US 6003065

I'll run targeted searches for this patent number against USPTO sources and CAFC 2026 dockets.

Let me refine the searches with more specific queries.

Let me attempt to retrieve the actual claim text and check the CAFC docket specifically.

1. Identification (verified against the authoritative patent text)

I did not auto‑correct the number; the search string "6003065" returned this patent both on Google Patents and uspto.report, so the match is direct.

2. Abstract (verbatim, from the patent document)

"According to principles of the invention, a distributed data processing system having a host computer coupled by way of a network to one or more peripheral devices is presented. In part, this distributed data processing system has advantages over current technologies because executables run on a host device can also be downloaded and executed on a target peripheral device. The virtual machine instruction processor located in the host machine and the peripheral device run the same instruction set and therefore readily share executables. This capability opens up robust communication between the peripheral device and the host machine and sophisticated peripheral device management and administration."

3. CAFC 2026 docket search — NEGATIVE RESULT

I searched for Federal Circuit 2026 appeal activity tied to patent 6003065. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, opinion, Rule 36 judgment, en banc petition, or briefing naming US 6,003,065. The 2026 CAFC materials my searches surfaced (e.g., Ironburg v. Valve, 2024‑2088; Spero v. Mercedes‑Benz, 2025‑1470; Extremity Medical v. Nextremity, 2025‑1160; mCom IP v. City National Bank, 2024‑2089; Flypsi v. Google, 2025‑1010 et seq.) involve entirely different patents and parties.

Caution — do not conflate short-form designations. Several results use the shorthand "the '065 patent" in contexts unrelated to this patent (notably Amdocs v. Openet, where the '065 patent concerns distributed network usage‑record/billing mediation). I could not verify from the retrieved snippets that those references are US 6,003,065, and on their face they appear to be different patents. I have not merged those results into this summary. Likewise, an unrelated 7,065,206 ('206) patent appears in Google v. Sonos — a different number entirely.

Given that US 6,003,065 expired on 2017‑04‑24, a live 2026 merits appeal on infringement is unlikely; any 2026 CAFC presence would more plausibly be an IPR/appeal or a fee/exceptional‑case matter — but I found no evidence of any such docket, so I state this as an absence of evidence, not confirmation of absence.

4. Litigation record surfaced

• Stanford NPE Litigation Database (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065) lists one case: Azul Systems Inc v. Sun Microsystems Inc, No. 3:06‑cv‑01988, N.D. Cal. I was unable to retrieve the filing date, the asserted claims, or any outcome from that page; the entry itself provides no disposition.
• The Google Patents record flags "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" with a Darts‑IP link (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=25295522...). Darts‑IP is a licensed dataset; the Google page does not reproduce the case caption or outcome, so I cannot corroborate it independently.

I found no PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) proceeding naming US 6,003,065 in the results retrieved. I would treat that as unconfirmed rather than a definitive negative.

5. Independent claims — explicit uncertainty

Important limitation on this section: the patent text supplied to me is truncated — the detailed description ends mid‑listing at the "Job Handling" API routines ("10.1.6) JobBillingInfo"), and the claims section was not included in the source material. I therefore do not have the authoritative claim language, and I will not reconstruct claim text as if it were verbatim. Exact claim numbering, count of independent claims, and claim scope are unverified.

What the Summary of the Invention does state supports at least two independent aspects, which in a patent of this era would typically be one system/apparatus claim and one method claim:

Aspect A — Distributed data processing system (apparatus). In plain language, the described independent system claim is expected to cover:

• a peripheral database coupled to a network, holding capability information for each peripheral device on the network;
• a host computer with a first virtual machine instruction processor (e.g., a Java virtual machine, in hardware or as software/co‑processor);
• one or more peripheral devices, each with its second virtual machine instruction processor capable of executing virtual machine instructions (printer, camera, telephone, HDTV, scanner, audio device, etc.);
• a first network interface on the host enabling bidirectional transmission, including status information;
• a storage device holding an application that requires a peripheral device, the application comprising virtual machine instructions;
• a determination mechanism (described as embedded in the application) that queries the peripheral database against predetermined criteria and selects which peripheral device should execute the application; and
• a download mechanism that transfers data and, optionally, a portion of the application to the selected peripheral device — with the alternative embodiment in which only data is downloaded and a pre‑existing application on the peripheral device operates on it.

Aspect B — Method of distributing processing. In plain language, the described independent method claim is expected to cover:

• collecting capability information for each peripheral device on the network (centralized in a database, or distributed across the devices themselves);
• executing an application of virtual machine instructions on a host having a virtual machine instruction processor, the application carrying predetermined criteria for peripheral selection;
• querying the collected capability information using those criteria and selecting the peripheral device to execute the application;
• transferring data and at least a portion of the application to the selected peripheral device;
• executing the application on the selected peripheral device using the transferred data; and
• establishing bidirectional communication between the selected peripheral device and the host to transmit and receive information about the device/host (status, control).

Dependent-claim subject matter (not independent claims, but what the specification emphasizes as fall‑through features) would likely include: co‑processor use of a proprietary processor alongside the virtual machine processor; a secondary network interface; migration/re‑routing of a partially executed job to another device; parallel job splitting (JobSplitInParallel), color/non‑color job splitting (JobSplitInColor), pre‑ and post‑processing re‑routing (JobPreProcess, JobPostProcess); device selection by name rather than by query; URL‑based font download (FontLocation/FontLoad) and third‑party font processing (ReadThirdPartyFont); SendPage/SendPageAddress; ThirdPartyColorManagementSelect; and firmware update routines. This list is derived from the specification's API and workflow descriptions, not from verified claim text.

6. Discrepancies and things I could not verify

1. Unified Patents portal anomaly. The Unified Patents page for US-6003065-A displayed the title "Control Method for Peripheral Device in Host Computer Connectable to a Plurality of Peripheral Devices" in the snippet I retrieved. That title does not match US 6,003,065 and appears to be a scraper artifact or a neighboring entry. I flag it rather than accept it.
2. Google Patents lists two priority dates in different spots ("Prior art date 1997‑04‑24" and, in the family listing, "1997‑04‑23"). The filing and priority date on the face of the record are 1997‑04‑24.
3. Claim text, claim count, and claim numbers: unavailable in my source. Do not rely on Section 5 as a quotation of the claims.
4. Litigation details (case outcomes, asserted claims, Darts‑IP first‑filed family member) are unconfirmed; only the Stanford NPE Database case caption and the Darts‑IP existence flag were retrieved.
5. No CAFC 2026 docket for this patent was found — reported as a negative search result.

7. Sources relied on

• Google Patents full text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6003065A/en (primary, authoritative for the text quoted above)
• uspto.report: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6003065 (confirms title/inventors)
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065
• Unified Patents portal (anomalous title noted): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6003065-A

Bottom line: US 6,003,065 is a 1999 Sun Microsystems (now Oracle America) patent on downloading and executing Java‑virtual‑machine executables/data onto peripheral devices (printers, cameras, displays) selected via a peripheral‑capability database, with bidirectional host–peripheral communication. It expired 2017‑04‑24. I found no CAFC 2026 docket naming it, and I do not have the claim text needed to state the independent claims verbatim.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6003065 specifically.

Found a strong lead. Let me verify details and check other litigation databases.

Summary of findings

Based on the litigation databases I could reach, US patent 6,003,065 (patent number 6003065) appears in one known U.S. litigation — a 2006 declaratory‑judgment/counterclaim dispute between Azul Systems, Inc. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the Northern District of California. I found no other known litigation (no PAE/NPE assertion campaigns, no additional district‑court cases, no CAFC appeals, and no PTAB IPR/PGR proceedings) involving this specific patent.

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Case identified

Source for the case-to-patent linkage: Stanford NPE Litigation Database, patent page for 6003065 — https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065 (shows: Azul Systems Inc v. Sun Microsystems Inc, 3:06-cv-01988, N.D. Cal.).

Procedural background (from contemporaneous press coverage)

• March 2006 — Azul Systems filed a declaratory-relief action in N.D. Cal. seeking a judgment that it did not infringe a list of ~20 Sun patents and/or that those patents were invalid, after alleging Sun demanded equity in Azul and "exorbitant" royalties. (ZDNet: https://www.zdnet.com/article/java-hardware-start-up-azul-sues-sun/ ; The Register: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2006/03/15/azul_sues_sun/)
• May 3–4, 2006 — Sun counterclaimed in the same San Jose action, alleging infringement of six Sun patents (described as relating to transactional memory/speculative locking, data processing, chip-to-chip communication, and software garbage collection), misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of a non-compete by former Sun executive Stephen DeWitt. (InfoWorld: https://www.infoworld.com/article/[2189650](/patent/2189650)/update-sun-sues-azul-for-patent-infringement.html ; NYT DealBook: https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/sun-files-countersuit-against-azul/)
• Settlement — The parties reportedly settled the dispute, with terms not disclosed. (ZDNet Japan report: https://japan.zdnet.com/article/20351197/)
• No CAFC appeal on US 6,003,065 was located.

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Important caveats on confidence

1. The precise role of US 6,003,065 within the case is not confirmed from a primary source. The Stanford NPE database associates the patent with this case, but I could not retrieve the underlying complaint/counterclaim text or PACER docket to verify whether 6,003,065 was (a) one of the ~20 patents in Azul's declaratory-judgment complaint, or (b) one of the six patents Sun asserted in its counterclaim. The database's "asserter/plaintiff" column lists Azul because Azul was the first-named plaintiff, even though the patent is a Sun-owned patent, which suggests the patent was at issue on the defensive side of Azul's DJ case (i.e., Sun would have been the party asserting it).
2. I could not independently confirm the exact filing date, docket status, or the settlement date/document from a primary source (PACER, CourtListener docket, or a court order). The filing date and settlement are drawn from 2006–2007 press reports.
3. Google Patents flags a litigation family for this patent via a Darts-IP link (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=25295522...) headed "First worldwide family litigation filed," which is consistent with at least one litigation existing, but I could not open that record to enumerate the cases.
4. I did not find any litigation in the Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal for this patent — the Unified Patents pages I retrieved for US‑6003065‑A showed only patent metadata and citation/reference lists, not litigation entries.
5. Expiry: The patent's anticipated expiration is 2017‑04‑24 (20 years from the 1997‑04‑24 filing date), and its legal status is "Expired – Lifetime." Any new assertion is therefore unlikely, and the current assignee of record is Oracle America, Inc. (successor to Sun Microsystems).

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Bottom line

• Known litigation: one. Azul Systems, Inc. v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., No. 3:06-cv-01988, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California — filed March 2006; Sun counterclaimed in May 2006; resolved by settlement (terms confidential).
• No other litigation involving US patent 6,003,065 was identified. If you need a PACER-confirmed docket history, the case number above is the one to pull; the specific claim chart/docket entry showing 6,003,065 should be verified against the actual pleadings, since the database linkage is the only source I could confirm for the patent's presence in that case.

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

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the absence and catch any litigation-driven challenges.

Correction to a preliminary assumption

I ran four confirmation searches after the structured block and found no AIA trial proceeding naming U.S. Patent No. 6,003,065 in any capacity — not as challenged patent, not in a joinder motion, not in a Fintiv analysis, not in an estoppel discussion. I am reporting the absence rather than manufacturing proceeding sections to fill the template. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block is therefore corroborated by live search.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,003,065: 0. No IPR, no PGR, no CBM. There is nothing to break down by active / claims invalidated / claims sustained / settled / institution denied — no petition has ever been filed. The defensive posture is the opposite of "hardened by surviving IPRs": this patent has never been tested at the Board, and it does not need to be, because every claim expired on 2017-04-24 (the 20-year term from the 1997-04-24 filing date; the patent's own record shows "Anticipated expiration" on that date and current status "Expired - Lifetime"). A defendant facing a demand letter on this patent today is looking at a time-barred, unenforceable-by-expiration asset, not a hardened one.

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No proceeding sections

Because the proceeding count is zero, there are no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} blocks to write. Any such block would be fabricated. What I can document is the non-PTAB record, which is the relevant subject matter adjacent to an AIA-trial report:

Litigation on the patent (non-PTAB) — context only

• Azul Systems, Inc. v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., No. 3:06-cv-01988 (N.D. Cal.) — the only case indexed against this patent (Stanford NPE Litigation Database, https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065; Google Patents "Family has litigation," https://patents.google.com/patent/US6003065/en).
• Posture: this was not an NPE assertion. Azul (a Java-appliance startup) filed a declaratory-judgment action in March 2006 seeking a declaration that it did not infringe ~20 Sun patents; Sun counterclaimed on six of its patents. Litigation was settled in June 2007 on confidential terms — reported as mutually acceptable, with Sun's chief legal counsel describing the terms as "favorable" to Sun (CNET/ZDNet coverage of the 2007-06-19 settlement; KIPO international dispute bulletin).
• Defensive value: relevant only as background. A 2007 confidential settlement between two operating companies produced no invalidity holding, no claim construction, and no estoppel touching this patent.

Adjacent-artifact check (negative)

I also looked for the patent in Board filings that mention patents without challenging them (e.g., Oracle's Realtime Data IPR family, IPR2016-00373 through -00377, and Oracle's Clouding IPR2013-00073). The '065 patent does not appear in those records. Do not let anyone read those hits as activity on this patent — they are unrelated Oracle petitions that surfaced only because of the shared assignee string.

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Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status. There is no PTAB claim-level scorecard, so the honest answer is: all claims are UNTESTED at the Board, and all claims are EXPIRED. No claim of 6,003,065 has ever been canceled through an AIA trial, and none has ever been confirmed either. The patent issued 1999-12-14, claimed priority to a 1997-04-24 filing, and reached end-of-term on 2017-04-24. It is pre-AIA, so it was never eligible for PGR (which requires an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16), and its subject matter — distributed execution of applications across host computers and peripheral devices with embedded virtual-machine instruction processors — is not a "financial product or service" claim set, so CBM review would not have been available either. The only realistic AIA vehicle was IPR, and none was filed.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone. No party has ever been a petitioner on this patent, so no petitioner or privy is barred from raising any ground. That cuts both ways for a defendant: there is no estoppel protecting you from a future petition, but there is also no prior petitioner to piggyback on. Practically, estoppel is a non-issue because the expiration clock has already foreclosed the obvious § 102/§ 103 IPR path — the Board does not institute on patents that cannot be amended and have no remaining enforceable term, and the real question for a defendant is not validity but whether any actionable infringement window exists at all.

Pattern signals. No pattern to report. There is no repeat petitioner (there are zero petitioners), no PTAB-appeal history for this patent at the Federal Circuit that I could find, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) ever challenged it — the Unified Patents portal lists the patent (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6003065-A) purely as a citation/prior-art record with Oracle America Inc. as current assignee, with no challenge entry. The single litigation event was a 2006–2007 operating-company dispute that settled. The absence of IPR activity here is not the usual "dormant patent" signal; it is explained by expiration, not by the patent being too strong to attack.

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Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiration, not invalidity. If you have received a demand letter citing US 6,003,065, the dispositive point is that the patent's term ended 2017-04-24. Confirm this against the USPTO Patent Center maintenance/term record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6003065/en shows "Anticipated expiration 2017-04-24" and status "Expired - Lifetime"). Because the § 286 six-year damages lookback from today (2026-10-01) reaches only to 2020-10-01 — after the expiration date — there is no open window for back damages either.
2. If a demand cites a specific claim, verify it is a real claim of this patent. Since no FWD exists, there is no canceling disposition to quote. Do not assert that any claim was canceled — it wasn't. The correct characterization to opposing counsel is "expired, never adjudicated."
3. Re-run the structured check before relying on this. The ODP ingest is a snapshot and AIA petitions can appear on a lag. Re-query PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) by patent number and by the application number 08/845,564 immediately before any filing or settlement position, and re-check CourtListener for any post-2024 filing. My searches are current as of 2026-10-01 and show nothing, but absence-of-record is the kind of finding that should be re-verified at the moment of reliance.
4. No trial-stage milestones to calendar. There is no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD date applicable, because no trial exists.

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Confidence and limits. High confidence on the zero-count finding: the structured ODP block says no AIA proceedings, and independent searches for IPR/PGR/CBM identifiers, Federal Circuit appeals, and litigation all came back empty for this patent. I could not locate a PTAB E2E page or a Federal Circuit docket for this patent because, on the available record, neither exists. I am not restating the 2007 Azul/Sun settlement terms as anything more than confidential — the public reporting is that terms were not disclosed. One caveat I cannot fully close: PTAB E2E does not always expose proceedings cleanly by patent-number search, so a proceeding that was terminated at the preliminary-response stage and never published could theoretically be missed; re-verification per step 3 is the mitigation.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 6003065 before writing up. Let me pull what I can from the authoritative text I've been given and cross-check against public sources.

Key lead found — there's a litigation entry. Let me dig into that and try to confirm reel/frame numbers.

US 6003065 — Assignment Record Reconstruction

Patent: US 6,003,065 — "Method and system for distributed processing of applications on host and peripheral devices"
Application: 08/845,564 · Filed 1997-04-24 · Granted 1999-12-14
Status: Expired — Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2017-04-24)

A caution on sourcing up front: I was able to retrieve the Google Patents legal-events log in full and cross-check two external databases, but I could not pull the underlying USPTO Assignment Center (Patent Assignment Search) records directly in this session, so reel/frame numbers for the 1997 Sun assignment are not available to me and are not fabricated below. Where I cite a reel/frame, I flag that it was confirmed only by inference from a parallel Sun-filed patent, not from the US6003065 record itself. Treat the chain below as accurate in substance and verify reel/frame fields at Assignment Center before relying on them.

Inventors

All three inventors are named as assignors on the same recorded assignment of inventors' interest to Sun Microsystems, Inc. dated 1997-10-10 (execution date unknown; recording 1997-10-10), roughly six months after the 1997-04-24 filing date. That is a routine, contemporaneous employee-invention assignment — the normal "all inventors assign to employer" pattern for a 1990s large-cap employer, not a departure signal.

Unusual patterns: none observable. There is no evidence in the record of inventors departing Sun within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-level re-assignment or reversion. Note that a "within 12 months" departure analysis would require employment records not in the patent file; I cannot substantiate it. Sun's 2010 acquisition is the only event that changed the inventors' (former) employer's ownership, thirteen years post-filing.

Original assignee

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) — assignee on the face of the issued patent and on the recorded 1997 assignment.

• Primary line of business: Enterprise computer hardware, operating systems, and software platforms; creator of the Java language and the Java Virtual Machine, which this patent's specification expressly builds on (Appendix I, "JAVA Virtual Machine Specification").
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — this is an operating company, and the specification describes Sun's Java/JavaOS and virtual-machine-processor products. Sun's own JavaStation/embedded-Java and JVM-processor programs (including the Tremblay/O'Connor hardware JVM application Ser. No. 08/788,807 incorporated by reference in this patent) are the product direction the claims serve. I cannot point to a specific commercial SKU that maps claim-by-claim; call that unclear at claim level, but the assignee is unambiguously an operating company, not a holding entity.
• Current status: Acquired by Oracle Corporation (announced 2009-04-20, closed January 2010); the Sun entity was renamed Oracle America, Inc. Sun as a separate corporate entity no longer exists. No bankruptcy proceeding for Sun; patents rode through the acquisition.

Assignment timeline

• 1997-10-10 (executed) / recorded 1997-10-10 — Reel not retrieved (see caveat)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of inventors' interest)
  • Assignor: Albert Yan; Jici Gao; Gerald Pelissier (individually)
  • Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources available to me — I did not retrieve the recorded cover sheet and will not guess at the attorney of record.
  • Context: Initial employment/inventor assignment — the standard first link, not an acquisition or fire-sale.

• 2010-02-12 (merger effective) / recorded 2015-12-11–12-16 — Reel 037303/0336 (reel/frame confirmed on a parallel Sun patent, US7409710 B1, via INPADOC; see caveat)

  • Conveyance: Merger and Change of Name (Google Patents renders it "MERGER AND CHANGE OF NAME (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Oracle USA, Inc.; Oracle America, Inc. (bundled predecessor names)
  • Assignee: Oracle America, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from available sources.
  • Context: Internal reorg / change of name only — Oracle's acquisition of Sun, recorded years after the effective date as a bulk portfolio name-change. No third party entered the chain.

• 2017-04-24 — Anticipated expiration; status "Expired – Lifetime." Not an assignment.

If the Assignment Center returns only these two records, that is itself the finding: the patent never left operating-company hands. There is no post-2015 assignment, no LLC, no security interest, and no release on the record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6003065
    1997 : Filed by Sun Microsystems
         : Inventors assign to Sun Microsystems
    1999 : Patent issued to Sun
    2006 : Azul sues Sun for declaratory relief
         : Sun counterclaims on this patent family
    2007 : Sun and Azul settle
    2010 : Oracle acquires Sun
    2015 : Merger recorded to Oracle America
    2017 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only assignee change is Sun Microsystems, Inc. → Oracle America, Inc. (reel 037303/0336), a name change of a large operating company. No "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC appears anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither Sun Microsystems nor Oracle America appears on any of the NPE lists named (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Oracle is itself a frequent defendant-adjacent operating licensor, not an NPE registrant.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either entry, so I cannot test recurrence. There is no reason to suspect it in a two-link chain between two operating companies, but this is an absence of data, not a negative finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two recorded transactions across 18 years, both operating-company events, not chained LLCs. No shared-correspondent/registered-agent clustering is observable (and none is suggested by the entity names).

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only litigation touching this patent (Stanford NPE Litigation Database, case 3:06-cv-01988, N.D. Cal.) was filed by Azul Systems against Sun as a declaratory-relief action in March 2006 — i.e., the alleged infringer sued the then-owner. There was no ownership change in the six months before that suit; Sun had held the patent since 1997. The assignment direction is inverted from the classic set-up-to-sue pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Sun did not file Chapter 7/11. The 2010 transaction was a going-concern acquisition by Oracle, not a distressed sale, and the 2015 record is a name-change/merger mechanics filing, not a sale of assets out of an estate.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company transferred this patent to a separate assertion vehicle. Sun asserted its own patents itself (including its counterclaim against Azul), and the portfolio stayed inside the corporate family through Oracle.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Oracle America and then at expiration.

Additional context that cuts against any NPE reading: the one case in the Stanford NPE database is tagged "8 – Product company," meaning the asserter (Azul) was itself an operating company. The dispute was a commercial negotiation over Java/multicore IP that Azul described as a Sun demand for "part ownership" plus royalties, and the parties settled in mid-2007. That is competitor-vs-competitor licensing warfare, the opposite of an NPE extraction model.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain is short and clean: inventors → Sun Microsystems, Inc. (1997-10-10) → Oracle America, Inc. via merger/change of name, reel 037303/0336 (effective 2010-02-12, recorded Dec 2015). Both assignees are/were large operating companies; the only litigation (Azul Systems v. Sun Microsystems, 3:06-cv-01988, N.D. Cal., 2006) was a declaratory-relief/competitor dispute that settled in 2007, with no pre-suit ownership change and no NPE vehicle anywhere. No shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLC transfers, and no defensive aggregator terminal — the patent simply stayed in the operating-company family until it expired 2017-04-24. Caveat: the 1997 reel/frame and both correspondents of record were not retrievable in this session; verify them before relying on this chain for a standing analysis.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search patent number 6003065) and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · Cross-check: Google Patents legal events https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6003065A](/patent/US6003065A)/en · Stanford NPE Litigation Database https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065 · Unified Patents portal https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6003065-A

I'll research US Patent 6003065 and its prior art citations. Let me run targeted searches.

I found forward citations but need the actual "Patent Citations" (prior art) section listed on US6003065 itself. Let me dig deeper.

The results so far are forward citations (patents citing 6003065), not the prior art 6003065 itself cites. Let me pull the actual "Patent Citations" table from the patent page.

Let me retrieve the actual prior-art reference lists from Justia and the Unified Patents portal for this specific patent.

I'll pull the cited prior art for this patent before running the § 103 analysis.

The citation list didn't surface. Let me target the patent's own citation tables and related invalidity record.

The citation table itself hasn't surfaced yet. Let me try dedicated patent-database mirrors that print "References Cited."

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,003,065 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Evidence basis, limits, and contradiction flags

Before the analysis, the boundaries of what I can actually support:

(a) I still do not have the claim text. The patent source supplied to me terminates in the Detailed Description at API routine "10.1.6) JobBillingInfo." There is no Claims section in my source material. Consequently, every "claim" characterization below is derived from the Summary of the Invention and the specification's enumerated embodiments — not from verified claim language. An obviousness analysis is only as good as the claim limitations it is run against; treat Sections 3 and 5 as provisional and re-run once claim text is obtained. This is consistent with (not a departure from) the earlier-generated Section 5, which also flagged the claims as unavailable.

(b) I could not retrieve the patent's own front-page "References Cited" list. My searches against Google Patents, uspto.report, freepatentsonline-style mirrors, and IPR exhibits did not return the examiner-cited patent/non-patent references for US 6,003,065. The task instruction to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page" is therefore satisfied only partially: the Google Patents "Prior Art" block supplies Prior art keywords — peripheral device, peripheral, virtual machine, application, network — and Prior art date 1997‑04‑24, but not the citation table. I have substituted (i) references that surfaced in my searches, (ii) art the patent itself admits in its Background, and (iii) the patent's own incorporated documents. Every reference is tagged with a confidence marker.

(c) Contradiction flags.

1. Date inconsistency. This task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the top-level operating instructions state today's date is 2026‑10‑01. I flag rather than silently reconcile. Nothing in the analysis depends on which is correct.
2. Prior-section anomaly now explained. The earlier-generated summary (Section 6.1) flagged that the Unified Patents page for US-6003065-A displayed the title "Control Method for Peripheral Device in Host Computer Connectable to a Plurality of Peripheral Devices." My search retrieved that exact title, date (1990‑08‑15) and assignee (Canon Inc) attached to US‑5,850,573‑A, which appeared adjacent to US‑6003065‑A in the Unified Patents "similar documents" listing. The anomaly is a scraper adjacency artifact, not a second title for US 6,003,065. US‑5,850,573‑A is, however, independently relevant as art (below).
3. Priority-date discrepancy persists. Google Patents shows "Prior art date 1997‑04‑24" and a family entry dated 1997‑04‑23. The filing date is 1997‑04‑24. Either date keeps the patent pre‑AIA.
4. No CAFC 2026 docket was found (unchanged negative result).

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1. Governing law

• Priority/filing 1997‑04‑24 → pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) applies (AIA §§ 102/103 govern applications filed on or after 2013‑03‑16).
• Framework: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope/content of prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, objective indicia — as modified by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations, "obvious to try" over a finite set of identified solutions, design incentives/market forces, "known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement").
• Pre‑AIA § 103(c) matters here: art that would otherwise qualify only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g) and was commonly owned at the time the invention was made is disqualified. This directly affects the patent's own cited sibling application (Section 4, Group IV).
• Expired status (2017‑04‑24) does not bar IPR on the claims but does eliminate injunctive/damages exposure; obviousness now matters for validity challenges, family members, and defensive purposes.

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2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA), as of April 1997

A bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience in one or more of: network peripheral control (printer page-description languages and driver architecture), networked computing/distributed systems, or interpreted/virtual-machine runtime design — or a master's degree with 1 year. Such a person would have been familiar with: network printing protocols and print drivers; PostScript/PCL page-description interpreters and downloadable resources; TCP/IP and socket programming; directory/management infrastructure (SNMP management information bases); and the then-current generation of Java (bytecode, JVM, downloadable applets). This is a proposed level; no litigation record fixing it was retrieved.

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3. The claim concepts tested (from the Summary — not verbatim claims)

Aspect A — System. [A1] peripheral database on the network holding capability information for each peripheral device; [A2] host computer with a first virtual machine instruction processor; [A3] one or more peripheral devices each having a second virtual machine instruction processor; [A4] network coupling host and peripherals; [A5] first network interface supporting bidirectional transmission, including status information; [A6] storage holding an application comprising virtual machine instructions that requires a peripheral device; [A7] a determination mechanism, described as embedded in the application, that queries the peripheral database against predetermined criteria and selects which peripheral device executes the application; [A8] a download mechanism transferring data and, optionally, a portion of the application to the selected peripheral device — with the express alternative that only data is downloaded and a pre-existing application on the device operates on it.

Aspect B — Method. [B1] collect peripheral capability information (centralized or distributed); [B2] execute a VM-instruction application on a host with a VM instruction processor, the application carrying predetermined peripheral criteria; [B3] query the collected information and select a peripheral device; [B4] transfer data and at least a portion of the application; [B5] execute on the selected device using the transferred data; [B6] establish bidirectional communication to send/receive host/peripheral information.

The asserted point of novelty, per the specification, is essentially [A2] + [A3] + the same/compatible instruction set on both sides, enabling one executable to be shared across host and peripheral while the device is selected by capability query and then communicates back bidirectionally.

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4. Prior art available for combination

Confidence key: [V] verified in retrieved sources; [P] named in the patent itself (admitted background or incorporated document); [U] unverified — I could not confirm the citation or the date from retrieved sources.

Group I — Device-resident interpreter that executes downloaded programs (the "VM in the peripheral" element [A3]/[B4]–[B5])

• PostScript, PCL, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe PrintGear, Microsoft GDI, Apple QuickDraw [P]. The patent's own Background concedes these PDL languages "organize the layout of page information in a programmatic manner," i.e., an interpreter resident in the printer executes a program downloaded from the host. PostScript Levels 1/2 additionally support downloadable procedures/resources/fonts — programs executed on the device.
• The Java Virtual Machine Specification (Lindholm & Yellin, Addison‑Wesley) [P] — the very document the patent incorporates as Appendix I. The specification is therefore conceded to be a pre-existing description of the VM instruction set/execution model. Publication date not verified (§102(a)/(b) posture discussed in §8).
• Java applet download-and-execute on a client via HotJava / Sun's 1995–96 "Java Language Environment" white paper material [U] — the "download architecture-neutral executable into a target machine and run it under a resident VM" model.
• US 5,850,573 A (Canon, Control Method for Peripheral Device in Host Computer Connectable to a Plurality of Peripheral Devices, 1990‑08‑15) [V (listing surfaced); citation status on the patent face U] — host-side control of a plurality of peripheral devices.

Group II — Peripheral capability database / query-selection ([A1], [A7], [B1], [B3])

• SNMP management information bases and the Printer MIB (RFC 1759, March 1995) [U] — network-resident, machine-readable capability and status objects for printers, i.e., exactly a "profile of the capabilities for each peripheral device coupled to the network" with query semantics.
• Directory services (X.500/LDAP; NetWare's directory, the latter named in the patent [P]) — resolvable location/attribute data for named network devices.
• Canon US 5,850,573 A [V] — selection among multiple peripheral devices tied to one host.

Group III — Bidirectional host↔device channel with status ([A5], [B6])

• IEEE 1284 (Enhanced Communication Port / ECP) [P] — named in the patent — was standardized precisely to add a reverse/back channel to the parallel peripheral link.
• TCP/IP sockets, Ethernet, X.25, SCSI, SDLC, HDLC, IEEE 1394 [P] — all named in the patent as known technologies for bidirectional peripheral networking.
• PJL / printer status and back-channel reporting [U].

Group IV — Hardware/co-processor platform ([A2]/[A3] architecture)

• Intel Pentium/x86, Sun SPARC/UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC [P] — the patent expressly states these known proprietary processors can execute virtual machine instructions, and that a VM instruction processor may be used "as a co-processor in conjunction with proprietary instruction processors." The co-processor architecture of the dependent concepts is therefore admitted prior art.
• Ser. No. 08/788,807 (Tremblay & O'Connor, A Hardware Virtual Machine Instruction Processor, filed 1997‑01‑23) [P] — cited by the patent. However, it is commonly owned by Sun and, if it qualifies only under § 102(e), pre‑AIA § 103(c) disqualifies it as § 103 art. A challenger should not rely on it.

Group V — Distributed processing / job routing (dependent-feature concepts)

• Sun RPC (RFC 1057, 1988) and XDR (RFC 1014, 1987) [V — surfaced in a retrieved bibliography, not the patent's citation list] — the canonical mechanism for dispatch of a remote computation and return of a result, plus Sun NFS (1985) for network file/resource sharing.
• Network print spoolers/queues and SNMP-based network management platforms (HP OpenView, IBM/Tivoli TME, Computer Associates Unicenter) [U] — the administration/diagnostics concepts (firmware push, status polling, remote configuration).
• URL-addressable/downloadable resources over HTTP + HTML [P] — the patent's own FontLocation(fontID)/FontLoad(virtual_location) and SendPageAddress() concepts presuppose the WWW URL retrieval model.

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5. Grounds of § 103 obviousness

Reminder: grounds are stated against concepts [A1]–[B6], not verbatim claims. Re-map once claim text is available.

Ground 1 — Canon '573 + JVM Specification (Appendix I) + PostScript/PDL printer art

• '573 supplies [A1]-flavored plural-peripheral control from a host with device identification/selection.
• PostScript/PCL supplies [A3]/[B4]/[B5]: a printer-resident interpreter executing a program downloaded from the host, including downloadable procedures and fonts.
• The JVM Specification supplies the architecture-neutral instruction set and the "same instruction set on both machines" property of [A2]+[A3].
• Combination result: a host executing VM instructions downloads VM instructions into a printer whose resident VM instruction processor executes them → [A]–[B] in substance, and this is a combination of known elements according to known methods yielding predictable results (KSR, rationale A).

Ground 2 — Java applet-download art + Printer MIB/SNMP capability query + bidirectional peripheral channel (IEEE 1284/PJL/sockets)

• Applet-download art supplies download-and-execute of an architecture-neutral executable under a resident VM ([A3], [A6], [A8]).
• Printer MIB/SNMP (or a NetWare/X.500 directory) supplies [A1], [A7], [B1], [B3] — a machine-queryable capability profile per network device, selected by criteria.
• IEEE 1284 reverse channel / TCP sockets / PJL status supply [A5], [B6].
• Combination result: capability-based selection of the target peripheral plus bytecode + data transfer plus status back-channel — the full Aspect A/B concept. Rationale: known techniques applied to a known device ready for improvement (KSR, rationale D).

Ground 3 — "Obvious to try" over a finite, identified solution set (interpreter-in-device + downloadable program + capability lookup)

At the April 1997 date, the field had converged on a small, identified set of ways to make heterogeneous peripherals interoperable without per-device drivers: (i) standardize a device-side interpreter (the PDL path — conceded in the Background); (ii) download an architecture-neutral program into a device-side interpreter (the applet path); (iii) query device capabilities and dispatch work to the best-suited device (the management/MIB path). Selecting and combining (ii) with (iii) for peripherals — rather than for general-purpose computers — is choosing from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions with a reasonable expectation of success (KSR; In re O'Farrell). No teaching away appears in the record I retrieved: the patent's own Background treats PDLs as partially successful and increasingly fragmented, which is a motivation, not a discouragement.

Ground 4 — Dependent-concept features (one or more of the following where claimed)

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6. Motivation to combine (the KSR articulation)

The strongest source of motivation is the patent's own Background, which is admissible as an admission about the state of the art and the recognized problem:

1. Driver proliferation / support cost — "the peripheral device manufacturer must develop a different device driver for each different application, hardware platform, operating system, and sometimes also for each of the different versions." This is a classic design incentive / market force (KSR) pushing toward an architecture-neutral executable.
2. PDL fragmentation — the Background states that PCL vs. PostScript fragmentation increased the driver burden. A PHOSITA seeking to solve the stated problem would naturally look to a single architecture-neutral instruction set rather than yet another PDL.
3. "Write once run everywhere" — the Background expressly describes Java as intended for networked/distributed environments and identifies the unmet need for peripherals "which operate under the same paradigm." The Background states the goal and the tool in the same document.
4. Status/diagnostics uniformity — the Background describes "a single application to manage a large heterogeneous collection of peripheral devices" as the desired end state — supplying motivation for the capability-database and bidirectional-status elements.
5. Predictability — each proposed combination reuses a known element for its known purpose: interpreter-in-device (PostScript), program download (applets), capability query (MIB/directory), back-channel (IEEE 1284/sockets), remote dispatch (RPC).

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7. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

• None identified in my sources. I found no evidence of record-level objective indicia (long-felt need, unexpected results, industry praise, copying, licensing-due-to-patent).
• Caution on commercial success: Sun's Java licensing success is not coextensive with any claim of this patent (In re GPAC; Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. v. Cadbury); a nexus would have to be shown between the claimed subject matter and the commercial success.
• Litigation outcome: the only case surfaced — Azul Systems Inc v. Sun Microsystems Inc, No. 3:06‑cv‑01988 (N.D. Cal.) — was filed as a declaratory-relief action by Azul against ~20 Sun patents and was settled (reported June 2007); Sun counterclaimed on six Sun patents. No invalidity holding, no claim construction, and no final merits determination naming US 6,003,065 was retrieved. Settlement is not an objective indicium of non-obviousness, and I cannot confirm that US 6,003,065 was among the six counterasserted patents.
• The Darts‑IP first-family-litigation flag on Google Patents remains unverified (licensed dataset; page does not reproduce the caption).

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8. Weak points and counter-arguments a challenger/patent owner must address

1. Appendix I's own prior-art status is double-edged. The JVM Specification is incorporated into the patent, so the patent owner may characterize it as part of the disclosure rather than 102(b) art; and if it is within one year of filing (a c. 1996 publication vs. April 1997 filing), it is at most 102(a) art requiring the challenger to establish the invention date. However, on the facts I have, the Lindholm & Yellin document is authored by "others" (not Yan/Gao/Pelissier), which supports 102(a). The exact publication date must be verified — I could not confirm it. Treat this as the single most important verification item.
2. The "same/compatible instruction set on host and peripheral" limitation is the element most likely to be argued as the point of novelty, on the theory that PostScript put an interpreter in the printer but did not put a shared VM on both host and device. The rebuttal is that applet-download art (Group I) plus PostScript (Group I) plus routine engineering yields exactly that with predictable results, and the Background states the desire for a single paradigm.
3. "Determination mechanism embedded in the application" ([A7]) is a software-architecture characterization (criteria embedded in the requesting program rather than in a global scheduler). The patent's own JobPreProcess/JobPostProcess descriptions show re-routing on either side of processing start, which cuts against treating "embedded in the application" as a meaningfully distinct structural limit. Read broadly, it is a functional limitation over a general-purpose computer — the Alice/Mayo § 101 overlay is a separate attack, not a § 103 one. I flag it but do not develop it here.
4. Pre‑AIA § 103(c) disqualifies the commonly owned Ser. No. 08/788,807 (Section 4, Group IV). Do not build a ground on it.
5. Claim-drafting risk. Mid-1990s Sun claims of this genre often recite the system in fairly broad functional terms (database + first VM processor + second VM processor + determination mechanism + download mechanism). Broad functional claims are, if anything, easier to invalidate under § 103 than narrow structural ones — but this must be confirmed against the actual claim text.

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9. Verification gaps (what must be obtained before this analysis is final)

1. The actual claims (all of them) from US 6,003,065 — my source truncates before the claims. This is the controlling gap.
2. The patent's front-page "References Cited" table (patent and non-patent), including the examiner's cited PDL/network-printing/VM art.
3. The prosecution history (file wrapper) — to identify whether the "same instruction set on host and peripheral" and "capability database query" limitations were the actual grounds of allowance.
4. Publication date of the Java Virtual Machine Specification (Lindholm & Yellin) and of any Sun white paper incorporated into Appendix I — decisive for 102(a)/(b).
5. Authentication of RFC 1759 (Printer MIB, 1995) as a printed publication, and its mapping to [A1]/[A7].
6. Whether US 5,850,573 A is on the face of US 6,003,065 as a cited reference (currently only an adjacency in a third-party similar-art listing).
7. Darts‑IP / Stanford record details for the Azul case (asserted claims, disposition) and confirmation of whether the Darts‑IP "first family litigation" entry refers to the Azul suit.

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Sources relied on

• Google Patents, US6003065A (primary; supplies "Prior art keywords," prior art date 1997‑04‑24, and the Background admissions): https://patents.google.com/patent/US6003065A/en
• uspto.report, grant/6003065 (bibliographic confirmation and sibling application Ser. No. 08/788,807): https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6003065
• Unified Patents portal, US-6003065-A (source of the adjacent US-5,850,573-A listing, 1990‑08‑15, Canon Inc., and the "Referenced By" set): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6003065-A
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database, patent 6003065 (Azul Systems Inc v. Sun Microsystems Inc, 3:06‑cv‑01988, N.D. Cal.): https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6003065
• IT Jungle, "Sun Microsystems Sues Azul Systems Right Back" (2006‑05‑15) — six counterasserted Sun patents, trade-secret allegations: https://www.itjungle.com/2006/05/15/tfh051506-story06-3/
• Japan/ZDNet report of the Sun–Azul settlement (June 2007), reporting Azul's March 2006 declaratory action against 20 Sun patents: https://japan.zdnet.com/article/20351197/
• EveryPatent, US 6003065 (full Background text): http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat6003065.html
• Third-party bibliography surfacing Sun RFC 1014 (XDR, 1987) and RFC 1057 (RPC, 1988): https://pastel.hal.science/tel-00005776v1/file/tel-00005776.pdf

Bottom line. On the concepts disclosed in the Summary, US 6,003,065 is vulnerable to § 103 on multiple independent grounds — most forcefully Ground 2 (applet-download art + capability-query/management art + bidirectional peripheral channel), with the motivation supplied largely by the patent's own Background (driver proliferation and PDL fragmentation). Ground 1 (Canon '573 + JVM Specification + PostScript) is a viable single-chain alternative. Ground 3 (KSR "obvious to try") is a useful backstop. All grounds are provisional because the claim text was not available to me, the patent's own citation list could not be retrieved, and the publication date of the incorporated JVM Specification remains unverified — that date is the pivotal factual question.