Invalidity dossier
US 6009475
Filter rule validation and administration for firewalls
Current assignee: Trend Micro Inc
Added 9/21/2026, 10:40:57 AM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6009475 A
Title: Filter rule validation and administration for firewalls
Identifiers and dates (per source):
- Patent number: US 6009475 A
- Application number: US08/773,543; filed 1996-12-23
- Prior art date / priority date: 1996-12-23
- Publication (grant) date: 1999-12-28
- Inventor: Theodore Jack London Shrader
- Original assignee: International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)
- Current assignee listed: Trend Micro Inc.
- Legal status listed: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2016-12-23; the source notes legal status is an assumption, not a legal conclusion)
Purpose: According to the supplied text, the invention relates generally to security systems in a distributed computer network, and more particularly to a web-based interface for administering IP filtering on a firewall computer of the kind placed between the non-secure Internet and a secure company Intranet. The stated problem is that prior interfaces (command line or SMIT) require memorizing many commands and piecing together output from different actions, which the text calls inconvenient and "anything but user friendly."
Plain-language scope: The described interface presents panes for defining and testing filter rules. A sample packet is defined in a pane and validated against the firewall's set of filter rules; if the packet fails, the filter rule that "caught" it is displayed. A list of filter rules can appear in a second pane, with the catching rule shown differently. A third pane may show a graphical bar representing the rule set, changed at the position of the catching rule to indicate how far the packet travelled. A query can also be run to find filter rules sharing attributes with a sample packet, with matches indicated by lines through a "scatter bar" and listed rules highlighted differently, plus a small bar showing the displayed portion relative to the complete list; an action may then be performed on a selected rule.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6009475/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not provide the full specification, complete claim language, all drawing contents, or an independent validity/ownership analysis. Reassignment entries (IBM to Trend Micro, 2010-05-17) are recorded, but the text states listed assignees may be inaccurate. No litigation, prior-art comparison, or claim construction is addressed here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:01:20 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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PTAB challenges
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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
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
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