US 6058106

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Now let me check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity and current legal status.

Search Results — US Patent 6,058,106

Scope note: I searched for the exact number 6058106 / 6,058,106 across USPTO/PTAB document sources, Google Patents, Justia, EveryPatent, and Federal Circuit materials. I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity (or any Federal Circuit appeal) naming this patent. That is expected: the patent's term ran out. I flag below where I have lower confidence.

Bibliographic Data

Ownership chain (per USPTO assignment records as reflected on Google Patents): Motorola, Inc. → Motorola Mobility, Inc. (Dec. 13, 2010) → Motorola Mobility LLC (Oct. 2, 2012, change of name) → Google Technology Holdings LLC (Nov. 24, 2014). The listed current assignee is Google Technology Holdings LLC.

Patent family / foreign counterparts: PCT/US1998/014015 published as WO1999021095A1; TW087113745 → TW432851B; FR9812648 → FR2770068A1.

Related U.S. applications incorporated by reference: Ser. No. 08/954,770 (space diversity in a TDD wireless system); Ser. No. 08/954,455, now U.S. 5,862,452 (low-complexity dynamic persistence mode for random access); and Ser. No. 08/893,332, now U.S. 6,157,632 (low-complexity protocol robust to bursted interference).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A network protocol method (300), access point device (600) and peripheral devices (700, 800) provide an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network wherein the access point device: (1) broadcasts a block assignment that specifies a wireless source peripheral device and a wireless destination peripheral device; (2) receives, from the wireless destination peripheral device, sequence information; (3) determines whether the sequence information represents one of: a negative acknowledgment and a positive acknowledgment with a sequence number; (4) forwards an acknowledgment to the wireless source peripheral based on the sequence information, and repeats steps (1)-(4) until N blocks of data, N a predetermined integer, have been transferred from the wireless source peripheral to the wireless destination peripheral."

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

There are six independent claims (1, 3, 8, 10, 12, 14). The core invention: in a centrally coordinated wireless in-home network (Motorola's "DA-TDMA"/In-Home RF Bus protocol), a peripheral-to-peripheral ("peer-to-peer") data transfer is scheduled by an access point that hands out block assignments, while the payload itself travels directly from source peripheral to destination peripheral only once (rather than being relayed twice through the access point). The access point remains the acknowledgment relay and sequencing authority.

Claim 1 — Method at the access point (APD). The access point receives an initiation request specifying N data blocks, zeroes its sequence number (APSN) and block count (n), and broadcasts a block assignment (BA). It receives from the destination peripheral either an "ACKSEQ" (positive ack + sequence number) or a "NAK." If the APD gets a NAK, or an ACKSEQ whose sequence number doesn't match its expected APSN, it forwards a NAK to the source peripheral and re-broadcasts the BA. If the block was acknowledged, it forwards an acknowledgment (carrying the block sequence number, BSN) to the source peripheral. If BSN matches APSN, it increments APSN and n; if n = N it ends the block assignments, otherwise it loops back to broadcasting BAs. (Essentially: an ARQ/scheduling state machine driven by the APD.)

Claim 3 — Access point device (apparatus). The APD comprises (A) a block assignment unit that broadcasts a block assignment naming a source peripheral and a destination peripheral, and (B) a NAK/ACKSEQ unit that receives sequence information from the destination peripheral, determines whether it is a negative acknowledgment or a positive acknowledgment with a sequence number, and forwards an acknowledgment to the source peripheral accordingly — repeated until N blocks have been transferred source-to-destination.

Claim 8 — Wireless source peripheral device (WSPD). A low-complexity source device with (A) a block assignment receiver unit that receives its block assignments, transmits a data block with a sequence number, and receives a forwarded acknowledgment from the access point; and (B) an acknowledgment interpreter that decides whether the forwarded acknowledgment is negative (then waits for another block assignment) or positive (then increments the sequence number and prepares the next block until N blocks are positively acknowledged).

Claim 10 — Wireless destination peripheral device (WDPD). A low-complexity destination device with (A) a block assignment receiver that receives its block assignments, receives a data block with a sequence number, and transmits sequence information to the access point (either a positive ack with the sequence number or a NAK); and (B) a block-sequence detector that compares the received sequence number to a wireless destination peripheral sequence number. On a match, the block is stored and the sequence number is incremented; on a mismatch, the block is discarded.

Claim 12 — Article of manufacture (computer-usable medium). A computer-readable medium carrying program code to (A) broadcast a block assignment naming a source and destination peripheral, (B) receive sequence information from the destination peripheral, (C) determine whether it is a negative acknowledgment or a positive acknowledgment with a sequence number, and (D) forward an acknowledgment to the source peripheral, repeating (A)–(D) until N blocks are transferred.

Claim 14 — System-level network protocol method. Using at least one access point, multiple source peripherals, and multiple destination peripherals: (A) the APD broadcasts a block assignment with addresses of a first WSPD and first WDPD; (B) the first WSPD transmits a block of data with a sequence number; (C) the first WDPD transmits acknowledgment information with the sequence number upon receipt; and (D) the APD forwards that acknowledgment information to the WSPD and returns to step A, continuing until N blocks have been successfully received by the WDPD.

Dependent claims (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15) add: initialization of n/APSN to zero (2); initiation-request types — contention block, isochronous setup, or application directive (4); N-block request detail (5); the full NAK/ACK rebroadcast logic and N-count comparison (6); piggybacking the acknowledgment in a block assignment (7); device-type lists for the source and destination peripherals (9, 11 — wireless speaker, cordless telephone, shared printer, networked game, peripheral PC, child's toy, video device, audio device, set top box); combining the ack-forwarding and BA steps into one transmission (13); and the "received successfully → next block / failed → repeat block" branching (15).

Context and Other Findings

• Prior art cited on the face of the patent: US 4,789,983 (Acampora et al.); US 5,640,390 (Sakamoto et al.); US 5,815,508 (Wadzinske et al.); EP 0 653 865 A2; plus non-patent literature (Kazama et al. 1994; Hyden et al., SWAN 1995; Agrawal et al., SWAN 1996; Brouwer & Verhoeff 1993; Castagnoli et al. 1993; Titlebaum 1981; Lin & Costello; McEliece).
• Forward citation / third-party use: The patent was cited as an "X" (particularly relevant) reference against claim 1 et al. in WO2002063914A1 (MSC), per the search report reproduced in that document.
• No known 2026 CAFC activity: Because the patent expired October 20, 2017 and shows only "Expired – Lifetime" status, and my searches surfaced no Federal Circuit docket, IPR, or district-court matter naming 6,058,106, I have no evidence of any 2026 appeal involving it. I cannot rule out a non-public or very recent docket entry, but nothing in the searched record supports one.

Uncertainty / Caveats

• The published patent text lists the application number as 08/953,948; one third-party aggregator page renders it as "US 9539484," which appears to be a formatting artifact — I treat 08/953,948 as authoritative.
• The Google Patents page applies modern CPC-style codes such as H04W52/383 ("power control in peer-to-peer links"); the original face-of-patent classification was H04Q 7/32. I report the Google-Patents classification as a modern reclassification, not the examination classification.
• I could not independently verify current record ownership beyond the assignment chain shown in the search results; the listed current assignee is Google Technology Holdings LLC.
• All quoted abstract/claim language is from the authoritative patent text; the claim breakdown above is my paraphrase and should be confirmed against the granted claims for any legal purpose.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6058106. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search patent litigation databases directly.

Let me try a few more targeted searches, including Google Patents' litigation data and other patent litigation trackers.

Summary of Findings: US Patent No. 6,058,106

Patent at issue: US 6,058,106 — "Network protocol method, access point device and peripheral devices for providing for an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network"

• Inventors: Mark Conrad Cudak, Bruce Dale Mueller, James Robert Kelton, Brian Keith Classon
• Original assignee: Motorola, Inc. (later Motorola Mobility LLC → Google Technology Holdings LLC)
• Filing/priority date: October 20, 1997
• Grant date: May 2, 2000
• Status: Expired — Lifetime (anticipated expiration October 20, 2017)

Litigation: None Found

I found no litigation involving US Patent No. 6,058,106.

I searched for litigation records covering this specific patent number across patent-litigation sources (including Google Patents litigation data, Unified Patents materials, PTAB filings referencing related patents, and general court docket references). The searches did not surface any district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB proceeding in which US 6,058,106 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

Several caveats and clarifications, per the strict-identifier instruction:

1. Other patents sharing the trailing digits "106" appeared in results but are NOT US 6,058,106. For example, the searches returned references to unrelated patents such as "U.S. Patent No. 10,487,106," "'106 patent" in the Tessera/PTI semiconductor packaging dispute, "8031064C3," patent "US10659885B2," and others. These are different patents and are expressly not results for US 6,058,106 — I have not conflated them. I flag them only to show what was excluded.

2. The asset value reference. A third-party analytics page (patentleaderboard.com) lists US 6,058,106 with an estimated value figure ("$77,172,000"). This is a valuation estimate, not evidence of litigation or licensing enforcement, and should not be treated as a litigation record.

3. Legal status. The patent is recorded as "Expired – Lifetime," with anticipated expiration on October 20, 2017 — well before the current date (April 26, 2026). Any assertion activity would necessarily predate expiration, and litigation over an expired patent is possible but was not found here.

Conclusion

Based on the sources searched, no known litigation involves US Patent No. 6,058,106. I cannot confirm the existence of any case (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, status) because none was located. If litigation exists that is not captured in the indexed public sources I searched, I do not have high-confidence knowledge of it, and I will not fabricate case details. To be certain, a direct, authoritative check of Docket Navigator, PACER, or the USPTO Patent Center "Litigation" record for this patent number would be the appropriate next step — I was unable to complete that targeted lookup within my available search steps.

PTAB Proceedings Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,058,106

"Network protocol method, access point device and peripheral devices for providing for an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network"
Inventors: Cudak, Mueller, Kelton, Classon · Assignee of record: Google Technology Holdings LLC (orig. Motorola, Inc.) · Filed 1997-10-20 · Granted 2000-05-02 · Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2017-10-20)

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block for 6,058,106 returns no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest, and independent web searching surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving this patent — not as the challenged patent, and not in any petitioner's or patent owner's proceeding list. There is nothing to break down by active / invalidated / sustained / settled / institution-denied, because there is no proceeding.

Bottom-line defensive posture: There is no PTAB estoppel, no cancellation, and no PTAB record to borrow from — but that is not a "hardened patent" story, it is an "expired patent" story. The patent's term ended 2017-10-20. The absence of IPRs is readily explained: the patent lived its entire enforceable life before AIA trials were widely used against it, and once it expired the economic motive to challenge disappeared. A defendant today should not be looking for a PTAB kill shot; the live questions are (a) whether the asserted claims are even within the expired term's damages window, and (b) whether the demand letter is being sent on claims the patent owner can still enforce at all.

Per-proceeding detail

No proceedings exist to report. In accordance with the instruction not to fabricate proceeding numbers, no ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} entries are generated. Specifically:

Search confidence: high for PTAB. Multiple targeted queries (patent number + IPR/PGR/CBM; assignee/inventor + PTAB; litigation dockets) returned only prosecution-history and prior-art citations of the '106 reference, never a trial proceeding. I flag this as "no PTAB activity on file" rather than a negative finding I can prove to a certainty — ODP ingest is not instantaneous, though here the patent's 2017 expiration makes a new filing highly unlikely.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. Because no AIA trial ever reached the Board on this patent, no claim of 6,058,106 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. All originally-issued claims stand as granted (as narrowed only by whatever prosecution history exists — not by any post-grant proceeding). That cuts both ways: there is no favorable PTAB claim-construction record for a defendant to cite, and there is no invalidated claim for a plaintiff to overreach on. The real limitation is temporal — the patent expired 2017-10-20, so the practical defense is the damages cutoff, not invalidity. Any pre-suit demand asserting ongoing infringement of an expired patent is a red flag worth calling out in a response letter.

Estoppel landscape: empty. With no IPR/PGR, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground. A defendant today retains the full universe of prior-art invalidity theories in district court — there is no "raised or reasonably could have raised" shadow. Likewise, no § 325(e) estoppel. This is the mirror image of a hardened patent: the patent owner also has no PTAB-validated claims to wave at a jury, so an invalidity case has not been pre-litigated by the Board. Note that because the patent is expired, relief is limited to past damages in the 6-year look-back under § 286 measured from the 2017 expiration, which sharply caps any exposure.

Pattern signals: no PTAB pattern exists, but there is relevant litigation history. The patent appears in district-court records tangentially rather than as an asserted patent. In Apple Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., No. 3:10-cv-00662 (W.D. Wis.), Motorola's operative answer (filed 2010-12-30) expressly addresses the '106 patent's prosecution — Apple's inequitable-conduct theory turned on the Agrawal reference ("SWAN: A Mobile Multimedia Wireless Network") and named-inventor/prosecutor Cudak, with the '106 patent cited as the exemplar of that prosecution history; Motorola denied that Agrawal was material prior art and denied any deceptive intent. As to the NPE docket, Rosetta-Wireless Corp. (which held other Motorola-origin wireless patents, e.g., U.S. 7,149,511) litigated in N.D. Ill. in 2015–2016 against Apple, Samsung, LG, HTC, and Motorola Mobility — but the IPRs and stays in that campaign concerned the '511 patent, not the '106. I found no evidence that Rosetta-Wireless or any other asserter put 6,058,106 at issue, and no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears anywhere in the '106 chain. Treat "no aggregator, no IPR" as consistent with a patent that was never aggressively asserted post-AIA.

Recommended next steps

• Do not budget for a PTAB defense. With zero AIA filings, there is no FWD to cite, no institution decision to distinguish, and no schedule to track. Any 1-year trial deadline, institution deadline, or oral-hearing milestone discussion would be fabricated here — none exists.
• Confirm expiration and enforceability first. The record shows expiration on 2017-10-20 (Google Patents legal status: "Expired – Lifetime"). Before engaging the merits of a current demand letter, verify via USPTO PatentCenter that no maintenance-fee lapse/revival or term extension (e.g., § 154(b) adjustment) changes the date, and confirm which claims — if any — a plaintiff claims were infringed within the enforceable window. Damages are bounded by § 286 (6 years) and the expiration date.
• Preserve the full invalidity toolbox. Because no § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists, you may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court, including art that could theoretically have been IPR grounds. The prosecution history is worth mining — recall the examiner considered the Agrawal "SWAN" reference (see Apple/Motorola inequitable-conduct allegations), and the '106 has been cited as prior art against later patents (e.g., it appears as an X-category reference in WO 2002/063914, and in RU 2,476,030 and RU 2,327,296 search reports). That citation trail is a ready-made starting prior-art map.
• If the demand cites other Rosetta/Motorola-origin patents, re-run this analysis per patent. The 2015–2016 Rosetta-Wireless campaign did generate PTAB activity — on U.S. 7,149,511 (defendants moved to stay the N.D. Ill. cases pending IPR of all asserted '511 claims). If the same family or the same asserter reappears, the '511 proceedings, not any '106 proceeding, are the relevant precedent.

Canonical sources: USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) — no proceeding listed for 6,058,106; Google Patents legal status (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6058106](/patent/US6058106)/en) — "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2017-10-20; NPE Litigation Database (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7149511) for the Rosetta-Wireless docket (patent 7,149,511, not this patent).

I'll research this systematically, starting with the assignment records and corporate history.

Let me dig into the corporate history and any litigation or NPE involvement.

US 6058106 — Ownership Reconstruction

Patent: US 6,058,106 B1 — "Network protocol method, access point device and peripheral devices for providing for an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network"
App. No.: 08/953,948 · Filed/Priority: 1997-10-20 · Issued: 2000-05-02

Data-integrity note up front. Google Patents' legal-events tab gives me the events (dates, assignor, assignee, conveyance type) but not reel/frame numbers and not the correspondent of record. The reel/frame values below are drawn from INPADOC legal-status records for sibling Motorola patents transferred in the same bulk transactions (US 8,125,944; US 2016/0049106). They are the same corporate transactions but I could not verify that the same reel covers US 6,058,106 itself, and the Google Technology Holdings recording was split across several reels. Treat those reel numbers as probable-but-unverified. Where I have no record, I say so rather than guess (especially the correspondent, which is central to your ask).

Inventors

All four are named as assignors on the 1997-10-20 assignment to Motorola, Inc. (Google Patents legal events: "Assignors: CLASSON, BRIAN KEITH, CUDAK, MARK CONRAD, KELTON, JAMES ROBERT, MUELLER, BRUCE DALE"). This is consistent with the patent's origin in Motorola's in-home RF/"In-Home RF Bus"/DA-TDMA program (Schaumburg, IL correspondence address).

Departure pattern: Not determinable from available records. The Google Patents legal-events listing shows only the assignment to Motorola. I found no evidence of the inventors leaving within 12 months of filing, and no evidence they did not. The sibling applications on the same docket (Ser. Nos. 08/954,770 and 08/954,455 — the latter issuing as US 5,862,452) share Motorola inventors, which is the expected pattern of a single internal R&D group, not a fire-sale precursor.

Original assignee

Motorola, Inc. (later split into Motorola Solutions, Inc. and Motorola Mobility, Inc./LLC).

• Primary line of business (1997): vertically integrated wireless communications — cellular infrastructure and handsets, two-way radio, semiconductors, and consumer electronics. A large operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Product practice of the claims: Unclear. The specification describes an "In-Home RF Bus" / DA-TDMA piconet air interface (24 GHz ISM, frequency hopping, stop-and-wait ARQ) intended to be realized in "custom silicon." I found no evidence Motorola shipped a commercial consumer product that specifically embodied the centrally coordinated peer-to-peer block-assignment scheme of claims 1+ (the claims are about the APD broadcasting a BA naming both a source and destination peripheral and relaying ACK/NAK). So: no confirmed product practice.
• Current status: The original assignee entity no longer exists in that form. Motorola, Inc. was split effective ~2011 (Motorola Mobility — handsets/home — and Motorola Solutions — public safety/enterprise). Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google (announced Aug 2011, closed May 2012), then sold to Lenovo (announced 2014-01-29, closed 2014-10-30), while Google retained the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio and licensed it back to Lenovo. Motorola Solutions remains an operating company. No bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Note on the first entry: The 1997-10-20 original assignment is an assignment of assignor's interest from the four inventors to Motorola, Inc., recorded at filing. Google Patents does not expose a reel/frame for it; I will not invent one.

1. 1997-10-20 (executed) / recorded 1997-10-20 — Reel not exposed by source

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest (original)
   • Assignor: Brian Keith Classon; Mark Conrad Cudak; James Robert Kelton; Bruce Dale Mueller
   • Assignee: Motorola, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not available from the record I can access.
   • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment.

2. 2010-12-13 (date per Google Patents legal events; execution vs. recordation not distinguished in source) — Reel/Frame 025673/0558 (unverified for this patent; value from INPADOC entry for US 8,125,944 covering the same Motorola Inc. → Motorola Mobility, Inc. bulk assignment)

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
   • Assignor: Motorola, Inc.
   • Assignee: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not available.
   • Context: Internal corporate separation — spin-off of the Motorola Mobility business from Motorola, Inc.

3. 2012-10-02 (recorded) — Reel/Frame 029216/0282 (unverified for this patent; value from INPADOC for US 8,125,944)

   • Conveyance: Change of Name
   • Assignor: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
   • Assignee: Motorola Mobility LLC
   • Correspondent: not available.
   • Context: Change of name only — no change in beneficial ownership.

4. Executed 2014-10-28 / recorded 2014-11-24 (per Google Patents legal events for this patent) — Reel/Frame not confirmed (the same transaction appears on sibling patents under Reel/Frame 034371/0612 and 034627/0001; the recording was split across multiple reels)

   • Conveyance: Assignment of interest
   • Assignor: Motorola Mobility LLC
   • Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC
   • Correspondent: not available.
   • Context: Internal reorg — placement of the retained Motorola Mobility portfolio into Google's IP-holding subsidiary after the Google/Lenovo carve-out; the same-day 2014-10-30 Lenovo closing did not move this patent (Google kept the vast majority of the portfolio).

5. 2017-10-20 — anticipated expiration (not an assignment; end-of-term event).

If you want the correspondent-of-record and the exact reel for the 2014 entry, that requires a live query in Assignment Center by patent number — I could not retrieve it here, and I won't fabricate it.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6058106
    1997 : Filed by Motorola Inc
         : Inventors assign to Motorola Inc
    2000 : Patent issued
    2010 : Assignment to Motorola Mobility Inc
    2012 : Change of name to Motorola Mobility LLC
    2014 : Assigned to Google Technology Holdings LLC
         : Lenovo acquires Motorola handset unit
    2017 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only non-operating named entity is Google Technology Holdings LLC (entry 4). It carries a holding-company name, but the evidence does not support a shell finding: (a) no licensing-only intermediate appears, (b) there is no "IP/Licensing/Ventures" shell between the operating company and the current owner, and (c) the chain is a straight corporate lineage Motorola → Motorola Mobility → Google Technology Holdings, with entry 3 being a change of name, not a sale. Google Technology Holdings is Alphabet/Google's IP-holding subsidiary, not a single-purpose Delaware/Texas licensing LLC.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee in the chain matches the supplied lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). The terminal assignee, Google Technology Holdings LLC, is a subsidiary of an operating company.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. The signal you care about most is the correspondent of record on each recording, and that field is not exposed in the sources I could reach. I will not name a lawyer or firm without the record. This signal is genuinely unassessed, not "cleared."

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Transfers are 2010 → 2012 (name change) → 2014, each tied to a documented corporate event (Motorola spin-off; name change; Google/Lenovo carve-out), spread over ~4 years with no shared registered-agent address in the record. No <24-month chained-LLC cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no infringement suit naming US 6,058,106. (The only hit tying this number to a proceeding is a European Search Report citation of US 6,058,106 as prior art in EP 1432176 — a citation, not an assertion.) No transfer is timed to a filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Motorola's transfers were a spin-off and a strategic M&A carve-out (Google, then Lenovo), not Chapter 7/11 proceedings.

7. Privateering — not present. The portfolio stayed with Google (the acquirer) after the Lenovo sale; there is no transfer to an NPE to assert on Google's behalf against competitors.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present (as defined). The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Caveat: Google's stated rationale for keeping the Motorola portfolio was explicitly defensive ("defend the entire Android ecosystem," per Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside, 2014-01-29 Google 8-K). That is defensive intent, but it is not a membership-based defensive aggregator, so the literal signal is "not present."

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

The chain is a four-step corporate lineage — Motorola, Inc. → Motorola Mobility, Inc. (Reel 025673/0558, 2010) → Motorola Mobility LLC (Reel 029216/0282, change of name, 2012) → Google Technology Holdings LLC (executed 2014-10-28, recorded 2014-11-24) — with zero NPE signals: no shell-entity intermediate, no listed asserter, no sub-24-month cascade, no bankruptcy sale, and no suit naming this patent. The terminal holder sits inside an operating-company group (Google/Alphabet) and the portfolio was retained expressly for defensive use, so the patent is best characterized as neutralized/non-asserted rather than NPE-held. Two caveats temper confidence: I could not retrieve the correspondent of record (so signal 3 is unassessed), and no product specifically embodying the claims was confirmed — hence the honest label is "non-asserting," not "operating-company assertion."

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 6058106) and Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6058106/en

Sourcing: Google Patents legal events (fetched 2026-10-01); INPADOC legal-status records for sibling Motorola patents (US 8,125,944; US 2016/0049106) for the probable reel/frame numbers; Google 8-K dated 2014-01-29 and contemporaneous coverage of the Google/Lenovo Motorola Mobility transaction for the corporate context.

I'll research US patent 6058106 and its prior art citations.

I have the citation list. Now let me research each cited reference in detail.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 6,058,106

Pat. No. 6,058,106 B1 — "Network protocol method, access point device and peripheral devices for providing for an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network"

• Application No.: 08/953,948 · Filed: 1997‑10‑20 · Granted: 2000‑05‑02 · Anticipated expiration: 2017‑10‑20 · Status: Expired – Lifetime
• Inventors: Mark Conrad Cudak; Bruce Dale Mueller; James Robert Kelton; Brian Keith Classon
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (current: Google Technology Holdings LLC)
• 15 claims across 5 independent claims: 1 (APD method), 3 (APD apparatus), 8 (source peripheral), 10 (destination peripheral), 12 (article of manufacture), 14 (system-level method)
• Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6058106A](/patent/US6058106A)/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/6058106 · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6058106

I interpreted the number literally as 6058106 / US 6,058,106. No similar-number substitution has been made; the citations below are taken from the reference list printed on the face of this patent.

1. Patent citations of record (the "References Cited" list)

The grant prints three U.S. patent documents and one foreign patent document:

Note on prior-art status (§102 framing, filing/invention date 1997‑10‑20): US 4,789,983 and EP 653 865 A2 pre‑date the filing by more than one year → potential §102(b) art. US 5,640,390 (granted 1997‑06‑17) pre‑dates the filing by under one year → potential §102(a) and, because it was filed 1994‑07‑01, potentially §102(e). US 5,815,508 published after the 1997‑10‑20 filing, so it can only be prior art under §102(e)/§102(a)-by-filing-date, not §102(a)/(b)-by-publication.

2. Reference-by-reference analysis

2.1 US 4,789,983 — Acampora et al., "Wireless network for wideband indoor communications"

• Assignee: AT&T Bell Laboratories; inventors Anthony Acampora and Jack H. Winters; filed 1987‑03‑05, granted 1988‑12‑06.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4789983A](/patent/US4789983A) · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4789983](/patent/4789983)

Description. A wideband indoor radio network in which a central node (30) with a call processor (35) coordinates all radio traffic. User devices time-share a single radio channel under a modified polling technique (central node controls the transmit token); frames are divided into a polling interval, continuous (voice) intervals, and bursty (data) intervals. The patent states plainly: "No direct communication is permitted among users, since all users may communicate only with concentrators 20 or 21 or central node 30" — all packets are routed through the central node.

Mapping to 6,058,106.

• Discloses: a centrally controlled wireless network with a node that broadcasts scheduling/polling assignments to peripherals (conceptually the "block assignment" broadcast of claim 1/3); frame/slot structure; central coordination.
• Missing: (i) a peer-to-peer payload transfer in which the source peripheral sends the data block directly to the destination peripheral; (ii) the destination peripheral transmitting sequence/acknowledgment information to the coordinating node; (iii) the node forwarding that acknowledgment to the source peripheral; (iv) sequence-number (BSN/APSN) tracking that gates retransmission; (v) any acknowledgment/ARQ scheme at all in the claim sense.
• This reference actually teaches away from the peer-to-peer feature (it forbids direct user-to-user links).

§102 conclusion. Does not anticipate any of claims 1–15 — every independent claim requires APD‑relayed acknowledgment of a direct peripheral‑to‑peripheral payload transfer, which is absent (and excluded) here. Best characterized as §102/§103 background art for the "centrally coordinated"/block-assignment concepts.

2.2 US 5,640,390 — Sakamoto et al., "Wireless communication network system"

• Inventors: Atsushi Sakamoto; Motoyasu Nagashima; Kazumasa Taninaka; Kouji Nishimura; filed 1994‑07‑01, granted 1997‑06‑17.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5640390A](/patent/US5640390A)/en

Description. A wireless LAN with a central communication controller (device 8) and multiple terminal devices. The controller detects the absence of a received signal and periodically generates a "nonbusy signal"; a terminal may transmit only after receiving the nonbusy signal. Terminals set a random value and count nonbusy signals to decide when to transmit — a contention/random-access control mechanism preventing two terminals from transmitting simultaneously to the controller.

Mapping to 6,058,106.

• Discloses: a central controller coordinating when terminals may transmit (loosely analogous to a centrally scheduled access).
• Missing: (i) block assignment naming both a source and a destination peripheral; (ii) a data block carrying a sequence number sent directly source→destination; (iii) the destination returning ACKSEQ/NAK to the controller; (iv) the controller forwarding an acknowledgment to the source; (v) an N‑block transfer completed by counted acknowledgments; (vi) any peer‑to‑peer transfer.
• Its subject matter is contention arbitration, not acknowledged sequential block transfer.

§102 conclusion. Does not anticipate any claim. It is at most §103 art on the "centrally controlled access" theme; it is more naturally cited against contention-access/persistence features (compare the sibling application Ser. No. 08/954,455, now US 5,862,452, also by Cudak and Pearce).

2.3 US 5,815,508 — Wadzinske et al., "Method and apparatus for providing information between communication devices"

• Granted 1998‑09‑29 (after 6058106's filing; citable only as §102(e) art if its application was filed pre‑1997‑10‑20 — verify the filing/priority date at USPTO PatentCenter).
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5815508A](/patent/US5815508A)/en

Description. A transmitting communication device sends an information packet divided into data blocks transmitted in groups. The receiving device returns an ACK indicating which blocks were (or were not) received; the transmitter retransmits only the missing portion, maintains transmission-attempt and unsuccessful-attempt counters, and terminates/queues if thresholds are exceeded. The description expressly contemplates application to communications between two portable radio devices (e.g., 106, 107) as well as between a stationary and a portable device.

Mapping to 6,058,106. Of the four cited patent documents, this is the most substantive:

• Discloses: division of a payload into blocks (the "N blocks, N an integer"); per-block acknowledgment; selective retransmission of the unrecognized block; retry counting; even a device‑to‑device (radio‑to‑radio) transfer.
• Missing for claim 1: (i) a distinct access point device that broadcasts a block assignment specifying both the WSPD and the WDPD; (ii) the APD receiving, from the destination, one of ACKSEQ-with-sequence-number or NAK and forwarding it to the source; (iii) the APD maintaining an APSN and gating on BSN = APSN; (iv) the APD's rebroadcast of the assignment upon mismatch.
• Missing for claim 3 (APD apparatus): there is no "block assignment unit"/"NAK/ACKSEQ unit" architecture.
• Missing for claims 8/10: no forwarded-acknowledgment interpreter at the source, no DPSN comparison/discard at the destination.
• Missing for claim 14: no APD that broadcasts the assignment and forwards acknowledgment information between the two peripherals; the acknowledgment here is direct, device‑to‑device.
• Its acknowledgment content is a bitmap of received/unreceived blocks, not a sequence-number echo (ACKSEQ) compared against an expected sequence counter.

§102 conclusion. Standing alone it does not anticipate any of claims 1–15 (each independent claim requires the APD as the relay of the acknowledgment and as the broadcaster of the paired source/destination assignment — absent here). It is however the strongest §103 candidate: combined with a centrally-scheduled wireless-network reference (e.g. US 4,789,983 or US 5,640,390) it could be argued to render the ack/retransmission mechanics obvious, though the specific "APD receives from the destination, forwards to the source" topology would still need a motivating teaching.

2.4 EP 653 865 A2 — foreign patent document (May 1995)

• Listed on the face of 6,058,106 merely as "653 865 A2 | May 1995 | EP." I could not independently retrieve and verify the title, applicant, inventors, or full disclosure of this document from the available results, and I will not reconstruct them from memory. Its May‑1995 publication date makes it ≥1 year pre‑filing (potential §102(b) art).
• Action required before relying on it: pull the EPO/Espacenet record for EP 0 653 865 A2 (https://worldwide.espacenet.com) and read the claims/description to map it element‑by‑element.
• Preliminary §102 conclusion: cannot be assessed without the text — not asserted to anticipate any claim at this time.

3. Non-patent literature cited (all printed as "Other References")

These are mostly enabling/specification-support references rather than claim-anticipating art. Prior‑art status: Kazama (Dec. 1994), Hyden (Apr. 1995), Agrawal (Apr. 1996) all pre‑date the Oct. 20, 1996 one‑year cutoff → potential §102(b) art; the remainder are textbooks/standards used to implement details of the written description.

§102 conclusion: none of the NPL entries, as described, discloses the APD‑centered peer‑to‑peer acknowledgment topology of the independent claims. They are best treated as §103/§112 support and as evidence of the state of the coding and hopping arts.

4. Related applications (incorporated by reference — not "prior art" in the §102 sense)

The patent's RELATED APPLICATIONS section incorporates three concurrent/earlier Motorola filings:

1. Ser. No. 08/954,770 — Method, access point device and peripheral for providing space diversity in a time division duplex wireless system (Eastmond, Cudak, Kepler), filed 1997‑10‑20.
2. Ser. No. 08/954,455 — Method, access point device and peripheral devices for low complexity dynamic persistence mode for random access in a wireless communication system (Cudak, Pearce), filed 1997‑10‑20, now US 5,862,452.
3. Ser. No. 08/893,332 — Low complexity protocol, device and system robust in the presence of bursted interference (Cudak, Kelton, Rasky, Mueller, Natarajan), filed 1997‑07‑16 (this appears to have issued as US 6,157,632).

These are same-family/sibling disclosures. US 6,157,632 is notable as the acknowledged starting point of this patent (the background states that in 08/893,332 a peripheral could not communicate directly with another peripheral, so the payload had to be sent twice through the APD). Because they share inventors/assignee and are incorporated by reference, they are not §102 art against 6,058,106 — but they are the correct basis for understanding the "efficiency" problem the claims solve and for any §103 combination analysis.

5. Bottom line

1. The patent was located and confirmed as US 6,058,106 (Appl. 08/953,948). No similar-number result is reported.
2. Its patent citations of record are exactly four: US 4,789,983; US 5,640,390; US 5,815,508; and EP 653 865 A2.
3. No cited reference, on the analysis above, anticipates any of claims 1–15 under §102. Every independent claim (1, 3, 8, 10, 12, 14) contains, as a core element, an access point device that (a) broadcasts a block assignment naming both a source and a destination peripheral, (b) receives sequence information from the destination peripheral, and (c) forwards an acknowledgment to the source peripheral for a direct peer‑to‑peer data transfer. None of US 4,789,983 (which forbids direct user‑to‑user communication), US 5,640,390 (contention/nonbusy signaling only), or US 5,815,508 (direct device‑to‑device block ACK, no central relay/assignment) discloses that combination.
4. The closest art is US 5,815,508 (block ACK/selective retransmission) and, for the central‑coordination theme, US 4,789,983 and US 5,640,390. These are §103‑type references; a combination argument would need an explicit motivation to route the destination's acknowledgment through a central scheduler and to have that scheduler broadcast the paired source/destination assignment.
5. Open item / cannot verify: I could not retrieve the substance of EP 653 865 A2 (title, applicant, disclosure) from available sources. I will not fabricate it. Its §102 exposure to any particular claim is unresolved and should be checked against the Espacenet/EPO full text before finalizing.

Caveat on method: element‑by‑element §102 mapping for US 4,789,983, US 5,640,390, and US 5,815,508 above is based on their published abstracts/descriptions as retrieved; a formal invalidity study should confirm against each reference's full specification and claims, and should verify the exact filing/priority dates of US 5,815,508 to fix its §102(e) status.

I'll research the prior art landscape for US 6,058,106 to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me look at the specific prior-art references cited on the patent page and related family.

Let me retrieve the full claim set and the specific prior-art references cited on the patent's face.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,058,106 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Caveat on sourcing. I exhausted my search budget before I could pull the patent's own front‑page "References Cited" (56) list verbatim from the Google Patents page, so I do not have an authoritative list of examiner‑cited art. The analysis below relies on (a) the prior art the patent itself identifies in its "Related Applications" and Background sections (the authoritative full‑text you supplied), and (b) references I did verify in search. Where I could not verify an identifier, I say so rather than inventing one. I did not auto‑correct any patent or application numbers.

1. Governing law / framework

Because the application was filed October 20, 1997 and granted May 2, 2000, the pre‑AIA version of § 103(a) applies. The analysis therefore proceeds under the Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), framework (scope/content of the prior art; differences; level of ordinary skill; objective indicia) and I assess motivation to combine under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).

A threshold § 103(c)/§ 102(e) wrinkle is addressed in § 7 below.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A person of ordinary skill would have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science and 2–4 years of experience in wireless data communications/MAC‑layer protocol design — i.e., someone familiar with TDMA/TDD air interfaces, reservation/polling MAC protocols, stop‑and‑wait ARQ, and the DECT/PHS micro‑cellular art. This is a relatively low level of skill for a protocol‑engineering invention, which weighs toward obviousness.

3. Scope and content of the prior art

3.1 Primary reference — the Motorola "low‑complexity protocol" base system

The patent itself concedes that essentially the entire DA‑TDMA machinery (centerpiece of the claims) already existed:

• U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/893,332, "Low Complexity Protocol, Device and System Robust in the Presence of Bursted Interference" (Cudak, Kelton, Rasky, Mueller, Nararajan), filed July 16, 1997, assigned to Motorola, Inc., and incorporated by reference into the patent. (I could not verify the issued patent number within my search budget, so I identify it by the application number the patent gives.)
• The two sibling applications named in the patent's "Related Applications": Ser. No. 08/954,770 (Eastmond, Cudak, Kepler) and Ser. No. 08/954,455 (Cudak & Pearce), the latter stated in the text as issuing as U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,452.

The patent's own Background states the difference in one sentence: in 08/893,332 "a wireless peripheral device … could not communicate directly with another wireless peripheral device," so the payload "is sent twice once by the wireless peripheral source to the access point device, and again by the access point device to a destination device."

Everything else the claims recite is described in that base system as already present:

• a block assignment (BA) broadcast by the access point containing source and destination addresses ("The source and destination address fields may either specify an access point or peripheral enabling downlink … uplink …, or peer‑to‑peer (peripheral to peripheral) transfers");
• an ACKSEQ burst carrying ACK‑0/ACK‑1/NAK plus a sequence number ("The block acknowledge field represents the outcome of the reception of the payload (positive/negative) and the sequence number from the block data");
• stop‑and‑wait ARQ with a 1‑bit sequence number ("[a]ll sequence numbers referred to herein are typically implemented using a 1‑bit binary counter");
• the scheduler "automatically retr[ying] blocks which do not receive a positive acknowledgment."

Notably, the only term in the claim set that is genuinely new relative to 08/893,332 is the routing of the payload (WSPD→WDPD directly) and the consequent position of the forwarding step (AP forwards the destination's ACK to the source). Even that "peer‑to‑peer" address capability is described in the BA‑burst discussion of the very specification.

3.2 Secondary references — centrally scheduled direct (peer‑to‑peer) radio links

1. U.S. Pat. No. 5,606,560 (Malek et al., Motorola, Inc., issued Feb. 25, 1997 — before the 1997‑10‑20 filing). I verified this reference in search. Its abstract expressly touts that "reversing the role of a handset … enables handset‑to‑handset communication independent of the base station (808)" and it discloses a base‑controlled TDMA/TDD frame with forward/reverse slots, a beacon slot, and a "correlation word/data block/CRC" burst format. It is thus direct evidence that, in the same assignee's own TDMA/TDD art, a controlling base already scheduled terminal‑to‑terminal traffic.

2. DECT direct mode. The patent's own Background discusses DECT at length and distinguishes it only on band/interference grounds, not on capability. DECT (ETSI) is well known to support direct portable‑to‑portable ("direct mode") operation in which a fixed part/central controller coordinates the time slots that two portables use to talk to each other. DECT is therefore § 102(b) art. (I did not verify a specific DECT document within my search budget, so I cite it as the general standard‑art reference the patent itself raises.)

3. Centrally scheduled "single‑hop" multiple‑access systems — Demand‑Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) / SS‑TDMA satellite and packet‑radio networks are long‑standing examples in which a central controller assigns a resource such that the two end terminals communicate directly, with the controller coordinating rather than relaying the payload. These were well known to the PHOSITA well before 1997.

3.3 ARQ / acknowledgment art

Stop‑and‑wait ARQ with 1‑bit (alternating‑bit) sequence numbers, and the practice of the scheduler maintaining the sequence state and re‑issuing assignments on NAK, are textbook (e.g., the standard data‑communications literature). The patent's own text ("All sequence numbers … 1‑bit binary counter") confirms that this element was not treated as inventive.

4. Differences between the prior art and the claims

Taking independent claim 14 (verified verbatim) and its apparatus counterpart (claim 1, an access point device comprising a block assignment unit and an acknowledgment information unit, per the specification/abstract):

So the differences between the claimed subject matter and the primary prior art reduce to: (i) transmit the payload directly from source peripheral to destination peripheral instead of source→AP→destination, and (ii) consequently forward the destination's acknowledgment back to the source.

Both differences are routing changes to a pre‑existing, fully disclosed scheduling/ARQ fabric — not new protocol mechanism.

5. Motivation to combine (KSR rationales)

Motivation to adopt direct peer‑to‑peer payload transfer (08/893,332 + Malek / DECT / DAMA):

1. The patent supplies the motivation itself. The express stated problem is that "the payload, which represents a largest portion of data being transmitted … is sent twice" and "If a method … arranged to provide a centrally coordinated peer‑to‑peer wireless communications network that minimized payload transmissions, greater efficiency would be achieved." Avoiding the double transmission of the largest data unit is a classic "known device ready for improvement" / "design incentive" rationale under KSR — a predictable, expected benefit.
2. Predictable result. Malek (same assignee) already demonstrated that a base‑controlled TDMA/TDD frame can schedule handset‑to‑handset traffic; DECT direct mode shows the same in a peer standard. Substituting a direct link for the two‑hop link yields the expected result (same payload delivered, half the air time for the payload) with no change in system architecture, since the AP remains the coordinator/scheduler.
3. The AP already sees the acknowledgment. Because the ACKSEQ burst already travels to the AP (the scheduler needs it to decide retries), "forwarding" that acknowledgment to the source is a trivial, predictable consequence once the payload is routed directly — the scheduler's existing sequence‑number state machine is unchanged.
4. Same field, same problem, same assignee. Malek and the base application are all Motorola TDMA/TDD in‑home/wireless systems; a PHOSITA would consult them together. KSR ("familiar elements … according to known methods"); MPEP § 2143 examples: "simple substitution," "use of known technique to improve similar devices in the same way."

Motivation to keep the stop‑and‑wait ARQ / sequence‑number / AP‑forwarded‑ack structure (08/893,332 + textbook ARQ):
The base system already used 1‑bit sequence numbers and stop‑and‑wait ARQ to survive microwave‑oven bursts; there is an express teaching that ARQ is preferred over FEC for efficiency. Retaining it while routing the payload directly is not a change in the ARQ design at all — it is the same ARQ applied to a differently routed block.

Resulting prima‑facie combination. 08/893,332 (optionally combined with the other two related Motorola applications for details of block assignment/persistence/registration) in view of Malek (or DECT direct mode / DAMA) renders claim 14 — and the parallel apparatus/peripheral-unit claims — obvious. The dependent claims (e.g., claim 15's "another block vs. repeat the block" logic) are also disclosed by the base system's retry scheduler and are routine design choices.

6. Anticipated counter‑arguments and objective indicia

• "The reference sends the payload twice" argument. The applicant could argue the base system teaches away from direct transfer because it deliberately routes through the AP. This is weak: the base system routed through the AP because it lacked the peer‑to‑peer address capability, not because direct routing was disfavored; and the patent itself says the double transmission is an efficiency deficiency to be cured. A deficiency expressly identified in the art is a motivation to fix it, not a teaching away.
• Secondary considerations. I found no evidence of unexpected results, long‑felt need met only by the claimed solution, industry praise, or licensing attributable to the peer‑to‑peer routing feature (as opposed to the broader Motorola RF‑bus platform). The litigation summary you supplied found no litigation involving 6,058,106 — so there is no commercial‑success or nexus record to weigh. Absent such evidence, no objective indicia rebut the prima‑facie case.

7. Two important caveats specific to this patent

1. Common‑ownership / pre‑AIA § 103(c) issue. The parent 08/893,332 and sibling applications were owned by Motorola, as is 6,058,106, and the inventor groups overlap (Cudak, Kelton, Mueller appear in both). If 08/893,332 qualifies as prior art only under pre‑AIA § 102(e)/(f)/(g), a § 103(c) common‑ownership disqualification could be argued. However, this application was filed Oct 20, 1997 and granted May 2, 2000 — i.e., it was not pending on or after December 10, 2004, so the AIPA/CREATE‑Act version of § 103(c) (effective for applications pending on/after Dec 10, 2004) does not reach it, and the original 1999 § 103(c) applied only to applications filed on/after Nov 29, 1999. On the face of it, § 103(c) would not rescue these claims. This should be confirmed against the actual examiner record, which I could not retrieve.
2. Incorporation‑by‑reference. Because the base application is incorporated by reference into the patent, its disclosure is effectively part of the challenged specification and, if it independently qualifies as prior art under § 102 (e.g., by being published or issuing as a patent before/at the relevant date), supplies nearly the entire claim in a single reference — making the obviousness case over, e.g., Malek/DECT a very short step.

8. Bottom line

• Claim 14 (and the parallel access‑point apparatus claim, e.g., claim 1) is prima facie obvious over the Motorola low‑complexity‑protocol application (Ser. No. 08/893,332, as it appears in the patent's own Background/Related Applications) in view of a centrally‑scheduled direct‑link reference — U.S. Pat. No. 5,606,560 (Malek et al., Motorola) being the cleanest verified example, with DECT direct mode and DAMA/SS‑TDMA as corroborating general‑art evidence. The only differences (direct payload routing + AP forwarding of the destination's ack) are efficiency‑driven, predictable routing changes to an otherwise fully disclosed block‑assignment/ACKSEQ/stop‑and‑wait‑ARQ fabric, and the patent itself articulates the motivation.
• The peripheral‑device claims (WSPD/WDPD) are obvious on the same combination, since the base system already discloses the source transmitting a data block with a sequence number and the destination checking a sequence number against an expected value.
• The dependent claims (repeat‑vs‑next‑block logic, 1‑bit sequence numbering) are disclosed or are routine design choices.

Confidence. I have high confidence in the architecture of the analysis and in the content of claim 14/15 (verified verbatim) and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,606,560 (verified). I have lower confidence in the exact issued‑patent number of the incorporated 08/893,332 reference and in any specific DECT document citation, which I flag rather than assert. To finalize, retrieve (a) the patent's front‑page (56) references and (b) the file‑history rejections from the USPTO Patent Center — neither of which I could complete within my search budget.