US 6134531

I'll verify the patent's identity and check for any 2026 CAFC/litigation activity before summarizing.

Verification note

I searched for the number 6134531 / US6134531A exactly as given. It resolves to US 6,134,531 A, application US 08/937,333. I did not find any Federal Circuit docket activity in 2026 (or any year) tied to this patent. One search hit containing the string "6134531" was a Connecticut Superior Court docket number — HHD-CV20-6134531-S (State of Connecticut ex rel. William Tong v. David Dunn) — which is not this patent and is unrelated. Flagging that explicitly so it is not mistaken for patent litigation.

Caveat on method: I queried the open web (Google Patents, Justia, RPX Insight, Unified Patents, FreePatentsOnline). I do not have direct programmatic access to USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC/PACER docket system from here, so my "no CAFC activity found" conclusion reflects public web searching only, not an exhaustive docket query. Treat it as indicative, not authoritative.

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Bibliographic summary (from the authoritative patent text)

Minor source discrepancies (not auto-corrected, just noted): Unified Patents lists priority date 1997-09-23, grant date 2000-10-16, and expiration 2017-09-23 — one day earlier on each than the Google Patents/statutory record (1997-09-24 / 2000-10-17). The assignment record in the patent text shows an effective assignment date of 1997-09-19. I have used the 09-24 / 10-17 dates from the authoritative full text.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A computerized method enables an audience to synchronously interact with a broadcast program in realtime. A broadcast clock of a broadcast system is synchronized to a standard time. A server clock of a server computer is synchronized to the standard time using a network timing protocol. A client computer clock of a client computer is synchronized to the server clock. The program is broadcast synchronously to the broadcast clock. Web pages are provided by the server computer to the client computer. Responses generated by the client computer are time-stamped according to the synchronized time of the client computer so that the responses can be time-correlated to segments of the program."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 5 claims: three independent (1, 2, 4) and two dependent (3 depends from 2; 5 depends from 4). My paraphrases below are my own reading, not an authoritative construction.

Claim 1 — Method (client + server steps). A server, while the program is being broadcast, sends a Web page to viewers' client computers asking for feedback about the program, and keeps a current server time value. On the client side: continuously maintain a client time; receive the page in a browser; automatically download and execute an applet associated with the page, which exchanges messages with the server to compute a time differential between client time and server time; accept the user's feedback input through the browser; build response messages; time-stamp them; and send them to the server. Each response's time stamp expresses a server time value computed from the client's own clock reading plus the applet-derived differential. The server then receives the messages and analyzes the time stamps to associate responses with specific broadcast segments. In short: browser-delivered applet clock-sync + client-side restamping into server time + server-side alignment of feedback to program segments.

Claim 2 — Apparatus (server-side, means-plus-function). The server-side counterpart to claim 1, drafted as an apparatus: a server computer having means for (a) maintaining a current server time value; (b) transmitting, during the broadcast, a feedback-soliciting Web page to viewers' client computers, with an associated applet that when executed sends messages to the server and generates the client/server time differential; (c) receiving time-stamped user response messages, where each stamp indicates a server time value derived by the client from its own clock plus the applet-generated differential; and (d) analyzing the stamps to associate responses with specific program segments.

Claim 4 — Method (server-side only). Substantively the server-side method of claim 1, recited from the server's perspective: maintain a current server time value; while broadcasting, transmit a feedback-soliciting Web page with an associated applet that generates the client/server time differential; receive time-stamped response messages where each stamp indicates a server time value computed by the client from its clock plus the differential; and analyze the time stamps to associate responses with specific broadcast segments. Unlike claim 1, the client-side acts (browser receipt, user input capture, message generation/transmission) are not recited as method steps here.

Dependent claims

• Claim 3 (from claim 2): the server has a server clock synchronized with the standard time, plus means for answering client requests for the current server clock value.
• Claim 5 (from claim 4): adds synchronizing the server clock with the standard time, and "means for responding to client computer messages requesting a server clock time value by returning a current server clock time value."

Practitioner observations

• Claim 5 mixes statutory categories: it is a method claim that recites "means for responding…," importing apparatus-style language into a method. That is a potential § 112 ¶ 2 indefiniteness/claim-type concern. This is my own observation, not a holding by any court.
• Claim 1 requires the applet mechanism specifically ("automatically downloading and executing an applet"), whereas the specification also describes an alternative NTP path. Independent claim 4 and apparatus claim 2 likewise require the applet. A pure NTP-based client implementation would appear to fall outside the independent claims as written.
• Non-infringement / prepaid-termination context: the patent expired at the end of its 20-year term on 2017-09-24 and is now in the public domain; the maintenance-fee record shows the 11.5-year fee was paid late (2012-09-04, with surcharge) but the patent did not lapse early.
• Cited-by breadth indicates the art field it seeded: 155 citing documents including 83 "cited by" entries, notably the Opinionlab web-page-feedback family, AT&T targeted-advertising/clickstream family, MediaIP interactive-programming family, and Nielsen clock-synchronization-for-audio-measurement work (EP2910015A4).
• Prior art cited (9 U.S. references): US 5,036,389 (Magus), US 5,226,177 (Viewfacts), US 5,600,632 (Bell Atlantic), US 5,633,872 (Eon), US 5,703,795 (Mankovitz), US 5,715,400 (IBM), US 5,761,606 (Wolzien), US 5,812,642 (Leroy), US 5,861,881 (ACTV).

Uncertainty disclosure: I am confident about the bibliographic data, abstract, and claim text because they come from the authoritative full patent text supplied to me. I am not in a position to authoritatively state that there is zero 2026 litigation or CAFC activity involving this patent — I could not run a live PACER/CAFC docket query, and expired patents rarely see appellate activity, which is consistent with (but does not prove) the absence of hits.

I'll search litigation databases and dockets for this specific patent number.

Let me run additional targeted searches on litigation-specific sources.

Let me check a couple more specialized litigation databases to be thorough.

Litigation search results for US Patent 6,134,531

Bottom line: I found no litigation involving US 6,134,531.

I searched the specific number 6134531 / 6,134,531 and cross-referenced it against the litigation-oriented sources I can reach (Unified Patents portal, RPX Insight, Google Patents/Justia, and general web). None of them returned a case in which US 6,134,531 appears as an asserted patent, a patent-in-suit, or a subject of a declaratory-judgment counterclaim.

What I checked and what I found

Note on near-miss numbers (do NOT conflate)

Several hits contain "531" but are different patents, and I am deliberately not treating them as this patent:

• US 6,411,531 — Linear Technology charge-pump patent (Advanced Analogic Technologies 10-Q).
• US 6,101,531 — Motorola "System for Communicating User-Selected Criteria Filter…," at issue in Apple Inc. v. Motorola Mobility (S.D. Fla., case No. 1:10-cv-23580).
• US 6,313,531 B1 — Micron coaxial interconnect patent.
• HHD-CV20-6134531-S — a Connecticut state court docket number, not a patent.

Each matches only a fragment of "6134531" and describes entirely different subject matter.

Proposed case table

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence that US 6,134,531 was never a heavily asserted patent: it expired on 2017-09-24 (20-year term), well before the modern NPE era would likely have targeted it, and it has a very large citing/cited-by footprint (155 citing documents) with no corresponding assertion activity surfaced.
• Method limitation (important): I do not have direct programmatic access to PACER, the CAFC docket, Docket Navigator, or Lex Machina. My search reflects public web results and the Unified Patents/RPX/Justia pages I could retrieve. A docket-exhaustive negative (e.g., a full Docket Navigator "which cases asserted this patent" query) could in principle surface a small, old, or sealed case I did not see. Treat the "no litigation" answer as well-supported but not exhaustively proven.
• I did not find any 2026 (or any-year) Federal Circuit appeal tied to US 6,134,531.

If you need a truly authoritative negative, the precise query to run is "asserted patent = 6,134,531" in Docket Navigator or Lex Machina, and a PatentCenter "Litigation" tab check on the '333 application — those are the tools that would close the residual gap.

I'll verify the "no proceedings on file" signal against public sources before writing this up.

No proceedings surfaced. Let me run two more targeted checks — CBM reviews were the likely vehicle for a 1997 business-method-flavored patent, and I want to confirm the PTAB/assignment record.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,134,531. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web checks of PTAB-facing and aggregator sources surfaced none either. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened" and not "cancelled" — it is moot: no petitioner ever attacked these claims at the PTAB, and the patent's 20-year term ran out on 2017-09-24, so claims 1–5 died of old age rather than by Final Written Decision. For a defendant today, the operative defense is expiration plus § 102(b)/§ 103 public-domain art status, not PTAB estoppel.

Verification basis: Google Patents US6134531A, Unified Patents portal US-6134531-A (shows CITX/BRIX indices but no trial links), FreePatentsOnline 6134531, USPTO PTAB Center, CourtListener.

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Per-proceeding detail

No proceeding entries exist, so the per-proceeding template cannot be filled without fabricating. I will not invent an IPR20XX-##### number, panel, or disposition. What I can do is document the near-misses I found so they are not mistaken for proceedings against this patent:

• ServiceNow, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Company, CBM2015-00077 (PTAB, 2015-09-17, Crumbley, APJ) — this is an HP patent, and the National Law Review write-up describes a CBM-eligibility denial turning on whether the claims were "generally useful technologies" versus a financial product or service. It is not US 6,134,531. I flag it only because a keyword search for "CBM" + "Hewlett-Packard" surfaces it, and the CBM-eligibility reasoning it contains is the reasoning that would have governed any CBM petition against 6,134,531. Source: National Law Review summary.
• Opinionlab '805 patent CBM petition papers at ptacts.uspto.gov — surfaced because 6,134,531 appears in the Opinionlab family's cited-art lists (see the prior section's § 102 prior-art discussion), not because 6,134,531 was challenged.
• Connecticut Superior Court docket HHD-CV20-6134531-S (State of Connecticut ex rel. William Tong v. David Dunn) — already flagged in the earlier verification note. Still not this patent. It recurs in every keyword search for the bare numeral.

Grounds I could not verify because no petition exists: there is no record of any petition alleging § 102 anticipation, § 103 obviousness, or § 112 indefiniteness against claims 1–5. Note, however, that the § 112 ¶ 2 claim-type issue discussed in the earlier "Practitioner observations" (claim 5 reciting "means for responding…" inside a method claim) is exactly the kind of defect a PGR petition would have targeted — had PGR been available. It was not: this patent's 1997-09-24 priority date falls outside the post-AIA first-inventor-to-file window, so PGR (§ 321) was never an option. CBM was the only AIA vehicle theoretically available, and § 18 of the AIA sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16 — 3 years after this patent already expired.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all of claims 1–5 expired untested. Claim 1 (client+server method), claim 2 (server apparatus, means-plus-function), and claim 4 (server-side method) are the independents; claims 3 and 5 are the dependents adding server-clock synchronization and clock-request-answering means. None of the five was ever the subject of an institution decision, let alone an FWD. Contrast this with the fate of the art field this patent seeded — the Opinionlab web-feedback family and the MediaIP interactive-programming family both drew substantial PTAB attention. This patent, by comparison, was never worth a $31,000+ IPR filing fee to anyone, most plausibly because it expired in 2017 and, per my searches, was never asserted against a revenue-generating defendant.

Estoppel landscape: empty. § 315(e)(2) and § 325(e)(2) estoppel are triggered only by a petitioner who obtains a final written decision. No petitioner exists, so no party is estopped from anything. That cuts against a defendant in one narrow sense — there is no PTAB record offering pre-litigated invalidity findings to borrow — but in practice it is irrelevant, because a defendant's invalidity theory in 2026 rests on 6,134,531 being (a) expired and (b) publicly available prior art itself, under § 102(b), for any later-filed claims directed to applet-based clock synchronization for audience feedback. If you were served a demand citing 6,134,531, the answer is one sentence: the patent's 20-year term ended 2017-09-24 and every claim is in the public domain. No FWD is needed to say that.

Pattern signals: none of the usual markers. No repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner at all). No PTAB appeal history — the earlier verification note found no CAFC activity in 2026 or any year, consistent with this. No defensive aggregator in the chain: Unified Patents' portal carries a page for the patent, but that is a data-page artifact with no linked challenge, not the signature of a Unified-filed IPR. The maintenance-fee history is worth one line for completeness — the 11.5-year fee was paid late on 2012-09-04 with a surcharge under the 2012-05-28 reminder — and the fact that the owner paid rather than let it lapse at year 11.5 tells you HP still saw residual value in 2012. It did not translate into assertion or into any AIA challenge by others.

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Recommended next steps

• No action is required to preserve PTAB-based defenses, because none exist to be had. There is no FWD to link, no disposition to quote, and no institution decision to calendar. Do not let anyone on the team assume a missing link means a missed link.
• If you are a defendant: the dispositive facts are (1) filing 1997-09-24, (2) issuance 2000-10-17, (3) statutory term expiring 2017-09-24. Confirm the absence of any post-expiration continuation, reissue, or reexamination certificate via USPTO PatentCenter before you commit to that position — I could not run PatentCenter programmatically, and a reissue or reexam certificate would change the analysis. I found no evidence of either, but treat that as indicative, not authoritative.
• Terminal-disclaimer / milestone calendars are not applicable. There is no institution deadline, no 1-year statutory trial clock running, and no FWD due date, because there is no trial.
• The absence is the signal, and it points at expiration, not at validity. Well-asserted patents attract IPRs; this one attracted none, and that pattern is consistent with a patent that was never commercially assertable after 2000 — and certainly not after 2017.

Uncertainty disclosure: I am confident in the "no AIA trial proceedings" conclusion because it rests on two independent inputs — the structured ODP block and my own searches — and because expired patents generating no PTAB activity is the expected null. I am not in a position to rule out a terminated-before-institution CBM filing or an ex parte reexamination request that never matured into a certificate; my searches surfaced neither, but I could not query PTAB E2E's full petition index or the CRU reexamination file directly from here. Treat those two narrow possibilities as unverified rather than excluded.

I'll verify what I can from public sources, then reconstruct the chain. Let me start with the reel/frame records referenced in the patent text.

Let me try more targeted queries for the assignment records on this specific patent.

Let me attempt to retrieve the recorded correspondence data directly and check for any post-2003 activity.

I've hit the tool-call ceiling, so here is the reconstruction based on the authoritative patent text (whose legal-events block mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center / "Assignments on the Web" records) plus the public sources I did retrieve.

Method note / limitation (important): I could not query the Assignment Center UI directly from this environment. The reel/frame numbers, conveyance types, dates and assignor/assignee names below come from the Google Patents legal-events block for US 6,134,531, which republishes USPTO assignment data, and are internally consistent with the two public secondary hits I retrieved (Unified Patents portal; plainsite's parallel Compaq recording). I was not able to retrieve the "Correspondent of record" field for any link in this chain — Google Patents does not expose it, and my searches did not surface the underlying assignment PDFs (which live at legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-NNNNNN-XXXX.pdf). I flag that as a gap rather than guess.

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Inventors

Pattern check — departures within 12 months: Unclear, and not inferable from the record. The only thing the assignment record proves is that all four assigned to DEC on 1997-09-19 (effective), five days before the 1997-09-24 filing — a routine pre-filing inventor assignment, not a departure signal. What is unusual is employer-side: DEC was acquired by Compaq within ~9 months of the filing (deal announced Jan 1998, closed June 1998). That is a corporate M&A event, not inventor attrition, but it is the pivot that produces the 2001 transfer below and is why this patent's file reads like a "change of corporate control" chain rather than a "fire-sale" chain. I could not verify individual inventor departure dates, so I will not assert them.

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Original assignee

Digital Equipment Corporation (Maynard, Massachusetts) — assignee of record on the issued patent (reel 008733/0588).

• Primary line of business: minicomputers (PDP, VAX), Alpha microprocessors, networking, and by the mid-1990s Internet/web services — DEC launched the AltaVista web search engine in 1995, so this patent's subject matter (browser-delivered Web pages and client-side applets) sits squarely in an area DEC actually operated in.
• Did DEC ship a product embodying the claims? Not determinable from the record. DEC clearly shipped web-server and browser-adjacent infrastructure and ran AltaVista, but I have no evidence a specific DEC product implemented the claimed "applet clock-sync + client-side restamping into server time" combination. I will not claim it did.
• Current status: No longer an independent entity. Dissolved into Compaq (acquisition completed 1998); Compaq merged with Hewlett-Packard (2002); the patent now reads as held by Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Not a bankruptcy — a strategic acquisition.

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Assignment timeline

Three recorded assignments. All are corporate-succession records; none is an NPE-facing transfer.

• 1997-09-19 (executed) / recorded 1997-09-24 — Reel 008733/0588

  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST"
  • Assignor: Trewitt, Glenn; Jefferson, David R.; Stata, Raymond Paul; Gould, Edward M. (the joint inventors)
  • Assignee: Digital Equipment Corporation (Massachusetts)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — Google Patents does not surface this field and I could not pull the recorded cover sheet. DEC's in-house patent department or its outside prosecution firm of the era would be the likely correspondent, but I will not name one without the record.
  • Context: routine pre-filing inventor assignment to the operating employer.

• 1999-12-09 and 2001-06-20 (executed by the two assignors) / recorded 2002-01-09 — Reel 012447/0903

  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" (assignors' interest)
  • Assignors: Digital Equipment Corporation (signed 1999-12-09) and Compaq Computer Corporation (signed 2001-06-20)
  • Assignee: Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Lead only, not a finding: a sibling DEC/Compaq recording for a different patent (Compaq ITG, L.P., 20555 SH 249, Houston, recorded 2001-11-16, reel 012305/0373) shows correspondent Jonathan M. Harris, Conley, Rose & Tayon, PC, Houston, TX. That is a different reel and a different patent and must not be attributed to 012447/0903 — it is flagged purely as a place to look when the record is pulled manually.
  • Context: internal corporate reorg — rolling the post-DEC-acquisition patent estate into Compaq's ITG holding vehicle; executed piecemeal over ~18 months, consistent with a bulk re-recording of the acquired portfolio.

• 2002-10-01 (effective) / recorded 2003-11-03 — Reel 014102/0224

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an assignment)
  • Assignor: Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P. (record reads "COMPAQ INFORMANTION TECHNOLOGIES GROUP LP")
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: change of name only — reflects the Compaq/HP combination (HP–Compaq merger closed 2002); no change in beneficial ownership beyond the merger.

No post-2003 assignment is recorded, and no security interest, license, or release appears in the chain. The maintenance-fee events (4-year 2004, 8-year 2008, 12-year 2012 with late-payment surcharge) confirm the patent stayed with the HP entity until it expired at end of term on 2017-09-24.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6134531
    1997 : Application filed
         : Inventors assign to Digital Equipment Corp
    1998 : DEC acquired by Compaq
    2001 : DEC and Compaq assign to Compaq ITG LP
    2002 : Name change to HP Development Company LP
    2003 : Name change recorded at USPTO
    2017 : Patent expires at end of term

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Method caveat: I could evaluate signals 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 against the assignor/assignee/date data I have. Signal 3 (correspondent) cannot be fully evaluated because I could not retrieve the correspondent field. I mark it accordingly rather than guess.

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No link names a licensing-only or single-purpose entity. The chain runs DEC → Compaq ITG, L.P. → HP Development Co., L.P., all large operating-company vehicles. No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" shell, no registered-agent address, no single-member LLC (reels 008733/0588, 012447/0903, 014102/0224).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee or assignor matches the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / MPHJ / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists. The terminal owner, HP Development Company, L.P., is an operating company (Unified Patents portal states parent company "HP Inc"; current assignee "Hewlett-Packard Development Co LP"). Note: HP is a large-scale defendant and counter-asserting party in the industry, but that is not the same as this patent appearing in an NPE chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear (data gap). The correspondent field was not retrievable for any of the three reels. There is no basis to find or exclude recurrence. If you pull the three cover sheets, the specific question to ask is whether a single firm appears on both 008733/0588 and 012447/0903 (which would just indicate DEC's/Compaq's longstanding outside counsel — expected and benign) versus a fresh licensing-oriented filer appearing only on a later link (which would matter). No finding either way.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Three records across ~5 years (1997 → 2003), each tied to a documented corporate event (DEC acquisition; Compaq ITG reorg; HP–Compaq merger). This is slow corporate succession, the opposite of the "<24 months through chained LLCs" pattern. The 1999-12-09 / 2001-06-20 execution split on reel 012447/0903 reflects two different corporate signatories, not rapid serial flipping.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent is in the record (and the prior section found no litigation/CAFC activity). The last assignment predates expiration by ~14 years and is a merger name-change, with no litigation to "precede."

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. DEC's end was a strategic acquisition by Compaq, not a Chapter 7/11 sale of patents. No bankruptcy-conveyance document appears on any reel.

7. Privateering — Not present. The transfers are intra-corporate successions (DEC estate → Compaq ITG → HP). No operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf; the terminal owner is the acquirer itself.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., an operating company. (The patent has, however, been effectively neutralized by expiration — see verdict.)

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — with an explicit taxonomy caveat.

Justification: the full recorded chain is a clean three-link corporate succession — reel 008733/0588 (inventors → Digital Equipment Corp., 1997-09-19/1997-09-24), reel 012447/0903 (DEC + Compaq → Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P., recorded 2002-01-09), and reel 014102/0224 (Change of Name → Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., effective 2002-10-01, recorded 2003-11-03) — with not a single NPE indicator: no shell LLC, no listed asserter, no security interest, no cascading transfers, and a terminal owner that is a large operating company, not a licensing vehicle. The patent was never asserted, expired at end of term on 2017-09-24, and is now public domain.

Caveat: the "Defensive / non-asserting" bucket is defined as a chain terminating at a defensive aggregator (RPX/AST/LOT/Unified), and this chain does not — it terminates at HP, an operating company. So the accurate characterization is "non-NPE, non-asserting corporate ownership," and I am choosing the closest available label rather than claiming HP is a defensive aggregator. The one genuine data gap (signal 3, correspondents) does not change this call, because every other signal is affirmatively negative and the assignee names are large public operating companies, not anonymity-engineered LLCs — the correspondent check matters most precisely when the LLC names look designed to look unrelated, which is not the case here.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 6134531) and the legacy interface at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Cross-check the underlying cover sheets at https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-008733-0588.pdf, ...-012447-0903.pdf, and ...-014102-0224.pdf to fill the correspondent field I could not retrieve.

Uncertainty disclosure: I am confident in the reel/frame numbers, conveyance types, and dates because they come from the authoritative patent text's legal-events block. I am not confident in any correspondent name for this patent — I retrieved none, and the Conley Rose reference above belongs to a different reel for a different patent. I also could not independently confirm via a live Assignment Center query, so treat the chain as high-confidence-but-not-independently-reverified.

I'll search the USPTO database for patent 6134531 specifically and analyze each cited reference.

Now let me research the remaining six cited references.

I hit the tool-call limit partway through, so below I report what I retrieved and explicitly flag where I am relying on lower-confidence sources. Read the confidence markers — they matter.

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Step 1 — Confirming the patent in USPTO-side records

No auto-correction applied. I treat "6134531" as US 6,134,531. I did not return results for near-miss numbers (6,411,531 / 6,101,531 / 6,313,531), consistent with the instruction.

One-day discrepancies (priority 09-23 vs 09-24; grant 10-16 vs 10-17) persist across sources. These were already flagged in your earlier generated sections; I am not re-litigating them here, only noting they persist. I use the authoritative 09-24 / 10-17 dates.

Method caveat: I reached Google Patents, Justia, uspto.report, Unified Patents and patentimages PDFs. I did not reach a live PatentCenter record directly. Treat this as authoritative-for-content, indicative-for-status.

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Step 2 — What "prior art for 6134531" means here

The nine U.S. references below are the References Cited on the face of the patent (the examiner-cited art), not the large "Cited By" family. Being cited means considered and overcome — not that any reference anticipates. I analyze them accordingly.

A critical dating observation your framework should capture (this is the analytically important part):

The application was filed 1997-09-24 (pre-AIA). Five of the nine references issued after that filing date and therefore cannot be § 102(a)/(b) art — they can only qualify under pre-AIA § 102(e) via their U.S. filing/priority dates. All nine have priority dates predating 1997-09-24, so all nine are available in some § 102 subsection. This is shown below.

(Issue/priority dates as listed in the Google Patents "Citations (9)" table reproduced in the authoritative full text.)

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Step 3 — Reference-by-reference

1. US 5,036,389 — Morales / Magus, Ltd.

"Satellite controlled audience polling system." Filed 1989-07-14 (App. No. 379,921); issued 1991-07-30. § 102(b).

Description (high confidence — full text retrieved): A satellite-controlled TV audience polling system. Polling questions are inserted into the TV picture; viewers at TV receiving stations answer via response units that emit timed r-f "beeps"; local ground stations and the satellite station process answers on-line; consolidated results are inserted back into the video picture alongside the questions substantially instantaneously. Beeps are "synchronously timed" relative to video frames, and the patent expressly discusses compensating r-f beep travel time to/from the satellite so results appear in a synchronously timed picture position.

§ 102 analysis: Directly on point for the purpose and preamble of claims 1, 2 and 4 (collecting real-time audience feedback on a broadcast program; synchronizing responses to program segments; producing instantaneous poll results). However, it discloses no Web page, no browser, no downloadable/executed applet, no Internet, no client clock and no client–server time-differential computed by the client. It cannot anticipate claims 1, 2, 4, or their dependents as a whole. Its value is as a § 103 reference against the preamble/general real-time-polling concept.

2. US 5,226,177 — Nickerson / Viewfacts, Inc.

"Real-time wireless audience response system." Priority 1990-03-27; issued 1993-07-06. § 102(b).

Description (high confidence — full text retrieved): A central processor + base station collects moment-to-moment viewer reaction from a plurality of addressed wireless response units via radio/optical/acoustic links; responses are accumulated and displayed in real time as an overlay on the program. Notably, the spec states some applications require the central processor to determine the position of a videotape being played back (VCR 22) by reading a previously recorded SMPTE time code — i.e., correlating responses to a position within the program.

§ 102 analysis: The closest of the face citations to the "associate responses with specific segments" concept, because of the SMPTE-time-code program-position tracking. It is still missing every software/network element of claims 1/2/4 (Web page, browser, applet, server time value, client-computed differential). No full anticipation; strong § 103 fodder for the correlation element.

3. US 5,600,632 — Schulman / Bell Atlantic Network Services

"Methods and apparatus for performance monitoring using synchronized network analyzers." Priority 1995-03-22; issued 1997-02-04. § 102(a)/§ 102(e).

Description (high confidence — full text retrieved): Multiple network analyzers each attach time stamps to packets; their clocks are synchronized (via commercial real-time clock boards, NIST ACTS dial-up, or Network Time Protocol). Crucially, the spec teaches: "One technique for synchronizing the clocks involves measuring round trip delay and calculating and recording difference values between pairs of clocks. The values of time stamps associated with packets captured are corrected to account for the difference values."

§ 102 analysis — this is the single most relevant reference on the timestamp-correction element. It discloses, in essentially the same mechanism: clock offset measured by round-trip delay → a difference value → timestamps corrected by that difference. That maps onto claim 1's "time differential" and the client-side restamping, and onto claim 3 / claim 5's NTP-synchronized server clock. It nonetheless lacks: broadcast program, audience feedback, Web page, browser, applet, and any feedback-to-segment association. No full anticipation of any claim; it is the best § 103 reference for the synchronization spine of claims 1–3.

4. US 5,633,872 — Dinkins / Eon Corporation

"Interactive radio." Priority 1994-06-08; issued 1997-05-27. § 102(a)/§ 102(e).

Description (high confidence — full text retrieved): A two-way interactive radio broadcast data network (RTUs, cell transmitter sites, hub, satellite links). Claims recite synchronizing transmission facilities to a precision clock signal derived from an independent precision clock source — including GPS-derived precision timing — and RTUs individually identified by digital pulses in a "predetermined timing relationship synchronized with said precision clock signal."

§ 102 analysis: Discloses an interactive broadcast with two-way response units and precise, source-independent clock synchronization in a broadcast context. Relevant to claim 1's synchronization theme and to the broadcast-clock concept. Lacks Web/browser/applet/server-clock-differential/feedback-to-segment analysis. No full anticipation; § 103 support for the "broadcast + synchronized interactive response" platform.

5. US 5,703,795 — Mankovitz

"Apparatus and methods for accessing information relating to radio and television programs." Priority 1992-06-22; issued 1997-12-30. § 102(e) only.

Description — LOWER CONFIDENCE (full text not retrieved; I hit the tool limit before fetching it). From training knowledge, this is part of the Mankovitz family directed to accessing auxiliary/program-related information tied to a TV or radio program (e.g., via an apparatus that reads program-identifying data and retrieves associated information). I recommend verifying against the document itself before relying on this description.

§ 102 analysis: Even taking the cautious description, it appears to address delivering program-related information, not collecting time-stamped audience feedback. It does not anticipate claims 1/2/4. Treat as tangential.

6. US 5,715,400 — Reimer et al. / IBM

"System and method for providing merchant information and establishing links to merchants while presenting a movie." Priority 1995-03-20; issued 1998-02-03. § 102(e) only.

Description — LOWER CONFIDENCE (not retrieved; tool limit). Title-supported reading: an interactive presentation (movie) with merchant information and merchant links presented during playback. That is an interactive-media-with-links teaching, not an audience-feedback/timestamping teaching.

§ 102 analysis: No anticipation of claims 1–5. Relevant, at most, as background for the "present an interactive program and link the viewer to remote information" environment.

7. US 5,761,606 — Wolzien

"Media online services access via address embedded in video or audio program." Priority 1996-02-08; issued 1998-06-02. § 102(e) only.

Description — LOWER CONFIDENCE (not retrieved; tool limit). Title-supported reading: embedding a network address (e.g., a URL) in a video/audio broadcast so a viewer can access an associated online service — the canonical broadcast↔Internet bridging concept.

§ 102 analysis: Relevant to the broadcast-program ↔ Internet-service linkage that underpins claims 1/2/4, and it is of the right era. But it does not teach solicited feedback via a Web page, an auto-downloaded applet, a client-maintained clock, or client-side restamping into server time. No anticipation.

8. US 5,812,642 — Leroy

"Audience response monitor and analysis system and method." Priority 1995-07-12; issued 1998-09-22. § 102(e) only.

Description — LOWER CONFIDENCE (not retrieved; tool limit). Title-supported reading: monitoring and analysis of audience responses (the class 379/92 classification on the face of the '531 patent suggests a telephone-based system).

§ 102 analysis: Relevant to the audience-response-monitoring objective only. No Web/applet/browser/client-clock elements. No anticipation.

9. US 5,861,881 — Freeman et al. / ACTV, Inc.

"Interactive computer system for providing an interactive presentation with personalized video, audio and graphics responses for multiple viewers." Priority 1991-11-25; issued 1999-01-19. § 102(e) only.

Description — LOWER CONFIDENCE (not retrieved; tool limit). Title-supported reading: an interactive computer system delivering a presentation with personalized, selectable video/audio/graphics responses to multiple viewers — interactive-TV-with-personalization. This is the ACTV family referenced repeatedly in the patent's own NPL list ("New ACTV hypes its path to Internet-TV convergence," Electronic Media, 1996-07-08).

§ 102 analysis: Relevant to interactive broadcast presentation and multi-viewer personalization. Does not disclose the claimed client-side clock-differential time-stamping pipeline. No anticipation. Note it has the earliest priority date (1991-11-25) of the nine — worth attention if § 102(e) dates are ever in dispute.

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Step 4 — Non-patent literature (13 entries on the face; the analytically meaningful ones)

I retrieved the patent's own NPL list verbatim. The important ones for the applet clock-sync element are:

⚠️ Flag (development on your earlier sections): the Coetanian Javascript time-synchronization reference (Apr. 1997) is likely the single most relevant date-contemporaneous item on the whole face of this patent for the applet mechanism, and the AboutTime/WebTV NPL entries are chronologically ineligible as prior art. I have not verified whether the Apr. 1997 date is the version date or the print date — confirm before relying on it.

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Step 5 — Claim-element mapping (independent claims 1, 2, 4)

Conclusion: No single face-cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–5 as a whole. Every independent claim contains the browser + auto-downloaded applet + client-computed server-time-stamp combination, which is absent from all nine.

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Step 6 — Bottom line: most relevant prior art

Ranked by relevance to US 6,134,531's actual claim coverage:

1. US 5,600,632 (Bell Atlantic) — closest on the timestamp-correction-by-measured-clock-difference spine of claims 1–3 (round-trip delay → difference value → corrected timestamps; NTP).
2. US 5,226,177 (Viewfacts) — closest on real-time moment-to-moment audience response correlated to program position (SMPTE time code).
3. US 5,036,389 (Magus) — closest on broadcast polling with synchronous timing and instantaneous feedback.
4. US 5,761,606 (Wolzien) — broadcast↔Internet address embedding.
5. US 5,633,872 (Eon) — precision-clock-synchronized interactive broadcast.
6. The remaining four (5,703,795; 5,715,400; 5,812,642; 5,861,881) are tangential.
7. NPL: Coetanian "Time Synchronization Javascript" (Apr. 1997) — most relevant non-patent item for the applet mechanism.

The realistic attack on claims 1–4 would be a § 103 combination — e.g., 5,036,389 or 5,226,177 (real-time broadcast feedback + segment correlation) in view of 5,600,632 (clock-offset measurement and timestamp correction) in view of a Web/Java-applet reference — not § 102 anticipation by any one reference.

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Confidence and caveats

• High confidence on: the patent identity/family; the bibliographic data for all nine references (titles, dates); the § 102-subsection eligibility table (derived from dates in the authoritative full text); and the full-text descriptions of 5,036,389, 5,226,177, 5,600,632, and 5,633,872 (retrieved).
• Lower confidence on the descriptions of 5,703,795, 5,715,400, 5,761,606, 5,812,642, and 5,861,881 — my searches for these five were cut off by the tool-step limit, so those descriptions are title/training-data-derived and should be verified against the documents before being relied on.
• I did not retrieve a live uspto.gov PatentCenter page for 6134531; USPTO-side confirmation came via uspto.report and Unified Patents.
• § 102(e) dates shown are priority dates from the Google Patents citation table; a pre-AIA § 102(e) date can hinge on actual U.S. filing (and domestic benefit) rather than the priority date, so verify per reference if this ever becomes dispositive.
• The AboutTime (Oct. 1998) and WebTV Plus (Nov. 1998) NPL items post-date the filing and cannot be § 102/§ 103 art — confirmed from the patent's own NPL list.

I'll verify what the cited references actually disclose before mapping them, so I don't mis-characterize the art.

Scope note and a date inconsistency to flag

This section is a retrospective, hypothetical § 103 analysis — the earlier sections established that US 6,134,531 expired 2017-09-24 and was never litigated or challenged at the PTAB, so no court or the Board has ever construed these claims. Everything below is my own construction of the claims against the art of record, not a holding.

Contradiction flagged: the header of this task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the operating-rule frame for this engagement states 2026-10-01. I have used no date-sensitive reasoning that depends on which is correct (the patent expired in 2017 either way), but the inconsistency is noted rather than silently normalized.

Verification caveat up front. The prior-art section of this page lists nine U.S. references and thirteen non-patent items. I retrieved and read the full text of four of the nine — US 5,036,389 ('389), US 5,226,177 ('177), US 5,600,632 ('632), and US 5,812,642 ('642) — and quote them directly below. For the other five patents ('872, '795, '400, '606, '881) and for all thirteen NPL items I was working from titles, assignees, dates, and general knowledge only; I have marked every such inference [UNVERIFIED — title/abstract level]. Do not quote my characterizations of those as if they were read.

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1. Governing law and the PHOSITA

Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies. The application was filed 1997-09-24, so the inquiry is: would the subject matter as a whole have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the subject matter pertains. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), frames the four factual inquiries; KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), supplies the rationales. Because of the 1997 filing date, the pre-AIA versions of §§ 102 and 103 govern, and KSR is applied as the Supreme Court's gloss on the same statutory text.

PHOSITA (my proposed definition): a software/network engineer holding a bachelor's degree in computer science or electrical engineering and two to four years of experience building client-server Internet applications, with working familiarity with (a) the World-Wide-Web and browser-executed mobile code (Java applets, JavaScript), (b) standard network time synchronization (NTP, and dial-up time services such as NIST ACTS), and (c) at least incidental exposure to broadcast audience-measurement systems. That is the level at which the record's references are written, and it is the level at which the patent's own disclosure is pitched — the spec's stated advantage is that the client-side sync "can be done without having to know if the client is running the NTP," i.e., it presumes an implementer who knows what NTP is.

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2. The prior art of record, and what each reference actually supplies

Prior-art qualification notes a petitioner must get right

• Wolzien '606 and Leroy '642 issued after the '531 filing (1998), so they are not § 102(b) art as patents; they are § 102(e) art as of their respective filing dates (1996-02-08 and 1995-07-12), both well before 1997-09-24. Same analysis for '872, '795, and '400.
• The Coetnian NPL is the soft spot. Published April 1997, it is § 102(a) art only as of its publication date, and the inventors could attempt a Rule 131 swear-behind to an earlier invention date (the assignment record shows an effective date of 1997-09-19, though that is assignment, not conception). Any combination that depends on Coetnian is therefore the most attackable. Combinations that reach the applet-sync element through the April 1996 Internet Week Java article plus Haidl's June 1996 NTP article are on firmer § 102(b) footing — but note that neither of those shows a client computing an offset, which is why Coetnian is valuable.
• Analogous art. All of '389, '177, '642, '872, '606, '881 are in the audience-measurement / broadcast-interactivity field — plainly analogous. '632 (network performance monitoring) is a different field but is reasonably pertinent to the particular problem the inventor faced — how to make time stamps from geographically dispersed, independently-clocked machines comparable — and in any event NTP clock synchronization was general knowledge in 1997 (Haidl, of record). Its status as analogous art is not a serious vulnerability.

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3. Element-by-element mapping — independent claims

Because claims 2 and 4 recite substantially the same subject matter in apparatus and server-side-method form, a mapping that disposes of claim 1 largely disposes of 2 and 4. I note the differences.

Claim 1

Claim 2 (server apparatus, means-plus-function)

Every "means" limitation is the server-side mirror of 1.1–1.3 and 1.12–1.13. Same references; same result. The applet limitation appears here as a capability of the transmitted page ("the Web page having associated therewith an applet"), which is if anything easier to read on the art than claim 1's active "automatically downloading and executing" step.

Claim 4 (server-side method)

1.3, 1.1, 1.2, 1.6 (as an attribute of the transmitted page), 1.12, 1.13 — nothing in claim 4 requires the browser download or the user-input capture to be recited as steps. It is a narrower, cleaner claim to invalidate than claim 1, because it drops the two client-side elements a defendant might struggle with (1.5, 1.7) and keeps only the server's transmit/receive/analyze triad.

Claims 3 and 5 (dependent)

Both add: (i) a server clock synchronized with the standard time, and (ii) means for answering client requests for the current server clock value.

• '632 supplies both, expressly: clocks "synchronized… using commercial real time clock boards, a dial up automated computer time service routine or a network time protocol," with the analyzer/computer serving time so peers can compute offsets. Haidl [UNV] supplies NTP as a routine service. And the Coetnian JS approach [UNV] structurally requires a time server that answers requests — the "means for responding" is the client/server protocol's other half.
• '389 supplies the underlying premise independently: broadcast events are "synchronously timed," i.e., the broadcast clock is tied to an external reference.

Conclusion on mapping: every limitation of claims 1–5 has an express or plainly implicit counterpart in the art of record, except the packaging of the offset computation inside a browser-delivered applet (1.6/1.11), which rests on the two NPL items.

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4. The three combinations, and the motivation to combine

Combination A — the primary combination

'177 (Viewfacts) + '632 (Bell Atlantic) + '606 (Wolzien) + Internet Week/Java & Coetnian NPL, optionally + '642 (Leroy) and '389 (Magus).

Why a PHOSITA would combine them. '177 and '642 together define the state of the art in what to do: capture a respondent's reaction in real time, associate it with the program's time base, and correlate it in time to program segments. '632 supplies the one missing capability to do that over a wide-area packet network: a documented method for making independently-running clocks comparable by measuring round-trip delay and correcting time stamps by the measured offset — the exact arithmetic the patent's FIG. 7 describes ("half of the smallest difference between the time server… and the time at which the server's clock value arrives at the client"). '606 and the Java NPL supply the delivery channel: browser-fetched content, tied to a broadcast through an embedded address, with executable code shipped to the client.

The express suggestion is in the references themselves. This is not hindsight — it is essentially a KSR "the prior art itself suggests the combination" case:

• '177's own background names the deficiency that the Internet solves: an in-home panel system "is also very costly to maintain on-line communications between each panelist's home and the central site," and its own field-of-search reaches the public telephone network as an alternative transport.
• '632 expressly names three off-the-shelf ways to synchronize dispersed clocks, including NTP, and expressly teaches correcting captured time stamps by the recorded offset — i.e., it hands the PHOSITA the mechanism and tells him why he wants it ("so that the time stamps applied at the same instant by different network analyzers have identical time stamps").
• The Internet Week Java NPL [UNV] names the vehicle.

KSR rationales engaged: (A) known elements combined according to known methods, predictable results; (B) simple substitution of the Internet/applet for '177's dedicated RF base station and '642's telephone bank; (C) use of a known technique ('632's offset correction) to improve a similar system ('177/'642's response-to-segment correlation) in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a device clearly ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try" — a finite, identified set of transports (dedicated hardware, telephone, Internet) with the Internet being the evident next step given the convergence press.

Credibility of the teaching: '177 teaches the time-based correlation not just for taped material but for live material via an "internally generated time base," which removes the most obvious objection (that audience-response correlation was inherently a tape-based technique).

Weakest link: 1.6/1.11 — the applet rather than merely a script or a hardware clock.

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Combination B — the narrow/server-side combination (best for claim 4, and for claims 3/5)

'389 (Magus) + '632 (Bell Atlantic) + Haidl NTP NPL [UNV] + Internet Week Java NPL [UNV], optionally + '642 (Leroy) for the correlation step.

This combination avoids dependence on the April 1997 Coetnian reference entirely, which matters because that reference is § 102(a) art and susceptible to a Rule 131 swear-behind, whereas Haidl (June 1996) and the Java article (April 1996) are § 102(b) art.

Motivation. '389 is a complete broadcast-polling architecture in which questions are asked during the broadcast and responses are returned during the broadcast, with responses synchronously timed to the video picture so that answers align with the segments they answer. Its only shortfall against claim 4 is that the responses travel over r-f beeps to a satellite rather than over a network to a server, and that the time alignment rides on the broadcast signal's own timing rather than on an explicit server time value. '632 tells the PHOSITA how to give a server a trustworthy clock and how to correct remote time stamps against it; Haidl [UNV] confirms NTP was a routine service; the Java NPL [UNV] confirms the Web-page-plus-executable-code delivery model. The motivation is the ordinary one of cost, reach, and design simplicity: replacing dedicated satellite/r-f return paths and in-room hardware with ubiquitous home PCs and the public Internet is the specific improvement '389's own architecture invites, and the patent's own spec concedes the point ("[m]ost radio and television broadcast systems use some type of time-synchronized transmission protocol," and the audience "is limited only by bandwidth and server computing power limitations"). Motivation is not a requirement of § 103 in any event — the references need only render the claimed subject matter obvious.

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Combination C — the "correlation-centric" combination

'642 (Leroy) + '632 (Bell Atlantic) + '606 (Wolzien) [UNV] + Coetnian NPL [UNV].

Motivation. '642 already discloses the endpoint the patent claims: a timing means, storage of "response data and the time of the communication," and "correlating in time the response data with the segments of the promotion," with a real-time display so a coordinator "may decide to alter subsequent segments." '642 also expressly contemplates scaling: "If the system… is utilized on a plurality of public television stations across the country… [a] central location could access all participating stations' databases via modem and prepare reports based on the average effectiveness information." That sentence is a direct invitation to distribute the response-gathering geographically and correlate it centrally — i.e., to replace '642's local telephone bank with network-connected clients. '632 supplies the clock discipline that distributed gathering requires. '606 [UNV] supplies the broadcaster-independent Web-site model.

The gap common to this combination is the applet and the browser; Coetnian closes it, subject to the § 102(a) caveat.

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5. Dependent claims 3 and 5

Claims 3 and 5 add nothing that is not squarely in '632 — an external time standard, three named ways to reach it (real-time clock board, dial-up ACTS, NTP), and a peer that answers time requests — reinforced by Haidl [UNV] for NTP and by '389 for the broadcast-clock premise. If the independents fall, the dependents add no separate inventive step. A patentee's best (and only) argument here would be that the specific combination of a standard-time-synchronized server clock with Web-delivered audience feedback is a non-obvious pairing; that is weak, because '632's synchronization teaching is expressly about making other machines' time stamps comparable to a reference clock — the functional purpose the dependent claims recite.

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6. The strongest counterarguments a patentee would make

I would be doing this job badly if I did not set these out, because they are the arguments that would actually be run:

1. The examiner allowed the claims with Coetnian JS and the Java article of record. Coetnian is a JavaScript time-synchronization utility, and the Java article is about joining television and the Internet with Java. Neither, alone, discloses the claimed combination of an applet computing a client/server differential used to restamp audience feedback against broadcast segments. The allowance is evidence that at least one examiner, with most of Combination A's pieces on the desk, thought the specific combination was not obvious. Allowance is not a validity holding, but it is a real datum.
2. The "applet" is a structural limitation, not a functional result. Under a literal reading, a JavaScript utility (Coetnian) is not a Java applet; the two NPL items must themselves be combined, and the combination of two NPL items with three patents starts to look like a mosaic assembled with the claim chart in hand. Expect a KSR argument that this is a "predictable variation" and a patentee argument that JavaScript ≈ applet is an anachronistic conflation.
3. The art taught localized gathering. '177's express caveat — "[t]he only requirement is that the entire survey be conducted within the range of the RF transceivers" — could be spun as the art's recognition that response-timing precision depends on proximity, and hence as a teaching away from globally distributed clients. I do not find this persuasive: '389 and '642 both teach geographic dispersion (satellite-linked regional audiences; multi-station modem aggregation), and '632 exists precisely to make dispersed clocks comparable. But it is the least frivolous teaching-away argument available.
4. The satellite-delay paragraph. The spec's own observation that satellite round trips introduce "up to a 1/4-second spread" is a limit on the art, not a teaching away — and the spec immediately says the spread "may not be significant in applications where audience reactions are measured at intervals larger than the spread." That cuts for obviousness: the artisan would simply design around it by using the terrestrial Internet path the claim presumes.

Objective indicia: the background section documents a recognized long-felt need (focus groups are geographically constrained, effortful, and skewed; telephone polling is retrospective and expensive) and expressly states that prose e-mail responses require human intervention and "dramatically limit[] the size of the audience." That helps the patentee on the need prong. But the nexus prong is where this fails: the need was for a scalable, real-time, geographically unconstrained audience-measurement method, and the asserted advance over the art is the application of the Internet and browser-delivered code to a problem the art had already solved in local settings. I found no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry-acclaim evidence attributable to these claims. (None asserted in the record before me; treat as an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.)

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7. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 2 are, in my view, more likely than not obvious under pre-AIA § 103(a) over '177 + '632 + '606 + the Java/Coetnian NPL, with '389 and '642 strengthening the broadcast-segment-correlation and response-to-segment-correlation elements respectively. The single element that carries real non-obviousness weight is the browser-delivered applet computing the client/server differential — and it was on the examiner's desk in the Coetnian and Internet Week references.
• Claim 4 is the weakest claim of the five. It omits the client-side method steps and retains only the server's transmit/receive/analyze triad, all three of which are expressly disclosed or plainly suggested by '389, '642, and '606.
• Claims 3 and 5 add nothing beyond '632's clock-synchronization teaching and NTP as a matter of ordinary skill.
• Every combination that depends on the Coetnian reference is procedurally exposed to a Rule 131 swear-behind, because that reference was published only ~5 months before the 1997-09-24 filing. Combinations resting on the April 1996 Java article and the June 1996 Haidl NTP article are § 102(b) art and are not so exposed — but those two do not themselves disclose client-side offset computation, so a petitioner needs '632 (which is § 102(e) art as of 1995-03-22 and is therefore robust) to carry that element. '632 is the load-bearing reference in every viable combination.

Uncertainty disclosure. My mapping of '872, '795, '400, '606, '881, and all thirteen NPL items is based on titles, dates, assignees, and general knowledge; I did not retrieve their full texts in this pass and have marked them [UNVERIFIED] accordingly. If the '606 and NPL texts say something materially different from what I have assumed, Combination A's element 1.1 and 1.6 mappings would need to be re-built. The four references I did read — '389, '177, '632, '642 — are quoted verbatim above and can be relied on. Note also that a serious § 103 opinion for an issued, expired patent would ordinarily be run against the full prosecution history (the applicant's remarks and any Rule 132 declarations), which I have not reviewed; the prosecution history is where the patentee's actual distinction over these references would be recorded, and it could change the analysis in a way I cannot detect from the face of the patent.