US 6246933

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation activity.

Let me check for any litigation or PTAB activity specific to this patent.

Summary: US Patent 6,246,933 B1

Search scope note: I searched Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, EveryPatent, uspto.report, and general web indices for USPTO/PTAB and CAFC 2026 activity tied to this exact number. I found no litigation, IPR, PGR, reexamination, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 6,246,933 in any indexed 2026 docket. I have no authoritative confirmation that this patent was ever asserted. My search was not an exhaustive PACER/PTAB query, so treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result rather than proof of absence.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

Systems for sensing, storing and updating operation parameters, visual conditions and audible conditions for an automotive vehicle include a plurality of sensors for registering vehicular operation parameters, including at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera. A microprocessor controller responsive to the vehicle operation parameters registered by the plurality of sensors and video images and audio signals from the video/audio camera is provided for processing the operational parameters and the video and audio signals. A rewritable non-volatile memory stores the processed operational parameters, video images and audio signals provided by the microprocessor controller. The microprocessor controller updates the rewritable memory as new parameters, video images and audio signals are sensed. When the data is converted to computer-readable form and read by a computer, an accident involving the automobile may be reconstructed.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (system) — A vehicle "black box" system with four elements: (i) multiple sensors registering vehicle operating parameters, including at least one digital video/audio camera mounted inside the rear-view mirror; (ii) a microprocessor controller that processes both the sensor parameters and the camera's video/audio; (iii) a rewritable non-volatile memory storing that processed data; and (iv) the controller continuously updating the memory as new data comes in.

Note the claim-1 limitation "placed inside the rear view mirror" is significant — it is narrower than the specification's general teaching of a camera "mounted to view forwardly through the rear view mirror," yet it became part of the granted independent claim.

Claim 16 (method) — A nine-step method for recording accident-related events: (a) provide vehicle-parameter sensors including at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera; (b) provide a microprocessor controller to process parameters plus camera video/audio; (c) provide rewritable non-volatile memory for the processed data; (d) provide receive/transmit interface means routing operational data and digitized video/audio to that memory; (e) provide a computer interface adapter coupled to the memory; (f) give that adapter computer-interface means to store the data in computer-readable form; (g) couple the adapter to a computer loaded with appropriate software; (h) read the computer-readable operational data, video, and audio into that computer; and (i) execute the program to reconstruct the accident.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2–4: forward-facing camera in the rear-view mirror; rearward-facing camera; side cameras.
• 5: microprocessor and rewritable non-volatile memory housed in a tamper-proof but removable box fixed to the vehicle.
• 6–7: continuous vs. periodic/regular memory updating.
• 8: memory divided into multiple logical data pages holding independent data sets.
• 9: memory type — battery-backed dynamic RAM with refresh, battery-backed static RAM, or electrically-alterable ROM.
• 10: internal-event parameters (braking pressure, brake temperature, hydraulic line pressure, average speed, acceleration/deceleration, turning rate, steering angle, compass heading, impact, tire pressure, cruise control, wiper, fog light, defroster, GPS).
• 11: external-event data (closing rate, distance, and direction of obstacles/other vehicles).
• 12–14: recording begins at ignition "on"; ends at ignition "off"; video/audio recording terminated automatically.
• 15: adds the computer interface to an external computer plus analyzing means that reconstruct the accident when the program executes.
• 17–18: reconstructed accident displayed on monitor, printed frame-by-frame, and/or converted to video/audio tape for VCR viewing; and the computer program is password protected.

Notable prior art cited on the face

US 5,435,184 (Pineroli et al.); US 5,445,024 (Riley, Jr. et al.); US 5,446,659 (Yamawaki); US 5,477,141 (Nather et al.); US 5,581,464 (Woll et al.); US 5,671,451 (Takahashi et al.); US 5,680,117 (Arac et al.); US 5,696,705 (Zykar). Note: the EveryPatent listing renders Riley, Jr. as 5,445,027, while the patent's own description and other sources render it 5,445,024 — I flag this as an unresolved discrepancy rather than correcting it.

Uncertainty / caveats

1. Assignee: Databases consistently show an "Individual" assignee with no recorded corporate owner. I found no assignment record transferring this patent to a company. A 2001 FreePatentsOnline citation index capitalizes the name as "Baque," and another as "Bague" — spelling variants exist across secondary sources.
2. Litigation: I could not locate any district court, PTAB, or CAFC 2026 proceeding naming this patent. Absent a PACER/PTAB verification, I cannot state affirmatively that no such proceeding exists.
3. Claim text source: The claim set reproduced here tracks the text in your authoritative patent document and matches the Justia/EveryPatent renderings; minor differences appear in the specification's summary section (which paraphrases claims 1 and 16 slightly differently from the granted claims).

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 6246933 across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to be thorough before concluding.

Finding: No litigation located involving US Patent 6,246,933

After searching litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents litigation materials, PTAB/IPR petition "related matters" sections, Docket Alarm/PTAB records, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and general patent-docket queries) I found no record of any lawsuit, IPR/PGR/CBM proceeding, or other adversarial proceeding in which US Patent 6,246,933 was asserted, challenged, or even named as a patent-in-suit.

Because the strict instruction is to report only what can be grounded, I will not invent any plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or outcome. There is nothing to fill into that table.

What I did find (and why it is not litigation)

Every "hit" for the number 6,246,933 in my searches falls into one of these non-litigation categories:

Notably, docket/IPR petitions routinely contain a mandatory "Related Matters" section listing all litigation involving the patent at issue. Searches across those documents did not turn up the '933 patent as a subject patent in any such list.

Verified bibliographic context (from the authoritative full text)

• Patent: US 6,246,933 B1 — "Traffic accident data recorder and traffic accident reproduction system and method"
• Inventor: Adolfo Vaeza Bagué
• Application: US 09/433,549, filed 1999-11-04; granted 2001-06-12
• Original/current assignee: Individual (no corporate assignee of record)
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2019-11-04
• Claims: 18 total (independent claim 1 directed to a system including a vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera placed inside the rear-view mirror)

Caveats on completeness

• I could not retrieve live PACER docket text or a full Unified Patents case list for this specific patent; my conclusions rest on the searches returned plus the patent record itself.
• The patent is a sole-inventor, individually-owned patent that expired on 2019-11-04. It shows no signs of having been transferred to an assertion entity, which is consistent with the absence of any assertion campaign.
• Absence of evidence is not conclusive proof that no case ever existed, but I have no basis to report any specific case, and I will not fabricate one.

Bottom line: To the best of the available record, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 6,246,933. If a definitive negative confirmation is required, the remaining authoritative checkpoints would be a PACER "party/patent" docket search across all district courts and the Unified Patents litigation database filtered on this exact patent number — neither of which returned an assertion in my searches.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" signal against the public record before drafting.

Let me run one more confirmation pass targeting litigation and any recently-filed petitions not yet indexed by ODP.

One more pass to check for reexamination, litigation assertion history, or a recent unindexed petition.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,246,933: zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent, and my independent searches (Google Patents, PTAB petition/document hits via ptacts.uspto.gov, Docket Alarm PTAB dockets, and general web) surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement termination, and no Federal Circuit appeal naming US 6,246,933 as the challenged patent. Because there are no proceedings, there is no breakdown by status to report — not "claims sustained," not "institution denied," simply no filings. The defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has survived IPRs and is hardened"; it is the opposite: the patent has never been tested at the Board, and — more importantly — it is expired, which moots most of what an IPR could have accomplished.

Three structural facts drive everything below:

1. Expiration. Google Patents records "2019-11-04 — Anticipated expiration," status Expired – Lifetime (i.e., all maintenance fees were paid; the term ran out, it did not lapse). Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6246933B1](/patent/US6246933B1)/en. That is 20 years from the 1999-11-04 filing date; no patent term adjustment or terminal disclaimer appears in the record provided.
2. PGR is unavailable by statute. The '933 patent's effective filing date is 1999-11-04, far before the 2013-03-16 PGR window. Only IPR was ever an available AIA vehicle (and § 18 CBM review, which has since sunset for petitions filed after 2020-09-16).
3. No assertion footprint found. Searches found no litigation in which 6,246,933 appears as the asserted patent. The patent shows up repeatedly in the record — but as prior art and IDS background, never as the challenged or asserted patent. See "Near-misses" below.

Proceedings on file

None. There is no proceeding to write up. I will not invent numbers, panels, or dispositions to populate the template.

Near-misses (do not confuse these with proceedings against the '933 patent)

These are places the patent surfaces in PTAB-adjacent records — every one is the patent being cited, not challenged:

That pattern is diagnostic: this patent's utility in the ecosystem has been as a prior-art cudgel against other vehicle-recorder patents — not as an asserted patent. If you are a defendant, read the table above as your offensive playbook, not your defensive one.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 18 claims UNTESTED. No claim of 6,246,933 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB, and no Federal Circuit decision addresses it. The claim set comprises 18 claims; the authoritative text provided reproduces independent claim 1 and claim 2. Claim 1 covers a sensor plurality including "at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera which is placed inside the rear view mirror," a microprocessor control means, rewritable non-volatile memory means, and continuous updating. That mirror-placement limitation is a conspicuously narrow hook — but it has never been litigated or construed, so any statement about its validity or scope would be speculation. I do not have high confidence in any invalidity prediction here.

Estoppel landscape: there is none to speak of. Because no IPR was ever instituted on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one. No petitioner — and no privity chain — is barred from raising any prior-art ground. Any ground that was "raised or reasonably could have been raised" in a hypothetical IPR remains fully available. Correspondingly, no petitioner enjoys a prior win that a defendant could borrow. If you wanted to invalidate, you would be starting from a blank slate, which means paying for your own petition, your own expert, and your own institution fight — for a patent that expired on 2019-11-04. That economics problem, not estoppel, is what actually protects you.

Pattern signals: absent. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against this patent (none has filed one). The patent owner has never appealed to the Federal Circuit, because he has never had a Board loss to appeal. There is no defensive aggregator — no Unified Patents, no RPX — in the chain; the current assignee of record is the individual inventor, Adolfo Vaeza Bagué, with no assignment to a monetization entity showing in the record. Google Patents' classification history shows the patent sitting quietly in G07C5/08 and G07C5/0841. A well-asserted patent of this vintage, in this technology area, would have drawn an IPR long ago; the absence of any petition is itself evidence that nobody has found it worth asserting.

The real defensive weapon is the calendar, not the Board. The patent expired 2019-11-04. Infringement liability can only attach to conduct before that date. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, a complaint filed today (2026-09-30) reaches back only six years — to 2020-09-30 — a window that contains zero days of enforceable patent term. A demand letter citing this patent is therefore demanding damages for a period from which no recovery is legally available, absent a rare and narrowly applied § 286 exception. That is a far stronger defense than any IPR outcome, and it is available immediately, with no filing fee.

Recommended next steps

There is no PTAB activity — say so plainly, and lead with expiration instead. There is no Final Written Decision to link to, and I will not manufacture one.

1. Best response to a demand letter: § 286 + expiration. The patent expired 2019-11-04 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6246933B1/en). Any pre-expiration infringement is now more than six years stale, so § 286 bars recovery on a complaint filed in 2026. Verify the expiration date against the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee and term records rather than relying solely on Google Patents, and confirm no certificate of correction, reissue, or PTA extended the term.

2. If — and only if — the owner somehow shows a live damages theory, note that IPR remains available against an expired patent, but it is a poor investment: the Board construes expired claims under Phillips, no claim amendments are possible, and you would be paying full freight for a defense that § 286 already supplies. § 315(b) gives you one year from service of a complaint to file, so there is no urgency until a complaint is actually served.

3. Screen the demand for the real target. Because '933 has no assertion history, ask what the letter actually attaches to — a modern dashcam/fleet-telematics product almost certainly post-dates the 2019 expiration. If the theory depends on a continuation or later-issued patent in a family, that patent, not '933, is the one needing a PTAB/FTO analysis. None of the proceedings I found touch this patent's family.

4. Use '933 offensively where it matters. If you are defending against a different vehicle-event-recorder patent, 6,246,933 is pre-AIA § 102(b) art with a 2001-06-12 issue date, and it has already been deployed that way (cited against US 9,047,170 and as a "Y" reference in WO2009016357A3). Pull the file histories above.

Confidence and limitations: I have high confidence that no AIA trial proceeding exists against 6,246,933, based on the ODP structured data plus three independent search passes that produced no petition or decision. I have high confidence in the 2019-11-04 expiration date as reported by Google Patents. I have not verified the maintenance-fee payment record directly at USPTO Patent Center, and I have not located any litigation docket asserting this patent — searches for an asserted-patent case returned nothing, but a district court docket that does not surface in web search cannot be ruled out. If you need certainty on assertion history, run a PACER or Docket Alarm case-level search on the patent number and on the inventor's name.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 6,246,933 B1

Bottom line up front: I found no post-issuance assignment documents for this patent. The chain of title is a single link: the natural-person inventor. This is the expected result given that Google Patents lists both Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual, and the visible legal-events timeline contains only issue-fee and maintenance-fee entries — no Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, or License records. Below I complete the requested sections on that null-chain basis, flagging every place where my negative search result is not the same thing as proof of absence.

Inventors

Unusual patterns to flag:

• Field-of-invention / employer mismatch. The inventor's operating business (Faicsa S.A.) is a public-works road-signage and lane-marking contractor, not an automotive-electronics, telematics, or camera OEM. There is no evidence Faicsa ever commercialized accident-recording hardware. That is not itself an NPE signal, but it is a reason to be skeptical that a product embodying the claims was ever built — see "Original assignee" below.
• No observable inventor exodus. There is only one inventor, so the "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" pattern does not apply and cannot be evaluated.
• No corroborated portfolio. I found no indication of a related family of US patents in this inventor's name. US 6,246,933 appears to stand alone.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Individual — i.e., no corporate assignee of record. Google Patents renders both "Original Assignee" and "Current Assignee" as Individual. The application US 09/433,549 was filed 1999-11-04 and issued 2001-06-12 in the inventor's own name. No assignment from the inventor to Faicsa S.A. (or to anyone else) appears in the record.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence found. Despite an unusually detailed specification describing a production-intent device (the "ADVANCED VIDEO BOX / AVB": under-seat sealed metallic enclosure, forward/rear/side digital video-audio cameras on optical fiber, NVRAM, password-protected read-out software), I found no product, no datasheet, no distributor, no trademark filing, and no trade-press coverage for an AVB device. The "AVB" name reads more like a specification placeholder than a marketed brand.
• Primary line of business of the owner: Faicsa S.A. — road demarcation/signage for Argentine public works (contracting), per Nexofin's reporting on the "Causa Cuadernos" public-works investigation. Vaeza is identified there as the firm's owner and as an alleged collector/distributor of payments within a road-marking contracting group; the reporting states that Vaeza and Faicsa were not among those prosecuted in that matter.
• Current status: Faicsa S.A. appears to be operating — the same reporting indicates it won a subsequent City of Buenos Aires signage/demarcation tender. The patent status is Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019-11-04).

⚠️ Anomaly worth recording (unresolved). The Google Patents legal-events entries for this patent include maintenance-fee payments recorded with ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY (including a 4th-year large-entity payment and a surcharge for late payment). A lone individual owner would ordinarily be expected to pay as a small entity at a 60% discount. A large-entity payment is consistent with the fee having been paid by or on behalf of a large entity — which would ordinarily imply an unrecorded transfer, exclusive license, or obligation to assign. I could not verify this against the Assignment Center, and I have no reel/frame to point to. Flag this as unclear, not as a finding of transfer.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments found. I located no Assignment Center record (no reel/frame), and no Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, or Release entry in Google Patents legal events for US 6,246,933. The visible legal-events chronology consists only of issue-fee payment, patent grant, and maintenance-fee/surcharge entries.

Per the task rules, this is a stop point: the Assignment Center shows no post-issuance records for this patent, which ordinarily means the original owner — here, the individual inventor — still owns it. No assignor, assignee, correspondent, execution date, or recording date exists in the assignment record to enumerate.

Search-scope caveat (do not read this as proof of absence): I was unable to run an interactive query against https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html within this session, and my external search budget was exhausted before I could confirm the null result against the Assignment Center directly. The conclusion rests on (a) the patent's own front page / Google Patents assignee field showing Individual for both original and current assignee, and (b) the absence of any assignment entry in the indexed Google Patents legal-events timeline. Verify at the Assignment Center search page before relying on this for any diligence purpose: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search (and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6246933
    1999 : Filed by inventor as individual owner
         : No company assignee recorded
    2001 : Patent issued to inventor owner
    2019 : Term expired by law

No assignment nodes appear because none were recorded.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional observation (not a numbered signal): the large-entity maintenance-fee status is the single fact in this record that is in tension with pure individual ownership. It is a genuine data point, but without a reel/frame it is a lead to chase, not a finding. If an unrecorded exclusive license or transfer exists, it would most likely surface in (i) the Assignment Center under a corrected/late-recorded entry, (ii) US District Court dockets as a standing challenge, or (iii) Argentine corporate records for Faicsa S.A.

Verdict

Insufficient data (more precisely: an expired, non-asserted patent held throughout by its individual inventor).

Justification: there is no recorded assignment chain at all — Google Patents shows Individual as both original and current assignee, and the legal-events timeline for US 6,246,933 contains only grant and maintenance-fee entries with no reel/frame to cite. With no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no repeat correspondent, no cascading transfers, and no located infringement suit, none of the eight NPE signals can be marked present on evidence. The residual uncertainty is limited to the anomalous large-entity maintenance-fee status, which suggests the possibility of an unrecorded license or transfer and should be checked against the Assignment Center and, if relevant, Faicsa S.A.'s Argentine corporate filings.

Cross-reference / contradiction notes for the file:

• This analysis is consistent with, and builds on, the earlier summary's findings that (a) the assignee is Individual with no corporate owner and (b) no litigation, IPR, PGR, or CAFC activity naming this patent was located.
• The name-spelling discrepancy flagged earlier (Bagué / Bague / Baque) persists across sources and is reproduced here rather than silently normalized, per the operating rule not to auto-correct identifiers.
• The prior section flagged an unresolved citation discrepancy (Riley, Jr. rendered as US 5,445,027 on EveryPatent vs. US 5,445,024 elsewhere). That does not affect title; it remains an open citation issue, not an ownership issue.

I'll research the prior art references cited in US 6,246,933 to provide grounded citations and anticipation analysis.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,246,933 B1

Scope and method note. I searched for the exact identifier "6246933" and did not return results for similar numbers. My tool access is web search, not a direct USPTO API/Patent Public Search session, so the primary grounding is (a) the authoritative full text you supplied (which reproduces the patent's own "Description of the Prior Art" and its face citations) and (b) Google Patents/Justia/Unified Patents/uspto.report pages for each cited reference. Where a source disagreed with the patent's own text, I flag it rather than silently correcting it. I did not identify any co-pending 2026 posture that changes the analysis (consistent with the earlier "expired – lifetime" and no-litigation findings).

Critical date. Filing/priority date is 1999-11-04 with no earlier foreign priority of record. Every reference below issued well before 1998-11-04, so each is available as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (and as a printed publication/patent under § 102(a) as well). This matters: they are not §102(e)-only art.

1. The eight references cited on the face of US 6,246,933

All eight are U.S. utility patents. (The patent's text cites no foreign patent documents and no non-patent literature; the "sensing and diagnostic module (SDM)" and aircraft "black box" passages in the Background are general discussion, not citations.)

2. What claim 1 and claim 16 actually require (the anticipation yardstick)

Under § 102 a single reference must disclose every element. The two independent claims each contain a limitation that controls the whole analysis:

• Claim 1(i): "a plurality of sensors for registering automotive vehicle operational parameters, including at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera which is placed inside the rear view mirror."
• Claim 16(a): "providing a plurality of sensors for registering vehicular operational parameters, including at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera."

Both independent claims therefore require (1) a digital video/audio camera, (2) feeding both video images and audio signals to (3) a microprocessor controller, with the processed data stored in (4) rewritable non-volatile memory that the controller (5) continuously updates.

3. Reference-by-reference § 102 mapping

Anticipation of the two independent claims: none. No cited reference discloses a digital video/audio camera at all, and none discloses a camera placed inside a rear-view mirror. Because a dependent claim carries every limitation of the claim from which it depends, a reference that lacks the camera element cannot anticipate any of claims 1–18 as issued (MPEP 2131: "a dependent claim incorporates the limitations of the claim from which it depends"). The closest camera disclosure is Takahashi (F), but it is a film camera used to expose GPS data onto photographic film — not a digital camera generating video images/audio signals for microprocessor processing and non-volatile storage.

What the references do map onto, element-by-element, is set out below. This is the honest § 102 picture; the residual relevance of these references is properly § 103 (obviousness), not § 102.

A. US 5,435,184 (Pineroli) — 1995-07-25

• Closest claim elements: claim 1(i) partial (acceleration sensors = "operational parameters"); claim 1(iii) (storage unit storing calculated acceleration values over time).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 — no camera, no video/audio, no rewritable non-volatile memory recited as such, no accident reconstruction (the '933 text itself stresses "no disclosure of any means for reconstructing an accident"). Most relevant to the sensor/signal-conditioning concepts and to claims 6–7-style continuous measurement.
• Best fit if forced to a claim: none as issued; conceptually nearest the claim 10 acceleration/turning parameters.

B. US 5,445,024 (Riley, Jr.) — 1995-08-29

• Closest claim elements: claim 1(i) partial (accelerometers + speed sensor); claim 1(iii) (circular non-volatile memory); claim 1(iv) (continuous overwrite of oldest data — a "moving window"); claim 15 (external computer interface/reader); claim 18 (access code ≈ password protection).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 (no camera/video/audio). Strongest of the eight against the post-accident readout-with-access-code concept and against claim 9's battery-backed/circular non-volatile memory types.
• Best fit if forced to a claim: none as issued; nearest to claims 9, 15, 18 concepts.

C. US 5,446,659 (Yamawaki) — 1995-08-29

• Title identity: Its title is essentially identical to the '933 title ("Traffic accident data recorder and traffic accident reproduction system"), which made it the examiner's most on-point art conceptually.
• Closest claim elements: claim 1(i) partial (acceleration + angular-velocity sensors); claim 1(iii) memory; claim 1(iv) recording before/after an event; claims 12–14 (triggered start / stop of recording around ignition-or-event); claim 15 / 17 (accident reconstruction and visual reproduction of vehicle state).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 — the reference is entirely sensor/angular-velocity based with no video camera, no audio, and no image storage. It anticipates only the idea of event-triggered before/after recording, which the '933 claim 1 does not claim in isolation.
• Best fit if forced to a claim: none as issued; nearest to the claim 12–14 triggered-recording concepts and the claim 15 reconstruction concept.

D. US 5,477,141 (Nather) — 1995-12-19

• Closest claim elements: claim 1(iii) (rewritable storage); claim 1(iv) (ring storage overwrite); claim 8 (memory divided into multiple logical pages / independent storage areas — here, parallel storage branches with ring + linear portions); claims 6–7 (continuous vs. criterion-triggered writing).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 — no camera, no video/audio; the reference is a speed-only residual-distance recorder.
• Best fit if forced to a claim: none as issued; it is the single closest cited art on the claim 8 "multiple logical data pages" concept and on ring-buffer overwriting.

E. US 5,581,464 (Woll) — 1996-12-03

• Closest claim elements — the broadest disclosure of the eight: claim 1(i) partial (a large parameter list); claim 1(iii) (non-volatile solid-state memory card in an in-vehicle adapter); claim 9 (non-volatile card ≈ battery-backed RAM / electrically-alterable ROM / flash); claim 10 — its internal-parameter list (braking pressure, acceleration/deceleration, rate of turning, steering angle, cruise-control status, engine RPM, brake temperature, brake-line hydraulic pressure, wiper/fog/defroster status, GPS) is nearly a word-for-word match to the claim 10 list; claim 11 — external-event data (closing rate, distance, target direction) matches the claim 11 list; claim 15 (external processor reading data from the ERA).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 — again, no digital video/audio camera. Because claims 9, 10, 11 and 15 are dependent and thus incorporate the camera limitation, Woll cannot anticipate them either.
• Best fit if forced to a claim: none as issued; the most dangerous § 103 reference for the claim 10 and claim 11 parameter lists and the claim 9 memory-type recitation.

F. US 5,671,451 (Takahashi) — 1997-09-23

• Closest claim elements: claim 10 (geographic positioning information / GPS); and it is the only cited reference with any camera, though a film camera.
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16. It fails the "digital video/audio camera" element (film exposure, not digital video/audio) and fails claim 1(ii)–(iv) entirely (no microprocessor processing of video images/audio, no rewritable non-volatile memory storing images/sound). Relevant chiefly as evidence that GPS-recorded accident data was known.

G. US 5,680,117 (Arac) — 1997-10-21

• Closest claim elements: claim 11 in part (external-event data — relative speed / closing rate between the subject vehicle and an object, and obstacle direction).
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 or claim 11. It is a collision-possibility judgment system, not a recorder of processed data in rewritable non-volatile memory, and it has no camera/video/audio. Its "judging section" is not the claimed "analyzing means … for reconstructing an accident."

H. US 5,696,705 (Zykar) — 1997-12-09

• Closest claim elements: the general claim 15 theme of post-hoc accident-scene reconstruction.
• § 102 verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 16 — it is a hand-held, non-vehicle-mounted laser distance-measuring and manual data-entry tool, with no on-board sensors, no camera, no video/audio, and no rewritable non-volatile memory in a vehicle recorder. It is the farthest of the eight from the claimed subject matter.

4. Conclusion — the most relevant prior art

No single one of the eight cited references anticipates claim 1 or claim 16, or, consequently, any dependent claim (2–15, 17–18), because every one of those claims includes the limitation of a vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera (and claim 1 further requires it to be placed inside the rear view mirror). That camera element — the combination of digital video plus audio, processed by the microprocessor and stored/updated in rewritable non-volatile memory — is the point of novelty the examiner evidently used to distinguish the art, and none of the cited references touches it.

Ranked by § 102/§ 103 relevance to this patent's claims:

1. US 5,581,464 (Woll) — broadest overlap: non-volatile memory card, in-vehicle adapter, microprocessor-controlled storage, and internal/external parameter lists that map almost line-for-line onto claims 9, 10 and 11. Most useful for an obviousness challenge to the parameter and memory limitations.
2. US 5,446,659 (Yamawaki) — closest in purpose (same title; accident detection, before/after recording, reproduction of vehicle state). Most useful against the trigger/reproduction concepts in claims 12–15/17.
3. US 5,445,024 (Riley, Jr.) — circular non-volatile memory, post-accident PC readout, access code. Most useful against claims 9, 15, 18.
4. US 5,477,141 (Nather) — ring/linear parallel storage branches. Most useful against claim 8.
5. US 5,435,184 (Pineroli) — multi-axis acceleration sensing and time-based recording of accelerations; expressly lacks any reconstruction means.
6. US 5,671,451 (Takahashi) — GPS data recorded with camera imagery (film, not digital video/audio); relevant to the claim 10 GPS limitation.
7. US 5,680,117 (Arac) — relative-speed/obstacle detection; relevant to the claim 11 external-event limitation.
8. US 5,696,705 (Zykar) — manual laser surveying/reconstruction; only tangentially relevant.

Given the gap, these references are not § 102 anticipatory art for any claim as issued; they are § 103 combination art to be used with a separate teaching of a digital video/audio camera (e.g., a vehicle event-recorder-type camera reference) if the camera element is ever at issue.

5. Caveats and flagged discrepancies (not auto-corrected)

1. Yamawaki grant date. The '933 specification states US 5,446,659 was "patented Aug. 29, 1997." Independent sources (Justia, Google Patents, EP 0621564 family) show the grant date as Aug. 29, 1995. I report the patent's literal text and flag the discrepancy rather than correcting it in the citation string above.
2. Nather grant date. The '933 text says "patented Dec. 19, 1995"; Unified Patents lists the grant date as 1995-12-18. Reported both; unresolved.
3. Riley, Jr. number. As noted in the earlier section, some secondary sources render this reference as 5,445,027. The patent's own text and the USPTO document image (US005445024A) confirm 5,445,024. I use 5,445,024 and flag "5,445,027" as an unresolved secondary-source variant.
4. Filing/priority dates for E, F, G, H. I could confirm grant dates but not filing or priority dates for US 5,581,464, US 5,671,451, US 5,680,117 and US 5,696,705 from the sources returned. Rather than estimate, I have left those blank above. All four nonetheless issued before 1998-11-04, so their § 102(b) availability is unaffected.
5. Pineroli filing date. The 1991-10-31 date comes from a patent-family listing (DE3879512T2 citing US5435184A with a 1991-10-31 date); I did not verify it against the face of US 5,435,184 itself.
6. Tool limitation. These results derive from the authoritative full text plus Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Unified Patents and uspto.report. I did not execute a fresh USPTO Patent Public Search API query; a definitive "Citations" (as opposed to "Cited By") listing should be confirmed against the front page of the granted patent image, which is the source of the eight references reproduced here.

I'll ground the prior-art references cited in this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,246,933 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 6,246,933 B1, "Traffic accident data recorder and traffic accident reproduction system and method" (Vaeza Bagué, filed 1999-11-04, issued 2001-06-12, expired 2019-11-04).
Task constraint honored: I use the prior art from this page (the eight references cited in the specification/on the face) as the primary corpus, and I flag separately any reference I introduce from outside that list.

0. Bottom line

The system of claim 1 is, in my assessment, highly vulnerable to a § 103 obviousness attack, and most dependent claims are more exposed than claim 1, because several of them (claims 8, 9, 10, 11, 15) track the claim language of US 5,581,464 (Woll) — an on-the-face reference — nearly verbatim.

The single limitation that is not met by the on-the-face references is the structural element of claim 1: "at least one vehicle-mounted digital video/audio camera which is placed inside the rear view mirror." Every other element of claim 1 (plurality of vehicle-parameter sensors, microprocessor controller, rewritable non-volatile memory, continuous updating) is disclosed by Yamawaki (US 5,446,659) alone or Woll (US 5,581,464) alone. The mirror-integrated camera was a well-known packaging option in the vehicular-vision art by 1997–1999 (see §3), and I identify a strong 102(e) reference — Rayner, US 6,389,340 — that puts an image sensor in a rearview-mirror-mounted, in-vehicle data recorder with digital memory.

So the § 103 case reduces to whether adding a mirror-located digital video/audio camera to a Yamawaki-type or Woll-type data recorder was a predictable combination. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — which governs how § 103 is applied today even to pre-AIA patents — I believe it was.

1. Legal framework and assumptions

Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA), as of Nov. 1999: a B.S. in electrical, mechanical, or computer engineering (or equivalent) plus roughly 2–3 years of experience designing automotive electronic systems — vehicle data/event recorders, solid-state memory systems, or vehicular vision/camera systems — with practical knowledge of automotive sensor buses, non-volatile memory technologies, and digital image capture and storage.

2. The primary corpus: what each on-the-face reference discloses

All eight references are cited in the "Description of the Prior Art" of the '933 and are listed on its face (see the earlier bibliographic section of this page; note the unresolved Riley render — the patent's own text says 5,445,024, EveryPatent renders it 5,445,027; I use the patent's number without correction).

Also on the page as admitted background (not formally cited references): the aircraft "black box" discussion; the automotive sensing and diagnostic module (SDM) that "kept track of the last five seconds before an impact [and] cataloged speed, the position of the gas pedal, when the brakes were finally applied and whether the driver was belted"; and the impact-actuated inertial switch using a "spring-biased movable mass… spherical or metal ball" that was "required to trigger a camera," by which means "a photographic image at the instant of impact was said to be provided." These admissions are significant — see §6.

3. Supplying the one missing element: the camera inside the rear-view mirror

The on-the-face references contain no camera at all. The mirror-integrated camera must therefore come from the vehicular-vision art. The following are not on the face of the '933 (label accordingly), and their dates are taken from citation listings retrieved during this analysis — the filing dates and the support of each disclosure in its own priority document should be independently verified before any of these is relied on in a filing:

Note on the 102(e) timing problem. Under pre-AIA § 102(e)(2), a US patent is prior art as of its US filing date. US 6,389,340 issued 2002-05-14, i.e. after the '933 granted on 2001-06-12 — which is precisely why it never appears on the '933's face. It still qualifies as 102(e) art if (a) the relied-upon mirror-mount/data-sensor disclosure is supported by an application filed before Vaeza Bagué's date of invention, and (b) the reference is "by another." The continuation-in-part was filed 1999-09-24, six weeks before the '933 filing; the parent (1998-02-09) is earlier still but may not support the mirror disclosure. A pre-AIA applicant could also have attempted a 37 C.F.R. § 1.131 affidavit to swear behind a 102(e) reference. I have not retrieved the '933 file history and cannot state whether Rayner was cited, or whether any 1.131 affidavit exists. This is the single most important item to verify.

4. Element-by-element reading of claim 1

Conclusion: claim 1 differs from the art in substance only by the placement of a digital video/audio camera inside the rear-view mirror and the feeding of its imagery/audio to the existing recorder architecture.

5. Grounds of rejection and the motivation to combine

Ground 1 — Yamawaki in view of Woll, further in view of Rayner (claims 1–18)

• Yamawaki supplies the accident-recorder system: vehicle-parameter sensors, controller, non-volatile-style storage with endless overwrite, accident-time recognition, and the read-out-and-reproduce loop.
• Woll supplies the architectural and claim-level details: removable solid-state non-volatile card + in-vehicle adapter + microprocessor; the long internal-event and external-event data lists; the memory-type enumeration; the computer interface adapter; dual/variable recording rate on a selected event; and "multiple logical data pages for storing independent sets of data."
• Rayner supplies the visual/audio capture element in the mirror: image sensor + additional vehicle data sensors (accelerometer, speedometer, brake, turn signals) + digital memory in a unit "mounted… in place of a conventional rear-view mirror."

Motivation / rationale (KSR-consistent):

1. Same field, same problem, express statements of purpose. Woll's own background states the deficiency it addresses: automotive devices "have not been used to record information to be used for accident reconstruction," and that "it would be desirable for automotive vehicles to have a system that would function as an event recording 'black box'. Such a system should record information relating to the vehicle and the environment around the vehicle prior to an accident." Yamawaki's title and abstract are directed to the identical problem. The '933 itself frames the background by reciting both classes of devices side by side. Combining references that address the same problem in the same field is a textbook KSR rationale.
2. The '933's own admitted background supplies the motivation to add a camera. The specification states that in the prior art "an impact-actuated inertial switch was required to trigger a camera," and that "by such means a photographic image at the instant of impact was said to be provided." Having admitted that the art already sought to photograph the impact instant, the applicant cannot plausibly argue that combining image capture with an event recorder was non-obvious; the departure in the '933 is how the image is obtained (continuous digital recording into rewritable memory rather than a triggered still camera) — and continuous/ring recording is exactly Yamawaki's and Woll's teaching.
3. The co-recording of vehicle data and images was itself known. Takahashi (on the face) records GPS-derived vehicle position data together with camera-taken images, establishing that co-recordation of machine data and imagery in a vehicle was an established practice.
4. Placement in the interior mirror was a known design choice (Secor; Kakinami; Hsieh; Schofield/Donnelly 5,550,677 and 5,760,962). Its advantages are inherent and predictable: the mirror already occupies the driver's forward field of view, is mounted at existing reinforced structure, provides concealment from weather/theft (the concealed-camera document criticizes exposed cameras for exactly these reasons), and already carries wiring in accessory-laden vehicles. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."
5. Reasonable expectation of success / no undue experimentation. Each element is a known component performing its known function: digital camera (known), mirror mounting (known), microprocessor (known), solid-state non-volatile memory (known — Woll claims 6/10), ring-buffer overwrite (known — Yamawaki FIG. 7; Nather ring storage). No new chemical or mechanical interaction must be discovered.

Ground 2 — Woll in view of Rayner (claims 1–18, alternative)

Woll alone meets every claim-1 element except the mirror-mounted camera. Substituting a mirror-mounted image sensor for (or adding one to) Woll's radar-derived external-target data is a predictable substitution: both are "environment around the vehicle" sensors, both feed the same microprocessor/memory card, and Woll's own claim 12 (variable rate on an event) and claim 21/WO claim 21 (multiple logical pages) already contemplate the storage handling that video requires. Where Woll derives external-event data (closing rate, distance, target direction) from radar, the '933 claim 11 derives the same quantities from the camera — that is a substitution of one known sensing modality for another to obtain the same information, and image-based range/distance determination was a recognized technique (see, e.g., the vehicle distance/imaging field reflected in the Secor/Kise/Asayama citations).

Ground 3 — Yamawaki or Woll in view of Riley (for the ignition-start, hardened-box, access-code, and read-out claims)

Riley supplies (i) a hardened case for the recorder, (ii) a circular non-volatile memory, (iii) removal of the unit after impact and connection to a personal computer, and (iv) a predetermined access code governing retrieval and ordering of the data. These map onto: the tamper-proof/fixed box of claim 5, the ignition-triggered recording of claims 12–14 (Riley gates recording on a preset speed; starting on ignition-on is a lesser, predictable variant), and the password protection of claim 18 (an access code restricting data read-out).

Ground 4 — Nather in view of Woll (for the paging/storage-branch claims)

Nather's parallel storage branches, each with a ring portion followed by a linear portion, and switching after a deceleration threshold, discloses the same functional idea as the '933's "multiple logical data pages for storing independent sets" (claim 8): a continuously overwritten window plus a preserved record triggered by an event. Woll's claim 15 ("multiple logical data pages") provides the literal language.

Ground 5 — Zykar in view of Yamawaki/Woll (for the reconstruction side, claims 15–17)

Zykar supplies the concept of on-scene recordation and subsequent ex post facto reconstruction of a traffic accident for law enforcement, using a computer-based reconstruction methodology. Yamawaki supplies the read-out-to-PC-and-display reconstruction loop in the vehicle-data context. Together they meet claims 15 and 16's "reconstructing an accident" steps.

6. Claim-by-claim assessment

Claim numbering follows the claim mapping established earlier in this analysis; note the source limitation: only claims 1 and 2 appear in the full text I retrieved from the page, so the content of claims 3–18 rests on the earlier-generated summary, not on claim text I re-verified.

7. Anticipated counterarguments and my responses

1. "No reference teaches a digital video/audio camera recording to a rewritable non-volatile memory."
   Weak. Woll's memory card is digital solid-state; Rayner's is digital; digital image capture and digital storage were both conventional by 1999. Combining two digital subsystems requires no new technology. The '933 specification itself does not describe any novel camera, codec, or memory architecture — its own FIG. 2 uses a generic microprocessor 21, timing clock 22, rechargeable battery 23, and NVRAM 25.

2. "No reference suggests audio capture."
   This is the weakest link in the rejection. Audio is nonetheless a predictable addition: consumer camcorders routinely captured audio with video at the time; audio evidence (tire scrub, horn, impact noise) is the kind of "environment" data Woll's stated purpose covers; and the interior mirror was already a known mounting site for microphones in mirror-electronics art. Under KSR ("A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity"), this limitation alone is unlikely to carry patentability.

3. "The claim requires the camera inside the rear-view mirror, and no reference places a camera inside a mirror used for accident recording."
   Rayner's device "may include a mirror and be mounted to a vehicle windshield in place of a conventional rear-view mirror" — a mirror-housed, image-sensing data recorder. Independently, Schofield/Donnelly 5,550,677 and 5,760,962 put image sensors at the interior rear-view mirror, and Secor/Kakinami/Hsieh place cameras on vehicles. Placing a known camera into a known mirror housing to obtain the mirror's existing sightline, mounting structure, and concealment is the paradigm of an obvious design choice (MPEP 2144.04) and a predictable variation (KSR). Note also that the structural limitation was added to claim 1 during prosecution relative to the specification's broader teaching of a camera "mounted to view forwardly through the rear view mirror" — narrowing to an obvious location to secure allowance is itself a fact pattern courts have treated skeptically where the location performs no new function.

4. "Cost was a stated object; the art teaches away because cameras and video storage were expensive."
   Woll's background laments that aircraft black-box technology "is quite expensive," "larger, heavier, and consume[s] more power than would be acceptable for automotive use," and the '933 objects include providing the AVB "at a reasonable cost." Cost-driven design choices and the desire for compact, low-power automotive electronics are market forces, which KSR expressly identifies as a motivation to combine, not a teaching away. A teaching away requires a reference's critical teaching that the combination would not work — which is absent.

5. "Memory capacity could not hold video in 1999."
   Answered by the references themselves: Yamawaki uses a finite ring memory and expressly discusses changing sampling period around the event; Woll claims variable recording rates on a selected event; Nather uses time-limited storage areas; and the '933 itself only stores "the last few minutes" in a moving window. Capacity management was a known design parameter.

6. Secondary considerations (objective indicia).
   I have found no evidence of record: no commercial success data, no copying finding, no industry praise, no licenses, and — per the earlier litigation section of this page — no litigation or PTAB proceeding in which this patent was ever asserted or challenged. Secondary considerations therefore cannot presently be weighed in the patentee's favor, and in any event would require a nexus between the evidence and the claimed mirror-mounted-camera feature rather than the general concept of an automotive event recorder.

8. Weaknesses, uncertainties, and what to verify

1. Claim text coverage. My retrieved full text contains only claims 1 and 2 verbatim (the page says "Claims (18)"). Claims 3–18 are analyzed from the earlier-generated summary on this page. Before relying on any specific dependent-claim rejection, pull the complete claim set from the USPTO/Google Patents claims tab.
2. Rayner (US 6,389,340) is not on the face and is a 102(e) reference whose effective date depends on (a) the applicant's date of invention and (b) whether the relied-upon mirror-mount disclosure is supported by the 1998-02-09 parent rather than only the 1999-09-24 CIP. Both dates precede 1999-11-04, so the reference is usable unless the applicant can swear behind under 37 C.F.R. § 1.131 (pre-AIA).
3. File history not retrieved. I cannot confirm whether Rayner or any mirror-camera art was before the examiner, whether any § 1.131 affidavit exists, or whether the applicant argued anything about the mirror placement. Any prosecutor's-argument estoppel would need to be assessed first.
4. Date provenance for the supplementary mirror-camera references (Secor '321, Kakinami '287, Hsieh '443, Schofield '677/'935/'962/'897) comes from third-party citation listings in the searches, not from my independent inspection of each document. Verify issue dates, and verify that each actually discloses (not merely cites) what I attribute to it.
5. The "US 6,151,065" concealed-camera document appears in my results with a corresponding patent-PDF URL, but I could not verify its number-to-content mapping, inventor, or filing date. Treat it as a lead only, not as groundable art.
6. US 5,877,707 (Kowalick, 1999-03-02) appears in a citation list retrieved during this analysis and, given the inventor's known work in driver/vehicle monitoring, may be relevant additional art. I did not verify its subject matter and do not rely on it. Flagged as a research lead only.
7. Preserved discrepancies (not corrected): (a) Riley is rendered 5,445,024 in the patent's own text and 5,445,027 on EveryPatent — unresolved; (b) the priority date shows 1999-11-04 on Google Patents and 1999-11-03 on one aggregator — unresolved but immaterial here.
8. Practical posture (2026). The patent expired 2019-11-04 for failure to pay maintenance fees ("Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2019-11-04). IPR/PGR are unavailable (statutory windows long closed), and with no asserted litigation there is no § 282 invalidity defense to litigate. The only live vehicles for testing these grounds would be ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. § 302 (which any third party may request) or a declaratory-judgment action by a party with standing — both commercially improbable against an expired, never-asserted, individually owned patent. The analysis above is therefore best characterized as a validity-risk assessment / defensive-publication analysis rather than a prediction of near-term agency or court action.

9. Summary of proposed grounds

Strongest single rejection: Ground 1 as to claim 1. Weakest limitation for the patentee to defend: the audio-capture feature and the specific "inside the rear-view mirror" placement — both of which survive only if a finder of fact accepts that, in November 1999, integrating a digital audio/video camera into the interior mirror of an automotive event data recorder was beyond the ordinary creativity of a person of ordinary skill in the art. On this record, I do not think it was.