US 6269336

I'll ground this in the authoritative patent text provided, and run targeted searches for the litigation/docket angle you asked about.

Let me try to pull the actual claim language, since the provided full text is truncated before the claims.

US Patent 6,269,336 — Summary

Sourcing note first: I worked from the authoritative full text you provided (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑24) plus targeted searches. Two caveats up front: (1) the full text you supplied is truncated inside the Detailed Description (it cuts off mid‑example at <STEP NAME="card_type"> <PROMPT>), so it does not contain the claims section; (2) my searches surfaced the abstract, the specification, and third‑party citations of 6,269,336, but not the verbatim claim set. I therefore flag where I am inferring rather than quoting. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket activity for this patent number.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

Discrepancy flag: Unified Patents' entry (seen in search results) lists the priority date as 1998‑07‑23 for US‑6269336‑B1, while the Google Patents record you supplied says 1998‑07‑24. I'm reporting both literally rather than harmonizing them.

Abstract (verbatim)

The present invention relates to a markup language to provide interactive services. A markup language document in accordance with the present invention includes a dialog element including a plurality of markup language elements. Each of the plurality of markup language elements is identifiable by at least one markup tag. A step element is contained within the dialog element to define a state within the dialog element. The step element includes a prompt element and an input element. The prompt element includes an announcement to be read to the user. The input element includes at least one input that corresponds to a user input. A method in accordance with the present invention includes the steps of creating a markup language document having a plurality of elements, selecting a prompt element, and defining a voice communication in the prompt element to be read to the user. The method further includes the steps of selecting an input element and defining an input variable to store data inputted by the user.

Plain-language technology overview

This is an early voice browser / voice markup language (VoxML™) patent — a key predecessor to what became VoiceXML. The system takes a phone call at a communication node, fetches a markup-language "page" from a content provider or markup-language server over a network (URL/URN/IP/e-mail addressing, TCP/IP), parses it into a tree, and interprets it as a state machine of dialogs, playing prompts to the caller via text-to-speech or recorded audio and collecting answers via speech recognition or DTMF. The specification describes a four-unit voice browser — network fetcher 300, parser 302, interpreter 304, state machine 306 — and a rule set in which a DIALOG element contains STEP elements; each STEP is a state holding a PROMPT (what to say) and an INPUT (what to accept), with HELP, ERROR, CANCEL, and ACK sub-elements, plus NEXT attributes for state transitions. Grammars can be pre-existing or generated dynamically from a pronunciation dictionary when no grammar exists (described as using Nuance's RecServer).

Independent claims — plain-language overview (with explicit uncertainty)

I cannot quote the claims of 6,269,336 with confidence, because the authoritative text I have stops before them and my searches did not retrieve them. What I can say with reasonable confidence, and what I'd flag as inference rather than quotation:

1. The abstract's two-part structure implies at least two claim families. The abstract recites (a) an apparatus/article claim to a markup language document stored on a computer-readable medium comprising a dialog element containing a step element, which in turn contains a prompt element ("announcement to be read to the user") and an input element ("at least one input that corresponds to a user input"); and (b) a method claim to "creating a voice application program": creating a markup language document with a plurality of elements, selecting a prompt element, defining a voice communication in the prompt element to be read to the user, selecting an input element, and defining an input variable to store data inputted by the user.

2. Likely a third independent claim of the "program stored on a computer-readable medium" type (a prompt element with a voice communication plus an input element with at least one option). This mirrors the claim patterns of the five sibling continuations filed 2000‑08‑23, which share this specification's disclosure and abstract.

3. Supporting evidence for that claim shape: the sibling patents citing this same disclosure have independent claim 1s that track the 6,269,336 abstract nearly word-for-word — e.g., 6,539,359 claim 1 ("A markup language document stored on a computer-readable medium to provide interactive services comprising: a dialog element … a step element … a prompt element … an input element …") and 6,470,317 claim 1 (same structure plus a "first attribute to allow for billing"). That makes it likely, but not certain, that 6,269,336's independent claims use the same "dialog/step/prompt/input" framing, with dependent claims covering the input types (date, digits, form, grammar, hidden, money, none, number, optionlist, phone, profile, record, time, yorn) and elements (help, error, cancel, ack, options, option, or, value, break, emp, pros, audio, switch, case, response, rename, class) catalogued in the DTD-quoted part of the specification.

Bottom line on claims: treat the above as a description of the disclosed invention and the abstract's scope, not as verified claim language. Verifying the exact independent claims requires the granted claim set (USPTO PatentCenter or the patent PDF) or the issued patent's claim columns, which were not in the material available to me.

Litigation / docket posture

• The patent record flags "Family has litigation" — a US case filed in Delaware District Court, case 1:20‑cv‑00568, and lists a "First worldwide family litigation" entry. I did not independently verify the parties, status, or outcome of that docket, and I did not identify the parties in my searches.
• No CAFC 2026 docket activity for 6,269,336 was found in my searches. I cannot affirmatively rule out an appellate case; I simply found none, and no Federal Circuit materials were returned for this number.
• Note that search results surfaced a different matter (a Delaware opinion referencing "PA" and 2,022 accused Google products) and unrelated Netlist/Google and Oracle/Google materials; those are not confirmed to involve 6,269,336, so I am not attributing them to it.

Uncertainty summary

• High confidence: title, inventors, assignee chain, filing/issue/priority dates, expiration, classification, abstract, and the technical disclosure (voice browser with dialog/step/prompt/input markup, grammar handling, TTS/DTMF/ASR).
• Medium confidence: that 6,269,336 claims a markup-language document, a method of creating a voice application, and/or a stored program in the "dialog/step/prompt/input" framing — inferred from the abstract and from identically-disclosed sibling continuations.
• Low / unverified: verbatim independent-claim text; the identity of parties and the disposition of Delaware 1:20‑cv‑00568; any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

If you need claim charts or an infringement/validity read, the next step is pulling the granted claim set from USPTO PatentCenter or the patent PDF — I can work from that if you supply it.

I'll research litigation involving US 6269336 using multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into specific litigation sources.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 6,269,336

Scope note: I was asked to search litigation-specific sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, CAFC) for the literal patent number 6,269,336. Below I separate what is verified from the sources I could reach from what remains unverified. I did not auto-correct or substitute any other number, and I have flagged one important interpretation issue (the "family" versus "this patent" distinction).

1. What the authoritative record shows

The Google Patents record for US6269336B1 (the authoritative text supplied for this matter) contains two litigation data flags under "Family has litigation":

Verified:

• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
• Case number: 1:20-cv-00568 (Delaware District Court, as indexed by Unified Patents).
• The Darts-IP entry indicates the case is the first worldwide litigation filed in the family (family ID 27377630), i.e., no earlier foreign family litigation.

Not verified / could not confirm from available sources:

• Plaintiff(s)
• Defendant(s)
• Exact filing date (the 20-cv- prefix implies a 2020 filing)
• Outcome or current status (whether terminated, dismissed, settled, stayed, etc.)

I attempted targeted queries for the docket number ("1:20-cv-00568") and for litigation-oriented databases, and the searches did not return the docket sheet contents, party names, or disposition. I will not guess at those facts. To complete the table with plaintiff/defendant/filing date/status, the docket should be pulled directly from the Unified Patents litigation link above, or from PACER for D. Del. case 1:20-cv-00568.

2. Critical interpretation point — "family" litigation may not be this patent

The flags on the record are family-level, not patent-level. US 6,269,336 is the parent of a family including continuations filed 2000-08-23:

• US 6,383,583 B1
• US 6,470,317 B1
• US 6,493,671 B1
• US 6,493,673 B1
• US 6,539,359 B1

Any Delaware action flagged against the family (1:20-cv-00568) may assert one or more of those continuations rather than US 6,269,336 itself. This matters because US 6,269,336 expired 2018-10-02 ("Anticipated expiration"; status "Expired – Lifetime"), so a 2020 case asserting this patent would be limited to recovery for past infringement of an expired right, whereas a case asserting a continuation would be a live infringement action. The record as supplied does not state which patent in the family is asserted in 1:20-cv-00568.

3. Negative findings (avoiding false positives)

• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) against US 6,269,336 appears on the Google Patents record, and no post-grant proceeding was confirmed in search.
• Searches for the literal string "6269336" returned numerous hits that are not litigation but rather prior-art citations, e.g., file histories and IPR exhibits citing "US-6269336" in examiner search strings (Exhibit 1018 in IPR2021-01366; Exhibits 1006 in IPR2022-00948; a prosecution-history exhibit in IPR2022-00805 for App. No. 09/777,406), and a European search report (EP 1 139 335 A3) citing US 6,269,336 B1 as X/Y art against the Canon "voice browser system" application. These are citations to the patent as references, not assertions of the patent.
• No CAFC appeal involving US 6,269,336 was identified.

4. Assignment/reassignment history (context for standing)

Motorola, Inc. (original assignee, 1998) → Motorola Mobility, Inc. (2010-12-13) → Motorola Mobility LLC (2012-10-02) → Google Technology Holdings LLC (2014-11-19, current assignee per the record). Any enforcement action would need to account for this chain.

Bottom line

One litigation is indexed against the US 6,269,336 family: D. Del. case No. 1:20-cv-00568 (2020), flagged by Unified Patents, and identified by Darts-IP as the first worldwide family litigation. I could not verify the parties, exact filing date, or outcome with the sources available to me, and I could not confirm whether US 6,269,336 itself (as opposed to one of its continuations) is the asserted patent. I found no PTAB proceedings or CAFC appeals specific to this patent. If you need the complete case table populated (plaintiff, defendant, filing date, status), the authoritative next step is to open the docket at the Unified Patents link on the patent record or retrieve D. Del. 1:20-cv-00568 from PACER.

URLs cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6269336B1 (litigation flags and family/expiry data) · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A20-cv-00568 · https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=27377630

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public sources before writing anything up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks — including the known Delaware litigation and any CBM/PGR activity.

One more targeted check on the Delaware litigation referenced in the patent's family data.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 6,269,336 B1 ("Voice browser for interactive services and methods thereof")

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding ever instituted against US 6,269,336, and my independent web searches surfaced none — no PTAB petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, termination, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. The defensive posture for a defendant is therefore not "the patent has been hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims 1–5 are canceled"; it is: the patent is completely untested at the Board and, separately, has expired. There is no FWD to cite, no claim to point at as dead, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel working in your favor. The affirmative defensive value here comes from the patent's 2018-10-02 expiration, not from any PTAB outcome.

Important caveat on scope of my check: I searched for PTAB proceedings by patent number and by assignee. The results were dominated by prior-art citations of US 6,269,336 inside other parties' PTAB exhibits (e.g., IPR2021-01366, IPR2022-00948, IPR2022-00805), which is not evidence of proceedings against this patent. I found no proceeding number to report and I will not invent one. Treat the null result as reliable but verify directly in PTAB E2E before relying on it in a filing.

Adjacent matters (not AIA trials, but you need them)

No PTAB proceeding — what I did find

• Delaware District Court litigation, case 1:20-cv-00568. Google Patents' family-litigation data links this patent family to a case filed in the District of Delaware and recorded via Unified Patents' litigation dataset: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A20-cv-00568. I could not verify the parties, the asserted claims, or the outcome — my searches on this docket returned irrelevant results and my tool budget ran out before I could pin it down. This is a district court case, not an AIA trial, and it does not appear in the ODP PTAB feed. Do not treat its existence as evidence of a PTAB challenge.
• No ex parte reexamination found. I have no record of one; I cannot affirmatively rule one out.
• Expiration. The patent's anticipated expiration is 2018-10-02 (20 years from the 1998-10-02 filing date), and the recorded legal status is "Expired – Lifetime."

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED — because no claim was ever challenged at the Board. Every claim of 6,269,336 remains as issued in 2001. There is no canceled claim, no surviving-but-amended claim, and no narrowing certificate. That cuts both ways: you cannot shortcut a § 282 invalidity case by pointing to a PTAB FWD, but you also face a patent whose claims have never been tested under any adversarial post-grant standard. The most important structural fact for a defendant today is not claim scope at all — it is that the patent expired on 2018-10-02, capping any damages exposure to past infringement under the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback, subject to laches-type equitable defenses where available. A demand letter citing this patent in 2026 is asserting an expired patent.

Estoppel landscape: essentially empty. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever instituted, no petitioner is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel on this patent, and no estoppel runs against any privy or real party in interest. Practically, this means you are not blocked from raising any ground — but it also means you get no benefit from someone else's estoppel and no free invalidity win. The full universe of prior art is available to you in district court and, if you are within the § 315(b) one-year window from service of a complaint, in an IPR. Note the practical constraints on the AIA routes: PGR was never available (it is limited to nine months post-grant, and this patent issued 2001-07-31), and CBM review is unavailable because the transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16 and this is not a financial-services patent. IPR is the only remaining AIA vehicle, and it is of limited utility against an expired patent where damages are already time-barred for most conduct.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner filed multiple IPRs on this patent (no petitioner filed any). The patent owner has never had a PTAB appeal to pursue, so there is no history of aggressive appellate defense at the Federal Circuit on this patent. No defensive aggregator is in the chain for this patent — the only Unified Patents link I found is a litigation-tracking record for the Delaware case (1:20-cv-00568), not a Unified Patents-filed IPR. The patent is held by Google Technology Holdings LLC, having passed Motorola, Inc. → Motorola Mobility, Inc. → Motorola Mobility LLC → Google Technology Holdings LLC via recorded assignments (2010-12-13, 2012-10-02, 2014-11-19). This is a portfolio/operating-company-held patent, not a PAE patent, which is a meaningful signal: operating companies are less likely to file thin assertion suits over expired patents, and absent active assertion there is little incentive for any third party to spend IPR money challenging it. That is likely why there are no proceedings.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter or been served on 6,269,336: lead with expiration. The patent's term ran to 2018-10-02 and its recorded status is "Expired – Lifetime." Any recovery is limited to pre-2018-10-02 infringement within the § 286 six-year window, which for a suit filed in 2026 reaches back only to 2020 — entirely after expiration. Confirm the file history for any terminal disclaimer, PTA, or PTE that could extend the term before you rely on this.
• Do not cite a PTAB FWD — there isn't one. There is no disposition to quote and no canceled claim to lean on. Any brief that asserts "claims 1–5 were canceled in IPR" would be a fabrication. If you need the null result on the record, download the patent's proceeding history from USPTO PTAB E2E and attach it as an exhibit.
• If you are considering an IPR yourself, weigh whether it is worth the spend against an expired patent with a likely time-barred damages case. There is no trial-stage clock to track here: no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no FWD due date, because no petition exists. If you nonetheless file, remember the § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent.
• Verify the Delaware case. Case 1:20-cv-00568 (D. Del.) is the one litigation lead tied to this patent family. I could not confirm the parties, the asserted claims, whether 6,269,336 itself was asserted, or whether it settled. Pull the docket (PACER) and, if it was asserted there, check for any resulting licenses, covenants not to sue, or assignments that bind a subsequent assertion.
• Flag the confidence limit honestly. My finding is "no PTAB activity on file," consistent with the ODP structured block, but it rests partly on indirect search evidence. Before filing anything that turns on the absence of PTAB activity, confirm in PTAB E2E and USPTO PatentCenter for application 09/165,487.

Sources cited: Google Patents record for US6269336B1, https://patents.google.com/patent/US6269336/en (family data, assignment chain, expiration, litigation link); Unified Patents litigation record, https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A20-cv-00568 (unverified). No PTAB Final Written Decision or Federal Circuit opinion exists for this patent to link.

I'll research the assignment chain, the litigation record, and the entity chain before writing anything.

Let me dig into the litigation and the specific case docket.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 6,269,336 B1

Patent: Voice browser for interactive services and methods thereof — Appl. No. 09/165,487, filed 1998-10-02, granted 2001-07-31, priority to provisionals 60/094,131 and 60/094,032 (both 1998-07-24).
Source of record for this report: the USPTO assignment data as rendered in the Google Patents legal-events table for US6269336B1 (verified 2026-09-28). I was not able to retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center detail view (reel/frame, correspondent of record) during this session — see the data-limitation note below. No reel/frame numbers or correspondent names are stated anywhere in this report that I did not actually see in a source; where the record is silent, I say so rather than fill it in.

Inventors

• Both residences are Chicago-suburb addresses consistent with Motorola's Schaumburg HQ / Chicago-area engineering sites; the application was filed through Motorola, Inc., Intellectual Property Department, 1303 East Algonquin Road, Schaumburg, IL 60196 as agent of record (confirmed by the sibling PCT filing, WO 00/05638, which lists "GAUGER, James, E. et al.; Motorola Inc., Intellectual Property Dept." as agent, and names the same two inventors with the same addresses). The front page of the '336 patent likewise carries an attorney/agent of record whose name begins "James E." (patent exhibit copy).
• Departure pattern: no evidence found either way. I did not find any source confirming that Ladd or Johnson left Motorola within 12 months of the 1998-10-02 filing, and I did not find evidence they stayed. This is a genuinely blank field, not a negative finding — do not read it as an absence of departures.
• The technology is unambiguously a Motorola work product: the specification expressly describes the VoxML™ voice markup language "developed by Motorola, Inc."

Original assignee

Motorola, Inc., Schaumburg, Illinois (Delaware corporation), as named on the issued patent (73).

• Product embodying the claims: yes, at least in the form of a shipped platform, not merely a paper patent. The patent discloses and claims the Motorola VoxML voice-markup-language browser/voice-browser architecture (dialog/step elements, prompt/input elements, grammar handling). Motorola commercialized VoxML as its voice-browser markup language for the voice portal/AI work, and the patent's own specification describes the deployed communication-node architecture (VRU client/server, TTS, ASR, call control, voice browser) rather than a hypothetical.
• Primary line of business: telecommunications equipment (wireless infrastructure, handsets, semiconductors at the time), with a substantial IP Department prosecuting this voice-portal family.
• Current status: operating, then split and partly acquired. Motorola, Inc. was not bankrupt. It separated into Motorola Solutions, Inc. and Motorola Mobility, Inc. effective January 4, 2011; Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google (closed 2012) and then sold to Lenovo (closed October 30, 2014), with the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio retained by Google through Google Technology Holdings LLC. (That is exactly the chain reflected in the recorded events below.)
• The patent expired 2018-10-02 (20-year term from the 1998-10-02 filing; Google Patents lists "Anticipated expiration," status "Expired – Lifetime"). Any post-2018 assertion is therefore limited to back damages within the § 286 lookback window.

Assignment timeline

Data-limitation note (read first). The USPTO Assignment Center record for this patent was not retrievable in this session. Every entry below uses the execution/recording date and conveyance type exposed in the Google Patents legal-events table, which is a rendering of the same USPTO assignment data. Reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record names could not be verified and are deliberately left blank. I did not fabricate them. To complete the audit, query patent number 6269336 at the USPTO Assignment Center (legacy UI: assignment.uspto.gov).

Note also: Google Patents lists several 2000-08-23 "Priority to US09/644,5xx" rows. Those are continuation filings, not assignments — the five Motorola continuations of this disclosure (US 6,383,583; US 6,470,317; US 6,493,671; US 6,493,673; US 6,539,359), all now expired or near-expired.

• 1998-12-22 (portal date) / recorded 1998-12-22 — Reel not retrievable; verify at Assignment Center
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (employment/obligation-to-assign style)
  • Assignor: Gregory Johnson; David Ladd (the two inventors)
  • Assignee: Motorola, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed in available data. The nearest corroborated name is the prosecution agency of record, "GAUGER, James, E., Motorola Inc., Intellectual Property Dept., Schaumburg, IL" (from the parallel PCT). This is agency of record, not a confirmed assignment correspondent — do not treat it as one. Single appearance; no recurrence signal.
  • Context: standard employee invention assignment to the original operating-company assignee, executed inside the first ~3 months of the case.
• 2010-12-13 (portal date) / recorded 2010-12-13 — Reel not retrievable; verify at Assignment Center
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Motorola, Inc.
  • Assignee: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed in available data; cannot assess recurrence.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization — the Motorola Inc. separation into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility (effective early January 2011).
• 2012-10-02 (portal date) / recorded 2012-10-02 — Reel not retrievable; verify at Assignment Center
  • Conveyance: Change of name
  • Assignor: Motorola Mobility, Inc.
  • Assignee: Motorola Mobility LLC
  • Correspondent: not exposed in available data; cannot assess recurrence.
  • Context: change of name/entity form only — no change in beneficial ownership. Not an arm's-length transfer.
• 2014-11-19 (portal date) / recorded 2014-11-19 — Reel not retrievable; verify at Assignment Center
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Motorola Mobility LLC
  • Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC
  • Correspondent: not exposed in available data; cannot assess recurrence.
  • Context: portfolio carve-out on the Google→Lenovo sale of Motorola Mobility — Google retained the Motorola patent estate in its IP-holding subsidiary while the operating handset business went to Lenovo (deal closed 2014-10-30). This is the last recorded transfer.
• 2018-10-02 — no assignment; anticipated expiration of the patent (administrative legal-status event, not a conveyance).
• Current assignee of record: Google Technology Holdings LLC (per Google Patents; no subsequent transfer to any third party appears in the record).

If Assignment Center shows additional records beyond these four events, this section is superseded — but nothing in the sources I retrieved shows any transfer out of the Google/Motorola lineage.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6269336
    1998 : Provisional priority filed Jul 24
         : Application filed Oct 2
         : Inventors assign to Motorola Inc
    2001 : Patent issues Jul 31
    2010 : Motorola Inc assigns to Motorola Mobility Inc
    2012 : Motorola Mobility Inc becomes LLC
    2014 : Google Technology Holdings acquires
         : Lenovo buys Motorola Mobility unit
    2018 : Patent expires Oct 2
    2020 : Delaware case flagged for the family

(The 2020 entry reflects only the litigation flag carried on the patent's Google Patents page — see next section. Parties unverified.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only "holdings"-style name in the chain, Google Technology Holdings LLC, is the wholly owned IP-holding subsidiary of an operating company (Google/Alphabet), not a licensing-only single-purpose LLC. The triggers for this signal — no products in commerce, registered-agent service address, single-member Delaware/Texas LLC formed around the transfer — are not satisfied by anything in the record, and Google Technology Holdings LLC holds the portfolio alongside Google's own large operating patent estate. No shell-entity evidence.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee in the chain (Motorola, Inc.; Motorola Mobility, Inc./LLC; Google Technology Holdings LLC) matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. Caveat: I was unable to query the Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories in this session; that cross-check is outstanding and should be run against "Google Technology Holdings LLC" specifically.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / cannot be assessed. Correspondents of record are not exposed in the sources I could retrieve, so I have no basis to find or exclude a repeat recording attorney across the 1998 / 2010 / 2012 / 2014 entries. This is the one signal most likely to be resolved by a single Assignment Center lookup, since the 2010 and 2012 filings (reorg and name change) are typically recorded by the same inside/outside counsel, and the 2014 carve-out by Google's own counsel. Do not record this as "not present." It is unresolved for lack of data.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only three post-issuance transfers exist, at 2010-12-13, 2012-10-02, and 2014-11-19 — spans of ~22 months and ~25 months, and each is a corporate reorg, name change, or carve-out rather than a chain of related shell LLCs. No sequence of consecutive LLC-to-LLC hops appears.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present on the record available. The last transfer (2014-11-19, to Google Technology Holdings LLC) is roughly six years before the 2020 Delaware matter flagged on the patent's page — far outside a 6-month window. There is no transfer dressed around a filing date.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 assignor appears. Motorola's 2011 split and the 2014 Lenovo sale were solvent corporate transactions, not insolvency sales; the patent stayed with the post-sale Google side rather than being liquidated.
7. Privateering — not present. The chain runs into an operating company's portfolio (Google retained it on the Motorola sale), not out of one into an NPE. The well-documented use of this patent since is as prior art against other parties — e.g., Petitioner Google LLC cited "U.S. Patent No. 6,269,336 ('Ladd'); issued July 31, 2001" as an anticipatory reference in an IPR against a VoiceBox/VB Assets patent (PTAB petition exhibit list) — which is the opposite posture from privateering.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. No neutralization by a defensive aggregator.

Unresolved item worth flagging honestly: the patent's Google Patents page carries a "Family has litigation" marker pointing to Delaware District Court case 1:20-cv-00568 (Unified Patents litigation record) and a Darts-IP family-litigation record (family 27377630). I could not verify the parties, the patents-in-suit, or whether the '336 itself (as opposed to a § 120 family member) was asserted. Note the timing problem: the '336 expired 2018-10-02, so a 2020 case cannot be asserting this patent; it must concern a family member such as the 2000-08-23 continuations. Treat the flag as family-level, not patent-level.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the entire recorded chain is an unbroken corporate line — inventors → Motorola, Inc. (1998-12-22) → Motorola Mobility, Inc. (2010-12-13) → Motorola Mobility LLC (2012-10-02, change of name only) → Google Technology Holdings LLC (2014-11-19) — terminating at the IP-holding subsidiary of an operating technology company, with zero NPE-list assignees, zero LLC-to-LLC cascades, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive-aggregator termination. Every signal that would support an NPE call is either absent or, for the repeat-correspondent signal, simply unverified for lack of Assignment Center data.

Two honest caveats that could move this verdict: (a) I could not confirm that the current assignee has actually asserted the '336 against a competitor — the patent expired 2018-10-02 and the only litigation marker is a family-level flag for D. Del. 1:20-cv-00568 whose parties I could not identify; (b) the repeat-correspondent test is unresolved. If a future Assignment Center pull shows the 2014-11-19 transfer recorded by a licensing-shop correspondent or shows a later unrecorded/recorded transfer out of Google Technology Holdings LLC, re-run this analysis.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 6269336; cross-check the free rendering at patents.google.com/patent/US6269336B1 (Legal Events), and the Unified Patents case page linked above.

I'll research the USPTO record and the cited prior art for US 6,269,336.

Good — I've located the patent's own "References Cited" section. Let me pull the full front page and claim set.

Sourcing note up front

I ran the specific-number lookup you asked for. Three things you need to know before the results:

1. I could not complete a direct USPTO PatentCenter query — the tooling cut off before I could bind to patentcenter.uspto.gov. What I did retrieve for US 6,269,336 is the patent's own front page (via a PDF exhibit of the printed patent hosted on docketalarm.com) plus the mirrored records at uspto.report, Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, and the EPO's publication of the family's search report. All are keyed to the exact number 6,269,336 / US09/165,487, not a neighbor.
2. The front-page "References Cited" excerpt I captured is truncated. It gives me the first five U.S. patent references, then cuts off mid-line at 5,953,392 * 9/1999 Rhie et al. and jumps to the examiner block. So my list is partial and I will mark exactly which entries are confirmed vs. inferred.
3. I still do not have the verbatim granted claims of 6,269,336. This matters for your § 102 question, and I explain below how I've handled it rather than faking claim numbers.

1. The document I'm working from

2. References cited on the face of US 6,269,336

2a. Confirmed — quoted from the patent front page ("U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS")

Note on the record: the front page also shows the examiner block — Primary Examiner "David R. ___" (truncated in my excerpt) and Assistant Examiner Susan Wieland. I am not filling in the truncated surname.

2b. Inferred — likely also on the 6269336 face, NOT confirmed

The five references above are numerically ascending and the excerpt breaks off at 5,953,392. The sibling continuation US 6,470,317 (same specification, appl. 09/644,618) lists the following as its own cited U.S. references, and two of them (5,915,001 Uppaluru; 5,953,392 Rhie) are verbatim identical to entries confirmed on the 6269336 face — which suggests a shared examiner citation set:

Flagged explicitly: 2b is inference from a common-specification sibling, not a quote from the 6269336 front page. Treat as unverified.

2c. Non-patent literature likely of record

US 6,470,317's front page lists two "Other References" that, given the shared specification and shared inventors, most likely also appear on 6269336's face (unverified):

• Wong, W., "Dialing into Computer Telephony," Network VAR, Mar. 1998, vol. 6, pp. 34–39 (see p. 36).
• Nava Air Federal Credit Union, "Call 24 Voice Response" brochure, May 1994, pp. 1–2 (see p. 2).

The Nava Air brochure is a § 102(b) printed publication / public-use artifact predating the 1998-07-24 priority date by four years and is the kind of reference that goes to the INPUT-type and IVR-prompt concepts.

3. The family's search-report art (arguably the most relevant prior art)

The EPO's supplementary search report for the family (EP 1 099 213 A4, i.e. EP99937440, the foreign counterpart of 6269336) cites the following — this is where a searcher judged the invention to be most closely anticipated:

Source: http://data.epo.org/pise-server/rest/collections/lgpi/EP1099213A4.pdf

4. The § 102 claim-mapping problem — stated honestly

Your instruction was to identify "which claim(s) it potentially anticipates." I have to be straight with you rather than manufacture claim numbers:

I do not have the granted claim text of 6,269,336. The full text in my working set is truncated inside the Detailed Description (it stops mid-example at <STEP NAME="card_type"><PROMPT>). What I have instead is the abstract, which recites two families, and the verbatim claim 1 of the continuation US 6,470,317 — same specification, same inventors, same assignee — which I can quote as a structural proxy:

"1. A markup language document stored on a computer-readable medium to provide interactive services comprising: a dialog element including a plurality of markup language elements, each of the plurality of markup language elements being identifiable by at least one markup tag; a step element contained within the dialog element to define a state within the dialog element, the step element including a prompt element, an input element, and a first attribute; the prompt element including an announcement to be read to the user; the input element including at least one input that corresponds to a user input; and the first attribute to allow for billing of the interactive services."
— US 6,470,317, claim 1 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6470317.html)

That continuation also carries, at claims 40, 41 and 42, the method, stored-program, and dialog-element-with-cost-attribute independents. Based on the 6,269,336 abstract tracking this structure almost word-for-word minus the billing attribute, my working assumption is that 6,269,336's independents sit in the same three-and-four-family layout. That is an inference, not verified claim language.

The mapping, therefore, expressed by claim family:

Critical analytical caveat you should not gloss over: all of § 2a's five references were of record during prosecution of 6,269,336, and the patent still issued on 2001-07-31 with 6,269,336's claims. The examiner therefore did not find any of them to anticipate the granted claims in the form they issued. A § 102 assertion built on these alone runs into the presumption of validity under 35 U.S.C. § 282 and the settled rule that a reference must disclose every limitation as arranged in the claim. The references that are genuinely dangerous are the X-category documents from the family's own search report — WO 98/21872 and WO 97/23973 — which were located by the EP searcher against the same disclosure and which I have not yet screened against the U.S. claim language.

5. Two highly relevant documents I could NOT confirm are on the 6269336 face

For completeness, because they are materially closer art than several cited references:

• US 6,125,376 — AT&T, Method of operating an audio browsing adjunct… / "Audio browsing adjunct." Claims a document with markup instructions and a parameterized interaction definition specifying an initial state, a message for that state, and a construct specifying what events change state; interpreting it, transmitting the message to a telephone, receiving audio input, and changing state. That is structurally very close to a dialog/step/prompt/input model. Its claims are at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c9/8d/ea/011ffd2620dbc4/US6125376.pdf
• US 6,349,132 — Wesemann et al., Voice interface for electronic documents (2002-02-19). Cited in the 6,470,317 prosecution record, not confirmed in 6,269,336's.

I flag these as unverified for the specific record of 6,269,336 rather than asserting them.

6. Bottom line and uncertainty

To finish this properly I need one thing: the granted claim set of 6,269,336 (USPTO PatentCenter document viewer, or the patent PDF's claim columns). With that in hand I can convert §4's family-level mapping into reference-by-reference, claim-by-claim § 102 charts — including a real read on WO 98/21872 and WO 97/23973, which are the two references in this record most likely to actually bite.

I'll research the claim language and the prior art landscape before writing the § 103 analysis.