US 6285357

I'll search for this specific patent number across the requested sources.

Let me dig deeper on the patent's claims/abstract and check specifically for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me verify the abstract text and full claim 1 language from authoritative sources.

Search scope and what I could (and could not) find

Searches run (2026-04-26 target date context):

• US patent 6285357 remote control device
• "6285357" patent CAFC 2026 docket
• "6,285,357" Federal Circuit appeal 2026
• US6285357 "Remote control device" Mitsubishi abstract claim 1
• patents.google.com US6285357B1 claims

Result on the CAFC / USPTO docket side: I found no Federal Circuit 2026 docket, and no CAFC appeal at all, involving US 6,285,357. The number 6285357 appears in search results only as:

• an entry in prior-art search-string / exclusion-list exhibits in unrelated litigation (e.g., PTAB petitions at ptacts.uspto.gov and N.D. Cal. / W.D. Tex. courtlistener recap exhibits, where it sits in long alphanumeric lists such as "6005533" | "6040829" | ... | "6285357" | ...), and
• a cited reference in prose on other patents' face pages (e.g., US 8,000,5764A1, US 12,067,220 B2, CN 1488106 A).

Those are citations of the patent as prior art, not indications that 6,285,357 itself is in suit or on appeal. I could not retrieve an official CAFC docket number, briefing schedule, or 2026 argument date for this patent, and I will not invent one. If you need a definitive negative, it should be confirmed against PACER/CAFC CM-ECF and USPTO PatentCenter directly — my web searches are not an authoritative docket check.

---

Patent identification (from the authoritative full text supplied)

Note: the patent is expired (term ran to the 2017-12-19 anticipated expiration), which is consistent with the absence of any recent CAFC docket activity.

---

Abstract / summary of invention

The text supplied (Google Patents "Definitions"/summary section) states:

"A remote control unit includes display means for displaying a function item select picture where a plurality of function items are arranged; function item select means for selecting any function item in the above-described function item select picture; decision instruction input means for deciding the above-described selected function item; cancel instruction input means for canceling the above-described selected function item; control means for allowing another function item select picture where a plurality of other function items are arranged to be displayed on the display means when a specific function item is decided and instructed by the above-described decision instruction input means, to output an instruction code of the above-described specific function item as decided and instructed; and communication means for converting the above-described outputted instruction code into a radio signal to transmit the radio signal to a device to be remotely controlled."

Caveat: I did not retrieve the verbatim 150-word official abstract from the granted front page; the above is the summary-of-invention text as published on the Google Patents page for US6285357B1. Substantively equivalent, but I flag that it is not the literal front-page abstract.

---

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Independent Claim 1 — the "drill-down menu" universal remote

A remote control unit comprising, in plain terms:

1. A display that shows a "function item select picture" — i.e., a menu listing several function items (e.g., lighting, air condition, TV).
2. A selector (the specification uses a rotary encoder/pointing device, or a pair of up/down push switches in Embodiment 2) to pick one item from that menu.
3. An "affirm" (decision) input button to accept the highlighted item.
4. A "deny" (cancel) input button to back out of the selected item.
5. A controller (control processing section + memory) that, when an item is affirmed, pulls another menu picture of sub-items out of memory and displays it — so the user navigates a hierarchy (device → function → set value) with the same two buttons plus selector on every device. The controller also emits the corresponding instruction code once the item is settled.
6. A communication section that converts that instruction code into a radio signal (the described implementation is infrared) and transmits it to the target appliance.

The core inventive thrust of claim 1 is one uniform interaction model across all controlled devices, minimizing dedicated buttons and unifying the operating procedure.

Independent Claim 20 — direction-aware remote that skips the device menu

Claim 20 is a second independent "A remote control unit, comprising:" claim. It contains the same display / selector / affirm / cancel / control / communication elements as claim 1, plus:

• "Subject-device identifying means" that identifies which appliance the unit is aimed at based on the direction/orientation of the unit body when pointed at that appliance (the specification implements this with an angle sensor — a rotation sensor + pendulum in Embodiment 6, inversion sensors in Embodiment 7, or a strain sensor loaded by the battery in Embodiment 8).
• The controller then displays, as the initial picture, the function-item menu for the already-identified device — eliminating the manual "which device do you want?" selection step.

Claim 22 — device-identification-code variant (classification uncertain)

The claim listing shows a claim 22 reciting that the controlled device itself includes a device identification code transmitting section, and that the remote's communication means has directivity and a receiving means for that code; by pointing the remote at a specific device, the controller identifies it from the received ID code and displays that device's function menu as the initial picture (Embodiment 9).

Uncertainty flag: the snippet showed claim 20 with "View Dependent Claims (21)" and then "22." in the same block, with claim 22 using dependent-style language ("wherein said control means…", "wherein said communication means…"). I therefore cannot state with confidence whether claim 22 is a separate independent claim or depends from claim 20/21. Treat claim 20 as the only clearly independent claim beyond claim 1 unless verified against the granted claim set.

Dependent-claim landscape (context, for completeness)

• Claims 4–5: up/down first and second selector switches; timer + continuous-operation judging to scroll a long list when a switch is held.
• Claims 6–7: continuous-operation acceptance advisability database, so scrolling stops at a boundary (e.g., VHF→UHF transition) to prevent runaway.
• Claims 8–9: item display order management by select-frequency table, reordering the menu by how often items are used.
• Claims 8, 10, 12: vibration generating means (eccentric-weight motor, solenoid beating the casing, motor-driven blade springs, or solenoid drive shaft through the key top) and sound means that speaks the selected item.
• Claim 13: characteristic (person) selecting means — normal / aged-person / mania modes changing the number, size, and value range of displayed items.
• Claim 15: pattern ("life pattern") operation mode operating several appliances in one action.
• Claims 16–18: multiple IR emitters with per-device light-emission-intensity and light-distribution management (and combined with the person-mode selection) to extend battery life and tolerate hand tremor.
• Claim 19: operation detecting sensor (IR/light, door open-close, seat contact) enabling hands-free control (Embodiment 25, toilet-space example).

---

Bottom line

• US 6,285,357 B1 "Remote control device" is a Mitsubishi (Mitsubishi Denki K.K.) patent, inventors Kushiro, Komiya, Nakata, Watanabe, Hata, and Fukano, filed 1997-12-19, claiming priority 1997-09-25, granted 2001-09-04, now expired (2017-12-19).
• It covers a menu-driven universal IR remote with uniform affirm/deny navigation, hold-to-scroll with boundary protection, usage-frequency reordering, haptic/audio feedback, user-profile menus, multi-device "life pattern" macros, adaptive IR intensity/beam control, and orientation- or ID-code-based automatic device selection.
• No CAFC 2026 docket for this patent was found; the only 2026-era "hit" for the number was an unrelated Federal Circuit docket notice (Contour IP v. GoPro) returned by keyword noise, which does not involve 6,285,357. Ground-truth confirmation should come from PACER/CAFC CM-ECF and USPTO PatentCenter, which I could not query directly here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6285357 across patent litigation databases.

The initial results show '6285357' appearing mostly in prior-art search result tables and prosecution exhibits, not as an asserted patent. Let me dig deeper into litigation-specific databases.

Let me run a few more targeted checks specific to asserted-patent dockets and the patent owner.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 6,285,357

Summary: I found no evidence of any patent litigation involving US 6,285,357 as an asserted (patent-in-suit) patent.

What the searches actually returned

Every hit containing the number "6285357" was the patent appearing as a cited reference in prior-art search tables and prosecution/exhibit documents — never as an asserted patent in a complaint. Specifically:

In other words, the only appearances of 6285357 in the literature I could retrieve are as prior art / search-result citations in other parties' cases — which is not litigation involving this patent.

Case list

No cases can be listed. I found no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for any case asserting US 6,285,357.

Caveats on completeness (important)

I want to be explicit about the limits of this conclusion:

• Search coverage was incomplete. My session reached its step limit before I could query the Unified Patents litigation caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), the CourtListener patent docket search, PACER, or CAFC dockets directly with this specific number. The three most useful targeted queries (plaintiff/defendant docket search; Mitsubishi-as-owner search; a site-restricted Unified Patents query) did not execute.
• Absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence. A patent can be asserted in a case where the number surfaces in a complaint PDF that my general web searches did not index under that string.

Positive context that bears on the likelihood

Two facts from the patent record itself make litigation unlikely to exist:

• Legal status: "Expired – Lifetime." Anticipated expiration was December 19, 2017 (filing date Dec. 19, 1997; this was a pre-1995-URAA-type term ending 20 years from filing). The patent has been expired for over eight years as of today (April 26, 2026), so it cannot be asserted for prospective infringement now.
• Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corp / Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha — a large operating company, not a patent-assertion entity. The patent does not appear to have been transferred to an NPE, which is consistent with no assertion history.

Recommended next steps to confirm

To reach a definitive "no litigation" conclusion, the following should be run directly (I could not complete them):

1. Unified Patents Litigation Caselist – search by patent number 6285357: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
2. CourtListener / RECAP docket search for "6285357" restricted to the complaint/docket field (rather than full-text exhibits).
3. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment for the '357 patent, to verify no assignment to a litigation-prone entity: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov
4. Lex Machina / Docket Navigator patent-number lookup (if available to you).

Bottom line: Based on the searches I was able to run, no litigation involving US Patent 6,285,357 is known. The number appears only as a prior-art citation in other parties' matters. Treat this as a preliminary finding pending the direct docket-database queries above, which I was unable to execute.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" signal against web sources before writing.

Let me run more targeted checks against PTAB dockets and the Federal Circuit.

One more pass to confirm there's nothing on PTAB E2E, Unified Patents, or the Federal Circuit.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,285,357: zero (0). The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding, and I could not surface any via web search — so there is no "active / invalidated / sustained / settled / institution-denied" breakdown to give; every one of those buckets is empty. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened patent" and not "claims canceled" — it is "never attacked at the PTAB, and now structurally beyond attack." The patent issued 2001-09-04 from a 1997-12-19 filing and its term expired 2017-12-19 (Google Patents legal status: "Expired – Lifetime"). Its whole IPR-eligible life (AIA trials began 2012-09-16) passed without a single petition, and the CBM transitional window slammed shut on 2020-09-16. Any defendant today faces a dead patent, not a hardened one.

---

No proceedings to list

I have no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, ground, or FWD to report. Per the task constraint ("Do not invent proceeding numbers"), I am reporting the absence rather than dressing it up.

What the searches actually returned for "6285357": every hit was the patent number appearing as a prior-art citation or search-string fragment inside other parties' PTAB petitions and district-court exhibits — never as a patent-in-suit or a challenged patent. Representative examples:

None of these is an AIA trial on the '357 patent.

Why the absence is consistent with the record

• Timing. IPR became available 2012-09-16. The '357 patent expired 2017-12-19. A challenger had a ~5-year window and no one used it. PGR was never available (patent issued 2001, long pre-AIA). CBM was available only to a party sued or charged with infringement of a covered business method patent — the '357 claims are directed to a remote-control appliance/UI, not a financial product or service, so it was almost certainly never CBM-eligible anyway.
• Owner. Mitsubishi Electric / Mitsubishi Denki K.K. — an operating company that held the patent to term rather than a monetization vehicle.
• No parallel litigation. The prior litigation analysis in this record found no assertion, so there was never the district-court trigger that would have made a § 315(b)-driven or defensive IPR rational.

---

Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of US 6,285,357 — independent or dependent — has ever been construed, canceled, confirmed, or amended by the PTAB. There is no surviving-claim list to hand a defendant, because there was never a narrowing. Claim 1 (the "remote control unit comprising display means / function item select means / decision instruction input means / cancel instruction input means / control means / communication means" claim) sits exactly as it issued on 2001-09-04, and every embodiment disclosed in the spec (Embodiments 1–25, FIGS. 1–49, including the angle-sensor subject-device identification, the tactile/sounding feedback, the person-select modes, the multi-emitter light-intensity/light-distribution control, and the operation-detecting-sensor non-contact control) is untested at the Board.

Estoppel landscape: empty, but also moot. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM reached an FWD, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone. There is no petitioner/privy in the chain whose hands are tied. That cuts against a defendant in the abstract (a clean slate for any IPR argument), but it is irrelevant here because the patent is expired and no assertion can proceed. Practically: § 315(e)(2) matters only if there is an underlying FWD, and there isn't one. If your opponent's demand letter somehow cites this number, the correct response is not an invalidity theory — it is "this patent expired on 2017-12-19; there is no live right to assert."

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner at all). No patent-owner PTAB appeal activity (Google Patents shows no post-grant proceeding, and I found no Federal Circuit docket); the only "appeal" line in the record is the ordinary 1999-04-27 assignment of the application from the inventors to Mitsubishi Denki K.K. No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents' own patent page surfaces US-6285357-B1 only as an adjacent reference on a different patent (US-9,036,181), not as the target of any Unified-filed trial.

⚑ Contradiction flagged in the prior section. The previously generated litigation summary states the patent has "been expired for over eight years as of today (April 26, 2026)." Today's operative date is 2026-09-29, and the correct elapsed period is ~8 years 9 months. The eight-year characterization is directionally right; the April 2026 "today" stamp is stale. No substantive conclusion changes.

---

Recommended next steps

1. Treat the "no PTAB activity" finding as final for practical purposes, but verify once more at the primary source. The USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (PTAB E2E) system allows lookup by patent number: https://ptab.uspto.gov (PTAB E2E / https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/). Run patent number 6285357 against proceedings. My web searches found nothing, and the structured ODP block is consistent — but the portal is the canonical check.

2. If you are a defendant being threatened: do not build an IPR or an invalidity case. Build a standing/expiry case. The dispositive facts are the 1997-12-19 filing date, the 2001-09-04 grant, and the 2017-12-19 expiration (Google Patents legal status "Expired – Lifetime"). After expiration, the patent is public domain and cannot be infringed prospectively; any pre-expiration damages theory requires proof of actual pre-2017-12-19 infringement.

3. Confirm no post-expiration reassertion shenanigans. Verify at USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) that no reissue, reexamination certificate, or terminal disclaimer changed the claim set after grant. Google Patents shows no such certificate; a reexamination cannot revive an expired term, but it can matter if someone is litigating historical damages.

4. If an active proceeding does surface that I missed: the statutory clocks are (a) institution decision within 6 months of petition/PO preliminary response, (b) FWD within 1 year of institution (extendable up to 6 months for good cause, § 316(a)(11)). Track those dates and, once an FWD issues, map the claim-level disposition to the estoppel analysis in § 315(e)(2) above.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is nothing to distinguish, distinguish around, or petition against at the PTAB. US 6,285,357 was never challenged, never narrowed, and expired on 2017-12-19. The absence of PTAB activity is not a signal of strength — it is a signal that the patent has been commercially irrelevant for a decade and is now in the public domain.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,285,357 across the USPTO assignment systems and related sources.

Let me dig into the assignment records specifically.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,285,357

Data-access caveat up front (read before relying on any serial number below): In this session I was able to retrieve the substance of the record from Google Patents' legal-events/assignment data, but I was not able to execute a live query against USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or the legacy search (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) before hitting the tool-call limit. Consequently no reel/frame number is reported below, and I will not invent one. The one transfer described is well corroborated (it appears in Google Patents' assignment/legal-events block and names all six assignors), but its reel/frame and its recording correspondent must be pulled directly from Assignment Center to be cited precisely.

---

Inventors

All six named inventors, with employer at filing where determinable:

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of any inventor departing the assignee within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of inventor-held (non-assigned) interests. The opposite pattern holds: Kushiro, Nakata, Komiya and their colleagues continued filing Mitsubishi Electric applications for two decades after the '357 (Kushiro's last listed grants are in the mid-2010s). This is a classic long-tenure corporate R&D team, not a pre-fire-sale inventor cohort. One housekeeping note: the application reaches the US via national-stage entry (US 09/297,201), so the inventors' assignment was recorded ~16 months after the international filing date — normal for PCT practice, not a title anomaly.

---

Original assignee

Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (rendered in English as Mitsubishi Electric Corporation / "Mitsubishi Electric Corp" on Google Patents).

• Entity identity: The Japanese and English names are the same legal entity, not a chain link. Google Patents' "Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corp" and the issue-time assignee "Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha" are therefore not a change-of-name assignment for NPE-tracking purposes (and no change-of-name record would be expected).
• Product embodying the claims: Yes — the patent is a remote-control unit for domestic/AV/lighting/air-conditioning equipment (IR remote with LCD function-item UI, angle-sensor device selection, haptic/audio feedback, adaptive IR intensity/distribution). Mitsubishi Electric is a large operating manufacturer of exactly these product categories (room air conditioners, lighting, AV, building/facility remote controllers), and the company continued filing directly in this space well after the '357 (see e.g. its later "remote controller / operation screen display" US 2018/0094828 and EP 2 384 016 facility-equipment remote controllers).
• Primary line of business: Diversified electrical/electronics manufacturing (energy systems, HVAC, building systems, factory automation, semiconductors, home appliances). Not a licensing entity.
• Current status: Operating, solvent, publicly traded (TSE: 6503). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition event affecting the patent chain was found. The patent itself is expired — lifetime (anticipated expiration 2017-12-19).

---

Assignment timeline

Chronological record:

• ≈1999 (executed date not exposed in the sources retrieved) / recorded 1999-04-27 — Reel/frame not retrieved (query Assignment Center to cite)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded on Google Patents as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"; classified as a reassignment)
  • Assignors: HATA, NOBUO; FUKANO, SAYURI; KOMIYA, NORIYUKI; KUSHIRO, NORIYUKI; NAKATA, MASANORI; WATANABE, HIDETAKE (all six named inventors)
  • Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in this session — must be captured from Assignment Center; no recurrence finding can be made without it. (Note: for a 1999 Japanese-corporate filing of this era, the recording correspondent is typically the US associate prosecuting the national-stage case, not in-house counsel; that hypothesis is untested here.)
  • Context: Ordinary employment/obligation-to-assign transfer of inventors' rights to their corporate employer, simultaneously with US national-stage entry. Not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

That is the entire recorded chain. Beyond this single inventor→employer assignment, I found no post-issuance assignment, security agreement, merger, license, release, or correction for US 6,285,357. There is no downstream transfer to any third party, no LLC, and no defensive aggregator in the chain.

(If Assignment Center ultimately shows additional records I could not surface — e.g. an internal Mitsubishi corporate reorganisation or an unreleased security interest — those would post-date 1999 and would not change the NPE analysis below, because there is no evidence of any transfer away from the Mitsubishi corporate family. Verify before finalising.)

---

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6285357
    1997 : International application filed
    1999 : Inventors assign to Mitsubishi Denki
    2001 : US patent issued
    2017 : Patent expired

---

NPE / troll-pattern signals

---

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

This is the correct pick under the stated taxonomy, but the reason is benign rather than ambiguous: the only recorded transfer is the inventor→employer assignment recorded 1999-04-27 to Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha, and nothing was ever transferred thereafter. No shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy, no privateering, and no defensive-aggregator acquisition exist in the record — and the patent expired 2017-12-19, roughly eight years ago, so it cannot be asserted now. On the evidence available, this is a non-asserting operating-company patent that lived out its full term inside the Mitsubishi Electric family; the "Insufficient data" label reflects only that (a) I could not query Assignment Center directly and (b) there is no post-1999 chain to evaluate. The only remaining verification gap is the reel/frame and correspondent for the 1999-04-27 recording.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "6285357"; legacy UI: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Corroborating legal-events block: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285357B1/en.

---

Contradictions / cross-reference notes vs. earlier sections

1. No contradictions found between this reconstruction and the prior Litigation and (implied) technical sections. Both converge on the same conclusion: Mitsubishi-owned, never asserted, now expired.
2. One minor record discrepancy to flag: Google Patents lists the priority date as 1997-09-25, while Unified Patents' page for this patent shows 1997-09-24. The patent's own printed priority (JP national filing, 1997-09-25 per the Google Patents header and all citing documents) is the value I relied on; the one-day difference is a time-zone/normalisation artifact at Unified Patents and has no effect on the assignment analysis.
3. Unverified field, repeated for emphasis: the 1999-04-27 entry's reel/frame and correspondent are the two data points I was unable to capture. If the correspondence later proves to be a repeat-player attorney firm, that would still change nothing here, because there is only one link in the chain — the recurrence signal requires two or more.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 6,285,357. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me find the specific "References Cited" section on the patent's front page.

Let me try to retrieve the patent's front-page references directly and via its family members.

Summary of what I was able to retrieve — and an important limitation

Before giving any prior-art list, I have to be explicit about a retrieval failure, because the alternative would be to fabricate citations:

I could not retrieve the front-page "References Cited" (backward-citation) list of US 6,285,357B1 within this session. Every search I ran returned US 6,285,357 as a forward citation appearing inside other patents' and prosecutions' reference tables — not the patent's own citation list. I also exhausted my step budget on the two searches that were most likely to surface it (a Google Patents "References Cited" pull and an EPO/EP0951194 search-report pull). I therefore cannot honestly present "each patent citation for 6285357" with full citations, dates, and claim mappings, because I did not obtain that list. Per my operating rules, I am stating this rather than inventing plausible-looking references.

I'm separating below what is verified, what is derivable, and what is my technical analysis (not the patent's citation list).

---

1. Patent identification (verified)

This matches the identifier literally — I did not substitute any similar number.

---

2. What is verified about the patent family (relevant to finding the real prior-art list)

From the annex of an unrelated EPO search report (EP 2337051 A1, category "A" citation of "US 6 285 357 B1 (KUSHIRO NORIYUKI [JP] ET AL) 4 septembre 2001, le document en entier, revendications concernées 1-12"), the same-invention family is:

• EP 0 951 194 A1 — published 1999-10-20
• WO 99/16282 A1 — published 1999-04-01
• JP 3763418 B2 — published/registered 2006-04-05

These are family members, not prior art. Their importance is procedural: the PCT application that became US 6,285,357 is WO 99/16282, and the International Search Report (ISR) for WO 99/16282 — plus the US examiner's PTO-892/PTO-1449 — is the authoritative, complete list of the references actually cited against this invention. That document is the correct target for the task you assigned; I could not fetch it in this session.

---

3. Forward citations ≠ prior art (to prevent a common mix-up)

US 6,285,357 is frequently cited by later patents, e.g.:

• US 2008/0005764 A1 ("System and method for presenting program guide information…")
• US 12,067,220 B2 ("System and method for flexible configuration of a controlling device")
• US 8,179,404 ("Patent Citations (35)")
• US 6,970,067 ("System for providing personalized services")
• CN 1488106 A

These are forward citations. They post-date 1997 and therefore cannot anticipate US 6,285,357 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Do not treat them as prior art. (The only § 102 relevance these could ever have would be the reverse direction — 6,285,357 as art against them.)

Also verified from the earlier litigation section (not repeated here): the number appears in litigation/prosecution records only as a prior-art search string (e.g., E.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00507-ADA Doc. 83-2; N.D. Cal. 3:…/cand 388002 Doc. 181; PTAB petitions 1549382/1558234/1557351) — never as an asserted patent.

---

4. Grounding for a § 102 analysis — what the claims actually cover

The authoritative claim text is not present in the material supplied to me (the provided "full patent text" is the description/summary and ends mid-sentence in Embodiment 25's recap; the numbered claims are absent). What I can ground from the provided text is the claim-1-level architecture recited in the summary:

1. display means for a multi-item "function item select picture" (claim 1 element);
2. function item select means (rotary encoder / up-down switches — Embodiment 1, 2);
3. decision instruction input means (affirmation button 3) and cancel instruction input means (denial button 4);
4. control means that, on deciding a specific item, displays a further function-item picture and emits an instruction code;
5. communication means converting the instruction code to a radio/IR signal.

Dependent-level features evident in the text include: timer + continuous-operation judging section (Emb. 3); continuous-operation acceptance-advisability database (Emb. 4); select-frequency item reordering (Emb. 5); elevation-angle/angle-sensor subject-device identification (Emb. 6-8); device-identification-code handshake (Emb. 9); tactile/vibration and audible feedback (Emb. 10-14); person/characteristic mode switch (Emb. 15); life-pattern macro operation (Emb. 16); multi-emitter IR light-intensity and light-distribution control (Emb. 20, 22, 23); operation-history-based intensity escalation (Emb. 24); and an operation-detecting sensor for hands-free control (Emb. 25).

A correct § 102 mapping must be done against these elements, using references that predate 1997-09-25 (priority) / 1997-12-19 (filing).

---

5. Candidate prior-art landscape by claim element — clearly flagged as my analysis, NOT the patent's verified citation list

I did not verify that the following were cited in US 6,285,357, and I am not asserting they anticipate specific claims. I list them only as the technically analogous art a § 102 analysis should test, so the framework is ready once the ISR/examiner citations are pulled from the sources in § 6:

• Hierarchical LCD menu remote with select/confirm/cancel keys (claim 1 core): the relevant art class is universal/multi-device remotes with on-screen menus, e.g. art cited by the ISR of WO 99/16282. Class CPC G08C 23/04, H03J 1/0025, G08C 2201/92 (universal remote), H03J 2200/24 (from the patent's own classification) define this cluster.
• Continuous-scroll / auto-repeat selection (Emb. 3-4): art on key auto-repeat and scrolling lists.
• Frequency-of-use menu reordering (Emb. 5): art on adaptive/learning menu ordering.
• Elevation-angle device identification (Emb. 6-8): art on orientation/attitude sensors used to select a controlled appliance (cf. the later classification G08C 2201/32, "Remote control based on movements, attitude of remote control device").
• Tactile/vibration and voice feedback (Emb. 10-14): art on haptic-feedback user interfaces and voice-announcing remotes.
• Multi-emitter IR intensity / light-distribution control (Emb. 20-24): art on programmable IR emission power/directivity in remotes (cf. G08C 2201/71, "Directional beams").
• Sensor-triggered hands-free control (Emb. 25): art on occupancy/motion-triggered control (toilet/task lighting, ventilation), e.g. the JP-A-5-106376-class space. (I have only weak recall here and would not rely on it without verification.)

None of the above is offered as a § 102 anticipation mapping. Doing that responsibly requires the actual reference text plus the actual claim language.

---

6. Exactly what to pull to complete the task correctly (I could not execute these)

1. US 6,285,357B1 Google Patents "References Cited" section — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285357B1/en (the backward-citation table, U.S. Patent Documents + Foreign Patent Documents + Other Publications).
2. WO 99/16282 A1 International Search Report — the pre-1999 examiner art for the same invention (EPO/Google Patents).
3. EP 0 951 194 A1 European search report — additional EPO-cited art for the same family.
4. USPTO Patent Center / IFW for App. 09/297,201 — the examiner's PTO-892 with references and the rejections they supported: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov.
5. USPTO PAIR / Global Dossier for the JP 3763418 B2 counterpart and JPO citations.

Once (1)-(4) are in hand, each reference can be given a full citation, its publication/filing date, a one-paragraph description, and a claim-by-claim § 102 tag — exactly as the task requires.

---

7. Bottom line

• Confirmed: US 6,285,357 B1, "Remote control device," Mitsubishi, priority 1997-09-25, filed 1997-12-19, granted 2001-09-04, expired 2017-12-19.
• Not obtained: the patent's own front-page and ISR prior-art citation lists. I will not fabricate them.
• High confidence: the forward citations (US 2008/0005764, US 12,067,220, US 8,179,404, etc.) are not prior art and cannot anticipate under § 102.
• Highest-value, unexecuted next step: retrieve the WO 99/16282 ISR and the US 09/297,201 examiner citations (PTO-892) — these give the authoritative, claim-linked prior art for US 6,285,357. Prior-art reference retrieval is required before any § 102 mapping can be responsibly stated.

If you can supply the patent's front-page citation table or the WO 99/16282 search report text, I will immediately convert it into the full citation/date/description/§ 102 claim-mapping table you asked for.

I'll pull the prior-art references actually cited on this patent's face and any related art, so the §103 combinations are grounded in real references rather than my recall.

Good — I have the patent's own background and classification. Now let me pull the face-page "References Cited" list and hunt for the pre-1997 art in the relevant sub-fields (menu-driven universal remotes, hold-to-scroll, orientation-based device selection, adaptive IR output).

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,285,357 B1 ("Remote control device"), 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope caveats before the analysis (important)

1. The "Prior Art section of this page" was not actually present in the material supplied. The full text you supplied contains the Google Patents Definitions + Embodiments text, the classification block, and the "Prior art keywords / Prior art date" metadata — but no face-page "References Cited" list and no examiner-cited art. My session hit its step limit before I could retrieve the granted front page's citation list or the JP family citations. Everything below is therefore built from (a) the art admitted in the patent's own Background, (b) the classifications, and (c) references I did retrieve in this session. I mark which is which.
2. Claim numbering for the dependent set is not fully verified. As flagged in the earlier generated section, I could not confirm whether the "device-identification-code" claim is independent or dependent, and the concept-to-claim-number mapping below is my best reconstruction. Where numbering is uncertain I say so.
3. Minor date inconsistency to flag: this task states the current date is April 26, 2026, while the system context and the fetched page timestamp say 2026-09-29. Neither affects the §103 analysis, but per your rules I am flagging it rather than silently reconciling.
4. Practical note: the patent expired 2017-12-19 (confirmed in the record). A §103 analysis now is retrospective/academic — it matters only if you are evaluating a historic validity challenge or a reissue-style exercise. No live invalidity defense is possible against an expired claim.

---

Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here is a consumer-electronics remote-control designer (~2–4 years experience, or a bachelor's in EE/CS) with working knowledge of: (i) universal/programmable IR remotes and their code libraries; (ii) microcontroller + LCD menu UI programming; (iii) IR emitter drive and beam optics; and (iv) tilt/orientation sensors. This is a crowded, incremental, consumer-cost-driven art — the KSR "predictable variation / market demand" framework applies with unusual force.

Field of the invention / analogous art (from the record): G08C23/04 (IR remote signalling), H03J1/0025 & H03J9/00 (CPU-driven remote tuning units), G06F3/0362 (1-D rotary/scroll input), plus the Google "prior art keywords" of "function item / remote control / control unit / remotely controlled / function."

---

Independent Claim 1 — the "drill-down menu" universal remote

Elements: (a) display showing a "function item select picture" of multiple items; (b) selector; (c) affirm (decision) input; (d) cancel (deny) input; (e) controller that, on affirm, retrieves and shows another function-item picture and outputs an instruction code; (f) communication section converting the code to a radio (IR) signal.

Primary combination: Darbee '810/'917 + Crook '068 [+ any of the 1990s LCD-menu remotes]

Additional corroboration of the trend: the PTAB record for the Darbee patents shows that Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar remote was known art that "considered a fixed matrix of keys to be a 'major shortcoming' of known remote controls" and "opted to design … [a] series of on-screen menus for selecting functions, with less keys." (IPR2014-01103 trial presentation) Caveat: I did not independently verify Ciarcia's publication date; treat it as corroborating the trend, not as a §102 anchor.

So what is arguably "not taught" by Crook+Darbee? Only the specific combination of a uniform affirm/deny-only interaction grammar applied identically across all controlled appliance types, and the automatic return to initial picture (Embodiment 1 flowchart). Both are, at most, design choices / obvious extensions of "less keys, menus instead of keys," and the patent's own admitted prior art already frames button-count reduction as the goal. Claim 1 is a strong obviousness candidate.

---

Claims 2–3 (affirm button / deny button)

A two-button accept / back-out model is the definitional grammar of hierarchical menu UIs and is taught per se by any menu-driven remote (Crook '068 highlight-and-select; Darbee line). No separate motivation is needed — KSR "known technique, predictable result."

---

Claims 4–7 — up/down selector switches; timer-measured hold-to-scroll; continuous-operation advisability database

Motivation: the reference base here is one of pure user-ergonomics expediency — reduce repeat key presses, avoid overshoot. Claims 4–7 are obvious over a menu-driven remote (Crook / CN 1251182A family) in view of well-known key auto-repeat. Caveat: I did not retrieve a single pre-1997 reference that expressly recites a per-function "continuous-operation acceptance advisability database"; that limitation (claims 6–7) is the least-certain part of this group — a secondary-reference or printed-matter search would be needed to nail it. Treat claims 6–7 as the weakest §103 positions of the "scroll" family.

---

Claims 8–9 — select-frequency table and reordering the menu by usage frequency

Reference/motivation: Darbee's own line explicitly seeks to make "his most frequently accessed functions … single keystrokes" and to let the user customize key placement (WO 94/14241). Frequency-of-use re-prioritization was also standard in TV "favorite channel" auto-sort features and "most-recently-used" menus. The patent's stated motivation (reduce procedure count / improve operability) is identical. Claims 8–9 are obvious as an automation of the admitted goal of prioritizing frequently used functions. This is arguably one of the more defensible dependent claims if one insisted on a "computing select frequency over a window and rewriting the display-order list" step, but under KSR it is a predictable data-management variation.

---

Claims 10–14 — vibration/touch-sense feedback and sounding (voice) feedback; profile ("person") modes

These claims are obvious individually and in combination; the strongest single point is the applicant's own admission that the vibration element is prior art.

---

Claim 15 — "pattern / life pattern" operation mode (one action → multiple devices)

Art/motivation: single-keystroke macros for multi-device sequences were a canonical universal-remote feature in the Darbee family: WO 94/14241's stated purpose is to let a user "assign any desired function to almost any key" and even reassign keys "across devices" (e.g., the mute key driving the amplifier rather than the TV). A "watch TV" macro that powers several devices is the direct, predictable extension. Claim 15 is obvious.

---

IR-emitter claims (multiple emitters; per-device intensity; per-device distribution; combined with person mode) and the adaptive/history claim

These claims are obvious over Lutz '943 in view of the applicant's admitted battery/directivity problem. Note: Lutz puts the detector at the appliance and evaluates tilt at the receiver; the §103 combination is "take Lutz's multi-source, different-pattern emitter drive and apply it in the remote to select beam per appliance," which is a predictable re-arrangement of known parts.

---

Independent Claim 20 — orientation-based "subject-device identifying means" (angle sensor) that skips the device menu

This is the most technically interesting claim and the one with the strongest independent-art challenge, because pointing/orientation-aware remotes were a developed 1990s sub-field.

Combination and motivation: Combine (i) a menu-driven multi-appliance remote (claim-1 art: Crook '068 / Darbee '810-'917), (ii) JP H7-19062 for the teaching that orientation selects which appliance's icons/functions are presented, and (iii) a conventional tilt sensor (Hall '623 / Odell / a commodity inversion switch) as the "angle sensor." Motivation: the patent's own recited object — "reduce the operating procedure" by eliminating the manual device-selection step — is exactly the ergonomic pressure motivating JP H7-19062 (device selection ease) and Hall (natural pointing). Under KSR this is "combining prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results."

Honest counterweight: Claim 20's specific formulation — an elevation-angle sensor (pendulum/rotation sensor; differently-inclined inversion sensors; battery-load strain sensor) used to auto-select the appliance and open that appliance's menu as the initial picture, without a cursor/"pointing" layer — is a narrower implementation than JP H7-19062 (which maps orientation to an on-screen cursor position and uses geomagnetic sensing) or than Lutz/Odell (which use the tilt at the receiver for control, not for appliance identification). So claim 20 is the hardest of the obviousness positions, and the inversion-sensor and battery-strain-sensor species (Embodiments 7–8) have the least direct pre-1997 counterpart I could retrieve. I cannot call claim 20 clearly obvious on the record I could reach; it needs the JP family citations and the face-page art, which I did not obtain.

---

The "device-identification-code" claim (~claim 22; independence unverified)

Concept: the appliance always transmits an ID code; the remote's communication means is directional and has a receiver for it; pointing the remote at the appliance identifies it and opens that appliance's menu.

Art: two-way IR remotes were known — US 5,552,917 (Darbee) claims "two-way data coupling means" and its spec contemplates an IR receiver as well as transmitter; the two-way-display remote family (WO 98/43158 / CN 1251182A) shows an IR/RF two-way remote updating its display from received data. (CN 1251182A) Motivation: auto-configure/identify the target appliance without user entry — a recurring goal (see also US 5,889,510 (Klarlund), post-priority) and the Darbee family's code-entry-reduction theme. §103 status: moderate. The directive requirement (directional receiver so that pointing selects the device) is the inventive hook; it overlaps with claim 20's orientation concept and would rise or fall with it. Independence/dependency of this claim is unresolved (flagged in the earlier section) — verify against the granted claim set.

---

Hands-free / operation-detecting-sensor claims (Embodiment 25, toilet space)

Concept: an operation-detecting sensor (IR/light, door open/close, seat contact/occupancy) triggers transmission of the corresponding instruction code.

Art: US 5,635,777 (Telymonde et al.), issued 1997-06-03 — a "hands-free remote control … capable of controlling a plurality of functions of a plurality of electronic devices," with sensor/transmitter extensions; it was cited as the X reference (and Y for broader claims) on the corresponding hands-free-remote application, showing this was a recognized field. (WO 2001035664 A3 search report; the same report cites US 5,552,807 (Hayes) as Y art.) Occupancy/motion sensors controlling lighting and ventilation are extremely old (occupancy-sensor restroom lighting/fans). Combination: occupancy sensor (old) + universal code transmitter (Darbee/claim-1 art) + the patent's own hospital/toilet use case. Motivation: the spec's own reason — hands "unclean or wet." These claims are obvious.

---

Synthesis — motivation-to-combine, stated cleanly (KSR-style)

1. Same field / analogous art: every reference above is a consumer remote control, a pointing device for a screen, or a menu UI — the closest possible art to G08C23/04 and H03J9/00.
2. The problem and its solution were articulated in the prior art itself. Darbee (WO 94/14241) states the finite-key problem and proposes reduced-key/menu access and frequency-based prioritization; Ciarcia (per the PTAB record) chose "on-screen menus … with less keys"; Lutz '943 built multi-source, different-pattern IR emitters; JP H7-19062 built orientation-driven multi-appliance selection. The '357 patent's stated objectives map 1:1 onto these known goals.
3. **Applicant admissions in the specification supply motivation for at least three claim families: the eccentric-weight vibration motor is "used for incoming vibrations in a pocket bell" (claims 10–13); the narrow-beam emitter and the lighting-device intensity requirement are recited as known problems (claims 16–18); button-count/operability is the admitted defect of the prior art (claim 1).
4. The combinations are mechanical/predictable: menu UI + CPU/code-data/IR output (claim 1); auto-repeat + boundary clamp (claims 4–7); frequency table + display-order list (claims 8–9); known actuator + "fire on redraw" (claims 10–13); profile parameter + conditional rendering (claims 14–15); multi-source emitter drive + per-device lookup table (claims 16–18); orientation sensor + multi-appliance menu (claim 20); occupancy sensor + code transmitter (hands-free claims).

---

Bottom-line obviousness posture (with confidence levels)

Caveats I must restate: (i) the face-page "References Cited" list and the JP/EP family citations were not retrieved (step-limit), so this analysis may omit the actual examiner-cited art — which, for a 1997 Japanese-origin filing, is likely to include JP utility-model and JP kokai references I did not see; (ii) the dependent-claim numbering and the independence of the "device-ID-code" claim are unverified; (iii) claim 20 (and, by overlap, the device-ID-code claim) is the position I am least confident about and I would not represent it as clearly obvious without the missing art. The remaining claim groups are, on the record I could reach, strong obviousness candidates — most of them propped up by the applicant's own admissions and by the dense, articulated, pre-1997 motivation in WO 94/14241 and the Darbee line.