US 6314409

I'll research this patent number across the sources you specified.

Let me check for recent litigation/docket activity and verify the claim set.

US Patent 6,314,409 — Summary

Identifier interpretation: The number "6314409" as given corresponds to US 6,314,409 B2. I have not substituted or corrected any digits; this is the literal match returned by the sources.

Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6314409/en), FreePatentsOnline (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/6314409.html), uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6314409), and PTAB Exhibit 1001 in CBM2014-00157.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A method and device are provided for controlling access to data. Portions of the data are protected and rules concerning access rights to the data are determined. Access to the protected portions of the data is prevented, other than in a non-useable form; and users are provided access to the data only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a mechanism protected by tamper detection. A method is also provided for distributing data for subsequent controlled use of those data. The method includes protecting portions of the data; preventing access to the protected portions of the data other than in a non-useable form; determining rules concerning access rights to the data; protecting the rules; and providing a package including: the protected portions of the data and the protected rules. A user is provided controlled access to the distributed data only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a mechanism protected by tamper protection. A device is provided for controlling access to data having protected data portions and rules concerning access rights to the data. The device includes means for storing the rules; and means for accessing the protected data portions only in accordance with the rules, whereby user access to the protected data portions is permitted only if the rules indicate that the user is allowed to access the portions of the data."

Independent claims — plain language

The specification describes four independent-claim concepts: a distribution method; a method of controlling access; a device for controlling access; and a machine-readable storage device embodying the packaged data. I retrieved the verbatim text of claim 1 (via uspto.report); the others are summarized from the specification and abstract, and I flag below where I lack verified verbatim wording.

• Claim 1 — Method of distributing data. Protect (e.g., encrypt) portions of the data; openly distribute the protected portions. The key limitation: every access to an unprotected (plaintext) form is limited by rules defining access rights, enforced by an access mechanism, so unauthorized access never yields the usable form — only the protected/non-useable form.

  • Dependent claims add: encryption (2); encrypting the data-encrypting key K_D (3) and providing its decrypting key (4); data types — software, text, numbers, graphics, audio, video (5); user-allowance rules (6); distribution-rights rules (7); access-control rights — display, printing, copying, execution, transmission, modification (8–9); access-control quantities — number/size of reads, expiration, intensity, fidelity/accuracy, resolution (10–11); payment requirements (12); rules keyed to user/protected-data/environmental characteristics (13); at least one built-in internal rule that cannot be made less restrictive by other rules (14–15); and embodiment in stand-alone devices such as a facsimile machine, television, VCR, laser printer, telephone, laser disk player, or computer system (16–18).

• Method of controlling access to data (parallel to claim 1 but framed on the access side). Protect portions of the data; determine rules concerning access rights; prevent access to protected portions other than in non-useable form; permit a user access only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a tamper-detecting mechanism.

• Device for controlling access to digital data. A device where the data comprise protected data portions plus rules concerning access rights. The device includes storage means for storing the rules and means for accessing the protected data portions only in accordance with the rules — i.e., a means-plus-function claim architecture. (The 2014 Markman presentation in 1:13-cv-03777 identifies disputed "means for outputting" and "means for generating" limitations, confirming means-plus-function claim(s) in the set.)

• Storage device readable by a machine tangibly embodying a package of digital data: the protected data portions plus rules concerning access rights, such that a user gains controlled access only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a tamper-detecting access mechanism.

Uncertainty flag: I verified claim 1 verbatim. I did not retrieve verbatim text for the other independent claims (their exact numbers and wording, e.g., the precise preamble of the device and storage-medium claims), so the descriptions above are faithful to the specification/abstract but should not be treated as quoted claim language.

Litigation / PTAB posture (from the sources)

• District court suits filed 2013–2014 (e.g., N.Y.S.D. 1:13-cv-03777, N.D. Ala. 2:13-cv-01106, W.D. Pa., S.D. Ohio, D. Neb., D. Minn., D. Md., N.D. Ga., W.D. Mo.), largely by Intellectual Ventures II LLC.
• PTAB: CBM2014-00157 (final written decision); IPR2014-00672 and -00673 (not instituted – merits); IPR2014-00719 and -00722 (adverse judgment); IPR2015-01322 and -01323 (final written decisions).
• Federal Circuit appeals on the family/patent: 14-1724, 16-1077, 17-2429, and 18-1367.
• Post-2020, Hanger Solutions, LLC became assignee. Note: Hanger's 2021–2022 assertion campaigns (Extreme Networks, Squarespace, Cequel/Altice, Mediacom) asserted other patents (e.g., 6,430,623; 6,609,159; 6,772,227; 6,119,171; 6,098,098; 6,868,160) — 6,314,409 does not appear among them.

On your specific request re: CAFC 2026 dockets

I could not confirm any 2026 CAFC docket or appeal involving US 6,314,409. Targeted searches for a 2026 Federal Circuit case tied to this patent number returned no results; the most recent appellate activity surfaced for this family is the 2018 appeal (18-1367), and 2026 CAFC decisions returned in my searches concerned unrelated patents (e.g., Netlist 10,489,314; Intellectual Pixels v. Sony, 10,681,109). Additionally, the patent's adjusted expiration of 2016-01-21 makes fresh infringement appeals unlikely, though validity/ownership appeals can in principle outlive the term.

Caveat on method: I do not have direct credentialed access to the USPTO PatentCenter/PACER/CAFC docket systems; the above is drawn from web-searchable mirrors (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report, Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal, Docket Alarm, Justia/CourtListener). Absence of a hit in those sources is not proof that no such docket exists — treat the "no 2026 CAFC activity found" statement as an absence of evidence rather than authoritative confirmation.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6314409. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the district court cases and the Intellectual Ventures campaign.

Let me identify the remaining district court cases and any later assertions.

I hit the search-step limit before I could fully verify every docket, so this answer flags confidence levels explicitly. Here's what I found for U.S. Patent No. 6,314,409 ("System for Controlling Access and Distribution of Digital Property," Schneck & Abrams; appl. 09/178,606; filed 1998‑10‑26; priority 1996‑01‑11; issued 2001‑11‑06).

Important framing

The '409 patent was one of a bundle of five patents asserted by Intellectual Ventures II LLC in a multi-defendant campaign against U.S. banks in 2013 (the others being 6,715,084; 5,745,574; 6,826,694; and 7,634,666). Almost all known litigation is that campaign plus the PTAB/CBM challenges it triggered. The patent expired 2016‑01‑21 (adjusted expiration), and title later passed to Intellectual Ventures II → IV Assets 158 → Hanger Solutions LLC (2020) — I found no confirmed Hanger-era assertion of the '409 patent.

A. District court litigation (Intellectual Ventures II LLC as plaintiff)

Note: I did not confirm that the '409 patent was actually asserted in every one of these dockets; several are listed as "family litigation" on the Google Patents page for US6314409B2, which can include cases from the same campaign.

B. PTAB proceedings (post-grant)

• IPR2014-00672 (IBM v. IV II, '409) — Not Instituted – Merits (filed ~4/18/2014)
• IPR2014-00673 (IBM v. IV II, '409) — Not Instituted – Merits (filed ~4/18/2014)
• IPR2014-00719 (Compass Bank v. IV II, '409) — Adverse Judgment / Terminated (filed 5/1/2014)
• IPR2014-00722 (Compass Bank v. IV II, '409) — Terminated – Settled (filed 5/1/2014; institution 10/24/2014; termination 12/12/2014)
• IPR2015-01322 (IBM v. IV II, '409) — Final Written Decision (filed 6/1/2015; instituted 12/8/2015; terminated 4/7/2016)
• IPR2015-01323 (IBM v. IV II, '409) — Final Written Decision
• CBM2014-00157 (covered business method review of '409) — Final Written Decision (filed 2014; petitioner not verified from my results)

C. Federal Circuit appeals

14‑1724, 16‑1077, 17‑2429, 18‑1367 are listed on the Google Patents page as involving this patent's family. Only 14‑1724 and 17‑2429 are confirmed in docket text I retrieved as appeals from the JPMC case (1:13-cv-03777). I could not verify the parties/outcomes for 16‑1077 or 18‑1367.

Caveats

• I was cut off before verifying the Minnesota (0:13-cv-02071), W.D. Pa. (2:14-cv-00832), Nebraska (8:13-cv-00167), and Maryland (8:14-cv-00111) dockets fully, and before searching Hanger Solutions-era suits. Treat those rows as partially verified.
• The CBM2014-00157 petitioner is unconfirmed in my retrieved results.
• I did not search PACER directly; results are from Unified Patents, Docket Alarm/CourtListener, Justia, Casetext, and Google Patents family data.

If you want, I can attempt a follow-up pass on the four unverified dockets and the Hanger-era history.

I'll research the PTAB proceedings on this patent. Note that although the structured ODP block defaults to "no activity," the Google Patents family record lists several PTAB cases — I'll verify each before reporting.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 6,314,409 B2 ("System for controlling access and distribution of digital property")

Discrepancy flagged up front: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block asserts ODP returns no AIA trials for this patent. That is contradicted by the patent's own Google Patents family record, which lists seven PTAB matters (two Not Instituted, two Adverse Judgment, three Final Written Decision), and by Unified Patents / Docket Alarm dockets. I treat the seven proceedings below as real and on file, and treat the ODP "nil" result as an ingest gap. Where I could not retrieve a document, I say so rather than guess.

Proceedings overview

Seven AIA proceedings are on file for US 6,314,409 — three reached a Final Written Decision, two were instituted and then terminated by post-institution adverse-judgment requests (publicly labeled settlement-related), and two were denied institution on the merits — and the bottom-line defensive posture is that this patent is not merely narrowed but expired (term ended 2016-01-21), so the entire PTAB campaign is historical: a demand letter citing these claims today can only reach pre-2016/2017 conduct within the § 286 damages window.

Status breakdown:

CBM2014-00157 — J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Covered Business Method review
• Filed: 2014-07-11
• Status: Final Written Decision (terminated 2016-01-12)
• Judge panel: Barbara Parvis, Kristen Droesch, Matthew Clements (per Docket Alarm docket)
• Petition grounds: Not fully retrieved. The exhibit list shows a § 102/§ 103 attack built on access-control and network-security prior art — Ex. 1029 Kerberos, Ex. 1030 SSL, Ex. 1031 S-HTTP, Ex. 1032 Privacy Enhanced Email, Ex. 1034 "bell76" (Bell/LaPadula), Ex. 1035 "dod85" (DoD CSC-STD), plus Ex. 1024 Neuman Declaration and Ex. 1038 Neuman Errata. Ex. 1027 is a district-court "Order and Opinion Granting MPSJ" and Ex. 1028 is a "Lupo RR re 084 and 409," indicating the CBM was litigated alongside the S.D.N.Y. action and a parallel IV patent (…"084").
• Institution decision: Instituted (trial ran to a hearing; a "Record of Oral Hearing" was entered 2015-09-30). Institution date not retrieved.
• Final Written Decision: The FWD issued and the case terminated 2016-01-12, but I was not able to retrieve the FWD text or its claim-by-claim verdict within my research budget — I will not invent which claims were canceled. Treat the disposition as an open item to pull from PTAB E2E.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement indicated; docket shows full briefing through Petitioner Reply (2015-06-29) and oral hearing.
• Appeal: Not verified.
• Defensive value: JPMorgan ran a full CBM trial through hearing on this patent. Whatever the disposition, the entire record — including the Board's claim constructions of "access mechanism" and its treatment of Bell/LaPadula and DoD CSC-STD as prior art — is free ammunition for a § 282 defense.

IPR2015-01322 — International Business Machines Corp. v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-06-01 (Notice of Filing Date Accorded 2015-06-11)
• Status: Final Written Decision (instituted 2015-12-08; terminated 2016-04-07)
• Judge panel: Not retrieved (author judge field empty in the Unified Patents record)
• Petition grounds (verified from Patent Owner's Preliminary Response, 2015-09-11): (1) Herschaft anticipates claim 1 and other challenged claims under § 102 — including a threshold dispute whether Herschaft is a § 102 prior-art printed publication; (2) Narasimhalu (Ex. 1009, US 5,499,298) anticipates; (3) Narasimhalu + Erickson (Ex. 1010, US 5,765,152) renders claim 7 obvious under § 103. Supporting evidence: Tygar Declaration (Ex. 1001), Brent Ray Declaration (Ex. 1004), FIPS 140-1 (Ex. 1015), '409 prosecution history (Ex. 1006), and the S.D.N.Y. 13-cv-03777 Dkt. 381 (Ex. 1007).
• Institution decision: Instituted 2015-12-08. IV expressly argued for discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d), contending the Board "ha[d] already considered substantially the same arguments and prior art" and that "IBM unfairly uses the Board's previous decisions denying institution as to these claims as a roadmap." The Board declined that argument and instituted.
• Final Written Decision: Case terminated 2016-04-07 with status "Final Written Decision." The claim-level verdict is not in the sources I retrieved. Two structural facts matter: (a) the patent's adjusted expiration was 2016-01-21, i.e., mid-trial, which drove the unusually short post-institution runway; (b) I therefore cannot state which of claims 1, 7, etc. were canceled. Do not represent this FWD's holdings without pulling the PDF.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement indicated.
• Appeal: Not verified.
• Defensive value: IBM (Kirkland & Ellis) v. IV (Sterne Kessler) produced a second full trial record on the same claims, and the institution decision rejected a § 325(d) road-mapping defense — meaning a defendant today cannot assume the Board will refuse to revisit already-litigated art on this patent.

IPR2015-01323 — International Business Machines Corp. v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-06-01
• Status: Final Written Decision (instituted 2015-12-08; terminated 2016-04-07)
• Judge panel: Not retrieved
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved. Given the identical filing/institution/termination dates, this is the companion petition to -01322 (almost certainly directed to a different claim set, since the Board institutes claim-by-claim and IPR2015-01322's grounds keyed to claims 1 and 7).
• Institution decision: Instituted 2015-12-08.
• Final Written Decision: Issued/terminated 2016-04-07; claim-level verdict not verified.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement indicated.
• Appeal: Not verified.
• Defensive value: Illustrates that a single petitioner will file two IPRs to cover the claim set — relevant if you are budgeting a validity challenge of your own.

IPR2014-00719 — Compass Bank v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2014-05-01
• Status: Institution of Inter Partes Review (2014-10-24); terminated 2014-12-12 — publicly labeled "Terminated-Settled" (Patexia)
• Judge panel: Jennifer S. Bisk, Justin Busch, Kristen L. Droesch
• Petition grounds: Claims challenged: 1-11, 13-21, 23-27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36-39 (i.e., essentially the whole claim set; at least 39 claims issue from this patent). Specific art/statutory basis not retrieved.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2014-10-24, but only as to claim 23 — the panel narrowed a 33-claim challenge down to one claim. That is a significant signal: as of 2014 the Board was not persuaded the broader claim set was reasonably likely unpatentable on Compass Bank's art.
• Final Written Decision: None — trial ended before FWD.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated 2014-12-12, roughly seven weeks after institution, consistent with a global settlement between IV and the bank and a request for adverse judgment to close the file. Terms are not public — say so if asked; do not characterize consideration.
• Appeal: None (no FWD to appeal).
• Defensive value: The claim-23-only institution is the most useful 2014-vintage datapoint available: it shows the Board viewed this specification as hard to invalidate on generic access-control art, which is exactly why IBM had to go hunting for Herschaft/Narasimhalu in 2015.

IPR2014-00722 — Petitioner not identified in my sources v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2014 (exact date not retrieved; docketed alongside IPR2014-00719)
• Status: Adverse Judgment — docket entry "Termination Request for Adverse Judgment After Institution — Judgment Request for Adverse Judgment" dated 2014-12-12
• Judge panel: Not retrieved
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved
• Institution decision: Institution occurred (the adverse-judgment request is expressly "After Institution")
• Final Written Decision: None issued — the proceeding closed by adverse judgment on 2014-12-12, the same day as IPR2014-00719.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated 2014-12-12 by adverse-judgment request. I will not name the petitioner — my sources do not confirm it, and the same-day termination with -00719 is consistent with (but does not prove) a coordinated settlement.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Confirms a second instituted trial died on the same day as Compass Bank's — i.e., IV was settling its 2013-2014 bank campaign rather than fighting to FWD while it pressed the parallel district-court actions.

IPR2014-00672 — Petitioner not identified v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2014 (date not retrieved)
• Status: Not Instituted — Merits
• Judge panel: Not retrieved
• Petition grounds: Not retrieved
• Institution decision: Denied on the merits. Per IV's later preliminary response in IPR2015-01322, the Board's earlier denials as to these claims became a "roadmap" that IBM exploited with new art — which indicates IPR2014-00672 (and -00673) involved the same or overlapping claims but different references.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None (denial of institution is non-appealable).
• Defensive value: A merits denial tells you the first wave of art failed; it does not shield the patent, because IBM's follow-on petition was instituted notwithstanding IV's § 325(d) argument.

IPR2014-00673 — Petitioner not identified v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2014 (date not retrieved)
• Status: Not Instituted — Merits
• Judge panel: Not retrieved
• Petition grounds / institution reasoning: Not retrieved
• Final Written Decision: None. Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Companion merits denial to -00672; same takeaway.

Strategic summary

Claim status. I can state with confidence what was challenged — IPR2014-00719 put claims 1-11, 13-21, 23-27, 29, 30, 32, 33 and 36-39 at issue, confirming this patent carries at least 39 claims and that the asserted independent claims are in the 1/23-range — but I cannot give you a CANCELED/SUSTAINED/UNTESTED ledger, because the three Final Written Decisions (CBM2014-00157, IPR2015-01322, IPR2015-01323) terminated 2016-01-12 and 2016-04-07 and I was unable to retrieve their texts. The one verified narrowing event is IPR2014-00719's institution on claim 23 alone, and that proceeding never reached a verdict. Treat any statement about which claims of the '409 patent are dead as unverified until the FWDs are pulled from PTAB E2E. Compounding this: the patent's adjusted expiration was 2016-01-21, so by the time the IBM IPRs were instituted (2015-12-08) the patent had roughly six weeks of remaining term — a fact that typically reshapes both the Board's and the parties' incentives and is a plausible explanation for a 2016-04-07 termination date only four months after institution.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel runs against the petitioners and their privies — Compass Bank, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, and whoever filed IPR2014-00672/673/-00722 — not against an unrelated defendant. So if you are a new target of Hanger Solutions LLC (the current assignee, following IV II → Intellectual Ventures Assets 158 LLC → Hanger Solutions in 2020), no IPR estoppel binds you: Herschaft, Narasimhalu, Erickson, the Bell/LaPadula and DoD CSC-STD references, Kerberos/SSL/S-HTTP/PEM, FIPS 140-1 and US 5,499,298 / US 5,765,152 are all available to you in a § 282 defense, and you can run them in a fresh IPR. Conversely, the 2014 merits denials on 00672/673 and the claim-23-only institution in 00719 are evidence that generic art fails, so a credible petition needs the better references (Herschaft, Narasimhalu) that IBM found in 2015.

Pattern signals. Yes to multiple IPRs per patent — IBM filed two on the same day (01322/01323) covering different claims; IV was hit with at least seven AIA petitions in a ~14-month window by bank and large-corporate petitioners. The patent owner fought institution (a full Preliminary Response with a developed § 325(d) theory) but settled the 2014 wave rather than take FWDs, and pressed the district courts instead — the family record shows a large multi-district campaign in 2013-2014 (S.D.N.Y., D. Md., D. Minn., D. Neb., N.D. Ga., W.D. Mo., W.D. Pa., S.D. Ohio, N.D. Ala., D. Mass.) plus CAFC dockets 14-1724, 16-1077, 17-2429 and 18-1367. Those CAFC dockets appear in the family record but I have not verified that any of them is an appeal of these PTAB FWDs — several are likely appeals from the district-court actions. I also cannot confirm Unified Patents as a petitioner; it appears in the record only as the docket aggregator.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the three FWDs before you rely on anything. The claim-level dispositions for CBM2014-00157, IPR2015-01322 and IPR2015-01323 are the whole ballgame, and they are public: search PTAB E2E / the USPTO PTAB Decisions site by proceeding number, and cross-check the Unified Patents dockets I used here — IPR2015-01322, IPR2015-01323, CBM2014-00157, and IPR2014-00672 / -00673. Quote the disposition and the exact claim numbers from the FWD — not from a docket status field.
2. Make the expiration argument first. With an adjusted expiration of 2016-01-21 (Google Patents family record), there is no prospective infringement. Any demand letter asserting this patent today is, at best, a pre-expiration damages claim, and § 286 caps recovery at six years before the complaint — meaning conduct after ~2017 (subject to the specific filing date) is off the table and any 2013-2016 theory has already been litigated against JPMorgan, Compass Bank and IBM.
3. No pending milestones to calendar. All seven proceedings are closed; there is no live institution deadline, oral hearing or statutory FWD due date. Do not budget for a co-pending IPR unless you file one yourself.
4. Sourcing note. If you must represent the current record in a filing, describe it as "seven AIA proceedings on file, all terminated between 2014-12-12 and 2016-04-07, three by Final Written Decision" — and disclose that the ODP ingest for this patent shows no AIA trials, which is inconsistent with the docket record and should be flagged to whoever is relying on the ODP pull.

Confidence caveats, stated plainly: verified = proceeding numbers, parties for CBM2014-00157 / IPR2014-00719 / IPR2015-01322, filing and institution and termination dates, panels for CBM2014-00157 and IPR2014-00719, the challenged-claim list and claim-23-only institution in IPR2014-00719, the IBM grounds as recited in IV's preliminary response, and the patent's expiration date. Not verified = every FWD disposition; petitioner identities for IPR2014-00672/-00673/-00722; panels for the IBM IPRs; any Federal Circuit disposition; and whether any FWD was appealed.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 6,314,409, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center records and reel/frame data.

Excellent — I found the reel/frame chain of title. Let me pull more detail on the later links and the correspondents of record.

I was able to reconstruct most of the chain of title from reel/frame data embedded in two Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(b) filings in the application file (09/178,606) and from Google Patents' legal-events records. One requested field — correspondent of record — I could not recover; that gap is flagged explicitly rather than filled in.

Assignment Forensics — US 6,314,409 B2

Sources actually used: Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6314409B2](/patent/US6314409B2) — Reassignment panel); Docket Alarm OCR of PTO/SB/96 "Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(b)" filings in application 09/178,606 (filed on behalf of Zofillip Pro Group LLC and Intellectual Ventures II LLC), which recite the reel/frame chain of title; Unified Patents PTAB/litigation portal.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "6314409") — same records as https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

⚠️ Data gap declared up front

The Assignment Center exposes a correspondent of record field per reel/frame. I could reach the reel/frame chain second-hand (via the 3.73(b) statements and Google's legal-events panel) but not the Assignment Center record detail itself, so I did not capture a single correspondent name, firm, or address. The only preparer-of-record fragment recoverable anywhere was a signature block reading "Lori A." on the IV II 3.73(b) statement (May 21, 2014) — a first name and initial only, insufficient to identify a firm.

This means NPE Signal 3 (repeat correspondent) cannot be scored on evidence and I will not guess at it. Everything else below is grounded in reel/frame or in the recorded Google legal-event entries.

Inventors

Corroboration that MITRE was the employer, not merely an assignee: the specification's own background section cites "Generalized Framework for Access Control: Towards Prototyping the ORGCON Policy," Abrams, M. D., et al., 14th National Computer Security Conference (1991) — i.e., inventor Abrams is a named author of one of the prior-art works cited against his own patent. The patent is a product of MITRE's ORGCON / Propagated Access Control research line, which is consistent with both inventors being MITRE staff at the January 11, 1996 priority filing.

Unusual-pattern check — "inventors depart within 12 months": Not determinable from the assignment record. What the record does show is that MITRE's rights were pushed out to a commercial defense contractor (MRJ, Inc.) contemporaneously with the 1998 divisional filing (Reel 009536/0778, recorded 1998-10-26). That is an FFRDC technology-transfer pattern, not evidence of inventor departures. I have no employment-end dates for either inventor and will not infer them.

Original assignee

Veridian Information Solutions, Inc. — as listed by Google Patents and consistent with the chain: the applicant of record at issue (2001-11-06) was MRJ, Inc., which recorded a Merger / Change of Name to Veridian Information Solutions, Inc. on reel 011958/0745 (recorded 2001-07-09), four months before the patent issued.

• Primary line of business: defense and intelligence IT services / systems integration — the successor organization to MRJ, Inc. (parent of Trident Data Systems, Inc.), assembling what became Veridian Corporation.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence found. Veridian was a services/integration contractor; the patent describes a tamper-responsive access mechanism intended for licensing to hardware/software vendors. The commercial exploitation path in the record is licensing and divestiture, not a Veridian-branded product.
• Current status: acquired. The chain shows Veridian Information Solutions → Veridian Systems Division (reel 014455/0356, recorded 2003-09-04) → General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc. by merger (reel 016976/0800, recorded 2005-11-07). General Dynamics is an operating public company (NYSE: GD). Note a one-step refinement of the prior section: the earlier summary compressed this to "MITRE → MRJ → Veridian"; the reel record adds two General Dynamics-legacy steps and the whole Beechtree/Verifides/Zofillip detour, which is where the litigation posture actually comes from.

Assignment timeline

Dates: Google Patents legal-event dates are recordation dates; the execution/effective dates are those recoverable from the record detail. Where I only have a recordation date I say so.

1. Executed ca. 1996–1998 / recorded 1998-10-26 — Reel 009536/0780

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Schneck, Paul B.; Abrams, Marshall D.
• Assignee: The MITRE Corporation
• Correspondent: not captured (see data gap)
• Context: initial inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded alongside the 1998 CPA filing rather than at the 1996 priority date.

2. Executed ca. 1998 / recorded 1998-10-26 — Reel 009536/0778

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: The MITRE Corporation
• Assignee: MRJ, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: FFRDC technology transfer — MITRE pushes the rights to its commercial defense contractor partner. Recorded on the same day and on the same reel as the inventors' assignment, i.e. a deliberately packaged recordation.

3. Executed 2001-07-09 / recorded 2001-07-09 — Reel 011958/0745

• Conveyance: Merger / Change of Name
• Assignor: MRJ, Inc. (Trident Data Systems, Inc.)
• Assignee: Veridian Information Solutions, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: internal reorg / change of name only — no change in beneficial ownership. Recorded four months before issuance.

4. Recorded 2003-08-29 — Reel 014438/0745

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (confirmatory)
• Assignor: MRJ, Inc. (Trident Data Systems, Inc.)
• Assignee: Veridian Information Solutions, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: belt-and-suspenders confirmation of link 3 — the same transfer re-recorded as a substantive assignment two years later, a common cleanup where the earlier merger instrument was thought insufficient for standing.

5. Recorded 2003-09-04 — Reel 014455/0356

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Veridian Information Solutions, Inc.
• Assignee: Veridian Systems Division
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: internal reorg — migration of the portfolio into the division that General Dynamics would acquire.

6. Recorded 2005-11-07 — Reel 016976/0800

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Veridian Systems Division, Inc.
• Assignee: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: corporate merger — the portfolio lands inside a large public defense prime.

7. Executed 2006-08-31 / recorded 2006-09-07 — Reel 018224/0924

• Conveyance: Security Agreement
• Assignor: Beechtree Verifides Management LLC (as the conveying/pledging party, per the 2011 corrective assignment)
• Assignee: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc. (secured party)
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: securitization — seller-side security interest in a structured divestiture. Note this was recorded before the underlying assignment in link 8, even though executed after it.

8. Executed 2006-08-22 / recorded 2006-11-22 — Reel 018563/0198

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc.
• Assignee: Beechtree Verifides Management LLC
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: divestiture — the defense prime exits the asset ~60 days after acquiring the Veridian portfolio. This is the pivot point of the entire chain.

9. Executed 2006-10-30 / recorded 2007-06-25 — Reel 019466/0552

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Beechtree Verifides Management LLC
• Assignee: Verifides Technology Corp.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: internal reorg within the holdco family — executed only 69 days after the inbound assignment.

10. Recorded 2009-10-14 — Reel 023373/0104

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Verifides Technology Corp.
• Assignee: Zofillip Pro Group LLC (New York LLC)
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: transfer to an assertion-holding vehicle — "Pro Group LLC" naming, no operating business. This is the link on which a PTO/SB/96 Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(b) was later filed (proving the entity existed to exercise the owner's rights in the file).

11. Recorded 2011-03-08 (executed 2009-09-15) — Reel 025923/0531

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
• Assignor: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc.
• Assignee: Beechtree Verifides Management, LLC
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: release of the link-7 security interest — structured financing unwound, three years after the fact.

12. Recorded 2011-04-13 — Reel 026116/0741

• Conveyance: Corrective Assignment
• Assignor: Beechtree Verifides Management LLC
• Assignee: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc.
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: correction only — fixes the conveying/receiving parties on reel 018224/0924 (the security agreement), where the parties had originally been recorded transposed.

13. Recorded 2013-05-28 — Reel/Frame not captured

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: Zofillip Pro Group LLC
• Assignee: Intellectual Ventures II LLC
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: transfer into a known NPE — consolidation of the acquisition vehicle into IV II. A PTO/SB/96 for IV II was filed May 21, 2014, confirming IV II as assignee of the entire right, title and interest.

14. Recorded 2020-02-02 — Reel/Frame not captured

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Intellectual Ventures II LLC
• Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 158 LLC
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: IV internal asset drop-down — the "Assets 158" vehicle is the standard IV carve-out wrapper.

15. Recorded 2020-01-04 — Reel/Frame not captured

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 158 LLC
• Assignee: Hanger Solutions, LLC
• Correspondent: not captured
• Context: transfer to asserter. ⚠️ Flag: the recordation dates in the Google legal-events panel place link 15 (2020-01-04) before link 14 (2020-02-02), which is chronologically inverted. I report it as recorded rather than "correcting" it; IV frequently records the downstream sale first. The unusual timing should be confirmed against the actual reel records at the Assignment Center.

Cross-check / contradiction flag vs. prior section: none material. The prior summary's "original assignee Veridian Information Solutions, Inc." and "current assignee Hanger Solutions, LLC" are both confirmed by the reel record. The prior summary simply omitted links 6–12 (the General Dynamics → Beechtree → Verifides → Zofillip segment), which is precisely the segment that converts this from a defense-contractor patent into an NPE asset.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6314409
    1996 : Priority filing by two MITRE inventors
    1998 : Inventors assign to MITRE
         : MITRE assigns to MRJ Inc
    2001 : Renamed Veridian Information Solutions
    2003 : Moved to Veridian Systems Division
    2005 : Merged into General Dynamics AIS
    2006 : Sold to Beechtree Verifides Management
         : Security interest back to General Dynamics
         : Merged into Verifides Technology Corp
    2009 : Assigned to Zofillip Pro Group LLC
    2011 : Security release recorded
         : Corrective assignment recorded
    2013 : Merged into Intellectual Ventures II LLC
         : IV infringement suits filed
    2014 : PTAB CBM and IPR petitions filed
    2016 : Patent term expires
    2020 : Dropped to Intellectual Ventures Assets 158
         : Acquired by Hanger Solutions LLC
    2021 : Hanger assertion campaigns begin

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
The operating-assignee-to-licensing-LLC pivot is at Reel 018563/0198 (executed 2006-08-22): General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc. — a public defense prime — assigned the patent to Beechtree Verifides Management LLC roughly two months after acquiring the Veridian portfolio via merger. It never returned to an operating company. The asset then passed Beechtree → Verifides Technology Corp. (Reel 019466/0552) → Zofillip Pro Group LLC (Reel 023373/0104) → IV II → IV Assets 158 → Hanger Solutions, LLC. Note the discipline required here: the names alone ("Beechtree," "Verifides," "Zofillip Pro Group," "Hanger Solutions") prove nothing. The finding rests on the documented inbound and outbound reel numbers plus the absence of any product — a ten-year chain of successor LLCs with no operating business and no commercial embodiment cited anywhere in the record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Intellectual Ventures II LLC entered by merger recorded 2013-05-28 and is a fixture on every public NPE list. Hanger Solutions, LLC is the current assignee of record (recorded 2020-01-04/2020-02-02) and, per the earlier summary on this patent, ran 2021–2022 assertion campaigns (Extreme Networks, Squarespace, Cequel/Altice, Mediacom) — though on sibling Veridian-origin patents, not on 6,314,409 itself. IV II's ownership of this patent is further confirmed by its own PTO/SB/96 Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(b) dated May 21, 2014, declaring it "the assignee of the entire right, title, and interest."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap, not a finding).
I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any reel/frame. The only recoverable preparer fragment is the signature block "Lori A." on the IV II 3.73(b) statement (May 21, 2014). I am explicitly declining to score this signal. A repeat-correspondent finding is exactly the kind of claim that must be evidenced by named entries on specific reel/frames; the earlier sections of this analysis should be read as containing no correspondent finding for this patent. If you can run the Assignment Center query interactively, pull the correspondent for reels 009536/0780, 018563/0198, 019466/0552, 023373/0104 and the two 2020 records — that is the highest-value open thread here.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Two distinct cascades:

• 2006–2009 (three transfers in ~38 months): GD AIS → Beechtree (2006-08-22) → Verifides Technology Corp. (2006-10-30 — 69 days later) → Zofillip Pro Group LLC (2009-10-14).
• 2020 (two transfers inside ~30 days): IV II → IV Assets 158 → Hanger Solutions, recorded within a month of each other.
  The 2006 Beechtree/Verifides sequence, in particular, is the signature of a portfolio warehousing transaction interposed between the divesting operating company and the ultimate acquirer.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT.
The Zofillip Pro Group LLC → Intellectual Ventures II LLC merger was recorded 2013-05-28, and IV's district-court campaign on this family began in 2013 (S.D.N.Y. 1:13-cv-03777; N.D. Ala. 2:13-cv-01106; and the 2013 W.D. Pa., S.D. Ohio, D. Neb., D. Minn., D. Md., N.D. Ga., W.D. Mo. filings). The consolidation into the asserting entity therefore lands within weeks of the first suits — the classic step that puts a clean, single plaintiff of record in place before filing. The subsequent PTAB wave (CBM2014-00157; IPR2014-00672/00673; IPR2014-00719/00722; IPR2015-01322/01323) confirms this patent was the subject of a sustained assertion-and-challenge program.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No bankruptcy conveyance appears anywhere in the chain. The 2006 General Dynamics → Beechtree transfer and the accompanying Security Agreement at Reel 018224/0924 (executed 2006-08-31) read as a negotiated divestiture with seller financing, not a distressed sale. The 2011 Release by Secured Party (Reel 025923/0531, executed 2009-09-15) closed that financing out.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR.
The shape fits — an operating defense prime (General Dynamics) exiting a patent to a non-practicing holder 60 days after acquiring it, with a security interest retained — but I found no SEC filing, Patent Progress, or EFF coverage tying General Dynamics to affirmative assertions by Beechtree/Verifides/Zofillip. A retained seller-financing interest is suggestive of an ongoing economic stake in monetization, but a security agreement is not proof of an assertion mandate. Not scored as a finding.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT (inverse signal absent).
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Hanger Solutions, LLC, an entity whose documented history is offensive assertion. The patent was never neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are documented on the reel record: (i) a shell/warehousing transfer out of an operating defense prime at Reel 018563/0198 (executed 2006-08-22), flowing through Beechtree Verifides Management LLC and Verifides Technology Corp. to Zofillip Pro Group LLC at Reel 023373/0104 (2009-10-14), with no product ever cited; (ii) a known asserter in the chain — the Zofillip → Intellectual Ventures II LLC merger recorded 2013-05-28, followed within weeks by IV's 2013 infringement suits (Signal 5, pre-litigation transfer), and IV II confirming whole-title ownership in its own May 21, 2014 Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(b); and (iii) cascading transfers in both 2006–2009 and 2020, ending at Hanger Solutions, LLC, a repeat plaintiff. The one signal I could not evaluate — repeat correspondent — should be treated as an open item, not as absent evidence.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — patent number 6314409 (reels to pull in full: 009536/0780, 009536/0778, 011958/0745, 014438/0745, 014455/0356, 016976/0800, 018224/0924, 018563/0198, 019466/0552, 023373/0104, 025923/0531, 026116/0741).

I'll research the cited prior art references on the face of US 6,314,409.

Let me pull the front-page citation lists from multiple mirrors.

Verification status first (so you can weigh what follows)

I ran this task against live sources. Two limits you should know about before reading the analysis:

1. The search tool returned a hard step cap mid-session ("You have reached the maximum number of steps"). I therefore could not complete a limitation-by-limitation § 102 mapping across every cited reference, and could not retrieve a clean, machine-readable copy of the '409 front page.
2. The best copies of the '409 front page that are publicly retrievable are OCR'd PTAB exhibits of the printed patent, and that OCR is badly garbled (e.g., "Yeafsley 6161." for "Yearlsey et al.", "816616" for "Stefik", "KaZIIlieICZak" for "Kamieniecki"). I recovered surnames, months and years reliably, but I am not going to invent patent numbers to fill the gaps.

I am not asserting that the following is the complete front-page citation list of US 6,314,409. Where I state a number, I have separate grounding for it. Where I only have an OCR surname + month/year, I say so.

1. The § 102 framework that governs every reference below

Build on the priority chain already established: US 09/178,606 filed 1998-10-26; § 62 division of 08/968,887 (filed 1997-11-05); which is a § 120 continuation of 08/584,493, filed 1996-01-11, abandoned (Google Patents priority date = 1996-01-11). The '409 is pre-AIA (filed 1998), so AIA §§ 102/103 do not apply.

This is the single most important analytical point about this reference list: a full third of the recovered entries (4/1996 through 4/1999) postdate the 1996-01-11 priority date. They cannot anticipate under § 102(a) or (b) on their face; they are only available as § 102(e) art if their own US filing dates precede 1996-01-11, or under § 102(a) only if the patentee cannot swear behind. Any § 102 conclusion about them requires the reference's filing date, not its issue date — and I could not verify those filing dates in this session.

Discrepancy to flag against the previously-generated section: my earlier summary recorded 08/584,493 as filed Jan. 11, 1996, matching Google Patents' 1996-01-11 priority date. The OCR of Plaintiff's own Markman deck in 1:13-cv-03777 reads "(62) Division of application No. 08/968,887, filed on Nov. 5, 1997, which is a continuation of application No. 08/584,493, filed on Nov. 11, 1996, and abandoned." One of these is wrong; a Nov. 11, 1996 date would move the § 102(a)/(e) cut-off ten months later and would promote 5/1996–10/1996 art (including the Stefik 6/1996 entry) into § 102(a) territory. I treat 1996-01-11 as correct (two independent sources), and the "Nov. 11, 1996" string as an OCR/transcription variance — but it is worth noting because it is outcome-determinative for the Stefik reference. Source: http://ocr.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2014-00157/.../Exhibit-1012-1012___2014_03_07_IVs_409_Slides_Markman_Hearing.pdf

Second discrepancy to flag: the prior summary described the claim set as claim 1 with dependents 2–18. The IPR2015-01323 petition challenges claims 21, 24–27, 29–30, 32–33, and 36–40 of the '409, which means the patent contains at least 40 claims — i.e., claims 1–18 are only the first claim group, and the four other independent-claim concepts (access-control method, device, storage medium, plus others) carry their own dependent sets. This doesn't contradict the earlier summary; it extends it, but it materially changes the anticipation analysis, because the PTAB's chosen primary art was aimed at claims 21–40, not claim 1. Source: http://ocr.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2015-01323/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6314409/docs/06-01-2015-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_of_US_Patent_No_6,314,409.pdf

2. Section A — U.S. patent citations (as recovered from the printed patent's "References Cited" block)

Recovered via OCR of Petitioner's Exhibit 1001 (CBM2014-00157) and Exhibit 1002 (IPR2014-00722).

Bottom line on Section A: the front-page U.S. patent list is overwhelmingly background art — cryptographic file security (Feistel, Ehrsam, Attanasio, Birney) and generic access-control/OS monitors (Morgan, Halpern, Bartek, Richard). Only four entries carry real § 102 weight, and all four are better characterized as § 103 art: Shear (A23), Wyman (A25), Stefik (A31), Ginter (A45) — plus Bender (A37) narrowly for the marking/watermarking claims.

3. Section B — Foreign patent documents

I did not recover any other foreign patent documents from the '409 face. Absence of evidence, not proof — the OCR block for foreign references was not captured in the excerpts I retrieved.

4. Section C — Non-patent literature cited on the face

These I recovered with specific page/date detail, so they are quotable:

5. Section D — The art actually litigated: this is the most relevant prior art, by the record's own admission

The front-page citations are what the examiner considered. The most probative prior art for the '409 is what petitioners chose to assert at the PTAB, because those challenges were authored by experts with the specification in hand and are the strongest available signal of anticipation risk.

The four litigated references, assessed

1. Herschaft — Petitioner proffered a WorldCat catalog record (Ex. 1013), a declaration of James G. Dunham (Ex. 1011), and a letter from Julie Presas (Ex. 1014). That is the classic evidentiary package used when the § 102(b) date of a printed publication is contested and must be proved up through library/archival provenance. Petitioner asserted Herschaft anticipates claims 21, 24–27, 29–30, 32–33, and 36–40 — i.e., the claims aimed at the output/derivative/peripheral aspects, not claim 1. I could not verify Herschaft's full bibliographic citation in this session and will not fabricate one. Confidence that Herschaft is the PTAB's primary asserted anticipating reference: high (it is quoted verbatim from the petition's table of contents).
2. Narasimhalu — asserted in the same petition as an independent anticipation ground against the same claim set (21, 24–27, 29–30, 32–33, 36–40). The fact that petitioner ran two separate single-reference anticipation theories against identical claims means the art was chosen for completeness-of-disclosure, not for obviousness-type combination. Full citation not verified in this session.
3. U.S. 5,499,298 — Petitioner's Ex. 1009, i.e., a US patent proffered as § 102(e)-style art in the 01322 ground. I could not verify its title, inventor, or dates in this session, and I am not going to guess. Its presence alongside FIPS 140-1 suggests it supplies the secure-hardware/tamper-response element of the ground.
4. U.S. 5,765,152 — Petitioner's Ex. 1010. My strong (but unverified) belief is that this is the Erickson "System and method for managing copyrighted electronic media" patent, issued 1998-06-09 — a foundational rights-management reference covering registering, packaging, and distributing copyrighted works in encrypted form with usage rules. Treat the identification as provisional. If correct, it is a § 102(e) candidate for the packaging/rules-with-data claims.
5. FIPS 140-1 (Federal Information Processing Standard, Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules) — asserted to supply the "tamper detecting mechanism" element and the destruction-of-keys-on-detection behavior. This is a standard, not a patent, and it is the one reference here that maps directly onto the express point of novelty in the specification ("Prior art systems rely on software for security. Without the tamper detection/reset mechanism of this invention, software can be modified or data can be intercepted…"). Its availability date matters enormously: if FIPS 140-1 (final, 1994-01-11) predates the priority date — which it appears to — it is a § 102(b) printed publication and is the reference to worry about for the tamper-detection limitation.

6. Ranked answer to "which claim(s) would each reference potentially anticipate?"

7. What I could not do, stated plainly

• I did not retrieve a clean front page. The numbers for the 1970s–1980s entries and for the 1994–1999 entries are not in this answer because the only accessible copies are garbled OCR and I will not reconstruct patent numbers by inference. Anyone relying on this must pull the printed patent at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6314409/en (Citations tab) or the USPTO/PatentCenter document.
• I did not verify the filing dates that determine § 102(e) status for the post-1996-01-11 references (Miyahara, Stefik, Ryan, Arnold, Ishiguro, Webster, Ginter, 5,499,298, 5,765,152). For a patent with a 1996 priority date, the filing date is the entire ballgame for that group, and it is exactly the datum I lack.
• I did not verify what was asserted in CBM2014-00157 or in the IPR2014-00719/-00722 adverse-judgment proceedings. I only confirmed their existence and outcomes.
• I did not identify Herschaft or Narasimhalu bibliographically. I have their role in the record verbatim and their asserted claim coverage verbatim; I do not have the citations.
• No 2026 docket activity on the '409 was found, consistent with the earlier section — and with an adjusted expiration of 2016-01-21.

The one place where a live source and the prior write-up genuinely diverge is the 08/584,493 filing date (Jan. 11, 1996 vs. Nov. 11, 1996), and it is not a trivial divergence: it decides whether the Stefik reference is § 102(a)/102(e) art or nothing at all. I would resolve that from the PatentCenter continuity data before relying on any anticipation theory built on Stefik.

I'll research the prior-art record for US 6,314,409 — the PTAB proceedings and the references cited in the patent itself — before building the obviousness analysis.

The CBM and IPR records give me the actual prior-art universe. Let me pull the specific references and grounds the Board relied on.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,314,409 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on date discrepancy: the task header says April 26, 2026, while the fetched page and the earlier sections used 2026‑09‑11. Nothing below turns on the difference; I flag it only so the record is consistent.

1. Scope, posture, and two corrections to the earlier sections

The §103 question is now largely retrospective. The CBM final written decision in J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC, CBM2014‑00157 (PTAB Jan. 12, 2016), held claims 1–11, 13–21, 24–27, 29, 30, 32, 33, and 36–39 unpatentable, and the resulting Post‑Grant Review Certificate J1 (issued Jul. 20, 2018) cancelled exactly that set. Claim 23 was disclaimed by the Patent Owner on Nov. 3, 2014. The ground actually tried and decided was §101 (Alice), not §103.
(Institution Decision; PG Review Certificate J1)

Correction 1 — independent-claim architecture. The earlier summary inferred four independent-claim concepts and implied the device/storage-medium claims sat inside the asserted set. The CBM institution decision states that "Independent claims 1, 21, and 24 are directed to methods." Combining that with the J1 cancellation list, the claims never cancelled are 12, 22, 28, 31, 34, and 35. It is therefore plausible — flagged, not verified — that the device ("means for…") and machine-readable-medium claims are among 34/35 and were never challenged at all. Any §103 analysis of those claims is accordingly hypothetical.

Correction 2 — claim 12. The earlier summary treated claim 12 (payment) as an ordinary dependent claim. In fact claim 12 was challenged but survived the CBM, and it is the claim on which the Board found CBM standing (i.e., that the patent performed operations used in a financial service). It is the single most consequential surviving claim and deserves its own §103 row (Ground D below).

Standard applied. The '409 patent carries a Jan. 11, 1996 priority date, so pre‑AIA §§102/103 govern (Graham/KSR; MPEP 2141–2144). Critically, statements in the patent's own "Background" describing the state of the art operate as admissions usable as prior art.

2. The prior-art universe actually available

The Google Patents "Prior Art" section on this page consists of (a) machine-generated prior art keywords ("data, access, rules, protected portions"), (b) "References Cited"/"Cited By" tables, and (c) the narrative background. The provided page text contains only (a) and (c); I could not retrieve the "References Cited" table itself, and my attempts to pull the IPR petition texts were cut off by the search-step limit. I therefore rely on (i) the references named in the patent's own background and (ii) the exhibit lists I did retrieve from the PTAB record (IPR2015‑01322 exhibit list, IPR2015‑01323).

3. Element mapping — claim 1 as the anchor

Claim 1 (the only independent claim whose verbatim text the earlier section verified) requires: (i) protecting portions of the data; (ii) openly distributing the protected portions; (iii) rules concerning access rights; (iv) an access mechanism enforcing those rules; and (v) every access to the unprotected form limited by the rules so that unauthorized access yields only the protected/non‑useable form.

4. Grounds of obviousness

Ground A — Erickson '152 in view of FIPS 140‑1. Erickson teaches nearly all of claim 1 at the software layer, including the counter‑intuitive "openly distribute the ciphertext" step. The only missing element is enforcement that survives a hostile user. FIPS 140‑1 supplies exactly that element as a standardized, mandatory‑for‑federal‑use specification: a cryptographic module boundary, tamper detection/response, and zeroization of keys. Motivation: the '409 specification itself concedes that OS‑resident protections "can be circumvented through the OS or by‑passing it," and that dongles and uncopyable media had failed — meaning the field was expressly searching for hardware‑rooted enforcement. FIPS 140‑1 was the obvious catalog of that hardware. Reasonable expectation of success: tamper‑responding modules (smart cards, secure coprocessors) satisfying FIPS 140‑1 existed before the '96 priority date. Result: claims 1–11, 13–21, 24–27, 29, 30, 32, 33, and 36–39 rendered obvious — a point of some irony, since these are precisely the claims the Board later cancelled on §101.

Ground B — Erickson '152 + Herschaft + US 5,499,298 + FIPS 140‑1. This is the shape of the ground IBM actually pleaded in IPR2015‑01322/‑01323 (filed Jun. 1, 2015; instituted Dec. 8, 2015 for claims 1–11 and 13–20; terminated Apr. 7, 2016 because the CBM FWD had already cancelled every challenged claim). I can state the exhibit composition with confidence; I could not retrieve the petition's limitation‑by‑limitation mapping, so I do not assert how Herschaft or '298 were applied. The inference I am willing to draw — labeled as inference — is that FIPS 140‑1 was used for the tamper‑detection/zeroization limitations and the WorldCAT‑authenticated Herschaft exhibit (plus a library letter) was used to establish a dated printed publication teaching rights‑based content distribution.

Ground C — The admitted access‑control literature combined with conventional encryption. ORCON (1981) gives originator‑controlled redistribution (claim 7); PAC/PACL (1989) gives rules attached to and propagating with objects; ORGCON (1991) gives an indelibly attached permission list; ORAC (1990) gives intersecting multi‑owner rights and identity/attribute gating (claim 13); TAM (1992) expressly identifies the DAC "safety problem" — that malicious code can rewrite the protection state — which is the single strongest motivation‑to‑combine citation in the whole record, because it is the art itself pointing at the need for non‑modifiable enforcement. Combine with ordinary public‑key distribution of encrypted content (admitted in the '409 spec) and a tamper‑detecting module (FIPS 140‑1), and claim 1's architecture follows. The Patent Owner attacked this line in the CBM, arguing (through Dr. Goldschlag) that ORGCON is a read, no‑copy policy requiring indissociable distribution lists, unlike claim 6's "openly distributing" an encrypted version (Ex. 2008 ¶¶ 27–30). That is a genuine, but narrow, differentiation — addressed in §5.

Ground D — Claim 12 (payment). Claim 12's payment limitation is squarely met by the patent's own admissions: real‑time Internet/direct‑dial payment and prepaid balances "debited against merchant credits, with periodic batch updating." Paid licensing of content was a routine commercial step; per‑access metering was already taught (e.g., the metering/usage‑based billing art of the early 1990s). Motivation: monetizing graded rights as taught by ORCON/ORAC. Claim 12 should be the easiest claim to invalidate on §103, because everything in it is admitted art plus a conventional billing mechanism.

Ground E — Output‑marking and device‑type claims. Low et al. (INFOCOM 1995) teaches line/word‑shifting document marking, meeting the watermark/header‑footer dependents. The stand‑alone‑device claims (facsimile, television, VCR, laser printer, telephone, laser‑disk player, computer) are met under KSR by the mere application of the same access mechanism to any device that renders protected content — an analogous, predictable environment change with no new function.

Ground F — Non‑overridable built‑in rules (the 14–15 / 34–35 family). Mandatory (non‑discretionary) access control that cannot be relaxed by a lesser authority is the MAC/DAC distinction the patent itself invokes by name (McCollum's title, "Beyond the Pale of MAC and DAC"), and the DCID 1/7 policies (NO_CONTRACTOR, NO_FOREIGN) are compulsory by construction. Hard‑coded, non‑overridable constraints plus the CA‑issued certificate described in the '409 spec supply this limitation without invention.

5. Anticipating the Patent Owner's rebuttals

• No teaching to combine. KSR disposes of this: all references are in the same field (information security / rights management), the '409 background cites them as the state of the art, and the patent's own admission that encryption "once received… may be freely manipulated and redistributed" defines the problem the combination solves.
• ORGCON teaches away (its read/no‑copy policy discourages open distribution of ciphertext; Goldschlag ¶¶ 27–29). This is the strongest nonobviousness argument on claim 1, but it fails at the point of the combination: the '409 spec concedes that encrypt‑and‑distribute‑openly was already known, so there is no teaching away from that step — only from copying in the different context of a trusted reference monitor.
• Prior art enforces in a trusted OS; the claims require hardware. Colorable. But FIPS 140‑1 and the contemporaneous secure‑coprocessor work supply the missing teaching, and the '409 spec admits the trusted‑OS premise fails.
• Board rejected the "technological invention" argument. On rehearing the Board was "persuaded by Petitioner's arguments that the 'access mechanism' limitation is not a technological feature or improvement over the prior art" (NLR summary of Paper 20). This is probative of obviousness but not a §103 holding — it arose in the CBM standing/§101 posture.
• Secondary considerations. I found no evidence of a nexus between the claimed architecture and any commercial product. The patent's monetization history is licensing/serial NPE transfer (MITRE → MRJ → Veridian → General Dynamics → BeechTree → Verifides → Zofillip → IV II → IV Assets 158 → Hanger Solutions), which is generally poor evidence of non‑obviousness.

6. What this record does not establish

1. No PTAB §103 holding exists. IPR2014‑00672 and ‑00673 were not instituted on the merits (IBM); IPR2014‑00719 and ‑00722 ended in adverse judgment/termination (Compass Bank); IPR2015‑01322/‑01323 were instituted but terminated before FWD. The only FWD on this patent is the §101 CBM decision.
2. I could not retrieve claim text for claims 21, 24, 34, or 35, nor the "References Cited" table. My mappings for anything beyond verified claim 1 are inferential.
3. Identities of "Herschaft," US 5,499,298, and the basis of the Apr. 28, 2015 S.D.N.Y. partial summary judgment (W.D./S.D.N.Y. 1:13‑cv‑03777) are unverified by me. I have deliberately not characterized those references' disclosures rather than guess.
4. Absence of evidence is not proof. My searches were capped; a further pass on the IBM petition papers, the CBM Petition (Paper 1, esp. pp. 28–65), and the "References Cited" table would materially tighten Grounds A–F.

7. Bottom line

Viewed as of the Jan. 11, 1996 priority date, claims 1–21 and 24–39 of US 6,314,409 look highly vulnerable under §103 as a predictable combination of (a) known, originator‑controlled rule‑based access policies (ORCON 1981, PAC/PACL 1989, ORAC 1990, ORGCON 1991, TAM 1992), (b) known encrypt‑and‑distribute‑openly rights‑management systems (Erickson US 5,765,152, filed 1994), and (c) a known tamper‑detecting cryptographic‑module standard (FIPS 140‑1, 1994), with output‑marking supplied by Low et al. (1995) and payment by the patent's own admissions. Ground B is the combination the record shows IBM actually advanced. The best remaining defense is claim 1's "every access" / hardware‑enforcement limitation as distinguished from software rights engines over a trusted OS — the same narrowing argument the Patent Owner pressed before the Board, which the Board discounted and which was never tested in a §103 FWD because the CBM's §101 ruling mooted every IPR.