US 6385535

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

US Patent 6,385,535 — Summary

Verification note: My searches surfaced this patent only through secondary aggregators (Google Patents, uspto.report, Justia, FreePatentsOnline citation lists). I did not retrieve a live USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR record or an official CAFC docket entry for this number. Numbers below are taken as-is and are not auto-corrected.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"A navigation system having a navigation controller includes a voice recognition unit for recognizing a predetermined word from the spoken utterances of a user. It also includes a destination supposition and suggestion unit for predicting an appropriate destination desired by a user, based on a user's speech, and audibly suggests the predicted destination, and destination entry unit. If the suggested destination satisfies a user, the destination entry unit enters into the navigation controller the suggested destination."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 19 claims. Independents are 1, 7, 13, 18.

Claim 1 — Navigation system (apparatus, broadest claim).
A navigation system with a navigation controller (finds a route to a set destination, displays the route with a map of the vehicle's position, and navigates the vehicle there) comprising three elements:

1. a voice recognition unit that recognizes a predetermined word in the user's spoken utterances;
2. a destination supposition and suggestion unit that supplies a suggested destination based on the user's utterances; and
3. a destination entry unit that enters the suggested destination as the final destination for the navigation controller.
   Nothing in claim 1 requires the suggestion to be audible, nor requires the user to confirm — those come in dependent claims.

Claim 7 — Navigation system with speaker identification (apparatus).
Builds on claim 1 by adding (a) a user voice characteristic registering unit that registers the voice of a user who frequently rides in the vehicle, and (b) a user identifying unit that identifies the current user from that registered voice. The voice recognition unit then recognizes the predetermined word from utterances of the identified user, and the destination supposition and suggestion unit predicts a destination from those utterances. Destination entry as in claim 1.

Claim 13 — Method of navigating a vehicle (broadest method claim).
Steps: provide a navigation system with a navigation controller; receive a spoken utterance from a user in the voice recognition unit; identify a predetermined word from that utterance; identify one or more destinations using the predetermined word; suggest a desired destination; and provide the desired destination to the navigation controller. (Dependent claim 14 adds reviewing history data; 15 makes the suggestion audible; 16–17 add a destination-confirmation step, optionally audible.)

Claim 18 — Method of navigating with speaker identification.
The method counterpart of claim 7: provide a system having the navigation controller plus user voice characteristic registering, user identifying, voice recognition, destination supposition and suggestion, and destination entry units; register a frequent user's voice; identify the user by the registered voice; recognize a predetermined word from that user's utterances; predict a destination from those utterances; and enter the suggested destination as the final destination. (Dependent claim 19 adds audible provision of the suggested destination.)

Disclosed subject matter (for context on how the claims are supported)

The specification describes an on-vehicle system where a voice agent (41) houses a spoken-utterance recognition unit (61) and destination supposition/suggestion unit (62). Word databases (73a, 73b…) hold keywords grouped by preference type — "recreation" (e.g., "somewhere exciting," "where," "boring," "recreation area"), "dining" ("hungry," "eat," "restaurant," "lunch"), and "relaxation" ("restroom," "tired," "rest spot," "thirsty"). A word-spotting technique extracts keywords from ordinary conversation rather than requiring a command prompt. A user preference database (75), user selection history database (76) and facilities information database (77) feed a destination supposition and suggestion processor (78), which draws also on event, traffic and weather data obtained via a PDA terminal (21) with radio communication. The system first suggests a type (e.g., "sporting events," "ramen noodle shop," "family restaurant"), and once the user accepts, narrows to a specific destination — in the worked examples, choosing the facility with the shortest travel time (Seibu Stadium; Kurumaya Ramen Noodle chain, Mitonishi store; Denny's, Makuhari store). Selections are written back to the history database, with the notable asymmetry that recently visited recreation areas are disfavored while frequently visited restaurants are favored. FIGS. 7–9 are the three flowcharts for recreation, dining, and relaxation branches.

CAFC / litigation check (2026)

No CAFC 2026 docket activity involving U.S. Patent 6,385,535 was found. I flag two near-misses that should not be conflated with this patent:

• A 2026 Federal Circuit combined petition for panel rehearing/en banc in a TrackTime matter concerns U.S. Patent Nos. 8,856,638 and 8,862,978 (Amazon). The "638" there is a different patent, not 6,385,535.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. v. Alpine Electronics of America, Inc., 609 F.3d 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (Nos. 2009-1544, -1545) involved Alpine as a defendant, but the patents in suit were U.S. 7,051,018 and 7,082,437 — not the '535 patent.

Uncertainty / limitations

• I could not access USPTO PatentCenter directly, so maintenance-fee and terminal-disclaimer/expiration details are unverified; the "Expired – Lifetime" label comes from an automated aggregator and is an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
• I found no evidence of the '535 patent being asserted in litigation, but absence of search hits is not proof of absence — dedicated docket tools (PACER, Docket Navigator, CAFC opinion archives) would be needed for a definitive negative.
• Claim text above is paraphrased from the full patent document; consult the issued claims for precise scope.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6385535.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 6,385,535

Bottom Line

No litigation specifically involving US Patent 6,385,535 was found.

I searched litigation-focused sources (including queries targeting the Unified Patents litigation portal, RPX/insight.rpxcorp.com, Docket Alarm, CourtListener/RECAP, PACER-oriented aggregators, and general litigation databases) for the exact patent number 6385535. None of the results identified a lawsuit, ITC Section 337 investigation, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal in which US 6,385,535 was the asserted patent or a patent-in-suit.

What the search actually returned (and why it is not this patent)

Per the strict instruction not to auto-correct or conflate identifiers, I am flagging the near-miss hits that could be mistaken for this patent:

Key contextual facts about US 6,385,535 (from the patent record)

• Title: "Navigation system"
• Patent number: US 6,385,535 B2 (per the source, published/granted 2002-05-07)
• Application number: US 09/828,421; filed 2001-04-05
• Priority date: 2000-04-07 (JP 2000-106207)
• Original/current assignee: Alpine Electronics, Inc.
• Inventors: Tetsuya Ohishi; Kiyoto Hiruta; Tatsuki Nakamura; Hiroshi Shishido; Hiroyuki Nemoto; Koji Hayashida; Fumio Saito
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2021-04-05)
• Only two references cited during prosecution (i.e., prior art cited by the examiner — not litigation): US 6,230,136 B1 (Matsushita) and US 6,175,803 B1 (Ford Global Technologies). Neither constitutes a lawsuit.

Important caveats

1. Expiration: Because US 6,385,535 expired on 2021-04-05 (source: Google Patents legal-status data), any infringement litigation would have had to be filed during its enforceable term. An expired patent cannot support an ongoing infringement suit.
2. Search limitations: I was unable to retrieve a direct hit from the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation) or a PACER docket for this specific number. Aggregator coverage of thin, old, or settled patent cases can be incomplete.
3. Recommendation for definitive confirmation: A conclusive negative should be verified against PACER's full docket search (all district courts + Federal Circuit) and Lex Machina / Docket Navigator / RPX by patent number, and via the USPTO Patent Assignment / litigation search. I did not have authenticated access to those paywalled/full docket systems in this session, so I cannot represent the above as an exhaustive litigation clearance.

Conclusion: Based on the searches performed and the authoritative patent record, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 6,385,535. The Alpine Electronics litigation that does appear in the record (Omnitek, Britannica, and the Honeywell ITC matter) involves the same assignee/party but different patents, and should not be attributed to US 6,385,535.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against web sources, since the "PTAB proceedings on file" block reports no AIA trials indexed by ODP.

The first pass returned mostly false positives on other "553" patents. Let me search more tightly for this specific patent number and its owner.

No IPR hits so far. Let me run the most targeted possible checks — the PTAB trial docket itself and any litigation involving this patent number.

PTAB Proceedings on US 6,385,535

Important caveat up front: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block reports zero AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and my independent web searches found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 6,385,535. I ran four targeted queries against the proceeding number, the patent number, the title ("Navigation system"), and the owner (Alpine Electronics). Every apparent hit was a false positive on a different patent — the Masimo 10,588,553 IPRs (IPR2020-01536/-01537), the ClearOne 9,264,553 IPR (IPR2017-01785), and an optical-modulator '535 patent. None of those is this patent. I also hit my search-step ceiling before I could do a final direct ptacts.uspto.gov trial-number lookup, so I cannot rule out a recently-filed, not-yet-indexed petition with absolute certainty. Treat the finding below as "no PTAB activity on file," with that one caveat.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,385,535: 0 — no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, and no institution denials, because no petition has ever been filed. The defensive posture for anyone handed a demand letter on this patent is not "hardened" or "invalidated" — it is moot: the patent's 20-year term ran out on 2021-04-05 (Google Patents records the anticipated expiration on that date and the current legal status as "Expired – Lifetime"), so the patent cannot be asserted against any post-expiration conduct.

(No proceedings to enumerate)

There are no proceeding entries to list. For completeness, the absence is worth documenting against the patent's face:

• Patent: US 6,385,535 B2, "Navigation system"
• Application: US 09/828,421, filed 2001-04-05; priority JP 2000-106207, 2000-04-07; granted 2002-05-07
• Assignee: Alpine Electronics, Inc. (original and current) — an operating company, not a monetization entity or defensive aggregator
• Claims: 19 total (independent claims 1, 7, 13, 18; the rest dependent)
• Term: expired 2021-04-05 (full 20-year term from filing; status "Expired – Lifetime")
• Examiner-cited references (2): US 6,230,136 B1 (Matsushita, "Voice control system and navigation system using same") and US 6,175,803 B1 (Ford Global Technologies, "Vehicle navigation route generation with user selectable risk avoidance"). These are the only cited prior-art references of record and are the natural starting points for any hypothetical ground.
• Forward citations: 243 citing publications — a heavily-cited, foundational reference in the "voice-directed destination suggestion" art (it is cited by, e.g., Apple's location-services family and by Ford's SYNC-related patents), which is consistent with it never needing to be litigated: it is a background reference, not an assertion asset.

Defensive value: There is nothing to defend against. Any demand letter citing US 6,385,535 is citing an expired patent. The only theoretically live theory would be past damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year lookback — which today (2026) reaches back to 2020 — but the patent expired in April 2021, leaving at most a ~12-month sliver of allegedly infringing conduct, and only if the claimant also owned the patent at the time. In practice that is not a viable case.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 6,385,535 has been canceled by the PTAB, because no AIA trial ever reached it. The claims did not expire "invalidated" — they expired intact but unenforceable by passage of time. For an unexpired patent the distinction between canceled, sustained, and untested claims would drive strategy; here all 19 claims sit in the same bucket: expired and untestable, whether or not they would have survived an IPR.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel arises only from a petitioner who reaches a final written decision. With no petitioner and no FWD, there is no estoppel on this patent in either direction — no bar on anyone, and no bar benefiting anyone. That said, estoppel is irrelevant to a defendant here for a simpler reason: an expired patent cannot be infringed by conduct occurring after expiration, so a non-infringement/invalidity defense on the '535 patent is largely an academic exercise. If a plaintiff is nonetheless asserting the '535 patent, the threshold motion is not an IPR — it is a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment on the ground that the patent expired 2021-04-05 and cannot support prospective relief or current-activity damages.

Pattern signals. None of the PTAB-activity signals the task asks about are present: no repeat petitioner, no patent-owner appeals, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. The owner, Alpine Electronics, Inc., is a Japanese automotive-electronics manufacturer and a subsidiary of Alps Alpine — the profile of an operating company that accumulates and cross-licenses patents rather than one that files IPRs. Worth flagging as context: Alpine appears in litigation as a defendant, not a plaintiff, e.g. Omnitek Partners LLC v. Alpine Electronics, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Case No. 5:20-cv-06460, filed 2020-09-15), which asserted other Omnitek patents (8,224,569, 8,645,057) against Alpine navigation products — the '535 patent was not among them. Note also the existence of a sibling Alpine family member, US 7,277,846 ("Navigation system," priority 2000-04-14, also Alpine, listed among the '535's forward citations). If you have a genuine freedom-to-operate concern in this voice-navigation space, the sibling is the asset worth checking for term and status — not the expired '535.

Recommended next steps

1. If you received a demand letter citing US 6,385,535: check the date first. The patent expired 2021-04-05. Confirm against Google Patents US6385535B2, which lists "Anticipated expiration 2021-04-05" and status "Expired – Lifetime." A claim chart built on an expired patent is not a licensing opportunity; it is either an error or a pressure tactic.
2. Do not file an IPR. It would be a waste of fees: the Board lacks a live controversy to resolve, and the patent is unenforceable by expiry regardless of outcome. There is no FWD to cite and no proceeding number to link, because none exists.
3. If litigation is threatened on the '535 patent, move promptly on expiry rather than validity — a Rule 12 motion or early summary judgment. Preserve the § 286 lookback point: even if the plaintiff reaches for pre-expiration conduct, six years from 2026-09-29 reaches only to 2020-09-29, and the patent died 2021-04-05, so the actionable window is roughly six months and only for conduct the plaintiff actually owned.
4. Re-run the check before relying on "zero." I confirmed via the ODP structured block plus four negative web searches, and the consistent result is no AIA activity. Because I could not complete a direct PTAB E2E trial-number lookup within my search budget, do one manual query on the PTAB docket and on CourtListener for "6,385,535" before finalizing any opinion language. The expected answer is still zero — but verify rather than inherit my negative from a search-limited pass.
5. Watch for confusion with look-alike patents. Proceeding and patent numbers ending in "553"/"535" are heavily trafficked (Masimo 10,588,553; ClearOne 9,264,553; an optical-modulator '535). Confirm the exact seven-digit number (6,385,535) and the assignee (Alpine Electronics) before importing any IPR outcome from search results.

Bottom line: No PTAB proceedings exist on US 6,385,535, and none ever will be filed — the patent expired 2021-04-05. There is no FWD to link and no claim-level outcome to report, and I will not manufacture one. The absence of PTAB activity here is not the usual signal that a patent is quietly strong; it is the signal that the patent ran its full term as a heavily-cited background reference and was never worth anyone's petition.

I'll verify the assignment record and ownership status with targeted searches before reconstructing the chain.

Let me check the USPTO-side records and Alpine Electronics' corporate status.

Let me verify there are no post-issuance assignments and check NPE/asserter databases for this patent and for Alpine.

US 6,385,535 B2 — "Navigation system" — Ownership & Assignment Record

Patent data (from the authoritative full text): filed 2001-04-05 · granted 2002-05-07 · priority JP 2000-106207 (2000-04-07) · current status Expired – Lifetime (anticipated term expiration 2021-04-05) · Apps. claiming priority: JP2000-106207 / JP2001289661A.

Sourcing note: Google Patents' "Legal Events" panel for this patent shows exactly one reassignment entry (2001-08-13, inventors → ALPINE ELECTRONICS, INC., "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"). That panel is derived from USPTO assignment data, so the record exists — but Google Patents does not render the reel/frame for it, and I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame or the recording correspondent from any reachable mirror within this session. I will not invent those numbers; they must be pulled live (see verification link in the Verdict).

Inventors

Seven named inventors, all on the JP-priority application JP2000-106207:

Determination basis and confidence: the patent was filed by Alpine as applicant off a Japanese priority application, all seven inventors signed an "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" to ALPINE ELECTRONICS, INC. recorded 2001-08-13, and the subject matter (on-vehicle navigation) is Alpine's core line. That is consistent with all seven being Alpine R&D employees (engineering HQ: Iwaki-city, Fukushima, Japan), but it is an inference from the assignment, not a verified employment record.

Departure-pattern check: I could not verify individual departure dates. There is no visible signal of a coordinated inventor exodus — but note that the absence is a data gap, not a clean bill of health. Also relevant: no post-issuance assignment is recorded, so there is no "portfolio fire-sale" timestamp to anchor a departure analysis against. Inventors stayed with a company that kept the patent for its full statutory term.

Original assignee

Alpine Electronics, Inc. (アルパイン株式会社), a Japanese public company (TYO: 6816) and subsidiary of Alps Electric Co., Ltd. Named on the face of the issued patent.

• Primary business: automotive electronics — car audio, in-dash head units, and in-vehicle navigation systems. Alpine built the world's first automotive navigation system (the 1981 Electro Gyrocator) and shipped generations of DVD- and satellite-linked navigation units (NVE-N872A, PMD-B100, PND-K3, ICS-X8).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Effectively yes at the platform level: the patent describes an on-vehicle navigation system that infers a destination from in-cabin speech and audibly suggests it. Alpine was actively shipping navigation platforms and an in-car voice/agent interface line in this era, and Alpine continued to develop in-vehicle navigation well past 2002. I found no product-specific evidence (no Alpine model manual or teardown) tying a shipped unit to the specific claims of the '535 patent, so treat "product embodying the claims" as likely but unverified at claim level.
• Current status: operating, but no longer a standalone entity. Per corporate histories, Alpine became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. via a share exchange in Jan 2019, and its entire business was merged into Alps Electric / Alps Alpine in April 2020, with the consolidated company renamed Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. No bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11, no fire-sale. Alpine is also a repeat infringement defendant (Sockeye Licensing TX LLC, Voxathon LLC, Typhoon IP LLC, Omnitek Partners LLC; ITC 337-TA-657/685) — i.e., a target of NPEs, not an NPE.

Assignment timeline

• 2001-04-05 (filed) / (application-filing event, not an assignment) — Reel/frame: n/a

  • Conveyance: Application filed (US 09/828,421)
  • Context: Inventors named; rights not yet formally recorded.

• executed on/before 2001-08-13 / recorded 2001-08-13 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — NOT RETRIEVABLE from sources reached; pull live from Assignment Center

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (employer assignment; matches the standard inventor→corporate-assignee instrument filed with the application)
  • Assignor: SHISHIDO, HIROSHI; SAITO, FUMIO; HIRUTA, KIYOTO; OHISHI, TETSUYA; NAKAMURA, TATSUKI; HAYASHIDA, KOJI; NEMOTO, HIROYUKI (all seven inventors)
  • Assignee: ALPINE ELECTRONICS, INC.
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable in this session — must be pulled from the Assignment Center record. No recurrence can be assessed because there is only one link in the chain.
  • Context: Routine employer assignment — inventors conveying rights to their employer of record. Not a sale, not a reorg, not a transfer to an asserter.

No further assignment events are recorded. After 2001-08-13 there are no subsequent reassignments, security agreements, mergers, name changes, or releases on the publicly indexed record. Alpine Electronics (later Alps Alpine) held this patent from filing through statutory expiry on 2021-04-05. The corporate absorption of Alpine into Alps Alpine was implemented as a share exchange/merger at the group level, not via a recorded patent-by-patent assignment.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6385535
    2000 : JP priority application filed
    2001 : US application filed
         : Inventors assign to Alpine Electronics
    2002 : US patent issued
    2019 : Alpine becomes Alps Alpine subsidiary
    2020 : Alpine business merged into Alps Alpine
    2021 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. There is no transfer to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity. The only recorded conveyance is the 2001-08-13 inventor→Alpine employer assignment; title never left the operating company.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Alpine Electronics, Inc. nor Alps Alpine appears on any NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities). Alpine appears in Unified Patents / RPX litigation data as a defendant in NPE suits — the opposite direction of the signal.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not applicable / not present. A recurrence test requires ≥2 recorded links; this chain has exactly one. The correspondent of record for the 2001-08-13 entry could not be retrieved here and must be checked live; a single appearance would still not be a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. No chain of LLCs, no clustered transfers, no shared correspondent addresses, because there is only the one recording in 2001.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment precedes any suit naming this patent; in fact I found no litigation asserting US 6,385,535 at all.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Neither Alpine Electronics nor Alps Electric/Alps Alpine filed Chapter 7/11. The 2019–2020 events were a group share exchange and business merger, not a distressed sale. Alpine's US operations were absorbed by a solvent parent.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to a third-party NPE asserting against competitors. Alpine retained title.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at the original operating company and then at expiry.

Verdict

Insufficient data — only the original assignment is recorded.

Justification: the entire recorded chain is a single instrument — the seven inventors' employer assignment to Alpine Electronics, Inc. recorded 2001-08-13 (per the patent's Google Patents legal-events panel, derived from USPTO reassignment data), with no post-issuance reassignment, security interest, merger recording, or release through the patent's statutory expiry on 2021-04-05. The original assignee is a genuine operating manufacturer of the accused-technology class (car audio and in-vehicle navigation) that was absorbed into Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. in 2020 as a solvent corporate merger, not a fire-sale — and Alpine appears in NPE litigation databases as a recurring defendant, not an asserter. There is therefore no shell-entity, cascading-transfer, pre-litigation-transfer, privateering, or defensive-aggregator evidence to weigh; the correct call is a data limitation on the chain, not an NPE finding. Note that I could not retrieve the 2001-08-13 reel/frame or correspondent of record in this session and did not fabricate them.

Verify at USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the indexed front end https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — search patent number 6385535 and record the reel/frame and correspondent for the sole 2001-08-13 entry. Cross-check the Google Patents legal-events panel at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6385535/en, which is the source of the single assignment entry cited above.

I'll search for the USPTO record for patent 6385535 and its cited prior art references.

Let me research the two cited prior art references and verify the USPTO record.

Let me verify the USPTO record directly and check the Japanese priority document and any additional references.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 6,385,535 B2

Note on scope and verification: My follow-up verification searches (USPTO PatentCenter direct record, JP 2001-289661 A, and any reexam/IPR references) hit the tool-call limit and could not be completed. This section therefore builds on (a) the authoritative full text of US 6,385,535 supplied in the prompt, and (b) the reference records retrieved for the two references listed under "Patent Citations (2)" on the Google Patents page for US 6,385,535. No contradiction with the earlier sections was found. The earlier "Patent summary" already flagged that the direct USPTO record could not be retrieved; that limitation carries forward here.

1. What actually counts as a "patent citation" for '535

Reading the '535 Google Patents page literally, the patent-number-bearing tables break down as:

So there are exactly two patent references the examiner applied against '535:

1. US 6,230,136 B1 — Matsushita
2. US 6,175,803 B1 — Ford Global Technologies

Both are marked with the examiner asterisk, i.e., they are the prosecution prior art. (The large "Cited By" lists — e.g., Apple/Magellan/Ford/X One patents — are not prior art to '535 and are excluded from this analysis.)

2. Reference A — US 6,230,136 B1

Brief description (what it actually discloses). Contrary to what the title might suggest, the retrieved claims/abstract describe a voice/audio data decoding apparatus — not a speech-recognition or keyword-spotting system. The claimed subject matter is sequence(s) of: first data storage means for temporarily storing input voice data; data sort means that sorts voice data only if coded in a coding system on a specific standard (e.g., ADPCM); second/third data storage means; count means and write count means; data write/read means; decode means; data synchronization means; parallel/serial data conversion means; and data interpolation means. The stated object is to decode voice data coded under one standard and forward it to a D/A converter with only small-scale circuit changes, and to handle differing sampling frequencies via the interpolation/synchronization circuitry. The "navigation system using same" aspect is the use of this decoded-voice/audio path in a navigation unit (i.e., the guidance-voice output/playback side).

The EP counterpart's own cited art (Dunlop, "HCI 4 Multimedia The CD Family"; US 5,386,436; JP H07-135496) reinforces that this document sits in the audio codec/voice-data handling field rather than in route guidance or destination entry.

Which claim(s) could it potentially anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102?
None — not a single claim of '535, in whole or in part, is anticipated.

• § 102 statutory basis: It can only be prior art under pre-AIA § 102(e) (a U.S. patent granted on an application filed before '535's effective date; US filing 1998-12-03 ≪ 2000-04-07). It is not § 102(a)/(b) art because it granted 2001-05-08, after '535's 2001-04-05 filing.
• Vs. claim 1: The claim requires a voice recognition unit for recognizing a predetermined word from spoken utterances of a user and, critically, a destination supposition and suggestion unit and a destination entry unit. US 6,230,136 discloses none of these. It is a voice-data decoding front end, and its "voice control" is control of voice data (coding/decoding standards), not recognition of a spoken word. It does not suggest a destination from an utterance.
• Vs. claim 7 / claim 18: These require a user voice characteristic registering unit and a user identifying unit (speaker identification against registered voiceprints). US 6,230,136 contains no speaker registration/identification.
• Vs. claims 3–6 / 9–12: No word-(keyword) database, no preference database, no facilities-information storage, no event-information collection/storage, and no selection-history storage. The storage means recited in US 6,230,136 are audio sample buffers for codec synchronization, not preference/history data stores.
• Roles it can realistically play: (i) § 102(e) background art evidencing that voice handling in navigation units was known before the priority date; and (ii) a § 103 secondary reference at most — but it supplies no teaching of destination prediction/suggestion, so it adds nothing to the two claim-1 elements it cannot reach.

Bottom line: US 6,230,136 is a weak reference for '535. Its citation appears to have been for general "voice + navigation system" context. It anticipates no claim.

3. Reference B — US 6,175,803 B1

Brief description (what it actually discloses). A vehicle navigation system that generates an optimal route using route-selection criteria including a user-selectable statistical risk index (e.g., a CAP crime index). As disclosed:

• Hardware: a navigation controller 10 with a navigation engine 11 and navigation database 12; a man-machine interface (MMI) 13 with a visual LCD display and manual inputs; "a speech recognition unit 14 connected to a microphone 15 and to navigation controller 10 for identifying spoken input from a user"; a speech generator 16 for audible navigation instructions; a vehicle position locator 17 (GPS/sensors); and an optional wireless communication link 18 for remotely supplied navigation/traffic data.
• Method: step 20 — determine current vehicle location; "a user inputs their desired destination through manual or spoken inputs"; step 21 — generate a route from current location to the desired destination; step 22 — provide route guidance; step 23 — off-route re-routing.
• UI flow (Fig. 3): MAIN MENU 25 ("destination input, destination memory, and system settings") → DESTINATION INPUT menu 26 (address / cross-street / points of interest) → ADDRESS menu 27 → ROUTING OPTIONS menu 28 (shortest route / avoid freeways / risk-index route) → GUIDANCE DISPLAY 29 (navigation map and/or turn-by-turn instructions).
• Core invention: segment weights (or elimination rules) adjusted by a statistical risk index vs. a user-set risk threshold; highways/freeways exempted; segment containing the destination exempted.

Which claim(s) could it potentially anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102?
This is the closest prior art to '535, but it anticipates no claim in full. Under § 102 a single reference must disclose every element; US 6,175,803 is missing the supposition/suggestion core. Mapping:

• § 102 statutory basis: pre-AIA § 102(e) (US application filed 1998-08-04, before '535's 2000-04-07 priority). It cannot be § 102(b) because it granted 2001-01-16, less than one year before '535's effective date; the § 102(a) question turns on the applicant's invention date and the JP priority, so § 102(e) is the clean basis.
• Actual role: This is a § 103 obviousness base, not a § 102 anticipation. It supplies the § 102(e) "navigation controller + speech-input navigation unit" skeleton, but the inventive core of '535 — inferring an intent from ordinary conversation and proactively suggesting a destination (then entering it on acceptance) — is absent.

Bottom line: US 6,175,803 is the most relevant of the two cited references, but it anticipates none of claims 1, 7, 13, or 18 (nor any dependent claim that incorporates the suggestion/entry or speaker-ID elements).

4. Consolidated § 102 verdict

Most relevant prior art overall: US 6,175,803 B1 (Ford, McNamara & Chowanic) — it is the only cited reference that teaches an on-vehicle navigation system with (i) route generation to a destination, (ii) map/guidance display, and (iii) a microphone + speech-recognition front end for spoken user input. It is the natural § 103 primary reference; US 6,230,136 B1 (Matsushita) is a distant secondary/background reference on voice handling in navigation units.

The two cited references together still do not disclose the distinguishing feature of '535 — predicting/supposing a destination from the content of a user's spontaneous utterance and audibly suggesting it before entry — which is why the claims issued over them.

5. Caveats and open items

1. Tool-limit truncation. I could not run the planned PatentCenter lookup for 6385535, the JP 2001-289661 A check, or a reexam/IPR sweep. All statements about which references were "cited" rest on the Google Patents "Patent Citations (2)" table, which is not a substitute for the official file wrapper. The USPTO record should be confirmed at https://patentcenter.uspto.gov and the JP priority publication at JPO/J-PlatPat.
2. A second "6385535" that is NOT the asserted patent. Multiple Justia/FreePatentsOnline pages list "6385535 | May 7, 2002 | Ohishi et al." — those are citation tables in other patents (e.g., US 9,774,717; US 10,313,826) that cite '535; they are not prior art to '535 and must not be conflated with it.
3. US 6,230,136 characterization. I describe it as a voice/audio decoding system based on the retrieved claims/abstract and the EP 0 921 641 A3 counterpart. I did not retrieve the complete US 6,230,136 specification, so I cannot fully exclude that its disclosure also touches speech recognition; the title ("voice control") is ambiguous, but the retrieved claim text is unambiguous that its claimed subject matter is codec/synchronization circuitry. Flagging this explicitly per the "state uncertainty rather than fabricate" rule.
4. § 102 vs. § 103 framing. The question asked which claims each reference potentially anticipates under § 102. My answer is deliberately literal: neither reference anticipates any claim, because the two claim-1/claim-13 core elements (destination supposition and suggestion from an utterance, and entry of a suggested destination) are absent from both. The examiner's use of these references is best explained as § 102(e) art supporting a § 103 combination with the applicant's own disclosed keyword/preference/history databases — not as anticipation.

I'll research the cited prior-art references before building the §103 analysis.

Let me pull more detail on the two cited references and check the '535 prosecution context.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,535 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope. This analysis builds on the two prior sections (patent summary, litigation summary) and does not re-describe the patent. It is limited to the prior art appearing on the patent's own page — i.e., the two examiner-cited references in the "Patent Citations (2) / Citations (2) — cited by examiner" tables at patents.google.com/patent/US6385535/en. I flag at the outset that the "Prior art keywords" (destination, user, unit, storage unit, navigation system) are Google's algorithmic tags, not references, and that the large "Cited By" lists are forward citations (all priority-dated 2000-04-14 or later, i.e., after this patent's 2000-04-07 priority) and therefore are not prior art here.

Governing law. The application was filed 2001-04-05 (priority 2000-04-07), so pre-AIA § 103(a) applies, with the Graham v. John Deere factors and the KSR gloss (a motivation to combine need not be found in the references themselves; predictable variations and design incentives count).

1. The prior art of record

2. Element-by-element mapping of the independent claims

Claim 1 (system)

Result: claim 1 is not rendered obvious by either reference, alone or in combination. The two-hunt.

Claim 7 (system with speaker identification) and claims 13 / 18 (methods)

• Claim 7 adds a user voice characteristic registering unit (registering a frequent rider's voice) and a user identifying unit (identifying the current speaker by that registered voice). Neither reference discloses speaker enrolment or speaker identification of any kind — '803's speech recognizer is speaker-independent destination input; '136 has no recognizer at all. The method claims 13 and 18 fail on the same gaps (13's "identifying one or more destinations utilizing the predetermined word" and "suggesting a desired destination"; 18's registering/identifying steps).

Dependent claims

3. The combinations a challenger would actually plead — and why they fail

Combination A — '803 + '136. Motivation: both are in the vehicle-navigation/voice field; '803 already discloses speech input and a speech generator in a navigation system, and '136 discloses voice-data handling for a navigation system. A PHOSITA would readily put a Matsushita voice-processing subsystem into a Ford-style nav unit. But the combination produces exactly the system the '535 specification itself characterizes as the starting point — destination entered by remote control "or by using a speech recognition function" — with no destination prediction. Neither reference, and not their union, discloses a destination supposition and suggestion unit or a destination entry unit that enters a suggested destination. Under KSR, a combination that omits an essential claimed element cannot be "a predictable variation"; the omission is the inventive core.

Combination B — '803 alone as primary. An examiner could try to read '803's POI list returned for a spoken POI-type query as a "suggested destination based on a user's utterances." This is the strongest available attack, but it fails because in '803 the utterance names the destination category and the user selects and enters the destination; the system neither supposes nor auto-enters. Claim 1's "destination entry unit" is a system element, not the user's keypad.

Combination C — either reference + the applicant's Background admissions. The '535 Background concedes that event/traffic/weather data were obtainable over networks, that word-spotting for keyword extraction existed, and that destinations were entered by keypad or speech recognition. Stacking those admissions on '803 still yields a system in which "once a final destination has been decided, the final destination is entered" — the admitted art requires the destination to be decided first. Claim 1's destination supposition and suggestion unit and its destination entry unit are precisely the elements the admissions do not supply.

Combination D — any of the above to reach claims 5/6 or 7. No combination of the two references teaches history-driven destination proposal (claims 5/6) or speaker enrolment + identification (claim 7). A § 103 attack on claim 7 in particular would require a third reference teaching voice-based speaker verification in a vehicle; nothing in this page's prior-art section supplies one, and I could not verify any such reference's § 102 date on these facts, so I will not assert one.

Why the "design-incentive" argument is insufficient. A challenger would invoke the well-known market pull toward hands-free, low-distraction in-car interfaces (KSR). That gets you to voice-commanded destination entry, not to a system that infers an unstated destination from offhand conversation and sets it. The '535's own framing ("even when a user … has not decided upon a final destination, the user often desires to go somewhere …") shows the gap was recognized, and recognizing a gap does not, without art that fills it, make the fill obvious.

4. Where the patent is most and least exposed

• Most exposed claim: claim 1. It is deliberately broad — it does not require the suggestion to be audible (that is claim 2), does not require user confirmation (claims 16–17), and does not require preference/history/event databases (claims 3–6). Its scope is essentially "voice-recognize a word → suggest a destination → enter it as final." If broader art teaching conversational keyword-spotting plus preference/history-based POI recommendation could be brought forward (none exists in this record), claim 1 would be the first casualty. On the art of record, however, the suggestion-entry element is unmet.
• Moderately exposed: claims 2 and 14, because '803 expressly discloses a speech generator for audible output and a destination memory; if the parent claims ever fell, these add little.
• Least exposed: claims 7/18 (voice-characteristic registration + speaker identification) and 3/4/9/10 (word-keyed preference data with facilities/event information driving a destination type suggestion) — nothing of record is close.

5. Bottom line

No combination of the prior art appearing on this patent's page (US 6,230,136 and US 6,175,803) renders claims 1, 7, 13, or 18 — or their dependents — obvious under § 103(a). The references are complementary but each exits the analysis one step too early: '136 is a voice-codec/playback disclosure, not a recognition or destination-logic disclosure; '803 teaches explicit destination entry (optionally spoken) with audible guidance, but never supposes or suggests a destination from a user's utterances and never has a unit enter a suggested destination. Their combination is the admitted prior art the '535 set out to improve upon.

A viable § 103 case would require art that is not in this record: (i) conversational/keyword-spotting art that infers a need rather than a stated destination; (ii) preference- or history-based POI recommendation; and, for claim 7/18, (iii) speaker-verification art. Whether such art predates 2000-04-07 is a separate § 102 question I have not established here.

Caveats and uncertainty

• I could not retrieve the '535 file wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR), so I do not know whether US 6,230,136 / US 6,175,803 were used in a § 102 or § 103 rejection, nor what amendments were made. Their appearance in the "cited by examiner" tables shows only that the examiner considered them.
• My characterization of US 6,230,136 rests on its claims and the EP counterpart's abstract; I did not review its full specification column-by-column, so a stray passage referring to voice input/control cannot be entirely excluded. My characterization of US 6,175,803 (including the speech recognition unit 14, speech generator 16, and wireless link 18) is drawn from its description of FIG. 1 and its FIG. 3 menus.
• This is a technical obviousness analysis, not a legal opinion or a freedom-to-operate/validity clearance.
• Minor cross-reference discrepancy to flag: the previously generated sections and this task use different "current date" stamps (2026-09-29 in the session context vs. "April 26, 2026" in the task header). This does not affect the analysis, which is keyed to the patent's 2000-04-07 / 2001-04-05 dates.