US 6564380

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

USPTO / CAFC Search Report — US Patent No. 6564380

Identifier verified literally: 6564380 (US6564380B1). Sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6564380](/patent/US6564380)/en), Espacenet (https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?...NR=[6564380B1](/patent/6564380B1)...). No similar-number results substituted.

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1. Bibliographic data

Assignment chain (per Google Patents reassignment records):

• 2003-03-21 — assigned to Pixelworld Networks, Inc. (from Murphy)
• 2007-06-07 / 2007-07-24 — assigned to Landis Software Storage, LLC / L.L.C.
• 2015-10-28 — assigned to S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC (via merger with Landis Software Storage L.L.C.)
• "Current Assignee" field lists S Aqua Semiconductor LLC (Google notes this may be inaccurate and is not a legal conclusion).

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2. Abstract (as granted)

An Internet-based video feed management system controls, manages, and administers commercial distribution of live video feeds from on-site video cameras and other sources to production companies at other locations. It uses a network of local video-propagation servers in different localities receiving feeds from source locations, plus a master authorization server that receives and grants requests via Internet from requesting parties. The master server issues an access code and establishes a unique publishing point for the requested feed from the handling propagation server. Feeds may be delivered live or stored/cached and re-transmitted later. The master server has a master feed list and pricing table for computing billings to requesting parties and payments to feed sources; the feed list is updated by feed listings input to the propagation servers. For live feeds from different camera types, a requesting party may remotely control the camera over the Internet via a universal control panel GUI in the browser issuing command codes corresponding to the camera type. The system can automatically generate video Web pages hosted on the master server and linked to clients' Web sites, using selectable display templates and uploaded client identification graphics.

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3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

The granted patent contains five claims total: two independent (claims 1 and 3) and three dependent (claims 2, 4, 5). Note that the granted claim set is materially narrower than the "Summary of the Invention," which describes broader video-feed-management and billing/pricing aspects that do not appear as independent claims. (Source: Espacenet claim text for US6564380 B1.)

Claim 1 — "Video feed remote control system" (independent).
A system combining: (a) video feeds from on-site cameras of different predetermined camera types; (b) video-camera-computers controlling the cameras, Internet-connected and individually IP-addressable; (c) at least one video-propagation server receiving the feeds over the Internet; (d) a master authorization server receiving access requests over the Internet and granting access to a requested feed; and (e) a universal control panel GUI on the requesting party's browser-enabled computer for controlling any of the different camera types. Critically, on granting access the master server gives the requester (i) the camera-type identification and (ii) the IP address of the camera's computer, so the requester can send type-appropriate control signals directly to that IP address. The claim then requires that the universal GUI and a plurality of control panel GUI files reside on the requester's browser-enabled computer, each GUI file corresponding to a respective camera type and issuing that type's set of command codes. (So the type-mapping logic is client-side in this claim.)

Claim 2 (dependent on claim 1). Covers the alternative, server-side conversion architecture: the universal GUI is a browser-based GUI file on the requester's computer; the video-propagation server provides the link from the requester's computer to the camera computers; and a command-code conversion module at the propagation server converts universal command codes into camera-type-specific command codes.

Claim 3 — "Automated video Web page generating system" (independent).
A system with: (a) video feeds from respective sources; (b) at least one video-propagation server receiving the feeds and transmitting a requested feed over the Internet; (c) a master authorization server receiving a request to use a feed in a requested display presentation format in conjunction with a video Web page to be linked to the requesting party's Web site; and (d) a video Web page generation module on the master server that automatically generates the video Web page in the requested format and links it to the client's Web site. The claim further requires the master server to include means for selecting a display template from a plurality of stored templates and for uploading the requester's identification graphics for incorporation into the selected template.

Claim 4 (dependent on claim 3). Narrows to video Web page advertising: the templates include a selection of ad display templates for use with the client company's identification graphics and any requested video feed.

Claim 5 (dependent on claim 3). Narrows to live events programming for a video production company, hosted by the master authorization server and linked to the production company's Web site.

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4. Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

I searched for CAFC 2026 scheduled-argument calendars, Federal Circuit updates, PTAB hearing schedules, and district-court dockets referencing this patent or its assignees (Pixelworld Networks, Landis Software Storage, S. Aqua Semiconductor).

Result: I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, oral-argument listing, PTAB proceeding, or active district-court complaint tied to US 6564380. The only "6564380" hits retrieved were:

• US6564380B1 itself (Google Patents, Espacenet, uspto.report);
• an unrelated Japanese patent JP 6564380 B2 (a prostate-cancer compound filing — a coincidence of numbering, not the US patent);
• a stray "6564380" string inside a PTAB IPR exhibit (filing-history document), which is not a litigation reference to this patent.

Uncertainty note: I could not verify any litigation history for this patent through the searches performed. This is consistent with the patent being expired as of 2020-01-24 (20 years from the 2000-01-24 filing), which makes new 2026 infringement actions unlikely (though a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal from an older suit is not impossible and cannot be ruled out from the available search results). I do not have authoritative confirmation of any such appeal, so I am not asserting one exists. For a definitive check, the USPTO PatentCenter "Events" tab for application 09/490,628, the PTAB API, and the CAFC PACER/CM-ECF docket system should be queried directly.

Sources cited:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US6564380/en
• https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/claims?DB=&ND=15&locale=en_IE&FT=D&date=20030513&CC=US&NR=6564380B1&KC=B1&tree=false
• https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?locale=en_IE&CC=US&II=16&date=20030513&NR=6564380B1&ND=13&KC=B1
• https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6564380
• https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/OralArguments/PublicCalendar-September2026.pdf (no 6564380 entry)

I'll search for litigation records tied specifically to US 6564380.

Initial results are mostly false positives. Let me run targeted searches on the assignees and litigation databases.

Litigation Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,564,380

Rule compliance note (literal identifier): Every query used the exact string 6564380 / 6,564,380. No similar-number substitution was made. Results for other numbers that happened to surface are flagged below as false positives so they are not mistaken for this patent.

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Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,564,380 was found. I identified zero district-court complaints, zero CAFC appeals, zero ITC § 337 investigations, and zero PTAB proceedings in which '380 is a patent-in-suit. Consistent with the previously generated "PTAB challenges" and "Patent summary" sections, which reached the same negative conclusion.

This is a negative finding from limited search tooling, not a certified docket clearance — see the confidence section below before relying on it.

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1. Case list

None to report. Per the requested format, the table is empty because there are no plaintiff/defendant pairs, jurisdictions, case numbers, or filing dates to record for this patent.

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2. What I actually searched (queries run this session)

1. "6564380" patent litigation
2. "6,564,380" patent infringement lawsuit
3. "S. Aqua Semiconductor" patent lawsuit → returned no results
4. "Pixelworld Networks" v. patent infringement → returned no results
5. "S. Aqua Semiconductor LLC" litigation patents asserted → returned no results
6. Attempted query against Unified Patents caselist (unifiedpatents.com caselist "6564380") → did not complete; the session hit its tool-call limit before that query executed (see limitations).

Queries 3–5 are the most diagnostic: a live assertion campaign by the current assignee, S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC, or by any predecessor (Pixelworld Networks, Landis Software Storage), would almost certainly surface in a query naming the plaintiff. All three returned empty.

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3. False positives encountered — do not chase these

The "6564380"-family searches returned documents that contain the digit string but are not litigation involving US 6,564,380:

• JP 6564380 B2 — Japanese patent, "化合物 [compounds] for treating prostate cancer" (JP national phase of PCT/US2014/056369, WO2015/042297, US priority 61/880,747, published 2019). Different jurisdiction, different subject matter, coincidence of numbering. Not this patent; not litigation.
• US 11,915,310 B2 ("Apparatuses, methods and systems for a video remote deposit capture platform," justia.com) — this patent cites '380 (Murphy, May 13, 2003) in its reference list. A forward citation, not an assertion. Google/Espacenet list ~658 forward-citing documents for '380; these are cited-by references, not litigation.
• Health Tracker Systems LLC v. Michael Kors (USA), Inc. (S.D.N.Y., dismissed with prejudice 9/15/2022) — asserted different patents entirely. The "438" overlap is coincidental.
• Michigan Motor Technologies LLC v. [defendants] (D. Del., amended complaint dated Apr. 29, 2019) and the IDT / light-emitting-panel complaints (E.D. Tex., Hyundai/BMW) — unrelated patents-in-suit and unrelated parties. They appeared only because '438-family numbers appear in the same documents.
• Neo Wireless LLC v. [automakers] — unrelated (U.S. 10,075,941, etc.).
• The only genuine "6564380" hits inside the PTAB document corpus are prior-art citation mentions inside third-party petitions (e.g., an IPR exhibit quoting a file history that cites '380). A citation in someone else's exhibit is not a proceeding against this patent.

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4. Why the absence is plausible (context, not proof)

Three independent facts make "no litigation" the expected result rather than a search artifact:

1. The patent expired 2020-01-24. Google Patents records 1999-01-26 priority, 2000-01-24 filing, 2003-05-13 grant, and an "anticipated expiration" of 2020-01-24, with legal status "Expired – Lifetime." No PTA is evident. This is carried over from the prior sections and is not contradicted here.
2. § 286 damages window has closed for a newly filed suit. Damages are recoverable only for the six years before a complaint. As of the session date (2026-09-27), that window opens 2020-09-27 — eight months after expiry. Unless a complaint was filed in or before 2020 (which I found no evidence of), a new suit has no reachable infringement period. That is a strong economic disincentive to file now.
3. The ownership chain terminates at a holding entity, not an active litigant. Pixelworld Networks (operating company) → Landis Software Storage, LLC/L.L.C. (2007) → S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC (2015, by merger). Per the prior "NPE / troll-pattern signals" section, no RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff listing, no Acacia/Marathon/IV/Wi-LAN/Conversant linkage, and no pre-litigation transfer was found. A ten-year holding period at S. Aqua with no assertion, on a patent with a near-term expiry, fits a non-asserted asset.

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5. Confidence and limitations — read before relying on this

• Confidence that no AIA/PTAB proceeding exists: high (structured PTAB/ODP block plus searches; consistent with the prior section).
• Confidence that no district-court or ITC case exists: moderate-to-low. My searches were a mix of full-text web queries and — for the Unified Patents caselist — a query that never executed because the session hit its step limit. Two of my productive assignee-name queries ("S. Aqua Semiconductor" patent lawsuit; "Pixelworld Networks" v. patent infringement) returned empty result sets, which is suggestive but can also indicate indexing gaps in the underlying index rather than true absence. Absence of searchable evidence is not proof of absence.
• Docket-level fields (case numbers, jurisdictions, filing dates) are entirely unverified — I have no case to report, so I have no fields to fill. I have not invented any case number, court, or filing date.

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6. Recommended verification steps (to convert this into a defensible clearance)

Because the confirmation must come from docket systems my web searches cannot substitute for:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (and the caselist endpoint referenced in the task). Search patent number 6564380 exactly; do not accept '438-family hits.
2. CourtListener / RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com — search the docket database for "6,564,380" and for plaintiff names S. Aqua Semiconductor, Landis Software Storage, Pixelworld Networks. This is the authoritative free source for filing dates and case numbers.
3. PACER / CM-ECF — https://pacer.uscourts.gov — confirm any RECAP hit at the source, and run a party-name sweep rather than a patent-number sweep, since complaints frequently identify patents only as "the '380 patent."
4. USPTO PatentCenter, application 09/490,628 — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov — the "Events" tab will show any § 290 statutory notice of patent suits filed against the patent, which is a direct cross-check on the docket search.
5. CAFC oral-argument and docket searches — https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov — confirm no pending 2026 appeal naming this patent or its owners (a 2026 appeal from an older suit cannot be ruled out by web search alone).
6. ITC EDIS — https://edis.usitc.gov — rule out any § 337 investigation.

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7. If a demand letter citing '380 arrives

Carry forward the prior section's litigation-posture points, now reinforced by the empty docket:

• Lead with expiration + § 286, not validity. If the accused conduct all post-dates 2020-01-24, the patent does not reach it.
• Demand the asserted claim numbers, accused products, and dates of first infringement, plus identification of any prior complaint that would have preserved a pre-expiry damages window. That single data point (a pre-2020 filing) is the only thing that could revive a damages theory.
• No IPR estoppel constrains the invalidity case — no AIA trial was ever instituted, so § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not attach and every § 102/§ 103/§ 101 ground remains available.

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Status flags carried forward (unresolved):

• Date discrepancy: the task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026"; the session clock reads 2026-09-27. My § 286 arithmetic uses the session date; the difference does not change the conclusion.
• Claim-count discrepancy between prior sections (flagged earlier, still open): the "Patent summary" section states five claims (independent 1 and 3); the PTAB "Strategic summary" section declines to state a count. Not material to a litigation search, but noted for consistency.

Sources cited this session: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6564380/en · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (query attempted; not executed before step limit) · https://www.courtlistener.com · https://pacer.uscourts.gov · https://patentcenter.uspto.gov · https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11915310](/patent/11915310) (forward-citation false positive) · http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f9/35/44/322d19ca2f43e0/JP6564380B2.pdf (JP false positive) · https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-health-tracker-systems-llc-v-michael-kors-usa-inc-[1250977](/patent/1250977) (unrelated false positive).

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,564,380: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and targeted web searches for this patent number plus assignee/inventor names (S. Aqua Semiconductor, Pixelworld Networks, Greg Murphy) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or CAFC appeal — only false positives on other patents (see "Search hygiene" below). Status breakdown is therefore: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened by two IPRs" and not "claims 1–5 canceled" — it is unusual in a stronger way: the patent is untested at the PTAB and, per the face of the Google Patents record, expired as of 2020-01-24. That expiration, not any PTAB outcome, is the dominant defensive fact.

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No proceedings to itemize

Because the canonical list is empty and my searches produced nothing, I am not creating per-proceeding subsections. I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions. What follows instead documents (a) what I searched and what came back, and (b) the substantive posture that follows from an empty PTAB docket.

Search hygiene / false positives flagged (so the next analyst doesn't chase them):

• US 8,441,438 (CyWee Group Ltd.) — this is a different patent (3D pointing device / six-axis motion sensor), and dominates any query containing "438" + PTAB. CyWee Group Ltd. v. ZTE USA, Inc., IPR2018-01258, and related Google/LGE IPRs are not about US 6,564,380. The Fed. Cir. decision is public at https://fedcircuitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CyWee-Group-Ltd.-v.-ZTE-USA-Inc.-opinion-below.pdf.
• JP 6564380 B2 — a Japanese patent on prostate-cancer compounds (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP6564380B2). Different jurisdiction, different subject matter.
• U.S. App. No. PCT/US2000/001645 / WO2000044169A1 / AU2735300A — these are the international counterparts of this patent (listed in the ODP block as priority filings), not proceedings.
• The only genuine hits on "6564380" in the PTAB record are prior-art citation mentions inside third-party petitions (e.g., Google's IPR2024-00233 exhibit quoting a file history that cites '380). A citation in someone else's exhibit is not a proceeding against this patent.

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Strategic summary

Claim-level status: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of US 6,564,380 has been canceled, confirmed, or even evaluated in an AIA trial. There is no FWD, no Board claim construction, no institution decision — so there are no "surviving claims" to list as narrowed-by-IPR, and no claim numbers to quote because none were adjudicated. (I also note the claim text itself was truncated in the source corpus I was given — it cuts off mid-sentence in the "Remote Control via Internet" section before the claims — so I have not independently verified the claim count and will not state claim numbers.)

Estoppel landscape: none attaches. This is the key practitioner point. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only by an IPR that is instituted and carried to a final written decision (and CBM/PGR have parallel provisions). Where no petition was ever filed — or where institution was denied — no estoppel arises, and the earlier SAS/partial-institution refinements are irrelevant. Practically: a defendant today faces zero IPR estoppel. Every § 102/§ 103 ground and every reference — including art a petitioner "reasonably could have raised" — remains available in district court or the ITC, subject only to the ordinary rules (and, if a civil action was filed first, the § 315(a)(1) bar on later-filed IPRs).

Pattern signals: (i) no repeat-petitioner pattern exists, because there is no petitioner at all; (ii) no patent-owner appellate behavior to assess — no Aqua Products-type motion-to-amend fight, no Rule 36 affirmances, no CAFC docket; (iii) no defensive aggregator in the chain. The ownership history is a classic monetization trail: Pixelworld Networks, Inc. (original assignee, 2003) → Landis Software Storage, LLC / L.L.C. (2007) → S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC (2015, by merger). The absence of a Unified Patents–style preemptive challenge on a 1999-priority media-delivery patent that has sat in a known NPE's portfolio for a decade is itself a signal — most likely because the patent's remaining life was too short to justify the cost of a petition.

The real posture — expiration, not PTAB. Per the ODP/Google Patents record: priority 1999-01-26, filed 2000-01-24, granted 2003-05-13, "Anticipated expiration" 2020-01-24 (20 years from the 2000-01-24 non-provisional filing; no PTA evident). Status is "Expired – Lifetime." Two consequences matter more than any IPR:

1. No prospective relief. The patent cannot be infringed after 2020-01-24, so there is nothing to enjoin and no ongoing royalty base. Any assertion today is necessarily a past-damages claim.
2. § 286 may bar recovery outright. Damages run back only six years from the complaint. As of today (2026-09-27), that window opens 2020-09-27 — eight months after the patent expired. Unless a complaint was filed earlier (e.g., in 2020 or before, preserving a pre-expiration window), a newly filed suit appears to have no actionable period of infringement left to recover for. This is a threshold, potentially case-dispositive defense — and it costs nothing to raise, unlike an IPR petition.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not plan an IPR budget first. With the patent expired and no PTAB history, a petition would buy no estoppel-clearing benefit and no prospective relief. IPR of an expired patent is legally available (the Board has instituted on expired patents), but the return is essentially zero for a defendant unless a live past-damages theory makes claim cancellation outcome-determinative.
2. Verify the docket, not just the PTAB. Confirm via USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) and PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) that (a) no reissue, reexamination, or inter partes reexamination exists, and (b) expiration was for failure to pay maintenance fees and no petition to revive/accept late payment is pending. Also confirm the chain of title (Pixelworld → Landis → S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC) — assignment records are at https://assignment.uspto.gov.
3. Pull the enforcement history. S. Aqua Semiconductor is an established assertion vehicle; the highest-value next search is a docket sweep (CourtListener RECAP, https://www.courtlistener.com; Docket Alarm; Lex Machina) for all cases asserting 6,564,380, with filing dates. That single data point determines whether the § 286 argument above is a complete bar or whether a pre-2020 complaint preserved a damages window.
4. If a demand letter arrives citing 6,564,380:
   • Demand the asserted claim numbers and the accused products/dates of first infringement. If the accused conduct all post-dates 2020-01-24, the patent simply does not reach it.
   • Assert § 286 as the lead defense if suit is filed now without a prior complaint.
   • Note that because no AIA trial ever occurred, no estoppel constrains your invalidity case — you may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, and you may also pursue § 101 (the claims are directed to video-feed distribution and billing, squarely within the Alice/Bilski line) free of any IPR-estoppel argument by the patent owner.
5. If active proceedings do materialize later (i.e., a recently filed petition appears at PTAB E2E or in a § 315(b) window), the standard milestones apply: institution decision within 6 months of the petition's filing, and a statutory 1-year deadline from institution to the FWD — plus any § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a complaint.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to exploit — but there is something better. Use the empty PTAB docket to defeat any estoppel narrative the patent owner may imply ("this patent has been validated"), and lead with expiration plus § 286 before spending a dollar on validity.

Confidence notes: I have high confidence in the "no AIA trial proceedings" finding (structured ODP block + searches) and in the expiration date as recorded by Google Patents. I have lower confidence on the absence of district court enforcement history for this patent and on the exact claim count; both should be verified against PTAB E2E, PatentCenter, and a litigation docket service before being relied on in a filing.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 6564380, focusing on reel/frame records and correspondents.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and correspondent details.

Let me try more targeted searches for the assignment records and assignee details.

Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction — US Patent No. 6,564,380

Critical evidentiary limitation (read first). The authoritative Google Patents record supplied for this patent exposes the assignment dates, conveyance types, assignors, and assignees, but it does not expose the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for any link in the chain. My searches during this session (USPTO Assignment Center index, uspto.report, and general web) returned the patent document and unrelated coincidences — e.g. JP 6564380 B2 and JPS56162018A (both Japanese) — but no assignment-record page showing reel/frame or correspondent fields. Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate reel/frame numbers or attorney names. Every reel/frame field below is marked [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center], and the correspondent field is marked [NOT RETRIEVED]. This materially limits signals 3 and 4 (correspondent recurrence and shared-address cascade), which are the most probative NPE tells.

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Inventors

• Named-inventor pattern: No multi‑inventor artifact, so the "all inventors depart within 12 months" fire‑sale tell cannot be assessed across a team. Nothing in the record shows a departure date for Murphy.
• Unusual-pattern note: The duplicate recording of the Murphy → Pixelworld assignment (2003‑03‑21 and again 2007‑06‑12) is mildly anomalous and is discussed under signals 3/4 below. I cannot tell from the available fields whether the 2007‑06‑12 entry is a corrective re‑recordation, a confirmatory assignment, or a separate instrument — that distinction requires the reel/frame and the document image.

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Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Pixelworld Networks, Inc. (original assignee; confirmed on the face of US 6,564,380 B1).
• Primary line of business: Internet video‑feed management — i.e., the subject matter of the patent itself (aggregating, authorizing, and distributing live video feeds from remote cameras over the Internet). The patent's business model is described as a "global video feed management system."
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Not determinable from the record. No commercial product documentation, no product‑specimen evidence, and no assignment‑record "goods/services" field was retrievable. The patent reads as a platform/business‑model disclosure (Master Authorization Server, PoP servers, Publishing Points) rather than a description of a shipped SKU.
• Current status: Operating/acquired/dissolved status not confirmed. What is confirmed is that Pixelworld transferred the patent away in 2007 (to Landis Software Storage), which is inconsistent with Pixelworld continuing to hold and practice the patent. I found no SEC 10‑K/8‑K (consistent with a private company) and no bankruptcy‑proceeding record.

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Assignment timeline

Dates below are as surfaced by the Google Patents legal‑events timeline (Google labels them assignment/recordation events; the underlying instruments' execution dates are not separately exposed in the text I hold, so I cannot rule out that some listed dates are recording dates rather than execution dates). Reel/frame and correspondent fields were not retrieved for any entry.

• 2003‑03‑21 (executed [verify]) / recorded [NOT RETRIEVED] — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: MURPHY, GREG
  • Assignee: PIXELWORLD NETWORKS, INC.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Inventor‑to‑company assignment — the original commercialization entity acquires the inventor's rights.

• 2007‑06‑07 (executed [verify]) / recorded 2007‑06 [NOT RETRIEVED] — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: PIXELWORLD NETWORKS, INC.
  • Assignee: LANDIS SOFTWARE STORAGE, LLC
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Transfer from the operating company to a holding/monetization entity — first step of the monetization trail.

• 2007‑06‑12 (executed [verify]) / recorded 2007‑06 [NOT RETRIEVED] — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (appears to be a re‑recordation / correction of the 2003‑03‑21 inventor assignment)
  • Assignor: MURPHY, GREG
  • Assignee: PIXELWORLD NETWORKS INC.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Likely corrective re‑recording of record title while the portfolio was being transferred (two name variants — "Pixelworld Networks Inc" vs. "Pixelworld Networks, Inc." — appear in the chain, a classic chain‑of‑title cleanup signature).

• 2007‑07‑24 (executed [verify]) / recorded 2007‑07 [NOT RETRIEVED] — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: PIXELWORLD NETWORKS, INC.
  • Assignee: LANDIS SOFTWARE STORAGE L.L.C.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Practically a duplicate of the 2007‑06‑07 entry under a second spelling ("LLC" → "L.L.C.") — again consistent with a chain‑of‑title cleanup rather than an economically distinct transfer.

• 2015‑10‑28 (executed [verify]) / recorded [NOT RETRIEVED] — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center]

  • Conveyance: MERGER (see document for details)
  • Assignor: LANDIS SOFTWARE STORAGE L.L.C.
  • Assignee: S. AQUA SEMICONDUCTOR, LLC
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Transfer‑to‑asserter via merger. Landis merged into (or was absorbed by) S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC, the entity that owns the patent today. This is the terminus of the chain.

Result: The USPTO/Google record does contain post‑issuance assignments — so this is not a "no recorded assignments / original assignee still owns it" case. The chain is: Murphy → Pixelworld Networks → Landis Software Storage → S. Aqua Semiconductor (by merger). What is missing from every retrieved entry is the reel/frame and the correspondent, which must be pulled from the Assignment Center document images before this analysis can be finalized.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6564380
    1999 : Provisional filed Jan 26
    2000 : Nonprovisional filed Jan 24
    2003 : Patent issued May 13
         : Murphy assigns to Pixelworld
    2007 : Pixelworld transfers to Landis Software
         : Murphy assignment rerecorded
         : Landis transfer rerecorded
    2015 : Landis merged into S Aqua Semiconductor
    2020 : Patent expired Jan 24

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Evidence caveat applying to signals 3 and 4 below: because no correspondent name and no reel/frame were retrievable, the two signals that most reliably expose a coordinated monetization chain (shared attorney / shared registered‑agent address) cannot be scored as "present" on this record. Their status is unclear, not negative. A negative inference here would be unsupported.

1. Shell‑entity transfer — PRESENT (moderate).
The chain moves the patent from an operating company (Pixelworld Networks, Inc.) to Landis Software Storage, LLC / L.L.C. in 2007, and then to S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC in 2015. Both downstream names carry classic holding/licensing suffixes ("…Storage, LLC", "…Semiconductor, LLC"), and neither is the operating company that the patent describes. However, I could not confirm the disqualifying‑evidence prongs (no‐products‑in‑commerce, registered‑agent‑service address, single‑member Delaware/Texas LLC) because the assignment record does not expose entity addresses or states of formation in the fields I retrieved. Scored present on the transfer‑off‑the‑operating‑company fact alone; the "shell" characterization itself is not yet confirmed.

2. Known asserter in the chain — UNCLER / WEAK PRESENT.
The current assignee S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC is a non‑practicing patent‑holding entity — the earlier sections of this analysis note it appears on a GreyB market report listing semiconductor patent sellers, and it acquired this patent by merger, not by operating the technology. I did not find S. Aqua on the enumerated canonical lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi‑LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.) within the searches performed, so I cannot call this a "known asserter" match on the named lists. Scored unclear/weak — a monetization entity, but not a confirmed list‑member asserter.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data not retrievable).
The correspondent of record is not exposed on any of the five assignment entries I retrieved. I therefore cannot test whether one attorney/firm handled both the 2007 Landis recordings and the 2015 S. Aqua merger. This is the single highest‑value gap in the reconstruction and the reason the verdict below is capped at "moderate." Pull the document images at Assignment Center for each reel/frame; the correspondent block is the first thing to transcribe.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — PRESENT (on timing alone).
Three recording events fall inside a ~7‑week window in mid‑2007 (2007‑06‑07, 2007‑06‑12, 2007‑07‑24), moving title between "Pixelworld Networks, Inc." and two spellings of "Landis Software Storage." The clustering is consistent with a chain‑of‑title cleanup executed in a single transaction (name‑variant correction + confirmatory re‑recordation) rather than three independent commercial sales. Scored present as a cascade; whether the 2015 merger entry shares the same correspondent address as the 2007 entries — the true coordination tell — remains unverified.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No infringement suit naming this patent was found (consistent with the earlier litigation and PTAB sections, which found no district‑court or AIA‑trial record). With no suit to correlate, the "assignment within 6 months before first suit" test yields no match. The 2015 merger nonetheless occurred 5 years before the 2020 expiration and without any resulting enforcement action — a "prepared but never deployed" posture.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT / UNCLEAR.
No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, no sale‑motion, and no 363‑sale record for Pixelworld or Landis was found. The 2007 transfer could be a wind‑down, but without a bankruptcy docket I will not characterize it as a fire‑sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
Privateering requires an operating company transferring to an NPE that then asserts on the operating company's behalf against competitors. Here the 2007 transfer moved the patent away from the operating company to a storage entity, and no assertion against Pixelworld's competitors followed. The inverse of the privateering pattern is not present — but the forward assertion simply never occurred.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC, an assertion‑style holding entity, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized by a defensive aggregator. (It is neutralized by expiration instead — see below.)

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification. The assignment record establishes a clean monetization trail off the operating company: Greg Murphy → Pixelworld Networks, Inc. (2003‑03‑21) → Landis Software Storage, LLC (2007‑06‑07, re‑recorded 2007‑07‑24) → S. Aqua Semiconductor, LLC by merger (2015‑10‑28) — i.e., a shell‑entity transfer to a non‑practicing holding entity plus a 2007 cascade of re‑recordings, which supplies the "2+ weak signals" threshold. I deliberately cap the verdict at moderate rather than high because the two strongest corroborating prongs are unretrieved: the correspondent of record (needed for signal 3, the repeat‑attorney test) and the reel/frame document images (needed to confirm entity addresses and the "single‑purpose LLC" facts for signal 1). No infringement assertion naming this patent was found, so this is an ownership‑pattern finding, not an enforcement finding — and the patent's own expiration on 2020‑01‑24 means the chain’s terminus never deployed it.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search 6564380 (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ; mirror index https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Transcribe, for each of the five events above, the reel/frame, execution date vs. recording date, and correspondent name/firm/address, then re‑run signals 3 and 4. Cross‑check the S. Aqua 2015 merger against Delaware/Texas entity filings and RPX/Unified Patents asserter directories.

Confidence: High in the chain shape and dates (they trace Google Patents' legal‑events block, which mirrors USPTO assignment data). Low‑to‑moderate in the completeness of the chain and in the shell/known‑asserter characterizations, because no reel/frame or correspondent was retrievable and the 10th/final document‑image details remain unverified. I did not invent any reel/frame or attorney name; the [NOT RETRIEVED] tags mark exactly where the record must be pulled.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 6564380. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me retrieve the full citation list and details for each reference.

Let me gather details on the key references and confirm the remaining cited documents.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 6564380 B1

Patent under analysis: US 6,564,380 B1 ("System and method for sending live video on the internet"), inventor Greg Murphy, original assignee Pixelworld Networks, Inc., appl. 09/490,628 filed 2000‑01‑24, granted 2003‑05‑13, priority US provisional 60/117,439 filed 1999‑01‑26 (PCT/US2000/001645; WO 2000044169 A1). Identifier interpreted literally as 6564380; the unrelated Japanese patent JP 6564380 B2 (prostate‑cancer compounds) surfaced in search and is expressly excluded, as are the unrelated "GEA438"/CyWee '438 references.

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0. Sourcing note and a material gap — please read first

The authoritative Google Patents text supplied for this patent is a body‑text extraction that omits the front‑page citation tables ("Patent Citations," "Cited By," "Foreign Patent Documents," "Other References"). I therefore rebuilt the citation list from the EPO's companion record, which is the same search-report data filed in the U.S. case:

Espacenet, "List of all citations: US6564380 (B1) — 2003‑05‑13," 10 documents cited.
https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=[6564380B1](/patent/6564380B1)&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=13&date=20030513&DB=&locale=en_IE

Two honesty flags:

1. Espacenet reports 10 cited documents, split into "Patents cited in the search report" (items 1–8) and "Patents cited by the applicant" (items 9–10). I retrieved items 1–9 in full but could not recover item 10 — the listing truncated it. Item 10 is unverified and must be pulled from the actual PTO‑892/SB‑08 in PatentCenter before this analysis is treated as complete.
2. Espacenet shows no X/Y/A relevance categories for the U.S. search report (U.S. examiners use Form PTO‑892, which does not categorize). Any statement below about which claims a reference touches is my own § 102 element mapping, not the examiner's — I could not access the examiner's reasons for allowance or the original office actions in this session.

Also note: the "≈658 citing documents" that Espacenet lists for this patent are forward citations (later patents citing '380). They are not prior art to '380 and are not analyzed here.

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1. Legal framework (this is a pre‑AIA patent)

Application 09/490,628 was filed 2000‑01‑24, so pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 govern. Two different critical dates matter, and the distinction is dispositive for several references:

Consequence: because nearly the entire citation set is § 102(e) art, each reference is potentially swear‑behindable under Rule 131 — it is competent to anticipate, but the applicant could in principle remove it as prior art by proving an earlier invention date. US 5,619,247 is the one reference that is § 102(b) art and therefore not removable.

Anticipation standard reminder: a reference anticipates a claim under § 102 only if it discloses every element as arranged in the claim. Most of what follows is materiality / obviousness analysis rather than true anticipation.

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2. The citation table

Recall from the previously generated sections that the granted patent has five claims: independent claims 1 and 3, dependents 2 (server‑side code conversion), 4 (ad templates) and 5 (live‑events programming) — the claim set is materially narrower than the Summary of the Invention. That matters here: several cited references map onto disclosed-but-unclaimed subject matter (feed lists, pricing tables, billing/payment), which they cannot anticipate because no claim covers it.

Note on item 9's assignee/filing detail: I confirmed the title, "Burns et al.," and the 1999‑11‑23 grant date from the record but did not independently verify the assignee or the underlying application filing date in this session; verify in PatentCenter before relying on the § 102(e) date.

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3. Reference‑by‑reference detail

3.1 US 5,619,247 — Russo / Smart VCR (item 1, the only § 102(b) reference)

"Stored program pay‑per‑view," granted 1997‑04‑08, priority 1995‑02‑24, CPC G06Q20/145 / H04N21/2543. Describes storing a program and enabling pay‑per‑view access with subscriber authorization and billing.

• Potential § 102 read against '380: touches only the authorization‑and‑billing concepts that appear in the '380 specification/Summary (access codes, pricing, payment to sources) but that were not carried into the granted claims. It does not disclose on‑site cameras of differing types, IP‑addressable camera computers, a propagation server, a master authorization server granting Internet access to a live feed, or a universal control‑panel GUI. No granted claim is anticipated.
• Why it matters anyway: it is the only citation that is not swear‑behindable, so it is the most robust § 102/§ 103 anchor for the commercial‑model disclosure, and it constrains any broadening of the disclosure that might be attempted in a continuation or reissue.

3.2 US 5,956,716 — Kenner/Gruber / InterVU (item 2)

"System and method for delivery of video data over a computer network," granted 1999‑09‑21, priority 1995‑06‑07. InterVU was a commercial streaming‑video delivery network; the patent describes storing video on network servers and delivering requested video to users over the network.

• Potential § 102 read: most directly material to claim 1 elements (b) and (c) (network‑connected video servers that receive/transmit requested video) and claim 3 element (b) (at least one video‑propagation server transmitting a requested feed over the Internet). It does not disclose the master authorization server's access‑code/publishing‑point grant, and it does not disclose the camera‑type‑specific universal GUI of claim 1(e) or the template‑based web‑page generator of claim 3(d). Likely § 103 rather than § 102 art for claims 1 and 3; not anticipatory of claims 2, 4, 5.
• Cross‑reference: the '380 specification itself names INTERVU Network, Inc. as the co‑vendor of the "Screening Room™" video‑asset‑management system — i.e., the applicant knew this family of art. That is a § 102(a)/§ 103 "known to the applicant" point the examiner could press.

3.3 US 5,991,801 — Rebec / Trans Video Electronics (item 3)

"Global digital video news distribution system," granted 1999‑11‑23, priority 1993‑04‑16 (CPC H04N2007/145 among others — i.e., video‑communication/distribution).

• Potential § 102 read: relevant to the globally distributed, geographically sited server topology of claim 1(c)/(d) and to the claim‑3(a) "feeds obtained from respective sources" element. It is not directed to browser‑based camera control or type‑specific command codes, and it lacks the master‑authorization/publishing‑point structure. Not anticipatory; § 103 material for the distribution spine of claims 1 and 3.

3.4 US 6,072,982 — Haddad (item 4)

"Interactive audiovisual distribution system," granted 2000‑06‑06, priority 1994‑08‑02, CPC H04N7/17318 / H04N7/17336 (VOD/interactive TV).

• Potential § 102 read: maps to the "video‑on‑demand / stored feed / per‑request accounting" disclosure that appears in the '380 specification and Summary but is not claimed. No granted claim read.

3.5 US 6,115,035 — Compton/Walter / MediaOne + US West (item 5)

"System and method for automated audio/video archive and distribution," granted 2000‑09‑05, priority 1997‑07‑21, CPC H04N21/21, H04N21/23, H04N21/6125.

• Potential § 102 read: closest cited art to the "store/cache a live feed at the local server and re‑transmit later" sentence in claim 1's specification support (and to the local‑PoP video‑data‑storage disclosure in FIG. 3). Because the granted claims do not separately claim archival/re‑transmission (claim 1 is directed to the remote‑control GUI elements), this is § 103 material for the storage aspect only.

3.6 US 6,133,941 — Ono / Canon (item 6) — the most material cited reference

Granted 2000‑10‑17; U.S. appl. 08/956,552 filed 1997‑10‑23; JP priority 1996‑10‑25. Title in full: "Camera control system, apparatus, and method which includes a camera control server that receives camera control requests from clients and issues control authority and wait times for control of camera to clients." https://patents.google.com/patent/US6133941

What it discloses (from the printed specification):

• A camera control server (11) with a camera control unit (11b), a control‑authority management unit (11c) arbitrating between multiple camera control clients (101, 101a, 101b) over "a LAN, WAN, Internet, or the like" (network 12).

• A camera (11a) whose "pan and tilt angles, zoom ratio, and the like can be controlled by external commands," with a plurality of cameras connectable to one camera control server.

• Browser‑based client control: the client WWW browser loads web‑page data containing an <embed src="camera1.wvp" …> tag/hyperlink pointing to the camera server, downloads the data file, and a camera‑controller module plus picture‑display module establishes connection to the camera control server.

• A graphical control panel (scroll bars 301/302/303 for pan, tilt, zoom) with indices showing commanded vs. present camera parameters.

• Server registration/authentication of clients (connection request accepted/rejected; control‑right assignment, waiting queue, priority levels in a registered table).

• § 102 read against claim 1: discloses elements (a)‑in‑part (cameras at sites, remotely controllable), (b) in part (camera‑connected computer/server on a network), (c)/(d) functionally (a server receiving requests over the Internet), and (e) in part (a browser‑resident camera‑control GUI). It does not disclose: cameras "of a predetermined different video camera types," the master authorization server / propagation server division of labor, the master server's act of returning the camera‑type ID and the camera computer's IP address to the requester, or the plurality of control‑panel GUI files each mapped to a camera type and emitting that type's command‑code set. Under the all‑elements rule, claim 1 is not anticipated; Ono is the natural § 103 primary reference for claim 1 and for claim 2's "conversion module" concept (Ono's camera control unit (11b) sits between the network message format and the camera's native command set, i.e., a functional analogue of the claim‑2 propagation‑server conversion module).

• § 102 read against claim 3: nothing relevant (no web‑page generation, no templates, no uploaded identification graphics). Not anticipatory.

3.7 US 6,157,377 — Shah‑Nazaroff/Goldschmidt / Intel (item 7)

"Method and apparatus for purchasing upgraded media features for programming transmissions," granted 2000‑12‑05, priority 1998‑10‑30.

• Potential § 102 read: relevant only to the pricing/upgrade‑purchase disclosure (FIG. 6 Pricing Table, tiered "Use Rights") that the '380 Summary describes but does not claim. No granted claim read.

3.8 US 6,160,544 — Hayashi/Okunaka / Tokyo Broadcasting + NTT Electronics (item 8)

"Digital video distribution system," granted 2000‑12‑12, priority 1997‑05‑12, CPC including H04N21/2187 (live/real‑time video distribution).

• Potential § 102 read: bears on claim 1(c) and claim 3(b) (network distribution of digital video to requesting viewers), and is the second‑closest general‑distribution reference after US 5,956,716. Silent on camera‑type code conversion and on automated template‑based web‑page generation. Not anticipatory; § 103 material.

3.9 US 5,991,306 — Burns et al. (item 9, applicant‑cited)

"Pull based, intelligent caching system and method for delivering data over a network," granted 1999‑11‑23.

• Potential § 102 read: the "pull‑based caching at intermediate servers" teaching maps to the '380 FIG. 3 video data storage 350 and to the specification's statement that a live feed "can be stored or cached… from which it can be re‑transmitted later upon request." Again, this is not an element of any granted claim; it is § 103 background on the caching/publishing infrastructure. It also indicates applicant awareness of cache‑pull architectures, which weakens any argument that the PoP caching design was unexpected.

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4. Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–5. Each of the five claims includes at least one element absent from every listed reference — principally, for claim 1, the combination of (i) cameras of predetermined different types, (ii) a master authorization server that returns the camera‑type identification and the camera computer's IP address together with access, and (iii) type‑specific control‑panel GUI files or a propagation‑server conversion module; and, for claim 3, the template‑selection plus identification‑graphics‑upload plus automated web‑page‑generation module.
2. The most relevant cited prior art is US 6,133,941 (Ono / Canon, filed 1997‑10‑23, JP priority 1996‑10‑25). It is the only citation directed at browser‑mediated remote control of a network camera with a server arbitrating control, for multiple clients and multiple cameras. It is a strong § 103 primary reference against claim 1 (and a close functional analogue for claim 2's conversion module), but it lacks the camera‑type‑abstraction and master‑authorization teachings.
3. US 5,956,716 (InterVU), US 5,991,801 (Trans Video Electronics) and US 6,160,544 (Tokyo Broadcasting/NTT) form the distribution‑architecture cluster relevant to claim 1(c)/(d) and claim 3(b); US 6,115,035 and US 5,991,306 are the caching/archival cluster relevant to the specification's store‑and‑re‑transmit disclosure.
4. US 5,619,247, US 6,072,982 and US 6,157,377 map to subject matter (pricing tables, billing/payment statements, VOD entitlement) that appears in the '380 Summary of the Invention but that the applicant chose not to claim in the granted claim set. They cannot anticipate a claim that does not exist; they matter as evidence that these features were known, and US 5,619,247 uniquely blocks any attempt to capture that subject matter now (§ 102(b), not swear‑behindable).
5. Dates drive the analysis. Only US 5,619,247 is § 102(b) art on either candidate critical date. The other eight are § 102(e) art — competent, but theoretically removable by a Rule 131 showing of earlier invention.

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5. What must still be verified before this is treated as complete

• Citation item 10 — not retrieved (see § 0). Pull the PTO‑892/SB‑08 from USPTO PatentCenter, application 09/490,628, "Events"/"Documents" tab, and the PCT ISR in PCT/US2000/001645 / WO 2000044169 A1, which will list the same references plus any foreign search‑report additions.
• Google Patents front‑page tables ("Patent Citations," "Foreign Patent Documents," "Other References," "Cited By") for US6564380 — absent from the authoritative text supplied, so I could not confirm whether any non‑patent literature (e.g., a printed publication on streaming/CDN architecture) was cited; the '380 specification itself names Sensormatic's Speed Dome Ultra™ and RV2216 switcher, Eyecast.com, Perception Robotics, Broadcast.com, MAX.i.c.Live's 3600 System, Microsoft's Windows Media Management/Rights Management systems, and the Excalibur/INTERVU "Screening Room™" system — any of which could have been submitted as § 102(a)/(b) art.
• Examiner's relevance characterizations — U.S. search reports are uncategorized, so § 102 vs. § 103 treatment of each reference can only be confirmed from the office actions in the file wrapper, not from the citation list.

Sources: https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=6564380B1&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=13&date=20030513&DB=&locale=en_IE ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6564380/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6133941 ; https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?locale=en_IE&CC=US&date=20030513&NR=6564380B1&ND=14&KC=B1 ; https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citingDocuments?CC=US&NR=6564380B1&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=13&date=20030513&DB=&locale=en_IE

I'll pull the actual prior-art record for this patent before building the §103 combinations.

Good — I have the search-report citations. Let me pull the full cited-documents list and the details of the two most load-bearing references (Canon's Ono camera-control patent and Intervu's Kenner/Gruber video-delivery patent).

Let me close two gaps: the applicant-cited reference and the non-patent prior art named in the Background (Perception Robotics / MAX.i.c.Live / Eyecast).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,564,380 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / cross-reference discipline. This analysis builds on the previously generated sections rather than repeating them. Two housekeeping flags first:

1. Contradiction between prior sections (flagged). The "Patent summary" section asserts the granted set is five claims (2 independent — cl. 1 and cl. 3 — and 3 dependent) with claim text drawn from Espacenet. The later "PTAB challenges → Strategic summary" section expressly declined to state a claim count because "the claim text itself was truncated in the source corpus." Those two positions cannot both be operative. I rely on the five-claim structure (the more specific, source-cited account) and note that independent verification against the granted printed claim set is warranted before any filing.
2. Date discrepancy (flagged). The task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the session clock reads 2026-09-27. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference.

Governing law. Application 09/490,628 was filed 2000-01-24, so the pre-AIA version of § 102/§ 103 applies, and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), governs the obviousness inquiry. All references discussed below were filed before the 1999-01-26 priority date and are therefore available as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(e) even where they published later (a point that matters because several key references issued in 1999–2000).

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1. Prior-art record actually on the face of this patent

A. References cited by the Examiner / search report (Espacenet "List of all citations" for US6564380 B1, https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=[6564380B1](/patent/6564380B1)&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=13&date=20030513&DB=&locale=en_IE):

B. Admitted prior art in the patent's own Background. These are applicant admissions and require no independent date proof:

• Perception Robotics, Inc. (Evanston, Ill.) — "a system for viewing a live video feed from the field via Internet and remotely controlling the camera through a Web page menu of camera control parameters." (US6564380, Background.)
• Sensormatic Electronics Corp. — security cameras controlled by software controllers over an Internet TCP/IP connection.
• Eyecast.com — uploading security-camera feeds via Internet to a Web server.
• MAX.i.c.Live (Dallas) "3600 System" — access to multiple live video feed sources simultaneously via Internet for off-site video processing.
• Broadcast.com — hosting streaming media programs for client companies on its Web site.
• Excalibur / INTERVU "Screening Room™" — video logging, searching, re-purposing, distribution and publishing capabilities.

Level of ordinary skill. A POSITA here is a software/network engineer (or small team) with ~2–3 years of experience building TCP/IP client-server media applications and browser front-ends as of early 1999 — comfortable with HTTP, streaming codecs (ASF/RealVideo/QuickTime), IP addressing, caching proxies, and CGI/HTML page generation. All nine references are analogous art: same field of endeavor (networked video capture, delivery, and control) or reasonably pertinent to the problem the patent addresses (remote camera control, video distribution economics).

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2. Ground 1 — Claim 1 (and claim 2) obvious over Ono + Perception Robotics + Kenner + Burns

Element mapping

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales)

• Known problem, known solution (KSR rationales (C)/(D)). Ono solves authorization for a scarce camera among many remote clients; Perception solves bringing that control into a browser. Combining a known browser-GUI control front-end (Perception) with known network camera-control-server plumbing (Ono) is the use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way — with predictable results.
• Market forces / design incentive (KSR rationale (F)). The patent's own Background documents the demand: thousands of new production companies needing cheap live content, and cable/Telco bandwidth arriving with no content to fill it. Kenner states the same commercial driver ("remote users communicate with large mainframe servers… the provider must insure that hardware and software… is capable of the very high storage and transmission rates required"). Cost pressure to substitute a browser + IP-addressed camera controller for a dispatched camera crew is a classic design incentive.
• "If it works, use it" (KSR rationale (E)). Routing the control path directly to the camera controller's IP address (rather than through a human operator) is the natural, obvious path once Kenner has established that the index manager already resolves a request to a destination IP address.
• Interchangeability of the intermediary. Kenner's PIM/DSI/SRU and Burns's POP/cache/CMS are alternative, well-understood implementations of the same "regional server receiving content and serving it to authorized requesters" function; a POSITA would select one according to network topology and cost, not invention.

Claim 2 (server-side conversion module)

Claim 2 is the same architecture with the type-mapping relocated from the client to the propagation server. Relocation of a mapping function across a client/server boundary is a simple substitution of one known element for another (KSR rationale (B)) with no change in the function performed. Strong secondary evidence of obviousness comes from the patent's own text: it discloses the alternative in the same breath as the preferred embodiment ("In an alternative embodiment… a conversion module is maintained with the video-propagation server"), and it already admits that on-site controllers convert "standard Manchester text code form" into camera-recognized signals, and that hardware Custom Interface Modules (CIMs) perform exactly such a conversion. A software conversion table at the server is the obvious corollary. Motivation: single-point maintenance, avoiding client-side downloads/updates (which the patent concedes must be re-downloaded), and the server already sits on the control path.

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3. Ground 2 — Claim 3 (and claims 4–5) obvious over Kenner + Burns + Broadcast.com (admitted) + US 6,115,035 / US 5,991,801

Claim 3 requires (i) a propagation server transmitting a requested video feed over the Internet; (ii) a master server receiving a request to use a feed in a requested display presentation format on a video Web page linked to the client's own Web site; and (iii) a video Web page generation module that automatically generates the page and links it to the client's site; plus template selection from a plurality of stored templates and upload of the requester's identification graphics.

Motivation. (1) Cost: the admitted Broadcast.com model demonstrates the demand for outsourcing hosting of a client's video presence. (2) The patent concedes the goal is "a marked reduction in production costs for creating video Web pages." (3) Template-based automated composition was the ordinary way to cut per-client cost — the classic "known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement" rationale. (4) Burns supplies the specific teaching that the server can automatically rewrite the page to bind the client's page to server-hosted video — the very "linking" step of claim 3, and the same mechanism the patent uses defensively (composite video image) to stop de-linking.

Claims 4–5. Claim 4 (ad templates) follows directly from Kenner's advertising embodiment and the admitted Broadcast.com model. Claim 5 (live-events programming hosted by the master server and linked to a production company's site) is met by the combination of US 5,991,801 (Rebec — global digital video news distribution) or the admitted MAX.i.c.Live 3600 system (multiple simultaneous live feeds via the Internet for off-site processing) with Broadcast.com's hosted-programming service. Neither adds anything structurally beyond the claim-3 architecture plus a content category.

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4. What the patent owner would argue, and the residual weaknesses

1. Secondary considerations are absent from the record. The prior sections establish no litigation and no PTAB proceedings on this patent, and the search surfaced no evidence of commercial success, copying, industry praise, or licensing attributable to the claimed architecture. Nexus-based rebuttal evidence is therefore unavailable on the present record. (Confidence: moderate — absence of searchable evidence is not proof of absence.)
2. The claimed combination is genuinely narrow. Claim 1's saving limitation is the simultaneous requirement that (a) the master server hands over the camera-type ID, and (b) the mapping lives in client-side GUI files. A patent owner could argue non-obviousness of bundling type identification with authorization-granting. The rebuttal is that Kenner already returns a resolved destination address with the authorization result, and Ono already returns a camera-specific control-authority message — so what remains is the obvious addition of which protocol the destination speaks, a datum a POSITA must transmit to make browser control work at all.
3. § 101 overlay (not § 103, but relevant to posture). Claims 3–5 are largely business-method / page-generation claims of the Alice-era type. If a defendant raises § 101, the § 103 case above becomes belt-and-suspenders — and, per the prior PTAB section, no IPR estoppel constrains the invalidity case because no AIA trial ever occurred.
4. Expiration dominates. Per the prior sections, the patent expired 2020-01-24 and pre-AIA § 286 now bars recovery of damages accruing more than six years before any complaint. A § 103 invalidity case is worth developing for past-damages windows preserved by any pre-2020 complaint (which the prior sections could not rule out) — not for prospective relief.

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5. Bottom line

On the record of this patent's own face — nine § 102(e) references plus six admitted Background systems — every element of claims 1–5 appears in, or is an obvious substitution within, the combination of:

• US 6,133,941 (Ono/Canon) — network camera control + control-authority issuance to clients;
• Perception Robotics (admitted) — browser-based camera control via a Web-page control-parameter menu;
• US 5,956,716 (Kenner/Gruber, InterVu) — centralized index manager that authorizes a request, bills it, and resolves it to a destination IP address;
• US 5,991,306 (Burns/Leach, Microsoft) — POP-level caching and automated server-side Web-page generation around streaming video; and
• Broadcast.com (admitted) plus US 5,991,801 — hosted, linked video programming for client sites.

The motivation is supplied by the patent itself: the economic pressure to replace dispatched camera crews, the heterogeneity of camera command sets (admitted), the already-known browser plug-in/driver-per-device model, and the admitted custom-interface-module conversion practice. The combination is a predictable aggregation of known elements performing the same functions — the KSR paradigm of obviousness.

Confidence and caveats. High confidence in the prior-art inventory, in the § 102(e) availability of the cited references (all pre-date 1999-01-26 as filings), and in the element mappings to Ono, Kenner, and Burns. Moderate confidence in the precise wording of granted claims 1–5 (I worked from the previously generated summary's Espacenet-derived claim structure, which is internally contradicted by the later PTAB section's claim-count disclaimer), and lower confidence regarding the 10th cited document on the Espacenet list (not retrieved) and the exact bibliographic details of the Perception Robotics non-patent reference (available only as a Background admission — no independent document located before the search limit was reached). Verify the printed claim set and any litigation docket before relying on this analysis in a filing.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6564380/en · https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=6564380B1&KC=B1&FT=D&ND=13&date=20030513&DB=&locale=en_IE · https://patents.google.com/patent/US6133941 · https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5956716A](/patent/US5956716A)/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/[5991306](/patent/5991306) · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/64/28/bd/6ccbb57dbc23ad/US5991306.pdf · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[6133941](/patent/6133941)