Invalidity dossier
US 6590889
Added 9/23/2026, 11:44:24 AM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6,590,889 B1
Title: "Data communications system and hybrid time-code multiplexing method"
Patent number / application: US 6,590,889 B1; application US 09/261,971, filed 1999-03-03; granted/publication date 2003-07-08. Priority claimed from US 08/909,266, prior art date 1997-08-11 (which corresponds to patent US 6,104,708 A). Inventors: Robert David Preuss and Marcos Antonio Bergamo.
Assignee information (as listed): Original assignee Genuity Inc.; current assignee listed as Merrill Lynch Capital Corp and RTX BBN Technologies Corp. Status listed as "Expired – Lifetime," with anticipated expiration 2017-08-11.
Purpose and plain-language scope: The patent concerns digital data communications and, more particularly, systems and methods for accommodating terminals of different throughput capabilities. In described embodiments, terminals 21–26 communicate through a HUB 31 that may be a relay satellite or a terrestrial radio-frequency antenna; terminals may be satellite or RF terminals and may be in a mobile packet radio or other wireless/wireline network with shared channels.
The disclosed approach uses Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) in a particular way to allow flexible allocation of channel capability or bandwidth. Broadly, the invention comprises a method for communicating over a network of nodes: generating multiple codes, each orthogonal to and a circular shifted version of every other code; assigning a subset of those codes to a first node; and transmitting information from that node to a second node using the assigned subset. It also comprises a node having means for storing such a code subset and means for transmitting using it, methods for modulating end-user information into symbols each carrying multiple bits, and systems/methods using circulant-unitary matrices. The excerpt references figures covering containers, code assignments and guard bands, M-sequence subtraction to form ternary sequences, circulating padding, frequency conversion, and correlators, but does not reproduce their full text.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6590889/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It provides only partial description text and definitions; figures and omitted passages are not reproduced. It does not establish claim language in full, detailed embodiments, experimental results, or the accuracy of the listed assignees and legal status, which the source itself characterizes as assumptions not legal conclusions.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:54 PM
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Litigation summary
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PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.