US 6629129

I'll search for authoritative records on this specific patent number, then reconcile with the full text provided.

Let me verify whether any litigation or CAFC activity exists for this patent, and check the full claim set (the provided text truncates at claim 28).

Let me attempt to retrieve the remaining claims (29–42), which the provided text truncated.

US Patent 6,629,129 — Analyst Summary

Search scope note: I searched for records tied to the exact number 6,629,129 (no truncation, no substitution). I found no litigation, IPR/PGR, or CAFC docket entry referencing this patent. Details and caveats are below.

---

1. Bibliographic Data (as listed)

The patent claims benefit of the disclosure of co-pending application Ser. No. 09/191,626, filed Nov. 13, 1998, titled "Automatic Scheduling and Formation of a Virtual Meeting Over a Computer Network," incorporated by reference (I did not verify what that application issued as, and do not assert a patent number for it).

---

2. Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"A method and system for controlling the interaction between a primary application and a virtual meeting application and assigning the responsibility between them for providing user interface components is provided. The virtual meeting application provides the functionality for a virtual meeting and provides user interface components related to transient state changes in the virtual meeting. The virtual meeting application is called from the user interface provided by the primary application. In response to state change event notification sent by the virtual meeting application to the primary application, the primary application updates user interface components that supplement the user interface provided by the virtual meeting application. The virtual meeting application is invoked through an application interface that is exposed by the virtual meeting application in a global name space. The application interface may be associated with a predefined mode that specifies which of the user interface components provided by the virtual meeting application will be displayed in a manner that appears to be part of the primary application's user interface and which of the virtual meeting user interface components will be suppressed."

Plain-language gist: Rather than making a user launch and juggle a separate conferencing program, the document-editing program itself offers "Meet Now." The editing program calls the conferencing program behind the scenes through a published COM-style interface, and the two programs split responsibility for what the user sees: the editing program owns the persistent controls (the online-meeting toolbar), while the conferencing program owns the transient pop-ups (call progress, "so-and-so joined," "Click the mouse to take control"). They keep in sync by exchanging state-change notifications and requests. A "predefined mode" tied to each interface decides which conferencing-program UI pieces are shown and which are suppressed. The commercial embodiment described is Microsoft Word 2000 with Microsoft NetMeeting (T.120-compliant).

---

3. Independent Claim — Plain-Language Overview

Only claim 1 appears to be independent (claims 2–28 in the supplied text all depend, directly or indirectly, from claim 1, including the computer-readable-medium claims 4 and 6). Claim 1 reads, in substance:

Claim 1 — A computer-implemented method for forming an instance of a virtual meeting and then sharing that instance between a plurality of computer applications, comprising four steps:

1. Provide a first computer application (the "primary" app, e.g., Word) that will be shared by a plurality of meeting participants' computers during the meeting, the first application having a first user interface;
2. Provide a virtual meeting application (e.g., NetMeeting) for forming and administering the meeting, the meeting application having its own virtual-meeting user interface and an application interface;
3. Under the control of the first computer application, invoke the virtual meeting application through that application interface; and
4. Under the control of the virtual meeting application, form and administer the instance of the virtual meeting.

Key observations on claim scope:

• The asserted novel core of claim 1 is control inversion / delegation: the primary application is the actor that invokes the meeting application, and the meeting application is the actor that then forms and runs the meeting. No separate "conferencing application launch" step by the user is required.
• Claim 1 is method-only and deliberately thin: it does not recite state-change notifications (that is claim 2), does not recite shared/embedded UI (clam 5), and does not recite document collaboration (claim 22). Those are all captured in dependents.
• The preamble's "sharing the instance… between a plurality of computer applications" is a potentially limiting term worth flagging in any construction analysis.

Notable dependent-claim families (from the text supplied):

• Notifications & supplemental UI: claims 2–3, 15, 20–21 — state notifications from meeting app → primary app; state-change requests from supplementary UI → meeting app.
• Interface embedding / modality: claims 5, 7–10 — displaying part of the meeting UI as part of the primary UI, "application modal" to the primary app, "always on top" windows.
• Modes & UI suppression: claims 11–12 — suppressing selected meeting-UI components; multiple application interfaces each defining a predefined mode.
• Lifecycle / multi-instance / multi-app: claims 16–19 — hiding the meeting UI; attaching a second primary application to the meeting; loading a second instance of the meeting application for a second meeting.
• Collaboration & transient dialogs: claims 22–27 — shared electronic document, "click to take control," attendee add/remove dialog, call-progress dialog, call-failure dialog.
• File transfer: claim 28 begins "transferring the file containing the ele…" (text truncated in the supplied source).

---

4. Litigation / CAFC Status (as of the stated date)

• No case, IPR/PGR, or CAFC appeal involving US 6,629,129 was located. Searches of general web/patent-corpus sources for the specific number returned only the patent's own bibliographic pages.
• The searches did surface a 2002–2004 Imagexpo LLC (SPX Corp.) v. Microsoft matter concerning NetMeeting's Whiteboard feature (jury verdict ~$62.3M on 2003‑11‑14; ~$60M settlement in Dec. 2003/Jan. 2004). That case concerned a different patent — it is not US 6,629,129, and I am explicitly not attributing it to this patent. It is relevant only as context that Microsoft's NetMeeting whiteboard code was litigated by others. Sources: https://www.infoworld.com/article/[2226992](/patent/2226992)/microsoft-to-pay-spx-60-million-in-patent-suit.html · https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2004/01/microsoft-pays-out-60-million-for.html
• Likewise, the "2026 CAFC docket" material returned by search (Netlist v. Micron/Samsung; Meetrix; IPR2020‑01079) is unrelated to this patent number.
• The Google Patents record shows no "Litigation" or "Federal Circuit" events, consistent with the absence of findings.
• One third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) lists an "approx value" of $77,295,000 for this patent. This is a proprietary model estimate, not an authoritative legal or financial figure and should not be relied on.

Conclusion on docket status: On the evidence available, US 6,629,129 appears to have never been asserted in litigation or challenged at the PTAB and to have no CAFC history. Because the patent reached its anticipated expiration on 2019‑06‑16 and is marked "Expired – Lifetime," no 2026 enforcement activity is expected. This is a negative finding from web-accessible sources, not a certified USPTO docket clearance.

---

5. Statement of Uncertainty

1. Truncated claim text. The authoritative text supplied to me ends mid‑claim 28 ("transferring the file containing the ele…"). Claims 29–42 are not in my source material. I therefore cannot describe their content or confirm whether any of them is independent (e.g., a possible independent apparatus/system claim). My statement that claim 1 appears sole independent is based only on claims 1–28.
2. Assignee. Google Patents lists Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC as current assignee and cautions that its assignee list "may be inaccurate." I have not independently confirmed the chain Microsoft Corp. → Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC beyond the displayed reassignment record dated 2014‑12‑09.
3. Negatives on litigation. Absence of results is not proof of absence of litigation. A definitive check would require a run against a complete PACER/Docket Navigator/PTAB database, which I could not execute here.
4. Date discrepancy. The prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the session metadata I was given says 2026‑09‑30. This does not change any conclusion above, since the patent expired in 2019 under either date, but I flag it rather than silently reconciling it.
5. "Prior art keywords" and CPC mappings shown on the Google Patents page are generated/indexing artifacts, not part of the patent's original front page, and I have not treated them as authoritative.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6629129 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try more targeted queries specific to the patent title and number.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent 6,629,129

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation — past or pending — specifically involving U.S. Patent No. 6,629,129. Based on the searching I was able to complete, no case (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome) is confirmed for this patent.

What I searched and what came back

I ran queries targeting the exact number (with and without commas) and the exact title against litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents litigation list, CourtListener/RECAP, PACER Monitor, Justia dockets, and general web). Key observations:

• No hit tied this patent number to a case. None of the results returned a docket, complaint, or order referencing "6,629,129" or "6629129."
• Results using the bare shorthand "'129 patent" refer to different patents — not this one. Per your instruction not to return similar numbers, I am explicitly flagging these as false positives rather than reporting them:
  • The Netlist v. Google reexamination/intervening-rights briefing (E.D. Tex., including the CourtListener RECAP PDF) concerns a different '912/'129-family patent (the DRAM memory-device matters), not 6,629,129.
  • The Bell Northern Research / Artec Europe v. Shenzhen Creality / Alza v. Impax / Anascape references to a "'129 patent" are all to unrelated patents (e.g., 4,762,129, and others), not this one.
  • The Sightsound.com v. NZK material concerns 5,191,573 — unrelated.
• Foreign citation only. The one place the exact number appears in a substantive document is a Chinese patent (CN 101427257 B, a Microsoft "tracking and editing resources in real-time collaborative sessions" patent), which cites US 6,629,129 as prior art. A prior-art citation is not litigation.

Important caveats

• This is a "not found," not a certified "none exists." My tool access was cut off before I could exhaust every specialized litigation database (e.g., a full Docket Navigator/Lex Machina search, full PACER sweep, or the USPTO Patent Assignment/litigation records). I cannot rule out that an older case exists.
• Why litigation is unlikely / the window has closed: US 6,629,129 has a filing/priority date of June 16, 1999, was assigned originally to Microsoft Corporation (now Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, per the reassignment dated 2014-12-09), and its anticipated expiration was June 16, 2019. The Google Patents legal-status field reads "Expired – Lifetime." Any infringement suit would have had to be filed during the enforceable term, and I found none.
• The patent does appear as a prior-art citation in later Microsoft filings (e.g., the CN 101427257 family), which is a patentability reference, not an enforcement action.

Recommendation for definitive confirmation

If you need a certified negative, the following should be run directly (I was unable to complete them here):

1. Docket Navigator or Lex Machina — search patents-in-suit for exactly 6,629,129.
2. PACER full-text/docket search and the Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) using the exact number.
3. USPTO Patent Center "Legal" / assignment and §290 notice records for this patent number.

No case details are provided because none were substantiated for U.S. Patent No. 6,629,129 specifically.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against public sources before writing the memo.

Now let me confirm there's no IPR/CBM/PGR under any naming variant, and check whether the patent was ever litigated or reexamined.

Let me do a final check on PTAB E2E/docket databases and any district court assertions.

PTAB Activity Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,629,129

Patent: Shared virtual meeting services among computer applications
Patent Owner: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (originally [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.))
Inventors: Bookspan, Donner, Dubrow, MacLin, Poon, Tafoya
Application: 09/333,694 · Filed: 1999-06-16 · Granted: 2003-09-30 · Expired (anticipated): 2019-06-16
Claims: 42 (as printed at grant)

---

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero) — the USPTO Open Data Portal structured record returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 6,629,129, and my independent web verification found no proceeding that the ODP merely failed to index; the breakdown is therefore active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0, leaving a defendant with a patent whose claims are entirely UNTESTED at the PTAB but which expired on 2019-06-16, so the absence of PTAB activity is not a "hardened patent" signal so much as a signal that no third party ever had a financial reason to challenge it — the patent's real defensive weakness is its expiration, not any Board precedent.

---

Proceedings on file

There are no AIA trial proceedings to report. I am not populating per-proceeding entries because doing so would require fabricating a proceeding number, a petitioner, or an FWD disposition — none of which exist in the source data or in public records.

Verbatim status from the structured source

"The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest."

Web verification performed (2026-09-30)

I ran targeted searches against PTAB-facing queries ("US 6629129 IPR", "6629129 CBM", "'6629129' PTAB trial", "'6,629,129' reexamination"). No results for this patent number as the subject patent in any AIA trial. The results that surfaced with "'912" or "'6629129" in them are false positives on different patents and must not be attributed to 6,629,129:

• Realtime Data / 7,777,651-adjacent IPR2018-00138 — a different '912 patent (video object-attribute detection, priority 2005) discussed in a PTAB petition at ptacts.uspto.gov. Unrelated.
• Netlist '912 patent litigation (E.D. Tex.) — a reexamination/intervening-rights dispute involving Google and Netlist, where the "'912 patent" is a pharmaceutical/digital family member distinct from this one (the opinion also references '942 and '247). Unrelated.
• Anascape Ltd. v. Microsoft / Nintendo, No. 9:06-cv-00158 (E.D. Tex.) — a 2007 reexamination campaign by Microsoft against twelve game-controller patents. US 6,629,129 is not among the patents listed. Unrelated.
• i4i v. Microsoft ('449 patent) — unrelated markup-language patent.

I found no district court complaint, ITC investigation, or ex parte reexamination on US 6,629,129 in the material retrieved. I cannot rule out an unindexed or sealed assertion, and I will not assert one exists.

Why the zero is analytically unsurprising

1. This is a Microsoft-owned patent, not a troll patent. The original assignee is Microsoft Corp. (reassigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC on 2014-12-09). Patents held by operating companies with no assertion history rarely attract IPRs — IPRs are filed defensively, in response to a demand or suit.
2. It expired on 2019-06-16 (20 years from the 1999-06-16 filing date). The AIA trial window that mattered (CBM review, roughly 2012-09-16 through 2020-09-16 — see USPTO's transitional program materials) came and went without a CBM filing. Instituting an IPR today on an expired patent is legally possible, but the Board would construe claims under Phillips rather than BRI, and no rational petitioner spends $300k-$500k to invalidate claims that already generate no royalties.
3. The patent predates the AIA by twelve years and issued in 2003. Any viable validity attack is therefore a § 102/§ 103 prior-art attack on a 1999 priority date — and it would be run in district court, not the Board.

Link for confirming the null result: USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End system — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ ; Board decisions archive — https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions ; Federal Circuit opinions/docket — https://www.courtlistener.com/ .

---

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 42 claims are UNTESTED. No claim of US 6,629,129 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB in an AIA trial. Claims 1-42 stand exactly as granted in 2003. If you receive a demand letter citing claim 1, claim 22 (collaborative document editing), claim 23 (virtual image of the primary application on an attendee's computer), or claim 24 (the "click to take control" UI), you cannot point to an FWD and say the claim is dead. You must also not pretend otherwise — there is no PTAB record to cite.

The real defensive posture is expiry, not estoppel. This patent expired on 2019-06-16. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages reach back only six years from complaint filing: a complaint filed on or after 2025-06-16 captures a damages window (filing date minus six years) that begins after the patent's expiration date, so there is no overlap between the accrual window and the enforceable term — meaning a complaint filed against a defendant today has, on its face, no recoverable past damages on the expired claims, and no possibility of prospective relief (injunction or ongoing royalty) because there is no ongoing infringement of an expired patent. (Note: the old laches defense was abrogated by SCA Hygiene Prods. v. First Quality Baby Prods., 580 U.S. 328 (2017), but § 286 remains an absolute damages bar and is the stronger tool here.) The commercial reality is that whoever is sending demand letters citing this patent is pursuing a pre-2019 accrual theory with a filing deadline that has already passed — verify the letter's date and the asserted accused activity dates carefully, because that is where the case lives or dies.

Estoppel landscape: effectively empty, and that cuts both ways. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted on this patent, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone. Any defendant is free to raise § 102/§ 103 grounds on prior art patents and printed publications in district court, and free to file a fresh IPR — no petitioner or privy has burned those grounds. Conversely, there is no petitioner-side win to free-ride on; there is no IPR record, no Board claim construction, and no FWD findings to import. Any invalidity case would be built from scratch. The prior-art universe is 1999-era: the patent's own specification names Microsoft NetMeeting and ITU T.120 as the then-existing virtual-meeting technology, and the Background expressly concedes that a "prior art method for establishing a virtual meeting" existed involving manual switching between a document-editing application and a virtual meeting application — a § 103 motivation-to-combine foothold that a skilled invalidity team should mine directly from column 1.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs (none filed at all). The patent owner has not pursued PTAB appeals (there is no FWD to appeal). There is no defensive aggregator in the chain — Unified Patents, RPX, and similar entities have no record of challenging this patent. The only assignee-side event of note is the routine 2014-12-09 intra-corporate transfer from Microsoft Corporation to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC.

---

Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a defense on a nonexistent PTAB record. There is no FWD to quote and no PTAB E2E docket to link. Replace the usual "claims 1-5 were canceled" argument with the two arguments that actually exist here: (a) expiry + § 286 — no recoverable damages window, no prospective relief; and (b) full-throated § 102/§ 103 invalidity on 1999-era art, unencumbered by any estoppel.

2. Pin down the accrual dates immediately. Demand a claim chart with accused-activity dates. If all accused conduct postdates 2019-06-16, the § 286 point disposes of damages outright. If any accused conduct is pre-expiration, determine whether the six-year lookback still reaches it given the complaint's filing date.

3. Confirm the ODP null result yourself before relying on it. Pull the file wrapper and any post-grant records via USPTO PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/) for application 09/333,694, and search PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) by patent number. My verification is search-based and the ODP ingest lag is real — if a recently-filed petition exists that neither ODP nor web search surfaced, that changes the picture, though not the expiry analysis.

4. Treat any assertion of this patent as a § 285 candidate. Asserting an expired 1999 patent with no damages window, more than seven years after expiration, is factually distinguishable from Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., 572 U.S. 545 (2014), only if there is a genuine pre-2019 accrual theory. If the demand is premised on current products, document that and evaluate an exceptional-case motion.

5. If a client is the patent owner (e.g., a Microsoft successor inquiry), the practical advice is the mirror image: the enforcement value of US 6,629,129 is essentially nil as of 2026-09-30, and licensing demands grounded on it carry real § 285 exposure. It is worth re-verifying the exact expiration date against the PatentCenter maintenance-fee and term records rather than relying on the Google Patents "Expired - Lifetime" flag (which, per Google's own disclaimer, "is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion").

---

Verification trail: structured ODP block ("no AIA trial proceedings"); targeted web searches run 2026-09-30 against PTAB E2E/PTActs, Google Patents, Docket Alarm, Justia, and CourtListener. All "'912"/"'6629129" hits resolved to unrelated patents (Realtime Data, Netlist, i4i, Anascape) and are flagged above. Absence of a PTAB record is reported as an absence; no proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions have been invented.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,629,129, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing sources.

Let me dig into the specific recorded assignments and their reel/frame numbers.

Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction — US Patent 6,629,129

Data-access caveat up front (read this first). My tooling was cut off after a limited number of queries and I could not complete a live query of the USPTO Patent Assignment Center record for this patent (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ; mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). As a result I can reliably reconstruct the chain (parties, dates, conveyance types) from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 6,629,129 and a cross-referenced INPADOC record, but I could not independently verify the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record for this specific patent. I flag every place that matters below rather than filling gaps with invented values.

---

Inventors

Six named inventors, all listed on the face of the patent, and all six are named as assignors in the same assignment of inventors' interest to Microsoft Corporation recorded 1999-09-03 (Google Patents legal events: "Assignors: MACLIN, MARKHAM F., DONNER, ROBERT D., DUBROW, DEBORAH L., POON, PAUL C., BOOKSPAN, MATTHEW D., TAFOYA, JOHN E.").

Basis for "employer at filing": the original assignee field is Microsoft Corp; the 1999-09-03 instrument is a standard "assignment of assignors' interest" executed by all six inventors; and the specification identifies the commercial embodiment as Microsoft Word 2000 + Microsoft NetMeeting (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA). John E. Tafoya is separately indexed as a Microsoft inventor with 7 Microsoft patents (Patent Leaderboard, https://www.patentleaderboard.com/microsoft/john-e-tafoya/[1214157](/patent/1214157)). I could not retrieve the inventors' individual home/employment addresses from the recorded instrument, so the "employer" column is an inference, not a quotation from the assignment document.

Unusual-pattern check: No anomaly. I found no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no individual inventor appears in any later recorded assignment — i.e., rights were consolidated in Microsoft at filing and never re-transferred back to or through the individuals. This is the benign, expected pattern for a corporate-originated portfolio patent, not a pre-fire-sale signal.

---

Original assignee

Microsoft Corporation (a Washington corporation; One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052).

• Primary line of business: software / operating systems and productivity applications. At the 1999 filing date this was the classic "operating company."
• Shipped a product embodying the claims: Yes — strongly supported. The specification expressly describes the invention as implemented in Microsoft Word 2000 (see the FIG. 3 description: "an actual embodiment of the invention in Microsoft Word 2000 manufactured by Microsoft Corporation") and administered through Microsoft NetMeeting running on the same machines (virtual meeting application 1006A–C; T.120-compliant). The online-collaboration toolbar, "Meet Now," "Send To → Online Meeting Participant," chat, whiteboard, and application-sharing features described in the claims map directly onto shipped Word/NetMeeting functionality. So there is a real commercial embodiment tied to the original assignee — not a paper patent.
• Current status: Operating, and it remains the corporate parent of the current assignee. Microsoft Corporation did not sell the patent out to a third party; in 2014 it moved the patent into its wholly-owned licensing subsidiary, Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (see timeline). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of the original assignee.

---

Assignment timeline

Only two recorded events appear in the Google Patents legal-events chain for US 6,629,129, plus the filing/grant/expiry milestones. I list them chronologically:

• 1999-06-16 (executed = filing date) / recorded 1999-09-03 — Reel not retrieved (Assignment Center record not reachable in this session)

  • Conveyance: Assignment — assignment of assignors' interest (the Google Patents entry reads "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Matthew D. Bookspan, Robert D. Donner, Deborah L. Dubrow, Markham F. MacLin, Paul C. Poon, John E. Tafoya (all six inventors)
  • Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (see caveat)
  • Context: original employment/inventor assignment to the operating company — routine "assignment" at filing, not an acquisition, sale, or aggregation.

• 2014-12-09 (recorded; inherent execution/effective date 2014-10-14 per the INPADOC record) — Reel provisionally 034543/0001 — UNVERIFIED for this patent

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Microsoft Corporation
  • Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC (Washington LLC; One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: intra-corporate internal reorganization — Microsoft transferred the patent to its wholly-owned licensing subsidiary. This was part of a mass 2014 recording of the Microsoft → MTL portfolio, not a sale to an unrelated buyer.
  • Reel/frame reliability note: the reel 034543/0001 was surfaced by Espacenet INPADOC in connection with a sibling Microsoft application in the same 2014 mass transfer ("NEW OWNER: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, WASHINGTON … EFFECTIVE DATE: 20141014 … REEL/FRAME: 034543/0001"). Because Microsoft recorded this as a single bulk instrument covering many patents, the same reel/frame may cover 6,629,129, but I could not confirm the frame that specifically lists this patent number. Treat 034543/0001 as probable but unverified.

• 2019-06-16 — not an assignment: anticipated expiration (Google Patents status: "Expired – Lifetime"). The patent is no longer enforceable.

No other transfers appear in the chain. In particular there is no sale to an NPE, no security agreement/liens, no merger, no change of name, and no release recorded for this patent.

Correspondent-of-record finding: I was unable to obtain the correspondent (recording attorney/agent) for either instrument. Per your methodology this is the single most probative field for NPE-chain detection, so the honest statement is: correspondent data not retrieved → the "repeat correspondent" signal is UNRESOLVED, not negative. A live Assignment Center pull for patent 6,629,129 is required to close this.

---

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6629129
    1999 : Filed by Microsoft Corporation
         : Inventors assign rights to Microsoft
    2003 : Patent issued
    2014 : Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
    2019 : Patent expired

---

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only post-issuance transfer (2014-12-09, Microsoft Corporation → Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC) is an intra-corporate move to the original assignee's own wholly-owned licensing subsidiary, not a transfer to an unrelated single-purpose LLC. MTL is a real, disclosed Microsoft affiliate based at One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA — the parent's address — not a registered-agent mailbox. No "IP/Patents/Ventures/Holdings" third-party shell appears. Name-suffix alone ("Licensing") is not treated as a finding here, per your rule.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. The assignees are Microsoft Corporation and Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC. Neither appears on any of the listed NPE catalogues (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff entity appears anywhere in the chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / unresolved. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either instrument, so I cannot confirm or rule out a recurring recording attorney. Do not read this as negative; it is blank data. Flag for follow-up on Assignment Center.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Two recorded transactions across 15 years (1999 → 2014), with zero chained-LLC relays, zero transfers inside a 24-month window, and no shared-correspondent clustering evidence. This is the opposite of a cascading pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The prior litigation search (see earlier section) found no infringement suit naming US 6,629,129. The only transfer (2014) is ~5 years before expiry and is intra-corporate, with no corresponding case. There is no transfer-then-sue sequence.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Neither Microsoft Corporation nor Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC ever filed Chapter 7/11, and no sale-in-bankruptcy of this patent is recorded.

7. Privateering — Not present (no evidence). For privateering you would expect the operating company to transfer the patent out to an unrelated NPE that then sues competitors on the original owner's behalf. Here ownership stayed inside the Microsoft family (Corp → MTL), and no assertion against competitors was identified. No SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure implicating this patent was found.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, a captive licensing entity of the operating company.

---

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — chosen as the closest fit, with an explicit caveat that the terminating entity is Microsoft's captive licensing arm, not a formal defensive aggregator, and that the patent expired unasserted rather than being neutralized by purchase.

Justification: The entire recorded chain consists of just two events — the inventors' assignment to Microsoft Corporation recorded 1999-09-03 and the bulk Microsoft Corporation → Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC transfer recorded 2014-12-09 (effective 2014-10-14; probable reel 034543/0001, unverified). Ownership never left the Microsoft corporate family, there is no NPE anywhere in the chain, no security agreement, no merger, no fire-sale, and no litigation was found naming this patent. Given its 2019-06-16 expiry and Google Patents status of "Expired – Lifetime," the patent was never a troll asset. Two caveats on confidence: (i) the specific reel/frame for this patent and the correspondent of record were not retrieved, so the repeat-correspondent signal is unresolved; and (ii) because none of the preset verdicts cleanly matches "operating-company patent that was internally transferred and expired unasserted," I am mapping it to Defensive / non-asserting by substance rather than by the literal defensive-aggregator parenthetical.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Alternate Assignment Search (mirror): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events for this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6629129/en

What a follow-up run should capture to close the open cells: (1) the reel/frame for the 1999-09-03 instrument; (2) the reel/frame that specifically lists 6,629,129 within the 2014 MTL bulk recording (confirm or refute 034543/0001); (3) the correspondent name + firm on both instruments; and (4) a certified "no other conveyances" confirmation from Assignment Center.

I'll search the USPTO and related databases for US Patent 6,629,129 and its cited prior art.

Let me pull the specific patent citation list from the USPTO/Google Patents record.

Let me try to retrieve the front-page patent citations directly.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,629,129

Status note up front: I was able to confirm the patent's bibliographic record, but my database queries were cut off before I could retrieve and verify the complete front-page "References Cited" list (the examiner-cited U.S. patent references printed on the face of the patent) from USPTO Patent Center / Google Patents. Per the operating rule to not fabricate identifiers, I will not invent patent numbers or dates for citations I could not verify. Below I separate (A) what is substantiated, (B) the prior art I can analyze with confidence, and (C) what requires a direct pull — rather than presenting an unverified citation table as if it were the record.

---

A. Patent identification (verified from the authoritative full text)

This is consistent with the previously generated Litigation summary (no suit substantiated; patent expired 2019-06-16). No contradiction found.

---

B. Prior art substantiated from the patent's own record

B.1 Applicant-admitted prior art in the "Background of the Invention" (the most probative §102 material)

The specification itself characterizes the following as the then-existing state of the art. Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, an applicant's own admissions in the specification about what was known/prior art are generally usable as prior art against the claims (they are not "secret prior art" and carry evidentiary weight). This is the cleanest, most authoritative prior-art content available from the four corners of the patent:

B.2 Co-pending application (incorporated by reference — NOT §102 prior art)

• U.S. Application Ser. No. 09/191,626, filed November 13, 1998, entitled "Automatic Scheduling and Formation of a Virtual Meeting Over a Computer Network," incorporated by reference in the specification.
• §102 caveat: Because this is expressly incorporated by reference into 6,629,129, its content is treated as part of the 6,629,129 disclosure. It cannot be used as §102 prior art against 6,629,129. I could not verify the issued patent number of 09/191,626 from my searches, so I am leaving the number unspecified rather than guessing.

---

C. What requires a direct pull (I could not verify)

To give you the complete "each patent citation" table you requested, the following must be retrieved directly. My searches surfaced the patent's text and its forward citations, but not the verified front-page "References Cited" list:

1. Google Patents "Patent Citations" tab for US6629129B1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6629129B1 (the "Patent Citations"/"Cited By" sections).
2. USPTO Patent Center legal file for 09/333,694 — the examiner's PTO-892 / "References Cited" form.
3. USPTO.report and Justia entries for 6629129, which reproduce the front-page references.

Forward citations I did confirm (these are NOT prior art — they cite 6,629,129, so they post-date it):

• CN 101427257 B (Microsoft; "Tracking and editing resources in real-time collaborative sessions") — cites US 6629129 B1 as a background reference. This is the substantive use of the number found in the search (consistent with the Litigation summary).
• Various later Microsoft and third-party filings (e.g., the family reference in US 7,167,182, "Scalable multiparty conferencing and collaboration …,", and the JP 2022145219 / NO342862B1 family) list 6,629,129 as a family/cited reference.

None of these are §102 prior art against 6,629,129.

---

D. §102 framework applied to the claims (based on substantiated art)

Independent claim 1 requires the combination of:

1. a first ("primary") application having a first user interface, shareable by participants;
2. a virtual meeting application having (a) a virtual meeting user interface and (b) an application interface;
3. invoking the VM application through the application interface under control of the first application; and
4. under control of the VM application, forming/administering the meeting.

• NetMeeting alone satisfies element (2) and (4) but not (1)/(3) — the programmatic, in‑UI invocation from a primary application.
• T.120 goes to (4) only.
• Word 97/2000 goes to (1) only.
• Therefore, none of the substantiated references is a single-reference §102 anticipation of claim 1; they are at most §103 (obviousness) candidates in combination.

Dependent claims that are narrower and harder to anticipate with the above art (they require features unique to the invention): claims 2–3 (state notifications → supplemental UI), claim 5 (portion of the VM UI displayed as part of the first UI), claim 7 (application-modal), claims 11–12 (suppression of VM UI components keyed to a predefined mode associated with the application interface), claim 24 ("click to take control"), and claims 26–27 (call-progress / call-failure UIs modal to the primary app). These are the elements most likely to distinguish over any single prior-art reference I could substantiate.

The element that gives 6,629,129 its novelty relative to the admitted prior art is the shared‑responsibility UI architecture: the primary application invokes the VM application via an application interface exposed in a global name space (spec uses COM IUnknown/QueryInterface), and the two applications exchange state-change events so the primary app renders a supplementary UI while the VM app renders transient UI — with UI components suppressed/displayed per a predefined mode. Your prior-art hunt should focus on references that disclose this specific architecture, not merely "application sharing."

---

E. Recommendation / corrections to the record

• To complete the requested per-reference table, pull the PTO-892 (References Cited) and the Google Patents "Patent Citations" list for US6629129B1 directly. I can then produce the full citation table (full citation, publication/filing date, description, and the specific claim each reference touches under §102) with verified identifiers.
• Do not treat the co-pending application 09/191,626 as prior art — it is incorporated by reference and is therefore part of this patent's own disclosure.
• Forward references (CN 101427257 B, US 7,167,182, etc.) are not §102 art against 6,629,129.
• No inconsistency with the prior-generated Litigation summary: the patent is expired (2019‑06‑16), and no litigation was substantiated.

If you can supply or permit me to re-run a fetch of the USPTO front-page citation list, I will convert Section C into the complete, verified prior-art table you asked for.

I'll try to close the gap flagged in the Prior Art section — the unverified front-page "References Cited" list — before building the §103 analysis.

Good — one useful confirmation surfaced. Let me verify it and probe for the actual cited references.

Two useful confirmations. Let me verify a few 1990s-era collaboration/application-sharing references so I only cite references I can date and describe.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,629,129 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026 (note: session metadata in earlier sections read 2026‑09‑30 — the same flag raised in the Patent summary and PTAB sections remains open; it changes nothing below, since the patent expired 2019‑06‑16 either way)

Builds on: Prior Art section (§B substantiated art; §C unverified front-page citations), Patent summary (claim 1 element structure), Litigation/PTAB sections (no assertion, no AIA trial), Assignment section (Microsoft → MTL).

---

0. One update that resolves an open item from the Prior Art section

The Prior Art section left this cell open: "I could not verify the issued patent number of 09/191,626."

Update from this session's searches: U.S. Application Ser. No. 09/191,626, filed 1998‑11‑13, titled "Automatic scheduling and formation of a virtual meeting over a computer network," issued as US 6,363,352 B1 on 2002‑03‑26, Microsoft Corporation. Confirmed across Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6363352B1/en), Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/6363352) and uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6363352). This is the document incorporated by reference into 6,629,129.

This looks like it hands you a §103 combination partner. It does not. See §2 below — this is the single most important analytical trap in this patent.

---

1. Legal framework

Governing statute: pre‑AIA § 103(a). 6,629,129 was filed 1999‑06‑16, so the AIA's §§ 102/103 (effective 2013‑03‑16) do not apply. The AIA's first‑inventor‑to‑file grace‑period framework is irrelevant here; what matters is pre‑AIA §102(b)'s one‑year bar (critical date 1998‑06‑16) and pre‑AIA §102(a)/(e).

Graham factors (Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966)): (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) secondary considerations.

Motivation-to-combine standard: KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) permits an articulated reason drawn from: (i) the prior art's own teachings; (ii) "the background knowledge, creativity, and common sense of the person of ordinary skill"; (iii) the nature of the problem to be solved; (iv) "market forces" and "design incentives"; and (v) the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." MPEP § 2144.04 (known-technique-to-improve-similar-device), § 2144.05 (same-field/same-vendor combinations), § 2144.06 (design incentives).

PHOSITA definition (proposed): As of June 1999 — a software engineer with a bachelor's in computer science (or equivalent) and two to four years' experience building networked Windows applications, familiar with: (a) the Win32/Windows user‑interface API (modal dialogs, owned windows, topmost windows); (b) Microsoft's COM / OLE Automation object model, including IUnknown and QueryInterface; (c) multipoint conferencing via a T.120‑compliant stack; and (d) document editors exposing an automation object model (e.g., Microsoft Word's VBA object model). This is a mid‑level, non‑specialist PHOSITA — a framing that matters, because 6,629,129's asserted novelty is largely integration plumbing, not new computer science.

---

2. What is, and is not, available as § 103 prior art — the critical threshold rulings

Before any combination is proposed, three references must be correctly characterized. Getting these wrong is how a § 103 analysis of this patent collapses.

Consequence: a § 103 case against 6,629,129 must be built from the admitted product/standard art (NetMeeting, T.120, Word 97), the general knowledge of COM/OLE Automation (which the spec itself admits is pre‑existing — see §3.3), and pre‑1998 collaborative-system patents. It cannot be built on 6,363,352. Anyone who tells you "obvious over Microsoft's own '352 patent" is making a §103(c) error.

---

3. Claim 1 — element chart and Ground 1

3.1 The elements

Claim 1 (method, sole independent claim on the record I have):

3.2 Ground 1 (primary): NetMeeting + T.120 + Word 97/2000 + COM/OLE Automation

The articulated reason to combine is supplied by the patent itself. The Background states the problem verbatim:

"The prior art method for establishing a virtual meeting to collaboratively edit an electronic document is a cumbersome process involving manually switching between applications. This manual switching requires that the user understand all of the individual application's user interfaces well enough to both form the virtual meeting and to enable the sharing of an electronic document…"

KSR holds that "the problem to be solved" is a legitimate source of the motivation. Here the patent identifies the exact deficiency — manual switching between a document editor and a conferencing program — and the claimed fix is to eliminate the switching by having the editor invoke the conferencing program. That is the definition of an obvious solution to a stated problem.

Element-by-element, the combination:

• A + B: Word 97/2000 (first application, first UI) and NetMeeting (VM application, VM UI) are both admitted prior art. Both shipped from the same vendor into the same Windows/Office ecosystem.

• C: The only genuinely "integrative" step. The technique used is COM/OLE Automation — and the specification concedes it as pre-existing:

  "the application interface conforms to the Microsoft COM interface specification available from Microsoft Corporation… Each object conforming to the Microsoft COM specification must expose an IUnknown interface… the QueryInterface function that when called returns whether an object supports a particular interface."

  That admission takes the implementation of the "application interface" outside the inventive contribution. Whether Word invokes NetMeeting's conference object, or NetMeeting enumerates Word via the Running Object Table / a global‑name‑space moniker, is the "predictable use of [a prior art element] according to its established function" (KSR). MPEP § 2144.04 applies directly: applying a known automation technique to a known conferencing product to produce a predictable result.

• D: NetMeeting already formed and administered meetings; nothing new.

Secondary, mutually reinforcing motivations:

1. Design incentive / market forces (MPEP § 2144.06). Users who already owned Word and NetMeeting had no way to start a meeting without leaving the document. Adding an "Online Collaboration → Meet Now" entry point is the ordinary product decision to reduce UI friction.
2. Same field, same vendor (MPEP § 2144.05). Both applications are Microsoft products designed to interoperate; the combination is a same‑field pairing, not an unpredictable cross‑industry leap.
3. Known technique for known purpose. Automation ("expose a method, call it from another app") was the standard Windows mechanism in 1999 for exactly this kind of cross‑application control.

Anticipation check: none of NetMeeting, T.120, or Word 97 alone discloses element C. Ground 1 is therefore an obviousness, not an anticipation, ground. But note how thin the gap is: claim 1 is method‑only and recites no state‑change protocol, no shared UI, and no document collaboration — all of which the applicant reserved for dependents (claims 2, 5, 22). Claim 1's entire asserted advance is control inversion plus an admitted‑prior‑art interface technology.

3.3 The "global name space" limitation

Claim 1's preamble and claim 12's "application interface exposed in a global name space" (spec's framing: COM objects registered/enumerable) is the term most likely to be pressed at a Markman hearing. It is not a strong nonobviousness hook: the spec treats COM registration as the given environment, and the alternative "pass an identification of the predefined mode … as a parameter to the function call" is described in the spec itself — i.e., the applicant conceded the design is a parameterization choice.

---

4. Ground 2: the collaborative‑editing and application‑sharing claims (22–23, 28)

For claims 22–28, the collaborative‑editing and control‑handoff concepts were decades old by 1999. Combine:

• NetMeeting (application sharing + file transfer — both admitted in the spec as NetMeeting capabilities);
• US 5,220,657 / US 5,008,853 (Bly et al., Xerox) — shared structured data object concurrently accessed by multiple workstation users, WYSIWIS representation, per‑user activity/status indication, entry locking, visual indication of who locked an entry and when;
• US 5,442,788 (Bier) — explicitly directed to "sharing a plurality of software applications on a single display while permitting substantially simultaneous input from all users," with per‑user input records ("Event Record," "Device Ownership tables") and a "Home Area" that a user clicks to claim an input device — i.e., to take control.

Motivation: all three references address the same field and the same problem — enabling several users at separate workstations to work on one shared document/application in real time. KSR makes a combination of references that "address the same problem" strongly obvious, particularly where the references are in the same technical field and one of them (NetMeeting) already implements the transport. Claim 23's "virtual image of the first computer application on a meeting attendee's computer" is simply NetMeeting's application‑sharing mode; the "granted control by the virtual meeting application" is the floor‑control/take‑control mechanism Bier's Home Area and NetMeeting's own sharing handoff both address.

Claim 28 (file transfer between participants) is admitted by the spec to be NetMeeting functionality — a weak claim on its face.

---

5. Ground 3: dependent claims, element by element

Most dependents recite routine UI/application‑framework implementation rather than technical advance. Applying KSR's "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions":

---

6. Where a §103 challenge is weakest (the honest counter‑case)

1. Claim 12 — the "predefined mode per application interface." This is the most specific, most structural limitation in the claim set: a multiplicity of application interfaces, each bound to a mode that determines which VM UI components are suppressed. The substantiated art does not expressly disclose a one‑interface‑one‑UI‑profile mapping. Counter‑argument: it is a design choice (an enum/flag), and the spec concedes a mode ID can be passed as a parameter — which under KSR puts it within "the background knowledge, creativity, and common sense" of the PHOSITA. Net: likely obvious, but this is where a validity challenge is most contestable.
2. Claim 24 — "click to take control." A specific interaction affordance. Analogous art (Bier's Home Area) is functionally similar but not identical. Moderate challenge.
3. Claim 1's preamble — "sharing the instance … between a plurality of computer applications." If construed as requiring that the same meeting instance be simultaneously shared across two-or-more applications (rather than across two‑or‑more users), that is a narrower reading that the substantiated art does not plainly meet. Flag for claim construction. Note the tension: the earlier Patent summary identified this same phrase as the "potentially limiting term" — the two sections agree.
4. Teaching away. I found no express teaching-away. A candidacy argument exists — the spec's security‑warning feature (collaboration "exposes the meeting host's computer to the possibility of unauthorized use by a meeting attendee") shows the field recognized a disincentive to embed conferencing in a document editor. That is a weak teaching-away argument: a security warning documents a known risk and mitigates it; it does not direct the PHOSITA away from the combination (In re Fulton; MPEP § 2145).

---

7. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

---

8. Conclusion

Claim 1 is, on this record, likely obvious under pre‑AIA § 103(a) over NetMeeting + T.120 + Word 97/2000 in view of the admitted COM/OLE Automation technology, with the motivation supplied by the patent's own statement of the problem (manual application switching) and reinforced by same‑vendor/same‑field design incentives. The asserted advance is integration plumbing implemented with a technology the specification itself concedes was pre‑existing.

Claims 22–24 and 28 are likely obvious over NetMeeting in view of Xerox's pre‑1998 collaborative‑system art (US 5,220,657; US 5,008,853) and Bier (US 5,442,788), reinforcing the same-field/same-problem rationale.

Claim 12 is the most defensible claim in the set analyzed — but even it is probably a routine design choice under KSR.

Two limits on this opinion:

1. I have not seen the examiner's PTO‑892. The Prior Art section flagged that the front‑page "References Cited" list was never retrieved. My searches this session returned only forward citations (e.g., US 10,380,081 and US 10,592,689 both list "6629129 — Bookspan et al."; CN 101427257 B cites 6,629,129 at col. 2, line 48 – col. 3, line 27, col. 6, lines 16–27, col. 9, lines 7–14, and FIGS. 8–10). Forward citations are not § 102 art. The examiner's actual cited references might include a closer art combination than the ones I can substantiate, or might confirm this analysis was already run and overcome in prosecution. Pull the file wrapper before relying on any of the above.
2. Claims 29–42 are not in my source material (the authoritative text truncates mid‑claim 28). I cannot say whether any of 29–42 is independent, or whether any recites something materially narrower. Do not represent this as a complete invalidity opinion on all 42 claims.

Practical note attaching to the earlier sections: this entire § 103 exercise is, at 2026‑04‑26, academic. The patent expired 2019‑06‑16, its Google Patents status is "Expired – Lifetime," the Litigation and PTAB sections found no assertion and no AIA proceeding, and — as the Strategic summary already explained — a complaint filed today has no § 286 damages window and no prospect of prospective relief. An obviousness opinion is a defense in reserve, not the primary defense. The primary defense is expiry. What an obviousness analysis is actually good for here is (a) supporting a § 285 exceptional‑case argument against anyone asserting it now, and (b) answering a demand letter on its merits if one arrives.

---

Verification trail this session: Google Patents, Justia and uspto.report records for US 6,363,352 B1 (confirming it is the Ser. No. 09/191,626 application); uspto.report and Google Patents records for US 5,220,657 (filed 1991‑04‑15, issued 1993‑06‑15, division of 1987‑12‑02 app, now US 5,008,853, Xerox, Bly et al.); the issued PDF of US 5,442,788 (Bier); Justia "Referenced Cited" tables for US 10,380,081 and US 10,592,689 (forward citations to 6629129); the CN 101427257 B specification as published. No prior-art patent numbers or dates have been supplied that were not surfaced by these searches. The Ser. No. 09/191,626 → US 6,363,352 identification is a correction/addition to the Prior Art section, not a contradiction of it.