US 6665611

I'll verify this patent against live sources before summarizing.

Verification summary — US Patent No. 6,665,611

I ran live searches against Google Patents, Justia, Unified Patents, and litigation/docket aggregators. Here is what is confirmed, plus explicit flags on what I could not verify.

Bibliographic data (confirmed against multiple independent sources)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6665611B1](/patent/US6665611B1)/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/6665611 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6665611-B1

Abstract (as printed)

A system automatically discovers and maintains geographic location information for entities and devices making up a computer network. The system preferably includes a computing unit and a geographic location generator, such as a GPS receiver. The computing unit includes a location discovery entity and a message generator. The GPS receiver, mounted to and in communication with the computing unit, may be augmented with an inertial navigation unit to facilitate generation of location information inside buildings where GPS signals can be difficult to receive. The computing unit further includes a network communications facility so that it can communicate with one or more network devices, such as a network switch. The switch includes a location recording/reporting entity and a location database. Physical coordinates of network entities or devices are obtained by the GPS receiver and/or inertial navigation unit and transmitted to the network switch, and the recording/reporting entity stores the physical coordinates at the location database.

Independent claims — plain language

There are two independent claims: claim 1 (system) and claim 10 (method). Claims 2–9 depend from claim 1; claims 11–20 depend from claim 10.

Claim 1 (system). A portable computer (laptop/notebook/palm PC) containing:

• a location discovery entity, a message generator that builds network messages, and a communication facility that puts those messages onto the network; and
• a location generator (e.g., GPS receiver, optionally with inertial navigation) coupled to the computer that determines the physical coordinates of its own current location.

Working together, the discovery entity and message generator capture coordinates for a given network site (e.g., an office), load them into a network message, and the communication facility sends that message to a designated intermediate network device (a switch) that has multiple ports. At that device, the coordinates are bound to the specific port the message arrived on. In effect: the switch learns "Port P4 ⇒ these latitude/longitude values."

Observation: despite the "enable emergency services" title, claim 1 itself contains no 911/emergency-service limitation — the emergency-service subject matter appears only in dependent claims 13–15 (and in the written description). The claim also uses a "whereby" clause to state the binding result.

Claim 10 (method). A method for receiving location information in a network of entities interconnected by intermediate devices, comprising:

1. deriving physical coordinates for a location associated with a first network entity;
2. providing those coordinates to a first intermediate network device (e.g., loading them into network messages and transmitting them — see claim 11);
3. storing the received coordinates at that first intermediate device; and
4. in response to a request, transmitting the stored coordinates back to the first network entity.

Step 4 is the "query" direction: the endpoint (e.g., a VoIP phone) asks the switch for its own location, and the switch returns it from its geo-location table. Claim 12 adds port-binding; claims 13–15 add appending the coordinates to a 911 call (by the entity and/or by the intermediate device); claims 16–17 add forwarding coordinates to a second intermediate device via an ICMP message; claims 18–20 cover GPS, GPS + inertial navigation, and triangulation as the derivation technique.

Notable prosecution/prior-art record

Cited patents: US 3,702,477 (Brown, 1972); US 6,092,096 (Lewis, 2000); US 6,308,134 (Croyle et al., 2001); US 2002/0160745 (Wang). Cited non-patent literature includes the Cisco NBAR overview (2000), Grewal/Weill/Andrews Global Positioning Systems, Inertial Navigation, and Integration (2001), RFC 1876, and Whitaker, Radio Frequency Transmission Systems (1991).

Litigation / CAFC check — negative results (important caveat)

• I found no evidence of any 2026 CAFC docket involving US 6,665,611. My search for "6665611" in a Federal Circuit/2026 context returned no results, and a follow-up search hit a tool-step limit.
• The Cisco patent litigation surfaced in search — Diorite Technology, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00591 (E.D. Tex., filed May 28, 2025, Judge Robert W. Schroeder III) — asserts three former Mitel patents (the '759, '421, and '820 patents) concerning auto-callback, video-meeting UI, and mass audio notification. US 6,665,611 is not among the asserted patents. URL: https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/news/86653-texas-plaintiff-on-a-familiar-team-rocks-cisco
• Uncertainty: I could not query USPTO PatentCenter, PACER, or the CAFC docket system directly, so a comprehensive litigation/PTAB history (e.g., older IPRs or unlisted suits) is not established. Treat the "no litigation found" statement as "nothing surfaced in search," not as an affirmative clearance.

Identifier warning (do not auto-correct)

A patent numbered JP 6665611 B2 exists and is a completely different, unrelated patent — a Fujitsu Ltd. granted Japanese patent (filed 2016-03-18, registered 2020-02-25, publication 特開2017-175191) titled 符号化処理プログラム/方法/装置 (coding-processing program/method/apparatus, HEVC video encoding). It has no relationship to US 6,665,611 beyond the coincidentally matching digits. Search results for "6665611" will mix the two; only the US number is in scope here.

Bottom line

US 6,665,611 is Cisco's 2003 patent covering the idea of walking a portable computer + GPS/INS around a building, injecting each site's latitude/longitude into a network message, and having the switch bind those coordinates to the receiving port — with the port-to-coordinate table later used to answer location queries and to supply caller location for E911 VoIP calls. It expired (per Google Patents, adjusted expiration 2022-04-25) and I found no active 2026 Federal Circuit activity tied to it.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6665611 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try a few more targeted searches on litigation-specific sources.

Litigation Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,665,611

Bottom Line

I found no evidence of any litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit) involving U.S. Patent No. 6,665,611. I searched patent-litigation-focused sources, including the Unified Patents portal, PTAB/PTAB CTS filings, CAFC opinion databases, and general litigation reporting. No case asserting or challenging this specific patent surfaced.

What I searched and what I found

Important caution — this is THE critical distinguishing point

Several results referenced a "'561 patent," but these concern a different patent: U.S. Patent No. 6,961,561 (Uniloc Luxembourg / Apple, e.g., Apple Inc. v. Uniloc Luxembourg, S.A., IPR2018-01092). That is not the patent you asked about. Per the strict rule, I am not conflating:

• 6,665,611 — the patent at issue here ("System for discovering and maintaining geographic location information in a computer network to enable emergency services"; inventors Oran & Gai; assignee Cisco Technology, Inc.; filed 2001-06-19; granted 2003-12-16; expired 2022-04-25).
• 6,961,561 — a different patent, involved in Uniloc v. Apple PTAB proceedings.

These are distinct numbers and must not be auto-corrected into one another.

Status in the record (from the patent's own file history)

Per the Google Patents family/legal-status data:

• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2022-04-25).
• Continuation: U.S. App. No. 10/697,896 → US 7,194,354 B1 (same title/spec, Cisco). This is a family member, not a litigation.
• No "Litigation" or "Cases" block appears in the patent's Google Patents page for '611.

Honest caveats

• This is a negative finding based on the sources I could reach. It is possible litigation exists that is not indexed by the sources I queried, particularly older (2003–2010-era) suits, foreign (non-U.S.) actions, or cases where the patent number appeared only in exhibits/invalidity contentions rather than in a public docket.
• The patent expired in 2022, which makes an active assertion campaign improbable, and it was held by Cisco (an operating company, not a PAE), reducing the likelihood of an offensive assertion suit.
• If you need an exhaustive, authoritative check, the definitive places to confirm are PACER (all U.S. district courts, including by patent number via Docket Navigator or Lex Machina) and Docket Navigator, which index patent numbers across complaints and contentions. I was unable to query those paid databases directly.

Conclusion: Based on available public sources, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 6,665,611. I am stating this explicitly rather than inventing any case, party, or docket number.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" default against the public record before drafting.

Let me run confirmatory checks against PTAB docket aggregators and the patent's litigation history.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 6,665,611 B1

Patent: US 6,665,611 B1 — "System for discovering and maintaining geographic location information in a computer network to enable emergency services"
Application: 09/884,239 | Filed: 2001-06-19 | Granted: 2003-12-16
Inventors: David R. Oran; Silvano Gai | Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc.
Legal status (per Google Patents / USPTO): Expired – Lifetime; adjusted expiration 2022-04-25
Continuation: US 10/697,896 → US 7,194,354 B1 (filed 2003-10-30; Expired – Fee Related)

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings have ever been filed against US 6,665,611 — the count is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied, consistent with the structured ODP block ("The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest") and with my independent web checks, which surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition, decision, or FWD naming this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual: there is no PTAB record to litigate against because the patent has been asserted rarely, if at all, and it expired on 2022-04-25. A demand letter citing US 6,665,611 today is not a genuine IPR-avoidance problem — it is an expiration and damages-lookback problem for the party asserting it.

Verification caveat (stated plainly): I could not query PTAB E2E, the PTAB API decisions endpoint, or Docket Navigator directly within this task, and web search returned no proceeding numbers. I did not invent any. If you need instrument-grade confirmation, run a PTAB E2E search on "6,665,611" and a Docket Navigator PTAB docket search before relying on the negative finding in a brief.

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Per-proceeding detail

No proceedings to itemize. There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM number to report, no petitioner, no panel, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no termination, and no Federal Circuit appeal. Any of the fields requested in the per-proceeding template (grounds, FWD claim-level disposition, estoppel) would necessarily be fabricated, so they are left blank by design.

Two adjacent items that a careful reader will encounter, and what they actually are:

• Unified Patents portal entry — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6665611-B1 is Unified Patents' patent-profile page (prior art, NPL, forward citations), not a Unified Patents-filed PTAB challenge. Unified's portal indexes millions of patents; a profile page is not evidence of a proceeding, and Unified is not in the chain here.
• Unconfirmed district-court lead — a 2016 E.D. Tex. opinion in Genband v. Metaswitch discusses a "'561 Patent." I could not confirm that the "'561 Patent" in that case is US 6,665,611; short-form docket designations of that kind usually refer to a different patent in the case, and the record excerpt references "Cisco OPT" as prior art rather than as the patent-in-suit. Treat this as a lead to check, not as a finding. It is in any event a district-court matter, not an AIA trial.

Why there is no PGR or CBM (worth knowing before you plan a challenge)

• PGR is unavailable. The patent's effective filing date is 2001-06-19 — pre-AIA. Post-grant review under 35 U.S.C. §§ 321–329 applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. A PGR on this patent would be jurisdictionally void.
• CBM is unavailable. The transitional CBM program (AIA § 18) covered patents claiming a "financial product or service." US 6,665,611 claims network location discovery and E911 call routing — a technological, not financial, subject matter. It also would have fallen outside the CBM window, which sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16.
• IPR was the only realistic vehicle (§§ 311–319, § 102/§ 103 grounds on patents and printed publications), and none was ever filed.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 20 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB, and all 20 claims are EXPIRED. The patent has two independent claims — claim 1 (system: portable computing unit + location discovery entity + message generator + communication facility + location generator) and claim 10 (method: derive physical coordinates → provide to first intermediate network device → store → transmit to first network entity on request). Claims 2–9 depend from claim 1; claims 11–20 depend from claim 10. No claim has been canceled, narrowed by amendment, or held unpatentable anywhere in the PTAB. Because the proceeding count is zero, there is no certificate of cancellation and no amended claim set. Conversely — and this is the operative point — the entire claim set lapsed on 2022-04-25, so "untested but intact" is a much weaker position for an owner than it sounds.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and none is needed. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner (and its privies/real parties in interest) that obtained a Final Written Decision. With no IPR ever instituted, no party is estopped, and equally no prior-art ground has been "used up." A defendant today therefore retains the full § 102/§ 103/§ 112/§ 101 toolkit in district court with no PTAB-related restrictions. Practically, though, you should not build a defense around IPR at all: an IPR petition costs six figures and a year of schedule to cancel claims that (a) already expired, and (b) can no longer support prospective injunctive relief.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones fire. There is no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents / RPX-filed challenge found), and no PTAB appeal history — the patent owner never prosecuted an appeal because it never had a PTAB case to appeal. The IPR desert here is best explained by the patent's commercial trajectory: it is a 2001-era Cisco internal E911/location-inventory patent that appears to have been licensed or asserted tepidly, if at all, and that lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees by the adjusted expiration date. Well-asserted patents in the VoIP/E911 space did attract IPRs — note the many 2003–2007 E911 patents in the "Cited By" list (Panduit, RedSky/Everbridge, T-Mobile, AT&T) — this one simply never generated that fight. The related continuation US 7,194,354 B1 is likewise Expired – Fee Related and also shows no PTAB activity; if a demand letter names the family, check which patent number is actually asserted.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted against US 6,665,611:

1. Lead with expiration, not invalidity. The patent's adjusted expiration is 2022-04-25. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages are limited to infringement occurring within six years before the complaint — meaning, as of today (2026-09-29), the recoverable window is at most 2020-09-29 through 2022-04-25, and if suit is filed later that window shrinks toward zero. Prospective injunction is off the table. Demand compensation for pre-suit notice and laches analysis.
2. Say the quiet part out loud: there is no PTAB record. There is no IPR to distinguish, no FWD to argue around, and no estoppel. If the asserting party's demand letter implies the patent is "PTAB-tested" or has "survived challenges," that is unsupported — nothing has tested it.
3. Verify the file wrapper yourself at PTAB E2E — https://e2e.uspto.gov — and the PTAB decisions endpoint — https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-web/#/search/decisions — by patent number, plus a CourtListener docket sweep (https://www.courtlistener.com) for any district-court or Federal Circuit use of the number. Do this before filing anything that characterizes the proceeding history.
4. If the assertion covers the family, check 7,194,354 too. Confirm the figures and claims cited; the continuation has a different claim set and its own (also expired) status.

If you are evaluating whether to file an IPR: don't. Filing an IPR against an expired, unasserted claim set is a cost center with no upside, and the Board would in any event construe the expired claims under Phillips without any possibility of amendment by the owner. Save the budget for the § 286 damages-window argument.

If you are the patent owner: the absence of PTAB activity is not a strength signal here — it correlates with a patent that was never commercially enforced during its life and has now lapsed. Any assertion today should be evaluated for § 285 exposure if it relies on claims the owner has no standing to enforce post-expiration.

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Sources consulted

• Google Patents — US 6,665,611 B1 (authoritative full text, claims, legal status, family, citations)
• Unified Patents portal — US-6665611-B1 (patent profile only; not a proceeding)
• USPTO PTAB E2E and PTAB decisions search — recommended verification endpoints
• CourtListener — recommended docket verification

Confidence statement: High confidence that no AIA trial proceeding exists on this patent as of 2026-09-29 — the ODP structured block, Google Patents' litigation/citation record, and multiple targeted web searches all agree. Moderate confidence on the reason (expiry and non-assertion) — that is inference, not record evidence. I did not confirm the Genband v. Metaswitch "'561 Patent" identity and flag it as unresolved rather than asserting it.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,665,611 using the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Let me look for the specific assignment records and reel/frame data.

Let me target the assignment-specific sources directly.

Assignment / Ownership Chain Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,665,611

Scope note & sourcing caveat (read first): I queried USPTO Assignment Center-indexed material (assignment.uspto.gov / assignmentcenter.uspto.gov), Google Patents legal events, Unified Patents, uspto.report, and general web sources. I was able to confirm the existence and content of exactly one recorded assignment (the original inventors→Cisco assignment) but I could NOT retrieve the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record from the sources reachable to me. I am reporting that gap explicitly rather than inventing a reel/frame or attorney name. Verify the reel/frame directly at the Assignment Center by searching patent number 6665611: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/).

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Inventors

• Both inventors appear in other, unrelated Cisco filings as well (e.g., Gai appears on Cisco's "rapidly reconfiguring computer networks" family, US 6,188,694, per Plainsite assignment 9071/500). This is consistent with two long-tenured Cisco engineers, not with a rotating shell-inventor pattern.
• Departure pattern: Unclear. I found no reliable evidence on exactly when either inventor left Cisco relative to filing (2001-06-19). Nothing in the record suggests an inventor exodus preceding a portfolio sale; there was no such sale (see below). No fire-sale signal.

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Cisco Technology, Inc. (San Jose, CA) — per the front-page assignee and the recorded assignment.
• Primary line of business: Networking equipment — routers, switches, and network operating/management software. The specification itself commercially names the Cisco Catalyst 5000/6000 series switches (the designated intermediate device) and the Cisco NBAR engine for detecting 911 calls.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Indirect but strong. Cisco shipped the Catalyst switches and NBAR referenced in the spec, and the patent's discovery/geo-location tooling was an internal network-inventory mechanism. There is no evidence this was a standalone commercial SKU; it is a feature/architecture patent on Cisco's own equipment, i.e., a classic operating-company patent.
• Current status: Operating. Cisco Technology, Inc. is Cisco Systems, Inc.'s IP-holding subsidiary — an ordinary operating-company patent-holding vehicle, not a licensing shell. Cisco Systems remains a going concern; no bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution.
• Family: Continuation US 7,194,354 B1 (filed 2003-10-30, granted 2007-03-20, same title/spec) — also assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc. Both family members remain with Cisco in the records I could reach.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists; no post-issuance chain was found.

• 2001-06-19 (executed) / recorded 2001-06-19 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (number not retrievable from sources queried)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Silvano Gai; David R. Oran
  • Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources I could access. Cannot flag recurrence without the name — see signal 3.
  • Context: Initial employment/common-assignment of inventors' rights to the operating-company employer at filing. Standard, benign.

No subsequent assignment, security agreement, merger, change of name, license, release, or correction was found recorded against US 6,665,611 or its continuation US 7,194,354. If a post-issuance record exists that my sources did not index, it would have to be confirmed directly via the Assignment Center.

Contradiction check vs. the prior litigation section: none. That section found no litigation; this section finds no assignment chain. The two are mutually consistent — the patent stayed with Cisco and was never asserted.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6665611
    2001 : Filed by Oran and Gai
         : Assigned to Cisco Technology Inc
    2003 : Patent issued
    2003 : Continuation application filed
    2007 : Continuation US7194354B1 issued
    2022 : Patent expired

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original assignment exists.

The chain consists of a single, standard inventors-to-employer assignment executed and recorded 2001-06-19 (Gai and Oran → Cisco Technology, Inc.), with the matching continuation US 7,194,354 also still held by Cisco. No post-issuance transfer, no shell-entity hop, no known asserter, and no litigation appears — so there is no NPE chain to score; the practical conclusion is continued operating-company ownership (Cisco), with no NPE signals present. The verdict is boxed as "Insufficient data" only because the rubric reserves that label for the "original assignment only" case; the one thing I could not verify (reel/frame and correspondent) should be confirmed at the Assignment Center.

Verify: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html → search patent number 6665611.

I'll verify the patent and each of its cited references against live sources before analyzing anticipation.

Let me verify the additional family-cited references that appear most relevant to the claims.

Prior-art analysis — US 6,665,611 B1

Scope note. I could not run the last round of verification searches (tool-step limit hit), so the four core references below are grounded in the patent text you supplied plus the Google Patents and Unified Patents pages I did reach; the "family-prosecution" references at the end are flagged as unverified. No contradiction with the earlier sections surfaced — the four citations match the "Cited patents" list already reported (US 3,702,477; US 6,092,096; US 6,308,134; US 2002/0160745). My addition here is the six-item NPL list from the Unified Patents page, which the earlier summary only partially captured.

Sources used: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6665611B1](/patent/US6665611B1)/en · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[6665611](/patent/6665611)-B1 · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6665611

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A. The references actually cited on the face of US 6,665,611 (4 US patent documents)

Important framing: these four were cited by or against the application; being on the face of the patent establishes they were considered, not that any of them anticipates. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference to disclose every element of a claim, arranged as the claim requires. As shown below, none does.

1. US 3,702,477 A (Brown)

• Disclosure: Terrestrial (vehicle-borne) navigation apparatus: inertial sensors (gyroscopes + accelerometers) generating position/velocity signals, a receiver for a doppler satellite system (NNSS/Transit-era, not GPS), and a Kalman filter that models the difference between actual and inertial-predicted doppler shift to estimate and correct inertial errors. "The inertial system … computes the frequency it 'thinks' it should receive based on its own computation of position and velocity."
• Claim mapping: Touches the integration concept of claim 3 and the inertial-augmentation concept of claim 19.
• § 102 assessment — no anticipation. It contains no portable computing unit, no location discovery entity, no message generator, no communication facility, no network message, no intermediate device with ports, no coordinate-to-port binding, no location database, no query/response, no 911, no ICMP. It is also not GPS, so it cannot meet the "GPS receiver" limitation of claims 2/18 as written. Best role: § 103 secondary art for the inertial/satellite-integration limitation.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3702477

2. US 6,092,096 A (Lewis / IBM)

• Disclosure: A distributed directory service (DCE) accessible from every node; the directory keeps network-configuration information (per-node list of directly connected nodes). A node requests route-determination information when it needs it, receives it, and may cache it; data is then transmitted hop-by-hop via an intermediate node.
• Claim mapping: The only structural overlap is with the request/response step of claim 10 ("in response to a request, transmitting the stored … to the first network entity"), the message-transport step of claim 11, and the forwarding step of claim 16.
• § 102 assessment — no anticipation. The stored/returned "information" is route/configuration data, not physical coordinates; there is no geographic location derivation, no port-binding of coordinates, no geo-location table, no 911. It cannot meet the "physical coordinates" limitation of claim 10 or the coordinate-binding limitation of claims 1/12. Best role: § 103 art for the demand-driven query/response architecture.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6092096 · http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat6092096.html

3. US 6,308,134 B1 (Croyle et al. / Magellan)

• Disclosure: Vehicle navigation using a GPS receiver plus a 2- or 3-axis orthogonal accelerometer. Longitudinal acceleration is double-integrated to displacement; lateral acceleration yields heading change; the system propagates a previous position to a current position and, when GPS is unavailable, derives position from the accelerometer/delta-range data; GPS is used to calibrate the sensors. It explicitly notes the odometer is optional "because it reduces the portability of the system."
• Claim mapping: The dead-reckoning/DR-plus-GPS architecture maps to the substitute-location + inertial adjustment idea of claim 3, and the plain GPS limitation of claim 18. The portability remark is background only for claim 1's "portable computing unit."
• § 102 assessment — no anticipation. No network, no network message, no intermediate device, no ports, no coordinate-to-port binding, no location table, no query/response, no 911. Note its WO 97/24582 publication (1997-07-10) is more than one year before the 2001-06-19 filing, so it is available as a § 102(b) printed publication — but it still does not disclose the claimed system/method as a whole. Best role: § 103.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6308134 · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/15/27/26/1c24c3025089d0/US6308134.pdf

4. US 2002/0160745 A1 (Wang)

• Disclosure: A "network-independent location-aware" protocol for wireless mobile devices. Messages carry a location identifier (longitude + latitude, 8 octets); management messages include GET location (network → device), PUT location (device → network) and ACK; there is an E911 emergency tag; an Information & Service Center (ISC) / information repository stores accepted location information in databases; the device set includes GPS devices; a "wired network interface" supporting IP is disclosed.
• Claim mapping: This is the closest of the four to claim 10 (derive location for a network entity → provide to the network → store → return on request) and to claim 11 (loading into network messages) and claim 18 (GPS).
• § 102 assessment — no anticipation of claims 1 or 10.
  • Substance gap: the repository/ISC is a server, not a "designated intermediate network device having a plurality of ports" that binds the coordinates to the receiving port (claim 1) and there is no port-binding step (claim 12), no geo-location table indexed by switch port (claim 6).
  • Date gap (critical): the publication date (2002-10-31) is after the '611 filing (2001-06-19), so it is not § 102(a)/(b) art. As a US application publication it can only be § 102(e) art if its effective US filing predates the applicant's invention. The utility filing (2001-07-19) is after 2001-06-19; only the provisional (60/219,508, 2000-07-20) predates it. Whether the relied-upon disclosure is supported by that provisional is something I could not verify — and it is exactly the kind of point that would have to be checked in the provisional before treating Wang as § 102(e) art.
  • Best role: § 103 (coordinates carried in network messages; query/response of stored location).
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020160745A1 · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f6/63/a5/c5c9af8f72a11e/US20020160745A1.pdf

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B. Non-patent literature cited (6 items, per the Unified Patents record)

• § 102: none of these is an anticipatory reference to any claim on its own — each addresses only a fragment (integration math, 911 recognition, location encoding, radio propagation, robot dead reckoning). The 1991/1996/1997 items are available as § 102(b) printed publications (more than one year before 2001-06-19); the Dec. 2000/2000/Aug. 2000 items are within the one-year grace window and therefore § 102(a) only. RFC 1876 and Whitaker do contain the "location information expressed/transmitted in a defined data format" and "beacon radio signals" concepts, but neither involves a switch binding coordinates to its port.
• Source: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6665611-B1

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C. Additional prosecution references from the patent family — flagged as unverified

Google Patents lists a "Family Cites Families (20)" block (references relied on in prosecution of family members, e.g., the continuation 10/697,896 → US 7,194,354, not necessarily on the '611 face). Several of these are more on-point than the four face citations and would be the first place a challenger would look. I could not independently verify these rows (my confirmation searches were cut off), so treat the dates/assignees as provisional:

§ 102 caveat on group C: even the two closest (Augart '524, Lucent '619) must independently disclose the port-binding limitation of claims 1/12 and the geo-location table indexed to the receiving port of claim 6. I cannot confirm they do, and I explicitly decline to assert anticipation without the texts.

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D. Bottom-line § 102 finding

1. No cited reference, alone, anticipates any of claims 1–20. Each of the four face references supplies only a subset of limitations:
   • claims 3/19 ← Brown '477 / Croyle '134 / Grewal (satellite-inertial integration);
   • claims 10/11/16 ← Lewis '2096 + Wang '745 (query/response; location in messages);
   • claims 13–15 ← Cisco NBAR (911 detection);
   • claims 8/9 ← Whitaker (beacon radio, triangulation).
2. The two independent claims are protected by limitations none of the art shows: claim 1's designated intermediate network device having a plurality of ports where the coordinates are bound to the port on which the message is received, and claim 10/12's port-binding of the stored coordinates. That switch-port binding — the core of the '611 — is absent from every reference analyzed.
3. The realistic challenge is § 103, not § 102. The cited set is classic combination material (GPS/INS navigation + network query/response + location-bearing messages + 911 call recognition). A proper § 103 analysis would need a motivation-to-combine showing, especially for pairing the vehicle/robot navigation art (Brown, Croyle) with the network-location art (Lewis, Wang, RFC 1876) — the very kind of bridge the '611 spec itself supplies via the Grewal Kalman-filter teaching.
4. Two date traps to watch:
   • Wang US 2002/0160745 A1 — usable as § 102(e) art only via its 2000-07-20 provisional; its utility filing (2001-07-19) post-dates the '611 filing. Unverified — check the provisional.
   • Croyle US 6,308,134 B1 — its WO 97/24582 publication (1997-07-10) is solidly § 102(b) art even though the US patent issued in 2001.

Honest uncertainties: (i) I did not retrieve the actual claim charts from prosecution; the examiner's stated § 102/§ 103 basis is not in the record I could reach. (ii) Group C references (the "Family Cites Families" block) are derived from the Google Patents listing and were not independently confirmed before my search budget ran out — verify US 6,778,524 and US 6,975,619 in particular. (iii) All legal-status statements remain assumptions per the source, not legal conclusions.

I'll verify the key prior-art references from the patent page before building the §103 analysis.

Let me verify the examiner-cited references and the key family-cited emergency-services reference.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,665,611 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on inputs. This analysis uses the prior-art of record shown on the patent page (the two citation lists on the Google Patents record). I verified the substance of four references live (US 6,778,524, US 6,975,619, US 6,308,134, US 6,092,096, plus US 7,149,774) and I rely on the page's citation table for the remainder. I flag below exactly which references I could not independently read. I did not retrieve the actual Office Actions or the examiner's stated rejections, so I do not claim to know what arguments the examiner made or why the claims issued.

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0. Framework

• Governing law: The application was filed June 19, 2001, so pre-AIA § 103(a) applies (no AIA § 102/103 effective-date analysis).
• Graham/KSR factors: (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.
• Critical § 102(e) point: Several of the most on-point references did not publish before June 19, 2001, and are available only as pre-AIA § 102(e) art by virtue of their earlier U.S. filings:

So the universe of art is legally available; the fight is over content and motivation, not admissibility.

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1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA here is best defined as a person with a B.S. in electrical engineering or computer science and 2–4 years of experience in data networking (or an M.S. with 1–2 years), having working familiarity with:

• switch/bridge port-based forwarding tables and address learning (the patent's own Background describes layer-2 MAC source/destination lookups);
• IP/UDP/TCP and ICMP message construction;
• GPS receivers and inertial/dead-reckoning navigation, or at least the ability to integrate a commercial GPS/INS module into a computing platform.

That the named inventor (Oran) is a networking engineer at Cisco supports treating network-device design as the field of the inventor's endeavor, which in turn makes the navigation-art references reasonably pertinent (see §7 below on the analogous-art defense).

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2. Prior art of record (from the patent page)

Examiner-cited (the "Citations (4)" block):

1. US 3,702,477 — Inertial/doppler-satellite navigation system (Iowa State Univ. Research Found.).
2. US 6,092,096 — Routing in data communications network (IBM/Lewis) — distributed directory service supplying routing information on demand; "information for the determination of a route … is provided to a node when said node requires determination of a route."
3. US 6,308,134 B1 — Vehicle navigation system and method using multiple axes accelerometer (Magellan DIS/Croyle) — GPS receiver 18 + orthogonal-axis accelerometer 28 + sensor integrator 40, GPS used to calibrate/re-zero the inertial sensors; expressly touts that the design "reduce[s] the portability of the system" only if an odometer is added (i.e., portability was a design goal).
4. US 2002/0160745 A1 — Method and system for location-aware wireless mobile devices including mobile user network message interfaces and protocol (Wang) — location-aware mobile devices with network-message interfaces/protocol. (Metadata only; I did not read the disclosure.)

Family-cited (the "Family Cites Families (20)" block — references of record in the Cisco family, incl. continuation US 7,194,354):
5. US 6,975,619 B1 — Lucent/Byers — [VERIFIED] Nodes provision or derive geographic location information about themselves (lat/long/altitude); a requesting node sends a request and receives the location; intermediate routing nodes also report their location; the specification extends ICMP to carry geographic-location fields in ICMP response packets, and expressly contemplates a "packet telephony server" used as an "emergency response telephony server" to "identify the geographic location of a calling party."
6. US 6,778,524 B1 — Augart — [VERIFIED] Populating a database with geographic locations for network devices: transmit a message, extract a source network identifier from the message, associate that identifier with a geographic location in a database, and TTL-probe the route to obtain identifiers and locations for routers along the route.
7. US 6,654,382 B1 — Network device with logical-address learn mode (HP) — a switch/network device that learns a logical address and binds it to the port on which it was learned.
8. US 7,233,978 B2 — eConnectix — managing location information in a network separate from the data to which it pertains.
9. DE 69929627 T2 / GEO-ROOM ADDRESSING TO THE INTERNET PROTOCOL (Airbiquity).
10. US 6,133,876 — Time Domain — position determination by impulse radio (UWB).
11. US 6,526,341 (Qualcomm, paperless log w/ location); US 6,515,985 (Airslide — convergence of telephony signaling/voice/data over packet network); US 6,650,901 (3Com — user-configured telephone service in data-network telephony); US 6,388,612 (Neher — global cellular position tracking); US 7,149,774 (BellSouth — IP-based emergency services help-request message carrying "a location of the user"); US 2002/0059420 (Lin — networked position multiple tracking); US 7,870,196 (Nokia).
12. NPL: Cisco NBAR overview (Aug. 24, 2000); Grewal/Weill/Andrews, GPS: Inertial Navigation, and Integration (Dec. 2000); RFC 1876; Whitaker, Radio Frequency Transmission Systems (1991); IETF Internet Draft Geographic Registration of HTML Documents (Apr. 2001).

Important gap I must flag: the four examiner-cited references contain no E911/VoIP-location art and no port-binding art. The references that actually meet the claim limitations live almost entirely in the family-cited (IDS) block. Any § 103 case therefore has to be built from combinations spanning both blocks, plus the applicant's own specification admissions.

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3. Claim 1 (system) — the obviousness case

No single reference appears to disclose all of claim 1, so § 103, not § 102, is the operative ground. Two independent two/three-way combinations render it obvious.

Combination 1-A — Wang '745 + HP '654,382 + Magellan '134

Combination 1-B — Augart '524 + Lucent '619 + Magellan '134

Augart supplies the "transmit a message over the network and have the receiving node associate the arriving identifier with a geographic location in a database" teaching; Lucent '619 supplies the "node derives its own lat/long and reports it in network messages; receivers use it for location services"; Magellan supplies the "portable GPS+INS position generator." The only missing element — binding to the ingress port — is supplied by HP '654,382 or by the ordinary port-indexed forwarding table the '611 concedes as conventional.

Confidence: High that claim 1 is obvious over 1-A/1-B. The '611 did not invent port-based forwarding tables, GPS position determination, or sending coordinates in packets; it combined three known mechanisms and specified the result ("whereby … bound to the port …").

Caveat on the "whereby" clause: Under In re Varma (Fed. Cir. 2016) and MPEP 2111.04, the "whereby" clause gets patentable weight only if it expresses a necessary relationship or is itself a positive limitation. Here it reads as a statement of the intended result of transmitting to the switch (the actual binding is done by the switch, an element not recited as part of the claimed system). If it is not a positive limitation, claim 1 is broader, and therefore easier to invalidate, not harder.

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4. Claim 10 (method) — the obviousness case

Combination 10-A — Lucent '619 + Augart '524 (+ HP '654,382).

The direction of the exchange differs between '611 and Lucent '619 (Lucent is distributed/peer-oriented; '611 is a switch-side registry), but claim 10's "store at the intermediate device and return on request" is the direct design choice of making Lucent's per-node location store a per-port record at the intermediate device — a predictable variation (KSR: "a mere change in … location of a known element, if predictable"). Augart '524 supplies the "store-at-the-network-node-and-associate" half; Lucent supplies the "serve-it-back-on-request" half.

Confidence: High.

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5. Dependent claims

• Claims 2, 18 (GPS): Magellan '134; Wang '745. Obvious.
• Claims 3, 19 (INS integrated with GPS from a substitute location): Very strong. Magellan '134 discloses GPS + accelerometers integrated and GPS used to calibrate/re-zero inertial sensor error — the same use the '611 describes for "zero[ing] the inertial navigation unit" at a window and walking back. US 3,702,477 adds inertial/doppler-satellite integration. Decisively, the '611 specification itself admits this is known: "The ability to integrate inertial navigation signals or information with GPS data is known to those skilled in the art," citing Grewal/Weill/Andrews. A specification admission of known technique is highly persuasive § 103 evidence.
• Claim 4 (IP message): Lucent '619 operates in an IP/TCP/UDP network; Augart '524 uses TCP/IP. Obvious.
• Claims 5, 6 (location recording entity; per-port geo-location table): HP '654,382 (learn-and-bind-to-port) + standard switch data structures; eConnectix '978 (centralized location store).
• Claim 7 (NVRAM): Routine design choice of non-volatile storage for configuration tables. Obvious.
• Claims 8, 9, 20 (radio beacon / triangulation): Time Domain '133,876 (impulse-radio position determination); the '611 specification admits triangulation is "well known to those skilled in the art," citing Whitaker (1991); UWB is likewise conceded as an alternative. Obvious.
• Claim 11: Lucent '619 + Augart '524. Obvious.
• Claim 12 (bind to port): HP '654,382. Obvious.
• Claims 13–15 (append coordinates to a 911 call; by the entity and/or the intermediate device): Strong. Lucent '619 claims 2–3 expressly cover a "packet telephony server" that is an "emergency response telephony server" using the location to "identify the geographic location of a calling party." US 7,149,774 (BellSouth) discloses a TCP/IP help-request message that includes "a location of the user" delivered to an emergency service center. US 6,650,901 (3Com) and US 6,515,985 (Airslide) supply data-network telephony service customization. Appending vs. sending separately is a trivial implementation choice.
• Claims 16–17 (forward to a second intermediate device via ICMP carrying coordinates): Very strong. Lucent '619 expressly discloses extending ICMP to incorporate geographic-location fields in ICMP response packets, with intermediate routing nodes reporting their own locations; Augart '524 supplies TTL-based probing to elicit identifiers from successive hops. Read together, claim 17 is close to a straight combination of two verified references.

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6. Motivation to combine (KSR factors)

1. Same field / common problem. Network management, location services, and packet telephony were the same art. The '611 Background identifies the problem (manual, error-prone equipment inventories that "are rarely performed"), and Augart '524, Lucent '619, eConnectix '978, and HP '654,382 each address in whole or part the same problem: tying network topology to physical geography.
2. Predictable combination of known elements. Every element is a known technique performing its known function: GPS gives coordinates; a packet carries data; a switch learns identifier→port; a table stores it; a query returns it. No new interoperability or unexpected result is claimed.
3. Design incentive / market pressure. By 2000–2001, VoIP deployment plus FCC E911 obligations created strong pressure to give IP/PBX callers a precise dispatchable location — the '611 Background itself frames E911-for-PBX as the unmet need, and Lucent '619's and BellSouth '774's emergency-telephony teachings supply the "why." HP '654,382 supplies the ready-made switch mechanism.
4. "Known technique to improve a similar device in the same way." Adding one attribute (coordinates) to a switch's existing port-indexed forwarding/learning table requires no architectural change — the classic KSR rationale.
5. Applicant's own admissions as SMM. The specification concedes as known: GPS/INS integration (Grewal), triangulation (Whitaker), NBAR-based 911 detection (Cisco), CDP discovery, and the conventional layer-2 port lookup. These admissions do the motivation work directly.
6. Express reference-to-reference pointers. The examiner already placed Magellan '134 and the inertial/satellite-navigation reference in the record; the family IDS placed Lucent '619, Augart '524, HP '654,382, and eConnectix '978 in the record — showing the artisan would have consulted exactly these sources.

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7. Secondary considerations and expected rebuttals

• No objective indicia of record. Nothing in the file suggests unexpected results, industry praise, licensing, or copying. Absent a nexus, secondary considerations cannot rebut a prima facie case.
• "Non-analogous art" defense is weak. The navigation references are reasonably pertinent to the problem (the '611's own IDS and specification cite navigation art and the Grewal textbook). A PHOSITA facing "where is this port physically located?" would naturally look to GPS/INS.
• "Different direction of data flow" argument (Lucent '619). Some claims (esp. 10, 16) can be argued as requiring the network device to hold and serve the location, whereas Lucent is peer-to-peer. This is the patent's best structural argument, but it is a predictable relocation of the store, and Augart '524 already teaches a server-side database that records location derived from a received message — closing the gap.

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8. Bottom line, vulnerabilities, and caveats

Assessment. Claims 1, 3, 6, 10–12, 16–19 are highly vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built from the references already of record (Wang '745, Lucent '619, Augart '524, HP '654,382, Magellan '134, US 3,702,477, Time Domain '133,876, eConnectix '978). Claims 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13–15, 20 are vulnerable but somewhat more dependent on the 911/VoIP and triangulation sub-combinations (Lucent '619 + BellSouth '774 + 3Com '901; Time Domain '133,876 + Whitaker). The single most damaging fact for the patentee is the specification's own admissions that GPS/INS integration, triangulation, NBAR-based 911 detection, and port-indexed switching were all known.

Where this analysis could be wrong / what I could not verify:

• I could not read US 2002/0160745 (Wang), US 6,133,876, US 7,233,978, DE 69929627, US 6,388,612, US 2002/0059420, or US 7,870,196; consequently Combination 1-A's Wang-based mapping is inferred from the title only and should be re-checked. Combination 1-B rests on references I did verify.
• I did not retrieve the examiner's actual rejections or the applicant's remarks, so I cannot say the combination was squarely before the examiner or why it was overcome.
• Several key references are 102(e)-only art; if any earlier-filed provisional were shown to predate them, or if the invention date were carried earlier via a Rule 131-type showing, the availability calculus could shift.

Identifier caution (no auto-correction): JP 6665611 B2 is an unrelated Fujitsu HEVC coding patent; it must not be conflated with US 6,665,611. All references above are to the US patent.

Sources used for live verification: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6778524B1](/patent/US6778524B1) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6975619B1](/patent/US6975619B1) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6308134 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6092096A](/patent/US6092096A) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7149774B2](/patent/US7149774B2) ; https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US6778524B1 .