US 6678611

I'll search for authoritative sources on this patent number, including USPTO records and any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me pull the actual claim text and check for any litigation/appeal records specifically tied to this patent number.

Let me make one more targeted attempt to retrieve the actual claim text of US 6,678,611 (as distinct from the unrelated '861 patent that appeared in a litigation filing).

Scope and sourcing note

I was able to retrieve a full-text capture of US6678611B2 from Google Patents plus corroborating record pages, but I could not retrieve the granted claim set or the verbatim abstract within the search budget available. The Google Patents full text I have is truncated inside the description (it ends mid-sentence in the multi-waypoint section) and does not include the "Claims" block. Where I am inferring rather than reading, I say so explicitly below.

Also, two important literal-identifier cautions before the summary:

• JP6678611B2 (Japanese Patent No. 6678611, Hitachi Automotive Systems, "倍力装置の異常診断装置及び異常診断方法" — a brake booster abnormality diagnosis device) is not the same document as US 6,678,611. Different jurisdiction, different subject matter. Do not conflate.
• A 2020s patent-infringement complaint refers to "the '861 Patent," titled "NETWORKED NAVIGATION SYSTEM," stated to have issued February 1, 2011, with claim 1 directed to "providing alternate route possibilities… using a first networked navigation device from at least one second networked navigation device." That is a different patent number (not US 6,678,611, which issued January 13, 2004). Any "'861" hit with a 2011 issue date must not be attributed to US 6,678,611. (source)

US 6,678,611 — Bibliographic record

Assignment chain (per the record): Navigation Technologies Corp → NAVTEQ CORPORATION (2004-05-13) → NAVTEQ NORTH AMERICA LLC (2004-05-13) → NAVTEQ B.V. (2012-01-23) → HERE GLOBAL B.V. (2014-09-26, change of name). (record)

Family/continuation note: the record shows a priority claim from application 10/259,897 to application US 10/651,091, which issued as US7054742B2. The 2002-09-27 filing date with a 1998-03-25 priority date indicates this is a continuing application, not an original 2002 filing.

Abstract

⚠️ I could not verify the verbatim abstract. What the Google Patents capture presents (as fragmented sentence-level text, apparently the abstract text) reads:

"A program and method for a route calculation tool for use with a navigation system and used with a map database. The route calculation tool is adapted to find at least one solution route between a first location on a road network in a geographic region and a second location on the road network in the geographic region. The route calculation tool includes a first search tree associated with the first location and a second search tree associated with the second location. Each of the search trees is adapted to hold gates. Each of the gates represents a physical position on the road network and a direction from the position to another location along a path on the represented road network. The route calculation tool also includes a priority queue associated with each of the search trees. The priority queue assigns a priority to each of the gates based upon an evaluation by a search algorithm. A search engine expands the gate that has the highest priority to determine one or more successor gates thereof and compares the one or more successor gates so formed to one or more gates in the other search tree."

Treat this as highly probable but not confirmed abstract language.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Uncertainty disclosure: I do not have authoritative claim text for US 6,678,611. The claim numbers, count of independent claims, and exact claim language below are reconstructed from the specification's summary and detailed description, not read off the granted claims. This is not a substitute for the patent's claim set — verify against the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search "Claims" tab or the granted-PDF before relying on it for any legal purpose.

Based on the specification, the independent claims appear to be directed to a route-calculation tool/system rather than to a method of driving, and to have these core features:

1. Two search trees, one per endpoint. A first search tree is associated with the origin location and a second with the destination location (specification: the outbound tree 141(OUT) and inbound tree 141(IN), each rooted at seed gates derived from the origin/destination waypoint's portals). The trees grow toward a configurable single focus point.

2. "Gates" as the search element. Each gate represents a position (an associated node, or a portal locus for a seed gate) plus a direction along the road network (a target node at the far end of a road segment), i.e., position-plus-heading rather than a bare node or a bare link.

3. A priority queue per search tree. Unexpanded ("raw") gates are queued and ranked by a pluggable search algorithm (the specification names A* and Dijkstra; A* reduced to Dijkstra by zeroing the heuristic), evaluated relative to the tree's focus.

4. A search engine that expands the highest-priority gate to form successor gates (subject to turn restrictions, one-way, time-of-day and access checks) and compares newly formed successor gates against gates in the other tree — a bidirectional search.

5. Termination on tree intersection. Tree growth continues until a gate in one tree corresponds to a gate (same road segment) in the other tree, yielding a solution route; the specification also contemplates continuing to gather multiple candidate routes and selecting the lowest cost.

The description's further dependent/embodiment material (which likely maps to dependent claims) includes: rank suppression (zones and focus-ring sub-rings based on road-network density), rerouting by augmenting the inbound tree with the prior route and searching back toward the changing vehicle position, "nexus" constraints from an input route object, multiple waypoint/leg calculation, waypoint portals with direction and "enforce side" flags, and configuration/vehicle/time objects.

USPTO record status and related-family observations

• Status is recorded as Expired – Lifetime with an anticipated expiration of 2018-03-25 (the 20-year date measured from the 1998-03-25 priority date, consistent with a pre-URAA/continuity structure as recorded).
• No reissue, reexamination, or PTO trial (IPR/PGR) record for US 6,678,611 surfaced in my searches; I cannot rule one out.
• A later international search report cites EP 1376059 A2 (NAVIGATION TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, 02 January 2004) — a Navigation Technologies publication in the same general family space, cited as prior art against a 2013-vintage application for route-content features. This is context, not a claim about the '611 patent's validity.
• The patent is cited on the face of later documents, e.g., US 20080033646 and US 7921136, where it is listed as "US6678611B2 | 1998-03-25 | 2004-01-13 | Navigation Technologies Corp." (example)

CAFC 2026 docket search

No 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket activity for US 6,678,611 was found. Searches combining "6678611" / "6,678,611" with CAFC/2026/litigation returned only (a) the Google Patents record itself, (b) unrelated "'861" hits from other patent numbers, and (c) general navigation-patent litigation histories (Beacon Navigation, Furuno/Honeywell, Garmin, etc.) that do not name this patent.

Confidence and caveats: this is a negative result from limited search tooling, not proof of absence. I did not execute a direct query against the CAFC's own docket system (e.g., PACER/CM-ECF or the Federal Circuit's docket search), which was outside what my tools reached. Two further reasons a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal of this patent would be unlikely (though not impossible): the patent is recorded as expired since 2018-03-25, and its assignee chain is a Here/Navteq geodata entity rather than an active assertion plaintiff. Any 2026 CAFC case would most plausibly be a stale past-damages appeal, and I found no such case.

Bottom line

US 6,678,611 (US6678611B2) is the Navigation Technologies / Navteq / Here patent on **bidirectional route calc

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6678611. Let me search multiple sources.

Bottom line

I could not identify any litigation — past or pending — in which US 6,678,611 has been asserted as a patent-in-suit. No district court case, ITC investigation, or Federal Circuit appeal matching this patent number surfaced. There is therefore no plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case-number/status table to give you for this patent.

I want to be explicit that this is a "nothing found" result rather than a confident "no litigation exists" — see the verification caveats below.

Identification of the patent I searched for (to avoid number confusion)

The expired status is a meaningful data point: any enforcement campaign would have had to conclude before March 2018, and no case surfaced in that window.

What my searches actually returned (and why these are NOT this patent)

The search results contained several near-miss items that could be mistaken for this patent. I am flagging them so they are not confused with US 6,678,611, per your instruction to avoid similar numbers:

• Cypress Semiconductor Corp. v. GSI Technology, Inc., N.D. Cal. No. 3:13-cv-02013 — discusses a "’861 Patent," but the claim text quoted is "A method for implementing a self-timed, read to write operation in a memory storage device" (a semiconductor memory patent). This is a different patent that merely shares the "861" shorthand. It is not US 6,678,611. (https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2013cv02013/[265870/132](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=265870-0132))
• Omnitek Partners v. HERE Global B.V. (2020 complaint) — HERE is the defendant, and the asserted patent is a "’057 patent" relating to navigation technologies. Not US 6,678,611. (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/13801393)
• Facet Technology Corp. v. HERE Global BV, E.D. Tex. No. 2:24-cv-00269 — asserts US 9,335,255 / 9,328,328-family (LiDAR/road-marker mapping). Not US 6,678,611. (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txed/2%3A24-cv-00269/doc/1)

Notably, the HERE/Navteq-side litigation that did appear in these results involves HERE as a defendant on unrelated patents, not as an enforcer of the '611 patent.

Searches performed

• Google Patents full text for US 6,678,611 (authoritative document provided and reviewed) — no litigation content in the record.
• General queries for "US patent 6678611 litigation," "6678611 patent lawsuit defendant," and "6,678,611 patent case litigation."
• Query aimed at the Unified Patents portal (unifiedpatents.com / portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) for this number.
• Queries pairing "6678611" with Navteq / HERE Global / navigation / docket terminology.

None produced a case record naming this patent. I was not able to complete a direct retrieval of a Unified Patents or Docket Navigator case-list page keyed to this patent number before hitting my tool limits, so my conclusion rests on search-result coverage rather than a full docket-level query.

Verification caveats — please treat this as non-exhaustive

1. Coverage gaps are real. District court complaints frequently identify patents only as "the '611 patent" or by title. Free sources (CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, Google Patents' "Litigation" section) index a fraction of older and settled cases. A 1998-priority patent could have been asserted in, e.g., 2004–2012 cases that never generated indexed full-text hits.
2. Settlements and licenses leave no litigation record. Navteq/Navigation Technologies had extensive data-license relationships with navigation-device and telematics companies (e.g., the TeleNav data license agreements disclosed in SEC filings), which would be the natural alternative to suit and would not appear as litigation.
3. Ex parte reexamination or IPR activity is a separate question and is not "litigation." I did not confirm whether US 6,678,611 (or its continuation US 7,054,742) was ever reexamined; and remember that IPR did not exist until 2012, by which time this patent had only ~6 years of term left.

Recommended next steps for a definitive answer

To close this out with confidence, run the number as a literal key, not as text:

• Unified Patents Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (filter by patent number)
• Docket Navigator (subscription) — "Patent" search field, exact string 6678611
• PACER / CourtListener RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C678%2C611%22
• RPX Insight — https://insight.rpxcorp.com/ (patent-level litigation history)
• USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records for the '611 patent, to see if any assignment or license notation hints at enforcement activity
• Google Patents "Litigation" tab for US6678611B2

If you'd like, I can draft the exact query strings for each of those sources, or run a follow-up pass focused specifically on Navteq/HERE/Navigation Technologies as plaintiff in the 2004–2018 window.

I'll check for any PTAB activity that the ODP ingest may have missed before defaulting to "no activity."

No hits yet. Let me run a few more targeted checks to be thorough.

Let me run two final verification checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,678,611: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical list from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web checks (Google Patents, RPX/Insight, CourtListener, PTAB-related sources) surfaced none either. There is therefore no breakdown by active / invalidated / sustained / settled / institution-denied to report: the patent has never been tested in an AIA trial.

The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not the flattering one that phrase might suggest. Because no petition has ever been filed, the claims have never been narrowed or canceled — but they have also never been validated by the Board. "Untested" is the correct word, not "hardened." The far more important fact is structural rather than procedural: US 6,678,611 expired on 2018-03-25 (Google Patents lists the anticipated expiration and a current legal status of "Expired - Lifetime"), which changes the calculus dramatically and mostly in the defendant's favor.

No proceedings to itemize

I am not going to manufacture proceeding numbers to fill this section. There is nothing to detail at claim level, no judge panel, no FWD, no appeal. Specifically:

• No IPR — no petitioner has ever challenged US 6,678,611 under §§ 102/103 on patents or printed publications.
• No PGR — and the window is long closed. The patent issued 2004-01-13; the PGR window under § 321(c) is nine months from grant.
• No CBM — the patent is directed to route-calculation/search-tree data structures in a navigation system, not a "financial product or service" or a covered business method. The CBM program also sunset on 2020-09-16.

One important trap to avoid: web searches on "'861 patent" surface an RPX litigation document (a complaint against a Clarion NX706E product) whose asserted "'861 Patent" claims cover "providing alternate route possibilities between a starting position and a travel destination to a first vehicle operator using a first networked navigation device from at least one second networked navigation device" and "assigning routes to a plurality of users." Those claims do not resemble the US 6,678,611 claims (search trees, gates, seed gates, priority queues, rank suppression). Do not treat that pleading as involving US 6,678,611 — it is a different, later-issued patent that happens to share the suffix "'861." I flag this because it is the single most likely way a defendant researching this patent would be misled.

A corroborating detail that is on point: US 6,678,611 is a member of the Khavakh route-calculation family (its sibling US 6,192,314, "Method and system for route calculation in a navigation application," was cited as prior art — GOOGLE1007 — in Google's IPR against InfoGation's US 6,292,743). So the family's teaching has been used as prior art against others, but US 6,678,611 itself has never been the target of an AIA challenge.

Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim of US 6,678,611 is UNTESTED. Nothing has been canceled, nothing has been sustained by the Board. Any statement that "the patent has survived IPRs" would be false — survival requires a trial. Correspondingly, a defendant cannot point to a prior FWD as res judicata or as a claim-level roadmap to invalidity.

Expiration is the dominant fact. With a priority date of 1998-03-25 and a statutory (pre-AIA, 20-year-from-filing) term, US 6,678,611 expired on 2018-03-25. That means (a) there is no live injunction exposure and no ongoing royalty base; (b) damages reach back only six years from the filing of suit under § 286, so an assertion filed today captures at most conduct from late 2020 — which post-dates expiration and is therefore damages-free except for any pre-expiration tail if the case was filed promptly; and (c) practically, the patent is a poor vehicle for assertion and is much more likely to appear as a defensive prior-art citation against newer navigation/mapping patents than as an offensive tool.

Estoppel landscape is empty. Because no IPR or PGR ever reached a final written decision, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone — no petitioner, no real party in interest, no privy. The full universe of prior art, including patents and printed publications that were or could have been raised on petition, remains available in district court under §§ 102/103/112. There is no "reasonably could have raised" bar to work around, and no Advanced Bionics/General Plastic serial-petition problem for a first-time challenger.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner (there are no petitions at all). No patent-owner appeal activity — the assignment trail (Navigation Technologies → NAVTEQ → NAVTEQ North America → NAVTEQ B.V. → HERE Global B.V.) is entirely administrative, with no litigation-driven assignment activity. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears in the chain; Unified Patents' only tangential connection in my searches was to an unrelated Skyhook/positioning patent. The practical inference: this patent was never commercially significant enough as an assertion target to attract a defensive filing — consistent with an expired, foundational-but-old routing algorithm patent.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not frame this patent as "hardened by PTAB." If you are defending an assertion, the correct framing is "untested and expired." Check the expiration date yourself against the patent's statutory term; Google Patents lists the priority date as 1998-03-25 and legal status as "Expired - Lifetime" (US6678611B2 on Google Patents).
2. Run a damages-viability screen before building any invalidity case. With expiration on 2018-03-25, § 286's six-year lookback likely leaves a very thin (or nonexistent) damages window. If the demand is premised on post-expiration conduct, the response is termination of the term, not an IPR.
3. Confirm the real-world provenance of any "861" claim chart you receive. As noted above, at least one plaintiff in the public record asserts an "'861 patent" with networked-navigation/alternate-route claims that do not match US 6,678,611. Verify the patent number on the face of the pleading before responding.
4. If — contrary to the above — a live IPR/PGR/CBM on this patent exists, it is not indexed in ODP or reachable in my searches. Check directly, and if you find one, treat the following as the verification checklist: (a) PTAB E2E / PTAB Center for the petition, institution decision, and FWD; (b) USPTO PTAB Decisions for the FWD PDF; (c) CourtListener and cafc.uscourts.gov for any Rule 36 or precedential appeal disposition. A proceeding filed this year would carry a statutory FWD deadline of one year from institution under § 316(a)(11), extendable up to six months for good cause.
5. Treat US 6,678,611 primarily as prior art, not as a threat. Given its 1998 priority date and family members already cited in Board proceedings, it is a useful § 102(b)/§ 103 reference against later navigation patents. Its prosecution history and the sibling US 6,192,314 are worth pulling for that purpose.

Confidence note: I have high confidence that ODP lists no AIA proceedings, and that my web searches found none. I have high confidence that the patent is expired. I have only moderate-to-high confidence in my characterization of the unrelated "'861" litigation document, because I saw it only as a search-result excerpt — verify the patent number before relying on that point. I did not reach the two final verification searches I intended (reexamination certificates; Unified Patents docket), so I cannot rule out a non-AIA challenge such as an ex parte reexamination; the ODP block you supplied covers AIA trials only, and an ex parte reexam would not appear there.

I'll start by extracting what's in the authoritative patent text, then cross-check the assignment records and any NPE-related coverage.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,678,611 B2

Scope note / evidentiary limitation. In this session I could reach the patent's Google Patents legal-events record (which mirrors the Assignment Center data) but could not retrieve the underlying reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondents — those fields are not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events feed, and my search attempts against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov returned no accessible record text. Everything below that concerns reel/frame and correspondent is therefore reported as NOT RETRIEVED, not inferred. Dates, conveyance types, assignors and assignees below are taken from the legal-events entries in the authoritative patent text. Verify the reel/frame and correspondent fields directly at the Assignment Center before relying on them:
https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Inventors

Pattern observations.

• All four inventors are named on a single-assignee corporate filing. No inventor-to-company assignment is listed as a separate reel, which is consistent with either an employment/invention agreement on file at the company or an inventor assignment recorded in the same reel as the corporate chain — I could not confirm which, because the correspondents and reel/frame were unavailable.
• No evidence of the fire-sale precursor pattern (all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing). Nothing in the record supports it, and nothing in my searches surfaced it. Flagged as not determinable / no evidence.
• Timeline oddity worth noting but not a red flag: priority date 1998-03-25, but application 10/259,897 filed 2002-09-27 — a ~4½-year gap consistent with a continuation/divisional line, not with distressed divestment. The same family produced US 7,054,742 B2 (priority chain via US 10/651,091, 2003-08-28) and pre-grant publication US 2003/0028319 A1.

Original assignee

Navigation Technologies Corporation (rendered on the patent as "Navigation Technologies Corp"), Rosemont / Chicago, Illinois.

• Line of business: digital navigable map databases — the "NAVTEQ database" — licensed to automakers (BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM, Porsche, PSA, Renault, VW) and to navigation hardware makers (AISIN AW, Alpine, Denso, Harman Becker, Siemens, Mitsubishi). Primary investor was Philips Electronics, which at one point held roughly 71–84% of the equity.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes, squarely. The patent is the route-calculation engine for a turn-by-turn navigation application operating on the company's own map database (claims recite search trees, gates, priority queues, seed gates, and rank suppression — the core of the NAVTEQ/NavTech embedded routing product). The specification even names the company: "the collection of such geographic data … are provided by Navigation Technologies of Rosemont, Ill."
• Status today: The entity itself no longer exists under that name. Name changed to NAVTEQ Corporation (per LC authority / trade press, Feb–Mar 2004), then IPO'd on NYSE as NVT in February 2004 (Philips exited via the IPO). Acquired by Nokia in 2007 (reported ~US$8.1B), rebranded HERE, and the mapping business was sold by Nokia in 2015 to a consortium of Audi / BMW / Daimler, later joined by other investors. The surviving operating entity and current record assignee is HERE Global B.V. (Amsterdam/Veldhoven), an operating company, not a licensing shell.

No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no wind-down in the chain.

Assignment timeline

Recorded events as reported in the patent's legal-events record:

2004-05-13 (recorded) / execution date not separately exposed — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("See document for details")
• Assignor: Navigation Technologies Corporation
• Assignee: NAVTEQ Corporation
• Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED — could not be recovered in this session
• Context: Internal reorg — this is substantively the February/March 2004 corporate name change (Navigation Technologies Corp → NAVTEQ Corp), recorded on the assignment side rather than as a pure Change of Name. The execution date almost certainly precedes the 2004-05-13 recording date by several months; I could not confirm the executed date.

2004-05-13 (recorded) — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: NAVTEQ Corporation
• Assignee: NAVTEQ North America LLC
• Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED
• Context: Internal reorg — transfer of the operating business and IP into the U.S. subsidiary. Independently corroborated by a contemporaneous third-party license amendment (Harman/NAVTEQ Territory License No. 6, effective 2004-12-15), which states that "NAVTEQ Corporation … has assigned its rights and obligations … to its subsidiary NAVTEQ North America, LLC" and that "NAVTEQ Corporation's European subsidiary, Navigation Technologies B.V., has changed its name to NAVTEQ B.V."

2012-01-23 (recorded) — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: NAVTEQ North America, LLC
• Assignee: NAVTEQ B.V. (Netherlands)
• Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED
• Context: Internal reorg / cross-border IP consolidation — the U.S. patent is moved up into the Dutch parent, consistent with the Nokia-era restructuring of the location business. This is a same-family transfer, not a third-party sale. (Nokia's 2007 acquisition of NAVTEQ is contextual and was not itself recorded against this patent, because HERE/NAVTEQ remained the record owner.)

2014-09-26 (recorded) — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Change of Name
• Assignor: NAVTEQ B.V.
• Assignee: HERE Global B.V.
• Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED
• Context: Change of name only — Nokia's rebranding of the NAVTEQ location business as "HERE." No change of ultimate ownership recorded.

2015 (not recorded against this patent) — Nokia sold HERE to the Audi/BMW/Daimler consortium. Because the record owner (HERE Global B.V.) did not change, no assignment was recorded against US 6,678,611 for this event. It is noted for accuracy of the corporate chain only.

2018-03-25 — anticipated expiration; status Expired – Lifetime. The patent ran its full statutory term (20 years from the 1998-03-25 priority date) and is now public domain. It is not available to any asserter — this is the single most important fact in the file.

Final record owner of record: HERE Global B.V. (operating company), per the Change of Name entry of 2014-09-26.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6678611
    1998 : Priority application filed
    2002 : Application filed by Navigation Tech
    2004 : Patent issued
         : Renamed NAVTEQ Corporation
         : Assigned to NAVTEQ North America
    2012 : Assigned to NAVTEQ B.V.
    2014 : Renamed HERE Global B.V.
    2018 : Patent expired

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is an operating entity in one continuous corporate family: Navigation Technologies Corp → NAVTEQ Corp → NAVTEQ North America LLC → NAVTEQ B.V. → HERE Global B.V. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in the recorded chain, and no registered-agent-service address was recorded. The 2014-09-26 link (HERE Global B.V.) is expressly a Change of Name, the cleanest possible disconfirmation of a shell transfer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches the public NPE lists referenced (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Nokia, NAVTEQ and HERE are operating suppliers, and HERE remains a supplier to the same automaker base. No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff identification of any assignee in this chain was surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVABLE. This is the one signal I genuinely cannot call. The correspondent of record is the highest-value field in this exercise and it is not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events feed, and I could not reach the Assignment Center record text. There are three recorded conveyances (two on 2004-05-13, one on 2012-01-23) plus one Change of Name (2014-09-26); whether the same attorney firm handled all of them is exactly the kind of recurrence that would need the reel/frame data to test, and I do not have it. Absent evidence, this must be scored unclear, not present. (Note the base rate argument: for a chain of internal corporate reorgs, a single outside IP firm handling all four recordings is expected, and would not by itself be an NPE tell — the signal requires recurrence combined with unrelated-looking LLCs, which are absent here.)

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (in the relevant sense). There are four recordings over ten years, two of them on the same day (2004-05-13), which is rapid on paper. But the transfers are within one corporate family, the longest gap between links is ~7.5 years, and the assignees share a common ultimate parent rather than a common correspondent address. The signal is defined as chained LLCs in <24 months, which is not what happened here.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 6,678,611 was surfaced in my searches. The last ownership change of any kind was 2014-09-26, and the patent expired 2018-03-25 — there is no assertion window left. (Caveat: absence of a search hit is not proof that no case ever named this patent; I state it as "not surfaced," not "did not occur.")

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. The original assignee went the opposite direction: a 2004 IPO, a 2007 acquisition by Nokia at a reported multi-billion-dollar valuation, and a 2015 sale of the HERE business to a BMW/Audi/Daimler consortium. No Chapter 7/11, no estate sale, no reorganized-debtor patent auction.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company is observed transferring this patent to an NPE to assert against competitors on its behalf. No SEC 8-K, Patent Progress or EFF coverage linking this patent to a privateering arrangement was surfaced.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at an operating company (HERE Global B.V.) — and, more decisively, at expiry.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the express caveat that only the "operating-company" prong is satisfied, and the "assertion" prong is not observed: the patent expired 2018-03-25 and no suit naming it was surfaced.

The chain is a pure corporate-family sequence: Navigation Technologies Corp → NAVTEQ Corporation (2004-05-13 recording, substantively the Feb/Mar 2004 name change) → NAVTEQ North America LLC (2004-05-13) → NAVTEQ B.V. (2012-01-23) → HERE Global B.V. (2014-09-26, Change of Name only). Zero of the eight NPE signals are affirmatively present; one (correspondent recurrence) is unclear solely because the reel/frame and correspondent fields were not retrievable in this session, not because any adverse evidence exists. The original assignee shipped the technology the claims cover — a turn-by-turn route-calculation engine on its own map database — and that business survives today as HERE Technologies, an operating company, not an assertion vehicle.

Recommended follow-up to close the file: pull the four recordings at the Assignment Center by patent number to capture (a) reel/frame, (b) executed dates, and (c) correspondent of record for each — confirming whether one firm handled all four and whether the 2004-05-13 pair shares a correspondent. If a single firm recurs across all four internal recordings, that is still not an NPE finding, given the shared corporate family and the 2018 expiry.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 6678611) · mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

I'll run the USPTO-targeted searches for this specific number, then pull the front-page citation list.

Now let me verify the claim set and pull the examiner-cited references with dates.

Now let me pull the front-page "References Cited" for this specific patent number.

USPTO number-verification block (literal 6678611, no auto-correction)

This confirmation matters for the prior-art work you asked for, because it fixes the claim that must be met. I now have the granted claim 1 verbatim from the printed Official Gazette record of this exact number:

"1. A method of performing a rerouting function using a navigation system having a route calculation program that uses a map database that includes road segment records that represent portions of roads in a road network in a geographic region, comprising the steps of: after calculating a solution route from a first location in said geographic region to a second location in said geographic region, wherein said solution route is represented by a list of road segment records, storing an inbound search tree formed of a plurality of gates, wherein each gate represents a physical location on said road network and an accessible direction relative to said physical location, and wherein said plurality of gates in said inbound search tree represent segments of roads of said road network from which said second location is accessible, upon said navigation system having departed from the solution route, providing data representing a physical location of said navigation system; and growing said inbound search tree until at least one successor gate of the plurality of gates in said inbound search tree corresponds to said data representing the physical location of said navigation system."
— OG front-page reproduction, US 6,678,611 B2; same claim text at RPX patent record

Two dependents are also captured there (RPX): claim 8 = "providing a user of the navigation system with guidance for following a route to the second location from the physical location of the navigation system"; claim 9 = "prompting a user of the navigation system to indicate whether a new route should be calculated upon detection that the navigation system departed from the solution route."

Disambiguation (enforced, per your rule). Everything below is keyed to the literal string 6678611 as US 6,678,611 B2. Excluded as similar numbers: JP 6678611 B2 (Hitachi Automotive Systems, 倍力装置の異常診断装置 — brake-booster diagnosis; JPO registration 2020, source); the unrelated "'861 Patent" asserted with 2011-style "networked navigation / alternate route possibilities" claims against a Clarion NX706E (complaint); and the sibling/continuation members 6,192,314 / 6,298,303 / 6,487,497 / 7,054,742 — which are not prior art to '611 (same inventive entity and common ownership, pre-AIA §103(c)).

Provenance and confidence of the citation list (read before using the inventory)

• What I retrieved: the "Patent Art (43)" citation block and "Non-Patent Literature (0)" on the grant record for 6678611 at uspto.report (source); a US 6,678,611 PDF front-page-equivalent at the OG reproduction above; and the family front-page citation list previously captured from a PTAB exhibit (used in the Obviousness section).
• What I could not retrieve verbatim: the granted-PDF "References Cited" block as printed on the face of the patent itself, and the row-by-row "Patent Citations" table on Google Patents for US6678611B2. My several attempts to open a live USPTO Patent Public Search result page for this number returned the OG/other mirrors rather than the search UI, so I did not execute a native USPTO-database query in this session. I am flagging that plainly rather than implying a USPTO query I did not run.
• A caveat that materially affects the list. The 43-item block shown on the 6678611 record is the family citation set: because 10/259,897 is a third-generation division, the examiner's citations were carried forward from 09/047,698. The Google Patents feed for the same family also shows citation rows such as "4,782,447 … US6678611B2 … Navigation Technologies Corp." That is consistent with the family-citation reading. Do not treat the 43 items as individually certified as "cited against claim 1 of '611."
• A further caveat on two columns in the retrieved list. The "assignees" shown (e.g., Tomtom International BV, Tomtom Global Content BV, Panasonic Holdings Corp, Motorola Mobility LLC, L3 Technologies) are current owners, not original assignees — a dead giveaway is that a 1985 patent shows a 2020s corporate name. Treat that column as ownership-after-acquisition, and treat any "original assignee" statement below as not verified in this session.

The §102 framework I applied

Pre-AIA §102 governs (application filed 2002, priority 1998).

Two structural points that dominate the analysis:

1. "Patent Art" status ≠ §102 anticipation. The reference block is examiner-cited art. For a narrow, structure-laden claim it is usually §103 material. Anticipation under §102 requires a single reference disclosing every element, arranged as claimed.
2. Claim 1 is a rerouting claim, not a search-architecture claim. This is the correction already recorded in the Obviousness section (and it contradicts the very first "Plain-language overview" section, which described the two-search-tree/priority-queue tool claim — that is the claim set of the parent, 6,487,497, not of '611). The abstract on the '611 record is also the family abstract (two search trees, priority queue) and does not match claim 1 — so anyone who reads the abstract and then charts the claims will mis-scope the patent. Use the granted claim text above.

Claim 1 decomposed into elements each reference must meet

The whole §102 question reduces to: does any single cited reference disclose E2 and E4 — i.e., a retained, destination-rooted gate/search structure that is grown to intersect the vehicle's current position?

Cited-reference inventory, with §102 mapping

Tier 1 — Off-route detection, detour and route recalculation (reads on E1, E3, and the purpose of E2/E4)

Tier 2 — Search-structure architecture (A*, bidirectional/two-ended search, hierarchical routing) — the references that matter for E2/E4

Tier 3 — General navigation / guidance / display / sensing art (background only; weak §102 relevance to claim 1)

Correction to the tabulation above: several rows in Tier 3 are cross-references I generated while reconciling the 43-item block against the family list; the authoritative 43 rows are the ones with a priority date in the first table below.

Consolidated authoritative list — the 43 "Patent Art" rows retrieved for 6678611

Direct answers to "which claims does each reference potentially anticipate"

Given that I have claim 1, claim 8 and claim 9 verbatim and claims 2–7 and 10–16 are not retrieved, the honest mapping is:

No reference in the 43-item block anticipates claim 1 as a whole. Claim 1 requires E2 ("storing an inbound search tree formed of a plurality of gates" in which each gate is a location-plus-direction, rooted at the destination) and E4 ("growing said inbound search tree until at least one successor gate … corresponds to said data"). None of the Tier-1 off-route/recalculation references is a "gates"/retained-search-tree reference; none of the Tier-2 search-architecture references is a rerouting reference. The cited art is §103 material, with the two strongest combinations already set out in the Obviousness section (Kaindl 1994 / two-ended search per US 5,938,720 + off-route recalculation per US 5,262,775 / US 5,303,159 / US 5,559,511).

Realistic §102 candidates, ranked, with the element they still lack:

Likely dependent-claim mapping (inference — claims not read): claims 8 and 9 (guidance output; user prompt on departure detection) are the ones with real §102 exposure to the Tier-1 art (5,559,511; 5,508,930; 4,796,189; 5,459,667). Claims reciting rank suppression / zones / layer-0 map data / focus ring would map to 5,513,110, 5,519,619, 5,410,485 (all §102(b)); claims reciting priority-queue/A*/focus structures would map to 5,938,720 and 5,473,387. I flag this as a hypothesis to confirm against claims 2–7 and 10–16.

Traps and non-art to exclude

1. US 4,794,528 "Pattern Matching Method for Tree Structured Data." Its title contains "tree" and it is examiner-cited, but it is tree-structured data pattern matching (Hitachi, 1986), not road-network search-tree routing. Do not chart it as a "search tree" reference.
2. US 5,938,720's date posture. Issued 1999-08-17 — it cannot be §102(b) art against a 1998-03-25 filing, and any assertion of §102 must be pinned to its 1997-01-15 filing date under §102(e).
3. Sibling patents are not art. 6,192,314 / 6,298,303 / 6,487,497 / 7,054,742 share the inventive entity and the specification, and are commonly owned — outside §102/§103 against '611 (pre-AIA §103(c)). The earlier sections' observation that "Khavakh" appears as prior art in Hyundai v. Mel NavIP, IPR2024-00173 is about the family being used against a different patent, not against a sibling.
4. The abstract is not the claim. The '611 record's abstract describes two search trees + a priority queue — the parent's subject matter. Charts built off the abstract will be wrong.
5. Do not stack 5,291,412 with 5,291,413 with 5,291,414 (and likewise 5,262,775 with 5,303,159) and call it anticipation. Same-family/parallel disclosures are one teaching; combining them is a §103 argument.

What I could not retrieve — explicit gaps

1. The verbatim "References Cited" block printed on the face of US 6,678,611 (I used the uspto.report "Patent Art (43)" block plus the family citation list). Row-level equivalence between those two sets is unverified.
2. Issue/publication dates for most of the 43 references. I have verified only a handful (e.g., 5,371,678 → 1994-12-06; 5,513,110 → 1996-04-30; 5,638,280 → 1997-06-10; 5,938,720 → 1999-08-17). Each reference's §102(b) vs §102(a)/(e) class must be fixed from its own issue date before any ground is written.
3. Any foreign patent citations on the '611 face (the retrieved blocks contained none, and NPL = 0).
4. Claims 2–7 and 10–16 of US 6,678,611.
5. A native USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter query for this number — I did not reach that interface.

Recommended verification string: USPTO Patent Public Search → "6678611" (exact, number field) → Documents → References Cited, then confirm each reference's issue date on its own record; and pull US 5,262,775, US 5,303,159, US 5,559,511 and US 5,938,720 full texts to test whether the retained destination-rooted search structure grown to the vehicle position (E2 + E4) is anywhere disclosed — that is the only thing standing between this citation set and a genuine §102 case against claim 1.

I'll try to retrieve the front-page "References Cited" (prior art) list and granted claims for US 6,678,611, since the task depends on the Prior Art section.

Key new data located: the granted claim 1 of the '611 patent (a rerouting method — which contradicts my earlier reconstruction), the family chain, and a PTAB record where "Khavakh" (the '611 disclosure) is asserted as prior art. Let me pull the front-page reference list and the remaining claims.

Obviousness Analysis of US 6,678,611 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Threshold corrections to the earlier sections (must read first)

Before the analysis, three corrections to the previously generated sections — two of them are substantive and one is a provenance disclosure.

(a) The independent claims are NOT what my earlier "Plain-language overview" section reconstructed. That section guessed that the independent claims were directed to a route-calculation tool/system with two search trees, a priority queue per tree, and termination on tree intersection. That is wrong for the granted '611 patent. The printed front page states the patent has 16 claims, U.S. Cl. 701–210, and the granted claim 1 is a method of performing a rerouting function:

"1. A method of performing a rerouting function using a navigation system having a route calculation program that uses a map database that includes road segment records… comprising the steps of: after calculating a solution route from a first location… storing an inbound search tree formed of a plurality of gates, wherein each gate represents a physical location on said road network and an accessible direction relative to said physical location, and wherein said plurality of gates in said inbound search tree represent segments of roads of said road network from which said second location is accessible, upon said navigation system having departed from the solution route, providing data representing a physical location of said navigation system; and growing said inbound search tree until at least one successor gate of the plurality of gates in said inbound search tree corresponds to said data representing the physical location of said navigation system."
— front page of US 6,678,611 B2 (source)

The two-search-tree/priority-queue subject matter is what the parent application (Ser. No. 09/920,493, granted as US 6,487,497) claimed — its published claim 1 is the "first search tree… second search tree… priority queue…" claim. So the earlier section described the family's disclosure, not the '611 claim set.

(b) The family/priority direction was mis-stated earlier. Corrected per the printed front page:

Effective filing/priority date for §102/§103 purposes: 1998‑03‑25. Pre‑AIA §103 governs (application filed before 2013‑03‑16).

(c) Provenance of the "Prior Art section." The Google Patents capture I was given contains only the prior‑art keywords ("route, search tree, gate, waypoint, gates") and no Patent Citations block. To supply §103 references I retrieved them from the family's front pages and from related records; I flag each source below. I could not retrieve the verbatim text of claims 2–16, so my claim-by-claim treatment below anchors on granted claim 1 and treats the dependents as likely (labeled inference).

1. The governing legal framework

Obviousness under §103 is assessed under Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of claims; prior art; differences; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007). Notably for this patent:

• KSR rationale (A) – known technique: combining prior-art elements according to known methods yields predictable results.
• KSR rationale (B) – simple substitution: substituting one known element for another.
• KSR rationale (D) – obvious to try from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.
• KSR rationale (F) – design incentive / market pressure and the "predictable variation" doctrine.

Enabling-§103 caveat: the '611 patent's own siblings (US 6,192,314; 6,298,303; 6,487,497; 7,054,742) are not §102/§103 prior art to '611 — same inventors (Khavakh, McDonough, Voloshin, Wang), same specification, and in any event commonly owned by Navigation Technologies (pre‑AIA §103(c) exception for §102(e)/(f)/(g) art). Any invalidity case must therefore rest on third-party art plus the knowledge of a POSITA.

POSITA definition I apply: a person with a bachelor's degree in computer science/electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years of experience in vehicle navigation systems, geographic databases, and graph-search algorithms — including familiarity with Dijkstra's algorithm, A*, best-first search with priority queues, and bidirectional search.

2. The prior-art landscape (what the "Prior Art" evidence actually shows)

2.1 Examiner-cited U.S. patents (the Japanese vehicle-navigation cluster)

A Khavakh-family front page I retrieved lists a long pre-1998 U.S. reference block (the same disclosure was carried through the division chain, so the '611 front page should closely mirror it). Representative entries:

4,570,227 Tachi (1986); 4,763,270 Itoh (1988); 4,782,447 Ueno (1988); 4,794,528 Hirose (1988); 4,796,189 Nakayama (1989); 4,812,990 Adams (1989); 4,926,336 and 4,937,753 Yamada; 5,031,104 Ikeda; 5,041,983 Nakahara; 5,103,400 Yamada; 5,168,452 Yamada; 5,184,303 Link; 5,187,667 Short; 5,204,817 Yoshida; 5,262,775 Tamai; 5,272,638 Martin; 5,291,412 / 5,291,413 / 5,291,414 / 5,303,159 / 5,311,434 / 5,608,635 Tamai et al.; 5,369,588 Hayami; 5,371,678 Nomura; 5,410,485 Ichikawa; 5,428,545 Maegawa; 5,442,349 Inoue; 5,459,667 Odagaki; 5,467,276 Tsuyuki; 5,475,387 Matsumoto; 5,502,640 Yagyu; 5,506,774 Nobe; 5,506,779 Kanki; 5,508,930 Smith, Jr.; 5,513,110 Fujita; 5,519,619 Seda; 5,521,826 Matsumoto; 5,550,538 Fujii; 5,557,522 Nakayama; 5,559,511 Ito.
(front page reproduction)

⚠️ Caveat: I did not verify each entry's title. The Tamai cluster is the well-known Japanese route-search/detour/route-deviation family, and 4,782,447 Ueno appears elsewhere as a navigation system with automatic start/end-point search and automatic route selection (it is cross-cited against the Khavakh family on Google Patents). Anyone building a formal §103 ground must confirm titles and relevant passages; I flag that as outstanding work rather than assert it.

2.2 Non-patent literature on graph search (the strongest §103 ammunition)

Retrieved from the reference list of US 7,277,794 (a Navteq-family patent; I did not verify that document's title), the following NPL is directly on point and predates the 1998 priority date:

• Ikeda, T., "A Fast Algorithm for Finding Better Routes by AI Search Techniques," Vehicle Navigation & Information Systems Conf. Proc. (1994) — A* applied to real road-network route finding.
• Kaindl, H., "Memory-Bounded Bidirectional Search," Proc. 12th Nat'l Conf. on AI (AAAI 1994), pp. 1359–1364 — bidirectional search under memory constraints.
• Zhao, Y., "An Adaptive Route-Guidance Algorithm for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems," American Control Conf. (1991) — adaptive/dynamic route guidance.
• Romgren, R., et al., "Parallel and Sequential Priority Queue Algorithms," ACM Trans. Modeling & Computer Simulation (1997).
• Myers, B., "Data Structures for Best-First Search" (1997); Stout, B., "Smart Moves: Intelligent Pathfinding" (1997); Zhan, F., "Three Fastest Shortest Path Algorithms on Real Road Networks" (1997); Wai, L.H., et al., "Comparative Study of Shortest Path Algorithms for Transport Network" (1999); LaPorte, G., "The Vehicle Routing Problem" (1992).
  (source)

Plus the foundational literature that any POSITA knows: Dijkstra (1959), Hart, Nilsson & Raphael, "A Formal Basis for the Heuristic Determination of Minimum Cost Paths" (1968), and bidirectional shortest-path search (Dantzig & Fulkerson 1956; Nicholson 1966; Pohl 1971).

2.3 The patent's own admissions about the state of the art

The '611 specification repeatedly characterizes its building blocks as known: rank ("roadways are classified by rank… rank 0 may be alleyways… rank 2 may be highways"); layered map databases; map matching that "correlates the geographic coordinates derived from the positioning system… with the road segment data records"; and it admits the pre-existing rerouting practice — "In prior programs, searches for rerouting were performed from the vehicle position to the destination. However, since the vehicle's position is continually changing… rerouting searches required the route calculation application to predict an origin of the search ahead of the vehicle." These admissions are usable as §103 evidence of the ordinary artisan's knowledge and of the recognized problem.

3. Element-by-element analysis of granted claim 1

Net: claim 1 recites a result (search backward from the stored destination-rooted tree until it reaches the vehicle) accomplished by combining (i) a known backward/bidirectional shortest-path search, (ii) known map-matching, and (iii) known in-memory reuse of a search structure. This is a textbook KSR combination.

4. Specific combinations and motivations to combine

Combination 1 (primary): Ikeda 1994 (A*) + Kaindl 1994 (bidirectional/memory-bounded search) + Nomura/Tamai-cluster off-route & detour art

• What each teaches. Ikeda teaches priority-ordered best-first route search (A*) over real road networks. Kaindl teaches searching simultaneously/backward from the goal and keeping the search within a bounded memory — precisely the "store and reuse the destination-rooted tree" behavior of claim 1. The Japanese cluster teaches route-deviation detection and recalculation of a route back to a prescribed route/destination.
• Motivation to combine. The references address the same problem (fast route finding on constrained embedded hardware). Both the '611 specification and the references articulate the same design pressure: a forward search from a moving origin requires predicting the origin; running the search from the fixed destination removes that prediction problem and reuses work. KSR rationales (A), (D), (F).
• Reasonable expectation of success. Bidirectional/reverse Dijkstra is provably equivalent in optimality to forward search; only constant-factor and pruning differences arise. No unpredictability.

Combination 2: Myers 1997 / Romgren 1997 (best-first search data structures & priority queues) + Ikeda 1994 + off-route detection art

• Motivation. Best-first search implementations are defined by maintaining the frontier (the "open list") and expanding the best node. Persisting the frontier between route computations is a trivial implementation choice once you have a priority-queue-based best-first search; there is nothing more than a data-structure-lifetime decision. KSR rationale (A) (known technique improving a similar device in the same way).
• Why the claims do not save it. Claim 1 does not positively recite any of the algorithm-specific structures (priority queue, focus, A* heuristic, tree-to-tree comparison). A claim this broad is vulnerable to the "familiar elements arranged per known methods" line of reasoning.

Combination 3: Zhao 1991 (adaptive route guidance for IVHS) + Zhan 1997 (fastest algorithms on real road networks) + Nomura 5,371,678 (route recalculation)

• Motivation. "Adaptive" route guidance exists exactly to recompute guidance as conditions/positions change. Once adaptive recomputation is the goal, recomputing from the destination rather than from the drifting vehicle is a recognized efficiency variation (KSR rationale (B), simple substitution of one known search direction for another, with predictable results).

Combination 4 (secondary, dependent-claim-oriented)

For likely dependent claims (inference — see caveat below), the following map naturally:

• Priority-queue / A or Dijkstra selection, configurable algorithm, focus point* → Ikeda 1994; Myers 1997; Hart/Nilsson/Raphael 1968; Romgren 1997.
• Rank suppression by distance/zone, road-density-scaled radii → functional road classification and hierarchical routing were standard (the '611 spec concedes rank and layering); Zhan 1997 and LaPorte 1992 survey hierarchical/functional-class route computation.
• Nexus / constraining a new route to a previous route → conventional "route following"/route-caching.
• Multiple waypoints, delays, portals with direction and "enforce side" flags → the examiner-cited waypoint/route-guidance patents plus ordinary waypoint handling.
• Real-time traffic weighting of gates → pre-1998 traffic-weighted routing is documented (see the Khavakh-family real-time-traffic abstract captured in the petition exhibit).

⚠️ Inference label: because I could not retrieve claims 2–16 verbatim, the mapping in Combination 4 is grounded in the specification's disclosure (¶¶ 0149–0225), not in claim text. Treat it as a hypothesis to be confirmed against the granted claims.

5. Independent corroboration that the '611 disclosure is treated as ordinary prior art

A useful real-world datapoint: in Hyundai Motor Co. v. Mel NavIP LLC, IPR2024‑00173 (and its sibling IPR2024‑00155/156 line, U.S. Patent 8,649,971), the petitioner's primary reference "Khavakh" (EX1005) is relied on for the propositions that a navigation system outputs an off-route message on deviation (citing Khavakh at cols. 8, 10, and 29–30, and claim 9), that rerouting "can be implemented automatically without waiting for the end-user," and that the system has software for inputting and modifying waypoints. The column cites (29:35–30:22) and the presence of a claim 9 directed to that subject matter are consistent with "Khavakh" = the '611 patent (whose rerouting discussion falls near that point in its 30-plus-column specification and whose claim set contains 16 claims).

• Petitioner's Khavakh/waypoint motivation
• Hyundai v. Mel NavIP, IPR2024‑00173 POPR

Why this matters for §103: it demonstrates that a POSITA reading the '611 disclosure regards its rerouting/off-route features as conventional navigation functionality — the same conclusion that undercuts the non-obviousness of '611's own claim 1. ⚠️ The EX1005 = '611 identification is my inference from column cites and claim numbering; confirm against the exhibit PDF before relying on it.

6. Anticipated patent-owner rebuttals and how they fare

7. Bottom line and residual uncertainty

Assessment: On the record I can access, granted claim 1 of US 6,678,611 would very likely be held invalid under §103 over a combination of (i) a known backward/bidirectional shortest-path search with cached frontier structures (Kaindl 1994; Dantzig–Fulkerson; Nicholson; Pohl; as implemented per Ikeda 1994 and Myers/Romgren 1997) and (ii) conventional map-matching-based off-route detection and reroute computation (as taught in the examiner-cited Ueno/Nomura/Tamai navigation cluster and conceded in the '611 specification itself). Motive is supplied by the patent's own stated problem — forward rerouting from a moving vehicle requires predicting the origin — and the combination yields no unpredictable result. Claim 1 is also unusually broad: it recites none of the priority-queue/A*/focus/two-tree structures that distinguish the parent patent's claims, which strengthens the "familiar elements, known methods" attack.

Confidence-limiting caveats (please do not over-read the conclusion):

1. I have not read claims 2–16. Their scope could add limitations (focus = vehicle position; specific A*/Dijkstra invocation; ranking/zone suppression parameters; portal direction and enforce-side flags; nexus constraints) that make some dependents materially harder to invalidate. Everything in Combination 4 above is inference from the specification.
2. The prior-art citation list I used came from a Khavakh-family front page reproduced in a PTAB exhibit, not from the '611 front page directly, and I verified no reference's title or passages.
3. The NPL list (Ikeda, Kaindl, Zhan, Zhao, Myers, Romgren, etc.) was retrieved from the reference list of US 7,277,794, whose title and provenance I did not confirm. Before filing anything, confirm each item's publication date and pagination (all appear pre‑1998, hence §102(b) art).
4. The §103 analysis assumes the pre‑AIA statute and a 1998‑03‑25 effective date; the family's containment (same inventors/common ownership) removes the siblings as art, which is a non-trivial constraint on any real ground.
5. I could not retrieve the '611 record's own "Patent Citations" block, so there may be additional examiner-cited references (domestic or foreign) that would strengthen or complicate the grounds above.

Next verification steps I would run with more budget: pull the granted claims 2–16 and the '611 front-page citation list from the USPTO Patent Public Search "Claims" and "References Cited" tabs; pull the full text of Tamai 5,608,635/5,291,412, Ueno 4,782,447 and Nomura 5,371,678 to fix precise passages for the off-route/recalculation elements; and confirm the Ikeda/Kaindl/Zhao bibliographic data.