Invalidity dossier
US 6731307
User interface/entertainment device that simulates personal interaction and responds to user's mental state and/or personality
Current assignee: Koninklijke Philips NV
Added 9/17/2026, 2:15:31 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6731307 B1
Title: "User interface/entertainment device that simulates personal interaction and responds to user's mental state and/or personality."
Patent number / application: US 6731307 B1; Application US09/699,577.
Inventors: Hugo J. Strubbe, Larry J. Eshelman, Srinivas Gutta, John Milanski.
Assignee: Original assignee Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; a 2004-03-15 reassignment to Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. from Philips Electronics North America Corp. is recorded. Current assignee listed as Koninklijke Philips NV.
Key dates: Priority/filing 2000-10-30; granted and published 2004-05-04. Legal status listed as "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2022-01-08.
Purpose (per the supplied text): The invention relates to devices that simulate personal interaction with a user through output modalities "such as light pulsations, synthetic speech, computer generated animations, sound, etc. to create the impression of a human presence with attending mood, ability to converse, personality, etc." It is positioned within noncommand interfaces and agents, and is distinguished from conversation simulators such as ELIZA and Splotch, which rely on template matching and "canned" responses. The stated aim includes responding to the user's mental state and/or personality.
Plain-language scope: The excerpt describes a conversational-agent architecture split into a user-interface shell (essentially constant regardless of database) and a database supplying personality/knowledge. Input matching uses templates that may be single words, phrases, or alternatives, with a synonym dictionary for canonicalization, inclusion/exclusion markers, variables bindable to responses, and implementer-assigned ratings to select the highest-ranked matching template. The excerpt does not reach the claims, so no claim scope is set out here.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6731307/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not supply the actual claims, the detailed description's full disclosure, drawings, or the precise mechanisms by which mental state or personality are detected and used. It also does not establish prosecution history, claim construction, or the content and dates of any prior art beyond the discussion of ELIZA and Splotch quoted above. Dates and assignee status are as listed on the source page and are not independently verified here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:03:08 PM
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Litigation summary
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PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.