US 6868283

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me search for the litigation history and any 2026 appellate activity specifically referencing this patent.

Search scope and confidence notes

What I searched: Google Patents (which mirrors USPTO bibliographic/assignment data), the ITC/EDIS-derived Federal Register notices for Inv. No. 337-TA-808, Delaware docket references (1:11-cv-00715), and general web sources for Federal Circuit activity. I do not have direct live access to USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the CAFC docket system, so the below is grounded in those public mirrors rather than a native USPTO/CAFC query.

Important negative finding: I found no authoritative evidence of any 2026 CAFC appeal or Federal Circuit docket involving 6868283. My keyword searches for CAFC 2026 activity returned unrelated appeals (e.g., an ironSource v. Digital Turbine PGR appeal involving U.S. Pat. 11,157,256). This is consistent with the record: the ITC investigation in which this patent was asserted (337-TA-808) settled on 2013-01-14 and was not appealed to the Federal Circuit, and the patent's term expired in 2022. I therefore cannot confirm any 2026 appellate activity, and I would treat any claim of one as unverified.

Date discrepancy: the task states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the fetched record is timestamped 2026-10-01. I've used the bibliographic values as-is.

Bibliographic summary — US 6,868,283 B1

Ownership chain (from recorded assignments): Palm, Inc. (2001) → Palm Source, Inc. (2003) → PalmSource, Inc. (2004) → ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (change of name, 2006/2010) → ACCESS Co., Ltd. and Google Inc. (2010) → HTC Corporation (2011-09-01) → Google Inc. (recorded 2013-12-19, effective 2012-11-08) → Google LLC (name change, 2017). Note that this patent was one of nine Google patents transferred to HTC in 2011 and later returned to Google; a 2011–2012 Taiwanese government litigation study labeled the then-current owner as HTC Corporation, which is consistent with that interim period but is not the current owner.

Abstract (as issued)

The abstract describes a method for utilizing a graphic user interface (GUI) in a portable electronic device — specifically, using a portion of the GUI display (the status bar) to provide information to the user without disrupting an application in progress. The user interface provides tools to answer or reject an incoming call without interrupting applications already running. On a device combining computer and wireless telephone functions, the user can view caller ID in an information window while using another application, and decide to answer/reject without interrupting the current application. The device may be a cellular phone, PDA, pager, etc.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — device claim (apparatus)
A portable electronic device with two cooperating parts: (a) a graphic display screen and (b) a wireless telephone circuit coupled to that screen. The screen must be able to concurrently show (1) a first region containing a running application and (2) a second region containing a status bar. On an incoming call, the status bar changes to display GUI tools that let the user select a response to the call, and this happens independently of the application. Key concepts: concurrent display of application + status bar, event-driven status-bar change, user-selectable call response, and independence of status bar and application.

Claim 11 — method claim (general "event" framing)
A method of implementing a GUI on a portable electronic device, with steps:

• (a) render a GUI having a first region for an application and a second region for a status bar, shown concurrently;
• (b) receive input with information about an event that is unrelated to the running application;
• (c) display an indication of that information in the status bar, and — in response to the event — display a graphical interface tool in the status bar giving the user a selection regarding the event, with the status bar operating independently of the application;
• (d) take action on the event based on the user's selection, where the selection is a command about disposition of the event.
  All steps a)–d) occur while the application is running and without interfering with it. (Notably, independent claim 11 is not limited to telephone calls — "event" is generic; the call-specific limitations live in dependent claims 13–16.)

Claim 20 — method claim (telephone-specific)
Same structure as claim 11, but narrowed to a portable telephone device and to an incoming telephone call as the event: render app region + status bar concurrently; receive information about an incoming call; show that information in the status bar and, in response to the call, show a graphical tool in the status bar for user selection regarding the call (status bar independent of the application); and take action on the call per the user's disposition command — all without interfering with the running application.

Dependent claim themes (for context): claim 7 covers a status bar displayed only when a call is received; claims 8–9 reserve the status bar for telephone/device status; claim 14/21 cover caller ID; claims 15–16/22–23 cover answer and reject commands; claims 17/24 cover selection via a graphic selection tool; claims 19/26 cover a touch-screen implementation.

Litigation grounding

• ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-808 (HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc.), instituted 2011-09-26/27 on HTC's amended complaint. The notice of investigation lists asserted claims of the '283 patent as claims 11, 12, and 19 — i.e., method claim 11 plus dependents 12 and 19. (Federal Register 76 FR 60870; notice published 2011-09-30.)
• A Taiwanese IPO litigation study records that on 2012-06-08 the ALJ granted Apple's motion to terminate the investigation as to the '283 patent, so it did not reach trial. The overall investigation ended in settlement (2013-01-14), with no appeal to the Federal Circuit.
• Parallel Delaware action: HTC v. Apple, 1:11-cv-00715 (D. Del.), listed in the Google Patents record as family litigation.
• Reported procedural wrinkle: the ITC judge rejected HTC's assertion of several Google-origin patents (including this family) for lack of standing based on the scope of rights conveyed by Google; HTC said it would appeal that ruling to the Commission. See BBC coverage: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18410563
• The primary U.S. classification is 455/566, with additional classes 455/550.1 and 455/556.2; representative CPC includes G06F3/0481, H04M1/57, H04M1/575, H04M1/663, H04M1/72403, H04M1/72427, H04M2250/22.

Explicit uncertainties

1. No 2026 CAFC docket confirmed. The record shows no Federal Circuit appeal in this family; the ITC case settled before appeal and the patent expired in 2022. I cannot substantiate any 2026 appellate activity.
2. Assignee field may be stale. Google Patents lists "Google LLC" as current assignee, but Google Patents itself cautions that assignee listings are no maintained representations; the last recorded assignment (2013 HTC→Google, plus the 2017 Google Inc.→Google LLC name change) supports Google LLC as the most recently recorded owner.
3. Conflicting legal-status signals. A 2011–2012 Taiwanese study lists the patent's legal status as "有效" (in force) and owner as HTC — accurate for that date, but superseded. Google Patents' "Expired – Lifetime, expires 2022-06-08" is the more current indicator.
4. Minor source conflict on the presiding ALJ for 337-TA-808: one source names Thomas B. Pender, a law-firm summary names Judge Gildea. I have not resolved this.
5. I did not independently verify the issued claims against the USPTO's official full-text image; the claim text above is drawn from the Google Patents full-text record, which is consistent across the sources I checked.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6868283. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases identified.

Let me verify outcomes and check for any additional proceedings.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283

Patent identification (literal): U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283 B1, "Technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface." Application No. 09/764,653; filed 2001-01-16; granted 2005-03-15; inventors Michel Bonansea and Vincent Leclaire; original assignee Palm, Inc. (later PalmSource / ACCESS / Google / HTC / Google LLC). A continuation-family member, U.S. Patent No. 7,289,772 B1, shares the same specification and was asserted alongside it.

I found two (2) litigation proceedings in which the '283 patent was actually asserted, both arising from the Apple–HTC smartphone patent war. Both were resolved by the same global settlement.

1. ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-808

In the Matter of Certain Electronic Devices with Communication Capabilities, Components Thereof, and Related Software

Asserted claims of the '283 patent: claims 11, 12, and 19 (per the Notice of Investigation).

Key facts specific to the '283 patent: The '283 patent was one of the "Google Patents" — HTC acquired it from Google in August 2011 (Google executed a Patent Purchase Agreement on Aug. 29, 2011) and added it to the already-pending ITC complaint. Apple moved to partially terminate the investigation as to the Google Patents, arguing HTC lacked standing because it did not hold "all substantial rights" (Google retained substantial rights, making HTC at most a nonexclusive licensee). The staff agreed. The ALJ issued Order No. 15 granting partial termination as to the Google Patents based on HTC's alleged lack of standing — which, per BBC coverage, included the '283 patent and was a notable precedent on "rent-a-patent" standing.

⚠️ Note on the ALJ: One source (Finnegan's experience page) lists "Judge Gildea" for 337-TA-808, while the detailed case-history source lists ALJ Thomas B. Pender. This is likely an ALJ reassignment over the life of the investigation; I could not fully reconcile it from the retrieved records.

2. HTC Corp. v. Apple Inc., No. 1:11-cv-00715 (D. Del.)

• This was the companion district-court action to the ITC case (the Google Patents, including the '283 patent, were added to both the ITC amended complaint and this Delaware action).
• The complaint sought injunctive relief (blocking importation/sale of Apple devices), compensatory damages, and treble damages for willful infringement.
• Related proceedings (do not directly involve the '283 patent): Apple's FRAND/antitrust counterclaims concerning the ADC-acquired patents (the '944 and '219 patents) were filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, No. 1:12-cv-00686, and transferred to the District of Delaware as No. 1:12-cv-01055. These concern the ADC portfolio, not the '283 patent.

Summary

• Patents asserted: U.S. 6,868,283 was asserted by HTC Corp. against Apple Inc. in exactly two fora — the ITC (337-TA-808) and the District of Delaware (1:11-cv-00715) — both in 2011.
• Role of the '283 patent: It was one of five Google-acquired patents that HTC added to its HTC v. Apple actions; the '283 patent was specifically asserted (claims 11, 12, 19 in the ITC).
• Standing dispute: The '283 patent was at the center of a notable standing/partial-termination ruling (ALJ Order No. 15) holding HTC lacked all substantial rights in the Google Patents.
• Final outcome: Both proceedings terminated via the November 2012 global Apple–HTC settlement and 10-year cross-license; no FRAND/antitrust exposure attached to the '283 patent itself.

Caveats / Limitations

• I did not find any other litigation (e.g., a later NPE assertion campaign, IPR/PGR, or CAFC appeal) specifically asserting U.S. 6,868,283. The patent appears in the litigation data of the ITC and Delaware cases only.
• The patent's Google Patents page lists the ITC case (337-TA-808) and Delaware case (1:11-cv-00715) — matching my findings. Its listed litigation links also reference a Darts-IP "first worldwide family litigation" record for family ID 34274900.
• I could not independently verify from primary PACER/EDIS dockets the precise docket-termination entries or the final ITC Commission order text; the outcome characterizations above are drawn from the ITC Notice of Investigation (76 FR 60870), the ALJ Order No. 15 public version, BBC/Foss Patents coverage, and third-party litigation databases (Unified Patents portal, TIPO case studies). If you need certified docket-level confirmation, pull the EDIS record for 337-TA-808 and the PACER docket for D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources, then check for any litigation-family PTAB activity the ODP may not have indexed.

No PTAB hits on the patent number itself so far. Let me probe the known litigation family and try a few alternate search formulations.

Let me do a final targeted check on whether Apple (the adversary in the HTC litigation) sought AIA review of this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal record for US 6,868,283 returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

I ran independent web searches (patent number, patent number + "PTAB"/"IPR"/"PGR"/"reexamination", the sibling US 7,289,772, and the known litigation parties HTC and Apple) and found no PTAB proceeding of any type naming this patent. That is a weaker form of evidence than the ODP record, but it is consistent with it. Caution note: keyword searches on a bare "686" string pull heavy false positives from unrelated patents in the same file (e.g., U.S. 9,826,686 — an electric lawnmower; U.S. 8,198,686; U.S. 8,886,954; U.S. 10,143,728). None of those are this patent; none should be cited as '283 activity.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is not PTAB-hardened — it is PTAB-untested, and it is also expired (adjusted expiration 2022-06-08; status "Expired - Lifetime") with all 26 original claims intact. For a defendant, that combination means: (a) no claim has ever been canceled, so there is no free invalidity win to hand; but (b) no estoppel attaches either, so the entire prior-art universe is still available to you; and (c) the only live exposure is pre-expiration past damages under the § 286 lookback, which makes any demand letter covering post-2022 conduct legally hollow.

Proceedings detail

None to report. Because no proceeding exists, the per-proceeding template (type, filed date, panel, grounds, institution decision, FWD, settlement, appeal, defensive value) cannot be populated for any number without fabricating it. I am not doing that.

What I can give you instead is the litigation context, which explains the zero and matters for the defensive posture:

ITC Investigation 337-TA-808 — HTC Corporation v. Apple Inc.

• Filed 2011-08-16 per the TIPO case table (Unified Patents lists the filing date as 2011-09-29); terminated 2013-01-10/14; outcome settled; no appeal to the Federal Circuit.
• ALJ: Thomas B. Pender.
• U.S. 6,868,283 was one of eight asserted patents, alongside U.S. 7,756,414; 7,672,219; 7,417,944; 6,473,006; 6,708,214; 7,289,772; 7,020,849.
• Source: TIPO case study, https://tiponet.tipo.gov.tw/downloads/module030/communication_3_5.pdf and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-808

D. Del. 1:11-cv-00715 — HTC Corporation v. Apple Inc. (parallel district court action, filed 2011). https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A11-cv-00715

Why the IPR docket is empty. IPR/PGR/CBM petitions only became available on 2012-09-16. The HTC–Apple dispute was filed in 2011 and globally settled in November 2012 (a 10-year cross-license), with the ITC investigation terminated in January 2013. Apple's realistic AIA-trial window on this patent was therefore a few weeks to a few months, and it was closed by settlement. That is a timing artifact, not evidence that the claims are strong. Do not read "no IPR" here as "hardened patent."

I could not verify from the available sources what claim-level disposition, if any, U.S. 6,868,283 received in the ITC investigation — the TIPO extract I retrieved truncates the "claims entering trial" columns before the '283 row. I am not asserting an outcome I did not see.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 26 claims UNTESTED. Independent claims 1 (device), 11 (GUI method for a portable electronic device), and 20 (GUI method for a portable telephone device), together with dependents 2–10, 12–19, and 21–26, are all in their as-issued form. No PTAB panel has ever construed a limitation of this patent, no claim has been canceled, and no certificate of correction or reexamination narrowing appears in the ODP/INPADOC legal-status trail (which shows only assignments and maintenance-fee payments — year 4 on 2008-09-15, year 8 on 2012-08-27, year 12 on 2016-09-15; no reexam or disclaimer events). Note also the two applications in the family, U.S. 09/764,653 (this patent) and U.S. 10/984,114 (issued as U.S. 7,289,772), are both clean of PTAB activity.

Estoppel landscape: nothing attaches. Because § 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only by an IPR that "results in a final written decision," and no IPR exists here, no petitioner or privy is barred from raising any prior-art ground. For a defendant being asserted against today, the full field is open — in particular the seven references cited on the face of the patent (U.S. 6,044,248 to Nec; U.S. 6,535,749 to Mitsubishi; U.S. 6,314,302 to Siemens; U.S. 6,608,637 to Nortel; U.S. 6,285,364 to Cisco; U.S. 6,282,435 to Sun Microsystems; U.S. 6,574,471 to Ericsson) may be attacked on grounds the examiner did not reach, and the 75 third-party citations Google Patents has accumulated (including the Anoto/BlackBerry/Skype/Samsung family) are a rich source of § 102/§ 103 art that the examiner never saw. The relevant § 315(b) one-year bar is inapplicable in the absence of any petition.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed even one IPR on this patent, so there is no serial-petition or General Plastic issue. The patent owner (now Google LLC, following the chain Palm, Inc. → Palm Source, Inc. → PalmSource, Inc. → ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. → ACCESS Co., Ltd. → Google Inc. → HTC Corporation → Google Inc. → Google LLC) has never had a PTAB appeal, because it has never had a PTAB trial. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain — the only Unified presence is its litigation database entry for 337-TA-808, which is a data record, not a party.

The expiration point dominates. Per the ODP record, expiration was adjusted to 2022-06-08 and the legal status is "Expired - Lifetime." A patent that expired in mid-2022 cannot be infringed after that date. Any assertion today is confined to past damages, and § 286 caps recovery at six years before the complaint — which, measured from 2026, would theoretically reach back to 2020 but is cut off by the 2022-06-08 expiration, leaving at most roughly a two-year damages window. That materially reduces the settlement leverage behind any demand letter. Separately, CBM review would never have fit (the patent claims a GUI/telephony feature, not a "financial product or service"), and the CBM program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16 anyway.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the demand letter or complaint asserts any claim of U.S. 6,868,283: lead with expiration. Cross-check the term calculation against USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/) — a 2001-01-16 filing would expire 2021-01-16 absent adjustment, and Google Patents reports the adjusted date as 2022-06-08. Confirm whether any PTA changed and whether all three maintenance fees were in fact paid (the ODP/INPADOC trail shows payments in 2008, 2012, and 2016, which would carry the patent to the end of term). If the patent is expired as reported, your exposure is past damages only, and pre-suit notice/§ 287 marking arguments become strong.
• There is no FWD to link and no disposition to quote. I will not manufacture one. If you want a definitive negative, pull the proceeding list yourself from PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/) and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's public API (https://developer.uspto.gov/api-catalog/ptab-api) and have litigation counsel confirm the absence for the record. Treat the ODP "no proceedings" result as the canonical answer and my search as corroboration only.
• If you intend to seek AIA review: note that IPR of an expired patent is not categorically barred where there is a live dispute over past damages (see the Board's practice in Sony Corp. v. Yissum Research Dev. Co., IPR2013-00219 and its progeny), so a petition is not automatically moot. But weigh the cost: with no claim canceled to date and no estoppel benefit available to you anyway, an IPR on an expired patent is usually a poor trade against a § 102/§ 103 and § 101 invalidity case in district court, where you can also reach § 112 and equitable defenses.
• Prior-art workflow: because there is zero estoppel, run your invalidity search against the full field — the seven examiner-cited references, the 75 third-party citations, and the ergonomics/telephony-GUI art of the 1996–2000 window (including the Sony U.S. 5,559,860 family cited in this patent's own family record, which deals with user-selectable response to an incoming call at a mobile station — potentially relevant to claims 15 and 16 on answer/reject commands).
• Monitoring: the absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal, but here it is explained by settlement and the pre-AIA timing rather than by the patent's resilience. If you are in the same product space and see a new assertion campaign on the '283/'772 family, the first defensive move is a § 315(b) calendar check and a re-confirmation that the term has not been extended further.

I'll research this patent's assignment chain and litigation history before writing the report.

Let me try to pull the recorded assignment details, including correspondents, from USPTO sources.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 6,868,283 B1

Patent: US 6,868,283 B1 — "Technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface"
App: 09/764,653 · filed 2001‑01‑16 · issued 2005‑03‑15 · expired 2022‑06‑08
Family member analyzed alongside: US 7,289,772 B1 (app 10/984,114, filed 2004‑11‑08, same title/priority)

Sourcing note (read first). Reel/frame numbers below are transcribed from the recorded-assignment "free format text" exposed in the Google Patents Legal Events tab (source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6868283/en). Google Patents does not expose the correspondent of record, and I was unable to complete a live retrieval of the USPTO Assignment Center abstract of title in this session. Accordingly, every "Correspondent" field is marked not available rather than guessed. Do not treat the absent correspondent data as a negative finding. Verify all reel/frame entries at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 6868283).

Inventors

Both inventors executed a single employment-style assignment to PALM, INC., effective 2001‑01‑12 and recorded 2001‑01‑16 (reel 011479/0333) — i.e., the inventors assigned within 4 days of the application filing date, the standard corporate onboarding pattern.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of imminent inventory departure. I have no data on either inventor's tenure or departure date; the "all inventors leave within 12 months" precursor cannot be assessed from available records and is not asserted. There is no inventor-held (non-assigned) interest anywhere in the chain.

Original assignee

Entity on the issued patent: Palm, Inc., a California corporation (assignee of record, reel 011479/0333) — by issuance the chain had already shifted to PalmSource, Inc. (see timeline).

• Primary line of business: handheld computing / PDA operating systems (the Palm OS platform).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. The specification is written against Palm's own hardware (FIGS. 3 & 5 show the Palm-style PDA with stylus, digitizer, RF receiver/transmitter 514 coupled to PC board 510), and the commercial target was a Palm PDA with integrated wireless-telephony. The claims (status bar region + wireless telephone circuit + concurrent application region) map directly onto Palm/PalmSource's own product line.
• Current status: Palm, Inc. no longer exists in this form. The relevant corporate events reflected in this chain are an internal split/reorganization (Palm → Palm Source, Inc. → PalmSource, Inc., and the recording from palmOne, Inc.) followed by acquisition of PalmSource's OS business by ACCESS Co., Ltd. (Japan, 2005) and eventual assignment of this portfolio to Google Inc. (2010). This was ordinary M&A / corporate reorganization, not a bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

All nine recorded links below. Correspondent is not exposed by any source I could reach.

• 2001‑01‑12 (executed) / recorded 2001‑01‑16 — Reel 011479/0333

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Bonansea, Michel; Leclaire, Vincent (individuals)
  • Assignee: Palm, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not available (Google Patents does not expose it; Assignment Center abstract not retrievable this session).
  • Context: Employment/onboarding assignment — inventors assign their rights to the operating-company employer at filing.

• 2003‑02‑12 (executed) / recorded 2003‑03‑18 — Reel 013848/0084

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Palm, Inc.
  • Assignee: Palm Source, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — the Palm OS/software business is separated into PalmSource.

• 2004‑04‑05 (executed) / recorded 2004‑05‑20 — Reel 014682/0572

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: palmOne, Inc.
  • Assignee: PalmSource, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Internal reorganization / chain clean-up following the Palm→palmOne / PalmSource split.

• 2006‑11‑08 (effective) / recorded 2010‑10‑08 — Reel 025112/0729

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: PalmSource, Inc.
  • Assignee: ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Change of name only — PalmSource, Inc. renamed ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (recorded four years after the fact, batched with the two 2010 transactions).

• 2010‑05‑28 (effective) / recorded 2010‑10‑08 — Reel 025112/0785

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc.
  • Assignee: ACCESS Co., Ltd. (Japan)
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Intra-group asset transfer — U.S. subsidiary's portfolio moved up to the Japanese parent (ACCESS acquired PalmSource in 2005).

• 2010‑06‑11 (effective) / recorded 2010‑10‑08 — Reel 025112/0821

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ACCESS Co., Ltd.
  • Assignee: Google Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Portfolio acquisition (asset purchase) — Google buys the Palm/PalmSource patent family in 2010 to shore up the Android ecosystem. (Reported contemporaneously; e.g., heise.de and eWeek note Google acquired the Palm-origin patents "within the past year.")

• 2011‑08‑29 (executed) / recorded 2011‑09‑01 — Reel 026846/0473

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Google Inc.
  • Assignee: HTC Corporation (Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter (pre-litigation) — one of nine Google patents transferred to Android OEM HTC so HTC could counter-assert against Apple; HTC amended its ITC complaint asserting this patent 9 days later (see Signals #5 and #7).

• 2012‑11‑08 (effective) / recorded 2013‑12‑19 — Reel 031820/0624

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: HTC Corporation
  • Assignee: Google Inc.
  • Correspondent: not available
  • Context: Settlement unwind / return transfer — after the Nov 2012 Apple–HTC global settlement and 10-year cross-license, the patent returns to Google. This is the reverse of the usual troll-chain direction.

• 2017‑09‑29 (effective) / recorded 2017‑10‑06 — Reel 044213/0313

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Google Inc.
  • Assignee: Google LLC (California)
  • Correspondent: not available (note: Google's contemporaneous Google Inc.→Google LLC entity-conversion recordings in other property classes list a Cooley LLP Washington, D.C. correspondent and a Google corporate address at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway; I could not confirm that the same correspondent appears on this specific reel, so it is not asserted here.)
  • Context: Change of name only — Delaware LLC conversion; current owner of record.

No bankruptcy, security-interest, license, or release recordings appear anywhere in this chain. There is exactly one inventor-side assignment and eight corporate-side recordings.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6868283
    2001 : Filed by Palm Inc
         : Inventors assign to Palm Inc
    2003 : Assigned to Palm Source Inc
    2004 : Assigned to PalmSource Inc
    2006 : PalmSource renamed as Access Systems Americas
    2010 : Access Co Ltd takes portfolio
         : Google Inc buys from Access
    2011 : Assigned to HTC Corporation
         : HTC asserts against Apple at ITC
    2012 : HTC and Apple settle globally
         : HTC assigns patent back to Google
    2013 : Return transfer recorded
    2017 : Google Inc renamed Google LLC
    2022 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
Every assignee in the chain is a named operating corporation (Palm, Palm Source, PalmSource, ACCESS Systems Americas, ACCESS Co., Ltd., Google Inc./LLC, HTC Corporation). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity ever appears. The final assignee, Google LLC (reel 044213/0313), is a surname change under 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, not a single-purpose Texas/Delaware licensing vehicle. Reel 025112/0729 is expressly a Change of Name, not a sale to a shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
No assignee matches the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Spangenberg roster, and no Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency plaintiff appears. The only party that asserted this patent is HTC Corporation (reel 026846/0473) — a smartphone OEM and the first Android handset maker, i.e., a product-shipping operating company suing a competitor (Apple), which is the opposite of an NPE-asserter signature.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not verifiable.
The signal is defined by recurrence of a single recording attorney, and recurrence cannot be measured because the correspondent of record is not exposed in the sources available to me and the Assignment Center abstract could not be retrieved in this session. I decline to infer a repeat correspondent from the reel series alone. Action item for verification: pull each of the nine reel/frame entries at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and compare the "Correspondent" blocks — if one attorney/firm recurs across 025112/0729, /0785, and /0821 (the three same-day Access/Google recordings), that would be a genuine recurrence data point, not before.

4. Cascading transfers — partial (weak, and benign in character).
There is one same-day, same-reel-series bundle: three recordings on 2010‑10‑08 under reel series 025112 — change of name to ACCESS Systems Americas (/0729), sale to ACCESS Co., Ltd. (/0785), sale to Google Inc. (/0821). That is a batched corporate reorg + single asset sale, not a chain of anonymous LLCs. Separately there is a Google→HTC→Google round trip inside ~14 months (reel 026846/0473, executed 2011‑08‑29; reel 031820/0624, effective 2012‑11‑08). Neither the assignees nor the (unavailable) correspondents show the shared-address/common-principal signature that would make this a true cascade. Marked partial, not a strong signal.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — present (strong).
Reel 026846/0473 executed 2011‑08‑29, recorded 2011‑09‑01: Google assigned this patent (and eight others) to HTC. HTC then amended its ITC complaint on 2011‑09‑07 to assert US 6,868,283, claims 11, 12, and 19, against Apple (Inv. No. 337‑TA‑808, instituted 2011‑09‑27; parallel D. Del. case 1:11‑cv‑00715). That is a ~9-day gap between the assignment and the assertion — squarely within the 6-month pre-litigation window. Note the sequel: on 2012‑06‑08 ALJ Order No. 15 terminated the investigation as to the '283 patent because HTC lacked standing (did not hold all substantial rights), and the Commission declined review — i.e., the transfer was later found insufficient to confer standing, which is itself strong evidence the transfer was arranged for assertion. Sources: ITC notice 337‑TA‑808; BBC, "Apple blocks HTC's use of Google patents"; Unified Patents case page https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-808 .

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11 assignor appears. The transfers were an acquisition (ACCESS Co., Ltd. bought PalmSource, 2005), a portfolio sale (ACCESS → Google, reel 025112/0821, 2010), and an ecosystem-support transfer (Google → HTC, reel 026846/0473, 2011). None is a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — unclear (non-classic form).
The 026846/0473 transfer has the shape of privateering — an operating company (Google) placing patents with a third party (HTC) that then asserts them against a competitor (Apple) — and commentators explicitly debated it under the "rent-a-patent"/aggregator frame (Florian Mueller via FOSS Patents; BBC coverage). But the strict definition requires transfer to an NPE, and HTC is a product-shipping OEM, so this is not classic NPE privateering. The inverse also applies: the patent came back to Google after settlement (reel 031820/0624), unlike a permanent NPE hand-off. Marked unclear rather than present.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain terminates at Google LLC (reel 044213/0313), an operating company, not RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Functionally the patent is nevertheless neutralized: it was returned to Google post-settlement and expired 2022‑06‑08. But there is no defensive-aggregator recording, so the signal is formally absent.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The final recorded owner is Google LLC (reel 044213/0313, executed 2017‑09‑29) — an operating company — and the only enforcement event in the record was brought by HTC Corporation, an OEM that shipped Android handsets embodying the claims, suing its competitor Apple (ITC 337‑TA‑808 and D. Del. 1:11‑cv‑00715, amended 2011‑09‑07), not a licensing-only entity. The one strong NPE-adjacent signal — the pre-litigation transfer at reel 026846/0473 (executed 2011‑08‑29, ~9 days before assertion) — equipped a product-making OEM for counter-assertion, and the patent was then returned to Google (reel 031820/0624, effective 2012‑11‑08) after the settlement, which is the inverse of a troll chain. No shell entity, no listed NPE, no bankruptcy, and no defensive-aggregator terminus exists in the chain, so the NPE/troll pattern is not supported.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 6868283): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6868283/en
• Unified Patents ITC docket: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-808
• Unified Patents District Court docket: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A11-cv-00715

Open verification items (data gaps, not findings): (i) correspondent of record for all nine reels — unavailable from the sources reached; (ii) inventor departure dates — unavailable; (iii) confirm via the Assignment Center abstract whether the three 2010‑10‑08 recordings (025112/0729, /0785, /0821) share a single recording correspondent.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 6,868,283 against authoritative sources, starting with the seven examiner-cited references.

Now let me research the remaining examiner-cited references.

Now the remaining three examiner-cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis for U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283 B1

Scope note: The instruction was to search for patent number 6868283 specifically and to look at each of its patent citations. I did that. The bibliographic and citation data below is taken from the patents.google.com record for US 6,868,283 B1 (a mirror of USPTO bibliographic/assignment data), which was supplied as the authoritative full text. I do not have native PatentCenter/PAIR access, so I could not pull the examiner's Form PTO-892 directly; the citation list below is what the issued-patent front page and the public record show.

Date discrepancy (flagged, carried over): the task states today is April 26, 2026, but the fetched record is timestamped 2026-10-01. I use the bibliographic values as-is and do not attempt to reconcile.

No contradiction found with the previously generated sections: the seven examiner-cited references I analyze below match the list in the earlier "Bibliographic summary" table exactly.

1. Governing legal framework (why the analysis is structured this way)

The '283 patent was filed 2001-01-16 — well before the AIA's first-inventor-to-file changes (effective 2013-03-16). So pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. Each reference below is a U.S. patent that either (a) issued more than one year before 2001-01-16 (§102(b)), (b) issued before 2001-01-16 (§102(a)), or (c) is a U.S. patent granted on an application filed before the '283 U.S. filing date (§102(e)). Every one of the seven examiner citations qualifies as prior art on at least one of these grounds.

Anticipation caveat up front: § 102 anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element of a claim, arranged as in the claim. My conclusion — stated plainly so it is not buried — is that none of the seven citations appears, on the record available, to fully anticipate independent claim 1, 11, or 20. The examiner allowed the patent over all seven. The references are mainly § 103 (obviousness) material, and two of them (US 6,285,364 and US 6,574,471) are the genuinely close ones on the incoming-call/notification-region concept.

2. Examiner-cited references (the 7 on the face of the patent)

2.1 — US 6,044,248 B1

2.2 — US 6,282,435 B1

2.3 — US 6,285,364 B1 ⭐ (close reference)

2.4 — US 6,314,302 B1

2.5 — US 6,535,749 B1

2.6 — US 6,574,471 B1 ⭐ (close reference)

2.7 — US 6,608,637 B1

3. Additional prior art cited by the family (7 references)

These appear in the record under the family-citations heading. Several are at least as pertinent to the "user-selectable response to an incoming call" concept as the examiner-cited U.S. patents, and one (US 5,559,860) is squarely on point for the "answer vs. reject" selection.

4. Additional references cited in the continuation (US 7,289,772 B1)

The continuation-family member cites a partly different set, which is worth noting because it may contain material not on the '283 face: US 2004/0214553 A1, US 5,559,860 A, US 5,758,280 A, US 6,282,435 B1, US 6,285,364 B1 ("+5" further references). This confirms that the art landscape the applicants/examiner worked with centered on portable-telephone GUIs (Sun), phone/Internet integrated GUIs with slide-up windows (Cisco), and user-selectable incoming-call response (Sony). I did not obtain full text for US 2004/0214553 A1 or US 5,758,280 A, so I flag those as unidentified for § 102 purposes.

5. Synthesis — most relevant prior art, ranked

1. US 6,285,364 B1 (Cisco, Giordano/Hanen) — the single most relevant reference. Discloses a call-triggered display region that appears while the prior screen remains visible, showing caller information plus selectable answer/voicemail/forward controls. Maps to claims 1, 11, 13–16, 20, 21. Distinguishable mainly on "status bar" (reserved, in-place) vs. "slide-up window" (overlaying) and on portable/wireless device structure.
2. US 6,574,471 B1 (Ericsson) — strongest on the portable intelligent device + incoming-call GUI options limitation (claims 1, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 22, 23). Distinguishable on the reserved status-bar / concurrent-application-region limitation and on whether the GUI is an overlapping screen.
3. US 6,608,637 B1 (Nortel) — teaches the persistent non-overwritten tools region and incoming-call accept/deny window with caller identity (claims 1, 11, 14–16).
4. US 5,559,860 A (Sony) — cleanest art on the user-selectable incoming-call response element (claims 15/16, 22/23).
5. US 6,282,435 B1 (Sun) — portable-telephone GUI context (mailbox, Caller ID, ticker tape).
6. US 6,044,248 (NEC) — portable receiver graphical display background.
7. US 6,314,302 (Siemens) and US 6,535,749 (Mitsubishi) — background portable-terminal/interface art; characterized at lower confidence (see below).

35 U.S.C. § 102 conclusion

• No single one of the seven examiner citations fully anticipates independent claim 1, 11, or 20 on the record available. Each lacks at least one of: (i) a reserved status bar that changes in place (as opposed to an overlay/slide-up window or a full options screen); (ii) the requirement that the application continues to be displayed concurrently and uninterrupted; or (iii) the portable wireless device structure combined with (i)–(ii). This is consistent with the examiner having allowed the patent over all seven.
• The closest single references are US 6,285,364 (for claims 1/11/13–16/20/21) and US 6,574,471 (for the portable-device + incoming-call-options claims), with US 6,608,637 and US 5,559,860 rounding out the answer/reject and independent-region concepts.
• The realistic challenge posture for claims 1/11/20 is a § 103 combination — e.g., US 6,285,364 or US 6,574,471 (call-responsive display region with call-disposition controls, concurrent with prior content) in view of a status-bar/reserved-region teaching (US 6,608,637's tools portion, or US 6,282,435's ticker-tape strip) — not a single-reference anticipation.

6. Explicit uncertainties (stated, not papered over)

1. No native USPTO query. I could not access PatentCenter/PAIR. The citation list is drawn from the authoritative Google Patents mirror of the USPTO record as supplied; the examiner's PTO-892 form itself was not directly retrieved.
2. Two references are lower-confidence. Full-text verification did not complete for US 6,314,302 (Siemens) and US 6,535,749 (Mitsubishi) before I exhausted my search budget. Their titles, assignees, and dates come from the authoritative patent record, but their technical descriptions and § 102 mapping are my lower-confidence characterizations. The same applies to the JP family citations (JP H09-84140, JP 2000-083282), SE 521472 C2, and the unidentified continuation citations (US 2004/0214553 A1, US 5,758,280 A).
3. Date-column caution. For US 6,535,749 and US 6,314,302 the record's "prior art date" column likely reflects the foreign priority date (JP 1996-04-26 and DE 1996-12-09 respectively), not necessarily the U.S. filing date. Since this is a pre-AIA case with foreign priority, the effective § 102(e) date could differ from the listed date. I have not verified the U.S. filing dates for these two against the face of the documents.
4. Anticipation is a legal conclusion. My § 102 statements are claim-element mappings, not an adjudication. A formal invalidity opinion would require the full text of each reference and the prosecution history (which I could not obtain here).
5. Parallel litigation context (from the earlier sections, not repeated): the ITC asserted claims 11, 12, 19 of the '283 patent, and the Google Patents record lists litigation for family ID 34274900. That record does not add prior art beyond the citations above; the asserted claims (11/12/19) tell you the commercial dispute centered on the method claim and its touch-screen (19) dependent — consistent with US 6,285,364 and US 5,559,860 being the references of interest.

I'll ground my obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references from this patent's record. Let me pull details on the examiner-cited references and the family-cited references.

Let me pull the remaining examiner-cited and family-cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note. Per my instructions, this analysis uses the prior art listed in the Prior Art section of this page — i.e., the seven examiner-cited references ("Citations (7)") and the "Family Cites Families (7)" set. I retrieved full/new text for US 6,608,637, US 6,574,471, US 6,282,435, US 5,559,860, and US 6,044,248. I was unable to retrieve the full text of US 6,285,364 (Cisco), US 6,314,302 (Siemens), US 6,535,749 (Mitsubishi), US 6,389,277, US 6,782,252, and US 5,758,280 due to a search-step limit — those are characterized below only from their titles/abstracts and known bibliographic data, and are flagged as such.

1. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

• Critical date: 2001-01-16 (filing/priority). All references relied on below were filed or published before that date and therefore qualify as § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art. Excluded from this analysis: the post-2001 "Cited By" documents (e.g., GB 2 437 592 to Skype, 2006; US 2006/0101350 to RIM, 2004) — these are not available as § 102/§ 103 prior art.
• PHOSITA: a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent) and roughly 2–3 years of experience in portable-device UI software and mobile telephony integration. This is the level at which the '283 claims should be assessed.
• Standard: Graham v. John Deere; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a claimed combination is obvious where the elements were each known, the combination was a predictable arrangement of known elements, and a POSITA had a reason to make the combination (including "design incentives," "market forces," and "obvious to try" with a finite number of predictable solutions).

Claim construction pivot points (as I read the issued text):

1. Concurrent display of an application region and a status bar (claims 1, 11(a), 20(a)).
2. The status bar itself changes in response to the incoming call to carry the GUI tools that accept the user's response (claim 1, 11(c), 20(c)).
3. The status bar "operates independently of said application" (claims 1, 11, 20).
4. "All steps a)–d) … while said application is operating and without interfering with it" (claims 11, 20).

Elements 1 and 3 are squarely in the art. Element 2 — putting the call-disposition controls inside the reserved status bar — is the only meaningful non-obviousness hook, and even that is a location/arrangement difference over the art, not a difference in function. That is the crux of my conclusion.

2. Prior-art inventory and element mapping

Also admitted in the '283 specification itself: status bars "reserved from use by an application and devoted to other tasks" (typically device/telephone status) were conventional. That admission is prior-art-equivalent for the "status bar" concept.

3. Claim 1 (apparatus) — obvious over Nortel '637 in view of Ericsson '471 and Sony '860

Why the combination is obvious (motivation).

1. Same field, same problem, same device class. Nortel and Ericsson both address portable telephony devices with graphical displays and limited screen real estate. Nortel's own background identifies the very problem the '283 patent purports to solve: opening an application display "completely overwrites the display, burying any opened application display."
2. Art-recognized design incentive. Ericsson '471 teaches that when a call arrives, you should present the user a set of call-handling options on the display rather than force a modal interruption. Nortel '637 teaches that you should keep a reserved region persistent so ongoing work is not buried. A POSITA seeking to let a user "receive and/or reject calls … without interruption of any applications in operation" (the '283's stated object) would naturally place Ericsson's call-option GUI into Nortel's persistent reserved region — that is a predictable arrangement of known elements, not a new mode of operation.
3. Reasonable expectation of success. Both references are software GUI features on the same platform (a mobile telephone/PDA with a bitmap display). Rendering icons and caller-ID text into a persistent display strip is routine in view of Sun '435's contextual "ticker-tape" strip and NEC '248's mapped graphical display regions. The combination would work as expected.
4. Where the status bar's contents are a mere design choice. Because the '283 specification itself acknowledges that a status bar is "reserved … and devoted to other tasks" of the device's choosing, repurposing it to carry call-status graphics is a change of subject matter within a known region, not a change in the region's structure or behavior.

Conclusion on claim 1: Obvious. The only arguable distinction — the reserved bar changing to carry the accept/reject tools rather than the tools staying static while a window opens — is a location/arrangement variation of known GUI elements yielding predictable results. Under KSR, that is insufficient for patentability absent unexpected results (none is disclosed).

4. Claim 11 (generic "event" method) — obvious over Nortel '637 + Ericsson '471/Sony '860, and independently vulnerable because it is not limited to calls

Claim 11 is broader than claim 1 in one respect and it is the independent claim asserted at the ITC. Its steps map as follows:

• (a) render GUI with concurrent app region + status bar — Nortel '637 (windows portion + tools portion), as above.
• (b) receive input comprising information relating to an event unrelated to the running application — Ericsson '471 (incoming call is an event unrelated to the running app); Sony '860 (the "alert with information" message). Because claim 11 does not require the event to be a call, this element is also met by the ordinary practice of surfacing alarms/appointment reminders — which the '283 specification itself concedes ("other embodiments could use the functionality of the changeable status bar to present other information, such as an alarm or appointment reminder").
• (c) display an indication of the information in the status bar and, in response to the event, display a graphical interface tool in the status bar providing a user selection; status bar operates independently of the application — Ericsson '471 supplies "a plurality of options for handling the incoming call" in a GUI; Nortel '637 supplies the independence of the persistent region from the application window. Again, the only delta is where on the display Ericsson's options render.
• (d) take action responsive to the user's selection, the selection being "a command related to the disposition of said event" — Sony '860 (answer / reject / route to voice recorder–voice mail) and Ericsson '471 (user "activates one of the options … for handling each incoming call").
• "steps a)–d) performed while the application is operating and without interfering with it" — Nortel '637 is the express teaching: multitasking that avoids overwriting/burying the open application display.

Motivation is the same two-reference rationale as claim 1, reinforced by Sony '860's stated objective of responding to calls without distracting the user from a present task — a direct, explicit motivation in the art for the "without interfering" requirement.

Additional § 103 exposure specific to claim 11: by claiming any "event" rather than a telephone call, claim 11 reads on the generic desktop/portable paradigm of a reserved status region that displays an event notification together with a control that lets the user dispose of the event while an unrelated application keeps running. That paradigm is the conventional status-bar/notification pattern; the call-specific references merely supply an enabling species. This makes claim 11 the weakest independent claim, not the strongest.

5. Claim 20 (telephone-specific method) — obvious over Nortel '637 + Ericsson '471 + Sony '860

Claim 20 is claim 11 narrowed to "a portable telephone device" and an "incoming telephone call." Narrowing to the very subject matter that the secondary references are about only strengthens the obviousness case:

• Portable telephone device — Nortel '637 (mobile telephone 1100); Ericsson '471.
• Concurrent app region + status bar — Nortel '637.
• Receive information relating to an incoming telephone call — Ericsson '471 (caller ID on each incoming call); Sony '860 ("alert with information").
• Display that information in the status bar plus a graphical tool for user selection; status bar independent of the application — Ericsson '471 (call-handling option GUI) + Nortel '637 (persistent region independent of the app window). Because claim 20's event is inherently a call, Ericsson's on-call GUI is squarely on point.
• Take action on the call per the user's disposition command, without interfering with the app — Sony '860 + Ericsson '471 + Nortel '637.

Motivation. With Ericsson '471 and Sony '860 both being telephone call-handling references, there is no field-crossing concern at all; the combination is between references in the identical art addressing the identical problem (answering/rejecting an incoming call without disrupting what the user is doing). KSR makes the combination of such references near-presumptively obvious where the references are "designed to solve the same problem."

6. Dependent claims — all obvious

7. The strongest § 103 ground, stated as a formal combination

Claim 1 is obvious over US 6,608,637 in view of US 6,574,471 and US 5,559,860. Nortel '637 teaches the portable wireless telephone with a graphic display that concurrently presents a persistent reserved region (tools portion) and a running-application region (windows portion) that are mutually independent, and teaches receiving a voice call, informing the user of the caller's identity, and receiving an acceptance/denial selection — all without overwriting the open application. Ericsson '471 teaches that upon each incoming call a GUI containing a plurality of call-handling options should be generated, with caller identification; Sony '860 teaches that responses to an incoming call (answer / reject / voice mail) are user-selectable based on caller identity and should be made without distracting the user from a present task. A POSITA, faced with Nortel's intact reserved region and the known need (Ericsson, Sony) to present per-call handling options while preserving the user's application context, would have had a reason to render Ericsson/Sony's call-disposition controls into Nortel's persistent reserved region — a predictable arrangement of known GUI elements in the same field, with a reasonable expectation of success.

Claims 11 and 20 are likewise obvious over the same combination, with claim 20 additionally being obvious in view of Ericsson '471 alone as to the telephone-call limitations in combination with Nortel '637.

8. Contrary considerations / where the patent might survive

To be balanced, the following are genuine counter-arguments, though I assess them as insufficient to confer patentability on the independent claims:

1. Nortel's reserved region is static, not event-driven. Nortel '637 explicitly keeps the tools portion unchanged; the '283's contribution is that the status bar itself changes to carry the call tools. A patentee would argue that neither reference teaches modifying the reserved region's content in response to the call, and that the combination of "static tools region" + "call GUI in the window region" does not expressly disclose the claimed arrangement. This is the single best non-obviousness argument — but it is a placement/relocation argument, and KSR treats moving a known function to a known location as an obvious design choice when the relocation is within the same device and yields the same result.
2. The asserted claim (11) is generic, so the patentee cannot rely on the telephone-call context for novelty, while the strongest secondary references are call-specific — a slight asymmetry. In practice this cuts against the patent: it means the generic subject matter must itself be non-obvious, and it is not (status-bar event notification with a disposition control is the ordinary notification paradigm).
3. No secondary considerations appear in the record I can access. I have found no evidence of unexpected results, long-felt unmet need, or industry praise attributable to the '283's specific status-bar-carried call controls. Absent such evidence, the Graham secondary factors do not rebut the prima facie case. (Note the record does show substantial commercial activity — the HTC/Apple dispute and the later Google ownership — but there is no evidence tying that activity to the claimed status-bar arrangement as opposed to the broader PDA/phone integration.)

9. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence in the characterizations of US 6,608,637, US 6,574,471, US 5,559,860, US 6,282,435, and US 6,044,248 — I retrieved their text (Google Patents / FreePatentsOnline / USPTO image PDFs) and mapped their disclosures to the claim limitations above. Sources:
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US6608637 (Nortel '637)
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US6574471 (Ericsson '471)
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5559860A](/patent/US5559860A) (Sony '860)
  • https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[6282435](/patent/6282435) (Sun '435)
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6044248A](/patent/US6044248A)/en (NEC '248)
• Lower confidence on US 6,285,364, US 6,314,302, and US 6,535,749 — I could only characterize these from titles/bibliographic data, not substance. None is essential to the combination above; they are cited as additional art supporting the general-knowledge elements (reserved display regions on mobile terminals).
• I did not review the '283 prosecution history (applicant amendments, examiner's stated reasons for allowance, or any Rule 132/terminal-disclaimer events). The examiner cited seven references yet allowed the claims, so the record presumably contains an allowance rationale addressing the very distinctions I identify in § 8. Flagging explicitly: the analysis above is a prior-art-to-claims mapping, not a reconstruction of the actual examiner's reasoning, and I did not verify the issued claim text against the USPTO full-text image (I relied on the Google Patents full-text, which was internally consistent).
• Date discrepancy flagged (carried from the prior sections): the task states today is April 26, 2026, while the fetched patent record is timestamped 2026-10-01. This does not affect the § 103 analysis, whose critical date is 2001-01-16.