US 6901440

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

Let me look for the actual claims text and any 2026 litigation/docket activity.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and check for any recent litigation.

Search Report: US Patent 6,901,440

Scope note: I searched Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Unified Patents, and general web sources, and ran targeted queries for CAFC 2026 docket activity. I did not have direct access to USPTO PatentCenter's claims pane or the CAFC docket system itself; results below are grounded in the sources I could retrieve.

⚠️ Important caveat on claim text

The authoritative full patent text supplied for this analysis does not contain a "Claims" section (it ends within the Detailed Description), and my searches did not return the literal claim language. Accordingly, the independent-claim overview below is derived from the specification and abstract, not from verbatim claim text. Treat it as a structural inference, not a quotation. I cannot confirm the exact number or wording of the independent claims.

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Bibliographic Data (from the authoritative full text)

Prosecution / assignment trail (from the full text):

• 1999-07-02 — Application filed by Agilent Technologies Inc.
• 1999-09-09 — Assigned to Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
• 2000-08-01 — Corrective assignment (to correct 4th assignor's name), Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
• 2005-05-31 — Patent granted.
• 2009-06-15 — Assigned to Sobha Renaissance Information Technology (from Agilent Technologies, Inc.).
• 2014-05-22 — Assigned to Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (from Sobha Renaissance).
• 2014-05-30 — Patent security agreement to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (agent); released 2018-11-26.
• 2019-01-03 — Short form patent security agreement to MidCap Financial Trust.
• 2019-07-02 — Anticipated expiration.

Abstract (verbatim, authoritative text)

"The present invention provides a scalable, high-performance universal service activation system and method for activating service(s) on a network management system/EMS or other information management system with universal or generic informational changes entered in a service provisioning system(s). … The inventive system and method incorporates object behavior concepts with the existing network management approach to create an EMS/NMS/OSS that significantly reduces the human effort to integrate network element configuration and provisioning for new and modified network elements. … The SMS/NMS/OSS provides a domain manager for generic method processing. … The domain manager provides a means to rollback or remove an implemented change if the change is canceled or unsuccessfully implemented. … The SMS/NMS/EMS/OSS provides means to modify object behavior in an operational system without the need to stop, reset, reinitialize, recompile the SMS/NMS/EMS/OSS components or modules."

Plain-Language Overview of Independent Claims (inferred from spec — see caveat)

Based on the specification, the independent claims most likely fall into a small family (at least one method claim, and probably a corresponding system/apparatus claim, and possibly a computer-readable-medium claim). The disclosed inventive core comprises three processes, which is almost certainly what the independent claims recite:

1. Service description — a user enters a service into a Service Provisioning System using a universal (generic) service component; multiple component instances are grouped to compose a service order, which is sent to an activation system over a messaging interface.
2. Service translation — the activation system routes generic components to a domain manager, which (a) maps vendor-neutral parameter names/values to vendor-specific ones, (b) decomposes the component into element-level activation requests using object networks (logical decision trees of atomic / multi-step / logical objects), and (c) routes vendor/location-specific parameters to the correct Element Management System (EMS).
3. Service activation — vendor/device-specific commands are delivered to the network element via the EMS, with status returned back through the activation system and messaging interface; rollback/dependency scheduling is supported.

A typical independent method claim would therefore read as: a method of activating a network service comprising entering a generic service component into a provisioning system, composing a service order, forwarding it to an activation system, translating the vendor-neutral component into vendor-specific terms via a domain manager and object network, decomposing it into element activation requests, and causing activation commands to be sent to a network element through an EMS. Again, this is a reconstruction, not verbatim claim text.

CAFC 2026 Docket Search: No Results

I found no evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket in 2026 involving US 6,901,440, and no 2026 litigation or PTAB activity. This is consistent with the patent's status: it is Expired – Lifetime with an anticipated expiration of 1999-07-02 + 20 years = 2019-07-02, so it could not support new infringement actions in 2026 (any live appeal would have to stem from a much earlier suit — none surfaced).

Conflation Warnings (IDs that are NOT this patent)

Search results contained several unrelated items using the same digit string, which I flag per the "interpret literally" rule:

• A different "the '690 Patent" in PTAB papers (filed Dec. 10, 2009; DOCSIS 2.0 probe-request subject matter) — not US 6,901,440.
• Brazilian DI 6901440-0 (a "cabide"/hanger design registration, 2009) and MU 6901440-0 (a 1989 Brazilian utility model reclassification) — unrelated.
• US 6,898,940 and US 6,778,821 appeared in results but are distinct patents.

Uncertainty Statement

• High confidence: bibliographic data, abstract, dates, inventors, assignee history, expiration status — all taken from the authoritative full text supplied.
• Lower confidence: the wording, count, and exact scope of the independent claims, since literal claim text was not retrievable in my searches. Anyone relying on claim scope (e.g., for validity or infringement analysis) should read the claims directly from USPTO PatentCenter or the granted patent PDF rather than relying on this summary.
• I made no attempt to auto-correct any identifier; "6901440" was searched exactly as given.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6901440 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me try additional targeted searches for litigation records.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 6,901,440

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent 6,901,440 was found in the sources searched. I was unable to identify any district court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, or PTAB proceeding in which US 6,901,440 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

What I searched and what I found

False positives excluded (as instructed, not auto-corrected)

• A Brazilian design registration (11) DI 6901440-0 (a "cabadde"/hanger design by Luiz Antonio da Silva Guimarães) — unrelated.
• Various SEC Rule 144 / securities cases citing "Rule 144" — unrelated.
• Numerous other patents with similar trailing digits (e.g., US 6,901,417-5; US 10,311,073) — not US 6901440.
• Unified Patents, LLC v. IdeaHub (CAFC 2024-1684), Ultratec v. CapTel, and Amdocs v. Openet (the '065/'510/'984/'797 patents) — none involve US 6901440.

Patent context (from the authoritative full text you supplied)

• Patent: US 6,901,440 B1 — "System and method for universal service activation"
• Application: US 09/347,112; Filed/Priority: 1999-07-02; Granted: 2005-05-31
• Inventors: Bimm, Clark, Kleinbach, Tory, Custeau, Russell, Cai
• Original assignee: Agilent Technologies Inc.; subsequently assigned to Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (current assignee per the record)
• Status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2019-07-02
• Notable chain-of-title security interests: Wells Fargo Bank (agent, 2014, released 2018); MIDCAP Financial Trust (2019). These are collateral security agreements, not litigation.

Caveats / confidence level

• Confidence: Moderate-to-high that no federal patent infringement litigation or PTAB proceeding names this patent, based on the databases reachable in this search. The absence of entries on the Unified Patents patent page (which normally surfaces litigation and PTAB data) is a meaningful negative signal.
• Limitations: I could not run fully exhaustive, real-time PACER or full-text District Court docket searches in this session. A state-court contract/licensing dispute, an arbitration, an unfiled or sealed action, or a case where the patent was mentioned only in an exhibit description might not appear in these sources. Because the patent expired July 2, 2019, any litigation window would necessarily predate that (enforcement actions are effectively foreclosed now).
• I did not fabricate any case names, numbers, jurisdictions, parties, or dates to fill the gap. None are reported here because none were found.

Recommendation for confirmation

To close the remaining gap with higher confidence, the following could be checked directly (I could not complete these within this session):

1. PACER full-text/docket search on "6,901,440" and "6901440" across all districts.
2. Docket Alarm and RPX Insight patent-by-patent litigation pages.
3. LexMachina / Westlaw / LexisNexis patent docket searches.
4. The patent's USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for any adverse proceedings or terminal disclaimers tied to litigation.

If you'd like, I can draft the precise search strings for those systems so a paralegal can run them and verify the negative result.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before finalizing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

One more check on litigation/enforcement history for context.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,901,440: zero. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web searches (Google Patents/Unified Patents portal, PTAB docket aggregators, and general IPR/litigation queries keyed to the patent number, title, assignee, and inventors) surfaced no AIA trial proceeding for this patent. Count: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has been tested and narrowed at the PTAB" — it has never been tested there at all. The more important defensive fact is different in kind: the patent's term expired on 2019-07-02 (Google Patents lists legal status "Expired – Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2019-07-02), so a defendant facing a demand letter today is looking at an expired patent, not a hardened one.

Caveat on the structured data. I treat the ODP-derived list as canonical and I found no contradicting evidence, so the default ("no PTAB activity on file") governs. But an absence-of-record finding is weaker than a positive finding: the ODP ingest can lag, and I did not obtain a direct, human-verified PTAB E2E "proceedings" tab readout for this patent. If you are making a court filing or an estoppel argument, confirm on PTAB E2E and via USPTO Patent Center before relying on it.

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Proceedings

None to report. There are no proceedings to list, so the per-proceeding template is inapplicable. I am deliberately not constructing entries from the Unified Patents portal page for US-6901440-B1 — that page is a general patent/prior-art analytics page (it lists 7 "Patent Art" references and 336 "Referenced By" documents), not evidence of a Unified Patents-filed IPR or of any defensive-aggregator challenge. I found no record of a Unified Patents, RPX, or other aggregator petition against this patent.

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Strategic summary

Claim-status picture: entirely UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim of US 6,901,440 has been canceled, confirmed, or even challenged in an AIA trial. That means I cannot tell you "claim 1 is dead" or "claims 1–5 survived" — and you should be suspicious of anyone who does, because no FWD exists to say so. I also did not obtain the issued claim text in the material provided to me, so I am not going to characterize specific claim numbers, independent-claim structure, or claim scope for this patent; that would be fabrication. If you need the claim set, pull it from the Google Patents page or USPTO Patent Center directly.

The controlling fact is expiration, not PTAB outcomes. The '440 patent issued from application 09/347,112 filed 1999-07-02 and, per Google Patents, carries an anticipated expiration of 2019-07-02 with legal status "Expired – Lifetime." A 20-year term from a 1999-07-02 filing ran out in 2019 (assuming all maintenance fees were paid — the record shows a 2019-01-03 security agreement to MidCap Financial Trust, consistent with an active portfolio being collateralized, but that is not proof of fee payment). Practical consequences for a defendant:

• No prospective injunction and no ongoing-infringement theory on the patent itself post-expiration.
• Damages are time-barred outside the § 286 six-year lookback — i.e., recovery, if any, would be limited to infringement within six years before the complaint and before the 2019-07-02 expiration, subject to § 287 marking and other defenses.
• IPR is unavailable in any event — the Board does not institute IPR on an expired patent where no amended claims are possible in a meaningful sense, and more basically there is nothing left to challenge for prospective freedom-to-operate purposes. Anybody demanding a license today on this patent is asking you to pay for an expired right.

Estoppel landscape: none, and that cuts both ways. Because no IPR/PGR was ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. There is no petitioner barred from re-raising art, and there is no petitioner-side invalidity record you can borrow. On the other hand, you are likewise unconstrained: any prior-art ground — § 102 or § 103, any reference, any combination — remains fully available to you in district court or as a § 282 defense, with no IPR estoppel shadow and no risk of the Board having already blessed the claims. The null PTAB record is, if anything, favorable to an invalidity defense in litigation, because the patent has never been examined adversarially beyond original prosecution.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner). No PTAB appeal history. No defensive aggregator in the chain. The assignment history is ordinary corporate housekeeping, not litigation-driven: Agilent Technologies (original) → Objective Systems Integrators (1999) → Sobha Renaissance Information Technology (2009-06-15) → back to Objective Systems Integrators (2014-05-22) → Wells Fargo security interest (2014-05-30, released 2018-11-26) → MidCap Financial Trust security agreement (2019-01-03). None of those events evidences enforcement activity or a PTAB challenge.

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Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the expiration date. If you have received a demand letter citing US 6,901,440, the first response points to the 2019-07-02 anticipated expiration. Ask the sender to identify (a) the date of any accused conduct, (b) the complaint date, and (c) how the demand escapes § 286's six-year bar. Confirm the expiration independently in USPTO Patent Center by checking the maintenance-fee history and the term calculation (including any PTA/terminal disclaimer), because a security-interest record is not a fee-payment record.
2. No FWD to link, and say so. There is no Final Written Decision, no IPR number, and no CAFC appeal to cite for this patent. Do not accept a demand letter that implies PTAB history that does not exist.
3. Preserve your invalidity options. With no § 315(e)(2) estoppel anywhere, keep the full § 102/§ 103/§ 112 toolkit live. A district-court invalidity case (or a DJ action) is unencumbered by any prior IPR record, and validity would be judged under Phillips with clear-and-convincing evidence — the patentee's burden.
4. Verify before filing. Before relying on the zero-proceeding finding in any brief, pull a current PTAB E2E proceedings readout for patent 6,901,440 and confirm there are no recently filed petitions the ODP ingest may not yet show. I could not surface any, but a docket-verified null is stronger than a search-derived null.
5. Check the corporate chain, not just the patent. If a demand is coming from a non-practicing entity, the 2014 Objective Systems Integrators assignment and the 2019 MidCap security interest are worth tracing for real-party-in-interest and standing questions.

Confidence notes: (a) "Zero PTAB proceedings" — high confidence based on the canonical ODP block and corroborating searches, but not a docket-verified null. (b) "Expired 2019-07-02" — taken directly from the Google Patents legal-status entry in the authoritative text supplied; verify maintenance-fee payment independently. (c) Claim numbers, claim scope, independent/dependent structure, and any litigation history — not verified, and I have not stated any.

I'll research this patent's ownership chain across the sources available to me.

Good — I have the corporate chain. Let me dig for the specific assignment records, correspondents, and any litigation.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 6,901,440 B1

Data provenance / limitations (read first). I was unable to query the USPTO Assignment Center UI or its assignment API directly in this session; the search interface is JS-driven and my retrievals returned only the Google Patents legal-events mirror, news releases, and third-party databases. Accordingly:

• Dates below are the event dates exposed by Google Patents, which mirror the Assignment Center records but do not distinguish execution date from recording date.
• Reel/frame numbers are exposed for only one link (reel 010682/0505, cited inside the corrective assignment). The remaining reels/frames and all correspondent-of-record fields were not retrievable and are marked as such rather than guessed.

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Inventors

Seven named inventors, all of whom appear to have been Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (OSI) personnel at the time of filing (1999-07-02). OSI was headquartered in Folsom, California, and the specification describes OSI's own NetExpert® / CM Exel™ framework, so the employment inference is well-supported though not independently confirmed document-by-document.

Name-record irregularities (flagged, not corrected):

• The 1999-09-09 assignment records the 4th inventor as "TORY, DANIELS CHARLES"; the 2000-08-01 corrective assignment records him as "TORY, DANIEL CHARLES." The correction was expressly filed to fix "the 4th assignor's name."
• The corrective assignment also renders Russell as "RUSSE, ROBERT JOSEPH" (vs. "RUSSELL, ROBERT JOSEPH" in the first filing).

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence of inventors departing OSI within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of any pre-filing portfolio fire-sale. All seven assigned to OSI on 1999-09-09, roughly two months after filing. No departure signal — not present.

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Original assignee

There is a two-entity discrepancy worth stating plainly:

• The entity named on the face of the issued patent (and Google's "Original Assignee") is Agilent Technologies, Inc.
• The entity that actually took the inventors' assignment at filing was Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (OSI) — assignment recorded 1999-09-09 at reel 010682/0505. Agilent only came to own the patent via its January 2001 merger with OSI, so it was the record owner by the 2005-05-31 issue date, which is why it appears on the front page.

Product embodying the claims: Yes — OSI's NetExpert® Unified Management Architecture (UMA™) OSS suite; the specification expressly describes NetExpert and the assignee's CM Exel™ system. The claims cover generic/vendor-neutral service-order description, translation, decomposition via "Object Networks," and activation on network elements — i.e., the core of OSI's commercial product.

Primary line of business: Telecommunications operations support systems (OSS) software (service assurance, delivery, usage), sold to fixed/wireless carrier service providers.

Current status:

• Agilent Technologies — operating company (test & measurement, life sciences; spun off Keysight Technologies in 2014). It divested the OSI/OSS business in 2007.
• Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. — the legal entity still named as current assignee of record (per Google Patent's "Current Assignee" field and Unified Patents' page for this patent). OSI was sold to India's Sobha Renaissance Information Technology (SRIT) in 2007 and then to MYCOM OSI on 2014-06-10 — a share/company acquisition, which is why no further patent assignment to MYCOM was recorded and the record owner remains "Objective Systems Integrators, Inc."

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Assignment timeline

The 2001 Agilent→OSI merger produced no separately recorded assignment in the legal-events record — ownership passed by operation of law (Agilent subsidiary Tahoe Acquisition Corp. merged into OSI, OSI surviving). The next recorded event is the 2009 assignment, in which Agilent appears as assignor. That gap is itself notable and is why the 2001 merger does not appear below as a discrete reel/frame entry.

• 1999-09-09 (recorded; execution date not exposed) — Reel 010682/0505

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: All seven named inventors (Bimm, Clark, Kleinbach, Tory, Custeau, Russell, Cai)
  • Assignee: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed in retrieved sources (Assignment Center correspondent field not retrievable)
  • Context: Original employment/assignment of rights to the operating company that developed NetExpert.

• 2000-08-01 — Reel/frame not exposed (this record cites the earlier reel 010682/0505)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (correct "4th assignor's name," previously recorded at reel 010682 frame 0505)
  • Assignor: Same inventor group (with Tory listed as "Daniel Charles")
  • Assignee: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Administrative correction only — no change of ownership.

• 2009-06-15 — Reel/frame not exposed

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Agilent Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Sobha Renaissance Information Technology (SRIT)
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Corporate divestiture — Agilent exited the OSS market; the underlying asset sale to SRIT announced 2007-04-11 and closed in July 2007, so this recording lags the transaction by roughly two years.

• 2014-05-22 — Reel/frame not exposed

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Sobha Renaissance Information Technology
  • Assignee: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Internal restructuring / transfer back to the operating subsidiary, timed eight days before the 2014-06-10 MYCOM OSI acquisition of OSI by share purchase.

• 2014-05-30 — Reel/frame not exposed

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Agent
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Securitization / lender collateral — not an ownership transfer.

• 2018-11-26 — Reel/frame not exposed

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Agent
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Lien release — extinguishes the 2014 Wells Fargo security interest.

• 2019-01-03 — Reel/frame not exposed

  • Conveyance: Short Form Patent Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
  • Assignee: MidCap Financial Trust
  • Correspondent: not exposed
  • Context: Securitization / refinancing — new lender collateral charge; still not an ownership transfer.

• 2019-07-02 — Anticipated expiration; legal status "Expired – Lifetime" (term ran 20 years from the 1999-07-02 filing).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6901440
    1999 : Filed by Objective Systems Integrators
         : Inventors assign to OSI
    2000 : Corrective assignment recorded
    2001 : OSI merged into Agilent
    2005 : Patent issued to Agilent
    2007 : Agilent sells OSI to Sobha Renaissance
    2009 : Agilent to Sobha assignment recorded
    2014 : Sobha assigns back to Objective Systems Integrators
         : Wells Fargo takes security interest
    2018 : Wells Fargo releases lien
    2019 : MidCap takes security interest
         : Patent reaches term expiry

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every ownership link runs between operating companies (Objective Systems Integrators → Agilent → Sobha Renaissance → Objective Systems Integrators). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures"-suffixed entity appears. The only third parties are secured lenders (Wells Fargo at reel/frame not exposed, 2014-05-30; MidCap, 2019-01-03), which take collateral interests, not title.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. None of Agilent, Objective Systems Integrators, Sobha Renaissance, or MYCOM OSI appears on the referenced public NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). Unified Patents' own portal page for US-6901440-B1 names the owner as "Objective Systems Integrators Inc" with no asserter/litigation activity surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not determinable. The correspondent-of-record is exactly the field I could not retrieve in this session; Google Patents legal events do not expose it. No finding is possible either way, and I will not infer one from firm names.

4. Cascading transfers — not present (at most weak). The two 2014 events are 8 days apart (assignment 2014-05-22; Wells Fargo security agreement 2014-05-30), but they are different conveyance types (ownership transfer vs. lender lien), not chained shell LLCs. The 2009→2014 gap is five years. No shared-correspondent or common-principal evidence exists in the retrieved record.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 6,901,440 was found in any retrieved source, and the patent expired 2019-07-02, so it cannot support a live assertion today.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — unclear. There is clear evidence of distressed divestiture: Agilent sold the OSI/OSS business in 2007 as non-core while exiting the segment, and SRIT was financially strained (VCCircle reports ~Rs 140 crore of acquisition-related debt, personal guarantees, and a restructuring/partial exit by P.N.C. Menon). But no Chapter 7/11 proceeding or court-supervised patent sale is documented for any assignor, so I cannot call it a bankruptcy fire-sale.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence that an operating company parked this patent with an NPE to assert on its behalf; no Patent Progress / EFF / SEC coverage surfaced.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (operating OSS vendor, now inside MYCOM OSI) under a MidCap Financial Trust security interest (2019-01-03).

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — stated with one important caveat.

This is a clean operating-company ownership chain: inventors → OSI (1999-09-09, reel 010682/0505) → Agilent by merger (2001) → Agilent to Sobha Renaissance (recorded 2009-06-15) → back to Objective Systems Integrators, Inc. (2014-05-22), with the only non-ownership events being lender liens (Wells Fargo 2014-05-30 and release 2018-11-26; MidCap 2019-01-03). Zero NPE signals are present, and the current owner ships products squarely in the claimed space (NetExpert/UMA service-activation OSS). The caveat: the "assertion" prong is not evidenced — no infringement litigation naming this patent was found, and the patent expired 2019-07-02, so the asset is functionally non-asserting. It is nonetheless correctly classified as an operating-company patent rather than an NPE or a defensive-aggregator holding.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search "6901440"): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6901440/en (see the "Events" panel)
• Unified Patents portal entry: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6901440-B1

Confidence note: the corporate-chain narrative is high-confidence (multiple independent sources); the reel/frame and correspondent details are low-coverage — only reel 010682/0505 was retrievable. If you need the full reel/frame set and the correspondent-of-record for each link, those must be pulled from the Assignment Center's detailed record view, which I could not drive programmatically here.

I'll search the USPTO and related patent databases for the specific prior-art citations tied to US 6,901,440.

The broad searches returned generic citation lists from unrelated patents. Let me narrow to the actual citation record for this specific patent.

The Unified Patents page surfaces the backward citations. Let me pull the fuller citation record from FreePatentsOnline and Justia, which publish the front-page "References Cited" lists.

Search Report: Prior Art Cited for US Patent 6,901,440

Method / sources actually reached: Google Patents (US6901440B1), the Unified Patents portal page for US-6901440-B1, Justia, and general web queries. I ran queries for the exact string 6901440 / "6,901,440" and did not substitute or auto-correct any number. I was cut off by a step limit before I could open USPTO PatentCenter's "References Cited" pane or FreePatentsOnline's front page, so the citation list below is partial and should be verified against the grant.

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⚠️ Two structural caveats before the list

1. The authoritative full text supplied for this analysis does not include the front-page "(56) References Cited" table, the Claims, or a Non-Patent-Literature list. The earlier "Patent summary" section already flagged the missing claims. The same gap applies here to citations — the fetched text jumped from Classifications to Definitions and never rendered the citation table.
2. The citation data below comes from the Unified Patents "Patent Art" (backward-citation) section for US-6901440-B1. That page rendered as an interleaved, truncated snippet, so the pairing of some patent numbers to their titles/assignees is ambiguous. I mark confidence for each entry and do not fill gaps with invented titles.

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Retrieved backward citations (prior art cited against/with US 6,901,440)

Not verified: the complete count of cited US patents, any cited foreign patent documents, and any Non-Patent Literature (e.g., ITU-T/TMN, TMF, ATM Forum references that the specification cites by name). Do not treat the seven rows above as the full (56) list.

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Important: forward citations are NOT prior art (do not misclassify)

The same page's "Referenced By" (336 forward citations) include several thematically near-identical documents that a keyword search will happily surface as if they were prior art. Because they postdate US 6,901,440 (filed 1999-07-02), they cannot be § 102 art against it:

• WO-2007053113-A1 — "Method and System for Implementing and Managing Vendor Neutral Network Systems" (2007)
• US-20090327473-A1 — "Methods, Systems and Computer-readable Media for Dynamically Recognizing and Processing Service Order Types in a Network Management System" (AT&T, 2005-01-17)
• US-8041786-B2 — "Configuration, Management and Monitoring of Network Resources Using Device Specific Command Templates"
• EP-1892966-A1 — "System and Method for Provisioning a Composite Telecommunications Services Product"
• GB-2445141-A — "Telecommunications Service Management" (2005-10-06)

These are useful as evidence of the field, not as anticipatory references.

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§ 102 Anticipation Assessment

Bottom line — and stated plainly: Based on the partial citation record I could retrieve, I cannot responsibly assert that any cited reference anticipates any specific claim of US 6,901,440. Two independent reasons:

1. No verbatim claim text was available (flagged in the earlier section; the supplied patent text has no Claims). Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a reference to disclose each and every limitation, arranged as in the claim. Without the claim language I cannot do a limitation-by-limitation mapping, and any per-claim assignment would be fabrication.
2. The retrieved references read as background/related art drawn from the general network-management and service-provisioning field (BT, Fujitsu, Verizon, IBM/AT&T, Wipro). None on its face discloses the apparent inventive core identified from the specification: vendor-neutral "universal service components" decomposed into element-level requests via persistent "object networks" of atomic/multi-step/logical service activation objects, with runtime-modifiable behavior and rollback.

Per-reference potential relevance (ranking, not an anticipation holding):

Likely § 103 posture: If any of these were applied, it would most plausibly be in a combination under § 103 (generic provisioning + element management + TMN layering), not as single-reference § 102 anticipation — which is consistent with these being examiner-cited background art rather than an anticipatory reference that forced a narrowing amendment.

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Confidence & what to verify next

• High confidence: the reference numbers/dates that rendered cleanly (US 5,812,533; US 5,987,513; US 6,335,927; US 6,363,411; US 6,363,421; US 6,400,689) are genuine cited documents connected to this patent's "Patent Art" section; and that the listed forward citations postdate the patent.
• Low confidence: title↔number pairings where the Unified Patents snippet offset labels; the identity of the "Global Service Management System…" document's number; and the completeness of the (56) list.
• To close the gaps with certainty, pull the granted-patent front page directly from:
  • USPTO PatentCenter / the grant PDF (the definitive "(56) References Cited" table), and
  • FreePatentsOnline https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6901440.html (renders References Cited + Referenced By).

Conflation check (interpreted literally, not auto-corrected): I again excluded non-matches sharing the digit string — Brazilian design DI 6901440-0 and utility model MU 6901440-0 — as unrelated. Only US 6,901,440 is reported here.

Recommendation: treat the table above as a lead list requiring verification, not as the finished prior-art record. Provide the verbatim claim set (class + independent claims at minimum) and I can convert this into a proper element-by-element § 102/§ 103 chart.

I'll pull the prior-art citations on this patent's page, since the authoritative full text supplied to me does not include a "References Cited" section.

I've located the seven examiner-cited "Patent Art" references. Let me pull the substance of each so the combination analysis is grounded.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,901,440 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Technical analysis, not legal advice. Prepared for patent-analyst purposes.

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0. Threshold caveats (read before relying on anything below)

(a) No verbatim claim text was available. As noted in the previously generated sections, the authoritative full text supplied for this analysis contains the Abstract and Description but no "Claims" section. My searches did not return literal claim language. The limitation mapping below is therefore built from the specification's own characterization of the invention (three named processes: service description → service translation → service activation; object networks; atomic/multi-step/logical objects; domain managers). I map those to claim-element families, not to numbered claim limitations. Anyone using this for an invalidity or validity opinion must re-run it against the granted claim set from the patent PDF or USPTO PatentCenter.

One indirect data point on claim count: the PCT search report for WO 2007/053113 A1 cites "US 6901440 B1 (BIMM et al.) 31 May 2005" under category X against "Relevant to claim No. 1-20." That is consistent with a 20-claim patent, but it is a third-party characterization, not confirmatory.

(b) Governing law is pre-AIA § 103(a). The application was filed 1999-07-02, well before the AIA's first-inventor-to-file date of 2013-03-16. So: pre-AIA §§ 102/103, with Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) supplying the framework (KSR applies to pre-AIA cases as well).

(c) Date inconsistency — flagged as instructed. The task prompt states the current date is April 26, 2026; the system header states 2026-09-29. Either way the patent's anticipated expiration was 2019-07-02 (Expired – Lifetime), so a live § 103 challenge in 2026 would be academic unless it attaches to a pre-expiration controversy (back damages, licensing, or a reexam/validity opinion). I flag this rather than silently picking one.

(d) POSITA. For this record I assume a person having ordinary skill in the art holding a B.S. in EE/CS (or equivalent) with 3–5 years of experience in telecommunications network management / OSS provisioning, including familiarity with TMN layering, SNMP/CMIP element management, object-oriented MIB modeling, and CORBA/IDL interfaces. This is a conservative, mid-range definition; a broader definition helps the obviousness case.

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1. The reference set

The "Prior Art" portion of the patent page (as surfaced through the Unified Patents patent record for US-6901440-B1) lists seven "Patent Art" references and zero non-patent literature:

Note on the US 6,330,598 assignee discrepancy: Unified Patents lists "International Business Machines Corp / AT&T Intellectual Property I LP"; Google Patents and RPX list Ameritech Corporation with a 1998-06-23 date, and the PCT publication is WO 1999/067719 A1. AT&T IP I is the successor-in-interest to Ameritech (via SBC). I cannot resolve the IBM attribution from this session and I will not auto-correct it — but it does not affect the substance of what the reference discloses.

Non-patent / applicant-admitted prior art (from the patent's own text — and these admissions matter under § 103):

• The assignee's own NetExpert® / Framework VSM system — an object-oriented EMS/NMS framework with 4GL rule-set editors, expressly described as the assignee's existing commercial product and characterized as prior art ("Even with NetExpert, these rules have to be entered through 4GL editors…").
• The traditional service activation architecture: "build rules or algorithms that perform the activation at the element level… typically written in a programming language and compiled into a service activation application."
• TMN/ITU-T standards (M.3200), including the four management layers and the FCAPS functional groups, plus ASN.1 MIBs, GDMO, and IDL — all invoked as known art.

Timeline effect: All seven patent references have effective pre-1999-07-02 dates and are available as prior art — mostly under pre-AIA § 102(e) (US patents/printed publications by another, effectively filed before the applicant's invention) and, for the earlier ones, potentially § 102(a)/(b). US 6,363,411 is the subtlest: it was physically filed 1999-10-19 (after the '440 filing date) but claims priority to 60/061,173 (1997-10-06) and 08/128,937 (1998-08-05), so § 102(e) treatment depends on whether the relied-upon disclosure is supported in those earlier applications. That is a real, contestable issue and I flag it rather than assuming it away.

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2. Mapping the reconstructed claim elements to the art

Where the art is strongest: A, B, C, D, E, H, I, J — essentially the entire architectural core (generic request → translation → domain routing → decomposition → element manager → status → rollback/scheduling).
Where the art is weakest / most contestable: F, G, K — specifically the object network as a persistent, editable map with atomic/multi-step/logical object types, and the "modify behavior in an operational system with no stop/reset/reinitialize/recompile" limitation.

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3. Combination A (primary): US 6,330,598 + US 6,400,689

This is the strongest two-reference combination and should be the lead position.

What 6,330,598 supplies. A global service management system sitting above multiple network element managers for multiple vendors, receiving an update request message "developed pursuant to a third protocol" (i.e., a vendor-neutral request format), identifying the destination(s), translating the message into each destination's vendor-specific protocol, and delivering the translated messages to the respective element managers, which then apply them to the network elements (SCPs). It further discloses:

• one-to-many decomposition (a single request directed to and translated for two different vendor elements),
• scheduling of messages and deletion/withdrawal before or after scheduling and after application (= rollback),
• error propagation with translation of element-manager errors "into a standard format,"
• status indication of a service package over a time window,
• an object-oriented implementation where objects contain attributes and methods and are decoupled so one object's steps can be changed without changing others,
• CORBA IIOP as the transport, and
• a graphical/Internet customer entry path.

What 6,400,689 supplies. A network service management apparatus expressly structured as: a network managing part, a service managing part, a policy management information part (work definitions), and a service management information generating part relating network and service information per user requests; and, in claim 1, an element accessing part, a domain managing part ("divides said network into domains and manages the domains, each of which is managed by each subnetwork manager"), and a multi-domain managing part ("setting and releasing an end-to-end communication path"). Its published abstract/description describes an MDM / LDM / EAM hierarchy with SNMP, FTAM, RS-232, FTP, CMIP and TLI access — i.e., the exact TMN-flavored domain-manager-over-element-manager topology the '440 patent claims.

Why a POSITA would have combined them. Both are in the same field (telecom service management / OSS), address the same recognized problem (heterogeneous, multi-vendor element bases that cannot be provisioned with a single request format), and are complementary rather than overlapping: 6,330,598 teaches the translation-and-routing engine; 6,400,689 teaches the domain-hierarchy architecture and policy/work model into which such an engine is naturally placed. Combining them is the textbook KSR situation — "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods… yield[ing] no more than predictable results." There is no teaching away: 6,400,689's domain manager needs a translation function to handle heterogeneous elements, and 6,330,598's translator needs an architecture in which to sit. The prior art further supplies the motivation explicitly in the form of the art-recognized TMN layering (admitted in the '440 background), which dictates exactly the element-management/network-management/service-management hierarchy both references instantiate.

Result. Combination A renders elements A, B, C, D, E, H, I, and J obvious. That is the large majority of the reconstructed claim scope.

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4. Combination B: A + US 6,363,411

Adds the "object behavior" dimension.

What 6,363,411 supplies. A centralized service administration process having functionality for naming, cataloging, distributing, activating, auditing, de-activating and removing call-processing service module/data components; reusable business objects that each encapsulate a distinct call-processing function plus any associated data; distribution of selected business objects to selected nodes based on pre-determined node configuration criteria; and an architecture that is expressly platform-independent and eliminates "vendor-specific hardware, operating systems and switching platforms." A later continuation (US 6,779,030) recites the provisioning flow directly: "receiving customer order data from a legacy system; generating a request for a service object based on the customer order data; creating a first service object based on the request…; and sending the first service object to a first service node."

Motivation. 6,363,411 supplies element F (reusable, function-encapsulating objects as the unit of service definition) and strong support for E and G (a single service request expanded into ordered, cataloged sub-components distributed to node-specific targets "based on pre-determined node configuration criteria" — the functional equivalent of routing templates selected by discriminator). The reference is explicit that its whole purpose is to eliminate vendor-specific dependency, which is verbatim the '440 patent's stated objective. A POSITA building a vendor-neutral activation system on the Combination-A architecture would plainly look to an object/component catalog with per-node distribution criteria — the art supplies the motivation in the form of the stated, identical problem.

Result. Combination B strengthens E, F, G, K, and the "runtime configurability" theme. This is where the object-network limitation becomes substantially obvious, though Combination B does not by itself give the specific atomic/multi-step/logical trichotomy with a logic-event callback naming successor objects.

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5. Combination C: A + B + the secondary references

These are supporting references whose full disclosures I did not verify in this session (I retrieved titles, assignees, and dates only for US 6,335,927, US 6,363,421, US 5,987,513, and US 5,812,533). I therefore state their likely role and flag the verification gap rather than asserting what they teach.

Even setting these four aside, Combinations A and B carry the load.

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6. Motivation-to-combine rationale (KSR/MPEP § 2143 factors)

A defensible obviousness position rests on these specific, articulable rationales — not on generic "these are all in telecom" hand-waving:

1. Same field, same problem, same solution direction. All references address provisioning/activating services on heterogeneous multi-vendor network elements — the exact problem the '440 background identifies.
2. Predictable result of a known combination. Placing a protocol/parameter translator (6,330,598) into a domain-manager/EMS hierarchy (6,400,689) is the mechanical application of the TMN layering the '440 patent itself admits as known.
3. Explicit design incentive in the references. 6,363,411 states its purpose as eliminating vendor-specific hardware/OS/platform dependency; 6,330,598 states its purpose as providing "a simplified interface for communicating update request messages… despite their protocol differences." Both articulate the same goal as the '440 patent — a strong "the prior art itself would have led" showing.
4. Obvious to try with a finite, identified set of solutions. Given a service-order-to-element translation problem, the available design choices (a centralized translator, per-vendor adapter modules, an object/rule catalog) were few, known, and each was being used for the same purpose.
5. Interchangeability of elements. The routing/translation engine, the domain hierarchy, and the object catalog are each substitutable for their functional equivalents without changing the principle of operation.
6. Applicant's own admissions. The '440 background concedes that (i) NetExpert already provided object-oriented management with 4GL rule sets and editors by which non-programmers could define "if-then" behavior, and (ii) the traditional approach was element-level compiled activation logic. Those admissions are prior art for § 103 and shrink the distance between the art and the architectural claims to almost nothing.

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7. Where the obviousness case is weakest — and where an attack/defense would actually turn

If I were defending the patent, I would not fight on the architecture (A–E, H–J). I would concentrate on the object network limitations and the runtime modification limitation, and force the petitioner to produce art (not argument) on the specific constructs:

• The atomic / multi-step / logical object trichotomy. 6,330,598 + 6,363,411 together suggest objects encapsulating functions and ordered steps, but the precise taxonomy — where a logical object's logic event returns the name of the next Service Activation Object, and atomic objects are terminal EMS events — is a specific software architecture. An obviousness case here likely needs either (a) an admitted-art + POSITA-inference argument built on the patent's own disclosure (the spec frames object networks as "directly related to the field of artificial intelligence known as neural networks," and the logic-event construct as an ordinary decision tree), or (b) an additional reference on rule/workflow engines. On the current seven-reference record, this is the softest spot.
• "Modify object behavior in an operational system without stop / reset / reinitialize / recompile." The best available teaching is 6,330,598's object decoupling ("objects are decoupled such that the programmed steps of any object can be modified without requiring modification of the programmed steps of any other object") plus the admitted NetExpert 4GL runtime-editable rule sets. That is a reasonably strong, but not airtight, mapping — a defense would argue 6,330,598's decoupling describes source-level modifiability, not runtime behavior change without restart. This limitation is where a serious obviousness challenge could still fail.
• Persistence of object networks in a database "so they can be loaded and saved persistently and survive system shutdown." Ordinary and well-known database practice; obvious, but the reference support is by inference rather than express disclosure.

Net assessment: On the evidence I can see, the independent architectural claims (generic service component → service order → provisioning-system messaging interface → domain manager → parameter mapping → decomposition → EMS delivery → status/rollback) are more likely than not obvious over US 6,330,598 in view of US 6,400,689, optionally in further view of US 6,363,411. Dependent claims directed to the atomic/multi-step/logical object taxonomy and to "runtime modification without recompilation" present a materially closer question and may survive on this record.

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8. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

I found nothing to weigh in favor of non-obviousness on this record, and I should be explicit about why that matters:

• No found litigation or PTAB challenge (consistent with the prior "Litigation summary" section) — so no adjudicated validity findings, no competitor copying evidence, no patentee-expert testimony to draw on.
• No evidence of unexpected results in the specification; the stated advantages (scalability, runtime configurability, reduced programming effort) are exactly the results the prior art was already pursuing, i.e., predictable, not unexpected.
• No established nexus to commercial success — the record shows only a chain of collateral security interests (Wells Fargo 2014, released 2018; MidCap Financial Trust 2019), not product-level sales evidence.
• Expired 2019-07-02, further reducing the practical relevance of any secondary-consideration record.

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9. Confidence, contradictions, and verification steps

Confidence levels:

• High: the identity of the seven "Patent Art" references, their titles, assignees, priority dates, and grant dates; the substantive disclosures of US 6,330,598, US 6,400,689, US 6,363,411, and US 6,400,689's claim 1 (retrieved and quoted above).
• Moderate: the mapping of those references to reconstructed (not verbatim) claim elements.
• Low / unverified: the substantive disclosures of US 6,335,927, US 6,363,421, US 5,987,513, and US 5,812,533 (titles only), and the exact number, wording, and scope of the '440 claims (no claim text retrieved).

Contradictions flagged, not auto-corrected:

1. Assignee of US 6,330,598: Unified Patents says IBM/AT&T IP I; Google/RPX/PCT say Ameritech, priority 1998-06-23 (Unified says 1998-06-22). Unresolved.
2. Current date: prompt says 2026-04-26; system says 2026-09-29.
3. Earlier sections of this analysis correctly flagged that no claims section was supplied; the PCT search report on WO 2007/053113 A1 characterizes US 6,901,440 as X-art against "claims 1-20," implying a 20-claim patent. This is consistent with, but does not prove, that count — and it is a prior-art citation against a later application, not litigation (no contradiction with the earlier "no litigation found" conclusion).

To close the gaps before filing anything:

1. Pull the granted claim set (all 20, if 20) from the patent PDF / USPTO PatentCenter — the analysis is claim-element-level until then.
2. Pull full text of the four unverified references and map them expressly.
3. Confirm the § 102(e) effective date for US 6,363,411 against its 1997/1998 priority applications, since the disclosure relied upon must be supported there.
4. Confirm the US 6,330,598 priority date (06-22 vs 06-23) from the file wrapper.
5. Determine whether any dependent claim's logic-event-names-the-next-object construct has express art support; if not, an obviousness challenge on that limitation should be built on the admitted NetExpert/4GL rule-set prior art plus the patent's own decision-tree framing.