US 7013478

I'll search for authoritative information on US 7013478.

Let me get the claim text and check for any 2026 litigation.

US 7,013,478 — Verification and Summary

Important caveat up front: I was able to confirm the bibliographic record and abstract, but the authoritative full text available to me is truncated mid‑specification (it ends at the FIG. 7b discussion) — the "What is claimed is" section was not served. I therefore cannot quote the literal independent claim language of this patent, and I will not reconstruct it from memory. The claim overview below is explicitly labeled as specification‑derived, not verbatim. Treat it as a working characterization to be verified against the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search full‑text record.

1. Bibliographic data (from the authoritative Google Patents record for US7013478B1, fetched 2026‑10‑01)

2. Abstract (as published)

"A method and an apparatus suggests programs for viewing by a subscriber. Terminals installed at a subscriber's home and at central locations, such as bookstores, video rental stores and libraries, provide responsive or intelligent search functions to suggest programs for viewing according to a subscriber's viewing preferences. Responsive searching includes posing questions to and receiving answers from the subscribers. Intelligent searching includes gathering historical data, such as the subscriber's history of programs watched. The programs include videotapes, videodiscs, television programs and electronic books. Subscribers indicate their selection and order the programs using a menu system. An automated billing system tracks the programs ordered."

This is consistent with the "Definitions" block of the granted text, which describes responsive analysis (mood, personal profile, category/genre, actor, year preference, standard rating selected from menus and used as search keys against a program database of abstracts) and "intelligent" analysis (passive historical data gathering, analysis/weighting algorithms, prioritization and menu positioning of suggestions).

3. Overview of the independent claims — SPECIFICATION‑DERIVED, NOT VERBATIM

Because I could not retrieve the claim set, the following describes the subject matter the independent claims are directed to, based on the patent's own statement of what "the invention provides" and on the description of the FIG. 11–14 menu flows:

• Terminal/apparatus claim(s). A terminal (expressly a set‑top terminal, but alternatively a kiosk/terminal at a video store, library, or bookstore) that receives incoming program/control information signals, stores menu templates and data in local memory, has a processor and a user interface (e.g., alpha‑numeric remote control, keyboard, or soft keyboard), generates menu screens on a TV/monitor, and suggests programs to the subscriber. The suggestion function is claimed in two flavors: a responsive mode (the terminal poses questions or presents subjective descriptors such as mood, program type, category/genre, actor, year, rating; the subscriber's entries are used as search keys against a program database to produce a list of suggested programs) and an intelligent/passive mode (the terminal records the subscriber's viewing history and applies analysis and weighting algorithms to propose, prioritize, and position suggested programs in the menu). The terminal is also remotely reprogrammable via the incoming signal (FIG. 10a/10b memory structures), and supports ordering of selected programs, with billing/tracking of orders (FIG. 14 ordering/preview menu).
• Method claim(s). A counterpart method of suggesting programs to a subscriber via such a terminal — receiving/defining subscriber preference entries through menus, correlating them (or correlating stored historical/program‑watched data) against stored program data/abstracts, and suggesting the matching programs, typically as a displayable menu of suggested titles with a selection/ordering step.

Identification of the specific independent claim numbers, and their exact scope and count, cannot be stated with confidence from the material I have. Related family documents I encountered (e.g., the European counterpart EP 0 673 582 B1, whose summary text states the object "is met by an apparatus according to claim 1 and a method according to claim 33") indicate the family follows an apparatus/method claim pairing, but I have not verified that US 7,013,478 uses the same numbering.

4. CAFC 2026 dockets — result of the search

• I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket (2026 or otherwise) involving US 7,013,478. I state this as "not found," not as a certification that none exists; a live PACER/CAFC docket query would be needed for certainty.
• This is consistent with the patent's status: Expired – Lifetime as of the 2012‑12‑09 anticipated expiration, which materially limits the prospect of live 2026 appellate activity.
• Do not be misled by false positives for the string "7013478":
  • 2016 WL 7013478 (N.D. Ill., Nov. 30, 2016) — a Westlaw citation, in Clearlamp, LLC v. LKQ Corp. It has nothing to do with the patent.
  • "US B1 7013478" appearing in the search‑report/family annex of at least two unrelated international applications (e.g., WO2012104855 and EP 2 068 555 A1) — citation noise in family lists, not litigation.
  • Several hits in PTAB/PTACTS petition papers are about unrelated patents (e.g., the "Herz" references and the Cox/Silverman/Arimilli/IPR petitions); "Cox" there refers to a prior‑art reference author, not to Cox Communications as this patent's assignee. The coincidence with the assignee name is not evidence of a case on this patent.

5. Uncertainty summary

If you need the verbatim independent claims, the next step is to pull the full‑text claim set from USPTO PatentCenter for application 09/321,569 or the granted patent US 7,013,478, or from the patent PDF (patentimages for US7013478).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7013478 across patent litigation databases.

The generic search returned mostly noise. Let me query patent-specific litigation databases directly.

Based on the searches I was able to run (I hit the tool-call limit before exhausting every database), here is what I can and cannot confirm about litigation involving US patent 7,013,478 (as written in the request — "7013478").

Bottom line

I was not able to verify any specific, named lawsuit asserting U.S. Patent No. 7,013,478 from the sources reached. Every search hit for the string "7013478" that came back was either unrelated noise or a citation to some other proceeding:

• 2016 WL 7013478 — a Westlaw citation for Clearlamp, LLC v. LKQ Corp. (N.D. Ill.), unrelated to the patent.
• Brazilian court docket 7013478-66.2020.8.22.0001 (TJRO) — unrelated.
• ABS vessel class number 7013478.
• Patent-family-table references listing US 7013478 as a family member of other applications (not litigation).

None of these is litigation over this patent. So, on the record available to me, no litigation involving US 7,013,478 can be confirmed.

What the record does show (ownership — relevant to who could sue)

From the Google Patents bibliographic data for US 7,013,478 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7013478/en):

• Title: "Method and apparatus for interactive program suggestion"
• Inventors: John S. Hendricks, Alfred E. Bonner, Richard E. Wunderlich
• Priority date: 1992-12-09; filed: 1999-05-28; granted: 2006-03-14
• Anticipated expiration: 2012-12-09; status: Expired – Lifetime
• Assignees (chronological):
  • Original: Sedna Patent Services LLC
  • 2004-10-11: assigned from Discovery Communications, Inc. → Sedna Patent Services, LLC
  • 2008-11-11: assigned from Sedna Patent Services, LLC → Cox Communications, Inc. (current assignee)

This ownership trail is the most useful lead: this patent sits in the well-known Hendricks/Discovery "program delivery system" family, and it passed through Sedna Patent Services LLC, a patent-assertion entity. Entities in that position (Sedna, and later Cox) are the parties who would plausibly have asserted it. However, I want to be explicit that I did not confirm any asserted case for '478 — I am flagging the ownership history only as context, not as evidence of a suit over this number.

What I am not able to tell you

• I did not find a docket in the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, or Justia connecting case numbers, plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, or filing dates to US 7,013,478.
• Because the searches I ran returned no '478-specific docket, I cannot responsibly supply plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case-number/filing-date/outcome fields for this patent. Supplying those would require fabricating them, which I won't do.

Recommended verification steps (to nail this down)

If you need a definitive answer, query these directly (my searches were cut off before reaching them):

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search by patent number 7,013,478).
2. CourtListener / RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com (party/docket search on "7,013,478" and on assignees "Sedna Patent Services" and "Cox Communications").
3. Lex Machina / Docket Alarm / RPX Insight — patent-number search returns the plaintiff, defendant, court, and case number.
4. PACER — confirm any candidate docket.
5. PTAB (PTABE2E / PTAB Proceedings) — check whether '478 was ever challenged in an IPR/PGR/CBM (different from district-court litigation but often relevant).

A useful cross-check: search for the Sedna Patent Services portfolio cases (the family this patent belongs to) and then confirm whether '478 specifically was pleaded in any of those complaints. That is the most likely place a '478 assertion would appear, but I have not verified it.

If you'd like, I can run a focused follow-up on the Sedna portfolio dockets to try to pin down whether '478 was ever asserted, once tool access is available again.

I'll start from the structured data (which reports no AIA proceedings) and then search the web to confirm or surface anything ODP hasn't indexed.

Initial searches surfaced several "’701 patents" that are unrelated (Carucel's 7,xxx,701; US 11,620,701). Let me narrow to this specific patent number and to Sedna/Cox's known disputes.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 7,013,478 ("Method and apparatus for interactive program suggestion")

Bottom line up front: I found no AIA trial proceeding — IPR, PGR, or CBM — directed at US 7,013,478. The structured PTAB block in this prompt (sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal) returns zero AIA trials, and my web sweeps did not surface any unindexed filing either. Everything below is written with that null result front and center, because for a defendant the absence plus the patent's legal status is the whole story.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA proceedings on file: 0 (0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials) — the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, and the reason is almost certainly that it reached the end of its term before the AIA trial regime became an attractive tool: Google Patents records the legal status as "Expired - Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2012-12-09, and the current assignee is not a litigating NPE but Cox Communications Inc. (assignment from Sedna Patent Services, LLC recorded 2008-11-11). The defensive posture this yields is not "hardened patent" or "claims canceled" — it is "no PTAB record, and a patent whose term has apparently lapsed; the challenge is now a term/standing question, not a validity question."

Proceedings on file

Because there is no proceeding, there is no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no panel, no settlement, and no PTAB appeal to report. I will not manufacture a docket number to fill this section.

What I searched, and the false positives I ruled out

My searches for "’701 patent" in the PTAB petitions corpus returned several hits that are different patents and must not be conflated with US 7,013,478:

• Carucel Investments' "’701 patent" (a wireless/mobile-network patent, continuation of App. 09/401,584, priority 1995-06-02) — asserted in Carucel Investments LP v. Fiat Chrysler et al., N.D. Tex. 2018. The petitions themselves list U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,221,904 / 7,979,023 / 8,463,177 / 8,718,543 as the related Carucel family. Not this patent.
• US 11,620,701 (Jacky Benmoha; asserted by Intercurrency Software) — an unrelated 2023-era patent.
• US 8,340,701 / US 6,... 701 and various "701" petition exhibits — unrelated.

The real US 7,013,478 surfaces only in citation lists and foreign search reports (e.g., it appears as a family member of US 2002/0042923 A1 in the EPO search report for EP 2 068 555; it appears in Justia "referenced by" tables for later media-guidance patents). That citation traffic reflects the patent's technical prominence in the interactive program guide / program recommendation art — not litigation or PTAB attack activity.

Caveat on verification: I could not run an exhaustive PTAB E2E / Patent Center query in this session. A null result from ODP plus public search is strong but not a substitute for a direct docket pull. See "Recommended next steps."

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Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled, sustained, or untested? — Every claim of US 7,013,478 is untested at the PTAB. No independent or dependent claim has been canceled, and none has been confirmed by the Board. I have deliberately not reproduced a claim set here, because the authoritative text supplied to me (the Google Patents record and specification excerpts) does not include the claim listing and I will not guess at claim counts or independent-claim structure. For a defendant, that means there is no IPR-based invalidity holding to cite and no statutory estoppel to leverage — but also no adverse PTAB precedent hardening the claims against you.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2). Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no "raised or reasonably could have raised" ground that is now foreclosed. Any invalidity theory you want to run — § 102, § 103, § 112, on any art — remains fully available to you in district court and could still be brought to the PTAB (subject to the timing and status constraints below). Conversely, you cannot borrow anyone else's estoppel-laden win.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern exists because there is no petitioner. There is no defensive-aggregator trail (no Unified Patents / RPX-filed petition on this patent appears in the data). And there is no PTAB-appeal pattern — with no FWD, there is no Sedna v. ... or Cox v. ... Federal Circuit appeal arising from an AIA trial on this patent. Note the ownership arc matters for predicting behavior: the patent was prosecuted by Discovery Communications, Inc., assigned to Sedna Patent Services, LLC (recorded 2004-10-11 / 2004), and then assigned to Cox Communications, Inc. (recorded 2008-11-11). Sedna was the active patent-assertion vehicle; Cox is the owner of record today, which changes the tactical posture — a cable operator holding a 1992-priority program-suggestion patent is a very different assertion risk than a dedicated monetization entity.

The term problem dominates everything. The structured data states "Expired - Lifetime" with anticipated expiration 2012-12-09. If that date is right, the patent's enforceability window closed over a decade ago, and under 35 U.S.C. § 286 even the six-year back-damages lookback (which would have run to roughly 2018-12-09) has also passed. That, more than any validity theory, is your defense. Two honest caveats: (1) "anticipated expiration" is Google's derived field, not an official USPTO legal conclusion (Google says so on its own face), and (2) a pre-AIA-chain patent's term can be driven by a terminal disclaimer to a parent rather than the nominal 20-year date — so the exact expiry should be confirmed against the patent's term/terminal-disclaimer record in Patent Center before anyone stakes a case on 2012-12-09. Even under the most generous reading, no PTAB challenge was ever filed.

Why no IPR? A structural explanation. US 7,013,478 has a 1992-12-09 priority date and a 1999-05-28 filing date, making it a pre-AIA patent. That forecloses Post-Grant Review entirely (PGR applies only to patents filed on or after the AIA first-inventor-to-file date of 2013-03-16). Covered Business Method review was theoretically available for certain pre-AIA patents until the CBM sunset on 2020-09-16, but a television program-suggestion patent would face a hard fight on the "financial product or service" eligibility threshold — the only financial hook in the disclosure is the incidental "automated billing system tracks the programs ordered." So the realistic window for an AIA trial was IPR, and by the time IPR petitioning became routine practice (2013 onward), the patent was already at or near expiry — which is precisely the period when the economic incentive to file a petition evaporates (a petitioner spends $500k+ to invalidate a patent that is about to lapse on its own). That is the likeliest reason there is no docket to report.

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null result directly — don't rely on this summary alone. Run the patent number against these primary sources:

   • PTAB E2E / PTAB Public Information (proceeding search + petition search): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ — search "7,013,478" and "7013478," and also search by patent owner "Sedna Patent Services" and "Cox Communications" to catch any proceeding indexed under the owner rather than the number.
   • USPTO PTAB Decisions page: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions — for any non-AIA (e.g., inter partes reexamination, which predates IPR and would not appear as an "AIA trial") or ex parte reexamination determination.
   • USPTO Patent Center for US 7,013,478: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov — pull the term/terminal disclaimer record and any reexamination certificate. This is the single most important document for the "is it expired?" question, and it is the item Google Patents labels an assumption.

2. If the patent is genuinely expired: the defense is dispositive and cheap — cite the Patent Center term record and 35 U.S.C. § 286 (six-year damages lookback) and § 271/§ 154 term limits. No PTAB petition is worth filing against an expired patent; the Board can institute on an expired claim, but you would be paying for a validity holding you don't need. Note also that a patent owner cannot amend claims in an IPR after expiration, so any IPR would be a pure invalidity exercise.

3. If the patent is not expired (i.e., the 2012-12-09 date is wrong or a terminal disclaimer runs later): then the absence of any IPR is itself the signal that this patent has historically not been a high-value assertion target — but that also means no one has built the invalidity record for you. You would be a first mover, and § 315(b)'s one-year bar from service of a complaint would set your filing clock. Do not assume any prior art or claim-construction work exists at the Board for this patent; you would be starting from scratch.

4. Pull the district-court history before assuming the patent is dormant. A null PTAB record does not mean the patent was never asserted — many defendants litigate validity in court without ever filing an IPR (especially for pre-AIA patents facing § 315(b) timing issues). Check CourtListener RECAP (https://www.courtlistener.com) and a commercial docket tool for "7,013,478" and for Sedna Patent Services as plaintiff. If you find prior § 282 invalidity rulings, those are your best non-PTAB leverage; if you find a § 315(b)-triggering complaint served more than a year ago, that forecloses an IPR you might otherwise consider.

5. Watch the sibling patents, not just this one. US 7,013,478 sits in a large 1992-12-09 / 1993-12-02 Discovery–Sedna family (e.g., US 5,798,785 "Terminal for suggesting programs offered on a television program delivery system," US 5,600,573, US 5,600,364, US 6,463,585, US 7,073,187, US 7,168,084, US 7,269,841, US 7,509,270, US 7,849,393). If you are facing a program-guide or program-recommendation demand letter, verify which family member is actually asserted — the specific patent number controls, and Google Patents' citation tables make these numbers easy to confuse. A demand citing US 7,013,478 and a demand citing a 2006–2010-era sibling require completely different responses.

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Sources and links

• Authoritative patent record (as supplied): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7013478/en — legal status "Expired - Lifetime"; anticipated expiration 2012-12-09; filed 1999-05-28; granted 2006-03-14; priority 1992-12-09; assignee chain Discovery Communications → Sedna Patent Services, LLC → Cox Communications, Inc.
• USPTO PTAB proceeding/petition search (for verification): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/
• USPTO PTAB decisions: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions
• USPTO Patent Center (term / terminal disclaimer / reexam record): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov
• CourtListener (district-court and Federal Circuit history): https://www.courtlistener.com

Confidence statement: High confidence that no AIA trial proceeding is on file for US 7,013,478 (structured ODP data says zero; public search surfaces none). Moderate confidence in the 2012-12-09 expiration — it is Google's derived field and should be confirmed against the Patent Center term record. Zero confidence in any claim-level PTAB outcome, because no such outcome exists to report; I have not invented one.

I'll research this patent's assignment history and ownership chain. Let me start with several searches.

Good — I've found key assignment documents. Let me dig deeper into the specifics.

Let me look for the specific reel/frame numbers and the correspondent of record.

Ownership Analysis — US 7,013,478 B1 ("Method and apparatus for interactive program suggestion")

Data note up front: In this session I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov record pages directly (tool budget exhausted after the searches below). A full-text search on that site is at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and the legacy front end at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Consequently I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers for this patent's recordings, and I will not invent them. The dates, parties, and conveyances below are grounded in (a) the Google Patents legal‑events block for US 7,013,478 that you supplied and (b) corroborating recorded‑assignment PDFs and related dockets that surfaced in search. Where only Google Patents supports a fact, I say so.

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Inventors

All three named inventors appear to be Discovery Communications, Inc. personnel at the time of the 1992/1993 priority filing (the "Hendricks patents" family):

The inventor residence cities (Potomac/Bethesda, MD and Alpharetta, GA) are confirmed from sibling family member US 7,269,841, which carries the identical inventor set and a Sedna assignee line.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence surfaced of inventors departing Discovery within 12 months of filing, and no post-1999 inventor reassignment/retention agreements appeared in the sources reviewed. Note that this is a long-lived continuation family (priority 1992‑12‑09; the instant application 09/321,569 was filed 1999‑05‑28): the inventors were inside Discovery for the entire prosecution-era span, which is the opposite of the "inventors bail out early" fire‑sale tell. Not present. (Caveat: I could not verify individual employment end‑dates; treat "no departures" as "no evidence," not as a confirmed negative.)

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Original assignee

Two different entities are implicated, so it is worth separating them:

• Assignee as printed on the issued patent: Sedna Patent Services, LLC (Philadelphia, PA). This is what Google Patents reports as "Original Assignee."
• True original assignee at the 1992/1993 priority date and the 1999 filing of 09/321,569: Discovery Communications, Inc. (Bethesda, MD; later One Discovery Place, Silver Spring, MD). The whole family issued to Discovery (e.g., US 5,559,549; US 6,052,554) before the 2004 transfer.

Discovery Communications, Inc. — business: cable television programming (Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, etc.), i.e., a content company, not a set‑top/hardware manufacturer. Status: operating (today part of Warner Bros. Discovery). Whether Discovery "shipped a product embodying the claims": Discovery led an early‑1990s interactive‑TV development effort, but no evidence was found that Discovery commercially deployed the claimed menu‑driven set‑top program‑suggestion system itself — the technology was monetized through licensing rather than a Discovery‑branded product. Treat "ships a product embodying the claims" as unclear/likely no.

Sedna Patent Services, LLC — business: patent holding/licensing only. It is a Delaware LLC whose recorded address, 1500 Market Street, 27th Floor, West Tower, Philadelphia, PA 19102, was Comcast's then‑corporate headquarters (Centre Square West) — a concrete tell that Sedna was a Comcast‑affiliated monetization vehicle for the Discovery patent estate (a Discovery/Comcast venture). Status: acquired/absorbed (its portfolio was dispersed — see below). This entity is the NPE‑pattern center of gravity for the chain.

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Assignment timeline

Recorded events for US 7,013,478 as reported by Google Patents legal events, corroborated by the assignment PDFs cited below. Reel/frame numbers were not retrievable in this session.

• 2004-09-14 (executed) / recorded 2004-10-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Discovery Communications, Inc., a Delaware corporation, One Discovery Place, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
  • Assignee: Sedna Patent Services, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, 1500 Market Street, 27th Floor, West Tower, Philadelphia, PA 19102
  • Correspondent: Eamon J. Wall / Wall & Tong, LLP, 595 Shrewsbury Avenue, Suite 100, Shrewsbury, NJ 07702 (USPTO Customer No. 26,291; the Sedna mail address is also client no. 56015). The recording recites "Sedna Patent Services, LLC, assigns of the entire right, title and interest in the applications identified in EXHIBIT A," signed by William D. McCall, Chief Executive Officer (of Sedna), executed Oct. 12, 2004. Flag: Wall & Tong recur as the Sedna correspondent of record (also on the 2009 change‑of‑power‑of‑attorney), i.e., a repeat player across the Sedna portfolio — though I could confirm recurrence only within the Sedna family, not on a second link of this specific chain.
  • Context: Monetization — an operating media company spins a large patent estate into a licensing‑only LLC (the classic operating‑company‑to‑NPE transfer); the counterparty address is the acquirer's cable‑operator HQ, indicating a joint monetization vehicle rather than an arm's‑length sale.
  • Source: recorded assignment / power‑of‑attorney PDFs (archive.org copies of USPTO filings for application 09/396,428 referencing the Sept. 14, 2004 assignment).

• 2008 (executed date not retrieved) / recorded 2008-11-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Sedna Patent Services, LLC
  • Assignee: Cox Communications, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Portfolio acquisition — an operating cable operator takes the estate (a multi‑patent, bulk assignment; the Plainsite index for this Sedna→Cox assignment lists dozens of applications/patents, so this is a portfolio‑level transaction, not a single‑patent deal).
  • Source: Google Patents legal event "Assigned to COX COMMUNICATIONS, INC. … Assignors: SEDNA PATENT SERVICES, LLC" and the bulk assignment index at plainsite.org (assignment id 4326962).

No further recorded assignments appear after 2008. The patent shows "Anticipated expiration 2012-12-09" and status Expired – Lifetime, with Cox Communications, Inc. as current assignee.

Related but out-of-chain fact worth logging: other members of the same Sedna estate branched to Comcast IP Holdings I, LLC (e.g., EP 1,226,713 shows a 2012 total transfer to Comcast IP Holdings I, LLC, 1201 N. Market St., Wilmington, DE) — consistent with Sedna being a Discovery/Comcast vehicle whose assets were later split between Comcast and Cox.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7013478
    1992 : Priority application filed by Discovery
    1999 : Continuation application filed
    2004 : Assigned to Sedna Patent Services LLC
    2006 : Patent granted to Sedna
    2008 : Assigned to Cox Communications Inc
    2012 : Patent term expires

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (partial).
   The 2004-10-11 recording moves the patent from operating company Discovery (DE corp) to Sedna Patent Services, LLC — a Delaware LLC whose name carries a licensing suffix ("Patent Services"), which has no products in commerce, and whose recorded address (1500 Market St., 27th Fl., W. Tower, Philadelphia) is a cable‑operator corporate HQ rather than a law/registered‑agent service. Name + no‑products + single‑purpose LLC + HQ address = multiple tells. Evidence: the 2004 assignment recital naming Discovery as assignor and Sedna as assignee (executed 2004‑09‑14).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT (against the named lists).
   Neither Sedna Patent Services nor Cox Communications appears among Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities. However, court interrogatories (D. Del. case 38499) show "Sedna Services LLC" was tasked with "investigating whether Comcast's / Charter's / Motorola's products … infringe patents owned by third parties" — i.e., Sedna functioned as an assertion‑support services entity even though it is not on the public NPE rosters. Treat the roster match as not present, the assertion‑services activity as a secondary data point.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / PARTIAL.
   Wall & Tong, LLP (Eamon J. Wall), Shrewsbury, NJ, Customer No. 26,291/56015 is the recurring correspondent for Sedna: it appears on the Oct. 2004 power‑of‑attorney/assignment materials and again on a 2009 notice regarding change of power of attorney (assignee‑intervened). That is one attorney/firm tracking the Sedna estate. I could not retrieve the correspondent for the 2008 Sedna→Cox recording, so I cannot confirm a same‑correspondent link across both chain entries. One appearance is not a finding; the Sedna recurrence is suggestive but incomplete here.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through ≥3 chained LLCs) — NOT PRESENT.
   Only two recorded transfers, four years apart (2004 → 2008). No rapid chain of intermediate LLCs.

5. Pre-litigation transfer (within 6 months of first suit) — UNCLEAR.
   No infringement suit naming US 7,013,478 surfaced in the sources reviewed, so I cannot date a "first suit" or measure it against the 2008 recording. (The known related litigation involves other patents — e.g., AT&T v. Cox, D. Del. 14‑1106, filed 2014, and Cox's 2015 IPRs against AT&T — where Cox was a defendant/petitioner, not the patent owner asserting this patent.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
   No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Discovery, Sedna, or Cox was found; the Discovery→Sedna transfer reads as a deliberate monetization carve‑out, not a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — PRESENT (partial).
   Discovery (an operating media company) placed its patents into Sedna, a monetization vehicle tied to Comcast's HQ, and Sedna performed third‑party infringement investigations (D. Del. 38499 interrogatories re Sedna's role investigating Comcast/Charter/Motorola products). Transferring an operating company's patents to a licensing/servicing entity that investigates competitors' products is the classic privateering/monetization posture. Evidence: the 2004 Discovery→Sedna assignment and the cited interrogatories.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
   The chain terminates at Cox Communications, Inc., a cable operator — not RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been "neutralized" by a defensive aggregator. (Behaviorally, Cox's later position was defensively oriented — it filed IPRs against AT&T patents after being sued — but Cox is not a defensive aggregator by definition.)

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain contains one documented operating‑company‑to‑licensing‑vehicle transfer — Discovery Communications → Sedna Patent Services, LLC, recorded 2004‑10‑11 (executed 2004‑09‑14), a no‑products Delaware LLC at Comcast's then‑HQ address with a "Patent Services" suffix — reinforced by evidence that Sedna performed third‑party infringement investigations (privateering tell). That is one strong signal plus one moderate signal, which caps the call at moderate rather than high. Confidence is deliberately not higher because the chain then re‑terminates at an operating company: the Sedna → Cox Communications assignment recorded 2008‑11‑11 puts the patent back with a product‑and‑service‑shipping cable operator, no suit on this specific patent was surfaced, and the patent has since expired (2012‑12‑09) — so the NPE characterization describes the 2004–2008 Sedna window, not today's owner.

Verify the recordings (and obtain the reel/frame fields I could not retrieve) at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 7,013,478; legacy interface: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Limitations: (i) reel/frame numbers and the 2008 correspondent were not retrievable in this session and are left blank rather than estimated; (ii) the "presence" of Sedna's assertion/privateering activity rests on Delaware docket interrogatory text, not on an assignment document; (iii) employment end‑dates for the individual inventors were not verified.

I'll research the prior art cited against US 7,013,478. Let me run several targeted searches.

I have the citing side but need US 7,013,478's own cited-reference list. Let me target the citation tables directly.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,013,478 B1 ("Method and apparatus for interactive program suggestion")

0. Search outcome and one unavoidable limitation, stated up front

You asked me to "look at each patent citation for 7013478." I must be direct about what I could and could not obtain within this session's search budget:

• I did not retrieve the front-page "References Cited" (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications) block of US 7,013,478 itself. The authoritative full text supplied to me is truncated at the FIG. 7b discussion and never reaches the front page's reference list or the claim set.
• What my searches returned for the string "7013478" was almost entirely the reverse citation traffic — i.e., later patents that cite US 7,013,478 as background (US 8,264,334; US 7,512,545; US 9,667,903; US 8,108,245; US 9,053,640; US 10,083,459; US 9,407,854; US 12,204,958; US 7,584,214). Forward citations are not prior art to this patent and I will not present them as such.
• Per the operating rule not to fabricate identifiers, I will not invent a reference list. Below I give (a) every reference I could actually confirm with an authoritative citation and a § 102 analysis, (b) the critical-date framework that governs which references even qualify, and (c) the exact place to pull the definitive list.

I also flag one contradiction found in the record: the Unified Patents portal entry for US-7013478-B1 lists a priority date of 1992-12-08, whereas the authoritative Google Patents record and the family's other members use 1992-12-09. Per your rule that the full patent text controls over search results, I treat 1992-12-09 as authoritative and note the 1992-12-08 rendering as a data-entry discrepancy in a third-party database (worth reconciling before any § 102 calendar is built, because it shifts every critical date by one day).

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1. The framework that governs everything: which critical date applies?

US 7,013,478 is a pre-AIA patent (application 09/321,569, filed 1999-05-28; priority claimed to 1992-12-09). All § 102 analysis therefore runs under pre-AIA §§ 102(a), (b), (e) and (g). But the single most important variable is whether the claims actually earn the 1992-12-09 priority date.

Why this matters enormously here: the '478 specification is a 1992-era disclosure. The genuinely dangerous third-party art in this field (Strubbe, the Herz family, Sony's learning-VCR art, etc.) is 1993–1996 vintage. Whether it is prior art at all to '478 turns on priority entitlement — and priority entitlement for this family has been litigated and disputed. In the ITC Section 337 proceeding captioned around the sibling Hendricks disclosures, the record shows extensive argument over whether "Hendricks '4284" (WO 94/14284) discloses the relied-upon limitations, and over the scope the 1992 priority disclosure actually supports (see the ITC publication at https://www.usitc.gov/publications/337/pub4815.pdf, discussing the "Hendricks '4284 application" and the "weighting 'most watched' programs" disclosure). Any § 102 attack should lead with the priority-entitlement question.

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2. Confirmed references with § 102 analysis

Confidence is stated per entry. "Claim mapping" uses the specification-derived claim characterization from the earlier section (responsive-search claims; intelligent/historical-data claims; terminal/menu claims; ordering/billing claims) — not verbatim claim language, which I could not retrieve.

2.1 US 5,798,785 A — the sibling/parent in the same family

Description: The originating disclosure of this family — a reprogrammable set-top terminal for a television program delivery system that suggests programs to a subscriber. It shares the '478 specification almost verbatim (menu templates, program control information signal, response/intelligent suggestion, billing).

§ 102 analysis — this reference is not § 102 prior art to '478, and that is the analytically important point:

• § 102(e): pre-AIA § 102(e) requires a U.S. patent "granted on an application … by another." The inventive entity of '785 (Hendricks/Bonner/Wunderlich) is the same entity as '478. Same inventorship → not "by another" → no § 102(e) rejection available.
• § 102(b): '785 issued 1998-08-25, which is less than one year before the 1999-05-28 filing. Even setting the priority question aside, it does not clear the one-year statutory bar and so is not § 102(b) art.
• § 102(a)/(g): unavailable — same inventive entity/own work.

Bottom line: '785 and '478 are same-family, same-inventor documents. The examiner could not use '785 against '478 on § 102, and neither can you. Any analysis that treats '785 as anticipating '478 is wrong on the law. Expect this confusion in third-party citation tables (e.g., WIPO/PTO family annexes commonly list them adjacently — see e.g. the family annex at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ab/97/0b/0c525006a33422/WO2012104855A1.pdf).

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2.2 WO 94/14284 A1 — the PCT publication of that same sibling (the real § 102 exposure)

Description: The international publication of the family's program-suggestion terminal. Per the ITC record, it discloses suggestion of programs to a subscriber and weights "most watched" programs more highly.

§ 102 analysis — this is the family document with genuine § 102(b) teeth:

• If the '478 claims earn the 1992-12-09 priority date, WO 94/14284 published after that date and is not prior art.
• If the '478 claims are held to be supported only by the 1999-05-28 filing, then WO 94/14284 was published 1994-06-23 — more than one year before 1999-05-28 → it is § 102(b) prior art as a printed publication.
• Critical nuance many analyses miss: pre-AIA § 102(b) has no exception for the inventor's own publication. That the applicant authored it is irrelevant to § 102(b). The only escape is the priority claim — which is exactly why priority entitlement is the decisive battleground.

Claim mapping (preliminary): WO 94/14284's disclosure would most plausibly bear on the intelligent/historical-data suggestion claims (weighting of most-watched programs) and the terminal/menu-generation claims. I cannot map to specific claim numbers because the '478 claim set was not retrievable.

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2.3 WO 94/13107 A1 and CA 2345161 A1 — same family, same analysis

Source: family tables at https://patents.google.com/patent/US9667903.

§ 102 analysis: Identical logic to §2.2. Not prior art if the 1992 priority holds; § 102(b) art (more than one year before 1999-05-28) if it does not. These documents are directed to the terminal hardware/menu-delivery side (templates, decompression, program control information signal) and would map to the terminal/apparatus claims rather than the suggestion-algorithm claims.

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2.4 US 5,223,924 — Strubbe (the most on-point third-party reference I could confirm)

Description: Automatically correlates a viewer's stated preferences against a stored T.V. program information database — i.e., the archetype of the '478 "responsive" search mode (preference entries used as search keys against a program database).

§ 102 analysis:

• If '478 loses the 1992 priority: issued 1993-06-29, more than one year before 1999-05-28 → clear § 102(b) art. It would be the lead anticipation reference against the responsive-search claims.
• If '478 keeps 1992-12-09: issued after the priority date, so not § 102(b); § 102(e) is the only avenue and it requires Strubbe's underlying U.S. application to have been filed before the '478 invention date (~1992-12-09). I could not verify the Strubbe filing date in this session — treat the § 102(e) avenue as unverified.

Claim mapping (preliminary): the corpus of responsive-search claims (posing preference questions / selecting subjective descriptors such as category, actor, year, rating, and correlating them against a program database of abstracts). I flag that Strubbe discloses preference-to-database correlation but not, on its face, the dual-mode (responsive and passive-historical) architecture or the menu-position prioritization described in the '478 specification — so a § 102 anticipation case would likely need to be pitched at the narrower responsive-search claims.

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2.5 US 5,444,499 — Sony (relevant only if priority fails)

Description: An AV apparatus that learns a history of user control — the closest third-party analogue to the '478 "intelligent/passive" mode (gathering historical data to infer preference).

§ 102 analysis:

• Not § 102(e) art even if priority fails: filed 1993-01-08, after a 1992-12-09 invention date.
• Not § 102(a) art (no pre-1992 publication).
• § 102(b) art only if the '478 claims lose the 1992 priority: issued 1995-08-22, more than one year before 1999-05-28. Under that premise it bears on the historical-data/"learning" claims.

Caveat: I confirmed this reference exists in the citation network of the Sedna/Discovery family table; I could not confirm it appears on the '478 front page. Labeled accordingly.

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3. References that are frequently mistaken for prior art to '478 (and are not)

Because you asked me to look at "each patent citation for 7013478," it is worth naming the false positives that the citation ecosystem generates:

The EPO family-annex lists (WO 2012104855A1, WO 2008116305A1, EP 2 068 555, JP 2007501791, JP 2010534352) are the source of most of the "7013478" noise — they are family-member tables, not prior-art citations. Do not treat them as art.

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4. What I could not do, and how to close the gap

The exact deliverable you asked for — "for each reference [on the '478 front page], give full citation, publication/filing date, brief description, and which claim(s) it potentially anticipates" — cannot be completed responsibly without the front-page reference list and the claim set. Both were outside the material available to me. I have given every reference I could independently confirm, with § 102 analysis, rather than pad the list with invented entries.

To obtain the definitive list (in priority order):

1. Patent images PDF front page — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US7013478.pdf (the "(56) References Cited" block is on page 1–2; the "What is claimed is" block is at the end). This is the fastest authoritative source.
2. USPTO Patent Center — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov, application 09/321,569: gives the examiner's cited references (PTO-892/1449 forms), the priority/benefit claims, and any terminal disclaimer (which, as noted in the earlier sections, is the real driver of the 2012-12-09 expiration).
3. Google Patents "Patent Citations" panel — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7013478/en — scroll to Patent Citations (n) and Non-Patent Citations.
4. The prosecution file (if it survives) for App. 09/321,569 — the examiner's reasons for allowance will show which of the cited references actually mattered.

Heuristic to speed the manual pull: this family was prosecuted from a common 1992 specification, so the cited-reference lists of the siblings — US 5,798,785 and the related Sedna/Discovery filings — will heavily overlap the '478 list. Use them as a starting checklist, but verify each against the '478 front page before assigning § 102 weight.

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5. Confidence table

If you can supply the front-page "(56) References Cited" text or the claim set from the '478 PDF, I will produce the full reference-by-reference § 102 chart against the actual claim language — including, for each reference, the independent claim(s) and dependent claims it reaches, and the priority-entitlement argument that determines whether it counts at all.

I'll start by trying to locate the Prior Art / "References Cited" section for this patent, since the task directs me to build on it.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and the patent's own cited references, which are essential to a claim-by-claim § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,013,478 ("Method and apparatus for interactive program suggestion") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Grounding note — what "Prior Art section" I actually had

I need to flag a material gap up front, because it affects everything below. No dedicated "Prior Art" section was served to me with this prompt. The authoritative text I received (the Google Patents record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7013478/en) is truncated mid‑specification and contains only a bare "Prior art keywords" block (program / programs / viewer / subscriber / menu) — no "References Cited" list, no "Background" art discussion, and no claim set. The previously generated sections of this analysis reach the same conclusion: the literal claim text of US 7,013,478 was never retrieved.

Rather than fabricate a prior-art section, I reconstructed the art universe from three verifiable sources, and I label each below:

1. The applicant's own admitted prior art, recited verbatim in the sibling European counterpart EP 0 673 582 B1 (the "Background" discussion), which distinguishes WO 92/17027 and WO 91/00670. These are admissions against interest on the face of the family and are the most reliable art in this analysis.
2. The "References Cited" printed on the face of the parent US 5,798,785 (Hendricks et al., "Terminal for suggesting programs offered on a television program delivery system"), which I retrieved at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/39/8b/0c/cd7092022d0130/US5798785.pdf. Since '478 is a direct continuation in that chain, this is a fair proxy for the art of record in the family.
3. Field art that I placed from independent knowledge (Young, Strubbe, Graves, Von Kohorn, etc.). Each is flagged [not re-verified in this session] so you don't treat it as a docket-grade citation.

A contradiction to flag explicitly: the previously generated "Patent summary" said the '478 disclosure ends at the FIG. 7b discussion and that the claims were unavailable. In this session I located a USPTO file-wrapper text PDF for application Ser. No. 09/396,428 (https://archive.org/download/gov.uspto.patents.application.09396428/…) containing claims that use precisely this disclosure's vocabulary — "mood indicator information," "preview information," "responsive suggesting means," "intelligent suggesting means," "library unit," "suggesting titles corresponding with the matches." That is application 09/396,428, not 09/321,569. It is very likely a sibling continuation of the same specification, and it tells us how this family claimed the subject matter — but it is not the '478 claim set, and I will not present it as such.

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1. What has to be rendered obvious — the claim framework

Because the '478 claims are unavailable, I work from the invention as the specification states it (the "Definitions" block served to me), which maps onto the standard apparatus/method pairing this family used. The limitations in issue are:

The § 103 question is therefore not "was the set-top terminal known?" (it plainly was) but "was it obvious, as of the critical date, to combine (a) a menu-driven program-delivery terminal, (b) a stored program-abstract database searched by user-entered keys, and (c) a passive viewing-history profile with weighting, in one system that suggests and orders programs?"

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2. Governing law and critical dates

• Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies. The application was filed 1999-05-28, before the AIA first-to-file date of 2013-03-16. Prior art is therefore governed by pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e)/(g), and the Graham v. John Deere framework (scope/content of claims; differences from art; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations) plus KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations, known techniques, design/market incentives — TSM is not the sole test).
• Critical date(s). Priority runs to 1992-12-09 (Ser. No. 07/991,074, "Remote control for menu driven subscriber access to television programming") through the 1993-12-02 CIP (Ser. No. 08/160,281 → US 5,798,785) and the 1997-08-05 continuation (Ser. No. 08/906,469 → US 6,408,437). Subject matter gets the 1992-12-09 date only if supported by 07/991,074; the kiosk/bookstore/library embodiment appears to be later-added (CIP) matter. This is the single most important variable — a reference dated between 1992-12-09 and 1993-12-02 attacks the kiosk claims but not the core TV-suggestion claims.
• § 103(c) removes the applicant's own family. The '478 and its parents share all three inventors (Hendricks, Bonner, Wunderlich) and were commonly owned by Discovery Communications. Under pre-AIA § 103(c), a reference is not prior art for § 103 if it was commonly owned at the time the invention was made — and a reference must be "by another" to qualify at all. US 5,798,785, US 5,559,549, US 5,600,364, US 5,659,350, US 6,408,437 and the rest of the Hendricks estate therefore cannot be used as § 103 art against '478. The obviousness case must be built entirely from third-party art.

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3. The prior-art universe

Two of these deserve emphasis. Graves '344 is close to a complete answer for L2–L5, and Strubbe '924 is a clean L4 platform — passive viewing history mechanically converted into a re-ordered presentation of programming.

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4. The obviousness case, combination by combination

Combination A — the "responsive" (question/key-search) claims

Primary: Graves '344 + Reiter '578. Secondary: Young '121 / '189 for L1.

• Reiter '578 teaches the stored, attribute-coded program listing and the search-and-display-the-matches mechanic (L2).
• Graves '344 teaches accepting the viewer's stated preference ratings and comparing them against each program's content code to select programmes (L3), plus the display of a preferred list and solicitation of a viewer ranking (L5).
• Young '121/'189 supply the menu-template terminal with processor/memory and remote-cursor selection (L1).

Motivation: Reiter and Graves are in the identical field and address the identical problem — a viewer facing more channels than he can sample. Graves states the problem expressly ("the viewer is inundated with program choices"), and both use the same known technique (attribute-matching against a stored program record). Combining a searchable coded listing with a preference-rating front end is the predictable application of a known technique to a known structure. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416–17. Likely conclusion: obvious.

Combination B — the "intelligent" (passive history + weighting) claims

Primary: Strubbe '924 + Graves '344 + Young '189.

• Strubbe '924 supplies passive collection of viewing history and its conversion into a prioritised preferred-channel listing — i.e. L4's data-gathering half.
• Graves '344 supplies L4's weighting half: multiplying preference attributes by content-code values, accumulating a grade per programme, choosing the top subset, and adaptively updating weights as the viewer rates programmes (neural-network/backpropagation; claims 5–9).
• Young '189 supplies the menu terminal and menu-position presentation (L1, L4's "menu position").

Motivation: both references are directed to "selecting programs for presentation to a viewer based on preferences," so their combination is the combination of prior elements according to known methods to yield predictable results — a classic KSR rationale. There is also a strong design incentive: the '478 background itself recites the market pressure ("TV consumers wish to go from limited viewing choices to a variety of choices … and keep costs down"). That is a market-based motivation supplied by the applicant's own specification. Likely conclusion: obvious.

Combination C — the kiosk / bookstore / library claims (the CIP-era matter)

Primary: Graves '344 (+ WO 92/17027's viewer-statistics collection) + a video-catalogue kiosk/catalogue-search reference.

This is where the critical-date problem bites. If the kiosk embodiment is supported only by the 1993-12-02 CIP, then art published in 1993 — and even Graves '344's 1995 issuance — becomes available. Graves expressly contemplates applying the same preference/agreement apparatus to "news, video games, software, music, books," which is precisely the '478 kiosk-at-a-bookstore/library use case. A point-of-sale/video-catalogue terminal that searches stock by attribute is the ordinary commercial analogue. But note the honest weakness: I have not verified a specific pre-critical-date U.S. patent on a recommendation kiosk for books/videos, so this combination is the least well-grounded of the four and I flag it as incomplete pending a proper prior-art search.

Combination D — ordering and automated billing (L5)

Graves '344 (ranking/selection) + Von Kohorn '973/'592 (two-way audience response with central crediting/billing) + Young '121 (VCR control from the guide).

Ordering a suggested program from a menu and having the head end bill for it was routine pay-per-view practice by 1992; the menu already had the "go" button, and the terminal already reported upstream via the polling frame format described in the '478 specification (FIGS. 7a/7b). Combining a billing function with a selection function is the union of two known, related functions with no change in their respective principles. Likely conclusion: obvious.

Combination E — remote reprogramming of the terminal (L6)

The strongest available art here is the applicant's own parent family (US 5,798,785 / US 6,408,437, which claim the reprogrammable terminal itself). Those references are disqualified under pre-AIA § 103(c) as commonly-owned/not "by another." Third-party art on down-loadable menu formats and downloadable firmware in cable converters (e.g., the art cited on the face of '785, including Hallenbeck US 5,038,211 for in-band data insertion) would have to carry this limitation. I cannot complete this combination on the record available.

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5. Consolidated motivation-to-combine (KSR rationales)

1. Same field, same problem. Young, Reiter, Strubbe and Graves are all television program-selection systems addressing the "too many choices" problem. KSR permits combination where references are "from the same field of endeavor."
2. Predictable result. Attribute-key search over a stored program database (Reiter) plus a preference profile (Graves/Strubbe) yields, predictably, a ranked list of programmes — nothing more than the expected sum of the parts.
3. Known technique. Keyword/attribute matching against a coded database and weighting of matched attributes were well-known data-processing techniques amenable to the set-top processor already present.
4. Market/design incentive. The '478 specification itself supplies the motivation: consumers "wish to advance from cumbersome and inconvenient television to easy and convenient television and keep costs down," and "participants are already being bombarded with programming options." Where the applicant's own text articulates the demand, the incentive rationale is unusually clean.
5. Explicit art extension. Graves '344 itself extends its teaching beyond video to "books and the like," bridging the video suggestions of Combination B to the kiosk claims of Combination C without any hindsight reconstruction.

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6. Countervailing considerations — where the § 103 case is weak

• The examiner allowed these claims in 2006. The '478 issued 2006-03-14 out of a 1999 filing, after the examiner had the benefit of all the intervening art, including Graves, Strubbe, Herz (1998), and the entire 1990s recommendation literature. Every allowance over 14 years of prosecution is a data point against a "facile" obviousness conclusion. I have not seen the file history, so I cannot say what arguments or amendments produced the allowance — that is the first thing to pull.
• Likely obviousness-type double patenting, not § 103, drove the family. The reported anticipated expiration of 2012-12-09 is exactly 20 years from the 1992-12-09 priority application — not from the 1999-05-28 filing. [Inference, flagged:] that is the fingerprint of a terminal disclaimer under 37 C.F.R. § 1.321 tying '478's term to a family member. If so, the PTO found '478's claims not patentably distinct from the family's earlier claims — a finding about the applicant's own claims, which says nothing about third-party art but does suggest the claims were never independently tested against it. Note that a terminal disclaimer is not prior art and cannot ground a § 103 rejection.
• The "two-flavour" combination. The responsive (question-driven) and intelligent (passive-history) modes in a single terminal is the feature most likely to have supported allowance, because neither Graves (stated preferences) nor Strubbe (passive history) alone shows both in one box. The answer is that Graves itself blends stated and learned preferences (claims 2–9 read on updating the file from viewer ratings), so the combination is prefigured — but this is the strongest non-obviousness argument available to a patentee and should be tested against the actual claim language.
• No secondary considerations to rely on. As the earlier assignment analysis found, Discovery did not deploy a branded product embodying the claims and the patent was monetised through Sedna; there is little or no commercial-success, long-felt-need or licensing nexus evidence available to rebut prima facie obviousness.
• The patent is expired (anticipated 2012-12-09). This analysis is therefore academic unless the term record shows otherwise.

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7. Bottom line and confidence

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8. What to pull to make this conclusive

1. The '478 claim set — USPTO PatentCenter, application 09/321,569 (and the patent PDF at patentimages for US7013478). Nothing above substitutes for it.
2. The '478 file history — the examiner's reasons for allowance and any § 103 rejections/arguments. This determines whether the claims were "independently tested" or merely terminally disclaimed.
3. Filing dates and § 102(e) status for US 5,410,344 (Graves) and US 5,223,924 (Strubbe) — controlling for whether they reach the 1992-12-09 subject matter.
4. The term/terminal-disclaimer record — to confirm whether 2012-12-09 is the operative expiry (and thus whether any of this matters).
5. A real prior-art search for a pre-1994 recommendation kiosk (video/books) — the missing link for Combination C.

Caveat, stated plainly: I was unable to run the kiosk prior-art search or open the claim set before my tool budget expired. The combinations above are constructed from verified reference content and verified family provenance, but the claim-mapping is necessarily approximate, and I have not manufactured either a reference or a docket to fill a gap.