US 7043363

I'll verify the patent details against live sources, including any litigation/docket activity.

Let me verify the claims text and check for any 2026 docket activity.

Let me look for the remaining claim text and any recent 2026 docket activity.

US Patent 7,043,363 B2 — Verification and Summary

Bottom line: The patent is confirmed and its bibliographic data is well documented, but a few details (full text of some dependent claims, and any 2026 litigation) could not be fully corroborated. Specifics and caveats below.

1. Bibliographic data (confirmed against Google Patents, the issued-PDF cover page, and the USITC record)

Inventor-name caution: the USITC publication renders the second inventor as "Sebastian Norris," while Google Patents and the USPTO assignment records render it "Sebastian Nonis" (assignment records also show OCR-style variants "SEBATSIAN"/"SEBASTIAN"). I am treating Sebastian Nonis as correct but flag the discrepancy rather than silently reconciling it.

Related applications (per the patent's own cross-reference): Ser. No. 10/269,105, "Layered Host Based Satellite Positioning Solutions," and Ser. No. 10/269,104, "Navigation Processing in Host Based Satellite Positioning Solutions," both filed Oct. 10, 2002 and incorporated by reference. Google Patents also lists later family filings US 11/149,438 (→ US 7,792,639), US 11/185,533 (→ US 7,970,412), and US 12/861,248 (→ US 8,954,269). I did not independently verify the exact priority relationship of those later filings to the '363 patent.

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods and systems consistent with the present invention provide a host based positioning system. The host based positioning system includes a tracker hardware interface that connects to a dedicated hardware space vehicle tracker. The tracker hardware interface receives positioning information from the space vehicle tracker. The host based positioning system also includes a memory that includes a GPS library having a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface. A processor runs functions provided by the interfaces."

3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claims 1, 8, and 16 are the independent claims (the USITC publication lists asserted claims 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, which is consistent with three independent claims at 1, 8, and 16).

Claim 1 — System. A system for processing positioning signals with three elements: (a) a tracker hardware interface that receives positioning information; (b) memory holding a GPS library divided into a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface, where the tracker interface contains at least one function for communicating over the tracker hardware interface; and (c) a processor that runs that tracker-interface function. In plain terms: instead of a self-contained GPS module, the host's processor executes a library in which the physical link to the tracker chip is abstracted behind a software interface. (Claim 1 text as quoted in the USITC report.)

Claim 8 — Method. A method in a positioning system that has a tracker hardware interface, comprising: calling a tracker interface function to receive positioning information from the tracker hardware interface; determining a position from that information using a positioning engine; and calling a user interface message-delivery function to communicate the position to a user application. In plain terms: the receive → compute → deliver pipeline is performed by host-side library functions across the two interfaces, rather than by dedicated hardware.

Claim 16 — Computer-readable medium. The same three-step method (call tracker interface function to receive positioning information → determine position with a positioning engine → call a user interface message delivery function to deliver the position to a user application) embodied as instructions on a computer-readable medium.

Uncertainty flag: My retrieved copy of claim 16's full body (and claims 18, 19, 20) was truncated at the point where the Federal Circuit/ITC excerpt ended. I can state from that source only that claim 16 opens "A computer-readable medium containing instructions that cause a positioning system having a tracker hardware interface to perform a method comprising the steps of:" and that claim 20 is "The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the positioning system further comprises a user interface, and further…" I did not obtain the complete text of claims 16, 18, 19, or 20, and the full text of dependent claims 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 17 was not in my retrieved material. Anyone relying on the exact scope should pull the granted claims from the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search record rather than rely on this summary.

Dependent-claim text I did obtain (from the USITC publication):

• Claim 4 (dep. on 1): the user interface comprises at least one positioning control function and at least one positioning engine communication function.
• Claim 7 (dep. on 4): the positioning engine communication function is a command delivery function.
• Claim 10 (dep. on 8): receiving a positioning engine start message from the user interface.
• Claim 11 (dep. on 8): receiving a user command for the positioning engine from the user interface.
• Claim 12 (dep. on 8): receiving a positioning engine stop message from the user interface.

4. Litigation / docket check

USITC Investigation No. 337-TA-596 — "Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same."

• Instituted March 13, 2007 on a complaint filed Feb. 8, 2007 by SiRF Technology, Inc., asserting US 6,304,216; US 7,043,363; US 7,091,904; and US 7,132,980. Respondent: Global Locate, Inc.; Broadcom, Inc. later added. (Federal Register 72 FR 11378.)
• The investigation was later terminated as to the '904 and '980 patents and certain claims of the '216 and '363 patents (Federal Register 73 FR 49219, Aug. 20, 2008).
• The ALJ's final initial determination of June 13, 2008 found no violation of Section 337; on Aug. 20, 2008 the Commission determined not to review that determination. (Federal Register 73 FR 49219.)
• The Commission's public report (USITC Pub. 4133, March 2010) sets out the '363 claim construction dispute — notably the construction of "tracker," with complainant proposing "a device that supports acquisition and tracking of the signal of a positioning satellite (e.g., a GPS satellite) and sends measurement data to a host device for position calculation," supported by the specification's statement that "the tracker hardware 104 acquires and tracks SPS satellites and sends raw measurement data to the host 102 for position calculation."

CAFC 2026 dockets: I searched for 2026 Federal Circuit docket activity tied to US 7,043,363 and found no such activity. My search coverage is not exhaustive of the CAFC's docket system, so this is "not found," not a positive assertion that no appeal exists. The only litigation signal I could confirm is the historical ITC case above (also surfaced by Google Patents' Unified Patents and Darts-ip litigation links).

Post-litigation status: Google Patents records the patent as Expired – Lifetime, with an adjusted expiration of Sept. 2, 2023 — i.e., any 2026 docket dispute would concern expired rights, though that does not preclude damages-period appeals.

5. Sources

• Google Patents, US 7,043,363 B2: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7043363/en
• Issued patent PDF (cover page showing "20 Claims, 6 Drawing Sheets" and the abstract): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/33/33/ae/aa5ea7d90b4c88/US7043363.pdf
• USITC Publication 4133 (Inv. No. 337-TA-596), '363 claim language and claim construction: https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4133.pdf
• Federal Register 73 FR 49219 (Aug. 20, 2008), Commission decision not to review: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2008-08-20/html/E8-19209.htm
• Federal Register 72 FR 11378 (Mar. 13, 2007), notice of investigation: https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents/E7-4555

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7,043,363. Let me run several searches.

Initial results were noisy. Let me search the specific litigation leads.

I found the key ITC investigation. Let me dig into related district court cases and confirm whether the '363 patent appeared in them.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,043,363

I searched (Unified Patents litigation portal, ITC/Federal Register records, CourtListener/Justia dockets, CAFC opinions, SEC filings) specifically for the number 7,043,363. I found one confirmed proceeding in which the '363 patent was asserted, plus a related district-court case whose patent list I could not fully verify. I found no other litigation asserting the '363 patent.

1. CONFIRMED — ITC Section 337 Investigation (the "'363" assertion)

Procedural history and outcome:

• The investigation was later terminated as to the '904 patent, the '980 patent, and certain claims of the '216 and '363 patents, and the complaint/notice of investigation was amended to add Broadcom, Inc. as a respondent.
• On March 13, 2008 the Commission declined to review an ID granting SiRF's partial summary determination on the importation requirement; on March 20, 2008 it declined review of the ID granting SiRF's partial summary determination on the economic prong of the domestic industry requirement.
• On June 13, 2008, ALJ issued the final Initial Determination finding NO violation of Section 337. As to the '363 patent specifically, the ALJ found:
  • Global Locate's products do not infringe asserted claims 7, 8, 10–12, 16, and 18–20 of the '363 patent; and
  • the asserted claims of the '363 patent are invalid as anticipated by each of the GPS Builder System and the First GPS system; and
  • SiRF did establish a domestic industry for articles protected by the '363 patent.
• The Commission extended the deadline to decide on review (to August 14, 2008), and on August 20, 2008 published its determination not to review the final ID — making the no-violation finding final (73 Fed. Reg. 49219).

Sources:

• USITC notice of extension (Inv. No. 337-TA-596): https://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/337-ta-596.1214421750_0.pdf
• Federal Register, institution notice (72 FR 11378 / FR Doc. E7-4555): https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents/E7-4555
• Federal Register, Aug. 20, 2008, "Notice of Commission Decision Not To Review a Final Determination Finding No Violation" (73 FR 49219): https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2008-08-20/html/E8-19209.htm
• USITC Publication (ID text detailing '363 findings): https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/documents/pub4133.pdf

2. RELATED but UNVERIFIED as to the '363 patent — District court counterpart

Source: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Central%20District%20Court/case/8:06-cv-01216

Caveat (important): I could not independently confirm from the docket that the '363 patent was pleaded as a patent-in-suit in 8:06-cv-01216. An expert-declaration filing in a later PTAB matter lists "SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc." with patents-in-suit including 7,043,363, but that listing blends the two parallel ITC investigations (337-TA-596 and 337-TA-602), so it is not reliable proof that '363 was in the district court complaint. Treat item 2 as related/parallel activity, not as a confirmed '363 assertion.

Proceedings I checked and that do NOT involve the '363 patent

• Global Locate/Broadcom v. SiRF — ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-602, Certain GPS Devices and Products Containing Same (instituted Apr. 30/May 7, 2007; respondents SiRF, E-TEN, Pharos, MiTAC, Mio). Patents: 6,606,346; 6,704,651; 6,651,000; 6,417,801; 6,937,187; 7,158,080. This is the mirror-image case (Global Locate's patents against SiRF) — the '363 patent is not among them. Fed. Cir. No. 2009-1262, SiRF Tech., Inc. v. ITC, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 12, 2010) (affirming violation findings) — again, no '363 patent.
• Broadcom Corp. v. SiRF Technology Inc., C.D. Cal. No. 8:08-cv-00546 (filed May 14, 2008; terminated Jan. 13, 2011). Asserted four Broadcom patents (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,310,104; 6,501,480; 5,524,127 appear in the summary-judgment papers) — the '363 patent was owned by the opposing party (SiRF), so it could not have been asserted here.
• ITC enforcement/modification proceedings arising out of 337-TA-602 (Broadcom enforcement complaint, Oct. 7, 2010; Commission instituted formal enforcement proceeding Dec. 1, 2010) — these concern the '602 remedial orders, not the '363 patent.
• The Google Patents page for US 7,043,363 flags "Family has litigation" and lists exactly one item: the ITC case 337-TA-596 (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337-TA-596), consistent with the above and indicating no other known litigation in the Darts-IP family dataset for family 35137554.

I also checked for any later cases by the current owner (SiRF → CSR Technology → Qualcomm Inc., reassigned Oct. 14, 2024) asserting '363, and found none. Note the patent's adjusted expiration was September 2, 2023, and its status is Expired – Lifetime, which further limits the likelihood of recent assertions.

Bottom line

The only confirmed litigation asserting U.S. Patent No. 7,043,363 is ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-596, Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same — SiRF Technology, Inc. (complainant) v. Global Locate, Inc. and Broadcom, Inc. (respondents), instituted March 13, 2007, in which the ALJ's June 13, 2008 final Initial Determination of no violation (no infringement of '363 claims 7, 8, 10–12, 16, 18–20; '363 claims invalid as anticipated by the GPS Builder System and First GPS system) became final when the Commission declined review on August 20, 2008. I could not confirm any district-court case in which the '363 patent was pleaded as a patent-in-suit, and I did not verify this against PACER directly — so if you need docket-level certainty for the C.D. Cal. 8:06-cv-01216 question, that should be pulled from PACER/EDIS.

One note per your strict-ID rule: all numbers above (7,043,363; 6,304,216; 7,091,904; 7,132,980; 6,606,346; 6,704,651; 6,651,000; 6,417,801; 6,937,187; 7,158,080; 7,310,104; 6,501,480; 5,524,127) are reproduced as they appear in the sources; several source documents render them without the leading "6," (e.g., "7,043,363" as "'363"), which I have not corrected beyond standard citation form.

I'll first verify the structured-data baseline against live sources before drafting.

The initial searches surfaced only unrelated patents sharing a similar "336" suffix. Let me target this patent's identifiers and its known litigation history.

Good — the ITC record confirms '363 was asserted in Inv. No. 337-TA-596 (a § 337 action, not an AIA trial). Let me now check specifically for any PTAB filings and any reexamination.

I hit the search-tool step limit, but I gathered enough to answer definitively. Here is the analysis.

US 7,043,363 — AIA Trial / PTAB Landscape

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM proceeding naming US 7,043,363, and my independent web searches (patent number, title, "PTAB," and the petitioner/owner entities) surfaced no additional or recently-filed proceeding that the ODP might not yet have indexed. Because there is nothing to break down by status (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials), the defensive read is unusual and cuts both ways: the patent has never been stress-tested at the PTAB (so there is no estoppel shield and no cancelation order to hand a defendant), but it expired on 2023-09-02, so the only live exposure left is back-damages for pre-expiration conduct — not an ongoing royalty or injunction theory.

Caveat on sourcing. I did not locate a PTAB Final Written Decision, institution decision, or trial number for this patent because none appears to exist. I am not inventing a proceeding number to fill the gap. Where I describe the patent's validity history below, I label it explicitly as non-PTAB.

Why the absence is expected (and not just an indexing gap)

Three structural facts explain why no AIA petition was ever filed:

1. Pre-AIA patent → no PGR. Application 10/269,914 was filed 2002-10-10; PGR is available only for patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. PGR was legally unavailable.
2. Not CBM-eligible. CBM review reaches patents claiming methods/apparatus for "a financial product or service." This patent claims a host-based satellite positioning system (GPS library, tracker interface, positioning engine). It is a technological invention, not a financial-services patent — CBM was never a plausible vehicle, and the CBM window closed to new petitions in 2020 in any event.
3. Timing and term. IPR became available 2012-09-16. By then this patent was eight years from issue and roughly midway through its term; the contemporaneous assertion campaign (below) had already ended in the patent owner's loss, which removes most of the incentive for a defendant to spend $500K+ on an IPR.

Non-PTAB validity and assertion history (context only — not an AIA trial)

There is no PTAB proceeding, but the patent was litigated, and the outcome is material to any defendant today.

ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-596 — Certain GPS Chips, Associated Software and Systems, and Products Containing Same (SiRF Technology, Inc. v. Global Locate, Inc., later joined by Broadcom, Inc.)

• Type: Section 337 investigation (ITC) — not an AIA trial.
• Filed: complaint filed 2007-02-08; supplemented 2007-02-22; investigation instituted 2007-03-13 (72 Fed. Reg. 11378).
• Asserted patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,304,216; 7,043,363; 7,091,904; 7,132,980 (later broadened as to the '904).
• Status / outcome: The investigation was terminated as to the '904 and '980 patents and certain claims of the '216 and the '363 patents; the ALJ's final Initial Determination (2008-06-13) found no violation of § 337 by respondents Global Locate and Broadcom. The Commission extended its review deadline to 2008-08-14. SiRF lost the investigation it had brought.
• Sources: Federal Register notice of institution (E7-4555); ITC notice of Commission decision extending review deadline (Inv. 337-TA-596); Google Patents family/litigation record.

Related, but directionally reversed: In the parallel Broadcom-funded dispute (ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-602, Fed. Cir. 09-1262, decided 2010-04-12), SiRF was the losing respondent, found to infringe Global Locate/Broadcom patents. In the accompanying Central District of California action, SiRF filed ex parte reexamination requests against four Broadcom patents — i.e., the reexaminations ran against the other side's patents, not against '363. Do not misread those reexams as a challenge to '363.

Terminal disclaimer / family note: continuation filings claim priority to this family (US 7,792,639; US 7,970,412; US 8,954,269). Clearance analysis on a GPS-integrated product should cover those separately — they are distinct patents with distinct expiration dates.

Strategic summary

Claim-level status of US 7,043,363. All 20 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB — none canceled, none sustained, none invalidated. There is no narrowing to report and no "hardened" claim set to respect. The structured data likewise shows no PTAB-triggered cancelation: the legal status is "Expired – Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2023-09-02. That expiration is the single most important datum for a defendant: for any accused conduct after 2023-09-02, there is no patent to infringe.

Estoppel landscape. With no IPR ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — there is no petitioner, no privity chain, and no "raised or reasonably could have raised" bar. If this patent is asserted today, every prior-art ground remains on the table in district court under §§ 102/103/112, including:

• the references the examiner already considered — notably U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,503 (McBurney, "Distributed GPS Navigation System"), discussed and incorporated by reference in the specification itself, plus the Trimble FirstGPS Architecture brochure and Infineon "First GPS System Solution" material cited on the face of the patent. The McBurney reference is a natural § 103 anchor because the specification concedes it as the prior-art approach this invention improves on.
• Because the patent is pre-AIA, §§ 102(a)/(b)/(e)/(g) apply, and § 112(b) indefiniteness remains fully available in litigation (the specification is highly implementation-specific — Windows CE / Nucleus threads, queues, semaphores — while the claims are stated at a functional level).

Pattern signals. No serial-petitioner pattern exists (no petitioner at all). The patent owner has not pursued PTAB appeals — there are none to appeal. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears anywhere in the chain for this patent; the only litigation flag in the structured data is the ITC investigation, which is the patent owner's own 2007 offensive action, not a defensive challenge. Current assignee is Qualcomm Incorporated (via CSR Technology Inc., which acquired SiRF). Qualcomm has not, so far as the record shows, asserted '363.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 7,043,363:

1. Check the dates first. The patent expired 2023-09-02. Any demand based on post-2023-09-02 conduct is facially meritless. Pre-expiration damages are the only exposure, subject to the § 286 six-year lookback measured from the complaint.
2. There is no IPR to point to. You cannot cite a cancelation order or an estoppel bar, because no AIA trial was ever filed. Any statement like "claims 1–5 were canceled in IPR" would be false for this patent. Do not confuse '363 with similarly numbered patents (e.g., U.S. 8,529,336 or 10,299,336, both of which have seen PTAB activity) — those are unrelated.
3. The ITC loss is your best leverage. Quote the ITC's 2008-06-13 final ID finding no violation of § 337, and the termination of the '363 claims from that investigation (ITC notice). It shows the patent's asserted claims did not carry the day in the only forum where they were tested.
4. If you nonetheless want PTAB cover (e.g., to support a stay in co-pending litigation), an IPR remains formally available under § 311. Be realistic: the Board's 2025-era institution practice disfavors petitions against long-expired, long-dormant patents ("settled expectations"), institution rates have collapsed, and an expired patent limits the practical value of any cancelation. A district-court § 282 invalidity case built on McBurney + Trimble FirstGPS + the extrinsic evidence is likely the higher-value path.
5. Scope and family check. Confirm whether the asserted claims are actually from '363 and not from a family member (US 7,792,639 / 7,970,412 / 8,954,269), which have later expiration dates and no ITC adverse history.

If you find a proceeding my search did not surface — an ODP index lag, a recently docketed petition, or a case number I could not retrieve — send me the number and I will pull the institution decision, FWD, and any Federal Circuit appeal and update this analysis. As of this date, the correct answer to "how many PTAB proceedings on this patent" is zero, and the structured ODP block supplied in this prompt should be treated as canonical on that point.

I'll research the assignment record, litigation history, and corporate lineage for US 7043363.

Let me dig for the specific assignment reel/frame records and the ITC litigation linkage.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,043,363 B2

"Host based satellite positioning systems" · App. 10/269,914 · Filed 2002‑10‑10 · Granted 2006‑05‑09 · Original assignee SiRF Technology, Inc.

Evidence limitation, stated up front: The tooling available to me returns Google Patents legal‑events data and third‑party litigation data, but I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame numbers, conveyance‑type codes, or the correspondent of record for any link in this chain. I am therefore reporting the chain at the entity/date level and explicitly marking reel/frame and correspondent as not retrieved rather than inventing them. The reel/frame gaps must be filled by querying https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ directly (search "7043363" or "10/269,914").

Inventors

Patterns noted:

• All five inventors are the assignors on the original SiRF assignment — an employee‑invention assignment, standard for a fabless semiconductor company. There is no inventor‑held or co‑owned residual interest (contrast the SiRF v. ITC facts for U.S. 6,606,346, where the Federal Circuit had to resolve a Magellan co‑ownership claim — the '346 asserted‑patent standing fight is described at http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/sirf-tech-inc-v-itc).
• Name‑transcription churn in the recorded names. The Google Patents legal‑events entries show the same five assignors recorded with garbled spellings — "SEBATSIAN" Nonis and "STEDAN" Witanis in the 2003‑08‑11 entry, corrected to "SEBASTIAN" / "STEFAN" by the 2004‑03‑24 entry — and the 2004 recording is expressly typed "CORRECTION OF ASSIGNMENT INVENTOR'S NAMES." This is a clerical chain‑of‑title defect that was cured, not a substantive ownership dispute.
• Inventor departure / fire‑sale precursor: unclear. I found no reliable evidence that the five inventors left SiRF within 12 months of the 2002‑10‑10 filing. Do not read this as a departure signal; it is simply unverified.

Original assignee

SiRF Technology, Inc. (San Jose, California) — originally recorded as assignee on the 2003/2004 assignments; the patent issued under SiRF's ownership in 2006.

• Product embodiment: yes. SiRF was a fabless GPS chipmaker and the largest supplier of GPS chips at the time. Its SiRFstar product line is the "tracker hardware" architecture this specification describes; the patent itself names SiRF's own parts (GRF2i/LP RF IC, GSP2t / GSP2e location processor) as the commercial implementation of the claimed tracker hardware. The host‑based library (SiRFNavServer.lib, gps_*.c/h sources) is SiRF's commercial software artifact.
• Primary line of business: GPS/GNSS baseband and RF chips plus host-side positioning software for PNDs, automotive telematics and handsets.
• Current status: acquired, twice, and now consolidated into Qualcomm.
  • 2009‑02‑10 announced / 2009‑06 closed: CSR plc acquired SiRF in a share deal worth ~$136M (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiRF).
  • 2015‑08‑13: CSR plc (which had renamed the SiRF US operations CSR Technology Inc.) was acquired by Qualcomm for ~$2.5B; CSR became Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd. (https://stage.gpsworld.com/qualcomm-to-acquire-sirf-chipmaker-csr/).
  • 2024‑10‑14: the US patent‑holding entity CSR Technology Inc. reassigned this patent (and its portfolio) to Qualcomm Incorporated per Google Patents legal events.
• Distress context: SiRF's dominance collapsed after it lost the Broadcom/Global Locate ITC case (violation found 2009‑01‑15; affirmed SiRF Tech., Inc. v. ITC, Fed. Cir., 2010‑04‑12). That commercial decline precedes the CSR sale — but it was not a bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Dates below are the event dates published by Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7043363/en). That source does not distinguish execution date from recordation date, and it does not publish reel/frame numbers, so I am flagging every reel/frame as not retrieved.

1. 2003‑08‑11 / recorded date not separately published — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST")
   • Assignor: Bulatovic, Nonis, Pande, Witanis, Yamamoto (names recorded with transcription errors)
   • Assignee: SiRF Technology, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved — must be pulled from Assignment Center
   • Context: Original employee‑invention assignment to the employer/filer; the foundational link in the chain.

2. 2003‑12‑31 / recorded date not separately published — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment (corrected assignor spellings: Stefan Witanis, Sebastian Nonis)
   • Assignor: Bulatovic, Witanis, Nonis, Pande, Yamamoto
   • Assignee: SiRF Technology, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Corrective re‑recording of the same original assignment (re‑executed to fix inventor name spellings); not a new transfer.

3. 2004‑03‑24 / recorded date not separately published — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Correction ("CORRECTION OF ASSIGNMENT — INVENTOR'S NAMES")
   • Assignor: Bulatovic, Witanis, Nonis, Pande, Yamamoto
   • Assignee: SiRF Technology, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Chain‑of‑title cleanup, closing out the 2003 spelling errors.

4. 2011‑12‑22 / recorded date not separately published — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an assignment of interest)
   • Assignor: SiRF Technology, Inc.
   • Assignee: CSR Technology Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Change of name only — corporate rebranding of the same legal entity after CSR plc's 2009 acquisition of SiRF. No new consideration, no third party.

5. 2024‑10‑14 / recorded date not separately published — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF INTEREST")
   • Assignor: CSR Technology Inc.
   • Assignee: Qualcomm Incorporated
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Intra‑group consolidation — nine years after Qualcomm acquired CSR plc (2015‑08), the US patent‑holding subsidiary's portfolio was formally vested in the parent. This is housekeeping, not a monetization event, and it occurred after the patent's 2023‑09‑02 adjusted expiration.

Records exist for this patent — five of them. The gap is reel/frame and correspondent, not the existence of a chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7043363
    2002 : App 10/269/914 filed 10 Oct
    2002 : Inventors employed at SiRF  [records not yet retrieved]
    2003 : Confirmatory assignment to SiRF Technology
    2003 : Re-recorded to fix assignor spellings
    2004 : Correction of inventor names
    2006 : Patent issued 9 May
    2007 : SiRF Global Locate GPS dispute begins
    2009 : ITC finds SiRF infringed Broadcom/Global Locate
    2009 : CSR plc acquires SiRF in share deal
    2011 : Change of name to CSR Technology Inc
    2015 : Qualcomm acquires CSR plc
    2023 : Adjusted term expiry 2 Sep
    2024 : Reassigned to Qualcomm Incorporated

(Slash in "10/269/914" rendered inline to avoid parser breakage — treat as application number 10/269,914.)

NPE / troll‑pattern signals

1. Shell‑entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No licensing‑only LLC ever appears. The chain is SiRF Technology, Inc. → CSR Technology Inc. (change of name only, 2011‑12‑22) → Qualcomm Incorporated (2024‑10‑14). All three are/were operating semiconductor businesses. No entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix acquired this patent as a monetization vehicle, and the assignee addresses are operating headquarters, not registered‑agent services. (Note: Google Patents shows a separate CSR affiliate, "CSR Technology Holdings Inc.," on sibling patents — that is a corporate holding tier inside an operating group, not a shell.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
None of SiRF Technology, CSR Technology Inc., or Qualcomm Incorporated appears on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi‑LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg rosters, nor as a Unified Patents or RPX high‑frequency plaintiff entity. Qualcomm is a serial litigant and an ITC complainant, but it litigates as an operating chipmaker against competitors — that is the inverse of an NPE profile. The Unified Patents litigation page linked from Google Patents (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/International%20Trade%20Commission/case/337‑TA‑596) is a defensive track on an ITC case, not an NPE assertion.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRETRIEVABLE / UNKNOWN.
This is the single most probative datapoint requested and I could not obtain it: no correspondent of record is exposed by any source I could reach. What I can say is that the 2003‑08‑11, 2003‑12‑31 and 2004‑03‑24 recordings are clearly filings by one consistent prosecuting/recording function — three near‑identical SiRF assignments of the same five inventors over eight months, including a self‑authored "correction of inventor's names." That recurrence is visible in the record structure, but without the correspondent names I cannot say whether it was outside counsel or in‑house, and I cannot compare it to other patents. Flagging as a required follow‑up, not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Five recorded events over 21 years, only two of which are genuine transfers of interest (2003 assignment; 2024 reassignment). The 2003‑12‑31 and 2004‑03‑24 entries are re‑recordings/corrections, and the 2011‑12‑22 entry is a change of name expressly labeled as such. No chained LLCs, no <24‑month multi‑hop sequence, no shared anonymous addresses.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (mild inversion).
The only transfer temporally near litigation is the inventors→SiRF assignment, executed/recorded 2003‑08‑11 — roughly four years before the 2007 SiRF/Global Locate dispute, and contemporaneous with the 2002 filing. It is an employment assignment, not a venue/standing play. Conversely, the 2024 Qualcomm vesting came ~15 years after the last GPS patent war concluded and after expiration (2023‑09‑02), so it cannot be a pre‑litigation transfer. The 2003 "delayed" recording (10 months post‑filing) is ordinary prosecution timing.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT.
SiRF was acquired in an all‑share merger with CSR plc (~$136M, announced 2009‑02‑10, closed 2009‑06) — a going‑concern acquisition. There is no Chapter 7/11 filing, no §363 sale, and no bankruptcy‑court assignment docket for SiRF or CSR. SiRF's post‑litigation decline is a commercial collapse that fed a merger price, not a liquidation.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. SiRF asserted its GPS patents itself, in its own name, against Global Locate/Broadcom — the classic operating‑company‑vs‑operating‑company posture. No SEC‑filed or Patent Progress/EFF‑documented privateering arrangement involves this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Qualcomm Incorporated, an operating chipmaker, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent is not neutralized by aggregation; it simply expired by adjusted term on 2023‑09‑02.

Verdict

Operating‑company assertion.

The chain is a clean single‑lineage corporate succession — inventors → SiRF Technology, Inc. (2003‑08‑11 assignment) → CSR Technology Inc. (2011‑12‑22, change of name only) → Qualcomm Incorporated (2024‑10‑14, intra‑group assignment) — with the intervening CSR plc (2009) and Qualcomm (2015) acquisitions as the causal operating events. SiRF shipped the claimed architecture commercially (SiRFstar chips + SiRFNavServer host library, with the specification itself naming SiRF's GRF2i/LP and GSP2t/e parts), and the patent family's recorded litigation is the SiRF ↔ Broadcom/Global Locate GPS chip war at the ITC (Unified Patents case link 337‑TA‑596; Federal Circuit affirmance in SiRF Tech., Inc. v. ITC, 2010‑04‑12) — operating company versus operating company. Zero of the eight NPE signal tests are present; the only open items are unretrievable correspondent data (test 3) and a documentation gap at reel/frame level.

Two caveats that materially qualify this verdict:

1. The patent is expired. Google Patents records an adjusted expiration of 2023‑09‑02; the 2024‑10‑14 Qualcomm assignment therefore conveyed an expired asset. No future assertion is possible, so the practical significance of the chain is defensive/historical only.
2. The 337‑TA‑596 linkage needs verification. The '363 is a SiRF‑owned patent, while ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑596 was instituted on Broadcom/Global Locate's complaint naming SiRF, E‑TEN, Pharos, MiTAC and Mio as respondents (see the Commission notice at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-12-07/pdf/2010-30611.pdf). The asserted patents there were Global Locate's ('346, '651, '000, '080, '187, '801) — not the '363. The Google Patents/Unified Patents link on this patent most likely reflects the broader SiRF–Broadcom dispute rather than the '363 being asserted in '596; the '363 was more plausibly in play in SiRF's own stayed district‑court suit against Global Locate. I could not confirm which proceeding asserted the '363.

To complete this record, pull from https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number 7043363): reel/frame and conveyance codes for all five recordings above, and the correspondent of record for each — the 2003/2004 entries in particular. That correspondent comparison is the one test that could still move this verdict, and it is currently blank rather than exculpatory.

I'll research US Patent 7,043,363 and its cited prior art. Let me start with searches.

Let me retrieve the full front-page citation list and details on the key references.

Let me gather details on the key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,043,363 B2

Important research caveats (read first)

1. The authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents scrape) does not contain the front-page "(56) References Cited" section. It jumps from the bibliographic/classification data to the Abstract and Description. I therefore had to obtain the citation list from a secondary rendering of the granted-patent front page (the OCR text of the printed patent PDF hosted at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/33/33/ae/aa5ea7d90b4c88/US7043363.pdf).
2. I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter/Public PAIR or Espacenet directly within my tool budget. The citation list below is drawn from the printed-patent front page (as OCR'd) and corroborated piecemeal by Google Patents pages. Where a number appears OCR-truncated or garbled, I reproduce it literally, per your strict no-auto-correction rule, and flag it.
3. I was unable to open the full specification of every cited reference; where I map a reference to a claim, I label my confidence level. Mapping a reference to a specific claim requires reading that reference's disclosure, which I could not fully do for all 24 entries.

1. Patent identification (verified)

Related same-family applications (NOT prior art — co-pending/same-applicant):

• Ser. No. 10/269,105, "Layered host based satellite positioning solutions" (issued as US 7,813,875 B2)
• Ser. No. 10/269,104, "Navigation processing in host based satellite positioning solutions"
• Continuation US 11/149,438 → US 7,792,639 B2; CIP US 11/185,533 → US 7,970,412 B2; continuation US 12/861,248 → US 8,954,269 B2.

These are relevant to family scope but cannot be §102 art against the parent.

2. Claim architecture (from the granted claims)

The patent has 20 claims: three independent claims plus dependents.

• Claim 1 (system) — requires (a) a tracker hardware interface for receiving positioning information; (b) a memory comprising a GPS library comprising a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface, the tracker interface comprising at least one tracker interface function for communicating over the tracker hardware interface; and (c) a processor for running the tracker interface function.
• Claim 8 (method) — (a) calling a tracker interface function to receive positioning information from a tracker hardware interface; (b) determining a position from the positioning information using a positioning engine; (c) calling a user interface message delivery function to communicate the position to a user application.
• Claim 16 (computer-readable medium) — instructions causing a positioning system to perform the claim-8 method steps.
• Dependents 2–7, 9–15, 17–20 (text not available in the source I used).

Anticipation note: For §102, a single reference must disclose every element. The "GPS library comprising a user interface / tracker interface / operating system interface" limitation is the narrowest and most software-architectural element; most hardware-centric references will not meet it alone, which pushes most of this art toward §103 rather than §102.

3. Face-of-patent prior-art citations (reproduced literally)

3.1 U.S. Patent Documents

3.2 U.S. Published Applications (numbers as OCR'd — several appear truncated; verify against original)

⚠️ Data-integrity flag: Four entries (2001/000407, 2002/002918, 2002/010298, 2002/017949) are shorter than the standard pre-grant numbering format and are almost certainly OCR-truncated (leading/dropped digits). I am reproducing them exactly as they appear and am not correcting them. Confirm each against the original patent front page before citing.

3.3 Other Publications ("OTHER PUBLICATIONS")

These three non-patent publications are the most conceptually on-point to the patent's central idea (a "host-based" GPS split between a sensor/tracker and a host processor running host-side software).

4. Reference-by-reference analysis and potential §102 mapping

Because the applicable law is pre-AIA (filed 2002-10-10), the relevant statutory categories are §102(a), §102(b), §102(e), and §102(f)/(g).

4.1 The two most relevant references

A. US 6,430,503 B1 — "Distributed GPS navigation system" (High confidence — verified by search)

• Inventors: Paul W. McBurney and Arthur N. Woo. Assignee: Trimble Navigation Ltd. Filed Jan. 6, 1998 (Appl. No. 09/003,316); granted Aug. 6, 2002; 58 claims.
• Disclosure: partitions GPS processing between (i) a "measurement platform" that performs time-critical intermediate tracking/measurement calculations and outputs intermediate measurement data (code phase, carrier phase, Doppler), over a standard serial/parallel link, and (ii) an external "user platform" containing a general-purpose processor that computes the navigation solution (position/velocity/time) in a multitask environment concurrently with other user applications, with the user platform being user-programmable.
• Why it matters: The patent's own Background states: "Such an approach is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,503 … 'Distributed GPS Navigation System' … the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference." This is an admission that the two-platform, host-computes-position architecture was known.
• Potential §102 mapping (confidence: moderate on 1/8/16, higher for a number of dependents):
  • Claim 1 — discloses the tracker-hardware-interface / host-processor / position-computation split, but on the record available to me it does not clearly disclose a "GPS library comprising a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface" as distinct software interfaces. → Strongest as §103 art (alone or with a software-interface reference); a §102 attack on claim 1 requires construing "GPS library … user interface … tracker interface … operating system interface" broadly enough to read on McBurney's two-platform software stack.
  • Claim 8 — arguably closer: McBurney's user platform "receives intermediate positioning data … and calculat[es] the position information from the intermediate positioning data." → Plausible §102 candidate for claim 8 if "tracker interface function" and "user interface message delivery function" are read functionally.
  • Claim 16 — the CRM form of claim 8; same analysis.
  • Note the power-source limitation in McBurney claim 1 (measurement platform and user platform on separate power sources), which US 7,043,363 does not require — so the mapping is not a clean element-for-element identity.

B. US 6,384,777 B1 — McBurney et al. (Moderate confidence)

• Issued 5/2002, classified 342/357.12 (satellite radio beacon positioning / receiver). Same inventor family as the Trimble distributed-GPS work above.
• Potential §102 mapping: Same conceptual space as 6,430,503; likely a §103 companion rather than a standalone §102 reference for independent claims 1/8/16. I could not independently retrieve its specification, so I cannot responsibly assert claim-by-claim anticipation. Verify full text before relying on it.

4.2 The three non-patent publications (Trimble FirstGPS; Infineon FirstGPS)

• Dates: printouts dated Sep. 23, 2002 — i.e., before the 2002-10-10 filing date, and thus within the pre-AIA §102(a) window ("described in a printed publication … before the invention thereof by the applicant"). They are NOT §102(b) art (that requires publication more than one year before filing, i.e., before ~2001-10-10), unless the underlying documents can be shown to predate that date.
• Substance: Both Infineon's and Trimble's "FirstGPS" materials describe a GPS architecture in which the GPS module provides measurements/satellite data to a host processor that runs the navigation software — i.e., the very "host based SPS" concept of the patent.
• Potential §102 mapping (confidence: this is the closest art on the inventive concept, but claim-mapping is uncertain):
  • Claims 1, 8, 16 — potentially anticipatory IF the brochures disclose the specific three-interface GPS-library structure (user interface / tracker interface / operating system interface) and the tracker-interface-function-on-a-processor element. As marketing/architecture documents, this is unlikely to be established at the claim-1 level, but they are powerful §103 art and strong evidence that "host based positioning" was known.
  • The fact that the applicant itself cited these on the face of the patent strongly suggests the examiner or applicant viewed them as the closest known "host based" architectures.

4.3 The remaining patent references — grouped by likely relevance

Statutory-timing note for the applications published 11/2002 and 12/2002 (Katayama, Fall, Tanaka): these post-date the 2002-10-10 filing, so they are not §102(a)/(b) art. They can only be §102(e) art if their U.S. filing dates precede 2002-10-10. That must be checked in PAIR.

5. Bottom line — the most relevant prior art for US 7,043,363

Ranked by relevance to the independent claims (1/8/16) and their core "host computes position; tracker supplies measurements; layered software interfaces" concept:

1. US 6,430,503 B1 (McBurney & Woo, Trimble Navigation, 8/6/2002) — the single most relevant reference, and admitted prior art by the patentee's own incorporation-by-reference. Best §103 combination anchor; plausible §102 reference for claim 8 (and thus claim 16) and, under a broad reading, claim 1.
2. Trimble "FirstGPS" web page and brochure (printed 9/23/2002) and Infineon "First GPS System Solution" web page (printed 9/23/2002) — closest to the "host based" architecture; §102(a) printed-publication art (within, not beyond, the one-year §102(b) bar). Best §103 art against claims 1/8/16 and best evidence of the state of the art.
3. US 6,384,777 B1 (McBurney et al., 5/2002) — same family/theme as #1; §103 companion.
4. US 6,411,254 B1 (Moeglein et al., 6/2002) and US 6,208,290 B1 (Krasner, 3/2001) — remote/distributed GPS processing; verify claims 1/8 element-by-element.
5. The Gildea references (5,589,835; 5,832,247) and the remaining hardware/navigation references — principally §103 art against dependent claims (interfaces, RTC/clock, navigation parameters, user-application output).

Honest limitation: I could not open the full specifications of items 3–5, 4.3's table, or the truncated application numbers within my tool budget. Any assertion that a given reference "anticipates" a specific claim under §102 must be confirmed by an element-by-element comparison against that reference's actual disclosure — you should run that comparison in East/PatentCenter before filing any IDS-based or invalidity position. My mappings above are analytical hypotheses, not verified anticipation findings.

Recommended verification steps: (a) pull the certified front page from USPTO PatentCenter for US 10/269,914 to confirm the four truncated application numbers; (b) confirm §102(e) filing dates for 2002/0196181, 2002/0198658, and 2002/017949; (c) obtain the actual publication dates of the Trimble/Infineon FirstGPS materials to test §102(b); (d) note the ITC 337-TA-596 record, which likely contains the parties' own prior-art positions for this patent.

I'll start by gathering the authoritative claim text and the prior-art references of record for US 7,043,363, then build the §103 analysis.

Let me pull the full claim set and the references-cited list.

Preliminary notes on sources and scope

What the page record actually supports. The authoritative text you supplied does not contain a printed "References Cited" list from the '363 face. The only prior-art material it exposes is:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,430,503 to Paul W. McBurney et al., "Distributed GPS Navigation System," which the '363 specification expressly discusses and incorporates by reference (see the Background and cross-reference section of the '363 as reproduced in your page text).
• The two sibling applications cross-referenced on the '363 face: Ser. No. 10/269,105 ("Layered Host Based Satellite Positioning Solutions") and Ser. No. 10/269,104 ("Navagation [sic] Processing in Host Based Satellite Positioning Solutions"), both filed Oct. 10, 2002.
• The Google Patents "prior art keywords" (gps, interface, tracker, positioning, nav) and the CPC classifications (G01S19/35, G01S19/37, G01S19/42, G01S19/36, G01C21/26-36, G01S5/0027, G01S5/0036).

I could not retrieve the examiner-cited art list itself before running out of search steps. I will not invent reference numbers, dates, or passages. Where I rely on a reference whose bibliographic details I could not verify from the page, I say so explicitly. Two additional documents surfaced in the search and are used below as secondary references, with the caveat that I verified only their abstracts/on-face data, not their full texts:

• EP 0 838 771 A2/A3, "Interface layer for navigation system," Navigation Technologies Corp. — verified abstract and search-report entry.
• US 2005/0234713 A1 (the Ser. No. 10/269,104 sibling publication).

I was also able to verify the actual claim language of claims 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 from the USITC's published determination (USITC Pub. 4133, the ITC proceeding involving the '363, Inv. No. 337-TA-596). Claims 2, 3 and 8–20 I could not verify verbatim; my analysis of those is expressly flagged as inferential.

I. The claimed subject matter

Independent claim 1 (verified)

"1. A system for processing positioning signals, the system comprising:
a tracker hardware interface for receiving positioning information;
a memory comprising a GPS library comprising a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface, the tracker interface comprising at least one tracker interface function for communicating over the tracker hardware interface; and
a processor for running the tracker interface function."

Three elements: (a) a tracker hardware interface receiving positioning information; (b) a memory-resident GPS library internally divided into user interface / tracker interface / operating system interface; (c) a processor executing the tracker interface function.

Verified dependent claims 4–7

Claims I could not verify

The ITC record confirms that claim 8 and claim 16 are independent claims, and that claims 9 and 17 depend from them respectively. Claim 8 is unasserted; claim 16 was asserted. The patent has 20 claims total. I have no verified text for claims 2, 3, 8–20, so I treat them below as presumptively parallel (system/method claims to the same layered-library architecture, plus dependent claims narrowing the user interface and tracker interface function sets toward the GPS_Start / GPS_Stop / GPS_Input / GPS_Output and OS_Thread_/OS_Mutex_/OS_Semaphore_ families disclosed in the specification, and toward the multi-threaded receive-manager / NavPeriodicTask architecture of FIGS. 5–7). That is inference, not verified claim text.

Governing law

Filed Oct. 10, 2002; granted May 9, 2006. Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 apply in their pre-March-16-2013 form. Google Patents lists legal status as Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration Sept. 2, 2023 (i.e., PTA-extended). The status entry is expressly an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

II. Level of ordinary skill

A POSA here would be a software/systems engineer with (i) 2–4 years in GPS/radionavigation receiver integration and (ii) working familiarity with modular software design — layered APIs, device-driver abstraction, and multithreaded RTOS primitives (threads, mutexes, semaphores). The '363 itself treats all of the following as ordinary rather than inventive, which is significant KSR evidence of the skill level:

• the GPS engine runs on the host CPU under a multi-threaded OS (Windows CE, QNX, Palm OS, UNIX, Linux, Windows 2000/NT/XP);
• the tracker interface "may load and call the operating system 120 serial communication drivers";
• the OS interface "calls operating system functions for task scheduling and synchronization, RTC access, and storage access";
• raw tracker data crosses the link at a deliberately low ~1 measurement/second, ~2 KB/s on an RS-232 port.

III. Ground 1 — McBurney '503 alone renders claim 1 obvious

Reference. U.S. 6,430,503 (McBurney et al.), "Distributed GPS Navigation System." (Note: I could not verify the '503 issue date or assignee from the supplied page; the '363 describes it as present in the art, and it appears in the EP 0 838 771 A3 / EP 2 056 122 A3 search reports as US 6 430 503 B1, McBurney, with relevant disclosure at col. 3 – col. 5, claim 1, FIGS. 1 and 3.)

Why it is squarely on point. The '363's own Background section characterizes McBurney as disclosing exactly the architectural premise of claim 1:

"the possibility exists for allowing the host microprocessor to bear the burden not only of running its regular applications, but also to operate as part of the SPS solution. Such an approach is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,503… titled 'Distributed GPS Navigation System.'"

That is a party admission that the distributed host/tracker GPS architecture — tracker hardware delivering positioning data to a host processor that computes and delivers the navigation solution — was already in the art. The '363's stated point of novelty is not that architecture; it is the manner in which the host-side functionality is packaged.

Element-by-element, claim 1:

Assessment. Ground 1 alone is not a clean anticipation-style obviousness case, because claim 1's "GPS library comprising a user interface, a tracker interface, and an operating system interface" is a structural decomposition that '503 may not name. But it is a very strong primary reference, and it supplies the motivating framework: the whole purpose of a distributed GPS architecture is to let generic host hardware and generic host CPUs carry the processing load. Ground 2 supplies the missing piece.

IV. Ground 2 — McBurney '503 + EP 0 838 771 (Navigation Technologies "Interface layer for navigation system")

This is my strongest §103 combination for the independent claims.

Reference. EP 0 838 771 A2 (published Apr. 29, 1998), A3 published Dec. 1, 1999, Navigation Technologies Corp. — "Interface layer for navigation system." Verified abstract:

"an improved method and system that provides for a data access interface layer in a navigation system… The data access interface layer is preferably stored in the navigation system as a library of software functions. The data access interface layer operates in conjunction with the navigation system application software. The data access interface layer isolates the navigation application software from the geographic data stored on the storage medium… By recognizing that different media types have different physical formats, the data access interface layer accommodates and isolates the differences so that the portions of the data access interface layer that interact with the navigation application software can be generic."

The combination. A POSA starting from McBurney's distributed GPS navigation system, facing the '363's own stated problem —

"each device varies considerably in architecture, operating system, hardware interfaces, and the like. Prior SPS solutions did not provide the flexibility that allowed the solutions to be adapted to a wide range of electronic devices. Instead, expensive customized solutions were needed for each device, thereby undesirably increasing costs and delaying the introduction of SPS services"

— would look for a known way to decouple application software from hardware- and OS-specific details. EP 0 838 771 teaches precisely that technique, in the same technical field (navigation systems), with the express benefit of portability across media/hardware types by making the application-facing portion "generic." Applying that known abstraction pattern to McBurney's host-based GPS yields, with predictable results: a user interface (application-facing), a tracker interface (hardware/link-facing), and an operating system interface (OS-facing) — the exact three-layer split of claim 1.

KSR rationales available:

• Known technique, known field: interface-layer abstraction was a recognized, art-recognized solution to exactly the portability problem the '363 identifies.
• Predictable result: layering a software library behind an API with a platform-abstraction shim does not change the function of the GPS engine; it merely relocates portability concerns into a shim.
• Design need / market pressure: the '363's own Background concedes the commercial imperative ("manufacturers constantly strive to reduce costs"; "numerous manufacturers… each device varies considerably").

V. Ground 3 — McBurney '503 + the commonly owned siblings '105 / '104 (with the §103(c) caveat)

Ser. No. 10/269,105 and Ser. No. 10/269,104, both filed the same day as the '363 (Oct. 10, 2002) and both commonly owned by SiRF Technology, Inc., disclose the layered host-based GPS architecture and the host↔tracker message interface respectively. The Ser. No. 10/269,104 publication (US 2005/0234713 A1) states:

"Some attempts to divide the processing of GPS location data between a host computer and tracker hardware device have been attempted. They often are limited to transferring formatted location data over a standard interface. The restraint of using a standard interface for transferring formatted location data limits the potential of the tracker hardware device…"

and discloses a protocol stack with transport/validation layers, start/end sequences, and a payload carrying a single-byte message identifier.

The §103(c) problem — and why it probably defeats this ground. Because the siblings were filed the same day as the '363 and published Oct. 20, 2005 (i.e., after the '363's Oct. 10, 2002 filing date), they cannot be §102(a) or §102(b) art against the '363. They could only qualify under §102(e) as applications "filed before the invention by the applicant." Pre-AIA §103(c) provides that §102(e)/(f)/(g) art that is commonly owned at the time the invention was made may not be used in a §103 rejection. With a common assignee (SiRF Technology, Inc.) and, per the assignment records on the page, the same inventive entity, Ground 3 is very likely statutorily barred. I flag it because it is the combination a lay observer would reach for first, and because the bar is a disqualification of the reference, not a teaching-away.

I note this caveat is also the reason Ground 2 matters so much: EP 0 838 771 is a third-party reference, so no §103(c) shelter applies.

VI. Ground 4 — McBurney '503 + a host/server GPS architecture reference (secondary)

The '363's field at the priority date included numerous host- or server-side GPS architectures in which the receiver front end produces measurements and a separate processor computes position (including the SnapTrack/Krasner-family "GPS receiver utilizing a communication link" documents and the assisted-GPS literature listed in the ITC prior-art notices, e.g., van Diggelen, "Global Locate Indoor GPS Chipset and Services," ION-GPS-2001). I could not verify the bibliographic details of any specific Krasner document from the supplied page, so I identify this ground by type rather than by citation, and would not rely on it as a primary ground. Its value is as corroboration that "raw measurement data out of the tracker, position computation on the host" — the '363's core premise — was conventional by Oct. 2002.

VII. Ground 5 — The dependent claims

Claims 4, 5, 6 (positioning control function: start; stop)

Claim 4 requires the user interface to carry both a positioning control function and a positioning engine communication function; claims 5 and 6 name start and stop. The '363's Table 11 maps these to GPS_Start() and GPS_Stop(), and the ITC expressly relied on GPS_Start()/GPS_Stop() being positioning control functions and GPS_Input()/GPS_Output() being positioning engine communication functions (USITC Pub. 4133, discussing '363 at 6:30–33, Tables 6, 11, 12).

A layered library necessarily exposes control (lifecycle) functions and communication functions separately. Any host-based GPS engine whose threads, threads' OS objects, and serial port must be initialized and torn down (as the '363 itself describes for GPS_Start(): "initializes and starts positioning engine threads and communication interface," and GPS_Stop(): "stops the positioning engine threads and communication interface") requires start and stop entry points. McBurney '503 + EP 0 838 771 renders claims 4, 5, 6 obvious; start/stop lifecycle APIs were conventional, and the '363's own specification presents them as ordinary mechanics.

Claim 7 (command delivery function)

Claim 7, the claim actually asserted at the ITC, depends from claim 4 and requires that the positioning engine communication function be a command delivery function. The ITC construed it narrowly as:

"a function that communicates a command from the user to the positioning engine."

That is, functionally, nothing more than an inbound command API to the GPS engine. The prior art is replete with exactly this: NMEA 0183 proprietary/standard input sentences and SiRF Binary Protocol input messages (the '363's own GPS_Input() sends message IDs such as GPS_NAV_INITIALIZE (0x80), GPS_NAV_SET_DGPS_SOURCE (0x85), GPS_NAV_SET_NAV_MODE (0x88), GPS_NAV_SET_SBAS_PRN (0xAA)), as well as Trimble's TSIP command set. Command-in structures for GPS engines were ubiquitous and, in many cases, were the only documented interface to a receiver. The '363 specification itself frames GPS_Input() as an ordinary client-side "send a command to the GPS receiver" call.

Ground for claim 7: McBurney '503 + EP 0 838 771 + the admitted conventionality of receiver command-input protocols (the '363's own Table 28 lists an input-message set with no assertion of novelty). A POSA implementing the layered library of Ground 2 must expose some inbound path to configure the engine; the claim's scope, as construed, adds no more.

Claims 2, 3 and 8–20 (unverified)

Because I do not have verified text, I can only note the shape of the anticipated grounds: dependent claims reciting the operating system interface functions would be met by the admitted conventionality of thread/mutex/semaphore/storage/RTC primitives (OS_Thread_Create, OS_Mutex_Create, OS_Semaphore_Wait, OS_Storage_Write, OS_RTC_Read), which the '363 itself describes as "operating system dependent and are implemented in the open source format available from SiRF Technology, Inc." Dependent claims reciting the tracker interface functions would be met by ordinary serial-port and messaging primitives (OS_*-style open/close/read/write/wait), corroborated by the commonly owned sibling 10/269,104's protocol-stack disclosure. And any claim reciting the multi-threaded receive-manager / periodic-navigation-task cooperation of FIGS. 5–7 would be met by routine partitioning of a producer/consumer pipeline across an RTOS. All of this is inferential and should be verified against the printed claims before being relied upon.

VIII. Motivation to combine, stated affirmatively

A POSA at Oct. 10, 2002 had four independent, mutually reinforcing reasons to arrive at claim 1:

1. The '363's own admitted design need. The Background concedes the portability problem in the field, the cost pressure, and that prior solutions required "expensive customized solutions… for each device." KSR treats an admitted, recognized problem as itself supplying the motivation.
2. The '363's own identification of McBurney as the starting architecture. "[T]he possibility exists for allowing the host microprocessor to bear the burden… Such an approach is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,503." The inventors pointed to the primary reference themselves.
3. EP 0 838 771 teaches the exact solution technique in the same field. A navigation-system interface layer "preferably stored… as a library of software functions" whose purpose is to make the application-facing portion "generic" across differing media/hardware. Applying it to a distributed host-based GPS yields the claimed three-interface library.
4. Predictable results, no change in function. Neither combination alters GPS signal processing, navigation mathematics, or the host/tracker division of labor. It changes only where the portability seam is drawn — a software-engineering design choice with a known, predictable payoff, and exactly the kind of "combination of familiar elements according to known methods" that yields no patentable subject matter under KSR.

IX. Rebuttal considerations and objective indicia

• §103(c) disqualification (analysis above, §V): the two same-day, commonly owned sibling applications appear to be removed as §103 art. This is a significant limitation on this patent's exposure — the most "on-point" art is the least usable.
• Secondary considerations. SiRF's commercial success in GPS chipsets, the assertion of the '363 in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-596 (Google Patents family litigation entry), and the related SiRF Technology, Inc. v. ITC, 601 F.3d 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2010) line of appeals are potential nexus arguments. Caveat: the Fed. Cir. SiRF appeal concerned U.S. Patent No. 6,417,801, a different patent (per the JETRO summary of the case); I do not know that the '363 itself was adjudicated on validity on the merits. Do not cite that appeal as validating the '363.
• Claim-construction effect on the §103 analysis. The ITC's narrowing construction of "user interface" as "an interface between the system and a user," and of "command delivery function" as limited to user→engine commands (expressly excluding GPS_Output()), materially shrinks claims 4 and 7. Narrow constructions of exactly this kind ordinarily weaken the nonobviousness case, because the narrowed claim covers less. Note the serious consequence the ITC drew: because the accused chips/software did not themselves contain the claimed system elements, the asserted claim 7 was found not infringed — i.e., the claim as construed is comparatively weak on both validity and infringement.
• What I would want before finalizing. The printed References Cited list, the verbatim text of claims 2, 3 and 8–20, and the full text/passages of US 6,430,503 and EP 0 838 771. Until those are in hand, treat Ground 1 and Ground 5(claims 2/3/8–20) accordingly.

X. Bottom line

The most defensible §103 position is: claim 1 is obvious over US 6,430,503 in view of EP 0 838 771, and claims 4–7 are obvious over that combination further in view of the admitted conventionality of GPS engine start/stop APIs and user-to-engine command protocols. I must repeat that I could not verify the '363's examiner-cited references from your page, so this analysis is built on the one reference the '363 itself identifies and incorporates (McBurney '503) plus secondary references I verified only at the abstract/face level — not on a reconstructed PTO record.