US 7062758

I'll search for the specific patent number and any related litigation or docket activity.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches for litigation/docket records.

US Patent 7,062,758 — Summary

Searching note: I searched for this specific number and for any CAFC / 2026 docket activity tied to 7,062,758. I found no CAFC docket or 2026 litigation records naming US 7,062,758. The Maxell enforcement activity that surfaces in search results (Samsung, VIZIO, TCL, LG, Apple) concerns different patents (e.g., 7,986,858; 8,107,007; 7,730,507; 7,760,213; 10,339,893; 9,578,369; 10,321,206; 8,037,161). I did not find any reliable source connecting 7,062,758 to a pending or recent CAFC appeal. Treat the litigation question as unconfirmed/negative rather than "none exists."

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative patent text)

Abstract

"When the meta data in an MP4 file is converted, a media data recopying process involves a long process duration and large memory space allocation. The invention provides that when an MP4 file is converted, an increment of a converted file size is estimated based on previously-registered meta data conversion candidate information, an overwritable free space equivalent to the estimated incremental size is inserted before a media data portion. In the MP4 file conversion, the converted meta data overwrites the to-be-converted meta data portion and the overwritable free space such that the MP4 file is converted without moving the media data."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Media data file generating device. A device that builds an encoded file from a first-format media file. That file contains media data (video + sound) plus "meta data" placed ahead of the media data (the MP4 moov before mdat situation). A second component generates an overwritable free space and inserts it between the meta data and the media data, so the produced data stream runs in sequence: meta data → free space → media data. The point is to reserve padding that a future format conversion can later overwrite without moving the media.

Claim 12 — Media data file converting device. A device with four parts: an input unit receiving the first-format file; a free-space generator inserting an overwritable free space between the media data and first meta data; a converter that changes the first format into a second format by converting the first meta data into second meta data; and an output unit. The key limitation: the second meta data is overwritten into the overwritable free space that sits between the media data and first meta data (as opposed to rewriting/relocating the media data).

Claim 18 — Media data file conversion method. The method counterpart. It inputs the first file, then compares the first size (data ahead of the media data in the first format) with the second size (data ahead of the media data in the second format). It converts the first meta data into second meta data and overwrites the second meta data into the free space inserted between the first meta data and the media data, based on the comparison result, then outputs the converted file.

Related dependent-claim highlights (context, since the user asked about independent claims): Claim 8 estimates a size C of data needed by the second format but absent from the first, and inserts free space ≥ C. Claims 9–10 extend this to deleting no-longer-needed data and sizing free space to a difference between the "to-delete" size D and "to-add" size C. Claims 13–16 (and 19–20) cover the comparison logic and the fallback path: when the converted meta data would not fit, temporarily memorize/copy the media data, rewrite the stco offsets, or terminate if memory is insufficient. Claims 11 and 17 claim incorporation into a portable device.

Practical significance

The patent addresses MP4/ISO base media file format (moov before mdat) conversion — e.g., to the Wireless Multimedia Forum RTFD 1.1 streaming profile. By pre-inserting a FreeSpaceBox and estimating the maximum meta-data growth from stored conversion-candidate information, the conversion can overwrite in place and avoid moving the mdat and rewriting the chunk-offset table (stco), saving time and memory — the stated motivation being constrained portable devices (PDAs, phones).

Uncertainty disclosure: I have the authoritative full text for the bibliographic, claim, and abstract content above. I could not confirm any CAFC appeal or 2026 docket involving this specific patent number; absence of search hits is not proof that no such proceeding exists. Before relying on litigation status, verify against the USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR record and the CAFC docket directly.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7062758 specifically.

Let me search more specifically, including patent litigation portals and the assignee's campaigns.

Litigation Search Report: US Patent No. 7,062,758

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 7,062,758. I searched for the exact number and the patent's identifiers, and nothing associated that patent with any court case, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding.

What I searched

The only on-point document surfaced was WO 2009/102178 A3 (Samsung, published Nov. 19, 2009), whose international search report cites "US 7062758 B2 (TORU YOKOYAMA) 13 June 2006 — See the whole document" as prior art. That is a prior-art citation in a PCT search report, not litigation, and it does not identify any case.

All other "7062758"-type matches were unrelated false positives:

• A trademark registration number 7062758 (JJx4 LLC, apparel retail — TTABVUE document);
• A chromosome coordinate "7062758" in a genomic patent publication (US 2012/0157324 A1);
• A Brazilian corporate registration number in a Ceará state gazette.

None of these refer to US Patent No. 7,062,758.

The patent itself (for context)

• Patent: US 7,062,758 B2, "File conversion method, file converting device, and file generating device"
• Inventor: Toru Yokoyama
• Assignee chain: Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. (2013) → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (2014) → Maxell, Ltd. (2018)
• Filing date: Aug. 14, 2002; Priority: Dec. 4, 2001 (JP 2001-369448); Granted: June 13, 2006
• Status: Expired – Fee Related. Per USPTO/Google Patents legal events, maintenance fees were not paid; the patent lapsed and was "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" (event dated July 9, 2018, effective June 13, 2018).

Caveats and limits

• This conclusion rests on public web/docket-aggregator search results, not a certified PACER or Docket Navigator run. It is possible a case exists in a database I could not reach, but nothing in my searches links this patent number to a case.
• Notably, Maxell, Ltd. (the patent's final owner) is a well-documented patent plaintiff — e.g., Maxell, Ltd. v. ZTE Corp., No. 5:18-cv-00034 (E.D. Tex.); Maxell, Ltd. v. Fandango Media, LLC, No. 2:17-cv-07534 (C.D. Cal.); Maxell, Ltd. v. VIZIO, Inc., No. 2:21-cv-06758 (C.D. Cal.); Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc., No. 5:19-cv-00036 (E.D. Tex.); and the 2023 Maxell v. Samsung dispute (E.D. Tex.). However, the patents asserted in those campaigns (e.g., 7,986,858; 8,107,007; 7,730,507; 7,760,213; 10,339,893; 9,578,369; 10,321,206) do not include 7,062,758, and I found no indication that this MP4 file-conversion patent was ever asserted in any of them or elsewhere.
• Because the patent expired in 2018 for non-payment of maintenance fees, any assertion window would have been roughly 2006–2018; I found no case within that period.

Conclusion: Based on the searches conducted, no known litigation (district court, ITC, or PTAB) involves US Patent No. 7,062,758. If your purposes require a definitive answer, I recommend a direct PACER/CM-ECF docket search and a Docket Navigator or Lex Machina patent-case query on the exact number, which I cannot execute here.

I'll verify the structured-data finding with targeted searches before drafting.

Searches surfaced only unrelated hits (a similarly-numbered trademark registration and other patents). Let me run a couple more targeted checks.

Let me run two final checks — one for any litigation assertion, one for a prior-art challenge (reexam or IPR) naming this patent.

I searched the canonical ODP-derived list, PTAB/PTACTS public petition materials, and general web sources. Here is the report.

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Proceedings overview

Total PTAB AIA trial proceedings on US 7,062,758: 0. There are no IPRs, PGRs, or CBMs on file — none active, none with claims invalidated, none with claims sustained, none settled, and none with institution denied. As of today (2026-09-28), the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) returns an empty proceeding list for this patent, and my independent searches of PTAB/PTACTS petition documents, PTAB decision repositories, Federal Circuit materials, and Maxell's own litigation filings surfaced no AIA trial naming this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has been hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is the far better one for a defendant: the patent was never PTAB-tested and, on the public record, lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees on 2018-06-13, so any current assertion is very likely time-barred rather than merely weak on the merits.

Caveat on sourcing. I was asked not to fabricate proceeding numbers, and I have none to report. If a proceeding exists that is not yet indexed in ODP and not retrievable via search, I could not find it; treat this as "no PTAB activity located," not as a negative that can never be rebutted. Anyone relying on this should confirm against PTAB E2E / PTACTS directly for the patent number before acting.

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Proceedings

None to enumerate. The requested per-proceeding template (Type / Filed / Status / Judge panel / grounds / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal) has no entries, because no AIA trial was ever instituted — or, on the public record, ever petitioned. Two adjacent facts do the work that a proceedings section normally would:

No proceeding — but a dispositive non-PTAB event: maintenance-fee lapse

• Patent: US 7,062,758 B2, "File conversion method, file converting device, and file generating device."
• Appln/Filing: US 10/217,465, filed 2002-08-14; priority JP 2001-369448 (2001-12-04); granted 2006-06-13.
• Original assignee: Hitachi, Ltd. (inventor Toru Yokoyama). Chain of title: Hitachi → Hitachi Consumer Electronics (2013-06-07) → Hitachi Maxell (2014-08-26) → Maxell, Ltd. (2018-01-25).
• Recorded status: Expired – Fee Related. Google Patents' legal-events table shows "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" (2018-07-09 entry) and "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" with an effective date of 2018-06-13.
• Inconsistency to flag: the same record also carries an "Adjusted expiration" legal-status entry of 2024-08-06 and a summary line reading "expires 2024-08-06." The adjusted expiration figure is a computed statutory-term date, whereas the lapse event reflects the fee non-payment. These cannot both be the operative expiration. On the face of the legal events, the patent went dead in 2018, not 2024. I am flagging this rather than resolving it — it is worth verifying at the USPTO before anyone relies on it.
• Why no PTAB activity: The patent's commercial/assertion life appears to have ended around the same time it lapsed. It does not appear among the patents asserted in Maxell's active campaigns that I reviewed — e.g., Maxell v. VIZIO (7,986,858 / 8,107,007 / 7,730,507 / 7,760,213 / 9,578,369 / 10,321,206 / 10,339,893), Maxell v. Apple, Maxell v. Coretronic/Optoma (7,850,313 / 8,593,580 / 9,322,530 / 9,547,226 / 9,565,388 / 9,900,569), Maxell v. TCL, or Maxell v. LG. A patent that is neither asserted nor live does not attract IPR petitions. That is the likeliest explanation for the empty docket — not that it was tried and survived.

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Strategic summary

Claim-level status. All 20 claims (independent claims 1, 12, and 18, with dependents) are UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim has been canceled, and none has been confirmed. There is no IPR certificate narrowing the patent and no FWD to cite. The claim set as issued on 2006-06-13 is the claim set that exists today — but enforceability, not claim scope, is the controlling issue, and it points the other way.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone. No petitioner is barred from raising any ground. That is normally a defect for a defendant; here it is irrelevant, because the patent's expired status is a complete defense to prospective conduct and sharply limits any past-damages exposure. Practically: a defendant does not need an IPR — and filing one on an expired patent for which the § 286 six-year lookback window (measured back from any complaint filed now) falls entirely after the 2018-06-13 lapse date would be a waste of money. The strongest "prior art" here is the calendar, not a printed publication.

Pattern signals. Maxell is an aggressive, well-documented PTAB target across other patents in the Hitachi-derived portfolio — third-party filings describe Samsung petitions IPR2025-01307 through -01316 against ten asserted Maxell patents, IPR2024-00867, and IPR2024-00717, and one filing alleges Maxell withheld material information from the Board and an examiner (37 C.F.R. § 1.56). That pattern makes the total absence of any challenge to 7,062,758 conspicuous, and reinforces the conclusion that this patent simply fell out of the portfolio's enforcement set (consistent with its 2018 fee lapse) rather than being a hardened survivor. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in the chain, because there is no proceeding to be in.

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Recommended next steps

1. Verify the lapse before anything else. The single highest-value action is to confirm at the USPTO PatentCenter/EPAS the maintenance-fee status of US 7,062,758 and the operative expiration date, and to reconcile it against the conflicting "adjusted expiration 2024-08-06" data point. Cite the record: the legal-events table at the patent's Google Patents page (patents.google.com/patent/US7062758/en) shows the "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" entry with effective date 2018-06-13. If confirmed, an expired patent cannot support a prospective injunction, and damages would be limited to the patented term and the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback — which, for a complaint filed today (2026-09-28), reaches back only to 2020-09-28, after the lapse. That is a threshold, potentially case-dispositive, defense rather than a validity fight.
2. If a demand letter arrives citing this patent, respond on status, not on merits. Do not spend on prior-art invalidity contentions for a patent that appears dead. Demand the patent owner identify (a) the exact claims asserted, (b) the accused acts and their dates, and (c) the basis for asserting an expired patent, including any asserted pre-2018-06-13 conduct within the limitations period.
3. If — contrary to this report — an AIA trial does surface, re-run this analysis against PTAB E2E / PTACTS and the PTAB Final Written Decision for the exact case, and treat the ODP omission as an indexing lag. Do not import outcomes from Maxell's other IPRs (the '757, '109, '590, etc.) onto this patent; the claims and art are unrelated.
4. Absence-is-the-signal framing. For the defendant audience: the fact that this patent attracted zero IPRs is not evidence of strength. Well-asserted, live patents in the Maxell portfolio reliably attract challenges. This one shows no challenge, no assertion in the reviewed complaints, and a 2018 fee lapse — a combination that reads as an abandoned asset. If the troll is asserting it, the burden shifts sharply to the troll to explain how it intends to recover on an expired patent.

Not legal advice; confirm all status and date findings against primary USPTO records before relying on them.

I'll start by checking the assignment records and cross-referencing sources.

Good — I found the reel/frame and correspondent for the 2018 link. Now let me pin down the earlier recordings and any litigation involving this specific patent.

US 7,062,758 — Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction

Patent: US 7,062,758 B2 — "File conversion method, file converting device, and file generating device"
App. No.: 10/217,465 · filed 2002-08-14 · issued 2006-06-13
Priority: JP 2001-369448, filed 2001-12-04 (JP counterpart published as JP2003173625A) · Family ID 19178835
Current recorded owner: Maxell, Ltd. (Kyoto, JP)
Status: Expired — fee lapse (maintenance fee nonpayment effective 2018-06-13; recorded 2018-07-09)

Sourcing note: the USPTO Assignment Center is a JavaScript application that cannot be queried directly by the tooling available here. The reel/frame numbers, execution dates and correspondent below are taken from the Google Patents "Legal Events" record for this patent plus mirrored USPTO Patent Assignment Abstract of Title text in PTAB/IPR exhibits, which reproduce the Assignment Center data verbatim. Where I could not confirm a field from a primary-looking source, I say so rather than guess.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• Single-inventor filing. Unusual for an MP4 container / box-structure invention, but there is nothing in the record to read into it.
• No inventor-departure signal. The only inventor executed the assignment to Hitachi, Ltd. about 8.5 months after the JP priority filing (2001-12-04) and 5 days after the US filing (2002-08-14). That is a normal, contemporaneous employment assignment, not a late cleanup after a departure.
• I found no evidence that the inventor left Hitachi within 12 months of filing, and I will not infer it. No fire-sale precursor is visible in this record.

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Original assignee

Hitachi, Ltd. (6-1, Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8220, JP) — named on the issued patent via the 2002 assignment.

• Line of business: diversified Japanese electronics/industrial conglomerate; the consumer-product-facing IP covering MP4/MPEG-4 file handling sat in its consumer electronics division.
• Product embodiment: Hitachi shipped MPEG-4/MP4-capable camcorders and mobile media devices in the 2002–2009 window, i.e. the field of the claims. Note the specification itself frames the invention as a server-side / device-side file conversion utility, so a direct "product embodying the claims" mapping is inferential rather than documented.
• Current status of the assignee as named: operating, and still the ultimate corporate ancestor of the current owner. Hitachi, Ltd. did not dissolve; it divested this IP by internal carve-out (see timeline).
• *Key structural fact (documented by Maxell in its own complaints, e.g. Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc., W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00646 ¶ 4):* in 2009 Hitachi, Ltd. assigned much of its consumer-product-facing IP to Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd., and in 2013 that entity assigned the portfolio — including the patents in that litigation — to Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. The '758 patent is part of that same Hitachi consumer portfolio.

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Assignment timeline

Four recorded assignments. All four are intra-corporate — no external acquirer ever appears in the chain.

• 2002-08-19 (executed) / recorded 2002-09-18 — Reel 013307/0969 (USPTO REEL/FRAME 013307/0969)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Toru Yokoyama (individual)
  • Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd. (Tokyo, JP)
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the sources available to me; I did not find an attorney/agent name of record for this recording and will not invent one.
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment, executed five days after the US filing.

• 2013-06-07 (executed) / recorded 2013-06-12 — Reel 030802/0610 (USPTO REEL/FRAME 030802/0610)

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Hitachi, Ltd.
  • Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. (JP)
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the sources available to me.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization — the 2009–2013 carve-out of Hitachi's consumer-product IP into its consumer electronics division; part of a bulk portfolio recording, not a targeted patent sale.
  • Flag: Reel 030802/0610 recurs verbatim across other Hitachi US patents (e.g. US 6,865,677 shows the identical "ASSIGNOR:HITACHI, LTD.; REEL/FRAME:030802/0610" event). That is a repeat reel on the same corporate transfer, not a repeat NPE attorney — it means the entire Hitachi consumer portfolio moved on one reel.

• 2014-08-26 (executed) / recorded 2014-09-08 — Reel 033694/0745 (USPTO REEL/FRAME 033694/0745)

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
  • Assignee: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (Ibaraki, JP)
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the sources available to me.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization — Hitachi Maxell took over the consumer IP as the licensing/R&D vehicle. Maxell's complaints describe this as aligning IP with Maxell's licensing and business-development function.

• 2017-10-01 (executed) / recorded 2018-01-25 — Reel 045142/0208 — Reel/Frame: 045142/0208 · Received 2018-01-25 · Recorded 2018-01-25 · Mailed 2018-03-09 · Pages: 141

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST — SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
  • Assignee: Maxell, Ltd. — 1 Koizumi, Oyamazaki, Oyamazaki-cho, Otokuni-gun, Kyoto, JP
  • Correspondent: NADEEN NSOULI, 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606
    • Flag: this is a repeat-player correspondent address across the Maxell/Hitachi-Maxell assignment family — the 141-page reel 045142/0208 is a portfolio-wide recording covering many Hitachi Maxell patents, and the 71 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago address matches the Chicago office used by Maxell's litigation counsel of record (Mayer Brown LLP appears as Maxell's counsel in its US district-court and PTAB matters). Important caveat: the recurrence here is a large operating company's outside IP counsel recording a corporate name-change, not an NPE lawyer running a stable of shells. Under the working rule that a single appearance is not a finding, this is a firm doing operating-company portfolio work — it does not support an NPE inference.
  • Context: change of name / intra-group reorganization — Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd. following the corporate reorganization described in Maxell's complaints. Recorded as an Assignment (not a Change of Name conveyance), but substantively a corporate renaming/reorganization.

Non-assignment legal events (for completeness, not part of the chain):

• 2009-11-16 — FPAY, 4-year maintenance fee paid
• 2013-11-13 — FPAY, 8-year maintenance fee paid
• 2018-07-09 — LAPS / STCH: patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, effective 2018-06-13

Note on a conflicting status entry: Google Patents simultaneously shows "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024-08-06" and "Adjusted expiration 2024-08-06" alongside the 2018 fee lapse. The maintained answer is the lapse: the patent terminated in 2018 for nonpayment of the 12-year maintenance fee. The 2024-08-06 figure is a computed 20-year term with adjustments and does not mean the patent was live until then. I cannot reconcile the two from the record; flagging rather than picking silently.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7062758
    2001 : JP priority application filed
    2002 : US application filed Aug 14
         : Inventor assigns to Hitachi Ltd
    2006 : Patent issued Jun 13
    2013 : Hitachi Ltd to Hitachi Consumer Electronics
    2014 : Hitachi Consumer Electronics to Hitachi Maxell
    2017 : Hitachi Maxell to Maxell Ltd
    2018 : Assignment recorded Jan 25
         : Maintenance fee lapse Jun 13

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
   Every assignee in the chain is a named operating entity in the same corporate family (Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd.). No "IP / Holdings / Ventures"-style single-purpose LLC appears at any reel. The only entity with a "Holdings"-adjacent role, Maxell Holdings, Ltd., is the parent of Maxell, Ltd. and is a Japanese operating company, not a licensing shell (see Maxell, Ltd. v. VIZIO, C.D. Cal. 2:21-cv-06758 ¶¶ 9–10). Assignee addresses are corporate headquarters in Tokyo/Ibaraki/Kyoto, not registered-agent service addresses. Reels 013307/0969, 030802/0610, 033694/0745, 045142/0208.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present (with a nuance).
   None of Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp or any Spangenberg entity appears at any reel/frame. Nuance worth stating precisely: the current owner, Maxell, Ltd., is a high-volume patent plaintiff — it has sued Apple, Samsung, VIZIO, TCL, ZTE, LG, Hisense and Coretronic/Optoma, and is a recurring PTAB patent owner. But Maxell is an operating company asserting its own inherited Hitachi portfolio, not an NPE that acquired patents for assertion. That distinction matters and the reel evidence supports the operating-company characterization, not the NPE one.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — present but non-probative.
   Only one correspondent is recoverable: Nadeen Nsouli, 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606, on Reel 045142/0208 (recorded 2018-01-25). The address recurs across many Hitachi Maxell → Maxell, Ltd. recordings because it is the outside-counsel address handling a portfolio-wide corporate name change. Because this is one operating company's counsel on one corporate reorganization — not the same lawyer appearing on successive unrelated LLC transfers — I do not score this as an NPE tell. The other three reels' correspondents could not be recovered; I flag that as a gap, not as evidence either way.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
   Four transfers is normal for a 20-year-old Japanese corporate IP lineage, and the gaps are 11 years, 1 year, and 3 years — not the sub-24-month LLC daisy chain. Critically, all assignees are affiliates of one another, and no two consecutive assignees share a registered-agent address or unrelated principals. Contrast with a genuine cascade, which would show unrelated LLCs and a common correspondent attorney.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
   The final transfer (Reel 045142/0208, executed 2017-10-01) is a name change / reorganization, not an acquisition enabling suit. Separately, I found no infringement action naming US 7,062,758. The Maxell complaints that repeatedly recite this same Hitachi assignment chain assert other patents (e.g. 7,986,858; 8,107,007; 7,730,507; 7,760,213; 9,578,369; 10,321,206; 10,339,893 in C.D. Cal. 2:21-cv-06758), not the '758 patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
   Neither Hitachi, Ltd., Hitachi Consumer Electronics, Hitachi Maxell nor Maxell, Ltd. filed for bankruptcy; the transfers are voluntary internal reorganizations. No Chapter 7/11 sale, no 363 sale order.

7. Privateering — not present.
   There is no evidence that an operating company transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The transferor and transferee are the same corporate group, and Maxell asserts in its own name (e.g. as named plaintiff in 6:20-cv-00646 and 2:21-cv-06758), not through an assignee proxy. No SEC disclosure of an off-balance-sheet assertion vehicle was identified.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
   The chain terminates at Maxell, Ltd.; it never reaches RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. The patent was not neutralized by defensive aggregation — it simply lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees (2018-06-13 effective / recorded 2018-07-09), which is a different mechanism: abandonment, not aggregation.

Signal tally: 0 of 8 NPE signals present. One signal (repeat correspondent) fires at the surface level but is explained by an operating company's portfolio-wide reorganization recording.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the full recorded chain — Reel 013307/0969 (2002-08-19/2002-09-18, Yokoyama → Hitachi, Ltd.), Reel 030802/0610 (2013-06-07/2013-06-12, Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics), Reel 033694/0745 (2014-08-26/2014-09-08, Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell) and Reel 045142/0208 (2017-10-01/2018-01-25, Hitachi Maxell → Maxell, Ltd.) — consists exclusively of intra-corporate transfers within one operating electronics group, with zero external acquirers and zero shell entities. The terminal owner, Maxell, Ltd., is a genuine product-shipping operating company (storage media, batteries, projectors; Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc., W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00646 ¶¶ 1–4) that broadly licenses and litigates its inherited Hitachi portfolio. Two caveats keep this verdict honest: I located no infringement action asserting US 7,062,758 specifically, and the patent expired for maintenance-fee nonpayment in 2018, so the "assertion" prong is documented at the portfolio level, not for this patent. If the taxonomy requires a live assertion of this patent, the fallback characterization would be "insufficient data — no assertion evidence," but it would remain not an NPE.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 7,062,758): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7062758/en

Data gaps I am explicitly flagging (not filling with inference):

1. Correspondent of record for Reels 013307/0969, 030802/0610 and 033694/0745 was not recoverable from the sources I could reach. If the Assignment Center is queried directly, capture the correspondent on Reel 033694/0745 in particular — it is the Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell transfer and would confirm or refute whether the same Chicago firm handled the entire 2013–2018 series.
2. The Google Patents status conflict (fee lapse 2018 vs. "adjusted expiration 2024-08-06") is unresolved on the record; the maintenance-fee lapse entry is the operative one.

I'll research this patent and its cited prior art. Let me gather grounding from the USPTO and other sources.

The patent is confirmed. Now let me research the key cited references to properly characterize them for an anticipation analysis.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,062,758 B2

1. Patent confirmed (USPTO)

The number 7062758 resolves in the USPTO/Google Patents record to US 7,062,758 B2, titled "File conversion method, file converting device, and file generating device." (Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7062758/en; the full text was supplied and is treated as authoritative. I did not find a conflicting record, so no auto-correction was needed.)

Critical date for the § 102 analysis: the earliest effective priority date is 2001-12-04. Only references dated before that date (a US patent/application's filing date qualifies under pre-AIA § 102(e); printed publications qualify as of their publication date) can be prior art. Two entries on the face of the patent fall on the wrong side of that date and are flagged below.

Independent claims (gist):

• Claim 1 — a media data file generating device: a file generator that produces an encoded file from a first media file (media data = video+sound; first meta data positioned before the media data), plus a free space generator that inserts an overwritable free space between the first media data and the first meta data, the output stream being meta data → free space → media data.
• Claim 12 — a media data file converting device: input unit, free-space generator, a converter that converts the first meta data into a second meta data of a second file format, and an output unit, wherein the second meta data is overwritten into the overwritable free space positioned between the media data and the first meta data.
• Claim 18 — the corresponding method: input, compare a first size (data before the media data in format 1) with a second size (data before media data in format 2), convert meta data, overwrite the second meta data into the free space based on the comparison, output.

Dependent claims worth mapping: 3 (means for specifying free-space size), 4–7 (storing/registering plural file formats), 8–10 (compute size C of added data / size D of deleted data / insert free space ≥ C or ≥ (D−C)), 13–16 (size comparison; temporary copy of mdat and stco rewrite when space is insufficient; abort when memory insufficient), 19–20 (method counterparts).

Caveat up front: The front page of US 7,062,758 lists these references under "U.S. Patent Documents," which is the examiner-cited list. The record supplied does not state which reference was applied against which claim, nor whether each was used under § 102 (anticipation) or § 103 (obviousness). The mapping to claims below is my own analytical assessment. My honest view: none of these references discloses the core claim-1/12/18 feature — inserting a FreeSpaceBox between the moov (metadata) and the mdat (media data) and later overwriting it — so they are best characterized as § 103/background art. Treat the "§ 102" attributions as "closest to anticipation" candidates rather than established anticipations.

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2. The 15 examiner-cited patent references

A. Highest relevance candidates

1. US 6,463,445 B1 — "Multimedia information retrieval system and method including format conversion system and method"

• Inventors: Teruhiko Suzuki, Yoichi Yagasaki. Assignee: Sony Electronics Inc. / Sony Corp.
• Filed 1999-09-30 (provisional 60/151,411, 1999-08-27); issued 2002-10-08. Prior art date ≈ 1999-08-27/1999-09-30 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: A format converter that automatically transcodes encoded multimedia bitstreams from one format to another so a client can decode them; it automatically determines whether decoding is needed and automatically allocates the memory resources required for conversion (frame memory).
• § 102 relevance: Closest to claim 12 (converter between two media file formats) and to claims 15–16 (determining/allocating temporary memory for the conversion). Weak on claim 1/18 because it does not teach inserting a free space before media data or overwriting metadata in place.

2. US 6,642,967 B1 — "Video data formatting and storage employing data allocation to control transcoding to intermediate video signal"

• Assignee: Sony United Kingdom Ltd.
• Filed 1999-11-16; issued 2003-11-04. Prior art date = 1999-11-16 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: Formatting and storing video data using data allocation, controlling transcoding to an intermediate video signal.
• § 102 relevance: The "data allocation" concept is the nearest structural neighbor to the claimed overwritable free space, so this is the most arguably relevant reference to claims 1 and 8 (allocating/inserting space in a stored video file). Still does not teach metadata-then-free-space-then-media-data ordering.

3. US 6,523,046 B2 — "Infrastructure and method for supporting generic multimedia metadata"

• Assignee: Microsoft Corporation.
• Filed 2000-02-25; issued 2003-02-18. Prior art date = 2000-02-25 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: An infrastructure for handling generic multimedia metadata across formats.
• § 102 relevance: Directed at the metadata aspect of claims 1 and 2 (meta data documenting the media structure). Does not address free-space insertion or in-place overwrite.

4. US 6,751,623 B1 — "Flexible interchange of coded multimedia facilitating access and streaming"

• Assignee: AT&T Corp.
• Filed 1998-01-26; issued 2004-06-15. Prior art date = 1998-01-26 (§ 102(e)). This is the counterpart of non-patent citation #1 (Basso/Puri/Schmidt).
• Description: Flexible interchange of coded multimedia to facilitate access and streaming — i.e., converting/handling a coded multimedia file across different usages.
• § 102 relevance: Can be argued against claims 4–5 (storing plural media data file formats and converting between them) and, generally, against the file-interchange premise of claims 12/18.

5. US 6,434,678 B1 — "Method for data storage organization"

• Assignee: GTP, Inc.
• Filed 1999-02-12; issued 2002-08-13. Prior art date = 1999-02-12 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: A method of organizing data storage (file layout / storage structuring).
• § 102 relevance: Potentially relevant to the file-structure layout underlying claim 1 (placed as a separate "free space" element in the file) and to claim 8's sizing step. My confidence in its specific content is low; the abstract-level description is all I can reliably state.

B. Format-conversion / transcoding references

6. JPH0851631A — "Trans-coding method and device"

• Assignee: Philips Electron NV (Philips).
• Filed 1994-06-30; published 1996-02-20. Prior art date = 1996-02-20 (§ 102(b) — printed publication more than one year before priority).
• Description: A transcoding method/device (format conversion).
• § 102 relevance: Generic transcoding art; at most relevant to claims 12/18 (converting between file formats). No teaching of free space or of not moving the media data.

7. JP2000092497A — "Transcoder"

• Assignee: NEC Corp.
• Filed 1998-09-16; published 2000-03-31. Prior art date = 2000-03-31 (§ 102(b)).
• Description: A transcoder (format converter).
• § 102 relevance: Same as above — background transcoding art touching claims 12/18 only.

8. US 6,549,577 B2 — "Computational resource allocation in an information stream decoder"

• Assignee: Sarnoff Corporation.
• Filed 1997-09-26; issued 2003-04-15. Prior art date = 1997-09-26 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: Allocating computational resources within an information-stream decoder.
• § 102 relevance: Touches the resource/memory-allocation theme of claims 15–16 (determining whether resources suffice before doing the conversion). Not a media-file-format reference.

C. Metadata / streaming / storage references

9. US 2002/0157112 A1 — "Method and apparatus for generating compact transcoding hints metadata"

• Inventor: Peter Kuhn. Filed 2000-03-13; published 2002-10-24. Prior art date = 2000-03-13 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: Generating compact transcoding-hint metadata for media.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant only to the metadata concepts of claims 1–2 and to the conversion premise of claim 12.

10. US 2004/0117427 A1 — "System and method for distributing streaming media"

• Assignee: Anystream, Inc. Filed 2001-03-16; published 2004-06-17. Prior art date = 2001-03-16 (§ 102(e) — filed before the 2001-12-04 priority).
• Description: Distributing streaming media (server-side media distribution/format handling).
• § 102 relevance: Background to the delivery-server embodiment (spec's sixth embodiment) and to the conversion premise of claims 12/18. Note the publication post-dates the priority date; only its 2001-03-16 filing date makes it citable under § 102(e).

11. US 2002/0136406 A1 — "System and method for efficiently storing and processing multimedia content"

• Inventor: Jeremy Fitzhardinge. Filed 2001-03-20; published 2002-09-26. Prior art date = 2001-03-20 (§ 102(e)/§ 102(a) as of filing).
• Description: Efficient storage and processing of multimedia content.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially relevant to claims 1 and 4–5 (storing media data files / handling multiple formats). The "efficiency" framing is conceptually close to the patent's stated object (avoid recopying the mdat).

12. US 2003/0061369 A1 — "Processing of multimedia data"

• Inventor: Emre Aksu (Nokia). Filed 2001-09-24; published 2003-03-27. Prior art date = 2001-09-24 (§ 102(e)).
• Description: Processing of multimedia data (server/terminal multimedia handling).
• § 102 relevance: General multimedia-processing background; at most tangential to claims 12/18. Filed before the priority date, so citable under § 102(e) notwithstanding its later publication.

D. File-space / editing references

13. US 5,604,900 A — "Method and system for dynamically and asynchronously expanding a file in a on-line database system without suppression of job execution"

• Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd. (same assignee family as the patent). Filed 1991-03-28; issued 1997-02-18. Prior art date = 1997-02-18 (§ 102(b)).
• Description: Monitors remaining empty space in a file and dynamically/asynchronously expands the file by a registered "allocated expansion space" when free space falls below a threshold; maintains space-management information and continues record I/O without interrupting jobs. (Verified via Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5604900.)
• § 102 relevance: This is the strongest "free/expandable file space" reference and thus the closest thing to the space-reservation concept of claims 1, 3, and 8. It teaches adding space to grow a file, but not inserting a persistent free-space box between metadata and media data for later in-place metadata overwrite — so at most a § 103 combination reference, not a clean § 102 hit.

14. US 6,088,304 A — "Editing method for deleting prescribed section of a program and editing apparatus thereof"

• Assignee: Sony Corporation. Filed 1996-09-25; issued 2000-07-11. Prior art date = 2000-07-11 (§ 102(b)).
• Description: Deleting a prescribed section of a program and editing the file accordingly.
• § 102 relevance: Directed at the deletion/updating aspect of claims 9 and 10 (deleting data present in format 1 but not needed in format 2, and updating affected parent-box sizes). Reasonable relevance to claim 9.

E. Reference apparently outside the prior-art window

15. JP2003046931A — "Information management apparatus and method"

• Assignee: Canon Inc. Filed 2001-08-01; published 2003-02-14.
• Flag: The publication date (2003-02-14) is after the 2001-12-04 priority date. Under pre-AIA § 102, a foreign (JP) published application does not obtain § 102(e)-style benefit from its filing date, so this document is not available as § 102 prior art against this patent on its face. It likely appears on the front page for § 103 / background purposes or as an IDS citation. I cannot confirm which claim(s), if any, it was applied to. I flag this rather than assert an anticipation.

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3. Non-patent literature cited (4 items)

These are prose references; each is a printed publication and thus § 102(b) art as of its publication year.

1. Basso, A.; Puri, A.; Schmidt, R.L., "Flexible Interchange of Coded Multimedia Facilitating Access and Streaming," 1998 IEEE, pp. 36–40 — the published-paper counterpart of US 6,751,623 (item 4 above). Relevant to claims 4–5 (interchanging/converting coded multimedia between formats). This is, candidly, the single most on-point non-patent item because "flexible interchange of coded multimedia" is the patent's own problem statement.
2. Han, Keesook J.; Tewfik, Ahmed H., "Fast Polynomial Regression Transform for Video Database," 1998 IEEE, pp. 143–147 — video-database/signal-processing art; largely unrelated to the free-space/format-conversion claims.
3. Hu, Michael J.; Jian, Ye, "Multimedia Description Framework (MDF) for Content Description of Audio/Video Documents," 1999 ACM, pp. 67–75 — metadata/description-framework art; relevant only to the metadata aspects of claims 1–2.
4. Mohan, Rakesh; Smith, John R.; Li, Chung-Sheng, "Adapting Multimedia Internet Content for Universal Access," 1999 IEEE, pp. 104–114 — adapting multimedia content for heterogeneous receivers (transcoding/adaptation); relevant to the conversion premise of claims 12/18.

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4. Bottom line — "most relevant" prior art

Key analytical conclusion: None of the cited references, alone, discloses the combination recited in independent claims 1, 12, and 18 — namely a media file having meta data, then an overwritable free space, then media data, and conversion by overwriting that free space with new meta data without moving the media data (so the mdat offset / stco need not be rewritten). The cited art clusters around transcoding/format conversion (§ 102 relevancy to claims 12/18 only) and around file-space management (relevance to claims 1/3/8 only). Accordingly, these references are most plausibly useful to the patent's validity only in a § 103 combination — e.g., the file-space-expansion teaching of US 5,604,900 combined with a format-conversion teaching such as US 6,463,445 — rather than as standalone § 102 anticipations.

Confidence and limitations: The citation list and dates are taken verbatim from the patent's own front page (Google Patents/USPTO link above) and are high-confidence. My characterizations of the content of most references are based on titles/abstracts and are lower-confidence for US 6,434,678, US 6,642,967, and US 2002/0136406 in particular; I could not, within this session, pull and re-read the full text of every one. The specific § 102-vs-§ 103 designations and per-claim applications in the original prosecution are not recoverable from the material provided, and I have not fabricated them.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references listed on the patent page. Let me pull details on the most relevant ones.

Let me pull details on the remaining key references, especially the Hitachi and Sony data-allocation references.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

U.S. Patent No. 7062758 B2 — "File conversion method, file converting device, and file generating device"

Inventor: Toru Yokoyama · Original assignee: Hitachi, Ltd. (later Hitachi Consumer Electronics; Hitachi Maxell; Maxell, Ltd.) · App. No. 10/217,465 · Filed 2002‑08‑14 · Priority 2001‑12‑04 (JP 2001‑369448 / JP2003173625A) · Granted 2006‑06‑13 · Status: Expired – Fee Related (maintenance fees lapsed 2018‑06‑13)

Scope and sourcing note. Per instructions I am using the Prior Art section of the US7062758B2 Google Patents page — i.e., the "Patent Citations (15)" list, the "Non‑Patent Citations (4)" list, and (because it is the authoritative text on the page) the applicant's own admitted prior art in the Background (ISO/IEC 14496‑1:2001 MP4 box/FreeSpaceBox structure, WMF RTFD 1.1, and the FIG. 23 temp‑space conversion flow). I retrieved full or partial text for US 6,463,445; US 6,751,623; US 6,434,678; US 6,523,046; and US 5,604,900. For the remaining cited references I have only the bibliographic data and titles shown on the page; mappings based on those are flagged as inference. I have not auto‑corrected any identifier — e.g., the grant is US7062758B2, the publication is US20030103073A1, and the JP priority is JP2001‑369448 / JP2003173625A.

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I. Governing framework

• § 103: Whether the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA). Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966).
• POSITA (proposed): A bachelor's degree in EE/CS (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience in multimedia file formats and MPEG‑4 systems (ISO/IEC 14496‑1) — i.e., someone comfortable with the MP4 box hierarchy, moov/mdat, stco/stsz/stsc, and with file‑format conversion.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) permits a rationale drawn from: (a) a known technique improving a similar device; (b) a simple substitution of one known element for another; (c) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (d) application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement. MPEP § 2143 requires an articulated motivation with a reasonable expectation of success.
• All 15 cited patent references and all 4 NPL items pre‑date the 2001‑12‑04 priority date and thus qualify (as § 102(a)/(b), or § 102(e) where U.S. filings/published applications predate it). The references are therefore combinable as of the critical date.

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II. The claims, decomposed

The commercial problem is stated in the specification itself: converting moov to the WMF RTFD 1.1 layout (adding ftyp, udta/wmfs/wmfm) conventionally requires copying the huge mdat into a temporary space 180 and rewriting stco (FIG. 23).

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III. What the Prior Art section yields

A. Admitted prior art (Background of US7062758B2) — the most important "reference"

1. ISO/IEC 14496‑1:2001 MP4 file format — the page describes: (i) the box = {size, type, data} structure (FIG. 2); (ii) moov 110 positioned before mdat 111; (iii) stsz 162, stsc 163, stco 164 (FIG. 5–7); and (iv) that the standard defines both required boxes and "an optional box which is available when required, or a user‑defined box" and that vendors' optional boxes cause interop failures. Critically for claim 1, the specification elsewhere identifies the claimed "overwritable free space" as the MP4 FreeSpaceBox — a box type already defined by the standard that readers skip. So the mechanism (a fillable, ignorable box) is admitted prior art; only its location and purpose (between moov and mdat, intended to be overwritten with converted metadata) is asserted as the invention.
2. WMF RTFD 1.1 (FIG. 8) — a target format that mandates ftyp 170 plus udta/wmfs/wmfm in moov 171, i.e., a known, finite list of required boxes a conversion target will add. This is the target‑format knowledge that claim 8's "size C" computation operationalizes.
3. The FIG. 23 prior‑art conversion flow — copy moov + mdat to temp space 180, delete originals, and (when mdat moves) rewrite stco. This is admitted prior art describing exactly the fallback path of claims 15 and 20 (temporarily copy media data, re‑write it, fix offsets).

B. Cited patent references (15) — relevance to the elements

C. Non‑Patent Citations (4)

• Basso, Puri & Schmidt, "Flexible Interchange of Coded Multimedia Facilitating Access and Streaming," 1998 IEEE — the article lineage of US 6,751,623; explicitly argues for flexible coded‑multimedia interchange to avoid recoding.
• Mohan, Smith & Li, "Adapting Multimedia Internet Content for Universal Access," 1999 IEEE — transcoding content to heterogeneous clients.
• Hu & Jian, "Multimedia Description Framework (MDF)…," 1999 ACM, and Han & Tewfik, "Fast polynomial Regression Transform for Video Database," 1998 IEEE — metadata description and media‑database indexing.

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IV. Grounds of rejection — claim by claim

Ground 1 — Claim 1 (and, correspondingly, 12 and 18): MP4 admitted prior art + US 5,604,900

Rationale (KSR (a)/(c) — known technique to improve a known device). The ISO/IEC 14496‑1 MP4 format (admitted) already teaches (i) moov metadata disposed before mdat media data, and (ii) a FreeSpaceBox — a defined, to‑be‑ignored, writable box. US 5,604,900 teaches the complementary idea: reserve an allocated expansion space in a file ahead of need so later content can be written without relocating the file or suspending the job, and register a threshold triggering use of that reserved space. One of ordinary skill, facing the admitted FIG. 23 problem — that converting moov (adding ftyp/udta/wmfs/wmfm) forces a multi‑gigabyte mdat copy and stco rewrite — would have been motivated to place a pre‑sized FreeSpaceBox immediately after moov and before mdat, so the enlarged metadata can later be written in place. The result is exactly the claimed sequential data stream meta data → overwritable free space → media data (the patent's own FIG. 10). The combination is a known container‑standard element relocated by a known space‑reservation technique, with a predictable result and no new mechanism — the essence of KSR's "known technique improving a similar device in the same way."

Ground 2 — Claim 2: + US 6,523,046

Claim 2 (metadata "documents at least a media data structure of data elements of the media data") is met by the admitted MP4 prior art alone: the specification itself states moov holds "information required for decoding or reproducing the media data," and FIG. 5–7 show stsz/stsc/stco describing per‑sample and per‑chunk structure. US 6,523,046 reinforces that metadata "describ[es] the content portion of a multimedia file" and is parsed to render structure. Rejection: anticipated/obvious over the admitted MP4 prior art; in the alternative obvious over MP4 + US 6,523,046.

Ground 3 — Claims 4, 5, 6, 7, 8: + US 6,463,445 and US 6,523,046

These claims require, respectively: storing plural file formats (4), determining the free size based on a specified target format (5), specifying a target format (6), registering a new format (7), and computing C = the data required by the target format that is absent from the source and reserving ≥ C (8).

• US 6,463,445 (Sony) discloses a contents‑information data structure describing the encoding format of candidate content, a client/target format selection, and automatic determination of the resources required to perform the conversion — i.e., storing plural‑format descriptors and computing what a conversion needs. It also expressly aims to "save processing time and computer resources."
• US 6,523,046 (Microsoft) discloses an extensible set of format‑specific decoders/encoders (registering a new format = "adding new decoders to extend the range of multimedia file metadata formats supported," claim 6 of that patent) and mapping of metadata items between formats.
• The WMF RTFD 1.1 admitted prior art supplies the concrete "size C" for the flagship embodiment: the mandated ftyp/udta/wmfs/wmfm boxes the target requires (the specification itself says MV1 "shows that the WMF format contains required boxes of at least 72 bytes").
• Motivation: To make the space‑reservation of Ground 1 work for arbitrary targets, a POSITA must know which targets exist and how much each adds. US 6,463,445 supplies the selection/resource‑computation framework and US 6,523,046 the extensible per‑format registry. Summarizing a target's required boxes into a single reserved size is a routine arithmetic/organizational step with predictable results. Claims 7 and 8 in particular are near‑textual reads: registering formats, and reserving the incremental target‑required size, is the ordinary way to implement any "convert to a known schema" system.

Ground 4 — Claim 9: + US 6,523,046 and US 6,088,304

Claim 9 requires deleting data present in format 1 but not needed in format 2, and updating the contents of other data affected by the deletion (i.e., fixing parent‑box sizes). US 6,523,046 discloses exactly this operation on metadata: it "discards such private metadata" that cannot be reinterpreted and, for alterations, "updates standard metadata items, such as thumbnail, width, height, and orientation." US 6,088,304 (Sony) is cited for "deleting [a] prescribed section of a program" and re‑editing the surrounding container. Motivation: Once claim 8's target‑required set is computed, the complement — source‑only boxes that must be dropped — follows directly; updating enclosing box sizes is a mandatory, well‑understood consequence of the MP4 box = {size,type,data} structure (admitted). This is a predictable design consequence, not a new insight.

Ground 5 — Claim 10: + US 5,604,900 and US 6,523,046

Claim 10 refines the arithmetic: compute D = size of data in format 1 not present in format 2, and reserve E ≥ (D − C) (net size change). This is the natural net‑delta generalization of claim 8. US 5,604,900 is directly on point because it registers an "allocated expansion space" as a quantity, and its whole point is sizing that reserved space to the expected growth so the job is never suspended. Applying the reservation to a net (added − deleted) box‑size delta is an obvious optimization of the same technique (and the applicant presents it as merely "strictly estimat[ing]" the incremental size to avoid an "unnecessarily large free size"). No unexpected result is shown.

Ground 6 — Claims 13, 14, 19: + US 5,604,900 and US 6,463,445

Comparing "before" and "after" sizes and overwriting only when size₁ > size₂ is a pre‑flight feasibility test. US 6,463,445 expressly performs an analogous pre‑flight test — it "determines whether or not decoding is required before transcoding … thereby saving processing time and computer resources" and determines the memory a conversion will need. US 5,604,900 triggers its reserved‑space operation on a comparison of actual remaining space against a registered threshold. Combining "reserve space sized to the target" (Ground 1) with "check that the reserved space is big enough before proceeding" (US 6,463,445 / US 5,604,900) is a routine, predictable safeguard a POSITA would adopt to avoid corrupting a file — exactly the KSR "known technique used to improve a similar device."

Ground 7 — Claims 15, 20: + the FIG. 23 admitted art, US 6,434,678, and US 6,642,967

Claims 15/20 recite the fallback path: when size₁ < size₂, (i) decide to temporarily memorize (buffer/copy) the media data, (ii) overwrite the second metadata into the source‑metadata space + free space + trailing space F, and (iii) write the copied media data immediately after F. This is, sentence for sentence, the admitted FIG. 23 prior art: copy moov/mdat to temporary space 180, delete originals, place the media data after the new header. US 6,434,678 adds in‑place/free‑site overwriting and "restructur[ing] and cop[ying] … to a target section." US 6,642,967 is cited for data allocation controlling transcoding. Motivation: One does not abandon a functioning converter when reserved space proves insufficient; the admitted prior art already provides the copy‑and‑rewrite approach, and applying it only as a fallback for the rare case is the textbook use of a known technique for its known purpose. Nothing in claims 15/20 is beyond the admitted art except its conditional invocation.

Ground 8 — Claim 16: + US 6,463,445 (strongest single mapping)

Claim 16 (decide whether to buffer based on available memory; terminate if the media data exceeds available memory) is squarely met by US 6,463,445 ("automatically determines the computer memory size required … thereby efficiently using computer memory resources") combined with ordinary embedded‑systems practice. Both the patent and the reference are concerned with constrained devices; checking memory before attempting to allocate it, and aborting with a message otherwise (the specification's "a massage [sic] to finish … is output"), is an obvious runtime guard with a predictable benefit.

Ground 9 — Claims 11, 17: + US 6,463,445 / US 2004/0117427 / US 2002/0136406 (and the patent's own admission)

The portable‑device limitation adds nothing structural. The admitted prior art ties MP4 to wireless delivery (WMF RTFD 1.1, which exists to serve "a platform for wireless delivery of multimedia contents"), and US 6,463,445 is expressly directed to clients including constrained receivers. A POSITA seeking to deliver MP4 to a PDA/phone — with less memory — would a fortiori apply the memory‑saving in‑place conversion of Grounds 1/6/8 on that device; that is KSR rationale (d) (known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement). The specification's own statement that the invention "is especially effective … in a portable digital device … such as a PDA and a cellular phone" confirms the limitation was a mere field‑of‑use choice, not an inventive contribution.

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V. Articulated motivation to combine (summary)

For each combination, the record supplies at least one KSR‑recognized rationale:

1. Same field / same problem — all cited references address format conversion, transcoding, or efficient multimedia storage, and the admitted problem (having to recopy mdat and rewrite stco) is the very inefficiency US 5,604,900, US 6,434,678, US 6,463,445, and US 6,523,046 set out to eliminate (each explicitly claims to save time/memory).
2. Known technique improving a known device — the MP4 FreeSpaceBox is a standard, ignorable, writable container element; using it as a pre‑reserved destination slot for later, larger metadata is the same technique as Hitachi's registered "allocated expansion space," applied to a container instead of a database file.
3. Predictable result — no new mechanism is added: the sequence moov → FreeSpaceBox → mdat is the specification's own FIG. 10; the conversion rewrites only the leading space; stco need not change because the media data does not move.
4. Design incentive / market pressure — delivering MP4 to heterogeneous clients (WMF RTFD 1.1; US 6,463,445; US 6,751,623; US 2004/0117427; the Basso/Mohan NPL items) creates a strong commercial incentive to make format conversion cheap, which is the entire premise of the patent.
5. Routine implementation of the residual features — size arithmetic (C, D, E), format registries, buffer‑capacity checks, and "abort if insufficient memory" are all conventional engineering steps once the architectural insight of Ground 1 is supplied.

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VI. Honest limits of this analysis (what I could and could not ground)

• The cited references are mostly about transcoding (re‑encoding payload), not container/box conversion. US 6,463,445, US 6,549,577, JP2000092497A, JPH0851631A, US 2002/0157112, and US 2003/0061369 concern codec‑level or resource‑allocation‑level conversion. Their mapping to a metadata‑only, media‑data‑preserving rewrite is therefore inferential, and an examiner or litigator would need to point to specific passages, not just titles. I have flagged every such mapping as inference.
• The strongest support for claim 1 is the applicant's own admitted prior art (ISO/IEC 14496‑1 FreeSpaceBox + moov‑before‑mdat) plus US 5,604,900. If US 5,604,900 is read as disclosing appending space at the end of a database file rather than inserting it between a header and its payload, the combination is weaker for claim 1 — but US 6,434,678, which concerns overwriting/reformatting defined storage sections with data written to "free storage sites," bridges that gap.
• I could not retrieve full text for US 6,642,967, US 6,549,577, JP2000092497A, JP2003046931A, JPH0851631A, US 2002/0157112, US 2004/0117427, US 2002/0136406, US 2003/0061369, US 6,088,304, or the four NPL items; those rows rest on the page's bibliographic data and titles alone. Any assertion about their internal disclosure should be verified against the documents before relying on it.
• No objective evidence of non‑obviousness appears on the page (no unexpected results, no licensing‑driven nexus, no long‑felt‑need recital). The closest thing to a secondary consideration is commercial adoption (assignment chain Hitachi → Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell → Maxell indicates the family was maintained and transferred), but assignee interest and a maintenance‑fee history are not probative of non‑obviousness.
• Practical note: US7062758B2 is expired (maintenance fees not paid; lapse effective 2018‑06‑13; "Expired – Fee Related"). § 103 invalidity is therefore of historical/defensive interest only, not a live invalidity‑defense issue.

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VII. Bottom line

On the record available, claims 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 11/17 would most likely be found obvious over (i) the admitted MP4/ISO 14496‑1 FreeSpaceBox and moov‑before‑mdat art in view of US 5,604,900 (pre‑reserved file expansion space) and US 6,434,678 (in‑place overwrite of free storage sections), further in view of US 6,463,445 (format‑conversion resource/memory determination) and US 6,523,046 (extensible multi‑format metadata mapping, deletion, and affected‑item updating) for the format‑knowledge and size‑computing claims (3–10, 15, 16, 20). The claims' only arguable toehold is the specific insight of embedding a writer‑overwritable reservation inside a distribution container between header and payload for the express purpose of a future in‑place format upgrade — but because the MP4 standard already defined an ignorable, writable FreeSpaceBox, and Hitachi '900 already taught reserving space so files need not be relocated, that insight is best characterized under KSR as applying a known technique to a known device, yielding a predictable result.