Invalidity dossier
US 7218938
Methods and apparatus to analyze and present location information
Current assignee: IpVenture Inc
Added 9/21/2026, 10:32:42 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US 7,218,938 B1
Title: Methods and apparatus to analyze and present location information
Patent number / application: US 7,218,938 B1; Application US 10/397,472
Inventors: Chung Lau; Peter P. Tong; C. Douglass Thomas
Assignee: IpVenture Inc (current assignee, per the listed source). Original assignee listed as "Individual."
Key dates: Priority date 2002-04-24; filing date 2003-03-26; publication/grant date 2007-05-15. Status: Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2025-06-11.
Purpose (plain language): The patent concerns analyzing location information and presenting it "in an easy-to-digest manner." Each piece of location information can include location-designating information (e.g., longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates) and location-related information, which relates to the location-designating information and can be supplied by a mobile device. Multiple pieces of location-designating information can be retrieved and processed. Location-designating information can be transformed into labels, a process that can use location-related information. The excerpt's illustration: location-related information about how many floors a bookstore versus a theatre has, combined with the mobile device's ~40-foot height above ground level, indicates the device is in the bookstore, not the theatre. The amount of location information can be reduced, e.g., an entire area represented by a single label, with location-designating information for that area compressed or consolidated into one piece tied to the label. Compression may be assisted by location-related information (e.g., retaining a piece of location information when location-related information changes by more than a pre-set value). Location information can be compared to standards, which can be related to time. Presentation can be visual, on a display, relative to a reference location, with the amount of displayed detail dynamically changing based on distance between the mobile device's location and the reference location.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7218938/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It omits the full claims, detailed embodiments, and figures. It does not establish the complete scope of coverage, the exact legal status or claim construction, or the content of any omitted text. It provides no subsequent-prosecution, litigation, or prior-art information.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:01:29 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 7218938. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.