Invalidity dossier
US 7277715
Methods, systems, and products for demographic discounting
Current assignee: AT&T Delaware Intellectual Property Inc
Added 9/23/2026, 11:24:52 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 — US7277715B2
Title: Methods, systems, and products for demographic discounting
Assignee/Applicant (as listed): Current assignee — AT&T Delaware Intellectual Property Inc; original assignee — AT&T BLS Intellectual Property Inc (spelled "Intelectual" in the source). Inventors: Robert J. Starr and Samuel N. Zellner. Filed 2005-08-10; granted/publication date 2007-10-02; priority date 2005-03-31 (claimed from US11/095,362). Application US11/200,963; also published as US20060223505A1. Google Patents lists legal status as "Expired – Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2025-04-09. Classifications: G06Q30/02 and related subclasses (discounts/incentives, targeted advertisements, wireless devices).
Purpose (per the supplied text): The application "generally relates to telecommunications and to data processing," and more particularly to location monitoring. It addresses providing discounts based on demographics and on geographic location, so that discounts vary according to the recipient's demographics and the distance from a reference location. Example use case: a merchant wants to target certain demographics and give a greater discount to customers who must travel farther to the merchant's physical location, to entice them to travel and make purchases.
Plain-language scope: A device's location is obtained, and a demographic indicator associated with the device is also obtained; the discount is retrieved from memory and is based on the location and the demographic indicator, with the discount increasing as distance from a reference location increases. Demographic indicators mentioned include billing address, household income, gender, age, employment, and education; historical location and purchase information may also be used. Disclosed subject matter includes methods, systems, and computer program products, with figures covering retrieval of discounts, multiple reference locations, address association, delivery, expiration, coupons, and an associated business entity.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7277715](/patent/US7277715)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: Because the text is excerpted, it does not provide the full claims, the exact claim language or scope, the complete written description, or the precise figures/embodiments. It also does not establish prosecution history, claim construction, the accuracy of the listed assignees or legal status, or any prior-art analysis. No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art conclusions are drawn here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:58 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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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.