US 7463596

I'll search for information about US patent 7463596 from authoritative sources.

I have the patent details. Now let me search specifically for CAFC 2026 docket activity and litigation involving this patent.

US Patent 7,463,596 B2 — Summary

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim from the record)

"A method and apparatus is provided for the time-based provisioning of wireless devices. A network access point monitors operation of wireless devices within a service region. When provisioning logic is activated at the network access point, the access point determines if the tracked parameter (such as power on or the onset of signal transmission) of the wireless device occurs within a designated time interval from the time of the provisioning activation. If the tracked device qualifies, the network access point proceeds with provisioning the device. In one system embodiment, the network access point tracks the power on time of wireless devices. When a wireless device to be authorized is powered on, the provisioning logic at the network access point notes the power on time. The user then activates the provisioning access at the network access point, and the network access point provisions the wireless device if it is recently powered on."

Independent claims (plain-language)

The patent has 30 claims, with two independent claims (all others depend on one of these):

Claim 1 (process): A method of associating devices that (a) tracks an operating parameter of a first device, where the tracked parameter is either the device's power-on event or the onset of the device's signal transmission, and (b) automatically associates that first device with at least one other device if the tracked operating parameter occurred within a defined time interval. In short: if a device powers on (or starts transmitting) during the qualifying window, it gets automatically paired/authorized with the network-side device.

Claim 16 (system): The system counterpart to claim 1, expressed in means-plus-function form: means for tracking the operating parameter of a first device (power-on or onset of signal transmission), and means for automatically associating the first device with another device if the tracked parameter occurs within a time interval.

Notes and uncertainties

• CAFC 2026 docket search: My web searches returned no results confirming any U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) appeal on a 2026 docket involving patent 7463596. I could not verify CAFC activity from the searches performed, so I cannot confirm or deny a pending 2026 appeal — treat that as unconfirmed.
• District court litigation (confirmed from the Google Patents record): The patent has been involved in numerous district-court cases (Texas Eastern, Texas Western, California Central, Virginia Eastern, Delaware, New York Southern, Alabama Northern, per Unified Patents/Darts-ip litigation data), mostly brought by/against entities in the Unwired/CommWorks chain. None of the listed district-court entries were identified in my searches as CAFC appeals.
• Dates: Minor discrepancies exist between sources: Unified Patents lists priority/grant/expiration one day earlier (Jan. 12, 2003; Dec. 8, 2008; Jan. 12, 2023) than Google Patents and the USPTO-style record (Jan. 13, 2003; Dec. 9, 2008; Jan. 13, 2023). The Google Patents/USPTO record provided as the authoritative text is used above.
• Assignee caveat: The "Current Assignee: Unwired Broadband Inc." shown by Google is a legal-status assumption; the USPTO assignment record shows a chain ending in an assignment to Unwired Broadband, Inc. (recorded 2022), with CommWorks Solutions, LLC as the immediate assignor. I did not independently verify post-2022 assignment records beyond the Google Patents legal-events table.

I'll search litigation databases for cases involving US 7,463,596 specifically.

I have a good start. Let me verify the 2026 filings and check for any CAFC appeals.

Let me verify the 2020 suits and other case numbers, plus check for CAFC appeals.

Litigation Involving US Patent 7,463,596 B2

Identification check (strict): The target is US 7,463,596 B2, application 11/673,513, "Time based wireless access provisioning," inventors Roskind & Robinson, original assignee America Online/AOL LLC, granted 2008-12-09, expired 2023-01-13. I excluded results for similarly-numbered patents (e.g., US 8,924,596; US 7,463,070; the Brazilian "7463596" registry entry that surfaced in one search; 7,177,285 / 7,911,979 / 6,891,807 / RE44,904, which are sibling patents in the same family, not this patent).

Important structural caveat up front. This patent is asserted almost exclusively as part of a 7-patent family campaign run by CommWorks Solutions, LLC (Alpharetta, GA; "Corporate Parent Brainbox Innovations, LLC" per its Rule 7.1 disclosures), and now also by Unwired Broadband, Inc. The complaints plead the family together (US7027465B2, US7177285B2, US6891807B2, US7911979B2, RE44,904, US9554304B2, and US7463596B2). The Google Patents "litigation" feed attached to this patent (sourced from Unified Patents/Darts-ip) aggregates the family campaign, so not every listed case necessarily asserted the '596 patent specifically. Below I separate (A) cases with documentary confirmation that '596 itself was asserted, from (B) cases in the Google Patents feed where the '596-specific assertion is not independently verified.

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A. Cases with documentary confirmation that US 7,463,596 was asserted

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B. Additional cases in the Google Patents / Unified Patents litigation feed (family campaign — '596 specificity unverified)

These appear in the Google Patents litigation record attached to US 7,463,596 (sourced from Unified Patents / Darts-ip). Because the family is pleaded together, I treat '596 assertion as unconfirmed for each of these unless separately noted.

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C. Federal Circuit (CAFC) activity

None found. I located no appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involving US 7,463,596. This is structurally consistent with the PTAB finding: with zero IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings and no final written decision, there can be no PTAB-originated CAFC appeal on this patent. Every district-court resolution I could identify was a voluntary/stipulated dismissal (see §A, rows 5, 6, 8, and the Zyxel/Vyve dismissals), i.e., a non-merits termination that is generally not appealable. The "CAFC 2026 docket" item flagged as unconfirmed in earlier sections remains unconfirmed here.

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D. Cross-cutting findings

1. Plaintiff is almost always CommWorks Solutions, LLC. The only confirmed role-reversal is the Altice USA / CSC Holdings declaratory-judgment action (D. Del. 1:21-cv-01323), where CommWorks was the defendant. CommWorks' Rule 7.1 disclosure names Brainbox Innovations, LLC as its corporate parent — the coordination allegation noted in the ownership section.
2. No case has produced a merits ruling on the '596 patent. The recurring outcome is dismissal with or without prejudice (NXP — with prejudice, Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i); TI — with prejudice, Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii); Altice — voluntary dismissal). That means no claim construction, no invalidity holding, no infringement holding, and no collateral estoppel as to any '596 claim.
3. The campaign is still live in 2026 — the two 2026 filings are CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Realtek Semiconductor Corp. (2:26-cv-00088, E.D. Tex., filed 2026-02-02) and CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Microchip Technology Inc. (7:26-cv-00043, W.D. Tex., filed 2026-02-10). Both are open; neither has reached answer on the merits as of this writing.
4. Expiry limitation. The '596 patent expired 2023-01-13. All 2025–2026 assertions can only reach pre-expiration past damages, which is why the pleadings in the STMicroelectronics action frame the injury as pre-expiry conduct.
5. Consistency check vs. prior sections. The earlier summary's caution that the assignee field is "a legal-status assumption" is borne out by the pleadings: CommWorks — not Unwired Broadband — is the named owner/assignee asserting the patents in the 2020–2026 complaints ("CommWorks owns all substantial rights, interest, and title in and to the '596 patent"), even though Google Patents lists Unwired Broadband, Inc. as current assignee. This is the same license-vs-assignment ambiguity flagged in the ownership section and should be treated as an open standing/RPI question.

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E. Sources

• Google Patents, US7463596B2 (litigation feed; Unified Patents / Darts-ip): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7463596/en
• Unified Patents litigation caselist: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database, patent 7463596 (two confirmed cases): https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7463596
• USPTO AO 120 for D. Del. 21-1323-JLH (Altice USA/CSC Holdings v. CommWorks), listing 7,463,596 B2: https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/14-58,473/RECOVERY_TECHNIQUES_IN_MOBILE_NETWORKS/docs/L4PMUC9SGREENX5.pdf
• PACER/UniCourt docket, 2:25-cv-00024 (DrayTek; Exhibit B = U.S. Patent No. 7,463,596): https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-casegubc3d0188bd08-[2008001](/patent/2008001)
• PACER docket / Complaint, 7:25-cv-00363 (CommWorks v. STMicroelectronics; Count II, '596 claim 1): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71193236/1/commworks-solutions-llc-v-stmicroelectronics-inc/
• PACER Monitor docket, 2:26-cv-00088 (CommWorks v. Realtek Semiconductor Corp.): https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/62913676/
• Dockets.Justia, 7:26-cv-00043 (CommWorks v. Microchip Technology Inc.): https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/7:2026cv00043/1172889760
• RPX Insight, 2:20-cv-00158 (CommWorks v. Cable One; closed 2021-02-12): https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txedce-[197834](/patent/197834)-commworks-solutions-v-cable-one
• Unified Patents docket, 2:20-cv-00159 (Consolidated Communications): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2:20-cv-00159
• PatSnap litigation analyses: CommWorks v. NXP (7:25-cv-00395), CommWorks v. TI (2:25-cv-00439), CommWorks v. u-blox (1:25-cv-02504)
• IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup, 2022-07-29 (CommWorks family patents incl. 7463596): https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/07/29/patent-filings-roundup-future-waco-patent-cases-headed-wheel-ax-wireless-launches-wifi-6-campaign-helsinn-paragraph-iv-litigation/
• Ex Parte complaint analysis, 8:24-cv-02250 (Axon Networks)

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Verification / confidence note (disclosed candidly)

I ran into a research step limit before completing the case-number-to-defendant mapping for the entirety of Group B. Specifically, these remain unverified and should be pulled from PACER/CourtListener before reliance: 2:26-cv-00088's exact '596 count; 7:26-cv-00043's '596 exhibit; 2:23-cv-08048, 2:23-cv-09229, 2:24-cv-00701, 2:24-cv-00931, 2:25-cv-00154, 2:25-cv-00252, 2:25-cv-00433, 2:25-cv-01257, 2:25-cv-00842, 7:25-cv-00101, 6:22-cv-01268, 6:23-cv-00063, 4:23-cv-00086, 2:23-cv-00510, 1:20-cv-07529. Additionally, I could not confirm that the Comcast action (6:21-cv-00366) asserted the '596 patent — the complaint counts I retrieved concerned sibling patents.

Highest-confidence items: (1) the patent expired 2023-01-13; (2) CommWorks Solutions, LLC is the plaintiff in the overwhelming majority of these actions; (3) no PTAB proceeding and no CAFC appeal exist on this patent; (4) no case has produced a merits ruling — outcomes are dismissals.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 7,463,596. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent — breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — so the defensive posture is not "hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims already canceled"; it is untested at the PTAB, which means no claim-level validity determination, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against any party, and no Board claim construction exists for a defendant to exploit or work around — a notable gap given that the patent was asserted in roughly two dozen district-court actions and expired on 2023-01-13, leaving only pre-expiration damages exposure.

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Proceeding-by-proceeding

There are no proceedings to serialize. I am not going to invent proceeding numbers, panels, or FWD dispositions to fill this section. What follows is the negative finding plus the one adjacent data point worth knowing.

Negative finding (canonical source). The structured PTAB block supplied with this prompt — sourced from the USPTO ODP API — reports no AIA trials on US 7,463,596 as of the most recent ingest. My independent web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM + 7,463,596 returned no petition, institution decision, FWD, or termination for this patent number. Every hit my searches produced for a "’596 patent" at the PTAB concerned a different patent (e.g., an eyewear patent 8,905,541 in IPR2024-01071; U.S. 8,924,596 in IPR2025-00478; Sanofi's clopidogrel ’596; Vederi's ’596 in the Google v. Vederi reexaminations). Numeric collision with "596" is pervasive in PTAB text — do not let it generate a false positive.

Adjacent data point (NOT this patent — pattern evidence only).

IPR2021-01297 — Unified Patents, LLC v. CommWorks Solutions, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent at issue: U.S. Patent 8,923,846 — not 7,463,596. Same patent owner (CommWorks Solutions, LLC) as in this patent's chain.
• Status: Filing-stage record located (Petitioner's Exhibit 1008, Declaration of Zygmunt J. Haas, Ph.D., filed 2021-07-30), challenging claims 1–6, 9–13, and 16–20 of the ’846 patent on § 103 grounds over Rune/ETSI/Pirkola. I did not locate an institution decision or FWD for it in the searches performed, so its outcome is unverified.
• Source: Docket Alarm, IPR2021-01297 docket
• Defensive value: It shows a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents) was actively challenging the CommWorks portfolio in 2021 — but it picked the ’846 patent, not the time-based provisioning family. That is meaningful negative evidence: Unified, with this patent family squarely in view, did not bring an IPR against 7,463,596.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. All 30 claims of 7,463,596 remain as issued: independent claims 1 (process) and 16 (means-plus-function system), plus dependents 2–15 and 17–30. Nothing has been canceled, narrowed by certificate of correction, or construed by the Board. Contrast this with the sibling Vederi patents in the result set, where the PTAB did cancel specific claims (e.g., claims 4, 63–66, 68, 70–72, 74 of Vederi's ’596) — that is exactly what has not happened here. The most a defendant can say is that claim 1 was the only claim CommWorks bothered to assert in several suits (per the CommWorks v. DrayTek complaint, Compl. ¶ 47, and the Vyve Broadband action listing US7463596B2 among seven asserted patents), which tells you where the commercial value is, but assertion practice is not a validity ruling.

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate, with two caveats. Because there is no institution and no FWD, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty. No party — including Unified Patents, CommWorks' district-court defendants, or any privy — is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground, in any forum, on any claim. A defendant today therefore has the fullest possible prior-art menu. Two practical caveats: (1) the patent expired 2023-01-13 ("Expired – Lifetime," per the Google Patents legal-status entry and expiration entry of 2023-01-13), so IPR relief now buys you invalidity of claims that can only be enforced for past damages — often still worth it for a multi-defendant campaign, but the leverage is lower; and (2) if you have already been served with a complaint, the § 315(b) one-year clock from service governs your filing window, and an expired patent still can be IPR'd (the Board reviews the claims; the patent owner simply loses the amendment option). Note the sharpened claim-construction posture for expired claims (Phillips), which can cut either way on means-plus-function claim 16's § 112(f) structure.

Pattern signals. (a) Same-petitioner repetition: none — no petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against this patent, because none has filed one at all. (b) Patent-owner PTAB appeals: none possible — no FWD exists, so the "CAFC 2026 docket" item flagged as unconfirmed in the prior summary cannot be a PTAB appeal from this patent; any 2026 Federal Circuit activity would have to arise from a district-court judgment, not the Board. (c) Defensive aggregator: present in the portfolio, absent on this asset (see IPR2021-01297, above). (d) Assertion cadence remains hot: the Google Patents record shows new 2025–2026 filings citing this patent (Texas E.D. 2:26-cv-00088; Texas W.D. 7:26-cv-00043; and 2025 actions in Texas E.D./W.D., California C.D., and Virginia E.D.), and third-party litigation summaries describe CommWorks actions against Vyve Broadband (7:23-cv-00147, US7463596B2 asserted), Zyxel (6:23-cv-00065), DrayTek (2:25-cv-00024), AVM (2:25-cv-00026), Axon Networks (8:24-cv-02250), and Adtran (5:23-cv-01327). A patent being asserted this widely, across this many years, with zero IPR petitions, is the single most striking finding here.

Bottom line for a defendant: the troll (or, in 2025–2026, the licensee/assignee chain) is asserting claims that no tribunal has ever invalidated and no tribunal has ever even examined. You cannot point to an FWD and say "claim 1 is dead." What you can do — and what no prior defendant apparently did — is file first, on the strongest § 103 art, before your § 315(b) year runs, and consider whether the expired status plus a Phillips construction of "automatically associating" and "operating parameter" gives you a clean non-infringement or § 112 story in the district court in parallel.

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Recommended next steps

1. Verify the negative finding directly against the canonical docket systems before relying on it. Run the patent number through USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Center and the PTAB Decisions search, and cross-check the ODP block's ingest date. The absence of PTAB activity is the load-bearing fact of this memo, so confirm it on the live docket rather than on secondary sources — ODP ingest lag is real, and my searches also surfaced nothing because nothing appears to exist.
2. Confirm expiration and enforceability scope. Google Patents records "Anticipated expiration" 2023-01-13 and legal status "Expired – Lifetime," with maintenance fees paid through the 12th year (2020-09-30). If you are a 2025–2026 defendant, confirm whether asserted conduct predates 2023-01-13 and whether any pre-suit damages are recoverable; ask for the § 287 marking/notice record (CommWorks sent notice letters — e.g., 2022-02-02 to Adtran/DrayTek, 2020-04-17 to EarthLink — per the complaints).
3. Pursue invalidity in the forum you control. With no PTAB record and no estoppel, an ex parte reexamination or an IPR remains available; if you are already in a Texas case and want to stay it, note that no NHK-Fintiv-style serial-petition concerns apply here because there is no prior petition at all. Budget against the § 315(b) one-year service deadline.
4. Request the litigation history from the patent owner under discovery or local rules. There is no FWD to cite, so the useful record is the district-court one — whether any defendant has raised invalidity contentions on claim 1 of the ’596, and whether any prior case resolved on validity. The PatSnap summaries I found indicate CommWorks' cases have terminated without merits rulings (e.g., Zyxel: dismissed with prejudice; Vyve: dismissed with prejudice), which means no estoppel, no collateral estoppel, and no validity adjudication benefits you — but also no adverse ruling against you.
5. If you locate a live 2026 proceeding or a CAFC appeal, escalate. I could not confirm any pending 2026 Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent, and I could not locate any AIA trial. Treat both as unconfirmed; if the portfolio's new 2026 filings (Texas E.D. 2:26-cv-00088; Texas W.D. 7:26-cv-00043) prompted an IPR, it would not yet appear in an ODP ingest that predates it.

Confidence note: The item I am most confident about is that there is no IPR/PGR/CBM on 7,463,596 — consistent across the structured ODP block and my searches. The items I am least confident about, and which should be verified on primary dockets, are (a) the current status of IPR2021-01297 (different patent, and I only found the petition-stage exhibit), (b) the enumeration of 2025–2026 district-court filings, which comes from Google Patents' Unified Patents/Darts-ip data rather than from PACER, and (c) the prior section's unconfirmed "CAFC 2026 docket" item, which — absent any FWD on this patent — cannot be a PTAB appeal.

I'll research the assignment records, including correspondents of record, which aren't in the patent text itself.

Ownership reconstruction — US 7,463,596 B2 (application 11/673,513)

Data-gap disclosure up front: The authoritative full text I was given (Google Patents legal-events table, mirrored from USPTO assignment data) contains reel/frame, conveyance type, assignor, assignee, execution/recording dates and the "effective date" for each recording — but it does not expose the correspondent-of-record field. My targeted searches for the individual reel/frame numbers (023379/0103, 037396/0647, 051463/0026, etc.) returned zero results, so I could not recover the recording attorney/agent names. I am therefore not reporting correspondents below; inventing them would violate the no-fabrication constraint. Signal #3 (repeat correspondent) is consequently unresolvable from the sources available to me and must be pulled directly from Assignment Center (link at the end).

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Inventors

Both inventors were obligated assignors to America Online, Inc. at the time of the January 2003 filing — that is the only employer identification the record supports. (I am not asserting job titles or departments; the record does not state them.)

Unusual pattern worth flagging: the inventors' own assignment to America Online was not recorded until 2009-10-20 — i.e., more than six years after execution, and five days after AOL LLC assigned the patent to Tarquin Consulting Co., LLC (recorded 2009-10-15). Recording the root of title at the moment of a portfolio transfer is a classic clean-up-in-anticipation-of-sale pattern; it suggests the inventors' paperwork was a diligence item for the Tarquin transaction rather than an ordinary contemporaneous filing. I cannot verify inventor departures within 12 months of filing — no source I retrieved speaks to that.

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Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: America Online, Inc. (assignee of record at issue), recorded as converted to AOL LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (reels 019927/0958 → 022540/0160 → 022846/0684).
• Line of business: consumer online services (AOL subscription service, AIM, AOL-branded content/portal), i.e., a large operating internet-services company — not a wireless access-point manufacturer.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No product of AOL's is identified anywhere in the record as an 802.11/Bluetooth access point practicing the "time-window power-on provisioning" claims. The specification's own home-network/access-point framing reads as a defensive/architecture filing rather than a product-line patent. Treat "shipped an embodying product" as not established.
• Current status of the original assignee line: America Online, Inc. ran through conversion to AOL LLC (2006 effective date on reel 019927/0958), the 2009 Time Warner spin-off (AOL Inc.), the 2015 Verizon acquisition, and the 2021 Verizon→Apollo sale (now Yahoo). Crucially, AOL divested this patent in 2009, six years before the Verizon deal — so none of the later corporate events affect this asset.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological, all entries from the 11/673,513 legal-events record. "Executed" = effective/signing date where stated, otherwise the recording date is used and noted.

1. 2003-01-09 / 2003-01-14 (signed) / recorded 2009-10-20 — Reel 023390/0819

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Roskind, James A.; Robinson, John D.
   • Assignee: America Online, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not exposed in the record text available to me (see data-gap disclosure).
   • Context: original inventor-to-employer assignment; recorded six-plus years late, five days after the Tarquin sale recorded.

2. Effective 2006-04-03 / recorded 2007-10-05 — Reel 019927/0958

   • Conveyance: Assignment as filed, corrected to Change of Name
   • Assignor: America Online, Inc.
   • Assignee: AOL LLC, a Delaware limited liability company
   • Correspondent: not available (see above).
   • Context: internal reorg — corporate conversion; no change in beneficial ownership.

3. Recorded 2009-04-13 — Reel 022540/0160

   • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (nature of conveyance at 019927/0958 corrected to change of name)
   • Assignor: America Online, Inc. → Assignee: AOL LLC
   • Context: correction of record only.

4. Recorded 2009-06-19 — Reel 022846/0684

   • Conveyance: Correction to Corrective Assignment (actual nature = conversion to limited liability company)
   • Assignor: America Online, Inc. → Assignee: AOL LLC
   • Context: second-order correction of record only; note the record needed two corrective layers before the title was clean enough to sell.

5. Effective 2009-09-17 / recorded 2009-10-15 — Reel 023379/0103

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: AOL LLC → Assignee: Tarquin Consulting Co., LLC (Delaware)
   • Context: outbound transfer of the asset to a separate holding LLC — first severance from the operating company.

6. Effective 2015-08-27 / recorded 2015-12-29 — Reel 037396/0647

   • Conveyance: Merger
   • Assignor: Tarquin Consulting Co., LLC → Assignee: Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (Delaware)
   • Context: holding-entity merger/consolidation (Tarquin absorbed into the Callahan Cellular vehicle).

7. Effective 2019-10-30 / recorded 2019-10-31 — Reel 050900/0904

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Callahan Cellular L.L.C. → Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (Delaware)
   • Context: transfer into an Intellectual Ventures patent-asset vehicle — the IV ring-fence step used before onward disposition.

8. Effective 2019-11-15 / recorded 2020-01-03 — Reel 051463/0026

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC → Assignee: CommWorks Solutions, LLC (Georgia)
   • Context: transfer to an active assertion entity (CommWorks / IP Investments Group).

9. Effective 2020-09-18 / recorded 2020-11-05 — Reel 054443/0958

   • Conveyance: License (as originally recorded)
   • Assignor: CommWorks Solutions, LLC → Assignee of record: Unwired Solutions, Inc. (California)
   • Context: grant of rights to a practicing wireless ISP (Unwired Broadband, Fresno, CA) — a use-license, not a shell transfer, on its face.

10. Effective 2020-09-18 / recorded 2021-02-04 — Reel 056981/0631

    • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment correcting the assignee name at 054443/0958 (Unwired Solutions, Inc. → Unwired Broadband, Inc.)
    • Context: correction of record only — name of the licensee/assignee fixed.

11. Effective 2020-09-18 / recorded 2022-02-16 — Reel 059907/0563

    • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment correcting the nature of conveyance at 056981/0631 — the record now recites Assignment
    • Assignor: CommWorks Solutions, LLC → Assignee: Unwired Broadband, Inc.
    • Context: the record itself changes the characterization from LICENSE to ASSIGNMENT. This is the single most important defect/nuance in the chain: the same September 18, 2020 transaction was recorded as a license, re-recorded as a license with a corrected name, and then re-recorded yet again as an assignment. Google Patents accordingly lists Unwired Broadband, Inc. as current assignee (a legal-status assumption, not a legal conclusion), while CommWorks Solutions, LLC remains the plaintiff of record in the CommWorks assertion cases. Treat the ownership of the right-to-exclude as contested on the face of the record.

Cross-check flag vs. prior section: the earlier summary rendered the final link as "(corrective assignment/license) Unwired Broadband, Inc." — that is consistent with reels 056981/0631 and 059907/0563 only if the later corrective controls. The earlier summary understated that the corrective sequence flips the conveyance type from license to assignment; downstream analyses (standing, joinder, real-party-in-interest) should not treat this as settled.

Foreign family: PCT/US2004/000860 → WO2004064305A2 (filed 2004-01-13; status Ceased). The US family is 10/341,847 → US 6,891,807; 10/961,959 → US 7,177,285; 11/673,513 → US 7,463,596; 12/323,399 → US 7,911,979. All four US members share the 2003-01-13 priority; the 2009, 2015, 2019 and 2020 recordings above are the transfers of the 11/673,513 member specifically, and the sibling members were conveyed in parallel transactions (same asset family, same counterparties).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7463596
    2003 : Inventors assign rights to America Online
    2006 : America Online converts to AOL LLC
    2009 : AOL LLC assigns to Tarquin Consulting
         : Inventor assignment recorded late same week
    2015 : Tarquin merges into Callahan Cellular L.L.C.
    2019 : Callahan assigns to Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC
    2020 : IV Assets 130 assigns to CommWorks Solutions LLC
         : CommWorks grants rights to Unwired Broadband
    2021 : Corrective recording fixes assignee name
    2022 : Corrective recording flips license to assignment

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. Reel 023379/0103 (effective 2009-09-17) moves the patent from operating company AOL LLC to Tarquin Consulting Co., LLC (Delaware), a name-suffix "Consulting" holding LLC; that LLC is then absorbed by merger into Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (Delaware) at reel 037396/0647 (effective 2015-08-27), which in turn pushes the asset into Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (Delaware) at reel 050900/0904 (effective 2019-10-30). A multi-hop chain of Delaware holding LLCs with no apparent operating business is the canonical shell-entity pattern. Note the naming caveat: I am relying on the recorded chain and the counterparties, not on the LLC names alone.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Two links match public NPE tracking:

   • Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (reel 050900/0904) — an IV patent-asset vehicle.
   • CommWorks Solutions, LLC (reel 051463/0026) — Unified Patents, which petitioned for IPR and ex parte reexamination against CommWorks patents, describes it as "an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC" (Unified Patents insights, 2021-07-30 and 2021-11-24); the Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists CommWorks cases with NPE status "Non Practicing Entity" (e.g., CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc., 6:22-cv-00156 W.D. Tex.; CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., 6:23-cv-00835 W.D. Tex.); IPWatchdog (2021-09-22) reports CommWorks among LLCs accused of operating inside a coordinated assertion campaign with an IV backend (see also Altice USA v. CommWorks Solutions, 1:21-cv-01323 D. Del.; RPX Insight tracks CommWorks v. ZyXEL, 6:23-cv-00065 W.D. Tex., flagged "NPE DC").
   • Callahan Cellular L.L.C. (reel 037396/0647) is likewise an entity in the IV-orbit family that has appeared as a plaintiff in wireless/IP assertion suits.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRESOLVED (data gap). The correspondent field is not present in the record text supplied to me, and searches on the specific reel/frame numbers returned no results. I therefore cannot state whether one attorney/firm handled 023379/0103, 037396/0647, 050900/0904, 051463/0026 and the 054443/0958–059907/0563 sequence. This is precisely the field to pull manually from Assignment Center (it is the strongest tell in this chain, because the assignment-side counterparties are all corporate/securitization-style re-recordings). No correspondent is asserted here.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Three successive transfers in under twelve months: Callahan Cellular → IV Assets 130 (effective 2019-10-30), IV Assets 130 → CommWorks Solutions (effective 2019-11-15), CommWorks → Unwired (effective 2020-09-18); recordings follow on 2019-10-31, 2020-01-03, 2020-11-05, with two further corrective recordings (2021-02-04, 2022-02-16) each re-papering the same 2020-09-18 transaction. An earlier two-step cascade (AOL → Tarquin 2009; Tarquin → Callahan 2015) shows the same churn pattern over a longer horizon.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR. The transfer to the asserting entity (IV Assets 130 → CommWorks, effective 2019-11-15) precedes the earliest confirmed CommWorks filings by substantially more than six months (Delaware DJ Altice v. CommWorks, filed 2021-09-17; Charter case filed 2022-02-11), so the strict "<6 months before first suit" trigger is not met on the evidence I have. What is documented is a transfer-then-assert sequence plus continuing litigation into 2024–2026 (e.g., 2:24-cv-00931, 2:25-cv-00024, and the 2026 filings 2:26-cv-00088 E.D. Tex. and 7:26-cv-00043 W.D. Tex. in the Google litigation table).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding appears in the record for AOL, Tarquin, Callahan, IV Assets 130 or CommWorks. The 2009 AOL → Tarquin transfer is an ordinary (if clean-up-driven) assignment, not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT as defined. The definition requires an operating company transferring to an NPE that asserts on the operating company's behalf. Here AOL severed the asset entirely in 2009 and has no apparent role in the 2021–2026 campaign; the asserters are IV-lineage entities acting on their own account. Separately, IPWatchdog's 2021-09-22 report of a coordinated campaign allegedly "driven by Brainbox and executed through" LLCs including CommWorks is a coordination allegation among asserters, not operating-company privateering — a distinct (though related) concern.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. The opposite occurred: Unified Patents attacked CommWorks-owned patents (IPR on US 8,923,846; ex parte reexam on US 6,832,249), i.e., a defensive aggregator is on the adverse side. The patent has not been neutralized; the family remains in active assertion.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain leaves an operating company (AOL LLC) at reel 023379/0103 (effective 2009-09-17) and thereafter runs only through non-operating holders — Tarquin Consulting, then Callahan Cellular L.L.C. via merger (reel 037396/0647, effective 2015-08-27), then Intellectual Ventures Assets 130 LLC (reel 050900/0904, effective 2019-10-30), then CommWorks Solutions, LLC (reel 051463/0026, effective 2019-11-15) — a documented IV-lineage assertion entity. Two strong signals are independently satisfied: shell/holding-entity transfer and known asserter in the chain (IV Assets 130; CommWorks, described by Unified Patents as "an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC" and listed as a Non-Practicing Entity in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database), reinforced by cascading transfers across 2019–2020 and a multi-year assertion campaign extending into 2026 (2:26-cv-00088 E.D. Tex.). The one genuinely unusual feature — the corrective recording at reel 059907/0563 that re-characterizes the final CommWorks→Unwired transaction from a license into an assignment — is noted but does not change the verdict, because assertion activity and the NPE characterization attach to CommWorks and its predecessors, not to Unwired Broadband.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7,463,596 / application 11/673,513) — see also https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and the Google Patents record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7463596/en. Requested follow-up: pull the correspondent of record for reels 023379/0103, 037396/0647, 050900/0904, 051463/0026, 054443/0958, 056981/0631 and 059907/0563 — that field, unavailable in the sources I could reach, is the missing input for signal #3.

I'll research this systematically, starting with the USPTO record for 7463596 and then examining the cited prior art.

Let me research the remaining significant cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,463,596 B2 ("Time based wireless access provisioning")

A. USPTO-record confirmation (identity check)

Per your strict rule, I searched for the exact number 7463596 and excluded similar numbers (e.g., 7,177,285 / 7,911,979 / 6,891,807 are family members, not the patent in question; 7,463,596 must not be confused with them). The record retrieved confirms:

Sources: Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US7463596/en ; Justia https://patents.justia.com/patent/7463596 ; Unified Patents https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/7463596 . Note the one-day date discrepancy flagged in the earlier summary (Unified Patents = Jan 12; Google/USPTO = Jan 13); I use the authoritative record (Jan 13, 2003).

Search artifact to flag: the retrieved litigation complaint (CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Axon Networks, Case 2:24-cv-02250, C.D. Cal.) asserts the '596 patent alongside its siblings 7,177,285, 7,911,979, 6,891,807 and RE44,904 — i.e., the '596 patent is being asserted in the same family campaign. (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/dct/[4532970](/patent/4532970)/8-24-cv-02250_complaint_exparte.pdf)

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B. Legal cut-off that governs §102 analysis

The '596 patent claims priority through continuations to 10/341,847, filed 2003-01-13. Because the disclosure is supported by that parent, the effective §102 date is 13 January 2003. Therefore:

• Art dated before ~Jan 13, 2002 is available under §102(b) (more than one year before the earliest filing) and §102(a)/(e).
• Art dated after Jan 13, 2003 is not §102 prior art at all against this patent.
• The patent's own parents (6,891,807; 7,177,285) and the child 7,911,979 are same-family, not prior art.

This cut-off matters because several entries in the front-page citation list are dated 2003–2007 and must be treated as background/admissions or prosecution-curiosity items, not §102 art (flagged in §F below).

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C. What the claims actually require (the anticipation template)

Every §102 candidate must disclose all of independent claim 1 (process) or claim 16 (system), which require:

1. Tracking an operating parameter of a first device, where the parameter is a power-on of the device or an onset of signal transmission by the device; and
2. Automatically associating the first device with at least one other device if the tracked parameter occurs within a time interval.

The crux — the element that distinguishes this patent — is using the device's own power-on / transmission-onset as the event that is time-qualified against a window. Dependent claims add: wireless device (2/17); device types (3/18); denial on repeat/outside-window (4/19); network type (5–6/20–21); info exchange incl. setup/handshake/encryption (7/22); device identifier/MAC (8–9/23–24); access point that tracks the parameter (10/25); activation of the time interval at the access point (11/26); button/switch activation (12/27); access-control list (13/28); wired-device connectivity (14/29); network connection/service area (15/30).

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D. The 23 patent citations, with citation, dates, description, and anticipation candidates

Grouped by relevance. Dates are the front-page dates as literally recorded.

D-1. Strongest relevance to the core time/activation concept (claims 1/16, 10–12/25–27)

1. US 2001/0048744 A1 — Kimura, "Access point device and authentication method thereof"

• Filed 2000-06-01; published 2001-12-06 (family: EP1161031B1).
• Discloses an access point that, when a mobile station requests authentication before association, notifies the network administrator and starts an "authentication wait timer" set to an arbitrary maximum; the administrator then supplies an authorize/reject input (button) before timeout, and only then does the AP return the authorizing authentication response. If the timer times out, authentication is auto-rejected.
• Potential §102 target: claims 10, 11, 12 (and mirrored 25, 26, 27) — an access point that tracks a parameter and is activated by a button/switch within a bounded time. It is the closest cited art to the "activation within a time interval" concept. Caveat: Kimura's tracked event is the authentication request / user input, not the device's power-on or transmission-onset; and its window runs after the request rather than qualifying the device's power-on time. So Kimura is best characterized as a strong §103 obviousness reference for the time-bounded, user-activated authorization, not a clean §102 anticipation of claims 1/16.
• Verified via Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US20010048744A1/en and FPO https://FreePatentsOnline.com/y2001/0048744.html . Notably, Kimura is independently relied on as prior art in PTAB IPR2017-01970 for the "user input within a predetermined period" concept (https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/ptab/IPR2017-01970/), corroborating its significance.

2. US 6,317,594 B1 — Gossman et al. (Openwave), "System and method for providing data to a wireless device upon detection of activity of the device on a wireless network"

• Priority 1996-09-27 (app. 09/399,012 filed 1999-09-22); issued 2001-11-13.
• Discloses detecting "trigger events" / activity of a wireless subscriber (handoff, origination, status, registration) and, in response, having the wireless system create/send messages and the external system return data to the wireless device.
• Potential §102 target: the "tracking an operating parameter … onset of signal transmission" element of claims 1/16 and the device/network context of claims 2/5/6 (17/20/21). Caveat: it is a cellular/WIN trigger architecture, not a home WLAN access-point provisioning scheme, and it discloses no time-interval qualification. No single-claim anticipation of 1/16.
• Verified (abstract) https://patents.google.com/patent/US6317594 .

3. US 6,282,183 B1 — Harris et al. (Motorola), "Method for authorizing couplings between devices in a capability addressable network"

• Filed 1997-06-02; issued 2001-08-28.
• Discloses authorizing/forming couplings (associations) between devices in an addressable network.
• Potential §102 target: the "associating a first device with at least one other device" element of claims 1/16, and the network/identifier context of claims 5/8 (20/23). Caveat: no power-on/transmission-onset tracking and no time interval; at most anticipates the association half of the claim.

4. WO 01/022661 A2 — Thomson Licensing, "Method for device registration in a wireless home network" (the specification cites this as "WO 01/2266," which I read literally; the citation table gives WO2001022661A2)

• Filed 1999-09-20; published 2001-03-29.
• Discloses sending an authentication key to a device for storage when an identification code received from the device corresponds to a code stored in an access point — i.e., identifier-based registration and key provisioning in a home network.
• Potential §102 target: claims 7/8/9 (setup/encryption info + device identifier + MAC) and 22/23/24, and the access-point registration context of claims 10/13 (25/28). Caveat: keyed to identifier matching, not to a time-qualified power-on. Same-family art (EP1615381 "Device and process for wireless LAN association," Thomson) also appears in the citing-family list.

D-2. Wireless-LAN access-point / authentication context (claims 10–15 / 25–30)

5. US 6,058,106 A — Cudak et al. (Motorola), "Network protocol method, access point device and peripheral devices for providing for an efficient centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network"

• Filed 1997-10-20; issued 2000-05-02.
• Discloses a centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless network with an access point that assigns block-transmissions between a wireless source peripheral and a wireless destination peripheral (ACK/NAK sequencing). The applicant discussed this reference in the Background.
• Potential §102 target: the access point + multiple wireless devices architecture of claims 10, 13, 14, 15 (25, 28, 29, 30) and the device-type list of claims 3/18 (its claims 9 and 11 recite wireless speaker, cordless telephone, shared printer, networked game, peripheral PC, child's toy, video/audio device, set-top box). Caveat: it is a MAC/addressing protocol — no operating-parameter tracking, no time interval. Not anticipatory of 1/16.
• Verified via full text: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/80/3c/35/beaee31a16c947/US6058106.pdf and https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6058106A](/patent/US6058106A)/en .

6. EP 1 081 895 A1 — Intel, "Secure wireless local area network"

• Filed 1999-09-03; published 2001-03-07.
• Discloses a wireless device operated with an access point connected to a wired LAN, using air-channel authentication.
• Potential §102 target: claims 7 (encryption/handshaking), 10/14 (25/29) (AP connected to wired devices/network). Caveat: no time-based qualification.

7. EP 1 191 763 A2 — Roke Manor Research, "Access authentication system for a wireless environment"

• Filed 2000-09-22; published 2002-03-27.
• Access-authentication architecture for wireless environments.
• Potential §102 target: authentication/provisioning aspects of claims 7, 10, 13 (22, 25, 28). No time-window teaching.

8. EP 1 225 778 A2 — Nokia, "Wireless repeater using identification of call originator"

• Filed 2000-12-29; published 2002-07-24.
• Wireless repeater using originator identification; relevant to the network/service-area claims 15/30 and identifier claims 8/9 (23/24). No time-based association.

9. US 5,461,627 — Rypinski, "Access protocol for a common channel wireless network"

• Filed 1991-12-24; issued 1995-10-24.
• Early common-channel wireless access protocol.
• Potential §102 target: only the broad environment of claims 1/2/5 (16/17/20) (wireless devices accessing a shared channel). Does not disclose any tracking or time window.

D-3. Provisioning / gateway / firewall background (generally dependent-claim or §103 fodder)

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E. Non-patent literature (17 items on the face of the patent)

The NPL divides into two classes:

(i) Genuinely pre-2003 technical literature (available as §102(b)/§102(a) art): Aziz & Diffie, Privacy and Authentication for Wireless Local Area Networks (Sun, 1993); Murthy et al., Firewalls for Security in Wireless Networks (HICSS, Jan 1998); Gummalla & Limb, An Access Protocol for a Wireless Home Network (WCNC, Sep 1999); Fujieda et al., A Wireless Home Network and its Application Systems (IEEE Trans. CE, May 2000); Zhang & Lee, Intrusion Detection in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks (MobiCom, Aug 2000); Candolin, Security Issues for Wearable Computing and Bluetooth Technology (Oct 2000); Saito et al., Wireless Gateway for Wireless Home AV Network (Aug 2001); Shepherd, Bluetooth Wireless Technology in the Home (Oct 2001); Lilakiatsakun & Seneviratne, Wireless Home Networks Based on a Hierarchical Bluetooth Scatternet Architecture (Oct 2001); Cypher, Painting Your Home Blue (Jan 2002). These support the general wireless-home-network/security background (claims 5–6/20–21, 7/22, 13/28) but none discloses time-qualified power-on association.

(ii) Post-priority items that cannot be §102 art against the '596 patent: "HP Spotlights Mobile Gear" (CNET, Oct 13 2003); Microsoft Announces Wireless Provisioning Services (Dec 10 2003); Wireless Provisioning Services Overview — The Cable Guy (Dec 2003); Sony Ericsson HBH-65 manual (Aug 2003). All post-date Jan 13, 2003 and should not be treated as anticipating references (see §F).

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F. References that cannot be §102 prior art to '596 (explicit flags)

1. US 7,274,931 B2 (Harris, 2004) — filed 2004-02-23; later than the '596 priority date.
2. Microsoft "Wireless Provisioning Services" items; HP/CNET Oct-2003; Sony Ericsson HBH-65 (Aug 2003) — all dated after Jan 13, 2003.
3. US 6,891,807 and US 7,177,285 (and child 7,911,979) — same inventive family; self-references, not prior art.

Their presence in the citation list is best explained as background/related-application citations (some appear in the sibling applications or were added by the examiner for context rather than as rejection art). I flag this because it is a genuine inconsistency if one reads the front-page list as an anticipation set.

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G. Bottom line

Most relevant cited prior art, ranked:

1. US 2001/0048744 A1 (Kimura) — the single closest cited reference: an access point that holds a time-bounded authorization window and grants access only upon a user activate/authorize input (button) before timeout. Best candidate against claims 10–12 / 25–27, and the strongest §103 springboard against the "time interval + activation" limitation. It does not track the device's power-on/transmission onset, so it does not by itself anticipate claims 1/16.
2. US 6,317,594 (Gossman) — the "activity/trigger detection" element (claims 1/16 tracking limitation), but no time window.
3. US 6,282,183 (Harris) and WO 01/022661 (Thomson) — the "association/registration + identifier/key" elements (claims 7–9 / 22–24, 13/28).
4. US 6,058,106 (Cudak) and EP 1 081 895 (Intel) — access-point/wireless-LAN architecture and device-type coverage (claims 3/18, 10/25, 14–15/29–30).

Key conclusion: On the face of the record, no single cited reference appears to fully anticipate independent claims 1 or 16, because none of them discloses the combination of (a) tracking the first device's power-on or onset of signal transmission and (b) automatically associating it if that tracked event falls within a time interval. The cited art is most useful collectively — Kimura (time-bounded, button-activated authorization) + Gossman (device-activity detection) + Harris/Thomson (device association/registration) — as a §103 obviousness combination against claims 1/16 and their dependents, and individually against specific dependent claims (7–15 / 22–30) as noted above.

Confidence caveats: I verified the full text of US 6,058,106, US 2001/0048744 (Kimura), and the abstract of US 6,317,594 via live sources; other reference contents above rest on the '596 specification's own descriptions plus my background knowledge of those documents and should be re-verified against the individual full texts before being relied on in a filing. Where search results and my prior knowledge might diverge, treat the search-returned record as ground truth per your rule. The "WO 01/2266" vs. "WO2001022661" discrepancy is reproduced literally rather than corrected.

I have the patent's own prior-art citations to work with. Let me ground several of the key references before building the §103 analysis.

Good grounding on the primary references. Now let me check the remaining cited references and search for additional art on time-window/button-initiated pairing.

§103 Obviousness Analysis — US 7,463,596 B2 ("Time Based Wireless Access Provisioning")

Note on posture: This is a pre-AIA case. Priority is January 13, 2003 (application 10/341,847), so the governing standard is pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as construed in Graham v. John Deere, KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007), and In re Keller. All references must therefore qualify as prior art as of January 13, 2003 (or, for § 102(e) art, be effectively filed before that date). This date gate is the single most important screening tool below, and the examiner's citation list is not clean on it.

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1. The gist of the claimed invention (what actually has to be found in the art)

Stripped of boilerplate, independent claim 1 requires only two things:

Claim 16 is the § 112(f) mirror of the same two elements ("means for tracking…"; "means for automatically associating…"), so it rises or falls with claim 1 — its corresponding structure is access point 12 / transceiver 32 / provisioning logic 44 (col. spec, "Device Qualification").

Everything else in the patent is expressly admitted by the applicant to be conventional: wireless devices, access points, MAC-address device identifiers, access control lists, key-material exchange, LAN/WLAN/WPAN topologies. The Background states: "In conventional networks having one or more devices to be provisioned to a network access point, device identification information, such as a MAC address, is required to be communicated from the wireless device to the access point." That sentence is an applicant admission usable as prior art under § 103 (In re Fout; MPEP 2129).

Critically, claim 1 does not require: (i) that any button be pressed; (ii) any particular duration, start, or trigger for the "time interval"; (iii) encryption; or (iv) that the interval be user-activated. That gives three independent attack vectors: (1) find the time-window feature in the art; (2) argue the time window is a predictable design parameter (In re Aller, In re Woodruff); and (3) a claim-construction argument that the "time interval" limitation is met by the ordinary sequence of device power-on → network registration.

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2. Prior art available as of January 13, 2003 (screened for § 102 status)

⚠️ References in the examiner's list that are NOT prior art (post-date the Jan. 13, 2003 priority): Microsoft "Wireless Provisioning Services Overview," The Cable Guy (Dec. 2003); "Microsoft Announces Wireless Provisioning Services," GeekZone (Dec. 10, 2003); "HP Spotlights Mobile Gear," CNET (Oct. 13, 2003); Sony Ericsson HBH-65 manual, LZT 1086746 R1A (Aug. 2003); and US 7,274,931 (Harris, filed 2004-02-23) in the citation table. None can support a § 103 rejection against claims entitled to the 2003 priority date. This matters disproportionately because those late-2003 items are the only ones in the record that touch the "push a button / registration mode" concept — see § 6 below.

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3. Element mapping — claim 1 / claim 16

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4. Combinations that render the claims obvious, with motivations to combine

Combination A (primary): WO 01/22661 + US 6,317,594 (optionally + Bluetooth time-bounded pairing) → anticipates/renders obvious claims 1, 16 and most dependents

• WO 01/22661 supplies the entire authorization architecture: wireless home network + central access point + device identification + verification + key delivery + stored credentials. Its express design goal is automatic, "as simple as possible," plug-and-play installation — i.e., the same problem the '596 patent states it is solving ("does not require a user interface for the initiation of a provisioning process").
• US 6,317,594 supplies the missing half of the mechanism: the network infrastructure observing a device's activity as a trigger event, without the device issuing a request. Substituting passive detection of device activity for WO 01/22661's device-supplied identification code is a substitution of one known element for another to obtain the predictable result (KSR rationale B) — the arrangement operates identically and the function of each element is unchanged (In re Keller, In re Merck).
• Motivation: Both references are in the same field (wireless LAN/home-network access control) and address the same deficiency the '596 Background admits — devices and users cannot conveniently supply provisioning data. A POSITA seeking to reduce user burden would combine "register the device to the AP" with "detect the device's activity at the AP," because the AP is already the entity with radio visibility of every device in its service region (a fact the '596 spec itself relies on: "keeps track of all wireless devices 14a–14n in the vicinity 18").

Combination B (architecture-complete alternative): EP 1 081 895 + US 6,058,106 + US 6,317,594 (+ the time-bounded pairing teaching)

• EP 1 081 895 gives AP↔device mutual authentication, device keys, an access-authorized wired LAN, and an authentication server (→ claims 2, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15 / 17, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30).
• US 6,058,106 gives the access point that "centrally control[s] access to a radio resource," device addressing, and — importantly — the device-genus list of claims 3/18 (video device, audio device, set-top box, cordless phone, printer, game, PC, toy).
• US 6,317,594 supplies activity-triggered network-side detection.
• Motivation mirrors Combination A; additionally, the examiner's own citation of these references together in the same field (all classified in the H04L/H04Q wireless-LAN and radio-access space) establishes the "familiar elements… known methods" predicate of KSR.

Combination C (provisioning-and-key cluster): US 6,275,693 + WO 01/22661 + US 6,317,594

• US 6,275,693 teaches provisioning by a network-side entity with a unique-ID assignment and SSL/WTLS-grade security (→ claims 7/22, 8/23), and WO 01/22661 teaches the home-network registration half, including the ACL-equivalent registration list (→ claims 13/28). Adding US 6,317,594's activity detection supplies the trigger.
• Motivation: all three are provisioning/access-control systems; the '596 Background itself frames the invention as an improvement to provisioning, so a POSITA improving a provisioning system would look to the provisioning art (KSR rationale D and E).

Common KSR rationales available in each combination: (A) known elements combined by known methods with predictable results; (B) known element substituted for another; (C) use of a known technique (detect device activity → register it) to improve a similar device; (D) application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (F) design incentives / market forces (consumer demand for zero-configuration home networking); (G) obvious to try a small identified set of candidate qualifiers for "which device did the user just bring home?"

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5. Dependent claims

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6. Where the art of record is genuinely weak (candid assessment)

1. The "time interval" itself is not squarely taught by any pre-2003 reference in the examiner's list. Every cited US/EP/WO reference teaches device-triggered or credential-triggered registration; none teaches gating on a time window. This is almost certainly why the claims issued. A successful § 103 challenge therefore needs one of:
   • a pre-Jan. 13, 2003 printed publication teaching time-bounded pairing/registration (Bluetooth's time-limited discoverable state per Spec. v1.0/v1.1 and the Candolin/Shephard/Cypher papers are the best candidates already in the record; manufacturer manuals and standards documents for cordless handset registration, wireless peripheral "learn mode," and garage-door-opener learn buttons are the obvious hunting ground — I have not verified a specific pre-2003 patent or publication for that practice in this session, and I will not assert one without verification);
   • a KSR design-choice argument that the width/placement of an acceptance window is a mere optimization of a result-effective variable (In re Aller; In re Woodruff), especially since the spec's only disclosed value ("e.g., such as a 5 minute interval") is unclaimed and uncritical; or
   • the claim-construction route (below).
2. Claims 11/12 and 26/27 (button/switch activation of the interval) are the most exposed in policy terms but the thinnest in evidence: the examiner's support came from Microsoft WPS and the Sony Ericsson HBH-65 manual, both published in late 2003, after the priority date, plus the Dec. 2003 Cable Guy column and the Oct. 13, 2003 CNET article. Those four citations are not prior art to these claims. A challenger must find independent pre-2003 evidence that a user-initiated, timed registration mode was known (e.g., a cordless-telephone base station or wireless peripheral pairing button).
3. US 7,274,931 appears in the patent's citation table but was filed Feb. 23, 2004 — likewise unavailable.

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7. The claim-construction argument (independent of any new art)

Claim 1's condition is "if the tracked operating parameter occurs within a time interval." Because the claim does not specify what starts, ends, or bounds the interval, a POSITA reading the claim in light of the specification could reasonably read the interval as spanning, e.g., the period from device power-on/transmission-onset to the network's decision point. On that reading, any system that registers a device after observing it power on — including the ordinary IEEE 802.11 association/probe sequence and the Bluetooth inquiry-connection sequence — practices the claim. Under that construction, Combination A's WO 01/22661 + US 6,317,594 pairing anticipates claim 1 outright under § 102(b). This is a validity-driven construction argument and is contingent on the tribunal's reading; the patentee will argue the interval must be tied to the act of provisioning activation (as in the preferred embodiment, times 84→86 of Fig. 5), which narrows the claim to a feature the applicant never claimed. This point should be run only alongside §8's non-obviousness rebuttals rather than as a standalone position.

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8. Anticipated rebuttals and responses

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9. Conclusion

• Claim 1 and claim 16 are, in my assessment, vulnerable to § 103 on WO 01/22661 + US 6,317,594, with the caveat that the "time interval" element is the load-bearing gap. That combination is strongly motivated (same field, same admitted problem, express "plug and play / automatic installation" objectives in the primary reference), the substitution is of a known element for a known element with predictable results, and the remaining elements are admitted conventional.
• Claims 2–10, 13–15, 17–25, and 28–30 are very likely obvious over the same combination plus US 6,058,106 (device genus, peripheral addressing), US 6,275,693 and EP 1 081 895 (provisioning, key material, ACL, wired-network connection), and the MAC-address admission in the specification.
• Claims 11, 12, 26, 27 (button/switch activation of the interval) are the least well supported by the prior art of record, because the examiner's supporting citations for that feature post-date the January 13, 2003 priority date and are therefore not prior art. A § 103 challenge on these four claims requires locating a pre-2003 reference teaching user-initiated, time-limited registration/pairing (candidate sources: Bluetooth Spec. v1.0 (Dec. 1999)/v1.1 (Feb. 2001) discoverable-mode timeouts; cordless-telephony handset registration procedures; wireless-peripheral "learn mode" documentation). I could not verify such a reference in this session and am flagging that as an open gap rather than asserting one.
• Practical relevance: the patent is recorded as expired – lifetime (anticipated expiration Jan. 13, 2023), so an obviousness holding now bears chiefly on past damages in the numerous pending/prior district-court actions in the Unwired Broadband/CommWorks chain (Texas E.D., Texas W.D., California C.D., Virginia E.D., Delaware, New York S.D., Alabama N.D.), not on prospective injunctive relief. The invalidity analysis for expired claims is typically litigated in the same forum where damages are sought.

Confidence: High on the § 103 mapping for claims 1–10, 13–25, 28–30. Moderate on the time-interval element for claim 1 (depends on the Bluetooth/"learn-mode" evidence being pinned down or the claim-construction argument succeeding). Low–moderate on claims 11/12/26/27 absent additional pre-2003 art. I did not verify a Federal Circuit 2026 appeal in this session; treat any such docket as unconfirmed.