US 7551209

I'll search for the specific patent and any appellate docket activity.

Let me search for litigation and appellate activity specifically.

Let me verify the patent's bibliographic data and check for any specific assertion of this patent number.

Summary: US Patent No. 7,551,209 B2

Search scope note. I searched for this specific number and for CAFC/appellate activity. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or other 2026 appellate activity for US 7,551,209. Anything I could not confirm from the authoritative patent text or from retrieved results is flagged below as uncertain. I did not auto-correct any identifier.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued): An imaging apparatus has a white balance control circuit for detecting an achromatic portion of an image of an object and controlling gains of the chrominance signals; an object distance detecting circuit; and a zoom value detecting circuit. It further has an object brightness detecting circuit and a white balance control amount adjustment value setting circuit for forming a white balance control amount adjustment value to adjust the control amount in the white balance control circuit on the basis of object brightness information, object distance detection information, and zoom value information, wherein the white balance control amount is adjusted on the basis of that adjustment value.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

All four independent claims share the same hardware platform (object-distance detecting means; zoom-value detecting means; object-brightness detecting means; and white-balance controlling means that detects an achromatic portion from a chrominance signal derived from the image sensor output and controls chrominance gain per the detected white-balance shift). They differ in which variable is swept and which variable supplies the switching threshold:

• Claim 1 — sweep zoom, threshold set by brightness. "While object distance detection information is fixed": if zoom value changes when object brightness is a first value, whether white balance adjustment is made is decided by a first threshold; if zoom changes when brightness is a second, different value, the decision uses a second, different threshold. In short: brightness selects which zoom threshold applies.

• Claim 2 (dependent on 1) — polarity of the zoom test. When brightness is the first value: zoom ≥ first threshold ⇒ no white balance adjustment; zoom < first threshold ⇒ adjustment is made. Same structure for the second value/second threshold. (Note the claim states "white balance is made" in the second branch — I read this literally as written.)

• Claim 3 — sweep brightness, threshold set by zoom. "While object distance detection information is fixed": if object brightness changes when zoom is a first value, the decision uses a first threshold; if brightness changes when zoom is a second, different value, a second, different threshold is used. Essentially the mirror image of claim 1.

• Claim 4 (dependent on 3) — polarity of the brightness test. When zoom is the first value: brightness > first threshold ⇒ adjustment made; brightness ≤ first threshold ⇒ not made. Same pattern for the second zoom value and second threshold.

• Claim 5 — sweep brightness with zoom fixed, threshold set by object distance (self-contained). "While zoom value is fixed": if brightness changes when object distance is a first value, a first threshold governs; if brightness changes when object distance is a second value, a second threshold governs. It also recites the polarity: brightness > the applicable threshold ⇒ adjustment made; brightness ≤ the threshold ⇒ not made. Claim 5 includes all the functional limitations itself, so it reads as an independent claim.

• Claim 6 — sweep object distance with zoom fixed, threshold set by brightness (self-contained). "While zoom value information is fixed": if object distance changes when brightness is a first value, a first threshold governs; if object distance changes when brightness is a second value, a second, different threshold governs. Polarity: distance > the applicable threshold ⇒ adjustment made; distance ≤ the threshold ⇒ not made. Also self-contained and therefore independent.

Analyst observation (not a legal conclusion): The claims as issued are drafted around threshold-selection by a third parameter and binary "made / not made" outcomes. The specification is broader and somewhat different in emphasis — it teaches computing an object-distance threshold value G from the zoom magnification E and object illuminance F (FIG. 3: G increases with zoom, decreases as the object gets brighter), then forming a white balance control amount adjustment value C (0–1, multivalued, with hysteresis via an object-distance discriminating counter; FIGS. 4A–4E) and applying it by multiplication or selection (FIGS. 5A/5B). The specification's stated purpose is to avoid stopping white balance correction on a white/light-source object that fills the frame while still suppressing erroneous correction of a light-coloured chromatic object (e.g., a human face). The "stopped" outcome corresponds to C = 0, and "made" to C = 1, while 0 < C < 1 is a limited/reduced-speed correction not reflected as such in the independent claims.

Litigation / CAFC status (2026)

• Google Patents' family-level litigation links for this family point to: W.D. Tex. case 6:21-cv-00158; D. Del. 1:18-cv-00310 and 1:18-cv-00216; N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01788; C.D. Cal. 2:17-cv-07528. I confirmed from the retrieved docket material that 6:21-cv-00158 is Maxell, Ltd. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), W.D. Tex. (Waco Division), complaint filed 2021-02-19, and that it is one of the Maxell mobile-technology campaigns following the Hitachi → Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell → Maxell assignment chain.
• Important caveat: those litigation links are asserted at the patent-family level by Google Patents, not necessarily at the level of US 7,551,209 specifically. My searches did not return a complaint, claim chart, or docket entry affirmatively identifying "7,551,209" as an asserted patent. So I cannot confirm — and do not assert — that '209 itself was ever asserted.
• CAFC 2026: I found nothing. No Rule 36 summary affirmance, no appeal docket, no oral argument, and no petition referencing 7,551,209 in 2026. Given that the patent's adjusted expiration is 2023-10-26 and its status is Expired – Lifetime, any residual appellate activity would be limited to review of past-damages or invalidity rulings rather than prospective relief — but I have no record of such a case.
• Other Maxell appellate/PTAB activity surfaced in my searches relates to different technologies (lithium-ion battery patents, smartphone unlock/data-processing patents, IPR2025-01308/01316 against the '650 and '646 patents, Samsung $117.7M jury verdict in E.D. Tex. in 2025) and does not involve 7,551,209.

Uncertainty disclosure: I have no authoritative, patent-number-specific confirmation of (a) any assertion of 7,551,209 in the identified district court cases, or (b) any CAFC 2026 docket for it. Both should be verified directly in USPTO PatentCenter / PACER / CourtListener if this matters for a filing or opinion. I also have no independent confirmation of the Patent Leaderboard "approximate value" figure for this patent (~$93,000), which is a third-party estimate and not an official valuation.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7551209/en (full text, claims, and family data as provided). Supporting docket source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Western_District_Court/6--21-cv-00158/Maxell_Ltd._v._Apple_Inc/docs/1.pdf

I'll search for litigation specifically tied to US 7,551,209, being careful to distinguish patent-family-level links from patent-number-specific assertions.

Key hit: a Delaware declaratory-judgment complaint expressly names "the '209 Patent" with white-balance limitations matching US 7,551,209. Let me nail down the case caption, the ITC action, and the other family-level cases.

Correction / flag to the prior section

The earlier summary stated it could not confirm any assertion of US 7,551,209, only patent-family-level links. My searches now returned patent-number-specific evidence, so I must flag that as a correction: US 7,551,209 B2 is expressly named (by number) in a real Delaware pleading. Details below. Everything else I could not confirm is labeled as such rather than asserted.

Litigation confirmed to involve US 7,551,209 B2 by number

1. Olympus Corporation et al. v. Maxell, Ltd. — D. Del. (declaratory judgment)

Why this is patent-number-specific: the docket's Report to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks (Doc. #3) lists the patents at issue as "US 6,765,616 B1; US 7,199,821 B2; US 7,551,209 B2; US 8,130,284 B2; US 9,451,229 B2." The complaint contains a "THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF (Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement of the '209 Patent)", alleging the accused products "lack white balance controlling means that utilize object distance detection, zoom value, and object brightness information, as required by all claims of the '209 Patent." That limitation language matches the issued claims of US 7,551,209. Accused products were Olympus digital cameras (OM-D E-M1 Mark II, OM-D E-M5 Mark II, OM-D E-M10 Mark II, Pen-F, Pen E-PL8, Tough TG-4, Air A01).

Sources: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2018cv00216/64447 ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/ded/1:18-cv-00216/doc/analysis/1 ; https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db1-olympus-corporation-et-al-v-maxell-ltd-[673988](/patent/673988)

2. Maxell, Ltd. v. Olympus Corporation et al. — D. Del. (infringement; companion case)

This is the affirmative mirror of the DJ action above. The DJ complaint expressly alleges that "Maxell has accused Olympus (and by necessary implication its U.S. subsidiary OAI) of infringing the '209 Patent," which ties the '209 to Maxell's own infringement theory in this pair of cases.

Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--18-cv-00310/Maxell_Ltd._v._Olympus_Corporation_et_al/docs/1.pdf ; https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2018cv00310/64593

Caveat: I have direct confirmation that the '209 number appears in the 1:18-cv-00216 (Olympus DJ) pleadings. I do not have the asserted-patent exhibit list from Maxell's separate 1:18-cv-00310 complaint in hand, so I cannot state with certainty which claims/patents Maxell formally pleaded there; the two cases were treated as associated (same judges, same parties, same accused products).

Family-level links that do NOT confirm '209 specifically (treated as unverified for this patent)

Google Patents attaches these to the patent family (ID 27750862), not necessarily to US 7,551,209. I could not confirm within my search budget that '209 itself was asserted in them:

• Maxell, Ltd. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158 (filed 2021-02-19). Maxell's mobile-technology campaign; the White Balance patent family was part of Maxell's Apple portfolio, but I did not retrieve a document naming 7,551,209 here.
• Maxell, Ltd. v. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. et al., N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01788.
• C.D. Cal. 2:17-cv-07528 — identified only as a family-level litigation link; caption/parties not confirmed in my results.

Also noted but not confirmed as the '209: a USITC investigation arising from Maxell's July 16, 2020 complaint against Apple over five patents, one described as relating to "camera white balance effects." I could not retrieve the ITC docket or confirm which white-balance patent (the '821, '209, or '284) was asserted, so I do not attribute that count to 7,551,209.

Bottom line

• Yes — litigation involving US 7,551,209 B2 is known and confirmed by number: Olympus Corp. v. Maxell, Ltd., D. Del. 1:18-cv-00216 (filed 2018-02-06), with companion Maxell, Ltd. v. Olympus Corp., D. Del. 1:18-cv-00310 (filed 2018-02-23). Dispute settled/closed in 2018.
• No CAFC or PTAB proceeding specific to 7,551,209 surfaced in my searches. (PTAB activity referenced in the same Web context — e.g., IPR2024-00867, IPR2025-01307 through -01316, and the Olympus-filed IPRs against the '177, '493, and '604 patents — involves other patents, not the '209.)
• Uncertainty disclosure: The Maxell v. Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158), Maxell v. ASUSTeK (N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01788), C.D. Cal. 2:17-cv-07528 links, and the ITC "camera white balance" count are family-level/indirect and are not confirmed for patent number 7,551,209. If this matters for a filing, verify the asserted-patent lists directly in PACER/CourtListener and the ITC EDIS docket.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" block against live sources before finalizing.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 7,551,209 B2

Bottom line up front: the canonical PTAB proceedings block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and included in this prompt — returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 7,551,209. I ran independent web searches to test that result (IPR/PGR/CBM by number, by patent owner "Maxell," and by the co-pending litigants ASUS, Apple, Lenovo and Motorola Mobility) and found nothing that contradicts it. I am reporting this as a genuine null, not as "the data might be stale." Any proceeding I did surface is flagged below as belonging to a different patent, and I have not invented a proceeding number.

Proceedings overview

Total PTAB proceedings on file for US 7,551,209: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs; therefore no breakdown across active / invalidated / sustained / settled / institution-denied, because there is nothing to break down.

Defensive posture this gives a defendant: The claims of '209 are completely untested at the PTAB. There is no final written decision, no estoppel, and no PTAB record to lean on. Critically, the patent is Expired – Lifetime with an adjusted expiration of 2023-10-26, which means an IPR is no longer a useful commercial tool (no prospective injunctive value to knock down, and the Board is reticent to institute on expired patents where the only live issue is past damages). If a demand letter cites '209 today, your remedies are (a) district-court invalidity on a § 102/§ 103/§ 112 theory in the litigation, or (b) an ex parte reexamination if you want an administrative bite — not an AIA trial. There is no "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" story here, and equally there is no "claims 1–6 are canceled" story. It is simply untouched.

Proceedings against this patent

None.

Because the required per-proceeding template presumes at least one row, the honest output is a single, explicit null entry:

[No proceeding number assigned] — N/A v. N/A

• Type: N/A — no AIA trial on file for US 7,551,209
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A — USPTO ODP returns no proceedings
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A at the PTAB; see the caveat on the Federal Circuit below
• Defensive value: Nothing from the PTAB is available to you. Every validity ground you want to raise against claims 1–6 — including the § 112 ¶ 6 / means-plus-function attack discussed below — remains unadjudicated and un-estopped.

Near-misses: activity I found that is not a proceeding against '209 (flagged, not asserted)

I list these so a defendant is not blindsided into thinking they are '209 proceedings. None of them is an AIA trial on US 7,551,209, and I am not representing otherwise.

• IPR2022-01287, Motorola Mobility LLC v. Maxell, Ltd. — I retrieved a Patent Owner exhibit filed in this IPR on 2022-11-04 that consists of Defendants' Final Invalidity Contentions for the '209 patent in the parallel W.D. Tex. case (Maxell, Ltd. v. Lenovo Group Ltd., 6:21-cv-01169-ADA). The presence of a '209 exhibit in that IPR docket does not establish that '209 was the challenged patent. My preliminary-response search did not confirm the challenged patent, and the ODP block returns nothing for '209. Treat this as unconfirmed. Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01287/Motorola_Mobility_LLC_v._Maxell_Ltd/
• IPR2019-00068 / IPR2019-00069 (ASUS v. Maxell) — these arise from the same N.D. Cal. campaign (3:18-cv-01788) in which '209 was asserted, but they challenge US 7,403,226 and US 9,544,517, not '209. Both were terminated by joint motion to terminate on settlement, with the agreement treated as business-confidential under 35 U.S.C. § 317(b). Source: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/ptacts-uspto/[1520016](/patent/1520016)/... (IPR2019-00068 joint termination motion).
• Apple Inc. v. Maxell, Ltd., IPR2020-00597 — challenges US 8,339,493, and institution was denied; Apple noticed an appeal (2020-10-06) raising APA/§ 314(d) arguments. Not '209. Source: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/federal_circuit/[955981](/patent/955981)/rpx-ptab/IPR2020-00597/
• Samsung v. Maxell IPR wave (IPR2024-xxxx / IPR2025-01308, -01316, etc.) and TCL Industries Holdings v. Maxell, IPR2025-00135 — a large, ongoing Maxell–Samsung/TCL campaign over a different ten-patent set (e.g., 7,577,417; 7,952,645; 10,812,646; 11,277,650; 11,812,091). '209 does not appear in the asserted-patent table in Samsung's Fintiv briefs. Sources: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558238](/patent/1558238)/ and https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-00135/
• Anecdotal, unverified: an Apple ex parte reexamination campaign. A Samsung exhibit represents that Apple requested roughly twelve ex parte reexaminations against ten Maxell patents. Ex parte reexam is not an AIA trial and would not appear in the PTAB block at all. I could not confirm whether '209 was among them, and the Google Patents record for '209 shows no reexamination certificate. If this matters, query the USPTO reexamination database directly.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 7,551,209: all six claims SUSTAINED by default — none canceled, none adjudicated, none tested. Claims 1, 3, 5 and 6 are independent; claims 2 and 4 are dependent (per the issued claim set already summarized earlier in this analysis). Because no petition was ever instituted, no claim of '209 has been canceled by the Board, and there is no FWD to quote. Do not let an adversary tell you otherwise, and do not tell a court otherwise.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that reaches a final written decision. With zero FWDs, no party is estopped on any '209 ground. That is a double-edged sword: it means there is no free, pre-litigated invalidity roadmap, but it also means every prior-art and § 112 ground is still available to a current defendant. Notably, the invalidity work-product already exists in the public record — the Lenovo/Motorola defendants served Final Invalidity Contentions against the '209 patent alleging §§ 102, 103, and 112 in W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-01169-ADA, and ASUS took the position in N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01788 that "white balance controlling means" (claim 1) and "object distance detecting means" (claims 1, 3, 5, 6) are indefinite under pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6, identifying those terms as claim-dispositive. Those are the two most promising non-PTAB attack vectors: (i) the means-plus-function indefiniteness/enablement attack on the corresponding structure (Maxell maps it to white balance control amount adjustment value setting circuit 9 and/or white balance control circuit 8, plus a microcomputer executing software per '209 at 15:50-55), and (ii) §§ 102/103 on the Final Invalidity Contentions art.

Pattern signals. Maxell is a serial PTAB defendant — but with a striking pattern: it has been hit with IPRs on the '226, '517, '493, '901, '417, '646, '650, '228, '091 and many other patents, yet never on '209. Two readings, and I flag both as inference, not fact: either every petitioner concluded '209 was a weak/expiring patent not worth the filing fee (consistent with its 2023-10-26 expiration), or '209 was never asserted against a party with the scale and incentive to file (ASUS settled its whole case via the IPR2019-00068/-00069 terminations). No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) challenge to '209 surfaced in any search. Also worth noting for procedural posture: the '209 patent's sibling/continuation US 8,130,284 and the parent US 7,199,821 share the same specification and the same claim-construction battleground — a construction win against '209 on the means-plus-function terms would have family-wide value.

Caveat on a Federal Circuit appeal. In PTAB petition exhibits I retrieved, Maxell's appellate Op. Br. and Reply Br. in the Maxell–Lenovo dispute argue '209 claim-construction issues (including the corresponding-structure dispute over circuits 8 and 9, and the § 112(a) enablement framing) — which suggests the W.D. Tex. judgment was appealed. I could not confirm a Federal Circuit docket number, the issues certified, or any disposition. Do not cite an appeal docket for '209 until it is verified on PACER/CourtListener. Separately, a Markman appendix in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1215 is cited as prior art on the corresponding structure — i.e., '209-family claims appear to have been in an ITC investigation too, but again this is context, not a PTAB matter.

Recommended next steps

• If no PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and say it early. The absence is itself a signal: a patent asserted against Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158), ASUS (N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01788), and Lenovo/Motorola (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-01169-ADA) that nonetheless attracted zero IPRs across a decade is unusual. Lead with it.
• Do not build a defense around a nonexistent FWD. There is no final written decision to link to and no canceled claim to quote. If you want the closest thing to an adjudicated record, pull the W.D. Tex. claim-construction briefing and order in 6:21-cv-01169-ADA and the N.D. Cal. joint claim construction statement in 3:18-cv-01788 (Docket 113, 2018-08-27), where the parties already agreed that "detecting an achromatic portion" means "detecting a white portion."
• If you need an administrative challenge, use ex parte reexamination, not IPR. With the patent expired as of 2023-10-26, an IPR's prospective value is gone; an ex parte reexam on the §§ 102/103 art from the Lenovo Final Invalidity Contentions is the cleaner path, and it also sidesteps the § 315(b) one-year bar and Fintiv-style discretionary denial entirely.
• Verify two open items before relying on this memo: (1) that no '209 IPR/PGR was filed in the last several months and simply not yet ingested by ODP — re-query PTAB E2E / the AIA trial search by patent number; and (2) whether '209 is among the Apple-requested ex parte reexaminations against Maxell, which would not show up in an AIA-trial search at all.
• Watch the Federal Circuit. If the Maxell–Lenovo '209 claim-construction ruling is on appeal, the disposition (even a Rule 36 summary affirmance) would be the first appellate word on the means-plus-function terms of claims 1, 3, 5 and 6 — far more consequential to a defendant than anything the PTAB has (not) done here.

Sources: canonical ODP block provided in this prompt (zero proceedings); USPTO PTAB E2E / ptacts.uspto.gov petition documents (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1558238/); IPR2019-00068 joint termination (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/ptacts-uspto/1520016/); IPR2020-00597 appeal notice (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/federal_circuit/955981/rpx-ptab/IPR2020-00597/); IPR2025-00135 docket (https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-00135/); patent text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7551209/en).

Uncertainty disclosure: I have no PTAB FWD, institution decision, or appeal docket for US 7,551,209 because I found none. Every statement above about the absence of proceedings is based on the ODP block plus searches that returned no contrary hit; every reference to '209-adjacent district-court or ITC activity is sourced to the documents cited and is not a claim that PTAB proceedings exist.

I'll search for the assignment records and correspondent data for this patent.

The '109 patent in that PTAB petition is a different patent (filed 2012) — I'll flag that. Let me chase the assignment records and correspondent data.

Excellent — I found the reel/frame chain from Maxell's own 3.73 statements plus a named correspondent. Let me dig further.

I've hit my tool-call limit, so here is the ownership reconstruction based on what I retrieved. Two of the items below are inferences from Maxell's own § 3.73(c) chain-of-title statements in PTAB filings rather than from a per-patent Assignment Center query for '209, and I have labelled them as such rather than presenting reel/frame numbers as confirmed for this patent.

Inventors

• I could not retrieve any direct evidence of the inventors' employment relationship — the inference rests solely on the issued patent naming Hitachi Ltd as original assignee and on the JP-first filing route (JP 2002-051841, filed 2002-02-27; US 10/321,842 filed 2002-12-18), which is the classic corporate-assignment path for a Japanese consumer-electronics employer.
• Departure-pattern check: no data. I found no inventor-employment, job-change, or LinkedIn-type records for either inventor. I therefore cannot confirm or refute the "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" pattern. Note that the relevant window here is 2002–2003, long before the 2013–2014 divestitures, so even a departure pattern would be weak evidence of a fire-sale setup.
• Identifier-collision warning (relevant to this whole analysis): a PTAB petition by Maxell refers repeatedly to "the '109 Patent," but that document identifies it as "Portable Terminal, Information Processing Apparatus, Content Display System And Content Display Method," filed June 6, 2012, inventors Matsubara/Nakade/Yamazaki/Higaki. That is not US 7,551,209. Any search on the shorthand "'109 patent" in the Maxell corpus will mix the two. Not auto-corrected — flagged.

Original assignee

Hitachi, Ltd. (6-6 Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8280, Japan — confirmed from the Maxell v. Apple corporate-disclosure table, E.D. Tex. 5:19-cv-00036 D.I. 160-2).

• Primary line of business: diversified Japanese industrial/electronics conglomerate. Within that, the relevant unit made consumer imaging products — the specification itself describes the invention in "an imaging apparatus such as video camera, digital still camera," and FIG. 1 is a camcorder signal chain (CCD → AGC → A/D → signal processing → NTSC encoder). Hitachi-brand camcorders are the archetypal embodiment.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Almost certainly yes for the commercial product (Hitachi camcorders had internal-photometric auto white balance), but I have no claim-chart or product-teardown evidence tying a specific Hitachi model to claims 1–6. Treat as high-probability, not established.
• Current status: operating. Hitachi, Ltd. still exists. The consumer electronics business, however, was carved out: Hitachi, Ltd. assigned consumer-facing IP to Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. (recorded 2013), and on 2013-07-01 Hitachi Maxell succeeded to Hitachi Consumer Electronics' business by company split (会社分割) — a fact I can confirm from Hitachi Maxell's own Japanese statutory filing (EDINET, 有価証券報告書, noting the 平成25年7月1日 company-split succession). The Maxell side then became a standalone listed company and the Maxell name (Hitachi Maxell → Maxell) dropped "Hitachi" in 2018.
• No bankruptcy for any entity in this chain.

Assignment timeline

Provenance note, read first. Google Patents records the following legal events for this family (no reel/frame shown): 2013-06-12 → Hitachi Consumer Electronics; 2014-09-08 → Hitachi Maxell; 2018-01-25 → Maxell, Ltd.; 2021-11-29 → Maxell Holdings, Ltd. (merger); 2021-12-03 → Maxell, Ltd. (change of name). I retrieved the reel/frame numbers for those same conveyances from Maxell's own Rule 3.73(c) chain-of-title statements filed in PTAB proceedings covering other Maxell patents, because I could not execute a per-patent Assignment Center query for 7,551,209 within my research steps. Reel/frame entries marked [carried over] are confirmed for sibling Maxell patents from the same corporate transaction; they are the correct reel for the transaction but I have not verified that '209 is on that reel. This distinction is material and I am not smoothing it over.

1. c. 2002 — inventors → Hitachi, Ltd.

• Reel/frame: not retrieved. No record found.
• Conveyance: Assignment (presumed)
• Assignor: Haruhiko Miyao; Takahiro Nakano
• Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Correspondent: unknown
• Context: ordinary corporate employment assignment at filing. Stated plainly: the Assignment Center / legacy assignment index entry for the original conveyance was not returned to me, so I have no reel/frame for it.

2. 2013-06-12 (recorded) — Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.

• Reel 030622 / 0001 [carried over] — confirmed as the reel for this exact conveyance in Maxell's 3.73(c) statements for US 10,176,848 and US 10,129,590.
• Conveyance: Assignment (corporate carve-out)
• Assignor: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved for reel 030622/0001.
• Context: internal reorganization — Hitachi moved consumer-product-facing IP into its consumer-electronics subsidiary (as Maxell's own complaint describes: "in 2009 Hitachi, Ltd. assigned much of its consumer product-facing intellectual property to Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd." — note Maxell's pleading says 2009 while Google's legal event and the reel series say 2013; I flag that discrepancy rather than reconcile it).

3. 2014-09-08 (recorded) — Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.

• Reel 033685 / 0883 or 033694 / 0745 [carried over — reel varies by patent batch]. Maxell's 3.73(c) statements cite 033685/0883 for US 10,176,848 and 033694/0745 for a second Maxell patent. I cannot tell which (if either) covers 7,551,209.
• Conveyance: Assignment (of assignor's interest; part of the 2013-07-01 company-split succession)
• Assignor: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Assignee: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved. A 2015-dated 3.73(c) statement elsewhere in this chain is signed "/Robert C. —" (surname truncated in the retrieved text); I do not treat a 3.73 signer as a recording correspondent.
• Context: internal reorganization / business succession, not a sale to a third party.

4. 2017-10-01 (executed) / recorded 2018-01-25 — Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd.

• Reel 045142 / 0208, 141 pages — this is a bulk assignment of a large patent portfolio, not a single-patent transfer.
• Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
• Assignor: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
• Assignee: Maxell, Ltd. — assignee address as recorded: 1 Koizumi, Oyamazaki, Oyamazaki-cho, Otokuni-gun, Kyoto, Japan
• Correspondent: NADEEN NSOULI, 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606 — the only named correspondent I recovered anywhere in this chain.
• Correspondent flag (single appearance, not recurrence): this name appears once in the material I retrieved. A "Nadeen Nsouli" is a US patent agent, Reg. No. 76859, currently listed at Cooley LLP, 110 N. Wacker Drive, Suite 4200, Chicago, IL 60606. Two cautions: (a) the recorded address in the assignment (71 South Wacker Drive) is a different Chicago address and a different firm from her current one, so I cannot confirm it is the same individual; (b) her public bio shows a life-sciences / inorganic-chemistry prosecution practice — she would not be a natural Maxell title agent. On the evidence available, this reads as an administrative signer of a bulk recording, not a repeat-player NPE attorney. I am not calling this a repeat-correspondent signal.
• Context: assignment into the newly-independent Maxell, Ltd. (renamed from Hitachi Maxell in 2018), aligning the IP with Maxell's licensing function.

5. 2021-11-29 (recorded) — Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell Holdings, Ltd.

• Reel 058255 / 0579 [carried over] (cited in a 2022-01-31 Maxell 3.73(c) statement).
• Conveyance: Merger — Google Patents records this as "MERGER"; Maxell, Ltd. became the subsidiary, Maxell Holdings, Ltd. the holding company.
• Assignor: Maxell, Ltd. / Assignee: Maxell Holdings, Ltd.
• Correspondent: the 2022 3.73(c) statement in this chain is signed "/John R. —"; surname truncated. Not usable as a correspondent finding.
• Context: internal holding-company reorganization.

6. 2021-12-03 (recorded) — Maxell Holdings, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd.

• Reel 058666 / 0407 [carried over]
• Conveyance: Change of Name (Google Patents: "CHANGE OF NAME")
• Assignor: Maxell Holdings, Ltd. / Assignee: Maxell, Ltd.
• Context: name change only — the operating entity re-took the Maxell, Ltd. name. No change in ultimate control.

Where the reel/frame evidence comes from:

• https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00867/Samsung_Electronics_Co._Ltd/docs/05-01-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1003-Ex_1003_Part_01_File_History_of_US_Pat_No_10,176,848.pdf
• https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558234](/patent/1558234)/download-documents (Maxell 3.73(c) statement dated 2022-01-31)
• https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00906/.../Exhibit-1006...File_History_of_Reexam_10,129,590...pdf (the 045142/0208 record, 141 pages, exec. 2017-10-01, correspondent Nadeen Nsouli)

Correction to the previously generated section. That section's caveat — "I cannot confirm — and do not assert — that '209 itself was ever asserted" — should now be updated: an Italian tech-press report on Maxell's 2021 Apple complaint lists 7,551,209 ("Apparecchi di imaging e metodo per il controllo del bilanciamento del bianco") among the patents in that suit, which corresponds to the previously identified W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158 (Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc.). So: 7,551,209 was asserted, in W.D. Tex., in 2021. This is secondary-source confirmation of a complaint exhibit list, not a court order — verify in PACER.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7551209
    2002 : JP priority filed by Hitachi
         : US parent application filed
    2009 : Patent issues to Hitachi Ltd
    2013 : Hitachi Ltd to Hitachi CE
    2014 : Hitachi CE to Hitachi Maxell
    2018 : Hitachi Maxell to Maxell Ltd
    2021 : Maxell Ltd merges into Holdings
         : Holdings renamed Maxell Ltd
         : Maxell sues Apple on 7551209

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
Every assignee in the chain is a real, named, publicly accountable corporate entity: Hitachi, Ltd. → Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. → Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell Holdings, Ltd. → Maxell, Ltd. There is no LLC named "IP / Patents / Licensing / Ventures," no Delaware or Texas single-purpose vehicle, no registered-agent service address anywhere in the chain. The assignee address on reel 045142/0208 is a genuine corporate address in Oyamazaki-cho, Kyoto. "Maxell Holdings, Ltd." is a merger holding company with an identifiable listed parent, not a shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT (against the enumerated list), with a note.
No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity, on the evidence I retrieved. But: Maxell is a high-frequency plaintiff in its own right — Apple (5:19-cv-00036; 6:20-cv-00646; 6:21-cv-00158), ASUSTeK (3:18-cv-01788), Huawei, ZTE (5:16-cv-00179, jury verdict for Maxell), Samsung (E.D. Tex. 2023/2025), plus ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1215. Maxell's own complaint states it "actively enforces its patents through licensing and/or litigation." That is aggressive monetization by a manufacturer, not NPE status — but it is the reason this chain deserves scrutiny.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT.
Only one correspondent name surfaced in the entire chain: Nadeen Nsouli, 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606, on reel 045142/0208. One appearance ≠ recurrence. I did not recover correspondents for reels 030622/0001, 033685/0883, 033694/0745, 058255/0579 or 058666/0407. No finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Six recordations over ~19 years (2002 → 2021). The closest pair is the 2021-11-29 merger and 2021-12-03 change of name — four days apart, but that is a single corporate reorganization executed in two recordation steps, with the same ultimate owner on both sides. Not LLC-flipping; no shared registered-agent addresses; no chained single-purpose vehicles.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (timing superficially close, substance defeats the inference).
The last recorded event (2021-12-03, change of name) is ~2.5 months before the 2021-02-19 W.D. Tex. complaint — inside the 6-month window. However: (a) the conveyance is a change of name, which transfers no new rights; (b) the substantive transfer to Maxell, Ltd. was executed 2017-10-01 (~3.4 years pre-suit); and (c) Maxell had already been suing Apple on this same portfolio since 2019 (5:19-cv-00036) and 2020 (6:20-cv-00646). The chain was not arranged to enable assertion — the assertion followed by years.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 for Hitachi, Hitachi Consumer Electronics, Hitachi Maxell, Maxell or Maxell Holdings anywhere in the retrieved record. The 2013–2014 transfers were a strategic carve-out/company split, not a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR.
This is the only genuinely arguable signal, and I will state its limits. On one hand: the entity that commercially exploited the invention (Hitachi's consumer-electronics business) divested the consumer-facing patent portfolio downstream in 2013–2014 into a company — Hitachi Maxell / Maxell — whose principal businesses are batteries, optical media, storage and accessories, and which then ran a large, coordinated assertion campaign against the very companies that make the products the patents describe. That is the structural shape of privateering. On the other hand: Maxell is a corporate affiliate/successor, not an independent third-party NPE; it asserts in its own name; there is no SEC filing, Patent Progress or EFF coverage establishing that Hitachi directs the campaign or shares recoveries; and Maxell does have real products and R&D. Marking unclear rather than inferring from naming or posture alone.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
Chain terminates at Maxell, Ltd., a litigating operating company. No RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN participation anywhere.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the entire chain consists of identified, non-shell corporate entities (reels 030622/0001 → 033685/0883 or 033694/0745 → 045142/0208 → 058255/0579 → 058666/0407), every transfer is an internal reorganization or name change within the Hitachi→Hitachi Consumer Electronics→Hitachi Maxell→Maxell corporate family, and there is no shell-LLC vehicle, no repeat NPE correspondent (only one correspondent name, Nsouli, on a 141-page bulk reel), no bankruptcy and no defensive-aggregator endpoint — so signals 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8 are all absent and signal 2 fails the enumerated-NPE-list test. The current assignee, Maxell, Ltd., is an operating manufacturer with stated R&D and product lines that sued Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00158, 2021) asserting 7,551,209 alongside 11 other portfolio patents, and its enforcement is explicitly licensing-driven.

Two caveats you should carry forward, because they are what would move this verdict: (i) I could not verify that Maxell currently ships a product embodying claims 1–6 (a camera performing the recited threshold-selection logic) — the "ships products embodying the claims" prong of the operating-company test is unproven, and if it fails, the honest alternative is NPE — moderate confidence on the strength of signal 7 (privateering) alone; and (ii) several reel/frame numbers above are [carried over] from sibling Maxell patents' 3.73(c) statements rather than confirmed for '209 itself. Both should be verified directly against the Assignment Center and PEDS before this is used in a filing.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7551209) — legacy index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

I'll research the cited prior art references for US 7,551,209. Let me run targeted searches on the patent itself and its key citations.

Good — I have solid detail on the two keystone references (JP 2532968 and the Hitachi internal-photometric art). Let me pull details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,551,209 B2 ("Imaging apparatus and method for controlling white balance")

Source of the citation list: the authoritative full text you supplied (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7551209/en), which reproduces the "Patent Citations (15)," "Non-Patent Citations (1)," and "Family Cites Families (3)" tables as they appear on the face of the patent. I treated those tables as the controlling list of references.

Search-method disclosure (honest limitation): I was able to retrieve the full text and claims of US 7,551,209 and the bibliographic/face-of-patent data directly. I was not able to query the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Application full-text databases directly in this session, and I could not retrieve machine-readable full text for several of the Japanese references. Where I describe a reference's disclosure, I state whether it is (a) verified from retrieved text, (b) verified from the patent's own discussion, or (c) inferred from title/classification only. Anything inferred is flagged. I did not alter any number or identifier.

1. Legal framework applied

• Priority date: 2002-02-27 (JP 2002-051841). Actual US filing of the parent: 2002-12-18; of this continuation: 2007-03-08.
• Because the effective filing date precedes 2013-03-16, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. The critical date for § 102(b) is 2001-02-27 (one year before the 2002-02-27 priority date); for § 102(a)/(e) it is 2002-02-27.
• Every cited reference published or issued well before 2001-02-27 (earliest 1992, latest 2000-01-07). Each therefore qualifies as a § 102(b) printed publication/patent, and § 102(a) art as well. There is no date problem for any of them.
• Claim architecture (from the section you already generated, which I adopt): independent claims 1, 3, 5, 6; dependent claims 2, 4. Every independent claim requires three parameters (object distance, zoom value, object brightness) with a two-threshold structure selected by the third parameter.

2. Complete citation table (as printed on the face of US 7,551,209)

Structural observation on the list (my inference; flagged): four cited pairs share an application date and assignee and are very likely the laid-open publication and the granted patent of the same Japanese application, i.e., one document each rather than two:

• JP H04-10887 A and JP 2532968 B2 (both Sanyo, app. 1990-04-27);
• JP H05-344530 A and JP 3193456 B2 (both Hitachi, app. 1992-06-11);
• JP H05-308563 A and US 5,617,141 A (both Hitachi, app. 1992-04-28) — likely JP/US counterparts of one invention.

If so, the "15 references" collapse to roughly 11–12 distinct disclosures. I flag this because it matters for a § 102/§ 103 count of references; I could not confirm the application numbers from a primary source in this session, so treat it as a hypothesis to verify in JPO/Espacenet.

3. Reference-by-reference analysis

For each I give: full citation · dates · description · § 102 anticipation assessment against claims 1–6. None of the cited references anticipates any claim, and I explain the missing element in each case. The controlling reason is uniform and stated once here:

Governing finding. Every independent claim (1, 3, 5, 6) requires the white-balance decision to be governed by two different thresholds that are selected according to a third, different parameter — i.e., a three-parameter, two-threshold mapping. The recited thresholds are functions of the parameter that is not being swept. No cited reference discloses a three-parameter threshold-selection scheme. The references cited against '209 are overwhelmingly two-parameter schemes (zoom + object distance) or ambience-classification schemes. Accordingly they are prior art to be distinguished and are § 103 material, not § 102 anticipatory art, on the present record.

3.1 US 5,283,632 A — Canon K.K. (Suzuki et al.) — "Image pickup apparatus"

• Dates: filed 1990-04-09; issued 1994-02-01. § 102(b).
• Description (verified from retrieved Google Patents text): hybrid white balance combining an internal (TTL) measurement taken from the image pickup element with an external color-measure sensor, and a synthesizing means that sets a variable synthesis ratio of the two control signals in accordance with focal-distance information from the image pickup optical system. Also disclosed: a warning device when WB cannot be properly set, and memory means for storing the WB control voltages. It is the classic "outer-measure vs. TTL" ratio-blending disclosure.
• § 102 against claims 1/3/5/6: No. It uses zoom/focal distance only as a blend-weight for two gain signals. It discloses no object-distance measurement, no object-brightness measurement, and no two-threshold selection. It does not anticipate any of claims 1–6. Relevance: § 103 only, and even then weak on the threshold-selection point.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5283632A](/patent/US5283632A)/en

3.2 JP H04-10887 A — Sanyo Electric — "White balance adjusting device"

• Dates: published 1992-01-16 (app. 1990-04-27). § 102(b).
• Description: I could not retrieve full text. From title/classification it is a WB adjusting device; it shares the 1990-04-27 application date with JP 2532968 B2 (see § 3.3) and is likely the laid-open publication of the same or a companion Sanyo application. Description here is inferred, not verified.
• § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6 (no verified three-parameter/threshold disclosure). Listed as context; effectively subsumed by JP 2532968 B2 if the pair is one application.

3.3 JP 2532968 B2 — Sanyo Electric — "Color video camera" ⭐ (the single most relevant cited reference)

• Dates: app. 1990-04-27; registered 1996-09-11. § 102(b).
• Description (verified from retrieved English text of JP2532968B2): detects the angle of view of the photographing lens (angle-of-view detection circuit 21, from zoom-lens position) and the distance to the subject (focus mechanism 22, infrared ranging → subject distance L), computes from these the effective area of the subject in the screen (effective-area calculating circuit 23), and based on that result either (i) changes the white-balance adjustment speed in multiple stages (多段階) or (ii) stops the current white-balance adjustment. Purpose: when angle of view is narrow or the subject is close, the frame contains too few subjects, colour is biased, and WB drifts to the complementary colour; the invention mitigates that drift.
• § 102 against '209: No — but this is the closest art and the principal § 103 reference. JP 2532968 discloses a two-parameter decision (zoom/angle-of-view + object distance) feeding a WB adjustment-speed/stop decision. It does not disclose object brightness as a parameter, and it does not disclose two distinct thresholds selected by a third parameter. Therefore every independent claim (1, 3, 5, 6) contains at least one limitation absent from JP 2532968: the brightness-governed second threshold (claims 1/3/5/6) and the explicit polarity of the comparison (claims 2/4/5/6).
• Note: The '209 specification expressly distinguishes JP 2532968 (it identifies it as the art that stops/limits WB control when the effective area is small, and criticises it for failing on a white/light-source subject that fills the frame). That express distinction is a strong prosecution/validity tool and confirms the examiner did not treat JP 2532968 as anticipating.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2532968B2/en

3.4 & 3.5 JP H04-170887 A and JP H04-170888 A — Canon Inc. — "White balance correction device"

• Dates: both published 1992-06-18 (both app. 1990-11-05). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved; inferred from title as Canon white-balance correction disclosures from the same 1990-11-05 filing pair. Likely companion cases.
• § 102: No anticipation of any of claims 1–6. Contextual/§ 103 background only.

3.6 JP H05-308563 A — Hitachi Ltd — "Image pickup device"

• Dates: published 1993-11-19 (app. 1992-04-28). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved in full; likely the JP counterpart of US 5,617,141 (identical assignee and 1992-04-28 application date) — see § 3.7. Description inferred.
• § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6.

3.7 US 5,617,141 A — Hitachi, Ltd. (Nishimura et al.) — "Image pickup devices having an image quality control function…" ⭐ (second most relevant US reference)

• Dates: filed 1992-04-28; issued 1997-04-01. § 102(b).
• Description (verified from retrieved full text and claims): an image pickup device with an ambience determining unit that determines the image-pickup ambience based on at least two of subject illumination, distance to the subject, and time of day, and a white balance control means responsive to the ambience determination that controls the gains of the R and B chroma signals and sets at least one of upper and lower limits of the gain control range in accordance with the determined ambience. Background expressly notes the problem that a conventional device "can malfunction by determining a colored subject in the presence of light from a source of light as a white subject."
• § 102 against '209: No anticipation — but this is the leading § 103 reference. It is the closest US art because it combines illumination/brightness + object distance and limits (either upper or lower) the WB gain control range. However it (a) uses "at least two of illumination, distance, and time of day" — brightness and distance are used to classify ambience, not to select between two thresholds; (b) it does not require or use a zoom value or focal length; and (c) it discloses setting a limit of the control range, not a binary two-threshold "adjusted / not adjusted" decision keyed to a third parameter. Hence at least the zoom-value element and the two-threshold-selection element are missing, defeating anticipation of claims 1, 3, 5, and 6. Note: it maps most naturally onto the specification's broader teaching (brightness + distance → change the WB control amount) — i.e., it is much closer to the specification/abstract than to the issued claims, which is a useful validity observation.
• URL: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a1/22/ec/5272e764faa5dc/US5617141.pdf

3.8 JP H05-344530 A — Hitachi Ltd — "White balance controller"

• Dates: published 1993-12-24 (app. 1992-06-11). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved in full. Notably, US 6,094,220 (Nakano et al., Hitachi) states that "Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 344530/1993 describes performance of automatic white balance control with higher accuracy by utilizing an intelligent algorithm recognizing the image pickup environment." That citation strongly suggests this reference is an environment-recognition WB controller, and it shares its application date (1992-06-11) with JP 3193456 B2 — likely the laid-open publication of the same application that granted as JP 3193456 B2 (§ 3.9). Description partly inferred.
• § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6; § 103 background.

3.9 JP 3193456 B2 — Hitachi, Ltd. — "White balance control device" ⭐ (the reference the specification identifies as the internal-photometric baseline)

• Dates: app. 1992-06-11; registered 2001-07-30. § 102(b).
• Description (verified from the '209 specification's own detailed discussion of it, and consistent with the US counterpart family such as US 5,177,599 / US 6,094,220 context): internal-photometric WB control in which two colour-difference signals (R−Y), (B−Y) are converted to (R−B) and (R+B−2Y); the levels of a luminance-dependent threshold are compared with those chrominance signals to discriminate an achromatic (white) portion; a "white portion extracting range" on colour-temperature-signal coordinates is set; chrominance signals within the range are extracted and integrated; and the R/B gains are fed back per the detected WB deviation. To avoid error, the extracting range is finely divided into plural regions by temperature and sequentially switched.
• § 102 against '209: No. It discloses the WB-controlling-means element common to all claims (detect achromatic portion from chrominance signals derived from the image-sensor output and control chrominance gain per detected WB shift) — this is essentially the preamble both references share — but it is silent as to object distance, zoom value, object brightness, thresholds, and any threshold selection. It therefore cannot anticipate claims 1, 3, 5, or 6. It is essential as background/§ 103 art and is the reference the specification distinguishes for producing "faded pale blue" faces.
• (My search also surfaced Hitachi's related US 5,177,599, "White balance controller … including an abnormality detector," and US 6,094,220, "Image pickup apparatus with image extracting unit" — neither is on the '209 face, but both are useful § 103/§ 102 context for the "detect achromatic portion / white-detector" sub-element.)
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/JP3193456B2/en

3.10 JP H06-339149 A — Sanyo Electric — "White balance adjusting device"

• Dates: published 1994-12-06 (app. 1993-05-31). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved; inferred from title as a Sanyo WB-adjustment disclosure. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6.

3.11 JP H07-075113 A — Victor Co. of Japan — "Video camera"

• Dates: published 1995-03-17 (app. 1993-09-03). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved; it is a "Video camera" reference, evidently a general WB/exposure-related teaching. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6.

3.12 US 5,550,587 A — Asahi Kogaku K.K. (Miyadera) — "White balance adjustment device for a still-video camera having an electronic flash"

• Dates: filed 1994-05-02; issued 1996-08-27. § 102(b).
• Description: verified only at bibliographic level (listed as "Miyadera," assignee Asahi Kogaku, class 348/223.1 in the parent US 7,199,821 front page). It concerns WB adjustment coordinated with an electronic flash. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6 — it addresses light-source/flash colour-temperature handling, not distance/zoom/brightness threshold selection.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5550587A](/patent/US5550587A)/en

3.13 JP H09-009136 A — Hitachi Ltd — "Imaging equipment"

• Dates: published 1997-01-10 (app. 1995-06-22). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6 on the present record.

3.14 JP H11-205806 A — Hitachi Ltd — "White balance control device"

• Dates: published 1999-07-30 (app. 1998-01-19). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved; a later Hitachi WB-control disclosure, part of the same corporate line of art as JP 3193456 B2 and JP H09-009136 A. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6.

3.15 JP 2000-004445 A — Minolta Co. Ltd. — "Camera"

• Dates: published 2000-01-07 (app. 1998-06-15). § 102(b).
• Description: not retrieved; inferred from title as a camera WB/exposure disclosure. § 102: No anticipation of claims 1–6.

3.16 Non-Patent Citation — Japanese Office Action in JP 2002-051841, dated 2007-05-22

• This is a prosecution document, not prior art. It cannot anticipate under § 102. It is nonetheless of interest because the JP family member JP 4042432 B2 (the JP grant corresponding to US 7,199,821 / this family) was examined against the art above, and the JPO examiner's citation set is the origin of much of the face-of-patent list. If the OHIM/JPO file is needed, obtain it from JPO J-PlatPat.

3.17 (Family-cite note, not a citation)

"Family Cites Families (3)" lists JP H03-193456 A (Seiko Epson, 1989-12-25), JP 2000-047297 A (Minolta, 1998-07-28), and JP 4042432 B2 (Hitachi, 2002-02-27 — the family's own JP member). The first two are family-level citation artifacts; JP H03-193456 A (note: not the same as the Hitachi JP 3193456 B2 cited at § 3.9 — the numbers are easy to confuse, and I have NOT conflated them) is a 1989 Seiko Epson inkjet-head document and is not WB art. JP 4042432 B2 is in-family and is not prior art against '209.

4. Ranking of the prior art, and § 102 vs. § 103

Most relevant art (ranked):

1. JP 2532968 B2 (Sanyo) — zoom/angle-of-view + object distance → effective area → multi-stage WB adjustment speed or stop. Discloses the closest overall architecture (frame-occupancy-driven WB intervention) and is expressly distinguished in the specification. Strongest § 103 reference against independent claims 1, 3, 5, 6 when combined with an object-brightness teaching (e.g., US 5,617,141). Not § 102 anticipatory.
2. US 5,617,141 A (Hitachi/Nishimura) — ambience from illumination + distance + time-of-day; WB gain control range limited accordingly. Adds the brightness dimension and a control-range limit; strong § 103 complement to JP 2532968; not § 102 anticipatory (no zoom element; no two-threshold selection).
3. JP 3193456 B2 (Hitachi) — internal-photometric achromatic-portion detection + temperature-switched white-extracting range. Supplies the common WB-controlling-means preamble; background/§ 103.
4. US 5,283,632 A (Canon) — variable TTL/external synthesis ratio as a function of focal distance. § 103 background for the "zoom value" element.

§ 102 conclusion: On the record before me, no cited reference — individually — anticipates claim 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. The common missing limitation is the claimed two-threshold, third-parameter-selected decision (and, for claims 1/3, use of object brightness as the selector; for claims 5/6, the recited comparison polarity). No single reference discloses all three of {object distance, zoom value, object brightness} arranged as the claims require. I would need the full text of the untranslated JP references (§§ 3.2, 3.4–3.6, 3.8, 3.10, 3.11, 3.13–3.15) before I would certify this conclusion as complete — but on their titles/classifications none appears to be a three-parameter threshold-selection disclosure.

5. Items I could NOT confirm (explicit uncertainty)

• Full text of most Japanese references. I verified JP 2532968 B2 and JP 3193456 B2 (the latter via the '209 specification's discussion and the JP counterpart JP 2003259389 A). The remaining JP references' descriptions above are flagged as inferred from titles, assignees, and application dates. Do not rely on those descriptions in a filing without pulling the JPO translations.
• The "same-application" hypotheses in § 2 (JP H04-10887 A / JP 2532968 B2; JP H05-344530 A / JP 3193456 B2; JP H05-308563 A / US 5,617,141 A) are inferences from matching application dates and assignees. Verify against JPO/Espacenet if the reference count matters.
• Direct USPTO database query. The strict instruction was to search the USPTO database for "7551209"; I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT directly in this session and relied on the authoritative Google Patents full text plus web retrieval. The bibliographic data, claims, and citation list are all taken from that authoritative text and are internally consistent.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7551209/en (patent text, claims, citation tables); https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2532968B2/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5283632A/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a1/22/ec/5272e764faa5dc/US5617141.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5550587A/en .

I'll ground the reference-level analysis by checking the key cited prior art documents.

§103 Obviousness Analysis — US 7,551,209 B2

Builds on the summary and claim breakdown already produced. I do not restate the claim text or bibliographic data; I cross-reference it.

0. What changed on the face of the record (flagged against the earlier section)

Two items in the earlier summary need correction or supplementation based on the prior-art records just retrieved:

1. "JP 2532968" identity is now confirmed and its content is now pinned down. The earlier section treated it only as the specification's foil. It is retrieved: JP2532968B2, Sanyo Electric, "カラービデオカメラ / Color video camera," JP application 特願平2-113127, laid open as 特開平4-010887 (1992-01-16), filed 1990-04-27, granted as 特許第2532968号. https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=201103063622482024 and https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2532968B2/en
2. Look-alike number warning (do not auto-correct). Google Patents' "Family Cites Families" field for this family lists JPH03193456A (Seiko Epson, "inkjet head") under the label "JPH03193456A." That is a different document from JP3193456B2 (Hitachi, "White balance control device," based on JPH05344530A, filed 1992-06-11). The specification's citations are "Japanese Patent No. 3193456" and "Japanese Patent No. 2532968"; those map to JP3193456B2 and JP2532968B2 respectively. The Seiko Epson JPH03193456A entry is an unrelated numeric near-neighbour and should not be cited as the '209 specification's reference.

1. Governing framework and the critical date

• Critical date: 2002-02-27 (JP 2002-051841); US filing 2002-12-18 via Ser. No. 10/321,842. All asserted art below predates 1990–1998, so §102(b)/§102(e)/§103(a) qualification is not in doubt.
• Standard: Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of claims, scope/content of prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), where the art is predictable and the combination is "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods [yielding] predictable results," the combination is obvious; a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" makes it "obvious to try." Camera white-balance control — chrominance integration against thresholds, gain feedback loops, lens/sensor parameter lookups — is squarely in the predictable arts.
• PHOSITA: an engineer with ~2–4 years' experience designing consumer video-camera signal processing (auto-white-balance, AE, AF), familiar with TTL/internal-photometric WB (R−Y, B−Y or R−B, R+B−2Y axes), with zoom/focus encoders and photometry circuits available as standard camera subsystems. The '209 specification concedes all of these components (AGC, A/D, signal processing, encoder, focus/zoom detection, photometry) are conventional — see the "DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS" passage listing elements 1–13.

2. The decisive structural observation about the claims

Claims 1, 3, 5 and 6 are four permutations of one idea: take the three known state variables — object distance (D), zoom (E), object brightness (F) — hold one fixed, sweep a second, and let the third supply the threshold that decides "adjust / don't adjust." Claims 2 and 4 merely recite the polarity of the comparison.

Nothing in any independent claim recites:

• how the threshold is computed (no formula, no table, no interpolation);
• the numerical values or the direction of the threshold's dependence on brightness/zoom/distance (unlike the specification, which does tie G monotonically to E and inversely to F — FIG. 3 and its discussion);
• any structure beyond means-plus-function/genus placeholders (detecting "means", "controlling means").

That matters for §103 in two ways. First, the recitations are result-oriented: the claims define the outcome of a decision logic whose inputs and mechanism the specification describes as ordinary camera engineering. Second, because the claim omits the specification's actual threshold-setting rule, an obviousness case need not reproduce FIG. 3 — it need only show that a POSITA would have arrived at brightness-indexed threshold switching among {distance, zoom, brightness} as the natural implementation of the known effective-area idea.

Caveat I must state plainly: I have not read the full text of JP2532968B2 or US5617141 in the original; the analysis below relies on retrieved claim 1, abstract and description excerpts. Anything resting on a specific unretrieved paragraph of those references is flagged as needing verification.

3. Prior-art content (as retrieved)

Note on the applicant's own admissions: the '209/821 specification states that object-distance detection from focus-lens position or distance sensors, zoom parameters (magnification, focal distance f, angle of view θ, zoom-lens position P), and brightness parameters (illuminance, luminance Y, illuminance/luminance sensors) are all interchangeable and conventional, and that the FIG. 4A–4E counter-based multistage/hysteresis scheme is an implementation choice. Those are usable admissions of the POSHITA's baseline.

4. Element-by-element mapping

Every element is disclosed; only the specific arrangement — brightness indexing the threshold — is arguably new, and the specification itself supplies the reason it is not inventive.

5. Ground 1 (primary): JP2532968 + US5617141 — anticipates the structure of all independent claims

Combine JP2532968B2 with US5617141, optionally with JP3193456 for the achromatic-detection limb.

1. JP2532968 supplies three of the four claim-1 pillars: object-distance detection (focus mechanism 22), zoom/angle-of-view detection (circuit 21), and WB gain control of colour signals performed/stopped in dependence on a threshold (the effective-area threshold), with multistage adjustment speed.
2. US5617141 supplies the fourth pillar: an object-brightness determination (illumination from AGC gain) used together with distance in an ambience decision that gates white-balance gain control. It also supplies the why: "it cannot make complete discrimination of the color of the subject from the color of the source of light by using only an image signal… The image pickup device can malfunction by determining a colored subject… as a white subject." Adding a third discriminator (brightness) is the very remedy it teaches.
3. The result is a camera in which WB adjustment is gated by a threshold that depends on distance, zoom and brightness. Claim 1's "while object distance detection information is fixed, if zoom value information changes when object brightness information is a first value… first threshold; [and] when brightness is a second value… second threshold" is simply the table lookup of that gate: fix distance, index by zoom, and let brightness choose which of two (of many) thresholds applies. Claim 3 is the mirror (fix distance, index by brightness, let zoom choose the threshold). Claim 6 is the same gate with zoom fixed. Claim 5 is the same gate with zoom fixed and brightness swept, distance supplying the threshold.

Why a POSITA would combine them (KSR rationales):

• Same field, same problem, same subsystem set. Both are video-camera auto-white-balance controls operating on a TTL colour signal with lens/distance/illumination inputs; both are Hitachi-family-adjacent consumer camera art (JP2532968 is Sanyo; US5617141 is Hitachi — the same assignee as the '209 original assignee). Combining references from the same narrow art is the paradigm case of predictable combination.
• Known technique to improve a similar device. JP2532968's own stated purpose is to prevent WB from drifting to the complementary colour when the frame is filled by a single subject (narrow angle of view / short distance). US5617141's stated purpose is the identical failure mode (a coloured subject misread as white). A POSITA addressing JP2532968's acknowledged defect — that a genuinely white or light-source subject filling the frame loses WB correction — would look precisely to additional discriminators such as brightness.
• The specification's own reasoning is the motivation. The '209 specification states, as the reason the invention works, that "the white object or the light source object is brighter than the chromatic object" and therefore the threshold should be relaxed for bright objects. That is an admission in the specification of what a POSITA would have appreciated, not an inventive insight.
• Only three state variables exist. Distance, zoom, brightness are the standard, non-exhaustive set of camera parameters available for this decision (the '209 spec itself lists them plus focussing-lens position and illuminance/luminance sensors as interchangeable). With a finite, small, fully enumerated menu of known parameters and a known threshold-comparison mechanism, indexing the threshold by a third parameter is at most an obvious to try variation under KSR.
• Predictable result, no new mechanism. The combination adds no new hardware — the encoder (11), zoom (12) and photometry (13) blocks already exist in JP2532968's camera and in the '209's own FIG. 1. The combination is {known gate} + {known third input} → {expected gate}.

Reasonable expectation of success: high. The gate is a comparator and a lookup; the failure modes (wrongly suppressing WB on a white subject; wrongly enabling it on a skin-tone face) are exactly those the references already discuss.

6. Ground 2 (strong alternative, and the cleanest case for claims 1–2): JP2532968 + US5283632 + US5831672

• US5283632 teaches that focal-distance information from the optical system is the correct variable for weighting/limiting the TTL (internal-photometric) WB path relative to an external measurement, and expressly identifies "a monotonic frame" as a condition in which TTL WB is unreliable. A monotonic frame is exactly JP2532968's "single subject fills the screen" scenario. US5283632 thus supplies the linkage between lens zoom information and trustworthiness of the internal-photometric WB decision.
• US5831672 supplies the final increment: brightness level of the object changes the WB correction speed / selects among plural WB modes. Claim 1's requirement that brightness "select which threshold applies" is squarely a species of "brightness selects the correction mode/speed." For claim 2's polarity (zoom ≥ threshold → no adjustment; zoom < threshold → adjustment made at the first brightness value, with a different threshold at the second brightness value), US5831672's mode-switching-by-brightness plus JP2532968's "stop when below a predetermined value" is a complete teaching of the polarity/anti-polarity pair the claim recites — noting that the claim's own polarity is inconsistent (it reads "…no adjustment is made … if it is less than the first threshold white balance is made" at the first brightness, then "...if it is equal to or more than the second threshold, white balance adjustment is not made, and if it is less than the second threshold white balance is made" — i.e. the same polarity at both brightness values, which the claim nevertheless labels as two different thresholds). That internal redundancy further weakens any argument that the claimed logic is a non-obvious selection among competing designs.

Motivation: brightness is the classic cue that a screen-filling subject is a white/achromatic object or a light source rather than a light-coloured chromatic object (skin); both references operate on the same signal chain and can be wired into the same comparator/lookup as JP2532968's effective-area circuit.

7. Ground 3: JP2532968 + US5550587 (+ US5617141) — targeted at claims 3, 5, 6

• US5550587 discloses WB adjustment as a function of image-object distance, with different coefficients applied depending on whether the sector is near or far (different coefficients = different thresholds/weights). It thus discloses the inverse mapping (distance chooses how WB is performed) that claims 5 and 6 recite in combination with the brightness/zoom index.
• US5617141 supplies brightness-as-ambience-input and the chroma-gain gating.
• Combined with JP2532968's zoom–distance effective-area circuit, a POSITA arrives at: zoom fixed → distance and brightness jointly determine the WB decision (claim 6); zoom fixed → brightness swept and distance supplies the threshold (claim 5); distance fixed → brightness swept with zoom supplying the threshold (claim 3).

Motivation: all three references solve the same reliability problem ("is the TTL colour signal trustworthy enough to steer the WB loop?") using overlapping, non-conflicting parameters. There is no teaching away, no bodily incorporation problem (all are camera signal-processing references), and each merely refines which parameter gates the loop.

8. Ground 4 (secondary, for completeness): the "occupied-area" line

US5465116 (Canon, Suzuki) — discriminating circuit for occupied area of a single object controlling the white-balance adjusting operation, including different operation in macro photographing — is essentially a structural alternative to JP2532968's effective-area approach and is directed at the same "large occupied area" case. Either alone or with US5617141/US5831672 it reinforces that gating WB on "how much of the frame one subject fills" was a known, thoroughly worked technique by 1995–1998. I disclose that this reference is not on the face of '209; if used in a challenge it would need to be independently qualified (its grant date 1995-11-07 predates 2002, so it qualifies as §102(b) art).

9. Claim-by-claim conclusions

No claim recites a specific threshold function, numerical value, hysteresis parameter, counter rate (the "every 5 frames" rate), or weighting rule. Those details — the only arguably non-routine parts of the specification — are unclaimed, so they cannot support patentability of the claims as issued.

10. Anticipated rebuttals and how they fare

• "JP2532968 teaches away by stopping WB." No. JP2532968 teaches two outcomes — multistage speed change or stop — based on a threshold. Selecting a brightness-indexed threshold that permits WB for bright objects is an adjustment of the same disclosed mechanism, not a departure from it. The '209 specification itself characterises its contribution as an improvement upon, not a repudiation of, JP2532968 ("in a manner similar to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2532968, a feedback loop is constructed…").
• "Brightness can't distinguish a white object from a light-coloured face." The references anticipate and address exactly this: US5283632 flags "a monotonic frame," US5617141 explains the coloured-subject-as-white malfunction. The claimed invention does no more than add a known discriminator to a known decision; imperfect discrimination is not a patentable advance where the claim recites only the decision logic.
• "Secondary considerations." The earlier section notes Maxell's assertion campaigns and third-party valuation estimates (~$93k by one estimate). Those are not, on this record, entitled to weight: (i) the patent expired 2023-10-26, so any current commercial success arguments would have to attach to past sales of accused products with no established nexus to the claimed threshold-indexing feature; (ii) no evidence of copying, unexpected results, industry praise, or a long-felt unmet need that was resolved only by the brightness-indexed threshold has been produced; and (iii) the specification recites the operative effect as the expected consequence ("even if… the white dog… is displayed on the whole image pickup picture plane, the correcting operation… is executed and the color deviation… can be avoided"), which cuts against unexpected-results arguments.
• "The claims were allowed over this art." Prosecution allowance is not a validity holding. Notably, the file history contains a Japanese Office Action dated 2007-05-22 in corresponding application JP 2002-051841 (Non-Patent Citation on the face of '209), and the US family spawned three separate continuations (US 7,199,821 / '209 / US 8,130,284) with successively re-drafted claim sets — a pattern sometimes associated with prosecution difficulty rather than clear allowance over the cited art. I have not retrieved the US examiner's reasons for allowance or the substance of the JP Office Action; that omission is material and should be closed before relying on this analysis in a filing.

11. Confidence, gaps, and what to verify

High confidence:

• The identity, dates and substantive content of JP2532968B2 (distance + angle of view → effective area → threshold → multistage speed change or stop) and its status as the specification's own primary foil.
• JP3193456B2 as the achromatic-detection reference and its mapping to JPH05344530A (Hitachi).
• The element-by-element coverage above.

Medium confidence (content retrieved from abstract/claims/partial description only):

• The precise wording of US5617141's ambience-determination claims and whether "illumination" is expressly derived from AGC gain in the claims as opposed to the description.
• US5283632's treatment of focal distance (description-level, not claim-level, in what I retrieved).
• Whether US5831672's "brightness level" is object brightness as measured photometrically or image brightness derived from the video signal (both would still qualify, but it matters for mapping).

Must be verified before use:

1. Full text of JP2532968B2 and, if it is to be cited, the laid-open JPH0410887A — to confirm the threshold-comparison and multistage-speed language is in the claims (not merely the embodiment), since the retrieved claim 1 already recites both the effective-area threshold and the stop condition.
2. Full text of JP3193456B2 and its US counterpart, if any, to confirm the luminance-dependent achromatic threshold and white-extraction range.
3. The US prosecution file histories of Ser. No. 10/321,842, 11/715,425 and 12/466,400, and the JP Office Action of 2007-05-22, to establish what the examiners treated as the distinguishing feature and whether a §103 rejection was traversed on the record.
4. Independent qualification of US5831672 and US5465116 (and US5177599), which are not on the face of '209 but surfaced in this search.
5. Whether the "first threshold"/"second threshold" limitation in claim 1 has any antecedent-basis or indefiniteness exposure (claim 1 recites "a first threshold value"/"a second threshold value" without defining how they differ beyond "different from the first threshold value"), and whether claim 6's closing "equal to or less than the second threshold value white balance adjustment is not made" is a drafting typo — the earlier section already flagged the "white value adjustment"/"form" slips. These are §112 issues, not §103, but they affect how broadly the §103 case can be stated.

Nothing in this analysis should be represented as a legal conclusion. It is a technical prior-art mapping for a validity opinion; the final §103 determination requires the full reference texts and the prosecution record.

Primary sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7551209/en (authoritative full text/claims); https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2532968B2/en ; https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=201103063622482024 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5283632A ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a1/22/ec/5272e764faa5dc/US5617141.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5550587A/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c9/bc/5b/58978775bc9a45/US5831672.pdf ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8b/e7/9e/26f8427c29746e/US5465116.pdf ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4e/cd/a9/90e2db4fbb1660/US5177599.pdf