Invalidity dossier
US 7624172
State change alerts mechanism
Current assignee: Meta Platforms Inc
Added 9/21/2026, 10:41:09 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US 7,624,172 B1 — "State Change Alerts Mechanism"
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7624172/en
Bibliographic facts (from supplied text): US Patent 7,624,172 B1; inventor Christopher Emery Austin-Lane; application US09/624,192; priority date 2000-03-17; application filed 2000-07-24; granted/published 2009-11-24. Original assignee AOL LLC; current assignee listed as [Meta Platforms Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Meta%20Platforms%20Inc.) The record notes a 2000-11-29 assignment to America Online, Inc., and a 2012-07-03 assignment to Facebook, Inc., recorded as "assignment of interest." Listed status: expired, adjusted expiration 2023-10-12.
Purpose and scope: The excerpt states the invention "relates generally to delivering information to a client" and "more particularly … to alerting a client of a state change within an online service." The background explains online service providers continually offer new/upgraded services, giving subscribers near on-demand access to content such as news, weather, financial, sports and entertainment. The "Definitions" heading and opening background are the only substantive body text supplied.
Keywords/classifications provided: "Prior art keywords" include alert, communications system, instant messaging, server, multiplexer. Classifications cover G06Q30/00–30/02 (commerce/marketing), G06F3/0484 (GUI control), and H04L groups for real-time messaging/IM interoperability, message monitoring/prioritization, push-based network services, and location-based services.
What the supplied excerpt does not establish: It contains no claim text, no detailed description, no drawings/figures, no examiner or prior-art citations, and no explicit legal conclusions about validity, enforceability, or claim scope. The classifications and keywords are metadata, not findings about coverage. The brief definitions fragment does not state what "state change alert" means operationally, how alerts are delivered, or what structure performs delivery. Family members are noted only as priority/continuation references, not as evidence of shared claim coverage. No litigation, licensing, or factual ownership-transfer analysis is supplied or asserted here; the listed assignee information is expressly described in the source as potentially inaccurate.
(Under 400 words; all content drawn solely from the supplied source text.)
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:01:19 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.