US 7729008

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me get the claims and check for any 2026 appellate activity.

Let me pin down the exact claim set of the '008 patent and check for any recent appellate activity.

US Patent 7,729,008 — Analyst Summary

Caveat on scope of this answer: I ran targeted searches but hit the tool limit before I could pull the verbatim granted claim set of the '008 patent or exhaustively sweep every 2026 CAFC docket entry. Where I am inferring from family members or from PTAB/litigation records rather than reading the '008 claims directly, I flag it below. I did not auto-correct or substitute any identifier — everything is keyed to the literal string 7729008.

1. Bibliographic data (authoritative — Google Patents / Espacenet)

Note on the expiration: the 2016-12-17 adjusted expiration is consistent with a 20-year term running from the 1996-02-26 priority date plus patent-term adjustment. On that record the patent is long expired, which materially affects what any 2026 appeal could still be about.

2. Abstract

The '008 patent shares its specification with sibling continuations in the same family. The abstract as it appears in the family (verbatim from the identically-titled continuation US 8,760,704 B2, same specification):

"The system provides for controlling color reproduction of input color image data in a network having nodes (or sites). The system distributes the input color image data from one of the nodes to other nodes, and provides data structures in the network. The system has means for providing color calibration data at each node characterizing output colors (colorants) of the rendering device of the node, and means for producing at each node, responsive to the color calibration data of the rendering device of the node, information for transforming the input color image data into output color image data at the rendering device of the node. The rendering device of each node renders a color reproduction responsive to the output color image data, wherein colors displayed in the reproduction at the rendering device of each node appear substantially the same within the output colors attainable by the rendering devices."

The "Definitions"/keyword extract on the '008 Google Patents page (color, gamut, image data, rendering) and the specification text supplied to me are consistent with this.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Explicit uncertainty: The authoritative full text I was given for the '008 patent is truncated in the description (it breaks off at "…the black utilization data which includes % UCR, maximum black,") and contains no claim set. My search results returned claim text from other applications in the same family/serial series (e.g., claims 55/72/75/78/84/92/100/148–149 in the 11/452,879-type continuations, and claims 33–63 of an earlier family member), not the verbatim granted claims of 7,729,008. I therefore give the substance of the independent claims as a family-consistent characterization, not as a quotation of the '008 claims:

1. Method claim (network/nodes, method form). A method of controlling color reproduction of input color image data representing pages/page constituents across a network of nodes, where each node has at least one rendering device. Steps: distribute the input color image data from one node to other nodes; provide a data structure (the "Virtual Proof") having components shared by the nodes and components local to each node; provide color calibration data at each node characterizing the output colors (colorants) of that node's rendering device; produce, from that calibration data, information for transforming input image data into output image data for that node's device; store that information in the appropriate shared/local components; transform the image data accordingly; and render a reproduction such that colors at each node look substantially the same, within the output colors attainable by each device. (Parallel method/verification/revising language appears in the family, including verifying the transform and revising the stored information when verification fails.)

2. System/apparatus claim. The apparatus counterpart: a computer at a site with memory storing the calibration data, tonal transfer curves, color transformations/profiles and the shared/local data structure, a network interface for exchanging that information over a network protocol, and a color output device (press, printer, proofer, display) that renders using the transform — again to achieve substantially matching appearance across devices.

3. Color reproduction apparatus claim ("rendering a page with color uniform with a remote device rendering the same page"). A device that communicates with a remote rendering device, receives the page's image data, produces a data structure with shared and local components containing the transform information, and renders the page so it matches the remote device's rendering.

4. Standalone color rendering system / computer-readable medium claims. The family also includes system and non-transitory computer-readable-medium claims reciting a user interface exposing menu selections (user color preferences, viewing-condition/illumination compensation), memory storing tonal transfer curves and color transformations at least partly derived from device-independent calibration data, and a chromatic adaptation transform for changing viewing conditions, plus gamut data enabling comparison of two or more devices.

Representative additional limitations seen across the family's independent/dependent claims: gamut descriptor data (including darkest reproducible color), in/out-of-gamut data structures, black utilization (GCR/UCR/TAC) controls, colorant-to-colorant proofing transforms, neutral-to-neutral lightness-plane shifting in gamut mapping, more-than-four-colorant support, and remote annotation/conferencing.

4. Litigation, PTAB and CAFC status

• PTAB: Adobe Inc. petitioned for inter partes review of the '008 patent in IPR2019-00627 (consolidated hearing 2020-05-28 with IPR2019-00628/'444, IPR2019-00629/'897, IPR2020-00646/'761). The Final Written Decision held that Petitioner had not shown claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 patent unpatentable — i.e., the challenged '008 claims survived. So the '008 patent has at least 38 issued claims. (Final Written Decision, public version via Banner & Witcoff / PTAB.)
• District court: Extensive litigation history (RAH Color Technologies as plaintiff/enforcement). Google Patents' litigation panel lists cases in N.D. Ill., E.D. Va., E.D. Tex., C.D. Cal., N.D. Cal., W.D.N.Y., E.D. Pa., E.D. Mich., W.D. Mich., S.D. Ill., including MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874) and Federal Circuit case 21-1067 (2021, not 2026).
• CAFC 2026 dockets — result of my search: I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket entry naming US 7,729,008 or RAH Color Technologies. My search for CAFC 2026 activity returned only unrelated matters (e.g., Contour IP Holding v. GoPro, No. 2026-2012; Headwater Research v. Verizon; the September 2026 oral-argument calendar), none tying back to this patent or patentee. Given the patent's 2016-12-17 expiration, an active 2026 appeal on the '008 patent is unlikely, though I cannot rule out a damages/collection-style or collateral proceeding beyond the dockets I retrieved.

Bottom line on the 2026 check: No verified 2026 CAFC docket activity for US 7,729,008 in the material I retrieved. This is a negative finding from limited searching, not a certification of absence.

5. Sources consulted

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US7729008/en (bibliographic record, abstract context, litigation panel, IPR2019-00627 listing)
• Family/spec corroboration: US 8,760,704 B2 and US 8,917,394 B2 (patentimages PDFs) — same title/specification, verbatim abstract
• PTAB Final Written Decision, IPR2019-00627 (Patent 7,729,008 B2), public version (bannerwitcoff.com PDF) — claims 28–33, 36–38 survived
• PTAB / IPR2019-00627 record (ipverse.greyb.com) and IPR2019-00629 FWD discussing related '008 matters
• Espacenet original document listing for US 7729008 (B2), 2010-06-01

If you want the verbatim granted claims of 7,729,008 with the exact independent-claim language, the authoritative next step is the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search full-text for patent number 7729008 — I can draft that retrieval for you rather than paraphrasing from family members.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7,729,008. Let me run several targeted searches.

I have substantial results. Let me verify outcomes and the earlier cases and the Federal Circuit appeal.

Let me get details on remaining cases and outcomes.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,729,008

Patent identification (literal): U.S. Patent No. 7,729,008 B2, "System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites," inventor Richard A. Holub, assigned to RAH Color Technologies LLC (originally), application 11/452,869 filed 2006‑06‑14, granted 2010‑06‑01, priority date 1996‑02‑26. Per the record, the patent is listed as "[e]xpired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2016‑12‑17. (Note the oddity: several complaints below name the '008 among patents‑in‑suit after its listed expiration; I report the filings literally.)

Owner/plaintiff throughout: RAH Color Technologies LLC (Alexandria, VA), wholly owned by Dr. Holub.

Below are the matters in which the '008 patent is confirmed to have been asserted or at issue. "Confirmed" means the complaint, IPR paper, or MDL order specifically names the '008.

District court cases

Additional 2017 N.D. Ill. dockets appearing in the Google Patents family-litigation list — 1:17-cv-02145, 1:17-cv-02924 — I could not tie with confidence to the '008 specifically; they may involve other patents in the Holub family. I flag them as unverified rather than assert them.

Multidistrict litigation

• In re: RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, MDL No. 2874, N.D. Cal. Case No. 3:18-md-02874-SI (Judge Susan Illston). Created by JPML order 2018‑12‑06; consolidated Adobe, Xerox, and EFI, with later conditional transfer of Heidelberger, Dalim, and Kodak. Judge Illston stayed the MDL proceedings 2019‑09‑10 pending the IPRs; the MDL is now closed (final judgment entered; "THIS MDL IS CLOSED").

PTAB proceedings

• IPR2019-00627, Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC (PTAB), Petition filed 2019‑02‑01, instituted 2019‑08‑20. Challenged claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 on §103 grounds (ICC v3.0/v3.01, Photoshop User Guide, Beretta). Final Written Decision (Paper 124): Petitioner did NOT prove by a preponderance that claims 28–33 and 36–38 are unpatentable — RAH prevailed. Companion IPRs: IPR2019-00628 ('444), -00629 ('897), -00646 ('761). Consolidated oral hearing 2020‑05‑28.

Federal Circuit

• Case No. 21-1067 (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) is listed in the patent's family-litigation record as an appeal arising from the RAH Color / Adobe dispute. I was unable to verify the outcome of this appeal in my searches — do not rely on this entry for the disposition.

Key limitations of this report

1. Several outcomes are not verified: X-Rite (exact disposition terms), Ricoh, R.R. Donnelley, Quad/Graphics, and both Microsoft cases. I have filing data but not confirmed terminations.
2. The Google Patents page's "Family has litigation" list is family-wide (it includes many Holub patents sharing the "System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites" specification), so entries there are not all attributable to the '008. I limited the table above to matters where the '008 is specifically named.
3. The X-Rite matter is complicated: one X-Rite complaint in the record lists ten patents-in-suit including the '008, and another lists eight including the '008 — these appear to be successive/different pleadings. The docketed W.D. Mich. case 1:14-cv-00638 (filed 2014‑06‑16 against X-Rite) is the one matching X-Rite's Michigan domicile.
4. I did not have PACER direct access; findings derive from Unified Patents/PTAB filings, Docket Alarm, Justia Dockets, UniCourt, CourtListener, and the Google Patents record.

If you need certified outcomes (e.g., dismissal orders, settlement terms, or Microsoft dispositions), I'd recommend pulling the dockets directly from PACER for each case number above, and the Federal Circuit docket for 21-1067.

I'll research the PTAB proceedings on this patent, starting with the one flagged in the patent page's litigation block.

Found the key proceeding. Let me dig into the FWD details, the appeal, and confirm no other IPRs on the '008 patent.

Now let me pin down the Federal Circuit appeal disposition and check for any additional IPRs on the '008 patent.

PTAB Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 7,729,008 ("System for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites," Holub / RAH Color Technologies LLC)

Source-quality note up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block says the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That block is incomplete. A full IPR on this patent — IPR2019-00627 — is documented in the Board's own FWD (Paper 124), in third-party dockets, and on the patent's own Google Patents page ("PTAB case IPR2019-00627 filed (Final Written Decision)"). I proceed on the documentary record and flag the ODP gap below.

Items I could not fully verify and have marked as such: (a) the Federal Circuit's exact disposition in No. 2021-1067; (b) the FWD's internal technical reasoning (I have the disposition language verbatim, not the full opinion text); (c) the FWD's caption/panel — sources conflict.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding has been filed against the '008 patent: IPR2019-00627 (Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC) — instituted 2019-08-20 on all nine challenged claims, and claims sustained in a Final Written Decision of 2020-08-19 (0 claims invalidated, 0 claims canceled, 0 settlements, 0 institution denials); Adobe appealed to the Federal Circuit (No. 2021-1067, docketed 2020-10-20, terminated 2021-09-22) and no public record shows any reversal. The defensive bottom line for a defendant today: claims 28–33 and 36–38 survived the only IPR ever filed on this patent and are now a hardened, twice-reviewed target — the Board wrote the opinion authoring this family in RAH's favor, so an IPR-based defense on these claims is materially harder, not easier. The countervailing point is that the patent's legal status is "Expired – Fee Related" (adjusted expiration 2016-12-17 per Google Patents), which is a real defense tool in damages, and the claim set outside 28–33/36–38 (e.g., claims 1–27, and any claims 34–35 or above 38) is untested by any PTAB panel.

IPR2019-00627 — Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. § 311), Tech Center 2600; Patent 7,729,008 B2.

• Filed: 2019-02-01 (Board docket; petition challenging the '008 patent). Concurrent petitions on three related RAH patents — IPR2019-00628 ('444), IPR2019-00629 ('897), IPR2019-00646 ('761) — were filed the same day/week.

• Status (verbatim from structured data / docket): Final Written Decision — judgment entered 2020-08-19; public version of the FWD ordered 2020-08-31 after the parties represented that no redactions were needed. Plain English: complete — all challenged claims survived; now on appeal-terminated status.

• Judge panel: Sources conflict and I did not retrieve the FWD caption itself. Patexia reports the panel as APJs Frances L. Ippolito (opinion author), John A. Hudalla, and Eleni Mantis Mercader; the Docket Alarm case page also lists Nathan A. Engels and J. John Lee on the docket; and an 2020-08-31 Board order covering IPR2019-00627 and -00628 was signed by APJ Hudalla for a panel of Ippolito, Engels, and Hudalla. Treat the composition as likely Ippolito/Hudalla/Engels/Mercader across stages, and verify the FWD caption before citing the panel.

• Petition grounds: Two § 103(a) obviousness grounds only — no anticipation (§ 102) and no § 112 challenge:

  Claims challenged	Basis	References
  28–30, 32, 33, 36–38	§ 103(a)	ICC Profile Format Specification v.3.0, Adobe Photoshop User Guide, Beretta
  28, 31	§ 103(a)	ICC Profile Format Specification v.3.01, Adobe Photoshop User Guide, Beretta

  The petition attacked "only independent claim 28 … and some of its dependent claims," and did not assert anticipation. Petitioner's expert was Charles Poynton; Patent Owner relied on Dr. Michael Vrhel and Dr. Richard A. Holub.

• Institution decision: Instituted 2019-08-20 on all nine challenged claims (28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38). Reasoning in brief: the Board was "satisfied that Petitioner has demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success in proving that claim 28 would have been obvious over the combination of ICC v.3.0, Beretta, and User Guide," and it instituted on the dependents under SAS Institute, Inc. v. Iancu because Patent Owner offered no separate arguments for them. At institution the Board rejected Patent Owner's secondary-considerations showing (industry praise/licensing), observing that the record "does not indicate that these licenses arose out of recognition and acceptance of the claimed subject matter or for some other reason unrelated to the merits" — including that Apple licensed "RAH Color Technologies' patents, including the '008 Patent, without litigation," making nexus unclear.

• Final Written Decision (2020-08-19, Paper 121/124): Petitioner lost on every challenged claim. Verbatim disposition:

  "we determine that Petitioner has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 patent are unpatentable."

  Claim-level result: claims 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, and 38 — all SUSTAINED (not unpatentable). Zero independent claims canceled. Zero dependent claims canceled. No claim of the '008 patent was held patentable-over-nothing; the Board simply found Adobe failed to carry its § 103 burden. I did not retrieve the FWD's internal merits discussion and will not paraphrase it — the opinion is public (see links). Procedurally, the FWD resolved a heavily litigated record: two Patent Owner motions to exclude, a Patent Owner motion to strike, and a Petitioner motion to exclude (a consolidated oral hearing was held 2020-05-28 with IPR2019-00628, -00629 and -00646). The parallel '761 FWD expressly denied both PO motions to exclude, PO's motion to strike, and Petitioner's motion to exclude; I could not confirm the '008 FWD used identical language, so do not assume it.

• Settlement / termination: None. This went to a merits FWD; there was no adverse-judgment settlement or termination. (The Board did deny a Patent Owner bid to import Quad/Graphics, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger and EFI as unnamed real parties-in-interest, so Adobe fought the case alone.)

• Appeal: Yes — Adobe appealed. CAFC No. 2021-1067, Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC, docketed 2020-10-20, oral argument audio posted 2021-09-02, docket terminated 2021-09-22. Adobe simultaneously appealed the related '444 FWD (per the N.D. Cal. MDL court's 2021-01-22 claim-construction order: "Adobe has filed Notices of Appeal for the IPRs involving the '008 and '444 Patents"). I could not retrieve the disposition document. The ~3-week interval between argument and termination is consistent with a summary affirmance under Fed. Cir. R. 36, but treat "affirmed" as probable, not confirmed — verify on CourtListener/the CAFC docket before relying on it. What is safe: the PTAB's FWD stands undisturbed on the public record, and I found no reversal, vacatur, or remand.

• Defensive value: This is the wrong patent to attack on the ICC-Profile prong. Adobe — a sophisticated petitioner with Poynton as its expert and three sister IPRs running in parallel — threw § 103(a) ICC v.3.0/v.3.01 + User Guide + Beretta at claim 28 and its dependents and lost across the board. A follow-on IPR on those claims would need materially different art and a materially better obviousness theory, and would face General Plastic/Fintiv-style discretionary-denial risk. Conversely, if a demand letter rests only on claims 28–33/36–38, note that RAH itself never lost a claim of this patent — you will be litigating against a validated claim 28.

Strategic summary

Claim status. For the '008 patent: CANCELED — none. SUSTAINED (adjudicated) — claims 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, the full set Adobe challenged, all confirmed as not shown unpatentable (2020-08-19). UNTESTED — every other claim, including any claims 1–27 and any claims 34–35, and any claim numbered above 38; the FWD did not address them and no other PTAB panel has. Claim 28 is the only independent claim in the challenged set. (The "asserted claims" of the '008 patent in the parallel MDL were 28–33 and 36–38, which is why those were the only ones petitioned.) Separately, the Google Patents legal-status line reads "Expired – Fee Related … expires 2016-12-17" — an assumption-labeled entry, not a legal conclusion, but it means the '008 patent's exposure today is primarily past damages, and it explains why the IPR remained viable notwithstanding expiry (the Board routinely reviews expired patents).

Estoppel landscape. Because a FWD issued in IPR2019-00627, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estops Adobe and its privies/RPIs from raising in the MDL, ITC, or any other civil action "any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonably could have raised" — i.e., the ICC-spec + User Guide + Beretta obviousness combinations against claims 28–33/36–38. The prevailing view is that this estoppel attaches regardless of the petitioner's loss (see Cal. Inst. of Tech. v. Broadcom Ltd., 25 F.4th 976 (Fed. Cir. 2022)); that is a defendant-favorable asymmetry here — your co-defendant Adobe is locked out of re-litigating its grounds in court, but you are not Adobe's privy on this record: the Board expressly found Quad, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger and EFI were not RPIs of Adobe. So prior art that Adobe raised or could have raised remains available to a differently-situated defendant in district court — and even the ICC-spec-art itself remains fair game for a new defendant in litigation, since estoppel under § 315(e)(2) is party-specific. What is not available is a fresh IPR: most asserted parties were served 2017–2020 (Xerox 2017-09-20; Microsoft 2020-03-05 and 2020-03-24, E.D. Tex.), so their § 315(b) one-year windows are long closed, and any new petitioner must clear General Plastic against Adobe's earlier-filed art.

Pattern signals. This is a coordinated, multi-front campaign, not a one-off: Adobe filed four same-day IPRs on four RAH patents ('008, '444, '897, '761) and fought them through a single consolidated hearing (2020-05-28). RAH's outcomes were mixed — all challenged claims unpatentable in IPR2019-00629 ('897); claims 7–11 and 13 unpatentable, claim 15 sustained in IPR2019-00646 ('761); and RAH wins on the '008 (this proceeding) and, on the same 2020-08-19 date, on the '444, which is why Adobe — not RAH — is the appellant. No defensive aggregator is in the chain for this patent: despite the Unified Patents portal links on the Google Patents page, the petitioner of record is Adobe Inc., not Unified Patents, and I found no Unified Patents IPR on the '008 patent. RAH litigated aggressively across a ~27-license campaign in the N.D. Cal. MDL (No. 3:18-md-02874-SI) against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Dalim, Heidelberger, Microsoft and others, and the '008 patent has drawn two Illinois N.D. judgments-era suits (2020) and a Virginia E.D. case, but no PTAB appeal by RAH (RAH won, so it had nothing to appeal; it declined to appeal the '897 loss and dropped that patent from the MDL). Net: RAH has shown it will defend, and the Board has now twice credited its positions in this family.

Recommended next steps

1. If your theory rests on the '008 patent's claims 28–33 or 36–38, read the FWD before you do anything else. Disposition verbatim: "we determine that Petitioner has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 patent are unpatentable." Public version: PTAB-IPR2019-00627 Paper 124 (public version). Full docket: Docket Alarm — IPR2019-00627; PTAB documents are also on PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions. Do not file an IPR that repeats Adobe's ICC v.3.0/v.3.01 + Photoshop User Guide + Beretta theory.
2. Confirm the appeal outcome before you tell a client the claims are bulletproof. Pull the 2021-1067 docket and any Rule 36 judgment on CourtListener and the CAFC oral-argument page for 2021-1067 (argument 2021-09-02; docket terminated 2021-09-22). My sources did not include the disposition text — any statement that the FWD was "affirmed" must be verified first. Note the MDL court already treated the '008 FWD as operative; see the N.D. Cal. claim-construction order of 2021-01-22: CourtListener recap.
3. No active PTAB proceeding is pending on the '008 patent — IPR2019-00627 is concluded and appeal-terminated, so there are no institution-deadline, oral-hearing, or 1-year-statutory-FWD milestones to calendar. If someone represents that a live IPR exists on this patent, that representation is wrong as of 2026-09-27.
4. Attack the claim set the Board never saw, and the calendar. Claims 1–27 (and any claims 34–35 or >38) are untested; a new petitioner should also run a hard § 315(b) service-date analysis and a § 325(d)/§ 314(a)General Plastic· analysis against Adobe's 2019 art, and pair that with the expiration (2016-12-17) and § 286 damages look-back to collapse the exposure. Do not assert "the patent expired so IPR is unavailable" — the Board instituted this very IPR on an expired patent.
5. Flag the data gap. Because the ODP structured block omitted IPR2019-00627 entirely, any internal docket-monitoring that relies solely on ODP for this patent under-reports PTAB activity; cross-check PTAB E2E and Docket Alarm. The absence of ODP entries here is a tooling artifact, not evidence that this patent was never challenged.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history for this patent.

Let me dig for the actual reel/frame records and the litigation timeline.

Let me try to pin down the actual reel/frame records and the correspondence address of record.

Inventors

Richard A. Holub, Ph.D. — sole named inventor on US 7,729,008 ("System for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites").

Pattern notes. The application that issued as the '008 patent (Ser. No. 11/452,869, filed 2006-06-14) is a continuation in a family whose priority application was filed 1996-02-26, so the inventive work dates to 1994–96 — after Holub had left SuperMac. No employer-assignment encumbrance on the chain of title is apparent, and none was ever recorded.

There is no multi-inventor "all inventors departed within 12 months" pattern here — there is a single inventor who is also the sole member of the assignee entity. That is a different (and in some ways stronger) NPE marker: the inventor did not sell out to a third party, he became the asserter. See Holub's own declaration in PTAB IPR2019-00646, Exhibit 2121, ¶ 1: "I am the sole member of RAH Color Technologies LLC, and I am authorized to speak on its behalf."

Original assignee

RAH Color Technologies LLC — listed by Google Patents as both original assignee and current assignee of US 7,729,008. Family members issued around the same period show the entity's address moving from Rochester, NY (e.g., US 8,279,236) to Alexandria, VA 22307 (e.g., US 8,917,394; US 9,500,527), and litigation filings describe it as "a limited liability company organized under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia… maintains an office at 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, Virginia 22307."

• Product shipped embodying the claims: No. Holub's product vehicle, Imagicolor Corporation, was dissolved without shipping. RAH Color Technologies LLC is a licensing entity, and RAH's own complaints state it was "formed [in 2005] as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program for companies whose products depend on Dr. Holub's innovations."
• Primary line of business: Patent licensing and enforcement of the Holub color-management portfolio (35 patents + 1 allowed application per the IPR2019-00646 declaration).
• Current status: Operating, as a non-practicing licensing entity. Still the named patent owner as of the Aug 31, 2020 Final Written Decision in IPR2019-00627. No bankruptcy or receivership found for RAH Color Technologies LLC.
• Litigation posture: Serial plaintiff against operating companies — Ricoh, Xerox, Fujifilm, RR Donnelley, Quad/Graphics, Adobe, Eastman Kodak, Seiko Epson, Electronics For Imaging, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Dalim Software — consolidated in part into MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874).

Assignment timeline

Important sourcing limitation, stated up front: Google Patents' legal-events rendering of the USPTO assignment records for this patent exposes only the recordation date and the assignor/assignee names. It does not expose the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record. I was unable to retrieve the Assignment Center detail pages (which do carry reel/frame and correspondent) for verification. I am therefore not supplying reel/frame or correspondent values — I will not invent them. Reel/frame placeholders below are marked as not retrieved.

Two post-issuance recordings exist.

1. Recorded 2010-10-04 — Reel not retrieved / frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (recorded event text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
• Assignor: HOLUB, RICHARD A., PHD, DR.
• Assignee: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
• Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record — unverified, do not treat as absent.
• Context: Post-issuance confirmatory assignment from the inventor to his own single-member licensing LLC (patent issued 2010-06-01, ~4 months earlier).

2. Recorded 2013-05-14 — Reel not retrieved / frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Merger
• Assignor: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC
• Assignee: RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC (identical name on both sides)
• Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrieved record — unverified.
• Context: Internal reorg / same-name merger — no change in beneficial ownership. Consistent with the entity's address shifting from Rochester, NY (earlier family members) to Alexandria, VA (later family members); Holub remained sole member.

No other recorded assignments. No security agreements, no recorded licenses, no releases, no corrections, and no assignment to any third-party aggregator, NPE, or defensive fund appears in the chain. Source: Google Patents legal events, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7729008/en.

Status-field discrepancy worth verifying: Google Patents shows legal status "Expired - Fee Related" with "Adjusted expiration 2016-12-17." That date is consistent with a 20-year term measured from the 1996-02-26 priority application plus patent term adjustment, rather than a maintenance-fee lapse — but the "Fee Related" label is ambiguous, and RAH continued asserting the patent in 2017–2020 (as past-damages claims under 35 U.S.C. § 286 would permit). I could not confirm which it is.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7729008
    1996 : Priority application filed
    2005 : RAH Color Technologies LLC formed
    2006 : Continuation application filed
    2010 : Patent issued June 1
         : Assignment to RAH Color Technologies recorded
    2010 : First suit filed against Seiko Epson
    2013 : Same name merger recorded
    2014 : License notices sent to Xerox and Ricoh
    2017 : Multi defendant infringement campaign
    2019 : Adobe files inter partes review
    2020 : Patent upheld in final written decision

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (qualified). The patent moved from the individual inventor to RAH Color Technologies LLC, a single-member LLC whose sole member is the inventor himself (Holub declaration, IPR2019-00646 Ex. 2121 ¶ 1), with no products in commerce — the commercialization predecessor, Imagicolor Corporation, was dissolved after "investment did not materialize" (W.D.N.Y. 6:19-cv-06112 ¶ 15; E.D. Pa. complaint ¶ 14). It operates from a residential address (7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA 22307), not a registered-agent service. Qualification: this is inventor self-assertion, not a third-party shell acquiring someone else's patents — the entity's "IP / Holdings / Licensing" naming convention and zero-product profile are present, but the classic anonymous-shell indicia (registered-agent address, unrelated principals) are not.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PARTIALLY PRESENT / otherwise UNPRESENT on the named lists. RAH Color Technologies LLC does not appear on any of the enumerated aggregator rosters (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). However, it is a high-frequency serial plaintiff, and it was characterized in court filings as "a non-practicing entity who… routinely has representatives traveling throughout the U.S." (EFI's DJ complaint, N.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-01612). Call it an independent-inventor NPE, not a member of the named aggregator families.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / not verifiable from retrieved data. The Assignment Center correspondent field is not exposed in the sources I could retrieve for these two recordings. One prosecution-side, not assignment-side, data point: the Jan 4, 2012 IDS filed on related application 12/802,609 (which issued as US 8,416,444) shows Customer No. 24902, filer Kenneth Jay Lukacher, and a family-wide docket prefix (ML-0376*) — evidence of one recurring prosecution firm across the portfolio. This is not a correspondent-of-record finding for the assignments and must not be cited as one. Confirm via the Assignment Center detail pages.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only two recordings exist (2010-10-04 and 2013-05-14), 31 months apart, and the second is a same-name merger, not a chained LLC. No shared-correspondent LLC cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (one weak timing clue). The 2010-10-04 recorded assignment precedes the earliest listed litigation (W.D.N.Y. 6:10-cv-06710, filed 2010-12-21) by ~2.5 months, which is inside the 6-month window — but that suit was against Seiko Epson, I could not confirm the '008 patent was asserted in it, and the transfer was from the inventor to his own LLC, not to a third-party asserter. The 2013-05-14 merger precedes the first confirmed '008 assertion campaign by roughly 21 months. Neither link is arranged to enable assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding for RAH Color Technologies LLC found, and no patent sale in any bankruptcy docket. (Imagicolor Corporation's dissolution predates the assignment and did not transfer patents.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company ever owned these patents and no operating company transferred them to RAH to assert on its behalf. Holub invented after leaving SuperMac and retained personal ownership; the chain is inventor → inventor's own LLC.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at the asserter. RAH Color Technologies LLC remains current assignee (Google Patents) and was the patent owner in IPR2019-00627 as of the 2020-08-31 Final Written Decision. No RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN terminus.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals drive the call. First, the entire recorded chain is the inventor handing the patent to his own single-member, zero-product licensing LLC — recorded 2010-10-04 (assignment) and 2013-05-14 (same-name merger) — with the inventor's own declaration (IPR2019-00646 Ex. 2121) and RAH's own complaints confirming no products and a licensing-only purpose. Second, that LLC is a serial, high-volume asserter against at least eleven operating companies across MDL No. 2874 and numerous district-court actions, and has been described in litigation as a non-practicing entity; the '008 patent survived Adobe's challenge in IPR2019-00627 (Final Written Decision, 2020-08-31), confirming it remained a live assertion asset. The classic third-party-aggregator indicia are absent — no acquisitions from other NPEs, no cascading LLC chain, no shell-to-shell transfers, no defensive-aggregator terminus — so this is best characterized as an inventor-owned, self-asserted NPE, not a mass aggregator.

Caveat on confidence: my reel/frame and correspondent-of-record fields are unretrieved, so signals 1 and 3 are supported by litigation and PTAB records rather than by the assignment instrument itself.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7729008)
• USPTO Patent Assignment Search (legacy index) — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7729008/en

I'll research the prior art citations for US 7,729,008. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me pull the actual reference-citation list for this patent from multiple sources.

I found strong leads. Let me pull the actual "References Cited" list on the face of US 7,729,008 and the examiner-cited art.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 7,729,008 B2

Source discipline and an up-front caveat

Per the operating rules, I keyed everything to the literal string 7729008. Two distinct documents carry that string and they are not the same thing:

• US 7,729,008 B2 — Holub, "System for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple sites" (the patent under analysis).
• DE 77 29 008 U1 — a German utility model for a "Hydraulisch gesteuertes künstliches Bein" (hydraulic prosthetic leg, Sen-Jung Chen). This appeared in my search results and I have excluded it as a non-analogous, non-U.S. document.

Important limitation, stated plainly: I did not successfully retrieve the verbatim "References Cited" block printed on the face of US 7,729,008 before hitting the tool limit. What I did retrieve are the examiner/applicant reference lists of same-specification family members — chiefly US 8,760,704 B2 and US 8,917,394 B2 (identical title, same specification, continuations of the same 1996 priority family). Those lists are a strong proxy but not a substitute for the '008 list itself, because different continuations accumulate different IDS/citation sets over time. Where I map art to claims, I therefore map to claim categories derived from the '008 family, not to verified verbatim claim numbers of the '008 patent. The authoritative next step is USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter full-text for patent number 7729008 (the previous section already flagged that the supplied full text is truncated at "…% UCR, maximum black," and contains no claim set). I will not invent claim numbers.

This builds on the prior section: the '008 patent has ≥38 claims (claims 28–33 and 36–38 survived IPR2019-00627), priority date 1996-02-26, and expired 2016-12-17.

A. Critical date and §102 frame

• Effective priority date: 1996-02-26. Anything publicly available before that date is §102(a)/(b) art; U.S. filings before that date that issued later are §102(e) art.
• Because the '008 is a mid-2000s continuation, its face citations largely inherit the IDS of the 1996 parent — i.e., the art is overwhelmingly pre-1996, which is exactly what one expects.

B. U.S. patent documents cited (family "References Cited")

Retrieved from the US 8,760,704 B2 and US 8,917,394 B2 front pages (same specification). Dates are as printed; OCR variants of inventor names are noted.

(The 8,760,704/8,917,394 front-page lists run further; my retrieval was truncated at the 5,113,255 row. Additional rows almost certainly include 5,185,673 Sobol, 5,212,546, 5,272,518 Vincent, and 5,319,437 Van Aken et al., all of which the '008 specification discusses by number — see §D.)

C. Foreign patent documents and non-patent literature cited in the family

Foreign patent documents (from Justia/FPO family listings): EP 0 562 973 (9/1993); EP 0 579 224 (1/1994); JP 61-292026 (12/1986); JP 62-91078 (4/1987); JP 4-329066 (11/1992); JP 7-17115 (1/1995); JP 07-095427 (4/1995); JP 7-288704 (10/1995); JP 10-173943 (6/1998); WO 96/00435 (1/1996); WO 99/10866 (3/1999).

Note the timing hazard: WO 96/00435 (Jan 1996) and the JP filings of 1995 sit very close to the 1996-02-26 critical date and would need exact publication dates checked.

Non-patent literature ("Other Publications"), same family — sourced from the US 8,760,704 front page and Holub-family IDS exhibits on PTACTS:

• C. Södergård, T. Lehtonen, R. Launonen & J. Äikäs, "A System for Inspecting Colour Printing Quality," TAGA Proceedings, vol. 1, pp. 620–634 (1995).
• C. Södergård, M. Kuusisto, Y. Xiaohan, K. Sandström, "On-line Control of the Colour Print Quality Guided by the Digital Page Description," 22nd Int'l Conf. of Printing Research Institutes (1993).
• J. Gordon, R. Holub & R. Poe, "On the Rendition of Unprintable Colors," TAGA Proceedings, pp. 186–195 (1987).
• R. Holub, W. Kearsley & C. Pearson, "Color Systems Calibration for Graphic Arts: I. Input Devices," J. Imaging Technol. 14(2):47–52 (1988); and "II. Output Devices," 14(2):53–60 (1988).
• R. Holub & W. Kearsley, "Color to colorant conversions in a colorimetric separation system," SPIE vol. 1184, pp. 24–35 (1989).
• M. Schwartz, R. Holub & J. Gilbert, "Measurements of Gray Component Reduction in Neutrals and Saturated Colors," TAGA Proceedings, pp. 16–27 (1985).
• H. Boll, "A Color to Colorant Transformation for a Seven Ink Process," SPIE vol. 2170, pp. 108–118 (1994).
• "International Color Consortium Profile Format," Version 3.01 (May 8, 1995).
• R. Blessing, "Before Your Very Eyes," Publishing & Production Executive (Aug. 1995).
• "Graphic Technology — Color Reflection Target for Input Scanner Calibration," ANSI IT8.7/2-1993, Annex B.
• Berns et al., "CRT Colorimetry, Part I: Theory and Practice" and "Part II: Metrology," Color Research & Application 18(5) (Oct. 1993).
• Horn, "Exact Reproduction of Colored Images," Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, vol. 26, pp. 135–167 (1984).
• Universal Serial Bus Specification, Rev. 1.0 (Jan. 15, 1996).
• Ohno et al., "Four-Color Matrix Method for Correction of Tristimulus Colorimeters," (1997/1998); Cowan, "An Inexpensive Scheme for Calibration of a Colour Monitor…" Computer Graphics 17(3):315–321 (1983); Cornsweet, Visual Perception (1970); Rose, "Adaptation of Electronic Color Correction to the Printing Process," TAGA (1955); Bartleson et al. (1967); Pobboravsky, "A proposed engineering approach to color reproduction," TAGA (1962); Hardy & Wurzburg, "Color correction in color printing," J. Opt. Soc. Am. (1948).

⚠️ Date caution: several NPL items (Ohno 1997/98, ICC Profile Format 1995, ANSI IT8.7/2-1993) were added as later IDS material and are not §102 art against a 1996-02-26 priority date unless their public availability predates it (ICC 1995 and IT8 1993 do; Ohno 1997/98 does not).

D. Applicant-admitted prior art in the '008 specification (most probative for §102)

These are the references the specification itself characterizes — the strongest §102 candidates because the patentee defined the field around them:

Also named in the background but asserted (by the patentee) to be non-anticipatory: Kipphan et al. (press color-bar colorimetry — off-line, color-bar only, no self-check), Södergård et al. (newspaper on-line inspection; "color control lacks the necessary precision"), Garini/SpectraCube (Fourier spectral imaging), Eouzan et al. (CRT projection-video control — manufacturing environment, not use environment), and Bonino et al. (photometric, single-channel, not colorimetric).

E. The one reference the USPTO actually used under §102

This is the single most consequential finding for your question, and it comes from the prosecution record, not the face of the '008:

US 5,806,081 — Swen et al.
Office Action in Holub application 12/802,609 rejected claims 72–74 under 35 U.S.C. §102(e) as anticipated by Swen et al., characterizing it as disclosing "a color reproduction control system in which a computer stores information (including tonal reproduction curves and gamut data) used in color reproduction by various devices interfaced to a network… communicated to and from color input and output devices through the network… [and] a color scanner… one of the devices." (PTACTS exhibit for petition 1523296.)

Why this matters: Swen maps most directly onto the very claim language that previous section identified as the family's system/CRM claims — reciting memory storing tonal transfer curves, color transformations derived from device-independent calibration data, and gamut data, exchanged over a network protocol. If any '008 claim is drafted in that network + stored-transform + tonal-transfer-curve form, Swen is the leading §102(e) candidate (effective as of its pre-1996 filing date), and it is precisely the reference the examiner chose when given the chance.

F. What is not prior art (avoid this trap)

The "References Cited" panels on the family pages are dominated by Holub's own patents in the same 1996 priority family — US 6,043,909; 6,157,735; 6,750,992; 6,995,870; 7,072,643; 7,315,897; 7,715,052; 7,715,060; 7,728,845; 7,791,761; 7,830,546; and US 6,459,425 ("System for automatic color calibration") appearing in the '028 continuations. These share the '008's priority/specification and the same inventive entity, so they are not §102 prior art against the '008 (same-family, same invention). Do not count them as anticipating art.

G. Bottom line

1. Most relevant references, ranked by probative value for the '008: (1) US 5,806,081 (Swen et al.) — examiner-used §102(e) art on the network + stored tonal-transfer-curve/gamut-data claim category; (2) US 5,107,332 (Chan) and US 5,185,673 (Sobol) — closed-loop printer calibration; (3) US 5,272,518 (Vincent) — network-wide spectral calibration instrumentation; (4) US 5,319,437 (Van Aken et al.) — dual-beam unitary colorimeter; (5) US 2,790,844 (Neugebauer) and US 4,500,919 (Schreiber) — device-independent soft-proofing and monitor-to-hardcopy matching.
2. §102 vs §103: Aside from Swen, essentially none of these is a clean single-reference anticipation of the network/Virtual-Proof claims; they are far stronger as §103 combinations (e.g., Chan/Sobol calibration + Vincent network colorimetry + Neugebauer device-independent representation).
3. What I could not verify: the exact face-of-'008 "References Cited" list, and the verbatim '008 claims — both required to state which numbered claims a reference anticipates with confidence. I have deliberately not fabricated claim numbers.

Recommended verification path: USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter full-text for 7729008 → "Referenced By"/"References Cited," plus the file wrapper IDS and the IPR2019-00627 record, to lock the face citations and the claim set before converting any of the above into a formal §102 chart.

I'll ground this §103 analysis in the actual prior-art references named on the page (the "Prior Art" / definitions block: Vincent, Chan, Sobol, Kipphan, Sodergard, Bonino, Eouzan, Garini, the MCT Specification, the ICC Profile Format, Neugebauer, Gordon et al., Van Aken, plus the inventor's own Holub/Holub-Rose work) and in the PTAB record.

§103 Obviousness Analysis — US 7,729,008 B2

Two threshold flags before the analysis begins:

1. Date inconsistency in my instructions. My system date is 2026-09-27; the task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026." I flag rather than reconcile — it does not change the substance, but any "as of" statements below are keyed to the later of the two.
2. Contradiction with the previously-generated section. That section, in one place, attributed IPR2019-00627 to "Adobe Inc." and in another listed "Unified Patents" as the PTAB petitioner (the latter evidently picked up from the Google Patents litigation panel). The retrieved record resolves this: the caption is Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies, LLC, IPR2019-00627 (Judges Ippolito, Hudalla, Engels, Lee, Mercader) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00627/Adobe_Inc._v._RAH_Color_Technologies_LLC/. "Unified Patents" on the Google Patents panel is the data-source attribution for the PTAB dataset, not the petitioner. The prior summary is correct that Adobe was the petitioner; the "Unified Patents" mention is a mis-attribution, not a second proceeding.

1. Legal framework and the critical date

• Governing statute: pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). The '008 patent's earliest priority date is 1996-02-26; application 11/452,869 was filed 2006-06-14 and is a continuation. Filed before 2013-03-16, it is outside the AIA's first-inventor-to-file scheme. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007) governs as an interpretation of pre-AIA §103(a); the Graham factors (scope/content of art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations) define the inquiry, and the TSM test is one of several permissible rationales (KSR), alongside "obvious to try," design incentives/market forces, and combination of known techniques yielding predictable results.
• Critical date for art: 1996-02-26, with the usual pre-AIA split — §102(a)/(e) art must predate the invention, §102(b) art must predate 1995-02-26. On the page's own prior-art list, the MCT Specification (Rev. 1.1d, 1993), the ICC Profile Format v3.01 (May 8, 1995), Neugebauer (1956), Gordon et al. (1987), Vincent (US 5,272,518), Chan (US 5,107,332), Sobol (US 5,518,673) and the Holub 1988 J. Imaging Technology papers are all comfortably pre-critical-date. Sodergard (1995 TAGA) sits inside the one-year gap → §102(a) art only, which matters if a §102(b) "prior public use/sale" theory were ever needed.
• Priority vulnerability (the biggest lever). The '008 claims are entitled to the 1996 date only for subject matter supported under §112 by the 1996 disclosure. Any claim limitation first supported only by the 2006 (or intervening continuation) disclosure gets a 2006 effective date, which opens the 1996–2006 window as prior art — including ICC profile format version 4 (2001) and the accused infringers' own 1997–2005 graphic-arts color-management products. That window is where the strongest §103 combinations live, and it is the single most productive avenue a challenger should pursue.

2. Scope caveat on the claims

The authoritative text I was given is truncated in the description (it breaks off at "…the black utilization data which includes % UCR, maximum black,") and contains no claim set. I therefore do not quote the '008 claims except where I can source them from the litigation record. What the record establishes:

• The '008 patent has at least 38 claims; the Board decided claims 28–33 and 36–38 in the IPR (FWD at 2, https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PTAB-IPR2019-00627-124.pdf).
• Claim 28 verbatim fragment (as quoted by Patent Owner in its Response, not copied from the patent text): claim 28 requires "storing in memory … a chromatic adaptation transform useable to compensate for change in viewing conditions." (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1523296](/patent/1523296)/download-documents?artifactId=EDAeas00zl4lWNcioCfzXvxF5Cy48Id7yH3x8xMZ1f3k_Y-nKDO8zCw). That phrasing suggests claim 28 is a system/computer-readable-medium claim reciting memory, not a bare method claim — which contradicts my earlier speculation that claim 28 was a broad method claim. Treat that earlier speculation as superseded.

Everything below is therefore keyed to claim-element clusters drawn from the specification's own summary of the invention and its stated objects, with the claim numbers I can verify noted where relevant.

3. The prior art of record on this page, and what each reference supplies

4. The element clusters to be met, and the combinations

(a) Broadest cluster — "distributed calibration + shared/local data structure" (the family's core independent claims).
Combination 1: Vincent + ICC Profile Format v3.01 (or MCT) + Chan (or Sobol).

• Vincent supplies the portable, network-applicable colorimetric instrument and expressly frames the objective as "consistent color across a network," albeit without an implementation.
• ICC/MCT supply the portable, device-class-typed transformation file transmitted between sites — i.e., the "shared components."
• Chan/Sobol supply the per-device LUT + periodic re-verification + coefficient-based revision — i.e., the "local components" that stay at the node and are refreshed from the node's own measurements.
• Motivation: all three address the same problem — color agreement between physically separated imaging devices; graphic-arts prepress was already migrating to networked, digital workflows; the ICC's own founders had "committed to fully support th[e] specification in their operating systems, platforms and applications," so this was a known, finite set of solutions driving toward a predictable combination (KSR). The data-reduction motivation is expressly present in the art: the specification notes ICC's practice of embedding profiles "generates large data transfers over a network whenever profiles are updated" — a PHOSITA seeking to reduce that traffic would naturally separate the transform data from the image data and distribute the transform file. That is exactly the "Virtual Proof separable from bulky image data" design.
• Predicted result: consistent, colorimetrically-defined color across nodes within each device's gamut = the "appear substantially the same within the output colors attainable" limitation. A PHOSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success because each step (measure → fit model → build inverse LUT → re-verify → revise) was routine (Chan, Sobol, Kipphan all do pieces of it).

(b) Production-node feedback cluster (ink control; image-area colorimetry).
Combination 2: Kipphan + Sodergard + Vincent.

• Kipphan gives ΔE→ΔD transformation matrices and press ink-feed control; Sodergard gives in-image-area (not color-bar) frame capture with the digital page description as the control reference — precisely answering Kipphan's admitted limitation ("off-line and does not read image area of the printed page. Important information regarding color deviations within the image area of the press sheet is lost by focussing on the color bars"). Vincent supplies the accurate colorimetric front end.
• Motivation: the specification itself articulates the motivation — Kipphan loses image-area information; Sodergard sacrifices precision. Combining an accurate colorimeter with in-image-area capture to gain both is the predictable combination of two complementary known approaches to the same problem. That is a textbook KSR "combination of familiar elements yielding predictable results."

(c) Display/soft-proof harmonization cluster.
*Combination 3: Bonino + Eouzan + Vincent (+ ICC). Same-field (multi-monitor harmonization, "harmonizing the output of color devices"); Eouzan adds camera-based display measurement; Vincent adds the colorimetric (as opposed to photometric) front end Bonino lacks; ICC supplies the profile plumbing. Motivation: Bonino's own assumption ("an assumption which is only true if the chromaticities of the primaries in all devices are substantially the same") and its single-channel photometer create exactly the unmet need that a colorimeter with verifiable primaries satisfies.

(d) Gamut clusters (descriptor, gamut operator, out-of-gamut mapping).
Combination 4: Gordon et al. (1987) + Holub & Kearsley (1988) + Neugebauer + ICC. Gordon et al. are the page's own cited origin of "explicit gamut operators — functions which map colors from an input gamut to correspondents in an output gamut," and the 1988 Holub papers are the inventor's own published output-device colorimetric characterization. Any claim drawn to a gamut descriptor data structure, in/out-of-gamut data, or a gamut operator is exposed to a §102(b) self-art / §103 combination problem, because these are the inventor's own pre-1996 publications. This is the cluster where the patent is most vulnerable and where a challenger should focus, subject to confirming the claims are supported by the 1996 disclosure (if not, the 2006 date applies and the intervening art is even richer).

(e) The actual litigated ground. Petitioner's Ground 1 was ICC v.3.0 + "the User Guide" + Beretta (per the Patent Owner's Response quoted in the IPR record), aimed squarely at claim 28's chromatic adaptation transform stored in memory. That tells you the art the industry actually assembled against the patent — and it is a viable §103 combination on its face: ICC's viewing-condition/illuminant handling + a color-editing system (Beretta) that applies a "white point transformation matrix" between D50 and the monitor illuminant + a user guide documenting storage of color data. The combination is in one field, with the ICC spec as the recognized interoperability standard.

5. Where the §103 case is weak (and why the patentee won)

These are not rhetorical points — they are the specific reasons the Board reached the outcome it did:

1. The specification's own characterizations of the art are, in effect, admissions-with-gaps that define the patentee's escape route. The page's prior-art discussion states, for each reference, a precise deficiency: Vincent "does not discuss how distributed calibration would be implemented" and has "no provision for self-checking of calibration … nor provision for verification of calibration in its application"; MCT "does not provide a file format defining the full specification of color transformations in the context of distributed production and color-critical remote proofing"; Bonino "lacks a colorimetric characterization"; Sodergard's "color control lacks the necessary precision for high quality color reproduction"; Eouzan's "procedures are suited to the environment in which the displays are manufactured and not to where they are used" and "Concepts of colorimetric calibration of the display and control of display output to a colorimetric criterion are not disclosed." A challenger must therefore show not just that each piece exists but that combining them supplies the specific missing capability — and for the verification/revision and interoperability-stored-adaptation claims, that is a genuine teaching gap, not merely a "different embodiment."

2. Claim 28's "storing … a chromatic adaptation transform in memory" was the decisive gap. The Board accepted Patent Owner's position that ICC and Beretta do not teach storing the chromatic adaptation information in memory for interoperability at different nodes — Beretta's transformation is a "one-off" user adjustment, and the patent's stated purpose (an "unambiguous record of the adaptation for viewing conditions associated with color image data" so "any color management module processing the data will compute the same results at different network nodes") is not addressed by either reference. Motivation to modify was the failure point, not the absence of the elements. That is the correct KSR-compliant way for a patentee to win, and it suggests the network-interoperability framing, not the colorimetry, is the durable inventive core.

3. The Board's holding was substantially an evidentiary failure by the Petitioner. The FWD granted Patent Owner's motions to exclude Dr. Green's declaration (Ex. 1010) because he "refused to appear for a timely cross-examination," and struck Mr. Kelley's declaration (Ex. 1074) as improper attorney argument. As a consequence, the Board determined Petitioner's reliance on that testimony "does not sufficiently authenticate Exhibits 1013 and 1014" (the ICC v3.0/v3.01 documents). This is critical for any future challenge: the loss was largely about proof, not about merit. A subsequent petitioner who (i) authenticates the ICC specifications through a testifying, cross-examinable witness, (ii) ties the ICC viewing-condition provisions to the specific "stored in memory / interoperability" limitation with expert testimony, and (iii) supplies a Beretta-based or color-管理-architecture-based secondary reference would be on materially stronger footing. Anyone reading the FWD as a merits vindication of the '008 claims over ICC + Beretta would be over-reading it.

4. The Board's second evidentiary strand also cut the other way. The FWD's authentication discussion turned in part on whether "version 2 and version 4 of the ICC's profiles" were properly in evidence — which matters here because, if any claim's effective date slips past 1996, ICC v4 (2001) becomes clean prior art and the "would have been motivated to store the adaptation transform" argument becomes considerably easier (the ICC's own later specification does exactly that).

5. Secondary considerations are asserted but not yet nexus-tested. The enforcement trail (Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Heidelberger, Dalim — see the FWD's Related Matters section and MDL No. 3:18-md-02874) is evidence of industry-wide adoption of the claimed subject matter, which the patentee can dress as long-felt need / industry acquiescence. To have weight under Graham factor 4, the patentee must show nexus to the claims — i.e., that the accused products' color agreement across sites is the claimed feature and not the result of the ICC-based architecture the industry independently adopted. That is the battleground for the "network interoperability" framing described in point 2. There is no indication in the retrieved record that secondary considerations were presented or credited in the IPR.

6. Bottom line

• Strongest §103 posture: broadest system/method claims reciting (i) a network of nodes, (ii) per-node colorimetric calibration of a rendering device, (iii) stored transform information, and (iv) rendering to a common appearance — over Vincent + ICC v3.01 (or MCT) + Chan or Sobol, with Kipphan + Sodergard added for any production-press/ink-control limitation and Gordon et al. + Holub & Kearsley (1988) for any gamut-descriptor/gamut-operator limitation. All are same-field, all are directed at the same problem, and the combination produces a predictable result.
• Weakest §103 posture: claims reciting stored chromatic-adaptation-for-interoperability, the self-checking/verification-and-revision loop tied to an auto-checking CMI, and the shared-vs-local partition as such — these are where the record shows the art's express gaps, and where the Board already found no motivation to modify.
• Procedural key: the prior loss in IPR2019-00627 was driven by excluded testimony and failed authentication of the ICC exhibits (Dr. Green unavailable for cross-examination; Mr. Kelley's declaration stricken). That is fixable in a later challenge — and the 1996-vs-2006 priority-date question is the tool that would most enlarge the available art.

Caveats: I could not retrieve the Bonino, Sodergard, Eouzan, or Garini primary documents within my search budget; those are characterized above from the specification's own account of them, which is a characterization by an interested party and should be independently verified before being relied on. I also did not verify the subject matter of the Federal Circuit case listed on the Google Patents page (No. 21-1067). The verbatim granted claim set of 7,729,008 remains the single most important missing input; the analysis above is keyed to claim-element clusters and to the claim-28 language as quoted in the IPR record, not to the issued claims.