US 7831199

I'll run targeted searches to check for any USPTO records, litigation, or CAFC docket activity for this specific patent number.

Let me attempt to retrieve the actual claim text for this patent, since the fetched record omitted the claims section.

Let me try to locate the literal claim text from the patent's own document set.

Summary — U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199 (interpreted literally as "7831199")

Scope note on my sources: I searched public patent records (Google Patents, the patent's own PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com, uspto.report, Unified Patents, idiyas) and general web sources. I could not access the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text database directly, and I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry referencing US 7,831,199. The literal claims text was not returned by any source I could retrieve, so my claim-level overview below is drawn from the specification's summary-of-invention passages, which closely parallel the claim language — it is an inference, not verified claim text. I flag this explicitly rather than present it as authoritative.

Bibliographic data (corroborated across multiple sources)

Abstract (verbatim, from the patent)

"Methods and systems that facilitate data delivery to electronic devices are disclosed. One aspect pertains to data delivery to electronic devices that are portable, such as, mobile devices. In one embodiment, one mobile device discovers another mobile device within its vicinity. The mobile devices can then wirelessly transmit data from one mobile device to the other. The mobile devices, or their users, can control, request or influence the particular data content being delivered."

Plain-language overview

The patent describes an ecosystem in which a portable media device (e.g., an MP3 player / iPod-type device) acquires digital content three ways: (a) peer-to-peer from another nearby portable device discovered over a short-range wireless network; (b) from a local server at a venue/establishment (a "local media server") that broadcasts, multicasts, or on-demand streams media and venue-specific data to devices in range; and (c) from a remote "media depository" over a network, including a "remote shuffle" that swaps out some stored songs for new ones. Supporting features include: patron/device discovery by the venue; using patron profiles, preferences, and listening habits to dynamically influence what the venue plays or pushes; subscription content delivered only when the subscriber physically visits a participating establishment (a "song of the week" model); localized data such as maps, airport flight info, and movie trailers; history and interest/shopping lists that track where a song was heard and enable one-click or deferred purchase; and incentive credits awarded to a user who shares media that a recipient then buys.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

(Independent-claim identities and any inter-claim dependencies are inferred from the specification's summary passages; I could not retrieve verified claim text. Treat as provisional.)

1. Method for delivering data to a portable device from another electronic device — discover the other device via a wireless network; request data from it over that network; and receive a wireless transmission of at least a portion of the requested data. (The near-verbatim mirror of claim 1 in the specification is: "discovering the another electronic device via a wireless network; requesting data from the another electronic device over the wireless network; and receiving from the another electronic device a wireless transmission of at least a portion of the data requested via the wireless network.")

2. Method for delivering data to a portable device from another electronic device (push/share variant) — discover the other device over the wireless network; receive information associated with that other device; determine, based on the received information, what data should be shared with it; and transmit that data to it.

3. Method for sharing data from a portable device to at least one other electronic device — connect to a wireless network; transmit profile information from the portable device to the other device(s) over the wireless network.

4. Computer readable medium carrying program code for the delivery scenario — code for identifying that the other device is within the portable device's vicinity; code for requesting data from it over a wireless link; and code for receiving a wireless transmission of at least a portion of the requested data.

5. Portable electronic device — combines wireless communication circuitry, a user input device, and a processor configured to discover the other device over a wireless link, request data from it, and receive a wireless transmission of at least a portion of the requested data.

6. Method for acquiring media items for storage on a portable electronic device — access a remote media depository via a data network; request a set of media items from that depository; and receive and store the set at the portable device over the data network (the "remote shuffle" / remote content update branch).

Litigation / docket check

• No CAFC 2026 docket activity, IPR, or district-court record specifically naming US 7,831,199 appeared in my searches. I did see unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit items involving Apple (e.g., a speech-recognition obviousness affirmance and a non-infringement affirmance), but none are tied to this patent number — I am not attributing them here.
• Caution on a number collision: several PTAB documents reference "the '199 patent" with claims about short-range unlicensed/TDD links, smartphone physiological-parameter sensors, etc. Those are a different patent (apparently US 10,219,199), not US 7,831,199. Because your instruction is to interpret identifiers literally, I am flagging rather than merging them.

Uncertainty flags

• Verified: title, assignee, inventors, application number, filing date, issue date, abstract, claim/drawing counts, priority/continuation relationships, term adjustment, and status — all corroborated across at least three independent public sources.
• Not verified: the exact wording, numbering, and independence/dependency structure of claims 1–25 (I could not obtain the claim set); any litigation, PTAB, or CAFC 2026 involvement specific to 7,831,199; and current fee/maintenance status (Google Patents labels it "Active" with an assumed 2027-12-22 adjusted expiration, which the site itself disclaims as a legal conclusion).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7831199.

Let me dig deeper into litigation-specific sources.

Summary of Findings — U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199

Direct answer: Based on my searches, I could not identify any known litigation (district court, ITC, or CAFC appeal) involving U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199, and I also found no PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM) directed at that specific patent. I want to be explicit that this is a "no results found" conclusion rather than an affirmative statement that no litigation exists — my search coverage was limited and I cannot rule out cases that are not indexed in the sources I reached.

What I searched

• Unified Patents patent page for US-7831199-B2 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7831199-B2) — the page resolved and returned patent bibliographic/family data but the retrieved content showed no litigation entries for the '199 patent.
• General web searches for litigation tied to the patent number, in both plain (7831199) and comma-formatted (7,831,199) variants.
• Searches for Apple-asserted or Apple-defended cases referencing the number.

Why "no litigation found" is plausible here

This patent appears to be a defensive/portfolio asset of Apple Inc. rather than an assertion vehicle. Key contextual facts from the record reviewed:

Its continuation/child patents include US 8,694,024 and US 9,084,089, which share the same specification. Apple patents of this type are commonly maintained in the portfolio but not litigated directly — the family members are sometimes the ones that surface in suits.

Important caveats and false-positive warnings

Several search hits containing the string "7831199" were unrelated false positives and should not be confused with the patent:

• A Brazilian state commercial registry PDF (JUCIS-RS) listing an individual "7831199 LIDI ANE SOARES" — a registration number, not the patent.
• A KR patent document (KR 100996365 B1) that merely cites US 7,831,199 B2 as a family/prior-art reference.

These are citation/registry artifacts, not litigation.

Recommendation for a conclusive check

Because litigation records are the authority for this question, I recommend verifying directly against primary sources I could not fully query here:

1. Unified Patents Litigation Portal — search the patent number at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist.
2. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — docket search for "7,831,199" in complaint text.
3. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment and PTAB (for any IPR/PGR) using Application 11/515,270.
4. Lex Machina / Docket Navigator — free-text patent-number search (most reliable for "asserted patent" queries).

I cannot, with high confidence, affirm an exhaustive negative. If you want, I can attempt a focused search of the Unified Patents litigation caselist and CourtListener for this number using additional steps.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before drafting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to be thorough.

Let me check the patent's family members and whether any related challenge exists.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,831,199: zero (0). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The canonical PTAB proceedings list supplied in this prompt (sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and my independent web checks on 2025/2026 indexed PTAB docket material surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 7,831,199 as the challenged patent — so the defensive posture is not "hardened by surviving IPRs," and it is also not "softened by cancellation." It is untested: all claims of the '199 patent stand exactly as issued on 2010-11-09, with no PTAB record, no Federal Circuit record, and (per the litigation summary already generated) no known district court or ITC assertion to explain the absence.

No proceeding entries to report

Because the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block is empty, there is no proceeding to place "most-impactful first," and I will not manufacture proceeding numbers or panel rosters to fill this section. Per the task constraints, I do not invent proceeding numbers, and I will not attribute an FWD disposition to a proceeding that does not exist.

For completeness on what "no AIA trial proceedings" does and does not cover:

The last three rows are the honest gap in this analysis: the ODP AIA-trial dataset is authoritative for IPR/PGR/CBM/derivation and silent on legacy ex parte and inter partes reexamination. The '199 patent issued 2010-11-09, in the window when pre-AIA inter partes reexamination was still available (it sunset 2012-09-16), so a legacy reexam filing is theoretically possible and would not appear in the structured data I was given. My web checks did not surface one, but I cannot affirm a verified negative on those files — the USPTO Patent Center "Reexamination" tab for Application 11/515,270 is the place to close that gap.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is untested. Independent claims, dependent claims, and all other claims of US 7,831,199 remain live and unadjudicated. There are no canceled claims to hand a defendant a free non-infringement/validity argument, and no confirmed claims to tell a defendant which theories have already failed. If a demand letter or complaint cites claim 1 — or any other claim — the assertion is not "sanction-bait" on PTAB grounds, because no PTAB panel has ever construed or cancelled anything in this patent.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate, which is the one real defensive benefit here. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only by a petitioner that obtains a final written decision in an instituted IPR. With zero IPR proceedings, no party and no privy of any party is estopped by § 315(e) — nor by the analogous PGR provision at § 325(e). That means: (i) any defendant is free to file an IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground based on patents or printed publications, without a "could have raised" trap; and (ii) the defendant can simultaneously run system-art / prior public use / on-sale defenses in district court, because § 311(b) limits IPR to "prior art consisting of patents or printed publications" and no IPR-based estoppel exists to narrow the district court case. Note this patent is pre-AIA (effective filing 2006-09-01, priority 2006-01-03), so pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e)/(g) and § 103 govern, and the § 102(b) critical date falls in the 2005 window — squarely in the era of dense portable-media-player, wireless-sync, and venue/geo-fenced content-delivery art that is the most likely IPR ammunition.

Pattern signals: there is no pattern. No repeat petitioner, no serial petitioning, no PTAB appeal practice, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain for this patent — the absence of an aggregator filing is itself notable, since Unified routinely files on Apple mobile-media patents of this vintage when they are asserted. The most coherent reading of the record is that US 7,831,199 is a portfolio/defensive asset that has never been asserted, which explains both the empty PTAB docket and the empty litigation docket. Its same-specification continuations — US 8,694,024 (granted 2014-04-08) and US 9,084,089 (granted 2015-07-14) — are separate patents with separate claim sets; a challenge to either would have no collateral effect on the '199 claims, but a defendant facing a family-wide assertion campaign should check each family member's own PTAB record independently. Adjusted expiration is 2027-12-22, so there is roughly a 14-month assertion runway left as of today (2026-10-01); a patent that has sat unchallenged for ~16 years at this point is unlikely to draw a first IPR unless it is asserted.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter or complaint on US 7,831,199: there is no FWD to link or quote, and no claim number that has been canceled. Do not expect a prior petitioner's work product to help you — you would be the first party before the Board on this patent. Budget for an original prior-art search against the pre-AIA § 102 critical date in the 2005 window, focused on patents and printed publications only (that is your IPR-eligible art under § 311(b)).
• Verify the two residual docket gaps yourself, since I could not close them: (1) USPTO Patent Center for Application 11/515,270 — check the Reexamination tab for any legacy ex parte or inter partes reexamination; (2) confirm the empty AIA-trial result at USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and PTAB Decisions (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) by searching application number 11/515,270 and patent number 7,831,199. For any CAFC appeal — of which I found none — the check points are https://cafc.uscourts.gov and CourtListener RECAP (https://www.courtlistener.com/?type=r&q=%227%2C831%2C199%22).
• If no assertion is pending: file this as "no PTAB activity" and treat the absence as the signal it is. A well-asserted patent of this age almost always attracts at least a Unified Patents or skeptical-defendant filing; the fact that this one has not, combined with the absence of any known litigation, indicates it is being held rather than enforced. Re-check only if an assertion appears, because assertion is the event that will generate any future proceeding.
• If you are considering filing the first IPR: the statutory clock is what it always is — institution decision within 6 months of the complete petition, and a final written decision within 1 year of institution under § 316(a)(11) (extendable up to 6 months for good cause). A petition filed now on a 2006-priority patent also raises a discretionary-denial question under § 325(d) and the Fintiv-type factors if parallel litigation exists; with no parallel litigation on record, the § 314(a) discretionary-denial exposure is unusually low, which modestly favors filing here relative to the typical Apple-mobile-media patent.

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the "zero AIA trial proceedings" conclusion, because it rests on the canonical structured ODP dataset plus corroborating web checks. I have only moderate confidence in the negative on legacy ex parte/inter partes reexamination, which is outside that dataset and outside what I could verify here; I have flagged that explicitly rather than asserting it.

I'll research the assignment/ownership record for US 7,831,199.

Ownership Reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199

Source limitations (read first). I attempted to pull the assignment record from the USPTO Assignment Center / Assignment Search and from PlainSite's mirrored assignment index, plus Google Patents "Legal Events." I was able to confirm the substance of the chain (two recorded documents, both visible on Google Patents' legal-events listing for this patent), but I could not retrieve the individual reel/frame numbers for this specific patent's own assignment pages in this session. I therefore report the reel/frame fields as unverified rather than invent them. Where I cite a reel/frame below, it is one that appears in corroborating USPTO-derived records for Apple's same 2007 change-of-name filing (which Apple recorded repeatedly across many reels), not a confirmed page for 11/515,270. Flagging this explicitly per the "don't fabricate" constraint.

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Inventors

Pattern check: No "all inventors departed within 12 months" signature. All seven were Apple employees at filing; departures (Fadell 2008, Robbin later) are staggered and well after the priority date. No pre-fire-sale exodus pattern. This is the personnel profile of a core product team (iPod/iTunes), not a patent being wound down.

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Original assignee

Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, California — renamed Apple Inc. effective January 9, 2007 (California Corporations Code §1110(d) merger of a wholly-owned subsidiary "Apple Inc." into the parent; confirmed by Apple's Form 8-K dated 2007-01-10, Items 5.03).

• Product embodiment: Yes. The claims read on Apple's own shipping ecosystem — iPod/iPhone wireless media sharing, iTunes "remote shuffle"-type playlist updates, and location-based local-media delivery (the spec expressly names iTunes® and iPod®). This is a classic operating-company asset.
• Primary business: Consumer electronics, software, and digital media services.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded (NASDAQ: AAPL). No bankruptcy, no dissolution. One Apple Park Way, Cupertino, CA 95014 (formerly 1 Infinite Loop).

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Assignment timeline

Recorded chain (two documents; only one is a true transfer of ownership):

• 2006-09-01 (executed ≈ filing date 2006-09-01) / recorded 2006-09-01 — Reel/Frame: not verified in this session

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: All seven individual inventors (Ng; Hodge; Fadell; Robbin; Borchers; Bell; Cue)
  • Assignee: APPLE COMPUTER, INC. (California corporation), 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014
  • Correspondent: Not verified (Apple-prosecution records for this period typically list Apple in-house counsel; could not confirm the exact recorded correspondent for this filing)
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-employer acquisition at filing (assignment of rights in App. 11/515,270).

• 2007-01-09 (executed) / recorded 2007 (January–February window; Google Patents indexes the event at 2007-03-13) — Reel/Frame: not verified for this patent. Apple recorded this same Change of Name across multiple reels in the Jan-Feb 2007 window, e.g. 3468/0526, 3469/0307, 3478/0408, and 019265/0961 (per USPTO-derived assignment abstracts and INPADOC records for other Apple patents); the page applicable to 11/515,270 was not confirmed.

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not a transfer of title)
  • Assignor: APPLE COMPUTER, INC.
  • Assignee: APPLE INC. (California corporation), 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014
  • Correspondent: Thomas R. La Perle, Apple Inc. in-house, 1 Infinite Loop, MS 3TM, Cupertino, CA 95014 (address corroborated across the reels above). Flag: this is Apple's own in-house IP attorney — it is not a repeat-player NPE recording firm. No recurrence of an outside/NPE correspondent appears anywhere in this chain.
  • Context: Change of name only — same corporate entity, same owner; no change in beneficial ownership.

• 2010-11-09 — Grant of US 7,831,199 to Apple Inc. (no assignment event).

• Family continuations US 8,694,024 and US 9,084,089 share the spec and remained with Apple.

Note: There is no post-issuance assignment of this patent to any third party. The only two recorded documents are the inventor assignment and a change-of-name filing. Reel/frame values above are deliberately marked unverified for this patent to avoid fabrication; the Assignment Center search page for confirmation is linked at the end.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7831199
    2006 : Inventors assign to Apple Computer Inc
    2007 : Change of name to Apple Inc
    2010 : Patent issued to Apple Inc

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" LLC appears. The chain terminates at Apple Inc., an operating company. No registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC (Google Patents legal events; Assignment Search).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg entity, or any Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency plaintiff appears as assignee. Assignee is Apple Inc. throughout.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. The one identified correspondent, Thomas R. La Perle (Apple in-house), has no NPE-assertion footprint; Apple's in-house IP attorneys file thousands of ordinary corporate assignments. A single recurring in-house name is normal corporate practice, not the NPE signal.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — Not present. Zero chained LLC transfers. Only the initial inventor assignment plus a same-entity name change.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement litigation naming this patent was identified (consistent with the earlier litigation summary for this number). No assignment within 6 months of any suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Apple never filed Chapter 7/11; the patent was not sold in any proceeding.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from Apple to an NPE to assert against competitors. No SEC filing or Patent Progress/EFF coverage indicates such a transfer.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present as defined (chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN). But note the inverse effect: the asset sits with the original operating-company owner and is not being asserted.

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

The recorded chain is only an inventor-to-Apple-Computer assignment (2006-09-01) followed by an Apple Computer → Apple Inc. change of name (executed 2007-01-09). There is no transfer to any NPE, no licensing-only entity, no foreign-asserter assignee, and no litigation naming this patent, so none of the eight NPE signals are met. Definitional caveat: strictly, the "Defensive / non-asserting" bucket is defined as a chain ending at a defensive aggregator, which is not the case here — this chain ends at the original operating-company owner (Apple Inc.). I select this verdict because the substantive outcome (a non-asserted patent retained by a practicing entity) is the closest fit among the available options; if your rubric requires strict bucket definitions, the alternative truthful call would be "Insufficient data — only the original assignment exists on the record" (the change-of-name filing transfers nothing).

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center / Assignment Search, query patent number 7831199 or Application 11/515,270 — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/).

I'll run targeted searches for the patent's cited prior-art references.

I now have the actual granted claim set and the examiner's cited-reference list. This materially changes the analysis, so let me verify the titles/dates of the most claim-relevant cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199 B2

Analysis date context: April 26, 2026. Scope: the "References Cited" appearing on the face of US 7,831,199 (application 11/515,270), with § 102 mapping against the granted claim set.

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⚠️ Critical correction to the previously generated sections (flagged contradiction)

The earlier "Patent summary" section stated that the literal claim text could not be retrieved and therefore inferred six independent claims from the specification's SUMMARY passages (peer-to-peer discovery / request-and-receive / profile-transmission / remote shuffle). That inference is contradicted by the claim set now retrieved for application 11/515,270. The granted claims are not the peer-to-peer delivery claims; they are venue-broadcast + incentive + age-based-interface claims.

Per the operating rules, I am flagging this explicitly rather than harmonizing it. The specification's SUMMARY passages describe embodiments and dependents/continuations (e.g., US 8,694,024; US 9,084,089; pubs. US 2011/0034121 A1 and US 2014/0221018 A1), not the independent claims of the '199 patent. Any downstream section relying on the six-inferred-claims framing should be corrected.

Granted claims of US 7,831,199 (source: uspto.report mirror of 11/515,270; verify against USPTO Patent Center)

Consequence for prior art: the claim-1 quartet of (i) incentive credits to a sharer conditioned on a different user's purchase at an online media store, (ii) retrieval of only information the user has permitted to be shared, (iii) broadcast identification gated on device proximity to the venue, and (iv) age-based venue-specific UI (claims 7/11/16/18/22) are the limitations where the cited art must be tested. Everything else in the patent (peer-to-peer sharing, remote shuffle, history/shopping lists, subscription "song of the week") is unclaimed subject matter that is irrelevant to § 102 analysis of these claims.

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1. The "References Cited" inventory (complete, from the patent face)

Source: uspto.report patent-grant page for 7,831,199 (URL below). These are the citations actually printed on the patent.

1.1 U.S. Patent Documents (150 items — number | issue date | first-named inventor)

4090216 May-1978 Constable · 4386345 May-1983 Narveson · 4451849 May-1984 Fuhrer · 4589022 May-1986 Prince · 4908523 Mar-1990 Snowden · 4928307 May-1990 Lynn · 4951171 Aug-1990 Tran · 5185906 Feb-1993 Brooks · 5293494 Mar-1994 Saito · 5379057 Jan-1995 Clough · 5406305 Apr-1995 Shimomura · 5559945 Sep-1996 Beaudet · 5566337 Oct-1996 Szymanski · 5583993 Dec-1996 Foster · 5608698 Mar-1997 Yamanoi · 5616876 Apr-1997 Cluts · 5617386 Apr-1997 Choi · 5670985 Sep-1997 Cappels · 5675362 Oct-1997 Clough · 5684513 Nov-1997 Decker · 5710922 Jan-1998 Alley · 5712949 Jan-1998 Kato · 5717422 Feb-1998 Fergason · 5721949 Feb-1998 Smith · 5726672 Mar-1998 Hernandez · 5739451 Apr-1998 Winksy · 5740143 Apr-1998 Suetomi · 5760588 Jun-1998 Bailey · 5778374 Jul-1998 Dang · 5803786 Sep-1998 McCormick · 5815225 Sep-1998 Nelson · 5822288 Oct-1998 Shinada · 5835721 Nov-1998 Donahue · 5835732 Nov-1998 Kikinis · 5838969 Nov-1998 Jacklin · 5864868 Jan-1999 Contois · 5867163 Feb-1999 Kurtenbach · 5870710 Feb-1999 Ozawa · 5918303 Jun-1999 Yamaura · 5920728 Jul-1999 Hallowell · 5923757 Jul-1999 Hocker · 5952992 Sep-1999 Helms · 6006274 Dec-1999 Hawkins · 6009237 Dec-1999 Hirabayashi · 6011585 Jan-2000 Anderson · 6018705 Jan-2000 Gaudet · 6041023 Mar-2000 Lakhansingh · 6052654 Apr-2000 Gaudet · 6108426 Aug-2000 Stortz · 6122340 Sep-2000 Darley · 6158019 Dec-2000 Squibb · 6161944 Dec-2000 Leman · 6172948 Jan-2001 Keller · 6179432 Jan-2001 Zhang · 6185163 Feb-2001 Bickford · 6191939 Feb-2001 Burnett · 6208044 Mar-2001 Viswanadham · 6216131 Apr-2001 Liu · 6217183 Apr-2001 Shipman · 6248946 Jun-2001 Dwek · 6295541 Sep-2001 Bodnar · 6297795 Oct-2001 Kato · 6298314 Oct-2001 Blackadar · 6332175 Dec-2001 Birrell · 6336365 Jan-2002 Blackadar · 6336727 Jan-2002 Kim · 6341316 Jan-2002 Kloba · 6357147 Mar-2002 Darley · 6377530 Apr-2002 Burrows · 6452610 Sep-2002 Reinhardt · 6467924 Oct-2002 Shipman · 6493652 Dec-2002 Ohlenbusch · 6536139 Mar-2003 Darley · 6549497 Apr-2003 Miyamoto · 6560903 May-2003 Darley · 6587127 Jul-2003 Leeke · 6587403 Jul-2003 Keller · 6587404 Jul-2003 Keller · 6605038 Aug-2003 Teller · 6606281 Aug-2003 Cowgill · 6611607 Aug-2003 Davis · 6611789 Aug-2003 Darley · 6617963 Sep-2003 Watters · 6621768 Sep-2003 Keller · 6623427 Sep-2003 Mandigo · 6631101 Oct-2003 Chan · 6693612 Feb-2004 Matsumoto · 6731312 May-2004 Robbin · 6760536 Jul-2004 Amir · 6762741 Jul-2004 Weindorf · 6775539 Aug-2004 Deshpande · 6781611 Aug-2004 Richard · 6794566 Sep-2004 Pachet · 6799226 Sep-2004 Robbin · 6801964 Oct-2004 Mahdavi · 6832373 Dec-2004 O'Neill · 6844511 Jan-2005 Hsu · 6870529 Mar-2005 Davis · 6876947 Apr-2005 Darley · 6882955 Apr-2005 Ohlenbusch · 6886749 May-2005 Chiba · 6898550 May-2005 Blackadar · 6911971 Jun-2005 Suzuki · 6918677 Jul-2005 Shipman · 6931377 Aug-2005 Seya · 6934812 Aug-2005 Robbin · 6950087 Sep-2005 Knox · 7010365 Mar-2006 Maymudes · 7028096 Apr-2006 Lee · 7046230 May-2006 Zadesky · 7062225 Jun-2006 White · 7076561 Jul-2006 Rosenberg · 7084856 Aug-2006 Huppi · 7084921 Aug-2006 Ogawa · 7092946 Aug-2006 Bodnar · 7124125 Oct-2006 Cook · 7131059 Oct-2006 Obrador · 7143241 Nov-2006 Hull · 7146437 Dec-2006 Robbin · 7171331 Jan-2007 Vock · 7191244 Mar-2007 Jennings · 7213228 May-2007 Putterman · 7234026 Jun-2007 Robbin · 7277928 Oct-2007 Lennon · 7301857 Nov-2007 Shah · 7356679 Apr-2008 Le · 7508535 Mar-2009 Hart

U.S. Published Applications (pre-grant): 2001/0013983 Izawa · 2001/0029178 Criss · 2001/0037367 Iyer · 2001/0041021 Boyle · 2001/0042107 Palm · 2002/0002413 Tokue · 2002/0013784 Swanson · 2002/0028683 Banatre · 2002/0045961 Gibbs · 2002/0046315 Miller · 2002/0055934 Lipscomb · 2002/0059440 Hudson · 2002/0059499 Hudson · 2002/0090912 Cannon · 2002/0116082 Gudorf · 2002/0116517 Hudson · 2002/0122031 Maglio · 2002/0123359 Wei · 2002/0152045 Dowling · 2002/0156833 Maurya · 2002/0161865 Nguyen · 2002/0173273 Spurgat · 2002/0189426 Hirade · 2002/0189429 Qian · 2002/0199043 Yin · 2003/0002688 Kanevsky · 2003/0007001 Zimmerman · 2003/0018799 Eyal · 2003/0037254 Fischer · 2003/0046434 Flanagin · 2003/0050092 Yun · 2003/0074457 Kluth · 2003/0076301 Tsuk · 2003/0076306 Zadesky · 2003/0079038 Robbin · 2003/0095096 Robbin · 2003/0097379 Ireton · 2003/0104835 Douhet · 2003/0127307 Liu · 2003/0128192 van Os · 2003/0133694 Yeo · 2003/0153213 Siddiqui · 2003/0156503 Schilling · 2003/0167318 Robbin · 2003/0176935 Lian · 2003/0182100 Plastina · 2003/0221541 Platt · 2003/0229490 Etter · 2003/0236695 Litwin · 2004/0001395 Keller · 2004/0001396 Keller · 2004/0012556 Yong · 2004/0055446 Robbin · 2004/0066363 Yamano · 2004/0069122 Wilson · 2004/0076086 Keller · 2004/0086120 Akins · 2004/0094018 Ueshima · 2004/0103411 Thayer · 2004/0125522 Chiu · 2004/0165302 Lu · 2004/0177063 Weber · 2004/0198436 Alden · 2004/0210628 Inkinen · 2004/0216108 Robbin · 2004/0224638 Fadell · 2004/0242224 Janik · 2004/0246275 Yoshihara · 2004/0255135 Kitaya · 2004/0267825 Novak · 2005/0015254 Beaman · 2005/0053365 Adams · 2005/0060240 Popofsky · 2005/0060542 Risan · 2005/0107031 Wood · 2005/0108754 Carhart · 2005/0111820 Matsumi · 2005/0122315 Chalk · 2005/0123886 Hua · 2005/0146534 Fong · 2005/0149213 Guzak · 2005/0152294 Yu · 2005/0156047 Chiba · 2005/0160270 Goldberg · 2005/0166153 Eytchison · 2005/0216855 Kopra · 2005/0218303 Poplin · 2005/0234983 Plastina · 2005/0245839 Stivoric · 2005/0246324 Paalasmaa · 2005/0248555 Feng · 2005/0257169 Tu · 2005/0259064 Sugino · 2005/0259524 Yeh · 2005/0270276 Sugimoto · 2006/0013414 Shih · 2006/0025068 Regan · 2006/0026424 Eto · 2006/0061563 Fleck · 2006/0068760 Hameed · 2006/0071899 Chang · 2006/0088228 Marriott · 2006/0092122 Yoshihara · 2006/0094409 Inselberg · 2006/0095502 Lewis · 2006/0098320 Koga · 2006/0135883 Jonsson · 2006/0145053 Stevenson · 2006/0152382 Hiltunen · 2006/0155914 Jobs · 2006/0170535 Watters · 2006/0173974 Tang · 2006/0190577 Yamada · 2006/0190980 Kikkoji · 2006/0221057 Fux · 2006/0221788 Lindahl · 2006/0259758 Deng · 2006/0265503 Jones · 2006/0272483 Honeywell · 2006/0277336 Lu · 2007/0014536 Hellman · 2007/0028009 Robbin · 2007/0061759 Klein · 2007/0089057 Kindig · 2007/0106660 Stern · 2007/0124679 Jeong · 2007/0129062 Pantalone · 2007/0135225 Nieminen · 2007/0248311 Wice · 2007/0255163 Prineppi · 2008/0055228 Glen · 2008/0134287 Gudorf · 2010/0077338 Matthews

1.2 Foreign Patent Documents (65 items)

DE 43 34 773 (Apr-1994); DE 44 45 023 (Jun-1996); EP 0 127 139 (May-1984); EP 0578604 (Jan-1994); EP 0 757 437 (Feb-1997); EP 0 813 138 (Dec-1997); EP 1028426 (Aug-2000); EP 1 213 643 (Jun-2002); EP 1289197 (Mar-2003); EP 1 503 363 (Feb-2005); EP 1 566 743 (Aug-2005); EP 1 372 133 (Dec-2005); EP 1 686 496 (Aug-2006); GB 2 370 208 (Jun-2002); GB 2384399 (Jul-2003); GB 2399639 (May-2005); JP 59-023610 (Feb-1984); JP 03-228490 (Oct-1991); JP 04-243386 (Aug-1992); JP 6-96520 (Apr-1994); JP 8-235774 (Sep-1996); JP 9-50676 (Feb-1997); JP 9-259532 (Oct-1997); JP 2000-90651 (Mar-2000); JP 2000-224099 (Aug-2000); JP 2000-285643 (Oct-2000); JP 2000-299834 (Oct-2000); JP 2000-311352 (Nov-2000); JP 2000-339864 (Dec-2000); JP 2001-236286 (Aug-2001); JP 2001-312338 (Nov-2001); JP 2002-076977 (Mar-2002); JP 2002-175467 (Jun-2002); JP 2003-188792 (Jul-2003); JP 2003-259333 (Sep-2003); JP 2003-319365 (Nov-2003); JP 2004-021720 (Jan-2004); JP 2004-219731 (Aug-2004); JP 2004-220420 (Aug-2004); KR 20010076508 (Aug-2001); WO 95/16950; WO 98/17032; WO 99/28813; WO 00/22820; WO 01/33569; WO 01/65413; WO 01/67753; WO 02/25610; WO 03/023786; WO 03/036457; WO 03/067202; WO 2004/049182; WO 2004/061850; WO 2004/055637; WO 2004/084413; WO 2004/104815; WO 2005/031737; WO 2005/048644; WO 2005/008505; WO 2005/109781; WO 2006/040737; WO 2006/071364.

1.3 Non-patent literature (representative; ~100 items)

Includes: "Apple Announces iTunes 2" (Oct. 23, 2001); "Apple Introduces iTunes" (Jan. 9, 2001); "Apple's iPod Available in Stores Tomorrow" (Nov. 9, 2001); "Nomad Jukebox" User Guide (Aug. 2000); "SoundJam MP Plus Manual v2.0" (2000); Compaq "Personal Jukebox" (Jan. 24, 2001); Birrell "Personal Jukebox (PJB)" (Oct. 13, 2000); De Herrera "Microsoft ActiveSync 3.1" (Oct. 13, 2000); IEEE 1394/Wikipedia (1995); Miniman, "Applian Software's Replay Radio and Player v1.02" (Jul. 31, 2001); Musicmatch Jukebox press release (May 18, 1998); Sinitsyn, "A Synchronization Framework for Personal Mobile Servers," IEEE PerCom Workshops (Mar. 14, 2004), pp. 208-212; Nützel et al., "Sharing Systems for Future HiFi Systems," IEEE (Jun. 2004); Steinberg "Sonicblue Rio Car" (Dec. 12, 2000); Travis Butler "Archos Jukebox 6000…" (Aug. 13, 2001) and "Portable MP3: The Nomad Jukebox" (Jan. 8, 2001); "Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB" (Dec. 21, 2005); "Creative MuVo TX 256 MB," T3 Magazine (Aug. 17, 2004); Kadir et al., "Adaptive Fast Playback-Based Video Skimming…," IEEE ICME 2004, pp. 2055-2058; Yee et al., "Faceted Metadata for Image Search and Browsing" (Apr. 5, 2003); Apple iTunes Smart Playlists (2003/2005); "Sony Ericsson … Auto pairing … Bluetooth" press release (Sep. 28, 2005); "How to Pair a Bluetooth Headset & Cell Phone" (About.com); iAP Sports Lingo 0x09 Protocol V1.00 (May 1, 2006); Jabra Bluetooth manuals (2002/2004/2005); Kennedy, "Digital Data Storage Using Video Disc," IBM TDB (Jul. 1981); and ~50 prosecution correspondence items (ISRs, Written Opinions, Office Actions in U.S. Appl. Nos. 11/212,313; 11/212,555; 11/327,544; 11/373,468; 11/439,613; 11/519,352; 11/530,773; 11/535,646; 11/583,199; 11/515,270 (this application — Office Action dated Sep. 2, 2009); foreign counterparts).

Primary Examiner of record: Tu X Nguyen. Attorney/agent: Beyer Law Group LLP.

Observational note (relevant to your task): the bulk of the U.S. citations (4090216/4589022 display contrast, 4386345/5406305/6950087 backlit displays and keyboards, 6018705/6052654/6876947/6882955 Nike pedometer family, 6611789, 6898550, 7171331, Jabra Bluetooth headset manuals, "Public Safety Technologies Tracer 2000," "Rocky Matrix Backlit Keyboard," etc.) are facially irrelevant to the granted venue-broadcast/incentive/age-UI claims and appear to be a boilerplate IDS carried over from sibling Apple media-player applications. Only a small subset is on point.

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2. Most relevant prior art on the face of 7,831,199 — itemized

Methodology caveat (important): I was able to verify title/subject matter for only a small number of the cited references within this session. For the remainder I have the citation and date from the patent face but not the reference's disclosure. Under the instruction not to fabricate, I give § 102 mappings only for references whose content I verified, and I mark everything else as "relevance inferred from title/field — disclosure not verified."

2.1 Verified and analyzable

(A) US 6,248,946 B1 — Dwek, "Multimedia content delivery system and method"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 6,248,946 B1 (Dwek), granted June 19, 2001 (also published as US 2001/0018858 A1).
• Assignee/subject: Multimedia content distribution — delivery of media from a central database/repository over a network (Internet) to remote users; describes Internet-radio models (SPINNER.COM; RADIO SONICNET; RADIOMOI.COM) in which a listener selects and ranks musical artists and categories of interest to create a customized "radio station," where the service streams songs from its servers to the listener's device, and where advertising supports the service and is displayed during streaming.
• Verified URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6248946
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claim 1(b) (a plurality/selection of media streams identified based on user preferences), (d)/(e) (obtaining characteristics indicating preference for certain types of media content), (f) (identifying the media/broadcast to the device based on the obtained characteristics), and arguably (g) (user interface/listener selection among available formats/stations).
• Why it does not anticipate claim 1 as a whole: Dwek's personalized-radio selection is server-side and account-based; it is not gated on the device being in the proximity of a venue, it is not a venue-broadcast model, and it discloses no incentive/credit mechanism (much less a credit conditioned on a different user's purchase at an online media store). It also does not disclose age-group-based interface customization (claim 7). Best posture: § 103 background, not § 102 anticipation.

(B) US 7,191,244 B2 — Jennings et al., "System and method for routing media"

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 7,191,244 B2 (Jennings; Bate), filed Jan. 18, 2002, granted March 13, 2007; predecessor publication US 2002/0099842 A1 (July 25, 2002); assignee StreamWorks Technologies, Inc. (family later SITO Mobile R&D IP / SITO Mobile). Priority to provisional 60/263,044 (Jan. 19, 2001).
• Verified URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7191244B2](/patent/US7191244B2) ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7191244
• Subject (verified from the specification text): a media-routing/streaming platform (ESRP, RTSMS, NRP, MMS) that dynamically matches content to a viewer: a "presentation" is generated by applying a viewer profile to a program, and "a media selector is used … when the content owner desires to target different media at an audience, based on audience characteristics, and to create different presentations for different groups of audiences. Examples of audience characteristics may include the individual's sex, age, hobbies, historical viewing habits, or other data the viewer would provide." It further discloses that "statistical identification … may be used to create a viewer profile … the viewer is within a geographic area, such as a zip code … that the viewer is within an age group, such as 18–23 years, that the viewer can watch movies of a designated media rating … the viewer is male or female…"; viewing rules may impose age restrictions; and different advertisements/presentations are selected based on the viewer profile.
• Potential § 102 relevance:
  • Claim 7 (and mirror claims 11, 16, 18/age variants, and 14 "child, adult, or senior" if construed broadly): Jennings expressly discloses (i) retrieving information from user/viewer profiles, (ii) obtaining a characteristic that includes the user's age, (iii) identifying an age group (its express "18–23 years" example), and (iv) delivering a customized presentation based on the profile/age group. These are the core of claim 7.
  • Claim 1: Jennings discloses (d) obtaining characteristics indicating content preference, (e) identifying which content goes to the device based on those characteristics, and arguably (g) a device-side presentation/selection construct.
• Why it still is not clean § 102 art: Jennings' viewers are generic client devices (including set-top boxes), and its customization is applied to a streamed presentation, not to a venue-scoped plurality of simultaneous broadcasts selectable via a mobile-device interface "only when … in the proximity of the venue." The venue-specificity of claim 7's UI and the "within the venue" wireless retrieval from a plurality of mobile devices are not squarely shown. Claim 1's incentive-credit-conditioned-on-another-user's-purchase limitation is absent. Best posture: strong § 103 primary reference for claims 7–17 and a supporting reference for claim 1 elements; a § 102 anticipation theory is arguable for claim 7 but not for claim 1.

(C) US 2002/0152045 A1 — Dowling et al. ("Information systems")

• Full citation: U.S. Published Application US 2002/0152045 A1 (Dowling et al.), published October 17, 2002. Google Patents shows the US 2002/0152045 A1 record with priority 1997-08-25 and a later assignee of record in the Signify/Color Kinetics → Philips lineage.
• Verified URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020152045A1
• ⚠️ Uncertainty: I verified only the bibliographic identity/title/date. I could not retrieve the disclosure of this reference, and its title ("Information systems") and apparent family lineage do not self-evidently map onto the venue-broadcast claims. I therefore make no § 102 mapping for it and flag it for direct verification. Do not assume, without reading it, that it discloses targeted venue media delivery.

2.2 Candidate relevance — citation/date verified from the face, disclosure NOT verified

These are the remaining cited items whose topic (as suggested by number/title pattern) could bear on the granted claims. I have not verified their disclosures, so no § 102 mapping is asserted. Each must be pulled and read before being relied on.

Bottom line on the candidates. On the record available to me, the two citations whose verified disclosures actually touch the granted claim limitations are Dwek (6,248,946) and Jennings (7,191,244). The "peer-to-peer sharing" and "synchronization" NPL (Nützel; Sinitsyn; iAP Sports Lingo) is on point for the specification and for the continuation claims (US 8,694,024 / 9,084,089), not for claims 1–25 of the '199 patent.

2.3 The limitation with no apparent anticipatory support on the face

For claim 1 (and its server/apparatus counterparts 18 and 22), the following combination is, in my assessment of the cited art, not disclosed by any single reference I could verify:

"providing incentives to users to share information from user profiles … wherein the incentives are credits towards purchasing media content at an online media store, wherein a credit is only provided if the sharing of the information results in a purchase of media content from the online media store by a different user."

This maps directly to the specification's passage: "the incentive award can be on-line media store credits … The nature or degree of the credits can be increased or restricted to those situations in which the second user buys the media content being shared from an authorized source, such as an on-line media store," and to "the user can be prompted … to approve delivery" / "information sharing has been authorized by the patron" (supporting the "permitted to be shared" limitation). This referral-credit-conditioned-on-a-third-party-purchase element is the strongest candidate for the point of novelty over the cited art, and neither Dwek nor Jennings (as verified) teaches it. That is consistent with the claims having been allowed over the cited art.

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3. § 102 framework and timing notes

• Governing statute: the application was filed Sept. 1, 2006, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 applies (AIA §§ 102/103 first apply to applications filed on/after March 16, 2013).
• Effective priority: Jan. 3, 2006 (provisional 60/756,122) and Jun. 20, 2006 (provisional 60/805,328). Assuming the Jan. 3, 2006 date, the § 102(b) one-year critical date is Jan. 3, 2005; references published/patented before that date are statutory bars (the majority of the cited U.S. patents and all pre-2005 foreign documents and NPL fall in this group).
• § 102(a)/(e): references published between Jan. 3, 2005 and the invention date are § 102(a)/(e) art; U.S. patents/publications are § 102(e) art as of their effective filing date, which can pull forward references that issued after the '199 priority date (e.g., US 7,277,928 Lennon (Oct. 2007); US 7,308,157 Shah (Nov. 2007); US 7,354,...). I flag that I did not verify the effective filing dates of these; each needs its (22)/(60) data checked.
• Items on the face that are not § 102 art on their face: US 2008/0055228 A1 (Glen, Mar. 2008), US 2010/0077338 A1 (Matthews, Mar. 2010), US 7,500,535 (Hart, Mar. 2009), US 7,308,157 (Shah, Nov. 2007), and the post-2010 publications. These can only be prior art if their applications were filed before the critical/invention date (§ 102(e)) — otherwise they were likely cited for other reasons or carried over from a sibling IDS, and are not available for a § 102 rejection.
• § 102(g)/§ 102(f): not assessed; would require interference/derivation evidence.
• Anticipation standard reminder: § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every limitation, arranged as in the claim (Net MoneyIN v. VeriSign). Where a reference discloses only some limitations, the correct ground is § 103, not § 102. Several entries above (Dwek, Jennings) are, on my verified reading, § 103 references, not § 102 anticipatory references.

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4. Explicit uncertainty flags

1. Claim set provenance: the claims are taken from the uspto.report mirror of application 11/515,270. I could not open the USPTO Patent Center/Patent Full-Text record directly. The text is internally consistent with the '199 specification (incentive credits ↔ "on-line media store credits"; permitted-sharing ↔ patron-authorization; age-based UI ↔ "a child might be presented with a reduced feature interface"), but verify against the official grant before relying on it in any validity opinion.
2. Contradiction with the earlier "Patent summary" section: that section's six independent claims (peer-to-peer delivery; profile transmission; remote shuffle) do not correspond to the granted claims. Treat the earlier inference as superseded.
3. Reference disclosures not verified: for every citation in § 1 other than Dwek and Jennings, I have citation + date only. I have not read the references and therefore cannot and do not assert what they disclose; the "candidate relevance" table in § 2.2 is a search lead list keyed to claim limitations, not an anticipation opinion.
4. Dowling (US 2002/0152045 A1): identity/date verified; disclosure not verified; no § 102 mapping asserted. Its apparent family lineage (Signify/Color Kinetics) makes an on-point venue-media disclosure uncertain — a direct read is required.
5. No exhaustive negative: this analysis does not establish that no anticipatory reference exists; it establishes only that among the references on the face of the '199 patent that I could verify, none discloses every limitation of an independent claim, and that the incentive-credit and venue-proximity limitations have no verified support on the face.

Primary sources used:

• Google Patents, US 7,831,199 B2 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7831199/en
• uspto.report, US 7,831,199 (full face: citations, claim set, examiner) — https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7,831,199
• Google Patents, US 6,248,946 B1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6248946
• Google Patents, US 7,191,244 B2 / uspto.report 7,191,244 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7191244B2 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7191244
• Google Patents, US 2002/0152045 A1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020152045A1
• Unified Patents, US-7831199-B2 (family/bibliographic) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7831199-B2

I'll research the prior art actually associated with this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the patent's own front-page citation list from primary sources.

Let me verify the specific candidate references and check the family's search reports.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,831,199 B2

*35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (pre‑AIA), with KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)*
Prepared: April 26, 2026

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0. Threshold caveat on the "Prior Art section of this page" — please read first

I must flag a source limitation up front, because it materially affects how much of this analysis is grounded versus reconstructed.

The authoritative fetched text of US 7,831,199 (patents.google.com/patent/US7831199/en) does not contain a "Prior Art," "Citations," or "Cited By" section. The version I was given includes the abstract, definitions, full written description, classifications, and legal-status data — but the citation tables that normally appear on a Google Patents page are absent from the fetch.

What I could retrieve of the page's prior-art listings came from the Unified Patents mirror (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7831199-B2), which displays a "Patent Art (294)" set. The items actually surfaced in that retrieval were, almost without exception, non-analogous art:

Conclusion on this point: on the record I could retrieve, the page's own prior-art set is a similarity set, not the examiner's citation list, and it does not supply references that read on the four core claim concepts (wireless peer discovery, profile-driven sharing, venue broadcasting, remote media depository). I therefore build the § 103 analysis below on three grounded pillars and label the rest as reconstruction:

1. Admitted prior art inside the patent itself (verified verbatim in the authoritative text) — the strongest and most citable material.
2. The patent's own related applications, incorporated by reference (verified verbatim in the Cross-Reference section) — several of which are themselves § 102(a)/(e) art.
3. Well-known published art and public uses in the field as of the Jan. 3, 2006 priority date, which I describe generically where I cannot verify a specific document number in this session. Where I name a specific number, treat it as a lead to verify, not as a verified citation.

I also carry forward the earlier sections' explicit flag: verified claim text was never obtained. The claim structure used below is the six independent-claim map inferred in the Patent Summary from the specification's Summary-of-Invention passages, which parallel the claims nearly verbatim. If an independent claim in the actual 25-claim set differs materially (e.g., if it recites a specific wireless protocol, a "graphical user interface" limitation, or an incentive-credit element), the analysis must be re-run against that text.

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1. Governing legal standard

• Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies (application 11/515,270 filed Sept. 1, 2006; earliest priority Jan. 3, 2006 — both before March 16, 2013). AIA § 103 does not apply.
• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations.
• KSR, 550 U.S. at 415–21: a combination is obvious where the elements were "known in the art," there was a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," the combination was "obvious to try," or market demand supplied the motivation. KSR also ratifies the longstanding "design incentive / market pressure" rationales.
• Rationale categories (MPEP § 2143 / In re Keller): (A) combining prior art elements per known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try" from a finite set; (F) design incentives/market forces; (G) teachings of the prior art pointing to the claimed invention.
• § 102(e) overlay: co-owned U.S. applications 10/987,649, 11/210,172, 10/423,490, and 11/314,291 all have filing dates before the Jan. 3, 2006 priority date and are therefore available as § 102(e) art to the extent published/granted (subject to the common-ownership proviso of § 103(c), which would remove them from § 103 consideration — an important defensive point for the patentee, discussed in § 6).

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A person of ordinary skill in the art as of Jan. 3, 2006 would have had: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), plus approximately two years of experience in mobile/handheld application development, with working familiarity in at least three of: (i) short-range wireless protocols (Bluetooth v1.2/2.0 incl. SDP and OBEX profiles, IEEE 802.11 a/b/g ad hoc and infrastructure modes); (ii) portable media player firmware and media-management client software (e.g., iTunes-type sync engines); (iii) client–server and peer-to-peer networking; (iv) digital rights management and subscription content licensing; and (v) mobile GUI design. This is a relatively low skill level for a general-purpose consumer-software/networking combination patent, which cuts in favor of obviousness.

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3. Pillar 1 — The patent's own admitted prior art

The Background of the Invention (§ 2, "Description of the Related Art") is a binding admission of what was known:

"In the case of MP3 players or PDAs, media data is typically downloaded from a host computer when the MP3 player or PDA is connected to the host computer by way of a cable (USB cable). In the event that a MP3 player or PDA supports wireless communication, it is possible that the downloading of media data to the MP3 player or PDA could be performed in a wireless manner. In the case of mobile phones, media data (such as songs or ring tones) are downloaded over the wireless communication network (i.e., cellular phone network)."

Three things are thereby admitted as prior art:

1. Portable media devices exist and store media data (iPod-type devices, MP3 players, PDAs).
2. Wireless downloading of media to a portable device is known.
3. The problem the patent purports to solve is framed as "it is advantageous to exchange (send and/or receive) media or other types of data with other electronic devices in a wireless manner" — i.e., the patent itself supplies the motivation to combine.

The Background also concedes the entire inventive premise of claim 1's problem statement. Under KSR, a statement in the specification identifying the problem and its desirability is powerful evidence of the § 103 motivation.

4. Pillar 2 — The incorporated-by-reference Apple applications (verified verbatim)

The Cross-Reference section expressly incorporates seven documents. Their subject matter and dates:

The four bolded applications have pre-priority filing dates and are candidates for § 102(e) art. 11/324,863 shares the priority date and is the most damaging: the "remote shuffle" of claims 6 and 15A–15C is its express subject matter, and the '199 specification even cross-references it as the source of that concept. This creates a double-patenting / derivation-adjacent vulnerability and, more directly, means the '199 patent's remote-shuffle branch is at minimum not a novel contribution of this application.

Counterweight (flag as a real defense): because all of these are commonly owned by Apple, 35 U.S.C. § 103(c) (pre-AIA, as amended by CREATE Act) would disqualify them as prior art for § 103 purposes in an examination or IPR context — but not for § 102 anticipation. In litigation, § 282 defenses would need to route around this. Any invalidity theory resting primarily on these references is therefore weaker than it first appears; the theories in § 5 below deliberately rely on third-party art.

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5. Pillar 3 — § 103 combinations

Combination 1 → Independent Claim 1 (and its CRM/apparatus twins, claims 4 and 5)

Proposed combination: (a) the Bluetooth SIG's standard Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) together with the OBEX Object Push Profile (OPP) / File Transfer Profile (FTP) — published specifications, well before 2006 — in view of (b) conventional portable media player + media management client art (e.g., the admitted USB-sync art and the Apple 10/987,649 wireless-sync disclosure), and optionally (c) UPnP Device Architecture / UPnP AV (published 2000–2002), which supplies peer-to-peer device and service discovery followed by content transfer over a wireless LAN.

Element-by-element:

Motivation (KSR rationales A, C, F): (i) the admitted prior art already recognized the desirability of wireless data exchange with portable devices; (ii) Bluetooth and 802.11 radios were already being integrated into portable media players and phones for headset/head-unit use, so reusing the same radio and already-standardized discovery/transfer profiles for content exchange is a textbook "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" (rationale C) with a predictable result; (iii) consumer demand for cable-free content sharing among devices is a recognized market force (rationale F); (iv) the combination is a "mere combination of known elements according to known methods" yielding predictable results (KSR at 416–18).

Reasonable expectation of success: high. Both protocols were mature, interoperable, and specified in detail; no new hardware was required.

Strength assessment: Strong. Claim 1, as inferred, is a barebones discovery→request→receive flow. There is essentially no technical distance between the claim and the standardized protocols. Unless the actual claim recites something narrowing (e.g., a specific "vicinity" determination technique, a specific user-interface trigger, or content-rights gating), this is highly vulnerable.

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Combination 2 → Independent Claim 2 (receive info about the other device; determine data to share based on it; transmit)

Proposed combination: Combination 1, further in view of (a) Bluetooth vCard/vCal exchange (a standard, published "personal information exchange" use case for the same OBEX stack) and (b) presence/interest-profile matching art — e.g., instant-messaging presence and "buddy list" profile systems (widely deployed by 2003) and recommendation/matching engines that select content for a recipient from a stated profile (standard recommender art by 2001–2004).

Motivation (rationales A, D, G): Sending files blindly to unknown peers wastes bandwidth and risks unwanted content; exchanging profile/interest data first and filtering what to send is an obvious quality-of-service and privacy refinement (rationale D: applying a known technique — profile-based filtering — to a known device ready for improvement). The specification itself supplies the rationale: it states the devices "can examine the predetermined criteria to determine whether information should be transmitted or exchanged."

Strength assessment: Strong-to-moderate. The general concept is plainly obvious; the vulnerability depends on whether the actual claim recites a specific data structure for the profile or a specific matching algorithm, which would narrow the prior-art reading.

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Combination 3 → Independent Claim 3 (connect to a wireless network; transmit profile information to other device(s))

Proposed combination: Bluetooth vCard/OBEX exchange (as above) in view of location- or proximity-based social/contact-broadcast systems known by 2004–2005 (proximity-based "who's nearby" contact broadcasting; conference badge/attendee-matching systems; early mobile social-networking services).

Motivation: networking/icebreaker utility; the patent's own text frames profile broadcasting as a way for "users of such other devices [to] understand the user of the mobile device and what his/her interests might be."

Strength assessment: Very strong. This is the broadest claim in the set — "connect to a wireless network; broadcast your profile" — and reads on Bluetooth vCard push plus essentially any proximity-presence system. If claim 3 is truly this broad, its validity is doubtful independent of any other combination.

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Combination 4 → Independent Claim 6 (access remote media depository via a data network; request a set of media items; receive and store them at the portable device)

This is the claim with the richest third-party prior art and the most direct public-use evidence.

Proposed combination (alternative sub-combinations, any one sufficient):

4a. Portable-subscription download services (public use / § 102(a),(b)).

• Napster To Go (announced CES Jan. 2005; commercial launch Feb. 2005) — a portable subscription service permitting subscribers to download sets of tracks from a remote depository over a network directly onto a portable player, with DRM-limited rights.
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited (May 2005) and Rhapsody To Go (2004–2005) — same model.
  These are real, publicly documented services that predate the Jan. 3, 2006 priority by roughly a year. Combined with the admitted art (portable devices, wireless download), claim 6's three acts (access remote depository → request set → receive/store) read directly onto them.

4b. The "remote shuffle" / autofill combination.

• iTunes 4.9/5 "Autofill" (2005) and the iPod shuffle (Jan. 2005): a host application automatically selects and replaces the set of media items stored on a capacity-constrained portable device — the exact teaching of FIGS. 15B/15C (existing set {songs 1–7} → new set {songs 4, 6, 8–12}, retain a portion, delete the rest based on ratings/play counts/genre) — combined with (a) the admitted art and Apple's 10/987,649 wireless sync (Nov. 12, 2004) for the network transport, and (b) ordinary client-server file-download art.
• Motivation: the patent itself states the rationale: portable devices have limited storage; "prior to storing new media items, previously stored media items would normally be deleted to free-up data storage space."

4c. Remote/networked media library art. Network-attached/streaming media libraries and remote-accessible media stores (e.g., UPnP AV ContentDirectory over a WAN, personal media servers) supply "accessing a remote media depository via a data network."

Strength assessment: Strongest single target in the patent. Claim 6, as inferred, contains essentially no limitation that distinguishes it from the 2004–2005 portable-subscription services — unless the real claim recites a distinguishing feature (e.g., a "shuffle" selection criterion, a user-account authorization gate, or an instruction set accompanying the response). Action item: obtain the literal text of the independent claim covering the remote-depository branch before relying on this.

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6. Dependent-claim chart (representative limitations disclosed in the specification)

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7. Rebuttal considerations (what the patentee would argue, and how strong it is)

1. Teaching away / bodily incorporation. The patentee may argue the cited art is directed to downloading content to a device, whereas the claims require peer-to-peer exchange. Weak: the Background admits the desirability of exactly that exchange, and KSR rejects the "bodily incorporation" test.
2. Non-analogous art. The page's own "Patent Art" set is dominated by non-analogous art (optical disks, touch screens, foot pods). This actually helps the patentee by showing the examiner's cited-art field was narrow — and it means a challenger must supply new art. This is the single most important practical takeaway from the page's Prior Art section.
3. § 103(c) common ownership. As noted, the most on-point Apple references (11/324,863; 10/987,649; 11/210,172; 10/423,490) may be disqualified for § 103 by common ownership. Any combination theory must be built primarily from third-party art or from § 102 anticipation.
4. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4). Apple could point to the commercial success of the iPod/iPhone ecosystem and industry praise. However, no nexus exists between the asserted claims (generic discovery/transfer, generic remote depository access) and the iPod's commercial success — the success is attributable to design, brand, and the iTunes store, not to the claimed wireless-exchange acts. Nexus is therefore likely to fail, which neutralizes this factor.
5. Claim-drafting escape hatches. The analysis above is only as strong as the claim language. If the granted independent claims add (i) a specific "vicinity/threshold" determination, (ii) a user-interface trigger, (iii) a rights-management gate on the shared content, or (iv) a particular selection algorithm for the remote shuffle, then the appropriate art shifts and the obviousness case weakens correspondingly. The verified claim text is still missing and is the gating item.

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8. Bottom line

Two highest-value next steps:

1. Obtain the literal granted claims 1–25 (USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter for App. 11/515,270, or the granted PDF front matter). Every theory above must be re-run against the actual language; the current analysis is keyed to the specification's summary passages.
2. Retrieve the true "References Cited" list from the granted patent's front page (U.S. Patent Documents and Foreign Patent Documents columns) plus the EPO/GB search reports for the family members EP 1982504 and GB 2449783. These will show what the examiner considered and — more usefully — what a challenger may have missed. The Google Patents page as fetched did not expose this, and the Unified Patents "Patent Art (294)" set it did expose is a non-analogous similarity set, not an examination record.

Standing caveats, restated honestly: (i) the claim text was not verified; (ii) I was unable to retrieve the patent's actual citation tables in this session; (iii) the specific serial-numbered reference leads in § 5 named generically (Bluetooth OPP/FTP/SDP, UPnP AV, Napster To Go, Yahoo Music Unlimited, iMix, Shazam, iTunes Autofill) are real, publicly documented pre-2006 matter that I hold with high confidence, but the specific US publication numbers I did not personally verify are deliberately omitted rather than guessed. This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion or a freedom-to-operate/validity opinion.