US 7864163

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

Now let me check specifically for any 2026 CAFC docket activity and the independent claim text.

Let me try to pin down the exact independent claim numbers and check for any recent (2026) litigation activity.

US Patent 7,864,163 — Verification Summary

Note on identifiers: I interpreted the number literally as US 7,864,163 B2 (publication US7864163B2). All searches for that exact number returned consistent results; no results pointed to a different patent, so no correction was needed.

Bibliographic data (consistent across sources)

Sources: Google Patents US7864163B2, FreePatentsOnline 7864163, MacTech, Jan. 4, 2011.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable electronic device with a touch screen display, comprises displaying at least a portion of a structured electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the structured electronic document comprises a plurality of boxes of content, and detecting a first gesture at a location on the displayed portion of the structured electronic document. A first box in the plurality of boxes at the location of the first gesture is determined. The first box on the touch screen display is enlarged and substantially centered."

What the invention does (plain language)

This is the "double-tap to zoom into a content block" patent behind Mobile Safari. When a user taps (e.g., double-taps with a finger) on a web page shown on a touch screen, the device inspects the page's render tree to find the box of content at the tap location (a paragraph, image, table, plugin object, etc.), then zooms/translates the page so that box is enlarged — its width expanded to fill the screen — and substantially centered. Tapping a different box while zoomed re-centers on that box instead. Text is resized so it does not fall below a predetermined minimum readable size. The specification also covers swipe-to-scroll, pinch/rotate gestures, and inline multimedia playback (FIGS. 5A–5M, 6A–6C, 7A–7F, 8).

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — method claim (this is the asserted/best-known claim). A computer-implemented method at a portable device with a touch screen:

• display at least part of a web page comprising a plurality of boxes of content;
• detect a first finger tap gesture at a location on the displayed portion;
• determine the box at that tap location;
• enlarge and translate the web page so that box is substantially centered, where enlarging means expanding the box so its width is substantially the same as the screen width;
• resize text in the enlarged box to meet or exceed a predetermined minimum text size;
• while the box is enlarged, detect a second finger tap gesture on a second box; and
• in response, translate the web page so the second box is substantially centered.

(Claim 1 text as reported by StackExchange/Ask Patents and IntelPropLaw. Note that the "Summary" section of the patent quotes a broader-sounding version of the same concept; the granted claim 1 appears to carry the additional "second finger tap on a second box," width-matching and text-resizing limitations — i.e., it narrowed during prosecution.)

Claim 49 — graphical user interface claim. A GUI on a portable device with a touch screen:

• at least a portion of a structured electronic document comprising a plurality of boxes of content;
• in response to a first gesture at a location: a first box is determined; the document is enlarged and translated so the first box is substantially centered;
• while the first box is enlarged, a second gesture is detected on a second box; and
• in response, the document is translated so the second box is substantially centered.

(Text as quoted at IntelPropLaw, claim 49. This user forum quotes the issued claim verbatim, so I treat it as reliable for the claim wording, though it is not an official USPTO source.)

Other independent claims (apparatus, computer-program product, and means-plus-function). The Summary of Invention expressly recites five statutory forms: (1) the method, (2) the GUI, (3) a portable electronic device comprising a touch screen display, one or more processors, memory and programs with instructions for the same steps, (4) a computer-program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium with a program mechanism, and (5) a portable electronic device expressed as "means for" performing each step. Given 59 total claims and that the GUI claim is claim 49, the apparatus and computer-program-product independents sit between claim 1 and claim 49 (dependent claims follow each).

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: I could not authoritatively confirm the exact numbers of the apparatus / computer-program-product / "means for" independent claims (e.g., whether the device claim is claim 34, 40, or another number). Claim 1 (method) and claim 49 (GUI) are well corroborated by independent secondary sources; the numbering of the remaining independents is inferred from the patent's own summary and the total claim count, not verified against the printed claim set. Treat those numbers as unconfirmed.

Litigation / PTAB / CAFC status

• District court: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics, N.D. Cal. Case No. 5:11-cv-01846 — the '163 patent was one of the utility patents asserted (per Google Patents litigation links and IPWatchdog).
• PTAB: IPR2016-00500, filed by Intellectual Integrity, LLC against the '163 patent; Google Patents records the outcome as "Not Instituted — Merits," i.e., review was denied, and IPWatchdog notes 58 other claims (including claim 1) were left intact (IPWatchdog, Feb. 3, 2016).
• Federal Circuit appeals listed by Google Patents (all historical, tied to the Samsung dispute): 13-1129, 13-1146, 14-1335, 14-1368, 15-1029, 15-1857, 15-2088; U.S. Supreme Court No. 15-777 (the Apple v. Samsung design-patent-damages case).
• Continuation family: Google Patents lists a long chain of continuing applications claiming priority through this family, including US 8,669,950; US 9,690,446; US 10,228,815; US 10,656,778; US 11,106,326; US 11,592,952; US 11,921,969; and US 12,189,913 (2024).

⚠️ 2026 CAFC docket check — no hits. I ran targeted searches for 2026 Federal Circuit activity and found no 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or decision specifically involving US 7,864,163. The 2026 Apple-related CAFC activity that surfaced concerns different patents (e.g., Apple v. Smart Mobile Technologies over the '083/'653/'946/'075 patents; Apple v. SpaceTime3D, No. 25-1022; Apple v. Squires on PTAB Fintiv instructions) and does not reference the '163 patent. If the '163 patent has a currently pending 2026 CAFC appeal, it did not appear in the searches I ran — I cannot confirm or rule it out, and I'd recommend a direct check of the CAFC docket (e.g., by case name/patent number) and USPTO Patent Center for the authoritative record.

Reliability of sources

The bibliographic data, abstract and priority information are corroborated by Google Patents (which mirrors the printed patent) and FreePatentsOnline, which agree. Claim 1 and claim 49 wording comes from secondary sources (Ask Patents and a practitioner forum) that quote the issued claims; I have not independently verified them against the USPTO printed claim set, so treat the exact claim language as high-confidence-but-unverified. The only substantive ambiguity is the numbering of the non-GUI independent claims, flagged above.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7,864,163.

Let me dig deeper into specific cases and the PTAB challenge.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,864,163

A note on scope: The '163 patent ("Portable Electronic Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Displaying Structured Electronic Documents," filed Sept. 4, 2007; issued Jan. 4, 2011; inventors Ording et al.; assigned to Apple Inc.) was asserted in the U.S. only against Samsung — principally as claim 50 in the first Apple v. Samsung case in the Northern District of California. The extensive litigation that foreign commentators associate with the "double-tap-to-zoom" patent outside the U.S. (Germany, Netherlands, U.K., Australia, Korea, Japan) was on foreign counterparts (e.g., EP 2 078 239 / the WO 2008/030879 family), not on US 7,864,163 itself. Below I separate the district court case, the PTAB challenge, and the appellate proceedings.

1. District Court Litigation

Outcome / current status

• Aug. 24, 2012 jury verdict: Jury found Samsung infringed claim 50 of the '163 patent with all accused devices except the Captivate, Indulge, Intercept, Nexus S 4G, Transform and Vibrant (per the amended verdict, Dkt. 1931). Overall award ≈ $1.049 billion, later reduced after a § 287 notice-date JMOL and a limited damages retrial, which produced a Nov. 21, 2013 verdict of ≈ $290 million. The combined final award was $548,176,477, which Samsung paid in December 2015 while expressly reserving the right to seek reimbursement if the patents (including the '163) were later invalidated.
• Indefiniteness ruling: Samsung moved for JMOL that "substantially centered" was indefinite. The court rejected that argument and denied Samsung's post-trial motion (Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., Order Denying Post-Trial Motions, Feb. 7, 2014, Dkt. 2947; see also Dkt. 2218 addressing the '163 term). The '163 patent was not held invalid.
• Injunction: A permanent injunction tied to the utility patents (including the '163) was entered (March 2014), later modified/reversed in part on appeal.
• Superseding settlement: The worldwide dispute ended in a June 2018 settlement, and the '163 patent was never invalidated in this litigation.

No other defendant is identified in the Google Patents litigation record for the '163 patent; the N.D. Cal. docket 5:11-cv-01846 is the only U.S. district court case listed for this patent.

2. PTAB Post-Grant Proceeding (not "litigation," but directly on the '163 patent)

This is notable as it was reported (IPWatchdog, Feb. 3, 2016) as the first IPR ever filed against an Apple-owned patent, and it was an NPE's attempt to use IPR offensively against the patent underpinning the billion-dollar verdict. It failed.

3. Appellate Proceedings (Federal Circuit and Supreme Court)

Google Patents' litigation data lists the following appellate matters in this patent's family. I was able to confirm the docket numbers as listed there, but I could not independently verify (via PACER/CAFC docket text) the precise issue-by-issue scope of every one of these dockets; treat the characterizations as provisional:

The Federal Circuit's 2015 opinion in the Apple v. Samsung appeals affirmed the district court's finding that "substantially centered" was not indefinite, and the '163 patent survived appellate review. (Citation from the record: the court's decision resolving the appeal of the district court's construction of "substantially centered" in claim 50 — Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 809 F.3d 633 (Fed. Cir. 2015).)

Bottom Line

• Yes, litigation exists, but it is essentially one U.S. case: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 5:11-cv-01846 (N.D. Cal., filed Apr. 15, 2011), involving claim 50 of the '163 patent, which went to verdict (Aug. 2012; retrial Nov. 2013), through a permanent injunction, and up to the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court before the June 2018 global settlement.
• One PTAB challenge, IPR2016-00500 (Intellectual Integrity, LLC v. Apple Inc.), was filed but institution was denied (July 26, 2016).
• The '163 patent has not been invalidated in any proceeding I could identify.
• Caveat: I did not obtain a full docket-by-docket confirmation from PACER for the multiple CAFC appeal numbers listed on Google Patents; those numbers are reported as family litigation data, and I could not verify which specific appeal raised which '163 issue. Any statement above mapping a docket to a particular issue should be treated as provisional pending docket review.

I'll verify the one proceeding that appears in the public record, and reconcile it against the structured ODP block.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 7,864,163 B2

Framing note / conflict to flag up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt states, verbatim: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. Web search may surface older or recently-filed proceedings the ODP hasn't indexed yet — flag any you find — but the default should be 'no PTAB activity on file.'"

I did surface one proceeding, and it is not merely a search artifact — IPR2016-00500 appears in PTAB's own papers, was reported in the PTO Litigation Center Report, and is mirrored in Docket Alarm and by IPWatchdog and Lexology. The ODP block is therefore incomplete as to this proceeding (most plausibly because the trial closed in 2016, long before the current ODP ingest window, and no FWD ever issued). I treat the ODP block as authoritative for recent/active proceedings and the public record as authoritative for the historical one. Both are reflected below.

A second conflict: the earlier "Litigation summary" and "PTAB proceedings on file" text in this matter attributes IPR2016-00500 to "Unified Patents." The PTAB paper itself names the petitioner as Intellectual Integrity, LLC (Frisco, TX). Google Patents' litigation block is the source of the "Unified Patents" attribution, and it is wrong — the filing was an NPE's offensive IPR, reported at the time as the first-ever IPR filed against an Apple-owned patent.

Proceedings overview

One (1) AIA trial proceeding on file — 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained on the merits, 0 settled, 1 institution denied. IPR2016-00500 (Intellectual Integrity, LLC v. Apple Inc.) challenged claims 2, 50, and 52, and the Board denied institution on the merits (37 C.F.R. § 42.108) on 2016-07-26. No claim of the '163 patent has ever been canceled at the PTAB.

Bottom line for a defendant today: the patent is not "hardened" by any PTAB win, and it is equally not narrowed by any PTAB loss — it is completely untouched. All 59 original claims stand. The denial is an institution-stage merits call that produced no FWD and therefore triggered no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone. Your IPR runway is open (subject to the one-year § 315(b) bar on you and your privies), but you would be walking into a patent that a district-court jury already found infringed and that the Federal Circuit has already left standing — so the institution-stage win here should be read as a soft signal, not a stamp of validity.

IPR2016-00500 — Intellectual Integrity, LLC v. Apple Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2016-01-22 (petition filing date, per PTO Litigation Center Report and Docket Alarm; the refund notice confirms post-institution fees were paid on 01/22/2016)
• Status: Not Instituted — Merits (Decision Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review, mailed 2016-07-26, 37 C.F.R. § 42.108). Plain-English gloss: the Board did not find a reasonable likelihood of prevailing and never put the patent on trial. A Notice of Refund followed on 2016-08-02, refunding $14,000 in post-institution fees to Petitioner's deposit account — confirmation that no trial was ever instituted.
• Judge panel: Administrative Patent Judges Justin T. Arbes, Thomas L. Giannetti, and Robert L. Kinder (Kinder authored). Art unit / tech center: TC 2600.
• Petition grounds: Claims 2, 50, and 52, challenged under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (anticipation). Per the petition's own introduction: "Claims 2, 50, and 52 of the '163 Patent are Anticipated Under 35 U.S.C. … This Petition shows – compellingly – that the challenged claims are invalid and/or unpatentable over the prior art, under 35 U.S.C. § 102." Claim numbering, verbatim from the Board's decision and the petition: "Claim 2, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claims at issue… 2. A computer-implemented method, comprising: at a portable electronic device with a touch screen display; …" and "Independent Claims 50 and 52 recite devices performing the method of Claim 2, in means plus function forms." (See the conflict flag below — this contradicts the earlier "Independent claims" section of this matter.)
  • ⚠️ Unverified attribution: an earlier section of this matter asserted the ground was "based on Harada, Ex. 1008." My searches did not confirm Harada as the primary reference in IPR2016-00500; the "Harada and Roker" material I retrieved belongs to a different petition. Treat "Harada" as unverified. What I can confirm is that the petition was a § 102 anticipation challenge, and the Board's framing quoted the challenged subject matter as found in the '163 patent's own Figures 5A/5C and 19:6–20:61.
• Institution decision: DENIED — 2016-07-26. The panel's reasoning, quoted: "Having considered both the Petition and the Preliminary Response, we are not persuaded that Petitioner has demonstrated a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail in showing the unpatentability of any of claims 2, 50, and 52 of the '163 patent. Accordingly, we do not institute an inter partes review of any claim." The Board did not write a claim-by-claim merits opinion — it simply found the § 314(a) threshold unmet as to every challenged claim.
• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD issued, and none could — no trial was instituted.
• Settlement / termination: Not applicable. The proceeding ended by non-institution, not by settlement. No § 317 termination and no confidential settlement terms exist on this record.
• Appeal: None, and none legally available. Institution denials are final and nonappealable under 35 U.S.C. § 314(d). Thryv, Inc. v. Click-to-Call Technologies, LP, 140 S. Ct. 1367 (2020), and Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016), foreclose APA/§ 1295 review of the institution call. There is no Federal Circuit docket arising from IPR2016-00500. The CAFC numbers listed on Google Patents for this patent (13-1129, 13-1146, 14-1335, 14-1368, 15-1029, 15-1857, 15-2088) are appeals from Apple v. Samsung, N.D. Cal. 5:11-cv-01846 — not from this IPR. Do not let those dockets be blended with the PTAB history.
• Counsel of record (as retrieved from PTAB papers): Petitioner — Ronald W. Burns (rwburns@intellectualintegrity.net) and Kenneth Emanuelson (rossipg.com). Patent Owner (Apple) — Peter Yim, Matthew I. Kreeger, Richard S. J. Hung (Morrison & Foerster).
• Defensive value: Limited but non-zero. Claim 2, claim 50, and claim 52 each survived an institution-stage anticipation attack, so a slipshod § 102 petition built on the same art will likely fail the same way. But the denial carries no estoppel and no claim-preclusive effect, so nothing stops you from filing an IPR on any claim, including claim 1 (which was never challenged) or claims 2/50/52 on different art or a § 103 theory. Conversely, do not expect a demand letter built on claims 2, 50, or 52 to be answerable with a "that claim is already dead" argument — it isn't.

Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. Canceled: none. Sustained on the merits: none. Untested at the PTAB: all 59. Claims 2, 50, and 52 were challenged but never instituted on, which means no FWD and no adjudication of patentability — a non-institution decision is not a validity holding. Claims 1, 3–49, and 51, and 53–59 have never been placed in front of the Board at all. The practical result is that the '163 patent is fully intact across its entire claim set: the complete '163 family — including the independent method claim, the GUI claim, the device claim, and the means-plus-function claims — remains available to Apple. There is no narrowed survivor list to report because there was no narrowing.

Estoppel landscape. This is the cleanest part of the picture and it cuts for a defendant. § 315(e)(2) estoppel requires an IPR "that results in a final written decision under section 318(a)." IPR2016-00500 produced no FWD, so no estoppel attached — not to Intellectual Integrity, not to its privies, not to anyone. A prior section of this matter flagged § 315(e)(2) as the relevant framework; the correct answer under that framework here is no estoppel of any kind. The prior-art grounds are therefore fully available to every defendant today, including a § 103 combination of the kind the earlier Obviousness section proposed (Tetzchner '403 + LaunchTile/XNav + Westerman + Hinckley), and including the '163's own specification-cited prior art, so long as you are not in privity with Intellectual Integrity. The one hard constraint is 35 U.S.C. § 315(b): anyone served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '163 patent more than one year ago — Samsung and its privies above all — is time-barred from petitioning. If you were just served, the clock is running.

Pattern signals. Minimal and non-repetitive. Same petitioner, multiple IPRs: no — Intellectual Integrity filed a single petition against the '163 and no follow-on. Patent owner appeal aggression: no — Apple had nothing to appeal, and Thryv would have blocked it anyway. Defensive aggregator in the chain: no — the patent sits with Apple Inc.; the only "Unified Patents" appearance is a Google Patents indexing attribution error on IPR2016-00500, not a real party. Litigation-stage estoppel/IPR-stopwatch: none created. The more telling signal is the silence since 2016: a patent that carried a billion-dollar verdict and that the Federal Circuit has already reviewed has attracted exactly one IPR in ten years, and that one came from a non-practicing entity with no products and no standing incentive to litigate to judgment. That is not a validity endorsement — it is a comment on the economics of attacking Apple's flagship GUI patent.

Recommended next steps

• No claims are invalidated, so there is no FWD to cite. If you are a defendant, you cannot point to a cancellation and say the demand letter has no case. The honest position is: "The '163 patent has never been narrowed at the PTAB; its only IPR was denied institution for failure to meet the § 314(a) threshold, which is not a validity ruling." Cite the denial if you want to show the art of record has been tested and found thin: IPR2016-00500, Paper 12, Decision Denying Institution (2016-07-26), https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-00500/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7864163/docs/07-26-2016-Board/Institution_Decision-12-Decision___Denying_Institution_of_Inter_Partes_Review.pdf — verify against the official copy in PTAB E2E at https://e2e.uspto.gov (the authoritative source) and the PTAB Decisions portal at https://www.uspto.gov/PTAB.
• There are no active proceedings, so there are no trial-stage milestones to track — no institution deadline, no oral hearing, no 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD clock is running. Nothing is pending. If you want a PTAB track, you would have to create it.
• Because the "no PTAB activity" default in the structured data is wrong here, do not rely on it again for this patent. Pull the proceeding directly from PTAB E2E (search by patent number 7864163), and reconcile the full docket — my retrieval of the docket was partial, so confirm whether any request for rehearing of the institution denial was filed after 2016-07-26 (37 C.F.R. § 42.71(d)). My searches found none, but I could not verify a complete docket and I am not asserting a negative I cannot prove.
• Before drafting a petition, fix the claim-numbering problem flagged in the prior sections. The Board's decision and the petition both treat claim 2 as the independent method claim and claims 50 and 52 as independent device (means-plus-function) claims. That contradicts the earlier "Independent claims" section of this matter, which identifies claim 1 as the method claim and claim 49 as the GUI claim. One of those is wrong, and a petition that charts the wrong claim is sanction-bait. Pull the printed claim set from USPTO PatentCenter and the FWD-referenced portion of the '163 specification (19:6–20:61) before filing anything.
• Mind the clock. Adjusted expiration is 2029-07-23 per the record. That is under three years out — short runway for an institution decision (6 months from filing), a trial (12 months from institution), and an appeal. If you are going to file, file now.

I'll verify the assignment record before writing anything. Let me pull the relevant sources.

Let me try to pull the actual USPTO assignment records and the litigation/PTAB history.

Let me try to nail down the actual reel/frame records and the anomalous 2011 reassignment entry.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 7,864,163 B2

Patent: US 7,864,163 B2 — "Portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying structured electronic documents"
App. No.: 11/850,013 · Filed: 2007-09-04 · Issued: 2011-01-04 · Priority: 2006-09-06 (Prov. 60/824,769)
Assignee of record on the face of the patent: Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA
Adjusted expiration (per Google Patents legal status): 2029-07-23

Retrieval caveat (read first). I could not machine-retrieve the live USPTO Assignment Center abstract of title for this patent. Assignment Center is a JavaScript application and my tooling returned search-indexed documents rather than the reel/frame-level record. The assignment events below are taken from the Google Patents legal-events block for US 7,864,163, which is derived from the same USPTO assignment database. I have therefore deliberately left reel/frame and correspondent fields marked as "not retrieved" rather than guess. Do not read a blank as "no record." Verify at the Assignment Center search below before relying on it.

Inventors

All eight named inventors were Apple employees at the time of filing (September 2007). The invention is the "tap‑to‑zoom / box‑centering" behavior of Mobile Safari.

Unusual-pattern check — not present. The classic fire-sale precursor (all inventors departing the original assignee within ~12 months of filing) does not apply here. The well-documented departures are years later and involve no transfer of rights:

• Scott Forstall left Apple in October 2012 — ~5 years after the 2007-09-04 filing (high confidence).
• Imran Chaudhri left Apple in 2016 (later co-founding Humane) — ~9 years after filing (medium confidence).

I did not find evidence of any inventor departure within 12 months of filing, and no inventor appears as an assignor to anyone other than Apple in the record I retrieved. Treat the specific later departure dates as background, not as chain-of-title evidence.

Original assignee

Apple Inc. (California corporation; formerly Apple Computer, Inc. until the January 9, 2007 name change; 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014).

• Product embodying the claims: Yes. Mobile Safari on iPhone/iOS implements the claimed "tap a box of content → enlarge and substantially center that box" behavior. This is not an abstract-licensing patent; the commercial product predates the patent's issuance and is the reason it was asserted.
• Primary line of business: consumer electronics, software and services (hardware/OS/browser vendor).
• Current status: operating, publicly traded (NASDAQ: AAPL). No bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11, no assignment for the benefit of creditors at any point in this patent's life.

Note on corporate name: Apple Computer, Inc. → Apple Inc. was effected January 9, 2007, before this application was filed. I saw a corroborating change-of-name record (executed 2007-01-09, recorded 2007-01-26, reel 3469/0307) but only inside a trademark-side USPTO filing, so I cannot tie it to this patent number. I flag it as entity-level context only.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded conveyance events exist, both naming Apple Inc. as assignee. There is no recorded transfer of this patent away from Apple — no shell LLC, no licensing entity, no security agreement, no release, no asserter.

• 2008-05-20 (recorded) — execution date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved/\\\\\\/\\\\

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Ording, Bas; Forstall, Scott; Blumenberg, Chris; Chaudhri, Imran; Christie, Greg; Lemay, Stephen O.; van Os, Marcel; Williamson, Richard (assignor list as printed in the Google Patents legal-events record)
  • Assignee: Apple Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center not machine-retrievable; no correspondent name surfaced in indexed sources)
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment taken ~8 months after the 2007-09-04 filing, consolidating title in Apple ahead of prosecution. Not a reorg, not a securitization, not a sale.

• 2011-02-02 (recorded) — execution date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved/\\\\\\/\\\\

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (same "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST" recital)
  • Assignor: Boule, Andre M.J.
  • Assignee: Apple Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: anomalous — flag for manual verification. Andre M.J. Boule is not a named inventor of US 7,864,163. Two benign explanations fit: (a) a single recorded assignment instrument covering multiple Apple properties (the '163 among them) signed by a different assignor, or (b) a Google Patents indexing artifact associating a neighbouring record with this patent number. I found no evidence this is a transfer away from Apple — the assignee field is Apple in both events. Verify the assignor/assignee fields and the reel/frame against Assignment Center before drawing any conclusion.

If the Assignment Center abstract of title turns out to contain additional entries (e.g., a later release or correction), that would be a finding not visible in the indexed sources I could reach. I am stating plainly that I did not find them.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7864163
    2006 : Priority provisional filed by Apple
    2007 : Nonprovisional filed by Apple
         : Inventors assign rights to Apple
    2008 : Inventor assignment recorded
    2011 : Patent issued to Apple
         : Second record names Apple as assignee
         : Apple sues Samsung in N D Cal
    2012 : Jury finds Samsung infringes
    2016 : IPR filed by Intellectual Integrity
         : IPR denied institution
    2029 : Adjusted expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
No assignment to any entity whose name ends in IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures exists in this record. The only two recorded conveyance events both name Apple Inc. as assignee (2008-05-20 and 2011-02-02). A single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC never appears as assignee. Reel/frame not retrieved, so this is a call on the assignee fields only — but every assignee field I can see is Apple.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
Apple Inc. is not on any RPX/Unified/Patent Progress high-frequency-plaintiff list; it is the operating company here. Critically: Intellectual Integrity, LLC (Frisco, TX) appears in this patent's history as the IPR petitioner, not as an owner. Per IPWatchdog, IPR2016-00500 (filed late January 2016) was filed by Intellectual Integrity, LLC against Apple's '163 patent and was not instituted on the merits. A PTAB challenger is a party attacking the patent, not a link in the chain of title. Do not conflate the two. (Google Patents' PTAB block lists IPR2016-00500 as "Not Instituted – Merits"; Docket Alarm lists the patent owner as Apple Inc.)

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not assessable; no recurrence found.
I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either conveyance, so I cannot run the repeat-correspondent test this prompt asks for. I am not going to invent an attorney name. This is a real gap in the analysis and the single highest-value thing to pull manually from Assignment Center. Note that the signal is defined as recurrence; with only two recorded events and no retrieved correspondents, there is nothing to recur.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
There are zero post-issuance transfers. The last recorded conveyance is 2011-02-02, roughly two months after the 2011-01-04 grant, and it is a conveyance to the original assignee. No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent addresses, no common principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present, with one timing note.
The first infringement action naming this patent is Apple Inc. v. [Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.), No. 5:11-cv-01846 (N.D. Cal.), filed April 2011 (docket surfaced via the Unified Patents litigation feed). The 2011-02-02 recorded conveyance therefore falls inside the six-month pre-suit window. However, that conveyance is to Apple, the operating company that built the product — it perfects Apple's own standing rather than arranging a hand-off to an asserter. The signal as defined (chain arranged to enable assertion by a non-practicing entity) is not present.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11, receivership, or §363 sale involving Apple or this property. Apple remained solvent throughout.

7. Privateering — not present.
Apple never transferred the '163 patent to a proxy. It enforced the patent in its own name against Samsung. No SEC disclosure, Patent Progress or EFF coverage indicating a proxy assertion.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with Apple. (Inverse note: "Unified Patents" appears in this space only as a petitioner in other Apple-related IPRs, e.g. the MemoryWeb '228 dispute — not as an assignee of the '163.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Apple Inc. is the assignee of record on the issued patent and on both recorded conveyance events (2008-05-20 and 2011-02-02, both naming Apple Inc. as assignee; reel/frame not retrieved). Apple ships products embodying the claims — Mobile Safari's tap-to-zoom — and asserted the '163 patent in its own name against an actual competitor, Samsung, in N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846, where the August 24, 2012 jury found infringement of claim 50 of the '163 patent across numerous Samsung devices as part of a ~$1.05B award. The patent was separately challenged at the PTAB by Intellectual Integrity, LLC in IPR2016-00500, which was not instituted — a challenge to Apple's title, not a transfer of it. Chain-of-title evidence is thin (original assignment records only), but every independent record — district court, PTAB, and the continuing Apple family through US 12,189,913 (2024) — shows Apple as owner throughout.

Signals present: none of the eight NPE signals is present; signals 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are affirmatively not present, and signal 3 (repeat correspondent) is not assessable for lack of retrieved correspondent data.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent number 7864163): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy USPTO assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (source of the two conveyance dates): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7864163/en
• PTAB proceeding IPR2016-00500 (petitioner Intellectual Integrity, LLC; not instituted): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2016-00500
• District court action 5:11-cv-01846 (N.D. Cal.): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/5%3A11-cv-01846

Two items to pull manually before filing this report: (1) the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent of record for both conveyance events; (2) confirmation of whether the 2011-02-02 record is a multi-property instrument (explaining the non-inventor assignor "Boule") or an indexing artifact. Neither item changes the verdict, but both are open gaps in the record above.

I'll research this patent and its prior art citations. Let me search for authoritative information.

Let me retrieve the specific prior-art references cited on the face of this patent.

Let me get the actual front-page "References Cited" listing from a full-text source.

Scope, sources, and a required caveat

What I searched. I queried for the specific patent number 7864163 and for its citation records (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Espacenet, USPTO/PTAB filings, and litigation exhibits in Apple v. Samsung, N.D. Cal.).

Caveat you should not skip. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim, printed "References Cited" (PTO‑892) list from the face of US 7,864,163 in these searches. The Google Patents page returned to me contained the specification, classifications, family, and litigation data, but the front‑page citation table did not come through. Rather than reconstruct that list from memory and risk inventing numbers, I am giving you the references that are documented in the public record as prior art actually relied upon against this patent (litigation invalidity contentions and the PTAB petition), plus the seminal references in the same art. Each is flagged for confidence, and I separate what I can verify from what I cannot.

Do not treat this as the complete PTO‑892 list. If you need the exact front page, pull the patent PDF (or the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" tab) directly.

1. Patent identification (ground truth from the patent text)

Claim 1 (as quoted in the public record) is a tap‑to‑zoom method: display a web page comprising a plurality of boxes of content; detect a first finger tap at a location; determine a first box at that location; enlarge and translate the web page to substantially center the first box, where enlarging expands the first box's width to substantially the touch‑screen width; resize text in the enlarged first box to a predetermined minimum text size; while the first box is enlarged, detect a second finger tap on a second box; and translate the web page to substantially center the second box. Dependent claims add: structured document = web page / HTML or XML; boxes defined by a Cascading Style Sheet; scaling document width to the display; render‑tree traversal down to the tapped node and up to the closest logical grouping (paragraph, image, plugin object, table; replaced inline / block / inline block / inline table); simultaneous zoom + translate; animated zoom; the 18‑point minimum‑text / scale‑factor arithmetic; a third gesture that reverses the enlargement; a third gesture that centers a second box (see claims 27–29, which depend from claim 2); swipe‑to‑scroll (vertical/horizontal/diagonal, 27° cone); 90° rotation via twist gesture; 90° rotation via accelerometer; and multi‑finger de‑pinch zoom.

(Note on claim numbering: my mapping of claim numbers is solid only for claim 1 and for claims 27–29, which are quoted verbatim in the Samsung invalidity exhibit below. Other dependent claims are described by subject matter, not by asserted number.)

2. Most‑relevant prior art, reference by reference

A. Choi — U.S. Pat. No. 6,211,856 B1 (the strongest § 102 reference on the core tap‑to‑zoom concept)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 6,211,856 B1, "Graphical user interface touch screen with an auto zoom feature," Sung M. Choi and Jan van Ee. Application Ser. No. 09/062,364, filed Apr. 17, 1998; issued Apr. 3, 2001. PCT counterpart published as WO 99/54807.
• Description (verified from the reference's own text quoted in PTAB exhibit material): A touch‑screen GUI in which an entire collection of icons/web content is displayed at a scale where functions are recognizable but too small to access. When the user touches the screen area accommodating an item, the system renders a zoomed‑in version of that area — "the portion of the image underneath the touched location is enlarged and displayed." The patentee expressly extended "auto‑zoom" beyond icons "to the rendering of any kind of graphical information," including web pages on handhelds with LCD touch screens: the page is displayed in its entirety (scaled down), and when the user touches a location, the portion centered around the touch location is magnified, preferably through animation. It also describes zooming a keyboard icon so the touched area "becomes large enough to fill the screen," and scrolling/magnifying across the keyboard.
• Potential § 102 anticipation:
  • Claim 1: discloses displaying a structured document content area on a touch screen → detecting a touch/tap at a location → determining the touched content area → enlarging it centered on the touch location, with animation. This maps onto the "determine first box at the gesture location" + "enlarge and substantially center" limitations, and the width‑to‑display "fill the screen" teaching maps onto the width‑expansion limitation. Choi does not, on its face, disclose the "second finger tap on a second box" limitation of granted claim 1 — so it anticipates the broader original/independent concept and the GUI/product/CRM claims' core, and is at minimum a § 103 base for claim 1.
  • Dependent claims reciting simultaneous zoom + translate and animated zoom — directly anticipated (Choi: "gradually changing layout" animation on zoom‑in around the touch point).
  • Confidence: high that the reference exists and says the above (quoted at length in PTAB/litigation exhibits); the specific claim mapping is my analysis.

B. Henckel et al. — U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,725 (and its sibling 5,463,726)

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,725, Henckel et al. (filed Dec. 31, 1992; issued Oct. 31, 1995) — the touch‑screen GUI reference expressly incorporated by reference into Choi '856. (Analogous: U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,726 to Price.)
• Description: Touch‑screen GUI processing control flow; disclosed "an example of a GUI with touch screen functionality" (Choi, col. 2:54‑57). Teaches the touch‑screen interaction substrate, not the zooming.
• Potential § 102: Weak alone. Best used as a § 103 secondary reference to supply touch‑screen selection of displayed regions for the "detecting a gesture on the displayed portion" limitation. Not an anticipation reference for the box‑zoom claims.

C. Pad++ / zoomable‑user‑interface family (Bederson, Hollan, Perlin) — the key "structured document + zoom" art

• Full citations (as cited in PTAB/IPR papers):
  • Bederson, B.B., Hollan, J.D., Perlin, K., Meyer, J., Bacon, D., Furnas, G., "Pad++: A Zoomable Graphical Sketchpad for Exploring Alternate Interface Physics," Journal of Visual Languages and Computing (1996) 7, 3–31.
  • Bederson, Hollan, Stewart, Rogers, Druin, Vick, "A Zooming Web Browser," Proc. SPIE Conference on Multimedia Computing and Networking, 1996.
  • Bederson, B.B. et al., "Implementing a Zooming User Interface: Experience Building Pad++" (retrieved from NYU Media Research Lab).
  • Perlin, K. and Fox, D., "Pad: An Alternative Approach to the Computer Interface," SIGGRAPH '93 (1993).
• Description: Pad++ is a "zoomable user interface" (ZUI) platform permitting dynamic display, navigation and manipulation of graphical representations of stored data on a zoomable virtual surface, with level‑of‑detail changing on zoom. Pad++ includes a multiscale web browser that reads hypertext written in HTML and follows links across the Internet, with zooming mechanisms in place of traditional navigation. It also provides directory‑browser and semantic‑zoom capabilities.
• Potential § 102 anticipation:
  • "structured electronic document is a web page / HTML or XML" claim elements, and the general enlarge‑a‑portion‑of‑a‑web‑page‑to‑make‑it‑legible limitation — Pad++ discloses HTML web browsing under a zooming interface.
  • Not a standalone anticipator of claim 1, because Pad++ does not disclose a (touch‑screen) finger tap gesture as the trigger. Its proper role is § 103: Pad++ (structured‑document zoom) in view of Choi '856 or another touch‑screen‑tap reference.
  • Confidence: high on content; Pad++ was relied on in related Apple IPRs (e.g., the Pad++/Hara combinations in PTAB petitions against sibling Apple patents).

D. LaunchTile (and the XNav system) — the reference Samsung actually asserted against '163

• Full citation: Karlson, A.K., Bederson, B.B., SanGiovanni, J., "AppLens and LaunchTile: Two Designs for One‑Handed Thumb Use on Small Devices," CHI 2005 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), April 2005 — the "LaunchTile Publication." Asserted together with the LaunchTile System and the XNav System as prior‑art systems/devices.
• Evidence of record: In Apple v. Samsung, N.D. Cal. Case No. 5:11‑cv‑01820/‑01846 (gov.uscourts.cand.239768, Doc. 1681‑16), Samsung's invalidity chart maps US 7,864,163 claims 27, 28 and 29 — and the swipe‑to‑scroll and device‑orientation claims — to LaunchTile/XNav, quoting the publication:
  • "LaunchTile divides the screen area into 4 equally sized application tiles" (tap a 2x2 zone or 1x2 box);
  • "Once an application is launched, three dedicated System buttons … A green Home button immediately zooms the view out to the Home screen";
  • dragging/panning the "zoomspace" "on rails," permitting the user to drag vertically and horizontally, but not diagonally;
  • the first and third gestures are a single tap.
• Potential § 102 anticipation (per Samsung's chart):
  • Claim 27 (third gesture on the enlarged second box → reduce the size of the displayed portion): the Home button zoom‑out.
  • Claim 28 (first box returns to its pre‑enlargement size): Home‑button zoom out returns to the original 36‑tile "zoom space."
  • Claim 29 (third gesture and first gesture are the same type): both single taps.
  • Swipe/pan claims (translating the displayed document; horizontal/vertical/diagonal movement): LaunchTile "on‑rail" dragging.
  • Confidence: high that this is the documented prior art actually mapped to '163's later claims (it is quoted in the court exhibit); the reference is a printed publication (CHI 2005) plus two prior‑use systems, both prior to the 2006‑09‑06 priority date.

E. Baudisch et al. — "Collapse‑to‑Zoom"

• Full citation: Baudisch, P., Lee, B., Hanna, A., "Collapse‑to‑Zoom: Viewing Web Pages on Small Screen Devices by Interactively Removing Irrelevant Content," ACM UIST 2004, Oct. 24–27, 2004, 5 pgs. (cited in the IDS/references family of Apple's related US 10,222,943).
• Description: On a small display, the user taps a block/region of a web page, irrelevant content is removed, and the tapped content is enlarged to fill the screen — i.e., block‑level selection of structured web content and enlargement on tap.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: the "determine a first box … at the location of the gesture" and "expand the first box so that its width is substantially the same as the width of the touch screen display" limitations of claim 1, and the "plurality of boxes of content" concept. Baudisch is desktop/PDA‑stylus oriented; used alone it is a § 102/§ 103 reference for the block‑selection‑and‑fill limitations and a strong § 103 partner with a touch‑tap reference (Choi) for claim 1.
• Confidence: high on the paper's existence and content; moderate on which Apple docket its IDS citation appears in.

F. Click‑to‑zoom web‑page references (WO 02/101567 → JP 2005‑507102 A)

• Full citation: WO 02/101567 A3 (PCT, published 2003‑02‑27, "Date of publication of the international search report") and its national‑phase publication JP 2005‑507102 A (published Mar. 10, 2005).
• Description (from the flowchart reproduced in the JP publication): "clickzoom"; access a web page's contents; perform layout; display all or a portion of the layout at a first scale; enable the user to click/tap a location; in response to a tap, replace the first‑scale layout display with a display at a larger scale of the portion of the layout that includes the tapped position, at substantially the same position on the screen; move the "cursor" with touch movement; and return to the first‑scale layout on release. Also covers semantic‑zoom text/string representation at small scale.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: the tap‑a‑web‑page‑location → zoom that portion in place core of claim 1, plus the animating/translating during zoom and scaling to fit concepts.
• Confidence: moderate. The OCR of the JP cover page is garbled, so I am not certifying the applicant or the exact WO bibliographic data. Verify the WO/JP numbers against Espacenet before relying on this reference.

G. Other art that appears in the family's citation environment (listed so you can pull the real PTO‑892)

These appear in the citation lists of Apple's closely related structured‑document/zoom patents (e.g., US 10,860,198; US 10,222,943) and are the kind of references you should expect on the '163 face page. I have not verified that each is on the '163 front page, so treat them as leads: US 2003/0080972 A1 (Gersten); US 2004/0027460 A1 (Morita); US 2004/0255244 A1 (Filner et al.); US 2005/0022130 A1 (Fabritius); US 2005/0022186 A1 (Carro et al.); US 2005/0057524 A1 (Hill et al.); US 2005/0154578 A1 (Chambers et al.); US 2005/0210403 A1 (Satanek); US 2005/0262450 A1 (Stammann); US 2005/0278566 A1 (Goldfwaite et al.).

3. Bottom line — how each reference maps to § 102

Practical conclusion: Choi '856 is the single most relevant reference for the novel core of '163 (tap a location on a displayed document and zoom that content in, centered, with animation), and LaunchTile + XNav is the reference set that the public record shows was actually mapped to the patent's later dependent claims (27–29) and the panning/orientation claims. Pad++ and Baudisch "Collapse‑to‑Zoom" fill the "structured document / boxes / full‑width enlargement" limitations. A § 102 anticipation of granted claim 1 as a whole is harder, because claim 1 also requires the second finger tap on a second box and the text‑minimum‑size‑with‑scale‑factor step; those are more likely to be attacked as § 103 combinations.

4. What I could not verify (stated explicitly)

• The exact, verbatim "References Cited" / PTO‑892 listing printed on the face of US 7,864,163.
• Whether the granted claim 1 text I quoted is the pre‑ or post‑reexamination/reexam‑certificate version; the version quoted comes from a third‑party claim‑1 reproduction, and the abstract/summary in the patent text is the broader "determine a first box … enlarge and substantially center" formulation.
• The applicant/assignee and exact publication data for WO 02/101567 (OCR degraded).

If you want, I can next attempt a targeted retrieval of the patent PDF/PatentCenter "References Cited" tab to reconcile the printed citation list against the litigation‑relied‑upon art above.

I'll first pull the prior-art references associated with this patent before running the obviousness analysis.

Let me dig into the specific prior-art references of record and the PTAB challenge.

Let me pin down the actual claim set and the examiner-cited references of record.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,864,163 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 7,864,163 B2 ("'163"), Portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying structured electronic documents
Appl. No.: 11/850,013 · Filed: 2007‑09‑04 · Granted: 2011‑01‑04 · Priority (as listed): 2006‑09‑06 · Assignee: Apple Inc.
Source of record used here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7864163/en

Evidentiary caveat up front (per operating rules): the fetched text of this Google Patents page contains the "Prior Art" keywords (gesture, touch screen, screen display, box, electronic document) and the litigation/PTAB history, but not the enumerated "Patent Citations" / "Non‑Patent Citations" lists or the full claim text. Where I rely on claim language or on prior art not present in the fetched page, I identify the source and flag my confidence. I have not verified reference-by-reference filing/grant dates; treat all § 102 date statements as requiring verification.

1. What the page's own "Prior Art" section tells us

The four "Prior art keywords" are effectively a one-to-one map of the claim elements: gesture (detection step), touch screen (the display), box (the "box of content"), electronic document (the document). That is itself an admission that the invention sits at the intersection of four mature fields — touch gesture recognition, touch-screen rendering, CSS-box document layout, and web browsing. The page also records that this family was the subject of Apple v. Samsung, N.D. Cal. 5:11‑cv‑01846, multiple CAFC appeals, and IPR2016‑00500 (listed on the page as "Not Instituted – Merits"; IPWatchdog identifies the petitioner as Intellectual Integrity, LLC of Frisco, TX — note the page attributes the petition to "Unified Patents." I do not auto-reconcile that discrepancy; both identifiers are reported as found).

• https://ipwatchdog.com/2016/02/03/first-apple-patent-challenged-at-ptab-touch-to-zoom/
• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2016-00500

2. The claims at issue — and a genuine textual conflict

Secondary sources quote two materially different versions of claim 1, and the fetched page does not contain the claims section. I reproduce both literally rather than picking one:

Version A ("structured electronic document") — quoted at https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/260/ : displaying at least a portion of a structured electronic document comprising a plurality of boxes of content; detecting a first gesture at a location; determining a first box at that location; enlarging and translating so the first box is substantially centered; while the first box is enlarged, detecting a second gesture on a second box; translating so the second box is substantially centered. (This version is consistent with the '163 abstract, which the fetched page does contain.)

Version B ("web page") — quoted at https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/394/ : same preamble but reciting web page, first finger tap gesture, enlarging comprising expanding the first box so that the width of the first box is substantially the same as the width of the touch screen display, resizing text in the enlarged first box to meet or exceed a predetermined minimum text size, and a second finger tap gesture on a second box.

The litigation record uses a claim-numbering consistent with neither quotation exactly: Samsung's charts and Dr. Singh's reports address "Claim 2" as the gesture/determine/enlarge-and-translate claim, "Claim 4" as "the structured electronic document is a web page," and "Claim 6" as document-width-to-display-width scaling (see https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.[239768](/patent/239768)/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.1681.19.pdf and https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/[239768/1351](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=239768-1351)/8.pdf). I therefore analyze at the limitation level, not the claim-number level. Anyone filing a § 103 challenge must confirm the as-issued claim text against the USPTO copy first.

3. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA would be someone with a B.S. in CS/EE (or equivalent) and ~2–3 years' experience in handheld/GUI software or web-browser rendering, or equivalent work experience. Critically, such a person would be familiar with (a) the CSS box model and DOM/render-tree hit-testing, (b) multi-touch gesture recognition, and (c) small-screen ("fit-to-width") browser reformatting. All three are 1990s–early-2000s arts.

4. Prior art of record available for combination

5. Proposed § 103 combinations

Ground 1 — Tetzchner '403 + LaunchTile/XNav + Westerman + Hinckley '102

Covers: all of Version A and elements 2.1–2.5 and 2.7–2.8 of Version B.

Motivation: Both references target the same problem — reading and navigating content on a small display where the document is larger than the screen. Tetzchner supplies the rendering/element-width solution; LaunchTile supplies the gesture-driven zoom/re-center interaction and expressly states a one-handed-use rationale. Combining them is the predictable juxtaposition of a known rendering technique with a known navigation gesture, producing no more than the expected result (KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398, 416–17 (2007): "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill… would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious").

Ground 2 — Van Ee '699 + Robbins '349 + LaunchTile/XNav

Van Ee teaches an overview/detail browser on a small display; Robbins/Flynt supply element-level (block) rendering and selection; LaunchTile supplies the touch-gesture enlarge/translate/re-center. Motivation: sequential "detail-on-demand" drill-down is a classic HCI principle; a POSITA seeking to remove nested panning/scrollbars on a handheld would naturally combine a known zoom-into-selected-region UI with a known document-block model.

Ground 3 — Flynt '632 / Choi '856 / Agnetta + LaunchTile/XNav + Hinckley '102

Same architecture as Grounds 1–2 but substituting the document-modeling and orientation references Samsung actually charted. (I cannot verify the disclosures of Flynt, Choi, or Agnetta; this ground is asserted provisionally.)

Ground 4 — Knowledge-based combination / "two lists" theory

The strongest conceptual argument, advanced in the Ask Patents thread: the claim is the pairing of (i) a known gesture from a closed menu (single tap, double tap, drag, pinch — see Westerman and the incorporated Apple gesture applications) with (ii) a known function from a closed menu (zoom, pan, center, reflow — see LaunchTile, Van Ee, Tetzchner). Per KSR, "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." The two-list argument must still be tied to a concrete reason for selecting tap-to-zoom-into-a-block, or it risks a hindsight objection.

6. Consolidated motivations to combine (KSR-aligned)

1. Same field, same problem — all references address handheld browsing/readability; no field-crossing leap.
2. Design incentive: eliminate horizontal scrolling and nested pan/zoom on small screens; keep text legible.
3. One-handed / thumb operation — LaunchTile's stated design goal; a known ergonomic driver.
4. Reduced need for precise multi-touch input — replacing pinch/pan with a single coarse tap is a recognized usability improvement for finger (versus stylus) input, which the '163 itself acknowledges.
5. Predictable, verifiable result — zooming/fitting a selected block has no unexpected interaction between elements.
6. Sequential drill-down is a known paradigm — re-centering on the newly tapped block is the natural continuation of the first centering operation, so the "second gesture" limitation is not an inventive leap but the same operation applied again (the '163 specification itself describes the same gesture "initiat[ing] different actions in different contexts").

7. Where the prima facie case is weak (and why it matters)

An honest analysis must record that this art has actually been tested, and the patent survived:

1. The "same document" / "different content" problem. Apple's expert argued that LaunchTile/XNav display entirely different content at the World, Zone and Application levels — the phone icon becomes a call list, unimplemented apps display "Application Under Construction" — so transitioning levels is substitution, not "enlarg[ing] and translat[ing]" the same structured electronic document as required. That argument was accepted, and Samsung's LaunchTile/XNav invalidity theory failed at trial. See https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/[239768/1351](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=239768-1351)/8.pdf and https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/[4178089/1024](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=4178089-1024)/4/apple-inc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd/.
2. Fixed zoomspace vs. arbitrary documents. LaunchTile operates on 36 pre-laid-out application tiles; the '163 claims require the device to determine a box from an arbitrary document's structure. That gap is the real invention, and Grounds 1–3 must bridge it with an explicit, non-conclusory teaching (Robbins/Flynt or POSITA knowledge of the CSS box model) rather than assumption.
3. "Closest parent node containing a logical grouping of content." The specific render-tree traversal (down to the hit node, up to the closest parent that is a replaced inline, block, inline block, or inline table) is the element least clearly met by the art — and the one most likely to be argued as the point of novelty.
4. "Predetermined minimum text size" (Version B). I could not verify, from the prior art of record, a reference expressly teaching a minimum-font-size floor applied to the enlarged box. Candidate sources a challenger would need to develop: mobile-browser font-inflation/text-size-adjust practice, W3C/WAI legibility guidance, and PDF/HTML reflow art. This is the most vulnerable limitation to a "no disclosure, hindsight only" rebuttal.
5. IPR2016‑00500 was not instituted on the merits (per the page), i.e., the art as presented did not establish a reasonable likelihood of unpatentability of the challenged claims.
6. The Opera article date cuts against the challenger. The Ask Patents thread suggests an Opera Mini article dated 2007‑08‑31 as prior art, but the '163's priority is 2006‑09‑06; a 2007 publication post-dates both the priority date and the one-year § 102(b) bar. That reference is likely not available art absent a successful priority challenge.
7. Objective indicia. Apple would assert commercial success of Mobile Safari/iPhone, industry copying (Samsung's own manuals depict tap-to-zoom, per the KIPI materials), and the failure of others. Any post-KSR challenge must address these.

8. Bottom line

• Most likely to succeed on the merits: a combination of Tetzchner US 2004/0107403 A1 (small-screen, fit-to-width rendering of web pages) + LaunchTile Publication / XNav (touch gesture → enlarge, translate, re-center) + Westerman multi-touch patents (admitted, incorporated-by-reference art) + Hinckley US 7,289,102 (orientation-matched width), with an expert opinion that the CSS box model / render-tree hit-testing supplied the "plurality of boxes of content" and "determine a first box at the location" limitations as POSITA-level knowledge.
• The fulcrum is limitations 2.5–2.6 and the render-tree limitation: "expand the box to the display width," "predetermined minimum text size," and "up to the closest parent node containing a logical grouping." Unless the challenger produces a concrete reference or reasoned design-choice rationale for the minimum-text-size floor and bridges LaunchTile's fixed zoomspace to arbitrary structured documents, the combination is likely to be rejected as hindsight — exactly the outcome the district court and the PTAB's non-institution decision produced.
• Before filing anything: confirm (i) the as-issued claim text (the Version A / Version B conflict above), (ii) the § 102 dates and 102(e) availability of Robbins, Flynt, Choi, and Agnetta, and (iii) whether any claim is entitled to the 2006‑09‑06 provisional date, since the entire Opera-based theory turns on that date.