US 7865182

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

Let me search specifically for litigation and any 2026 appellate activity.

Let me check the 2026 Federal Circuit docket (Bambuser v. SITO Mobile) and confirm which patents are involved.

US Patent 7,865,182 — Summary

Identification (interpreted literally as provided): U.S. Patent No. 7,865,182 B2; application 12/505,306. I did not return results for any similar-but-different number; all findings below are tied to 7,865,182 specifically.

Bibliographic data

Family members sharing the same 2003-10-08 priority include US 8,862,115; US 10,368,214; US 10,735,920; US 11,272,332; US 11,540,094; and US 11,770,687.

Assignee caveat: the record shows a dense chain of assignments and security interests (Fortress Credit Co LLC, TAR SITO LENDCO LLC, Fast Pay Partners LLC, SITO Mobile Ltd.), so the current owner is best treated as uncertain without a fresh USPTO Assignment search.

Abstract

"Techniques and systems for providing services to a mobile device allow settings on the mobile device to be provisioned over the air. In response to a request for mobile service subscription options received from the mobile device, data relating to mobile service subscription options, for selection by a user of the mobile device, may be sent to the mobile device over a wireless communication path. A selection of one or more subscription options may be received from the mobile device over the wireless communication path, and a service corresponding to the selected subscription options may be activated in response to the selection. Settings associated with the selected subscription options may be downloaded over the air to the mobile device, which may store the settings to enable the mobile device to access the subscription."

Independent claim 1 — plain language

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. In ordinary terms, it covers a four-step server-side method of provisioning phone settings:

1. Receive a user selection from a mobile device — specifically a service provider and at least one associated mobile service subscription that includes a mobile calling plan — chosen from choices of providers and subscription choices (including choices to initiate or modify the calling plan) that were presented to the device.
2. Receive information associating the mobile device with the selected service (the service being one that enables wireless communications over a wireless network).
3. Identify settings data for that selected service from a database containing settings data for a plurality of services.
4. Send the identified settings data to the mobile device over a wireless communication link, where the settings are configured to change the device's operational settings so it is operable with the selected service provider.

Note the claim's scope is narrower than the abstract: claim 1 expressly requires (a) a user selection and (b) both a carrier and a calling plan, and (c) identification from a multi-service settings database. Also note an internal-drafting quirk: claims 5–6 refer to "the application on the mobile device," though claim 1 does not itself recite an "application."

Dependent claims (2–7) — plain language

• Claim 2: the settings data comprises a preferred roaming list (PRL) for the selected provider.
• Claim 3: the settings data identifies operational settings that, when installed, enable the device to access the selected subscription from the selected provider.
• Claim 4: the selected subscription is offered by a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
• Claim 5: the application on the device is adapted for a BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) platform.
• Claim 6: the application on the device is adapted for a Java platform.
• Claim 7: the multiple services are mutually exclusive mobile communication services, and the database stores settings data for each.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 search result

I searched for a 2026 CAFC docket on this patent and found none asserting or involving 7,865,182.

• The SITO Mobile appellate activity I located in the 2025–2026 window is Bambuser AB v. SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, CAFC No. 26-1052 (filed 10/15/2025, appeal from D.N.J. 2:23-cv-21757, declaratory judgment). Per the available docket and case reporting, that appeal involves the media-routing/streaming family — US 7,191,244; 8,015,307; 8,554,940; 9,349,138; 10,769,675; and 10,735,781 — not the '182 patent. As of the February 2026 filings, briefing was still underway (reply brief deadline extended to March 2026).
• SITO Mobile's 2021 Delaware infringement campaign (e.g., v. WWE, 1:21-cv-00721; v. fuboTV; v. True Crime Network) asserted a different set of twelve patents (7,054,949; 7,689,706; 8,825,887; 9,026,673; 9,135,635; 9,135,636; 9,350,777; 9,380,088; 9,591,360; 9,756,362; 10,009,637; 10,171,846) — the '182 patent is not among them.
• Consistent with that, 7,865,182 reached its anticipated expiration on October 8, 2023 (status "Expired – Lifetime"), so it cannot support a live infringement action in 2026.

Uncertainty statement: I was not able to query PACER or USPTO Patent Center / Assignment directly, and my docket findings rest on web-search results (Google Patents, Justia/Dockets, Ex Parte, Unified Patents, PTAB documents). I therefore cannot rule out a low-visibility or sealed 2026 proceeding mentioning '182, but I found no evidence of one, and the expiration date makes such a case unlikely. The current ownership position of the patent is also uncertain given the layered assignment and security-interest records.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7865182 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and the patent owner's known cases.

Let me check the specific patent page and docket databases for this exact number.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 7,865,182

Bottom line: I found no evidence in the sources searched that U.S. Patent No. 7,865,182 (“Over the air provisioning of mobile device settings”) has ever been asserted in, or been the subject of, any patent infringement litigation or declaratory judgment action.

I want to be explicit rather than pad this out: the searches I ran did not surface any complaint, docket, verdict, PTAB petition, or news report tying the specific number 7,865,182 to a case. Accordingly, I am reporting no known litigation for that exact patent.

Important distinction — I must not conflate this with other SITO patents

The patent owner chain (Single Touch Interactive, Inc. → Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC → SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC) has been highly litigious, and searches for the family/owner return a large volume of cases. None of the cases I located, however, identified 7,865,182 as an asserted patent. They involve different patent numbers. Per your instruction not to auto-correct or merge similar numbers, I am keeping these separate rather than treating them as litigation on 7,865,182:

• Single Touch Interactive, Inc. v. Zoove Corp., No. 4:12-cv-00831-YGR (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 2012). Asserted U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,813,716 and 8,041,341 (abbreviated dial-code platform) — not 7,865,182. Settled Nov. 12, 2013 ($750,000, license, dismissal with prejudice).
• SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC et al. v. fuboTV, Inc., C.A. No. 1:21-cv-00725-CFC (D. Del., filed May 21, 2021). Asserted patents include 7,054,949; 7,689,706; 8,825,887; 9,026,673; 9,135,635; 9,135,636; 9,350,777; 9,380,088; 9,591,360; 9,756,362; 10,171,846 (media-routing family) — not 7,865,182.
• Hulu, LLC v. SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, IPR2021-00308 and related PTAB proceedings (e.g., CBM2020-00028) regarding 8,825,887 and related patents — not 7,865,182.
• Bambuser AB v. SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC et al., No. 2:23-cv-21757 (D.N.J., filed Nov. 1, 2023) — declaratory judgment action; patents not identified in the materials as including 7,865,182.
• NPE (Stanford) records list SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC v. ExploreLearning, Inc. (4:23-cv-00348, E.D. Tex.) and SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC et al. v. SFA Holdings Inc. (1:23-cv-00688, W.D. Tex.) — patent numbers not shown in the retrieved material.

None of these state 7,865,182 as an asserted patent.

Family-mate note (same title, different numbers — kept separate per your rule)

7,865,182 is a continuation of U.S. Application 10/682,312 (issued as U.S. 7,565,141), and has continuation descendants including 8,862,115; 10,368,214; 10,735,920; 11,272,332; 11,540,094; 11,770,687. Each is a distinct patent number. I found no litigation asserting 7,865,182 specifically. If you want, I can run the same targeted search against each of those exact numbers.

Status of the patent itself

• Priority date: 2003-10-08; filed 2009-07-17; granted 2011-01-04.
• Google Patents status: “Expired – Lifetime”; anticipated expiration 2023-10-08. (Legal status on Google Patents is a stated assumption, not a legal conclusion.)
• Assignee history includes Fortress Credit Co. LLC security interests and various SITO/TAR Sito Lendco reassignments; current listed assignee SITO Mobile R&D IP LLC.

Confidence and caveats

• Confidence that no case asserted this exact number: moderate-to-high based on the sources reached, but not absolute. I was cut off before exhausting additional litigation portals (I intended to check the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia Dockets, and the PACER docket for the fuboTV and Bambuser cases for any amended pleadings and infringement contentions listing 7,865,182).
• I did not verify every SITO complaint's asserted-patent list; a patent can be added to a suit by amended pleading or infringement contentions, which may not appear in high-level search results.
• Google Patents' “Cited By”/“Families Citing” tables I retrieved are prior-art citation lists, not litigation records, and should not be read as evidence of suits on this patent.

Recommended verification steps (to close the gap): search Docket Alarm/CourtListener and PACER for the plaintiff entities “Single Touch Interactive, Inc.,” “Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC,” and “SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC,” and inspect each complaint/amended complaint and P.R. 3-1 infringement contention for the literal string 7,865,182 (and “7865182”). Also check the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the District of Delaware/D.N.J. dockets for the cases listed above.

If you'd like, I can attempt those verified docket-level searches next.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file against US 7,865,182: 0. The USPTO ODP structured block returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal directed at the '182 specifically — the breakdown by status is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. The bottom line for a defendant is unusual and cuts strongly your way for the wrong reason: this patent has never been stress-tested at the PTAB, but it has also already expired (anticipated expiration 2023-10-08 per Google Patents; status "Expired – Lifetime"), so there is nothing left to invalidate and no prospective injunction — the exposure, if any, is a past-damages theory under 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year lookback. Do not read the absence of PTAB activity as "hardened patent"; read it as "old, expired, and superseded by live continuations."

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No proceedings to report

There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM number to list for US 7,865,182. I am not going to manufacture one. Two caveats on how I sourced this:

• The canonical list in the prompt's "PTAB proceedings on file" block is empty for this patent ("no AIA trial proceedings … as of the most recent ingest").
• Web searches for "7,865,182" IPR, "7865182" inter partes review, and "7565141" IPR (the '182's parent, US 7,565,141) returned no petition against either patent. Every SITO Mobile PTAB hit I found was against a different patent in the portfolio. I could not reach PTAB E2E / PTAB Center directly within this session, so treat this as "no activity found," not a negative clearance — re-verify at PTAB Center (PTACTS) and PTAB E2E before relying on it in a brief.

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Related-family activity — NOT on the '182 (context only, do not cite as this patent's record)

SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC / SITO Mobile, Ltd. is a well-known AIA-challenge target, and its portfolio has taken heavy PTAB fire. As of the searches above, the identified proceedings are all against sibling patents, not the '182:

Why these do not help or hurt you on the '182: different patent numbers, different claims, and no privity-based estoppel flows through to the '182 under § 315(e)(2) unless the same petitioner is later asserting the '182 (not the posture here). But they are useful pattern evidence: (a) SITO's patents have repeatedly been invalidated on § 103 grounds when converted to IPR; (b) the asserted family's priority claim was aggressively disputed below the 2003 date (Hulu contended a no-earlier-than-2002-01-18 priority date and § 112 written-description failures); and (c) SITO litigated this family through 2021–2024 against streaming defendants (Hulu, fuboTV, TheStreet, etc.), with defendants routinely moving to stay pending IPR/CBM.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on the '182 — all untested, but moot. Claims 1–7 (the entire claim set) have never been addressed by the PTAB: none canceled, none sustained, none construed in an FWD. There is therefore no "surviving claim" list and no adverse-judgment precedent to cite. The operative fact is not claim status but term: the '182's priority/filing date is 2003-10-08 and its anticipated expiration is 2023-10-08, roughly three years before today. A defendant being asserted against this patent today is essentially being accused of conduct from 2020-09-30 forward at the earliest (six-year § 286 window from a 2026 complaint), but only up to the 2023-10-08 expiration — post-expiration conduct is not infringing, and the pre-expiration window is shrinking every day.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to worry about on the '182 because no petitioner ever filed an IPR/PGR on it. That cuts both ways: you are not blocked from raising any prior-art ground you like in an IPR or in district court — but filing an IPR against an expired patent is generally a waste of money, since the Board's statutory remedies address live claims. If you nevertheless want an invalidity record for defensive-collateral-estoppel or "invalidity" optics purposes, your art is wide open (no prior IPR estoppel), and the § 101 Alice angle was already probed on sibling patents via the CBM route.

Pattern signals. (1) The owner is a serial, portfolio-wide enforcer: Single Touch → Single Touch Interactive R&D IP → SITO Mobile R&D IP → SITO Mobile, Ltd., with secured-lender reassignments through Fortress Credit, TAR SITO LendCo, and Fast Pay Partners, 2015–2019 — a textbook monetization/financing chain. (2) The same petitioner (Hulu) filed multiple IPRs/CBMs across the family in the same window, and at least one sibling patent ('887) was held fully unpatentable in IPR2021-00308. (3) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX as filer, etc.) appears in the chain for the '182. (4) The '182 is one of eight family members with a common 2003-10-08 priority; the live continuation descendants — US 8,862,115; 10,368,214; 10,735,920; 11,272,332; 11,540,094; 11,772,687 — are where the assertion risk has migrated, and those are the patents a demand letter today is most likely actually about.

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the identity of the asserted patent. If a demand letter or complaint cites US 7,865,182, check whether the live continuation claims (e.g., US 11,540,094 / 11,772,687, which recite a carrier/service-plan selection UI) are also asserted. The '182 itself is expired as of 2023-10-08 — verify on USPTO Patent Center whether any PTA or terminal disclaimer moved that date, and confirm the "Expired – Lifetime" legal status shown on Google Patents US7865182B2.
2. If only the '182 is asserted: attack the damages window first, not validity. Under § 286 the recoverable period runs six years back from filing and stops at expiration (2023-10-08); if the complaint post-dates 2026-09-30, the entire recoverable universe is roughly 2020-09-30 → 2023-10-08 with continuous-marking/notice constraints. Sunsets notwithstanding, confirm no reissue or post-expiration continuation re-capture is in play.
3. If a live continuation is asserted instead: that is the patent to IPR. There is no estoppel carried over from any '182 proceeding (there are none), and the sibling-patent record gives you a roadmap — Hulu's invalidity contentions in SITO Mobile R&D IP v. Hulu (W.D. Tex. No. 6:20-cv-00472-ADA) and the IPR2021-00308 FWD (all claims of '887 unpatentable) are directly instructive on the § 103 combinations and the priority-date attack (owner claims 2000-03-31; petitioner argued no earlier than 2002-01-18 for lack of § 112 written description). Pull the FWD text from PTAB Center or the PTAB API/Decisions database and the RPX docket page cited above.
4. No trial-stage deadlines apply — there is no pending AIA trial on the '182, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no 1-year § 316(a)(11) FWD due date to calendar. Any PTAB clock in this dispute belongs to a different patent; map the docket before adopting the other side's timeline.
5. Verify the negative. Before representing to a court or client that "no PTAB activity exists," re-run the check through PTAB Center (PTACTS) and PTAB E2E. My searches found none, and the ODP block shows none, but I could not directly query the Board's docket in this session — say "none found," not "none exists."

Confidence and gaps: High confidence that the '182 is expired and that no PTAB proceeding against it appears in the ODP feed. Medium-to-high confidence that no IPR/CBM was filed against the '182 in the 2013–2026 window — my web searches were not exhaustive, and I was cut off before I could enumerate the complete SITO-family PTAB docket, so a proceeding against the '182 could in principle exist that neither the ODP ingest nor my searches surfaced. Treat the related-family table above as context, not as this patent's record.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,865,182 using the sources available to me.

I was able to retrieve the Google Patents legal-events record and corroborating SEC EDGAR material, but I hit tool limits before I could pull the Assignment Center reel/frame and correspondent fields. I flag exactly where that leaves gaps rather than filling them in.

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Assignment Record — US 7,865,182 B2

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7865182") · legacy UI — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7865182/en · family detail — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090280796A1/en

⚠️ Data-integrity note (read first). My retrievable sources expose the date, conveyance type, assignor, and assignee of each recorded event, but not the reel/frame or the correspondent of record for any link except one. I could not load the Assignment Center detail pages (tool limits) and found no third-party index (uspto.report, Unified Patents portal) exposing reel/frame for this patent family. Accordingly Signal #3 (repeat correspondent) cannot be evaluated, and every reel/frame field below is marked [not retrieved] unless the number appeared in source text. I have not invented any reel/frame numbers or attorney names. The single reel/frame disclosed anywhere in my material is 048547/0578 (embedded in the text of the 2019-06-17 corrective assignment).

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern note (mild). This is a single-inventor portfolio. The inventor did not "depart within 12 months of filing" in the classic fire-sale sense — rather, he retained personal ownership of the family for ~6 years (2003 filing → Dec. 2009 assignment) and only conveyed it because a 2008 merger agreement obligated him to. That is a founder-side earn-out/merger-obligation pattern, not an abandonment pattern. Note also that Macaluso was majority shareholder of Soapbox Mobile, Inc., a related-party vendor to the company, and was issued ~13.77M shares plus convertible notes in 2010 — i.e., he remained economically entangled with the assignee for years after the conveyance.

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Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: Single Touch Interactive, Inc. (per Google Patents "Original Assignee"; the reassignment chain also names Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, Inc. and Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC, later renamed SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC).

• Primary line of business: mobile technology/interactive mobile marketing — over-the-air device provisioning, mobile advertising and location-based marketing. The asserted claims (carrier/plan selection + OTA settings push from a multi-service settings database) read on the company's actual platform.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — this is not a paper-only patent. The specification describes the company's own "CARRIER SELECT™" application, its BREW/Java client, and its application-download-server (ADS) architecture. The company ran this as a commercial service (the spec even names its live ADS host singletouch-vipl.qualcomm.com).
• Current status: the operating parent became SITO Mobile, Ltd., which went into severe financial distress (see the security-interest chain below) and ceased to operate as a going concern; the patent family now sits in the SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC holding vehicle, which is the entity Google Patents lists as current assignee. The patents' commercial value was monetized by assertion in the 2021 Delaware campaign.

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Assignment timeline

All dates below are the recording dates as published by Google Patents legal events; executed dates are noted only where separately corroborated. Reel/frame not retrieved except where stated.

1. executed 2009-12-14 / recorded 2010-03-23 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Macaluso, Anthony G.
   • Assignee: Single Touch Interactive, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Acquisition — merger-driven conveyance of the inventor's personally held patent family under the 2008 Agreement and Plan of Merger.

2. 2015-02-03 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (Security Agreement)
   • Assignor: Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC; Single Touch Interactive, Inc.; SITO Mobile, Ltd.
   • Assignee: Fortress Credit Co LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Securitization — the patent family pledged as collateral for lender financing (bundled grant across three affiliated grantors).

3. 2016-09-19 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Single Touch Interactive, Inc.
   • Assignee: Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Internal reorganization — carve-out of the patents into a dedicated IP-holding LLC.

4. 2016-09-19 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Change of Name
   • Assignor: Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC
   • Assignee: SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Change of name only — corporate rebrand matching the parent's 2016 SITO Mobile rename; no change in beneficial ownership.

5. 2016-09-19 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Single Touch Interactive, Inc.
   • Assignee: Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Internal reorganization.

6. 2016-09-19 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
   • Assignor: Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, Inc.
   • Assignee: Single Touch Interactive, Inc.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Internal reorganization / mirror transaction — this entry is the exact reverse of entry 5, filed the same day; the pair reads as a correction or two-step entity shuffle rather than a true disposition. Worth flagging as an internal-consistency anomaly in the chain.

7. 2017-09-19 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (assignment of security interest)
   • Assignor: Fortress Credit Co LLC
   • Assignee: TAR SITO LENDCO LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Securitization / collateral re-papering — the Fortress security interest is transferred to a successor lending vehicle.

8. 2019-03-08 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

   • Conveyance: Security Interest
   • Assignor: TAR SITO LENDCO LLC
   • Assignee: SITO Mobile, Ltd.
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Securitization (direction of a security-interest chain).

9. 2019-03-08 — Reel 048547 / 0578 — Reel confirmed from source text

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: SITO Mobile, Ltd.
   • Assignee: TAR SITO LENDCO LLC
   • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
   • Context: Lien release — partial unwind of the secured lending relationship.

10. 2019-04-17 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC
    • Assignee: Fast Pay Partners LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Securitization — the IP-holding LLC itself grants a new security interest; consistent with the parent's deepening liquidity crisis.

11. 2019-06-17 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment
    • Assignor: TAR SITO LENDCO LLC
    • Assignee: SITO Mobile, Ltd.
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Correction only — explicitly corrects the conveying/receiving-party data previously recorded on Reel 048547, Frame 0578 (i.e., it reverses the parties of entry 9).

12. 2019-10-24 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignor: Fast Pay Partners LLC
    • Assignee: SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC
    • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
    • Context: Securitization / collateral return.

Summary of chain character: of 12 recorded events, 5 are security interests or their release, 1 is a pure change of name, 1 is a corrective assignment, and 2 are mirror-image same-day internal transfers. There is no outright sale to a third-party acquirer anywhere in the chain. The only "real" transfers are (i) inventor → operating company (2009/2010) and (ii) operating company → IP-holding LLC (2016).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7865182
    2003 : Priority filing by inventor Macaluso
    2009 : Filed continuation 12/505/306
    2009 : Macaluso assigns family to Single Touch
    2011 : Patent issues to Single Touch Interactive
    2015 : Pledged to Fortress Credit
    2016 : Moved into Single Touch R&D IP LLC
         : Rebranded to SITO Mobile R&D IP LLC
    2017 : Lender interest moves to TAR SITO LENDCO
    2019 : Secured party releases and corrections
         : New pledge to Fast Pay Partners
    2023 : Patent expires by original term

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (moderate).
   The patents were carved out of the operating company into a dedicated holding vehicle: Single Touch Interactive, Inc. → Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC (recorded 2016-09-19, entry 3), then re-named to SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC (entry 4). The "R&D IP" entity is a separate, IP-only vehicle from the operating business, and it is the same entity that later acted as a plaintiff in the 2021 Delaware campaign. Caveat: I could not verify its address (registered-agent service?), member count, or product-less status, because I could not load the Assignment Center record. So this is a partial signal — IP-holding-LLC structure is evidenced; "anonymous shell" indicators are not.

2. Known asserter in the chain — UNCLEAR.
   The current holder, SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, is a high-frequency patent plaintiff — it filed the 2021 Delaware campaign against WWE (1:21-cv-00721), fuboTV, True Crime Network, et al. on twelve patents (7,054,949; 7,689,706; 8,825,887; 9,026,673; 9,135,635; 9,135,636; 9,350,777; 9,380,088; 9,591,360; 9,756,362; 10,009,637; 10,171,846). But none of those is '182, and I found no evidence that SITO appears on an Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Mosaid-Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Document Generation / Spangenberg list, or on a Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff list. Marking unclear rather than present, per the "no inference from naming alone" rule.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — INSUFFICIENT DATA (could not evaluate).
   This is the signal the task flags as most diagnostic, and it is the one I could not retrieve. With 9 of 12 events clustered on three calendar days in 2016 and 2019 and grantors/grantees flip-flopping, a single law firm almost certainly drafted the bulk of these recordings — but I will not name one without the recorded correspondent field. Re-run against https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and read the correspondent column on each reel/frame.

4. Cascading transfers — PARTIALLY PRESENT / ATYPICAL.
   There is a dense multi-link cluster: four events all recorded 2016-09-19 (entries 3–6) and four more recorded across 2019-03-08 → 2019-10-24 (entries 8–12), i.e., 8 of 12 events inside ~3 years, matching the "<24 months" spirit. However, the substance is re-organizational and securitization-based, not a chain of successive third-party shell LLCs — the parties are the same corporate family plus two lenders. So the density is present but the shell-cascade character is not.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
   No infringement suit naming '182 was identified (contrary to the family's other patents). The 2021 campaign did not assert '182. No assignment falls within 6 months of a suit on this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — UNCLEAR.
   The 2015 Fortress pledge, the 2017 transfer of that interest to TAR SITO LENDCO LLC, and the 2019 Fast Pay Partners LLC pledge are all consistent with a distressed borrower pledging its IP to multiple successive lenders. But I found no confirmed Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 filing and no court-approved sale of the family. Distress indicators: yes. Recorded bankruptcy sale: not verified.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR / consistent with pattern.
   The structure is suggestive: an operating company moved patents into an R&D IP LLC, and that LLC (under its post-rename name) later sued operating companies (WWE, fuboTV) in 2021. That is the shape of privateering/aftermarket assertion. Again, '182 itself was not among the asserted patents, and there is no SEC disclosure reciting a privateering arrangement, so I mark it unclear.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
   The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The chain terminates at SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, which is an enforcer, not a neutralizer.

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain is not an operating-company chain: the patents were moved off the operating business into a dedicated IP-holding vehicle (Single Touch Interactive, Inc. → Single Touch Interactive R&D IP, LLC, recorded 2016-09-19, then renamed SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, same date), and that same vehicle is the entity that appeared as a high-frequency patent plaintiff in the 2021 Delaware campaign (WWE, fuboTV, et al.) — so 1–2 weak/strong signals are in evidence. Confidence is held to moderate, not high, for three reasons: (i) no third-party sale ever occurred — 5 of the 12 events are secured-lending paper (Fortress 2015-02-03; TAR SITO LENDCO 2017-09-19; releases/corrections 2019-03-08 & 2019-06-17; Fast Pay 2019-04-17/2019-10-24), so the "chain of shell LLCs" is largely a lender chain; (ii) this specific patent was never asserted and expired on 2023-10-08; and (iii) I could not retrieve the reel/frame or correspondent of record, so Signal #3 — the single most diagnostic tell — is unevaluated. Re-verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (Reel confirmations needed on all 12 events) and cross-check the correspondent column against Unified Patents' and RPX's plaintiff directories before raising confidence.

Cross-reference check: this is consistent with the previously generated summary (expired 2023-10-08; current assignee SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC; not in the 2021 Delaware twelve). No contradictions found. One nuance worth recording: the summary lists Single Touch Interactive, Inc. as original assignee — the SEC evidence shows the inventor held the family personally until 2009-12-14 and conveyed it under the 2008 merger agreement, so the corporate ownership began with that assignment, not with the 2003 filing.

I'll research the prior-art references cited against US 7,865,182. Let me search for the specific "References Cited" / patent citation data.

I found the "Referenced Cited" (backward citation / prior-art) list. Let me gather details on each reference to assess § 102 relevance.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,865,182 B2

Task scope. I searched specifically for patent number 7,865,182 and returned only material tied to that number (not 7,865,180/7,865,183/7,865,182-similar look-alikes). All identifiers below are reproduced literally as found; I have not auto-corrected any number.

1. What "patent citations for 7,865,182" can and cannot be prior art

The Google Patents record supplied in the case file shows two forward-citation blocks on the face of the document:

• "Cited By (70)" — patents/published applications that cite 7,865,182 (e.g., the large Headwater Partners / Headwater Research family, Red Hat, Odyssey Software, AT&T, Symantec). These post-date the '182 and are not prior art to it.
• "Families Citing this family (276)" — likewise forward citations (Jasper Wireless, Apple, T-Mobile, Icontrol, Kyocera, etc.). Also not prior art to the '182.

The only material that can anticipate under § 102 is the backward "References Cited" list that appears on the patent's face. That list is reproduced below. (Sources: Justia patent page https://patents.justia.com/patent/7865182 ; Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US7865182/en ; FreePatentsOnline https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7865182.html.)

2. Critical date used for the § 102 analysis

Claim 1 is assessed as of the 8 October 2003 priority/effective filing date (the '182 is a continuation of US 10/682,312, filed 2003-10-08, now US 7,565,141 — see the Cross-Reference section of the '182 itself). Consequences:

• § 102(b): reference must pre-date 8 Oct 2002.
• § 102(a)/(e): reference must pre-date 8 Oct 2003 (for § 102(e), the reference's own U.S. filing date must pre-date that date).

3. References Cited (backward citations) — patent documents

4. References Cited — Non-Patent Literature (printed publications, § 102(b))

These are the citations most likely to be § 102(b) printed publications, since they pre-date 8 Oct 2002 (or were at least published before the critical date):

1. "The Road to Profit is Paved with Data Revenue," Qualcomm Internet Services White Paper, pp. 1-23, Jun. 2002.
2. "BREW Distribution System (BDS) Overview," Qualcomm Internet Services White Paper, pp. 1-17, © 2003.
3. "BREW™ and J2ME™ — A Complete Wireless Solution for Operators Committed to Java™," Qualcomm Internet Services White Paper, pp. 1-9, © 2003.
4. "Press Kit," Qualcomm Internet Services, pp. 1-9, updated Nov. 25, 2003.
5. "nReach," Ring Tones, Phone Games, Phone Graphics, etc., http://www.nreach.com/static/nreach/docs/, pp. 1-2, Feb. 4, 2004.
6. "BREW Wireless Resource Center Brought to you by Qualcomm and DevX," http://www.devx.com/Brew/Article/10187, pp. 1-4, Sep. 15, 2003.
7. Website "BREW" — http://www… (Qualcomm BREW site, cited in the patent's own specification as "www.qualcomm.com/brew").

The Qualcomm BREW / BDS white papers are the single most significant prior-art cluster here: they describe the BREW application execution environment and the BREW Distribution System (BDS) — an application-download-server architecture for wirelessly delivering applications/settings to BREW handsets. That maps directly onto claim 5 (BREW platform) and onto the claim 1 "database of settings / send over a wireless link" steps.

5. Anticipation analysis against claim 1 (the sole independent claim)

Claim 1 requires, in combination:

• (a) receiving a user selection of a service provider AND at least one associated mobile service subscription comprising a mobile calling plan, from choices presented to the device (including choices to initiate or modify the plan);
• (b) receiving information associating the device with the selected service;
• (c) identifying settings data from a database containing settings data for a plurality of services; and
• (d) sending that settings data over a wireless link so as to change the device's operational settings to be operable with the selected provider.

For § 102 anticipation, a single reference must disclose all of (a)–(d) arranged as claimed. Assessment on the record available:

• The cited OTA programming / activation references (esp. US 6,622,017 – Hoffman; and the Nodoushani/Austin/Ruckart group) appear directed at the general concept of remotely programming/provisioning a wireless handset. That squarely implicates elements (b), (c) and (d). The open question for each is whether it discloses element (a)'s specific user-driven, over-the-air selection of both a carrier and a calling plan from presented choices, and element (c)'s selection from a multi-service settings database.
• The Qualcomm BREW/BDS white papers strongly support (c)–(d) and the BREW limitation of claim 5, but on their face they describe an application-download/distribution system rather than a carrier-plus-calling-plan user selection flow.
• The Wake '753 reference (US 2004/0043753 A1) is a wireless-activity billing reference — it bears on service/subscription account management (and would have been relevant to the billing teachings of the specification, Fig. 3 transaction manager/billing server), but it is only § 102(e) art and does not appear to reach element (a).
• The Majmundar/Mazzara/Robin/Raivisto 2004 publications are § 102(e)-only art (published after the critical date); they can only be applied via their earlier U.S. filing dates.

Conclusion on the most relevant prior art: the strongest § 102 candidates are US 6,622,017 (Hoffman) and the Qualcomm BREW/BDS white papers, with US 6,052,449 / 6,144,849 / 6,393,270 / 6,606,377 as § 102(b)/(a) background art in wireless activation. However, on the record I retrieved I cannot confirm that any single reference discloses the full claim-1 combination — in particular the user selection of both a carrier and a calling plan and the multi-service settings database identification step. The fact that the '182 issued over this art is consistent with the examiner having found the specific combination non-anticipated.

6. Confidence and uncertainty (per operating rules)

• Verified: the existence, number (7,865,182), title, priority date (2003-10-08), parent (US 10/682,312 / US 7,565,141), and the backward "References Cited" list above (patent numbers, publication/issue dates and inventor surnames; and the Qualcomm non-patent literature).
• Not fully verified: the textual content/titles of most individual cited references. My reference-by-reference searches for these numbers were cut short by the tool-step limit, so the "brief description" and § 102-element mapping for each reference are inferences drawn from the citation dates and the field, not confirmed quotations from the references. I have flagged this rather than assert content I could not verify. In particular I do not have high-confidence, verified descriptions of the specific disclosures of US 6,052,449, US 6,144,849, US 6,393,270, US 6,606,377, US 6,622,017, or US 6,941,270.
• Not performed: a full-text claim chart against each reference (needs the reference PDFs and, ideally, PACER/Patent Center and the '141 file wrapper). I was also unable to query USPTO Patent Center / Assignment directly in this session.
• Cross-reference: this section is consistent with the earlier-generated summary (expiration 2023-10-08; no 2026 litigation asserting '182; forward-citation families like Headwater are not prior art). No contradiction with the prior sections was found.

Recommended next step for a definitive § 102 opinion: pull the full text of the four § 102(b)/(a) U.S. patents (6,052,449; 6,144,849; 6,393,270; 6,606,377) plus US 6,622,017 and the Qualcomm "BREW Distribution System (BDS) Overview" white paper, and the '141 prosecution history, then chart each against claim 1 elements (a)–(d).

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art tables on the patent page, but first let me verify the key references and their dates.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,865,182 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the Patent Summary and Litigation Summary already generated. I do not repeat the claim language or the litigation findings except where they are needed as analytical inputs.

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1. Analytical framework and one correction to the earlier sections

Governing law. Application 12/505,306 was filed July 17, 2009, as a continuation of 10/682,312 (filed October 8, 2003). Because the application was filed before March 16, 2013, pre-AIA §§ 102/103 govern. Prior art is therefore measured against the October 8, 2003 priority date, plus § 102(e) U.S. filings whose effective dates precede that date.

§ 103 standard. Graham v. John Deere factors as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007): (1) scope/content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) PHOSITA level; (4) secondary considerations. Because the claims are expired and I found no litigation history on the '182 (see Litigation Summary), no objective indicia have been developed in an adversary record; the analysis is accordingly art-centric.

Correction / refinement to the earlier sections. The Litigation Summary loosely characterized both citation tables on the patent page as "prior-art citation lists." That is imprecise and matters a great deal here:

I flag this because the page's own header ("*Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party") appears on both tables, and the label semantics are genuinely ambiguous. I therefore applied the date test rather than the label: only documents predating 2003-10-08 are treated as prior art below. If Google's "Families Citing this family" is in fact a forward citation list at the family level, then the pool shrinks further and the analysis must rest on independently-verified art (which I supply and cite in § 2). Either way, the conclusions in § 5–6 do not change.

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2. The prior-art pool (date-filtered, verified)

I verified the bibliographic facts for the load-bearing references by search. Dates of record:

Non-qualifying (flag for the record). The page also lists several items whose dates fall after 2003-10-08 and which therefore cannot be prior art here: US 7,539,156 B2 (Qualcomm, 2003-10-17 — nine days after the '182 priority date, and thus wrong-year art); US 2005/0101310 A1 (ixi mobile, 2003-11-12); US 8,655,309 B2 (E2 Interactive, 2003-11-14); TWI253812B (BenQ, 2004-01-09); ATE427012T1 (RIM, 2004-01-12); US 8,255,281 B2 (T-Mobile, 2006); US 7,885,654 B2 and the US 7,929,959/8,032,181/8,442,521 Apple "service provider activation" family (2007); and the entire "Cited By" set. These cannot support any obviousness rejection of the '182.

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3. Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA)

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent, plus 2–3 years of experience in wireless telephony or mobile-device provisioning — or equivalent work experience. The person is familiar with: CDMA/GSM air interfaces; IS-683 OTASP and PRL/NAM provisioning; SIM/NAM programming; client–server data download over wireless links; and server-side management of large fleets of handsets. This is a mature, standards-driven art.

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4. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1

Claim 1 is a three-party, server-side method. Mapping to the strongest single reference and to the combination:

Observation on a drafting quirk already noted in the Patent Summary. Claims 5–6 depend from claim 1 but recite "the application on the mobile device," an element claim 1 never introduces. This does not change the § 103 analysis, but it means claims 5–6 must be read as incorporating an application-based implementation from the specification; any combination that supplies a downloaded client application (e.g., BellSouth's on-device OAA application program; Palm's update agent; Kyocera's runtime engine + opcode library) covers that element.

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5. The combinations

Combination 1 — BellSouth '489 + IS-683-A (primary; strongest)

Where each element comes from. BellSouth '489 supplies the architecture and flow: a handset deliberately shipped with only a generic network address; an application on the handset that initiates an over-the-air activation request; the server receiving the request and returning provisioning data that is committed to the handset; and the express capability to "change, over-the-air, available service." IS-683-A supplies the data objects and the database analog: it standardizes the very settings the claim recites — NAM operational parameters, SSPR/Preferred Roaming List, rate/feature parameters, A-key — and OTASP is by definition a server-side provisioning service that must hold, per carrier/market, the parameter sets to be pushed.

Motivation (KSR). (i) Industry mandate: IS-683/OTASP was the published CDMA provisioning standard as of June 1998; a PHOSITA building a provisioning server in 2003 would implement the standard's message set as a matter of course, and KSR's "predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions" applies directly. (ii) Same problem, same field: both references address activating/reconfiguring a handset without returning it to a dealer. (iii) Design incentive: a server that must serve many markets must store parameter sets for each — this is the "database containing settings data for a plurality of services" limitation, and generalizing a per-market parameter store to a per-carrier parameter store is a mere change in the content, not the principle, of the store.

Result. Renders claim 1 obvious; independently, IS-683-A alone or with '489 renders claim 2 (PRL) and claim 3 (settings enabling access) obvious.

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Combination 2 — GM '126 + Kyocera '793 (+ IS-683-A)

Where each element comes from. GM '126 supplies limitations (a) and (b) almost verbatim: the user selects the carrier, the ESN and user information are transmitted to the selected carrier, and the PRL/call-setting/feature-setting parameters are downloaded over the air per IS-683-A. Kyocera '793 supplies limitation (c): a network-resident "area code server" holding sets of parameters and a security server, that, upon a request from the handset, sends a network instruction that changes a stored setting (or replaces the stored table wholesale), which the handset's runtime engine installs.

Motivation (KSR). (i) Both references are directed to the same problem — post-manufacture reconfiguration of a handset's operational parameters from the network rather than at the factory or dealer. (ii) KSR, "obvious to try": once GM '126 shows carrier selection driving an OTA parameter download, and Kyocera shows the network can hold and dispense multiple sets of device settings, holding the per-carrier settings sets in the server-side store is an expected and predictable arrangement with no change in the underlying operation. (iii) Kyocera's express storage of sets (plural) of parameters removes any argument that a multi-service database was a novel architectural idea.

Result. Renders claim 1 obvious.

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Combination 3 — BellSouth '489 (or the OTASP art, US 6,144,849 / US 6,047,071) + Palm '273 / RIM '865

Where each element comes from. BellSouth/OTASP supply limitations (a)–(b) and (d). Palm '273 supplies a server-side "update store module" that dispenses update packages to requesting devices, manages configuration parameters, and performs "remote locking and remote enabling of electronic device capability" — i.e., the claim-1 server-side identify-and-send architecture plus the enable/disable capability the specification relies on for the "temporary disable / SMS reactivation" feature. RIM '865 supplies express server-side control of configuration settings for mobile devices and services.

Motivation (KSR). (i) All three are in the same field and address over-the-air configuration management of a handset fleet. (ii) A server that already stores application/update packages (Palm) would predictably be used to store settings packages as well — the "update package" and the "settings data" are the same class of downloadable server-side object. (iii) Design incentive: a single download infrastructure reduces cost, which is the very benefit the '182's Background touts.

Caveat. Palm '273's only pre-priority date is its provisional (2003-09-17), three weeks before the '182 priority date; its non-provisional was filed 2004-09-17. Treating '273 as § 102(e) art requires that the provisional support the specific disclosure relied upon (In re Giacomini). RIM '865 (2001-10-26) is unencumbered on this point and should be the lead reference in this combination.

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Combination 4 — Any of the above + the "carrier-select at point of sale / multi-carrier retail" motivation (claims 1, 4, 7)

The "database containing settings data for a plurality of services" and the MVNO limitations (claims 1, 4) are supported not only by Kyocera's multi-set store, but by (i) E2 Interactive's point-of-sale activation art and (ii) the admitted state of the art in the '182's own Background, which the applicant expressly conceded: that handsets were factory-programmed for one carrier; that mass retailers "offer mobile phones for multiple different carriers" and therefore must carry inflated, carrier-specific inventory; and that retail clerks perform activation. A patent's own background is an admission of what was known and is properly usable to supply the motivation and the problem recognition. Combined with Kyocera '793, this makes the multi-service settings database the expected solution to a recognized problem, not an inventive one.

Claims 4 (MVNO) and 7 (mutually exclusive services, with the database storing settings for each) add only the business-model/administrative framing: an MVNO is a reseller (Virgin Mobile USA and Boost Mobile both launched in 2002 — pre-priority), and "mutually exclusive" simply reflects that a handset registers with one carrier at a time, which is inherent in the OTASP/PRL architecture. Under KSR ("market forces … a design incentive to implement a predictable variation"), and In re Kollman/In re Rose lines on business-method context, these limitations are obvious.

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6. Dependent-claim verdicts

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7. Where the obviousness case is weak (a candid assessment)

I would not represent the case as airtight on the present record. The three soft spots:

1. "User selection of … a calling plan" as a separate choice from the carrier (claim 1, limitation (a)). GM '126 and BellSouth '489 establish carrier selection and parameters download. The claim's insistence on both a provider and an associated mobile calling plan, chosen from presented plan choices including plan-modification choices, is narrower than either reference taken alone. A combination must therefore add art showing plan/service-plan selection and plan modification presented on the handset (e.g., point-of-sale plan-selection or carrier-portal art). This element is where a validity challenge would concentrate, and I have not verified a single reference of record that discloses on-device plan selection.
2. Evidence quality. I have verified titles, dates, assignees and abstracts, but not the full specification/claim text of US 6,636,489, US 7,184,793, US 8,555,273 or IS-683-A as against each claim limitation. The element mapping in § 4 is based on the page's disclosure plus abstract-level verification. A formal chart should quote column/line support from each reference.
3. § 102(e) date fragility. Palm '273 (provisional 2003-09-17) and Kyocera '793 (non-provisional 2003-09-18) both depend on provisional/parent-priority support for their pre-2003-10-08 effective dates. If that support fails for the relied-upon disclosure, they drop out as art; RIM '865 (2001-10-26) and BellSouth '489 (1997) do not have this problem and should be the load-bearing references.

There is no apparent teaching-away: nothing in the pool teaches that settings must remain factory- or clerk-programmed. To the contrary, BellSouth '489 expressly touts changing available service over the air.

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8. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

• No objective indicia are in the record. The Litigation Summary found no litigation asserting 7,865,182, and the patent reached anticipated expiration on 2023-10-08. There is therefore no adjudicated evidence of commercial success, copying, praise, licensing demand, or long-felt need tied to the '182's claims, and no nexus evidence. Absent such evidence, factor 4 is neutral.
• Note that the family's later continuations (e.g., US 11,272,332; US 11,540,094; US 11,770,687) issued years later against evolving art; that does not bear on the '182's claims.

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9. Bottom line

Confidence. Moderate-to-high for claims 2, 3, 6, 7 and for the bulk of claim 1; moderate for the "user-selected calling plan" element of claim 1 and for claims 4–5. The moderate ratings are evidentiary, not conceptual: the concepts were all in the air by 2003; the open question is whether one reference of record pinpoints on-device plan selection and modification.

Explicit uncertainties carried forward from the earlier sections:

• I could not query PACER/PACER-adjacent dockets or USPTO Patent Center/Assignment directly; the prior-art and date verification above rests on Google Patents, Justia, 3GPP2, and Unified Patents/Docket Alarm material via web search.
• The citation-table semantics on the patent page are ambiguous (see § 1); I applied a date filter rather than relying on the table labels.
• I have not confirmed whether the asterisked ("*") entries in the page's tables were cited during the '182's own prosecution or during prosecution of a family member — that distinction matters for § 325(d)/In re examination-estoppel style arguments, and cannot be resolved without the file wrapper.

Recommended verification steps to make this reject-proof:

1. Pull the full PDFs of US 6,636,489; US 6,915,126; US 7,184,793; US 6,144,849; US 6,047,071; US 10,476,865; US 8,555,273 and chart each claim-1 limitation to a specific column/line.
2. Obtain a copy of TIA/EIA/IS-683-A (June 1998) as a printed publication and quote the PRL/NAM provisioning sections.
3. Search pre-2003 art for on-handset calling-plan selection / plan modification (point-of-sale plan menus, carrier-portal provisioning) to close the limitation-(a) gap.
4. Retrieve the 10/682,312 and 12/505,306 file wrappers to identify which references the examiner actually considered, and to confirm the effective dates relied on for the § 102(e) references.