Invalidity dossier
US 7877494
Added 9/23/2026, 1:16:09 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US7877494B2
Title: Method, components and system for tracking and controlling end user privacy
Assignee: InterDigital Technology Corporation (original and current assignee listed).
Inventors: Alan G. Carlton, Alan Charles Louis Briacon, Narayan P. Menon.
Key dates (as listed): Priority date 2006-05-17; filed 2007-05-17; published as US20070271379A1 on 2007-11-22; granted/published as US7877494B2 on 2011-01-25. Status listed as "Expired – Fee Related," with adjusted expiration 2028-02-07.
Purpose: The patent addresses privacy and security problems arising in converged wireless networks, where continuous connectivity and context-aware technologies expose end users to escalating misuse of user data. The inventors frame three metaphors—"information overload," "Big Brother," and the "Kafka Nightmare"—and identify challenges of cost, context, and control.
Plain-language scope: The invention relates to privacy services (PSs) for protecting user data transferred in a converged wireless network. A PS may reside in a user device or as a separate component communicating with a user device to report and receive user input regarding privacy of user data and related privacy policy. The PS preferably implements a privacy policy through service elements addressing different aspects of user data, preferably including some or all of an identity element, a trust element, a rights element, and a security element. The identity element associates an identity of a user/originator/owner (including user-defined and anonymous identities) and possibly intended/actual recipients with the user data. The trust element associates a degree of reliability and/or quality to the user data, changeable based on how, where, and when the data is communicated. Privacy is described as a quantifiable delta between a policy state ("what is desired") and an observed state ("what actually happens").
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7877494](/patent/US7877494)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: Full claim language and claim scope; complete specification details; the full list of service elements and their interactions; enablement or validity; and any litigation, ownership transfers, or prior art beyond what is shown.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:11 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.