Invalidity dossier
US 7949779
Controlling subscriber information rates in a content delivery network
Current assignee: MOUNT SHASTA ACQUISITION LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 7:45:53 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US7949779B2
Title: Controlling subscriber information rates in a content delivery network
Patent number: US7949779B2 | Application: US11/980,689 | Publication (A1): US20080215750A1
Inventors: David A. Farber, Richard E. Greer, Andrew D. Swart, James A. Balter
Dates:
- Priority date: 1998-02-10 (claimed from US09/021,506, which issued as US6185598B1)
- Filing date: 2007-10-31
- Publication date: 2011-05-24 (granted same day)
- Anticipated expiration: 2018-02-10
- Legal status: Expired – Fee Related
Assignees: Original assignee Level 3 Communications LLC. The record lists Mount Shasta Acquisition LLC, Digital Island Inc, and Sandpiper Cdn LLC as current assignees, and notes a 2024-04-26 assignment to Sandpiper CDN, LLC from Level 3 Communications, LLC.
Purpose / plain-language scope: The patent concerns "controlling subscriber information rates in a content delivery network." Based on the classification data supplied, its subject matter sits at the intersection of: distributed/replicated-server network arrangements and server selection for load balancing (H04L67/1001–H04L67/1025, covering load, network conditions, hashing, heuristics, and dynamic criteria); data replication or mirroring between nodes (H04L67/1095); intermediate processing near the data provider, e.g. reverse proxies (H04L67/2895); proxy service provisioning and adding application-control metadata (H04L67/56–H04L67/563); DNS-based name-to-address mapping (H04L61/4511); web retrieval and browsing optimisation via caching or content distillation (G06F16/957); and CPU/resource allocation to service requests considering machine load (G06F9/5005–G06F9/505). The prior-art keywords listed are: repeater, resource, content provider, particular content, resources.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7949779](/patent/US7949779)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: The supplied text contains no claims, no abstract, no detailed description, and no drawings content. It therefore cannot establish the actual claimed scope of "subscriber information rates," how rate control is implemented, or any specific technical limitation. The dates are explicitly identified in the source as assumptions. Assignee listings are stated by the source to be potentially inaccurate, and no legal analysis of status is represented. This overview makes no finding on validity, enforceability, or prior art.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:41:50 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 7949779. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
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.