Invalidity dossier
US 7961616
Method and apparatus for congestion control in a wireless communication system
Current assignee: Qualcomm Inc
Added 9/21/2026, 9:24:13 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US7961616B2
Title: Method and apparatus for congestion control in a wireless communication system
Patent number / application: US7961616B2; application US09/877,820
Assignee: Qualcomm Inc (original and current assignee, per the listing; the page notes assignees "may be inaccurate")
Inventors: Avinash Jain; Jack M. Holtzman
Key dates: Priority/filing date 2001-06-07; publication of US20020186657A1 on 2002-12-12; granted/publication date 2011-06-14. Legal status shown as "Expired – Fee Related," with an adjusted expiration of 2028-11-15. The page states legal status is an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
Purpose (from the supplied text): The invention relates to communications systems, specifically congestion control in a wireless communication system where a base station communicates with multiple mobile users. Congestion is described as a measure of pending and active traffic relative to rated system capacity; overload occurs when traffic exceeds capacity. Embodiments are said to provide efficient congestion control allowing individual access terminals to implement individual targets.
Plain-language scope (from the supplied text): A method for generating a congestion indicator, including determining an outerloop threshold as a function of a desired threshold, measuring a congestion metric, comparing the measured metric to the desired threshold, and updating the outerloop threshold based on that comparison. A mobile station apparatus includes means for receiving a congestion indicator and determining a congestion condition from it, plus data rate control means for determining a next data rate as a function of congestion-indicator history and the mobile station's data rate history.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7961616](/patent/US7961616)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: The supplied text is an excerpt. It states a method "includes determining" but then cuts off, so the full claim set, full description, and complete definitions are not established here. It also does not establish claim scope, validity, infringement, litigation, ownership transfers, or prior art. Classifications and patent-family members are listed but not explained.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:02:31 PM
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Litigation summary
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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
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.