US 8184324

I'll search for the specific patent and any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me search for CAFC 2026 activity and the full claim set.

Let me retrieve the abstract and the full text of independent claims 1 and 8.

US 8,184,324 B2 — Summary

I ran searches against patent databases and litigation/docket aggregators (Google Patents, Justia, uspto.report, Stanford NPE Litigation Database, Unified Patents, PTAB/PTActs records). Note on scope: I found no CAFC (Federal Circuit) 2026 docket involving US 8,184,324. If such an appeal exists it is not reflected in the sources I could reach, so I am flagging that as unverified rather than asserting it does not exist.

A caution on the number itself: the string "8184324" also appears in unrelated records (e.g., a Brazilian state commercial-registry filing listing "8184324 DIMITRIUS VAZ E SILVA FERREIRA EIRELI"). Those are not this patent and were excluded.

Bibliographic data (from the granted patent record)

Abstract

The authoritative text supplied for this analysis contains the specification/definitions but not the verbatim abstract paragraph, so I will not quote one. Faithful to the claims and specification, the disclosure is directed to a mobile wireless information apparatus (smart phone, PDA, laptop, Internet pad, etc.) that wirelessly discovers/searches for output devices (printers, displays, audio devices), selects one, conforms at least part of digital content into output images / intermediate output data at the information apparatus, and wirelessly transmits that data to the selected output device for rendering — without requiring a dedicated, device-dependent driver for each output device at the information apparatus.

Independent claims (plain language)

The patent has four independent claims, all in means-plus-function form ("means for…").

• Claim 1 — Mobile wireless information apparatus (broadest). A mobile wireless information apparatus, distinct from the output device, having a wireless communication unit and a user interface. It includes: means for opening a wireless communication channel; means for obtaining content; means for conforming at least part of the content into one or more output images; and means for transmitting output data over the wireless channel to the output device for rendering. I was not able to retrieve claim 1's text verbatim from my sources, so the precise wording (e.g., whether "search/discovery" language appears in claim 1 or only in later claims) should be confirmed against the official copy.

• Claim 8 — Conforming/transmission-centric variant. Substantively similar to claim 1 but directed to conforming content into one or more output images at the apparatus and transmitting to a selected wireless output device. Dependent claim 9 expands the conforming step to include at least one of: rasterization, scaling, interpolation, decoding, encoding, color correction, color space transformation, color matching, halftoning, image processing, enhancement, segmentation, digital watermarking, conversion, smoothing, anti-aliasing, and compression. (Verbatim claim 8 preamble not independently confirmed.)

• Claim 15 — Discovery + security variant. Adds the full workflow: opening a wireless channel; wirelessly discovering available wireless output devices; receiving, over the channel, an attribute for each discovered device (name, identity, device type, address, indication of a supported output device profile); selecting a device based on that attribute; obtaining a security key; sending the key and requesting the device to open a secured wireless connection; receiving an authentication response; establishing a secure wireless connection if positive; conforming content into output data in a format/language for that device; and transmitting the output data over the secured connection for rendering.

• Claim 21 — Device-dependent intermediate output data variant. A mobile wireless information apparatus (distinct from the output device, with wireless unit and GUI) comprising: means for receiving a device-dependent attribute associated with one or more wireless output devices; means for selecting a device based on that attribute; means for opening the wireless channel directly to the selected device; means for obtaining content; means for conforming content into one or more output images; means for generating device-dependent intermediate output data containing those images and related to the received attribute; and means for transmitting that intermediate output data over the wireless channel for rendering.

Representative dependent claims: claim 16 (apparatus is laptop, mobile phone, smart phone, Internet pad, Internet appliance, digital camera, or PDA); claim 17 (security key types — identity, username, password, ID number, signatures, physical/digital key, biometrics, fingerprint, voice); claim 18 (compressed audio/video/image data); claims 19–20 (device-dependent vs. device-independent output data); claim 22 (authenticating via security keys); claim 23 (wireless searching/discovering output devices); claim 24 (transmitting payment information for rendering); claim 25 (compression); claim 26 (two or more image layers each encoded with a distinct encoding technique — the MRC aspect).

Litigation / proceedings context (as of the sources reviewed)

• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al, No. 2:22-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., filed June 24, 2022) — listed in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database as a case involving patent 8,184,324, naming numerous Hisense entities.
• Flexible other Flexiworld campaigns assert related family members rather than the '324 patent itself — e.g., IPR2021-00714 (Roku v. Flexiworld) concerns US 8,989,064; Flexiworld v. Amazon (N.D. Cal.) involved claim construction of "radio frequency wireless communication connection"; Lexmark suits involved the '846, '073 and '402 patents; PTAB proceedings addressing the '903 patent's written-description support.
• No 2026 CAFC docket tied to 8,184,324 was found. Given the patent's anticipated 2022 expiration, any live appellate activity would more likely concern family members (e.g., US 8,964,220; 9,037,088; 9,792,516; 10,140,066; etc.), not the '324 patent.

Uncertainty flags

1. Abstract not verified — the supplied authoritative text did not include it.
2. Verbatim claim 1 and claim 8 preambles not retrieved — descriptions above are inferred from dependent-claim references and parallel family text; confirm against the official patent document.
3. Priority date discrepancy — Google Patents shows 2001-01-19; Unified Patents and other records show 2001-01-18 for related family members.
4. CAFC 2026 docket — not found; stated as unverified, per the instruction not to fabricate authoritative findings.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 8,184,324. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me verify the specific case and search for any additional litigation.

Let me dig deeper into whether the '324 patent was actually asserted in the Hisense case and look for other Flexiworld campaigns.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,184,324

Bottom line: Public litigation databases map exactly one case to US 8,184,324 — the Flexiworld v. Hisense action originally filed in the Eastern District of Texas. I found no CAFC appeal and no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) specifically directed to the '324 patent. However, there is a documentary discrepancy I flag below, and I reached my search-step limit before I could fully resolve it, so treat the affirmative finding with moderate (not high) confidence.

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1. The one case tied to the '324 patent

Sources:

• Stanford NPE Litigation Database, patent 8184324 page lists this single case: "Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al, 2:22-cv-00228, E.D.Tex., Jun 24, 2022" — https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/8184324
• Google Patents' "Family has litigation" / Texas E.D. case link for US 8,184,324 points to E.D. Tex. case 2:22-cv-00228 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184324/en
• Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/2:2022cv00228/[215527](/patent/215527)

2. Related / successor docket (same dispute, Georgia)

• Flexiworld Technologies Inc v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al, No. 1:22-cv-04337 (N.D. Ga.), before Judge Steven D. Grimberg — docketed as "Transferred from Texas Eastern on 10/31/2022," status Pending at the time the docket was last captured. Source: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/georgia/gandce/1:2022cv04337/[308815](/patent/308815) and https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-flexiworld-technologies-inc-v-hisense-co-ltd-et-al-[1327658](/patent/1327658)
  • I could not definitively confirm whether the N.D. Ga. case is the transferred 2:22-cv-00228 or a companion Hisense complaint (E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00227 / 2:22-cv-00225 also exist, and the N.D. Ga. docket's E.D. Tex. filing receipt number differs from the 2:22-cv-00228 receipt). Flexiworld filed multiple near-simultaneous Hisense complaints dividing different patent groupings, which creates this ambiguity.

3. Important caveat — a conflict in the record

The AO 120 (Report on Filing of an Action Regarding a Patent) filed in Flexiworld's Hisense action in E.D. Tex. lists the patents-in-suit as 7,609,402; 10,140,072; 10,140,073; 10,387,087; and 10,768,871 — and does not list 8,184,324. See the AO 120, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1553925](/patent/1553925)/download-documents (and the IPWatchdog roundup for the companion E.D. Tex. complaint 2:22-cv-00227, https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/07/01/patent-filings-roundup-centripetal-sees-iprs-microsoft-engineer-sues-seven-waco/).

Because of this, I cannot rule out that the Stanford database associated '324 with the Hisense case based on family/related-patent grouping rather than a direct assertion of the '324 patent in that complaint. I was unable to retrieve the actual complaint exhibit that would conclusively show '324 in the asserted claims. I am therefore not fully certain that US 8,184,324 was ever actually asserted against a defendant in a filed complaint.

4. Flexiworld's other campaigns (checked and excluded)

Flexiworld filed numerous infringement actions in 2020–2026, but the available patent-to-case mapping does not attribute US 8,184,324 to any of them:

• Roku (W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00819, 6:21-cv-00680, 6:21-cv-00767, 6:21-cv-00882) — asserted '811, '259, '233, '073, '871, '903, '064, '114, '066
• Amazon (W.D. Tex. 6:20-cv-00553; separate 2:25-mc-00018) — not '324
• Lexmark (E.D. Ky. 5:22-cv-00097/00098/00110; W.D. Tenn.) — asserted '402, '073, '846, '791, '031
• Brother (W.D. Tenn.) and Epson America — not '324
• Sony (E.D. Tex.) — not '324
• Indeed (W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-01254) — not '324
• TCL (E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00229, filed 03/20/2026) — asserted '871, '798, '056, '259, '811, '233, '903, '000, '031, '402, '802, '521 — not '324

5. Patent status note

The '324 patent itself is recorded as Expired – Fee Related, with an anticipated expiration of Jan. 18, 2022 (priority date Jan. 19, 2001). Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184324/en.

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Recommendation

If you need a litigation-grade answer, the two documents that would settle the ambiguity are (a) the original complaint + infringement contentions in E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00228 and (b) the N.D. Ga. 1:22-cv-04337 amended complaint — to confirm whether claim(s) of US 8,184,324 were expressly asserted. I reached my search-step limit before retrieving those. As of the sources above, the only case publicly associated with US 8,184,324 is Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al, No. 2:22-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., filed June 24, 2022), later litigated in N.D. Ga., with no reported merits outcome on the '324 patent.

I'll verify the ODP structured data against public sources before writing anything.

Let me dig into the Flexiworld PTAB campaign specifically and check for any proceedings naming '8184324.

A Google Patents legal-events hit references IPR2023-00845 (Lexmark / Apex Swiss / Ninestar). Let me pin down which patent that challenges and search PTAB E2E.

PTAB Proceedings — US 8,184,324 ("Mobile information apparatus for wireless search and data transfer")

Patent owner: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. · Inventors: William Ho Chang, Christina Ying Liu · Priority: 2001-01-19 · Granted: 2012-05-22 · Legal status on file: Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2022-01-18)

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Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on US 8,184,324 — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and an independent search of PTAB petition files, E2E dockets, and the Flexiworld litigation/P-TAB record surfaces no petition ever filed against it (0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied); the bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is therefore "no PTAB estoppel, no FWD in your favor, and no claim has been tested — but the patent itself expired on or about 2022-01-18, so the only live question is a shrinking past-damages window, not an injunction."

A defendant's playbook here is the mirror image of the usual one: there is no invalidated claim to point at, and there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constraining you, because nothing was ever instituted. The value in this file is on the remedy side, not the validity side.

⚠️ Two references that superficially look like an IPR on this patent — neither is one. Both are sibling-patent proceedings in the same Flexiworld family, and the Google Patents family legal-events feed mixes them into the US8184324B2 family view:

Do not cite either as a challenge to the '324. I have not fabricated a proceeding number for this patent, because none exists.

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Proceedings on US 8,184,324

None. There is no proceeding to break out claim-by-claim, no panel to name, no institution decision, no FWD, and no appeal. Any entry I could write under the requested ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} heading would be invented. For the avoidance of doubt, the following fields have no content for this patent: Type · Filed · Status · Judge panel · Petition grounds · Institution decision · Final Written Decision · Settlement/termination · Appeal.

Adjacent proceedings (context only — different patents, same family)

IPR2023-00845 — Lexmark International, Inc. (with Apex Swiss Holdings SARL and Ninestar Corporation) v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent challenged: U.S. 7,609,402 ("Methods for universal data output")
• Filed: 2023-04-21 (family legal-events date); Patent Owner Mandatory Notices served 2023-05-12
• Status: On file in the Flexiworld family legal-events record as an AIA trial filed before the PTAB
• Panel / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal: Not verified in my sources. I will not guess.
• Defensive value: Only as a signal about the patent owner's willingness to be challenged — Flexiworld answered Lexmark's IPRs rather than folding. It tells you nothing about the validity of 8,184,324.

IPR2023-00846 — Lexmark International, Inc. v. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent challenged: U.S. 9,965,233
• Filed: 2023-04-28
• Status: Terminated–Settled
• Institution decision date: 2023-11-14
• Termination date: 2024-01-26
• Counsel: Petitioner — Amy Simpson et al.; Patent Owner — Charles Ginnings et al.
• Settlement terms: Not public; settlement in PTAB trials is routinely confidential. Note the sequencing — an institution decision issued (2023-11-14) and the case then terminated roughly 10 weeks later, consistent with the parties settling after institution. I have not verified an institution paper, so treat the "instituted" reading as inference.
• Defensive value: This is the closest thing to a template for attacking Flexiworld: Lexmark (with Apex Swiss/Ninestar as RPI/real-party allies elsewhere) filed a coordinated IPR wave across the family, and the wave ended in settlement, not in a merits ruling. Any petition you file on the '324 would start from scratch against a patent nobody has ever briefed at the Board.

Also worth knowing: the '324 was litigated, not challenged

• Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Hisense Co., Ltd. et al, No. 2:22-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex.), filed 2022-06-24. This is the only case in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database tied to patent 8,184,324, and it is also the case surfaced in the patent's own Google Patents litigation panel. Named defendants include Hisense Co., Ltd., Hisense Visual Technology Co., Ltd., Qingdao Huatong State-Owned Capital Operation (Group) Co. Ltd., and a set of Hisense international/import affiliates — a display-device-facing defendant set, which fits the '324's output-device framing. Disposition is not verified in my sources.
• No defensive aggregator filed on the '324. Unified Patents appears in the record only as the data source for the E.D. Tex. docket entry — that is a data-provenance link, not evidence Unified Patents is a party.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of 8,184,324 has been canceled, and no claim has been confirmed. Every issued claim — including the independent apparatus claims and the dependent claims appearing in the printed patent (the printed claim set runs at least to claim 23, e.g., claim 21 with dependents 22 and 23) — stands exactly as it issued on 2012-05-22. I cannot give you a "surviving claims" list because there is no narrowing event to derive one from. The one thing that has changed is outside the PTAB entirely: per the patent's Google Patents record the patent's anticipated expiration is 2022-01-18 (the page labels its legal status an assumption, not a legal conclusion), and the on-file status is Expired – Fee Related. That reframes any assertion against you from "how do I invalidate this" to "which of my acts before 2022-01-18 does the patent owner think it can still reach."

Estoppel: there is none, in either direction. Because no IPR was ever instituted on the '324, § 315(e)(2) bars nobody — not Lexmark, not any privity chain. Practically this cuts both ways: (a) you face no risk that your own IPR, if filed, gets time-barred or that a prior petition by a privy created estoppel problems; and (b) the patent owner cannot use a prior FWD to argue issue preclusion or "already-litigated validity" against you in district court. Every prior-art ground — § 102, § 103, and § 112 — is fully available to you in court on a clean slate. Note the estoppel point that trips people up: even if you were in privity with Lexmark, the Lexmark IPRs were on the '402 and '233 patents, so their estoppel would attach to those patents' grounds, not to the '324.

Pattern signals. The petitioner pattern is coordinated and corporate, not aggregator-driven: Lexmark, Apex Swiss Holdings SARL, and Ninestar Corporation were named together as the opponent group on the '845 filing, and Lexmark filed its IPRs in parallel with its E.D. Ky. defense (the Flexiworld v. Lexmark campaign, 5:22-cv-00097 through -00110, which asserted a dozen-plus Flexiworld patents against Lexmark's wireless printers and apps). Flexiworld, for its part, litigates widely and does not abandon contested matters cheaply — it survived a Lexmark motion to dismiss on § 287 marking allegations and fought through four amended complaints. The telling gap is that the '324 was never picked up by the IPR wave. Two readings: either it wasn't asserted against a deep-pocket defendant with the appetite (Hisense is a foreign display vendor), or the family's IPR target set was chosen around the patents that mattered to printer defendants. Either way, no one has told the Board anything about the '324's validity.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a defense that assumes PTAB guidance exists. There is no FWD to link to, no institution decision, and no claim-disposition to quote. If you want to attack validity, you are the first mover — that is an advantage (no adverse panel findings, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no Fintiv history on this patent) and a cost (you eat the full petition and the full defense, with no § 315(e)(2) pressure forcing the patent owner into a stay posture elsewhere).
2. Lead with the expiration and damages math, not validity. The patent is on file as expired with an anticipated expiration of 2022-01-18. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286 the patent owner's recovery is capped at six years before the complaint is filed, and combined with expiration the recoverable window for a suit filed on 2026-09-29 runs roughly from 2020-09-29 only through 2022-01-18 — with no injunction possible. Verify the expiration date independently against the file's terminal disclaimer and any § 154(b)/PTA adjustment before you bank on the date; the Google Patents value is expressly flagged as an assumption. And note SCA Hygiene v. First Quality (2017) removed laches, so delay alone won't bar damages inside the § 286 window.
3. If you are a defendant facing a demand letter citing this patent: the correct first question is whether the demand identifies acts after 2022-01-18 — if so, that is not infringement, because an expired patent cannot be infringed. § 287(a) marking compliance is also contested and unresolved in the Flexiworld campaign (the E.D. Ky. court allowed the marking allegations to survive dismissal on an "information and belief" theory), which is a pre-suit-damages lever worth preserving.
4. If you nonetheless want a PTAB track (e.g., to get an FWD on the record before trial or to support a stay motion), note the statutory clock: the Board's deadline is one year from institution, and a petition on an expired patent is still permitted, but you should brief the practical mootness/limited-remedy point because it will shape the panel's interest under § 314(a) and your stay argument. Coordinate with any co-defendants in the Hisense action before filing so you don't duplicate ground sets in parallel.
5. Clean up the two false positives before you brief anything. If a vendor's family chart or a prior-art database shows "IPR2023-00845" next to patent 8,184,324, that is a family-level rollup error — the petition targets 7,609,402. Confirm before you tell a court or an adversary otherwise.

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Primary sources to verify against

• Patent (authoritative claim text, legal events, family litigation panel): https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184324/en
• Patent Owner Mandatory Notices in IPR2023-00845, identifying the challenged patent as 7,609,402 (PTAB E2E / PTACTS): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1553925](/patent/1553925)/download-documents
• Lexmark v. Flexiworld, IPR2023-00846 ('233 patent; Terminated–Settled, institution decision 2023-11-14, termination 2024-01-26) — case record via PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and indexed case page: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2023-00846
• Litigation record for the '324 (Hisense, No. 2:22-cv-00228, E.D. Tex., filed 2022-06-24): https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/8184324
• PTAB Final Written Decisions (none for this patent): https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions
• Federal Circuit opinions and dockets (no appeal located for this patent): https://cafc.uscourts.gov/ and https://www.courtlistener.com/

Open items I could not verify (flagged, not resolved)

• A PTAB E2E petition artifact (id 1549382) contains a string reference to "US-8184324" adjacent to "7263270" with a 2013-05-03 timestamp, in what appears to be a related-application or priority listing rather than a challenge to the '324. I could not identify which proceeding that document belongs to, and I am not treating it as a proceeding against this patent.
• Disposition of Flexiworld v. Hisense (2:22-cv-00228) — settlement, dismissal, or judgment is not confirmed in my sources.
• Any Federal Circuit appeal touching the '324 — none located. The CAFC activity I did see in Flexiworld-adjacent materials concerns Lexmark's § 287/marking dispute and an unrelated standing petition (Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components line of authority); I could not tie either to this patent and am not reporting them as appeals of an '324 proceeding.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record for US 8,184,324. Let me search the USPTO assignment records and cross-reference sources.

Let me search for the specific reel/frame for the '324 patent's assignment and the litigation history.

Let me search for the specific reel/frame for the '324 patent and the Flexiworld entity details.

US 8,184,324 B2 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Scope note on sources. I could reach Google Patents legal events, the Stanford NPE Litigation Database, Unified Patents, RPX litigation documents, and district-court complaints (Hisense, Epson, LG, Sony, Roku) that quote Flexiworld's PTO assignment records verbatim. I could not execute a live query against the USPTO Assignment Center's per-patent record view. The consequence is stated precisely below: I have one confirmed recorded assignment for the '324 patent from Google Patents legal events, but I do not have the reel/frame for this patent specifically, and I will not substitute a family member's reel/frame for it.

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Inventors

Employer at time of filing (2009). Both inventors are the founders of the assignee, Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. (Vancouver, WA). This is a founder-owner filing, not an employee-inventor filing — i.e., the inventors are the company.

Unusual patterns — none of the classic "departure" flags. The concerning pattern the task asks about is inventors leaving within ~12 months of filing, which precedes portfolio fire-sales. Here the opposite is true: Chang and Liu are still the named inventors on Flexiworld's continuation applications filed in 2016, 2017, 2019, and as late as 2021 (US 11,096,056 B2, issued 2021-08-17). Not present.

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Original assignee

Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., Vancouver, WA — assignee on the face of the issued patent and current assignee of record.

• Primary line of business. A wireless-output / "universal output" software startup founded circa 2000 by Chang and Liu. The '324 specification describes its own thesis: an information apparatus that outputs to printers, displays, and audio devices without installing a device-dependent driver per output device.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? No — not by its own admission. Flexiworld pleaded in the LG action: "Since issuance of each of the Patents-in-Suit, Flexiworld has not made, offered for sale, sold, or imported a product that practices any of the Patents-in-Suit or that would otherwise require marking under 35 U.S.C. § 287." This is a party admission, not an inference, and it is the single most probative fact for the NPE analysis below.
• Current status. An active patent-holding and asserting entity. No SEC registrant status and no public filings; it is privately held. It continues to file continuation applications and to sue (e.g., E.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-00228 vs. Hisense, 2022; W.D. Tenn. and N.D. Cal. actions; recent 2025 filings). The Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies Flexiworld under its "Failed startup" asserter category. No bankruptcy record (Chapter 7 or 11) was found.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded event. Google Patents legal events show a single post-issuance assignment for US 8,184,324:

• Execution date not retrievable / recorded 2012-08-06 — Reel not retrievable from sources reached (see caveat)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: CHANG, WILLIAM HO; LIU, CHRISTINA YING (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: FLEXIWORLD TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: Not recoverable from the sources I could reach. Flagging honestly rather than guessing.
  • Context: Original inventor→company assignment — the founders conveying their invention to their own startup. This is a founding conveyance, not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Reel/frame caveat (important). Complaints and IPR filings in the Flexiworld family quote reel/frames for sibling patents — 028733/0064 ('402), 042385/0202 ('031, '259, '072, '178), 043675/0454 ('856), 046519/0534 ('871), 039816/0200 ('596), 029112/0430 ('811), 012325/0362 ('233). I did not find the '324's own reel/frame in any source, and reproducing a sibling's number here would be fabrication. This should be confirmed at the Assignment Center by patent number.

No other recorded transfers. There is no assignment of the '324 patent to a special-purpose LLC, no security agreement, no merger, no release, and no change-of-name record in any source reviewed. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. remains the assignee of record.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8184324
    2009 : Application filed by Flexiworld
    2012 : Patent issued May 22
         : Inventor assignment to Flexiworld recorded
    2022 : First suit naming this patent filed
         : Flexiworld v Hisense in E D Texas

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No reel/frame shows a conveyance to any "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" LLC. The chain is inventor → Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., and stops there. The patent sits with the original operating assignee.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. is itself the asserter and is publicly catalogued as such: it appears as the patent asserter in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database for 8,184,324 under the "Failed startup" category (Flexiworld v. Hisense, 2:22-cv-00228, E.D. Tex., filed 2022-06-24). It is a high-frequency plaintiff — parallel campaigns against Hisense, Epson, LG, Sony, Amazon, and Roku, and it is the patent owner in PTAB proceedings PGR2021-00112 and IPR2022-00775 (Unified Patents v. Flexiworld). Note the distinction: Flexiworld is not on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN name lists; it is a first-party operating-startup-turned-asserters, which the databases nonetheless score as an NPE because it does not practice the claims.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (as to assignments); adjacent recurrence observed. With only one assignment link, recurrence within this chain cannot exist. I could not recover the assignment correspondent for the '324 reel, so I cannot make the call the task most wants here. What I can report from the litigation and PTAB record is repeated counsel: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (Brent N. Grochocinski, Charles Austin Ginnings) filed Flexiworld's PTAB power of attorney (PGR2021-00112, dated 2021-10-04) and appears in the Hisense docket (Charles Austin Ginnings, Timothy Grochocinski). That is a recurring-counsel pattern on the assertion side, not the recording side — and per the task's own caution, a recurring firm is not itself a finding unless tied to NPE-specific conduct. Reported as context, marked unclear.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No sequence of chained LLC assignments; no multiple transfers in <24 months. Only one recorded event in the patent's 20-year life.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The assignment postdates issuance (2012) and precedes the first suit naming this patent by roughly ten years (2022). No transfer was arranged within 6 months of suit; the plaintiff has been the owner continuously.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding and no court-supervised patent sale found. "Failed startup" here describes a non-practicing operating history, not an insolvency auction.

7. Privateering — not present. Privateering requires an operating company transferring patents to an NPE to assert against competitors. Here the founder-owners and the asserting entity are the same people; there is no upstream operating-company beneficiary.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Unified Patents is adverse to Flexiworld (it petitions against Flexiworld patents) — the inverse of a defensive-aggregation endpoint.

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The ownership chain itself is clean: a single founder-to-company assignment recorded 2012-08-06 to Flexiworld Technologies, Inc., with no shell-LLC transfer, no cascading chain, no pre-litigation transfer, and no defensive-aggregator endpoint — so most troll-pattern signals are affirmatively absent. The one strong signal is #2: the assignee is a catalogued, non-practicing, high-frequency asserter — Flexiworld is scored as a "Failed startup" NPE in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database, it asserted this patent in Flexiworld v. Hisense, 2:22-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., 2022-06-24), and it has admitted in a sister suit (LG) that it has never made, sold, or offered for sale any product practicing the asserted patents — with no accompanying shell-entity or fire-sale indicia, that is one strong signal rather than two, hence moderate rather than high confidence. The principal limitation on this verdict is evidentiary: I could not retrieve the '324-specific reel/frame or its recorded assignment correspondent, which is exactly the datum that would either confirm or dispel a repeat-recording-counsel pattern.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 8184324) — also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

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Uncertainty flags (carried forward / new)

1. Reel/frame for the '324 assignment not retrieved — do not treat the family reel/frames cited above (028733/0064, 042385/0202, etc.) as belonging to this patent.
2. Assignment correspondent not retrieved — signal #3 is therefore genuinely unresolved for this chain.
3. Execution date of the assignment not retrieved — only the recorded date (2012-08-06) is sourced.
4. Consistent with the earlier section: the abstract was absent from the supplied authoritative text, and the verbatim claim 1 / claim 8 preambles were not independently confirmed — neither affects the ownership analysis above.

I'll search for the USPTO record for US 8,184,324 and its cited prior art references.

Let me search for the specific prior-art citations listed on the patent record.

Let me look for the front-page (56) references of the patent itself.

Status of the requested search — important limitation

I must lead with an integrity flag rather than a fabricated citation list.

I could not retrieve the verbatim front‑page "References Cited" (form PTO‑892 / "(56)") list for US 8,184,324 B2 from the accessible USPTO / Google Patents records during this search session. The authoritative full text supplied for this analysis contains the specification, definitions, classifications, and the claim set, but the front‑page citation list is only present in the scanned images and was not returned as text. The searches I ran returned (a) the claim text, (b) the family / "cited‑by" / "similar documents" data, and (c) citation lists belonging to other Flexiworld‑family patents — not the examiner‑ and applicant‑cited references that appear on the '324 front page itself**.

Therefore I will not present a list of "the cited references" as if I had read them off the patent. Doing so would be fabrication. Below I separate what is confirmed from what is only citation‑adjacent, and I explicitly identify the references I can document with a source and URL.

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1. Confirmed bibliographic identification (matches the prior section)

Sources: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8184324](/patent/8184324) ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/8184324

Note the ID is interpreted literally as 8,184,324 (US8184324B2) and does not correspond to any of the visually similar numbers (8,184,324 ≠ 8,164,324 / 8,184,234 / 8,148,324, etc.). No results for similar numbers are reported here.

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2. What the records do establish about the '324 prior‑art field

Even without the PTO‑892 text, the record fixes the legal frame for any § 102 analysis:

• Effective filing / priority date for this continuation: 2001‑01‑19 (Google Patents "Prior art date"), with the family sometimes shown as 2001‑01‑18. Any § 102(b) art must predate 2001‑01‑19 (or 2000‑11‑01, the parent priority some records show) to be anticipatory; anything between then and 2009‑10‑26 is at best § 102(e) art.
• The independent claims are all means‑plus‑function: claim 1 (opening channel / obtaining content / conforming to output images / transmitting), claim 8 (conform/transmit variant), claim 15 (discover → attribute → select → security key → secure connection → conform → transmit), claim 21 (device‑dependent attribute → select → open channel directly → conform → generate device‑dependent intermediate output data → transmit). (Verified claim text: Justia / uspto.report.)
• The prior‑art keywords placed on the front page by the examiner/Google — output, wireless, information apparatus, output device, data — confirm the examiner searched in the wireless‑printing / pervasive‑output art, i.e., Bluetooth/IEEE‑802.11 mobile printing and driverless (intermediate‑data) print architectures.

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3. References documented in the '324 citation ecosystem (with sources), and their § 102 relevance

The following are the only references I could tie to the '324/Flexiworld 2001 family record through an actual source. Caveat: several of these come from family / "cited‑by" / related‑patent listings rather than from the '324 PTO‑892 itself, so their status as examiner‑cited vs. merely family‑related is unconfirmed. I mark each accordingly.

I am explicitly declining to list any other "cited references" for US 8,184,324, because I could not verify them against the patent's own front page.

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4. What still must be retrieved to answer the task fully (recommended next step)

To produce the complete, correct per‑reference § 102 table you asked for, one must open the granted‑patent front page (the "(56) References Cited — U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications" block) for US 8,184,324 B2. The reliable places to obtain it:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR for application 12/606,178 — the PTO‑892 list and the issued patent PDF front page. (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov)
2. Google Patents → US8184324B2 → "References Cited" section (rendered from the OCR of the front page).
3. Justia → 8184324 → "Citations" section.
4. uspto.report/patent/grant/8184324 → "References Cited".

Each U.S. reference on that front page would then be given its own row with: number, inventor, publication date, title, an anticipation assessment against independent claims 1, 8, 15, and 21 (and the dependent claims 9, 16–26), under § 102(a)/(b)/(e) as framed by the 2001‑01‑19 priority date.

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5. Uncertainty flags (carried forward and updated)

1. The PTO‑892 / "(56)" list is unverified and therefore not reported. This is the single largest gap relative to the task; it is a retrieval failure, not a finding that the patent has no cited art.
2. Reference status is mixed. Items A, B, D, E are documented on Flexiworld‑family pages but not confirmed as examiner‑cited against the '324 patent; item C is the applicant's own parent (not prior art); item F belongs to a different patent's citation list.
3. Priority‑date discrepancy persists (2001‑01‑19 vs 2001‑01‑18 vs 2000‑11‑01), which changes the § 102(a)/(b)/(e) cutoff and must be resolved before any anticipation conclusion.
4. No fabrication: I did not invent citations. If you can supply the front‑page PDF text (or authorize a direct fetch of the Google Patents "References Cited" block), I will produce the complete per‑reference § 102 anticipation table immediately.

I'll ground this §103 analysis in the actual prior-art record for this patent rather than working from memory. Let me retrieve the cited references and claim text.

The prior-art table didn't appear in the supplied text or my first searches. Let me pull the front-page references and any post-grant challenges directly.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,184,324 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Source limitation you should know about before reading further

The task directs me to use "the results from the Prior Art section of this page." The authoritative text supplied for this analysis contains the Abstract/Definitions, the Figure list, and the classification/CPC tables, but it does not contain the granted patent's "(56) References Cited" table, the "Cited By" list, or a "Prior Art" section. My searches for the '324 patent's own front-page references (US8184324 PDF "References Cited," IPR/reexam records naming '324) did not return the '324 table before I reached my search limit.

Consequently, I cannot present the examiner's own cited-art list for US 8,184,324 verbatim. Rather than fabricate one (which the operating rules forbid), I ground this analysis in the closest available verified prior-art record:

The '324's own "Prior art keywords" strings on the page (output / wireless / information apparatus / output device / data) are a classification artifact, not prior art.

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1. Legal framework applied

• § 103(a), pre-AIA (the '324 has a 2001 priority date and was filed 2009-10-26 as a continuation). Governed by Graham v. John Deere + KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007), which applies because the relevant decision date here post-dates KSR.
• Means-plus-function claims. All four independent claims (1, 8, 15, 21) are in "means for…" form. Under § 112 ¶ 6 / In re Donaldson, each means term is construed to cover the corresponding structure disclosed in the specification and equivalents. For § 103, the question is whether the prior art discloses structure performing the identical function, or an equivalent. Critically, the corresponding structures here — a client application with a rasterization component 310, an intermediate output data generator 320, and a communications manager 330 running on a general-purpose mobile computing device — are all ordinary, recited at a high level of generality in the '324 spec (see the §4 admissions). Broad generic structure + generic function = a wide, easily-met claim.
• Effective filing date. The art must qualify under § 102(e)/(a)/(b) as of 2001-01-19 if the claims are entitled to that date. Note the family's own vulnerability: in IPR2021-00714 (Roku), the Board instituted on lack of written description for a family claim, and a party argued the spec "at most" discloses generic concepts. If the '324's 2009-filed claims are not supported by the 2001 disclosure, the window of available § 102 art opens substantially (2001–2009 art becomes fair game). This is a real, claim-specific risk, and it widens the obviousness attack surface.
• Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA). A B.S. in EE/CS or equivalent, 2–4 years' experience in network printing, embedded systems, and wireless LAN/short-range radio, familiar with (a) printer controllers/PDLs and page rasterization, (b) network print servers and printer discovery/capability protocols, and (c) published wireless standards (Bluetooth 1.0, 1999; IEEE 802.11).

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2. The claim set being tested (per the prior sections, treated as authoritative)

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3. Prior-art references and what each supplies

(Tier 1 = the family's own ISA-cited art; Tier 2 = family "(56)" background art; content verified only where noted.)

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4. The specification's own § 103 admissions (a key, frequently underweighted lever)

The '324 specification is unusually generous to an obviousness challenger because it characterizes the building blocks as pre-existing:

1. The problem itself is admitted prior art. The "walk up to a printer at the airport" mobile-printing scenario and the multi-hour driver-installation burden are described as the state of the art the invention improves on (see the "prior art" framing in the Definitions and the FIG. 1A/1B discussion).
2. Both conventional RIP-placement architectures are admitted: RIP in the information apparatus (FIG. 1A) and RIP in the output device via a PDL printer controller (FIG. 1B). The claimed invention is expressly positioned as a "more balanced distribution of the raster image processing computational load" — i.e., the placement/allocation of known RIP sub-operations, an archetypal design choice (KSR; In re Rouffet).
3. MRC is admitted prior art (quote above).
4. Output device profiles — described as receiving "at least a partial output device profile… uploaded to the information apparatus from the output device" — is the claimed claim-21 "device dependent attribute," presented without any assertion of novelty.
5. Print servers and external output controllers are admitted: "One example of such an implementation is a print server connected to an output device"; the controller may be a PC, workstation, or server running application software.
6. Wireless standards are named, not invented: Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 are invoked as ambient technology for the communication interface.
7. Generic enabling language: the output controller is described as "a black box that can be implemented with hardware, software, or both" (as characterized in the '903 PTAB record for the same spec).

These are admissions against interest about the prior art and the ordinary skill level, and they substantially narrow the space in which non-obviousness can be argued.

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5. Proposed § 103 combinations, claim by claim

Ground A — Claims 1 and 8 (broadest independent claims)

Combination: Dennis (US 5,337,258) + Tsunekawa (US 5,737,501) + a mobile host with a short-range radio per the Bluetooth 1.0 / IEEE 802.11 standards + a network print server (LANSpool PC Week art).

Element mapping:

Motivation to combine (KSR):

• Known problem + finite, predictable set of solutions. The mobile "print-it-now-anywhere" problem was well recognized pre-2001 (admitted by the '324 spec). Combining an already-known host-side rasterizer (Dennis/Tsunekawa) with an already-known wireless NIC and an already-known printer-side controller (FIGS. 1A/1B, both admitted) uses no more than prior-art elements according to their established functions.
• Predictable result. KSR holds that "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." Swapping a wired host→printer link for a wireless one was a routine, standards-driven substitution with no new technical effect beyond mere wireless transmission ("over air"), which In re Kao/In re Harza style reasoning treats as a predictable substitution of a known medium.
• Design incentive / market pressure. The patent itself decries the multi-step, multi-hour driver installation burden and the limited memory/processing of mobile devices; the market incentive to move processing off the mobile host and to avoid per-device drivers supplies the articulated reason to combine.
• The "balanced RIP distribution" is a design choice. Placing rasterization at the host and halftoning/color-conversion at the device is nothing more than apportioning known RIP steps between two known processors to optimize a known trade-off (host memory/CPU vs. device cost) — obvious as a matter of contemplated design alternatives. The '324 spec even describes the device-independent variant (predefined/standard rasterization parameters) as an available option.

Ground A also disposes of claim 8 and its dependents, because claim 8's added functional language (conforming = rasterization/scaling/encoding/…) is a recitation of the generic image-processing toolkit; Dennis/Tsunekawa/Saleh teach host-side and device-side image/data processing, and the '903 PTAB record (same spec) documents the petitioner's position — unrebutted on this point — that these were "generic processing operations" that conventional printers already performed.

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Ground B — Claim 15 and dependents 16–20 (discovery + security)

Combination: Ground A + the Bluetooth pairing/authentication mechanism + the network access-control art (Tier 2; verify US 5,228,118 / 5,467,434 / EP 691,619).

Element mapping:

Motivation: Wireless peer-to-peer service discovery and authenticated pairing are the raison d'être of the Bluetooth specification, which was published and available before the 2001 priority date. A POSITA implementing "print from my phone to a nearby printer" over Bluetooth would necessarily (i) discover nearby devices, (ii) display them for selection, and (iii) authenticate the pairing — there is no meaningful non-obvious gap. Where claim 15 recites a generic "security key" and an "authentication response," the art supplies the function, and the means-plus-function structure (a communications manager performing conventional authenticated handshaking) is ordinary.

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Ground C — Claims 21–23 (device-dependent attribute → device-dependent intermediate output data)

Combination: Ground A + network printer capability/attribute exchange (printer MIB / device-profile art) + the '324's own admitted device-profile-upload mechanism.

Claim 21 requires: receiving a device-dependent attribute (name, brand, model, identity, address, voice, security info, or device profile — the uspto.report text confirms this enumeration), selecting on it, opening the channel directly to the device, and generating device-dependent intermediate output data related to that attribute.

• Device-dependent attribute reception = known printer-capability discovery (SNMP/printer MIB, PJL status, IPP "Get-Printer-Attributes") and the admitted "output device profile uploaded from the output device."
• Direct device-to-device channel = ad hoc/peer-to-peer Bluetooth/802.11, an advertised capability of those standards.
• Device-dependent intermediate output data related to the attribute = the very thing every device-specific driver already produced (raster @ the device's native resolution/color space) — the patent merely relocates that operation and labels it "intermediate."
• Claim 23 (searching/discovering) is supplied as in Ground B; claim 22 (authentication via security keys) as in Ground B.

Motivation: If you have received the device's attributes, the engineering reason to format the output image to those attributes is self-evident (fit, resolution, color fidelity). That is precisely a KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

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Ground D — Claim 26 (two or more image layers, each with a distinct encoding technique)

Combination: Ground A + the admitted MRC-in-color-fax art.

This is the easy one. The specification concedes: MRC "has previously been used to minimize storage requirements" and was "proposed for use in color image fax transmission." Layering background/foreground/toggle with different resolutions/encodings to improve compression is the definitional purpose of MRC. Applying a known multi-layer image compression scheme (MRC/color fax) to the known problem of shipping a raster image from a mobile host to a printer is a textbook obvious combination with an articulated benefit (smaller file, better compression, retained quality) that the '324 spec itself recites ("reduce output data file size, retain greater image information, increase compression ratio"). Claim 25 (compression) falls with Ground A + any standard image compression.

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Ground E — Claim 24 (transmitting payment information to the output device for rendering)

Combination: Ground A + conventional network payment/billing art. The family's own RE42,725 abstract describes job objects containing "payment, subscription, authentication, identification" — demonstrating that payment-in-a-print-job was a known, conventional job parameter rather than an inventive feature. A POSITA adding a pay-per-page kiosk-printing capability would predictably include the payment field in the output/job data.

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6. Why a POSITA would have been motivated — the consolidated KSR rationale

1. Articulated problem, known solution space. The '324 spec frames the problem (mobile users cannot preinstall device drivers; mobile devices are resource-poor) and identifies the solution space (move processing, use generic/standard formats, use wireless local links). Where the patentee frames the problem this explicitly and admits each solution mechanism, the KSR "design incentive" and "obvious to try" rationales apply with unusual force.
2. Prior-art elements performing their established functions. Wireless NICs provide wireless links; print servers provide shared-printer access; rasterizers rasterize; MRC compresses layers; Bluetooth pairs. Every element does exactly what it was known to do, and their mere aggregation yields no more than the predictable sum of those functions.
3. Predictable substitution of a transmission medium. Wired host→printer (Saleh/Dennis/Tsunekawa, LANSpool) to wireless host→printer (Bluetooth/802.11) is a substitution of one known medium for another with the same result — routine and obvious absent an unexpected result, which the record does not show.
4. The patentee's own submissions. Claim 24's payment feature and the output-device-profile feature appear in the applicant's own prior patents' abstracts/claims as conventional job parameters, and the MRC concession is in the '324 spec itself.
5. Third-party expert evidence (family-wide). The '903 petition record, addressing the same specification, documents that an expert opined that the output-controller, wireless-module-in-a-printer, and generic processing/authentication elements "were routine and conventional by the time of the alleged invention," and that adding a wireless module mirrored the long-used approaches of connecting printers to wired networks. Because the '324 shares this specification, the same reasoning transfers with little modification.

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7. Anticipated patent-owner defenses and how strong they are

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8. Bottom line

On the record I could verify, each independent claim of US 8,184,324 is vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built from pre-2001, family-recognized art:

• One primary combination — Dennis (US 5,337,258) + Tsunekawa (US 5,737,501) + Saleh (US 5,048,057) + a Bluetooth/IEEE-802.11 short-range radio + a known network print server (LANSpool PC Week art) — reasonably reaches claims 1, 8, 9–14, 19–21, 23, 25.
• Layering the Bluetooth pairing/authentication mechanism and conventional network access control reaches claim 15 and dependents 16–18, 22.
• The applicant's own admitted MRC-in-color-fax art reaches claim 26.
• The family's own RE42,725 "payment/subscription" job-object description reaches claim 24.

The strongest KSR motivations are (i) the patent's own admission that the mobile-driverless-printing problem and both RIP architectures were prior art, and (ii) predictable, function-preserving substitution of a known wireless medium and known image-formatting steps into a known host→printer workflow.

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9. Uncertainty flags (read before relying on this)

1. The '324 patent's own "(56) References Cited" table was not retrieved and is not present in the supplied authoritative text. The references above are drawn from the family's ISR/"(56)" records (WO 02/084928, RE42,725, US 10,481,846) — a defensible but not identical basis. An analyst should pull the '324 front page and confirm whether Dennis, Tsunekawa, Saleh, Sasaki, etc. were actually cited in the '324 itself.
2. Individual reference contents are unverified. I have not read Dennis, Tsunekawa, Saleh, Sasaki, Sklut, Motoyama, Howes, Suzuki, Wakabayashi, Patel, Atkinson, Kageyama, EP 691,619, Lamming, Rangan, or Hughes. Their element mapping above is inferred from their titles/roles and the ISA's citation of passage locations. Verify each before relying on it for an element-by-element mapping.
3. Priority-date support is a live factual question (see §1) that materially changes the size of the prior-art universe.
4. Claim 1 and claim 8 preambles were not retrieved verbatim (a flag carried over from the prior section). The mapping assumes the reconstructed scope recorded in the prior sections; the uspto.report excerpt independently corroborates the claim 15/16–23/21–23 language, so those are the better-grounded mappings.
5. Post-grant challenge is now foreclosed in practice. The '324 is recorded Expired – Fee Related, anticipated expiration 2022-01-18, and no IPR/PGR specifically naming '324 was found (family challenges were directed to the '903, '257, and other siblings). This § 103 analysis is therefore principally relevant to litigation damages/validity history, licensing, and defensive use, not to a prospective AIA petition.
6. Date note: the task states the current date as April 26, 2026; the earlier generated sections used 2026-09-29 and 2026-06-22. This does not affect the § 103 substance (the patent expired in 2022), but flagging the inconsistency per the operating rules.