US 8184603

I'll verify the patent record against live sources, then summarize.

Let me check for litigation and any CAFC docket activity specifically tied to this patent.

Verification note first

I searched the USPTO-derived records (Google Patents/PatentsView/USPTO.report), and searched for Federal Circuit activity. I found no CAFC docket, appeal, or PTAB proceeding in 2026 (or any year) tied to US 8,184,603. The only litigation-adjacent hits were unrelated CommScope matters (e.g., TQ Delta, LLC v. CommScope Holding Co., No. 2:21-cv-00310-JRG) and Corning Optical Communications Wireless Ltd. v. LGC Wireless Inc. et al, 5:15-cv-03976 (N.D. Cal., transferred to D. Del.) — neither of which the search results tie to this specific patent number. Treat "no 2026 CAFC docket found" as a null result, not a confirmed absence; I cannot rule out a docket by exact number without a direct PACER/CourtListener docket query.

Also important: the authoritative text you supplied is truncated in the Description section (mid-¶ of FIG. 5 discussion) and does not include the literal claims. My claim overview below is therefore derived from the patent's own Summary of the Invention, not from verbatim claim language. See the uncertainty note at the end.

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US 8,184,603 B2 — Bibliographic record

Prosecution/ownership chain (as recorded): LGC Wireless → security agreement in favor of Interwave Communication Inc./Alvarion entities (2007) → assignments back to LGC Wireless (2007–2008) → LGC Wireless, LLC (2012) → ADC Telecommunications, Inc. (2012, merger) → Tyco Electronics Services GmbH (2015) → CommScope EMEA Limited (2015-10-26) → CommScope Technologies LLC (2015-10-29), with JPMorgan/Wilmington Trust collateral filings and releases.

Abstract (verbatim): "A system (100) and method for providing high capacity voice and high speed data communication between user equipment terminals (UEs 104) and a public network (108). Generally, the system (100) includes a community Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN 102) having a centralized base transceiver station (CBTS 114) coupled to a public network (108), and several remote transceiver stations (RTSs 118) each coupled to several UEs (104), and, via a radio link, to the CBTS. In one embodiment, the CBTS (114) and RTSs (118) include a Global Systems for Mobile communication/General Packet Radio Service (GSM/GPRS) transceiver (148, 154) to provide data communication, and a WLAN transceiver (150, 156) to provide voice communication. Preferably, the WLAN transceiver (150, 156) is compatible with an open standard, such as IEEE 802.11. More preferably, the CBTS (114) and RTSs (118) include frequency converters (152, 158), to up-convert a frequency of signals generated in at least one of the transceivers to couple the CBTS to the RTS via a signal at a frequency above standard GSM frequencies."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Based on the patent's Summary of the Invention, the independent claims fall into roughly four families. Wording below is my paraphrase of the disclosed subject matter, not claim language.

1) Community-WLAN communication system (the flagship independent claim).
A system for carrying voice and data between a public network and many user equipment terminals (UEs). Its core is a "community WLAN" made of (a) one centralized base transceiver station (CBTS) connected to the public network — via a trunk such as E1/T1, or alternatively a satellite link or another public wireless network — and (b) many remote transceiver stations (RTSs) placed at customer sites. Each RTS serves a cluster of UEs (phones, faxes, computers) either directly or through a site LAN, and reaches the CBTS over a radio link. In the preferred version, each of the CBTS and RTS carries both a GSM/GPRS transceiver (for data) and a WLAN transceiver (for voice), the WLAN side being an open standard (HiperLAN/1, HiperLAN/2, or IEEE 802.11). A private HLR/authentication center handles subscriber registration/authentication and CDRs for billing; a VLR is optional for roamers.

2) Frequency-converter variant of the system (up-converted GSM backhaul).
Same CBTS/RTS architecture, but characterized by a frequency converter at the CBTS and at each RTS that up-converts signals from at least one of the transceivers so the CBTS–RTS radio link runs above the standard ~900 MHz GSM band (preferably an ETSI-specified band, most preferably at least about 3.5 GHz). Purpose stated: tap underused spectrum, raise capacity, and avoid licensed-band congestion/rate restrictions. Both transceivers are also described as capable of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) operation.

3) Transceiver station (apparatus claim — the RTS itself).
A standalone transceiver station for use in such a system: an antenna, a GSM transceiver, and a frequency converter coupled to the GSM transceiver so the station can communicate using GSM technology at a frequency above conventional GSM bands (ETSI band; preferably ≥ ~3.5 GHz). In one version the GSM transceiver is a GSM/GPRS transceiver, so the station handles data as well as voice.

4) Method of providing voice and data communication via a community WLAN.
Steps: (i) receiving call information in the community WLAN (from a UE or from the public network); (ii) providing subscriber identification and security information for the UE to the community WLAN (verified against the HLR/AuC; per the Summary, to an authentication server in the broader WLAN/private-network aspect); (iii) coupling the UE to the public network over the community WLAN — GSM/GPRS for data, WLAN standard for voice; and, where a frequency converter is used, (iv) up-converting a transceiver signal to a band above ~900 MHz (ETSI band; preferably ≥ ~3.5 GHz). Subscriber credentials may come from a SIM/USIM in the UE, from SIM cards associated at the RTS, or from a virtual SIM (VSIM) stored in memory (per the incorporated application Ser. No. 10/002,551).

5) Broader WLAN-to-cellular bridging system (separate aspect).
A system letting low-power, unregulated UEs reach a public cellular network through a WLAN: a public cellular network (a GSM network linked to a PSTN; optionally a 3G/UMTS network linked to GSM and the Internet) plus a WLAN coupled to it. It adds a RADIUS server to authenticate/authorize UEs, with an HLR (home location register/home subscriber server) and VLR coupled to the RADIUS server to support roaming across multiple linked WLANs (RADIUS/DIAMETER roaming model alongside traditional GSM MAP). A VLR–RADIUS interface (VRAD) with an embedded VLR and an EAP interface is described. UEs may run client software to control supplementary services (e.g., voice group call, call forwarding, call waiting/hold, multiparty conferencing, closed user group, advice of charge, call barring, USSD, explicit call transfer, CCBS, SMS, Follow Me) and value-added services (email, calendar, wireless inventory). Corresponding method claims cover receiving call info in the WLAN, supplying subscriber ID/security info to an authentication server (from a SIM/USIM, a card reader, or an identity-module memory in the network), and coupling the UE to the public or private network over the WLAN.

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Uncertainty flags (please read)

• Claim text not available to me. The supplied authoritative text stops before the claims. My claim overview is reconstructed from the Summary of the Invention and the "Definitions" prior-art-keyword block. If you need claim-number-specific analysis (e.g., "claim 1 is a system claim; claim 12 is a method claim; claims 20–25 depend from X"), that requires the actual claim set. I will not guess at claim numbering or exact limitations.
• Claim count/layout unverified. I cannot confirm how many independent claims exist or where the system/method/transceiver-family boundaries sit in the issued claims.
• CAFC 2026 docket: not found. No 2026 Federal Circuit docket referencing 8,184,603 surfaced. This may be because none exists; the number may appear on an appeal docket only in the underlying briefs; or the docket may not be indexed by the sources I searched. Recommend confirming directly via CourtListener or PACER if this matters.
• Assignee records are self-reported by Google Patents, which expressly disclaims having performed a legal analysis; I have reproduced them as recorded, including the dual "LGC Wireless LLC"/"LGC Wireless, Inc." entries and the current CommScope listing.
• Dates kept literal. Priority date 2002-01-31, filing date 2004-07-15, issue date 2012-05-22, and adjusted expiration 2028-06-01 are reported as given; the 2002 priority date is described in the record as an assumption rather than a legal conclusion.
• One search hit claimed a "System and method for transmitting data" title cross-referenced to US8184603B2 — that appears to be a citation-list artifact on another patent page, not a title of 8,184,603. The title above is the one on the patent's own record.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me search litigation-specific portals and try variations.

Litigation search: US Patent 8,184,603

Bottom line: I found no litigation, and no PTAB/IPR/PGR/CBM proceeding, in which US 8,184,603 ("the '603 patent") is identified as an asserted or challenged patent. Every source I retrieved that discussed this patent number described it only in bibliographic/assignment terms (issuance, ownership transfers), never as a patent-in-suit or patent-at-issue.

I want to be precise about what that null result does and does not cover, so you can weigh it correctly.

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What I searched

• Google Patents / uspto.report / golden.com record for 8,184,603 (all historical, no docket references).
• General queries for "8,184,603" / "8184603" combined with lawsuit, complaint, infringement, IPR, PTAB, CBM, district court.
• Searches anchored to the recorded owners (LGC Wireless, ADC Telecommunications, CommScope) and to the patent's subject matter (community WLAN / GSM-GPRS / RADIUS).
• Searches targeting Unified Patents' portal and third-party/IPR datasets.

Returned hits were unrelated patents incorrectly surface-matched (e.g., glucose-sensor IPRs, Sable Networks, Headwater/Samsung, Ultravision, CyWee) or unrelated 2026 matters (Align/Angelalign, Jazz/Avadel, HP/Wilus). None concerned the '603 patent.

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Cases that are related but do NOT assert the '603 patent

These involve the same corporate family and are the closest "near-misses"; I flag them so you can rule them in or out yourself — but on the evidence below, none identifies US 8,184,603 as a patent-in-suit.

Chronology point that matters: the '603 patent did not issue until 2012-05-22. Any pre-2012 case (like the 2010 Mobileaccess suit) therefore cannot have asserted it. Only the 2015 Corning case post-dates issuance.

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Discrepancies and gaps you should know about

1. Corning case number conflict (flag as a contradiction). The earlier section of this analysis recorded this litigation as Corning Optical Communications Wireless Ltd. v. LGC Wireless Inc. et al, 5:15-cv-03976 (N.D. Cal., transferred to D. Del.). My searches this round surfaced 1:15-cv-01072-UNA (N.D. Cal., filed 2015-08-31) as the filing. These are two different numbers. Both can be true if one is the original N.D. Cal. number and the other a re-numbered D. Del. case after transfer (or if there were two related suits) — but I could not verify the relationship this round, and I am not auto-correcting either number. Treat both as reported-literally and confirm against PACER.
2. Corning asserted '837/'148, not '603. The complaint text I retrieved enumerates the '837 and '148 patents. I found no textual evidence that Corning asserted the '603 patent. That is a negative finding from a partial document (the complaint excerpts were truncated at page 1 of 12), so it is not conclusive that the '603 was omitted — only that no retrieved passage links it to that case.
3. No later CommScope-era assertion found. Despite the '603 patent surviving in the CommScope portfolio (current assignees CommScope EMEA Ltd / CommScope Technologies LLC) and its family continuing (US 10,659,970 B2 via App. 15/166,796), I found no case tying the '603 to a CommScope enforcement campaign.
4. No post-grant challenge found. No IPR/PGR/CBM naming US 8,184,603 as the challenged patent appeared.
5. Search-tool limitation. I could not run direct, authoritative docket queries against CourtListener/RECAP, PACER, Docket Alarm, RPX Insight, or the Unified Patents litigation caselist for this exact patent number in this session. A null result from open web search is weaker than a null result from a direct docket query. If the answer is commercially material, confirm with a CourtListener "patent number" query and a PACER/Lex Machina search for "8,184,603."

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Recommendation

If you need a defensible "no known litigation" statement:

• Run a CourtListener/RECAP search on patent number 8,184,603;
• Cross-check Lex Machina / Docket Navigator for patents-in-suit filter = 8,184,603;
• Confirm the Corning v. LGC Wireless case number(s) and patents asserted (1:15-cv-01072 vs. 5:15-cv-03976) directly from PACER.

Based on the evidence available to me right now, the accurate statement is: no litigation or PTAB proceeding involving US 8,184,603 was found, with the Corning v. LGC Wireless matter noted as a related-entity case whose asserted patents (as retrieved) were the '837 and '148 patents, not the '603.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" result against live sources before writing the analysis.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks to confirm the null result and to rule out the "'603 patent" name-collision I'm seeing.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 8,184,603 B2

Bottom line up front: I found no AIA trial proceedings on this patent — none instituted, none filed, none denied. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) is a null return, and my web searches did not surface any IPR, PGR, or CBM tied to US 8,184,603 or to application 10/893,611. What I did surface is a name-collision trap that I flag below because it will mislead any keyword search you run.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — zero active, zero claims invalidated, zero claims sustained, zero settled, zero institution-denied. Because there is no PTAB record, there is no claim-level outcome to report: no claim of US 8,184,603 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the Board, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to anyone. The patent therefore stands as issued, and a defendant's only AIA options are prospective.

That said, "zero IPRs" is not the same as "unassailable" — it mostly reflects that this patent appears never to have been the subject of a serious, well-funded assertion campaign that would normally draw a petition. The prior sections note the patent is recorded as Expired – Fee Related (Google Patents), which — if accurate — is a far more powerful defensive fact than any IPR outcome. See the flag below.

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No proceeding entries to detail

The prescribed per-proceeding template (petitioner v. patent owner, grounds, institution, FWD, appeal) has nothing to populate. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions to fill it. Stating this plainly, per the operating rules.

Name-collision warning (important — a naive search will burn you): Searching "603 patent" + PTAB returns a large body of results that are U.S. Patent No. 7,406,603 B1, "Data Protection Systems and Methods," owned by Intertrust Technologies, asserted against Dolby Laboratories and digital-cinema exhibitors (Cinemark, Marcus, etc.), involving e.g. Dolby Labs. v. Intertrust, IPR2020-00663 (institution denied 2020-12-08) and IPR2020-01123, plus the N.D. Cal. litigation Dolby Laboratories, Inc. v. Intertrust Techs. Corp., No. 3:19-cv-03371-EMC.

• That is a different patent — different number (7,406,603 vs. 8,184,603), different title, different owner, different technology (digital content protection vs. community WLAN voice/data).
• Reference: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00663/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7406603/
• This is almost certainly the source of any "'603 patent IPR" line item you see in a vendor database or a Google hit. Do not attribute it to 8,184,603.

(The earlier generated "Patent summary" section already flagged an unrelated title artifact on this patent's citation list; this is a second, more insidious version of the same problem — same trailing digits, different patent.)

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Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED at the PTAB. Every claim of 8,184,603 is in the same posture it was on 2012-05-22. There are no canceled claims, no surviving-after-trial claims, and no Board claim constructions to argue about. Whatever the issued claims say — and note the earlier section's caveat that the authoritative text supplied does not include the literal claim set — the full claim scope is intact as a matter of PTAB record.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is petition-specific; it bars a petitioner (and its privies/real parties in interest) from raising in district court any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised in an IPR that reached a final written decision. With no IPR and no FWD, no estoppel has attached to any party. A defendant today faces no artificial narrowing of its § 102/§ 103 prior-art arsenal from the PTAB. Conversely, if a defendant files its own IPR and loses, it will be the party that gets estopped on the grounds it raised or could have raised — so the "no prior IPRs" state cuts both ways.

Pattern signals: essentially none. No serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (I found no Unified Patents proceeding on this patent — the Unified Patents portal surfaces only the pre-grant publication US 2005/0088999 A1 and its citation neighborhood, not a filed challenge; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20050088999-A1). No patent-owner appeal activity, because there is no Board decision to appeal. The prior section's independent finding of no CAFC docket tied to 8,184,603 is consistent with this — an unappealed, never-challenged patent.

Two time-bar/eligibility mechanics a defendant should know now:

• PGR is unavailable. The 9-month post-grant window under § 321(c) closed in ~February 2013 (issue date 2012-05-22). No PGR was filed.
• CBM is unavailable. The CBM program does not accept petitions filed on or after 2020-09-16, and this is not a "covered business method" patent on its face anyway.
• IPR remains the only AIA vehicle — available against any patent regardless of issue date, but subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a complaint alleging infringement, and subject to the Board's § 314(a)/Fintiv discretionary-denial practice if parallel litigation is advanced. Recent Director guidance has softened Fintiv, but the one-year bar is statutory and unforgiving.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and you were hoping to lean on an existing PTAB outcome: there isn't one. No FWD exists to cite, so there is no "claims 1–5 were canceled" argument available to you. That means:

1. Verify the expiration status before anything else. The recorded legal status is Expired – Fee Related (per the prior section's bibliographic table, sourced from Google Patents), with an adjusted expiration of 2028-06-01. These two figures are in tension (a fee lapse and a 2028 term calculus can coexist if, e.g., a maintenance fee was missed and the patent lapsed early). If the patent actually lapsed for non-payment of a maintenance fee, the strongest defense is not invalidity but non-existence of an enforceable right — check the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee history (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) for the 3.5/7.5/11.5-year fee windows. This is a factual question I cannot resolve from the supplied text and I am explicitly not asserting it as confirmed. Confirm it on the official record; it could moot the entire dispute.

2. If the patent is live and you are within the § 315(b) window, an IPR is available and unstoppably fresh: no prior petitioner to join, no estoppel against you, no Board claim construction to work around. The classification profile (H04W16/18 network planning, H04W88/10 multi-mode access points, H04W84/12 WLAN) tells you where the art lives — pre-2002 GSM/WLAN interworking, distributed antenna/community-base-station literature, and the up-converted-GSM-backhaul concept. Because the claims have never been construed by any tribunal, your claim-construction position is greenfield.

3. If you are already in litigation and the case is mature, weigh § 314(a) discretionary denial and the § 315(b) clock carefully before petitioning — the absence of prior IPRs means you get no free ride from an earlier petitioner's work, and a late petition risks both the statutory bar and Fintiv-style denial.

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Uncertainty flags (read before relying)

• Zero is a null result from the ODP ingest plus my searches — not a notarized absence. I could not query the PTAB E2E docket by patent number directly. To be certain, run the patent number at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) or the USPTO's Patent Center "Proceedings" tab, and cross-check CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) for any Board-originated appeal. A recently filed, unindexed petition could in principle exist.
• I did not invent any proceeding. Where the template asks for panel, grounds, institution date, and FWD, I have deliberately left those blank because the record is empty — filling them would be fabrication.
• The "Expired – Fee Related" status is self-reported by Google Patents, which disclaims having performed a legal analysis, and it is reproduced here literally. Do not treat it as a legal conclusion of lapse.
• The literal claims of 8,184,603 remain unavailable in the authoritative text supplied (it truncates mid-Description and omits the claims). Any claim-number-specific statement — "claim 1 is dead," "surviving claims are 6–10" — is impossible to support from this record, and none is made here.

I'll work from the authoritative record I was given and try to pull the underlying USPTO assignment data (reel/frame, correspondent) from live sources.

Good — I'm getting real assignment data. Let me dig deeper into the specific records and correspondents.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 8,184,603 B2

Source note before the record. I could not open assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov directly in this session (tool limitation — the Assignment Center is a query UI, not an indexable page). What follows is reconstructed from (a) the authoritative Google Patents "reassignment" legal-events feed supplied in the full-text record, which is derived from the USPTO assignment database, and (b) one third-party extraction (plainSite / PlainSite mirror of USPTO Patent Assignment records) that exposed a reel/frame and correspondent for one entry. Only two reel/frame numbers could be confirmed — I flag each. I did not fabricate reel/frame numbers for entries where they were not retrieved. Verify all entries directly at the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search.

Also carried forward from prior sections: the authoritative text does not include the literal claims, so I cannot state which specific claims any product practices. That affects only the "ships a product embodying the claims" prong below, not the chain-of-title analysis.

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Inventors

Employer basis. The patent specification expressly identifies "a WAVEXpress NIB platform, commercially available from Interwave Communications, of Menlo Park, Calif.," and the FIG. 5 embodiment names interWAVE's "WAVEXchange™ (WXC)" and "Network-In-A-Box™ (NIB)" products. The named inventors' subject matter is that interWAVE product line, so their employer at the earliest priority filing (provisional 2002-01-31, first non-provisional 2003-01-14) was almost certainly interWAVE Communications, Inc. — then an independent company; Alvarion acquired interWAVE's cellular mobile unit ("CMU") in 2004.

Corroborating record: a Waylett, Nicholas S. → Interwave Communications, Inc. inventor assignment is recorded 2007-10-23 (see timeline). The late recording date (≈3–4 years after the earliest filing) is consistent with an ordinary employment/inventor assignment recorded in bulk during the 2007 Alvarion→LGC clean-up — not evidence of an inventor departure.

Departure pattern — not established / unclear. I found no evidence that either inventor left within 12 months of filing, and the 2007 Waylett assignment argues against a pre-filing rights gap. I could not retrieve employment histories for either inventor, so I am not asserting a departure or a retention pattern.

⚠️ Contradiction to flag. Google Patents' filing event reads "2004-07-15 Application filed by LGC Wireless LLC." That cannot be literally correct: LGC Wireless acquired the Alvarion CMU only on 2006-11-21 (publicly reported; ~$15M). A 2004-07-15 filing therefore must have been made by the then-owner (interWAVE/Alvarion), with Google's "filed by" field back-attributed to the current owner of record. Treat "filed by LGC Wireless LLC" as a record artifact, not a 2004 fact.

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Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: LGC Wireless, LLC (uspto.report and Google Patents both list LGC Wireless, LLC / LGC Wireless, Inc. as assignee of the granted patent). At the time of the application filing, however, the rights sat with interWAVE Communications (→ Alvarion CMU), which is the true "original" owner of the subject matter.
• Primary line of business: LGC Wireless was an in-building wireless / distributed antenna system (DAS) and pico-cell vendor — an operating company, not a holding vehicle. It acquired the interWAVE/Alvarion cellular mobile unit expressly to add "pico base stations and soft switching technology" to its in-building coverage portfolio (contemporaneous trade press).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? The subject matter (CBTS + RTS "community WLAN," GSM/GPRS + WLAN transceivers, frequency-converted backhaul) maps to the interWAVE WAVEXpress / Network-In-A-Box product line, and later to LGC's in-building base-station/DAS products. Because the literal claims are unavailable in the supplied record, this is a subject-matter mapping, not a claim-by-claim product read.
• Current status: No longer independent — absorbed into CommScope. Successive verifiable events: LGC Wireless merged into ADC Telecommunications, Inc. (recorded 2012-08-09) → ADC's assets passed to Tyco Electronics Services GmbH (2015-07-01) → CommScope EMEA Limited (2015-10-26) → CommScope Technologies LLC (2015-10-29). CommScope (NASDAQ: COMM) is the current operating owner. I found no bankruptcy or dissolution of LGC Wireless, LLC on the record.

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Assignment timeline

Dates below are the USPTO reassignment (recording) dates as carried in the authoritative legal-events feed, except where an execution date was separately retrieved. Reel/frame is shown only where confirmed.

1. 2007-03-02 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: LGC Wireless, Inc.
   • Assignee (secured parties): Interwave Communication Inc.; Alvarion Inc.; Alvarion Mobile Inc.; Interwave Advanced Communications, Inc.; Alvarion Ltd.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Securitization — LGC grants a security interest in the patent family to the interWAVE/Alvarion seller entities, consistent with securing deferred/earn-out consideration from the Nov 2006 CMU acquisition. Not an ownership transfer.

2. 2007-10-23 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: Waylett, Nicholas S. (inventor)
   • Assignee: Interwave Communications, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Internal / clean-up — late-recorded inventor assignment confirming chain of title to the interWAVE entity.

3. Executed 2007-10-26 / recorded 2007-11-21 — Reel 20143 / Frame 0960 ✅ (confirmed)

   • Conveyance: Termination of Security Interest
   • Parties as recorded: Interwave Communications, Inc.; Interwave Advanced Communications, Inc.; Interwave Communications International, Ltd. ↔ Partners For Growth, L.P. (Santa Clara, CA 95054)
   • Correspondent: Ropes & Gray LLP, New York, NY 10036 ✅
   • Context: Securitization release — Partners For Growth (a lender that took a security interest as far back as 2004) releases its interest. ⚠️ Note the party labeling is ambiguous across sources: Google Patents renders this event as a transfer "to" Partners For Growth, while plainSite renders the same reel/frame as Partners For Growth's termination. Reported literally; the conveyance type (termination) is the operative one.

4. 2008-01-11 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignors: Alvarion Inc.; Alvarion Ltd.; Alvarion Mobile Inc.; Interwave Advanced Communications, Inc.; Interwave Communications International, Ltd.; Interwave Communications, Inc.
   • Assignee: LGC Wireless, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Clean-up / consolidation — the interWAVE + Alvarion entities quitclaim remaining rights (and clear the 2007 security agreement) to LGC, closing the CMU acquisition title.

5. 2012-02-03 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Change of Name
   • Assignor: LGC Wireless, Inc. → Assignee: LGC Wireless, LLC
   • Context: Change of name only (no change in beneficial ownership).

6. 2012-08-09 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Merger
   • Assignor: LGC Wireless, LLC → Assignee: ADC Telecommunications, Inc.
   • Context: Internal reorg / merger.

7. 2015-07-01 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Merger and Change of Name
   • Assignors: ADC Telecommunications, Inc.; LGC Wireless, LLC → Assignee: ADC Telecommunications, Inc.
   • Context: Internal reorg (post-TE-Connectivity ownership housekeeping).

8. 2015-07-01 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: ADC Telecommunications, Inc. → Assignee: Tyco Electronics Services GmbH
   • Context: Corporate divestiture — ADC (then TE Connectivity's broadband-networks business) transferring assets within the TE structure.

9. 2015-10-26 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
   • Assignor: Tyco Electronics Services GmbH → Assignee: CommScope EMEA Limited
   • Context: Divestiture — TE Connectivity's broadband networks business (including the former ADC/LGC portfolio) sold to CommScope.

10. 2015-10-29 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest
    • Assignor: CommScope EMEA Limited → Assignee: CommScope Technologies LLC
    • Context: Internal reorg — placement of the asset into the CommScope operating subsidiary.

11. 2016-01-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (ABL)
    • Assignor: CommScope Technologies LLC → Assignee: [JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Collateral Agent](/asserters/jpmorgan-chase-bank-n-a-as-collateral-agent)
    • Context: Securitization (collateral pledge; no ownership change).

12. 2016-01-13 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (Term Loan)
    • Assignor: CommScope Technologies LLC → Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Collateral Agent
    • Context: Securitization (collateral pledge).

13. 2019-04-09 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
    • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. → Assignees: CommScope Technologies LLC; Andrew LLC; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Allen Telecom LLC; Redwood Systems, Inc.
    • Context: Securitization release (second, parallel release recorded same day).

14. 2019-04-09 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved — duplicate-form Release of Security Interest naming the same CommScope entities; same context.

15. 2019-07-03 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
    • Assignor: CommScope Technologies LLC → Assignee: Wilmington Trust, National Association, as Collateral Agent
    • Context: Securitization (refinancing collateral pledge).

16. 2019-07-03 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: ABL Security Agreement
    • Assignors: ARRIS Enterprises LLC; ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; ARRIS Technology, Inc.; CommScope Technologies LLC; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Ruckus Wireless, Inc. → Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
    • Context: Securitization (portfolio-wide credit facility).

17. 2019-07-03 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Term Loan Security Agreement — same assignors/assignee as #16.
    • Context: Securitization.

18. 2021-11-19 (recorded) — Reel 049905 / Frame 0504 ✅ (confirmed — the reel/frame is expressly cited in the 2024 release below)

    • Conveyance: Security Interest
    • Assignors: ARRIS Enterprises LLC; ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; CommScope Technologies LLC; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Ruckus Wireless, Inc. → Assignee: Wilmington Trust
    • Context: Securitization (refinancing collateral pledge).

19. 2024-12-19 (recorded) — Release referencing Reel 049905 / Frame 0504 ✅

    • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
    • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Collateral Agent → Assignees: ARRIS Technology, Inc.; Ruckus Wireless, LLC; CommScope Technologies LLC; ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; ARRIS Enterprises LLC
    • Context: Securitization release — most recent recorded event; confirms the patent remains in the CommScope collateral pool as of late 2024.

Correspondent recurrence check. Only one correspondent is available in the retrieved record: Ropes & Gray LLP, New York, NY 10036, on reel 20143/0960 only. Per the stated rule, a single appearance by a large general-practice firm is not a finding; it is not flagged as an NPE correspondent pattern. I could not retrieve correspondents for the other 18 entries, so I cannot rule out recurrence (this is a data gap, not a negative).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8184603
    2002 : Priority provisional filing
    2003 : First non-provisional filed
    2004 : Continuation filed
    2006 : Alvarion cell unit sold to LGC Wireless
    2007 : LGC grants security agreement to Interwave Alvarion
         : Waylett inventor assignment to Interwave Communications
         : Partners For Growth security interest terminated
    2008 : Interwave Alvarion entities assign to LGC Wireless Inc
    2012 : LGC Wireless Inc renamed LGC Wireless LLC
         : LGC Wireless LLC merged into ADC Telecommunications
         : Patent granted May 22
    2015 : ADC assets assigned to Tyco Electronics Services
         : Tyco Electronics Services to CommScope EMEA
         : CommScope EMEA to CommScope Technologies
    2016 : JPMorgan collateral security agreements
    2019 : JPMorgan releases security interests
         : Wilmington Trust security agreement
    2021 : Wilmington Trust security interest reel 049905 0504
    2024 : Release of security interest at reel 049905 0504

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every transferee in the chain is an operating company or corporate subsidiary: LGC Wireless, Inc./LLC (DAS/pico-cell vendor), ADC Telecommunications, Inc., Tyco Electronics Services GmbH, CommScope EMEA Limited, CommScope Technologies LLC. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears. Reels 20143/0960 and 049905/0504 and the 2008/2012/2015 recordings all name product-companies. Caveat: reel/frame values beyond those two were not retrieved, so this is an entity-type finding (reliable) not a per-document address finding.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee (LGC, ADC, Tyco/TE, CommScope, ARRIS, Ruckus) matches the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, Spangenberg entities). The prior sections' Unified Patents / RPX searches likewise surfaced only the pre-grant publication (US 2005/0088999 A1) and no asserter signal.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. Only one correspondent retrieved — Ropes & Gray LLP, New York, NY 10036 (reel 20143/0960). A single occurrence is explicitly not a finding. The recurring-correspondent test cannot be run because 18 of 19 entries have no correspondent data in the retrieved sources. Flagged as a data gap, not as clean.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT BUT BENIGN. Three recordings within ~4 months in 2015 (07-01 → 10-26 → 10-29; ADC→Tyco→CommScope EMEA→CommScope Technologies) and a 2007–2008 cluster (03-02 → 10-23 → 11-21 → 2008-01-11). However, these move the asset within/along a documented corporate divestiture (TE Connectivity's broadband-networks sale to CommScope) and a title clean-up — not chained shells sharing a correspondent address. No common-principal shell pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 8,184,603 was found (consistent with the prior Litigation section). With no suit, no transfer can be "within 6 months before" one.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — UNCLEAR. The record shows asset divestitures, not a bankruptcy sale: interWAVE's CMU to Alvarion (2004), Alvarion's CMU to LGC (2006-11-21). I found no Chapter 7/11 for LGC/ADC/TE/CommScope in the retrieved materials. Whether interWAVE itself entered bankruptcy around 2005–2006 is not confirmable from what I retrieved and I am not asserting it — verify via SEC EDGAR (interWAVE 10-K/8-K) and bankruptcy dockets if material.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to a licensing entity asserting on a sponsor's behalf. The chain stays among operating companies that themselves built/sold the underlying wireless infrastructure.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at CommScope Technologies LLC (an operating company), not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent sits in CommScope's secured-collateral pool (reel 049905/0504), which is financing, not defensive aggregation.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — read as "operating-company-owned, currently non-asserting."

Justification. Every recorded transfer (reel 20143/0960; reel 049905/0504; the 2008-01-11 assignment to LGC Wireless, Inc.; the 2012 change of name; and the 2012/2015 merger and assignment recordings) moves the patent only among operating companies — interWAVE/Alvarion → LGC Wireless → ADC → Tyco Electronics → CommScope — with zero shell-entity LLCs, zero known asserters, and no defensive aggregator. Not one of the eight NPE/privateering/aggregator signals is affirmatively present; the only "present" signal (cascading 2015 transfers) is a documented corporate divestiture. ⚠️ Honest caveat: the verdict label's second prong — that the owner is "suing actual competitors" — is not met; no litigation naming this patent was found, and the prior sections record the patent as Expired – Fee Related. The defensible statement is therefore: a clean operating-company chain of title ending at CommScope Technologies LLC, with no assertion of this patent identified.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 8,184,603; cross-check the recording dates above and retrieve the reel/frame + correspondent fields I could not access.

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Cross-reference flags (discrepancies vs. prior sections)

• Contradiction: Prior "Patent summary" section lists the original assignee as LGC Wireless LLC/Inc. and says the 2004-07-15 application was "filed by LGC Wireless LLC." The assignment record (2007 Waylett→InterWave; 2007-03-02 LGC security agreement; 2008-01-11 Alvarion/InterWave→LGC) shows the subject matter originated with interWAVE/Alvarion and only reached LGC via the 2006 acquisition and 2008 clean-up. Both are reported literally; the 2004 "filed by LGC" attribution is most likely a Google back-attribution artifact.
• Party-labeling ambiguity on reel 20143/0960: Google Patents renders it as a transfer to Partners For Growth; plainSite renders the same reel/frame as a Termination of Security Interest. Reported literally, not reconciled.
• "Expired – Fee Related" (prior section) is a Google Patents self-report and is in tension with a 2024 release of collateral. If the patent lapsed for a missed maintenance fee, the 2024 recording would be a routine portfolio housekeeping step rather than evidence of enforceability — resolve via the official maintenance-fee history in Patent Center.

I'll research the specific prior-art citations on the face of US 8,184,603. Let me pull the patent's citation record.

Let me pull the patent's cited-references table directly from patent databases.

I have the claims and the start of the cited-references list. Let me retrieve the full "Referenced Cited" table for '603.

I've now retrieved the issued claim set and a portion of the patent's cited‑reference table. Two important corrections to the earlier sections, then the prior‑art analysis.

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Verification of the patent number (literal)

Confirmed: US 8,184,603 B2 — "Communication system having a community wireless local area network for voice and high speed data communication," Waylett & McIntosh, application 10/893,611, filed 2004‑07‑15, issued 2012‑05‑22, original assignee LGC Wireless. This is the correct record.

I did not return, and am deliberately excluding, US 7,406,603 (Intertrust, "Data Protection Systems and Methods") and any other similar number. The earlier PTAB section correctly flagged that one as a name‑collision trap.

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⚠️ Contradiction flag — the earlier "claim overview" conflated two different documents

The earlier Patent summary section described claim families including (3) a transceiver‑station apparatus claim and (5) a broader WLAN‑to‑cellular bridging system with RADIUS/HLR/VLR, PBX, 3G‑GGSN interfaces, and a "claim 25." Those are not the claims of US 8,184,603.

The actual issued claims of '603 (now retrieved) are 15 claims, independents 1, 7, and 11 — all centered on the community‑WLAN CBTS/RTS architecture with GSM/GPRS transceivers and up/down frequency conversion of the GSM backhaul above conventional GSM bands. There is no transceiver‑station apparatus claim and no RADIUS/3G/PBX bearing claim in '603.

The claim set with claims 1–42 (RADIUS server, HLR/VLR roaming, PBX, IuPS802.11/Abis802.11 interfaces, 3G‑GGSN, etc.) belongs to a different, related document — US 2003/0139180 A1, "Private cellular network with a public network interface and a wireless local area network extension," application 10/126,250, McIntosh et al., filed 2002‑04‑19, published 2003‑07‑24. That is a sibling in the same corporate portfolio, not US 8,184,603. (Note: because it shares inventor McIntosh and was filed after '603's 2002‑01‑31 priority, it is not prior art to '603.)

Note on scope of the earlier "no litigation / no PTAB" findings: those remain valid, but the "claim overview" they were built on needs to be re‑read against the real 15‑claim set below.

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The claims that prior art must be measured against (for the §102 mapping)

• Claim 1 (independent – system): a communication system for voice+data between a public network and UEs at multiple locations, comprising a community WLAN of fixed equipment: a CBTS coupled to the public network, and multiple RTSs each at a location, each coupled to UEs and, via a radio link, to the CBTS; CBTS and each RTS each comprise a GSM/GPRS transceiver for communications therebetween to provide data; and GSM/GPRS RF signals are frequency converted from conventional GSM bands up to frequencies above conventional GSM bands, and converted back down on receive.
• Claim 7 (independent – system): CBTS + multiple RTSs; each has a GSM transceiver operating in conventional GSM bands and a frequency converter doing the up/down conversion.
• Claim 11 (independent – method): receiving call info in the community WLAN; providing subscriber ID/security info using at least one RTS; coupling the UE to the public network over the community WLAN via a CBTS–RTS radio link using a GSM standard, with the up/down frequency conversion.
• Dependents 2–6, 8–10, 12–15: PSTN+Internet/trunk; WLAN transceiver for voice (HiperLAN/1, HiperLAN/2, 802.11); ETSI band; ≥ ~3.5 GHz; GSM/GPRS; public wireless network coupling.

Priority date for prior‑art purposes: 2002‑01‑31 (provisional 60/353,815); pre‑AIA §102 governs.

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Prior art cited on the face of US 8,184,603

Retrieval limitation (please read): the authoritative text supplied earlier omitted the citation list, and my session‑budget was exhausted before I could pull the complete "Referenced Cited" table. I confirmed the U.S. Patent Documents subgroup below from the patent's own reference table (patents.justia.com/patent/8184603). The list is truncated after US 5,956,331; additional references almost certainly follow. Treat the list below as partial, not exhaustive.

Every confirmed reference published 1988–1999 — all more than one year before the 2002‑01‑31 priority date — so each is at least §102(b) prior art (and §102(a)). Descriptions are drawn from general knowledge and should be verified against the full texts; I mark low‑confidence items.

Non‑patent literature and incorporated references (identified from the patent's own text)

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§102 assessment — the blunt version

No single listed reference appears to be a clean, complete §102 anticipation of independent claims 1, 7, or 11, because each independent claim affirmatively requires the combination of:

1. a community WLAN of CBTS + multiple RTSs (distributed fixed equipment), and
2. GSM/GPRS transceivers at both the CBTS and each RTS for the inter‑station link, and
3. up‑conversion of GSM/GPRS signals from conventional GSM bands to frequencies above those bands, and back down.

• The DAS/repeater patents (Fischer, Russell, Georges, Schwartz, Scheinert, Van der Kaay – refs #3–7, 9, 10, 12–14, 16) are the most on‑point: they disclose centralized base‑station equipment feeding distributed remote antenna/remote units, and Georges et al. ('099) — and the wider DAS family — reach the frequency‑translation idea. These are the references a challenger would lead with for claims 1, 5, and 7 and their dependents. But on their face they describe distributing cellular service to mobile stations via antenna units; whether the remote unit is a "remote transceiver station … coupled to a number of UEs" with its own GSM/GPRS transceiver and its own WLAN transceiver is the factual gap that makes a pure §102 argument difficult and pushes these into §103 territory.
• Rypinski '544 (RF LAN) and the Rautiola '775/'331 references speak to the WLAN‑coupled‑to‑a‑mobile/cellular‑network concept, i.e., the aspect that dominates '603's sibling ('180), but only peripherally to '603's GSM‑frequency‑conversion independents.
• The NPL (802.11‑1997; Halls/HiperLAN) is squarely relevant only to the WLAN‑standard dependents (claims 4 and 14), and cannot anticipate an independent claim.

So the realistic posture is: the DAS family + the WLAN/802.11 art are the "most relevant prior art," most likely usable in §103 combinations against claims 1–15, with Georges '099 and the Fischer/Russell continuations being the closest on the frequency‑conversion limitation and Rypinski/Rautiola closest on the WLAN‑coupling limitation. True §102 anticipation — if it exists at all in this set — would most plausibly be argued against claims 7 and its dependents (a bare "CBTS + RTSs + GSM transceiver + frequency converter" combination), which is the narrowest of the three independents.

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Uncertainty flags (read before relying)

1. Citation list is incomplete. Retrieval truncated after US 5,956,331. There are almost certainly further U.S. patents (and likely foreign/EPO documents and additional NPL) on the face of '603 that I could not enumerate. The analysis above covers only the confirmed subset.
2. Reference descriptions are from general knowledge, not full‑text review this session. I could not open each patent's specification. Items marked "low confidence" (e.g., Mathis '644) in particular should be verified; do not quote my one‑line characterizations as authoritative.
3. Applicant‑cited vs. examiner‑cited not distinguished. The compiled "Referenced Cited" table does not separate them here, so I cannot say which of these the examiner actually relied on for allowance/rejection.
4. Claim set correction is significant. Any downstream analysis that relied on the earlier "four/five claim families" (apparatus claim; RADIUS/3G bridging claims incl. "claim 25") must be redone against the actual 15‑claim set of '603. The RADIUS/3G/PBX subject matter lives in US 2003/0139180 A1 (App. 10/126,250), not in '603.
5. Pre‑AIA §102 confirmed by priority date, but I am reproducing the 2002‑01‑31 priority as an assumption per the record, consistent with the earlier sections.

If you want the complete, authoritative citation list with examiner/applicant attribution and the front‑page "References Cited" exactly as printed, pull the US 8,184,603 B2 grant PDF (the patentimages link surfaced in this session: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/02/f6/8f/846379e46abfaf/US8184603.pdf) or the USPTO Patent Center "References Cited" tab, and I'll build the full per‑reference §102/§103 charts from that primary source.

I'll ground this analysis in actual prior-art references. First, let me note a gap and then verify the reference set.

Important gap flag: The task says "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but the authoritative full text you supplied includes only a "Prior art keywords" block (cbts, gsm, network, wlan, public) — not a Citations / Cited By / Similar Documents list. So there is no enumerated prior-art reference list in the record I was given. Rather than fabricate a reference list, I'll verify the references that do appear in the patent text itself and search for the actual cited art.

Let me run those checks.

Good — I now have actual claim text surfacing (claims 1, 7, 11) and some of the patent's own incorporated references. Let me pull the complete claim set and verify the key prior-art references before analyzing.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,184,603 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Two threshold problems with the instruction, stated up front

0.1 There is no "Prior Art section" in the record provided. The authoritative full text you supplied contains only a "Prior art keywords" block (cbts, gsm, network, wlan, public) and a "Definitions" block — no Citations, Cited-By, or "References Cited" list. I therefore cannot "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page" in the literal sense, because that section was not included. Rather than invent a reference list, I have built the analysis from (a) prior-art references named inside the '603 specification itself (which are concrete, dated and citable), and (b) references surfaced and verified by live search. Where I could not fully verify a reference's date or full text, I say so.

0.2 The earlier section's "claims unavailable" caveat is now superseded in part. The previously-generated summary correctly noted the supplied text omitted the literal claims. A live search surfaced actual claim language (claims 1, 7 and 11) via RPX Insight's record for US 8,184,603 B2 (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US8184603B2](/patent/US8184603B2)). I reproduce it below. This is a partial claim set from a secondary source, not verbatim from the patent's own record — treat numbering beyond claim 1/7/11 as unverified.

0.3 A status contradiction to flag. The earlier section recorded the legal status as "Expired – Fee Related" (Google Patents). RPX's page shows "Status: Active Grant." These conflict. Neither is a legal conclusion; confirm on USPTO Patent Center. This does not change the §103 analysis but matters to enforceability.

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1. Governing law and critical date

• Framework: The application was filed 2004-07-15, a continuation of 10/655,152 (2003-09-03), itself a continuation of 10/342,591 (2003-01-14), claiming priority to provisional 60/353,815 (2002-01-31). Pre-AIA §§ 102/103 apply. Obviousness is judged under the Graham factors as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — i.e., the "expansive and flexible" approach, permitting combination of familiar elements according to known methods, and articulation of a reason to combine drawn from the problem to be solved, the prior-art teachings, or the knowledge of a PHOSITA.
• Presumed critical date: 2002-01-31 (provisional). This is the single most important variable in this analysis — see §6.1.
• Scope of the §103 attack: focused on the frequency-conversion limitations, because (per the retrieved claim text) those limitations dominate the independent claims; the WLAN/voice/RADIUS/HLR subject matter appears to be elsewhere in the disclosure/dependent claims.

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2. Person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA here is a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent) plus roughly 3–5 years of experience designing or deploying cellular (GSM/GPRS) and/or WLAN network infrastructure, including base-station subsystems, RF backhaul, and mobility/authentication (HLR/VLR, RADIUS). This is a mature, hardware-centric, heavily standardized field — a fact that cuts strongly in favor of obviousness, because much of the claimed subject matter is a matter of selecting and arranging known standard components.

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3. The independent claims as retrieved (paraphrased faithfully from RPX)

Claim 1 — communication system. Requires:

1. a community WLAN comprising fixed equipment that includes:
2. a CBTS coupled to a public network;
3. multiple RTSs, each coupled to UEs and, via a radio link, to the CBTS, at least one RTS at each of several locations;
4. the CBTS and each RTS each comprising a GSM/GPRS transceiver for communications therebetween to provide data communication between the public network and UEs;
5. RF signals transmitted CBTS→RTS and RTS→CBTS are frequency converted from first frequencies within conventional GSM bands to second frequencies above those bands (up-conversion); and
6. signals received by the CBTS from the RTSs and by each RTS from the CBTS are frequency converted back from the second (above-band) frequencies to the first (in-band) frequencies (down-conversion).

Claim 7 — communication system (GSM variant). Same architecture, but a GSM transceiver ("transmits and receives GSM RF signals at frequencies within conventional GSM frequency bands") plus a respective frequency converter at the CBTS and each RTS, with the identical up-convert/down-convert bidirectional limitation.

Claim 11 — method. A method, in a system "including a community WLAN comprising fixed equipment" with a CBTS coupled to a public network and RTSs coupled to UEs and via a radio link to the CBTS, comprising: receiving call information in the community WLAN; providing subscriber identification and security information for the UE to the community WLAN; and coupling the UE to the public network — with the frequency-conversion backhaul steps.

Analytical consequence: the retrieved independent claims are narrower than the Summary of the Invention suggests. They are not primarily about voice-over-WLAN; they are primarily about bidirectional frequency-translating GSM/GPRS backhaul between a central box and remote radios. That is where the obviousness case must be fought, and that is also where it is strongest.

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4. The prior-art reference set

4.1 References named inside the '603 specification (self-authenticating, citable)

4.2 Frequency-conversion / radio-backhaul art (verified by search, dates to be confirmed)

4.3 Standard-based art for the dependent/other subject matter (all pre-2002)

• IEEE 802.11 (1997; 802.11b 1999) and ETSI BRAN HiperLAN/1 (1998) / HiperLAN/2 (2000) — the WLAN standards the spec itself names.
• RADIUS — RFC 2865 (June 2000); the standard IP-access authentication/accounting protocol.
• EAP — RFC 2284 (1998); the EAP-SIM IETF draft is cited by the '603 itself as prior work.
• GSM/UMTS core architecture — HLR/VLR, MAP, RADIUS-DIAMETER roaming models, all standardized well before 2002.

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5. The obviousness combinations

5.1 Combination A — the "core" attack on claims 1, 7 and 11

Primary reference: the Interwave private-cellular "NIB + PALIM" art (US 5,818,824 and its siblings US 5,734,699 / US 5,999,813 / US 6,212,395).
Secondary reference: a radio-link/frequency-conversion reference (US 7,072,586; alternatively US 6,724,804).

What the primary teaches. A private wireless/cellular network on premises — effectively a "network in a box" containing switching (MSC) and base-station (BTS/BSC) functionality — coupled to a public PLMN through an A-interface (PALIM). This maps onto claim 1's CBTS coupled to a public network and onto the Summary's own description (the '603 expressly calls its CBTS a "WAVEXpress NIB … commercially available from Interwave Communications" and expressly incorporates these PALIM patents). Note the '603 is, in significant part, the applicant describing its own already-commercial product (WAVEXpress NIB datasheets dated Oct. 2002 and June 2003 are retrievable; a Wayback capture dates to Dec. 4, 2003).

What the secondary teaches. Base stations/radio units connected to a central station over a radio link, with frequency conversion between bands (US 7,072,586), or a hub/subscriber system that converts a signal from one frequency band to another, including into higher (quasi-millimeter) bands (US 6,724,804).

The mapping:

Reason to combine (KSR-permissible):

1. The problem itself supplies the motivation. The '603's own Background states that licensed-band overcrowding "leads to diminishing increases in capacity … due to interference" and that the object is "tapping into an unused or underused portion of the radio spectrum." That is precisely the reason a PHOSITA would move the CBTS–RTS backhaul to a higher band — the specification admits the rationale.
2. Regulatory compulsion. GSM operators cannot lawfully radiate an in-band, high-power point-to-point backhaul over licensed GSM channels; relocating the link (e.g., to 3.5 GHz) is a routine regulatory design choice, not an inventive insight.
3. Predictable result, familiar elements. base station + frequency converter + radio link is a combination of known elements performing their known functions — the paradigm of §103 (KSR; Perfect Web Techs. v. InfoUSA).
4. Same field, same problem. All references are in cellular/radio network infrastructure; no field-crossing hurdle.

Conclusion (Combination A): Claims 1, 7 and 11 would have been prima facie obvious over the NIB/PALIM art in view of the radio-link/frequency-conversion art. The bidirectional up/down-conversion limitation is met because any two-way translating radio link converts both directions — a PHOSITA would treat "convert back on receive" as inherent to operating the link, not a separate inventive step.

5.2 Combination B — alternative primary reference (distributed-antenna / repeater art)

Primary: a distributed-antenna / frequency-translating repeater reference (e.g., the family of "frequency conversion unit" DAS references surfaced — US 7,072,586; US 6,724,804; and the "client node device with frequency conversion" literature).
Secondary: GSM base-station/subsystem art and the standards.

Here the host unit ↔ remote units over a frequency-translated link architecture is the primary teaching, and the GSM/GPRS-transceiver limitation is supplied by the secondary. Reason to combine: extend GSM coverage/data service to remote locations at lower cost, while avoiding licensed-band congestion — again the '603's own stated rationale.

5.3 Combination C — dependent claims (WLAN voice, SIM/virtual-SIM authentication, RADIUS/HLR/VLR roaming)

For any dependent claims reciting the WLAN transceiver / voice-over-WLAN, the SIM or virtual-SIM, or the RADIUS + HLR/VLR features (per the Summary and Figs. 5–15):

• WLAN voice + open standards: IEEE 802.11 and ETSI HiperLAN/1–2, plus documented WLAN↔cellular interworking (ETSI BRAN/UMTS interworking work), and the applicant's own WO 03/039108 (App. 10/002,551, filed 2001-11-01) disclosing a virtual SIM / identity module with subscriber identification and security information for a UE accessing a public network through a private wireless network.
• RADIUS + EAP + SIM auth: RADIUS (RFC 2865, 2000), EAP (RFC 2284, 1998), and the EAP-SIM draft the '603 itself cites — the '603's own specification says the EAP/SIM approach was known and incorporated.
• Roaming via HLR/VLR + RADIUS/DIAMETER + MAP: standard GSM mobility management.

Motivation: extend cellular service and authentication to low-cost, unregulated WLAN terminals; authenticate WLAN users against existing GSM subscriber credentials; and reuse the installed HLR/VLR for roaming. All are standard, well-motivated engineering choices. Claims reciting these features would be obvious over the standard-based art in view of the virtual-SIM art, particularly because the '603 expressly incorporates and characterizes 10/002,551 as known.

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6. Counterarguments the patent owner can raise — and why they are weak (or not)

6.1 The priority date is the patent owner's only real shelter — and it may fail. Several otherwise-killer references (the WAVEXpress NIB datasheets of Oct. 2002 / June 2003; WO 03/081557, filed 2003; US 2002/0026126 A1, published Feb. 2002) post-date 2002-01-31 but pre-date the 2004-07-15 filing. If the provisional 60/353,815 does not provide §112 written-description support for the specific combination of (a) a GSM/GPRS NIB backhaul that is frequency-converted above the GSM band and (b) the WLAN-voice/RADIUS architecture — and there is a real argument it does not, given how much of the detailed disclosure post-dates the provisional — then the effective date slides to 2003-01-14 or later, and all of these references become available prior art. That would make the obviousness case substantially stronger. Confirming the provisional's disclosure content is the highest-value next step.

6.2 "The combination is physically different from a repeater." The patent owner will argue a frequency-translating repeater is not the same as a GSM base transceiver station whose own GSM transceiver output is up-converted. This is the strongest non-obviousness argument, and it hinges on how the claims' "respective GSM/GPRS transceiver … frequency converted" is construed. But US 7,072,586 and US 6,724,804 both disclose frequency conversion of base-station/hub signals (not merely air-interface repetition), which blunts the distinction.

6.3 Secondary considerations are absent. There is no litigation and no PTAB proceeding involving the '603 (per the earlier sections' null results), so there is no patentee-side evidence of unexpected results, commercial success attributable to the claims, copying, or industry praise. Nexus would also be difficult: the WAVEXpress product predates the asserted invention, which undercuts "commercial success attributable to the claimed invention."

6.4 No teaching away found. I found no reference in the retrieved art teaching away from higher-band backhaul for a GSM base-station link. Absent teaching away, KSR counsels in favor of obviousness where the combination is "obvious to try" or flows from a known problem.

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7. Bottom line

• Independent claims 1, 7 and 11 (as retrieved) are directed to a frequency-translating GSM/GPRS radio backhaul between a central "network-in-a-box" and remote transceiver stations — a combination of (i) the applicant's own pre-2002 NIB/PALIM private-network architecture and (ii) known frequency-converting radio-link/hub–remote art. On the art available, and on the specification's own admitted rationale (spectrum congestion), these claims are prima facie obvious under § 103.
• The WLAN-voice, SIM/virtual-SIM, and RADIUS/HLR/VLR subject matter — which is what makes the patent commercially interesting — appears to live in dependent claims and the broader family, and is likewise obvious over the standards-based art + the incorporated virtual-SIM application (10/002,551 / WO 03/039108).
• The decisive factual question is the validity of the 2002-01-31 priority claim. Resolve it, and the strength of the obviousness case changes materially.

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8. Uncertainty flags (do not skip)

1. No "Prior Art section" was present in the supplied text — only "Prior art keywords." The reference set above is reconstructed from the specification's incorporated references and from live searches, not from any enumerated citations list on the patent. If a citations list exists on the live Google Patents page, it should be substituted in.
2. Claim text is from a secondary source (RPX Insight), not the patent record, and is partial (claims 1, 7, 11 only). Numbering, dependency structure, and the full claim set are unverified. The earlier section's caveat that the literal claims are unavailable is partially superseded, not fully resolved.
3. Reference dates for US 7,072,586 and US 6,724,804 were not confirmed to pre-date 2002-01-31 in this session; grant dates are 2006 and 2004, and I describe their subject matter as representative of well-known pre-2002 frequency-conversion practice. Confirm priority dates before relying on them as §102/§103 art.
4. I did not fabricate reference contents. Where a reference's disclosure is described, it is at the level the retrieved search text supports.
5. Status conflict: Google Patents says "Expired – Fee Related" (adjusted expiration 2028-06-01); RPX says "Active Grant." Unresolved; confirm at USPTO Patent Center.
6. The most useful next steps: (a) pull U.S. provisional 60/353,815 and compare its disclosure to the issued claims to test the priority claim; (b) obtain the complete claim set from the patent record; (c) confirm the priority dates and full text of US 7,072,586 and US 6,724,804; (d) check the '603's actual Citations/Cited-By list on the live page for any art I could not surface here.