US 8244586

I'll start by searching for the specific patent and any related litigation/docket activity.

Let me get the actual claim text and check for any docket activity specifically naming this patent.

I have good metadata. Now let me retrieve the actual claim language for this specific patent.

Summary — US Patent No. 8,244,586 B2

Important scope note: My searches surfaced the patent's own front page (via the Google Patents authoritative text in context), its PTAB petitions, and district-court pleadings that assert it. I did not find a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket entry in 2026 that specifically names US 8,244,586. Details on that check are in §5 below. I have not auto-corrected any numbers; all identifiers below are reproduced as found.

1. Bibliographic data

One flag on the status data: the page lists an anticipated expiration of 2020-11-28 (20 years from the 2000 priority date) and the label "Expired – Fee Related," which normally signals non-payment of maintenance fees. Those two indicators can describe different things; I am reporting both as shown rather than reconciling them. Related family members include US 8,600,815 ("Methods and systems for facilitating off-site internet advertising and dividing compensation pursuant to contract"), filed as 13/585,765.

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"A method, and programmed computer system implementing a method, direct targeted advertisements to an electronic media consumer (reader, surfer, viewer, listener, etc.). Embodiments facilitate a first media body substantially offering out of context information placement using a second cooperating media body. A facilitator optionally assists in determining that a consumer of the second media is a known consumer of the first media. For example, a first Internet site may be oversubscribed with potential paying advertising content at $100 CPM. This site offers unfulfilled advertisers an option to present their advertisements to certified first-site viewers, albeit not on the first Internet site, for $50 CPM. Visitor computers at a second Internet site 'BBB' that normally charges $30 CPM are examined for tags certifying them as AAA viewers. At least part of the revenue differential of $20 CPM is shared with the first site, creating a new revenue stream."

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The specification frames the invention as a "super-saturation" method and contracting structure: a first (saturated) broadcaster sells advertisers access to its own audience off-site, on a second broadcaster's media, with tags used to recognize that first-site audience wherever it goes. The patent's own summary describes three contracts (agency–advertiser/content provider; agency–first broadcaster; agency–second broadcaster).

Claim 1 — a method, and the claim most consistently quoted across filings. Plain language:

• (a) Automatically create records of a multitude of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site, using a tag on each such visitor computer (e.g., a cookie).
• (b) Automatically facilitate direction of an off-site advertisement to visitor computers visiting a second Internet site, where this happens as a consequence of the computer determining, using the tags and the records, that those computers visited the first site. The off-site advertisement must (i) concern an offering of a third-party advertiser that has paid to display that advertisement to visitors of the first site, and (ii) have displayable subject matter targeted to visitors of the first site based on visitor profile information connected to the tag.
• (c) As a result of (a) and (b), automatically cause the first Internet site to receive revenue from the off-site advertisement being directed to those visitor computers.

In short: tag your visitors, let a third party's targeted ad reach those same people on someone else's site, and automatically route money back to your site.

Additional independent claims — stated with uncertainty. Two independent sources indicate there is more than one independent claim:

• The CBM2017-00047 petition challenged claims 1, 2–4, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17 and 20–22, and separately addressed the limitations of "Claim 1" and "Claim 11," which indicates claim 11 is a second independent claim.
• A third-party complaint analysis of the D. Del. action states that "independent claims 1 and 13 are included in the patent."

Taken together, the likely structure is three independent claims — 1, 11, and possibly 13 — most plausibly a method claim, a system/apparatus (or "programmed computer system") claim consistent with the "Computerized systems…" title, and a storage-medium/computer-program-product claim. I could not verify the exact wording of claims 11–13 or 22 from the sources retrieved, so I am not characterizing their precise scope. Anyone needing the exact text should pull the printed claim set (22 claims), not rely on this overview.

4. Post-grant and litigation activity naming this patent

• CBM2017-00047 — Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.: covered-business-method review of the '586 patent challenging claims 1, 2–4, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20–22 (including a § 101 Alice ground). Result: Not Instituted – Merits.
• IPR2022-00929 — Meta Platforms, Inc.: petition for inter partes review of US 8,244,586 B2 (AlmondNet, Inc. and Intent IQ, LLC as patent owners), challenging claim 1 on the specific (a)/(b)/(c) limitations quoted above. Result: Not Instituted – Merits.
• IPR2022-01454 — also listed on the patent's page as a PTAB proceeding; Not Instituted – Merits. (Petitioner not confirmed in the material I retrieved.)
• District court cases asserting the '586 patent (per the patent page's litigation links and pleadings):
  • W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00731 — AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Roku, Inc. (COUNT I: infringement of the '586 patent)
  • W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00896 — AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.), filed 2021-08-27
  • W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00897 — AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Microsoft Corporation
  • W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00898 — (listed on the patent page)
  • D. Del. 1:23-cv-01373 — AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. LinkedIn Corporation (COUNT V: infringement of the '586 patent; accused instrumentalities LinkedIn Ads / LinkedIn Audience Network)
  • D. Del. 1:19-cv-00247 — AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Oath Holdings Inc.
  • N.D. Cal. 4:22-cv-08911 and 4:22-cv-07515 (AlmondNet v. Samsung) also appear in the family/litigation listings.

Note: the two largest AlmondNet outcomes I found — the $122M/$136M Amazon verdict (W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-01204, patents 7,822,639 and 8,671,139) and the AlmondNet v. Meta appeal — do not center on the '586 patent.

5. CAFC 2026 docket check (result: no match found)

I searched specifically for 2026 Federal Circuit activity tied to 8,244,586 and found no docket entry naming this patent. The 2026 CAFC items that surfaced are related-but-distinct:

• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 24-1834 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 13, 2026) — nonprecedential per curiam AFFIRMED of PTAB IPR2022-01436 (Law360: "affirms Meta's win over AlmondNet ad tech patent"). The appeal arises from IPR2022-01436, which is a different IPR number than the '586-related IPR2022-00929 (which was not instituted). I therefore cannot state that the April 13, 2026 affirmance concerns US 8,244,586, and the record I retrieved does not identify which AlmondNet patent it covers.
• AlmondNet v. Amazon, Fed. Cir. No. 26-1326 — appeals voluntarily dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) (April 2026); reported as concerning US 8,671,139 and US 7,822,639. Not the '586 patent.

Bottom line on the docket question: as of the sources available to me, there is no CAFC 2026 docket entry specifically for 8,244,586. Given that both PTAB challenges to the '586 patent (CBM2017-00047 and IPR2022-00929) were not instituted, there would be no natural PTAB-to-CAFC appeal path for this patent in 2026.

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. Exact text of claims 11–22 — not verified from primary sources in this session; only claim 1's limitations are well-substantiated (via the Meta IPR petition's quotations and the spec's summary).
2. Which patent the April 13, 2026 Fed. Cir. decision (24-1834/IPR2022-01436) invalidated — not established; it is not confirmed as the '586 patent.
3. Legal-status interpretation — "Expired – Fee Related" vs. the 2020-11-28 anticipated expiration are reported as-is, unreconciled.
4. This is a technical/bibliographic summary, not legal advice; nothing here is a validity, infringement, or claim-scope opinion.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8244586. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into specific cases and the Unified Patents litigation portal.

Let me verify a few remaining case details via the Unified Patents litigation portal and confirm statuses.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,244,586

Patent identification (literal): U.S. 8,244,586 B2, "Computerized systems for added-revenue off-site targeted internet advertising," inventor Roy Shkedi, assignee AlmondNet, Inc. Application No. 13/368,686, filed 2012‑02‑08, granted 2012‑08‑14, priority date 2000‑11‑28 (division of 12/911,601 → cont. of 10/996,491 (U.S. 7,822,639) → cont. of 09/723,391 (U.S. 6,832,207)). Google Patents status: Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2020‑11‑28).

Note on scope of this answer: The '586 patent is part of a large AlmondNet/Intent IQ ad‑targeting portfolio that is litigated together. I have listed only cases where I found direct confirmation that '586 itself was asserted or listed. Where that link is inferential, I flag it. I was unable to open the Unified Patents litigation caselist for a per‑patent view (searches returned the Unified Patents PTAB caselist and third‑party aggregators instead), so the below is assembled from the Google Patents litigation record on US8244586, Docket Alarm D.‑Del./W.D.‑Tex. dockets, PACER‑derived summaries, and the Rule 3‑1 infringement contentions in the E.D.N.Y. Yahoo case.

A. District court litigation

Cases involving the '586 family where '586's specific inclusion is NOT confirmed from my sources

These are part of the same portfolio campaign and appear in the family-level litigation record, but I did not find direct confirmation that '586 was pleaded in them:

• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al., 6:21-cv-00898 (W.D. Tex., filed 2021‑08‑27) — This is the case where a W.D. Tex. jury in June 2024 returned a ~$122 million verdict for AlmondNet. That verdict was on U.S. 7,822,639 and U.S. 8,671,139, not on '586. One aggregator tags '586 to this docket; the trial patents were '639/'139.
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., 6:21-cv-00896 (W.D. Tex.) — transferred to 4:22-cv-08911 (N.D. Cal.).
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., 6:21-cv-00891 (W.D. Tex.) and 4:22-cv-07515 (N.D. Cal.) (stayed).
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al., 6:22-cv-01204 (W.D. Tex.) — reported terminated.
• AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al., 7:25-cv-00165 (W.D. Tex., filed 2025‑04‑15) — AlmondNet + Intent IQ v. Amazon.com, Amazon.com Services, AWS. Docket activity through 2026 (Markman briefing, stay, and an Order on Motion to Dismiss entered 2026‑04‑06). I could not confirm '586 is asserted here.

B. USPTO PTAB proceedings (not district court litigation, but directly on '586)

(Related CBM challenges to sibling patents — CBM2017‑00049 ('249), ‑00051 ('904), ‑00052 ('582) — were also denied institution.)

C. Bottom line

• '586 has been litigated, but as one patent inside AlmondNet's larger "off‑site/targeted advertising" enforcement program rather than as the lead or trial patent.
• Confirmed '586 assertions: E.D.N.Y. 1:16‑cv‑01557 (Yahoo), D. Del. 1:19‑cv‑00247 (Oath Holdings), D. Del. 1:21‑cv‑01035 and W.D. Tex. 6:21‑cv‑00731 (Roku), W.D. Tex. 6:21‑cv‑00897 (Microsoft/Xandr), and D. Del. 1:23‑cv‑01373 (LinkedIn).
• Outcomes: no case produced a merits judgment on '586. Every one resolved by transfer, consolidation, stay, or stipulated dismissal (with prejudice where specified — LinkedIn, Microsoft). The only money judgment in the campaign I found (the ~$122M Amazon verdict, June 2024) was on '639 and '139, not '586.
• Validity of '586: three PTAB challenges (CBM2017‑00047, IPR2022‑00929, IPR2022‑01454) were all denied institution, so no claims of '586 have been cancelled.
• '586 itself is now expired (fee‑related) as of the 2020‑11‑28 anticipated expiration, so forward‑looking infringement exposure is limited, though past damages could theoretically remain in cases with pre‑expiration conduct.

Caveat: Because I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation caselist per patent, and because several aggregator entries tag patents to dockets at the family level, the items in Section A "not confirmed" should be verified against the actual complaints/AO‑120 forms before being relied on for the '586 specifically.

I'll verify the PTAB record for this patent, starting with the proceedings named in the earlier sections and checking whether any decision documents, panels, or appeals are public.

Strong record surfacing. Let me pin down the CBM denial reasoning, the Meta IPR decision date/panel, and whether any of these was appealed.

PTAB / AIA Trial Record — U.S. Patent 8,244,586 B2

"Computerized systems for added-revenue off-site targeted internet advertising" (Shkedi; AlmondNet, Inc.) — App. No. 13/368,686; granted 2012-08-14; priority 2000-11-28.

⚠️ Conflict flag — read before relying on the counts

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt states, verbatim:

"The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. … the default should be 'no PTAB activity on file.'"

That is the canonical ODP position, and I report it as such — but it is contradicted by independent, primary-source records. Web search surfaces three post-grant proceedings against U.S. 8,244,586, each with an institution decision document on file. I am flagging them per the instruction that "Web search may surface … proceedings the ODP hasn't indexed yet — flag any you find."

Two plausible reconciliations (I cannot confirm which is correct from the retrieved material):

1. Indexing gap. Two of the three are IPRs denied institution on the merits; denied-institution IPRs are sometimes absent from "AIA trial proceedings" feeds keyed to instituted trials. The third is a CBM, a transitional program under AIA § 18 that is frequently indexed outside a generic "AIA trial proceedings" endpoint.
2. Feed lag / scope. The ODP ingest simply has not captured these dockets.

No contradiction exists between this block-level conflict and the previously generated sections of this report — the Litigation, Prior Art, and Obviousness sections independently identified these same three proceedings. This section adds the panel, decision-date, and record-level detail. I have not invented any proceeding number; all three numbers below appear in PTAB filings, PTAB E2E documents, and/or the Unified Patents PTAB portal.

Proceedings overview

Three post-grant proceedings name U.S. 8,244,586 — one Covered Business Method review (§ 101) and two Inter Partes Reviews (§ 103) — and all three were denied institution; there is no Final Written Decision, no cancelled claim, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal on this patent, leaving the 22 claims exactly as issued and a defendant facing assertion with an untested patent whose three challengers all failed at the threshold door rather than on the merits.

Breakdown by status:

Bottom-line defensive posture: neither "the patent is hardened" nor "the troll has no case." The accurate gloss is "untested and therefore neither strengthened nor weakened — but with three public road maps of what failed, and zero estoppel attached to any of them." No challenger has ever reached an FWD, so no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached and the prior art from all three petitions remains fully available in district court. Conversely, no claim has been narrowed, and there is no institution decision or FWD to point a court toward on the merits.

IPR2022-01454 — Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., and Amazon.com Services LLC v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)

• Filed: 2022-08-31

• Status: Not Instituted – Merits (Unified Patents portal label). Verbatim from the Board's decision: "Decision Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review 35 U.S.C. § 314" — i.e., the denial is stated under § 314 rather than the post-institution § 318 track.

• Judge panel: Kristen L. Droesch, Thomas L. Giannetti, and Lynne H. Browne, Administrative Patent Judges. Giannetti, Administrative Patent Judge, authored.

• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, and 20. Grounds were pre-AIA § 103(a) obviousness. Petitioner's exhibit list identifies the art as Ex. 1006 — U.S. Pat. App. Pub. 2001/0039515 ("Mayadas") as primary, supported by Ex. 1007 — U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/201,340 ("Mayadas Provisional"), Ex. 1008 — U.S. Pat. No. 7,366,682 ("Katiyar"), Ex. 1009 — U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,241 ("Rosenberg"), and Ex. 1011 — Zeff & Aronson, Advertising on the Internet. (One oddity worth noting literally: Ex. 1001 is AlmondNet's own U.S. Pat. No. 7,822,639 — the '586's parent — and Ex. 1004/1005 are the '586 patent and its prosecution history. Exhibit role not verified.)

• Institution decision: Denied — 2023-03-21. Stated reasoning, quoted:

  "For the reasons discussed below, we determine that Petitioner has not established a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail with respect to any claim challenged in the Petition. We, therefore, deny institution of inter partes review."

  Important nuance: the parties filed Petitioner's Reply (2023-01-26) and Patent Owner's Sur-Reply (2023-02-02) "directed solely to the issue of discretionary denial" — i.e., a § 314(a)/Fintiv-style fight. The retrieved decision text frames the outcome in reasonable-likelihood (merits) terms; Amazon's Reply argued Fintiv Factor 4 (overlap) and Factor 2 (proximity to trial) supported institution and offered a stipulation not to pursue invalidity on Mayadas-based grounds in the parallel litigation. I cannot confirm from the retrieved excerpt which basis actually carried the denial — merits or discretion. Both were briefed.

• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD was issued, so no claim was cancelled and no claim was adjudicated patentable. Do not represent otherwise.

• Settlement / termination: N/A — never instituted. Procedural tail: Petitioner's request for refund of post-institution fees (2023-08-30); Notice: refund approved (2023-09-06).

• Appeal: None found. A denied-institution decision is not appealable to the Federal Circuit in the ordinary course, so no CAFC docket exists.

• Defensive value: Moderate and purely negative-form. The petition died before the Board weighed the merits, so no estoppel attached and Amazon's Mayadas/Katiyar/Rosenberg/Zeff combination is still available as a district-court invalidity theory. But note the asymmetry: the Board also did not reject the theory — it declined to reach it. A defendant should treat the Mayadas packet (Ex. 1006/1007) as the most-developed off-site-targeting art package already assembled against this patent.

• Primary sources: decision — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01454/Amazon.com_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/03-21-2023-Board/Institution_Decision__Deny-12-Institution_Decision__Denying_Institution_of_Inter_Partes_Review_35_USC_sec_314.pdf · docket/documents — https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Amazoncom-Inc-et-al-v-AlmondNet-Inc-id-[180653](/patent/180653)/documents/sort_by/doc_number/sort_dir/asc · PTAB E2E — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabs/

IPR2022-00929 — Meta Platforms, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc. and Intent IQ, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review

• Filed: 2022-04-25 (Petition); Meta identified as "Meta Platforms, Inc. f/k/a Facebook Inc."

• Status: Not Instituted – Merits.

• Judge panel: Not retrieved. I could not confirm the APJ panel for this proceeding, and I will not guess it.

• Petition grounds: Two grounds, both pre-AIA § 103(a):

  • Ground 1 — claims 1–5, 8–9, 11–14, 16–17, and 19–20 obvious over Amjadi, Robinson, Zeff, and Stout.
  • Ground 2 — claims 6–7, adding Fabris.
  • Sole primary reference for the "first Internet site" element: Amjadi — specifically AlmondNet's POPR refers to "Amjadi's 'incentive host server 410'" (Amjadi is identified in Meta's parallel invalidity contentions as U.S. Patent 7,958,224, filed 2/17/1999).

• Institution decision: Denied. Date not confirmed in the retrieved material (the POPR was filed 2022-08-03; the denial post-dates it). Stated reasoning, from the Patent Owner's framing of its winning argument, which the Board evidently accepted:

  "The Petition's fatal flaw is that it materially rewrites Amjadi by characterizing Amjadi's 'incentive host server 410' as an 'incentive host server 410 site' without any explanation of how 'host server 410' is disclosed as or is inherently a Web site. The Petition cannot meet its burden by simply conflating the word 'server' with 'site'…"

  The Board's acceptance of this is corroborated by the later Amazon decision's background section, which recites: "The '586 patent has been before the Board in the following proceedings: CBM2017-00047 (institution denied); IPR2022-00929 (institution denied)." — that is a Board-authored confirmation of the '586 status, which I weight heavily.

• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD issued; no claim cancelled; no claim sustained.

• Settlement / termination: N/A — never instituted.

• Appeal: None found.

• Defensive value: The denial turned on a reference-mapping defect, not a legal holding — the Board did not say the '586 claims are non-obvious, only that Meta had not shown Amjadi discloses a website. That defect is curable: swap the primary reference for one whose disclosure is unambiguously a site (e.g., the Merriman '061 / Angles '811 line identified in this report's Obviousness section), and the same § 103 theory can be re-run. No estoppel blocks it.

• Primary sources: Petition — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00929/Meta_Platforms_Inc/docs/04-25-2022-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petitioners_Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_Of_Pat_No_8,244,586.pdf · POPR — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00929/Meta_Platforms_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/08-03-2022-Patent_Owner/Preliminary_Response-6-PATENT_OWNERS_PRELIMINARY_RESPONSE.pdf

CBM2017-00047 — Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18; 37 C.F.R. §§ 42.300–304)

• Filed: 2017-04-18 (initial Petition, Paper 2). Corrected Petition filed 2017-06-02 (Paper 6) — the Board expressly noted Petitioner "was not ordered to correct its Petition" and that the record did not show Board authorization was obtained (37 C.F.R. § 42.20(a)), but declined to reach that issue given its disposition.

• Status: Institution Denied. Decision bearing "Denying Institution of Covered Business Method Patent Review 35 U.S.C. § 324(a) and 37 C.F.R. § 42.208."

• Judge panel: Michael W. Kim, Justin T. Arbes, and Thomas L. Giannetti, Administrative Patent Judges. Kim authored.

• Petition grounds: Single ground — 35 U.S.C. § 101 (patent-ineligible abstract idea / Alice). Challenged claims 1, 2–4, 11–13, 16, 17, and 20–22 (decision's wording). Petitioner's expert (Stephen Gray) opined these claims "are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the limitations correspond to the abstract idea of securing revenue from advertising," with the remainder merely reciting "generic computer hardware and software operating on the Internet." No § 102 or § 103 ground was presented, and the Petition expressly argued claim 1 and claim 11 limitations separately — the strongest contemporaneous signal that claim 11 is a second independent claim (consistent with the Prior Art and Obviousness sections of this report).

• Institution decision: Denied — 2017-10-16. Stated reasoning:

  "we are supersuaded [sic] that Petitioner has demonstrated 'that it is more likely than not that at least 1 of the claims challenged in the petition is unpatentable.' 35 U.S.C. § 324(a). We, thus, do not institute a covered business method patent review of any claim of the '586 patent, on any ground."

  ⚠️ Ambiguity to flag against the previously generated sections. The Litigation Summary section characterizes this denial as resting on CBM-eligibility grounds. The decision text as retrieved frames the denial in § 324(a) "more likely than not unpatentable" terms (the merits standard). Patent Owner's POPR raised three independent non-institution grounds — (1) patent is not directed to a "financial product or service," (2) patent is for a "technological invention," and (3) claims not more likely than not ineligible under § 101. The retrieved decision language matches ground (3). By contrast, the sibling CBMs in the same Yahoo! campaign were expressly denied for failure to show CBM-eligibility ("Petitioner has not met its burden of showing that the 'X' patent is eligible for the transitional covered business method patent review program" — CBM2017-00049 ('307), -00050 ('249), -00051 ('904), -00052 ('582)). I report both readings and do not resolve them; the '586 denial's stated § 324(a) standard reads as merits-based on the text I retrieved.

• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD; no claim cancelled; no claim sustained.

• Settlement / termination: N/A — never instituted. Procedural tail: Yahoo!'s request for refund of $18,000 in post-institution fees granted (Notice mailed 2018-02-15).

• Appeal: None found. Not appealable in the ordinary course.

• Defensive value: Limited but non-zero for a § 101 defense. The Board's denial is a threshold ruling; it creates no estoppel and binds no court. But it does mean Yahoo! did not carry its burden on the record it built, and it sits alongside seven sibling CBM denials (CBM2017-00046 '639, -00049 '307, -00050 '249, -00051 '904, -00052 '582, -00056 '146, -00058 '139). A defendant running Alice against the '586 is running an argument a well-resourced petitioner already lost at institution.

• Related district proceeding named in the decision: AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Yahoo! Inc., No. 1:16-cv-01557-ILG-SMG (E.D.N.Y.).

• Primary sources: Institution Decision — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2017-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8244586/docs/10-16-2017-Board/Institution_Decision-8-Trial_Instituted_Document.pdf · POPR — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2017-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8244586/docs/08-09-2017-Patent_Owner/Preliminary_Response-7-PATENT_OWNERS_PRELIMINARY_RESPONSE.pdf · Notice of Refund — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1487714](/patent/1487714)/download-documents?artifactId=a777nWxDeGaBoD2rsf_Mw7oVmHnGwrAGF5RxsKf1j9BsS5lG2ga7Sx8

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of 8,244,586 has been CANCELED or SUSTAINED by the Board, because no FWD was ever issued. All 22 claims stand as granted on 2012-08-14. The claim set challenged across the three proceedings covers the asserted universe — claims 1–9, 11–14, 16–17, and 19–22 — but "challenged" here means "named in a petition that was refused at the threshold," which has no adjudicative weight. There is a notably untested residue: claims 10, 15, 18, and 21 were addressed in the CBM's § 101 ground (21 in a dependent-claim section) but never appeared in either IPR's § 103 challenge — the two IPRs stop at claim 20. I have not verified the text of any claim beyond 1, 2, and 11, and I make no scope representation about the untested claims.

Also relevant to the patent's overall posture, and repeatedly conflated in aggregator feeds: the instituted, adjudicated AlmondNet IPRs in this campaign are on other patents. The 2023-11-30 PTAB decision striking down four challenged claims of an AlmondNet advertising patent and the 2026-04-13 Federal Circuit affirmance (AlmondNet, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 24-1834, affirming IPR2022-01436) are NOT about U.S. 8,244,586 and must not be cited as such.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and that cuts in the defendant's favor. Because no petition was instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to any of Yahoo!, Meta, or Amazon (nor to their privies). Concretely, for a defendant being asserted on the '586 today:

• The Amjadi + Robinson + Zeff + Stout (+ Fabris) § 103 combination is still fully available in district court — Meta is not barred, and a non-privy defendant is not barred at all.
• The Mayadas (2001/0039515) + Mayadas Provisional 60/201,340 + Katiyar + Rosenberg + Zeff § 103 combination is still fully available — Amazon's stipulation in the '554 petition was conditioned on institution and never took effect.
• The § 101 / Alice theory from CBM2017-00047 remains available, unburdened by any adverse FWD.
• § 315(b) is the live clock to watch. In the parallel campaign the Board denied an Amazon IPR as time-barred under § 315(b) (that was the '398 patent, not the '586). A defendant served with a '586 complaint has one year to file; and note the practical sequencing risk that a pre-institution § 314(a) discretionary denial is not a merits loss and does not preserve the ability to file a second petition on the same art.

Pattern signals. (1) Petitioner diversity, not a unified-patents campaign on this patent. Three different petitioners attacked the '586 — Yahoo! (2017), Meta (2022), Amazon (2022) — which is what a broadly asserted patent looks like, not a defensive-aggregator attack. I found no Unified Patents petition against the '586. Caution on one data point: a Unified Patents portal row associates "Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute & Hanbat National University Industry-academic Cooperation Foundation" with an AlmondNet IPR, but the case number there is IPR2022-01453, which concerns the '639 patent (a different, more recent patent in the family) — not the '586. Treat any ETRI/Hanbat attribution to IPR2022-01454 as a portal artifact; the '554 petitioner of record, on the face of the decision document, is Amazon. (This refines, and partially corrects, the Litigation Summary section, which listed the '554 petitioner as "not confirmed" and flagged the ETRI/Hanbat co-listing — the decision caption resolves the petitioner as Amazon.) (2) The patent owner litigates, not appeals. AlmondNet's pattern is aggressive district-court enforcement across ~15+ dockets plus layered PTAB defenses; I found no PTAB appeal by AlmondNet on the '586 and no § 315(e) challenge to these denials. (3) Two-year separation. Yahoo! (2017) → Meta/Amazon (2022), consistent with new defendants arriving and filing within their § 315(b) windows.

⚠️ Also flag against the structured block: its "no PTAB activity on file" default is the opposite of the primary record for this patent. For a client-facing memo, I would not repeat the ODP default without the three-proceeding correction above.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite any FWD for U.S. 8,244,586 — there isn't one. The correct, defensible statements are: "All three post-grant challenges to the '586 patent were denied institution; no claim has ever been cancelled; no claim has ever been adjudicated." Cite the Amazon institution decision (2023-03-21) as proof of the status of the prior two proceedings, since the Board itself recites both earlier denials: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01454/Amazon.com_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/03-21-2023-Board/Institution_Decision__Deny-12-Institution_Decision__Denying_Institution_of_Inter_Partes_Review_35_USC_sec_314.pdf

2. Build the invalidity case from the two cured defects, not from the denials. Meta lost because it mapped the "first Internet site" onto Amjadi's "incentive host server 410" and the Board read "server" ≠ "site." Fix the primary reference, not the argument: pair the Mayadas packet (Ex. 1006/1007 from the Amazon petition) or the Merriman '061 / Angles '811 / Gerace '396 website-centric line with the revenue-return and price-differential elements (Goldhaber '210 + Zeff) identified in this report's Obviousness section. Attack claim 11(e)–(f) — the pure price-differential split — first; it is the least technical and most KSR-vulnerable limitation.

3. Open the docket yourself and verify four things I could not close from search: (a) the IPR2022-00929 institution decision date and APJ panel (Meta IPR) — the POPR is 2022-08-03, so the decision falls between then and the Amazon decision's 2023-03-21 recitation; (b) whether the Amazon denial rested on § 314(a) discretion (Fintiv) or on the merits — the decision's own framing is merits, but both were briefed; (c) whether the CBM2017-00047 denial rested on § 101 merits or CBM-eligibility (the sibling CBMs were eligibility-based; the '586 text reads merits-based); and (d) whether any of the three generated a request for rehearing or a SIPCO-style appeal. Start at PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabs/ and cross-check CourtListener for any AlmondNet appellate docket referencing 8,244,586: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=AlmondNet

4. Calendar the estoppel and time-bar analysis before filing anything. Since no institution occurred, nothing is estopped — but also confirm the client's § 315(b) service date, and confirm whether any privy of Meta or Amazon is a party (which would import their petition content but, given no institution, import no estoppel).

5. Reconcile the ODP record before filing a memo citing the structured block. The ODP feed showing zero proceedings for this patent should be treated as an indexing limitation, not as evidence of no activity. If you need the ODP entry for a filing, pull it through USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB E2E for the patent directly and note the discrepancy.

Explicit uncertainties (do not treat as resolved): (i) IPR2022-00929 panel and decision date — not retrieved; (ii) the precise legal basis of the Amazon and Yahoo! denials (merits vs. discretion, § 101 merits vs. CBM-eligibility) — both partly ambiguous on the documents retrieved; (iii) exact text of claims 3–22 — not verified in any section of this report; (iv) identity/number of the Stout and Fabris references in Meta's Grounds 1–2 — not retrieved; (v) this is a technical/procedural record analysis, not legal advice, and is not a validity, infringement, or claim-scope opinion.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8,244,586.

I'll research the prior art cited for US 8,244,586, focusing on the front-page patent citations and any references identified in the PTAB proceedings.

The Google Patents page render is truncating the "References Cited" table. Let me pull the front-page citations and PTAB-petition prior art directly.

Let me get the specific prior-art grounds from the IPR petitions and the full front-page citation list.

I've hit the tool-call limit, so I'll synthesize from the sources retrieved. Note that the Google Patents render of US 8,244,586 repeatedly truncated at the "References Cited" table, so I was not able to pull the complete official (56) citations list from the primary page. Below I clearly separate what I could substantiate from what I could not.

Prior Art Analysis — US 8,244,586 B2

0. Verification of the patent number (literal)

Searching "8244586" returns US 8,244,586 B2 only. No similar number was substituted.

Pre‑AIA status matters for §102: because the priority date is 2000‑11‑28, US 8,244,586 is governed by pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102. That means:

• §102(b) art must predate 1999‑11‑28 (one year before priority);
• §102(a)/(e) art must predate 2000‑11‑28, with §102(e) US patent/publication references taking their filing date (and, at most, a properly supported provisional date);
• reference to "§102 in this report means the pre‑AIA statute as applied to this patent.

1. Front-page "References Cited" — what I could and could not verify

Could not verify: The Google Patents text in context gave me the abstract, description and claim-definition blocks but the References Cited table rendered empty/truncated on every retrieval. I therefore do not have a confirmed, complete list of the (56) references cited on the face of US 8,244,586. I will not reconstruct that list from memory.

What I did retrieve (with a caveat): FreePatentsOnline's page for US 8,244,586 returned a table headed "US Patent References." However, that table is ordered by descending issue date and contains many of Shkedi's own patents issued between 2010 and 2012 — a pattern characteristic of a "Referenced By / cited-by" list rather than examiner/applicant citations. I am therefore flagging it as ambiguous and NOT treating it as the authoritative cited-art list. Representative entries as displayed:

Interpretation caveat (important): Even if some of the above were genuinely cited by the examiner, front-page cited references were overcome during prosecution — the '586 patent issued with claim 1 notwithstanding them. Front-page citations therefore generally go to patentability-support/§103 combinations, not to §102 anticipation of the issued claims. The substantive §102 candidates for the '586 are the references raised in the PTAB petitions and district-court invalidity contentions in §§2–4 below.

2. The two (three) post-grant challenges — where the real prior art sits

Consequence: No claim of the '586 patent has been cancelled, and — critically for the §102 question — no tribunal has ever held any claim of '586 anticipated by any reference. Every substantive challenge was either a §101 challenge (CBM2017‑00047) or a §103 obviousness combination (the IPRs), and all were denied.

Sibling CBMs (CBM2017‑00049 on '249, ‑00051 on '904, ‑00052 on '582) were likewise denied on CBM-eligibility grounds.

3. The prior art actually asserted against the '586 claims

3.1 CBM2017‑00047 (Yahoo!) — claim identifiers (secondary, but useful)

The petition addressed claims 1, 2–4, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20–22. Its grounds were §101/Alice (patent-ineligibility), which is why the reference-based anticipation question does not arise here. The Board denied institution because Yahoo! did not carry its burden on CBM-eligibility — i.e., the denial was procedural/statutory, not a merits win on the art.

3.2 IPR2022‑00929 (Meta) — the primary §103 combination, and its sole independent-reference

This is the most substantive art challenge to the '586 patent. Key facts confirmed from the Patent Owner's Preliminary Response:

• Meta challenged claim 1 only (the sole challenged independent claim).
• Primary reference: "Amjadi." Meta relied "solely on Amjadi's 'incentive host server 410'" as the alleged "first Internet site" — i.e., Amjadi is asserted to disclose the "records of a multitude of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site using a tag on each such visitor computer" element.
• Meta's ground was obviousness (§103), combining Amjadi with "three or four secondary references."
• Patent Owner's winning argument: Meta's petition "materially rewrites Amjadi by characterizing Amjadi's 'incentive host server 410' as an 'incentive host server 410 site' without any explanation of how 'host server 410' is disclosed as or is inherently a Web site." The Board denied institution — the "first Internet site" limitation was not met.
• Corroboration that claim 11 is independent: the Patent Owner's response quotes limitation "1(a)/11(a)" with two different wordings — claim 1: "automatically creating records of a multitude of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site using a tag on each of such visitor computer"; claim 11: "causing creation of electronic records of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site, using a tag on each of said visitor computers." This builds on (and refines) the prior sections' conclusion that claim 11 is a second independent claim.

On the identity of "Amjadi": I could not retrieve the full citation (patent or publication number, filing/publication date) for Amjadi in this session. Its disclosed "incentive host server 410" suggests a rewards/incentive-network patent, but I will not guess a number or date. This is an explicit gap.

3.3 IPR2022‑01454 (Amazon)

Listed on the patent page as a PTAB case on the '586 patent, not instituted — merits (termination/institution decision 2023‑03‑21). I could not retrieve the specific references or grounds in the material available; I will not speculate.

4. Prior art identified in district-court invalidity contentions (the art pool)

Defendants in the W.D. Tex. / N.D. Cal. campaign filed a common "Prior Art References" exhibit (Exhibit G to Meta's Preliminary Invalidity Contentions, AlmondNet v. Meta, 6:21‑cv‑00896) listing pre‑2000 art against the family (which includes the '586). These are the strongest §102(a)/(b)/(e) candidates for the 2000‑11‑28 priority date:

Additional asserted art across the family (from the same contentions, charted against sibling patents but relevant to the '586's "saturation/off‑site" family):

5. Claim-by-claim potential anticipation analysis (§102, pre‑AIA)

Bottom line up front: On the record retrieved, no single reference was found that anticipates any claim of US 8,244,586. Every reference identified was asserted (where asserted at all) in an obviousness (§103) combination, and both IPRs and all CBMs on the '586 patent were denied institution. The "anticipates" column below should be read as "closest §102 candidate / what the reference would have to teach," based on limitation-by-limitation proximity — not as an established anticipation.

5.1 Claim 1 (independent, method) — the limitations an anticipatory reference must meet

1. Automatically create records of a multitude of visitor computers visiting a first Internet site, using a tag on each visitor computer;
2. Automatically facilitate directing an off-site advertisement to computers visiting a second Internet site, as a consequence of the computer determining (using the tags/records) that those computers visited the first site;
3. The off-site advertisement must (i) concern an offering of a third‑party advertiser that paid to display to first-site visitors, and (ii) have displayable subject matter targeted to first-site visitors based on visitor profile information connected to the tag;
4. Automatically cause the first Internet site to receive revenue from the off-site ad being directed.

5.2 Claim 11 (second independent claim — confirmed)

Claim 11 is worded as "causing creation of electronic records of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site, using a tag on each of said visitor computers" — i.e., a system/computer-implemented parallel to claim 1(a). The same references and the same "first Internet site" failure point apply. The Amjadi denial is directly on point for claim 11(a).

5.3 Dependent/other challenged claims (2–4, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20–22)

I could not verify the text of these claims from primary sources in this session. They appear (from the CBM claim list) to correspond to the content types addressed in the specification for off-site placements (advertisement, public-service announcement, personal reminder, judicial instrument, credit warning, graphic, multimedia, audio, banner) and to the tag type (cookie, identification message, telephone-system DB notification, message-identifier record, credit-card DB credit warning, public-service DB personal notice, legal-instrument DB record, cellular SIM-card message, wireless-service DB notification). I therefore cannot map a §102 reference to them with confidence.

6. Bottom line

1. No reference has been shown to anticipate (or was even found to anticipate) any claim of US 8,244,586. All art-based challenges were §103 obviousness combinations; all were denied institution; the only granted-institution-style §101 challenge (CBM2017‑00047) was denied on CBM-eligibility, not on the art.
2. The single most important prior-art reference for the '586 claims is "Amjadi" (US patent/publication disclosing an "incentive host server 410"), the primary reference in Meta's IPR2022‑00929 — and the Board's denial turned on the "first Internet site" limitation, not on Amjadi's tagging/revenue disclosures.
3. The strongest pre‑2000 §102(a)/(b)/(e) art — Merriman US 5,948,061, Gerace US 5,848,396, Angles US 5,933,811, Herz US 5,754,939, Goldhaber US 5,794,210, Montulli US 5,774,670 — collectively cover tag-based user identification and targeted-ad serving, but they do not individually show the claim‑1 combination of (i) off-site ad placement to a second site's traffic, (ii) targeting by profile info tied to a tag minted at the first site, and (iii) automatic revenue return to the first site. That third element (4) is the '586 claim‑1 element least well met by the classical pre‑2000 art.
4. §102(e) traps to watch: Roth 541 and Herz (pub.) only reach back to 1998/1999 through their priority/provisional records, which must be proven; as issued/published documents they post-date the 2000 priority date.
5. The complete front-page "References Cited" list for US 8,244,586 was NOT obtained — see §7.

7. Explicit uncertainties (do not treat as resolved)

1. The official front-page cited-references list for US 8,244,586 was not retrievable (Google Patents' References Cited table rendered empty on every fetch). The FPO table I recovered is date-descending and contains Shkedi's own follow-on patents, so I flagged it as likely a cited-by list and did not treat it as authoritative. Anyone relying on the (56) citations must pull the printed patent or the PAIR/USPTO "References Cited" view directly.
2. The full citation of "Amjadi" (patent vs. publication, number, dates) could not be retrieved. Its "incentive host server 410" indicates a rewards/incentive-network disclosure, but I did not confirm its number — I will not guess it.
3. The specific prior art and grounds in IPR2022‑01454 (Amazon) were not retrieved.
4. Exact text of claims 2–22 was not verified; §102 mapping is therefore limited to claim 1 (and, by parallel wording, claim 11(a)).
5. This is a technical prior-art mapping only — not a legal opinion on validity, anticipation, obviousness, or claim scope. The §102/§103 characterizations reflect the procedural record (petitions/denials) and the limitation-by-limitation proximity of each reference, not an adjudicated result.

No contradiction with the previously generated sections was found. This analysis corroborates two of their points and adds grounding: (a) that claim 11 is a second independent claim (now confirmed by the "1(a)/11(a)" limitation parallel in the Meta IPR record), and (b) that no merits judgment has ever been entered against the '586 patent — which here extends specifically to the prior-art question.

I'll research the prior art cited on this patent's page and the art cited during prosecution of the family, since the task directs me to the "Prior Art" section.

Let me dig into the specific prior-art references relied on in the PTAB proceedings and the patent's own citation record.

Now let me identify the specific primary references used in each PTAB challenge, and the patent's own citation record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,244,586 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)

Patent: U.S. 8,244,586 B2, "Computerized systems for added-revenue off-site targeted internet advertising" (Shkedi; AlmondNet, Inc.). App. No. 13/368,686; filed 2012-02-08; granted 2012-08-14; earliest claimed priority 2000-11-28. Pre-AIA § 103(a) governs the priority-date analysis below.

0. Scope note and a procedural flag (read first)

I could not retrieve the literal "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page (the front-page "Citations"/"Cited By" lists and the "Prior art keywords" field: media; internet site; information; site; broadcaster are all that the page exposes to me through search). Rather than reconstruct that list from memory — which the rules prohibit — I have built this analysis on the prior-art record that is actually verifiable and of record in the challenges to this exact patent:

• CBM2017-00047 (Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet) — exhibit list retrieved (Gray Declaration).
• IPR2022-00929 (Meta Platforms, Inc. v. AlmondNet / Intent IQ) — petition TOC and claim-by-claim headings retrieved.
• IPR2022-01454 (Amazon.com, Inc. et al. v. AlmondNet) — complete petitioner exhibit list retrieved, plus the Patent Owner Preliminary Response (POPR) headings.
• Defendant's Preliminary Invalidity Contentions, Exhibit G (AlmondNet v. Meta, W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00896) — reference list retrieved.

If the "Prior Art" section you intended is the Google Patents Citations list, please paste it and I will re-run the mapping against those references directly. Flagging this because the analysis below is only as good as the reference set.

Procedural flag: all three PTAB challenges to the '586 patent were denied institution (CBM2017-00047; IPR2022-00929; IPR2022-01454). No tribunal has ever reached the merits of obviousness on the '586 patent, so nothing below reflects an adjudicated holding — it is analysis, not an opinion. (Consistent with the earlier section of this report, the April 2026 Fed. Cir. affirmance in AlmondNet v. Meta, No. 24-1834, arises from IPR2022-01436 — a different AlmondNet patent — and is not about the '586.)

Also note: the system prompt gives today's date as 2026-09-28 while the task text says April 26, 2026. I have not relied on either; all dates below are the dates of the underlying documents.

1. Contradictions with the previously generated sections — flagged explicitly

Per the operating rules, I am not auto-correcting anything; I am flagging where the earlier sections and the retrieved primary record diverge.

None of these change the substance of the (a)/(b)/(c) analysis already generated; #1 and #5 do change how the claim set should be charted.

2. The claims to be tested

2.1 Claim 1 (text as quoted in the IPR2022-00929 petition and Schmandt Declaration)

Preamble (system form): a system comprising one or more computers programmed to implement a method.

• 1(a): "automatically creating records of a multitude of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site using a tag on each of such visitor computers;"
• 1(b): "automatically facilitating direction of at least one off-site advertisement to visitor computers visiting a second Internet site as a consequence of computer-determining, using the tags and the records, that the visitor computers have visited the first Internet site, which off-site advertisement concerns at least one offering of a third-party advertiser that has paid to display said advertisement on visitor computers that have visited the first Internet site and has displayable subject matter that is targeted to visitors of the first Internet site based on visitor profile information connected to the tag; and"
• 1(c): "as a result of the acts in parts (a) and (b), automatically causing the first Internet site to receive revenue from the off-site advertisement being directed to the visitor computers that have visited the first Internet site."

2.2 Claim 11 (text as quoted in the IPR2022-00929 petition / Schmandt Declaration)

• 11(a): "causing creation of electronic records of visitor computers that visit a first Internet site, using a tag on each of said visitor computers;"
• 11(b): "facilitating delivery to visitor computers visiting a second, different Internet site of advertisements sold, for a first price, for placement on visitor computers that have visited the first Internet site; and"
• 11(c): "causing the proprietor of the second Internet site to receive revenue from direction of the advertisements to the visitor computers visiting the second Internet site as a consequence of computer-determining, using the tags and said electronic records, that such visitor computers have visited the first Internet site;"
• 11(d): "wherein the advertisements concern at least one offering of a third-party advertiser;"
• 11(e): "wherein the revenue received by the second Internet site is in an amount less than the first price for the advertisements;"
• 11(f): "wherein the proprietor of the first Internet site receives at least part of the difference between the first price and the revenue received by the proprietor of the second Internet site."

This is the critical observation for § 103. Claim 11(e)-(f) is a price-differential arithmetic: the first site sells at price P, the second site is paid P−k, and the first site keeps k. That is not a technical effect; it is a revenue-split business arrangement implemented on a general-purpose network. It is the single most vulnerable element of the patent under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), which holds that "a predictable variation[] of any of these [known] elements" and "a method of doing business" using known technology are obvious.

2.3 Dependent claims for which I have verified text

Only claim 2 (tag placed without any expression of consent) is verified in full. Claims 3 (cookies), 4 (part (a) performed in conjunction with the first-site proprietor), 5 (part (b) performed in conjunction with the second-site proprietor), 8 (first site receives a portion of a premium over the usual second-site price), and 9 (second site receives more than the usual price but less than the premium) are verified by their petition headings. I do not have verified text for claims 6, 7, 12–14, 16–17, or 19–22, and I will not characterize them precisely.

3. The prior art of record

References I flagged as weak on dates: Katiyar (7,366,682) is only prior art against a 2000-11-28 date if it has a § 102(e) filing date earlier than that; I could not verify it. Stout and Fabris I could not identify at all. Any obviousness case built primarily on those three is not currently supportable from my sources.

4. § 103 mapping

Ground A (Meta's Ground 1/2) — Amjadi in view of Robinson, Zeff and Stout (and Fabris for claims 6-7)

Motivation to combine (Ground A): Amjadi already monetizes a host site by paying/rewarding visitors in connection with advertiser content. Robinson already teaches selecting what to deliver to a given user from that user's profile. Zeff teaches that the ordinary commercial expression of this is CPM-priced banner delivery on third-party sites, and that ad networks existed. A POSITA facing the admitted problem — a first site with unfulfilled advertiser demand that cannot add more in-context inventory — would combine these to move the same advertiser's message to a second site while keeping the same audience. There is no teaching away in any of them, and the combination requires no change in the principle of operation of any reference: it adds a settlement channel (a routine referral/revenue-share), not a new device.

Where the Board's denial bites (and how to fix it): AlmondNet's whole POPR argument is that "host server 410" is a server, not a website, and that Meta "materially rewrites Amjadi." That is a disclosure argument about the primary reference, not a legal impediment. The obvious repair is to stop using Amjadi's server as the "first Internet site" and instead use a reference whose disclosure is unambiguously a site. The strongest candidate already of record is Merriman '061 / Angles '811 / Gerace '396, each of which addresses websites and ad delivery to their visitors. That is Ground C, below. I note this as a strategic observation about the art, not as a prediction of a PTAB outcome.

Ground B (Amazon's IPR2022-01454) — Mayadas in view of Katiyar, Rosenberg and Zeff

Amazon's theory, per the POPR headings, is that Mayadas' user profiles and cookies, together with a data aggregator's website, meet the tag-based record-creating (1(a)) and the "determining, using the tags and the records" (1(b)) limitations. Katiyar, Rosenberg and Zeff supply the off-site ad delivery and the advertiser-payment/revenue elements.

AlmondNet's counter is disclosure-based: Mayadas does not establish that the profiles/cookies are used to determine that a computer visited the relevant website, and does not establish that an advertisement is directed as a consequence of that determination ("IPR2022-01454 POPR, §§IV.A-B"). Notably, the POPR does not argue that the economic limitations (claims 1(c), 11(e)-(f)) were unmet by the art — a telling silence, because those limitations are the easiest to meet with ordinary business-method references. The weak link in Ground B is the date of Katiyar, which I could not verify as a § 102(e) reference.

Ground C — The combination I would build from the art of record (my analysis, not a party's)

Primary: Merriman et al., U.S. 5,948,061 (filed 10/29/1996), in view of Montulli, U.S. 5,774,670 (filed 10/6/1995), and Goldhaber, U.S. 5,794,210 (filed 12/11/1995), further in view of Herz/Robinson/Gerace/Angles and Zeff.

Why a POSITA would have combined Ground C (KSR factors):

1. Known problem, known elements. Every element — cookies (Montulli/RFC 2109), central ad serving across affiliated sites (Merriman), profile targeting (Herz/Robinson/Gerace/Angles), and paying for audience attention (Goldhaber) — existed by 1997-1999. The '586 does not add a new component, protocol, or data structure; it rearranges known components into a settlement flow. KSR expressly covers "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods."
2. Market pressure, self-admitted. The specification's own "Economic Issues" section describes the pressure ("having sold all the available advertising space… and then receiving inquiries for additional advertising space") and its own "Ergonomic Issues" section describes the aesthetic cap on in-context inventory. That is precisely the design incentive KSR credits.
3. Predictable result. Moving a banner from site A to site B, targeting it with the same cookie-derived profile, and splitting the fee, produces no unexpected result: same ad, same audience, different page. KSR at 417 ("the improvement is a predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions").
4. No teaching away; enablement trivial. The ad-serving references supply every mechanism. Nothing in them disparages off-site delivery — Merriman and Angles are premised on delivery to sites other than the one the user was "at."
5. Ordinary commercial practice, admitted. The specification states that "a web site sales force will sell access to its audience via offsite content because no one knows better than a web site sales force how to sell to their own audience" and that an agency "will merely act as a facilitator that will charge a percentage or a fee for a transaction." Those are descriptions of conventional industry roles, not technical advances.
6. "Automatically" adds nothing. In a programmed ad server, "automatically creating records," "automatically facilitating direction," and "automatically causing… revenue" are the ordinary mode of operation of the very machines described in Merriman (ad delivery and billing are inherently automatic in a server-mediated system).

The one limitation that needs care

Claim 1(b) requires that the off-site ad be directed "as a consequence of" determining — from the tags and the records — that the computers visited the first Internet site. That is a requirement that the first site's identity be known to the serving mechanism — i.e., cross-site recognition keyed to the first site's tag, not merely generic behavioral targeting. This is the narrowest and most defensible element of the claim, and it is exactly the element on which both AlmondNet POPRs attacked the petitions (Amjadi, Mayadas). A successful § 103 case must show a reference in which the ad serving is triggered by recognition of a tag placed by a specific first site — i.e., a closed-loop recognition architecture rather than a pooled behavioral pool. I did not find such a reference in the retrieved record. That is the single most important gap in the obviousness case as currently documented, and I say so plainly rather than papering over it.

5. Secondary considerations that would be raised against § 103

AlmondNet would likely advance: (i) the patent's citation as prior art in later ad-tech patents; (ii) the licensing/enforcement campaign (the litigation history generated earlier in this report); and (iii) industry adoption of off-site/audience-extension advertising (e.g., the LinkedIn Audience Network accused in D. Del. 1:23-cv-01373).

Weaknesses in each:

• Nexus. Off-site "audience extension" is what the asserted prior art (Merriman, Angles) already enabled; adoption of the general practice does not establish nexus to the specific claim limitations.
• Licensing successes are evidence only with a nexus; here, every district case resolved without a merits judgment, and the only verdict in the campaign (the ~$122M W.D. Tex. verdict, June 2024) was on U.S. 7,822,639 and 8,671,139 — not the '586.
• Skepticism / teaching away: none identified in the record.

6. Claim-by-claim conclusion (with explicit gaps)

7. Bottom line

1. The '586 claims recite a known technical toolkit arranged into a revenue split. Tags (cookies), central ad servers, profile-based targeting, and paying media properties for audience attention were all squarely in the prior art by 1997-1999 — several of them listed in the patent's own lineage references and in the Meta invalidity contentions (Montulli '670; Goldhaber '210; Herz '939; Gerace '396; Angles '811; Merriman '061; Robinson '014).
2. The strongest § 103 combinations on this record are: (A) Amjadi + Robinson + Zeff + Stout (+ Fabris) — Meta's Grounds 1 and 2; (B) Mayadas + Katiyar + Rosenberg + Zeff — Amazon's IPR2022-01454; and (C), which I would construct, Merriman '061 + Montulli '670 + Goldhaber '210 + Herz/Robinson/Gerace/Angles + Zeff.
3. The decisive vulnerability is claim 11(e)-(f) — a pure price-differential ("first price" minus "revenue received by the second site" = first site's share). It is a business arrangement expressed arithmetically, and the patent's own specification describes the same structure as conventional practice.
4. The decisive obstacle is claim 1(b)'s requirement that the ad be directed as a consequence of determining, from the tags and the records, that the computers visited the first Internet site. Both Petitions lost on that point. No reference retrieved in this session discloses closed-loop, first-site-keyed cross-site recognition with the specificity needed. Absent such a reference, a § 103 case against claim 1 as a whole is not yet established, even though the economic claims (11) are weak.
5. No merits ruling exists. All three PTAB challenges to the '586 were denied institution, and no district court has adjudicated the '586's validity. This analysis is a technical assessment, not legal advice, and is not a validity, infringement, or claim-scope opinion.

Sources

• Google Patents, US 8,244,586 B2 (authoritative full text supplied in context): https://patents.google.com/patent/US8244586/en
• IPR2022-00929, Meta Platforms, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc. — Petition (filed 2022-04-25): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00929/Meta_Platforms_Inc/docs/04-25-2022-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petitioners_Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_Of_Pat_No_8,244,586.pdf
• IPR2022-00929 — Patent Owner Preliminary Response (filed 2022-08-03): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00929/Meta_Platforms_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/08-03-2022-Patent_Owner/Preliminary_Response-6-PATENT_OWNERS_PRELIMINARY_RESPONSE.pdf
• IPR2022-00929 — Declaration of Christopher M. Schmandt: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-00929/Meta_Platforms_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/04-25-2022-Petitioner/Exhibit-1002-Declaration_of_Christopher_M_Schmandt.pdf
• IPR2022-01454, Amazon.com, Inc. et al. v. AlmondNet, Inc. — Petitioner's Updated Exhibit List (filed 2023-03-03): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01454/Amazon.com_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/03-03-2023-Petitioner/Notice__Exhibit_list-11-Petitioners_Updated_Exhibit_List.pdf
• IPR2022-01454 — Patent Owner's Preliminary Response (filed 2022-12-29): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01454/Amazon.com_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/12-29-2022-Patent_Owner/POPR_filed-6-Patent_Owners_Preliminary_Response.pdf
• IPR2022-01454 — Petitioner's Reply to POPR (filed 2023-01-26): https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01454/Amazon.com_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/01-26-2023-Petitioner/Other__other-9-Petitioners_Reply_to_Patent_Owners_Preliminary_Response_Pursuant_to_37_CFR_Section_42108c.pdf
• CBM2017-00047, Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc. — Petition (filed 2017-04-18) and Exhibit List: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2017-00047/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8244586/docs/04-18-2017-Petitioner/Petition-2-Petition_for_Covered_Business_Method_Review_of_US_Patent_No_8,244,586.pdf
• CBM2017-00047 — Declaration of Stephen Gray: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2017-00047/Yahoo%21_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/04-18-2017-Petitioner/Exhibit-1002-Declaration_of_Stephen_Gray.pdf
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 6:21-cv-00896 (W.D. Tex.) — Defendant's Preliminary Invalidity Contentions, Exhibit G: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01262/Meta_Platforms_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/11-08-2022-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2012-Exhibit_2012.pdf
• Unified Patents PTAB caselist (IPR2022-01454 status/petitioner row): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?petitioners=Electronics+%26+Telecommunications+Research+Institute+%26+Hanbat+National+University+Industry-academic+Cooperation+Foundation
• FreePatentsOnline, US 8,244,586 (reference listing): https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8244586.html
• AlmondNet Group Patent Families list (IAB Tech Lab, 2024-05-10): http://iabtechlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/24-05-10-AN-DAT-IIQ-MASTER-Patents-and-Apps-list.pdf