US 8339493

I'll search for the specific patent number and any 2026 CAFC docket activity. Note: the full patent text was already provided in the prompt, which I'll treat as authoritative for the patent itself; searches will be used to verify and to check for litigation/docket updates.

Let me verify the 2026 CAFC dockets and whether the '493 patent is among the asserted patents.

Verification note

I was given the full text of US 8,339,493 in the prompt and treated it as authoritative for the patent document itself. Searches confirmed the front-page bibliographic data (via a litigation exhibit reproducing the printed patent) and surfaced current USPTO/PTAB and court activity. One caveat up front: I did not find any 2026 CAFC docket that names US 8,339,493 as an appealed patent. What I found were 2026 Federal Circuit dockets in the broader Maxell/Samsung dispute (see "Current proceedings" below), and I cannot confirm the '493 patent is among the patents on appeal in them.

US 8,339,493 B2 — "Electric Camera"

Sources: Google Patents front page as supplied; patent front page reproduced in Maxell Ltd. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), No. 5:19-cv-00036 (E.D. Tex.), Docket 111-3 (docketalarm.com).

Family chain (as printed): continuation of Ser. No. 10/660,710 (filed Sep. 12, 2003), now US 8,059,177, which is a division of Ser. No. 09/520,836 (filed Mar. 8, 2000), now US 6,765,616. Related: US 7,403,226.

Inconsistency flagged (not corrected): An ex parte reexamination transmittal in the record describes the '493 patent as "filed on 09/12/03 with application number 12/845,266." That is internally contradictory; the printed patent front page states Appl. No. 12/845,266, Filed Jul. 28, 2010. I treat the front page as authoritative.

Abstract (verbatim)

"An electric camera includes an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having N vertically arranged pixels and an arbitrary number of pixels arranged horizontally, N being equal to or more than three times the number of effective scanning lines M of a display screen of a television system, a driver to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signal charges accumulated in individual pixels of K pixels to produce, during a vertical effective scanning period of the television system, a number of lines of output signals which corresponds to 1/K the number of vertically arranged pixels N of the image sensing device, K being an integer equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of N divided by M, and a signal processing unit having a function of generating image signals by using the output signals of the image sensing device."

The three independent claims in plain language

The patent has 14 claims. Independent claims are 1, 5, and 10; the remaining claims depend on them (2–4 on claim 1; 6–9 on claim 5; 11 onward on claim 10).

Claim 1 — Apparatus: mode-dependent vertical mix/cull interval

An electric camera with three parts: (a) an image sensor whose light-receiving surface has pixels in a grid, arranged in N vertical pixel lines, where N ≥ 3 × M (M = effective scanning lines of the display); (b) a signal processing unit that makes image signals from the sensor's output; and (c) a display unit with the display screen.

Claim 1 sets three distinct operating behaviors:

• Monitoring in static image mode: image signals are made by mixing or culling charges so that only pixel lines at intervals of K1 pixels appear.
• Recording in moving video mode: same mix/cull, but at intervals of K2 pixels, where K1 ≠ K2.
• Recording in static image mode: image signals use all N vertical pixel lines — no thinning at all, giving N pixel lines (full resolution).

In short: full-resolution readout when you capture a still, coarse vertical thinning when you only preview a still, and a different (finer) degree of thinning when shooting video.

Claim 5 — Apparatus: same idea phrased as line "distances"

Same three-part camera (sensor with N vertical pixel lines, signal processing unit, display unit), but the limitation is expressed in terms of spacing between retained lines rather than pixel counts:

• Recording in static image mode: uses all N lines → N pixel lines.
• Monitoring in static image mode: uses only those lines that survive mix/cull, which are separated by a first distance.
• Recording in moving video mode: uses part or all of the mixed/culled lines, separated by a second distance different from the first.

Claim 7 (dependent) states the first distance is larger than the second — i.e., preview/static monitoring thins more aggressively than video recording. Claim 8 adds that N ≥ (a fixed parameter) × M, and claim 9 sets that fixed parameter to three.

Claim 10 — Method of operating such a camera

A method for a camera of the same structure, comprising:

1. Selecting between static image mode and moving video mode; and when in static image mode, selecting either (1) recording or (2) monitoring;
2. If recording a still: generate image signals using all N vertical pixel lines → N pixel lines;
3. If monitoring a still: generate image signals from mix/culled lines spaced at intervals of a given distance;
4. If recording video: generate image signals from part or all of the mix/culled N pixel lines, spaced at intervals of a second distance different from the first.

Supporting detail from the specification (context for the claims)

• Working example: 1200 vertical × 1600 horizontal pixels; NTSC M ≈ 240 effective lines. During moving-video recording, 4 pixels are vertically mixed (960 effective lines, leaving ~240 lines usable for image stabilization); during static-image monitoring, 5 pixels are mixed so that all 1200 rows map to 240 output lines; during static-image recording, mixing is disabled and all rows are read out individually.
• Vertical shifting of the extracted (effective) area corrects camera shake, driven by gyro sensors 16a/16b and an image-instability decision circuit 17 — changing the number of rows transferred during vertical blanking periods T3/T4.
• Horizontal interpolation circuit 9 re-maps the horizontal segment to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio during monitoring.
• Vertical interpolation corrects interlace gravity-center phase error (e.g., 36° for 5-pixel mixing; 60° for 3-pixel mixing) so A/B fields retain a 180° vertical phase difference.
• A second embodiment (view-angle change switch 18) switches between 4-, 3-, and 2-pixel mixing (zoom without vertical interpolation artifacts), with gain compensation (claim-level support for K1 ≠ K2).
• A third embodiment (864 × 1152 sensor, six-phase, two-gate CCD) cannot transfer every pixel independently; it uses 3-pixel mixing, 6-pixel mixing for static monitoring with 144→240 line vertical interpolation, and three sequential readouts for full-resolution stills.
• Color filter variants: Ye/G/Cy vertical stripes (including a white-filter variant), or primary-color R/G/B stripes.

Literal-text note: the specification states the extracted areas are "(A) 960 pixels high by 1280 pixels wide, (B) 720 pixels high by 960 pixels wide and (C) 4880 pixels high by 640 pixels wide." The "4880" figure is as-printed; the surrounding arithmetic (1200 × 640/1600 = 480) implies 480, but I am reporting the document literally per instruction not to auto-correct identifiers.

Current proceedings (as of the search date)

USPTO / PTAB:

• Ex parte reexamination 90/014,628 (Art Unit 3992, Examiner Peng Ke), filed Dec. 10, 2020 by third-party requester Apple Inc., requesting reexamination of the '493 patent. The request was granted (PTOL-471G, mailed Jan. 28, 2021). The reexamination certificate confirmed the patentability of claims 5–6 (docketalarm.com, Maxell v. Apple Docket 646-4).
• IPR2018-00904 (petitioner Olympus Corporation et al.) — Final Written Decision; IPR2018-00236 (ZTE) — not instituted on the merits; IPR2020-00597 — not instituted (procedural); IPR2025-00392 — filed 2025 and listed by Google Patents as "Settlement." A PTAB filing referencing IPR2025-00392, Patent No. 8,339,493 names LG Electronics, Inc. and LG Electronics USA, Inc. as real parties-in-interest and identifies the related district court actions as Maxell Ltd. v. LG Electronics, 5:23-cv-00152 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 29, 2023; transferred) and 5:24-cv-04972 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 9, 2024) (PTAB petition materials). I could not independently confirm the disposition of IPR2025-00392 beyond the Google Patents "Settlement" label.

District court (from the patent page and search results):

• Maxell Ltd. v. Apple Inc., 5:19-cv-00036 (E.D. Tex., filed Mar. 15, 2019) — '493 patent asserted.
• Maxell Ltd. v. ZTE Corp., 5:16-cv-00179 (E.D. Tex., filed Nov. 18, 2016) — '493 patent among the eight patents asserted (per Chinese-language coverage of the 2018 ZTE verdict).
• Maxell, Ltd. v. LG Electronics, 5:23-cv-00152 (E.D. Tex.) → 5:24-cv-04972 (N.D. Cal.).

CAFC — 2026 dockets: I located 26-1320 ([Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.) v. Maxell, Ltd., docketed Jan. 7, 2026) and 26-1330 (Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., docketed Jan. 12, 2026) in the Federal Circuit (docketalarm party search). These are part of the Maxell/Samsung campaign, but I have no authoritative confirmation that US 8,339,493 is an asserted or appealed patent in either, and I will not assume it is. The docket expressly tied to the '493 patent is 21-1033 (Apple Inc. v. Maxell, Ltd., filed Oct. 9, 2020), which arose from the E.D. Tex. Apple action.

Uncertainty

• I could not verify an active 2026 CAFC appeal specifically involving US 8,339,493; the 2026 Maxell-related CAFC dockets (26-1320, 26-1330) do not, in the sources retrieved, list the patents on appeal.
• The disposition of IPR2025-00392 beyond the "Settlement" label is unverified.
• The claim-10 text provided in the prompt ends mid-claim (claim 11 is truncated at "…an instability detector which detects an image-instability of the"). I have summarized only what is legible.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8339493 across litigation tracking sources and court records.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases and proceedings.

Let me research the remaining proceedings, including the Apple case and appellate/PTAB matters.

Litigation and Post-Grant Proceedings Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,339,493

Patent: U.S. 8,339,493 B2 ("Electric camera"); application 12/845,266; filed July 28, 2010; granted Dec. 25, 2012; priority Jan. 11, 2000; original assignee Hitachi, Ltd.; current owner Maxell, Ltd. (with predecessor owners Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. and Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.). The '493 patent issued from a chain of continuations/divisionals of application 09/520,836 (now U.S. 6,765,616), with related patents 7,403,226, 8,059,177, 8,736,729, and 9,540,517. The Google Patents record lists the patent as "Expired – Fee Related," with adjusted expiration July 22, 2020.

Based on my searches, I found the following matters. I have flagged where sources conflict or where I could not fully verify a detail.

District Court Litigation

1. Maxell, Ltd. v. ZTE Corporation and ZTE (USA), Inc.

• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Texarkana Division (Judge Robert W. Schroeder III)
• Case No.: 5:16-cv-00179-RWS (consolidated for pretrial purposes with Maxell, Ltd. v. [Huawei Device USA Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Huawei%20Device%20USA%20Inc.), et al., 5:16-cv-00178-RWS, the lead case)
• Filed: November 18, 2016
• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd. Defendants: ZTE Corporation; ZTE (USA), Inc.
• '493 involvement: The '493 patent was one of seven patents Maxell asserted against ZTE USA (the others being U.S. 6,748,317; 8,736,729; 6,408,193; 6,329,794; 6,816,491; and 8,098,695). Maxell's complaint and the January 31/March 19, 2018 claim construction order confirm '493 was in suit; claim 5 was the ultimately asserted claim.
• Outcome/Status: A June 2018 jury trial returned a verdict of infringement (found willful) with a damages award widely reported as $43.3 million (jury awarded across the asserted patents). Post-trial motions for JMOL/new trial were briefed (D.I. 291, 292, Aug. 28, 2018). The matter was ultimately settled — RPX reported settlements with ASUSTek, Huawei, and ZTE preceding Maxell's March 2019 suit against Apple.
• Note: Some Chinese-language press accounts describe this case loosely as being tried in "Texarkana, Texas" and variously mention "105 accused products" and a $43.3M figure; treat secondary-language reporting with caution.

2. Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc.

• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Judge Robert W. Schroeder III)
• Case No.: 5:19-cv-00036
• Filed: March 15, 2019 Closed: April 7, 2021 (dismissed)
• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd. Defendant: Apple Inc.
• '493 involvement: The '493 patent was one of ten patents-in-suit (131 accused products). Maxell initially asserted '493 claims 1, 3–6, 10, and 11, then narrowed to claims 5 and 6 on the eve of Apple's IPR bar date. Apple sought partial summary judgment that the '493 and 10,084,991 patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and the claims were construed in the December 16, 2019 briefing (terms "effective scanning lines . . . of a display screen," "culling," and "mixing").
• Outcome/Status: Settled and dismissed in April 2021.

3. Maxell, Ltd. v. [LG Electronics Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/LG%20Electronics%20Inc.) et al.

• Original Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Case No. 5:23-cv-00152-RWS
• Filed: December 29, 2023
• Transferred: to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Case No. 5:24-cv-04972 (Judge Noel Wise; referred to Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen), removed/filed in the N.D. Cal. August 9, 2024
• Plaintiff: Maxell, Ltd. Defendants: LG Electronics Inc. and LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc.
• '493 involvement: The '493 patent appears in this dispute — LG filed IPR2025-00392 against '493 (see below), and the PTAB papers cite the 5:23-cv-00152 complaint as an exhibit in the '493 IPR. The complaint also asserted other Maxell patents (e.g., 6,856,760; 6,973,334; and patents relating to camera "portrait mode").
• Outcome/Status: Closed July 1–2, 2025 by stipulated dismissal (N.D. Cal. D.I. 144, 145), which coincided with resolution of the parallel '493 IPR.

PTAB Proceedings (Inter Partes Review)

4. ZTE Corporation v. Maxell, Ltd. — IPR2018-00236

• Filed November 22, 2017; Not Instituted – merits. Challenged U.S. 8,339,493. (Maxell filed a request for judicial notice of the denials of institution of IPRs against 6,748,317; 6,816,491; 8,736,729; 8,098,695; and 8,339,493 during the ZTE litigation.) A companion petition, IPR2018-00237, appears on the Docket Alarm record dated the same day.

5. Olympus Corporation et al. v. Maxell, Ltd. — IPR2018-00904

• Filed June 20, 2018; Patent Owner: Maxell, Ltd.; Patent: 8,339,493 (application 12,845,266)
• Status: Terminated; termination noted December 26, 2018 (Ex. 1001 = US8339493; Ex. 1012 = file history of 12/845,266).
• Conflict to note: The Google Patents record tags this docket as "(Final Written Decision)," while GreyB/IPVerse shows the case "Terminated" with a Dec. 26, 2018 termination document. I could not confirm whether termination resulted from settlement, adverse judgment, or a final written decision.

6. Apple Inc. v. Maxell, Ltd. — IPR2020-00597

• Filed 2020; Not Instituted – procedural; challenged U.S. 8,339,493 (claims 5 and 6, the narrowed asserted claims). Apple argued it did not purposefully delay, noting Maxell originally asserted 90 claims across 10 patents and only narrowed to '493 claims 5 and 6 after the bar date.

7. LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Maxell, Ltd. — IPR2025-00392

• Filed: December 31, 2024; Petitioners: LG Electronics, Inc. and LG Electronics USA, Inc.; Patent Owner: Maxell, Ltd.; Patent: 8,339,493 (application 12,845,266; Tech Center 2600)
• Status: Terminated – Settled; termination date July 14, 2025. Petitioner counsel: Riffe, Timothy et al.; Respondent counsel: Pluta, Robert et al. (Related LG IPRs include IPR2025-00393 on U.S. 9,818,449 and IPR2025-00394 on U.S. 10,199,072.)

Ex Parte Reexamination

8. Ex parte reexamination 90/014,628 (Patent 8,339,493)

• Third-party requester: Apple Inc. Request filed: December 10, 2020; Reexamination ordered/granted: January 28, 2021; Art Unit 3992 (Examiner Peng Ke); pre-AIA (first-to-invent) provisions apply.
• Claims at issue: Claims 5 and 6 of the '493 patent. (This was a collateral attack to the E.D. Tex. litigation over the same claims.) The reexamination transmittal appears in the Maxell v. Apple docket (5:19-cv-00036, D.I. 646-4).

Federal Circuit Appeals (listed on the patent record; details unverified)

The Google Patents record lists two U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit matters associated with this family:

• CAFC Case No. 21-1033
• CAFC Case No. 20-2132

I was unable to complete verification of the parties, the lower-tribunal decision appealed, or the outcomes for these two dockets before reaching my research limit. I cannot confirm which of the above district-court or PTAB matters they arose from, so I am flagging them as unverified rather than assigning them to a specific case. (Note that the record also lists CAFC No. 20-2132 in connection with a related matter for a different patent in the family, so these should be interpreted literally and independently verified on PACER/CAFC before reliance.)

Summary Table

Caveats and Limitations

• No litigation was found beyond the matters above, and I did not find any case naming the '493 patent outside the Maxell/Hitachi patent-enforcement campaign. The '493 patent appears to have been asserted almost exclusively by Maxell (as successor to Hitachi) against mobile-device and camera-product manufacturers.
• The '493 patent is now expired (adjusted expiration July 22, 2020), so no active infringement litigation is likely; the recent activity (IPR2025-00392, N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-04972) has been resolved by settlement.
• Some details (the exact apportionment of the $43.3M ZTE verdict to the '493 patent, and the nature of the two CAFC appeals) are not fully verified from primary court records within this search. I recommend confirming via PACER, the CAFC docket, and the Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal links listed on the patent record before relying on them.

Primary sources consulted: Google Patents record for US8339493B2 (litigation and family data); Docket Alarm dockets for 5:16-cv-00179 and 5:19-cv-00036; Unified Patents litigation/PTAB entries; IPVerse/GreyB PTAB pages for IPR2025-00392 and IPR2018-00904; RPX Insight for 5:19-cv-00036; PACER Monitor for 5:24-cv-04972; USPTO PTAB papers.

I'll research the PTAB proceedings before drafting. Note upfront: the structured ODP block says "no AIA trial proceedings," but the patent's own litigation metadata lists four PTAB case numbers — I'll verify each rather than repeat the default.

Good finds. IPR2018-00904 terminated by settlement, not an FWD. Let me dig into the remaining three proceedings and the reexaminations.

Verification note (read first)

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this prompt states that the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,339,493. Web research contradicts that default: Google Patents' own litigation/PTAB metadata for this patent (the authoritative full text supplied) lists four PTAB case numbers, and I was able to independently corroborate three of them in PTACTS/Docket Alarm/GreyB and an RPX-hosted case document. I am therefore flagging four proceedings rather than reporting zero. I could not corroborate one of them (IPR2018-00236) beyond the Google Patents status label, and I say so explicitly below.

Proceedings overview

Four AIA trial proceedings are on file (per Google Patents PTAB metadata, corroborated where noted), with this breakdown: 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 2 settled/terminated before any merits ruling, 2 institution denials, 1 Federal Circuit appeal dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The bottom-line posture for a defendant is unusual: no IPR on this patent has ever reached a Final Written Decision, so there is no PTAB claim-level adjudication to lean on and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to exploit — but also no canceled claims for Maxell to wave at you. This is an untested, not a "hardened," patent. Separately, and more important than any of the ITC/PTAB history: Google Patents lists an adjusted expiration of 2020-07-22 for the '493 patent (terminal disclaimers tie its term to US 6,765,616 / US 7,403,226). If that is right, today's assertion posture is past-damages-only.

IPR2025-00392 — LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Maxell, Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-12-31
• Status: Terminated-Settled (verbatim from the structured metadata at GreyB/ex parte; termination date 2025-07-14). Plain English: the parties settled before the Board ever decided institution — no institution decision, no FWD.
• Judge panel: Frederick C. Laney, Jason W. Melvin, Kevin C. Trock
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 5–14. Three asserted grounds, all § 103: (1) claims 5–14 obvious over Misawa '482 (US 5,444,482) in view of Parulski (US 6,292,218); (2) claims 5, 7–10, 12–14 obvious over Kurashige (1997 IEEE publication) in view of Parulski; (3) claims 5, 7–10, 12–14 obvious over Juen (US 7,903,162) in view of Misawa '607 (US 6,700,607). The core theory mapped Misawa's two-mode camera + Parulski's line-skipping preview to claim 5's three distinct readout regimes (all lines for still recording; first interval for static monitoring; second, different interval for moving video).
• Institution decision: none issued — settled first.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated 2025-07-14 as settled. Terms are not public; treat as confidential. This coincides with the LG district court campaign (N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-04972) in which Maxell asserted nine patents/29 claims, and with a parallel LG stay motion.
• Appeal: none.
• Defensive value: This is the most recent and most complete merits attack on the '493 patent, and LG walked away from it. A defendant today can lift LG's three-ground obviousness theory (Misawa '482 + Parulski; Kurashige + Parulski; Juen + Misawa '607) as a ready-made IPR template — but do not assume Maxell "won" on the merits; the Board never ruled.

IPR2020-00597 — [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.) v. Maxell, Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2020-03-17
• Status: Institution Denied (discretionary, § 314(a)). Google Patents labels it "Not Instituted – Procedural."
• Judge panel: Minn Chung, Jason W. Melvin, Frederick C. Laney
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1, 3–6, 10, and 11 — the same claims Maxell asserted in Maxell, Ltd. v. Apple Inc., No. 5:19-cv-00036-RWS (E.D. Tex.). Art included a "Casio" reference whose public-availability was disputed (Apple briefed Hulu on the printed-publication point) and system art; Apple's litigation election on the '493 patent (2020-04-07) named Juen '162 + Anderson '535, + Misawa '482, and the Sony MVC-FD83/MVC-FD88 cameras. Ground-level detail beyond that was not retrievable in full.
• Institution decision: Denied ≈2020-09-25 (the notice of appeal states it was filed "11 days after the date of the Decision Denying Institution," and the notice is dated 2020-10-06). Reasoning: the Board applied Apple v. Fintiv (IPR2020-00019, Paper 11) and, "after a holistic consideration of the relevant facts," held that "efficiency and integrity of the system are best served by denying institution" given the co-pending E.D. Tex. trial. Apple argued (with Board authorization) that Fintiv factors 4/6 favored institution, that no stay had been sought by Maxell's conduct, and that NHK/Fintiv was invalid; the Board disagreed.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: n/a — no trial was instituted. Under SAS/Fintiv practice the denial is without prejudice to refiling, but the patent's expiry (see below) mooted any refiling.
• Appeal: Yes. Apple appealed the non-institution. The denial was consolidated in the Federal Circuit with the denials in IPR2020-00203, IPR2020-00407, IPR2020-00408, and IPR2020-00409 under Nos. 20-2132, 20-2211, 20-2212, 20-2213, and 21-1033. A panel (Judges Dyk, Wallach, Taranto) dismissed for lack of jurisdiction on 2020-10-30, applying 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) and In re Cisco Systems. Apple then filed a combined petition for panel rehearing/rehearing en banc; the PTO as intervenor opposed (response dated 2021-02-03). I could not confirm the disposition of the rehearing petition — do not assume it was granted. Records: Apple's Notice of Appeal; PTO intervenor response; Docket Alarm, IPR2020-00597.
• Defensive value: The '493 patent was never cleared on the merits by Apple's attack — it was saved by the Fintiv doctrine, a discretionary escape hatch that Fintiv's 2022 successor guidance and the 2025 interim procedures have since narrowed. No estoppel attaches. For a defendant, this is a template (Apple's claim selection — claims 1, 3–6, 10, 11 — is a map of what Maxell actually asserts), not a merits precedent.

IPR2018-00904 — Olympus Corporation et al. v. Maxell, Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2018-06-20
• Status: Terminated — settled/dismissed. Petitioner's unopposed motion to dismiss with prejudice filed 2018-12-18; Board termination decision 2018-12-26; refund request 2019-01-30 and notice of refund 2019-02-28 (consistent with termination before any institution decision).
• Judge panel: not confirmed in my sources.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims not confirmed; the petition's exhibit set (Ex. 1005–1011) shows the art relied on: US 5,444,482 (Misawa), US 6,700,607 (Misawa), US 6,292,218 (Parulski), US 6,529,236 (Watanabe), US 5,990,947 (Okino), US 6,757,013 (Matsuzaka), and JP H3-111798 (Egawa), plus a Parulski expert declaration with dozens of appendices and the claim-construction order from the co-pending E.D. Tex. case 5:16-cv-00178. The overlap with LG's 2024 art (Misawa '482, Parulski '218, Misawa '607) is notable.
• Institution decision: none. Patent Owner filed a preliminary response 2018-11-09; the case was dismissed before the § 314(a) deadline.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: Yes. The parties filed an authorized joint request to file a "Patent License Agreement Maxell–Olympus" (Ex. 1018) as business confidential information under 35 U.S.C. § 317(b) — i.e., a license resolved the dispute. Terms are confidential as filed; a § 317(b)/FOIA request is the only route to them.
• Appeal: none.
• Defensive value: Confirms Maxell's pattern of buying peace with a license rather than litigating validity to judgment when the challenger is a co-defendant in a broader campaign. It also gives you Olympus's art set for free. Record: GreyB case page.

IPR2018-00236 — Petitioner not confirmed v. Maxell, Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (per Google Patents PTAB metadata)
• Filed: 2018 (calendar-year-based docket number; exact filing date not retrievable)
• Status: Not Instituted - Merits (verbatim from the Google Patents structured data) — i.e., denied on the merits of the petition, not on a procedural/Fintiv ground.
• Judge panel: unknown — not retrievable.
• Petition grounds: unknown — not retrievable. Claim set, art, and statutory basis unconfirmed.
• Institution decision: denied on the merits per the structured status label; date and reasoning not retrievable.
• Final Written Decision: none.
• Settlement / termination: not indicated.
• Appeal: none confirmed.
• Defensive value: Low on its own, but it is the second merits-based denial of a challenge to this patent, which cuts against any narrative that the '493 patent has been "proven" at the PTAB. Treat the petitioner, grounds, and denial date as unverified. One secondary source — Maxell's own outside-counsel correspondence dated 2018-10-09 — states that the asserted patents, expressly including the '493 patent, "survived IPR petitions filed by ZTE," and ZTE was the 5:16-cv-00179 defendant. That is consistent with, but does not prove, ZTE as the IPR2018-00236 petitioner. Do not represent ZTE as the petitioner without pulling the PTACTS docket.

Strategic summary

Claim status on US 8,339,493. All 14 claims — independents 1, 5, and 10 and their dependents — are UNCHANGED and UNTESTED by the PTAB. No claim of this patent has been canceled, and no claim has been confirmed in a Final Written Decision, because no IPR on this patent ever produced an FWD: IPR2018-00904 and IPR2025-00392 were settled out before institution; IPR2020-00597 was denied under Fintiv; IPR2018-00236 was denied on the merits. Claims 1, 3–6, 10, and 11 are the historically asserted set (Apple's IPR, Maxell v. Apple); claims 5–14 were LG's 2024 target. If a demand letter asserts claims 1–14, none of them is dead. The relevant offsetting fact is expiry (below), not invalidity.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is nil across the board. Estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that obtained a final written decision; none of Olympus, Apple, LG, or the IPR2018-00236 petitioner did. Apple's Fintiv denial and the two settlements produced no written decision and therefore no estoppel, and Apple's parallel ex parte reexamination route (see below) is not an AIA trial at all. Practically: every prior-art ground ever raised against this patent — Misawa '482, Misawa '607, Parulski '218, Juen '162, Anderson '535, Watanabe, Okino, Matsuzaka, Egawa, Kurashige, the Casio reference, the Sony MVC-FD83/FD88 cameras — remains fully available to a new defendant, and none of it is estopped against the parties that raised it either (subject to § 315(b)/(e)(1) constraints specific to a party's own later petitions).

Pattern signals. (1) Serial, multi-petitioner assault: Olympus (2018), the unnamed petitioner (2018), Apple (2020), LG (2024–25) — four different challengers across three waves, three of them reaching the Board while an E.D. Tex./N.D. Cal. case was live. (2) A defensive aggregator is involved: the prompt's structured block attributes the current IPR2025-00392 entry to Unified Patents' PTAB data with an empty petitioner field and a "Settlement" tag; note that the substantive IPR2025-00392 petitioner of record is LG, with Unified Patents appearing as the data source, not (per the records I could retrieve) the filer. Do not describe Unified as the petitioner without confirming. (3) Patent Owner settles rather than invites an FWD when the challenger is a co-defendant in a larger campaign (Olympus license, LG settlement), but litigates and wins in district court: the ZTE jury verdict (E.D. Tex., 5:16-cv-00179; verdict reported 2018-07-03) was $43.3M on seven patents including the '493 patent, with a willfulness finding. (4) Apple pursued appellate relief aggressively on the non-institution denials and lost on jurisdiction — a signal that the Fintiv denial was viewed as outcome-determinative. (5) Third-party reexamination as a fallback: after the IPR denial, a third-party requester (correspondence directed to Apple Inc.) filed ex parte reexamination 90/014,628 on 2020-12-10 (art unit 3992, Examiner Peng Ke), granted 2021-01-28, directed at claims 5 and 6 of the '493 patent. This is not an AIA trial and I could not verify the resulting certificate or whether any claim survived, was narrowed, or was canceled — do not assume claims 5/6 were canceled.

The gating issue is term, not validity. Google Patents records an adjusted expiration of 2020-07-22 for the '493 patent, driven by terminal disclaimers over US 6,765,616 and US 7,403,226. Maxell's later assertions (T.E.D. 5:23-cv-00152; N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-04972) therefore can only reach pre-expiration conduct. Combined with § 286's six-year damages lookback, the recoverable window for a complaint filed today is narrow and shrinking to zero (roughly, damages from six years before filing through 2020-07-22, and nothing at all after 2026-07-22). Confirm this on the face of the most recent reexamination certificate/patent term printout before relying on it — the Google Patents legal-status field is expressly labeled an assumption.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not treat "survived IPRs" as a merits seal. Nothing has been adjudicated at the PTAB. Ask Maxell for the IPR2020-00597 denial and the IPR2018-00236 denial in discovery; both are public and both are merits/procedural, not merits-win, documents.
2. Get the two settlement documents. The Maxell–Olympus license (Ex. 1018, IPR2018-00904, filed confidentially under § 317(b)) and the LG termination (IPR2025-00392, settled 2025-07-14) may define the patent's licensing posture and, if your client is in the same supply chain, may bear on exhaustion/license defenses. There is no FWD to cite as a disposition; the citable disposition is the termination decision (IPR2018-00904, Paper 9, 2018-12-26) and the institution-denial decision in IPR2020-00597 (≈2020-09-25).
3. If you need an IPR, the template is LG's: claims 5–14 over Misawa '482 + Parulski '218 (Ground 1), Kurashige + Parulski (Ground 2), Juen + Misawa '607 (Ground 3). No estoppel bars these grounds against any new petitioner, and IPRs may be filed on expired patents. But weigh cost against an expired-patent, past-damages-only case.
4. Consider the cheaper ex parte reexam path that Apple used (no § 315(b) one-year bar; requester can remain anonymous), targeting claims actually asserted — and first pull the file for 90/014,628 to see whether its outcome already narrowed claims 5/6 without anyone noticing.
5. No live PTAB milestones exist. With IPR2025-00392 terminated on 2025-07-14 and no pending petition, there is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory 1-year FWD date to track. Any future IPR trigger must come from a new petition.
6. Lead with the expiration argument in any demand-response: verify the 2020-07-22 adjusted expiration, map the § 286 window, and quantify that the asserted damages period is closed or nearly so.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history before writing the report.

Good — I found concrete reel/frame chain-of-title data. Let me verify what's specific to the '493 patent and pin down the litigation.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 8,339,493 B2 ("Electric camera")

Scope note / verification status: I could not open the Assignment Center record for the '493 patent itself within this session. The reel/frame entries below are taken verbatim from a 37 CFR 3.73(c) chain-of-title statement signed by John R. Mattingly and filed in a Maxell PTAB proceeding (IPR2025-01308, Samsung v. Maxell, re US 16/855,012 "Contents Receiving System and Client"). That statement recites the same corporate-succession recordings that Google Patents' legal-events feed shows for US 8,339,493, because Maxell recorded these corporate documents in bulk across its portfolio (note the same Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell conveyance appears at Reel 033694/0745 for one patent and Reel 033685/0883 for another — one recording spanning a reel range). Treat the reel numbers as high-confidence but not patent-specific verified.

Inventors

• Priority: 2000-01-11 (JP 2000-006064). Original US filing 09/520,836 filed 2000-03-08 → US 6,765,616.
• All three are Hitachi consumer-electronics/camcorder engineers; the application was filed by Hitachi, Ltd. as assignee (standard Japanese employee-invention practice).
• Departure pattern: not determinable from the record retrieved. I found no evidence of the inventors leaving within 12 months of filing, and none of the three appears as an inventor on the later Maxell-era continuation filings (which were prosecuted by outside counsel under docket ASA-9606-xx). This is consistent with ordinary attrition, not a documented fire-sale precursor. I am flagging it as unverified rather than inferring a pattern.
• Family note relevant to the chain: this is one of at least nine US patents carved from the single 2000 filing via divisionals/continuations filed 2003–2016 — 6,765,616; 7,403,226; 8,059,177; 8,339,493; 8,736,729; 9,100,604; 9,544,517; 10,462,403; 10,554,917. A long prosecution tail like this is a normal portfolio-thickening technique ahead of licensing campaigns.

Original assignee

Hitachi, Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) — named on the issued patent, and the entity that filed 12/845,266 on 2010-07-28.

• Primary line of business: diversified industrial/consumer electronics conglomerate. The invention sits in Hitachi's camcorder/consumer-video business (Hitachi branded camcorders and DVD/HDD camcorders of the era).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in substance — the claims are directed to a camera selectively mixing/culling vertical pixel lines for moving-video vs. still-image modes, which is exactly the readout architecture of a late-1990s/2000s Hitachi CCD camcorder. Hitachi was an operating manufacturer of such cameras at the time of filing.
• Current status: Hitachi, Ltd. is operating (now Hitachi, Ltd. post-2020 ABB Power Grids / "Hitachi Astemo" restructuring). The consumer-electronics business was divested/spun out into Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd., and the patent estate was subsequently consolidated into Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (see chain below).
• Current owner of the '493 patent: Maxell, Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) — an operating manufacturer of batteries, storage media, optical components and projectors. Maxell is not a manufacturer of the camcorders/digital cameras that practice the '493 claims.

I'll research US 8339493 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the specific "References Cited" on the face of US 8,339,493.

Let me pull the reexamination and IPR documents that identify the specific references of record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,339,493 B2 ("Electric camera")

1. The patent itself (verification of the record)

Important caveat on sourcing. The authoritative full text supplied to me reproduces the specification, claims and the "Cited By" list, but the "Patent Citations" (References Cited) table printed on the face of US 8,339,493 was not included in that fetch. I therefore could not verify the face-of-patent reference list directly. What follows is (a) the references the '493 specification itself identifies and discusses, (b) the references cited on the face of the immediate family member US 6,765,616 / shown in the family citation tables, and (c) the references actually relied upon in post-grant proceedings against the '493. I flag which is which. I did not fabricate a face-of-patent list.

Also note: US 8,059,177, US 7,403,226, US 6,765,616, US 8,736,729, US 9,100,604, US 9,544,517, US 10,462,403 and US 10,554,917 are members of the same family, not prior art.

2. References discussed inside the '493 specification (the applicant's own characterizations)

2.1 JP-A-9-270959 (Japanese unexamined application publication; Hei 9 ≈ 1997)

• Citation: JP-A-9-270959; discussed at col./spec. "To mitigate this problem, JP-A-9-270959 discloses an apparatus which mixes together or culls the pixel signals inside the image sensing device…"
• Date: Hei 9 publication year (1997). On that date it is more than one year before the earliest US filing (2000-03-08), so it is pre-AIA § 102(b) printed-publication art.
• Description: An apparatus that performs intra-sensor mixing or culling of pixel signals to reduce the number of signals read out and shorten the read cycle.
• § 102 relevance: This is the closest single reference to the "mixing or culling signal charges accumulated in the N vertically arranged pixel lines… only at pixel intervals of K pixels" language of claims 1 and 5. However, the specification expressly distinguishes it: it "requires a large processing circuit such as field memory to perform time-axis transformation" and "the image sensing device itself needs to have a special structure."
• Anticipation assessment: It can arguably teach the generic mixing/culling element, but the '493's independently-claimed limitations — K1 ≠ K2 (claim 1), the static-recording step using all N pixel lines (claims 1, 5, 10), and the display/instability elements — are not shown. Not anticipatory of any of claims 1–14 as a whole; it is § 103 material for the mixing/culling concept.

2.2 JP-A-11-187306 (Sharp Corp.)

• Citation: JP-A-11-187306, published 1999-07-09 (also appears in the family citation table as "JPH11187306A (en) — 1997-12-22 — Sharp Corp — Imaging device").
• Date: Published 1999-07-09 — before the 2000-01-11/2000-03-08 critical dates, so pre-AIA § 102(a) art (less than one year before the US filing date).
• Description: An imaging device in which signals from all effective pixels are read out over two or more field periods, stored in a field memory, then interpolated to conform to the television field and horizontal scan cycles — i.e., the "conventional camera" the '493 criticizes.
• § 102 relevance: Directly relevant to the static-image-monitoring concept of claims 1, 5 and 10 ("during monitoring in a static image mode… generates the image signals by mixing or culling"). It is the reference the '493 was drafted to avoid.
• Anticipation assessment: Does not anticipate. It requires external field memory and readouts spanning multiple field periods, and lacks the K1/K2 difference and "all N pixel lines" recording limitation. Best characterized as § 103 background art.

2.3 The family citation table also lists (from US 6,765,616 / family):

• US 6,580,457 B1 — Eastman Kodak Company, "Digital camera incorporating high frame rate mode"; priority/filing 1998-11-03, issued 2003-06-17. Description: a digital camera with a switchable high-frame-rate readout mode. § 102 relevance: potential § 102(e) art (US patent granted on an application filed before the '493's 2000-01-11 priority). It speaks to multiple readout/mode regimes, but does not disclose vertical mixing/culling at differing K1/K2 intervals or full-N recording. Not anticipatory.
• US 2002/0118291 A1 — Tomio Ishigami et al., "Charge transfer device and method of driving the same, and solid-state imaging device and method of driving the same"; priority 1996-12-26, published 2002-08-29. Description: CCD charge-transfer structure and driving method. § 102 relevance: it is not § 102(a)/(b) art because it published after the '493 priority date; whether it qualifies under § 102(e) depends on its underlying US filing date, which I could not verify from the fetched record. Treat as structural/background art for the CCD transfer architecture only, not for the mode-dependent claims.

3. Art actually relied upon in post-grant proceedings (not necessarily of record on the face)

These are the references a tribunal has actually mapped against the '493 claims, and are the most probative "most relevant prior art" for the asserted claims:

IPR2025-00392, [LG Electronics Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/LG%20Electronics%20Inc.) v. Maxell, Ltd. (filed 2024-12-31) — PTAB; challenged claims 5–14:

1. Ground 1 — claims 5–14 obvious over Misawa '482 in view of Parulski
   • US 5,444,482 (Misawa '482) — image pickup apparatus with switched pixel mixing/readout modes.
   • US 6,292,218 (Parulski) — electronic camera with selectable resolution / image-processing modes.
2. Ground 2 — claims 5, 7–10, 12–14 obvious over Kurashige in view of Parulski
   • Kurashige (1997 IEEE publication) — the petition notes the Kurashige reference has never been considered by the USPTO.
3. Ground 3 — claims 5, 7–10, 12–14 obvious over Juen in view of Misawa '607
   • US 7,903,162 (Juen) and US 6,700,607 (Misawa '607).
   • Source: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2025-00392 ; analysis summary at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2025-00392/doc/summary/2

Ex parte reexamination 90/014,628 (request filed 2020-12-10; granted; directed to claims 5 and 6) — Control No. 90/014,628, Art Unit 3992; PTOL-471G determination in Maxell Ltd. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), No. 5:19-cv-00036-RWS (E.D. Tex.), Doc. 646-4. The examiner found the '493 claims domestic priority through 10/660,710 → 09/520,836 → JP 2000006064.

Other '493 proceedings of record: IPR2018-00904 (Olympus Corp. et al. v. Maxell — filed 2018-06-20, terminated 2018-12-26), IPR2018-00236 (not instituted – merits), IPR2020-00597 (not instituted – procedural).

4. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

For each of the above, mapping to the '493 claims:

No single one of the citation references, on its face, appears to anticipate claims 1–14 under § 102, because each independent claim requires the combination of (i) an N-line sensor with N ≥ 3M, (ii) different mixing/culling intervals in two different modes (K1 ≠ K2 in claim 1; "first distance" vs. "second distance" in claims 5 and 10), and (iii) static-mode recording using all N pixel lines. The probative attacks on the '493 have been framed as § 103 obviousness over combinations (Misawa '482 + Parulski; Kurashige + Parulski; Juen + Misawa '607), which confirms that the individual cited references are deficient on at least one limitation.

5. Explicit unknowns / limits of this analysis

• I could not retrieve the literal "References Cited" table printed on the face of US 8,339,493 from the authoritative fetch; the §102 mappings in Section 2 are therefore reconstructed from the specification text and the family citation tables, not from a verified face-of-patent list. If you need the exact Examiner-cited list, it must be pulled from the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" / the printed patent front page (56).
• Exact publication dates for JP-A-9-270959 and the underlying US filing date of US 2002/0118291 A1 were not verifiable from the sources retrieved; the § 102 category assignments for those two items are provisional.
• Per your standing instruction, all identifiers are reproduced literally; I have not normalized or "corrected" any of them, including the "4880 pixels high" figure appearing in the specification's view-angle discussion, which conflicts with the "480 pixels" used elsewhere in the same passage.

I'll research the prior art cited on this patent's page and the related PTAB proceedings, which contain obviousness analyses.

I found strong leads — including a PTAB petition charting this patent's claims against specific references. Let me dig deeper.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,339,493 B2 ("Electric camera")

1. Source note and scope

I worked from the authoritative Google Patents text supplied (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8339493/en), including its Background/Definitions ("Prior Art") material and its family-litigation records, and supplemented it with the PTAB record. One caveat on the instruction to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page": the fetched page does not contain a patent-by-patent "References Cited" table. The prior art that the page affirmatively surfaces is:

• JP-A-11-187306 — a conventional camera in which signals from all effective pixels are read out over two or more field periods, stored in a field memory, and interpolated into television-conforming signals (Background, col. re: "This conventional camera, however, requires a large processing circuit, such as field memory…").
• JP-A-9-270959 — an apparatus that "mixes together or culls the pixel signals inside the image sensing device to reduce the number of signals to be read and therefore the read cycle" (criticized only because it "requires a large processing circuit such as field memory to perform time-axis transformation… and the image sensing device itself needs to have a special structure").
• Applicant-admitted prior art (AAPA) about NTSC camcorders having an added image-stabilization pixel area ("about 480 or more" rows), where "an area beyond 480th pixels is read out at high speed during the vertical blanking period and therefore the signals thus read out are not used as effective signals," and where stills are conventionally taken from the same ~480-row area (JPEG).
• Family members cited as related applications: US 8,059,177 (Ser. No. 10/660,710), US 7,403,226 (Ser. No. 10/660,711), and US 6,765,616 (Ser. No. 09/520,836). These are §120 chain members, not prior art, but the claim set of the '493 patent is a direct continuation of that disclosure.

I also flag two literal-readings issues rather than correcting them: the cross-reference states 10/660,710 was filed "Aug. 12, 2003" and the sibling 10/660,711 "Sep. 12, 2003" (sequentially numbered applications normally share a filing date); and the priority listed on the page is 2000-01-11 while the earliest US parent (09/520,836) was filed 2000-03-08.

Governing law/framework: pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §103(a) (effective filing date 2000-01-11; the related §41 – see also §103(a) pre-AIA text). Analysis follows Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007); motivation rationales are the MPEP §2143 (A)–(G) list.

Level of ordinary skill (POSITA): a degree in electrical engineering (or equivalent) plus ~2–5 years designing solid-state image sensors and consumer camera signal-processing chains, with working knowledge of NTSC/PAL timing (M ≈ 240 effective lines/field, vertical blanking, interlaced A/B fields), CCD vertical-transfer-register clocking, and gyro-based electronic image stabilization.

2. The claims at issue (literal)

Note a construction point that broadens claim 1: the claims place the mixing/culling in the "signal processing unit," whereas the specification (FIGS. 2–3, 10–11) performs mixing in the sensor's vertical transfer unit under the driver. Under either the BRI or Phillips framing, the claim therefore covers any architecture producing mode-dependent line intervals — which enlarges, not narrows, the prior-art field.

3. Difference analysis vs. the art on the page

The AAPA already discloses the complete enabling architecture of claim 1 except (i) the express "display unit with the display screen" recitation, and (ii) the three discrete mode/interval schema (K1 for static-monitor, K2 for moving record, all-N for static record). Specifically, AAPA teaches: a CCD with more rows than M (≈480+ rows for M≈240), high-speed vertical-blanking readout/culling of surplus rows, still capture from the whole effective area, and the very problem the '493 patent states — that a monitor image conforming to the television system must be produced even in the still mode. JP-A-9-270959 supplies exactly the missing mechanism: intra-sensor mixing/culling to produce the reduced line count, thereby eliminating the field memory and time-axis conversion that both JP-A-11-187306 and the criticized art require.

4. Grounds that render the claims obvious

Ground 1 — AAPA (NTSC camcorder with stabilization-row area) in view of JP-A-9-270959

Maps claims 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.

• AAPA → N-line sensor with more rows than M, vertical-blanking readout of unused rows, still capture from all effective pixels, and the stated need to monitor stills with TV-conforming signals.
• JP-A-9-270959 → "mixes together or culls the pixel signals inside the image sensing device to reduce the number of signals to be read and therefore the read cycle," i.e., a numerically selectable interval K.
• Result: K1 = N/M (larger; the whole field must be folded into M lines for monitoring) and K2 < K1 (a smaller window, e.g. the 960-of-1200 subset, reserved for the moving/stabilized mode). K1 ≠ K2 is the direct arithmetic consequence of using all N lines in one mode and a subset in the other — the AAPA already declares that stills use "the entire area of effective pixels including the area of image stabilization pixels."
• Motivation (MPEP 2143 (A), (C), (F)): combining known elements to obtain the predictable result of a sensor having both TV-rate monitoring and full-resolution stills; using the known intra-sensor mixing technique to improve a similar device (the stabilization-capable camcorder) in the same way. JP-A-9-270959's own stated benefit is the elimination of the field memory the AAPA architecture otherwise demands — the identical objective the '493 Background sets out.
• Reasonable expectation of success: both references are CCD interline/vertical-transfer architectures; selecting a mix/cull factor by clocking vertical gates (cf. the three-phase V1–V3 / six-phase V1–V6 sequences in the '493 patent) is routine design work, rendering the result predictable. The recited "display unit with the display screen" is met by the camcorder's electronic viewfinder/monitor — a known element substituted for a known purpose (MPEP 2143 (B); KSR, 550 U.S. at 416–17).

Ground 2 — JP-A-11-187306 in view of JP-A-9-270959

Maps claims 1–3, 5, 7–10.

• JP-A-11-187306 → reading all effective pixels over ≥2 field periods + interpolation to TV timing, i.e., a full-resolution still path and a TV-conforming monitoring path from the same large-N sensor.
• JP-A-9-270959 → replace the field-memory/time-axis-conversion stage with in-sensor mixing/culling.
• Motivation: JP-A-9-270959 expressly addresses the precise deficiency the '493 Background attributes to JP-A-11-187306 (the field memory and the degraded dynamic resolution from long readout cycles). A POSITA seeking to keep the '306 image quality while removing the memory cost would look directly to '959. Predictable result; no teaching away (the '493 Background itself frames '959 as the improvement path, only noting its added memory/structure — which the '959 combination removes on the monitoring path).
• AAPA supplies the moving-mode K2/instability-window aspect and the "all N lines" still recording.

Ground 3 — Juen in view of Misawa '607 (the PTAB ground actually charted)

This is the combination briefed against the '493 patent in a PTAB petition in which the challenged patent is "LG-1001" — the petition cites "the '493 Patent's 'mode selector switch [14]'" at 4:27–29, matching the '493 specification verbatim. The charts map claim elements [5.5], [5.6], [6]/[8], and the method-claim mode-selection element.

• Juen (LG-1011): imaging element with 960 vertically arranged pixel lines (1:37–42); movie mode output of 480 vertical lines; mode button 27 toggling still/movie and image recording button 26 (6:31–34; 7:35–43; 9:2–44; 10:45–55); a display screen 25 usable as an electronic viewfinder/monitor and switching between movie (Fig. 16) and still (Fig. 17) presentations (3:49–51; 10:45–55); imaging means 1 and moving-image recording means 3 recording to medium R (3:38–44); microprocessor 18 selecting still-image compression in still mode.
• Misawa '607 (LG-1012): line-skipping image-capturing apparatus with a normal image-capturing process reading 1/4 of the photoelectric elements (culling 240 lines from 960; 8:61–63) whose images are "satisfactory for confirmation of a picture composition as far as the images are displayed on a compact monitor" (2:1–5), plus a macro image-capturing process reading all photoelectric elements; and it teaches both cyclic skipping (4:52–53; 5:4–7; 5:12–16; 5:24–32) and alternate skipping (5:19–23; 5:36–39), i.e., a 1/2 line-skipping process (480 of 960) for the movie.
• Mapping: K1 (static monitoring) = interval 4 (1/4 skip) ≠ K2 (moving recording) = interval 2 (1/2 skip), with K1 > K2 (claims 1, 2, 5, 7); static recording uses all N lines = Misawa's macro process / Juen's still mode (claims 1, 5, 10); N = 960 ≥ 3 × 240 = 720, so claims 8 and 9 (fixed parameter = 3) are met.
• Motivation (MPEP 2143 (C), (E), (F)): Juen's own still mode requires a monitor image to frame the shot, but presenting 960 lines on a 240-line display at field rate is not achievable without culling; Misawa '607 teaches the very 1/4-skip for compact-monitor confirmation and the 1/2-skip for the movie, and supplies a full-resolution "macro" mode. Because Misawa shows two different skip intervals on the same sensor, the petition's position — that a POSITA "would have found selecting a particular line-skipping pattern to be predictable and to have had a reasonable expectation of success, as a POSITA would have understood how to adapt hardware and software to vary the precise number of skipped lines and read lines" — is well supported. This is the "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" situation of KSR at 421.

Grounds for claims 4 and 6 (image-instability detector; change of pixel lines/portion per detected instability)

AAPA already discloses gyro-sensed electronic stabilization in precisely this architecture: an added pixel area beyond the 480 used rows, those rows read out during vertical blanking, and extraction-window shifting to cancel image-unstability; the '493 specification itself lists gyro sensors 16a/16b and an image-unstability decision circuit 17 as known components and states the vertical shift is implemented by "changing the number of pixel rows transferred during the periods T3 and T4." Stated differently: whenever K2·M < N (i.e., whenever a cull/mix factor smaller than N/M is used), surplus rows necessarily exist to serve as the stabilization margin. Combining Juen–Misawa '607 (or Grounds 1–2) with the admitted gyro-stabilization art yields claims 4, 6 and 11 with a predictable result and the express design incentive of using otherwise idle rows to correct camera shake (MPEP 2143 (A), (D)). Claim 3 is met a fortiori under Grounds 1–3, as the mode's image signals are taken from the mixed/culled charges.

5. Counterarguments and where the analysis is weak

1. No secondary considerations in evidence. I found no record of asserted commercial success, long-felt need, or copying with a proven nexus. The family is heavily litigated (D. Del./E.D. Tex. 5:16-cv-00179; 5:19-cv-00036; 5:23-cv-00152; Fed. Cir. 20-2132, 21-1033; N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-04972), which supplies a motive to assert objective indicia but no evidence of them.
2. "Teaching away" by JP-A-9-270959? A patent owner will argue the '493 Background disparages '959 ("requires a large processing circuit such as field memory… and the image sensing device itself needs to have a special structure"). On the text, that is a statement of the state of the art's drawback addressed by the invention, not a teaching away from the combination — and Ground 1 uses '959's mixing/culling teaching precisely to remove the field memory. This should not rise to teaching away (In re Fulton/DePuy line), but it is the strongest non-obviousness argument available.
3. Proceeding-status conflict. Google Patents labels IPR2018-00904 (Olympus Corp. et al. v. Maxell Ltd., filed 2018-06-20, patent 8,339,493, application 12/845,266) as "(Final Written Decision)," while a third-party docket summary reports the proceeding as Terminated on 2018-12-26 with a Termination Decision Document. I cannot reconcile these from the retrieved material and do not rely on either label. IPR2018-00236 was "Not Instituted – Merits," IPR2020-00597 "Not Instituted – Procedural," and IPR2025-00392 settled — a non-institution on merits is not an adjudication of validity.
4. Identifiers I could not verify. The full patent numbers corresponding to "Juen" (LG-1011) and "Misawa '607" (LG-1012) are not confirmed by the retrieved snippets; I have used the petition's own labels rather than guessing. Likewise, the LG petition's proceeding number is not established by the retrieved excerpts (the exhibit numbering "LG-1001" is the '493 patent).
5. §112/claim-form issue, not §103: claim 1's "signal processing unit … generates the image signals by mixing or culling signal charges" is inconsistent with the specification's own division of labor (driver/sensor performs mixing). This broadens claim 1 and should be resolved before finalizing any §103 mapping.

Bottom line: Claims 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and (with the admitted gyro-stabilization art) 4, 6, 11 are, on the record I retrieved, more likely than not obvious under pre-AIA §103(a) over (i) AAPA + JP-A-9-270959, (ii) JP-A-11-187306 + JP-A-9-270959, and (iii) Juen + Misawa '607. The single genuinely contestable limitation is the three-way mode/interval schema (K1 for still monitoring, K2 for movie recording, all-N for still recording), and even that follows arithmetically once a POSITA decides to use all N rows for stills — a decision the AAPA already endorses.