US 8674849

I'll search for the specific patent number and any litigation records.

Let me run a few more targeted checks on litigation, status, and claim text.

Summary of U.S. Patent No. 8,674,849

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim from the record)

"An information display terminal allows a user to grasp rapidly and surely the direction to a destination, and can guide the user to the destination without placing a burden on the user. The information display terminal is provided at a passage, and its display screen displays a route guidance screen that guides a route to the destination. The route guidance screen displays a pseudo-action image that shows the walking motion, and a destination display information image indicating a destination name such as 'Subway Ticket Gate'. The action image shows the motion of walking toward the destination, but the display position does not change. The destination display information image is displayed in front of the action image in the advancing direction."

Plain-language overview of the claims

Note on source and uncertainty: The full text of the claims section was not reproduced in the source document supplied to me, and my live searches did not return the verbatim claims text. The following is reconstructed from the patent's Summary of the Invention (which mirrors the claim set) and the Google Patents claims listing (which shows claims 12–15 present). Based on that record, claim 1 is the sole independent claim, with claims 2–15 as dependent claims. I have high confidence in claim 1's substance (it is quoted nearly verbatim in the patent's summary); moderate-to-high confidence that the numbered features below map to dependent claims 2–15 in the order listed, since that order exactly matches the Summary section.

• Claim 1 (independent): An information display terminal with a display screen that shows a route guidance screen for guiding a user to a destination. The route guidance screen shows (a) an action image depicting the motion of walking in the direction of the destination and (b) a destination display information image representing the destination's name. The destination display information image is displayed in the front area of the action image — i.e., ahead of the walking figure in its walking direction. The premise is that viewers (humans have mirror-neuron-driven imitative tendencies) intuitively read the walking figure's direction, and a destination label placed in front of the walker catches the eye faster and more reliably than one behind it.

• Dependent claim (constant position): The action image shows walking motion while staying at a constant display position on the screen (the figure walks in place rather than traversing the screen).

• Dependent claim (viewing angle): The route guidance screen renders the action image as if seen looking up or looking down, depending on the mounting height of the display screen (e.g., ceiling-mounted vs. floor-mounted).

• Dependent claim (moving passage): The action image walks along a passage, and the passage graphic moves in the direction opposite the walking direction (a treadmill-style effect that implies forward progress).

• Dependent claim (time-sequenced multiple destinations): The screen repeatedly cycles through multiple route guidance screens for different destinations, switching every predetermined time.

• Dependent claim (simultaneous multiple destinations): The screen displays, at the same time in different areas, multiple route guidance screens for different destinations.

• Dependent claim (normal vs. abnormal situations): In a normal situation the action image is a still image; in an abnormal situation (e.g., emergency/evacuation) the action image shows walking/running motion.

• Dependent claim (walking toward the label): The action image walks across the screen toward the display position of the destination display information image.

• Dependent claim (orientation): The action image is oriented in different directions depending on the movement direction.

• Dependent claim (scaling): The action image changes in size as it moves (e.g., shrinks as it recedes in a pseudo-3D scene).

• Dependent claim (plurality of walkers): The route guidance screen shows multiple action images all walking toward the destination-information image's position (e.g., the train-door embodiment in Figs. 7A/7B).

• Dependent claim (mobile terminal): The information display terminal is a mobile terminal (e.g., a cell phone whose display flips when the user turns around, per Fig. 15).

CAFC 2026 docket check

My searches of the CAFC/Federal Circuit docket for 2026 returned no results connecting patent number 8,674,849 to any appeal or case. Similarly, no district-court litigation involving this patent surfaced in searches. If a CAFC case exists, it is not indexed against this patent number in the sources I could reach. I cannot rule out litigation filed under related case names, assignee "Hitachi," or co-pending family members — I would flag any such search as unverified.

Other notes / uncertainty

• The patent has a Japanese family member (JP 5687940 B2) and cites JP laid-open references 2007-249095 and 2007-248279 as prior art.
• The Google Patents record labels it "Expired – Fee Related," which typically indicates lapse for unpaid maintenance fees; the stated "expires 2032-02-19" is an adjusted expiration figure and is not necessarily consistent with the fee-related lapse. I did not have live access to USPTO Patent Center to confirm the current fee/status, so treat the precise legal status as unverified.
• No claim charts, reexamination, IPR, or post-grant proceedings were found in my searches; none should be assumed.

Based on my searches of available litigation-focused sources, I found no known litigation involving US Patent 8674849.

Findings

Searches performed:

• US Patent 8674849 litigation — no results
• "8674849" patent lawsuit — no results
• "8674849" Hitachi patent case — returned only inventor/patent-leaderboard pages identifying US 8,674,849 ("Information display terminal," Hitachi, granted 2014-03-18), not litigation
• "8674849" "v." OR "vs." complaint patent infringement — no results
• "US8674849" litigation docket — no results
• A site-restricted search of Unified Patents' litigation portal returned no matching case list entries

Conclusion

No litigation is known involving US Patent 8674849 as of April 26, 2026. I could not identify any case with:

• Plaintiff(s)
• Defendant(s)
• Jurisdiction
• Case number
• Filing date
• Outcome/current status

The patent's Google Patents legal-status record shows only that the patent is "Expired - Fee Related" (adjusted expiration listed as 2032-02-19) — which is a maintenance-fee/term status, not an indication of litigation.

Caveat: My search results for litigation databases were limited or empty, and I did not have access to a comprehensive PACER/CAFC full-text query in this session. If you need confirmation beyond reasonable doubt, I'd recommend direct queries of PACER (federal civil and appellate dockets), the Unified Patents litigation caselist portal, and RPX/DocketNavigator using the patent number 8674849, plus checking the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) records for any inter partes review or post-grant proceedings (none were flagged in my searches).

Proceedings overview

The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) for US 8674849 as of the most recent ingest, and targeted web searches (including PTAB-oriented queries combining the patent number, title, and assignee Hitachi) surfaced no older, settled, or recently-filed proceedings that the ODP might have missed. Total count: 0. Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. The bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB history to exploit or to fear — but the far more consequential fact is that the patent is listed by Google Patents/USPTO assignment records as "Expired – Fee Related," meaning the more promising defensive inquiry is maintenance-fee status, not IPR estoppel.

Proceedings

No AIA trial proceedings exist for this patent. There are no proceedings to summarize individually, and I will not fabricate proceeding numbers, judge panels, institution decisions, or Final Written Decisions.

What the record does show, and what a defendant should verify first:

• Patent status (Google Patents / USPTO record): "Expired – Fee Related," with a 20-year term that would otherwise run to approximately 2032-02-19 (adjusted expiration date listed on the record). "Fee Related" expiration means the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees, not expiry of the full term.
• Filing regime: The application (US 13/397,065) claims priority to JP 2011-079320 filed 2011-03-31 and was filed 2012-02-15 — pre-AIA. Even if someone wanted to challenge it, PGR and CBM windows are inapplicable to this pre-AIA grant; only IPR (patents/printed publications, §§ 102/103) would ever have been available, and any would-be petitioner served with a complaint would have faced the § 315(b) one-year bar.
• Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.; inventors Hoshino, Horii, Ishikawa, Ichige, Sato.

Strategic summary

Claims status — CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED. All claims of US 8674849 (independent claims 1 and any dependent claims through 15, per the specification's claim listing) are UNTESTED by any AIA trial proceeding. No PTAB petition was ever filed, no claim was ever instituted upon, and no claim has been canceled or sustained by the Board. There is no FWD, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal because there is no underlying PTAB case.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue here — with zero IPRs, no petitioner (or privy) has been estopped, and conversely no defendant is boxed out of any ground by a prior petition. If this patent were being asserted today, a defendant's prior-art challenges would be entirely unencumbered by PTAB estoppel. The real constraint is statutory: this is a pre-AIA patent, so only § 102/§ 103 prior-art (patents and printed publications) could be raised in an IPR, and the § 315(b) one-year clock from service of any infringement complaint would apply.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern to read: no serial petitioner, no Unified Patents or defensive-aggregator involvement, no aggressive patent-owner PTAB litigation posture — because no proceeding exists. The absence of PTAB activity on a Hitachi signage/wayfinding patent is not itself surprising: this is a modest, low-litigation-profile patent family, and the "Expired – Fee Related" status means the patent has likely been unenforceable for a substantial period, which by itself would explain why no challenger ever bothered to spend IPR money.

The most important caveat. "Expired – Fee Related" must be verified live at USPTO Patent Center / the maintenance-fee database before any defense strategy leans on it. If the patent lapsed for non-payment, the owner generally cannot recover damages for infringement during the lapse (35 U.S.C. § 41(c) and related case law), and a patent owner cannot revive and then sue for pre-revival infringement. However, maintenance fees can sometimes be paid late (including via the 24-month petition window or through an unintentional-delay petition), so confirm the current fee status and any revival on the date you need it.

Recommended next steps

1. Verify maintenance-fee status first. Pull the fee-history and current status for US 8674849 from USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov). If the "Expired – Fee Related" status is current and no revival petition is pending, that is your strongest and cleanest defense: an expired patent cannot support an infringement action, and this makes an IPR unnecessary. Quote the fee-status screen and the 35 U.S.C. § 41(c) lapse/revival rules in any response to a demand letter.

2. Do not file an IPR reflexively. With zero PTAB activity and an apparently lapsed patent, filing an IPR would be wasted spend — you cannot be estopped by a proceeding that never happened, and the Board may not even have jurisdiction to institute on a patent whose maintenance fees are unpaid. A § 315(b) analysis is only relevant if the patent is somehow revived and you are sued.

3. If the patent is revived and asserted: the clean slate means you can raise the full menu of § 102/§ 103 art available at the time, plus any unpatentability defenses that don't depend on PTAB (e.g., § 101, § 112, prosecution history, and the Japanese-language prior art cited in the file wrapper — note the specification itself discusses JP 2007-249095 and JP 2007-248279, which may be relevant art). An IPR petition would need to clear the one-year post-service bar under § 315(b), so decide within that window.

4. Watch for a revival petition. If the assignee (Hitachi) or a successor files a maintenance-fee revival petition, that is the event that would make this patent dangerous again — and it is the event that could finally attract an IPR. The absence of PTAB activity today is a signal only because the patent has likely been dead; if it comes back to life, re-assess.

No PTAB proceedings exist to link. I found no USPTO PTAB E2E docket, no Final Written Decision, and no CourtListener/CAFC matter for this patent. If you have a specific demand letter naming US 8674849, the practical play is the fee-status defense, not the IPR docket.

I was unable to complete additional live lookups within my step budget, and I want to be explicit about that limitation up front: I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record data for the assignment record from the sources available in this session. The assignment history below is reconstructed from the Google Patents legal-events feed (reproduced in the authoritative patent text above) and my searches. Reel/frame fields are flagged as unverified rather than guessed.

Inventors

All five named inventors on US 8,674,849:

• Takeshi Hoshino
• Youichi Horii
• Tadaaki Ishikawa
• Yukiko Ichige
• Hiroki Sato

Employer at time of filing: Hitachi, Ltd. — the recorded assignment (recorded 2012-04-19) runs from these five individuals to Hitachi, Ltd., and each inventor's continued patent output is listed under Hitachi on patent-leaderboard aggregators. Unusual patterns: none observed — the inventors appear to be career Hitachi personnel, not a group that departed en masse post-filing.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Hitachi, Ltd. (per Google Patents assignee record and the recorded assignment).
• Line of business: Japanese multinational electronics / infrastructure conglomerate (rail, power, digital signage and information-display systems, IT).
• Product embodiment: Unclear from public sources whether a specific commercial product embodies the claims (an "information display terminal" showing a walking-motion action image with destination text in front of the figure). Hitachi does sell digital-signage/guidance displays, but I found no evidence tying a specific product to these claims, and no litigation that would have flushed out such evidence.
• Current status: Operating (as of 2026). The patent itself is recorded as Expired - Fee Related on Google Patents, with adjusted expiration listed as 2032-02-19 — a maintenance-fee/term status, not a transfer event.

Assignment timeline

From the Google Patents legal-events feed for US 8674849, exactly one assignment event appears — the original conveyance from the inventors to Hitachi, Ltd., recorded before issuance:

• 2012-04-19 recorded (execution date not separately retrievable in this session) — Reel/Frame: not retrieved; verify at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (per Google Patents event label)
  • Assignor: Takeshi Hoshino, Youichi Horii, Tadaaki Ishikawa, Yukiko Ichige, Hiroki Sato
  • Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session (no USPTO Assignment Center record text surfaced by my searches)
  • Context: Standard inventors-to-employer assignment recorded four months after the US filing (filed 2012-02-15), two months before pre-grant publication (2012-10-04). This is the normal origination step, not a post-issuance transfer.

No post-issuance assignments were found. No assignment to any LLC, holding company, licensing entity, or defensive aggregator surfaced in any search. This is itself the finding: the record is consistent with Hitachi, Ltd. still owning the patent (subject to its fee-related lapse).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8674849
    2011 : JP priority application filed
    2012 : US application filed by Hitachi Ltd
         : Inventors assign to Hitachi Ltd
    2014 : Patent granted
    2032 : Adjusted expiration listed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer of this patent to any licensing-only LLC, "IP/Holdings/Ventures" entity, or registered-agent address appears in the record. The only assignee ever identified is Hitachi, Ltd.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, Conversant, RPX, or other listed entity appears in any assignment record; no litigation naming this patent was found (see litigation summary above).
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / no data. I could not retrieve correspondent-of-record data from the USPTO Assignment Center in this session, and there is only one assignment on file, so no recurrence pattern can exist to evaluate. Flagged for direct verification.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one conveyance exists (2012-04-19); there is no chain of chained LLC assignments.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit is known, and no assignment is dated near any suit.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Hitachi, Ltd. has not gone through a patent-selling bankruptcy; no Kodak/Nortel-style proceeding is associated with this patent.
7. Privateering — not present. No transfer from Hitachi to an assertion vehicle, and no SEC or press evidence of an operating-company-sponsored NPE.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it appears to remain at Hitachi, Ltd.

Verdict

Insufficient data

The only recorded assignment is the original inventors-to-Hitachi conveyance of 2012-04-19 (per the Google Patents legal-events feed); no post-issuance transfer, litigation, or assertion activity was found, and I could not independently pull reel/frame or correspondent data from the USPTO Assignment Center in this session. The available record therefore points to Hitachi, Ltd. — an operating company — as the continuing owner, with no NPE indicators of any kind, but a positive operating-company-assertion call is also unsupported because no litigation or product embodiment evidence exists. Verify the single record at the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) by searching patent number 8674849 to capture the reel/frame and correspondent for the file.

The general searches returned only the full-text Google Patents page. Let me dig into the citation sections specifically.

I need the actual citation list from the patent's front page / Google Patents "Patent Citations" section. Let me run targeted searches on candidate references.

Important caveat on what I could and could not retrieve

I was unable to pull the complete USPTO/Google Patents "Patent Citations" list for US 8,674,849 in this session — the searchable surface returned the full-text specification but not the front-page reference table. I also could not run a direct USPTO Patent Center/Public Pair query. The certain citations below are the two Japanese laid-open references expressly discussed in the patent's own Background section. One further candidate (US 2008/0272936 A1) is flagged from secondary evidence (Google Patents "Cited By" data) but is unverified. There may be additional examiner-cited references and non-patent literature on the file wrapper that I could not enumerate. Any full § 102/§ 103 study should verify the complete reference list at USPTO Patent Center and the Google Patents "Patent Citations" tab before relying on it.

Confirmed search of patent number 8674849

Searches confirmed the record for US 8,674,849 B2 (application 13/397,065; Hitachi, Ltd.; filed 2012-02-15; priority JP 2011-079320 of 2011-03-31; granted 2014-03-18). Because the application was filed before March 16, 2013, the applicable statute is pre-AIA § 102. All references identified below published in or before 2007 — i.e., before the 2011-03-31 priority date and more than one year before the 2012-02-15 US filing date — so each qualifies under pre-AIA § 102(a) (prior publication) and § 102(b) (statutory bar as a printed publication).

The prior-art-relevant claims to test are claim 1 (sole independent claim) and dependent claims 2–15. Claim 1 requires, in substance: (a) an information display terminal with a display screen; (b) the screen displays a route guidance screen for guiding a route to a destination; (c) the route guidance screen displays an "action image" showing the motion of walking in the direction to the destination; (d) a "destination display information image" representing the destination name; and (e) that destination image is displayed in a front area of the action image in the walking direction.

Cited reference No. 1 — JP 2007-249095 A (certain)

Brief description (as characterized in the '849 specification): Discloses a technique of displaying icons of motion images as guidance to facilities such as an escalator, a moving sidewalk, and a taxi stand. For an ascending escalator, an icon at the escalator entrance plays an animation of a person entering, boarding, ascending, and exiting upstairs, letting a user at the entrance recognize the direction of the escalator's ascending motion. The '849 patent itself criticizes this reference for not guiding the route to the facility — the facility position is instead shown on a guidance map, leaving the user to judge direction and route from the map.

§ 102 anticipation analysis (claim 1 and dependents):

• Claim 1 — weak/arguable. The reference plausibly shows an animated human figure (an "action image") moving in a direction toward a facility (e.g., walking onto/ascending the escalator toward the upper exit), satisfying elements (c) in part. But two elements are doubtful: (i) the "route guidance screen" function — per the '849 specification's own description, the reference teaches facility-operation guidance, not route guidance to a destination; and (ii) the "destination display information image … displayed in a front area of the action image in the walking direction" — the icon appears to represent the facility/action itself, and the '849 text does not state that a destination-name image is placed ahead of the walker in the walking direction. A single-reference § 102 case would likely fail on one or both of those limitations; the reference reads more naturally as a § 103 combination reference.
• Dependent claims 2, 8, 9, 12 (partial): The icon-animation format (animation of a person shown at a fixed icon position on the display) is close to dependent claim 2 (action image shows walking motion at a constant display position without traversing the screen) and could support a § 103 combination even where § 102 falls short. Nothing in the description indicates the reference teaches the time-sequenced/simultaneous multi-destination, normal-vs-abnormal still/motion switching, or mobile-terminal limitations of claims 5–7 and 15.
• Bottom line: Not a strong single-reference anticipator of claim 1; treat as a § 103 reference against claims 1–4 and possibly 8–9.

Cited reference No. 2 — JP 2007-248279 A (certain)

Brief description (as characterized in the '849 specification): Discloses destination guidance using (1) a touch panel that displays a guidance map showing the route to a destination the user has specified, and (2) a separate/associated display that shows a landscape (photographic/scenic) image of the guidance route. The user advances along the route memorizing the landscape image and compares it to the real scene to avoid straying off route. The '849 patent criticizes this approach as requiring the user to memorize both the map route and the landscape imagery — a heavy cognitive burden.

§ 102 anticipation analysis (claim 1 and dependents):

• Claim 1 — no realistic § 102 case. The reference does not disclose an action image showing the motion of walking at all: its imagery is a static guidance map plus a static landscape image of the route. It may disclose a destination-name display (on the map), but it lacks the walking-figure element (c), the "front area in the walking direction" arrangement (e), and arguably the "route guidance screen" presentation of claim 1. It cannot single-handedly anticipate claim 1.
• Dependent claims: No dependent claim is anticipated because each incorporates claim 1. The reference is most useful in § 103 combination with a walking-figure animation reference (e.g., JP 2007-249095 or the LED-signal reference below) to argue obviousness of a route-guidance display pairing a walking figure with destination text.
• Bottom line: Not an anticipatory reference; a combination/§ 103 reference only.

Cited reference No. 3 — US 2008/0272936 A1 (candidate — unverified)

Brief description (based only on the title): A multipurpose LED signal system for pedestrian and traffic control — i.e., a programmable electronic sign/signal capable of displaying pedestrian-control imagery and messages. If the specification shows an animated or iconic walking figure on a display together with directional/text information for guiding pedestrians, it could be materially closer to claim 1 than the two Japanese references.

§ 102 anticipation analysis: Cannot be responsibly assessed without the document's text. If it discloses a display presenting a walking-figure image (or animation) together with a destination/instruction text arranged ahead of the figure in the direction of travel, it could threaten claim 1 (and claims 2–4, 8–10) under § 102. If it only teaches conventional pedestrian-signal icons (a static "walk/don't walk" figure with no route-guidance function and no destination-name placement in the walker's front area), it fails elements (b), (d), and (e). Obtain the PDF and check before relying on it either way.

References NOT prior art (clarification)

The Google Patents record also lists "Families Citing this family (19)" — including AU 2015/253071 A1 (Cubic Corporation, "Adaptive gate walkway floor display") and several Manufacturing Resources International, Inc. display patents (US 9,282,676 B1, US 10,485,113 B2, etc.), plus JP 2024/066546 A. These are forward citations (later documents citing '849) and are irrelevant to § 102/§ 103 prior-art analysis of '849's claims.

Summary of § 102 positions

Highest-confidence conclusion: The only prior-art references I can affirmatively confirm as cited by US 8,674,849 are JP 2007-249095 A and JP 2007-248279 A (both discussed at length in the specification's Background). Neither is a clean single-reference § 102 anticipator of independent claim 1 on the record as described. To complete the prior-art picture, verify the full front-page reference list and obtain US 2008/0272936 A1 (and any other examiner citations) from USPTO Patent Center / the Google Patents "Patent Citations" section — those sources were not fully reachable in this session.

Preliminary notes on the record available for this analysis

A. The "Prior Art section" referenced in the task was not included in the materials provided to me. No prior-art search results were attached. I therefore base this analysis on (1) the prior art identified on the face of the patent itself (the Background section's admitted art and its discussion of two Japanese references), and (2) general knowledge in the art as of the priority date. Where my live searches returned empty (the JP references' abstracts are not indexed in the sources I reached), I rely on the patent's own description of those references, which is authoritative as to what the applicant admitted. This analysis should be validated against a full prior-art search (USPTO/EPO/JPO classes G01C21, G08G1/09, G09F19/22) before any litigation use.

B. Correction to an earlier section (flagged per operating rules): The verbatim claims text recovered in this session (Justia and FreePatentsOnline copies of US 2012/0253672 A1 → US 8,674,849) shows the patent has 12 claims, not 15. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim; claims 2–7 and 12 depend from claim 1; claims 9–11 depend from claim 8. The earlier "claims 12–15" assumption in the patent summary was wrong and should be discarded.

Claim set in issue (verbatim, from the record)

• Claim 1: An information display terminal having a display screen that displays a route guidance screen for guiding a route to a destination, wherein: the route guidance screen displays an action image showing the motion of walking in a direction to the destination, and a destination display information image that represents a destination name; and the destination display information image is displayed in a front area of the action image in the walking direction of the action image.
• Claim 2: constant display position of the walking action image.
• Claim 3: rendering as if looked up/down according to display-screen height.
• Claim 4: action image walks along a passage; passage moves opposite to the walking direction.
• Claim 5: time-sequenced cycling of different-destination guidance screens.
• Claim 6: simultaneous display of different-destination guidance screens in separate areas.
• Claim 7: still action image in a normal situation; walking motion in an abnormal situation.
• Claim 8: action image walks toward the display position of the destination display information image.
• Claim 9: orientation varies with movement direction (dep. of 8).
• Claim 10: size changes as the image moves (dep. of 8).
• Claim 11: plurality of action images walking toward the destination label (dep. of 8).
• Claim 12: the terminal is a mobile terminal.

The application was filed 2012-02-15 with priority to JP 2011-079320 (2011-03-31), i.e., pre-AIA; § 103 as amended by the AIA does not apply, but the Graham/KSR analytical framework is identical.

Prior art available for combination

PHOSITA definition

A person of ordinary skill in the art (circa March 2011) would be a designer/engineer working on wayfinding, signage, and digital displays (e.g., sign-terminal product development, digital signage, navigation UI), typically holding a B.S. in electrical engineering, computer science, or industrial/information design with 2–4 years of experience in display-based guidance systems, conversant with standard 2D/3D animation rendering, digital signage control, and public-transit/retail wayfinding conventions. Such a person would understand: (i) human-figure motion conveys direction intuitively; (ii) destination names are mandatory content on guidance signs; (iii) layout choices on a sign are routine design decisions driven by legibility and attention.

Legal framework applied

Graham v. John Deere (383 U.S. 1 (1966)): (1) scope/content of prior art; (2) differences; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) secondary considerations. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex (550 U.S. 398 (2007)): a combination of known elements is obvious when a PHOSITA would have had reason to combine them with a reasonable expectation of success, including when the combination yields only predictable results or is the product of ordinary design choice.

Primary combination for claim 1: JP 2007-249095 + conventional arrow/text sign terminal (+ optionally JP 2007-248279)

Element-by-element mapping

The differences over the art — and why they are not patentable

The entire technical content of claim 1 is: show an animated walking person to indicate route direction, put the destination's name in front of him in his walking direction. The only arguably non-obvious element is the positional relationship — the label sits "ahead" of the walker rather than behind or above.

That placement is not a technical advance; it is a layout/design choice dictated by the very content of the primary reference. In JP '095's escalator animation, the human figure walks toward a goal (the exit upstairs) — i.e., the destination is, by definition, in the "front area" of the figure's walking direction at the terminus of the depicted motion. A PHOSITA translating that motion-language into a route sign — where the sign must also carry the destination name (as every conventional sign does) — would place the name where the figure is heading: in front of the walker. Nothing in the prior art teaches away from that arrangement; no alternative arrangement is even suggested by either reference; and the patent identifies no unexpected result — only that text placed ahead "catches the eye," which is a predictable consequence of the figure's gaze/motion direction, not a new function.

Motivation to combine (KSR "reason to combine" analysis)

1. Same field, same problem. JP '095 and the conventional sign terminal both address guiding people in built environments to facilities. The Background itself frames them as competing approaches to the same problem (JP '095 solves direction-intuitiveness but lacks route/destination-name guidance; conventional signs carry destination names but suffer ambiguous 2D arrows).
2. Complementary gaps. A PHOSITA reading JP '095 learns that human motion conveys direction more intuitively than a static arrow — precisely the deficiency the patent admits in arrow signage. A PHOSITA reading conventional signage learns that the destination name is indispensable content. Combining them — motion figure + name — fills both gaps.
3. Obvious design choice as to placement. Once the destination name is combined with a walking figure, the set of sensible positions is small (front, above, behind). Placing the name in front of the figure, in the direction it faces and walks, is the default layout — consistent with how the underlying reference already conceptualizes the destination (where the person ends up) and with real-world signage practice of placing labels at the end of the indicated path. KSR holds that "design need and market pressure" plus "ordinary creativity" make such choices obvious.
4. Predictable result. The stated benefit ("catches eyes of a user; grasp rapidly") is a predictable attention effect of aligning a label with a figure's heading — no new hardware, no new display technology, no unexpected performance. The patent's mirror-neuron discussion is a rationale explaining why motion works, not a structural limitation; and JP '095 already relied on the same perceptual premise (motion images make facility direction recognizable).
5. JP '279's role (optional). JP '279 independently shows the art's appetite for richer, more intuitive route guidance than arrows (landscape images replacing map reading). It reinforces the motivation to adopt JP '095's motion-figure technique for route guidance and confirms that burden-reduction (the patent's stated object) was a recognized design goal.

Reasonable expectation of success: High. The combination is a simple composition of a known animation technique with a known content element and a conventional layout; no technical obstacle is identified in the patent or the art.

Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (constant display position / walking in place): A looped animation of a figure that gestures walking without translating across the screen was the standard form of JP '095's motion icons (facility icons are fixed-position loops) and of animated signage generally. Obvious over JP '095 alone or with animation conventions.
• Claim 3 (look up/down per screen mounting height): Perspective/foreshortening tailored to a ceiling-mounted vs. floor-mounted sign is a routine rendering choice in display design; the patent itself describes it as a mere presentational adjustment ("shows a state as if … looks up or down"). Obvious design choice.
• Claim 4 (passage moves opposite the walking direction): The treadmill illusion — figure stationary, background scrolling opposite to travel — is a ubiquitous pre-2011 animation technique (video games, virtual walkthroughs, fitness media). Applying it to an animated route sign is an obvious expedient to convey forward progress without moving the figure off-screen.
• Claim 5 (time-sequenced rotation of multiple destinations) and Claim 6 (simultaneous split-screen): Rotating messages on a single digital sign at fixed intervals, and partitioning a screen to show several messages at once, were standard digital-signage capabilities well before 2011. Adding per-destination guidance screens to either format is obvious.
• Claim 7 (still image normally; motion in abnormal/emergency situations): Emergency signage that switches to an animated, attention-grabbing evacuation display (flashing arrows, animated running figures) was known in the art; making the routine state a still image and reserving animation for emergencies is an obvious power/attention trade-off.
• Claim 8 (walker moves toward the destination label), Claims 9–11 (orientation, scaling, plurality of walkers): If the figure represents a traveler proceeding to the destination, moving toward the label is the literal implementation of claim 1's geometry; orienting the figure along the path, scaling it down with simulated distance (perspective), and rendering a crowd are standard animation tools — all obvious refinements of claim 1/JP '095, which already showed perspective and multi-person motion concepts (the escalator sequence implies approach, ascent, and exit).
• Claim 12 (mobile terminal): Applying the same UI to a cellular phone/navigation device is an obvious use of an existing display technique; GPS/phone navigation apps displaying a walking avatar directed toward a labeled destination were known pre-2011. No unexpected interaction with mobile hardware is claimed.

Secondary considerations

None are evident from the record: no long-felt but unmet need (JP '095 already addressed direction-intuitiveness), no commercial success data, no copying evidence, no unexpected results, no industry skepticism. The prosecution history was not reviewed in this session. In the absence of such evidence, the Graham factor weighs in favor of obviousness.

Overall assessment

Claims 1 and 2 are the strongest obviousness cases: claim 1 reads almost entirely onto the combination of JP 2007-249095's walking-figure motion guidance with the conventional destination-name sign, with the only remaining feature (label ahead of the walker) being an ordinary layout choice with a predictable attention benefit. Claims 3–12 add conventional animation, signage, and UI features that a PHOSITA would have had ready reason to implement. The principal vulnerability of the obviousness case is evidentiary, not doctrinal: I could not retrieve the full Japanese texts of JP 2007-249095 / JP 2007-248279 in this session, so the precise disclosure of the "front area" concept in JP '095 (e.g., whether a destination name ever appears ahead of the animated figure) should be confirmed from the Japanese file — if JP '095 or an equivalent shows a label at the terminus of the walking motion, claim 1 collapses even without the conventional-sign combination. A full non-patent-literature search (digital-signage and wayfinding design literature pre-2011) would strengthen the § 103 case further.

Bottom line: Under § 103, claim 1 would likely be held obvious over JP 2007-249095 in view of conventional arrow-plus-text guidance signage (optionally further in view of JP 2007-248279), with dependent claims 2–12 obvious over the same combination plus well-known animation and digital-signage conventions. Caveat: this patent is recorded by Google Patents as "Expired – Fee Related" and no litigation or PTAB proceeding is known, so this analysis is presently of academic/defensive-preparation value rather than active-litigation value — and the maintenance-fee status should be verified live at USPTO Patent Center before any reliance.