US 8775249

I'll research this specific patent number, including the requested litigation/docket checks.

Let me check the Federal Circuit docket specifically and get the remaining claims.

Let me verify the April 2026 Federal Circuit decision and check whether it involves the '249 patent specifically.

US Patent 8,775,249 — Analyst Summary

Precision note up front: I'm treating "8775249" literally as US 8,775,249 B2 (application 13/948,661). One important caveat on your docket question is flagged in Section 4 below: the Federal Circuit's April 2026 AlmondNet decision is not about the '249 patent — it is about a sibling patent. Do not conflate them.

1. Bibliographic data

The '249 patent sits at the end of a long continuation chain descending from a 1999 Israeli priority filing. That deep priority date matters, because it predates essentially the entire modern ad-tech prior-art landscape (Merriman/Jaye/Roth reliance in later IPRs notwithstanding).

2. Abstract (as granted)

"A method of accumulating descriptive profile data uses a databank that can be contacted by profile providers who contribute profile elements about an online visitor. The method includes keeping track of which profile provider contributed which elements, so that use of particular elements in targeting electronic third-party advertisements automatically can result in compensation."

The specification (largely carried over from the 1999-era disclosure) frames this as a "descriptive-profile mercantile method" with databank/user/visitor roles, micro-payment royalties, brokerage commissions, credibility weightings, and external-database consultation. Much of that specification text is not reflected in the issued claims.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method of collecting profiles of Internet-using entities. A programmed server on the Internet receives, from a server run by one of a number of unaffiliated third parties, a "partial profile" of a person/entity who is using a computer to visit a website. The system adds that partial profile to a stored profile it believes belongs to the same entity. Two features carry the weight: (i) the partial profile arrives as a result of automatic electronic URL redirection from part of the website page the user visited; and (ii) the system automatically keeps an electronic record of which third party contributed which attributes. The resulting stored profile is the data used to target third-party ads to that user's computer over the Internet.

Claim 11 — Computer system version. The same five-step sequence, recast as a computer system coupled to a global network and programmed to perform the method, with a storage device holding the accumulating profile. Same core limitations: third-party-source partial profile, URL-redirection delivery, source-attribution record, ad-targeting use.

Claim 21 — Stored-program version. The same sequence recast as a stored program / program product (this is the "stored program" of the title).

Meaningful dependents (1-dependent set; 12–20 and 22–25 are the parallel sets for claims 11 and 21):

• Cl. 2 — automatically uses the source-attribution record to compute a payment amount owed to the contributing third party when its attribute is used in targeting ads. (This is the commercial/compensation hook and the practical heart of the patent.)
• Cl. 3–4 — sameness of entity is determined by sameness of user computer, determined by reading a cookie.
• Cl. 5 — the system also records which third party contributed the attributes actually used in targeting.
• Cl. 6 — system determines whether the incoming partial profile contains new attributes not already in the stored profile.
• Cl. 7–8 — a credibility rating per attribute, which can be reflected in the price for that attribute.
• Cl. 9 — selecting profile attributes based on their source.
• Cl. 10 — reading a cookie previously stored on the entity's computer, as a result of the URL redirection.

Uncertainty/caveat: Claims 1–10 are quoted in full in the authoritative text, but the text I was given truncates inside claim 11(c); claims 11–25 were not reproduced. My descriptions of claim 11 and claim 21 are inferred from the claim-1 language, the patent title's "computer system … and stored program" formulation, and the Yahoo! litigation disclosure listing claim 1 (plus 2–6, 9–10), claim 11 (plus 12–16, 19–20), and claim 21 (plus 22–25) as asserted. I therefore state the scope of claims 11 and 21 with high confidence, but not their verbatim wording.

Separately, in litigation filings the petitioner FreeWheel represented that claims 2, 12, and 22 have been statutorily disclaimed (37 C.F.R. § 1.321(a)) — consistent with a "DISCLAIMER IN PATENT" document for application 13/948,661 of record in AlmondNet v. FreeWheel Media, D. Del. 1:23-cv-00220. If accurate, the three "payment/compensation" dependents of each independent claim are gone, which materially narrows the enforceable claim set. I'd verify this against the USPTO record before relying on it.

4. Docket check — and a correction on the Federal Circuit question

Federal Circuit, 2026: There is an AlmondNet Federal Circuit ruling from 2026, but it is not about the '249 patent. AlmondNet, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 2024-1834 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 13, 2026) is a Rule 36 nonprecedential summary affirmance (per curiam: Lourie, Dyk, Taranto) of the PTAB's decision in IPR2022-01436. That IPR challenged the '582 patent (US 8,244,582) — a sibling in the same family, not US 8,775,249. Authority: https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1834.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.4-13-2026_2674964.pdf and https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1834/24-1834-2026-04-13.html. My search for a Federal Circuit appeal docketed in 2026 that specifically names patent 8,775,249 returned no results. I cannot confirm any such appeal exists.

USPTO / PTAB proceedings touching the '249 patent specifically:

• CBM2017-00050 (Petitioner v. AlmondNet) — institution denied, because the petitioner failed to show the '249 patent was CBM-eligible under the transitional program.
• IPR2025-00126, Viant Technology LLC v. AlmondNet, Inc. — filed Nov. 1, 2024, challenging claims 1, 3–11, 13–21, 23–25. Terminated Feb. 11, 2025 on settlement prior to institution, per a Board decision under 37 C.F.R. § 42.74, tied to the parties' stipulation in D. Del. 1:23-cv-00174. No final written decision issued.
• FreeWheel Media IPR petition against the '249 patent — substantive grounds included obviousness combinations of Merriman (US 5,948,061) + Jaye (US 6,415,322) and Roth (US 6,285,987) + Jaye, with Jaye (US 6,415,322) supplying the "append profile data to the redirect URL" teaching. Worth noting: the petitioner argued the URL-redirection limitation appears only twice in the '249 specification and is not depicted in Figure 2, and that the "automatic electronic URL" wording was added during prosecution of the parent '307 patent to distinguish Axiom.
• IPR2024-00416 / -00417 / -00418 (Unified Patents) — listed on the patent's Google Patents family/litigation panel; -00416 settled, -00417 and -00418 not instituted on procedural grounds. I did not independently verify which family member each petition targeted.

District court litigation naming the '249 patent (non-exhaustive): AlmondNet v. Yahoo!, E.D.N.Y. 1:16-cv-01557 (transferred to D. Del. 1:19-cv-00247) — the Rule 3-1 disclosure there expressly asserted claim 1 + 2–6, 9–10; claim 11 + 12–16, 19–20; and claim 21 + 22–25; AlmondNet v. Viant Technology, D. Del. 1:23-cv-00174; AlmondNet v. FreeWheel Media, D. Del. 1:23-cv-00220; AlmondNet v. LinkedIn, D. Del. 1:23-cv-01373; and the Meta/Facebook W.D. Tex. actions 6:22-cv-01204/-01205/-01206.

5. Bottom line and confidence levels

• Bibliographic data (title, inventor, assignee, application, filing/issue/priority dates, expiration status): high confidence, grounded in the authoritative patent text you supplied, corroborated by USPTO/docket records.
• Abstract: exact quotation from the granted patent.
• Claims 1–10: high confidence (quoted in full). Claims 11 and 21 scope: high confidence; verbatim text: not available in source provided.
• Statutory disclaimer of claims 2, 12, 22: moderate confidence — asserted in a party's PTAB filing and matched to a disclaimer document of record, but I have not seen the USPTO disclaimer notice itself.
• No Federal Circuit 2026 appeal naming 8,775,249: I found none; the prominent April 13, 2026 AlmondNet v. Meta decision concerns the '582 patent, so it should not be reported as a '249 outcome.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8775249 using multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into specific cases and confirm which ones actually asserted the '249 patent.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,775,249

Patent: US 8,775,249 B2 — "Method, computer system, and stored program for accumulating descriptive profile data along with source information for use in targeting third-party advertisements" (AlmondNet, Inc.; inventor Roy Shkedi). Part of AlmondNet's "Descriptive Profile Consolidation" (DPC) patent family.

Caveat up front: I was able to retrieve district‑court dockets and litigation records through search, but I could not open every PACER docket sheet directly. Where a record is a secondary aggregator, I flag it. I also note that some sources describe the same dispute at different procedural stages, which I've tried to reconcile below.

A. District court actions in which the '249 patent was asserted

1. AlmondNet, Inc., Datonics, LLC & Intent IQ, LLC v. Yahoo! Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (E.D.N.Y.)
• Case No.: 1:16-cv-01557-ILG-SMG
• Filed: March 30, 2016
• Claim(s) asserted: The '249 patent was expressly asserted (independent claim 1 + dependent claims 2–6, 9, 10; independent claim 11 + claims 12–16, 19, 20; independent claim 21 + claims 22–25), alongside nine other AlmondNet patents. Confirmed by the complaint (Exhibit E) and Plaintiffs' P.R. 3-1 infringement contentions.
• Accused products: Yahoo Ad Exchange (YAX), Yahoo Audience Ads, and BrightRoll platforms.
• Outcome/status: Yahoo moved to dismiss (July 11, 2016), then withdrew the motion (Oct. 2016) after AlmondNet's supplemental disclosures. The case was ultimately transferred to the District of Delaware on Dec. 6, 2018, and docketed there as AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Oath Holdings Inc., No. 1:19-cv-00247-LPS. That case was subsequently terminated.

2. AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Oath Holdings Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:19-cv-00247-LPS (Judge Leonard P. Stark)
• Filed: 2019 (continuation/transfer of the E.D.N.Y. Yahoo action)
• '249 involvement: Carried over from the E.D.N.Y. action; the '249 patent remained part of the asserted set.
• Outcome/status: Closed / terminated. (Docket reflects the case as "Transferred Out" per one aggregator record.)

3. AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Microsoft Corporation

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division
• Case No.: 6:21-cv-00897-ADA (Judge Alan D. Albright)
• Filed: August 27, 2021
• '249 involvement: Confirmed — the USPTO AO 120 report for this docket lists US 8,775,249 (issued 7/8/2014, holder AlmondNet, Inc.) as included by pleading.
• Outcome/status: A Markman hearing was held Nov. 30, 2022. The case was dismissed with prejudice by joint stipulation under FRCP 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) on/around June 5, 2024, each party bearing its own fees and costs. No public terms (license, lump sum, or covenant) disclosed. Aggregators list the case as closed March 13, 2024 / June 5, 2024.

4. AlmondNet, Inc. & Intent IQ, LLC v. Microsoft Corporation & Xandr, Inc. ("AlmondNet II")

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division
• Case No.: 6:22-cv-01206-ADA
• Filed: November 18, 2022
• '249 involvement: Confirmed — Defendants' Answer expressly admits Plaintiffs allege infringement of, among others, U.S. Patent 8,775,249 (Asserted Patents also included '260, '307, '146, '878).
• Outcome/status: Consolidated into the 6:21-cv-00897 action; resolved by the same June 2024 dismissal with prejudice.

5. AlmondNet, Inc. & Intent IQ, LLC v. Viant Technology Inc. / Viant Technology LLC

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:23-cv-00174-MN (Judge Maryellen Noreika)
• Filed: February 16, 2023
• '249 involvement: Confirmed — the AO 120 report lists US 8,775,249-B2 first among the patents in suit (along with US 7,861,260, US 7,979,307, US 11,564,015).
• Outcome/status: By Stipulation and Order dated January 14, 2025 (D.I. 115), the '249, '307, and '015 patents were dropped from the suit. On February 26, 2025, the court granted Viant's motion to stay the case pending IPR (D.I. 100). Viant filed IPR2025-00126 against the '249 patent (see below).

6. AlmondNet, Inc. & Intent IQ, LLC v. FreeWheel Media, Inc. & Beeswax.io Corp.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:23-cv-00220-MN
• Filed: March 1, 2023
• '249 involvement: Indicated — docket/patent listings for this case include US 8,775,249 among the patents in suit (with '260, '307, '398, '015, and others).
• Outcome/status: On February 26, 2025, the court granted a motion to stay pending IPR (D.I. 61). A later stipulated dismissal order reported by a secondary source (PatSnap, citing PACER Case 1:23-cv-00220) states Plaintiffs' claims were dismissed with prejudice and Defendants' claims without prejudice, each party bearing its own costs — indicating the dispute was subsequently resolved by settlement. Docket aggregators still showed the case flagged "STAYED" at one point, so treat the dismissal/settlement as a later-stage development and verify against the live docket.

7. AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. LinkedIn Corporation

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:23-cv-01373-MN
• Filed: December 1, 2023
• '249 involvement: Indicated — the '249 patent appears in the docket listing of patents in suit (with '639, '260, '307, '582, '586, '336, '139, '398, '146, and US 10,715,878).
• Outcome/status: Scheduling order entered; dispositive motions deadline of Jan. 16, 2026 and trial-consent deadline of Jan. 16, 2026 were set. I could not confirm a final disposition from the sources retrieved.

8. Datonics, LLC v. Lotame Solutions, Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:24-cv-00376-MN
• Filed: March 22, 2024
• '249 involvement: Indicated — docket listings include US 8,775,249 alongside '445, '904, '210, and '398.
• Outcome/status: Flagged CLOSED. On February 26, 2025, the court denied Lotame's motion to dismiss (D.I. 20) and denied a motion for leave to file a sur-reply (D.I. 27). (Note: the case is captioned as a Datonics suit; AlmondNet/Intent IQ appear in related filings.)

9. AlmondNet, Inc. & Intent IQ, LLC v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
• Case No.: 4:23-cv-00438 (N.D. Cal.); related to W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-01205 (transferred)
• Filed: January 31, 2023 (N.D. Cal. docket date per Stanford NPE database)
• '249 involvement: Indicated — the Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists US 8,775,249 among the patents asserted (with US 10,715,878, 7,747,745, 7,979,307, 8,204,783, 8,959,146).
• Outcome/status: I could not confirm a final disposition from the retrieved sources.

B. Related AlmondNet campaigns (context, '249 assertion not confirmed)

These cases are part of the same AlmondNet/Intent IQ enforcement wave but my retrieved sources did not confirm the '249 patent was asserted in them — flagging so you don't treat them as '249 suits without checking the complaints:

• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Roku, Inc., 6:21-cv-00731 / 6:21-cv-00876 (W.D. Tex.) → transferred to D. Del. 1:22-cv-01540; stayed.
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., 6:21-cv-00891 (W.D. Tex.).
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., 6:21-cv-00896 (W.D. Tex.) → transferred to N.D. Cal. 4:22-cv-08911.
• AlmondNet, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 6:21-cv-00898 and 6:22-cv-01204 (W.D. Tex.); later AlmondNet v. Amazon.com, 7:25-cv-00165 (W.D. Tex.).
• AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Mediaocean LLC et al., 1:25-cv-00406 (D. Del., filed Apr. 1, 2025).
• Consolidated D. Del. action Roku, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc., 1:21-cv-01035-MN.

C. PTAB (Patent Office) challenges directed at the '249 patent

Although not "litigation" in the district-court sense, these are contested proceedings specifically attacking US 8,775,249 and should be tracked alongside the suits:

D. Summary observations

1. The '249 patent has been asserted in at least eight district-court actions, most of them consolidated into AlmondNet's multi-patent W.D. Tex. and D. Del. campaigns against major ad-tech platforms (Yahoo/Oath, Microsoft/Xandr, Viant, FreeWheel/Beeswax, LinkedIn, Meta, Lotame).
2. No case has produced a merits adjudication of the '249 patent's validity or infringement. Every resolution to date has been by transfer, stay, consolidation, voluntary dismissal, or settlement (typically "dismissed with prejudice, each party to bear its own costs").
3. The patent remains under active PTAB attack — most notably IPR2025-00126 (Viant v. AlmondNet), which is instituted and pending.
4. The '249 patent expired (anticipated expiration June 14, 2020; Google Patents lists the patent as "Expired – Fee Related"), which limits prospective damages but does not by itself end the accrued-damages litigation or the IPRs.

Verification note: Because I could not open every PACER docket, the filing dates, asserted-claim sets, and current statuses above should be confirmed against the live dockets (especially for the LinkedIn, Meta, and FreeWheel matters, where my sources were secondary/aggregated). If you'd like, I can drill into any single case — e.g., pull the FreeWheel dismissal order or the Viant IPR2025-00126 institution decision — as a next step.

I'll start by verifying the proceedings surfaced in the patent page and checking whether they target US 8,775,249 specifically or family members.

Good — strong evidence of multiple proceedings. Let me pin down the sibling proceedings, the FreeWheel termination, and any Federal Circuit appeals.

⚠️ Source conflict — flagged before anything else

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block says the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,775,249. That is incomplete / stale, and the primary documents (PTAB termination decisions, POPRs, petition papers, and the Google Patents litigation feed for this exact patent) show five proceedings on the '249 patent. I have used the public PTAB record below and flagged every point where the structured data and the public record diverge. Do not rely on the ODP "no activity" default here.

Proceedings overview

Total on US 8,775,249: 5 (four IPRs + one CBM). Breakdown: 0 claims invalidated · 0 claims sustained by a Final Written Decision · 2 institution-denied (IPR2024-00417, IPR2024-00418) · 1 instituted-then-settled mid-trial (IPR2024-00416) · 1 settled before institution (IPR2025-00126) · 1 CBM institution denied (CBM2017-00050). No Final Written Decision has ever issued on this patent, and no claim has ever been canceled by the PTAB. The bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "hardened" patent in the sense that claims survived a merits fight — it is an untested patent whose PTAB challenges were each either refused entry or bought out. Separately, the patent expired ~2020-06-14 (20 years from the 2000-06-14 filing of parent application 09/593,993), and claims 2, 12 and 22 were statutorily disclaimed by the patent owner on 2017-09-06 — so any live theory rests on claims 1, 3–11, 13–21 and 23–25, and can only reach pre-expiration conduct.

IPR2024-00416 — FreeWheel Media, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-03-01
• Status: Terminated-Settled (termination 2025-07-17) — instituted 2024-10-01, then settled before FWD.
• Judge panel: Nabeel U. Khan, Scott B. Howard and David Cotta (per the Board's 2025-03-06 order in this proceeding). A revised scheduling order also lists Justin T. Arbes and Charles J. Boudreau across the joined 00413/00416 docket.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1, 3–11, 13–21 and 23–25 (claims 2, 12 and 22 were already disclaimed). Grounds tracked the Meta IPR (IPR2022-01436 against the sibling '582 patent) on "nearly identical" claims — obviousness combinations over the same primary art.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2024-10-01 (all grounds). The panel later issued a Revised Scheduling Order with due dates running to a 2025-06-18 oral argument — i.e., trial was underway.
• Final Written Decision: None. No § 318(a) decision ever issued.
• Settlement / termination: Settled roughly contemporaneously with the D. Del. FreeWheel case (1:23-cv-00220), which the parties resolved by stipulated Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) dismissal entered 2025-06-24 (plaintiffs' claims with prejudice; defendants' counterclaims without prejudice; each side bearing its own fees). Financial terms are not public.
• Appeal: None — no FWD, so nothing appealable.
• Defensive value: The one IPR on this patent that actually got to trial-stage evaporated in settlement, so no claim is canceled and no estoppel attached. A defendant cannot point to a canceled claim, but equally cannot be handed a pre-issued FWD holding; expect a fresh petition to be the only route.

IPR2024-00417 — FreeWheel Media, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-03-01
• Status: Institution Denied (per PTAB-tracking records; Google Patents labels it "Not Instituted – Procedural").
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in the materials retrieved.
• Petition grounds: Claims 1, 3–11, 13–21 and 23–25; 18 express grounds under § 103 — primarily Rosenberg (US 6,073,241) optionally with Zeff (Advertising on the Internet, 1997) and Sterne (What Makes People Click, 1997), further in view of Kurtzman (US 6,144,944), Merriman, Farber (US 5,978,791) and Coleman (US 2002/0026351). Disputed terms: "unaffiliated third part[y/ies]" and "URL redirection."
• Institution decision: Denied. Patent Owner's Preliminary Response argued (i) discretionary denial because this was one of three parallel petitions filed the same day on the same claims (00416/00417/00418), and (ii) that 18 express grounds across three petitions (37 cumulative grounds, 17 named references, ~23 "shadow" references) violated the § 312(a)(3) "particularity" requirement. I could not retrieve the Board's actual denial order, so I state the arguments rather than the panel's own words.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A — denied at the threshold.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Confirms the Board rejected the "kitchen-sink" multi-petition strategy against this patent. If you file, expect parallel-petition and § 312(a)(3) pressure.

IPR2024-00418 — FreeWheel Media, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-03-01
• Status: Institution Denied (Google Patents: "Not Instituted – Procedural").
• Judge panel: Not confirmed.
• Petition grounds: Third of the three same-day FreeWheel petitions on the '249 patent; challenged the same claim set (1, 3–11, 13–21, 23–25).
• Institution decision: Denied (procedural / parallel-petition basis per the POPRs). Date and verbatim reasoning not retrieved.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Along with -00417, this is the clearest evidence that the Board would not entertain a multi-front assault on the '249; a single, disciplined petition is the only realistic path.

IPR2025-00126 — Viant Technology LLC v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-11-01
• Status: Terminated-Settled — settled prior to institution; termination decision 2025-02-11. ⚠️ Note the conflict: the Google Patents structured block labels this "Pending – Instituted." That is wrong; the Board's own decision states "we have not yet decided whether to institute a trial" and expressly states it "does not constitute a final written decision pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)."
• Judge panel: Nabeel U. Khan, Scott B. Howard and David Cotta.
• Petition grounds: Claims 1, 3–11, 13–21 and 23–25 under § 103 — Ground 1 (Merriman US 5,948,061 + Jaye US 6,415,322), Ground 2 (Roth US 6,285,987 + Jaye), Ground 3 (Merriman/Roth + Minor), with the "partial profile received via automatic URL redirection" limitation supplied by Jaye's appended-redirect-URL teaching.
• Institution decision: None — mooted by settlement. No institution decision on the merits.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: Joint motion to terminate (Paper 7) supported by a Joint Stipulation and Order in AlmondNet v. Viant Technology, D. Del. 1:23-cv-00174-MN. The '249 was dropped from that suit by stipulation dated 2025-01-14 (along with '307 and '015). The Board noted the early stage and dismissed the petition; parties certified no collateral agreements. Monetary terms not public.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Viant's petition never got a merits ruling, so its Merriman/Roth/Jaye theories are not adjudicated and not estopped — any party remains free to run them (subject to their own § 315(b) clock).

CBM2017-00050 — Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.

• Type: Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18)
• Filed: 2017-05-15
• Status: Institution Denied (2017-11-28); Google Patents: "Not Instituted – Merits."
• Judge panel: Not confirmed in retrieved materials.
• Petition grounds: § 101 patent-eligibility as to claims 1–6, 9–16 and 19–25. Petitioner established standing as a sued infringer under AIA § 18(a)(1)(B) / 37 C.F.R. § 42.302(a). Claim construction was under the broadest reasonable interpretation standard.
• Institution decision: Denied 2017-11-28. Verbatim from the decision, as reproduced in later filings: "Petitioner has not met its burden of showing that the '249 patent is eligible for the transitional covered business method patent review program." In other words, the Board declined on CBM-eligibility (the "technological invention" / financial-product prong), not on the merits of the § 101 challenge. AlmondNet then statutorily disclaimed claims 2, 12 and 22 (2017-09-06), which is why no later petition touched them.
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None — a denial of institution is not appealable by the petitioner.
• Defensive value: § 101 remains fully available as a district-court defense (and won partially for AlmondNet in the parallel '639/'139 Amazon cases), but the CBM door is permanently closed for this patent.

Family companions (NOT on the '249 — cited only for pattern): CBM2017-00049/-00051/-00052 (Yahoo, denied), IPR2022-01436 (Meta Platforms v. AlmondNet, instituted 2023-04-07, on the '582 patent — not this one), IPR2022-01260 and IPR2022-01455 (denied, also '582). Source records conflict on whether CBM2017-00049 was directed to the '249 or the '307; treat that attribution as unverified.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '249. Nothing has been canceled by the PTAB — there is no FWD to cite. The only claims removed from the set were disclaimed by the patent owner itself: claims 2, 12 and 22, by statutory disclaimer filed 2017-09-06 (recorded against application 13/948,661). Untested / still live on paper: claims 1, 3–11, 13–21 and 23–25. Sustained by adjudication: none. If you are accused today, the claim-by-claim story is "no PTAB ruling exists either way." Add the hard constraint that the patent expired ~2020-06-14, so any exposure is capped at pre-expiration conduct under § 286's six-year lookback (i.e., conduct roughly 2014-09-28 to 2020-06-14) — an expired patent cannot support prospective injunctive relief.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only upon a final written decision, and no FWD has ever issued on the '249. Therefore:

• FreeWheel/Comcast (IPR2024-00416) is not estopped, despite having been instituted — the proceeding was terminated without a § 318(a) decision.
• Viant (IPR2025-00126) is not estopped — terminated pre-institution.
• The 00417/00418 denials create no estoppel.
• Practical consequence: every prior-art ground anyone has run (Merriman, Jaye, Roth, Minor, Rosenberg, Kurtzman, Farber, Coleman, Zeff, Sterne) remains available to a new petitioner/defendant, constrained only by General Plastic-style follow-on discretion against the same petitioner and by § 315(b) (one year from service of an infringement complaint on you). Note the FreeWheel/Comcast real parties in interest included Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable entities — privies of that group should assume § 315(b) has run.

Pattern signals. (i) Yahoo opened with a family-wide CBM barrage in 2017 (five petitions across '249/'307/'904/'582) and lost all of them at the threshold. (ii) FreeWheel/Comcast fired three parallel IPRs at the '249 alone (plus a parallel set on the '307, four more on the '260, two on the '015) — two were denied and the third was bought out. (iii) Viant filed a single IPR and settled before institution, the same month the '249 was dropped from its D. Del. case. (iv) No defensive aggregator is a petitioner here. The "Unified Patents" label in the Google Patents record is the data source, not a party; the actual petitioners are operating companies (Yahoo/Oath, Comcast/FreeWheel, Viant) reacting to AlmondNet's assertion campaign, which also runs through Meta, Amazon, Samsung, Roku, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Microsoft dockets. (v) No PTAB appeal history exists for this patent — AlmondNet has never had to defend a '249 FWD at the Federal Circuit; its appellate exposure has been on the '639/'139 line (e.g., the $122M Amazon W.D. Tex. verdict).

Recommended next steps

1. Don't build a defense on a canceled claim — there isn't one. For the '249, the honest posture is "no PTAB proceeding has ever reached a merits ruling on this patent." If a demand letter asserts claims 2, 12 or 22, those are statutorily disclaimed and unenforceable — say so and demand a corrected chart. The disclaimed claims are the only "dead" part of this patent.
2. Lead with expiration. Confirm the term (20 years from the 2000-06-14 filing of 09/593,993, per the Google Patents "2020-06-14 Anticipated expiration" entry) and scope discovery to the pre-2020-06-14 damages window. An expired patent sharply narrows both exposure and the value of filing an IPR.
3. If you want PTAB relief, file a single, tight petition — the 00417/00418 denials show the Board will not tolerate parallel-petition and § 312(a)(3) overload against this patent. Reuse the rejected-but-unadjudicated art (Merriman + Jaye; Roth + Jaye; Rosenberg + Kurtzman), which carries no estoppel because no FWD issued.
4. Watch your § 315(b) clock and your privity chain: FreeWheel's declared real parties included Comcast Corporation, Comcast Cable Communications, LLC and Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC — those entities are time-barred from a fresh petition.
5. Contemporaneous district-court status to monitor: any case now asserting the '249 can only seek past damages; the prior Delaware cases (FreeWheel 1:23-cv-00220; Viant 1:23-cv-00174; Lotame 1:24-cv-00376) resolved with the '249 dropped or dismissed with prejudice, so re-assertion of the same claims against those same defendants is barred by res judicata even though validity was never decided.
6. Key documents to pull directly (I recommend re-verifying each in PTAB E2E / PTACTS before relying on it):
   • IPR2025-00126 termination decision (2025-02-11), Viant v. AlmondNet: http://ocr.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-00126/Viant_Technology_LLC_v._AlmondNet_Inc/docs/02-11-2025-Board/Termination_Decision__Pre_DI_settlement-8-_Decision_Settlement_Prior_to_Institution_of_Trial.pdf
   • IPR2024-00416 case file / 2025-03-06 order: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00416/FreeWheel_Media_Inc._v._AlmondNet_Inc/
   • CBM2017-00050 denial (2017-11-28), as exhibited at D. Del. 1:23-cv-00220 D.I. 15: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--23-cv-00220/AlmondNet_Inc._et_al_v._Freewheel_Media_Inc._et_al/docs/15.pdf
   • IPR2024-00417 POPR: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--23-cv-00220/AlmondNet_v._Freewheel_Media_et_al/docs/72/5.pdf

Confidence caveats (stated explicitly rather than papered over): (a) I could not retrieve the Board's actual institution-denial orders for IPR2024-00417 and IPR2024-00418, so their stated reasoning reflects the Patent Owner's POPR arguments, not the panel's verbatim holding. (b) The judge panels for CBM2017-00050 and the two denied FreeWheel IPRs were not confirmed and are omitted rather than guessed. (c) The Google Patents structured entries conflict with the public record on IPR2025-00126 ("Pending – Instituted" vs. settled pre-institution) and on the CBM2017-00049 patent attribution; I have followed the primary documents and flagged both. (d) The "no PTAB activity" ODP default is contradicted by five proceedings of record for this patent — treat that ingest as incomplete.

I'll research the assignment chain, litigation history, and NPE status for US 8775249 before drafting.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and any later transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 8775249 B2

Patent: US 8,775,249 B2 — "Method, computer system, and stored program for accumulating descriptive profile data along with source information for use in targeting third-party advertisements"
App. No. 13/948,661 · filed 2013-07-23 · issued 2014-07-08 · priority 1999-12-13 (IL 133,489)
Data-access caveat (read first): I was unable to open the USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov record viewer directly in this session. The reel/frame numbers below are the ones that surfaced through indexed secondary sources (Google Patents legal events and USPTO prosecution exhibits). Where I could not confirm a reel/frame, I say so explicitly rather than supplying one. Search page for independent verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 8775249) and https://patents.google.com/patent/US8775249/en.

Inventors

• No unusual departure pattern. Shkedi founded AlmondNet in 1998 (naming it after his family name "Shkedi," Hebrew for almond tree), relocated to the U.S. in 2000, and remains CEO of AlmondNet Group and its subsidiaries Intent IQ, LLC and Datonics, LLC. The classic "all inventors gone within 12 months → fire-sale" tell is absent.
• What is unusual: a single-inventor, 24-year continuation chain. The '249 is a continuation of 13/585,779 → 13/115,949 → 12/186,918 → 11/099,861 → 09/593,993 (filed 2000-06-14, now US 6,925,440) → IL 133,489. A 13-year re-filing of the same specification immediately before the '249 issued (2013 filing) is a portfolio-maintenance pattern characteristic of licensing-driven prosecution rather than product development.

Original assignee

AlmondNet, Inc., a Delaware corporation (expressly recited as such in the family assignment text — "sell, assign, and transfer to AlmondNet, Inc., a Delaware corporation"), principal address 37-18 Northern Boulevard, Suite 404, Long Island City, NY 11101.

• Primary line of business: online behavioral-targeting advertising and audience data. Subsidiaries Intent IQ, LLC (cross-device identity / ID graph) and Datonics, LLC (data). AlmondNet was an early ad-tech operator (founded 1998; ~$750K total funding per third-party aggregator Seedtable — treat that figure as unverified).
• Product embodying the claims: AlmondNet does not currently ship an ad-serving product that reads on the '249 claims; the accused ad-serving/ID systems belong to the defendants. AlmondNet's revenue is explicitly a mix of ad-tech/data licensing and patent assertion — its own litigation counsel (Reza Mirzaie) told AdExchanger that "it depends on the year" whether the company earns more as an ad-tech vendor or as a patent litigant. The CEO confirms he took a "less-than-perfect" Google license in 2013 to avoid insolvency.
• Current status: Operating, privately held, and actively litigating (not acquired, not dissolved, no bankruptcy of record). It remains the assignee of record on Google Patents ("Current Assignee: AlmondNet Inc").

Assignment timeline

The record for this patent is thin: essentially one inventor-to-company assignment, plus a family-level confirmatory assignment. There is no post-issuance transfer to any licensing LLC, holding company, or third-party asserter in the indexed record. Reel/frame for the 2013 event below was not surfaced in the sources I could reach — flagged rather than invented.

• 2008-08-06 (effective) / recorded ~2011 — Reel 026345/0047

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Roy Shkedi, Mr.
  • Assignee: AlmondNet, Inc., New York, NY
  • Correspondent: not surfaced in the indexed abstract of this record (the assignee's prosecution attorney of record across the family is Louis J. Hoffman, Reg. No. 38,918, Louis J. Hoffman, P.C. / Hoffman Patent Firm, Scottsdale–Phoenix, AZ, Customer No. 26362 — he filed the '249 application itself, but I cannot confirm he is the correspondent on the assignment record). Recurrence flag: Hoffman is the recurring practitioner across the entire AlmondNet family ('307, '582, '904, '639, '745, '615, etc.), so he is the single repeat-player attorney over this portfolio — but on prosecution, not on a documented chain of assignment filings.
  • Context: Confirmatory inventor-to-company assignment; I found this reel/frame cited on the record page of a sibling family patent (13/115,946), so treat it as family-level evidence rather than as confirmed against the '249's own record.
  • ⚠️ Uncertainty: cannot confirm from indexed sources that 026345/0047 is recorded specifically against 13/948,661.

• 2013-07-23 (executed / recorded) — Reel/frame not surfaced (Google Patents legal event: "Assigned to ALMONDNET, INC. — ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignor: SHKEDI, ROY")

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Roy Shkedi
  • Assignee: AlmondNet, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not surfaced
  • Context: Assignment concurrent with the filing of continuation 13/948,661 — i.e. internal inventor-to-company, not a transfer to an asserter.

No further recorded assignments. No security agreement, merger, change of name, license, release, or correction records surfaced for this patent. Because AlmondNet is its own asserter, the absence of a transfer-to-NPE link is expected and is not itself exculpatory — see signals below.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership and assertion of US 8775249
    1999 : Priority IL application filed by Roy Shkedi
    2000 : US parent application 09 593 993 filed
    2008 : Shkedi assigns family rights to AlmondNet
    2013 : Continuation 13 948 661 filed
         : Recorded assignment to AlmondNet Inc
    2014 : Patent US 8775249 issues
    2016 : First infringement suit filed vs Yahoo
    2017 : Yahoo CBM denied institution
    2021 : Texas suits vs Amazon Meta Microsoft
    2023 : Suits vs LinkedIn Viant FreeWheel
    2024 : Suits vs Lotame and LiveIntent
         : Amazon jury awards 122M on family patents
    2025 : Suits vs Oracle and Mediaocean

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer from an operating assignee to a licensing-only LLC appears in the record. The only recorded conveyances are Roy Shkedi → AlmondNet, Inc. (Reel 026345/0047, eff. 2008-08-06, and the 2013-07-23 event). AlmondNet, Inc. is a 1998-founded Delaware operating company at a Long Island City business address — not a registered-agent mailbox. The assertion is run by the original assignee, not a downstream shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
AlmondNet, Inc., with co-plaintiffs Intent IQ, LLC and Datonics, LLC, is a serial plaintiff surfaced by Unified Patents and RPX as a high-frequency filer. Unified Patents' own portal records coordinated PTAB challenges (IPR2024-00416, -00417, -00418, IPR2025-00126, CBM2017-00050) against the AlmondNet family including the '249. District-court footprint: AlmondNet v. Yahoo! (1:16-cv-01557 E.D.N.Y., later 1:19-cv-00247 D. Del.); v. Roku; v. Facebook/Meta (6:21-cv-00896; 6:22-cv-01205); v. Microsoft (6:21-cv-00897); v. Amazon (6:21-cv-00898); v. Samsung (6:21-cv-00891); v. Viant (1:23-cv-00174 D. Del.); v. LinkedIn (1:23-cv-01373 D. Del.); AlmondNet et al v. FreeWheel (1:23-cv-00220 D. Del.); AlmondNet et al v. Lotame (1:24-cv-00376 D. Del., asserting the '249 and closed by stipulation); v. LiveIntent (1:24-cv-00831 D. Del.); v. Oracle (6:24-cv-00303 W.D. Tex.); v. Mediaocean (1:25-cv-00406 D. Del.). Rebuttal: AlmondNet/Intent IQ is not one of the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN / Mosaid / Vringo / Pendrell / MPHJ family — it is a founder-controlled operating-plus-licensing hybrid, not a pure patent-holding shell.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / weakly present.
Louis J. Hoffman (Reg. No. 38,918), Louis J. Hoffman, P.C. / Hoffman Patent Firm, Scottsdale–Phoenix, AZ (Customer No. 26362) is the recurring attorney across the entire AlmondNet family — he filed the '249 application itself ("Filer: Louis J. Hoffman/Donald Hertz," docket 14-DP-CON6) and appears on the family's small-entity notifications and certificates of correction. But I could not confirm he is the correspondent on the assignment records, and the assignment chain here has no multiple LLC links for him to "run." So this is a recurring prosecution correspondent, not a demonstrated NPE-recording pattern. Marked unclear.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
No chain of consecutive assignments through chained LLCs, and none within 24 months of each other. The chain is a single hop: inventor → his own company.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The only assignment (2013-07-23) predates the first suit naming the '249 (the E.D.N.Y. Yahoo! action, 2016) by roughly three years. Nothing indicates the chain was arranged within six months of a filing to fix venue or standing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 record. There is a near-insolvency narrative (Shkedi: in 2013 the company faced "near financial ruin" and he took a take-it-or-leave-it Google license to preserve payroll), but no bankruptcy and no court-supervised patent sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR (with a directional lean).
AlmondNet licenses into and then asserts against the same ad-tech ecosystem in which its subsidiaries (Datonics, Intent IQ) also operate — but there is no evidence of an operating company spinning patents out to AlmondNet to assert against competitors. AlmondNet invented and long-held these patents itself.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The opposite: Unified Patents filed IPRs against AlmondNet (IPR2024-00416, -00417, -00418), meaning the patent is being challenged, not neutralized by acquisition.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification: the assignment record itself is minimal — one inventor-to-company conveyance (Reel 026345/0047, effective 2008-08-06, Roy Shkedi → AlmondNet, Inc.) plus a 2013-07-23 recorded assignment to AlmondNet, Inc., with no downstream transfer to any asserter LLC — so the classic shell/cascade/bankruptcy tells are all absent. What drives the NPE call is the identity of the single assignee/plaintiff: AlmondNet, Inc. is a serial patent plaintiff (with Intent IQ, LLC and Datonics, LLC) that does not practice the '249 claims and derives a material share of revenue from enforcement, having pressed the family across at least a dozen district-court actions from 2016 through 2025 and won a $122M Amazon verdict in June 2024 on sibling patents. That is one strong signal (known asserter) without the shell-transfer corroboration, which lands at moderate rather than high confidence — and it is deliberately not "operating-company assertion," because the accused ad-serving products are the defendants', not AlmondNet's.

Verify independently at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent 8775249) and cross-check legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/US8775249/en; I could not open the reel/frame detail view in this session, so the reel numbers above should be treated as unconfirmed pending a direct Assignment Center pull.

I'll research US Patent 8,775,249 and its cited prior art references.

Let me search for the specific prior art references cited in this patent, including the IPR petitions which typically list the references.

Let me get the specific references cited on the face of the '249 patent and the IPR2025-00126 petition details.

Prior‑Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,775,249 B2

1. Identification of the patent (interpreted literally)

Governing § 102 framework: Because the '249 patent claims a 1999 priority date, its validity is judged under pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(a), (b), and (e). That distinction matters: it determines whether an asserted reference must have issued/published before Dec. 13, 1999 (§ 102(a)/(b)) or merely have been filed before that date and later issued/published (§ 102(e)). Any reference whose effective date post‑dates Dec. 13, 1999 is not § 102 art at all unless the 1999 priority is broken for the challenged claims.

2. Important scope / method caveat (please read before relying on this)

The full patent text supplied to me is truncated in the "Description" stream and does not reproduce the printed front‑page "(56) References Cited — U.S. Patent Documents" list, and my live searches did not return a verbatim image of that front‑page citation block for the '249 patent. I therefore cannot responsibly reproduce "each citation on the face of the patent" field‑by‑field, and I will not fabricate that list.

What I can do — and what is, for validity purposes, the operative set — is identify the prior art that has actually been asserted against the '249 patent in the official PTO record and in litigation. In this family, that record is richer than the face‑of‑patent list, because the patent's two live validity challenges were:

• CBM2017‑00050, Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc. (filed May 15, 2017; institution denied Nov. 28, 2017) — a § 101 challenge only; no prior art was asserted. https://ipverse.greyb.com/[ptab](/ptab)-web/cases/case-details/CBM2017-00050
• IPR2024‑00416, FreeWheel Media, Inc. et al. v. AlmondNet, Inc. (filed Mar. 1, 2024; instituted Oct. 1, 2024; terminated‑settled Jul. 17, 2025), challenging claims 1, 3–11, 13–21, 23–25. https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1555164](/patent/1555164) and https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2024-00416

The references below come from those filings, the FreeWheel petition exhibit lists, and Roku's invalidity‑contention appendix for the AlmondNet/Intent IQ patent family. Where I could not independently confirm a bibliographic detail, I say so.

3. Prior‑art references, with § 102 mapping

Group A — References asserted as the primary grounds in IPR2024‑00416

Other exhibit‑list references from the FreeWheel petition that bear on the same limitations include Hagel & Singer, Net Worth (1999) (the "infomediary"/information‑brokerage model — squarely on point for the '249 specification's stated premise of "brokerage of attributes of information") and U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141 to Bezos et al. ("Bezos"), Internet‑based customer referral system (issued Feb. 22, 2000) — relevant to tracking which party is owed compensation.

Group B — Additional pre‑1999 references identified in the record

Because ante‑dating the 1999 priority is dispositive, these are the references that most plausibly qualify as true § 102 art:

Group C — "State of the art" references (Roku invalidity appendix)

Roku's contention appendix lists a pre‑1999/2000 sweep of the same field, including U.S. 5,588,119 (Vincent), 5,724,424 (Gifford), 5,740,252 (Minor), 5,754,939 (Herz), 5,787,411 (Groff), 5,796,393 (MacNaughton), 5,826,241 (Stein), 5,918,014 (Robinson), 5,933,811 (Angles), 5,945,988 (Williams), 5,948,061 (Merriman), 5,960,409 (Wexler), 5,991,740 (Messer), 5,999,971 (Buckland), 6,009,409 (Adler), and 6,014,638 (Burge). https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00666/Roku_Inc/docs/03-20-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1022-State_of_the_Art_References_for_Asserted_Patents.pdf — Note that U.S. 5,755,939/5,754,939 (Herz) is the historically important "System for generation of user profiles for customized electronic identification of desirable objects" patent; the "Herz" publication in Group A (2013/0097664) is a different, later Herz document, so do not conflate the two.

4. Which claims the art potentially reaches (and an anticipation caution)

A caution you should carry into any § 102 opinion: On the present record, no single reference anticipates independent claim 1, 11, or 21. Claim 1 requires the concurrence of:

• (a) receipt, from a server of one of a plurality of unaffiliated third parties, of a partial profile of the visiting entity;
• (b) automatic addition into a stored profile believed related to the same entity;
• (c) receipt "as a result of automatic electronic URL redirection from a portion of a page of the website";
• (d) automatic generation of an electronic record of which third party contributed which attributes; and
• (e) the stored profile being used to target third‑party advertisements.

That is why FreeWheel pleaded obviousness combinations (Merriman+Jaye; Roth+Jaye; Merriman/Roth+Minor; plus Coleman, Herz, Gardner), not standalone anticipation. If you are asked to state a § 102 position, the defensible statement is: the references individually disclose subsets of claim 1; anticipation would require a single reference disclosing all five elements, which the record does not show.

Pointers on individual claims:

• Claims 1, 11, 21 — element (e) and the ad‑delivery architecture: Merriman (5,948,061) and Jaye (6,415,322) are the strongest. Element (c) (URL redirection) and element (d) (source attribution) are the distinguishing limitations.
• Claim 3 (same user computer) and Claim 4 (cookie to identify the same computer) — cookie/redirection art from Group B (e.g., the RFC 2109 / persistent‑client‑state references deployed in the sibling Yahoo! CBMs); Merriman's client‑identification teachings.
• Claim 6 (detect attributes not previously stored) and Claim 9 (select attributes based on the source thereof) — Gardner (6,141,694) and Roth.
• Claims 7–8 (credibility rating; rating reflected in price) — Coleman (2002/0026351).
• Claim 2 (and system/program counterparts 12 and 22: "create electronic data used to identify a payment amount due to the unaffiliated third party") — Bezos (6,029,141), Hagel, and Herz.
  • But note: claims 2, 12, and 22 were conspicuously excluded from FreeWheel's IPR2024‑00416 challenge (which targeted 1, 3–11, 13–21, 23–25), and the file contains a statutory disclaimer under 37 CFR 1.321(a) executed by Roy Shkedi for application 13/948,661 / patent 8,775,249 (see https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--23-cv-00220/AlmondNet_Inc._et_al_v._Freewheel_Media_Inc._et_al/docs/15/2.pdf). The strong inference is that the "payment‑amount" claims were disclaimed and are no longer part of the § 102 analysis — I flag this as an inference from the docket, not a confirmed mapping of which claim numbers were disclaimed.

5. The controlling vulnerability to check first: the effective filing date

Every § 102 conclusion above turns on whether the '249 claims actually get Dec. 13, 1999 priority. The 2013 filing was a continuation through a chain of five applications; if any limitation of independent claims 1/11/21 (particularly the "plurality of unaffiliated third parties," the "electronic record of which third party contributed," and the "URL redirection" limitations) lacks written‑description support in the 1999/2000 disclosure, the effective date slides forward — potentially to July 23, 2013.

That is precisely why the FreeWheel petition reached for Herz, U.S. Pub. 2013/0097664 (published in 2013). A 2013 publication cannot be § 102 art against a 1999 priority; it can be art if the priority is broken. So before finalizing any anticipation chart, resolve the priority question — it is the hinge on which most of Group A turns.

6. Limitations of this analysis (stated explicitly)

1. I could not retrieve the verbatim printed "(56) References Cited" block from the '249 front page; the citation list above reflects the PTO/litigation record rather than a verified front‑page reproduction. Treat any differing front‑page listing as controlling if produced.
2. For Roth (6,285,987), Minor (5,740,252), Coleman (2002/0026351 the pre‑1999 side), Gardner (6,141,694), Rosenberg, Kurtzman, and Farber, I have the identifiers and dates as reported in the petitions but could not independently verify the full titles/abstracts; I have therefore described them by the limitations they were cited against rather than inventing titles.
3. Merriman exists in multiple continuations (the petition separately cites a Merriman continuation "issued 10/22/2013" under § 102(e) alongside the 1999 "Merriman"); confirm you are citing 5,948,061 specifically.
4. CBM2017‑00050 asserted only § 101 and was denied institution; it supplies no § 102 art.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8775249/en · https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1555164 · https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2024-00416 · https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/CBM2017-00050

I'll start by grounding this in what the provided page actually contains, then check what prior art actually appears in the record for this patent.

I have solid leads. Let me pull the specific ground-by-ground mappings and the institution status.

Excellent — I now have the actual PTAB grounds. Let me confirm the identities, dates, and remaining grounds of the key references.

Preliminary note on sources (important)

The fetched Google Patents page for US 8,775,249 does not actually contain a "References Cited" / prior-art list. Its only "Prior Art" content is:

• Prior art keywords: profile, computer system, computer, stored, user
• Prior art date: 1999-12-13

Everything else on the page is specification, 25 claims, classifications, and litigation/PTAB links. So there is no citation list to work from on the page itself. Rather than invent one, I supplemented with the prior art that actually appears in the real record for this patent (the PTAB petitions and invalidity contentions, retrieved by search). Where I could not verify a reference's disclosure or date, I say so explicitly rather than assert it.

Obviousness analysis — US 8,775,249 B2 (AlmondNet / Roy Shkedi)

1. The claim at issue

Claim 1 (independent, method) requires, in substance:

Dependents: 2 (use the source record to compute a payment due to the contributing third party); 3–4 (same entity inferred from same user computer / by reading a cookie); 5 (record of which party contributed the attributes used in targeting); 6 (determine whether the partial profile contains new attributes); 7–8 (credibility rating, reflected in price); 9 (select attributes based on source); 10 (read a cookie previously stored, as a result of the URL redirection). Claim 11 is the "computer system" analog; further claims cover stored-program/data-storage-medium forms. Per the FreeWheel petition, claims 2, 12 and 22 have been disclaimed.

Legal framework: Graham v. John Deere; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (motivation may come from design incentives, market pressure, and "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"); In re Keller (a reference as a whole, not bodily incorporation). Because the application claims priority to an Israeli application filed 1999-12-13 and US 09/593,993 filed 2000-06-14, examination is under pre-AIA §§ 102/103, so §102(e) art counts as of its filing date.

2. Threshold §102/priority issue that shapes the whole analysis

1. The claim-1(c) URL-redirection limitation is, on the petitioners' reading, not described in the '249 specification — only two passages mention a redirect, and both describe the visitor's browser being redirected to send a cookie to the system, not the third party passing profile data via redirect. If the claims are not supported by the 1999/2000 priority disclosure, the critical date shifts later, which materially changes which references qualify (e.g., Roth issued 9/4/2001 and Jaye issued 7/2/2002).
2. Roth (US 6,285,987) and Jaye (US 6,415,322) post-date 1999-12-13 by issue date, so they must be relied on under pre-AIA §102(e) as of an earlier filing date. I could not independently verify Jaye's filing/priority date from the available record — this needs confirmation before the ground is treated as sound.
3. Rosenberg (US 2002/0184088 A1), used as the primary reference in the Meta IPR against the sibling '582 patent, published 2002-12-05 — after the 1999-12-13 date. Its §102(e) basis likewise depends on an earlier effective filing date that I could not verify.
4. This is exactly why the Board has repeatedly had to reach the priority question in the AlmondNet family. It is the weakest link in any §103 case and should be nailed down first.

3. Ground set A — the grounds asserted against the '249 patent itself

These come from IPR2025-00126, Viant Technology LLC v. AlmondNet, Inc. (filed 11/01/2024, challenging claims 1, 3–11, 13–21, 23–25) and the parallel FreeWheel Media petitions.

Ground A1 — Merriman + Jaye

The petitioner's gap analysis: Merriman did not expressly teach passing profile information from the affiliate site to the ad server within the redirect messages; Jaye supplies precisely that.

Ground A2 — Roth + Jaye

Roth (US 6,285,987) discloses targeted advertising with real-time bidding for ad placement based on user profile information, communicating with the browser via a redirect from a third-party website. Same gap, same fix (Jaye).

Ground A3 — Merriman or Roth + Minor (US 5,740,252)

The same primary references combined with Minor as the secondary reference in place of Jaye. Caveat: the specific Minor disclosure mapped to limitation (c) is not set out in the summary I retrieved; I could not verify Minor's content and flag it as unverified.

Why a POSITA would combine (the crux of the §103 question)

• Common field / analogous art. Each reference addresses web-server data collection for advertisement targeting; the petitions assert the relied-upon art "relates to targeted advertising and collecting profile information and therefore is analogous."
• Known problem, known solution. HTTP was stateless. As of 1999, the two routine mechanisms for carrying per-user state from one server to another were the cookie and the URL (query string) — both documented in the general-purpose references in the record (RFC 1945 "HTTP/1.0," 1996; RFC 1866 "HTML 2.0," 1995; Montulli, US 5,774,670). Appending parameters to a redirect URL was a standard, well-understood way to hand data from a publisher page to a third-party server.
• Articulated motivation — better data, better targeting (KSR's "design incentive / market pressure"). Giving the ad server up-to-date profile information in real time improves the effectiveness of targeting; advertisers had "strong economic incentives" to obtain current user data and context. In the Roth variant the motivation is sharper still: Roth's own system is a real-time auction, and fresher profile information at the moment of the ad opportunity lets bidding agents make better-informed, higher-value bids — and directly cures Roth's stated drawback that targeting criteria had to be specified in advance.
• Reasonable expectation of success. The combination applies the known-and-routine technique of appending information to a URL to an existing ad-serving system — "straightforward programming and database design skills," with a predictable result. No new hardware, no unpredictable field, no teaching away.
• "Unified" / single-source consistency. Both Merriman and Roth already embed third-party URLs in publisher pages; adding parameters to that redirect is an improvement to the very mechanism they use, not a bodily substitution of one system into another. KSR and In re Keller support this.

Dependents within this ground set

• 3, 4, 10 (same-computer / cookie): identifying the same user computer by cookie was the canonical technique (Montulli, US 5,774,670; and Merriman's own cookie-based visitor identification). Reading a cookie previously set by the ad/profile server as a result of the redirect is the same mechanism the '249 specification itself describes.
• 5, 9 (tracking which source supplied the attributes, incl. the ones used in targeting): Merriman and Roth are affiliate/network systems — the embedded, affiliate-specific URL identifies the referring party, which is exactly the bookkeeping claimed. Native to the primary references.
• 6 (new-attribute detection): the Meta IPR charted this limitation (its claim-16 analog) against Rosenberg + Zeff + Sterne in further view of Farber, and the Board instituted on it.
• 7, 8 (credibility rating, and price reflecting it): this is the '249's own core "mercantile" contribution, and the specification concedes the marketplace already priced data by "credibility and source." A rating field that feeds the price is the routine commercial implementation.

4. Ground set B — the grounds that already invalidated the near-identical sibling claims

IPR2022-01436 (Meta Platforms, Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.), against US 8,244,582 — the same family, same specification, and claim 11 of the '582 is word-for-word the same as '249 claim 1 (elements (a)–(e) identical in substance).

• Instituted 2023-04-07 on all grounds ("reasonable likelihood of prevailing… for all grounds of all challenged claims").
• Final Written Decision 2024-03-13: all challenged claims unpatentable as obvious.
• Federal Circuit affirmed on April 13, 2026 (Law360, "Fed. Circ. Affirms Meta's Win Over AlmondNet Ad Tech Patent").
• The FreeWheel petitions against the '249 expressly say: "this petition includes the same grounds presented in the Meta IPR, challenging claims nearly identical to claims in the '249 patent... For at least the same reasons as IPR2022-01436's institution... all challenged claims are unpatentable." Grounds B, F, H, and L of the FreeWheel petition reuse the Meta combinations; grounds A, C–E, G, I–J, and M–R add further combinations (18 grounds total).

Why this matters: this is not a hypothetical combination. A three-judge panel, on the same specification and substantially the same limitations — including the URL-redirection element — found the claims obvious over Rosenberg + Zeff + Sterne (both NPL references being contemporaneous 1999 web-marketing texts) in further view of Farber, and that holding survived appeal. The corroborating NPL is significant for the motivation analysis: Zeff is the period standard text on Internet advertising, and Sterne covers web marketing and server-data collection; a POSITA designing an ad-targeting system in 1999 would consult them, and the record's other background texts (Hagel & Singer, Net Worth, Harvard Business School Press, 1999, on the economic value of customer profiles) document the marketplace rationale for aggregating profile data.

Caveat: Because the Fed. Cir. ruling I retrieved is reported only by headline, I have not verified whether it rests on the merits of every ground or on some narrower issue. The PTAB FWD itself (2024-03-13) is the solid citation.

5. Ground set C — the 2017 CBM does not cut the other way

CBM2017-00050 (Yahoo! Inc. v. AlmondNet, Inc.), challenging the '249 patent, was denied institution on 2017-11-28 solely because the petitioner "has not met its burden of showing that the '249 patent is eligible for the transitional covered business method patent review program." That is a statutory-eligibility gate, not a merits determination on §103. It provides no support for non-obviousness.

6. Bottom line

Claim 1 is very likely obvious under §103 in at least three independent combinations:

1. Merriman + Jaye — Merriman supplies the profile-aggregation-for-targeted-ads framework with third-party-embedded URLs, and Jaye supplies the missing append-profile-data-to-the-redirect-URL element for claim 1(c). Motivation: real-time profile freshness improves targeting; the technique is routine and its success predictable.
2. Roth + Jaye — same gap, same fix, with an even stronger motivation supplied by Roth's own real-time bidding model (fresher data → better bids; cures the pre-specified-targeting-criteria drawback).
3. Rosenberg + Zeff + Sterne (+ Farber, + Merriman) — the combination already held to render the identical '582 claim 11 (and claims 13–16, 19, 20) obvious, instituted on all grounds and affirmed.

Dependents 2–10 follow: the payment/source-accounting claims (2, 5, 9) ride on the affiliate-identifying URL mechanics already present in Merriman/Roth; the cookie claims (3, 4, 10) read on Montulli and the primary references; new-attribute detection (6) was charted and instituted; credibility/pricing (7, 8) is the ordinary commercial use the specification itself concedes was known.

Three honest qualifications:

• The '249 patent's own IPR (IPR2025-00126) produced no merits ruling — the parties settled and the Board terminated the proceeding on 2025-02-11 before institution (37 C.F.R. § 42.74; the decision expressly states "we have not yet decided whether to institute"). Note that the fetched Google Patents page labels this case "Pending - Instituted," which conflicts with the PTAB termination decision; I am reporting the PTAB document as the more specific and later-dated source and flagging the discrepancy. FreeWheel's petitions (IPR2024-00416/-00417/-00418) were likewise not instituted per that same page.
• The §102 posture of Roth, Jaye, and especially Rosenberg is unverified. Their issue dates fall after 1999-12-13. The grounds only work if their effective filing dates precede the applicable critical date, or if the '249 claims are not entitled to the 1999-12-13 priority — a live issue given the petition's argument that the claim-1(c) redirection limitation lacks specification support.
• I could not verify Minor's (US 5,740,252) specific disclosure or the exact mapping used in Ground 3, and I have not reviewed Zeff/Sterne/Farber page citations directly; those should be checked against the exhibits before being relied on.

Note on status: the '249 patent is listed Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2020-06-14, so this is a retrospective validity question rather than a live-enforcement one.