Invalidity dossier
US 8977768
Video distribution system including progressive playback
Current assignee: Divx LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 11:59:34 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US8977768B2
Title: Video distribution system including progressive playback
Patent number: US8977768B2
Application number: US12/982,413 (filed 2010-12-30)
Publication: US20110099225A1 (published 2011-04-28); granted 2015-03-10
Priority date: 2007-01-05 (stated as an assumption, not a legal conclusion)
Inventor: Roland Osborne
Current assignee (as listed): Divx LLC; original assignee Sonic IP LLC. (The source notes listed assignees may be inaccurate.)
Anticipated expiration: 2028-01-07
Purpose: According to the supplied definitions, the invention "relates generally to playing multimedia files over a network and more specifically to the progressive playback of multimedia files as they are downloaded over a network." Progressive playback is described as "playing back remote content as it is being downloaded," letting a user start a remote movie after "a couple of seconds" instead of waiting for full download.
Plain-language scope (from the excerpt): The text describes "systems and methods ... for performing progressive playback and 'trick play' functions on partially downloaded media files." Many embodiments include "a receiver or player driven system." The excerpt contrasts this with server-driven approaches (citing U.S. application Ser. Nos. 11/323,044, 11/323,062, 11/327,543, and 11/322,604), noting standard HTTP servers typically lack this functionality and custom servers "often scale poorly." It also discusses Samba, which gives an application remote-file access as if local but may be "insufficient" for trick play (e.g., rewinding, fast forwarding, scene skipping) requiring non-sequential access, since pre-caching assumes sequentially viewed frames.
Classifications include H04L65/60, H04L65/764, G06F16/71, G06F16/73, G06F16/738, G06F16/739, H04N21/23406, H04N21/44004, H04N21/472, H04N21/6587, and H04N5/783.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8977768](/patent/US8977768)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It omits the claims text, detailed description, and figures, so the precise claimed scope cannot be determined from this excerpt. It also does not establish validity, enforceability, or the accuracy of listed assignees; and it provides only a partial family/litigation listing. No missing facts have been inferred.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:52 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.