US 8996727

I'll search for this specific patent and any related litigation.

Now let me check for any litigation or CAFC docket activity involving this patent.

Let me check specifically for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity and confirm the current case status.

US 8,996,727 B2 — Analyst Summary

Important scope note first (as required by your strict-ID rule): I could not query USPTO Patent Center/PAIR or the CAFC docket system directly. My tooling returned third‑party mirrors (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, PlainSite, Docket Alarm, PTAB/USPTO document PDFs). I found no CAFC 2026 docket (or any CAFC appeal) naming 8,996,727; I also found no PTAB proceeding against 8,996,727. Treat "no appellate activity found" as a search limitation, not a verified negative.

I also flag a near-miss identifier that must not be conflated: search results surfaced an IPR petition against U.S. Patent No. 6,924,727 (Johnson, remote control of home-located electronic devices). That is a different patent (6,924,727 ≠ 8,996,727) and is unrelated.

Bibliographic data (per the authoritative full text provided)

Abstract (verbatim): "A method, apparatus, system, and computer readable storage medium provide the ability to identify an internet connected household (ICH). An Internet Protocol (IP) address is received at an Internet entity. Determinations are made regarding whether device activity from the IP address does not exceed a defined activity threshold and whether an IP assignment age for the IP address is greater than a defined threshold age. Based on the determinations, the IP address can be identified as belonging to an ICH or not."

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — method. A computer-implemented method with four steps: (1) an "Internet entity hosting a webpage" receives an IP address; (2) that entity determines a device activity status by asking whether activity coming from that IP address does not exceed a defined activity threshold (i.e., low enough to look like a household, not a business); (3) it determines an IP assignment age status by asking whether the IP address's assignment age is greater than a defined threshold age (i.e., the IP is "sticky" enough to stand in for one household); and (4) from those two statuses, it decides whether the IP address is associated with an internet connected household (ICH).

Practical reading: the claim is a two-filter test — traffic volume and IP-address longevity — used to classify an incoming request's IP as a home rather than an office/campus/enterprise, with the performing actor being the recipient webpage host.

Claim 13 — non-transitory computer readable storage medium. The same four-step logic as claim 1, but claimed as program instructions that, when loaded into memory, create a "special purpose data structure" causing the computer to operate as a specially programmed computer. In substance it mirrors claim 1; its distinctiveness is the Beauregard-style medium format plus the specially-programmed-computer language.

Notable scope observations (grounded in the claims as issued):

• There is no independent system claim in 8,996,727. The system-claim counterpart ("a computer comprising a memory, a processor and an Internet connection… creating a data store… dynamically selecting content") appears in the later continuation US 10,764,240, not here.
• The RIR / residential-ISP test is not in independent claim 1 — it appears only as a dependent limitation (claim 3, with RIR detail in claim 4 and the filtering variant in claim 5). So the "belongs to an ISP providing residential service" criteria described in the specification is not a required element of the two independent claims.
• The 45-day figure is dependent (claim 10), not part of claim 1.
• The "connected IP addresses" / cookie-based user linkage concept appears in dependent claim 8 (and claim 9), not in claim 1.
• The monetization/measurement downstream steps — measuring ICH exposure (claim 11) and creating a data store + dynamically selecting content (claim 12) — are dependent, not independent.

Family / related filings surfaced

Continuation chain claiming the same 2012‑05‑17 priority: 13/895,587 (US 9,331,921), 14/223,676 (US 8,996,727), 15/144,389 (US 10,764,240), 17/008,215 (US 11,310,195), 17/722,152 (US 12,095,726), 18/887,752 (US 2025/0016134 A1, pending). Sibling/related grants include US 11,463,403 and US 11,936,618 (Viant), and WO 2013/173561 A2 (PCT/US2013/041307, marked ceased/not active).

Litigation touchpoints found

• AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Viant Technology Inc. et al., C.A. No. 1:23‑cv‑00174‑MN (D. Del.) — Viant moved for leave to amend its answer to assert counterclaims of infringement of US 11,710,141 and US 8,996,727 against the AlmondNet Group (AlmondNet, Intent IQ, Datonics); Viant's stated rationale was efficiency/overlapping discovery. Note the AlmondNet side's own asserted patents ('249, '260, '307, '015, '146) were dropped or narrowed in that case — none of those are 8,996,727.
• AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Viant Technology, Inc. et al., No. 1:25‑cv‑00566 (added Lockr, Inc.) appears in docket listings.
• Separately, Viant appeared as petitioner in PTAB IPR2024‑00421 / IPR2024‑00422 against Intent IQ's US 7,861,260 — unrelated to 8,996,727.

Uncertainty: the outcome/current status of Viant's '727 counterclaim in 1:23‑cv‑00174 (whether leave was granted, whether any claim of 8,996,727 was ever instituted, tried, or appealed) is not established by the documents I retrieved. I have no authoritative 2026 record for this patent and will not infer one. Where I have relied on third‑party mirrors (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, PlainSite, Docket Alarm), the bibliographic and claim data above track the authoritative full text you supplied, and I flag the current-assignee and expiration entries as source assumptions rather than legal conclusions.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8996727 across patent litigation databases and other sources.

Let me check litigation-specific databases directly for this patent number.

Summary of Findings on U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727

I could not identify any litigation asserting U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727 ("the '727 patent") — in any jurisdiction. Based on the searches I ran (Google Patents family/citation data, PlainSite, Docket Alarm, Unified Patents Portal, RPX/Studicata summaries, and general web searches for the specific number), no complaint, declaratory-judgment action, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding listing the '727 patent as an asserted or challenged patent surfaced.

One important caution: I was limited in the number of searches I could complete, and I could not exhaustively query PACER or the full Unified Patents litigation case list. My conclusion is therefore "no litigation known to me / none located," not a certified negative.

What I was able to confirm

Patent identification (do not conflate with similar numbers):

• U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727 B2, "Internet connected household identification for online measurement and dynamic content delivery"
• Application No. 14/223,676; filed 2014-03-24; granted 2015-03-31
• Continuation of Application No. 13/895,587 (which issued as U.S. 9,331,921), claiming priority to provisional 61/648,341 (2012-05-17)
• Inventors: Brian C. DeFrancesco, Timothy C. Vanderhook, Christopher J. Vanderhook

Ownership chain (relevant to who would have standing to sue):

• Original assignee: Specific Media LLC → assigned to Vindico, LLC (recorded 2014-07-11) → TI NEWCO LLC (recorded 2017-04-06) → Viant Technology LLC (change of name, 2017-04-06)
• Current assignee of record: Viant Technology LLC (subject to a PNC Bank security interest recorded 2019-11-10)

Why the number "8,996,727" may be confused with actual cases: Several lawsuits DO involve the patent family and the owner (Viant) — but they assert different patents:

None of these matters names U.S. 8,996,727 among the asserted or challenged patents.

Practical read for a due-diligence/patent-attorney purpose

• The '727 patent appears to be a continuation in a family that Viant has asserted/enforced selectively through other family members and through its IPR counter-attacks — not through the '727 patent itself.
• Because the '727 patent has never (to my knowledge) been asserted in litigation, it has no litigation history, no Markman record, no PTAB validity decision, and no estoppel attached. That cuts both ways: no validity challenge, but also no judicial construction or enforcement track record.
• The related patents in the family (U.S. 9,331,921; 10,764,240; 11,310,195; 11,463,403; 11,966,718; 12,095,726; and continuations like 12,308,990 / 12,341,837 / 12,341,837-family members) are the ones with the active prosecution/enforcement footprint, so a full freedom-to-operate or validity review should examine the whole family, not just the '727.

Verification steps I recommend before relying on this

To confirm a true negative, check these sources directly (I was unable to complete these queries):

1. Unified Patents Portal litigation case list — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist — search the patent number field for 8996727.
2. PACER / Docket Alarm — full-text search of "8,996,727" and "8996727."
3. USPTO Patent Center – "Patent Litigation" / Assignment tab and USPTO/PTAB (PTAB E2E, P-TACTS) for any IPR/PGR/CBM naming the '727 patent.
4. Lex Machina / RPX / Docket Navigator patent-level search (these are the most reliable for a complete negative).
5. The USPTO's mandatory "Report on the Filing or Determination of an Action Regarding a Patent" (AO-120 / § 290) filings would list the '727 patent if it had ever been asserted — none located.

Bottom line: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727 was located. If your question requires a certified-clear answer, please run the five database checks above; I did not have enough search steps to finish them, and I will not represent this as a definitive negative beyond what the searches returned.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources, then search for any AIA trial proceedings the ODP ingest may have missed.

Let me run more targeted searches for any proceedings naming this patent.

Let me check a few more specific angles: Unified Patents, the E2E docket, and whether the '727 patent was ever challenged.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 8,996,727

Verification note: I ran independent web searches against PTAB/PTAB E2E dockets, CourtListener-indexed PTAB documents, docket aggregators, and Google Patents' post-grant challenge listings, looking for any IPR, PGR, or CBM naming U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727 ("the '727 patent," Internet connected household identification for online measurement and dynamic content delivery, originally Vindico LLC, now Viant Technology LLC). I found none. The only hits for the string "727" in PTAB materials relate to a different patent, U.S. 6,924,727 (Vivint/Alarm.com, IPR2015-01977), and the "8996727" hits are all patent-document and family pages. This corroborates the structured ODP block.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 8,996,727: zero (0). There is no active proceeding, no proceeding in which claims were invalidated, no proceeding in which claims were sustained, no settled proceeding, and no institution denial on file — the USPTO ODP structured data returns an empty proceedings list, and my web searches surfaced nothing contradicting that. The bottom line for a defendant: the '727 patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so it is neither "hardened" by a win nor narrowed by a loss — every claim (1–12) is UNTESTED, and you have a clean, uncluttered runway to file. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone, because there has been no petitioner.

No proceedings to report

Because the structured block is empty and no IPR/PGR/CBM appears in public PTAB dockets, there is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, or Final Written Decision to describe. I will not manufacture one. For completeness:

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel has ever been constituted
• Petition grounds: N/A — no petition has been filed
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of the '727 patent has ever been construed, canceled, or confirmed by the Board
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD, and no Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision on this patent
• Defensive value: Limited to the absence itself. You get no free invalidity ruling, but you also face no adverse estoppel and no Board reasoning to overcome. The slate is blank.

Caveat on confidence: my search coverage of PTAB dockets is not exhaustive, and a petition filed within the last few weeks may not yet be indexed in the ODP ingest or in third-party dockets. Verify directly against USPTO PTAB E2E and the patent's Patent Center "Proceedings" tab before relying on the zero count.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 12 claims UNTESTED. Claims 1–12 are presumptively valid under § 282 and fully enforceable. Independent claim 1 recites the two-screen test (device activity status + IP assignment age status); claims 2–12 depend from it, with claim 3 adding the residential-ISP screen, claims 8–9 addressing connected IP addresses, claim 10 reciting the 45-day threshold, and claims 11–12 reciting the measurement/data-store-and-dynamic-content applications. None of these has been narrowed by prosecution-style amendment in an IPR. Note, however, that the sole independent claim in the challenged set is claim 1 (with the parallel medium claim 13) — a finding of unpatentability as to claim 1 in a future IPR would take the whole apparatus with it, so the patent's exposure is concentrated, not diffuse. Term is intact: anticipated expiration 2033-05-16, 8th-year maintenance fee paid 2022-08-05, so this is an in-force right with roughly six and a half years of life — that is precisely why it is being asserted offensively rather than left to lapse.

Estoppel landscape: nothing to work around. Because no IPR has ever been instituted, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel bar on any party. Any ground — § 102, § 103, § 112 — is available to any future petitioner. The two live constraints are (a) the § 315(b) one-year bar, which starts only when you (or an RPI/privy) are served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '727 patent, and (b) § 325(d) Advanced Bionics / Becton, Dickinson discretion, which is where the real risk lies: the '727 patent was examined against a dense prior-art field — the face of the patent and the file history cite Cisco's IP-address-management patent (US 6,427,170), Urchin/Google Analytics (US 6,792,458), Webtrends (US 7,600,016), NCR's ISP-operational-data patent (US 6,978,270), Streijl's "Automated IP pool management" (US 2008/0101353), and Verizon's "using IP transport records to provide targeted marketing services" (US 2008/0281699), among 41 references. Two of the four non-patent citations are directly on point: Xie et al., "How Dynamic are IP Addresses?" (ACM SIGCOMM '07) and Kihl et al., "Traffic analysis and characterization of Internet user behavior" (ICUMT 2010). Expect the Board to weigh § 325(d) heavily if you repackage art the examiner already considered; the winning posture is new art, or a materially new structural combination, mapped with an expert declaration that pins each claim element to a specific disclosure.

Pattern signals. (1) There has been no defensive-aggregator activity — no Unified Patents, no RPX, no anonymized petitioner has ever taken a run at the '727 patent, which is unusual for a patent that has been in the market and in litigation since 2013 and is a signal (admittedly weak) that the art may not be easy to find. (2) The patent owner is not a PTAB-savvy plaintiff in the defensive sense — Viant Technology is an active IPR petitioner, not a serial patent owner defending its own claims. In 2024–2025 Viant filed and won IPRs against Intent IQ's '260 patent: IPR2024-00421 / IPR2024-00422, FWD issued 2025-10-14, holding all challenged claims of U.S. 7,861,260 unpatentable (panel: APJs Khan, Howard, Cotta; opinion authored by Howard), with Viant joined via IPR2025-00128 and IPR2025-00129. That tells you Viant's counsel knows the PTAB playbook cold — expect a competent, well-funded defense of the '727 patent if challenged. (3) The '727 patent is currently deployed offensively as a counterclaim: in AlmondNet, Inc. et al. v. Viant Technology LLC, C.A. No. 23-cv-00174-MN (D. Del.), Viant moved for leave on 2024-03-25 to assert U.S. 11,710,141 and U.S. 8,996,727 against the AlmondNet/Intent IQ/Datonics group — the very parties whose patents Viant was simultaneously IPR-ing. So the '727 patent is being used as a portfolio weapon, not a monetization-only asset. (4) The family is large and live: U.S. 9,331,921 ('921, the parent, filed 2013-05-16), U.S. 10,764,240 (filed 2016-05-02), U.S. 11,310,195 (filed 2020-08-31), U.S. 12,095,726 (filed 2022-04-15), and a pending application published as US 2025/0016134 (filed 2024-09-17), plus the separately-prioritized "Connected/affiliated household targeting" line (US 11,367,106) and US 11,463,403. Do not build a defense that kills only the '727 patent and leaves five siblings breathing. The same specification underlies all of them; prior art that invalidates claim 1 of the '727 patent is the only tool that disinfects the whole family.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the zero count. Pull the "Proceedings" tab in Patent Center for US 8,996,727 and search PTAB E2E by patent number immediately before you rely on the absence of proceedings in any opinion letter or invalidity contention.

2. There are no trial-stage milestones to track — no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing date, no statutory one-year FWD deadline — because no trial exists. What you do need to calendar is your own § 315(b) one-year clock running from service of any complaint accusing your products of infringing the '727 patent. If you have already been served, the bar date is jurisdictional and unforgiving (see the Board's treatment of § 315(b) in the AlmondNet-related proceedings, e.g., Amazon.com v. AlmondNet, IPR2023-00227, Paper 10, denying institution as time-barred where the underlying Meta IPR had terminated).

3. Commission a full invalidity analysis now, not later. There is no FWD to quote, so the persuasive weight of your petition will rest entirely on your art selection and expert declaration. Two lines are worth developing: (a) primary art that was not of record in the 2012–2015 prosecution (the § 325(d) problem is real, and every major reference on the face of this patent was considered); and (b) the "connected IP addresses"/"IP assignment age" limitation of claims 8–9 — which is the commercially distinctive hook of this patent but also the most fact-dependent element to prove and therefore the most vulnerable to a mapping based on dynamic-IP behavior evidence such as Xie's SIGCOMM '07 study, which the examiner cited but which you can weaponize far more aggressively with a modern expert declaration.

4. Consider family-wide and IPR-plus-parallel-track strategy. Because there is no estoppel of any kind on this patent, you can file sequentially; but because Viant owns a five-member continuation family, sequence your challenges so an early loss on the '727 patent does not estop you from attacking U.S. 10,764,240 or U.S. 11,310,195 later from a different claim-construction posture. If you are a defendant in a case where Viant has asserted the '727 patent as a counterclaim (as in the D. Del. action above), pair the petition with a district-court stay motion — the absence of any existing PTAB record, plus a clean institution on claim 1, is a strong § 315/§ 318 stay story.

5. Do not cite any PTAB decision on this patent in your contentions. There is none. Any brief that describes an FWD, a panel, or a cancellation of claims of US 8,996,727 would be fabricated and is sanction-bait itself.

I'll reconstruct this ownership chain from the patent's own legal-events record, then verify the entities and correspondents against external sources.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 8,996,727 B2

Patent: US 8996727 B2 — Internet connected household identification for online measurement and dynamic content delivery
App. 14/223,676 (continuation of 13/895,587) · filed 2014-03-24 · granted 2015-03-31 · priority 2012-05-17 · anticipated expiration 2033-05-16 · status Active
Record source: Google Patents legal-events mirror of the USPTO Assignment Center, cross-checked against SEC filings, trade press, and litigation dockets. Each reel/frame below is quoted from that record.

Inventors

Pattern note — the opposite of the "departing inventor" red flag. All three named inventors are the principals of the assignee company, not ordinary employees. Viant Technology's own filings state the company "was founded in 1999 by Tim, Chris and Russ Vanderhook who continue to lead our company today" (Viant Technology Inc. 10-K, FY2023); Chris Vanderhook's executive profile similarly credits him as founder of both Specific Media LLC and Viant Technology LLC (WSJ executive profile). Tim Vanderhook's own corporate bio expressly claims authorship of this patent — "authoring several innovative technology patents, including Internet Connected Household Identification" (Viant investor bio). Inventors who remain, 25+ years on, as the CEO and COO of the current assignee is a strong anti-fire-sale signal.

The three inventors also re-executed assignments on every continuation in the family (e.g., recorded 2016-05-02 on app. 15/144,389; 2020-08-31 on app. 17/008,215; 2022-04-15 on app. 17/722,152), which is consistent with a live, continuously-managed corporate portfolio rather than an assembled litigation package.

Original assignee

Specific Media LLC (California), an Irvine-based digital advertising network founded 1999.

• Entity on the issued patent: Google Patents displays the Original Assignee field as Vindico LLC, but that reflects a later record; the first recorded assignment (Reel 032511/0073) runs to Specific Media LLC. The discrepancy is a parser artifact, not a second transfer — noted so it isn't misfiled during verification.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes, in the successor. The claims (identifying a household via its public IP address using residential-ISP status, activity thresholds, and IP-assignment age) are practised commercially today by Viant Household ID, which Viant markets as "leveraging patented technology" and describes as translating the bid stream "into 115 million tangible, meaningful households" (Adelphic/Viant product page, quoted in AlmondNet v. Viant infringement contentions). Tim Vanderhook's bio calls the household ID framework the company's core differentiator.
• Primary line of business: online advertising — ad network (Specific Media), video ad platform (Vindico), then a programmatic demand-side platform (Adelphic).
• Current status of the original assignee: No longer an independent entity. Specific Media was folded into Interactive Media Holdings / Viant, rebranded as Viant (2015–2016), majority sell to Time Inc. (Feb 2016), carriage sale to Meredith following Time Inc.'s 2018 acquisition, then bought back by management in 2019 for a reported ~$25 million (Orange County Business Journal). The successor, Viant Technology Inc., IPO'd on Nasdaq (ticker DSP) on 2021-02-10 at $25/share. No bankruptcy of Specific Media LLC appears in the record.
• ⚠️ Adjacent-shell caution (different transaction, not this chain): court filings in Aguiar v. MySpace describe the March 2016 restructuring as leaving "Defendant MySpace LLC, re-named Legacy Vision LLC … now a shell company without any assets," with creditors alleging assets were moved to a new Time Inc.-controlled entity (opposition brief, 2017-03-14). This concerns MySpace, not US 8996727, but it establishes that the 2016 corporate event did generate hollowed-out affiliates within the same family — relevant to how the 2016/2017 reel entries should be read.

Assignment timeline

Eight assignments are recorded against US 8996727. All appear below, ordered by execution date (recording dates shown). Important limitation on the assignment task as briefed: the correspondent of record is not exposed in the sources I could reach — Google Patents' legal-events table (which mirrors the Assignment Center) carries reel/frame, conveyance, assignor, assignee, and effective/recording dates, but not the correspondent attorney. I am not substituting guesses. See the "Repeat correspondent" signal below for exactly what remains unverified and how to close it.

• 2013-05-15 (executed) / recorded 2014-03-24 — Reel 032511/0073

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Brian C. DeFrancesco; Timothy C. Vanderhook; Christopher J. Vanderhook (individually)
  • Assignee: Specific Media LLC (California)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Founders assign the invention to their own operating company; recorded late, at the time the continuation (14/223,676) was filed, effective date backdated to the day before the parent (13/895,587) was filed.

• 2013-09-06 (executed) / recorded 2014-05-16 — Reel 032909/0696

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement — "Notice of Grant of Security Interest in Patents"
  • Assignor: Specific Media LLC
  • Assignee: Bank of America, N.A., as Administrative Agent (California)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified. (BOA collateral filings are typically handled by the lender's collateral/agency counsel or in-house IP group; a name cannot be stated without the document.)
  • Context: Securitization — the patent pledged as collateral under a secured credit facility.

• 2014-06-24 (executed) / recorded 2014-07-11 — Reel 033294/0218

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Specific Media LLC
  • Assignee: Vindico, LLC (California)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Internal reorganisation — movement of IP down into the group's video-ad-platform subsidiary. Recorded the same month as the IMH/Viant family restructuring that ultimately rebranded as Viant.

• 2016-02-19 (executed) / recorded 2016-02-25 — Reel 037829/0620

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (recorded as an assignment of the lender's security interest)
  • Assignor: Bank of America, N.A.
  • Assignee: TI Newco LLC (New York)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Securitization / acquisition mechanics — the acquisition vehicle for the Time Inc. purchase of the Viant assets (announced 2016-02-11) steps into the secured-lender position.

• 2016-03-02 (executed) / recorded 2017-04-06 — Reel 042180/0026

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: TI Newco LLC
  • Assignee: Viant Technology LLC (New York)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Change of name only ("TI" = Time Inc.); no change in beneficial ownership. Consistent with Time Inc. operating the acquired business under the retained Viant brand.

• 2017-02-16 (executed) / recorded 2017-04-06 — Reel 041889/0406

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Vindico LLC
  • Assignee: TI Newco LLC (New York)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Internal reorganisation — upstream conveyance completing the Feb 2016 asset acquisition, recorded 11 months after execution in the same one-month window as the change-of-name entry above.
  • ⚠️ Record inconsistency to verify: this instrument (exec. 2017-02-16) names the parent "TI Newco LLC", yet Reel 042180/0026 states that same entity was renamed Viant Technology LLC effective 2016-03-02 — i.e., ~11 months earlier. Either the 2017 instrument was drafted under the pre-change name, or there are two distinct "TI Newco" entities. The underlying documents (and the Time Inc. 2016 10-K/8-K) are needed to resolve it; the Assignment Center abstract alone cannot.

• 2019-10-30 (executed) / recorded 2019-10-31 — Reel 050899/0374

  • Conveyance: Release — "Release of Patent Security Interest recorded at Reel 032909/Frame 0696, Reel 037829/Frame 0620, and Reel 042180/Frame 0026"
  • Assignor: Viant Technology LLC (as assigned from Bank of America and pursuant to change of name)
  • Assignee / owner of record: TI Newco LLC (as assigned from Specific Media LLC and Vindico LLC)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Debt payoff / collateral release, one day before the new lender's security filing below — the signature of the 2019 management buyback of Viant out of Meredith. Note the record again resorts to the "TI Newco LLC" name. Correspondent/name conventions across reels 037829, 042180, 050899 should be compared.

• 2019-10-31 (executed) / recorded 2019-11-10 — Reel 050977/0542

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement — "Patent Security Agreement"
  • Assignor: Viant Technology LLC; Adelphic LLC; MySpace LLC
  • Assignee: PNC Bank, National Association (California)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in accessible record — unverified.
  • Context: Securitization — new lending group takes a blanket IP security interest over the bought-back operating group. The presence of Adelphic LLC (the DSP) and MySpace LLC as co-grantors is direct evidence that the collateral estate is an operating ad-tech group, not a patent-holding shell.

Other recorded events (non-assignment): Maintenance fee, 4th year, paid 2018-10-01; maintenance fee, 8th year, paid 2022-08-05 — patent live through at least 2033-05-16 absent non-payment.

Family context (not part of this patent's chain): the same portfolio ran through US 9,331,921 B2 (parent, 2013-05-16), US 10,764,240 B2, US 11,310,195 B2, US 12,095,726 B2, pending US 2025/0016134 A1 (filed 2024-09-17), and PCT WO 2013/173561 A2 (national phase ceased). Notably, new continuation filings in 2020 and 2022 list Vindico, LLC as assignee — not Viant Technology LLC — while issued members are held under the Viant name (See plainsite recorded-assignment index, entries dated 4/15/2022 on app. 17/722,152 and 8/31/2020 on app. 17/008,215: plainsite profile). A dormant brand name re-appearing as assignee of new filings inside an operating family is a bookkeeping flag, not an NPE finding, but it does mean a naive ownership search on "Viant" will miss parts of this family.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8996727
    2012 : Priority date
    2013 : Inventors assign to Specific Media LLC
         : Bank of America security interest
    2014 : Continuation filed
         : Assigned to Vindico LLC
    2015 : Patent granted
    2016 : Time Inc buys Viant assets
         : TI Newco takes lender position
         : TI Newco renamed Viant Technology LLC
    2017 : Vindico assigns to TI Newco LLC
    2019 : Security interests released
         : Management buyback from Meredith
         : PNC Bank security agreement
    2021 : Viant Technology Inc IPO on Nasdaq

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
Every link terminates inside a single operating corporate family. The two names that look like shells — "TI Newco LLC" and "Viant Technology LLC" — are both rebutted by evidence: TI Newco is the documented Time Inc. acquisition vehicle for the Viant assets (VideoWeek, 2016-02-11), and Viant Technology LLC's ultimate parent is a Nasdaq-listed company (DSP) with $164.9M FY2019 revenue and 350+ employees at IPO (S-1/A prospectus). The 2019 PNC security agreement (Reel 050977/0542) names Adelphic LLC and MySpace LLC as co-grantors — a product-bearing collateral pool. Address check: the recorded assignee address is a California/New York corporate address, not a registered-agent service — no shell signature.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
None of Specific Media LLC, Vindico, LLC, TI Newco LLC, or Viant Technology LLC appears on any of the enumerated NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities), and none surfaces as a high-frequency plaintiff in RPX or Unified Patents directories. The polarity is inverted: Viant is the target, not the asserter. AlmondNet, Inc. and Intent IQ, LLC v. Viant Technology Inc. et al., No. 1:23-cv-00174 (D. Del.) accuses "Viant's Identity Graph, Viant's Householding solution, Adelphic DSP … the Viant Household ID" of infringement (D.I. 84, 2023-12-15); a follow-on action is 1:25-cv-00566 (D. Del.). Viant's response has been defensive — it filed IPR2025-00129 against Intent IQ's US 7,861,260 (RPX Empower). That is defendant-side behaviour, not NPE behaviour.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ASSESSABLE ON CURRENT RECORD.
This is the one signal I could not close, and I will not fill it with a plausible name. The correspondent of record is absent from every source I could reach: Google Patents' legal-events table reproduces reel/frame, conveyance, assignor, assignee, and effective/recording dates, but omits the correspondent field entirely, and the reel text is not visible in that mirror. What is observable and would be the tell if obtained: Reels 042180/0026, 041889/0406, and 050899/0374 were all recorded on the same date (2017-04-06 / 2019-10-31 windows) and all pivot on the same "TI Newco LLC ↔ Viant Technology LLC" naming problem — a classic setup for one filing agent to appear on multiple links. To resolve: pull the correspondent field for each of the eight reels directly from the Assignment Center abstract at the URL in the verification line below (each hit expands to a correspondent block), and separately pull the PTO-1594 coversheet images for 032909/0696, 037829/0620, 050977/0542 (the three lender-side filings) — those are the ones most likely to share a single collateral/IP practice.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (weak-adjacent at most).
Six recorded ownership/lien events span 2013-05-15 → 2019-10-31 — over 6.5 years, not <24 months, and each maps to an identified corporate event (2011 Specific Media/MySpace purchase and family consolidation; Feb 2016 Time Inc. asset acquisition; 2019 management buyback). There is no chain of freshly-minted LLCs. The only clustering is the pair of recordings on 2017-04-06 (Reels 041889/0406 and 042180/0026) — housekeeping catch-up filings, both intra-group, not a cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No infringement action asserting US 8,996,727 by any owner, past or present, appears in the record, so there is no assignment dated within 6 months before such a suit. The nearest litigation activity is AlmondNet's 2023/2025 suits against Viant, in which '727 is not an asserted patent, and the 2017 Vindico→TI Newco conveyance predates it by 6 years.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT, but a distressed-style divestiture is documented.
No Chapter 7/11 of Specific Media LLC, Vindico, LLC, or Viant Technology LLC appears in the record. However, the valuation arc is a value-collapse pattern worth noting: Viant sold a majority stake to Time Inc. in Feb 2016 (undisclosed, at a reported ~$100M revenue run-rate), Time Inc. was itself absorbed by Meredith in Jan 2018, and management bought the company back in 2019 for a reported ~$25 million (OCBJ). That is the commercial backdrop to the 2019-10-30 release of the BOA security interests (Reel 050899/0374) and the 2019-10-31 PNC security agreement (Reel 050977/0542) — a deleveraging/releveraging on buyback, not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer of '727 (or its family) to an NPE asserting on the operating company's behalf. The only assertion activity touching this technology is a third party (AlmondNet/Intent IQ) suing Viant, the operating owner — the reverse of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Viant Technology LLC, an operating ad-tech company (indirectly, Viant Technology Inc., Nasdaq: DSP). The patent has not been neutralised.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Justification (with the one caveat stated up front). The ownership record terminates at a practising operating company, not an NPE: the chain runs inventors → Specific Media LLC (Reel 032511/0073, exec. 2013-05-15) → Vindico, LLC (Reel 033294/0218, exec. 2014-06-24) → TI Newco LLC / Viant Technology LLC (Reels 041889/0406 and 042180/0026, 2016–2017) → Viant Technology LLC, co-grantor with Adelphic LLC and MySpace LLC on the PNC security agreement (Reel 050977/0542, exec. 2019-10-31), whose ultimate parent is the Nasdaq-listed Viant Technology Inc. (DSP), and whose marketed Viant Household ID product is described by third parties as embodying the patented household identification technique. The two "suspicious" names in the chain — TI Newco LLC and Viant Technology LLC — are both affirmatively explained (Time Inc. acquisition vehicle; listed operating parent), and the inventors are the founders who still run the company, which is the strongest available evidence against a shell/asserter reading.

Caveat you should carry forward: the template defines this verdict as requiring the current owner to be "suing actual competitors." On '727 specifically, the record shows the opposite posture — Viant is a defendant to AlmondNet/Intent IQ and has filed defensive IPRs, and I found no Viant assertion of '727. So the label fits the ownership facts (practising owner, no shell, no NPE in chain) but the assertion prong is unevidenced. If your framework requires offensive assertion, the honest alternative label is "Operating company — practising, non-asserting as to '727." What the record definitively does not support is any NPE or troll classification: 0 of 8 signals present, and signals 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are affirmatively negated by named evidence.

Two items to close before this memo is finalised:

1. Correspondent of record for all eight reels — not retrievable from the mirrors I used; required to score Signal 3 (repeat correspondent) properly, and to test whether Reels 041889/0406, 042180/0026 and 050899/0374 share a single filing agent.
2. The "TI Newco LLC vs. Viant Technology LLC" identity/timing conflict — Reel 042180/0026 says the name changed on 2016-03-02, yet Reels 041889/0406 (2017-02-16) and 050899/0374 (2019-10-30) both name "TI Newco LLC." Confirm whether one entity or two, via the Assignment Center abstract chain and the 2016 Time Inc. and 2019 Meredith/Viant transaction filings.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search "8996727"): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8996727/en

I'll research US 8996727 and its cited prior art, prioritizing live search results.

Let me research the key prior art references (the examiner-cited references marked with *) and the non-patent literature.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,996,727 B2

Scope note / caveats

I interpreted the identifier literally as US 8,996,727 B2 (I did not substitute the visually similar US 6,924,727 that appears in one of the search results — that is a different, unrelated patent about remote home-device control). All statement below is grounded in the full patent text supplied and the Google Patents / FreePatentsOnline / ACM records returned by search. I hit a tool step limit before completing every reference-specific look-up, so for a handful of IDS-only references I am relying on the citation list in the patent text itself and flag them as such. Nothing here is a legal conclusion; "anticipation" is used in the technical sense of §102.

The patent in brief

Independent claim 1 requires four steps at an "Internet entity hosting a webpage": (a) receive an IP address; (b) determine a device activity status (activity does not exceed a defined threshold); (c) determine an IP assignment age status (assignment age greater than a defined threshold age); and (d) based on both statuses, determine whether the IP address is associated with an ICH.

Dependent claims of interest: 3–4 (residential-ISP status via RIR "who-is"); 6–7 (monitoring activity over a defined period); 8–9 (observing a number of connecting IP addresses from an ISP; two IPs "connected" when one identified user generates activity from both); 10 (the 45-day numeric threshold); 12 (data store of interests/activity/actions → dynamic content selection).

Critically, claim 1 is a conjunction of the activity filter AND the IP-age filter. No single reference found appears to disclose both, which is the crux of the analysis below.

A. Examiner-cited references (marked with * on Google Patents)

These are the references the examiner placed in the Notice of References Cited, i.e., the art most squarely "of record."

1. Xie, Yinglian; Yu, Fang; Achan, Kannan; Gillum, Eliot; Goldszmidt, Moisés; Wobber, Ted — "How Dynamic are IP Addresses?" (Non-patent literature)

• Citation: ACM SIGCOMM '07, Kyoto, Japan; Computer Communication Review, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 301–312; published Aug. 27, 2007 (DOI 10.1145/1282380.1282415).
• Description: Introduces UDmap, a fully automatic algorithm that identifies dynamically assigned IP addresses and characterizes their dynamics (churn, rotation) using only application-level server logs — applied to a month-long Hotmail login trace (＞102 million dynamic IPs). The paper's whole thesis is measuring how long an IP address stays with a given endpoint and detecting reassignment.
• Potentially anticipatory of — §102: Claim 8 / claim 20 (observing a number of IP addresses from an ISP over a defined period; calculating an IP assignment age by detecting when addresses are reassigned). This is the single most on-point reference for the "IP assignment age" limitation, and it is the reason it appears in the IDS. It does not teach the device-activity threshold (claim 1(b)/claim 6), the residential-ISP classification (claim 3), or the "connection" defined by a cookie-identified user (claim 9), so it does not anticipate claim 1 as a whole.

2. US 6,681,232 B1 — Sistanizadeh, Mehdi; et al. (Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc.)

• Citation: "Operations and provisioning systems for service level management in an extended-area data communications network." Filed 2000-06-07; issued 2004-01-20.
• Description: Service-level management/provisioning for a metropolitan-area data network — tracking subscribers, address/pool assignment, and service-level measurement across a provider network.
• Potentially relevant to — §102/§103: Claims 1/3/8 insofar as it describes centralized tracking of IP-level service assignments and usage by subscriber. It is a broad "network operations" reference; it does not describe residential-vs-business household inference or the 45-day retention metric. Realistically §103 material, not §102 anticipation.

3. US 7,506,360 B1 — Wilkinson, Richard; et al. (Mirage Networks, Inc.)

• Citation: "Tracking communication for determining device states." Filed 2002-10-01; issued 2009-03-17.
• Description: Monitors network communications and tracks device state over time by observing connection/communication activity (used in a network-access-control context).
• Potentially relevant to — §102: Claim 6 (monitoring activity from an IP address over a defined period of time and comparing to a level). It supports the "monitor activity, compare to a level" step but says nothing about households or IP-assignment ageing. §103 only.

4. US 2008/0274736 A1 — Hu, Weihua ([[Huawei Technologies Co.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Huawei%20Technologies%20Co.), Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Huawei%20Technologies%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.))

• Citation: "Method and system for implementing data routing of roaming user." Filed 2008-07-15; published 2008-11-06 (family: US 8,891,443 B2; US 9,763,077 B2; priority CN 200610033435.1, 2006-01-26).
• Description: A 3GPP/SAE-LTE scheme for allocating an IP address (home vs. roaming network) to a user's default IP bearer during network attach — i.e., how IP addresses are assigned and how long/mobility affects routing.
• Potentially relevant to — §102: Only tangentially to the concept that IP address assignment is time-bounded and controlled. It does not address household identification, activity thresholds, or online measurement. Weak §103 material at best.

5. US 2009/0034521 A1 — Kato, et al. (The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.)

• Citation: "Apparatus, Method, and Program for Validating User." Filed 2006-03-29; published 2009-02-05.
• Description: User/transaction validation, including identity-related checks.
• Potentially relevant to — §102: Only to the general notion of classifying/validating an entity from network-observed data. Not directed to IP-assignment or household inference; likely cumulative.

6. US 2011/0287764 A1 — Zitnik, et al. (Interop Technologies)

• Citation: "Home location register query reduction apparatus and methods." Filed 2010-05-21; published 2011-11-24.
• Description: Reducing HLR queries in a mobile network by caching/tracking subscriber-state information.
• Potentially relevant to — §102: Marginal — caching subscriber/state data in a network. Not directed to the ICH problem; almost certainly cumulative.

7. US 2013/0311649 A1 — DeFrancesco, Vanderhook, Vanderhook (Specific Media LLC)

• Citation: "Internet connected household identification for online measurement & dynamic content delivery." Priority 2012-05-17; published 2013-11-21.
• Description: This is the patent family's own earlier publication (the parent/companion US 9,331,921).
• Potentially relevant to — §102: Not prior art to US 8,996,727 — same inventors, same assignee, same effective date, and a §102(b) exception / common-ownership situation. It is listed only as an artifact of the citation report.

B. Other references of record (IDS citations, §102(a)/(b)/(e) candidates)

The following were listed in the "References Cited" section of US 8,996,727 / US 11,310,195 (the family continuation) but were not the primary examiner-marked art. The materially relevant ones:

Also cited: US 5,964,839; US 6,151,601; US 6,427,170; US 7,039,699; US 7,600,016; US 2002/0128925; US 2004/0073533; US 2005/0033641; US 2005/0114496; US 2005/0286686; US 2006/0136372; US 2006/0288096; US 2008/0033794; US 2009/0113062; US 2009/0125397; US 2011/0016206; US 2011/0231497; US 2011/0314495; US 2012/0124607; US 2013/0006706; US 2013/0276027; WO 2006/058274 (Arbitron); WO 2010/120359 (Alibaba); and the PCT ISR/WO dated 2013-11-22 for PCT/US13/41307. These are broadly in traffic-monitoring, targeting, and IP-management fields and function as §103 background rather than §102 anticipation.

C. Honest bottom line on §102 vs. §103

No reference found anticipates claim 1 as a whole. Claim 1 requires the conjunction of (i) a device-activity threshold test and (ii) an IP-assignment-age threshold test, both resolved at a webpage-hosting "Internet entity." The art splits cleanly:

• IP-assignment ageing / IP dynamism → Xie et al. (SIGCOMM '07) is the strongest, and is squarely the reference the examiner cared about for claims 8/20. Combined with US 2008/0101353 (Streijl, automated IP pool management) and US 2012/0102169 (Yu, travel/non-travel addresses), an IP-age limitation is well met.
• Household-as-IP-address and IP-based behavioral targeting → US 2008/0281699 (Whitehead/Verizon) and US 2010/0191577 (Lu/Nielsen) are the most material; Whitehead even defines "user" to include a household identified by a single set of data.
• Activity-threshold filtering → US 7,506,360 (Wilkinson), US 6,792,458 (Muret), and the Kihl et al. NPL paper.
• Cookie-based user linking across two IPs (claim 9) → US 2013/0212188 (Duterque) is the specific mechanism; verify its §102(e) effective date, since its 2012-02-14 filing is before the '727 priority date but its publication is after, making it potential §102(e) art only if the effective filing predates 2012-05-17 (it does, on the face of the data).

The likely real-world validity challenge to the '727 claims is therefore a §103 combination: Xie et al. (IP dynamism/age detection) + a household-vs-business activity/ISP-classification reference (Whitehead or Lu/Nielsen), which is precisely the kind of two-reference obviousness ground that the family's later IPRs (e.g., the Roku/′198-family petitions) practiced.

Claims least vulnerable to any cited art: claim 10 (the specific 45-day threshold — a numeric limitation the cited art does not disclose) and the specific combination in claim 1; claims most exposed: 8, 9, and 20 (IP assignment age via observed connected IP addresses), and to a lesser degree 6 and 12.

Disclaimer

This is a technical prior-art mapping, not a legal opinion on validity or infringement. Legal status shown on Google Patents ("Active," anticipated expiration 2033-05-16) is an assumption by the aggregator and not a legal conclusion. Confirm the §102(e) effective filing dates (especially US 2013/0212188) and the examiner's exact PTO-892 markings against the official file wrapper before relying on any anticipation position.

I'll verify key details of the prior-art references cited on the page before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,996,727 B2

"Internet connected household identification for online measurement and dynamic content delivery"
Priority date: 2012‑05‑17 · Filed: 2014‑03‑24 · Granted: 2015‑03‑31
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8996727](/patent/US8996727)/en

A. Framework

Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the question is whether the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) at the effective filing date. Where the claimed elements are individually known and their combination yields only predictable results, the combination is obvious. Design choices (e.g., selecting a numeric threshold) and the mere automation of known manual/statistical techniques are likewise obvious (KSR; In re Aller; MPEP 2143, 2144.04).

Claim 1 (independent) requires only two determinations plus a conclusion:

1. Receiving an IP address at an Internet entity hosting a webpage;
2. A device‑activity status — whether activity from that IP does not exceed a defined activity threshold;
3. An IP‑assignment‑age status — whether the IP's assignment age is greater than a defined threshold age;
4. Using (2) and (3) to decide whether the IP is associated with an ICH.

Notably, claim 1 does not recite the residential‑ISP test; that limitation appears only in dependent claim 3. So the independent claim reads on a two‑factor algorithm, and any § 103 combination only needs to supply those two factors plus a web‑server receiving step.

B. Element‑by‑element mapping to the page's prior art

C. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 18, 20, 21, 22

Primary combination: Microsoft US 2012/0102169 A1 + Xie et al. (SIGCOMM '07) + a web‑server analytics reference (Urchin US 6,792,458 B1 / Yim US 2006/0288096 A1 / Mynarski US 2004/0073533 A1).

• Microsoft '169 supplies elements (1)–(2) and the ICH‑type conclusion: it takes server‑side logs of "host or user IDs, IP addresses, and time stamps" and automatically classifies each IP as home, work, or travel using activity‑level thresholds and time windows, explicitly recognizing that "address ranges from which the same users appear consistently are more likely to be residences or workplaces." That is the claimed "device activity status" and the "associated with an ICH" conclusion in substance.
• Xie supplies element (3) almost verbatim: a working, published technique (UDmap) for (i) identifying dynamically assigned addresses, (ii) measuring how long an address stays with a user before reassignment, and (iii) quantifying that "IP volatility … ranging from several hours to several days." A POSITA need only place Xie's measured age against a chosen age threshold — a routine design choice.
• The web‑analytics reference supplies element (1)'s "Internet entity hosting a webpage" / HTTP‑request limitation (claim 2) and the measurement purpose of claim 11‑adjacent subject matter.

Why combine — the motivation is unusually strong here: Microsoft's U.S. 8,615,605 itself cites Xie et al., "How Dynamic are IP Addresses?" in its references, alongside "How to tell an airport from a Home: Techniques and Applications" and "Characterizing Residential Broadband Networks." Two of the named inventors of the '169 (Yu, Xie) are co‑authors of the Xie NPL. The references are therefore not merely "in the same field" — one expressly builds on the other, which is close to the strongest form of articulated motivation. Microsoft '169 also concedes the very problem Xie solves: "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) IP address allocation and local travel may result in home IP addresses changing frequently." A POSITA seeking to make Microsoft's "home IP" classification stable would naturally incorporate Xie's volatility/assignment‑duration measure — precisely the '727's stated rationale ("to ensure that the IP address is static enough that it can serve as an identifier for a reasonable period of time").

Ground 2 — Claims 3, 4, 5, 15, 16, 17

Add Shi Lu US 2010/0191577 A1.

Shi Lu discloses each element of claims 3–5:

• RIR‑based determination (cl. 4): registry queries to ARIN (expressly identified as one of five RIRs) returning the ISP/organization.
• Classification "providing residential internet service based on publicly available information" (cl. 4): the market information database "includes at least one parameter associated with organization names to identify whether the organization is residential … or non‑residential"; "If the IP address of interest is associated with an ISP, then it is also deemed to be used for residential purposes."
• Filtering out non‑residential IPs (cl. 5): "If the IP address is not residential …, then … determine whether there are additional IP addresses of interest to test."

Motivation: Shi Lu is in the identical field (household‑level broadband market measurement keyed to the modem's public IP), operates on the same input (the household modem's ISP‑assigned IP), and reaches the same intermediate conclusion (residential ISP). Adding Shi Lu's cheap registry pre‑filter ahead of Microsoft's activity/consensus filter is the routine ordering of two known filters — a predictable aggregation producing no more than the expected benefit (fewer non‑household IPs to score).

Ground 3 — Claims 7, 19

Microsoft '169 (pruning of "Internet infrastructure for transient users" and of IPs lacking classification consensus) + Shi Lu '577 (active/inactive activity testing, and filtering out non‑residential/non‑household IPs) render these obvious.

Drafting note: Claim 7 is internally inconsistent with the specification — it recites that activity below the threshold leads to a non‑household determination, whereas the '727 specification (¶ step 506) says the opposite ("If the level of activity exceeds the activity threshold, the system assumes that the IP address is not for an ICH"). Its scope is therefore ambiguous and, to the extent it covers any low‑activity IP being filtered, it is squarely met by Shi Lu's inactive‑IP handling and by Microsoft's non‑consensus pruning.

Ground 4 — Claims 11, 23

Shi Lu '577 (broadband market penetration/market‑share statistics from household IPs), Arbitron WO 2006/058274 A2 (household media/market research), Urchin US 6,792,458 B1 and Webtrends US 7,600,016 B2 (reach/traffic measurement). Measuring an identified household's content exposure is the stated purpose of these references; the '727 specification concedes as much ("For online/web content owners … ICH identification provides a method to measure the total ICH's exposure to their content").

Ground 5 — Claims 12, 24

Experian US 8,533,322 B2 (and family member US 8,145,754, "Service for associating IP addresses with user segments") + Verizon US 2008/0281699 A1 + Phorm US 2008/0201311 A1 + Zenor US 2011/0314495 A1.

Experian '332 teaches: (i) building profiles/segments keyed to IP addresses from ISP‑collected behavioral data (the claimed "data store … interests, activity, and actions"); and (ii) a query interface through which a content provider, on receipt of a page request carrying only an IP address, retrieves the segment and selects custom content in real time (the family describes selection "substantially in real time (e.g., in less than ½ second)"). Verizon '699 and Phorm '131 show the same IP‑based targeting motivation. Combining these with an ICH determination is a predictable application of known targeting techniques to a newly refined audience unit (household vs. individual device).

D. Consolidated KSR motivation‑to‑combine factors

1. Same field / same problem. Every reference addresses the same server‑side question: what does an observed public IP in a log tell you about the endpoint? Microsoft '169 and the '727 both ask whether an IP is a residence.
2. Express incorporation/overlap. Microsoft '169 cites the Xie NPL and shares inventors with it. This is direct, documented motivation, not hindsight.
3. Recognized technical problem + known solution. Microsoft '169 flags DHCP reassignment as destabilizing home‑IP classification; Xie quantifies and solves exactly that.
4. Predictable result / mere aggregation. Activity‑threshold filtering and age‑threshold filtering each address the same goal (excluding IPs that are not reliable identifiers of one household) and, combined, yield only the expected improvement in precision.
5. Design choice. The 45‑day figure of claim 10 is expressly characterized in the '727 as an example ("e.g., 45 days"); no criticality or unexpected result is ascribed to it. Xie's data ("several hours to several days") and Microsoft's 30‑day windows establish the parametric space; optimizing within it is routine (In re Aller).
6. Market demand. Crawford's "Household Internet Use" NPL and the Arbitron/Shi Lu/Experian references evidence the recognized commercial need to measure and monetize household‑level online activity — a classic KSR "design incentive" and "market pressure."

E. Anticipated counter‑arguments and responses

Caveat on completeness: I have directly verified the disclosure of Microsoft US 2012/0102169 A1 / US 8,615,605 B2, Shi Lu US 2010/0191577 A1, Experian US 8,533,322 B2, and the Xie NPL. For Urchin US 6,792,458 B1, Webtrends US 7,600,016 B2, Mynarski US 2004/0073533 A1, Yim US 2006/0288096 A1, Phorm US 2008/0201311 A1, Verizon US 2008/0281699 A1, Arbitron WO 2006/058274 A2, Zenor US 2011/0314495 A1, Invidi US 2013/0276027 A1 and Duterque US 2013/0212188 A1, I am relying on the titles/abstracts listed in the page's prior‑art section; a full‑text pull would be needed before relying on them in a validity contention. I have not independently confirmed the '727's prosecution history or the claims of its parent US 9,331,921.

F. Bottom line, claim by claim

Overall: Independent claim 1 as issued is broad enough (no residential‑ISP requirement) that a two‑reference combination of Microsoft US 2012/0102169 A1 + Xie et al. (SIGCOMM '07) — one of which expressly cites the other — establishes a prima facie case of obviousness, with the web‑server element supplied by any of the cited traffic‑analytics references. Adding Shi Lu US 2010/0191577 A1 disposes of the residential‑ISP dependent claims, and Experian US 8,533,322 B2 disposes of the content‑delivery dependent claims.