US 9030378

I'll search for this specific patent number in litigation/docket databases and USPTO sources.

Let me run more targeted searches for this specific patent.

Let me do a final targeted check for any court proceedings.

US Patent 9,030,378 — Analyst Summary

Search note (as requested): I could not run a direct query against the USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC/PACER docket systems from this environment. My checks were web searches. I found no evidence of any CAFC appeal, IPR/PGR, district-court suit, or 2026 docket activity involving U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378. Search hits containing a "'378 patent" (e.g., Largan Precision v. Ability Opto-Electronics, and a 2014 IPR in an SEC filing) refer to different patents that coincidentally end in 378 and should not be attributed to this one. Treat the litigation finding as "none found," not as a certified all-clear.

Bibliographic Data

Cited prior art (of record): US 4,479,195 A (AT&T Bell Labs, "Data conference system"); JP H07-129357 A (Just Syst Corp, "Multi display system"); US 5,996,002 A (Fuji Xerox, collaborative work support); US 7,557,774 B2 (Microsoft, multi-monitor pointer movement).
Notable forward citations: US 2013/0249773 A1 / US 10,740,059 B2 / US 11,256,464 B2 (Ricoh, Kato); US 2016/0062726 A1 (Konica Minolta); US 2022/0335911 A1 / US 12,073,810 B2 (BOE).

Abstract (verbatim, condensed)

In a sharing display processing system having a plurality of display processing systems each including one or more display apparatuses, each display processing system arranges display regions corresponding to its display apparatuses on a first memory region shared with another display processing system, arranges contents on a second memory region managed by the self system, extracts a part of that second memory region as an extracted region, and arranges the extracted region on the first memory region. Each display apparatus displays the extracted region falling within the range of its own display region on the first memory region.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent's core idea: decouple where content lives (a per-system "virtual region") from where it is shown (a common "shared coordinate" space onto which each system stamps display rectangles). Because the sharing happens at the level of an abstract shared coordinate rather than at physical hardware, multiple sites can mix and match windows across their own screens.

Claim 1 — System claim (a "sharing display processing system" with a first and a second display processing system):

• A content arrangement unit places, onto one shared memory region used by both systems, two things: (a) a first extraction region cut out of a first virtual region that holds first content, and (b) a second extraction region cut out of a second virtual region that holds second content. In other words, each side crops a window out of its own private canvas and publishes that crop into the common space.
• A display region arrangement unit places, on that same shared memory region, a first display region (for the first system) and a second display region (for the second system) — and does so independently of how the extraction regions are arranged. So screen ownership and content placement are set up separately; a display region can overlap, sidestep, or ignore the published crops.
• A display control unit then drives the first system's display unit to show whatever content lands inside the first display region, and the second system's display unit to show whatever lands inside the second display region.

Claim 3 — Apparatus claim ("a first display processing apparatus"):
Same three functional blocks — content arrangement, display region arrangement, display control — but written from the perspective of a single participant. The distinguishing flourish is in the last clause: the first apparatus controls its own display unit to show content within the first display region, while the content in the second display region is displayed on a second display unit of a second display processing apparatus connected to the first apparatus. Essentially claim 1 recast as one node of the network.

Claim 9 — Method claim (in a sharing display processing system):
The method counterpart of claim 1, as steps: (1) arrange, on the shared memory region, the first and second extraction regions taken from the first and second virtual regions; (2) arrange, on the shared memory region, the first and second display regions independently of the arrangement of the extraction regions; (3) control the first system's display unit to display content in the first display region; (4) control the second system's display unit to display content in the second display region.

Claim 12 — Method claim (in a first display processing apparatus):
The method counterpart of claim 3, ending with the same "second display unit of the second apparatus connected to the first apparatus" limitation.

Dependent claims worth flagging: claim 2 (and its method analogue claim 11, plus claim 8) narrows to arranging the display regions "independently of the sizes and arrangement positions" of the extraction regions — a meaningful narrowing because the specification stresses this independence (display regions can even overlap each other, per FIG. 6). Claims 4–7 add a requesting unit (ask another system to update a region), a selection unit (select only part of a content), and arrangements based on display size information.

Notes, Caveats, and Observations

1. The granted claims are narrower and differently worded than the published application. The specification and the pre-grant publication (US 2010/0020086 A1) are written in terms of a display processing system with "first memory region" / "second memory region" units; the issued claims were rewritten around a "shared memory region," "extraction region(s)," and a first/second display processing system pairing, with the "independent of arrangement" limitation elevated into the independent claims. That strongly suggests amendment during prosecution (likely over US 4,479,195 and/or US 5,996,002), but I do not have the prosecution history file and cannot assert this as fact. Anyone relying on claim scope should pull the file wrapper.

2. Terminology inconsistency in the source text. The Google Patents rendering shows claim 6 and claim 7 each beginning with "a display region arrangement unit configured to arrange the first display region on the memory region…" even though claim 3 already recites such a unit — I am reporting the literal text; I am not correcting it. Separately, claim 4 references a "requesting unit" and claim 10 references content "stored in the display processing apparatus" despite claim 10 depending from a claim 9 that recites a system — again, quoted literally.

3. No litigation or post-grant proceedings found. Despite targeted searches for CAFC 2026 activity, district-court complaints, and PTAB filings naming 9,030,378, nothing surfaced. The patent appears to have lived out its life as a Canon defensive/portfolio asset, was maintained through the 4th-year fee in 2018, and was then allowed to lapse in 2023. Given Canon is a very active litigant generally, the absence of any suit on this particular patent is a plausible (if unverifiable here) negative result.

4. Uncertainty statement. Bibliographic facts above are taken from the authoritative full text you supplied and are high-confidence. Assertions about litigation, prosecution history, and non-published docket activity are low-confidence negative findings based on limited web search, not on direct database queries, and should be independently verified against PatentCenter, PACER, and the CAFC docket before being relied upon.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9030378.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378

Bottom line

I found no litigation — district court, ITC, PTAB, or Federal Circuit — involving U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378. I am reporting that as a negative finding rather than fabricating a case.

Patent identification (for the record)

To make sure I searched the correct asset, the following is confirmed from the authoritative patent text and reinforcing web results:

• Patent: U.S. 9,030,378 B2, "Sharing display processing system, display processing system, and display method"
• Application: 12/502,083; filed 2009-07-13; granted 2015-05-12
• Inventor: Takeshi Suzuki
• Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (assignment recorded 2009-10-09, REEL/FRAME 023349/0860)
• Priority: JP 2008-189040 (2008-07-22); JP counterpart JP5055216B2
• Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2023-06-19 for failure to pay maintenance fees; adjusted expiration listed as 2033-03-26)
• Family: No other family members besides US 12/502,083 and JP 2008-189040

Source: Google Patents / USPTO record — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9030378](/patent/US9030378)/en and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/9,030,378

Searches performed

I ran searches across the sources you identified, including the Unified Patents litigation portal caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), Justia Dockets, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, and general web search, using the exact strings "9030378," "9,030,378," and combinations with terms such as litigation, lawsuit, complaint, PACER, and defendant.

What the searches turned up (and what they did NOT)

• No docket, complaint, IPR/PGR/CBM, ITC investigation, or CAFC appeal lists patent 9,030,378 as an asserted or challenged patent.
• The only direct hits for "9,030,378" are patent-record pages (Google Patents, uspto.report), not litigation records.

Important false-positive warning

Several Canon lawsuits and one VDPP LLC action appear in results, but none of them can be attributed to patent 9,030,378 on the evidence available:

• VDPP LLC v. Canon USA Inc., No. 3:2025-cv-03250 (N.D. Tex., filed Nov. 25, 2025, Judge Brantley Starr). The amended complaint attaches exhibits labeled "380 Pat" and "874 Pat." This is a possible lead worth checking, but the search results do not establish that the "380 Pat" is U.S. 9,030,378 (could be a different patent number ending in 380), and it is not patent 9030378 on the face of the record I retrieved. Do not treat this as confirmed litigation against the '378 patent. Source: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txndce/3:2025cv03250/[412255](/patent/412255)
• Canon Inc. v. LD Products, Inc., No. 2:19-cv-02085 (C.D. Cal.) — asserted patents are 7,869,740; 8,165,494; 8,588,646; 8,971,760; 9,494,916; 9,857,763; and 10,162,304. 9,030,378 is not among them.
• Other Canon matters (Zhuhai Henyun, Fairland, Sysorex, Indigo Blue, Nolen) are unrelated on the record retrieved and do not identify the '378 patent.

Litigation table

Confidence and caveats

• The negative finding is reasonably reliable because the '378 patent has an unusually thin assertion profile: it lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees in 2023, which makes it an unlikely monetization target, and it does not appear in any of the standard litigation aggregators I checked.
• Confidence level: moderate-to-high, but not absolute. Free aggregators (Justia, CourtListener, Unified's portal) are not exhaustive of every PACER docket, and a very recent filing (e.g., late 2025–2026) could exist that is not yet indexed. If you need a definitive clearance, the authoritative next step is a direct PACER/LEXIS/Westlaw litigation search on "9,030,378" and a check of the patent's own USPTO PatentCenter "Litigation" tab.
• I did not auto-correct the patent number. All findings are tied strictly to U.S. 9,030,378 / application 12/502,083.

Conclusion: Based on available public records, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378.

I'll start by verifying the canonical PTAB list against live web sources, since the structured block reports no AIA proceedings.

Let me run additional targeted checks for any IPR/PGR numbers, litigation, and Federal Circuit activity tied to this patent.

Let me do a final pair of cross-checks — one on the PTAB/USPTO proceeding portals and one on court dockets — before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — US 9,030,378 B2

Patent: Sharing display processing system, display processing system, and display method
Patent Owner / Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (inventor: Takeshi Suzuki)
Priority: 2008-07-22 (JP 2008-189040) · Filed: 2009-07-13 · Granted: 2015-05-12 · Claims: 14
Status: Expired — Fee Related (lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees; effective 2023-05-12)

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions against US 9,030,378, and my independent web searches (Google Patents, PTAB E2E document portal hits, USPTO.report, CourtListener/RPX docket sweeps) surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming this patent. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Bottom line for a defendant: this patent was never tested at the PTAB, but that is a much less important fact than its expiration status — the patent lapsed on 2023-05-12 for nonpayment of maintenance fees, so the only exposure it can create today is backward-looking damages for pre-lapse conduct (subject to the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year bar). There is no IPR estoppel, no FWD, and therefore no claim-cancellation shortcut — but there is also no live enforcement target.

Sourcing note / caveat. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt is the canonical source and reports none. I ran web searches to catch anything the ODP ingest may have missed and found nothing on point; the search hits for strings like "9030378" were unrelated third-party IPR petitions for other patents (e.g., '930, '879, '873 patents) and are not attributable to this patent. I am flagging this explicitly rather than inferring a proceeding that does not appear to exist. If you need a belt-and-suspenders confirmation, search PTAB E2E under Application Number 12/502,083 and Patent Number 9,030,378: PTAB E2E · USPTO Patent Center for 12/502,083.

Because there are no proceedings, the per-proceeding template is empty. The substantive analysis therefore moves to what the absence means and what the docket actually shows.

Strategic summary

Claim status: ALL 14 CLAIMS UNTESTED AT THE PTAB — none canceled, none sustained. Claims 1–14 (independent claims 1, 3, 9, and 12, with dependents 2, 4–8, 10–11, 13–14) stand as granted, never having been subjected to an AIA validity challenge. That framing can be misleading, though: an unchallenged claim is not a validated claim. It simply means no petitioner ever spent the money. Here the more likely explanation is economic, not merit-based — the patent issued in 2015 to a large operating company (Canon), which is not a typical assertion profile, and it lapsed before any third party had a strong incentive to file. The claims were also narrowed on the merits internally: the granted claims are markedly narrower than the original disclosure's framework, reciting extraction regions from virtual regions arranged on a shared memory region with display regions placed "independently of arrangement of the first and second extraction regions" (claims 1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14). That "independently of" limitation is the likely validity anchor and the likely infringement bottleneck.

Estoppel landscape: none attaches. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not apply to anyone. A defendant is free to raise any prior-art ground — § 102 or § 103, patents, printed publications, or (unlike in an IPR) system prior art and public-use evidence — in district court or in a fresh IPR. The four references of record from prosecution remain fair game to attack, including the primary Japanese art the examiner distinguished: JPH07129357 (Just System Corp., the "multi display system" cited in the background as the closest known approach), plus US 4,479,195 (AT&T Bell Labs, Data conference system), US 5,996,002 (Fuji Xerox, shared-window collaborative work), and US 7,557,774 (Microsoft, multi-monitor pointer handling). The specification itself concedes the core concept — creating a virtual region, arranging contents, and extracting a display-sized region — was known, which is a useful § 103 admission if you ever need to attack the surviving claims. See the patent's cited-art table at Google Patents US9030378B2.

Pattern signals: a designed-in ceiling rather than a war. There is no repeat petitioner, no patent-owner appeal activity, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain. Two structural facts explain why: (1) PGR was never available — the application was filed 2009-07-13, well before the 2013-03-16 AIA cutoff, so only IPR (and CBM) were ever options; and (2) CBM was facially ineligible — this is a display/video-conference content-sharing patent, not a "covered business method" tied to financial services, and would likely have qualified as a "technological invention" exempt from CBM review. So IPR was the only viable AIA path, and nobody took it. The family is small: a single Japanese counterpart, JP 5055216 B2 / JP 2010-026877 A (JP5055216B2), and a related Canon filing around the same period (JP 5180720 B2, filed 2008-07-29, video-conference system) that shows Canon was building a portfolio in this space rather than asserting it.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and received a demand citing US 9,030,378:

• Lead with expiration. The patent lapsed on 2023-05-12 for failure to pay the 8th-year maintenance fee (USPTO legal event code LAPS/STCH, effective 20230512; fee-due window began with the 2023-01-02 reminder). Post-2023-05-12 making, using, selling, or importing cannot infringe. Any damages case is compressed into pre-lapse conduct, further cut by the six-year damages lookback under 35 U.S.C. § 286 — so the realistically recoverable window is roughly 2018–2023 at the outside, and shrinking every day.
• Check for reinstatement. A lapse for nonpayment is curable via petition for unintentional delay (37 C.F.R. § 1.378) with the fee and surcharge. Confirm current status in Patent Center before relying on expiration as a complete bar; if reinstated, enforcement rights revive prospectively.
• Note the "not-tested" gap. There is no FWD to link to, because none exists — do not let an adversary characterize the patent as "survived PTAB review." It was never reviewed. The absence of any IPR after a decade on the register is consistent with a weak commercial-assertion story, not with hardened validity.

If you are evaluating a pre-lapse infringement claim (i.e., a plaintiff-side or insurance-coverage posture):

• There is no estoppel and no FWD disposition to cite either way. Any invalidity position must be built from scratch in the district court, using the § 102/§ 103 art above plus system/public-use evidence unavailable in an IPR. The specification's own admission that "a specific virtual region is created within one system, and a plurality of image contents are arranged on the created virtual region ... [and] extracted ... and displayed on the display apparatus" is prior-art framing you can exploit directly against claims 1/3/9/12's broadest reading.
• No live trial milestones to track. With no pending petition, there is no institution-decision deadline, no 1-year statutory FWD clock under § 316(a)(11), and no oral-hearing date. Nothing is pending that could change the claim set.

Bottom line. No PTAB proceedings exist — state that plainly and don't manufacture one. The decisive fact for a defendant today is not validity but life: US 9,030,378 is a lapsed, fee-expired patent whose enforcement value is limited to pre-2023-05-12 conduct, and it was never narrow enough for anyone to bother attacking. That is a materially better posture than "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened."

I'll verify the assignment record against external sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me confirm there are no post-issuance assignments and check the JP family counterpart.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 9,030,378 B2

Patent: US 9,030,378 B2 — "Sharing display processing system, display processing system, and display method"
Application: US 12/502,083 · filed 2009-07-13 · granted 2015-05-12
Priority: JP 2008-189040 (2008-07-22); JP counterpart JP 5,055,216 B2
Current status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2023-05-12 for non-payment of maintenance fees)

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: None. This is a single-inventor, single-assignee corporate filing. There is no evidence of inventor departure, no joint-inventor fragmentation, and no inventor-side later assignment — the typical "all inventors out the door within 12 months" fire-sale precursor is not present. Assignment to the employer was signed before filing, not months after.

Original assignee

Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.), Tokyo, Japan — named on the face of the issued patent and confirmed by Google Patents' assignee block ("Current Assignee: Canon Inc; Original Assignee: Canon Inc").

• Primary line of business: Global imaging/optics conglomerate — printers, copiers, cameras, medical and industrial imaging equipment, and the electronics/software that supports them. The patent's video-conference embodiment (FIGS. 9–15, multipoint A/B/C conferencing over network 600) fits Canon's office-imaging and collaboration product line.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear / not established. The specification is drafted around a general-purpose "sharing display processing system" (multiple display units on a shared coordinate, virtual regions, extracted regions). No product was identified in the accessible records as practicing the claims, and no commercial embodiment is named in the patent. I did not find evidence of a Canon-branded product mapped to these claims. Treat this as unverified rather than negative.
• Current status: Operating. Canon Inc. is a publicly listed, ongoing concern (TSE: 7751) with no bankruptcy or dissolution event in the relevant period. It remains the record owner.
• Notable posture: Canon's head of IP has been publicly characterized as an outspoken critic of NPE activity and of operating companies that "enable" it (Managing IP/Lexology, 2018). Canon litigates aggressively — but as a practicing operating company against actual competitors (e.g., its multi-defendant ITC toner-cartridge campaigns), never as a patent-monetization plaintiff. That posture is consistent with what the record shows here: no transfer.

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events register — which mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center record — shows exactly one recorded assignment for US 12/502,083 / 9,030,378, plus post-grant fee events. There is no post-issuance assignment of any kind.

• 2009-07-08 (executed) / recorded 2009-10-09 — Reel 023349 / Frame 0860
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Suzuki, Takeshi (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the retrievable record. The Google Patents legal-event entry logs only "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR SUZUKI, TAKESHI; REEL/FRAME 023349/0860" with effective date 2009-07-08; the Assignment Center's correspondent-of-record field (the filing attorney/agent) was not independently retrievable in my searches. I will not guess at an attorney or firm name. For a routine pre-filing employee assignment to a large Japanese operating company, the correspondent is typically the assignee's in-house IP department or its regular outside prosecution firm — but that is an inference about the type of filing, not a documented fact about this reel/frame. No repeat-correspondent flag can be raised or cleared on this chain.
  • Context: Routine employer assignment — employee-inventor conveys rights to his employer at filing; not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Subsequent legal events (not assignments):

Finding: The chain of title terminates at the original assignee. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha owned this patent from filing (2009) through expiry (2023-05-12). The patent was never transferred, sold, securitized, or contributed to a licensing vehicle. It was allowed to lapse rather than monetized — the strongest single piece of evidence against any NPE reading.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9030378
    2008 : JP priority application filed by Canon
    2009 : Inventor assigns rights to Canon
         : US application filed by Canon
    2015 : US patent granted
    2018 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2023 : Patent lapses for non payment
         : Chain ends at Canon

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically the rubric's "only the original assignment" bucket, which here is a clean-title outcome rather than an evidentiary failure.

Justification: The complete recorded chain is a single conveyance, Suzuki → Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, executed 2009-07-08 and recorded 2009-10-09 at Reel 023349/0860, with no post-issuance assignment of any kind and no corroborating litigation. Every NPE signal in the checklist is affirmatively not present: there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading transfer, no pre-litigation transfer, no bankruptcy sale, no privateering, and no defensive-aggregator terminus. Canon retained the patent from 2009 filing through its 2023-05-12 lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees — the opposite of a monetization chain. The one caveat is that the correspondent-of-record field was not retrievable, so a repeat-correspondent check (signal 3) cannot be run at all; that is the only reason the data is not fully complete.

Verification: USPTO Assignment Center search for US 9,030,378 (indexed mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search by patent number 9030378). Google Patents legal events for US9030378B2 corroborate the single assignment and the 2023 fee lapse.

Analyst note on method limits

• I did not fabricate a correspondent name for Reel 023349/0860; the field was not exposed in any source I could reach, so it is reported as an open item rather than filled by inference.
• The JP sibling JP 5,055,216 B2 was confirmed to exist in the same family (via the Google Patents "Also Published As" and family tables), but I could not retrieve its JPO assignment history before exhausting my search budget — if Canon's Japanese recordation is needed for a complete multinational chain, that remains to be pulled from the JPO register.
• No RPX/Unified Patents asserter-directory match was possible for this patent because it never entered a monetization chain to begin with.

I'll verify each cited reference against live sources before analyzing anticipation.

Let me verify the remaining JP references, including the family-cited art.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378 B2

Scope and method

I treated the patent number literally as 9,030,378 / application 12/502,083 and did not auto-correct to any near-miss number. The "patent citations for 9030378" are the four references of record listed on the face of the patent (the "Citations (4)" table), plus the three references in the "Family Cites Families (3)" table. I verified each against live sources (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report, J-GLOBAL) and quote the authoritative bibliographic data from the patent text you supplied where a source conflicted.

Important framing before the reference-by-reference detail: Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, anticipation requires that a single reference disclose every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. On my reading, none of the seven references of record anticipates any of the 14 granted claims — and none comes close to the independent claims 1, 3, 9, and 12, whose distinguishing element is arranging both (i) extraction regions cut from per-system virtual regions and (ii) display regions, on one memory region shared between two different display processing systems, with the display regions placed independently of the extraction regions. The cited art is best understood as § 103 (obviousness) material and background context, not § 102 art. I flag this explicitly rather than manufacture an anticipation case.

Reference-by-reference

1. US 4,479,195 A — "Data conference system"

Brief description. A processor-controlled data-conference bridge for a telephone/network services complex. It receives digital data from multiple conferees' terminals (which may run at different data rates and protocols), buffers messages in a shared buffer memory accessible by several distributed processors, and retransmits the conference data to the other conferees in the correct speed and format. It integrates voice and data conference legs via time-slot interchange and is fundamentally a telecommunication conferencing switch/bridge, not a display or window-management system.

Potential § 102 analysis.

• The only elements it touches are the generic "arranging content so that multiple parties receive it" idea behind the content arrangement unit of claims 1/3/9/12 (the shared buffer memory could be argued as a "memory region," and the bridge distributes "data" that could loosely be called "content").
• It discloses no virtual region in which content is arranged, no extraction region, no display region for a display apparatus, and no display control unit mapping regions to display units. There is no notion of a shared coordinate space of display rectangles at all.
• Anticipation verdict: none. It cannot anticipate any of claims 1–14, even on the broadest reading. It is background art establishing that multi-party data conferencing was known.

2. JP H07-129357 A — "Multi display system" (マルチディスプレイシステム)

Brief description (from J-GLOBAL abstract/claims): A virtual memory space is provided to a CPU having a graphics output function. When display units are connected, a module arranges and manages the display space corresponding to each display unit on the logical output space of the virtual memory space, so the display units can be controlled independently of the communication means (i.e., the constraint between CPU and display unit is dissolved and display/CPU resources are distributed). This is precisely the art the '378 specification cites and distinguishes in its "Description of the Related Art": "a virtual space is provided to a CPU having a graphic output function, and a display space corresponding to a display unit is arranged and managed on a logical output space of that virtual space."

Potential § 102 analysis.

• Reads on the display-region-arrangement concept: arranging, on a logical (memory) space, display regions corresponding to display apparatuses. This maps to the "display region arrangement unit" recited in claims 3, 6, 7, and 12, and to the first-memory-region concept underpinning claim 1.
• But it is a single-system (single-CPU virtual memory) architecture. It does not disclose (a) a memory region shared among two display processing systems, (b) content arranged on a second, per-system virtual region, (c) an extraction region cut from that virtual region, or (d) arranging display regions independently of the extraction-region arrangement — because no extraction region exists in this reference.
• Anticipation verdict: Does not anticipate independent claims 1, 3, 9, or 12. It is the strongest single-reference § 103 anchor and the closest art, but it discloses the pre-'378 state of the art, not the claimed multi-system sharing architecture. (This is the reference the '378 applicants appear to have relied on the specification to distinguish — see the cross-reference in the Patent-summary section noting the granted claims were rewritten around a "shared memory region.")

3. US 5,996,002 A — "Collaborative work support system and method to facilitate the process of discussion in a meeting using a shared window"

Brief description: A collaborative-work/meeting-support system running on plural computers, each assigned to an operator. It has a shared data storage for storing shared data displayed on every computer; an individual data storage for data individually created by one operator; an individual data sender that pushes an operator's individual data to the other computers so it is displayed there as created shared data; and a manager that stores individual data together with associated data as a storage unit. It includes permission-getting, display-state-change, and layer-selection functions for a shared window.

Potential § 102 analysis.

• Reads on the notion of plural computers displaying common shared data, which is the conceptual analogue of a system "shared among display processing systems" (claims 1/9) — the individual data sender pushing data into the shared view is reminiscent of the requesting unit of claim 4 and the selection unit of claim 5 (selecting a part of content to share).
• It discloses no virtual region, no extraction region, no shared display-coordinate space, and no display-region-independence limitation. The shared window is a single logical shared data store, not a two-tier virtual-region→extracted-region→shared-coordinate architecture.
• Anticipation verdict: Does not anticipate any independent claim. Possible § 103/§ 103-combination relevance to claims 4 and 5.

4. US 7,557,774 B2 — "Displaying visually correct pointer movements on a multi-monitor display system"

Brief description: To move a pointer "visually correctly" across monitor boundaries, a virtual space is created and kept separate from the internal display surface onto which information is written for the monitors. The virtual space is established so that its virtual display areas reflect the visual arrangement/alignment of the monitors (including differing screen/pixel resolutions), captures pointer movements, and on a pointer-update frame maps the pointer from the virtual space to the internal display space for display. The reference expressly discusses that a multi-monitor system's internal display surface contains display areas corresponding to each monitor and that a user may specify the arrangement of those display areas.

Potential § 102 analysis.

• This is the best of-record art on the "arrange display regions corresponding to display apparatuses on a memory region" concept and on arranging them independently of / without regard to other content (claims 3, 7, 8, 12, 14; the "display size information" limitation of claim 7 resonates with its resolution-calibration discussion).
• It discloses no content arranged on a per-system virtual region and no extraction-region concept whatsoever — its "virtual space" holds a pointer, not extracted content regions. Nothing is "extracted" from a second memory region and placed on the shared space.
• Anticipation verdict: Does not anticipate independent claims 1, 3, 9, 12. Strong § 103 material for the independence/arrangement limitations.

Family-cited references (listed in "Family Cites Families (3)")

Caveat: My search budget expired before I could pull the full text of these three JP references; the citations/dates below come from the authoritative Google Patents family table in the patent record you supplied, and the descriptions are based on their titles. Treat the descriptions as provisional; the citations are reliable.

5. JP H06-30139 A — "Remote conference terminal device"

• Full citation: JP H06-30139 A (特開平6-30139), applicant Ricoh Co., Ltd. Titles: "遠隔会議端末装置" / "Remote conference terminal device."
• Filing date: 1992-07-13. Publication date: 1994-02-04.
• Description: A remote-conferencing terminal.
• § 102 relevance: Context art for the video-conference embodiment (claims 1/9's "sharing display processing system" framing). Discloses no shared memory region, extraction region, or display-region architecture. Does not anticipate any claim.

6. JP 2006-039919 A — "Image sharing display system, terminal with image sharing function, and computer program"

• Full citation: JP 2006-039919 A (特開2006-039919), applicant Pioneer Electronic Corp. ("画像共有表示システム、画像共有機能付き端末及びコンピュータプログラム" / "Image sharing display system, terminal with image sharing function, and computer program").
• Filing date: 2004-07-27. Publication date: 2006-02-09.
• Description: An image-sharing display system with image-sharing-capable terminals and a program.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially the closest of the three family cites to the "sharing display" concept (claims 1/9). Without the full text I will not assert element-by-element mapping; on its title alone it does not appear to disclose a virtual-region→extraction-region→shared-coordinate pipeline. No supported § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.

7. JP 2006-106983 A — "Display device and display method"

• Full citation: JP 2006-106983 A (特開2006-106983), applicant Canon Inc. ("表示装置及び表示方法" / "Display device and display method").
• Filing date: 2004-10-01. Publication date: 2006-04-20.
• Description: A display device and display method — appears to be a same-assignee Canon filing in the display space.
• § 102 relevance: Generic display-device/display-method art; no shared-coordinate or extraction-region teaching is visible from the record available. Does not anticipate any claim.

Consolidated § 102 mapping

Independent claims (1, 3, 9, 12): not anticipated by any of the above. Each requires the combination of (i) extraction regions from per-system virtual regions placed on a shared memory region and (ii) display regions placed independently of that arrangement, with display control driving content within the display regions. No single reference contains that combination.

Dependent claims (2, 4–8, 10–14): not strictly anticipated either, but the elements are individually scattered in the art — claim 2/8/11/14's "independently of sizes and arrangement positions" (US 7,557,774, JP H07-129357); claim 4's requesting/update feature and claim 5/10's partial-content selection (US 5,996,002); claim 7's display-size-based arrangement (US 7,557,774, JP H07-129357).

The strongest validity pressure is not the cited art — it is the applicant's own admission

The '378 specification's "Description of the Related Art" concedes: "when a plurality of contents are to be displayed on a plurality of display apparatuses, a specific virtual region is created within one system, and a plurality of image contents are arranged on the created virtual region. Then, a region having the same size as a display apparatus is extracted from the virtual region after the arrangement, and is displayed on the display apparatus." That passage maps directly onto the "virtual region → arrange contents → extract a region → display it" sequence of the granted claims, and is a classic § 103 admission of the then-known concept. Combined with JP H07-129357 (virtual space + display spaces on a logical output space) and US 7,557,774 (a separate virtual space with per-monitor display areas mapped to the monitors), a competitor attacking claims 1/3/9/12 would likely frame a § 103 combination around those two plus US 5,996,002 for the multi-computer sharing teaching — not a § 102 single-reference case.

Caveats

1. No anticipation found — reported as such. I did not force any reference into a § 102 conclusion. A reference may be "potentially anticipatory" of isolated claim elements, but § 102 requires all elements in one reference, and none of the seven supplies the shared-memory-region + extraction-region + independent-display-region combination.
2. Prosecution history not retrieved. I could not pull the file wrapper to confirm which of these references the examiner used to drive the amendments. The claim-set narrowing (shared memory region; the "independently of arrangement" limitation) is consistent with allowance over the cited art, but I state that as inference, not fact — consistent with the caveat flagged in the Patent-summary section.
3. Three JP family cites unverified in full text. Descriptions for JP H06-30139, JP 2006-039919, and JP 2006-106983 are based on titles; their dates come from the authoritative family table. Verify full text on J-PlatPat before relying on any element-level mapping.
4. Forward citations are not prior art. US 2013/0249773 (Ricoh/Kato), US 2016/0062726 (Konica Minolta), US 2022/0335911 / US 12,073,810 (BOE) postdate the '378 priority and are cited-by art only.
5. Status reminder. The patent lapsed 2023-05-12 for non-payment of maintenance fees (lapse recorded 2023-06-19). Prior-art analysis remains relevant only for the pre-lapse enforcement window (subject to the § 286 six-year damages bar), as detailed in the Litigation and PTAB sections above.

I'll ground the prior-art analysis by verifying what the references of record actually disclose before building the § 103 combinations.

Let me verify the three additional Japanese family-cited references, since they may bear on the multi-site sharing and display-region-selection elements.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,030,378 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Sharing display processing system, display processing system, and display method · US 9,030,378 B2
App.: 12/502,083 · filed 2009-07-13 · priority JP 2008-189040 (2008-07-22) · granted 2015-05-12
Inventor/Assignee: Takeshi Suzuki / Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2023-05-12)

0. Scope, framework, and one critical caveat

Governing law. The application was filed before 2013-03-16 and claims a 2008 Japanese priority date, so pre-AIA §§ 102/103 govern. All four references of record pre-date the 2008-07-22 priority date (or the 2009-07-13 filing by more than the § 102(b) grace period), so each qualifies as prior art. Obviousness is measured under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1966) (scope/content of the art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations; design incentives and market forces; "the improvement is [not] more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," id. at 417). See MPEP §§ 2141, 2143, 2144.

The references I am permitted to use — the "Prior Art" section of this page (all cited of record):

⚠ Critical caveat to weigh throughout. These are the references the examiner had of record and nevertheless allowed the claims over. That is a material fact for a § 103 attack: a successful prima facie case must demonstrate either (i) a combination the examiner did not consider, (ii) a teaching in a reference the examiner evidently under-appreciated (notably the Pioneer reference, which is not discussed in the '378 background at all), or (iii) reliance on the PHOSITA's general knowledge and common sense as KSR permits. This analysis is a technical/analytical prima facie case, not a legal conclusion, and I did not retrieve the prosecution history (file wrapper) — the earlier analyst note in this record correctly flags that the granted claims were rewritten relative to the published application US 2010/0020086 A1. That contradiction is real: if the "independently of arrangement of the first and second extraction regions" language was added to overcome art during prosecution, it means the pre-amendment claims were easier to invalidate and the post-amendment claims turn on that specific independence limitation. The analysis below therefore concentrates fire on that limitation.

1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A person of ordinary skill would hold a bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or equivalent, with roughly 2–4 years' experience in display-control systems, windowing/graphics user interfaces, or networked conferencing systems — or equivalent work experience. Such a person would be familiar with: multi-monitor "virtual desktop" coordinate spaces; screen-buffer/framebuffer compositing; window-sharing and remote-collaboration systems; and video-conference endpoint architecture. This is a software/logical field — the '378 specification itself states the system is a general-purpose computer executing programs stored in a storage unit — so the PHOSITA has both the capability and the ordinary inclination to combine known display-control and collaboration techniques.

2. What each reference teaches (and does not)

US 4,479,195 (AT&T — Data conference system). A multiport data-conference arrangement in which "[d]ata to be conferenced is put in a buffer memory which is shared by all levels of processors." Each port stores a received data signal "at a preassigned location in said buffer memory," and the conference processor then orders the other designated ports to transmit to their respective data terminals the contents of said preassigned memory location. (Abstract; claim 1; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[4479195](/patent/4479195).html; https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US4479195A](/patent/US4479195A).) Teaches: a shared memory region accessible by a plurality of conference participants, content from one participant placed at a location in that shared region and read out by the others' terminals. Does not teach: virtual regions, extraction, or display regions.

JP H07-129357 (Just System — Multi display system). Per its J-GLOBAL abstract and claim, a virtual memory space is provided to a CPU having a graphics output function, and when a display unit is connected, "a module is provided which arranges and manages a display space corresponding to the display unit in a logical output space of the virtual memory space," so as to "eliminate constraints between the CPU and the display unit" independent of communication means. (https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=200903061809298765.) Teaches: the first memory region — a logical output space on which display regions corresponding to respective display units are arranged, decoupled from the physical display device. This is the reference the '378 background itself identifies as the closest known approach and around which the stated problem is framed. Note: the '378 background characterizes this reference as creating a virtual region, arranging image contents on it, and extracting a display-sized region for display — i.e., the patentee's own admission of the virtual-region/extraction concept. That admission is itself § 103 ammunition (a specification concession of what was known).

US 5,996,002 (Fuji Xerox — Shared window collaboration). Plural computers "connected with each other, each of which is assigned for an operator and displays shared data"; a shared data storage; individual data created by one operator and "individually displayed on any of the computers"; an individual data sending means that sends that data to the other computers on command so it is displayed there "as created shared data"; and management of the data as a unit of storage. (Abstract; claim 1; https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US5996002A](/patent/US5996002A).) The figure materials expressly include an "INDIVIDUAL DATA SELECTING & SENDING SECTION." Teaches: multi-system content sharing — content authored at one node is placed in a shared store and published to other nodes' displays; plus a selection function. Does not teach: a shared coordinate space or per-monitor display-region arrangement.

US 7,557,774 (Microsoft — Multi-monitor pointer). A "virtual space" is created and "kept separate from the internal display surface"; "the virtual display areas of the virtual space reflect the visual arrangement of the monitors"; the virtual space captures pointer movement and, on an update frame, "the pointer is mapped from the virtual space to the internal display space." (Abstract; ¶¶[0044]–[0045]; idiyas.com/patent/badge/7557774; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8a/88/02/8c0cbbf8da9157/US7557774.pdf.) The reference is expressly premised on monitors being dissimilar in physical size, screen resolution, and pixel resolution, and on handling that heterogeneity. Teaches: a two-space architecture — a logical/virtual arrangement space distinct from the physical display surface — with virtual display areas per monitor whose arrangement reflects the monitors' actual layout, plus handling of heterogeneous screen sizes/resolutions.

JP 2006-039919 (Pioneer — Image sharing display system; US 2006/0023063 A1). This is the most directly on-point reference and is not analyzed in the '378 background. In the Pioneer system: a first terminal displays "at least one portion of the image"; a "first display area information generating device" generates first display area information "which indicates a first area occupied by the at least one portion displayed on the first screen device with respect to a whole area of the image," and transmits it to the second terminal; the second terminal likewise displays its own portion of the shared image; and each terminal can "recognize which portion of the shared image is currently displayed on the first screen device." The stated problem is precisely the heterogeneous-screen-size problem: "if the screen of one terminal is larger than that of the other terminal, the point indicated in the one terminal may not be displayed in the other terminal." (Pub. abstract; ¶¶[0006]–[0012], [0055]–[0061]; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/82/b0/62/b28c689f7f945b/US20060023063A1.pdf.) Teaches: (a) a shared image plane among first and second terminals; (b) each terminal taking/displaying a portion of that image; (c) display-area information defined with respect to the whole image — i.e., each terminal's display region in a shared coordinate system; (d) generation of that information based on the terminal's own screen size/resolution, independent of the other terminal's area; and (e) communication of the display-area information between systems.

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element chart with primary combination

Primary combination: JP H07-129357 in view of US 5,996,002, further in view of US 7,557,774 and JP 2006-039919.

Result: Every element of claim 1 is disclosed or rendered obvious by the combination. The only element requiring genuine motivation rather than a bare textual mapping is the co-location of extraction regions and display regions on one shared memory region, with the latter placed independently of the former — and that is supplied twice over (JP H07-129357's decoupled logical output space; US 7,557,774's separate virtual space/mapped display areas; JP 2006-039919's per-terminal display-area information).

4. Motivation to combine (the KSR / Graham rationales)

A § 103 rejection cannot rest on a mere list of references; there must be an articulated reason why the PHOSITA would have combined them, with a reasonable expectation of success. Four independent rationales are available here.

(A) Same field of endeavor / same problem. All four principal references are in the single, unbounded field of display control for multiple displays and networked collaboration/conferencing. KSR expressly permits combining references "in the same field of endeavor," and even in different fields when the elements perform their established functions. Here they perform their identical functions: arranging display spaces, sharing content across terminals, and compositing into a common space.

(B) The patent's own framing creates the design incentive. The '378 background admits that "a specific virtual region is created … a plurality of image contents are arranged on the created virtual region … a region having the same size as a display apparatus is extracted … and is displayed on the display apparatus," and then states the problem that, because the CPU manages the virtual space, "it is difficult to share contents and display apparatuses between a plurality of systems." That is a textbook articulation of a known problem plus the predictable solution direction: decouple the logical arrangement space from any single system's hardware and share it. KSR holds that "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Moving a known virtual output space (JP H07-129357) into a shared store already taught for conferencing (US 4,479,195) and collaborative data (US 5,996,002) is exactly that predictable use.

(C) The Pioneer reference supplies the missing multi-terminal piece, and the examiner's silence on it matters. JP 2006-039919 already teaches two terminals sharing one image, each displaying a portion, each generating display-area information relative to the whole image, and each adapting to its own screen size. The PHOSITA seeking to implement the '378 architecture (private virtual region → extracted crop → shared coordinate → per-display viewport) would have found in Pioneer both the workflow and the reason (heterogeneous screens, as Pioneer's ¶[0006] states). Because the '378 background never discusses Pioneer, a combination anchored on Pioneer is the strongest candidate for a ground the examiner did not squarely consider.

(D) Predictability / no new hardware. Every element is a software logical construct — a memory region, a crop, coordinates, a display mapping. The '378 specification confirms the invention runs on a general-purpose computer executing programs. The PHOSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success because each sub-technique (virtual coordinate spaces, shared stores, per-monitor mapping) was independently known and had confirmed operability in the cited art.

5. Independent claims 3, 9, and 12

• Claim 3 (single-apparatus view) and claim 12 (its method analogue) differ from claim 1 only in perspective and in the closing limitation that the second display region's content is displayed on a second display unit "of the second display processing apparatus which is connected to the first display processing apparatus." That connectivity is squarely met by US 5,996,002 ("plural computers … connected with each other") and by JP 2006-039919 ("accommodated in a network and which can mutually share an image"). No additional inventive element is added.
• Claim 9 (system-method) is the method counterpart of claim 1 with identical steps, including "arranging … the first and second display regions independently of arrangement of the first and second extraction regions." Same analysis.

6. Dependent claims

7. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

Graham requires weighing objective indicia where a nexus exists. On this record there is no evidence of:

• Commercial success tied to the claims — no product was identified as practicing them (consistent with the earlier assignment analysis), and the patent was allowed to lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees on 2023-05-12, which is affirmatively inconsistent with a nexus-bearing success story.
• Copying, industry praise, long-felt need, or failure of others — no litigation, PTAB proceeding, or licensing activity exists (per the earlier sections of this record), so there is no third-party "respect" for the claims to cite.
• Unexpected results — the specification asserts the benefit that "display apparatuses and contents can be easily shared between a plurality of systems," which is precisely the expected consequence of the claimed combination, not a surprising one.

Absent nexus evidence, these factors do not rebut the prima facie case.

8. Anticipated counter-arguments (and responses)

1. "Display-region independence isn't taught; the prior art arranges displays around the content." Response: US 7,557,774 expressly separates the virtual space from the display surface and arranges virtual display areas by monitor arrangement; JP 2006-039919 defines each terminal's display area by its own screen with respect to the image, without regard to the other terminal's area. Even if one argued this was a design choice, KSR treats re-arranging known elements to achieve a predictable result as obvious — and FIG. 6 of the '378 patent (overlapping display regions) confirms the independence is a permissive design choice, not a technical necessity.
2. "The references are from different sub-fields (conferencing vs. window sharing vs. pointer display)." Response: KSR disposes of strict field-of-endeavor walls; and the shared problem — displaying content across multiple/heterogeneous displays — is common to all. JP 2006-039919 bridges conferencing and screen-sharing in a single reference.
3. "JP H07-129357 addresses CPU/display constraints within one system, teaching away from multi-system sharing." Response: That reference is not a teaching away; it is silent on the multi-system case. Silence is not teaching away, and its stated purpose (eliminating CPU↔display constraints) is fully compatible with sharing the resulting logical space — indeed it is the same decoupling idea.
4. "The examiner considered all four references and allowed." Response: The examiner did not have to consider the combination anchored on JP 2006-039919, which is nowhere discussed in the '378 background and which maps most directly onto the extraction/display-region architecture. That is the strongest, most defensible ground.

9. Conclusion

A prima facie case of obviousness under § 103 exists against all independent claims 1, 3, 9, and 12 and their dependents.

• Strongest single combination: JP 2006-039919 in view of JP H07-129357, further in view of US 5,996,002 — Pioneer supplies the multi-terminal shared-image plane, per-terminal display-area definition and the heterogeneous-screen motivation; Just System supplies the virtual/logical output space in which display spaces are arranged; Fuji Xerox supplies content sharing across connected systems plus the selection and update-request functions (dependent claims 4–5).
• Alternative combination: JP H07-129357 + US 5,996,002 + US 7,557,774 — robust for the "independently of sizes and arrangement positions" limitation (claims 2/8/11/14) via the Microsoft two-space architecture.
• US 4,479,195 is a useful tertiary reference to show a shared memory region among conference participants (and is the archetype for the "shared memory region" term), but it is the weakest of the four as a primary reference, being a hardware conference-bridge patent.

Overall confidence: moderate. The textual mappings are solid and grounded in the references' own abstracts/claims, but (i) the examiner allowed over these very references, and (ii) I could not retrieve the full texts of JP H06-30139 (Ricoh) and JP 2006-106983 (Canon), nor the prosecution history, so the precise ground the examiner considered is unknown. A determination-grade opinion should add the file wrapper, the full JP reference translations, and any system/printed-publication art, and should verify the pre-AIA effective dates of each reference.

Cross-check against the earlier sections of this record: No contradiction found. This analysis is consistent with the summary's observation that the granted claims are narrower and differently worded than the published application — indeed, the "independent of arrangement" limitation identified there as the likely validity anchor is precisely the limitation this analysis shows two separate references (US 7,557,774 and JP 2006-039919) also teach, which is the key reason a strong § 103 case can still be built notwithstanding the examiner's allowance.