US 9041737

I'll search for this specific patent number and check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me run more targeted searches for litigation and USPTO records.

Let me do one more targeted check for any 2026 appellate activity involving this patent.

Search Results Summary (USPTO / CAFC 2026)

I searched for the exact number 9041737 / US 9,041,737 B2 and for corresponding 2026 Federal Circuit activity. Findings and caveats:

• Authoritative full text retrieved for US 9,041,737 B2 from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9041737/en) and the issued-PDF cover page (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/85/ac/fc/11c39dd75e7813/US9041737.pdf). These agree on all bibliographic data.
• No CAFC 2026 docket entry for this specific patent number surfaced in my searches. I could not find any authoritative record of a 2026 appeal involving US 9,041,737. I want to be explicit: this is a negative search result, not proof of absence. Docket coverage in general web search is incomplete, and I was unable to query PACER/CAFC dockets directly. Do not treat the absence as definitive.
• A likely reason there is no active 2026 appeal: the patent is recorded as "Expired – Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration date of 2022‑12‑02, so the enforceable term had already lapsed before 2026. That is an inference, not a confirmed docket fact.

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Bibliographic Summary of US 9,041,737 B2

Continuity chain (per the patent's own Cross-Reference): This application is a continuation of Ser. No. 13/683,828 (filed Nov. 21, 2012), itself a continuation of Ser. No. 12/963,444 (Dec. 8, 2010), a continuation of Ser. No. 11/617,997 (Dec. 29, 2006, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,872,640), a continuation of Ser. No. 10/307,403 (Dec. 2, 2002, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,193,609), which claims benefit of provisionals 60/368,988 (Apr. 2, 2002) and 60/365,160, 60/365,161, 60/365,197 (all Mar. 19, 2002).

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Abstract (verbatim)

"Navigating on a display includes tracking motion of an input tool on a display, comparing a motion of the input tool to a threshold, and changing a position of the visible portion of a page of information on the display if the input tool motion exceeds the threshold. The position of the visible portion of the page of information on the display is constrained if the motion does not exceed the threshold."

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Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent has three independent claims — a method claim (1), a computer-readable-medium claim (6), and a device claim (12). All three recite essentially the same four-step process; claims 6 and 12 are structural/statutory-category variants of claim 1.

Claim 1 — Method

1. Access an electronic document that has multiple "predefined portions" (in the specification, these are logical columns/content blocks).
2. Present a display area showing the document on a touchscreen, where the visible area includes at least part of a first predefined portion and at least part of a second predefined portion (i.e., the view straddles more than one portion).
3. Detect a user interaction with the first predefined portion, where that interaction is a touch input on the touchscreen directed at the first portion.
4. In response, move the display area relative to the document until the sides of the display area are aligned with the sides of the first predefined portion, thereby focusing the display area on that first portion.

In plain terms: when the user touches (e.g., taps or touch-drags on) a content block/column on a touchscreen, the view snaps into alignment with that block's edges so it fills the display cleanly — the "snap-to-column" behavior described in the specification.

Claim 6 — Non-Transitory Computer-Readable Storage Medium
Same four functional steps as claim 1, but framed as instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause a computer system to access the document, present the display area on the touchscreen, detect the touch interaction with the first predefined portion, and move/align the display area to focus on that portion.

Claim 12 — Device
A physical apparatus claim reciting: a touch screen display, at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and at least one processor that executes stored instructions to carry out the same access → present → detect touch interaction → align/focus sequence as claim 1.

Selected dependent-claim context (for orientation):

• Claims 2–5 add selectable graphical interface elements (icons), each corresponding/linked to a predefined portion and operable to move the display area to the linked portion.
• Claims 19–28 elaborate on those elements: graphical representations of the portions, depicting shape/size/relative position, presented in sequential order or in an arrangement matching the document (left-to-right), with the right-most/left-most icons mapping to the last/first portions, positioned near the bottom of the display area.
• Claims 16–18 (device) recite a web page document, focusing so that only the first portion is viewable, and detecting contact of an input tool on the touchscreen.
• Claims 29–36 add centering the display area on the first portion and/or reciting the touch input as a touch-and-drag, as well as snapping into horizontal alignment.

Note an internal title/claim vs. abstract mismatch: the title and claims emphasize navigation controls and alignment/snapping to predefined portions, whereas the abstract describes the earlier-in-family "threshold-constrained scrolling" concept. Both concepts appear together in this patent family.

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Uncertainty / Confidence Notes

• High confidence on title, inventor, assignee, filing date (Dec. 28, 2012), issue date (May 26, 2015), application number, priority date, abstract, and independent-claim content — all taken directly from the authoritative patent text.
• Medium confidence on the "anticipated expiration 2022‑12‑02" and "Expired – Lifetime" status — these are Google Patents/legal-status indicators marked as assumptions, not legal conclusions.
• Low confidence / unverified on any CAFC 2026 docket activity: I found none, and I could not directly access PACER/CAFC docket databases. Given the patent's apparent 2022 expiration, an active 2026 appeal is unlikely, but I cannot rule it out from the sources available to me. If you need a definitive litigation answer, that requires a PACER and CAFC docket query rather than general web search.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9041737.

Let me search more specifically on patent litigation databases.

Let me query dedicated patent litigation databases for this specific patent number.

Summary of Findings

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,041,737 was identified. Based on my searches, I could not locate any district court action, ITC investigation, or Federal Circuit appeal in which US 9,041,737 was asserted or challenged.

What I searched and found

I searched for the literal number 9041737 and its formatted variants (9,041,737) across patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, PTAB/PTABS records, Justia, CourtListener, RPX Insight, and general CAFC/PACER references). The results returned zero cases tied to this specific patent number. Every patent case that surfaced referenced different patents, e.g.:

• Leader Technologies, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., D. Del., Civil Action No. 08-862-LPS — asserted US 7,139,761 (not 9,041,737).
• MasterObjects, Inc. v. Meta/Facebook matters — asserted US 8,539,024, US 9,760,628, US 10,311,073, etc.
• Various Unified Patents IPRs (SportBrain '002, MasterObjects '073, MCOM IP, Ozmo Licensing, etc.) — none involving 9,041,737.

I did not find a docket entry, complaint, IPR petition, or appeal identifying 9,041,737 as a patent-in-suit.

Important caveats

• The number was interpreted literally. I did not substitute or "correct" any identifier, and I excluded results for similar-looking numbers.
• I could not fully execute live queries against the requested portals. My searches returned results but I was unable to directly pull a per-patent litigation record from portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist for this number. My conclusion is therefore based on the aggregate search evidence, and I want to be explicit that the absence of results here is not proof of absence of litigation — it may reflect search-coverage limitations, sealed cases, or cases where the patent was asserted but is not well-indexed.
• Do not rely on this as a definitive clearance/ownership opinion. A definitive answer requires a targeted docket search (PACER Case Locator, Docket Navigator, or RPX/Unified per-patent litigation pages) using the exact patent number.

Context on the patent (from the authoritative text)

For your reference — and NOT as evidence of litigation — the patent itself establishes:

• Title: "Display navigation using navigation controls"
• Assignee/Owner: Meta Platforms, Inc. (originally Facebook, Inc.; chain of title traces through AOL Inc. / AOL LLC / America Online, Inc. to inventor Luigi Lira).
• Priority date: 2002-03-19; filed: 2012-12-28 (application Ser. No. 13/730,693); granted: 2015-05-26.
• Legal status per the record: "Expired – Lifetime," with anticipated expiration 2022-12-02.
• Family: a large continuation family (e.g., US 10,365,785; US 10,055,090; US 9,856,864; US 9,750,606; US 9,626,073; US 9,360,993; US 9,046,738; US 8,902,253; US 8,648,801; and the '609/'640 ancestors).

The patent expired in 2022, which may account for the absence of recent assertion activity, but I caution that this is an inference, not a confirmed litigation fact.

Bottom line: On the evidence available to me, I found no known litigation involving US 9,041,737. If you need a verified litigation history, I recommend a direct per-patent search on PACER/Docket Navigator or the Unified Patents and RPX per-patent pages.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 9,041,737. The canonical structured source for this task — the USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in the prompt — returns no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM involving this patent, and my independent web searches (PTAB E2E petition documents, docket aggregators, IPWatchdog's Facebook PTAB trial tables, Unified Patents portal pages for family members, CourtListener/CAFC opinion text) surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal naming 9,041,737 or application Ser. No. 13/730,693.

Bottom-line defensive posture: There is no PTAB record to lean on — for better and for worse. Because no petitioner ever knocked on the Board's door, all 38 claims (independents 1, 6, 12 and every dependent) remain UNTESTED and formally intact at the Office. A defendant today cannot say "claim 1 is dead," and cannot point a court to an FWD canceling anything. What the defendant does get is the mirror-image advantage: no § 315(e) estoppel attaches to anyone, so a fresh IPR petition is unconstrained by any prior petitioner's grounds. The countervailing reality is that the patent record shows it expired 2022‑12‑02 ("Expired – Lifetime"), which guts the practical motive to file at all and, since 2025, invites discretionary denial on settled-expectations grounds. This is a lapsed patent with an untouched claim set, not a hardened one.

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Per-proceeding detail

None to report. The output format anticipates one ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} block per proceeding. Because the structured list is empty and my searches corroborate that emptiness, I am deliberately not generating proceeding blocks — inventing a proceeding number would violate the explicit constraint against fabrication.

Disambiguation — false positives I ruled out (do not confuse these with '737)

Several superficially similar numbers surfaced and were excluded as different patents:

• IPR2023‑01021, Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Eight kHz, LLC — U.S. Patent No. 10,917,737 B2. Same last three digits, wrong patent. (institution decision)
• IPR2017‑00829, Twitter, Inc. v. Youtoo Technologies / VidStream — U.S. Patent No. 9,083,997 B2. (FWD / Notice of Appeal)
• IPR2018‑01783 / IPR on U.S. Patent No. 7,478,144 (Stuckman), and the various MasterObjects / MCOM IP / SportBrain Unified Patents campaigns — none touch the Lira family.

Per the literal-identifier rule, none of these were auto-corrected into matches for US 9,041,737, and none are reported as proceedings against it.

Relevant adjacent fact — the Lira family is prior art, not a challenged patent

This is the one genuinely useful PTAB-adjacent finding. The Lira family (the '737 and its ancestors US 7,193,609 and US 7,872,640) has been deployed offensively as prior art against other people's patents, including by examiners in ex parte prosecution and by Apple against Samsung patents in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., N.D. Cal. No. 5:11‑cv‑01846. Examiner/party papers quote Lira's disclosure at length against claims of Apple's '381 patent, including the snap-to-column teaching: "causes the logical column 1220 to snap into alignment with the display window 1205 as the user stops scrolling." (CourtListener, Apple v. Samsung, Dkt. 2291‑1; Dkt. 168‑4)

Why that matters to a defendant: the same 2002 Lira disclosure that reads on Apple's scroll/snap claims is what would be asserted against the '737's own claims 1–38, which recite essentially the same snap-to-predefined-portion behavior. The art that kills this patent is very likely Lira-family art plus the 2002-era prior art ecosystem — and no one has spent the money to prove it at the Board.

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Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. None are canceled, none are sustained on the merits by the Board, and all 38 are untested. Claims 1, 6, and 12 (the independents) and every dependent claim from 2–5 and 13–38 stand exactly as issued on 2015‑05‑26. There is no narrowing through IPR to point to. Any statement that "claims 1–5 have been canceled" would be false as to this patent — the PTAB record is entirely blank.

Estoppel landscape (§ 315(e)(2)). Because no petition was ever filed, no estoppel exists in either direction. No petitioner is barred, and no privy of any petitioner is barred. A defendant currently facing assertion (or, more realistically, a licensing demand over pre‑2022 conduct) can raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, including art that "reasonably could have been raised" hypothetically — the "reasonably could have raised" clause has no operative trigger without a prior IPR. The usual Sotera-style stipulation tradecraft for defeating Fintiv denial is likewise unconstrained by history. Concretely: the full 2002-era prior-art field is open, including the Lira family itself, Lira-adjacent references, and the Apple/Samsung reexam record.

Pattern signals. No serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents has per-patent pages for family members like US 9,626,073 and US 9,886,163 — see portal.unifiedpatents.com — but those pages show no AIA trial against the Lira family), and no PTAB appeal history. Meta/Facebook appears in PTAB records predominantly as a petitioner (138+ trials per IPWatchdog's tally), not as a patent owner defending this portfolio. The patent owner has never had to defend these claims at the Board, and there is a documented record of the Lira disclosure being recycled as prior art by examiners rather than being tested as a patent.

The legal-status overlay is the dominant strategic fact. The record shows "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2022‑12‑02 (a status assumption, not a legal conclusion). Three consequences flow from that:

1. No injunctive relief is realistically available; exposure is limited to pre‑expiration damages within the § 286 six-year lookback.
2. IPR against an expired patent is legally permissible (the Board may institute to settle patentability of claims relevant to past damages), but the practical payoff is small — which explains the zero-proceeding history.
3. Settled-expectations denials are now explicit Board policy. The Board has repeatedly exercised § 314(a) discretion to deny institution where "challenged patents ha[d] been in force over nine years, creating settled expectations" (Intel v. Proxense LLC, IPR2025‑00327, Paper 12 (2025‑06‑26)), and has designated such decisions informative (Dabico Airport Solutions v. AXA Power, IPR2025‑00408, designated 2026‑01‑09). A 24‑year‑old expired patent is the paradigm case for a discretionary denial.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat the PTAB record as empty — and say so in writing. Any defense memo asserting an FWD against the '737 should be revised. The absence of IPRs is itself a signal: well‑asserted, commercially valuable patents attract IPRs, and this one attracted none, consistent with a portfolio whose enforceable life ran out in 2022.

2. If you are a defendant and the patent could still reach you, do not plan around an IPR as the primary defense. Run the numbers first: (a) does the demand target conduct occurring on or before 2022‑12‑02? If not, the claim is likely moot; (b) is the exposure large enough to justify a petition that faces a substantial risk of settled-expectations discretionary denial? If yes, the forum of first resort is probably a district‑court invalidity case or a declaratory-judgment action, not the Board.

3. If you do file, file on the Lira-family art itself. The most parsimonious § 102/§ 103 theory against claims 1–38 is art from the same 2002 window, including the Lira ancestors US 7,193,609 and US 7,872,640 and the snap-to-column references the examiner used against Apple in Apple v. Samsung (N.D. Cal. 5:11‑cv‑01846). Because no estoppel exists, you retain the freedom to raise grounds any earlier petitioner could have raised — but there was no earlier petitioner, so caveat: you also get no benefit from anyone else's work product.

4. Verify the negative before you rely on it. The structured ODP list is authoritative for indexed AIA trials, but it is an ingest, not a live PACER‑equivalent. Before filing anything that depends on "no PTAB history," re‑run the check directly: USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the PTAB's public decisions page (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions), searching both 9,041,737 and 13/730,693; and if any proceeding is found, pull the FWD and any CAFC opinion via CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) and the Federal Circuit opinions page (https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders). I flag explicitly: I could not query PACER/CAFC dockets directly, so this conclusion rests on the ODP structured data plus corroborating web sources — a negative finding, not proof of absence.

I'll research the assignment record for US 9,041,737 through USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records via PlainSite and USPTO.

Let me pull the Google Patents legal-events records for this patent and its ancestors, which expose the reel/frame numbers.

I was able to assemble the assignment chain from the authoritative patent text (Google Patents legal events), the ancestor patents' legal-events records, and PlainSite's assignment mirror. Important caveat up front: I could not execute live, paginated queries against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov in this session. The reel/frame numbers below are taken from Google Patents legal-events records for this family and from PlainSite's mirror of USPTO assignment records. Where I could not independently verify a reel/frame, I say so. Verify against the Assignment Center search (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) using patent number 9041737.

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Inventors

• Luigi Lira — sole named inventor. Residence at the time of filing: Costa Mesa, CA (stated on the issued face of the ancestor patents US 7,193,609 and US 7,872,640).
• Employer at the time of filing: America Online, Inc. (Dulles, VA). Lira's rights were assigned to America Online, Inc. by an assignment with an effective date of 2002‑11‑27 (the same day the parent application 10/307,403 was being prepared; the parent was filed 2002‑12‑02). This is the classic employee-inventor → employer assignment.
• Unusual patterns: None detected. This is a single-inventor family, not a team, so the "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale tell does not apply. There is no evidence Lira left AOL before assignment; on the contrary, the assignment was executed at filing. No co-inventor disputes or corrections-of-inventorship are recorded in the family's legal events.

(No second inventor is named anywhere in the '693 specification, the claims, or the assignment records I retrieved.)

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Original assignee

Two answers, because issuance post-dates the corporate transfer:

• Entity named on the issued patent (face of US 9,041,737): Facebook, Inc., Menlo Park, CA. The patent granted 2015‑05‑26, years after the AOL → Facebook patent sale, so Facebook is the "assignee" of record on the printed patent.
• Entity that originally owned the invention (true "original assignee"): America Online, Inc. (a/k/a AOL). The application (Ser. No. 13/730,693) is a continuation whose earliest priority is 2002‑03‑19, and the 2002 assignment ran to America Online, Inc.

Business and product:

• America Online, Inc. / AOL — Dulles, VA; online services, portals, and (in the 2000s) a mobile/AOL client browser. The claimed subject matter (reformatting content into logical columns and snap-to-column navigation on small displays) was directly relevant to AOL's mobile portal and AOL client software. AOL's primary line of business was internet content/access and advertising; AOL also monetized through licensing its portfolio.
• Facebook, Inc. / Meta Platforms, Inc. — social networking and mobile apps. Meta ships touchscreen mobile apps (Facebook, Instagram) whose horizontal column-snapping and touch-drag behavior sits squarely inside the claim family's subject matter.
• Current status: Meta Platforms, Inc. — operating. AOL's status is "operating, restructured": it was spun out of Time Warner (2009), acquired by Verizon (2015), combined into Yahoo Inc., and later sold to Apollo Global Management. No bankruptcy on the AOL side that would trigger a family fire-sale (contrast Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid patterns).

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Assignment timeline

The recorded chain, in chronological order. Recording dates for the four 2002‑era / reorg links are shown as listed in Google Patents legal events for this family; the underlying execution/effective dates differ from recording dates and are noted.

1. 2002‑11‑27 (executed/effective) / recorded in the 2002–2003 window — Reel 013546/0782

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: LIRA, LUIGI
   • Assignee: AMERICA ONLINE, INC. (Virginia)
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved in this session (assignment cover sheet correspondent field not exposed by the mirrors available to me). Flag: data gap.
   • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment covering the 2002 applications from which US 9,041,737 descends.

2. effective 2002‑11‑27 / recorded ~2006–2007 — Reel 018721/0048

   • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded against AOL LLC ownership)
   • Assignor: LIRA, LUIGI
   • Assignee: AOL LLC (Virginia)
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved. Flag: data gap.
   • Context: Confirmatory/re-recorded chain-of-title entry mapped to the corporate conversion of America Online, Inc. into AOL LLC. (The 2002 effective date is the original assignment date; the 018721 reel is a later recording.)

3. 2006–2007 — no separate reel confirmed — Change of Name / conversion

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (America Online, Inc. → AOL LLC)
   • Assignor: AMERICA ONLINE, INC.
   • Assignee: AOL LLC
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved. Flag: data gap.
   • Context: Internal corporate reorganization (name conversion), not an arm's-length sale.

4. 2009 — no separate reel confirmed — Assignment

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: AOL LLC
   • Assignee: AOL INC.
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved. Flag: data gap.
   • Context: Internal reorganization on the AOL spin-off from Time Warner (AOL LLC → AOL Inc., 2009).

5. 2012 (executed ~2012‑06‑14 in the master AOL→Facebook conveyance) / recorded, and re-recorded 2013‑05‑17 against this continuation — Reel not independently confirmed for '693 (see below)

   • Conveyance: Assignment
   • Assignor: AOL INC.
   • Assignee: FACEBOOK, INC. (1601 South California Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94025)
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved. Flag: data gap.
   • Context: The landmark AOL → Facebook patent sale (the ~2012 transaction in which Facebook paid ~$550M for roughly 750–800 AOL patents) — a genuine arm's-length portfolio acquisition, not a privateering arrangement. PlainSite mirrors an AOL Inc. → Facebook, Inc. assignment "Assignment of Assignors Interest," paperwork executed June 14, 2012, recorded under reel 51466/20, but that specific record is indexed for a different AOL-origin filing, so I treat 51466/20 as probable but unverified for '693 specifically.

6. recording 2013‑05‑17 (bulk title-cleanup) — Google Patents legal events list four events stamped 2013‑05‑17, all captioned "reassignment," stacking the entire corporate chain (Lira → America Online → AOL LLC → AOL Inc. → Facebook) onto the then-pending '693 application. This is a title-consolidation recording of pre-existing conveyances, not new consideration.

7. 2021‑12‑20 (recorded) — Change of Name

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc.)
   • Assignor: FACEBOOK, INC.
   • Assignee: META PLATFORMS, INC.
   • Correspondent: Not retrieved. Flag: data gap.
   • Context: Pure corporate rename (Meta rebrand, Oct/Dec 2021); no change in beneficial ownership.

Bottom line for this section: The Assignment Center does have records for this patent family — this patent is not in the "original assignment only" bucket. However, I was not able to independently confirm a distinct USPTO reel/frame for every link on the '693 application itself; the last two links (AOL→Facebook and Facebook→Meta) are corroborated by the PlainSite mirror and the patent's own legal-events listing but their exact reel/frame strings for '693 are unverified in this session.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9041737
    2002 : Invented by Luigi Lira
         : Assigned to America Online Inc
         : Reel 013546/0782 recorded
    2007 : Reel 018721/0048 recorded
         : America Online becomes AOL LLC
    2009 : AOL LLC assigned to AOL Inc
    2012 : AOL Inc sold portfolio to Facebook Inc
    2013 : Chain re-recorded on continuation
    2015 : Patent US 9041737 issued
    2021 : Facebook renamed Meta Platforms

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every link is an operating company with products in commerce: America Online, Inc. → AOL LLC → AOL Inc. → Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" suffix appears at any point (reels 013546/0782, 018721/0048, and the 2013‑05‑17 consolidation entries).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. None of Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities appears as assignee. The chain terminates at Meta Platforms, Inc. (reels per §1 and the 2021‑12‑20 change-of-name entry).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap). I could not retrieve the "correspondent of record" field for any link in this session; the mirrors available to me expose reel/frame, conveyancing type, assignor, and assignee but not the filing attorney/agent. This is the single most important field to pull from the Assignment Center directly, because it is the strongest NPE tell. No recurrence can be asserted or ruled out from my current evidence.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — NOT PRESENT. Transfers span 2002 → 2021 and correspond to identifiable corporate events (AOL's 2009 spin-off, the 2012 AOL→Facebook sale, the 2021 Meta rename), not a chained-LLC conveyor belt. The 2013‑05‑17 grouping is a bulk recording of old conveyances, not new transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer within 6 months before a suit — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 9,041,737 was identified in the earlier litigation pass, so there is no suit for a transfer to precede. The 2012 AOL→Facebook transfer was a portfolio sale, not a standing-creation maneuver.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. AOL's trajectory was spin-off → Verizon → Yahoo/Apollo restructuring, not a Chapter 7/11 patent liquidation of this family. No bankruptcy docket entry ties to these reels.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No evidence (and nothing in the chain) shows Facebook/Meta transferring this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The chain moves toward the operating company, not away from it.

8. Defensive aggregator at the end — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, Allied Security Trust, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or Open Invention Network; it terminates at Meta Platforms, Inc.

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: Every recorded link is an operating company rather than an NPE — Lira → America Online, Inc. (reel 013546/0782, eff. 2002‑11‑27), through the AOL LLC/AOL Inc. reorganizations (reel 018721/0048), to Facebook, Inc. (~2012, per the AOL→Facebook record mirror), and finally Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc. as a mere change of name recorded 2021‑12‑20. No shell LLC, no known NPE assignee, no cascade, no pre-suit transfer, and no litigation on the patent was found; the patent is recorded Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022‑12‑02), so it is effectively neutralized. Caveat on the label: the taxonomy's "Defensive / non-asserting" bucket is defined by a defensive-aggregator terminus, and there is none here — I am using the label for its operative meaning (operating-company-owned, never asserted, expired), not to imply an RPX/AST/LOT/Unified acquisition. I also could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field, so the strongest possible NPE tell (repeat NPE recording attorney) remains unchecked; if you need that confirmed, pull the correspondent field for reels 013546/0782 and 018721/0048, the 2013‑05‑17 consolidation entries, and the 2021‑12‑20 change-of-name entry directly from the USPTO Assignment Center.

Verification link: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (patent number 9041737) — and the same records at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 9,041,737 B2, starting with the patent's own citation record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,041,737 B2 ("Display navigation using navigation controls")

0. Scope, sources, and an important limitation

What I did: I searched for the exact string 9041737 (and 9,041,737) and retrieved the authoritative USPTO front-page record for the patent via its issued-PDF image on Google Patents' storage mirror:

• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/85/ac/fc/11c39dd75e7813/US9041737.pdf
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US9041737/en

Limitation you must know about before using anything below: The front page of US 9,041,737 lists a large "References Cited" block (56) — the printed list runs to well over 100 U.S. patent documents and is split with a "(Continued)" continuation onto the second column. My retrieval captured only the first portion of that list (roughly the pre-1999 entries) plus the foreign document and the one NPL citation. I could not retrieve the remaining cited documents (the 1999–2002 entries, other foreign documents, and any second NPL reference) within this session. I will mark clearly what is verified vs. not retrieved, and I will not invent the missing entries.

I also could not execute a direct per-patent query in USPTO Patent Center / Patent Full-Text (the tool returned a step-limit notice), so everything below is grounded in the issued-PDF front page rather than a live USPTO API hit. The patent number was interpreted literally — I did not substitute any similar-looking number.

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1. Threshold issue that governs the whole § 102 analysis: what is the effective filing date?

This matters more than any single reference, so it must come first.

• The patent claims priority to March 19, 2002 (provisionals 60/365,160; 60/365,161; 60/365,197) and April 2, 2002 (60/368,988), via Ser. No. 10/307,403 → 11/617,997 → 12/963,444 → 13/683,828 → 13/730,693 (this patent, filed Dec. 28, 2012).
• The originally-filed 2002 specification describes "snap-into-alignment" and column alignment in the stylus context (spec ¶ [0053]–[0054]: bars 1400, lifting the pen, snap-to-nearest-logical-column), not the touchscreen "detect a touch input with respect to the first predefined portion → move the display area until the sides of the display area are aligned with the sides of the first predefined portion" recitation that appears in claims 1, 6, and 12.
• That claim language was added years later (the same "receiving data… touchscreen display… determining whether the detected motion has met a predetermined threshold" family of claims appears in the ~2012–2013 continuations, e.g., US 2013/0113745).

Consequence for § 102: If the touchscreen/side-alignment limitations in claims 1/6/12 are not entitled to the 2002 priority date (a written-description/enablement question, not a § 102 question, but it drives § 102), the effective date for those claims moves forward — potentially to Dec. 2012. That would pull in a whole second tier of prior art filed 2002–2012 (see § 5 below). Conversely, if the 2002 date holds, only pre-2002 art counts. I flag this as the single most consequential uncertainty and note it explicitly rather than assuming one way.

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2. Verified prior-art citations retrieved from the face of US 9,041,737

The following were read directly off the issued front page. Note: the OCR of the printed front page contains apparent digit errors; per the standing rule I reproduce the identifiers literally and flag the suspected OCR artifacts rather than silently correcting them.

2.1 U.S. Patent Documents (verified, as printed)

List continues ("(Continued)") — the 1999–2002 U.S. entries were not retrieved and are not represented above.

2.2 Foreign Patent Documents (verified)

2.3 Non-Patent Literature (verified)

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3. Additional cited U.S. patents cross-confirmed (direction verified)

The retrieved list is incomplete, but three additional cited references are independently corroborated because their own Google Patents pages list US 9,041,737 B2 in their "Cited By" tables — which is the mirror image of US 9,041,737's own "Patent Citations" list:

Sources corroborating these three listings:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US5844561 (lists US9041737B2)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5845303A](/patent/US5845303A) (lists US9041737B2)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6771290B1](/patent/US6771290B1) (lists US9041737B2)

Caveat: US 6,771,290 was granted Aug. 3, 2004 — after the 2002 priority date. It could only be prior art via its earlier effective filing date under (pre-AIA) § 102(e) / (AIA) § 102(a)(2), which requires verifying its actual filing date. I did not verify that filing date, so I do not assert it is § 102 art.

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4. § 102 anticipation assessment (what can and cannot be concluded)

4.1 The test I applied

For claims 1, 6, and 12 (all three recite substantively the same four steps), a single reference anticipates only if it discloses all of:

1. accessing an electronic document comprising a plurality of predefined portions;
2. presenting, via a touchscreen, a display area that includes at least part of a first AND at least part of a second predefined portion (the view straddles two portions);
3. detecting a touch input provided by way of the touchscreen with respect to the first predefined portion;
4. moving the display area relative to the document until the sides of the display area are aligned with the sides of the first predefined portion — plus, for the dependent set, centering (claims 29–30, 36), touch-and-drag (34, 37, 38), and snapping into horizontal alignment (35).

The dependent claims 2–5 and 19–28 add the navigation-icon limitations (one icon per portion, arranged left-to-right, right-most icon ↔ last portion, near bottom of display).

4.2 Finding on the retrieved citations

On the record retrieved, none of the identified cited references appears, on its face, to disclose the complete combination required by claim 1/6/12.

• The retrieved 1990s references are, by their dates and thematic grouping, a broad scrolling / stylus-and-touch / document-formatting art set — the kind of background an examiner assembles when the claims are directed to navigating a document on a small display. That matches what the specification itself describes as the known art (spec ¶ [0043]–[0044]: scroll bars and "touch-and-drag" scrolling).
• No retrieved reference is identified as being applied against the claims — the front page shows a reference list, not an examiner's rejection. The patent issued with 38 claims and, per the record noted in the earlier sections, was subject to a terminal disclaimer; I found no express § 102 rejection surviving of record.
• For claims 1/6/12's touchscreen-side-alignment step (element 4), the naturally closest candidate among the retrieved set would be a document-structure reference (e.g., US 5,845,303, Tempelman) combined with a touch-navigation reference — but that would be a § 103 obviousness theory, not § 102 anticipation, and even then I would need the full texts to substantiate it.

Therefore, the honest § 102 conclusion is: On the material I could verify, I did not identify a citation on the face of US 9,041,737 that anticipates claims 1, 6, or 12 — but this is a preliminary, incomplete-record conclusion, not a clearance opinion.

4.3 References I would prioritize for full-text review (but do not assert as anticipatory)

These are the cited references whose themes overlap most with the independent claims and which warrant full-text pulling before any § 102 statement:

I am explicitly not assigning any of these an "anticipates claim X" label, because doing so would require reading the reference's disclosure against the claim language — which I could not do here without the full texts and the complete citation list.

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5. The second tier: post-2002 art that becomes relevant only if the 2012 date controls

This is the most consequential gap. The patent's own "Families Citing this family" table (191 entries) shows the later art in this space. If claims 1/6/12's touchscreen limitations are not entitled to the 2002 priority date, the following become potentially available as prior art (§ 102(a)(1)/(a)(2)) despite post-dating 2002:

Caution: these appear in the "Citing this family" table, i.e., they are forward citations that cite this family. They are therefore not prior art against the 2002 priority date and are not citations of US 9,041,737. I include them only because they define the art the applicant later had to be distinguished from, and because US 9,086,756 (Opera) and US 8,769,430 (IBM) would be the references a § 102 challenge would reach for if the effective date slips to 2012.

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6. Summary table of verified citations, with § 102 disposition

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7. What I could not do (stated plainly)

1. I could not retrieve the complete "References Cited" list. The front page is a multi-column "(Continued)" list; I captured only the ~1999-and-earlier U.S. entries plus GB 2347200 and the Hori NPL item. The 1999–2002 entries are missing from this analysis.
2. I could not read any cited reference's full text, so I cannot affirmatively map any reference to any claim element. No § 102 "anticipates claim X" assertion here should be relied upon; the §4.3 table lists candidates for review, not findings.
3. I did not confirm the effective filing date entitlement of the touchscreen claim limitations — the pivotal § 102 variable.
4. Several identifiers on the front page appear to be OCR-corrupted (e.g., "5,026,097," "5,317,396," "5,635,297," "5,887,757"). Per the standing rule I left them as printed rather than auto-correcting; verify against the PDF before citing.
5. No USPTO Patent Center / Patent Full-Text API result was obtained (step-limit notice), so the above rests on the issued-PDF record.

8. Recommended next steps to complete a defensible § 102 study

1. Pull the complete "References Cited" front page (both columns) from the PDF mirror above and transcribe every entry.
2. Determine the effective filing date of claims 1/6/12 (written-description analysis against the 2002 spec).
3. For each cited reference (and, if the date slips, each 2002–2012 reference), obtain full text and chart element-by-element against claim 1.
4. If a § 102 position exists, it is most likely to come from a document-structure reference (portions) + explicit touch-snap-to-boundary disclosure in a single reference — which I did not identify in the material retrieved.

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Bottom line: The authoritative record ties US 9,041,737 B2 to a large 1990s-era scrolling/touch-navigation prior-art set (with US 5,844,561, US 5,845,303, and the unverified GB 2347200 and Hori et al. among the on-point items), plus US 6,771,290. On the incomplete record available, I found no citation that anticipates claims 1, 6, or 12, and I explicitly flag that the highest-value prior art for these touchscreen "snap/align-to-portion" claims is likely post-2002 (Opera's US 9,086,756; IBM's US 8,769,430; Apple's US 7,469,381) — relevant only if the claims lose their 2002 priority.

I'll research the prior art specifically available for this patent, including references cited during prosecution and any IPR art.

Let me verify the key prior-art references and their dates before building the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,041,737 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Reference date used: the patent's own record states the earliest priority as March 19, 2002 (provisionals 60/365,160; 60/365,161; 60/365,197, plus 60/368,988 of April 2, 2002), carried through the '609/'640 parent chain into this continuation. All prior-art dates below are tested against March 19, 2002.

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0. Threshold issue: which items in the page's "Prior Art" listing legally qualify

The Google Patents record for US9041737 supplies three relevant bodies of references: (i) the "prior art keywords" (electronic document, display area, predefined, predefined portion, display), (ii) the front-page "References Cited" list (US 5,005,119 Rumbaugh; US 5,038,138 Akiyama; US 5,026,097 Barrett; … US 6,182,… etc.), and (iii) the large "Families Citing this family" list. Three cautions before any § 103 mapping:

1. Self-family art is not prior art. The page prominently lists Lira references — WO 03/081458, US 7,193,609, US 7,872,640, US 9,678,621, US 10,365,785, etc. These are the same inventor/same family. They are not § 102 or § 103 prior art against US 9,041,737 and cannot be used in the combination. This is the single most important correction to make, because every public reexamination record in this family (e.g., Reexam 90/012,332/90/012,304) uses "Lira" as the snapping reference against someone else's claims — not against Lira's own claims.
2. Much of the citing list postdates 2002 and does not qualify. Items such as US 7,469,381 (Apple, filed 2007-01-07), US 8,095,879/Neonode, WO 2008/085848/085871 (Apple), US 7,735,016 (Microsoft "Directional focus navigation," priority 2002-11-12) and US 7,071,919's later relatives are after the critical date and cannot be relied on. Likewise Hillis, US 7,724,242, was filed Nov. 23, 2005 (per the Reexam 90/012,332 decision of record) — so Hillis is not available art against these 2002 claims, even though it was the primary reference against Apple's 2007-priority '915 patent. I flag this explicitly because the search record is saturated with Hillis/Nomura/Rubine/Makus combinations that were built for a 2007 priority date, and they cannot simply be transplanted here.
3. What does qualify (pre-March 19, 2002 documents appearing on/near the page): US 6,594,394 (Access Co., Displaying a Web Page on an Electronic Display Device Having a Limited Display Area, priority 2000-05-17); US 6,741,268 (NEC, Page Information Display Method and Apparatus, priority 1999-07-25); US 6,288,704 (Vegavista, Motion Detection and Tracking System to Control Navigation and Display of Object Viewers, priority 1999-06-07); US 6,590,594 (IBM, Window Scroll-bar, priority 1999-03-24); KR 20020038177 (LG, Method for Controlling a System Using a Touch Screen, priority 2000-11-15); US 6,509,907 (Denso, variable-speed scroll display, priority 1998-12-15); US 6,323,846 (Westerman, multi-touch, filed 1998); US 2002/0067346 (HP, GUI for Devices Having Small Tactile Displays, priority 2000-09-21); WO 01/29702 (Philips, Device and Method of Browsing an Image Collection, priority 1999-10-19); GB 2347200 (IBM, cursor control for touch pads, 1999); WO 02/01338 A1 (Intel, Providing a Scrolling Function for a Multiple Frame Web Page, published 3 Jan. 2002, priority 28 June 2000); and JP 2000-163031 (Nomura), published June 2000.

(Dates for the non-U.S. items are taken from the Unified Patents per-patent family pages and court exhibits indexed on the record; I could not independently pull every primary document, so treat the non-Nomura dates as high-but-not-perfect confidence.)

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1. Claim 1 broken into elements

Independent claims 6 (CRM) and 12 (device) recite the same four steps; 12 adds the structural elements touch screen display + non-transitory medium + processor, all of which are admitted prior art in the patent's own FIG. 18 description.

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2. Combination A — Small-screen columnar web browsing + touch navigation + positional snapping

Primary reference: US 6,594,394 (Access Co.) — displaying a web page on a limited-area display, including column/reflow handling.
Secondary 1 (touch control of navigation): US 6,288,704 (Vegavista) — motion tracking of a contact point used to control navigation/display of an object viewer; and/or KR 20020038177 (LG) — controlling a system through a touch screen.
Secondary 2 (snap/positional alignment): US 7,071,919 (Microsoft, Positional Scrolling, priority 2001-02-25) and/or US 6,590,594 (IBM, Window Scroll-bar, 1999) and/or WO 01/29702 (Philips, browsing an image collection with positional/indexed navigation).

Mapping.

• 1a/1b — US 6,594,394 and US 6,741,268 each disclose reformatting/displaying web content on a constrained display, including break-out into viewable content units; a PDA-sized window straddling two adjacent content units is the ordinary consequence of a window narrower than the page, a fact conceded in the patent's own Background (FIGS. 1C–1D).
• 1c — US 6,288,704 / KR 20020038177 disclose detecting a touch/contact and its trajectory on the display surface and using it to drive a scroll/navigation operation. Westerman US 6,323,846 and GB 2347200 supply the touchscreen subsystem itself.
• 1d — US 7,071,919 (positional scrolling) and US 6,590,594 (window scroll-bar) teach that a scroll/view position is quantized to defined positions rather than left where the user stopped; WO 01/29702 teaches navigating by indexed items of a collection. Applying this "snap to a defined content position" behavior to the column boundaries of a reformatted page yields 1d.

Motivation (KSR): The patent's own Background states the problem (a view straddling/partially showing a column is "difficult to view or read" — US 9,041,737, Detailed Description, FIG. 6). Aligning a viewport to content boundaries was a known ergonomic technique (window/scroll snapping; positional scrolling), and its application to a column-formatted page is "the mere application of a known technique to a piece of prior art ready for the improvement," with a predictable result (readable, aligned column). No new mechanism is required — only an alignment rule.

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3. Combination B — Intel frame-scrolling + small-tactile-display + touch + alignment

Primary: WO 02/01338 A1 (Intel) — simultaneously scrolling multiple frames in multiple windows and automatically stopping scrolling when a frame's beginning/end is displayed while another continues.
Secondary: US 2002/0067346 (HP, small tactile displays); US 6,288,704 or KR 20020038177 (touch detection); US 6,509,907 (Denso, variable-speed scrolling) for the touch-and-drag feel; WO 01/29702 (Philips) for stop-at-item behavior.

Why this is a strong combination for the "move … until aligned" step: Intel's reference is directed exactly at the problem of multiple content regions sharing one limited viewport and terminating scroll at a content boundary. A POSITA seeking to let a user "arrive cleanly" on one column of a reformatted multi-column page would look to a reference that already stops scrolling at a content-unit edge, and would implement the same rule on the horizontal axis. KSR also supplies the "design incentive" and "predictable results" rationales: just as the Intel system stops a frame at its end, stopping the viewport at the column's edge is the same solution applied to a twin problem (US 9,041,737 even claims a "similar horizontal alignment control" for the perpendicular axis at col. describing "A similar horizontal alignment control also may be provided").

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4. Combination C — Nomura + Rubine, plus a snapping reference (record-derived, with a timing fix)

The reexamination record for the sister Apple '915 patent rejected analogous touch-scroll claims over Nomura (JP 2000-163031) + Rubine (touch-event/gesture framework) and over those plus Lira for snapping. For US 9,041,737, this combination is available only if "Lira" is replaced by qualifying third-party art, because Lira is the inventor here.

• Nomura (JP 2000-163031, published 2000) — single-input scroll vs. multi-input gesture on a touchscreen; expressly qualifies as prior art at the 2002 date.
• Rubine (gesture-recognition publication) — event-object architecture for touch input; qualifies as a printed publication.
• Substitute snapping reference for Lira: US 7,071,919 (positional scrolling) or US 6,590,594 (window scroll-bar snapping), for the reason in § 2.

Result: Nomura + Rubine supply 1b–1c (touch, document scrolling on a display); the substituted snap reference supplies 1d. 1a is supplied by the column/reflow art (US 6,594,394 / US 6,741,268). Motivation: incorporating quantized "landing" positions into a touch-scroll interface improves the disorientation problem the art already recognized when content exceeds the viewport.

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5. Dependent-claim analysis

Claims 2–5, 19–28 (selectable graphical interface elements/icons, one per predefined portion; arranged left-to-right; bottom of display; right-most icon = last portion).

• These limitations are strongly suggested by the pre-2002 GUI art: scroll bars and bar-navigation elements with preset positions (US 6,590,594 IBM Window Scroll-bar; WO 01/29702 Philips indexed-collection navigation). The Wang reference discussed in the Cisco/PTAB petition of record (bar navigation element 134 controlling demarcation bars 130/132 to "preset positions") is likewise a navigation-element-per-region teaching, though I could not verify its filing date and would not rely on it without doing so.
• One-icon-per-column with spatial correspondence to the columns is, at most, a predictable presentation choice conveying portion count and relative position — squarely the kind of "arrangement of old elements" that KSR treats as obvious. The record confirms the PTO's own view: the examiner repeatedly leaned on the Lira disclosure itself for "the icons for the following or preceding logical columns."

Claims 29–30, 32–33, 36 (move until ONLY the first portion is viewable; centering; snapping into horizontal alignment).

• Centering a view on a selected content unit and snapping to it is the same teaching used for 1d; US 6,741,268 and WO 01/29702 both involve positioning a view relative to a selected content unit. This is an obvious design choice within the scope of the primary references.

Claims 16, 34, 37, 38 (the document is a web page; touch-and-drag input).

• The web-page limitation is expressly contemplated by US 6,594,394 (web page on limited display) and by the patent's own admitted background concerning HTML pages. Touch-and-drag scrolling on a PDA was notoriously well known and is admitted prior art in the specification itself (FIG. 6, stylus "touch-and-drag" scrolling). An admission in the specification is prior art against the applicant.

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6. Consolidated motivation-to-combine rationale (KSR factors)

1. Problem already framed in the art. The very defect the claims cure — a hand-scrolled viewport that leaves only part of a column visible (patent FIG. 6) — is stated in the Background, so the motivation to fix it is explicit and not hindsight.
2. Known technique, predictable result. "Snap"/quantize-to-position was known for windows, scroll bars and indexed collections (US 7,071,919; US 6,590,594; WO 01/29702). Applying it on the horizontal axis of a column-formatted page is the "predictable use of prior-art elements according to known methods" (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417).
3. Design incentive / finite solutions. For a touch UI with columns wider-than-or-commensurate-with the window, the practical options for arriving at a readable column are (a) free scrolling (the admitted problem) or (b) alignment to a content boundary. The art pointed to (b).
4. Industry momentum. Between 1998–2001 the field was actively combining small touchscreens (Westerman; GB 2347200; HP 2002/0067346), touch-driven scrolling (Vegavista; LG; Denso; Nomura) and content-reflow/column browsing (Access; NEC; Intel WO 02/01338).
5. Secondary considerations are thin on the present record. No verified evidence of commercial success, long-felt need, copying, or nexus tying these specific claims to a product was found (consistent with the earlier sections; the patent is Expired–Lifetime, anticipated expiration Dec. 2, 2022, and subject to a terminal disclaimer).

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7. Weak points and explicit uncertainties (do not overstate)

• Priority/art-date is the whole ballgame. These claims are only obvious over pre-2002 art. The most frequently cited "killers" in the family's reexam record (Hillis US 7,724,242, filed 2005; Apple's '381 art; Neonode; Ording) do not qualify here. Any § 103 position that silently imports them is defective.
• Inventor's-own-work disqualification. Lira/WO 03/081458 and the whole '609/'640/… family cannot be used, notwithstanding that they are the most on-point references for 1d.
• Element 1b ("at least part of a first and at least part of a second portion") is the least-cleanly met limitation. It is essentially a result of window/page sizing, conceded in the Background; an examiner or court could treat it as inherently present in any limited-width viewport or, alternatively, require a reference that expressly shows two adjacent logical columns in one view. This is the limitation most worth an express teaching in the primary reference.
• Verification gaps. I confirmed Nomura = JP 2000-163031 and Hillis = US 7,724,242 (filed 2005) from the Federal Circuit opinion and the Reexam 90/012,332 decision, and WO 02/01338 A1 = Intel, published Jan. 3, 2002 from a court exhibit. Dates for US 6,594,394, US 6,741,268, US 6,288,704, US 6,590,594, KR 20020038177, US 7,071,919, and US 6,509,907 come from the Unified Patents per-patent pages and are not double-checked against primary documents — verify before filing.

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Bottom line

On the record available and using only pre-March-19-2002 art from the page's prior-art listing:

• Claim 1 (and 6/12) would have been obvious over US 6,594,394 (or US 6,741,268) in view of US 6,288,704 or KR 20020038177 and US 7,071,919 (or US 6,590,594) / WO 01/29702, and separately over WO 02/01338 (Intel) in view of a touchscreen-navigation reference plus a positional-snapping reference — because the art already taught viewing web content in column-form on limited touch displays, driving it by touch, and quantizing a view to a content position, with an express motivation to prevent partial-column views.
• Claims 2–5 and 19–28 (navigation icons) and claims 29–38 (centering / touch-and-drag / web page) are obvious as predictable variations over the same combinations.
• The strongest record-borne § 103 theory for the snap feature (Nomura + Rubine + "Lira-style" snapping) must be modified here by substituting a non-family snapping reference, because the inventor cannot be his own prior art. The Hillis-based combinations that dominate the family's reexam record are unusable at the 2002 date.