Invalidity dossier
US 9183538
Method and system for quick square roof reporting
Current assignee: Pictometry International Corp
Added 10/9/2026, 12:01:28 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 9,183,538 B2
Title: Method and system for quick square roof reporting
Patent number: US 9,183,538 B2
Application number: US 13/424,054
Inventor(s): Chris T. Thornberry; Dale R. Thornberry
Assignee/current assignee: Pictometry International Corp. (original assignee: Pictometry International Corp.)
Priority/filing date: 2012-03-19
Publication date: 2015-11-10
Adjusted expiration (as listed): 2033-02-16
Classifications include: G06Q 50/16 (real estate); G06Q 10/10 (office automation); G06Q 30/0631 (recommending goods or services); G06Q 50/08 (construction); G06T 7/62 (geometric attributes of area, perimeter, diameter or volume)
Purpose. Per the supplied definitions, residential and/or commercial property owners approaching a major roofing project may be unsure of the amount of material needed or the next step. Owners typically contact contractors for a site visit; each contractor must be physically present to determine material needs and/or time, making estimates laborious and subject to contractor timing, weather, contractor education, and the like. Estimates may also vary between contractors in estimated square footage, causing variance in supply ordering. Images are used to measure objects and structures and to determine geographic locations of points within an image when preparing estimates for construction projects such as roofing, potentially increasing estimation speed and reducing on-site labor and fuel costs.
Plain-language scope. The disclosure concerns a roof estimator reporting system (FIG. 1) with one or more memories (FIG. 2) and program logic (FIGS. 3–6), and describes a slope factor chart for determining pitch factors (FIG. 7). Prior-art keywords listed include roof, readable medium, host system, computer readable, and geographic location.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9183538/en
What the excerpt does not establish. It provides no claims, no detailed description, no figures' full content, and no prior-art references beyond keywords. It therefore does not establish the specific claimed scope, the estimating method's steps, or any legal conclusion. It also does not establish the accuracy of listed dates, assignees, or legal status, which the source itself flags as assumptions or non-legal conclusions.
Generated 10/10/2026, 12:00:54 AM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.