US 9349120

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 9349120, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me search for any 2026 CAFC docket activity involving this patent, plus additional claim details.

Let me check specifically for any Federal Circuit 2026 docket and the PTAB outcome for this patent.

US Patent 9,349,120 — Analyst Summary

Bottom line: I could confirm the bibliographic and claim details of US 9,349,120 from authoritative sources, but I found no 2026 CAFC docket activity naming this patent. I flag that explicitly rather than infer it.

Bibliographic data (US9349120B2)

Assignee caveat: The granted patent lists BlackBerry Limited as assignee (confirmed on the face of the PDF). Google Patents' "current assignee" field reflects the 2023 chain of transfers to Malikie Innovations Ltd. Because Google notes these assignments "may be inaccurate," treat current ownership as likely-but-not-verified.

Abstract

"Methods, systems, and computer programming products are provided for silencing message threads. Incoming messages related to the same matter are grouped into one or more message threads. A user can select to silence a message thread. Once a message thread has been silenced, the user will no longer receive notifications of new messages added to the thread. Methods, systems, and computer programming products display new incoming electronic messages flagged as silenced in the inbox together with any message thread not flagged as silenced."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 24 claims. Independent claims are 1 (system), 13 (method), and 24 (non-transitory computer-readable medium). Per the RPX and Justia claim listings, claim 1 as issued is the fuller version (the "Summary" section of the spec shows an earlier, shorter formulation).

Claim 1 — System (apparatus).
A communication system (processor + non-transitory readable media + communications subsystem) where the software causes the processor to:

1. Receive a selected message thread for silencing (user picks a thread);
2. Activate a flag in the non-transitory media associated with that thread, the flag meaning "silenced";
3. Determine that a new incoming message belongs to that selected thread;
4. Determine the thread is flagged as silenced by reading the flag;
5. Override an already-enabled notification setting so no receipt notification fires for that thread's new messages; and
6. Display the new message in the inbox alongside non-silenced threads, while the silenced thread's messages are shown in a different manner (the spec describes "greyed out"/diminished appearance) — i.e., silenced messages still appear in the inbox, just without alerts and visually de-emphasized.

Claim 13 — Method.
Substantively the same process cast as method steps: receive one or more threads selected for silencing → activate a flag per selected thread → receive a new incoming message → identify it as belonging to a selected thread → determine the thread is flagged silenced → override a currently-enabled notification setting so no receipt notification is activated → display the new message in the inbox with any non-silenced thread, with silenced-thread items shown differently (while further notifications are silenced).

Claim 24 — Non-transitory computer-readable medium.
A CRM storing processing instructions that, when executed, cause a data processor to perform the method for silencing notifications for incoming electronic messages — the software-article counterpart to claim 13.

Depended-on concepts worth noting: claims 2–3 (group discussion; silencing affects only the user who flagged it), claim 4 (group inbox or email inbox), claims 5–6 (display; diminished appearance), claims 7–8 (unflagging/reactivation, retention of message, resumption of notifications), claim 9 (wireless device), claim 10 (auditory/visual/physical alerts), claims 11–12 (default inbox view; storing message in inbox).

Litigation / administrative posture — and the honest uncertainty

• No CAFC 2026 docket for this patent found. My searches returned no Federal Circuit case in 2026 naming US 9,349,120. The Law360 July 2026 item about the PTO rejecting a Unified Patents reexamination request against a Malikie/BlackBerry video-coding patent is a different patent and should not be conflated with this one.
• The Google Patents family-litigation data lists earlier proceedings, not 2026 ones: PTAB IPR2019-00706 (Unified Patents, final written decision), C.D. Cal. case 2:19-cv-01444, and Federal Circuit appeals 20-1256 and 21-1124. I could not retrieve the substance/outcome of IPR2019-00706 within my search budget, so I won't characterize its result.
• General counsel dockets (e.g., a 2026 [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.) v. Key Patent Innovations appeal involving Malikie/Key Patent Innovations) appear in search results involving Malikie, but I found no link tying that docket to patent 9,349,120.

Explicit uncertainty statements: (1) I could not retrieve the full verbatim text of claim 24 or positively verify every dependent claim's current wording — the claim characterizations above rely on RPX/Justia claim listings and the granted-PDF description. (2) I did not confirm any 2026 CAFC filing for this patent; absence of a search hit is not proof that none exists. If you need a definitive answer on 2026 CAFC activity, the authoritative check is the CAFC docket search (cafc.uscourts.gov) and USPTO Patent Center / PTAB API for application 12/713,577.

Sources: Google Patents US9349120B2; granted-PDF US009349120B2 (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com); RPX Insight US9349120B2; Justia Patents #9349120.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 9349120. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search for the specific cases identified in the patent record.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,349,120

Patent: U.S. 9,349,120 B2 — "System and method for silencing notifications for a message thread" (filed Feb. 26, 2010; granted May 24, 2016; priority Apr. 8, 2009). Original assignee Research In Motion / BlackBerry; now recorded under Malikie Innovations Ltd.

Below is what I could confirm for the specific patent 9,349,120 only. I have not folded in similarly‑numbered patents (e.g., Netlist's U.S. 7,619,912, or the Lex Tex / Barmag "912" patent, both of which surfaced in searching but are unrelated).

1. District Court litigation

(a) BlackBerry Limited v. Twitter, Inc.

• Plaintiff: BlackBerry Limited
• Defendant: Twitter, Inc.
• Jurisdiction / Court: U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Western Division)
• Case No.: 2:19-cv-01444-GW-(KSx) (Judge George H. Wu; Mag. J. Karen L. Stevenson)
• Filing date: February 27, 2019
• Patent at issue: Yes — the Complaint/First Amended Complaint asserted seven patents including U.S. 9,349,120 (the "'120 Patent"). The patent record itself links this case (2:19-cv-01444) to 9,349,120.
• Outcome / Status: In its Oct. 1, 2019 ruling on Twitter's § 101 motion to dismiss, the court denied dismissal as to the '120 Patent (finding it not drawn to an abstract idea at Alice Step One). The case was thereafter resolved by joint stipulation — on January 2, 2020, the court (1) vacated its earlier order invalidating claims of U.S. 8,676,929, 8,296,351, 8,572,182 and 8,825,777, and (2) dismissed all claims and counterclaims with prejudice, each party bearing its own costs/fees.
• Sources: Docket Alarm (2:19-cv-01444, Docs. 51, 54, 59, 60); Reuters, "BlackBerry sues Twitter for patent infringement"; Google Patents litigation record.

(b) BlackBerry Limited v. Facebook, Inc., et al.

• Plaintiff: BlackBerry Limited
• Defendants: Facebook, Inc. and affiliated entities (WhatsApp, Instagram)
• Jurisdiction / Court: U.S. District Court, Central District of California (related to the Twitter case; Judge George H. Wu)
• Case No.: 2:18-cv-01844-GW-(KSx)
• Filing date: March 2018
• Patent at issue: Yes — the '120 Patent (9,349,120) was among the asserted patents. In the Twitter ruling the court expressly incorporated "its previous ruling on Facebook Defendants' § 101 motion to dismiss and … its concurrently‑issued ruling in the Facebook Case" finding the '120 claims not drawn to an abstract idea.
• Outcome / Status: I could confirm the § 101 rulings referencing the '120 Patent, but I could not confirm from the sources retrieved the final disposition of this case as it pertains to the '120 Patent. Treat the outcome as unverified.

(c) BlackBerry Limited v. Snap Inc. — uncertain, flagged

• Case No.: 2:18-cv-02693-GW-(KSx) (C.D. Cal.), filed 2018.
• This case is related to (a) and (b), and the seven‑patent family asserted against Twitter overlaps with the Facebook/Snap campaigns. However, I could not confirm that U.S. 9,349,120 specifically was asserted against Snap. I am listing it only as a related matter; do not treat the '120 Patent as confirmed in the Snap case without checking the Snap complaint.

2. USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (post‑grant proceeding)

Facebook, Inc. v. BlackBerry Limited — IPR2019-00706

• Petitioner: Facebook, Inc. (with Instagram, LLC and WhatsApp, Inc.)
• Patent Owner: BlackBerry Limited
• Forum: PTAB, Inter Partes Review
• Case No.: IPR2019-00706
• Filing date: February 19, 2019
• Patent challenged: U.S. 9,349,120
• Outcome / Status: A Final Written Decision issued (reported by IPWatchdog's Sept. 9, 2020 roundup, listing "IPR2019-00706 | Final Written Decision | Blackberry Limited | Facebook, Inc., Instagram, LLC, WhatsApp, Inc.").
• Online record: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2019-00706

(Note: this is an administrative validity challenge, not infringement litigation, but it is directly tied to enforcement of the '120 Patent.)

3. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

The Google Patents litigation record for 9,349,120 lists two Federal Circuit appeals:

• No. 20-1256
• No. 21-1124

These are recorded as tied to this patent's litigation (likely arising out of the Facebook/Snap/Twitter district‑court matters and/or the IPR2019-00706 Final Written Decision). I could not independently confirm from the sources retrieved the parties, the underlying decision appealed, or the disposition of either appeal. I am reporting the case numbers exactly as listed, without guessing their subject matter.

Summary table

Caveats and limitations

• I was unable to query PACER or the CAFC docket directly in this session; the above relies on Google Patents' litigation entries, Docket Alarm/UniCourt dockets, court PDFs, the PTAB portal, and news reporting. Verify items (2), (4) and (5) against primary dockets before relying on them.
• I found no evidence that current owner Malikie Innovations (which acquired this patent from BlackBerry via OT Patent Escrow in 2023) has asserted 9,349,120 against any party. That does not rule out such suits; it means I could not confirm any.
• Per your instruction, I have not auto‑corrected identifiers and have excluded the unrelated Netlist U.S. 7,619,912 and Lex Tex "912" matters from these results.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 9,349,120 ("System and method for silencing notifications for a message thread")

Discrepancy flag up front. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block says the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That is wrong as a factual matter — the public record shows a fully-litigated IPR (filed, instituted, FWD, appealed, affirmed, mandate). I surfaced it by web search as instructed. The ODP gap is likely an ingest/indexing issue tied to the 2023 assignments (BlackBerry → OT Patent Escrow → Malikie Innovations). Do not rely on the ODP "no activity" default for this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 9,349,120: one (1). Breakdown: 1 claims-invalidated (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp v. BlackBerry, IPR2019-00706 — all challenged claims held unpatentable, affirmed by the Federal Circuit), 0 active, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied, 0 claims sustained. Bottom line for a defendant: the asserted claim set of the '120 is dead. The only independent claim(s) and most dependents were cancelled after a Rule 36 affirmance; a demand letter built on the IPR-challenged claims is asserting claims that no longer exist. Only the handful of claims the petitioner chose not to challenge remain as live claim scope — and they are narrow dependents, not the inventive core.

IPR2019-00706 — Facebook, Inc., Instagram, LLC, and WhatsApp, Inc. v. BlackBerry Limited

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319). Complete patent-scorecard entry: Docket Alarm/PTAB case page; Unified Patents PTAB portal record.
• Filed: 2019-02-19 (notice of filing date accorded 2019-03-08). The petition was triggered by BlackBerry's infringement suit BlackBerry Limited v. Facebook, Inc., et al., No. 2:18-cv-01844-GW-KS (C.D. Cal.), where the '120 was one of nine asserted patents.
• Status (verbatim from the structured/docket data): "Final Written Decision" / outcome recorded as "Unpatentable." Case terminated 2020-09-01. Plain English: the Board cancelled the challenged claims, and the Federal Circuit affirmed.
• Judge panel: The Board's consolidated order in the companion BlackBerry/Facebook IPRs (Paper dated 2019-10-31, covering IPR2019-00516, -00528, -00706, -00899) lists APJs Michael R. Zecher, Miriam L. Quinn, Robert L. Kinder, Jacqueline T. Harlow, and Aaron W. Moore. Third-party reporting of this case lists the merits panel as Moore, Zecher, Quinn (case analytics). I could not retrieve the FWD cover page to confirm the exact three-judge composition — verify on PTAB E2E before quoting a panel.
• Petition grounds (all § 103 obviousness; no § 102 or § 112 challenges were pleaded in the relief request):
  • Ground 1 — claims 1–3, 5, 7–8, 10, 13–15, 17, 19–21, 24 obvious over Dallas (Alastair Dallas, Special Edition Using Collabra Share 2 (1995)), Brown (Special Edition Using Netscape Communicator 4 (1997)), and Kent (C++ Demystified (2004)).
  • Ground 2 — claim 9 over Dallas/Brown/Kent in further view of Bott (Using Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (2001)).
  • Ground 3 — claims 11 and 22 over Dallas/Brown/Kent in further view of Mann (How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (2007)).
  • Grounds 4–6 — alternative obviousness formulations adding LeBlanc (Using Eudora (2d ed. 1997)) to shore up the "notification" limitations.
  • Relief requested: cancellation of claims 1–3, 5, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, and 24 (21 claims). The petition summary is at Ex Parte analytics. Key constructions briefed: "flag" (Petitioner: "status indicator"; PO: "a mark or code indicating a status or condition") and "notification" (Petitioner: plain meaning; PO: narrower "user alert").
• Institution decision: Instituted 2019-09-04 (Board "Trial Instituted Document," Paper 9; scheduling order Paper 10 the same day). Per Mealey's, the Board found petitioners "showed a reasonable likelihood that they will prevail in establishing that at least one claim" is unpatentable. I could not verify whether institution was granted on every challenged claim and every ground — pull Paper 9 to confirm scope (specifically whether any ground was denied or the panel exercised its § 314(a) discretion).
• Final Written Decision: issued 2020-09-01, outcome unpatentable. Oral hearing held; hearing transcript at Paper 34 (2020-08-07); hearing order Paper 28 (2020-05-20). IPWatchdog's FWD roundup lists the decision at ipwatchdog.com.
  • Claim-level granularity — caveat. The public case record confirms the outcome (all challenged claims unpatentable), but I was unable to retrieve the FWD's verbatim "ORDERED that …" clause, so I will not fabricate the exact claim list from the decision itself. Based on the petition's relief request, the claims at issue were 1–3, 5, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, and 24. The FWD text should be pulled from PTAB E2E and quoted before it is used in any filing. Claims 4, 6, 12, 16, 18, and 23 do not appear in the petition's challenge list and therefore were not adjudicated — do not represent that the FWD addressed them.
  • The substantive thrust, as summarized publicly: the Board credited the Dallas/Collabra Share "ignore thread" disclosure as teaching per-thread suppression of new-message indicators, with Kent supplying the Boolean flag implementation and Brown supplying the teaching that ignored threads keep receiving messages in the background. That is the reasoning that killed the claims.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Trial ran to a merits FWD and then to appeal.
• Appeal: Yes. Patent Owner's Notice of Appeal filed 2020-10-28 (Paper 36). Federal Circuit No. 2021-1124, captioned BlackBerry Limited v. Hirshfeld (the Director intervened as appellee — the Facebook petitioners did not appear on appeal). Argued by James M. Glass (Quinn Emanuel); Monica Barnes Lateef for the PTO Solicitor. Disposition: AFFIRMED, per curiam (Moore, Chief Judge, Clevinger and Chen), Rule 36 judgment entered 2021-11-08 — a nonprecedential, no-opinion affirmance. Sources: CourtListener opinion page and the Rule 36 PDF. The Board's docket records the Federal Circuit mandate and a Trial Certificate Checklist on 2022-07-25, consistent with a § 318(b) certificate cancelling the challenged claims — pull the certificate from PTAB E2E to confirm the cancellation date.
  • Separate, unverified CAFC docket. Google Patents also links CAFC No. 20-1256 to this family. I could not confirm what that appeal involved (most likely an unrelated BlackBerry/PTO matter, not the '120 FWD, since the '120 appeal is 21-1124). Do not assume it is part of the '120 record without pulling the docket.
• Defensive value: Decisive. Every claim the petitioner chose to attack was held unpatentable and the holding was affirmed. If a current demand letter or complaint asserts any of claims 1–3, 5, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, or 24, the assertion is directed at cancelled claims — and because the invalidity determination was affirmed on appeal, the patent owner is poorly positioned to relitigate it (non-mutual issue preclusion against the patentee is a live argument). The only residual risk is the untested dependent claims.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '120. Cancelled / adjudicated unpatentable: claims 1–3, 5, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, and 24 (subject to confirming the FWD's ORDERED clause and the § 318(b) certificate). The independent claim(s) and the bulk of the dependent set are gone — including claim 1, which carried the "override a currently-enabled notification setting" core of the disclosure quoted in the patent's own summary of the invention. Untested: claims 4, 6, 12, 16, 18, and 23 (per the petition's relief request). Those are narrow dependents; they were never the subject of an institution or FWD, so they are neither cancelled nor blessed. Practically, the patent has been reduced to a rump set of dependents that add limitations on top of now-dead independent claims — a structurally weak assertion target, but not a zero.

Estoppel landscape. Under § 315(e)(2), Facebook, Inc., Instagram, LLC, WhatsApp, Inc., and their privies are estopped in civil actions from asserting any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised — which, given the breadth of Grounds 1–6, is essentially the entire printed-publication art space (Dallas, Brown, Kent, Bott, Mann, LeBlanc, and the dictionary/textbook references). For a new defendant (e.g., one now facing Malikie Innovations Limited, the current assignee following the 2023 BlackBerry → OT Patent Escrow → Malikie chain), § 315(e)(2) does not bar a fresh IPR on the surviving claims, and the petitioner estoppel does not travel to unrelated parties. Critically, the FWD/record is a public roadmap: the Dallas/Collabra "ignore thread" teaching plus a Kent-style flag is a ready-made § 103 attack that any new defendant can adopt in district court or in a new IPR against claims 4/6/12/16/18/23. Watch two procedural traps: § 315(b) bars a petitioner served with an infringement complaint more than one year earlier, and § 315(a)(1) bars a petitioner who filed a DJ action first.

Pattern signals. This was a campaign IPR, not a one-off: the same Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp petitioner group simultaneously challenged sibling BlackBerry patents in IPR2019-00516 and IPR2019-00528 (US 8,279,173) and IPR2019-00899 (US 8,301,713) — all to defend the C.D. Cal. case. No defensive aggregator was the petitioner here. The Google Patents page's "Petitioner: Unified Patents PTAB Data" line is a data-source attribution, not a party; do not describe Unified Patents as the challenger. The patent owner (BlackBerry, via Quinn Emanuel) appealed and lost on a Rule 36 affirmance — so this is not a case where the patentee ran a successful appellate counterattack; the opposite. The patent's current owner, Malikie Innovations, acquired it as part of a large monetization package, which means the surviving dependent claims could still be dusted off in a low-value assertion campaign — the IPR history is your best defensive asset.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull and quote the FWD disposition verbatim. Get Paper ~35 from PTAB E2E and quote the "ORDERED that … have been shown to be unpatentable" clause exactly, plus the § 318(b) cancellation certificate (Board docket shows the mandate + trial certificate checklist at 2022-07-25). If your demand letter cites claims 1–3, 5, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, or 24, attach both documents and cite the Rule 36 affirmance (No. 2021-1124, 2021-11-08).
2. Verify institution scope and panel. Confirm from Paper 9 (institution) and the FWD cover page exactly which claims/grounds were instituted, and the true three-judge panel composition, before representing either in court.
3. Confirm what, if anything, survives. Obtain the cancellation certificate and the current claim listing for the '120. If claims 4, 6, 12, 16, 18, or 23 are asserted, run the Dallas/Brown/Kent/Kent-flag combination against them immediately — the FWD reasoning is directly transferable and a follow-on IPR is available to a defendant not in privity with the 2019 petitioners.
4. No pending trial milestones. There are no active AIA proceedings on the '120, so there is no institution deadline, oral hearing, or statutory one-year FWD deadline to track. Any new IPR you file starts its own clock (institution decision at ~6 months, FWD at 12 months from institution).
5. Do not rely on ODP silence. Because ODP returned no proceedings for this patent despite a five-plus-year PTAB history, run a manual PTAB E2E / Google Patents "family has litigation" check (including IPR2019-00706, 21-1124, and the unre-

Provenance/confidence note: Petition grounds, claim lists, docket events, institution and FWD dates, panel names, and the Federal Circuit Rule 36 affirmance are grounded in the sources linked above. The one substantive gap is the FWD's verbatim claim-level ORDERED text and the exact three-judge panel — I did not retrieve those documents and have flagged every place where that matters rather than filling the gap by inference.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 9349120, starting with the authoritative USPTO records and cross-referencing litigation/NPE databases.

I have the core reel/frame data. Let me dig into the inventor-to-RIM assignment, the BlackBerry change-of-name record, and the litigation/NPE context.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 9349120 B2 ("System and method for silencing notifications for a message thread")

Verification entry point: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number or application 12/713,577). Mirror index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Caveat on completeness: I reconstructed this chain from the patent's own legal-events record, an assignment recitation filed in the family's PTAB papers, the BlackBerry 8-K/press release, and UK IPO (GB/EP) counterpart records. I was not able to pull the live Assignment Center detail pages for every link. Where I could not confirm a reel/frame, I say so rather than invent one. Reel/frame values below are only those with a citable source.

Inventors

• Unusual patterns: None detected. This is a solo-inventor application out of a large corporate R&D shop, with an ordinary employment assignment to the applicant 75 days after filing (execution date not confirmed; recorded 2010-05-12). There is no evidence that the inventor departed the assignee within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-side reversion or later inventor assignment in the chain. The "inventors bail out then portfolio is fire-sold" pattern is not present here.

Original assignee

Research In Motion Limited (renamed BlackBerry Limited effective 2013-07-09; recorded with USPTO 2014-11-05 as a Change of Name).

• Product embodying the claims: Yes — the patent is directed to silencing per-thread notifications in a group inbox, and the specification expressly names BlackBerry™ Groups (photo uploads, lists, member-location discussions) as the implementation vehicle. BBM/BlackBerry messaging plus the BlackBerry Groups group-site feature map directly onto the described embodiment.
• Primary line of business: Handset maker and enterprise mobility/secure messaging provider at filing; today a public (NYSE/TSX: BB) enterprise software company focused on IoT (QNX) and cybersecurity.
• Status: Operating and solvent as of today. It did not enter bankruptcy; it divested this patent as a voluntary monetization of non-core IP (see 2023 events below).

Assignment timeline

Note on the first two links: Google Patents reproduces the USPTO recording dates and conveyance types but not the reel/frame strings. I did not retrieve the reel/frame for the 2010 inventor assignment or the 2014 change-of-name record, and I will not fabricate them.

• Executed ~2010 (date not confirmed) / recorded 2010-05-12 — Reel/frame not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Kalu Onuka Kalu (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Research In Motion Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved from sources accessed
  • Context: Ordinary employment/induction assignment of the application to the corporate applicant.

• Executed 2013-07-09 / recorded 2014-11-05 — Reel/frame not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (no change in beneficial ownership)
  • Assignor: Research In Motion Limited
  • Assignee: BlackBerry Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate rebrand — RIM → BlackBerry; not a transfer of interest.

• (2016-05-24 — patent issues as US 9349120 B2 to BlackBerry Limited)

• Executed 2023-03-20 / recorded 2023-04-27 — Reel 063471 / 0474

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: BlackBerry Limited
  • Assignee: OT Patent Escrow, LLC (200 West Madison, 37th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606)
  • Correspondent: not confirmed from sources retrieved — a Richard J. Botos signature appears on a 2023 filing in this patent family (dated 2023-12-27), but I cannot confirm Botos is the Assignment Center correspondent of record on this reel/frame. Flagging for direct confirmation rather than asserting it.
  • Context: Structured carve-out sale — BlackBerry's ~32,000 non-core patents routed through an escrow vehicle ahead of closing on the Malikie deal.

• Executed 2023-03-20 / recorded 2023-06-16 — Reel 064015 / 0001

  • Conveyance: Assignment — Nunc Pro Tunc
  • Assignor: OT Patent Escrow, LLC
  • Assignee: Malikie Innovations Limited
  • Correspondent: not confirmed (see note above)
  • Context: Escrow → acquirer step-up; the "nunc pro tunc" recital back-dates the transfer to the deed date (2023-03-20).

• Executed 2023-03-20 / recorded 2023-06-19 — Reel 064066 / 0001

  • Conveyance: Assignment — Nunc Pro Tunc
  • Assignor: BlackBerry Limited
  • Assignee: Malikie Innovations Limited
  • Correspondent: not confirmed (see note above)
  • Context: Direct BlackBerry → Malikie belt-and-suspenders link running in parallel with the escrow chain, both back-dated to the same deed.

• Recorded 2023-09-05 — Reel 064806 / 0669 (correcting 063471/0474)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment
  • Assignor: BlackBerry Limited → Assignee: OT Patent Escrow, LLC
  • Context: Cover-sheet cleanup (removal of application no. 12,817,157 from the reel); confirms the BlackBerry → escrow conveyance.

• Recorded 2023-09-05 — Reel 064807 / 0001 (correcting 064015/0001)

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment
  • Assignor: OT Patent Escrow, LLC → Assignee: Malikie Innovations Limited
  • Context: Cover-sheet cleanup confirming the escrow → Malikie conveyance.

Current owner of record: Malikie Innovations Limited (The Glasshouses GH2, 92 Georges Street Lower, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin A96 VR66, Ireland), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Key Patent Innovations Limited ("KPI"). Expiration adjusted to 2032-03-24.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9349120
    2009 : Provisional application filed
    2010 : Non-provisional filed by RIM
         : Kalu assigns to Research In Motion
    2013 : RIM renamed BlackBerry Limited
    2016 : Patent issued to BlackBerry
    2019 : Facebook files IPR2019-00706
    2023 : BlackBerry carves out portfolio
         : Escrow LLC receives 063471 0474
         : Malikie receives 064015 0001
         : Malikie receives 064066 0001
         : Corrective assignments recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (strong).
   Reel 063471/0474 moved the patent from operating company BlackBerry Limited to OT Patent Escrow, LLC, a purpose-built Chicago escrow vehicle (200 West Madison, 37th Fl.), then Reel 064015/0001 lifted it to Malikie Innovations Limited, expressly described in BlackBerry's own release as "a newly-formed subsidiary of Key Patent Innovations Limited… a leading intellectual property monetization company." A newly formed single-purpose buying LLC funded by a third-party investment firm (>$30B AUM) is the textbook structure.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
   Current assignee Malikie Innovations Ltd. is an IP-monetization entity actively litigating; e.g., Malikie Innovations Ltd. and Key Patent Innovations Ltd. v. MARA Holdings, Inc., W.D. Tex. No. 7:25-cv-00222 (filed 2025-05-12). It is not on the legacy Acacia/Marathon/IV rosters, but it is a demonstrated high-volume assertion vehicle for the carved-out BlackBerry portfolio.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
   I could not confirm the Assignment Center correspondent of record for any 2023 reel/frame from the sources available. A Richard J. Botos signature appears on a 2023 document in this patent family. Recurrence across links is not established, and I will not manufacture a finding from a single unverified name.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (strong).
   Four recordals in a ~4.5-month window (recorded 2023-04-27, 2023-06-16, 2023-06-19, 2023-09-05), running through a chained structure (BlackBerry → OT Patent Escrow → Malikie and BlackBerry → Malikie directly), all back-dated by nunc pro tunc recitals to a single deed dated 2023-03-20. Multiple LLCs, staggered filings, duplicate paths — classic cascading structure.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR / likely present in economic effect.
   The patent was in BlackBerry's hands when Facebook filed IPR2019-00706 (Petitioner Facebook, Patent Owner BlackBerry). The 2023 transfer to Malikie precedes Malikie's assertion campaign, but I could not confirm a suit that names this patent post-transfer, so I mark this unclear rather than assert it.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
   BlackBerry was a solvent, publicly traded operating company; the 2023 deal was a Voluntary non-core IP sale (8-K, March 21, 2023), not a Chapter 7/11 liquidation. Contrast Kodak/Nortel-style proceedings — none here.

7. Privateering — PRESENT.
   BlackBerry sold the portfolio, took a license-back, kept use of its products, and retained a large profit-share: $170M at closing + $30M + royalties of 8%/15%/30%/50% of profits, capped near $700M (BlackBerry 8-K, 2023-03-21). The operating company monetizes its legacy patents through a non-practicing vehicle against the rest of the industry while continuing to sell product — the defining economics of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator / anti-NPE — NOT PRESENT.
   The chain terminates at Malikie Innovations Ltd., an asserting monetizer. It does not end at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized.

Related litigation on the family (from the patent's own legal-events record): PTAB IPR2019-00706 (Facebook, Inc. v. BlackBerry Limited, filed 2019-02-19); CAFC Nos. 20-1256 and 21-1124; C.D. Cal. 2:19-cv-01444.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain runs from a genuine operating company (Research In Motion → BlackBerry Limited) into a purpose-built acquisition structure and terminates at a pure monetization vehicle. Two or more strong signals are independently supported by citable records: the shell-entity/escrow transfer at Reel 063471/0474 → Reel 064015/0001, and the cascading, nunc-pro-tunc transfers recorded 2023-04-27 through 2023-09-05 that consolidate the patent in Malikie Innovations Limited, a "newly-formed subsidiary of Key Patent Innovations," further reinforced by BlackBerry's own license-back + profit-share disclosure (8-K, 2023-03-21) that makes this a textbook privateering disposition. Current owner of record: Malikie Innovations Limited per Reel 064066/0001 and Reel 064807/0001.

Verify independently at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 9,349,120) — and in particular confirm the correspondent of record fields for Reels 063471/0474, 064015/0001, 064066/0001, 064806/0669 and 064807/0001, which I flagged as unverified above.

I'll research the cited prior art references for US 9,349,120, starting with the USPTO/Google Patents citation data.

Let me get the full citation list and details on the key references, including the IPR grounds.

I have the core citation list. Now let me characterize the individual references.

I hit the tool-call limit mid-research, so I'll give you what I verified plus explicit flags on what I could not verify. I will not invent reference titles or abstracts.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,349,120 B2 ("Silencing notifications for a message thread")

0. USPTO lookup result (the specific number requested)

This is a different patent from US 9,426,120 (Kim et al.), which also appears in PTAB filings. Do not conflate them.

1. Sources & method

I cross-checked three sources for the citation list: the Google Patents "Patent Citations" block, the Justia "Referenced Cited" table, and the PTAB petition exhibit list for IPR2019-00706. A caveat up front: I did not have search budget to open the granted-PDF "References Cited" page itself, so I cannot guarantee the Justia list is byte-for-byte identical to the list printed on the face of the patent. Treat the table below as the citation set as reported by these databases, not as a certified copy of the printed front page.

2. U.S. patent documents cited against US 9,349,120

Dates below are publication/issue dates as listed in the cited databases (not filing dates, unless noted). "Description" is supplied only where I independently confirmed it from a search hit; otherwise it is flagged [not independently verified].

Granted U.S. patents

Published U.S. applications

3. Non-patent literature printed as cited

Per Justia, the front-page NPL consists of foreign prosecution communications, not technical publications:

• Matias Erny Reichl Hoffman, Response to Office Communication under Art. 94(3) EPC, filed 2011-07-07, re EP App. 10154855.0.
• Extended European Search Report under Rule 62, dated 2010-05-07 (same EP family).
• MERH IP response to Rule 62 communication, dated 2010-08-05.
• EPO communication under Art. 94(3) EPC, EP 10 154 855.0, dated 2011-03-04.
• Norton Rose response to Examination Report, CA 2,694,885, dated 2013-05-17.
• CIPO Examination Reports, CA 2,694,885, dated 2012-11-19 and 2013-12-17.

These are procedural/prosecution documents (EP 2249530 / EP 2239696 and CA 2,694,885 are the foreign counterparts). They are not §102 prior art in themselves, but they show the same art was considered in the EP/CA families.

4. The prior art that was actually litigated — IPR2019-00706

This is more probative than the citation list, because it is the art a petitioner was willing to stake an invalidity case on.

• Proceeding: Facebook, Inc. (and Instagram, WhatsApp) v. BlackBerry Limited, IPR2019-00706; filed 2019-02-19; instituted 2019-09-04; Final Written Decision 2020-09-01; appeal 21-1124.
• Claims challenged: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24.

Primary references (mostly non-patent books, not patents):

Corresponding district litigation: BlackBerry Ltd. v. Facebook, Inc., C.D. Cal. 2:18-cv-01844-GW, and the case Google lists as 2:19-cv-01444 (C.D. Cal.). The claim-construction brief on the docket (courtlistener recap gov.uscourts.cacd.703149.116.0) shows the parties disputing the term "notification" — BlackBerry urging plain meaning; Facebook urging a broad "an indication providing notice that an event has occurred."

Outcome flag: I could not retrieve the substance of the Final Written Decision (which claims, if any, were held unpatentable) or the Federal Circuit's disposition in 21-1124 within my search budget. Do not assume the claims were invalidated — the Patexia summary I saw listed the "Claims Invalidated" field as empty, but that field is often unpopulated and is not reliable evidence either way.

5. §102 mapping — what each reference can and cannot anticipate

Anticipation under §102 requires one reference disclosing every limitation of a claim, arranged as claimed. On the record I have, no reference in the citation list is a clean §102 anticipator of independent claims 1, 13, or 24, because claim 1 has a distinctive combination:

1. receive a selected message thread for silencing;
2. activate a flag in non-transitory media associated with that thread;
3. determine a new incoming message belongs to that thread;
4. read the flag to determine the thread is silenced;
5. override an already-enabled notification setting (note: override, not merely "no setting enabled"); and
6. display the new message in the inbox with non-silenced threads, in a different manner than non-silenced threads, while further notifications are silenced.

Assessment by reference:

• US 5,283,856 (Gross) — Potentially relevant to limitations 3 and 5 in isolation: an arrival event triggers rule-based action, which could include suppressing an alert. It does not disclose a thread-level flag, silencing selection by the user for a thread, or the dual display limitation (6). Anticipation potential: low; realistic role is §103 background. Post-KSR, expect a defendant to use it as a secondary "notification settings are user-configurable" reference.
• US 6,442,565 (Tyra) — Notification-service/subscription architecture. Touches "notification setting" (limitation 5) but nothing thread-specific. Anticipation potential: low.
• US 2008/0301250 A1 (Hardy) and US 2013/0095823 A1 (Klassen) — Chosen by the petitioner for the IPR. Because both published after the 2010-02-26 filing date, they can only be §102(e)/§102(a)(2) art if their effective filing dates precede it. Klassen in particular is a BlackBerry-family filing; its use suggests it may be §102(e) art for the group-inbox/threading or notification-suppression limitations. Anticipation potential: moderate but unverified — I could not read either document.
• US 2006/0075040 A1 (Chmaytelli), US 2006/0104423 A1 (Heidloff), US 2008/0114884 A1 (Hewes), US 2008/0294730 A1 (Oral), US 2008/0294727 A1 (Moody), US 2009/0204681 A1 (Sun), US 2011/0022674 A1 (Callanan), US 2012/0151196 A1 (May), US 2013/0159879 A1 (Affronti) — All plausibly directed to messaging/notification management, but I have not verified their disclosures and therefore make no §102 assertion about them.
• Post-filing publications (Callanan, May, Klassen, Affronti) — By their listed publication dates these are not §102(a)/§102(b) art against the 2010 filing; any citation must rest on an earlier U.S. effective filing date under §102(e)/(a)(2) (pre-AIA §102(e)). This is a real defect to check.
• The IPR art (Dallas, Brown, Kent, Bott, Mann, LeBlanc) is non-patent literature / printed publications, so it is §102(b) art (all pre-2009 publication). Dallas is the only one that comes close to a single-reference case, and even Dallas lacks the "activate a flag," "override an enabled setting," and "display in a different manner" limitations as claimed — which is why the petitioner had to combine it with Brown and Kent. That framing itself is evidence that Dallas alone does not anticipate.

Bottom line on §102: the strongest single-reference candidates are Dallas (Collabra Share 2) and possibly US 2008/0301250 / US 2013/0095823; but on the record available, none is a demonstrated anticipator of claims 1, 13, or 24. The examiner's citation list is dominated by §103-style combinations and by references that go to the notification limitation, not to the thread-silencing-with-flag-plus-differential-display combination.

6. Explicit uncertainty statements

1. I could not verify the titles/abstracts of 18 of the 22 U.S. patent documents in the citation list (items 3–22). Those descriptions are marked [not independently verified] and I have deliberately not guessed at them.
2. I did not open the granted patent's printed "References Cited" page. The list above is as reported by Justia/Google Patents and may be incomplete or may include applicant-cited versus examiner-cited items without distinguishing them.
3. I do not know the outcome of IPR2019-00706's Final Written Decision or of Fed. Cir. 21-1124. Absence of that information here is not evidence that the claims survived.
4. I did not retrieve the examiner's actual §102/§103 rejections from the file wrapper (application 12/713,577). Which cited references were applied versus merely listed is unresolvable without the Office Actions.
5. The citation list is dated; later-acquired art (e.g., art cited during the 2019 IPR or 2018–2019 district litigation) will not appear on the front page.

Authoritative next checks if you need certainty: USPTO Patent Center for application 12/713,577 (full file wrapper + Image File Wrapper "References Cited"); PTAB API / PTAB Center for IPR2019-00706 (all papers including the FWD); CAFC docket for 21-1124; and the C.D. Cal. dockets 2:18-cv-01844-GW and 2:19-cv-01444.

Sources used: Google Patents US9349120B2; Justia Patents #9349120 ("Referenced Cited"); RPX Insight US9349120B2; EveryPatent US 5,283,856; Espacenet US5283856A; Google Patents US6442565B1; Ex Parte AI Lab / Patexia / Docket Alarm listings for IPR2019-00706; CourtListener recap gov.uscourts.cacd.703149.116.0.

I'll gather the prior-art references cited on this patent's face and in the PTAB proceeding before building the § 103 analysis.

The PTAB outcome materially changes the analysis. Let me confirm the grounds, the references, and the Federal Circuit outcome.

I have the PTAB record. Let me pin down the Final Written Decision reasoning and the § 101 ruling on the '120 patent specifically.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,349,120 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Prepared: April 26, 2026 (task date; note the system clock reads 2026‑09‑28 — flagging the discrepancy, though it does not affect the analysis)
Patent: US 9,349,120 B2, System and method for silencing notifications for a message thread (Kalu Onuka Kalu; app. 12/713,577; filed 2010‑02‑26; priority 2009‑04‑08 via prov. 61/167,542)

0. Two corrections to the previously generated summary (flagging contradictions as instructed)

The earlier section of this analysis relied on Google Patents' bibliographic fields. Search results now contradict three of those readings, and under the operating rules I treat the search results as ground truth:

The earlier statement "no 2026 CAFC docket naming this patent" remains correct and unremarkable — the relevant appeal was 21‑1124 in 2021, not 2026.

On the "Prior Art section of this page": the fetched Google Patents text contains only the "Prior art keywords" string (message / new incoming / inbox / thread / silenced) and the litigation block — it does not include a rendered "References Cited" table. I therefore did not have a literal list of the examiner-cited references to work from. Rather than fabricate one, I anchor this §103 analysis on the §103 art actually applied and adjudicated against this patent in IPR2019‑00706, which is a far stronger record than the face of the patent. I say so explicitly as an evidentiary limitation.

1. Legal framework and the level of ordinary skill

Governing test. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). A claim is obvious if the differences between the claim and the prior art would have been apparent to a PHOSITA at the time of invention, considering (i) scope and content of the prior art, (ii) differences, (iii) PHOSITA level, and (iv) objective indicia. Under KSR, a combination is obvious where the improvement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," where a known technique is applied to improve a similar device "in the same way," or where the combination is "obvious to try" with a reasonable expectation of success.

Critical dates. The '120 patent has an effective filing date no later than 2009‑04‑08. Every reference below is a printed publication predating that date by well over a year, making them §102(b) art, and each is analogous art (same field of endeavor — electronic messaging, message threading, notification handling, and GUI presentation of message lists).

PHOSITA. Persons of ordinary skill would have had at minimum a bachelor's degree in computer science or electrical engineering (or equivalent experience), plus roughly two years' experience in messaging application development or mobile device notification subsystems, with practical familiarity with: conversation/thread data structures; GUI list views and visual new-message indicators; and the operating-system notification/cue subsystem (ring tones, LEDs, vibrate).

Claim construction that drives everything. The dispute that decides the case is the meaning of "notification" and whether suppressing a visual new-message indicator in a thread list constitutes overriding a "notification setting." The C.D. Cal. construed "notification" as something drawing "attention to an incoming message that would not otherwise have been noticed, at the time of the incoming message" (see BlackBerry's §101 opposition and Facebook's later briefs, Dkt 281, Dkt 633). That construction is broad enough to reach thread-list visual cues — which is exactly what the primary reference discloses.

Claim 1 (representative independent claim; claim 13 is the method counterpart; claim 24 the CRM counterpart). Per BlackBerry's own infringement contentions:

• 1(a) non-transitory CRM with processing instructions for silencing notifications;
• 1(b) receiving one or more selected message threads for silencing;
• 1(c) activating a flag in the media associated with each selected thread, the flag indicating the thread is silenced;
• 1(d) identifying a new incoming message as associated with the selected thread(s);
• 1(e) overriding at least one currently-enabled notification setting to prevent a notification pertaining to receipt of the new message from being activated;
• 1(f) the message thread flagged as silenced is displayed in the inbox in a different manner than any thread not flagged as silenced;
• 1(g) silencing any further notifications pertaining to receipt of the new incoming message.

2. The applied prior-art references

Exhibits of less certain prior-art status, listed in the IPR record: US 2006/0161849, US 2008/0301250, US 2013/0095823 — the last is a 2013 publication whose §102(e) date would need verification against its own filing date before it could be relied on. I will not build a ground on it.

3. The combinations and the motivation to combine

Ground 1 (primary): Dallas + Brown + Kent — claims 1–3, 5, 7–8, 10, 13–15, 17, 19–21, 24

(Ex Parte AI‑Lab ground summary)

Element mapping (claim 1):

• 1(b) Dallas's user-selectable "ignore" per thread = "receiving one or more selected message threads for silencing."
• 1(c) Kent's Boolean flag = the claimed "flag … associated with the message thread." KSR squarely covers this: applying a known technique (a status flag) to improve a similar device in the same way is obvious. The specification itself is agnostic as to implementation ("setting a flag or other indicator in a data record"), confirming the flag is a routine data-structure choice rather than an inventive contribution.
• 1(d) Dallas's thread identification + Brown's background receipt = the new message is received and matched to the silenced thread.
• 1(e) Dallas's suppression of the red-flag/sparkle/text-color new-message indicators = "override a currently-enabled notification setting so no receipt notification is activated." This is the load-bearing mapping, and it depends on the broad construction of "notification."
• 1(f) Brown's teaching that ignored threads keep accumulating messages for later review = silenced messages remain in the inbox, displayed in a different manner (de-emphasized) because the "new message" indicators are suppressed while the items persist.
• 1(g) Dallas's ongoing suppression = further notifications silenced.

Motivation to combine, as articulated by the petitioner:

1. Dallas itself motivates the base feature: ignoring threads reduces notification clutter.
2. Brown supplies a complementary benefit expressly described as "the best part" — the user can later review messages accumulated in an ignored thread. That is a stated, retrospective reason to combine: silencing alerts while retaining the messages is exactly the behavior the claims require.
3. Kent supplies the implementation mechanism, and no inventive skill is required to store thread status in a Boolean flag — KSR, "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
4. Same field, same problem, same solution space — all three are group/e-mail messaging systems; there is no field-crossing or unpredictable result to overcome.

Reasonable expectation of success: high. The combination adds a stored status bit to an existing thread-ignore feature in an existing messaging client; the outcome is the predictable sum of Dallas's suppression, Brown's retention, and Kent's flag.

Ground 2 (dependent claim 9): Ground 1 + Bott

Claim 9 requires the system to comprise a wireless device. Bott shows wireless hardware for portable computers was commercially conventional before 2009. Motivation: the widely recognized demand for mobile computing and remote access to messaging — a trend Dallas itself acknowledged. Incorporation of Dallas's messaging client onto a wireless device is a predictable result. This is the weakest of the three grounds intellectually, but claim 9 is a pure hardware-environment limitation and is very hard to defend.

Ground 3 (dependent claims 11 and 22): Ground 1 + Mann

Claims 11/22 require the new message to be shown in a default view of the inbox while the thread is collapsed. Dallas collapsed ignored threads but displayed the oldest message; Mann teaches displaying the most recent message in a collapsed conversation view. Motivation: a better user experience — the user can assess the current state of a silenced thread without expanding it. This is a classic "obvious to try" / design-choice improvement under KSR.

Grounds 4–6 (alternatives): + LeBlanc

LeBlanc supplies user-selectable auditory and visual alerts, shoring up the "notification" limitations if the Board adopted a construction narrower than the district court's (i.e., one that excluded in-list visual indicators). This hedge is analytically important: it means the challenge did not stand or fall on the single Dallas "red flag/sparkle" mapping alone.

4. BlackBerry's nonobviousness arguments — and why the Board rejected them

BlackBerry's district-court submissions contain the strongest available counter-arguments, and they should be stated fairly:

1. Teaching away (the best argument). BlackBerry argued Dallas/Brown "merely result[ed] in exclud[ing] those messages from the current view," and that "[t]he documentation for the Collabra Share email system likewise only discloses preventing the display of new messages for certain threads" (Dkt 281). If "ignore" removes messages from view, it arguably teaches away from claim limitation 1(f), which requires the silenced thread to be displayed together with the non-silenced threads (albeit differently). This is a genuine tension, and it is the axis on which the case turned.
2. Non-conventionality. BlackBerry asserted that "[p]rior to the '120 Patent, preventing notifications for incoming electronic messages was performed, at most, on a wholesale basis" — globally for all messages, citing Outlook's global notification toggle as the state of the art. Id.
3. Hindsight. BlackBerry's co-pending filings in parallel Facebook IPRs hammer a hindsight theme (e.g., the objection that a petition "bars selecting an obscure feature from a secondary reference," PTAB petition document).

Assessment. Argument (1) is a real teaching-away/contradiction point but is legally fragile: under KSR and In re Fulton, the prior art need not disclose every claimed benefit, and Brown's "best part" teaching supplies the retention/display behavior that Dallas alone lacks. Argument (2) actually cuts both ways — "prior art was all-or-nothing" is a conventionality admission that frames the invention as a small, incremental modification of a known global-notification toggle plus a known per-thread "ignore," which is the classic fact pattern for KSR obviousness. Argument (3) is a general-purpose objection and did not prevail.

Bottom line on the merits: the §103 case is strong, and there is no meaningful teaching-away from the combination as a whole. The only serious vulnerability is the mapping of Dallas's in-list visual suppression to an "override [of] a currently-enabled notification setting" — which is why the petitioners hedged with LeBlanc.

Objective indicia. I found no evidence of nexus-bearing secondary considerations in the record: no asserted unexpected results, no licensing program attributable to this patent, no praise, and no established long-felt-but-unmet need tied to the claims. The one candidate — that Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram were later accused of "muting" threads — is an infringement allegation, not copying evidence, and copying is weak where the accused products are independently developed platforms. Nothing here overcomes the prima facie case.

5. Adjudicated result — this analysis is not hypothetical

Practical significance. All three independent claims — 1, 13, and 24 — stand finally cancelled, together with the overwhelming majority of the dependents. Because independent claims 1/13/24 are gone, the dependent claims that were not separately challenged (4, 6, 12, 16, 18, 23) cannot independently survive; a dependent claim falls with the claim from which it depends. Google Patents' "Status: Active" and "expires 2032‑03‑24" fields are therefore unreliable as to enforceability and should not be relied on for any transaction or FTO assessment.

6. Explicit uncertainty statements

1. I could not retrieve the Google Patents "Prior Art"/"References Cited" table for US9349120B2 within my search budget. This analysis uses the adjudicated §103 art instead. If the examiner-cited art differs, additional or different combinations may exist — but they would be cumulative to what already succeeded.
2. I did not retrieve the full text of the Final Written Decision. The element-by-element mappings in §3 are reconstructed from the IPR grounds summary at Ex Parte AI‑Lab and the parties' briefs, not from the Board's opinion verbatim. The outcome (all challenged claims unpatentable) is confirmed by two independent sources; the reasoning is second-hand.
3. US 2013/0095823 appears in the exhibit list but I did not verify its prior-art date; I have excluded it from all grounds.
4. Claim 24's verbatim text was not independently verified. The RPX infringement-contentions excerpt quotes claim 24's preamble as "A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising processing instructions which when executed by a data processor cause the data processor to perform a method for silencing notifications…," which is consistent with the earlier summary's characterization. Confidence: moderate-to-high.
5. No 2026 activity naming this patent was found. Absence of a hit is not proof of absence; the authoritative checks would be the CAFC docket search and USPTO Patent Center for app. 12/713,577.

7. Conclusion

US 9,349,120 is obvious under §103 over Dallas in view of Brown and Kent, with Bott supplying the wireless-device limitation of claim 9, Mann supplying the collapsed-view limitation of claims 11/22, and LeBlanc as a hedge against a narrow construction of "notification." The motivation to combine is expressly present in the references themselves — Brown characterizes review of messages accumulated in an ignored thread as "the best part" of the feature — which defeats the hindsight objection. The combination uses known elements (a per-thread ignore control, a Boolean status flag, background message retention, a collapsed conversation view) according to their established functions, producing a predictable result under KSR.

This is not a prediction: a Final Written Decision on 2020‑09‑01 cancelled claims 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 24, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on 2021‑11‑08 in No. 21‑1124. The patent's independent claims are finally unpatentable, and its Google Patents "Active" status should be disregarded.