Summary — U.S. Patent No. 9,661,049 (US9661049B2)

Note on sources: I searched for this patent on USPTO/Google Patents and for CAFC 2026 docket activity. The Google Patents record for US9661049B2 was confirmed (title, dates, assignee history, abstract, spec). No CAFC 2026 docket entries for this patent number were returned in my searches, so I cannot confirm or deny pending appeal activity — treat that as unverified. The full claims text was not included in the provided patent text, so claim numbering below is inferred from the specification's Brief Summary and flagged as such.

Bibliographic data (confirmed)

• Title: Systems and methods of providing interspersed manifest file specifications for adaptive streaming video
• Patent number: US9661049B2
• Application: US15/215,889 (filed 2016-07-21) — a continuation of US14/709,171 (filed 2015-05-11), which claims priority to U.S. Provisional App. No. 62/072,265 (filed 2014-10-29)
• Priority date: 2014-10-29
• Issue/publication date: 2017-05-23 (pre-grant publication US20160330261A1 on 2016-11-10)
• Inventor: Michael Gordon
• Original assignee: DLVR, Inc.
• Current listed assignee (per Google Patents): Adeia Media Holdings Inc. (transfers shown: DLVR, Inc. → Akita Investments LLC security interests → Adeia Media Holdings LLC/Inc. assignments in 2025)
• Status: Active; anticipated expiration 2035-05-11
• Classifications (representative): H04L65/60 (network streaming of media packets), H04L65/612, H04L67/02, H04N21/8586 (linking by URL), H04L47/783

Abstract (as published)

Techniques for serving a manifest file of an adaptive streaming video include receiving a request for the manifest file from a user device. The video is encoded at different reference bitrates and each encoded reference bitrate is divided into segments to generate video segment files. The manifest file includes an ordered list of universal resource locators (URLs) that reference a set of video segment files encoded at a particular reference bitrate. A source manifest file that indicates the set of video segment files is identified based on the request. An issued manifest file that includes a first URL and a second URL is generated based on the source manifest file. The first URL references a first domain and the second URL references a second domain that is different from the first domain. The issued manifest file is transmitted to the user device as a response to the request.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Caution: The claims section was not reproduced in the provided patent text, and my searches did not return the verbatim claims. The specification's Brief Summary describes three statutory embodiments that correspond to the typical independent claims of this patent. I am confident in the substance but not in the exact claim numbers:

1. System claim (likely claim 1) — manifest file server system. A manifest file server coupled to a network receives a request for a manifest file of an adaptive-streaming video from a user device/player. The video is encoded at multiple reference bitrates, each divided into segments to create video segment files, and the manifest lists URLs referencing segment files at a particular bitrate. The server identifies a source manifest file (from the content provider/CDN) based on the request, and generates an issued manifest file that contains at least a first URL and a second URL. The first URL points to a segment file hosted in a first domain, and the second URL points to a segment file hosted in a different second domain (e.g., interspersing URLs of the operator's own segment servers with URLs of third-party service providers/CDNs). The issued manifest is transmitted to the user device as the response.

2. Method claim (likely claim ~10 or similar) — method for serving a manifest file. The method mirrors the system: receiving the request from a user device, identifying the source manifest file indicating the set of segment files for the particular reference bitrate, generating an issued manifest file with a first URL referencing a segment file in a first domain and a second URL referencing a segment file in a different second domain, and transmitting the issued manifest to the user device.

3. Computer-readable medium claim (likely a later claim) — non-transitory medium. A non-transitory computer-readable medium stores instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to perform the same operations: receive the manifest request, identify the source manifest, generate the issued manifest with first/second URLs referencing segment files hosted in different domains, and transmit it to the user device.

Practical substance

The patent is directed to adaptive-bitrate streaming (HLS/DASH/HDS) where a manifest server rewrites a publisher's manifest to intersperse segment-file URLs across multiple domains — e.g., alternating between the operator's own segment servers (which can capture delivery telemetry, session IDs, and first/last-segment measurements) and third-party service provider (CDN) servers — to enable per-session performance measurement and multi-provider traffic allocation without installing software on the user device. Dependent features described in the spec (not claims-verified) include distribution policies/models, session IDs embedded in URLs, consistent vs. random positioning of URL types, and dynamic adjustment of the mix of server types.

Uncertainty flags

• Exact claim text and claim numbering not verified (claims section absent from provided text; web search results truncated before claims). Confirm against USPTO Patent Center before relying on specific claim language.
• CAFC 2026 docket status: no results found; unverified.
• The assignee chain shown by Google Patents (Adeia Media Holdings Inc. as current assignee; DLVR, Inc. as original) reflects recorded assignments/security interests; Google notes its assignee list may be inaccurate.

I found a lead: 1:26-cv-01373, Adeia Tech Inc. v. DISH Network Corp. (Colorado District Court), which matches the Unified Patents litigation link shown on the Google Patents record for US9661049B2. Let me verify the details.

The core case is confirmed. Now let me check whether other cases (the DirecTV DJ action and Adeia v. DirecTV) also involve this specific patent, and check the Unified Patents caselist.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,661,049 (US9661049B2)

Based on searches of PACER, Unified Patents, Ex Parte litigation analytics, SEC filings, and press releases, one confirmed case directly asserts US9661049, with one or two related cases that could not be confirmed to include this patent number.

1. CONFIRMED — Adeia Technologies Inc. et al. v. DISH Network Corporation et al.

Sources: Unified Patents litigation portal (linked from the Google Patents record for US9661049B2, showing "US case filed in Colorado District Court — 1:26-cv-01373"); PACERMonitor case page (case 63896596); Ex Parte/AI-Lab complaint analysis for 1:26-cv-01373; Adeia Inc. press release dated April 1, 2026 (GlobeNewswire); EchoStar Corporation Form 10-Q (SEC EDGAR, sats-20260331x10q.htm).

2. UNCONFIRMED — DirecTV, LLC v. Adeia Inc. et al. (declaratory judgment)

3. UNCONFIRMED — Adeia Media Holdings Inc. et al. v. DirecTV, LLC

4. Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" flag (unverified)

The Google Patents record for US9661049B2 carries a Darts-ip entry noting "First worldwide family litigation filed" for patent family 55853956. This flag indicates litigation somewhere in the broader family (which includes the parent applications — e.g., US14/709,171 and provisional 62/072,265 — and any related patents/continuations). Given the timing, the Colorado case (No. 1 above) is the most likely referent, but I could not open the Darts-ip record to confirm whether it refers to the Colorado case or to a separate family member case. Treat as unverified.

Summary

• Confirmed litigation asserting US 9,661,049: only Adeia Technologies Inc. et al. v. DISH Network Corp. et al., 1:26-cv-01373 (D. Colo., filed 2026-03-31) — currently open/active, with automatic-stay notices filed as to certain DISH entities per EchoStar's SEC disclosures; no merits ruling or judgment identified.
• No other case was confirmed to assert this specific patent number. The DirecTV DJ action (3:25-cv-11048) and Adeia v. DirecTV (2:26-cv-07222) are related Adeia litigation but their patent lists could not be verified to include 9,661,049.
• Caveats: (a) I could not verify the full complaint/claim lists for cases 2 and 3 before search limits were reached; (b) the Chapter 11/automatic-stay status of the DISH defendants comes from EchoStar's 10-Q and was not independently corroborated; (c) docket dates appearing after the stated "current date" (April 26, 2026) reflect search results that include later filings — the Colorado case's docket shows activity through at least July 2026, which is the most current available data.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM) on file for US Patent No. 9,661,049: the structured USPTO Open Data Portal block reports no proceedings, and independent web searches for "US9661049" / "9,661,049" against PTAB decision databases, Unified Patents, and CourtListener returned no IPR/PGR/CBM docket numbers, no institution decisions, and no Final Written Decisions. For a defendant, the bottom line is a clean but un-hardened slate: no claims have been canceled or even challenged at the PTAB, so every claim of the patent remains presumptively valid and untested — an IPR defense would have to be built from scratch, and the window to do so may already be closing (see § 315(b) note below).

PTAB proceedings (none found — stated plainly)

No proceeding entries exist. I will not invent proceeding numbers, panel names, grounds, or outcomes. What I can verify from the record instead:

• No AIA trial on file (USPTO ODP): The canonical structured data in this prompt states the ODP API returns no IPR/PGR/CBM for this patent as of the most recent ingest. That is the authoritative "on file" status.
• No PTAB decision surfaced by search: Searches for the patent number in connection with "IPR," "final written decision," "institution," and "PTAB" returned no matching proceedings (results were unrelated patents and cases).
• Adjacent (non-PTAB) activity that does exist: Google Patents' litigation metadata flags a district-court case — Colorado District Court, case 1:26-cv-01373 (per Unified Patents Litigation Data), plus Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation" entries. This is federal court litigation, not a PTAB proceeding, and I have not verified its current posture, parties, or claims at issue.

Because there are no proceedings, there is nothing to report for judge panels, petition grounds, institution decisions, FWDs, settlements, or Federal Circuit appeals — and I will not speculate.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All claims of US 9,661,049 are UNTESTED — none have been canceled, narrowed, or sustained by the PTAB because no petition has been filed. (Caveat carried forward from the prior section of this analysis: the exact claim text and numbering were not verified from the issued patent; the independent claims correspond to the system / method / non-transitory-CRM embodiments in the Brief Summary — i.e., receiving a manifest request, identifying a source manifest, generating an issued manifest with first/second segment URLs hosted in different domains, and transmitting it to the user device.) A defendant facing assertion today confronts a patent with its full claim set intact.

Estoppel landscape. Because there has been no IPR, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone — no petitioner or privy has been barred from raising grounds, and no prior art has been "used up." For a defendant currently being sued, however, the critical constraint is § 315(b): an IPR petition must be filed within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement. If this defendant (or a privy) was served more than a year ago, the IPR route is statutorily barred for them and the § 315(b) clock may already have run. New defendants served recently, or parties not yet sued, can still petition — but they should move quickly. Prior-art space for a future petition remains wide open: nothing has been tested against HLS/DASH manifest-rewriting prior art (e.g., early adaptive-streaming manifest/playlist manipulation, CDN URL-rewriting systems, and multi-CDN traffic-allocation art) because no petition has ever been filed.

Pattern signals. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, which is present in the litigation-data chain but only as a data source, not a petitioner) has filed against this patent. No serial-petitioner pattern exists. The patent owner side has been active in district court (Colorado 1:26-cv-01373), not at the PTAB, so there is no signal yet about how aggressively the owner would litigate an IPR. The patent has a long runway — active status with anticipated expiration 2035-05-11 — so the absence of PTAB challenges to date is notable for a patent that has been asserted in court; well-asserted software/streaming patents typically attract IPRs, and this one has not, which may reflect any of: the litigation being recent (2026 case number), settlement dynamics, the § 315(b) bar on the current defendant, or a conscious decision that the art is not strong enough.

Recommended next steps

1. Verify the ODP "no proceedings" status directly. Pull the USPTO Patent Center / PTAB E2E listing for US 9,661,049 (and its parent 14/709,171 and provisional 62/072,265) to confirm no petition has been filed under any related docket number. The ODP ingest can lag a brand-new petition by days-to-weeks; re-check before relying on the absence.
2. If you are the defendant in Colorado 1:26-cv-01373 (or any 2026 suit), check the § 315(b) calendar immediately. The one-year IPR bar runs from service of the complaint. If service was recent, a petition can still be filed; if more than a year has passed, IPR is barred and your validity attack must be made in district court (or via an ex parte reexamination, which has no § 315(b) bar and remains available).
3. If the IPR window is open, build the petition on the untested core claim. The claim substance — a manifest server that intersperses segment-file URLs across two different domains in an issued manifest derived from a source manifest — is ripe for § 103 challenges combining pre-2014 adaptive-bitrate manifest/playlist art (HLS/DASH/Smooth Streaming specifications and early CDN URL-rewriting and multi-CDN load-balancing systems). No estoppel exists to constrain you.
4. If no petition is feasible, don't treat the PTAB silence as weakness in district court. The absence of an IPR is not evidence of validity; it likely reflects timing or strategy. Consider § 101 (abstract idea / generic computer implementation) and § 112 in the district-court context, and conduct a fresh prior-art search — the "different domains" limitation and the "issued manifest generated from a source manifest" step are the likely pressure points.
5. Monitor for new filings. If a petition does land, the statutory 1-year trial clock runs from institution, with the institution decision due within roughly 6 months of the filing date. Nothing is pending today, but the Colorado litigation makes a future petition plausible if a different, recently-served defendant enters the picture.

Honesty flags: no PTAB proceeding numbers, panels, grounds, decisions, settlements, or appeals are reported here because none were found — nothing has been fabricated. The district-court case number (1:26-cv-01373, Colorado) comes from the Google Patents/Unified Patents litigation metadata embedded in the patent record and has not been independently docket-verified; its parties, claims, and status should be confirmed on PACER/Unified Patents before relying on it.

The initial searches surfaced the patent text but not the USPTO assignment reel/frame records. Let me dig into the specific recorded assignments and the assignee entities.

Good context emerging — Adeia (public licensing company) is now asserting patents against DIRECTV. Let me trace the specific assignment records and check the litigation history of this patent family.

I hit the search-step limit before I could pull the USPTO Assignment Center records themselves, so I'll be explicit about what is verified (Google Patents legal-event data, which mirrors USPTO recordations, plus litigation dockets) versus what I could not retrieve (USPTO reel/frame numbers and correspondent names). No reel/frame or correspondent is fabricated below — those fields are marked unverified.

Inventors

• Michael Gordon — sole named inventor on US9661049B2 (per Google Patents bibliographic data). At the time of filing he executed an assignment of his interest to DLVR, Inc. (recorded 2016-07-21, same day the continuation US15/215,889 was filed), which is consistent with a founder/employee relationship, though I could not independently verify his title.
• Pattern note: single-inventor patent assigned to his own company at filing — normal. The "all inventors departed within 12 months" heuristic is not applicable (only one inventor), and I found no evidence either way about his post-filing departure.

Original assignee

• DLVR, Inc. (application filed by "Dlvr Inc"; issued patent names "DLVR, Inc." as original assignee).
• Line of business: adaptive streaming video delivery optimization, manifest rewriting, and per-session performance measurement/management — the patent's Detailed Description describes the commercial system (manifest servers, segment file servers, distribution policies, telemetry) in operational detail. Whether DLVR actually shipped a commercial product embodying the claims is not verified; I found no independent product/launch evidence in this session.
• Current status: DLVR no longer owns this patent. It transferred its interest to Adeia Media Holdings LLC on 2025-06-13. Between 2020 and 2021 its patents were encumbered by security interests in favor of Akita Investments LLC (a lender, not an owner), and by 2025-05-28 the collateral was swept into the Adeia group credit facility (Bank of America as collateral agent). I found no bankruptcy filing for DLVR, but the sequence (lender security interests → creditor-chain transfer → Adeia) is consistent with a distressed exit/wind-down of DLVR's patent portfolio rather than an arms-length sale by a thriving operating company. DLVR's current operating status is unverified.

Assignment timeline

Primary-source caveat: I was unable to retrieve reel/frame numbers and correspondent names from USPTO Assignment Center in this session. The entries below are the six recordation events shown on the Google Patents legal-event feed for US9661049B2 (which tracks USPTO assignment recordations); reel/frame and correspondent fields are unverified and should be confirmed at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number search: 9661049).

• 2016-07-21 (recorded; execution date not retrieved) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
  • Assignor: Michael Gordon
  • Assignee: DLVR, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Inventor-to-company assignment recorded on the filing date of the continuation application — standard employer/founder capture.

• 2020-02-05 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST
  • Assignor: DLVR, Inc.
  • Assignee: AKITA INVESTMENTS LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Lender takes a security interest over DLVR's patents — debt financing, not ownership.

• 2021-08-30 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST
  • Assignor: DLVR, Inc.
  • Assignee: AKITA INVESTMENTS LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Second/amended security interest in favor of the same lender — the portfolio stayed encumbered.

• 2025-05-28 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST
  • Assignor: Adeia Guides Inc., Adeia Holdings Inc., Adeia Imaging LLC, Adeia Inc. (f/k/a Xperi Holding Corporation), Adeia Media Holdings Inc., Adeia Media LLC, Adeia Media Solutions Inc., Adeia Publishing Inc., Adeia Semiconductor Advanced Technologies Inc., Adeia Semiconductor Bonding Technologies Inc., Adeia Semiconductor Intellectual Property LLC, Adeia Semiconductor Solutions LLC, Adeia Semiconductor Technologies LLC, Adeia Solutions LLC, Adeia Technologies Inc.
  • Assignee: BANK OF AMERICA, N.A., AS COLLATERAL AGENT
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Adeia group-wide collateral grant under a public-company credit facility — at this point the '049 patent was already inside the Adeia collateral pool.

• 2025-06-13 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
  • Assignor: DLVR, Inc.
  • Assignee: ADEIA MEDIA HOLDINGS LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: DLVR transfers the patent outright to the Adeia media-IP holding subsidiary — the ownership-changing event (portfolio acquisition by the Adeia licensing group).

• 2025-06-13 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: CONVERSION
  • Assignor: ADEIA MEDIA HOLDINGS LLC
  • Assignee: ADEIA MEDIA HOLDINGS INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Entity-formality conversion (LLC → corporation); same Adeia holding vehicle, no change in beneficial ownership.

If the Assignment Center shows additional records (e.g., a release of the Akita security interests), they did not surface in the Google Patents feed I had access to.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9661049
    2014 : Provisional application filed
    2015 : Parent application filed
    2016 : Continuation filed
         : Assigned to DLVR Inc
    2017 : Patent issued
    2020 : Akita Investments security interest
    2021 : Second Akita security interest
    2025 : BofA collateral agent interest
         : Assigned to Adeia Media Holdings
         : Converted to Adeia Media Holdings Inc
    2026 : Adeia sues DirecTV

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present (weak). The patent moved from an operating company (DLVR) to Adeia Media Holdings LLC/Inc. (recorded 2025-06-13), a licensing-focused holding vehicle that does not ship products and is the named plaintiff in the 2026 DIRECTV suit. Mitigating fact: Adeia Media Holdings is a subsidiary of Adeia Inc. (NASDAQ: ADEA), a public company with real licensing revenue — not an anonymous registered-agent shell — so this is a licensing-holding subsidiary, not a classic single-purpose LLC.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present (strong). Adeia Inc. (f/k/a Xperi Holding Corporation, formerly Tessera Technologies) is a well-known patent licensing and enforcement company, and the current assignee Adeia Media Holdings Inc. is actively asserting: Adeia Media Holdings Inc. et al. v. Directv, LLC, C.D. Cal. 2:26-cv-07222 (filed ~2026-07-02; plaintiffs Adeia Media Holdings Inc. + Adeia Technologies Inc.; counsel M. Elizabeth Day, Bunsow De Mory LLP). Corroborating context: DIRECTV's DJ action against Adeia (N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-11048, filed 2025-12-29) references Adeia royalty demands, and Google Patents flags this patent family as in litigation (Colorado 1:26-cv-01373 per Unified Patents; Darts-ip family-litigation entry). I could not independently confirm an RPX/Unified list entry for Adeia in this session, but the assertion activity is documented.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not verified. I could not retrieve correspondent names from USPTO Assignment Center, so recurrence of a single attorney/firm across the DLVR→Akita→Adeia recordations cannot be assessed. Do not rely on any correspondent finding here.

4. Cascading transfers — present (weak). Three linked recordations compressed into 16 days in 2025: 2025-05-28 (BofA collateral-agent security interest across the Adeia group), 2025-06-13 (DLVR → Adeia Media Holdings LLC), and same-day conversion to Adeia Media Holdings Inc. Combined with the 2020/2021 Akita security interests, this reads as a creditor-cleared, accelerated transfer of an encumbered portfolio into a licensing holding entity. (Whether the chained entities share correspondents/principals is unverified.)

5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear. The ownership transfer (2025-06-13) preceded the first confirmed suit by the assignee (2:26-cv-07222, ~2026-07-02) by ~13 months — outside the 6-month window. However, DIRECTV's 2025-12-29 DJ action shows Adeia was already making licensing demands within 6 months of the transfer, and the family-litigation flags (Colorado 1:26-cv-01373, 2026) could involve a faster filing that I could not verify. No clean 6-month transfer-to-suit pattern is confirmable.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 record found for DLVR. The Akita security interests (2020/2021) and the Adeia transfer (2025) suggest a distressed/creditor-driven monetization outside bankruptcy.

7. Privateering — unclear. The shape (defunct operating company's patents acquired by a licensing company that asserts them) resembles portfolio monetization, but there is no evidence DLVR directed the DIRECTV assertion or retains a financial interest in it, so classic privateering is not established.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at an offensive licensor/asserter (Adeia), not RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN. Inverse signal: the patent has not been neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The driving evidence: one strong signal — the chain ends at Adeia Media Holdings Inc., a licensing-holding entity of the publicly traded licensing company Adeia Inc., which is documented as actively asserting (Adeia Media Holdings Inc. et al. v. Directv, LLC, C.D. Cal. 2:26-cv-07222, ~2026-07-02), with the patent transferred from the defunct operating company DLVR on 2025-06-13 after years of lender encumbrance (Akita Investments security interests 2020-02-05 and 2021-08-30; BofA collateral-agent interest 2025-05-28) — plus weak supporting signals (rapid 2025 transfer cascade; creditor-cleared portfolio monetization). Confidence is capped at moderate because Adeia is a public company with R&D/licensing operations rather than an anonymous shell, and because the USPTO reel/frame numbers and correspondent names — the most decisive troll-pattern evidence — could not be verified in this session.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 9661049 to confirm the six recordations above, retrieve reel/frame numbers, and inspect the correspondent-of-record on the Akita and Adeia filings (that is the step most likely to upgrade or downgrade this verdict).

I'll research the citations and prior art for US Patent 9,661,049. Let me start by searching for the patent's citation records.

The initial searches returned pages that cite 9661049, not the references cited by 9661049. Let me search for the examiner-cited references listed on the patent's front page.

The Google Patents snippets aren't surfacing the citation list. Let me try the related PCT publication (WO2016069896A2, same family) and other routes to find the examiner-cited references.

I've reached the search-step limit, so I'll consolidate what the searches confirmed and what remains unverified, then give the best-supported prior-art analysis with explicit caveats.

1. Verification status (read first)

What I could confirm via live search:

• US9661049B2 exists exactly as identified (title, dates, assignee chain, spec content) — confirmed on Google Patents.
• The patent is part of a DLVR, Inc. family sharing the 2014-10-29 priority date: WO2016069896A2, US20160127260A1, US20160127440A1, US10911509B2, US11075970B2, US11533352B2, US11757964B2, US11765219B2, US11936708B2, etc. (Family members sharing the same effective filing date are not §102 prior art against one another.)
• Two older documents appear on pages listing US9661049B2 in their citation/cited-by records: US20120151009A1 and US20130290465A1 (details below). The snippet structure strongly indicates US9661049 cites these documents.

What I could NOT verify (be aware):

• I could not retrieve the complete examiner "Patent Citations (27)"-style list for US9661049 itself (the one such list I surfaced, "Patent Citations (27)", belongs to a different patent — US9800639 — that cites DLVR family members). Treat any reference not explicitly confirmed above as a candidate, not a confirmed citation.
• The verbatim claims of 9661049 remain unverified (as flagged in the prior summary). The §102 mapping below therefore uses the independent-claim substance from the Brief Summary (system / method / CRM embodiments) and is keyed to those elements, not to verified claim numbers.

2. Confirmed/strongly-indicated cited references

2.1 US20120151009A1

• Full citation: US Patent Application Publication US20120151009A1, "Method and Apparatus for Generating and Handling Streaming Media Quality-of-Experience Metrics" (title per the linked record on the publication page; assignee as shown on Google Patents).
• Dates: Published 2012-06-14 (predates the 2014-10-29 priority date → prior art under AIA §102(a)(1)); filing date 2011-12-13 (approximate, unverified at the exact-day level).
• Brief description: Discloses generating and handling quality-of-experience (QoE) metrics for streaming media — measuring delivery performance of streamed content, including adaptive-bitrate streaming sessions, and using measurement data to manage delivery. It is a foundational reference in the streaming-telemetry space that DLVR's own later applications (US9661049, US11075970B2) cite.
• §102 analysis: Likely anticipates the measurement-related dependent concepts and arguably reads on the base of independent claims (receive request → serve manifest → measure segment delivery). Key gap: the searches do not confirm that US20120151009A1 discloses the core independent-claim limitation of rewriting the manifest so that the first URL references a segment in a first domain and a second URL references a segment in a different, second domain (interspersed multi-domain URLs). If it lacks that, it does not fully anticipate the independent claims — it would be a §103 combination candidate instead.

2.2 US20130290465A1

• Full citation: US Patent Application Publication US20130290465A1, "System and Method for Proxy Media Caching" (the linked later grant in the snippet is US10462258B2, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., granted 2019-10-29).
• Dates: Published 2013-10-31 (prior to 2014-10-29 → §102(a)(1) art); original filing date pre-2013 (unverified exact date).
• Brief description: Discloses proxy-side caching and delivery of media, including handling of segment/manifest requests in streaming delivery — a proxy intercepting media requests and serving/caching segments, which is directly relevant to a manifest server that intercepts requests and issues rewritten manifests.
• §102 analysis: Likely reads on the server-side interception and issued-response portions of the independent claims (receive request → identify source/upstream manifest → respond to user device). Key gap: as with 2.1, no confirmation that it discloses interspersing segment URLs across two different domains within a single issued variant manifest; absent that element it would not fully anticipate the independent claims.

3. Candidate prior art (highly relevant, not confirmed as examiner-cited)

These are references in the same art unit/space that an examiner would reasonably have considered; treat them as candidates until checked against USPTO Patent Center's citation list.

(Caveat: the four bracketed candidates are representative of the field from training data; I could not confirm any of them in the live citation record of 9661049.)

4. Bottom-line claim-level assessment

• The differentiating limitation of the independent claims (as described in the Brief Summary) is the issued manifest containing a first URL whose segment is hosted in a first domain and a second URL whose segment is hosted in a different second domain — i.e., an intermediary manifest server interspersing URLs across domains within a single variant manifest for measurement/allocation purposes, without client-side software.
• Every pre-2014 reference I identified discloses large portions of the claim (manifest request/response, multi-bitrate segmented video, ordered segment URL lists, server-side manifest handling). None has been confirmed — via the live search results — to disclose the multi-domain interspersal element in a single issued manifest. On the evidence available, no single confirmed reference appears to anticipate the independent claims in full under §102; the strongest case against the patent would be a §103 obviousness combination (e.g., HLS/DASH manifests + CDN URL rewriting + QoE measurement, per US20120151009A1).

5. What to do before relying on this

1. Pull the "Patent Citations" tab on Google Patents (patents.google.com/patent/US9661049B2/en) or the USPTO Patent Center bibliographic/IDS data for 9661049 to obtain the complete examiner citation list (including non-patent literature).
2. Retrieve the verbatim claims from USPTO Patent Center and re-key the §102 mapping to actual claim numbers.
3. Confirm whether US20120151009A1 and US20130290465A1 are in fact examiner citations (my inference is based on their pages listing 9661049 as a citing document, which is strong but not a substitute for the official record).

I'd rather flag these as unverified than present a fabricated citation list. If you can provide the front-page "References Cited" block or the Patent Center IDS, I can complete the per-reference §102 table with high confidence.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,661,049 (US9661049B2) under 35 U.S.C. § 103

A. Scope, sources, and honesty flags (read first)

Source for prior art. The full patent text provided to me does not itself contain a "Prior Art / References Cited" section. I recovered the face-of-the-patent citation list from Justia's rendering of the patent (https://patents.justia.com/patent/9661049), which mirrors Google Patents' "Citations" tab. That list is treated here as the Prior Art section for this analysis.

Claims. The verbatim claims were not included in the provided text and my searches did not return them. Consistent with the earlier sections of this analysis, I analyze the substance of the independent claims as reflected in the Abstract and Brief Summary: (1) a system claim — a manifest file server; (2) a method claim; (3) a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim — each centered on receiving a manifest request, identifying a source manifest, generating an issued manifest whose first URL references a segment file hosted in a first domain and whose second URL references a segment file hosted in a different second domain, and transmitting the issued manifest. Exact claim numbers/limitations are unverified — confirm against USPTO Patent Center before relying on any specific claim language.

Verification status of references. I verified titles/content for only two cited references (US8145782, US8327013, both McGowan/Unicorn Media) plus partial content for related family members. For every other cited reference, I can confirm only that it appears on the face of the patent; I have not verified its substantive disclosure. I flag each accordingly and do not attribute unverified disclosures to any reference. This is a framework analysis, not a validity opinion.

B. Claimed subject matter in substance

The independent claims require, in substance:

The patent's own disclosure tells us the purpose of L6: to intersperse the operator's own segment-server URLs among third-party service-provider (CDN) URLs so the operator's servers can record delivery telemetry (session IDs, bitrate shifts, first/last-segment measurements) without installing any software on the user device (spec § "Detailed Description"; FIG. 5's issued variant manifests showing sfs.b.manifestserver.net URLs alternating with contentprovider.service-provider.net URLs).

C. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA at the relevant time (priority date 2014-10-29) would be someone with a B.S. (or equivalent experience) in computer science/engineering, 2–4 years' experience in HTTP-based adaptive-bitrate streaming (HLS, DASH, HDS/Smooth Streaming), CDN architecture and traffic management, and web/HTTP infrastructure (DNS, URL rewriting, caching, redirects), familiar with the HLS media-playlist specification and with standard CDN practices such as URL signing, host-level load balancing, and multi-CDN failover.

D. The Prior Art section (face-of-patent citations) — inventory

Verified (content confirmed by search)

1. US8145782B2 — McGowan & Carls (Unicorn Media, Inc.), "Dynamic chunking for media streaming" (filed 2010-12-22; granted 2012-03-27). Verified: a system that dynamically generates index files for chunked HTTP streaming; the index file generator can insert advertisements at any point during playback (i.e., inject URLs pointing to other content/hosts into the index); can create an index file having links to one or more redirectors; the index file generator "may be created at the beginning of the media streaming to provide individualized media content to a particular end user and unique information regarding the streaming session to a content provider"; supports per-session, dynamically generated index files with secure URLs; gathers server-side session/reporting data (stops, plays, pauses, skips) without relying on player beaconing. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8145782B2; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/51/5e/c0/4931be9a491a16/US8145782.pdf

2. US8327013B2 — McGowan & Carls (Unicorn Media), "Dynamic index file creation for media streaming" (filed 2012-03-26; granted 2012-12-04; continuation of 8145782). Verified: systems/methods for receiving requests for a media file and generating corresponding index files used in streaming; index files for multiple sub-streams/bitrates; insertion of advertisements at any point; per-session index generation. Source: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[8327013](/patent/8327013).html; https://patents.google.com/patent/US8327013B2

3. US8645504B2 — McGowan (Unicorn Media) (granted 2014-02-04) — cited on the face of the patent; same family lineage (per the family history in the 8327013/8954540 records, the Unicorn Media index/chunking family includes 8645504). I have not verified 8645504's title/disclosure independently; treat as a family member with likely related index-file/streaming content.

Cited on the face of the patent but NOT substance-verified by me

• US8051166 (Jenkins et al., 2011) — cited; content unverified.
• US8234350 (Gu et al., 2012) — cited; content unverified.
• US8495675, US8539523, US8762564 (Philpott et al., 2013–2014) — cited; likely Adobe HDS/manifest-related given the assignee and timing, but unverified.
• US20040210320 (Pandya, 2004) — cited; unverified.
• US20120151009 (Bouazizi et al., 2012) — cited; DASH-related (Nokia), unverified.
• US20120198492 (Dhruv et al., 2012) — cited; unverified.
• US20130103849 (Gillies et al., 2013) — cited; unverified.
• US20130290465 (Harrison et al., 2013) — cited; unverified.
• US20130332971 (Fisher et al., 2013) — cited; unverified.
• US20140089465 (van Brandenburg et al., 2014) — cited; likely CDN/DASH-related (TNO), unverified.
• US20140149557 (Lohmar, 2014) — cited; likely Ericsson adaptive-streaming/session-related, unverified.
• US20140230003 (Ma et al., 2014) — cited; likely multi-CDN/content-delivery-related, unverified.
• US20140250230 (Brueck et al., 2014) — cited; likely adaptive-bitrate streaming/manifest-related, unverified.
• US20140280906 (Johns et al., 2014) — cited; unverified.
• US20140337411 (Panje et al., 2014) — cited; unverified.
• US20150180924 (O'Callaghan, 2015) — cited; unverified.
• US20150256577 (Gutiérrez et al., 2015) — cited; unverified.
• US20150296274 (Good et al., 2015) — cited; unverified.
• US20160127260 / US20160127440 (Gordon, 2016) — the inventor's own sibling applications; not § 103 prior art under AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) analysis nuance, but relevant to the family.
• WO2013147983 (2013) — cited; unverified.
• WO2016069896 — the PCT publication of this very family.
• NPL: PCT/US2015/058054 International Search Report & Written Opinion (Apr. 28, 2016); office actions in parent U.S. Appl. 14/709,171.

Transparency note: Because the examiner cited these references, they are the natural first line of attack — but a rigorous § 103 case requires reading each one. Several (e.g., Ma 20140230003, van Brandenburg 20140089465, Lohmar 20140149557, Brueck 20140250230) are, by title/timing/assignee, plausible candidates for disclosing manifest-based routing across multiple delivery networks, and each should be pulled and read before filing anything.

E. Limitation-by-limitation mapping (primary combination)

The strongest combination on the verified record is the McGowan/Unicorn Media family (US8145782 + US8327013, optionally + US8645504) in combination with the then-routine multi-CDN/manifest-routing art represented by the cited Ma, van Brandenburg, Lohmar, and/or Brueck applications (to be verified):

F. Combinations and motivation to combine (the core of the analysis)

Combination 1 — McGowan/Unicorn Media (US8145782 / US8327013 / US8645504) + multi-CDN allocation art (Ma 20140230003 and/or van Brandenburg 20140089465 and/or Lohmar 20140149557, to be verified)

The combination: Take McGowan's dynamic, per-session index-file generator that already rewrites a source index into a session-specific playlist and injects third-party-host URLs (ad insertion) and redirector URLs. Combine with the routine practice — disclosed in the cited multi-CDN applications and well known in the industry — of allocating content delivery across multiple service providers/CDNs for redundancy and performance. A PHOSITA would configure McGowan's index generator to write some segment URLs pointing to the operator's own segment servers and other segment URLs pointing to a second service provider's domain, i.e., the claimed "first domain / different second domain" pattern.

Motivation:

• Server-side performance measurement without client software. This is the patent's own stated problem (spec: performance "difficult to monitor in actual use… especially difficult to determine from a user's perspective," and the embodiments "do not require the installation of additional software"). McGowan already solved the analogous problem for viewing behavior — its index generator gathers session/reporting data server-side, expressly "as a substitute for or complement to beaconing data" (verified). A PHOSITA wanting delivery-performance data would naturally extend McGowan's server-side measurement concept by ensuring some segment requests traverse the operator's own servers — i.e., by pointing some manifest URLs at those servers.
• Multi-provider allocation is industry-standard. The patent itself recites that "content providers typically allocate the distribution of content among two or more service providers for redundancy purposes." Rewriting manifests to steer segments to different CDNs was a known technique (that is the apparent subject of several cited references — Ma, van Brandenburg, Lohmar). Combining a known manifest-rewriting engine (McGowan) with a known allocation scheme (multi-CDN) is a textbook § 103 "known technique, known to work in the same way, applied to a known device" scenario (KSR).
• Ad-insertion is direct evidence of the "different domain" concept. McGowan's verified ad insertion already places URLs for different content (from an ad server host) into the index file — demonstrating that a PHOSITA had already solved the sub-problem of "one playlist, multiple hosts." Extending that to ordinary segment URLs is an insubstantial change.

Combination 2 — McGowan + adaptive-streaming manifest-rewriting applications (Brueck 20140250230, Gillies 20130103849, Harrison 20130290465, Fisher 20130332971 — to be verified)

If any of these cited applications discloses rewriting HLS/DASH playlists per-request (e.g., for CDN selection, tokenized URLs, or session tracking), it supplies the missing "issued manifest generated from a source manifest" and "different domains" language more explicitly; McGowan supplies the session-level rewrite and measurement purpose. Motivation: same as above — performance management, redundancy, session telemetry.

Combination 3 — single-reference obviousness under McGowan alone (secondary theory)

If the McGowan '782 disclosure of redirectors ("create an index file having links to one or more redirectors on the system… configured to issue the location of the chunk") is read with its ad-insertion teaching, a reasonable argument exists that the "first domain / second domain" limitation is a trivial selection: a PHOSITA implementing McGowan's redirector embodiment for delivery performance measurement would point some chunk requests at the measurement infrastructure and others at CDN hosts. This theory is weaker for claim 1's explicit "second domain different from the first domain" language and should be a fallback.

Why the combination would have been obvious — KSR framing

• Predictable variation: choosing which hosts appear in a playlist's URLs, in a repeating/interspersed pattern, is a predictable design choice once the goals (measurement + multi-CDN allocation) are set.
• Design need + known alternatives: the need to measure and manage multi-CDN delivery was well documented (the patent's own Background admits CDNs such as Akamai/Limelight and multi-provider allocation were standard). The known alternatives — URL rewriting, manifest rewriting, DNS-level steering, redirectors — all point to the same solution.
• No unexpected result: interspersing URLs across domains produces no new technical effect beyond routing segment requests to different servers — a routine result.
• No teaching away: nothing in McGowan or the multi-CDN art teaches against mixing hosts within a single playlist; HLS media playlists expressly support absolute URLs to arbitrary hosts (the patent itself notes manifests "commonly" use relative URLs but that absolute URLs are used in its embodiments — indicating the protocol permits either).

Reasonable expectation of success

High. URL substitution in a text playlist is a trivial transformation; the HLS client simply follows the URLs it is given. The only technical risk (cross-domain cookies/session correlation) was already solved by the art (session IDs in URLs/query strings, per McGowan's session-specific index files and secure URLs).

G. Secondary considerations (rebuttal factors)

• No long-felt need shown on this record — the problem (multi-CDN measurement) was openly discussed in the patent's own Background, and McGowan/Unicorn Media's 2010–2012 filings show the dynamic-manifest space was active; if anything, the record suggests the solution space was crowded, favoring obviousness.
• No unexpected results or teaching away identified.
• Commercial success / licensing: the family has been asserted in district court (Colorado 1:26-cv-01373 per the litigation metadata), but litigation activity is not itself evidence of non-obviousness.
• Copying: not shown.

H. Conclusion

On the verified record, the strongest § 103 case is: US8145782 (McGowan) alone or with US8327013 (McGowan), in combination with the cited multi-CDN/manifest-routing applications (Ma 20140230003, van Brandenburg 20140089465, Lohmar 20140149557, Brueck 20140250230 — each to be read and verified), rendering the substantive independent claims obvious: McGowan supplies the source-manifest → per-session issued-manifest rewrite, session tracking, server-side measurement, and multi-host URL injection; the multi-CDN art supplies the motivation and mechanism for splitting segment URLs across two different domains; and a PHOSITA would combine them for performance measurement and multi-provider allocation without client-side software — the patent's own stated goals. The "different domains" limitation is the battleground limitation; it is the most likely to carry the day for the patentee if no cited reference expressly shows segment-URL-level splitting across different second-level domains in one playlist, so a fresh search (beyond the face-of-patent citations) for pre-2014 HLS/DASH playlist-splitting and multi-CDN manifest-rewriting systems is essential.

I. Verification checklist before relying on this analysis

1. Pull the issued claims of US9661049B2 from USPTO Patent Center (claim text was not in the provided materials; numbering and dependent limitations unverified).
2. Read, in full: US8145782, US8327013, US8645504 (McGowan/Unicorn Media family).
3. Read, in full, the unverified cited applications most likely to carry Combination 1/2: US20140230003 (Ma), US20140089465 (van Brandenburg), US20140149557 (Lohmar), US20140250230 (Brueck), US20130103849 (Gillies), US20130290465 (Harrison), US20130332971 (Fisher), US20140280906 (Johns), US20140337411 (Panje), US20150180924 (O'Callaghan), US20150296274 (Good), US20150256577 (Gutiérrez), US8495675/US8539523/US8762564 (Philpott), US8234350 (Gu), US8051166 (Jenkins), US20120198492 (Dhruv), US20120151009 (Bouazizi), US20040210320 (Pandya), and WO2013147983.
4. Conduct a fresh pre-2014 search for non-cited art on (a) per-request manifest/playlist rewriting in HLS/DASH, (b) multi-CDN segment-level allocation via manifests, and (c) manifest-based telemetry without client SDKs.
5. Confirm the Colorado 1:26-cv-01373 docket (parties, claims, claim-construction posture) if this analysis is being used in that litigation.

Honesty flag: two references were substance-verified (US8145782, US8327013); one family member (US8645504) is identified by family lineage only; all other cited references are verified only as appearing on the face of the patent. No disclosures have been attributed to references I have not read. This document is a technical analysis framework, not a legal opinion.