Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC (Corning Gilbert Inc.)

Company overview. Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC — widely known by its legacy brand Corning Gilbert Inc. — is a Glendale, Arizona manufacturer of coaxial and RF connectors at 5310 W. Camelback Road. Its predecessor, Gilbert Engineering Co., Inc., was a Glendale-based connector maker owned by Oak Industries until Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) merged with Oak in a transaction announced November 1999 and completed in 2000. The company is a wholly owned Corning subsidiary; its headcount and revenue are not separately disclosed. Parent Corning reported FY2024 GAAP net sales of $13.12 billion (core $14.47 billion) with about 56,000 employees, and 2024 Optical Communications segment sales of $4.66 billion.

Products / operations. Corning Gilbert designs and manufactures coaxial connectors for cable TV and broadband networks — trunk and distribution connectors, drop and compression F-connectors, adapters and terminators sold under brands including Gilbert, UltraSeal, UltraEase, UltraRange and UltraShield — plus sub-miniature RF/microwave push-on interconnects (GPO, GPPO, G3PO, G4PO, GMS, SGMS) rated to roughly 65 GHz for military, satellite, wireless and telecom use. Corning cites over 50 years of connector design experience. This is an operating manufacturer with real product lines, not an NPE or shell licensor.

Patent-litigation posture. The tracked database records one appearance — as plaintiff/petitioner before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, filed 2013-06-10 — and zero defendant-side entries. That profile is consistent with an operating company using inter partes review in an active product-market dispute, not with a patent assertion entity. No tracked activity sits in plaintiff-friendly venues such as the Eastern District of Texas; the PTAB sits in Alexandria, Virginia.

Notable cases / context. Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC v. PPC Broadband, Inc. (PTAB) is the tracked matter. In public records it was one strand of a broader connector dispute: Corning challenged PPC patents (e.g., U.S. 8,323,060; 8,313,353; 8,287,320) in IPR2013-00340/-342/-345/-346/-347 while PPC sued Corning Gilbert in the Northern District of New York. The Federal Circuit addressed claim construction in PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC, 815 F.3d 747 (Fed. Cir. 2016), and the parties terminated IPR2013-00340 after settling in September 2018. The Board also found Corning Inc. and Corning Optical Communications LLC should have been named real parties-in-interest.