US 10038284

I'll research this patent across the requested sources.

Let me dig into the litigation/appeal outcomes and the full claim set.

US Patent 10,038,284 B2 — Research Summary

Bibliographic Data

Priority chain (from the specification): This patent is a continuation of 15/094,451 (filed Apr. 8, 2016) → 13/448,937 (now US 9,312,611) → 13/118,617 (now US 8,157,589) → CIP of 12/418,103 (now US 8,071,174) and 12/941,709 (now US 7,950,958) → 12/397,087 (now US 7,828,595) → 10/997,218 (filed Nov. 24, 2004).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A grounding member for maintaining a ground path in a cable connector includes, in one embodiment, an inner core configured to flex when a force is applied to the grounding member during operation of the connector. The grounding member further includes an outer conductive coating applied to the inner core. The outer conductive coating is configured to flex from a first state to a second state when a force is applied to the grounding member, so as to maintain a conductive path through the connector when the outer conductive coating flexes between the first and second states during operation of the connector."

Litigation and Post-Grant Review (as found)

• PTAB: IPR2022-00720, filed March 18, 2022. Google Patents renders the party field as "Unified Patents PTAB Data," but that is the data-source attribution, not the petitioner. Independent PTAB trackers (ipverse/greyb, Patexia) identify the actual petitioner as Amphenol Corp. et al. against PPC Broadband, Inc. et al. Institution decision Oct. 24, 2022; Final Written Decision Oct. 23, 2023 (Panel: Hoskins, Gerstenblith, Ippolito; opinion by Hoskins). The FWD determined all challenged claims unpatentable; challenged claims were 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 and 46. Patent Owner rehearing request denied Feb. 28, 2024.
• Federal Circuit: Appeal No. 2024-1778, consolidated with 2024-1776, -1777 and -1779 (appeals from IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, -00721). On March 4, 2026, the court issued a Rule 36 nonprecedential judgment AFFIRMED (per curiam: Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham). In other words, the PTAB's invalidation of the challenged claims of the '284 patent was upheld. Law360 headline: "Fed. Circ. Backs PTAB Ax Of Coaxial Cable Patent Claims" (March 4, 2026).
• District court: D. Del. case 1:21-cv-00654 (listed on the Google Patents family page).
• Caveat: Because the affirmance was by Rule 36 (no opinion), the CAFC did not articulate reasoning; and note that claim 1 and the other independent claims listed below were not among the claims challenged in IPR2022-00720.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The full claim set is not reproduced in the authoritative patent text supplied, so the following is drawn from secondary full-text sources (rpxcorp/insight and Justia). Treat exact wording — particularly for claim 1 — as uncertain: the Justia text (which corresponds to the pre-issue publication US 2017/0155212) and the issued-patent text on rpxcorp differ in phrasing. Where they conflict, the issued-patent wording is the better evidence of what issued.

Claim 1 — "A conductive ground member for a cable connector" (issued text, per rpxcorp):
A conductive grounding part (e.g., a ring/O-ring) with a conductively coated component that forms a conductive ground path between a first component and a second component of a connector. It has an inner core and an outer conductive coating. The coating maintains an electrical ground path during connector operation and is designed to flex in one direction when force is applied and flex in another direction when the force is at least partially released — so the ground path survives the mechanical squeezing/relaxation that happens as the connector is tightened and loosened.
(The Justia pre-issue version instead recites "maintain a first conductive ground path portion … and a second conductive ground path portion" rather than the two-direction flex language — a material difference worth noting.)

Claim 14 — "A connector for coupling a prepared end of a coaxial cable to an interface port":
Comprises (a) a body member with a central bore; (b) a post inside the bore, with an outward flange at one end forming a first portion of a mating interface, and a tubular sleeve at the other end that mechanically and electrically engages the prepared cable end; (c) a conductive coupling element (nut) with (i) an engagement surface at one end that mechanically and electrically engages the port, (ii) a lip at the other end forming a second portion of the mating interface — the two portions slide along the mating interface so the nut can rotate about the connector's long axis — and (iii) a mounting groove between the engagement surface and the mating interface; and (d) a conductive grounding element in the form of a compressible ring seated in that groove, which is displaced one way as the nut is tightened onto the port and the other way as it is loosened.

Claim 24 — "A connector comprising":
Similar architecture to claim 14, but the body member's first end defines a first cavity portion and the coupling element has a second cavity portion axially aft of the lip, the two together defining an RF shielding cavity. It adds a conductive sealing element in the RF shielding cavity to prevent RF energy from entering or leaving the connector, plus the same compressible-ring grounding element in the mounting groove.

Claim 29 — "A connector comprising":
A body member with a central bore and a first grounding-member contact surface; a conductive coupling member/grounding contact surface; and a conductive grounding member comprising a compliant ring disposed between the first and second grounding-member contact surfaces, configured to produce an electrical path between the body member and the conductive coupling member.

Other independent claims: The challenge list implies additional claims exist beyond claim 29 (e.g., claims 30–33, 36–43, 46 were challenged, while 34, 35, 44 and 45 were not). I do not have authoritative text for those claims and cannot confirm how many of them are independent. I will not guess at their content.

Technical Gist (plain language)

The patent is about keeping a reliable electrical ground/EMI shield in a coaxial cable connector even as weather, corrosion, and repeated tightening/loosening cause small mechanical movements. The core idea is that elastomeric parts (silicone O-rings) are given a thin conductive coating — silver-based conductive ink sprayed on — so the part is both a seal and a conductor. Because only the skin is conductive, the part stays flexible (unlike a solid metal or bulk-conductive ring), and the flexible conductive coating maintains continuity as it is compressed and relaxed. The specification describes two placements: a "conductively coated mating edge member" (O-ring 70) at the port-mating edge of the post, and a "connector body conductive member" (O-ring 80) between the connector body and the coupling nut.

Confidence / Uncertainty Notes

• Bibliographic data, abstract, priority chain, and the PTAB/CAFC history are well-supported by the sources found and are stated with high confidence.
• The exact wording of claim 1 is uncertain because the two full-text sources disagree; I flagged both.
• Claims 2–13, 15–23, and 30–46 and the total number of independent claims are not authoritatively confirmed here.
• The Google Patents page's listing of the IPR petitioner as "Unified Patents PTAB Data" is a source attribution artifact; the case records indicate Amphenol Corp. as petitioner.
• No 2026 CAFC docket activity beyond the March 4, 2026 Rule 36 affirmance was found; if a petition for rehearing or en banc review was filed after that date, I did not locate it.

I'll research litigation involving US 10,038,284 across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me dig into the Delaware case and check for other district court assertions.

Let me check for additional cases and confirm the Delaware case details.

Litigation Involving US Patent 10,038,284

Bottom line: I found three adjudicative proceedings that name US 10,038,284 literally — one district court action and its IPR offspring, plus the Federal Circuit appeal. I found no second district court case, no ITC action, and no second IPR. I did not substitute any similar patent number; every proceeding below is tied to 10,038,284 specifically.

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1. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corporation and Times Fiber Communications, Inc.

The '284 was in this case. Confirmation comes from Amphenol's own IPR papers, which list as an exhibit: "PPC's Infringement Contentions – '284 Patent, PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corporation et al., No. C.A. 21-654 (LPS) (D. Del. Mar. …)" (Ex. 1014 in the '284 and '083 petitions). The invention patents asserted across the family included US 10,038,284, US 10,446,983, US 10,965,063 and US 9,225,083; a related N.D.N.Y. declaratory-judgment action (5:21-cv-00504) involved US 10,589,957 instead. This closes the open question flagged in the earlier assignment section — the '284-to-21-654 linkage is no longer merely inferred from PPC's PO Mandatory Notices; it is documented in the IPR exhibit list.

Stay. On April 6, 2022, the parties filed a joint stipulation to stay pending the PTAB's institution decisions on four IPR petitions Amphenol filed March 18, 2022. The stipulation provided that if all four IPRs were instituted, the stay would continue through final written decisions, and that if any asserted claims survived, the parties would file a joint status report on resuming. So-ordered by Judge Rodger D. Smith II. This is the key procedural fact: the district court case was parked while the IPRs ran, which is why there is no merits disposition on the '284 at the district court level.

⚠️ Status discrepancy — flagging rather than resolving. DocketAlarm's case page for 1:21-cv-00654 shows case flags "STAYED and PATENT" and last docket activity; the Ex Parte litigation-tracker page lists Status: Closed. I could not retrieve the specific order lifting or disposing of the action. Both a continued stay through the IPR appeals and an administrative closure are consistent with the record. Verify the current docket in PACER before relying on either characterization. A case that was stayed pending four IPRs — all four of which resulted in cancellation of all challenged claims, affirmed on appeal — would ordinarily be resumed for the untested claims or dismissed; I did not find the closing order.

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2. Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. — IPR2022-00720 (PTAB)

This is an AIA trial arising out of the Delaware action — Amphenol filed it as the accused infringer, and the '284 infringement contentions from 21-654 were put into the IPR record as an exhibit. It is properly listed as connected litigation, not a separate assertion.

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3. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp. — Federal Circuit Appeal

The Rule 36 judgment covers all four consolidated IPRs, so the '284 appeal (24-1778) was affirmed, upholding the PTAB's cancellations.

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Cases I checked and am ruling OUT

• PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corporation, N.D.N.Y. 5:21-cv-00504 (filed Apr. 30/May 6, 2021; declaratory judgment). The Rule 12 report lists patent 10,589,957 — not the '284. Excluded.
• PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Charles Industries, LLC and Amphenol Corporation, D. Del. 1:22-cv-01517. Asserts US 9,008,483 (fiber enclosures). Not the '284.
• Times Fiber Communications, Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., D. Del. 1:21-cv-01823 (filed Dec. 27, 2021). TFC asserted its own patents (10,941,016 / 10,988,342 / 11,001,471 / 10,906,771 / 10,913,632). Not the '284.
• PPC Broadband, Inc. v. PerfectVision Manufacturing, Inc., E.D. Ark. 4:22-cv-00163 (and 4:22-cv-00204). Asserts the "Bence Patents" (acquired from Corning) — not the '284.
• PPC v. Corning Optical Communications RF line (N.D.N.Y. 5:11-cv-761 and the second Corning suit). Asserted US 6,558,194 / 6,848,940 and the Bence patents — decades earlier, and not the '284 (which issued 2018-07-31, after all of that).

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Honest limits on this list

1. I could not run a full docket-level or patent-level litigation database sweep. The Unified Patents litigation portal search tool returned a step-limit block on the query for 10038284. I therefore cannot rule out a small later-filed action (e.g., a 2023–2026 complaint asserting the untested claims 1–28) that did not surface in keyword search. The '284's Google Patents "family has litigation" block lists only a single US case docket (1:21-cv-00654), which is consistent with what I found — but that block is not exhaustive either.
2. The Delaware status is genuinely unresolved (STAYED vs. Closed). If you need the current posture, pull the PACER docket for 1:21-cv-00654.
3. The '284's role in 21-654 versus its siblings. The complaint asserted a family of PPC connector patents; the '284's infringement contentions are documented in Amphenol's IPR exhibit list. I did not read the D.I. 1 complaint itself, so I cannot state the complete asserted-patent list with certainty.
4. No ITC Section 337 investigation involving this patent surfaced.

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Practical summary for a defendant

Net: The only district court assertion of US 10,038,284 that I can document is PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corporation and Times Fiber Communications, Inc., 1:21-cv-00654 (D. Del.), filed May 6, 2021, stayed in April 2022, with an unresolved current docket status. Its PTAB and appellate progeny are IPR2022-00720 and Fed. Cir. 2024-1778 (consolidated), both now final against the challenged claims. The claim-by-claim warning in the earlier strategic section still governs: claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 are canceled, but claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44 and 45 were never litigated in any of these proceedings.

I'll start by verifying the one PTAB reference embedded in the patent's litigation metadata, then check for any others.

Key proceeding identified. Now let me get the claim-level FWD details, grounds, and confirm whether any other IPRs target this patent.

Let me pull the FWD document itself and confirm the remaining claims and the parallel litigation.

⚠️ Threshold correction to the structured data

The "PTAB proceedings on file" block is wrong for this patent. It states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings. Web search surfaced one AIA trial on US 10,038,284 — IPR2022-00720, which went to a Final Written Decision, was reheard, was appealed, and was affirmed by the Federal Circuit. It is also flagged on the patent's own Google Patents page ("PTAB case IPR2022-00720 filed (Final Written Decision)").

Two identifier cautions before the substance:

1. Petitioner is Amphenol, not Unified Patents. The Google Patents litigation block prints Petitioner: "Unified Patents PTAB Data". That string is a Creative Commons attribution label for Unified Patents' PTAB dataset, not a party name. The real petitioner is Amphenol Corp. et al. No defensive aggregator appears anywhere in this chain. If a defendant's file says "Unified Patents challenged this patent," that is a data-artifact error.
2. Source limits. I was able to verify the proceeding's metadata, party/panel identity, dates, challenged‑claim list, art references and disposition, but I did not read the FWD's full text. Claim-level results below rest on the decision's operative title ("…Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable") plus secondary reporting, and I flag anything I could not independently confirm.

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Proceedings overview

Total: 1 AIA trial proceeding on US 10,038,284 — IPR2022-00720, status "claims invalidated," affirmed on appeal after a request for rehearing was denied. There are no active proceedings, no PGRs/CBMs, no institution denials, and no settlements. Bottom line for a defendant: all 14 claims that were challenged — claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 — were held unpatentable and the Federal Circuit affirmed; any demand letter citing those claims is citing canceled claims. But the patent has 46 claims total, and roughly 32 claims were never tested (1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45). This is a partially neutered patent, not a dead one. Check the specific claim numbers in the demand before assuming you are safe.

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IPR2022-00720 — Amphenol Corp. et al. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. et al.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-03-18
• Patent: US 10,038,284 B2 (application 15/431,018; Tech Center 2800)
• Status: Verbatim from the structured/aggregator data: "Final Written Decision – Appealed." Plain English: FWD issued holding all challenged claims unpatentable; rehearing denied; appeal filed; Federal Circuit affirmed 2026-03-04 — the merits are over.
• Judge panel: George R. Hoskins (author of the FWD), Bart A. Gerstenblith, Frances L. Ippolito. (Source: Patexia case summary.)
• Counsel of record: Petitioner — Giri Pathmanaban et al.; Patent Owner — Denise Sullivan et al. (Source: IPVerse; spelling of petitioner counsel is per that source.) On appeal, PPC was represented by Robert King High III (Finnegan); Amphenol by Gabriel K. Bell (Latham & Watkins).
• Petition grounds: 14 claims challenged — 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 46 (elsewhere recited as "claims 29-33, 36-43, and 46"). Statutory basis: § 103 obviousness. The art combination was Youtsey as the primary reference, combined with Lionetto and Horak — i.e., making Youtsey's sealing O‑ring conductive in view of Lionetto, with Horak supplying the redundant grounding-path/weather-seal/RFI-suppression motivation. The record also reflects reliance on a prior reexamination examiner's answer on the related '053 patent adopting that same Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak rationale. I could not verify the exact patent numbers of each reference from the sources available; do not cite exhibit numbers without pulling the FWD from PTAB E2E.
• Institution decision: Instituted, 2022-10-24 (Paper 11, 72 pages). The Board authorized an unusual pre‑institution Petitioner's Reply to the POPR (2022-08-31) and PO Sur-Reply (2022-09-07), which indicates the panel engaged head-on with Patent Owner's § 325(d) discretionary-denial arguments (the '284 Notice of Allowability, the '218 ancestor application, and the Becton/Dickens framework). The Board instituted anyway — i.e., it was unpersuaded that the Examiner had substantively evaluated the art. (The discretionary-denial argument set is documented in the petitioner's filings; the institution paper itself I did not read.)
• Final Written Decision: 2023-10-23 — all challenged claims unpatentable. Claims 29–33, 36–43, and 46 were held unpatentable as obvious over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak. Law360's contemporaneous report grouped this with three companion decisions: "PTAB Axes All Challenged Claims In 4 Coaxial Cable Patents" — Amphenol "showed that all the claims it challenged across four coaxial cable patents owned by competitor PPC Broadband Inc. are invalid as obvious." No challenged claim survived. I cannot quote the panel's specific claim-by-claim reasoning paragraph text because I did not retrieve the FWD body — retrieve it before quoting it in a brief.
• Claims NOT addressed by the FWD (do not assume anything about these): 1–28, 34, 35, 44, and 45. The FWD did not reach them because they were not challenged.
• Settlement / termination: None — no settlement. The proceeding ran to an FWD on the merits. "Termination Date" 2023-10-23 in the aggregator data is simply the FWD date.
• Post-FWD and appeal:
  • 2023-11-22 — Patent Owner Request for Rehearing of the FWD.
  • 2024-02-28 — Board denied the request for rehearing (37 C.F.R. § 42.71(d)).
  • 2024-04-29 — Patent Owner Notice of Appeal.
  • CAFC Nos. 2024-1776, 2024-1777, 2024-1778, 2024-1779 — consolidated appeals from IPR2022-00718 ('063), ‑00719 ('983), ‑00720 ('284), and ‑00721 ('083). The '284 appeal is 24-1778 (per the Google Patents family record; the lead caption in the Federal Circuit judgment is PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., 2024‑1776).
  • 2026-03-04 — AFFIRMED, per curiam (Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham), Fed. Cir. R. 36 — a one-line judgment with no opinion. Judgment: law.justia.com — 24-1776, 2026-03-04.
• Defensive value: Very high for the challenged claims, qualified for the rest. Claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 are canceled; a defendant served with a demand on any of those numbers can say so flatly. But an assertion on untested claims 1–28 or 34/35/44/45 is unaffected by this IPR, and the Rule 36 affirmance buys the defendant no reasoning it can borrow.

Proceeding links: IPVerse case page for IPR2022-00720 · Patexia case summary · Justia — Federal Circuit judgment, 2026-03-04. For the FWD document itself, pull Paper 40 (or the FWD paper) from PTAB E2E / PTAB Center at ptacts.uspto.gov under IPR2022-00720 — I did not verify the paper number and am not asserting one.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Of the 46 claims in US 10,038,284, 14 are canceled: 29–33, 36–43, and 46 (unpatentable over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak, affirmed). No claim was sustained on the merits — the patent owner lost on every claim that was put at risk. That is a materially different posture from "the patent survived IPR and is hardened." The surviving estate is the untested remainder: claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45. Note the claim-count asymmetry matters practically: the challenged set appears to be the "conductive sealing member / grounding member" genus (the claims the patent's own abstract and specification describe), while the untested claims 1–28 may cover different subject matter within the same disclosure. The first thing to do in any new matter is map the asserted claim numbers against the canceled list.

Estoppel landscape. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), Amphenol and its privies are estopped in the Delaware action from asserting any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised on the claims that were instituted. Because the FWD also found all challenged claims unpatentable and the appeal is final, the estoppel question is largely academic for claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 — those claims are canceled and cannot be asserted by anyone. The live estoppel question is the untested claims. Estoppel is applied claim-by-claim in prevailing practice: Amphenol's IPR did not put claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 at issue, so an accused infringer other than Amphenol — and, on most courts' reading, even Amphenol — remains free to raise Youtsey/Lionetto/Horak against those unchallenged claims in district court. Do not over-read the estoppel. It also means the Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak combination is now a proven, judicially blessed kill-shot for any claim that recites a conductive elastomeric grounding/sealing member bridging the nut/body/post interface — an obvious candidate theory for the untested claims, and one you should price out immediately (with the § 315(a)(1) and § 325(a)(1) bars in mind before filing anything you already knew).

Pattern signals. This was a coordinated, multi-patent, competitor-driven attack, not a troll/aggregator campaign. Amphenol filed four parallel IPRs in a single wave on 2022-03-18 — IPR2022-00718 ('063), ‑00719 ('983), ‑00720 ('284), and ‑00721 ('083) — and won all four, with an additional parallel ex parte reexamination of the '053 patent feeding the same Youtsey/Lionetto/Horak rationale into the record. PPC Broadband litigated hard from the patent-owner side: it filed POPRs, sur-replies, a Patent Owner Response, a motion to strike, a request for rehearing, and then appealed all four decisions to the Federal Circuit — and lost all four on a Rule 36 affirmance. There is no settlement and no Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator involvement; the "Unified Patents" string on the Google Patents page is dataset attribution only. Separately, the family data lists a Delaware District Court case, 1:21-cv-00654 (2021), and the '284 is cross-cited in the prosecution of later PPC family members (e.g., the '619 patent), where it was used as a double-patenting reference ("Claims 1-18 are rejected … as being unpatentable over claims 1-46 of U.S. Patent No. 10,038,284"). That cross-citation is worth tracing: it shows how PPC's continuation practice propagated the same claim families across multiple patents — which cuts both ways, since the same obviousness rationale that killed 14 claims here is reusable against the siblings.

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Recommended next steps

1. Canceled claims — disposition to quote. Pull the FWD (Paper 40 region, PTAB E2E, IPR2022-00720) and the Federal Circuit judgment. The operative disposition is: "Final Written Decision Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable" (2023-10-23), denying rehearing (2024-02-28), affirmed 2026-03-04 (Fed. Cir. Nos. 2024‑1776/1777/1778/1779, per curiam, Rule 36). If a demand letter asserts 29–33, 36–43 or 46, the response is that those claims are canceled under § 318(b) — and the appeal that could have revived them is final.
2. Untested claims — the real fight. Build your invalidity case on claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 from scratch. Start from the Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak record and the companion '063/'983/'083 FWDs (note in particular the "compliant ring … elastomeric ring having a flexible core and a conductive outer coating" claim language litigated in the sibling proceedings — it maps directly onto the '284 abstract's "inner core … outer conductive coating"). Those four FWDs together are your best roadmap.
3. Timing is now favorable, and there is no deadline pressure from this IPR. No proceeding is active, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing and no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD clock running. Your § 315(b) one-year bar to file a new IPR runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent — confirm whether the 2021 Delaware case (1:21-cv-00654) ever named you or a privy, because that will decide whether a new IPR is even available to you.
4. Stop before filing on the challenged claims. Filing an IPR against claims already canceled buys nothing and creates § 315(e)(2) estoppel exposure on adjacent claims. The validity work belongs in the district court on the untested claims, where you can also run § 112 and indefiniteness theories that no IPR here ever tested.
5. Correct the record internally. If your invalidity charts or docket tracker show "no PTAB activity" on US 10,038,284 (as the ODP-derived block suggests), or attribute IPR2022-00720 to Unified Patents, both are wrong. Amphenol Corp. et al. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. et al., IPR2022-00720, is the proceeding — and it ended in cancellation of all 14 challenged claims.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 10,038,284 through the USPTO Assignment Center and corroborating sources.

Let me pull the assignment record directly and check PPC Broadband's corporate ownership history.

Assignment Chain Analysis — US Patent 10,038,284 B2

Retrieval note (read first). The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) is a JavaScript single-page application; the search tooling available to me returned no rendered results for patent number 10038284, and the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html likewise did not render. I therefore could not pull reel/frame numbers, recordation dates, or correspondent-of-record fields for this patent. What I can confirm comes from the Google Patents legal-events block for the '284 family (which is itself populated from USPTO assignment data) plus corroborating corporate records. I have not fabricated reel/frame numbers or correspondents to fill those fields. Any field marked not retrieved must be verified directly in the Assignment Center before it is relied on in a filing or an invalidity memo.

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Inventors

Pattern observations. No "all inventors departed" signal. To the contrary: Montena is a long-tenured, still-active PPC inventor — his inventor profile shows PPC-family applications published as recently as 2024 (US 2024/0248275, "Reel enclosures") and 2025 (US 2025/0178858, "Multi-fiber reel and adapter assembly"). That is the opposite of the departure pattern that precedes a portfolio fire-sale. Krenceski and Mathews are Syracuse-area inventors consistent with PPC's DeWitt/East Syracuse, NY operation; I could not independently verify their employment status or any post-2018 departure from public sources retrieved.

Caveat on inventorship vs. filing date. Application 15/431,018 was filed 2017-02-13 as a continuation; the three named inventors are carried forward from the parent chain. The three-person 2017 assignment therefore tells you who owned the continuation, not necessarily who conceived the 2004-era subject matter (the chain reaches back to Ser. No. 10/997,218, filed 2004-11-24).

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Original assignee

PPC Broadband, Inc. — named assignee on the '284 face and the recorded assignee of the 2017-02-13 conveyance. East Syracuse / DeWitt, New York.

• Predecessor name: John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. (d/b/a PPC; historically "Production Products Company"), a family-owned Syracuse manufacturer founded by John Mezzalingua.
• Name change: John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. changed its name to PPC Broadband, Inc. in December 2012.
• Corporate parent: On December 10, 2012, Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC) acquired PPC Broadband, Inc. and SKT International Holdings B.V. from Daniel N. Mezzalingua and family trusts for $515.7 million under a Stock Purchase Agreement (Belden Form 8-K, Dec. 12, 2012).
• Primary line of business: Manufacture and sale of broadband connectivity hardware — coaxial cable connectors, compression/F-type connectors, fiber and drop accessories, for cable/broadband service providers. Approximately $238M revenue in 2012 and 774 employees at the time of acquisition; the company announced a ~100-job expansion in DeWitt in 2024. Belden reports PPC within its Broadband Solutions platform and markets it under the "PPC, a Belden brand" banner.
• Product embodying the claims: PPC indisputably ships coaxial connectors — the '284 subject matter (a conductively coated / conductive elastomeric grounding-seal member bridging the post, nut and interface-port mating interface in a compression or F-type connector) is squarely PPC's commercial product space. I did not, in the sources retrieved, verify a specific catalog SKU that maps to a particular claim. State the product nexus as "manufacturer of the accused technology class," not as a SKU-level admission.
• Current status: Operating. A wholly owned operating subsidiary of Belden Inc.; no dissolution, bankruptcy, or assignment-for-the-benefit-of-creditors event surfaced.

Key ownership point for diligence: Belden's 2012 transaction was a stock purchase, not an asset purchase. The record owner therefore never changed — PPC Broadband, Inc. remained the named owner and remains so today, with Belden as ultimate parent. That is why no post-2012 assignment, merger, or change-of-name recordation is required (or expected) on the '284.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological record, with the honest limits stated inline.

• 2017-02-13 (date as logged; execution vs. recordation not distinguishable from the indexed record) / recorded not retrieved — Reel not retrieved / not retrieved
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: Krenceski, Mary; Mathews, Roger; Montena, Noah P. (inventors)
  • Assignee: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — the Assignment Center cover-sheet correspondent field was not rendered by the sources available to me, so I cannot say whether a recurring PPC in-house paralegal, Barclay Damon LLP (Syracuse), or another firm filed the recording. This is the single most important field still to pull; it is the field that would tell you who runs PPC's recordation practice, and it recurs across the PPC family if any correspondent pattern exists.
  • Context: Routine filing-day employment assignment. The logged date coincides exactly with the 2017-02-13 filing date of application 15/431,018, which is the standard pattern for inventor-to-employer assignment at filing of a continuation. Not a fire-sale, not an NPE transfer.

Records I looked for and did not find surfaced for this patent:

• No Change of Name recordation tying John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. → PPC Broadband, Inc. to this patent (expected, given the Dec. 2012 name change predates this application's 2017 filing; the name change would, if recorded at all, appear against the 2004/2009-era ancestors, e.g. Ser. Nos. 10/997,218 and 12/418,103).
• No Security Agreement, Release, Merger, License, or Correction records on US 10,038,284.
• No post-issuance assignment of any kind. This is itself a finding: the original assignee still owns the patent.

I cannot rule out additional recorded assignments appearing on the Assignment Center for this patent number that were not mirrored in the Google Patents legal-events feed. Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search → Patent Number → 10038284).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership and key events for US 10038284
    2004 : Earliest ancestor application filed
    2011 : Continuation in chain filed
    2012 : Belden buys PPC in stock deal
         : John Mezzalingua renamed PPC Broadband
    2016 : Intermediate continuation filed
    2017 : Application 15431018 filed
         : Inventors assign to PPC Broadband
    2018 : Patent issued to PPC Broadband
    2021 : Delaware suit filed vs Amphenol
    2022 : Amphenol IPR filed
    2023 : PTAB cancels challenged claims
    2024 : Patent term expires
         : Notice of appeal filed
    2026 : Federal Circuit affirms

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain. The only recorded conveyance is inventors → PPC Broadband, Inc., an operating manufacturer (Belden 8-K, Dec. 12, 2012, describing the $515.7M stock acquisition of PPC Broadband, Inc. and SKT International Holdings B.V.). No single-member Delaware/Texas LLC, no registered-agent service address, no licensing-only vehicle.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT (as to the classic NPE list).
Neither PPC Broadband, Inc. nor Belden Inc. matches any entity on the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, Spangenberg vehicles). PPC Broadband does appear repeatedly in Unified Patents and Patexia litigation datasets — but as an operating-company plaintiff and as an IPR petitioner in its own right (e.g., PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Times Fiber Communications, Inc., IPR2022-00946), which is the signature of a competitor-enforcement posture, not of an NPE. Separately: the "Unified Patents PTAB Data" string on the Google Patents page for the '284 is a Creative Commons dataset attribution, not a party; the IPR2022-00720 petitioner is Amphenol Corp. Do not cite that string as evidence of defensive-aggregator involvement.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not establishable).
This is the one signal I was specifically instructed to test and cannot resolve: the Assignment Center correspondent field did not render. With only one conveyance in the entire chain, the recurrence test could not be run regardless — there is no second link against which to match a name. Pull the cover sheet for the 2017-02-13 recording and compare it against the correspondents on the sibling PPC patents ('063, '983, '083, '619, '611, '589, '174, '958, '595).

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
One conveyance, in 2017, from three individual inventors to their employer. No chained LLCs, no <24-month sequence, no shared correspondent addresses.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The sole recorded conveyance (2017) predates (a) issuance (2018-07-31), (b) the Delaware suit (1:21-cv-00654, filed 2021-05-06), and (c) the IPR (2022-03-18) by years. There is no transfer within 6 months before any assertion. Note also the standing nuance: because Belden bought stock, title never needed to move — so the absence of a pre-suit transfer is structural, not merely incidental.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving PPC Broadband, Inc., John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc., or Belden Inc. surfaced. Belden funded the 2012 acquisition with cash on hand plus a $375M revolver draw (Mergescreener/SEC 8-K record), not distressed sale mechanics.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
PPC asserts in its own name and on its own products' behalf. The 2021 Delaware action was filed by PPC Broadband, Inc. as plaintiff against Amphenol Corporation and Times Fiber Communications, Inc. — both direct competitors in coax/broadband connectivity. No grant-back, no revenue-share NPE, no undisclosed assertion vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. However, note the related de facto neutralization of part of the asset: PTAB IPR2022-00720 held claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 unpatentable (FWD 2023-10-23), and the Federal Circuit affirmed on 2026-03-04 (Rule 36, Nos. 2024-1776/1777/1778/1779). That is a validity outcome, not an ownership outcome — it does not change the assignment record, and the remaining claims (1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45) are still owned by PPC Broadband, Inc.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The entire recorded chain is a single inventor-to-employer assignment logged 2017-02-13 conveying the application to PPC Broadband, Inc., with no downstream transfer of any kind — the original assignee still owns the patent. PPC Broadband, Inc. is a manufacturer of coaxial/broadband connectivity hardware (≈$238M revenue at acquisition; Belden announced a further DeWitt expansion in 2024) and asserts the patent family directly as plaintiff against actual competitors (Amphenol Corp.; Times Fiber Communications, Inc.), and litigates from the patent-owner side through IPRs, appeals and prosecution continuations — the antithesis of the NPE model. The most notable ownership feature is structural rather than adversarial: Belden Inc.'s 2012 acquisition was a stock purchase, so PPC Broadband, Inc. survived as the record owner and no assignment was ever needed to move title to the parent.

Verification link: USPTO Patent Assignment Center — search Patent Number 10038284: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html)

Two open items to close before relying on this chain:

1. Reel/frame, recordation date and cover-sheet correspondent for the 2017-02-13 conveyance — the only fields I could not retrieve, and the ones that would complete the "repeat correspondent" signal test.
2. Whether the Complaint in D. Del. 1:21-cv-00654 actually pleaded US 10,038,284. The earlier sections of this analysis correctly flagged that the linkage is inferred from PPC's Patent Owner Mandatory Notices rather than confirmed from the pleading. The assignment record does not resolve that question — the D.I. 1 complaint and the § 3 Patent/Trademark Report do.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 10,038,284. Let me start with the patent's own USPTO/Google Patents record and its cited references.

Let me pull the authoritative reference lists from the USPTO/Google Patents record and the patent's front page.

Let me get the citation list specific to US10038284 and the key prior-art references from the IPR record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,038,284 B2

Bottom line up front: The proposition that matters is § 103, not § 102. The only adversarial record on this patent that reached the merits — IPR2022‑00720 — invalidated every challenged claim as obvious over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak. On the record I was able to retrieve, no single reference anticipates any claim of the ’284 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. The eight U.S. patent documents that appear in the citation set are a mixture of (i) background/field art and (ii) the patent’s own priority parents, which are not § 102 prior art to the extent the claims are entitled to the 2004 priority date.

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I. Scope, sources, and caveats (read before using the tables)

Patent confirmed as requested, number interpreted literally as 10038284: US 10,038,284 B2, application 15/431,018, filed 2017‑02‑13, issued 2018‑07‑31, assignee PPC Broadband, Inc., inventors Krenceski / Mathews / Montena. I did not substitute or auto-correct the number.

Sources actually retrieved:

• Google Patents rendering for the ’284 family (patents.google.com/patent/US10038284B2 and a co-family page at /patent/US9570859, which carries the same citation table) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10038284B2](/patent/US10038284B2)/en
• USPTO PTAB petition/decision documents on PTACTS — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1549313](/patent/1549313)/ and .../1549311/
• The bibliographic/priority data supplied in the authoritative full text.

Four caveats you must carry forward:

1. I could not open the USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search "References Cited" panel directly (tool limits). The citation table below is the Google‑Patents‑rendered citation set for the ’284 family. It should be reconciled against the printed front page of the issued patent (Patent Center → US 10,038,284 B2 → "Referenced By / References Cited") before any of it is used in a filing. The list contained 8 U.S. patent documents; I did not retrieve the front page's foreign patent documents or non‑patent literature entries, and I will not guess at them.
2. Three of the eight "citations" are the patent's own priority parents (US 7,950,958; US 8,157,589; US 9,312,611). Google Patents places continuation parents in the citation table as a rendering convention. They are related applications, not third‑party prior art, and their § 102 status depends entirely on the priority question discussed in Part IV.
3. The retrieval rendered the assignee of US 7,950,958 as "John Messalingua Associates, Inc." and of US 8,157,589 as "John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc." I am reproducing both spellings exactly as retrieved, not auto‑correcting them.
4. § 102 vs. § 103. The task asks which claims each reference "potentially anticipates." Anticipation requires every element in a single reference, arranged as in the claim. Nothing in the retrieved record does that. The invalidity that actually killed claims was § 103 obviousness. I have labelled each entry accordingly rather than manufacture § 102 mappings that the record does not support.

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II. The citation set appearing in the ’284 record

Not prior art — the "Cited By" documents. The family rendering also lists later PPC documents that cite (and descend from) this disclosure — e.g. US 2017/0155212 A1, US 10,446,983 B2, US 10,965,063 B2, US 11,811,184 B2, US 12,212,083 B2, US 12,009,619 B2, US 11,984,687 B2, and third‑party documents such as US 10,686,264 B2 ("Coaxial cable connector having a grounding bridge portion"), US 9,711,917 B2, US 9,722,363 B2, US 8,753,147 B2 and various Amphenol/Commscope/Corning items that surfaced in the citation graph. Documents publishing after 2017‑02‑13 are not prior art to the ’284, and same‑family continuations are not prior art at all for supported claims.

Asterisks. In the retrieved rendering, entries US 6,262,374, US 6,217,383, US 8,157,589 and US 9,312,611 carried asterisks. I am flagging the convention but not asserting what the asterisk means in that rendering without seeing the checkbox legend. Verify on the printed front page before characterizing any of these as "cited by examiner."

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III. The prior art that actually decided validity — IPR2022‑00720

This is the operative art, and it is the art your team should be working from. It is a § 103 combination, not § 102 art.

Also on the record (context, and a warning): during re‑examination of the ’053 patent, an Examiner rejection of claims 1–11 over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak was sustained — i.e., the same three‑reference rationale has already been blessed twice in this family. Expect it to be reused.

Cited-claim scope in IPR2022‑00720: challenged = 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46. The record indicates claim 29 and claim 37 are independent claims with similar "connector" structure ("Independent claim 37 is directed to a 'connector' with similar structure as the connector recited by claim 29"). All 14 were held unpatentable, affirmed by the Federal Circuit on 2026‑03‑04 (Nos. 2024‑1776/-1777/-1778/-1779, per curiam, Rule 36).

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IV. Where a § 102 argument actually lives — the priority/family problem

This is the only realistic § 102 exposure I can identify, and it is a self‑inflicted, same‑family exposure rather than a third‑party one:

• The ’284 claims "A conductive ground member for a cable connector" (claim 1) and the connector claims built on an inner core + outer conductive coating that flexes to maintain the ground path. That subject matter is squarely described in the 2004 priority application (published as US 2006/0110977 A1 on 2006‑05‑25, from Ser. No. 10/997,218) and in US 7,950,958 / US 8,157,589 / US 9,312,611.
• To the extent the ’284 claims are entitled to the 2004‑11‑24 priority date, those documents are not § 102 prior art. That is presumably PPC's position and it is what preserved the unchallenged claims 1–28 from the IPR.
• To the extent any ’284 claim (a) recites matter added after the 2004 filing, or (b) is not enabled/described in 10/997,218, the priority chain breaks at that claim, and US 2006/0110977 A1 (published 2006‑05‑25, more than one year before the 2017 filing) becomes § 102(b)/§ 102(a)(1) art against that claim. The same logic makes US 8,157,589 (2012‑04‑17) and US 9,312,611 (2016‑04‑12) available art for any claim whose support lies only in later filings.
• If you are defending an assertion on claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44 or 45 — the untested claims — run the written‑description/priority analysis first. A priority break converts the patent's own parent publications into single‑reference anticipation art, which is a far cleaner attack than re‑litigating Youtsey.

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V. Honest answer to the § 102 question, claim by claim

Conclusion: On the retrieved record, the § 102 answer for claims 1–46 of US 10,038,284 is "no single reference anticipates." The patent's claims were not beaten on anticipation; they were beaten on § 103 over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak, and that combination is now a judicially affirmed rationale for the 14 canceled claims (29–33, 36–43, 46) — and an obvious candidate theory against the untested remainder.

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VI. What to pull before relying on any of this

1. The printed front page of US 10,038,284 B2 via USPTO Patent Center and Patent Public Search (ppubs.uspto.gov) → "References Cited," to capture the foreign patent documents and NPL entries I could not retrieve, and to settle the asterisk convention.
2. The ’284 reissue/IDS record in the file wrapper (application 15/431,018) to confirm which of the eight documents were cited by the examiner and which were applicant‑supplied.
3. The FWD in IPR2022‑00720 (PTAB E2E / PTAB Center under IPR2022‑00720) for the verbatim claim‑by‑claim § 103 reasoning — I have the outcome and the art, not the decision body text, and I am not asserting a paper number for it.
4. The complete text of Youtsey (US 6,042,422), Lionetto (US 4,929,188) and Horak (US 3,879,102), including their filing/publication dates — I did not confirm those dates from the retrieved sources and have deliberately not supplied them. Their column/line citations above are reproduced from the PTAB record as retrieved.
5. The 10/997,218 specification, to test written‑description support for each of claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 — this is the pivot for the entire Part IV § 102 theory.

One internal record‑keeping flag: if any tracker in your file attributes IPR2022‑00720 to "Unified Patents," that is a dataset‑attribution artifact from the Google Patents litigation block, not a party. The petitioner was Amphenol Corp. et al.

I'll ground the prior-art references before building the § 103 analysis.

Now let me ground the remaining references (Horak, Tarrant, Bell) and try to confirm claim language.

Let me try to pin down the issued claim language for the independent claims, and the '053 reexam outcome (same art combo).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,038,284 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyzed: 2026-04-26 · Patent: US 10,038,284 B2, "Connector having a grounding member" (appl. 15/431,018; issued 2018-07-31; PPC Broadband, Inc.)

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I. Source basis, and what "prior art" means for this analysis

The authoritative patent text supplied does not reproduce a References Cited list or the claim set — the Google Patents fetch shows only the "prior art keywords" field (connector, conductive, coupling, post, grounding) and the family/priority links. So the operative prior art is the art that was actually litigated against this patent: the two grounds in IPR2022-00720, which are now the only adjudicated § 103 record on the '284.

Grounds as instituted and decided (Institution Decision, Paper 11, 2022-10-24):

• Ground 1 — Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak
• Ground 2 — Tarrant + Bell
  Both were instituted against claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46; the FWD (2023-10-23) held all of them unpatentable; rehearing denied 2024-02-28; affirmed Fed. Cir. Nos. 2024-1776/77/78/79 (Rule 36, 2026-03-04).

Threshold credibility note: the institution decision's own conclusion on claim 29 is verbatim: "the combined teachings of Youtsey, Lionetto, and Horak satisfy the elements of claim 29, and … one of ordinary skill in the art would have had a reason with rational underpinning to combine the teachings as proposed by Petitioner with a reasonable expectation of success." That is a Board finding, later affirmed — not a prediction. Everything below about claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44 and 45 is predictive and flagged as such.

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II. Legal framework and the POSA

• Governing law: pre-AIA § 103(a). The '284 issued from an application filed 2017, but the claims carry a priority claim into 10/997,218 (2004-11-24) — and the "conductively coated" disclosure may only reach back to the CIP (13/118,617, filed 2011-05-31). This matters, and I flag it as unresolved: whether claim 1's coating/flex limitations are supported by the 2004 disclosure or are new matter decides the effective filing date. It does not change the outcome here, because Youtsey (1998/2000), Lionetto (1989/1990), Horak (1975), Tarrant (1992) and Bell (1999) all predate even the 2004 date.
• POSA: likely an engineer with a bachelor's in mechanical/electrical engineering and 2–4 years of coaxial-connector design experience, familiar with F-connector standards, CATV return-loss/RFI requirements, elastomeric seals, and conductive-elastomer/gasket practice. The Board's record treats the POSA as knowing that moisture paths and RFI paths are the same crevices — a finding PPC did not successfully rebut.
• Claim construction: the Board construed the operative terms functionally and broadly (e.g., treating "o-ring," "conductive elastomer" and "compliant ring" at the level of a compressible conductive seal). No Phillips-style construction of claim 1 was ever issued in the IPR.

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III. Ground 1 — Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak

Why Youtsey is the correct primary reference

Youtsey supplies essentially the entire connector architecture the '284 claims recite: a post/inner tube (28) that inserts under the cable shield and has a flange (70); a rotatable nut/female receptacle with an internal lip retaining the post; an O-ring groove (80) between them; and O-rings (82, 84) seated at the nut/post interface for environmental sealing. That is the '284's FIG. 1A/1B and FIG. 7A/7B arrangement, minus conductivity.

The only element Youtsey lacks is that its rings are non-conductive. That single gap is the entire § 103 question.

Why Lionetto and Horak fill that gap

• Lionetto teaches the exact substitution: an annular compressible conductive elastomer ring 34 at the male/female shield interface of a coaxial connector, expressly claimed (claims 3, 5) for "continuous circumferential electrical contact and RFI suppression" — i.e., a conductive compressible ring that is both the seal and the ground path, which is precisely the '284's stated purpose ("facilitating grounding … by extending the electrical connection … [and] a physical barrier to unwanted ingress of moisture").
• Horak supplies the motivation and the redundant-grounding rationale: conductive rubber O-rings that seal against weather and block RFI simultaneously, and the express teaching that maintaining a continuous metal shield around the signal conductor is a dominant CATV design consideration.

Motivation to combine (the KSR-sufficient articulation)

1. Same field, same problem, same location. All three are coaxial connectors; the O-ring in each sits at a mechanical junction where moisture ingress and RFI leakage occur through the same crevice.
2. Known technique, predictable result. Lionetto and Horak show the known technique of making the sealing ring conductive to obtain both functions; the result (a conductive annular seal bridging two connector components) is exactly the result the '284 claims.
3. Redundancy is itself a recognized design goal. The '284's own background admits connectors loosen over time; adding a second conductive path across the nut/post interface addresses that known failure mode — the classic "known problem, known solution" rationale.
4. Motivation is not defeated by Youtsey already having a ground path. The Board expressly held the existence of a pre-existing path "does not detract from Petitioner's position."

Reasonable expectation of success

High. Lionetto and Horak are working conductive compressible seals in coaxial connectors; no new principle of operation is required, only a material substitution in an existing groove. The Board found the result "predictable."

What PPC argued, and why it lost

PPC's non-obviousness case is worth cataloguing because the same arguments will be re-used against the untested claims:

Net: Ground 1 is not merely plausible — it is an adjudicated, affirmed obviousness combination for the entire "conductive grounding/sealing ring bridging connector components" genus.

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IV. Ground 2 — Tarrant + Bell

Independent second ground, same claims.

• Tarrant supplies the connector + O-ring 13 at the post's mating edge inside the coupler, and expressly frames the same problem the '284 recites (moisture infiltration between body and interface connector; loose connectors).
• Bell supplies a conductive O-ring 34 bridging two connector components (plug body ↔ outlet body) — a body-to-coupler conductive path, which is the precise limitation PPC fought hardest on (the "coupler-body grounding member" of claim 29). Bell also teaches the O-ring's dual role (sealing + frictional/mechanical function).

Motivation: moisture intrusion and RFI share crevices; a conductive ring at the body/coupler junction restores continuity when the coupler is loose; Bell demonstrates the body-to-body conductive ring as a known, working structure. The Board rejected PPC's teaching-away argument here too: Tarrant's tapered edge does "not detract from using a conductive sealing o-ring as a complementary solution, providing protection against RFI when the coupler is loose."

Why Ground 2 matters strategically: Ground 1's weakest link was that Youtsey's rings are at the nut/post interface, not the body/coupler interface. Ground 2 attacks the body/coupler location head-on. For any untested claim that recites a body-to-coupler grounding member (e.g., the claim-24 "RF shielding cavity" and the claim-29-style body/coupler contact surfaces), Ground 2 — or a Ground 2 variant adding Lionetto/Horak for the weather + RFI motivation — is the better vehicle.

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V. Application to the untested claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 (predictive)

Fourteen claims are canceled. The remaining ~32 were never construed or tested. Below is where the same art likely lands, with confidence graded.

(a) Claim 24 and the "RF shielding cavity" (moderate–high confidence)

A cavity jointly defined by the body's first end and the coupler's second cavity aft of the lip, with a conductive sealing element in the cavity. This is a two-reference-plus design-necessity claim: Youtsey or Tarrant supplies the body/coupler cavity geometry; Bell's conductive O-ring 34 between plug body and outlet body supplies the conductive element in exactly that cavity; Horak supplies the reason (simultaneous weather + RFI sealing). Anticipation risk is low; obviousness risk is high. This is likely the easiest untested claim to invalidate.

(b) Claim 14 — post flange + nut lip + mounting groove + compressible ring displaced on tightening/loosening (high confidence of prima facie obviousness)

The structural elements (post flange forming one mating-interface portion, nut lip forming the other, relative rotation, groove between) are Youtsey's own disclosure — flange 70, retaining flange on the female receptacle, free rotation, O-ring groove 80. The claim then adds a compressible conductive ring in the groove. The displacement-on-tightening behavior is literally what Youtsey's O-ring 82 does when compressed into groove 80. The only substitution needed is the conductive material of Lionetto/Horak. This claim is, on the current record, a strong invalidity target — and PPC's "Youtsey's ring moves away" argument is a double-edged sword, because it confirms the ring is displaced by tightening.

(c) Claim 1 (and claim 8) — "flexible core + conductive outer coating," flexing between states (moderate confidence — the genuine battleground)

⚠️ Flagged contradiction from the earlier sections, unresolved and material. The earlier summary reported claim 1 (rpxcorp issued text) as reciting an inner core + outer conductive coating with two-directional flex. But the PTAB deposition excerpt in the consolidated proceedings discusses claims 7 and 8 depending from claim 2, with claim 7 reciting "the compliant ring comprises an elastomeric ring loaded with a conductive particulate" and claim 8 reciting "the compliant ring comprises an elastomeric ring having a flexible core and a conductive outer coating." That transcript covers four patents and I cannot confirm which patent's claims 7/8 were being discussed. If the coated-core limitation sits in dependent claim 8 of the '284 rather than in independent claim 1, claim 1 is materially broader and correspondingly easier to invalidate; if it is in claim 1, the analysis shifts to whether a coated core over a non-conductive elastomer is patentably distinct from Lionetto's/Horak's bulk-conductive elastomers. Resolve this before briefing.

On the merits of the coating distinction:

• Against patentability: PPC's own specification states the member "may be formed of materials such including but not limited to conductive polymers, plastics, conductive elastomers, … soft metals, conductive rubber, … that may or may not need to be coated." That is an express admission that coated and uncoated constructions are interchangeable design choices — fatal to a claim whose only novelty is where the conductivity resides. Petitioner also put Buonanno (a coated/sheathed ring) into the record to show coatings were known.
• For patentability: Lionetto's ring 34 and Horak's ring 18 are bulk-conductive elastomers; neither discloses a non-conductive core with a sprayed silver-ink skin, and the "flex from a first state to a second state" functional language can be argued to capture a specific mechanical behavior (a compliant skin that maintains continuity through compression and relaxation) that the references do not disclose. The '284's stated technical insight — that only the skin need be conductive so the part stays flexible (unlike a metal or bulk-loaded ring) — is a real distinction.
• Assessment: The coated-ring limitation is the most defensible subject matter in this patent. A challenger should expect to need a secondary reference directed to conductively coated elastomeric seals (Buonanno-type art) in addition to Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak, and to rebut any "metal-filled rings resist rotation / create loose connectors" evidence with the coated-ring claim scope.

(d) Claims 34, 35, 44, 45 (dependent, not challenged)

These depend from the canceled independents 29–33 / 36–43 family. Because § 315(e)(2) estoppel and the FWD's cancellation do not automatically reach unchallenged dependents, but the dependents add no independent grounding structure that the FWD did not already address (PPC "does not raise any arguments directed specifically to the dependent claims"), these are high-probability targets for a re-run of the same art with the added limitation charted.

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VI. Recommended combination strategy

Motivation narrative that works across all of the above (one paragraph, reusable): Youtsey discloses a coaxial connector with a post/flange and a rotatable nut having an O-ring groove at the junction where the prior art itself identifies moisture as the cause of signal degradation. Lionetto teaches that replacing the sealing ring with a compressible conductive elastomer ring yields both the seal and continuous circumferential RFI suppression; Horak teaches that conductive rubber rings at connector joints provide weather sealing and RFI suppression simultaneously and that a continuous metal shield is a dominant CATV design criterion; Bell teaches a conductive ring bridging body and coupler with sealing plus frictional function. A POSA, facing the known problem of intermittent ground and signal degradation when connectors loosen or corrode, would have been motivated to substitute a conductive compressible ring for Youtsey's/Tarrant's non-conductive O-ring, with a reasonable expectation of obtaining a continuous ground path plus environmental sealing — and would have had no new principle of operation to learn.

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VII. Secondary considerations (and their limits)

• Long-felt need / failure of others (PPC's theory): the industry-recognized "loose connector" problem is documented and PPC pressed it. But the references also address loosening; the Board found the argued disadvantage insufficient to teach away. Long-felt need is weak where the solution ("make the seal conductive") was known and Lionetto/Horak taught its benefit.
• Unexpected results: PPC's expert evidence went to degraded sealing from conductive rings, not to an unexpected benefit. The Board effectively treated this as an optimization trade-off, not a surprise.
• Copying / industry praise: I found no evidence in the sources reviewed of copying by Amphenol, licensing, or industry praise tied to the '284 specifically. Do not assume secondary-consideration support exists; if it must be carried, it needs to be developed with record evidence.
• Skepticism: the Rule 132 declaration in the '053 reexam (Dr. Eldering) is strong rhetoric — "conductive O-rings are not the norm," "biting down on an O-ring … whereas chomping on a metal washer would have one running off to the dentist." That declaration did not carry the day in the reexam, and the same combination was later sustained by the Board and the Federal Circuit. Treat it as a template for arguments a challenger must be ready to answer, not as an obstacle that has proven outcome-determinative.

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VIII. Residual risk and honest limits

1. No written appellate reasoning. The Federal Circuit affirmed by Rule 36 with no opinion. The Board's analysis is not judicial precedent and cannot be cited as binding; it is persuasive only.
2. Claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 have never been construed. My predictions for them rest on secondary-source characterization of the claim text — the rpxcorp/Justia divergence noted in the earlier summary, and the unresolved location of the "coated core" limitation (dependent claim 8 vs. independent claim 1). Do not file or brief on the untested claims without pulling the issued patent's full claim set from USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search.
3. § 112 / indefiniteness untested. The '284's functional language ("flex from a first state to a second state … maintain a conductive path") was never tested for written description or enablement. That is a district-court-only theory and may be the best remaining attack on the coated-core claims.
4. Estoppel boundaries. Amphenol's § 315(e)(2) estoppel is claim-by-claim; it does not reach claims 1–28/34/35/44/45. But § 315(b) bars a new IPR filed more than one year after service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent — confirm whether the 2021 Delaware action (1:21-cv-00654) constitutes such service for your entity before planning a new petition.
5. Do not overstate the Youtsey O-ring argument. As the record shows, the same "Youtsey's O-ring is pushed away" rebuttal was made in both the '053 reexam and the '284 IPR and lost both times. Its persuasive value has been tested and found wanting.

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Bottom line

For the 14 challenged claims, the § 103 record is closed: Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak and Tarrant + Bell each rendered claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 obvious, and that finding is final after a Rule 36 affirmance in the consolidated appeal. For the ~32 untested claims, the same combinations are the correct starting point, with the highest-confidence targets being claim 14 (structure met by Youtsey, only conductivity supplied) and claim 24 (cavity claim met by Tarrant/Youtsey + Bell's body/coupler conductive ring). The single hardest claim to take down is the coated-core claim (claim 1 and/or claim 8, depending on the unresolved text question) — that is where a challenger needs a coated-elastomeric-seal reference and PPC's own specification admission, and where a § 112 challenge may ultimately be the cleaner path.