US 10474270

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, including any litigation or CAFC docket activity.

Let me dig deeper into the litigation and PTAB/C AFC activity.

US Patent 10,474,270 B2 — Analyst Summary

Bibliographic data (verified from the patent document itself)

Continuity chain: Application 16/005,694 is a continuation of Ser. No. 15/133,605 (filed 2016-04-20, now US 10,013,088), which is a continuation of Ser. No. 13/021,581 (filed 2011-02-04, now US 9,323,400), which claims priority to KR 10-2010-0089955. Later family members include US 10,895,926 (from 16/677,191), US 11,809,663, US 12,321,555, and US 2025/0291445 A1.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A flat panel display having an integrated touch screen panel directly formed on a sealing thin film is disclosed. In the display, sensing lines of the touch screen panel are formed to extend to a substrate of the display panel, on which organic light emitting elements are formed, so that the touch screen panel and the display panel are connected to a flexible printed circuit board, thereby simplifying manufacturing processes and decreasing product cost."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — A display device with a touch sensor built on the display's own encapsulation/sealing film:

• A substrate with a pixel area (first area) and an adjacent second area (peripheral/driver region); pixels in the pixel area.
• A sealing thin film covering the first area and having an inclined surface at its edge.
• Sensing cells formed on the top surface of the sealing film to detect touch.
• Sensing lines connected to the sensing cells that run out over the sealing film and over the second area of the substrate.
• A driving circuit electrically coupled to the sensing cells via those sensing lines.
• Wherein: the inclined surface lies between the sensing cells and the driving circuit; the sensing lines include at least one inclined portion following that inclined surface; the sensing cells are arranged as first direction (e.g., row) cells and second, intersecting direction (e.g., column) cells; adjacent cells of each group are joined by first/second connection patterns; and an insulating layer separates the two connection patterns.

In short: the touch electrode layer sits on the thin-film encapsulation, and its routing traces ride down the sloped edge of that encapsulation onto the substrate so they can reach the driver without breaking at the step.

Claim 11 — A more specifically structured version of the same concept:

• Same substrate/pixel-area/second-area, sealing thin film with inclined surface, and driver-over-sensing-line architecture.
• Separately recites first sensing cells (connected along a first direction) and second sensing cells (connected along an intersecting second direction), with first sensing lines and second sensing lines each routed over the sealing film and over the second area of the substrate.
• Same inclined surface between the sensing cells and the driving circuit; same inclined line portion; same first/second connection patterns with an insulating layer between them.
• Adds specific routing geometry: one of the second sensing lines has a first portion extending in the second direction and a second portion turning in the first direction; another second sensing line has a first portion plus a third portion extending in the opposite direction — i.e., traces fan out to opposite sides of the panel.

Dependent claims of note: claims 2 and 14 add a distance relationship (sensing lines are measurably closer to the substrate where they overlie the second area than where they overlie the sealing film); claims 6–7 and 15–16 state the driving circuit drives the sensing cells and also the display pixels.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket — searched, NOT confirmed

Per your instructions I searched USPTO/PTAB and CAFC records for this specific number. Results:

• No CAFC 2026 docket naming US 10,474,270 was found. I could not verify any Federal Circuit appeal for April 2026 (or any other 2026 date) that identifies patent 10,474,270.
• A 2026 CAFC appeal does exist — Pictiva Displays International Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., No. 2026-1599 (nonprecedential order dated 2026-07-07, dismissing the appeal under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b)), arising from PTAB IPR2024-01093 — but that IPR concerns U.S. Patent 8,723,164, not 10,474,270. Do not attribute it to '270. (The related Samsung Display v. Pictiva IPR2024-01223 likewise is not this patent.)
• The Google Patents record for US 10,474,270 carries a "Family has litigation / First worldwide family litigation filed" flag linking to a Darts-IP family ID (45806191). That flag is at the family level; I could not resolve, from the sources retrieved, which family member was actually asserted or in which forum. Treat this as an unverified pointer, not proof of litigation on '270 itself.
• Sources retrieved did show Samsung Display litigation involving other patents (e.g., Solas OLED, Sinotechnik, and the BOE / ITC 337-TA-1351 matters involving U.S. Patents 9,818,803; 10,854,683; 7,414,599; 9,330,593; 11,594,578), none of which is 10,474,270.

Uncertainty statement

The bibliographic data, abstract, and claim summaries above come from the authoritative full text of US 10,474,270 that you supplied, and are reliable. The absence of a 2026 CAFC docket for this patent is based on my searches only — I cannot certify that none exists, and my searches were limited in number. If you need a definitive litigation/PTAB check, the authoritative sources would be the USPTO Patent Public Search / Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket pages and PACER/CAFC CM-ECF queried directly by patent number, together with the Darts-IP family 45806191 record.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10474270. Let me check multiple sources.

Let me check litigation-specific databases.

Let me dig into the litigation flag on the patent page and check specialized litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent No. 10,474,270

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation, ITC investigation, or PTAB/post-grant proceeding that specifically asserts or involves US Patent No. 10,474,270 ("Flat panel display with integrated touch screen panel," Samsung Display Co., Ltd.).

I want to be explicit about the confidence level here, because there is one ambiguous signal worth flagging (see below).

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What the authoritative patent record itself shows

The Google Patents record you supplied for US 10,474,270 B2 contains a litigation flag in its family data:

"Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" — linking to Darts-IP at https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=45806191

This tells us the patent family (Family ID 45806191) has at some point been associated with litigation somewhere, but the Google Patents page does not identify a case name, court, case number, or which family member was asserted. I was unable to retrieve the Darts-IP family page to resolve this. So this flag, standing alone, cannot be attributed to the '270 patent specifically — it could attach to a sibling (e.g., US 9,323,400; US 10,013,088; US 10,895,926; US 11,809,663; US 12,321,555 or the Korean/Chinese counterparts) or to a family member in another jurisdiction.

Everything else on the face of the record is patent-office activity, not litigation:

• Legal status: Active; anticipated expiration listed as 2031-02-04
• A 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2023-04-24
• No "Litigation," "Docket," or "Case" entries in the Legal Events table (only fee-payment and prosecution events)

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What I searched, and what came back

I searched for the exact number 10474270 across litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents portal, Darts-IP, CAFC opinions, PACER/docket aggregators, PatSnap Eureka litigation intelligence, Docket Alarm, and general web). Results:

In every case where searches returned actual display-industry patent litigation, the asserted patents were different numbers, e.g.:

• Samsung Display v. BOE Technology Group, E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00430 / 2:25-cv-00426 — asserted US 11,081,503; 7,279,708; 10,832,616; 10,720,483 (dismissed with prejudice Nov. 24, 2025)
• Samsung Display v. CSOT / TCL — asserted US 11,594,578; 7,414,599; 9,330,593
• Pictiva Displays International v. Samsung — asserted US 8,314,547; 11,828,425; 8,723,164; 8,558,223, etc., plus related IPRs (e.g., IPR2024-01093, IPR2024-01222, IPR2024-01223)

None of these involve US 10,474,270.

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Important caveats

1. Search completeness. My tool access was limited, and I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, Darts-IP, PACER, or Westlaw/Lexis for the exact number. Public dockets for district-court patent cases generally identify patents by number in the complaint, and those complaints aren't fully indexed by open web search.
2. The Darts-IP flag is unresolved. If litigation did occur, the most likely place to confirm it would be the Darts-IP family page for Family ID 45806191, or a full-text PACER/Westlaw search for "10,474,270".
3. Assertion vs. citation. Even when patents appear in litigation-adjacent filings, they may just be cited as prior art or in a claim-construction appendix — not asserted.

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Recommendation

If you need a litigation-grade answer, I'd suggest confirming via:

• Darts-IP: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=45806191 (this is where the Google Patents flag originates)
• PACER / Docket Alarm / Unified Patents Portal: full-text search on the exact string 10,474,270
• PTAB (P-TACTS) and the ITC EDIS database for any post-grant or Section 337 proceedings

As it stands, based on the searches I was able to run: no litigation specifically involving US Patent No. 10,474,270 is known or documented in the sources I could reach — though the patent's family carries a Darts-IP litigation flag that I could not verify down to the specific patent or case. I'd rather flag that ambiguity than assert either that litigation exists or that none exists with false certainty.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against live sources before finalizing.

No PTAB hits for the patent number itself. Let me probe the family and litigation angle to be thorough.

Let me run two final targeted checks on the family and any defensive-aggregator activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,474,270: 0. Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — the structured USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my live searches (Google Patents litigation/PTAB tab, PTAB petition documents, CourtListener-adjacent sources) surfaced no petition naming U.S. Patent No. 10,474,270.

Bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "hardened, survived-two-IPRs" patent and not a "claims-canceled" patent — it is an untested patent at the PTAB. All 16 claims remain live and unadjudicated. That cuts both ways: the patent owner has no IPR win to point to as a validity badge, but you also have no free estoppel-reinforced invalidity judgment to inherit. Because no IPR was ever filed, the § 315(b) one-year bar has not run against anyone, and § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty — an IPR is fully available to you.

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No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to write. I found no proceeding number for this patent and will not invent one. For completeness, here is what I checked and what I affirmatively did not find:

• Google Patents litigation/PTAB data for US10474270B2 lists a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-IP family ID 45806191, first worldwide family litigation filed) and "Cited By" references — but no AIA trial proceeding, no PTAB case number, and no FWD in the patent's PTAB record.
• Family members are untested too, as far as my search reached. US 9,323,400 (parent), US 10,013,088, US 10,895,926, US 11,809,663, and US 12,321,555 all trace to the same 2010-09-14 priority and all carry the title "Flat panel display with integrated touch screen panel." No IPR petition naming any of them surfaced.
• The BOE v. Samsung Display IPRs are on different patents. BOE Technology Group's IPR filings against Samsung Display (e.g., IPR2025-01479 on U.S. Patent No. 11,574,991) and the ITC § 337 patents at issue — U.S. Patent Nos. 7,414,599; 9,330,593; 9,818,803; 10,854,683; 11,594,578 — do not include 10,474,270. BOE's reported "5件均已成功立案" (five IPRs instituted) refers to those pixel-array/pixel-circuit patents, not this touch-screen-integration patent.
• No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) IPR on this patent surfaced.

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Strategic summary

Claim status of 10,474,270. All claims are UNSUSTAINED-because-untested. No claim is canceled, and no claim has been confirmed in an AIA trial. Claims 1 and 11 are the two independents; claims 2–10 depend from claim 1, and claims 12–16 depend from claim 11. Note the drafting quirk a defendant should exploit: claim 1 recites "a sealing thin film covering the first area," while the specification's own embodiment is described as an encapsulation layer / sealing thin film over the pixel area — the written description runs to "sealing thin film" (200) with organic/inorganic layer stacks (202/204/206/208) and an inclined end portion (201). There has been no PTAB or court claim-construction of "sealing thin film," "inclined surface," or the admittedly odd claim-3/claim-11 direction language ("a second direction, e.g., a column direction" contradicted by "[a] first direction, e.g., a column direction" in the spec) — that ambiguity is live and unexploited.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a blank slate. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground, and no printed-publication ground is off the table. Conversely, § 315(b)'s one-year clock has not started for any party, so if you have been served with a complaint asserting this patent, note your filing deadline: one year from service of the complaint for any IPR you intend to file, and § 315(a)(1) bars an IPR filed by a plaintiff who previously filed a DJ action of invalidity on the same patent.

Pattern signals. The patent owner (Samsung Display Co., Ltd.) has been an aggressive enforcer in this product space — most notably the 2022–2025 campaign against BOE Technology Group before the ITC and the Eastern District of Texas (e.g., Samsung Display Co. v. BOE Technology Group Co., No. 2:25-cv-00412, E.D. Tex.) — but it has not chosen to assert this patent in a way that provoked an IPR. That is the key signal: the absence of PTAB activity here reflects non-assertion, not invalidity-proof strength. This patent's family is also remarkably persistent — a chain of continuations from 2011 through the pending US 2025/0291445 A1 filed 2025-06-02 — so a defendant facing a demand on 10,474,270 should assume sibling patents (US 10,013,088; US 10,895,926; US 11,809,663; US 12,321,555) can be asserted if you invalidate or design around this one. The family's anticipated expiration is 2031-02-04 (20 years from the 2011-02-04 filing of US 13/021,581), leaving roughly 4.3 years of enforceable term as of today.

Litigation context caveat. The BOE/Samsung Display dispute reportedly reached a comprehensive settlement in November 2025, with joint motions to terminate the ITC § 337 investigations and withdrawal of the parallel district court actions. That settlement is confidential as to terms (cross-license terms are industry speculation, not public record). If your demand letter or suit arises out of the BOE/Samsung conflict — e.g., you are a downstream repair shop, importer, or set maker in that supply chain — the settlement and associated IPR activity (on the other patents) are the operative background, and 10,474,270 appears not to have been part of it.

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Recommended next steps

• Treat the "no PTAB activity" result as a green light on IPR, not as a reason to stand down. Nothing has been litigated or adjudicated, so you can file an IPR on 10,474,270 challenging claims 1–16 without any § 315 estoppel risk, subject only to § 315(b)'s one-year bar from service of a complaint. The prior-art references already catalogued in this patent's own prosecution history (including the Samsung Mobile Display/KR 10-1073215 "flat panel display integrated touch screen panel" family and the Eastman Kodak integrated-touch-screen OLED references cited on the face of the patent) are the natural starting exhibit set.
• Verify claim status yourself before relying on this memo. Because the ODP ingest lags, confirm the current state on the USPTO's PTAB portal (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and the patent's USPTO Patent Center record for application 16/005,694 (filed 2018-06-12, granted 2019-11-12, maintenance fee paid 2023-04-24). I found no proceeding, but this is a negative search result, not a certificate of clean status.
• If a proceeding is pending that my sources missed, the milestones to track are: (1) the § 314(b) institution decision deadline — three months from the patent owner's preliminary response or the last date it could have filed one; and (2) the § 316(a)(11) final written decision deadline — one year from institution, extendable up to six months for good cause, per the Board's scheduling order. Search for the case on PTAB E2E by patent number to pull the institution decision and FWD.
• Watch the sibling continuations, not just this patent. The pending US 2025/0291445 A1 is a live continuation in the same family; if it issues, the assertion target can shift, and a § 315(a)(1)/§ 325(a)(1) DJ-action bar analysis becomes relevant to your filing strategy.
• Flag for follow-up: the Darts-IP "family has litigation filed" flag (family ID 45806191) indicates some litigation touched this family somewhere in the world. I could not identify the case, court, or parties from open sources, and I will not speculate. If you are defending an assertion of this patent, ask plaintiff's counsel for the complete litigation history of the family under Rule 26 / local patent rules discovery — that is the cleanest way to resolve the flag.

No proceeding number, FWD, panel composition, or disposition is cited above because none exists in the record I could verify. Do not rely on this memo as a substitute for a docket check on the day of filing.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record using the primary sources. Let me search.

I ran targeted searches against the Assignment Center–derived data (via Google Patents' legal-events mirror and legacy assignment PDFs) and the open web. Here is what the record actually shows. Important upfront caveat: I could not retrieve any recorded assignment entry for US 10,474,270 — because there does not appear to be one. I did not fabricate reel/frame numbers to fill the template.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: No inventor-departure signal. Song and Cho carry long Samsung-inventor histories, and all four inventors were employees of the Samsung display subsidiary located at Giheung-gu/Yongin-si (the same address appearing on Samsung display-side assignments such as reel 027315 and reel 029207/0226). Nothing indicates a departure-then-fire-sale sequence. The application is a continuation chain, all of which were prosecuted by the same corporate owner.

Original assignee

Samsung Display Co., Ltd. is the assignee named on the issued patent (Google Patents "Original Assignee"; front page of US 10,474,270 B2).

• Product embodiment: Yes, credibly. The claims cover an OLED flat panel with sensing cells/sensing lines formed on an inclined-edged sealing thin film routed to a single FPCB — this is the on-cell / "Y-OCTA"-class architecture Samsung Display ships in Galaxy-era AMOLED panels. Samsung Display is a high-volume operating manufacturer, not a licensing vehicle.
• Primary line of business: AMOLED/LCD panel manufacturing and sale.
• Current status: Operating.
• Caveat on the original-owner name: The 2011 parent application (Ser. No. 13/021,581, filed 2011-02-04) predates the 2012 combination of Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd. into Samsung Display Co., Ltd. Given the filing date and the Giheung address, the original 2011 applicant was almost certainly Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd., with the name changing to Samsung Display by the time of the 2018 continuation. I could not locate a recorded change-of-name or merger reel/frame for this patent family, so treat the Mobile Display → Display transition as likely-but-unverified.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignment entries were found for US 10,474,270.

• The Google Patents legal-events table for US 10,474,270 B2 (which mirrors USPTO assignment activity) contains only prosecution and maintenance events: fee-payment/entity-status (2018-06-12), notice of allowance (2019-03-11, 2019-07-15), docketed (2019-06-14), patent grant (2019-10-23), and 4th-year maintenance fee (2023-04-24). There is no AS (Assignment), CHN (Change of Name), MER (Merger), SEC (Security Agreement), or LIC (License) event.
• No third-party assignee, LLC, correspondent attorney, or reel/frame appears anywhere in the record.
• The only ownership-adjacent event is the internal Samsung Mobile Display → Samsung Display corporate combination (~2012), for which I found no recorded instrument tied to this patent.

Correspondence of record: Not determinable, because there is no recorded assignment to carry a correspondent. N/A — no reel/frame to cite.

Per your instruction, I'm flagging plainly rather than inventing links. Note the limitation: I could not drive the Assignment Center UI directly (it is a JS application and my searches surfaced no indexed record for this number), so this is "no records found," not a certified USPTO statement. The independent corroboration is the empty Google Patents legal-events assignment block.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10474270
    2010 : KR priority application filed
    2011 : US parent filed by Samsung unit
    2012 : Samsung Display formed via merger
    2016 : First continuation filed
    2018 : Second continuation filed
    2019 : Patent US10474270 granted
         : Third continuation filed
    2021 : Fourth continuation filed
    2023 : Fifth continuation filed
    2025 : Sixth continuation filed
    2031 : Anticipated expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment to any LLC at all. No reel/frame evidences a move off the Samsung entity. Current owner is Samsung Display Co., Ltd.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc. Every family member (US 9,323,400; US 10,013,088; US 10,474,270; US 10,895,926; US 11,809,663; US 12,321,555; US 2025/0291445) is Samsung Display–assigned per the Google Patents family table.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. No recorded assignment = no correspondent of record to recur. Cannot be assessed, but the absence of any NPE-side recording attorney is itself negative for this signal.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero transfers, so no chained LLCs. The only "chain" is six successive continuations by the same owner (2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, 2025) — that is a prosecution/portfolio-expansion pattern, not an ownership-laundering pattern.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment within 6 months of any suit; no assignment to cite. (Note: Google Patents shows a family-level flag — "Family has litigation / First worldwide family litigation filed" with a Darts-IP link, family ID 45806191 — but the direction of that litigation, offensive vs. defensive, is not established by the data I could access.)
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Samsung Display has not been in bankruptcy; no Chapter 7/11 record.
7. Privateering — not present/unclear. No SEC 8-K or Patent Progress/EFF coverage surfaced showing a transfer to an asserting proxy. The patent remains inside the operating parent.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Samsung Display.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the express caveat that my basis is the absence of any NPE-style transfer rather than a traced assignment chain.

Justification: (a) there is no recorded assignment, change-of-name, merger, or license event in the Google Patents legal-events record for US 10,474,270 B2 — the only ownership-relevant events are the 2019 grant and the 2023-04-24 maintenance-fee payment, so title never left Samsung; (b) the family table shows Samsung Display as assignee on all seven family applications through US 2025/0291445, and the family has been continuously expanded by continuation filings in 2016/2018/2019/2021/2023/2025 — the opposite of a fire-sale or shell transfer; and (c) the claimed subject matter (on-cell touch on an OLED sealing film routed to a single FPCB) is embodied in Samsung Display's shipping AMOLED products. The one live unknown is the family litigation flag on Google Patents — if that suit is Samsung Display asserting this family against a competitor, it confirms the call; if Samsung Display is the defendant, the patent is being used defensively. I could not establish the direction.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10474270) — returns no assignment records as of this review. Corroborating legal-events table: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10474270B2](/patent/US10474270B2)/en

If you need the certified answer, the next step is a direct query to the Assignment Center's assignment-api.uspto.gov endpoint or PEDS/ODP for application 16/005,694 — I could not reach those programmatically here, and I will not report a reel/frame I have not actually seen.

I'll verify the patent record and dig into the prior-art references cited against it.

Now let me pull details on the remaining key references cited on the face of US 10,474,270.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,474,270 B2

1. USPTO record check (specific number only)

I searched on the exact string 10474270. The record returned is unambiguously US 10,474,270 B2, not a neighbor number:

Noise to discard: the only non-patent hits for the literal string were a Wiley DOI (…10474270) and a Brazilian company-registry number ("10474270 DUPLO T CONSTRUCOES LTDA"). Neither is the patent. I saw no results for similar numbers (10474280, 10474260, etc.) in the relevant searches, so nothing has been conflated.

Critical-date framing (important for everything below). The '270 is a continuation of 15/133,605 → 13/021,581 (filed 2011-02-04), which claims KR priority 2010-09-14. The claims are therefore pre-AIA §102/§103 art-tested, with:

• §102(a)/(b)/(g) art = references publicly available before 2010-09-14 (or before the invention date).
• §102(e) art = US applications/patents with an effective US filing date before 2011-02-04 (foreign priority does not count toward a §102(e) date — In re Hilmer). This matters for at least three of the cited references below, which published after 2010-09-14 but were on file in the US before 2011-02-04.

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2. Scope and confidence of this analysis

The patent's front page lists 18 references cited by the examiner (plus 26 more cited elsewhere in the family). I retrieved and read the full text of the highest-signal English-language references (US 6,885,157; US 2002/0186208 A1; US 2002/0171610 A1; US 2011/0012845 A1; US 2011/0128240 A1 and its US 9,559,152/US 8,890,832/US 8,952,918 progeny). For the remainder I am working from the verified citation data on the '270 face plus the abstract/claims where retrievable. Where I did not read full text, I say so — I will not invent disclosure content for references I could not open. A "potentially anticipates" call below is a feature-overlap judgment, not a legal conclusion; genuine anticipation requires every limitation in a single reference, and for the independent claims none of these alone appears to do that (see §6).

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3. The 18 examiner-cited references

Tier 1 — closest to the '270's core concept (integrated touch + display sharing one substrate/cable)

A. US 6,885,157 B1 — Cok, Yokajty, Serbicki (Eastman Kodak)

• Published/granted: 2005-04-26 (filed 2003-11-25, App. 10/721,129). Verified in full.
• Disclosure: an integrated touch screen + OLED panel in which the display substrate protrudes beyond the cover; touch signals are routed via conductive vias to electrical contacts on the display substrate, and processing circuitry for the touch screen sits on the display substrate, with a single cable to both. Expressly contrasts two-cable prior art.
• Why cited: it is the classic "one substrate, one cable, touch processing on the display side" teaching — i.e., the preamble/architecture of '270 claim 1 and the "driving circuit electrically connected to the sensing cells" and single-FPCB ideas.
• §102 candidate for: claims 1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 16 (architectural/connection features only).

B. US 2002/0186208 A1 — Feldman & Cropper (Eastman Kodak)

• Published 2002-12-12 (filed 2001-05-15, App. 09/855,449). Verified in full.
• Disclosure: electroluminescent (OLED) display + touch elements on opposite faces of one transparent substrate, with a single flex-cable carrying both display and touch conductors. Claims 3–6 cover a bifurcated cable, edge conductors, and a clip with metal contacts.
• Why cited: same "touch and display share substrate and one FPC" family of ideas (the '270's stated object).
• §102 candidate for: claim 8 (sensing lines to the driving circuit via wiring/FPC) and the single-FPCB aspect underpinning claims 1/11 preambles.

C. US 2002/0171610 A1 — Siwinski et al. (Eastman Kodak)

• Published 2002-11-21 (priority 2001-04-04, App. 09/826,194). Verified in full.
• Disclosure: OLED array on one face of a transparent substrate, touch-sensitive elements on the other, "minimum number of substrates," thin/light construction.
• Why cited: generic integration of a touch layer onto the display substrate to save thickness (the '270 background art).
• §102 candidate for: the claim 1/11 preamble only. Not a serious anticipation reference for the characterizing clauses.

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Tier 2 — touch-sensor structures and electrode/insulator architecture

D. US 2011/0012845 A1 — Rothkopf et al. (Apple Inc.)

• Published 2011-01-20; provisional 61/227,054 filed 2009-07-20. Verified in full.
• Disclosure: capacitive touch sensor with ITO transparent electrodes on a flexible polymer (clear polyimide) substrate instead of glass, explicitly to reduce thickness; copper/conductive traces route sensor signals to processing circuitry over a flex-circuit path integral to the sensor structure. Discusses thinner-than-glass substrates vs. ~0.5 mm cover glass.
• §102(e) date: the 2009-07-20 provisional (US filing), so it qualifies notwithstanding its 2011 publication.
• Why cited: directly on point for "sensing cells on a thin (non-glass) layer, sensing lines routed from the cells to a driver," and the material/transparency rationale.
• §102 candidate for: claim 1 (sensing cells + sensing lines + routing), claim 9 ("sensing lines comprise a different material from the sensing cells" — the copper-traces-vs-ITO distinction), and the substrate-thinning motivation.

E. US 2011/0128240 A1 — Choi et al. (LG Display)

• Published 2011-06-02; KR priority 2009-12-01 (KR 10-2009-0117710). Progeny granted as US 9,559,152; US 8,890,832; US 8,952,918. Verified via the granted-family texts.
• Disclosure (from US 9,559,152): first bridge electrode on a substrate, insulating layer patterns over it, first electrodes connected to the first bridge, a second bridge electrode on the insulating layer patterns crossing over, and second electrodes integrally connected to the second bridge. I.e., exactly the over-and-under cross-over with an interposed insulator recited in '270 claims 1/11.
• §102(e) date: its actual US filing (~Nov. 2010) — before 2011-02-04, but after 2010-09-14, so it is §102(e) art measured against the US filing date, not §102(a)/(b) art. Flagging this date dependency explicitly.
• Why cited: the "two adjacent first sensing cells connected by a first connection pattern; two adjacent second sensing cells connected by a second connection pattern; insulating layer between them" clause.
• §102 candidate for: the connection-pattern + insulating-layer limitation of claims 1 and 11 (not the inclined-encapsulation limitation).

F. US 2010/0108409 A1 — Tanaka et al.

• Published 2010-05-06 (priority 2008-11-06).
• Disclosure: capacitive-coupling touch panel (as titled). Appears cited as a general capacitive-electrode-array reference.
• §102 candidate for: the capacitive sensing-cell limitation of claims 1/11. (I did not read full text; mapping is feature-level only.)

G. US 2010/0214247 A1 — Tang et al. (Acrosense Technology)

• Published 2010-08-26 (priority 2009-02-20).
• Disclosure: capacitor touch panel / capacitive sensor array.
• §102 candidate for: the "capacitive sensing cells" aspect of claim 1; weak on everything else.

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Tier 3 — display-with-touch and OLED encapsulation references

H. US 2010/0033443 A1 — Hashimoto (Hitachi Displays)

• Published 2010-02-11 (priority 2008-08-06). "Display device." Cited as a display-with-integrated-input-technology reference. (Full text not retrieved.)
• §102 candidate for: general substrate/first-area/second-area display context; not for the characterizing clauses.

I. US 2010/0060601 A1 — Oohira (Hitachi Displays)

• Published 2010-03-11 (priority 2008-09-05); granted as US 8,330,734 B2. "Liquid crystal display device." Cited for display-substrate/panel architecture. §102 candidate: preamble-level only.

J. US 2010/0309150 A1 — Lee et al. ("Jaedo Lee")

• Published 2010-12-09; priority 2009-06-08. "Organic light emitting diode display."
• Date caution: the publication post-dates the 2010-09-14 priority date, so it is only art via §102(e) on its earlier US filing; its applicability therefore depends on documented US filing dates, which I could not fully confirm.
• §102 candidate for: OLED display with touch-sensing capability; preamble-level.

K. KR 2010-0061121 A — Samsung Electronics

• Published 2010-06-07 (priority 2008-11-28). "Touch sensible organic light emitting diode display."
• §102 candidate for: touch-sensing integrated into an OLED display — relevant to the "sensing cells on an OLED display" concept of claims 1/11. Foreign-language; I did not read full text.

L. CN 101626017 A — Samsung Mobile Display (三星移动显示器株式会社)

• Published 2010-01-13 (priority 2008-07-11); US sibling US 2010/0007616 A1 (Brent Jang); KR sibling KR 2010-0007717 A. "Organic light emitting display device."
• Relevance: thin-film encapsulation for OLED — the "sealing thin film covering the first area" element. §102 candidate for: the encapsulation-layer element of claims 1/11, and possibly the sealed-against-oxygen/moisture rationale recited in the '270 specification. I did not read the full disclosure, so I cannot say whether it teaches an inclined encapsulation edge.

M. KR 100873080 B1 — Samsung Mobile Display

• Published 2008-12-09 (priority 2007-05-10); US sibling US 7,936,121 B2. "Organic electroluminescent display."
• §102 candidate for: OLED sealing/encapsulation structure; preamble + sealing-film element.

N. CN 101766055 A — Sumitomo Chemical

• Published 2010-06-30 (priority 2007-07-31); US sibling US 2010/0244073 A1 (Ito et al.). "Organic electroluminescent device and method for manufacturing the same."
• §102 candidate for: OLED device fabrication/encapsulation; background.

O. US 2005/0172722 A1 — Kobayashi et al. (Chiaki Kobayashi)

• Published 2005-08-11 (priority 2002-03-29). "Pressure sensor and method for fabricating the same."
• Fairly tangential; likely cited for inclined/sloped edge geometries or fabrication-on-substrate technique. §102 candidate: weak; possibly the inclined surface concept if the sensor construction shows a sloped layer edge. (Full text not retrieved — I would not rely on this without reading it.)

P. US 2004/0185301 A1 — Tsuchiya et al. (Semiconductor Energy Laboratory)

• Published 2004-09-23 (priority 2002-12-19); siblings CN 1729719 A, US 2008/0116795 A1. "Display device and manufacturing method of display device."
• §102 candidate for: display-device manufacturing/layer architecture; background.

Q. CN 1591876 A — Matsushita Electric (松下电器产业株式会社)

• Published 2005-03-09 (priority 2003-08-28); US sibling US 2005/0051829 A1 (Satoru Goto). "Semiconductor device."
• Background; §102 candidate: weak.

R. US 2007/0242055 A1 — Lai (Ritdisplay)

• Published 2007-10-18 (filed 2006-04-14). "Top-emitting OLED display having transparent touch panel."
• §102 candidate for: transparent touch panel stacked on an OLED (top-emitting), i.e., the "sensing cells over the pixel area, light transmitted through" concept. Preamble-level.

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4. Family-cited references worth flagging (cited elsewhere in Family ID 45806191)

These were not on the '270 face but appear in the family citation record. One of them is arguably the single most relevant prior art to the '270's stated inventive concept:

Note that KR 10-1886801 B1 in that list is the Korean counterpart of the '270 family itself (priority 2010-09-14) — it is not prior art and must be excluded from any anticipation chart.

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5. Claim-by-claim §102 mapping (feature-overlap, best single reference per claim)

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6. Bottom line

1. No single examiner-cited reference anticipates independent claim 1 or 11. The references individually teach pieces — integrated touch+OLED with one substrate/one cable (US 6,885,157; US 2002/0186208; US 2002/0171610), thin-film encapsulation of OLED (CN 101626017; KR 100873080; CN 101766055; TWI 421607), capacitive electrode cross-over with an interposed insulator (US 2011/0128240 / US 9,559,152), and thin non-glass touch substrates with copper routing (US 2011/0012845) — but none shows the combination that the '270's characterization actually rests on: sensing lines riding down an inclined edge of a thin-film encapsulation layer and onto a peripheral area of the display substrate to reach a common driver.

2. Closest single-reference threats are claims 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, where the mapping to US 6,885,157 (integrated touch processing + driver on the protruding display-substrate area + single cable) and US 2011/0012845 (traces of a different conductor than the electrodes) is genuinely close.

3. The most dangerous uncited reference is KR 10-1073215 B1 (Samsung Mobile Display, "flat panel display integrated touch screen panel," 2010-03-05) — same title, same assignee, earlier than the '270 priority date. It appears only in the family citation record, not on the '270 face, and it should be pulled in any invalidity review.

4. Date gate to apply before asserting any of these: Tier-2 references US 2011/0012845, US 2011/0128240 and US 2010/0309150 published after the 2010-09-14 priority date. They are usable only as pre-AIA §102(e) art measured against the US filing date (2011-02-04), and for US 2011/0128240 the Hilmer doctrine means its Korean 2009-12-01 priority does not supply the §102(e) date. Establish each one's actual US filing date before relying on it.

5. Caveat on my own completeness. I verified full text for US 6,885,157; US 2002/0186208; US 2002/0171610; US 2011/0012845; US 2011/0128240 / US 9,559,152. For CN 1591876, CN 101626017, CN 101766055, KR 100873080, KR 2010-0061121, US 2005/0172722, US 2010/0033443, US 2010/0060601, US 2010/0309150, US 2007/0242055, US 2010/0108409, US 2010/0214247 and the family-cited set, the mapping above is based on the verified citation data and abstracts, not on a full-text read. Before finalizing an invalidity chart, pull the full texts of CN 101626017 A / US 2010/0007616 A1 (for the inclined encapsulation edge) and KR 10-1073215 B1 — those two are where a genuine anticipation of claims 1/11 is most likely to live.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis by verifying a few of the key prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,474,270.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,474,270 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the prior sections of this analysis (bibliographic verification, litigation/PTAB negative results, and claim-status strategy). This section does not repeat that material; it uses the prior-art citations appearing on the face of the patent (the "Patent Citations (26)" and "Family Cites Families (26)" blocks of the Google Patents record) as the operative reference set.

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1. Analytical framework and the critical date

Critical date. Pre-AIA law applies (application 16/005,694 carries a 2010-09-14 KR priority date and the parent 13/021,581 was filed 2011-02-04, before the AIA's 2013-03-16 change). The presumptive critical date for § 102/§ 103 is therefore 2010-09-14, subject to swearing behind to the actual invention date.

Two important date classes among the cited references — this materially affects which can be used:

⚠️ Flag for the prior sections: the earlier memo described US2011/0012845 and similar as straightforward "prior art." That is only true under § 102(e), and an IPR petitioner must plead and prove the U.S. filing/provisional date to invoke it. This is a real procedural burden, not a formality.

Governing standard. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations; "design incentives and other market forces"; "obvious to try" where the number of identified, predictable solutions is small); In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) (a secondary reference need not be bodily incorporated; the test is what the combined teachings would have suggested). All cited references are in the display/touch-sensing art and are analogous art (same field of endeavor and reasonably pertinent to the problem of thin, low-cost integrated touch displays).

Level of ordinary skill (proposed). A B.S. in electrical/electronic engineering or materials science with 2–4 years of experience in flat-panel display design, or equivalent; familiar with on-cell/in-cell touch integration, OLED thin-film encapsulation, photolithographic conductor patterning, and FPCB/COG driver interconnection. This is the level at which the references below are read.

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2. Claim 1 — limitation-by-limitation mapping

Observation: Every limitation of claim 1 is disclosed somewhere in the patent's own cited-art set. No single reference discloses all of 1a–1l; the case is therefore a § 103 combination case, and the dispute will be entirely about motivation to combine and the "inclined surface" limitation (1c/1g/1h).

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3. Reference-by-reference teachings (with grounding quotes)

3.1 Kodak US 2002/0186208 A1 (Feldman et al.) — "Organic electroluminescent display with integrated touch screen"

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3c/20/23/c301a08b8fa209/US20020186208A1.pdf

• Discloses an EL/OLED display with touch-sensitive elements on a common substrate, and — critically for claims 1f, 6, 7, 15, 16 — a single flex-cable carrying both display and touch signals:

  "a single flex-cable containing a plurality of conductors electrically connected to both the flat panel display matrix and the touch sensitive elements for providing external electrical connection to the display."
  "External electronics 52 contain circuitry to control the touch sensitive elements 14 and the flat panel display matrix 29 … The circuitry can physically be either in one integrated circuit, or in a multiplicity of packages."

• Discloses routing conductors along the edge of the structure and onto the substrate (FIG. 7a/7b): metal connectors 54 "vacuum deposited, electrochemically attached, screen printed, or glued along the edges of the substrate 40 and bonded to the two faces."
• Motivation expressed in the reference itself: "This improved display eliminates the need for a second cable, a second connector … and therefore eliminates one assembly step during system integration, as well as the cost of a second cable and connector."

3.2 Kodak US 6,885,157 B1 (Cok, Yokajty, Serbicki) — "Integrated touch screen and OLED flat-panel display"

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6885157

• Directly presages the '270 business problem and solution: "The present invention has the advantage that it reduces the costs and improves the reliability and performance of a touch screen that is used with an OLED flat-panel display by integrating cable connections on a single substrate and providing touch screen signal processing on the display substrate."
• Substrate protrudes beyond the cover to expose contacts — i.e., a second area of the substrate carrying the driver connection (claims 1a, 10).

3.3 Creator Technology TWI421607 B / US 2010/0264817 A1 / US 8,598,787 B2 — "Permeation barrier on flexible device"

https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI421607B/en · http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2e/4b/90/9dd9f4f7cd8e98/US8598787.pdf

• The best "inclined surface" reference in the citation set. It teaches a thin-film packaging/barrier whose protective layer has three sections, the third of which "conforms to the shape of sides of the electro-optical material, the second electrode, and the second substrate." A conformal barrier wrapping a display's side wall and running onto the substrate is, structurally, an inclined/sealing-film edge bridging pixel area to substrate.
• Explicitly addresses the OLED degradation problem the '270 specification recites: "their lifetimes … largely limited by the degradation of the organic light emitting material induced by water and oxygen permeating into the display"; "thin brittle layers are applied as permeation barrier, either directly on the display devices or parts thereof (thin film packaging)."
• ⚠️ Date caveat: the TW filing is 2007-07-31 but the U.S. publication is 2010-10-21 (post-critical-date); § 102(e) treatment depends on the PCT's U.S. designating/filing status — must be pleaded.

3.4 Samsung Mobile Display KR 10-1073215 B1 — "flat panel display integrated touch screen panel"

https://patents.google.com/patent/KR101073215B1/en

• Front-cover evidence for limitations 1d/1e, and same technical family of subject matter, same assignee:

  "본 발명은 터치 스크린 패널을 평판표시장치의 상부기판 상에 직접 형성하는 구조에 관한 것으로, 상기 터치 스크린 패널의 비표시영역에 형성된 감지라인들…" — "a structure for directly forming a touch screen panel on the upper substrate of a flat panel display … sensing lines formed in the non-display area … covered by a shield member."

• Its background section is verbatim the same as the '270 background (thickness/cost criticism of attaching a separately made touch panel, two driving ICs, two FPCBs). This is powerful evidence that the problem statement motivating the claimed solution was common knowledge by the critical date.
• ⚠️ Date caveat: priority 2010-03-05, listed publication 2011-10-12. As a Korean document it does not receive pre-AIA § 102(e) treatment; its use depends on an earlier Korean publication. Verify on KIPRIS before relying on it; treat it primarily as corroborating evidence of the state of the art rather than as the anchor reference.

3.5 Apple US 2011/0012845 A1 (Rothkopf) — "Touch sensor structures for displays"

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/21/46/25/fce5aad19b3028/US20110012845A1.pdf

• The single best motivation-to-combine reference because it states the design incentive in the inventors' own terms:

  "Although efforts are made to ensure that the glass substrate on which the capacitive electrodes are formed is not too thick, conventional glass substrates may still occupy about half of a millimeter in thickness. Particularly in modern devices in which excessive overall device thickness is a concern, the glass substrate thickness that is associated with conventional capacitive touch sensors can pose challenges."

• Teaches sensing electrodes on a polymer (polyimide) layer, and routing: "Copper traces or other conductive traces may be used to route sensor signals … over a flex circuit path that is formed as an integral part of the touch sensor structure" — supporting claim 1e and the claim 9 "different material" limitation (Cu traces vs. ITO cells).

3.6 Capacitive multi-direction electrode arrays with bridging and interposed insulator

• US 2010/0108409 A1 (Jun Tanaka, "Capacitive coupling type touch panel," pub. 2010-05-06) — pre-critical-date.
• US 2010/0214247 A1 (Acrosense Technology, "Capacitive Touch Panel," pub. 2010-08-26) — pre-critical-date.
• US 8,552,315 B2 (Atmel, "Two-dimensional position sensor," eff. 2009-09-03) and US 8,576,182 B2 (Atmel, eff. 2009-09-01).
• US 7,995,041 B2 / US 8,217,913 B2 (Apple, "Integrated touch screen," eff. 2009-02-02) — the title itself is the claim-1 concept ("integrated touch screen"), and these disclose row/column electrodes on the display with a crossover bridge and interposed insulator (limitations 1i–1k).

3.7 Shared/combined driver and FPCB

• US 2011/0128240 A1 (Howon Choi, "Display device with a touch device," eff. 2009-12-01); US 2010/0309150 A1 (Jaedo Lee, OLED display, eff. 2009-06-08); KR 10-2010-0061121 A (Samsung Electronics, "Touch sensible organic light emitting diode display," pub. 2010-06-07 — pre-critical-date). These supply the "one driver IC drives both touch and pixels" teaching of claims 6/7 and 15/16.

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4. Proposed obviousness combinations

Combination A (primary — attacks claim 1, and with the secondary references, claim 11)

Kodak '208 + Kodak '157 + Rothkopf US 2011/0012845 + TWI421607 + Apple US 7,995,041 (or Tanaka US 2010/0108409 / Atmel US 8,552,315)

How it reads:

1. Kodak '208/'157 supply the architecture: touch elements integrated on the display, on a common substrate; a single cable; touch signal processing on the display substrate; the substrate's exposed/protruding area as the location for that connection.
2. Rothkopf '845 supplies the express motivation to abandon the separate glass touch substrate (thickness) in favor of electrodes formed directly on a thin polymer/encapsulation layer, plus Cu trace routing from the electrodes to processing circuitry over an integral flex path.
3. TWI421607 supplies the sealing thin film with a conformal, sloped side wall bridging the display area to the substrate — the claimed "inclined surface."
4. Apple '041 / Tanaka / Atmel supply the mutual-capacitance electrode geometry, the first/second connection patterns, and the interposed insulating layer.

Result: claim 1 (all of 1a–1l) is rendered obvious. The only genuinely arguable limitation is 1h ("at least one inclined portion along the inclined surface"), which is met by Kodak '208's edge-deposited metal connectors 54 once combined with TWI421607's sloped barrier. Even if the examiner draws a distinction, the difference is a predictable consequence of replacing a via/edge-connector routing with direct trace-over-the-barrier routing — a result dictated by the geometry and motivated by the thickness/cost rationale both Kodak references and Rothkopf state.

Combination B (alternative anchor — Samsung-centric)

KR 10-1073215 B1 + US 2010/0007616 A1 + US 2010/0033443 A1 + Rothkopf '845 (+ Kodak '208 for the single-FPCB/driver point)

• KR '215 supplies the touch panel formed directly on the display's upper substrate with sensing lines in the non-display area.
• US 2010/0007616 A1 (Samsung Mobile Display, "Organic light emitting display device," pub. 2010-01-14 — clean pre-critical-date art) supplies the thin-film-encapsulated OLED stack.
• US 2010/0033443 A1 (Hitachi, "Display device," pub. 2010-02-11 — clean pre-critical-date art) supplies the display-with-integrated-elements context.
• Rothkopf '845 supplies the thickness rationale; Kodak '208 supplies the shared driver/FPCB.

This combination is attractive because two of its anchors are unambiguously pre-critical-date published art, avoiding the § 102(e) pleading burden that Combination A carries for Rothkopf '845.

Combination C (targets claim 11's routing geometry)

Add US 2011/0128240 A1 (Choi) and/or US 2010/0309150 A1 (Lee) and/or KR 10-1073215 B1 to any of the above. The claim 11 limitation — one second sensing line turning in the first direction and another turning in the opposite direction (i.e., fan-out to both sides) — is the standard peripheral-routing fan-out that any of these references shows or renders obvious for equalising trace lengths and routing around a rectangular active area. Nothing in claim 11 is more than a routine design choice in trace routing (KSR; In re Kuhle).

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5. Dependent claims

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6. Motivation to combine (KSR analysis)

A PHOSITA at 2010-09-14 would have been motivated to combine these references for at least six independent, record-supported reasons:

1. The problem and the objective were named in the prior art itself. Kodak '208: "There remains a need for an improved touch screen electroluminescent display system that removes redundant materials, decreases cost, and simplifies system integration tasks." KR '215's background and the '270 specification share that identical framing. Where the reference states the same problem, motivation is not a stretch — it is express.

2. Thickness as a design incentive. Rothkopf '845 states the glass touch substrate "may still occupy about half of a millimeter in thickness" and that "excessive overall device thickness is a concern." Replacing a glass sealing substrate with a thin-film encapsulation directly addresses that — and both the '270 specification and US 2010/0007616 A1 identify thin-film encapsulation as the standard replacement.

3. Predictable, finite set of solutions. KSR holds a combination obvious where the prior art identifies a finite number of predictable solutions. Here, for "how do I get touch routing off the top of a thin encapsulation onto the substrate?" the field offered exactly: (a) vias through a cover (Kodak '157), (b) conductors along the substrate's edge (Kodak '208, FIG. 7a/7b/8a/8b), (c) conformal layers wrapping the side of the stack (TWI421607), and (d) flex tails integrated into the sensor stack (Rothkopf '845). Selecting edge/conformal routing is a predictable variation.

4. Cost/assembly pressure. Both Kodak references quantify the saving (eliminating a second cable, connector, and assembly step). That is the classic KSR "market forces" rationale.

5. Same field, same assignee ecosystem, same problem statement. KR '215 (Samsung Mobile Display, the '270 applicant's predecessor) and US 2010/0007616 A1 (Samsung Mobile Display) show the same industrial actor was already working the touch-on-display and thin-film-encapsulation problems contemporaneously. The combination is not hindsight — it is the documented path of the relevant industry.

6. Design choice / obvious to try. Fan-out routing (claims 3, 5, 11–13), material selection for traces (claim 9), and mounting the driver on the peripheral area (claim 10) are routine engineering choices with no unexpected result.

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7. Rebuttals to the likely patent-owner arguments (and honest weaknesses of the invalidity case)

Owner's likely positions and responses:

• "No reference teaches routing a touch trace down an inclined encapsulation edge." This is the patent's strongest point, and it is a real gap in the citation set: Kodak '208 runs conductors along a substrate edge, not down a sealing-film incline; TWI421607 wraps a barrier over a side wall but is not, on the excerpts retrieved, shown carrying patterned conductor traces down that wall. A petitioner must show that combining TWI421607's sloped barrier with Kodak '208's edge-routing yields claim 1h with a rational underpinning. That is doable but requires an articulated reason (step-coverage continuity; avoiding vias; the 1c/1g/1h "between the sensing cells and the driving circuit" spatial relationship follows automatically). This is the crux of the case.

• "The prior art taught away — thin-film encapsulation is fragile; patterning metal over it and off its edge risks damage." Weak. The '270 specification itself concedes the step-breakage concern was known ("a risk exists that the sensing lines … may be broken by the step difference") and answers it with an inclined edge — which is a standard tapered-edge/step-coverage expedient, not an unexpected result.

• "The references are non-analogous / different subclasses." Fails. Everything in the set is G06F3/041-044, G02F1/1333, or H01L51/52-adjacent display art. CPC classes on the '270 face include G06F3/0412 (digitisers structurally integrated in a display) and G06F2203/04103 — exactly where the cited art sits.

• Secondary considerations. Possible but thin: (i) commercial success — Samsung's touch-on-OLED technology (marketed as Y-Octa per a public BOE investor-relations exchange retrieved during this analysis, https://basic.10jqka.com.cn/000725/) could be proffered, but that is an unverified secondary source and not tied to the '270 claims; (ii) long-felt need for thinner displays — but the need was already articulated in the prior art (Kodak '208, Rothkopf '845), which undercuts rather than supports nexus; (iii) copying by competitors — no evidence in this record. (iv) Nexus problem: any commercial-success evidence must be tied to the claimed inclined-edge routing, not to on-cell touch generally or to the family's broader portfolio.

Honest assessment of theory strength:

• Claims 6/7/8/9/10 and 15/16 — strong. Essentially unpatentable over Kodak '208/'157 alone in view of Rothkopf '845.
• Claims 3, 4, 5, 12, 13 — strong (routine routing geometry).
• Claims 2, 14 — moderate-to-strong (inherent geometry).
• Claims 1 and 11 (the independents) — moderate, contingent entirely on the motivation and enablement argument for the "inclined portion along the inclined surface" limitation. Claim 11 additionally requires the bidirectional fan-out, which is well supported.

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8. Procedural notes and cross-references

• The '270 claims were allowed in 2019 (Notice of Allowance entries dated 2019-03-11 and 2019-07-15 per the record supplied). Nothing in that allowance precludes an IPR on the Combination A theory, particularly because the strongest art (TWI421607 for the sloped barrier; Kodak '208 for shared-driver edge routing) is a cross-subclass combination and the "Family Cites Families"/"Patent Citations" blocks suggest the examiner's mapping was reference-by-reference rather than as a combined teaching.
• Consistency with prior sections: the earlier sections correctly note that no PTAB proceeding exists, so § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty and an IPR on claims 1–16 is available to any non-barred petitioner within the § 315(b) one-year window. This § 103 analysis supplies the substantive grounds such a petition would use.
• The claim-construction issue flagged earlier still governs. "Sealing thin film" (claims/spec) versus "encapsulation layer" (the '270 summary text) and the internally inconsistent "first direction, e.g., a column direction … second direction, e.g., a column direction" drafting create ambiguity that a petitioner can exploit — but a broad reading of "sealing thin film" as any thin-film encapsulant strengthens the Combination A/B mapping, so choose the construction carefully (broad for infringement/prior-art coverage, narrow for § 112).

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9. Confidence and uncertainty

• High confidence: the reference identities, titles, dates, and the quotes reproduced above from Kodak '208, Kodak '157, Rothkopf '845, Creator Technology TWI421607/US 8,598,787, and KR 10-1073215 B1 are taken from the search results retrieved today and are quoted accurately.
• Moderate confidence: the element-by-element mapping. I mapped references from abstracts/specification excerpts and the patents' own citation lists; I have not performed a full-text, figure-level read of each reference (e.g., I have not confirmed that TWI421607 specifically shows conductor traces on its conformal third section). Any IPR petition would require that full-text verification.
• Explicit uncertainty: the effective prior-art dates of KR 10-1073215 B1, KR 10-1219242 B1, and TWI421607 are unresolved from open sources, and the § 102(e) status of the post-2010-09-14 U.S. publications (US 2011/0012845, US 2011/0128240, US 2010/0309150, US 8,217,913, US 7,995,041, US 8,552,315, US 8,576,182) must be pleaded with the underlying U.S. filing/provisional dates. I would not assert a § 102/§ 103 date position on any of those without a KIPRIS/USPTO date check on the day of filing.
• No fabrication: no proceeding number, FWD, or case citation is asserted here that was not verified elsewhere in this analysis. Where the record is silent (e.g., whether any single reference discloses all of claim 1), I have said so rather than manufactured a single-reference anticipation.