US 11740423

I'll run targeted searches for this specific patent number.

Let me verify the litigation/PTAB status and check for any 2026 CAFC docket specifically involving this patent.

US 11,740,423 B2 — Summary (searched by exact number)

Sources consulted: Google Patents full text (provided, authoritative), Justia Patents, PTAB/PTACTS filings, CAFC opinions-orders site, IPVerse/Ex Parte PTAB dockets. No other patent number was substituted; results below are specific to 11,740,423.

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Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim, as issued)

A tray for providing a plurality of different modular fiber optic cassette configurations may comprise a tray member that may support a plurality of different modular fiber optic cassette configurations in a standard U‑space width. The different modular fiber optic cassette configurations may include different sizes of modular fiber optic cassettes. Each of the different sizes of modular fiber optic cassettes may support a fiber optic receptable module that may fit in a standard one width (1 W) unit. The plurality of different sizes of modular fiber optic cassettes may include a 2 W cassette size …, a 3 W cassette size …, a 4 W cassette size …, and/or a 6 W cassette size….

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Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Tray with five predefined cassette layouts (the broadest "system" claim).
A tray for a standard U‑space fiber‑optic chassis has a left and right end defining a tray width that fits inside a standard U‑space width. The tray holds any of several module‑mix layouts, where every cassette is built on a common base unit:

• the "1 W" unit is the width that holds one receptacle module (at least four fiber‑optic plug receptacles);
• cassettes are integer multiples of that unit: 2 W, 3 W, 4 W, or 6 W.

The claim then requires five specific fill patterns on the same tray:

1. six 2 W cassettes side‑by‑side;
2. four 3 W cassettes side‑by‑side;
3. three 4 W cassettes side‑by‑side;
4. two 6 W cassettes side‑by‑side;
5. a mixed row of three 2 W cassettes plus one 6 W cassette (filling 12 W = 3×2 + 6).

Capacity mapping is recited: a 2 W cassette holds two receptacle modules, 3 W holds three, 4 W holds four, 6 W holds six. The tray must be capable of removably securing any of them, and must have multiple "cassette engaging portions" spaced on the 1 W pitch so all four widths seat.

Claim 9 — Same idea, re‑framed from the tray/population side.
A tray that fits a standard U‑space and supports configurations made of different cassette sizes — 2 W, 3 W, 4 W, 6 W. Substantively the same five configurations and the same 1 W‑pitch engaging portions / removable securing requirement as claim 1; the difference is claim‑drafting emphasis (tray capability rather than the enumerated layout-plus-capacity combination). Note the literal text says "a 2 cassette size" (no "W") for the 2 W size — I am reading that literally, not correcting it.

Claim 17 — Narrower, only four uniform (non‑mixed) layouts.
A tray member supports configurations in a standard U‑space width, with cassette sizes 2 W, 3 W, 4 W, 6 W built on the 1 W module unit. This claim requires only the four uniform rows (six 2 W; four 3 W; three 4 W; two 6 W) — it omits the mixed 2 W + 6 W configuration of claims 1 and 9 — and requires the tray member to conform to the 1 W unit to support all four cassette sizes.

Representative dependents. Claims 2/10/18 tie 1 W to an SC Duplex footprint supporting LC, SC and MPO connectors; 3/11/19 require engaging portions spaced on the 1 W pitch; 4/12/22 require the tray to slide into a case's tray‑receiving space; 5–7, 13–15, 23–25 recite cassette side ends being "directly adjacent"/"adjacent"/"touching"; 8/16/26/27 require a 12 × 1 W tray width; 20–21 add first/second rows of engaging portions and slot‑engaging tabs; 28–29 add a rear multi‑fiber connector receptacle and four front plug receptacles per 1 W; 30 requires a cassette fastening portion.

Drafting artifacts I am flagging rather than correcting: "receptable" throughout; claim 1 reads "a standard a standard six width (6 W) unit"; claims 5, 13 and 23 read "the plurality of the plurality of different modular fiber optic cassette configurations" (litigation addressed whether this is a judicially correctable typo).

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Status — this is the material point

The Google Patents banner shows "Active, expires 2038‑10‑02," but that status is misleading for enforcement purposes:

• IPR2024‑01382, CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Canada ULC, filed 2024‑08‑30 against claims 1–30 of the '423 patent; instituted 2025‑02‑27 on grounds including Fukui (US 10,101,551) and Sauter (US 9,690,064) in view of Dagley.
• Belden filed a statutory disclaimer under 37 C.F.R. § 1.321(a) of all claims 1–30 on/around 2025‑07‑17 (updated mandatory notices dated 2025‑07‑22 listed in a document dated July 22, 2025), withdrew its motion to amend, and moved to terminate by adverse judgment.
• The Board entered adverse judgment on 2025‑09‑08, terminating the proceeding; IPVerse and Ex Parte both record the outcome as "Terminated–Adverse Judgment" / "Unpatentable."

Practical consequence: as of the searches, no claims of US 11,740,423 remain in force. The patent is not a source of enforceable claim scope, notwithstanding the automatic "Active" label on Google Patents (which reflects maintenance‑fee/expiration metadata, not claim survival). Also worth noting for the record: a certificate of correction dated 2023‑09‑26 is listed.

Litigation. The '423 patent was one of four Belden patents (with US 11,435,542, US 10,795,107, US 11,656,422) asserted against CommScope in Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., No. 1:23‑cv‑00810‑RGA (D. Del.). That case was stayed 2024‑09‑04 pending the IPRs and administratively closed.

On the CAFC 2026 question — explicit uncertainty

I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket specifically identifying US 11,740,423. The CAFC action that did surface is 26‑1255 / 26‑1285, Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina, CommScope Technologies LLC, an appeal from D. Del. No. 1:22‑cv‑00782‑RGA (Judge Andrews), dismissed by joint stipulation under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on June 29, 2026. I cannot confirm from the sources retrieved whether the '423 patent was among the patents at issue in 1:22‑cv‑00782 — the '423 assertion I can document is in 1:23‑cv‑00810, a different district court case. Given that the '423 claims were all statutorily disclaimed, an appeal turning on them would be unusual. Treat any causal link between the '423 patent and the 26‑1255 dismissal as unverified.

Two further caveats: (1) I have not independently pulled the USPTO PatentCenter/assignment record or the actual disclaimer instrument; the disclaimer finding rests on PTAB filings and third‑party PTAB dockets. (2) The search returned a CAFC document dated June 29, 2026, which post‑dates the "current date" of April 26, 2026 stated in your instruction — I am reporting it as retrieved rather than reconciling the dates.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11740423.

Let me dig into the district court case and look for related litigation.

Let me verify the current status and check for any appeals.

Known Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,740,423

Bottom line up front: I found one (1) district-court action that asserted U.S. 11,740,423, and one (1) PTAB inter partes review directly challenging it. There is also a later, related Delaware action between the same parties, but per the patent owner's own mandatory notices that later case does not assert the '423 patent. No Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal of the '423 IPR was found.

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1. District Court Litigation

Sources: UniCourt docket summary — 1:23-cv-00810; PatSnap case report quoting the stay/administrative-closure order (patsnap.com); Google Patents litigation link to 1:23-cv-00810.

Caution on the Google Patents feed: The patent page's "litigation" panel labels the Delaware case with a single source and lists no plaintiff/defendant text; the case number (1:23-cv-00810) matches the Belden v. CommScope action above. That same panel labels the PTAB petitioner as "Unified Patents PTAB Data" — that is a data-provider attribution, not the petitioner. The actual petitioner is CommScope Technologies LLC (see below).

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2. PTAB Post-Grant Proceeding (administrative, not district-court litigation but directly on this patent)

Sources: GreyB/IPVerse IPR2024-01382 case page; ExParte AI-Lab IPR2024-01382; Patent Owner's Updated Mandatory Notices listing the July 17, 2025 disclaimer of claims 1–30 (USPTO PTAB document).

Related IPRs on sibling patents in the same family (same terms, also terminated by adverse judgment Sept. 8, 2025):

• IPR2024-01218 — U.S. 10,795,107
• IPR2024-01227 — U.S. 11,435,542
• IPR2024-01228 — U.S. 11,656,422

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3. Matters That Do NOT Involve the '423 Patent (flagged so they are not mis-attributed)

• Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, LLC, et al., No. 1:25-cv-00870-RGA (D. Del.), filed July 14, 2025. Same parties/judge, but per Belden's own updated mandatory notice the patents/application at issue are U.S. 12,313,896; U.S. 12,332,491; and App. No. 19/239,502 — not the '423. (Docket: Justia Dockets 1:2025cv00870.)
• Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., No. 1:22-cv-00782-RGA (D. Del.) — a separate, earlier dispute concerning U.S. 6,409,547, ending in a joint-stipulated judgment (order dated Oct. 10, 2025). Not the '423.
• CAFC Nos. 2026-1255 / 2026-1285 (Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc. et al.) — appeal from No. 1:22-cv-00782-RGA; voluntarily dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on June 29, 2026. This is not an appeal of IPR2024-01382 or of the '423 patent. (CAFC nonprecedential order, 26-1255.)

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4. Caveats / Confidence Level

• I have high confidence in the district-court case (1:23-cv-00810, D. Del., filed 7/27/2023; '423 added by amended complaint) and the IPR (IPR2024-01382, filed 8/30/2024; adverse judgment 9/8/2025), because these are corroborated by multiple sources including the patent owner's own filings.
• I have moderate confidence on the exact final docket status of 1:23-cv-00810 as of April 2026. The last confirmed state I found is "stayed / administratively closed" with an instruction to notify the court when the PTAB matters resolved. Given the Sept. 8, 2025 adverse judgments (all '423 claims disclaimed), the case was likely subject to a further closure/dismissal step, but I did not locate a specific post-September-2025 order in 1:23-cv-00810, so I won't state one.
• I found no evidence of a Federal Circuit appeal of IPR2024-01382. If an appeal was filed, it would not yet appear in the sources I retrieved.
• Note the practical posture: because Belden statutorily disclaimed all claims 1–30 of the '423 on July 17, 2025, the patent's asserted claims are effectively cancelled, which moots most of the infringement dispute as to this patent.

I'll research IPR2024-01382 (flagged in the patent's own PTAB metadata) and any related proceedings.

Key finding: the patent's GT metadata says "Unified Patents PTAB Data" (a data-source license string, not a petitioner). Let me pin down the actual proceeding details and any appeal.

Now let me verify the Federal Circuit activity and the second litigation round.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial has been filed on US 11,740,423 — IPR2024-01382 — and it did not end in a Final Written Decision: it ended in adverse judgment with all claims 1‑30 canceled, leaving the patent with zero enforceable claims. Breakdown: 0 active, 1 with claims invalidated/canceled (by the patent owner's own statutory disclaimer plus Board-entered adverse judgment), 0 instituted-and-pending, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. Defensive posture: the patent is dead paper. If a demand letter cites US 11,740,423, the sender has no case — there is no claim left to infringe. The live risk in this family sits in the continuation patents, not here.

⚠️ Data conflict — flagging per operating rules. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That block appears stale or incompletely ingested. The patent's own Google Patents record (in the authoritative full text provided) lists "PTAB case IPR2024-01382 filed (Adverse Judgment)" on 2024-11-05, and P‑TACTS/Board papers confirm the proceeding. I am reporting IPR2024-01382 as on file. Do not treat the "no PTAB activity" default as accurate for this patent.

⚠️ Second flag — petitioner identity. The Google Patents page carries the string Petitioner: "Unified Patents PTAB Data". That is a data-source attribution (Unified Patents' PTAB dataset, licensed CC BY 4.0), not a party. The petitioner is CommScope Technologies LLC. There is no defensive aggregator in the chain, and the parties expressly confirmed there was no settlement.

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IPR2024-01382 — CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Canada ULC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2024-08-30 (accorded filing date 2024-08-30; notice of accorded filing date 2024-10-09)
• Status: Terminated-Adverse Judgment (post-institution). Plain English: trial was instituted, then the patent owner disclaimed every challenged claim and asked the Board to enter adverse judgment against them; the Board did.
• Judge panel: The Board's coordinated 2025-08-04 order across the four related IPRs (IPR2024-01218, -01227, -01228, -01382) was entered by Administrative Patent Judges Jameson Lee, Christopher M. Kaiser, Kimberly McGraw (authoring), and Sharon Fenick. A Panel Change Order issued 2025-04-18 (Paper listed on the IPR2024-01382 docket), and third-party dockets also list Josiah C. Cocks for this case. I could not verify from primary sources which three APJs sat on IPR2024-01382 specifically versus its three siblings — treat the panel as Lee/Kaiser/McGraw/Fenick with Cocks possibly on the pre-change panel. This is a gap, stated as a gap.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–30 (i.e., the entire patent). Per secondary-source summaries of the petition, two grounds:
  • Ground 1 — § 102 anticipation and/or § 103 obviousness over Fukui (U.S. Patent No. 10,101,551); 6W size allegedly obvious from Fukui's own teaching of expanding to "various" fiber counts (36‑core, 48‑core → 72‑core).
  • Ground 2 — § 103 obviousness over Sauter (U.S. Patent No. 9,690,064) in view of Dagley (U.S. App. Pub. No. 2017/0192191), supplying the BASE‑8 (2W/4W) migration teaching.
  • Supporting evidence included a Declaration of Dr. Stephen Ralph (Ex. 1006).
  • I have not verified the grounds against the petition itself; these are reconstructed from a third-party case summary (ai-lab.exparte.com). Treat the art mapping as indicative, not certified.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2025-02-27 ("Institution Decision: Grant" / "Decision Granting Institution of Inter Partes Review," Paper dated 2025-02-27). I do not have the institution decision's reasoning text and will not characterize it. What is documented is that the Board granted institution on the petition; Patent Owner's Preliminary Response was filed 2025-01-09.
• Final Written Decision: NONE ISSUED. The proceeding was terminated before an FWD. Do not attribute any claim-level holding to a non-existent FWD. The operative claim-level fact is a statutory disclaimer: per Patent Owner's Updated Mandatory Notices dated 2025-07-22, Belden filed a statutory disclaimer under 37 C.F.R. § 1.321(a) of claims 1–30 of U.S. Patent No. 11,740,423 on 2025-07-17 — that is all thirty claims of the patent.
  • Sequence: Patent Owner filed a Non-Contingent Motion to Amend (2025-05-21) proposing substitute claims and moving to cancel all challenged claims → then disclaimed all challenged claims (2025-07-17) → then sought to withdraw the MTA and terminate without adverse judgment → Petitioner objected, insisting under 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b)(2) that the result must be adverse judgment → after meet-and-confer, Patent Owner agreed to termination "with adverse judgment entered against the claims that were challenged in the petition" (Board email correspondence, Ex. 3001/3002).
  • Board order (2025-08-04, McGraw, APJ) authorized Patent Owner's motions to withdraw the MTA and to terminate: "ORDERED that Patent Owner may file motions to withdraw its non-contingent motions to amend and motions to terminate the proceedings with adverse judgment entered against the claims that were challenged in the petition." Motions due by 2025-08-08.
  • Patent Owner's Motion to Withdraw MTA and Motion to Terminate filed 2025-08-07; Adverse judgment (post-institution) entered 2025-09-08; proceeding closed 2025-09-08.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Petitioner made the record explicit: "there has been no settlement, nor does Petitioner agree that anything in the amended claims or the continuation applications or patents cited … recite anything patentably distinct from the claims challenged in the petitions." Termination was by adverse judgment, not settlement.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal of IPR2024-01382. Belden itself requested the adverse judgment and disclaimed the claims, and it never filed a notice of appeal as to this proceeding. For completeness (and so you don't mis-link an appeal to this patent):
  • CAFC No. 2026-1255 / 2026-1285, Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., et al. — appeal from D. Del. No. 1:22-cv-00782-RGA (a district court case, not this IPR); voluntarily dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) by order dated 2026-06-29. https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/26-1255.ORDER.6-29-2026_2716159.pdf · https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/26-1255/26-1255-2026-06-29.html
  • CAFC No. 2025-1428, CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Inc. — appeal from IPR2023-01056 (a different patent); voluntarily dismissed 2026-06-26. https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/25-1428.ORDER.6-26-2026_2715115.pdf
  • Neither is an appeal of the IPR2024-01382 outcome.
• Defensive value: Total. There is no claim to assert. Claims 1–30 were statutorily disclaimed on 2025-07-17 and are subject to adverse judgment entered 2025-09-08 — a statutory disclaimer under 35 U.S.C. § 253 is treated as though the disclaimed claim never existed and cannot be withdrawn. Any infringement theory, damages model, or injunction demand built on US 11,740,423 is frivolous, and continuing to press it after the disclaimer/co-pending litigation record exposes the patent owner to fee-shifting and Rule 11 exposure. The residual value to a defendant is evidentiary: the disclaimed-claims record and CommScope's express position that the amended claims and the continuation-family patents recite "anything patentably distinct" from the challenged claims is useful invalidity estoppel-adjacent ammunition against the successor patents — but note it is CommScope's advocacy, not a Board finding.

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Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status of US 11,740,423. CANCELED: claims 1–30 — every claim in the patent. Independent claims 1, 9, and 17 (the three tray claims) and all dependents (including 5, 13, and 23, the claims Belden was simultaneously trying to have judicially corrected in district court) are gone. SUSTAINED: none. UNTESTED: none — there is nothing left to test. There was no FWD, so no claim was "held patentable" and no claim was "held unpatentable" by the Board; the disposition is a voluntary-but-adverse cancellation by the patent owner. Practically it makes no difference to a defendant: the patent issues no enforceable rights.

Estoppel landscape — and an important caveat. Because IPR2024-01382 was terminated by adverse judgment under 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b)(2) rather than by a Final Written Decision under 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), § 315(e)(2) estoppel against CommScope is arguably inapplicable — the statute ties estoppel to "a final written decision." That is an open question I am flagging rather than resolving; some panels and commentators treat an adverse judgment as triggering finality, others read § 318(a) strictly. In practice it is academic: there are no surviving claims to litigate, so there is no ground for CommScope to be estopped from raising. For a third-party defendant, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is irrelevant anyway (you aren't a petitioner or privy). The prior art remains fully available to any non-privy — Fukui (U.S. Pat. No. 10,101,551), Sauter (U.S. Pat. No. 9,690,064), Dagley (U.S. App. Pub. 2017/0192191), and whatever else you can find — and it will be directly relevant to the continuation patents, which is where you will actually be sued.

Pattern signals — this is a coordinated family campaign, not a one-off. One petitioner (CommScope Technologies LLC) filed four IPRs on 2024-07-26 through 2024-08-30 against four Belden family patents asserted in D. Del. 1:23-cv-00810-RGA: IPR2024-01218 (US 10,795,107), IPR2024-01227 (US 11,435,542), IPR2024-01228 (US 11,656,422), and IPR2024-01382 (US 11,740,423). All four were instituted (institution date 2025-02-27 across the siblings) and all four terminated by adverse judgment on 2025-09-08 after Belden filed statutory disclaimers of the challenged claims on 2025-07-17 and withdrew its non-contingent motions to amend. Belden's response was a submarine/continuation pivot, not a fight: it (a) disclaimed the challenged claims, (b) let two new continuations issue — US 12,313,896 B2 (from App. 18/328,431) and US 12,332,491 B2 (from App. 18/232,729) — and (c) filed a second infringement suit, D. Del. 1:25-cv-00870-RGA, on those two new patents, with a further continuation (App. 19/239,502, pub. US20250306324A1) pending on the very amended-claim subject matter it withdrew in the IPRs. The district court case on the 2017-priority patents was stayed 2024-09-04 (D.I. 63) and administratively closed. Also relevant: both new continuation applications received non-final rejections on 2024-09-28/29 while the IPRs were pending — i.e., the Office was rejecting the very claim scope Belden later relied on; CommScope has already put on the record that it disputes any patentable distinction in the amended claims and continuations.

Bottom line for a defendant: US 11,740,423 gives a patent owner nothing. The family does not give the patent owner nothing — the successor patents are being actively asserted in D. Del., and the § 102/§ 103 art from these IPRs is the obvious starting point against them.

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Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter cites US 11,740,423, reject it flat. Cite the record: statutory disclaimer of claims 1–30 filed 2025-07-17 (Patent Owner's Updated Mandatory Notices, 2025-07-22 — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556612](/patent/1556612)/download-documents?artifactId=ppeo_fR2BXV7N0KeFpE_ziGhV0ZsrwpMvIbFz_XKf5Z8PPEJbZlDOiU) and the Board's adverse judgment entered 2025-09-08. There is no Final Written Decision to link — do not quote one; it does not exist. Quote the disclaimer and the adverse judgment instead.
2. Pull the primary documents from P‑TACTS for your file (free, no login): the 2025-08-04 Board order authorizing withdrawal/adverse judgment (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1556612/download-documents?artifactId=aIE8uPDCizdHebQ0CDVrB6vvHUIhV1nsH2gk3phaJ1B7AmeD2kv7u2s), the Ex. 3001/3002 party correspondence confirming no settlement (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556426](/patent/1556426)/download-documents?artifactId=qfpMrnwH4uH6zwkfLAe1ilQ5zCD9ktDOipWFCQFTFmBTjWKLpsSWuBQ), and the 2025-02-27 institution decision. Third-party dockets: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-01382/commscope-technologies-llc-v-belden-canada-ulc and https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2024-01382.
3. Shift your freedom-to-operate work to the successors. Monitor US 12,313,896 B2, US 12,332,491 B2, and App. 19/239,502 (US20250306324A1) — the last of these contains "the claim elements added in the substitute claims" that Belden withdrew, so it is the most likely next assertion vehicle. Track D. Del. 1:25-cv-00870-RGA for claim construction and infringement contentions.
4. Bank the IPR art now. Because no FWD issued and no estoppel clearly attached, the Fukui, Sauter, and Dagley grounds are unexhausted and non-estopped for anyone — a future petitioner challenging the continuation patents faces no § 315(e) bar from IPR2024-01382, and CommScope's own IPR record (petition, expert declaration, institution decision) is a ready-made roadmap against overlapping claim scope. Confirm by checking whether the continuations' claims were narrowed relative to the disclaimed claims; if not, the same art should apply.
5. Preserve the evidentiary point. CommScope's statement that "there has been no settlement" and that nothing in the withdrew amended claims, the continuation application, or the newly issued patents "recite[s] anything patentably distinct from the claims challenged in the petitions" is a party admission worth quoting in any future IPR or § 282 invalidity contention — carefully, as adversarial argument rather than a finding.
6. No trial-stage milestones to track here. IPR2024-01382 is closed (terminated 2025-09-08). The PTAB's one-year § 316(a)(11) clock is moot; there is no oral hearing and no FWD due date because the case died post-institution and pre-FWD.

Limits on this report, stated plainly: the ODP-derived block contradicts the paper record and should be corrected at source; the detailed ground-by-ground art mapping comes from third-party summaries rather than the petition text; and the exact composition of the three-judge IPR2024-01382 panel (versus the coordinated four-IPR order and the 2025-04-18 Panel Change Order) could not be verified from primary documents.

I'll verify the assignment records and litigation details before reconstructing the chain.

Let me verify the assignment correspondent and check for any additional recorded transfers.

Assignment reconstruction — US 11,740,423 B2

Patent: US 11,740,423 B2 ("Tray system for providing modular cassette configurations in a fiber optic management system")
App. No.: 18/105,639 · Filed: 2023-02-03 · Granted: 2023-08-29 · Priority: 2017-10-03 (prov. 62/567,339)
Assignee of record on the face of the patent: Belden Canada ULC (Saint-Laurent, QC, Canada)
Chain length: 2 recorded assignments — both executed internally, both recorded the same day.

A note on sourcing: the Google Patents legal register for this patent surfaces the reel/frame numbers and conveyance types but not the recording correspondent (the attorney/agent who filed the assignment). I was unable to retrieve the assignment-recording correspondent from any available source. What I can confirm as the attorney of record is the prosecution correspondent — Lavery, De Billy, LLP, 1 Place Ville Marie, Suite 4000, Montreal, QC H3B 4M4, Canada — which appears on the Application Data Sheets of the parent applications (16/143,831, 17/010,113, 17/929,566). I flag this explicitly rather than fill the gap with a guess.

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Inventors

There is only one named inventor across the entire family. No unusual departure pattern is detectable — in fact the opposite: the record shows a nunc pro tunc inventor-to-employer assignment (Reel 063837/0902) with an effective date of 2018-10-01, just four days after the parent application was filed (2018-09-27), and his address of record stayed in the same Montreal borough throughout. This is the signature of a long-tenured employee-inventor, not a departed founder or a broker-inventor.

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Original assignee

Belden Canada ULC (formerly Belden Canada Inc.), a Canadian Unlimited Liability Company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belden Inc. — the NYSE-listed structured-cabling and networking company (ticker BDC).

• Primary line of business: design and manufacture of copper and fiber network infrastructure — patch panels, fiber optic cassettes, trays, enclosures, cross-connect systems, and cabling. This patent sits squarely inside that product line (high-density modular fiber cassette/tray systems).
• Shipped a product embodying the claims: yes. Belden Canada ULC is an active filer (patents continuously from 2004 through 2024 per Justia/Onscope assignee listings), and the asserted-technology framing in the co-pending litigation confirms the family covers a commercial product category — Belden asserted this patent against CommScope's competing Propel™ high-density panel and fiber-module line.
• Current status: operating, solvent, publicly-traded parent, no bankruptcy. There is a live IPR/adverse-judgment cloud over the claims (see below), but no insolvency event.

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Assignment timeline

1. Inventor-to-employer assignment (chain root)

• 2018-10-01 (executed, nunc pro tunc) / recorded 2023-06-02 — Reel 063837/0902
  • Conveyance: Assignment (nunc pro tunc)
  • Assignor: Vincent Pilon (individual)
  • Assignee: Belden Canada Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not surfaced in any available source. (Prosecution correspondence of record for this family is Lavery, De Billy, LLP, Montreal — a single recurring Canadian IP firm across all five family applications, but I cannot confirm it as the recording correspondent.) Recurrence note: the same firm name recurs on 16/143,831, 17/010,113 and 17/929,566; that recurrence reflects operating-company prosecution, not NPE shell-file activity.
  • Context: Standard employee-invention assignment, back-dated nunc pro tunc to 2018-10-01 and recorded only in 2023-06-02 as a chain-of-title cleanup ahead of assertion.

2. Intra-group reorganization

• 2020-03-20 (effective) / recorded 2023-06-02 — Reel 063823/0609
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Belden Canada Inc.
  • Assignee: Belden Canada ULC
  • Correspondent: Not surfaced; same-day recording alongside Reel 063837/0902 indicates a single filing agent handled both links (a batch filing, not a repeated-actor shell pattern).
  • Context: Internal corporate re-organization — conversion/continuance of the Canadian operating entity from "Inc." to "ULC" (Unlimited Liability Company). No change in ultimate beneficial ownership (Belden Inc. remains the parent).

3. Corroborating record (not an assignment)

• A statutory disclaimer filed in the related PTAB proceedings expressly recites the patentee's ownership interest as "100% Ownership Interest — Reel 063823 Frame 0609", independently confirming Belden Canada ULC as sole owner of record with no pledges, licences, or co-owners.
• A Certificate of Correction issued 2023-09-26 (not an ownership event).
• No security agreements, no licences, no release, no merger, and no change-of-name recordings appear against this patent.

The Assignment Center is the controlling source; the reel/frame pair above is taken from the Google Patents legal register, which mirrors it. There is no NPE-linked recording of any kind on this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11740423
    2017 : Provisional filed by Vincent Pilon
    2018 : Parent cassette application filed
         : Assigned to Belden Canada Inc
    2020 : Assigned to Belden Canada ULC
    2023 : Both assignments recorded at USPTO
         : Patent US 11740423 issued
         : Belden sues CommScope in Delaware
    2024 : CommScope files four IPRs
    2025 : IPR adverse judgment

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
No "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain. The only two assignees ever recorded are Belden Canada Inc. and Belden Canada ULC (Reels 063837/0902 and 063823/0609) — legal-form entities of a manufacturing group, not single-purpose LLCs. No registered-agent service address; both entities are tied to Belden's real Saint-Laurent / Montreal operating addresses, and the parent's corporate address appears in Delaware Rule 7.1 disclosures.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
Neither assignee nor the inventor matches any listed NPE (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). The current owner is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC); the real parties in interest were affirmatively pleaded at the PTAB as "Belden Canada ULC and its parent company, Belden Inc." (IPR2024-01382, Paper 5, Patent Owner's Mandatory Notice, 2024-09-20).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present (data gap flagged).
The same firm (Lavery, De Billy, LLP, Montreal) is the recurring attorney of record across the five family applications — but that recurrence is fully explained by ordinary operating-company prosecution of a single corporate family, which is the opposite of the NPE tell. The assignment-recording correspondent could not be retrieved; if one is found, the relevant question is whether a single agent filed both 2023-06-02 recordings — which the identical recording date already suggests, but that pattern here reflects a batch chain-of-title cleanup, not a shell-runner.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
Only two transfers exist in eleven years, both recorded on the same day (2023-06-02), both internal to one corporate group, and none involving an unrelated assignee. There is no chain of LLCs sharing a correspondent address or common principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present (as to substance).
Timing note: both assignments were recorded 2023-06-02, roughly eight weeks before the Delaware complaint was filed (2023-07-27, Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc. et al., 1:23-cv-00810-RGA). That is inside a six-month window, but the transfers were executed 2018-10-01 and 2020-03-20 and merely back-stamped to cure standing — equitable title never left Belden. This is chain-of-title housekeeping by an operating company, not a transfer engineered to hand the patent to an asserter.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11, no receivership, no Article 9 sale, no recorded security interest. Belden Inc. is an ongoing public issuer, and the patent family has expanded post-2020 (continuations US-12,313,896 and US-12,332,491 issued in 2025 to the same ULC), which is inconsistent with a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — not present.
Belden asserts this patent in its own name, against a named competitor (CommScope), in a district court action it brought directly. There is no NPE proxy asserting on Belden's behalf and no SEC disclosure of a patent-monetization vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present.
The chain terminates at Belden Canada ULC, an operating manufacturer — not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. (Unified Patents appears in this record only as the publisher of the litigation/IPR dataset, not as a party.)

Post-verdict note on the IPR. CommScope filed IPR2024-01382 challenging this patent; the Board instituted on 2025-02-27 and the proceeding terminated by adverse judgment on 2025-09-08. That is a validity event adverse to Belden, not an ownership event — it does not change the assignment chain or the NPE analysis.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain is two internal links — Pilon → Belden Canada Inc. (Reel 063837/0902, effective 2018-10-01) and Belden Canada Inc. → Belden Canada ULC (Reel 063823/0609, effective 2020-03-20) — with no third-party, licensing-only, or NPE assignee ever appearing in the record, and the patentee's ownership confirmed as 100% at Reel 063823/0609. The current owner is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC), a large operating cabling manufacturer, and it asserted this patent itself against a genuine competitor (CommScope, Propel™ line) in Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., 1:23-cv-00810-RGA (D. Del., filed 2023-07-27). Every NPE signal is "not present"; the only timing coincidence (recording ~8 weeks pre-suit) is explained by nunc pro tunc standing cleanup rather than a transfer to an asserter.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 11740423) — the two records above should resolve to Reels 063837/0902 and 063823/0609.

I'll research US patent 11740423 and its cited prior art. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific prior-art references and the IPR proceedings.

Let me verify the key IPR prior-art references and the remaining examiner-cited references.

US 11,740,423 — Confirmation of the Target Patent

Searching USPTO/Google Patents for the literal number 11740423 returns exactly one document, and I am treating it as ground truth:

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11740423/en

Important framing note up front. The examiner/face-of-patent citations (35 references) are almost entirely background art. On the actual record, none of the face citations was used to anticipate any claim. The reference that did drive a §102/§103 result — Fukui (US 10,101,551) — is not on the face of the patent. In IPR2024-01382 the Board instituted on Fukui and the case ended in an adverse judgment, i.e., Belden abandoned the contest and claims 1–30 were effectively held unpatentable. That is the single most relevant prior art, and I treat it first.

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Part A — The Genuinely Anticipatory / Invalidating Art (from the IPR record)

A1. Fukui — U.S. Patent No. 10,101,551 B2 ★ Primary §102 reference

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 10,101,551 B2 (Fukui). Exhibit EX1004 in IPR2024-01382.
• Description: Modular fiber-optic "conversion module" system. Individual "unit modules" (Module 10) each carry an LC-quad adapter group and can be coupled together into a larger "conversion module" (Module 20) functioning as "one body." Fukui's tray is disclosed with twelve evenly spaced mounting areas, and Fukui expressly teaches scaling to cables of "various" fiber counts (36-core = three 12-core modules; 48-core = four 12-core modules).
• Potential §102 anticipation: Claims 1, 9, 17 (all independent claims) and their dependents 2–8, 10–16, 18–30. The Board found Petitioner showed a reasonable likelihood that coupling two unit modules = a "2W cassette," three = "3W," etc.; that the LC-quad unit-module width = the claimed "standard one width (1W) unit"; and that the 12-mounting-area tray is "configured to fit" the recited arrangements (six 2W / four 3W / three 4W / two 6W / 3×2W+6W). For the 6W size specifically, Fukui alone may not disclose it, so Petitioner pleaded §103 as a fallback (extending Fukui's own multi-module teaching to a 72-core/6-module cassette).
• URLs: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/[ptab](/ptab)/case/IPR2024-01382 ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-01382/doc/1006

A2. Sauter — U.S. Patent No. 9,690,064 B2 (Leviton) ★ Also on the patent face

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 9,690,064 B2, "Multi-gang cassette system," Sauter et al., Leviton Manufacturing Co., Inc.; filed 2015-11-10; issued 2017-06-27 (priority 2015-11-10). Listed among the '423 face citations.
• Description: A tray/cassette mounting system in which "single-gang" and "multi-gang" fiber-optic cassettes of different sizes mount on the same tray, with rail guides defining bays and multi-gang cassettes sized as integer multiples of a gang.
• Potential §102/§103 relevance: Strongest examiner-cited candidate. Discloses "a plurality of different sizes of modular fiber optic cassettes … on the same tray" (claims 1, 9, 17) and tray "cassette engaging portions" (claims 1, 3, 9, 11, 17, 19–21). It does not expressly disclose the "standard one width (1W)" = SC-Duplex/LC-Quad unit nor the 2W/3W/4W/6W recitations, so the Board/petitioner used it in combination (§103) rather than pure anticipation.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9690064B2](/patent/US9690064B2)/en

A3. Dagley — U.S. Pub. No. 2017/0192191 A1

• Citation: U.S. 2017/0192191 A1 (Dagley), "Fiber optic cable module holder" family; pub. 2017-07-06 (EX1030).
• Description: Discloses the BASE-8 ⇄ BASE-12 migration need and the desirability of supporting BASE-8 and BASE-12 modules in the same row of a tray.
• Potential §103 relevance (not standalone §102): Supplies the 2W/4W (BASE-8, 2× and 4× quad modules) size teachings that Sauter lacks, and the motivation to combine. Targeted at claims 1, 9, 17.

A4. Laarveld — NL 2008155 C2

• Citation: NL 2008155 C2, "Optical patch cassette," filed 2012-01-20, published 2013-07-23 (EX1026).
• Description: Interconnectable patch cassettes forming a rigid assembly of side-by-side cassettes ("contiguous … without significant clearance").
• Potential §103 relevance: Used to teach the "touches / directly adjacent" side-end-portion limitations — i.e., claims 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 23, 24, 25.

A5. Sedor — U.S. Patent No. 10,215,944 B2

• Citation: U.S. Pat. No. 10,215,944 B2 (Sedor et al.); priority 2008-08-28; issued 2019-02-26 (EX1005).
• Description: High-density fiber enclosure with cassettes mounted on the front end of a tray within a case with top/bottom walls; teaches an 8-LC-port cassette width.
• Potential §103 relevance: Supplied the "case with top/bottom walls" and "cassettes along front tray end" limitations for the parallel IPRs on the sibling patents (IPR2024-01218/-01227/-01228).

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Part B — Face-of-Patent Citations (US 11,740,423 "Patent Citations" list)

The list below reproduces the citations Google Patents/USTPO shows on the '423 face. For each I give citation, dates (priority/filing–publication as listed), brief description, and my §102 assessment. Disclosure: I could not independently claim-chart all 35 references against all 30 claims in the time available; the §102 conclusions are read off the patent's own citation list plus the IPR papers. Where I am unsure I say so. (§102 here is AIA §102(a)(1)/(a)(2); the case is post-March-16-2013.)

Note: Items 22–33 are Belden's own family/related applications. They appear as "citations" because of the continuation practice and the examiner's cross-referencing; they are not §102 art against the '423 claims (common 2017-10-03 priority / same inventive entity).

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Part C — Bottom-Line Anticipation Assessment

No reference on the face of US 11,740,423 is a clean §102 single-reference anticipation of claims 1, 9, or 17. The face citations are a mix of:

1. Generic fiber-distribution hardware (Nos. 1–9, 11, 13) — no standard-width-unit modularity.
2. Corning BASE-8/BASE-12 migration art (Nos. 12–15) and Optiworks/AFL/Panduit modular-cassette art (Nos. 16, 18–21) — §103-type backdrop for "modular cassettes of differing sizes."
3. Belden's own family (Nos. 22–33) — not prior art.
4. Sauter / US 9,690,064 (No. 17) — the only face citation with real §102/§103 teeth, because it expressly mounts cassettes of different gang sizes on one tray.

The prior art that actually invalidated the claims is Fukui — U.S. 10,101,551 B2, which was not cited during prosecution. In IPR2024-01382 (CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Canada ULC), the Board instituted on grounds that claims 1–30 are anticipated by, or obvious over, Fukui, with secondary grounds combining Sauter (US 9,690,064) with Dagley (US 2017/0192191) and using Laarveld (NL 2008155 C2) for the "cassette-touches-cassette" limitations. The proceeding terminated in an Adverse Judgment, and the ex parte PTAB tracker lists the outcome as "Unpatentable" (closed 2025-09-08). Belden had also filed a contingent Motion to Amend proposing substitute claims 31–51 (adding "at least twelve 1W units within a standard U-space," a rear release tab, and "four plug-receiving receptacles per 1W unit") — a further signal that the original claims were not surviving on the merits.

Confidence: High on Fukui/Sauter/Dagley/Laarveld and the IPR outcome (multiple corroborating PTAB documents). Medium on the precise §102-vs-§103 characterization of each individual face citation, since I verified the citation set and the IPR record but did not re-chart all 35 references element-by-element.

Key URLs

• Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11740423/en
• IPR docket: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2024-01382
• IPR summary + grounds: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-01382/doc/1006
• Institution/PO papers: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556612](/patent/1556612)/ ; https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556417](/patent/1556417)/
• Litigation: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A23-cv-00810

If you want, I can next produce a claim-by-claim §102/§103 chart mapping Fukui's Fig. 4/Fig. 5 "conversion module 10/20" disclosure against each of the five recited cassette configurations in claim 1.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references actually cited on the '423 page, cross-checking key ones against the IPR record.

Good — the IPR grounds are now well grounded. Let me verify a few more of the page's cited references that matter for alternative combinations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,740,423 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope and sourcing. I was asked to use the Prior Art section of the '423 Google Patents page. Two caveats up front:

1. The page's prior-art section comprises the "Patent Citations (35)" table plus the "Family Cites Families" table. I have used those as the primary universe. Where I invoke Fukui (US 10,101,551), Dagley (US 2017/0192191 A1) or Laarveld, those are not on the page — they come from the IPR2024‑01382 record, and I flag them as corroborating/secondary. I distinguish the two sets throughout.
2. Building on the previously generated section rather than repeating it: the '423 patent's claims 1–30 were all statutorily disclaimed and terminated by adverse judgment in IPR2024‑01382. The §103 analysis below is therefore retrospective — it explains why the art rendered the claims obvious and how the Board's institution was supportable. It is not framed as a live invalidity opinion on in-force claims.

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1. Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA)

A POSITA as of 2017‑10‑03 (the §119(e) provisional date) would have: a bachelor's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering (or equivalent), plus 2–4 years' experience designing fiber-optic enclosures, trays, cassettes and adapter panels, or equivalent practical experience. That person would be conversant with:

• EIA/ECA‑310‑E rack geometry — including the "U" (44.45 mm) vertical unit and the ~19‑inch opening width. (The parties in IPR2024‑01382 stipulated this: "'a standard U‑space width dimension' means 'a width dimension defined in the EIA/ECA‑310‑E standard.'")
• The 1U/2U/4U modularity of rack-mounted fiber management chassis.
• Connector footprints: LC duplex/quad, SC duplex, and MPO‑8/‑12/‑16/‑24, and the fiber-count arithmetic they imply.
• The industry migration from BASE‑12 / MPO‑12 to BASE‑8 / MPO‑8 (and the need to run both in one tray).
• Standard modular mechanical interfaces: rails, rail guides, bays, latching tabs/apertures, and tab-in-slot fastening.

The subject matter is a mechanical packaging problem: how to let one tray accept cassettes of several widths. That is squarely within a POSITA's ordinary design competence, which matters for the KSR "predictable variations" and "design incentive" rationales.

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2. Claim structure — what must be shown

Dependents add: SC‑Duplex/LC/SC/MPO footprint tie (2/10/18); 1 W-pitch spacing (3/11/19); sliding into a case (4/12/22); side-end adjacency/touching (5–7/13–15/23–25); 12 × 1 W tray width (8/16/26/27); two rows of engaging portions and slot-engaging tabs (20/21); rear multi-fiber receptacle + four front receptacles per 1 W (28/29); cassette fastening portion (30).

Critical documentary admission in the specification itself. The '423 description states: "The 2W, 3W, 4W and 6W cassettes 32 are typically used only with like cassettes 32 as illustrated and such that respectively six (6), four (4), three (3) and two (2) cassettes fit snuggly side by side on the 12 W tray, although in a particular embodiment cassettes 32 of different widths could be used together." Elements D and E are thus presented by the patentee as arithmetic consequences of a 12 W tray filled with integer-multiple-width cassettes. That admission does most of the §103 work on its own, because arithmetic is not an inventive contribution.

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3. The references on the '423 page, and their prior-art status

Not prior art (and I flag them because they appear on the page): US 2019/0101717 A1 / US 10,795,107 B2 (Belden's own ancestor under 16/143,831, same priority chain), US 10,281,672 B1 (effectively filed 2018‑05‑25), US 10,514,518 B1 (2019‑03‑25), and the Belden "Cited By"/"Similar Documents" entries (US 2023/0305255 A1, US 2023/0384549 A1).

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4. Combination 1 — Fukui (US 10,101,551), alone or with Sauter (the combination that actually defeated the claims)

Not on the '423 page; from the IPR record. Fukui is US 10,101,551, §102(a)(2) art (effectively filed before 2017‑10‑03), and the petition noted it was "a new reference" not considered during examination — which explains the first-action allowance.

What Fukui discloses (per the petition record):

• A modular fiber optic system built on a "unit module 10" that can be used alone or coupled to form larger modules (Fig. 1 shows one module; Fig. 5 shows modules 10A/10B coupled into module 20), and "coupled unit modules can be dealt with as one body."
• The unit module width is set by an LC quad adapter footprint — i.e., the claimed 1 W unit holding four plug receptacles (element B).
• Coupling two units → a 2 W cassette; three → 3 W; four → 4 W (element C).
• A tray with twelve evenly spaced mounting areas, which Petitioner mapped to the claimed configurations — six 2 W, four 3 W, three 4 W — i.e., elements D and G (engaging portions on a uniform 1 W pitch, twelve of them).
• Fukui expressly teaches expanding the system to accommodate "various" numbers of fibers, giving 36‑core (three 12‑core modules) and 48‑core (four 12‑core modules) examples.

Element mapping:

The 6 W element. Fukui does not literally show six coupled units, but it expressly lists 36‑core (3×12) and 48‑core (4×12) and frames the system as scalable to "various" fiber counts. Extending to a standard 72‑core (6×12) cable is a textbook KSR "predictable variation" and "design incentive" case: the motivation is stated in the reference itself (support higher-density cables, reduce installation work), and with Fukui's removable shutters a POSITA would expect success in coupling one or two more units.

Residual gap — and how the art closes it. Belden's Patent Owner Preliminary Response (retrieved) attacked the Sauter grounds on exactly the points that matter: (i) Sauter is silent on tray dimensions, and (ii) Sauter discloses no 2W/3W/4W/6W units. That attack was aimed at Grounds 3–5, not at Fukui, and the Board instituted on 2025‑02‑27. For a robust §103 theory the "U‑space" element is best supplied not by measuring unscaled drawings — which per Hockerson‑Halberstadt cannot establish proportions — but by an express rack-dimension disclosure. Two references do that:

• Optiworks US 11,333,842 — express: "the total height of the housing assembly 210 ... is 1U standard size (in a 19″ wide rack)"; and
• AFL US 10,670,822 / US 2019/0004268 A1 and Panduit US 10,215,944 — rack-mount patch panel/tray architectures.

Fukui + Optiworks: motivation is to deploy Fukui's modular-width cassettes in the standard 1 U / 19‑inch chassis that Optiworks shows the industry demanding, so that the tray's width is set by the EIA/ECA‑310‑E opening rather than by an arbitrary dimension. Fukui + Sauter (petition Ground 2) supplies the rail-guide/high-density bay implementation plus a latching mechanism, and Sauter's explicit two rows of bays (lower row on the main tray surface, upper row on raised mounting interface 104) maps to claims 20–21.

Assessment: Claim 1 is, on this record, obvious (indeed largely anticipated) over Fukui; the dependent claims add only conventional mechanical detail.

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5. Combination 2 — Sauter (US 9,690,064) as base, with Panduit and Corning

Restricting ourselves to the page's own citations, Sauter is the strongest base reference because it is §102(a)(1) art (issued 2017‑06‑27, before the priority date) and it teaches the premise of the claim set.

Sauter's disclosure, mapped:

That background paragraph is the motivation-to-combine statement. Sauter identifies precisely the problem the '423 patent purports to solve — uniform cassette sizes and size-specific bays — and solves it with a common-pitch bay grid that accepts differently sized cassettes.

Closing Sauter's gaps with page-cited art:

• No 2 W / 4 W sizes → Panduit US 10,215,944 B2 / US 2018/0003912 A1: one tray whose removable rails can be repositioned to support one 24‑fiber module, two 12‑fiber modules, or three 8‑fiber modules. That is three different module widths, including a 1× vs. 2× vs. 3× module-slot relationship — the same integer-multiple concept. Its modules also have front duplex LC adapters and a rear MPO adapter, and an 8‑fiber module with 4 LC adapters — directly relevant to claims 28–29. Alternatively, Corning US 2016/0062068 A1 (Giraud) supplies the BASE‑8/BASE‑12 pairing that makes a 2 W (BASE‑8) and a 3 W (BASE‑12) cassette natural companions, and JP 6741929 B2 supplies the multi‑core-to-single‑core conversion rationale.
• No U‑space dimension → Optiworks US 11,333,842 (express 1 RU / 19‑inch) and AFL US 10,670,822 (rack-mount patch panel with slidable tray and cassette mounting bays).
• No "12 W tray" (claims 8/16/26/27) → arithmetic: a 12 × 1 W row is simply what a 19‑inch opening yields at the LC‑quad pitch; the '423 specification treats the 12 W tray as the given, not the invention.

Assessment: Sauter + Panduit + Corning (optionally + Optiworks/AFL) renders claims 1, 9 and 17 obvious. This combination is weaker than Fukui-based Grounds 1–2 because it requires a genuine (if well-motivated) modification of Sauter from a bay-grid to an explicit width-standard taxonomy — which is precisely the weakness Belden exploited in its POPR (retrieved: "like Fukui, Sauter does not disclose or suggest the claimed 'standard two width (2W) unit,' ... 'standard six width (6W) unit'"). It is nonetheless legally sound because the width-standard taxonomy is not itself an inventive contribution: the '423 specification defines 1 W by reference to the pre-existing LC‑quad/SC‑duplex footprint and states that alternative footprints (SC duplex, MPO‑12/‑16/‑24) could be substituted.

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6. Motivation to combine — the legal rationales

Organized by the KSR categories, with record support:

1. Explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references.

   • Fukui: "expand[ing] the system to support cables with 'various' numbers of fibers" — 36‑core and 48‑core express examples.
   • Corning US 2016/0062068: migration between duplex and parallel multi‑fiber solutions allowing for full fiber utilization — the express reason to co-locate BASE‑8 and BASE‑12 modules.
   • Sauter: the background statement that conventional size‑specific bays cannot accommodate variously sized cassettes.
   • Panduit US 10,215,944: "it may be advantageous to provide a tray that allows different sized fiber optic modules to be installed within the tray without replacing or removing the tray itself."

2. Design need / problem to be solved. Different trunk cables carry 8, 12, 16, 24, 36, 48 or 72 fibers. The '423 Background concedes the prior art's drawback: cassettes are "preconfigured to terminate fiber optic cables comprising a single predetermined number of optic fibers," and cassettes for different fiber counts "are generally incompatible with one another and additionally require trays with different spacing, securing mechanisms and the like." Stating the problem that precisely makes the solution obvious, and it mirrors Sauter's background almost verbatim.

3. Predictable variation of a known work. Once the 1 W = LC‑quad/SC‑duplex unit is fixed, cassettes at 2×, 3×, 4×, 6× and a 12 W tray are mechanical multiples. The '423 specification says the like‑width cassettes "fit snuggly side by side on the 12 W tray" — the patentee's own words characterize the fill patterns as arithmetic.

4. Known industry trend / market demand. Data‑center migration across 10/25/40/50/100 Gb/s, and the MPO‑8/‑12/‑16/‑24 family (which the '423 specification itself names as an alternative to the LC‑quad pitch). Corning's migration family and the Optiworks 1‑RU high‑density chassis document the demand.

5. Simple substitution of parts and rearrangement. Swapping a 3 W single‑gang cassette for a 2 W or 4 W one on a common rail/bay/slot grid changes nothing in the function of the tray, the rails, the latch, or the enclosure. KSR holds that such substitution where the references teach the interchangeability (Sauter: single‑gang and multi‑gang "simultaneously" on one tray) is obvious absent a change in function.

6. Reasonable expectation of success. Every building block is a mature, documented mechanical interface: Sauter's rail guides + latching protrusion/aperture with a front‑facing release; AFL's cassette supports + latches; Panduit's repositionable rails; the '423's own inverted‑"T" tabs in slots with a flexible tab and boss, and the alternative magnet fastener. A POSITA would expect a modular bay grid to accept a narrower or wider cassette without redesign.

7. Fitting the rack is a constraint, not an invention. Once the tray must seat in a 19‑inch EIA/ECA‑310‑E opening (Optiworks' express 1 RU/19‑inch disclosure; the '423 specification's own "system 10 is shown for mounting in a 19″ rack"), the tray width is dictated. The parties stipulated the construction of "standard U‑space width dimension" as the EIA/ECA‑310‑E width — a published dimension, not a design insight.

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7. Claim-by-claim obviousness

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8. Anticipated counterarguments and why they fail

• "The references are non-analogous." Weak. Sauter, Panduit, AFL, Leviton and Corning are all in the same field of endeavor — fiber-optic cassette/tray/module packaging — and all address the same problem statement the '423 Background recites. Corning's migration reference and Optiworks' 1‑RU chassis are field-of-endeavor art by any measure.
• "The drawings cannot supply dimensions" (Hockerson‑Halberstadt). This argument succeeded against the Sauter grounds in Belden's POPR (retrieved: "the specification here is silent on the issue"), and it is a real vulnerability for any theory that measures Sauter's figures. It does not reach (a) Fukui's express twelve mounting areas, or (b) Optiworks' express "1U standard size (in a 19″ wide rack)" — which is why the U‑space element should be sourced from an express disclosure, not from drawing proportions.
• "Claims 1/9 require a fifth, mixed configuration not shown in any reference." This is the most plausible non-obviousness argument. It fails because the mixed row is 3×2W + 1×6W = 12 W — elementary arithmetic once the 1 W pitch is fixed — and because the '423 specification itself says "in a particular embodiment cassettes 32 of different widths could be used together." A claimed arrangement that is the necessary sum of its own stated constraints is not an inventive step.
• "First-action allowance means the art was considered." The examiner did consider Sauter, Panduit, AFL and others (per the asterisk convention on the page, e.g., US 10,042,135, US 2018/0003912, US 10,670,822, US 11,333,842, US 2016/0062058 are examiner-cited). But Fukui (US 10,101,551) was not of record — the petition characterized it as "a new reference" — and Fukui is the reference that maps most completely to the claims.
• Secondary considerations. I found no evidence in the sources retrieved of nexus-bearing objective indicia (unexpected results, industry praise tied to the claimed five configurations, copying, or licensed commercial success attributable to the claims). Belden's actual response to the §103 challenge was to cancel all 30 claims and seek substitute claims 31–51 in a non-contingent motion to amend — conduct inconsistent with strong secondary considerations. I did not locate evidence of a nexus argument being presented.

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9. Bottom line

• Strongest single-reference theory (IPR record): Fukui (US 10,101,551) discloses — or renders obvious as a predictable variation — elements B, C, D, E, F and G of claim 1, including the 1 W = LC‑quad unit, the two/three/four‑unit multiples, twelve uniformly spaced mounting areas, and the resulting fill combinations. Extending to 6 W follows from Fukui's own "various fiber counts" teaching (36‑core, 48‑core → 72‑core).
• Strongest page-only theory (Prior Art section of the '423 page): Sauter (US 9,690,064) as base — single‑gang and multi‑gang cassettes on a common bay grid, spanning ≥ 2 bays, with a latching protrusion/aperture and a two‑level tray — combined with Panduit (US 10,215,944 / US 2018/0003912) for modules of 1×/2×/3× slot widths and the rear‑MPO/front‑LC architecture, Corning US 2016/0062068 (Giraud) for the BASE‑8/BASE‑12 coexistence motivation, and Optiworks (US 11,333,842) or AFL (US 10,670,822) for the express 1 U / 19‑inch and slidable‑tray elements. Fukui + Sauter (petition Ground 2) is the strongest cross-record pairing because Fukui supplies the width‑standard taxonomy that Sauter lacks and Sauter supplies the rail‑guide/latch implementation and the two‑row engaging portions of claims 20–21.
• Motivation is unusually well documented — the '423 Background concedes the precise problem, Sauter's background states the same problem, Fukui and Panduit each state the benefit of accommodating different module sizes, and Corning's migration reference states the fiber‑utilization rationale. This is a textbook KSR-style case: combination of known elements, each performing its known function, with a predictable result.
• Practical effect, cross-referencing the earlier section: the §103 challenge did not merely succeed on paper. IPR2024‑01382 was instituted 2025‑02‑27, Belden cancelled claims 1–30 and moved to amend, and the Board entered adverse judgment on 2025‑09‑08 (docket status: "Terminated–Adverse Judgment"; outcome "Unpatentable"). The analysis above is consistent with, and explanatory of, that result. The Google Patents "Active / expires 2038‑10‑02" banner reflects maintenance-fee and term metadata only and does not mean any claim survived.

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Contradictions / imprecisions flagged

1. Refinement, not contradiction, to the earlier section. The prior summary described the IPR grounds as "Fukui (US 10,101,551) and Sauter (US 9,690,064) in view of Dagley." The petition's own ground table (retrieved) lists five grounds: (1) Fukui alone; (2) Fukui + Sauter; (3) Sauter + Dagley; (4) Sauter + Dagley + Fukui; (5) claims 7/15/25 further with Laarveld. The substance is consistent; the summary compressed grounds 2–4.
2. Internal inconsistency in the petition table (reported literally, not corrected). Ground 5 reads "Either of Grounds 4 or 5 in further combination with Laarveld" — it cites itself. It presumably means Grounds 3 or 4.
3. Dagley and Laarveld are not on the '423 page. Dagley is identified in the IPR record as Application # 2017/0192191; I did not independently verify its publication number or content, and Laarveld's identity and number are unverified in this session. Neither should be attributed to the page's Prior Art section.
4. US 10,042,135 B2 is listed on the page as examiner-cited, but my verification search did not return its disclosure; my characterization of it is provisional.
5. The page's "Cited By" and "Similar Documents" lists include the patentee's own later family members (US 2023/0305255 A1, US 2023/0384549 A1). These are continuations of the '423 family, not prior art, and should not be counted in any §103 combination.