US 11957031

I'll search for any CAFC 2026 docket activity and USPTO records specific to US 11,957,031.

Records check — what I searched and what it returned

⚠️ Date flag (carried forward, now sharper). The stated current date is 2026‑04‑26, but the sources retrieved above are dated 2026‑09‑18 through 2026‑09‑22 and describe IPR petitions filed 2026‑09‑17 — i.e. roughly five months after the stated date. I cannot have a September event in an April snapshot. I'm reporting the search hits as retrieved rather than silently reconciling them, exactly as the earlier sections did.

⚠️ Correction to a prior section. The earlier Strategic summary called claim 5 "independent." It is not. Claim 5 opens "The display device according to claim 1." The '031 patent has exactly one independent claim (claim 1) and 19 claims total; claims 2–19 are all dependent. This summary is therefore built around a single independent claim, and I flag the prior characterization as erroneous rather than repeating it.

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US 11,957,031 B2 — Concise Summary

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"A display device is provided. The present disclosure allows a distance between a protective layer and a coverplate to be greater than or equal to a default value in an overlapping area of the protective layer and the coverplate, so the coverplate will not squeeze the protective layer, thereby preventing a risk of cracking the display device."

Plain-language overview — the independent claims

Only independent claim: claim 1 (apparatus)

A display device with four cooperating parts:

1. A flexible screen body having a planar area (the picture-displaying region) and a bending area attached to it (the non-displaying region that folds around to the back of the module for a narrow bezel).
2. A color filter placed on the flexible screen body and covering at least the planar area — the POL-less / polarizer-replacing color-filter stack (red, green, blue resists plus a black matrix).
3. A protective layer on the flexible screen body covering at least part of the bending area — in practice the UV-cure glue bead that relieves bending stress in the fold.
4. A coverplate placed on the color filter covering at least the planar area.

And the point of novelty: in the region where the protective layer and the coverplate overlap, the distance between them must be ≥ a "default value," and that default value must be greater than 0.

In plain English: the coverplate must not touch or press down on the bend-area protective glue where the two layers coincide, because the previous design stack was too thin (≈95 µm UV glue but only ≈5 µm color filter and a thin optical adhesive), and pressing the coverplate onto the glue cracked the module. The claim requires a strictly positive stand-off — "leave a physical gap".

No numerical value is given. The specification says only that the default value "is a value greater than 0 and may be flexibly adjusted according to actual needs, and is not specifically limited in the embodiment." Every remaining claim depends from claim 1 and inherits this limitation.

Dependent claim 5 (the most substantive non-independent claim)

Claim 5 narrows claim 1 by defining the bending area as three sequential sub-areas —

• transitional bending sub-area (B1) — flush with and connected to the planar area;
• bending sub-area (B2) — the actual fold (bent ~180°, semicircular arc); and
• extending bending sub-area (B3) — runs to the back of the support layer;

— and then requires that the protective layer completely cover B2 and cover at least part of B1, that the coverplate be bonded to the color filter by an optical adhesive, and that the coverplate completely cover the planar area and cover at least part of B1.

Other notable dependents, in plain language: claim 2 (protective-layer thickness ≤ coverplate-to-screen-body clearance); claim 3 (adds a touch-control layer and an insulating layer between the screen body and the color filter); claim 6 (optical-adhesive thickness > maximum protective-layer thickness on B1); claim 7 (protective layer also extends onto B3); claim 8 (protective layer is a UV glue); claim 9 (support layer straddling the fold — one side carries planar+B1, the other side carries B3); claims 10–13 (first backplate, second backplate, foam, stiffener plate, heat-dissipation layer); claims 14–15 (further "default value" standoffs relative to the initial and terminal bending positions); claim 16 (RGB sub-pixels matched to RGB color resists and a black matrix); claim 17 (the optical adhesive is an OCA); claim 18 (heat-dissipation material = metal or graphite, including Cu foil / Al foil / stainless steel foil); claim 19 (a driving unit on the B3 surface facing away from the support layer).

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Uncertainty / confidence notes

1. High confidence on title, patent number, assignee, sole inventor, application number, PCT and priority relationships, grant date, claim count and the text of claim 1 and the abstract — all read directly from the authoritative full text I was given.
2. Certificate of correction (2026‑01‑27) not retrieved. I cannot confirm whether it altered any claim wording. Any analysis of claim scope should run off the corrected text, not the printed grant.
3. Claim 2 contains an OCR rendering "cqual" ("less than or cqual to") in the record I hold. I have not silently corrected it; it is read literally as "equal."
4. The phrase "default value" is unbounded in the claims and the specification. I flag this as a § 112(b) indefiniteness exposure, not as a factual finding about validity.
5. Only one IPR proceeding (IPR2026‑00486 / Samsung Display's 2026‑09‑17 petition) is known to target this patent, no institution decision and no FWD exist, and no CAFC appeal concerning US 11,957,031 exists on the 2026 docket. Samsung's public characterization of its ground is § 103 obviousness over "simple combinations" of prior art; the specific references and challenged claims are not public and I have not guessed them.
6. Absence of a CAFC hit is not proof of no appeal — very recently filed or sealed matters may lag in public databases.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11957031, starting with the lead in the patent record and then verifying against litigation databases.

The docket lead is confirmed. Let me verify details and check for any additional cases.

Let me check the docket status and confirm details for case 2:26-cv-00228.

Litigation Involving US Patent 11,957,031

One litigation is known. No other federal district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) asserting or challenging US 11,957,031 was found.

Case 1 — Wuhan China Star v. Samsung Display (the only known case)

Regarding US 11,957,031 specifically: The complaint alleges that the accused flexible/foldable OLED panels practice claim 1 — i.e., a flexible screen body with a planar area and bending area, a color filter, a protective layer over the bending area, and a coverplate, where in the overlap of the protective layer and coverplate the distance between them is "greater than or equal to a default value" and the default value is greater than 0. The complaint asserts at least independent claim 1. This is the same claim-1 limitation set recited in the patent's own claim 1 (default value > 0).

Related litigation that does NOT involve the '031 patent (flagged to avoid confusion)

• Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., et al., No. 3:25-cv-01430-S (N.D. Tex., Dallas Div., filed June 2025). This is the mirror-image Samsung suit against TCL CSOT/Wuhan China Star, Ultimate Eshop LLC (d/b/a Parts4Repair), and Vican, Inc. (d/b/a eTech Parts Plus). It asserts US 11,594,578; US 7,414,599; and US 9,330,593 — not US 11,957,031. Ultimate Eshop was dismissed by joint motion on March 20, 2026; the case continues against the remaining defendants (claim construction briefing in spring 2026, trial docket reset to October 2027). This case is the backdrop/motivation for the '031 suit but is legally distinct.

• Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., No. 2:26-cv-00227 (E.D. Tex.) — opened March 19, 2026 and terminated March 20, 2026 as a "case opening error by attorney," i.e., a clerical docketing artifact, not a substantive case.

• In re Certain Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode Display Panels and Modules for Mobile Devices (ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1351) — asserted the '578, '599, '593, '803, and '683 patents, not the '031 patent.

• Fed. Cir. Nos. 26-1092 / 26-1106, Wuhan China Star, et al. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (appeal from PTAB IPR2024-00620 concerning the '593 patent) — does not involve the '031 patent. The cross-appeal was dismissed April 7, 2026.

Verification notes and caveats

1. Source of the lead: The patent record itself carries a litigation docket link: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas Eastern District Court/case/2:26-cv-00228, and the text: "US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court." I confirmed the case through Unified Patents litigation data, Justia dockets, and the First Amended Complaint text itself.
2. Case-number consistency: The complaint caption reads "Civil Action No. 2:26-cv-228"; docket databases render it as 2:26-cv-00228. Same case.
3. Cause-of-action anomaly: Justia's docket listing shows "15 U.S.C. § 1126 Patent Infringement" for 2:26-cv-00228. That is almost certainly a docketing feed artifact; the complaint itself pleads an action "under the patent laws of the United States, 35 U.S.C. § 1 et seq."
4. No outcome exists yet. I found no trial verdict, settlement, consent judgment, dismissal, transfer, stay, or IPR/PGR petition directed at US 11,957,031.
5. Date caution: Your prompt states a current date of April 26, 2026, but several retrieved docket items (e.g., an N.D. Tex. order dated June 8, 2026, and a docket "last checked" in September 2026) are dated later. Where records postdate April 26, 2026, treat them as possibly reflecting developments after your stated date. I did not identify anything that changes the status of the '031 case from "pending."
6. Scope limitation: Absence of a found case is not definitive proof of no other litigation — some newly filed or sealed matters may not yet appear in public databases. I could not run an exhaustive PACER-only search, and I found no evidence of any case beyond the one above.

I'll start by pulling what's publicly available on the sole proceeding in the canonical list.

Useful context emerging. Let me dig into the petition and the parallel litigation.

Let me try to pin down the petition specifics and any companion filings.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 11,957,031: IPR2026-00486 (Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd.), filed 2026-09-17 and still "Pending." Breaking that down: 1 active/pending, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — and consequently no Final Written Decision and no Federal Circuit appeal of this patent exists. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "the patent survived two IPRs and is hardened," but rather "the patent is intact and untested at the PTAB as of 2026-09-18, with a competitor-filed IPR filed yesterday and an institution decision roughly 5–6 months out." Any defendant being pitched this patent today should treat all 19 claims as live and enforceable, and should be aware that the only real-world validity challenge on the table is Samsung Display's, in a two-front war with the patent owner.

⚠️ Scope caveat. The IPR is one day old. No petition papers, expert declarations, ground tables, panel assignments, or institution decision are publicly indexed in the sources I could reach. Everything below marked [unverified] is either from the structured docket block or from secondary reporting; I have not fabricated any ground, reference, claim number, or APJ name.

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IPR2026-00486 — Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (IPR), 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319 [from structured data]
• Filed: 2026-09-17 [from structured data]
• Status: Pending [verbatim from structured data] — plain English: petition filed; preliminary response clock has not yet run; no institution decision entered. Docket "last modified" 2026-09-17 confirms no substantive activity since filing.
• Judge panel: Not yet public. The Board assigns the panel only when the decision on institution is issued; no APJ names are available as of 2026-09-18. [unverified / unavailable]
• Petition grounds: Not publicly available. The petition numbers, challenged claims, statutory bases (§§ 102/103/112), and prior-art combinations are not yet indexed. USPTO publishes the petition in PTAB E2E (see links below) shortly after filing; I could not retrieve it, and I will not guess at references. For context only: the co-pending district court complaint asserts at least independent claim 1 of the '031 patent (E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228, First Amended Complaint ¶ 81). It would be conventional for a petitioner to challenge claim 1 and the claims depending from it, but that is an inference, not a fact.
• Institution decision: None. Statutory setting: the patent owner's preliminary response is due ~3 months from service of the petition (37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b)), and the Director's institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing date (§ 314(b)) — so an institution decision is expected in roughly the 2027-02 → 2027-03 window, with Board practice sometimes landing nearer the 5-month mark.
• Final Written Decision: None. If instituted, the FWD is statutorily due within 12 months of the institution date (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months for good cause — i.e., a realistic FWD window of ~2028-early-2028 for this patent.
• Settlement / termination: None reported.
• Appeal: None — there is nothing appealable yet.
• Defensive value: For Samsung Display specifically, this petition is timely: it was filed ~6 months after the 2026-03-19 complaint, comfortably inside the § 315(b) one-year bar (and note § 315(b) bars only the petitioner, not a co-defendant like Walmart or Best Buy). For anyone else facing assertion of the '031 patent — a customer, a distributor, a repair-parts seller, an OEM — IPR2026-00486 buys you information but not immunity: you are not the petitioner, you get no § 315(e) estoppel benefit, and you cannot rely on the FWD (if there ever is one) as your own invalidity judgment. The practical read is that a well-resourced competitor has now thrown the first punch at claim 1; the outcome is 18 months away at best.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All 19 claims of US 11,957,031 are UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none disclaimed. There is no narrowing to date. The claim set is: independent claim 1 (flexible screen body with planar + bending areas; color filter; protective layer over at least part of the bending area; coverplate; and — the point of novelty — "in an overlapping area of the protective layer and the coverplate, a distance between the protective layer and the coverplate is greater than or equal to a default value, wherein the default value is greater than 0"), independent claim 5 (the B1/B2/B3 sub-area architecture with entirely relative terms — "completely covers," "at least a part of"), and dependent claims 2–4, 6–19. Note the drafting vulnerability that a defendant should probe: claim 1's core limitation is a dimensional relationship to an unspecified "default value," and claims 12–15 layer further relative/geometric requirements with no numerical bounds. That is a § 112 indefiniteness and infringement-proof problem, not a prior-art problem — and it is a reason to wonder whether the Samsung petition attacks one or both independent claims on § 112 as well as §§ 102/103. I cannot confirm that; the petition is not yet public.

Estoppel landscape. Only Samsung Display Co., Ltd. carries estoppel exposure here, and only prospectively: § 315(e)(1) attaches to instituted claims and § 315(e)(2) attaches upon a final written decision, after which Samsung (and its privies/RPIs) may not raise in the E.D. Tex. case any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised — prior-art patents and printed publications under §§ 102/103 included. Because nothing has been instituted, zero estoppel has attached as of today. For a different defendant — say a retailer or an aftermarket screen supplier named later, or a downstream OEM — the entire prior-art universe remains available, including system art and public-use/on-sale art that no petitioner can raise at the PTAB at all (§ 311(b) limits IPRs to patents and printed publications). That asymmetry is the single most important defensive fact in this file: system-art invalidity and § 112 defenses are yours alone, and Samsung's petition cannot consume them.

Pattern signals. This is not a troll scenario and should not be analyzed as one. Patent owner Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. ("CSOSDT") is an operating subsidiary of TCL CSOT, and this patent is a counter-assertion in a two-way display-industry war: Samsung Display sued TCL CSOT/Wuhan China Star in N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-01430 (filed June 2025, asserting U.S. 11,594,578, 7,414,599, 9,330,593), and on 2026-03-19 CSOT struck back in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228 asserting the '031 patent plus U.S. 12,133,429 and 11,257,891 against Samsung Display, Walmart and Best Buy, targeting OLED panels in Google Pixel 8/9/10 series devices. There is no defensive aggregator or NPE in the chain — the petitioner is a direct competitor, and Samsung Display has previously used the IPR system defensively in this same war (its patents survived CSOT/BOE/Tianma/Visionox IPRs at the PTAB, and those challengers appealed to the Federal Circuit in 26-1092, where a corrected opening brief was filed 2026-04-17 and Samsung's cross-appeal was dismissed 2026-04-07 — that appeal is on Samsung's patents, not an appeal concerning the '031 patent). So the institutional pattern cuts one way: Samsung Display litigates patents on both sides and is comfortable using the Board as a defensive tool, and the '031 patent's owner has shown itself willing to take PTAB losses to the Federal Circuit.

One procedural wildcard worth flagging. Petitions filed well after a parallel district court case has progressed now face real discretionary-denial risk. The context I could locate includes a precedential Director decision, Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc., IPR2026-00097 (PTAB May 14, 2026), denying institution where the same patent and validity issues were litigated in district court, the petition was filed late in the litigation, and the trial was imminent; that decision is described as directing denial where AIA review would expand rather than narrow validity disputes and where institutional resources would be misused (reported at https://www.nyipla.org/images/nyipla/sponsors/June%[202026](/patent/202026)%20PTAB%20Committee%20Meeting.pdf). Samsung Display filed IPR2026-00486 roughly six months into the E.D. Tex. case and roughly four months after CSOT's First Amended Complaint. Whether that is "late" depends on the docket's trial setting, whether Samsung stipulates to the statutory estoppel, and whether the Director reads Magnolia's anti-duplication principles as reaching a competitor-vs-competitor case with genuine claim-narrowing potential. I cannot predict this, and no institution decision exists to report.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not treat IPR2026-00486 as decided anything. It is a docket entry, not a result. Pull the actual petition from USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov — the Patent Trial and Appeal Board E2E portal; enter proceeding number IPR2026-00486) and from the PTAB public-information pages. That is the only way to know the challenged claims and grounds, and I have deliberately not supplied them.
2. Calendar the milestones now. Preliminary response due ~2026-12-17 (3 months from service under 37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b)); institution decision due by ~2027-03-17 (§ 314(b), 6 months), practically often ~5 months; if instituted, FWD due within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months. Track it at https://ptab.uspto.gov and via the patent's Google Patents page, https://patents.google.com/patent/US11957031/en, which carries the litigation and IPR links.
3. If you are Samsung Display's co-defendant (or a similarly situated customer/retailer/repair-parts supplier), do not stand behind Samsung's petition. You are not the petitioner; you get no estoppel benefit and no automatic stay, and you carry your own § 315(b) clock from your own service date. Preserving your own invalidity case — especially system art, public use, and on-sale art, which are categorically outside IPR reach under § 311(b) — must be done in the district court action, not deferred to the Board.
4. Attack the claim language, not just the art. Claim 1 requires a distance "greater than or equal to a default value," and the specification states the default "may be flexibly adjusted according to actual needs, and is not specifically limited in the embodiment" (see the '031 specification's discussion around col. 6). There is no numeric bound anywhere in claim 1 for what is arguably the point of novelty. Press § 112(b) — with the corollary that [unverified] if the Board construes "default value" broadly, infringement will turn on microscopic cross-sectional proof of a non-zero gap, which is exactly the evidentiary fight CSOT's own complaint sets up.
5. Get the claim-level docket details directly, and verify the claim text you are reading. Two things to confirm from primary sources: (a) the IPR's challenged-claim list once the petition publishes; and (b) a certificate of correction issued on this patent on 2026-01-27 (recorded in the patent's legal events). If that certificate touched any claim language, the claim set the petition challenges may differ from the printed grant — a defendant's infringement and invalidity analysis must run off the corrected text. For the district court posture, the live docket is Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., Walmart Inc., and Best Buy Co., Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex.), and for the parallel appeal it is Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Tech. Co. v. Samsung Display Co., No. 26-1092 (Fed. Cir.) at https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/cafc/26-1092.
6. Where the absence of activity matters. There is exactly one AIA proceeding and it is one day old. That is itself informative: this is an operating-company counter-assertion in a corporate war, not a serial-assertion campaign, and the patent has not yet been through any adversarial validity testing at the Office. Claims you are accused of infringing today should be assumed valid and enforceable until an FWD says otherwise — and no FWD exists.

I'll verify what I can from first-party and litigation sources before writing the analysis.

Good — I found the litigation. Now let me verify the assignment records and corporate/ownership context.

This is a key lead — a reported TCL China Star → Texas PAE transfer. Let me investigate whether US 11,957,031 is in that chain.

Critical update to a prior section

The earlier summary flagged as unconfirmed whether US 11,957,031 was actually in suit and against whom. That is now resolved by first-party litigation documents, and I am correcting the record: the 2:26-cv-00228 case is Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., [Walmart Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Walmart%20Inc.), and Best Buy Co., Inc., filed 2026-03-19 in the E.D. Tex., and the '031 patent is the second of three asserted patents (with US 12,133,429 and US 11,257,891). This materially changes the NPE analysis relative to the earlier "insufficient data" posture on litigation.

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Inventors

Unusual patterns observed

• The assignment was executed ~3.5 months before the underlying application existed. Effective date 2021-02-01 predates both the CN priority filing (CN 202110548905.2, 2021-05-20) and the PCT filing (PCT/CN2021/097527, 2021-05-31). This is a forward-looking/employment-style assignment recorded against the application rather than a negotiated, case-specific transfer. Consistent with an employee obligation-to-assign, not with any divestiture.
• No post-issuance inventor activity. I found no evidence of the inventor leaving Wuhan CSOSDT within 12 months of filing, no re-assignment, and no inventor-retained rights. I also found no data either way (I did not verify employment records or LinkedIn-type sources, and I will not infer).
• Single-inventor naming on a module-integration invention (bezel-bending architecture, optical-adhesive/UV-glue dimensional relationship) is mildly atypical for a large-fab portfolio, but it is not a transfer or distress signal.

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Original assignee

Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 武汉华星光电半导体显示技术有限公司; also rendered "Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Bandaoti Display Technology Co., Ltd." in TCL's translated financials).

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Assignment timeline

Record caveat (stated plainly): I was not able to retrieve first-party page content from USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) or the legacy index (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) for this patent number — my queries returned no USPTO-hosted assignment page. The single assignment entry below is taken from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 11,957,031 B2, which indexes the PTO assignment reel/frame. I therefore cannot affirmatively certify that no other recordings exist, only that the record I hold shows one. I did not obtain the correspondent of record for reel 057404/0809, so signal 3 below cannot be scored on evidence.

• 2021-02-01 (executed) / recorded 2021-09-08 — Reel 057404 / 0809
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: ZHOU, JING (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: WUHAN CHINA STAR OPTOELECTRONICS SEMICONDUCTOR DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., China (entity status: large entity)
  • Correspondent: Not available in my source snapshot. I will not name an attorney by inference. Flagged as a data gap.
  • Context: Inbound inventor-to-employer assignment (employment/obligation-to-assign), not a divestiture. Note the mismatch worth flagging: executed 2021-02-01 but not recorded until 2021-09-08 — a ~7-month recording lag, and ~3 months after PCT filing.
• (No other assignment, security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, or release appears in the record I hold.)

Related but non-assignment legal events (for completeness):

• 2024-03-06 — continuation US 18/597,853 filed (published US 2024/0215397 A1); no separate assignment recorded, consistent with automatic ownership by the same assignee.
• 2026-01-27 — Certificate of Correction issued. Not an ownership event.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11957031
    2021 : Inventor assigns to Wuhan China Star
         : Recorded at reel 057404 frame 0809
         : CN priority application filed
    2024 : Issued as US 11957031 B2
         : Continuation filed as US 18597853
    2026 : Certificate of correction issued
         : Suit filed against Samsung Display
         : Walmart and Best Buy also named

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only recorded conveyance is inventor → operating fab (reel 057404/0809). Google Patents' "Current Assignee" field, fetched 2026-09-18, still shows Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in the chain; assignee address is an operating campus, not a registered-agent service.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT, with one unresolved lead. No Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg or similar entity appears as assignee or assignor. However, ip fray reports (category pages for TCL/Hisense/Litigation Finance) that "TCL's China Star transferred hundreds of patents to [a] Texan PAE suing LG and Hisense," described as "the first assignment to a patent assertion entity by TCL and its affiliates since withdrawing from LOT Network," and a companion article identifies a "Fortress-backed NPE asserting former TCL China Star patents in Eastern District of Texas." I could not retrieve the article bodies or the assigning entity's name, and I could not verify whether US 11,957,031 is inside that package. The contemporaneous Google Patents assignee field showing China Star as current owner is evidence against inclusion — but that field is indexed with lag. Mark this specific patent "unclear," and treat it as the single most important open item to confirm. If the '031 patent is later found in a China Star→Fortress-backed PAE reel, signals 2 and 7 flip and the verdict would need to move to NPE—moderate/high.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not scoreable). With only one recorded assignment and the correspondent of record unavailable to me, there is no recurrence to test. I decline to name any attorney. To close this, query Assignment Center for reel 057404 and capture the correspondent field verbatim, then compare against the correspondent on the recorded assignments of the other asserted patents (US 12,133,429; US 11,257,891).

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. No chained LLC-to-LLC sequence; no cluster of transfers within <24 months; nothing since 2021.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The sole assignment recorded 2021-09-08 precedes the first suit naming the '031 patent (2026-03-19, 2:26-cv-00228) by roughly 4.5 years. There is no late-breaking transfer into the plaintiff's name designed to manufacture standing or venue. The plaintiff asserted the patent as its own long-held property.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. The assignee is a consolidated, revenue-generating subsidiary of a listed company (TCL Technology, SZSE 000100). No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, no estate sale.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR (corporate-family level only). The ip fray reporting on TCL/China Star → Fortress-backed NPE transfers is a textbook privateering fact pattern at the corporate-family level, and TCL's LOT Network withdrawal is directionally consistent. But for this patent, the record shows the operating subsidiary retaining and asserting title itself, which is the opposite of privateering. Do not score it present on this patent without the reel.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. On the contrary, TCL reportedly left LOT Network and the patent is under active assertion in E.D. Tex.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The only recorded conveyance for US 11,957,031 is the inventor-to-employer assignment at reel 057404 / frame 0809 (executed 2021-02-01, recorded 2021-09-08), and Google Patents still lists Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. as current assignee as of 2026-09-18. That assignee is a real, consolidated, revenue-generating AMOLED panel maker inside TCL Technology Group (62.38% indirect per TCL's FY2025 report) that pleads it supplies flexible OLED panels to major handset brands, and it is now asserting this patent itself, alongside US 12,133,429 and US 11,257,891, against Samsung Display — a direct competitor — in Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., Walmart Inc. and Best Buy Co., Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., filed 2026-03-19).

Two honest qualifications on that verdict: (i) naming Walmart and Best Buy as co-defendants is a downstream-retailer lever that PAEs favor for venue and damages optics, even though the plaintiff is an operating company; and (ii) the ip fray reporting of China Star→Fortress-backed PAE transfers means the corporate family runs both models, and I could not positively exclude US 11,957,031 from that package — the assignee-of-record evidence says it was retained, and I score on the evidence I can cite, but this is the item to verify first.

Verify independently at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11,957,031; pull reel 057404/0809 and capture the correspondent field) and via the litigation record at Docket 2:26-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex.). Google Patents mirror of the assignment event: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11957031/en.

I'll ground this in the actual citation list from the patent record, then try to retrieve text for the key references.

Good — two references retrieved with substantive text. Let me pull the remaining key citations.

Let me pull the remaining cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — US 11,957,031 B2 ("Display device")

Sourcing note (read first)

I did not obtain a first-party USPTO PatentCenter or USPTO "Patent Full-Text" page for 11957031 in this session — consistent with the sourcing disclosure already flagged in the earlier bibliographic section. Every citation listed below is taken from the "Citations (11)" table in the Google Patents record for US 11,957,031 B2 (patents.google.com/patent/US11957031/en, fetched 2026‑09‑18), which is the authoritative document I was given. I did not retrieve or verify the "Cited by examiner" asterisks individually, so I treat all 11 as part of the cited reference set as the record presents them.

I was able to retrieve substantive text for four of the 11 references plus one closely related document. For the remaining seven, I only have citation-level data (number, assignee, title, dates); I describe them at that level and say so explicitly rather than inferring their disclosure. Do not treat my one-line descriptions of un-retrieved references as verified content.

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Methodological point that governs everything below

Every one of claims 2–19 is dependent on claim 1 (or on another dependent claim). Under § 102 a reference anticipates a dependent claim only if it discloses every limitation of claim 1 and the added limitation. So the § 102 question collapses to: does any single reference disclose the full claim 1 combination —

1. a flexible screen body with a planar area and a bending area connected to it;
2. a color filter on the flexible screen body, at least covering the planar area;
3. a protective layer on the flexible screen body covering at least part of the bending area;
4. a coverplate on the color filter, at least covering the planar area; and
5. in the overlap of the protective layer and the coverplate, the protective‑layer‑to‑coverplate distance ≥ a "default value" that is greater than 0.

Element 5 — a strictly positive, required stand-off between the bend protective layer and the coverplate — is the point of novelty. It is a negative/avoidance limitation (the coverplate must not squeeze the UV glue), and it is what the specification identifies as the solution to the 95‑µm‑UV‑glue cracking problem discussed in the Background.

The corollary is important and I want to state it plainly rather than force a § 102 label onto every reference: on the text I retrieved, I found no single cited reference that discloses all five elements. That is consistent with the patent having issued. The cited set is therefore best characterized as a § 103 cluster — module-stack art combined in various permutations — with a small number of references that come close enough on individual claim 1 sub-elements to be worth § 102 attention on dependent claims. I map each below.

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Inventory of the 11 cited references

(No non-patent prior art was cited as § 102 art. The three NPL items in the record are prosecution documents — the CNIPA Office Action of 2022‑01‑07 and the ISR/Written Opinion of 2021‑11‑29 — and are not themselves prior art. I do not have the ISR's cited-reference table, which is a gap worth closing.)

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Per-reference § 102 assessment

The two references with real § 102 traction

CN 112786807 A (#11) — the most material citation in the set, and the closest thing to anticipatory art I found.

• Why it matters: its disclosure is the same module architecture the '031 claims. It recites a flexible display panel split into a display region (→ '031 planar area AA), an in‑between region (→ '031 transitional bending sub‑area B1 / bend sub‑area B2), and a side region bent to the back (→ '031 extending bending sub‑area B3); an OCA + coverplate stack over the display region (→ '031 color filter/OCA/coverplate stack, cf. element 4); and a protection glue layer over the bend region (→ '031 protective layer 30, element 3).
• § 102 exposure — dependent claims, not claim 1. Claim 6 of the '031 ("a thickness of the optical adhesive is greater than a maximum thickness of the protective layer on the transitional bending sub‑area") reads almost verbatim onto CN 112786807 A's published claim 3, which recites the OCA layer being thicker than the protection glue layer. That is a serious § 102(a)(1) problem for claim 6 in isolation.
• Why it likely does not anticipate claim 1. The '031 requires a positive gap between the protective layer and the coverplate where they overlap (element 5). CN 112786807 A's auxiliary glue layer directly contacts the coverplate — the opposite teaching on that limitation. Whether the '031's "protective layer" is read to correspond to the 保护胶层 (which does not contact the coverplate) or to the 辅助胶层 (which does) is the pivot; a careful mapping would need claim‑construction of "protective layer."
• § 102(a)(1) timing is the headline risk. CN 112786807 A published 2021‑05‑11; the '031's effective filing date is 2021‑05‑20 (CN 202110548905.2). Nine days of margin. Because it is a Chinese national publication, it is only § 102(a)(1) printed‑publication art — not § 102(a)(2) art (a CN publication is not a US patent/publication or a PCT application designating the US). That means the § 102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exception does not reach it, even though both are Wuhan China Star filings. Had it published eleven days later it would have been worthless as art. This is the single most important fact in the prior‑art picture and it is worth verifying the publication date against CNIPA directly.

CN 110224081 A (#7, BOE) — the strongest structural § 102/§ 103 reference against the claim 5/6 subject matter.

• Retrieved disclosure: display panel with effective display region / bending region / pad region; protective glue layer on the bending region; a bonding (adhesive) layer that extends over the protective glue layer and covers one side edge of it, with that adhesive edge lying within the fixing layer's coverage; and a chip protection film covering the opposite side edge of the protective glue layer.
• § 102 exposure: this is the cleanest prior disclosure in the set of the OCA‑over‑the‑protective‑layer's‑edge geometry that underlies '031 claim 5 and, by extension, the thickness relationship in claim 6. It also shows a bent pad/extending region carrying a chip (→ claim 19's driving unit, though the '031 adds "disposed on one surface of the extending bending sub‑area away from the support layer").
• Limitation on it: no color filter (it is BOE module art of the polarizer era in the abstract I retrieved), so it cannot reach claim 1's element 2 as a single reference. Its realistic role is § 103 — combined with a POL‑less/color‑filter reference, or used against claims 5, 6 and 19 once claim 1 is otherwise met.
• Timing: published 2019‑09‑10, comfortably before the 2021‑05‑20 effective filing date. No common‑ownership issue (BOE).

The other references with retrieved content

US 2019/0318689 A1 (#1, Samsung Display; granted US 11,017,716 B2).

• Retrieved disclosure: exactly the claim‑1 skeleton minus the color filter — flexible display panel with first area / second area / bending area between them; a bending protection layer over the bend, formed in two stages, one of which is a photo‑curable (UV) material (→ '031 claim 8's "UV glue"); a driving circuit chip and a spaced‑apart FPC on the second area (→ '031 claim 19); and a protective film with an opening at the bend.
• § 102 exposure: none against claim 1 — it uses an integral polarization plate, not a color filter, and says nothing about a coverplate‑to‑protective‑layer gap. Its realistic citation value is § 103 (motivation to use a photo‑curable bend protective layer; driving‑unit placement) and § 102 against the added limitations of claims 8 and 19 in isolation.
• Note the same referral pattern flagged in the litigation section: a Samsung Display reference sits in the file history of a patent now asserted by Wuhan China Star against Samsung Display in E.D. Tex. 2:26‑cv‑00228.

CN 112634764 A (#10, Wuhan China Star — same assignee).

• Retrieved disclosure: display panel + first backplate + support plate + elastic heat‑dissipation layer + second backplate + COF + FPC + polarizer + coverplate. That is a near‑one‑to‑one read of the '031's support‑layer architecture in claims 9, 10, 12, 13, 18 (first/second backplates, stiffener/heat‑dissipation layer) and the driving‑unit elements of claim 19 (COF and FPC on the extending region).
• § 102 exposure: the correspondence here is to dependent stacking claims; it does not carry a color filter and does not recite the protective‑layer/coverplate gap, so claim 1 is untouched. Cite it as § 103 art on the support/heat‑dissipation stack, where it is a close match.
• Timing: published 2021‑04‑09 (≈6 weeks before the effective filing date) — again a § 102(a)(1) printed publication, so the common‑ownership exception in § 102(b)(2)(C) does not apply to it.

References I could not read (I am flagging rather than guessing)

For CN 108877519 A (#2), CN 108682307 A (#3), CN 108962029 A (#4), CN 109119453 A (#5), CN 109859642 A (#6), CN 111430426 A (#8) and CN 112289185 A (#9), I have only number/assignee/title/dates. Based on that metadata alone:

• All were published 2018‑11‑23 through 2021‑01‑29, i.e. all before the 2021‑05‑20 effective filing date, so all are facially available as § 102(a)(1) printed publications. None raises a timing problem.
• On title alone, the four Tianma / Govisionox references (#2–#6) cluster around flexible display module and bending‑region stacks — the same problem space as the '031's Background (bend‑to‑back narrow‑bezels, bend‑region stress). I cannot say which claim(s), if any, they bear on. Any mapping I offered would be invention on my part.
• Two filings (#8 CN 111430426 A and #9 CN 112289185 A) are same‑assignee (Wuhan China Star) — practically, this is the self‑citation pattern normal in a high‑volume portfolio, and where such a document is only § 102(a)(2) art the common‑ownership exception in § 102(b)(2)(C) may remove it entirely; for CN national publications (which are not § 102(a)(2) art) the exception does not apply. Again: I need the text before mapping claims.

Recommendation: the marginal value of my analysis would rise materially if DOIs/full texts for #2–#6 and #8–#9 were pulled from CNIPA/Espacenet. In particular #8 CN 111430426 A (same assignee, "Display panel and manufacturing method," 2020‑07‑17) and #9 CN 112289185 A ("Display module," 2021‑01‑29) sit closest in time and subject matter to the '031 and I would want their claims in front of me.

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Bottom line

1. No clean § 102 anticipation of claim 1 by any cited reference. No cited document discloses all of: color‑filter (POL‑less) stack + bend protective layer + coverplate + a required positive stand‑off between the protective layer and the coverplate in their overlap. The "default value > 0" limitation is the distinguishing feature and the cited art does not teach it.
2. The best § 102 candidates are dependent‑claim hits, not claim 1. Specifically CN 112786807 A against claim 6 (it recites OCA thickness > protective glue thickness — cf. its published claim 3) and against claim 5's architecture; and CN 110224081 A against the geometry underlying claims 5/6 and against claim 19.
3. The real exposure is § 103, not § 102 — an obviousness case built from CN 110224081 A (bend protective glue + adhesive over its edge, BOE) in view of any POL‑less/color‑filter module reference, with US 2019/0318689 A1 supplying the UV‑curable two‑stage bend protective layer and the driving‑chip/FPC placement.
4. Timing is uncomfortably tight on two references. CN 112786807 A (published 2021‑05‑11) and CN 112634764 A (published 2021‑04‑09) precede the 2021‑05‑20 effective filing date by 9 and 41 days respectively — and, as CN national publications, both are § 102(a)(1) art beyond the reach of the § 102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exception despite sharing the '031's assignee. Their publication dates should be verified against CNIPA's primary record before anyone relies on them.
5. Caveats that qualify all of the above:
   • The certificate of correction dated 2026‑01‑27 in the record postdates the grant text I have. I do not have the corrected wording, so the claim language I am mapping against may not be the currently in‑force version of the claims. Re‑verify claim 6 in particular, since it carries the strongest § 102 mapping.
   • Claim 2 in my source reads "less than or cqual to" — an OCR artifact I have not silently corrected.
   • Your stated current date is April 26, 2026, while other retrieved items (the E.D. Tex. case filed 2026‑03‑19; the certificate of correction 2026‑01‑27) fall before it but the docket items noted in the previous litigation section fall after. I have treated the citation set as stable regardless.
   • I could not confirm the "cited by examiner" status of individual references, and I did not obtain a first‑party USPTO page for 11957031.

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual cited references. Let me pull what's publicly available on the key ones.

The first batch gave me the Samsung reference but little on the Chinese art. Let me target the specific cited references most likely to bear on claim 1's elements.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,957,031 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note (please read before using this): This section uses the prior-art record carried on the patent's Google Patents page — the 11 examiner-cited references and the 2 family-cited references — and applies the Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), framework as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). I retrieved and read the full claim/abstract text of only a subset of those references in this session. Everything I could not open is marked [text not retrieved] and I have not characterized its disclosure. I have not fabricated any reference content, paragraph number, or claim mapping.

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1. Two contradictions with the previously generated sections (flagged, not silently reconciled)

1. Claim independence. The previously generated Strategic summary describes "independent claim 5 (the B1/B2/B3 sub-area architecture…)" and speaks of "one or both independent claims." That is wrong on the face of the document: claim 5 begins "The display device according to claim 1," so it is dependent. The patent has 19 claims with only claim 1 independent (the Patent summary section states this correctly). All 18 dependent claims rise or fall with claim 1. My analysis below treats claim 1 as the sole point of novelty.

2. Date of record. The current task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the previously generated PTAB section reports IPR2026-00486 filed 2026‑09‑17 and the platform date is 2026‑09‑18. A petition filed 2026‑09‑17 cannot exist as of an April 26, 2026 "current date." I flag this rather than resolve it; the § 103 analysis below is date-independent, but any statement about what Samsung's petition argues would not be.

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2. The prior-art universe, and what I could actually verify

Corroborating references I encountered but which are not on the face of US 11,957,031 (usable for motivation/context; flag them as non-cited art): CN 110993653 A (Wuhan China Star, 2020‑04‑10 — 加固层 of UV-curable glue over the bending region, height controlled relative to a blocking member); CN 109461382 B (Wuhan China Star — UV glue layer on the film-circuit layer at the bend); CN 108877514 A (Wuhan China Star, 2018‑11‑23 — protective layer over the bend region, glue can be UV glue, overlap with backboards > 0.2 mm).

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3. PHOSITA and the claim-construction predicate

PHOSITA: a display-module packaging engineer with a B.S. in electrical/mechanical/materials engineering and 2–3 years' experience designing and laminating flexible OLED module stacks (film lamination, OCA/UV-glue selection, pad-bending, backplate/support design for narrow-bezel modules). She is familiar with the module stack as a set of interchangeable film layers and routinely trades thickness against bending stress.

Predicate for the whole § 103 case: claim 1's sole point of novelty is not a structure but a dimensional relationship to an unspecified variable. The specification states the "default value" "is a value greater than 0 and may be flexibly adjusted according to actual needs, and is not specifically limited in the embodiment" — i.e., any positive clearance. Under Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc), that reads on any design in which the coverplate and the bend-covering protective layer are merely non-contacting where they overlap. This cuts strongly against the patent owner in § 103: the claimed "invention" reduces to "leave a gap", and the specification supplies no lower bound other than zero.

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4. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1

Conclusion on claim 1: every structural element is disclosed; the only open question is limitation (e). That is the entire § 103 battleground.

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5. Primary combination — the one I would assert

CN 112786807 A in view of US 2019/0318689 A1 (optionally further in view of CN 112634764 A)

Why CN 112786807 A is a § 102(a)(1) reference at all — and why common ownership does not save it. CN 112786807 A published 2021‑05‑11; the '031 effective filing date is the CN priority date 2021‑05‑20. Both are Wuhan China Star filings, and CN 112786807 A is on the face of the '031 patent as an examiner citation. But the AIA common-ownership exception at 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)(2)(C) is available only against § 102(a)(2) art (U.S. patents/applications). A published foreign application is § 102(a)(1) art ("printed publication"), and no common-ownership escape applies. And the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception fails too: CN 112786807 A's named inventor (曾杰) is not the '031 inventor (Jing Zhou), so it was not "made by the inventor." CN 112786807 A is fully available prior art — nine days ahead of the priority date. (See generally MPEP ch. 2154 for the AIA 102(b) exceptions.)

The combination. CN 112786807 A supplies (a)–(d) and, critically, the height relationship in claim 3 — OCA thicker than the protective glue, on the same layer plane, in a pad-bending module with a coverplate. US 2019/0318689 A1 supplies the mature bend-area architecture (distinct first/second/bending areas; a thickness-engineered bending protection layer; a driving chip and FPC laid on the second area with a deliberate non-zero spacing between them) and, importantly, the design philosophy that the bend-region coating's thickness is a free parameter chosen to control stress. A PHOSITA implementing CN 112786807 A's thickness relation across the coverplate region arrives directly at limitation (e): the coverplate, held off by the thicker OCA, cannot contact the protective glue where the two overlap.

The gap is also the inevitable result of numbers the patent itself concedes. The '031 specification states the UV glue is ~95 µm, the color filters ~5 µm, and the optical adhesives "both thin." Any coverplate laminated over a ~5 µm CF/OCA stack while a ~95 µm UV-glue bead sits on the bend cannot obey the laws of geometry and not stand off the glue unless it is pressed into it — which is precisely the "squeeze" the specification describes as the defect. Under In re Robertson, 169 F.3d 743 (Fed. Cir. 1999), a characteristic is inherent when it is "necessarily present." A defendant should plead the gap both as expressly taught (via CN 112786807 A claim 3) and, in the alternative, as inherent in the combined stack.

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6. Why a PHOSITA would have combined them (the required motivation)

KSR holds that the test is "what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art" — In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). Five independent motivations exist here:

1. Identical field and identical problem. Every reference is a flexible/pad-bend OLED module addressing (i) narrow-bezel bending and (ii) bending-region cracking. There is no In re Clay, 966 F.2d 656 (Fed. Cir. 1992), analogous-art problem: the references are from the same field of endeavour, if not literally the same device.
2. Three of the references are the patent owner's own earlier module work (CN 112786807 A, CN 112289185 A, CN 112634764 A, all Wuhan China Star). A PHOSITA reading them is not combining disparate inventions; she is iterating a single company's module roadmap.
3. KSR's "same technique, similar device" rationale. Covering a bend with a UV/glue protective layer and choosing its thickness had been used to fix bend cracking (US 2019/0318689 A1's BPL; CN 110993653 A's 加固层; CN 109461382 B's UV glue layer). Extending a known thickness-control technique to a known module stack is the paradigm of § 103 obviousness.
4. The problem is stated by the patent owner itself. The '031 background expressly diagnoses the defect: "since thicknesses of the color filters and optical adhesives are both thin, when coverplates are attached … the coverplates will squeeze the UV glues, thereby causing the OLED display panels to have a risk of cracking." KSR: "a problem known in the art at the time of filing" supplies the motivation. Where the prior art teaches the cause, spacing the parts to eliminate it is an obvious design choice, not invention. See In re ICON Health & Fitness, 496 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
5. Reasonable expectation of success / no teaching away. No reference teaches away: nothing conditions durability on the coverplate contacting the UV glue. To the contrary, CN 112786807 A teaches that the purpose of its auxiliary glue layer is to fill the gap between coverplate and panel "thereby preventing the flexible display panel from producing large deformation and reducing the risk of breakage" — i.e., the art uniformly seeks standoff/support, not compression. Cf. In re Gurley, 27 F.3d 551 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (teach-away requires a contrary teaching).

Result: claim 1, and all claims depending from it that merely add conventional module layers, are obvious under § 103.

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7. Dependent-claim chart

Claims 6, 16, 17 and 19 are the most vulnerable — each is either verbatim in a reference or admitted in the specification's own background.

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8. Where the § 103 case is genuinely thin (do not oversell this to a client)

1. The examiner already considered all 11 references and allowed the case. That is not dispositive (KSR; the Office is not the final arbiter), but it means the § 103 theory must be built on the combination, not on any single reference. I would not plead anticipation by CN 112786807 A alone on this record.
2. The literal reading of limitation (e) is unproven from the text I have. CN 112786807 A teaches the OCA/protective-glue thickness relation; I have not located a passage in it expressly stating that the coverplate and the protective glue are spaced apart where they overlap. The inherency fallback (§ 5) and the "leave a gap" claim-construction argument (§ 3) carry more weight than the express-disclosure argument.
3. Claim 11 (foam) and claim 12 (stiffener) are unsupported on this record. I could not open CN 112289185 A, CN 111430426 A, CN 110224081 A, or the five 2018–2019 Tianma/BOE references. Do not assert obviousness of claims 11–12 until those texts are pulled.
4. The certificate of correction dated 2026‑01‑27 (see the previously generated Patent summary) may have altered claim text. Any invalidity contention must run off the corrected claim set, not the printed grant.

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9. Cross-reference flags

• Source of the "default value" construction. I rely on the '031 specification's statement that the default value "is a value greater than 0 and may be flexibly adjusted according to actual needs, and is not specifically limited in the embodiment." If the 2026‑01‑27 certificate of correction touched that passage, the § 3 predicate above must be re-run.
• The previously generated Patent summary's uncertainty #1 (unobtained corrected text) and #2 (OCR artifact "cqual" in claim 2) both remain live and are material here: claim 2 is part of the § 103 chart.
• Consistency with the PTAB section: IPR2026‑00486 was filed 2026‑09‑17 and is one day old; the petition grounds are not public. If Samsung Display's petition raises §§ 102/103 over these same CN 112786807 A / CN 112634764 A / US 2019/0318689 A1 references, the § 315(e)(2) estoppel would attach to Samsung upon FWD — but not to any other defendant, and not to system-art, public-use or on-sale grounds, which § 311(b) places outside IPR reach entirely.

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10. Bottom line

I would assert the following § 103 combination: CN 112786807 A (module stack: coverplate on OCA over the display area, protective glue over the bend region, OCA thicker than the protective glue) in view of US 2019/0318689 A1 (three-part flexible panel with a thickness-engineered bending protection layer over the bending area, and a driving chip/FPC spaced on the pad region), further in view of CN 112634764 A (first/second backplates with an elastic heat-dissipation layer and COF/FPC). The motivation is direct: the prior art taught the cause of the very defect the '031 patent claims to cure, taught the remedy (a thicker optical adhesive standing the coverplate off the bend coating), and used the same bend-coating technique across the same field. The remaining limitation — "distance ≥ a default value, default > 0" — is, on the patent's own construction, nothing more than "leave a positive gap," which is an obvious design choice and, on the specification's own 95 µm/5 µm numbers, arguably inherent. The combination renders claim 1 obvious, and carries claims 5–10, 13–19 with it at high confidence; claims 2–4 follow from the same geometry; claims 11–12 require verification against the unread references before they can be asserted.

I'll search for the USPTO term-adjustment record for this specific patent number.

Let me target the specific application and patent with more precise queries.

Term, Adjustment, Extension, Continuation and Family Analysis — US 11,957,031 B2

Sourcing note — what I searched and what came back

I searched specifically for US patent 11,957,031 (and its application number 17/419,713). I did not substitute results for any similar or adjacent number, and I have discarded nothing on the basis of number proximity.

Result of the search: I could not retrieve a first-party USPTO PTA determination for 11,957,031. What the searches returned was generic PTA/PTE legal-background material — MPEP Chapter 2700 excerpts, the AIA Technical Corrections Act PTA notice language (78 Fed. Reg. 19416), Wyeth v. Kappos / Novartis v. Lee commentary, and PTAB exhibit copies of unrelated patents' PTA notices — plus one Chinese-language trade article confirming the Samsung Display IPRs against 11,257,891 / 11,957,031 / 12,133,429. None of these contained a PTA day count, a PTE grant, or an expiration calculation for 11,957,031. I therefore build this section primarily on the authoritative full text I was given (the Google Patents record for US11957031B2, https://patents.google.com/patent/US11957031/en), and I say explicitly where I am inferring rather than reporting.

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1. Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) — 35 U.S.C. § 154(b)

What the record says

The inference I draw, and why

The record shows 2041-05-31 in two separate places — the structured "Adjusted expiration" field and the legal-status string — and that date is exactly 20 years from the 2021-05-31 international filing date. Google Patents computes "adjusted expiration" as the base 20-year date plus any recorded PTA. A figure that lands precisely on the 20-year anniversary is therefore strong evidence that the recorded PTA is 0 days (or, alternatively, that no PTA has been carried into the dataset).

Stated plainly: my best reading is that US 11,957,031 carries a PTA of 0 days — but I did not retrieve the official determination, so this is an inference from two datapoints in the record, not a verified day count.

Why 0 days is arithmetically plausible

Using the § 154(b) clocks and the dates in the record (allowance 2023-12-05; grant 2024-04-09):

• B delay (§ 154(b)(1)(B)) — appears to be 0 under either possible anchor. Total pendency from the international filing date (2021-05-31) to grant (2024-04-09) is roughly 1,044 days ≈ 34.3 months — under the 36-month mark. So even taking the earliest possible B-clock anchor, the case issued before the three-year date (2024-05-31). If the B clock is anchored instead to the § 371(b)/(f)/(c) national-stage date — which is necessarily later than 2021-05-31 — the three-year date falls even further out. B delay = 0 either way.
• A delay (§ 154(b)(1)(A)(i)) — indeterminate from what I hold. The A clock runs from a date tied to commencement of the national stage (§ 371(b) or (f), or the later § 371(c) date), plus 14 months. I do not have the national-stage commencement date or the mailing date of the first Office Action under § 132. The record's legal-events list jumps from the 2021 assignments to the 2023-12-05 Notice of Allowance, with no intervening Office Action dates, so I cannot compute A delay.
• C delay (§ 154(b)(1)(C)) — 0. No interference, no secrecy order, and no appeal is recorded in the legal events. (The NPL list shows a CNIPA Office Action dated 2022-01-07 — that is the Chinese prosecution, not a U.S. Office Action, and it neither creates nor reduces U.S. PTA.)
• Applicant delay (§ 37 C.F.R. 1.704) — none recorded. No RCE, no abandonment/revival, no deferral of issuance in the legal events. Note that the absence of an RCE matters for the Novartis/Exelixis line of authority: there is no "continued examination" period to exclude or include, which simplifies the calculation considerably.

Net: every clock I can compute points to zero or negligible PTA, and the record's own expiration date is the unadjusted 20-year date.

What I am not able to confirm

1. The front-page notice is the authoritative source. Every U.S. patent bears: "Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by ___ days." That number is what governs. I did not retrieve it.
2. The certificate of correction dated 2026-01-27. This was flagged in the earlier Patent summary section as unretrieved. A certificate of correction is not normally a term event, but the USPTO does issue certificates of correction sua sponte to adjust PTA (see the redetermination practice described in the PTAB materials returned by my search: "the Office will sua sponte issue a certificate of correction adjusting the PTA to [X] days"). I cannot exclude the possibility that the 2026-01-27 certificate touched term or PTA. Run any expiration analysis off the certificate-corrected record.
3. Because a PTA request for reconsideration must be filed within two months of issuance (37 C.F.R. 1.705) and any civil challenge within 180 days of grant (§ 154(b)(4), per Novartis v. Lee), any window for the patentee to have sought more PTA closed in late 2024. The PTA figure in force today is, for practical purposes, final.

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2. Patent Term Extension (PTE) — 35 U.S.C. § 156

No PTE exists, and none is available. This is a categorical conclusion, not a records gap.

PTE under § 156 compensates a patentee for regulatory review by the FDA (or comparable review for food additives, color additives, animal drugs, or medical devices) before commercial marketing. It requires that the patent claim a product, a method of using a product, or a method of manufacturing a product that was subject to a regulatory review period, and it is granted only by the USPTO acting on a § 156(d) application which must be filed within 60 days of the relevant FDA permission.

US 11,957,031 claims:

"A display device, comprising: a flexible screen body comprising a planar area and a bending area… a color filter… a protective layer… a coverplate… wherein in an overlapping area of the protective layer and the coverplate, a distance between the protective layer and the coverplate is greater than or equal to a default value, wherein the default value is greater than 0." (claim 1)

That is a display-module structural apparatus claim. It is not directed to a drug, biologic, food additive, color additive, animal drug, or Class II/III medical device. There is no FDA regulatory review period to which a § 156 extension could attach, no § 156(d) application appears anywhere in the record, and the assignee (Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd.) is an AMOLED panel manufacturer, not a regulated pharmaceutical or device sponsor.

PTE = not applicable / 0 days. Do not carry a PTE assumption into any expiration model for this patent.

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3. Continuations, divisionals, CIPs, and other § 120/365(c) progeny

Timing point worth holding onto: the continuation was filed 2024-03-06, roughly one month before the parent granted on 2024-04-09, and after the 2023-12-05 Notice of Allowance. That is a continuation-on-the-eve-of-issue, a standard portfolio move to keep a second shot at the disclosure alive. It is not a separate patent — as of the record it is a pending application, so it has no independent enforceable term and no PTA or expiration date to report until it issues.

Effect of the continuation on term: a continuation carries the same 20-year base date — 2041-05-31 — because § 154(a)(2) runs the term from the earliest application to which § 120/365(c) benefit is claimed. If US 18/597,853 issues, it will expire on or after 2041-05-31 (i.e., 2041-05-31 plus whatever PTA it earns), not 20 years from its own 2024-03-06 filing date. Watch for a possible terminal disclaimer (see § 6 below).

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4. Related family members

Per the record's "Publications (2)", "Family Applications (2)", "Applications Claiming Priority (3)", "Applications Claiming Priority (3)" and "Also Published As" tables — and excluding the two entries in "Family Cites Families (2)" (KR 102550857 B1, LG Display, and KR 20190087694 A, Samsung Display), which are prior art cited in the family, not family members:

Flags on the family picture:

• The record shows the Chinese member only as the "A" publication CN 113314033 A (application publication). Whether a granted Chinese patent (CN 113314033 B) issued is not shown in the record I hold, and I will not assume it. Note the family-status table describes the CN member as "Pending" — which, read literally, indicates the Chinese case had not granted as of the record's compilation.
• There is no European, Japanese, or Korean national-phase member — protection appears to have been pursued in the US and China only. This is significant commercially: the patent family has no counterpart coverage in Samsung Display's home jurisdiction (KR) or in the EP/JP markets.
• The PCT member is "Ceased" — routine, and not an abandonment signal for the two national-stage members.

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5. Projected expiration date

The number

Projected expiration: 2041-05-31 (20 years from the 2021-05-31 international filing date), plus 0 days PTA on my reading of the record — i.e., the projection and the base date coincide.

As of today's stated date (2026-04-26), that is approximately 15 years and 1 month of remaining nominal term.

Inputs to the calculation, itemized

Two independent confirmations of the same date in the record

The record states the date twice — once as the structured "Adjusted expiration: 2041-05-31" and once in the legal-status block as "Active, expires 2041-05-31" — and once as the statutory "2041-05-31 Adjusted expiration" legal-status event. Three consistent datapoints, all equal to the unadjusted 20-year date.

Confidence

• High confidence that the 20-year base date is 2041-05-31. It follows mechanically from the international filing date of 2021-05-31 as it appears throughout the record, and no earlier U.S. filing is claimed.
• Moderate confidence that PTA = 0. My basis is that the only adjustable variables I can compute (B delay and the 36-month pendency) resolve to zero, and the record's own expiration equals the unadjusted base. It remains an inference.
• Not verified: whether the 2026-01-27 certificate of correction altered the PTA figure. If it did, the true expiration would shift later by that number of days (certificates of correction under § 154(b) practice generally increase PTA; they do not reduce granted term).

⚠️ Date flag (carried forward). The task states the current date as 2026-04-26, but several items reported in the earlier sections of this analysis (the Samsung IPRs filed 2026-09-17, docket activity in September 2026) postdate it. For this section the relevant dates — 2021-05-31, 2024-03-06, 2024-04-09, 2024-06-27, and the 2026-01-27 certificate of correction — all fall before or on the stated current date, so the term arithmetic above is unaffected. The discrepancy is confined to the litigation/PTAB sections, not to term.

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6. Maintenance fees and the real expiration risk

Term is nominal. Maintenance fees are the actual risk to the 2041 date, and they are also the item most likely to have moved since the record was compiled.

Under 35 U.S.C. § 41(b), maintenance fees are due 3 years and 6 months, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years after grant, each with a 6-month grace period on payment of a surcharge. Running those off the grant date of 2024-04-09:

(I have computed these from the recorded grant date; the exact due dates appear on the patent's front page and in Patent Center, and — importantly — I did not retrieve any maintenance-fee payment event for this patent. The absence of a fee event in the record I hold is not evidence that a fee was missed; the first fee is not even due until October 2027.)

Note for anyone assessing this patent as an asset today: with the first maintenance fee not due until October 2027, and the patent under active assertion in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228, fee payment is very unlikely to be a term risk in the near term. But if the litigation is resolved or abandoned, fee payment becomes a live question for a patent whose remaining term runs to 2041.

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7. What to verify, and where

Because my searches did not produce the first-party PTA determination, these are the sources that would close the gaps, in priority order:

1. The patent's own front page — the "Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by ___ days" line. This is the quickest definitive answer on PTA. Available via https://patents.google.com/patent/US11957031/en (front-page image) and USPTO Patent Public Search (https://ppubs.uspto.gov).
2. USPTO Patent Center — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov (search 11,957,031 or 17/419,713). Pull the "Patent Term Adjustment" tab in the file wrapper, which breaks the figure into A / B / C delay, overlap, and applicant delay, and pull the maintenance-fee tab.
3. The 2026-01-27 Certificate of Correction — same file wrapper. Confirm whether it altered the PTA notice. This is the single highest-value unverified item for term purposes, because it is the only event in the record that could have changed the 2041-05-31 projection.
4. The continuation's status — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240215397A1/en and Patent Center for application 18/597,853. Watch specifically for (a) whether it has issued, (b) any terminal disclaimer filed in it, (c) its own PTA, and (d) any Notice of Allowance — each would change the family's enforceable-term picture.
5. The CN member — confirm at CNIPA whether CN 113314033 A matured into a grant.

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8. Bottom line

Two honest qualifiers. First, the PTA figure is the one number in this analysis I could not pull from a primary source; treat "0 days" as a well-supported inference, not a fact. Second, the certificate of correction issued 2026-01-27 remains the open item that could change the expiration date — an item already flagged as unresolved in the earlier Patent summary and Prior art sections of this analysis, and it is unresolved here too.