US 12352412

Summary of U.S. Patent No. 12,352,412 (US12352412B1)

Confirmed bibliographic data

Source: Google Patents page for US12352412B1 (retrieved 2026-09-08/patent text supplied), plus USPTO-style bibliographic data embedded in the Google Patents record.

Abstract (verbatim essence)

A light holding system having a light holder with wings that define an outer contoured surface. A channel extends inwardly of the outer contoured surface and has a bottom wall and lateral walls. The wings are resiliently bendable between an uninstalled and an installed position. In the uninstalled position the tips of the wings are at a first distance from an opening in the channel and in the installed position the tips of the wings are at a second distance from the opening in the channel. The second distance is less than the first distance.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The invention is a two-part LED light-strip mounting system for use on RV ceilings/panels: a retaining strip (installed between adjacent panels) and an elongate light holder (an extrusion with a central channel that grips an LED strip).

• Claim 1 (broadest): A system with a retaining strip plus an elongate light holder. The holder has resilient wings with tips and a channel beneath an outer contoured surface; the channel has overhanging walls near the surface, lateral walls joined to a bottom wall, and an opening. Either the holder's bottom surface or the retaining strip carries a ridge wall with a retention barb, while the other carries a groove with upstanding walls and inward retention nubs. The wings bend between an uninstalled position (tips at a first distance from the opening) and an installed position (tips at a nearer second distance). When installed, the wings are biased away from the opening, back toward the uninstalled position — meaning the wings act as springs pressing against the panels.

• Claim 8: Like claim 1, but frames the geometry more specifically around the channel's internal width: the overhanging walls extend toward each other and are narrower than the internal width of the channel (defining a restricted mouth for gripping the LED strip). The barb/groove pairing is stated between "one of said elongate light holder and said retaining strip" and the other, and a portion of the retention barb is expressly wider than the ridge wall (the snap-fit requirement).

• Claim 14: The most geometrically trimmed version — it recites the retaining strip, holder with wings/channel/lateral walls/bottom wall/opening, and the barb-in-groove snap-fit with the barb wider than the ridge wall, but does not require the overhanging-wall narrowing in the claim body (that feature is added back by dependent claim 15). The spring-bias behavior of the wings is retained.

Dependent claims 2–7, 9–13, and 15–18 add details such as barb inclined/catch surfaces, overhanging-wall catch surfaces meeting at terminal edges narrower than the lateral walls, the barb being wider than the gap between the retention nubs, and the channel walls being biased against the LED strip when the wings are installed.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket search results

• I searched for a CAFC 2026 docket associated specifically with patent number 12352412 and found none — the searches returned no Federal Circuit appeal entries for this patent number. If an appeal from the district court case below is later filed, it would presumably appear on the CAFC docket, but I found no such 2026 CAFC matter as of this search, and I cannot confirm one exists.
• What the searches did confirm is an active district court case: Sigma Switches Plus, Inc. v. ABC Marketing, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-00888 (N.D. Ind.), in which US12352412B1 (Claim 1 asserted) is one of several Sigma patents (including US12181127B1 and the related US12352411B1) asserted against ABC Marketing's "LineLite Track"/"Stellar Lighting" products. A docket summary shows the case was active as of late 2025/early 2026 (scheduling order dates around January 30, 2026, with preliminary infringement/invalidity contentions and claim-construction exchanges scheduled for spring 2026). The Google Patents record also flags "family has litigation" and links to this Indiana Northern District case.

Uncertainty notes

• No authoritative CAFC 2026 docket entry for US12352412 was located; the only identified litigation is at the district-court level. I cannot rule out a later-filed appeal not yet indexed or covered by my searches.
• Assignee name appears in records in slightly varying forms ("Sigma Switched Plus, Inc." per the recorded assignment; "Sigma Switches Plus Inc"/"SIGMA SWITCHES PLUS Inc" on the Google Patents metadata); the recorded assignment to "SIGMA SWITCHED PLUS, INC." is the more authoritative statement.
• The Google Patents "anticipated expiration" of 2044-08-05 is an automated estimate and should not be treated as a legal conclusion about patent term.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 12352412. Let me search several sources.

I found a lead on the Indiana Northern District case. Let me dig deeper into the docket and status.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent 12,352,412 (US12352412B1)

Based on my searches, there is one known, active federal district court case in which US Patent 12,352,412 is asserted:

Sigma Switches Plus, Inc. v. ABC Marketing, Inc.

• Case number: 3:25-cv-00888
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana
• Filing date: October 28, 2025
• Plaintiff: Sigma Switches Plus, Inc. (also recorded as Sigma Switched Plus, Inc., assignee of the '412 patent)
• Defendant: ABC Marketing, Inc.
• Patents in suit: The complaint asserts multiple patents in the same "LED light holding system" family, including U.S. Patent Nos. 12,181,127, 12,276,396, 12,352,411, and 12,352,412 (the patent at issue here). For the '412 patent, Claim 1 is asserted.
• Accused products: The "LineLite Track" and associated "End Cap," sold under ABC Marketing's "Stellar Lighting" brand, marketed for the RV OEM and specialty vehicle OEM markets.
• Current status (as of April 2026): Active and in the early litigation phase. A scheduling order was entered on January 30, 2026. Deadlines set under that order included preliminary infringement contentions (due ~Feb. 16, 2026), preliminary invalidity contentions (due ~Mar. 16, 2026), and exchange of claim terms for construction (due ~Mar. 30, 2026, with preliminary claim-construction exchanges into early April 2026). The case is thus proceeding through discovery toward claim construction; no merits judgment or settlement disposition appears in the records I retrieved.

Corroborating sources

• The Google Patents record for US12352412B1 itself flags a U.S. case filed in the Indiana Northern District Court and links to Unified Patents litigation record 3:25-cv-00888, and to Darts-ip family record 96174778 (family litigation).
• The case-specific docket/analysis page (Ex Parte / Docket Alarm mirrors of the INND docket) confirms: caption "Sigma Switches Plus Inc v. ABC Marketing Inc," filed 10/28/25, docket number 3:25-cv-00888, and confirms the '412 patent (Claim 1) is asserted against the "LineLite Track."

Caveats

• I could not confirm any other separate litigations (e.g., other district courts, ITC investigations, or Hatch-Waxman/PTAB proceedings) specifically naming US 12,352,412 from these searches. My searches were limited, so absence of evidence here is not definitive proof that no other proceedings exist.
• Be careful not to confuse this case with litigation over the closely related family members (e.g., US 12,352,411 or US 12,181,127), which are asserted in the same case alongside the '412 patent rather than in separate cases.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR, PGR, or CBM) on file for US 12352412 B1. The USPTO Open Data Portal ingest shows no proceedings, and web searches (including PTAB-specific and assignee-specific queries for "Sigma Switches Plus" / "Sigma Switched Plus") surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal for this patent. The statutory implication: all 18 claims of US 12352412 B1 are currently untested and fully in force — a defendant cannot lean on any PTAB claim cancellation, but also faces no adverse PTAB record that would harden the patent against a fresh challenge.

(No individual proceedings to report — the proceeding-by-proceeding template is intentionally empty because none exist. For completeness, nothing was found for the patent's close family members US 12,276,396 B1 or US 12,352,411 B1 either, though my search coverage there was less exhaustive.)

Strategic summary

Claim status. All claims of US 12352412 B1 — independent claims 1, 8, and 14, plus dependent claims 2–7, 9–13, and 15–18 — remain UNTESTED by any PTAB proceeding. No claim has been canceled, and no claim has been "sustained" in the IPR sense (because no petition was ever instituted). This is unsurprising given the patent's age: it issued 2025-07-08, roughly 14 months before today's date (2026-09-08), and a first IPR petition typically cannot be filed until a petitioner has identified the prior art and, if sued, must clear the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of the complaint.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone, because no IPR/PGR/CBM has been instituted. Every prior-art ground that could be raised remains available. The practical caveat is § 315(b): the defendant already in suit — ABC Marketing, Inc., in Sigma Switches Plus, Inc. v. ABC Marketing, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-00888 (N.D. Ind.) — faces a one-year deadline running from service of that complaint (the case was active with scheduling activity into 2026, per docket records). Any party not yet sued, or sued more recently, still has a full toolbox of § 102/§ 103 grounds.

Pattern signals. The patent owner, Sigma Switches Plus, Inc., is asserting a tight family of LED-strip ceiling-mount patents in the RV OEM space — US 12,181,127 B1, US 12,352,411 B1, and US 12,352,412 B1 are all asserted in the N.D. Indiana case against ABC Marketing's "Stellar Lighting" / "LineLite Track" products. Google Patents flags the family as having "first worldwide family litigation," and ABC Marketing has its own pending application (US 2025/0314360 A1, "Linear Lighting and Retaining System") that cites US 12,352,412 — a sign this is a competitor-versus-competitor dispute rather than a shell-game monetization campaign. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in any PTAB chain, because no PTAB chain exists yet. The absence of PTAB activity despite active litigation is itself informative: either the one-year § 315(b) window is still open for the litigant, or the parties are choosing to litigate validity in district court (where ABC Marketing's invalidity contentions were due 2026-03-16 per the scheduling order surfaced in search results).

Recommended next steps

• If you are ABC Marketing (the current defendant): confirm the exact service date of the complaint in 3:25-cv-00888 and calendar the § 315(b) deadline. If that deadline has not passed, an IPR remains the highest-value validity vehicle — the asserted claim (Claim 1, per the complaint analysis) recites a fairly specific mechanical combination (retaining strip + grooved/ridged snap-fit + resilient wings biased away from the channel opening in the installed position), and the examiner cited only the parent US 12,276,396 B1 as prior art, meaning the closest third-party art (RV ceiling trim systems, snap-fit LED channel extrusions, e.g., the art listed in the patent's own "Similar Documents" cluster) was largely unexplored during prosecution.
• If you are a new defendant not yet sued: no estoppel binds you and no PTAB record exists — you can be the first mover. Do a thorough pre-filing art search now; the earliest possible petition date maximizes optionality, and being first lets you define the record before the patent owner's district-court claim construction (preliminary claim-construction exchanges were scheduled for spring 2026 in the N.D. Indiana case) gains momentum.
• District-court coordination: watch the N.D. Indiana case (3:25-cv-00888) closely. If the court issues a claim construction adverse to the patent owner, or if ABC Marketing's invalidity contentions identify strong art, that same art can be recycled into an IPR petition with claim construction already tested. Conversely, if the parties settle, a defendant later sued by Sigma would face a patent owner with a litigation-tested claim set and no PTAB estoppel of its own — making an early IPR even more important.
• Bottom line: there is no PTAB proceeding to cite, no FWD to link, and no claim to quote as canceled. The patent is 14 months old, fully intact, and currently being asserted in court. A defendant's realistic play is to file the first IPR promptly if the § 315(b) clock allows — the absence of any prior challenge means the prior art is fresh and the claim scope has not yet been narrowed by any PTAB or appellate decision.

Verification note: I did not locate any PTAB proceeding numbers, and per the operating rules I have not invented any. The ODP-derived "no proceedings" default is consistent with every web search I ran (PTAB trial-search, assignee, and family queries). If a petition was filed very recently and is not yet indexed by ODP or search engines, it did not surface as of 2026-09-08 — re-check USPTO PTAB E2E and the FTK/Patent Center docket before relying on this analysis for a filing deadline.

I have reached the search-step limit for this session. Below is the ownership-chain analysis based on the USPTO-derived legal events embedded in the Google Patents record for US12352412B1 (which mirror USPTO Assignment Center data), the litigation docket records surfaced earlier, and company-directory corroboration. I could not execute a live query against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov in this environment; the reel/frame below comes from the recorded-assignment notice reproduced in the Google Patents legal-events feed, which is USPTO-sourced.

Inventors

Pattern note: No "all inventors departed within 12 months" pattern. The inventors are principals/employees of the original assignee and remained with it after filing — the opposite of a pre-fire-sale departure pattern.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: "SIGMA SWITCHES PLUS Inc" in Google Patents metadata / "SIGMA SWITCHED PLUS, INC." in the recorded assignment (reel 070540/0210) and the USPTO legal-event feed. The litigation caption uses "Sigma Switches Plus Inc." These are spelling variants of one Elkhart, Indiana entity; no separate name-change document surfaced.
• Line of business: Operating manufacturer/distributor of switches (rocker, toggle, push-button, waterproof) and injection-molded parts/assemblies for appliance, marine, automotive, lawn & garden, and recreational-vehicle industries. Founded 1983/1986; HQ at 4703 Wyland Dr, Elkhart, IN 46516 (RV-industry hub). Small company (~9–10 employees; revenue est. ~$2.8M, per Kona Equity/ZoomInfo).
• Product embodying the claims: I could not verify a specific commercial Sigma SKU embodying the claims from the searches available. Context strongly indicates operating use: the company develops the RV-ceiling LED-light-holding product family in-house (three inventor-employees, including the owner and sales manager), and the asserted patent is directed to an RV-ceiling LED strip mounting system sold into the RV OEM channel.
• Current status: Operating (as of the data retrieved; not dissolved, not in bankruptcy).

Assignment timeline

Per the Google Patents legal-events feed (USPTO-sourced), exactly one assignment is of record for US12352412B1:

• 2025-03-06 (executed) / recorded 2025-03-18 — Reel 070540/Frame 0210
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (assignment from inventors)
  • Assignor: Brian Rothbauer, Adrian Byers, Nick Rothbauer (all named inventors)
  • Assignee: SIGMA SWITCHED PLUS, INC. (Elkhart, IN)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the accessible record; I could not retrieve the correspondent attorney/firm from the USPTO cover sheet in this environment. With only one link in the chain, no correspondent-recurrence analysis is possible.
  • Context: Standard inventors-to-employer assignment executed ~11 days before the CIP application was filed (2025-03-17) and recorded before grant (2025-07-08) — routine chain-of-title hygiene, not a transfer to an outside party.

Finding: No post-issuance assignments, security agreements, mergers, licenses, or releases are of record. No transfer to any LLC, holding company, or aggregator appears. This is itself the operative finding — the original assignee (Sigma Switched Plus, Inc.) still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12352412
    2023 : Priority claimed from provisional filing
    2025 : CIP application filed Mar 17
         : Inventors assign to Sigma Mar 18
         : Patent issued Jul 8
         : Suit filed vs ABC Marketing N D Ind

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded conveyance (reel 070540/0210, recorded 2025-03-18) runs from the three individual inventors to an operating manufacturer. No IP-holding LLC, no registered-agent address, no licensing-only assignee anywhere in the record.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Round Rock, or any Unified Patents/RPX high-frequency plaintiff. The sole assignee is Sigma Switched Plus, Inc., a switch manufacturer.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not applicable. Correspondent data was not retrievable in my searches, and with a single recorded link there is no chain-internal recurrence to evaluate.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment, period. No chained LLCs, no <24-month transfer series.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present (in the NPE sense). The inventor→company assignment (executed 2025-03-06, recorded 2025-03-18) predates the patent grant (2025-07-08) and the suit (3:25-cv-00888, N.D. Ind., 2025). It is standard standing hygiene — the entity that filed the application received title before grant, and the same entity filed suit. No transfer timed to enable assertion or manufacture venue.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy proceedings involving the assignee surfaced; assignee remains an operating concern.
7. Privateering — Not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists; the operating company itself is the plaintiff.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at the operating assignee, which is affirmatively enforcing.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The recorded chain is a single, ordinary inventors-to-employer assignment (reel 070540/0210, executed 2025-03-06, recorded 2025-03-18) leaving the patent with Sigma Switched Plus, Inc. — an Elkhart, Indiana switch/electrical-component manufacturer selling into the RV OEM channel, with the inventor-owner and inventor-sales-manager still at the company. Sigma itself filed suit as plaintiff in Sigma Switches Plus Inc v. ABC Marketing Inc, No. 3:25-cv-00888 (N.D. Ind. 2025), asserting claim 1 of this patent against ABC's competing "LineLite Track" LED lighting sold to RV OEMs — a competitor in the same market, not a licensing target. No shell LLCs, no NPE assignees, no cascading transfers, and no aggregator appear anywhere in the record; the only caveat is that I could not independently confirm a commercial Sigma product embodying the claims, though the company profile, in-house inventor roster, and competitor-suit posture are all consistent with operating-company assertion.

Verification: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 12352412; reel/frame 070540/0210). Litigation record: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Indiana%20Northern%20District%20Court/case/3%3A25-cv-00888.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 12,352,412 (US12352412B1)

Scope note on the database search

I searched for the specific patent number 12352412 (literal, not auto-corrected). The authoritative full-text record (Google Patents, retrieved 2026-09-08, and confirmed by the patent text supplied with this task) identifies exactly one entry in the formal "Patent Citations" field for US12352412B1. Additional searches (including for USPTO Patent Center records and examiner citations tied to application US19/081,606) returned no further formal citation list; note that Google Patents' separate "Similar Documents" and "Families Citing this family" lists are algorithmically generated / forward-citation data, not examiner-cited prior art, and I do not treat them as § 102 references. A definitive confirmation of the complete face-of-patent citation list (including any non-patent literature) would require the USPTO Patent Center image file wrapper, which I could not fully retrieve in these searches.

1. The single patent citation on the face of US12352412B1

US12276396B1 — "LED light holding system"

Brief description. US12276396B1 discloses the same general RV-ceiling LED light-strip mounting architecture later refined in US12352412B1: a retaining strip fastened to a joist between adjacent ceiling panels, the strip having upstanding walls forming a groove with retention nubs; an elongate light holder (single-piece extrusion) with lateral wings terminating in tips, an outer contoured surface, and a central channel defined by lateral walls joined to a bottom wall; a ridge wall extending from the bottom surface of the bottom wall and carrying a retention barb wider than the ridge wall, the barb snap-catching behind the retention nubs; and end caps with coped portions and connection chambers for splicing power wiring. The parent's claim set defines the wing deflection geometry relative to the retention barb (tips at a first distance from the barb in the uninstalled state and a greater second distance in the installed state), whereas the CIP (US12352412B1) re-defines the geometry relative to the channel opening (second distance nearer than the first) and adds the "overhanging walls narrower than the channel's internal width" recitations in claims 8 and 14/15. (Sources: Justia assignee abstract for US12276396B1; patents-review.com reproduction of application 18/794,130; patent text supplied.)

2. Anticipation analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (AIA)

US12276396B1 is the only formally cited patent reference, and the analysis is straightforward because of the family relationship.

(a) Statutory timing under § 102(a)(2)

• US12276396B1 was granted April 15, 2025 — after the March 17, 2025 filing date of US12352412B1 — so it is not § 102(a)(1) prior art (no public availability before the CIP's effective filing date).
• It was "effectively filed" August 5, 2024 (and claims priority to December 26, 2023), i.e., before the CIP's March 17, 2025 filing date. For claims (or claim scope) not entitled to the parent's priority date, US12276396B1 could in principle qualify as § 102(a)(2) prior art.

(b) Why it does NOT anticipate any claim — three independent grounds

1. Same priority date for carried-over subject matter. US12352412B1 is a continuation-in-part of US18/794,130 (= US12276396B1) and claims the same December 26, 2023 priority chain. For every claim limitation disclosed in the parent/provisional, the CIP's effective filing date is December 26, 2023 — the same date as the parent's priority date. § 102(a)(2) requires the reference to be effectively filed "before" the effective filing date of the claimed invention; equal priority dates defeat the statute. Thus US12276396B1 is not § 102(a)(2) prior art for the core subject matter of independent claims 1, 8, and 14 and their dependents 2–7, 9–13, and 15–18 insofar as those limitations trace to the parent disclosure (channel, lateral walls, bottom wall, wings, ridge wall/barb, nubbed groove, snap fit).
2. Common-ownership exception — § 102(b)(2)(C). Even for any new matter added in the CIP (e.g., the FIGS. 9–12 alternative geometries, the round-barb embodiment, the opening-relative distance language of claims 1/8/14 that differs from the parent's barb-relative language), the parent's disclosure and the CIP's claimed invention were, not later than the CIP's effective filing date (March 17, 2025), owned by the same person — both are assigned to Sigma Switched Plus, Inc. (recorded assignment for the CIP effective March 6, 2025; the parent issued to the same entity). The § 102(b)(2)(C) exception disqualifies US12276396B1 as § 102(a)(2) prior art against the CIP.
3. Inventor-origin overlap. The three named inventors (Rothbauer, Byers, Rothbauer) are identical on both patents, and the parent's subject matter originated with them, further supporting exclusion under the § 102(b)(2)(B)/(C) framework.

(c) Conclusion on § 102

US12276396B1 does not anticipate claims 1–18 of US12352412B1. Its appearance in the "Patent Citations" field (marked "*cited by examiner") reflects standard USPTO practice of placing the parent patent on the face of a continuation-in-part for information/priority tracing — not a finding that it is anticipatory. Any § 102 or § 103 challenge would additionally need to confront the priority-chain overlap and the common-assignment exception before the merits of the reference's disclosure could even be compared to the claims.

3. Other references that appear in the record but are NOT § 102 prior art

4. Bottom line

• The only patent citation for US12352412B1 in the record is US12276396B1 — the assignee's own parent patent.
• Full citation: US 12,276,396 B1 (app. 18/794,130; filed Aug. 5, 2024; priority Dec. 26, 2023 via Prov. 63/614,739; granted Apr. 15, 2025), "LED light holding system," Sigma Switches Plus, Inc.
• Anticipation potential under § 102: none, because (i) the CIP shares the parent's December 26, 2023 priority date for the overlapping subject matter, defeating § 102(a)(2)'s "before" requirement, and (ii) any new matter is shielded by the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception — both patents belong to Sigma Switched Plus, Inc. and share the same inventors.
• Caveat: This analysis rests on the Google Patents full-text record and supplementary public sources. The complete examiner citation list (including any non-patent literature) shown on the printed patent and in the USPTO file wrapper could not be independently verified in these searches; if the user needs the definitive face-of-patent list, the USPTO Patent Center record for application US19/081,606 should be consulted directly.