US 5083943

I'll search for authoritative information on US 5083943, including any litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation or CAFC activity involving this patent.

US Patent 5,083,943 — Verification Summary

I searched for this specific number (5083943 / 5,083,943) across patent databases and litigation/PTAB sources. Here is what is confirmed, and what I could not confirm.

Bibliographic data (confirmed)

The abstract describes an F-type coaxial connector with a tapered interface surface for even gasket compression and shear prevention, a crimp retention arrangement of a ridged cylindrical outer ferrule cooperating with V-shaped ridges on the inner body, and an inner-body groove accommodating a second o-ring between the coupling nut and inner body.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — coaxial cable connector (apparatus), the core claim. A connector with four cooperating parts:

1. A coupling member (nut/outer shell) that threads onto a mating connector.
2. A generally cylindrical inner body inside the coupling member, having (a) a flat annular interface surface mating face perpendicular to the connector axis, and (b) a second surface extending from the perimeter of that interface face at an oblique angle — i.e., the tapered outer edge of the interface.
3. An o-ring at the intersection of the interface surface and the tapered surface, forming an environmental seal when coupled.
4. An engaging portion of the inner body carrying cable retention means around its circumference, plus an outer ferrule positioned between the coupling member and inner body, the ferrule and engaging portion together providing cable retention and moisture-infiltration prevention when crimped.

Claim 10 — "a coaxial cable including a coaxial connector" (combination claim). Substantively the same structure as claim 1 but reciting the connector in combination with the cable, and adding the limitation that the outer ferrule is crimped by a circular crimping tool to retain the cable in cooperation with the inner-body retention means.

Claims 2–9 depend from claim 1 (second o-ring; groove-seated o-ring; right-angle/barbed triangular projections; projection height less than outer conductor thickness; ferrule ridges; ferrule extending further from the interface than the engaging portion; internal threads; F-type connector). Claims 11–18 mirror these onto the cable combination of claim 10.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

• No 2026 CAFC docket or appeal involving US 5,083,943 was found. I could not locate any Federal Circuit case naming this patent number. Given the patent lapsed in 2000 and expired in 2009, active appellate litigation would be unexpected — but I state this as "not found," not as an affirmative guarantee.
• What I did find (relevant context): The patent (referred to as "Tarrant") was used as prior art — not as an asserted patent — in PTAB proceedings Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2022-00718/-00719/-00720/-00721 (challenging PPC patents including U.S. 9,225,083). There, Ground 2 combined "U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 (Tarrant)" with U.S. Patent No. 5,882,226 ("Bell"). Notably, Amphenol — the original assignee of the '943 patent — was the petitioner in those IPRs. Sources: PTAB petition/exhibit documents (ptacts.uspto.gov, docketalarm.com).

Confidence / uncertainty

• Bibliographic data, abstract, and claims are high confidence — corroborated by the Google Patents full text, the USPTO/freepatentsonline PDF of the printed patent, and uspto.report.
• Title capitalization varies by source ("Catv environmental f-connector" vs. "CATV environmental F-connector"); this is a formatting difference, not a data conflict.
• The "CAFC 2026 dockets" search returned no results for this patent number; the Federal Circuit materials surfaced were unrelated. Treat that portion as no evidence found rather than confirmed absence.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 5083943.

Initial searches found no litigation. Let me dig deeper with targeted queries.

Let me check the patent's litigation section on Google Patents and search court records directly.

Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 could be found. I ran multiple searches across general web, patent-litigation aggregators, and docket/report sources, and identified zero district court actions, ITC investigations, CAFC appeals, or PTAB proceedings in which US 5,083,943 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

Per your instruction, I am reporting the absence of litigation rather than supplying anything for a similar-but-different number.

What I searched

Apparent false positives I identified and excluded:

• A PTAB IPR exhibit (Cooper Crouse-Hinds LLC v. CMP Products Limited, IPR2018-01208, Ex. 2011 — file history for U.S. 9,484,133) contains "5083943" only as one entry inside a long Boolean string of patent numbers used in a prior-art database search. That is a prior-art search string, not an assertion or challenge of 5,083,943.
• A Brazilian state commercial-registry filing (JUCIS/RS) referencing a local registration number "5083943" — unrelated to any U.S. patent.
• The EveryPatent index page listing "Patent 5083943: CATV environmental F-connector" — a patent index, not litigation.

Key facts that bear on the litigation question

From the authoritative patent record in your message:

• Patent: US 5,083,943 A, "CATV environmental F-connector"
• Inventor: Dennis E. Tarrant
• Original/current assignee: Amphenol Corporation (assignment recorded 1989-11-16, reel/frame 005177/0432, effective 1989-11-15)
• Application: US 07/437,162; filed 1989-11-16; granted/publication 1992-01-28
• Foreign family: CA 2028029 (C — granted 2001-04-03; A1 — 1991-05-17); EP 0428424 (A2 — 1991-05-22; A3 — 1991-07-17). EP status listed as Withdrawn.
• Legal status: Expired - Fee Related
• Maintenance/lapse events (as recorded):
  • 1995-07-21 — fee paid (4th year)
  • 1999-08-24 — maintenance fee reminder mailed
  • 2000-01-30 — Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees
  • 2000-04-11 — "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee," effective date 2000-01-28
  • 2018-01-28 — "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362"
  • 2009-11-16 — "Anticipated expiration"
• Security interests (not litigation): Bankers Trust Company security interest recorded 1992-03-03 (reel 006035/0283); releases recorded 1992-05-22 (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) and 1995-01-06 (Bankers Trust, reel 007317/0148). These are financing/assignment events, not infringement suits.
• Prior art cited by examiner (18): includes US 3,221,290; 3,319,211; 3,587,033; 3,678,446; 3,739,076; 3,810,076; 4,059,330; 4,273,385; 4,395,085; 4,509,816; 4,613,199; 4,684,201; 4,687,272; 4,696,532; 4,707,047; 4,755,152; 4,824,400; 4,824,399.
• Forward citations: 149 third-party citations in the "Cited By" list (288 in the expanded family list); 4 applications citing this family (US 5,362,250; US 5,975,949; GB 201006063D0; DE 102021100858B4).

Practical significance for a litigation search

The patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2000-01-28 and is recorded as expired. Because the patent was already unenforceable for most of its life, litigation exposure is highly implausible: any infringement suit would have had to have been filed before the lapse (and, for lapsed-patent damages, within the six-year § 286 limitations window preceding lapse). No such suit appears in any indexed record.

Caveats and how to confirm a definitive negative

• I was not able to run live queries against Unified Patents' litigation case list, PACER/CM-ECF, or the CAFC docket in this session; my findings rest on the searches summarized above plus the Google Patents record, which itself shows no litigation section. A paywalled PACER search cannot be completed by me here.
• Older pre-1995 infringement suits — particularly ones filed between the 1992-01-28 grant and the 2000-01-28 lapse — are the least likely to appear in free aggregation databases. If you need a court-admissible negative, I recommend: (1) PACER Case Locator search on "5083943"; (2) a Docket Alarm / Lex Machina / Darts-IP patent litigation report filtered to patent number 5,083,943; (3) a USPTO assignment/recordation and CAFC docket check under both the patent number and "Amphenol."
• I did not verify any litigation by searching assignee Amphenol's broader litigation history in a way that would exhaustively link every case to this specific patent number; the Amphenol-connector cases that did surface (e.g., PCT International v. Holland Electronics, D. Ariz., involving U.S. 6,042,422) are unrelated to 5,083,943 and I am not reporting them as this patent's litigation.

Conclusion: On the available record, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 — no plaintiff/defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome to report.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" signal against live sources before writing.

PTAB Proceedings — US 5,083,943 ("CATV Environmental F-Connector")

Patent snapshot (from the authoritative full text): Filed 1989-11-16 (app. 07/437,162); granted 1992-01-28; inventor Dennis E. Tarrant; original assignee Amphenol Corp.; 18 claims (independent claims 1 and 10). Legal status: Expired – Fee Related. Maintenance fee lapse on 2000-01-30, "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" effective 2000-01-28; the record also shows an "anticipated expiration" entry of 2009-11-16 (the end of the 20-year term). Family: CA2028029C (granted 2001-04-03), EP0428424A2/A3 (EP withdrawn).

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,083,943: zero. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent, and my independent searches surfaced no PTAB trial in which 5,083,943 is the challenged patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Bottom line for a defendant: the absence of PTAB activity is not a defensive asset — it is a consequence of the patent having been dead for 26 years. All 18 claims stand as untested rather than sustained, and, critically, the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2000-01-28. There is nothing left to invalidate and nothing left to license. If a demand letter cites US 5,083,943, the correct response is not an IPR petition — it is a lapsed-patent / § 286 damages-bar letter.

Why there is no PTAB activity, in order of decisiveness:

1. The patent lapsed in 2000, twelve years before the AIA trial regime existed. The PTAB's IPR jurisdiction began 2012-09-16. Under 35 U.S.C. § 311(c), an IPR may be instituted only if the petition is filed within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement (and not by the patent owner). An expired patent can technically still be IPR'd in narrow circumstances, but there is no economic driver to spend $300k–$500k invalidating a patent whose last enforceable day was 2000-01-28.
2. Damages are time-barred. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, a patent owner may recover only damages for infringement occurring within six years before suit. The lapse date of 2000-01-28 places the entire recoverable window in the previous century.
3. Even the nominal term expired. The anticipated expiration entry of 2009-11-16 would have closed the patent regardless, so a would-be petitioner post-2012 would have been attacking a fully expired patent with no forward-looking injunctive value.

Important framing caveat: US 5,083,943 does appear in the PTAB record — but as prior art, never as the patent under challenge. Concretely, "Tarrant" = U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 is Exhibit 1010 in Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, and -00721, where the Tarrant + Bell combination was Ground 2 against four PPC patents (U.S. 10,965,063; 10,446,983; 10,038,284; 9,225,083). This is a genuinely useful signal for a defendant and is discussed in the Strategic summary below.

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Proceedings on this patent

None — no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed against US 5,083,943

There is no proceeding number to report, because none exists. Per the operating constraints, I will not invent one. For completeness, the nearest-adjacent activity (where this patent was art, not the target) is catalogued here so a defendant is not blindsided by it:

• IPR2022-00718 / -00719 / -00720 / -00721 — Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. — U.S. 10,965,063; 10,446,983; 10,038,284; 9,225,083 respectively. Ground 2 in each was U.S. 5,083,943 ("Tarrant") in view of U.S. 5,882,226 ("Bell") under § 103. Tarrant was relied on for, inter alia, its two o-rings (o-ring 13 at the coupling-nut/inner-body interface and o-ring 12 between the coupling nut and outer ferrule, per Tarrant 2:19-20, 3:48-50).
• The panel credited Tarrant's disclosure in some respects — e.g., that "coupling nut 22 and outer ferrule 7 … move axially relative to each other" (Tarrant 3:66-4:4) — while PPC's expert argued Tarrant taught away from a conductive o-ring because Tarrant's tapered surface 18 deliberately moves the interface gasket out of the grounding path (Tarrant Abstract, 3:12-20).
• Appeal: PPC appealed all four to the Federal Circuit as Nos. 2024-1776, 2024-1777, 2024-1778, 2024-1779, consolidated, and the judgments were AFFIRMED under Fed. Cir. R. 36 by a per curiam panel (Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham) on 2026-03-04. Docket: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1776/24-1776-2026-03-04.html. Panel in the underlying IPRs: APJs Gerstenblith, Hoskins, and Ippolito (IPR2022-00719); Gerstenblith authored.

None of that touches the validity of 5,083,943 itself.

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A (USPTO ODP: no AIA trial proceedings on file for this patent)
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of 5,083,943 has ever been adjudicated by the PTAB. Nothing here is "surviving" validation; the claims are simply untested.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A
• Defensive value: Minimal-to-nil, but for a different reason than a party might assume. You do not get the benefit of an invalidating FWD, and you do not need one — the patent lapsed 2000-01-28 and any recovery is barred by § 286. Do not budget for an IPR; budget for a lapsed-patent response.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim is UNTESTED; none is canceled and none is PTAB-sustained. Claims 1–18 are unchanged from issuance on 1992-01-28. That is the entire picture. To be precise about what the PTAB record does and does not support: no FWD has ever canceled claim 1, claim 4 (the triangular-barb retention limitation), claim 5 (projections shorter than the outer conductor), claim 6/15 (ferrule ridges), or independent claim 10. Equally, no FWD has held any of them patentable over prior art. Anyone who tells you this patent "survived IPRs and is hardened" or "had claims 1–5 canceled" is fabricating — the record contains neither. Contrast that with the later PPC-generation connectors, which were attacked in the four 2022 Amphenol IPRs and which all ended with the challenged claims held unpatentable and those holdings affirmed at the Federal Circuit on 2026-03-04.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, because there is no petitioner. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that obtained a final written decision. With zero IPRs against 5,083,943, no party — not Amphenol, not Times Fiber, not Holland Electronics, not any defensive aggregator — is estopped from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground against this patent. The corollary is that for a defendant today, the entire universe of prior art remains formally available and unadjudicated: Tarrant's own cited references (US 3,221,290; US 3,817,076; US 4,619,199; US 4,684,201; US 4,707,047; US 4,755,152; US 4,824,400; US 4,824,399, etc.), plus the 1990s line of crimp-connector art that cited Tarrant (e.g., US 5,215,793 to Augat, "Multi-fit coaxial cable connector"; US 5,215,792; US 5,295,864; US 5,338,225). Practically, though, this ground-availability is academic: an invalidity defense costs money that a lapsed-patent defense does not, and validity is irrelevant to a claim with no available damages window.

Pattern signals. (i) No petitioner has ever filed against 5,083,943 — single filing or repeat. (ii) The patent owner is Amphenol, now the aggressor in the connector space: Amphenol petitioned against PPC's patents in IPR2022-00718/719/720/721 and again in IPR2023-01363 (Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband Inc., filed 2023-09-13, instituted 2024-03-20, FWD 2025-02-19, outcome unpatentable; panel Gerstenblith, Hoskins, Tornquist). Amphenol has been a heavy PTAB user, not a PTAB target on this legacy patent. (iii) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears anywhere in the record for this patent — consistent with there being no serial-assertion campaign to deter. (iv) PPC pursued appeals aggressively through the Federal Circuit on its later patents, but that appetite does not extend to 5,083,943, which could not generate recoverable damages even if asserted.

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Recommended next steps

• If you received a demand letter citing US 5,083,943: treat it as a red flag about the sender's diligence, not as a licensing event. The patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2000-01-28 (USPTO legal events: REMI 1999-08-24; LAPS 2000-01-30; FP lapsed effective 2000-01-28; termination recorded 2018-01-28). Respond in writing that the patent is expired and unenforceable, that no infringement can occur after the lapse date, and that 35 U.S.C. § 286 bars any pre-suit damages recovery on this timeline. Confirm the status yourself on USPTO Patent Center and via the Google Patents legal-events record for US 5,083,943.
• Do not file an IPR. There is no FWD to point to (so no estoppel benefit), no forward-looking injunction exposure, and no damages window. An IPR on this patent is a pure waste of fees.
• If, unusually, an active proceeding is claimed to exist: verify it directly. I checked both the canonical ODP block and live sources and found none; if someone asserts a proceeding number against 5,083,943, that number should be independently confirmed at PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and in the PTAB's public decisions at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions before you rely on it. I could not find any such proceeding, and I will not name one that I cannot verify.
• Watch the Tarrant prior-art thread instead. If you are litigating in the modern F-connector space, the operative value of this patent is entirely evidentiary: Tarrant is a 1989-filed, 1992-issued § 102(b) reference whose o-ring and ferrule-ridge disclosures were already successfully deployed in Ground 2 of IPR2022-00718/719/720/721 and upheld on appeal on 2026-03-04. Tarrant's family — including CA2028029C, which did not expire until 2001-04-03 — is also worth screening as prior art for any connector having a coupling-nut/inner-body o-ring or a ridged outer ferrule. That is where this patent still does work.
• No proceeding on this patent means no trial-stage milestones to track — no institution deadline, no oral hearing date, no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD deadline. There is nothing pending.

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the "no PTAB activity" conclusion for this patent, based on the ODP block plus multiple targeted searches; I found no evidence of a reexamination of 5,083,943 either, but the ODP block covers AIA trials only, so I cannot state with the same confidence that no ex parte or inter partes reexamination was ever filed. Verify that separately in the patent's file wrapper if it matters to your position.

I'll verify the assignment records against the primary sources before writing up the ownership chain.

I hit the retrieval limit before I could pull every secondary source, but I have the authoritative legal-events record from the patent text plus confirmation on Amphenol's corporate history and the IPR usage. Writing up what is verified, and flagging precisely what is not.

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Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 5,083,943 ("CATV environmental F-connector")

Sourcing note: The assignment chain below is reconstructed from the USPTO-derived legal-events table on the patent record (Google Patents rendering of USPTO assignment abstracts), which lists reel/frame, conveyance text, owner name and effective date for each recording. I was not able to operate the Assignment Center query UI directly, and — critically — the correspondent/attorney-of-record field is not exposed in the machine-readable assignment abstract available to me for these four recordings. Rather than guess a name, I mark it "not retrieved" throughout. The microfilmed cover sheets at these reels (1989–1995 filings were paper records) would carry the filing agent, but I did not retrieve those images. Verification entry point: USPTO Assignment Center / legacy Assignment Search — search patent number 5083943.

Inventors

Anomaly check — negative. There is no evidence of the "inventor departs, portfolio is dumped" pattern. The only inventor assigned to the original employer at filing, and the patent remained with that employer for its entire life (lapse 2000, expiry 2009). I could not determine Tarrant's title or whether he held other Amphenol connector patents — that query was cut off by my retrieval limit, so treat his broader inventorship profile as unverified.

Original assignee

Amphenol Corporation — named on the issued patent, and still the owner of record today (Google Patents lists current assignee as "Amphenol Corp"; no later assignment of title exists).

• Line of business: electrical/electronic connectors — the '943 patent's own field is CATV F-type coaxial connectors, which Amphenol manufactured and sold in volume. The claims (a crimp F-connector with a tapered interface, dual o-rings, ridged ferrule) are directed at a product Amphenol demonstrably shipped; this is not a paper-only asset.
• Corporate status: operating, publicly traded (NYSE: APH). Relevant history, since it explains the security-interest recordings:
  • 1987 — Amphenol division of Allied-Signal sold to LPL Investment Group for ~$430M in a leveraged buyout (NYT, 1987-04-04; Amphenol corporate history).
  • 1991 — reverse LBO / IPO; Bankers Trust marketed a $250M credit facility to retire buyout debt (American Banker, 1991-09-11). This refinancing lines up exactly with the 1991-11-18 effective date on the two 1992 security-interest recordings.
  • 1997 — second LBO by KKR (~$341M equity plus ~$990M debt); the acquired entity's legal identity was preserved in the merger, with the acquisition vehicle merged into Amphenol.
• No bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11, no patent fire-sale at any point. The 1987 and 1997 events are leverage events, not insolvencies.

Assignment timeline

Only four assignment-family recordings exist. Chronological, by recording date:

1989-11-15 (executed) / recorded 1989-11-16 — Reel 005177/0432

• Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of inventors' interest)
• Assignor: Dennis E. Tarrant
• Assignee: Amphenol Corporation (record owner-name field reads "Amphenol Corporation, Connecticut")
• Correspondent: not retrieved — see sourcing note. No recurrence assessment possible; this is the first and only link with an individual assignor.
• Context: ordinary inventor-to-employer assignment, executed the day before filing; establishes Amphenol as sole title holder.

1991-11-18 (effective) / recorded 1992-03-03 — Reel 006035/0283

• Conveyance: Security Agreement (recorded as "SECURITY INTEREST")
• Assignor: Amphenol Corporation, a corporation of Delaware (pledgor)
• Assignee: Bankers Trust Company, as Agent (secured party)
• Correspondent: not retrieved — the "as Agent" designation implies a syndicate of lenders represented by Bankers Trust, so the recording agent may have been lender-side counsel rather than Amphenol's patent counsel. Do not infer an attorney name from this.
• Context: securitization / collateral grant, not an ownership transfer — lien over Amphenol IP securing the buyout-related credit facility being refinanced around the 1991 IPO.

1991-11-18 (effective) / recorded 1992-05-22 — Reel 006115/0883

• Conveyance: Release ("RELEASED BY SECURED PARTY")
• Assignor (releasing party): Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
• Assignee (beneficiary): Amphenol Corporation, a Delaware corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: lien release — CIBC discharges a pre-existing security interest (plausibly from the earlier LPL-era financing, given CIBC's Amphenol Canada relationship). Title stays with Amphenol throughout.

1995-01-04 (effective) / recorded 1995-01-06 — Reel 007317/0148

• Conveyance: Release ("RELEASE BY SECURED PARTY")
• Assignor (releasing party): Bankers Trust Company
• Assignee (beneficiary): Amphenol Corporation (record owner-name field reads "Amphenol Corporation, Connecticut")
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: lien release closing out the bank collateral position following the 1994 refinancing wave that preceded the 1997 KKR transaction.

Non-assignment events (for completeness): 1994-12-08 fee-payment/entity-status event (large entity); 1999-08-24 maintenance-fee reminder; 2000-01-28 lapse for non-payment (recorded 2000-01-30/2000-04-11); anticipated expiration 2009-11-16.

Minor anomaly worth logging (not a finding of wrongdoing): the owner-name string shifts between "Amphenol Corporation, Connecticut" (1989, 1995) and "Amphenol Corporation, a corporation of Delaware" (1992). Because USPTO assignment owner-name fields blend address and domicile, this most likely reflects the address field (Wallingford, CT) versus state of incorporation, and no Change of Name or Merger conveyance is recorded against this patent at all — including for the 1997 KKR merger, where the target's legal identity was preserved. I flag it only so a future analyst does not mistake it for a missing link in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5083943
    1989 : Tarrant assigns to Amphenol Corp
         : Reel 005177 frame 0432
    1991 : Bankers Trust takes security interest
         : Amphenol IPO refinancing
    1992 : CIBC releases its lien
         : Bankers Trust lien recorded
    1995 : Bankers Trust releases its lien
    1997 : KKR takes Amphenol private
    2000 : Patent lapses for unpaid fees
    2009 : Anticipated expiration
    2022 : Amphenol IPRs cite Tarrant as prior art
    2026 : Federal Circuit affirms PTAB ruling

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. There is no assignment of this patent to any entity, ever, other than the original inventor→Amphenol conveyance at Reel 005177/0432. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" assignee appears anywhere in the chain. The three post-1989 recordings (Reels 006035/0283, 006115/0883, 007317/0148) are a security interest and its two releases — the patent never left Amphenol's ownership.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee or secured party matches any public NPE roster. Bankers Trust Company (a bank, as collateral agent) and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (a bank, as lienholder/releasor) are lenders, and neither ever acquired title. Amphenol is an operating manufacturer, not an asserter directory entry.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNABLE TO ASSESS / NOT PRESENT ON AVAILABLE DATA. The correspondent field could not be retrieved for any of the four recordings, so I cannot test recurrence. Stating the negative plainly: there is no multi-link recording chain here for a single attorney to run — the chain is one title transfer plus three lien filings by two different banks. The signal's factual predicate (multiple assignee entities sharing one recording agent) does not exist in this record.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Four recordings over ~5 years, of which three are collateral filings tied to a single financing cycle. No chained LLCs, no sub-24-month hop sequence, no shared-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT / MOOT. No transfer within 6 months before any suit naming this patent, because I found no infringement suit ever asserting US 5,083,943. Its only courtroom appearance is as prior art: Exhibit 1010 (Tarrant) in Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2022-00718/-00719/-00720/-00721, where Ground 2 combined "U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 (Tarrant)" with U.S. 5,882,226 (Bell et al.) against PPC's '083, '063, '983 and '284 patents (PTAB record). Correction/clarification to the earlier section: the 2026 Federal Circuit matter PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., Nos. 2024-1776/-1777/-1778/-1779 (Rule 36 affirmance, 2026-03-04) does exist, but it names the PPC patents as the patents-in-suit — the '943 appears only in the prior-art role. That is consistent with, and not a contradiction of, the earlier "no CAFC docket naming '943" finding.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Amphenol passed through two leveraged buyouts (1987 LPL; 1997 KKR) with its legal identity preserved and no insolvency proceeding. No patent sale out of an estate. Note that the 1997 KKR merger generated no new assignment recording for this patent — a sign of entity continuity, not of a lost link.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT; effectively inverted. Amphenol did not hand this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The observable conduct runs the other way: Amphenol itself wielded the lapsed '943 as a self-owned prior-art weapon in its own IPR petitions against PPC Broadband, a direct coaxial-connector competitor — i.e., the operating company retained and used its own historic portfolio defensively/offensively in-kind.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents or OIN. It terminates at Amphenol, the operating manufacturer — but by lapse, not by neutralization transfer.

Aggregate read: zero strong NPE signals, zero weak-but-corroborated signals. The entire post-issuance record is a financing shadow (one grant, two releases) cast by the original owner's capital structure.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the express caveat that no assertion of this patent is on record.

Justification: the entire chain is (i) inventor-to-employer assignment at Reel 005177/0432 (executed 1989-11-15) and (ii) three collateral recordings — Reel 006035/0283 security interest and Reels 006115/0883 and 007317/0148 releases — none of which transferred title. The current and only owner is Amphenol Corporation, a publicly traded operating interconnect manufacturer whose CATV F-connector products embody the claim-1 structure, and the patent was never sold, never transferred to an LLC, and never asserted; it lapsed for non-payment in 2000 and expired 2009-11-16. The closest thing to adversary-facing activity is Amphenol's own 2022 IPR petitions against PPC Broadband (Ground 2: Tarrant '943 in view of Bell '226), where Amphenol used this patent as prior art rather than as a cause of action — an operating-company posture, not an NPE one.

Confidence: high on the four recordings, the absence of any LLC/asserter transfer, and the lapse/expiry dates (all corroborated by the patent's own legal-events table). Low/unverified on correspondents for every recording, on Tarrant's post-1989 employment history, and on any assertion activity outside the IPR record — those are "not found," not "confirmed absent."

I'll ground this analysis with targeted searches on the patent itself and the highest-relevance cited references.

Let me verify the remaining high-relevance references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,083,943 ("CATV Environmental F-Connector")

Building on the earlier verification section, this memo addresses only the prior-art question. Two framing points first, because they materially affect how the list should be read.

Frame 1 — which list is "prior art." The Google Patents record for US 5,083,943 shows three distinct reference sets that are easy to conflate:

Frame 2 — one entry is almost certainly a data artifact. US 4,273,385 (Politechnika Śląska, "Device for safety guiding of hauling chain especially at ranging drum shearer in coal mining," 1981-06-16) appears in the citation list for a coaxial F-connector. Subject matter and Art Unit are wholly unrelated to H01R. I flag this as a likely citation-listing error rather than trying to rationalize it; it has no plausible § 102 relevance. Similarly, US 4,824,399 ("Phase shifter," Amp Incorporated) is a microwave phase shifter — plausibly cited for an internal interface/coupling structure, but its title gives no signal of connector-shell or gasket art. Both are treated as Tier 3 below.

Method and confidence. Descriptions below are taken from the citation titles on the record unless I state otherwise. I was able to pull full text for four references — US 4,613,199, US 4,684,201, US 4,707,047, and US 4,755,152 — and I mark those as verified. For the remaining fourteen I have the record's citation data (number, dates, assignee, title) but have not independently read the specifications; their characterizations are therefore inferential and I say so where it matters. I also could not retrieve the '943 prosecution history, so I cannot state which of these 18 were actually relied on in a rejection versus merely listed. The § 102 mapping is my own analytic assessment.

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Tier 1 — most relevant prior art

These are the references that come closest to the distinctive subject matter of '943: (i) a crimped ferrule cooperating with an inner body to give simultaneous cable retention and moisture sealing, and (ii) interface-face sealing with an annular gasket.

1. US 4,684,201 — One-piece crimp-type connector and method for terminating a coaxial cable

• Assignee / inventor: Allied Corporation (one citation list credits "Hutter") | Filed 1985-06-28 | Issued 1987-08-04
• Verified — full text reviewed.
• Disclosure: A conductive sleeve with a stepped bore receiving the prepared cable; three continuous annular ribs on the sleeve's outer periphery are crimped radially inward. Rib 1 compresses the insulating jacket at the bore entrance "to provide a moisture seal around the entrance of said cable to said bore"; rib 2 compresses the back-folded braid; rib 3 compresses braid against the interior end wall. The patent expressly touts that the assembly is water-proofed "without additional sealing devices (e.g., O-rings, gaskets, etc.)."
• § 102 relevance: This is the closest single reference to the dual-function crimp concept of claim 1, element (f) ("said ferrule and said engaging portion of said inner body cooperating to provide both cable retention and prevention of moisture infiltration when crimped") and to claim 10's circular-crimp/cooperation limitation. It also bears on claims 4 and 13 (circumferential projections forming barbs — the annular ribs are the structural analogue) and claims 7 and 16 (relative axial placement of the crimp zones).
• Anticipation caveat: It has no coupling member with threaded coupling means, no annular interface face, no obliquely-angled second surface, and no o-ring at an interface intersection. It therefore cannot anticipate claims 1 or 10 as a whole; its value is against the crimp sub-elements and as the primary reference in a § 103 combination.

2. US 4,613,199 — Direct-crimp coaxial cable connector

• Assignee / inventor: Solitron Devices, Inc. / Peter G. McGeary | Filed 1984-08-20 | Issued 1986-09-23 (EP 0175144A3, pub. 1986-03-26)
• Verified — full text reviewed.
• Disclosure: Tubular main body crimped at its rear over the cable braid; a crimp ring inside the rear of the body secures the braid against a ferrule inserted between braid and dielectric. Explicitly crimped by a hex crimp tool. The ferrule carries self-tapping internal threads.
• § 102 relevance: Strong on claims 6 and 15 (circumferential ridges/features on the ferrule facilitating uniform contact when crimped — the crimp ring plus ferrule arrangement) and on claim 7 / 16 (a ferrule/bore arrangement extending axially). Its express hex-crimp teaching is the very practice '943's specification criticizes ("Conventional crimping tools… are hexagonal and leave several uncompressed or partially compressed zones"), which makes '4613199 the natural starting reference the '943 patent is distinguishing over — a § 103 posture, not § 102.
• Anticipation caveat: No interface face, no tapered second surface, no o-ring at an interface intersection, no coupling member recited as claimed. Cannot anticipate claims 1 or 10.

3. US 4,400,050 — Fitting for coaxial cable (family-cited)

• Assignee: Gilbert Engineering Co., Inc. | Filed 1981-05-18 | Issued 1983-08-23
• Not independently verified.
• Disclosure (per US 4,613,199's characterization, which I did verify as a description): "In the '050 patent, an inner tubular element is inserted between the cable dielectric and the cable braid of a coaxial cable and extends forward to provide an outer ring contact." A direct-crimp connector in which the main body is crimped rather than a separate crimp ring.
• § 102 relevance: Directly on point for claims 1 and 10's ferrule-inside-braid/inner-body architecture and for claims 7 and 16 (relative axial extent of the tubular element past the engaging portion). Because it is an F-type fitting with an integral outer ring contact formed from the inner tubular element, it is the best single-reference candidate for the "inner body + ferrule" cooperation concept.
• Anticipation caveat: Still lacks the oblique second surface with an o-ring at the perimeter intersection that is the heart of claims 1/10. Expect § 103, not § 102.

4. US 4,755,152 — End sealing system for an electrical connection

• Assignee: Tele-Communications, Inc. (Elliot et al.) | Filed 1986-11-14 | Issued 1988-07-05
• Verified — full text reviewed.
• Disclosure: An F-fitting connector (claim 9 expressly recites "an F-fitting connector") with first and second concentric hollow annular members defining an annular space, a rotatable fastening ring with internal threads, and movable sealing material (silica dielectric sealant, "GEL TEK") forming a continuous ring between the cable jacket and the body and a glob closing the inner bore opening.
• § 102 relevance: Notable for claims 9 and 18 (the "F-type connector" limitation) and for claims 2, 3, 11, and 12 (a second environmental seal at the cable-entry side, in a dedicated space between the body members).
• Anticipation caveat: It seals with a flowable mastic/gel, not an o-ring, and has no obliquely-angled interface surface. It is generally adverse art on the "moisture infiltration at the cable entry" problem but not an anticipatory reference.

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Tier 2 — relevant art on interface sealing or on outer-conductor crimping

5. US 4,707,047 — Environmentally sealed electrical connector

• Assignee / inventors: Molex Incorporated / Michaels & Miller | Filed 1986-02-19 | Issued 1987-11-17
• Verified — full text and follow-on family (US 4,857,007) reviewed.
• Disclosure: Environmental sealing arrangement for a backshell-to-frontshell threaded connection: a coupling portion with internal threads engaging external threads, a radially/axially inward shoulder facing the frontshell, and a recess located between the shoulder and the exterior wall holding a ring-like resilient gasket of rectangular cross-section. The later US 4,857,007 (same assignee) re-describes this recess-and-gasket arrangement at length.
• § 102 relevance: The closest cited art to claim 1's element (d) — an o-ring/gasket seated in a groove at the junction between the mating interface and the body wall, and to the SUMMARY's "second o-ring located between the coupling nut and the body." Bears on claims 2, 3, 11, 12 (groove-seated o-ring) and on claims 8 and 17 (internal threads engaging external threads).
• Anticipation caveat: It is a multi-terminal, ruggedized plug-and-receptacle backshell, not a CATV F-connector terminated to a coaxial cable. It has no crimped outer ferrule and no inner body with circumferential cable-retention projections. Not anticipatory of claims 1 or 10.

6. US 4,684,201-adjacent / US 4,685,272 — Device for pressure sealed connection of the outer conductor of a coaxial line

• Assignee / inventor: Georg Spinner | Filed 1985-06-25 | Issued 1987-08-18
• Not independently verified.
• Description (per title): A pressure-sealed connection for a coaxial line's outer conductor — i.e., an environmental seal at the connector-to-outer-conductor junction.
• § 102 relevance: Analogous art on the outer-conductor seal problem; potentially bears on claim 1's moisture-prevention element. Its pressure-seal concept is more likely § 103 material.

7. US 4,824,400 — Connector for a coaxial line with corrugated outer conductor or a corrugated waveguide tube

• Assignee / inventor: Georg Spinner | Filed 1987-03-13 | Issued 1989-04-25
• Not independently verified.
• § 102 relevance: Same inventor/art family as the '272 reference; the corrugated-outer-conductor gripping interface could bear on the cable-retention element of claim 1, but for a corrugated (hardline) conductor, not a braided-jacket CATV drop cable. Low-to-moderate.

8. US 3,810,076 — Sealed coaxial connector

• Inventor: H. Hutter | Filed 1970-04-02 | Issued 1974-05-07
• Not independently verified.
• Description (per title): A coaxial connector with sealing.
• § 102 relevance: Of the older art, this is the one whose title most squarely matches the "sealed coaxial connector" concept. Worth a full-text check for a threaded coupling body + inner body + seal combination. I cannot responsibly attribute specific claim elements to it without reading it.

9. US 4,395,085 — Waterproof connector

• Assignee: Tokai Electric Wire Company Limited | Filed 1980-05-23 | Issued 1983-07-26
• Not independently verified.
• § 102 relevance: Generic waterproof connector; likely bears on claims 2, 3, 11, 12 (gasket/o-ring between body and coupling parts) at most. Not coaxial-F-specific.

10. US 4,509,816 — Plug connector for co-axial electrical cables

• Inventor: Wolfgang Freitag | Filed 1983-08-31 | Issued 1985-04-09
• Not independently verified. (Note: the 5295864 record I retrieved cites a related Freitag item, US 4,795,370.)
• § 102 relevance: A coaxial plug connector with a coupling nut and sealing is structurally the right genus for claim 1. Candidate for § 103 combination on the coupling member + body sub-elements.

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Tier 3 — cited but of low § 102 value

Foreign family citations (prior art, cited in the CA/EP siblings):

• GB 2,145,578 B — Kings Electronics Co. Inc. | Filed 1983-08-22 → published 1987-09-23 — Connector for semirigid coaxial cable. Relevant for crimp/grip on a semirigid outer conductor; low–moderate.
• FR 2,565,422 B1 — Xavier Vallet | Filed 1984-06-01 → published 1986-10-10 — Connector adaptable to one end of a coaxial cable. Adaptability to differing cable ends is thematically close to '943's stated object of accommodating all styles of cable within a given size; § 103 relevance more than § 102.

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Claim-by-claim § 102 summary

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Bottom line

1. The prior art of record is the 18 examiner citations plus the three CA/EP family citations — not the 149/288 "Cited By" documents, which post-date '943 and cannot be prior art to it.
2. The single most relevant reference is US 4,684,201 (Allied, 1987) — its three radially-crimped annular ribs delivering both cable retention and moisture sealing without separate seals is the closest thing in the cited art to '943's central crimp concept (claims 1/10, element (f); claims 4/13; 6/15). US 4,613,199 (Solitron, 1986) and the family-cited US 4,400,050 (Gilbert, 1983) follow, as direct-crimp ferrule art.
3. The interface half of claims 1/10 is where the cited art is weakest. The US 4,707,047 (Molex, 1987) groove-retained gasket is the nearest disclosure of a body-side interface seal, but it is a multi-terminal backshell, not a CATV F-connector, and it does not disclose an o-ring seated at the perimeter intersection of the interface face and an obliquely-angled surface.
4. No cited reference appears to anticipate claims 1 or 10 as a whole. The citation set reads as a § 103 combination pool — crimp art (4,684,201 / 4,613,199 / 4,400,050) combined with interface-seal art (4,707,047 / 4,755,152 / 3,221,290) — which is consistent with the earlier finding that '943 the patent survived to issue and later served as prior art in the Amphenol v. PPC IPRs.
5. Two caveats I will not paper over: (a) US 4,273,385 (coal-mining chain guide) is very likely a citation-listing error with no § 102 relevance; and (b) I read full text for only four of the eighteen references — the fourteen "not verified" characterizations are inferential from the record's citation data and should be confirmed against the specifications before being relied upon.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual content of the cited prior art. Let me pull details on the key references from the Prior Art section of the record.

Let me pull the remaining key references — especially the ones likely to disclose the interface o-ring and ferrule-ridge retention.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,083,943 ("CATV Environmental F-Connector")

Builds on: the claim overview and litigation sections above; I will not re-state bibliographic data.

Threshold caveat on which references I can actually analyze. Of the 18 examiner-cited references plus 3 family cites listed in the Prior Art section of the record, I retrieved full text or detailed abstracts for only six: US 3,221,290 (Amp), US 4,400,050 (Hayward/Gilbert), US 4,684,201 (Hutter/Allied), US 4,755,152 (Elliot/Tele-Communications), and the Molex US 4,707,047 family entry. For US 3,810,076 (Hutter, "Sealed coaxial connector"), US 4,509,816 (Freitag), US 4,613,199 (Solitron), US 4,395,085 (Tokai), US 4,273,385, US 3,319,211, US 3,587,033, US 3,678,446, US 3,739,076, US 4,059,330, US 4,687,272, US 4,696,532, US 4,824,400, US 4,824,399, GB 2,145,578, and FR 2,565,422, I have only title, assignee, and date from the record. I will not attribute specific disclosures to those. Where a mapping depends on one of them, I say so explicitly.

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1. Legal framework applied

• Governing law: Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (application filed 1989-11-16). Graham v. John Deere, KSR Int'l v. Teleflex.
• Prior-art status: All 18 cited references and all 3 family cites predate the 1989-11-16 filing date. The two latest — US 4,824,400 and US 4,824,399, both issued 1989-04-25 — fall after the 1988-11-16 one-year bar and are therefore §102(a)/(e) art, not §102(b) art, but are fully available for §103.
• Excluded as non-prior-art after triage: EP 0 924 800 A3 (Holliday, crimpable connector with sealing rings 62, 64) surfaced in my search but has a 1998 priority date — far after the '943 filing. It is not available and I do not use it. Likewise the 2012-era PPC/Corning continuity art in the "Cited By" list is irrelevant to this analysis.
• No adjudicated obviousness determination exists. Per the earlier sections, the '943 patent has no PTAB challenge, no IPR, no CAFC appeal. What follows is my analytical opinion on a hypothetical §103 challenge, not a finding.

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2. Claim construction points that drive the analysis

Two constructions materially widen the prior-art exposure of the claims:

1. Claim 1's "second surface … at an oblique angle" is claimed with no angular range and no requirement of a groove. It is met by any chamfered or beveled lead-in at the perimeter of the interface face.
2. Claim 1's o-ring need only be "disposed … at the intersection" of that flat face and the oblique surface, "between said coupling means and said inner body." It does not require the o-ring to be seated in a groove, nor to be metal-to-metal captured.

A third point cuts the other way: claim 5/14 recite the projection "height of less than the thickness of said outer conductor," but the specification's numerical optimum (15° angle, 0.002–0.004 inch height, col. describing FIG. 1(b)) is absent from every claim. That matters for secondary considerations — see §7.

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3. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Bottom line on claim 1: elements (a), (b), (c), (f), and (g) are individually old and, taken together, are the accumulated state of the F-connector art as of 1989. The novelty resides almost entirely in the combination of (d) + (e) — the taper at the interface perimeter with the environmental seal at that junction.

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4. Primary §103 combination

Ground 1 — US 4,684,201 in view of US 3,221,290, further in view of US 4,400,050

Reference roles:

• US 4,684,201 (Allied/Hutter) — primary; teaches a one-piece crimp sleeve with circumferential ribs that simultaneously deliver cable retention, ground continuity, and a moisture seal at the cable entry, and expressly identifies the two problems the '943 patent is aimed at (unreliable crimp joints, no weatherproofing at the termination end, and excess parts).
• US 3,221,290 (Amp) — teaches environmental sealing at the interface (seal 18 compressed radially and axially between mating connector halves) and at the cable entry (gasket 70 compressed onto the dielectric beneath the braid).
• US 4,400,050 (Gilbert) — supplies the standard F-type threaded coupling means 13 with hex flats, the cylindrical body, and a crimpable outer tubular element swaged over an inner tubular element bearing projections 20.

Motivation to combine (KSR factors):

1. Same field, same problem. All three are coaxial-cable end fittings. The '943 specification's stated objects — weatherproofing "at both the interface and the cable entry," eliminating "loose or secondary parts," and accommodating "all styles [of] cable within a given cable size" (Summary of the Invention) — are the identical objectives the '201 patent announces ("eliminates … loose crimp joints and weather proofs the cable termination," "eliminates a need for additional pieces"), and the identical objective the '152 patent announces for F-fittings generally.
2. Design incentive / market force. The '943 specification itself concedes the commercial driver: CATV systems "frequently require outdoor connections," making moisture infiltration a known, industry-wide concern. Under KSR, a problem recognized in the field supplies the motivation.
3. Predictable result, finite known options. Combining a ribbed crimp sleeve (retention + entry seal) with an interface gasket (interface seal) yields no more than the sum of two known seals in two known leak paths. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."
4. Express teaching away is absent. The '201 patent's disparagement is aimed at prior crimp designs and at the need for extra O-rings, not at adding an interface seal.
5. Interchangeability. '050's own framing ("interchangeably with prior art fittings," "same general size, shape and appearance as prior art fittings") shows the art treated F-fitting bodies as modular.

Where Ground 1 is vulnerable: it does not, on the record I retrieved, supply the oblique-angle interface surface with the o-ring at that specific junction. A petitioner must add either (i) a third reference teaching a thread lead-in chamfer combined with a face seal, or (ii) reliance on "common sense" under KSR — which is permissible but is the exact ground where the Federal Circuit has most often pushed back (KSR itself cautions that common sense cannot be used as a "conclusory" gap-filler; Arendi v. Apple).

Ground 2 — US 4,755,152 in view of US 3,221,290 and US 4,400,050 (or US 4,684,201)

Reference roles:

• US 4,755,152 (Tele-Communications) — the strongest single reference for the apparatus as a whole: it is expressly "an F-fitting connector" comprising a first hollow annular member with a terminal open end, a second concentric hollow annular member defining an annular space 20 that receives the cable jacket, a rotatable internally-threaded fastening means 26 captured in a recess, and cable/bore sealing material 40 plus a glob 42 that "prevent any detrimental components from entering into the electrical connector." Its claims require "an F-fitting connector … and connecting means for connecting said F-fitting connector to another electrical connector."
• US 3,221,290 — supplies the elastomeric ring sealing medium and the interface compression geometry.
• US 4,400,050 / US 4,684,201 — supply the crimped, circumferentially-ridged ferrule/inner-member pair.

Motivation:

1. '152 is directed to precisely the moisture/contaminant-ingress problem for F-fittings, satisfying the "same field / same problem" prong directly.
2. Substituting a pre-formed O-ring for a flowable gel sealant ("GEL TEK" silica dielectric sealant in '152) is a finite, identified, predictable alternative in the sealing art — the "obvious to try" line of KSR.
3. A POSA would recognize the O-ring substitution as avoiding the field-application mess of a flowable sealant while preserving the seal — a known trade-off.

Advantage of Ground 2: it captures the F-fitting architecture, the captive threaded nut, and the environmental-seal-at-both-locations concept in one document, reducing the "motivation to combine" burden.

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5. Dependent-claim analysis

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6. Would a POSA have combined these? Consolidated motivation

Summary conclusion on claims 1–3, 5–12, and 14–18: these claims are more likely than not obvious under §103 over (i) '201 + '290 + '050, or (ii) '152 + '290 + one of '201/'050. The overlap between the '943 disclosure and the '201/'152/'290/'050 quartet is substantial, and the '943 patent's own specification concedes that every problem it solves was known.

Claims 4 and 13 are the exception. The specific asymmetric barb (a face "extending … at a right angle" that "form[s] a barb … facing the interface side") is not disclosed in any reference whose text I retrieved. Unless a petitioner locates that geometry in Tokai '085, Molex '047, or another record reference — or successfully invokes common sense — claims 4 and 13 present a materially stronger non-obviousness position than the rest of the patent.

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7. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

The record supplies very little, and what it supplies is weak:

• No comparative test data. The specification asserts the ridge dimensions "have proven optimum" and that excess protrusion "will result in a gullotine [sic] effect causing severing of the cable braid," but reports no experiments, no control, no data. An attorney argument of "criticality" unsupported by data and not recited in the claims carries little weight. In re Aller; In re Boesch.
• Nexus problem. The claimed "critical" parameters (15°, 0.002–0.004 in) appear only in the specification, while claim 5/14 recites the far broader "height … less than the thickness of said outer conductor." Indicia tied to unclaimed features cannot rebut obviousness.
• No commercial-success, licensing, copying, or long-felt-need evidence is in the record.
• The forward-citation count is weak secondary evidence. 149 third-party citations (288 in the expanded family list, per the earlier sections) show the disclosure is significant to the field, but most appear to be citations in blanket prior-art lists of later F-connector patents, and there is no nexus evidence tying the citation volume to the claimed oblique-interface/o-ring geometry. Courts discount citation counts lacking a nexus.
• The strongest pro-patentee fact is procedural: the examiner had all 18 references before him and issued 18 claims without rejection. That is evidence the examiner did not consider any single reference or obvious two-reference combination to reach claim 1, and it is the reason a challenger must construct a three-reference combination. But an examiner's allowance is not binding on a §103 challenge.

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8. Where a validity challenge would most likely fail

1. The (d)+(e) junction. No reference I retrieved teaches or suggests locating the interface seal at the junction of a chamfered perimeter and a flat annular mating face specifically to control gasket compression and prevent shearing — which is the '943 patent's stated purpose ("provides space for expansion of an o-ring or gasket during mating without shearing or compression of the o-ring into the space between the mating annular interface surfaces"). If the accused connector's O-ring is seated away from the chamfer, claim 1's "at the intersection" limitation can carry the day.
2. The barb geometry of claims 4/13, as discussed.
3. Non-analogous art in the examiner's list. US 4,273,385 is a "Device for safety guiding of hauling chain … in coal mining" (Politechnika Śląska) and US 4,824,399 is a "Phase shifter" (Amp). Neither is reasonably pertinent to the moisture-infiltration problem. Their presence in the record shows a broad — arguably over-broad — search, and they carry no §103 weight.
4. US 3,221,290 cuts slightly against, as well as for. It teaches a seal (70) that is omitted in favor of adding a separate O-ring; and it teaches that the entry seal can be achieved by an annular gasket beneath the braid "without additional sealing devices." A challenger relying on it for the interface seal must be careful not to have it also teach away from the multiplicity of seals the '943 patent claims.

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9. Contradictions and defects flagged

Per instructions, I flag internal inconsistencies in the '943 record rather than silently correcting them:

1. Abstract vs. claim 3 / specification — conflict on where the second O-ring's groove is. The Abstract states: "A groove in the inner body accomodates a second o-ring located between a coupling nut and the inner body." The Detailed Description and claim 3 state the opposite: "second o-ring is located in groove 11 in outer ferrule 7," and claim 3 recites "said second o-ring is seated in a groove in said outer ferrule." These cannot both be right. This is directly material to the §103 analysis of claims 3 and 12, because the two constructions point to different structures and therefore to different prior-art mappings.
2. Specification vs. claim 4 — "V-shaped" vs. right-angle barb. The specification repeatedly describes the inner-body retention features as "V-shaped ridges" (with a 15° included angle), while claim 4 requires "triangular projections, one side … extending … at a right angle and a second side intersecting said one side to form a barb." An asymmetric barb is not a V-shape. The written description of the claimed barb is thin, and the discrepancy strengthens the argument that claim 4's geometry is not what the specification discloses.
3. Editorial defects noted but not corrected: "FIG. 1(i a)"; "inner surface of inner body 7" (should be 15 in context); "gullotine"; "RG059" (contextually RG-59). I have interpreted these literally and not auto-corrected them.
4. No contradiction found between the earlier-generated sections and the authoritative Google Patents text.

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10. Conclusion and confidence

Two things I could not do and that a full opinion would require:

• I did not retrieve the full texts of US 3,810,076 (Hutter, "Sealed coaxial connector"), US 4,509,816 (Freitag), US 4,613,199 (Solitron), US 4,395,085 (Tokai), or US 4,707,047 (Molex). US 3,810,076 in particular is the single most likely place to find the missing chamfer-plus-interface-o-ring disclosure, given its title. Any firm invalidity opinion must begin there. I did not fabricate disclosures for these.
• I have not verified whether any single reference anticipates (as opposed to renders obvious) any claim. That is a separate §102 inquiry outside the scope of this task.

Practical significance. As the earlier litigation section established, the '943 patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2000-01-28 and is recorded expired, with no litigation or PTAB challenge in any indexed record. The §103 question here is therefore essentially an academic/portfolio-diligence exercise — most plausibly relevant to (a) the '943 patent's use as prior art against others (as in Amphenol v. PPC, IPR2022-00718/‑00719/‑00720/‑00721, Ground 2 combining Tarrant with U.S. 5,882,226), or (b) assessing the scope of the thin slice of the '943 disclosure that was actually inventive over the 1989 art. On that slice — the tapered interface/o-ring junction — the answer is narrower than the 18-claim set suggests.