Invalidity dossier
US 6696781
Silent discharge lamp with controllable color
Current assignee: Osram GmbH
Added 9/23/2026, 1:27:10 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6,696,781 B2
Title: "Silent discharge lamp with controllable color"
Assignee/Applicant: Original assignee listed as Patent-Treuhand-Gesellschaft fuer Elektrische Gluehlampen mbH; current assignee listed as OSRAM GmbH. Inventors: Udo Custodis and Angela Eberhardt.
Key dates (as listed): Priority date 2000-12-20; filing date 2001-11-15; publication of US20030020405A1 on 2003-01-30; patent granted and published as US6696781B2 on 2004-02-24; anticipated expiration 2021-11-15. Legal status shown as "Expired – Fee Related."
Purpose: The patent addresses silent gas discharge lamps using dielectric barrier discharges, where at least one anode is separated from the gas fill by a dielectric layer. It aims to make the color of the emitted light controllable in such lamps, particularly for white light with adjustable color temperature and for flat-panel backlighting and display applications.
Plain-language scope: The claimed lamp has a discharge vessel with a gas fill, a luminescent layer, and electrodes divided into separately operable groups. The luminescent layer contains elementary luminescent surfaces of at least two different colors, each assigned to an electrode group. These groups and surfaces are two-dimensionally interleaved so the light emission surface can essentially be lit by each electrode group on its own. By operating electrode groups simultaneously with controlled power, the relative color proportions — and thus the overall color mixture — can be controlled. An operating method and an image display device using multiple such lamps are also described. The patent describes continuous dimming and mentions two or more primary colors, with three primary colors being sufficient in principle.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6696781/en
What the excerpt does not establish: The full text is excerpted; complete claims, all figures and descriptions, the exact number of claims, and any omitted details are not established here. Dates are as listed and may be assumptions per the source.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:07 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 6696781. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.