US 7065115

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation or docket activity.

Let me check for the actual claim language and any litigation/docket records.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim set to give an accurate independent-claim overview.

Summary of US Patent No. 7,065,115

Note on scope of this search: I could not directly query the USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the CAFC docket systems; results below come from Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, EPO register data, and secondary aggregators. Where I lack authoritative confirmation I flag it.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"A thin-film organic laser that includes: a substrate; a bottom mirror provided on the substrate; at least one active region deposited on the bottom mirror, wherein the at least one active region includes organic gain material; an external mirror provided at a predetermined distance from the at least one active region such that the bottom mirror combined with the external mirror forms a laser resonator; and an optical pumping means for exciting the organic gain material to produce a laser beam with a wavelength λ and at least one lateral laser mode in the laser resonator and an output of laser light."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The full claim set was not retrievable from the sources I could query, so the following is grounded in the abstract and specification; treat claim-numbering and exact wording as uncertain.

Principal independent claim (appears to be claim 1). It covers a thin-film organic laser made of five cooperative parts:

1. a substrate (e.g., sapphire or glass) that is transparent to the pump light and preferably heat-conductive;
2. a bottom mirror on the substrate — a dielectric stack (e.g., TiO₂/SiO₂) highly reflective at the lasing wavelength (spec says >99%) but transmissive to the pump light;
3. at least one active region on the bottom mirror containing organic gain material (e.g., an Alq host with DCJTB or C545T dopant, or a polymer), with a thickness of roughly 0.1–20 µm;
4. an external mirror spaced a predetermined distance from the active region, so that the bottom and external mirrors together form the laser resonator/ external cavity (the spec describes a nearly-hemispheric cavity with a concave substrate surface and a planar external mirror; the external mirror reflectivity is specified as >95%); and
5. an optical pumping means that excites the organic gain material to produce a laser beam at a wavelength λ having at least one lateral laser mode, and an output beam.

The distinguishing point over the cited Kozlov patent (U.S. 6,160,828) is that the invention is optically pumped (not electrically pumped), uses a cavity with one curved surface (a concave substrate acting as a mirror opposed to a plane mirror) rather than two curved intracavity surfaces, and is designed for a low-threshold, high-finesse, large-mode-area resonator suitable for pumping by inexpensive incoherent sources such as LEDs.

Other independent claims — uncertainty. The disclosed document contains at least 23 claims (a "claim 23" reference appears in indexed text), and the specification describes several alternative structures (resonant periodic gain; multiple gain layers/wavelength ranges for RGB or white emission; coupled-cavity variants). It is therefore plausible that additional independent claims are directed to method-of-generation or alternative-structure aspects, but I could not confirm the exact number, scope, or wording of any independent claim beyond the abstract-level language above. I recommend verifying claim text directly in the official USPTO full-text record.

CAFC 2026 docket / litigation check

I found no evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity, or any litigation, involving patent 7,065,115. A targeted search for such docket records returned no results. This is an absence-of-evidence finding, not a positive confirmation that no such proceeding exists — a definitive check would require querying PACER/CM-ECF and the CAFC docket directly.

Additional observations

• The publication/reissue lineage shows the granted patent is a continuation of Ser. No. 10/272,611 (published as US 2004/0076204 A1), which went abandoned; some texts indexed under that earlier publication include a "second organic laser film structure 22b" with an internal mirror that does not appear in the granted specification, i.e., the granted disclosure appears to have dropped that intermediate embodiment.
• The prior art cited on the face includes U.S. 5,553,088 (Brauch), 5,131,002 (Mooradian), 5,991,318 (Caprara), 6,243,407 (Mooradian), 6,160,828 (Kozlov), 6,097,742 (Caprara), 6,194,119 (Wolk), plus the Berggren, Tessler, Kozlov, McGehee, Corzine, Kranzelbinder, Ishigure and Siegman references.

Bottom line: US 7,065,115 is an Eastman Kodak patent (Duarte/Kruschwitz/Kurtz/Spoonhower) on an optically-pumped thin-film organic laser in an external, nearly-hemispheric cavity — a curved-substrate bottom mirror plus a spaced external mirror, low-loss cavity, and LED/lamp pump source — issued 2006-06-20 from a 2004-01-29 filing claiming 2002-10-16 priority, now expired. No CAFC 2026 docket activity located.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7065115. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search the litigation-specific databases.

Let me search a few more targeted sources, including the Unified Patents litigation portal and free patent litigation databases.

Litigation Search: US Patent 7,065,115

Bottom line

I found no known litigation involving US Patent 7,065,115. Multiple targeted searches of patent-litigation aggregators and general web sources returned no district court case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal asserting or challenging this specific patent. I report this as a negative finding rather than an absence of effort — but with the caveats noted below about search limitations.

What the searches did return (for the '115 patent itself)

No litigation records surfaced. The results concerning the patent were limited to prosecution/bibliographic and corporate data:

Corporate events that are NOT litigation

Two items appeared in the record that could be mistaken for litigation activity but are not:

1. Security-interest assignment (2012-02-21) — CITICORP NORTH AMERICA, INC., AS AGENT, recorded a security interest, listing assignors Eastman Kodak Company and Pakon, Inc. This is a collateral/liens record tied to Kodak's restructuring, not a lawsuit.
2. Kodak bankruptcy-era ownership disputes (e.g., Eastman Kodak Co. v. Apple Inc. / FlashPoint Technology, Adv. Pro. No. 12-01720, Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) — these involved different Kodak patents ('335, '218, '406, '703, '854) and did not concern the '115 patent.

Other hits (Ampex v. Eastman Kodak, Berkey Photo v. Kodak, the ITC digital-photo-frame matter) involved wholly different patents and technologies.

Confidence and caveats

• Confidence in the negative finding: moderate-to-high, but not absolute. The search engine returned no docket, complaint, or decision citing this patent, and the Unified Patents portal/PTAB case-list searches surfaced no '115-related proceeding.
• Important limitation: I was cut off before completing several planned direct queries against litigation-specific databases (Unified Patents portal case list, PACER/Docket Alarm, NPE Litigation Database, CAFC dockets). A truly exhaustive check should be run directly against those platforms.
• Practical context: The patent expired for fee non-payment in 2022 and was Kodak-owned — factors that make it an unlikely candidate for an NPE assertion campaign, which is consistent with the absence of litigation found.
• Per your instruction, I did not auto-correct any identifiers, and I did not fold in results for similar patent numbers.

Recommended verification steps

If you need a definitive answer for legal purposes, I'd recommend confirming directly against:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search patent 7065115)
2. PACER / Docket Alarm / Lex Machina — full-text docket search for "7,065,115"
3. CAFC dockets — https://cafc.uscourts.gov (no appeal found, but confirm)
4. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov (to confirm assignment and any recorded litigation-related documents)

If you'd like, I can run those specific portal queries now that the earlier search batch has completed.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,065,115: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced nothing to contradict that — no PTAB Final Written Decision, no Federal Circuit appeal, and no ex parte reexamination certificate referencing the patent. Status breakdown is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. Defensive posture: the claims of 7,065,115 are wholly untested at the PTAB, and there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on the books — but the patent itself is expired (adjusted expiration 2022-10-23, "Expired - Fee Related" per Google Patents), which is the single most important fact for anyone holding a demand letter that cites it. All prior-art grounds remain available to a defendant; the fight, if any, is over past damages, not injunctive relief.

No proceedings to report

There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM docket number to list for US 7,065,115. I am not inventing one. Nothing in the ODP block and nothing in the public record I could locate shows this Kodak patent was ever challenged in an AIA trial. (Contrast with heavy Kodak litigation such as the GAF/Berkey antitrust line, which is unrelated, and the 2012 Kodak chapter 11 portfolio disputes over the digital capture patents — different patents, different technology, and not proceedings against 7,065,115.)

What the record does show, for context:

• Patent identity: US 7,065,115 B2, "External cavity organic laser," Eastman Kodak Company; inventors Kruschwitz, Duarte, Kurtz, Spoonhower. Filed 2004-01-29 as application 10/767,713, a continuation of Ser. No. 10/272,611 filed 2002-10-16 (now abandoned); priority date 2002-10-16; granted 2006-06-20. Source: Google Patents.
• Terminal status: legal status "Expired - Fee Related, expires 2022-10-23"; "Adjusted expiration" event dated 2022-10-23. Even on the un-adjusted 20-year clock from the 2002-10-16 priority/filing date, the patent term ended 2022-10-16. Either way, the patent is past its term.
• Encumbrance / ownership: a security interest was recorded to CITICORP NORTH AMERICA, INC., AS AGENT, on 2012-02-21, with assignors Eastman Kodak Company and Pakon, Inc. — consistent with Kodak's 2012 restructuring. Google Patents still lists Eastman Kodak Co. as current assignee. Chain of title from the 2012 bankruptcy portfolio sales should be verified before relying on any ownership representation in a demand letter (USPTO Assignment).

Strategic summary

Claim-level status: UNTESTED — every claim (1 through the last issued claim) remains unadjudicated. No claim of 7,065,115 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed in a PTAB Final Written Decision, because there has never been a PTAB trial. I cannot give you a "surviving claims" list, because there is no narrowing event to point to. The only formally canceled claim-like subject matter on the family tree is the parent application Ser. No. 10/272,611, which went abandoned (that is a prosecution fact, not a claim cancellation). Conversely, the untested status cuts both ways: a defendant cannot borrow a PTAB holding to knock out a claim, but there is also no adverse PTAB holding hardening any claim against a § 102/§ 103 attack.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. Because no IPR/PGR reached a final written decision, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one. Any defendant can raise any prior-art ground — § 102 anticipation, § 103 obviousness, and § 112 written-description/enablement — in district court or in a new AIA petition, and every reference is preserved. Practically, though, the expired status dominates the analysis: with no possibility of forward-looking injunctive relief and infringement damages limited to the pre-expiration period (subject to the six-year damages lookback of § 286), the expected value of a full IPR on this patent is low unless a plaintiff is asserting it for past royalties on a substantial revenue base. There is also no defensive-aggregator trail here — no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity petition appears anywhere in the record for this patent (unifiedpatents.com filings and the ODP block both negative as of the ingest date).

Pattern signals: none. The same petitioner has not filed multiple IPRs (there are zero petitioners). The patent owner has not pursued PTAB appeals aggressively (there is nothing to appeal). The absence of PTAB activity is a meaningful signal in itself: well-asserted, revenue-generating patents with live infringement campaigns almost inevitably attract IPRs, and the total absence of any challenge across more than two decades of term suggests either that the patent was never a significant assertion vehicle or that any assertions were resolved before trial-stage challenges crystallized. Combined with the fee-related lapse, the more likely read is a portfolio patent that aged out quietly rather than a hardened monetization asset.

Recommended next steps

1. Check the expiration date first. If a demand letter asserts US 7,065,115 today, the threshold question is whether the asserted acts fall before 2022-10-16 (or the 2022-10-23 adjusted expiration). Post-expiration activity is not infringement. A letter that cites only current conduct is defective on its face regardless of claim strength. Confirm status directly in USPTO PatentCenter rather than relying on the Google Patents banner.
2. Preserve every prior-art ground. With no FWD anywhere, you have no § 315(e)(2) estoppel problem — a failed IPR would still leave § 282 defenses intact for grounds you could have raised only if you actually raise them in the IPR (statutory estoppel is self-inflicted; it isn't imposed here). If you do file, file on grounds you intend to keep, and consider ex parte reexamination (§ 302) as a lower-cost alternative to IPR for a patent this old, since an expired patent cannot be amended in any meaningful commercial sense.
3. Verify chain of title and enforceability. Confirm who currently owns the patent (the 2012 Citicorp security interest and Kodak's 2012 chapter 11 asset sales mean the recorded assignee may not reflect present ownership), and pull the file history for Ser. No. 10/272,611 and 10/767,713 for prosecution-history estoppel and any § 112 exposure (the specification claims ranges and relationships — e.g., the mode-radius equations and the "greater than 10 mm" cavity-length guidance — that can be attacked on written-description/enablement grounds under § 112).
4. If the patent owner asserts it against you, demand the PTAB record. There is none. A representation that the patent is "PTAB-validated," "has survived IPR," or is "hardened by prior challenges" would be false as to US 7,065,115. Ask for the proceeding number; they cannot produce one.
5. Re-verify before relying on this memo. The ODP ingest is a snapshot. Search PTAB E2E and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions page directly for any proceeding filed after the ingest date, and check CourtListener for any Federal Circuit appeal naming 7,065,115. I found none as of 2026-09-29, but a newly filed petition would not yet appear in every index.

Confidence note: I have high confidence that there is no PTAB Final Written Decision, no Federal Circuit decision, and no settled AIA trial involving this patent. I have moderate confidence that no petition was ever filed at all — a recently filed, unindexed petition would not appear in the ODP block, and I could not reach PTAB E2E programmatically to do a final confirmation. Verify at ptab.uspto.gov before finalizing any clearance opinion.

I'll research this patent's assignment record, starting with what's in the authoritative patent text and then cross-checking assignment databases.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records and any litigation involving this patent.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7065115 B2 ("External cavity organic laser")

Scope note / limitation. In this session I could not directly drive the USPTO Assignment Center UI (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov). The reel/frame data below comes from (a) the authoritative Google Patents legal-events record for US 7065115 supplied in the patent text, and (b) secondary sources mirroring USPTO recordings for the broader Kodak portfolio. Items I could not verify against this patent's own record are explicitly marked. No assignment has been inferred or invented.

Inventors

All four are named as assignors on the recorded assignment to Eastman Kodak Company (reel 013738/0070, executed 2003-01-15 to 2003-01-29), which both confirms Kodak employment and rules out any third-party or university co-ownership. The inventors are an in-house Kodak laser/optics research group — Duarte is a published authority on tunable lasers and Siegman-style resonator theory, which is consistent with the specification's heavy reliance on Gaussian-mode and g-parameter analysis.

Unusual-pattern check: No public source consulted shows a mass inventor departure within 12 months of filing, and none shows the inventors assigning to anyone other than Kodak. There is no evidence of a pre-fire-sale personnel exodus. I could not determine individual departure dates with confidence, so I make no finding either way.

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company (a New Jersey corporation; principal place of business 343 State Street, Rochester, NY 14650), as recorded on the face of the patent and in reel 013738/0070.

• Primary line of business: imaging — historically silver-halide film and photographic equipment, by the 2000s transitioning to digital imaging, commercial printing, and specialty materials.
• Product embodying the claims: No. There is no evidence Kodak ever commercialized a thin-film organic external-cavity laser. The specification is directed to a research-stage device (incoherent LED/lamp pumping of an organic gain film in a nearly-hemispheric external cavity) and reads as a defensive/portfolio patent rather than a product patent.
• Current status: Kodak filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on 2012-01-19 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.), obtained debtor-in-possession financing from Citicorp, and emerged from Chapter 11 in September 2013. It continues as an operating commercial imaging company. The patent itself is recorded as Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2022-10-23, with the current assignee listed as Eastman Kodak Co. — i.e., this patent apparently reached end of term still in Kodak's hands.

Assignment timeline

A. Verified records for this patent

• 2003-01-15 → 2003-01-29 (executed) / recorded 2003 (reel series 013738; exact recording date not shown in the source consulted) — Reel 013738 / 0070

  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST"
  • Assignor: Kruschwitz, Brian E.; Duarte, Francisco J.; Kurtz, Andrew F.; and others (Spoonhower, John P.)
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company (New York)
  • Correspondent: Not available. The Google Patents record exposes reel/frame, conveyance, and signing dates but not the recording correspondent. The patent's attorney of record is Pamela R. Crocker (Rochester, NY) — that is prosecution counsel on the face of the patent, which is not necessarily the correspondent who filed the assignment recording. Flagged as unresolved rather than assumed.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment. Executed against the parent application Ser. No. 10/272,611 (filed 2002-10-16); the patent at issue is a continuation (Ser. No. 10/767,713, filed 2004-01-29).

• 2012-02-15 (effective) / recorded 2012-02-21 — Reel 028201 / 0420

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (SECURITY INTEREST) — a lien, not a transfer of ownership
  • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company; Pakon, Inc.
  • Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc., as Agent
  • Correspondent: Not available from the sources consulted.
  • Context: Securitization. Kodak, as debtor-in-possession, granted the DIP lenders a security interest over its patent estate to secure the January 2012 DIP credit facility (subsequently amended and restated March 2013). This is the only post-issuance entry Google Patents shows on US 7065115's own record.

B. Portfolio-level Kodak lien filings (surfaced in secondary sources; coverage of US 7065115 not independently verified)

These were recorded against large schedules of Kodak patents and are almost certainly co-extensive with this patent, but I could not confirm US 7065115 appears on their schedules. Treat as context, not as chain events:

• effective 2013-03-22 — Reel 030122 / 0235 — Wilmington Trust, N.A., as Agent — patent security agreement; assignors include Eastman Kodak Company and Pakon, Inc.
• effective 2013-09-03 — Reel 031158 / 0001 — JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent — Intellectual Property Security Agreement (First Lien); assignors Eastman Kodak Company, Far East Development Ltd., FPC Inc., and others.
• effective 2013-09-03 — Reel 031159 / 0001 — Barclays Bank PLC, as Administrative Agent — Intellectual Property Security Agreement (Second Lien).
• Reel 031162 / 0117 — Bank of America, N.A., as Agent — Intellectual Property Security Agreement (ABL).
• effective 2013-09-03 — Reel 031157 / 0451 — Release of security interest in patents, by Citicorp North America (Senior DIP Agent) and Wilmington Trust, N.A. (Junior DIP Agent) — clearing the 2012 DIP liens in connection with the exit financing.

C. A sale that is not part of this patent's chain

On 2012-12-18, Kodak (as debtor-in-possession) executed a Patent Sale Agreement with Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (7251 W Lake Mead Blvd, Ste 300, Las Vegas, NV 89128) — the vehicle for the ~$525M Kodak digital-imaging portfolio sale. No assignment to IV Fund 83 LLC is reflected on US 7065115's record, and Google Patents still lists Eastman Kodak Co. as current assignee. This patent therefore appears to have been excluded from the IV transaction and to have stayed with Kodak to expiry. I flag the IV sale only to close it out, not to assert it as an event in this chain.

No infringement litigation naming US 7065115 was found. No Assignment Center record could be retrieved directly, but the record is not empty — it contains an original assignment plus one verified lien.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7065115
    2002 : Parent application filed
    2003 : Inventors assign to Eastman Kodak
    2004 : Continuation application filed
    2006 : Patent issued
    2012 : Kodak files Chapter 11
         : Citicorp records security interest
    2013 : Kodak exits Chapter 11
         : DIP liens released
    2022 : Patent reaches expiry

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The assignee of record is and remains Eastman Kodak Company (reel 013738/0070). No LLC with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix ever appears as assignee on this patent's record. The one LLC associated with the Kodak estate — Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC — has no recorded interest here.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches the public NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). Note the near-miss: IV Fund 83 LLC is on those lists and was the buyer of Kodak's digital-imaging portfolio in reel-adjacent December 2012 filings, but this patent's record shows no assignment to it.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The recording correspondent field is not exposed in the sources available to me, and with a chain consisting of one assignment plus liens there is no recurrence to test. Not a finding in either direction. (Prosecution counsel of record is Pamela R. Crocker, Rochester, NY — a single appearance, and prosecution counsel, so explicitly not a signal.)

4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is no sequence of ownership conveyances at all, let alone chained LLCs within 24 months. The only 2012–2013 activity is a lien (reel 028201/0420) and its release (reel 031157/0451).

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was located, so there is no pre-suit assignment to measure against. The 2012-02-15 lien predates no litigation and is a financing instrument, not an assertion setup.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — present as context, not present as to this patent. Kodak's Chapter 11 (petition date 2012-01-19) drove both the DIP lien recorded 2012-02-21 (reel 028201/0420) and the December 2012 portfolio sale to IV Fund 83 LLC. But no sale or assignment of US 7065115 itself is recorded — Kodak remained assignee of record through expiry. The bankruptcy is the reason the record shows security interests; it did not move this patent's title.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer to an NPE asserting on Kodak's behalf; nothing in this chain resembles the Kodak→NPE assertion pattern seen elsewhere in the estate.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data — and, more precisely, operating-company ownership that was never asserted.

The complete ownership record consists of the original inventor assignment to Eastman Kodak Company (reel 013738/0070, executed 2003-01-15/29) plus a single verified lien, the Citicorp DIP security interest (reel 028201/0420, effective 2012-02-15, recorded 2012-02-21). There is no ownership transfer, no NPE assignee, no cascading LLC chain, and no litigation. Kodak remained assignee of record and the patent is now expired (adjusted expiration 2022-10-23). Under the rubric this is the "only the original assignment" case — no NPE pattern to report.

Verification links:

• USPTO Patent Assignment Search (Assignment Center): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events for this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7065115/en
• FreePatentsOnline record (attorney of record, filing data): https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7065115](/patent/7065115).html

I'll research the prior art citations for US 7,065,115 using targeted searches.

Let me retrieve the complete "Patent Citations" list from the Google Patents record for US 7,065,115.

I have the specification-level citations. Let me verify the front-page "References Cited" list and gather details on the key references.

Prior-Art Analysis for US Patent No. 7,065,115

Scope note / sourcing. My earlier sections established the bibliographic record for this patent (Duarte/Kruschwitz/Kurtz/Spoonhower, Eastman Kodak, filed 2004‑01‑29 as a continuation of Ser. No. 10/272,611, priority 2002‑10‑16, expired). For this task I was asked to pull the "References Cited" for the specific number 7,065,115 from the USPTO record and analyze each under § 102. Two honesty caveats up front, per your standing rules:

• I could not directly query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the USPTO full‑text "References Cited" field; my tool access is web search only and I was cut off before completing the last batch. The citations below are taken from (a) the authoritative full patent text supplied in the prompt (which cites them in the Background/Detailed Description), corroborated by (b) FreePatentsOnline's /7065115 and Google Patents' US7065115B2 records, and (c) the EP family search report for EP 1 411 608 (the European counterpart).
• I could not retrieve the exact claim set, so the § 102 mapping is stated as potential anticipation against the claim‑1 element set described in the abstract and specification, not against verbatim claim language. Treat claim‑number specificity as provisional. (This is the same limitation flagged in the earlier summary section.)

1. U.S. patent documents cited (the "References Cited" set)

These are the references the '115 disclosure itself relies on and are also the examiner‑style prior art. Note several were cited against the inventors' own point of novelty (organic + external cavity + optical pumping).

Note on what is not here: the '115 does not appear to cite the equivalent Princeton/Forrest VCSEL references on its US face (e.g., WO 98/50989), but those did surface in the family's foreign search report (see § 3).

2. Non‑patent literature cited

These are the printed publications cited in the '115 Background. Under § 102(a)/(b) (pre‑AIA, applicable given the 2002 priority), a printed publication has a § 102 date as of its publication.

3. Additional references from the family search report (EP 1 411 608)

The European search report for the counterpart (EP 1 411 608 A3, search completed for the same priority) cited a further set that the US examiner may or may not have considered. These are relevant because they show what the EPO regarded as material:

The "[XY]" coding means the EPO found these relevant alone (X) or in combination (Y) — i.e., the organic‑VCSEL art (Princeton/Forrest) plus the external‑cavity art (Brauch/Mooradian/Caprara) are the combination the examiner classically relies on for § 103.

4. § 102 anticipation assessment (consolidated)

Given the claim‑1 element set — (a) substrate; (b) bottom mirror on substrate; (c) active region including organic gain material on the bottom mirror; (d) external mirror spaced from the active region so that bottom + external mirror form the resonator; (e) optical pumping means exciting the organic gain material to produce a beam of wavelength λ with ≥ 1 lateral mode plus an output:

• No single cited reference discloses all of (a)–(e) as a matter of § 102. The organic‑gain references (Kozlov '828, Diaz‑Garcia '083, Berggren '089/'089‑family, Princeton WO 98/50989) disclose (c) but not the optically pumped external cavity; the external‑cavity references (Brauch '088, Mooradian '002/'407, Caprara '318/'742) disclose (d)/(e) but not organic gain.
• Closest to § 102 against claim 1: US 6,160,828 (Kozlov) — it discloses an external‑cavity organic laser (a–d, and arguably a laser output). Its only gap for claim 1 is that it is electrically, not optically, pumped. If any claim in the '115 omits "optical pumping means" or recites only structure, Kozlov is a § 102 reference for elements (a)–(d); for claim 1 as written, it is at most a § 103 anchor.
• Element‑level § 102 hits (likely against narrower/dependent claims):
• Organic/polymeric gain material → US 5,881,083; US 5,881,089; US 6,194,119; WO 98/50989.
• Optically‑pumped external cavity with gain at the end mirror → US 5,553,088; US 5,991,318; US 5,131,002; US 6,243,407.
• Periodic/resonant gain placement → US 6,097,742; Corzine et al. 1989.
• Nearly‑hemispheric / Gaussian mode‑radius relationships → Siegman, Lasers (1986).
• Multiple gain layers / partial mirrors → the coupled‑cavity and periodic‑gain references (Caprara '742, '318).
• The '115's own point of novelty — organic gain medium + one‑curved‑surface (concave‑substrate) external cavity + incoherent (LED/lamp) optical pumping — is not anticipated by any single listed reference; it was allowed over these, and the EP "[XY]" combination shows the relevant § 103 pairing is Princeton/Forrest (organic) + Brauch/Mooradian/Caprara (external cavity).

5. Caveats you should carry forward

1. Claim text not verified. I could not retrieve the issued claims of 7,065,115 from an authoritative full‑text source in this session; the § 102 mapping above is against the element set in the abstract/specification and should be checked against the actual claim set before being relied on for any legal purpose.
2. "Cited by" ≠ prior art. Google Patents lists forward citations to '115 (e.g., US 2005/0135446 Eastman Kodak "Electrically driven organic optical resonator"; US 2005/0281308 Samsung external‑cavity dual‑wavelength; US 2006/0018354 Osram optically pumped surface‑emitting device; US 2008/0187017 Osram organic semiconductor laser). Those are later documents and are not § 102 prior art to '115 — they are useful only as evidence of the field's later development.
3. Front‑page vs. specification citations. I have treated the specification's cited references (corroborated by FreePatentsOnline/Google Patents) as the "citations for 7065115." To be fully rigorous on the USPTO record, confirm the exact "U.S. Patent Documents / Other Publications" fields in PatentCenter; the set should match § 1–2 above.
4. Per your instruction, all identifiers are reproduced literally and I did not substitute results for similar numbers.

I'll supplement the prior-art record with the actual claim language and the content of the key references before running the § 103 analysis.

I have the parent publication's claim set. Let me confirm the granted '115 claim set, including whether there is a second independent claim to the coupled-cavity variant.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,065,115 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Bottom line up front. On the claim-1 language that I was able to verify, the '115 claims are, in my assessment, prima facie obvious over the combination of Kozlov US 6,160,828 (the organic VCSEL) with Brauch US 5,553,088 (the thin-disk external-resonator laser), optionally further combined with Caprara US 5,991,318 / US 6,167,068 (optically-pumped external-cavity surface-emitter with birefringent filter/etalon), Caprara US 6,097,742 (periodic external-cavity gain), and Berggren US 5,881,089 (organic laser pumped by an incoherent LED). The single limitation that Kozlov does not supply — an external mirror spaced from the active region, cooperating with the bottom mirror to define the resonator — is the express subject matter of Brauch and the Caprara OPS patents, and the patent's own specification contains admissions that the relevant geometry and design rules were "long known." I flag the important evidentiary caveat below.

Minor internal-consistency note, per your instruction to flag contradictions: the system header gives today's date as 2026‑09‑29 while the task block says 2026‑04‑26. I have not attempted to reconcile these.

1. Evidentiary basis and its limits (read this first)

• I retrieved verified, verbatim claim 1 — from the parent publication US 2004/0076204 A1 (claims section, https://patents.justia.com/patent/20040076204#5), whose claim 1 is textually identical to the '115 abstract and to the '115 claim text as republished on Google Patents/FreePatentsOnline:

  "1. A thin-film organic laser, comprising: a) a substrate; b) a bottom mirror provided on the substrate; c) at least one active region deposited on the bottom mirror, wherein the at least one active region includes organic gain material; d) an external mirror provided at a predetermined distance from the at least one active region such that the bottom mirror combined with the external mirror forms a laser resonator; and e) an optical pumping means for exciting the organic gain material to produce a laser beam with a wavelength λ and at least one lateral laser mode in the laser resonator and an output of laser light."

• Caveat: I could not retrieve the granted '115 claim set verbatim. I hit the tool-step limit on the final FreePatentsOnline claims query. The '204 publication disclosed claims up to at least 40, and the JP family member JP 2004140340 A (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2004140340A/en) contains an additional independent claim directed to a coupled-cavity variant — "an internal mirror having reflectivity Rint … the bottom mirror combined with the internal mirror forms a first laser resonator; an external mirror … forms a second laser resonator." Whether that claim survived verbatim into the '115 grant is unconfirmed. Treat the dependent-claim mapping below as high-confidence for the '204 disclosure and probable-but-unverified for the '115 grant.

• All prior-art characterizations below come from the references' own claim texts/abstracts and from the '115 specification, not from a full read of each reference.

2. Legal framework

• Governing law: The application was filed 2004‑01‑29, so pre‑AIA § 103 applies (no pre‑AIA/post‑AIA first-inventor-to-file issue).
• Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — not the law at examination (grant 2006‑06‑20), but the correct framework for any current validity assessment. Under KSR: (i) combining familiar elements according to known methods is obvious when the result is predictable; (ii) a technique used to improve one device, which a PHOSITA would recognize would improve similar devices in the same way, is obvious; (iii) a finite number of identified, predictable solutions and a reasonable expectation of success renders a claim "obvious to try."
• PHOSITA level: a laser/optoelectronics engineer with an advanced degree and several years in thin-film organic optoelectronics and resonator design — the art already employed Siegman's resonator formulas, DBR design, and host–dopant organic gain.

3. What the references teach

4. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Net: every element of claim 1 is disclosed in the prior art; the only difference over Kozlov is the external-resonator configuration (element d), which the OPS/thin-disk art supplies.

5. Primary combination: Kozlov + Brauch (motivation to combine)

The motivation is unusually well documented, because it is recited in the '115 specification itself:

1. The problem with Kozlov's device is stated in the patent. Kozlov's external-cavity embodiment "requires a transparent electrode [ITO] deposited above the organic gain materials," and ITO "commonly requires the substrate to be heated at an elevated temperature that would destroy most commonly used organic luminescent materials." Removing the top electrode/contact from the organic layer by going to an optically pumped external cavity is the inventor's own stated reason for the change — that is a self-evidenced motivation.
2. Brauch supplies the predictable solution. Brauch's thin disk sits on one resonator end-mirror with a spaced second mirror, and its resonator is "designed to produce a single Gaussian laser mode with a relatively large area … in order to scale the laser power without damaging the laser material." Organic gain media are admitted in the '115 specification to have "low optical and thermal damage thresholds" — so the thin-disk teaching is directly pertinent: it solves the same problem (damage-free power scaling via large mode area) in the same way.
3. The patent admits the geometry was old. "It has long been known that the power density can be reduced in bulk laser materials by situating them near the concave mirror in a nearly-hemispheric resonator." (specification, discussing FIG. 3). That admission alone would defeat a non-obviousness argument built on the curved-substrate/near-hemispheric geometry.
4. Predictable result. Substituting an organic thin-film gain medium (known to lase — Kozlov) for the inorganic/semiconductor gain of Brauch/Caprara is a substitution of one known laser gain material for another to exploit its known property (broad visible gain, low unpumped loss). KSR: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

A reasonable expectation of success follows because the bottom DBR mirror of the organic stack is functionally equivalent to Brauch's high-reflectance coating on the disk's cooling surface — both are the resonator end mirror with the thin gain medium deposited/coated directly on it.

6. Secondary references and the dependent claims

7. Alternative primary combinations (all viable)

• Kozlov + Caprara '318/'068 + Berggren '089 — Kozlov organic VCSEL + Caprara's optically-pumped external-cavity surface-emitter with birefringent filter minus the nonlinear crystal + Berggren's incoherent LED pumping. Deleting Caprara's optically nonlinear crystal (and its function) removes only the frequency-conversion element, which the claim does not require; the residual external-cavity structure is unchanged. Motive: eliminate the cost, single-longitudinal-mode constraint, and efficiency penalty of frequency conversion (a motive the '115 spec expressly recites).
• Kozlov + Mooradian '002 — multiple-pass external-cavity vertical emitter, adapted to an organic gain region.
• Kozlov + Brauch + Caprara '742 + Corzine — adds periodic/resonant gain at standing-wave peaks for the resonant-gain dependent claims.

8. Counterarguments and objective indicia (what the applicant would argue)

Likely applicant arguments (these appear to be why the claims issued):

1. "Kozlov is a different kind of cavity." The specification argues Kozlov's cavities have two curved intracavity surfaces whereas the invention has one curved surface and a plane external mirror (a propagation-matrix distinction). But this is a difference in degree/configuration of a known element, and the "one concave + one plane" geometry is exactly the near-hemispheric configuration the spec admits was long known.
2. "Kozlov is electrically pumped." Answered by Berggren/McGehee (LED-pumped organic lasers) and Brauch/Caprara (optically-pumped external cavities).
3. Possible teaching away (weak): the '115 background argues that the OPS/thin-disk materials "are all crystalline and grown on flat substrates" and need nonlinear frequency conversion. That is a statement that the prior materials had disadvantages; it is not a teaching away from combining the external-resonator architecture of Brauch/Caprara with an organic gain. KSR instructs that a reference is read for what it fairly teaches, and mere omission of an unclaimed element (the nonlinear crystal) does not create patentability.

Objective indicia — none favorable to patentability on this record:

• No evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry praise surfaced; the earlier litigation search found no assertion of the patent (consistent with an expired, fee-lapsed Kodak asset) and the earlier docket search found no CAFC/PTAB activity.
• No unexpected results are demonstrated relative to the closest prior art. The specification's low-threshold figure (0.1 W/cm²) and reflectivity figures (>99% bottom, >95% external) are unclaimed, so they cannot confer patentability on claim 1.
• Notably, contemporaneous same-field art (e.g., EP 1 249 903 A2, "Incoherent light-emitting device apparatus for driving vertical laser cavity," published 2002‑10‑16 — the very '115 priority date — and the Kahen US 6,836,495 line) already taught vertical organic laser cavities with high-reflectance DBR mirrors, small-molecule host–dopant gain, sub-75 °C top-mirror deposition, and the dramatic threshold reduction obtained by increasing pump spot size and pulse width. I flag that EP 1 249 903's publication date is the same day as the '115 priority date, so it is not itself § 102(b) prior art standing alone; its value here is as evidence of the ordinary skill level and the predictability of the result, not as a standalone reference.

9. Conclusion and confidence

Assessment: Claim 1 (and, with high probability, all of the dependent claims identified above) would have been obvious under § 103 over Kozlov US 6,160,828 in view of Brauch US 5,553,088, and further in view of Caprara US 5,991,318 / US 6,167,068, Caprara US 6,097,742, and Berggren US 5,881,089. The motivation to combine is supplied by (i) the well-known deficiencies of electrically pumped organic lasers recited in the '115 specification itself (ITO processing temperature, low carrier mobility, electrode-penetration loss), (ii) the express teaching of Brauch/Caprara to place a thin gain medium on one resonator mirror with a spaced external mirror for large-mode-area, damage-free power scaling, and (iii) the '115 specification's admission that near-hemispheric, curved-substrate power-density reduction was "long known."

Confidence:

• High as to the structure of the analysis and the sufficiency of Kozlov + Brauch to reach every element of claim 1.
• Moderate on the exact identity/scope of the granted '115 dependent claims and on whether a coupled-cavity independent claim issued, because I could not retrieve the granted claim set verbatim.
• This is a validity-risk opinion based on the reference face and the specification, not a formal reexamination; it does not account for any non-obviousness evidence in a file history I could not retrieve.

Recommended verification before relying on this: pull the granted '115 claim set directly from USPTO PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) or FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7065115](/patent/7065115).html) and confirm (a) the total claim count, (b) the presence of the coupled-cavity independent claim, and (c) the exact text of claims 2–40 — then re-run this mapping against the granted text.