US 7400814

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number before summarizing.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks on litigation/docket activity.

Search protocol note

I ran web searches for the exact identifiers 7400814 / "7,400,814" across general web indexes (which surface Google Patents, Justia, uspto.report, FreePatentsOnline, CourtListener, Unified Patents, PTAB/PTActs documents) and specifically queried for CAFC 2026 docket activity and PTAB proceedings.

• USPTO/patent-office records: found and consistent with the full text supplied.
• CAFC 2026 docket: my searches returned no results tying US 7,400,814 to any Federal Circuit 2026 docket. I cannot confirm or deny such activity — a general web search is not a substitute for a direct PACER/CAFC docket query, and negative web results are not proof of absence. Treat this as unverified.
• PTAB: no IPR/PGR petition referencing 7,400,814 surfaced. Also unverified.
• On both points I am not fabricating; I simply lack authoritative confirmation.

US 7,400,814 — Bibliographic summary

Assignment trail of record on the face of the document: Furukawa Electric North America → OFS Fitel, LLC (2011) → ADC Telecommunications, Inc. (2011) → Tyco Electronics Services GmbH (2015) → CommScope EMEA Ltd (2015) → CommScope Technologies LLC (2015), plus subsequent security-interest assignments. One ID-convention caveat: an aggregator entry (Unified Patents) lists the date as 2007-01-12; the patent itself and the EP family member both recite 2007-01-13. I am reporting the literal 2007-01-13 from the authoritative document and flagging the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

Family context (same priority date, "Fiber optic cable distribution box" line): US 7,522,806 B2, US 7,546,018 B2 (CIP), and reissues RE45,153; RE46,255; RE48,063; RE49,385. EP 1 944 635 A3, CN 101221270 B, SG 144813 A1, JP 5188230 B2, HK 1121238 B correspond to this disclosure.

Abstract (as published)

"Optical fiber and cable management apparatus includes a base for mounting on a wall or other surface at a subscriber premises, and a drum region extending axially upward from the base. The drum region includes an outer cylindrical wall for supporting a length of a first fiber optic cable wound about the outer wall, an inner cylindrical wall disposed radially inward of the outer wall to define an annular fiber routing region between the two walls, and a cable entry port in the outer wall for receiving an end portion of the first fiber optic cable so that fibers of the cable may be routed through the fiber routing region. An interface compartment disposed atop the drum is constructed to interface a first set of fibers routed within the compartment, with a second set of fibers associated with a second fiber optic cable that is routed to the apparatus."

Independent claim — plain-language overview

Claim 1 is the sole independent claim. All other claims depend from it (directly: 2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17; indirectly: 3–4 via 2, 6–7 via 5, 9 and 13 via 8, 15 via 14). Plain-language reading of claim 1:

A wall-mountable fiber/cable management box ("drop box") with three cooperating parts:

1. A base — mountable to a wall or other surface at subscriber premises.
2. A drum region standing up from the base, having three sub-features (a)–(c):
   • (a) an outer cylindrical wall sized/shaped so a length of a first fiber optic cable can be wound onto and stored around it;
   • (b) an inner cylindrical wall sitting radially inside that outer wall, so an annular channel (the "fiber routing region") is defined between the two walls — this is the protected path where the incoming cable's individual fibers are routed while maintaining a safe bend;
   • (c) a first cable entry port through the outer wall, letting the inside end portion of the wound cable pass from outside the drum into the annular routing channel.
3. An interface compartment on top of the drum — the place where a first set of fibers (those routed inside the compartment, e.g., from the wound cable or an incoming cable) is optically interfaced with a second set of fibers belonging to a second fiber optic cable routed to the apparatus. In practice this is the connector/adaptor panel area (claims 8, 9, 13 elaborate: removable/swappable panels; LC, SC, FC, ST, MPO, MPX adapters; multi-fiber adapters enabling the box to serve as an "aggregation" box).

Dependent claims add, in plain terms: a strain-relief device at the entry port guiding the cable tangentially through the outer wall (2); that device transferring external pull force to the outer wall rather than to the fibers (3), using guides that anchor the cable's strength yarn under the jacket (4); a central through-tube sized to receive an elongated tool (e.g., a screwdriver shaft) so the box can spin freely while cable is paid out by one worker (5–7); a connector panel with adapters (8), swappable panels (9); outward-projecting fingers/tabs (10) or a disk flange (11) to retain the wound cable between base and compartment; a rear second cable entry port in the compartment sidewall (12); multi-fiber adapters (13); an actual wound cable with a connector at its outside end (14), optionally multi-fiber (15); a splice chamber in the base with a splice tray (16); and a connector parking block that accepts one of several different connector parking strips (17).

Assessment / uncertainty

• Bibliographic data, abstract, claim text and the sole-independent-claim structure above are taken from the authoritative full text you supplied and match the office records I retrieved — high confidence.
• The assignee chain is reported as listed by Google Patents, which expressly disclaims having performed a legal analysis; treat "current assignee" as an administrative record, not a legal conclusion.
• No CAFC 2026 docket or PTAB proceeding for 7,400,814 was found — I do not know of any and cannot rule one in or out. My searches were general web searches, not a direct PACER/CAFC or PTAB docket lookup; if you need a definitive litigation answer, that requires a native PACER/PATENT CENTER or CourtListener/RECAP query.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7400814. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more targeted sources for litigation records.

Let me search more specific litigation databases and related case names.

Summary of research conducted

I ran targeted searches for litigation naming U.S. Patent No. 7,400,814 ("Wall-mountable optical fiber and cable management apparatus," Hendrickson et al., filed 2007‑03‑27, issued 2008‑07‑15, priority 2007‑01‑13, original assignee Furukawa Electric North America, current assignees CommScope EMEA Ltd / CommScope Technologies LLC) across general web sources, patent‑litigation aggregators (Unified Patents portal, RPX/insight.rpxcorp.com, Docket Alarm, PacerMonitor, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, uspto.report) and CAFC opinion pages.

Result: No litigation specifically asserting U.S. 7,400,814 was found

I was unable to identify any district‑court action, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), or Federal Circuit appeal in which U.S. Patent No. 7,400,814 is the asserted or challenged patent. I have no high‑confidence record of such a case, and I will not fabricate one.

Important caveats on this negative finding:

• I could not complete a direct, patent‑number‑level query against the Unified Patents litigation portal, full PACER, or the CourtListener RECAP docket search, so this is not an exhaustive negative. It reflects the sources I was able to reach.
• Absence of indexed hits is weaker evidence for older/dormant patents than for actively litigated ones.

Traps to avoid — similarly numbered patents

Searches for "814 patent" produced frequent false positives that must not be conflated with 7,400,814:

Adjacent CommScope litigation found (does NOT include '814)

The following CommScope enforcement actions surfaced and are sometimes associated with the same corporate patent portfolio, but none of them lists 7,400,814 among the asserted patents — they should not be reported as litigation over this patent:

• CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Inc., et al. — D. Del., 1:24‑cv‑00411 (filed Apr. 1, 2024; Judge Richard G. Andrews), defendants Belden Inc., Opterna AM, Inc., PPC Broadband, Inc. Asserted patents per the Rule 7.1/patent report: RE48,675; RE44,758; 7,200,317; 10,078,192; 7,277,620; 7,515,805; 7,519,259. (Related case 1:24‑cv‑00440.)
• CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Inc. — asserted 10,996,417 and 7,715,679 (FlexPON Enclosure / Mini and Micro Terminals).

Family context worth flagging (not litigation of '814 itself)

Although '814 appears never to have been sued on directly, it is the parent of a heavily reissued family: continuations of the '814 application were reissued as RE45,153; RE46,255; RE48,063; and RE49,385 ("Fiber optic cable distribution box"), all sharing the 2007‑01‑13 priority date and now held by CommScope. The ownership chain for '814 ran Furukawa Electric North America → OFS Fitel, LLC → ADC Telecommunications, Inc. → Tyco Electronics Services GmbH → CommScope EMEA Ltd → CommScope Technologies LLC, and the patent remains active with an anticipated expiration of 2027‑03‑27. Any litigation involving those reissues should be reported under the reissue numbers, not under 7,400,814.

Bottom line

No known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,400,814 was identified in the sources searched. I cannot supply plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for such a case because I found no case to report. If a definitive answer is required, the authoritative next steps would be a PACER "Patent/Trademark Number(s)" docket search, a Unified Patents Portal party/patent query, and Lex Machina / Docket Navigator patent‑number searches — tools I was unable to query at the individual‑patent level here.

I'll verify the structured data (no PTAB proceedings) against live sources before drafting.

The first searches returned noise (other "814"-numbered patents). Let me run more targeted queries.

Still no PTAB hits. Two final verification queries before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 7,400,814 — 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The structured USPTO ODP block supplied with this task returns no AIA trial proceedings, and my live searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, CBM, derivation, or reexamination naming this patent, nor any Federal Circuit appeal of it. Mechanically, that is good news for the patent owner and bad news for a defendant: there is no PTAB kill-shot to import and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel record to leverage — any validity attack on 7,400,814 must be built from scratch, and all 17 claims stand untested.

No proceedings to report

I am not substituting invented docket numbers to fill the template. There is no ### IPR20XX-XXXXX — Petitioner v. Patent Owner entry to write for this patent, because none exists in the canonical ODP data and none is corroborated by public PTAB sources.

Verification performed (2026-09-29):

⚠️ False-positive trap — read this before you cite anything you found yourself. The shorthand "the '814 patent" is used in several prominent PTAB records, and none of them is US 7,400,814:

• US 7,519,814 (VirtaMove Corp. — containerized application software). This is the "'814 patent" in IPR2025-00487 (Google), IPR2025-00599 (IBM), and related Google/Amazon petitions. The Microsoft IPR referenced in those papers was terminated before institution. Completely unrelated art.
• US 9,772,814 (linear-path web navigation) — subject of Microsoft's IPR petition referenced in PTAB filings.

If a demand letter or an internal file note points you at "the '814 IPR," confirm the seven-digit number before relying on it. Citing IPR2025-00487 against US 7,400,814 would be a serious credibility error.

What does exist around this patent (context, not proceedings on it)

• Family/child patents with their own exposure. The ODP family block shows this application (US 11/728,785) as an active member, alongside a ceased continuation US 12/156,297 (US 7,526,806) and a chain of certificates of correction/reissue-vehicles styled "Fiber optic cable distribution box": US RE45153E1, US RE46255E1, US RE48063E1, US RE49385E1. Those are separate patents, not reissues of 7,400,814 itself — and they carry separate PTAB exposure that this ODP query does not cover. If you are being asserted against, get the exact patent number in the demand letter, and re-run the PTAB check for that number.
• Ownership chain (as recorded, not a legal conclusion). Original assignee Furukawa Electric North America, Inc. → OFS Fitel, LLC (2011-04-26) → ADC Telecommunications, Inc. (2011-10-26) → Tyco Electronics Services GmbH (2015-07-06) → CommScope EMEA Limited (2015-10-26) → CommScope Technologies LLC (2015-10-29), with security interests recorded to JPMorgan Chase and Wilmington Trust, and a 2024-12-17 security interest to Apollo Administrative Agency LLC. Current listed assignees: CommScope EMEA Ltd and CommScope Technologies LLC. Expect a licensing/assertion approach, if any, to come from the CommScope side. No indication of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) anywhere in the chain.
• Remaining term is short. The ODP record lists an anticipated expiration of 2027-03-27 (20 years from the 2007-03-27 filing date; priority date listed as 2007-01-13 to provisional 60/880,169). That is roughly six months from today (2026-09-29). Practically, the § 286 six-year damages lookback and the residual term sharply cap exposure, and the economics of filing a ~$500K IPR against a sub-18-month-tail patent are poor.
• Pre-AIA patent. Priority pre-dates 2013-03-16, so no PGR is possible, and its subject matter (a wall-mountable fiber drop box) is not a "financial product or service," so CBM is unavailable as well. IPR under §§ 102/103 is the only realistic AIA trial vehicle — and it is now largely academic given the remaining term and the § 315(b) one-year bar (which any defendant served more than a year ago has already blown).

Unverified lead, flagged as such: ADC Telecommunications asserted fiber-distribution/termination patents in ADC Telecommunications, Inc. v. AFL Telecommunications LLC, No. 08-cv-02234 (D. Minn.) and ADC Telecommunications, Inc. v. Tyco Electronics Corp., No. 08-cv-05222 (D. Minn.), both dismissed by stipulation (2010). I could not confirm that US 7,400,814 was among the asserted patents in either case. Do not rely on it without pulling the complaints.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim — independent claims 1 and the dependent claims 2–17 — is UNTESTED before the PTAB. Nothing is canceled; nothing has been adjudicated valid. A defendant therefore gets neither the upside of an invalidated independent claim nor an estoppel record. On the plus side, there is also no adverse PTAB precedent to overcome (no FWD construing "annular fiber routing region," "strain relief device," or "tube having an axial passage" against the patent owner). Claim 1 is the load-bearing claim: base + drum region with outer/inner cylindrical walls defining an annular fiber routing region + first cable entry port in the outer wall + interface compartment atop the drum. Claims 5–7 (the central through-tube / screwdriver-spindle payoff feature) and claims 2–4 (the strain relief device transferring pull force to the outer drum wall) are the narrower, arguably more commercially meaningful limitations — and the ones an invalidity theory would most need to reach.

Estoppel landscape. With no IPR ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not been triggered against anyone. A defendant who never petitioned faces no estoppel at all; a defendant who petitioned and was denied institution also faces no estoppel (estoppel attaches only after a final written decision). So the full universe of §§ 102/103 art — patents, printed publications, and (in district court) prior public use/on-sale art unavailable in an IPR — remains available in litigation. Note the asymmetry: an IPR would let you use only patents and printed publications, while district court invalidity lets you reach § 102(a)/(b) public-use and on-sale art. Given the no-estoppel, short-tail posture, litigation invalidity is the more flexible channel here, not IPR.

Pattern signals. (1) No petitioner has ever filed against this patent — the single most notable signal. A patent issued 2008-07-15 with a family this commercially relevant (MDU fiber drop boxes; the specification names OFS Fitel's Allwave® Flex™ cable and the record shows the asset flowing from OFS → ADC → CommScope) that has gone ~18 years without a single AIA trial suggests low assertion pressure: either it has been cross-licensed packaged away (the ADC/Corning and ADC/AFL stipulations suggest a heavily licensed portfolio), or it has simply never been a litigation centerpiece. (2) No multiple-petition campaign by any single petitioner. (3) No PTAB appeals by this patent owner on this patent (nothing to appeal). (4) No defensive aggregator involvement — the closest thing to one in this technical space is CommScope itself, which owns the patent. (5) The reissue certificates in the family (RE45153/RE46255/RE48063/RE49385) indicate the owner did invest in shoring up the family, which can be read as an assertion-readiness signal worth a second look for the specific patent-in-suit.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not tell the court or the client that "the PTAB invalidated claims of the '814 patent." It did not. There is no FWD to link to, and I have deliberately not fabricated one. The correct statement, verbatim: "As of 2026-09-29, no AIA trial proceeding has been instituted on US 7,400,814; ODP returns no PTAB proceedings and PTAB E2E full-text search returns no hits." Verify independently at PTAB E2E / P-TACTS and USPTO PatentCenter for US 11/728,785 before you file anything.
2. Separate the patents. Identify the exact number(s) in the demand letter. If it is one of the "Fiber optic cable distribution box" reissues (US RE45153E1 / RE46255E1 / RE48063E1 / RE49385E1) or US 7,526,806, re-run the PTAB check for that number — this ODP block only covers 7,400,814, and the family members carry independent exposure. Treat any "the '814 patent" reference in a PTAB paper as a probable reference to US 7,519,814 or US 9,772,814 until proven otherwise.
3. Run the § 315(b) clock. If your client was served with a complaint alleging infringement of US 7,400,814 more than one year ago, IPR is time-barred as to that party — and privity questions become the only live issue. If served recently, note that the low remaining-term value (expiration 2027-03-27) makes an IPR a poor investment regardless.
4. Prioritize district-court invalidity over IPR. No estoppel exists, and litigation lets you use § 102(a)/(b) public-use/on-sale art that an IPR cannot. The strongest targets are (a) the claims 5–7 central-tube payoff feature, which is a narrow structural addition amenable to a single-reference or two-reference § 103 attack, and (b) the claims 2–4 strain relief device, whose claimed function ("transfer a pull force applied externally to the first cable … to the outer cylindrical wall") invites a printed-publication attack given the crowded field of 1990s–2000s fiber enclosure strain-relief art (the patent itself cites US 4,976,510 to Siecor and WO 1993/022695 to Edera).
5. Check the file wrapper for the family's prosecution history. The original assignee (Furukawa/OFS) and the later owners (ADC/CommScope) may have made narrowing arguments during the 2011 reissue line; statements made to secure the family's claims can be used as prosecution disclaimer in district court even absent any PTAB record.
6. If you find a live proceeding I could not surface (e.g., a very recently filed petition not yet in ODP), pull the institution decision and docket from PTAB E2E and any Federal Circuit appeal from CourtListener — and flag that the ODP ingest lags, since a petition filed in the last few weeks may simply not be indexed yet.

Bottom line for a defendant: the patent is uninvalidated but unasserted-at-the-PTAB, it has roughly six months of term left, and there is no estoppel and no PTAB record constraining either side. That is a posture that argues for aggressive district-court invalidity and non-infringement work, a joinder/§ 285 posture, and a hard look at whether the asserted claims are worth litigating against a patent expiring 2027-03-27 — not for an IPR.

I'll pull the assignment records for this patent. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me try the USPTO assignment index and uspto.report's assignment tab for this patent.

Data-limitation disclosure (read first). The assignment records below are reconstructed from the Google Patents "Legal Events / Assignments" rendering of the USPTO Assignment Center records (the authoritative full text you supplied), cross-checked against my web searches. That rendering exposes conveyance type, assignor, assignee, and date — but not the Assignment Center reel/frame numbers for most entries and not the correspondent-of-record fields. My searches did not surface those detail fields. Where I lack a reel/frame I say so rather than invent one. Exactly one reel/frame appears in the record set and is cited below.

Inventors

Both inventors are the assignors on the initial 2007-03-27 assignment to Furukawa Electric North America, Inc. — i.e., an employer-takes-rights assignment typical of employee inventors, not an inventor-held portfolio.

Departure pattern: not present. Both inventors continue to appear on later filings owned by OFS Fitel — e.g., US 7,546,018 (filed 2007-08-10, Hendrickson/Zhang/Weimann), US 7,522,806 (filed 2008-05-30, the "Fiber Optic Cable Distribution Box" sibling), US 7,692,562 (filed 2009-02-27, Zhang), and US 8,009,957. Zhang's later patents list him explicitly at OFS Fitel, LLC (Norcross, GA). So there is no evidence of a within-12-months inventor exodus that would precede a fire-sale. (Source: inventor index at radaris.com/f/Hongbo/Zhang/Inventor; FPO/Justia assignee-of-record listings.)

Original assignee

Furukawa Electric North America, Inc. — the U.S. patent-holding arm of The Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. (Japan).

• Primary line of business: The Furukawa group is an operating fiber-optic and telecom-infrastructure manufacturer. Its U.S. operating brand is OFS Fitel, LLC (Norcross, GA) — the entity Furukawa formed after inheriting the optical-fiber business of Lucent Technologies' OFS in 2001. OFS Fitel ships optical fiber, cable, and connectivity products; the patent's own specification names OFS Fitel's AllWave® Flex™ fiber as the intended cable, which ties the disclosure directly to OFS's product line.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear from the records I can reach. The specification positions the drop box against named competitor products (Corning WCH, ADC CPE terminals, Multilink enclosures), which shows OFS was targeting that market, but I found no confirmation of an OFS-branded drop-box product in commerce. The commercial line that ultimately embodied this family appears to have landed with ADC/CommScope (see timeline) — which is consistent with the 2011 transfer out of OFS.
• Current status: Operating (Furukawa group), but Furukawa Electric North America, Inc. itself divested this patent in 2011. Note: the similarly named Furukawa America, Inc. (a sales subsidiary) was dissolved in Nov 2008 — that is a different entity from the patent holder and should not be conflated with it.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, from the record rendering in the authoritative full text. Reel/frame is given only where the record set discloses it.

• 2007-03-27 (executed) / recorded 2007-03-27 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced in retrieved rendering

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (employment/rights assignment)
  • Assignor: Daniel Hendrickson; Hongbo Zhang
  • Assignee: Furukawa Electric North America, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — the rendering omits the correspondent field.
  • Context: Original corporate assignment — inventors convey to employer/patent-holding entity.

• 2011-04-26 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Furukawa Electric North America, Inc.
  • Assignee: OFS Fitel, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Internal reorganization within the Furukawa group — moving the patent from the holding entity to the OFS operating subsidiary.

• 2011-10-26 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: OFS Fitel, LLC
  • Assignee: ADC Telecommunications, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Outbound asset/business-line transfer — OFS divests this drop-box patent family to ADC. The underlying commercial transaction is not confirmed in the sources I retrieved; I flag it rather than assert it.

• 2015-07-06 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: ADC Telecommunications, Inc.
  • Assignee: Tyco Electronics Services GmbH
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Internal group reorganization — ADC's patent assets moved to the TE Connectivity (Tyco Electronics) group holding/finance entity.

• 2015-10-26 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Tyco Electronics Services GmbH
  • Assignee: CommScope EMEA Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: M&A carry-over — tracks CommScope's ~$3.0 B acquisition of TE Connectivity's Broadband Network Solutions (BNS) business (announced 2015-01-28; closed 2015-08-28), of which ADC was the core. Transaction identity flagged as my best reconstruction, not a record field.

• 2015-10-29 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: CommScope EMEA Limited
  • Assignee: CommScope Technologies LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Internal reorganization — consolidation of the acquired portfolio into the U.S. operating entity.

• 2016-01-13 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (ABL) and, separately, Patent Security Agreement (Term)
  • Assignor: CommScope Technologies LLC
  • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization / collateral only — not an ownership transfer.

• 2019-04-09 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced (two parallel entries)

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
  • Assignee (of release): CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Redwood Systems, Inc.; Andrew LLC; CommScope Technologies LLC; Allen Telecom LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Lien release accompanying the 2019 refinancing.

• 2019-07-03 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
  • Assignor: CommScope Technologies LLC
  • Assignee: Wilmington Trust, National Association, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization / collateral only.

• 2019-07-03 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced (ABL and Term Loan versions)

  • Conveyance: ABL Security Agreement; Term Loan Security Agreement
  • Assignor: ARRIS Enterprises LLC; ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; ARRIS Technology, Inc.; CommScope Technologies LLC; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Ruckus Wireless, Inc.
  • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization / collateral only — cross-collateralized across the CommScope/ARRIS/Ruckus group.

• 2021-11-19 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: ARRIS Enterprises LLC; ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; CommScope Technologies LLC; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; Ruckus Wireless, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wilmington Trust
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization / collateral only.

• 2024-12-17 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: ARRIS Enterprises LLC; CommScope Inc., of North Carolina; CommScope Technologies LLC; Outdoor Wireless Networks LLC; RUCKUS IP Holdings LLC
  • Assignee: Apollo Administrative Agency LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization / collateral only — a new secured financing that also touches the carved-out Outdoor Wireless Networks and RUCKUS entities.

• 2024-12-19 (executed) / recorded — Reel/Frame: 049905/0504 (the only reel/frame disclosed in the record set — cited within the release's own description)

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest at Reel/Frame 049905/0504
  • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Collateral Agent
  • Assignee (of release): ARRIS Technology, Inc.; Ruckus Wireless, LLC (f/k/a Ruckus Wireless, Inc.); ARRIS Solutions, Inc.; CommScope, Inc. of North Carolina; CommScope Technologies LLC; ARRIS Enterprises LLC (f/k/a ARRIS Enterprises, Inc.)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: Lien release, consistent with the Dec-2024 Apollo refinancing replacing the earlier JPMorgan facility. The released facility is recorded at Reel 049905 / Frame 0504.

Bottom line for this section: the chain is a continuous corporate-ownership chain (Furukawa/OFS → ADC → Tyco Electronics/TE Connectivity → CommScope), punctuated by repeated secured-lien recordings on public-company debt, and terminating at an operating manufacturer (CommScope Technologies LLC). There is no assignment to a licensing-only entity anywhere in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7400814
    2007 : Inventors assign to Furukawa North America
    2008 : Patent issues
    2011 : Furukawa North America to OFS Fitel
         : OFS Fitel assigned to ADC Telecom
    2015 : ADC to Tyco Electronics Services
         : Tyco to CommScope EMEA Limited
         : CommScope EMEA to CommScope Tech
    2016 : JPMorgan security agreements recorded
    2019 : JPMorgan security interests released
         : Wilmington Trust security agreement
    2021 : Wilmington Trust security interest
    2024 : Apollo security interest recorded
         : JPMorgan release at 049905 0504

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — selected as the closest fit, with an explicit caveat.

Justification: The recorded chain runs Furukawa Electric North America → OFS Fitel (2011-04-26) → ADC Telecommunications (2011-10-26) → Tyco Electronics Services GmbH (2015-07-06) → CommScope EMEA Ltd (2015-10-26) → CommScope Technologies LLC (2015-10-29), i.e., from one operating manufacturer to another, with the later links riding public M&A (the CommScope/BNS acquisition of TE Connectivity's ADC business) and intra-group reorganizations. Zero NPE signals fire — no licensing-only shell, no known asserter, no defensive aggregator, no bankruptcy sale — and all post-2015 recordings are secured-lien filings on CommScope group debt (the one disclosed reel/frame, Reel 049905/Frame 0504, is a released JPMorgan security interest).

Caveat, stated because it changes the label: the "assertion" prong of the verdict is unverified — I found no lawsuit naming US 7,400,814. What the record affirmatively establishes is operating-company ownership by CommScope Technologies LLC, a fiber-connectivity manufacturer whose ADC/CommScope product lines plausibly embody the claims; if strict proof of competitor litigation is required, re-classify as operating-company ownership, non-asserting, pending a docket check. The correspondent fields must still be pulled live — signal #3 is unresolved and is the most probable place a hidden pattern, if any, would appear.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7400814; the indexed mirror is https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). For the contemporaneous litigation/PTAB question, a native PACER/CAFC and PTAB docket query is required — general web search is not a substitute.

I'll run targeted searches on the patent number and each cited reference before analyzing.

Let me confirm a few citation details (inventors/dates) and check for any litigation/PTAB context tied to this number.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,400,814 B1

Record confirmed (step 1). I searched for the literal number 7400814 and retrieved the record for US 7,400,814 B1, "Wall-mountable optical fiber and cable management apparatus," application 11/728,785, filed 2007-03-27, claiming priority to provisional 60/880,169 filed 2007-01-13. 17 claims, one independent (claim 1). Sources retrieved: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7400814/en) and the USPTO-data mirror https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7,400,814.

Scope / tooling caveat: my retrieval went through Google Patents' and uspto.report's USPTO-derived records rather than a direct PatentCenter session, and I did not return results for look-alike numbers (e.g., 7,400,415, 7,008,014, 7,040,814). Nothing in the "References Cited" set below is a substituted or adjacent number — each is taken literally from the face of US 7,400,814.

The task header states the current date as April 26, 2026; my system context says September 29, 2026. Neither changes the analysis, but flagging it since §102 depends on dates.

Applicable §102 framework

Because 11/728,785 was filed before 2013-03-16, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs. Effective critical date is the 2007-01-13 provisional filing (priority date), so:

• §102(a)/(b): references publicly known/patented/published before 2007-01-13 (or before the 2007-03-27 actual filing date for §102(a) subject to the §102(b) one-year bar inquiry).
• §102(e): earlier-filed, later-published U.S. applications/patents, prior art as of their filing date.

Anticipation requires every element of a claim in a single reference, arranged as claimed. I analyze each of-record reference accordingly, without reading the references as anticipating any claim merely because they share field.

A. The "References Cited" on the face of US 7,400,814

The patent lists four unique patent documents (plus two reexamination certificates of one of them) and three non-patent items. Google Patents' citation table marks US 5,987,203 and US 6,927,340 with an asterisk ("cited by examiner"); US 4,976,510 and WO 93/22695 appear in the table without a marker.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4976510B2/en, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7f/ad/90/d33142dbdc17f4/US4976510.pdf, https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1993022695A1, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5987203, https://patents.google.com/patent/US6927340. Corroborating aggregator entries: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-4976510-A, https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5987203-A.

B. Reference-by-reference: description and §102 exposure

1. US 4,976,510 A / B1 / B2 — Siecor "Communication outlet" (1990; reexam certs 1994, 1995)

Brief description. A wall communications outlet with a backplate having a central circular opening; first and second sets of sidewalls ringed about the opening to form a storage area for optical fibers or copper wires (claim 1 requires the first set of sidewalls to have a minimum inner radius ≥ 3 cm; the specification remarks that 2 cm suffices to protect the fibers); fiber-retaining tabs project from the second set of sidewalls; upstanding posts with slots hold connector panels that can be slid in and out, the panels carrying connector sleeves (e.g., simplex fiber sleeves, duplex FDDI, modular jacks). Cables can enter through the hole in the backplate or through openings in the side of the outlet cover; side-entry cables are supported in mounting troughs and tied.

Why it is the structurally closest of-record reference. It discloses the concentric-annulus fiber-storage concept (claim 1, element (b)) and a slotted, swappable connector panel (claims 8–9) in a wall-mountable housing.

§102 mapping — which claims it could plausibly be asserted against:

2. WO 93/22695 A1 — Edera, ribbon-cable distribution device (1993)

Brief description. A compact "diffusor" for optical ribbon cables: a plastic card housing a demountable MT4 semi-connector fanning to four SC-2 semi-connectors; circular grooves on which the ribbon/fibers are wound to assure the minimum curvature radius at every obligatory passage; a blocking system 11 for the reinforced protective tubes that "allows to carry eventual longitudinal stresses during the phase of traction of the semiconnectors."

§102 mapping:

3. US 5,987,203 A — Lucent, "Distribution module for optical couplings" (1999)

Brief description. A distribution module for a conventional electrical panel integrating optical and electrical couplings: a housing with a passage holding interchangeable high-density modular coupling strips (ST/SC/FC/LC variants; cap-and-base strips that snap apart for field cleaning); a slack tray attached to the housing that spools the buffered fiber and provides strain relief, with the spool drum radius chosen to satisfy the fiber manufacturer's minimum bend radius; a retainer for front-side mounting.

§102 mapping:

4. US 6,927,340 B1 — Serconet, wall-cavity faceplate adapter (2005)

Brief description. A purely mechanical mounting adapter that lets a junction-box-style faceplate be installed in a cylindrical wall cavity/sleeve (common in Europe/Middle East), using expandable clamps and 3¼-inch-spaced mounting points. Family: WO 03/028181 A1, EP 1 430 581 B1, DE 601 08533 T2.

§102 mapping: This reference discloses essentially only the claim 1 preamble — "a base constructed and arranged for mounting on a wall or other surface at a subscriber premises." It has no drum region, no inner/outer cylindrical wall, no annular fiber routing region, no cable entry port, no interface compartment, no connector panel.

• Anticipation: none of claims 1–17. Even claim 1's preamble is not claim 1 as a whole.
• Its only legitimate role is as §102(a)/(b)/§103 evidence that wall-mounting a communications fixture over a cavity is old — cumulative with the NPL items below.

Non-patent literature

C. Bottom line on the of-record art

1. No reference of record anticipates any of claims 1–17 as issued. Claim 1 is the whole inventive combination — (i) wall-mount base, (ii) upstanding drum with outer wall that carries a wound length of cable, (iii) inner wall defining an annular fiber routing region, (iv) entry port in the outer wall admitting the wound cable's inside end, and (v) interface compartment atop the drum. No single reference supplies all five.
2. The strongest §103 combination from the record is US 4,976,510 (annual/concentric fiber-storage region + slotted swappable connector panels) + US 5,987,203 (connector panel with interchangeable adapters, slack spool with minimum-bend-radius drum and strain relief), optionally + WO 93/22695 for tangential path/strength-member strain relief and multi-fiber demountable connectors, + the ADC/Corning/Multilink NPL for the wall-mountable-enclosure-with-ports commercial context, + US 6,927,340 for the uncontested wall-mounting element. That is an obviousness theory (§103), not anticipation.
3. Claims with the highest §102 exposure are the narrow dependent claims — particularly claim 9 (US 4,976,510's slidably removable panels; US 5,987,203's interchangeable strips), claim 8 (connector panel with dual-side coupling), and claim 13 (multi-fiber couplings — WO 93/22695's MT4; US 5,987,203's high-density strips). The drum/annulus/wound-cable core of claim 1 is where the record is weakest.

D. Additional candidate prior art not on the face of US 7,400,814 (flagged as my own identification)

The examiner's search appears to have missed or not cited the closest spool-in-enclosure art. Candidates to verify:

• US 7,478,829 B2 — Multilink, Inc., Slack cable storage box — filed 2006-04-27 → potential §102(e) art as of its filing date (predates 2007-01-13). Likely the patent-side counterpart to the cited Multilink 2007 catalog family and therefore the item to check first.
• US 6,243,526 B1 — Storage spool assembly for optical fiber — issued 2001-06-05 → spool with bend-radius control.
• US 7,346,253 B2 — Corning, Fiber optic drop cable slack storage receptacle — filed 2003-12-24.
• US 7,315,681 B2 — Kewitsch, Fiber optic rotary coupling and devices — filed 2004-08-09.
• US 7,120,347 B2 — Corning, Multi-port optical connection terminal — filed 2004-01-27.

Each supplies one or two claim elements (spool, wall-mount enclosure, connector panel, port) but none alone discloses the claim 1 combination. I have not independently verified each of these against its full specification, so treat them as leads rather than conclusions.

E. Confidence and open items

• High confidence: the patent's identity, dates, claim count, and the content of the four of-record patent citations (verified against Google Patents and the reference PDFs).
• Medium confidence: the assignee field "Lucent Technologies Inc." for US 5,987,203 and the "Abel et al." inventorship attribution (from a FreePatentsOnline secondary listing); and the exact filing/publication day for the Multilink 2007 catalog, which governs whether it is §102(b) art at all.
• Known ID discrepancies I am not harmonizing: Unified Patents lists US 4,976,510 with priority 1989-11-19 and grant 1990-12-10, while the patent and Google Patents say 1989-11-20 / 1990-12-11; and Unified Patents dates US 7,400,814 itself to 2007-01-12 versus the document's 2007-01-13. These are aggregator rounding artifacts; the literal document dates control.
• Not established: whether any of these references was the specific basis of a rejection, and whether any litigation or PTAB proceeding involving 7,400,814 exists — my earlier searches found none, but did not query PACER/PTAB directly. Unverified, not disproven.

I'll ground this analysis by pulling details on the prior-art references listed on the patent page (examiner citations, family citations) before building the § 103 combinations.

Good grounding on the primary examiner citations. Now I need the strain-relief, payout-mandrel, splice-chamber and connector-parking art.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,400,814 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent analyzed: US 7,400,814 B1, "Wall-mountable optical fiber and cable management apparatus" (Appl. 11/728,785; filed 2007‑03‑27; priority U.S. Prov. 60/880,169 filed 2007‑01‑13) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7400814B1](/patent/US7400814B1)/en

Note on the priority date: the page states a prior-art date of 2007‑01‑13, which I use as the effective date. (My earlier section flagged an aggregator listing of 2007‑01‑12; I continue to use the literal date from the authoritative document.)

1. Framework and skill level

This is a pre‑AIA application (effective filing 2007‑01‑13), so pre‑AIA § 103(a) governs and the Graham v. John Deere factors apply; the KSR Int'l v. Teleflex rationales (predictable variation, known technique to improve similar devices, obvious design incentives/market pressure, "the improvement is a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions") are the operative analytical tools. MPEP 2143 rationales (A)–(G) are used below.

Level of ordinary skill (my construction): a packaging/mechanical designer (BSME or equivalent) with ~2–4 years in fiber-distribution enclosures for outside-plant/premises deployment, familiar with: minimum bend-radius constraints of optical fiber, cable spooling/payout hardware, standard optical connector adapters (LC/SC/FC/ST/MPO) and modular adapter panels, and strain-relief practice for jacketed strength-membered fiber cable. All the references below are in the same field, and this is a non‑pioneering, crowded art (the patent itself concedes a whole pre-existing industry of wall-mountable drop boxes).

2. Which references on the page are actually prior art

This is the single most important scoping step. The Open Data Gateway page lists three categories, and they are not interchangeable:

The 151 entries under "Family Cites Families" are mixed; the pre‑2007 ones (e.g., US 6,243,526; US 6,315,598; US 5,335,874; US 6,511,009; US 6,711,339; US 6,215,938; US 6,580,866; US 7,266,283; US 7,266,280; DE 3841607; FR 2 730 319) are usable, and I rely on several below.

NPL caveat: the ADC and Corning items are expressly listed as undated, and the Multilink catalog is a "2007" catalog. An undated catalog/web page is weak § 102(b) evidence, though the instant patent's own Background adopts them as the state of the art ("Current industry practice calls for the boxes to have a cable entry port at the left side… and one or more ports at the right side…"), which makes them usable at minimum as applicant admissions about the field and about the problem to be solved. Flagging this, not papering over it.

3. What each available reference teaches (with pinpoints)

R1 — US 4,976,510 A/B1/B2, "Communication outlet," Davila et al. (Siecor), filed 1989‑11‑20, issued 1990‑12‑11. https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4976510B2](/patent/US4976510B2)/en ; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7f/ad/90/d33142dbdc17f4/US4976510.pdf

This is the closest single reference and, in my view, the most dangerous one — it is nearly a structural anticipation of the drum region of claim 1:

• "backplate having first and second sides, the backplate having an opening therein for receiving a cable" → § 1 "base … for mounting on a wall or other surface";
• "a first set of sidewalls mounted to the first side of the backplate, … ringed about the opening and having a minimum inner radius equal to or greater than three centimeters" → inner cylindrical wall;
• "a second set of sidewalls mounted to the first side of the backplate ringed about the first set of sidewalls" → outer cylindrical wall;
• "the radius of first set of sidewalls 22 is at least sufficient to prevent damage to optical fibers placed between the first and second sets of sidewalls due to an excessive degree of bending" → the annular region between two concentric walls being used as a bend-radius-protected fiber routing/storage region (claim 1(b));
• "fiber retaining tabs 24 … tabs 31 project from the second set of sidewalls to help keep the fibers in place" → claim 10's "fingers or tabs";
• "upstanding posts … with slots therein to accommodate connector panels held in the slots … panels can be slideably removed and inserted … to hold connector sleeves" → claims 8 and 9;
• "Cables can enter the wall outlet through the hole in the backplate or from openings in the side of an outlet cover" → two cable ingress locations (claim 12 motif) and, critically, a central opening whose axis coincides with the axis of the concentric sidewalls (claim 7 motif);
• "It can be mounted on single or double electrical boxes … for surface mounting" → wall/subscriber-premises mounting.

R2 — US 6,315,598 B1, "Outlet box with cable management spool," Elliot et al. (ADC Telecommunications), filed 2000‑02‑01, issued 2001‑11‑13. https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6315598B1](/patent/US6315598B1)

• A wall/surface-mountable outlet box: "a housing defining a connector access opening, and a connector holder mounted adjacent the connector access opening"; "a cradle … and a cable management spool mounted in the cradle, at least a portion of the spool … outside the housing."
• Expresses the governing design rationale verbatim: "Effective cable management prevents cables from becoming intertwined and enhances signal transmission quality by ensuring that minimum bend radius requirements are maintained."
• Accommodates different connector types (modular jack, BNC, F, RCA, SC fiber, ST fiber adapters) → the interface-compartment/connector-panel element of claim 1, and the multiple-adapter-type aspect of claims 8/9/13.

R3 — US 6,243,526 B1, "Storage spool assembly for optical fiber," Avaya Technology Corp., filed 1999‑10‑26, issued 2001‑06‑05. https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6243526B1](/patent/US6243526B1) ; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/20/15/6c/38f01daebe66f4/US6243526.pdf

• A cylindrical spool whose "outer surface 16 is configured with a radius of curvature adapted for ensuring that optical fibers wound thereon will comply with a minimum bend radius" → claim 1(a) outer cylindrical wall dimensioned to support a wound length.
• "a plurality of angularly-spaced, radially projecting retaining tabs 22 … retaining wall segments 24 … preventing fibers wound on the spool from slipping off" → claims 10/11 (tabs or flange to confine the winding).
• "fingers 58 … extend across at least a portion of the outer surface 16 and are spaced radially therefrom for maintaining the fibers on or close to the outer surface 16" → claim 10's "fingers or tabs … [that] confine a length of cable."
• "guide 48 … formed as an arcuate segment that extends at least partially across and is spaced radially from the outer surface 16 of the spool … also ensures that the minimum bend radius of the fibers is maintained" → an arcuate guide defining an arcuate/annular routing channel radially outside the winding surface — the functional equivalent of the claimed annular fiber routing region, achieved with a curved wall concentric-ish to the spool.
• "connectors 42 may be engaged within … coupler 30 … The optical fibers 44 extending from the connectors 42 then may be wound about the spool 12" → an interface (coupler/adapter) at one side and a wound fiber on the other, i.e., the interface/winding architecture of claim 1.
• "cable tie holes 60 … adapted to receive cable ties 62 for securing the position of an optical fiber cable jacket 64" → claim 3/4 motif (mechanical anchoring of the cable's jacket/strength structure so pulling force does not reach the fibers).
• The assembly is expressly designed to be mounted into a faceplate of a wall outlet box.

R4 — US 5,987,203 A, "Distribution module for optical couplings," Abel et al. (Lucent), filed 1997‑10‑09, issued 1999‑11‑16. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5987203 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5,987,203](/patent/5987203)

• A housing with a passage in which high-density modular coupling strips are secured; the strips are "chosen based on the type of connectors to be coupled," "like types of strips are interchangeable," and the module "can be used with coupling strips" of different connector types → claims 8 and 9 in substance.
• "a slack tray can be attached to the housing that spools and offers strain relief to the buffered fiber … The drum radius on which the fiber is spooled is appropriately chosen to satisfy any minimum bend radius requirements of the fiber manufacturer" → claims 2–4 rationale: slack/routing on a drum plus strain relief, both tied to bend-radius compliance.

R5 — WO 93/22695 A1, "A distribution device with demountable connectors, for the termination of optical ribbon cables," Edera, published 1993‑11‑11. https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1993022695A1

• A termination/distribution enclosure accepting a ribbon (multi-fiber flat) cable whose fibers are broken out and terminated in demountable connectors. Relevant to (i) the ribbon-cable handling that the instant specification's strain-relief device 224 is built around (the patent's own "flat ribbon fiber optic cable 260"), and (ii) claims 14/15 (connectorized cable end).

R6 — US 6,927,340 B1, "Adapter for mounting a faceplate of a first style on to an electrical outlet cavity of a second style," Serconet, filed 2001‑09‑25, issued 2005‑08‑09. https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6927340B1](/patent/US6927340B1)

• Teaches field-interchangeable faceplate/adapter panes to adapt one mounting format to another → supports the claim 9 "removable and exchangeable panel" concept and the claim 12 "port in the form of a large opening through an alternate connector panel" concept. Its relevance is ancillary but real, and its presence among the four examiner citations indicates the examiner himself viewed panel interchangeability as known.

R7 — US 7,356,237 B2, "Optical fiber cable termination apparatus," Tyco Electronics Corp., filed 2005‑07‑25, issued 2008‑04‑08. https://patents.google.com/patent/US7356237

• Pre‑2007 effective date → available under pre‑AIA § 102(e) as of its 2005‑07‑25 filing.
• Discloses a housing whose interior is divided by a partition into an upper compartment and a lower compartment ("housing 101 … interior cavity 115 divided into an upper compartment or chamber 115A and a lower compartment or chamber 115B by the partition member 150") — i.e., a two-tier, stacked housing of the same genus as the claimed "interface compartment disposed atop the drum";
• a "tubular fiber entrance" and an "extension … extending outwardly from the sidewall, the extension defining a passage having an axis and in communication with the fiber port," with entrance/exit axes oblique "to facilitate bend radius control of optical fibers" → a cable entry port formed through a wall of the housing, tangentially/obliquely guided for bend-radius control — the functional core of claim 2.
• This reference was itself cited against the EP member of this family (EP1944635A3 lists US7356237B2 as a considered document), which is useful corroboration that the family's European examiner regarded it as material.

R8 — Additional pre‑2007 art from the family-citation list (available, disclosed as related art): US 5,335,874 (Siecor, Connectorized optical fiber cable reel — a reel carrying factory-connectorized fiber cable, directly on point for claims 14/15); US 6,511,009 (Cisco, Fiber optic cable spool); US 6,711,339 (ADC, Fiber management module with cable storage); US 6,215,938 (ADC, Fiber optic cabinet and tray); US 6,580,866 (Lucent, Fiber splice holder with protected slack storage feature); US 7,266,283 (Fiber Optic Cable Storage Inc., Fiber optic storing and dispensing apparatus); US 7,266,280 (Avago, Cable storage device providing continuous adjustability with controlled bend radius); DE 3841607 (Siemens, cassette for excess lengths of optical fibers in the splice area); FR 2 730 319 (Caudrelier, Fiber optic splice box).

4. The primary obviousness case: R1 + R3 (+ R2) renders claims 1, 2, 10, 14 obvious; R4 renders 8, 9, 13 obvious; R5/R7 supply the porting/entry feature and the stacked-compartment architecture

4.1 Claim 1 — element-by-element

Conclusion on claim 1: No single reference anticipates all of claim 1 (R1 stores loose fibers in the annulus rather than a cable on the outer wall, and neither R1 nor R3 has a wall-borne entry port into the annulus). But the combination R1 + R3, optionally + R2 and R7, renders claim 1 obvious. Each reference is in the identical field (wall-mountable fiber outlets/enclosures), addresses the identical problem (bend-radius-compliant fiber storage and connection at a premises wall), and each supplies precisely the element it is known for, with no change in their respective principles of operation. That is the paradigm KSR fact pattern — "the improvement is a predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

4.2 The specific KSR/MPEP rationales, articulated

1. Rationale (C)/(D) — known technique to improve a similar device, ready for improvement. R1 already teaches the exact geometry claimed (two concentric cylindrical walls with a bend-radius-protected annular region between them, plus tabs and a slotted connector panel). The only thing R1 lacks is a cable (as opposed to slack fiber) wound on the outer wall and a port admitting that cable's inside end. R3 supplies exactly that: a cylindrical winding surface whose radius is chosen against minimum bend radius, retaining tabs, radial retaining fingers, and an arcuate bend-radius guide. Substituting/adding R3's cable-winding drum to R1's wall-mounted backplate is applying a known technique to a known device that was ready for improvement (the patent's own Background says the industry wanted smaller drop boxes that store cable).

2. Rationale (B)/(F) — design incentive and market pressure. The instant patent's own Background admits: (i) industry practice already placed a provider-cable entry on one side and subscriber ports on the other; (ii) existing boxes were "relatively large" because they accommodated older, 3‑inch-minimum-bend cable; (iii) reducing size/labor was the pressing need. Both R2 and R3 expressly recite the same design objective ("effective cable management … ensuring that minimum bend radius requirements are maintained"; "the drum radius … appropriately chosen to satisfy any minimum bend radius requirements" — R4). A POSITA therefore had a stated, shared design goal to combine concentric-wall bend-radius management with spooled cable storage in a wall box.

3. Rationale (A) — simple substitution, predictable result. Making the outer wall's circumference the cable-winding surface, and the inner wall the bend-radius-defining core, is a mere substitution of one known fiber-handling geometry (R1/R3) for another in a known box (R2), with predictable results (protected routing, retained winding). No new principle of operation is required, and no reference teaches away.

4. Rationale (G) — predictable variation / design choice. Continuous disk flange (claim 11) vs. discrete tabs/fingers (claim 10) is a recognized design choice with no unexpected effect (R3's "angularly-spaced retaining tabs 22" and "retaining wall segments 24" bracket both options; the patent's own two embodiments differ only in this respect — FIG. 1 tabs 38 vs. FIG. 5 flange 204).

4.3 The one genuinely distinguishing element — and why it is still obvious

Claim 1(c)'s "first cable entry port formed in the outer cylindrical wall" is the only feature I cannot point to as literally disclosed in R1/R3. It is disclosed in substance by R7 ("an extension extending outwardly from the sidewall … defining a passage … in communication with the fiber port … to facilitate bend radius control") and is inherent in R2 (the wound cable necessarily passes from the spool through the housing wall to the connector holder). Providing an aperture through a housing wall so that a cable can pass into the housing is the most elementary mechanical expedient in the enclosure art (see also R1's own backplate opening and cover side openings). In re Kuhle–type design-choice reasoning and the KSR "predictable variation" rationale dispose of it.

5. Dependent claims

6. The single strongest three-reference rejection (for an invalidity contention)

R1 (US 4,976,510) in view of R3 (US 6,243,526), further in view of R4 (US 5,987,203).

• R1 supplies the wall-mountable base, the concentric inner/outer cylindrical walls with a bend-radius-protected annular region between them, the retaining tabs, and the slide-in connector panel — i.e., claim 1's base, drum region walls, annular region, and interface element.
• R3 supplies the conversion of that geometry into a cable-winding drum (outer surface radius ≥ minimum bend radius; retaining tabs/segments; radial retaining fingers; arcuate radial guide that guarantees bend radius; adapter/coupler at the interface; cable-jacket tie-down) — i.e., claim 1(a), the winding function, claim 10, and claim 2's tangential/radial routing.
• R4 supplies the drum-based slack routing with strain relief, the drum radius selection against the fiber manufacturer's bend-radius spec, and the modular, interchangeable, connector-type-selected adapter strips — i.e., claims 2–4 rationale, 8, 9 and 13.
• Motivation: all three are in the same art, the same physical setting (a premises wall outlet/enclosure), and address the same problem (bend-radius-safe fiber storage with connectorized interfaces). R2 and the applicant's own admitted industry practice supply the "box with both a provider-side and subscriber-side connection point" context, and the patent's Background supplies the explicit motivation (smaller, easier-to-install MDU drop boxes).

A secondary, independent combination — R7 (US 7,356,237) + R2 (US 6,315,598) + R4 — attacks the same claim from the opposite direction: R7 gives a partitioned, two-compartment enclosure with a wall-borne cable-entry passage obliquely angled for bend-radius control, R2 gives a spooled cable management box with a connector holder and multiple adapter types, and R4 gives the interchangeable adapter strips and spool-mounted strain relief. This route avoids over-reliance on R1's sidewalls and instead meets the "interface compartment disposed atop the drum" limitation more directly (via R7's stacked compartments 115A/115B).

7. Secondary considerations and counter-arguments (why they likely do not save the claims)

• Teaching away? None found. R2, R3 and R4 all teach toward smaller-radius, bend-radius-managed storage; the instant patent's advance is characterized in its own specification as exploiting newer low-bend-loss fiber (OFS Allwave® Flex™) — that is an available-materials consequence (a known-good material enabling a known design objective), not a technical insight that the art discouraged. Where the only difference is a recognized, commercially available material enabling a smaller version of a known structure, the claims (which recite no dimensions at all) read on the prior-art structures regardless.
• Unexpected results? The claims contain no numerical ranges, no criticality of dimensions, and no asserted result that is not the predictable consequence of the combined teachings. The specification's numbers (3.0 in. drum OD; 0.7874 in. inner wall; ~2.0 in. mean routing diameter) appear only in the description, so they cannot supply patentable weight.
• Commercial success / long-felt need: The family (Commscope/OFS reissues RE45,153; RE46,255; RE48,063; RE49,385 and the successive ADC/Kowalczyk spool-enclosure families) evidences a commercially important product line, and a secondary-consideration case could be asserted. But the nexus burden is high: the claimed advance over R1+R3+R4 is essentially size, and the asserted nexus would have to run to the specific claimed combination rather than to the family's commercial embodiments (which include many unclaimed features — the splice chamber, parking block, lockable spools, etc.). I would expect a court to find the nexus insufficient absent product-level proof tied to claims 1–15. Also, the reissue chain pertains to the separate "Fiber optic cable distribution box" patent (US 7,522,806 line), not to the claims of US 7,400,814 — a point that cuts against using the reissues as probative evidence for these claims.
• Prosecution posture: the examiner cited only four references (R1, R5, R4, R6) and does not appear, from the page, to have combined them in a § 103 rejection. I do not have the full file history, so this is an inference from the citation list only — but a four-reference, no-combination allowance in a crowded, 15‑year-old art is consistent with a rejection that could have been made and was not. That is an invalidity opportunity, not a validity strength.

8. Confidence, gaps, and things I could not verify

High confidence (grounded in retrieved text): the disclosures attributed to US 4,976,510, US 5,987,203, US 6,315,598, US 6,243,526 and US 7,356,237 in § 3, including the verbatim passages quoted.

Medium confidence: the pinpoint applications of US 6,927,340 and WO 93/22695 (I retrieved their subject matter and titles/claims, not their full texts); the characterizations of US 5,335,874, US 6,215,938, US 6,580,866, US 7,266,283, US 7,266,280 and the DE/FR items, which I derived from their titles and citation context on this page rather than from their full texts.

Explicitly not verified:

1. Claim 17 — I did not retrieve a specific pre‑2007 reference to a connector-parking block accepting different commercially available parking strips. My argument for this claim rests on the capability-limitation doctrine and on parking practice generally, not on a pinned reference. Treat claim 17 as the weakest link in the chain.
2. Claim 4 — I flagged US 2007/0127875 A1 (strength members wound about a bridge member and anchored) but could not verify its filing date, so I do not rely on it as § 102(e) art; the claim is supported instead by the general practice of anchoring aramid yarn (and R3's tie-down of jacket 64).
3. Claims 5–7 (through-tube) — my final search round for cable-payout/spool-with-spindle art was cut off by a tool step limit, so the reel-payout references I cite (US 1,276,625; US 5,522,561; US 6,669,129) are from the family-citation list on this page and my own knowledge, not from retrieved text in this session. The core insight — that a central bore in a drum, receiving a screwdriver shaft as a spindle, is a predictable use of a known technique even without a dedicated reference — is legal rather than evidentiary, and I stand behind it, but I want to be clear about what I actually fetched.
4. The three NPL items are undated on the page (beyond "2007" for the Multilink catalog); their § 102(b) status is therefore not established. As I noted, they remain usable as admissions of the problem and of the field.
5. Dates: I used 2007‑01‑13 (document) rather than 2007‑01‑12 (aggregator) for the effective date consistent with my earlier section, and I flagged the conflict rather than harmonizing it.

Bottom line. US 7,400,814's independent claim 1 is, in my assessment, more likely than not obvious under § 103 over US 4,976,510 in view of US 6,243,526 and US 5,987,203 (with US 6,315,598, US 7,356,237, WO 93/22695 and US 6,927,340 as reinforcing references and as the alternative R7-based combination). Every element has a specific, quotable antecedent in the same field; the design objective was admitted in the patent's own Background; and the sole arguably novel element (a cable entry port through the outer drum wall, and the coaxial payout tube) is met by known passage-forming and reel-spindle expedients whose combination produces nothing more than the predictable sum of their parts. Claims 2–15 fall with combinations built from R4/R7/R3, and claims 16–17 are supported by well-known splice-tray and connector-parking practice, though claim 17 rests on the weakest reference footing of the set.