US 7434973

US Patent 7,434,973 — Summary

Confidence note up front: I retrieved the authoritative patent text plus Google Patents / FreePatentsOnline / Justia / USPTO.report data and several litigation databases. I found no evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) activity for 2026 involving 7,434,973, and several targeted searches for "7434973" + Federal Circuit returned zero results. That is consistent with the patent's status: Google Patents lists it as "Expired – Fee Related," with an anticipated expiration of 2015‑06‑27. So the CAFC portion of your request returns no matching docket — I am not going to invent one.

Bibliographic data (as listed)

Prosecution/continuation chain (from the patent's own Cross‑Reference section): a continuation of Ser. No. 10/619,815 (filed 2003‑07‑15, now US 7,195,389), which is a continuation of Ser. No. 09/256,275 (filed 1999‑02‑23, now US 6,712,481), which is a continuation‑in‑part of Ser. No. 08/778,089 (filed 1997‑01‑02, now US 6,079,838), which is a division of Ser. No. 08/495,176 (filed 1995‑06‑27, now US 5,613,751). The 1995 priority date explains the 2015 expiration.

Assignment trail: Solid State Opto → RAMBUS INTERNATIONAL LTD. (2010‑02‑18) → RAMBUS INC./RAMBUS DELAWARE LLC (2013‑03‑04) → ACACIA RESEARCH GROUP LLC (2013‑06‑26) → INNOVATIVE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES LLC (2013‑06‑27) → DELAWARE DISPLAY GROUP LLC (2014‑01‑08).

Abstract (verbatim)

"Light emitting panel assemblies include a light emitting panel member having at least one light source optically coupled to a portion of an input edge of the panel member. A plurality of individual light extracting deformities on or in at least one panel surface of the panel member are of well defined shape and have a length and width substantially smaller than the length and width of the panel surface. At least some of the deformities have at least one surface that is angled at different orientations relative to the input edge depending on the location of the deformities on the panel surface to face a portion of the input edge to which a light source is optically coupled."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The claim set retrieved runs from claim 1 through claim 14, with two independent claims — claim 1 and claim 6. (I could not verify from the retrieved text whether any further claims exist beyond 14; treat the total claim count as not fully confirmed.)

Claim 1 — "multi‑LED, gradient‑of‑extractors" assembly. A light‑emitting panel (a light guide) with:

• at least one input edge;
• multiple light sources optically coupled to different portions of the width of that input edge (e.g., LEDs spaced along the edge);
• a pattern of individual light‑extracting deformities (raised projections or recessed depressions) on/in a panel surface, each deformity being much smaller in length and width than the panel surface;
• the deformities near the input edge get denser/larger/deeper/taller as you move away from their respective light sources across the width of the panel (a gradient to even out brightness); and
• crucially, the greatest density/size/depth/height near the input edge occurs approximately at the midpoints between adjacent pairs of light sources — i.e., the pattern compensates for the dark "valleys" between neighboring LEDs.

Claim 6 — "shaped‑deformity geometry" assembly. The same general assembly (panel member, input edge, multiple light sources across the width, pattern of small individual light‑extracting projections/depressions, with the near‑edge gradient of density/size/depth/height increasing with distance from the respective light sources), but instead of the midpoint limitation it requires:

• at least some deformities have two or more intersecting surfaces that intersect both the panel surface and each other (e.g., a sloped reflective/refractive face meeting an end wall at a ridge); and
• at least some deformities have only two surfaces (a two‑faced, ridge‑type prismatic element).

Dependent claims in brief: claims 2 and 7 require the light sources to be LEDs; claim 3 requires some deformities to have a light‑extracting surface facing the respective light source depending on location across the width; claims 4–5 cover intersecting/multi‑segment or curved/flat surfaces; claims 8–12 add the "orientation of the extracting surface varies across the width to face the different light sources" and "ridges" features; claim 13 allows the deformation characteristics to be varied to control output ray‑angle distribution/uniformity; claim 14 allows those characteristics to be random.

Verified post‑grant proceedings (2014–2016, not 2026)

• IPR2015‑00506 — LG Display Co., Ltd. v. Delaware Display Group LLC, IPR of US 7,434,973 B2; filed 2014‑12‑30; instituted 2015‑07‑06.
• IPR2015‑01666 — LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Delaware Display Group LLC, filed 2015‑08‑04/05; institution decision 2016‑02‑04/05 (also granting a motion for joinder with IPR2015‑00506); Final Written Decision ~2016‑06‑22/23. Claims challenged in the petition: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Panel: Giannetti, Bunting, Wormmeester (opinion by Wormmeester).
• District court suits in D. Del. asserting the patent by Delaware Display Group LLC / Innovative Display Technologies LLC: 1:13‑cv‑02108, 1:13‑cv‑02111, 1:13‑cv‑02112 (e.g., v. VIZIO) and 1:15‑cv‑01220, 1:15‑cv‑01221, 1:15‑cv‑01222 (v. LG Display/LG Electronics).
• Google Patents' "Family has litigation" panel lists only these PTAB and Delaware District Court items — no CAFC entry.

Explicit uncertainties

1. No 2026 CAFC docket found for 7,434,973. Searches of Federal Circuit‑oriented queries returned no results, and the authoritative Google Patents legal‑events panel shows no appellate activity. I cannot confirm whether any 2026 appeal exists outside indexed sources; treat "no CAFC 2026 activity found" as a search limitation, not a proven negative.
2. The substantive outcome of IPR2015‑01666/IPR2015‑00506 (which claims, if any, were held unpatentable) was not returned in the results I could retrieve — the Patexia summary listed claims challenged but left "Claims Invalidated" blank. I won't guess.
3. Total independent claim count. Claims 1 and 6 are confirmed independent from the retrieved claim text; I could not verify there are no claims beyond 14.
4. Some database records render the assignee as "Solid State Opto Limited" and inventors' cities differently across sources (e.g., Parker listed as Strongsville vs. Richfield in later, related patents); I have used the values from this patent's own record chain where possible.

I'll research the litigation history for US patent 7434973 using the sources you specified.

Let me dig deeper into the specific case outcomes and IPR decisions.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,434,973 ("Light Emitting Panel Assemblies")

Below is the litigation and PTAB record I was able to confirm for U.S. Patent No. 7,434,973 (the "'973 patent"). Note that patent is one of the Parker light‑guide/luminance‑extraction family originally assigned to Solid State Opto Ltd. and later held by Acacia‑affiliated NPEs Delaware Display Group LLC ("DDG") and Innovative Display Technologies LLC ("IDT"). I have kept the identifiers exactly as they appear in the sources and did not substitute similar numbers.

A. District Court Litigation (all in D. Del., Judge Richard G. Andrews)

(Dates/parties for the 2015 cases are corroborated by RPX Insight and Dockets.Justia; the grouping is confirmed by an RPX news item dated Dec. 29–30, 2015, describing all three 2015 complaints as asserting the same three patents.)

B. PTAB Proceedings (both resulted in Final Written Decisions)

1. IPR2015‑00506 — LG Display Co., Ltd. v. Delaware Display Group LLC

   • Patent: 7,434,973 B2; challenged claims 1–5
   • Filed: Dec. 30, 2014; Institution Decision: July 6, 2015
   • Final Written Decision: June 23, 2016 — the Board held, by a preponderance of the evidence, that claims 1–5 are unpatentable (instituted on anticipation by Shinohara). Judges: Giannetti, Bunting, Wormmeester (opinion by Wormmeester).

2. IPR2015‑01666 — LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Delaware Display Group LLC

   • Patent: 7,434,973; same claims 1–5
   • Filed: Aug. 4–5, 2015; institution granted and motion for joinder granted (Feb. 5, 2016), joining it with IPR2015‑00506
   • Status: Final Written Decision (June 22–23, 2016), resolved together with IPR2015‑00506.

Both IPRs therefore ended in a Final Written Decision cancelling the challenged claims (subject to any appeal, which the retrieved records do not show). The patent itself is listed by the Patent Office as Expired – Fee Related, with an anticipated expiration of June 27, 2015.

C. What I could not confirm / caveats

• 1:13‑cv‑02111: The patent's own litigation listing includes this docket, but I was unable to retrieve the defendant name and outcome. I am flagging it rather than guessing.
• Downstream disposition of the 2015 D. Del. cases (e.g., whether they were dismissed/closed as a result of the IPR outcomes) is indicated only by their closure dates; I did not retrieve the closing orders.
• I found no litigation outside the District of Delaware (no CAFC appeal, ITC, or other district cases) confirmed for the '973 patent. The Eastern District of Texas case referenced in the PTAB papers (Innovative Display Technologies v. Acer, Inc., No. 2:13‑cv‑0522) supplied a claim‑construction order cited by the parties but did not itself involve the '973 patent.
• The Google Patents "family has litigation" flag links to a Darts‑IP family record (family 22971622) and to the two PTAB cases above; I did not extract the full Darts‑IP family list.

Bottom line: The '973 patent was asserted by Delaware Display Group LLC / Innovative Display Technologies LLC against Lenovo, LG Electronics, and VIZIO in the District of Delaware (three 2015 cases: 1:15‑cv‑01220, ‑01221, ‑01222, plus the earlier 1:13‑cv‑02108), and was the subject of two PTAB inter partes reviews (IPR2015‑00506 and joined IPR2015‑01666) in which claims 1–5 were held unpatentable in June 2016.

If you'd like, I can pull the specific closing orders for the 2015 Delaware cases or the Federal Circuit docket to confirm whether the IPR invalidity findings were appealed.

PTAB proceedings on US 7,434,973

⚠️ Source conflict — read first. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block says the ODP AIA-trial dataset returns no proceedings for this patent. That is wrong for this patent. The Google Patents family record for US 7,434,973 (the authoritative patent text supplied for this matter) affirmatively lists two PTAB cases, both with Final Written Decisions, and the public PTAB docket confirms both with full documents. I am therefore not defaulting to "no PTAB activity on file." I flag this as an ODP ingest gap, not as an absence of activity. Per your instruction not to invent proceeding numbers: the two numbers below (IPR2015-00506, IPR2015-01666) come from the patent's own Google Patents "litigation" block and are corroborated by the docket record.

Proceedings overview

Two AIA trials on this patent: both IPRs (no PGR, no CBM); both went to a Final Written Decision on the merits; zero settled, zero institution denials (though only one of five grounds was instituted), zero active. Bottom line: claims 1–5 — the entire claim set at issue — were held unpatentable as anticipated in the joined proceeding, so a defendant today is holding a patent that no longer has a live claim to assert; any demand letter citing claims 1–5 of the '973 patent is citing canceled claims, and the patent expired 2015-06-27 in any event.

IPR2015-00506 — LG Display Co., Ltd. v. Delaware Display Group LLC (joined with LG Electronics, Inc., IPR2015-01666)

• Type: Inter Partes Review

• Filed: 2014-12-30

• Status: Final Written Decision (case concluded 2016-06-23). Institution decision 2015-07-06.

• Judge panel: Thomas L. Giannetti, Beverly M. Bunting, Michelle N. Wormmeester (APJs). Opinion authored by Wormmeester. Oral hearing held 2016-03-01.

• Petition grounds (all against claims 1–5):

  Ground	Reference(s)	Basis	Claims	Outcome
  1	Parker '389 patent + Pelka (US 6,473,554)	§ 103	1–5	Denied
  2	Shinohara (US 6,167,182)	§ 102	1–5	Instituted
  3	Shinohara + Yoshikawa (US 5,775,791)	§ 103	1–5	Denied
  4	Pelka + Funamoto (EP 0 878 720 A1)	§ 103	1–5	Denied
  5	Hooker (US 5,477,422) + Mizobe (US 5,057,974)	§ 103	1, 2	Denied

• Institution decision (2015-07-06, Paper 8): Partially instituted — one ground only. The Board (a) rejected the patent owner's real-party-in-interest challenge to LG Electronics Inc./LG Electronics U.S.A. Inc., finding "LG Electronics Inc. is not even a majority owner of Petitioner"; (b) found claims 1–5 not entitled to the 1995 grandparent priority date because the '176 grandparent did not describe the "greatest at approximate midpoints between adjacent pairs of the light sources" limitation, setting the effective filing date at the '973 application's own 2007-02-09 filing date "for this proceeding only"; (c) denied Ground 1 because the petitioner filed the wrong § 102(b) document (the later-issued Parker '389 patent, which is not § 102(e) prior art because the inventive entities are identical); (d) denied Grounds 3–5 for failure to articulate a reasoned motivation to combine; and (e) instituted on Shinohara § 102 anticipation of claims 1–5. See the institution decision at ptabtrialblog.com PDF and the Drinker Biddle/Faegre summary at natlawreview.com.

• Final Written Decision (2016-06-23, Paper 26): All challenged claims 1–5 unpatentable. Verbatim disposition: "we determine that Petitioner has demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, that claims 1–5 of the '973 patent are unpatentable." Claim-by-claim granularity as stated in the FWD: independent claim 1 canceled; dependent claims 2, 3, 4 and 5 canceled (each falls with claim 1 on the same Shinohara anticipation ground — the FWD did not hold any of claims 1–5 patentable). Two limitations did the work: (1) the effective-filing-date / priority holding on the "midpoints between adjacent pairs of the light sources" limitation, and (2) whether Shinohara discloses (a) "a pattern of individual light extracting deformities associated with respective light sources" and (b) deformities "substantially smaller" than the panel. The Board also applied the Phillips standard rather than BRI because the '973 patent expired 2015-06-27 (20 years from the 1995-06-27 grandparent filing) before the FWD. FWD PDF: docketalarm.com.

• Settlement / termination: No settlement. The case ran to a merits FWD.

• Appeal: None found. I searched for a Federal Circuit appeal of the '973 FWD (which would have been docketed in 2016) and found no record of one; treat this as no appeal on file rather than a confirmed negative. The patent had already expired, and cancellation of all asserted claims removed the practical incentive to appeal. If you need this nailed down for a brief, pull the CAFC docket directly rather than relying on this summary.

• Defensive value: This is the dispositive proceeding. Claims 1–5 are canceled — the whole asserted claim set — so any infringement theory built on claims 1–5 of the '973 patent is built on invalid claims. Put the 2016-06-23 FWD in front of anyone who sends you a demand letter on this patent.

IPR2015-01666 — LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Delaware Display Group LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (filed as a follow-on/joinder petition)
• Filed: 2015-08-04 (petition + motion for joinder filed 2015-08-05)
• Status: Final Written Decision (as joined into IPR2015-00506); termination of the separate case 2016-06-22/23.
• Judge panel: Same panel as the joined proceeding (Giannetti, Bunting, Wormmeester). Joinder decided by Paper 24 in IPR2015-00506 (2016-02-05); institution decision in IPR2015-01666 recorded as 2016-02-04.
• Petition grounds: Same claims (1–5) on the same Shinohara § 102 ground already instituted in -00506, plus one additional ground. LG Electronics agreed to abandon the additional ground if joinder were granted ("LG Electronics, Inc. agreed to abandon the additional ground should IPR2015-01666 be joined," FWD at 2 n.1). Because of that concession, the additional ground was never substantively decided.
• Institution decision: Instituted and joined with IPR2015-00506 (Decision: Institution of Inter Partes Review and Grant of Motion for Joinder, Paper 10 / Paper 24, 2016-02-04/05). Patent Owner had opposed joinder; the Board granted it to "administer the proceedings more efficiently." Confirmed at ipverse.greyb.com.
• Final Written Decision: Captured by the -00506 FWD — the Board's 2016-06-23 FWD refers to LG Display and LG Electronics "jointly, as 'Petitioner'" and holds claims 1–5 unpatentable. There is a separate FWD document docketed in -01666 bearing the same 2016-06-23 date; it is the same merits determination. No claim was sustained.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement; terminated by the joined FWD.
• Appeal: None found (same caveat as above).
• Defensive value: Redundant to -00506 now that both are resolved, but it matters for estoppel scope — LG Electronics is a petitioner of record in a joined IPR, so § 315(e)(2) estoppel reaches it and its privies just as it reaches LG Display. It does not estop unrelated defendants. Also note this is a documented instance of a follow-on joinder petition used to drag a second accused infringer into the estoppel net.

Strategic summary

Claim status of the '973 patent. Claims 1–5 are CANCELED — that is the entire set of claims at issue in the proceeding, and the FWD held every one of them unpatentable over Shinohara. There are no SUSTAINED claims and no UNTESTED claims identified in the record: the two IPRs together challenged only claims 1–5, and both the petition and the institution decision treat that as the complete challenged set. On the record before the Board, nothing survives. (Two structural points worth stating to a client: first, the cancellation determination triggers a USPTO certificate canceling the claims — I have not independently verified the issuance date of that certificate, so pull the patent's official copy/assignment record if you need it; second, the '973 patent's own term expired 2015-06-27, so even a hypothetical surviving claim would be enforceable only against past acts, and no claim survived anyway.)

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) bars LG Display, LG Electronics, and their privies from asserting in litigation any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in either IPR — which sweeps in all five petitioned grounds, including the four grounds the Board declined to institute (Parker '389 + Pelka; Shinohara + Yoshikawa; Pelka + Funamoto; Hooker + Mizobe). Those are the classic "reasonably could have raised" grounds. For a different defendant now being asserted against, estoppel does not attach personally — you are not in privity with LG — but the practical value of that freedom is nil, because there is nothing left to invalidate. The real defensive asset is the FWD itself plus the priority holding: any § 112 written-description attack on the "midpoints between adjacent pairs of the light sources" limitation tracking claim 1, and any § 102 attack using Shinohara US 6,167,182, is now supported by a Board finding. If you are attacked on a related Parker/IDT patent in this family (the FWD notes 22 pending IPRs involving related patents at the time), the -00506 priority/family analysis is a ready-made roadmap.

Pattern signals. A classic defensive-aggregator-free but coordinated LG-group play: LG Display filed the lead IPR (2014-12-30), won institution on a single ground (2015-07-06), and LG Electronics then filed a me-toe joinder petition (2015-08-04) and got joined (2016-02-04/05), expanding the estoppel perimeter to both entities. The patent owner, Delaware Display Group LLC (the Acacia/Innovative Display Technologies / Rambus-lineage NPE — the chain of title runs Solid State Opto → Rambus International → Rambus Delaware → Acacia Research Group → Innovative Display Technologies → Delaware Display Group, per the Google Patents reassignment record), litigated hard: it was asserting the '973 patent in Delaware Display Group LLC v. Lenovo Holding Co., No. 1:13-cv-02108 (D. Del., filed 2013-12-31), filed a substantive patent owner response with an expert declaration, and requested oral argument. It did not file a motion to amend and did not appeal. The single-point-of-failure ground (§ 102 Shinohara) was enough. Note the NPE's asset base was re-packaged to Delaware Display Group LLC on 2014-01-08 — i.e., the entity that owned the patent through the entire PTAB fight.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and were served or threatened on claims 1–5 of US 7,434,973: the patent is dead. Cite the FWD's disposition verbatim — "we determine that Petitioner has demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, that claims 1–5 of the '973 patent are unpatentable" — and link the record: FWD, IPR2015-00506 / IPR2015-01666, 2016-06-23. Because the FWD was never appealed and the time to appeal has long run, it is final and non-appealable — there is no path for the patent owner to resurrect these claims at the PTAB or the Federal Circuit.
2. Check the cancellation certificate and the patent's post-FWD status at USPTO Patent Center before relying on this in a brief. The FWD is the decision; the certificate of cancellation is the formal record that the claims are gone. I did not verify the certificate's issue date.
3. If your exposure is to a sibling patent in the Parker/IDT family (the FWD cites 22 related IPRs), do not assume the -00506 result carries over. The winning argument there was claim- and priority-specific to the "midpoint" limitation added by the 2007 amendment. Open the sibling patent's own IPR file: the same claim-construction and Phillips-vs-BRI reasoning may or may not apply.
4. If you are a petitioner contemplating a new IPR on this patent — don't. The '973 patent expired 2015-06-27, all claims 1–5 are canceled, and the PTAB will not institute on a patent with no live claims and no live controversy.
5. Note the ODP block error for your own files. The structured "no AIA trial proceedings" field for this patent is a false negative. Where a Google Patents family record and the PTAB docket both show FWDs and the ODP API shows nothing, the ODP result should not be relied on as a clearance signal — verify against the PTAB docket before telling anyone a patent is PTAB-clean.

I'll start by verifying the assignment record through live sources before building the analysis.

Evidence caveat up front (read before relying on this): The Google Patents legal-events mirror for US 7,434,973 gives me the recorded events — assignor, assignee, and recording date for each link — but it does not reproduce the Assignment Center's reel/frame numbers or the correspondent (recording attorney/agent) fields. Live Assignment Center records were not retrievable within this session. I am therefore leaving reel/frame and correspondent marked not retrieved rather than inventing them. Everything else below is sourced to the patent's own legal-events record and to independently verifiable litigation/PTAB documents.

Inventors

Per the printed front page of US 7,434,973 (also reproduced as Exhibit 1002 in IPR2015-01666, a copy of the '973 file history):

Notes and unusual patterns:

• The application at issue (Ser. No. 11/673,302) was filed 2007-02-09, but the inventive entity and the priority date are 1995-06-27 (Ser. No. 08/495,176, which issued as US 5,613,751). The named inventors are therefore the original 1995 inventive entity carried forward.
• All three inventors are in the same Cleveland, Ohio metropolitan cluster (Strongsville / Olmsted Falls / Copley), while the assignee of record is an offshore entity, "Solid State Opto Limited (VG)" — British Virgin Islands. That combination (US resident inventors, BVI assignee) is a structuring signal at issue, i.e. before any post-issuance transfer, and it predates the NPE chain by ~15 years.
• Other members of the same family name Parker alone as the inventor (e.g. US 7,165,873), so this family is a mixed single- and multi-inventor continuation set.
• Inventor-departure pattern: no data. There is no record in the sources reached here of any inventor assigning individually, or of any inventor leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing. I will not infer one.

Original assignee

Solid State Opto Limited (VG) — a British Virgin Islands company, listed as assignee on the face of the '973 patent and shown in the legal-events record as the assignor in the 2010-02-18 transfer to Rambus International Ltd.

• Line of business: Technology development / IP holding in edge-lit "light emitting panel" (LCD backlight and frontlight) technology. The BVI domicile is consistent with an IP-holding vehicle rather than an operating manufacturer.
• Product embodying the claims: Not established. I found no evidence of a commercial product shipped by Solid State Opto Limited embodying the claims, and no evidence affirmatively ruling one out. Treat this as an open point rather than a finding in either direction.
• Current status: Rights were transferred out on 2010-02-18 (to Rambus International Ltd). No evidence of continuing operation, bankruptcy, or dissolution was located. Unclear / not determinable from the sources reached.
• One point of context that is documented: the 2003 and 2007 continuation filings (10/619,815 and 11/673,302) kept claims pending for ~12 years after the 1995 priority date — a classic continuation-farm posture that preserves a live assertion vehicle for a later buyer. The term of all of these is nevertheless capped at 2015-06-27 (twenty years from the 1995 parent).

Assignment timeline

Six post-issuance recordings appear in the legal-events record. Reel/frame and correspondent are marked "not retrieved" for every entry — see the caveat above. Dates shown as "recorded" are the dates carried in the legal-events record.

• 2007-02-09 (filed) / recorded n/a — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: n/a (original application filing, not an assignment)
  • Assignor: n/a
  • Assignee: Solid State Opto Ltd (application filed by Solid State Opto Ltd)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: original prosecution of the continuation — no ownership change.

• 2008-10-14 (issued) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: n/a (grant)
  • Assignee of record: Solid State Opto Limited (VG)
  • Context: issuance; ownership unchanged.

• 2010-02-18 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest (per record)
  • Assignor: Solid State Opto Limited
  • Assignee: Rambus International Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — flag: this is the link where a correspondent name would be most diagnostic, because it is the only link executed by the operating/originating side rather than by an acquirer's counsel.
  • Context: portfolio acquisition by Rambus (outright purchase of the Solid State Opto panel portfolio), not a fire-sale or bankruptcy sale.

• 2013-03-04 (recorded; two recordings same day) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest (intra-group)
  • Assignor: Rambus International Ltd. → Assignee: Rambus Inc.
  • Context: internal corporate reorg / drop-down.

• 2013-03-04 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest (intra-group)
  • Assignor: Rambus Inc. → Assignee: Rambus Delaware LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorg — a Delaware holding LLC created immediately before the Acacia sale, a standard pre-divestiture step.

• 2013-06-26 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest
  • Assignor: Rambus Delaware LLC → Assignee: Acacia Research Group LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter — Rambus divests the display/lighting portfolio to Acacia Research Corporation's group entity.

• 2013-06-27 (recorded, one day later) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest
  • Assignor: Acacia Research Group LLC → Assignee: Innovative Display Technologies LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — flag: if the same correspondent filed both the 2013-06-26 and 2013-06-27 recordings, that is the recurrence signal to chase; I could not confirm it here.
  • Context: securitization / assertion-vehicle parking — the portfolio is dropped into an Acacia licensing subsidiary one day after Acacia acquires it.

• 2014-01-08 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest
  • Assignor: Innovative Display Technologies LLC → Assignee: Delaware Display Group LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — flag: this is the third Acacia-family recording touching this patent; a recurring correspondent across the 2013-06-26, 2013-06-27 and 2014-01-08 entries would be decisive for Signal 3.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter / campaign structuring — final hop into the vehicle that actually sued (see below).

Correspondent conclusion: the Assignment Center's correspondent field — the field you specifically asked to capture — was not recoverable in this session, so I am reporting it as a gap on all six entries rather than assigning a name. For completeness, the litigation/PTAB counsel of record on this patent are documented and are not the same thing as an assignment correspondent: Patent Owner's counsel in IPR2015-00506 and IPR2015-00757 included Justin Kimble (in-house) and pro hac vice Jeffrey R. Bragalone and T. William Kennedy (the Dallas firm Acacia routinely used); Petitioner's counsel included Robert Pluta. Do not substitute these into the reel/frame correspondent slots.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7434973
    1995 : Priority filing 08495176
    2007 : Continuation filed 11673302
    2008 : Patent issued to Solid State Opto
    2010 : Assigned to Rambus International Ltd
    2013 : Rambus Inc takes over from Intl Ltd
         : Rambus Delaware LLC intermediary
         : Acacia Research Group acquires
         : Innovative Display Technologies LLC
         : LG Display America sued in Delaware
    2014 : Assigned to Delaware Display Group LLC
         : LG Display files IPR2015-00506
    2015 : Patent term expires
         : Acacia units settle with Sony
         : Further LG suits filed in Delaware
         : IPR2015-01666 joined to 00506
    2016 : PTAB final written decision

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Rights moved from the originating holder into a licensing-only LLC and then into a second single-purpose LLC, on 2013-06-27 (Acacia Research Group LLC → Innovative Display Technologies LLC) and 2014-01-08 (Innovative Display Technologies LLC → Delaware Display Group LLC). This is not inference from naming: in its own PTAB mandatory notice filed 2015-03-10 in IPR2015-00757, Delaware Display Group LLC stated that "Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation" are its real parties-in-interest — an assertion vehicle with a parent, no products, and a Delaware LLC form. Note also that the original assignee was already a BVI entity, "Solid State Opto Limited (VG)."

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Acacia Research Corp — which is on your supplied NPE list — is literally in the chain of title as Acacia Research Group LLC, recorded 2013-06-26, and is an identified real party-in-interest of the current owner. Acacia publicly confirmed the assertion program: on 2015-08-13 it announced that "its Innovative Display Technologies LLC and Delaware Display Group LLC subsidiaries" had entered a settlement and patent license agreement with Sony Corp. resolving D. Del. litigation. Google Patents also flags the patent as belonging to a family with litigation and having 2013/2015 D. Del. suits (1:13-cv-02108, 1:13-cv-02111, 1:15-cv-01220, 1:15-cv-01221, 1:15-cv-01222).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (evidence gap, not a negative finding).
I have no correspondent data for any of the six recordings, so I cannot test this signal. I am declining to treat a single hypothetical appearance as a finding, and I am equally declining to call it "not present." Action item for verification: pull the correspondent field for the 2010-02-18, 2013-06-26, 2013-06-27 and 2014-01-08 recordings on Assignment Center and compare.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
Three ownership hops inside ~6.5 months: 2013-06-26 → 2013-06-27 → 2014-01-08, on top of two same-day intra-Rambus recordings on 2013-03-04. Cumulatively the patent changed hands six times in under four years (2010 → 2014), and the last three hops are among affiliated Acacia entities that share a real party-in-interest (per DDG's own PTAB notice). Common correspondents/principals across those three hops is exactly what would normally clinch this signal — see Signal 3.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT.
The 2013-06-27 transfer into Innovative Display Technologies LLC lands roughly six months before the December 2013 D. Del. suits against LG Display America (and alongside the 2013 suit cluster). The 2014-01-08 transfer into Delaware Display Group LLC precedes the 2015 D. Del. filings in 1:15-cv-01220/21/22 and the 2015-12-30 LG Display / LG Electronics / LG Electronics Mobilecomm action asserting the '973 along with US 7,384,177 and US 7,404,660. Sequencing the clean standing record before filing is the classic pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No bankruptcy, receivership, or §363 sale appears anywhere in the chain. Solid State Opto → Rambus (2010-02-18) and Rambus → Acacia (2013-06-26) are negotiated portfolio transactions, not distressed sales. (Contrast the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid pattern in your rubric.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT on this record.
Rambus sold the portfolio outright to Acacia rather than sponsoring assertion against its own competitors, and there is no SEC-filing or trade-press evidence located here of Rambus directing or funding the later suits. This is a straight divestiture, not privateering. (Weak/unclear rather than a hard negative — I did not retrieve Rambus 10-K/8-K text in this session.)

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Delaware Display Group LLC, an active plaintiff, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Two caveats worth stating precisely: (a) the PTAB cases surfaced on the Google Patents page are attributed to "Unified Patents PTAB Data" — that is a data-licensing attribution, not the petitioner; the actual challengers were LG Display Co., Ltd. and LG Electronics, Inc.; and (b) while the 2016-06-23 final written decision in IPR2015-00506 and the 2015-06-27 patent-term expiry effectively neutralized this particular patent, neutralization by adverse ruling is not the same as a defensive-aggregator acquisition, so the signal remains "not present."

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain of title is a documented transfer into an acknowledged patent-assertion program, not a guess: 2013-06-26 Rambus Delaware LLC → Acacia Research Group LLC (Acacia Research Corp is on the known-asserter list), 2013-06-27 → Innovative Display Technologies LLC, and 2014-01-08 → Delaware Display Group LLC — three affiliated-entity hops in roughly six months, with DDG itself naming Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation as real parties-in-interest in its PTAB mandatory notice and Acacia publicly announcing a Sony settlement through "its Innovative Display Technologies LLC and Delaware Display Group LLC subsidiaries" on 2015-08-13. The 2013-06-27 and 2014-01-08 transfers immediately precede the Delaware infringement filings (1:13-cv-02108/02111 and 1:15-cv-01220/01221/01222), and the patent was litigated against LG Display and LG Electronics (IPR2015-00506 and IPR2015-01666) before the PTAB's 2016-06-23 final written decision and the 2015-06-27 term expiry. Two strong signals (known asserter in chain; shell-entity/cascading transfers) plus a present pre-litigation-transfer signal drive the high-confidence call; Signal 3 (repeat correspondent) could not be scored because the Assignment Center correspondent fields were not retrievable in this session, and that is the one piece of evidence that would make this record airtight.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7434973; application 11/673,302), and the parallel interface at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Cross-check against the legal-events record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434973/en and the PTAB dockets for IPR2015-00506 and IPR2015-01666.

I'll research US patent 7434973 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the complete and specific citation list for US 7434973.

Let me retrieve the complete reference list from Justia and FreePatentsOnline.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,434,973 B2

1. Patent identification (verified, taken literally)

Continuity chain stated in the specification: 11/673,302 is a continuation of 10/619,815 (now 7,195,389), which is a continuation of 09/256,275 (now 6,712,481), which is a continuation‑in‑part of 08/778,089 (now 6,079,838), which is a division of 08/495,176 (now 5,613,751).

Sources: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434973/en), FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7434973.html), USPTO.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7,434,973).

2. Important caveats before the citation list

I want to be explicit about the limits of what searchable records give me, so nothing below is mistaken for a verbatim record:

• I could not retrieve the patent's full verbatim claim set or its foreign/non‑patent reference list. The list below is the U.S. patent references cited on the front page / IDS of US 7,434,973 (as published by FreePatentsOnline). Foreign patent documents and NPL are not included because I could not confirm them.
• § 102 vs. § 103: Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim. In this family, the cited 1996–2001 references were almost certainly used in § 103 obviousness combinations, not as clean § 102 anticipators. I flag this rather than overstate anticipatory effect.
• Priority‑date problem (critical): The listed patent references are nearly all dated 1996–2001 — after the 1995‑06‑27 priority date. Therefore most of them are not § 102(f)/(g) prior art to the claim set as it reads today unless (a) the particular claim is not supported by the 1995–1997 applications (so it loses the 1995 priority and gets a later effective filing date), or (b) they qualify under the pre‑AIA § 102(e) as of their own earlier U.S. filing dates. This exact priority/new‑matter question is the substance of the Unified Patents IPR2015‑00506 / IPR2015‑01666 proceedings. Any real § 102 map for this patent must first resolve the priority date claim‑by‑claim.

3. Cited U.S. patent references (full citation, date, description)

(The published FPO list is truncated after 5,598,281; additional older U.S. references and the foreign/NPL citations were not retrievable in this session.)

4. What the patent actually claims (basis for the § 102 mapping)

From the abstract and summary (verbatim substance): the assembly has a light emitting panel member; at least one light source optically coupled to a portion of an input edge; a plurality of individual light extracting deformities on or in at least one panel surface, of well‑defined shape, with length and width substantially smaller than the panel surface; and at least some deformities have at least one surface angled at different orientations relative to the input edge depending on the deformities' location, to face a portion of the input edge to which a light source is optically coupled.

The independent claim(s) therefore turn on this combination, and the dependent claims add: variable density/size/depth of deformities; increasing deformity size with distance from the light source; transparent, back‑reflector‑free panel for front lighting; planar deformity surfaces; etc.

⚠️ I do not have the verbatim claim text, so I am mapping to claim categories, not asserting specific claim numbers beyond the independent claim. Verifying exact claim numbers requires the granted claim set (USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents claims tab).

Reference‑to‑claim assessment (most relevant first)

5. Bottom line

1. No single cited U.S. reference appears to disclose every element of the independent claim (edge‑coupled source + well‑defined small deformities + location‑dependent angular orientation of deformity surfaces to face the source). On the record available, the correct statutory theory is § 103 obviousness, not § 102 anticipation.
2. US 5,671,994 (Tai et al.) is the strongest § 102 candidate for the front‑lighting claims; US 6,011,602 (Miyashita et al.), US 5,919,551 (Cobb), and US 5,771,328 (Wortman) are the strongest for the dependent variable‑pattern/geometry claims.
3. The priority‑date question is dispositive. Because the claims trace to 1995‑06‑27, the 1996–2001 references are usable only if (a) a given claim is not supported by the 1995–97 disclosures (loses priority), or (b) they pre‑date under § 102(e). This is exactly the issue litigated in IPR2015‑00506 and IPR2015‑01666.
4. Not retrieved in this session: the foreign patent documents (e.g., EP/WO/JP items), non‑patent literature, the exact granted claim text, and pre‑1996 U.S. references beyond the truncated list. To finalize a defensible § 102 chart I would need the verbatim claim set and the complete IDS.

If you can supply the granted claim set (or authorize me to pull the Google Patents “Claims” tab), I will produce a limitation‑by‑limitation anticipation chart keyed to specific claim numbers.

I'll start by pulling the actual claim text and any IPR/post-grant record for US 7,434,973, since the § 103 analysis has to be anchored to specific claims and specific references.

Now let me get the actual claim language and the references cited during prosecution and in the IPRs.

Obviousness analysis — US 7,434,973 B2 ("Light emitting panel assemblies")

0. Bottom line up front

• I could not retrieve the actual claim set or the examiner-cited reference list for US 7,434,973 from the material available. The full patent text supplied to me stops mid-sentence in the "Detailed Description" (FIGS. 16 through 19 show other light extracting deformities 98 ... individual depressions 100 in) and contains no claims, no "References Cited" list, and no "Prior Art" section in the strict sense — only a two-sentence Background, two incorporated-by-reference patents, and the fee-status/classification data.
• Accordingly, the analysis below is built on (a) the only prior art expressly identified in the document I was given (the Background section and its incorporation-by-reference), (b) the priority/CIP chain, which itself creates prior art exposure, and (c) the verifiable IPR record for this patent, which is the authoritative real-world § 103 challenge.
• I will not invent reference numbers, inventors, or dates I have not verified. Where a ground would require a specific secondary reference, I identify the technical content the reference must supply and flag the citation as unverified.

1. What the supplied record actually establishes

Patent bibliographic data (source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7434973/en):

• App. No. 11/673,302, filed 2007-02-09; granted 2008-10-14.
• Priority date listed: 1995-06-27 (claimed from US 08/495,176 → US 5,613,751).
• Prior art keywords listed on the face of the record: light, deformities, panel, width, panel member.
• Status: Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2015-06-27.

Priority chain (from the Description, "Cross-Reference to Related Applications"):
'973 ← continuation of 10/619,815 (filed 2003-07-15, now US 7,195,389) ← continuation of 09/256,275 (filed 1999-02-23, now US 6,712,481) ← continuation-in-part of 08/778,089 (filed 1997-01-02, now US 6,079,838) ← division of 08/495,176 (filed 1995-06-27, now US 5,613,751).

Prior art expressly present in the document:

• US 4,897,771 and US 5,005,108 — "assigned to the same assignee as the present application," and expressly incorporated herein by reference for the types of light sources 3 that may be used.
• The Background section itself is essentially a one-paragraph admission: "Light emitting panel assemblies are generally known." That is a § 103 admission about the general state of the art, not a reference-specific ground.

The only other record-based prior-art statement I can verify is procedural, from the PTAB docket:

• IPR2015-00506, LG Display Co., Ltd. et al. v. Delaware Display Group LLC, petition filed 2014-12-30, instituted 2015-07-06, Final Written Decision 2016-06-23 (35 U.S.C. § 318(a)). (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2015-00506)
• IPR2015-01666, LG Electronics, Inc. et al. v. Delaware Display Group LLC, petition filed 2015-08-04, institution + grant of motion for joinder 2016-02-05, terminated 2016-06-22. (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2015-01666)
• Related district court cases in D. Del.: 1:13-cv-02108, 1:13-cv-02111, 1:15-cv-01220, 1:15-cv-01221, 1:15-cv-01222.

I could not retrieve the petition exhibit lists, so I cannot state which references LG Display relied on. That is the single most important missing piece for a reference-by-reference obviousness opinion, and I am flagging it rather than guessing. The exhibit lists would be cited as IPR2015-00506 Exs. 1001–10xx.

2. The claim to be analyzed (reconstructed — flagged as reconstruction)

Because the claim text was not provided, I use the Abstract, which the record shows mirrors the broadest claim:

"Light emitting panel assemblies include a light emitting panel member having at least one light source optically coupled to a portion of an input edge of the panel member. A plurality of individual light extracting deformities on or in at least one panel surface of the panel member are of well defined shape and have a length and width substantially smaller than the length and width of the panel surface. At least some of the deformities have at least one surface that is angled at different orientations relative to the input edge depending on the location of the deformities on the panel surface to face a portion of the input edge to which a light source is optically coupled."

Breaking this into limitations:

Two immediate observations:

1. Limitation D is the likely point of novelty, and it is a purely geometric/optical orientation limitation.
2. Every other limitation is described in the specification as individually known and is supported by generic language ("as well known in the art," "of any suitable type," "may be molded, etched, stamped, thermoformed, hot stamped or the like").

3. Governing law and the date problem (this is decisive)

Pre-AIA § 103 applies. The application was filed 2007-02-09 but claims a 1995-06-27 effective filing date, so the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions (effective 2013-03-16) do not govern. The analysis is therefore Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).

The critique every real ground turns on: the chain includes a CIP (08/778,089, filed 1997) followed by a continuation (09/256,275, filed 1999) and a further continuation (10/619,815, filed 2003). A claim in the '973 is entitled to the 1995-06-27 date only if the § 112 written-description support for its full scope is present in 08/495,176. That is a serious question here, because the FIG. 39A / 39B material — the only place in the record that describes limitation D in the multi-source, multi-orientation form recited in the Abstract — may have been new matter added in the 1997 or 1999 CIP. I could not verify which figures were present in the 1995 parent, so I flag it.

Consequence: if limitation D is only supported from 1997 or 1999 onward, then anything published or patented between 1995-06-27 and the applicable date becomes § 102(b)/§ 102(e) prior art — including, potentially:

• US 5,613,751 (issued 1997-03-25), the parent, and
• US 6,079,838 (issued 2000-06-27), which are family members that are not prior art if the 1995 date holds, but become prior art against any claim not entitled to it.

This is the single most efficient obviousness attack on the '973 and it is entirely internal to the record I was given.

4. Candidate § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Single-reference obviousness over a thin-panel illuminator with well-defined extraction deformities

Primary reference: either of the two patents expressly incorporated in the '973's own description, US 4,897,771 or US 5,005,108, each relied on for "thin panel illuminator"-type structure with a light source edge-coupled into a transparent panel and light extracted by surface features.

What it supplies: limitations A, B, and C.
What it does not supply: limitation D (location-dependent angular orientation of the extraction surface to face the coupled input-edge portion).

Why a skilled artisan would modify it: the '973's own specification supplies the motivation, and that motivation is the classic KSR "known problem/known solution" rationale:

• The stated purpose of the deformities is "more precisely controlling the emission of light … the internal angle of reflection of a portion of the light rays will be great enough to cause the light rays either to be emitted out of the panel…" — i.e., maximize incidence angle above critical angle at each deformity.
• Orienting an extraction facet so that its normal points back along the local ray direction is the arithmetic, predictable way to achieve that. Nothing more than the geometry of the light path from a known source location to a known facet location is required.

Ground 2 — Ground 1 + a reference teaching radial/tangential orientation of extraction facets toward the source

Secondary reference needed: a light-guide/diffuser reference teaching that the light-extracting prisms, grooves, or dots are rotated or radially aligned so their extraction faces the light source, i.e., a "sunburst" or radial orientation of extraction features. (Verification pending — I was unable to pull the IPR exhibit lists; this is a category the ground must supply, not a citation I can vouch for.)

Why combine: where the primary reference already discloses extraction deformities whose function is to exceed the critical angle, and the secondary reference teaches that the extraction feature must be oriented toward the source to do so efficiently, combining them is "the mere arrangement of old elements" producing no more than their expected combined result (KSR; Sakraida v. Ag Pro). The artisan's only task is to take the known solution and apply it at each location — which is exactly what limitation D recites.

Rebutting the Patent Owner's predictable argument: the Patent Owner will argue no reference teaches that the orientation of the deformity surface must vary with location. The answer is that limitation D is a continuous mathematical consequence of a fixed source and a fixed facet-normal rule; the "different orientations" are not a new structure but the same structure repeated with a computed angle. Under KSR, obviousness cannot be defeated by a variation that is "purely stylistic" or a predictable geometric projection.

Ground 3 — Ground 1 + a reference teaching multiple light sources coupled to different portions of an input edge, with color mixing

Secondary reference needed: a reference teaching a light transition/mixing area with a plurality of LEDs (e.g., R, G, B) coupled into one edge of a panel and mixed to produce a desired or white output.

Record support that this is old: the '973's own FIG. 7 discussion — "each of the light sources 3 desirably employs three colored LEDs (red, blue, green) in each transition mixing area 43 so that the light from the three LEDs can be mixed to produce a desired light output color" — is drafted as an embodiment of a known practice, not an invention. The Abstract's limitation D ("to face a portion of the input edge to which a light source is optically coupled") and FIG. 39B are, structurally, just this idea applied to facet orientation.

Why combine: the motivation is express and commercial — with multiple colored sources on one edge, extraction facets that all face one nominal source direction are mis-aimed for the other sources; aligning each facet to the nearest/most relevant source portion restores the light-output uniformity and efficiency that the primary reference already seeks. That is a finite, identified, predictable solution set (KSR).

Ground 4 — "Obvious to try" / design-incentive ground

Even if Grounds 2 and 3 are each thought to fall just short of the full limitation D, the limitation reduces to: given a source at position p and a facet at position q, orient the facet's reflective surface to face p. For a single source this is one line of arithmetic; for multiple sources, the artisan selects the source portion that best serves the local region. Under 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." The '973 offers no evidence of unexpected results — a point the specification effectively concedes, since it asserts the benefit in a single sentence without data ("can cause 60 to 70% or more of the light received through the input edge 18 … to be emitted from the same side of the panel member") and offers no comparison against a non-oriented pattern.

5. Motivation-to-combine themes to plead (with the KSR hook for each)

6. Rebuttals the Patent Owner has available (and how strong they are)

1. "No reference teaches location-dependent orientation." This is the strongest argument and the one that would have been pressed in IPR2015-00506. It succeeds if the secondary reference teaches only a uniform orientation of all extraction features, or only rows/staggering (FIGS. 32–37) rather than angularly varying facets.
2. Priority/antedating. If the 1995 date holds for all claims, the window of available art narrows sharply. This is why the CIP question in § 3 is the pivotal factual issue.
3. Secondary considerations. Long-felt need for thin (the spec claims panels "0.125 inch thick or less"), low-power, uniform, and long panels; evidence of copying; industry adoption in LCD backlighting. These are the classic Windsurf/objective-indicia arguments. Their weight depends on establishing a nexus between the orientation limitation and the commercial success — a nexus that is difficult to establish here because the '973 covers a very broad genus of configurations (FIGS. 1–47) and no single claim maps to a single product feature.
4. Claim construction. The district courts issued Claim Construction Orders in the parallel D. Del. cases (referenced as exhibits in the IPR record — "Claim Construction Order, No. 13-cv-522," "No. 14-cv-201"). The construction of "well defined shape" and "to face a portion of the input edge" could materially change the § 103 analysis, and I could not retrieve those orders.

7. Verification gaps I could not close (stated explicitly)

1. The claim set of US 7,434,973 — not in the supplied material; I reconstructed from the Abstract.
2. The actual IPR2015-00506 / -01666 grounds and exhibit lists — I retrieved the docket metadata (filing, institution, FWD dates, counsel: Petitioner Robert Pluta; Patent Owner Justin Kimble) but not the references relied upon. The Final Written Decision of 2016-06-23 is the definitive public record of an obviousness adjudication of this patent, and any serious opinion must be reconciled with it.
3. The figure-by-figure content of US 5,613,751, US 6,079,838, and US 6,712,481 — needed to decide whether limitation D is entitled to the 1995 date.
4. Whether any claim of the '973 was cancelled, confirmed, or held unpatentable in IPR2015-00506. The case terminated 2016-06-23, weeks before the patent's own 2015-06-27 expiry (the file shows "Expired – Fee Related"), which limits the practical significance of the outcome.

8. Assessment

On the record I can verify, the strongest § 103 position is not a single-reference anticipation of limitation D — the location-dependent angular orientation of the extraction surface is the one limitation the art of record as I can see it does not squarely show. It is instead:

Primary reference (a thin-panel illuminator with well-defined, critical-angle-exceeding extraction deformities, e.g., the incorporated US 4,897,771 / US 5,005,108) in view of (i) a reference teaching orientation of extraction means toward the light source and (ii) a reference teaching multiple sources coupled to different portions of one input edge, further in view of the admitted known practice of varying deformity density/size with distance from the source — the combination yielding, as a predictable geometric result, facets whose orientation varies with location to face the coupled input-edge portion.

The motivation is supplied directly by the '973's own stated objectives (uniformity, efficiency, thinness, color mixing, staying above the critical angle), which is the classic KSR posture: a known problem, a finite set of predictable solutions, and no demonstrated unexpected result. The chief obstacles to a clean invalidity holding are (a) an incomplete showing on limitation D by the secondary references, and (b) the priority question, which cuts both ways but is also the best lever for widening the prior-art field if limitation D is CIP-added matter.

If you can supply the IPR2015-00506 petition exhibit list and Final Written Decision text, I can convert the categorical grounds above into a reference-by-reference claim chart and state with confidence whether the Board's reasoning tracked — or diverged from — this analysis.