US 7950958

I'll search for information on this specific patent, including any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me do one more targeted check for any 2026 appellate or litigation activity.

US 7,950,958 B2 — Summary

I searched for this specific number and confirmed it against the full patent text and multiple independent sources. No auto-correction applied; the identifier is exactly 7,950,958.

Bibliographic data

Source grounding: printed patent front page (PDF exhibit); Google Patents family/reassignment data in the provided record.

Abstract (as issued)

"A connector having a conductive member is provided, wherein the connector comprises a connector body capable of sealing and securing a coaxial cable, and further wherein the conductive member, such as an O-ring, physically seals the connector, electrically couples the connector and the coaxial cable, facilitates grounding through the connector, and renders an electromagnetic shield preventing ingress of unwanted environmental noise."

Independent claims in plain language (9 claims total; independents are 1, 6, 7)

• Claim 1 (apparatus): A coaxial-cable connector that mates with a male interface port. It has (a) a connector body that receives part of the cable; (b) a post with a "mating edge," the post contacting the cable's conductive grounding shield; and (c) a conductive member that sits inside a threaded nut and physically/electrically touches the post's mating edge. That contact grounds the connector through the conductive member and post when the connector is threadably advanced onto the port, and also helps shield against EMI. The key structural hook is the conductive member bridging the nut-to-post mating edge interface.

• Claim 6 (apparatus, means-plus-function): A connector with a post (having a mating edge) at least partly inside a connector body, a threaded nut axially aligned with the post, and a "means for conductively sealing and electrically coupling the post and the threaded nut" — where that means physically and electrically contacts the post's mating edge. (In the specification this means is disclosed as the conductive O-ring/member, e.g. element 70.)

• Claim 7 (method of grounding): Provide such a connector (connector body + post with mating edge + conductive member positioned to touch that mating edge); fixedly attach the coaxial cable; then advance the connector onto an interface port until electrical grounding is extended through the conductive member.

Dependent claims 2–5 add: post first/second-end geometry (2), the conductive member being a conductive O-ring that conductively and physically seals (3), a deformably compressible connector-body first end (4), and a fastener member that deforms that end (5). Dependent claims 8–9 add the threaded nut (conductive member couples/seals post and nut) and the step of completing the electromagnetic shield by threading the nut onto the port.

Note on terminology: the issued claims of the '958 speak of a "threaded nut." Later family members (e.g., US 8,157,589; US 8,876,550; US 9,575,859) recast the same disclosure in terms of a "coupling member" and a "conductively coated member" — worth flagging if you are comparing claim scope across the family.

Litigation / PTAB and CAFC status

• District court: The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists this patent as asserted in PerfectVision Manufacturing Inc v. PPC Broadband Inc, No. 4:12-cv-00623 (E.D. Ark.) — matching the Darts-IP/Unified Patents litigation links on the Google Patents record. Source: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7950958
• PTAB: The '958 appears as an exhibit (Exhibit 2004) in Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2022-00721 (Docket Alarm).
• CAFC 2026 docket — nothing found naming 7,950,958. I searched and found a 2026 Federal Circuit matter involving the same patent owner and field — PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., Nos. 2024-1776/1777/1778/1779 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 4, 2026), Rule 36 summary affirmance of PTAB decisions in IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, -00721 (https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1776.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.3-4-2026_2656063.pdf; also on the March 2026 oral-argument calendar). Those appeals concern coaxial cable patents owned by PPC Broadband, but I could not confirm from the search results that US 7,950,958 itself was one of the patents at issue in those four IPRs. Treat that link as unverified rather than established.

Uncertainty / caveats

1. I could not find any 2026 CAFC docket entry that specifically names patent 7,950,958. The only 2026 appellate result in this space is the PPC v. Amphenol appeal above, and I cannot certify that the '958 is among the four patents reviewed there.
2. The printed patent's assignee line is rendered as "John Messalingua Associates, Inc." in the OCR exhibit — that is almost certainly an OCR rendering of Mezzalingua, and I have not "corrected" the underlying corporate history, which is independently confirmed by the 2013 reassignment records to PPC Broadband, Inc.
3. The patent is expired/lifetime-lapsed per the status listed; this is a status assumption, not a legal conclusion.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7950958. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the specific case and look for any other litigation.

Let me search for additional cases that specifically asserted the '958 patent.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,950,958

Bottom line: My searches surface one case in which U.S. Patent No. 7,950,958 ("Connector having conductive member and method of use thereof," Roger Mathews, assigned to PPC Broadband, Inc.) was expressly identified as a patent-in-suit, plus one closely related companion action in which the '958 patent may have been asserted. The '958 patent is a member of PPC Broadband's large F-connector "continuity" family (from the 2004-11-24 priority application), and it has been swept into the broader PPC connector wars, but my research did not confirm that the '958 patent itself was asserted in the PPC-versus-Corning, PPC-versus-TFC, ITC, or PTAB proceedings.

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1. PerfectVision Manufacturing, Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. (a/k/a John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. d/b/a PPC)

Grounding: The '958 patent is expressly listed as a patent-in-suit in ¶ 17 of PerfectVision's complaint ("United States Patent Nos. 8,192,237 (the '237 Patent); 7,845,976 (the '976 Patent); 7,950,958 (the '958 Patent); 8,075,338 (the '338 Patent); 8,157,589 (the '589 Patent); and 8,167,646 (the '646 Patent) (collectively Patents-in-Suit)"). See the complaint text reproduced at https://www.scribd.com/document/109036150/PerfectVision-Manufacturing-v-John-Mezzalingua-Associates.

The procedural history (motion to dismiss on covenant-not-to-sue grounds, stay pending Already, LLC v. Nike, motion to transfer to N.D.N.Y. denied, second amended complaint adding later-issued PPC patents) is recounted in the court's June 10, 2013 order at https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ared.91234/gov.uscourts.ared.91234.37.0.pdf. The dismissal is at https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ared.91234/gov.uscourts.ared.91234.110.0.pdf. Docket/index: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/[5500269](/patent/5500269)/perfectvision-manufacturing-inc-v-ppc-broadband-inc/ and https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7950958.

Note on posture: The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists this case under patent 7950958 with PerfectVision as "patent asserter" (category "8 – Product company") and PPC Broadband as "alleged infringer." Stacked against the underlying complaint, this reflects that PerfectVision was the DJ plaintiff — i.e., the party that put the '958 patent's validity/non-infringement at issue — while PPC was the patent owner. Both the NPE database and the Google Patents litigation link for US7950958 point to this single Arkansas case (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7950958/en; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Arkansas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/4%3A12-cv-00623).

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2. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. PerfectVision Mfg., Inc. (companion / mirror action)

Caveat: I could not confirm from the sources retrieved whether the '958 patent was among the patents asserted in 5:13-cv-00134. The published PPC complaint excerpt I retrieved from that docket addresses trade-secret/misrepresentation theories and the parties' distributor relationship; the patent counts are not fully reproduced in the snippet. Treat the '958 patent's inclusion in this N.Y. case as unverified.

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What I Did Not Find (explicitly flagged)

• No affirmed finding of infringement or invalidity of the '958 patent surfaced in any case. The only '958-specific litigation event I can confirm is its inclusion as a patent-in-suit in a declaratory-judgment action that was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.
• PPC vs. Corning litigation (e.g., John Mezzalingua Assocs. v. Corning Gilbert, 5:11-cv-761; PPC Broadband v. Corning Gilbert, 5:13-cv-538, 5:13-cv-1310; PPC Broadband v. Corning Optical Commc'ns RF, 5:12-cv-911, 5:16-cv-162; and the ~$61M enhanced-damages appeal, Fed. Cir. No. 17-1347) involved other patents (e.g., 6,558,194; 6,848,940; 8,075,338; 8,366,481; 8,469,740; 8,475,205; 8,480,431; 8,485,845). I found no indication the '958 patent was asserted there.
• PPC vs. Times Fiber Communications (5:13-cv-460; D. Del. 1:21-cv-01823) and ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-938 involved other family members/patents; I found no '958 assertion.
• PTAB proceedings (e.g., Corning's IPR2013-00340/-00342/-00345/-00346/-00347, directed to 8,313,353 and 8,323,060, and the '446 and '229 patents) did not appear to target the '958 patent.
• No NPE/PAE litigation against the '958 patent was found; the patent's owner (PPC Broadband) is an operating/product company, and the '958 patent expired (anticipated) on 2024-11-24 (status: "Expired – Lifetime" per Google Patents).

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Practical Caveats

1. Sources searched: Stanford NPE Litigation Database, CourtListener/RECAP, Google Patents litigation links, Unified Patents litigation portal, FJC Integrated Database, and general web search. I did not obtain a complete DTS/Darts-IP family-litigation report (the Google Patents "First worldwide family litigation" link points to a licensed Darts-ip dataset I could not open), nor did I run a full PACER docket sweep.
2. Completeness: District-court dockets and databases are updated on varying schedules; consent judgments, licenses, and unasserted settlements would not appear. This is not a legal opinion or a freedom-to-operate/validity analysis.
3. Identifier discipline: Per your instruction, I have not auto-corrected any patent or case numbers. Note that "7,950,958" (US7950958) is a distinct patent from the similarly numbered 8,950,958-type numbers, and should not be conflated with RE44,758 or other "758"/"958"-looking identifiers that appear in unrelated connector/fiber-optic complaints.

Recommendation: To close the gap on Case 2 and to confirm no additional '958 assertions exist, pull the full docket for N.D.N.Y. 5:13-cv-00134 (and the PerfectVision filings therein) and run a keyword docket search across PACER/CourtListener for "7,950,958" and "7950958."

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before drafting.

Let me dig specifically for IPRs challenging this patent and its family.

Let me check specifically for any PTAB or reexam filings naming this patent.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings have ever been instituted (or, on the available record, filed) against US 7,950,958. The structured USPTO ODP block in this prompt returns an empty set, and my independent web sweep found no IPR, PGR, or CBM docket naming the '958 patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 9 of 9 claims sustained-by-default (untested) / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The bottom line for a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by PTAB wins" — it is that the patent was never stress-tested, and it expired on 2024-11-24, so the assertion you are facing can only reach past damages under the § 286 six-year lookback. The absence of IPRs here is a product of timing (the patent's family was litigated hard in 2012–2015, when AIA trials were in their infancy) and of the patent's age, not of demonstrated validity strength.

Because there are no proceedings to list, the sections below document (a) exactly what I searched, (b) the near-miss PTAB activity on sibling patents that a defendant will inevitably be asked about, and (c) what the null result means.

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No proceedings on US 7,950,958 — verification trail

I could not execute a final confirming query on PTAB E2E / Patent Public Search (search-tool step limit), so the null result rests on the structured ODP data plus corroborating documentary evidence:

• PPC's own mandatory notices are the strongest corroboration. In IPR2013-00343, decided 2013-07-01, PPC Broadband filed its 37 C.F.R. § 42.8(b)(2) related-matters statement listing every then-pending IPR and reexamination in the connector family — IPR2013-00340, -00342, -00343, -00345, -00346, -00347, and Inter Partes Reexamination Control No. 95/002,400 (US 8,192,237). No proceeding against the '958 appears. A patent owner has a duty of candor in that filing; a co-pending IPR on the '958 would have been disclosed. (mandatory notices PDF)
• The Corning reexamination/IPR campaign skipped the '958. In PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Corning Gilbert, Inc., No. 5:11-cv-00761 (N.D.N.Y.), the court's memorandum-decision recounts Corning's November 2013 ex parte reexaminations of US 6,558,194 and US 6,846,940 and its May 2014 IPR petition on US 6,676,446 — none on the '958. (opinion PDF)
• No third-party filings surfaced either. Repeated targeted searches for "7,950,958" + IPR/petition/FWD returned only the patent's own family documents, not Tribunal papers.

Bottom line: treat "no PTAB activity on file" as accurate, subject to a two-minute confirmation on PTAB E2E or Patent Public Search (query 7950958 in the PTAB proceedings field) before you rely on it in a brief.

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Near-miss PTAB activity a defendant will be asked about

These are the proceedings that actually happened in this connector family — none of them touch US 7,950,958, but opposing counsel or a client will conflate them, so know the difference.

IPR2013-00340 / -00342 — Corning Gilbert Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc.

• Patent: US 8,323,060 (claims 1–9 in -00340; claims 10–25 in -00342)
• Filed 2013-06-10. Petitioner later substituted Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC.
• Filed by Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC (Todd R. Walters, Roger Lee); PPC represented by Hiscock & Barclay LLP (Denis J. Sullivan, Douglas J. Nash).

IPR2013-00343 / -00345 — Corning (Optical Communications RF) v. PPC Broadband

• Patent: US 8,313,353 (claims 7–27 in -00345).
• Filed 2013-06-10; institution 2013-11-26.

IPR2013-00346 / -00347 — Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC v. PPC Broadband, Inc.

• Patent: US 8,287,320 (claims 1–8, 10–16, 18–31 in -00346; claims 9, 17, 32 in -00347).
• Filed 2013-06-10; instituted 2013-11-26; FWD 2014-11-21; appealed to the Federal Circuit as Appeal No. 2017-1362. Panel on the -00346 FWD: Jacqueline Wright Bonilla, Jameson Lee, and Josiah C. Cocks (Cocks writing). (Patexia docket summary) — claim-level outcomes for that FWD were not visible in my search results, so I am not representing which claims survived.
• Petitioner's expert throughout the cluster: Robert S. Mroczkowski, Sc.D.; key prior art included Newman (US 4,795,360), Montena (US 6,558,194), Tatsuzuki (JP 2002-15823), and — notably — Matthews, US 2006/0110977 A1, which is the published application that became the '958 patent's sibling.

Inter Partes Reexamination Control No. 95/002,400 — US 8,192,237. Pre-AIA inter partes reexam, not an AIA trial.

Why the '958 was never hit: the 2012–2014 attacks were aimed at the later-issued members of PPC's connector continuity family, and by the time PPC began monetizing the '958 specifically the patent term was running out. Note also that the '958's own continuations are the asserted assets today — e.g. US 10,446,983 (app. 16/050,726) descends directly from the '958, and my search surfaced Amphenol-related papers referencing that application. I could not confirm a proceeding number for any IPR on the '983 or its siblings, so treat the continuation family as an open question and check it separately; do not carry the '958's clean record over to the children.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. US 7,950,958 issued with claims 1–9 and, per the Google Patents record, has never been narrowed by a PTAB final written decision, a certificate of cancellation, or (on the record I could find) a reexamination certificate. All nine claims therefore stand as issued — which is a different thing from "upheld." Claim 1 recites a connector body, a post having a mating edge, and a conductive member configured to reside within a threaded nut and positioned to physically and electrically contact the post's mating edge to ground the connector when threadably advanced onto a port. Claim 6 is the § 112 ¶ 6-style "means for conductively sealing and electrically coupling" claim; claims 7–9 are the method claims. Nothing has been canceled, so there is no "the troll's claims are dead" defense available on this patent. The correct defensive posture is prior-art invalidity under §§ 102/103 that has never been adjudicated, plus the expiration and damages-limiting arguments below.

Expiration is the dominant fact. The '958 claims priority to 2004-11-24 and, per Google Patents, reached anticipated expiration on 2024-11-24 (subject to any patent term adjustment). As of today (2026-09-30) the patent is expired and unenforceable going forward — no injunction, no ongoing royalty, no continuing-infringement theory. Recovery is capped by 35 U.S.C. § 286 to the six years preceding the complaint, and by any notice/§ 287 marking limitations. If a demand letter is citing the '958 for current product sales, that framing is already wrong.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed on the '958, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty as to this patent — there is no petitioner and no privity chain barred from raising anything. Practically, that cuts against the defendant in one narrow way: there is no ready-made record of prior art that a petitioner already found persuasive, so you would be building from scratch. But it cuts for the defendant in the ways that matter: (i) every ground under §§ 102, 103, and 112 is available in district court or at the ITC, unfiltered by the Board's IPR-scope limits; (ii) no Fintiv-style stay dynamics or § 315(b) one-year bar considerations arise; and (iii) the Matthews US 2006/0110977 publication — the '958's own parent publication — was already in the Corning expert's toolkit against siblings, which is a useful starting point for a § 102(b) analysis against the '958's claims given the shared priority lineage. Beware the reverse estoppel: if PPC or an affiliate was a petitioner in the sibling IPRs, PPC (not the defendant) is the party carrying estoppel, but do not assume a defendant's privies are clean — verify against any current litigant's supplier relationships.

Pattern signals. (1) Corning, not a defensive aggregator, was the aggressor — six Corning IPRs in 2013 against four sibling patents, plus ex parte reexams and a § 112/enforceability campaign in the N.D.N.Y. litigation. No Unified Patents or RPX proceeding involving the '958 appears. (2) PPC is a repeat patent owner but also a repeat petitioner — it filed IPR2022-00831 against Times Fiber's US 10,589,957, which drew a pre-institution statutory disclaimer of the challenged claims by the patent owner. That tells you PPC knows its way around the Board and that its targets sometimes fold rather than fight. (3) PPC's enforceability history is a genuine, non-PTAB risk factor worth exploring. In the N.D.N.Y. litigation, Corning pursued an inequitable conduct defense premised on PPC's alleged failure to disclose a PTAB institution decision during reexaminations of other PPC patents, and the court devoted extended analysis to it. That theory has not been applied to the '958, and I make no representation about its merit, but the '958 shares prosecution lineage and counsel with the patents at issue there — a skilled defendant should run an inequitable conduct / Rule 56 review of the '958's own prosecution history before assuming the file is clean. (opinion PDF)

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null result, and put a date stamp on it. Run 7950958 as a patent number search in PTAB E2E (and check the Patent Public Search "PTAB" tab), then confirm the reexamination certificate status for the '958's application 12/941,709. That gives you a citable "as of 2026-09-30, no AIA trial has been instituted against the '958" statement for your invalidity contentions or for a stay brief.
2. Don't expect an IPR to save you, and don't file one you don't need. With the patent expired as of 2024-11-24, an IPR offers no ongoing-royalty benefit and cannot forestall an injunction (there isn't one to forestall). An IPR on an expired patent is generally a waste of a § 315(b) budget unless the past-damages exposure is large enough to justify invalidating the claims retroactively. A district court invalidity judgment is the cleaner path.
3. Lead with expiration and § 286. Brief the actual end-of-term date against the complaint date and confine damages discovery to the six-year lookback window. If the patent's remaining term had any PTA, get the exact expiration (and any terminal disclaimer) from the file wrapper before you commit to a date.
4. Attack the unadjudicated front directly. There is no IPR estoppel and no Board claim construction on this patent, so all claim-construction and § 112 arguments (including indefiniteness of the claim 6 "means" recitation and written-description support for the "mating edge"/"conductive member within a threaded nut" limitations) remain fully available, constrained only by the district court's own Phillips construction.
5. Scope the continuation family separately. US 10,446,983, US 10,038,284, US 9,570,859, US 10,965,063, and US 11,984,687 all claim priority to the '958 and are unexpired. My search surfaced Amphenol-related papers touching application 16/050,726 (the '983), but I could not confirm any proceeding number — check each child patent individually before you tell anyone the family is IPR-free. The children, not the '958, are where the live risk sits.

Confidence and caveats: The "no proceedings" conclusion is well supported but not exhaustively machine-verified (I hit a tool step limit before completing a direct PTAB E2E query). I did not obtain claim-level outcomes for the sibling-patent FWDs and have deliberately not stated which claims survived them. The expiration date of 2024-11-24 is taken from the Google Patents record and should be confirmed against the file wrapper before being used in any filing.

I'll research this patent's assignment history and ownership chain before drafting.

Let me try to pin down the actual reel/frame numbers and correspondent of record.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,950,958 B2

"Connector having conductive member and method of use thereof"
Inventor: Roger Mathews · Assignee of record: PPC Broadband, Inc. (East Syracuse, NY)
App. 12/941,709 filed 2010-11-08 · issued 2011-05-31 · priority 2004-11-24 (CON of 12/397,087 → CON of 10/997,218)

Data-access caveat (read first). The assignment data below is grounded in the Google Patents "Reassignment / Legal Events" record for this patent (fetched from the authoritative text supplied), cross-checked against Plainsite, Stanford's NPE Litigation Database, PTAB/IPR filings, and court records. I could not open USPTO Assignment Center or Patent Assignment Search directly with the tools available, and the Google Patents legal-event feed for this patent does not expose reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record. I therefore do not fabricate reel/frame or correspondent fields below. Where a real reel/frame number was located for a related John Mezzalingua/PPC recording, it is flagged as unverified for this patent. This gap is material and should be closed by a direct Assignment Center pull.

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Inventors

Unusual patterns: None found. Sole inventor on the 2004 parent (10/997,218); no evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing, and he continued to co-invent JMA applications through at least 2012 (13/448,937). I could not retrieve the executed inventor-to-JMA assignment document, so the employment relationship is inferred from the assignee-of-record and the inventor's sustained presence on JMA/PPC filings rather than from the assignment instrument itself.

Data-quality note: the inventor's surname is spelled "Mathews" on the granted patent and "Matthews" on the 2006 publication — a USPTO indexing inconsistency worth carrying in any docket.

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Original assignee

John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc., 6176 East Molloy Road, East Syracuse, NY 13057, doing business as PPC ("Precision Products Company" trade identity in the CATV/telecom connector market).

• Primary line of business: design and manufacture of coaxial cable connectors for the cable/broadband and telecommunications industries — a hardware manufacturer, not a licensing entity. PPC's own litigation pleadings describe it as "a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of coaxial cable connectors" (N.D.N.Y. complaint excerpt).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. This patent family is the "constant contact / conductive member" connector line (conductive O-ring / continuity member between post, nut and body enabling ground continuity when the connector is not fully tightened). PPC asserted these very patents against competing connector vendors' products, and PPC's own connectors were the subject of the disputes.
• Current status: Operating. The original assignee was renamed in two recorded steps — John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. → MR Advisers Limited → PPC Broadband, Inc. — and continues today as PPC Broadband, Inc., East Syracuse, NY (a broadband-connector supplier). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or wind-down is reflected in the record. Note that JMA's US connector manufacturing entity also reappears as "John Mezzalingua Associates, LLC" (Liverpool, NY) on later filings — a related corporate-family name, not an NPE vehicle.

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Assignment timeline

Recorded conveyances affecting title to (or a security interest in) US 7,950,958, as reflected in the Google Patents legal-event record for this patent. These are the recorded "reassignment" entries promoted to this patent; reels/frames and correspondents were not exposed in the source and are not invented here.

• YYYY-MM-DD executed (not exposed) / recorded ~2013-02-12

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. (d/b/a PPC)
  • Assignee: MR Advisers Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — no correspondent-of-record exposed; do not assume the litigating firms (Finnegan et al.) are the recording agents.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganisation / rebranding only — beneficial ownership unchanged.
  • Recurrence flag: cannot be assessed; the corresponding Andrew-facing field is blank in my sources.

• recorded ~2013-02-13

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: MR Advisers Limited
  • Assignee: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: completion of the same internal name-change reorganisation (second step). No change in ultimate owner.

• recorded ~2013-10-04

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Assignee: [JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent](/asserters/jpmorgan-chase-bank-n-a-as-administrative-agent)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: securitisation — secured-lender collateral filing over the IP, typical of an operating company's credit facility; not a title transfer.

• recorded ~2013-10-08

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (Confirmatory Grant of Security Interest in US Patents)
  • Assignor: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: securitisation — companion lender collateral recording; again not a title transfer.

• recorded 2016-10-12

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Administrative Agent
  • Assignee: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable.
  • Context: lien release — the Wells Fargo security interest was discharged; title consolidated back to the operating company free of that encumbrance.

Related, unverified-for-this-patent recording. Plainsite indexes USPTO Patent Assignment reel 35808/508, conveyance Change of Name, John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. → Mr Advisers Ltd., executed 2012-09-11, recorded 2015-06-02 (listed on application 13/661,912). This is a genuine JMA → Mr Advisers name-change recording and almost certainly the same corporate act underpinning the 2013 entries above, but its property schedule (which patents it lists) could not be confirmed, so I do not assert it covers US 7,950,958. This is exactly the reel/frame that a direct Assignment Center pull should confirm.

Bottom line on title: the patent was never transferred out of the John Mezzalingua / PPC operating-company family. Every post-issuance entry is either an intra-corporate name change or a lender collateral filing (later released). No assignment to any third-party licensing entity appears anywhere in the chain.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7950958
    2004 : Filed by John Mezzalingua Associates
    2006 : Published as US20060110977A1
    2009 : Continuation filed 12/397,087
    2010 : Continuation filed 12/941,709
    2011 : Patent issues as US7950958
    2012 : PerfectVision declaratory suit E D Ark
    2013 : Name change to MR Advisers Limited
         : Name change to PPC Broadband Inc
         : Security agreement JPMorgan Chase
         : Security agreement Wells Fargo
    2016 : Wells Fargo security interest released

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only entity-name movements are two recorded change-of-name conveyances (JMA → MR Advisers Limited → PPC Broadband, Inc.). "MR Advisers Limited" reads like a shell by name alone, but the record classifies it as a name change of the same operating company, and the current assignee (Google Patents; PPC's own pleadings) is PPC Broadband, Inc., a manufacturer at 6176 East Molloy Road, East Syracuse, NY — a factory address, not a registered-agent drop. No products-in-commerce absence, no single-member LLC pattern.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, or Spangenberg entity appears at any link. Critically, Stanford's NPE Litigation Database entry for this exact patent classifies the asserter as "Product company" (asserter category 8), not as an NPE — npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7950958.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / no finding. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for any assignment touching this patent, so no recurrence can be demonstrated. The operating-company litigation counsel of record (e.g., Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner in PPC v. Corning) are trial counsel, not the recording agents on these conveyances, and must not be conflated with the assignment correspondent.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. The chain contains no succession of unrelated LLCs. The two Feb-2013 name-change entries are the same corporate act; the two Oct-2013 entries are lender collateral filings; the 2016 entry is a lien release. There are no back-to-back third-party assignments within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. Suits over this family were filed while title already sat with the operating company: the N.D.N.Y. actions against Corning Gilbert (2011, later 5:12-cv-00911 and 5:13-cv-01310), the W.D.N.Y. action against Thomas & Betts/Belden (6:11-cv-06327, complaint filed 11/9/2010), and PerfectVision Mfg., Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., 4:12-cv-00623 (E.D. Ark.), the Darts-ip/Unified-indexed case carrying this patent. No assignment to the plaintiff landed within six months before any filing; PPC asserted as the pre-existing owner.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceedings or §363 IP sales involving any assignee were located.

7. Privateering — not present. PPC asserts these patents in its own corporate name at its own expense and is the entity that makes the connectors; the patent is not held by a proxy litigant asserting on PPC's behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at PPC Broadband, Inc. (operating manufacturer) and does not reach RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralised; if anything it remains an active assertion asset of the owner.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain runs John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. (assignee at issue, E. Syracuse, NY) → MR Advisers Limited and PPC Broadband, Inc. via two recorded change-of-name conveyances (~2013-02-12 and ~2013-02-13), with two security agreements (JPMorgan, ~2013-10-04; Wells Fargo, ~2013-10-08) and a 2016-10-12 release by secured party — i.e., internal reorganisation and lender collateral, not a transfer to an asserter. PPC Broadband, Inc. is a connector manufacturer that asserted this patent family against real competitor products (PerfectVision 4:12-cv-00623); Stanford's NPE database classifies the asserter here as a "Product company," and no known-NPE or defensive-aggregator entity appears anywhere in the chain. The principal residual uncertainty is procedural, not substantive: reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record were not exposed in the sources I could reach, so the fields are left blank rather than fabricated.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center and Patent Assignment Search — search patent 7950958; confirm the JMA → MR Advisers → PPC Broadband reel/frame entries (a candidate is reel 35808/508, executed 2012-09-11, recorded 2015-06-02, unverified for this patent) and capture the correspondent-of-record on each, which is the one field that would let signal #3 be adjudicated. Cross-check: Google Patents legal events, Stanford NPE DB.

I'll research the actual prior-art citations on the face of US 7,950,958. The full text I was given includes forward citations ("Cited By") but not the "References Cited" / Patent Citations section, so I need to pull that separately.

I have the beginning of the "References Cited" list, but it's a long historical list. Let me pull the complete citation set and the substantive references.

Let me pull the full "References Cited" list from a patent-database mirror for 7,950,958.

Important preliminary flags (read first)

Two contradictions/gaps I must surface before the analysis:

1. The authoritative full text you gave me for US 7,950,958 omits the (56) References Cited section. The scrape contains the abstract, description, claims, the forward citation tables ("Cited By (63)" and "Families Citing this family (82)"), and the family/reassignment data — but not the front-page list of references the examiner/applicant cited against the '958. The task ("look at each patent citation for 7950958") therefore cannot be answered from the supplied record alone, and I had to source the (56) list externally. This is a material gap, not something I can paper over.
2. Date discrepancy: the task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating context gives today as 2026-09-30. I have not adjusted any identifier or date; I flag it because it affects nothing in the §102 math below (the relevant cut-off is the 2004-11-24 priority date) but you should know the two dates disagree.

I did not auto-correct any number. Every alphanumeric below is reproduced literally as retrieved.

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A. Identifier verification (strict rule)

Searching the exact string 7,950,958 returns, consistently:

No result for a "similar" number was substituted. (Note: the record renders the assignee as "John Messalingua Associates, Inc." in OCR — I am not correcting it, per the rules.)

Critical §102 consequence: because the '958 claims 2004-11-24 priority, the universe of §102(a)/(b)/(e) prior art is anything publicly available before 2004-11-24. Any reference dated after that cannot be §102 art against these claims absent a §102(e) earlier effective filing date that itself predates 2004-11-24.

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B. What "each patent citation for 7950958" actually is

US 7,950,958 has an unusually large (56) list — on the order of 200+ U.S. patent documents, ~30–40 foreign patent documents, and a handful of "Other Publications." It is essentially the same list carried across the whole Mathews family (US 7,828,595 / 7,833,053 / 7,845,976 / 7,950,958), inherited from the abandoned 2004 parent and its 2009 continuations.

I could not retrieve the complete list in one pass, and I could not distinguish examiner-cited from applicant-cited (IDS) items — that distinction matters enormously for a §102 opinion, because IDS-submitted art is often only marginally relevant.

Confirmed citations (non-exhaustive)

(i) U.S. patents, first portion — confirmed from the printed patent (Exhibit 2004, Amphenol v. PPC, IPR2022-00721; identical to the US 7,828,595 / 7,845,976 front pages):

(ii) U.S. patents, later portion — confirmed via the USPTO-report record for grant 7950958:

(iii) Foreign patent documents (confirmed on the '958 front page):

(iv) Other publications (confirmed): Supplementary European Search Report, EP05813878, dated 2009-02-06, 11 pages.

Not to be attributed to the '958: My searches surfaced a citation pair — 6,332,815 B1 12/2001 Bruce / 7,494,355 B2 2/2009 Hughes et al. — but that snippet belongs to the (56) of US 8,287,320 (IPR2013-00345, Ex. 1009), not to the '958. I have kept them out of the '958 list rather than let a search result contaminate the record.

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C. Most relevant prior art — reasoned assessment

Because I could not obtain the complete (56) list, I will not invent per-reference descriptions. What I can do rigorously is:

C.1 The correct §102 question

Every independent claim of the '958 requires the same three-element core:

• Claim 1: connector body + post having a "mating edge" + a conductive member configured to reside within a threaded nut and physically and electrically contact the mating edge of the post.
• Claim 6: post with mating edge + threaded nut + "means for conductively sealing and electrically coupling the post and the threaded nut" that physically and electrically contacts the mating edge.
• Claim 7: the method counterpart, requiring the same contact.

Dependent claims 2–5 and 8–9 add only geometry (post first/second ends), the conductive O-ring species, the deformable body end, the fastener member, and the threading step.

Therefore, under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a reference anticipates only if a single reference discloses all of: (a) the connector body, (b) the post with a mating edge contacting the grounding shield, and (c) the conductive member residing in the threaded nut and contacting that mating edge. Nothing short of (c) can anticipate.

C.2 Application to the cited art

The confirmed '958 front-page art is, with few exceptions, pre-1987 coaxial connector and general electrical-connector art (the 1928–1969 block and the 1982–1987 block above). On the face of it:

Bottom line under §102: None of the confirmed cited references appears to disclose the conductive member positioned within the threaded nut and in contact with the post's mating edge. That is exactly why the claims issued and why the family survived the PPC/PerfectVision and reexamination fights. Accurate answer to "which claim(s) does each anticipate": none of them, standing alone, anticipate any independent claim. They are §103 fodder and background, not §102 killers. If a reference does anticipate, it is almost certainly a later-added or applicant-submitted item that I could not retrieve, and I will not guess which.

C.3 Where the real anticipation risk actually sits (flagged as unverified)

Two lines of evidence suggest the genuinely dangerous art sits outside the confirmed front-page block:

1. In the PPC family IPRs (e.g., IPR2013-00345/-00346 re US 8,313,353 and US 8,287,320), the petitioner's primary combination was "Tatsuzuki in view of Montana, further in view of Matthews" — with Tatsuzuki (Ex. 1002, a Japanese-origin reference disclosing a disc-shaped spring continuity member between nut and body) as the primary reference. I could not confirm that Tatsuzuki is on the '958 (56) list. If it is, it is a far more serious §102/§103 reference than anything in the confirmed block, and it deserves priority attention.
2. The '958's own "Cited By (63)" table includes US 2011/0230090 A1 (Bence, 2005-01-25) and US 2009/0098770 A1 (Bence et al.) / US 7,479,035 B2 (Bence et al., Electrical connector with grounding member) — i.e., the Bence grounding-member family. Those are forward citations (they cite the '958), but they evidence a parallel and heavily-litigated art line on the same nut/body grounding problem. I flag Bence as relevant prior art only for context, not as a §102 reference here, because I have not verified its date relationship on the '958 record.

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D. What I could not do, and why

• I could not retrieve the complete (56) list of US 7,950,958 (≈200+ U.S. items); I confirmed roughly 85 U.S. patents, 2 foreign documents, and 1 other publication. The remainder (including the crucial 1988–2004 window — Szegda, McMills, Tarrant, Szegda, Samchisen, Sucht, and older Mathews/Montena-era art) is not confirmed by me.
• I could not verify examiner-cited vs. applicant-cited status.
• I could not verify the disclosure content of the individual references, so I have not fabricated descriptions or anticipatory mappings for them. Per your rules, I have marked unverified items as unverified rather than guess.
• I found no CAFC docket naming US 7,950,958 itself (consistent with the prior section's caveat); the 2026 Federal Circuit Rule 36 judgment in PPC Broadband v. Amphenol, Nos. 2024-1776–1779, concerns PPC coaxial connector patents but I cannot certify that the '958 was among the four patents reviewed.

If you want the complete, defensible §102 matrix, the two documents that will settle it are (a) the (56) page(s) 1–2 of the printed patent PDF (the Docket Alarm Exhibit 2004 for IPR2022-00721 is the authoritative image), and (b) the file wrapper's IDS/PTO-892 for 12/941,709 showing examiner-cited vs. applicant-cited status. Give me either and I will produce the full reference-by-reference citation/date/description/claim-mapping table you asked for.

I'll ground this analysis in the reference data available for this patent. First, let me verify what the "Prior Art" section actually contains for the '958.

The IPR2022-00721 finding is important — let me verify which patent that IPR actually challenged and pull the real prior-art record for the '958.

Let me pull the actual front-page reference lists (the "Patent Citations" that Google Patents renders separately from the forward "Cited By" list).

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,950,958 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Two flags before the analysis

(a) What the "Prior Art" section of this page actually contains — and why most of it cannot be used.

The record for the '958, as fetched, contains:

• a "Prior art keywords" field: connector, post, coaxial cable, conductive, connector body (this is Google's examiner-field-of-search metadata, not a reference list);
• a "Cited By (63)" table; and
• a "Families Citing this family (82)" table.

Both of those tables are forward citations — references that post-date the '958's November 24, 2004 priority date (e.g., US 8,157,589, 2012; US 8,231,412, 2012; US 9,190,744, 2015; US 9,570,859, 2017). Forward citations are not prior art under pre-AIA §§ 102/103 against the '958, because they were not publicly available before the critical date. They can only be used as evidence of the level of ordinary skill or of objective indicia (e.g., copying, industry adoption). Any obviousness ground built on them would fail. I flag this because the instruction was to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page" — taken literally, that section yields no valid § 103 references.

I therefore built the grounds below from the two sources that are legally usable: (i) the (56) References Cited list printed on the front page of the '958's own family (e.g., https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7950958](/patent/7950958); https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7b/aa/7c/568576a6576a14/[US7828595](/patent/US7828595).pdf), and (ii) the references actually applied against this identical disclosure in reexamination 95/001,689 and in the Amphenol IPRs.

(b) Contradiction with the earlier generated section. The prior summary stated the '958 "appears as an exhibit (Exhibit 2004) in Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, IPR2022-00721." That is correct as far as it goes — but it is potentially misleading: the patent under review in IPR2022-00721 is US 9,225,083, not the '958. The four patents in that consolidated proceeding are US 10,965,063 ('718), US 10,446,983 ('719), US 10,038,284 ('720), and US 9,225,083 ('721) (see the consolidated oral-hearing transcript: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2022-00721/Amphenol_Corp._v._PPC_Broadband_Inc/docs/09-18-2023-Board/Other__Hearing_transcript-34-Other__Hearing_transcript.pdf). The '958 served as a family/priority exhibit. The '958's own claims were never adjudicated in an IPR. That distinction matters for how much weight the IPR outcome carries — see § 8.

(Minor note: the system date is 2026-09-30 while the task states 2026-04-26; I treat both the March 4, 2026 Federal Circuit judgment and the 2013 assignments as past events under either date.)

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1. Governing framework and critical date

Because the claims are supported by the Nov. 24, 2004 disclosure, the critical date for prior art is Nov. 24, 2004. This is decisive: it excludes the entire Bence, Burris, Chee, Montena and PPC-family "continuity member" wave (2007–2012) that dominates the page's forward-citation tables.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A person of ordinary skill would be a mechanical/electrical engineer with roughly 2–4 years' experience designing RF coaxial (CATV "F-type") connectors, or equivalent, familiar with: crimp/compression connector assembly; the electrical role of the post/inner tube in extending the cable shield to the port; environmental O-ring sealing at the nut/port interface; and RFI/EMI gasket practices. This is the level assumed in the reexamination record, where the declarants (Dr. Eldering, Dr. Crivello) spoke in terms of return loss/insertion loss and waveguide continuity — the kind of knowledge that would be routine for such an artisan.

3. Key claim constructions that drive the result

1. "mating edge of the post" (claims 1, 6, 7) — the axial face of the post/inner-tube that is presented toward the male port; in the '958 that is element 49 (and element 99 on the integral-post body 90). Youtsey's analogue is flange 70 on inner tube 28.
2. "conductive member … configured to reside within a threaded nut" (claim 1) — a ring-like conductive body seated in the nut's inner cavity. Youtsey discloses the cavity (groove 80) and the ring (O-ring 82); the only dispute is whether it is conductive and whether it contacts the post flange.
3. "means for conductively sealing and electrically coupling the post and the threaded nut" (claim 6) — § 112 ¶ 6 (pre-AIA). The corresponding structure disclosed in the specification is the conductive O-ring 70 and equivalents thereof. The prior-art structure for the equivalence analysis is a conductive elastomeric ring in the nut cavity (Lionetto) or a resilient conductive seal at the connector interface (Horak).
4. "conductive O-ring" (claim 3) — a ring of conductive elastomer. There is no claim requirement of a particular durometer or conductivity mechanism, which weakens any argument that conductive-elastomer rings are a different kind of element.

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4. Ground A (primary): Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak

This is not a hypothetical combination. It is the exact ground the Examiner applied to the '958's own disclosure in Inter Partes Reexamination 95/001,689 (U.S. 7,833,053, Mathews, same specification), and the same three-reference combination Amphenol used in IPR2022-00721 against family member US 9,225,083. It was sustained by the Board and affirmed by the Federal Circuit on March 4, 2026 (Rule 36; https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1776.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.3-4-2026_2656063.pdf).

The references

Claim-by-claim mapping

Why the POSITA would combine (KSR rationales)

• Same field, same problem, same solution shape. Youtsey's O-ring exists precisely because the nut/port junction is where moisture and RF leakage occur. Lionetto and Horak are directed to the identical junction in the identical device (RF coaxial connectors) and address the identical failure mode the '958's specification identifies ("electromagnetic noise can be problematic when it is introduced via the connective juncture between an interface port and a connector"). MPEP § 2143 examples (a), (b), (c) and (d) all apply.
• Substitution of a known material for a predictable purpose. Replacing an insulating rubber O-ring with a conductive-elastomer O-ring to add a ground/EMI path is a substitution of one known element for another to obtain a predictable result — the classic KSR rationale. The '958's own specification confirms that the ring's material was a matter of ordinary selection, listing "conductive polymers, plastics, elastomeric mixtures, composite materials having conductive properties, soft metals, conductive rubber, and/or the like."
• Design incentive / obvious to try. Only a finite number of ways exist to seal a threaded connector interface (elastomeric ring, gasket, metal-to-metal compression). Converting the ring to conductive, or adding a compliant conductive seal at the flange, is a predictable design choice with a known benefit (ground path + RFI seal).
• Horak supplies the explicit teaching of the benefit. Horak's RFI seal teaches the artisan why to make the interface member conductive, supplying the "reasonable expectation of success" that a conductive member is not merely compatible with the sealing function but improves it.
• Teaching-use of the specification. The '958 specification states that the conductive member "may facilitate electrical coupling of the post 40 and the threaded nut 30 by extending therebetween an unbroken electrical circuit" and "may effectuate a buffer preventing ingress of electromagnetic noise between the threaded nut 30 and the post 40." That is a statement of a known technique applied to a known structure, not an unpredictable discovery.

The strongest counter-argument, and why it may not carry

PPC's Rule 132 record in reexam 95/001,689 (Declaration of Dr. Charles A. Eldering, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1549312](/patent/1549312)/) argued that Youtsey's O-ring 82 is compressed into special groove 80 as the port advances, i.e., it moves away from flange 70, so substituting a conductive O-ring would not produce reliable contact with the mating edge — support for which PPC produced epoxy cross-section photographs of working samples. That is a genuine limitation-based argument, not a mere "references individually" attack. It is answerable on two fronts: (i) claim 1 requires the member to be "positioned to physically and electrically contact the mating edge," which reads on a ring seated adjacent the flange at least before full tightening, and (ii) Lionetto's conductive elastomer is disclosed as abutting a tapered edge, supplying the contact geometry Youtsey's groove allegedly lacks. The Board evidently found the record sufficient, and the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion.

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5. Ground B (alternative): Youtsey + Lionetto alone (and Youtsey + Horak alone)

The obviousness case does not depend on all three references.

• Youtsey + Lionetto: Youtsey supplies every structural element of claim 1 except a conductive member; Lionetto supplies a conductive compressible seal in the same location for the same purpose. Motivation: adding a ground/RFI path at the connector-to-port junction. This may be enough for claims 1–3 and 6–9 on a "substitution of known material" rationale, though Horak strengthens the reasonable-expectation showing.
• Youtsey + Horak: Horak's compliant conductive sealing member teaches using a conductive element under compression to bridge and seal the interface; combined with Youtsey's ring-in-nut geometry, this yields claim 1.
• Palinkas + Lionetto: see § 6.

The Board and Examiner each relied on three-reference combinations, which suggests the two-reference variants were viewed as weaker — likely because the mating-edge contact limitation needed an extra teaching (Horak) to make contact under compression plainly predictable.

6. Ground C: Palinkas (anticipation/obviousness on the "compressibility" theory)

In the same reexam, the Examiner also rejected claims 1, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12 of the '053 under § 102(a)/(e) over US 6,716,062 (Palinkas et al.), on the theory that Palinkas's metal-to-metal interface between the flange and the post is a "compressible" sealing contact. PPC rebutted this by arguing that a brass flange (E ≈ 104 GPa, tensile ≈ 247 MPa) is not a valid substitute for an EPDM/Viton O-ring (Shore A ≈ 70, E ≈ 5.6 MPa). This ground is materially weaker than Ground A and should be treated as secondary: the material-property mismatch is a real distinction, and a § 103 case resting on "metal behaves like rubber" invites a reasonable-expectation challenge. Use Palinkas as a cumulative reference on the sealing/gap-closing function, not as the linchpin.

7. References that must be excluded (post-critical-date)

To avoid an easy rebuttal, these commonly cited coaxial-continuity references cannot be used against the '958:

This exclusion is important: a superficial reading of the page's citation tables would suggest a dense web of "conductive grounding member" art, but essentially all of it post-dates the '958 and is legally irrelevant to § 103.

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8. Objective indicia (secondary considerations) and how they weigh

PPC's record in reexam 95/001,689 is the best available statement of the non-obviousness case:

1. Long-felt but unresolved need — connectors that are not fully tightened or that loosen over time break the shield-to-port path, degrading return loss/insertion loss and generating costly truck rolls for MSOs. The '958's specification itself frames the problem this way.
2. Teaching away / counterintuitive placement — the industry avoided placing anything between the post and the port; Youtsey's structure deliberately grooves the O-ring out of that path. Dr. Eldering's declaration calls the Mathews placement "counterintuitive" and argues a skilled artisan "would have found [a conventional O-ring] useless in the position Mathews placed it in."
3. Unexpected result — surface-area contact between the conductive member and the post increases as the connector is tightened, because the member is sandwiched between post and port.
4. Skepticism in the art — "conductive O-rings are not the norm … given the inherently insulating properties of the materials used for O-rings."

Counterweights:

• No established nexus was shown between these alleged indicia and the claimed subject matter; the "long-felt need" is arguably met by any conductive continuity member at the interface, and the entire 2009–2013 industry wave of continuity connectors suggests the solution was readily arrived at by others once the problem was framed.
• Third-party skepticism of the patents is documented in the same record: the '053 was rejected in reexam over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak; claims of US 9,225,083 (same specification) were held unpatentable by the PTAB in IPR2022-00721 and that judgment was affirmed by the Federal Circuit on March 4, 2026. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) also forecloses attacking the references individually rather than the combination.
• Nexus caveat: the IPR and Federal Circuit rulings were on claims of US 9,225,083 and the '053, not on the '958's claims. They are persuasive as to what Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak disclose and suggest, but they are not an adjudication of the '958.

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9. Bottom line per claim

Overall: the strongest § 103 challenge is the Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak combination, which has the unusual advantage of having already been applied to this exact specification (reexam 95/001,689) and to a same-priority family member (IPR2022-00721, affirmed Fed. Cir. Mar. 4, 2026). The strongest defense is a limitation-specific argument that Youtsey's O-ring is displaced into groove 80 and therefore is not "positioned to physically and electrically contact the mating edge of the post" — an argument that requires proof of how the assembled connector actually behaves, not just how the reference reads.

10. Explicit uncertainties

1. The '958's claims were never themselves invalidated. No IPR, no reexam of the '958 is in the record I retrieved. The obviousness conclusion is extrapolated from the same-specification reexam and IPR and should be labeled high-confidence-but-not-adjudicated.
2. IPR2022-00721 ≠ the '958. I could not find any proceeding in which the '958's claims 1–9 were construed or held unpatentable; the earlier section's reference to Exhibit 2004 is consistent with a family exhibit only.
3. The Federal Circuit disposition is a Rule 36 summary affirmance — non-precedential and without opinion; it carries no reasoning I can cite for why the combination was found obvious.
4. I could not retrieve the '958's own full (56) list in an authoritative text form; the reference list I obtained is from the sibling patent US 7,828,595 (same specification, same examiner, same attorney). Treat the specific front-page citation mapping (e.g., Lionetto at 4,929,188) as verified but the claim that every front-page item in the '958 mirrors the '595 as unverified.
5. The page's "Prior Art" section, read literally, supplies no usable § 103 references — it is examiner keyword metadata plus forward citations. Anyone briefing this patent off the Google Patents page alone would be citing post-2004 art against a 2004 priority date.
6. I did not independently verify the contents of Palinkas US 6,716,062 beyond the Examiner's and PPC's characterizations in the reexam record.