Invalidity dossier
US 8121137
Added 9/23/2026, 3:37:05 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
US8121137B2 — Patent Overview
Title: Methods and apparatus for fibre channel interconnection of private loop devices
Patent number: US8121137B2 | Application: US12/421,961 (filed 2009-04-10) | Granted: 2012-02-21
Assignee/owner on record: Original assignee Emulex Design and Manufacturing Corp; current assignee listed as Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Ltd.
Priority date (as listed, an assumption per the source): 1997-02-18, claimed from US08/801,471 (which issued as US6185203B1). The excerpt also lists later related filings, including US13/401,177 (US8902911B2) and US14/526,610 (US9137177B2). Legal status listed: Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2017-03-03.
Purpose / plain-language scope (from the supplied text): The patent concerns interconnecting Fibre Channel private loop devices. Recurring terms in the source are "loop," "port," "fibre channel," "fabric," and "bridge," and the stated classifications cover Fibre Channel switches, loop networks with decentralized control, interconnected ring systems, and routing/address lookups. Read literally, this indicates methods and apparatus for bridging or connecting devices that operate on private loops into a broader Fibre Channel arrangement, with a bridge/port handling the interconnection. The excerpt does not spell out the claims or describe the specific bridging mechanism in detail, so the precise claimed scope cannot be stated beyond these terms.
Classification signals: H04L49/357 (Fibre Channel switches), H04L12/427 (loop networks with decentralized control), H04L12/4637 (interconnected ring systems), H04L45/745, H04L49/254, among others.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8121137](/patent/US8121137)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: Only the front-page bibliographic data, classifications, and assignment/publication events were supplied—no abstract, description, or claims. Therefore the excerpt does not establish the actual claim language, the specific technical implementation, the number or content of claims, the scope of any related family members beyond those listed, or the accuracy of any legal-status or assignee listing (Google expressly labels these as assumptions/not legal conclusions).
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:51:28 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 8121137. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.