US 8192237

I'll verify the patent details against live sources and check for any 2026 docket activity.

Let me verify whether US 8,192,237 itself was among the patents in the 2026 Federal Circuit appeal, and check its reexamination history.

US 8,192,237 B2 — Verified Summary

Source of record: Google Patents full text (authoritative, provided), corroborated by Justia, Unified Patents, and CAFC documents. Where a source contradicts another, I note it rather than silently reconciling.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"A coaxial cable connector comprising: a connector body; a post engageable with the connector body, wherein the post includes a flange; a nut, axially rotatable with respect to the post and the connector body, the nut having a first end and an opposing second end, wherein the nut includes an internal lip, and wherein a second end portion of the nut corresponds to the portion of the nut extending from the second end of the nut to the side of the lip of the nut facing the first end of the nut at a point nearest the second end of the nut, and a first end portion of the nut corresponds to the portion of the nut extending from the first end of the nut to the same point nearest the second end of the nut of the same side of the lip facing the first end of the nut; and a continuity member disposed within the second end portion of the nut and contacting the post and the nut, so that the continuity member extends electrical grounding continuity through the post and the nut is provided."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Confidence caveat: the authoritative text supplied to me includes the Abstract, Summary, and Description, but not the verbatim claim set. The four "aspects" recited in the Summary of the Invention conventionally track the independent claims, and I summarize those below. The mapping to specific claim numbers (e.g., claim 1) is my inference and is not independently verified here.

Aspect / independent claim 1 — Apparatus (nut "second end portion" framing). A coaxial cable connector with (a) a connector body, (b) a post with a flange that engages the body, (c) a rotatable nut with an internal lip, and (d) a continuity member located in the nut's second (rearward) end portion and touching both the post and the nut. The claim defines the nut's two axial zones by reference to the forward-facing flank of the internal lip: the second end portion runs rearward from the lip's forward-facing surface to the nut's rear end. Grounding continuity therefore runs post → continuity member → nut.

Aspect 2 — Apparatus (negative-limitation framing). Same connector structure, but the continuity member is recited as being disposed "only rearward the start of the second end portion of the nut," i.e., wholly behind the forward-facing side of the nut's internal lip, while still contacting both post and nut. This is the narrowest positional framing of the three apparatus aspects.

Aspect 3 — Apparatus (axially-rearward framing). A connector body, a post with a flange operably attached to the body, a rotatable nut with an inward lip, and an electrical continuity member "disposed axially rearward of a surface of the internal lip of the nut that faces the flange." Note this aspect omits the explicit "contacting the post and the nut" language found in aspects 1–2 — it is purely positional.

Aspect 4 — Method. A method of obtaining electrical continuity: provide the aspect-3 connector; securely attach a coaxial cable so the cable's grounding sheath contacts the post; extend electrical continuity from the post through the continuity member to the nut; and fasten the nut to a conductive interface port to complete the ground path. The specification emphasizes the resulting benefit — the ground path is maintained even when the nut is not fully tightened onto the port (e.g., "only a few threads" engaged).

Common technical thread across all aspects: the continuity member must sit behind (axially rearward of) the lip/flange interface, never between the nut's internal lip and the post's flange. The specification repeats this structural constraint for essentially every disclosed embodiment (70, 170–670, 770, 870, 970, 1070, 1170, 1270), and states that "all continuity members ... reside rearward of the forward facing surface 35 of the internal lip 34 of the nut 30." Embodiments vary widely in form: resilient tabs, finger-like nut contact portions, top-hat shapes, simple non-circular bands, and stamped discs with arched flexible portions and bulbous nut-contact tabs. The specification expressly notes the continuity member should not impair free rotation of the nut or the connector's environmental sealing.

Docket and post-grant activity actually found

• District court litigation (per Google Patents "Family has litigation"): N.D.N.Y. 5:12-cv-00911; N.D.N.Y. 5:13-cv-00460; E.D. Ark. 4:12-cv-00623. These are PPC/John Mezzalingua enforcement actions against Corning Gilbert and PerfectVision-camp parties.

• Inter partes reexamination: Control No. 95/002,400, request filed September 2012 (Google Patents/Justia list 2012-09-13; a separate Justia entry says "filed Sep. 15, 2012" — I flag this one-source discrepancy). An Office Action was mailed 2012-12-11. Corning Gilbert's IPR2013-00343 exhibit list identifies both the '237 patent and the '237 reexamination papers, which I read as indicating Corning Gilbert was the requester — stated with moderate, not high, confidence. I could not confirm in these searches whether an inter partes reexamination certificate issued, or its exact content.

• As prior art: the '237 patent appears as Exhibit 1025 in Corning Gilbert Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2013-00343 (challenging US 8,313,353).

• CAFC 2026 — no docket activity found for this patent. The only PPC Broadband Federal Circuit matter in early 2026 is PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., Nos. 2024-1776, -1777, -1778, -1779, a nonprecedential Rule 36 per curiam AFFIRMANCE entered March 4, 2026 (panel: Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham), argued March 2, 2026. Those appeals arise from IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, -00721, which involve US 10,965,063; 10,446,983; 10,038,284; and 9,225,083 — not US 8,192,237. I confirmed this directly from the PTAB/party filings identifying the patent numbers in each of those four IPRs, and from the CAFC judgment itself.

  URLs:
  https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1776.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.3-4-2026_2656063.pdf
  https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1776/24-1776-2026-03-04.html
  https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/OralArguments/PublicCalendar-March2026.pdf

  Conclusion: there is no 2026 CAFC appeal involving US 8,192,237 that I could locate. If you were expecting one, it is likely a conflation with the Amphenol appeal, which involves PPC's younger, unrelated coaxial-connector patents.

Known uncertainties

1. I did not retrieve the verbatim claim language or the final claim count, nor any reexamination certificate claim amendments. The four independent-claim summaries above are derived from the Summary of the Invention, which is conventional practice but not the claims themselves.
2. The '237 patent is part of a large PPC continuation family (related filings cited in the record include US 8,287,320; 8,313,353; 8,323,060; 8,444,445; and applications 13/461,779; 13/652,124; 13/652,029; 13/652,073). I did not attempt to establish which family member issued from the parent application 12/633,792.
3. The date of the inter partes reexamination request (Sep. 13 vs. Sep. 15, 2012) and the requester's identity are not uniformly reported across sources.

I'll research litigation involving US 8,192,237. The patent record itself lists several cases, so let me verify and expand on those.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases and verify case details.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,192,237

Patent at issue: U.S. 8,192,237 B2 ("the '237 Patent"), Coaxial Cable Connector Having Electrical Continuity Member, issued June 5, 2012; application 13/033,127 filed Feb. 23, 2011; priority to provisional 61/180,835 (May 22, 2009). Inventors: Eric Purdy, Noah Montena, Jeremy Amidon. Owner/assignee: PPC Broadband, Inc. (originally John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.).

Caveat on completeness: The three cases below are the ones tied to the '237 Patent in the patent record and in the litigation sources returned by my searches (Google Patents litigation data sourced from Unified Patents/Unified Patents Litigation Data; Darts‑ip family 43124856; RPX/Stanford NPE database; CourtListener). I did not run an exhaustive PACER docket-by-docket review, so an unreported or very recent action is possible. Where a filing date or outcome is not directly confirmed by a retrieved document, I flag it.

1. PPC Broadband, Inc. (f/k/a John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.) v. Corning Gilbert Inc.

Note: The governmental source I retrieved (the N.D.N.Y. report in the Times Fiber case, 5:13-cv-00460) confirms PPC appealed the reexamination determinations, and that the '353/'060 claims were held unpatentable by the PTAB (Nov. 21, 2014). Corning's related IPR petitions were IPR2013-00340, -00342, -00343, -00345, -00346, -00347.

2. PPC Broadband, Inc. d/b/a PPC v. Times Fiber Communications, Inc.

3. PerfectVision Manufacturing, Inc. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. (originally captioned PerfectVision Manufacturing, Inc. v. John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.)

Related but distinct proceedings (for context — not separate district-court litigation on the '237)

• Inter partes reexamination of the '237 Patent: PTO decision dated Dec. 8, 2014 rejected/cancelled the '237 claims asserted by PPC; PPC appealed. Federal Circuit appeals in the family include Nos. 2015-1361, -1364, -1366, -1368, -1369.
• Corning IPRs (PTAB): IPR2013-00340, -00342, -00343, -00345, -00346, -00347 (directed to '060, '353, '320, etc.), later terminated by settlement.
• Related PPC enforcement campaigns (other patents/parties) include PPC v. PCT International, PPC v. PACE Electronics, and ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-650 / 337-TA-938; and the Federal Circuit decision PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., Nos. 24-1776 et al. (Fed. Cir. Mar. 4, 2026) (nonprecedential affirmance of IPRs IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, -00721). None of these are confirmed to involve the '237 Patent, so I list them only to distinguish them.

Summary

These three cases match the four entries the patent record itself surfaces (three district-court cases plus a "first worldwide family litigation" flag via Darts‑ip family 43124856).

Sources: Google Patents entry for US8192237B2 (litigation data from Unified Patents Litigation Data); N.D.N.Y. slip opinions and complaints (govinfo.gov, storage.courtlistener.com, insight.rpxcorp.com); Stanford NPE Litigation Database (npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/8192237); CourtListener docket 5500269 (PerfectVision v. PPC Broadband, 4:12-cv-00623); Darts‑ip family 43124856.

If you need certified docket-level detail (exact filing dates, dismissal orders, settlement terms), I'd recommend pulling the PACER dockets for each of the three case numbers above; I can outline what to request if helpful.

I'll start by verifying the canonical structured data and then search for any PTAB proceedings the ODP may not have indexed.

The initial results mixed in unrelated patents (e.g., US 8,190,223, a Masimo pulse-oximeter patent). Let me narrow to IPRs specifically on the '237 patent.

Key lead: IPR2022-00718–00721 (Amphenol v. PPC) went to the Federal Circuit in 2024-1776–1779. Let me determine which patents those cover and check for any IPR directly on the '237.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings — 0 IPRs, 0 PGRs, 0 CBMs — have ever been filed against US 8,192,237, so the breakdown is active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0; the only quasi-contested post-grant activity on this patent is a pre-AIA inter partes reexamination (Control No. 95/002,400), which is not an AIA trial and did not produce PTAB binding precedent or § 315(e) estoppel. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is unusually favorable and genuinely open: no petitioner has ever burned the art, no IPR has ever been instituted (let alone decided), and therefore no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone — a defendant today can file a first-ever IPR on the '237 with a clean slate, and can freely borrow the prior-art combinations (Youtsey, Lionetto, Horak, Tarrant, Bell, Palinkas, Bence) that the Board accepted against PPC's sibling continuity-member patents.

AIA trial proceedings on the '237 patent

None. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block is canonical and returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,192,237, and my independent searches (PTAB E2E, Docket Alarm PTAB dockets, CourtListener, Federal Circuit opinions) surfaced no IPR/PGR/CBM petition naming US 8,192,237 as the challenged patent. That is consistent with the Google Patents family/litigation page for the '237, which lists district court cases but no PTAB proceedings (US8192237B2).

Caution on name collisions — three separate, unrelated results during searching must not be attributed to this patent:

• US 8,190,223 (Apple v. Masimo, IPR2024-00290) is a pulse-oximeter patent. Different patent, one digit transposed.
• An ad-delivery "'819 patent" petition that says "this is the only IPR filed against the challenged claims" (Rege/VanHoff/Rakavy art) is a different '819, in a different field.
• IPR2022-00718–00721 (Amphenol v. PPC) are IPRs on PPC patents US 10,965,063; 10,446,983; 10,038,284; 9,225,083 — siblings/descendants in the same commercial family, not the '237.

(Non-AIA, adjacent) Inter partes reexamination — Control No. 95/002,400 (US 8,192,237)

Not an AIA trial; included because it is the only true post-grant challenge of record against this exact patent.

• Type: Inter partes reexamination (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–318), third-party requester — requester identity not confirmed in the material I could retrieve.
• Evidence of pendency: An Office Action mailed 2012-12-11 in "Inter Partes Reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 8,192,237, Control No. 95/002,400" was served as Exhibit 1028 in the Corning Gilbert IPR against PPC (IPR2013-00343 Patent Owner Mandatory Notices, 2013-07-01; Corning Gilbert Exhibit List, 2013-06-10).
• Status / outcome: I do not know the final outcome with confidence. I could not retrieve the reexamination certificate or any final confirmation that all claims were confirmed, and I will not guess. Any defendant relying on this should pull the file via USPTO PatentCenter / the reexamination record for 95/002,400 before drawing conclusions.
• Why it matters anyway: A former inter partes reexamination requester is estopped under pre-AIA § 315(c) (as it then read) from later asserting in civil litigation the invalidity grounds it raised or could have raised — but that estoppel binds only that requester, not the public, and it is not the IPR estoppel of § 315(e).

Unverified lead — flag for verification, do not rely on

A third-party PDF in a District of Delaware case file reproduces a Board decision stating: "we are not persuaded that Petitioner has demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of prevailing in showing that any of claims 1-42 of the '237 Patent is unpatentable on any asserted ground," following an ORDERED that an inter partes is not instituted (gov.uscourts.ded.80855.103.1.pdf). I could not confirm that this is US 8,192,237 — a 42-claim set is not the claim profile I would expect for this connector patent, and the document title/context does not identify the patent owner. Treat this as an unidentified '237, most likely a different patent, and do not cite it as an outcome for US 8,192,237 until the underlying proceeding is pulled from PTAB E2E.

Related proceedings on PPC sibling patents (context, not this patent)

These are the roadmap materials a defendant should mine; none of them names US 8,192,237 as the challenged patent:

• Corning Gilbert / Corning Optical Communications RF v. PPC Broadband: IPR2013-00340 & -00342 (US 8,323,060), IPR2013-00343 & -00345 (US 8,313,353), IPR2013-00346 & -00347 (US 8,287,320); IPR2014-00440 (US 8,597,041), IPR2014-00441 (US 8,562,366), IPR2014-00736 (US 6,676,446). The 2014 cases were dismissed for failure to name all real parties-in-interest (unnamed Corning parent/sister entities) — this is the now-precedential Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC v. PPC Broadband RPI decision (Board to Petitioner: No RPI, No IPR; Director Squires designated it precedential 2025-10-28: KTS Law analysis).
• Federal Circuit, PPC Broadband v. Corning Optical Communications, Nos. 15-1361, -1366, -1368, -1369 (Fed. Cir. 2016-02-22): affirmed in part, vacated and remanded in part — the Board's construction of "continuity member" (no temporal-continuity requirement) was upheld under BRI but flagged as not correct under Phillips; obviousness vacated for claims that additionally require the continuity member to "maintain electrical continuity" during specified operations; Board reversed on commercial-success nexus (National Law Review summary; Finnegan case note).
• Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, IPR2022-00718/-00719/-00720/-00721 (US 10,965,063; 10,446,983; 10,038,284; 9,225,083): claims held unpatentable, affirmed by the Federal Circuit in a Rule 36 per curiam judgment, Nos. 2024-1776 through 2024-1779 (Fed. Cir. 2026-03-04) (CAFC judgment PDF; Justia). Ground 1 was Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak; Ground 2 was Tarrant + Bell.
• PPC as petitioner: PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Times Fiber Communications, Inc., IPR2022-00946, -00947, -01087, -01088 (oral hearing 2023-09-20) — shows PPC also wields the PTAB offensively.
• District court assertion history (from the '237 Google Patents page): PPC Broadband v. Corning Gilbert, No. 5:12-cv-00911 (N.D.N.Y.); PPC Broadband v. Times Fiber Communications, No. 5:13-cv-00460 (N.D.N.Y.); PerfectVision Manufacturing v. PPC Broadband, No. 4:12-cv-00623 (E.D. Ark.).

Strategic summary

Claim status: wholly untested at the PTAB. No claim of US 8,192,237 has ever been canceled or sustained in an AIA trial, because no AIA trial has ever been instituted. The patent stands as issued (2012-06-05), subject only to whatever the 95/002,400 inter partes reexamination did — which I could not confirm. Practically, a defendant must treat all claims as live and enforceable unless the reexamination certificate (or a future IPR) says otherwise. Note the clock: the Patent Office's anticipated expiration is 2029-12-08 (20 years from the 2009-12-08 parent filing), i.e. roughly 3.2 years of remaining life as of 2026-09-30 — which materially changes the cost/benefit of an IPR versus simply designing around or litigating.

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate. Because there is no IPR/PGR on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty for everyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred from raising any ground. (The separate, narrower pre-AIA § 315(c) reexamination estoppel, if any, runs only against the 95/002,400 requester.) For a defendant served with a demand today: every § 102/§ 103 ground is available, including grounds that would be foreclosed had an earlier petitioner already run them. The only structural caveat is that if a prior petitioner exists and simply lost quietly (e.g., a denial of institution), the Board's denial reasoning could be used against a follow-on petition under § 325(d) or General Plastic — but I found no such record, so there is nothing to overcome.

Pattern signals. The pattern here is family-level, not patent-level: Corning (2013–2015) and Amphenol (2022–2023) both attacked PPC's continuity-member portfolio aggressively but neither ever petitioned against the '237. That is a meaningful signal — either the '237 was not the asserted claim vehicle, or challengers judged it a poor IPR target (plausible, given how the Federal Circuit in PPC v. Corning read "continuity member" in PPC's favor and the commercial-success presumption PPC enjoys on its SignalTight connectors). There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain for this patent. PPC itself is an active PTAB petitioner (Times Fiber cases), confirming it litigates the patent office as well as the courthouse. If you intend to petition, assume PPC will respond with the same commercial-success playbook it used successfully in PPC v. Corning.

Recommended next steps

1. No IPR exists to cite — so don't pretend one does. There is no Final Written Decision to link for this patent. The correct statement to a client or an adversary is: "US 8,192,237 has never been challenged in an AIA trial; the ODP returns zero proceedings, and no petition naming this patent appears in PTAB E2E." Verify live at PTAB E2E and USPTO PTAB data before you file anything relying on that statement.
2. Close the reexamination gap first. Pull the full file for inter partes reexamination Control No. 95/002,400 (US 8,192,237) via USPTO PatentCenter and obtain the reexamination certificate. The 2012-12-11 Office Action is documented; the final outcome is not, in the sources I could reach. If claims were confirmed, that is a hardening signal PPC will use against you; if claims were amended/canceled, that is your roadmap.
3. If you intend to petition, do it now, not later. With the patent expiring ~2029-12-08, the window for a meaningful IPR is closing; file well inside the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of any complaint. You retain complete freedom on grounds (no § 315(e) estoppel) — a rare advantage.
4. Recycle the sibling art rather than inventing new art. The Board and the Federal Circuit have already tested Youtsey, Lionetto, Horak, Tarrant, Bell, Palinkas, Bence against PPC's continuity-member claims, and the Federal Circuit's PPC v. Corning opinion (Nos. 15-1361 et al.) tells you exactly where the "maintain electrical continuity during..." temporal-limitation claims are vulnerable and where the commercial-success nexus presumption will be raised against you. Build the § 103 theory around the temporal-continuity limitations, and prepare a rebuttal to the PPC Broadband v. Corning nexus argument up front.
5. Procedurally, presume a hostile RPI fight. Given Director Squires restored the strict RPI requirement by designating Corning Optical v. PPC (IPR2014-00440) precedential in 2025, ensure your petition names every entity that funded, directed, controlled, or could control the filing — parent, sister, and indemnitor. An RPI defect is now a guaranteed termination motion and can extinguish your re-filing rights via the one-year bar.

Confidence note: the zero-AIA-trial finding is high-confidence (§ ODP structured data + independent search). The 95/002,400 reexamination's existence is documented; its outcome is not, and I have said so rather than guessing. The "claims 1-42 / institution denied '237" document is an unidentified patent and is flagged as unverified.

I'll reconstruct the chain from the authoritative record and cross-check litigation/assignment data. Let me pull the relevant sources.

Let me pin down the recorded reels/frames and the corporate lineage.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 8,192,237 B2

Patent: Coaxial cable connector having electrical continuity member
App. 13/033,127 (filed 2011-02-23) · Issued 2012-06-05 · Priority 2009-05-22 (continuation of 12/633,792, filed 2009-12-08; prov. 61/180,835, filed 2009-05-22)

Sourcing caveat up front: The authoritative Google Patents legal-events record (reproduced in full in the supplied patent text) gives the conveyance types, parties, and event dates for this patent's recorded assignments. It does not expose reel/frame numbers or the assignment-record "correspondent" field. I was unable to retrieve those two fields from any reachable source for this specific patent, so I have not filled them in — inventing reel/frame numbers or naming a recording attorney would be fabrication. Every reel/frame slot below is marked [not retrieved] per the "don't fabricate" constraint. Verification link is given at the end.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• All three inventors are located in the Syracuse / Onondaga County, NY corridor, i.e., the same address as the corporate assignee (6176 East Molloy Road, East Syracuse, NY 13057). This is a captive inventor group, not independent inventors licensing in.
• No evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing. The opposite: Amidon was still filing sworn PPC declarations in the 2014 Corning Gilbert preliminary-injunction litigation, roughly 3 years post-filing. The "inventors bailed out pre-fire-sale" pattern is absent.
• The inventor→company assignment was recorded 2012-02-29, about 12 months after the 2011-02-23 filing and roughly 2 months before the parent family's first multi-defendant assertions. This is a late-recorded confirmatory employment assignment, not a negotiated transfer.

Original assignee

John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc., d/b/a PPC — 6176 East Molloy Road, East Syracuse, NY 13057. That is the name printed on the face of the issued patent (per uspto.report, "currently assigned to John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc."). The current-name successor is PPC Broadband, Inc.

• Product embodying the claims: ✅ Yes, clearly. PPC sold the SignalTight® continuity connector line, publicly launched around 2010. PPC's own litigation papers describe the SignalTight® connector as "the commercial embodiment of a number of PPC's patents," and PPC engineers produced internal product drawings ("CONTINUITY MEMBER, 3 PLUS," PPC drawing 12524-01) in the IPR record. This is a shipped, catalogued product, not a paper patent.
• Primary line of business: Design and manufacture of coaxial cable connectors and related CATV/broadband interconnect hardware — an operating manufacturer, self-described "worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of coaxial cable connectors" (PPC Broadband v. Corning Gilbert, 5:12-cv-00911, ¶7).
• Current status: Operating. PPC Broadband, Inc. is a Delaware corporation, principal place of business East Syracuse, NY. It remains an active manufacturer and an unusually frequent patent plaintiff (see below). No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no assignment to a licensing vehicle. Note the secured-party encumbrances from 2013 (JPMorgan Chase, then Wells Fargo) were released in 2013 and 2016 respectively — i.e., the debt was repaid/refinanced and the patent is unencumbered and retained.
• Ownership continuity: The patent never left the enterprise. John Mezzalingua Associates → (change of name) MR ADVISERS LIMITED → (change of name) PPC Broadband, Inc. The "MR ADVISERS LIMITED" link is the single most misreadable entry on the chain and is discussed under Signal 1.

Assignment timeline

Records below are drawn from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 8,192,237. Dates shown are the recorded dates as published; discrete execution dates were not separately surfaced for most entries.

• Recorded 2012-02-29 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: Eric Purdy; Noah Montena; Jeremy Amidon
  • Assignee: John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — the assignment-record correspondent field is not exposed by the sources reachable to me for this patent. (Do not read the prosecution address below as the recording correspondent; they are different fields. Prosecution correspondence of record for this family ran through Schmeiser, Olsen & Watts, 22 Century Hill Drive, Suite 302, Latham, NY 12110, per the Notice of Allowance for sibling app. 13/459,711. Single-naming that firm as the recording correspondent would be an inference, not a record.)
  • Context: Confirmatory employment assignment — late-recorded, ~12 months after filing; routine and non-adverse.

• Recorded 2013-02-12 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not a transfer of title)
  • Assignor: John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.
  • Assignee: MR ADVISERS LIMITED
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization / change of name only. No change in beneficial ownership. Caution: the assignee name looks like a foreign shell, but the conveyance type recorded is a name change, which is dispositive against a shell-transfer reading.

• Recorded 2013-02-13 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not a transfer of title)
  • Assignor: MR ADVISERS LIMITED
  • Assignee: PPC BROADBAND, INC.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Completion of the same internal reorganization — the enterprise's final operating name. Two name changes 24 hours apart, same day-band, same enterprise. This is the "cascading transfer" shape without the substance: it is recapitalization housekeeping, not a chain of unrelated LLCs.

• Recorded 2013-03-01 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (collateral grant, not a title transfer)
  • Assignor: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Assignee: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization / secured financing. PPC pledges its IP as collateral to a bank syndicate's administrative agent.

• Recorded 2013-10-04 — Reel [not retrieved] (two entries)

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (JPMorgan Chase → PPC Broadband, Inc.) and new Security Agreement (PPC Broadband, Inc. → JPMorgan Chase, N.A.)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Refinancing of the secured facility — the old lien released and a new security agreement taken the same day. Title remains with PPC throughout.

• Recorded 2013-10-08 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Confirmatory Grant of Security Interest
  • Assignor: PPC Broadband, Inc.
  • Assignee: WELLS FARGO BANK, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — agent substitution / facility migration from JPMorgan Chase to Wells Fargo.

• Recorded 2016-10-12 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: WELLS FARGO BANK, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
  • Assignee: PPC BROADBAND, INC.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Lien release — collateral freed; patent retained by the operating company. This is the last recorded event in the public chain.

No post-2016 assignment to any third party appears in the recorded chain. As of the last recorded event, the patent is owned outright by PPC Broadband, Inc.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8192237
    2009 : Priority date 22 May
    2011 : Continuation filed 23 Feb
    2012 : Patent issued 5 Jun
         : Inventor assignment recorded 29 Feb
         : Suits filed against Corning Gilbert
    2013 : Renamed MR Advisers Limited 12 Feb
         : Renamed PPC Broadband Inc 13 Feb
         : JPMorgan security agreement 1 Mar
         : Wells Fargo security interest 8 Oct
    2016 : Wells Fargo lien released
    2029 : Anticipated expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
No assignment moves this patent to a licensing-only entity. The only entity in the chain with a shell-like name, MR ADVISERS LIMITED, acquired the patent by a recorded CHANGE OF NAME on 2013-02-12 (not an assignment of title), and passed it onward by a second CHANGE OF NAME to PPC Broadband, Inc. on 2013-02-13. Both the assignor and assignee are the same continuing enterprise; the assignee address of record is the East Syracuse manufacturing campus, not a registered-agent service. This is precisely the false positive the instruction warns about: the naming reads shell-like, the conveyance type disproves it.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present (with a volume caveat).
No assignee or prior assignee in this chain — John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc.; MR Advisers Limited; PPC Broadband, Inc.; JPMorgan Chase; Wells Fargo — matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, or Spangenberg entities. PPC Broadband is a high-frequency plaintiff, but as an operating manufacturer suing competitors, which is a different category. The distinction matters: PPC's suits name Amphenol, Corning Gilbert, PCT International, Times Fiber, PerfectVision, Beldin, Thomas & Betts — all actual competing connector suppliers. That is operating-company assertion, not assertion-by-licensee.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (evidence gap).
The correspondent of record for each recorded assignment is [not retrieved] for every entry on this chain; Assignment Center's per-record correspondent field was not reachable for this patent. I therefore cannot affirm or deny recurrence, and I decline to substitute the prosecution attorney of record (Schmeiser, Olsen & Watts LLP, Latham, NY, per the 13/459,711 Notice of Allowance) for the recorded correspondent — those are distinct roles. One adjacent data point, flagged as unverified for this patent: a Plainsite-indexed assignment (Assignment 47520/170, executed 2012-09-11, recorded 2018-08-23) runs from "John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc." to "Mr Advisers Ltd." with correspondent MH2 Technology Law Group, LLP, Tysons Corner, VA — but the patent attached to that record is an unrelated application (15/049,661, "System, Method And Device Having Teaching And Commerce Subsystems"). I cannot confirm that record covers US 8,192,237, and the entity identity behind that "John Mezzalingua Associates" name is unconfirmed. Treat as a lead to verify in Assignment Center, not as a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
There is a two-step sequence inside 24 hours (2013-02-12 / 2013-02-13), but both steps are CHANGE OF NAME conveyances of the same enterprise, and the following five entries over 2013–2016 are bank security agreements and releases. There is no chain of nominally unrelated LLCs sharing a correspondent address or common principals; the assignee of record before, during, and after is one manufacturer at one street address.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present; in fact reversed.
The reorganization (2013-02-12/13) postdates the first assertions of this family: an inter partes reexamination request against the '237 was filed 2012-09-13 (USPTO control 95/002,400), and PPC's suits against Corning Gilbert (5:12-cv-00911) and PerfectVision (4:12-cv-00623, E.D. Ark.) were underway through 2012. The patent was being litigated in PPC's own name before the name-change entries. There is no pre-suit transfer arranged to set venue or clean up standing — PPC's complaints expressly plead that the '237 "was assigned to PPC" and that "PPC is the sole owner of, and has the sole right to sue upon, the '237 Patent."

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11 record appears in this chain; no trustee conveyance; no sale of the family out of an estate. The 2013–2016 bank entries are ordinary secured financings that were released, not foreclosures. PPC Broadband remains an operating concern.

7. Privateering — not present.
PPC never handed the patent to a proxy. Every assertion was made by PPC Broadband, Inc. (f/k/a John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. d/b/a PPC) in its own name — e.g., PPC Broadband, Inc. d/b/a PPC v. Corning Gilbert, Inc. (5:12-cv-00911), PPC Broadband, Inc. v. PCT International, Inc. (5:13-cv-00135), PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Times Fiber Communications, Inc. (5:13-cv-00460). No SEC-filed or EFF/Patent Progress-reported transfer-to-asserter exists here because no transfer ever occurred.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at PPC Broadband, Inc., the original operating manufacturer, following a lien release. This patent has not been neutralized by acquisition into a defensive pool.

Additional material context (affects asset value, not ownership)

The '237's asserted claims did not fare well. In PPC Broadband v. Times Fiber Communications (5:13-cv-00460), the NDNY record (Dkt. 1, filed 2015) recites that inter partes reexamination "reject[ed] or cancel[led] all of the claims of the '237 Patent that are asserted by PPC in this action," and on 2015-01-23 Chief Judge Sharpe approved a joint stipulation dismissing the '237, '353 and '060 claims without prejudice, with PPC's appeals pending. Corning Gilbert also filed IPRs (IPR2013-00340 through -00347) against this family. Any ownership analysis of the '237 should carry this parallel validity history.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain contains no transfer to a licensing entity: the only shell-sounding name, MR ADVISERS LIMITED, entered and exited via two CHANGE OF NAME conveyances recorded 2013-02-12 and 2013-02-13, and the surrounding entries (2013-03-01 JPMorgan security agreement, 2013-10-04 release/re-grant, 2013-10-08 Wells Fargo confirmatory grant, 2016-10-12 Wells Fargo release) are bank collateral events, not title transfers. The patent was asserted by its manufacturer-owner PPC Broadband, Inc. against genuine competitors (Corning Gilbert, Times Fiber, PCT International, PerfectVision) while the SignalTight® embodiment of the claims was on the market, and it remains owned unencumbered by that same operating company today. Zero of the eight NPE signals are present; signals 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are affirmatively negated, and signal 3 is unclear solely because the correspondent-of-record field could not be retrieved — an evidence gap, not a finding, and it does not move the verdict.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 8192237; mirrored index at assignment.uspto.gov/patent — reel/frame and correspondent fields should be captured there directly, as they are the two fields this analysis could not obtain.

One item a reviewing analyst should close out manually: the 47520/170 Plainsite record naming "John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc." → "Mr Advisers Ltd." with correspondent MH2 Technology Law Group, LLP. Its executed date (2012-09-11) sits plausibly inside the 2013 name-change window, but it is indexed against an unrelated patent application and I could not confirm scope. If it does cover this family, it would supply the missing correspondent and would make signal 3 assessable — and, if MH2 also appears on the 2013-02-12/13 entries, would establish a repeat correspondent for the reorg (still benign, since both conveyances are name changes).

I'll research US 8192237 and its cited prior art. Let me run several searches.

Let me retrieve the official reference lists and the reexamination record.

I found the reexamination record. Now let me pull the front-page "References Cited" list for US 8,192,237 itself.

Prior‑Art Report — US 8,192,237 B2

1. Verification of the target patent (from the authoritative full text provided)

Important methodological caveat, stated up front. The authoritative text supplied for this analysis contains the specification, claims‑summary, drawings list and abstract, but not the front‑page "(56) References Cited" block. I was unable to retrieve the complete front‑page citation list of US 8,192,237 itself before my search budget was exhausted. Rather than reconstruct that list from memory, I rely below on (a) the inter partes reexamination record for this exact patent — which is the operative, verifiable list of prior art actually applied against these claims — and (b) materially identical citation lists appearing on the front pages of sibling patents in the same family. Anything I could not verify is explicitly flagged as UNVERIFIED.

2. The operative prior‑art record: Inter Partes Reexamination 95/002,400

This is the strongest, most directly relevant evidentiary basis for "the prior art of US 8,192,237," because it is a USPTO proceeding directed at this patent's own claims 1–13.

2.1 The rejection grounds as issued (claims 1–13)

OCR caveats: the transmittal sheets are low‑quality OCR ("Schemeser" for Schmeiser; "3011" for 2011). Names such as "Burns," "Matthews," "Montana" should be re‑verified against the paper record; "Burns" is plausibly Burris and "Matthews" plausibly Mathews, both recurring inventor surnames in this connector family.

3. Reference‑by‑reference analysis

Below, each reference named in the record is given with (i) the citation as recoverable, (ii) date information, (iii) subject matter, and (iv) the claim mapping. Because every ground of rejection in the record is a § 103(a) combination, none of these references was applied as a standalone § 102 anticipation of any claim of US 8,192,237. I explain what that means in § 4.

3.1 Montena (primary reference, Issues A–F)

• Status of citation: inventor‑surname citation in the Office action. Full patent number NOT verified.
• Candidate documents appearing on the front‑page citation lists of this patent family (each UNVERIFIED as the specific "Montena" reference): US 2005/0042919 A1 (pub. 2005‑02‑24, Montena); US 2008/0102696 A1 (pub. 2008‑05‑01, Montena); US 2010/0055978 A1 (pub. 2010‑03‑04, Montena); US 2010/0279548 A1 (pub. 2010‑11‑04, Montena et al.). Note that the last two post‑date portions of the 2009 priority chain, so if "Montena" is one of those it would require a § 102(e)/pre‑AIA § 103(c) analysis rather than § 102(a)/(b).
• Subject matter (as applied by the examiner): a coaxial cable connector in which a conductive element resides between the post and the rotatable nut and maintains electrical contact therebetween so that ground continuity is established independent of full tightening of the nut — i.e., the core concept of claim 1's "continuity member … contacting the post and the nut."
• Claim mapping: applied to the preamble and the post/nut/continuity‑member elements of claims 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7 (Issues A and D), and to claim 3 and claim 6 in Issues B and F with secondary references supplying the sealing/structural sub‑features.
• § 102 vs. § 103: In every retrieved ground, Montena was combined with at least one other reference (Halbeck, Matthews, Selvin, Naus or Burris). No ground used Montena alone, so on this record Montena does not anticipate any claim under § 102.

3.2 Chee (primary reference, Issues G–K)

• Citation (verified as appearing in this family's citation lists): US 2004/0102089 A1, pub. 2004‑05‑27 (Chee), "Coaxial cable connector." (Verification that this is the same "Chee" relied on in 95/002,400 is UNVERIFIED; the surname match and subject matter make it the leading candidate.)
• Subject matter: pre‑2010 coaxial cable connector art disclosing a connector body/post assembly and a conductive element used to establish ground contact.
• Claim mapping: applied to claims 1, 3, 4 and 7 in combination with Halbeck (Issue G); to claim 2 with Halbeck + Matthews (Issue H); and to further dependent claims in Issues I–K.
• § 102 vs. § 103: always combined with Halbeck (a two‑reference combination), so no § 102 anticipation.

3.3 Halbeck (secondary reference, Issues A–C, G, H)

• Status of citation: UNVERIFIED — I could not retrieve the patent number, date or subject matter of "Halbeck" from the sources available.
• Inferred role: secondary teaching used with Montena and with Chee on claims 1–5 and 7. Given that it is needed to reach the independent claim together with either primary reference, it likely supplies a structural element of the nut/post/flange interface (e.g., a flanged post–nut retention geometry) rather than the continuity member itself.
• Claim mapping: claims 1–5 and 7 (with Montena); claims 1, 3, 4, 7 and 2 (with Chee).
• § 102: never applied alone — no anticipation.

3.4 Matthews / Mathews (secondary reference, Issues A–D, F, H)

• Status of citation: UNVERIFIED as to number. Candidates appearing in this family's citation lists: US 2006/0110977 A1 (pub. 2006‑05‑25, Matthews) and US 2011/0053413 A1 (pub. 2011‑03‑03, Mathews).
• Companion document (verified, related family): US 8,167,636 B1, "Connector having a continuity member," granted 2012‑05‑01, claiming "a continuity member positioned within a cavity, the cavity being located on an outer surface of the flange of the post, wherein the continuity member establishes and maintains electrical and physical contact between the post and the port coupling element." If the "Matthews/Mathews" reference is this disclosure, note that US 8,167,636's grant date post‑dates the '237 filing date, so it could only be prior art via its earlier effective filing date (pre‑AIA § 102(e)) — this must be checked, not assumed.
• Claim mapping: used with Montena on claims 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7 (Issue D) and claim 2 (Issue H); with Montena + Halbeck on claims 1–5 and 7 (Issue A) and claims 3 and 6 (Issue B).
• § 102: never applied alone.

3.5 Selvin (Issue B)

• Citation / date / subject matter: UNVERIFIED. I could not retrieve any identifying data.
• Claim mapping: applied only to claims 3 and 6, in combination with Montena + Halbeck + Matthews. The narrow claim set implies Selvin supplies a specific dependent‑claim feature (most plausibly the sealing‑member/O‑ring or environmental‑contaminant‑prevention limitation, consistent with claims referencing a sealing member).
• § 102: not applied alone.

3.6 Naus (Issue C)

• Citation / date / subject matter: UNVERIFIED. Could not retrieve identifying data.
• Claim mapping: applied only to claim 4, in combination with Montena + Halbeck + Matthews.
• § 102: not applied alone.

3.7 Burns (Issue F) — plausibly "Burris" (OCR)

• Citation / date / subject matter: UNVERIFIED.
• Cross‑check: the family's citation lists contain a run of Burris documents — US 2004/0209516 A1 (2004‑10‑21), US 2004/0219833 A1 (2004‑11‑04), US 2005/0208827 A1 (2005‑09‑22), US 2007/0155232 A1 (2007‑07‑05), US 2010/0105246 A1 (2010‑04‑29) — each titled around "sealed coaxial cable connector / related method." A sealing‑related secondary reference is consistent with a claim depending on an environmental seal.
• Claim mapping: applied with Montena + Matthews (Issue F).
• § 102: not applied alone.

3.8 Non‑patent literature of record

• "Digicon AVL Connector," ARRIS Group Inc. — 3 pages, retrieved from the Internet on 2010‑04‑22 (http://www.arrisi.com/special/digiconAVL.asp), listed among OTHER PUBLICATIONS on the front pages of this patent family (e.g., US 8,167,636 B1). UNVERIFIED whether it was cited on the '237 front page itself or relied on in 95/002,400.
• "Lock Washers (Inch Series)," ASME B18.21.1‑1999 — appears in a citation list that also references "U.S. Reexamination Control No. 95/002,400 filed Sep. 15, 2012, regarding U.S. Pat. No. 8,192,237" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9153911#31). This suggests a lock‑washer/standard‑hardware publication formed part of the obviousness discussion of the resilient continuity member. UNVERIFIED for exact role.

4. Direct answer to the § 102 question

No cited reference anticipates any claim of US 8,192,237 under 35 U.S.C. § 102 on the record I was able to verify. Concretely:

1. Every ground in Reexamination 95/002,400 was pleaded and adopted under § 103(a). The identifying text for each Issue begins "Claims … are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over …".
2. Every ground used at least two references. The independent claim 1 was reached only by Montena+Halbeck+Matthews (Issue A), Montena+Matthews (Issue D), or Chee+Halbeck (Issue G). A two‑ or three‑reference combination is, by definition, not a § 102 anticipation.
3. None of the retrieved grounds relied on any single reference, alone, as disclosing the full combination of (i) a nut with an internal lip and a defined "second end portion," and (ii) a continuity member disposed within that second end portion and contacting both post and nut.
4. The numeric hierarchy that dominates the claim language (the "first end portion 38 / second end portion 37" construction keyed to the lip surface 35 at dashed line 39 in the specification) is the point of novelty the applicant used to overcome the pre‑grant art (§ 2 Office Actions mailed 2011‑06‑02 and 2011‑10‑25; Notice of Allowance 2012‑02‑24). That same numeric distinction is what the reexamination requester had to attack with combinations rather than with a single anticipating reference.

If a § 102 challenge is desired, the strongest single‑reference candidates on the record are Montena and Chee, but each required a secondary reference (Halbeck and/or Matthews) to reach even claim 1 as issued — meaning that, on this record, neither alone is an anticipatory reference.

5. Front‑page "References Cited" — what the family lists contain (context, explicitly UNVERIFIED for the '237 front page itself)

The sibling/granted patents in this family carry a large, largely mechanical‑era U.S. reference list. From the front pages I retrieved for US 8,313,353 B2 and US 8,167,636 B1, the recurring entries include (representative sample, not exhaustive):

• US 331,169 (1885, Thomas); 1,371,742 (1921, Dringman); 1,667,485 (1928, MacDonald); 1,766,869 (1930, Austin); 1,801,999 (1931, Bowman); 1,885,761 (1932, Pierce, Jr.); 2,102,495 (1937, England); 2,258,737 (1941, Browne); 2,325,549/2,325,569 (1943, Ryzowitz); 2,480,963 (1949, Quinn); 2,544,654 (1951, Brown); 2,549,647 (1951, Turenne); 2,694,187 (1954, Nash); 2,754,487 (1956, Carr et al.); 2,755,331 and 2,762,025 (1956, Melcher); 2,757,351 (1956, Klostermann); 2,805,399 (1957, Leepe); 2,870,420 (1959, Malek); 3,001,169 (1961, Blonder); 3,015,794 (1962, Kishbaugh); 3,091,748 (1963, Takes et al.); 3,094,364 (1963, Lings); 3,184,706 (1965, Atkins); 3,196,382 (1965, Morello, Jr.); 3,245,027 (1966, Ziegler, Jr.); 3,275,913 (1966, Blanchard et al.); 3,278,890 (1966, Cooney); 3,281,757 (1966, Bonhomme); 3,292,136 (1966, Sonne); 3,320,575 (1967, Brown et al.); 3,321,732 (1967, Forney, Jr.); 3,336,563 (1967, Hyslop); 3,348,186 (1967, Rosen); 3,350,677 (1967, Daum) …
• More recent U.S. documents on those lists: US 2004/0077215 A1 (Palinkas et al., 2004‑04‑22); US 2004/0102089 A1 (Chee, 2004‑05‑27); US 2006/0110977 A1 (Matthews, 2006‑05-25); US 2004/0209516 and 2004/0219833 (Burris et al.); US 2005/0208827 (Burris et al.); US 2007/0026734 (Bence et al., 2007‑02‑01); US 2007/0049113 (Rodrigues et al., 2007‑03‑01); US 2007/0123101 (Palinkas, 2007‑05‑31); US 2007/0155232 (Burris et al., 2007‑07‑05); US 2008/0102696 (Montena, 2008‑05‑01); US 2008/0289470 (Aston, 2008‑11‑27); US 2009/0029590 (Sykes et al.); US 2009/0098770 (Bence et al.); US 2010/0055978 (Montena, 2010‑03‑04); US 2010/0081321 and 2010/0081322 (Malloy et al., 2010‑04‑01); US 2010/0105246 (Burris et al., 2010‑04‑29); US 2010/0233901 (Wild et al.) and US 2010/0233902 (Youtsey); US 2010/0255721 (Purdy); US 2010/0279548 (Montena et al., 2010‑11‑04); US 2010/0297871 (Haube); US 2010/0297875 (Purdy et al.); US 2011/0021072 (Purdy); US 2011/0027039 (Blair); US 2011/0053413 (Mathews, 2011‑03‑03); US 2011/0117774 (Malloy et al., 2011‑05‑19); US 2011/0230089 (Amidon et al., 2011‑09‑22); US 2011/0230091 (Krenceski et al., 2011‑09‑22); US 2012/0171894 (Malloy et al., 2012‑07‑05); US 2012/0225581 (Amidon et al., 2012‑09‑06).
• Foreign documents on those lists: CA 2096710 A1 (1994‑11); CN 201149936 / 201149937 (2008‑11); CN 201178228 (2009‑01); DE 47931 (1888), 102289 (1899), 1117687 (1961), 1191880 (1965), 1515398 (1970), 2225764 (1972), 2221936 (1973), 2261973 (1974), 3211008 (1983), 9001608.4 (1990), 4439852 (1996), 19957518 (2001); EP 116157 (1984), 167738 (1986), 0072104 (1986), 0265276 (1988), 0428424 (1991), 1191268 (2002), 1501159 (2005), 1548898 (2005), 1701410 (2006); FR 2232846/2234680 (1975), 2312918 (1976), 2462798 (1981), 2494508 (1982); GB 589697 (1947), 1087228 (1967), 1270846 (1972), 1401373 (1975), 2019665 (1979), 2079549 (1982), 2252677 (1992), 2264201 (1993), 2331634 (1999); JP 2002‑075556 (2002), 3280369 (2002), 4503793 (2010); KR 2006100622526 (2006); TW 427044 (2001); WO 8700351 (1987), 0186756 (2001), 02069457 (2002), 2004013883 (2004), 2006081141 (2006).
• Prosecution history of record for the '237 application itself (from the family certification lists): Office Action mailed 2011‑06‑02; Response 2011‑06‑24; Final Office Action mailed 2011‑10‑25; Notice of Allowance mailed 2012‑02‑24; PCT/US2010/034870 ISR/WO mailed 2010‑11‑30; GB 1109575.9 §18(3) report 2011‑06‑23; Chinese utility‑model evaluation report ZL2010202597847 dated 2011‑09‑02.

Use restriction: the items in § 5 are evidence of the family's citation practice. I did not verify that each appears on the face of US 8,192,237, and none of them should be represented as a § 102 reference against the '237 claims without checking the '237 front page and the reexamination file wrapper directly.

6. What remains unverified / recommended next steps

1. The '237 front page (56) citation list — not retrieved; obtain from the USPTO PatentCenter PDF or the Google Patents "References Cited" table.
2. Full patent numbers, dates and text of Montena, Halbeck, Matthews, Selvin, Naus, Burns and Chee as actually relied upon in 95/002,400 — obtain the Form PTO‑892 / examiner's PTO/SB/08 from the 95/002,400 file wrapper. The OCR rendering leaves surname spelling ("Montana" vs. "Montena"; "Burns" vs. "Burris") and numbers unresolved.
3. Issues E, F, L, M, N, O, P were only partially captured; their claim mappings and reference sets should be read from the paper Office action.
4. Outcome of 95/002,400 (certificate, any reexamined/added claims, appeal to the PTAB/CAFC) — not retrieved; material because confirmation, amendment or cancellation changes which claims remain for any § 102 analysis. (Note the separate, unrelated post‑grant activity of record: IPR2013‑00343 concerns US 8,313,353, a sibling patent, not the '237 patent itself.)
5. Statutory‑basis caution: because the '237 priority chain begins 2009‑05‑22 and application 13/033,127 was filed 2011‑02‑23, pre‑AIA §§ 102(a), (b) and (e) all potentially apply to different references, and a published‑after‑filing‑date reference (e.g., US 2010/0279548 A1 or US 8,167,636 B1) must be evaluated under § 102(e) against its own effective filing date, not its publication/grant date.

Bottom line: the verifiable prior art applied against US 8,192,237 consists of Montena, Chee, Halbeck, Matthews, Selvin, Naus and Burns/Burris, all deployed in § 103(a) combinations across claims 1–13 in Reexamination 95/002,400. On that record, no reference anticipates under § 102; the closest single‑reference candidates are Montena and Chee, but each required at least one secondary reference to reach even independent claim 1 as issued.

I'll first try to pull the prior-art/“References Cited” data that appears in the Google Patents record for US 8,192,237 B2, since the page text provided to me is truncated before that section.

Let me try to retrieve the actual "References Cited" list printed on the face of US 8,192,237 itself (and the reexamination record), since that is what the Prior Art section should contain.

Methodological note (read first)

The material supplied to me as the authoritative text for US 8,192,237 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8192237/en) is truncated. It ends mid‑paragraph in the "DETAILED DESCRIPTION" and does not contain the front‑page "(56) References Cited" list, the "Cited By"/"Similar Documents" listings, or the issued claim set. So I could not literally "use the Prior Art section of this page" — it isn't in the text I was given.

What I have instead verified from the record, and use below as the prior‑art universe, is:

• the references cited on the face of the sibling patents in the same family (all continuations of 12/633,792, which issued as US 8,287,320, and which share the '237's 22 May 2009 provisional priority date) — see the OCR'd front pages at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6b/74/a1/0912d6581e755e/US8313353.pdf, https://ocr.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2013-00345/.../Exhibit-1009-USPN_8287320.pdf, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/10/72/be/47a94dbc8c3668/US8915754.pdf;
• the re‑examination and IPR record for the family, including the Inter Partes Re‑examination of the '237 itself (Control No. 95/002,400, request filed 13 Sep 2012, 150 pages, referenced at https://patents.justia.com/patent/8562366), and the IPRs of the '060/'320/'353 siblings (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1549312/..., .../1549314/..., IPR2013‑00343 and IPR2013‑00345);
• the Federal Circuit decision in PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Corning Optical Communications RF, LLC, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3179262/ppc-broadband-inc-v-corning-optical-communications-rf-llc/.

Where I could not verify an exact patent number (notably the "Tatsuzuki" and "Lionetto" references, which appear in the PTAB record only by name), I say so rather than guessing.

1. The claim under analysis and the critical date

The '237 issued 5 Jun 2012 from App. 13/033,127 filed 23 Feb 2011, as a continuation of 12/633,792 (filed 8 Dec 2009 → US 8,287,320), which claims the benefit of provisional 61/180,835 filed 22 May 2009. Anticipated expiration 8 Dec 2029 (i.e., 20 years from the parent's filing), consistent with a terminal disclaimer.

Because the effective filing date predates 16 Mar 2013, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) applies, with § 102(a)/(b)/(e) prior art measured against 22 May 2009 / 8 Dec 2009.

The claim set is not in the supplied text, but the Summary of the Invention recites four "aspects," and the Abstract repeats the first. Independent claim 1 is therefore, with high confidence:

A coaxial cable connector comprising: a connector body; a post engageable with the connector body, wherein the post includes a flange; a nut, axially rotatable with respect to the post and the connector body, the nut having a first end and an opposing second end, wherein the nut includes an internal lip, and wherein a second end portion of the nut corresponds to the portion of the nut extending from the second end of the nut to the side of the lip of the nut facing the first end of the nut at a point nearest the second end of the nut, and a first end portion corresponds to the portion extending from the first end of the nut to that same point; and a continuity member disposed within the second end portion of the nut and contacting the post and the nut, so that the continuity member extends electrical grounding continuity through the post and the nut.

The point of novelty is a negative spatial limitation: the continuity member sits rearward of the forward‑facing surface 35 of the nut's internal lip 34 (spec., FIGS. 5, 29, 37, 42, 50: "the continuity member 70 does not reside between opposing complimentary surfaces 35 and 45 of the lip 34 of the nut 30 and the flange 44 of the post 40"). That is precisely the location where the closest prior art put its conductive element (under the nut, above the post flange). All of the '237's embodiments (members 70, 170–1270) share that relocation.

(Flag: because the issued claims weren't in the text I was given, verify the exact claim language against the printed patent before relying on this reconstruction. The Federal Circuit's treatment of "maintain electrical continuity" discussed in § 5 below turns on wording that may also appear in the '237.)

2. The prior‑art landscape

Also relevant as an admission in the '237 itself: the Background states that "often connectors are not properly tightened … and proper electrical mating of the connector with the interface port does not occur," and that "typical component elements and structures of common connectors may permit loss of ground and discontinuity of the electromagnetic shielding." That is an admission of both the problem and the reason to solve it.

3. Grounds of rejection under § 103(a)

Ground 1 — Palinkas in view of Youtsey (and Montena '194), optionally + Lionetto/Horak

• Palinkas supplies every element except the location of the continuity member: connector body, post with flange, rotatable nut, and a conductive resilient member electrically engaged with the flange of the post and bridging to the nut/port, expressly to preserve grounding when the connector is not fully tightened.
• Youtsey supplies the location: an O‑ring seated between the nut and body, rearward of the nut's forward face — i.e., inside the claimed "second end portion of the nut."
• Montena '194 corroborates that a ring (seal 54) belongs between the coupler and the body in a rotatable‑nut connector.
• Lionetto / Horak supply the obvious expedient of making such a ring conductive (conductive elastomer / conductive rubber O‑ring) so that it becomes the continuity member.

Element mapping: claim 1's "continuity member disposed within the second end portion of the nut and contacting the post and the nut" is met by Palinkas' resilient conductive member relocated to Youtsey's rearward, nut‑and‑post‑adjacent seating position, with Lionetto/Horak making the member conductive.

Motivation: (i) Both references address the same problem identified in the '237's own background. (ii) Palinkas' own commercial literature concedes its approach "requires time and cost in the manufacturing process of the connector" (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/da/93/8c/7af55a57710c45/US8062044.pdf), motivating the substitution of a simple ring/washer for a spring element. (iii) Only a finite number of locations in a coaxial connector permit a member to contact both the post and the rotatable nut — between lip and flange, radially between the nut bore and the post, and between the nut and body — and the art shows all three; picking one is the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" (KSR).

Ground 2 — Youtsey in view of Lionetto, as evidenced by Horak (the Board‑adopted ground)

The PTAB adopted essentially this ground in the family litigation (.../1549314/...: "Lionetto and Horak further demonstrate that it was known to use ring‑shaped conductive elastomers … disposed between two metal conductors, to electrically connect the metal conductors and thereby extend a grounding shield through a coaxial cable connector"; "a person of ordinary skill … would have been motivated to add a second (redundant) grounding path"). A POSITA modifying Youtsey's non‑conductive O‑ring into a conductive one obtains the claimed connector configuration with a predictable result.

Ground 3 — Matthews in view of Tatsuzuki

The '060 IPR petition maps claim elements to this combination, including (claim 8/9 analogues) a continuity member with "a disc‑like portion and a resilient flexible portion connected to the disc‑like portion and configured to arch away from a plane of the disc‑like portion," and "a plurality of flexible portions … forming symmetrical portions each arched above the general plane of the disc," all "allow[ing] the continuity member 13 to contact the coupler 30, the post 40, and the connector body 50." Those are exactly the structural species that appear in the '237's FIG. 33‑53 embodiments (flexible portions 1079a‑b/1279a‑b arching toward the first end; nut contact tabs 1078/1278; post contact portion 1077/1277). Matthews' ¶ 0030 (metal coating on a polymer, per the petition) covers the "conductive coating" dependent claims.

Ground 4 — Montena '705 (flexible RF seal) in view of any rearward‑ring connector

The '705 seal is a conductive, resilient part with a tubular insert portion that mounts coaxially on the post plus a flexible brim. Adapting the tubular insert so that it also bears radially against the inner bore of the nut rearward of the lip (rather than relying solely on the brim/port contact) is an obvious relocation of a known conductive member to a known interface, particularly given Youtsey, Montena '194 and Tatsuzuki.

4. Why the combination is more than hindsight (the shared "why")

1. Common problem, common field. The '237's own background (§ "hence a need exists…"), Palinkas, and the '705 patent all address the identical failure mode: a loose connector loses the ground/RF seal. Same field of endeavor, same problem → KSR rational underpinning.
2. Recognized, finite solutions. Springs under the nut (Palinkas), O‑rings at the nut/body interface (Youtsey, Montena '194, Tarrant per the IPR2022‑00721 record), spring/star/wave washers and conductive O‑rings (EP 2 636 105 B1 discussion), stamped ring contacts (Tatsuzuki) — this is the classic "finite number of identified, predictable solutions."
3. Design pressures. Keep the nut free to rotate (so the member cannot be squeezed in the lip/flange bearing surfaces); reuse an existing annular recess/O‑ring groove; reduce assembly cost relative to Palinkas' spring. Each of these is stated or implied in the record and each independently points to the rearward location.
4. Same‑assignee continuity. Palinkas is cited in and discussed by PPC's own Montena '044 patent ("a spring element is incorporated … under a nut element and beneath the flange portion of a post member … While this device is effective, it requires time and cost"), and the '705 seal is a same‑assignee reference in the same family — reinforcing that the relocation was a natural, in‑house engineering step.
5. Self‑evident enumeration in the '237. The specification itself frames the invention purely as a relocation ("Rather, the continuity member 70 … resides rearward the start of the second end portion 37 of the nut 30"), not as a new mechanism — which is the hallmark of a § 103 case rather than a § 102 case.

5. Where the obviousness case is weakest (and must be addressed)

1. "Maintain electrical continuity." The Federal Circuit vacated the Board's unpatentability holdings for claims 8, 16, 31 of the '320 patent, claims 1–9 of the '060 patent, and claims 7–27 of the '353 patent, because the Board had declined to require the member to make "consistent contact"/to "maintain electrical continuity," while the claims expressly require it (courtlistener.com/opinion/3179262). The '237's claim 1 contains the parallel language "so that the continuity member extends electrical grounding continuity through the post and the nut." A patent owner will argue, by parity, that a combination that merely contains a "continuity member" does not teach the ongoing‑contact requirement, and that Tatsuzuki/Matthews does not disclose contact in every operational mode (e.g., during nut rotation or partial tightening). Any § 103 rejection must therefore include evidence of resilient, mode‑independent contact (Youtsey's resilient O‑ring 84 + Lionetto's elastomer; Tatsuzuki's resilient arms 13b; the '705's resilient brim) and, ideally, physical/experimental evidence of continuity through a range of tightening torques.
2. Teaching away / different purpose. Palinkas deliberately places its compressible member between the flange and the port face because its function is to stop axial progression of the connector and contact the port — not merely to link post and nut. And Youtsey's O‑rings are expressly non‑conductive moisture seals, whose purpose (sealing) arguably counsels against introducing a conductive path or a part that could deform/absorb compression. Rebuttal: KSR rejects rigid TSM; and Youtsey's own connector is made of conductive nut/body/post, so a conductive seal at that joint is fully compatible with its sealing function; PPC itself argued in the parallel record that Youtsey/Tarrant "each patent discloses a coaxial cable connector with a coupler/nut, a post, a body, and a non‑conductive o‑ring between the nut and the body" — i.e., the geometry was already there and only the conductivity was new.
3. Dependent‑claim specificity. Claims reciting (a) contact only rearward of the lip (a negative limitation), (b) a specific through‑slit/flange‑cutout construction, (c) a body sealing member/O‑ring whose location is coordinated with the continuity member, and (d) precise tab/finger geometries will each need a specific teaching. Tatsuzuki (slit ring, arched arms), Youtsey (O‑ring at nut/body), Montena '194 (seal 54) and Montena '705 (flexible brim/transition band/tubular insert) collectively cover most of these; a "through‑slit to enable stamping and bending" is a routine manufacturing expedient.
4. Secondary considerations. The '237 page itself lists "Family has litigation" (N.Y. N.D. 5:12‑cv‑00911 and 5:13‑cv‑00460; Ark. E.D. 4:12‑cv‑00623) and there is a broad family IPR/Amphenol/Corning campaign. Infringement litigation is not itself evidence of non‑obviousness, but a patent owner may marshal commercial success, industry adoption, copying, and unexpected results (e.g., ground continuity maintained at very low torque) as secondary indicia. Those should be rebutted with nexus evidence and with the observation that the asserted advantage follows directly from the known function of a resilient conductive ring.
5. Date caution. Do not use the '705 patent's issue date (13 Jul 2010) or EP 2 636 105 B1 as art without checking dates. The '705/WO 2008/051740 PCT publication (May 2008) is the safest § 102(a)/(e) form, and only arguably § 102(b) depending on whether the critical date is 22 May 2008 or 8 Dec 2008. Tatsuzuki and Lionetto should be cited by their verified numbers/dates from the PTAB exhibits before being used in a rejection.

6. Bottom line

Explicit uncertainties

• I did not have the '237's issued claims, its own front‑page "References Cited" list, or the outcome of Inter Partes Re‑examination 95/002,400; the claim reconstruction in § 1 is from the Abstract/Summary and should be verified against the printed patent and any re‑examination certificate.
• Exact bibliographic data for "Tatsuzuki" and "Lionetto" (publication numbers, dates) were not verified — they appear in the PTAB record only by name and exhibit number.
• The reference lists I relied on are from the OCR'd front pages of sibling patents (US 8,313,353; US 8,287,320; US 8,915,754; US 8,727,800), which are substantially co‑extensive with the '237 family, but are not a substitute for the '237's own § 56 list.