US 9004718

I'll search for current information on this patent, including any CAFC litigation activity.

Let me do one more targeted check for litigation or post-grant proceedings involving this patent.

Search Results for US Patent No. 9,004,718

Important caveat up front: My searches of USPTO-facing sources and Federal Circuit docket material did not surface any CAFC 2026 appeal, IPR, PGR, or district-court litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,004,718. I found no PTAB petition or Federal Circuit docket entry tied to this number. I cannot confirm the absence with certainty — my search tools only reach indexed public web content, not the full PACER/PTAB docket databases — so treat "no litigation found" as not located rather than verified nonexistent. If you need a definitive litigation check, that would require a direct PACER/PTAB (PTAB-E2E) query. I did not locate any Federal Circuit activity for the 2026 term.

Note also one search hit pairs "9004718" with a Japanese publication (JP 9004718 A, 1997-01-07) in an EPO search report — that is an unrelated JP number, not the US patent.

Bibliographic Summary

Abstract (as granted)

A decorative illuminated trim system having at least one mountable base track. The base tracks include a recessed LED seat and two parallel attachment grooves. The trim system includes a cover with two rails. The cover is partially translucent and adjacent the base track such that the rails engage with the attachment grooves. The trim system has at least one LED string between the cover and the LED seat. The LED string includes LED bulbs that receive electric current from an electricity source and emit light. Some of the light emitted by the LED string passes through the cover.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — System (decorative illuminated trim)

A mounting base track that fastens to a surface (wall, tile, molding, etc.). The track has two functional features: (a) a recessed seat shaped to hold an LED string, and (b) two substantially parallel attachment grooves running along it. A cover with two protruding rails snap-fits or slides into those grooves; the cover is at least partly translucent. An LED string (with at least one LED bulb powered from an electricity source) sits in the recessed seat between the track and the cover, and light passes out through the cover. Critically, granted claim 1 also requires a decorative element placed over the cover, and that element must have (i) at least one window that lets light through portions of the cover, and (ii) at least one opaque area that blocks light through other portions of the cover. (This is narrower than the "first aspect" described in the specification's Summary, which described the base track + cover + LED string without the decorative element.)

Claim 8 — Method of assembling such a system

A step-by-step counterpart to claim 1: provide the elongate base track (with recessed LED seat + two parallel attachment grooves); provide the at least partly translucent cover with two rails; install the cover over the track so the rails engage the grooves; install the LED string between cover and LED seat; and install a decorative element over the cover, the element having at least one light-passing window and at least one light-blocking opaque area.

Claim 15 — System (fuller combination)

Essentially the claim 1 system plus a translucent jacket substantially surrounding the LED string. Recites: base track with recessed LED seat and two parallel attachment grooves; translucent cover with two rails engaging the grooves; LED string between cover and seat emitting light that passes through the cover; a decorative element over the cover with at least one window and at least one opaque area; and a jacket surrounding the LED string that lets light pass through.

Dependent Claims (context)

• 2–7 (depend from 1): two parallel protrusions on the decorative element engaging the attachment grooves beside the rails (2); translucent jacket around the LED string (3); support surface is an architectural building aspect (4); conductive material in the LED string for inter-string electrical connection (5); at least one wire bridging the conductive material of two adjacent LED strings (6); connector board with holes bridging a junction between adjacent strings and receiving the wire (7).
• 9–14 (depend from 8): the method counterparts of the above — protrusions (9), jacket (10), jacket with dispersing ridges (11), conductive material (12), wire engagement (10/13), connector board at the junction (14).
• 16 (depends from 15): adds the conductive material / wire / connector-board electrical-connection features to the claim 15 combination.

Points of Uncertainty

• No CAFC 2026 docket or PTAB proceeding located for this patent; this is a negative search result, not a verified absence of litigation.
• Inventor name variance: the granted patent lists "Alyssa M. Nelson," while the related design patent family (e.g., US D701,643 S) lists "Alyssa M. Nuest." These appear to be the same person based on shared co-inventors and common assignment to Belwith, but I am flagging it rather than reconciling it, per the identifier-literal rule.
• Status: "Expired – Fee Related" with an adjusted expiration of 2033-06-25 is Google Patents' algorithmic status; it is expressly an assumption, not a legal conclusion, and reflects maintenance-fee lapse rather than any invalidity finding.
• All bibliographic content above is drawn from the authoritative full patent text you supplied and the Google Patents / Espacenet / FreePatentsOnline records surfaced in search; no litigated or post-grant validity determinations for this patent were found.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 9004718 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search patent litigation-specific databases.

I found a potential hit. Let me dig deeper into it and check for other Belwith enforcement actions.

Litigation Summary — U.S. Patent No. 9,004,718

One (1) litigation is known involving this patent. Details below, followed by important verification caveats.

⚠️ Date discrepancy to flag up front: You stated today's date is April 26, 2026, but the case records below show the complaint was filed April 29, 2026 (and one aggregator indexed it June 24, 2026). Per your instruction to treat live search results as ground truth, I'm reporting the dates as found in the records rather than reconciling them to your stated date.

Case 1: Belwith Products, LLC v. Menard, Inc.

Sources:

• PacerMonitor: https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/64391971/Belwith_Products,_LLC_v_Menard,_Inc
• Ex Parte case page: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/miwd/1:26-cv-01400/belwith-products-llc-v-menard-inc
• Justia Dockets (W.D. Mich., NOS 830): https://dockets.justia.com/browse/circuit-6/state-michigan/court-miwdce/noscat-10/nos-830

Critical verification caveat

I could not confirm from the search results that US 9,004,718 is one of the patents actually asserted in the complaint. The docket aggregators confirm only that (a) Belwith Products, LLC is the plaintiff, (b) it is a § 271 patent case, and (c) Belwith is the recorded assignee of the '718 patent. A 51-page complaint is consistent with multiple patents-in-suit. Belwith also owns related design patents from the same 2012 filing family (USD670429, USD670430, USD670431, all filed April 23, 2012 and issued Nov. 6, 2012 — listed as cited references on the '718 patent's face), which are plausible co-asserted patents. To state the patents-in-suit with certainty you would need the complaint text itself (PACER Doc. 1 in 1:26-cv-01400).

Negative results (searches that returned nothing)

• No CAFC appeal found involving US 9,004,718.
• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) found challenging US 9,004,718.
• No prior district court litigation found asserting the '718 patent before the 2026 Menard case.
• No other Belwith Products enforcement actions surfaced in the searches performed.

Procedural context

The '718 patent's adjusted expiration is June 25, 2033, and its Google Patents legal status is listed as "Expired – Fee Related." Note: the former is an adjusted expiration date under 35 U.S.C. § 154(b), while the latter reflects a failure-to-pay-maintenance-fee status. If the fee status is accurate, that would affect the remedy available in the pending suit (damages accrual window), and the petition/record should be checked for a maintenance-fee petition to revive. I'm flagging this rather than asserting it, since the Google Patents status is explicitly a non-legal-conclusion data field.

Methodology / limitations

I searched general web sources and litigation aggregators (PacerMonitor, Justia Dockets, Ex Parte, Open Public Records, Docket Alarm) and cross-referenced the patent's own "Cited By" and "Citations" tables on Google Patents. I did not obtain a direct response from the Unified Patents litigation portal caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) for this specific patent, so that source is unverified. If you need a definitive, docket-grade answer, pull the PACER docket for 1:26-cv-01400 (complaint and any amended complaint) to confirm the exact patents-in-suit.

Bottom line: The only known litigation involving (or plausibly involving) US 9,004,718 is Belwith Products, LLC v. Menard, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-01400 (W.D. Mich.), filed April 29, 2026, currently pending with no outcome yet. Confirmation that the '718 patent is among the asserted patents requires the complaint text.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 9004718: zero (0). The structured ODP block is empty, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Defensive posture: the patent is untested, not hardened. There is no IPR estoppel to work around (§ 315(e)(2) never attached), which means a defendant is free to bring any § 102/§ 103 ground it can find — but it also means there is no free kill-shot, and all 16 claims remain presumptively valid and fully available to the patent owner.

Per-proceeding detail

No proceeding sections are generated, because there are no proceedings to describe. I am deliberately not fabricating docket numbers, panels, or dispositions.

What I checked (all negative):

Two caveats worth stating explicitly rather than papering over:

1. ODP AIA-trial coverage vs. post-issuance review. The supplied block is scoped to AIA trial proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM). It would not necessarily surface an ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. § 302 or a § 505(b) reexamination. I searched for one and found nothing, but I cannot rule one out from the supplied data alone — confirm directly in USPTO Patent Center and PTAB E2E before relying on this.
2. Google Patents itself shows no PTAB history. The Google Patents "Cited By" list for this patent (11 entries) contains only later-issued patents, several marked as third-party citations — no "PTAB" or "IPR" table on the family page, which is consistent with zero proceedings.

Enforceability flag that matters more than the PTAB docket: Google Patents lists the legal status as "Expired - Fee Related", with an adjusted expiration of 2033-06-25. Read literally, that label indicates lapse for non-payment of a maintenance fee. That is Google's assumption, not a legal conclusion, and a lapsed patent can in principle be revived by petition with intervening-rights consequences — but for a defendant, the maintenance-fee status of this patent is the single highest-value item to verify first. If the patent is in fact lapsed and unrevived, there is no case to defend, and the IPR analysis below is academic.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 16 claims are UNTESTED. Nothing has been canceled, disclaimed, or narrowed by the PTAB. Claims 1–16 — including independent claim 1 (system), independent claim 8 (method of assembling), and independent claim 15 (system with decorative element + jacket) — stand exactly as issued on 2015-04-14. Claim 3's jacket limitation and claim 16's connector-board/wire/conductive-material combination are the commercially interesting ones: claim 16 in particular pulls in the modular LED-string splicing architecture (FIGS. 7–23) that gives the patent its real scope beyond the base-track/cover geometry.

Estoppel landscape: empty, which cuts both ways. Because no IPR was ever instituted, no petitioner is estopped under § 315(e)(2), and the patent owner cannot point to any prior IPR victory to deter a challenge. A defendant today has the full statutory menu: IPR on § 102/§ 103 grounds, and — if any claim is ever asserted against a covered business method — CBM is unavailable here both because the claims are directed to lighting hardware, not a "financial product or service," and because the CBM transitional program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16. PGR is also unavailable: the application was filed 2013-04-24, so the 9-month PGR window (which would have run to roughly 2016-01-14) closed years ago. Realistically, IPR is the only AIA vehicle left. Note also that IPR's § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement — with no litigation on file, that clock has not started for anyone.

Available art (from the face of the patent itself). The examiner considered and the patent cites references that remain fair game for a fresh IPR, since no prior petitioner has burned them:

• US8534864B2 — Mounting rail for a lamp (Led-Linear GmbH) — the closest structural analogue to the claimed base track; expressly cited by the examiner.
• US6637924B2 — Strip lighting apparatus and method (Teledyne).
• US20060146531A1 — Reo, Linear lighting apparatus with improved heat dissipation.
• US20110075416A1 — Chou, LED illumination device having two sides illumination.
• US20110141722A1 — Acampora, Architectural lighting.
• DE102011003608A1 — Tridonic, Housed LED module (published 2012-02-23, before the 2012-04-24 priority date).
• TWI499742B — Geee Creations, Seamless connecting shell and lighting device using the same — directly relevant to claim 16's connector architecture.
• US9228727B2 / USD745736S1 — May, Lighting assembly — cited as a third-party citation, priority 2012-04-05.

The claim-1 combination (recessed LED seat + two parallel attachment grooves + translucent two-rail cover + LED string therebetween) is a crowded, largely mechanical design space, and the file history shows the claims were allowed over art of exactly this character. That is where an IPR would have to be built — and nothing suggests it would be easy.

Pattern signals: none. There is no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX involvement surfaced), and no patent-owner appeal activity, because there has been no proceeding to appeal. Belwith also holds three design patents from the same 2012-04-23 filing spree (USD670429, USD670430, USD670431), so a defendant facing a broader campaign should check those separately — design patents are IPR-eligible but have not been challenged either.

Recommended next steps

• Verify maintenance-fee status before anything else. Pull the fee history in USPTO Patent Center for application 13/869,614. The "Expired - Fee Related" label and the 2033-06-25 adjusted expiration strongly suggest lapse. If the patent lapsed and was not revived, or was revived long after the 6-month grace period, intervening rights under 35 U.S.C. § 252 may sharply limit any recovery — this is the cheapest possible defense and should be run first.
• Confirm the negative PTAB result directly. Search PTAB E2E by patent number and by the parties (Belwith Products, LLC; inventors Myers / Veleris / Cohen / Koskela / Nelson) to catch anything ODP has not ingested. Also check CourtListener and PACER for any co-pending district court action, since a served complaint would start the § 315(b) clock.
• If you do petition, do it early. There is no prior petitioner, so you get a clean shot at the strongest art — but with no litigation on file, you also have no § 315(b) deadline, meaning a preemptive IPR carries no urgency advantage. Weigh that against the risk that filing first forfeits grounds you might want to hold in reserve, given that § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to grounds you raised or reasonably could have raised.
• Do not build a defense argument on "the PTAB already killed this patent." It did not. Any assertion that claims 1–16 have been invalidated would be false, and sanctionable if pressed to a court.
• Absence is the signal. A 2015 patent with a commercial decorative-trim product and no IPR in eleven years of enforceability suggests either that Belwith never asserted it aggressively or that it has not been worth challenging. Either way, do not assume the claims are weak — assume they are simply unexamined by the Board.

I'll research the assignment chain for this patent. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me search for the specific assignment reel/frame records.

Important sourcing caveat before the record

I was able to reconstruct the substance of this patent's recorded assignment chain from the Google Patents legal‑events module (which mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center data), but I was not able to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondents. The Assignment Center record sets were not reachable in a form that exposed those fields during this session, and I will not invent reel/frame identifiers. Every reel/frame slot below is marked [not retrieved] rather than filled with a plausible-looking number. If you need the exact reel/frame and correspondent string, that requires a direct query at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov (search 9004718 or 13/869,614).

Inventors

Named inventors as recorded on the granted patent and on pre‑grant publication US 2013/0279160 A1 (which also lists their residence cities):

Pattern notes:

• The pre‑grant publication names BELWITH PRODUCTS, LLC, Grandville, MI in the §71 applicant field, and the recorded 2013 assignment lists all five of these individuals as assignors to Belwith. So all five were, by record, employees/contractors of Belwith at filing — the "employer at time of filing" is inferable from the assignment itself, not from any employment document I retrieved.
• Geographic concentration worth flagging: four of five inventors gave Chicago‑metropolitan or Northwest‑Indiana addresses (Monee, Northbrook, Buffalo Grove, Crown Point), while the assignee's address is Grandville, MI (Grand Rapids area). The patent's attorney of record, Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd. (Chicago, IL), is also a Chicago firm. That cluster is consistent with a Chicago‑area design/engineering function feeding a Michigan‑based hardware manufacturer — but note this is an inference from addresses on the face of the publication, not a verified employment finding.
• No inventor‑departure signal is determinable from the public assignment record. I found no evidence of any inventor assigning away personal rights other than the single inventor→Belwith assignment, and no evidence of inventors forming a competing entity. The "all inventors depart within 12 months" pre‑fire‑sale tell is not present on the records I could see.
• Cross‑reference / minor contradiction to carry forward: the previously generated section flagged that the sibling design‑patent family names an inventor "Alyssa M. Nuest" while this patent names "Alyssa M. Nelson." I am not reconciling those; I only note that on this patent the name of record is Nelson.

Original assignee

Belwith Products, LLC — Grandville, Michigan (3100 Broadway Ave SW, Grandville, MI 49418, per Belwith's own 2013 press release contact block). Original and current assignee on the face of the patent and in Google Patents' current‑assignee field.

• Line of business: designer and manufacturer of decorative furniture, cabinet and door hardware, operating through its Keeler and Hickory Hardware divisions (Belwith also owns the First Watch Security brand, which appears as the social/web property on its PatSnap company record). Founded 1893, privately held, roughly 100–250 employees depending on source.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the evidence of the file itself. The patent's own Information Disclosure Statement cites Belwith Products, LLC, "Light Integrated Trim (LIT): Modular lighting strip system," Belwith Keeler © brochure — i.e., a commercial product brochure for the system shown in FIGS. 1–2. The related design patents (US D670429 / D670430 / D670431, "Decorative LED illuminated trim," issued 2012‑11‑06, same assignee) protect the ornamental appearance of that same commercial line. This is an operating company protecting a shipping product, not a paper portfolio.
• Current status: appears to be an ongoing operating concern — patent‑grant activity continues into the 2020s (PatentsView‑derived counts show Belwith grants in 2020, 2023 and 2025). I found no bankruptcy, dissolution, or receivership record for Belwith. It is a private LLC, so no SEC 10‑K/8‑K exists to corroborate financing; the only large‑scale financial artifact in the record is the JPMorgan security interest discussed below.
• Enforcement posture (relevant context, not an NPE signal): Belwith is a repeat IP plaintiff against hardware competitors — e.g., Belwith Products, LLC v. Laurey Cabinet Hardware (a division of Strategic Brands, Inc.), W.D. Mich. No. 1:10‑cv‑00898, consent judgment entered 2010‑12‑29 (asserting design patent US D451,782 and a copyright registration), and the October 2012 W.D. Mich. action against Hammary Furniture Co., American Drew, and Kincaid Furniture Co. (La‑Z‑Boy subsidiaries), settled in 2013 for patent and copyright infringement. Neither of those suits names US 9,004,718 — they predate or are contemporaneous with this application's April 2013 filing.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded post‑filing events appear in the Google Patents legal‑events module for US 9,004,718. Neither reel/frame was retrievable in this session. No release of the security interest is shown among the events I retrieved.

• Executed date not shown in retrieved source / recorded 2013-08-08 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]
  • Conveyance: Assignment (of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: KOSKELA, LISA KAY; VELERIS, JOHN D.; COHEN, MICHAEL AARON; NELSON, ALYSSA M.; MYERS, GARY L.
  • Assignee: BELWITH PRODUCTS, LLC
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — could not be pulled from the Assignment Center record in this session.
  • Context: Standard inventor‑to‑company assignment perfecting Belwith's title to the application filed 2013‑04‑24 (provisional priority 2012‑04‑24). This is the only ownership transfer of record.
• 2016-11-08 (recorded; execution date not shown in retrieved source) — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]
  • Conveyance: Security Interest (Security Agreement / grant of collateral lien)
  • Assignors (grantors): BELWITH PRODUCTS, LLC; BELWITH PRODUCTS, N.A., LLC; BELWITH REAL ESTATE, LLC
  • Assignee (secured party): JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization/financing — Belwith pledged its patent collateral (this patent included) to JPMorgan as collateral agent under a credit facility. This is not a transfer of ownership; the patent remains Belwith's property subject to a lien. Note the two additional grantor entities (Belwith Products, N.A., LLC and Belwith Real Estate, LLC), which reveal an affiliated‑entity financing structure typical of a leveraged private manufacturer — not an IP‑holding shell.
  • Open item: I found no recorded release/termination of this security interest in the events available to me. If no release was ever recorded, a stale lien of record could surface in a title/standing diligence check even though ownership never left Belwith.

Correspondent note (one clause, as instructed): The only attorney of record I could positively identify for this family is Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd., Chicago, IL (prosecution counsel on the granted patent and on US 2013/0279160 A1). That is a single, non‑recurring appearance in my data and the firm is a full‑service IP firm serving operating companies — I therefore do not treat it as a repeat‑correspondent NPE tell. The assignment correspondents (the people who actually filed the 2013‑08‑08 and 2016‑11‑08 recordings) remain unidentified.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9004718
    2012 : Provisional application filed
    2013 : Utility application filed 24 Apr
         : Five inventors assign rights to Belwith
    2015 : Patent issued to Belwith
    2016 : Security interest granted to JPMorgan Chase
    2033 : Adjusted expiration per Google Patents

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating‑company assertion.

The entire ownership chain is a single inventor→Belwith assignment recorded 2013‑08‑08 plus a 2016‑11‑08 security interest to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.; title never left Belwith Products, LLC, a 130‑year‑old private manufacturer that sells the very hardware line this patent covers ("Light Integrated Trim," Belwith Keeler brochure cited in the patent's IDS) and that has enforced other patents in its own name against competitor hardware suppliers (Laurey, consent judgment 2010‑12‑29; La‑Z‑Boy subsidiaries, filed Oct 2012). Zero NPE signals fire: no shell‑entity transfer, no listed asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre‑litigation assignment, no privateering, no defensive aggregator. Confidence caveat: the verdict rests on the assignee's demonstrated operating‑company and enforcement profile, not on any located assertion of US 9,004,718 itself — no suit, IPR, PGR or CAFC appeal naming this patent was found (consistent with the earlier‑generated section), so the patent is best characterized as an operating company's product patent with no NPE history, and the maintenance‑fee lapse ("Expired – Fee Related") rather than assertion is the likely explanation for its current status.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 9004718 or application 13/869,614 to obtain the reel/frame numbers, execution dates, and recorded correspondents that were not retrievable here. Cross‑check the Google Patents legal events tab and USPTO Patent Center for any release of the JPMorgan security interest.

I'll search for the specific patent and key cited references to build the prior-art analysis.

Let me gather details on the utility references most likely to bear on § 102.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,004,718 B2

"LED decorative illuminated trim system" | Appl. No. 13/869,614 | Inventors: Myers, Veleris, Cohen, Koskela, Nelson | Assignee: Belwith Products, LLC | Primary Examiner: Bao Q. Truong

1. Verification of the target patent (not a similar number)

I confirmed U.S. 9,004,718 directly against the authoritative full text supplied and against three independent records that match it exactly:

• Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9004718B2](/patent/US9004718B2)/en
• Espacenet: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[9004718B2](/patent/9004718B2)&KC=B2&FT=D
• FreePatentsOnline: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/9004718.html

All three confirm: priority 2012-04-24 (provisional 61/637,828), filed 2013-04-24, issued 2015-04-14, 16 claims (3 independent — 1, 8, 15). This is the Belwith trim patent and not the unrelated Japanese publication JP 9004718 A (1997-01-07) that occasionally surfaces in EPO search reports. Nothing in these records contradicts the previously generated bibliographic section; the two are consistent (examiner, agent, claim count, and assignee all match).

Statutory framework. Because the application claims benefit of a provisional filed 2012-04-24 — before March 16, 2013 — and no claim has an effective filing date on or after that date, the pre-AIA version of 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 governs. All 23 examiner-cited references published (or, for the earlier-filed ones, were filed) before 2012-04-24 and therefore qualify as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b), or alternatively § 102(a)/(e). I apply that framework below.

Scope note. The task asks about the citations made against 9,004,718 — i.e., the "Patent Citations (23)" table (backward art). I have deliberately excluded the "Cited By (11)" and "Families Citing this family (24)" lists, which are forward citations (later art citing this patent) and are not prior art to 9,004,718.

2. The 23 cited references (citation, dates, description)

Dates are as recorded on the face of the patent's citation tables. Descriptions marked "(title-based)" are drawn from the title/assignee only — I did not retrieve the full document for those and say so rather than invent detail.

A. Utility patents and published applications

B. Ornamental (design) patents

(Related, not "cited" art: FPO's record lists co-pending Belwith design applications 29/418,916 and 29/418,918 (filed 2012-04-23) and 29/423,808, 29/423,811, 29/423,814 (filed 2012-06-05), all by Myers et al. — the design family counterparts of this utility patent.)

3. § 102 analysis — do any cited references anticipate?

3.1 The controlling test

Anticipation under § 102 requires that a single reference disclose every element and limitation of the claim as arranged in the claim. The three independent claims here are demanding combinations:

• Claim 1 (system): (a) elongate base track mountable to a support surface; (b) a recessed LED seat; (c) two substantially parallel attachment grooves; (d) a cover with two rails, at least partially translucent, rails engaging the grooves; (e) an LED string disposed between cover and seat, at least one LED bulb powered by an electricity source; and (f) a decorative element disposed over the cover, having at least one light-passing window and at least one light-blocking opaque area.
• Claim 8 (method): the assembly counterpart of claim 1, including the step of installing the decorative element over the cover.
• Claim 15 (system): the claim 1 combination plus a translucent jacket substantially surrounding the LED string.

Limitation (f) — the windowed/opaque decorative element over the cover — is the feature that distinguishes all three independent claims from the more generic base-track + cover + LED-string disclosure described in the specification's own Summary ("first aspect"). This is significant: it is the limitation most likely added during prosecution, and it is the limitation that the cited art does not clearly reach.

3.2 Conclusion on anticipation

None of the 23 examiner-cited references anticipates any independent claim — 1, 8, or 15 — or any claim depending from them. Specifically:

• The 13 design patents (items 11–23) are ornamental. A design patent's disclosure is its drawings' appearance; it is prior art as a printed publication, but none of these shows the functional combination (recessed LED seat + two parallel attachment grooves + rail-bearing translucent cover + LED string + windowed/opaque decorative element). They also predominantly show unrelated fixtures (chandelier arm, wall fixture, lighting panel). No § 102 anticipation of any claim. Items 21–23 (Belwith's own D670,429/D670,430/D670,431) are the designer's own ornamental counterparts and are not anticipatory of the utility claims.
• The 10 utility references disclose pieces of the puzzle but never the whole. No single one discloses a decorative element with both a window and an opaque area positioned over a rail-mounted translucent cover.

3.3 Closest references and their near-misses (per reference)

Below, "potentially anticipates" reflects element-by-element screening. Where I say "none," it is because at least one claim element is missing from that reference.

US 8,534,864 B2 — Led-Linear GmbH (item 10). Closest structural art.

• Discloses: a mounting rail (a) with two parallel mounting formations (c), and an adapter profile carrying a light emitter that snaps into the rail; a lens/transparent potting can be retained by inner ridges.
• Missing: (b) a recessed LED seat in the claimed sense; (e) an LED string seated between cover and seat; and entirely (f) the decorative element with window/opaque area.
• Potentially anticipates: none. Strong § 103 art against the base-track/rail-engagement concept (and it would have anticipated the broader "first aspect" of the specification had a claim been drawn to it), but not the granted claims. Note its § 102(e) status: filed 2011-08-12, before applicant's 2012-04-24 invention date.

US 2011/0141722 A1 / US 8,142,047 B2 — Acampora, ABL IP Holding (item 9). Closest housing/lens art.

• Discloses: (a) an elongate housing; (b) a lamp mounting surface with LEDs; (d) a lens fixable on the housing; and (c) two parallel elongate channels running the housing length that receive the lens seal ridge — structurally analogous to "two parallel attachment grooves" engaged by cover "rails." Also expressly directed to architectural lighting (relevant to claim 4 / claim 1's support surface).
• Missing: (e) an LED "string," and (f) the decorative element with window and opaque area.
• Potentially anticipates: none. Strong § 103 art; would support a rejection over the base-track/cover sub-combination only.

US 2006/0146531 A1 — Reo (item 4).

• Discloses a linear LED lighting apparatus with LEDs, primary/secondary optical assemblies, and a heat-dissipating housing — relevant to the general "linear LED fixture" field and to claim 4's architectural use.
• Missing: (a)–(c) base track/grooves, (d) rail cover, (f) windowed decorative element.
• Potentially anticipates: none. § 103/background art at most.

US 6,637,924 B2 — Teledyne (item 3).

• Discloses an elongated strip light with a reflective rear surface and a light-output face — conceptually adjacent to the reflective "LED seat"/diffusing cover idea.
• Missing: base track with attachment grooves, rail-bearing cover, LED string, windowed/opaque decorative element.
• Potentially anticipates: none.

US 5,898,814 A — Yamamoto (item 2).

• Discloses an elongate covering with illuminating areas — arguably the closest "illuminated trim with light-passing regions" concept, and the only cited reference whose title evokes "windows" that pass light.
• Missing: LED string in a recessed seat, two parallel attachment grooves, rail cover, and the opaque area limitation coupled to a translucent cover.
• Potentially anticipates: none (may be relevant background for the window/opaque concept).

US 3,215,039 A — Flocks (item 1). Reflective sheet only — far afield. Potentially anticipates: none.

US 2011/0075416 A1 — Chou (item 8). Title indicates two-sided LED illumination; I could not retrieve the specification to verify. Even taking the title at face value, it does not disclose the claimed base-track/groove/rail/cover combination or the windowed decorative element. Potentially anticipates: none — flagged as unverified.

US 2007/0291420 A1 — Grand Halo (item 5); US 7,572,596 B2 — Canadian General-Tower (item 6); US 7,832,918 B2 — Chien (item 7). Optical-element, pool-lighting, and decorative-night-light references respectively (title-based). Each addresses a different problem and lacks the claimed combination. Potentially anticipates: none.

4. Bottom line

• Anticipation (§ 102): the cited references do not anticipate claims 1–16. The granted independent claims all hinge on the decorative element with a window and an opaque area disposed over a translucent, rail-mounted cover — a limitation no single cited reference discloses. This is consistent with the claim-drafting history implied by the file: the specification's Summary describes a broader base-track + cover + LED-string combination, but every granted independent claim was narrowed to require the decorative element.
• Most relevant prior art overall: US 8,534,864 B2 (Led-Linear GmbH) and US 2011/0141722 A1 / US 8,142,047 B2 (Acampora / ABL IP Holding). Both disclose the mechanical heart of the invention — an elongate mounting housing/track with two parallel formations/grooves engaged by a light-transmitting cover/lens — and would be the primary § 103 references for the base-track/cover sub-combination.
• Design patents (13 of 23 citations) carry essentially no § 102 anticipation weight against the functional claims; they are ornamental and largely depict unrelated fixtures. The three Belwith design patents (D670,429/430/431) are the applicant's own ornamental counterparts.
• Supporting art for narrower features: US 2006/0146531 A1 and US 6,637,924 B2 for the linear-LED/optics context; US 5,898,814 A for illuminated areas in a covering.

5. Caveats and points of uncertainty

1. Search coverage. My searches reached indexed public sources (Google Patents, Espacenet, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, and PDF repositories). They do not reach the complete USPTO Image File Wrapper / examiner search history, so I cannot state definitively which references were applied against which claims, or whether the examiner also relied on art within the specification's "incorporated by reference" material.
2. Unverified references. I could not retrieve US 2011/0075416 A1, US 2007/0291420 A1, US 7,572,596 B2, US 7,832,918 B2, US 3,215,039 A, and US 5,898,814 A; their descriptions above are title/assignee-based and should be confirmed against the full documents before being relied on in any office action or validity opinion.
3. US 8,534,864B2 publication date. The pre-grant publication US 2013/0039052 A1 is dated ~2013-02-14 (Google/Justia); the exact day should be confirmed. Its prior-art effect under pre-AIA § 102(e) runs from its 2011-08-12 filing date, which is what matters here.
4. No validity determination. Nothing in this analysis (or in the Google Patents "Expired – Fee Related / adjusted expiration 2033-06-25" status) is a legal conclusion of validity, enforceability, or claim scope. This is a technical prior-art screen only.
5. Consistency with prior sections. The earlier "no litigation/PTAB located" finding is unaffected and not contradicted by anything found here; the bibliographic data remain consistent.

If you want, I can run a focused element-by-element § 103 chart (e.g., US 8,534,864 in view of Acampora, further in view of a diffuser/optical-element reference) to test the obviousness exposure of claims 1, 8, and 15.

I'll ground this analysis by pulling details on the key prior-art references listed on the patent page before mapping them to the claims.

Let me pull details on the remaining references most relevant to the decorative window/opaque-element limitation and the strip lighting.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,004,718 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on scope and evidence. This analysis uses the prior-art references listed on the patent page ("Patent Citations (23)" and the earlier-dated entries in "Families Citing this family"). I retrieved titles, abstracts, claim text, and description excerpts for several key references; for the remainder I rely on the titles/classification data on the page and general knowledge of the art. Where I am inferring rather than quoting, I say so. This is an analytical opinion, not a legal conclusion, and a definitive § 103 case would require full-text review and the file wrapper (the applicant's remarks and the examiner's reasons for allowance).

Governing law / critical date. Application 13/869,614 was filed 2013-04-24 and claims benefit of provisional 61/637,828 (2012-04-24). Because the application was filed after 2013-03-16 but (apparently) all claims are entitled to the 2012-04-24 provisional date, this is a "transition" application and pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 most likely govern, with KSR's flexible (non-rigid-TSM) obviousness standard. The analysis below is substantively the same either way. The critical date for prior art is 2012-04-24 (or 2013-04-24 if the claims are not entitled to the provisional).

1. What the claims actually require (the "gist" for § 103)

The three independent claims are a combination of five known structural elements, none of which is individually new:

1. An elongated mounting track/channel (base track) fastened to a surface, with a recessed seat and two parallel grooves.
2. An elongated translucent lens/cover whose rails snap into the grooves.
3. An LED strip/string in the seat emitting through the cover.
4. (Claims 1, 8, 15) A decorative overlay over the cover having light-passing windows and light-blocking opaque areas.
5. (Claims 3, 15, 16) A translucent jacket around the LED string; (claims 5–7, 12–16) conductive traces, jumper wires, and a connector board for joining adjacent strips.

Crucially, no claim recites any numerical criticality, material, geometry, or unexpected result. The specification repeatedly disclaims specificity ("any suitable material," "any suitable shape and size," "any suitable manner"). Under KSR, a "patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each of its elements was, independently, known in the prior art" — but where elements perform their known functions and produce only a predictable result, the claim is obvious. That is the posture here.

2. The prior-art landscape on the page

Important caveat on the "Families Citing this family" list. Those 24 entries are forward citations (most with priority dates of 2014–2023) and therefore are not prior art against this patent. Only the Tridonic DE 10 2011 003 608 A1 publication (2012-02-23) predates the critical date. The others (Grigore, May, Itasca, Joovv, etc.) merely show the field's later development and cannot be used in a § 103 rejection.

3. Primary combination — Claims 1 and 8

Core combination: LED-Linear '864 + Reo '531 + Yamamoto '814 (optionally + Chien '918).

(a) The mounting track with recessed seat and two parallel grooves — LED-Linear '864. The reference expressly describes a mounting rail with parallel longitudinal grooves and complementary snap-fit formations, holding a light-emitter profile that can be positioned anywhere along the rail. That is the claimed "elongate base track ... two substantially parallel attachment grooves," and it teaches the snap engagement used by claim 1's cover rails. Reo '531 supplies the "elongated housing with a lamp mounting surface" (the recessed seat) and an enclosing lens.

(b) The translucent rail-engaging cover — Reo '531 / Grand Halo '420 / LED-Linear '864. Reo '531's "secondary optical assembly" is a lens covering the LED array; LED-Linear '864's adapter/rail interface is a groove-and-formation snap. Substituting an extruded translucent lens whose edges seat in the rail grooves is, at most, a predictable mechanical variation of these structures — using a known snap-groove arrangement to retain a known lens.

(c) The LED string — Reo '531 (and Teledyne '924 / Acampora '722). Reo '531's "plurality of light emitting diodes" in a linear array is the claimed LED string with at least one LED bulb powered to emit light. Acampora '722 likewise mounts LEDs on a lamp mounting surface inside an elongate housing.

(d) The decorative element with windows and opaque areas — Yamamoto '814 (and Chien '918). This is the only element not squarely present in the linear-lighting housing references, and it is supplied by Yamamoto '814: a covering body with light-transmitting portions and a colored, non-transparent region, mounted over/around an LED or photoluminescent light plane in an accommodating channel. Chien '918 independently teaches placing an image-bearing optics film/lens (with printing, patterns, and shaped openings) in front of LEDs to create a decorative lighted effect. Either reference supplies the claimed "window + opaque area" overlay.

Motivation to combine (KSR):

• Same field, same problem. Reo '531 and LED-Linear '864 are both directed to elongated LED luminaires for architectural surfaces; the problem they expressly identify — the "scalloping"/discrete bright-spot appearance of point-source LEDs in a linear array — is exactly the problem this patent's decorative element solves ("the LED bulbs can be hidden by opaque areas ... to conceal discrete bright spots"). A skilled artisan facing that problem would look to the well-known technique of masking/overlaying patterned films over point sources, which is precisely what Yamamoto '814 and Chien '918 teach.
• Predictable result. Placing a stencil-like overlay over a diffuse linear light is a predictable application of a known element to a known structure, yielding no more than the expected uniform, patterned glow.
• Known interchangeability. Rail/cover/lens assemblies and decorative overlays are separate, modular parts; combining them is the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

Thus claim 1, and its method counterpart claim 8 (identical steps executed in the ordinary order of assembly), are prima facie obvious.

4. Secondary / dependent limitations

(i) Claims 3, 10, 11, 15 — translucent jacket and dispersion ridges. Tridonic DE 10 2011 003 608 A1 ("Housed LED module") teaches encapsulating/housing an LED module; Reo/Grand Halo teach light-diffusing optical elements. Encasing an LED strip in a translucent sleeve (silicone is expressly named in the specification, which claims no special advantage for it) for weatherproofing and light diffusion is a routine design choice with a predictable result. Claim 11's "plurality of ridges" for dispersion is met by conventional diffuser ridge geometry.

(ii) Claim 2 / claim 9 — parallel protrusions engaging the grooves. This is the cover/decorative-element edge geometry already used by Yamamoto '814 (abutting/gripping edges) and by LED-Linear '864's snap formations. Snap tabs/tongues are the definitional "design choice" of the mechanical arts; claim 2 recites no unexpected geometry.

(iii) Claim 4 — "support surface is an architectural building aspect." Reo '531 (building facades), Acampora '722 (architectural lighting), and Yamamoto '814 (stair nosing) each expressly mount to architectural structures. This element is met directly and, in any event, adding an intended use to an apparatus claim does not patentably distinguish it.

(iv) Claims 5–7, 12–14, 16 — conductive traces, jumper wire, connector board. These recite electrically joining adjacent LED strips: conductive material in the strip; a wire bridging the two; a board with holes at the junction. Connector boards, jumper wires, and conductive traces in flexible LED strips are ubiquitous in the strip-lighting art and the specification itself describes the crimp/wire connection in matter-of-fact terms with no asserted advantage. Under KSR, arranging known electrical connectors in their established way to join two known LED strips is obvious as a matter of common sense and market demand (the desire to extend the run — which Reo '531 expressly contemplates, being "customizable in length"). These are the weakest claims to defend on their technical merits and the easiest to reject once the base claim falls.

5. Claim-by-claim summary

6. Where the rejection could be attacked (candor on the weaknesses)

A rigorous § 103 case must acknowledge the soft spots, because the examiner clearly did not combine the references and allowed the case:

1. No single reference teaches the decorative window/opaque overlay in combination with a rail-mounted linear LED. The rejection therefore depends entirely on the motivation to combine Yamamoto/Chien with the housing references. A patentee would argue the references are non-analogous (night lights and stair nosing vs. architectural trim) and that no reference expressly motivates the combination (a rigid-TSM argument — but KSR largely forecloses this where the field and problem overlap, as Reo's "scalloping" discussion shows).
2. Connector-board claims are supported by general knowledge, not a pinpoint reference. I did not retrieve a single listed reference squarely disclosing the crimped-wire + connector-plate junction. A rejection would have to rest on official notice / common sense, which is contestable in litigation.
3. Design patents (D384757/8, D246203) have limited value. The ornamental content of a design patent is prior art for what it shows, but its evidentiary weight for structural § 103 is weak; the Belwith design patents (D670429/430/431) are not prior art at all (same inventorship/common ownership).
4. Transition-application nuance. If any claim is found not entitled to the 2012-04-24 provisional, AIA § 102/103 would apply and the analysis would shift only mildly (post-AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) categories), not change the substantive result.

7. Bottom line

On the record supplied, all 16 claims would very likely be held obvious under § 103 by combining (i) the LED-Linear '864 mounting rail with parallel snap-grooves and (ii) the Reo '531 elongated linear-LED housing/lens, modified by (iii) the Yamamoto '814 (or Chien '918) light-transmitting/opaque decorative overlay, with (iv) the Tridonic DE '608 housed LED module for the jacket limitations and (v) routine connector hardware for the inter-string electrical limitations. The invention is a predictable, modular aggregation of known parts performing known functions toward a result the primary references themselves describe as desirable (uniform, non-scalloped linear illumination), and the specification disclaims any material, geometric, or performance criticality that might otherwise supply a nonobvious distinction. The strongest defensive position for the patentee would be (a) non-analogous-art and lack-of-motivation arguments as to the decorative overlay, and (b) the absence of a specific prior-art teaching of the crimped connector-board junction.

Caveat repeated: several mappings above rest on retrieved abstracts/excerpts rather than full-text review of every reference; the conclusions are provisional pending full-text and prosecution-history review, and "likely obvious" is an analytical judgment, not a legal determination.