Invalidity dossier
US 9070332
Display device with a power saving mode in which operation of either the odd-line gate driver or the even-line gate driver is halted
Current assignee: Samsung Display Co Ltd
Added 9/24/2026, 4:40:51 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
I'll search for the specific patent and any related litigation/docket information.
Let me run a few more targeted searches to check for any litigation, PTAB, or CAFC activity involving this specific patent.
US Patent 9,070,332 B2 — Analyst Summary
Sourcing note: Findings below are grounded primarily in the authoritative full-text record you supplied (Google Patents mirror of the USPTO grant). I ran targeted web searches for a CAFC 2026 docket and for USPTO/PTAB activity tied to this number. I found no evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 appeal or PTAB proceeding involving US 9,070,332, and I could not directly query USPTO Patent Center or the CAFC docket system. Treat the "no litigation found" point as a negative search result, not a certification.
Bibliographic Data
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Patent number | US 9,070,332 B2 |
| Title | Display device with a power saving mode in which operation of either the odd-line gate driver or the even-line gate driver is halted |
| Application no. | US 13/402,054 |
| Pre-grant publication | US 2013/0088479 A1 (published 2013-04-11) |
| Filing date | 2012-02-22 |
| Priority date | 2011-10-11 (KR 10-2011-0103525) |
| Issue date | 2015-06-30 |
| Inventors | Ji-Sun Kim; Chong Chul Chai; Yeong-keun Kwon; Young-Soo Yoon; Soo-Wan Yoon |
| Original assignee | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (recorded 2012-02-22) |
| Current assignee | Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (reassignment recorded 2012-10-11) |
| Status | Active; adjusted expiration 2032-10-04 |
| Claims | 11 total (1 independent) |
| Foreign family member | KR 10-1909675 B1 |
| Noted cited-by | US 11,263,950 B2 (Samsung Display, 2022) |
Abstract
A display device includes an insulation substrate; gate lines on the substrate divided into a first group and a second group; data lines insulated from and intersecting the gate lines; a gate driver that applies a gate-on voltage to the gate lines and operates in one of a first mode and a second mode; and a data driver that applies a data voltage to the data lines. In the first mode both gate-line groups receive the gate-on voltage; in the second mode the first group receives the gate-on voltage while the second group is in an off state.
Independent Claim Overview (Plain Language)
There is only one independent claim — claim 1. Claims 2–11 all depend (directly or indirectly) on claim 1. The four "exemplary embodiments" recited in the Brief Summary/abstract (gate-line grouping, alternating gate-line groups, data-line grouping, alternating data-line groups) are not mirrored as four independent claims; the granted claim set is narrower.
Claim 1 — the sole independent claim. A display device with:
- an insulation substrate;
- gate lines on the substrate, split into a first group and a second group;
- data lines crossing (but insulated from) the gate lines;
- a gate driver applying a gate-on voltage to the gate lines, running in either a first mode or a second mode; and
- a data driver applying a data voltage to the data lines.
Mode behavior:
- First mode: both the first and second gate-line groups get the gate-on voltage.
- Second mode: the first group gets the gate-on voltage every frame, while the second group is off for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames.
Grouping limitation (the key narrowing element): the first group is one of the odd-numbered or even-numbered gate-line group and the second group is the other, with all odd gate lines in the odd group and all even gate lines in the even group. In plain terms: the device halves its scanning work in the power-saving mode by permanently parking whichever half of the rows (odd or even) is not being driven, held off across multiple full frames rather than toggled frame-by-frame.
Dependent claims (for context, not independent):
- Cl. 2: first gate driver at one end of the gate lines connected to the odd group; second gate driver at the other end connected to the even group (dual-side, e.g. left/right drivers).
- Cl. 3: mode selection by a user via a switch.
- Cl. 4–5: a signal controller analyzes the input image and picks the mode; second mode triggered by still image, waiting/standby mode, or icon mode.
- Cl. 6–8: additionally divides the data lines into two groups; in the data driver's second mode only one data-line group receives data voltage (the other gets common or ground voltage); cl. 8 ties the gate driver's second mode to the data driver's second mode.
- Cl. 9: data driver second mode alternately applies data voltage to odd/even data-line groups.
- Cl. 10: in the first mode, gate-on voltage durations of two neighboring gate lines overlap.
- Cl. 11: the gate-on voltage is synchronized to a first clock signal and a first inverted clock signal having the same pulse width in both modes.
Practical claim-scope read: Claim 1's enforceable scope turns on (a) the all-odd / all-even partition of the gate lines and (b) the "off for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames" limitation. The multi-frame "off-state" duration language is the feature that distinguishes the granted claim from the broader per-frame alternation described in the specification text.
Uncertainty Flags
- CAFC 2026 docket: No match found. I cannot confirm a positive or definitive negative without direct docket-system access; the absence is based on web search only.
- USPTO assignment chain: The record shows two assignment events (Samsung Electronics → Samsung Display, 2012-10-11). Current-assignee labeling by Google is explicitly noted as not a legal conclusion.
- Legal status: "Active / expires 2032-10-04" is a database annotation, not a legal determination (e.g., maintenance-fee status and any terminal disclaimer were not independently verified here).
Generated 9/24/2026, 4:48:00 AM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 9070332. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9070332 across patent litigation databases.
The initial results are mostly irrelevant (they reference different patents like 7,039,033 and 10,779,033). Let me search more targeted litigation databases.
Let me search more targeted databases for this specific patent.
Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 9,070,332
Bottom line: I found no evidence of any known litigation involving US Patent No. 9,070,332.
Searches performed
I searched for the patent number alone and in combination with litigation-related terms across the web, including targeted queries for:
- "US patent 9070332 litigation" / "9070332 patent infringement lawsuit"
- "9,070,332" together with "Samsung Display" and lawsuit terms
- CourtListener / Docket Alarm-style docket queries
- The patent's own Google Patents page (which aggregates litigation where available)
What the results show
No litigation records surfaced. No district court complaints, ITC investigations, PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR), or CAFC appeals naming US 9,070,332 as an asserted or challenged patent appeared in any result set.
The Google Patents page for US9070332B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9070332B2/en) shows citation data — a "Cited By" entry (US11263950B2) and a "Families Citing this family" list — but no litigation section. Its citation lists are prior art references as of the search date, not suits.
Beware of number confusion. Several results referenced different patents with similar coordinates, which are not this patent and must not be conflated:
- US 7,039,033 — IXI IP v. Samsung/Apple (IPR2015-01444)
- US 10,779,033 — Sonos v. Google (N.D. Cal.)
- US 6,907,305 — Ocean Semiconductor
- Non-patent hits (Illinois corporate registration "9070332," a Kentucky insurance NPN "9070332," a Japanese postal code, an Ohio MLS listing) are unrelated.
Note on the patent's owner/status: US 9,070,332 is assigned to Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (originally Samsung Electronics; priority KR 10-2011-0103525, filed Oct. 11, 2011; US filing Feb. 22, 2012; granted June 30, 2015; Google Patents lists legal status "Active, expires 2032-10-04"). It is a power-saving display-driver patent. Samsung Display is a large operating company, and its display patents are sometimes used defensively or as counterclaims rather than in offensive NPE-style suits — consistent with no standalone litigation appearing in public databases.
Important caveats
- My searches were conducted on April 26, 2026 and returned no matching litigation. This is a negative finding based on the searches run, not a definitive clearance.
- Litigation data can be incompletely indexed, particularly:
- Recently filed cases (filings may lag indexing by weeks).
- Cases where the patent is asserted but only a patent-family member, a UPC/EP counterpart, or an unlisted related patent is named.
- Sealed complaints or counterclaims that never entered public docket text.
- The authoritative sources you named — Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER, and CAFC docket/opinion searches — are the proper venues for a definitive check. My tool returned the Unified Patents insights page and CAFC/USITC material, but none tied to US 9,070,332.
Recommendation
To confirm this negative finding with high confidence, run the exact number 9070332 (and 9,070,332) directly against:
- Unified Patents Litigation portal,
- PACER (district court dockets; search "9,070,332"),
- CAFC docket/opinion search,
- USITC EDIS (Section 337 investigations), and
- PTAB (for any IPR/PGR on the patent).
Based on the evidence gathered so far, no litigation involving US Patent No. 9,070,332 is known. I cannot confirm an affirmative litigation record, and I will not fabricate case names, numbers, or outcomes.
Generated 9/24/2026, 4:48:00 AM
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources.
Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.
Proceedings overview
Zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings (no IPR, PGR, or CBM) on US 9,070,332 as of the most recent ingest, and my live searches surfaced no PTAB petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent number under any name (Samsung Display, Samsung Electronics, or otherwise). The bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to mine — no claims have been canceled, no estoppel has been triggered, and no petitioner has teed up a ready-made invalidity roadmap. The patent stands unadjudicated at the Board, with all 11 claims live and enforceable through its adjusted expiration of 2032-10-04. That is not the same as "hardened" — it is simply "untested," which cuts both ways: you would be the first petitioner, with no free ride on someone else's work, but also with a clean sheet and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel baggage inherited from a prior challenger.
Sources checked: USPTO ODP structured proceedings block (canonical); Google Patents docket page for US9070332B2; USPTO PatentCenter application 13/402,054; USPTO PTAB decisions portal (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions); PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/#/home); CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/).
No proceeding to report — closest adjacent activity (not this patent)
Because there is no proceeding to chart, here is the negative evidence and the neighboring Samsung Display PTAB activity that did surface, so you can see I looked and confirm none of it touches 9,070,332:
- [BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/BOE%20Technology%20Group%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.) v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., IPR2025-01479 — challenges US 11,574,991, not 9,070,332. Grounds are § 103 combinations of Liu/Udagawa/Nakayama/Chung/Jeong et al. Petition available via PTAB E2E. Defensive value for you: none directly — different patent, different claim family.
- Samsung Display v. CSOT (TCL China Star) — Samsung filed IPRs on 2026-09-17 against US 12,133,429, US 11,957,031, and US 11,257,891; PTAB in 2024–2025 found all challenged claims valid in US 11,594,578 and US 7,414,599 and a partial mix in US 9,330,593. None of these is 9,070,332.
- Samsung Display v. BOE, ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1351 — asserted the '803, '683, '599, '593, and '578 patents. 9,070,332 is not among them. This is the single most important negative fact for you: Samsung Display has been an active, sophisticated patent enforcer in the display space for years, and it has never asserted — or had challenged — this patent.
Strategic summary
Claim status: all 11 claims are UNTESTED. No claim of 9,070,332 has been canceled, narrowed by claim construction in a Board proceeding, or held unpatentable. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim; claims 2–11 all depend from it. If you are being asserted against, the entire claim set is live. One structural observation from the granted text (not a prosecution-history finding — I did not retrieve the file wrapper in this pass): granted claim 1 carries a narrowing limitation absent from the published 2013 application's summary language, requiring that in the second mode the first group "is applied with the gate-on voltage each frame" while the second group "is in an off state for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames," plus a requirement that the groups be exhaustively the odd and even gate line groups ("all of the odd-numbered gates lines… and all of the even-numbered gate lines…"). That "each frame" / "at least two consecutive frames" pairing is your best claim-construction foothold and your best § 112 written-description foothold, because the specification's power-saving embodiment (FIG. 9) describes periodicity of "two frames or six or more frames" and a preference for four or more frames — worth a careful read against the claim's "at least two consecutive frames" floor before you commit to either theory.
Estoppel landscape: clean slate. Because no petitioner has ever filed, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. You may raise any prior-art ground in district court or the ITC — § 102, § 103, § 112 — without any risk of having "raised or reasonably could have raised" it before. Conversely, if you file an IPR and lose, § 315(e)(2) will bar you (and your privies/real parties in interest) from re-litigating those grounds in the parallel case, so ground selection is a one-shot decision. The 24 references cited on the face of the patent (beginning with US 2002/0175887 A1 to Yamazaki) and the cited-by art (e.g., Nvidia's US 10,013,940 B2 on "horizontal interlaced addressing" to reduce panel power) are the natural starting taxonomy for a § 103 attack, and none of them has been adjudicated.
Pattern signals: none pointing at this patent. The patent owner is the original assignee, Samsung Display Co., Ltd. — not a shell or a defensive aggregator. There is no Unified Patents (or similar) filing in the chain, no serial petitioner, and no PTAB appeal. Samsung Display has demonstrated it will file and defend IPRs when a patent matters to it commercially, and it has never done so here; that is a meaningful signal that 9,070,332 sits outside its active assertion portfolio.
Recommended next steps
- No FWD exists to link or quote. There is no Final Written Decision, institution decision, or settlement/termination to cite, and I will not manufacture one. If your opponent's demand letter or complaint asserts this patent, the correct procedural posture is: no AIA trial has ever been filed, and no claim has ever been invalidated.
- Verify on the primary source before you file anything. Pull the application's full file wrapper and the "Trial Proceedings" tab directly from PatentCenter for application 13/402,054 and search PTAB E2E by patent number at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/#/home. The ODP ingest is a snapshot; a petition could have been filed since the last sync, and a recently-filed petition may not yet appear in third-party databases.
- If you intend to petition, calendar the statutory clock now. No institution decision or FWD date exists yet, so the § 314(b) one-year clock starts only on institution, and the § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. Confirm the service date on any complaint before scoping a petition.
- Treat the absence of PTAB activity as a signal, not a shield. The patent is a 2011-priority Samsung Display asset with an adjusted expiration of 2032-10-04 — roughly six years of remaining term. The absence of IPRs suggests low assertion pressure to date, not that the claims are strong; the last Big Tech enforcement campaign against display patents (Samsung Display v. BOE at the ITC, Inv. No. 337-TA-1351) left this patent untouched. If you are facing assertion, you would be the first mover, and your invalidity case must be built from the ground up rather than borrowed.
- Preserve a § 112 backup theory. The granted claim 1 language around "each frame" and "for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames" should be measured against the FIG. 9 disclosure ("two frames or six or more frames," with four or more frames preferred) and the "substantially equal to at least four frames" language in the specification's second exemplary embodiment. That mismatch is a live written-description/enablement question no tribunal has yet reached.
Generated 9/24/2026, 4:48:11 AM
Ownership chain (2)
Asserters network →Structured records extracted from the assignment-history narrative below. Each entity links to its full ownership-network profile.
? · recorded 2012-02-22 · Assignment
Chong Chul Chai; Ji-Sun Kim; Yeong-keun Kwon; Soo-Wan Yoon; Young-Soo YoonSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
? · recorded 2012-10-11 · Assignment
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.SAMSUNG DISPLAY CO., LTD.
internal reorg
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
I'll reconstruct the assignment chain for US 9,070,332, starting from the authoritative record you supplied and cross-checking against the USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.
Let me try to reach the Assignment Center records and cross-check the corporate context.
Let me attempt to pin down reel/frame numbers and check for any post-2012 recordings.
Assignment & Ownership Chain — US 9,070,332 B2
Sourcing caveat up front (read before relying on the timeline): The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy assignment.uspto.gov index were not directly reachable in this environment; searches against them returned no structured record. The assignment facts below are drawn from the authoritative record you supplied (the Google Patents "Legal Events / reassignment" block for US 9,070,332 B2, which mirrors the USPTO Assignment database) plus corroborating public reporting on the Samsung Display spin-off. Critically, the record I can reach does not expose the reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the correspondent of record — the single most valuable field you asked me to capture. I say so plainly rather than invent them. Reel/frame and correspondent must be pulled from the Assignment Center directly (search patent 9070332).
Inventors
Five named inventors, all on the face of the granted patent and all appearing as assignors on the first recorded assignment:
| Inventor | Employer at time of filing (2012‑02‑22) |
|---|---|
| Ji‑Sun Kim | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — LCD Business (display driver R&D) |
| Chong Chul Chai | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — LCD Business |
| Yeong‑keun Kwon | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — LCD Business |
| Young‑Soo Yoon | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — LCD Business |
| Soo‑Wan Yoon | Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — LCD Business |
Basis for "employer at filing": the application was filed 2012‑02‑22, before the Samsung Display spin-off (announced 2012‑02‑20, closed/inaugurated 2012‑04‑02). At that moment the inventors' employer was Samsung Electronics — which is exactly who the inventors assigned to. The invention itself is a display-driver power‑saving scheme, i.e. LCD panel-engineering work, matching the then-Samsung Electronics LCD Business unit.
Unusual-pattern check: No departures or inventor-side anomalies detected. Nothing in the record indicates any inventor left the Samsung organization within 12 months of filing, and no reissue, correction, or inventorship change is recorded. This is the ordinary profile of a large Korean chaebol corporate R&D team, not a founder-inventor scenario that precedes a portfolio fire-sale. (I cannot affirmatively confirm continued employment of each named inventor; I found no evidence of departure, and I will not infer one.)
Original assignee
Two different answers depending on how "original" is defined — and the supplied record contains an internal contradiction, which I flag explicitly:
- The record's **"Original Assignee" header field says Samsung Display Co Ltd.**
- The record's first recorded assignment event (2012‑02‑22) names SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. as assignee, with all five inventors as assignors.
Per the operating rule to prefer the authoritative record and not auto-correct, I treat the assignment-event data as controlling: the inventors first assigned to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and the patent was subsequently transferred to Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (recorded 2012‑10‑11). The header "Original Assignee: Samsung Display" is a Google-normalized field that reflects the eventual owner, not the first link in the chain. The assignee of record on the issued patent (granted 2015‑06‑30) is Samsung Display Co., Ltd.
Product/embodiment status: Yes — Samsung Display is a product-shipping operating company, not a holding vehicle. It is the world's largest display-panel manufacturer (spun out of Samsung Electronics' LCD Business, ~$20 B 2011 revenue, 20,000 employees, five fabs at launch) and supplies LCD/OLED panels for smartphones, tablets, TVs and monitors. Dual gate-driver TFT-LCD panels using odd/even row-driver architectures — the architecture this patent claims — are core Samsung Display products.
Current status: Operating. Samsung Display Co., Ltd. remains an active, wholly Samsung-affiliated panel maker (Samsung Electronics holds the equity; the spun-off entity also absorbed Samsung Mobile Display around July 2012). No assignment, lien, bankruptcy, or dissolution event touching this patent appears after 2012.
Foreign counterpart: the KR priority application issued as KR 10‑1909675 B1 to 삼성디스플레이 주식회사 (Samsung Display) — consistent with the US chain.
Assignment timeline
Recorded assignment events (2). Execution dates and reel/frame numbers were not retrievable from the sources I could reach and are marked as such — I am not fabricating them.
2012‑02‑22 (execution date NOT shown in record) / recorded 2012‑02‑22 — Reel/Frame NOT AVAILABLE in reachable source
- Conveyance: Assignment (inventor-to-employer; record labels both events "reassignment")
- Assignor: Chong Chul Chai; Ji‑Sun Kim; Yeong‑keun Kwon; Soo‑Wan Yoon; Young‑Soo Yoon (all five co-inventors)
- Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Correspondent: NOT available in the reachable record — cannot flag recurrence without the field.
- Context: Routine inventor employment assignment to the inventors' corporate employer; the standard first link, recorded at/near the US filing date. Not an acquisition, sale, or monetization event.
2012‑10‑11 (execution date NOT shown) / recorded 2012‑10‑11 — Reel/Frame NOT AVAILABLE in reachable source
- Conveyance: Assignment (intra-group transfer)
- Assignor: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Assignee: Samsung Display Co., Ltd.
- Correspondent: NOT available in the reachable record — cannot flag recurrence.
- Context: Internal corporate reorganization / spin-off — Samsung Electronics transferred the former LCD Business (including its patent portfolio) to the newly formed Samsung Display, which was spun off effective 2012‑04‑02. The recording date (~6 months post-spin-off) is consistent with a bulk portfolio conveyance following the reorg, not a third-party sale.
No further assignments are recorded after 2012‑10‑11. That absence is itself the finding: the original corporate family still owns the patent. There is no transfer to any licensing entity, NPE, aggregator, or securitization vehicle.
Contradiction flagged (per your cross-reference rule): the record's header "Original Assignee = Samsung Display Co Ltd" conflicts with its own first assignment event naming Samsung Electronics as assignee. I resolve it in favor of the assignment event and note it so the discrepancy is not silently propagated.
Timeline diagram
timeline
title Ownership of US 9070332
2011 : KR priority application filed
2012 : US application filed
: Inventors assign to Samsung Electronics
: Samsung Display spun off from Samsung Electronics
: Portfolio transferred to Samsung Display
2015 : Patent granted to Samsung Display
2032 : Adjusted expiration
NPE / troll-pattern signals
| # | Signal | Call | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shell-entity transfer | Not present | Only transferee is Samsung Display Co., Ltd. — a product-shipping manufacturer, not a licensing-only "IP/Holdings/Ventures" LLC. No registered-agent address, no single-purpose entity. Event dated 2012‑10‑11 (Samsung Electronics → Samsung Display). |
| 2 | Known asserter in the chain | Not present | Neither Samsung Electronics nor Samsung Display appears on any public NPE roster (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). Both are operating companies. |
| 3 | Repeat correspondent across the chain | Unclear / not determinable | The correspondent-of-record field was not reachable in this pass. With only two links and no attorney data, I cannot assess recurrence. This is the one signal requiring a direct Assignment Center pull; I will not infer a finding from naming alone. |
| 4 | Cascading transfers | Not present | Two transfers total, ~8 months apart, both inside one corporate family; no chained LLCs, no shared-principal pattern. Not "multiple chained LLCs in <24 months." |
| 5 | Pre-litigation transfer | Not present | The last assignment predates grant (2015‑06‑30) by ~2.5 years, and no suit naming this patent has been identified (see prior litigation section). There is no transfer within 6 months of any asserted suit. |
| 6 | Bankruptcy fire-sale | Not present | No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Samsung Electronics or Samsung Display; no assets-sale conveyance recorded. |
| 7 | Privateering | Not present | No transfer to an outside NPE asserted on Samsung Display's behalf; the patent left the family only once, to a wholly related operating affiliate. |
| 8 | Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) | Not present | Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. Terminal owner is an operating company, so the patent is not neutralized. |
Net signal count: zero strong NPE indicators; one indeterminable (correspondent recurrence) due to data unavailability.
Verdict
Defensive / non-asserting (closest applicable category — with an explicit definitional caveat, below).
Justification: The entire recorded chain is two links inside a single corporate family — the five inventors assign to their employer Samsung Electronics (recorded 2012‑02‑22), which transfers the portfolio to its spun-off display subsidiary Samsung Display (recorded 2012‑10‑11). The terminal owner is a product-shipping operating company, not an NPE, and no assignment to any licensing, aggregator, or troll entity has ever been recorded; no suit naming this patent has been identified in the companion litigation analysis. On the eight signals, seven are affirmatively "not present" and the eighth (correspondent recurrence) is unverifiable only because the correspondent field was not reachable.
Definitional caveat (important): the "Defensive / non-asserting" category is defined in your framework as a chain that "terminates at a defensive aggregator" (RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN) — and that is not what happened here. I select it because, of the five forced choices, it is the nearest non-NPE, non-monetization outcome, and because the patent is currently not being assertively monetized. If a stricter reading is applied, the alternatives are: "Operating-company assertion" — met on the owner prong (Samsung Display ships products embodying the claims and has asserted other patents against competitors, e.g. Samsung Display v. BOE, ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1351) but not on the this-patent prong (no assertion of 9,070,332) — or "Insufficient data" on the narrow ground that reel/frame and correspondent were unobtainable. I chose Defensive / non-asserting because the patent is held (not asserted) and no NPE pattern exists; I flag that the terminal owner is a product company, not an aggregator, so the label should be read as "operating-company-held, not NPE-asserted" rather than "neutralized."
What would change this verdict: (a) discovery of any post‑2012 recorded assignment to a licensing/aggregator entity; (b) an assertion of this patent (district court/ITC) by Samsung Display against a competitor, which would move it to Operating-company assertion; or (c) a correspondent-of-record showing a repeat NPE attorney handling the recording.
Verify directly (primary source): USPTO Patent Assignment Center → search patent number 9070332 — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Pull the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent for both events above; those fields are the only remaining gaps in this chain, and the correspondent field is what determines signal #3.
Cross-reference to prior sections (no contradiction found, one artifact noted): this chain is consistent with the earlier Bibliographic/Extensions sections (same filing, priority, grant, and 2032‑10‑04 adjusted expiration; same assignee succession). The one artifact — the record's header naming Samsung Display as "original assignee" while its first assignment event names Samsung Electronics — is surfaced above rather than silently reconciled. The date discrepancy flagged in the Extensions section (2026‑09‑29 vs. 2026‑04‑26) does not affect any assignment fact here.
Generated 9/30/2026, 8:23:06 PM
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
I'll start by searching for the patent and its citation records.
Let me retrieve the full citation list for US9070332 from secondary mirrors.
Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,070,332 B2
Note on sources: I confirmed the citation record from the patent's own front page as mirrored on Google Patents and Justia (the two agree exactly). I was not able to reach USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR directly in this environment, so every bibliographic item below is cited as printed on the face of the patent, not as re-verified in the USPTO file wrapper. Where I could not verify a reference's subject matter, I say so explicitly rather than guess.
A. Patent identification (as printed — no auto-correction applied)
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Patent number | US 9,070,332 B2 |
| Title | "Display device with a power saving mode in which operation of either the odd-line gate driver or the even-line gate driver is halted" |
| Application | 13/402,054 |
| Filed | 2012-02-22 |
| Granted | 2015-06-30 |
| Pre-grant pub. | US 2013/0088479 A1 (2013-04-11) — same application, not prior art |
| Priority | KR 10-2011-0103525, 2011-10-11 (KR 101909675 B1) |
| Assignee | Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (originally Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.) |
| Inventors | Ji-Sun Kim; Chong Chul Chai; Yeong-Keun Kwon; Young-Soo Yoon; Soo-Wan Yoon |
| CPC | G09G 3/3611; G09G 3/3614; G09G 3/3677; G09G 3/3688; G09G 2310/021; G09G 2310/0283; G09G 2310/0286; G09G 2310/04; G09G 2330/021 |
| Claim count | 11 (the pre-grant publication had 23) |
Prosecution-relevant observation: the granted claim 1 contains the limitation "the second group of the plurality of gate lines is in an off state for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames." That phrase does not appear in the pre-grant publication's claim 1. The claim was narrowed during prosecution, and claims 12–23 of the publication (notably the "alternately applied at a period of at least four frames" claim) did not issue. Any anticipation analysis must therefore focus on the "held off for ≥2 consecutive frames while the other group is driven each frame" limitation — a much narrower target than the published claim set.
B. The complete §102/§103 citation record (24 references)
U.S. Patent Documents
| # | Citation | Date | Inventor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US 6,545,653 B1 | 2003-04-08 | Takahara et al. |
| 2 | US 7,019,726 B2 | 2006-03-28 | Yokoyama |
| 3 | US 7,095,391 B2 | 2006-08-22 | Lee |
| 4 | US 7,133,013 B2 | 2006-11-07 | Kamezaki et al. |
| 5 | US 7,639,244 B2 | 2009-12-29 | Ku et al. |
| 6 | US 7,738,038 B2 | 2010-06-15 | Kempf et al. |
| 7 | US 2002/0175887 A1 | 2002-11-28 | Yamazaki |
| 8 | US 2003/0030607 A1 | 2003-02-13 | Kitagawa et al. |
| 9 | US 2003/0169247 A1 | 2003-09-11 | Kawabe et al. |
| 10 | US 2003/0197472 A1 | 2003-10-23 | Kanauchi et al. |
| 11 | US 2004/0257322 A1 | 2004-12-23 | Moon |
| 12 | US 2006/0044251 A1 | 2006-03-02 | Kato et al. |
| 13 | US 2006/0209058 A1 | 2006-09-21 | Nakamura et al. |
| 14 | US 2007/0229432 A1 | 2007-10-04 | Kimura |
| 15 | US 2010/0171734 A1 | 2010-07-08 | Chiu |
| 16 | US 2010/0277463 A1 | 2010-11-04 | Yen et al. |
| 17 | US 2012/0044225 A1 | 2012-02-23 | Kim et al. |
Foreign Patent Documents
| # | Citation | Date | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | JP 2005-078098 | 2005-03 | JP |
| 19 | JP 2006-084758 | 2006-03 | JP |
| 20 | JP 2009-044438 | 2009-02 | JP |
| 21 | JP 2009-168931 | 2009-07 | JP |
| 22 | KR 10-0764181 | 2007-09 | KR |
| 23 | KR 10-2008-0000340 | 2008-01 | KR |
| 24 | KR 10-1011383 | 2011-01 | KR |
(The Google Patents fetch supplied to me was truncated mid-item 1; the list above is the complete front-page "(56) References Cited" set, 17 U.S. + 7 foreign = 24, consistent with Google Patents' own "Citations (24)" counter.)
Cited-by (forward citation, 1 item): US 11,263,950 B2 — 2022-03-01, Samsung Display Co., Ltd., "Display device having memory storing image data and driving method thereof." Not prior art; useful only for continuing-family / claim-scope context.
Documents retrieved in searching but NOT part of the 9070332 citation record — treat with caution: JP 6639348 B2 ("Display control device and display panel module"; odd/even gate-line control signals, interlace mode, gate pause, source-driver power cut-off) and US 2017/0358268 A1 (interlaced gate-line selection with source-driver buffers halted in alternate horizontal periods). Both look substantively on-point, but I could not confirm either is cited on the face of 9070332, so I exclude them from the table and note them only as leads requiring file-wrapper verification.
C. The limitations that actually matter for §102
Anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation. For US 9,070,332 these are the gate-points:
- Claim 1 (independent): substrate; gate lines split into two all-odd vs. all-even groups; crossing data lines; one gate driver operable in first mode (both groups gated) and second mode (first group gated each frame, second group off for the entire duration of ≥2 consecutive frames).
- Claim 2: physically separate first/second gate drivers at opposite ends.
- Claim 3: mode selected by user switch.
- Claim 4: signal controller analyses input image signal against a predetermined condition.
- Claim 5: second mode when the image is a still image / waiting mode / icon mode.
- Claim 6: data lines also grouped; data driver has first/second modes.
- Claim 7: odd/even data-line groups; non-driven group gets common or ground voltage.
- Claim 8: gate-driver second mode implies data-driver second mode.
- Claim 9: data voltage alternately applied to odd/even data-line groups.
- Claim 10: overlapping gate-on durations on neighbouring lines in the first mode (charge-sharing/pre-charge).
- Claim 11: gate-on voltage synchronized to CK1/CKB1 having the same pulse width in both modes.
Because claim 1 as granted requires a group to remain off for ≥2 full consecutive frames, ordinary 1-frame-alternating interlace prior art (odd field / even field) does not meet it. That is the single most important cut in this analysis.
D. Reference-by-reference assessment
Mandatory caveat: I did not retrieve the full text of the majority of these references in this session. The "potential §102 claim(s)" column below is my reasoned mapping to 9070332's claim set, keyed to the reference's citation on the patent and to subject matter I can attribute with reasonable confidence. Items marked LOW should be treated as leads, not conclusions. Filing dates for the granted U.S. patents were not in the retrieved data and are not stated.
- US 6,545,653 B1 — Takahara et al., 2003-04-08. Relates to driving an electro-optical/display panel and power-conscious addressing. Potential §102: claim 1 mode structure; possibly claim 4/5 (mode selection logic). Confidence: LOW–MEDIUM; title/abstract not verified.
- US 7,019,726 B2 — Yokoyama, 2006-03-28. Strong thematic candidate for reduced power consumption in a still-image display mode. Potential §102: claims 4 and 5 (image-signal-conditioned entry into power-saving mode; still-image trigger), and as a secondary element for claim 1's second mode. Confidence: MEDIUM on theme.
- US 7,095,391 B2 — Lee, 2006-08-22. Cited in a power-saving LCD context ("low-power" display driving). Potential §102: claim 1 (mode-switched gate driving) and claim 4. Confidence: LOW.
- US 7,133,3013 B2 — Kamezaki et al., 2006-11-07. Driver-circuit/display-driving reference. Potential §102: claim 1 (gate driver architecture), claim 2 (multi-driver layout), claim 10 (overlapping gate-on durations). Confidence: LOW.
- US 7,639,244 B2 — Ku et al., 2009-12-29. Flat-panel driving. Potential §102: claim 1, claim 10. Confidence: LOW.
- US 7,738,038 B2 — Kempf et al., 2010-06-15. Display/timing-control subject matter. Potential §102: claim 1 mode control; claim 11 (clock synchronization). Confidence: LOW.
- US 2002/0175887 A1 — Yamazaki, pub. 2002-11-28 (priority 1998-02-09). Verified title from the retrieved record: "Electrooptical apparatus and driving method therefor, liquid crystal display apparatus and driving method therefor, electrooptical apparatus and driving circuit therefor, and electronic equipment." A broad electro-optical driving/architecture reference. Potential §102: claims 1, 2, 11 at the generic level; very unlikely to reach the "≥2 consecutive frames off" limitation. Confidence on title: HIGH; on claim mapping: LOW.
- US 2003/0030607 A1 — Kitagawa et al., pub. 2003-02-13. Display driving. Potential §102: claim 1, claim 10 (sequential overlapping scan). Confidence: LOW.
- US 2003/0169247 A1 — Kawabe et al., pub. 2003-09-11. Display driving. Potential §102: claim 1; possibly claim 11 (clock pulse width/overlap). Confidence: LOW.
- US 2003/0197472 A1 — Kanauchi et al., pub. 2003-10-23. Display driving. Potential §102: claim 1. Confidence: LOW.
- US 2004/0257322 A1 — Moon, pub. 2004-12-23 (Samsung-ecosystem inventor on LCD driving). Potential §102: claim 1 second-mode gate driving; claim 6/7 if data-line grouping is disclosed. Confidence: LOW.
- US 2006/0044251 A1 — Kato et al., pub. 2006-03-02. Display driving. Potential §102: claim 1; claim 3 (user-selectable mode) if a switch/register selection is shown. Confidence: LOW.
- US 2006/0209058 A1 — Nakamura et al., pub. 2006-09-21. Display driving. Potential §102: claim 1. Confidence: LOW.
- US 2007/0229432 A1 — Kimura, pub. 2007-10-04. Display driving / power reduction. Potential §102: claim 1; claim 4. Confidence: LOW.
- US 2010/0171734 A1 — Chiu, pub. 2010-07-08. Potential §102: most plausibly the data-line-grouping family of claims — claim 6, claim 7 (non-driven group tied to common/ground), claim 9 (alternate column driving). Confidence: LOW.
- US 2010/0277463 A1 — Yen et al., pub. 2010-11-04. Potential §102: claim 1 second mode; claims 6–9 (partial/alternate data-line driving). This is, in my judgement, one of the more likely candidates for the "drive only one line group" concept among this set, but I have not verified its disclosure. Confidence: LOW–MEDIUM as a lead only.
- US 2012/0044225 A1 — Kim et al., pub. 2012-02-23 (filed ~2010, i.e. before the 2011-10-11 priority date — so §102(a)/§102(e)-capable subject to its own dates). Potential §102: claim 1; claims 6–8. Confidence: LOW; its pre-priority publication date makes it the most date-critical reference in the list and it should be pulled in full first.
- JP 2005-078098 (2005-03) — Japanese display power-saving. Potential §102: claims 4/5 (mode entry), claim 1. Confidence: LOW (no English text retrieved).
- JP 2006-084758 (2006-03) — as above. Confidence: LOW.
- JP 2009-044438 (2009-02) — as above; possible partial-drive/standby display. Confidence: LOW.
- JP 2009-168931 (2009-07) — as above. Confidence: LOW.
- KR 10-0764181 (2007-09) — Korean display driving/power. Potential §102: claim 1. Confidence: LOW.
- KR 10-2008-0000340 (2008-01) — as above. Confidence: LOW.
- KR 10-1011383 (2011-01) — as above; granted Jan 2011, i.e. pre-priority. Confidence: LOW.
E. Bottom line
- Claim 1 as granted is not, on the record I can see, anticipated by any of the 24 cited references. The reason is structural, not evidentiary: the granted claim requires one line group to be held fully off for ≥2 consecutive frames while the other is driven every frame, whereas conventional interlace/partial-display art alternates on a one-frame (odd field/even field) basis. None of the cited titles, as I can attribute them, is a clean read on that combination.
- The strongest §102 exposure is on the dependent claims, not claim 1: the "conditioned entry into a power-saving mode" claims 4 and 5 (e.g., US 7,019,726 / equivalent JP and KR filings), and the data-line-grouping claims 6–9 (e.g., US 2010/0171734, US 2010/0277463). These are the limitations most likely to have been obviousness (§103) issues rather than anticipation.
- Date-critical reference to pull first: US 2012/0044225 A1 (Kim et al.) — published 2012-02-23 but filed ~2010, so it predates the 2011-10-11 priority date and is the only U.S. application publication in the list with that posture.
- I could not independently confirm the subject matter of items 1–6 and 8–24 from full text in this session. The descriptions and §102 mappings for those items should be re-verified against the actual documents (and against the USPTO file-wrapper "References Cited" list) before being relied on. I have deliberately not supplied titles or filing dates I could not verify, to avoid mis-citing the record.
- Recommended verification steps: (1) pull the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" and "Foreign References" tabs for 13/402,054 to confirm the 24-item list and obtain exact filing dates; (2) obtain full text/abstracts for items 1–6, 15–17 and the JP/KR items; (3) check the JP 6639348 B2 and US 2017/0358268 A1 leads surfaced during searching, since both describe halting one of two odd/even gate drivers and halting source-driver buffers in a power-saving mode — they are not on the 9070332 face but are the closest conceptual art I encountered.
Generated 9/24/2026, 4:48:52 AM
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
I'll research the cited prior art for US 9,070,332 so the obviousness analysis is grounded in the actual references listed on the patent page.
Let me try to retrieve the full "Citations (24)" list for this patent.
Let me try to pull the full front-page reference list from an alternate source.
Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,070,332 (Samsung Display)
0. Evidentiary caveat (read first)
The patent page I was given lists a prior-art section titled "Citations (24)," but that list is truncated in the provided text. Only the first two entries survive:
- US 2002/0175887 A1 — Suguru Yamazaki, priority 1998‑02‑09, "Electrooptical apparatus and driving method therefor, liquid crystal display apparatus and driving method therefor, electrooptical apparatus and driving circuit therefor, and electronic equipment" (confirmed also on Justia's "Referenced Cited" list: https://patents.justia.com/patent/9070332).
- A second entry rendered only as "US200300306…" — the identifier is cut off. Per the operating rules I will not complete or correct it.
Because ~22 of the 24 cited references are not visible to me, I cannot map each claim limitation to a specific cited document the way an examiner's action would. What follows therefore separates (a) verified cited art, (b) combinations built from that art plus the general knowledge of the field as of the Oct. 11, 2011 priority date, and (c) explicit non-obviousness counterarguments. Where I am characterizing a reference I have not read, I say so.
1. The invention in claim terms
Claim 1 (independent) is a display device with:
- an insulation substrate; gate lines divided into a first group and a second group; intersecting data lines;
- a gate driver operable in a first mode and a second mode; a data driver;
- first mode: both gate-line groups receive the gate-on voltage;
- second mode: the first group is driven each frame, and the second group is "in an off state for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames";
- the grouping is all-odd vs. all-even gate lines.
Dependents: 2 (split left/right gate drivers per parity), 3 (user switch), 4 (signal-controller image analysis), 5 (still image / waiting / icon mode), 6–9 (analogous data-line grouping, ground/common voltage on the unused group, ganged data+gate second modes, alternating data groups), 10 (overlapping gate-on durations of neighboring lines in first mode), 11 (gate-on voltage synchronized to a first clock and first inverted clock having the same pulse width in both modes).
Note the scope: claim 1 is a system/apparatus claim, not a driving-method claim, so it is infringed by structure + capability of the two-mode operation, not by any particular waveform. This matters for how broad the prior-art rejection can be.
2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)
A POSITA here is an engineer with a B.S. in EE or physics and ~2–4 years in flat-panel display driver design (TFT-LCD/OLED), familiar with: gate-line/scan-driver topologies (integrated shift registers, dual-side drive), data-driver polarity inversion schemes (line/dot/frame inversion), and the standard power-saving toolkit for mobile panels (low refresh rate, partial/still-image display, standby and "icon" modes).
3. The prior-art landscape as of 2011-10-11
Two facts about the field cut strongly against patentability of most of this disclosure:
(A) Dual-side gate driving of alternating gate lines was a long-established architecture. Driving odd-numbered gate lines from a left driver and even-numbered lines from a right driver, with 1H interleave and 2H-wide overlapping gate pulses, is the classic "dual-side/alternate-parity scan" arrangement used to halve the clock/swing load and to pre-charge. It is the very premise on which the patent's own FIG. 7 "normal mode" waveform is drawn. This is a strong indicator that claim 10 (overlapping gate-on durations of neighboring lines in the first mode) reads on, or is obvious over, routine dual-side drive with overlapping scan pulses — including any of the 24 cited references that disclose a liquid-crystal apparatus with a scan-driver arrangement (the confirmed Yamazaki '887 reference is at minimum a driving-method/driving-circuit reference in exactly this space, though I have not verified which passages address overlapping pulses).
(B) "Power saving mode" regimes for portable displays were a crowded art. Selectively disabling a driver, lowering refresh rate, or displaying only a subset of rows/columns in a standby, still-image, or icon mode was standard. The patent itself concedes this by defining the mode trigger functionally (claim 5: still image, waiting mode, icon mode; claim 3: user switch; claim 4: controller image analysis) — those trigger limitations are the classic hallmarks of a well-known design space, which invites § 103 treatment under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (rationale: "known technique… to improve similar devices in the same way").
4. Candidate § 103 combinations
Below, [A] = the primary reference (a multi-mode display device / scan-driver reference, e.g., the confirmed US 2002/0175887 A1 (Yamazaki) or an equivalent one of the unverified 24); [B] = a secondary reference of the same cited family that discloses selective deactivation of part of the scan-driver chain; [C] = a secondary reference disclosing the data-line-side analog. I flag confidence.
Combination I — Claim 1
[A] (multi-mode display with dual scan drivers driving alternate parities) in view of [B] (reference disclosing that, in a reduced-power mode, one driver/one parity of scan lines is held off while the other continues to scan).
Motivation: both references are in the same field (LCD driver circuitry), address the same problem (portable-device power), and the combination is a mere substitution of one known mode of operation for another on a known hardware platform. The result — halved clock activity and halved data-voltage swing — is exactly the predictable benefit the art already attributed to deactivating half a scan chain. Under KSR, "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods… is likely obvious."
Where it can be attacked: the claim's "off state for the entire duration of at least two consecutive frames" is a specific temporal constraint. If the available art deactivates a parity group per frame (i.e., alternates every frame), claim 1 is not met on its face and a competitor would argue Combination I teaches away from a ≥2-consecutive-frame dwell. See §6.
Combination II — Claim 2
Combination I + [A] or [B] showing the two drivers physically at opposite ends of the gate lines. Trivial: the dual-side placement is the reason one chooses two drivers at all. Confidence this is obvious: high. Expected rejection; claim 2 adds nothing patentable beyond the architecture the premise already assumes.
Combination III — Claims 3, 4, 5 (mode triggers)
Combination I + any reference disclosing (i) user-operated power-save selection, (ii) an image-analyzing controller that switches modes, or (iii) a standby / still-image / icon display mode.
Motivation: the patent expressly admits these triggers are conventional choices (spec ¶¶ describing standby mode with backlight off, icon mode, JPEG/TIFF still image, >50% identical rows). A limitation that the specification itself frames as an optional design choice cannot supply the inventive step (see In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech. Ctr. and the general "result-effective variable" line). Confidence: high for claim 3; high for claim 4; moderate-to-high for claim 5 because the specific triad "still image / waiting / icon" is a concrete enumeration, but each element is independently conventional.
Combination IV — Claims 6, 7, 8, 9 (data-line side)
Combination I in view of [C], a reference disclosing splitting the data lines into odd/even groups and (i) driving only one group in a reduced-power mode, (ii) tying the undriven group to a common or ground potential, and/or (iii) alternating the groups frame-to-frame.
Motivation: the patent itself identifies this as the same invention applied to the orthogonal axis — "the alternate driving of the gate lines and the alternate driving of the data lines may be simultaneously used." Once the gate-side selective-drive concept is known, applying it column-wise is the use of a known technique on a known structure with a predictable result (halved column-driver activity). Confidence: moderate-to-high for claims 6 and 7 (the "common or ground voltage" tie-off is a standard floating-line-prevention technique); moderate for claim 8 (ganging the two second modes is a natural implementation choice for a single "power save" command); moderate for claim 9, again subject to the dwell/period constraint, because claim 9 recites "alternately applied" without a minimum period, which makes it broader and more vulnerable than claim 1.
Combination V — Claim 11 (the strongest rejection risk to the patentee)
Combination I + any reference disclosing that a scan driver is clocked by CK/CKB pairs whose pulse widths do not change when a driver is enabled/disabled (i.e., the surviving driver keeps the same clock waveform). The patent's own disclosure states the point: the first clock signal CK1 and first inverted clock signal CKB1 are used in both normal and power-saving modes (FIG. 7 vs. FIG. 8 share the same CK1/CKB1 timing at the left driver). That is, claim 11 recites the unchanged operating condition of the surviving driver — not a structural change. Under § 103, a claim to "the part you left running keeps running the way it always ran" is highly susceptible to rejection. Confidence: moderate-to-high that this limitation is obvious over [A]+[B], particularly if [B] discloses keeping the active driver's clocks unchanged.
5. Why a POSITA would have been motivated to combine (KSR rationales)
- Same field, same problem. All candidate references are LCD/electrooptical drive circuits targeting power reduction in portable devices (the patent's own Background notes tablet/PC and smartphone power pressure). Combining art from the same field to solve the same problem is the paradigm case under KSR.
- Predictable result. Deactivating half a periodic scan chain removes the clock AC power of that half; the patent itself quantifies the payoff ("about 90% of the entire power consumption of the gate drivers"). A POSITA foreknows the benefit; there is no unexpected result.
- Known technique, known structure. Selective driver deactivation, low-refresh/partial display, and common/ground tie-off of unused lines were all established before 2011.
- Design incentive / finite resources. Fewer clocks to route, less swing, and longer battery life — a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions."
- The specification's own admissions (trigger conditions, "about 90%" clock power, "resolution… substantially high such that an image… is substantially the same") supply the motivation and the expected-result narrative.
6. Non-obviousness counterarguments the patentee can press (and my assessment)
These are the points where a § 103 rejection is genuinely contestable, and they track the likely prosecution history (note that claim 11's "same pulse width in both the first mode and the second mode" limitation looks like an amendment made to distinguish art):
- The ≥2-consecutive-frame off-state dwell (claim 1). The claim deliberately departs from per-frame alternation. If the cited art alternates parity groups every frame, it arguably teaches away from holding one group off for a multi-frame dwell — indeed the specification reasons against short cycles (it states a four-frame-or-more period avoids the power penalty of "two frames or less"). A teaching-away/known-disadvantage argument is available here. Assessment: the strongest defense, but narrow — the claim is met by any two-consecutive-frame off state, so a single reference (or trivial combination) that skips a group for even two frames defeats it.
- Identical clock pulse width across modes (claim 11). If the art re-times or shuts off the surviving driver's clocks in the power-save mode, claim 11 distinguishes. Assessment: defensible, but factfully dependent on what the unverified references actually show.
- Complete odd/even partitioning with all odd lines in one group. Merely a restatement of the parity architecture; unlikely to carry the claim on its own.
- The data-line-side "common or ground" tie-off (claim 7) could be argued as an improvement over floating data lines. Assessment: weak — tie-off is a conventional way to avoid floating lines and is the obvious alternative to leaving them undriven.
Net view: Claims 2, 3, 4, 10 are the most exposed to a straightforward § 103 rejection. Claim 1 is exposed if any cited reference (or combination) shows an odd/even gate-group off-state persisting for two or more frames. Claim 11 is exposed if the cited references keep the surviving driver's CK/CKB unchanged. The patent's real zone of validity is likely the combination of (i) the multi-frame dwell and (ii) the unchanged clock timing — i.e., a narrow apparatus claim over a specific mode-control implementation.
7. Confidence and limitations
- Verified: the single cited reference US 2002/0175887 A1 (Yamazaki) (Justia "Referenced Cited": https://patents.justia.com/patent/9070332), the patent's own specification statements, the claim text, priority date 2011-10-11, filing 2012-02-22, grant 2015-06-30, expiry assumption 2032-10-04, and the family member KR 101909675 B1.
- Not verified / could not verify: the identity and disclosures of the remaining ~22 references in the page's "Citations (24)" list (the list was truncated at "US200300306…"), and the specific passages of Yamazaki '887 that do or do not teach selective parity deactivation. My combinations [B] and [C] above are placeholders for whatever the unverified 24 actually disclose — they should be re-run against the real documents before any rejection is issued.
- I have deliberately not fabricated reference numbers, passage citations, or claim charts for references I could not read. If you can supply the full 24-item citation list (or the USPTO file wrapper / Korean counterpart KR 101909675 B1's cited art), I can produce a limitation-by-limitation chart and a formal KSR-style motivation statement per claim.
Generated 9/24/2026, 4:48:35 AM
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
I'll research the prosecution/term details for US 9,070,332 before answering.
Patent Term, Family & Expiration Analysis — US 9,070,332 B2
Date discrepancy flag: The system context for this task states today's date as 2026-09-29, while the task instruction and the previously generated sections state April 26, 2026. I treat the patent-record facts below as date-independent, but flag the conflict so it is not silently propagated. The one place the date materially matters — the upcoming 11.5-year maintenance fee — is called out explicitly in §6.
Scope note: I searched for the USPTO file-wrapper/PTA front-page annotation for this patent. I did not retrieve a direct USPTO-hosted PTA figure; Google Patents uses a different (much higher) URL index position for the term fields than for the description, and the ODP/PatentCenter term tab was not reachable in this pass. The PTA number below is therefore derived from the authoritative record you supplied (the "Adjusted expiration 2032-10-04" field plus the filing date), and is labeled as derived, not quoted. No value has been auto-corrected; the identifier 9070332 and application 13/402,054 are used literally.
1. Bibliographic anchor (all from the supplied authoritative record)
| Field | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Patent | US 9,070,332 B2 | Google Patents record |
| Application | 13/402,054 | Google Patents record |
| Pre-grant publication | US 2013/0088479 A1 (2013-04-11) — same application, not a separate family member | Google Patents record |
| Filing date | 2012-02-22 | Google Patents record |
| Earliest priority | KR 10-2011-0103525, 2011-10-11 | Google Patents record |
| Issue date | 2015-06-30 | Google Patents record |
| Adjusted expiration (as printed) | 2032-10-04 | Google Patents record |
2. Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) under 35 U.S.C. §154(b)
Base 20-year term. Under §154(a)(2) the term runs 20 years from the U.S. filing date, not the foreign priority date (foreign priority under §119 does not push the term start). Base date = 2012-02-22 + 20 years = 2032-02-22.
Adjusted expiration on the record = 2032-10-04.
Implied PTA = 2032-10-04 − 2032-02-22 = 225 days.
I verified the arithmetic independently: day-of-year 53 (Feb 22, 2032, a leap year) + 225 = day 278 = October 4, 2032. The two figures reconcile exactly, which is strong internal corroboration that the record's "adjusted expiration" carries a 225-day PTA.
What I could NOT verify (and will not fabricate):
- The front-page "PTA: ___ days" annotation itself (no direct USPTO fetch succeeded).
- The split of that 225 days across A-delay (§154(b)(1)(A)), B-delay (§154(b)(1)(B), the three-year pendency clock), C-delay (§154(b)(1)(C)), and any overlap / applicant-delay offsets under §154(b)(2). The application pended ~858 days (2012-02-22 → 2015-06-30), i.e. under three years, so B-delay is unlikely to contribute materially; the 225 days is more consistent with A/C-type USPTO delay. But that is inference, not a documented determination.
- Whether any terminal disclaimer exists (none is mentioned in the supplied record; if one existed to a co-owned patent, it would cap the term at that patent's expiration, which could override the 2032-10-04 figure).
Action to harden this: pull the PTA determination and the "Terminal Disclaimer" field directly from PatentCenter, application 13/402,054, and cross-check the front-page "Primary Examiner / PTA" block via the USPTO Patent Public Search.
3. Patent Term Extension (PTE) under 35 U.S.C. §156
None, and none available. PTE is a Hatch-Waxman remedy limited to patents covering drug products, medical devices, food/color additives, or plant-protection products whose commercial marketing was delayed by a required federal regulatory review period. A display-driver patent is categorically ineligible. There is no regulatory-review pathway, no FDA approval event, and thus no PTE — and none appears in the record. I state this affirmatively as a statutory-eligibility conclusion, not a search result.
4. Continuation applications
None identified. The supplied family data lists:
- Family ID = 48041790
- Family Applications (1): US 13/402,054 — and only that one.
A continuation (or CIP) would appear as an additional U.S. application claiming benefit of 13/402,054 and would share the family. The record shows no continuation of the U.S. application. I also checked the "Also published as" field: the only U.S. publication listed is US 2013/0088479 A1, which is the pre-grant publication of the same application — not a separate continuation publication.
5. Divisional applications
None identified. No divisional is listed among the family applications. Because the granted set is 11 claims (1 independent) with claims 12–23 of the published application never issuing, the natural question is whether the non-issued published claims were pursued in a divisional. On the record you supplied, the answer is no — there is no divisional in the family. (If one were filed, it would appear as a second family application.) This is worth a direct file-wrapper confirmation, because a divisional is the single most common place for "unissued published claims" to reappear.
6. Related family members
The patent has a very small family — two jurisdictions, one application each:
| Member | Number | Jurisdiction | Linkage |
|---|---|---|---|
| US granted patent | US 9,070,332 B2 | US | Application 13/402,054 |
| US pre-grant publication | US 2013/0088479 A1 | US | Same application (13/402,054) |
| KR application (priority) | KR 10-2011-0103525 | KR | Filed 2011-10-11; US claims §119 priority |
| KR granted patent | KR 10-1909675 B1 | KR | Grant of the same KR priority application |
Country status (per record): US (1) = US9070332B2; KR (1) = KR101909675B1. No EP, CN, JP, or PCT/WO family member is listed.
Important distinction — do NOT conflate these with family members:
- US 11,263,950 B2 (Samsung Display, 2022) is a forward citation ("Cited By"), i.e. a later, unrelated Samsung Display patent that cites 9,070,332. It is not in the patent family and does not affect term.
- The KR priority application's two entries ("KR10-2011-0103525" and "KR1020110103525A / KR101909675B1") in the "Applications Claiming Priority (2)" table are the application and its grant/publication of the same filing, not two distinct applications.
- One search result showed KR101909675B1 dated 2018-10-19, assignee 삼성디스플레이 주식회사 (Samsung Display) — consistent with the KR family member's grant date, which I flag as corroborating but not independently verified.
7. Projected expiration date
| Basis | Date |
|---|---|
| U.S. filing + 20 years (statutory base) | 2032-02-22 |
| Plus PTA (derived, 225 days) | 2032-10-04 |
| Projected expiration (record figure) | 2032-10-04 |
This 2032-10-04 date is the operative projected expiration, matching Google Patents' "Adjusted expiration." It rests on three conditions that must all hold, none of which I could fully verify in this pass:
- No terminal disclaimer capping the term to a shorter co-owned patent (unverified).
- All maintenance fees paid through the 11.5-year window (see below).
- The PTA determination stands (no post-issuance PTA redetermination reducing the 225 days).
Maintenance-fee schedule (issue date 2015-06-30; due at 3.5 / 7.5 / 11.5 years, 6-month grace)
| Fee | Due date | Grace period ends | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5-year | 2018-12-30 | 2019-06-30 | presumably paid (patent listed Active) |
| 7.5-year | 2022-12-30 | 2023-06-30 | presumably paid |
| 11.5-year | 2026-12-30 | 2027-06-30 | ⚠️ upcoming / imminent |
This is the single most time-sensitive item. The 11.5-year maintenance fee falls due 2026-12-30 — roughly 3 months out on the 2026-09-29 reading, or ~8 months out on the 2026-04-26 reading. Failure to pay within the grace period (to 2027-06-30) would cause the patent to expire before term, defeating the 2032-10-04 projection. Given the patent owner is an operating company (Samsung Display Co., Ltd.) with no abandonment signal, payment is likely — but "Active" is a database annotation, not proof of payment. The "legal status = Active" line in the record is expressly flagged by Google as a non-legal conclusion.
8. Bottom line
- PTA: 225 days (derived: 2012-02-22 base + 225 = 2032-10-04). Front-page annotation not directly retrieved.
- PTE: None — statutorily ineligible (non-pharmaceutical/device).
- Continuations: None in the family record.
- Divisionals: None in the family record (but the unissued published claims 12–23 make a divisional check worthwhile at the file wrapper).
- Family members: US 9,070,332 B2; US 2013/0088479 A1 (same app); KR 10-2011-0103525 / KR 10-1909675 B1. That is the entire family — no EP/CN/JP/WO members listed.
- Projected expiration: 2032-10-04, contingent on no terminal disclaimer, a standing PTA, and payment of the 11.5-year maintenance fee due 2026-12-30.
Cross-reference to prior sections (no contradiction found): This analysis is consistent with the earlier "Bibliographic Data," "Assignment," and "Prior Art" sections, each of which reported the same filing/priority/issue dates and the 2032-10-04 adjusted expiration. The only tension is the date discrepancy flagged at the top (2026-09-29 vs. 2026-04-26), which affects the urgency framing of the 11.5-year fee and nothing else.
Primary sources for verification: Google Patents US9070332B2 · PatentCenter app. 13/402,054 · USPTO Patent Public Search · USPTO Maintenance Fee schedule/amounts · Justia mirror patents.justia.com/patent/9070332.
Generated 9/29/2026, 2:25:58 PM
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.
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