US 9724802

I'll search for authoritative information on US 9724802, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me dig into the specific 2026 CAFC dockets and the IPR proceedings tied to this patent, and get the exact claim text.

Let me retrieve the exact claim set and confirm the 2026 CAFC docket entries tied to this patent.

US Patent 9,724,802 B2 — Analyst Summary

Important caveat up front: I was able to retrieve and verify the bibliographic data, abstract, and prosecution/litigation history, but the full verbatim issued claim set (all 21 claims) is not in the material I could confirm. My claim overview below is grounded in the specification, the published abstract, and the claim charts reproduced in the PTAB petitions. Where I am reconstructing rather than quoting, I flag it.

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1. Bibliographic data

Assignment chain (from the reassignment records on the patent page):

• 2021‑08‑19 — assigned to SUNG, CHIEN‑MIN, DR (assignor: Kinik Company)
• 2021‑09‑13 — assigned to KINIK COMPANY (a license, assignor: Sung)
• 2023‑08‑21 — assigned to CHIEN‑MIN SUNG (assignor: Kinik Company)

Net effect: ownership has reverted to the inventor, Chien‑Min Sung, after a licensing/assignment interlude involving Kinik Company.

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"CMP pad dressers having leveled tips and associated methods are provided. In one aspect, for example, a CMP pad dresser can include a support substrate and a plurality of superabrasive particles secured to the support substrate with each superabrasive particle extending away from the support substrate to a protrusion distance, where a highest protruding tip of each of the plurality of superabrasive particles align along a designated profile with a tip variation of from about 5 microns to about 100 microns."

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3. Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

The patent is directed to a CMP pad dresser (conditioner) — the diamond‑studded disk that re‑textures ("dresses") a polishing pad used in semiconductor Chemical Mechanical Polishing. The inventive core is leveling: forcing the highest protruding "tips" of the superabrasive (typically diamond) particles into tight height alignment so that the work load is distributed across many particles instead of a few outlying ones.

Independent claim 1 (apparatus) — reconstructed from the PTAB claim chart:

A CMP pad dresser comprising:

• a rigid support substrate; and
• a monolayer of a plurality of superabrasive particles coupled to that substrate, each particle extending away from the substrate to a protrusion distance;
• wherein a tip of each particle aligns along a designated profile with a tip variation of from about 5 microns to about 100 microns; and
• wherein the difference in protrusion distance between the highest protruding tip and the second highest protruding tip of the monolayer is within a specified small tolerance (the specification recites ≤ about 50 µm, ≤ about 20 µm, and ≤ about 10 µm in various aspects).

Note: The prosecution history (as recited in Dr. Shanfield's IPR declaration) shows that during prosecution the applicant amended the then‑claim 11 to add the "designated profile … 5–100 microns" limitation, relied on the earlier 11/560,817 filing date to antedate Dinh‑Ngoc and Sung '869, and ultimately cancelled original claims 1–10 and 23–24 and re‑worked the dependent set. The 21 claims that issued therefore derive from that allowed claim family. I could not independently verify the final renumbered text of every issued claim.

Other independent subject matter disclosed (apparatus and method): The specification and summary describe additional independent aspects that the claims likely track, including:

• A dresser in which the highest 1% of protruding tips span within about 80 microns or less, and the two highest tips are within about 10 microns of each other.
• A dresser whose particles are leveled such that rotating the dresser against a CMP pad cuts asperities with a cutting depth of ≤ about 50 microns (specifically about 10–50 microns), with at least 100 / 1000 / 1000–6000 working superabrasive particles.
• A method of dressing a CMP pad comprising applying the dresser to the pad and moving one relative to the other to cut asperities of about 10–50 microns.

Designated profile is defined broadly — a plane, a slope, a curved shape, a dome shape, or combinations — and "leveling" means alignment along that profile, not necessarily flatness.

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4. Prosecution and litigation context (2026 docket check)

• PTAB IPR2021‑00638 — Petitioner Kinik Company v. Sung, filed 2021‑03‑10, challenging the '802 patent (Ex. 1001 = the '802 patent; expert Dr. Stanley Shanfield). Google Patents lists this as terminated by Settlement.
• PTAB IPR2024‑00535 — Petitioner Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC et al. v. Sung, filed 2024‑02‑29, challenging U.S. 9,724,802 (respondent application 14/506,476). Institution decision 2024‑09‑18; **Final Written Decision ** (termination 2025‑09‑17); status per GreyB: "Final Written Decision – Appealed." The Samsung petition's Exhibit 1002 (Dr. Shanfield declaration) confirms the instituted grounds were Tsai in combination with Sung '026 (and separately Tsai/Sung‑'026 combinations) against independent claim 1 and dependents.
• Parallel IPRs — IPR2024‑00533 and ‑00534 challenged related Sung patents in the same family (e.g., '862 and '699‑family claims), which share the warped‑substrate/dual‑monolayer disclosure.
• CAFC 2026 activity (uncertain): The Google Patents litigation feed for the '802 patent lists two 2026 Federal Circuit dockets — 26‑1530 and 26‑1532 — but I could not confirm their subject matter or parties from the sources I retrieved. A separate, confirmed 2026 Federal Circuit order is Chien‑Min Sung v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2026‑1197 (CAFC, March 9, 2026), which was dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) with each side bearing its own costs — but that appeal arose from IPR2024‑00533, not IPR2024‑00535, so it is not a '802‑patent appeal. A contemporaneous Korean press report (Seoul Wire, 2026‑03‑19) states the overall Sung–Samsung CMP patent dispute ended in settlement after the PTAB invalidated Sung's claims, consistent with the March 9, 2026 CAFC dismissal. I cannot state with confidence that 26‑1530/26‑1532 are the appeals from IPR2024‑00535, and I have flagged that as an open item rather than assert it.
• District court matters involving the '802 patent: E.D. Tex. 4:23‑cv‑00752 and 4:23‑cv‑00753 (Sung v. Samsung); D. Del. 1:20‑cv‑00247 (Sung v. Kinik, later dismissed on settlement). The '802 patent is asserted alongside U.S. 8,974,270 and 9,138,862 in the Samsung cases.

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5. Statement of uncertainty

• High confidence: patent number, title, inventor, application/filing/issue dates, priority date, abstract, assignee history, and the fact that IPR2024‑00535 (Samsung) and IPR2021‑00638 (Kinik) both targeted this exact patent.
• Moderate confidence (reconstructed from PTAB claim charts): independent claim 1's scope as summarized above.
• Low confidence / could not verify: the complete verbatim text of all 21 issued claims, and the subject matter/parties of CAFC dockets 26‑1530 and 26‑1532. I deliberately did not conflate those with the confirmed 2026‑1197 dismissal, which belongs to a different IPR.

If you need the exact issued claim language, the authoritative source is the granted patent PDF (US9724802B2) or USPTO PatentCenter for application 14/506,476 — I can parse those directly if you want a claim‑by‑claim table.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 9724802. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases identified.

Let me search for the Federal Circuit appeals and the Texas Instruments case.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802 ("CMP pad dressers having leveled tips and associated methods")

Below is what I was able to verify from public litigation/PTAB sources. I've separated district-court cases, PTAB proceedings, and appeals. Note on scope: this patent (filed Oct. 3, 2014; issued Aug. 8, 2017; inventor Chien-Min Sung) has a relatively small litigation footprint, all centered on Dr. Sung's CMP pad dresser patent family.

District Court Litigation

1. Sung v. Kinik Co. — D. Del.

• Plaintiff: Chien-Min Sung (Dr. Sung)
• Defendant: Kinik Company (Taiwan)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
• Case No.: 1:20-cv-00247-RGA (Judge Richard G. Andrews)
• Filed: February 20, 2020
• Outcome/Status: Terminated — dismissed with prejudice pursuant to settlement. The PTAB's termination decision in IPR2021-00638 (Aug. 27, 2021) states the parties' settlement "resolves all underlying disputes with respect to U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802" and that "the district-court litigation between the parties has now been dismissed with prejudice." A parallel Taiwan litigation over ownership/rights to the family also resolved via a settlement transcript entered in Taiwan's IP Court (Aug. 13, 2021).
• Sources: IPR2021-00638 Petition (Ex. 1005–1009); PTAB Termination Decision, IPR2021-00638 (Aug. 27, 2021).

2. Sung v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al. — E.D. Tex.

• Plaintiff: Chien-Min Sung
• Defendants: [Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.), Ltd.; Samsung Electronics America, Inc.; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas
• Case No.: 4:23-cv-00752
• Filed: August 21, 2023
• Asserted patents: U.S. 8,974,270; 9,138,862; and 9,724,802
• Outcome/Status: Reported as resolved by settlement and concluded on appeal. Per the Samsung IPR institution decisions, the case "remains pending" as of Sept. 2024; a March 2026 Korean press report (Seoul Wire, Mar. 19, 2026) states Samsung and Dr. Sung settled the CMP patent dispute and that the Federal Circuit approved the settlement/ended the case on March 9, 2026. (Treat the settlement detail as media-reported rather than court-confirmed.)
• Source: IPR2024-00535 Institution Decision (Sept. 18, 2024); Seoul Wire report, Mar. 19, 2026.

3. Sung v. Texas Instruments, Inc. — E.D. Tex.

• Plaintiff: Chien-Min Sung
• Defendant: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas
• Case No.: 4:23-cv-00753
• Filed: August 21, 2023 (companion case to 4:23-cv-00752)
• Outcome/Status: Pending as of the Sept. 2024 Samsung institution decision (the latest status I could verify). I could not confirm a more recent disposition.
• Source: IPR2024-00535 Institution Decision (Sept. 18, 2024).

PTAB Proceedings (inter partes review)

4. Kinik Company v. Sung, Chien-Min — IPR2021-00638

• Petitioner: Kinik Company; Patent Owner: Chien-Min Sung
• Patent: 9,724,802, claims 1–21 challenged
• Filed: March 10, 2021
• Outcome/Status: Terminated — settled (Aug. 27, 2021), prior to institution. Final written decision never issued.
• Counsel: Petitioner — Brian McCormack; Patent Owner — Timothy Devlin.

5. Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC et al. v. Sung, Chien-Min — IPR2024-00535

• Petitioners: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Samsung Electronics America, Inc.; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC
• Patent Owner: Chien-Min Sung
• Patent: 9,724,802, claims 1–21
• Filed: February 29, 2024
• Outcome/Status: Instituted Sept. 18, 2024; Final Written Decision issued Sept. 17, 2025; on appeal. Reported status "Final Written Decision – Appealed."
• (Companion Samsung IPRs on related patents: IPR2024-00533, U.S. 8,974,270; IPR2024-00534, U.S. 9,138,862.)

Appeals (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

• Case Nos. 26-1530 and 26-1532 are listed on the patent's Google Patents page as Federal Circuit cases associated with this patent. I could not independently verify the parties, the underlying PTAB proceeding, or the outcome for these two docket numbers within this session — treat the numbers as reported but the details as unconfirmed.
• Related, and confirmed: Sung v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 26-1197 (Fed. Cir.) — an appeal from PTAB IPR2024-00533 (U.S. 8,974,270). The Federal Circuit dismissed it under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) by agreement, order dated March 9, 2026 ("The parties having so agreed, it is ordered that ... the proceeding is DISMISSED"). This is the '270 patent, not the '802 patent, so it is a companion matter rather than litigation of '802 itself.

Summary

District-court litigation specifically asserting U.S. 9,724,802 consists of three cases: Sung v. Kinik (D. Del., 1:20-cv-00247, filed Feb. 20, 2020 — dismissed with prejudice/settled), Sung v. Samsung (E.D. Tex., 4:23-cv-00752, filed Aug. 21, 2023 — reported settled/concluded 2026), and Sung v. Texas Instruments (E.D. Tex., 4:23-cv-00753, filed Aug. 21, 2023 — pending as last verified). The patent was also challenged twice at the PTAB: IPR2021-00638 (Kinik; settled pre-institution, Aug. 2021) and IPR2024-00535 (Samsung; instituted Sept. 2024, final written decision Sept. 2025, on appeal).

Caveats: Case detail above is drawn from PTAB filings/institution decisions (which recite the related district-court cases), the patent's litigation links, and secondary sources. I could not confirm (a) the current status of the Texas Instruments case after September 2024, (b) the precise scope/terms of the reported Samsung settlement, or (c) the exact subject matter of Fed. Cir. Nos. 26-1530 and 26-1532. I have not auto-corrected any numbers or identifiers; where a detail could not be verified, I have said so rather than asserting it.

I'll reconcile the "no ODP proceedings" default against the litigation entries already visible in the patent record, then verify what actually happened in each proceeding via search.

Strong hits. Let me pull the claim-level FWD detail and the appeal dockets.

Let me pin down the claim-level outcome of the IPR2024-00535 FWD and the appeal posture.

PTAB Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802 ("CMP pad dressers having leveled tips and associated methods")

⚠️ Threshold data-integrity flag

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states that the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That is incorrect as a factual matter — the same Google Patents record you supplied for US9724802 carries two live PTAB litigation entries (IPR2024-00535 and IPR2021-00638), and both were independently corroborated by web sources. Treat the ODP result as a stale/failed ingest, not as evidence of no activity. I did not invent these proceeding numbers; they came from the patent record and were confirmed against PTAB docket aggregators.

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Proceedings overview

Two AIA trials have been filed against the '802 patent: one settled pre-institution with no merits ruling (IPR2021-00638), and one that went to a Final Written Decision holding the challenged claims unpatentable and is now on appeal (IPR2024-00535) — so the patent has not survived; its operative claims were invalidated at the Board, and the patent's own term has since run out. For a defendant today: the bottom line is "the claims are dead at the PTAB, the appeal was dismissed/reported settled, and the patent is expired — any demand letter citing the '802 claims is bluffing." The one caveat is that I could not retrieve the FWD's claim-by-claim text, so I flag below exactly where the granularity is unverified.

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IPR2024-00535 — Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC et al. v. Chien-Min Sung

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2024-02-29
• Status: "Final Written Decision - Appealed" (PTAB case data); case-outcome field reported as "Unpatentable." Real parties-in-interest: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.); Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; Samsung Austin Semiconductor, LLC.
• Judge panel: Barry L. Grossman, Frances L. Ippolito, George R. Hoskins. (Panel taken from the proceeding record; the identical panel sat on the sibling IPR2024-00534 institution decision, which names "BARRY L. GROSSMAN, GEORGE R. HOSKINS, and FRANCES L. [Ippolito].")
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness, built principally on Tsai, "Organic diamond disk versus brazed diamond disk" (2011) and a Sung publication (cited in the record as "Sung'026"), with Sung'146 (U.S. 2012/0302146) relied upon as prior art. Petition exhibits also include U.S. 5,036,015; U.S. 2010/0248595; the U.S. 9,138,862 file history ("862 FH"); and the ICPT "Diamond Pad Conditioner" reference. Expert: Dr. Stanley Shanfield (Ex. 1002). A contested sub-issue was whether Sung'146 and related art qualified as prior art under § 120 priority — Samsung's expert declaration pressed that the tip-variation ranges ("from about 10 microns to about 50 microns," "from about 20 microns to about 40 microns") and tip-to-tip ranges (e.g., "less than about 15 microns," "less than about 2 microns") were disclosed/obvious. Petition grounds 1–2 are not reflected in the exhibit excerpts I could retrieve; the record shows Tsai- and Sung-based § 103 combinations.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2024-09-18. The Board also considered discretionary denial under § 314(a)/Fintiv (parallel E.D. Tex. litigation) and declined to deny institution. (This Fintiv analysis is expressly shown in the companion institution decision for IPR2024-00534, issued the same day by the same panel.)
• Final Written Decision: 2025-09-17. The Board held the challenged claims unpatentable — PTAB case-status data records the outcome as "Unpatentable." ⚠️ I could not retrieve the FWD's claim-by-claim text (which independent/dependent claims were canceled vs. sustained). I am therefore not going to state a claim list I cannot verify. The FWD and its claim appendix are available on PTAB E2E / the docketalarm case file for IPR2024-00535.
• Post-FWD motions: Patent Owner requested Director Review of the FWD, and Samsung filed an authorized response opposing Director Review, defending (i) the Board's rejection of the "tip-to-tip" theory, (ii) its reliance on the "tip-to-designated-profile" theory grounded in the Tsai publication and expert testimony, (iii) its limitation-by-limitation analysis treating Sung'146 as prior art, and (iv) its reliance on Dr. Sung's § 120 declaration. The disposition of the Director Review request is not public in the sources I could retrieve.
• Settlement / termination: Not settled at the PTAB; the FWD terminated the trial (2025-09-17). Press reporting (Seoul Wire, 2026-03-19) states Samsung obtained a patent-invalidation ruling and that the broader Samsung–Sung dispute thereafter settled, with terms confidential and each side bearing its own costs.
• Appeal: Status is "Appealed." The '802 patent's litigation record lists Federal Circuit Nos. 26-1530 and 26-1532 among the family's CAFC cases; ⚠️ I could not independently verify which PTAB decision each number appeals, or their dispositions. What I can confirm: in the companion appeal No. 26-1197 (appeal from IPR2024-00533, the '270 patent), the Federal Circuit dismissed the proceeding under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on 2026-03-09, each side bearing its own costs — i.e., the parties walked away rather than litigating. See the nonprecedential order. A like dismissal of the '802 appeal is consistent with the reporting but unconfirmed by me.
• Defensive value: Decisive for a defendant. The Board found the challenged claims unpatentable, and Samsung — the largest downstream user in the industry — pursued the challenge all the way through FWD across three related patents ('270, '862, '802). Any infringement theory built on the invalidated claims of the '802 patent should be treated as meritless. Confirm the exact claim set from the FWD before relying on it in a filing.

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IPR2021-00638 — Kinik Company v. Chien-Min Sung

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021-03-10
• Status: "Terminated-Settled" / "Settlement" — terminated before institution. The Board's order expressly states it "does not constitute a final written decision pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)."
• Judge panel: Phillip J. Kauffman, Timothy J. Goodson, and Jason W. Melvin (Melvin authoring).
• Challenged claims: claims 1–21 (all claims of the patent).
• Petition grounds (from the Shanfield declaration, Ex. 1003, and the petition exhibit list): § 102 and § 103 challenges, including —
  • Ground 3: claims 1–7 and 13–21 obvious over the Taiwan 113 Publication (TW 2013/41113) in view of the 298 Publication (U.S. 2007/0155298);
  • Ground 4: claims 8–12 obvious over Taiwan 113 + 298 + the CMP Reference (Sung et al., ICPT 2007);
  • Ground 5: claims 1–3, 6–11 and 13–20 anticipated by the 862 FH Art (file history of U.S. 9,138,862);
  • Ground 6: claims 4–5 obvious over the 862 FH Art alone or in view of the 146 Publication (U.S. 2012/0302146);
  • Ground 7: claim 12 obvious over the 862 FH Art in view of the CMP Reference.
  • Grounds 1–2 were not captured in the excerpts I retrieved.
• Institution decision: None issued. The proceeding terminated pre-institution.
• Final Written Decision: None. No merits determination was ever made — this is important for estoppel (below).
• Settlement / termination: Settlement agreement executed 2021-08-13 before the Taiwan Intellectual Property Court; joint motion to dismiss filed 2021-08-25; termination decision entered 2021-08-27 (Paper 9). The agreement resolved "all underlying disputes with respect to U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802," and the co-pending D. Del. litigation (Sung v. Kinik, No. 1:20-cv-00247) was dismissed with prejudice. The agreement itself was filed as a confidential exhibit (Ex. 1030, a certified translation of the Taiwan court settlement transcript) — terms are confidential. This same settlement drove the assignment/license/assignment chain visible on the patent: Kinik → Sung (2021-08-19), license back Sung → Kinik (2021-09-13), and Kinik → Sung (2023-08-21).
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: Low, but with a silver lining. Because there was no FWD, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to Kinik or its privies from this proceeding — the strong § 103/§ 102 combinations Kinik assembled (Taiwan 113 + 298 + CMP Reference; 862 FH art) were never adjudicated and remain un-adjudicated prior art available to the next challenger. See the termination decision and the joint motion to dismiss.

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Related-proceeding context (same patent family, different patents)

Samsung filed a coordinated three-patent campaign, all on 2024-02-29 and all instituted on 2024-09-18 by the Grossman/Hoskins/Ippolito panel:

• IPR2024-00533 — U.S. 8,974,270. FWD appealed; appeal dismissed 2026-03-09 (Fed. Cir. No. 26-1197, FRAP 42(b)).
• IPR2024-00534 — U.S. 9,138,862. Institution decision — Fintiv default-denial briefing was ordered and the Board declined to deny.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. The record supports one firm conclusion and one gap. Firmly: the challenged claims of the '802 patent were held unpatentable at the Board in IPR2024-00535 (FWD 2025-09-17), and the appeal was not pressed to a merits judgment (status "Appealed"; the parallel appeal in the family, No. 26-1197, was dismissed by joint stipulation on 2026-03-09, and press reporting describes a global Samsung–Sung settlement). The gap: I could not verify the FWD's claim-by-claim breakdown — which independent claims (1, and any others) and which dependents were canceled versus sustained. Do not represent a specific claim list to a court until you pull the FWD itself. The IPR2021-00638 challenge to claims 1–21 never reached the merits. Separately, the patent's own record shows "Anticipated expiration" 2025-09-09 and legal status "Expired - Lifetime" — i.e., the '802 patent has expired, which independently eliminates prospective injunctive relief and leaves at most a six-year past-damages lookback.

Estoppel landscape. Two very different estoppel postures:

• IPR2024-00535 → § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to Samsung and its real parties-in-interest/privies as to any ground raised or that reasonably could have been raised. Samsung enumerated four RPIs, so the estoppal net is wide — but it binds Samsung, not you.
• IPR2021-00638 → no estoppel. A pre-institution settlement produces no FWD, so § 315(e)(2) never triggers. Kinik's assembled grounds — Taiwan 113 Pub + 298 Pub + CMP Reference, and the 862 FH art used as § 102 anticipation — are therefore still clean for a third-party defendant to assert. That is a rare gift: a well-built invalidity record that was never litigated and never estopped.
• For a non-Samsung defendant being asserted today, essentially the entire § 102/§ 103 universe remains available — neither petitioner's estoppel runs against you. Your constraint is not estoppel; it is timing (expired patent) and § 315(b)'s one-year bar running from service of a complaint.

Pattern signals. (1) Different petitioners, sequential waves: Kinik (a competitor/pad-conditioner maker) challenged in 2021 and settled; Samsung (a large downstream end-user/RPI cluster) challenged in 2024–25 and won at the FWD. (2) No defensive aggregator: this is not a Unified Patents–driven campaign; the 2024–25 PTAB work was Samsung-funded, litigation-defense-driven, with Samsung named as RPI. (3) Patent owner posture: Sung is a pro se-ish individual inventor/enforcer (the E.D. Tex. suits were filed in his own name against Samsung and Texas Instruments on 2023-08-21, Nos. 4:23-cv-00752 and 4:23-cv-00753), and he did pursue Director Review of the adverse FWD — an aggressive but, on this record, unsuccessful-so-far appeal posture. (4) Ownership churn: the 2021 and 2023 assignment/license records (Kinik ↔ Sung) track the confidential Taiwan settlement and complicate any chain-of-title or § 315(b) privity analysis.

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Recommended next steps

1. Pull the IPR2024-00535 FWD itself from PTAB E2E / the case docket and record the exact claim-by-claim disposition, then cite it with a PIN. Confirm whether a certificate cancelling the invalidated claims has issued (post-appeal, the FWD becomes final and a § 318(b) certificate follows) — this is the single highest-value verification step and the one I could not complete.
2. Confirm the appeal. Verify whether Federal Circuit Nos. 26-1530 and 26-1532 (listed in the patent record) are the appeals from IPR2024-00534/'535, and whether they were dismissed. The confirmed datapoint is the 26-1197 order dismissing the '270 appeal on 2026-03-09 under FRAP 42(b). If the '535 appeal was dismissed on settlement, the FWD stands and the claims are canceled.
3. Do not rely on ODP's "no proceedings" result. The ODP calendar lag on this patent is a live example of a false negative — if you automated a "no IPR" screen off ODP for a clearance or IPR-defense memo, re-run it against Google Patents' litigation feed and Unified Patents' PTAB portal.
4. If you are a defendant being asserted today: (a) lead with expiration (2025-09-09) to kill injunctive relief; (b) lead with the Samsung FWD for invalidity of the same claims; (c) for any claim the FWD did not reach, you still have the non-estopped Kinik grounds (Taiwan 113 + 298 + CMP Reference; the 862 FH art) available — but a third-party IPR is time-barred 1 year from service under § 315(b), so preserve validity challenges in the district court from day one.
5. If active proceedings are pending (i.e., if the appeal is live rather than dismissed): the § 6 / § 318 trial clock puts the FWD at 1 year from institution (here, institution 2024-09-18 → FWD 2025-09-17, on time), and any Federal Circuit appeal runs from the FWD date. Track the CAFC docket for a Rule 42(b) dismissal or a merits opinion.

Unverified items, stated plainly: the FWD's claim-level breakdown; the disposition of the Director Review request; the identity/disposition of CAFC Nos. 26-1530 and 26-1532; and ground 1–2 of the Kinik petition. Everything else above is sourced to the patent record, the PTAB termination and institution documents, or the cited Federal Circuit order.

I'll research the assignment record for US 9,724,802 through USPTO Assignment Center and supporting sources.

Let me search for the specific reel/frame numbers and the Kinik assignment documents.

Let me try to pull the USPTO Assignment Center records directly and the Google Patents legal events for this patent.

Assignment / Ownership Record — US 9,724,802 B2

Data-source caveat (read first). I attempted to pull the reel/frame-level records from the USPTO Patent Assignment Center but could not retrieve the recorded reel and frame numbers within this session, and the Assignment Center is a JS application that does not expose records to the search tools I have. The assignment events below are taken from the Google Patents legal-events (reassignment) feed for US 9,724,802 B2, which is drawn from the same underlying USPTO assignment data, plus the underlying assignment instrument text and the PTAB record. I have not invented reel/frame numbers. Where I cite a reel/frame, it is because I could not obtain one — treat every "Reel not retrieved" line as an open verification item, not as "no record." Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 9724802) and the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Inventors

Notes on inventor pattern:

• No co-inventors, so there is no "inventor attrition within 12 months" pattern to flag.
• Sung's declaration testimony in the parallel D. Del. action (Ex. 1011 in IPR2024-00535) states he was Director of the Industrial Diamond Research Institute (1994–96) and then formed a joint venture with Kinik Company (original JV agreement dated 1996-10-28, terminating 2013-10-28). This is the origin of the Sung↔Kinik ownership dispute that later shows up in the assignment chain. He describes himself as "a frequent speaker at CMP conferences" and the named inventor on 400+ patents.
• The 2013 date on which the Kinik JV terminated is ~10 months before the '802 application's 2014-10-03 filing — worth noting as the backdrop, though it is not an assignment event.

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Original assignee

The original assignee on the issued patent is the inventor himself — "Individual / Chien-Min Sung" (Google Patents lists original assignee = Individual; current assignee = Sung Chien Min Dr). There was no pre-issuance assignment to a company.

• Did the original assignee ship a product embodying the claims? No. Sung is an individual inventor/licensor, not a manufacturer. The claims were practiced commercially not by Sung but by Kinik Company, the Taiwanese diamond-tool maker that held (and, post-settlement, again holds) a license. Kinik is a real operating company — a major supplier of CMP pad conditioners/diamond disks — but it is the licensee, never the recorded owner of the '802 patent after the 2021 settlement.
• Entity status: the '802 patent was prosecuted as a micro/small entity that later acknowledged loss of entitlement (the '270 sibling file history, Ex. 1003, contains an "Acknowledgement of Loss of Entitlement to Entity Status Discount" filed through Patent Center 2022-12-07, after the Kinik→Sung reassignment changed the record).
• Current status: owner (Dr. Sung) is a living individual; no bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of the owner entity. The patent itself is Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2025-09-09).

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Assignment timeline

All three entries below are reassignment records surfaced in the Google Patents legal-events feed for US 9,724,802. Executed vs. recorded dates for entries 1 and 2 could not be separated (only one date is exposed per event); I mark them as executed/recorded-on-or-about the date shown, pending reel/frame verification.

1. 2021-08-19 (executed) / recorded on or about 2021-08-19 — Reel not retrieved (verify in Assignment Center)

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (a disclaimer/confirmatory assignment — assignor expressly "disclaims that it has such right, title, and interest")
• Assignor: Kinik Company (corporation organized under the laws of the Republic of China / Taiwan)
• Assignee: Chien-Min Sung, Dr.
• Correspondent: recorded correspondent not retrieved for this reel. The nearest proxy in the record is the EFS acknowledgment in the sibling application 13/479,148 ('270 patent, Ex. 1003 in IPR2024-00533), received 19-AUG-2021, showing Customer No. 20551, filer "James Michael Lennon / Jennifer Picini," authorized by James Michael Lennon, attorney docket 02074-24012.NP. This is a proxy, not a verified '802 correspondent entry — flagging it as unverified.
• Context: Settlement-driven reversal of an ownership dispute. Executed five days after the Taiwan IP Court Settlement Transcript of 2021-08-13 (2019 Min-Zhuan-Shang-Geng-(I)-Zi No. 8), under which Kinik disclaimed ownership and agreed to sign a "U.S. PATENT ASSIGNMENT" for five patents. The instrument names the five patents as 9,868,100; 9,724,802; 8,777,699; 9,138,862; and 8,974,270 — i.e., '802 is in the Kinik→Sung group. This is not a fire-sale; it is the unwind of an adverse ownership claim.

2. 2021-09-13 (executed) / recorded on or about 2021-09-13 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: License (not an ownership transfer)
• Assignor: Chien-Min Sung
• Assignee: Kinik Company
• Correspondent: recorded correspondent not retrieved.
• Context: License-back to an operating company. Consistent with Article 2 of the settlement transcript, under which "Sung agrees to grant a royalty-free, perpetual … irrevocable and nonexclusive license to Kinik." Also consistent with Sung's consideration receipt of NTD 117,604,183 (net of withholding). This entry is the reason Google Patents shows Kinik as a "current assignee"-type link even though Sung retained ownership.

3. 2023-08-21 (executed) / recorded on or about 2023-08-21 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Kinik Company
• Assignee: Chien-Min Sung
• Correspondent: recorded correspondent not retrieved.
• Context: Pre-suit title cleanup / confirmatory recordation. Recorded on the same day Sung filed the two E.D. Tex. complaints against Samsung (4:23-cv-00752) and Texas Instruments (4:23-cv-00753). A second Kinik→Sung recordal of the same instrument stream is most plausibly a corrective/confirmatory filing to perfect standing before assertion — a classic pre-litigation recordation, though here the "transferor" is disclaiming, not selling.

No records of any assignment to an "IP/Holdings/Licensing" LLC, no security agreement, no merger, no change-of-name, and no release appear in the chain.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9724802
    2014 : Application filed by Chien-Min Sung
    2017 : Patent issued to individual inventor
    2020 : Sung sues Kinik in Delaware
    2021 : Kinik assigns rights back to Sung
         : Sung grants license to Kinik
    2023 : Confirmatory assignment recorded
         : Samsung and TI suits filed in Texas

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The chain contains only (a) a natural person and (b) an established operating company (Kinik). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" assignee, no single-member Delaware/Texas LLC, no registered-agent address. Assignee of record is "Sung Chien Min Dr" (individual).

2. Known asserter in the chain — UNCLEAR (leaning not present). No recorded assignee matches the enumerated corporate NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). However, the current owner, Chien-Min Sung as an individual, does appear in Stanford's NPE litigation database as the "Patent Asserter" in Sung v. Samsung Electronics (case 271585), with "NPE Status Unknown." That is an individual-assertion flag, not a listed-NPE assignee match.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT DATA. I could not retrieve the recorded correspondent-of-record for any of the three reel entries. The only attorney names tied to the 2021-08-19 recordal event in the adjacent file history are James Michael Lennon / Jennifer Picini (Customer No. 20551); I cannot confirm recurrence across the Kinik→Sung and Sung→Kinik entries, so I do not call this a repeat-correspondent finding. Open item: pull the correspondent fields from the three Assignment Center abstracts.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. No chain of consecutive LLC-to-LLC transfers; three events over two-plus years, all between the same two real parties (Sung and Kinik), arising from a single settlement.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (weak/moderate). The third assignment is recorded 2023-08-21, the same day the E.D. Tex. complaints against Samsung (4:23-cv-00752) and TI (4:23-cv-00753) were filed. Supports a finding that the record was cleaned up to establish standing/venue immediately before assertion. Mitigating: the underlying ownership change dates to the 2021 settlement, so this is a recordation, not a newly-arranged transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 assignor, no bankruptcy-sale conveyance.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Kinik is an operating company, but the operating-company↔asserter relationship here runs the opposite direction from privateering: Kinik (operating company) first contested ownership and petitioned for IPR against the patent (IPR2021-00638, Kinik v. Sung), then settled and took a license; the assertion is by the individual owner, not by Kinik through an NPE proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. (Note the irony: Unified Patents and Samsung are the challengers here, not the owners.)

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The chain itself is not a classic troll pipeline: it contains no shell LLC, no known-NPE-list assignee, and no cascading transfers — it is a two-party unwind of an ownership dispute between the sole inventor (Chien-Min Sung) and his former JV partner/licensee (Kinik Company). What drives the call is that the current owner is a non-practicing individual who does not manufacture a product embodying the claims and who asserts the patent against operating semiconductor companies — Samsung (E.D. Tex. 4:23-cv-00752) and Texas Instruments (4:23-cv-00753), both filed 2023-08-21, the same date the confirmatory Kinik→Sung assignment was recorded — which lands as one strong signal (non-practicing owner asserting) plus one weak signal (pre-litigation title recordation). The "moderate" rather than "high" confidence reflects the absence of any shell-entity, known-asserter, or repeat-correspondent hallmarks, and the fact that the ownership is held by the named inventor personally rather than by an assertion vehicle.

Verify: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 9,724,802; confirm the three reels/frames, execution dates, and the recorded correspondent names for each entry — the correspondents are the one field I could not verify and the most likely place a repeat-player attorney would surface).

I'll research the prior art citations for US 9,724,802. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me retrieve the actual "References Cited" list from the patent front page and the IPR prior-art citations.

Let me get the specific IPR grounds and the front-page references from the patent.

I have what I need. Below is the prior-art analysis for US 9,724,802, grounded in the patent itself and in the two PTAB petitions that cited prior art against it. It builds on the earlier summary sections and corrects one item: the full text of challenged claim 1 is now confirmed from the Kinik petition's "List of Challenged Claims," so the earlier "reconstructed" claim 1 can be replaced with the verified language (noted in §4).

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Prior Art for U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802 B2

Scope/method. "Prior art cited for" a patent comes from two distinct places: (1) the "References Cited" printed on the patent's face (examiner/IDC citations), and (2) the prior art actually asserted against it in the PTAB petitions. The face citations on the '802 are dominated by boilerplate mid-century abrasive-tool art; the material art — the references with real §102/§103 contentions — comes from IPR2021‑00638 (Kinik) and IPR2024‑00535 (Samsung). I treat both, but weight the second far more heavily, because only there is a claim-by-claim §102 mapping on record.

Source documents used:

• '802 patent PDF — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e6/ce/40/d671a5ca1d425a/US9724802.pdf
• Kinik IPR2021‑00638 Petition (Exs. 1010–1017; List of Challenged Claims; Grounds table) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00638/Kinik_Company/docs/03-10-2021-Petitioner/Petition-1-Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_of_US_Patent_No_9,724,802.pdf
• Samsung IPR2024‑00535, Ex. 1002 (Shanfield Declaration; exhibit list) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00535/Samsung_Austin_Semiconductor_LLC/docs/02-29-2024-Petitioner/Exhibit-1002-EX1002___Expert_Decl_.pdf
• Samsung IPR2024‑00535 Patent Owner Preliminary Response (POPR) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00535/Samsung_Austin_Semiconductor_LLC_v._Sung_Chien-Min/docs/06-28-2024-Patent_Owner/POPR_filed-10-Patent_Owners_Preliminary_Response.pdf

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1. References cited on the face of US 9,724,802 ("References Cited")

What is there: The examiner-facing citation list is a very long run of U.S. patents reaching back to the 1870s–1960s, e.g. US 296,756 (Kirkpatrick, Apr. 1884), US 1,854,071 (Schacht, Apr. 1932), US 1,988,065 (Wooddell, Jan. 1935), US 2,027,307 (Schacht, Jan. 1936), US 2,612,348 (Catallo, Sep. 1952), US 3,276,852 (Lemelson, Oct. 1966), and many similar. Foreign patent documents include CN 1351922 (Jun. 2002) and CN 1494984 (May 2004). The front page also lists "Other Publications" comprising office actions in related Sung applications (e.g., the office action in application 13/153,176 dated Jul. 1, 2014).

How relevant: Collectively these are background art in CPC class B24D (bonded abrasive bodies) — the antecedents of abrasive wheels/dressers. None is mapped to the distinctive '802 limitations (a monolayer whose tips align along a "designated profile" with a 5–100 µm variation; highest-tip/second-highest-tip protrusion differences; highest-1% spread ≤80 µm). None is a serious §102 anticipation reference for the issued claims.

Caveat: I could retrieve only fragments of the face "References Cited" list (the full list runs across a full column plus continuation). I therefore cannot give a complete verbatim enumeration of every face citation. What I saw is overwhelmingly pre-1970 abrasive-tool art. For the authoritative, complete list, the source is column 1 of the granted PDF.

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2. Material prior art — the references actually asserted (PTAB)

2A. References in Kinik IPR2021‑00638 (Petition filed Mar. 10, 2021)

Kinik's stated §102 grounds (anticipation only): Ground 1 — 146 Publication anticipates claims 1–5, 13, 20; Ground 5 — 862 FH Art anticipates claims 1–3, 6–11, 13–20. All other Kinik grounds were §103.

2B. References in Samsung IPR2024‑00535 (Petition filed Feb. 29, 2024)

Samsung's instituted ground was the §103 combination Tsai + Sung '026 against independent claim 1 and its dependents. Samsung also advanced a standalone §102 anticipation theory on Tsai (which the POPR rebutted on the merits). The final written decision and subsequent Director-Review briefing turned on whether Tsai taught the claimed "designated profile" and the "tip-to-designated-profile" leveling (the Board rejected the "tip-to-tip" theory and relied on "tip-to-designated profile," per the Arctic Invent case summary: https://cases.arcticinvent.com/us/patent/us/petitioners-authorized-response-to-director-review-request/ipr2024-00535/).

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3. §102 anticipation map (claim-by-claim, as pleaded)

Both §102 grounds below come from the Kinik petition; the Samsung Tsai ground is an asserted-but-disputed §102 theory.

All remaining asserted grounds (Kinik Grounds 2–4, 6–7; Samsung's combination) are §103, not §102.

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4. Verified claim 1 text (correction to the earlier summary)

The earlier litigation summary reconstructed claim 1. The Kinik petition's "List of Challenged Claims" supplies the operative text:

• 1pre: "A CMP pad dresser, comprising:" — followed by a support substrate element (the retrieved copy elides the intervening line, but element 1b references "the support substrate").
• 1b: "a monolayer of a plurality of superabrasive particles coupled to the support substrate, wherein each superabrasive particle in the monolayer extends away from the support substrate to a protrusion distance,"
• 1c: "wherein a tip of each of the plurality of superabrasive particles aligns along a designated profile with a tip variation of from about 5 microns to about 100 microns, and"
• 1d: "wherein the difference in protrusion distance between the highest protruding tip and the second highest protruding tip of the monolayer of superabrasive particles is less than or equal to about 50 microns, and"
• 1e: "the difference in protrusion distance between the highest 1% of the protruding tips of the monolayer of superabrasive particles are within about 80 microns or less."

This confirms the earlier reconstruction and adds that the "highest 1% ≤80 µm" limitation (previously attributed to a separate independent aspect) is in fact part of independent claim 1, which is why the 146 Publication / 862 FH Art anticipation grounds are directed at claim 1 as a whole.

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5. Bottom line

• Face-of-patent citations are numerous but essentially pre-modern abrasive-tool antecedents; they are not the operative §102 art.
• The operative §102 art is: (i) US 2012/0302146 A1 (146 Publication / Sung '146), asserted to anticipate claims 1–5, 13, 20; (ii) the file history of US 9,138,862, asserted to anticipate claims 1–3, 6–11, 13–20; and (iii) Tsai et al. (2012), asserted (and disputed) to anticipate claims 1–5, 13, 15, 19–21.
• The principal §103 references are Taiwan 113 (TW201341113), US 2007/0155298, the CMP Reference (IDD paper), and the Tsai + Sung '026 combination.

6. Open items / uncertainty

• High confidence: the identity and dates of the PTAB-asserted references (146 Publication, 298 Publication, 895 Publication, Taiwan 113, 862 FH Art, CMP Reference; Samsung's Tsai, Sung '026, Sung '869, US 5,036,015, Pysher, Ishizuka) and the Kinik Grounds 1/5 §102 claim mappings — all taken directly from the petitions' exhibit lists and grounds tables.
• Moderate confidence: exact publication dates for US 2007/0155298 (stated ~Jul. 5, 2007) and US 2008/0292869 (~Nov. 2008); verify at USPTO PatentCenter/Google Patents.
• Could not verify: (a) the full verbatim "References Cited" list on the '802 face (I saw only fragments — the retrieved column is truncated); (b) the Ex. 1017 identity (Taiwan publication number truncated in the retrievable copy); (c) the exact nature of "862 FH Art" — the petition labels it a file history, used as an anticipation reference, which is unusual and worth confirming against the petition body. I have not auto-corrected any number; where a value was unreadable I have said so rather than guess.
• Note the earlier sections' dangling item stands: Fed. Cir. Nos. 26‑1530 and 26‑1532 remain unconfirmed as to parties/subject matter, and the final written decision in IPR2024‑00535 is reported as appealed, so the §102/§103 groundwork above reflects the petition record, not a final validity adjudication.

I'll research the actual prior-art references cited against this patent (both on the patent's face and in the IPR petitions), since the "Prior Art" section drives the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the Final Written Decision details and the patent's own front-page references to complete the prior-art picture.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,724,802 B2

"CMP pad dressers having leveled tips and associated methods"
Inventor: Chien-Min Sung · Appl. No. 14/506,476 · Filed 2014-10-03 · Issued 2017-08-08 · 21 claims

Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 and the Graham v. John Deere framework, as elaborated by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007). Current date for purposes of this memo: April 26, 2026.

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0. Scope and method

The prior sections of this dossier covered bibliographic data, the abstract, and the litigation/PTAB posture. They flagged one material gap — the verbatim issued claim set, which had only been reconstructed from PTAB claim charts. I can now partially close that gap: the IPR2024-00535 record confirms the patent has 21 claims and that claim 1 is an apparatus claim ("A CMP pad dresser…") while claim 11 is a method claim ("method of making a CMP pad dresser") — consistent with the earlier reconstruction. I still cannot quote every dependent claim verbatim here, so the mapping below is anchored to the limitations the parties actually litigated, which is the correct set for a § 103 analysis anyway.

The instruction is to use the "Prior Art" section of this page as the source. Note what that section actually contains: a prior-art date of 2005-05-16 (the provisional 60/681,798 priority anchor), keywords (superabrasive particles, microns, dresser, cmp pad, superabrasive), and the usual Citations / Cited By lists (including the long series of early-20th-century U.S. patents — Schacht, Buckner, Melton, Benner, Kuzmick, etc. — plus foreign documents CN 1351922 and CN 1494984). The operationally decisive § 103 art, however, is the art the patentee's own family and the Board treated as prior art: Tsai, Sung '026, and Sung '146, joined in the IPR2024-00535 grounds. I analyze both.

Caveat on the "Cited By" material: the early U.S. patents and the two CN documents on the face of the '802 patent are in the abrasives/dressing field generally. None of them, standing alone, discloses the leveling-tolerance metrics that are the inventive core; they are best characterized as background art establishing that CMP pad dressers, diamond grit bonding, and pad conditioning were all well known. I would not rest a § 103 ground on them alone.

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1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

The Board and Dr. Shanfield treated the POSITA as a person with at least a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, materials science, or a related discipline, plus a few years of experience designing/dressing CMP pad conditioners (see Shanfield Decl., Ex. 1002, ¶¶ 20–23, available via the docket at docketalarm.com case IPR2024-00535). Under the "field of the invention" prong, that person's knowledge spans polyurethane CMP pad conditioning, diamond/polycrystalline-diamond (PCD) dressers, epoxy "reverse-casting" manufacture, and asperity metrology (surface-roughness, pad-topography). Critically, this POSITA would have known that leveling diamond tips improves dressing uniformity — that fact was common ground in the literature well before 2012.

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2. The prior art of record

2a. On the face of the '802 patent (the page's "Prior Art" section)

• Prior-art keywords: superabrasive particles, microns, dresser, cmp pad, superabrasive.
• Prior-art date: 2005-05-16.
• Patent citations: ~200 early U.S. patents (Schacht, Buckner, Wooddell, Melton, Benner, Kirchner, Kuzmick, etc.) plus CN 1351922 (2002) and CN 1494984 (2004).
• This art's teaching: general abrasive/dressing structures and CMP dressing tools; establishes the field but does not teach the claimed leveling tolerances.

2b. The operative § 103 art (IPR2024-00535 and the prosecution record)

The CN 1351922 / CN 1494984 documents and the early U.S. patents are the "face-of-the-patent" art; the table above is the art that actually drives invalidity.

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3. Claim architecture analyzed

• Claim 1 (independent, apparatus): rigid support substrate + monolayer of superabrasive particles, each extending to a protrusion distance, with the highest protruding tips aligned along a designated profile with a tip variation of ~5–100 µm, and a protrusion-difference limitation between the highest and next-highest tips.
• Dependents narrow the ranges (10–50 µm; 20–40 µm; <20 µm), the protrusion difference (≤50/20/10 µm), the cutting depth (<20; 1–20; 10–20 µm), and the counts of working superabrasive particles (≥100; ≥1000; 1000–6000; 2000–5000; ≥1000 within ~30 µm).
• Claim 11 (independent, method of making): reverse-casting/leveling method for producing the leveled-tip dresser.
• Method-of-dressing subject matter (cutting asperities ~10–50 µm) is also claimed/disclosed.

The single distinguishing concept across the independent claims is numeric leveling tolerance ("designated profile" alignment) plus the downstream metrics (cutting depth, working-particle count) that follow from it.

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4. Ground-by-ground obviousness analysis

Ground A — Tsai anticipates or renders obvious claims 1–5, 13, and the sub-range/count dependents

Tsai discloses an ODD CMP pad dresser with a substrate + monolayer of diamond particles in an organic (epoxy) matrix, made by reverse casting, with leveled cutting tips such that all diamonds act as "regular diamond cutters" sharing "an equal dressing load." Tsai reports diamond spacing (500 µm) that a POSITA can convert (Shanfield ¶¶ 156–157, 188) into on the order of 24,768 cutters on a 100 mm disk — which alone places the "at least 100 / at least 1000 working superabrasive particles" limitations within the prior art, and supports "1000–6000" and "2000–5000" as obvious sub-ranges. Tsai's ~15 µm leveling places the claimed "5–100 µm designated-profile tip variation" squarely within the disclosure, and overlapping/disclosed ranges are anticipatory or at minimum obvious when no criticality is shown (In re Petering; Titanium Metals v. Banner).

Why obvious even if not anticipatory: Tsai's tips are described as leveled but the reference does not use the patentee's exact "designated profile" vocabulary. A POSITA reading Tsai's leveled-ODD teaching would immediately arrive at the claimed dresser, because Tsai's own stated benefit — more cutters sharing the dressing load — is the claimed invention's stated benefit (see '802 spec.: "A more effective normalization of work load distribution across the surface of the CMP pad dresser can lead to a more uniformly deglazed pad and more uniform pad asperities").

Ground B — Tsai in view of Sung '026 (the principal combination)

This is the combination on which the Board instituted, and it is the cleanest § 103 case.

Elements supplied by each reference:

Motivation to combine (KSR / MPEP 2143(A) — known elements combined to yield predictable results):

1. Same field, same problem, same solution. Both references are CMP pad conditioners aimed at uniform pad conditioning. Combining them is the archetypal "familiar elements according to known methods" case.
2. Express teaching that leveling drives performance. Tsai: "[t]he better-leveled ODD has more cutters that can dress the pad, and thus, they share an equal dressing load." Sung '026: level tips "uniformly distribute frictional forces across substantially each superabrasive particle," preventing pull-out. Both references articulate the very motivation a POSITA would need.
3. Both use reverse casting. Tsai ("[t]he ODD is manufactured by reverse casting polymers"; "reversing the process of attaching diamonds using an organic matrix (e.g. epoxy)") and Sung '026 ([0083]) disclose the same manufacturing route — so the combination requires no re-engineering, just applying Sung '026's tip-tolerance teachings to Tsai's ODD.
4. The claimed numeric tolerances are ranges optimized in a known way. Selecting 10–50 µm, 20–40 µm, or <20 µm from Sung '026's disclosed 1–150 µm spread is routine optimization of a recognized design parameter with a predictable result — obvious under In re Aller and KSR ("a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions"; "if a technique has been used to improve one device … a person of ordinary skill would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way"). The POSITA would try different tip variations to reduce manufacturing cost and simplify processing (Shanfield ¶ 217).
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Both reference the same polymer CMP pads; Sung '026 teaches that the protrusion distance "essentially" equals the cutting depth ([0076]). A POSITA modifying Tsai's protrusion to hit Sung '026's 1–20 µm cutting depths would expect success — nothing in the references suggests otherwise.

Ground C — Sung '146 (and Sung '026) against claims 1–7 and 13–21

For the claims not reached by Ground A/B, the petition advanced Sung '146 as a § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 reference (the "designated profile," the counts, and the cutting-depth ranges appear expressly in the Sung family disclosures). The Board adopted Sung '146 as anticipatory prior art, which is the subject of the patentee's priority challenge (see § 7). At minimum, if Sung '146 is prior art, the family's own earlier disclosures render the contested ranges obvious — a patent cannot be non-obvious over its own earlier specification unless criticality or unexpected results are shown (In re Nomiya; In re Wertheim).

Ground D — Dual-monolayer / anti-warpage dependents

To the extent any claim recites the dual-monolayer anti-warpage structure from the specification (FIGS. 2–4), Dinh-Ngoc (US 2010/0248595 A1) discloses a CMP pad conditioner with abrasive-grain layers on both major surfaces of a substrate. Combining Dinh-Ngoc's balanced dual-layer architecture with the Tsai/Sung '026 leveling teachings is obvious: the patent itself concedes the rationale — equalizing warping forces on both sides "can effectively cancel forces on opposing sides" — which is precisely the design incentive a POSITA would have had for using a symmetric two-sided conditioner.

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5. Claim-by-claim mapping (consolidated)

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6. Consolidated motivation-to-combine statement

For each ground, the record supports a rationale selected from MPEP 2143(A): (i) combining prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (ii) simple substitution of a known element (a tighter tip-leveling tolerance) for another known element; (iii) use of a known technique (reverse casting to a fixed spacer height) to improve a similar device in the same way; and (iv) "obvious to try" optimization of a numeric parameter (KSR, 550 U.S. at 421; In re Applied Materials). The reasonable expectation of success is supplied by the references' own statements that leveled tips spread the dressing load and that protrusion distance sets cutting depth.

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7. Objective indicia and the patentee's rebuttal

Objective indicia (secondary considerations): no clear nexus evidence appears in the record. The patentee has not pointed to unexpected results beyond the disclosed ranges (the ranges are broad and continuous), nor to blocking patents, nor to copying. Long-felt need / commercial success can be argued but would require proof that the success is attributable to the claimed leveling tolerance rather than to the general CMP market.

Patentee's counter-arguments (from the POPR and the Director-review petition):

1. Sung '026 is not prior art because it is the grandparent of the '802 patent (i.e., the '802 chain runs through it, so it enjoys the same priority and cannot be § 102(b) art). The Board rejected this priority argument, treating Sung '026/'146 as prior art under its priority ruling.
2. Tsai does not disclose a "designated profile" — the patentee argued (via Dr. Tsai's unrebutted testimony) that the Tsai paper describes measured/resulting tip heights, not a pre-selected target contour. The Board purportedly resolved "designated profile" two ways (a flat-profile construct and an average-height construct), which the patentee calls internally inconsistent and unsupported by substantial evidence.
3. Priority forfeiture — the Board's ruling is said to improperly strip the '802 patent of earlier filing dates.

These are procedural/priority challenges, not technical non-obviousness arguments. Even if the "designated profile" construction is narrowed, the objective leveling that Tsai and Sung '026 both teach still renders the numeric-tolerance claims obvious, because "designated profile" adds no structure beyond "the contour along which the tips are aligned."

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8. What the tribunal actually found (corroboration)

Per the reported Final Written Decision in IPR2024-00535 (Sept. 17, 2025), the Board held claims 1–9 and 12–21 unpatentable, i.e., the overwhelming majority of the claim set fell — on the Tsai + Sung '026 and Sung '146 grounds analyzed above. The case is "Final Written Decision – Appealed," and the patent owner filed a Director-review petition attacking the FWD. (Sources: Ex Parte case page; Arctic Invent summary.)

One flag on my earlier sections: the prior summary reconstructed claim 1 with only "moderate confidence" and could not verify claim 11. The IPR record now corroborates that claim 1 is apparatus and claim 11 is a method claim, so that reconstruction stands. I still cannot state which claims (if any) survived the FWD — the reported outcome ("1–9 and 12–21 unpatentable") implies claims 10–11 were not held unpatentable, but I have not verified whether that reflects a merits win, a non-institution, or a reporting artifact. Treat the 10–11 status as an open item.

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9. Bottom line

Under § 103, the '802 patent's claims are, in my assessment, obvious over the prior art of the page's Prior Art section as amplified by the references the parties actually litigated:

• Tsai alone discloses the leveled-tip organic diamond CMP pad dresser that is the heart of claim 1, including the working-particle counts, and thus anticipates or renders obvious claims 1–5, 13, and the count/leveling dependents.
• Tsai + Sung '026 supplies every remaining numeric limitation (designated-profile tip variation 5–100 µm; tip differences ≤50/20/10 µm; cutting depth 1–20 µm; reverse-casting method) with an express, strong motivation to combine — both references state that leveling spreads the dressing load — and a reasonable expectation of success.
• Sung '146 covers claims 1–7 and 13–21 to the extent they are not already met.
• Dinh-Ngoc covers any dual-monolayer anti-warpage dependents.

The Board's FWD (claims 1–9, 12–21 unpatentable; on appeal) is consistent with that conclusion. The remaining live issues are priority/§ 102(b)(2) status of the Sung-family references and the "designated profile" construction — legal and evidentiary issues, not technical ones — and are the subject of the pending Director review and the 2026 Federal Circuit appeals (26-1530 and 26-1532), the subject matter of which I still cannot confirm from the sources retrieved.

Uncertainties I am not papering over: (a) the verbatim text of every dependent claim; (b) whether claims 10–11 survived the FWD and why; (c) the identity/outcome of Fed. Cir. 26-1530 and 26-1532; (d) the precise scope of the reported Samsung settlement. I have stated these as open rather than asserting them.