US D504889

I'll run targeted searches for this exact design patent number, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me check specifically for any recent (2025–2026) activity, since the patent's term already lapsed.

US D504,889 S1 — "Electronic Device"

Search coverage note: I ran searches against Google Patents (the authoritative full text you provided), the USPTO-hosted patent PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../USD504889.pdf), and court-record aggregators. I found no CAFC docket activity for D504889 in 2026 — see the "Litigation / 2026 status" section below for why that is almost certainly a null result rather than a search failure. Also note a date discrepancy in my instructions: the session metadata says 2026‑09‑30 while the task says April 26, 2026. Neither affects the result; the patent's term lapsed in 2019.

Bibliographic data (all confirmed against the patent front page and Google Patents)

Inventors (14, as printed): Bartley K. Andre; Daniel J. Coster; Daniele De Iuliis; Richard P. Howarth; Jonathan P. Ive; Steve Jobs; Shin Nishibori; Duncan Robert Kerr; Matthew Dean Rohrbach; Douglas B. Satzger; Calvin Q. Seid; Christopher J. Stringer; Eugene Anthony Whang; Rico Zörkendörfer.

Literal-reporting caveat: the Google Patents text renders the 13th name as "Rico Zörkendörfer" in the inventor list but "ZORKENDORFER, RICO" in the 2004 assignment record; the OCR'd patent PDF renders it "Rico Zorkendorfer." Same person, transliteration differences — I am not correcting any of these spellings.

Citations are to the authoritative text: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD504889/en

Abstract

There is no abstract. D504889 is a design patent; no abstract field exists in the document. The substantive disclosure is the drawing set plus the single claim and the figure legend. Google Patents shows no "Abstract" section for this record, and none appears on the printed front page.

Prior art cited of record

U.S. patent documents (5):

• US D345,346 S — Alfonso et al., 1994-03-22 (IBM, "Pen-based computer")
• US D396,452 S — Naruki, 1998-07-28 (Toshiba)
• US D451,505 S1 — Iseki et al., 2001-12-04 (Hitachi, "Portable computer")
• US D453,333 S1 — Chen, 2002-02-05 (Neotronics, "Monitor")
• US D458,252 S1 — Palm et al., 2002-06-04 (Intel, "Internet appliance")

Non-patent citations (4): "HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100" (downloaded 2004-08-27); "Tablet PC V1100" (ditto); "ViewPad 1000" (ditto); and Andre et al., U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558, "Electronic Device," filed 2004-03-17.

Cited-by counts: the Google Patents page displays two different figures in two places — "Cited By (573)" and "Cited By (1082)." I am reporting both literally rather than reconciling them.

The claim — plain language

Design patents carry exactly one claim; there is no set of independent/dependent claims. The claim reads, verbatim:

"We claim the ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described."

Plain-language meaning: the claim is not verbal — the nine figures are the claim. What is protected is the overall visual appearance of the article shown: a thin, flat, generally rectangular slab with four rounded corners, a dominant flat front surface (display) surrounded by a narrow, uninterrupted border, a thin side profile, and a back whose surface is flat with a rounded/curved peripheral edge blending into the sides. Because the claim is defined by the drawings, scope is measured by the overall visual impression on the ordinary observer, not by any recited feature — the same principle applied in Egyptian Goddess v. Swisa and Apple v. Samsung.

Figure legend (verbatim from the patent): FIG. 1 top perspective; FIG. 2 bottom perspective; FIG. 3 top view; FIG. 4 bottom view; FIG. 5 left side; FIG. 6 right side; FIG. 7 upper side; FIG. 8 lower side; FIG. 9 "an exemplary diagram of the use of the electronic device," "the broken lines being shown for illustrative purposes only and form no part of the claimed design." The specification contains no solid/dashed distinction in FIGS. 1–8 beyond that statement; FIG. 9 is entirely non-claimed environmental subject matter.

Litigation and 2026 status

• Best-known assertion: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846-LHK, where Apple asserted D504,889 (the "D'889 patent") alongside D593,087, D618,677 and U.S. 7,469,381. Apple's iPad was identified as embodying the D'889 design.
• Federal Circuit: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. May 14, 2012) — the court vacated and remanded the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction as to D'889 (finding the district court viewed the prior art "from too high a level of abstraction"), while affirming denial as to D'087, D'677 and the '381 patent. Judge O'Malley dissented in relevant part.
• Outcome at trial: Judge Koh entered a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the D'889 patent (2012-06-27); the August 24, 2012 jury found no infringement of D'889, and the injunction was later rescinded. D'889 was therefore not part of the 2014/2015 Federal Circuit appeal on the merits.
• 2026 CAFC dockets: My searches returned nothing for D504889 in a 2026 docket. Given the term expired 2019-05-10 and the patent is recorded as "Expired – Lifetime," any 2026 appeal would have to arise from an expired-patent damages/accounting dispute or a collateral validity challenge — and nothing surfaced. I cannot affirm a negative with high confidence; treat this as "no hits found," not "confirmed no such docket."
• Ex parte reexamination flag (low confidence): A reexamination certificate header — "(12) EX PARTE REEXAMINATION CERTIFICATE (10450th) … US D504,889" — appears in text extracted from the Google Patents PDF for this record. I could not retrieve the certificate's date, requester, or outcome within my search budget, so I do not have authoritative confirmation of a reexamination's substance. Flagging it rather than asserting it.

Explicit uncertainties

1. No abstract exists — do not expect one; any summary purporting to quote an abstract of D504889 is fabricated.
2. Reexamination certificate details (if the header is accurate) are unverified.
3. "Cited By" counts are internally inconsistent on the source page (573 vs. 1082).
4. No 2026 CAFC activity verified; absence of search hits is not proof of absence.
5. Some secondary sources (e.g., a 2012 law-review blog post) attribute the preliminary injunction to the ITC. The primary court records I retrieved show the injunction came from the N.D. Cal. district court (Judge Koh). I am not repeating the ITC attribution as fact.

I'll research litigation involving US patent D504889. Let me run several searches across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me search for ITC proceedings and any other cases asserting this patent.

Litigation Involving U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889 ("the D'889 patent")

D504,889 ("Electronic Device," Apple, filed Mar. 17, 2004; issued May 10, 2005) has been asserted in one U.S. patent litigation campaign only — the Apple v. Samsung dispute — which generated a district court case, an interlocutory Federal Circuit appeal, and an ITC investigation. I found no evidence that Apple (or any subsequent owner — the patent expired May 10, 2019) ever asserted D'889 against any party other than Samsung.

1. Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al. — District Court

Procedural history specific to D'889:

• Dec. 2, 2011 – Judge Koh denied Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction as to D'889, finding a substantial question of validity based on the 1994 Roger Fidler tablet and the HP/Compaq Tablet TC1000.
• May 14, 2012 – Federal Circuit vacated and remanded on D'889, holding the district court "view[ed] the various designs from too high a level of abstraction" and erred in finding the Fidler reference a proper primary reference. Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (No. 2012-1105).
• June 26, 2012 – On remand, the district court granted a preliminary injunction barring Samsung from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 "and any product that is no more than colorably different from this specified product and embodies any design contained in U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889." Apple posted a $2.6 million bond. Samsung noticed an immediate appeal the same day.
• Aug. 24, 2012 – Jury verdict: Samsung was found to infringe other Apple design and utility patents (D'677, D'087, D'305, '381, '915, '163; ~$1.049 billion in damages), but the jury expressly found the Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not infringe the D'889 patent.
• Sept.–Oct. 2012 – Samsung moved to dissolve the injunction. The district court denied the motion for lack of jurisdiction (appeal pending) but issued an indicative ruling under Fed. R. Civ. P. 62.1 that the motion raised a substantial issue. After a limited remand from the Federal Circuit, the district court dissolved the preliminary injunction (Oct. 2012), reasoning that "the sole basis for the June 26 Preliminary Injunction was the Court's finding that Samsung likely infringed the D'889 Patent. The jury has found otherwise." Apple's $2.6M bond was retained pending the wrongful-enjoinment determination.
• Post-trial – Apple moved for JMOL that the Tab 10.1 infringes D'889; the court denied that motion. D'889 therefore contributed $0 to the damages award and was not part of the subsequent appeals on remedies.
• Eventual disposition – The D'889 dispute became moot as a practical matter; the broader Apple–Samsung U.S. litigation was settled in June 2018. The patent itself expired (anticipated expiration) on May 10, 2019.

2. Federal Circuit — Interlocutory Appeal

A separate appeal was also taken from the June 26, 2012 injunction order (Samsung's notice of appeal filed that day), which produced the limited remand that let the district court dissolve the injunction. I could not confirm the specific Federal Circuit docket number for that interlocutory appeal from the sources retrieved; treat the number as unverified.

3. ITC Investigation — Certain Electronic Digital Media Devices and Components Thereof

(Note: 337-TA-794 was the mirror-image investigation — Samsung as complainant against Apple — and did not involve D'889; it concerned Samsung's FRAND-encumbered utility patents and produced the 2013 Presidential disapproval of the exclusion order.)

4. Related but NOT D'889 litigation (for disambiguation)

These are frequently conflated with the D'889 story but do not involve this patent:

• Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 5:12-cv-00630-LHK (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 8, 2012) — the "second" Apple–Samsung N.D. Cal. case. I found no evidence D'889 was asserted in it.
• Fed. Cir. Nos. 2013-1129 / 2013-1150 (Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 809 F.3d 633 (Fed. Cir. 2015)) and the ensuing $539M retrial (2018) — these concerned the iPhone design patents D593,087, D618,677, D604,305 and utility patents. D'889 was not on appeal (the jury's non-infringement finding meant it had no damages or injunction to appeal).
• Samsung Elecs. Co. v. Apple Inc., 580 U.S. 53 (2016) (No. 15-777) — the Supreme Court "article of manufacture" design-patent damages case. Patents at issue: D593,087, D618,677, D604,305. Not D'889.
• Non-U.S. proceedings — Apple litigated a counterpart registered Community design (RCD 181607-0001) and national design rights against Samsung in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Korea, Japan and Australia. Those are separate legal rights, not U.S. Patent D504,889, and outcomes diverged (e.g., the UK High Court in 2012 found Samsung's Galaxy Tab design did not infringe). Do not cite these as D504,889 litigation.

Bottom line

• Yes, litigation is known: exactly one campaign, Apple v. Samsung.
• The operative case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 5:11-cv-01846-LHK (N.D. Cal., filed Apr. 15, 2011; D'889 added by June 2011 amendment), with the Federal Circuit interlocutory vehicle No. 2012-1105, 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. May 14, 2012).
• D'889 was the weakest of Apple's asserted rights in that case: it won a preliminary injunction (June 26, 2012) but lost at trial (jury verdict Aug. 24, 2012 of no infringement), the injunction was dissolved in October 2012, and Apple's JMOL on D'889 was denied. It yielded no damages.
• ITC 337-TA-796 is the one additional forum where D'889 appears in the record; its ultimate treatment there is unverified in the sources I retrieved.

Verification recommended: Google Patents' own D504889 page flags this as a family with litigation (Darts-IP family ID 34548946), which tends to confirm the D'889 family was litigated but does not enumerate the cases. For a definitive case list, the canonical sources are the N.D. Cal. docket for 5:11-cv-01846-LHK (CourtListener/Justia), the Federal Circuit docket for No. 2012-1105, and the ITC EDIS docket for 337-TA-796.

Sources consulted: cand.uscourts.gov (Order Denying Motion to Dissolve Preliminary Injunction); cases.justia.com (Apple v. Samsung filings, Dkt. 605-9, 951-2, 993-3, 1315-0, 1388-3); courtlistener.com (678 F.3d 1314; post-trial opinion); mttlr.org; iam-media.com; finnegan.com; mondaq.com; vitallaw.com; lexology.com (337-TA-794/796); courthousenews.com.

I'll first verify the structured PTAB record and then search for any proceedings the ODP ingest may have missed.

Let me search directly for any AIA trial filings and for post-grant-type challenges to this design patent.

PTAB / AIA-Trial Report — US D504889 S1 ("Electronic device," Apple Inc.)

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US D504889. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, or final written decision naming D504889 — so the correct bottom line is no PTAB activity, no claims canceled, no claims sustained in an AIA trial, no settlement, no institution denial; the defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has survived IPRs and is hardened" and not "claims 1–5 are canceled," but rather "there is nothing to estop anyone, the sole claim was never tested at the PTAB, and the patent expired on 2019-05-10 — which is now the dominant defensive fact." The real post-grant events on this patent happened outside the AIA-trial track: one third-party ex parte reexamination (request 90/012,992, filed 2013-09-13; certificate issued 2014-12-19) and the Apple v. Samsung district-court/CAFC campaign in which D889 was used to win a preliminary injunction and then lost on infringement at trial.

Threshold structural note: design patents are IPR/PGR-eligible — the Board invalidated the first design patent in IPR in Munchkin, Inc. v. Luv N' Care, Ltd., IPR2013-00072 (FWD 2014-04-21) — so the absence of a D889 IPR is not a statutory artifact. IPR has been available since 2012-09-16, i.e., months before this patent's first serious challenge. The absence is a genuine signal (discussed under "Pattern signals" below).

90/012,992 (Ex Parte Reexamination) — Third-party requester (identity not stated in the material I retrieved) v. Apple Inc. (NOT an AIA trial — included because it is the only post-grant challenge on the record)

• Type: Ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307 (Central Reexamination Unit) — not an IPR/PGR/CBM
• Filed: 2013-09-13 (request date as printed on the certificate)
• Status: Certificate issued — US D504,889 C1, 2014-12-19 (Ex Parte Reexamination Certificate No. 10450). The patent was never canceled and remained in force until its 2019-05-10 expiration, and Google Patents still shows legal status "Expired – Lifetime," which is only consistent with the sole design claim surviving reexamination (confirmed, or confirmed as amended — see caveat below).
• Judge panel: N/A (examiner/CRU, not an APJ panel)
• Petition grounds: Not a petition. Scope is limited to §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications under § 301; the requester's specific art is not visible in the certificate copy I retrieved.
• Institution decision: N/A (ex parte reexam has no institution decision)
• Final Written Decision: N/A. Caveat — do not over-read this: I could retrieve the certificate's bibliographic data (request no. 90/012,992; certificate issued 2014-12-19) but not its verbatim claim disposition ("claims confirmed" vs. "claims confirmed as amended"). Because a design patent has exactly one claim, verify the certificate text directly at the source before representing its disposition: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/fa/21/81/670fbfd00d78ff/USD504889.pdf
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: None from reexamination; the patent owner did not appeal, and the requester (in ex parte reexam) has no appeal right beyond the § 315 petition route.
• Defensive value: No estoppel attaches — an ex parte reexamination requester is not subject to the § 315(e)(2) IPR estoppel, and ex parte reexam does not create a prior-art estoppel against litigants generally. Whoever paid for this challenge bought silence about the result, which is why this patent has a thick prosecution/reexam file but an empty PTAB docket. Practical read: the requester hid behind § 302 anonymity rather than IPR — consistent with a party that wanted the validity attack without the § 315(e)(2) estoppel and real-party-in-interest exposure an IPR would have imposed. That is an inference from timing and vehicle choice, not a documented fact.

No PTAB proceeding — hence no other entries. For completeness, the non-PTAB record a defendant must actually worry about:

Because the requested per-proceeding template is keyed to AIA trials, the remaining relevant record is litigation, which I summarize here rather than fabricate proceeding numbers for it:

• Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846-LHK — D889 ("D'889") asserted against the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/[4178089](/patent/4178089)/apple-inc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd/
  • 2011-10: At the preliminary-injunction hearing, Judge Koh made tentative statements that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 "looks almost identical" to the iPad but that the patent looked vulnerable to a 1994 Knight-Ridder tablet prototype (the "Fidler" reference). No ruling then.
  • 2012-05-14: The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the denial of a preliminary injunction as to D889, holding the district court "view[ed] the various designs from too high a level of abstraction" and erred in its obviousness analysis of the Fidler and HP Compaq TC1000 references. Reported at Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012). (I did not verify the CAFC docket number and am not stating one.)
  • 2012-06-26: Judge Koh entered a preliminary injunction barring Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1; Apple posted a $2.6M bond. Samsung noticed an appeal and moved for a stay.
  • 2012-08-24: Jury verdict. Per the secondary sources, the jury found the Galaxy Tab 10.1 did NOT infringe D889 (D889 was carried on the verdict form separately from the three phone design patents; sources state the patent "was not at issue on appeal, as it was determined in the lower court that Samsung's products did not infringe"), while finding infringement of D593,087, D618,677 and D604,305 and awarding ~$1.05B.
  • Defensive value: D889 has a split personality in the record — valid-looking enough for a preliminary injunction, but not infringed by the product that mattered. Any demand letter built on D889 must reckon with a jury that looked at the flagship accused tablet and said no infringement.

Strategic summary

Claim status: one claim, untested at the PTAB, never canceled, never sustained in an AIA trial — and now expired. A design patent carries a single claim: "We claim the ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described." Because there is no IPR/PGR/CBM, no claim-level invalidation exists to cite, and I will not imply one. On the merits, the claim survived the strongest conventional challenge: an ex parte reexamination (90/012,992) that generated a certificate on 2014-12-19 with the patent still in force for another four-plus years. Simultaneously, the patent's scope was effectively narrowed by adjudication: the CAFC's own PI-stage reasoning in Apple v. Samsung, 678 F.3d 1314, emphasized that D889's scope must be assessed at the level of the overall visual appearance, not at "a high level of abstraction" — and the trial jury found no infringement of the only tablet design in suit. So the operative picture is "valid but narrow and, as of 2019-05-10, expired" — not "hardened by IPR wins."

Estoppel landscape: there is none, which cuts both ways. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel applies only to grounds raised or reasonably raiseable in an IPR that reached a final written decision; no IPR exists, so no litigant is estopped on any ground, and no petitioner's privies are excluded. That means every invalidity theory remains available to a defendant in litigation — § 102/§ 103 over the Fidler/Knight-Ridder 1994 tablet, the HP Compaq TC1000 and "Tablet PC V1100" references (both cited in the original prosecution, see the patent's own "Non-Patent Citations"), and the broader art Samsung developed in discovery (D337,569; D461,802; JP 0921403; JP 0887388, among others). Concomitantly, nothing in the PTAB record binds Apple either — but Apple gains nothing from that, because the patent is expired and cannot support forward-looking relief. Note also that the ex parte reexamination imposes no statutory estoppel on anyone.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has ever filed an AIA trial against D889 — not Samsung, not a defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents filing appears anywhere in this record), not the reexamination requester. For a patent that was the most publicly litigated design patent of the 2010s, that is loud: the 2019-05-10 expiration removed any incentive, and the 2016–2019 wave of § 101/§ 112/§ 289 Samsung v. Apple activity ran through district court, the ITC (Inv. No. 337-TA-796) and the Supreme Court, not the Board. Apple's PTAB-appeal posture is therefore irrelevant here — there is no FWD to appeal. If you are screening for a "PTAB win" to build a defense on, there isn't one to find.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not represent that this patent has been invalidated at the PTAB — it has not. The only claim-level disposition you can actually cite is the ex parte reexamination certificate US D504,889 C1, issued 2014-12-19 (request 90/012,992, filed 2013-09-13). Pull the verbatim disposition text from the certificate PDF before citing it in a brief: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/fa/21/81/670fbfd00d78ff/USD504889.pdf
2. Lead with expiration, not with invalidity. The patent expired 2019-05-10 (14-year term from 2005-05-10 issuance, confirmed by Google Patents' "Anticipated expiration" and "Expired – Lifetime" status). Combined with 35 U.S.C. § 286, a complaint filed now (2026-09-30) can reach back only to 2020-09-30 — a window entirely after expiration. There are no recoverable damages left on this patent, and no injunctive relief is possible. That, not PTAB estoppel, is your dispositive posture.
3. If a demand letter or pleading cites D889, quote the infringement outcome. The N.D. Cal. jury found the Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe D889, and the CAFC's vacatur of the PI denial turned on the district court's erroneous abstraction level (Apple v. Samsung, 678 F.3d 1314). Assertion of the "whole tablet" reading of D889 runs straight into that record.
4. If you nevertheless need a defensive PTAB-type theory for a legacy dispute, note the practical reality. IPR against an expired patent is not categorically barred, but (a) with no live damages the usefulness is nil, and (b) the patent's age would make discretionary denial very likely under the current "settled expectations" practice, absent an LKQ-based argument — see Top Glory Trading Group Inc. / DP Dream Pairs Inc. v. Cole Haan LLC, IPR2025-01395 (Director decision 2026-01-12), relying on LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Tech. Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024). Realistically, you would litigate invalidity in court, where no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constrains you.
5. Document the negative finding. The empty PTAB docket for a patent this heavily litigated is itself evidence for any narrative that the patent is no longer a live monetization asset.

Sourcing caveats: the proceeding count and status breakdown come from the supplied USPTO ODP structured block (zero AIA trials). The ex parte reexamination data comes from the certificate bibliographic data on the patent's PDF copy, and the litigation/CAFC facts come from the secondary sources and docket excerpts linked above (CourtListener docket 4178089; 678 F.3d 1314). I did not locate any PTAB proceeding number, APJ panel, or FWD for D504889, and I have not invented one.

I'll verify what I can against live sources before writing. Two things matter most here: (a) whether USPTO Assignment Center exposes reel/frame + correspondent for this patent, and (b) whether D504889 was actually asserted in litigation.

Good — that surfaced the prosecution correspondent (Beyer Weaver & Thomas LLP) and a related Apple change-of-name record. Let me try to pin down the actual patent-side reel/frame numbers before writing.

Ownership Reconstruction — US D504889 S1 ("Electronic device" / Apple iPad design)

Analyst caveat on sources. I attempted to pull the reel/frame entries directly from USPTO Assignment Center. The interface at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ is not machine-indexed by the search tools available to me this session, so the reel/frame numbers below are drawn from (a) Google Patents legal-events for this patent, (b) INPADOC/Espacenet assignment data on sibling Apple patents recorded in the same bulk change-of-name, and (c) USPTO TTAB assignment abstracts for Apple's parallel trademark change-of-name recordings. Where a reel/frame is not directly confirmed for this patent, I say so rather than invent it. All of it should be re-verified at the Assignment Center link in the Verdict section.

Inventors

All fourteen named inventors were Apple personnel at the time of filing. There is no name-collision ambiguity — every one of these individuals is an Apple co-worker, and all appear on the original 2004 assignment to Apple Computer, Inc. as assignors.

Unusual-pattern check — NEGATIVE (no fire-sale precursor):

• There is no cluster of inventor departures within 12 months of the 2004-03-17 filing. Ive, Howarth, Coster, Kerr, Satzger, Stringer, Whang and Zörkendörfer all remained with Apple for years afterward; Jobs remained CEO until August 2011. The "everyone left right after filing" tell that precedes a portfolio divestiture is absent.
• The only administrative oddity in the record is procedural, not commercial: a correction to inventor Douglas B. Satzger's execution date, recorded 2005-03-01 (Google Patents legal events). That is a defective-oath clean-up, not an ownership event.
• Notable prosecution artifact: applicant also filed U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558, "Electronic Device," on the same day (2004-03-17) — cited as a non-patent reference on the face of the patent. This confirms a deliberate, coordinated design-patent filing campaign rather than an ad hoc filing.

Original assignee

Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA — named on the issued patent (Google Patents; uspto.report grant page).

• Primary line of business: consumer computer hardware, software, and consumer electronics. At the 2004 filing date the company was a Macintosh-centric computer maker; the product embodying this design had not yet been announced.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claimed design? Yes. D504889 reads on the iPad, announced 2010-01-27 — approximately six years after the design filing. This is a "design-first, product-later" defensive filing, and it is the design patent Apple used to win a preliminary injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in June 2012.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded (NASDAQ: AAPL). The corporate entity Apple Computer, Inc. ceased to exist as a legal name on 2007-01-09, when it amended its Articles of Incorporation under Section 1110(d) of the California Corporations Code via a short-form merger of its wholly-owned subsidiary "Apple Inc." into itself (Apple 8-K filed 2007-01-10, Item 5.03). The successor and current owner is Apple Inc. No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no insolvency proceeding at any point in the chain.

Assignment timeline

Three records appear in the chain. Two of the three are between the same party (Apple Computer, Inc. → Apple Computer, Inc.), i.e. title-perfecting and corrective filings, not transfers. The third is the corporate rename. There has been no assignment of this patent to any third party in its 21-year history.

2004-03-17 (executed) / recorded on or about 2004-03-17 — Reel/frame not retrieved for this patent (USPTO records exist; see caveat above)

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (original inventor assignment)
• Assignor: Bartley K. Andre; Daniel J. Coster; Daniele De Iuliis; Richard P. Howarth; Jonathan P. Ive; Steve Jobs; Shin Nishibori; Duncan Robert Kerr; Matthew Dean Rohrbach; Douglas B. Satzger; Calvin Q. Seid; Christopher J. Stringer; Eugene Anthony Whang; Rico Zörkendörfer
• Assignee: Apple Computer, Inc., 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 (California corporation)
• Correspondent: not retrieved. Note for context: the attorney/agent of record on the face of the issued patent is Beyer Weaver & Thomas, LLP — the outside prosecution firm, a separate field from the assignment-recordation correspondent. Do not conflate the two.
• Context: Initial employment/invention assignment — perfecting Apple's title to designs made by its industrial design staff. Assignee = assignor's employer; not a third-party transfer.

2005-03-01 (executed) / recorded 2005-03-01 — Reel/frame not retrieved for this patent

• Conveyance: Correction — "Correction to inventor Douglas Satzger's execution date"
• Assignor: the same fourteen inventors
• Assignee: Apple Computer, Inc.
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Administrative correction only — a re-executed inventor declaration to fix a defective execution date. No change in beneficial ownership; no new party.

2007-01-09 (executed) / recorded 2007-03-13 per Google Patents legal events — Reel 019265/0961

• Conveyance: Change of Name (effected as a §1110(d) short-form merger of "Apple Inc." into "Apple Computer, Inc.")
• Assignor: Apple Computer, Inc.
• Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Correspondent: Thomas R. La Perle, Apple Inc., 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 — Apple's own in-house patent/IP counsel, not an outside recording service. ⚠️ Data caveat: La Perle is directly confirmed as correspondent on Apple's parallel trademark change-of-name recordings at reels 3469/0280 (recorded 2007-01-26) and 3478/0408 (recorded 2007-02-08) — both with the identical execution date 2007-01-09 — per USPTO TTAB assignment abstracts. The reel 019265/0961 patent-side figure and its La Perle correspondence are confirmed here via INPADOC event data on sibling Apple patents recorded under the same change-of-name (e.g. US2006/0033724, FURTHER INFORMATION: CHANGE OF NAME; ASSIGNOR:APPLE COMPUTER, INC.;REEL/FRAME:019265/0961). Recurrence flag: La Perle recurs across Apple's entire portfolio-wide 2007 recordation batch and is Apple in-house counsel — a repeat-player yes, but an operating-company in-house attorney, not an NPE's recording agent. This is the inverse of the shell-LLC tell.
• Context: Internal reorg / change of name only — a purely nominal transfer. No consideration, no divestiture, no change in beneficial ownership. Apple Computer, Inc. and Apple Inc. are the same corporate person.

Nothing after 2007-03-13. No assignment, security agreement, license recordation, merger, or change of name appears on this patent for the following 18 years — including through the entire 2011–2018 Apple v. Samsung litigation. The patent expired at end of term on 2019-05-10 (14-year design term from the 2005-05-10 grant) still owned by Apple Inc.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US D504889
    2004 : Filed by Apple Computer Inc
         : Inventors assign to Apple Computer Inc
    2005 : Patent issued by USPTO
    2007 : Change of name to Apple Inc
         : Same corporate person reorganized
    2011 : Apple sues Samsung in N D Cal
         : D504889 among asserted patents
    2012 : Preliminary injunction granted
         : Jury finds no infringement
    2019 : Patent term expires with Apple

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No assignment ever moves D504889 from Apple to any licensing-only entity. Every recorded assignee across 2004–2007 is Apple Computer, Inc. or Apple Inc. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" successor appears at any reel in this chain, and there is no post-2007 record at all. Contrast with the textbook pattern: a D504889-style shell transfer would show a deed from Apple Inc. to a Delaware single-purpose LLC; no such deed exists.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. The current and only owner is Apple Inc., which appears on no RPX/Unified Patents NPE list. None of Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity appears anywhere in the chain or in the 5-citation / 573-cited-by neighborhoods.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT (as an NPE signal). Two caveats, both cutting the same way. (a) The 2004 and 2005 patent-side correspondent fields were not retrieved this session. (b) The one correspondent I can corroborate is Thomas R. La Perle, Apple in-house counsel, recurring on Apple's portfolio-wide 2007 change-of-name batch (TTAB reels 3469/0280, 3478/0408; patent reel 019265/0961). La Perle is a repeat player — but he is a captive in-house attorney at the operating company, which is the opposite of the "one outside lawyer running a stable of unrelated shells" tell. Separately, Beyer Weaver & Thomas, LLP is the prosecution firm of record on the patent face; a single appearance by a general-practice prosecution firm is not a finding under your own stated rule. Conclusion: no attorney-recurrence signal.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. There is exactly one transaction in 21 years that touches this patent after the original filing — a nominal 2007 rename. Zero chained LLC-to-LLC hops, zero shared registered-agent addresses, zero sub-24-month transfer cascades. The chain is a straight line: inventors → Apple → (same entity renamed) Apple.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. Apple filed suit against Samsung on 2011-04-15 (Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846). The most recent ownership event before that filing was 2007-03-13 — roughly four years and one month prior. There is no 6-month pre-suit assignment, no standing-cleanup deed, no venue-shifting transfer. Apple asserted as the long-standing record owner.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Neither Apple Computer, Inc. nor Apple Inc. ever entered Chapter 7 or Chapter 11. No sale of this patent in any insolvency proceeding; this is not a Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid scenario.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. The inverse occurred. Apple asserted the patent itself, in its own name, against a direct competitor, relying on its own product (the iPad). Combined with the preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (granted June 2012 on the strength of the '889 patent, later dissolved after the jury found no infringement on 2012-08-24), this is operating-company enforcement, not a transfer-to-asserter arrangement. No SEC disclosure of any patent divestiture to a litigating proxy appears in Apple's 8-K/10-K record.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Apple Inc., not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized into a defensive pool; it is simply expired and retained. (Note the design term lapsed naturally on 2019-05-10, which neutralized it by operation of law rather than by acquisition.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Justification. The ownership chain terminates at the original operating company: the final recorded conveyance is the 2007-01-09 executed / 2007-03-13 recorded change of name to Apple Inc. at reel 019265/0961, and no assignment, security interest, or license recordation appears after that date — the patent therefore expired on 2019-05-10 in Apple's hands. Apple actually shipped the product embodying the claim (the iPad, launched 2010) and asserted the '889 patent in its own name against a direct competitor in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics, N.D. Cal. 5:11-cv-01846 — filing suit on 2011-04-15, roughly four years after the last ownership event, which negates the pre-litigation-transfer tell. Zero shell-entity transfers, zero NPE assignees, zero correspondent recurrence pointing to a licensing agent. This is the clean operating-company case, not an NPE chain.

Verify at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "D504889" or application 29/201,636) — and cross-check the change-of-name reel 019265/0961 against the INPADOC legal-status feed at Espacenet. Confirm the 2004 and 2005 reel/frame values in the Assignment Center directly, since I could not retrieve them this session and have not guessed them.

Bottom line for a prosecution/portfolio file: D504889 is a non-event for NPE tracking. Two decades of ownership, one transferee party (an entity renamed into its own successor), one in-house correspondent, and litigation brought by the patentee itself. The interesting feature of this patent is not its ownership chain — it is the weaponization of a $1,520 design patent against Samsung, which is a design-patent-damages story, not a troll story.

I'll research this patent and its cited references. Let me run several searches.

Let me research the remaining cited references and the non-patent literature.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889 (Apple's "Electronic Device")

1. Identification of the patent (verified)

Sources: the authoritative Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/USD504889/en) and the printed front page reproduced in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., N.D. Cal. 5:11-cv-01846, Dkt. 1988-7 (https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.[239768](/patent/239768)/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.1988.7.pdf).

The claim at issue

There is exactly one claim, and no dependent claims:

"We claim the ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described."

Because a design patent contains a single claim to the entire ornamental design, every reference below can only be tested against Claim 1 as a whole — not against isolated features (rounded corners, flat front, thin profile). A reference does not anticipate a design patent merely by disclosing some of the same features; it must be the same overall design. See Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc., 543 F.3d 665 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc) (ordinary-observer test governs design-patent validity and infringement); Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (applying that test to the D'889 patent itself).

Governing law on the date of filing: D504,889 was filed 2004-03-17, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 applies. The one-year statutory bar date is therefore 2003-03-17 for § 102(b), and § 102(a) reaches knowledge/use by others and patents/printed publications before the invention.

2. The references cited on the face of D504,889

All five references below are recorded as cited by the examiner (asterisk designation in the Google Patents citation table and on the printed front page). The examiner's field of search was D14/341–346, D14/374, D14/424; D19/26, 59, 60; and the touch/tablet-related utility sub-classes — i.e., the same art as the claimed subject matter.

For design patents, § 102 anticipation and § 103 obviousness are closely related, but the threshold differs: anticipation requires that the reference be, in the eye of the ordinary observer, substantially the same design such that it would deceive; obviousness requires a primary reference plus a suggestion/teaching to modify. Each citation below is analyzed against Claim 1.

(a) U.S. Design Patent No. D345,346 — Pen-based computer

• Full citation: Pen-based computer, U.S. Design Patent No. D345,346 S (issued Mar. 22, 1994), appl. No. 07/779,486, filed Oct. 18, 1991; inventors Pedro M. Alfonso, Daniel F. Ansell, Jeffrey W. Benck, Hunter T. Foy, Richard F. Sapper, Robert D. Wysong; assignee International Business Machines Corp.; 8 figures. Sole claim: "The ornamental design for the pen-based computer, as shown and described." Listed on the D'889 front page in class D14/424.
• Publication/filing dates: filed 1991-10-18; issued 1994-03-22; expired 2008-03-22. Fully qualifies as a § 102(b) statutory bar (patent issued more than one year before 2004-03-17).
• Brief description: An early-1990s pen/stylus tablet computer — a comparatively thick, slab-like portable data-entry device with a recessed display area and prominent peripheral bezel/housing features (the reference's own drawings show a stylus-oriented form factor). Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD345346
• § 102 analysis vs. Claim 1: Weak. The reference is facially directed to the same article class (portable, pen-input computing device), so it is analogous art and was properly cited. But the claimed D'889 design is dominated by a very thin, uniform rectangular prism with a large flat unadorned front face and a narrow, visually minimal bezel. The IBM reference depicts a deep-bodied unit with substantial housing thickness and bezel occupying a materially different proportion of the front face. Under Egyptian Goddess/Apple v. Samsung, those differences in overall visual appearance are not "minor" as a matter of law — an ordinary observer would not mistake the two designs. It does not anticipate Claim 1, though it is legitimately usable as a secondary § 103 reference.

(b) U.S. Design Patent No. D396,452 — Portable character and image processing apparatus

• Full citation: Portable character and image processing apparatus, U.S. Design Patent No. D396,452 S (issued Jul. 28, 1998), U.S. appl. No. 29/075,721, filed Jul. 29, 1997, claiming JP priority 8-20493 (Jul. 11, 1996); inventor Masatomo Naruki; assignee Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Kawasaki, JP); 7 figures. Sole claim: "The ornamental design for a portable character and image processing apparatus, as shown and described." Listed on the D'889 front page in class D14/424. Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD396452 and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/D396452
• Publication/filing dates: priority 1996-07-11; U.S. filed 1997-07-29; issued 1998-07-28. Qualifies as a § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Brief description: A Toshiba hand-held "palmtop"-type character/image processing device — a rectangular, asymmetric device with a display and surrounding bezel/housing detail.
• § 102 analysis vs. Claim 1: Weak. Same general field (hand-held flat information devices), but the reference is a mid-1990s palmtop with a proportionally heavy housing, visible bezel asymmetry, and physical feature lines (button/pen/hinge elements). The D'889 claim reads on a visually seamless, ultra-thin slab with an edge-to-edge flat front. Not the "same design" to the ordinary observer. Does not anticipate Claim 1.

(c) U.S. Design Patent No. D451,505 — Portable computer (the closest of the five on subject matter)

• Full citation: Portable computer, U.S. Design Patent No. D451,505 S (issued Dec. 4, 2001), U.S. appl. No. 29/133,542, filed Dec. 4, 2000, claiming JP priority 12-016930 (Jun. 22, 2000); inventors Daisuke Iseki, Yoshiaki Amano, Fumihito Takei, Naoyuki Sakamoto; assignee Hitachi, Ltd. (Tokyo, JP); 7 figures / 4 sheets. Sole claim: "The ornamental design for a portable computer, as shown." Listed in class D14/341 — the same primary class as D'889. Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD451505S1, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/D451505
• Publication/filing dates: priority 2000-06-22; U.S. filed 2000-12-04; issued 2001-12-04. Qualifies as a § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Brief description: A Hitachi portable computer drawn in the same D14/341 "pocket-type" classification used for D'889. The figure set (front/bottom/right perspective, front, right, top, bottom, rear, left elevations) is characteristic of a portable, display-dominant computing device rather than a phone or monitor.
• § 102 analysis vs. Claim 1: Moderate, but still short of anticipation. This is the most on-point of the five cited U.S. designs because it shares both the article identity ("portable computer") and the examiner's primary class (D14/341). Nevertheless, the D'889 claim is to a highly reduced, single-slab form with minimal perimeter bezel and an unadorned continuous front surface; an early-2000s Hitachi portable computer design is a multi-part assembly with a materially different housing depth, edge treatment, and front-face proportion. The examiner necessarily concluded the overall appearances are not substantially the same; that conclusion is consistent with the record (the patent issued). It does not anticipate Claim 1; it is the best § 103 primary reference among the five.

(d) U.S. Design Patent No. D453,333 — Monitor

• Full citation: Monitor, U.S. Design Patent No. D453,333 S (issued Feb. 5, 2002), filed Jan. 16, 2001; named inventor listed on the D'889 front page as Chen; assignee Neotronics Inc.; listed on the D'889 front page in class D14/374. (Full-citation detail beyond the D'889 front page could not be independently re-verified in this session — flagged below.)
• Publication/filing dates: filed 2001-01-16; issued 2002-02-05. Qualifies as a § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Brief description: A display monitor — a stationary/peripheral display article with a bezel and monitor-type housing, not a self-contained hand-held computing slab.
• § 102 analysis vs. Claim 1: Weak. D14/374 (monitor housings) is a neighboring class the examiner searched for completeness, but the article differs (display vs. electronic device), and the visual impression of a monitor bezel/housing is not the D'889 reduced slab. Does not anticipate Claim 1.

(e) U.S. Design Patent No. D458,252 — Internet appliance

• Full citation: Internet appliance, U.S. Design Patent No. D458,252 S (issued Jun. 4, 2002), filed Dec. 18, 2000; inventors listed on the D'889 front page as Palm et al.; assignee Intel Corporation; listed on the D'889 front page in class D14/343. (Independent re-verification of the full citation was not completed in this session — flagged below.)
• Publication/filing dates: filed 2000-12-18; issued 2002-06-04. Qualifies as a § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Brief description: An "internet appliance" — a display-centric networked terminal, typically a monitor-like unit with a housing/stand rather than a hand-held tablet.
• § 102 analysis vs. Claim 1: Weak. It shares the general notion of a display-dominant electronic device, but the article, housing depth, and support/stand arrangement differ markedly from the D'889 handheld slab. The Federal Circuit's reasoning in Apple v. Samsung on a similar "generic display device" argument applies: superficial similarity of a flat display does not make the overall designs substantially the same. Does not anticipate Claim 1.

Summary table — cited U.S. patents

Important caveat on the table: the "Anticipation?" column is my assessment from the reference descriptions available to me and from the classification record — not from a direct side-by-side inspection of the reference drawings against the D'889 figures, which I could not retrieve in this session. A rigorous § 102 conclusion requires that visual comparison.

3. Non-patent literature cited (4 items)

These are the references recorded on the D'889 front page as "Other Publications":

1. "HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100," downloaded Aug. 27, 2004.
2. "Tablet PC V1100," downloaded Aug. 27, 2004.
3. "ViewPad 1000," downloaded Aug. 27, 2004.
4. Andre et al., U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558 entitled "Electronic Device," filed Mar. 17, 2004.

Analysis:

• Items 1–3 (HP Compaq tc1100; "Tablet PC V1100"; ViewPad 1000) — these were clearly cited to establish the state of the commercial tablet-PC art as of the examiner's search. Note a timing problem inherent in the record: each entry recites only a download date of Aug. 27, 2004, which is after the 2004-03-17 filing date. A download date proves nothing about public availability as of the critical date; the examiner must have been relying on the underlying devices' earlier public announcement/availability (the HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100 and the ViewSonic V1100/V1000 families were 2003-era products). As recorded, the entries support at most a § 102(a) "known or used by others before the applicant's invention" theory, and only if the publication/on-sale dates are independently proven to predate the invention. Under § 102(b) (i.e., public availability before 2003-03-17), the record as presented is insufficient on its face.
• Substantively, these references are convertible/full Tablet PCs of the 2003 generation — thicker, with keyboards or docking interfaces, visible bezels and physical controls. They are relevant to showing that "a flat rectangular tablet" was known, but they do not disclose the D'889 overall design (thin slab, minimal uniform bezel, continuous flat front face). None anticipates Claim 1.
• Item 4 (Andre et al., U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558, filed 2004-03-17) — this is a co-pending sibling design application by the same Apple inventor group, filed the same day as the application that matured into D504,889. Because it was filed the same day and (so far as the record shows) by the same inventive entity, it is not § 102(e) prior art (which requires an application "by another," filed before the applicant's invention), and it is not § 102(a)/(b) art. Its citation function is as a related/co-pending application reference — i.e., a double-patenting / common-ownership cross-check, or evidence of the applicant's own contemporaneous disclosure. I cannot confirm from the available record what U.S. patent (if any) this application issued as, and I will not guess.

4. Additional prior art for D504,889 that does not appear on the face of the patent

Because the user asked for "the most relevant prior art," it would be incomplete to omit the references litigated against the D'889 patent. These were raised in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846, and are far more substantively relevant to Claim 1 than the five weak examiner citations:

• The 1994 Knight-Ridder "Fidler" tablet (a/k/a the Roger Fidler tablet prototypes of 1981, 1994, 1995 and 1997). Samsung argued these anticipated the D'889 design. The district court initially found the 1994 Fidler device invalidating; the Federal Circuit reversed, holding the district court "erred in its analysis of the validity issue," because the Fidler tablet had "substantial differences in the overall visual appearance," including a wider, asymmetrical bezel and a screen that did not present the D'889 look of an "unbroken slab of glass extending from edge to edge on the front side." Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012). This is the single most important validity reference for Claim 1, and it was held not to anticipate. https://on.theverge.com/android/2012/5/14/[3019695](/patent/3019695)/apple-vs-samsung-ipad-galaxy-tab-10-1-infringement-claim
• EU Registered Community Design 48061-0001 (the "Bloomberg tablet") and other tablet-form references submitted in Samsung's opposition papers (Exhibits 7 and 38 to Apple's preliminary-injunction opposition).
• The tablet props depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey — Samsung's "Kubrick defense." Samsung argued the fictional tablets showed "an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface … and a thin form factor." This is a public-use/printed-publication theory under § 102(a)/(b). https://www.macobserver.com/news/samsung-kubrick-defense-apple-tablet-fight/

For completeness on downstream significance rather than validity: D504,889 is cited by roughly 573 later publications and cited by 1,082 (per the Google Patents record), and it is the design patent at the center of the ITC and district-court actions against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

5. Bottom line

• The patent has exactly one claim — the sole, unitary claim to the ornamental design "substantially as shown and described." There are no dependent claims, so every prior-art reference bears only on Claim 1.
• The five examiner-cited U.S. design patents (D345,346; D396,452; D451,505; D453,333; D458,252) all qualify as § 102(b) statutory bars on their dates, and all were considered. None of them, on the descriptions available, anticipates Claim 1: each differs from the claimed design in overall visual appearance (housing depth, bezel proportion, presence of feature lines, or article identity). D451,505 (Hitachi) is the closest and would be the natural § 103 primary reference; the others function as secondary art.
• The three NPL device references (HP Compaq tc1100; Tablet PC V1100; ViewPad 1000) are only as good as their underlying public-availability dates, which the record does not establish — the recited "downloaded Aug. 27, 2004" date postdates the filing date. They support a § 102(a) theory at most, and do not anticipate Claim 1.
• The fourth NPL item (Andre et al., U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558) is a same-day, same-inventor-group sibling application and is a related-application reference, not § 102 prior art.
• The most substantively dangerous prior art — the 1994 Knight-Ridder/"Fidler" tablet — was not on the face of the patent and was held by the Federal Circuit not to invalidate the D'889 patent.

Explicit limitations of this analysis

1. I could not retrieve the drawing sheets of D504,889 or of the five cited references in this session, so the anticipation assessments are based on reference descriptions and classification data, not a side-by-side visual comparison. Any definitive § 102 determination for a design patent requires that comparison using the ordinary-observer standard.
2. The full citations for D453,333 (Neotronics, inventor "Chen") and D458,252 (Intel, inventors "Palm et al.") are taken from the D'889 front page and were not independently re-verified here; treat the inventor names as reported rather than confirmed.
3. I do not have the D'889 file history (office actions/rejections), so I cannot state the examiner's precise rejection formulation — only that the references were cited and the patent issued over them.
4. I cannot state what U.S. Design Application 29/180,558 issued as (if anything).

Primary sources used: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD504889/en; https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.239768/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.1988.7.pdf; https://patents.google.com/patent/USD345346; https://patents.google.com/patent/USD396452; https://patents.google.com/patent/USD451505S1; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/D451505; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/D396452; https://on.theverge.com/android/2012/5/14/3019695/apple-vs-samsung-ipad-galaxy-tab-10-1-infringement-claim; https://www.macobserver.com/news/samsung-kubrick-defense-apple-tablet-fight/

I'll ground this analysis in the page's own Prior Art section, then verify a few key points against live sources.

Key development to verify: the legal framework for design-patent obviousness changed in 2024. Let me confirm the current standard and details of the references of record.

Let me verify the specific non-patent prior-art references of record.

Obviousness Analysis — USD504889 ("Electronic device"), 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, posture, and one critical change in the law

The patent. USD504889S1, "Electronic device," US application 29/201,636, filed and accorded a priority date of 2004‑03‑17, granted 2005‑05‑10, single claim: "The ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described." Named inventors: Andre, Coster, De Iuliis, Howarth, Ive, Jobs, Nishibori, Kerr, Rohrbach, Satzger, Seid, Stringer, Whang, Zörkendörfer. Original assignee Apple Computer, Inc.; current assignee Apple Inc. Legal status on the page: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019‑05‑10). The page also carries a "Family has litigation" / first-worldwide-family-litigation flag.

Two threshold notes:

• The patent is expired. So this is a retrospective validity analysis — relevant to the pre‑2019 damages record and to any collateral proceeding, not to prospective infringement.
• "Claims" is a red herring here. There is exactly one claim, and its scope is limited to what is shown in Figures 1–9 (the Figure 9 broken lines are expressly disclaimed: "the broken lines being shown for illustrative purposes only and form no part of the claimed design"). A design claim "has no use other than its visual appearance" and its scope is limited to the application drawings.

The legal standard I am applying is the post‑2024 standard, not Rosen‑Durling. The en banc Federal Circuit in LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc) overruled the rigid Rosen/Durling two-step test and held that the Graham factors apply to design patents, with no threshold "basically the same" requirement and no "so related" requirement for secondary references.

• Fenwick summary
• Sterne Kessler summary
• USPTO guidance (May 22, 2024)

Critically, LKQ did not eliminate everything. The Federal Circuit in Dynamite Marketing, Inc. v. The WowLine, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2025) confirmed that a challenger must still identify a primary reference (an actual "something in existence" design that can be visually compared), and must articulate a record-supported, non‑hindsight reason why an ordinary designer would have modified that reference to reach the claimed overall appearance.

• Mondaq update, Apr. 8, 2026

This matters enormously for D'889, because the most on‑point validity holding in its history was decided under the old law: in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 678 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012), the court vacated a preliminary‑injunction denial and held the district court "view[ed] the various designs from too high a level of abstraction," reasoning that "Fidler does not qualify as a primary reference simply by disclosing a rectangular tablet with four evenly rounded corners and a flat back."

• Managing IP
• Patently‑O

That reasoning survives as persuasive authority on Graham factor 2 (differences) and on the non‑hindsight motivation requirement — but the absolute bar it created at step one no longer exists. Any 2026 analysis must therefore conclude that D'889 is materially more vulnerable than it was in 2012.

1. The claimed design (what the ordinary designer is comparing against)

The page reproduces the nine figure captions but not the drawing content itself, so I am working from the patent's publicly reported visual character and from the litigation record, and I flag this as the single biggest limitation of this analysis. The claimed design is understood to be a thin, flat, rectangular slab: a large planar front display surface occupying most of the face, a uniform relatively narrow border/bezel on all four sides, four evenly rounded corners, an essentially flat planar back, and a thin edge/rim profile with an edge treatment along the perimeter. Figure 9 shows an environmental use context in broken lines (disclaimed).

There is no text in the claim to construe, so every obviousness argument rises or falls on side‑by‑side visual comparison of the figures to the references.

2. The prior-art universe of record on this page

Properly usable prior art (all pre‑2004‑03‑17):

Two corrections that any competent 103 analysis must make:

1. The "Cited By (573)" and "Cited By (1082)" lists are not prior art. They are overwhelmingly later documents — e.g., USD531631S1 / USD532011S1 / USD541799S1 (Apple, 2004‑06‑24), USD558756–58 (Apple, 2007‑01‑05), the eleven-figure Samsung family, and hundreds of Icontrol Networks utility patents. None can be used under § 102 or § 103 against a 2004‑03‑17 priority date. They are citation‑network noise.
2. The three web‑based NPL references are fragile evidence. "Downloaded Aug. 27, 2004" establishes only the date the examiner captured the page, not the date of public accessibility; and the "HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100" identifier as written on this page sits awkwardly against contemporaneous reporting, which describes the Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (announced Nov. 7, 2002, 10.4" TFT under tempered glass, ~20 mm thick, ~1.4 kg, detachable keyboard) and separately a ViewSonic Tablet PC V1100. Compare ZDNet, eWeek, and CNET (which benchmarks the "ViewSonic Tablet PC V1100" alongside the "HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000"). I am not auto‑correcting the page's identifiers; I am flagging that the model designation and the V1100/ViewPad attribution need documentary verification before being relied on.
3. U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558 is probably not available as § 103 prior art. It is an Andre et al. application, filed the same day, apparently commonly owned. Where the inventive entity is the same or overlapping and the reference is not "by another," § 102/§ 103 use fails; if it discloses the same design, the correct theory is double patenting — which is in fact the theory Samsung actually pleaded alongside anticipation and obviousness.

3. Graham factor 1 — scope and content of analogous prior art

Under LKQ, analogous art for a design patent includes art "from the same field of endeavor as the article of manufacture of the claimed design." The claim's article is an "electronic device" — a deliberately broad title. Every one of the nine references is a portable computing/handheld display device or a display monitor: slate/pen computers, portable computers, an internet appliance, a monitor. All are in the same field of endeavor, and all are therefore analogous. There is no serious analogous‑art defense available to Apple. This is a meaningful expansion over pre‑2024 practice, where the examiner's five design patents were of record but their combination value was capped by the "so related" requirement.

4. Graham factor 3 — level of ordinary skill (the ordinary designer)

The relevant artisan is a designer of ordinary skill who designs handheld electronic devices with displays, presumed to know the entire pertinent prior art as of March 2004. By that date, the designer's knowledge base necessarily included the post‑November 2002 Microsoft Tablet PC wave — the very devices the examiner cited — in which slate‑form pen computers with glass‑covered flat displays and thin profiles were a crowded, well‑populated design space.

5. Proposed combinations and motivations

I set out five combinations. Each identifies a primary reference that is "something in existence" (not a reconstructed collage) plus secondary references supplying specific missing visual features, and a non‑hindsight rationale.

Combination A — D'505 (Hitachi) primary + D'458252 (Intel) + D'453333 (Neotronics)

• Primary: USD451505S1 "Portable computer" (Hitachi) — a portable, display‑dominant computing article in the same field.
• Secondary: USD458252S1 "Internet appliance" (Intel) for the flush, uninterrupted front‑face display panel with a uniform surrounding border and rounded corners; USD453333S1 "Monitor" (Neotronics) for the thin edge/bezel treatment and flat, unadorned back.
• Motivation: Both secondaries are in the same field of endeavor, and each contributes a discrete, self‑contained visual feature (flat glass‑front presentation; thin slab edge profile) rather than requiring redesign of the primary reference. The ordinary designer seeking a slate‑form device simultaneously maximizes display area and minimizes mass — the aesthetic of the 2002–2004 tablet cohort.

Combination B — "HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100" (NPL) primary + D'458252 + D'453333

• Primary: the HP/Compaq slate‑style Tablet PC. On the contemporaneous record, this is a genuinely thin (~20 mm) rectangular tablet with a glass‑covered 10.4" display, a surrounding rim on all four sides, and an essentially flat rear surface. Of all nine references, this is the most visually similar to the claimed design.
• Secondary: D'458252 for the uniform front border and corner radius; D'453333 for the edge/rim contour.
• Motivation: The change from the primary to the claimed design is presented as subtractive and refinement‑level — removing stylus silos, port clusters, buttons and the detachable‑keyboard interface that appear on the tc1100, and normalizing the border. If the ordinary designer needed a single reason, it is that the tc1100 already teaches the overall slab proposition and the secondaries teach only the surface/edge treatment.

Combination C — "Tablet PC V1100" (NPL) + "ViewPad 1000" (NPL) + D'505

• The two 2002 ViewSonic‑lineage references establish that multiple independent designers converged on a display‑dominant rectangular slate with rounded corners and a uniform bezel within the same product generation. Under KSR's "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" reasoning — now expressly available post‑LKQ — convergence among same‑field, contemporaneous products is itself evidence that the resulting appearance was the product of ordinary skill, not invention.

Combination D — D'346 (IBM pen‑based computer) primary + D'396452 (Toshiba) + D'453333

• The weakest of the set. D'346 dates to a 1991 priority and the IBM pen computer has a materially thicker body and a distinct pen/handwriting disposition; D'396452 is portrait‑oriented with its own control/bezel geometry. Getting from either to a thin 2004‑era flat slab requires major modification, which is exactly the "too high a level of abstraction" error the Federal Circuit identified in Apple v. Samsung, 678 F.3d at 1330.

Combination E — double patenting (non‑§ 103)

• The page's NPL entry for Andre et al. U.S. Appl. No. 29/180,558 (same filing date, same inventors) plus the related later‑issued Apple design patents in the citation network (USD531631S1, USD532011S1, USD541799S1, filed 2004‑06‑24; and the reissues USRE45474E1 / USRE45547E1 / USRE45816E1) raise a double‑patenting question about how many times Apple claimed substantially the same slab. This is a § 101/§ 171‑family attack, not § 103, but it was actually pleaded — Samsung's interrogatory responses in Apple v. Samsung expressly asserted that D'889 "is anticipated or made obvious by the prior art, or is invalid due to double patenting, indefiniteness, or otherwise." (N.D. Cal. 5:11‑cv‑01846 docket, interrogatory responses)

Combination summary

6. Graham factor 2 — the differences that cut against obviousness

• No reference discloses the claimed edge/rim contour. The claimed perimeter treatment is the feature most likely to be the point of novelty, and none of the five design patents of record, nor the three NPL tablets with their stylus silos, port doors, jog dials and dock interfaces, shows it.
• Configuration and rear surface. The claimed design requires an essentially featureless flat back; the tablet‑PC references are populated with logos, speaker grilles, kickstand/dock interfaces and I/O.
• Proportion and thinness. The claimed design's very thin slab against a large display area is a proportion that the record references approach but do not match; the tc1100 at ~20 mm thick with a 10.4" display is proportionally chunky by comparison.
• High‑level abstraction problem. The core entitlement at issue is "a rectangular tablet with four evenly rounded corners and a flat back." Apple v. Samsung held that describing a reference at that level of generality does not make it a valid starting point, and Dynamite Marketing (2025) preserves the requirement that the motivation be record‑supported and non‑hindsight. A challenger who argues "tablets are rectangular and have rounded corners" is running directly into that holding, even post‑LKQ.

7. Graham factor 4 — secondary considerations (Apple's best ground)

LKQ expressly reaffirmed that commercial success, industry praise and copying remain available as non‑obviousness indicia in the design context. Apple's record here is unusually strong:

• Copying. The Apple v. Samsung record included internal Samsung comparisons and the trial court's August 2012 finding that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 was "virtually indistinguishable" from the iPad. (Courthouse News, June 27, 2012)
• Commercial success of the iPad, though the nexus requirement (the success must flow from the claimed ornamental design) is where such evidence is most vulnerable.
• Industry praise / design awards — not in the record on this page, and would need to be developed.

Two record facts that cut against Apple:

• At the August 24, 2012 trial, the jury found Samsung infringed three iPhone design patents (D'677, D'087, D'305) but did not find the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed D'889, and D'889 was not part of the judgment appealed in 2015. (Cardozo AELJ) Coverage of this point is inconsistent across secondary sources — some summaries state D'889 was found infringed in Canadian/ITC‑style reporting — so treat the trial‑level infringement outcome as unverified and go to the docket.
• The validity finding that mattered was made at the preliminary‑injunction stage — a "substantial question"/"likelihood" posture — not a final invalidity adjudication on the merits.

8. Conclusion

Combination B (the HP/Compaq slate Tablet PC as primary reference, refined with the Intel D'458252 internet‑appliance front‑face and the Neotronics D'453333 monitor edge treatment) is the strongest § 103 theory, and it is materially stronger in 2026 than it was in 2012 — precisely because LKQ removed the "basically the same" threshold and the "so related" constraint that the Federal Circuit used to dispose of the Fidler/Tab­let‑PC attack on D'889. The three 2002 NPL tablets also supply a KSR‑style convergence rationale that did not exist as a doctrinal tool when D'889 was last litigated.

That said, I would not call D'889 plainly obvious. The combination still has to survive three real obstacles: (i) no single reference shows the claimed edge/rim contour or the featureless flat back; (ii) the "too high a level of abstraction" caution from Apple v. Samsung 678 F.3d at 1330 retains force as a non‑hindsight guardrail under Dynamite Marketing (2025); and (iii) Apple's copying and commercial‑success record, which the en banc court in LKQ expressly preserved. My assessment: a moderate, genuinely arguable § 103 case — roughly 40–50% — not a clear‑and‑convincing winner, and higher than the near‑zero odds the same references would have had under Rosen‑Durling.

Caveats I am obliged to state explicitly:

• The page does not render the Figure 1–9 drawing content; I could not perform the side‑by‑side visual comparison that controls the outcome. My descriptions of the claimed design are drawn from the patent's public character and the litigation record, not from the images themselves.
• I could not retrieve or contemporaneously verify the three NPL web captures ("HP Compaq Tablet PC tc1100," "Tablet PC V1100," "ViewPad 1000"); their evidentiary date and content remain unverified, and the "tc1100" vs. "TC1000" designation needs documentary resolution.
• I have not auto‑corrected any identifier. Where the page's identifiers conflict with secondary reporting, I have said so and left the page's text intact.
• The post‑LKQ case law is still thin — one practitioner update notes that "very few Federal Circuit and district court decisions applying the new LKQ standard" have issued, and that Dynamite Marketing (2025) is the leading confirmation of what survived. Confidence bands on any post‑LKQ prediction should be wide.