US D604305

I'll verify this specific design patent against external sources, then summarize.

US D604305 — Verification Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the literal identifier "D604305" (and its publication form USD604305S1). I did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity involving D604305. The Federal Circuit history for this patent is from the 2013–2018 period (see Litigation below). I queried the live web rather than a native USPTO/CAFC docket API, so my docket negative-result is a search negative, not an exhaustive registry check — treat it as "no 2026 CAFC activity found," not "confirmed none exists." (Also note: the current operating date is 2026-09-30, while your prompt states April 26, 2026; this does not change the substantive findings.)

Bibliographic Data

Recorded assignment (2008-01-18): An assignment of interest to APPLE INC. names assignors Chaudri, Imran; LeMay, Stephen O.; Matas, Mike; Anzures, Freddy; Ording, Bas; Van Os, Marcel; Christie, Greg; Coffman, Patrick. This is broader than the two named inventors — the record does not explain the discrepancy (likely a combined assignment covering multiple family applications). Uncertainty flagged.

Abstract

There is no abstract. Design patents are not required to include one, and this patent has none. The entire textual disclosure consists of the drawing description plus the single claim. Do not rely on any "abstract" you may see reproduced for D604305 by third-party databases — none exists in the authoritative document.

Disclosure (Drawing Description)

• The patent file contains at least one drawing executed in color; color copies are furnished by the Office on request and payment of the fee.
• FIG. 1 — front view of a graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof, showing the new design.
• FIG. 2 — front view of a second embodiment thereof.
• Broken line showing of the display screen in both views forms no part of the claimed design.

Contemporaneous third-party descriptions characterize the claimed subject matter as a grid (reported as 16) of colorful icons arranged on a dark/black screen background. That characterization comes from secondary sources (IPWatchdog; foreign commentary on Samsung v. Apple), and the color content is central to scope because the color drawing is expressly part of the file. I have not independently re-verified the icon count from the authoritative image.

Claims

There is exactly one claim, and it is the only claim — design patents are limited to a single claim (35 U.S.C. § 171). Accordingly, there are no plural "independent claims" to summarize.

Claim 1: "The ornamental design for a graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof, as shown and described."

Plain-language scope:

• The claim is to ornamental appearance only — the visual look of the GUI as a whole, not any function, behavior, code, or underlying icon meaning.
• Because it is a single-claim design patent, scope is defined by the drawings (FIGS. 1 and 2) taken as a whole, not by isolated features. The two figures mean the patent covers two embodiments in one claim.
• Everything shown in solid lines contributes to the claimed appearance. The broken-line display screen is expressly excluded from the claim — i.e., the screen/device is context only, and the claim is to the GUI itself (or a portion of a display screen).
• The claim is not limited to any particular device, brand, or platform, since the article of manufacture is claimed as "a display screen or portion thereof."
• Color matters: because the file includes at least one color drawing, color as depicted is part of the design's visual appearance. Note that the published black-and-white rendering differs from the color content available through the Office — a point commentators have raised as significant to scope.

Litigation and Enforcement History (relevant to "docket" question)

The Google Patents record also carries a "Family has litigation" flag linking to a Darts-IP litigation dataset for family 41280099.

Explicit Uncertainties

1. No 2026 CAFC docket found for D604305. The patent expired 2023-11-17, which would ordinarily foreclose prospective injunctive enforcement; any modern activity would most plausibly be residual damages/remand-related, not new infringement suits.
2. Inventor list vs. assignment assignors differ (2 named inventors vs. 8 assignors in the 2008 record).
3. No abstract exists — any abstract attributed to this patent by third parties is not part of the authoritative text.
4. The reported "16 colorful icons on a black screen" description comes from secondary sources, not from the authoritative claim or figure text.

Sources: Google Patents, USD604305S1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/USD604305S1/en; N.D. Cal. final jury instructions and D'305 claim construction, No. 5:11-cv-01846 (CourtListener); Banner & Witcoff case alert on Samsung v. Apple; IPWatchdog, "Strong Design Patents: The Power of Color" (Aug. 6, 2013).

I'll research litigation involving US D604305 specifically. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me gather more detail on each distinct proceeding, including ITC and other defendants.

Now let me check the ITC action Apple filed against Samsung, the HTC case, and the litigation databases.

Let me confirm the district court case timeline and check whether D604305 was asserted against any other defendant.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" default against the live web before writing up.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — US D604305 S1

Preliminary verification note: I sourced the proceedings list from the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest), which returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. I then attempted to falsify that negative with targeted web searches ("D604305" + IPR/PTAB/inter partes review; petitioner-focused searches; reexamination searches; design-patent IPR searches). Every hit resolved to the Apple v. Samsung district court / Supreme Court line of cases. I found no proceeding number, no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, and no PTAB appeal connected to D604305. I could not query PTAB E2E / PRPS natively, so treat this as a strong negative, not a registry-certified negative.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings exist on D604305 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — because no petition was never filed; the bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened by survived IPRs" and not "claims canceled by the Board," but rather "the patent was never subjected to an AIA trial at all, and it expired by its own term on 2023-11-17, so any demand letter asserting it today can only reach a shrinking tail of pre-expiration damages."

Proceedings

No proceedings to itemize

There are no AIA trials on this patent, so the per-proceeding template (Type / Filed / Status / Panel / Grounds / Institution / FWD / Settlement / Appeal) has no entries rather than blank entries. To be explicit about what does not exist:

• IPR — none. No petitioner was ever instituted or denied.
• PGR — none, and none was legally available: PGR applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. D604305's filing and priority date is 2007-06-23 (see the Google Patents record: priority to US 29/281,460, filed 2007-06-23). PGR jurisdiction never attached.
• CBM — none, and practically unavailable. AIA § 18(d)(1) limited CBM review to patents claiming a method or apparatus for data processing/operations used in a financial product or service, excluding "technological inventions"; a GUI design claim is not such a claim. CBM petitions also sunset for filings on or after 2020-09-16.
• Appeals to the Federal Circuit from a PTAB FWD — none, because there is no FWD. The only Federal Circuit appeals in this patent's history are from the district court judgment (Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., 786 F.3d 983 (Fed. Cir. 2015)) and the SCOTUS remand line — those are § 282 district-court invalidity/§ 289 damages issues, not § 318 appealable FWD issues.

Adjacent post-grant activity (NOT AIA trials — flagged so you don't conflate them)

Strategic summary

Claim status: UNTESTED at the PTAB, and UNREACHABLE going forward. D604305 has exactly one claim ("The ornamental design for a graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof, as shown and described"), and it remains neither canceled nor sustained by the Board — the Board has never construed it. So there is no FWD to link, no canceled claim to point at, and no PTAB record of any kind. What exists instead is a district court record: the N.D. Cal. jury found the patent infringed and not invalid, the Federal Circuit affirmed (Apple v. Samsung, 786 F.3d 983), and the second jury awarded $533.3M on 2018-05-24. Anyone facing assertion today inherits that adverse validity history, not a favorable PTAB wipe-out. The offsetting fact is term: a pre-AIA design patent granted 2009-11-17 carries a 14-year term, and the record lists anticipated expiration 2023-11-17 with legal status "Expired – Lifetime." There is no live monopoly to enjoin.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, which cuts both ways. Because no IPR was instituted and no FWD issued, § 315(e)(1)/(2) estoppel never attached to anyone — so there is no estoppel-created prior-art carve-out and no "grounds you could reasonably have raised are now yours to keep." Conversely, a defendant contemplating a new IPR faces hard gates: § 315(b) bars a petition filed more than one year after service of a complaint alleging infringement (anyone served before roughly 2025-09-30 is now time-barred), § 315(a)(1) bars a petitioner who first filed a civil action challenging validity, and § 311(b) confines IPR grounds to § 102/§ 103 over patents and printed publications only. That last limit is the whole ballgame for design patents. Design invalidity is typically proved with non-patent prior art — physical devices, product photos, screenshots, catalog pages, on-sale/public-use evidence. In the Apple v. Samsung record, the asserted piece of prior art most discussed as potentially anticipating the Apple designs was the Samsung F700 handset — a physical device. That evidence (a) could never have been raised in an IPR and (b) was in fact excluded at trial on evidentiary grounds (Samsung failed to introduce it timely and its substitute witness lacked first-hand knowledge, per the Cardozo article). A GUI design patent is therefore structurally a poor IPR target and a better district-court invalidity target.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. No serial petitioner (no repeat filer on this patent), no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar in the chain — the only non-Apple names in the file are the 2008 assignors and the litigants), no patent-owner PTAB-appeal aggression, and no parallel PTAB/trade-dress hybrid campaign. The "28+ sibling design patents" in family 41280099 were monetized through district court enforcement, not through PTAB. That is consistent with the general pattern: GUI/icon design patents are asserted, not IPR'd.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant being asserted today, do not build a defense on a PTAB record — there isn't one. There is no FWD to cite and no canceled claim to quote. Your invalidity case, if you need one, lives under § 282 in district court, where non-patent prior art (devices, screenshots, packaging) is admissible and where you are not confined by § 311(b).
2. Attack the damages window first, before the merits. The patent's 14-year term from the 2009-11-17 grant ran to 2023-11-17 (record-consistent). Any complaint filed after that date can only reach pre-expiration acts, further capped by 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year lookback from filing and by § 287 marking/notice. On a 2026 demand, the actionable tail is roughly 2020-11-17 → 2023-11-17 at the outside, shrinking every year. A demand letter citing § 289 "total profits" on post-2023-11-17 conduct has no statutory foothold.
3. Check the negative yourself at the primary sources, since my check was search-based: PTAB E2E — https://ptab.uspto.gov/ ; PTAB decisions — https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions ; and Patent Center for any ex parte reexam certificate or adverse-judgment/disclaimer record tied to 29/281,460. The "PTAB proceedings on file" block is the canonical list and it is empty.
4. Watch the § 315(b) clock if you ever do want an IPR. For an expired patent the Board can still institute, but the practical yield is limited to foreclosing past damages, and the one-year bar from service will usually have run before you retain counsel. Any IPR theory must rest on patents and printed publications — so audit the D604305 "Cited By" and family record for pre-2007-06-23 printed publications (GUI design patents and published applications), since physical-device art is unusable there.
5. Do not import D677/D652054 post-grant noise into this file. The Cardozo-sourced 2015-08-05 ex parte reexam rejection and the aggregator's reexam-certificate notation concern other family members and are unverified for D604305 itself.

Grounding links used: Google Patents record — https://patents.google.com/patent/USD604305S1/en ; N.D. Cal. joint proposed final jury instructions (design-patent claim construction, Apple v. Samsung, No. 5:11-cv-01846) — https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.[239768](/patent/239768)/gov.uscourts.cand.239768.3672.2.pdf ; Cardozo AELJ design-patent-trolling article (D677 reexam; D305/D087 status; F700 exclusion) — https://www.cardozoaelj.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/35.1-Coughlin.pdf ; Banner & Witcoff SCOTUS alert (Samsung v. Apple, No. 15-777) — https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ALERT-SCOTUS-Decision-in-Apple-v.-Samsung.pdf .

Explicit uncertainties: (i) my PTAB negative is a structured-data plus web-search negative, not a PRPS/E2E registry query; (ii) I did not verify the outcome of the D677 ex parte reexamination; (iii) I did not verify the D652054 reexamination-certificate notation; (iv) I state no Board precedent case name for IPR-of-expired-patent because I could not verify a citation, so I have framed it as general practice rather than authority.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent through available sources.

Let me look for the specific reel/frame record and any post-issuance transfers.

Assignment Chain Analysis — US D604305 (Apple Inc.)

Source-access caveat (read first). The USPTO Patent Assignment Search at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ is a JavaScript application that does not expose individual reel/frame records to general web-index search, and it is not reachable via the search tools available in this session. I was therefore unable to retrieve the reel/frame number, the execution date as distinct from the recordation date, or the correspondent of record for the one assignment linked to this patent. Google Patents' "Legal Events" tab does surface that assignment (it is sourced from the same USPTO assignment data), and I rely on it below — but I will not invent a reel/frame number. Any reel/frame you see missing here is a genuine retrieval gap, not an absence of a record. Verify directly at:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "D604305")
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (legacy index, same records)

Inventors

Both inventors list San Francisco addresses, both were Apple employees, and Apple is the assignee — the ordinary Apple in-house design-team pattern, not a group of independent inventors assigning after the fact.

Unusual patterns: None of the classic fire-sale precursor (all inventors departing the assignee within 12 months of filing). Chaudhri's well-known departure from Apple was 2017 — a decade after this 2007 filing — and Anzures' departure was likewise years later (his exact date I cannot pin down with high confidence; flagged as uncertain). Neither departure postdates any transfer of this patent, because no transfer ever occurred.

Discrepancy already flagged in the prior section, now expanded: the 2008-01-18 recorded assignment lists eight assignors (Chaudri, Imran; LeMay, Stephen O.; Matas, Mike; Anzures, Freddy; Ording, Bas; Van Os, Marcel; Christie, Greg; Coffman, Patrick) against only two named inventors. The most plausible explanation — offered as inference, not fact — is that Apple recorded a single omnibus assignment covering a batch of iPhone UI inventions signed by the whole interface team on one date, and the database's "assignors" field simply reflects every signatory on that instrument. Note also the misspelling "Chaudri" in the recorded document versus "Chaudhri" on the patent face. Chain-of-title reviewers should treat that as a clerical variance to be reconciled, not as a different person.

Original assignee

Apple Inc. (Cupertino, CA) — recorded as original assignee on the face of the patent (FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report, Google Patents all agree), and current assignee per Google Patents' "Current Assignee" field, which explicitly warns the list "may be inaccurate" but in this case is corroborated by uspto.report's statement that the grant "is currently assigned to Apple Inc."

• Product embodying the claims: Yes, and famously so. The design is the iPhone home screen — a rounded-square grid of colorful app icons over a black background, i.e., the iOS springboard of the original iPhone (2007) and iPhone 3G/3GS era. Apple asserted it against the Samsung Galaxy family, and the jury found the accused Samsung GUIs confusingly similar.
• Primary line of business: Consumer electronics, software, and services (public company, NASDAQ: AAPL).
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition. SEC filings (10-K/8-K) disclose no divestiture of this design patent — Apple does not itemize individual patent assignments in its periodic reports, so the SEC trail here is silent rather than contradictory.

Assignment timeline

Chronological list of every recorded assignment located:

• Executed on or about 2008-01-18 / recorded 2008-01-18 — Reel/frame: NOT RETRIEVED (see source-access caveat)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest — Google Patents titles it "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Chaudri, Imran; LeMay, Stephen O.; Matas, Mike; Anzures, Freddy; Ording, Bas; Van Os, Marcel; Christie, Greg; Coffman, Patrick
  • Assignee: Apple Inc. (Cupertino, CA)
  • Correspondent: UNKNOWN — not retrievable in this session. Lead, not a finding: contemporaneous Apple prosecution correspondence of this era routes through Blakely Sokoloff Taylor & Zafman LLP (BSTZ), 1279 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA under the Apple docket prefix, as seen in a 2010 USPTO correspondence record for a related Apple application. I have not verified that BSTZ was the assignment correspondent of record for D604305, and I am not asserting it. Do not treat a single appearance as a repeat-correspondent signal.
  • Context: Internal capture — Apple obtaining title from its employee inventors roughly seven months after the 2007-06-23 filing. Not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer to an asserter.

No further assignments, security agreements, mergers, change-of-name records, licenses, or releases appear anywhere for this patent. The Google Patents legal-events feed for D604305 shows exactly one reassignment entry (2008-01-18, to Apple Inc.) followed only by prosecution/priority events and the anticipated-expiration entry (2023-11-17). Practically: Apple has held this patent from execution of the assignment through expiration.

Family-level corroboration of no divestiture: the Google Patents priority table lists 69 priority applications and 12 "family applications after," every one of them still credited to Apple Inc. — including the continuation-in-part USD608366S1, the divisional USD644238S1, and the long tail of "Icon for a portion of a display screen" siblings extending to 2023 (USD1092502S1). A portfolio fire-sale would normally show a cluster of these siblings moving together to a single acquirer on one reel. Nothing of the kind appears. The Google Patents "Family has litigation" flag points to the Darts-IP litigation dataset for family ID 41280099 (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=41280099) — a litigation annotation, not an ownership change.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US D604305
    2007 : Design application filed by Apple
         : Inventors Anzures and Chaudhri
    2008 : Assignment to Apple Inc recorded
         : Jan 18 executed and recorded
    2009 : Patent D604305 granted Nov 17
    2011 : Apple sues Samsung Apr 15
    2012 : Jury finds infringement Aug 24
    2016 : Supreme Court reverses on article of manufacture
    2018 : Retrial verdict 533 million dollars
    2023 : Patent expired Nov 17
         : Still held by Apple Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded conveyance (2008-01-18) runs to an operating company, Apple Inc. No assignee in the chain carries an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix; no registered-agent-service address appears; no single-purpose Delaware or Texas LLC is in the record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee matches the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Mosaid-Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Document Generation / Spangenberg-entity universe, and no Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff entity appears. The asserting party of record is Apple itself.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. There is only one link in the chain, and the correspondent of record could not be retrieved. A recurrence signal requires two or more links sharing a recording attorney; that structure does not exist here regardless of who is named on the single 2008-01-18 record.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment, in 2008, and no subsequent movement across the 15 years to expiration. No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent addresses, no common principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The sole assignment predates the first infringement suit (Apple v. Samsung, N.D. Cal. No. 5:11-cv-01846, filed 2011-04-15) by roughly three years and three months — far outside the 6-month window. There was no venue- or standing-engineering transfer because Apple owned the patent continuously and sued in its home district.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Apple has never been in Chapter 7 or Chapter 11; no patent-sale proceeding (Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid/Sun–Oracle style) touches this chain.

7. Privateering — Not present. The patent was never transferred to an NPE that asserted on Apple's behalf. Apple asserted it directly, in its own name, against a direct competitor — the opposite of privateering. This is corroborated by the litigation record: identical D604305 assertion by Apple in the 2011 N.D. Cal. action and its progeny, and by the Supreme Court's treatment of Apple as the § 289 "owner" in Samsung v. Apple, No. 15-777 (2016-12-06).

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. No link to RPX, Allied Security Trust, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or Open Invention Network. Note that the patent is now de facto neutralized — but by statutory expiration on 2023-11-17, not by acquisition into a defensive pool. Do not conflate the two.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain consists of a single recorded assignment — the 2008-01-18 internal capture of the two inventors' rights by Apple Inc. — with no subsequent transfer of any kind through the patent's expiration on 2023-11-17. Apple is the original, current, and only assignee of record. It shipped the embodying product (the iPhone home screen) and asserted D604305 directly against a competitor, Samsung, securing a jury infringement verdict in 2012 and a retrial award of $533,316,606 in 2018; that is the textbook operating-company posture, and no NPE signal in the checklist is present. The one item I cannot close is the reel/frame and correspondent of record for the 2008-01-18 assignment, which the Assignment Center would supply — verify at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html or https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.

I'll research the prior-art citations for D604305, starting with the patent's own front-page references.

Let me pull the front-page "References Cited" section from multiple patent databases.

Good — I found the front-page reference list. Let me retrieve the complete list, including foreign and other references.

I hit my search-step ceiling, so this answer is based on what I retrieved. I'll flag the gaps explicitly rather than paper over them.

Prior Art Analysis — US D604,305 S1 ("Graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof")

0. Search scope, and one important structural point

Where the citations came from. Google Patents' rendering of D604305 (the authoritative text in the record) exposes only a "Cited By (284)" list — i.e., forward citations. It does not render a "Cited Patent / References Cited" table. So the backward (prior-art) list below comes from FreePatentsOnline's transcription of the printed front page (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D604305.html), retrieved as a search snippet. Cross-checks came from uspto.report, Justia, and a WIPO/IPO comments PDF containing the ex parte reexamination certificate US D604,305 C1.

Consequence: the list below is incomplete. My retrieval was truncated mid-entry at "D462,07…". I could not retrieve:

• the tail of the U.S. Patent Documents list,
• any Foreign Patent Documents,
• the "Other References" block (design patents of this era frequently cite third-party GUI screenshots, icon compilations, or product manuals — some with dates well before June 2007).

Treat everything below as "retrieved so far," not "complete."

Not searched (per instruction): I did not return results for adjacent numbers (D604304, D604306, 6,043,305, etc.). Note "US D604,305 C1" is the reexamination certificate designation for this same patent, not a different patent.

1. Controlling framework — why "which claims" collapses to one row

Anticipation standard for designs: a single reference anticipates only if it is "substantially the same" as the claimed design under the ordinary observer test — International Seaway Trading Corp. v. Walgreens Corp., 589 F.3d 1233 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (applying Gorham Co. v. White, 81 U.S. 511 (1871), to anticipation). Section 103-type combinations are not anticipation.

Because there is only one claim, every § 102 question below answers to the same claim. I map each reference to it, and state candidly whether it could anticipate.

2. References cited on the face of D604305 (the actual prior art of record)

Dates shown are grant dates as transcribed. I did not retrieve filing dates for most entries — this matters, because under pre-AIA § 102(e)(2) a granted U.S. patent is prior art as of its filing date, not its grant date. Several references below (R1–R4, R6–R9) granted after D604305's 2007-06-23 filing, so they can only be art via an earlier effective filing date / earlier invention. Flagged as unresolved.

Sanity check on the list's direction: the presence of 2003–2006 entries (R22–R25) confirms this is the backward/prior-art list, not a forward-citation list. Good.

Statutory-basis observation. Only R22–R25 (and presumably R26) can be § 102(b) art on their face (pre-2006-06-23). The 2007 grants (R17–R21) fall inside the one-year grace period and are therefore § 102(a)/(e) art at best. The 2008–2009 grants (R1–R16) depend entirely on earlier filing dates under § 102(e)(2) — dates I did not retrieve.

3. Most relevant prior art — my ranking

Tier 1 — closest in kind (icon-grid / display-screen GUI designs):
R20 (D544,875, "Set of icons for display screen"), R21 (D540,340), R6/R7 (D576,171; D574,388), R18 (D552,620), R19 (D548,239), R1/R17 (D587,720; D555,660).

Tier 2 — utility patents on icon layout/scaling (probatable under § 102(b), and the only references guaranteed to precede the grace-period line):
R22 (US 6,983,424, Dutta), R24 (US 6,731,316, Herigstad), R25 (D472,244).

Tier 3 — same-field phone display images:
R3, R4, R5, R10, R11, R12, R15, R16.

Tier 4 — transitional/animated and non-analogous:
R2, R8, R9, R13, R14, R23.

Bottom line of the ranking, stated plainly: on the metadata available, none of the retrieved references is a strong anticipatory reference. The two that deserve actual side-by-side figure comparison are R22 (Dutta) because it is the only retrieved reference that is unquestionably § 102(b) art and that concerns automated arrangement of icons on a display, and R20 (D544,875, Wang, "Set of icons for display screen") because icon-set designs are the nearest analogue to a home-screen grid. I have not inspected the figures of either; do not treat this as a conclusion.

4. Direct answer: which claim(s) each reference potentially anticipates

• Every reference in Section 2 can only be assessed against claim 1, because claim 1 is the only claim (35 U.S.C. § 171; the patent's claim section is captioned "Claims (1)").
• My assessment: no reference among R1–R25 anticipates claim 1 as a whole, for three reasons:
  1. The reference must be "substantially the same" as the entire claimed design (International Seaway / Gorham). These are cited as background art in the GUI/icon field and as § 102(a)/(e)/(b) formal art; the examiner allowed the case, and the sole claim was later confirmed on reexamination.
  2. Color is in the claim. The record expressly states the file "contains at least one drawing executed in color," and the color content is central to scope (IPWatchdog, "Strong Design Patents: The Power of Color," Aug. 6, 2013 — the color image had to be pulled from PAIR because the printed patent is black-and-white). A reference that discloses only a black-and-white icon layout is a poor § 102 anticipation of a claim whose appearance includes the color scheme.
  3. Class mismatch. R14 (D567,171, uninterruptible power supply, D13/110) and R23 (D507,577, printer UI) are not analogous art for a handheld display GUI.
• Where § 102 arguably does bite hardest is R22 (US 6,983,424). It is the earliest-granted icon-arrangement reference in the retrieved list and sits outside the grace period. If its figures depict the same overall icon-grid appearance, it is the single best § 102 candidate. Unverified.

5. Do NOT treat the 284 "Cited By" entries as prior art

This is the most likely error in this task, so I'm flagging it explicitly. The 284 forward citations, and the 405 "Families Citing this Family" entries, are not § 102 prior art against D604305:

• They post-date D604305 (2009 onward), so they cannot be § 102(a) or (b) art.
• Many share D604305's own 2007-06-23 priority (e.g., D644238, its divisional; D608366, its continuation-in-part) and are therefore neither "by another" nor earlier. A division cannot anticipate its own parent.
• The listed forward citations that are Apple's own later filings (D636392, D638835, D643852, D644243, D645472, D693733, etc.) are self-citations.

6. The prior art you should actually chase: ex parte reexamination 90/012,990

This is the most probative prior-art event in the file, and it is not reproduced anywhere I could retrieve:

A 2013-filed ex parte reexamination of an Apple GUI design patent most plausibly originated as a third-party (Samsung) request. That request would have assembled the strongest available § 102/§ 103 art against claim 1 — this is the prior-art set to obtain, via Patent Center's "Display References."

7. Contradiction flagged against the earlier-generated sections

The OCR'd reexamination certificate in the WIPO/IPO PDF (ipo.org/.../IPO-Comments-to-WIPO-on-Designs.pdf) carries D604305's bibliographic data — "US D604,305 C1," title "GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR A DISPLAY SCREEN OR PORTION THEREOF," inventors Anzures; Chaudhri, assignee Apple, application 29/281,460, filed Jun. 23, 2007 — but quotes a claim and figure description that do not match D604305:

• Claim as printed there: "The ornamental design for a user interface for a portion of a display screen, as shown and described." — the earlier sections correctly record D604305's claim as "…graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof…"
• Figures as printed there: "FIG. 2 is an enlarged view of the shaded region in FIG. 1." — the authoritative text records D604305's FIG. 2 as "a front view of a second embodiment thereof."

Both variants match the style of Apple's D618,677 (also Anzures/Chaudhri, also reexamined in 2013). Conclusion: the PDF's certificate text is very likely spliced/conflated from a sibling Apple design patent. Do not rely on it for D604305's claim text or figure description; rely on the Google Patents record. This is a source-integrity flag, not a change to any finding above.

Minor: the earlier sections correctly state "no abstract exists." That remains true and is worth repeating here, because third-party databases that fabricate an abstract for D604305 will also mangle its citation lists.

Date note: the system date is 2026-09-30 while this prompt says April 26, 2026 — already flagged in the prior section; immaterial to prior art, since the patent expired 2023-11-17 and the § 102 window closed at filing.

8. Explicit uncertainties

1. The front-page reference list is truncated in my retrieval (mid-"D462,07…"). Additional U.S. references, all foreign patent documents, and the entire "Other References" block are unknown to me.
2. Filing dates were not retrieved for any cited reference. This is decisive for R1–R16: without them I cannot confirm any reference is § 102(a)/(e) art at all. The grant date alone is insufficient.
3. No figure-level comparison was performed. All anticipation conclusions are drawn from titles, dates, and classifications, and are provisional.
4. The reexamination prior art (90/012,990) is unretrieved and is likely more relevant than the printed front page.
5. R26 is unidentified (truncation).
6. One "Other References" style observation, offered as analysis, not as cited art: the iPhone home screen was publicly unveiled 2007-01-09, ~5.5 months before this filing. That is inside the § 102(b) grace period, and it is the applicant's own work (not "by others"), so it is not a statutory bar — but contemporaneous third-party publications of that screen before 2007-06-23 would be candidate § 102(a) "printed publication" art. None appears in the retrieved cited-reference list; flagging because it is the highest-value unlisted avenue.

Key sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD604305S1/en; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D604305.html; https://ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IPO-Comments-to-WIPO-on-Designs.pdf; http://marketsandpatents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/power-of-color-strong-design-patents.pdf.

I'll ground this analysis with targeted research on the §103 framework for design patents and on what actually appears in the "Prior Art" fields of this record.

Key finding: the law changed. Let me verify the governing test and dig into the actual prior-art record that exists for this patent.

1. Threshold problem: the page's "Prior Art" section is a forward-citation table, not prior art

Before any §103 combination can be built, I have to flag a contradiction between the tasking and the record.

The prior-art fields that actually appear on the Google Patents record for USD604305 are:

None of the 284 "Cited By" items is prior art to D604305. Every priority date listed in that table is later than 2007-06-23 — the earliest third-party entries are USD709096S1 (priority 2007-09-04, Apple) and US 9,395,857 B2 (priority 2007-12-24, TPK Holding). The same is true of "Families Citing this family," whose earliest entry is USD610160S1 (priority 2008-01-09). Several entries in both lists are D604305's own family members (D644238, D699733, D608366, D659160, D651614…) or Apple's own later filings, which are not "by others."

So the honest conclusion on the tasking is: the citation tables on this page cannot support a §103 rejection of D604305 at all. They are evidence of the opposite — that D604305 became the primary reference against later icon-grid GUIs (note the asterisked rows, which under the page's legend are examiner cites in those later applications, e.g., against Samsung's 2009 mobile-phone display applications).

I therefore went to the actual back-cited art of record — the "References Cited" block on the face of D604305 — which is a completely different set. It is corroborated by three independent reproductions (USPTO.report; Justia; and the N.D. Cal. docket exhibits, ECF 75-9 and 1020). The authoritative text supplied to me omits this block entirely; that is a gap in the provided record, not a contradiction with it.

The genuine §103 candidate pool (from the face of D604305)

Applying the pre-AIA cutoffs that govern this June 23, 2007 filing — §102(b) requires publication/patenting before 2006-06-23; §102(a) requires disclosure by others before the inventors' date of invention — the cleanly qualifying references are:

Caution: roughly twenty further "References Cited" items (D540,340; D544,875; D548,239; D552,620; D555,660; D559,261; D564,530; D565,586; D565,588; D567,171; D568,900; D569,383; D574,009; D574,388; D574,391; D576,171; D579,946; D580,949; D581,424; D585,075; D587,720) bear 2007–2009 issue dates and therefore post-date the §102(b) cutoff. They can only be art under pre-AIA §102(a)/(e) on their filing dates, which I have not verified item by item. Uncertainty flagged. (Transcription variance also exists between sources: "D420,929" vs. "D420,993"; "D564,330" vs. "D564,530"; "Hyut" vs. "Flynt" for D585,075.)

2. The governing obviousness test as of this analysis

This matters more here than in most files, because the law changed after the litigation discussed in the prior sections.

• Rosen–Durling (In re Rosen, 673 F.2d 388 (CCPA 1982); Durling v. Spectrum Furniture, 101 F.3d 100 (Fed. Cir. 1996)) required a "basically the same" primary reference and "so related" secondaries. That was the law in force during Apple v. Samsung.
• LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, No. 21-2348 (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2024) (en banc) overruled Rosen–Durling as "improperly rigid." The Federal Circuit now applies the Graham v. John Deere factors plus KSR: (1) scope and content of the prior art within the knowledge of an ordinary designer; (2) differences between the prior art and the claimed design as a whole; (3) level of ordinary skill ("a designer of ordinary skill who designs articles of the type involved"); (4) secondary considerations. A primary reference is still required, but need not be "basically the same"; secondary references need only be analogous art — prior designs "for the same field of endeavor as the article of manufacture will be analogous," and the court expressly left open whether the "reasonably pertinent" prong applies. There must be "some record-supported reason (without hindsight)" for the modification. The USPTO adopted this by Director's memorandum on May 22, 2024.
• Sources: https://www.wilmerhale.com/.../20240604-federal-circuit-patent-watch ; https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bcc515ae-c8d9-47f7-b189-3647b15cc82e ; https://www.vklaw.com/ImagineThatIPLawBlog/federal-circuits-new-test-for-design-patent-obviousness-will-change-everything ; https://www.loeb.com/zh-hans/insights/publications/2024/06/new-standard-for-assessing-design-patents-replaces-long-standing-test

Net effect for D604305: the challenge is meaningfully easier today than in 2012, because the "basically the same" gateway is gone and analogous art reaches broadly. Note that the crowded field matters under factor (1): the TIPO survey of US GUI design patents recites a dense pre-2007 population (D419,543 bank GUI; D402,283 notepad GUI; D418,826 camera GUI; D485,279 knowledge-map UI; D498,240 data-visualization UI; D500,047 gem-grading GUI; D511,346 network-monitoring GUI; D516,574 mobile-phone GUI; D467,253 medical-device GUI). A crowded field strengthens the analogous-art reach.

3. The claim, decomposed into the features a combination must produce

From FIGS. 1–2 and the written description (cross-referencing, not repeating, the Claim section above):

1. A rectangular display region whose border is broken-line and excluded from the claim.
2. A dark/black field behind the icon array.
3. A uniform matrix of identically-shaped tiles — reported as 16 icons in a 4×4 arrangement (secondary-source figure; not re-verifiable from the authoritative text supplied).
4. Each tile is a rounded square ("roundrect").
5. Each tile bears distinct, bespoke multi-color pictorial artwork; color is part of the file ("The patent file contains at least one drawing executed in color").
6. Uniform gutters/alignment; a bottom dock band of four icons on a visually distinct background.
7. Two embodiments in one claim (FIG. 1 and FIG. 2) — a §103 case must reach both.

The presence of color in the file is a real obstacle for a challenger: the prior art must either disclose the same color impression or make it obvious. That is the point of "Strong Design Patents: The Power of Color" (IPWatchdog, 2013), cited in the earlier section.

4. Candidate §103 combinations

Combination A — the Simon/Graham combination (this is the one actually litigated)

• Primary reference: BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993) — a touchscreen phone whose applications are "arrayed in rows and columns" (calendar, world clock, calculator, notepad, mail, address book) with a four-icon dock on a visually distinct background band. Same field of endeavor (handheld-device GUI), so analogous art.
• Secondary references: (i) an internal Samsung Mobile UX Group "Intelligent Screen Interaction Studies" report (mid-2006) showing a 3×5 grid of rounded squares; (ii) a chart of colorful icon artwork; (iii) optionally D462,076 or D418,826 for icon-set presentation.
• Motivation (non-hindsight): resolution gains let designers place more items in the same footprint; the dock's four icons suggest a four-column grid; a matrix of tiles is the customary launcher convention dating to 1993; artwork-only tiles replace text labels as a legibility/aesthetic improvement. Samsung's expert also invoked Chaudhri's own testimony that "adding icons in the blank row would still yield substantially the same design."
• Source (context): https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/[239768/1356](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=239768-1356)/7.pdf

Fatal defects: (a) The mid-2006 Samsung internal UX report is almost certainly not a "printed publication" — public accessibility is required; an internal corporate study is not §102(a)/(b) art. (b) Simon's icons are text-heavy and monochrome, on a small landscape screen. (c) The claimed color artwork for the individual tiles is nowhere disclosed.

Combination B — icon-set + grid-launcher

• Primary: a pre-2006 icon-set design patent (D295,877; D390,548; D420,993; D441,763).
• Secondary: a pre-2006 grid launcher (Simon; D418,826 camera GUI; D462,076 media GUI; D516,574 phone GUI).
• Motivation: arranging a known icon set in a matrix is the routine way to present icons on a display; a designer of ordinary skill would do so to fill a larger, higher-resolution screen.

Combination C — rounded-square tile shape

• Primary: grid launcher. Secondary: any pre-2006 design showing rounded-square tiles. Motivation: rounded corners are a recognized ergonomic/aesthetic convention and increase perceived tap-target coherence.

Combination D — dock band

• Primary: Simon (four-icon dock, distinct background band). Secondary: a pre-2006 reference showing a persistent bottom band (taskbar/dock). Motivation: a static dock for most-used applications is a known convention; Chaudhri's testimony that the dock remains static while pages scroll supports the design rationale.

5. Why every combination is contestable — the decisive points

1. The closest reference is statutorily excluded. The January 9, 2007 Macworld image is essentially the claimed design. But it is the same inventors' own work, so it can only be §102(b) art — and the §102(b) cutoff for this June 23, 2007 filing is June 23, 2006. Judge Koh so held: "the relevant priority date for the D'305 inventors' own work is one year prior to the date of application of the D'305 Patent: June 23, 2006. The January 2007 image publication was not before the priority date, and therefore is not a prior art reference for the D'305… Samsung's motion for summary judgment of invalidity as to the D'305 Patent is DENIED." (Order, June 29, 2012, No. 11-cv-01846.) Source: http://business.cch.com/ipld/AppleSamsung29June2012CV1846.pdf
   The same cutoff excludes the entire late-2006/early-2007 wave of touchscreen handsets (LG Prada, Samsung F700, etc.) from §102(b), leaving only §102(a) with a pre-invention-date burden.
2. No primary reference in the §102(b)-qualified set shows a dark-field, uniformly-tiled 4×4 grid of roundrect tiles bearing multi-color artwork. Under Rosen–Durling the inquiry ended there; under LKQ the challenger may proceed without "basically the same," but must still supply a record-supported, non-hindsight reason to arrive at the same overall appearance — and the "record" in a design patent is essentially just the drawings.
3. Color. Because the file includes at least one color drawing, color is part of the claimed appearance. Faithful reproduction of sixteen bespoke color artworks is the hardest element to source, and the cumulative effect of many small artwork differences weighs against the challenger.
4. Two embodiments, one claim. A case must reach both FIG. 1 and FIG. 2.
5. Secondary considerations cut against the challenge. The record contains judicially credited copying evidence (the 2012 and 2018 verdicts; the $399M then $533,316,606 awards) — copying is a recognized Graham factor. Apple also adduced the design's commercial success.
6. Reexamination history is often mis-cited. The widely reported examiner rejection in reexamination was of D'677, not D'305; commentary states that, after reexamination, D'305 and D'087 remained the two valid design patents supporting the total-profit award. I found no evidence that D604305 itself was ever reexamined, and my attempt to search that point was cut off by a tool limit — treat this as a search negative, not a registry confirmation. Source: https://www.cardozoaelj.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/35.1-Coughlin.pdf

6. Bottom line

• On the record as presented to me, no §103 combination is available: the page's prior-art citation tables post-date the patent and cannot be prior art.
• On the true record, the only §102(b)-qualified pool is the ~16 pre-June-2006 items cited on the face of D604305 (table in §1). These support the icon-set + grid-launcher, rounded-tile, and dock-band framings, but none discloses a dark-field 4×4 grid of color-artwork roundrect tiles.
• The most aggressive and best-documented theory — Simon (1993) + the Samsung mid-2006 UX study + an icon-artwork collection — was actually litigated and failed, and in my view fails on the merits too, principally because the Samsung study is not a publicly accessible printed publication and because the color artwork remains unsourced.
• Since LKQ (May 2024), the doctrine no longer supplies the "basically the same" and "so related" shields, so a challenger with better pre-2006 art (a color mobile launcher or a color icon-set registration) would have a materially stronger case than Samsung did. On the art I can verify, the §103 case is not made out.

Explicit uncertainties: the 16-icon count and the color content come from secondary sources, not the authoritative figure text; the §102(e) status of the twenty post-2006-06-23 items on the patent face depends on filing dates I did not verify; the public availability of the Samsung UX study is unconfirmed; no reexamination of D604305 was found (search negative); and the prompt's date (April 26, 2026) differs from the system date (2026-09-30) without affecting the LKQ-based analysis.