US D655165

I'll run targeted searches for this exact patent number and check for any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Now let me check for any CAFC 2026 appellate docket activity, plus litigation context.

US D655165 — Identification

Claims — important structural point

D655165 contains exactly one claim, and it is not an "independent claim" in the utility-patent sense. The entire claim text is:

"The ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described."

There are no dependent claims, no claim set, and no separate independent claims to summarize. In a US design patent the single claim is the design claim, and its scope is defined by the seven drawing figures, not by words:

• FIG. 1 — perspective view of a packaging tray
• FIG. 2 — rear elevation view
• FIG. 3 — left elevation view
• FIG. 4 — top plan view
• FIG. 5 — right elevation view
• FIG. 6 — front elevation view
• FIG. 7 — bottom plan view

Plain-language overview: the claim covers the visual appearance of a shallow, multi-compartment tray for holding packaged items (the commercial context per the parent family is packaging for dental/whitening items having a tacky "gummy" surface). Anyone wanting to know what is actually protected must read the drawings; the words add nothing beyond "as shown and described." Because it is a design claim, infringement is judged by the ordinary observer test on the overall ornamental appearance, not by element-by-element claim reading.

Abstract

The record carries the abstract: "Implementations of the present invention include methods, devices, and systems that provide effective packaging items with at least one gummy surface… the package includes inadhesive polymers such that the item can be removeably adhered to a portion of the package," etc.

Uncertainty flag: a design patent normally has no abstract of this kind. This text reads as boilerplate carried over from the parent utility application (US 12/885,729, "Packaging for gummy substratum"), and it describes functional subject matter that is outside the design claim's scope. I would not treat it as legally meaningful claim scope. It appears on FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D655165.html) and Google Patents but not in the printed patent front page as reproduced in the PDF.

CAFC 2026 docket search — no results

I searched for a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming D655165 specifically. I found no authoritative record of any CAFC 2026 appeal, docket entry, opinion, or Rule 36 judgment involving US D655165. Searches returned only unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit/Supreme Court material (e.g., Oasis Tooling v. Siemens Industry Software, Nos. 7,685,545 / 8,266,571 — a §101 case with no connection to this patent). I cannot rule out a sealed or non-indexed docket, but nothing in the accessible record supports a 2026 CAFC proceeding.

What the record does show is district-court enforcement activity by CAO Group, Inc., reported by third-party (primarily Chinese cross-border e-commerce) aggregators, not by primary court records:

• 24-cv-00901 (filed ~Feb. 2, 2024) and 2024-cv-01211 — sealed/"hidden" patent enforcement actions naming Cao Group patents including D655165, reported via Bishop Diehl & Lee.
• 2025-cv-14512 (filed Nov. 16, 2025; TRO granted ~Jan. 8, 2026), Nicholas S. Lee for CAO Group, Inc., asserted primarily on US 10,603,259 (peroxide gel tooth-whitening composition), with D740117, D655163 and D655165 listed as additional asserted design patents.

Caveats on this enforcement information:

• It comes from secondary aggregator blogs (52by.com, maijiazhichi.com, sohu.com, 61tro.com), which are not authoritative court records. I could not confirm docket entries directly.
• Several of those sources describe D655165 as "透明氟塑料" ("transparent fluoroplastic"), which contradicts the patent's own title and claim ("Packaging tray"). Per your instruction to prefer search results over training data where they conflict — but here the conflict is within the search results, and the authoritative patent document controls. The "transparent fluoroplastic" characterization is almost certainly an aggregator error or a mis-mapping to a different CAO product/patent.
• Do not conflate D655165 with the adjacent numbers appearing in the same cases: D655163 (a spray-bottle head design) and D740117 (a later CAO Group packaging tray design, filed Mar. 13, 2014, issued Oct. 6, 2015, which lists D655165 as prior art).

Bottom line

D655165 is a design patent for the ornamental appearance of a packaging tray, filed June 30, 2011, issued March 6, 2012, naming Jensen and Nichols, now held by CAO Group, Inc., and expired as of March 6, 2026 (14-year term). It has one design claim — "the ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described" — so there is no set of independent claims to parse; the drawings are the claim. No 2026 CAFC activity was found for this number.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me dig deeper into the specific case records and check additional litigation databases.

Bottom line

I found no litigation in which U.S. Patent No. D655165 is identified in a case caption, a court order, or a docket entry as an asserted patent. What I did find is a family of "Schedule A" e-commerce infringement campaigns by the patent's owner, CAO Group, Inc. (West Jordan, Utah — the assignee of D655165 per the June 1, 2015 assignments recorded on the patent's face), in the Northern District of Illinois, in which secondary TRO-monitoring commentary says D655165 (together with design patents D740117 and D655163) was among the patents CAO was relying on. Those complaints were filed under seal, and the specifics were publicly redacted, so the design-patent assertion is not directly verifiable from a court document I could reach.

Please treat the "asserted patent" identifications below as attributed secondary reporting, not confirmed docket facts.

Candidate cases involving CAO Group / the D655165 family

Related but different patents (for completeness): CAO Group, Inc. v. Karaka LLC d/b/a The DoubleY Brands, No. 1:24-cv-04903 (N.D. Ill.) — asserts only U.S. 10,603,259 (peroxide gel composition), not D655165.

Verification and reliability caveats

1. No litigation database entry names D655165. I could not retrieve a Unified Patents litigation caselist page, PACER docket, or CourtListener docket in which "D655165" appears as the asserted patent. The matches came from Chinese-language TRO/trademark-monitoring publishers (maijiazhichi.com, 52by.com, amz123.com, kjtro.com, tro101.com, worldtro.com) summarizing sealed Illinois Schedule A complaints. Their identification of D655165 is editorial inference in at least one instance — one article explicitly hedges ("查询到有可能是该公司名下这三个外观专利" = "it is possible the case involves these three design patents").
2. The successful merits rulings rest on utility patents, not D655165. The $1,003,846.15-per-defendant default judgment in 1:24-cv-00901 and the pleadings in 1:24-cv-01211 are grounded in 10,603,259 / 10,646,419 / 11,219,582. I found no order, claim construction, injunction, or damages award that adjudicates D655165.
3. The blogs misdescribe the patent. Multiple sources label D655165 "透明氟塑料" ("transparent fluoroplastic") — i.e., a material. Per the authoritative patent text, D655165 is a design patent titled "Packaging tray," filed June 30, 2011, granted March 6, 2012, inventors Steven D. Jensen and Jack Ronald Nichols, sole claim: "The ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described." That mislabeling is a strong signal the reporting is unreliable as to which IP rights were actually pleaded.
4. Term/expiry note relevant to any live dispute: the patent's own record lists an anticipated expiration of March 6, 2026, and legal status "Expired – Lifetime." As of today (April 26, 2026) the patent term has run. Any claim premised on D655165 would therefore be limited to past infringement for conduct occurring before that date; it cannot support prospective injunctive relief against future sales.
5. No appellate activity found. I found no CAFC appeal, IPR/PGR, or district court judgment addressing D655165, and no case naming a defendant other than anonymous Schedule A e-commerce sellers.

Recommended next steps to convert this to ground truth

• Pull the unsealed complaints/Schedule A exhibits in 1:25-cv-14512 (N.D. Ill.) — Judge Seeger expressly denied the motion to seal on 1/5/2026 and ordered the clerk to unseal Dkt. 5, citing Zorro Productions v. Schedule A. That docket is therefore the best candidate for a document that actually names D655165.
• For 1:24-cv-00901, check the Amended Complaint and Amended Schedule A, which the court ordered unsealed on 3/27/2024.
• Confirm on USPTO PatentCenter / Assignment that Cao Group, Inc. holds record title (the June 1, 2015 assignments from Jensen and Nichols are recorded).

Summary: No litigation is confirmed in which U.S. D655165 is the identified asserted patent. The closest matches are three Northern District of Illinois Schedule A design/utility campaigns by CAO Group, Inc. — Nos. 1:24-cv-00901 (default judgment, terminated 7/1/2024), 1:24-cv-01211 (terminated 8/6/2025, utility patents only), and 1:25-cv-14512 (open as of today, TRO/preliminary injunction, default proceedings pending) — with D655165 identified as a possibly-asserted design patent only in secondary commentary, not in any court document I could retrieve.

I'll verify the structured data before writing anything, since the ODP block reports zero proceedings and that's a strong claim worth double-checking.

The two initial searches came back clean, but I want to check the legal premise (design patents and AIA trial eligibility) and the litigation/reexam backdrop before writing.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US D655165: zero. The canonical ODP block supplied in the prompt returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent, and independent web searches for "D655165" + IPR/PTAB produced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal — the only "D655165" hits are the patent itself, citation lists in later Apple/Printpack/Impossible Foods design patents, and Chinese-language TRO trackers describing CAO Group's district-court campaigns. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

Defensive posture: the patent has never been tested at the Board — so there is no IPR estoppel, no cancellation record, and no Board finding to borrow. But that absence is largely academic here, because the patent's own status line reads verbatim "Expired - Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of 2026-03-06. As of today (2026-09-28) D655165 has been lapsed for roughly seven months. A defendant's real question is not "has it survived IPRs" but "can anyone still collect past damages on it," and the answer is a narrow six-year lookback window that closed on 2026-03-06 (35 U.S.C. § 286). Note also that a design patent carries only one claim — the prompt's "claims 1–5 canceled" framing cannot apply to this patent, and no proceeding exists to cancel anything.

No proceedings to itemize — and why

The per-proceeding template (petitioner, judge panel, grounds, institution, FWD, settlement, appeal) has nothing to populate. Instead, here is the honest account of what I checked, what the law permits, and the nearest analogues — clearly labeled as proceedings on other patents, not this one.

Coverage caveat

The ODP list is authoritative as of its most recent ingest, and it is empty. My searches surfaced nothing older or newer that ODP might have missed. Two limits on that conclusion, stated plainly:

1. I cannot rule out an unindexed or very recently filed petition. Post-expiration IPR petitions are rare but not impossible, so this is a residual risk rather than a certainty.
2. Practical probability is low: the patent lapsed 2026-03-06, and the strongest driver of IPR filings — a live assertion seeking prospective relief — no longer exists.

Was an AIA trial even legally available?

This matters because a defendant's first instinct is often "design patents can't be IPR'd." That instinct is wrong, and I corrected it against the record:

• IPR is available for design patents. The Board has adjudicated design-patent IPR petitions on the merits, applying the Rosen/Durling primary-reference and "designer of ordinary skill" framework to a claim reciting "[t]he ornamental design for … as shown and described." See the Board's decision denying institution in IPR2014-00542 (vehicle headlamp design patent), https://ptabtrialblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/IPR2014-00542-Decision-Denying-Institution-20140905.pdf, and the expert declaration in IPR2024-00525 (D927,161, footwear), https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00525/Next_Step_Group_Inc/. Nothing in § 311 is limited to utility patents.
• PGR would have been unavailable for this patent regardless: PGR reaches only patents subject to first-inventor-to-file, i.e., claims with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. D655165 carries a priority date of 2009-09-18 and was filed 2011-06-30. Design patents are PGR-eligible when post-AIA (see PGR2016-00021, Galaxia Electronics v. Revolution Display, on D736,750, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/), but that door was closed here by chronology.
• CBM is inapplicable — the patent claims an ornamental tray appearance, not a data-processing method used in financial services, and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 in any event.

So: IPR was available and simply never filed. For a defendant today it is also nearly pointless, since an expired patent supports no prospective relief and the Board's existing body of design-patent practice adds nothing a district court can't do directly.

What is on file in the family (context, not proceedings)

I verified the '988 family status only from the Google Patents family data in the prompt and a Justia/patents.google.com pass; I did not confirm '988's maintenance-fee history or PTA, and I found no PTAB proceeding against it — but absence of evidence in my searches is not the same as a clean ODP pull. Confirm via PTAB E2E before relying on it.

Closest analogues I did find (other patents — cite, don't misattribute)

• IPR2014-00542 — design-patent IPR petition, institution denied on the merits; panel faulted the petitioner's Rosen analysis for ignoring claimed features and differences in shape/position. https://ptabtrialblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/IPR2014-00542-Decision-Denying-Institution-20140905.pdf
• PGR2016-00021 — Galaxia Electronics Co. v. Revolution Display, LLC, design patent D736,750; institution denied, including on ornamentality and on an inventorship theory the panel noted should have been pleaded under § 171 rather than § 101. (Design patents are PGR-eligible when post-AIA.)
• IPR2024-00525 — pending/recent design-patent IPR (D927,161) confirming the Board's continued handling of design claims.

These are useful for framework, not for outcome: none involves D655165, CAO Group, or a packaging tray.

Strategic summary

Claim status. D655165 has exactly one claim — "[t]he ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described" — and it is UNTESTED, not canceled. There is no cancellation record, no certificate, and no Board finding, so any statement that "claims 1–5 are dead" would be fabrication. The operative fact is different and stronger for a defendant: the claim is expired as of 2026-03-06. Because it is unamended and never reexamined, its scope remains as issued, and its validity can still be litigated defensively for past-damages purposes — but it cannot support an injunction, and post-2026-03-06 conduct is simply non-infringing.

Estoppel landscape. There is no estoppel on this patent — § 315(e)(2) estoppel only arises from a petitioner that reached a Final Written Decision, and no one did. Every ground a defendant might raise is fully available: § 102/§ 103 in district court under the Rosen/Durling/High Point Design ordinary-designer framework, plus the ordinary-observer infringement test (Gorham), and ex parte reexamination under § 302 as a parallel track. One practical constraint if you ever do file an IPR (on the '988 sibling, or on this patent for past-damages purposes): the examiner already considered a dense tray/pan field — D507451 "Pancake-muffin baking pan with oblong wells," D518330 "Cookie pan," D523751 "Aluminum foil tray," D255413 "Broiler pan insert," D424941 "Core box," D633388 (Apple "Packaging") — so § 325(d) discretion and the Advanced Bionics / Becton Dickinson factors will demand art that is not substantially the same as what's of record. Assume a petition built on existing-of-record pan/tray references is institution-denial bait.

Pattern signals. CAO Group is a repeat, sophisticated PTAB player on offense — it petitioned for IPR of Procter & Gamble's US 6,045,811 and US 5,989,569 (S.D. Ohio Case No. 1:13-cv-00337-TSB), and its LED patents were themselves the target of OSRAM Sylvania ex parte reexam requests (90/012,957, 95/002,324). So the company knows how the Board works, and its decision not to see IPRs filed against the packaging trays is not naivety on its part. The likely reason is structural: D655165 has been asserted primarily in sealed "Schedule A" e-commerce cases — 2024-cv-00901 (filed 2024-02-02, Bishop Diehl & Lee), 2024-cv-01211 (filed 2024-02-12, same firm), and 2025-cv-14512 (filed 2025-11-16, Nicholas S. Lee; TRO reported granted 2026-01-08), which bundle D655165 with D655163 and D740117 and with utility patents US 10,603,259 / 10,646,419 / 11,219,582. That posture produces default judgments and small settlements, not the resourced IPR petitioners who create Board precedent. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears anywhere in the chain. Caveat: the 2024/2025 case details above come from Chinese-language TRO-tracking sites (61tro.com, 52by.com, worldtro.com) rather than from PACER, so verify docket numbers, filing dates, and the '14512 TRO grant directly before quoting them.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not over-index on the PTAB. State it plainly in any opinion letter: no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed on US D655165. There is no FWD to quote, no claim-cancellation disposition to cite, and no estoppel to exploit. A demand letter that implies otherwise is bluffing about the wrong forum.
2. Lead with expiration. The patent's own legal-status line reads "Expired - Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2026-03-06 (14 years from the 2012-03-06 grant, per 35 U.S.C. § 173; no maintenance fees apply to design patents). Any damages theory is capped at that date and further bounded by the § 286 six-year lookback from the complaint date (e.g., a 2025-11-16 complaint reaches back only to 2019-11-16).
3. Then attack the remaining family exposure. If the assertion package includes US 9,211,988 B2, that utility patent is the one with term left (nominally to ~2030-09-20) and is IPR-eligible with zero estoppel against any petitioner. Before filing, (a) pull the ODP/PTAB E2E record for '988 to confirm no proceedings, (b) confirm maintenance fees and any PTA, and (c) audit whether your art is substantially the same as the pan/tray references already of record.
4. If an active Schedule A case exists against you, the June-2026-docketed milestones template doesn't apply (there is no trial). Focus instead on (a) § 286 windowing, (b) the expired-patent bar to injunctive relief, and (c) a § 302 ex parte reexamination of D655165 if you need an administrative validity ruling on the record — noting that a lapsed patent cannot be amended, which sharpens the requester's leverage.
5. Verify one priority oddity. Google Patents lists D655165 as a "Continuation" of US 12/885,729 with a 2009-09-18 priority date. If the design patent's specification does not support that benefit claim, the effective § 102/§ 103 date shifts — and because D655165's cited prior art already includes mid-1970s through 2006 pans and trays, the priority date may be load-bearing for validity. I flag this as unverified and worth a file-history pull; do not assert it as a defect without checking the application papers.

Nothing in this section is a substitute for the authoritative records. Before filing or sending anything, pull D655165 from Google Patents, the PTAB E2E / PATS portal, and PACER — no proceeding number has been invented here, and none should be cited that isn't in those systems.

I'll research the ownership chain before writing. Starting with parallel searches.

Good — CAO Group is an operating dental-products company that has sued on this patent. Now let me pin down the recorded assignment details.

Ownership reconstruction — US D655165 (Packaging tray)

Scope note up front: the two authoritative sources I could actually reach — Google Patents' legal-events table and the FPO/Justia bibliographic records — confirm that ownership changed once, in 2015, from the two named inventors to CAO Group, Inc. They do not expose reel/frame numbers or a recording correspondent. I was unable to load the USPTO Assignment Center record itself (assignment.uspto.gov / assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) within this session, so where the reel/frame is unknown I say so rather than guess. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search D655165) and cross-check the legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/USD655165/en.

Inventors

Sources: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D655165.html (residences, "Attorney, Agent or Firm: CAO Group, Inc. (West Jordan, UT, US)"); https://patents.justia.com/inventor/jack-nichols; https://www.patentleaderboard.com/ultradent-products/steven-d-jensen/[301411](/patent/301411).

Unusual patterns — checked and not found:

• No inventor-departure pattern. Both inventors remained tied to CAO Group years after filing. Justia lists Nichols on CAO Group handpiece applications filed as late as 2014-09-02; Jensen is a CAO Group inventor-of-record into the 2020s (e.g., US 12,396,823; US 2026/0049861). This is the opposite of the pre-fire-sale signature.
• One genuine anomaly: the ownership gap. D655165 issued with no assignee on the face — FPO lists the assignees as "JENSEN STEVEN D.; NICHOLS JACK RONALD," i.e., the two individuals. Yet prosecution was conducted through CAO Group's own in-house correspondence. The application was filed 2011-06-30 and no assignment was recorded until 2015-06-01, a ~4-year gap. That reads as an unrecorded/uncorrected employment obligation being formalized, not as an arm's-length transfer — but I cannot confirm the conveyance type from the sources available, so treat the characterization as unconfirmed while the dates stand.
• Note also that Jensen carries a dual portfolio footprint (patents associated with both CAO Group and Ultradent Products). Nothing in this chain turns on that; Ultradent is not in D655165's assignment history.

Original assignee

At issue: the patent named no corporate assignee. The 29/396,528 application issued on 2012-03-06 with Steven D. Jensen and Jack Ronald Nichols as the owners (FPO "Assignee" field).

Current assignee: CAO Group, Inc., 4628 W Skyhawk Drive, West Jordan, UT 84084 — per the Google Patents legal events recording two 2015-06-01 assignments into CAO Group, one from each inventor.

• Line of business: operating dental / medical device manufacturer, founded 2000 by Dr. Densen Cao. CAO describes a 60,000 sq ft FDA-registered, ISO-certified facility outside Salt Lake City, 160+ patents, and a China joint-venture manufacturing arm (https://caogroup.com/pages/about-cao-group). Core products: LED curing lights, diode lasers, dental materials, and the Sheer White! professional whitening strip line.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. D655165 claims "the ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described," and the disclosure (Google Patents abstract) is expressly about packaging an item with a gummy surface without a liner — i.e., the peel-and-place carrier tray for gel-bearing whitening strips. CAO sells exactly that: the Sheer White! whitening strip (SheerFilm® technology), distributed through dental professional channels (secondary reporting: https://www.sohu.com/a/885023363_122010985; https://maijiazhichi.com/archives/66470).
• Current status: operating. No bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution record surfaced. I found no evidence of a Chapter 7/11 proceeding for CAO Group.

Assignment timeline

Recorded post-issuance assignments: 1 event, 2 records, 0 reel/frame numbers surfaced by the accessible sources. Both entries are dated 2015-06-01 in the Google Patents legal-events table, and both designate CAO GROUP, INC. as assignee. Google Patents splits multi-assignor instruments by assignor, so these two entries very likely represent a single assignment instrument with two assignors (Jensen and Nichols) rather than two sequential transfers — I flag the ambiguity because it matters for signal #4.

• Execution date: not shown in the consulted sources / recorded 2015-06-01 — Reel not retrieved (Assignment Center lookup required)

  • Conveyance: rendered as "reassignment" in Google Patents; underlying type (Assignment vs. Corrective Assignment) not confirmed
  • Assignor: NICHOLS, JACK RONALD
  • Assignee: CAO GROUP, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — the Assignment Center correspondent field is the one to capture on verification. Nearest available datum for this patent: the prosecution firm of record on D655165 was CAO Group, Inc., in-house (West Jordan, UT), and CAO's practice is to use its own General Counsel's office as the correspondence address (CAO Group filings show Kelly Preece, General Counsel, CAO Group, Inc., 4628 W Skyhawk Drive, West Jordan, UT 84084, with notification copies to kelly.preece@caogroup.com and jim.farmer@caogroup.com). That is a prosecution correspondent, not an assignment correspondent — do not conflate. Because the same in-house identity covers only this one transfer event, it is not a repeat-correspondent finding.
  • Context: internal formalization of ownership — inventors to their operating employer, ~4 years post-filing and ~3 years post-grant.

• Execution date: not shown / recorded 2015-06-01 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: as above — "reassignment"; type not confirmed
  • Assignor: JENSEN, STEVEN D.
  • Assignee: CAO GROUP, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (see immediately above; same caveat)
  • Context: companion record to the Nichols entry — most likely the same instrument, closed the individual-ownership gap on the face of the patent.

Nothing after 2015. There is no subsequent assignment, security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, or release in the accessible record. CAO Group has owned D655165 continuously since 2015-06-01 and asserted it in its own name.

Relevant chronology that is not an assignment but shapes the chain:

• 2009-09-18 — provisional priority (US 61/276,993); second provisional 2010-03-30 (US 61/319,124).
• 2010-09-20 — parent utility application 12/885,729 filed, "Packaging for gummy substratum," which became US 9,211,988 B2 (2015-12-15). D655165 is listed as a continuation of 12/885,729 — the design was carved out of the copending utility.
• 2011-06-30 — design application 29/396,528 filed.
• 2012-03-06 — D655165 granted.
• 2015-06-01 — inventors assign to CAO Group (the two records above).
• 2014-03-13 / 2015-10-06 — later, related CAO design US D740117 S, also "Packaging tray," filed by CAO Group with the corporate assignee named. D740117 cites D655165. This shows CAO's design-patent packaging family was corporate-owned from the start going forward.
• 2026-03-06 — anticipated expiration. D655165 is expired as of today (2026-09-28), Google Patents status "Expired - Lifetime."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US D655165
    2009 : Priority provisional filed
    2010 : Parent utility application filed
    2011 : Design application filed
         : No assignee recorded
    2012 : D655165 granted to Jensen and Nichols
    2015 : Assigned to CAO Group Inc
    2024 : CAO Group asserts D655165
    2026 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in the chain. The sole assignee is CAO Group, Inc. (2015-06-01 records), a named operating manufacturer with a 60,000 sq ft FDA-registered plant and a public product line (caogroup.com). No registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose LLC, no Delaware/Texas incorporation tell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. CAO Group does not match the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). One honest caveat, and it cuts the other way from the naming heuristic: CAO Group is an unusually high-volume filer of sealed design-patent/TRO cases against Amazon-style resellers — reported as 24-cv-00901, 24-cv-01211 (filed 2024-02-12, Bishop Diehl & Lee, Ltd.), 25-cv-04054 (filed 2025-04-15, Dickinson Wright PLLC), and 25-cv-14512 (filed 2025-11-16, TRO reported granted 2026-01-08, Nicholas S. Lee / Bishop Diehl & Lee). D655165 is named in these campaigns alongside D655163 and D740117. High-frequency-plaintiff status is real here, but the plaintiff is the manufacturer of the competing product, not a licensing vehicle — so the RPX/Unified "high-frequency plaintiff" flag is not equivalent to an NPE flag. I could not directly query the RPX Insurance or Unified Patents asserter directories in this session; that cross-check remains unclear/unverified. Sources: https://www.sohu.com/a/760885266_100190190; https://www.sohu.com/a/885023363_122010985; https://maijiazhichi.com/archives/66470.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. The chain contains a single transfer event, so there is nothing to recur. Assignment correspondents were not retrievable for either 2015-06-01 record. Separately: the prosecution correspondent of record for D655165 was CAO Group's own in-house office (FPO: "Attorney, Agent, or Firm — CAO Group, Inc., West Jordan, UT"), which is consistent with the inventors being CAO personnel, but a single in-house appearance on a single instrument is not the recurrence signal. The recurring names in this story are litigation counsel (Bishop Diehl & Lee / Nicholas S. Lee across the 2024 and 2025 campaigns; Dickinson Wright in 25-cv-04054) — I record that as an observation, not a finding, because plaintiff-side enforcement counsel recurrence is not the assignment-correspondent tell the analysis asks for.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One dated event (2015-06-01), two assignor-split records, same assignee, no onward transfer. Even reading the pair as two sequential records rather than one instrument, the chain is two links to a single end-point, not a cascade through chained LLCs in under 24 months. Zero common-address or common-principal LLC pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only transfer (2015-06-01) predates the earliest observed assertion (2024) by roughly nine years. Nothing was arranged to set venue or create standing shortly before suit; CAO's standing has been of record since 2015, and the patent was asserted long after the assignment was recorded.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy proceeding, trustee sale, or 363 sale is associated with CAO Group or with either inventor. Assignments here run from individuals to an operating company, the reverse of a fire-sale direction. (Absence of a filing is my finding from the sources reached; I cannot prove a negative for all jurisdictions.)

7. Privateering — not present. CAO Group is the named plaintiff in every identified suit (24-cv-00901, 24-cv-01211, 25-cv-04054, 25-cv-14512) and retains ownership; no NPE licensee or exclusive-licensee shell appears. There is no operating-company-to-NPE transfer to analyze, and no SEC-disclosed privateering arrangement is implicated (CAO is privately held).

8. Defensive aggregator — not present, but practically neutralized. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN — it terminates at CAO Group. However, D655165 expired on 2026-03-06 (14 years from the 2012-03-06 grant; Google Patents "Expired - Lifetime"). As of today it is unassertable going forward, even though the pre-expiry enforcement campaign was real.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

CAO Group, Inc. is the sole and current owner of D655165 by virtue of the 2015-06-01 assignments from the two named inventors (Google Patents legal events; reel/frame not retrievable in this session), and it is a genuine operating dental-products manufacturer in West Jordan, Utah that ships the embodying product — the Sheer White! whitening strip and its gummy-surface packaging tray. It asserts the patent in its own name as plaintiff (24-cv-00901, 24-cv-01211 filed 2024-02-12, 25-cv-04054 filed 2025-04-15, 25-cv-14512 filed 2025-11-16) rather than through any licensing shell, and all eight NPE signals are absent — the only soft data point is CAO's unusually high volume of TRO-style marketplace suits, which is anti-counterfeiting/competitor enforcement by a product company, not NPE conduct. The practical postscript is that the patent lapsed on 2026-03-06, so whatever assertion value the chain carried ended this year.

Verification links: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search D655165) · https://patents.google.com/patent/USD655165/en (legal events) · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D655165.html (original assignees, firm of record)

Gaps to close on the next pass (stated as gaps, not findings): (a) the reel/frame and execution dates for the two 2015-06-01 records; (b) the recorded conveyance type — plain Assignment vs. Corrective Assignment — which determines whether the 2011–2015 gap was an unrecorded employment obligation or a true transfer; (c) the assignment correspondent of record, to run the repeat-correspondent test properly; (d) a direct RPX/Unified asserter-directory check on CAO Group, which I could not complete here.

I'll ground this in live searches before analyzing. Note upfront: D655165 is a design patent with exactly one claim — "The ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described." That structural fact drives the entire § 102 analysis below.

I have the front-page reference list now. Let me verify several of the cited references directly, since the Google Patents wrapper in the provided text listed only 11 citations while the printed front page (per FPO/USPTO.report and the actual PDF) lists 16.

Prior‑Art Analysis — U.S. Design Patent No. D655165

1. Identification of the patent (literal reading of the record)

Two record corrections you should carry forward:

1. The Google Patents wrapper understates the citation list. The version of the page supplied to me shows "Citations (11)." The printed front page (Box 56) of D655165 — as reproduced in the granted PDF, FreePatentsOnline, and uspto.report — actually lists sixteen (16) references. The wrapper omits D157,115 (Zumpe), D202,529 (Rosebrook), D219,645 (Rabe), D223,145 (Bloch), and D226,775 (Jones). The analysis below uses the 16‑reference front page, which is the authoritative examiner citation list.
2. No live USPTO PatentCenter/Dossier page was retrievable through my searches; the record below is grounded in patents.google.com/patent/USD655165, freepatentsonline.com/D655165.html, uspto.report/patent/grant/D655165, and the granted PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/46/98/ef/98742e5d7c9b38/USD655165.pdf. Treat this as a search‑derived rather than a PatentCenter‑verified record.

2. Governing standard — why the §102 question is narrow here

• There is only one claim. A design patent has a single claim, and D655165's is "the ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described." Every prior‑art question below therefore reduces to: does a single reference disclose a design substantially similar in overall appearance to the design of D655165's Figures 1–7? (compare International Seaway Trading Corp. v. Walgreens Corp., 589 F.3d 1233 (Fed. Cir. 2009); Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc., 543 F.3d 665 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc)). There is no claim 2 to attack, no doctrine of equivalents broadening at the anticipation stage, and no element‑by‑element "all elements in a single reference" test in the utility sense.
• Two‑way test for anticipation of a design: the reference must (a) be analogous art (same field of endeavor, or reasonably pertinent to the problem the design addresses), and (b) be substantially similar in overall appearance to the claimed design. Same‑class references (D9/456) satisfy (a) almost automatically; different‑class art (e.g., D7/357 cookware, 206/… containers) satisfies (a) only if the tray function is the point of similarity.
• Which §102 applies: the application was filed June 30, 2011 — pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs. All 16 references issue from before the March 16, 2013 AIA change, so no §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) analysis applies.
• Critical date: via the §120 continuation of 12/885,729, the effective date is at latest September 18, 2009. Fifteen of the sixteen references pre‑date that date and are §102(b) art (patent or printed publication more than one year before the critical date). The sixteenth — D633,388 — issued after the critical date and must be analyzed under §102(e) (patent granted on an application filed before the applicant's invention date).
• I cannot see the drawings. My assessment of "substantially similar in overall appearance" is necessarily inferential, based on the cited class, the reference titles, and the abstract of the parent utility application (US 9,211,988: a tray for items having a "gummy surface," with well/recess structure and "inadhesive polymers" so the article adheres to a portion of the package). Any single‑reference anticipation conclusion would require a side‑by‑side visual comparison of the reference figures against D655165 FIGS. 1–7. I flag that limitation rather than assert a visual match I cannot verify.

3. The complete cited prior art (Box 56, D655165 front page)

3.1 Tier 1 — same class (D9/456) or directly tray/pan‑recess art; the only realistic §102 candidates

3.2 Tier 2 — utility references cited by the examiner (compartmented trays/containers)

3.3 Note on the two remaining printed‑page numbers

Two of the sixteen front‑page citations have no published title in the record I retrieved:

• US D202,529 S — Rosebrook (Oct. 1965), cited class D15/90.
• US D219,645 S — Rabe (Jan. 1971), cited class D7/555.
• US D226,775 S — Jones (Apr. 1973), cited class D7/359.

These are the oldest and most remotely classified references. On the face of the record they are the least likely to anticipate the sole claimed design; the D15 and D7 classes make the analogous‑art argument weak, and their 1965–1973 drawing idioms are far from a modern thermoformed packaging tray. I cannot rank their visual similarity without their figures.

4. Bottom‑line ranking

1. D523,751 (Vetrano, aluminum foil tray) — same class D9/456, §102(b), cleanest single‑reference anticipation candidate for claim 1.
2. D424,941 (Boutour, core box) — same class D9/456, §102(b).
3. D633,388 (Andre, Apple "Packaging") — same class, §102(e) only, ledger‑clearing requirement.
4. D507,451 (Land, multi‑well baking pan) — visually apt but carries an analogy burden (D7/357).
5. US 5,040,678 (Lenmark, biological sample transport container) — best utility‑reference candidate; multi‑well packaging tray.
6. Everything else (D518,330; D255,413; D223,145; D157,115; D202,529; D219,645; D226,775; US 4,387,804; US 7,000,769; US 2006/0086639; US 1,979,902) — cited of record, but each faces a material §102(b)/analogous‑art or visual‑distance problem.

Which claim is implicated: only claim 1 — the single and only claim of D655165. There is no other claim for any of these references to reach. Notably, the examiner cited all sixteen references and still allowed the single claim, i.e., the Office did not find any of them to be a single‑reference anticipation of the claimed overall appearance; they were cited as background/individual features in a crowded design field (D9/456).

5. Related matter — not prior art

• US D740,117 S — Nichols, Jack R., et al. "Packaging tray," CAO Group, Inc., filed March 13, 2014, granted October 6, 2015. Same title, same assignee, and it cites D655165. Its filing date (2014‑03‑13) is after D655165's, so it is not prior art to D655165 (it is a later same‑owner design).
• US 9,211,988 B2 is the parent utility application (12/885,729) in the same family; a family member is not §102 art against D655165.

6. Caveats you should attach to this opinion

1. Visual comparison is unresolved. Anticipation of a design claim is a pictures‑to‑pictures question. I ranked by class, title, and §102 basis, not by an actual figure overlay — I did not render FIGS. 1–7 of D655165 against the candidates' figures. No conclusion above should be quoted as a firm anticipation holding without that side‑by‑side.
2. Titles are literal. Several numbers carry no title in the printed record (Rabe, Bloch, Jones, Zumpe, Rosebrook); I did not substitute presumed titles.
3. D633,388's "§102(e)" label is a watch item — should anyone contest it, the §102(e) status of a design‑patent reference and its as‑of date must be verified.
4. One search hit (a Chinese‑language article, sohu.com) reports Cao Group asserting "US D655165" (described there as "PACKING TRAY") in a 2024 action, case no. 2024‑cv‑01211. I could not verify this against a court docket, and I flag it as low confidence — but note that asserted design patents in a crowded D9/456 field are exactly where the Tier 1 references above become the invalidity defense set.

I'll ground this in the record's citation list and verify a few reference details before analyzing.

Key development: the governing test changed. Let me confirm the current framework and check several cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Design Patent D655165 ("Packaging tray")

Scope of this analysis: claim 1 (the only claim) reads: "The ornamental design for a packaging tray, as shown and described." All reliance is on the seven drawing figures (FIG. 1 perspective; FIGS. 2–6 elevation views; FIG. 4 top plan; FIG. 7 bottom plan) per the patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/USD655165/en and the grant PDF at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/46/98/ef/98742e5d7c9b38/USD655165.pdf.

Threshold caveat (stated up front, per instructions): I do not have visual access to the drawing sheets. The analysis below is built from the title, the figure schedule, the abstract/prosecution family (US 12/885,729 → US 9,211,988, "Packaging for gummy substratum"), and the examiner's own classification and citation record. Nothing below should be treated as a substitute for a side-by-side visual comparison of the D'165 figures against the reference figures — that comparison is the whole case in a design obviousness dispute. Confidence is therefore moderate for the legal framework, low-to-moderate for the specific reference-vs-figure mappings.

1. Legal framework (note: the old test no longer governs)

The historical Rosen–Durling test (requiring a primary reference "basically the same" as the claimed design, and secondary references "so related" to it) was overruled en banc in LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2024). Design obviousness now proceeds under the flexible Graham factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art within the knowledge of an ordinary designer in the field; (2) differences between the prior art designs and the design claim, judged on overall visual appearance; (3) the level of ordinary skill (a designer of ordinary skill in the pertinent field); and (4) whether an ordinary designer would have been motivated to modify the prior art to create the same overall visual appearance, with secondary considerations still available. See USPTO Director's memorandum of May 22, 2024, https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/updated_obviousness_determination_designs_22may2024.pdf.

Two post-LKQ refinements matter here:

• A primary reference is still expected ("something in existence," visually similar to the claim — not a jumble of selected features), and the motivation must be record-supported and non-hindsight; the greater the visual gap, the heavier the challenger's burden. Dynamite Marketing, Inc. v. The WowLine, Inc. (Fed. Cir. late 2025), discussed at https://webiis08.mondaq.com/unitedstates/patent/[1768700](/patent/1768700)/.
• Conclusory "these differences are de minimis / a designer could just change it" arguments have been rejected post-LKQ. Diode Dynamics v. 5DLight (C.D. Cal. 2025); A&A Global Imports v. Lerman Container (PTAB 2025), both summarized at https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/step-into-ip-blog/two-years-after-lkq-how-courts-are-applying-the-new-design-patent-obviousness-framework.html.

Priority date. D'165 was filed 2011-06-30 as a continuation of 12/885,729 (filed 2010-09-20), claiming priority to 2009-09-18 (provisional 61/276,993). Every reference below was filed or published before 2009-09-18 — even before 2011-06-30 — so the challenge does not depend on which priority date is chosen.

2. The prior art of record ("Prior Art" section of the D'165 page)

Two record facts are unusually helpful to a § 103 challenger and should be foregrounded:

1. Two references are classified by the examiner in D9/456 — the same class as the claimed design (D 424,941 "Core box" and D 523,751 "Aluminum foil tray"). Under LKQ's analogous-art framing, this is near-dispositive evidence that these are prior art in the same field of endeavor that an ordinary designer of packaging trays would consult.
2. Citation-chain overlap. USD 507,451 (Land) itself cites US 1,979,902 (Potter) and USD 255,413 (Alexander) — two of the very references cited on the D'165 face. See https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D507451.html. This shows the same pan/tray prior art has been treated as relevant to recessed-well articles by examiners in this art, which is concrete support for "an ordinary designer would look to these."

Discrepancy to flag: the grant PDF's reference list appears to include additional items not in the Google Patents "Patent Citations (11)" table — e.g., D 219,645 S (Bloch), classified D9/456, plus D 157,115, D 202,529, and D 226,775. If confirmed, D 219,645 is another same-class reference and should be added to any formal invalidity contention. I have not independently verified that listing beyond the PDF extract.

3. Graham Factor 1 — Scope and content / choice of primary reference

Field of endeavor: shallow, rimmed trays/containers with one or more recessed receptacles for holding discrete articles — the ordinary designer here is a designer of thermoformed packaging trays, blister-card trays, pill/tablet trays, sample-transport trays, and (relevantly) compartmented pans. The D'165 abstract (packaging items having a "gummy surface" without a liner, using "inadhesive polymers") and the parent family (US 9,211,988) confirm the article is a small-article packaging tray, consistent with CPC classes B65D 75/327, B65D 75/367 and B65D 25/10 on the record.

Best candidates for a primary reference (in descending order of usefulness):

1. USD 633,388 S (Apple, "Packaging," filed 2007-06-25) — same article-of-manufacture category (packaging tray/insert), rectangular shallow tray form. Best "primary reference" for a § 103 theory because its overall visual category matches the claim.
2. USD 507,451 S1 (Land, oblong wells pan) — an existing, single, unitary tray with a row/array of oblong recessed wells and a perimeter rim; the closest analogue to the dominant visual feature one would expect in a "recessed-well" packaging tray. Its examination history (D9/456-classed references) shows it belongs to the same design search field.
3. USD 424,941 S (Boutour, "Core box") and USD 523,751 S1 (Vetrano, "Aluminum foil tray") — both in the exact claimed class D9/456; suitable primary references for tray-with-recess morphology and for rim/flange treatment.
4. US 2006/0086639 A1 (Priebe, pill fill tray) and US 5,040,678 A (Lennark, sample transport container) — tray-plus-array-of-receptacles articles; useful as primaries where the claimed design's dominant feature is the well array.

I would not lead with US 1,979,902 (shelf), US 4,387,804 (folded paperboard pill/cup package, whose disclosure is predominantly fold lines, blisters and flaps rather than tray geometry — see https://patents.google.com/patent/US4387804), or US 7,000,769 (blister package, 206/534). Those are better used as secondary references.

4. Graham Factor 2 — Differences

Without the drawings I can only state the categories of difference that must be addressed, and they should be addressed on overall visual appearance, not feature-by-feature:

• Tray footprint and proportions — lid-less open tray vs. references that are pans (thicker sidewalls, nesting lips) or closed packages (blister/board laminates).
• Number, shape, depth, and arrangement of wells — a single row vs. a 2×N matrix; round vs. oblong; uniform vs. varied depth.
• Rim/flange geometry — flat perimeter flange (typical of peel-seal packaging) vs. rolled/decorated pan edges.
• Bottom structure (FIG. 7) — any ribs, feet, or offsets visible from beneath, which the cited pans and the Apple packaging reference would not necessarily show.
• Absence of any unclaimed matter — the D'165 text uses no broken-line/phantom-line convention, so all illustrated lines are claimed. This cuts against a challenger who wants to dismiss surface details as non-limiting, but it also means the claim's scope is whatever the figures actually show.

The differences are likely to be in proportion, well count/arrangement, and flange profile — the very features that post-LKQ tribunals have scrutinized most closely (A&A Global turned on neck-height proportions and interior-compartment depth/shape; Diode Dynamics on geometry and overall visual impression).

5. Graham Factor 3 — Ordinary skill

An ordinary designer of packaging trays: experienced with thermoformed/recessed tray structures, familiar with the conventions of blister trays, pill/tablet fill trays, sample-transport trays, and compartmented serving/baking pans, and aware that well arrays are standardized for item-count and item-pitch reasons. This is a designer, not a mechanical engineer — the level is not high, which modestly favors the challenger.

6. Motivation to modify — the actual combinations

Under LKQ/Dynamite Marketing, the motivation need not come from the references themselves, but there must be a record-supported, non-hindsight reason. Four such reasons are documented on this very record:

(a) Same field of endeavor. The examiner placed D 424,941 (Core box) and D 523,751 (Aluminum foil tray) in D9/456, the claimed design's own class. Nothing more is needed to establish that an ordinary designer of packaging trays would consult these.

(b) Commonplace ornamental features / common sense (KSR). Arrays of recessed wells in a shallow rimmed tray are ubiquitous in this field: baking pans (D 507,451, D 518,330), pill cups (US 4,387,804), pill fill trays (US 2006/0086639), sample-transport trays (US 5,040,678), blister packages (US 7,000,769), and tray inserts (D 255,413, US 1,979,902). Selecting well count/shape and a flat sealing flange for a tray of this type is design-convention work, not invention.

(c) Documented citation chain. D 507,451 (Land) cites US 1,979,902 (Potter) and D 255,413 (Alexander) — two references already on the D'165 face. This is objective evidence that these references have long been treated as the pertinent art for recessed-well trays (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/D507451.html).

(d) Market/industry practice. The parent family is directed to packaging dental items having a tacky ("gummy") surface, and the record classifies the design under A61C 2202/00 (packaging for dental appliances) and B65D 25/10 (article-locating fittings). An ordinary designer of such trays would be motivated to provide discrete locating wells for item retention without contact to the tacky surface, and to provide a perimeter flange for a peel/film closure — both of which are shown, separately, across the cited art.

Candidate rejection combinations

Preference. Combination A is the strongest because USD 507,451 is a single, existing, unitary tray with the dominant visual feature (an array of recessed wells in a rimmed rectangular body), and the modifications needed (tray proportions, flange profile) are supplied by references the examiner himself placed in D9/456. Combination B is stronger on "same article of manufacture" but requires importing the well array. A formal contention would plead A as primary, with B as an alternative, and C as a third alternative.

7. Secondary considerations and the challenger's vulnerabilities

• Secondary considerations are alive post-LKQ. D'165 was reportedly asserted by the assignee in litigation (Cao Group enforcement, reported 2024-cv-01211; https://www.sohu.com/a/760885266_100190190 — a secondary Chinese-language source, treat as unverified). If the patent owner can show copying, commercial success of the corresponding dental packaging line, or industry praise, that must be weighed. Conversely, that same enforcement activity may make the patent a target for a post-LKQ IPR, particularly given the Federal Circuit's willingness (per Top Glory Trading Group v. Cole Haan, 2025–26) to let changed law supply the "change in law" factor for older design patents — although D'165 itself expired 2026-03-06 (14-year term from grant), which sharply limits IPR/validity incentive.
• Hindsight risk. Because the D'165 figures cluster well-known tray features (rim, wells, flat flange), a challenger must be careful that the asserted combination is not "tailored to replicate" the claim. Diode Dynamics is directly on point: reference-driven reconstruction of the claim is fatal.
• No express teaching of well count/shape. If the D'165 claim's distinctiveness resides in a specific well arrangement/proportion (e.g., a particular 2×N array, asymmetric well sizes, or a specific depth-to-width ratio), then the motivation showing must be tied to that specific configuration — and A&A Global shows the Board will reject generic "a designer could easily adjust proportions" reasoning.
• The abstract/utility-family content is not the claim. The "gummy surface / inadhesive polymer" narrative describes the article's intended use and can support the field-of-endeavor analysis, but it cannot supply missing ornamentation; the claim is the drawings alone.

8. Bottom line

There is a legally available, but not slam-dunk, § 103 case against D655165. Under the post-LKQ Graham framework, the strongest theory is:

USD 633,388 S1 or USD 507,451 S1 as the primary reference (both "something in existence" and visually similar in the tray/well-array sense), modified in view of USD 424,941 S and USD 523,751 S1 — each examiner-classified in D9/456, the same class as the claimed design — with USD 518,330 S1, USD 255,413 S, US 1,979,902 A, US 2006/0086639 A1, US 5,040,678 A, US 4,387,804 A and US 7,000,769 B2 supplying evidence that recessed-well trays and flat-flanged compartmented packages were commonplace in the field.

The motivation is: same field of endeavor (proved by the examiner's own D9/456 classifications and the cross-citation chain from D 507,451 to US 1,979,902 and D 255,413), design convention (well arrays for locating discrete small articles), and the market/industry practice of peel-seal trays used in the parent family's dental packaging art.

The principal weaknesses are (i) the absence of a single reference that already shows the complete claimed appearance — now no longer fatal, but still the most persuasive evidence — (ii) the requirement of a record-supported, non-hindsight motivation specific to the claimed well arrangement and flange geometry, and (iii) the risk that the patent owner's secondary-considerations evidence offsets the prima facie case. I cannot quantify the outcome without viewing the D'165 figures and the reference figures side by side; that comparison should be performed before this analysis is relied on.