US D789435

I'll search for the specific patent number and any litigation records.

Let me check for any Federal Circuit appeal docketed in 2026.

US D789,435 S1 — "Camera" (GoPro action camera design)

Scope note: I searched for the exact identifier D789435. Everything below is limited to that patent. I did not find any close-number variant asserted in the sources returned (a separate source mistyped it as "D789,345" and another as "D789,435" — I have flagged those rather than treating them as the same record).

1. Bibliographic data

(Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en — the USPTO full-text record as republished by Google Patents. I did not independently query USPTO Patent Center or TSDR.)

2. Abstract

There is no abstract. Design patents are not required to and conventionally do not contain an abstract. The '435 record has no abstract field; the specification consists of a single sentence of figure descriptions plus the claim, and the disclosure is carried by the ten drawings. Any "abstract" purporting to describe this patent would be fabricated — I will not supply one.

3. Specification / drawings

The entire written description is:

FIG. 1 is a front, top, and left side perspective view of a camera showing our new design;
FIG. 2 is a rear, bottom, and right side perspective view thereof;
FIG. 3 is a front, top, and right side perspective view thereof;
FIG. 4 is a rear, bottom, and left side perspective view thereof;
FIG. 5 is a front elevational view thereof;
FIG. 6 is a rear elevational view thereof;
FIG. 7 is a left side elevational view thereof;
FIG. 8 is a right side elevational view thereof;
FIG. 9 is a top plan view thereof; and,
FIG. 10 is a bottom plan view thereof.
The broken lines depict portions of the camera in which the design is embodied that form no part of the claimed design.

Key legal consequence: the broken (dashed) lines are disclaimed. Only what is drawn in solid lines across Figures 1–10 is claimed. This is the provision that drives the infringement analysis discussed below.

4. The claim (there is only one)

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

Plain-language overview. This is not a claim in the utilitarian sense; there is no "independent claim" and no dependent claim, and no element-by-element recitation. The single claim is a pictorial claim: it covers the overall visual appearance of the camera body as depicted in Figures 1–10, excluding everything shown in broken lines. Practically, the scope is defined by the solid-line surface contours, the lens/protrusion arrangement, the button and port features shown in solid line, and the overall proportions of a small, roughly box-shaped action camera — not by any function, material, dimension, or internal component. Infringement is tested under the Egyptian Goddess ordinary-observer test (and Litton Industries v. Whirlpool for minor differences), and the claim is limited to what is actually drawn in solid line.

On the specifically claimed features, secondary reporting from the 2026 ITC dispute identifies a square side button on the lower side of the body as shown in solid lines (i.e., claimed), and a smooth (featureless) surface on the opposite side where the accused products carried buttons (Patently-O, Mar. 2026, https://patentlyo.com/patent/2026/03/guest-post-design-patents-at-the-itc.html). I have not inspected the drawings myself in this session, so I cannot independently verify the full inventory of solid-line features, and I flag that as an uncertainty.

5. Family

Four co-pending/related U.S. design applications share the Nov. 17, 2015 priority date:

• USD769346S1 — app. 29/545,934 (filed Nov. 17, 2015)
• USD773546S1 — app. 29/554,818 (filed Feb. 16, 2016) — listed as the parent of the '287 application (continuation)
• USD790002S1 — app. 29/576,703 (filed Sept. 6, 2016)
• USD789435S1 — app. 29/582,287 (filed Oct. 26, 2016)

So D789435 is one of a set of four sibling designs covering the same GoPro camera generation.

6. Litigation (this is where D789435 has been most consequential)

a) ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1400 — Certain Cameras, Camera Systems, and Accessories Used Therewith. GoPro filed the § 337 complaint on March 29, 2024 against Arashi Vision Inc. d/b/a Insta360 and Arashi Vision (U.S.) LLC, asserting five utility patents ('413, '052, '894, '840, '832) plus the single claim of D789435. Instituted May 6, 2024 (89 FR 37242). ALJ Doris Johnson Hines issued the Final Initial Determination on July 10/11, 2025, finding a violation as to D'435 only and no violation on all five utility patents. On February 26, 2026, the Commission issued its final determination: violation of § 337 as to D789,435; no violation as to the '840 and '052 patents; remedy is a limited exclusion order + cease-and-desist order; bond set at 0% during Presidential review; investigation terminated. (FR Doc. 2026-04160, 91 FR, published Mar. 3, 2026: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-03-03/pdf/2026-04160.pdf)

Notably, the LEO reaches only certain older Insta360 Ace-series models. The ALJ's finding that Insta360's redesigned camera falls outside the scope of D'435 was left undisturbed and became final. Insta360 characterized this as a near-complete win; GoPro retained the right to appeal within 60 days of entry of the final determination. (Morrison Foerster client alerts, Feb. 26, 2026: https://www.mofo.com/resources/news/[260226](/patent/260226)-insta360-section-337)

b) Parallel district court action. GoPro, Inc. v. Arashi Vision Inc., No. 8:24-cv-00681-HDE-JCV (C.D. Cal.), filed the same day, stayed June 3, 2024 pending the ITC outcome, and slated to resume now that the ITC case is terminated. This is the forum where damages (as opposed to exclusion) would be at issue.

c) PTAB. IPR2024-01434, Arashi Vision (U.S.) LLC v. GoPro, Inc., petition filed Sept. 26, 2024, challenging the sole claim of D'435 (obviousness over six primary references, including "Hero4" printed publications, Chen686, Woodman, CN Design 303440022, KR Design 300792432, and U.S. D710,921). The Board denied institution on March 31, 2025 ("Petitioner has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail"), so the '435 claim has never been invalidated. (Decision: https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf) Panel listing shows Administrative Patent Judge Jennifer S. Bisk.

d) CAFC 2026 dockets. The only 2026 Federal Circuit case I found naming both GoPro and Arashi/Insta360 is CAFC No. 26-1890, GoPro Inc v. Arashi Vision US LLC, filed June 2, 2026, appealing from PTAB IPR2024-01052 — that is a utility patent appeal, not an appeal involving D789435. I found no Federal Circuit appeal docketed specifically on D789435. Given that GoPro's appeal window ran 60 days from the Feb. 26, 2026 ITC final determination, an appeal may exist that is not captured in the search results returned to me; I flag this as an open uncertainty rather than asserting that none was filed. (For completeness, a different 2026 GoPro Federal Circuit matter, No. 2026-2012, Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., docketed July 8, 2026 from the N.D. Cal., is unrelated to design patents or D'435.)

e) Prior art on the face of the patent. 21 cited references, predominantly GoPro's own earlier camera designs (USD721395, USD737879, USD751131, USD732593, USD734799, USD710922, USD725169, USD750146, USD760309, USD775254) plus third-party camera designs (USD742952 Nikon, USD753749 Hikvision, USD750680/USD750686 Dazzne, USD755270 Garmin, USD755874 Digilife, USD758467 AEE) and one utility patent on camera housings (US 8,544,643).

7. Explicit uncertainties

1. No abstract exists — I have not invented one.
2. No "independent claims" exist in the plural sense — the patent has exactly one claim, which is not characterized as independent or dependent.
3. I have not visually inspected Figures 1–10, so my description of the solid-line vs. broken-line subject matter beyond the square side button derives from secondary reporting, not from the drawings themselves.
4. Assignee status on Google Patents lists both "Huge Design Inc" and "GoPro Inc" as current assignees; the recorded Dec. 6, 2016 assignment from Huge Design to GoPro suggests GoPro is the operative owner, but I have not confirmed this in USPTO Assignment records directly.
5. No CAFC appeal on D789435 was found, but absence of a search hit is not proof of absence; the 60-day appeal clock from Feb. 26, 2026 is a plausible source of a filing I did not see.
6. Date discrepancy: the request states the current date as April 26, 2026, but my search results include material dated July 2026 (a Federal Circuit docketing notice dated July 8, 2026, and an awards announcement dated July 25, 2026). The itemized D'435 facts above are all sourced from records dated on or before the ITC's Feb. 26, 2026 final determination, so this discrepancy does not affect them, but subsequent developments may be missing.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en · https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-03-03/pdf/2026-04160.pdf · https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf · https://www.usitc.gov/cameras_camera_systems_and_accessories_used · https://patentlyo.com/patent/2026/03/guest-post-design-patents-at-the-itc.html

I'll search for litigation involving US patent D789435 across the sources you specified.

I have substantial results. Let me verify the district court case and check for any other defendants/cases.

Let me verify whether any other cases exist (other defendants, appeals, or foreign proceedings).

Litigation Involving U.S. Design Patent No. D789,435

Summary: Based on my searches (Google Patents litigation links, Unified Patents PTAB portal, Docketbird/Justia dockets, Law.com Radar, PTAB documents, ITC/Federal Register notices, and Chinese-language trade-remedy reporting), D789435 ("Camera," GoPro, Inc.) has been asserted in one patent-infringement campaign — GoPro v. Arashi Vision / Insta360 — which generated two parallel US proceedings (an ITC § 337 investigation and a C.D. Cal. district court action) plus a related PTAB challenge. I found no other litigations naming D789435 as an asserted patent against any other party.

1. ITC Section 337 Investigation — In the Matter of Certain Cameras, Camera Systems, and Accessories Used Therewith

Note: Some secondary Chinese-language summaries render the design patent as "D789,345" (e.g., the Sohu and ANZone write-ups), which appears to be a typographical error for D789435 as confirmed by the underlying ITC Initial Determination and Federal Register text.

2. District Court Parallel Action — GoPro, Inc. v. Arashi Vision Inc. et al.

3. Related PTAB Proceeding (not litigation, but arising from the same dispute)

4. Other / Foreign Proceedings (context, not D789435-as-asserted)

• Insta360's China actions against GoPro: Reporting indicates Insta360 filed patent-infringement actions in China against GoPro-related entities, described as defensive/mirror-image countersuits. I found no confirmation that D789435 itself is asserted in those Chinese actions (D789435 is a US design patent), so I cannot attribute a D789435 claim to them.
• Family-level litigation flag: The Google Patents record (family ID 57120315, which also includes USD769346, USD773546, and USD790002) carries a "First worldwide family litigation filed" flag with a Darts-ip link, consistent with the GoPro v. Insta360 campaign above.

Caveats

• No other defendants found. My searches did not surface any additional US litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit) asserting D789435 against any party other than Arashi Vision / Insta360. If you need certainty, a PACER docket search on the patent number and a Darts-ip/Unified Patents review would be the authoritative check.
• Federal Circuit appeal: The ITC's final determination entitles GoPro to petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit within 60 days of the final determination becoming final (after Presidential review). I could not confirm from available sources whether GoPro has filed an appeal as of April 26, 2026 — treat the appellate status as unconfirmed/pending.
• I did not independently verify the current C.D. Cal. docket beyond the stay order and later Chinese-language reporting that it would resume; the most recent PACER retrieval reflected in the sources I found was April 2024, with post-ITC reporting indicating the stay lifts.

Primary sources: ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 Final ID (July 10, 2025); 91 Fed. Reg. 10417–10418 (Mar. 3, 2026); IPR2024-01434 Institution Decision (Mar. 31, 2025); Docket 8:24-cv-00681 (C.D. Cal.); Unified Patents PTAB caselist; Patently-O, "Guest Post: Design Patents at the ITC" (Mar. 2026).

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding has been filed against US D789435 — IPR2024-01434 (Arashi Vision Inc. d/b/a Insta360 v. GoPro, Inc.) — and it was denied institution on 2025-03-31; zero proceedings reached a Final Written Decision, so the patent's single claim is SUSTAINED and UNNARROWED: 0 claims canceled, 0 claims held unpatentable, 0 settlements, 1 institution denial (100% of filed proceedings).

⚠️ Discrepancy flag: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt reports no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the ODP ingest. Web search contradicts that: IPR2024-01434 is real, was docketed 2024-09-26, and terminated 2025-03-31 with institution denied (PTAB docket mirrors at Unified Patents caselist and GreyB/ipverse). Treat the ODP block as under-inclusive for this patent. I found no second IPR, PGR, or CBM on D789435 by any petitioner.

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is a hardened design patent, not a paper tiger. The single claim survived the only PTAB challenge brought against it, and in the parallel ITC investigation the design patent was simultaneously upheld as infringed by Insta360's legacy products (ITC final determination, 2026-02-26, Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 — limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist order issued). A defendant facing a demand letter on D789435 cannot point to any canceled claim; the only viable play is a fresh, better-particularized IPR (or § 102/§ 103/§ 112 invalidity defense in court), designed around the deficiencies the Board identified.

IPR2024-01434 — Arashi Vision Inc. (d/b/a Insta360) v. GoPro, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (post-AIA, 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2024-09-26 (accorded filing date; petitioner also identified in third-party dockets as "Arashi Vision US LLC")
• Status: Institution Denied — terminated 2025-03-31, the same day as the institution decision. Plain English: the Board never reached the merits on the record; the petition died at the threshold.
• Judge panel: APJ Jennifer S. Bisk, joined by APJs McGraw and Kinder (per Banner Witcoff's PTAB Highlights summary of Paper 9). Caveat: panel composition is from a secondary source; the primary decision PDF is at bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf.
• Petition grounds: All grounds targeted the sole claim — "[t]he ornamental design for a camera, as shown and described" — under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (AIA version; the Board noted the effective filing date post-dates 2013-03-16). The petition was styled as six grounds, one per primary reference, but the Board counted "at least 24 distinct grounds" rolled up in various alternative combinations. Primary references included a GoPro-earlier design referred to as "Gioscia," "Chen686," and "Woodman," plus five pre-critical-date "Hero4" articles (Maker, DP Review, Stoilov, Gigazine, Amazon). Secondary references included Heo (Korean design publication, "Portable Blackbox," published 2015-04-16, Ex. 1024), Li (Chinese utility model publication, "Sport Camera," published 2015-09-02), and McVicker (U.S. Patent No. 9,864,258, "Scuba regulator mount system," issued 2018-01-09, Ex. 1029), together with a Chinese design publication (Ex. 1021) and GoPro design patents D710,921 and D750,680. Petitioner also relied on the Bressler declaration on a designer of ordinary skill (bachelor's degree in industrial design or two years designing cameras — adopted unopposed).
• Institution decision: Denied — Paper 9, 2025-03-31. The panel's core holding: "a petition based on 24 distinct grounds raised against a single patent claim without particularity in the analysis burdens Patent Owner unduly and makes inefficient use of the Board's resources." Verbatim from the decision: "After considering the parties' arguments and the evidence of record, we determine that Petitioner has not demonstrated a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail in challenging the patentability of the '435 patent's claim. Thus, we do not institute an inter partes review." Two supporting rationales: (1) the "Hero4" articles were not shown to be printed publications qualifying as prior art; and (2) even setting that aside, Petitioner "systematically ignore[d] the primary references' claimed visual designs as a whole," leaning on annotated side-by-side figures that the Board found "not particularly helpful in comparing the overall visual effect of the designs." The Board also refused to adopt Petitioner's proposed claim construction (a "rectangular body with flat faces…" verbal description) as "incredibly general," instead offering a feature-by-feature Egyptian Goddess-style description: a rectangular camera with rounded corners, a conspicuous protruding lens top-right on the front, a display covering nearly the entire rear, a top-left protruding button, a bottom button, and side buttons — "a sleek and modern impression that is rectangular, but not boxy."
• Final Written Decision: None issued — no FWD, therefore no claim-level verdict, no cancellation, and no patentability holding on the merits. Do not treat the Board's claim-construction commentary as a merits adjudication of validity.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Termination was by denial of institution, not by the parties' agreement. No adverse judgment or disclaimer was entered against GoPro.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal from a PTAB decision exists (there is no FWD to appeal, and denials of institution are not appealable). I found no CAFC docket arising from IPR2024-01434. Note, separately: no stay/estoppel link to the district case. The co-pending district case is GoPro, Inc. v. Arashi Vision Inc., No. 8:24-cv-00681-HDE-JCV (C.D. Cal.), filed 2024-03-29 and stayed 2024-06-03 pending the ITC investigation, now expected to resume. The ITC's 2026-02-26 final determination in Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 is appealable to the Federal Circuit within 60 days of entry of the final determination (GoPro retains that right per Insta360's public disclosures); I could not confirm on the record available to me that any CAFC appeal on D789435 has actually been docketed.
• Defensive value: The denial is a procedural gift and a warning. The gift: the Board's own reasoning tells you exactly how not to plead design-patent obviousness — one primary reference per ground, a side-by-side comparison of the designs as a whole (not annotated feature harvesting), rigorous § 102(a)(1) proof that each asserted publication was publicly accessible, and a single, coherent primary-reference theory. The warning: because institution was denied, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attached to Insta360 or its privies — so the denial gives you no procedural shield, and GoPro's claim remains fully alive for both PTAB and district-court purposes.

Strategic summary

Claim status. D789435 has exactly one claim — "[t]he ornamental design for a camera, as shown and described." It is SUSTAINED and UNTESTED on the merits: no IPR grounded it, no FWD addressed it, no claim was canceled, and the IPR petition that challenged it was denied institution. There are no surviving-claims to list because nothing was narrowed. The design has, however, been enforced successfully: the ITC's final determination found Insta360's legacy products infringe D789435, and the ITC issued a limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist order (2026-02-26), while expressly confirming that Insta360's redesigned camera does not infringe. So the practical universe of accused product designs for this patent has just been mapped by the ITC — a non-infringement design-around is already judicially blessed for at least one competitor's current product line.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel anywhere in this family, because estoppel attaches only after a final written decision, and IPR2024-01434 never got past institution. For a defendant now being asserted against (e.g., in the revived C.D. Cal. action or a new suit), that cuts both ways:

• Against you: no prior-art ground is foreclosed by estoppel; but equally, GoPro is not estopped from anything either, and the PTAB denial has no preclusive effect on district-court invalidity.
• For you: the entire IPR2024-01434 record is public — the petition, the Bressler declaration, the GoPro preliminary response (PTACTS petition documents, ptacts.uspto.gov), the Board's Paper 9, and the underlying references (Heo, Li, McVicker, the Chinese/Korean design publications, D710,921, D750,680). That record is free prior-art and motivation-to-combine intelligence. Critically, do not simply re-file the same art the same way — the Board told you why it fails (no printed-publication proof for Hero4; no design-as-a-whole analysis; 24 grounds). A materially better petition must cure those defects, and must also beat the § 325(d)/discretionary-denial overlay if the art overlaps what GoPro put in front of examiners, plus the Fintiv-style considerations now that a litigated ITC determination and a reviving district case exist.

Pattern signals. One petitioner, one shot at this patent: Insta360/Arashi filed a single IPR against D789435 and did not get a second bite, and I found no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, no RPX, no IPR filed by a shell entity) in this patent's PTAB history. Insta360 is, however, a serial PTAB filer against GoPro generally — press reporting indicates the PTAB rejected three separate Insta360 invalidity challenges to GoPro's HyperSmooth-related utility patents by the end of 2025, and the ITC final determination invalidated or cleared several GoPro utility patents (Nos. 10,015,413; 10,529,052; 10,958,840; 11,336,832; 10,574,894) while GoPro's design patent D789435 held up. GoPro is litigating this family aggressively on three fronts (ITC, C.D. Cal., and PTAB defense), and Insta360 has counter-attacked in Chinese courts (Jiangsu, Shenzhen, Changsha). The absence of any additional IPR on D789435 — despite two years of hot litigation and a live ITC exclusion order — is itself a strong signal that the design claim is genuinely hard to invalidate with the available art.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not build an invalidity theory on the IPR2024-01434 petition as filed. Quote the Board's own words at Paper 9 (2025-03-31): "a petition based on 24 distinct grounds raised against a single patent claim without particularity in the analysis burdens Patent Owner unduly." Re-filing that structure invites a second denial and, worse, hands GoPro a 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2)-proof narrative in the district court. Primary decision text: IPR2024-01434, Paper 9.
2. If you are being asserted in the revived C.D. Cal. action (GoPro, Inc. v. Arashi Vision Inc., No. 8:24-cv-00681-HDE-JCV), attack the claim on ordinary-observer grounds under Egyptian Goddess / L K Q v. GM using the Board's own feature-by-feature description (protruding top-right lens, full-rear display, rounded-corner rectangular body, button placement) as a roadmap for what must be disclosed to render it obvious. The Board's refusal to adopt Petitioner's "rectangular body with flat faces" construction is a caution against over-generalizing the claim.
3. Budget for the printed-publication § 102(a)(1) fight. Any Hero4-type catalog, review, or retail listing must be authenticated with Wayback/archive metadata, accessibility evidence, and a distribution showing — the Panel expressly found the Hero4 articles unproven as printed publications. Any U.S. Patent No. "D789,345" citation you encounter in the ITC coverage is a typographical error in the Chinese-language reporting for D789,435 — do not cite it as a separate patent.
4. Monitor the CAFC clock on the ITC side. GoPro's right to appeal the ITC final determination (2026-02-26) expires 60 days after entry. Track the Federal Circuit docket and CourtListener for any appeal styled GoPro v. ITC / Arashi Vision; if GoPro appeals the design-patent findings, the appellate claim construction may materially change the enforcement map. There is no PTAB appeal to track — the sole proceeding was denied institution and produced no FWD.
5. Design around, don't invalidate — at least as a first-line strategy. The ITC has already confirmed that Insta360's redesigned camera does not infringe D789435. That is a public, judicially endorsed design-around template. For a defendant, a cleared redesign is faster, cheaper, and more certain than an IPR against a design claim that has now survived every challenge thrown at it.
6. If you do file an IPR, flag the real-world posture to your client: with the ITC determination on the books and the district case reviving, expect GoPro to argue discretionary denial (Fintiv factors / § 325(d) for art already before the Office), and expect the Board to scrutinize whether your petition is "materially different" from — not a rerun of — IPR2024-01434.

Confidence notes. High confidence: existence, petitioner, patent owner, filing date (2024-09-26), denial of institution (2025-03-31), absence of any FWD, and the identity of the sole challenged claim. Moderate confidence: exact panel composition and the precise attribution of individual secondary references (my sources include an OCR-degraded copy of the decision in which the Heo/Li descriptions are partly garbled). Not established on the record available to me: whether any CAFC appeal has actually been docketed on D789435, and whether any additional PTAB petition on this patent was filed after 2025-03-31. I found none, but I cannot rule it out.

I'll search for the assignment record and correspondent details for this patent.

Let me look for the specific assignment reel/frame records and the correspondent of record.

Let me try to pull the certified assignment records exhibit and any USPTO assignment API data.

Ownership Chain Reconstruction — US D789,435 S1 ("Camera," GoPro, Inc.)

Retrieval caveat, stated up front (read this before the tables): I was unable to reach the USPTO Assignment Center record set directly in this session. The recorded transactions below are reconstructed from the Google Patents legal-events feed (which is populated from the same USPTO assignment data), and the existence of a certified assignment record is independently corroborated by GoPro's ITC exhibit list ("Certified Assignment Records for U.S. Design Patent No. D789,435," carried as GoPro Ex. 1011 in Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 and reproduced in the IPR2025-00017 exhibit set: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2025-00017/Arashi_Vision_Inc._%28d-b-a_Insta360%29_v._GoPro_Inc/01-30-2025-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2006-Ex_2006/).

What I could not retrieve, and will not invent: reel/frame numbers, execution dates (distinct from recording dates), and the correspondent of record for each recording. No retrievable source returned those fields for this patent. I have left them marked as unavailable rather than supplying plausible-looking values. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "D789435" or application 29/582,287).

Inventors

Pattern observed — and it is not the usual one. The classic pre-fire-sale tell (all inventors departing the original assignee within ~12 months of filing) is not determinable here, because I have no employment-departure data for any of the four. What is observable, and is worth noting for its own sake:

• The inventorship is split between two employers — two GoPro in-house designers and two outside consultants at Huge Design Inc. This is a consultant-on-industrial-design engagement, and it is the reason the assignment chain has three simultaneous recordings on Dec. 6, 2016 rather than one.
• Because Fitzgerald and Webb were never GoPro employees, there is no "departure" event to look for on their side; their rights moved by contract from the outset. This is a clean chain, not a defect.
• GoPro address of record for corporate filings in this era: 3000 Clearview Way, San Mateo, CA 94402 (taken from a GoPro TTAB filing of record, https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91255135-OPP-1.pdf — corporate/trademark filing, not the assignment address, which I could not retrieve).

Original assignee

GoPro, Inc. — Delaware corporation, principal place of business San Mateo, California. Listed as original assignee on the face of D789,435 and confirmed as patent owner by GoPro's own pleading ("GoPro owns by assignment all rights, title, and interest in and to the… Patent," Complaint, GoPro, Inc. v. Arashi Vision Inc., No. 8:24-cv-00681-HDE-JCV (C.D. Cal.), https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/dct/[4501380](/patent/4501380)/8-24-cv-00681_complaint_exparte.pdf).

• Primary line of business: consumer action/imaging cameras and the associated software and subscription ecosystem. Founded 2002; publicly traded (NASDAQ: GPRO).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claimed design? Yes — and this is adjudicated, not inferred. In Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 the Commission, on reconsideration of Order No. 18, affirmed that the economic prong of the domestic-industry requirement is satisfied as to the D'435 patent — i.e., GoPro proved significant U.S. investment in articles embodying this design. GoPro's own evidence in the parallel IPR identified the GoPro HERO5 Black as a product of this design generation (Patent Owner's Exhibit 2002, "GoPro HERO5 Black – 2017" Red Dot Award, cited in GoPro's Preliminary Response, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556678](/patent/1556678)/download-documents).
• Current status: operating, not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy in any source I found. Financial-distress caveat to monitor: on Aug. 4, 2025, two secured interests were recorded against GoPro's patent portfolio — one naming Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C., as agent and one naming Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as agent. A hedge fund acting as agent on a secured patent-lien recording is a refinancing signature, not a patent transaction, but it is the kind of event that historically precedes portfolio monetization. Flagging it as a watch item, not a finding.
• Assignee-of-record confusion resolved: Google Patents lists both "Huge Design Inc" and "GoPro Inc" under current assignees. That dual listing is an artifact of the assignment-event history, not co-ownership. The Dec. 6, 2016 recording from Huge Design Inc. to GoPro, Inc. extinguishes Huge Design's interest. GoPro is the sole operative owner. (This partially resolves Uncertainty #4 from the prior section.)

Assignment timeline

All seven entries below are recorded dates from the Google Patents legal-events feed. Execution dates and reel/frame numbers were not retrievable and are marked as such.

• Recorded 2016-12-06 (executed date not retrievable) — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Fitzgerald, Quinn Jerome Odette; Webb, William Duncan, II
  • Assignee: Huge Design Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — see verification gap above. (No recurring-correspondent finding can be made without this field.)
  • Context: Work-for-hire capture — outside industrial-design consultants assigning their inventive contribution to their own design consultancy. Standard consultancy intake, not a transfer.

• Recorded 2016-12-06 (executed date not retrievable) — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Nguyen, Huy Phuong; Gioscia, Richard
  • Assignee: GoPro, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Employee invention assignment — in-house GoPro designers assigning to their employer.

• Recorded 2016-12-06 (executed date not retrievable) — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Huge Design Inc.
  • Assignee: GoPro, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Clean-up / quiet-title conveyance — the consultancy passes the two outside inventors' rights through to GoPro, consolidating 100% of the right, title and interest in a single holder. This is the step that makes the chain litigable, and it is why the ITC domestic-industry and standing findings were clean.

• Recorded 2017-02-22 — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (grant of security interest)
  • Assignor: GoPro, Inc.
  • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable (typically the lender's counsel on a portfolio lien — unverified here)
  • Context: Securitization — collateral grant under GoPro's corporate credit facility. Not a transfer of ownership.

• Recorded 2021-01-25 — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Release (Release of Patent Security Interest)
  • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Assignee: GoPro, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Lien release on payoff/refinancing — encumbrance cleared; ownership unchanged.

• Recorded 2025-08-04 — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (grant of security interest)
  • Assignor: GoPro, Inc.
  • Assignee: Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C., as Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Securitization / refinancing — new collateral grant. Same date as the Wells Fargo recording below; the pairing is consistent with a single 2025 credit facility with a hedge-fund term lender and a bank agent. Post-dates all litigation on this patent.

• Recorded 2025-08-04 — Reel/frame not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (grant of security interest)
  • Assignor: GoPro, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: Securitization / refinancing — companion collateral grant to the same facility.

Verification gap statement. The seven events above are consistent across the Google Patents legal-events feed and the ITC/PTAB record (GoPro litigated ownership as an element of its § 337 case and produced certified assignment records for D789,435). What is not public in any source I could retrieve is the reel/frame and correspondent for each event — the two fields your brief correctly identifies as the highest-value tells. On the strength of what is available, no correspondent recurrence finding is possible for this chain, and I am not going to manufacture one. The only attorney-of-record data point I surfaced is adjacent rather than on-point: GoPro's trademark correspondence of record runs through Fenwick & West LLP (Connie L. Ellerbach, 801 California St., Mountain View, CA) — that is a trademark record, not the assignment correspondent, and I flag it only as a lead to test, not as a finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US D789435
    2015 : Priority date Nov 17 2015
    2016 : Filed by GoPro Oct 26 2016
         : Consultants assign to Huge Design
         : GoPro inventors assign to GoPro
         : Huge Design assigns to GoPro
    2017 : Patent issued Jun 13 2017
         : Security interest to JPMorgan Chase
    2021 : JPMorgan lien released
    2024 : Asserted against Insta360 at ITC
         : Parallel CD Cal suit stayed
    2025 : New liens to Farallon and Wells Fargo
    2026 : ITC finds violation on D789435

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain. The only non-operating entity is Huge Design Inc., a product-design consultancy that appears as an inbound assignee (of its own consultants' rights) and then immediately assigns out to GoPro. That is the inverse of a shell transfer: it is a consolidation into the operating company, not an extraction out of it. Recorded 2016-12-06 (×3).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee at any point matches a public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). The full assignee set is: Huge Design Inc., GoPro, Inc., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C. The last three are secured creditors — lienholders, not owners — and Farallon is a hedge fund, not a patent plaintiff. No RPX/Unified/RPX-style high-frequency plaintiff appears.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRESOLVED (unclear).
This signal is not evaluable on the data retrieved: the correspondent field did not surface for any of the seven recordings, so I can neither confirm nor exclude a repeat player. I note the methodological point in your brief is correct and would be decisive here — a single attorney of record across all seven recordings (including the 2017 and 2025 security interests) would tell you whether a bank-side or GoPro-side firm ran the whole file. A PACER-adjacent check worth running: the certified assignment records were filed as an ITC exhibit, so the reel/frame numbers are sitting in a public PDF in Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 — that is the fastest route to recovering the fields I could not.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not cascade. Three conveyances on a single day (2016-12-06) constitute one transactional closing, not a chain of hops. The next substantive event is 2,636 days later (2017-02-22), and it is a lien, not a transfer. No shared-principal LLC sequence exists.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The operative ownership vesting is recorded 2016-12-06. The first infringement suit naming this patent was filed March 29, 2024 (ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1400 and C.D. Cal. 8:24-cv-00681, both filed the same day). That is roughly 7.3 years before assertion — the opposite of a pre-suit venue-engineering transfer. The 2025 security interests post-date the litigation and are unrelated to standing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 filing by GoPro, Huge Design, or any assignee was found in any source. The patent has never been sold in a bankruptcy proceeding. Watch item, not a finding: the Aug. 4, 2025 secured grants to Farallon Capital Management and Wells Fargo, recorded as a pair, are a refinancing signal consistent with balance-sheet stress; nothing in the record shows insolvency or an asset sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
The clearing inverse. In privateering, an operating company hands patents to an NPE to assert on its behalf. Here GoPro asserts the patent in its own name against a direct competitor (Arashi Vision / Insta360) in both the ITC and district court, and its own complaint pleads that it holds "the full and exclusive right to bring suit." No intermediary was inserted.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at an operating company, not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Nothing in the record shows this patent has been neutralized. (Note the asymmetry: the IPR that attacked it, IPR2024-01434, was filed by the accused infringer itself, not by a defensive aggregator, and institution was denied on March 31, 2025 — so the patent has never been invalidated and has never been aggregated.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

GoPro, Inc. acquired 100% of the right, title and interest in D789,435 through three recordings all dated 2016-12-06 (two inventor assignments plus the Huge Design Inc. → GoPro, Inc. clean-up), and still owns it; the only later recordings are a 2017-02-22 JPMorgan Chase security interest with a 2021-01-25 release and a pair of 2025-08-04 security interests to Farallon Capital Management and Wells Fargo — liens, not ownership transfers, and none of them touching an NPE. GoPro then asserted the patent in its own name against a direct competitor, and the ITC affirmed that the domestic-industry economic prong is met as to D'435 on Feb. 26, 2026 — meaning GoPro proved it ships articles embodying the claimed design. Six of the eight NPE signals are affirmatively absent, the seventh (bankruptcy) is clean with one refinancing watch item, and the eighth (repeat correspondent) is unresolved purely for lack of retrieved data and could not change the verdict in any plausible direction given the complete absence of an intermediary entity.

Verify (and recover the reel/frame + correspondent fields I could not): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · https://patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en

I'll verify the '435 record at USPTO and research each cited prior-art reference before building the § 102 analysis.

I have the full 21-reference citation list. Let me enrich the descriptions and cross-check the invalidity art from the IPR proceeding.

Prior-Art Analysis — US D789,435 S1 ("Camera," GoPro, Inc.)

Reference frame. This builds on the earlier sections and does not repeat them. The bibliographic data, the single-claim text, the broken-line disclaimer, and the litigation posture (ITC 337-TA-1400; IPR2024-01434; C.D. Cal. 8:24-cv-00681) are as previously established. What follows is the § 102 prior-art work-up of the 21 references cited on the face of the '435 patent, plus the additional invalidity art that surfaced in the IPR.

Source note. I retrieved the grant record via three mirrors of the USPTO front page (patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en, uspto.report/patent/grant/D789,435, patents.justia.com/patent/D789435). All three agree on the 21-item "References Cited" list and on the examiner/assignee metadata. I did not query USPTO PatentCenter or TSDR directly, and I did not open the drawing sheets of the cited references myself (see Uncertainties).

1. Two framing points that determine the whole § 102 answer

1.1 — Every reference maps to the same, single claim. The '435 patent has exactly one claim ("The ornamental design for a camera, as shown and described."). So for every reference below, the answer to "which claim(s) does it potentially anticipate" is Claim 1 — the sole claim. There is no claim set to differentiate. What actually differentiates the references is (a) whether they are prior art at all under the AIA date rules, and (b) whether a single one of them is "substantially the same" as the claimed design.

1.2 — The § 102 test for a design claim is the infringement test. Under International Seaway Trading Corp. v. Walgreens Corp., 589 F.3d 1233 (Fed. Cir. 2009), "that which infringes, if later, would anticipate, if earlier" — the Gorham/Egyptian Goddess ordinary-observer test is the sole test for anticipation as well as infringement. Practically: a single reference anticipates Claim 1 only if an ordinary observer, familiar with the prior art, would be deceived into thinking the reference design and the '435 design are the same. Combinations are unavailable for § 102; they are § 103 material only. Significant visual differences defeat anticipation even where many features correspond. (Confirmed in the ITC/PTAB record for this very patent — see § 4 below.)

2. The date framework (AIA; effective filing date November 17, 2015)

The '435 is an AIA patent: filed October 26, 2016 (app. 29/582,287), a continuation of 29/554,818, with earliest priority 29/545,934 filed November 17, 2015. So:

This produces a clean split of the 21 cited references: 11 are § 102(a)(1) art (issued before the priority date), and 10 issued after it — of which 6 are third-party (available only under § 102(a)(2)) and 4 are GoPro's own (excepted under § 102(b)(2)(C), and therefore not prior art on these dates).

3. Table A — references that qualify under § 102(a)(1) (issued before Nov. 17, 2015)

All rows: potentially anticipate Claim 1 (the sole claim).

4. Table B — references that issued after Nov. 17, 2015

All rows again: potentially anticipate Claim 1 (the sole claim) — but only if they independently clear the § 102 date gate.

Practical bottom line on the two tables. Only one cited reference (B3 / D750,686, Chen686) is simultaneously (i) third-party, (ii) a camera rather than a housing, (iii) effectively filed before the priority date, and (iv) visually close. That is why it, and not the GoPro lineage, was the lead reference in the IPR. And even Chen686 failed — see next.

5. The strongest candidate, and why it still does not anticipate

US D750,686 S1 ("CAMERA," ShenZhen Dazzne Technical Limited, inv. Chen; filed/priority Oct. 27, 2014; issued Mar. 1, 2016) — the only realistic single-reference § 102(a)(2) candidate.

• The PTAB called Chen686 "the most similar to the claimed design" of the five primary references it analyzed, and "the only primary reference that shows a design for a camera as opposed to a design for a transparent housing for a camera." (IPR2024-01434 Institution Decision, Paper 9, Mar. 31, 2025, at § II.F.2.)
• But the Board identified differences it treated as real, not trivial: on the front, "the claimed design shows 'a rectangular lens cover extending outward from the body' while the lens in Chen686 is round." Petitioner's fix — importing a rectangular lens cover from Huang or McVicker — was rejected because neither secondary reference had "the same shape or size as the corresponding feature," and because Petitioner gave no reasoned motivation for the modification.
• The Board ultimately found Petitioner had not shown Chen686 "alone or in combination with the various secondary references, teaches or suggests a camera having the same overall visual appearance of the claimed design," and denied institution on every ground.
• § 102 consequence: a reference that does not render the claim obvious a fortiori does not anticipate it (anticipation is the narrower inquiry). Chen686 is therefore a § 103 reference that failed — not a § 102 anticipation.

(Source: https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf)

Runner-up: US D753,749 S1 (Hikvision, "Sport video camera," filed Aug. 29, 2014) — same category, § 102(a)(2) art, and the only third-party cited reference that one of Google's two citation tables flags as examiner-cited. I have not seen a visual side-by-side for it, so I flag it as the best unlitigated candidate rather than asserting it is close.

Note on the GoPro lineage (A6/A10/B4): D721,395 and D737,879 are the same-article-type ancestors and, intuitively, the closest designs to the '435. They are cited on the face of the patent, so the examiner evidently considered them and still allowed the claim — which means the examiner did not view any of them as "substantially the same." (The four GoPro design families — D721,395 / D737,879 / D751,131 — share a Sep. 13, 2012 priority date and are the same lineage the '435 refines.)

6. Art not on the face of the '435 patent but raised against it (and its § 102 status)

These come from IPR2024-01434 and are more timely than most of the cited references. I flag them because a § 102 analysis that stops at the face of the patent would miss them.

(The earlier "Patent summary" and "Litigation summary" sections should be read alongside this — but note the correction in § 7.1 below.)

7. Contradictions and corrections relative to the previously generated sections

7.1 — The IPR's "six primary references" were misdescribed earlier. The prior "Patent summary" stated the IPR challenged the claim "over six primary references, including 'Hero4' printed publications, Chen686, Woodman, CN Design 303440022, KR Design 300792432, and U.S. D710,921." The Petition's own reference table (Exhibit list) shows the six primary references are: Hero4 publications; "Gioscia" (US D710,921, Ex. 1013); "Chen680" (US D750,680, Ex. 1014); "Wang" (CN utility model, Ex. 1016); "Chen686" (US D750,686, Ex. 1018); and "Woodman" (US D702,747, Ex. 1019). Huang (CN 303440022), Heo (KR 300792432), Li (CN 303358967) and McVicker (US 9,864,258) are secondary references, not primaries. The earlier list both omitted Chen680 and Wang and promoted the secondary references to primaries. (Source: Petition Exhibit table, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/.../[1556678](/patent/1556678); decision at https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf)

7.2 — Number mismatch, Gioscia: D710,921 vs. D710,922. The face of the '435 cites US D710,922 S1 (Camera housing, Gioscia et al., issued Aug. 12, 2014). The IPR Petition's Exhibit table identifies its "Gioscia" primary reference as US D710,921, and the Board describes Gioscia as "a design patent titled 'CAMERA HOUSING,' issued on August 12, 2014." Those are two different patent numbers sharing an issuance date and title pattern. I cannot resolve from the record I have whether the Petition's "D710,921" is a transcription error for D710,922 or a genuinely different GoPro design patent issued the same day. I have not auto-corrected it, per your instruction.

7.3 — The IPR's "Woodman" reference is not on the '435's face. The Petition's "Woodman" primary is US D702,747 — a number that does not appear among the '435's 21 cited references (those Woodman designs are D721,395, D732,593, D734,799, D737,879). So the IPR's lead Woodman art is different art from anything the examiner cited. The earlier summary's loose reference to "Woodman" should not be read as pointing at a face citation.

7.4 — "Examiner-cited" vs. "IDS-submitted" is not reliable in this record. Google's two citation tables on the '435 page attach the examiner asterisk to different subsets (the 19-row table and the 21-row table disagree, e.g., on D732,593). At most 8 of 21 carry the asterisk in one table and 5 in the other. I therefore do not treat the examiner/IDS distinction as reliable, and my analysis above does not depend on it. The substantive point stands regardless: appearing in "References Cited" is not a § 102 rejection, and none of the 21 references produced a surviving rejection, since the claim issued and the IPR was denied.

7.5 — The '435 "family" designs are not prior art to the '435. D769,346 (filed Nov. 17, 2015), D773,546 (filed Feb. 16, 2016) and D790,002 (filed Sep. 6, 2016) share the priority date and family; none was "effectively filed before" Nov. 17, 2015, and they share the inventive entity. They are relevant to same-family/double-patenting considerations, not to § 102. The earlier family discussion should not be read as identifying them as prior art.

8. Direct answer to the question asked

• Which claim(s) does each cited reference potentially anticipate? Claim 1 — the sole claim of D789,435 — and nothing else. There is no other claim. Summary of the strength of that mapping:

• Bottom line: on the present record, no reference cited on the face of D789,435 has been shown to anticipate Claim 1, and the one reference that came closest (Chen686) failed at the § 103 stage in IPR2024-01434, which is a stricter-for-petitioner, weaker standard than § 102. The claim has survived challenge and was held valid and infringed at the ITC.

9. Explicit uncertainties

1. I have not visually inspected the drawing sheets of D789,435 or of any of the 21 references in this session. My visual-difference statements for Chen686 and Gioscia are quoted from the PTAB's Institution Decision, not from my own comparison of the figures. Any assertion of anticipation would require that inspection.
2. Filing vs. priority dates in Tables A and B are the "priority date" entries in Google's citation table for the '435. For design patents these are normally the U.S. filing date, but where a reference carries a foreign priority or a continuation lineage I have not independently verified the § 102(d) "effectively filed" date in each reference's own record.
3. § 102(a)(2) / § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership determinations (Tables B1, B4, B9, B10) rest on the assignee data in the citation table (all "GoPro, Inc.") plus the recorded Dec. 6, 2016 assignments. I did not pull each reference's assignment history from USPTO Assignment to confirm ownership as of Nov. 17, 2015. If any of those four were not commonly owned as of that date, it would become § 102(a)(2) art rather than being excepted.
4. The D710,921 / D710,922 number mismatch (§ 7.2) and the D702,747 "Woodman" reference (§ 7.3) are unresolved. I have deliberately not normalized either number.
5. Publication dates for Huang (CN 303440022), Li (CN 303358967) and Wang (CN utility model) are not established in the material available to me; I cannot classify them under § 102(a)(1) vs (a)(2) with confidence.
6. The Hero4 publications' date and public-availability showing was contested and unproven below. They are the most factually attractive § 102(a)(1) art in this dispute (HERO4 launched Sept./Oct. 2014, ~13 months pre-priority), so if the '435 design is essentially the HERO4 camera, that is where a well-evidenced anticipation case would start — but I have not confirmed that the '435 solid-line design matches the HERO4 product appearance, and the Board did not so find.
7. Date discrepancy carried forward. This request states today is April 26, 2026; the prior section recorded search results dated July 2026. All § 102 analysis above depends only on dates on or before the Nov. 17, 2015 priority date and on the Mar. 31, 2025 IPR decision, so the discrepancy does not affect it — but later developments may not be captured.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/D789,435 · https://patents.justia.com/patent/D789435 · IPR2024-01434 Institution Decision (Mar. 31, 2025), https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf · IPR2024-01434 Petition Exhibit list, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1556678/download-documents · 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) · LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Tech. Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc).

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for D'435 — the cited references on the face of the patent plus the six references Arashi/Insta360 actually assembled in IPR2024-01434. Let me pull that record.

The petition text is available. Let me pull more of it to identify each reference and Arashi's actual combination theory.

Now I have the Board's reasoning and the reference map. Let me pin down the remaining primary references and the exhibit list.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Design Patent No. D789,435 ("Camera") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Built on: the claim-scope and broken-line analysis, the family/bibliographic record, and the litigation sections above. I do not repeat those; I use them.

1. Framework and the two thresholds that decide everything

Which § 103. The Board in IPR2024-01434 held the AIA version of § 103 applies, because the '435's effective filing date post-dates March 16, 2013 (decision, § II.B). The operative critical date is therefore November 17, 2015 (the family priority date).

Who the artisan is. Not a POSITA in the utility sense. The relevant artisan is a designer of ordinary skill in the art of camera/consumer-camera industrial design — the Board worked from the Bressler Declaration (Ex. 1002) on that basis. I have not seen Bressler's precise skill-level definition and flag that.

The legal test. The Board applied LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc), which replaced the rigid Rosen/Durling "basically the same" / "so related" threshold with the Graham factors applied through the eyes of an ordinary designer. Critically, the Board also imported the pre-existing prohibition (quoted from LKQ at 1298, itself quoting In re Jennings, 182 F.2d 207, 208 (CCPA 1950)) that a primary reference must "not [be] something that might be brought into existence by selecting individual features from prior art and combining them, particularly where combining them would require modification of every individual feature."

The two thresholds any § 103 theory must clear:

1. Qualification. Each reference must actually be prior art as of Nov 17, 2015. (See § 2 below — this is where the challenger's case is most vulnerable and it went untested.)
2. Overall appearance. The combination must produce "the same overall visual appearance as the claimed design." LKQ, 102 F.4th at 1299.

Claim scope (from the earlier section, restated only as a premise). One claim; no dependent fallback. Only solid-line subject matter counts. From the Board's annotated-figure discussion, the claimed appearance includes: a rectangular body with flat faces; a rectangular lens cover extending outward from the body and showing an inner rectangle; a rectangle for a display flush with the front face; a top button protrusion; and discrete rectangular button/access elements on the sides. Per the ITC record, the claimed design also includes a square button on the lower side and a smooth surface on the opposite side.

2. The prior-art universe (three tiers)

The under-appreciated qualification point (Tier C). Richard Gioscia is a named inventor of the '435 and of D710,921. That overlap does not remove D710,921 from the prior art: it issued 2014‑08‑12, more than one year before 2015‑11‑17, and the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception reaches only disclosures made one year or less before the effective filing date. GoPro's pre‑November‑2014 catalogue — including its own design patents — is therefore fair game against its own later design. The Board treated Gioscia as a primary reference without questioning this, which is consistent.

The qualification gap nobody litigated. Chen686 and Chen680 both issued 2016‑03‑01 — after the '435's 2015‑11‑17 priority date. They can only be prior art under § 102(a)(2), which requires that they were effectively filed before 2015‑11‑17 and name another inventor. The Board never addressed this. If either Chen application was filed on or after 2015‑11‑17, that entire ground collapses at the threshold — no Graham analysis needed. Likewise Huang (CN 303440022) published 2015‑11‑11, six days before the priority date. Technically valid § 102(a)(1) art; evidentially nearly worthless for the motivation prong, because it cannot show what camera designers actually knew in the field when the '435 was designed.

3. Candidate combinations

Combination 1 — Chen686 + Huang + Heo (+ McVicker) [Arashi's Ground 5]

• Chen686 supplies the closest overall form: rectangular body with flat faces, a small rectangle flush with the front face, rectangular button/access elements, rectangles occupying much of the rear. It is the only primary reference claiming a "CAMERA" rather than a "CAMERA HOUSING" (Board, § II.F.2 & n.24).
• Huang and McVicker supply a rectangular lens cover extending outward from the body (Chen686's lens is round).
• Heo supplies rectangular top buttons.
• Motivation asserted: an ordinary designer would substitute rectangular for circular features to create a coherent rectangular design language, and would adopt a rectangular lens cover because it was known to improve image quality (Pet. 99; Bressler ¶ 165).

Combination 2 — Gioscia D710,921 (primary) + Huang/Heo/McVicker [Ground 2]

• Motivation: the primary reference is GoPro's own contemporaneous action-camera shell; the outer shell defines the body silhouette, so adapting a housing design into the camera body itself is a routine design move within a single product line. Common ownership/same field makes the references plainly analogous.

Combination 3 — Hero4 publications (primary) + Huang/Heo [Ground 1]

• Motivation: the Hero4 publications show "a rectangular body with flat faces, a rectangular lens cover extending outward from the front of the body and showing a line, a rectangle for a display at the front that is flush with its front face, … buttons/access elements at the top, left side, right side, and bottom, and an overall visual impression of a rectangular/'box-like' design" (Pet., quoting Bressler ¶ 46). That feature set maps onto the claimed solid-line disclosure with unusual completeness. Secondary references supply any residual rectangular lens/button geometry.
• This is conceptually the strongest theory — it attacks the design with images of a real GoPro product — but it is an evidentiary theory, and the evidence failed: the Board found the Wayback Machine affidavits inadequate because two of the exhibits' content did not match the archived documents (Ex. 1006 contained links and comments referencing July 2024 and May 2024).

Combination 4 — Woodman D702,747 (primary) + secondaries [Ground 6]; and Wang CN 204360078 (primary) + secondaries [Ground 4]

• Board: Woodman's "overall visual impression of the two designs is even more stark"; as to Wang, the Board noted the reference is directed to a "GORPO sport camera heat dissipation protection housing" and that the differences from the claimed design were ignored.

Combinations 5 (untried) — the all-GoPro "self-collision" theory

Nothing in either record appears to have run the Tier C/A references against each other: D710,921 + D775,254 + D721,395 as a three-way combination of GoPro's own camera and housing designs, all § 102(a) art, all already cited on the '435 face, with Huang or D750,680 (Dazzne) supplying the rectangular lens bezel. The motivation would be the strongest available kind: same designer, same product line, same design language, successive generations — i.e., the ordinary designer of GoPro's own cameras iterating the silhouette. Whether that is enough is a separate question (see § 4), but it is the combination I would expect a well-funded challenger to try next, precisely because it avoids the "housing ≠ camera" objection the Board used against three of Arashi's five primaries.

4. Why the motivations on offer are the weak link

Every candidate combination above was rejected, and the Board's reasons generalise:

1. Feature checklist = hindsight. The Board's central holding: the petition "improperly focuses on individual design concepts rather than overall visual appearance," "selectively chosen certain design features (for example, the use of rectangular buttons) … while deliberately ignoring other design features (for example, the dimensions and corner curves of those buttons as well as their position on the body)." That is Jennings/LKQ language, and it is fatal to any combination built by swapping discrete elements.
2. "Modification of every individual feature." Reaching the claimed design from Chen686 required changing the lens (round → rectangular, and to a specific size and shape), the buttons, the displays, and their positions. The Board noted the petitioner "does not explain why or how a designer of ordinary skill would have modified either Huang or McVicker's rectangular lens cover to arrive at the corresponding feature of the '435 patent."
3. The "known technique" motivation is generic. "Rectangular buttons would have created an overall visual impression of a rectangular design" and "rectangular lens cover … known to improve image quality" are exactly the kind of generic rationale the Board discounts — they do not explain why the designer lands on this overall appearance rather than any of the many rectangular-lens action cameras on the market.
4. Six days of notice. Huang, the reference supplying the rectangular lens cover in the two best grounds, published 2015‑11‑11. Using it as proof of what an ordinary designer "would have been motivated" to do six days before the priority date is an evidentiary problem the petitioner never addressed.
5. Asymmetric use of "minor." There is a real doctrinal tension the challenger can exploit: GoPro persuaded the ITC to treat the claimed lower square side button (solid line = claimed) and the claimed smooth opposite surface as unimportant for infringement, while the Board refused to let Arashi treat dimensional/positional differences as unimportant for validity. Formally these are different tests; practically, a challenger will argue GoPro cannot have it both ways. Range of Motion Prods. v. Armaid, 166 F.4th 981 (Fed. Cir. 2026) is the authority cutting the other way (no claim vitiation), and the Federal Circuit has not resolved the tension. I flag this as an argument, not a holding.

5. Secondary considerations

There is no objective-evidence record on this claim: no nexus evidence, no copying evidence, no industry-praise evidence in either decision. Commercial success of the underlying GoPro product is likely real but undemonstrated with nexus to the claimed ornamental features, and design patents present acute nexus problems. I would not build a § 103 defense on this record without developing that evidence. I have not seen any evidence on this point; I am not asserting it does not exist.

6. Bottom line

Yes, literal § 103 theories exist and can be articulated against the single claim — primarily Chen686 + Huang/Heo, secondarily Gioscia D710,921 + Huang/Heo/McVicker, and (untried) a GoPro-within-GoPro combination of D710,921/D775,254/D721,395 with a rectangular-lens reference. Each is supportable by a same-field, analogous-art motivation.

No, they have not worked, and the reasons are structural, not accidental. Two independent tribunals have now examined this claim: the Board denied institution on all six primary references (holding the petition did not even show a reasonable likelihood), and the ITC's Final Initial Determination found the '435 valid and infringed (affirmed 2026‑02‑26). The single-claim design is narrow (solid lines only), and its narrowness is precisely what insulates it: a narrow claim is hard to invalidate by combination because nearly any combination requires modifying "every individual feature," which is the Jennings trap.

My assessment, with confidence levels:

• High confidence: that Chen686 + Huang/Heo was the strongest available combination, and that the Board's Jennings/LKQ reasoning is what defeated it.
• Moderate confidence: that the untried all-GoPro self-collision combination is stronger than what was asserted, because it defeats the Board's "CAMERA HOUSING ≠ CAMERA" distinction and supplies a credible same-designer motivation.
• Moderate confidence: that the qualification dates of Chen686/Chen680 (issued 2016‑03‑01) are a live, unexplored threshold vulnerability.
• Low confidence: that any record I can construct from these sources would succeed where Bressler-backed Arashi failed.

7. Explicit uncertainties

1. I have not inspected the D'435 drawings or any prior-art figures in this session. My feature inventory derives from the Board's decision, the petition excerpts, and secondary reporting — not from images.
2. I do not have the filing dates of Chen686 or Chen680, so I cannot say whether they are § 102(a)(2) art at all. This is the single most important missing fact.
3. I do not have the issue/filing dates or content of Huang (CN 303440022), Heo (KR 300792432), Li (CN 303358967), or Wang (CN 204360078) beyond the publication dates the Board footnoted. I cannot independently confirm their disclosures.
4. I am relying on the Board's paraphrase of LKQ (102 F.4th at 1298–99) for the post-Rosen/Durling standard; I have not read LKQ directly in this session.
5. The ITC's validity reasoning is not before me — the "valid and infringed" finding reaches me through a machine-translated secondary summary; I have not verified the Commission's § 103 analysis.
6. No "abstract," no dependent claims, no independent claims in the plural — consistent with the earlier section; nothing here changes that.
7. Date discrepancy (flagged again): the task states the current date as April 26, 2026, but the record I retrieved includes material dated after that (the ITC's Feb. 26, 2026 determination is consistent; the Armaid decision reported at 166 F.4th 981 and the Sterne Kessler "2025 Year in Review" dated January 2026 are at the edge). The system date supplied to me is 2026‑09‑30. I have flagged rather than reconciled this.

Sources: https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IPR2024-01434.pdf (IPR2024-01434 Institution Decision, Mar. 31, 2025) · https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556678](/patent/1556678)/download-documents (Petition and Patent Owner Preliminary Response) · https://patents.google.com/patent/USD789435/en · https://patentlyo.com/patent/2026/03/guest-post-design-patents-at-the-itc.html · https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-03-03/pdf/2026-04160.pdf · LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Tech. Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc), as quoted in the Board's decision · In re Jennings, 182 F.2d 207 (CCPA 1950).