US 10038284

I'll research this patent across the requested sources.

Let me dig into the litigation/appeal outcomes and the full claim set.

US Patent 10,038,284 B2 — Research Summary

Bibliographic Data

Priority chain (from the specification): This patent is a continuation of 15/094,451 (filed Apr. 8, 2016) → 13/448,937 (now US 9,312,611) → 13/118,617 (now US 8,157,589) → CIP of 12/418,103 (now US 8,071,174) and 12/941,709 (now US 7,950,958) → 12/397,087 (now US 7,828,595) → 10/997,218 (filed Nov. 24, 2004).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A grounding member for maintaining a ground path in a cable connector includes, in one embodiment, an inner core configured to flex when a force is applied to the grounding member during operation of the connector. The grounding member further includes an outer conductive coating applied to the inner core. The outer conductive coating is configured to flex from a first state to a second state when a force is applied to the grounding member, so as to maintain a conductive path through the connector when the outer conductive coating flexes between the first and second states during operation of the connector."

Litigation and Post-Grant Review (as found)

• PTAB: IPR2022-00720, filed March 18, 2022. Google Patents renders the party field as "Unified Patents PTAB Data," but that is the data-source attribution, not the petitioner. Independent PTAB trackers (ipverse/greyb, Patexia) identify the actual petitioner as Amphenol Corp. et al. against PPC Broadband, Inc. et al. Institution decision Oct. 24, 2022; Final Written Decision Oct. 23, 2023 (Panel: Hoskins, Gerstenblith, Ippolito; opinion by Hoskins). The FWD determined all challenged claims unpatentable; challenged claims were 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 and 46. Patent Owner rehearing request denied Feb. 28, 2024.
• Federal Circuit: Appeal No. 2024-1778, consolidated with 2024-1776, -1777 and -1779 (appeals from IPR2022-00718, -00719, -00720, -00721). On March 4, 2026, the court issued a Rule 36 nonprecedential judgment AFFIRMED (per curiam: Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham). In other words, the PTAB's invalidation of the challenged claims of the '284 patent was upheld. Law360 headline: "Fed. Circ. Backs PTAB Ax Of Coaxial Cable Patent Claims" (March 4, 2026).
• District court: D. Del. case 1:21-cv-00654 (listed on the Google Patents family page).
• Caveat: Because the affirmance was by Rule 36 (no opinion), the CAFC did not articulate reasoning; and note that claim 1 and the other independent claims listed below were not among the claims challenged in IPR2022-00720.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The full claim set is not reproduced in the authoritative patent text supplied, so the following is drawn from secondary full-text sources (rpxcorp/insight and Justia). Treat exact wording — particularly for claim 1 — as uncertain: the Justia text (which corresponds to the pre-issue publication US 2017/0155212) and the issued-patent text on rpxcorp differ in phrasing. Where they conflict, the issued-patent wording is the better evidence of what issued.

Claim 1 — "A conductive ground member for a cable connector" (issued text, per rpxcorp):
A conductive grounding part (e.g., a ring/O-ring) with a conductively coated component that forms a conductive ground path between a first component and a second component of a connector. It has an inner core and an outer conductive coating. The coating maintains an electrical ground path during connector operation and is designed to flex in one direction when force is applied and flex in another direction when the force is at least partially released — so the ground path survives the mechanical squeezing/relaxation that happens as the connector is tightened and loosened.
(The Justia pre-issue version instead recites "maintain a first conductive ground path portion … and a second conductive ground path portion" rather than the two-direction flex language — a material difference worth noting.)

Claim 14 — "A connector for coupling a prepared end of a coaxial cable to an interface port":
Comprises (a) a body member with a central bore; (b) a post inside the bore, with an outward flange at one end forming a first portion of a mating interface, and a tubular sleeve at the other end that mechanically and electrically engages the prepared cable end; (c) a conductive coupling element (nut) with (i) an engagement surface at one end that mechanically and electrically engages the port, (ii) a lip at the other end forming a second portion of the mating interface — the two portions slide along the mating interface so the nut can rotate about the connector's long axis — and (iii) a mounting groove between the engagement surface and the mating interface; and (d) a conductive grounding element in the form of a compressible ring seated in that groove, which is displaced one way as the nut is tightened onto the port and the other way as it is loosened.

Claim 24 — "A connector comprising":
Similar architecture to claim 14, but the body member's first end defines a first cavity portion and the coupling element has a second cavity portion axially aft of the lip, the two together defining an RF shielding cavity. It adds a conductive sealing element in the RF shielding cavity to prevent RF energy from entering or leaving the connector, plus the same compressible-ring grounding element in the mounting groove.

Claim 29 — "A connector comprising":
A body member with a central bore and a first grounding-member contact surface; a conductive coupling member/grounding contact surface; and a conductive grounding member comprising a compliant ring disposed between the first and second grounding-member contact surfaces, configured to produce an electrical path between the body member and the conductive coupling member.

Other independent claims: The challenge list implies additional claims exist beyond claim 29 (e.g., claims 30–33, 36–43, 46 were challenged, while 34, 35, 44 and 45 were not). I do not have authoritative text for those claims and cannot confirm how many of them are independent. I will not guess at their content.

Technical Gist (plain language)

The patent is about keeping a reliable electrical ground/EMI shield in a coaxial cable connector even as weather, corrosion, and repeated tightening/loosening cause small mechanical movements. The core idea is that elastomeric parts (silicone O-rings) are given a thin conductive coating — silver-based conductive ink sprayed on — so the part is both a seal and a conductor. Because only the skin is conductive, the part stays flexible (unlike a solid metal or bulk-conductive ring), and the flexible conductive coating maintains continuity as it is compressed and relaxed. The specification describes two placements: a "conductively coated mating edge member" (O-ring 70) at the port-mating edge of the post, and a "connector body conductive member" (O-ring 80) between the connector body and the coupling nut.

Confidence / Uncertainty Notes

• Bibliographic data, abstract, priority chain, and the PTAB/CAFC history are well-supported by the sources found and are stated with high confidence.
• The exact wording of claim 1 is uncertain because the two full-text sources disagree; I flagged both.
• Claims 2–13, 15–23, and 30–46 and the total number of independent claims are not authoritatively confirmed here.
• The Google Patents page's listing of the IPR petitioner as "Unified Patents PTAB Data" is a source attribution artifact; the case records indicate Amphenol Corp. as petitioner.
• No 2026 CAFC docket activity beyond the March 4, 2026 Rule 36 affirmance was found; if a petition for rehearing or en banc review was filed after that date, I did not locate it.

I'll search for litigation involving US 10038284 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search for the specific district court case and the Federal Circuit appeal.

Let me verify which patents were asserted in the Delaware case and confirm the outcome.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,038,284 ("Connector having a grounding member")

Based on my searches of patent‑litigation aggregators (Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm/Justia dockets, Patexia, Patent Center PTAB records, and the CAFC opinions/orders site), I found one district‑court case and one consolidated appellate proceeding tied to U.S. 10,038,284, plus the PTAB proceeding that invalidated its claims. No other infringement suits asserting this specific patent surfaced.

⚠️ Caveat on scope: The patent number was interpreted literally as 10,038,284. I did not find any case asserting this patent against any defendant other than those below. I also cannot confirm from the sources retrieved that 10,038,284 was one of the asserted patents in the district‑court case; the linkage is inferred from the patent owner's mandatory notices and the IPR filings. That limitation is flagged in each entry.

1. District Court Litigation

• Docket Alarm: http://ocr.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--21-cv-00654/PPC_Broadband_Inc._v._Amphenol_Corporation_et_al/
• Ex Parte AI Lab: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/ded/1:21-cv-00654/ppc-broadband-inc-v-amphenol-corp
• Patexia docket: https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/PPC-Broadband-Inc-v-Amphenol-Corporation-et-al-id-[152158](/patent/152158)/documents

Patent‑number linkage (important): I could not confirm directly from the complaint that U.S. 10,038,284 was among the patents asserted in 1:21‑cv‑00654. However, PPC's Patent Owner Mandatory Notices in the parallel IPRs identify this Delaware case as a related matter, and Amphenol's IPR2022‑00720 (on the '284 patent) was filed while 1:21‑cv‑00654 was pending — the typical posture when IPRs are filed in response to a district‑court complaint. This supports, but does not conclusively prove, that the '284 patent was asserted there.

Related/earlier Delaware case (different patents): PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corporation and Times Fiber Communications, Inc., No. 1:20‑cv‑01148 (D. Del., filed Aug. 28, 2020) asserted U.S. Patents 8,510,782; 9,167,286; 9,351,051; 9,516,376; and 9,860,591 — not 10,038,284. (Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2020cv01148/73087)

2. PTAB Proceeding (the challenge that invalidated the '284 claims)

• PTAB case details: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2022-00720
• Patexia summary: https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/shorturl-id-[162532](/patent/162532)
• Grounds relied on: Ground 1 — Youtsey (U.S. 6,042,422) + Lionetto (U.S. 4,929,188) + Horak (U.S. 3,879,102); Ground 2 — Tarrant + Bell.

3. Federal Circuit Appeal (consolidated)

• CAFC Judgment PDF: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1776.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.3-4-2026_2656063.pdf
• Justia: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/24-1776/24-1776-2026-03-04.html

Net effect: The Federal Circuit's March 4, 2026 Rule 36 affirmance left the PTAB's finding that claims 29–33, 36–43, and 46 of U.S. 10,038,284 are unpatentable standing. The '284 patent's anticipated expiration was November 24, 2024 (per Google Patents bibliographic data), so it is expired.

Summary of Known Matters

1. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp. & Times Fiber Communications, Inc. — D. Del. No. 1:21‑cv‑00654 — filed 5/6/2021 — STAYED (aggregator lists as closed). Linkage of U.S. 10,038,284 to this case inferred, not directly confirmed.
2. Amphenol Corp. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. — IPR2022‑00720 — filed 3/18/2022 — all challenged '284 claims unpatentable (FWD 10/23/2023); rehearing denied 2/28/2024.
3. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp. — Fed. Cir. Nos. 2024‑1776/‑1777/‑1778/‑1779 — judgment 3/4/2026 — AFFIRMED (Rule 36).

No other litigation asserting U.S. 10,038,284 was found. If you need a definitive confirmation that the '284 patent was pleaded in 1:21‑cv‑00654, the complaint and its Patent/Trademark Report (D.I. 1 and the § 3 report) from PACER would be the authoritative source; my searches surfaced the case, its schedule, and its stay, but not the list of asserted patent numbers in that complaint.

Note on dates/identifiers: all case numbers, patent numbers, and dates above are reproduced exactly as retrieved from the cited sources and were not auto‑corrected.

I'll start by verifying the one PTAB reference embedded in the patent's litigation metadata, then check for any others.

Key proceeding identified. Now let me get the claim-level FWD details, grounds, and confirm whether any other IPRs target this patent.

Let me pull the FWD document itself and confirm the remaining claims and the parallel litigation.

⚠️ Threshold correction to the structured data

The "PTAB proceedings on file" block is wrong for this patent. It states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings. Web search surfaced one AIA trial on US 10,038,284 — IPR2022-00720, which went to a Final Written Decision, was reheard, was appealed, and was affirmed by the Federal Circuit. It is also flagged on the patent's own Google Patents page ("PTAB case IPR2022-00720 filed (Final Written Decision)").

Two identifier cautions before the substance:

1. Petitioner is Amphenol, not Unified Patents. The Google Patents litigation block prints Petitioner: "Unified Patents PTAB Data". That string is a Creative Commons attribution label for Unified Patents' PTAB dataset, not a party name. The real petitioner is Amphenol Corp. et al. No defensive aggregator appears anywhere in this chain. If a defendant's file says "Unified Patents challenged this patent," that is a data-artifact error.
2. Source limits. I was able to verify the proceeding's metadata, party/panel identity, dates, challenged‑claim list, art references and disposition, but I did not read the FWD's full text. Claim-level results below rest on the decision's operative title ("…Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable") plus secondary reporting, and I flag anything I could not independently confirm.

Proceedings overview

Total: 1 AIA trial proceeding on US 10,038,284 — IPR2022-00720, status "claims invalidated," affirmed on appeal after a request for rehearing was denied. There are no active proceedings, no PGRs/CBMs, no institution denials, and no settlements. Bottom line for a defendant: all 14 claims that were challenged — claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 — were held unpatentable and the Federal Circuit affirmed; any demand letter citing those claims is citing canceled claims. But the patent has 46 claims total, and roughly 32 claims were never tested (1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45). This is a partially neutered patent, not a dead one. Check the specific claim numbers in the demand before assuming you are safe.

IPR2022-00720 — Amphenol Corp. et al. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. et al.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-03-18
• Patent: US 10,038,284 B2 (application 15/431,018; Tech Center 2800)
• Status: Verbatim from the structured/aggregator data: "Final Written Decision – Appealed." Plain English: FWD issued holding all challenged claims unpatentable; rehearing denied; appeal filed; Federal Circuit affirmed 2026-03-04 — the merits are over.
• Judge panel: George R. Hoskins (author of the FWD), Bart A. Gerstenblith, Frances L. Ippolito. (Source: Patexia case summary.)
• Counsel of record: Petitioner — Giri Pathmanaban et al.; Patent Owner — Denise Sullivan et al. (Source: IPVerse; spelling of petitioner counsel is per that source.) On appeal, PPC was represented by Robert King High III (Finnegan); Amphenol by Gabriel K. Bell (Latham & Watkins).
• Petition grounds: 14 claims challenged — 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 46 (elsewhere recited as "claims 29-33, 36-43, and 46"). Statutory basis: § 103 obviousness. The art combination was Youtsey as the primary reference, combined with Lionetto and Horak — i.e., making Youtsey's sealing O‑ring conductive in view of Lionetto, with Horak supplying the redundant grounding-path/weather-seal/RFI-suppression motivation. The record also reflects reliance on a prior reexamination examiner's answer on the related '053 patent adopting that same Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak rationale. I could not verify the exact patent numbers of each reference from the sources available; do not cite exhibit numbers without pulling the FWD from PTAB E2E.
• Institution decision: Instituted, 2022-10-24 (Paper 11, 72 pages). The Board authorized an unusual pre‑institution Petitioner's Reply to the POPR (2022-08-31) and PO Sur-Reply (2022-09-07), which indicates the panel engaged head-on with Patent Owner's § 325(d) discretionary-denial arguments (the '284 Notice of Allowability, the '218 ancestor application, and the Becton/Dickens framework). The Board instituted anyway — i.e., it was unpersuaded that the Examiner had substantively evaluated the art. (The discretionary-denial argument set is documented in the petitioner's filings; the institution paper itself I did not read.)
• Final Written Decision: 2023-10-23 — all challenged claims unpatentable. Claims 29–33, 36–43, and 46 were held unpatentable as obvious over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak. Law360's contemporaneous report grouped this with three companion decisions: "PTAB Axes All Challenged Claims In 4 Coaxial Cable Patents" — Amphenol "showed that all the claims it challenged across four coaxial cable patents owned by competitor PPC Broadband Inc. are invalid as obvious." No challenged claim survived. I cannot quote the panel's specific claim-by-claim reasoning paragraph text because I did not retrieve the FWD body — retrieve it before quoting it in a brief.
• Claims NOT addressed by the FWD (do not assume anything about these): 1–28, 34, 35, 44, and 45. The FWD did not reach them because they were not challenged.
• Settlement / termination: None — no settlement. The proceeding ran to an FWD on the merits. "Termination Date" 2023-10-23 in the aggregator data is simply the FWD date.
• Post-FWD and appeal:
  • 2023-11-22 — Patent Owner Request for Rehearing of the FWD.
  • 2024-02-28 — Board denied the request for rehearing (37 C.F.R. § 42.71(d)).
  • 2024-04-29 — Patent Owner Notice of Appeal.
  • CAFC Nos. 2024-1776, 2024-1777, 2024-1778, 2024-1779 — consolidated appeals from IPR2022-00718 ('063), ‑00719 ('983), ‑00720 ('284), and ‑00721 ('083). The '284 appeal is 24-1778 (per the Google Patents family record; the lead caption in the Federal Circuit judgment is PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Amphenol Corp., 2024‑1776).
  • 2026-03-04 — AFFIRMED, per curiam (Reyna, Hughes, Cunningham), Fed. Cir. R. 36 — a one-line judgment with no opinion. Judgment: law.justia.com — 24-1776, 2026-03-04.
• Defensive value: Very high for the challenged claims, qualified for the rest. Claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 are canceled; a defendant served with a demand on any of those numbers can say so flatly. But an assertion on untested claims 1–28 or 34/35/44/45 is unaffected by this IPR, and the Rule 36 affirmance buys the defendant no reasoning it can borrow.

Proceeding links: IPVerse case page for IPR2022-00720 · Patexia case summary · Justia — Federal Circuit judgment, 2026-03-04. For the FWD document itself, pull Paper 40 (or the FWD paper) from PTAB E2E / PTAB Center at ptacts.uspto.gov under IPR2022-00720 — I did not verify the paper number and am not asserting one.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Of the 46 claims in US 10,038,284, 14 are canceled: 29–33, 36–43, and 46 (unpatentable over Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak, affirmed). No claim was sustained on the merits — the patent owner lost on every claim that was put at risk. That is a materially different posture from "the patent survived IPR and is hardened." The surviving estate is the untested remainder: claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45. Note the claim-count asymmetry matters practically: the challenged set appears to be the "conductive sealing member / grounding member" genus (the claims the patent's own abstract and specification describe), while the untested claims 1–28 may cover different subject matter within the same disclosure. The first thing to do in any new matter is map the asserted claim numbers against the canceled list.

Estoppel landscape. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), Amphenol and its privies are estopped in the Delaware action from asserting any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised on the claims that were instituted. Because the FWD also found all challenged claims unpatentable and the appeal is final, the estoppel question is largely academic for claims 29–33, 36–43 and 46 — those claims are canceled and cannot be asserted by anyone. The live estoppel question is the untested claims. Estoppel is applied claim-by-claim in prevailing practice: Amphenol's IPR did not put claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 at issue, so an accused infringer other than Amphenol — and, on most courts' reading, even Amphenol — remains free to raise Youtsey/Lionetto/Horak against those unchallenged claims in district court. Do not over-read the estoppel. It also means the Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak combination is now a proven, judicially blessed kill-shot for any claim that recites a conductive elastomeric grounding/sealing member bridging the nut/body/post interface — an obvious candidate theory for the untested claims, and one you should price out immediately (with the § 315(a)(1) and § 325(a)(1) bars in mind before filing anything you already knew).

Pattern signals. This was a coordinated, multi-patent, competitor-driven attack, not a troll/aggregator campaign. Amphenol filed four parallel IPRs in a single wave on 2022-03-18 — IPR2022-00718 ('063), ‑00719 ('983), ‑00720 ('284), and ‑00721 ('083) — and won all four, with an additional parallel ex parte reexamination of the '053 patent feeding the same Youtsey/Lionetto/Horak rationale into the record. PPC Broadband litigated hard from the patent-owner side: it filed POPRs, sur-replies, a Patent Owner Response, a motion to strike, a request for rehearing, and then appealed all four decisions to the Federal Circuit — and lost all four on a Rule 36 affirmance. There is no settlement and no Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator involvement; the "Unified Patents" string on the Google Patents page is dataset attribution only. Separately, the family data lists a Delaware District Court case, 1:21-cv-00654 (2021), and the '284 is cross-cited in the prosecution of later PPC family members (e.g., the '619 patent), where it was used as a double-patenting reference ("Claims 1-18 are rejected … as being unpatentable over claims 1-46 of U.S. Patent No. 10,038,284"). That cross-citation is worth tracing: it shows how PPC's continuation practice propagated the same claim families across multiple patents — which cuts both ways, since the same obviousness rationale that killed 14 claims here is reusable against the siblings.

Recommended next steps

1. Canceled claims — disposition to quote. Pull the FWD (Paper 40 region, PTAB E2E, IPR2022-00720) and the Federal Circuit judgment. The operative disposition is: "Final Written Decision Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable" (2023-10-23), denying rehearing (2024-02-28), affirmed 2026-03-04 (Fed. Cir. Nos. 2024‑1776/1777/1778/1779, per curiam, Rule 36). If a demand letter asserts 29–33, 36–43 or 46, the response is that those claims are canceled under § 318(b) — and the appeal that could have revived them is final.
2. Untested claims — the real fight. Build your invalidity case on claims 1–28, 34, 35, 44, 45 from scratch. Start from the Youtsey + Lionetto + Horak record and the companion '063/'983/'083 FWDs (note in particular the "compliant ring … elastomeric ring having a flexible core and a conductive outer coating" claim language litigated in the sibling proceedings — it maps directly onto the '284 abstract's "inner core … outer conductive coating"). Those four FWDs together are your best roadmap.
3. Timing is now favorable, and there is no deadline pressure from this IPR. No proceeding is active, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing and no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD clock running. Your § 315(b) one-year bar to file a new IPR runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent — confirm whether the 2021 Delaware case (1:21-cv-00654) ever named you or a privy, because that will decide whether a new IPR is even available to you.
4. Stop before filing on the challenged claims. Filing an IPR against claims already canceled buys nothing and creates § 315(e)(2) estoppel exposure on adjacent claims. The validity work belongs in the district court on the untested claims, where you can also run § 112 and indefiniteness theories that no IPR here ever tested.
5. Correct the record internally. If your invalidity charts or docket tracker show "no PTAB activity" on US 10,038,284 (as the ODP-derived block suggests), or attribute IPR2022-00720 to Unified Patents, both are wrong. Amphenol Corp. et al. v. PPC Broadband, Inc. et al., IPR2022-00720, is the proceeding — and it ended in cancellation of all 14 challenged claims.