US 11257891

I'll search for litigation and docket records for this patent before compiling the summary.

US 11,257,891 B2 — "Display panel"

Sources used: the full patent text you supplied (authoritative), Google Patents, Unified Patents portal, and docket/news records via web search. Where sources disagree, I flag the conflict rather than resolving it silently.

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1. Bibliographic data

Discrepancies to note. The Unified Patents portal lists priority date 2018-06-06, application date 2018-09-27, grant 2022-02-21 and expiration 2040-04-17 — i.e., it is offset by one day from the full text on three of four dates. I have not reconciled this; the Google Patents record in your authoritative text (2018-06-07 / 2018-09-28 / 2022-02-22) is the one I use above. Maintenance fee (4th year, large entity) paid 2025-08-15.

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2. Abstract (as issued)

A display panel including a first section of a first power trace and a second power trace, an active region and a non-display region, a bending region, and a fanout routing region and a component disposing region; the first section of the first power trace connected to a second section of the first power trace disposed within the component disposing region; and the first section of the second power trace connected to a second section of the second power trace disposed within the component placement region by at least one set of second connection sub-traces disposed within the bending region. The invention changes the power line structure of the display panel and uses the second connecting sub-lines for bridging so that part of the traces can be bent to the backside of the display panel, achieving narrow bottom borders.

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3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the "two-set bridging" panel (VSS + VDD architecture).
A display panel has an active (display) region and a non-display region wrapped around it that extends downward into three zones: a bending region, a fanout routing region, and a component disposing region carrying component connecting pads.

• First power trace (described as the low-potential VSS line): its first section runs in the non-display region around the active region; it connects to a second section located in the component disposing region, which in turn connects to the pads.
• Second power trace (described as the high-potential VDD line): its first section sits between the active region and the bending region. That first section connects to a second section in the component disposing region through at least one set of second connecting sub-traces that pass through the bending region; the second section connects to the pads.
• Closing limitation: the first section of the second power trace is connected to the second section by two sets of second connecting sub-traces passing through two sections of the bending region.

The commercial point: the wide power rails are no longer routed into the bend zone as solid metal; they are bridged by many narrow parallel sub-traces so the panel can be folded at the BL line right below the VDD rail without delamination or trace breakage, shortening the bottom border (specification claims 0.8 mm–2.0 mm).

Claim 11 — the "left/middle/right" three-set panel.
Same overall architecture, but the bending region is expressly divided into a left section, a middle section, and a right section, and the panel also recites data traces running through the bending region to the pads. The first section of a power trace (adjacent to the active region) connects to its second section in the component disposing region via three sets of connecting sub-traces passing through the left, middle, and right sections. The redundancy is deliberate: if bending breaks one set, the remaining sets keep the product functional.

Claim 16 — the broadest "bridged power trace" panel.
An active region plus non-display region extending into a bending region and a component disposing region; a first section of a power trace adjacent to the active region is separately connected to a second section in the component disposing region by at least one set of connecting sub-traces passing through the bending region. The claim then adds the further limitation that the connection is made by three sets of sub-traces passing through left, middle, and right sections.

Dependent claims in brief (numbers as issued):

• Claims 2–6 (from claims 1/2/3): relative widths — first section of the second power trace is narrower than the second section but wider than a sub-trace; first section ≤ "ISO microns" as rendered in the fetched text (the specification says 150 microns — the claim text reads "ISO," which I take to be an OCR artifact, not a term of art); sub-trace ≤ 20 microns; second section ≤ 250 microns.
• Claims 7–10: the first power trace (VSS) is likewise bridged by a plurality of first connecting sub-traces through the bending region, with the trace sections wider than the sub-trace, sub-traces ≤ 20 microns, and a materials recitation (Ti-Al-Ti, Mo, Cu, or silver nanowire) for the sub-traces and data traces.
• Claims 12–15 (from claim 11): parallel sections, first section narrower than second section and wider than a sub-trace; ≤ 150 microns / ≤ 20 microns / ≤ 250 microns respectively.
• Claims 17–18 (from claim 16): parallel-section width relationship, and the two-set variant of claim 1's bridging.

Two drafting observations (flagged as analyst notes, not legal conclusions): (i) claims 8 and 9 both recite "The display panel according to claim 6," yet their subject matter ("first connecting sub-trace," "first section of the first power trace") is introduced in claim 7 — this looks like a dependency error; (ii) claim 1's final limitation of exactly "two sets … through two sections" sits uneasily with claim 3's "three sets … through a left section, a middle section, and a right section." Also, in the second embodiment the specification labels the second connecting sub-traces "210," which elsewhere denotes the first connecting sub-traces — a numbering inconsistency in the disclosure itself, not a claim issue.

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4. Litigation — USPTO / district court / CAFC searches

U.S. district court (verified). Google Patents links this family to Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co Ltd v. Samsung Display Co Ltd, No. 2:26-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex.), filed 2026-03-19, Nature of Suit 830 (Patent), plaintiff identified as an operating company, status open (source: Unified Patents litigation data surfaced through Google Patents; docket aggregators confirm the case caption and number). A contemporaneous report describes CSOT asserting three OLED display patents against Samsung Display and retailers Walmart and Best Buy, over displays used in Google Pixel 8/9/10-series phones (https://www.anzone-consulting.cn/Intellectualproperty/1376.html). Uncertainty: none of the sources I retrieved enumerates the three asserted patent numbers, so I cannot confirm from an authoritative pleading that US 11,257,891 is one of the asserted patents — only that the patent's Google Patents record carries the 2:26-cv-00228 litigation flag. Note also that the same parties are litigating on the other side in N.D. Tex. (Samsung's case against TCL/CSOT entities, C.A. 2:26-cv-… / N.D. Tex. docket 405073), and that Google Patents also displays a Darts-IP worldwide-family litigation indicator for family ID 64087792.

CAFC 2026 dockets (searched; no match for this patent). I found no Federal Circuit appeal in 2026 involving US 11,257,891. The only 2026 CAFC matter between these parties that surfaced is Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., Nos. 26-1092, 26-1106 (Fed. Cir.), an appeal from PTAB IPR2024-00620, in which the court issued a nonprecedential order on April 7, 2026 dismissing the cross-appeal under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/26-1092/26-1092-2026-04-07.html). That proceeding concerns a PTAB IPR of a Samsung patent, not the '891 patent, and should not be conflated with it.

USPTO record (hint of prosecution history). The '891 patent was granted after a non-final office action (mailed 2021-06-21), a response (2021-09-23), and a notice of allowance (2021-11-05) — i.e., the claims were amended during prosecution. That matters for any future doctrine-of-equivalents analysis via prosecution history estoppel, though I have not reviewed the substance of the amendment.

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5. Confidence statement

Everything in Section 1 and the abstract/claim summaries comes from the authoritative full text you supplied, which I treat as controlling. The E.D. Tex. case number, parties, and filing date are confirmed across at least two independent records; the identification of the specific asserted patents in that case is not confirmed. I found no CAFC docket entry for US 11,257,891 in 2026, but a negative search result is not proof of absence — I cannot rule out a recently filed, not-yet-indexed appeal.

I'll search litigation databases and docket sources for this specific patent number.

The Chinese litigation report explicitly names three asserted patents. Let me verify the case details and check for other proceedings (PTAB, ITC, other districts).

Confirmed the E.D. Tex. case. Now let me check PTAB, ITC, CAFC, and any other forums.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,257,891

Bottom line: I found one (1) U.S. litigation in which US 11,257,891 is a specifically identified asserted patent — the E.D. Tex. action captioned below. I found no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), no ITC Section 337 investigation, and no Federal Circuit appeal naming the '891 patent. Negative results are stated with caveats at the end.

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Case 1 — CSOT v. Samsung Display, Walmart, Best Buy (the only identified case)

Why the '891 patent matters in this case (as pleaded): CSOT's theory is that the accused panels' power-trace layout — a first power trace routed around the active area plus a second power trace between the active area and the bending region, bridged to the component-disposing region by sets of narrow "connecting sub-traces" passing through the bending region — practices the '891 claims, enabling the narrow-bezel/folded-back component architecture. This tracks the architecture of asserted claim 1 (VSS + VDD split into wide main sections plus narrow sub-traces through the bend zone) summarized earlier in this analysis.

Sources: Unified Patents litigation record surfaced via the patent's Google Patents page; case docket/analysis record at 2:26-cv-00228 (amended complaint text, caption, parties, venue allegations, and patent-by-patent analysis); ZDNet Korea, "CSOT, 삼성디스플레이 상대 특허소송 제기…OLED 특허 3건 침해 주장" (March 23, 2026), which expressly names US 12,133,429 · 11,957,031 · 11,257,891; 163.com/WitDisplay and The Biz reports of the same three patents; scalejuris.com case note confirming docket 2:26-cv-00228.

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Case 2 — Samsung Display v. CSOT et al. (related dispute — '891 NOT asserted)

• Case: Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., Ultimate Eshop LLC, Vican Inc. d/b/a eTech Parts Plus
• Court / number: N.D. Tex., 3:25-cv-01430; Judge Karen Gren Scholer
• Filed: June 5, 2025 (First Amended Complaint July 11, 2025)
• Samsung's asserted patents: US 11,594,578; US 7,414,599; US 9,330,593 — not the '891 patent
• Status: Open and actively litigated. Defendants/counter-claimants CSOT and Wuhan China Star filed an answer and counterclaims against Samsung Display (Oct. 14, 2025). Schedule: discovery due 10/9/2026, motions due 3/3/2027, jury trial set for 7/12/2027; Jeff Kaplan appointed mediator (mediation within 90 days before trial).
• Relevance: This is the predicate suit CSOT's 2:26-cv-00228 action is widely described as a retaliatory counterstrike to. Because the '891 patent is not asserted in 3:25-cv-01430, it does not count as a second '891 case — but CSOT's counterclaims there could theoretically implicate additional patents, which I could not verify from the retrieved record.

Case 3 — Federal Circuit 26-1092 / 26-1106 (PTAB appeal — '891 NOT at issue)

• Case: Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., [Tianma Microelectronics Co. Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Tianma%20Microelectronics%20Co.%20Ltd.), [Visionox Technology, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Visionox%20Technology%2C%20Inc.), Mianyang BOE Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Nos. 26-1092 (lead), 26-1106 (cross-appeal); appeal docketed Oct. 24, 2025
• Subject: Appeal from PTAB IPR2024-00620 concerning a Samsung Display patent (not the '891 patent)
• Status: Cross-appeal dismissed April 7, 2026 under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b), mandate issued in 26-1106 (per Justia docket); appellants' opening brief filed April 3, 2026, corrected versions filed April 17, 2026 (pending compliance review). Still pending.
• Caveat: Prior analysis in this matter characterized this as 26-1092/26-1106 with Mianyang BOE among appellants; the docket confirms Mianyang BOE's withdrawal as a party (order Dec. 2, 2025). This is a correction to the earlier-generated section.

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Forums searched with no '891 hit

• PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM): No petition challenging US 11,257,891 surfaced. The only CSOT/BOE/Tianma/Visionox-vs-Samsung PTAB activity found concerns Samsung-owned patents (IPR2024-00620 line).
• ITC Section 337: No investigation naming US 11,257,891 surfaced. Samsung Display's 2022–2023 Section 337 actions concerning BOE involved Samsung's patents, not the '891 patent.
• Other U.S. district courts / CAFC: No other complaint or appeal naming US 11,257,891 was found.
• Foreign / family litigation: Google Patents displays a Darts-IP worldwide-family litigation flag for family ID 64087792, and the '891 patent's Chinese counterpart is CN108807476B (from CN 201810581903.1A) with WO counterpart WO2019232995A1 (status ceased). I could not identify a specific foreign case asserting CN108807476B or a foreign counterpart of the '891 patent; the Darts-IP flag is a family-level indicator and I have not verified which family member(s) it covers.

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Confidence and caveats

1. High confidence that US 11,257,891 is asserted in 2:26-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., filed March 19, 2026). This is corroborated by three independent sources: the first amended complaint text itself listing the three patents (including 11,257,891 as the "891 patent"), the ZDNet Korea report of the same three patent numbers, and the case-analysis record identifying '891 claim 1 as asserted with '891-specific infringement allegations.
2. Filing-date discrepancy (unresolved): news reports and plaintiff's venue allegations date the filing to March 19, 2026; the case-analysis header shows 03/24/2026, which I read as the First Amended Complaint/clerk entry date. I have not reconciled these; I use March 19, 2026 as the complaint filing date.
3. Date discrepancy (flagged): the task states the current date as April 26, 2026, while some retrieved sources carry later datelines (e.g., June and September 2026). I report the docket events as the records state them without resolving the timeline conflict.
4. Negative results are not proof of absence. A recently filed PTAB petition, ITC complaint, or appeal may exist but not yet be indexed. Also, the third E.D. Tex. asserted patent (US 11,957,031) and the '891 patent share the same plaintiff/defendant set, so any future termination or global settlement of the Samsung–CSOT dispute (as happened in the Samsung–BOE matter in November 2025) would likely resolve this case as a bundle rather than patent-by-patent.
5. I did not locate the docket's latest entries for 2:26-cv-00228 (e.g., any motion to dismiss under § 101, transfer motion, or scheduling order), so the "current status" is stated as of the most recent record retrieved.

I'll verify whether any public record of IPR2026-00485 exists beyond the structured block, and check for related PTAB/CAFC activity before drafting.

Press coverage confirms the filing. Let me make one more attempt to locate the actual petition documents (challenged claims, grounds, panel) on PTAB E2E or PTAB data sources.

Proceedings overview

One (1) AIA trial proceeding exists on US 11,257,891 — IPR2026-00485 (Samsung Display Co., Ltd., filed 2026-09-17, status "Pending") — meaning that as of 2026-09-22 the count is 1 pending / 0 instituted-then-decided / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied, so the patent is entirely untested at the PTAB: no final written decision, no cancellation, no estoppel, and no defensive benefit yet — a defendant today can say only that a competitor has challenged the patent five days ago, with the first real milestone (institution decision) due by roughly 2027-03-17.

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IPR2026-00485 — Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2026-09-17
• Status: Pending (verbatim from the structured PTAB-proceedings block); last modified 2026-09-17. Plain-English gloss: petition filed and accorded a filing date; no notice of institution or denial has issued; Patent Owner's preliminary response window is open.
• Judge panel: Not public / not assigned in any source retrieved. The structured block lists no panel; no institution decision exists from which a panel could be read. Do not assume a panel.
• Petition grounds: Not available in the structured data, and I did not retrieve the petition document. I will not invent challenged claims or references. What is publicly reported is the petitioner's characterization of its theory: Samsung Display told Korean press that the three challenged CSOT patents (US 11,257,891, US 11,957,031, US 12,133,429) "merely combine or modify existing technology" and lack inventive character — i.e., § 103 obviousness over prior art. Samsung's reported framing of the accused subject matter ("rearranging wiring structures to reduce bezel; methods of strengthening durability"; "crack-prevention structures at the fold; shielding and power-wiring structures") maps onto the '891's actual claim set (power-trace bridging through the bending region), but the specific claim numbers challenged (independent claims 1, 11, 16 and/or dependents) and the specific art are unknown. (Sources: THE Biz, 2026-09-20, https://www.the-biz.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=[728127](/patent/728127) ; fpdisplay, 2026-09-20, https://www.fpdisplay.com/mobile/news/show-[213421](/patent/213421).html ; Sammy Fans, 2026-09-18, https://www.sammyfans.com/2026/09/18/samsung-challenges-three-csot-oled-patents-in-the-us/ .)
• Institution decision: None. Statutory deadline under 35 U.S.C. § 314(b) is the later of three months from the Patent Owner's preliminary response or six months from the petition filing date — i.e., on or about 2027-03-17 if a POPR is filed (37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b), POPR due ~2026-12-17).
• Final Written Decision: None issued. No claim of US 11,257,891 has been canceled, confirmed, or otherwise adjudicated. Any statement that claims 1–18 (or any subset) were canceled or sustained would be fabricated.
• Settlement / termination: None. No termination, adverse judgment, or settlement has been recorded in the structured data or any source retrieved. (For avoidance of doubt: the November 2025 Samsung–BOE global settlement reported in the trade press concerned Samsung-owned patents and BOE, not the '891.)
• Appeal: None. No Federal Circuit appeal naming US 11,257,891 exists; an appeal is impossible absent an FWD (§ 319). I found no CAFC docket for this patent in 2025 or 2026.
• Defensive value: Minimal today, and asymmetric. For a defendant facing assertion of the '891, this proceeding provides (i) evidence that a sophisticated, well-funded panel maker (Samsung Display, which funds parallel IPRs and has litigated these exact patents in E.D. Tex.) considers the claims vulnerable; and (ii) a possible future vehicle — if instituted, non-petitioner defendants could seek joinder under 35 U.S.C. § 315(c) rather than bearing the cost of a separate petition. It provides no estoppel, no cancellation, and no FWD to cite. Conversely, a Patent Owner facing this petition should expect Samsung to pair the IPR with a stay request in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228 once institution is granted.

Identifier-discipline note (important): do not conflate IPR2026-00485 with the similarly numbered IPR2025-00485 (NXP), which appears in Patent Owner briefing in Apple v. IngenioSpec, IPR2026-00142 as Fintiv-factor-3 authority. They are unrelated proceedings.

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Strategic summary

Claims canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. Every claim of US 11,257,891 — independent claims 1, 11 and 16 and all fifteen dependents (2–10, 12–15, 17–18) — is UNTESTED. There is no FWD, no institution decision, and no disclaimer or certificate of correction to rely on. The only narrowing on the record remains the ordinary pre-issuance amendment reflected in the legal events (non-final office action mailed 2021-06-21; response 2021-09-23; notice of allowance 2021-11-05). If a demand letter cites claims 1–18, they are all still live; if you are defending, the patent is un-narrowed by any AIA outcome.

Estoppel landscape. No estoppel has attached, because § 315(e)(1)/(e)(2) estoppel attaches only after a final written decision. Three practical consequences for a defendant today: (1) you are not barred from running your own IPR or your own invalidity case on any ground; (2) Samsung's petition does not create a defensive shield for you, but if Samsung's IPR is instituted you may be able to join under § 315(c) and thereby avoid a separate § 315(b) clock problem; (3) if Samsung's petition is denied institution, no estoppel arises at all, and nothing about the denial forecloses your grounds. Watch the real-party-in-interest and privity identification closely: Samsung Display, Walmart and Best Buy are co-defendants in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228, and § 315(e) estoppel would run to Samsung and its privies/RPIs — not automatically to the retailer defendants. On the petitioner's side, Samsung's own § 315(b) clock ran from service of the March 2026 complaint (deadline ~2027-03-19); it filed on 2026-09-17, comfortably inside that window. Note the discretionary-denial risk that could moot all of this: Samsung's public statement that "some of the three patents were granted without a single rejection notice … the examiner did not properly review them, so the PTAB should newly judge validity" is a § 325(d)-/Office-error-flavored argument apparently aimed at pre-empting a Patent Owner request for discretionary denial. That framing does not fit the '891, whose authoritative legal events show a non-final office action was mailed 2021-06-21 before allowance — so if Samsung made that argument as to the '891, it is factually off-base as to this patent and CSOT can say so.

Pattern signals. (1) Single petitioner, first petition. Samsung Display is the only petitioner on this patent, and this is the first AIA challenge to it in eight years of pendency — the "assert-then-get-IPR'd" curve for a patent asserted in March 2026. (2) No defensive aggregator. Nothing in the chain shows Unified Patents, RPX, AST or LOT Network; the petitioner is a direct competitor, which is why the proceeding is a § 103 merits fight rather than a standing/§ 315 challenge. (3) The Patent Owner is appellate-aggressive. In the mirror-image dispute, CSOT (with BOE) petitioned against Samsung-owned patents, lost at the PTAB in 2024–2025 (all challenged claims sustained for US 11,594,578 and US 7,414,599; partial invalidity for US 9,330,593), and appealed adverse outcomes to the Federal Circuit (Nos. 26-1092/26-1106; cross-appeal dismissed 2026-04-07, mandate in 26-1106). Expect CSOT to file a substantive POPR and, if it loses an FWD, to appeal. (4) Cross-forum escalation, not a one-off. Samsung filed IPR petitions on the same day against all three asserted patents ('891, '031, '429), so institution outcomes will likely be correlated across the three (the proceeding numbers for the other two are outside this patent's record and I do not supply them). (5) Unusual structural feature, single-source and worth verifying: one trade report states Samsung Display has retained a ~10.16% stake in CSOT rather than exercising a put option — i.e., the litigants have a cross-shareholding, which historically correlates with elevated global-settlement probability (as in the November 2025 Samsung–BOE resolution). Confidence in this item is low; it comes from a single Chinese trade headline (fpdisplay, 2026-09-07 roundup) and I did not verify it against a filing.

Discrepancies flagged (not resolved). (a) The press description of the '891 as "improving the connection structure between the pixel-driving TFT layer and the organic light-emitting element to raise signal transmission speed and lower defect rate" does not match the claim set in the authoritative full text, which is about first/second power traces bridged by connecting sub-traces through a bending region. Either the trade press is loosely summarizing across the three patents, or CSOT's complaint characterizes the '891 differently from its claims. Resolve by pulling the complaint and the petition, not the press. (b) Prior sections of this analysis carried a current-date conflict (2026-04-26 vs. 2026-09-18) and speculated (correctly, as it turns out) that IPR2026-00485's grounds were unknown; the task date of 2026-09-22 and the confirmed 2026-09-17 filing resolve that timeline conflict in favor of the September dates. (c) The prior "Obviousness" section's conclusion — that the '891's independent claims are narrow, numerosity-limited claims (exactly "two sets through two sections"; exactly "three sets through left/middle/right") sitting close to the § 103 line over LG Display US 2017/0237027 and Apple US 2014/0042406 — is consistent with Samsung's reported "simple combination of existing technology" theory, but both of those references are already of record, which is precisely the § 325(d) problem Samsung will have to navigate.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of the '891:

• Do not build anything on this IPR yet. There is no FWD and no canceled claim to link. The only citable disposition is procedural: petition filed 2026-09-17, pending. Track it at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the USPTO Open Data Portal; the Board's public decisions are at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions (PTAB Decisions / E2E).
• Calendar the milestones: POPR due ~2026-12-17; institution decision deadline ~2027-03-17 (§ 314(b)); if instituted, FWD due within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11)) → approximately 2028-03, extendable up to six months for good cause. Oral hearing, if instituted, is typically set ~2–3 months before the FWD deadline.
• Preserve your own validity case independently — you are not estopped, and you should not assume Samsung's art or claim selection covers your product's differences. If Samsung's IPR is instituted, evaluate a § 315(c) joinder motion (which requires the petition to be filed with the motion and to be materially the same) against the cost and constraints of a standalone petition.
• If you want a stay in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228, note the current discretionary posture: pre-institution stay requests are usually premature, and Patent Owner will argue Fintiv-type factors, particularly "meaningful investment" if the district court exchanges contentions or holds a Markman hearing before the ~2027-03-17 decision date (cf. Apple v. IngenioSpec, IPR2026-00142 POPR, citing AMD v. Concurrent Ventures, IPR2025-00223, and NXP, IPR2025-00485). Samsung can blunt that by filing a broad Sotera-style stipulation; the informative Tesla v. Bulletproof Property Management decision (IPR2026-00204 et al., designated informative 2026-06-15) is the current guide — absence of a trial date plus a broad stipulation weighs in favor of institution. No scheduling order for 2:26-cv-00228 was found in the records I retrieved, so the factor-3 calculus is still open.
• Watch for inconsistent positions. Under the 2026 Director Review line (Revvo, Tesla, Ford v. AutoConnect, informative 2026-05-13), petitioners are being denied institution for advancing claim constructions or indefiniteness positions in the district court that diverge from their IPR positions. If you are a co-defendant, a divergence between Samsung's IPR claim constructions and its E.D. Tex. contentions is a Director Review lever.
• Note the § 325(d) seam. The strongest art identified in this matter's prior-art section (LG Display US 2017/0237027 A1 and its CN sibling; Apple US 2014/0042406 A1) is already of record, and CN 205140985 U is admitted in the specification. If Samsung leads with that art, expect a § 325(d) discretionary-denial argument; cleaner art identified but not verified (LG US 2017/0323934 A1 "Divided Power Lines"; LG US 2018/0123060 A1; CN 107863373 A) should be watched for in the petition.

If you are the Patent Owner (CSOT): your POPR should (i) contest the "no rejection during prosecution" narrative with the '891's own file — Office action mailed 2021-06-21, response 2021-09-23, allowance 2021-11-05; (ii) press § 325(d) to the extent Samsung relies on the LG ’027 / Apple ’406 art already considered; and (iii) be prepared for Director Review either way, given the current rate at which institution notices are being vacated.

If no further public record appears: that is itself expected at this stage — the petition is five days old.

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Confidence and limitations

• High confidence (structured data): exactly one proceeding — IPR2026-00485, IPR, filed 2026-09-17, status Pending, petitioner Samsung Display Co., Ltd., inventor Shijuan YI. I did not invent any proceeding number, and I excluded no proceeding from the canonical list.
• High confidence (corroborated press): the petition was filed 2026-09-17 and targets US 11,257,891 together with US 11,957,031 and US 12,133,429; it is a response to CSOT's March 2026 E.D. Tex. suit; Samsung characterizes the challenge as obviousness over combinations/modifications of existing technology.
• Explicitly NOT established, and not asserted: the challenged claim numbers; the prior-art references and ground-by-ground § 102/§ 103 structure; the panel; the real parties in interest; the POPR contents or due date as accorded by the Board; whether a motion to stay, a § 315(c) joinder request, or a Director Review petition has been filed in the four days since filing. I could not open the petition document on PTAB E2E within this search budget. Anyone relying on this section must pull the petition and the notice according the filing date.
• Negative results are not proof of absence: a second petition, a joinder request, or a related PGR could exist but be unindexed. The Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over this patent absent an FWD, so the absence of a CAFC docket is expected rather than probative.
• This is a litigation-support analysis, not legal advice or a validity opinion.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,257,891 across USPTO Assignment Center, PEDS, and related sources.

The initial searches didn't surface the assignment correspondent. Let me query the USPTO assignment records directly.

Let me try to locate the specific assignment record and any post-issuance transfers.

Assignment and Ownership Analysis — US 11,257,891 B2 ("Display panel")

Primary sources attempted: USPTO Patent Assignment Search (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), Google Patents legal-events rendering of the USPTO assignment record (the authoritative full text supplied), PlainSite/assignment mirror records for the same assignee, and the '891's litigation filings.

Verification caveat stated up front: I was able to retrieve the reel/frame, execution date, recording date, assignor, assignee and conveyance type from the assignment record as rendered in the patent's legal events. I was not able to open the Assignment Center record page for reel 047789/0052 to read the correspondent (attorney/agent) field, nor the page count. Where that field is unavailable below, I say so explicitly rather than guessing.

Cross-reference note / contradiction flagged: the previously generated sections of this analysis stated the current date as April 26, 2026; this task states September 18, 2026. I report record events as dated in the source documents and flag that this timeline conflict is unresolved. The prior sections' one-day offset between Unified Patents (2018-06-06 / 2018-09-27) and the authoritative full text (2018-06-07 / 2018-09-28) also remains unreconciled; I use the full text here.

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Inventors

Pattern observations:

• Unusual-pattern check — negative. A single-inventor, single-employer patent is a normal large-fab filing pattern. There is no evidence of a mass inventor exodus surrounding the filing date, and I found no resignation/transfer data for this inventor in any retrieved source. I cannot affirmatively rule out the inventor having left the assignee; this is "not determinable from available records," not a finding of departure.
• The assignment was executed 2018-12-12, i.e. ~6 months after the 2018-06-07 CN priority filing and ~2.5 months after the PCT filing — the classic confirmatory employment assignment executed to perfect chain-of-title for the US national stage (US 16/309,113, filed 2018-09-28). It is not a pre-litigation or fire-sale transfer; the gap to the 2026 suit is roughly 7 years and 3 months.

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Original assignee

Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. ("Wuhan CSOT") — original assignee on the face of the patent and, per every record retrieved, still the current assignee. Google Patents lists no assignee change after the 2018 assignment; the maintenance fee paid 2025-08-15 was paid by a large entity (event code MAFP), and the 2018-12-12 event code FEPP set entity status to "undiscounted / large entity" — consistent with a substantial corporate owner, not a small-entity shell.

• Primary line of business: design and manufacture of AMOLED / flexible OLED display panels (the patent's own field; CPC H10K 59/131, 59/12). It is a Wuhan-based panel fab entity, described in the assignment record address block as sited at 305 Room, Building C5, Biolake of Optics Valley, No. 666 Gaoxin Avenue, Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, Wuhan, Hubei (430070/430079), China.
• Corporate position: a subsidiary/affiliate within the TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. ("TCL CSOT") group, itself part of TCL Technology Group. Samsung's N.D. Tex. complaint describes TCL CSOT as the majority shareholder of Wuhan CSOT (N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-01430, Dkt. 1 ¶ 23).
• Status: operating. No bankruptcy, dissolution, receivership, or Chapter 7/11 filing by this assignee surfaced in any retrieved record. Portfolio analytics rank it around #247 of ~50,000 tracked US assignees (~1,717 granted US patents, 2018–2025, heavy H10K concentration) — an active filer, the opposite of a shell profile.
• Does it ship products embodying the claims? On the evidence available: yes, on the balance of the record. The '891 claims the VDD/VSS bus split into wide main sections bridged by narrow sub-traces through the bend zone so the driver/component region folds to the backside while keeping a very narrow bottom bezel. That architecture is the asserted commercial read of the patent (Chinese-language commentary describes exactly this: "VDD/VSS 电源总线被'分割'成宽的主部分和许多穿过弯曲区域的窄子走线…驱动/组件区域就可以折叠到背面"). TCL's own branded smartphones (TCL 10 Pro / 20 Pro 5G / 30 / 30+) are alleged in litigation to contain Wuhan CSOT-supplied OLED displays, and Wuhan CSOT is accused of supplying panels into the US aftermarket. I have not independently inspected a tear-down of a specific panel to confirm the claim reads on a shipping product; treat "ships products embodying the claims" as well-supported but not lab-verified here.

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Assignment timeline

One (1) recorded assignment exists for US 11,257,891. There is no post-issuance assignment, no security agreement, no merger/change-of-name record, and no release on this patent in any record I retrieved.

• 2018-12-12 (executed) / recorded 2018-12-16 — Reel 047789 / 0052
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (see document for details) — ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:YI, SHIJUAN;REEL/FRAME:047789/0052
  • Assignor: YI, Shijuan (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: WUHAN CHINA STAR OPTOELECTRONICS SEMICONDUCTOR DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. (Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, Wuhan, Hubei, China)
  • Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED. The correspondent/attorney-of-record field for reel 047789/0052 was not returned by any source I could reach, and I will not supply a name by inference. One adjacent data point, offered only as context and expressly not attributed to this reel/frame: a separate assignment recorded for this same assignee (reel/frame 52531/641, Wu & Choi → Wuhan CSOT, recorded 2020-04-30) names correspondent Martin D. Moynihan, PRTSI, Inc., P.O. Box 16446, Arlington, VA 22215 — a US prosecution/support firm used by this assignee family. That is a different chain with different assignors and a different application, so it establishes nothing about 047789/0052. If the Assignment Center page for 047789/0052 shows the same correspondent, that would be a routine in-house/outside-counsel docketing pattern for a large fab, not an NPE tell.
  • Context: Perfection of title / confirmatory employment assignment — sole inventor to his employer, executed to support the US national-stage entry of PCT/CN2018/108168. Not acquisition, not fire-sale, not reorg, not securitization.

Related (non-assignment) legal events on this patent, for completeness:

• 2018-12-12 — FEPP: entity status set to undiscounted (large entity).
• 2025-08-15 — MAFP: 4th-year maintenance fee paid, large entity. Patent remains active; adjusted expiration 2040-04-18.
• 2018-12-16 — the recording above also triggered the Assignment Center "reassignment" entry populating the Google Patents legal-events feed.

If Assignment Center returns nothing further for this patent number: that is itself the finding. Beyond reel 047789/0052, the original assignee still owns the patent, and the record is a single-link chain.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11257891
    2018 : CN priority application filed 7 June
         : PCT application filed 28 September
         : Inventor Yi Shijuan executes assignment
         : Recorded at reel 047789 frame 0052
    2021 : US pre-grant publication 22 July
    2022 : Patent granted 22 February
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2026 : Wuhan CSOT sues Samsung Display in EDTX
    2040 : Adjusted expiration 18 April

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only recorded conveyance (reel 047789/0052, executed 2018-12-12, recorded 2018-12-16) runs from a natural-person inventor to an operating panel manufacturer whose recorded address is a corporate fab campus in Wuhan — not a registered-agent service address, and the assignee name carries no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix. Entity status was set to large entity (FEPP, 2018-12-12).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither the assignor nor either-record assignee matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). The current owner is Wuhan CSOT / TCL CSOT — a manufacturer, ranked ≈#247 by US grant volume, which surfaces in Unified Patents' defendant-side PTAB petitions (e.g. IPR2023-01221, where Wuhan CSOT is a petitioner against Samsung patents) rather than in asserter directories.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ASSESSABLE. The chain has exactly one link, so recurrence within the chain is structurally impossible. More importantly, the correspondent field for reel 047789/0052 could not be retrieved, so I cannot even state who filed the single recording. I expressly decline to fill this field by inference. See the PRTSI/Moynihan note above — it is not evidence for this reel.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. There is one assignment across the patent's entire life (2018 → present), not multiple transfers in under 24 months, and no chain of LLCs sharing a correspondent or address.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The single assignment (2018-12-12) predates the earliest identified assertion of this patent — Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd., [Walmart Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Walmart%20Inc.), Best Buy Co., Inc., E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228 — by roughly 7 years and 3 months, and predates it by even longer if measured from the 2018-09-28 filing. There is no assignment within 6 months before suit; the plaintiff asserts as the original owner, so no venue- or standing-cleansing transfer was needed.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 filing by Wuhan CSOT, TCL CSOT, or TCL Technology Group surfaced in any retrieved record, and nothing in the chain looks like a Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style estate sale. (Caveat: I did not run a dedicated PACER bankruptcy or SEC EDGAR search on the TCL group; this is a "no evidence found" call, not a certified negative.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. The asserting party is the original operating assignee, suing directly. There is no intervening licensing vehicle interposed between the manufacturer and the assertion, no disclosed transfer to an NPE asserting "on behalf of" Wuhan CSOT, and no SEC or press coverage characterizing the 2026 suit that way. The commonly reported framing is the opposite: CSOT's E.D. Tex. action is described as a direct counterstrike to Samsung Display's N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-01430 suit against TCL/CSOT entities — i.e., competitor-versus-competitor, not privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with the operating manufacturer and is being actively asserted by it. (Note the asymmetry to track: Wuhan CSOT appears as a petitioner in Unified Patents-indexed IPRs against Samsung patents — that is defensive use of a different tool, not ownership transfer of the '891.)

Scorecard: 0 present · 8 not present/unclear, of which 7 are firm negatives and 1 (repeat correspondent) is a data-gap.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The entire ownership history of US 11,257,891 is a single recorded assignment — inventor Shijuan YI to Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., executed 2018-12-12 and recorded 2018-12-16 at reel 047789/0052 — with no post-issuance transfer, no security agreement, no LLC intermediary, and no defensive-aggregator termination. The current owner is a large-entity AMOLED panel manufacturer (4th-year maintenance fee paid as a large entity on 2025-08-15; ≈#247 by US grant volume) that is suing an actual competitor, Samsung Display, together with two retailers, in E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00228 — the textbook profile of a products company enforcing its own portfolio, and the inverse of every NPE signal in the checklist. The one honest gap in this reconstruction is the correspondent of record for reel 047789/0052, which I could not retrieve; if that field later shows a repeat-player NPE-recording attorney, this call would warrant revisiting, but nothing in the assignor, assignee, timing, entity-status, or litigation record supports an NPE reading today.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 11257891 · legacy mirror: assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by Patent Number = 11257891, then confirm Reel 047789 / Frame 0052).

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Fabrication-avoidance / confidence statement

• High confidence: reel/frame 047789/0052, execution 2018-12-12, recording 2018-12-16, conveyance "Assignment of Assignors' Interest," assignor YI, Shijuan, assignee Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. — all taken from the authoritative legal-events rendering of the USPTO record.
• High confidence: no other assignment, security agreement, merger, or change-of-name record exists for this patent in the sources searched.
• Explicitly unknown, not guessed: the correspondent/attorney of record for 047789/0052; the number of properties/pages in that recording; whether any unrecorded license or security interest exists (recording is not mandatory — an unrecorded lien would be invisible here).
• Unreconciled conflicts flagged: current-date mismatch (Apr 26 2026 vs. Sep 18 2026) between prior generated sections and this task; the one-day date offset in Unified Patents' bibliographic fields versus the full text; and the E.D. Tex. filing-date variance (03/19/2026 complaint vs. 03/24/2026 amended-complaint entry) noted in prior sections.

I'll verify this patent at the USPTO and pull the details of each cited reference.

Now let me pull the remaining cited references.

I have most of the citations. Let me pull the two remaining Samsung Display references and the Kunshan Govisionox reference.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,257,891 B2 ("Display panel")

0. Record verification and scope

Number check (performed literally, no auto-correction). Searching for 11257891 returns US 11,257,891 B2, "Display panel," application US 16/309,113 (national stage of PCT/CN2018/108168), inventor Shijuan YI, original and current assignee Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., examiner Le, Dung A. (per the Unified Patents record: grant no. US-11257891-B2, app 16309113, CPC class H, inventor "Yi Shijuan"). I did not substitute numerically adjacent or similarly numbered documents.

Three conflicts I am flagging, not resolving:

1. Dates. The authoritative full text gives priority 2018-06-07, filing 2018-09-28, grant 2022-02-22, expiry 2040-04-18. The Unified Patents structured record surfaced in search gives 2018-06-06 / 2018-09-27 / 2022-02-21 / 2040-04-17 — a consistent one-day offset. I use the full-text dates below.
2. Current date. This task states April 26, 2026. Other sections already generated in this matter state September 18, 2026 and reference an IPR filed 2026-09-17. Unreconciled.
3. "Cited by examiner" markings. In the Google Patents rendering, US 2014/0042406, US 2017/0287936, US 2017/0288008 and US 2019/0095007 carry the * (cited by examiner) mark; US 2009/0135113 and US 2017/0237027 do not carry * or †. I therefore describe the set as "of record," not as "examiner-cited," and note provenance where the rendering shows it.

Governing law. Priority 2018-06-07 is post-AIA, so AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 apply. All eight of-record references except US 2019/0095007 qualify under § 102(a)(1) (patent or printed publication before the effective filing date). US 2019/0095007 has an effective filing date of 2017-09-26 (KR priority) but a publication date of 2019-03-28 — i.e., after the '891 priority date — so it is only available as § 102(a)(2) art, not § 102(a)(1). That distinction matters and is easy to get wrong.

How to read the § 102 column. The three independent claims (1, 11, 16) are narrow. Each requires (i) a non-display region around an active region extending into a bending region plus a component disposing region with component connecting pads, (ii) at least one power trace whose first section lies adjacent to the active region, before the bend, (iii) that first section connected to a second section inside the component disposing region by discrete sets of narrow "connecting sub-traces" passing through the bending region, and (iv) a count/placement limitation — two sets through two sections (claim 1 and 18) or three sets through a left, middle and right section (claims 3, 11 and 16). Claim 7 adds the same bridging for the first power trace (VSS ring); claim 10 adds a specific materials group (Ti-Al-Ti, Mo, Cu, silver nanowire).

No single reference of record discloses all of these. My honest bottom line, stated up front: I found no reference on the face of US 11,257,891 that anticipates independent claim 1, 11 or 16 on its own disclosure. The most dangerous references are LG Display US 2017/0237027 A1 (and its CN sibling CN 107112349 A) and Apple US 2014/0042406 A1, both of which disclose the conceptual core — a power trace crossing a bend zone as a set of split, redundant sub-traces — in sufficient detail to support strong § 103 combinations, and which plausibly read on a broader claim than the one that issued.

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1. The eight references cited on the face of US 11,257,891

1.1 US 2009/0135113 A1 — Sony Corporation

Description. An active-matrix organic-EL panel in which a current supply line (power supply line, Vcc) is common to a column of pixel circuits, and the line width of the intersection of the current supply line with the signal line is made smaller than the line width of the other parts of the current supply line. The stated benefit is that the non-intersecting width can be increased to lower interconnect resistance (reducing Vdrop = {N(N+1)/2}·I·r) and to reduce coupling into the signal line, especially in a top-emission structure. There is no bending region, no component disposing region, and no sub-trace splitting.

§ 102 assessment — Potentially anticipates: none.

• It cannot anticipate claims 1, 11 or 16: each requires a bending region and connecting sub-traces passing through it, which Sony lacks entirely.
• It is relevant only as a § 103 secondary reference against the width-relationship dependent claims — 2, 12 and 17 ("the first section … is less than a width of the second section … and is greater than a width of the connecting sub-trace") and 4/13 ("not greater than 150/ISO microns"). Sony teaches deliberately varying the width of a power line along its length — but by narrowing at line crossings, a different technical rationale from the '891's narrowing so the line can survive a fold. That rationale gap is where a patentee would attack the combination.

1.2 US 2014/0042406 A1 — Apple Inc. — the conceptual core

Description (retrieved in full). An OLED display with minimized border regions in which bent edge portions of a polyimide substrate fold away from the active area so the driver IC and FPC sit behind the display; a backfilm with neutral-plane adjustment features and bend-region trenches; and, critically:

• "Conductive traces on the first polymer layer that extend from the active area over the bent edge portions, wherein each conductive trace splits into multiple sub-traces on the bent edge portions" (claim 8).
• FIG. 12 and ¶[0079]: "conductive traces such as traces 51 on surface 64 each split into four sub-traces … in bend region 56. Traces 51A–51D may converge into a single trace 51 on both sides of bending region 56. … one or more traces such as traces 51A and 51C may suffer breaks 1120 due to the bending of layer 48. However, other traces such as traces 51B and 51D that are unbroken may be sufficient to carry display signals along the bend region."
• Also: a "display device with a reduced border region" comprising a substrate, display panel with display pixels, and peripheral circuitry on the substrate proximate the display panel and configured to drive the display pixels, wherein a portion of the periphery of the substrate is bent substantially orthogonal to the display panel, the bent portion including at least one electrode (claims 14–15, ¶[0013]); power (VDD) routing listed among the peripheral circuitry (¶[0005]); bend radius <1 mm, bend angle ~90° (¶[0098]); and alternative bend-region electrode geometries — waving/sinusoidal/alternating/disruptive planar patterns, angled traversal, a second bend portion of a different conductor (¶¶[0100]–[0102]).

§ 102 assessment.

• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1, 11 or 16 as issued. Reasons: (a) the split traces 51 are described functionally as carrying "display signals," and although Apple lists "power (VDD) routing" as peripheral circuitry, I found no express disclosure that the VDD/VSS power line itself splits into sub-traces — which is the specific limitation of claims 1 and 16 ("second power trace") and the VSS-ring limitation of claim 7; (b) Apple has no "component disposing region" with "component connecting pads" in the '891's sense and no "fanout routing region" as a separate recited zone; (c) Apple's split is into four sub-traces forming a chain (51A–51D), not "two sets … passing through two sections" or "three sets … passing through a left, middle and right section."
• It does, however, anticipate the feature recited in claims 1/11/16 as "the second connecting sub-traces." Apple's split-into-sub-traces-in-the-bend-region with express redundancy teaching ("if one or more of the split traces breaks during bending, one or more unbroken traces may remain intact") is the same solution to the same problem as the '891's specification ("if some of the first connecting sub-traces are broken, there are still other portions … without causing product failure"). Read against the preamble of claim 1 as a whole, this is anticipation-defeating only because of the "power trace" and "component disposing region" language — i.e., the '891's novelty sits in which trace is split and where the ends land, not in the splitting itself.
• This is the single most likely art to be used to invalidate, in a § 103 combination with a power-distribution reference (LG below, or Sony).

1.3 US 2017/0237027 A1 — LG Display — the most on-point reference

Description (retrieved in full). A flexible display with a bend allowance section between flat areas, the inactive area with the COF/PCB bent to the rear of the display. Two passages matter enormously:

• Strain-reducing split/merge traces. "To further improve robustness, a wire trace may employ a trace design in which the wire trace repeatedly splits and converges back in a certain interval. … a wire trace includes at least two sub-traces arranged to form a trace design resembling a chain with a series of connected links" (¶[0151]); "sub-traces can serve as a backup electrical pathway in case one of the sub-traces is damaged or severed by cracks" (¶[0153]). FIG. 11B shows a "grid-like" web of diamond trace shapes, expressly stated to be "particularly useful for a wire trace that transmit a common signal to multiple points or for a wire trace that require a very low electrical resistance. For example, a VSS line and a VDD line in the flexible display 100 may have the grid-like trace design, especially if such lines are arranged to cross over a bend allowance section" (¶[0167]).
• "Divided VSS-VDD Wire Trace." A dedicated section (¶¶[0256]–[0262]) discloses "one or more of power signal wires of the flexible display 100, such as the VDD and/or the VSS, has the grid-like wire trace formed of multiple diamond-chain traces adjoined side-by-side … The power signal wire trace includes one or more elongated channels in its grid-like wire trace. Each of the elongated channels is provided between two divided grid parts, which are on the opposite sides of the elongated channel. The divided grid parts are connected at one or both ends of the power signal wire."
• Also relevant: bend radius 0.1–0.5 mm; the bend allowance section may be free of support layer/polarizer/touch layer; conductive lines may "converge back" between designs (¶[0168]); multi-layer conductor groups Ti/Al/Ti, Mo/Al/Mo, Ti/Cu/Ti, Mo/Cu/Mo (¶[0125]).

§ 102 assessment.

• Potentially anticipates claim 16 — the broadest independent claim — and this is the most credible § 102 argument against any issued claim. Claim 16 requires only: active region + non-display region extending into a bending region and a component disposing region, and "a first section of a power trace … disposed adjacent to the active region … separately connected to a second section of the power trace disposed within the component disposing region by at least one set of connecting sub-traces passing through the bending region." LG's "divided VSS-VDD" power trace, whose divided grid parts are connected at one or both ends across the bend allowance section by diamond-chain sub-traces, maps onto "first section / second section / connecting sub-traces passing through the bending region" with unusual fidelity. The obvious patentee rebuttals are (i) that LG's connection is a continuous split/merge chain rather than discrete "sets" of parallel sub-traces, and (ii) LG's elongated channel divides the trace lengthwise (a rail for micro-coating spread) rather than defining a bounded "first section" and "second section."
• Does not anticipate claim 16 as issued, because claim 16 also requires "three sets of connecting sub-traces passing through a left section, a middle section and a right section of the bending region," and LG does not divide the bend region into left/middle/right and does not place three discrete connector sets.
• Does not anticipate claims 1 or 11, which additionally require the first power trace (VSS) to be "disposed within the non-display region around the active region" and a distinct "fanout routing region" separate from the component disposing region. LG describes an inactive area surrounding a rectangular active area and a COF/PCB at the rear, but not a VSS ring trace routed around the active area as a recited element, and not a separately recited fanout routing zone.
• § 103: very strong, and the combination is not merely "art in the field" — LG supplies the exact motivation the '891 gives ("if some … are broken, there are still other portions … connected without causing product failure") for the exact structure ("divided VSS/VDD"). It also supplies much of claim 10's materials group (Ti/Al/Ti, Mo, Cu) — though not "silver nanowire," which would need a separate reference.

1.4 CN 107112349 A — LG Display (乐金显示有限公司)

Description. This is the Chinese family member of § 1.3 — same inventors (Lee Jun Seok, Ki Yun Ho, Choi Dong Wook), same LG Display applicant, same priority, same specification content (strain-reducing split/merge traces, divided VSS-VDD grid trace).

§ 102 assessment. Identical to § 1.3, subject to the Chinese-language text. Potentially anticipates claim 16 on the same "divided VSS-VDD" theory, with the same rebuttals. Note for the file: the examiner appears to have cited both the US publication and its CN sibling, which is duplicative art (same disclosure) and adds nothing cumulative beyond making the LG teaching available in Chinese. If a § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art" argument is ever run at the PTAB against a Samsung petition, this duplication is a point to watch.

1.5 US 2017/0288008 A1 — Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

Description — not verified. I was unable to retrieve the disclosure of this document within the search budget. From the metadata alone, it is a Samsung Display application with a Korean priority date of 2016-03-31 and the title "Display apparatus," sharing its priority date and subject matter with CN 107275364 A (§ 1.6), which appears to be the Chinese counterpart of the same disclosure.

§ 102 assessment — I will not speculate. On the metadata alone I cannot map any specific claim. Given the assignee, priority date, and title, the plausible subject matter is a bendable/flexible display apparatus with a bending area and stress-management or wiring structure — which would place it as § 103 art against the "bending region / component disposing region" architectural limitations of claims 1, 11 and 16, not as an anticipation reference. Any statement beyond that would be fabrication. Anyone relying on this reference must pull the text.

1.6 CN 107275364 A — Samsung Display (三星显示有限公司)

Description — not verified. Same limitation as § 1.5: I could not retrieve the disclosure. It shares the 2016-03-31 priority with US 2017/0288008 A1 and is almost certainly its CN counterpart.

§ 102 assessment — not determinable on the record retrieved. Listed for completeness; treat as potential § 103 art on the bending-area architecture pending review of its text.

1.7 US 2017/0287936 A1 — Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

Description — not verified. Retrieved metadata only. Note the near-collision with the non-cited Samsung Display publication US 2017/0278901 A1, "Display Apparatus With Bending Area Capable Of Minimizing Manufacturing Defects" (app. 15/332,415, priority KR 2016-03-25/2016-06-21), which I encountered in search and which discloses a first conductive layer crossing a bending area over an organic material layer with an inorganic groove and a protective-film opening — i.e., a neutralizing/stress-buffer architecture for bend-region wiring. US 2017/0278901 A1 is NOT of record on the '891 and I do not count it among the citations; I flag it only because it is adjacent art a defendant may want to consider.

§ 102 assessment — not determinable on the record retrieved. No basis to assert anticipation of any claim.

1.8 US 2019/0095007 A1 — Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

Description (retrieved in full). A display apparatus with a substrate having a display area and a non-display area containing a bending area bent about a bending axis; an encapsulation layer; a touchscreen layer; a touch wire extending from the encapsulation layer into the bending area; and a fan-out wire at least partially in the bending area, the touch wire and fan-out wire being on different layers in the bending area. Key sub-features: the fan-out wire comprises a "connection wire" in the bending area and an "inside wire" on a different layer, connected through a contact hole between the bending area and the display area; the elongations of the touch wire and the connection wire are greater than the elongation of the inside wire — i.e., a deliberately ductile segment of a line that crosses the fold and re-joins the stiffer metallurgy outside it. Also an inorganic insulation layer with an opening or groove corresponding to the bending area, with an organic material layer in the groove as a stress buffer.

§ 102 assessment — Potentially anticipates: none.

• No sub-trace splitting, no sets of parallel redundant sub-traces, no power trace divided into bridged sections. Its "connection wire / inside wire / contact hole" architecture is a series discontinuity (two-layer routing), not a parallel redundancy, and it is applied to fan-out/data and touch routing.
• § 103 relevance is real but secondary: it supplies a fully worked example of (a) the "bending area + non-display area + component-side pads" layout, (b) stress-buffering an inorganic layer at the bend, and (c) elongation-matched metallurgy for a bend-crossing segment — all of which a defendant would use to argue that routing a power trace through the bend as split sub-traces was an obvious design choice by June 2018.

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2. References in "Family Cites Families" (cited during prosecution of the family, not on the '891 front page)

These five were cited in the family (i.e., in the prosecution of the Chinese counterpart CN 201810581903.1 / CN 108807476, or sibling filings). They are not expressly of record on US 11,257,891's face, so their § 102/§ 103 use in the U.S. requires independently establishing prior-art status.

Assessment. I retrieved only bibliographic data for these five; I will not map them to claims. Two points of practical use:

• CN 107863373 A published 2018-03-30, i.e. before the '891's 2018-06-07 priority, so it is available as § 102(a)(1) art if its disclosure is relevant. Its title ("display panel and terminal") is consistent with a narrow-bezel/bendable panel disclosure, and its presence in the family's citation list suggests the Chinese examiner considered it material to the bend-region routing claims. This is the highest-value un-retrieved reference and should be pulled first.
• The four KR documents: a Korean application that never entered the U.S. is not § 102(a)(2) art; it can only be § 102(a)(1) art from its own publication date (typically 18 months post-priority), and no Korean language text is in the U.S. record. Treat these as background/§ 103 support only, subject to confirming their publication dates.

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3. Specification-admitted prior art that is not on the front page

CN 205140985 U — China utility model, cited in the '891's own Background section and expressly admitted to be prior art:

"China utility model patent No. 205140985U discloses a flexible AMOLED display panel structure comprising a first substrate and a second substrate … the first substrate comprising a display region and a non-display region, wherein the non-display region is disposed around the display region and is bilaterally symmetric. Each of contacts of a controller connecting interface disposed on the non-display region is connected to each of data traces within the display region by a metal routing structure, and the metal routing structure includes a bending routing region and a fanout routing region, each metal trace in a bending routing region and each metal trace in the fanout routing region is connected to each other one by one."

Why this matters more than its absence from the front page suggests. This is the only reference in the entire record that supplies the "bending region + fanout routing region + non-display region around the display region + traces connecting to a controller interface" architecture that forms the preamble of claim 1. As an admission in the specification, it is prior art to the '891 as a matter of the patent's own text, independent of any publication-date proof.

§ 102 assessment. Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1, 11 or 16 — it discloses one-by-one (series) connection of metal traces through a bending routing region, not sets of redundant parallel connecting sub-traces bridging a divided power trace, and it does not disclose the two/three-set placement limitations. But it anticipates the entire architectural preamble of claim 1 and the "non-display region extending to form a bending region" preamble of claims 11/16, and it is the natural anchor for a § 103 argument that the only thing left to invent was the redundant bridging of a power rail. I could not retrieve its full text or its exact publication date.

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4. Ranking — the most relevant prior art, in order

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5. Claim-level § 102 exposure summary

The structural takeaway: the only independent claims that issued close on counting and placing discrete sets of connecting sub-traces in named sub-regions of the bend (two sets/two sections; three sets/left-middle-right). That drafting is exactly what one expects when the applicant is distinguishing art of the Apple and LG type, where sub-traces are a single continuous split/merge web crossing the whole bend allowance section. Validity therefore turns on whether "two sets … passing through two sections" or "three sets … left, middle and right" is a real structural difference from a divided power trace bridged by a diamond-chain web — which is a claim-construction question about "sets" and "sections," not a prior-art question. That is also precisely the seam identified in the earlier section of this analysis about claim 1's "two sets" versus claim 3's "three sets" and the claims 8/9 dependency irregularity.

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6. What I could not do — stated plainly

1. Full-text retrieval failed for five of the eight on-record references and all five family-cited references: US 2017/0288008 A1, CN 107275364 A, US 2017/0287936 A1 (of record) and CN 107863373 A, KR 102086644 B1, KR 102351664 B1, KR 102649632 B1, KR 102328679 B1 (family-cited). I have given their bibliographic data and declined to map them to claims. Anyone relying on this analysis must pull those texts.
2. CN 205140985 U text and publication date not retrieved; its content is quoted only from the '891's own Background section.
3. I did not verify the references against the USPTO's own image/OCR files, only against the Google Patents citation table and third-party mirrors. Reel citation tables occasionally drop or misattribute entries; the */† provenance marks in particular should be confirmed against the printed patent.
4. No PTAB or court has construed "connecting sub-traces," "set," or "section" — the PTAB proceeding identified elsewhere in this matter (IPR2026-00485, filed 2026-09-17) has produced no institution decision, so there is no Board construction to lean on. Nothing here should be read as a validity opinion.
5. Identifier discipline observed: every alphanumeric cited above is reproduced literally from the source (including the rendered "ISO microns" in claim 4 and the "component disposing region 20" / "210" inconsistencies in the specification's second embodiment noted in earlier sections). I have not silently corrected any of them.

I'll check whether the parallel IPR petition's grounds or any claim-construction positions have become public, since those would bear directly on the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 11,257,891 B2 ("Display panel")

Bottom line up front: The of-record art is not anticipatory on my review, but the patent's three independent claims sit close to the § 103 line, and the two strongest references — LG Display US 2017/0237027 A1 and Apple US 2014/0042406 A1 — were both already before the examiner. The single most important structural observation is this: the '891's own Background section concedes every element of claims 1, 11 and 16 except the split-bridge of the power trace through the bend region — and that bridge is exactly what Apple and LG disclose, with the same stated rationale the '891's specification gives. That is a textbook KSR fact pattern.

Procedural posture note (conflict flagged, not resolved). The task states today is 2026-04-26. Previously generated sections in this matter state 2026-09-18 and reference an IPR (IPR2026-00485) filed 2026-09-17 — a date that would be in the future relative to the task date. I report the analysis below without resolving that timeline conflict. I found no public IPR2026-00485 petition in this search, so nothing below reflects Samsung's asserted grounds. This is a validity analysis, not an opinion of counsel, and no claim construction has issued in any forum.

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1. Legal framework applied

PHOSITA (my proposed definition, for the analysis): a person with a B.S. in electrical engineering, materials science, or mechanical engineering and 2–3 years of experience in flexible-display backplane design, including bend-region routing and stress management; or an M.S. with ~1 year. This is the level the references themselves assume (they speak in terms of diamond-chain trace geometry, neutral-plane placement, and sub-trace width — i.e., routine panel-design vocabulary).

Claim-construction predicates. The § 103 outcome turns heavily on three terms, none construed by any tribunal to date:

1. "set" of connecting sub-traces — a discrete group, vs. a continuous split/merge web. This is the whole ballgame against LG.
2. "sections" of the bending region — lateral zones of the bend, vs. the two lateral boundaries of the bend.
3. "power trace" — the specification expressly labels the first power trace the low-potential (VSS) line and the second the high-potential (VDD) line. That mapping is a binding gloss the patentee cannot easily escape.

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2. What the specification itself concedes (the most underrated fact in this record)

The Background of the '891 describes the conventional panel 100 in FIG. 2 as already having:

The '891 also concedes, in the Background, why the conventional design fails ("This kind of design still has a little bit of border … it limits achievement of a true narrow border design") and what happens if you simply move the fold closer ("bending may cause the delamination at the high-potential power trace … the traces placed within the bending region may break").

Analytical significance. These are binding admissions about the state of the art. They reduce the contested issue to a single question: was it obvious, as of June 2018, to route the VDD (and VSS) power trace through the bend region as multiple narrow sub-traces rather than as solid metal? Every independent claim's preamble is thus effectively off the table, and the case collapses to the limitation the applicant added last: the "two sets … two sections" / "three sets … left, middle and right" counting-and-placement language.

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3. The reference set, grouped by provenance

Group A — references on the face of the patent (verified in the Prior Art section)

Group B — references identified in this search that are NOT of record

I retrieved partial text for the following. They are not among the '891's citations, so they are § 325(d)-clean candidates — but their content and exact publication dates need verification before reliance, and I flag that expressly.

Caveat on Group B: the dates, full disclosures, and family relationships of LG '934/'060 have not been verified to the standard I applied in the Prior Art section. Treat them as leads requiring a pull, not as established § 102(a)(1) art.

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4. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping of a single three-reference combination

Combination I: LG '027 (primary) + Apple '406 + CN 205140985. All three are analogous art (flexible-display routing), all pre-date 2018-06-07, and all were before the examiner.

The only unmet limitation is the closing "two sets / two sections" clause. Everything else is disclosed in haec verba or admitted.

Is the "two sets / two sections" clause itself obvious?

Yes, on four independent rationales, and the patentee's own disclosure supplies the evidence:

1. It is the natural implementation of the disclosed divided-trace structures. LG '027's divided grid parts sit on opposite sides of an elongated channel — i.e., laterally separated bridged groups — and are "connected at one or both ends." A divided trace connected at both ends is, structurally, two connection locations. Apple's 51A–51D split "converge[s] … on both sides of bending region 56" — two lateral convergence zones. Placing the bridge groups at two spaced zones of the bend width is not a new invention; it is the geometry the art already draws.
2. Predictable variation, finite solutions (KSR). Once one of skill decides to bridge a power rail across the fold with narrow sub-traces, the available design space is (a) how many groups (1, 2, 3, … n) and (b) where to put them (at one, two, or three laterally spaced zones). Both LG and Apple work this space. Choosing "two, at two ends" rather than "one, centered" or "three, across the width" is a routine engineering selection with no unexpected result.
3. The '891's own specification states the reason, which is a known reason. The specification says the sub-traces are "separately disposed at two ends of the first section … and the second section," leaving "an intermediate hollow region 215 … not laid with metal layer to reduce a proportion of the metal layer, so the flexibility of the bending region increases." Reducing metal proportion in a bend to increase flexibility is the stated premise of both primary references (Apple's bend-region trenches/neutral-plane work; LG's diamond-chain strain-reduction design). When the claimed arrangement's benefit is the art's own known benefit, the arrangement is obvious.
4. Market force / design incentive (KSR). The '891's stated object (bottom border "0.8 mm to 2.0 mm") reflects the industry-wide narrow-bezel race, and the patent admits that moving the fold close to the VDD rail is the way to get there. Apple and LG were responding to the same pressure. Under KSR, design incentives and market forces can supply the motivation.

Claim 1 conclusion: obvious over LG '027 + Apple '406 + CN 205140985 (+ the applicant's own Background admissions). Moderate-to-high confidence as to the structural elements; the "two sets/two sections" clause is the point on which the patentee has its only real argument, and it is a design-choice argument, not a teaching-away argument.

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5. Claim 16 — the broadest claim, and the closest § 103 call

Claim 16 requires only: a first section of a power trace adjacent to the active region, "separately connected to a second section of the power trace disposed within the component disposing region by at least one set of connecting sub-traces passing through the bending region," plus the further limitation of three sets passing through a left, a middle and a right section.

• First two elements: essentially anticipated by LG '027 alone. The "Divided VSS-VDD Wire Trace" disclosure (divided power-signal trace parts connected across the bend allowance section) maps onto "first section … second section … connecting sub-traces passing through the bending region" with unusual fidelity. This is the single best § 102 argument in the record, though it depends on whether LG's continuous diamond-chain split/merge web (with an elongated channel whose stated purpose in the sister application is micro-coating wettability, not electrical division) reads on a "set."
• The three-set / left-middle-right limitation is not disclosed by LG or Apple. It is met by obviousness: the third bridged group is the same technique applied a third time, at a third location across the bend width.
• Note the internal claim problem. Claim 16 requires three sets; claim 18, which depends from claim 16, requires "two sets … passing through two sections." The patentee's only saving construction is that a device with three sets necessarily contains two — which, if accepted, is also an admission that the two-set and three-set limitations are not structurally distinct inventions but the same idea counted differently. That admission helps the § 103 case.

Claim 16 conclusion: obvious. The strongest claim to attack first, because it is broadest and its one unmet limitation (three sets) is the same design choice attacked under claim 1.

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6. Claim 11 — three-set panel with data traces

Adds: (i) bend region "defines a left section, a middle section, and a right section"; (ii) data traces passing through the bending region to the pads; (iii) three sets of sub-traces through those three sections.

Claim 11 conclusion: obvious over LG '027 + Apple '406 + CN 205140985 (+ US 2019/0095007 for the bend-crossing data/fanout routing).

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7. Motivation to combine — the required articulation, stated affirmative

Because a § 103 rejection must carry an articulated reason, here are seven, each tied to a KSR category. They are cumulative, not alternative.

(A) Explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references themselves. LG '027 ¶[0167] does not merely permit the combination — it recommends it: "a VSS line and a VDD line in the flexible display 100 may have the grid-like trace design, especially if such lines are arranged to cross over a bend allowance section." Where a primary reference names the very element (VDD/VSS power line) and the very situation (crossing a bend allowance section), the suggestion requirement is satisfied without resort to general engineering-wisdom arguments.

(B) The patentee and the art state the identical problem and the identical solution. The '891's Background: bend reliability of the power traces is the obstacle to a narrow border. LG '027 ¶[0153]: sub-traces "serve as a backup electrical pathway in case one of the sub-traces is damaged or severed by cracks." Apple '406: if "one or more of the split traces breaks during bending, one or more unbroken traces may remain intact." The '891's own specification: "if some of the first connecting sub-traces 210 are broken, there are still other portions of the first connecting sub-traces 210 connected without causing product failure." Three references, one rationale, word for word. Under KSR, where the claimed result is the result the art already expected, patentability does not follow from the re-description.

(C) No teaching away, and no countervailing penalty. The classic reason one of skill would refuse to split a power line is IR drop — splitting a wide power rail into narrow sub-traces raises resistance, which in an OLED panel causes luminance non-uniformity. The art affirmatively rebuts that concern. LG's sister publication states that "the additional electrical pathway created by splitting and merging of the conductive line trace 120 yields much lower electrical resistance" (LG '934). LG '027 makes the same point in describing the grid design as suited to lines "that require a very low electrical resistance" (¶[0167]). So the one technical reason that could have supported a teaching-away argument is disclosed in the opposite direction by the primary reference itself. This is, in my view, the most important motivation point in the whole analysis.

(D) Design incentives and market forces (KSR). The '891's stated goal (border 0.8–2.0 mm; "full-screen display design") is the industry's stated goal. Apple, LG and the '891 were all commercializing the same fold-the-driver-to-the-back architecture. The '891's Background describes exactly this pressure and calls the residual border a defect ("limits achievement of a true narrow border design"). Market pressure to shrink the chin, combined with an art-recognized way to keep the fold from cracking the power rail, supplies the motivation.

(E) Predictable variation of a known technique applied to a known element. Splitting a conductor into redundant parallel paths in a flex region is a known technique (Apple, LG, and the broader flexible-circuit literature). Applying it to one identified element of the panel (the VDD/VSS rail) to obtain the known benefit (bend survival with redundancy) is "the improvement of one device … in the same way" that KSR holds obvious.

(F) Obvious to try — finite, predictable solutions. Once the decision to bridge is made, the variables are: sub-trace count (LG and Apple show 2, 4, and n as a continuum), sub-trace width (Apple draws them narrow, with no numeric limit; Sony teaches locally narrowing power lines), group count (2 or 3), and group placement (ends vs. ends+center). All are finite and predictable in effect. This is the KSR "obvious to try" scenario.

(G) The patentee's own prosecution amendments supply the concession. The file shows a non-final Office action (2021-06-21), a response (2021-09-23), and allowance (2021-11-05) — the claims were amended to issuance. I have not retrieved the amendment, so I flag this as inference, not fact: the limitations that read as litigation-driven add-ons (exactly "two sets" / exactly "three sets … left, middle and right") are the sort of numerosity limitations added to traverse art of the Apple/LG kind. If the amendment history bears that out, it is simultaneously (i) evidence that the applicant regarded the bridging concept itself as disclosed, and (ii) a prosecution-history-estoppel problem for any doctrine-of-equivalents theory. Verify at USPTO PatentCenter before relying on it.

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8. Claim-by-claim conclusion table

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9. What the patentee will argue, and how it fares

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10. Practical / procedural notes that bear on how the § 103 case would be run

1. § 325(d) is the gatekeeper for the strongest references. Both LG '027 and Apple '406 are of record. A petitioner or defendant leading with them invites the Board or the examiner to exercise discretion to decline to reconsider "the same or substantially the same art previously presented." LG's sister publications (US 2017/0323934 A1 "Divided Power Lines" and US 2018/0123060 A1) and CN 107863373 A are different references and are the strategically cleaner lead — subject to § 325(d) "substantially the same art" and to verifying their dates and disclosures.
2. IPR ground limits. An IPR may rely only on patents and printed publications under § 102/§ 103. The Background admissions (the '891's own FIG. 1–2 description) are usable as evidence of the state of the art, and CN 205140985 U and CN 107863373 A are printed publications — so the architecture can be established without system-art problems. The Apple/Nintendo-style public-use/public-accessibility fights seen in other Samsung cases do not arise here.
3. Where the art is thinnest. The numeric claims (4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15) and the AgNW alternative in claim 10 have no express numeric or material disclosure in the of-record art. They are obvious as routine optimization / known alternatives, but they are the claims the patentee can most plausibly defend claim-by-claim, and a challenger relying on the record as it stands should either pull art with express bend-region sub-trace widths (LG's family discusses widths in the 2.5–8 µm range at stress points) or be prepared to prove optimization.
4. Dependency defects cut against the patentee, briefly. Claims 8 and 9 depend from claim 6 although their terms are introduced in claim 7; claim 10 depends from claim 1 although "first connecting sub-traces" is introduced only in claim 7; claim 3 adds "three sets" to claim 1's "two sets"; claim 18 adds "two sets" to claim 16's "three sets"; and claim 4 renders "ISO microns" where the specification says 150 µm. These are primarily § 112 issues and are not part of the § 103 analysis, but each creates a construction problem that a defendant can exploit to narrow the claims — and a narrowed "two sets" or "three sets" is more easily distinguished, which paradoxically helps the patentee. Handle the § 112 and § 103 attacks in a coordinated way, not in isolation.

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11. Confidence and limitations

High confidence (from the authoritative full text): the claim language of claims 1–18; the specification's labelling of the first power trace as VSS/low-potential and the second as VDD/high-potential; the Background admissions regarding display region 101, non-display region 102, component disposing region 103, fanout routing region 104, control chip 105, high-potential power trace 106, low-potential power trace 107, bend line BL, and the "0.8 mm to 2.0 mm" object.

Moderate-to-high confidence: the LG '027 and Apple '406 disclosures quoted above, which were retrieved in full in the Prior Art section; the LG '934 and LG '060 excerpts retrieved in this search.

Explicitly not established, and not asserted:

• I have not retrieved the IPR2026-00485 petition, and I found no public copy of its grounds. Nothing above reflects Samsung's actual asserted combinations. (Relatedly, the timeline conflict between the task date of 2026-04-26 and the previously generated sections' 2026-09-18 is unresolved.)
• I have not read the prosecution-history amendment (2021-09-23 response). My inference that numerosity limitations were added to traverse Apple/LG-type art is labeled as inference.
• The publication dates and full disclosures of LG '934 and LG '060 are unverified, as are the disclosures of US 2017/0288008 A1, US 2017/0287936 A1, CN 107275364 A, CN 107863373 A, and the four KR family-cited documents. Any of these could strengthen or complicate the analysis materially; the Samsung Display ones in particular could supply the missing express disclosure of a divided bend-crossing power trace.
• No tribunal has construed "set," "section," or "connecting sub-traces." The outcome of the analysis I have laid out turns on those constructions, and I have not resolved them — I have identified them as the decisive issue.
• This is not a legal opinion and not a validity conclusion. It is a technical analysis of where the issued claims sit relative to the record, prepared to support (not substitute for) a freedom-to-operate or invalidity opinion by counsel.

Net assessment: On the record as it stands, the § 103 case against claims 16, 1, 11 and 7 is strong, anchored on the applicant's own Background admissions plus LG '027's express application of the divided/grid trace design to VDD and VSS lines crossing a bend allowance section, with Apple '406 supplying the split-and-redundancy technique and CN 205140985 supplying the bending-plus-fanout routing architecture — and with LG's own statement that splitting lowers resistance removing the only plausible teaching-away argument. The case against the numeric dependent claims is weaker and needs either the un-retrieved references or an optimization/criticality showing.

I'll verify the USPTO record for this patent number and the term-adjustment/family data before drafting.

Let me pull the front-page term data and hunt for any continuation/divisional children of this family.

Patent Term, Adjustment/Extension, Continuation & Family Analysis — US 11,257,891 B2 ("Display panel")

Search discipline observed: I searched for the literal string 11257891 and confirmed the hit is US 11,257,891 B2, "Display panel," application 16/309,113, inventor Shijuan YI, assignee Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. — matching the authoritative full text supplied. I did not accept or return results for numerically similar documents (e.g., the JP priority applications JP 11257891 A / JP 15457891 A that surfaced in an unrelated EPO record, or the "ISO microns" style rendering artifacts elsewhere in this matter). All identifiers below are reproduced literally.

Source hierarchy used: (i) the authoritative Google Patents full text supplied (controlling); (ii) the USPTO-derived legal-events block inside that text; (iii) the Unified Patents structured record surfaced by search (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11257891-B2), used as a cross-check.

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1. Core term data

Why the baseline is 2018-09-28 and not 2018-06-07. For a § 371 national stage, the term runs 20 years from the international filing date; a mere foreign priority claim under § 119/§ 365(b) does not move the 20-year base earlier. There is no benefit claim under § 120, § 121, § 365(c) or § 386(c) anywhere in this record (see §4 below), so nothing pulls the base date back to the CN priority date. 2038-09-28 is therefore the unadjusted expiry, and the difference to the recorded 2040-04-18 is attributable to statutory term adjustment.

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2. Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) — 35 U.S.C. § 154(b)

2.1 What the authoritative record shows

• The patent issued after a non-final Office action (mailed 2021-06-21), a response (entered 2021-09-23) and a Notice of Allowance (mailed 2021-11-05) — i.e., a normal three-event prosecution, ~3 years and ~5 months from the 2018-09-28 filing to the 2022-02-22 grant.
• The record contains no petition for recalculation of PTA, no PTA decision, and no certificate of correction. The only legal events are: FEPP (2018-12-12), AS (2018-12-16), STPP ×3 (2021), STCF (2022-02-02), MAFP (2025-08-15).
• The supplied full text does not reproduce the front-page notice ("…the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by ___ days"), so the printed day count is not in the record I was given.

2.2 What I could not retrieve — stated plainly

I could not open the USPTO's own itemized PTA determination for 16/309,113 — i.e., the Issue Notification's "Determination of Patent Term Adjustment under 35 U.S.C. 154(b)" form, or the Patent Center "Patent Term Adjustments" tab showing A delay / B delay / C delay / overlapping days / applicant delay / total. My searches for a front-page PTA figure for 11257891 returned only generic PTA authorities (Wyeth, Cellect, 37 C.F.R. 1.703–1.705) and unrelated cases. I will not invent an A/B/C breakdown.

2.3 Implied adjustment (derived, with arithmetic shown)

20-year statutory baseline   = 2018-09-28 + 20y = 2038-09-28
Recorded adjusted expiration = 2040-04-18
Implied PTA                  = 2038-09-28 → 2040-04-18
                             = 365 days (→2039-09-28) + 203 days (→2040-04-18)
                             = 568 days  ≈ 1 year 6 months 21 days

• Derived PTA ≈ 568 days on the § 154(a)(2)/§ 363 base date. I flag this as derived, not read from a USPTO determination.
• Sensitivity / alternative base: if one (incorrectly, under § 154(a)(2)) measured the 20-year term from the CN priority date 2018-06-07, the baseline would be 2038-06-07 and the implied adjustment would be 681 days. I give both so the arithmetic is auditable, but the § 154(a)(2)/§ 363 base is the international filing date, so 568 days is the figure the record supports.
• The Unified Patents one-day-earlier expiration (2040-04-17) would imply 567 days on the same base. Flagged, not reconciled.
• Plausibility check (illustrative, not from the record): a first Office action mailed 2021-06-21 — roughly two and a half years after a late-2018 national-stage entry — plus issuance in February 2022 (i.e., ~5 months after the three-year anniversary of the international filing) is qualitatively consistent with a substantial combined A-delay + B-delay figure in the ~500+ day range, with no visible applicant-delay event other than the ordinary response interval. This is a sanity check on the order of magnitude only; it is not an itemization and must not be cited as one.

Where to confirm the exact figure: the printed patent's front page; USPTO Patent Center → application 16/309,113 → "Patent Term Adjustments" tab; and the Issue Notification mailed ~3 weeks pre-issue (37 C.F.R. § 1.705 governs any request for reconsideration, and the 180-day review window under § 154(b)(3)/(b)(4) has long closed for a 2022 grant).

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3. Patent Term Extension (PTE) — 35 U.S.C. § 156

None, and none available. Section 156 extensions are granted only for patents claiming a product, method of using a product, or method of manufacturing a product subject to a regulatory review period before commercial marketing (FDA-regulated drugs, certain medical devices, food/color additives, and animal drugs/veterinary biologics). US 11,257,891 claims a display panel (an OLED/flexible-display backplane power-trace architecture; CPC H10K 59/131, H10K 59/12) — a consumer-electronics component not subject to a § 156 regulatory review period. There is no PTE application, no PTE certificate, and no pediatric-exclusivity-style extension in the record.

Consequence: the entire post-2038-09-28 life of this patent is PTA only. There is no second, § 156-based layer of term that a terminal disclaimer, an IPR outcome, or an ODP analysis would need to account for.

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4. Continuations, divisionals, CIPs, and other benefit claims

Finding: none. The authoritative record lists "Family Applications (1)" for family ID 64087792 in the United States — a single U.S. application, 16/309,113. Nothing in the record shows:

Important distinction — citing documents are not family members. The record contains several lists that must not be confused with continuations or family members:

• "Cited By" / "Families Citing this family" (e.g., US 2025/0044892 A1 and US 12,340,043 B2, both Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Technology; CN 110794610 B; CN 109473044 B; CN 109283717 B; CN 109686757 B; CN 109671354 A; JP 6698144 B1; KR 102858762 B1; EP 3998599 A4; CN 111696461 B; CN 113903773 A; CN 112397453 B; CN 115280505 B; CN 115988930 B) are third-party/same-assignee documents that cite this family. They are not children of 16/309,113 and do not share its term base.
• Two same-assignee items deserve a flag as leads only, not as family members: CN 109473044 B ("Power line wiring structure and flexible display panel thereof," Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology, priority 2018-11-26) and CN 109671354 A ("A kind of bent area Wiring structure and its display device," same assignee, priority 2018-12-05). Both post-date the '891's 2018-06-07 priority, are same-assignee, and are topically adjacent (bend-area / power-line routing). On the record they are separate filings that cite this family, not continuations or divisionals. They are worth a pull if you are mapping CSOT's bend-region power-routing portfolio, but they must not be described as family members of the '891 without verifying a formal § 120/§ 365(c) benefit claim.

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5. Related family members (verified from the authoritative text)

Observation worth noting in a licensing or FTO file: the International Preliminary stage was closed out (WO 2019/232995 A1 status "ceased"), so the asserted U.S. patent is the family's live enforcement vehicle in the United States, and the CN grant (CN 108807476 B) is the live counterpart in China. There is no U.S. continuation on file that could be used to obtain claims of different scope, which means the issued claim set of US 11,257,891 (independent claims 1, 11, 16) is the only U.S. claim scope available in this family.

Family-level litigation flag (term-irrelevant but ownership-relevant): Google Patents displays a Darts-IP worldwide-family litigation indicator for family ID 64087792; this is a family-level flag and I could not verify which family member(s) it covers (flagged in the earlier Litigation and Assignments sections of this matter).

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6. Projected expiration date

Projected expiration: 2040-04-18 (Google Patents adjusted expiration), with the one-day-earlier 2040-04-17 figure in the Unified Patents record flagged as an unresolved offset.

This date is conditional on:

1. Payment of the remaining maintenance fees — no extension is automatic; the expiry assumption is that all windows are met (see §7).
2. No terminal disclaimer being filed later (none is of record). A TD filed to overcome an obviousness-type double-patenting rejection would cut the term back to the referenced patent's expiry, and under § 154(b)(2)(B) PTA cannot restore term beyond a disclaimer date.
3. No post-grant disclaimer, reissue, or adverse judgment altering the term (none of record).
4. No PTA recalculation — the 180-day review window under § 154(b)(4) and 37 C.F.R. § 1.705 closed long ago for a 2022 grant, so the day count is effectively frozen unless the USPTO corrects it sua sponte.

Not term-relevant: IPR 2026-00485 (Samsung Display, filed 2026-09-17, pending) cannot change the expiration date. Cancellation of all challenged claims in a final written decision would make the patent unenforceable as to those claims while leaving the nominal expiry date unchanged — a practical, not calendrical, effect.

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7. Maintenance-fee calendar (term-preservation risk)

Maintenance fees are due at 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years after grant (35 U.S.C. § 41(b); 37 C.F.R. § 1.20(e)–(g)), each with a six-month grace period with surcharge.

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8. Conflicts and gaps flagged (not resolved)

1. One-day offset between the two independent records — grant 2022-02-22 (Google) vs 2022-02-21 (Unified Patents); filing 2018-09-28 vs 2018-09-27; priority 2018-06-07 vs 2018-06-06; expiration 2040-04-18 vs 2040-04-17. This is a consistent ±1 day offset across four fields; I have used the Google Patents (full-text) values throughout and derived the PTA from those values only.
2. Timeline inconsistency already carried in this matter: earlier generated sections in this file state the current date variously as 2026-04-26, 2026-09-18 and 2026-09-22, and reference an IPR filed 2026-09-17 — which is after the date given in this task (April 26, 2026). This is unresolved in the file and is repeated here rather than corrected.
3. Pre-grant publication timing is anomalous and unexplained: US 2021/0225981 A1 published 2021-07-22, roughly three years after the 2018-09-28 international filing and well after the 18-month date, and after the WO publication of 2019-12-12. Worth a note in any prosecution-history review, though it does not affect term.
4. Derived, not verified: the 568-day PTA. I could not retrieve the USPTO Issue Notification PTA determination or the Patent Center PTA tab within this search budget, and I will not reconstruct an A/B/C/applicant-delay breakdown from arithmetic.

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9. Bottom line

• PTA (§ 154(b)): present, ≈ 568 days on the § 154(a)(2)/§ 363 base date of 2018-09-28 — derived from the recorded adjusted expiration, not read from a USPTO PTA determination. No recalculation request or PTA decision is of record.
• PTE (§ 156): none, and none available — a display panel is not a § 156 "product" subject to a regulatory review period.
• Continuations / divisionals / CIPs: none. Family ID 64087792 has exactly one U.S. application (16/309,113). Citing documents (US 2025/0044892 A1, US 12,340,043 B2, the CN/KR/EP/JP citations) are not children.
• Family members: CN 201810581903.1A → CN 108807476 A/B; PCT/CN2018/108168 → WO 2019/232995 A1 (ceased); US 16/309,113 → US 2021/0225981 A1 → US 11,257,891 B2. No other national-phase members.
• Projected expiration: 2040-04-18 (subject to the 2040-04-17 alternative in the Unified Patents record), contingent on payment of the 7.5-year fee by 2029-08-22 (grace to 2030-02-22) and the 11.5-year fee by 2033-08-22 (grace to 2034-02-22), and on no terminal disclaimer or disclaimer of record.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Center, application 16/309,113 → "Patent Term Adjustments" and "Continuity Data" tabs; and the printed front page of US 11,257,891 B2 for the § 154(b) notice text. This is a records analysis, not legal advice.