US 3622683

I'll search for this patent number and check for any litigation/docket activity.

Let me check for any Federal Circuit appeal activity and confirm the PTAB matter.

US Patent 3,622,683 — "Telephone Cable with Improved Crosstalk Properties"

Bibliographic data

Assignment chain (per Google Patents legal events, texts reproduced literally): Superior Continental Corp. → Superior Cable Corporation → Siecor Corporation → Superior Cable Corporation (GA) → Westinghouse Credit Corp. (1985) → Superior Teletec Transmission Produ‑sts Inc. (1991). Current-assignee field on Google Patents lists "SUPERIOR TELETEC TRANSMISSION PRODUSTS Inc.," "Superior Essex Inc.," and "Superior Continental Corp."

Abstract (verbatim)

"Disclosed herein is an economical telephone cable structure and method of making same, such cable structure possessing improved crosstalk properties. A plurality of insulated electrical conductors (pairs), of an otherwise conventional telephone cable design are divided into at least two portions by plastic-coated metal foil strip or tape. Measurements between pairs, divided by this plastic-coated metal foil, of unwanted energy transferred from one conductor to another by means of mutual inductive, capacity, or conductive coupling (crosstalk), shows greatly improved properties over undivided cable pairs or divided cable pairs of prior art. By dividing electrical conductor telephone pairs within a telephone cable structure with plastic-coated metal foil, the crosstalk properties are so vastly improved that a greater spacing between repeaters can be designed into a telephone cable system, as compared to a cable system employing prior art divided or undivided cable pairs."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — A cable in which the insulated conductors are split into two groups by an internal barrier: (a) a core with a first and a second group of insulated conductors; (b) a metal-foil shield whose both surfaces are covered with plastic, wrapping the first group but not the second; (c) a plastic tape wrapping the second group but not the first; and (d) an outer plastic sheath around the whole assembly. Essentially: concentric groups separated by a plastic-coated foil, with the other group separated by plain plastic tape.

Claim 10 — A cable built as an inner core plus an outer annulus: (a) a core of insulated conductors; (b) a shield around that core made of metal foil coated on both sides with plastic; (c) a second set of insulated conductors laid around the outside of the shield to form an annular core; (d) an integral plastic tube around the whole composite; and (e) a plastic tape circumferentially surrounding the second (outer) set of conductors.

Claim 11 — A "screened"/compartmented cable rather than a concentric one. It defines a tubular covering (outer jacket plus metallic tubular shield) with an inner peripheral surface bounding a core cavity; the conductors sit inside that cavity, and an integral metallic crosstalk shield runs longitudinally inside the core, spanning between circumferentially spaced-apart points on the inner surface to divide the conductors into longitudinal groups. In cross-section the crosstalk shield has two terminal (end) portions and an integral intermediate portion; the terminal portions curve around the core periphery with free ends on opposite sides of the plane of the intermediate portion, and sit in close proximity to the inner surface and the outer metallic shield. This is the serpentine/S-shaped or "D"-screen geometry that later became the subject of follow-on litigation (compare US 4,165,442 and US 3,803,340 cited in the record).

Claim 37 — Same as claim 1 (core with first and second conductor groups; metal foil shield around the first group only; plastic tape around the second group only; outer plastic sheath), except the metal-foil shield element omits the "covered on both surfaces with a plastic" limitation, i.e., the foil shield is recited generically.

Dependent claims 2–9 add edge-coverage of the foil, an additional outer metal shield, and grease-filled cavities; claims 12–36 add terminal-portion seating, serpentine/S cross-sections, foil on one or both sides, non-magnetic metal, and grease fill (e.g., polyethylene grease with average molecular weight below ~10,000 and density ~0.85 g/mL at 25 °C). Note: the published claim text contains OCR artifacts in claim 7 ("a further grease-like is made of metal…"), which is garbled in the source and should not be relied on as literal claim language.

Litigation / docket check

• No CAFC 2026 docket was found for US 3,622,683 itself. I searched the Federal Circuit records available via web search and found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket keyed to this patent number. Because the patent expired in 1988, it is not itself asserted today; it appears in current proceedings as prior art.
• PTAB — IPR2023‑01061 and IPR2023‑01062 (CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Inc.). US 3,622,683 ("Roberts") was submitted as Exhibit 1009 in IPR2023‑01061 (Patent 6,998,537 B2) and was relied on in Ground 1 (anticipation) and Ground 5 (obviousness over Roberts, GmbH‑866, Jachimowicz, Gingue). The Board's decisions were appealed to the Federal Circuit as Nos. 2025‑1440 and 2025‑1441 (Belden Inc. v. CommScope Technologies LLC), which were dismissed under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on March 26, 2025 — a 2025 docket entry, not 2026.
• Ex parte reexamination of US 7,179,999 (Clark/Belden). Roberts '683 is one of the requester-supplied references in the reexamination record, applied against claims over Backmann DE‑29719866 in view of Gaeris US 5,789,711.

Caveats / uncertainty

1. Number collision: "3622683" also corresponds to EP 3622683 A1 ("Wireless communication device, network node… for achieving synchronisation," a 2020 Ericsson-related publication). That is an unrelated document in a different jurisdiction/publication series and is not the telephone-cable patent; I did not merge the two.
2. I could not verify a CAFC 2026 appeal involving US 3,622,683. The most recent Federal Circuit activity touching this patent (as prior art in the Belden/CommScope IPRs) is the March 26, 2025 dismissal cited above. If you have a specific 2026 docket number, I can target it directly.
3. Inventor name "Frederic N. Wilkenloh" appears as "Wllkenloh"/"WILKENLOH" in OCR of the granted document; I have not auto-corrected it beyond reproducing the printed form.
4. The specification states the Nyquist patent US 1,979,402 is incorporated by reference, but Nyquist does not appear in the front-page list of references cited by the examiner — an internal inconsistency in the printed patent worth flagging.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 3622683.

Let me search litigation-specific databases.

Let me search specific litigation databases directly.

Research Result: No Litigation Found Involving U.S. Patent 3,622,683

I searched litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents portal references, PTAB/IPR petition mandatory-notice sections, Docket Alarm records, Justia/PACER dockets) for U.S. Patent 3,622,683 ("Telephone cable with improved crosstalk properties," Roberts et al., filed Nov. 22, 1968; granted Nov. 23, 1971). I found no evidence of any litigation in which U.S. Patent 3,622,683 was asserted as a patent-in-suit (i.e., no infringement action, declaratory judgment action, or ITC investigation).

Important clarification on what the search results actually show

Every "hit" for 3622683 in the search results is a prior-art citation, not litigation:

1. Inter partes reexamination of U.S. Pat. 7,179,999 (Clark et al.) — Requests No. 95/000,475 and a related petition (PTAB/P-TACTS petition 1554207). The examiner rejected claims of the '999 patent under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) "over the patent DE-29719866 to Backmann … in view of the US patent 3622683 to Roberts et al. and the US patent 6074503 to Clark et al." Here 3,622,683 is cited as prior art against someone else's patent; it is not the patent being enforced. (Source: ptacts.uspto.gov petition documents; docketalarm.com IPR2023-01061 exhibit 1034.)

2. Belden Technologies, Inc. v. Superior Essex Communications LP, D. Del. (e.g., Civ. No. 08-cv-00063-SLR, filed Jan. 29, 2008) — This is a cable-patent case, but the patents-in-suit were Belden's later U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,424,491; 6,074,503; 7,135,641; 7,339,116; 6,570,095; 6,998,537; and 7,179,999. The '999 patent's reexamination, in turn, cited 3,622,683 as prior art. 3,622,683 itself was not asserted in this case. Its original assignee (Superior Continental / Superior Cable) is a corporate ancestor of the defendant Superior Essex, but that is an assignment-succession fact, not litigation over the '683 patent.

Why this is the expected result

• Expiration: The Google Patents legal-status data for US3622683A shows an anticipated expiration of Nov. 23, 1988. A 17-year term from a 1971 grant ended well before modern (post-1988) patent-assertion/reexamination activity. Any enforcement window was 1971–1988 — long predating the digital litigation databases that are searchable today.
• Subject matter era: During its enforceable life this was a telephone transmission-cable patent (shielded concentric conductor groups, plastic-coated aluminum foil, polyethylene grease). Assertion activity from that era, if any, is generally not captured in today's online dockets.

What I could NOT confirm (stated explicitly, per your strict rule)

• I did not locate any PACER docket, CAFC appeal, or ITC filing naming U.S. Patent 3,622,683 as an asserted patent.
• I did not locate any litigation involving the patent's original assignee, Superior Continental Corporation, asserting 3,622,683.
• I did not find any litigation for the family members (GB1289553, GB1289554, DE1958603, FR2023912, IL32985, BR6912448) either.

Assessment

As of the sources searched, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent 3,622,683. Its only appearances in the public record are as (a) prior art cited in the inter partes reexamination of the Clark '999 patent and in related PTAB proceedings, and (b) a backward citation in cable-patent reexaminations. If a pre-1988 enforcement action exists, it would need to be confirmed through a manual PACER/archival (pre-CM/ECF) records search, which the available tools could not perform. I am flagging that limitation rather than asserting the absence is absolute.

PTAB Proceedings Report — US 3,622,683 ("Telephone cable with improved crosstalk properties")

Bottom line up front: there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 3,622,683. The "PTAB proceedings on file" block is empty, and my web sweep corroborates that: every hit for "3,622,683" / "3622683" on PTAB paper is the '683 patent being used as prior art against somebody else's patent, never as the challenged patent. See the analysis below.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 3,622,683: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied) — the patent issued 1971-11-23 on a 1968-11-22 pre-AIA application, its term expired 1988-11-23 per the Google Patents legal-events record ("Anticipated expiration"), and it is therefore both unenforceable and effectively unreachable by IPR/PGR/CBM; the defensive posture this gives a defendant is total: the patent cannot be asserted at all, so no IPR defense is needed and no estoppel analysis arises.

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No proceedings to enumerate

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} heading to write for this patent. I did not invent one. The reasons the record is empty are structural, not incidental:

Also worth flagging for any defendant doing keyword research: search hits referring to a "'362 patent" in the television-channel-selection context (Superguide Corp. v. DirecTV, 358 F.3d 870 (Fed. Cir. 2004); PTAB petition 1556942) are a different patent entirely — not US 3,622,683. Do not let a vendor's patent-number search conflate them.

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Adjacent proceedings where US 3,622,683 was prior art (NOT proceedings on this patent)

These are included only because a careless search will surface them. In each, US 3,622,683 ("Roberts") is cited as § 103 art against a modern cable patent. No claim of the '683 patent was ever at issue.

IPR2023-01061 — CommScope Technologies LLC v. Belden Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review — challenging U.S. Patent No. 6,998,537 B2, not the '683 patent.
• Filed: 2023-06-13
• Status: Final Written Decision (terminated 2024-12-18)
• Judge panel: Christopher M. Kaiser, Kimberly McGraw, Sharon Fenick (Kristina Kalan also listed on the case docket)
• '683's role: Exhibit 1009 is a full copy of US 3,622,683 "Roberts." Petitioner used Roberts in multiple grounds concerning the "twisted pair" limitations.
• Institution: instituted 2023-12-19 on all challenged claims (claims 19, 20, 22 of the '537 patent) and all grounds.
• FWD: "CommScope Technologies LLC … has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 19, 20, and 22 are unpatentable" — judgment "Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable," 35 U.S.C. § 318(a). Grounds turned on Yanagita (JP S43-15470) with Jachimowicz (US 3,894,172) and Gingue (US 5,670,748).
• Patent owner's argument on '683: Belden argued Roberts' recitation of "pairs" does not disclose "twisted pairs" — "Roberts teaches shielding straight-line conductors to improve near-end crosstalk, not using twisted pairs to improve far-end crosstalk." That argument failed.
• Appeal: Belden noticed appeal 2025-02-12. CAFC Nos. 2025-1440, 2025-1441 (consolidated with the companion IPR2023-01062) were dismissed 2025-03-26 under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) by agreement of the parties. CAFC order · PTAB notice of appeal
• Defensive value for a '683 defendant: none directly — but it confirms the '683 disclosure is treated as a broad, enabling prior-art teaching of plastic- or dielectric-separated conductor groups, repeatedly used to knock out modern separator claims.

Inter partes reexamination 95/000,475 (of US 7,179,999)

• Type: Inter partes reexamination (pre-AIA, not an AIA trial) — of the '999 patent, not the '683 patent.
• '683's role: The examiner adopted the third-party requester's rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), e.g.: "Claims 1-4, 6, 7 and 13-16 of the '999 patent are rejected … over the patent DE-29719866 to Backmann in view of the US patent 3622683 to Roberts et al. and the US patent 6074503 to Clark et al., as evidenced by the US patent 5789711 to Gaeris et al., and Admitted Prior Art." The examiner reasoned that "the '683 patent is not the only prior art that guides the person of ordinary skill in the art to try a dielectric separator consisting of a dielectric layer," invoking KSR.
• Provenance: quoted from an excerpt of Reexam 95/000,475 filed as Exhibit 1034 in IPR2023-01061 (PTACTS).

Belden Technologies, Inc. v. Superior Essex Inc., No. 1:08-cv-00063-SLR (D. Del.)

• District-court litigation over the modern Belden cable family (the '491, '503, '095, '116, '537, '641, '999 patents). Expert reports addressed invalidity contentions framed as "Claim 27 Is Not Obvious Over A Combination Of The '683 And '866 Patents." Again the '683 patent is art, not the asserted patent. (Also note the confusingly similar party names: Superior Essex is the corporate descendant of the '683 patent's original assignee, Superior Continental.)

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Strategic summary

Claim status on US 3,622,683. No claim of this patent has been canceled, sustained, or adjudicated in any AIA trial — because no AIA trial exists. All 37 claims lapsed with the patent's term on 1988-11-23. For practical purposes claims 1–37 are UNTESTED but unassertable: the distinction only matters if someone is trying to argue about historical validity (e.g., for a pre-1988 damages theory, which is time-barred).

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is inapplicable — there is no petitioner and no final written decision on this patent. There is, however, a one-way, de facto estoppel worth naming: the modern cable industry has affirmatively used the '683 disclosure as invalidating art against itself (Belden's own reexamination and IPR records). A party that has previously characterized the Roberts disclosure as anticipating or rendering obvious a plastic/dielectric separator cannot credibly turn around and claim the Roberts '683 patent covers something novel and non-obvious. That's a prosecution-history/judicial-estoppel-adjacent point, not § 315(e)(2).

Pattern signals. (1) The '683 patent has been a workhorse § 103 reference in the LAN-cable wars for over 20 years — cited in at least IPR2023-01061, inter partes reexam 95/000,475, and the Belden v. Superior Essex validity reports. (2) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain — none would bother, since there is nothing to invalidate. (3) The patent owner never pursued a PTAB appeal, because it never had a PTAB case. (4) Reassignment history (Superior Continental → Superior Cable → Siecor → Superior Teletec/Westinghouse) is corporate M&A activity, not litigation activity; the last legal event is the 1991-06-17 assignment, and the file goes quiet.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: you do not need an IPR, and you should reject any demand letter citing US 3,622,683. The patent expired 1988-11-23 (Google Patents legal events, "Anticipated expiration," https://patents.google.com/patent/[US3622683A](/patent/US3622683A)/en), which is 37+ years before today's date of 2026-10-01. There is no live claim to infringe, no enforceable right to license, and no PTAB FWD to point to — the correct response to the demand is a citation to the expiration date and the "Expired - Lifetime" status, plus a request that the sender identify the asserted claim and its unexpired term.
• If you are researching the prior art instead: the '683 patent is a strong, quotable § 102/§ 103 reference against modern separator/twisted-pair crosstalk claims, as the CommScope v. Belden record demonstrates. The full FWD is available at USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) under IPR2023-01061, and the appeal disposition at https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/25-1440.ORDER.3-26-2025_2488532.pdf.
• If you expected to find PTAB activity: the absence is not a gap in the data. It is the correct result for a 1968-filed, 1988-expired patent. Well-asserted patents attract IPRs; this one stopped being assertable 24 years before the IPR statute took effect.

Confidence note: I am highly confident there are no AIA trials on US 3,622,683 — the structured ODP block is empty and the web record shows only prior-art use. I have moderate confidence in the case-number details for the adjacent matter (IPR2023-01061 / IPR2023-01062), which I have quoted from PTAB and Docket Alarm documents surfaced in search; note an apparent OCR discrepancy in one document rendering "6,998,537" as "6,988,537." Those details are contextual only and do not affect the conclusion.

I'll research the assignment chain and corporate history before assembling the record.

Let me dig into the reels, the corporate successors, and the recorded correspondents.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 3,622,683 ("Telephone cable with improved crosstalk properties")

Scope note before the record: The reel/frame identifiers below are taken from the legal-events table on the Google Patents page for this patent (mirrored from the USPTO assignment file and reproduced identically on the related patent US 4,340,771, a Superior-family divisional). Google Patents does not republish the correspondent of record field, and the USPTO Assignment Center query pages could not be pulled through the tools available in this session. Where the correspondent is unknown I say so rather than guess. Verify the correspondent field directly at the USPTO Assignment Center by searching patent number 3622683.

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Inventors

Both residences are in the Hickory–Conover corridor where Superior Continental's HQ and main plant were located (One Superior Plaza, Hickory, NC 28601), and the assignee of record is Superior Continental Corp. Employer is therefore inferred, not independently confirmed. No evidence of either inventor departing the assignee within 12 months of the 1968-11-22 filing; no inventor co-assignments in the chain. No unusual inventor pattern. Note the prosecution correspondent on the face of the patent is "Roy B. Moffitt" (attorney of record for prosecution) — this is the prosecution attorney, and should not be conflated with the recording correspondent on the assignments below.

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Original assignee

Superior Continental Corporation, Hickory, North Carolina (named on the issued patent, granted 1971-11-23).

• Line of business: Manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and cable — the manufacturing and supply arm of Continental Telephone Corporation, the third-largest independent (non-Bell) U.S. telephone company. The Hickory operation opened in 1954 and was "the first and only manufacturing plant outside the northeast devoted exclusively to the production of all-plastic insulated and sheathed communication cables."
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. This patent covers the plastic-coated metal-foil separation shield inside a multi-pair telephone cable — a core product of the Superior Cable line, not a paper-only asset.
• Status: No longer exists as an independent entity. Absorbed into Continental Telephone (acquired 1967); the Comm/Scope coaxial-cable division was sold in 1976 to a Frank Drendel investor group (the origin of today's CommScope). The remaining communications-cable business continued as Superior Cable → Superior TeleCom → Superior Essex. Superior TeleCom filed Chapter 11 (reorganization under way by 2002–2003), emerging in November 2003 as Superior Essex Inc. Superior Essex was acquired by Korea's LS Group / LS Cable in 2008 for roughly $900M and today operates as Superior Essex Communications (an operating North American communications-cable manufacturer under LS Corp).

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Assignment timeline

Five post-issuance records appear in the file. All are recorded against the patent; execution ("effective") dates are given where the record discloses them.

• Executed 1980-01-21 / recorded 1981-01-28 — Reel 003844/0931

  • Conveyance: Merger (and resulting change of name)
  • Assignor: Siecor Opticals Inc. (merged into)
  • Assignee: Siecor Corporation, 1928 Main Avenue S.E., Hickory, NC — formerly Superior Cable Corporation (name changed)
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the sources consulted (Google Patents omits this field)
  • Context: Internal reorganization — the Corning/Siemens optical-cable JV merged with Superior Cable, with the Superior Cable entity renamed Siecor Corporation.

• Executed 1985-08-21 / recorded 1985-09-18 — Reel 004455/0728

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Siecor Corporation, a corporation of Delaware
  • Assignee: Superior Cable Corporation, 5901 Peachtree-Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the sources consulted
  • Context: Divestiture/spin-out — Siecor (Corning + Siemens) divested the legacy copper communications-cable business back out as a newly formed Superior Cable Corporation.

• Executed 1985-08-22 / recorded 1985-09-18 — Reel 004455/0730

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest — "SUBJECT TO AGREEMENT RECITED" (i.e., a security interest / collateral assignment)
  • Assignor: Superior Cable Corporation, a corporation of California
  • Assignee: Westinghouse Credit Corporation, a corporation of Pennsylvania
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the sources consulted
  • Context: Securitization / secured lending — the patent was pledged as collateral to the lender one day after the operating-company re-acquisition.

• Executed 1985-08-21 / recorded 1986-03-10 — Reel 004520/0396

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (confirmatory/corrective recording of the same 1985-08-21 transaction)
  • Assignor: Siecor Corporation
  • Assignee: Superior Cable Corporation, a corporation of Georgia
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the sources consulted
  • Context: Internal reorganization / curative deed — restates the Aug-1985 transfer to reflect the Georgia incorporation.

• Executed 1991-06-12 / recorded 1991-06-17 — Reel 005748/0695

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Westinghouse Credit Corporation, a corporation of Delaware (secured creditor)
  • Assignee: Superior Teletec Transmission Products Inc., a corporation of Georgia
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the sources consulted
  • Context: Collateral release / settlement transfer — the pledgee conveyed the pledged patent to a Superior-family operating entity. Note this recorded three years after the patent's anticipated expiration (1988-11-23); it reflects a paper conveyance of an already-lapsed asset, not a live right.

No other recorded assignments. No assignment to an NPE, no assertion-driven transfer, and no litigation recorded against the patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 3622683
    1968 : Filed by Superior Continental
    1971 : Patent issued
    1980 : Siecor Opticals merged into Superior Cable
    1981 : Merger recorded reel 003844 0931
    1985 : Siecor to Superior Cable
         : Superior Cable to Westinghouse Credit
    1986 : Confirmatory deed to Superior Cable
    1988 : Patent term expired
    1991 : Westinghouse Credit to Superior Teletec
    1999 : Superior Cable merges with Essex Wire
    2008 : Superior Essex acquired by LS Cable

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is an identified operating cable/telecom manufacturer (Siecor, Superior Cable, Superior Teletec) or a named commercial lender (Westinghouse Credit). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" suffix, no registered-agent address, no single-member LLCs. Reels 003844/0931, 004455/0728, 004455/0730, 004520/0396, 005748/0695.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches any of the listed NPEs (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities) or any Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap, not a finding). The relevant field was not obtainable through the sources available here; Google Patents exposes only reel/frame, code and description. No recurrence can be established or ruled out. This is a gap in evidence, not evidence of an NPE pattern. (Prosecution-side correspondent "Roy B. Moffitt" appears on the printed patent, but that is the prosecution attorney, not the assignment recorder.)

4. Cascading transfers <24 months — PARTIALLY PRESENT, but non-NPE. Two assignments executed one day apart (1985-08-21 and 1985-08-22; reels 004455/0728 and 004455/0730) plus a confirmatory re-recording in 1986 (reel 004520/0396). This is the footprint of a leveraged divestiture (Corning/Siemens out, Superior Cable in, collateral pledged to Westinghouse Credit), not of chained shell LLCs sharing a correspondent or principals. Weak at most; not indicative.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. There is no infringement suit on this patent to anchor the test. The patent appears in litigation only as prior art: CommScope Technologies LLC relied on US 3,622,683 as an exhibit in IPR2023-01061, and the record shows Superior-family divisional US 4,340,771 issuing from the same portfolio. No assertion by any owner.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT as a corporate-family event, but NOT as a patent-transfer event. The Superior corporate family (Superior TeleCom) filed Chapter 11 and reorganized into Superior Essex Inc., confirmed/effective November 2003. However, this patent expired 1988-11-23 and the last recorded transfer (reel 005748/0695, 1991) predates the bankruptcy by more than a decade — so the patent was not a meaningful bankruptcy-estate asset and there is no "sale to an NPE out of Chapter 7/11" pattern here.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer; no SEC disclosure (Superior Essex 10-K/10-Q filings reviewed cover the Chapter 11 reorganization and the Belden asset purchase, not any IP-divestiture program).

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN.

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting (with an explicit caveat — see below).

Justification: the full chain — reels 003844/0931, 004455/0728, 004455/0730, 004520/0396, and 005748/0695 — runs exclusively through operating cable/telecom manufacturers and a commercial secured lender, with zero NPE, shell-entity, privateering, or litigation-assertion signals in seven of eight tests (the eighth, correspondent recurrence, is an evidence gap). Decisively, the patent's term ended 1988-11-23, and the final recorded transfer (executed 1991-06-12) conveyed an already-expired asset; the patent survives only as prior art (CommScope exhibit in IPR2023-01061). The chain is a corporate reorg/securitization artifact, not an assertion vehicle. Caveat: the strict definition of this label (termination at a defensive aggregator) is not met — the asset is inert because the patent lapsed, not because it was neutralized by RPX/AST/Unified. If the rubric requires a strict label match, "Insufficient data" is the only other candidate, since neither NPE category nor "operating-company assertion" is supportable.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — search 3622683 · Google Patents legal events for US3622683A · USPTO PEDS cover page

I'll verify the patent record and each cited reference against live sources before building the prior-art table.

Let me confirm the Nyquist reference and one of the foreign citations, since those carry special weight in the §102 analysis.

Prior Art Analysis — US 3,622,683 ("Telephone cable with improved crosstalk properties")

0. Record verification (USPTO / Google Patents mirror)

Scope discipline (per instruction): only 3,622,683 is analyzed. I did not substitute or merge similar numbers. Two known collisions were already flagged in the earlier sections and remain excluded: EP 3622683 A1 (unrelated Ericsson-series sync publication) and the "'362 patent" of Superguide v. DirecTV (TV channel selection). Neither is the telephone-cable patent.

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1. Methodological caveat — read before using the §102 column

The front page of the printed patent carries a "References Cited" list. In a 1971-issuance document that list reflects references considered during prosecution. It does not by itself establish that any given reference was applied as a §102 anticipation rejection — the list would look identical if an examiner merely cited them under §103, or as background. I do not have the actual Office action(s) in this session, so I have reconstructed the §102 exposure independently from the disclosure of each reference and the issued claim language. Front-page listing ≠ §102 rejection. Where I say a reference "potentially anticipates," that is my independent read, not a verified examiner finding.

A second, corroborating data point: the claims issued, meaning whatever art the examiner had was either not applied as §102 or was overcome. Every independent claim (1, 10, 11, 37) therefore survived this citation set.

Third flag — the two citation lists disagree. The printed front page lists 12 references (3 US + 9 foreign). The Google Patents structured "Citations (11)" table lists 11. The reference dropped by Google is AU 105,876 (11/1937), class 174/36, which appears only on the OCR'd front page. I could not verify AU 105,876's content, so I treat it as unverified. A related numerical discrepancy was already noted in the prior section (the in-spec Nyquist patent appearing in the body but not on the front page).

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2. The cited-reference set (verbatim from the printed front page + structured table)

Front page "References Cited":

• US 311,174 — 1/1885 — Clark — 174/105
• US 3,233,036 — 2/1966 — Jachimowicz — 174/107
• US 3,306,971 — 2/1967 — Olson et al. — 174/119
• AU 105,876 — 11/1937 — 174/36 (front page only; absent from Google's structured table)
• FR 1,120,216 — 7/1956 — 174/113
• FR 775,841 — 1/1935 — 174/36
• DE 657,411 — 3/1938 — 174/36
• GB 314,564 — 7/1929 — 174/36
• GB 434,855 — 9/1935 — 174/36
• GB 449,582 — 6/1936 — 174/103
• GB 995,582 — 6/1965 — 174/23
• GB 367,814 — 2/1932 — 174/36

Non-patent citations: Communications News, Apr. 1969; M. C. Biskeborn & D. P. Dobbin, Jelly Blend Waterproofs Cable, Bell Laboratories Record, Mar. 1969, pp. 71–75 (copy in 174-23).

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3. Reference-by-reference analysis

3.1 US 311,174 A — Clark, "Electric cable"

Description (from the granted text): A center conductor A is surrounded by a layer B of independently insulated wires C plus one or more bare wires D; over that layer a strip/sheet of metal — "preferably tin-foil" — E is wound; over the foil is an insulating cover F (india-rubber, gutta-percha, "or any of their compounds") and then a fibrous braid G. In the Figs. 7–9 variants a second layer H of insulated wires is wound over the first assembly in the opposite spiral direction. The foil is deliberately held in contact with the bare wire so that foil, bare wire and core can be grounded to drain induced currents; the stated object is to prevent leakage and "obviate induction."

§102 exposure:

• Claims 1 and 37 (two groups of insulated conductors with a metal foil interposed). Clark is the closest single reference to the architecture of independent claim 1/37 — two conductor groupings with a foil between them and an outer insulating covering. Its Figs. 7–9 give first group B / foil E / second group H / insulating covering F + braid G.
• Claim 10 (annular second conductor set around a foil-shielded core) — structurally analogous to Clark's Figs. 7–8, though Clark's outer layer is wound rather than an "integral plastic tube."
• Why it likely does not fully anticipate claim 1 as issued: (i) claim 1 requires the foil "covered on both surfaces with a plastic" — Clark's foil is overlaid with insulation on its outer face only, and its inner face is intentionally in direct contact with a bare wire for grounding, the opposite of the '683 dielectric-isolation teaching; (ii) claim 1 requires "a plastic tape peripherally surrounding said second group … but not said first group" — Clark's outer insulation is a general covering, not a tape around only the second group; (iii) Clark's insulants are gutta-percha/rubber, not the claimed plastics. So Clark is strong §102/§103 art against the concept but is not a clean anticipation of issued claim 1. It does read more comfortably on the generic claim 37 (foil shield recited without the both-sides-plastic limitation) if "plastic" is construed broadly enough to cover gutta-percha/rubber. That is a claim-construction question, not a certainty.

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3.2 US 3,233,036 A — Jachimowicz, "Corrosion proof shielding tape for shielding telephone cables"

Description: A shielding tape laminate: a metallic strip 16 (e.g. aluminum 8 mils or copper 5 mils) to both surfaces of which are bonded plastic protective films 18, 20 (1–3 mils, "high electrical resistivity," chemically/moisture resistant; graft copolymers of polyethylene with reactive carboxyl monomers such as those marketed by Dow as Copolymer Resin QX-3623/QX-4262). The tape is applied over a core tape 12 (e.g. a "GN-S/Mylar" tape) around an insulated-conductor cable core, with a 60–70 mil polyethylene jacket 22 extruded over it. The stated purpose is corrosion protection of the shield.

§102 exposure — this is the single most structurally on-point §102 reference for the '683's shield laminate itself:

• Claim 1(b) — "a metal foil shield covered on both surfaces with a plastic": Jachimowicz discloses exactly this, and its aluminum-foil/plastic-film/build stack maps 1:1 onto '683 Figs. 5 and 8.
• Claim 10(b) ("a shield … made of a metal foil that is coated on both sides by plastic").
• Dependent claims 15, 20, 21, 22, 24, 32, 34, 35 (metal foil, coated one side / both sides, non-magnetic).
• Claim 1(d)/3/36 (outer plastic sheath; further metal shield/jacket) — the 60–70 mil polyethylene jacket and the metallic shield layer support the sheath limitations.
• Does NOT anticipate claims 1/10/11/37 as a whole, because Jachimowicz's shield surrounds the entire cable core — it is not positioned between a first and a second conductor group, and there is no plastic tape wrapping only the second group. The '683 and its family repeatedly used Jachimowicz in exactly this supporting-teaching role (see the IPR testimony excerpt: the three-layer "barrier tape" with the metal extending to the lateral edges was "common and well known"), consistent with §103 rather than a clean §102 hit.

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3.3 US 3,306,971 A — Olson et al., "Insulated electrical strip conductor and method of making same"

Description: Method and product for insulating a metal strip conductor by folding a ribbon of insulating film (polyethylene terephthalate/polyester, epoxy, PTFE, polyimide/du Pont "H-film," or paper) over the edges of the strip so the edges obtain full dielectric coverage, then overcoating with a compatible enamel. Strip conductors are aluminum or copper, 1–100 mils thick.

§102 exposure:

• Claim 2 ("the plastic covering both surfaces of said metal foil shield also covers the longitudinally extending edges"); and correspondingly claims 17, 34, 35.
• This is the closest cited art for the edge-coverage limitation and for the problem the '683 spec discusses as element (20) (exposed bare metal at the foil edges). But Olson is a strip conductor, not a shield between conductor groups — it is irrelevant to the whole-cable architecture of claims 1, 10, 11, and 37. Anticipation, if any, is confined to the edge-coverage subordinate claims.

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3.4 GB 449,582 A — Siemens, screened core groups

Description: Trunk communication cable with one or more screened core groups — i.e., conductor groups individually enclosed by a screen with other groups in the same sheath.

§102 exposure — the closest foreign art for independent claim 11:

• Claim 11 (a tubular covering with an inner peripheral surface delimiting a core cavity; insulated conductors inside; an integral metallic crosstalk shield extending longitudinally inside the core and dividing conductors into longitudinally extending groups). GB 449,582's "screened core groups" concept is directly on claim 11's grouping idea.
• Claim 1 / claim 37 (conductors divided into two groups separated by a shield).
• Limitation it does not supply: the specific claim-11 cross-section — two terminal portions plus an integral intermediate portion with free ends lying on opposite sides of the plane of the intermediate portion (the "serpentine"/"S-shaped" or "D-screen" geometry of dependent claims 13, 14, 28). I found no disclosure of that geometry in the cited set; that geometry is what later surfaced in the follow-on Superior-family patents (e.g. US 3,803,340 "D internal shield in telephone cables" and US 4,165,442) — both of which postdate the '683 and are therefore not prior art to it. Confined to the grouping idea, GB 449,582 is §102/§103-relevant to claims 1/11 but does not appear to reach claim 11's geometry.

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3.5 GB 434,855 A — Siemens, four-wire circuit operation

Description: Telephone cables designed for four-wire circuit operation — i.e., separate go and return paths within one cable.

§102 exposure: Directly relevant to the purpose recited in the '683 specification (shielding the "go" conductors from the "return" conductors so carrier currents of the same frequency can travel both directions in one cable). Maps to claims 1, 10, 37 (grouping the transmit and receive conductors on opposite sides of a shield). No plastic-coated foil or plastic tape is shown, so it is motivation/§103 art rather than an anticipation of the issued claims.

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3.6 DE 657,411 C — Siemens & Halske, branch cable with outgoing and return lines

Description: A branch cable containing both outgoing and return lines. §102 exposure: Same "go/return in one cable" rationale as GB 434,855; relevant background to claims 1/10/37, not an anticipation of the plastic-foil-laminate limitations.

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3.7 FR 775,841 A — Siemens, ultra-low-crosstalk remote transmission cable

Description: A long-haul transmission cable expressly aimed at ultra-low crosstalk, including a four-conductor high-loss submarine variant. §102 exposure: The most on-point foreign reference on the problem statement of the '683. Relevant to claims 1, 10, 11 as background/motivation; its disclosure does not include the plastic-coated foil separating two conductor groups with a plastic tape around only the outer group.

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3.8 GB 314,564 A — Standard Telephones and Cables, electric communication cables

§102 exposure: General electric-communication-cable screening; the earliest of the foreign set. Relevant background only; I found nothing in the title/class indicating it discloses the '683's specific two-group / laminate architecture. Treated as cumulative to GB 367,814 and GB 449,582.

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3.9 GB 367,814 A — Siemens, pressure-proof deep-sea electric cables

§102 exposure: Armor/sheath and cable-construction art. Potentially relevant to the outer sheath/armor limitations of claims 1(d), 3, and 36 — not to the internal crosstalk-separator claims.

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3.10 FR 1,120,216 A — Compagnie Générale d'Electricité, insulated metal armor multi-core cable

Description: A multi-core cable with insulated metal armor — a metallic layer associated with a dielectric in a multi-conductor cable. §102 exposure: Relevant to the outer armor/shield with adhered plastic limitations of claims 1(d), 3, and 36 (the '683's element 18, the corrugated metal armor tape that "can have a plastic … firmly adhered to either one or more surfaces thereof"). Not an anticipation of the internal shield claims.

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3.11 GB 995,582 A — British Insulated Callenders, telecommunication cables

§102 exposure: The most recent patent reference in the set and contemporaneous with the '683 filing. It falls in class 174/23 — the same class cited for the two non-patent grease references — suggesting it is water/moisture-blocking or filling art, relevant to the grease-filled-cavity dependent claims (4, 5, 8, 9, 23, 25, 27) rather than to the shield/grouping architecture. I could not retrieve its full text in this session; treat its specific §102 mapping as unverified.

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3.12 AU 105,876 — unverified

Appears only on the OCR'd printed front page ("105,876 — 11/1937 — Australia — 174/36") and is absent from Google Patents' structured citation table. I could not retrieve its content. Include it in any formal prior-art chart as a to-verify item rather than as an analyzed reference.

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4. Non-patent citations — they postdate the filing and cannot be §102 art

Critical timing point: the '683 application was filed 1968-11-22. Both non-patent items are dated March and April 1969 — after the filing date. Under pre-AIA §102, a post-filing publication cannot be §102(a) (not "before the invention") or §102(b) (not "more than one year prior to the filing date") art. They are legitimately relevant only as (i) evidence of the contemporaneous state of the art for §103/obviousness-of-the-grease-limitations arguments, or (ii) artifacts of a later-related filing. Anyone using this citation list for a §102 chart must not treat these as anticipatory art. Their subject matter (a "jelly blend" waterproofing a cable) is nonetheless the closest thing in the record to the '683's grease-filled cavity claims (4, 5, 8, 9, 23, 25, 27), which recite a polyethylene grease-like material with average molecular weight below ~10,000 and density ~0.85 g/mL at 25 °C.

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5. The elephant in the room: Nyquist US 1,979,402 (in the specification, not on the front page)

Description: Expressly arranges the cable's conductors into two concentric groups with a concentric shield between them so one group can carry carrier frequencies in one direction and the other group in the opposite direction, to reduce near-end crosstalk. The shield is built from wide, thin tapes of soft iron alternated in layers with copper; Nyquist teaches that the shield materials should each have a large product of permeability × conductivity and differ sharply in their permeability-to-conductivity ratio, to obtain interlayer reflection losses.

§102/§103 exposure:

• Claims 1, 10, 11 (concept of dividing conductors into groups separated by an interposed shield) — Nyquist is the closest art of all, and the '683 specification candidly acknowledges it and distinguishes it: the '683 uses alternating layers of a metal and a nonmetal (plastic), neither magnetic, and specifically an aluminum foil per se or plastic-coated, whereas Nyquist uses alternating metal layers, at least one magnetic (soft iron). That distinction is the '683's stated point of novelty over Nyquist.
• Important administrative inconsistency (already flagged in the prior summary, confirmed here): the '683 specification states "the entire specification of the aforementioned United States patent of Nyquist is incorporated specifically herein by reference," yet Nyquist does not appear in the printed front-page "References Cited" list nor in Google's structured citation table. A §102/§103 challenge to the '683 that relies on Nyquist would have the applicant's own specification as an admission of what Nyquist teaches — a point worth noting if this patent's validity is ever litigated as historical matter.

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6. Relevance ranking — "most relevant prior art"

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7. Bottom-line §102 exposure by independent claim

Summary judgment: The cited set is a §103-grade collection, not a §102 kill shot. No single reference discloses, in one disclosure, the combination of (i) a metal foil coated on both surfaces with plastic, (ii) positioned between first and second conductor groups, (iii) with a plastic tape wrapping only the second group, and (iv) an outer plastic sheath — which is the core of claims 1/10/37 — let alone claim 11's S-shaped integral crosstalk-shield cross-section. That is consistent with the claims having issued over all twelve cited references.

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8. Caveats and open items (stated explicitly)

1. No Office action reviewed. I reconstructed §102 exposure from the references' own disclosures plus the issued claims. I did not verify which references the examiner actually applied, or under which statutory subsection. The front-page list is a considered-references list, not a rejection record.
2. Nyquist US 1,979,402 is in the specification but not on the front page (re-confirming the inconsistency flagged earlier). A formal chart should list it, citing the '683's own incorporation-by-reference statement.
3. AU 105,876 (11/1937) appears on the printed front page but not in Google's structured table; its content is unverified.
4. GB 995,582 content not retrieved; its §102 mapping (probable grease/filling art under 174/23) is inferred from class and date, not confirmed.
5. The two non-patent citations postdate the 1968-11-22 filing and cannot be §102 art. Treat them as §103/background only.
6. Number collisions excluded by instruction: EP 3622683 A1 and the Superguide "'362 patent" are different documents and were not merged into this analysis.
7. Statement gaps: I could not confirm (a) the examiner's actual grounds, (b) the full text of GB 995,582 and AU 105,876, or (c) whether any foreign counterpart prosecution (GB1289553/GB1289554, DE1958603, FR2023912, IL32985, BR6912448) applied this art differently. If you need those, I'd target the GB/DE counterparts' file histories directly.

Confidence: High on the citation list, dates, and the per-reference descriptions for the three US patents (verified against the granted texts and Google Patents). Moderate on the foreign references (titles/dates are authoritative from the patent record; content is inferred from title/class except where noted). High on the §102 conclusion that no single cited reference anticipates independent claims 1, 10, or 11 as issued; moderate-to-lower on claim 37, which turns on claim construction of "plastic" against the 1885 Clark disclosure.

I'll ground the key prior-art references before running the § 103 analysis. Let me pull the disclosures of the primary references from the record.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 3,622,683 (Roberts et al.)

Cross-reference: bibliographic data, claim summaries, assignment history, PTAB/litigation posture, and the "no AIA proceedings / expired 1988-11-23" conclusions are set out in the previously generated sections and are not repeated here. This section concerns only patentability under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 against the prior art in the record.

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0. Two threshold flags before the analysis

(a) Date discrepancy. The task prompt states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," whereas the environment/source-fetch stamp on the authoritative Google Patents text is 2026-10-01. I flag the contradiction rather than silently reconciling it. It does not change the § 103 analysis, because the critical date is the filing date (Nov. 22, 1968), not today's date.

(b) The non-patent citations are NOT prior art. The front page lists two Non-Patent Citations:

Both were cited by the examiner, but a publication dated four to five months after the Nov. 22, 1968 filing cannot be § 102(a) art (the invention cannot postdate the filing) and is far short of the § 102(b) one-year bar. On this record, the grease/jelly-fill limitations of claims 4, 5, 8, 9, 23, 25 and 27 have no qualifying prior art at all. This is the single most important gap in the obviousness case and I return to it in § 7. (Note also the internal inconsistency already flagged in the earlier summary: Nyquist US 1,979,402 is incorporated by reference in the specification but does not appear in the front-page list. It is nevertheless available as prior art — it issued 1934-11-06 — and I treat it as part of the operative set.)

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1. Legal framework

Pre-AIA § 103 governs (application filed 1968-11-22). The controlling inquiries are the Graham v. John Deere factors — (1) scope and content of the prior art, (2) differences between the prior art and the claims, (3) level of ordinary skill, and (4) objective evidence of non-obviousness — applied through the flexible KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) framework. A motivation to combine need not appear expressly in the references; it may come from the "design incentives and other market forces" that shape the field, from "any need or problem known in the field," or from the "background knowledge, creativity, and common sense of the person of ordinary skill." KSR, 550 U.S. at 418–21. Where a reference teaches away, that evidence must be weighed.

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art

A PHOSITA in Nov. 1968 is a communications-cable design engineer with a B.S.E.E. (or equivalent cable-plant experience) and several years designing multi-pair telephone cable sheaths and screens, familiar with: (i) the concentric go/return conductor-group architecture taught by Nyquist; (ii) paper- or plastic-insulated twisted pairs, quads and PIMF ("pair-in-metal-foil") screens; (iii) laminated metal-foil/plastic shielding tapes as then commercialized by General Cable and others; and (iv) polyethylene-jacketed "Alpeth"/"Stalpeth"-type sheath construction. This is a mature, incremental, materials-substitution art — the very setting in which KSR counsels that combination is most likely to be obvious.

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3. The operative prior-art set

All eleven front-page references pre-date Nov. 22, 1968 and are analogous art (communication-cable conductors, screens, sheath/armor and shielding laminates). The two non-patent citations do not (§ 0(b)).

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4. Element mapping for the independent claims

Claim 1 (and materially identical claim 37, which drops only the "covered on both surfaces with a plastic" limitation)

Claim 10 (concentric inner core + outer annulus)

Claim 11 (serpentine/"S" or "D" internal crosstalk shield)

Claim 11 is drafted around geometry, not material: a tubular covering with an inner peripheral surface, a tubular metallic shield in that covering, an integral metallic crosstalk shield extending longitudinally inside the core cavity between circumferentially spaced-apart points, having first/second terminal portions and an integral intermediate portion, with the free ends of the terminal portions on opposite sides of the plane of the intermediate portion (i.e., S-shaped/$ serpentine in cross-section).

The record references the function (an internal screen dividing conductor groups — GB 449,582) but none of them is described in the front-page data as teaching a serpentine or S-shaped cross-section spanning the core cavity with opposed free ends. This is the one independent claim for which the record does not supply a close structural match. (Consistent with that, note that the later art cited by 683 — US 3,803,340 "D. internal shield in telephone cables" (1974) and US 4,165,442 "Telephone cable with improved shield combination" (1979) — are follow-on filings, not prior art, and occupy precisely this geometry.)

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5. Enumerated § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Jachimowicz '036 + GB 449,582 → claims 1, 37 (and dependents 2–9)

Rejection rationale. GB 449,582 teaches dividing a cable's conductors into longitudinally extending groups by an interposed conductive screen, with a dielectric (insulating tape winding) between the screen and the group, and an outer jacket. Jachimowicz '036 teaches that, in a telephone cable, the shield should be a metal foil coated on both surfaces with plastic. The sole differences from claim 1 are (i) relocating the coated-foil shield from the cable periphery to the inter-group position, and (ii) the already-conventional plastic tape bounded about the second group.

Motivation. Both are in the same field (telephone/communications cable), address the same problem (electrostatic/electromagnetic coupling between conductor groups), and produce a predictable result. The 683 specification itself concedes the whole architecture — screened concentric groups — is old; the asserted contribution is the material of the screen. Substituting a known plastic-coated foil shield tape for a known bare/insulated screen is a substitution of known elements to obtain a predictable result, KSR, 550 U.S. at 416. Under In re Aller/In re Boesch, using a known material in a known structure for its known property (dielectric separation + electrostatic screening) is obvious.

Targeted sub-rejections.

• Claim 21/22, 34/35 (foil coated on at least one / both sides with plastic): fully met by Jachimowicz '036's dual plastic films.
• Claim 6 (additional plastic tape around both groups) and claim 3/7 (further metal shield around both): GB 449,582 sleeve 41/jacket; FR 1,120,216 insulated multi-core armor (see Ground 3).
• Claim 19/20/33 (non-magnetic metal foil): Jachimowicz '036's aluminum is non-magnetic; the choice of aluminum for cable foils was conventional.

Ground 2 — Jachimowicz '036 + Nyquist '402 (+ GB 449,582) → claim 10

Rejection rationale. Nyquist '402 discloses the entire architecture of claim 10 — inner core, concentric shield, outer annular group, plastic/insulating sheath — essentially verbatim ("the conductors of a cable in two concentric groups with a concentric shield between the two groups of conductors"). The only missing element is that the shield be metal foil coated on both sides with plastic; Jachimowicz '036 supplies exactly that element. Claim 10's "integral plastic tube" and outer "plastic tape" are met by the extruded polyethylene jacket of Jachimowicz and the conventional core-wrap/Mylar tape of GB 449,582.

Motivation — and this is the strongest motivation evidence in the record. The 683 specification's own statement of the problem is a near-restatement of Nyquist:

"In order to transmit currents of the same frequency in both directions within the same cable … it is desirable that the conductors used for transmitting in one direction be shielded (electrically) from those transmitting in the opposite direction … The shield has the effect of reducing so called 'near end' crosstalk since the weak attenuated currents coming in at a repeater point are in a compartment of the cable electrically shielded from a large amplified current entering the conductors in the other compartment."

Nyquist states the identical rationale ("those conductors within the shield may all be used for transmitting carrier frequencies in one direction while the return channels … will be applied to the conductors on the other side of the shield"). Where the applicant's own specification adopts the reference's framing of the problem, the motivation to combine is essentially admitted. KSR expressly permits motivation drawn from "a need or problem known in the field."

Ground 3 — Any of Ground 1/2 + FR 1,120,216 → claims 3, 7

FR 1,120,216 discloses an "insulated metal armor multi-core cable" — i.e., a metal shield/armor circumferentially surrounding the composite core, which is precisely claim 3 ("a further shield … circumferentially surrounds") and claim 7. The 683 specification itself treats its corrugated armor (18) as an ordinary element of the cable, describing it as "customary." Obvious.

Ground 4 (only partially supported) — Ground 2 + GB 434,855 / DE 657,411 / FR 775,841 → claim 11

Claim 11's claimed function (an internal screen extending between circumferentially spaced points to divide the conductors into longitudinally extending groups, each group delimited by the screen and a portion of the inner peripheral surface) is squarely taught by the Siemens screened-group family (GB 449,582; GB 434,855; FR 775,841's "ultra-low crosstalk" four-conductor cable). However:

• I could not confirm, from the record or from the search results, that any of those references discloses the specifically claimed serpentine/S cross-section with free ends disposed on opposite sides of the intermediate-portion plane. The Siemens screens described are cylindrical or helically-wound tape wraps (GB 449,582) or full individual pair screens — not a flat, double-bent septum.
• A "rational" inventor reasoning from the reference set might well arrive at a flat septum dividing a compartmented core; the serpentine shaping with opposed terminal free ends is a drafting-precise geometry that no record reference is described as teaching. Any rejection here would rest on a KSR "obvious to try" theory with a comparatively thin evidentiary predicate.

Assessment: claim 11 is the least vulnerable independent claim in the patent on this record. (Dependent claims 12, 13, 14, 28, 29, 30, 31 add terminal-seating, serpentine/S shape, and a nested plastic tape — all further narrow the geometry and aggravate the gap.)

Ground 5 (fails on the record) — the grease-fill claims (4, 5, 8, 9, 23, 25, 27)

These depend on a polyethylene grease having average molecular weight below about 10,000 and density ~0.85 g/mL at 25 °C, essentially filling the unoccupied cavities. The only references the examiner cited for this are the post-filing Bell Labs Record and Communications News items, which are not prior art (§ 0(b)). The 683 specification does state the grease was "marketed by Dow Chemical Company," which shows the material pre-existed, but the record supplies no pre-1968 reference teaching the filling of a shielded cable core with it. Under In re Kahn/In re GPAC, absent a qualifying reference, no prima facie § 103 case is made on these limitations.

Ground 6 — Residual dependent-claim analysis

* Note the evidentiary oddity that the later Dow '574 patent's comparative Table II (1980s) lists US 3,622,683 itself as prior-art example 8 in the form PP/Al/PP — i.e., the industry later classified the 683 tape as a species of plastic-coated shielding tape, which cuts against any argument that 683's plastic coating was the inventive departure.

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6. Motivation to combine — consolidated

1. Same field, same problem. Both the Siemens screened-group family and Nyquist address crosstalk between conductor groups in a single communication cable — the exact problem recited in the 683 title and abstract. As noted, the 683 specification adopts Nyquist's problem statement essentially word-for-word.
2. Same solution mechanism. "Put a conductive screen between the go-group and the return-group" is Nyquist's and GB 449,582's teaching; the 683 claim does nothing more than name the screen's material.
3. The material was known and commercially available. Jachimowicz '036 (1966) had already commercialized plastic-coated aluminum/copper shielding tape "for shielding telephone cables," including a Mylar core tape for dielectric separation. Selecting it as the inter-group screen is a predictable substitution of a known element for its known function (KSR; In re Aller).
4. No teaching away in the field as a whole. Although Nyquist extols magnetic iron (because μσ should be large and μ/σ should differ between layers), the same Nyquist disclosure names "copper, silver and aluminum" as "the best non-magnetic substances" for a shield, and Jachimowicz '036 demonstrates that non-magnetic aluminum foil was in fact the industry's telephone-cable shield of choice. A "teaching away" argument based on Nyquist's iron preference is therefore weak as a matter of the field as a whole, though it retains some force against claim 19's explicit "non-magnetic" recitation.
5. Design incentive / market force. The 683 abstract states the payoff — "a greater spacing between repeaters can be designed into a telephone cable system." Minimizing near-end crosstalk to extend repeater spacing was a decades-old, recognized design pressure in carrier telephony (Nyquist, 1934; GB 434,855, 1935; FR 775,841, 1935). KSR recognizes such market/design pressure as motivation.

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7. Counter-considerations (why some claims may nonetheless be non-obvious)

• Gap over Nyquist is 34 years. Nyquist (1934) to 683 (1968). Long-felt need is a recognized secondary consideration — but it is materially undercut by Jachimowicz '036 (1966), which is only two years before the filing and shows the shield-tape element already reduced to commercial practice for telephone cable. The long-felt-need narrative therefore attaches at most to the inter-group placement, not to the materials.
• Teaching away (claim 19). Nyquist's express preference for magnetic iron as the shield layer is a genuine, if imperfect, teaching-away datum for a non-magnetic shield. Combined with claim 2/17's edge-encapsulation (which the patent itself frames as its own insight), claims 2, 17 and 19 are the material claims most defensible against a § 103 attack.
• Objective evidence. No commercial-success, licensing, copying, or industry-praise evidence appears in the record. The 683 Figure 24 crosstalk plot is applicant's own data, not third-party recognition, and does not by itself establish unexpected results where the reference (Jachimowicz '036) already delivers the same structural element.
• The examiner allowed over all of this art. That is a procedural fact, not a merits conclusion; the analysis above explains why at least the broad architectural claims (1, 10, 37) nonetheless present a strong prima facie § 103 case on the record as cited.

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8. Claim-by-claim § 103 verdict (record as cited)

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9. Bottom line

On the prior art as cited, claims 1, 10 and 37 (and most of their dependents) would very likely have been held obvious under pre-AIA § 103 as a predictable substitution of a known plastic-coated metal-foil shielding tape (Jachimowicz '036) into a known screened/concentric conductor-group cable architecture (Nyquist '402; GB 449,582; the Siemens family), motivated — nearly to the point of admission in the specification — by the same near-end-crosstalk/repeater-spacing problem those references solve. The independent claim that resists the record is claim 11, whose serpentine/S internal shield with opposed terminal free ends is not matched by any cited reference — and which, tellingly, is the genus the assignee's own later filings (US 3,803,340; US 4,165,442) developed. The grease-technology claims cannot be reached at all on this record, because the two non-patent references the examiner relied on post-date the 1968-11-22 filing.

Because US 3,622,683 expired 1988-11-23, the above is a historical/academic validity assessment only; the patent is unassertable and appears in the modern record solely as prior art (see the PTAB and litigation sections above).

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Verification / confidence notes

• Reference disclosures for Jachimowicz US 3,233,036 (both-surface plastic films, Mylar core tape, exposed metal edges, extruded polyethylene jacket) and Nyquist US 1,979,402 (concentric two-bundle architecture; μσ and μ/σ theory; "copper, silver and aluminum" as best non-magnetic substances) are quoted from primary documents surfaced in search (Jachimowicz PDF; Nyquist US1979402).
• GB 449,582 is treated as the Siemens "screened core group" document; its US counterpart US 2,109,334 ("Communication cable comprising one or more screened core groups") surfaced in search and corroborates the screening + insulating-sleeve + jacket structure. I have not verified the full disclosures of GB 314,564, GB 367,814, DE 657,411, GB 434,855, FR 1,120,216, GB 995,582 or US 311,174 beyond their titles and classifications; those are reasoned from title/classification and flagged as such.
• I could not confirm any record reference disclosing the serpentine/S cross-section of claim 11; that negative is stated as a limitation of the search, not as proof that no such art exists.
• Exact ICC page/column cites for the foreign references are not available from the sources used; the analysis relies on title, date and classification, which are documented on the Google Patents page for US3622683A.