Invalidity dossier
US 5307241
Added 9/23/2026, 4:05:34 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 5,307,241
Title: Electronic circuit board arrangements including main auxiliary circuit boards
Patent number: US5307241A
Application number: US08/037,150
Inventor: Antonio Pistilli
Original assignee: Northern Telecom Ltd
Priority/filing date: 1993-03-25
Publication/grant date: 1994-04-26
Legal status (as listed): Expired – Fee Related
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5307241/en
Purpose
The patent addresses a known difficulty in electronic circuit design: when a circuit board is densely populated, there may be "virtually no room for components to be added manually," and gaining access to connection points for adding components "may also be very difficult or inconvenient," while leads of manually added components generally must be carefully insulated, requiring further manual steps.
Plain-language scope
The arrangement combines a main circuit board, which carries and interconnects components of an electronic circuit, with an auxiliary circuit board. At least a part of the auxiliary board lies parallel and directly adjacent to the main board. That part has holes aligned with holes in the main board, and conductors pass through the aligned holes to make electrical connections with conductive tracks on both boards.
A further aspect covers a main board with a first face carrying components and a second, soldering face; a flat auxiliary board directly adjacent the second face, with holes aligned to main-board holes through which component leads pass; additional components on the face of the auxiliary board furthest from the main board; and conductive tracks on the auxiliary board connecting those additional components to leads passing through the aligned holes.
The description states the auxiliary board can supply connections conveniently while taking very little space, separately from the main board, can carry additional components (e.g., surface-mounted), can be on either face of the main board, may be flexible and extend over components, and suits automated manufacturing, reducing manual labour costs.
What the excerpt does not establish
The supplied text is an excerpt and omits the full claims, detailed description, and drawings' complete content. It does not establish the exact claim wording, the full list of cited prior art, litigation, ownership transfers beyond the listed reassignments, or validity. Some classification and reassignment entries appear in the source but are not relied on here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:51:09 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.