Invalidity dossier
US 5876107
Light emitting panel assemblies
Current assignee: LEE MANG-SHIANG
Added 9/23/2026, 4:48:06 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 5,876,107
Title: Light emitting panel assemblies
Patent number: US5876107A
Application number: US08/778,734
Inventors: Jeffery R. Parker, Mark D. Miller, Daniel N. Kelsch
Original assignee: Lumitex Inc.
Current assignee (as listed, with Google's caveat that listed assignees may be inaccurate): LEE MANG-SHIANG; Innovative Display Technologies LLC
Priority date: 1995-06-27
Filing date: 1997-01-02
Publication/grant date: 1999-03-02
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2015-06-27
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5876107/en
Purpose and plain-language scope
The patent concerns light emitting panel assemblies. The excerpt's keyword list points to four recurring concepts: a light, a panel member, an assembly, and a light source, together with a "transition area." The classification record describes the subject matter as light guides, including planar or plate-like light guides; means for improving coupling-in of light from a light source into the guide, such as shaping a portion of the guide (collimating, focussing, diverging surfaces, or recesses that house part of the light source) and taper-shaped guides placed between the source and the guide; and means for improving coupling-out of light, including redirecting means on the guide surface, two-dimensional arrangements of prisms, protrusions, indentations or roughened surfaces, and linear or arc-shaped grooves extending across the guide. Classifications also cover arrangements of plural sources, e.g. multi-colour sources, and a surgical-field illumination application using white LEDs. In plain terms, the disclosed assemblies appear directed to distributing light from a source through a panel using shaped coupling and surface features that extract light in a controlled way. No claims, abstract, or detailed description are present in the supplied excerpt, so the precise claimed scope cannot be stated from this text.
What the excerpt does not establish
The excerpt contains no claim language, no abstract, no specification text, and no drawings. It therefore does not establish the actual claimed invention, its limitations, the number of claims, or the embodiments described. It also does not establish prior art, validity, enforceability, infringement, or the accuracy of the listed assignees or dates (which the source itself labels as assumptions, not legal conclusions). Per the operating constraints, no litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art research was performed.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:44:09 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 5876107. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
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.