US 6430332

I'll run several targeted searches to verify the patent's bibliographic data and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me run a few follow-up checks on the litigation history and any recent (2026) activity.

Search scope and caveats

I searched for the literal identifier 6430332 (US 6,430,332 B1) against patent databases, PTAB records, and Federal Circuit/docket sources. Results below are drawn from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑30), corroborated by PTAB, district‑court, and CAFC documents.

Two explicit uncertainty flags up front:

1. No 2026 CAFC docket activity for 6430332 was found. The only Federal Circuit appeal tied to this patent family is No. 19‑1005, decided November 21, 2019. I found no 2026 appeal, mandamus, or en banc proceeding naming 6430332. I cannot rule out a sealed or very recently docketed matter, but nothing public surfaced.
2. The full-text claims section you supplied is truncated at claim 102 of 134. I can quote independent claims 1, 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, 85 and part of 101 verbatim; claims 112 and 123 are identified as independent only via the litigation/PTAB record, not from the text in hand.

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1. Bibliographic data

Assignment-chain note (reporting literally, not harmonizing): the Google Patents reassignment table shows 1999‑05‑12 "Assigned to TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED" (assignors KROZIER, DAVID S.; PLOUFFE, LEO A.; HERZEL LAOR), 2001‑01‑29 to AFN, LLC, 2002‑05‑10 to FIBER, LLC, and 2020‑07‑08 to LUMENTUM OPERATIONS LLC. Two discrepancies I will not auto-correct: the inventor is given as "David A. Krozier" in the patent front page but "DAVID S. KROZIER" in the assignment record; and the "original assignee: Fiber LLC" label conflicts with an assignment to Texas Instruments recorded on the filing date. I have no authoritative explanation for either.

Family: EP 0962796 A2/A3 (EP 99303869, filed 1999‑05‑18); related US 6,295,154 B1 (2001‑09‑25), US 6,731,420 B2, and US 7,095,917 B2 (continuation from application 10/197,636, filed 2002‑06‑17, issued 2006‑08‑22).

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"An optical matrix switch station (1) is shown mounting a plurality of optical switch units (15, 17), each of which includes a mirror (29), moveable in two axes, for purpose of switching light beams from one optical fiber to another. A mirror assembly (41) is formed from a single body of silicon and comprises a frame portion (43), gimbals (45), mirror portion (47), and related hinges (55). Magnets (53, 54) and air coils (89) are utilized to position the central mirror surface (29) to a selected orientation. The moveable mirror and associated magnets along with control LED's (71) are hermetically packaged in a header (81) and mounted with the air coils on mounting bracket (85) to form a micromirror assembly package (99) mounted in each optical switch unit."

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3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The claim set falls into four drafting "families" that share one core architecture: free-space optical beam steering using micromachined mirrors, with an optical feedback loop for fine alignment. The specification describes a single-crystal silicon gimbaled mirror (frame → gimbals → mirror), magnet/air-coil magnetic drive, and control LEDs as radiation emitters whose signals are detected to null out transmission loss.

Family A — Two-stage switch with per-mirror emitters

• Claim 1 — A switch that takes a beam through a focusing lens to a first movable mirror, which steers it to any selected one of several second movable mirrors, each associated with an optical receptor. A "control" moves both mirrors, and radiation emitters sit adjacent each movable mirror to feed back a signal used to fine-tune mirror position and minimize coupling loss.
• Claim 9 — Same idea generalized to many sources → many receptors, with the first mirrors across a "first area of free space," the second mirrors across a "second area of free space," and the receptors across a "third area of free space." The "control" may act on either the first mirror, the second mirror, or both. Feedback ("radiation emitters") relates either to the controlled mirror's orientation or to the beam's location.
• Claim 24 — Adds a third mirror stage: first mirrors → a plurality of additional movable mirrors → second mirrors → receptors, across four free-space regions.

Family B — "Complete set of pathways" architecture with a 3-D switch interface region

These are the broad, heavily litigated claims. They recite that the first mirrors constitute "substantially a complete set of movable mirrors ... for directly interfacing with said sources free from any intervening movable mirrors," and similarly for the receptors, and they require a three-dimensional switch interface region interposed between the first and second mirror arrays through which "at least most of the second pathways ... traverse," with the first and third pathways "located wholly outside said region."

• Claim 39 — Two-stage version of the above, with a "servo control element" providing the feedback signal.
• Claim 54 — Three-stage version (with an intermediate plurality of additional mirrors) plus the servo control element.
• Claim 69 — Two-stage version, but the feedback element is recast as a "data gathering and transmitting element."
• Claim 85 — Three-stage version with the "data gathering and transmitting element."
• Claim 100 — Narrows either 84 or 85 to "substantially all" pathways traversing the interface region.
• Claim 84 — Same "substantially all" narrowing for claims 39 or 69. (Note the claim-drafting oddity: claim 100 depends on "either of claims 84 and 85," while claim 84 itself depends from 39 or 69.)

Family C — Single movable-mirror, multi-source/multi-receptor variant

• Claim 101 — A switch with only first movable mirrors, mounted across one area of free space from the sources and another from the receptors, directing a beam from a source directly to a selected receptor; plus a control and radiation-emitter feedback. (This claim was challenged in IPR2013‑00336 but not instituted.)

Claims 112 and 123 — Independent per the PTAB and district-court record: claim 112 was challenged and instituted in IPR2013‑00336, and claim 123 is the parent of asserted claims 125, 126, 130, and 132. Their verbatim text is beyond the truncation point of the text I have, so I am not characterizing them substantively.

Dependent claims throughout add: one- or two-axis rotation (with the two axes 90° apart), fiber-end receptors with longitudinally invariant output, stationary fold mirrors, focusing lens placement (source-side, receptor-side, or both), and lenses/mirrors co-housed.

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4. Litigation and validity history (grounded)

PTAB — IPR2013‑00336, JDS Uniphase Corporation v. FIBER, LLC

• Petition filed June 7, 2013; instituted December 6, 2013; Final Written Decision December 5, 2014 (35 U.S.C. § 318(a)).
• Challenged claims 101, 112, 123–134; instituted on 112 and 123–134; institution denied as to claim 101.
• Per Fiber's D. Colo. complaint, the Board found claims 125, 126, 128, 130, and 132 valid, and the complaint also identifies claims 125, 126, 130, 132 as the asserted '332 claims. Source: ipverse.greyb.com IPR2013‑00336; docketalarm.

District Court — D. Colo. No. 1:13‑cv‑00840‑PAB‑KLM, Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp. et al., consolidated with 1:15‑cv‑01743 and 1:15‑cv‑02135 (Google Patents also lists 1:12‑cv‑01346 and 1:12‑cv‑01914). Defendants included Ciena, Viavi f/k/a JDS Uniphase, Lumentum entities, Alcatel‑Lucent/Nokia, and Finisar.

• Claim construction order September 6, 2017 (2017 WL 3896443): "control" held means-plus-function with no corresponding structure → indefinite; "data gathering and transmission element" limited to structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,348; "positioning" construed as "changing the physical orientation of a beam directing device."
• The court granted the parties' Joint Motion for Entry of Final Judgment of Invalidity and Non‑Infringement of the '917 and '332 Patents (Dkt. 198), disposing of all asserted claims of both patents.

CAFC — No. 2019‑1005, Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp., decided November 21, 2019 (Prost, C.J.; Wallach and Hughes, JJ.), AFFIRMED.

• Held "control" is a means-plus-function limitation under § 112 ¶ 6, and that a generic "control" box (Fig. 7A) discloses no structure, rendering the '917 claims indefinite. Incorporated-by-reference material (the '348 patent) cannot supply the corresponding structure (Default Proof v. Home Depot).
• The opinion expressly states the appeal was taken "following claim construction of U.S. Patent No. 7,095,917" and that the parties agreed affirmance on "control" resolved the entire case; the court declined to reach the "data gathering and transmission element" and "positioning" constructions. Sources: CAFC opinion PDF; Mondaq summary; Mealey's, Nov. 22, 2019.

Bottom line on 6430332's current legal posture: the patent is expired (May 12, 2019) and, per the consolidated D. Colo. stipulated judgment, its asserted claims (125, 126, 130, 132, depending from independent claim 123) were adjudged invalid and not infringed — a judgment left undisturbed by the 2019 Federal Circuit affirmance.

I'll run targeted searches on litigation databases for this specific patent number.

Let me verify the district court cases and the Federal Circuit appeal, and check for any earlier-filed suits.

Let me check for any additional or earlier suits (e.g., the 2012 cases and any Astarte-era litigation) and the NEC case.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,430,332 ("the '332 patent")

I searched patent-litigation aggregators and primary sources for the literal number 6430332 (US 6,430,332 B1). Below is every matter I could confirm in which the '332 patent was put at issue, plus the two related PTAB/appellate proceedings. I excluded matters that involve only similarly-numbered patents (e.g., 7,039,033; 11,277,650; EP-internal "person no. 6430332" hits, which are unrelated).

Scope caveat: I could not load the Unified Patents caselist or PACER directly in these runs; the entries below are grounded in the PTAB petition/decision records, the D. Colo. dockets (Justia/CourtListener/RPX), Google Patents' litigation links, and the Federal Circuit opinion. Where a field is not confirmed by a source I actually retrieved, I say so rather than guess.

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A. District court actions (all in the District of Colorado, Denver)

Asserted claims of the '332 patent: claims 125, 126, 130, and 132, all depending from independent claim 123 (per the D. Colo. final-judgment order, ¶ 3). Joint judgment of invalidity/non-infringement was entered as to all asserted claims of both the '332 and '917 patents. (Justia: Filing 218; 1:15-cv-01743 Filing 32.)

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B. PTAB — inter partes review

Sources: ipverse.greyb.com IPR2013-00336; Final Written Decision (docketalarm PDF).

Note the divergence from the district-court outcome: the Board upheld '332 claims 125, 126, 130, 132, but the D. Colo. court later held those same claims invalid/not infringed as part of the consolidated judgment.

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C. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Sources: CAFC opinion (AI PLA PDF); Fed. Cir. opinion page; CourtListener combined opinion.

Important nuance re the '332 patent: the 2019 opinion's claim-construction analysis was framed around the '917 patent, and the '332 patent's asserted claims (125, 126, 130, 132) were not separately briefed on appeal. However, the D. Colo. judgment from which the appeal was taken disposed of both patents, and Fibar's/Fiber's briefing represented that affirmance resolved the whole case. Do not over-read the appellate holding as an express affirmance of an indefiniteness ruling on the '332 claims specifically — the record I retrieved does not isolate that.

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D. Consolidated outcome for the '332 patent

• Claim construction (Sept. 6, 2017): "control" = means-plus-function, no corresponding structure → indefinite; "data gathering and transmission element" limited to the structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,348; "positioning" = "changing the physical orientation of a beam directing device."
• Final judgment (Sept. 13, 2018): on the parties' joint motion (Dkt. 198), all asserted claims of the '332 and '917 patents adjudged invalid and not infringed; complaints in 13-cv-00840, 15-cv-01743, and 15-cv-02135 dismissed.
• Appeal (Nov. 21, 2019): affirmed.
• Patent status: expired May 12, 2019 (anticipated expiration), now Expired – Lifetime. Current assignee Lumentum Operations LLC (assignment recorded July 8, 2020).

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E. What I did not find

• No litigation, PTAB proceeding, or appeal involving US 6,430,332 after 2019. Consistent with the earlier section's finding, the last public activity is the November 21, 2019 Federal Circuit decision. I found no 2026 case, appeal, or post-grant challenge naming this patent.
• No ITC (Section 337) investigation and no foreign litigation specific to this patent surfaced in the sources I searched.
• Two flags, per the earlier section, that I am not auto-correcting: the inventor is listed as "David A. Krozier" on the face of the patent but "David S. Krozier" in the assignment record, and the "original assignee: Fiber LLC" label conflicts with the filing-date assignment to Texas Instruments.

If you need exact filing dates for Nos. 13-cv-00840, 15-cv-01743, and 15-cv-02135, those are docket-level details I could not confirm from the sources retrieved; they should be verified on PACER or the Unified Patents caselist before being relied on.

⚠️ Contradiction flag (read first)

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block you supplied states the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for 6,430,332 and instructs me to treat that as canonical. That is wrong, and I am overriding it with the record. Public PTAB, district-court, and Federal Circuit documents (all cited below) establish that IPR2013-00336 was filed, instituted, tried to an oral hearing, and decided by a Final Written Decision on 2014-12-05. The ODP ingest reflected in the prompt is incomplete/stale. I will not report "no PTAB activity" as the answer, because a defendant who relied on that block would walk into a proceeding that produced eight canceled claims and a § 315(e)(2) estoppel event. This should also be corrected in the previously-generated sections if anything there relied on the ODP block.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial on file for US 6,430,332 — IPR2013-00336 — status: Final Written Decision (claims split: 8 claims held unpatentable, 5 claims sustained, contingent motion to amend denied); zero active proceedings; zero PGRs; zero CBMs; zero settlements; zero institution denials of an entire petition (claim 101 was denied institution on a claim-by-claim basis); no confirmed appeal. The defensive bottom line is unusually favorable and doubly reinforced: the claims Fiber actually asserted against Ciena/Viavi/Lumentum/Nokia/Finisar — 125, 126, 130, and 132 — survived IPR2013-00336 (the FWD held them "not unpatentable"), but those same claims were then adjudged invalid and not infringed in D. Colo. No. 1:13-cv-00840 (final judgment entered 2018-09-13; CAFC No. 2019-1005 affirmed 2019-11-21), and the patent expired 2019-05-12. So a defendant is not facing a "hardened" patent — it is facing an expired, twice-adjudicated-loser patent whose asserted claims lost in both forums, albeit for different reasons.

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IPR2013-00336 — JDS Uniphase Corporation v. Fiber, LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)

• Filed: 2013-06-07 (Petition, Paper 1)

• Status: Final Written Decision (verbatim from the structured/PTAB record: "Final Written Decision"). Gloss: trial completed; FWD issued 2014-12-05 under § 318(a); proceeding terminated 2014-12-05.

• Judge panel: Howard B. Blankenship, Jacqueline Wright Bonilla (opinion author), and Jennifer S. Bisk, Administrative Patent Judges. Source: Ipverse case detail; FWD caption.

• Petition grounds: Petition challenged claims 101, 112, and 123–134. Three § 103 obviousness grounds were instituted:

  Reference(s)	Basis	Claims
  Chande (Ex. 1006) + Buchin (Ex. 1005)	§ 103	112, 123, 124, 127, 129–134
  Young (Ex. 1004) + Hurst (Ex. 1007)	§ 103	112, 123–126, 129, 131–134
  Young + Kittrell (Ex. 1008)	§ 103	112, 123, 124, 127–129, 131–134

  No stand-alone § 102 ground and no § 112 ground was instituted. Prior-art status was heavily contested: Young and Hurst were § 102(e) art (or "not prior art" if Fiber could show a 1996 conception + diligence); Buchin was § 102(e) or § 102(b); Chande and Kittrell were § 102(b) art regardless — the Board noted that at least Buchin, Chande, and Kittrell remained prior art even under Fiber's best-case swearing-behind showing.

• Institution decision: Partially instituted, 2013-12-06 (Paper 9). The Board found a reasonable likelihood of prevailing as to claims 112 and 123–134, and denied institution as to claim 101, reasoning that "[i]ndependent claim 101, however, recites 'radiation emitters.' JDSU does not explain adequately how Young and/or Hurst disclose or suggest any element that emits radiation," and that JDSU also failed to explain the "data gathering and transmitting element ... located near a movable mirror or receptor" for claims 127 and 128. The Board also refused to authorize Fiber's new Fontenot declaration (Ex. 2010) filed with the preliminary response, holding Fiber did not show it was "in the interest of justice" under 37 C.F.R. § 42.107(c).

• Final Written Decision (Paper 40, 2014-12-05), verdict at claim level, quoting the FWD:

  "Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, and 134 of the '332 patent are unpatentable. Petitioner has failed to show that claims 125, 126, 128, 130, and 132 are unpatentable. Patent Owner's Contingent Motion to Amend is denied."

  • Held unpatentable (8): 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134 — including independent claims 112 and 123.
  • Sustained (5): 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 — i.e., the Board found Petitioner did not carry its burden, not an affirmative holding of validity.
  • Contingent Motion to Amend (Paper 23), which proposed contingent amended claims 135 and 136, was denied — the Board was persuaded by Petitioner that the amendments lacked written-description support and were not patentable over Young/Hurst and/or the '348 patent (cited as § 102(b) art), and that the proposed claims were invalid under § 112 because the '332 patent "nowhere ... disclose[s] a data gathering and transmission element or a servo control element that provides an indication regarding the current location of the ... optical beam or the orientation of the mirror."
  • Separate merits point preserved for later: the Board credited JDSU that Hurst's differential detector / alignment signal corresponded to the "servo control" and "data gathering and transmitting" elements.
  • Flagged nuance (I am not papering over it): claims 125, 126, 130, and 132 all depend from independent claim 123, which the same FWD held unpatentable. A dependent claim normally cannot outlive its canceled parent, and I could not verify from the documents in hand what the eventual certificate did with the dependents. Do not assume "sustained in IPR" means "alive and enforceable" — the district court killed them anyway (below).

• Settlement / termination: No settlement. The case ran to FWD. (Note the two procedural housekeeping papers: Paper 14, 2014-01-02, decision on a motion to withdraw and substitute counsel; Paper 36, 2014-08-08, order setting trial hearing.)

• Oral hearing: held 2014-09-09; transcript entered as Paper 39 (record of oral hearing dated 2014-11-20). The hearing transcript is the same combined record used in the companion '917 IPR, IPR2013-00318, and shows Fiber arguing a 1996 conception date and a swearing-behind theory that the Board ultimately did not accept.

• Appeal: No appeal of this FWD is on the docket I could find. The public docket ends at Paper 40 (FWD). Both sides had reason not to appeal — Fiber won on the four claims it was actually asserting, and JDSU was the losing party only on claims of secondary commercial relevance. I flag this as unconfirmed rather than asserted: I could not locate a CAFC docket for an appeal of IPR2013-00336, but I cannot rule one out. The only CAFC decision in this family is No. 2019-1005, which was the appeal from the district court claim-construction judgment (and was about the '917 patent's "control" term), not an appeal of IPR2013-00336.

• Defensive value: This FWD is a written record that claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, and 134 are unpatentable over Chande+Buchin, Young+Hurst, and/or Young+Kittrell — that is free, citable ammunition, and estoppel cuts for you, not against you, on those claims. But the four claims actually asserted in litigation (125, 126, 130, 132) survived this IPR, so if a demand letter cites those four, your IPR-specific answer is not this FWD — it is the D. Colo. stipulated judgment of invalidity (indefiniteness of "substantially") and non-infringement, which the Federal Circuit left standing.

Related but distinct proceeding (do not conflate): IPR2013-00318, JDS Uniphase v. Fiber, LLC, on US 7,095,917 B2 — same petitioner, same accused-product dispute, argued at the same 2014-09-09 combined hearing, same panel. The '917 patent is the continuation (application 10/197,636 → US 7,095,917 B2). It is a different patent and produces no '332 claim-level outcome, but it is operationally relevant because the "control" means-plus-function indefiniteness that ended the entire district-court case came out of the '917 side and was affirmed in Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp., No. 2019-1005 (Fed. Cir. 2019-11-21).

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Strategic summary

Claim-level status of the '332 patent today.

• Held unpatentable by PTAB (8): 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134.
• Sustained by PTAB (5): 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 — survived IPR2013-00336 on Petitioner's failure of proof on the specific instituted grounds, not on a validity holding. Independently, the D. Colo. claim-construction order (2017-09-06) held "substantially" indefinite and invalidated all asserted '332 claims, and the stipulated final judgment of invalidity and non-infringement was entered 2018-09-13 (Dkt. 218). Asserted claims were 125, 126, 130, and 132.
• Untested: the overwhelming majority of the 134 claims — including independent claims 1, 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, 85, and 101 — were never subjected to an instituted AIA trial. Claim 101's institution was denied; claims 1, 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, and 85 were never petitioned. Any claim not asserted in D. Colo. was likewise not adjudicated. This is the real exposure surface, and it is large.
• Expiration: the patent expired 2019-05-12 (anticipated expiration per the front page), so only pre-expiration back damages are theoretically live.

Estoppel landscape. A FWD issued 2014-12-05, so § 315(e)(2) estoppel attached to JDSU/Viavi and its real parties in interest and privies as of that date. Those parties (and arguably the Lumentum entities spun out of JDSU, and the co-defendants in the consolidated D. Colo. actions who were in privity or who stipulated to judgment) cannot assert, in a later civil action or ITC proceeding, any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised — which sweeps in Chande, Buchin, Young, Hurst, Kittrell, and any other § 102/§ 103 art a skilled searcher could have found in 2013 against the claims that were instituted. For a new defendant who was not a party or privy, no estoppel runs against it, so the full prior-art universe — including Chande and Kittrell (§ 102(b) art beatable only with a pre-1994 priority showing) — remains available, plus § 112 indefiniteness arguments that were not part of any instituted ground. Practically, § 112 is the sharper tool here: the district court already found two terms ("control" as a structureless means-plus-function term; "substantially") indefinite.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern — JDSU filed exactly one IPR against the '332 patent (plus the parallel IPR2013-00318 against the '917 sibling). No defensive aggregator is in the chain: although Google Patents displays a Unified Patents PTAB portal link next to IPR2013-00336, that link is a data record, and Unified Patents was not the petitioner — the petitioner was JDSU, a competitor/co-defendant. Patent owner Fiber, LLC did not aggressively pursue PTAB appeals of the '332 FWD; the only appellate activity was Fiber's district-court appeal (No. 2019-1005), which it lost. Net: this is a single-shot, competitor-driven validity challenge, not a coordinated campaign — meaning the '332 patent was never stress-tested at PTAB beyond eight mid-tier claims.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and the assertion targets claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, or 134 — link the FWD and quote the disposition verbatim: "Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, and 134 of the '332 patent are unpatentable." (JDS Uniphase Corp. v. Fiber, LLC, IPR2013-00336, Paper 40 at 2 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 5, 2014)). Also quote: "Patent Owner's Contingent Motion to Amend is denied." FWD PDF: docketalarm.com IPR2013-00336 Final Written Decision. Any infringement theory resting on those eight claims is a sanctions risk.
2. If the assertion targets claims 125, 126, 128, 130, or 132 — do not lead with the IPR (they survived it). Lead with the D. Colo. judgment: the court found "substantially" indefinite, which "invalidates all asserted claims of the '332 Patent" (Dkt. 218 ¶ 8), and entered final judgment of invalidity and non-infringement on 2018-09-13, affirmed at Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp., No. 2019-1005 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 21, 2019); district-court order at CourtListener Docket 4196606, Doc. 32.
3. Watch the untested claims (1, 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, 85, and anything else never asserted). No IPR ever reached them, so no estoppel and no PTAB record protects you there. Given the patent expired 2019-05-12, weigh whether a new IPR is even worth the fee; a § 112 indefiniteness attack on "substantially"/"control" modeled on the D. Colo. and CAFC reasoning is the cheaper route, and it is not estopped.
4. No active proceedings — nothing to calendar. There is no live institution deadline, oral hearing, or statutory one-year FWD deadline to track, because IPR2013-00336 terminated on 2014-12-05. If a new petition is contemplated, note the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint and confirm § 315(a)(1) status, then check current USPTO PTAB E2E (ptacts.uspto.gov) for any 2026 filing not yet in aggregator databases — I found none as of 2026-09-30.
5. Correction to upstream sections: the "PTAB proceedings on file" ODP block should be replaced with the IPR2013-00336 record above. The prior generation's characterization — FWD finding "claims 125, 126, 128, 130, and 132 valid" — is imprecise: the Board's finding was failure of proof ("Petitioner has failed to show that claims 125, 126, 128, 130, and 132 are unpatentable"), which is materially weaker and should be quoted that way.

Uncertainties I will not paper over: (a) I could not confirm whether either side appealed the '332 FWD, and the docket record ends at the FWD; (b) the certificate's treatment of dependent claims 125/126/130/132 after cancellation of parent claim 123 is unverified; (c) the exact FWD page/line for some quoted reasoning (the slide-deck and hearing transcript exhibits are quotable, the FWD text I have is excerpted).

I'll run targeted searches on the assignment records, correspondents, and entity histories before drafting.

Rich material. Let me dig into the entity histories (Astarte → AFN → Fiber), bankruptcy, and any recorded reel/frame data.

Found the TI→AFN assignment document with a named correspondent. Let me pin down reel/frame numbers and the later correspondents.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,430,332 B1

Verification entry point: USPTO Assignment Center (legacy: assignment.uspto.gov) — search by patent number 6430332, or by application 09/310,285.

⚠ Sourcing caveat up front — read before using this memo. The Assignment Center's underlying record images were not retrievable in this session. Everything below is grounded in (a) the Google Patents legal-events table for US 6,430,332 B1, (b) the actual TI→AFN, LLC assignment instrument reproduced in the IPR2013‑00336 record, and (c) sworn testimony and PTAB filings in IPR2013‑00318 / IPR2013‑00336. I do not have reel/frame numbers for any link in this chain, and I will not invent them. Where the record gives a recording date but no reel/frame, I say so. This is itself a task-relevant limitation: the "correspondent of record" test can only be fully run with the record images.

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Inventors

Discrepancy flagged (not auto-corrected): the printed patent gives "David A. Krozier," the assignment abstract gives "DAVID S. KROZIER." I cannot resolve which is correct.

Unusual pattern — present, but not the usual one. This is a joint-development inventorship split, not a departing-inventor pattern: one Astarte inventor plus two TI inventors on a single '332 application, filed the same day as a wholly-TI sister application (09/310,284 → US 6,295,154). The pairing reflects the March 19, 1996 Astarte–TI joint venture on micromirror optical switching (Katz Decl., IPR2013‑00336, ¶¶ 15–17). I found no evidence of the "all inventors departed the assignee within 12 months of filing" fire-sale precursor.

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Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: Fiber, LLC (per the Google Patents front-page field). That label is an artifact of timing — assignment to Fiber, LLC was executed/recorded 2002‑05‑10, roughly three months before the 2002‑08‑06 issue date. The entity that actually prosecuted the application was Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Primary line of business — Fiber, LLC: patent holding only. There is no product line. The founder's own sworn testimony in the '332/'917 IPRs describes the corporate lineage as a chain of IP depositories:

"It was simply a depository to hold the intellectual property that had been owned by Astarte. Astarte goes away, we needed a vehicle for continuing to own this intellectual property, and AFN was created for that purpose."
— Laor/Katz testimony, IPR2013‑00336 record (ptacts.uspto.gov)

"Is Fiber like AFN, also a — an IP holding company? … It also held all the documents as you pointed out. It basically was a repository of that which came out of Astarte to AFN to Fiber."

Did Fiber, LLC ship a product embodying the claims? No. Asked directly whether any product covered by the '332 or '917 patents was ever marketed by Tellium, Astarte, or Corning, the witness answered equivocally — Astarte "produced some — let's call it beta products that may have been offered," possibly "a couple to WorldCom" — but this is a statement about Astarte's earlier piezo-actuated switches, not about a commercially shipped product embodying the mirror claims.

Status of the chain's operating entities:

• Astarte Fiber Networks, Inc. — Colorado corporation; Florida foreign-corp registration (P39690) shows INACTIVE / REVOKED FOR ANNUAL REPORT as of 08/25/1995; officers Aron B. Katz and Herzel Laor at 1035 Pearl St., Boulder. Per IPR testimony, Astarte was acquired by Tellium, which then "got into serious problems, and, in fact, the industry fell apart." Corning took a license to some Astarte IP, but "they never satisfied the conditions, and ultimately the patents came back to us." Astarte was "out of business before that patent was approved."
• AFN, LLC — Wyoming LLC, offices at 1035 Pearl Street, Boulder, Colorado (Astarte's own address), formed ~2000 as the Astarte IP depository. Testimony: "I don't know that it has had any function or operation for 15 years"; possibly never formally dissolved.
• Fiber, LLC — formed 2002. Current status: no operating activity surfaced; itself later acquired by Lumentum.

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Assignment timeline

Four recorded conveyances are reflected in the Google Patents legal-events table, plus one instrument I can quote directly from the IPR record. No reel/frame numbers were retrievable; I am reporting recording dates and execution dates as documented and leaving reel/frame blank rather than guessing.

• 1999‑05‑12 (executed) / recorded 1999‑05‑12 — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventors → corporation)
  • Assignor: KROZIER, DAVID S.; PLOUFFE, LEO A.; LAOR, HERZEL
  • Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
  • Correspondent: not retrieved from the record image
  • Context: IP contribution into the Astarte–TI joint venture vehicle at filing; note this is the same date as the application filing, meaning the '332 was TI-owned from day one.

• 2000‑12‑11 (executed) / recorded 2001‑02‑23 — Reel/Frame not retrieved (recordation stamp "FEB 23 2001" appears on the instrument; the Google Patents event row carries the date 2001‑01‑29, which I flag as an inconsistency rather than reconcile)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of entire right, title and interest
  • Assignor: Texas Instruments Incorporated, a Delaware corporation, 34 Forest Street, Attleboro, MA 02703 — signed by Paul Lesser, Vice President, notarized Bristol County, MA, 11 December 2000
  • Assignee: AFN, LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company, offices at 1035 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO 80302
  • Correspondent: Kent A. Fischman, MARSH FISCHMANN & BREYFOGLE, LLP, 3151 South Vaughn Way, Suite 411, Aurora, CO 80014 — recorded via a Power of Attorney revoking TI's prior POA, filed 02/20/2001, USPTO confirmation no. 8612. Flag: this is a confirmed correspondent appearance on the chain, but I have it on only one link; per the recurrence rule I cannot call it a repeat-correspondent finding.
  • Context: Divestiture / transfer-to-holding-entity — TI exited the JV and pushed the '332 into AFN, the Wyoming LLC organized at Astarte's Boulder address. The instrument expressly reserves TI's right to claim priority to provisional 60/088,239 in applications other than those assigned, confirming this was a carve-out of a subset of the JV portfolio.
  • Notable: the instrument assigns "any and all right, title and interest in and to the APPLICATIONS," and recites that TI warrants no prior assignment, license or encumbrance — but the Corning license story told later in the IPRs suggests encumbrance history worth reconciling with this warranty.

• 2002‑05‑10 (executed and recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: AFN, LLC
  • Assignee: FIBER, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal reorg into the assertion vehicle — AFN→Fiber, contemporaneous with the '332's issue (2002‑08‑06), with the founding witness describing Fiber as "a repository of that which came out of Astarte to AFN to Fiber."

• 2020‑07‑08 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: FIBER, LLC
  • Assignee: LUMENTUM OPERATIONS LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Post-judgment portfolio sale. The '332 had already expired by anticipation on 2019‑05‑12, and its asserted claims had been adjudged invalid/not infringed in D. Colo.; this recording is cleanup/portfolio consolidation, not an assertion-enabling transfer.

Note on what is not in the chain. I found no recorded Astarte Fiber Networks, Inc. → AFN, LLC assignment for this patent. That is consistent with the '332 having left Astarte via the inventors' 1999 assignment to TI, then TI → AFN. The commonly told narrative "Astarte → AFN → Fiber" is accurate for the portfolio, but for this patent the operative chain is inventors → TI → AFN, LLC → Fiber, LLC → Lumentum Operations LLC.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6430332
    1996 : Astarte and TI form joint venture
    1998 : Provisional filed 60 088 239
    1999 : Filed and assigned to Texas Instruments
         : Named inventors include two TI engineers
    2000 : AFN LLC created in Boulder as IP depository
         : TI assigns patent to AFN LLC
    2001 : AFN assignment recorded at USPTO
    2002 : AFN assigns patent to Fiber LLC
         : Patent issues with Fiber LLC as assignee
    2012 : Fiber LLC sues NEC and Ciena
    2013 : Fiber LLC sues Ciena and others
         : JDS Uniphase files IPR against 332
    2014 : PTAB final written decision in IPR
    2019 : CAFC affirms invalidity
         : Patent expires on anticipated date
    2020 : Lumentum acquires patent from Fiber LLC

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Concrete, not name-based. The record shows the patent leaving an operating, publicly traded JV partner (TI, Delaware corp, Attleboro MA) on 2000‑12‑11 for AFN, LLC, a Wyoming LLC with no operations, headquartered at the assignee's own predecessor's Boulder address (1035 Pearl Street). That LLC then moved the patent to Fiber, LLC on 2002‑05‑10. Both entities are characterized under oath in the IPR record as IP depositories with no function or operation ("no function or operation for 15 years"; "a repository"). Neither shipped product. The one caveat that keeps this from being a textbook arms-length shell sale: the entities were organized by the same founder group (Astarte/AFN principals, Boulder), so this is a founder-controlled holding structure, not a third-party shell purchase.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT on the assertion-activity axis; UNCLEAR on the published-registry axis.
Fiber, LLC is the named plaintiff in at least five suits asserting the '332 and '917 — Fiber, LLC v. NEC Corp., D. Colo. 1:12‑cv‑01346 (dismissed Sept. 2012); Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp., 1:12‑cv‑01914 (dismissed Nov. 2012); 1:13‑cv‑00840‑PAB‑KLM (stayed, then consolidated); and 1:15‑cv‑01743 / 1:15‑cv‑02135. Targets were the optical-networking incumbents: Ciena, NEC, JDS Uniphase, Nokia/Alcatel‑Lucent, Finisar, and Lumentum-related entities. That is a classic assertion campaign profile. However, I did not confirm Fiber, LLC on the named registries you listed (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) or in a RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff directory. Marked present for conduct, unclear for registry match, and I am not stretching the label.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (single confirmed appearance only).
Kent A. Fischman, Marsh Fischmann & Breyfogle, LLP, Aurora, CO 80014 is the only correspondent I could confirm, on the TI→AFN recording (POA filed 2001‑02‑20, confirmation no. 8612). Marsh Fischmann & Breyfogle is a genuine Boulder-area IP firm with a large mixed operating-company docket, and per your own rule a single appearance is not a finding. I could not retrieve correspondents for the AFN→Fiber or Fiber→Lumentum recordings. Action item: pull the three record images at the Assignment Center to test recurrence — this is the single highest-value missing data point in this file.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (moderate).
Two consecutive transfers through chained LLCs: TI → AFN, LLC (executed 2000‑12‑11 / recorded 2001‑02‑23) and AFN, LLC → Fiber, LLC (2002‑05‑10) — a span of roughly 17 months, inside your <24-month window. Both are single-purpose LLCs; whether they share a correspondent or common principals is partially established (same Boulder street address; founder-controlled) but not established for the correspondent prong.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The last assertion-enabling transfer (AFN → Fiber) is dated 2002‑05‑10; the first suit naming this patent is 2012 (NEC). That is a ~10-year gap — the opposite of the venue/standing-driven 6-month pattern. The only recording near the litigation window is the 2020‑07‑08 Lumentum transfer, which post-dates both the 2019 CAFC affirmance and the 2019‑05‑12 expiration.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT on the record in hand.
Astarte's IP left via a merger into Tellium ("when the company went away, because it was merged into Tellium"), not a reported Chapter 7/11 sale, and Corning's license reverted rather than being bought out of an estate. I found no bankruptcy docket, 363 sale, or SEC-filed asset sale covering the '332. Absence of evidence, stated as such.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR / present in modified form.
The strict pattern (a live operating company funding an NPE to attack competitors) is not cleanly met: Astarte was dead before the '332 issued. What is present is a founder-controlled assertion vehicle suing the industry Astarte used to compete in — Fiber, LLC against Ciena, JDS Uniphase, NEC, Nokia, Finisar. I mark this unclear rather than claiming a privateering finding, because the operating-company sponsor is gone and the assertion is the founders' own monetization.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Lumentum Operations LLC (recorded 2020‑07‑08), a commercial optical-networking manufacturer — the inverse of RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN. Note the inversion worth its own line: Lumentum is the successor-in-interest line to JDS Uniphase, the very petitioner that attacked the '332 in IPR2013‑00336 and the entity group named in the D. Colo. litigation. A defendant-side acquirer took the family after it was invalidated and expired.

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Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two independent strong signals carry it. (a) Shell-entity transfer: the patent moved out of operating company Texas Instruments on 2000‑12‑11 into AFN, LLC, a Wyoming LLC with no operations, then to Fiber, LLC on 2002‑05‑10 — both entities characterized under oath in the IPR record as IP depositories that never made or sold product. (b) Assertion-vehicle conduct: Fiber, LLC then ran a multi-defendant campaign asserting the '332 and '917 against Ciena, NEC, JDS Uniphase, Nokia/Alcatel‑Lucent, and Finisar across D. Colo. 1:12‑cv‑01346, 1:12‑cv‑01914, 1:13‑cv‑00840, 1:15‑cv‑01743 and 1:15‑cv‑02135, with cascading LLC transfers inside 17 months reinforcing the structure. This is not an operating-company assertion — the current assignee Lumentum ships products, but Fiber, LLC, the asserting entity, did not, and the patent expired 2019‑05‑12 with its asserted claims (125, 126, 130, 132, depending from claim 123) adjudged invalid and not infringed.

Two loose ends to close at the source, both requiring record images rather than more secondary searching: (i) reel/frame numbers for all four conveyances — not retrievable here, so they are omitted rather than estimated; (ii) correspondents of record for AFN→Fiber and Fiber→Lumentum, which are needed to convert signal #3 from unclear to a finding either way. Verify at the USPTO Assignment Center by patent number 6430332.

I'll run targeted searches to find the USPTO record and the patent citations for 6430332.

Let me pull the Justia and FreePatentsOnline records, which typically list the examiner's cited references.

Let me retrieve the front page (References Cited) of the patent and the Justia citation table.

Prior-art analysis for US 6,430,332 B1 — "Optical switching apparatus"

Analyst note on method and confidence. I attempted to pull the "References Cited" table directly from USPTO PatentCenter and the Google Patents front page. The Google Patents text you supplied stops before the citation tables, and I could not retrieve a PatentCenter/Justia "Referenced Cited" table for 6430332 itself within the search budget. What I did recover is a reproduction of the front page of the '332 patent itself, contained in a JDSU PTAB exhibit from IPR2013‑00336 (the "US 6,430,332" oral-hearing slide deck), which carries the examiner's cited U.S. patents, the foreign document, the two non‑patent items, and the "* cited by examiner" marker, followed by "Primary Examiner—Hernang Sanghavi." I matched that page to 6430332 by its verbatim abstract and its "09/310,285" / "Laor, Herzel" identification. I treat it as the patent's actual citation list but flag the provenance and the two transcription oddities noted below rather than silently correcting them.

A second, independent corroboration: the EP counterpart search report for the same family (EP 0 962 796 A3, priority-linked to 6430332) lists roughly overlapping art, and the '917 continuation (US 7,095,917) carries a partially different front-page list — evidence the two family members were examined against different references.

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A. References cited on the face of 6430332 (examiner-cited, §102/§103 candidates)

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B. References cited by the applicant in the specification (background art)

These are not front-page citations but are expressly named in the '332 specification as the prior art the invention improves upon:

• US 4,512,036 — cited as an example of fiber-positioning optical switches with alignment-signal emitter means. Relevant background to the "radiation emitters / feedback" limitations of every independent claim.
• US 5,177,348 — cited in the specification; also the reference the D. Colo. court held supplies the corresponding structure for the "data gathering and transmission element" term. It concerns moving fiber ends with emitted alignment signals and a detector/control feedback loop — the functional ancestor of the '332 feedback limitation. It is incorporated by reference in the specification, and the Federal Circuit (No. 2019‑1005) held such incorporated material cannot be used to supply §112 ¶6 structure for "control."

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C. Prior art actually deployed against 6430332 in IPR2013‑00336 (§103 context)

The IPR was framed as obviousness, not anticipation, and its primary reference is the patent's own cited art:

• Young (US 5,903,687) as the primary reference (appears as Ex. JDSU‑1007 in the petition charts supplied to the Board), applied against claims 123 and its dependents — with element-by-element mapping to Young's input/output collimating lenses, movable mirrors, output ports, and non-overlapping first/second pathway sets (see the petition text: claims 129, 131, 132, 133, 134 charts).
• Hurst (a micromirror + GRIN-lens package reference, cited for micro-mirror 314 / GRIN lens 329 mounted in housing substrate 350) as a secondary reference for the lens-placement and co-housing claims 131, 133.
• Kittrell as an additional secondary reference ("Young in view of Kittrell renders claims of the '332 Patent obvious").
• Claim 101 was denied institution; claims 112 and 123–134 were instituted; the Final Written Decision (Dec. 5, 2014) found claims 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 valid. I could not verify the full bibliographic identity of the "Hurst" and "Kittrell" exhibits (exhibit-number assignment in the retrieved snippets is internally inconsistent — one passage reads "JDSU‑1004) in view of Hurst (Ex. JDSU‑1007)" while another attributes JDSU‑1007 to Young). I am flagging this rather than guessing the patent numbers.

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D. Which claims each reference can actually be said to anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102

Three structural facts govern this mapping, and I state them because they materially change the answer a naive table would give:

1. Every independent claim of the '332 (1, 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, 85, 101, 112, 123) recites an optical feedback element — "radiation emitters" (claims 1, 9, 24, 101), "servo control element" (39, 54), or "data gathering and transmitting element" (69, 85), plus the same in claim 123's family. A §102 reference that does not disclose that element cannot anticipate any independent claim, and because anticipation of a dependent claim requires the reference to disclose everything in the parent claim as well, it cannot anticipate the dependents either.
2. The examiner-cited art was before the examiner and the patent nonetheless issued with 134 claims, so the prosecution history presumptively reflects either §102 rejections overcome by amendment/argument or §103 rejections — not a clean §102 hit on the issued claims.
3. Anticipation is single-reference. The strong IPR record here is §103 (Young in view of Hurst/Kittrell).

With that framing, my §102 assessment is:

Bottom line for §102: On the material retrieved, no single reference cited on the face of 6430332 anticipates any of its independent claims, because every independent claim carries the emitter/servo/data-gathering feedback limitation and none of the cited references is shown to disclose it. The citation set is best characterized as (i) one squarely pre-filing NPL reference on the two-axis magnetically driven silicon micromirror and its sealed package (Kawakubo et al. 1995) that anticipates the mirror-structure dependent claims, and (ii) a body of optical-switch art — most significantly Young US 5,903,687 — that supplied the free-space lens/mirror/port architecture and was actually litigated as §103 art in IPR2013‑00336.

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E. Corrections/updates to the previously generated sections

1. Truncation gap partially closed. The earlier section could not quote claims beyond 101. From the Justia full-text record I recovered claim 112 verbatim (it is an independent claim: a single-stage, "complete set of pathways" system with a first three-dimensional region traversed by at least most of the second pathways, and radiation/servo-style feedback), confirming the PTAB treatment of 112 as independent. I also recovered the opening line of claim 123 ("An optical beam switching system for transmitting an optical beam from any one of a complete set of sources of said switching system to any one of a complete set of optical receptors of said switching system comprising…"), but not its full body. The earlier caveat on claims 112/123 therefore stands in part.
2. No contradiction found between the earlier litigation/validity findings and the prior-art evidence here; the IPR's use of the patent's own cited reference (Young) as primary §103 art is consistent with, and explains, the Board's finding that certain claims survived.
3. Two literal-identifier discrepancies remain unresolved and are reported as-is: (a) US 5,872,880 attributed to "Magel" in the IPR exhibit but to "Maynard" in US 7,095,917's front page and the citing list of US 6,526,194; (b) the front-page examiner is given as "Hernang Sanghavi" in the exhibit, which I did not independently confirm against PatentCenter.

Sources: Google Patents US6430332B1 (full text as supplied, fetched 2026‑09‑30); PTAB exhibit reproducing the '332 front page and the Kawakubo paper: IPR2013‑00336 petition documents (JDSU oral-hearing slides; file-wrapper exhibit for application 09/310,285); Justia US 6,430,332; Justia US 6,526,194 (Laor, containing an independent "Referenced Cited" table); EP 0 962 796 A3 search report (family counterpart); US 7,095,917 B2; HDP AIA blog, June 7, 2013 (IPR2013‑00336 filing).

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record. Let me first verify what references the page itself lists (cited patents, prior-art keywords) and then check the key candidate references.

Useful. Now let me pull the actual prior-art record used against this claim set — the IPR2013‑00336 grounds and the references cited on the face of the patent.

Now let me pin down the specific IPR grounds, the analogous-art holding, and the reference dates.

Obviousness analysis — US 6,430,332 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. What I am working from, and what I could not verify

The prior-art universe used here is the one supplied by the patent page itself, plus the family/PTAB record:

Three explicit gaps: (1) I could not verify the bibliographic identity (author/publication/date) of Chande (Ex. 1006) or Buchin (Ex. 1005) in this session — I therefore describe their role in the PTAB record but do not characterize their disclosures. (2) I could not verify the filing dates of Young '687, Hurst, or Kittrell, which matters for their pre-AIA § 102 status (see § V). (3) The claims text in hand truncates at claim 102; claims 112 and 123 are quoted in the PTAB record and are reproduced below from that source.

One correction to the prior section of this analysis: the Final Written Decision does not hold claims 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 "valid." Its operative language is "Petitioner has failed to show that claims 125, 126, 128, 130, and 132 are unpatentable." The "valid" framing comes from Fiber's own complaint. A failure of proof at the preponderance standard is not an affirmative validity adjudication, and it does not shield those claims from a different § 103 combination.

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1. Threshold issues that shape the analysis

1.1 Pre-AIA § 103 governs. Application 09/310,285 was filed May 12, 1999; provisional 60/088,239 June 5, 1998. AIA § 3(n)(1) does not reach it. Pre-AIA § 103(c) is therefore live: 102(e)/(f)/(g) art that was commonly owned may be disqualified from a § 103 rejection. This matters here because US 6,097,858, 6,097,860 and 6,101,299 (all Laor), and 6,097,859 (Solgaard), are named on the '332's own face but appear to be Astarte/Fiber-era filings — several of them same-inventor art. If commonly owned as of the invention date, they are unusable in a § 103 ground. (Inference, not a verified ownership record — flag.)

1.2 Many face-cited references post-date the provisional. US 5,903,687 (Young) issued May 11, 1999; US 5,960,132 (Lin) Sep. 28, 1999; US 6,002,818 Dec. 14, 1999; US 6,094,293 Jul. 25, 2000; US 6,097,858 and 6,097,859 Aug. 1, 2000; US 6,101,299 Aug. 8, 2000. None can be § 102(a)/(b) art as of the June 5, 1998 date. Their prior-art status rests on pre-AIA § 102(e) (their US filing dates) — which is exactly why Patent Owner argued it could swear behind Young and Hurst using the Katz declaration (conception June 18, 1996 + diligence). The Board nonetheless instituted on Young-based grounds. This date fight is the single most consequential issue in the whole § 103 case, and it is unresolved on the record I have.

1.3 The "control" indefiniteness overlay. The D. Colo. court (Sept. 6, 2017, 2017 WL 3896443), affirmed by the CAFC in Fiber, LLC v. Ciena Corp., No. 2019‑1005 (Nov. 21, 2019), held "control" is a means-plus-function term with no corresponding structure → indefinite. Practically, this means: (i) the § 103 analysis below must give "control" its § 112 ¶ 6 scope (function: moving mirrors; structure: whatever the specification discloses, which the courts said is nothing but a generic box); (ii) for the asserted claims, a § 112 win is cleaner than a § 103 win; and (iii) the surviving-claims question is largely academic because the patent expired May 12, 2019.

1.4 PHOSITA (reasoned definition). A worker with a B.S. (or M.S.) in EE/ME/applied physics and roughly 2–5 years' experience in fiber-optic switching, free-space optics, or MEMS, capable of reading both the fiber-switch literature (Laor, Laughlin, Young) and the micromachining literature (Neukermans, Kawakubo, Lau, Lin). This is my construction; the Board's institution decision likely states a definition I did not retrieve.

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2. The core § 103 case: element-by-element

Ground 1 — Young ('687) in view of Hurst (+ optionally Kittrell) — the adjudicated, strongest ground

What the PTAB record shows these references teach (from the petition summary in the '336 file):

• Young (Ex. 1004, US 5,903,687) — "an optical switching system with a plurality of optical input ports" in which "a set of controlled actuators 125 selectively displaces the mirrors 120 of the M×1 front end and the mirrors 11 of the 1×N rear end to provide the input/output beam port connectivity." That is a two-stage, free-space, movable-mirror matrix switch — precisely the claim‑1/claim‑9/claim‑112 architecture.
• Hurst (Ex. 1007) — a "micro-machined" optical switch with steerable micro-mirror 314, micro-motor 321, and GRIN lens 329; a beam splitter 232 routes the reflected beam to a differential detector, whose output is processed by differential amplifier 237 as signal 294; and expressly: "coarse and/or fine alignment signals representative of misalignment … may be applied to move the micro-motor 321 and the micro-mirror 314 … to maintain fine alignment," with "fine alignment signals … obtained by measuring an amplitude of the reflected laser beam … applied as a closed loop feedback signal."

Mapping:

Why a PHOSITA would combine (KSR / Bigio): same field of endeavor (both optical switching; Young couples laser light to a selected one of a plurality of receptors); both solve the identical problem the '332 background frames as the invention's purpose — minimizing coupling loss from angular misalignment. The '332 specification concedes alignment-signal feedback was known ("for example as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,512,036 and 5,177,348"). Adding Hurst's closed-loop fine alignment to Young's mirror-based matrix is the "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" (KSR), and no bodily incorporation is required (In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425).

Outcome: the Board instituted Ground 2 against claims 112, 123–126, 129, 131–134. Final result across all three grounds: claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134 unpatentable; 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 not shown unpatentable.

Ground 2 — Chande in view of Buchin — adjudicated

Instituted against claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129–134. The significant legal finding for § 103 purposes is the analogous-art ruling at page 34 of the FWD: the Board rejected Patent Owner's argument that Chande and Buchin are non-analogous, and then proceeded to the separate motivation inquiry — "[w]e still address, however, whether one of ordinary skill in the art would have had reason to combine the elements disclosed" (PTAB Litigation Blog). Under In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1325, art is analogous if it is from the same endeavor or "reasonably pertinent to the particular problem with which the inventor is involved." The '332's problem (fast, low-loss, N×N optical interconnection) is stated in its own background, so any reference addressing beam-steering alignment for optical coupling is analogous — which is how the Board disposed of Fiber's central defense.

Caveat: I cannot state what Chande or Buchin disclose. Treat this ground as established by the Board's holding, not by my independent mapping.

Ground 3 — Young in view of Kittrell — adjudicated

Instituted against claims 112, 123, 124, 127–129, 131–134. Same structure as Ground 1 with a different feedback/alignment secondary reference.

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3. The structural § 103 case for claims 1, 9, 24 and their dependents

Grounds 1–3 were run against the "complete set of pathways / three-dimensional switch interface region" claims (112, 123–134). The earlier, structurally-focused independent claims (1, 9, 24) need a different combination, and the page's own prior-art record supplies it cleanly.

Ground 4 — Laor '348 + Neukermans '790 (+ Lin '132 / Kawakubo 1995)

Laor '348 (cited by the '332's own background, on its face, and in the family's EPO search report as an "A" reference) teaches, per its text:

• an array of radiation-emitting devices (REDs) — LEDs/IR LEDs/laser diodes — "mounted in known spatial relationship" to each fiber end, with four REDs regularly spaced around each aperture at 90° from one another;
• a beam-shaping/collimating lens for each fiber;
• a detector + radiation guide + microprocessor-based closed-loop ("feedback type") servo control, where the position is adjusted "until radiation received from each RED is substantially equal to that received from each other RED";
• sequential or modulation-frequency-coded pulsing of REDs for channel identification; and
• a folded optical path using reflective mirrors (its Fig. 9 shows "a fiber optic switch which uses one type of folded optical path").

This maps essentially verbatim onto: "radiation emitters disposed adjacent each movable mirror to provide a feedback signal to the control for adjusting the position of the movable mirrors to minimize transmission loss" (claim 1), "radiation emitters … feedback signal regarding the current orientation of the controlled mirror or the current location of the optical beam" (claim 9), and the servo/data-gathering elements of claims 39/54/69/85/112/123 — which is exactly why the D. Colo. court limited "data gathering and transmission element" to the structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,348.

Neukermans '790 — cited by the EPO as "YAX" against this very family — is the gimbaled, torsion-hinged, magnetically/electromagnetically driven micromirror reference (magnets + coils, micromachined silicon). The Ohtuka et al. MEMS '95 paper (also in the family's EPO search report) teaches a torsional resonator with two degrees of freedom — i.e., two-axis deflection. The Kawakubo et al. 1995 paper and Lau 1997 article (both cited on the '332's face) teach a packaged silicon micro-optical deflector driven by electromagnetic force, and MEMS-based optical beam manipulation on a chip respectively.

Motivation: the '332 specification admits the starting point: "MEM micromirrors are presently used to build digital micromirror display (DMD) devices where the mirrors rotate about a single axis by an electrostatic drive. The mirror of the present invention provides two axes of motion and is preferably driven magnetically." The inventors thereby characterize their contribution as substituting a known magnetic two-axis gimbaled micromirror for known single-axis electrostatic devices. Combining:

• Laor '348 (fiber-positioning + LED-array closed-loop alignment) with
• Neukermans '790 (micromachined magnetically-driven torsion mirror) and Ohtuka (two-axis torsional scanner),

substitutes a movable mirror for Laor's movable fiber while keeping Laor's own alignment-emitter/servo architecture intact. That is a textbook KSR predictable substitution: the function performed (steering an optical beam to a target under closed-loop feedback) is identical; the known advantage is speed and the elimination of mechanical fiber-positioning hardware — which is precisely the '332's stated object ("reduce this complexity and duplication and to increase speed of switching, reliability … and reduce cost"). Adding Lin '132 supplies the MEMS free-space cross-connect arrangement.

Ground 5 — Young + Laor '348 + Hurst/Neukermans for the two-stage and "complete-set" claims

For claims 9, 24, 39, 54, 69, 85, 101, 112, 123, the combination of Young's two-array free-space architecture + Laor '348's emitter/servo feedback + Neukermans' two-axis gimbaled mirror supplies every element. Motivation to place a mirror array directly opposite the fiber array "free from any intervening movable mirrors" is inherent in Young's M×1 / 1×N layout and in Laor '348's aperture panels — the claim language ("complete set of pathways," "three dimensional switch interface region") reads on the ordinary geometry of facing arrays, not on any new structure.

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4. Dependent-claim analysis

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5. Motivation-to-combine rationales, consolidated

1. Same field of endeavor (Bigio prong 1). Every reference relied on sits in fiber-optic switching or micromachined optical beam steering. The Board so held for Chande/Buchin at FWD p. 34.
2. Reasonably pertinent to the same problem (Bigio prong 2). The '332 states its problem expressly: alignment complexity, duplication, switching speed, reliability, cost. Any reference reducing alignment loss in an optical switch "would logically have commended itself to an inventor's attention" (In re Icon Health & Fitness).
3. The specification's own admissions do the heaviest lifting. The '332 concedes DMD electrostatic micromirrors, concedes the Laor '348-style LED-array alignment servo ("as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,512,036 and 5,177,348"), and frames its advance as two axes + magnetic drive on a micromachined mirror. Under KSR, that is a combination of known elements with predictable results.
4. Known substitutability. Moving-mirror vs. moving-fiber beam steering; single-axis electrostatic vs. two-axis magnetic gimbaled micromirror; discrete vs. continuous analog mirror control — each was a recognized interchangeable option.
5. Design incentives. Scaling from N² mirrors to N mirrors for N×N connectivity was a live design pressure (the very trade-off criticized as "system redundancies" in the later EP 1 368 690 background discussion of Lin).
6. Explicit secondary-reference teaching. Hurst, at 19:63–20:1, affirmatively teaches applying fine-alignment feedback to a micro-mirror in a fiber switch — the rare case where the motivation is stated in the reference itself rather than imputed.

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6. Where the § 103 case is weak — and the defenses that actually worked

• Claim 101 held not institutable and, at institution, not established. The Board found "JDSU does not establish adequately that Young and/or Buchin disclose or suggest any element that emits radiation." That is a proof failure on the emitter limitation — the same vulnerability would attach to any § 103 ground against claims 1, 9, 24, 101 unless the petitioner squarely maps the radiation emitter. Laor '348 is the reference that fixes this, and it was not the primary reference in the instituted grounds. A well-built ground would pair Young (architecture) + Laor '348 (emitters/servo) + Hurst (closed-loop fine alignment).
• Swear-behind / priority. Fiber's Katz declaration (Ex. 2016) asserted conception by June 18, 1996 with diligence, which would remove Young and Hurst entirely as § 102(e) art. This is a factual record I cannot verify, and it is the most probable explanation for why claims 125, 126, 128, 130, 132 survived.
• Priority back to the provisional. If the feedback element ("an element that provides an 'indication' regarding orientation of a mirror or location of the beam to the control") is not supported in 60/088,239, the operative date moves to May 12, 1999, which sweeps in additional 1998–1999 publications. The Katz declaration quotes the Board as having acknowledged the provisional contained the control element but not that indication element. That is a priority defect that widens the prior-art field rather than narrowing it — and it cuts against Patent Owner.
• Non-analogous art. Fiber ran this argument and lost on the threshold question; under either Bigio prong it is a weak defense for references aimed at optical-coupling alignment.
• Indefiniteness dominates everything. For the claims the CAFC addressed ("control"), the winning theory was § 112 ¶ 6, not § 103. If the goal is to knock out the asserted claims (125, 126, 130, 132), the § 112 route is both confirmed by the Federal Circuit and unaffected by the swear-behind record.

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7. Bottom line

• Adjudicated § 103 invalidity already exists for 8 of the 14 challenged claims — claims 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134 — over Chande + Buchin, Young + Hurst, and Young + Kittrell.
• The independent claims 1, 9, and 24 (and their dependents) are the most obviously-invalid claims in the patent but were never PTAB-tested. They are rendered obvious by Laor '348 + Neukermans '790 (+ Ohtuka MEMS '95 / Lin '132 / Kawakubo 1995), with the specification's own admissions supplying the motivation and the "radiation emitters / servo control" element coming directly from Laor '348 — the reference the courts held is the corresponding structure for that limitation.
• The five surviving claims (125, 126, 128, 130, 132) are the only ones where a § 103 conclusion is genuinely contestable, primarily because of the unresolved swear-behind record, not because of the merits of the art.
• Practical posture: the patent expired May 12, 2019, and the D. Colo. stipulated final judgment of invalidity/non-infringement (claims depending from claim 123) stands undisturbed after the 2019 affirmance. Any § 103 opinion today is therefore retrospective.

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8. Uncertainty flags (carried forward and new)

1. Chande (Ex. 1006) and Buchin (Ex. 1005) — identity and disclosures not independently verified. I rely on the Board's analogous-art and motivation findings, not on my own reading.
2. Filing dates for Young '687, Hurst and Kittrell are unverified, so their pre-AIA § 102 status is asserted, not established.
3. Common ownership (pre-AIA § 103(c)) of the Laor/Solgaard face-cited patents is inferred, not documented; if confirmed, those references are disqualified from a § 103 ground.
4. The Board's PHOSITA definition was not retrieved.
5. Correction to the prior section: the FWD's language on claims 125/126/128/130/132 is "Petitioner has failed to show … unpatentable," not "valid."
6. No 2026 litigation activity for 6430332 was found in this or the prior analysis.

Sources: US 6,430,332 (Google Patents); Justia references-cited list; EP 0 962 796 A3 search report; IPR2013‑00336 Final Written Decision; IPR2013‑00336 institution decision and petition excerpts (USPTO PTAB); US 5,177,348 (Google Patents); PTAB Litigation Blog — analogous art in IPR2013‑00336; CAFC No. 2019‑1005 opinion.