US 6469767

I'll search for this specific patent number and check for any litigation records.

Let me run one more targeted check on litigation/enforcement history for this specific number.

Patent Analysis: US 6,469,767 B2

⚠️ Identification / Non-Correction Note

You asked about "patent number 6469767." I am interpreting this literally as US 6,469,767 B2. Two other identifiers share the same digit string and must not be conflated with it:

• JP 6469767 B2 — an entirely unrelated Japanese patent ("Use of PEDF-derived polypeptide for preventing and/or improving skin aging," registered 2019-01-25, applicant/field in cosmetics/dermatology). Same digits, different jurisdiction, different invention.
• A Córdoba (Argentina) tax-execution proceeding, expediente Nº 6469767 — an unrelated administrative matter.

Neither has any technical or legal relationship to US 6,469,767.

1. Bibliographic Data (from the authoritative patent text)

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"To provide a liquid crystal display wherein means for connecting to transparent electrodes can be prevented from standing out unseemly when the liquid crystal display is turned on without increasing a death area in the periphery of a liquid crystal screen, plural wiring formed on a first transparent substrate are electrically connected to extended parts of transparent electrodes formed on a second transparent substrate via a connection and a part of each wiring passes between the connection and a liquid crystal inclusion body."

3. Independent Claim 1 — Plain-Language Overview

Only one claim is independent. Claim 1 covers a simple-matrix (passive-matrix) liquid crystal display and reads, in substance, as a combination of five elements:

1. Liquid crystal inclusion body — liquid crystal sealed between a first and second transparent substrate, each carrying plural transparent electrodes (the passive-matrix row/column electrodes).
2. At least one driver — mounted on the first transparent substrate.
3. Plural extended parts — the ends of the transparent electrodes that live on the second substrate are extended/led out beyond the liquid crystal inclusion body (necessary because the driver sits on the other substrate).
4. Plural wiring on the first substrate — running from a location opposite each extended part over to the driver.
5. A connection — electrically joining the wiring on substrate 1 to the extended parts on substrate 2 (in the specification, an anisotropic conductive paste/film bond).

The single point of novelty (the characterizing limitation): "a part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body."

Why it matters (the problem solved): In the conventional design (FIGS. 11–13), the opaque anisotropic-conductive connection pad sits right next to the visible liquid crystal area, spoiling the look of a small display (e.g., a mobile-phone screen). Simply moving the connection farther away would work aesthetically but enlarges the "death area" (inactive border) around the screen. The claimed geometry routes the transparent common wiring inside the gap between the bond pad and the liquid-crystal area, so the connection is pushed away from the visible screen without adding wasted border. The wiring is ITO (transparent), so the re-routed portion is essentially invisible.

Because this is the only independent claim, the entire enforceable scope of the patent turns on that "part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body" relationship.

4. Dependent Claims — Additional Limitations

• Claim 2 (from 1): recites structure — each wiring has an intermediate part crossing the extended parts and an end extending away from the liquid-crystal body; the connection (conductive substance) is formed between the end and the extended part.
• Claim 3 (from 2): the intermediate part is narrower at the region facing an extended part than the wiring end is.
• Claim 4 (from 2): the extended part is narrower where it faces the intermediate part than where it faces the wiring end. (Claims 3–4 address preventing stray conduction between crossing traces.)
• Claim 5 (from 1): the pitch of the bonded/connected parts is larger than the pitch of the electrodes on the second substrate.
• Claim 6 (from 1): electrodes on substrate 2 split into two groups — one group extended at one longitudinal end, the other at the other end (so wiring exits both sides).
• Claim 7 (from 1): driver offset in a fixed direction; wiring omitted in a region to one side of the driver, and input terminals occupy that region.
• Claim 8 (from 1): stripe-pattern transparent electrodes, mutually perpendicular across the two substrates; wiring parallel to substrate-1 electrodes at both ends; connection perpendicular to the wiring.
• Claim 9 (from 8): extended parts have the same width and direction as the substrate-2 electrode pattern.
• Claim 10 (from 8): extended-part pitch is continuously/gradually widened relative to the electrode pitch.
• Claim 11 (from 9) / Claim 12 (from 10): connection via a band of anisotropic conductive film oriented perpendicular to the extended parts near their ends.

5. Prior Art Cited on the Face of the Patent

US 4,600,273 (Seiko Epson); JPH03-059623 (Citizen Watch); JPH06-043474 (Mitsubishi Electric); US 5,556,670 (Casio); US 5,706,069 (Philips); US 5,946,057 and US 6,108,057 (NEC — electrostatic discharge damage prevention). These six/seven references frame the connection-between-substrates and passive-matrix-display context.

6. Litigation Check — USPTO and CAFC 2026 Dockets

Findings: I found no litigation, no CAFC appeal, and no PTAB proceeding involving US 6,469,767. Specifically:

• No Federal Circuit docket or opinion for this patent number appeared in the 2026 (or any) search results. The only 2026 CAFC material returned was an unrelated decision (TrackTime, LLC v. Amazon.com Services LLC, No. 2024-1102, Fed. Cir. July 2, 2026) concerning US 8,862,978 — not this patent.
• A patent-database mirror records "诉讼案件数: 0" (number of litigation cases: 0) for US 6469767, consistent with no enforcement history.
• The Rohm-related litigation surfaced (e.g., O2 Micro International v. Rohm, E.D. Tex. 2:05-cv-00211) concerns different Rohm patents (e.g., US 6,804,129; 6,259,615; 6,396,722) and is not about US 6,469,767.

Caveat / uncertainty I want to be explicit about: I do not have direct, credentialed access to PACER, the CAFC's own docket system, or USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB APIs in this session. My litigation check is based on public web search plus third-party patent databases. A definitive negative clearance would require a direct PACER/CAFC docket query. What I can say with reasonable confidence is that no public record of litigation on this patent appeared.

7. Source Notes

• Primary (authoritative): Full patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6469767/en — this is the controlling source for all bibliographic, abstract, and claim content above.
• FreePatentsOnline mirror: https://FreePatentsOnline.com/6469767.html (claim/abstract text corroborates).
• Third-party database (litigation count): http://www.szpa.org/patent/showservice-65649.html.
• Per your operating rule, where the fetched full text and search snippets conflicted, I treated the fetched full patent text as authoritative; nothing in the search results contradicted the core bibliographic record.

Bottom line: US 6,469,767 is a Rohm Co., Ltd. passive-matrix LCD wiring-layout patent (Onishi, filed 2001-04-06, issued 2002-10-22, JP priority 2000-04-17), with a single independent claim covering routing transparent common wiring between the electrode bond connection and the visible liquid-crystal area to hide the opaque bond pads without growing the border. It is long expired (lapsed 2010 for unpaid maintenance fees) and appears to have no litigation or CAFC history.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6469767. Let me search several sources.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

Let me check a few more litigation-specific sources to be thorough.

Litigation Search: US Patent 6,469,767

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB — involving US Patent 6,469,767. Based on the sources I was able to search, this patent appears never to have been asserted in a US infringement suit.

Patent identification (as matched)

What the searches showed

1. Patent-level litigation count = 0. A commercial patent-record aggregator (szpa.org) listing this exact family (JP2001296545A | US20010030729A1 | US6469767) reports "诉讼案件数 0" — i.e., zero litigation cases associated with this family.
2. No case caption matched. Searches for the patent number in litigation contexts returned no complaint, docket, ITC Section 337 investigation, PTAB petition (IPR/PGR/CBM), or CAFC appeal identifying US 6,469,767 as an asserted or challenged patent.
3. Rohm's litigation history that did surface is unrelated. For example, O2 Micro International Ltd. v. Rohm Co., Ltd., Sony Corp., et al., No. 2:05-cv-00211 (E.D. Tex., filed Jun. 3, 2005), is a real Rohm patent case, but the patents asserted there are O2 Micro's backlight/inverter patents (e.g., US 7,394,209 context) — not US 6,469,767. I did not find any case in which Rohm asserted '767, nor any case in which '767 was asserted against Rohm.
4. No post-grant proceedings. Nothing indicated the patent was ever subject to IPR, PGR, CBM, or reexamination. The only recorded legal events are routine: assignment to Rohm (2001), a maintenance-fee payment (2006), a maintenance-fee reminder (2010), and lapse/expiration (2010).

Important disambiguation (do not conflate)

Under your rule to interpret identifiers literally, the numeric string "6469767" appears in several unrelated records, none of which involve US Patent 6,469,767:

• JP 6469767 B2 — a Japanese patent titled "Use of PEDF-derived polypeptide for preventing and/or improving skin aging" (a peptide/pharmaceutical case, appl. JP 2017-131741). Different country, different subject matter.
• Argentine court docket No. 6469767 — Dirección de Rentas de la Provincia de Córdoba c/ Sucesión Indivisa de Pierini Duilio Osvaldo (a tax collection matter).
• Czech contract ID 6469767 (Mendel University Brno) and a Chinese civil judgment cited at paragraph 6469767 by the Supreme People's Court.
• US design patent D612,646 and various '646 patents (e.g., the HQ Specialty Pharma v. Fresenius Kabi '646 patent, Campbell Soup v. Gamon Plus D612,646) — all different patents sharing only a partial number.

Requested table

Limitations / confidence

• I could not query Docket Navigator or run a full PACER/CM-ECF docket search (both are subscription/authenticated systems), and I did not obtain a live result from the Unified Patents litigation portal for this number. My conclusion rests on the aggregated sources above plus targeted searches of litigation-oriented material.
• Because the patent expired in 2010 and was assigned to a Japanese manufacturer that primarily enforced other patents, a small/old case cannot be 100% excluded by open-web search alone. If a definitive negative is needed, the authoritative next step is a Docket Navigator "patent" search, a PACER party/docket search, and the USPTO Patent Trial & Appeal Board and ITC EDIS databases for the exact number 6,469,767.

Conclusion: On the record available to me, no litigation is known for US Patent 6,469,767.

I'll verify the structured ODP data against live sources before reporting.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks for any AIA trial or litigation history.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions against US 6,469,767, and three targeted live searches (PTAB docket text, proceeding-number lookups, and petitioner/patent-owner combinations) surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no termination, and no Federal Circuit appeal — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, and the bottom-line defensive posture is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" but something considerably more useful: the patent is a dead letter. It lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees on 2010-10-22 and was formally recorded as expired under 37 CFR 1.362 on 2010-11-22. All 12 claims stand unadjudicated — not because they were tested and survived, but because nobody ever had a reason to test them.

The absence of PTAB activity here is not the "well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs" signal. It is the opposite signal: this patent was never a meaningful assertion vehicle, and it was abandoned by its own owner before the AIA trial regime even existed (IPR petitions became available 2012-09-16, roughly 23 months after this patent lapsed).

Proceedings

No proceedings to enumerate. Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block, the PTAB proceeding list for US 6,469,767 is empty, and I found nothing in live search to override that. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers (e.g., a speculative "IPR2023-xxxxx") to fill this template. The per-proceeding sections (type, filed, status, panel, grounds, institution, FWD, settlement, appeal, defensive value) are therefore N/A for every field, and I am stating that explicitly rather than leaving blanks that could be misread as missing data.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 12 claims UNTESTED — and unenforceable by operation of law, not by adjudication. No claim of US 6,469,767 has ever been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed in an AIA trial. Claims 1–12 (claim 1 independent; claims 2–12 dependent, with claims 8–10 forming their own dependency chain and claims 11–12 depending from 9 and 10 respectively) remain exactly as granted on 2002-10-22. The reason for that clean sheet is the maintenance-fee lapse recorded in the Legal Events table: "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362," effective 2010-10-22, following an "Information on status: patent discontinuation" entry dated 2010-11-22 and a "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" entry dated 2010-12-14. The last fee payment on record was the 4-year payment on 2006-03-31; the 8-year window was missed. Rohm let the patent go. Because the 20-year term from the 2001-04-06 filing date would have run to 2021-04-06, the patent died roughly a decade before its natural expiration.

Estoppel landscape — the operative provision is not § 315(e)(2), it is § 286. With zero IPRs, § 315(e)(2) estoppel simply does not exist against anyone: no petitioner has raised, or reasonably could have raised, any ground, so no party (and no privy) is statutorily barred from any invalidity theory. The practical consequence cuts the other way, though — a defendant does not need IPR estoppel or prior art at all. An expired patent cannot be infringed by conduct occurring after expiration, and damages are limited by 35 U.S.C. § 286 to six years before suit, which here would reach back only into a period ending more than 15 years ago. Any demand letter asserting US 6,469,767 today is asserting an expired patent, and the correct response is not an IPR petition (the Board would be an expensive detour around a much simpler dispositive answer) but a short letter citing the Patent Center fee-lapse record and the § 1.362 expiration. Note the corollary: because the patent is expired, the claims cannot be amended and any IPR or ex parte reexamination would be a pure invalidity exercise with no injunctive upside — the economics that normally motivate a defensive aggregator are entirely absent here.

Pattern signals: none, and the reasons are structural. No petitioner has filed even one IPR, let alone a serial campaign. Rohm never pursued a PTAB appeal — it could not have, since no trial was ever instituted and the patent had already lapsed before the AIA trial regime took effect. There is no Unified Patents (or other aggregator) link in the chain, and third-party litigation data for the family reports zero lawsuits on this patent, consistent with an abandoned asset. Rohm did not pursue appeals aggressively in the U.S., but it did keep prosecuting related subject matter: the citing family shows Rohm's own later JP 4156861 B2, "Organic EL display device and portable terminal" (priority 2002-05-07), which indicates the company's display R&D continued even as this particular asset was allowed to lapse. One caution for anyone running automated docket screens: Google Patents and general web search return frequent hits on JP 6469767 B2, an entirely unrelated Japanese patent (PEDF-derived polypeptides for skin aging, registered 2019-01-25) whose number happens to collide. That is a coincidental number match, not a family member, and should not be reported as a foreign counterpart.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and have received an assertion of US 6,469,767: do not file an IPR. Pull the fee-lapse record from USPTO Patent Center and the Legal Events table on the Google Patents record for US6469767B2, which shows "2021-04-06 Anticipated expiration" but — critically — the earlier operative entries of 2010-10-22 ("Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees"), 2010-11-22 ("patent discontinuation"), and 2010-12-14 ("PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362"). Confirm current status directly through PTAB E2E and Patent Center rather than relying on any secondary aggregator, since "Expired - Fee Related" is a status flag subject to correction if a petition to accept late payment were ever (very unlikely, 16 years later) granted. There is no FWD to link to or quote, because no FWD exists — and that is itself the point.
2. There are no trial-stage milestones to track. No institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, no statutory 1-year FWD clock is running, because no proceeding was instituted. The only live dates in this patent's history are in the past (2001-04-06 filing; 2002-10-22 grant; 2010-10-22 lapse).
3. State the absence plainly, and do not over-read it. I want to be explicit about what I could and could not verify: the ODP structured block is authoritative and empty, and my independent searches (PTAB docket text, proceeding-number lookups, petitioner/owner combinations, and third-party litigation counts) found nothing. If you have a specific docket number or petitioner name in hand that I did not have, give it to me and I will chase it — but absent that, the honest and correct answer is that US 6,469,767 has no AIA trial history at all and expired for fee non-payment in 2010. Do not characterize this as a patent that "survived" anything.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me check for any post-issuance transfers, litigation, and the recorded correspondent.

US 6469767 — Ownership & Assignment Analysis

Patent: US 6,469,767 B2 — "Liquid crystal display"
Applicant/issued owner: ROHM CO., LTD. (Kyoto, JP)
Inventor: Hiroaki Onishi (sole)
Appl. 09/827,057 filed 2001-04-06; priority JP 2000-114951 (2000-04-17); issued 2002-10-22
Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2010-10-22 for non-payment of maintenance fees)

Inventors

No departure pattern is detectable: with a single inventor and only one recorded conveyance, there is no evidence of inventor attrition preceding a portfolio sale. The Google Patents record lists no co-inventors.

Original assignee

ROHM CO., LTD. — Kyoto, Japan. Publicly traded (Tokyo Stock Exchange, ticker 6963). Primary line of business: semiconductors and electronic components — ICs, discrete devices, and, relevant here, LCD driver ICs and LCD modules (the patent is a panel-level layout for simple-matrix/passive-matrix LCDs used in mobile telephones). ROHM was an operating manufacturer in the exact product space claimed, not a holding vehicle.

Current status: Operating, independent, and ongoing. ROHM never divested this patent. The current assignee of record remains ROHM CO., LTD. There is no Chapter 7/11 event, acquisition, or spin-out associated with this patent in the record I retrieved. Notably, ROHM did assert patents offensively in this era (e.g., the 2000–2001 Rohm v. Nichia LED disputes / ITC action), but not this patent.

Caveat: I could not independently confirm that a specific commercial ROHM model embodied claims 1–12. What is documented is that ROHM operated in the claimed product category and held the patent until it lapsed.

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is recorded against US 6,469,767. The chain is a single inventor-to-employer conveyance; there are no post-issuance transfers.

• 2001-03-29 (executed) / recorded 2001-04-06 — Reel 011693/0772
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST"
  • Assignor: Hiroaki Onishi (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Rohm Co., Ltd., Japan
  • Correspondent: Not stated in the records I was able to retrieve. The Google Patents legal-events extract reports the reel/frame, the assignor, and the assignee, but omits the correspondent field. I am flagging this explicitly rather than guessing a firm name. To capture the correspondent of record, the reel/frame must be pulled directly from USPTO Assignment Center (search reel 011693 frame 0772).
  • Context: Routine pre-filing inventor-to-employer assignment. No fire-sale, securitization, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter character.

Downstream (non-assignment) legal events: 2006-03-31 4-year fee paid; 2010-05-31 maintenance-fee reminder; 2010-10-22 lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees; 2010-11-22 patent discontinuation. Anticipated expiration 2021-04-06 (mooted by the 2010 lapse). Third-party databases record 0 litigation cases for this patent.

Because only the original assignment exists, the remaining sections are short by design — that absence is the finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6469767
    2000 : Priority filing in Japan
    2001 : Inventor assigns to Rohm Co Ltd
         : US application 09827057 filed
    2002 : US patent 6469767 issues
    2010 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — the assignment record consists solely of the original inventor-to-employer conveyance.

Justification: The only recorded assignment is reel 011693/0772 (executed 2001-03-29, recorded 2001-04-06), moving the patent from inventor Hiroaki Onishi to Rohm Co., Ltd., an operating semiconductor/LCD manufacturer. There are no post-issuance assignments, no NPE in the chain, and zero recorded litigation; the patent lapsed in October 2010 for unpaid maintenance fees rather than being asserted or sold. Per the rubric, a chain containing only the original assignment supports no NPE inference in either direction — it is a clean operating-company ownership record, not an assertion vehicle.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 6469767, or reel 011693 frame 0772 to recover the correspondent of record) · PEDS/ODP: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ · Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6469767B2](/patent/US6469767B2)/en

Open item to close the analysis: The correspondent on reel 011693/0772 was not retrievable from the indexed sources I searched. Because this is a single-link chain for an operating company (not an anonymous LLC), the correspondent is unlikely to be a repeat-player NPE filer — but I did not confirm it, and I am not asserting a firm name without the record.

I'll verify the patent in USPTO systems and then research each cited prior-art reference. Let me run several targeted searches.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,469,767 B2 ("Liquid crystal display")

0. USPTO / Database Verification of "6469767"

A query for the literal string 6469767 returns, in USPTO-family databases, US 6,469,767 B2 — Liquid crystal display; Appl. No. 09/827,057; filed 2001-04-06; JP priority 2000-04-17 (JP 2000-114951); granted 2002-10-22; inventor Hiroaki Onishi; assignee Rohm Co., Ltd.; IPC G02F 1/1345. This matches the authoritative full text already analyzed.

Same-digit identifiers that are NOT this patent (flagged per the strict no-auto-correction rule, and consistent with the prior section): JP 6469767 B2 (unrelated Japanese dermatology/cosmetics patent) and the Córdoba expediente Nº 6469767. Neither is the subject of this analysis. No other US patent shares the number 6,469,767.

⚠️ Tooling caveat up front: my searches were cut off after the first batch by a step limit. I fully retrieved substance for US 4,600,273 and US 5,556,670, and confirmed citation/date/assignee data for all seven references from the patent's own face and Google Patents. For JPH03-059623, JPH06-043474, US 5,706,069, US 5,946,057, and US 6,108,057 I could not retrieve the reference bodies in this session, so their "brief description" is drawn from title/assignee/classification and the applicant's own characterization where available. I say so explicitly rather than fabricating claim-mapping.

1. The References Cited on the Face of US 6,469,767

The patent lists seven prior-art documents (Google's "Citations (6)" panel plus the additional NEC grant in the "Patent Citations (7)" table). All predate the 2000-04-17 priority date and therefore qualify as prior art under §102(a)/(b).

2. Per-Reference Analysis

Reference 1 — US 4,600,273 A (Seiko Epson, "Display panel having conductive contact media")

• Full citation: US 4,600,273 A, "Display panel having conductive contact media," Seiko Epson Corporation; filed/priority 1982-04-20; issued 1986-07-15.
• Description (retrieved): A display panel built from two parallel glass plates carrying opposed electrodes with an optical (liquid-crystal) medium between them. The innovation is the conductive contact medium joining terminals on the two substrates — conductive particles (e.g., nickel/gold-plated glass fiber) dispersed in an epoxy binder, forming a contact portion whose thickness is controlled to keep the LC layer uniform (~4.6–4.9 µm) so display speed and color are even. Sources: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4600273](/patent/4600273) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6469767/en.
• §102 relevance: Discloses the anisotropic/conductive-particle interconnect between opposed substrates — i.e., the genus of the "connection" element of claim 1 and the "conductive substance" of claim 2. On its own it does not disclose the driver on the first substrate, the extended parts, the wiring routing, or the characterizing "part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body." No claim is anticipated. It is a §103-evidence reference only (connection-technology background).

Reference 2 — JPH03-059623 A (Citizen Watch, "Manufacture of liquid crystal display panel")

• Full citation: JP H03-059623 A, "Manufacture of liquid crystal display panel," Citizen Watch Co., Ltd.; filed 1989-07-28; published 1991-03-14.
• Description: Per its title/assignee, a fabrication method for an LCD panel. I could not retrieve the body in this session. Citizen's contemporaneous filings in this space (e.g., EP 0 793 135 / EP 1 039 333) concern passive-panel electrode routing and terminal connection; the reference is plausibly directed to forming/connecting panel terminals.
• §102 relevance: As a process disclosure it cannot anticipate the apparatus claim 1 as a whole. It is at most §103 background for the "connection" and for the ACF/conductive-joining limitations of claims 11–12. No anticipation identified (and I flag insufficient data).

Reference 3 — JPH06-043474 A (Mitsubishi Electric, "Liquid crystal display device")

• Full citation: JP H06-043474 A, "Liquid crystal display device," Mitsubishi Electric Corp.; filed 1992-07-24; published 1994-02-18.
• Description: Not retrieved (body). Mitsubishi's cited LCD work of this era relates to substrate/electrode connection and drive-line layout. Title is generic; classification G02F.
• §102 relevance: Cannot be assessed reliably. Given the generic title and the fact that the examiner nonetheless allowed claim 1, it is most plausibly a structural-background reference for element (a) (substrates/electrodes) or the connection. No anticipation identified; flagged as unverified.

Reference 4 — US 5,556,670 A (Casio, "Liquid crystal display panel") — most relevant

• Full citation: US 5,556,670 A, "Liquid crystal display panel," Casio Computer Co., Ltd.; inventors Mihara, Kumagai, Kobayashi; filed 1992-10-15; issued 1996-09-17. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5556670
• Description (retrieved): Lower and upper flexible substrates carry opposed ITO display electrodes (3, 4) with LC sealed by sealing member 7. One end of the lower substrate 1 projects laterally beyond the upper substrate, and on that projecting portion — outside the liquid-crystal-filled space — are formed external-connection electrodes and an upper-substrate-connecting electrode 10. On the underside of the upper substrate's projecting end is a connecting electrode 11 directly connected to upper electrode 4. Electrodes 10 and 11 are opposed and joined by a cylindrical cross member 12 of silver paste (printed). See also https://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5556670.html.
• §102 relevance — element-by-element to claim 1:
  • LC body between two electrode-bearing substrates → element (a) ✔
  • electrode on the second (upper) substrate whose end is extended outside the LC body to a connecting electrode 11 → element (c) ✔
  • conductor on the first (lower) substrate (electrode 10) at a location opposite the extended part → element (d) (wiring) ✔
  • connection (cross member 12) electrically joining them → element (e) ✔
  • a driver mounted on the first substrate → ✘ not disclosed
  • "a part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body" → ✘ not disclosed (Casio's confluence is at the projecting edge, not routed inside the pad-to-display gap)
• Assessment: This is the closest reference and a strong §103 combination base for claims 1, 2, 9 and 11 (inter-substrate connection geometry), but it does not anticipate claim 1, because the sole characterizing limitation (element f) and the driver element are missing. It likewise does not anticipate dependent claims 3–8, 10, 12.

Reference 5 — US 5,706,069 A (Philips, "…sealing edge circumferentially provided with protrusions…")

• Full citation: US 5,706,069 A, U.S. Philips Corp.; filed 1994-01-01; issued 1998-01-06.
• Description: Per title, an LCD whose sealing edge (the seal bounding the liquid-crystal region) is formed with circumferential protrusions, plus a method of manufacturing multiple panels from a mother plate. Concerns seal/panel-periphery geometry.
• §102 relevance: Relevant only to element (a) (the liquid-crystal inclusion body / sealing member). It is silent on driver placement, extended parts, wiring routing, and the (f) limitation. No claim anticipated. §103 background at most.

Reference 6 — US 5,946,057 A (NEC, "Liquid crystal display having electrostatic discharge damage prevention")

• Full citation: US 5,946,057 A, NEC Corp.; filed 1997-05-28; issued 1999-08-31.
• Description: Per title, ESD-protection features (protective shorting/grounding structures) on an LCD substrate. Not retrieved in body.
• §102 relevance: Relates at most to wiring layout on the first substrate (element d) and to free-lying routing that must be protected from static discharge. It discloses no inter-substrate connection geometry, no driver-mounted-on-first-substrate with extended parts, and no (f) limitation. No claim anticipated. §103 background only.

Reference 7 — US 6,108,057 A (NEC, "Liquid crystal display having electrostatic discharge damage prevention")

• Full citation: US 6,108,057 A, NEC Corp.; filed 1997-05-28; issued 2000-08-22. Same title/specimen as US 5,946,057 (NEC family; the later grant).
• Description / §102 relevance: Identical subject matter to Reference 6 (ESD-damage prevention). Same conclusion: background to substrate wiring only; no claim anticipated.

Note on the duplicate: the Google record shows US 5,946,057 under "Citations (6)" but lists both US 5,946,057 and US 6,108,057 in the "Patent Citations (7)" table (same NEC priority date and title). I treat them as one family cited twice, which is why the citation panels read 6 vs. 7.

3. Overall §102 vs. §103 Assessment

None of the seven cited references anticipates any of claims 1–12 under 35 U.S.C. §102. Concretely:

• Claim 1 requires the conjunction of (a) LC body, (b) driver on the first substrate, (c) extended parts on the second substrate, (d) wiring from the extended-part location to the driver, (e) a connection, and (f) "a part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body." No single reference teaches (f), and most teach neither (b) nor (f). US 5,556,670 supplies (a)/(c)/(d)/(e) only. → No anticipation.
• Claim 2 (intermediate part + end; conductive substance between end and extended part): only US 5,556,670 and US 4,600,273 touch the conductive-substance junction; the claimed geometry is absent. → No anticipation.
• Claims 3–4 (localized narrower widths to suppress stray conduction at crossings): no cited reference addresses trace-narrowing at crossing points. No anticipation.
• Claim 5 (bond pitch > electrode pitch): not addressed by any cited reference. No anticipation.
• Claim 6 (electrode groups extending at opposite ends): not addressed by the cited set. No anticipation.
• Claim 7 (terminals in a region beside the driver): not addressed. No anticipation.
• Claims 8–10 (stripe patterns perpendicular across substrates; extended parts matching electrode width/direction; gradually widened pitch): partially generic-structure territory (US 5,556,670 shows offset substrate edges and ITO electrodes) but none of the specifics. No anticipation.
• Claims 11–12 (ACF band perpendicular to the extended parts): US 4,600,273 (conductive contact media) and US 5,556,670 (silver-paste cross members) are the nearest analogues, but neither discloses the claimed anisotropic-conductive-film band orientation. No anticipation.

The proper role of this art is §103 (obviousness) evidence — i.e., that inter-substrate electrode connection via conductive paste/particles (Epson, Casio) and substrate peripheral geometry (Philips, NEC) were known in passive-matrix LCDs. That the examiner cited seven references yet allowed claim 1 with the single characterizing limitation confirms the references were background/obviousness material, not anticipatory.

4. Caveats and Confidence

• High confidence: the identity of US 6,469,767, its citation list, dates, assignees, and the claim-mapping conclusions above (from the authoritative full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6469767/en).
• Low confidence / unverified: the substantive technical content of JPH03-059623, JPH06-043474, US 5,706,069, US 5,946,057, and US 6,108,057. My tool session hit its step ceiling before I could pull their bodies or USPTO full-text/PDF views. A definitive §102 statement about those five would require retrieving their specifications from USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search or the JP J-PlatPat/Espacenet full-text (their bodies were not in the authoritative US text provided, which quotes them only by title).
• No contradiction was found between the fetched full text and the search results; per your rule I treated the fetched full patent text as authoritative.

Bottom line: the most relevant cited prior art for US 6,469,767 is US 5,556,670 (Casio) — it discloses the inter-substrate electrode connection between an extended second-substrate electrode and first-substrate wiring that claim 1 presupposes — followed by US 4,600,273 (Seiko Epson) for the conductive-particle connection medium. Neither, nor any other cited reference, anticipates claim 1 or its dependents; they are §103 background.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis by pulling what I can on the cited references, then build the combination arguments. Let me search the key prior-art documents.

Let me pull the remaining cited references to ground each one.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,469,767 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, framework, and a disclosed inconsistency

Governing law. This patent has a JP priority of 2000-04-17 and a US filing date of 2001-04-06, so it is pre-AIA. Obviousness is therefore measured under pre-AIA § 103(a), but the substantive standard applied to any challenge today (litigation, or an ex parte reexamination) is KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) and the Graham v. John Deere factors. The references of record are all § 102(b) art except US 6,108,057, which issued 2000-08-22 (after the 2000-04-17 priority date) but shares a 1997-05-28 filing date with US 5,946,057 and is therefore available under pre-AIA § 102(e) as of its 1997-05-28 filing date. (The two NEC references share title and filing date and appear to be a common disclosure; I treat them as one teaching.)

PHOSITA. A person having ordinary skill in the art here would hold a B.S. in EE, applied physics, or materials science with 2–4 years' experience designing/manufacturing passive-matrix LCD modules — ITO electrode patterning, sealing/fill processes, chip-on-glass (COG) driver mounting, and anisotropic-conductive-film (ACF) bonding. Every § 103 conclusion below must be evaluated from that vantage point as of April 2000.

⚠️ Contradiction to flag. The previously generated sections were produced with a system date of 2026-09-25 (the patent-text fetch timestamp), while this task states the current date is 2026-04-26 — and the prior litigation section cites a CAFC decision dated July 2, 2026. Those cannot all be correct. Nothing in the § 103 analysis turns on it, but the temporal inconsistency should be reconciled. No substantive contradictions were found between this patent text and the earlier sections.

⚠️ Verification caveat (important for how much weight to give this). I was able to verify the disclosures of US 5,706,069 and US 5,556,670 (Google Patents) and partially verify US 4,600,273. I could not obtain the specifications of JPH03-059623, JPH06-043474, US 5,946,057, or US 6,108,057 in this session. Statements about those four are based on bibliographic data and titles only and are marked as unverified. A defensible rejection must map full text to the claims; treat this as a roadmap, not a finished office action. I also did not have the prosecution history, which matters because it would reveal what the examiner actually relied on when allowing the single independent claim.

1. The decisive structural observation: most of claim 1 is admitted prior art

The Background section of US 6,469,767 (col. describing FIGS. 11–13) is a self-executing admission that describes a "conventional type liquid crystal display." Mapping it against claim 1:

Conclusion: every element of claim 1 is disclosed by the applicant's own admitted prior art — except the characterization limitation. The entire question of obviousness therefore collapses to one narrow issue:

Given the admitted prior art in which the connection sits adjacent the LC body and the wiring runs outside it, would it have been obvious to invert that relationship so the wiring runs between the connection and the LC body?

And the specification itself supplies the design trade-off that frames the answer: moving the connection away from the LC body (to hide the opaque ACP) necessarily increases the extrusion width of the wiring and thus the "death area," unless the space between the connection and the LC body is occupied by the wiring (which is exactly what claim 1 recites). This is textbook KSR territory — a design choice with a known, predictable trade-off, driven by market demand.

2. Primary § 103 combinations for claim 1

Because the gap is a layout feature, the strongest cases combine (a) a reference supplying the complete connection architecture and (b) an explicit or inherent reason to relocate/route the connection. I give three, in descending strength.

Combination 1 (Strongest): Admitted prior art ('767 FIGS. 11–13) + US 5,706,069 (Philips)

or Casio '670 + Philips '069

• What Philips '069 contributes. Philips expressly addresses the very layout concern at issue: it discloses counter electrodes on the second plate connected to conductor tracks on the first plate at an overlap region (protrusion 3B at the "area of the overlap between the relevant counter electrode and the relevant conductor track"), and it explicitly frames the design goal in terms of relative positioning / lateral size / mutual pitch — "a smaller lateral size of the through-connection is sufficient for the same series resistance, so the mutual pitch of the through-connection … can be reduced" (US 5,706,069).
• Motivation to combine (KSR / MPEP 2144).
  1. Known problem, same field. Both the '767 admission and Philips '069 concern the same problem: spatially organizing a connection between an electrode on one plate and a conductor track on the other plate in the panel's peripheral (non-display) region. Nothing is combined across fields.
  2. Market forces / design incentive (KSR). The admitted prior art concedes the opaque connection "comes into a visible area of the liquid crystal screen and it does not look nice" if the panel is a mobile-phone display. Reducing bezel ("death area") was a recognized industry demand (see, e.g., the same motivation in the EP 0444621B1 excerpt retrieved during this analysis: the peripheral mounting of drivers "requires a large area … a problem").
  3. Predictable result. Inverting the order of two adjacent peripheral features (wiring run vs. bond pad) so the transparent ITO run occupies the inter-pad gap, and pushing the opaque pad outward, produces the expected result — the aesthetic problem is cured and no new border is added. There is no unexpected property and no new operative principle.

Combination 2: Casio '670 + US 4,600,273 (Seiko Epson) + design incentive

• Casio '670 supplies the complete passive architecture: first/second substrates with electrodes, an LC-filled space bounded by a seal, a projecting portion of the first substrate carrying electrodes to external circuitry, and a second-substrate connecting electrode (11) joined to a first-substrate electrode (10) by a cross member outside the LC-filled space.
• Seiko Epson '273 supplies the claim's "connective" species in its most directly applicable form: a conductive contact medium (conductive particles in epoxy) forming the cross-substrate connection, with the contact-portion thickness matched to the cell gap — i.e., the ACF/ACP connection the '767 specification adopts.
• Motivation: substitution of one known cross-substrate connection medium for another (silver-paste cross member → anisotropic conductive contact medium) to obtain a known advantage (fewer process steps; area-array bonding rather than a discrete printed dot; reliability), which is a classic simple substitution of one known element for another yielding predictable results (MPEP 2144.04 / KSR). The layout feature is then reached by the same design-incentive reasoning as Combination 1.

Combination 3: '767 admitted prior art + US 5,946,057 / US 6,108,057 (NEC) — UNVERIFIED, offered conditionally

• If the NEC ESD references teach a peripheral conductor routed along/around the LC display region (shorting-ring/common-wiring periphery — typical of ESD-protection designs, and consistent with the '767 claim 6 "two groups" split of common wiring), they would supply a teaching of placing an ITO conductor run in the peripheral region adjacent the LC body. Combined with the admitted prior art and a design-incentive rationale, that would directly support "a part of each wiring passes between the connection and the LC body."
• I could not verify the NEC disclosures and therefore do not rely on this combination. It must be confirmed against full text before use.

Note: I did not find any cited reference that expressly discloses the claim-1 routing. If none exists, a rejection on claim 1 must be a rationale-based rejection (KSR "design choice"/"obvious to try" + design incentive), not a reference-by-reference anticipation of the limitation.

3. Dependent claims 2–12

These are overwhelmingly layout-optimization claims. Each depends from claim 1 (or 2/8/9/10), so the claim-1 dispositive issue carries through; the added limitations are separately addressed below.

Aggregate assessment of dependents: claims 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 are the most vulnerable (fan-out, inherency, and known bonding medium). Claims 3 and 4 are the least vulnerable on the present record because I found no cited reference that discloses narrowing a trace at a crossing, and their stated purpose (preventing stray conduction between a common wiring and an electrode it crosses) arguably evidences a new problem created by the claim-1 routing — which the patent owner can use as a non-obviousness argument (see § 4).

4. Arguments on the other side (why a rejection is not a foregone conclusion)

To be balanced, the patent owner would respond:

1. No reference discloses the dispositive limitation. On the record, neither the admitted art nor any cited reference places wiring between the connection and the LC body.
2. The cited art arguably teaches away. The admitted prior art deliberately keeps the connection as close as possible to the LC body and routes the common wiring outside it. Minimizing trace length (resistance) and avoiding crossing/overlap of the high-density common-wiring field with the extended electrode ends are genuine engineering reasons to keep that arrangement. The '767 routing runs the wiring across the extended parts (claims 3–4 exist precisely to mitigate the resulting short-circuit risk), so the prior-art placement was not merely arbitrary.
3. Unexpected/dual benefit. The specification asserts that the arrangement hides the opaque connection without enlarging the death area — the simultaneous satisfaction of two competing constraints. If evidence showed the prior art achieved only one, that supports non-obviousness.
4. Hindsight. Relying on the patent's own statement of the trade-off to reconstruct the claimed inversion risks impermissible hindsight.

Objective indicia (secondary considerations): the record supplied contains no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, long-felt need, or failure of others tied to the claim-1 feature. Rohm's business in small mobile-phone LCDs might support a commercial-success narrative, but no nexus evidence is present, so no weight should be given at this stage.

5. Bottom line

• Claim 1. The single limitation distinguishing it from the applicant's own admitted prior art is the routing "a part of each wiring passes between the connection and the liquid crystal inclusion body." Because the specification itself frames this as a choice between two options with a known, predictable trade-off (hide the opaque bond pad vs. grow the border), claim 1 is exposed to a KSR "design choice / predictable variation / market-demand" rejection built on the admitted prior art plus a layout-optimization reference such as US 5,706,069 (Philips) — a reference of record that is expressly concerned with the relative placement, lateral size, and pitch of a cross-substrate through-connection. This is the most promising § 103 theory. It is a rationale-based rejection, not a clean two-reference anticipation.
• Claims 2–12. Independently weak on their own; the strongest candidates for obviousness are claims 5, 7, 10, 11, and 12 (fan-out, driver/terminal layout, and use of a known anisotropic-conductive bonding medium). Claim 2 is moderate. Claims 3 and 4 are the hardest to reach on the present record and may survive if the owner argues that narrowing at crossings solved a problem introduced by the novel routing.
• Overall strength of a § 103 challenge (my assessment): moderate for claim 1 with the Philips '069-based rationale; moderate-to-strong for claims 5/7/10–12; weak as to claims 3–4. A truly robust challenge would require (i) full-text verification of the four unverified references, (ii) ideally one reference expressly teaching peripheral ITO routing adjacent the visible area (the NEC ESD references are the best candidate and must be checked), and (iii) the prosecution history to see what the examiner actually distinguished.

Practical relevance caveat: the patent lapsed 2010-10-22 for non-payment of maintenance fees and its 20-year term ran to 2021-04-06. Any § 103 analysis is therefore largely retrospective (e.g., intervening rights, or an academic/what-if reexamination), not a live validity contest.