US 6711385

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 6711385 and any related CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me gather additional detail on the litigation and reexamination outcomes.

One more check for any post-argument rulings in the companion appeals.

US Patent 6,711,385 — analyst summary

Note on the identifier: The number you gave, 6711385, and the number used throughout the litigation record, 6,711,385 ("the '385 patent"), are the same patent — Google Patents renders it as US6711385B1; courts and the PTO render it as 6,711,385. No auto-correction was applied; these are consistent.

Date discrepancy flag: You state the current date is April 26, 2026. The authoritative records I retrieved contain events dated June and July 2026 (briefing and oral argument), which post-date that. My operating date is October 1, 2026. I report the later records below and flag where they sit relative to your stated date.

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Bibliographic data (from the authoritative patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6711385](/patent/US6711385)/en)

Abstract (verbatim): "An apparatus for communication of electric or electromagnetic signals over air includes a transmitter or receiver and a coupler. The coupler has a capacitive circuit connected with an air-core or dielectric-core transformer. The capacitive circuit resonates with the transformer at a preselected frequency. The coupler eliminates noise and is matched to the characteristic impedance of the air at the preselected frequency, which linearizes communication and allows high-speed data and voice communication over long distances."

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Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 (transmit side) — A communications apparatus for sending electric or electromagnetic signals through the air, where the air has a "characteristic impedance," comprising:

1. a transmitter with an output impedance that transmits at a preselected frequency; and
2. a coupler connected to the transmitter, the coupler containing a transformer with a non-magnetic core, which passes the signals into the air, and which matches the transmitter's output impedance to the characteristic impedance of the air.

Claim 26 (receive side) — Mirror-image apparatus for receiving signals from the air: a receiver with an input impedance operating at a preselected frequency, and a coupler with a non-magnetic-core transformer that receives the signals from the air and matches the receiver's input impedance to the characteristic impedance of the air.

Everything else is dependent. Notable dependents actually asserted against Samsung: claim 11 (transformer built from stacked, spaced-apart conductive plates, the upper plate matched to the air impedance at a preselected bandwidth) and claim 18 (the plates formed directly in a chip by deposition of metallic layers). The remaining dependents cover air-core coaxial coils of differing diameters (claims 3–7, 28–32), dielectric/resin cores (8–9, 33–34), solid-state transformers (10, 35), parallel vs. serial capacitors, antennas, metal-pipe/coax/foil variants (20–24, 45–49), and doped-silicon plates (19, 44).

Specification themes: eliminating bandwidth "notches" caused by signal reflections; a "phase shift linear" coupler derived from Abraham's earlier '258 Application (Ser. No. 09/344,258, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,104,707, incorporated by reference); air characteristic impedance treated as roughly 1–200 Ω depending on environment; and 1:1 turns ratio (N1 = N2) so no high transmission voltage is needed.

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Litigation and administrative record (post-grant)

District court — Satius Holding, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. & [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.), No. 1:18-cv-00850-CJB (D. Del.)

• Complaint filed June 2018 asserting claims 1, 11 and 18 of the '385 patent against, e.g., Galaxy S8/S9 and Galaxy Tab S3 products (accused RF components: Qualcomm SDM845, Qualcomm TruSignal, Samsung Shannon 965).
• Case stayed December 2019 pending PTO reexamination, then resumed after the first reexamination certificate issued (2022/2023).
• Judge Christopher J. Burke's claim construction held the claim 1 preamble ("transmitting electric or electromagnetic signals over air") to be limiting; defendants contended the term is indefinite because "electric signals" cannot be transmitted through air.
• December 2024: judgment for Samsung — claim 1 held invalid as indefinite, on the reasoning that transmitting electric signals through air is a scientific impossibility. Satius noticed appeal February 14, 2025.

Federal Circuit — three related dockets (all noted on the Google Patents page as "Family has litigation"):

• 25-1444, In re Satius Holding, Inc. — appeal from the PTAB in ex parte reexamination. The Board's Decision on Appeal (2024‑06‑24) and Decision Denying Rehearing (2024‑12‑11) entered a new ground of rejection: claim 1 obvious over Lindenblad in view of McCoy or Orr. Satius argues claim construction / prosecution history disclaimer — that the earlier reexamination construction ("designed to match the most common characteristic impedance of the air where the wireless transmitter/receiver will be used") controls. The USPTO counters that Satius forfeited its construction arguments and that matching is inherent in the amateur-radio antenna impedances (McCoy 20–100 Ω; Orr 105–135 Ω) falling inside the patent's disclosed 1–200 Ω air range. Samsung filed an amicus brief supporting affirmance (Reexam Control No. 90/014,826; earlier request 90/014,378).
• 25-1446, Satius Holding, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — appeal of the Delaware invalidity judgment; designated a companion case to 25-1444 and assigned to the same merits panel (order of March 13, 2025).
• Both were argued July 9, 2026 before Chief Judge Moore and Judges Lourie and Hughes (audio posted at cafc.uscourts.gov).

USPTO reexaminations:

• 90/014,378 — first ex parte reexamination, requested by Samsung September 19, 2019. Result: Reexamination Certificate C1 (2022‑05‑03) confirming the claims (claims 1, 11, 18 upheld over the cited art, including the inventor's own earlier coupler art and Tran U.S. 6,184,833).
• 90/014,826 — second ex parte reexamination, requested August 11, 2021; the source of the adverse PTAB decision now on appeal in 25-1444.

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Uncertainty / caveats

• I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or PACER directly in this session; the procedural history above is assembled from the Google Patents record, the Federal Circuit's own site, CourtListener oral-argument records, the PTAB/court briefs hosted by Fed Circuit Blog, a D. Del. opinion PDF, and press coverage. Treat specific docket-entry dates as secondary-source derived.
• I found no final Federal Circuit merits decision in either 25-1444 or 25-1446. As of the latest retrievable record, both were argued July 9, 2026 and remain pending. If a decision issued after that, I did not see it.
• The CourtListener auto-transcript renders "impedance of air" as "impedance of error"; that is a transcription artifact, not claim language.
• The '385 patent is expired (adjusted expiration Sept. 27, 2021, "Expired – Lifetime"), so the live stakes in the appeals concern past damages and validity determinations rather than injunctive relief.

I'll search for litigation records tied to the literal patent number 6711385.

Let me query litigation-specific sources.

Let me check for any additional defendants or cases beyond the Samsung suit, plus the RPX/docket record.

Scope and identifier check

Every record I retrieved that concerns a US patent under this number uses the same patent, and the literal string 6711385 appears verbatim in the PTO's own correspondence for it (the PTAB Appeal No. 2021‑005257 cover sheet lists "APPLICATION NO. 90/014,378 … 6711385"[¹]). No auto‑correction was applied: 6711385 / US6711385B1 / 6,711,385 B1 are the same patent rendered three ways across PTO, court, and Google Patents records.

Date discrepancy (carried forward from the prior section): you state today is April 26, 2026, but retrievable records carry June and July 2026 dates (the Federal Circuit's own site posts oral‑argument audio under a "07‑09‑2026" URL[²]). My operating date is October 1, 2026. I list events as dated in the records and flag where they post‑date your stated date.

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Litigation involving US patent 6711385 (6,711,385)

Search result: exactly one district‑court action, plus two related Federal Circuit appeals. I found no ITC § 337 action, no second district‑court defendant, and no second plaintiff against this patent. Notably, the "Unified Patents Litigation Data" link embedded in the patent record points to the same Delaware case (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A18-cv-00850), i.e., Unified's data attributes only one case to this patent.[³]

1. District court — the only infringement suit

Sources: D. Del. docket facsimile (via Docket Alarm) quoting the 08/08/2019 discovery order and the 12/11/2019 stay order[⁴]; PacerMonitor (Judge Burke; terminated 2025)[⁵]; Ex Parte case tracker (1:18‑cv‑00850, filed 06/05/18, closed 01/16/25, "Appeals 25‑1446")[⁶]; CourtListener claim‑construction opinion text[⁷]; Covington's account of the December 2024 indefiniteness ruling[⁸]; PTAB Decision on Appeal's "Related Litigation" statement[¹].

2. Federal Circuit — appeal of the Delaware judgment

Sources: Justia CAFC docket 25‑1446[⁹]; CourtListener/Federal Circuit audio record[¹⁰]; cafc.uscourts.gov audio‑upload page for 2025‑1446[²].

3. Federal Circuit — related administrative appeal (PTAB → CAFC)

Sources: PTAB Appeal 2021‑005257 Decision on Appeal (Reexam 90/014,378; "We REVERSE")[¹]; Google Patents legal‑events listing the 2019 and 2021 reexamination requests and the 2022‑05‑03 confirming certificate[³]; Fed Circuit Blog amicus brief PDF, June 2026[¹¹].

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Caveats and search limitations

• I could not query PACER, USPTO PatentCenter, or the Unified Patents portal case list directly in this session; the above is assembled from PACER‑derived aggregators (Docket Alarm, PacerMonitor, UniCourt, Patexia, Ex Parte), the Federal Circuit's own site, CourtListener, the PTAB Decision on Appeal, and law‑firm/press accounts. Treat individual docket‑entry dates as secondary‑source derived.
• If a second suit existed against a defendant whose name I did not query, I did not surface it. My searches for "Satius Holding" complaints returned only the Samsung action; the Korean IP‑NAVI dispute record likewise lists only plaintiff "Satius Holding, Inc." v. defendant "Samsung Electronics (Korea)" with a dispute date of 2018‑06‑05[¹²].
• No final Federal Circuit merits decision in 2025‑1444 or 2025‑1446 appeared in my results; both were argued July 9, 2026 and remain pending on the latest retrievable record.
• Because the '385 patent expired (adjusted expiration Sept. 27, 2021, "Expired – Lifetime"[³]), neither case can yield injunctive relief; the disputes concern past damages and validity.
• The CourtListener auto‑transcript renders "impedance of air" as "impedance of error" — a transcription artifact, not claim language.

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Reference URLs

1. PTAB Decision on Appeal, Appeal 2021‑005257, Reexam 90/014,378 — https://drive.google.com/file/d/17ZEblj_MZY9zg-K5KyutDdjEPxLgQZnb/view
2. CAFC oral‑argument audio page, 2025‑1446 — https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/07-09-2026-2025-1446-satius-holding-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd-audio-uploaded/
3. Google Patents, US6711385B1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6711385/en
4. D. Del. docket facsimile (1:18‑cv‑00850‑MN‑CJB) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Delaware_District_Court/1--18-cv-01599/…/68/4.pdf
5. PacerMonitor, 1:18‑cv‑00850 — https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/24723591/Satius_Holding,_Inc_v_Samsung_Electronics_Co,_Ltd_et_al
6. Ex Parte case tracker, 1:18‑cv‑00850 — https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/ded/1:18-cv-00850/satius-holding-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd
7. CourtListener, Satius Holding, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (D. Del. claim construction) — https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10293759](/patent/10293759)/satius-holding-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd/
8. Covington, "Litigator of the Week Shout‑Out" (Dec. 2024 indefiniteness ruling) — https://www.cov.com/en/news-and-insights/media-mentions/2024/12/litigator-of-the-week-shout-out-covington-gets-key-claim-construction-ruling-for-samsung
9. Justia CAFC docket 25‑1446 — https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/cafc/25-1446
10. CourtListener oral argument, Satius Holding v. Samsung — https://www.courtlistener.com/audio/[105703](/patent/105703)/satius-holding-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd/
11. Fed Circuit Blog amicus brief, In re Satius Holding, Inc. (June 2026) — https://fedcircuitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/In-re.-Satius-Holding-Inc.-Amicus-Brief.pdf
12. IP‑NAVI (Korea) dispute record — https://www.ip-navi.or.kr/ipnavi/ref/boardDetail.navi?boardCode=B00034&boardSeq=[175959](/patent/175959)

I'll verify the structured block's default ("no AIA trials on file") against live sources, and check whether any IPR/PGR/CBM petition exists that ODP hasn't indexed — plus the status of the two pending CAFC appeals.

Now let me check specifically for any AIA trial petition (IPR/PGR/CBM) against this patent, and whether the July 9, 2026 appeals have produced a decision.

Let me run two final confirmatory searches — one targeting PTAB trial numbers tied to the patent, another on the post-argument disposition.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings exist on US 6,711,385 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM — so there is no institution denial, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, no § 315(e) estoppel, and no IPR-derived claim cancellation to report; the structured PTAB/ODP block in the prompt is correct on its face and my live searches confirm it (the only PTAB activity touching this patent is ex parte reexamination, requested by Samsung under 35 U.S.C. § 302, which is not an AIA trial). The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore unusual and worth stating plainly: this is a 2000-priority, 2004-granted, already-expired patent (adjusted expiration 2021-09-27) that a well-funded defendant chose to attack exclusively through two ex parte reexaminations rather than an IPR. No claim has ever been canceled; claim 1 is currently subject to a Board-entered new ground of rejection for obviousness (Lindenblad in view of McCoy or Orr) now on appeal, and separately to a district-court holding of indefiniteness — both under review and both undecided as of the latest retrievable record.

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No AIA trial proceedings on file

Per the canonical structured data: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." I found nothing on live search that contradicts this — repeated queries for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming Satius, Charles Abraham, or "6,711,385"/"6711385" returned no AIA trial number, and Samsung's actual PTAB filings against Satius-family patents that surfaced in search (e.g., IPR2025-01551 against PayGeo; IPR2026-00017 and IPR2025-01253 against Netlist) are unrelated patents and unrelated parties. I decline to invent an IPR2020-xxxxx number to fill the template.

Why this matters more than it looks: the § 315(b) one-year bar, the § 315(e)(2) estoppel that normally follows an FWD, and the s. 311(c) joinder rules all presuppose an AIA petition. None of that machinery was ever engaged here. A defendant today inherits no estoppel benefit from anyone's prior work — but also faces no estoppel constraint on its own art.

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Adjacent PTAB activity (NOT AIA trials — presented because it drives the defensive picture)

Because the task is "tell a defendant what actually happened," I include the two ex parte reexaminations and their appeals. I am labeling these explicitly as non-AIA proceedings so nothing here is mistaken for an IPR disposition.

Reexamination 90/014,378 → PTAB Appeal 2021-005257 (claims confirmed)

• Type: Ex parte reexamination, 35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307 (not an AIA trial)
• Requested: 2019-09-19, by Samsung (third-party requester)
• Claims in play: claim 1 challenged; claims 11 and 18 were indicated allowable; claims 2–10, 12–17, 19–50 were not subject to reexamination at all
• Examiner's rejection: claim 1 rejected as obviousness-type double patenting over the inventor's own Abraham U.S. 6,407,987 combined with Tran U.S. 6,184,833 (dual-strip antenna)
• PTAB panel: reported as APJs Jeffery, Chen, and Engle — the amicus record states the same panel heard both reexamination appeals (secondary-source derived; treat with the usual caveat)
• Decision on appeal: 2021-005257, PTAB Dec. 28, 2021 — REVERSED. The Board held the applicant's earlier statements did not establish that "a coupler for matching the impedance of an electrical line is equivalent to or interchangeable with a coupler for matching the impedance of the air"
• Outcome: Ex parte Reexamination Certificate C1, "patentability of claims 1, 11, and 18 confirmed," certificate dated 2022-04-29 (Google Patents logs the confirming decision at 2022-05-03, CONR, effective 2022-04-29)
• Defensive value: a reexamination confirmation carries none of the estoppel, narrowed-claim, or claim-cancellation value a defendant gets from an IPR FWD. It is not a hardening event in the AIA sense — the very next procedural step shows why (below).

Reexamination 90/014,826 → PTAB Appeal 2024-001658 (new § 103 rejection) → CAFC 25-1444

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (not an AIA trial)
• Requested: 2021-08-11, by Samsung — i.e. filed while the first reexam was still running and while the district court case was stayed
• Primary reference: Lindenblad, U.S. 2,687,513 (impedance matching network for an antenna)
• Examiner's rejection: 2023-03-03 — claim 1 anticipated under § 102(a), (b), (e) by Lindenblad, and obvious under § 103(a) over Lindenblad
• PTAB decision on appeal: 2024-06-24 — the Board REVERSED the Examiner, holding Lindenblad alone does not describe "said coupler matching the output impedance of the transmitter to the characteristic impedance of the air," but then entered a NEW ground of rejection under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b): claim 1 obvious over Lindenblad in view of either Lew McCoy, Lew McCoy on Antennas (1994), or William I. Orr, The W6SAI HF Antenna Handbook (1996)
• Board's reasoning (quote): "in light of McCoy or Orr, providing a coupler that matches the transmitter's output impedance to the air's characteristic impedance in Lindenblad would have been obvious to ordinarily skilled artisans to, among other things, match the transmitter's output impedance to that of the antenna to maximize power transfer and minimize reflections." The Board expressly found it did not matter that "neither McCoy nor Orr specifies … the impedance of air," because "those antenna impedances will match the air's characteristic impedance at some location given the relatively wide range of air impedances contemplated by the '385 patent."
• Rehearing: denied, 2024-12-11 ("The Request for Rehearing has been considered and is denied.")
• Appeal: CAFC No. 25-1444, In re Satius Holding, Inc. — issues are (1) forfeiture/construction of the "matching" limitation and (2) substantial-evidence support for the obviousness findings. Samsung filed an amicus brief supporting affirmance (June 2026). Argued 2026-07-09 before Chief Judge Moore and Judges Lourie and Hughes. No merits decision found as of the latest retrievable record.
• Defensive value: this is where the real leverage sits. Claim 1 currently stands rejected on a Board-entered § 103 ground that is not final for judicial review pending 25-1444. If affirmed, claim 1 — and every asserted dependent (11, 18) — falls on obviousness, independent of the district court's indefiniteness theory.

District-court counterpart → CAFC 25-1446 (indefiniteness)

• Satius Holding, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 1:18-cv-00850-MN-CJB (D. Del.), filed 2018-06-05, asserting claims 1, 11, 18.
• Judge Burke held the claim 1 preamble limiting and the term "transmitting electric or electromagnetic signals over air" indefinite (transmitting electric signals through air being a scientific impossibility), invalidating claim 1 and dependents 11 and 18; judgment for Samsung; appeal 25-1446 filed 2025-02-14.
• 25-1444 and 25-1446 were designated companion cases on the same merits panel by order of 2025-03-13 and argued together on 2026-07-09. Pending.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing is canceled; a lot is untested. Claim 1 is (i) rejected by the Board on obviousness subject to a live appeal (25-1444) and (ii) held indefinite by a district court subject to a live appeal (25-1446). Claims 11 and 18 have never been substantively adjudicated on the merits of their added limitations — the oral argument transcript records counsel conceding that "obviousness is not an issue in our case" for 11 and 18 and that "there was no separate discussion below or on appeal about 11 and 18"; their fate rides entirely on claim 1's indefiniteness. Claims 2–10, 12–17, and 19–50 — 47 of the 50 claims — were never reexamined and have never been asserted, so they are effectively untouched; if a defendant is ever accused under one of those, there is almost no prepared administrative record to inherit. Note the important asymmetry: a reexamination certificate confirmed claims 1/11/18 in 2022, and a Board panel rejected claim 1 on a new ground in 2024 — the same patent, opposite outcomes, both now at the Federal Circuit.

Estoppel landscape — essentially empty. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone, including Samsung. A new defendant is neither helped nor hindered by Samsung's work. Samsung is free to assert any § 102/§ 103 ground it can find, and so are you. The only binding effects in play are (a) the losing party's appeal rights in 25-1444/25-1446 and (b) issue-preclusion-style effect of any final CAFC judgment. Conversely, the 47 unasserted/unexamined claims are the real remaining exposure — do not assume "invalid in Delaware" means "invalid everywhere," because claims 11/18 and the unasserted claims were not the subject of the district court's indefiniteness holding at the dependent-claim limitations level.

Pattern signals. (1) The same requester (Samsung) filed twice — 90/014,378 in 2019 and 90/014,826 in 2021 — i.e., it re-attacked after losing the first round, rather than filing an IPR. (2) The patent owner has appealed aggressively and twice (once to the Board in each reexam, now to the CAFC in 25-1444) and is simultaneously defending 25-1446; Satius appears as an NPE (Satius Holding, LLC) with a single asserted patent and a single known defendant. (3) No defensive aggregator appears in the chain — the Unified Patents link on the Google Patents record points only to the same Delaware case, not to any IPR. (4) The only third-party activity in the family is Samsung's amicus brief — from the adverse litigant, not a neutral.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant today: do not build a defense on "there was an IPR and the claims were canceled." There wasn't one. The usable defenses are the two pending appellate outcomes. Track CAFC 25-1444 (obviousness of claim 1 over Lindenblad + McCoy/Orr) and CAFC 25-1446 (indefiniteness of "transmitting electric or electromagnetic signals over air"): https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/07-09-2026-2025-1444-in-re-satius-holding-inc-audio-uploaded/ and https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/07-09-2026-2025-1446-satius-holding-llc-v-samsung-electronics-co-ltd-audio-uploaded/. An affirmance in 25-1444 gives you claim 1 under § 103; an affirmance in 25-1446 gives you claim 1 under § 112.
• Practical posture check first: the patent expired 2021-09-27 ("Expired – Lifetime"). Damages are limited to pre-expiration sales, and the asserted-art period (Galaxy S6 through S9-era) largely predates much of any new device's life. Value your exposure accordingly before spending on validity.
• Because no IPR was filed, an IPR is still technically available to a newly served defendant, but weigh it: (i) your § 315(b) one-year clock starts on service; (ii) an expired patent's live issues are past damages, which an IPR does not eliminate; and (iii) the Board already has an obviousness record (Lindenblad/McCoy/Orr) you can adopt or improve on. A statutory disclaimer is unavailable here — you cannot disclaim claims, since you are not the owner.
• Request the complete reexamination files (90/014,378 and 90/014,826) and the 2021-005257 and 2024-001658 appeal records via USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB E2E, and pull the full CAFC briefs and appendices from https://fedcircuitblog.com — those contain the comprehensive claim charts and the Board's full § 41.50(b) reasoning.
• If you must act now, the cleanest non-IPR offensive is a third ex parte reexamination under § 302 against the untested claims (2–10, 12–17, 19–50) using the same Lindenblad/McCoy/Orr line plus, e.g., the patent's own admission regarding antenna art — but understand that a reexam, like the two before it, produces no estoppel and no claim-cancellation finality until the certificate issues.

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Flags and caveats

• Identifier: 6711385 / US6711385B1 / 6,711,385 are the same patent; no auto-correction applied. (Carried forward from prior sections.)
• Date discrepancy (carried forward): you previously stated today is April 26, 2026; retrievable records carry June and July 2026 dates (the CAFC audio is posted under a 07-09-2026 URL). My operating date is 2026-10-01. I report events as dated in the records.
• Terminology correction to the prompt's framing: the prompt calls the block a list of "PTAB proceedings." Strictly, this patent has no AIA trial proceedings but does have PTAB appellate activity in reexamination. There is a difference; I have kept it explicit throughout.
• Number-collision trap — do not be misled: search surfaced a PTAB petition exhibit (ptacts.uspto.gov petition 1463819) charting a different "RE '385 patent" with claims numbered 20, 31, 53, 58–61, 68, 77, 90, 118, 129, 177, 208, 272, 273, 274 and art such as Ovesjö, KR 10-0155510, Zehavi U.S. 5,602,833, Laird, and the TTA Proposals. That is an unrelated CDMA/orthogonal-complex-spreading reissue patent — not US 6,711,385, which has only 50 claims and concerns couplers. Do not attribute any of that art or claim numbering to the '385 patent.
• Secondary-source derivation: PTAB appeal numbers (2021-005257; 2024-001658), the APJ panel (Jeffery, Chen, Engle), the certificate date, and docket dates are drawn from the PTAB Decision on Appeal / Opinion Below, the Federal Circuit briefs and amicus brief hosted at fedcircuitblog.com, CourtListener oral-argument records, cafc.uscourts.gov, and aggregators. I could not query USPTO PatentCenter, PTAB E2E/ODP, or PACER directly in this session.
• No final CAFC merits decision in 25-1444 or 25-1446 was found; the dispute trackers consulted show "Decision — / Appeal Outcome —" for 25-1446. Both remain pending.
• Transcript artifact: the CourtListener auto-transcript renders "impedance of air" as "impedance of error." That is a transcription error, not claim language — do not quote it as though it were the claim.

I'll research the assignment record details — reel/frame numbers, correspondents of record, and the corporate history of the assignees.

Good leads. Let me dig into the assignment records, correspondents, and the Satius corporate history.

Let me get more detail on the assignment records and correspondents of record.

I've hit the search-step limit, so I'll present what the retrievable records support and flag the gaps precisely. Note upfront: I could not retrieve the "correspondent of record" field from the USPTO Assignment Center in this session — that field is the one the task most wants, and I will not invent it. Where I have an attorney name, I label its source and whether it is an assignment correspondent (it is not).

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Assignment & ownership analysis — US 6,711,385

Inventors

Pattern notes.

• Single-inventor patent. The '385 patent lists exactly one inventor. That is notable for a 50-claim RF/transformer apparatus patent and is the seed of the later one-patent, one-defendant assertion posture.
• Founder-assignment, not a departure. Abraham executed the assignment to Wire21 on 2001-01-19, recorded 2001-02-14 — roughly 6.5 months after the 2000-07-06 filing. This is the standard founder/employee "assign everything I file" instrument, not the "all inventors exit within 12 months" fire-sale precursor the prompt asks about. Abraham remained the controlling principal across every subsequent entity (Wire21 → Satius → Satius Holding).
• Do not confuse portfolios. A separate, later recorded assignment (USPTO Reel 29067/458, executed 2012-09-24) names three assignors — Abraham, Charles; Reinert, Chris; and Jarels, John E. (Plainsite). Because the '385 patent has only one named inventor, that instrument almost certainly sweeps in other Satius-family patents, not this one. I could not retrieve its patent schedule to confirm, and I flag it rather than attribute it to the '385 patent.
• Prior affiliation. Abraham's earlier coupler/line-communication patents in the citation list are assigned to Videocom, Inc. (e.g., US 5,629,587; US 5,818,127; US 6,014,386). That indicates he moved from the Videocom line-communication venture into the Wire21/Satius venture that filed the '385 patent.

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Original assignee

Satius, Inc. (Nevada) — the assignee of record at issuance on 2004-03-23, arriving there by change of name from Wire21, Inc.

Bottom line: the original assignee was a real (if small) operating venture in the power-line-communications space founded/controlled by the inventor, not a from-birth licensing shell — which is why this is a converted operating company, not a classic third-party troll transfer.

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Assignment timeline

Recorded assignments for this patent, from the Google Patents legal-events block and the underlying reel/frame citations:

2001-01-19 (executed) / recorded 2001-02-14 — Reel 011534/0915

• Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
• Assignor: Abraham, Charles
• Assignee: WIRE21, INC. (Nevada)
• Correspondent: not retrievable in this session — the Assignment Center correspondent field was not returned by any available source. No named attorney available for this link.
• Context: Founder-to-company assignment; the inventor assigned the as-yet-unissued application to his own venture.

2002-12-02 (executed) / recorded 2003-06-30 — Reel 014220/0646

• Conveyance: Change of Name
• Assignor: WIRE21, INC.
• Assignee: SATIUS, INC. (Nevada)
• Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
• Context: Change of name only — no change in beneficial ownership; Wire21 rebranded as Satius.

2008-01-04 (executed) / recorded 2009-01-30 — Reel 022177/0263

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: SATIUS, INC.
• Assignee: SATIUS HOLDING, INC. (Maryland)
• Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
• Context: Internal reorganization / transfer to a holding entity controlled by the same principal. First appearance of an address that is a PO Box (Clarksville/Highland, MD).

2012-09-24 (executed) / recorded 2012-09-27 — Reel 29067/458

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignors: Abraham, Charles; Reinert, Chris; Jarels, John E.
• Assignee: Satius Holding, Inc., P.O. Box 731, Clarksville, MD 21029
• Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
• Context: Rights-cleanup / confirmatory assignment across a group of Satius-family patents. Caveat: because the '385 patent names only Charles Abraham, this instrument may not cover the '385 patent — flagged, not asserted, absent the patent schedule. Source: Plainsite assignment 29067/458.

The record does not contain any assignment from Satius Holding, Inc. to "Satius Holding, LLC." Yet the plaintiff in the only infringement suit is Satius Holding, LLC (D. Del. 1:18-cv-00850). No recording converting Inc. → LLC appears in the Google Patents legal-events block. This is the single most important gap in the chain and is discussed under signal 5 below.

Correspondent-of-record finding (the field you asked me to prioritize)

I could not obtain assignment correspondents. The only attorney data points that are retrievable concern the reexamination/appeals, not the recordation practice:

• Jeffrey H. Price, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, 1177 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036 — the "correspondence address" printed on the PTAB Decision on Appeal in Reexam 90/014,378 / Appeal 2021-005257 (PTAB decision). This is prosecution-correspondent data, not an assignment-recording correspondent.
• James Hannah, Kramer (US) LLP (HSF Kramer), 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 700, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 — Satius's appellate counsel (CAFC opening brief).
• Kenneth Whittington appears in the same brief's caption block.
• Unconfirmed lead: a TTAB opposition file (No. 91293198) in my results lists a correspondent "IP RESEARCH PLUS, INC., Attn: Penelope J.A. Agodoa, Waldorf, MD 20602." Waldorf, MD is in the same county cluster as the Satius PO-Box addresses. I could not tie this correspondent to the '385 patent or to any Satius assignment, so I present it only as a lead to chase in the Assignment Center — not as a finding.

I will not name a repeat-player recording attorney for this chain, because I did not retrieve one.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6711385
    2000 : Application filed by Charles Abraham
    2001 : Assigned to Wire21 Inc
    2002 : Wire21 renamed Satius Inc
    2004 : Patent issued on Mar 23
    2008 : Assigned to Satius Holding Inc
    2012 : Confirmatory assignment recorded
    2018 : First suit filed against Samsung
    2021 : Patent expired Sep 27

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — UNCLEAR (weak).
The terminal owner, Satius Holding, Inc., has shell-entity tells: the word "Holding," a PO Box service address (P.O. Box 731, Clarksville, MD 21029; later P.O. Box 162, Highland, MD 20777 per INPI), and no products in commerce. But the movement into it (Reel 022177/0263, exec. 2008-01-04) is a same-principal internal reorganization, not a sale to an unrelated third-party LLC — and the underlying operating brand (Satius, Inc.) was itself controlled by the inventor. On naming alone this would be a false positive; on evidence it is a genuine non-operating holder but a family-internal one. Call it unclear.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee in the chain (Abraham, Wire21, Satius, Satius Holding) matches any entity on the enumerated lists — Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities. Satius is not an RPX/Unified-listed "high-frequency plaintiff"; RPX's involvement (RPX litigation document 12940607) is as a tracker of the single case, not as an owner. One suit, one patent, one defendant ≠ high-frequency. Signal not present.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT DETERMINABLE.
This is the signal I was explicitly asked to test and could not. No assignment-correspondent field was retrievable for any of the four recorded links (Reels 011534/0915, 014220/0646, 022177/0263, 29067/458). I therefore decline to score this present or absent. Actions: pull each reel's face and the corresponding Assignment Center "correspondent" field by hand. The only attorney names I have (Price/Kramer Levin; Hannah/HSF Kramer) are litigation/reexam counsel and cannot carry this signal.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Transfers are widely spaced, not cascaded: 2001 → 2002 (rename) → 2008 → 2012. No cluster of consecutive assignments through chained LLCs within 24 months, and no evidence the assignees share a correspondent address beyond the family's own Maryland PO Boxes.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR, possibly relevant.
The last recorded assignment is 2012, six years before the 2018-06-05 suit — so the recorded transfer is not within the 6-month window. However, the suing plaintiff is "Satius Holding, LLC," an entity that does not appear in the assignment chain (which ends at Satius Holding, Inc.). If an Inc.→LLC conversion or transfer to the asserting LLC occurred shortly before June 2018, it is unrecorded in the sources I could retrieve — a clean-standing/venue arrangement tell. Flagged as unclear pending the Assignment Center face.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT (no evidence).
No Chapter 7/11 for Wire21, Satius, or Satius Holding surfaced. The patent left the operating entity by internal reorganization, not by an insolvency sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (no evidence).
There is no operating-company-to-NPE transfer to assert on a sponsor's behalf. The asserting entity and the original operating venture share the same principal (Abraham), so this is self-assertion, not privateering for a third party.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT (inverse).
The chain terminates at Satius Holding, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Nothing here was neutralized; it was asserted.

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Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The terminal owner, Satius Holding, Inc. (Reel 022177/0263, exec. 2008-01-04), is a non-operating Maryland holding entity with a PO Box address and no products, and its affiliate Satius Holding, LLC filed the only known suit — asserting only this 2000-priority patent, against Samsung in June 2018 — which is textbook NPE behavior (one patent, one defendant, no practicing entity on the plaintiff side). What keeps the call at moderate rather than high is (a) the chain is a same-principal rename and reorganization (Wire21 → Satius → Satius Holding) rather than a transfer into an unrelated shell, so there is no classic public NPE-list match, and (b) I could not retrieve any assignment correspondent, which is precisely the datum that would confirm or kill the repeat-lawyer signal. The unresolved Inc.→LLC gap between the recorded owner and the 2018 plaintiff is the highest-value item to chase.

Verify here: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 6711385; legacy interface https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Pull the face of each of Reels 011534/0915, 014220/0646, 022177/0263, 29067/0458 to capture the correspondent and confirm whether 29067/458 actually lists the '385 patent.

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Flags & caveats

• Correspondent field unavailable. The task's priority datum — the recording correspondent — was not retrievable for any link. I did not substitute a litigation attorney for an assignment correspondent. Signal 3 is scored not determinable, not "not present."
• Inc. → LLC gap. The recorded owner is Satius Holding, Inc.; the 2018 plaintiff is Satius Holding, LLC. No recording of that transition appears in my sources. Treat the recorded chain and the asserting entity as not yet reconciled.
• Reel 29067/458 attribution uncertain. Its assignor set (Abraham, Reinert, Jarels) does not match this patent's single inventor; it likely covers other Satius-family patents. Included for completeness, flagged as possibly non-covering.
• Secondary-source derivation. Reels/frames and execution/recording dates come from the Google Patents legal-events block and the PTAB/INPI/Plainsite records; I could not query the Assignment Center or PatentCenter directly in this session.
• Carried-forward date flag. Prior sections in this analysis note a discrepancy between the stated "today" (April 26, 2026) and records carrying June/July 2026 dates; my operating date is 2026-10-01. No new contradiction arises in the ownership record.
• Identifier. 6711385 / US6711385B1 / 6,711,385 denote the same patent; no auto-correction applied.

I'll verify the content of the most § 102-relevant references — especially the reexamination art (Lindenblad/McCoy/Orr), which does not appear in the front-page citation list, plus the closest structural references.

Prior-art analysis — US patent 6,711,385 (US6711385B1), "Coupler for wireless communications"

Identifier check (no auto-correction applied). 6711385, US6711385B1, and 6,711,385 B1 are the same patent; the string 6711385 appears verbatim in the PTO's own papers for it. All analysis below is for that patent only.

Date flag (carried forward). You state today is April 26, 2026; the authoritative patent text was fetched 2026-10-01, and prior sections of this analysis contain June–July 2026 records. I report dates as they appear in the records.

Method. I started from the authoritative front-page citation list in the granted patent (31 patent citations, at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6711385](/patent/US6711385)/en) and verified the content of the structurally closest references by live search. Descriptions sourced only from the citation title (no full text retrieved) are labeled [title-derived].

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The short answer on § 102

None of the 31 front-page citations anticipates independent claim 1 or claim 26. Anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every claimed element arranged as claimed. Every one of the 31 references fails at least the same two limitations that the PTO's own Board acknowledged:

1. a coupler comprising a transformer having a non-magnetic core — and
2. "matching the output impedance of the transmitter [ / input impedance of the receiver] to the characteristic impedance of the air."

The 31 citations are overwhelmingly wire-line / power-line / CATV / telemetry art (Abraham's own earlier line-coupler family plus third-party power-line references) or antenna-coupling / transponder art. They are, at most, § 103 references, and mostly for the structural dependent claims (3–7, 11–24), not for the point of novelty in claims 1/26.

The single most § 102-relevant reference in the entire file is not on the front page. U.S. 2,687,513 to Lindenblad was applied by the examiner in reexamination 90/014,826 as an express § 102(a), (b), (e) anticipation of claim 1; the Board then reversed that anticipation and substituted a § 103 ground (Lindenblad + McCoy or Orr) that is now on appeal at CAFC 25-1444. That procedural history is the prior-art story of this patent.

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Table 1 — The 31 front-page citations, in relevance tiers

An asterisk ( * ) marks the three references Google renders as examiner-cited rather than applicant-cited; treat that flag as secondary-source derived.

Tier A — Antenna / impedance-matching / transformer-coupling (closest to claims 1, 26)

Tier B — Transformer/coupler structure (claims 3–7, 11–24, 28–49)

Tier C — Abraham's own earlier coupler family (the '258 / '707 line) — § 102(b) as to coupler structure

Tier D — Wire-line / power-line / CATV / telemetry background (§ 103 only; largely cumulative)

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Detailed entries — the references that actually matter

1. US 5,214,392 A — Murata Mfg. Co., Ltd. ("Multilayered ceramic type electromagnetic coupler apparatus")

• Filed 1989-10-31 (US 07/429,490, continuation-in-part of a 1988-11-08 JP priority); published 1993-05-25. Examiner-cited (asterisk).
• Disclosure: a coupler in which coil elements are printed with conductive paste on ceramic green sheets that are laminated, pressed, and co-fired into an integrated stack, with an insulating layer between the coil elements; a modulator drives one coil and a demodulator takes the other via electromagnetic coupling; disclosed embodiments expressly add a magnetic piece to improve coupling, and other embodiments use four alternating coil elements.
• § 102 relevance: This is the closest structural reference to the "conductive-plate / chip-material / deposited-layer / dielectric-core" dependent claims — claims 11, 16, 18 and their receive-side twins 36, 41, 43, and arguably claims 8/9 (dielectric core) and 33/34. A single reference disclosing spaced-apart conductive coil elements in a laminated dielectric body reads directly on claim 11's "second conductive plate placed underneath and spaced apart from the first conductive plate."
• The gap: Murata discloses no matching to the characteristic impedance of the air, and its added-magnetic-piece embodiments cut against the "non-magnetic core" limitation of claim 1/26. So it is a § 102 candidate against dependent structural claims only, and only if the co-fired coil elements are treated as the claimed plates.

2. US 5,420,579 A — Bio Medic Data Systems ("Antenna and driving circuit for transmitting and receiving signals to and from a passive transponder")

• Filed 1990-10-29; published 1995-05-30.
• Disclosure (verified): a transmit antenna formed of a primary coil with a secondary coil magnetically coupled to it, the primary wound about the secondary at ~1:17, the secondary coupled to a tuned exciter-secondary circuit so the secondary resonates at the exciter frequency; separate receive coils on a ferrite rod with a null point; band-pass filtering to strip noise.
• § 102 relevance: Bio Medic is the front-page citation that comes nearest to the structural core of claims 1/26 — a primary/secondary coupled-coil transformer feeding an antenna, with resonant tuning of the secondary, directed to "match"/transfer at a chosen frequency. It touches claims 1, 3, 4, 26, 28, 29.
• The gap: the coupling medium is the ferrite rod (a magnetic core — directly contrary to the "non-magnetic core" element) and the impedances matched are the interrogator/transponder coils, not the characteristic impedance of air. § 102 fails; § 103 value only.

3. US 5,891,183 A — Med-El ("Device for transferring electromagnetic energy between primary and secondary coils")

• Filed 1996-06-04; published 1999-04-06.
• Disclosure (verified): a transcutaneous energy link in which primary and secondary coils, facing each other, "form a transformer" transferring energy from a transmitter powering the primary to an implanted stimulator; the invention distributes coil turns across the radii to raise the coupling coefficient; coil diameters 15–30 mm, separations 4–15 mm.
• § 102 relevance: reads on the generic "transformer having a … core" concept of claims 1/26 and on coaxial, facing primary/secondary coils (claims 3/28), and is a § 102(b) reference for the energy-transfer framing.
• The gap: it is an air-core-in-the-sense-of-no-ferrite but implant-tissue-coupled inductive power link, not signal communication through the air at a preselected frequency matched to air's characteristic impedance. § 103 only as to claims 1/26.

4. EP 0 433 752 A1 — Rauma-Repola Offshore Oy ("Inductive coupler for transfer of electric energy")

• Filed 1989-12-18; published 1991-06-26. Examiner-cited (asterisk).
• Disclosure [title-derived]: an inductive energy coupler — a two-coil, coreless (or magnetically coupled) arrangement for power transfer.
• § 102 relevance: § 102(b) candidate only for the bare "transformer" recitation shared by every claim; it discloses no transmitter/receiver with a data signal at a preselected frequency and no air-impedance matching. § 103 at most.

5. US 3,714,661 A — US Navy ("Method and apparatus for coupling multiple power sources to single radiating antenna")

• Filed 1972-01-24; published 1973-01-30.
• § 102 relevance: coupling of sources to a radiating antenna relates to claims 1, 25, 26, 50 (coupler + antenna). No non-magnetic-core transformer stated, no air-impedance match. § 103 only.

6. US 4,206,464 A — Licentia ("Arrangement including circulators for connecting a plurality of transmitters and receivers to a common antenna")

• Filed 1976-09-17; published 1980-06-03. § 102 relevance: plural transmit/receive devices to a common antenna — claims 1, 26 in the loosest sense; the coupling element is a circulator, not a transformer. Not anticipatory. § 103 only.

7. US 5,212,813 A — Dassault Aviation ("Device for the coupling to a common antenna of at least two transmitting and/or receiving devices")

• Filed 1990-02-28; published 1993-05-18. § 102 relevance: a coupling device between transmitters/receivers and a common antenna — surface resemblance to claims 1/26; impedance matching, if any, is to the antenna/line, not to air's characteristic impedance. § 103 only.

8. US 5,584,058 A — Radio Frequency Systems ("System and method for combining multiple transmitters in a multiple channel communication system")

• Filed 1992-02-18; published 1996-12-10. § 102 relevance: transmitter-combining/antenna-coupling. § 103 only.

9. US 5,061,941 A — Checkpoint Systems ("Composite antenna for electronic article surveillance systems")

• Filed 1990-02-01; published 1991-10-29. § 102 relevance: an antenna structure in an EAS system; potentially relevant to the "antenna attached to the coupler" claims (5, 7, 13, 15, 22, 24, 25, 30, 32, 38, 40, 47, 49, 50). No transformer-with-non-magnetic-core + air matching. § 103 only.

10. US 5,504,427 A — Nartron Corp. ("Rotational position sensor having variable coupling transformer")

• Filed 1992-11-12; published 1996-04-02.
• § 102 relevance: § 102(b) as to the mere presence of a variably coupled transformer; the application is rotational position sensing, and any impedance matching is incidental. Cannot anticipate claims 1 or 26. § 103 only.

11. US 3,825,931 A — Sperry Rand ("Phase front detection system")

• Filed 1972-08-01; published 1974-07-23. Examiner-cited (asterisk).
• § 102 relevance: phase linearity is a stated advantage of the '385 coupler (spec., citing the '258 Application), so this reference is a § 103 candidate against the "phase shift linear" functional language — but that language appears only in the specification, not in any claim, so it cannot support a § 102 rejection of any claim.

12. The Abraham / Videocom line-coupler family (Tier C, #12–21 above), and principally US 6,104,707 A

• US 6,104,707 A = the '258 Application (Ser. No. 09/344,258) that the '385 specification incorporates by reference in its entirety. Filed 1989-04-28; published 2000-08-15 — i.e., more than one year before the '385 filing date of 2000-07-06, placing it squarely in § 102(b).
• Disclosure (per the '385 specification's own characterization): the "novel air-core or dielectric core transformer" plus "associated coupling capacitor network" that achieves "resistive matching to approximately the lowest known value of the line characteristic impedance," creating a band-pass filter at the carrier frequency.
• § 102 relevance — this is the important one. Because the '385 specification says the coupler of the '385 patent is the same coupler as the '258/'707 coupler (only the matched medium changes from line to air), the '707 patent is a § 102(b) reference to every structural limitation of the '385 claims: air-core/dielectric-core transformer (claims 2, 8, 27, 33), coaxial differing-diameter coils (3, 28), series/parallel coupling capacitor (4, 6, 29, 31), and the antenna hook-ups.
• The gap that saves claims 1 and 26: the '707 patent matches the characteristic impedance of an electrical line, not of the air. This is precisely the distinction the Board relied on in appeal 2021-005257, holding that the applicant's statements did not establish that "a coupler for matching the impedance of an electrical line is equivalent to or interchangeable with a coupler for matching the impedance of the air." So: § 102 against the dependent structural claims; § 103 (not § 102) against claims 1/26.
• The other family members (US 5,559,377; 5,717,685; 5,592,482; 5,625,863; 5,818,127; 6,014,386; 6,023,106; 5,351,272; WO 90/13950) are cumulative — same disclosure lineage, line-based couplers, § 103-only value against 1/26.

13. Tier D (US 3,911,415; 3,943,447; 4,148,019; 4,514,594; 4,866,733; 4,944,299; 4,992,774; 5,032,820; FR 2 691 863; US 5,334,975)

• All are wire-line, power-line-carrier, CATV, interphone, or implantable-telemetry disclosures. They disclose no over-air coupler and no non-magnetic-core transformer matched to air's characteristic impedance. § 103 only, and largely cumulative against the "communication over a conductor" background that the '385 patent itself distinguishes in its Background section.

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Table 2 — Material art not on the front page (where the real § 102 fight is)

Lindenblad is the closest prior art in existence to claim 1 and it still did not anticipate. Verified content: Lindenblad discloses an air-core transformer impedance-matching network in which "impedance matching between a transmitter output circuit and an antenna input circuit is desired," and reports a constructed device transforming a 240 Ω patch-cord impedance to 550 Ω distribution lines. That is the strongest possible single-reference case against claim 1 — an express air-core transformer matching a transmitter to an antenna — and yet:

• Lindenblad's matched quantity is the distribution-line impedance, and
• the Board held it does not describe "said coupler matching the output impedance of the transmitter to the characteristic impedance of the air."

The examiner's original § 102 rejection over Lindenblad alone was therefore reversed, and the case now rests on § 103 (Lindenblad + McCoy/Orr, via inherency based on the patent's own 1–200 Ω "air impedance" range) — briefing and argument at CAFC 25-1444, argued 2026-07-09, pending.

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Table 3 — Claim-by-claim § 102 exposure (best single reference only)

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Practical conclusions for a searcher or defendant

1. Do not tell a court that "the prior art of record anticipated the claims." The 31 front-page citations are § 103 material. The only reference ever applied as a § 102 anticipation of claim 1 is Lindenblad, and the Board rejected that theory.
2. The operative § 103 combination is Lindenblad + McCoy or Orr, via the inherency argument that amateur-radio antenna impedances (McCoy 20–100 Ω; Orr 105/120/135 Ω) fall inside the '385 patent's own disclosed 1–200 Ω air range. This is on appeal (25-1444) and is not final.
3. Murata 5,214,392 is the most underexploited reference in the front-page list for the structural dependents (11, 16, 18 and mirrors) that Samsung actually asserted. It was never the subject of a substantive merits adjudication at the dependent-claim level.
4. No cited reference touches claims 10/35 (solid-state) or 19/44 (doped silicon) — those limitations have essentially no prepared art, which is both an exposure for an accused infringer and an opportunity for a third reexamination or IPR petitioner.

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Flags and caveats

• § 102 vs. § 103 discipline. I answered the § 102 question as posed for every reference, but the honest result is that zero front-page references anticipate independent claims 1 or 26, and only Murata 5,214,392 (§ 102(b)) and the '707/'258 family (§ 102(b)) approach true § 102 status against specific dependent claims.
• Title-derived descriptions. Entries marked [title-derived] (notably Rauma-Repola EP 0 433 752 and the Tier D wire-line references) rest on the citation title and assignee only; I did not retrieve their full texts. Verify against the printed patents before relying on them in a filing.
• Examiner-cited asterisks (US 3,825,931; 5,214,392; EP 0 433 752) are read from Google Patents' render and are secondary-source derived.
• Reexam art provenance. Whether Lindenblad, Abraham '987, or Tran were added during reexamination (as their absence from the front-page citation list implies) versus cited-but-withdrawn in original prosecution is not resolvable from the sources I could reach. I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIC or the reexam file wrappers directly in this session.
• Prior-art date rule applied: for § 102(b), I used the
  '385 filing date of 2000-07-06 and the 2000-07-06 priority date (no earlier priority is claimed; the '385 patent is not a continuation of the '258/'707 case — it incorporates it by reference only). The '707 patent's 2000-08-15 issue date is therefore >1 year after the '385 filing is irrelevant; its 1989 filing and pre-2000 publication place it in § 102(b).
• Carried-forward date/identifier flags: 6711385 = US6711385B1 = 6,711,385; stated "today" of April 26, 2026 conflicts with a 2026-10-01 fetch date and June–July 2026 records in prior sections.

I'll ground the § 103 analysis with a couple of targeted checks on the operative Board rejection and the Lindenblad reference, then build the combinations from the prior-art section already generated.

Obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US patent 6,711,385 (US6711385B1)

Identifier check (no auto-correction applied). 6711385 = US6711385B1 = 6,711,385 B1; the string 6711385 appears verbatim in the PTAB's own papers (Appeal 2024‑001658, Reexam Control 90/014,826). All analysis is for that patent only.

Date flag (carried forward). You state today is April 26, 2026. My operating date is 2026‑10‑01; the records I retrieved carry a July 9, 2026 oral-argument date. I report events as dated in the records. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the discrepancy.

Method. I build on the prior-art section already generated rather than re-deriving it. The two live searches I ran in this step confirmed (a) the Board's actual § 103 rationale and (b) Lindenblad's actual disclosure. I do not repeat the reference-by-reference descriptions from the prior-art section; I reference them and add the combinations and motivations that section did not supply.

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1. The governing framework

Obviousness is a question of law with underlying factual findings, applying the Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17 (1966), factors:

1. scope and content of the prior art;
2. differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art; and
4. secondary considerations.

Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a claim is obvious where the combination of familiar elements according to known methods yields predictable results, or where a POSITA would have had "a reasonable expectation of success." KSR recognizes that "a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ," and rejects rigid rules requiring an express teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references. Where a technique has been used to improve one device, a POSITA "would recognize that it would be obvious to improve similar devices in the same way." Id. at 417.

The Federal Circuit's review standard here is settled and is quoted in Satius's own brief: "Obviousness is a question of law based on underlying findings of fact… the Board's ultimate determination on obviousness [is reviewed] de novo and the Board's underlying factual findings for substantial evidence." (Opening Brief).

Level of ordinary skill in the art (factor 3)

The '385 patent does not state a skill level, and no court in this record has fixed one. The Board used "ordinarily skilled artisans" without a formal definition. A defensible formulation, consistent with the art and with the parties' framing, is:

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or physics (or equivalent), plus approximately two years of experience in RF circuit and antenna design, including impedance-matching networks and transformer/coupler design — or equivalent practical experience.

The Board treated the POSITA as knowing the standard 50‑ohm transmitter output impedance and standard amateur-radio antenna impedances. From the oral argument: "Patent Owner's counsel also acknowledged at the oral hearing that the output impedance of a transmitter is typically 50 ohms" (Opening Brief). That concession anchors the skill level: the POSITA knows ordinary impedance-matching practice cold.

The one construction ruling that drives everything

The single most important input to the § 103 analysis is how broadly "said coupler matching the output impedance of the transmitter to the characteristic impedance of the air" (the "Matching Limitation") is construed:

• Patent Owner's position: the coupler must be designed to match the air impedance "where the wireless transmitter/receiver will be used" (a specification-derived limitation).
• Office/Board position: because claim 1 is an apparatus claim, the limitation "simply require[s] that the coupler is capable of 'matching the output impedance of…'" — i.e., a capability, not a use-based design intent (USPTO Response Brief). The Office invoked Advanced Software Design Corp. v. Fiserv, Inc., 641 F.3d 1368, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2011), for the proposition that a preamble defines the environment or capability of an apparatus claim, and Paragon Solutions for the rule that "any use of a device that meets all of the limitations of an apparatus claim… infringes [or teaches] that apparatus claim."

Why this matters for § 103: under the broad construction, the reference need only disclose a coupler capable of presenting an impedance within air's range — which is a far lower bar than showing the reference designed for an air match. Conversely, if the narrower construction survives (via prosecution-history disclaimer), every combination below weakens materially, because neither McCoy nor Orr mentions the characteristic impedance of air at all, and the Board itself conceded as much: "neither McCoy nor Orr specifies the particular characteristics of the locations where the disclosed communications apparatuses and their associated transmitters and couplers are used. Nor does McCoy or Orr specify the impedance of air at those locations" (Board decision, quoted at Opening Brief). Flag this as the swing issue — the § 103 case is only as strong as the construction.

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2. Differences between the prior art and the claims (factor 2)

Boiling the claim set down, the '385 patent's claims reduce to five structural families:

The prior-art section established that (a) the front-page citations are line/power-line/CATV/telemetry art plus antenna-coupling art, (b) Lindenblad, US 2,687,513 is the closest reference and the only one ever applied as a § 102 anticipation — and the Board reversed that anticipation, and (c) the '707/'258 family is the inventor's own line-coupler disclosure and is § 102(b) art as to coupler structure but not as to an air match.

The differences therefore localize to one factual gap: whether the prior art discloses or renders obvious matching to the characteristic impedance of the air (as opposed to a line, patch cord, distribution line, or antenna feed).

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3. Combination grounds

Ground 1 — Lindenblad in view of McCoy OR Orr (the Board's ground; the primary § 103 attack on claims 1 and 26)

This ground is not hypothetical — it is the actual, pending ground of rejection. The Board entered it as a new ground of rejection under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) on 2024‑06‑24, rehearing denied 2024‑12‑11, now on appeal at CAFC 25‑1444, argued 2026‑07‑09, pending.

What Lindenblad discloses (verified from the patent PDF and the Office's description): an impedance transformation/matching network in a transmitter–antenna system, expressly framed as "transformer coupling means for matching two portions of a signal transmission circuit which operate at two different impedance levels." Critically, Lindenblad teaches that for high-power RF applications "such impedance matching can be done most effectively and economically by air-core transformer means," and its constructed embodiment transformed a 240 Ω patch-cord impedance to a 550 Ω distribution-line impedance (Response Brief). The Board found Lindenblad discloses every element of claim 1 except the Matching Limitation.

What McCoy/Orr supply: specific, standard amateur-radio antenna designs whose feed-point impedances fall inside the '385 patent's own disclosed range of air characteristic impedances (1 Ω to 100–200 Ω, col. 3, ll. 8–24):

• McCoy, Lew McCoy on Antennas (1994) — dipole ≈ 20–100 Ω, usually ≈70 Ω; quad driven element ≈100 Ω; two-element quad ≈100 Ω, with a "2 to 1" (100→50 Ω) balun that "brings the match down to 1 to 1."
• Orr, The W6SAI HF Antenna Handbook (1996) — loop antennas at 135 Ω, 120 Ω, and 105 Ω (Orr Fig. 5‑1).

The Board's motivation rationale (verbatim): "in light of McCoy or Orr, providing a coupler that matches the transmitter's output impedance to the air's characteristic impedance in Lindenblad would have been obvious to ordinarily skilled artisans to, among other things, match the transmitter's output impedance to that of the antenna to maximize power transfer and minimize reflections" (Opinion Below).

Why a POSITA would combine them (KSR mapping):

• Same field of endeavor and same problem. Lindenblad is RF transmitter-to-antenna impedance matching; McCoy and Orr are handbooks about matching a transmitter to an antenna. Both are directed to the identical objective — efficient power transfer at an operating frequency. Integration is a combination of art from a single recognized field.
• Lindenblad itself supplies the invitation. It does not fix its coils to particular impedance values; it teaches that "by suitably choosing impedance values for the coils' windings, a desired impedance matching network is obtained" (col. 4, ll. 14–17). The Board reasoned this means Lindenblad "is not limited to any particular impedance values, but could include other values, such as 50-ohm transmitter output impedances and antenna impedances other than 550 ohms, such as those in McCoy and Orr" (Opinion Below). That is a classic "known technique … ready for improvement" rationale: the reference is a tunable matching network, and the POSITA picks values to suit the antenna at hand.
• Predictable result. Substituting one known antenna feed impedance (100 Ω quad) for another known load and adjusting a known matching network's turns/taps to match is the epitome of KSR's "combination of familiar elements according to known methods … yield[ing] predictable results." No new structural change to Lindenblad's coupler is needed.
• Finite, identified solutions. Antenna feed impedances (50/70/100/105/120/135 Ω) were a small, well-known menu in the amateur-radio art; selecting one within the patent's disclosed 1–200 Ω band is KSR's "obvious to try" paradigm.

Receive-side claim 26: an impedance-matching network is reciprocal. The same physical structure matches in both directions; a POSITA knows a matching network designed for transmit works for receive. The Office's brief makes precisely the "capability of an apparatus" point. So Ground 1 discharges claim 26 as well as claim 1.

Vulnerability (state it plainly): the Board's bridge is inherency, not express disclosure. It reasoned that the amateur-radio antenna impedances "will match the air's characteristic impedance at some location given the relatively wide range of air impedances contemplated by the '385 patent." Inherency requires the missing limitation be necessarily present, and Satius's strongest counter is that the art never says to match air, and the "it will match somewhere" theory is contingent, not necessary. The Board's own admission that neither secondary reference mentions air impedance is the patent owner's best appellate point. Treat Ground 1 as contested, not established.

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Ground 2 — The '707/'258 coupler in view of Lindenblad (or in view of any recognized need to match an over-air load)

The references: US 6,104,707 (the '258 Application, Ser. No. 09/344,258, incorporated by reference in its entirety by the '385 specification) together with Lindenblad, US 2,687,513.

Why this combination is potent against the structural limitations:

• The '385 specification states the coupler is the same device as the '258 coupler — an "air-core or dielectric core transformer" plus a "coupling capacitor network" — differing only in the medium matched (line → air). That is a party admission that the coupler structure is old art. A patentee cannot simultaneously incorporate the structure by reference and claim the structure as novel.
• The '707 is § 102(b) art: filed 1989‑04‑28, issued 2000‑08‑15 — more than one year before the '385 filing date of 2000‑07‑06, with no earlier priority claimed (the '385 is not a continuation of the '258 case; it incorporates it by reference only).
• Lindenblad supplies the missing "air" element — it is the reference that expressly matches a transmitter to a radiating antenna using air-core transformer means. Adding Lindenblad's air-match teaching to the '707's admitted coupler structure covers claim 1's combination of (non-magnetic-core transformer) + (match to the air) with a stronger motivation than Ground 1, because Lindenblad itself uses the words "air-core" and matches to a radiating element.

Motivation to combine: both references address impedance matching in signal-transmission systems; Lindenblad expressly teaches air-core transformer coupling for transmitter-to-antenna matching; a POSITA seeking to adapt a known line coupler (the '707 coupler) to an over-air link (Lindenblad's environment) would do so as a simple substitution of known elements for a known purpose, with predictable results. This is KSR category (B) — substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results.

Note on the earlier Board holding: in the first reexamination (Appeal 2021‑005257), the Board reversed a rejection and held that "a coupler for matching the impedance of an electrical line is [not] equivalent to or interchangeable with a coupler for matching the impedance of the air." That holding is a double-edged sword: it defeats Ground 2 as a pure § 102/§ 103 argument based on the '707 alone, but it simultaneously confirms that the only step separating the '707 from claim 1 is the air-match — which is exactly what Lindenblad supplies. Ground 2 should be pleaded as '707 + Lindenblad, never '707 alone.

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Ground 3 — Murata US 5,214,392 in view of Lindenblad and/or the '707 (structural dependents, claims 11–19 / 36–44)

The reference: Murata US 5,214,392, "Multilayered ceramic type electromagnetic coupler apparatus" (filed 1989‑10‑31; published 1993‑05‑25) — coil elements printed with conductive paste on ceramic green sheets, laminated, pressed, and co-fired, with an insulating layer between coil elements.

Why it is the most underexploited reference in the file: the Board's Ground 1 attacks only claim 1 and is silent on the stacked-plate dependents. Murata discloses, in a single reference, the core structure of claim 11 ("a second conductive plate placed underneath and spaced apart from the first conductive plate"), claim 16 (plates separated by an insulating/dielectric body), and — for the co-fired, printed-conductor embodiments — plausibly claim 18 (conductors "formed directly in a chip by deposition"), plus the dielectric-core limitations of claims 8/9.

Motivation to combine (Murata + Lindenblad/'707):

• Both Murata and the '385 patent are coupler/transformer apparatus for communicating a signal between two circuit portions via electromagnetic coupling — same field.
• Murata's purpose is miniaturization/integration of a coupler into a chip-scale package. That maps directly onto the '385 specification's stated motivation for the plate/chip embodiment: the alternative transformer designs are "preferable for use in the present invention with wireless transmitters/receivers where small size is important — e.g., particularly in mobile units."
• A POSITA confronting the known need to shrink an air-core/dielectric coupler for a mobile unit would look to the known laminated-dielectric coupler art (Murata) and substitute its laminated plate/coil stack for the '707's wound coaxial coils — KSR category (C): "use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way."
• The result is a predictable aggregation of known coupler topologies; no new result is obtained.

Gap to flag: Murata's disclosed embodiments expressly add a magnetic piece to improve coupling, which cuts against the "non-magnetic core" limitation of claims 1/26 — but that limitation is not in claims 11–18, so Murata reads on the plates claims without needing to bridge the non-magnetic-core gap.

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Ground 4 — Bio Medic US 5,420,579 in view of Lindenblad and/or McCoy/Orr (claims 1, 3, 4, 26, 28, 29)

The reference: US 5,420,579 — a transmit antenna formed of a primary coil magnetically coupled to a secondary coil, the secondary coupled to a tuned resonant circuit so it resonates at the exciter frequency, with band-pass filtering.

What it supplies: a primary/secondary coupled-coil transformer feeding an antenna, with resonant tuning of the secondary at a chosen frequency — i.e., the structural spine of claims 3/28 (coaxial coupled coils) and 4/29 (a capacitor resonated with the coil). Bio Medic comes closer to the structural core of claims 1/26 than any front-page citation.

Motivation to combine: Lindenblad (or the '707) supplies the air-core/dielectric core and the air-match motivation; Bio Medic supplies the resonant, frequency-selective coupled-coil-with-antenna arrangement. Both are signal-communication couplers; both use resonant tuning at an operating frequency. A POSITA would recognize that adding a resonant tuning capacitor to a matching network is a routine, predictable measure for band-selecting a carrier frequency — a classic "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" rationale.

Gap: Bio Medic's coupling medium is a ferrite rod (a magnetic core) — directly contrary to the "non-magnetic core" element of claims 1/26. So Bio Medic cannot anticipate; it is a § 103 reference only, and its use against claim 1 requires removing the ferrite (i.e., a substitution argument), which a POSITA would make only with the Lindenblad/'707 air-core teaching in hand. Do not plead Bio Medic alone against claim 1.

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Ground 5 — Med-El US 5,891,183 (or EP 0 433 752 / Nartron US 5,504,427) in view of the '707 and Lindenblad (claims 3, 20–24 / 28, 45–49)

References: Med-El US 5,891,183 (facing primary/secondary coils that "form a transformer," coil diameters 15–30 mm, separations 4–15 mm); EP 0 433 752 (inductive energy coupler); Nartron US 5,504,427 (variable-coupling transformer).

What they supply: two-coil, coreless/coupled transformer geometry — the coaxial, differing-diameter primary/secondary arrangement of claims 3/28, and the analogue of the concentric "pipe/foil" geometry of claims 20–24/45–49. Med-El's facing, spaced-apart coils are structurally the same concept as the '385's coaxial coils with an air gap.

Motivation to combine: the references share the field of transformer coupling between spaced-apart windings for communication/energy transfer; the '385 specification itself characterizes its "gap … filled with resin" as a way to reduce inductive loading — a known transformer-design objective. A POSITA would recognize that adjusting coil diameter, spacing, and core material to tune coupling is routine transformer design, yielding predictable results. KSR categories (C) and (D).

Gap: none of these references discloses a match to air's characteristic impedance; they remain § 103 references only when combined with Lindenblad (for the air match) or confined to the geometry dependents.

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Ground 6 — Antenna-plus-coupler references (claims 5, 7, 13, 15, 22, 24, 25 / 30, 32, 38, 40, 47, 49, 50)

References: US 3,714,661 (coupling sources to a radiating antenna), US 3,943,447, US 5,212,813 (coupling transmitters/receivers to a common antenna), US 5,584,058, US 5,061,941 (composite antenna).

What they supply: the bare "antenna attached to the coupler/capacitor/plate/pipe" element. That element is a conventional, well-understood component whose addition to an impedance-matching coupler is the ordinary way to couple energy to free space. Motivation: an antenna is the standard, known means for radiating or receiving an electromagnetic signal into or from air; attaching one to a coupler is a predictable combination with a predictable result (radiation). This ground is strong on its own and requires no contested inherency.

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Ground 7 — Additional/alternative references not on the front page

Unmapped claims (honest gaps):

• Claims 10/35 (solid-state transformer) and 19/44 (doped-silicon plates): no reference in the cited art discloses either. These limitations have essentially no prepared art. The only available line is the specification's own admission that "Today's integrated circuits using active transistors can simulate and/or create an air-core transformer" — an admission that such solid-state equivalents were known, usable against claims 10/35. For claims 19/44, a petitioner would need new art (semiconductor conductive-plate/doped-layer art), which is not in this record. Flag: no § 103 ground on this record for claims 19/44.

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4. Claim-by-claim § 103 mapping

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5. Motivation to combine — consolidated

Across all grounds, the motivations fall into five KSR-recognized categories:

1. Known problem, known solution. The '385 specification itself identifies the problem — "reflected signals … cause notches that come and go in the bandwidth" — and states that "[t]he two impedances (air and transmitter/receiver) need to be matched to each other to avoid notches." The references (Lindenblad above all) are directed to matching to maximize power transfer and minimize reflections. Same problem, same solution type.
2. Combination of familiar elements, predictable results. A matching network (Lindenblad) + a known antenna (McCoy/Orr) + a known coupler structure ('707) is an aggregation of known elements with no new structural result.
3. Known technique improving a similar device in the same way. Murata's laminated-dielectric coupler applied to the '707's coupler to achieve the '385 patent's own stated goal — small size for mobile units.
4. A reference ready for improvement. Lindenblad expressly teaches that the matching network's impedance is obtained by "suitably choosing impedance values for the coils' windings" — an express invitation to re-tune for a chosen load.
5. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions. Antenna feed impedances (50/70/100/105/120/135 Ω) were a small, well-known menu — KSR's "obvious to try" doctrine.

Reasonable expectation of success. For the functional goal (maximize power transfer, minimize reflection), the expectation of success is essentially certain — that is textbook RF engineering. The contested question is not whether a POSITA would expect to match an antenna to a transmitter, but whether matching an antenna's feed impedance is "matching the characteristic impedance of the air." That is a claim-construction/inherency question, not a motivation question. Both the Office and Satius frame it that way (Response Brief; Opening Brief).

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6. Countervailing points and defenses to the § 103 case

A. The Board's own reversals cut against broad obviousness. The examiner applied Lindenblad alone as a § 102(a),(b),(e) anticipation of claim 1; the Board reversed, holding Lindenblad does not describe the air-match limitation. The Board then substituted a § 103 ground using handbooks that admittedly never mention air impedance. That procedural posture is a real weakness: the Office is asking a POSITA to supply a limitation that the Office concedes is express in none of the three references.

B. Inherency is a strict standard. "[W]here … the prior art does not disclose a claim limitation expressly, inherency may supply a missing claim limitation" — but "the mere fact that the prior art may be modified … would not render a claim obvious if the modification would not necessarily result in the claimed structure" (Opening Brief). The Board's "it will match somewhere" theory is a contingency argument, not a necessity argument — the classic target on appeal.

C. Construction/forfeiture. Satius argues prosecution-history disclaimer: it "relied on the earlier construction to successfully distinguish the prior art of record in two serially filed reexamination requests," citing Biogen Idec v. GlaxoSmithKline, 713 F.3d 1090, 1095 (Fed. Cir. 2013). If that argument lands, the narrower "designed to match … where used" construction controls, and Ground 1 fails on the record the Board made (the Board expressly found neither McCoy nor Orr identifies the air impedance at any location).

D. Secondary considerations (factor 4). Independently, the patentee has no developed secondary-considerations record:

• Long-felt need / failure of others: the patent's Background attacks Spread Spectrum and CDMA as inadequate, which could support nonobviousness — but the art does not show the industry tried and failed to make an air-matched coupler; it shows the industry chose DSP. That is a different solution path, not a failed attempt at the claimed one.
• Unexpected results: the specification asserts "phase linearity," "eliminates noise," and "up to several Gbps" — but contains no experimental data. Unsupported assertions in the specification are weak evidence of unexpected results.
• Teaching away: the only arguable teaching-away is that the entire prior-art coupler industry matched lines (Abraham's own '707 family) rather than air. That is a weak "teach away" because the references are not saying "do not match air"; they simply address a different medium.
• 46-year gap: Lindenblad issued 1954; the '385 was filed 2000. A long gap can evidence nonobviousness (Leo Pharm. v. Rea, 726 F.3d 1346, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2013)). But the gap is explained by the fact that the prior problem (matching to a line) had a solution, and the air-match problem only became salient with mobile wireless — which undercuts the "long-felt but unmet need" inference.

E. The § 112 overlay. A district court has held claim 1 (and asserted dependents 11, 18) invalid as indefinite because "transmitting electric signals through air" is asserted to be scientifically impossible (D. Del. 1:18‑cv‑00850; appeal CAFC 25‑1446). That is a § 112 issue, but it interacts with § 103: if the claim is construed so that "electric or electromagnetic" covers only electromagnetic signals (the only physically transmissible kind), then the prior art's RF nature is squarely within the claim and the § 103 case becomes easier. The two appeals (25‑1444 § 103; 25‑1446 § 112) are therefore not independent — an affirmance on either defeats the asserted claims, but on different theories. Both remain pending as of the latest retrievable record.

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7. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 26 are, on the present record, subject to a live, Board-entered § 103 rejection over Lindenblad + McCoy or Orr — the operative combination is not merely a hypothetical, it is the ground under review in CAFC 25‑1444 (argued 2026‑07‑09, pending). The motivation (maximize power transfer, minimize reflections) is well-grounded; the swing issue is the construction/ inherency of "matching … the characteristic impedance of the air."
• The strongest additional, untested § 103 ground in the file is Murata US 5,214,392 against the stacked-plate dependents (11–18, 36–43) and the dielectric-core dependents (8–9, 33–34). Those claims were never substantively adjudicated on the merits of their added limitations, and the Board's Ground 1 does not reach them.
• The '707 + Lindenblad combination is the cleanest route against the structural claims, given the specification's own admission that the coupler is the same device applied to a different medium.
• No § 103 ground exists on this record for claims 19/44 (doped-silicon plates) and only a weak, specification-admission-based ground for claims 10/35 (solid-state). Any petitioner targeting those limitations needs new art.
• Secondary considerations are undeveloped, and the patent contains no experimental data to support its asserted "phase linearity" and "Gbps" advantages — leaving the nonobviousness case resting almost entirely on the disputed construction of the air-match limitation.

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8. Flags and caveats

• Identifier: 6711385 / US6711385B1 / 6,711,385 B1 are the same patent; no auto-correction applied. (Carried forward.)
• Date flag (carried forward): your stated date is April 26, 2026; the records carry July 9, 2026 oral argument and my operating date is 2026‑10‑01. Reported as dated in the records.
• No final merits decision in CAFC 25‑1444 or 25‑1446 was found; both remain pending. Ground 1 is therefore an undecided rejection, not an established invalidity.
• Construction-dependent. The strength of Grounds 1, 2, 4 and 5 depends on the broad "capability" construction of the Matching Limitation. Under the patent owner's narrower construction, every air-match ground weakens materially, and the Board's own findings (neither McCoy nor Orr mentions air impedance) are Satius's best counter.
• Inherency is contested, not established. The Board's rationale rests on inherency ("will match … at some location"), which is the point of attack on appeal. Do not state as settled that the prior art "discloses" the air-match.
• Source derivation. The Board's rationale and the Office's construction arguments are quoted from the briefs and Opinion Below hosted at fedcircuitblog.com and the oral-argument record at CourtListener. Lindenblad's disclosure is quoted from the patent PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com. I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB E2E or PACER directly in this session; treat docket specifics as secondary-source derived.
• Transcript artifact (repeated for safety): the CourtListener auto-transcript renders "impedance of air" as "impedance of error." That is a transcription error, not claim language — do not quote it.
• Number-collision trap: search surfaced unrelated "RE '385" materials (claims numbered 272–274, art such as Ovesjö/KR 10‑0155510/Zehavi) belonging to a different reissue patent. Do not attribute that art or numbering to US 6,711,385, which has 50 claims and concerns couplers.