US 6886956

I'll search for current information on US 6886956, including any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me run additional targeted searches to check for any 2026 litigation or appellate activity.

Summary — US Patent No. 6,886,956

Sourcing note: I could not run a live query against USPTO PatentCenter or a CAFC docket system directly. The findings below rest primarily on the authoritative full patent text you supplied, supplemented by web results for litigation/PTAB history. Where searches returned nothing, I say so explicitly rather than infer.

Bibliographic data

Continuity chain (per the patent's own Cross-Reference section): This application is a continuation of Ser. No. 10/005,090 (filed Dec. 5, 2001, now US 6,508,563 B2) → continuation of Ser. No. 09/703,088 (filed Oct. 31, 2000, now US 6,367,940) → continuation of Ser. No. 09/167,949 (filed Oct. 7, 1998, now US 6,158,867) → division of Ser. No. 08/585,062 (filed Jan. 16, 1996, now US 5,895,115). The 1996-01-16 priority date derives from that earliest parent.

Assignment history (as listed in the file record): Solid State Opto → RAMBUS International Ltd. (2010) → RAMBUS Inc. / RAMBUS Delaware LLC (2013) → Acacia Research Group LLC (2013) → Innovative Display Technologies LLC (2013).

Abstract (verbatim)

"Light emitting panel assemblies include in one form of the invention a light emitting panel member made of a transparent resiliently deformable elastomeric material that absorbs impact without breakage for use in automotive lighting applications of various types. In another form of the invention, a rigid light emitting panel member may be used with dome switches for switch area lighting or to backlight control buttons/key pads. Also, a rigid light emitting panel member may be used as a structural member, and two or more such light emitting panel members may be stacked together and used to light an instrument panel or the like."

Independent claim

Caution: In the claim set furnished (33 claims total), only claim 1 is independent. Claims 2–15 depend from claim 1; claims 16–22 depend from claim 16 (which depends from claim 1); claims 23–30 depend from claim 23 (which depends from claim 1); claim 31 depends from claim 1. Claims 32 and 33 are truncated in the supplied text (the set ends mid-sentence at claim 31, "wherein said substrate provide[s]…"), so I cannot characterize them — they may or may not add independent scope.

Claim 1 (plain language): A vehicle-illumination light emitting assembly with four required elements:

1. A light guide having opposite sides and at least one light input surface along an edge.
2. One or more LEDs positioned along that light input surface, the guide receiving and conducting their light from the edge for emission out of at least one side.
3. A plurality of light-extracting deformities on at least one side, where the deformities' shapes control the output ray-angle distribution of the emitted light to suit a particular application.
4. A transparent substrate overlying at least one side of the light guide, where that substrate provides an exterior portion of the vehicle being illuminated.

So the independent claim is essentially: edge-lit LED light guide + shape-tailored light-extraction features + an overlying transparent cover that is itself a vehicle exterior surface (e.g., a lens).

Key dependent-claim scope worth flagging:

• The substrate may be a sheet, film, lens, or plate (claim 2), attached to (claim 3) or positioned against (claim 4) or covering (claim 5) the light guide.
• Deformities may be depressions and/or raised surfaces (claim 6), may vary across the surface (claim 7), and may be prismatic/lenticular or other ray-angle-changing devices (claim 8).
• LEDs may be attached to a circuit (claim 9) or embedded/potted/bonded/molded into the light guide (claim 10).
• Claim 16 adds deformities on the substrate with controlled shapes, and requires variation between light-guide and substrate deformities in at least one of: size, shape, placement, index of refraction, density, angle, depth, height, type.
• Claim 23 adds a coating/surface treatment with variable density, color, index of refraction, reflection, opaqueness, translucence, area, depth, shape, size, or type.

Litigation / PTAB posture (searched)

• No CAFC 2026 docket activity for US 6,886,956 was found. My searches of Federal Circuit 2026 dockets and general web sources returned nothing tying this patent to a 2026 appeal. I do not have authoritative confirmation of any 2026 appellate proceeding — treat "none found" as the answer, not as a verified negative.
• PTAB: Multiple IPRs were filed against the '956 patent, including IPR2015-00575 (Koito/Stanley), IPR2015-00896 (Toyota), IPR2015-00934, IPR2015-00994 (Mercedes-Benz USA), IPR2015-01540 (Ford). Search results indicate these were resolved by institution denial and/or joint motions to terminate following settlement (Ford IPR2015-01540: institution denied, termination judgment Oct. 30, 2015; Mercedes IPR2015-00994 challenged claims 1, 4–6, 9, and 31 on Decker DE 41 29 094 A1 and Tsuboi/Asai/Gage/Lister grounds).
• District court: Asserted by Innovative Display Technologies LLC against multiple automakers (e.g., Nissan 2:14-cv-202, American Honda 2:14-cv-222, Ford 1:14-cv-849, GM 1:14-cv-850, Mercedes-Benz 2:14-cv-535, ZTE 2:13-cv-527). Several were stayed pending settlement; the GM '956 count was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice as to Koito/Stanley-supplied products after those components became licensed.

Explicit uncertainties

• Priority date is an assumption per the source: asserted as 1996-01-16 from the parent division, not a legal conclusion.
• Claims 32–33 are not visible in the supplied text and could not be characterized.
• The listed current assignee may be inaccurate (the source itself disclaims any assignment analysis).
• I found no evidence of 2026 CAFC activity; I cannot affirmatively certify that none exists.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 6886956 using the sources you specified.

Good — I have a solid base. Let me now pull the district court case details and PTAB proceedings.

Litigation and Post-Grant Proceedings for U.S. Patent No. 6,886,956

Important framing notes before the list:

• US 6,886,956 B2 ("the '956 patent," Light emitting panel assemblies for use in automotive applications and the like) is one member of a large Parker/Solid-State-Opto family (parent U.S. 5,895,115 → 6,158,867 → 6,367,940 → 6,508,563 → '956). Litigation in this family was typically filed on multiple patents-in-suit at once (commonly '547, '194, '177, '660, '974, '370, '816, and '956). Where a case number is reported on the Google Patents "family has litigation" list, that list is family-wide, not necessarily '956-specific, so I distinguish below between (a) cases the Stanford NPE Litigation Database ties specifically to patent 6886956, and (b) cases listed only on the family-wide page.
• The '956 patent expired on/about 2016-01-16 (anticipated expiration; status "Expired – Fee Related"). Most activity below occurred 2013–2016.
• Where I could not verify a party name or outcome with confidence, I say so rather than fill the gap.

A. District court cases specifically indexed to patent 6886956

Per the Stanford NPE Litigation Database patent page for 6886956 (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6886956), four cases list this patent:

Case 1 (ZTE, 2:13-cv-00527): Complaint named U.S. 6,755,547; 7,300,194; 7,384,177; 7,404,660; 7,434,974; 7,537,370; and 8,215,816 — reported in trade coverage; the Stanford database additionally ties 6886956 to this docket. Status: Closed.

Case 4 (GM, 1:14-cv-00850): Well documented. Docket shows a joint claim-construction process with Ford Motor Company as a co-defendant in the same Delaware cluster, and then a stipulation of voluntary dismissal entered 10/23/2015 by Judge Richard G. Andrews. Acacia Research Corp.'s Form 8-K (Oct 16, 2015) confirms IDT and Delaware Display Group entered a settlement and license agreement with General Motors LLC and Valeo North America, Inc. resolving Civil Action No. 1:14-cv-00850. Outcome: settled/licensed, dismissed.

B. Related family cases in which '956 was reported as a patent-in-suit

These appear on the family-wide litigation links and/or in mandatory-notice filings, but I could not confirm for every one that 6886956 (as opposed to a sibling patent) was asserted:

• IDT v. Toyota Motor Corp. et al., No. 2:14-cv-00200 (E.D. Tex.) — filed 03/10/2014; Judge Gilstrap; status Closed (source: ex parte.ai case record; Finnegan experience page). Note: this docket number is also described in some sources (Korean NPE annual report, ip-navi) as a multi-defendant automotive case involving 6886956 among patents US6508563, US6755547, US7300194, US7384177, US7404660, US7434974, US8215816. I flag a party-name inconsistency in secondary sources (Toyota vs. Hyundai/other automotive defendants) that I could not fully resolve within this search — treat the defendant list for 2:14-cv-00200 as unverified.
• IDT v. BMW, No. 2:14-cv-00106 (E.D. Tex.) — complaint asserted U.S. 6,508,563 and the '547 patent among others; BMW filed a motion to transfer to D.N.J. in June 2014. Whether 6886956 was pleaded in this specific docket is unconfirmed.
• IDT v. Volkswagen AG et al. (incl. Audi AG), E.D. Tex. — filed ~April 7, 2014 (Law360), asserting seven light-emitting-panel-assembly patents. Reported as 2:14-cv-00300 in the family listing; exact '956 inclusion unconfirmed.
• Other family-listed E.D. Tex. dockets: 2:14-cv-00202, 2:14-cv-00722; Delaware: 1:14-cv-00849. Defendant names and '956-specific status not verified.

C. PTAB proceedings (inter partes reviews) involving 6886956

The Google Patents page lists eight IPRs as filed against this family/patent, all marked "Settlement" in the case caption exceptions noted:

Confidence: IPR2015-00575, IPR2015-00994, and IPR2015-01540 are well grounded (GreyB/IPverse, ex parte.ai, and Docket Alarm/Patexia records all confirm the '956 patent, application 10/298,367, Tech Center 2800). Petitioners for IPR2015-00798/829/896/934 are listed by Google Patents only as "settlement" entries; I could not verify petitioner identity and I do not want to guess.

An additional Koito IPR, IPR2015-00574, exists but target U.S. 6,508,563, not '956 — included here only to prevent conflation.

D. Non-US / ITC

The USITC Section 337 notice at 83 FR 53106 (2018) naming ZTE Corporation and ZTE (USA) Inc. as respondents involves a different complainant/patent set (an LED/display investigation) and is not shown to involve 6886956 — I mention it only to note I checked and found no '956-based ITC action.

E. Bottom line / caveats

• No ITC action involving 6886956 was found.
• All district court cases identified were brought by Innovative Display Technologies LLC (an Acacia Research subsidiary; chain of title: Solid State Opto Ltd. → Rambus International → Rambus Inc./Rambus Delaware → Acacia Research Group → IDT, June 2013). Defendants were automotive OEMs/Tier-1 suppliers and consumer-electronics makers.
• Outcomes: predominantly settlements/license agreements and voluntary dismissals (e.g., GM/Valeo; the IPR cluster settled or was denied institution). I did not find any case where '956 was taken to judgment on validity or infringement, and I did not find a final written decision invalidating '956.
• Verification gaps: Party names for E.D. Tex. dockets 2:14-cv-00202, 2:14-cv-00300, 2:14-cv-00722, D. Del. 1:14-cv-00849, and E.D. Tex. 2:14-cv-00535 (beyond the Mercedes-Benz listing), plus petitioners for four of the IPRs, could not be confirmed within the search budget. I am flagging these rather than supplying names I have not grounded.

If you need me to close those gaps, the most efficient next sources are the Unified Patents litigation portal case pages for the specific docket numbers, PACER/Docket Alarm for the E.D. Tex. automotive dockets, and the PTAB P-TACTS petition documents (artifact IDs for IPR2015-00575 and IPR2015-00994 appear in the record above) for the remaining petitioner identities.

I'll verify the PTAB history for this patent before drafting, since the Google Patents record I was given actually lists several IPR numbers even though the ODP block reports none.

Good — that surfaced real PTAB activity. Let me pull the details on each proceeding number.

Let me pin down the remaining proceeding numbers and their petitioners.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — U.S. Patent No. 6,886,956

Source conflict flag (read first). The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. That is not consistent with the patent's own bibliographic record. The Google Patents family/litigation record for US 6,886,956 lists seven PTAB proceeding numbers tied to this patent (IPR2015-00575, -00798, -00829, -00896, -00934, -00994, -01540), and I independently verified several of them against third-party PTAB dockets and case-document lists. I am treating the seven as the working list and flagging everything below by confidence level. Do not rely on the ODP "zero" result alone — it appears to be an ingest/coverage gap for 2015-era proceedings that terminated pre-institution, not a true absence of activity.

Proceedings overview

Seven AIA trials are on the record for US 6,886,956 — all seven were filed in the January–July 2015 window, none was ever instituted on the merits, none produced a Final Written Decision, and not a single claim was canceled or sustained on the merits. Status breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 2 confirmed institution-denied / pre-institution terminations (IPR2015-00575; IPR2015-01540), 5 additional proceedings that the patent record tags as "(Settlement)" with no merits disposition (IPR2015-00798, -00829, -00896, -00934, -00994).

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is a closing-window NPE campaign that never reached a merits ruling and is now moot. There is no IPR cancellation to lean on and no PTAB estoppel to exploit — but that is irrelevant, because the far stronger defense is that the patent term expired on 2016-01-16 (20 years from the 1996-01-16 priority filing of application 08/585,062, per the patent's own anticipated-expiration record and its "Expired – Fee Related" legal status). Any assertion today reaches only past damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286, and the six-year lookback window closed on 2016-01-16 conduct more than six years before any 2026 complaint — i.e., there is essentially nothing left to recover. This is not a "the patent has survived and is hardened" patent; it is an expired patent.

IPR2015-01540 — Ford Motor Company v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-07-02
• Status: Institution Denied / Judgment — Termination of Proceeding (2015-10-30). Google Patents' family record tags this case "(Settlement)." Plain English: the parties settled and asked the Board to kill the case before any institution decision issued.
• Judge panel: Not publicly identified in the sources reviewed — no institution decision or FWD issued, so no merits panel is on the record. Petitioner counsel Eric Buresh; Patent Owner counsel George Webb.
• Petition grounds: Petition filed against the '956 patent (Petitioner's "956 Patent IPR Petition," Exs. 1001–1015). Specific claims, art, and statutory basis not verified in the sources I could reach.
• Institution decision: None issued. The Board terminated the proceeding instead. Docket sequence confirms this: Patent Owner's Waiver of Preliminary Response on 2015-10-14 → Joint Motion to Terminate and Joint Request to Treat Settlement Agreement as Business Confidential Information on 2015-10-28 → Judgment Termination of Proceeding on 2015-10-30 → Petitioner's Request for Refund of Post-Institution Fees on 2015-11-18 and Board Notice of Refund on 2015-11-19. The refund request is the tell: post-institution fees are only refundable if no trial was instituted — so no claim of the '956 patent was ever at risk of cancellation in IPR2015-01540.
• Final Written Decision: None. No claim was canceled, held unpatentable, or held patentable.
• Settlement / termination: Settled. Joint motion to terminate filed 2015-10-28; judgment 2015-10-30. The settlement agreement itself was filed with a joint request to be treated as business confidential — its terms are not public and I will not speculate about them. (Note the timing: Ford settled after the Patent Owner waived its preliminary response, i.e., the settlement was not driven by an adverse institution decision.)
• Appeal: None. No appealable merits decision existed; institution-denial/termination judgments of this type are generally unreviewable under 35 U.S.C. § 314(d).
• Defensive value: Ford's IPR died pre-institution and left no estoppel under § 315(e)(2) and no claim-cancellation precedent. For a defendant today it is useful only as evidence of the art Ford assembled (Exs. 1001–1015), which is publicly re-usable because estoppel never attached.

IPR2015-00575 — Koito Manufacturing Co., Ltd. et al. v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-01-15
• Status: Institution Denied (per PTAB docket aggregator), with the institution decision dated 2015-07-28. Google Patents' family record tags the case "(Settlement)," which conflicts with a pure merits denial. Gloss: the proceeding ended without institution on 2015-07-28; whether the operative paper was a merits-based denial or a termination-on-settlement judgment is not resolved in the sources I could reach, and I am not going to guess.
• Judge panel: Not identified in the sources reviewed (no FWD). Petitioner counsel William Mandir; Patent Owner counsel George Webb.
• Petition grounds: Not verified. Challenged claims, art, and § 102/§ 103/§ 112 basis were not available to me.
• Institution decision: Denied / no trial instituted, 2015-07-28. Panel reasoning not available in the sources reviewed — I cannot quote it and will not paraphrase it.
• Final Written Decision: None. No claim was canceled or sustained.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated at the institution stage. If the Google Patents "(Settlement)" tag is correct, settlement terms would be confidential; if it was a straight § 314(a) denial, there was no settlement at all. Confidence: low.
• Appeal: None found.
• Defensive value: Minimal as precedent — no institution means no estoppel and no claim construction on the record. The one durable takeaway is strategic rather than legal: Koito — an automotive lighting OEM — was one of the first petitioners, and its own prior-art lamp designs (per the Mercedes-Benz petition's reliance on the Koito-originated Asai reference) formed part of the art stack used against this patent.

IPR2015-00994 — Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-04-02
• Status: "(Settlement)" per the patent's family record. No institution decision or FWD found.
• Judge panel: Not identified. (Mercedes-Benz previously/simultaneously sued in Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, Inc. et al, No. 2:14-cv-00535 (E.D. Tex.) — see NPE Litigation Database listing for this patent.)
• Petition grounds — ⚠️ from a third-party AI-generated case summary (exparte.com), not from the petition or a Board paper; treat as second-hand and unverified until you pull the actual Paper 1 / Exs. 1001–1007 from PTAB E2E. As summarized there:
  • Challenged claims: 1, 4–6, 9, and 31 (note: this matches the format of claims in the issued patent; claim 31 is a substrate-protection claim per the printed claim set).
  • Ground 1 — § 102 anticipation by Decker (German Unexamined Patent Specification No. DE 41 29 094 A1), asserting Decker's vehicle signal lamp discloses a light guide with an input surface, an LED at that surface, light-deflecting prisms as the light-extracting deformities, and a transparent end plate (A) as the "transparent substrate" that constitutes an exterior vehicle portion.
  • Ground 2 — § 103 obviousness over Tsuboi (JP Utility Model JPS57-60171) in view of Asai (S61-153201), Gage (Optoelectronics/Fiber-Optics Applications Manual, 2d ed. 1981), and Lister (LEDs for exterior lighting, Automotive Engineer, Oct./Nov. 1992) — i.e., substituting an edge-coupled LED for Tsuboi's incandescent bulb.
  • Ground 3 — § 103 obviousness of claim 4 over Decker in view of Arima (JPS62-201407), as an alternative showing that "positioned against" is met.
• Institution decision: Not found / none issued before termination.
• Final Written Decision: None. No claim canceled or sustained.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated; settlement terms, if any, confidential and not public.
• Appeal: None found.
• Defensive value: The art stack itself is the asset here — Decker (DE 41 29 094 A1), Tsuboi (JPS57-60171), Asai (S61-153201), Arima (JPS62-201407), Gage, and Lister are all public, pre-1996 prior art. Because IPR2015-00994 never instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to Mercedes-Benz, its privies, or anyone else — so those references remain fully available to a current defendant. Verify the grounds against the actual petition before building anything on them.

IPR2015-00798 — Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2015-02-25 (per Patexia case records, which also list this case in the related-case dockets for Toyota Motor Corp. and BMW of North America against Innovative Display Technologies)
• Status: "(Settlement)" per the patent's family record; no institution decision or FWD found.
• Judge panel: Not identified.
• Petition grounds: Not verified — challenged claims, art, and statutory basis not available in the sources reached.
• Institution decision / FWD: None found. No claim canceled or sustained.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated; terms not public.
• Appeal: None found.
• Defensive value: Part of the coordinated 2015 automotive-OEM pile-on (VW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Koito, plus the Toyota/BMW related dockets). None of it produced a merits ruling, so none of it produced estoppel or cancellation. Its practical value is as a pointer to the OEM joint-defense art set — the exhibits in the VW, Ford, and Mercedes petitions are the fastest way to reconstruct the best pre-1996 art on the '956 patent.

IPR2015-00829 · IPR2015-00896 · IPR2015-00934 — petitioners not verified

• Type: Inter Partes Review (assumed from the IPR prefix in the patent's record; not independently confirmed)
• Filed: 2015 (exact dates not verified; the -008xx/-009xx sequence is consistent with spring 2015 filings)
• Status: "(Settlement)" per the patent's family record for each. No institution decision, no FWD, no claim-level outcome available.
• Judge panel: Not identified.
• Petition grounds: Not verified. I could not reach a docket aggregator or PTAB paper identifying the petitioner, the challenged claims, the art, or the statutory basis for any of these three. I am deliberately not guessing at petitioner names — the 2015 campaign involved multiple automotive OEMs and at least one lighting supplier, but assigning any specific one to these numbers would be fabrication.
• Institution decision / FWD: None found for any of the three.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated pre-institution on the face of the record.
• Appeal: None found.
• Defensive value: Treat as terminated-and-dormant. Before relying on any of these three for anything, pull Papers 1–1x and any termination judgment from PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board EndPoint at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ for the specific case numbers. Confidence: low.

Strategic summary

Claim-status picture: nothing was canceled, and nothing was affirmatively sustained. This is the unusual and important nuance. Across the seven proceedings, no Final Written Decision ever issued on US 6,886,956, so no claim of the patent has ever been adjudicated unpatentable or patentable by the Board. Claims 1, 4–6, 9, and 31 were challenged (per the unverified IPR2015-00994 summary) but never adjudicated. Every claim of the patent therefore remains UNTESTED at the PTAB — including the independent claim 1 and the substrate-protection claims. There is no "claims 1–5 are dead, stop citing them" story here. If a demand letter cites claims 1, 9, or 31, those claims were never invalidated by the Board.

Estoppel landscape: there is no estoppel. Because not one of the seven IPRs was instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) never triggered for any petitioner. That means Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Koito, and the unidentified petitioners in -00829/-00896/-00934 — and their privies and real parties in interest — are free to raise in district court any § 102/§ 103 ground they raised or reasonably could have raised, including every reference in every petition exhibit set. Correspondingly, a new defendant is not blocked either; the full pre-1996 art universe (Decker DE 41 29 094 A1; Tsuboi JPS57-60171; Asai S61-153201; Arima JPS62-201407; Gage 1981; Lister 1992) is unencumbered by any IPR estoppel. The flip side: because there was no institution, there is also no IPR-driven claim construction, no Board claim-construction analysis, and no expert record to borrow for invalidity or non-infringement positions — the defendant builds from scratch.

Pattern signals. (1) This was a classic 2014–2015 automotive NPE campaign, not a serial-IPR story: Acacia's Innovative Display Technologies LLC asserted the '956 patent against GM, Mercedes-Benz, American Honda, ZTE, VW, Ford, BMW, and Toyota in the E.D. Tex. and D. Del., and the OBMs of the day (VW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Koito) answered with IPRs. (2) No petitioner filed a second IPR on this patent that reached a merits ruling, and the proceedings cluster tightly in 2015-01 through 2015-07 with disposition by mid-to-late 2015 — the signature of a campaign that folded into global settlements rather than one fought to judgment. (3) No defensive aggregator contributed a substantive outcome here — the named petitioners are operating companies, not Unified Patents — so no Unified-filed IPR on this patent should be assumed absent verification. (4) The ownership chain is a monetization chain: Solid State Opto Ltd → Rambus International Ltd. (2010) → Rambus Inc. and Rambus Delaware LLC (2013-03-04) → Acacia Research Group LLC (2013-06-26) → Innovative Display Technologies LLC (2013-06-27). The current-record assignee is Innovative Display Technologies LLC. (5) No Federal Circuit appeals were found for this patent — consistent with a docket in which nothing merits-related ever issued.

The dispositive fact remains expiration. The patent's anticipated expiration date is 2016-01-16, and its legal status is "Expired – Fee Related." Whatever was left of the 2015 campaign ended a decade ago.

Recommended next steps

1. If you hold a demand letter, check the date before you check the claims. Because the '956 patent expired on 2016-01-16, any infringement necessarily ended on that date. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages are recoverable only for infringement occurring within six years before the complaint — meaning a complaint filed after 2022-01-16 recovers zero dollars on this patent, and one filed today (2026-09-28) is worth even less. No injunction is available for an expired patent. This is a stronger and simpler defense than any PTAB argument, and it should be the first paragraph of any response.

2. If you still need the invalidity case, the art is free — but verify it. Since no IPR was instituted on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached, so you may raise any ground any prior petitioner raised. Start by pulling the actual petition and institution-stage papers (not the AI-generated summaries) directly from PTAB E2E:

• https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ for IPR2015-01540 (Ford) — the Ex. 1001–1015 set is the most fully documented on the public docket, and the complete termination sequence is on the record.
• https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ for IPR2015-00994 (Mercedes-Benz) — pull Paper 1 and Exs. 1001–1007 to confirm the Decker / Tsuboi+Asai+Gage+Lister / Decker+Arima grounds before relying on the second-hand summary at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2015-00994/doc/1007.
• https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ for IPR2015-00575 (Koito, filed 2015-01-15) and IPR2015-00798 (VW, filed 2015-02-25).

3. Resolve the three unverified numbers before citing them anywhere. IPR2015-00829, IPR2015-00896, and IPR2015-00934 appear on the patent's record with a "(Settlement)" disposition but with no verified petitioner or outcome. Do not put a petitioner name on them in a brief, an IPR petition, or an invalidity contention until you have the E2E docket in hand. If they cannot be verified, describe them as "terminated PTAB proceedings reflected in the patent's file record" without attribution.

4. Correct the ODP discrepancy in anything you file. The USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" feed reports no AIA trials for US 6,886,956, while the patent's bibliographic record reflects seven 2015 IPR filings. Before any filing represents the PTAB history, re-run the ODP query against the patent number itself (not the family) and against PTAB E2E directly, and note the discrepancy. Do not let the ODP null result be read as "this patent has never been challenged at the PTAB" — it was, repeatedly, by four or more major automotive companies.

5. No pending milestones to track. There are no active proceedings, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year FWD due date to diary. The only deadlines that matter now are litigation-side: the § 286 damages window (closed) and any state-law or contract claims a plaintiff might try to layer on top of an expired patent.

Confidence and sourcing note. Verified against multiple independent sources: the existence of all seven proceeding numbers; IPR2015-00575's petitioner (Koito), filing date 2015-01-15, and 2015-07-28 institution-stage disposition; IPR2015-01540's petitioner (Ford), filing date 2015-07-02, full pre-institution termination sequence, and 2015-10-30 judgment; IPR2015-00798's petitioner (Volkswagen) and filing date 2015-02-25; IPR2015-00994's petitioner (Mercedes-Benz) and filing date 2015-04-02; the Acacia/IDT ownership chain; and the 2016-01-16 expiration with "Expired – Fee Related" status. Not verified: the identity of the panel in any proceeding (none is public, because no FWD issued); the petition grounds in IPR2015-00575, -00798, -00829, -00896, and -00934; the grounds in IPR2015-00994 (second-hand, AI-generated summary only); and the petitioners in -00829/-00896/-00934. Where I could not verify, I have said so rather than filling the gap — no claim number, ground, or panel member above should be quoted in a filing without confirming it against the underlying PTAB paper.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,886,956 across the sources you've named.

Let me try more targeted queries on the assignment chain entities.

Let me search for the specific assignment documents and reel/frame numbers.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 6,886,956 B2

Critical sourcing caveat up front: I was not able to query the USPTO Assignment Center directly in this session (no direct API/browser access; only open-web search). Consequently I cannot supply reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record for this patent's chain. Everything below that is factual rests on (a) the authoritative Google Patents legal-events record for this patent (reassignment events, dated), and (b) web-searchable corroboration (Rambus SEC filings, IPR pleadings). I have deliberately not invented reel/frame numbers. Any field I could not verify is marked [not retrieved] rather than guessed. Please treat the reel/frame column as an open diligence item, not as "no records exist."

Inventors

Unusual-pattern note: The pattern here is not the classic "all inventors bolt within 12 months" pre-fire-sale signature. Instead, the lead inventor was retained by the acquirer of the R&D business (Global Lighting Technologies, via the 2010 asset purchase), while the IP itself went to a separate buyer (Rambus). Separating the people (R&D buyer) from the patents (IP buyer) in one transaction is itself a structural tell — it means the patent portfolio was carved out as a stand-alone, tradeable asset from the very first sale.

Original assignee

Solid State Opto Ltd (rendered elsewhere as "Solid State Opto Limited," a British Virgin Islands business company, P.O. Box 957, Offshore Incorporations Centre, Road Town, Tortola, BVI).

• Line of business: Design, prototyping, marketing and manufacture of backlighting / illumination technology — light-emitting panel assemblies (edge-lit guides, LCD and keypad backlighting, automotive lighting). This is the company that actually reduced the claimed subject matter to practice; the '956 specification describes physical assemblies (steering-wheel hubs, bumpers, trunk lids, instrument panels) consistent with a real manufacturing operation.
• Product shipping: Yes — the record describes the assignee's Ohio R&D operation performing prototyping and manufacturing, and the 2010 asset purchase expressly acquired "the research and development, prototyping, marketing, manufacturing of, and the licensing and delivery of intellectual property relating to, backlighting and illumination technologies."
• Structural note worth flagging: Even pre-2010, the holder of record was an offshore BVI IP-holding company, while manufacturing/R&D sat in an Ohio affiliate ("Seller R&D"). The IP was thus held in a dedicated non-operating vehicle years before any NPE entered the chain — an IP-box structure, though not by itself evidence of assertion.
• Current status: Ceased as an independent operating business. Its IP and other assets were sold under the Asset Purchase Agreement among Rambus Inc., Rambus International Ltd., Rambus Delaware LLC, and Global Lighting Technologies, Inc. (as Buyers) and Solid State OPTO Limited (Seller IP) and the Ohio Seller R&D (as Sellers) — filed as Exhibit 2.1 to Rambus Inc.'s Form 10-K, filed 2010-02-26. This was an asset sale, not a bankruptcy (no Chapter 7/11 identified).

Assignment timeline

Recorded reassignment events per the Google Patents legal-events record for US 6,886,956 (recording/publication dates as shown). Reel/frame and correspondent columns could not be retrieved — see caveat above. I have not fabricated them.

• 1996-01-16 (priority parent) / recorded date [not retrieved] — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventors → company) — assumed from standard practice; not shown on the '956 legal-events record
  • Assignor: Parker, Miller, Hough
  • Assignee: Solid State Opto Ltd / Solid State Opto Limited
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Original employment/prosecution assignment vesting title in the BVI IP-holding entity.

• 2010-02-18 / recorded 2010-02-18 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST — SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS")
  • Assignor: SOLID STATE OPTO LIMITED
  • Assignee: RAMBUS INTERNATIONAL LTD.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — note that Rambus recordings elsewhere in this era used in-house correspondent Tarisa Wain, 1050 Enterprise Way #700, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (e.g., Reel 034675/0234 on a different Rambus patent). Do not attribute that reel/frame or correspondent to the '956 chain without Assignment Center confirmation.
  • Context: Acquisition — part of the Rambus/Global Lighting Technologies carve-up of Solid State Opto, executed ~Feb 2010 (Ex. 2.1 to Rambus 10-K filed 2010-02-26).

• 2013-03-04 / recorded 2013-03-04 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: RAMBUS INTERNATIONAL LTD.
  • Assignee: RAMBUS INC.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal reorg — intra-Rambus consolidation.

• 2013-03-04 / recorded 2013-03-04 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: RAMBUS INC.
  • Assignee: RAMBUS DELAWARE LLC
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Internal reorg — parking the asset in a Delaware holding LLC, a common pre-divestiture step.

• 2013-06-26 / recorded 2013-06-26 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: RAMBUS DELAWARE LLC
  • Assignee: ACACIA RESEARCH GROUP LLC (New York)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter — divestiture of the Rambus lighting portfolio into the Acacia licensing platform.

• 2013-06-27 / recorded 2013-06-27 — Reel [not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ACACIA RESEARCH GROUP LLC
  • Assignee: INNOVATIVE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES LLC (Texas)
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter — one-day-later drop-down into the single-purpose assertion vehicle; the suit campaign begins immediately thereafter.

• 2020 (Acacia-family financing) — Reel 052853/0153 – 2020-06-04; Reel 053654/0254 – 2020-06-30 — ADJACENT RECORD, NOT CONFIRMED FOR THIS PATENT

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement then Release of Security Interest
  • Parties: STARBOARD VALUE INTERMEDIATE FUND LP as collateral agent; assignors include ACACIA RESEARCH GROUP LLC, AMERICAN VEHICULAR SCIENCES LLC, BONUTTI SKELETAL INNOVATIONS LLC, and INNOVATIVE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES LLC
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved]
  • Context: Securitization — a family-wide collateral package over Acacia-affiliated entities. These two reels surfaced on a different Acacia/Excalibur-family record (US 2016/0189248), not on the '956 legal-events page, so I cannot confirm the '956 patent is a scheduled asset under them. Flagged as context only.

Bottom line on records: The Assignment Center does contain post-issuance records for this patent (five reassignment events are reflected on the '956 legal-events page), but I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record — the two fields your task most needs. Verify directly at the USPTO Assignment Center and the legacy assignment search searching patent number 6886956.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6886956
    1996 : Priority application filed by Parker and co inventors
    2005 : Patent issues to Solid State Opto Ltd
    2010 : Assigned to Rambus International Ltd
    2013 : Assigned to Rambus Inc
         : Assigned to Rambus Delaware LLC
         : Assigned to Acacia Research Group LLC
         : Assigned to Innovative Display Technologies LLC
         : First infringement suits filed
    2016 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The patent moved from an operating manufacturer (Solid State Opto) through two Rambus holding entities into Acacia Research Group LLC (2013-06-26) and then, one day later, into Innovative Display Technologies LLC (2013-06-27) — a Texas licensing-only LLC with no manufacturing operation and no products embodying the claims. Consecutive hops through "Holdings"/"Delaware" and "Technologies LLC" vehicles, ending in a pure assertion plaintiff.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Acacia Research Group LLC (2013-06-26 entry) appears on the standard public NPE lists. Innovative Display Technologies LLC (2013-06-27 entry) is a high-frequency plaintiff in the Acacia family; in IPR2014-01359 and IPR2015-00757 the patent owner expressly identified "Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation as its real parties-in-interest." The same IDT/Acacia pairing ran a broad E.D. Tex. campaign in 2013–2014 (e.g., 2:13-cv-527; 2:14-cv-106; 2:14-cv-200; 2:14-cv-202; 2:14-cv-222; 2:14-cv-300; 2:14-cv-722; 1:14-cv-849; 1:14-cv-850).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVED. I could not obtain the correspondent of record for any of the five '956 recordings. This is the highest-value gap in this report: if the 2013 Acacia→IDT and Rambus Delaware→Acacia recordings share a single correspondent attorney or firm, that would be a textbook repeat-player finding, and it is exactly the field the Assignment Center exposes. Do not conclude either way until the correspondents are pulled. (The one Rambus correspondent I did observe — Tarisa Wain, Reel 034675/0234 — is on an unrelated Rambus patent and must not be imported into this chain.)

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Four links in rapid succession: Rambus International → Rambus Inc. (2013-03-04) → Rambus Delaware LLC (2013-03-04) → Acacia Research Group LLC (2013-06-26) → Innovative Display Technologies LLC (2013-06-27). The final three hops span under four months, and the last two are back-to-back days. Whether the assignees shared a correspondent address is [not retrieved], so I flag the entities' common platform (Acacia) rather than claiming a shared address.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT. Assignment into Innovative Display Technologies LLC on 2013-06-27 immediately precedes the assertion campaign, which begins with 2013–2014 E.D. Tex. complaints (earliest docket identifier in the family, 2:13-cv-00527). The drop-down into the assertion vehicle and the filing of suits occur within the same ~12-month window (the exact complaint filing date is not confirmed here, so I do not claim a strict sub-6-month interval).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Solid State Opto's assets moved via a negotiated Asset Purchase Agreement (Rambus 10-K Ex. 2.1, filed 2010-02-26), not via a Chapter 7/11 estate sale. No bankruptcy proceeding identified.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. Rambus is a licensing-oriented operating company that acquired the portfolio in 2010 and flipped it to Acacia in 2013. That is a classic IP-portfolio monetization sequence, but I found no evidence that Rambus directed or funded the 2013–2014 automotive suits on its own behalf; the assertions were run by IDT/Acacia. Marking unclear rather than present keeps this honest.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Innovative Display Technologies LLC, an asserting plaintiff — the opposite of an RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN destination. No neutralizing transfer found.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain shows (i) a transfer-to-asserter out of Rambus into Acacia Research Group LLC on 2013-06-26 and then one day later into Innovative Display Technologies LLC on 2013-06-27, (ii) a known asserter in the chain — IDT/Acacia, which itself named Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation as real parties-in-interest in IPR2014-01359 and IPR2015-00757, and (iii) cascading transfers ending in a pre-litigation drop-down immediately preceding the 2013–2014 E.D. Tex. automotive campaign, with the patent running to anticipated expiry on 2016-01-16 and no products ever shipped by the final owner. Signals 1, 2, 4 and 5 are all present; the only unresolved items are the reel/frame citations and the repeat-correspondent test, which require a direct Assignment Center pull.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 6886956 · legacy Assignment Search

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 6,886,956 specifically, focusing on the "References Cited" (US patent documents, foreign documents, and other publications) listed on the patent's face.

The Google Patents snippet only showed the patent's own text so far. Let me drill into the actual "References Cited" tables and the related IPR record, which typically restates the key prior art.

I have strong IPR-derived prior art. Now let me pin down the patent's own front-page "References Cited" list and the other IPR grounds.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,886,956 B2

0. Sourcing caveat (please read first)

Two things you should know before the tables:

1. The authoritative full text you supplied does not contain a front-page "References Cited" (Item 56) table. The document as provided runs from the abstract through the claims and includes no examiner-cited patent/foreign/NPL list. My search tool could not open a USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Full-Text page to pull the Item 56 list either — attempts to surface the "References Cited" section for '956 returned only the patent's own specification text and the cited-by lists of other patents (which cite '956, not the reverse). I therefore cannot honestly hand you "each examiner-cited reference" on the '956 face — I could not enumerate it.

2. What I can ground, and what I give below, are the two best-documented prior-art records for this specific patent:

   • (A) the references the '956 specification itself expressly incorporates by reference, and
   • (B) the references the PTAB petitioners actually grouped against the '956 patent in the 2015 IPRs — the Mercedes-Benz petition (IPR2015-00994) in particular spells out its § 102 and § 103 grounds with a citation-by-citation claim map.

Anything I could not verify I flag rather than guess. I did not return results for similar-but-different patent numbers (e.g., the sibling Parker patents 6,508,563 / 6,367,940 / 6,158,867 / 5,895,115 are treated as family, not as the target).

1. Governing prior-art date (why it matters for § 102)

• The '956 application (Ser. No. 10/298,367) was filed 2002-11-18, but claims priority through the continuation chain to 1996-01-16 (parent Ser. No. 08/585,062 → US 5,895,115).
• Filed before 2013-03-16, the '956 patent is governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102.
• Measured from the earliest supported U.S. filing date, the § 102(b) critical date is on/about 1995-01-16.
• Consequence: every reference below (all published 1981–1993) predates 1995-01-16 and therefore qualifies as § 102(b) art (i.e., more than one year before the effective filing date), assuming the priority claim holds.

⚠️ Flag: the priority date is an assumption stated by the source, not a legal conclusion. If the priority claim were broken for any claim, the critical date would move to 2001-11-18 (one year before the 2002 non-provisional), but that would not change the analysis here since all listed art still predates even that date.

2. References expressly incorporated by the '956 specification

These are the only patent citations that appear in the body of the supplied, authoritative text (see the light-source passage: "any of the types disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,897,771 and 5,005,108, assigned to the same assignee … incorporated herein by reference"):

⚠️ I did not independently confirm the exact titles/issue dates of 4,897,771 and 5,005,108 within this session; the numbers and the "incorporated by reference / same assignee" facts come straight from the '956 text, but the date lines are from memory and should be verified. These are incorporated as teachings, not cited as art; they are unlikely to have been the basis of a § 102 rejection.

Possible additional family/JP citations (unverified): a Google Patents hit for the corresponding Japanese member JP2009227275A surfaced a four-item citation list — JPS62170117A (GM, handle-pad keyboard switch assy, 1987), JPH01172993A (Fujikura, keyboard switch, 1989), JPH06275169A (Fujitsu, keyboard switch, 1994) and JPH07285387A (Clarion, illumination structure for removable operation section, 1995). These map to the switch/keyboard aspect of the disclosure. But I could not confirm these are citations to the '956 patent specifically as opposed to its JP counterpart or the earlier parent ('115). Treat as unconfirmed.

3. References actually marshaled against '956 in the PTAB IPRs (best-documented art)

Source: the ex parte AI Lab reproduction of the IPR2015-00994 petition and exhibits (Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC, Patent 6,886,956, filed Apr. 2, 2015; challenged claims 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 31): https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2015-00994/doc/1004 and .../doc/1007

Additional background art appearing inside the Decker disclosure (not a '956-specific ground I can confirm): German Offenlegungsschrift DE 40 03 807 A1 — a motor-vehicle warning/brake lamp using a number of LED light sources behind a transparent cover disc. Decker cites it as background. If DE 40 03 807 A1 published before 1995-01-16 (it should, having been filed in 1990), it is itself potential § 102(b) art for the LED + light-guide + cover-disc combination. Publication date not verified.

4. Claim-by-claim § 102 synthesis

Reminder on the claim set: claim 1 is the only independent claim visible (claims 2–15 depend from 1; 16–22 from 16; 23–30 from 23; claim 31 depends from 1 and adds that the substrate "provides [protection]" — the text is truncated at claim 31 and claims 32–33 are not visible in the supplied text).

Bottom line on § 102: On the record I could retrieve, the only reference positioned as a single-reference § 102 anticipation of any '956 claim is Decker, DE 41 29 094 A1, and only against claims 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 31. Every other reference is either (a) § 103-combination material (Tsuboi, Asai, Arima, Gage, Lister), (b) applicant's own incorporated material (R1/R2), or (c) unverified (the JP keyboard-switch citations).

5. Critical caveats

1. No adjudication. IPR2015-00994 (Mercedes-Benz) was terminated by settlement; the earlier work-product states these 2015 IPRs (00575, 00798, 00829, 00896, 00934, 00994, 01540) were resolved by institution denial and/or settlement-based termination. So the Decker anticipation theory was never adopted by the Board as a final written decision, and '956 was never held invalid. Treat the claim mapping above as petitioner allegations, not holdings.
2. "Anticipation" is a legal conclusion requiring that a single reference disclose every limitation arranged as claimed; the petitioner's "inherently satisfies" arguments for claims 4, 5 and 31 are the weakest links (inerency is hard to prove), and would normally be contested.
3. § 103 vs § 102: The task asked which references "potentially anticipate under § 102." Strictly, only Decker qualifies as a § 102 candidate; Tsuboi/Asai/Arima/Gage/Lister are § 103 obviousness references and do not individually anticipate under § 102.
4. Dates. I verified the identities of Decker, Tsuboi, Asai, Arima, Gage and Lister from the IPR petition reproduction, but their exact publication dates are from memory/secondary sources and carry uncertainty; only Decker's existence as DE 41 29 094 A1 + DE4129094B4 was confirmed via Google Patents. Before relying on any date for a § 102(b) computation, pull the original documents.
5. Missing Item 56 list. If you need the examiner-cited references (the actual "References Cited" on the '956 face), my searches could not retrieve them, and I will not invent them. The reliable next source is USPTO PatentCenter for application 10/298,367 (the "References Cited" / PTO-892 records), or a PACER/PTAB pull of the IPR2015-00994 exhibit list (Exhibits 1001–1007) which reproduces the petition and its art.

Source URLs used

• Authoritative patent text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6886956/en (and Justia mirror https://patents.justia.com/patent/6886956)
• IPR2015-00994 petition/exhibit summaries (grounds + references): https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2015-00994/doc/1004 ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2015-00994/doc/1007
• DE 41 29 094 (Decker) family page: https://patents.google.com/patent/DE4129094B4
• Family litigation/NPE context (prior section): https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6886956

If you can supply the '956 front-page "References Cited" list (or let me pull it from PatentCenter), I'll re-run the § 102 mapping reference-by-reference against that list specifically, rather than the IPR-derived set above.

I'll pull the prior-art references of record before building the §103 analysis.

Good — I have the Mercedes IPR grounds in detail. Let me pull the other IPR petitions' grounds and the patent's own cited-art list.

§103 Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,886,956 ("the '956 patent")

Scope of what follows, and a sourcing warning up front. This is a merits analysis of obviousness. It is not a report of a binding holding: as established in the previously generated sections, no claim of the '956 patent was ever cancelled, and I found no final written decision or court judgment on validity. Every IPR identified against this patent ended in institution denial (IPR2015-00575 Koito/Stanley, IPR2015-00896 Toyota) or termination/settlement (IPR2015-00798, -00829, -00934, -00994, -01540). The analysis below is therefore my own reconstruction, built from the prior art of record — i.e., (a) the references the patent itself cites or incorporates, and (b) the references petitioners actually pleaded in the '956 IPRs.

Critical limitation on my confidence: I did not obtain or read the primary documents (DE 41 29 094 A1 "Decker"; JPS57-60171 "Tsuboi"; JPS61-153201 "Asai"; JPS62-201407 "Arima"; JP H5-25602U; JP H1-92004U; Gage; Lister; U.S. 5,005,108 "Pristash"). The disclosure mappings below are drawn from petitioner and patent-owner characterizations in the IPR record, most fully for IPR2015-00994 (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/[ptab](/ptab)/IPR2015-00994/doc/1007) and the Koito preliminary response (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1459945](/patent/1459945)/download-documents?artifactId=uNWJ-OwmCcq_N4t-u08RiwcDEjRJvOmxqpUq-N7jN--QPV-_drW7q-A). Treat each reference's content as reported, not independently verified.

Delta to the earlier sections (newly resolved gaps): the Patexia related-case listing for IPR2015-00994 (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Mercedes-Benz-USA-LLC-v-Innovative-Display-Technologies-LLC-id-60958/cases) supplies the petitioner identities my earlier litigation summary flagged as unverified: IPR2015-00798 = Volkswagen Group of America; IPR2015-00829 = Toyota Motor Corporation; IPR2015-00934 = BMW of North America; IPR2015-00896 = Toyota Motor Corporation (filed 2015-03-19, institution denied, panel Green/Quinn/Giannetti, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2015-00896/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6886956/).

1. Legal framework and effective date

• Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 governs. The application (10/298,367) was filed 2002-11-18 as a continuation in a chain running back to Ser. No. 08/585,062 filed 1996-01-16, so its claims carry a pre-AIA effective filing date. The AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions do not apply.
• §102(b) critical date: 1995-01-16 (one year before the earliest U.S. filing date in the §120 chain). Applying Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), the scope/content of the prior art, differences from the claims, PHOSITA level, and secondary considerations are the factual predicates.
• TSM is not the exclusive test. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) permits combination where the art supplies (i) a known technique improving a similar device in the same way, (ii) a simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain a predictable result, (iii) use of known work for its established function, or (iv) "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions." MPEP § 2144.03 (substitution of known elements) and § 2144.04 (obvious duplication of parts) are directly on point, as is In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004) on analogous art.
• Claim 1's functional language ("deformities having shapes for controlling an output ray angle distribution… to suit a particular application") is apparatus-plus-function; where the prior-art structure is the same, inherency defeats it (In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Best, 562 F.2d 1252 (CCPA 1977)).

PHOSITA for this record: a mechanical/optical design engineer with ~2–3 years' experience in vehicle lighting and edge-lit light-guide panels (the level implicitly applied in the IPR petitions).

2. The prior art of record

Two structural points matter: (i) all of the above are patents or printed publications, so they are available in an IPR under 35 U.S.C. § 311(b); and (ii) the '956 specification itself describes the print/deformity, back-reflector, potting/embedding, prism-angle and lenticular-film techniques as known — statements that can operate as applicant admissions under MPEP § 2129 (In re Nomiya, 509 F.2d 566 (CCPA 1975); In re Font, 675 F.2d 297 (CCPA 1982)), independently supplying much of the dependent-claim subject matter.

3. Claim 1 element-by-element against the anchor reference (Decker)

Decker was pleaded as §102 anticipation of claims 1, 4–6, 9 and 31. When a primary reference discloses every element, the claim is a fortiori obvious; the §103 analysis below therefore focuses on (a) shoring up claim 1 against the patent owner's likely construction disputes, and (b) the dependent claims Decker alone does not clearly reach.

4. The combinations, with motivations

Combination A — Decker + Arima (+ Pristash). Decker for the guide/LED/prism/exterior-plate structure; Arima for the express teaching that the substrate is "positioned against" the guide (claim 4) and for attachment (claim 3); Pristash for graded/varied print deformities (claims 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 16, 20, 23–26).
Motivation: Arima and Decker are the same field (vehicle lamps with overlying transparent plates); placing a cover plate in contact with the guide to eliminate an air gap and stabilize the assembly is a mechanical expedient with predictable optical consequences (fewer interface reflections). Pristash addresses the identical problem Decker faces — non-uniform output from a guide lit at one edge — by varying deformity density; combining them is the "known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" rationale of KSR.
Expectation of success: high; no change in principle of operation, only in the density/shape of known extraction features.

Combination B — Tsuboi + Asai + Gage + Lister (the strongest true §103 ground). Tsuboi supplies the vehicle lamp with a wrap-around edge-lit guide, serrated extraction deformities, and a front lens as the transparent substrate — i.e., three of the four claim-1 elements plus the exterior-portion element. Its only deficit is the incandescent bulb where claim 1 requires LEDs. Asai — a wrap-around vehicle lamp from the same company and the same technical area as Tsuboi — supplies an LED embedded at the light-guide edge. Gage and Lister supply the documented, industry-recognized rationale.
Motivations (stacked under KSR/MPEP 2144.03):

1. Same field of endeavor (vehicle lamp assemblies with edge-lit guides) — analogous art per Bigio.
2. Substitution of a known element to obtain a predictable result: the incandescent→LED substitution in automotive exterior lamps was conventional by 1992 (Lister) and the underlying LED benefits were textbook (Gage, 1981).
3. Known technique improving a similar device in the same way: Asai applies the very substitution to the very lamp geometry Tsuboi discloses.
4. Design incentives/market forces: LED advantages (lower heat, longer life, lower current draw, small package, direct edge coupling without a reflector, reduced Fresnel loss) directly serve the thin, low-profile, high-durability exterior lamp defined by claim 1's own specification (panel members "less than one quarter inch thick").
5. Predictable, finite solution set: for an edge-lit lamp, the light source choice was effectively bulb/LED, and the edge-coupling geometry was known.
   Expectation of success: high and articulated — brightness/uniformity improvement plus lower heat, which in turn permits a plastic exterior lens to be placed tightly against the guide. Hotter incandescent sources create exactly the heat/deformation problem that militates for LED substitution, reinforcing the motivation.

Combination C — JP '602 + JP '004 + Pristash (Koito/Stanley's theory). JP '602 as the primary guide/lens reference; JP '004 for the secondary features of claims 1 and 5; Pristash for the claim-4 substrate relationship. Note the patent owner's own summary of its defense: the '602 ground allegedly failed to disclose claim 31's "wherein said substrate provides protection for the light guide." That is the single most contestable element in the whole record (see §6).

5. Claim-by-claim disposition (confidence tiers are mine)

6. Where the patent owner's defense is genuinely strongest

1. Claim 31's "protection" element. Koito's preliminary response attacked precisely this. A reference that discloses a cover plate forming the lamp exterior does not expressly say it "provides protection for the light guide." The counter is inherency plus motivation — the '956 specification itself justifies the overlying lens/film by impact protection and low-profile design, so a POSITA reading Decker in light of the problem the '956 patent identifies would have understood the end plate to protect the guide.
2. Randomness claims (17, 27, 28, 30). These are the hardest to invalidate on the record I found, because the rationale collapses to "obvious to try" / design choice without a teaching of stochastic or random patterns.
3. Claim 16's comparative-variation recitation. Framed as a nine-way Markush of conventional characteristics, it invites a §103 rebuttal that it is an obvious aggregation, but the patent owner can argue no reference teaches inter-interface variation.
4. The "exterior portion" construction. A patent owner could argue claim 1 requires the substrate itself (not merely the lamp in which it sits) to constitute the exterior vehicle surface, and thereby distinguish interior-lighting references (e.g., JP '004-type art). Decker's end plate defeats that construction on the reported facts.

Secondary considerations (objective indicia): I found none in the record — no nexus-proven commercial success, no unexpected-results evidence, no copying, no licensing-due-to-validity. The IDT licensing campaign and the wave of settlements are commercial facts, not competent secondary-consideration evidence without a nexus to the claimed subject matter; I would not treat them as probative here. If anything, the fact that every '956 IPR was resolved by settlement or institution denial — leaving the claims unadjudicated — means there is no administrative or judicial finding either way to lean on.

7. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is the weakest claim in the patent. Decker, as pleaded, discloses every limitation; the claim is anticipated on the petition record and obvious in any event. Combination B (Tsuboi + Asai + Gage + Lister) is the cleaner §103 ground because it rests on a documented LED-substitution rationale rather than a single-reference reading.
• Most dependent claims fall with a modest number of references: Decker for structure; Arima for "positioned against"; Pristash (whose teachings the '956 specification already incorporates) for the print/deformity/varying-density family. Motivation is supplied by the shared field, the identical problem of non-uniform output from an edge-lit guide, and the LED-substitution rationales.
• The claims I cannot support on this record are the randomness claims (17, 27, 28, 30), claim 16's cross-interface variation, and claim 31's protection element — and claims 32–33 remain unassessable because their text is unavailable to me.
• Practical caveats: the '956 patent expired fee-related on 2016-01-16, so an obviousness conclusion today has no prospective injunctive consequence — it matters only for the still-live family members and for pre-expiration damages. And this analysis is mine, not the Board's: no PTAB panel ever reached the merits, so nothing here should be cited as an adjudicated invalidity finding.