Invalidity dossier
US 7014914
Added 9/23/2026, 5:32:43 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 7014914 B2
Title: Polyester yarn and airbags employing certain polyester yarn
Assignee: Milliken and Co (recorded as "MILIKEN Co" / "Milliken and Co"; original assignee Milliken and Co)
Inventor: Ramesh Keshavaraj
Key dates: Priority/filing date 2004-01-09; publication date 2006-03-21; legal status "Expired - Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2024-06-18.
Purpose: The patent addresses polyester yarn for automotive airbag cushions as a lower-cost alternative to stabilized nylon 6,6. The excerpt states that nylon 6,6 has long been a preferred airbag yarn and that nylon yarns with tenacity above 8.0 g/denier are common in airbag use. Polyester has not been favored because it "tends to deteriorate over time at high temperature and high humidity" and has shown "inadequate performance in humidity aging tests." Airbag applications reportedly require a yarn to retain at least about 85% of its strength after several thousand hours of high-temperature, high-humidity exposure. The excerpt states that commercially available polyester airbag yarns "lose more than about 37% strength when exposed to 85° C. and 95% relative humidity for about 3000 hours."
Plain-language scope: The disclosure characterizes polyester yarn by measurable properties — tensile strength (tenacity), intrinsic viscosity (IV), and carboxyl end groups (CEG) — during hydrolytic aging at 80° C. and 95% RH. Prior-art yarns PET 1 (KoSa) and PET 2 (Honeywell), woven at 41 × 41, began at CEG values of 34.3 and 41 equivalents/10⁶ grams and rose to about 79.3 and 104 m.eq/gm after 3000 hours, with accelerated strength loss believed catalyzed by carboxyl end groups. The invention identifies polyester yarn types showing minimal tensile-strength loss under the same conditions (FIGS. 4–5, with a CEG of at least about 80 equivalents/10⁶ grams noted for PET 2 as a contrast point).
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7014914/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It is explicitly excerpted and omits the claims, detailed description, and examples. The exact claim language, numerical claim limits, and the specific yarn composition/process of the invention are therefore not verifiable from this text. The excerpt also gives no litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis, and none is offered here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:43:32 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 7014914. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.