US 7032135

I'll run several targeted searches to ground this analysis in current sources.

Let me verify a few remaining points — any Federal Circuit appeal, and whether an IPR exists.

Verification note

I ran targeted searches for the exact string 7032135 / 7,032,135. Everything below comes from (a) the authoritative full patent text supplied in your message (Google Patents / issued patent PDF), and (b) live search hits on the litigation record. I found no Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming US 7,032,135 — the only 2026 activity I could locate for this patent is the district court case described below. If an appeal exists, my searches did not surface it, so treat "no CAFC appeal" as "not found," not "confirmed absent."

Bibliographic data — US 7,032,135 B2

Abstract (verbatim): "Communication apparatus includes a plurality of interface cards, including a central interface card and spoke interface cards, which are adapted to link communication lines to a network. A protection bus includes multiple spoke connections that link the central interface card to the spoke interface cards in a partial star configuration, such that on at least one of the spoke connections there are two of the spoke interface cards connected together to the central interface card."

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — the apparatus.
A box (e.g., a backplane-based network access shelf) holding several line/interface cards: one central card and several spoke cards, each linking user communication lines (the spec's example is DS-3) into a network. The cards are wired by a single protection bus that runs as a partial star: the central card sits at the hub, and on at least one spoke two spoke cards share a single spoke connection back to the central card. Claim 1 adds the negative limitation that no more than one spoke may be a single-card spoke — i.e., at most one spoke has only one spoke card attached, and all the remaining spokes carry pairs. (With N spoke cards this means the bus needs only ceil(N/2) spokes.)

Claim 10 — the backplane (article of manufacture).
The same architecture claimed as physical hardware: a backplane substrate; a set of receptacles (edge-connector slots) fixed to it, including a central receptacle and spoke receptacles; and printed circuit traces on the substrate forming a protection bus with multiple spoke connections in the partial-star layout — two spoke receptacles tied together onto at least one spoke — again with no more than one single-receptacle spoke and pairs on the rest. This claim captures the core commercial point of the invention: the shared traces cut both backplane trace count and connector pin count versus separate 1:1 and 1:N buses.

Claim 11 — the method of fault protection.
Steps: (1) arrange the central + spoke interface cards to serve communication lines; (2) interconnect them with the partial-star protection bus (two spoke cards on at least one spoke; no more than one single-card spoke, pairs elsewhere); (3) determine that a fault occurred in a first card serving a first line; (4) responsive to the fault, convey the traffic over the protection bus from that card to a second card, so the second card serves that line in place of the first. The specification's worked example is toggling switches 40/42 to shunt the failed card's DS-3 line onto the shared spoke, either to its paired 1:1 partner (FIGS. 3–4) or up to the central card in the 1:N mode (FIGS. 6–7).

Dependent claims add the specifics: working/protection pairs operating 1:1 (claims 2, 12), the working card's connection interface plus input switch that forwards to the protection card on fault (3, 13), the protection card's output switch feeding its processing circuitry (4), the central card acting as the 1:1 partner for the lone single-card spoke (5, 14), the central card acting as 1:N protection for the spoke cards (6, 15), spoke-card input switches forwarding on fault (7, 16), per-spoke output switches on the central card (8), and card switches that select between 1:N and 1:1 modes on the same bus (9, 17).

Litigation posture (as of April 2026)

• Enhanced Data Streaming LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., Civil Action No. 2:25-cv-01038-JRG, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (Judge Rodney Gilstrap). EDS filed 2025-10-10 asserting five patents: U.S. 9,185,151 (reissued as RE50,398), 6,891,855, 7,336,605, 7,660,234, and 7,032,135 (the "'135 Patent"). Cisco's Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the indirect and willful infringement claims was DENIED (Memorandum Opinion and Order, entered 2026-06-02). Pre-suit knowledge was pleaded partly on a March 2017 letter from Orckit IP LLC to Cisco with a portfolio schedule.
  • Sources: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-01038/pdf/USCOURTS-txed-2_25-cv-01038-0.pdf ; https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/2:2025cv01038/[241096](/patent/241096)/48/
• Google Patents also flags a "first worldwide family litigation" entry (Darts-ip family 32092282) pointing to the same Texas action.
• The patent's own record (the full text you supplied) lists it as Expired – Lifetime with adjusted expiration 2024-02-11, i.e., the asserted term expired before the 2025 complaint was filed. That is a notable posture issue for damages on this particular patent and is worth flagging; it does not by itself preclude suit (a patentee can sue for past infringement within the § 286 limitations period).

Uncertainties and record caveats

1. Assignee accuracy. Google Patents states its assignee list "may be inaccurate." The auditor's chain reads: inventors → Corrigent Systems Ltd. (2002) → Orckit-Corrigent Ltd. (name change, effective 2009-09-06) → Hudson Bay security agreement 2013 and release 2013-07-26 → Orckit IP, LLC (2016-05-10 record) → Enhanced Data Streaming LLC (effective 2025-03-09). I did not independently confirm the EDS assignment in USPTO Patent Center; I also could not retrieve a live Patent Center status page, so the "Expired – Lifetime / 2024-02-11" status is taken from the patent record, not from a direct USPTO query.
2. Claim-numbering discrepancy between publication and grant. The pre-grant publication (US 2004/0078620 A1, per Justia) renders the "no more than a single one of the spoke connections…" limitation as claim 2, while the granted patent (authoritative text above, and the issued PDF) puts it in claim 1 and shifts the working/protection-pair limitation to claim 2. I treated the granted patent as controlling. If you need the precise published-application claim set for a priority or intervening-rights analysis, pull the 2004/0078620 A1 text directly.
3. No CAFC 2026 docket found. My searches did not locate any Federal Circuit 2026 appeal naming 7,032,135 or Enhanced Data Streaming v. Cisco. The Federal Circuit docket I did see for this dispute family is a district-court-level denial of a motion to dismiss, which is not appealable as of right. I cannot state affirmatively that no appeal exists.
4. No IPR identified for the '135 patent. I did not find a PTAB petition challenging 7,032,135. This should be read as "not found in the searches performed," not as a definitive absence; PTAB dockets were not exhaustively queried (a search step limit was reached).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7032135.

Let me search for additional litigation involving this patent, and check the parties involved.

Let me check for any additional Enhanced Data Streaming cases and confirm whether the '135 patent appears in other suits.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 7,032,135

Based on my searches of litigation databases (Unified Patents litigation portal, Justia/Docket Alarm dockets, CourtListener, govinfo, and Google Patents' litigation links), I found one (1) lawsuit asserting U.S. Patent No. 7,032,135.

Case 1: Enhanced Data Streaming LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc.

Details:

• The '135 patent is one of five patents asserted in the complaint: U.S. Patent Nos. 9,185,151 (reissued April 22, 2025 as RE50,398), 6,891,855, 7,336,605, 7,660,234, and 7,032,135.
• The accused functionality relates to Cisco network equipment (e.g., switches/routers), with features such as "StackWise Virtual," "Cisco FabricPath," and virtual port channels (vPC) alleged to implicate the partial-star/redundancy architectures.
• Procedural history: Cisco moved to dismiss the indirect and willful infringement claims on December 19, 2025 (Dkt. 17). EDS filed a First Amended Complaint on January 16, 2026 (Dkt. 22). Cisco filed a second motion to dismiss on January 30, 2026 (Dkt. 26). On June 2, 2026, Judge Gilstrap denied Cisco's motion to dismiss (Dkt. 48), finding EDS had adequately pled pre-suit knowledge (via a March 20, 2017 letter from prior owner Orckit IP LLC to Cisco and an enclosed "Schedule of Orckit IP's Patent Portfolio") and specific intent for induced infringement.
• Outcome: No final judgment; the case remains in active litigation. This case is the "Family has litigation" entry shown on the patent's Google Patents page, which links to 2:25-cv-01038.

Ownership / assignment context (relevant to the litigation)

• Original assignee: Corrigent Systems Ltd. / Orckit Corrigent Ltd. (Israel) → Orckit-Corrigent Ltd. → Orckit IP, LLC (2016) → Enhanced Data Streaming LLC (assignment recorded Aug. 15, 2025, effective March 9, 2025). The re-assignment to the NPE plaintiff immediately preceded the October 2025 suit.
• The patent is listed as Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2024-02-11), which would limit recoverable damages to the period before expiration.

What I did NOT find (important caveats)

• No other district court cases asserting the '135 patent were identified. Notably, the related Orckit Corporation v. Cisco Systems, Inc. suits — Case No. 2:22-cv-276 (E.D. Tex., filed 2022) and Case No. 2:25-cv-00181 (E.D. Tex., filed February 14, 2025) — assert different patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,680,904; 7,545,740; 8,830,821; and 10,652,111) and therefore do not involve the '135 patent.
• No CAFC appeal and no PTAB/IPR proceeding specifically directed at U.S. 7,032,135 was identified (the IPRs I located — e.g., Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Orckit Corp., IPR2023-00554 — concern other Orckit patents, not the '135 patent).

Confidence and limitations

I have high confidence in the existence and core details (parties, jurisdiction, case number, status) of the Enhanced Data Streaming v. Cisco case, since it is confirmed by multiple independent sources (govinfo PDF, Justia, CourtListener, and the Unified Patents portal). I have lower confidence that no additional, more recent litigation exists, because I could not exhaustively query PACER, Darts-IP, or the full Unified Patents case list, and new suits (including against other defendants by EDS) could have been filed and not yet surfaced. If you need certainty, a direct PACER/RPX or Darts-IP search on the patent number is recommended.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for US 7,032,135 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searching surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. There is therefore nothing to tally as active / invalidated / sustained / settled / institution-denied: no claims are canceled, no claims are sustained, and no statutory estoppel has attached to anyone.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the claims of the '135 patent are completely untested at the PTAB and are not "hardened" — they are simply unadjudicated. That cuts both ways. There is no PTAB kill-shot to hand you, but there is also no adverse institution/estoppel precedent, and every prior-art ground remains available. The single most important fact about this patent's defensive posture is not the PTAB at all — it is the expiration date, discussed in the strategic summary.

Caveat on completeness: per the structured block, a recently filed petition that the ODP has not yet indexed could exist. I found no such filing. If you are counsel of record, confirm directly against PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and the patent's USPTO PatentCenter "Patent Trial" tab before relying on the negative.

No proceedings to list

Because the canonical structured data (and my search) show zero AIA trials, the requested per-proceeding sections are inapposite. I am not going to invent a proceeding number, a panel, or an FWD. For completeness, here is the litigation context that a defendant needs instead:

Related civil action — Enhanced Data Streaming LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-01038-JRG (E.D. Tex.)

• Filed: 2025-10-09/2025-10-10 (Unified Patents lists 2025-10-09; the court's opinion recites filing on 2025-10-10).
• Judge: Rodney Gilstrap (Marshall Division).
• Patents asserted: U.S. 9,185,151 (reissued 2025-04-22 as RE50,398), 6,891,855, 7,336,605, 7,660,234, and 7,032,135 — the '135 patent is one of five.
• Status: Open. Cisco's Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss EDS's indirect- and willful-infringement theories was denied on 2026-06-02 (Memorandum Opinion and Order, Dkt. 48). The court held EDS adequately pleaded pre-suit knowledge based on a 2017-03-20 letter from Orckit IP, LLC to Cisco and its enclosed "Schedule of Orckit IP's Patent Portfolio," and adequately pleaded post-suit intent.
• Sources: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10893882](/patent/10893882)/enhanced-data-streaming-llc-v-cisco-systems-inc/ ; https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/2:2025cv01038/[241096](/patent/241096)/48/ ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A25-cv-01038
• Defensive value: No PTAB estoppel exists here, so Cisco (or any co-defendant) remains free to run § 102/§ 103 invalidity on the '135 patent in the district court — but see the expiration point below, which likely matters more than validity.

Other Orckit-lineage litigation (context, not this patent)

Cisco is also defending Orckit-lineage assertions in E.D. Tex. on different patents — e.g., Quicker Connections LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01074 (E.D. Tex.) (asserting 6,822,943; 6,834,038; 7,054,264; 7,061,859; 7,483,399, with a Cisco IPR petition on the '859 patent referencing "settled expectations" and Fintiv arguments) and Orckit Corp v. Cisco Systems Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00181 (E.D. Tex.). These show the same portfolio being monetized in waves against Cisco, but none of them involves the '135 patent, and none is an AIA trial on the '135 patent.

Note on Unified Patents: Unified appears in the Google Patents record only as the source of the litigation data for the 2:25-cv-01038 case. There is no evidence Unified Patents filed, funded, or joined any IPR against the '135 patent. Do not assume a defensive aggregator is in the chain.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All seventeen claims of US 7,032,135 — independent claims 1, 10, and 11 and dependents 2–9 and 12–17 — are UNTESTED at the PTAB. None are canceled; none are sustained. There has been no narrowing whatsoever through AIA review. The partial-star protection-bus claims (claim 1's "no more than a single one of the spoke connections has only one of the spoke interface cards connected thereto," and its backplane (claim 10) and method (claim 11) counterparts) stand as issued.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR reached a final written decision, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to any party. There is no petitioner barred from raising a ground it raised or reasonably could have raised. For a defendant currently being asserted against, the entire § 102/§ 103 prior-art space — including patents, printed publications, and (in district court) system/product art that IPR cannot reach under § 311(b) — remains open. Practically, the strongest district-court lever is not prior art but the patent's term.

Expiration — the controlling fact. Google Patents' legal-status data records the '135 patent as "Expired – Lifetime," with an adjusted expiration of 2024-02-11 (20-year term running from the 2002-08-02 filing, as adjusted). Any recovery is confined to damages for infringement occurring no more than six years before the complaint (35 U.S.C. § 286; EDS filed in October 2025, so back to roughly October 2019) and in no event after the expiration date. There is no injunctive exposure for post-expiration conduct. This is a damages-only, historical-accrual case for the '135 patent.

PTAB filing posture today. This is a poor PTAB candidate right now for three independent reasons: (1) a § 315(b) time bar will run one year from service of the complaint on any party served; (2) under the current Director-driven discretionary regime, the "settled expectations" factor and the near-decade-plus age of a now-expired patent weigh heavily toward discretionary denial (see the Acting/confirmed Director's Dabico Airport Solutions v. AXA Power, IPR2025-00408 decision, denying institution where the patent had been in force ~8 years); and (3) the practical damages window is closing. For a defendant here, ex parte reexamination is the lower-risk administrative route (no Fintiv/§ 315(b) gatekeeping, no settled-expectations overlay, no post-filing participation needed), if a validity challenge is wanted at all.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not assume PTAB activity exists. It does not. Verify on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and the PatentCenter "Patent Trial" tab for US 7,032,135 before filing anything that turns on the absence of estoppel; the structured ODP block is authoritative and I found nothing to contradict it.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) one-year bar from the date each defendant was served in 2:25-cv-01038 (filed 2025-10-09/10). If you intend to petition at all, that clock governs.
3. Lead with expiration and § 286, not validity. Confirm the official expiration/term-adjustment date from the patent's file wrapper (PTA/terminal-disclaimer history and any extension). A complaint asserting an expired patent should be narrowed to the six-year lookback window and offers zero injunction leverage — press that early in the case, including on remedies and case-management grounds.
4. If a validity challenge is still wanted, weigh ex parte reexam first. It sidesteps the 2025 discretionary-dénial regime entirely. If you do petition, brief the § 314(a) discretionary factors head-on — litigation status (EDTX trial timing vs. the statutory 1-year FWD deadline), the Sotera/Super-Stipulation posture, and a direct rebuttal of "settled expectations."
5. Monitor for a late-filed petition. Old-portfolio NPE suits frequently attract IPR petitions months after service. Re-run the ODP query periodically; if a petition appears, the institution decision, the panel, and any FWD (claim-level) will be public on PTAB E2E and are the only authoritative source for claim-by-claim outcomes.
6. No appeal trail to chase. With no FWD, there is no Federal Circuit docket for this patent; the only appellate/opinion activity in the record is the district court's 2026-06-02 Rule 12(b)(6) denial and EDS's earlier pleading skirmishes.

I'll research the assignment chain and litigation record before building the report.

Good — I have the litigation. Now let me pin down the recorded correspondents and the Orckit history.

Rich context. Now let me pin down the correspondents of record and the Enhanced Data Streaming entity.

US 7032135 — Ownership & Assertion Reconstruction

Sources used: Google Patents legal-events/assignment data for US7032135B2 (patents.google.com/patent/US7032135), the E.D. Tex. docket and memorandum opinions in Enhanced Data Streaming LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., 2:25-cv-01038-JRG, Unified Patents litigation portal, and PTAB/PTACTS filings from related Orckit proceedings. Where a field was not in the retrieved record, I mark it as such rather than guess.

⚠️ Note on correspondents: The reel/frame data for this patent does not publish the recording correspondent in the sources retrieved. I have flagged the correspondent entries I could verify from related Orckit IP records and explicitly marked them as not-this-patent. I did not fabricate any correspondent name or reel/frame.

Inventors

All three executed the inventor→company assignment between 2002-07-09 and 2002-07-15, i.e., before the 2002-08-02 filing date — normal in-house practice, not a red flag.

Unusual patterns: I found no evidence that any of the three inventors left Corrigent within 12 months of filing; that specific tell is not determinable from the sources retrieved. What is documented is the assignee's later corporate collapse (see below) — the "portfolios get sold after the operating company fails" pattern here operates at the company level, not via individual inventor departures.

Original assignee

Corrigent Systems Ltd. (Israel), renamed Orckit-Corrigent Ltd. by change of name effective 2009-09-06 (recorded 2014-04-01, Reel 032579/0201).

• Business: telecom networking hardware — packet-transport network switches, notably the CM-4000 product family (CM-4140, CM-4206, CM-4314T/4314) and the CM-401x switch family, sold to Tier-1 carriers (Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, WilTel). Contemporaneous PTAB filings state Orckit-Corrigent invested >$200M in R&D and at times exceeded $500M in annual revenue. The '135 patent's backplane partial-star protection bus is exactly the kind of shelf/line-card architecture such products use.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Corrigent/Orckit-Corrigent ran a documented patent-marking program, affixing a marking label to shipped products that listed Orckit patents (established in Orckit-related PTAB papers). I could not verify that the '135 patent specifically appears on that label, so I state product-practice as probable, not confirmed for this patent.
• Current status: Dissolved / liquidated. After the dot-com bust the company accumulated debt, entered Israeli debt-restructuring/insolvency proceedings in 2012, and went into liquidation; in 2015 its shell was offered for roughly NIS 500,000 (Globes). In 2016 its patents were purchased out of the insolvency proceedings by Orckit IP, LLC (PTAB record; IAM Media, "This company went bankrupt, and NPEs bought its patents and filed 26 litigations," 2 Sep 2024).

Assignment timeline

Recorded chain for US 7032135 (all reel/frame data from the Google Patents legal-events table for the patent):

• 2002-07-09/15 (executed) / recorded 2002-08-02 — Reel 013170/0387

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Rafi Harel; Leon Bruckman; Gal Mor
  • Assignee: Corrigent Systems Ltd. (Israel)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in source
  • Context: initial inventor-to-company assignment at formation of the portfolio.

• 2013-03-18 (executed) / recorded 2013-03-18 — Reel 030033/0774

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Orckit-Corrigent Ltd. (Israel)
  • Assignee: Hudson Bay IP Opportunities Master Fund, LP (New York)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in source
  • Context: securitization — the portfolio pledged as collateral for financing as the company's finances deteriorated.

• 2013-07-23 (effective) / recorded 2013-07-26 — Reel 030887/0983

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Hudson Bay IP Opportunities Master Fund LP
  • Assignee: Orckit-Corrigent Ltd. (Israel)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in source
  • Context: release of the security interest (financing repaid/restructured) — title returns to the operating company.

• recorded 2014-04-01 (effective 2009-09-06) — Reel 032579/0201

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Corrigent Systems Ltd.
  • Assignee: Orckit-Corrigent Ltd (Israel)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in source
  • Context: internal corporate reorg — change of name only, no change in beneficial ownership.

• 2016-04-25 (effective) / recorded 2016-05-10 — Reel 038529/0087

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Orckit Communication Ltd.; Orckit-Corrigent Ltd.; Corrigent Systems Ltd.
  • Assignee: Orckit IP, LLC (Delaware)
  • Correspondent: not in this patent's record. Related Orckit IP records show a power-of-attorney/correspondence address of Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green, PA c/o Peter Nieves, 1000 Elm Street, Manchester, NH 03105-3701, and an Orckit IP, LLC registered address of 874 Walker Road, Suite C, Dover, Delaware (a registered-agent service address). Flagged as related-record, not confirmed on Reel 038529/0087.
  • Context: bankruptcy/insolvency fire-sale — the entire Orckit-Corrigent patent estate purchased out of the Israeli liquidation.

• 2025-03-09 (effective) / recorded 2025-08-15 — Reel 072030/0801

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Orckit IP LLC
  • Assignee: Enhanced Data Streaming LLC (Texas)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved in source
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter — selected patents carved out to a newly formed assertion entity; suit against Cisco followed weeks later.

Related-record tell (not on this patent's reels, but on the Orckit IP chain): the same Orckit IP rights have shuttled through additional vehicles — Orckit IP, LLC → Blackbird Tech LLC (Reel 045708/0435, 2018-04-26) → Orckit IP, LLC (Reel 048067/0604, 2019-01-09) and Orckit IP, LLC → Nahum Communication N.T.B. Ltd. (Reel 060539/0804, 2021-12-31) → Orckit IP, LLC (Reel 060544/0799, 2022-06-15) — with correspondent Richard A. Baker, Jr., 291 Main Street, West Newbury, MA 01985 on the Nahum re-acquisition. This demonstrates portfolio-level asset-shuffling and a repeat New-England correspondent, though it pertains to other Orckit patents.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7032135
    2002 : Filed by Corrigent Systems Ltd
         : Inventors assign rights to Corrigent
    2006 : Patent issued as US 7032135
    2013 : Security agreement to Hudson Bay fund
         : Release by secured party to Orckit
    2014 : Corrigent renamed Orckit Corrigent Ltd
    2016 : Fire sale to Orckit IP LLC out of liquidation
    2017 : Year 12 maintenance fee paid
    2024 : Adjusted patent term expiration
    2025 : Orckit IP assigns to Enhanced Data Streaming
         : EDS sues Cisco in E D Texas

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT. The patent sits in Orckit IP, LLC, a licensing-only vehicle (Delaware, address 874 Walker Road, Suite C, Dover, Delaware — a registered-agent service address, from related Orckit IP records), and was then conveyed by Reel 072030/0801 (effective 2025-03-09) to Enhanced Data Streaming LLC (Texas), a newly formed entity with no products. Its entire footprint evidenced here is a single infringement suit.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Orckit IP, LLC is a recognized NPE vehicle (IAM Media, 2 Sep 2024: Orckit's bankruptcy "sold its patents to a web of 10 NPEs," generating 26 litigations). Enhanced Data Streaming LLC is labeled an "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" by Unified Patents' litigation portal for case 2:25-cv-01038. Neither appears on the Acacia/Marathon/Intellectual Ventures/Mosaid lists, so the match is via the Unified Patents asserter directory, not a name-brand NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / not established. The correspondent of record for Reels 013170/0387, 030033/0774, 030887/0983, 032579/0201, 038529/0087, and 072030/0801 was not available in the retrieved record, so I cannot confirate a repeating recording attorney on this chain. On the related Orckit IP chain the recurring correspondents are Peter Nieves (Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green, Manchester NH) and Richard A. Baker, Jr. (West Newbury, MA) — suggestive of a small, repeat-player recording bench, but flagged as related-record, and a single appearance would not be a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT for this patent (but present at portfolio level). The '135 patent has only two post-issuance ownership hops: Orckit-Corrigent → Orckit IP (2016) and Orckit IP → Enhanced Data Streaming (2025), separated by ~9 years. Other Orckit patents, however, show rapid chained LLC transfers (Blackbird Tech, Nahum Communication) — a portfolio-level pattern, not this patent's own chain.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (with a nuance). The assignment to Enhanced Data Streaming LLC was effective 2025-03-09 and recorded 2025-08-15 (Reel 072030/0801); the Cisco suit was filed 2025-10-09/10 (2:25-cv-01038). That is ~7 months after execution (just outside the strict 6-month execution window) but only ~8 weeks after recording — consistent with a chain assembled to establish clean standing/venue shortly before assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT. Orckit-Corrigent entered Israeli insolvency (2012 restructuring; liquidation by ~2015-2016) and its patents, including this one, were purchased out of the proceedings by Orckit IP, LLC via Reel 038529/0087 (2016-04-25). Multiple PTAB filings and IAM Media corroborate the fire-sale framing.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT / unclear. No evidence retrieved that an operating company is using this NPE to attack its own competitors; Orckit-Corrigent is defunct, not a sponsoring operating company.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN.

Additional term note: Google Patents shows an adjusted expiration of 2024-02-11 and legal status "Expired – Lifetime" — i.e., the patent appears to have expired before the October 2025 Cisco suit was filed. If correct, the 2025 assertion can only reach pre-expiration past damages. This does not change the ownership analysis but is relevant to the litigation posture.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain shows two strong, documented signals: a bankruptcy fire-sale (Orckit-Corrigent's estate conveyed to the licensing-only Orckit IP, LLC at Reel 038529/0087, 2016-04-25) followed by a shell-entity, pre-litigation transfer to Enhanced Data Streaming LLC at Reel 072030/0801 (effective 2025-03-09, recorded 2025-08-15) just ~8 weeks before Enhanced Data Streaming LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., 2:25-cv-01038-JRG (E.D. Tex., filed 2025-10-09/10), in which Unified Patents classifies the plaintiff as an NPE. The absence of any products, the registered-agent-and-licensing LLC profile, and the tightly timed transfer-to-assertion make an operating-company-assertion reading untenable.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov (search "7032135") or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (same underlying records); litigation record at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A25-cv-01038

Two caveats the record forces me to state plainly: (a) the recording correspondents for the six reel/frame entries above were not retrievable from the sources I could access, so Signal 3 is unresolved rather than negative; and (b) the product-practice/marking question for the '135 patent specifically is probable but not confirmed. If you can pull the raw assignment records directly from Assignment Center (which exposes the correspondent field per reel), Signal 3 can be closed out — and on the related Orckit reels the names to test for recurrence are Peter Nieves and Richard A. Baker, Jr.

I'll verify the patent via search and then analyze the cited prior art references.

Let me gather details on the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 7,032,135 B2

"Equipment protection using a partial star architecture" (Orckit Corrigent Ltd. → Orckit IP, LLC → Enhanced Data Streaming LLC)

1. Patent Confirmation (literal identifiers preserved)

The number 7032135 resolves uniquely to this document. No other patent number was substituted. (Note: search results for "7032135" returned only this patent, plus coincidental hits from unrelated PTAB proceedings citing "JPAP '213" — those are not US 7,032,135 and were disregarded.)

Independent claims of record: claim 1 (apparatus), claim 10 (backplane), claim 11 (method). Dependent claims 2–9 and 12–17. The distinguishing structural limitation common to all three independent claims is the "partial star" bus — "on at least one of the spoke connections there are two of the spoke interface cards connected together to the central interface card," and in the granted claims, "no more than a single one of the spoke connections has only one of the spoke interface cards connected thereto."

2. Legal Framing and an Important Date Caveat

Because the application was filed 2002-08-02, it is governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a), (b), (e) (first-to-invent). For a reference to be § 102 prior art, its date must precede 2002-08-02 — as a printed publication (102(b) if >1 yr before; 102(a) if before the invention), a U.S. patent granted before the filing date, or a published U.S. application with an effective filing date before 2002-08-02 (102(e)).

Three of the "citations" listed on the face of the patent carry effective dates after 2002-08-02 and therefore are not § 102 prior art at all; they appear in the citation list for completeness/IDS purposes. They are flagged below.

Also note: a single reference anticipating a claim must disclose every limitation. The recurring problem for the examiner here is that the cited art is rich in 1:1 and 1:N line-card protection on a shared bus, but (based on the abstracts/text I could retrieve) does not disclose the partial-star grouping of two spoke cards per spoke trace. My per-reference anticipatory assessments below reflect that, and I state explicitly where a reference is better characterized as § 103 (obviousness) art than § 102 art.

3. Citation Inventory (19 patent citations, as listed on the face of US 7,032,135)

* = cited by examiner. Dates are publication dates as listed by Google Patents.

Non-patent citations (3):

• Microsoft Computer Dictionary, 5th ed. (2002) — definitions of "Star Network," "Star Topology," "Mesh Network." Used to construe "partial star." Not anticipatory; claim-construction reference only.
• Cisco ONS 15454 product literature (May 2002). Potentially a § 102(b) printed-publication candidate for 1:N protection in optical transport platforms, if verified to disclose the claimed bus topology. Not yet verified in this analysis.
• Null, Linda, The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture (2003), p. 536 — general architecture text; background only.

⚠️ Post-dating citations that are NOT prior art to this patent: US 2004/0228627 A1 (IBM, priority 2003-05-15), which appears in the "cited by / attorney-cited" set. References US 2003/0088698 A1 (filed 2001-11-06) and US 2003/0147344 A1 (filed 2002-02-07) do predate 2002-08-02 on their filing dates and could qualify under § 102(e) if applicable, but are in unrelated fields.

4. Detailed Analysis of the Significant References

4.1 The two most relevant references

US 6,636,478 B1 — Metro Optix, Inc. ("Configurable scalable communications equipment protection method system") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 6,636,478 B1; filed 2000-05-03 (Appl. 09/563,518); granted 2003-10-21; inventors Steven Dale Sensel, David Allen Hamblin, Timothy Albert Carey; Metro Optix, Inc. (Allen, TX).
• Description: A configurable/scalable line-interface-card protection system for front-access shelves. A daisy-chain alternate signal path, signal selectors (relays), and alternate front-panel entry points are provided. Any interface card can be designated a primary or a protection card "without hardware-constrained or slot-specific card requirements." "Variations of 1:N protection, and multiple groups of 1:N configurations and partitions can be defined without changes to cabling or backplane design variations through setting of relays and signal selectors on each card." Claims recite three per-card relays and three interconnection modes ("route to daisy-chain," "through," "daisy-chain terminator").
• Assessment: This is the closest art on flexible/configurable 1:1↔1:N protection that reuses the same backplane interconnects, which maps to the purpose of independent claims 1/10/11 and to dependent claims 9 and 17 (switching between 1:N and 1:1 configurations). However, the Metro Optix topology is a linear daisy-chain, not a star/hub-and-spoke with a central card at the hub, and it does not disclose two spoke cards sharing a single spoke connection to a central card. A single reference must disclose all elements, so § 102 anticipation of claims 1, 10, and 11 is unlikely; claim 9/17 likewise depend from the partial-star base claim and are not anticipated standing alone. Best characterization: principal § 103 reference.

US 6,724,880 B1 — Nortel Networks ("Method and apparatus for sparing communications circuits") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 6,724,880 B1; filed 2000-08-11; granted 2004-04-20; Nortel Networks Limited.
• Description: Sparing of communications circuits on a shared backplane arrangement (as listed on the face of the patent). I do not have verified claim text for this reference in the retrieved material — treat the following as provisional.
• Assessment: Listed as examiner-cited and appears directed to the same field (sparing communications circuits on a bus). It is a plausible § 102/§ 103 candidate for the 1:N aspects of claims 6–8, but I could not verify disclosure of the partial-star spoke grouping; no anticipation of claims 1, 10, 11 is supportable on the present record.

4.2 1:N redundancy on an interconnect bus

US 6,879,559 B1 — Chiaro Networks, Ltd. ("Router line card protection using one-for-N redundancy") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 6,879,559 B1; Appl. 09/703,043 filed 2000-10-31; granted 2005-04-12; Chiaro Networks, Ltd. (also published as EP 1 202 504 A2, 2002-05-02). Inventors incl. Blackmon, Brewer, Dozier, Kleiner, McDermott, Palmer, Shaw, Traylor.
• Description: Router line cards are partitioned, separating packet forwarding from external/internal interfaces. A serial bus structure on the interface side interconnects any interface port within a protection group with a protect line card for that group. Any failed working line card is switchably replaced; "one-for-N protection ratios, where N is an integer greater than two," with <100 ms switch time. Duplicate data bus supports hot replacement. (Claims recite N working cards + M protect cards, solid-state switches, 2×2 switches, serial bus structure.)
• Assessment: Strong § 102/§ 103 art for the 1:N protection concepts of claims 6, 7, and (in part) 8, and for the notion of a shared bus that connects many interface cards to a single protection card. It does not disclose a central interface card at a star hub with pairs of spoke interface cards sharing one spoke — the bus here is a serial/daisy-chain structure. No anticipation of claims 1, 10, 11. Note its EP counterpart published 2002-05-02, before the critical date, and the US application's 2000-10-31 filing date is § 102(e) prior art.

US 6,359,858 B1 — Fujitsu Network Communications ("Switching redundancy control") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 6,359,858 B1; filed 1999-06-03; granted 2002-03-19; Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc.
• Description: Switching redundancy control (as listed on the face of the patent). I do not have verified claim text; treated as provisional.
• Assessment: Field-relevant, examiner-cited. Plausibly relevant to the 1:N aspects of claims 6–8, but the record here does not support anticipation of the partial-star independent claims.

4.3 Spare-card switching on a high-speed interface (Alcatel)

US 5,321,393 A — Alcatel Network Systems, Inc. ("Spare card connection and switching circuitry for high-speed telecommunications interfaces") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 5,321,393 A; filed 1992-04-10; granted 1994-06-14; Alcatel Network Systems, Inc. (companion to US 5,321,394 A).
• Description: 1-for-n / m-for-n protection for DS-3/STS interface cards. A switch card routes incoming signals to working cards or a spare card; the spare card can "bridge on" to monitor a working card. A second data path substitutes the spare card for a malfunctioning working card.
• Assessment: Relevant § 102 art for the fault-triggered transfer of a user-line signal to a protection card recited in claims 3 and 7 (and the mirrored output-switch concept of claims 4 and 8, given the transmitter/receiver substitution paths). However, it uses a separate central switch card (a full-star-like crosspoint), and the spare is a single dedicated card, not a partial-star hub with paired spoke cards. It does not anticipate claims 1, 10, 11; relevant chiefly as § 103 art against the switching-dependent dependent claims.

4.4 Improved-redundancy telecom switch (Excel)

US 5,596,569 A — Excel, Inc. ("Telecommunications switch with improved redundancy") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 5,596,569 A; filed 1994-03-08; granted 1997-01-21; Excel, Inc.
• Description: Redundant switching architecture in a telecommunications switch (as listed). I was unable to retrieve verified claim text.
• Assessment: Field-relevant background/§ 103 art on redundancy in a switch fabric. Cannot be asserted as anticipatory to the partial-star claims on the present record.

US 5,638,358 A — NEC ("Protection switching system having impedance matching circuits") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 5,638,358 A; filed 1994-04-27; granted 1997-06-10; NEC Corporation.
• Description: Protection switching with impedance-matching circuits (as listed). Apparatus-specific to line interfaces.
• Assessment: Weak relevance. Potentially relevant only to the physical-layer/high-impedance bridging aspects, not the topology. Not anticipatory.

4.5 / 4.6 Line-card redundancy switching applications (2002-published)

US 2002/0179720 A1 — Valentino Liva ("Method and apparatus for redundancy switching in line cards") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 2002/0179720 A1; filed 2001-05-30; published 2002-12-05.
• Assessment: Examiner-cited and directly on point for line-card redundancy switching; § 102(e) prior art by its 2001-05-30 filing date. Provisional: relevant to claims 2–9 (1:1/1:N line-card switching). No support on record for the partial-star limitation; cannot anticipate claims 1, 10, 11.

US 2003/0196135 A1 — ADC DSL Systems, Inc. ("Protection switching of interface cards in communication system") *cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 2003/0196135 A1; filed 2002-04-10; published 2003-10-16.
• Assessment: Filed before the 2002-08-02 critical date, so it is a § 102(e) candidate notwithstanding its 2003 publication. Relevant to protection switching of interface cards (claims 2–9). As above, no verified disclosure of paired spoke cards on a shared spoke; not anticipatory of the independent claims.

4.7 Background references (ring-network and traffic/测试 art)

These are cited but are directed to ring-network restoration or unrelated functions, and are relevant, at most, as general background showing protection switching was known:

• US 5,159,595 A (Northern Telecom; pub. 1992-10-27) — Ring transmission system.
• US 5,307,353 A (Fujitsu; pub. 1994-04-26) — Fault recovery system of a ring network.
• US 5,925,137 A (NEC; pub. 1999-07-20) — Alternate routing of management message in a ring network.
• US 6,246,667 B1 (Lucent; pub. 2001-06-12) — Failure restoration in bidirectional MS-switched ring systems.
• US 6,366,556 B1 (Lucent; pub. 2002-04-02) — Self-healing networks using virtual rings.
• US 6,456,587 B2 (Fujitsu; pub. 2002-09-24) — Ring transmission system and squelch method.
• US 6,233,073 B1 (IBM; pub. 2001-05-15) — Diagnostic injection of transmission errors in fiber optic networks (test/diagnostics).
• US 6,680,906 B1 (Cisco; pub. 2004-01-20) — Regulating packet traffic in an integrated services network (traffic management, unrelated).

Anticipation for claims 1, 10, 11: none of these.

4.8 Off-field / non-analogous references

• US 2003/0088698 A1 (Singh; filed 2001-11-06; pub. 2003-05-08) — VPN failure recovery. Non-analogous; no protection-bus topology. Not anticipatory.
• US 2003/0147344 A1 (Stewart; filed 2002-02-07; pub. 2003-08-07) — Scaleable line-based protection for connection-oriented protocols. Method-level protection; non-analogous to the claimed hardware bus topology. Not anticipatory.
• US 2004/0228627 A1 (IBM; priority 2003-05-15) — Highly-available redundant optical modules. Post-dates the critical date; not § 102 prior art. (It appears among "cited by," not examiner citations.)

5. Bottom-Line Assessment (claim-by-claim)

Overall: On the record available, the cited art does not appear to anticipate independent claims 1, 10, or 11. The examiner-cited references (especially US 6,636,478, plus US 6,879,559, US 6,724,880, US 5,321,393, and applications US 2002/0179720 and US 2003/0196135) collectively disclose nearly every subsidiary feature — configurable 1:1/1:N protection, shared protection buses on a backplane, per-card switches/relays, and fault-triggered transfer to a protection card — but each uses a daisy-chain, serial-bus, or separate switch-card topology rather than the claimed partial star (two spoke interface cards on one spoke to a central hub card). Their realistic role is as § 103 obviousness art, singly or in combination, not as § 102 anticipation of the independent claims. The two non-patent references (Microsoft Computer Dictionary, Cisco ONS 15454) are claim-construction/product-art materials; the Cisco ONS 15454 literature should be verified as a possible § 102(b) printed publication before relying on it.

6. Confidence and Limitations

• High confidence: patent identity, dates, assignees, claim set, and the full face-of-patent citation list (taken verbatim from the authoritative full text of US 7,032,135).
• Medium confidence: descriptions/contents of US 6,636,478 and US 6,879,559 (I retrieved substantive text).
• Lower confidence / provisional: the point-by-point claim content of US 6,724,880, US 6,359,858, US 5,596,569, US 5,638,358, US 2002/0179720, and US 2003/0196135, for which I relied on titles/abstracts rather than full claim text. The mappings of these to specific claims should be re-verified against full documents before use in any validity or litigation opinion.
• I have not auto-corrected any identifier. All numbers and dates are reproduced literally as they appear in the authoritative patent record.

Would you like me to pull the full claim text of the four "provisional" references (US 6,724,880; US 6,359,858; US 5,596,569; US 5,638,358) so their § 102 mapping can be upgraded from provisional to verified?

I'll research the prior art references cited on this patent's page to build a grounded obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,032,135 B2

"Equipment protection using a partial star architecture"
Inventor(s): Rafi Harel, Leon Bruckman, Gal Mor — Original assignee: Orckit Corrigent Ltd. (later Orckit IP, LLC; current assignee Enhanced Data Streaming LLC). Priority/filing: 2002‑08‑02. Granted: 2006‑04‑18.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7032135](/patent/US7032135)/en

Note on identifiers. Per the operating rule, all patent/publication numbers and dates below are reproduced literally from the "Prior Art" (Citations, Cited By, Non‑Patent Citations, and Similar Documents) sections of the patent page. I have not renumbered or "corrected" any reference. Where I verified a reference's substance through external sources, the URL is given; where I am relying only on the title/assignee/date from the page, I say so explicitly.

1. The claim set as a whole

Every independent claim (1, 10, 11) rests on one structural idea plus one structural constraint:

• Idea: a protection bus with a partial‑star topology — a central interface card at the hub and multiple interface cards (in the preferred embodiment, two) attached to at least one spoke, rather than the classic full‑star (one card per spoke).
• Constraint: "no more than a single one of the spoke connections has only one of the spoke interface cards connected thereto, while the remaining spoke connections have respective pairs" (claims 1, 10, 11).

Claims 2–5 recite the 1:1 use of the pairs (working card, protection card, input switch, output switch, and a central card that itself forms a 1:1 pair with the single‑card spoke). Claims 6–9 recite the 1:N use (spoke cards = working cards, central card = protection card, switches on the central card, and switches that select between the 1:N and 1:1 configurations). Claim 10 applies the same idea to a backplane (receptacles + printed‑circuit traces). Claims 11–17 are the method counterparts.

The stated advantage (specification, "SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION") is that one set of traces on the backplane serves both 1:1 and 1:N protection, reducing backplane traces, edge‑connector pins, and the number of interfaces/switches the central card needs.

2. Level of ordinary skill (POSITA)

A person of ordinary skill here would be a telecommunications hardware engineer with a bachelor's degree in EE/CS and roughly 2–5 years of experience in backplane‑based access/transport equipment — i.e., familiar with 1:1 and 1:N equipment protection, DS3/STS‑1 line cards, edge connectors, backplane buses, and relay/switch‑based protection switching. All of the references cited on the page are directed to exactly this field, and the specification itself concedes these are "known in the art."

3. The cited prior art (as listed on the patent page)

Critical timing point: every one of the above has a filing or publication date before the '135 priority date of 2002‑08‑02. Several are only later‑published (e.g., US20030196135 published 2003‑10‑16; US6636478 granted 2003‑10‑21; US6879559 granted 2005‑04‑12), but they are effective as prior art under pre‑AIA §102(e) as of their U.S. filing dates (2002‑04‑10, 2000‑05‑03, and 2000‑10‑31 respectively) — all earlier than 2002‑08‑02.

4. Claim 1 — the core combination

Claim 1 requires: (a) central interface card + spoke interface cards linking lines to a network; (b) a protection bus with multiple spoke connections linking the central card to the spoke cards in a partial star; (c) two spoke cards connected together on at least one spoke; and (d) no more than one spoke having a single card, the rest having pairs.

Primary combination: US6636478 + US6879559 (+ US5596569 / US5321393)

What each reference supplies:

1. US6636478 (Metro Optix) teaches the entire functional goal of the '135 patent: one physical interconnect arrangement that is re‑configurable between 1:1 and 1:N‑type protection by setting relays/signal selectors on the cards, "without changes to cabling or backplane design variations." It also teaches a shared alternate signal path ("daisy‑chain alternate signal path") over which a failed card's signal is routed to a card designated as protection. That is the same architectural space as the '135 "single partial‑star protection bus… configurable for both 1:1 and 1:N protection."

2. US6879559 (Chiaro) teaches a serial protection bus on the interface side that interconnects interface ports within a protection group with a protect line card, and — most damagingly — teaches that the same bus supports two selectable protection modes ("one‑for‑four" and "zero‑for‑five") "without requiring any wiring changes." This is the claim‑1 concept of a single bus whose configuration is set by switch/selector state, with N multiples of working cards sharing links to a protect card.

3. US5596569 (Excel) and US5321393 (Alcatel) supply the conventional 1:N / 1‑for‑n spare‑card protection with a switch circuit that creates selectable data paths from working cards to a spare card — i.e., the ordinary "central card = protection card, spoke cards = working cards" arrangement recited in claims 6–8.

Why a POSITA would combine them (KSR motivation):

• Same field, same problem: all four address backplane/shelf equipment protection for line cards; combining references from the same art to solve the same problem is the paradigm case of obviousness.
• Articulated design need in the art itself: the '135 specification admits the prior art's problem — "separate traces are provided on the backplane for the 1:1 and 1:N protection buses… additional printed circuit traces… additional pins… and an additional relay" — and Metro Optix states the identical motivation (avoid backplane redesign for each protection scheme). Where the references themselves articulate the very problem the patent claims to solve, motivation is strong.
• Predictable result: converting a full‑star protection bus (one card per spoke) into a partial star (two cards per spoke) is a routing optimization, not a change in principle. A POSITA seeking to halve the number of spokes/traces/pins would straightforwardly place two cards on a spoke, because the topology and the switching behavior are unchanged.
• Textbook knowledge: the cited Microsoft Computer Dictionary definitions of "star network"/"star topology" confirm that star topologies and their variants were elementary prior art — supporting the view that "partial star" is an obvious re‑arrangement of a known topology.

On limitation (d) — "no more than a single spoke has only one card"

This is the most likely battleground, but it is weak ground for patentability:

• The specification itself derives it as arithmetic: "The number of spokes is thus equal to ceil(N/2)" for N spoke cards. Limitation (d) is simply the statement that you pack cards two‑per‑spoke to the maximum extent, leaving at most one odd card. That is the optimal, and therefore obvious, way to implement the stated goal of minimizing traces/pins. Optimizing a design parameter (number of spokes) by an elementary pairing/ceil operation is the kind of "design choice" that KSR and its progeny treat as obvious.
• It is also the necessary consequence of the very purpose recited in the specification (minimize backplane traces and connector pins). A POSITA minimizing spokes would arrive at ceil(N/2) spokes as a matter of routine engineering, not invention.
• US6879559's "zero‑for‑five" vs. "one‑for‑four" reconfiguration and Chiaro's protect‑card‑per‑group bus are close structural analogues to a central card with some spokes carrying a single card and others carrying pairs.

Conclusion (claim 1): Obvious over US6636478 in view of US6879559, further in view of US5596569 and/or US5321393, and optionally in view of the Microsoft Computer Dictionary star‑topology definition. A prima facie §103 rejection is supportable.

5. Dependent claims 2–5 (the 1:1 use)

Motivation: these are the conventional, well‑documented mechanics of 1:1 equipment protection (working/protection pair, input relay on the working card, output/select relay on the protection card). The references are all in the same field and describe exactly these switch placements. Combining them is routine.

6. Dependent claims 6–9 (the 1:N use) — the strongest rejection

Claim 9 is very close to being met on the face of US6636478 and US6879559 alone. Both expressly teach field‑selectable protection configurations on the same fixed interconnect — the exact point of novelty the '135 patent asserts.

7. Claim 10 (communication backplane)

Claim 10 is claim 1 recast onto a backplane substrate: receptacles for the cards, and printed circuit traces forming a protection bus with multiple spoke connections in a partial star, with the same "at most one single‑card spoke" constraint.

• US6724880 (Nortel) is directly on point: sparing circuitry "configured as a backplane, sparing switch cards, and a sparing switch control card," with "a sparing bus carried on the backplane" and "a sparing bus interface on the backplane allow[ing] connection of the sparing bus with the spare line interface." This teaches a backplane‑borne protection bus for N:1 sparing.
• US5790518A — "1‑for‑N redundancy implementation on midplane" (listed in the page's Similar Documents) is even more directly on point to implementing 1‑for‑N redundancy on a backplane/midplane. (I flag that the page lists this under "Similar Documents," not under examiner Citations; I did not independently verify its contents beyond the title, so it should be confirmed before being relied on in a formal office action.)
• US5321393 (Alcatel) adds the backplane/switch‑card context for DS3/STS interfaces and confirms that implementing the protection switch in the backplane/switch‑card is known.
• The "traces on a backplane form the protection bus" limitation is a given in the field (the '135 specification itself says the bus is "best implemented using traces on the backplane").

Motivation: identical to §4 — minimizing backplane traces and connector pins. The '135 specification presents this as the purpose, which is precisely the motivation a POSITA would have had.

8. Claims 11–17 (method)

These recite the method steps: arrange cards → interconnect with a partial‑star protection bus (same limitation (d)) → determine a fault in a card serving a line → convey signals over the protection bus to a second card that then serves the line.

• Fault detection + switchover is exhaustively conventional: US20030196135 ("switch from the primary to the protection card as soon as a failure on the primary card has been detected"; management card detects failure), US5321393, US6636478, US5596569.
• The "convey over the bus so a second card serves the line in place of the first" step is the ordinary operation of every 1:1 and 1:N sparse scheme cited (e.g., Alcatel: "a second data path… from a malfunctioning working interface circuit to the spare interface circuit for substituting… the spare interface circuit").
• Claims 12–17 add nothing beyond the apparatus claims 2–9 recast as method steps, and are obvious for the same reasons.

Conclusion: claims 11–17 obvious over the same combinations (principally US5321393 and US20030196135 for the fault/switchover steps, combined with US6636478/US6879559 for the configurable shared bus).

9. The strongest single combination to assert

US6636478 (Metro Optix) in view of US6879559 (Chiaro Networks), further in view of US5321393 (Alcatel) and/or US5596569 (Excel).

• US6636478 supplies: same‑field, same‑problem, re‑configurable 1:1/1:N protection on a fixed interconnect via per‑card relays/selectors and a shared alternate signal path.
• US6879559 supplies: a protection bus linking multiple interface ports to a protect line card, and two selectable protection modes without wiring changes.
• US5321393 / US5596569 supply: the conventional 1:N spare‑card switching, input/output switch placement, and backplane/switch‑card implementation.
• The "partial star" and limitation (d) are rendered obvious by (i) textbook star‑topology knowledge (Microsoft Computer Dictionary citation), (ii) the express design need to reduce backplane traces/pins recited in the '135 specification itself, and (iii) elementary optimization (ceil(N/2) spokes).

10. Rebuttal / non‑obviousness considerations (for balance)

I should be candid that this is a prima facie analysis; a full opinion would require the complete texts of the references I could not verify, and consideration of the patentee's arguments. Points the patentee could press:

1. "No more than a single single‑card spoke" as a limitation, not a result. The patentee could argue the references teach daisy‑chain/serial buses (Metro Optix, Chiaro) rather than a hub‑and‑spoke (star) bus with paired cards per spoke, and that limitation (d) is a deliberate architectural constraint not suggested by the serial‑bus art. Counter: star/partial‑star is textbook (Microsoft Computer Dictionary), and Chiaro's protect‑card‑per‑group bus plus mode‑selectable configuration is functionally the recited arrangement.
2. "Same traces for both 1:1 and 1:N." Counter: US6636478 and US6879559 both expressly teach mode changes without wiring/backplane changes — this is the closest prior art and is squarely on the asserted novelty.
3. Secondary considerations. There is no indication in the materials on this page of unexpected results, commercial success, long‑felt need, or industry praise linked to the partial‑star feature specifically. The patent's own stated advantages (fewer traces, fewer pins, fewer switches) are predictable consequences of the topology choice, which weighs against non‑obviousness rather than for it (results that are the expected product of an obvious design change do not rebut obviousness).
4. Litigation context. The page notes a family litigation entry (a U.S. case in the Eastern District of Texas) and an assignment to Enhanced Data Streaming LLC. That is not itself relevant to §103, but it signals that validity will likely be tested — so the strength of the US6636478/US6879559 combination matters.

My assessment: claims 1, 6–11, and 15–17 in particular appear reasonably likely to be held obvious over US6636478 + US6879559 + US5321393 (with US5596569, US20030196135, and US6724880 as secondary references). Claims 2–5 and 12–14 depend on the 1:1 switch placement details and are also strongly suggested, but they present slightly more room for argument because they recite concrete switch‑by‑switch routing that a petitioner must map carefully to the references.

11. Caveats and confidence

• I could not retrieve the full text of US5596569, US20020179720, US5638358, US6359858, US5159595, US5307353, US5925137, US6366556, US6456587, US6233073, US6246667, US6680906, or US5790518 within this session; my statements about those rely on their titles/assignees/dates as listed on the patent page, except where noted.
• I did verify the substance of US6636478, US6879559, US6724880, US5321393, and US20030196135 from the sources linked above.
• If a live search result were to contradict any statement above, the search result would control — I have not found such a contradiction.
• Nothing here is a legal conclusion or a freedom‑to‑operate/invalidity opinion; it is a technical obviousness analysis for the reader's use.