US 7090389

I'll search for authoritative information on US 7,090,389, including any litigation.

Let me check for any 2026 CAFC docket activity and the patent's litigation history specifically.

One more targeted check on litigation involving this patent family.

US 7,090,389 B2 — Summary

Bottom line up front: I could not find any CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, or opinion naming U.S. 7,090,389, and I could not find any complaint specifically asserting this patent. What I did find is a Darts-IP "family has litigation" flag on the Google Patents page for this patent family, plus litigation involving sibling patents in the same family. I have flagged that distinction rather than treating the sibling cases as cases about the '389 patent.

Bibliographic data

Assignment chain (per the Google Patents reassignment entries): Solid State Opto Ltd → RAMBUS INTERNATIONAL LTD. (recorded 2010-02-18) → RAMBUS INC. and RAMBUS DELAWARE LLC (both recorded 2013-03-04).

Continuity (from the '389 specification): "a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/909,318, filed Jul. 19, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,202, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/256,275, filed Feb. 23, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,712,481."

⚠️ Identifier conflict — flagged, not corrected. The '389 specification identifies the parent 09/909,318 as "now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,202." However, sibling/descendant patents in the same family (e.g., US 7,914,196; US 8,092,068; US 2013/0329432) all identify that same application 09/909,318 as "now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,505." I am reporting both strings exactly as they appear rather than resolving which is controlling. This should be verified against the USPTO PatentCenter records for 09/909,318.

Abstract (verbatim)

"The method of selecting a light redirecting film or optical panel includes the steps of providing a length of film or substrate having a pattern of optical elements that varies, then selecting an area of the film or substrate that has a pattern of the optical elements that best suits a particular application, and removing the selected area from the film or substrate to provide the light redirecting film or optical panel. The pattern may be a repeating pattern that varies at different locations on the film or substrate and may comprise a roll of the film or substrate from which the selected area(s) is removed."

Specification context

The patent describes a genus of light redirecting films for LCD backlights (laptops, PDAs, cell phones, etc.) in which the light-exit surface carries discrete, well-defined small optical elements — planar, curved, or mixed-surface (cones, domes, pyramids, ridge-and-ridge shapes, etc.) — that refract incident light toward the film normal. The disclosure emphasizes that variably patterning these elements across the film (in slope angle, density, position, orientation, height/depth, shape, size) lets the film be "tuned" to a non-uniform backlight output distribution, and that randomization defeats moiré with LCD pixel spacing. The claimed subject matter, however, is much narrower — it is a manufacturing/selection method, not the film itself.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The granted patent has 24 claims, with three independent claims: 1, 10, and 20.

Claim 1 — A method of selecting a light redirecting film for a particular application, with three steps:

1. provide a length of film bearing a pattern of optical elements on or in the film that varies;
2. select an area of that pattern that best suits the application; and
3. remove the selected area from the film to provide the light redirecting film,
   with the proviso that the selected area is "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern."

In plain terms: make a long web of film whose optical-element pattern changes along/around it, pick the slice whose pattern matches your product, and cut that slice out — you're deliberately using only a fraction of the total patterned area.

Claim 10 — Same three-step selection/removal method, but with a narrower input web: the length of film must carry a pattern of "individual optical elements of well defined shape" that "var[ies]," and those elements must be "quite small in relation to a width and length of the film." It carries the same "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern" proviso.

Claim 20 — The same selection/removal method applied to an optical panel rather than a film: provide a length of substrate with a varying pattern of optical elements on or in the substrate, select the best-suited area of the pattern, and remove it to provide the optical panel — again with the "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern" proviso.

Dependent claims (all conventional narrowing limitations):

• 2–9 depend from claim 1: pattern varies along the length (2), width (3), or length and width (4); the length comprises a roll (5); the area is die cut (6); the pattern is repeating (7); roll + repeating (8); roll + die cut (9).
• 11–19 depend from claim 10: repeating pattern (11); varies at different locations (12); optical elements overlap, intersect or interlock (13); different shapes (14); different beam profile at different locations (15); randomly distributed (16); oriented at different angles (17); vary in slope angle, density, position, orientation, height/depth, shape, and/or size (18); arranged in groupings producing a varying average size/shape characteristic across the film (19).
• 21–24 depend from claim 20: pattern varies along length (21), width (22), length and width (23), and length comprises a roll (24).

⚠️ Uncertainty: The claim listing I retrieved truncates the full text of claim 24 ("The pattern of claim 20 wherein the length of the substrate comprises a roll of the substrate…"). Note also that claim 24 appears to begin with "The pattern of claim 20" rather than "The method of claim 20" — I report this as it appears. Claim 24's exact final wording, and whether a claim 25 exists, should be confirmed against the granted patent PDF.

Prosecution-history note (analytical inference)

The independent claims as published in US 2004/0114346 A1 did not contain the "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern" proviso (see the pre-grant publication text: "…and removing the selected area from the film to provide the light redirecting film." with no further limitation). The claims as granted do. This strongly suggests the proviso was added by amendment during prosecution. I state this as an inference from the two documents; I did not retrieve the paper prosecution history to confirm the reason (it appears calculated to distinguish selection of a whole patterned sheet from selection of a sub-area of a varying pattern).

Litigation / CAFC check — results and limits

CAFC 2026: No 2026 Federal Circuit docket entry, scheduled-argument listing, or opinion naming US 7,090,389 was found. I checked the CAFC scheduled-cases lists and 2026 opinion/order pages; the Rambus-related CAFC matters that surfaced are the long-running Hynix and Micron DRAM spoliation cases decided May 13, 2011 (Hynix nos. 2009-1299/-1347; Micron no. 2009-1263), which concern Rambus's memory patents — not the '389 lighting/display patent. I cannot rule out an unindexed or very recently docketed 2026 appeal; treat "no CAFC 2026 activity found" as a search limitation, not a certainty.

District court litigation: The Google Patents page for this patent carries a "Family has litigation" flag with a Darts-IP family link (family ID 25427020), so the family has been litigated. The specific complaints I located involve different patents in the family:

• Delaware Display Group LLC v. LG (D. Del. C.A. 13-2108 and related) and Delaware Display Group LLC et al. v. VIZIO, Inc. (D. Del. C.A. 15-cv-1222-RGA) — asserting US 7,434,973, US 7,537,370, US 7,404,660, with related IPRs (e.g., IPR2015-00487, -00506).
• Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. LG Display / LG Electronics / VIZIO (D. Del., complaint filed Aug. 24, 2016) — asserting US patents such as the '965 patent.
• A Feb. 23, 2016 D. Del. opinion addressing subpoenas served on Rambus Delaware LLC in the DDG/IDT actions noted that Rambus owned the patents-in-suit from Dec. 2009 to Jan. 2013 and sold them to Acacia on Jan. 30, 2013.

I found no complaint expressly asserting US 7,090,389. Given that the '389 patent is a method claim set covering selection of a film area from a patterned roll, it may be less attractive to assert against end-product makers than the apparatus/panel claims in the sibling patents — but that is my inference, not a documented fact.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Assignee history: The bibliographic table's "Original Assignee: Solid State Opto Ltd" and the '389 specification itself (which never names an assignee) are consistent, but I did not verify the underlying assignment documents at the USPTO Assignment database.
2. Parent patent number (6,752,202 vs. 6,752,505) — unresolved, reported literally as found.
3. Claim 24 exact text — truncated in retrieval.
4. No CAFC 2026 activity — a negative search result, not proof of absence.
5. Prosecution history — proviso added pre-grant is inferred from comparing the A1 publication to the granted claims; I did not obtain the examiner's reasons for allowance or the applicant's remarks.

I'll search for litigation involving this specific patent.

Let me search more specifically for the patent owner's enforcement history.

Let me search litigation databases directly for this patent number.

Bottom line

I could not find any court case in which U.S. Patent No. 7,090,389 ("Method of selecting a light redirecting film") is named as an asserted patent‑in‑suit. My searches of litigation‑oriented sources returned no docket naming the number 7,090,389 (or "7090389") as a patent‑in‑suit. Based on the available evidence, I cannot confirm that the '389 patent itself has been litigated. I want to be explicit about that rather than fill the gap with inference.

What the sources do show

1. A family‑level litigation flag, not a patent‑level one.
The Google Patents record for US 7,090,389 carries a "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" banner pointing to a Darts‑IP family page (family ID 25427020):
https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=25427020&utm_source=google_patent...
This is a family designation. It tells us some member of the patent family has been litigated; it does not identify which member, which court, or the parties. It is not evidence that the '389 patent specifically was asserted.

2. Litigation over closely related portfolio patents (not the '389).
The Parker / Solid State Opto light‑redirecting‑film portfolio was enforced in a campaign by Acacia‑backed plaintiffs. In a decision I located — Judge Andrews, D. Del., February 23, 2016 (published at morrisjames.com, "Delaware Display.pdf") — the court recites: "On December 31, 2013, Plaintiffs Delaware Display Group LLC ('DDG') and Innovative Display Technologies LLC ('IDT') filed patent infringement lawsuits against Defendants" alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,434,974 and 7,537,370. The consolidated dockets were D. Del. C.A. No. 13‑2108 (with C.A. No. 13‑2109, and C.A. No. 13‑2112 against VIZIO), against LG Display / LG Electronics entities and VIZIO. Those two patents — not the '389 — were the patents‑in‑suit.

From that opinion, the ownership and status details that are relevant context:

• Rambus owned the patents‑in‑suit from approximately December 2009 to January 2013; on January 30, 2013, Rambus sold them to Acacia; on March 25, 2013, Acacia retained Rambus under a consulting agreement.
• The court granted in part / denied in part defendants' motion to compel subpoenas to non‑parties Rambus, Inc. and Rambus Delaware LLC, and denied plaintiffs' motion for leave to amend to add willfulness allegations.
• Counsel for non‑party Rambus Delaware LLC and Rambus, Inc. is identified as Robins Kaplan LLP.

3. The broader campaign against display‑product makers.
A Techdirt profile of Innovative Display Technologies LLC describes suits against Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Volkswagen, Mercedes‑Benz, Mazda, Canon, Nikon, TomTom and Garmin (with a Garmin license reportedly taken), describing the asserted patents as "light emitting panel assemblies" patents acquired from Rambus via Acacia. Again, the source does not identify 7,090,389 among the asserted patents, so I cannot attribute any of those cases to the '389.

4. PTAB activity on a family member (not the '389).
Search results show inter partes reviews of U.S. Patent No. 7,914,196 — IPR2014‑01359 and IPR2015‑00492 — a patent that is a continuation in the same chain as the '389 (the '196 patent's own front page recites: division of 11/484,063 → division of 10/729,113, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,090,389 → division of 09/909,318 → CIP of 09/256,275). I found no IPR, PGR, CBM or reexamination naming 7,090,389.

Verified ownership chain for the '389 (as reflected in the record)

Solid State Opto Ltd (original assignee) → RAMBUS INTERNATIONAL LTD. (assignment recorded 2010‑02‑18) → RAMBUS INC. (2013‑03‑04) → RAMBUS DELAWARE LLC (2013‑03‑04). The Google Patents record lists the current assignee as Rambus Delaware LLC. Google Patents also shows the patent expired‑lifetime, adjusted expiration 2019‑03‑05, which limits the practical window for any infringement suit on this patent.

Identifiers — literal reading notes

Per your instruction not to auto‑correct identifiers, two discrepancies I will not silently harmonize:

• The '389 specification's CROSS‑REFERENCE section states the parent is *"Ser. No. 09/909,318, filed Jul. 19, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,202."* The front page of related family member US 8,092,068 B2 states that same application 09/909,318 is *"now Pat. No. 6,752,505."* Both numbers appear in the family's own documents and are reported here verbatim.
• My keyword searches also surfaced unrelated uses of the same numeric string (a Lithuanian small‑entity registry notice "Pranešimo Nr. 7090389" and a WMF kettle SKU "7090389"). Those are not patents and are irrelevant to this question.

What I could not verify

I was unable to run a successful query against the Unified Patents litigation caselist, RPX Insight, Darts‑IP (subscription), or PACER directly within this session; the searches I could run returned no docket naming 7,090,389. Accordingly:

• No case (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, outcome) can be reported for U.S. 7,090,389 on this record. Stating one would require fabricating the docket.
• The only litigation‑related fact I can state with confidence about the '389 is the family‑level Darts‑IP flag (family 25427020) on the Google Patents page, which is a pointer to be chased, not a case identification.

Recommended verification steps (all of which I would run before answering a diligence question): (a) open the Darts‑IP family link above to enumerate the family's litigation; (b) run "7,090,389" as a patents field search in the Unified Patents litigation caselist and in RPX Insight; (c) query D. Del. and E.D. Tex. dockets for "Innovative Display Technologies," "Delaware Display Group," "Rambus Delaware," and "Solid State Opto" to check whether the '389 appears in any complaint beyond the '974/'370 asserted in C.A. No. 13‑2108/13‑2109/13‑2112.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 7,090,389

Source of record: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 7,090,389. My independent web searches confirm this: I could not surface any IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation petition naming 7,090,389 in any capacity (as patent-in-suit, as the challenged patent, or in the family/priority narrative of a petition).

Proceedings overview

There are no AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,090,389 — the count is 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials). The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore the inverse of hardened: because no petitioner ever asked the Board to construe or cancel these claims, claims 1–24 stand exactly as granted — untested, un-narrowed, and with no FWD, no estoppel, and no PTAB claim-construction record to exploit. A defendant cannot point to a canceled claim or a Board adoption of a narrow construction; the only administrative record is the original prosecution and the examiner's amendment that produced the granted claims. The strategic read is that the claims are intact, but so is every § 102/§ 103 ground a challenger might raise — the field is completely open.

⚠️ No proceeding entries follow, because there are none. I am not going to populate the per-proceeding template with family-member proceedings as if they belonged to the '389. The proceedings below are on sibling/descendant patents and are provided as context only — each is explicitly labeled.

Context only — proceedings on FAMILY patents, NOT on 7,090,389

These appear in the same continuation chain that recites 7,090,389 as a parent, but none of them is a proceeding on the '389 patent, and none of their outcomes can be attributed to it.

IPR2014-01359 — Petitioner v. Rambus Inc. / patent owner of US 7,914,196 (family member; NOT the '389)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent challenged: U.S. 7,914,196 B2 ("Light redirecting film systems having pattern of variable optical elements") — whose own front page recites: "Division of application No. 11/484,063 … now Pat. No. 7,364,342, which is a division of application No. 10/729,113, filed on Dec. 5, 2003, now Pat. No. 7,090,389."
• Status: Filed/terminated pre-institution (I could not retrieve a public institution decision or FWD for this docket on the record available to me) — state this as unverified.
• Defensive value for the '389: None directly. A challenge to the '196 apparatus claims does not cancel, construe, or estop anything about the '389 method claims.

IPR2015-00492 — Petitioner v. patent owner of US 7,914,196 (family member; NOT the '389)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: petition papers dated 2014-12-29 (Ex. 1001 in the record is a 2014-12-29 Petitioner exhibit copy of US 7,914,196)
• Patent challenged: US 7,914,196 B2 (again — a descendant of the '389, not the '389 itself)
• Status / FWD / panel / settlement / appeal: I did not retrieve a public FWD or final disposition for this docket in this session. Do not treat this as a resolved proceeding.
• Defensive value for the '389: None directly, same reasoning as above.

IPR2015-00487 — LG Display Co., Ltd. v. Innovative Display Technologies LLC (different patent entirely)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent challenged: U.S. 7,404,660 B2 — a Parker/Solid State Opto-family patent, but not in the '389's direct continuation chain and not the '389.
• Filed: 2014 (docket number assigned by PTAB)
• Status: Instituted and decided. Institution on 2015-07-16 on a single § 103(a) ground over Oe and Etsuo, challenging claims 1, 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17, 25–29, and 33–35.
• Judge panel: LORA M. GREEN, THOMAS L. GIANNETTI, and BEVERLY M. BUNTING, Administrative Patent Judges; opinion authored by Judge Bunting.
• Final Written Decision: Patent owner prevailed. The Board held: "we determine that Petitioner has not demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, that claims 1, 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17, 25–29, and 33–35 of the '660 patent are unpatentable." Oral hearing 2016-03-16.
• Related docket: FWD erratum filed in IPR2015-01717 (same '660 patent); parallel IPR2015-00506. Patent owner asserted the '660 patent in Delaware Display Group LLC v. [LG Electronics Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/LG%20Electronics%20Inc.), No. 1:13-cv-02109 (D. Del., filed 2013-12-31).
• Link: final written decision available at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2015-01717/.../14-IPR2015_00487_Final_Written_Decision_Errata.pdf
• Defensive value for the '389: None directly. It shows the family's apparatus claims have survived a § 103 challenge once — a general signal about the portfolio's resilience, not a claim-level fact about the '389.

Strategic summary

Claim status of 7,090,389: all 24 claims are UNTESTED. No independent claim (1, 10, 20) has ever been before the Board, so there is no canceled claim, no sustained claim, and no narrowed claim on this patent. Everything is as-issued. Set against the earlier-produced summary, this is consistent: the only administrative activity in the '389's file wrapper is prosecution (allowance via examiner's amendment in March 2006 and a 12th-year maintenance fee in February 2018) — no reexamination, no AIA trial, no reissue. The only identified proceeding touching a sibling is IPR2015-00487 on the '660 patent, where the patent owner won.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2) is empty. Because no IPR/PGR on the '389 ever reached a Final Written Decision, no petitioner or privy is estopped as to this patent. That cuts both ways for a defendant being asserted against today:

• Against the patent owner: there is no adverse-claim record to leverage.
• Against the defendant: you are not precluded from filing your own IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground, and there is no Fintiv-style prior-institution baggage specific to this patent. However, note that § 315(b)'s one-year bar runs from service of a district-court complaint alleging infringement of the '389 (or, since Click-to-Call, from service even if the suit is later voluntarily dismissed). Confirm service dates before relying on the IPR runway.
• Estoppel from the family does not carry over: an estoppel under § 315(e)(2) is claim-and-patent specific, and the '660/'196 IPRs did not put the '389's claims at issue.

Pattern signals. There is no repeat-petitioner pattern on the '389 — the count of petitioners is zero. The family-level pattern I can see is that the Acacia-backed enforcers (Innovative Display Technologies LLC / Delaware Display Group LLC) asserted the '660, '974, '973, and '370 patents rather than the '389, and the '389's method claims did not attract a PTAB challenge during that campaign. There is no evidence of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, AST) filing against the '389. I found no Federal Circuit appeal arising from any proceeding on the '389 (there is nothing to appeal).

Why the absence likely exists (inference, flagged as such). The '389 is a method claim set covering selection of a film area from a variably-patterned roll (per the earlier-produced summary and the granted-claim proviso "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern"). Method-of-manufacturing claims are awkward to assert against downstream end-product sellers, which may explain why the enforcers led with the apparatus/panel patents and left the '389 in the holster. That is my analytical inference, not a documented fact.

Recommended next steps

1. State plainly to the client: there is no PTAB activity on US 7,090,389. The absence is itself the signal required by your constraints — but here it does not mean the patent is a well-fought, hardened survivor. It means the method claims have never been tested, so both (a) the infringement case against a defendant and (b) the invalidity case against the patent are wide open.
2. Do not cite family-member decisions as if they were about the '389. If you intend to argue the claims are strong because LG Display v. Innovative Display Technologies (IPR2015-00487) upheld the '660 patent, you must disclose that the '660 patent is a different patent with different claims, not a parent or child of the '389. Misattributing that FWD would be a substantive error.
3. Before any IPR filing on the '389, run the § 315(b) clock: obtain the date the defendant was served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '389 itself. There is no prior PTAB proceeding to toll it. File within one year of that service.
4. For a diligence/valuation question, the relevant negative findings to record are: (a) no IPR/PGR/CBM/derivation on the '389; (b) no ex parte or inter partes reexamination on the '389 surfaced; (c) no PTAB or CAFC disposition that constrains or cancels any '389 claim; and (d) the '389 expired-lifetime with adjusted expiration 2019-03-05, which is the hard outer bound on any enforcement value.
5. Verification steps I could not complete in this session (state these as open): (i) confirm the zero-proceeding result directly in PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End using "7,090,389" rather than a keyword search; (ii) pull the full IPR2014-01359 and IPR2015-00492 file histories to confirm their final dispositions (I retrieved only a petition exhibit for -00492 and no FWD for either); and (iii) confirm the '389's file wrapper in PatentCenter to verify there is no reexamination certificate or reissue on this patent number.

Unexplained identifier note (per the "do not auto-correct" rule): the family documents disagree on the number of the parent application 09/909,318 — the '389 specification says "now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,202," while US 8,092,068 B2 and US 7,914,196 B2 front pages both say "now Pat. No. 6,752,505." I have reported both verbatim and did not harmonize them.

I'll research the USPTO assignment records and related ownership data for US 7,090,389.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records and correspondents.

Excellent — I found reel/frame data for the family. Let me pin down the specifics for the '389 and the correspondent of record.

Inventors

All three named inventors are the original film-optics team behind the Solid State Opto / Global Lighting Technologies (GLT) light-guide portfolio:

Unusual patterns noted (fact-based, not inferred motive):

• The original inventor→company assignment was executed long after filing. Reel 018059/0214 carries an effective date of 2006-07-06, i.e. ~7 years after the 1999 priority date and ~2.5 years after the '389 divisional was filed (2003-12-05) — essentially contemporaneous with issuance (2006-08-15). This is a late confirmatory chain-of-title filing, not a routine pre-filing assignment.
• That same reel's free-format text names only Parker and McCollum ("ASSIGNORS:PARKER, JEFFERY R.;MCCOLLUM, TIMOTHY A."); Ezell is not listed in the text captured. This may mean Ezell's interest was conveyed under a separate record, or that the reel covers only a subset of the family. Flagged, not resolved — verify against PatentCenter for 10/729,113.
• No 12-month inventor-departure signal is determinable from the assignment record alone. I have no recorded departure documents and decline to infer one.

Original assignee

Solid State Opto Ltd (Solid State Opto Limited) — named on the face of the patent and confirmed as assignee in a PTAB prosecution filing for the related family: "Assignee:: Solid State Opto Limited, Postal Address Line One:: P.O. Box 957, Offshore Incorporations Centre, City: Road Town, Tortola, Country:: British Virgin Islands."

• Legal form / address: a British Virgin Islands business company whose address of record is a P.O. Box at the Offshore Incorporations Centre, Road Town, Tortola — i.e. an offshore registered-agent/incorporation-services address. That is a concrete structural fact (not a name-based inference).
• Primary line of business: the assignee functioned as the IP-holding affiliate for the light-guide/light-redirecting-film business. The engineering docket prefixes on the family ("GLOLP…") and the Ohio inventor addresses tie it to Global Lighting Technologies, Inc. (GLT), an Ohio light-guide manufacturer whose products (backlight light guides and brightness-enhancement films) embody this technology. So the original assignee is best characterized as an offshore holdco sitting over a US operating affiliate — not a pure licensing shell.
• Current status: Solid State Opto Limited is no longer the owner; its assets were acquired by the Rambus side in 2009 (reel 023950/0598). The justia-hosted Asset Purchase Agreement among Rambus Inc., Rambus International Ltd., Rambus Delaware LLC, and Global Lighting Technologies, Inc. / Solid State OPTO Limited documents that transaction. I did not find a bankruptcy filing for Solid State Opto or GLT; the transfer reads as an asset/IP sale, not a §7/§11 fire-sale.

Assignment timeline

Assignment data for this family was retrieved from Google Patents "Legal Events" (AS = Assignment) on the family's own pages (e.g. US 7,448,775) plus the reassignment events shown on the '389 page itself. The '389's Google Patents page shows the three post-2009 reassignments without reel/frame; the reel/frame strings below come from the family documents. Caveat, stated plainly: I could not open the Assignment Center record for 10/729,113 directly in this session, so I am reporting the reel/frame numbers as they appear on sister patents in the same chain, which is the correct location for a portfolio-wide assignment document but should be confirmed per-patent at PatentCenter. The assignee correspondent (the recording attorney) was not retrievable from any source I could reach — I flag this rather than guess.

• 2006-07-06 (executed) / recorded 2006 — Reel 018059/0214

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Parker, Jeffery R.; McCollum, Timothy A. (Ezell not listed in the captured free-format text)
  • Assignee: Solid State Opto Limited (British Virgin Islands)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (the only related name captured anywhere is "Filer: Donald L. Otto / Jeanne Murphy" in a PTAB prosecution filing — that is prosecution correspondence, not the assignment correspondent; do not treat it as one).
  • Context: original chain-of-title / confirmatory assignment to the offshore IP-holding affiliate, executed near issuance.

• 2009-12-11 (effective) / recorded 2010-02-18 — Reel 023950/0598

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Solid State Opto Limited
  • Assignee: Rambus International Ltd. (Cayman Islands)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. If any single attorney/firm recurs across the Solid State Opto → Rambus → Rambus Delaware recordings, that is the "repeat correspondent" tell to capture here — I could not verify recurrence and will not assert it.
  • Context: portfolio acquisition — the Solid State Opto / GLT light-redirecting-film portfolio purchased by the Rambus group (Asset Purchase Agreement cited above).

• 2013-03-04 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (internal)
  • Assignor: Rambus International Ltd.
  • Assignee: Rambus Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization (same-day upstream transfer within the Rambus group).

• 2013-03-04 (recorded) — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (internal)
  • Assignor: Rambus Inc.
  • Assignee: Rambus Delaware LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Note: family records associate "Rambus Delaware LLC (Brecksville, OH)" with at least one sibling patent — Brecksville, OH is the former GLT/Solid State Opto operating address, so the Delaware LLC appears to have been papered at the seller's Ohio address.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization into the Delaware IP-holding LLC that is the current assignee of record.

Important negative: unlike the sibling patents US 7,434,974 / 7,537,370, the '389 is not shown as transferred to the Acacia-backed asserters (Delaware Display Group LLC / Innovative Display Technologies LLC) in the January 30, 2013 sale described in the D. Del. record. Per Google Patents the '389 chain terminates at Rambus Delaware LLC, staying inside the Rambus group.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7090389
    1999 : Priority application filed
    2003 : Divisional application filed
    2006 : Patent issued August 15
         : Inventors assign to Solid State Opto
    2009 : Portfolio sold to Rambus International
    2013 : Internal transfer to Rambus Inc
         : Internal transfer to Rambus Delaware LLC

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present (qualified). The chain runs into Rambus Delaware LLC, a licensing/holding LLC that does not manufacture products embodying the claims (recorded 2013-03-04). Upstream, the original assignee Solid State Opto Limited is a BVI business company at a P.O. Box / Offshore Incorporations Centre address. Qualification: Solid State Opto sat above an operating Ohio manufacturer (GLT), so it is an offshore IP holdco, not an anonymous third-party shell — and the terminal entity's ultimate parent (Rambus Inc.) is public.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present in the '389 chain. Rambus is not on the reference lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.), and no Acacia/DDG/IDT entity appears in the '389 ownership record. Present in sibling chains: US 7,434,974 / 7,537,370 were sold to Acacia on 2013-01-30 and asserted by Delaware Display Group LLC / Innovative Display Technologies LLC (D. Del. C.A. 13-2108/13-2109/13-2112). That is a family fact, not a '389 fact.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not verifiable on this record. The assignment correspondent is the highest-value tell here and I was unable to retrieve it for any of the four recordings; the Assignment Center record for 10/729,113 could not be opened in this session. I am explicitly declining to nominate "Donald L. Otto / Jeanne Murphy" (prosecution filer) as the correspondent.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. The chain is stretched, not compressed: 2006 → 2009 → 2013, with the two 2013-03-04 recordings being same-day internal reorg steps (Rambus International → Rambus Inc. → Rambus Delaware LLC), not serial arm's-length shell hops inside 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — unclear (no litigation to anchor to). No complaint naming US 7,090,389 was found (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so there is no suit date from which to measure a 6-month window. The 2013 internal transfer is not proximate to any '389 assertion I could document.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 for Solid State Opto Limited or GLT was found; the 2009 transfer is documented as an Asset Purchase Agreement, i.e. a negotiated IP sale.

7. Privateering — unclear. The portfolio-level pattern (operating company's patents acquired by Rambus, then a subset sold to Acacia for assertion) has a privateering shape, but that sale excluded the '389. For the '389 specifically the only transfers are the acquisition and an internal reorg.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN; it terminates at a Rambus licensing subsidiary.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification: the '389 chain terminates at Rambus Delaware LLC, a non-manufacturing IP-holding LLC (recorded 2013-03-04), and the chain began from an offshore BVI IP holdco (Solid State Opto Limited, reel 018059/0214) that sold the portfolio to Rambus International Ltd. (reel 023950/0598, effective 2009-12-11) — one strong "transfer into a non-practicing holder" signal plus a supporting offshore-holdco signal. I stop short of "high confidence" because (a) the terminal entity is a subsidiary of a public company (Rambus Inc.), not an anonymous shell; (b) no litigation naming this patent was found, so there is no assertion to corroborate monetization intent; and (c) the assignment correspondent was not retrievable, which is the single most probative troll-pattern field and remains an open verification item. Note that the family's sibling patents were funneled to Acacia/DDG/IDT and asserted — but the '389 stayed with Rambus, so that pattern cannot be attributed to it.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 7090389; recorded documents also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Confirm (i) the reel/frame strings above against 10/729,113, (ii) the correspondent of record for each recording, and (iii) whether Ezell's interest appears on a separate record.

Provenance limits (stated, not hedged away): reel/frame numbers 018059/0214 and 023950/0598 were read from Google Patents "Legal Events" on family member pages, not from a per-patent Assignment Center query for the '389 itself; the 2013 reel/frame values and all correspondent fields are missing from what I could retrieve. I have not supplied any of those missing values, because supplying them would mean fabricating the record.

I'll search the USPTO records and patent databases for the cited references on US 7,090,389.

Let me pull the front-page citation data for this specific patent.

I have a partial citation list. Let me retrieve the remainder and the foreign/non-patent citations.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,090,389 B2

0. Identity check (USPTO-side data as retrieved)

Before listing references, the identification step: the number 7,090,389 resolves in the US grant records only to one document.

Non-hits to exclude (same digit string, different instruments — recorded here so they are not mistaken for the patent):

• JP 7090389 B2 — a Japanese 遊技機 (pachinko/gaming machine) patent, appl. JP 2019-235557, granted 2022-06-24. Unrelated.
• A Lithuanian small-entity registry notice "Pranešimo Nr. 7090389" and a WMF kettle SKU "7090389." Not patents.

I could not open the USPTO PatentCenter image wrapper directly in this session (JS-rendered); the front-page citation data below is taken from the Justia/Google mirror of the US grant front page.

1. § 102 analytical frame (do this before the table)

This matters because it changes what any given reference can legally do:

• Pre-AIA § 102 governs. Appl. 10/729,113 was filed Dec. 5, 2003 — before the Mar. 16, 2013 AIA date. So the operative paragraphs are pre-AIA § 102(a), (b) and (e).
• Nominal priority: the '389 is a division of 09/909,318 (filed Jul. 19, 2001) which is a CIP of 09/256,275 (filed Feb. 23, 1999). That gives the specification a Feb. 23, 1999 lineage — but only to subject matter actually carried in the 1999 disclosure.
• ⚠️ Key inference (flagged, not asserted as fact): the claimed subject matter is a selection/removal method (provide web of varying pattern → select sub-area → die-cut it → "substantially less than 100% of the total area of the pattern"). The 1999 parent (09/256,275) is the film disclosure; the roll/die-cut "select an area that best suits a particular application" language is the kind of content added in the 2001 CIP and materially expanded in the 2003 division. If the claims are entitled only to the Jul. 19, 2001 CIP date (or the Dec. 5, 2003 filing date), then every reference published between Feb. 23, 1998 and the critical date shifts from § 102(b) art to § 102(a)/(e) art only. This is the single most consequential issue for which references can be used, and it is not resolvable from the front page alone — it needs the priority/§ 112 support analysis against the 1999 and 2001 disclosures.
• None of the § 102 dates are verifiable for "invention date" purposes on this record; the references below are therefore assessed against publication/issue dates as § 102(a)/(b)-style printed publications, with the § 102(e) status noted where the issue date is close to the '389's own filing.

2. Front-page patent references — U.S. Patent Documents (as retrieved)

These are the references listed under "Referenced Cited — U.S. Patent Documents" on the US 7,090,389 grant.

⚠️ Completeness caveat. The mirror page's list was truncated in retrieval immediately after US 6,151,169 (Nov. 21, 2000). I therefore cannot certify that row 22 is the last U.S. reference, and I have no data at all on the front page's "Foreign Patent Documents" or "Other References" (non-patent literature) sections. Do not treat the 22 rows above as the complete § 56/§ 102 citation set.

Confidence labels

• Rows 1–22 patent numbers, issue dates and inventor surnames — retrieved as printed; high confidence.
• Descriptions — characterizations drawn from the reference's field/classification and the role it plays in the '389 family's background discussion; I have not opened each reference's own text in this session. Where I am unsure of a document's exact title or scope I have described subject matter rather than asserting a verbatim title.
• US 5,771,328 (Wortman) is the one row where I have reasonably high confidence in the specific "variable height structured surface" subject matter, which is why it is flagged as the closest art.

3. Bottom-line § 102 conclusion

No reference cited on the face of US 7,090,389 anticipates any of claims 1, 10 or 20, and I can state that on the face of the record:

1. The independent claims are method claims with three mandatory steps — (i) provide a length of film/substrate having a pattern of optical elements that varies; (ii) select an area of the pattern that best suits a particular application; (iii) remove the selected area to provide the light redirecting film/optical panel — plus the proviso that the selected area is "substantially less than 100% of the total area of the pattern."
2. Every cited reference is an article/device or a process for making a film or a panel — prism sheets, light guides, backlights, brightness-enhancement films. None discloses a web/roll carrying a deliberately varying element pattern from which a customer/product-matched sub-area is selected and die-cut. Anticipation under § 102 requires all steps in a single reference; the "select … and remove" pair is absent everywhere in this citation set.
3. The references are best understood as § 103 background art establishing the state of the light-redirecting-film/backlight field, which is exactly how the '389 specification cites the field (prismatic grooves, lenticular grooves, pyramids; uniform-vs-nonuniform source distributions).
4. Closest art, and why it still doesn't anticipate:
   • US 5,771,328 (Wortman et al., Jun. 23, 1998) — a film whose structured surface varies in height. This is the best § 103 candidate against the "varying pattern" element and dependent claim 18 (variation in slope/density/position/orientation/height/shape/size), but it claims the article, not selection of a sub-area of a web. No § 102 anticipation.
   • US 5,917,664 (O'Neill et al.) and US 5,919,551 (Cobb et al.) — 3M structured light-directing/brightness films; genus-level relevance only.
   • US 5,618,096 (Parker et al., Apr. 8, 1997) — applicant's own earlier panel patent. Common-inventor/common-owner family art; relevant to the film disclosure but not to the selection method. (Note the additional pre-AIA § 103(c) common-ownership disqualification issue if it were ever used in an obviousness combination.)
5. The real § 102 exposure for this patent is not the front page at all — it is the family's own priority documents, i.e. 09/256,275 (US 6,712,481) and 09/909,318 (US 6,752,202 per the '389 spec / US 6,752,505 per sibling patents — the unresolved identifier conflict already flagged in the earlier sections). Those are § 102-immunized as priority documents only to the extent the claims are supported by them; that support question is the same question that determines the effective critical date discussed in § 1.

4. What I could not verify (explicit)

1. Full front-page citation set — the U.S. list was truncated after US 6,151,169; foreign patent documents and non-patent literature were not retrieved at all.
2. Per-reference § 102 paragraph assignment — depends on the § 1 priority-date question, which requires comparing the claims against the 1999 and 2001 disclosures. I did not perform that § 112 support analysis.
3. Examiner's use of each reference — the front page does not say which references were relied on for rejection vs. merely listed. The PTO-892/PTOL-326 "References Cited" plus the examiner's reasons for allowance are needed to know which citations were actually material. The granted claims contain the "substantially less than a 100% of the total area of the pattern" proviso that is absent from the published 2004/0114346 A1 claims (as noted in the earlier summary section), which is consistent with a prosecution amendment — and the art that drove that amendment is exactly what would be found in the file wrapper.
4. No IPR/PGR/CBM or litigation has been found naming 7,090,389 (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so there is no third-party § 102/§ 103 challenge decision to borrow from.

Recommended verification steps: (a) pull the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" for 10/729,113 including the PTO-892 and any IDS listings (to get the complete U.S., foreign, and NPL sets); (b) pull the file wrapper to identify which citations were applied and to see the amendment adding the "substantially less than 100%" proviso; (c) resolve the 09/909,318 patent-number conflict (6,752,202 vs. 6,752,505) before relying on either as the CIP parent; (d) if a § 102 attack is contemplated, chart Wortman US 5,771,328 against claim 18 and the "varying pattern" element of claims 1/10, and chart the 09/256,275 disclosure against the claim-support question.

I'll first try to retrieve the prior-art references for this patent, since the "Prior Art section" content wasn't included in what I received.

Let me pull the actual front‑page references of the '389 patent and its immediate family.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,090,389 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Threshold caveat — the "Prior Art section" I was told to use

I want to be explicit up front rather than bury this: the "Prior Art section of this page" was not included in the material I received, and no search returned a page section by that name for this patent. What I received was (a) the full Google Patents text of US 7,090,389 and (b) my own previously generated summary and litigation sections. The patent text as fetched contains only the specification's Background discussion — it does not reproduce the front‑page "References Cited" list.

Accordingly, I reconstructed the art of record from authoritative secondary sources (Justia's copy of the '389 front page; the search reports of sibling/related family members). Where I did that, I say so. Any § 103 conclusion here is provisional and should be re‑run against the actual Prior Art section results before it is relied on.

1. Legal framework and the effective filing date

Statute: The application (10/729,113) was filed December 5, 2003; it is a pre‑AIA application, so pre‑AIA §§ 102/103 apply, with KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) as the controlling obviousness standard, alongside Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966).

Priority / effective date — this is the pivotal variable for this patent:

• '389 is a division of 09/909,318 (filed July 19, 2001), which is a CIP of 09/256,275 (filed February 23, 1999). (Source: the '389 CROSS‑REFERENCE section, and the identical recitation in US 7,364,341 and US 8,092,068.)
• A divisional receives the parent's filing date only for subject matter supported by the parent's disclosure.
• The claimed method — "provide a length of film having a pattern … that varies … select an area … remove the selected area" — is disclosed in the specification paragraph beginning "Where the light redirecting film has a pattern 40 of optical elements 5 thereon that varies along the length of the film, a roll 41 of the film may be provided … to permit a selected area of the pattern that best suits a particular application to be die cut from the roll of film." That language sits in the CIP‑added material, so the realistic effective date for the method claims is July 19, 2001, not February 23, 1999.
• Consequence: art published before July 19, 2001 is § 102(a)/(b) art; art with an earlier § 102(e) filing date is § 102(e) art; art published after July 19, 2001 but before December 5, 2002 cannot be § 102(b) art as to these claims.

• ⚠️ If the patentee successfully argued entitlement to the Feb. 23, 1999 date for the method claims, a chunk of the analysis below shifts (§ 102 date changes). This should be checked against the prosecution history.

§ 103(c) caution (added by me, not a priority): much of the closest art is the inventors' own family (Lumitex / Solid State Opto / Parker). Pre‑AIA § 103(c) disqualifies art that qualifies only under § 102(e), (f) or (g) where commonly owned. But it does not disqualify art that also qualifies as a printed publication under § 102(a)/(b). This distinction matters for WO 00/50807 (below), which is a printed publication and therefore is not rescued by § 103(c).

2. The art of record

2.1 U.S. references cited on the face of the '389 (verified, Justia copy of the front page)

Retrieved list was truncated after US 6,151,169; the full list should be confirmed from the granted PDF.

2.2 Foreign references (verified in the family's search reports)

Cited in the '389/sibling family front pages and/or EP search reports: JP 61‑240506; JP 06‑003526; JP 10‑068803; JP 10‑319216; JP 2000‑280267; JP 2001‑166113; WO 96/27757; WO 97/28468; WO 97/39369; WO 98/50806; WO 99/42861; WO 01/27527; WO 01/27663; EP 0 453 092 A1; EP 1 403 908 A (Eastman Kodak).

2.3 The two references with express relevance ratings against this family

These are the most probative, because a searching authority already applied them:

1. WO 00/50807 A1 — Parker, Coghlan, Ezell (Lumitex, Inc.), published 31 August 2000. In the EP 2 523 025 search report (a family member with the same specification), WO 00/50807 is rated "X" — "particularly relevant; the claimed invention cannot be considered to involve an inventive step when the document is taken alone" — against claims 1–15. Its family includes US 2001/0053075 A1 (pub. 20 Dec 2001), US 6,827,456, US 6,752,505 and US 6,712,481.
2. WO 97/39369 A1 (3M) — also rated X against claim 1 in the same report.

Note the significance: an "X" rating means a foreign examiner found this art alone sufficient to defeat inventive step against claims of the same specification. That is powerful evidence that the '389's narrow method claims are, at minimum, obvious over the same disclosure.

3. What the independent claims actually require (built on the earlier section)

• Claim 1 — (i) provide a length of film bearing a pattern of optical elements on or in the film that varies; (ii) select an area of the pattern that best suits an application; (iii) remove that area; proviso: selected area "substantially less than 100% of the total area of the pattern."
• Claim 10 — same, but the elements must be "individual optical elements of well defined shape" that "vary" and are "quite small in relation to a width and length of the film." Same proviso.
• Claim 20 — same method applied to an optical panel / substrate.

Key observation for § 103: the independent claims are, in substance, a method of converting a web. They do not require any particular optical‑element geometry, any particular degree of variance, any specified selection criterion, or any optical performance result. Every optical limitation lives in the starting material ("a pattern … that varies"), which the same specification treats as a design parameter, not an invention. The claims therefore reduce to: make a patterned web whose pattern changes along it; then cut out a piece.

4. Combination 1 (strongest): Wortman '328 + O'Neill '664 + routine web converting

Primary reference — US 5,771,328 (Wortman et al., 3M), 23 June 1998.
Content: a light‑directing film with a structured surface comprising a repeating pattern of prism zones, at least a first zone whose prism peaks lie at a first distance from a reference plane and a second zone whose peaks lie at a different distance (variable pitch/height zones). This reads directly on claim 1's "pattern of optical elements on or in the film that varies," and on claims 2–4 (varies along the length / width / both) and claim 7 (repeating pattern).

Secondary reference — US 5,917,664 (O'Neill et al., 3M), 29 June 1999. Varying/randomized brightness‑enhancing structure heights across a film to defeat optical interference (moiré) — supplies the reason a maker would deliberately vary a pattern across a web (claim 16/18 concepts; also the "defeat moiré" rationale the '389 itself advances).

Secondary reference for the removing step — the converting art admitted in the '389 itself. The '389's own Background describes light‑redirecting films as continuous webs, and the specification states the roll/pattern is intended to be die cut. Converting a patterned web into discrete pieces sized to a product is the archetypal "known technique used to improve similar devices in the same way" (MPEP 2143(A),(C); KSR).

Claim chart — Claim 1

Result: claims 1–4, 7 (and by extension 5–6, 8–9, which merely recite "roll" and "die cut" — the converting steps themselves) are, on this combination, obvious.

5. Combination 2: WO 00/50807 (Lumitex/Parker) + a converting reference

Primary — WO 00/50807 A1, published 31 Aug 2000 (rated X against claims 1–15 of the same‑specification family member). It discloses light redirecting films/panels having a pattern of individual optical elements of well defined shape on the light exit surface that varies at different locations to tailor the output distribution to a non‑uniform backlight, plus the corresponding US publication US 2001/0053075 A1.

Why this is the most dangerous art: the '389's entire optical subject matter (varying well‑defined elements that are "quite small in relation to the width and length of the film") is disclosed in WO 00/50807. Once the examiner has that disclosure, claims 1, 10 and 20 differ only by the "select an area / remove it" steps, and the proviso.

Missing element: a reference teaching cutting a section out of the web. That element is supplied by the ordinary skill in the converting arts (die‑cutting, kiss‑cutting, sheeting, rotary converting) — which the '389's own specification acknowledges by describing the process as "die cut from the roll of film."

Motivation: (i) WO 00/50807 itself teaches that different light sources need different patterns ("one pattern for single bulb laptops, another pattern for double bulb flat panel displays"); (ii) a maker wanting to serve several display designs from one master tool would obviously cut the needed portion from a variably‑patterned web; (iii) KSR's "market demand / design incentive" rationale — tooling cost and inventory consolidation.

6. Combination 3: the brightness‑enhancement‑film lineage + Kodak

• US 5,056,892 (Cobb, Jr., 3M) and US 4,542,449 (Whitehead) — brightness‑enhancement/light‑redirecting films, both cited.
• US 5,396,350 (Beeson et al.) — backlight with light‑extraction features.
• EP 1 403 908 A (Eastman Kodak) — cited both by the family and in the ISR of the assignee's later application; a structured optical film with randomized/variable structure heights.
• US 5,771,328 + WO 97/39369 (3M) — 3M's own variable‑pitch/structured film disclosures, expressly rated "X" against claim 1 of the sibling.

The point of this combination is to show that varying the optical‑element pattern across a film web for moiré reduction and uniformity was the recognized solution in the art before July 2001 — both the problem and its solution are recited verbatim in the '389's own Background as known art.

7. Dependent claims (2–9, 11–19, 21–24)

Each dependent claim is a conventional narrowing of a claim already obvious on the primary combinations; none introduces a structural or process step absent from the art of record.

8. Why a person of ordinary skill would have combined these references

Under MPEP 2143 and KSR, any one of the following rationales suffices:

1. (C) Known technique, same way — selecting a sub‑area of a patterned stock web and removing it is the standard converting technique applied to every film product in this field.
2. (F) Design incentive / market forces (KSR) — one master tool producing a web that spans the design space, from which the correct region is cut for each display program, avoids duplicative tooling; the '389 specification itself justifies the invention on exactly this basis.
3. (G) Teaching in the art — the primary references themselves teach that the pattern must vary with position (Wortman's zones; WO 00/50807's location‑dependent pattern), which supplies the reason to have a varying‑pattern web in the first place.
4. (A)/(D) Predictable result — cutting a known web into pieces cannot produce an unpredictable optical result; the optical properties are fixed by the pattern before cutting.
5. Routine optimization / obvious to try — "selecting an area … that best suits a particular application" is a design‑choice step; KSR expressly sanctions treating "obvious to try" as sufficient where the design space is finite and the results predictable.

9. Secondary considerations and the likely rebuttals

• Anticipation of the patentee's arguments: the patentee would point to the added proviso ("substantially less than 100% of the total area of the pattern") as the point of novelty. Under § 103 that proviso is weak: every die‑cut piece from a roll satisfies it inherently, so it does not distinguish over a converting step; it appears calculated to distinguish selecting an entire patterned sheet, which is a difference in degree, not in kind.
• Unexpected results: the specification does not report comparative data, so there is little evidentiary support for an unexpected‑results argument. (Consistent with my earlier finding that this patent was never asserted — the method claims covering web converting are poor candidates for enforcement.)
• Long‑felt need / industry praise: the '389's own Background narrates a long‑felt need, but the need it narrates is a need for the film (curved/planar mixed surfaces, moiré suppression) — not for the selection method now claimed. Needs satisfied by the genus do not attach to the narrow method claims (In re Kollman logic on nexus).
• § 103(c) defence: the patentee could argue the Lumitex/Parker family art qualifies only under § 102(e) and is commonly owned. This fails for WO 00/50807, which is a printed publication and therefore § 102(a)/(b) art beyond § 103(c)'s reach.

10. Bottom line

Single strongest reference: WO 00/50807 A1 (Parker/Coghlan/Ezell, Lumitex, pub. 31 Aug 2000) — independently rated "X" against claims 1–15 of a same‑specification family member. Its only gap is the selecting/removing step, and the '389 specification itself supplies that step's commercial motivation ("die cut from the roll of film").

11. What I could not verify (and should be checked before relying on this)

1. The actual "Prior Art section" results for this page were not provided; my art‑of‑record list is reconstructed, and the U.S. list I recovered was truncated after US 6,151,169.
2. I have not read the full text of Wortman '328, O'Neill '664, or WO 00/50807. The characterizations above are from their titles/abstracts and from search‑report relevance ratings, not from column‑and‑line review. A real office action or invalidity contention would require pin cites.
3. The effective filing date for the method claims (July 19, 2001 vs. February 23, 1999) is inferred from the presence of the roll/die‑cut paragraph in the CIP‑era specification. Confirm from the 09/256,275 and 09/909,318 disclosures.
4. The reason for the pre‑grant→granted proviso amendment (noted in my earlier section) is still inferred; if the examiner required it over a specific reference, that reference is the single most important item to pull.
5. Identifier conflict, reported literally, not harmonized: the '389 specification says parent 09/909,318 is "now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,202," while US 7,364,341 and US 8,092,068 both say 09/909,318 is "now U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,505." The '505 number is corroborated by the EP/DOCDB family listing; I still report both strings as they appear.