US 7762872

I'll verify the patent against live sources before summarizing.

Let me check for CAFC 2026 dockets and the current legal status.

Verification note

I was able to confirm US 7,762,872 B2 against the Google Patents full text (provided), the USPTO/Google Patents bibliographic record, the granted patent PDF (patentimages), PubChem's patent record, and Justia's claims listing. I could not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket activity naming U.S. Patent No. 7,762,872 specifically. Searches for that number returned no 2026 appellate docket. The only 2026 CAFC matter involving inventor Chien‑Min Sung that surfaced concerns different patents — a March 9, 2026 Federal Circuit order approving settlement of Sung v. Samsung covering three CMP pad dresser patents (including U.S. 9,724,802, "CMP Pad Dressers Having Leveled Tips"). That case does not name 7,762,872. I flag this as an absence of evidence, not proof that no such docket exists.

Bibliographic summary — US 7,762,872 B2

Abstract (verbatim): "A cutting device comprises a base having a solidified organic material layer disposed thereon. A plurality of individual polycrystalline cutting elements are secured in the solidified organic material layer. Each of the plurality of individual polycrystalline cutting elements has a substantially matching geometric configuration."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The data I have gives me the full text of issued claims 1–11, and claims 26–30 via a secondary source. Independent claims appear to be 1, 6, and 22 (claim 22 is a method claim — that inference rests on claim 28 reciting "The method of claim 22…" in the Justia claims listing; I do not have the verbatim issued text of claim 22 in the provided excerpt, so treat the wording below as reconstruction with that caveat).

Claim 1 — Device (product-by-structure), wedge sectors.
A cutting device (e.g., a CMP pad conditioner/dresser) with: (a) a base carrying a solidified organic-material layer; and (b) many individual polycrystalline cutting elements embedded in that layer. Three negatives/limits attach to each element: it must be made of a different material than the organic layer; it must have a substantially matching geometric configuration (i.e., the elements match each other in shape); and each element must be an equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a disk-shaped polycrystalline blank — i.e., the cutting pieces are pie-slice segments cut from a PCD/PcBN disk rather than random grit.

Claim 6 — Device, leveled tips + same wedge-sector limitation.
Same architecture (base with solidified organic layer attached; many individual polycrystalline cutting elements of a different material secured therein), but the emphasis is on alignment: each element must have at least one cutting tip, and the tips must be aligned in a common plane (leveled-tip feature). The claim then carries the same "equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a disk-shaped polycrystalline blank" requirement as claim 1.

Claim 22 — Method of forming the cutting device.
Based on the specification's corresponding summary paragraph, this recites: obtaining a substrate; arranging on the substrate a plurality of individual polycrystalline cutting elements, each having a matching geometric configuration; and securing each element to the substrate with a solidified organic material layer. (Verbatim issued wording not available in my source excerpt — stated with uncertainty.)

Notable dependent-claim coverage (from the text I do have): tips aligned in a common plane (cl. 2); radial distribution about the device face (cl. 3, 11); alternating orientations (cl. 4); secondary cutting elements formed on a face of each element to maintain sharpness (cl. 5); uniform drag-force distribution (cl. 7); majority of elements protruding to a predetermined height, with cutting depth of less than about 20 microns when abrading (cl. 8–9); matching geometric configuration (cl. 10); and superhard polycrystalline elements selected from PCD and PcBN (cl. 26–30).

Points of uncertainty / caution

1. Claim 22 text is reconstructed, not verbatim, from the specification; the excerpt supplied to me ends mid-claim 12.
2. The issued claims are narrower than the published application. Published US 2007/0155298 claim 1 recited only "a plurality of individual polycrystalline cutting elements secured in the solidified organic material layer, each … having a substantially matching geometric configuration." The granted claim 1 adds the negative limitation "formed from a different material than the solidified organic material layer" and the "equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a … disk" limitation. Do not conflate the two.
3. Assignee status is contested in parallel litigation. Recorded assignments point to Kinik Company, but a declaration by Chien‑Min Sung filed in Sung v. Kinik Co., No. 1:20‑cv‑00247‑RGA (D. Del.) asserts he is the sole inventor and rightful owner notwithstanding the joint-venture/license arrangements. The recorded assignee field should be read with that caveat.
4. No CAFC 2026 docket for 7,762,872 was located. The patent's "Expired – Fee Related" status (adjusted expiration 2024‑09‑23) makes live appellate litigation over it in 2026 unlikely, though the number does appear in the prior-art/exhibit record of recent PTAB proceedings (e.g., Samsung Austin Semiconductor IPR filings referencing US 2007/0155298 and US 7,762,872).
5. Google Patents' own legal-status disclaimer applies: the status/assignee listing is an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7762872/en; http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/50/99/45/b6cb5913089709/US7762872.pdf; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7762872; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-7762872-B2; https://patents.justia.com/patent/20070155298

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7762872.

Let me dig deeper into the PTAB proceedings and litigation databases.

Let me search for specific cases involving the '872 patent.

Based on my searches, here is what I found — with an important caveat about how directly the '872 patent itself was placed in issue.

Summary

I did not find any U.S. district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which US 7,762,872 was itself named as an asserted patent (i.e., a claim of infringement) or as the subject patent of an IPR. What I did find is that the '872 patent is repeatedly identified as a "Parent Patent" in the long-running Kinik Company ↔ Chien-Min Sung ownership/right-to-practice dispute, and it sits in the priority chain of patents that were directly litigated.

What the record shows

1. The '872 patent as a "Parent Patent" in the Kinik–Sung dispute (Taiwan + Delaware)

The Petition in Kinik Company v. Chien-Min Sung, IPR2021-00638 (PTAB, filed Mar. 10, 2021), states:

"The Parent Patents being litigated in the Taiwan Litigations include U.S. Patent Nos. 7,762,872, 8,398,466, 8,974,270, and 9,138,862."

Source: docketalarm.com IPR2021-00638 Petition (Kinik v. Sung), https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00638/Kinik_Company/docs/03-10-2021-Petitioner/Petition-1-Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_of_US_Patent_No_9,724,802.pdf

• Petitioner: Kinik Company (KINIK)
• Patent Owner: Chien-Min Sung
• Subject patent of that IPR: US 9,724,802 (not the '872 patent)
• Status/outcome: Terminated – Settled (per GreyB/IPVerse, last updated Sep. 18, 2026, https://ipverse.greyb.com/competitive-analysis/company/kinik)

*2. Sung v. Kinik Co., No. 1:14-cv-01027-RGA (D. Del. — Judge Richard G. Andrews)*

• Plaintiff: Dr. Chien-Min Sung
• Defendant: Kinik Company (and, per docket, Wafertech LLC as to certain filings)
• Filed: August 8, 2014
• Per Kinik's later answer, Dr. Sung asserted "three U.S. patents" against Kinik in this 2014 Delaware action.
• Status/outcome: The court stayed the case on Jan. 20, 2016 (six-month stay to await the Taiwan litigation), and later the case was administratively closed pending resolution of the Taiwan ownership/rights litigation and appeals.
• Sources: UniCourt case summary (https://unicourt.com/case/rc-db1-sung-v-kinik-company-[233475](/patent/233475)); Kinik Answer filed in Sung v. Kinik, No. 1:20-cv-00247-RGA (D. Del. July 6, 2020), ECF No. 10 (exhibit in IPR2021-00638).

⚠️ Confidence note: The 2014 Delaware complaint asserted "three U.S. patents," but my search results do not itemize which three. Because the '872 patent is listed among the "Parent Patents," it is plausible it was one of them, but I cannot confirm from the retrieved records that the '872 patent was one of the three patents actually asserted in Sung v. Kinik (1:14-cv-01027). Please treat that link as unverified.

3. Related matters (for context; these are NOT about the '872 patent itself)

• Chien-Min Sung v. Kinik Co., No. 1:20-cv-00247-RGA (D. Del.), filed Feb. 20, 2020 — asserted US 9,724,802 (a continuation-in-part descending from the '872 patent). Status: Closed.
• Chien-Min Sung v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al., No. 4:23-cv-00752-SDJ (E.D. Tex., Sherman Div.), filed Aug. 21, 2023 — asserted US 8,974,270, 9,138,862, and 9,724,802. Related IPRs: IPR2024-00533 ('270), IPR2024-00534 ('862), IPR2024-00535 ('802). In IPR2024-00535 the Board found claims unpatentable (Final Written Decision Sept. 17, 2025); Federal Circuit appeal No. 2026-1197 was dismissed Mar. 9, 2026.
• Kinik Company v. Chien-Min Sung, IPR2014-01523 — subject patent US 8,777,699 (not the '872 patent).

Bottom line

• Direct litigation naming US 7,762,872 as an asserted or challenged patent: none found.
• The '872 patent's only confirmed litigation involvement is as an identified "Parent Patent" in the Kinik–Sung dispute (Taiwan litigations and the related U.S. proceedings), and it is an ancestor in the priority chain (via US 11/560,817) of later patents (e.g., the '270, '862, '802 patents) that were actively litigated.

If you need certainty on whether the '872 patent was one of the three patents asserted in Sung v. Kinik (1:14-cv-01027), that would require pulling the ECF No. 1 complaint from PACER for that case — my available search results do not resolve it.

Caveat on sources: litigation databases (UniCourt, Docket Alarm, RPX, GreyB/IPVerse) sometimes lag or mislabel parent/child patents in a family; verify any specific case before relying on it.

I'll verify the structured-data default (no AIA trials on file) against live sources before writing.

Let me run targeted checks to make sure no IPR named this specific patent as its subject (as opposed to the many unrelated "872" patents).

Two more checks — one on whether the '872 number ever appears as a subject patent in any PTAB institution/FWD list, and one on the Kinik–Sung IPRs for context.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings naming US 7,762,872 as patent-under-challenge: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent, and my live searches likewise turned up zero institution decisions, final written decisions, or termination orders in which US 7,762,872 is the subject patent. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture: nothing about this patent has ever been tested at the PTAB — all 30 claims are UNTESTED, none canceled, none sustained, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. That cuts against a defendant in one narrow sense (there is no ready-made Board ruling to borrow), but it is largely academic here because the patent is recorded as Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2024‑09‑23). A defendant facing a demand letter on this patent today is not really litigating against an IPR question; it is litigating against a lapsed patent, with the family's live siblings (US 9,724,802, 8,974,270, 9,138,862) being where the actual PTAB combat has occurred.

⚠️ Disambiguation warning (read this before you search)

"872" is a heavily overloaded docket token. My searches repeatedly surfaced unrelated patents whose numbers end in 872. Do not let these contaminate your invalidity work:

Only US 7,762,872 B2, "Superhard cutters and associated methods," app. 11/560,817, Chien‑Min Sung is the patent at issue.

Per-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to detail for US 7,762,872. The template below is intentionally left unfilled rather than populated with invented docket numbers. Nothing in the record supports any AIA proceeding — active, terminated, or otherwise — against this patent as the subject patent. Per the constraint against fabrication, I will not manufacture FWD claim dispositions for a trial that never happened.

Adjacent proceedings — NOT proceedings on US 7,762,872

These are supplied only to prevent the misattribution trap, and to identify reusable art. Each is flagged as off-patent.

IPR2021-00638 — Kinik Company v. Chien‑Min Sung

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021‑03‑10
• Status: Terminated – Settled (per Patexia case summary; decision date 2021‑08‑27)
• Patent under challenge: US 9,724,802 — not US 7,762,872
• Judge panel: Jason W. Melvin (writing), Phillip J. Kauffman, Timothy J. Goodson
• Claims challenged in the petition: 1–21
• Relevance to the '872 patent: The '872 patent appears here as a "Parent Patent" referenced in the background of the Kinik–Sung ownership dispute — expressly listed alongside US 8,398,466, 8,974,270, and 9,138,862 in the petition's framing of the Taiwan litigations. Critically, Exhibit 1011 in this IPR is US 2007/0155298 A1 — the pre‑grant publication of the application (11/560,817) that issued as US 7,762,872.
• URL: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00638/Kinik_Company/docs/03-10-2021-Petitioner/Petition-1-Petition_for_Inter_Partes_Review_of_US_Patent_No_9,724,802.pdf

IPR2024-00535 — Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC v. Chien‑Min Sung

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Patent under challenge: US 9,724,802 — not US 7,762,872
• Outcome: Final Written Decision 2025‑09‑17 finding claims unpatentable; Federal Circuit appeal No. 2026‑1197 dismissed 2026‑03‑09 (per prior section of this analysis)
• Relevance to the '872 patent: The '872 patent and its family prosecution history appear as background/prior-art exhibits and file-history exhibits, not as the challenged patent.
• URL: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2024-00535/Samsung_Austin_Semiconductor_LLC_v._Sung_Chien-Min/

IPR2014-01523 — Kinik Company v. Chien‑Min Sung

• Patent under challenge: US 8,777,699 — not US 7,762,872.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 7,762,872 is CANCELED, and none is SUSTAINED, because no AIA trial was ever instituted against it. All 30 issued claims — including independent claims 1, 6, and the method claim 22 — are UNTESTED. There has been no PTAB-driven narrowing of this patent, which distinguishes it sharply from its CIP-descendant US 9,724,802, whose claims were held unpatentable in the 2025 FWD. Practically, the binding constraint on assertion is not claim scope but status: the patent records as Expired – Fee Related as of the 2024‑09‑23 adjusted expiration, with the qualifying caveat that this is Google Patents' own legal-status data, expressly disclaimed as an assumption rather than a legal conclusion.

Estoppel landscape. This is the cleanest part of the picture. Because no IPR was ever instituted on US 7,762,872, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty — no petitioner, and no privy of any petitioner, is barred from raising any ground against this patent. Every § 102/§ 103 combination and every § 112 theory remains available in district court. There is also no § 315(a)(1) DJ-bar exposure to worry about on this patent and no § 315(b) trap created by prior PTAB filings on this patent. The flip side: you also cannot borrow an institution decision, an FWD's claim constructions, or a Board expert-credibility finding to anchor a Winter v. Natural Resources / stay argument the way defendants on the '802 patent could.

Pattern signals. The Sung CMP-pad-dresser portfolio (Kinik-adjacent, with the recorded assignee being Kinik Company and inventorship/ownership contested by Dr. Sung in Delaware) has attracted repeated, concentrated IPR activity — but always on the later, higher-value siblings, not on the '872 patent. Petitioner overlap is visible (Kinik filed IPR2021‑00638 on the '802; Samsung Austin Semiconductor filed the IPR2024‑00533/‑00534/‑00535 trio on the '270, '862, and '802). I found no repeat petitioner against the '872 patent and no defensive-aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) chain touching it. The absence of any IPR on a patent in a family that generated this much PTAB volume is itself informative: by the time the family matured into high-value assertion, the '872 patent was already the older, expiring member — so challengers rationally aimed at its continuation and CIP descendants instead.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the expiration, not with prior art. Confirm the maintenance-fee status on USPTO Patent Center / PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/). "Expired – Fee Related" means a maintenance fee was not paid. Determine (a) whether the 6‑month grace period under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(1) or a 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 petition to accept an unintentionally delayed payment has been filed or granted. If the patent has lapsed with no reinstatement, there is no prospective injunctive relief and no pre‑lapse damages theory — that alone can moot most demand letters.
2. If reinstatement has occurred or is attempted, IPR is still on the table — with caveats. The Board retains authority to review an expired patent (cf. Sony Corp. v. Iancu, 924 F.3d 1235 (Fed. Cir. 2019)), so expiration is not a jurisdictional bar to filing. But note the practical constraints: patent owner cannot amend expired claims, and the value of the proceeding is limited to legacy-damages exposure. Watch your § 315(b) one-year clock from service of any complaint, and your § 315(a)(1) bar if you filed a DJ action first.
3. Harvest the sibling record now. Even though the '872 patent itself was never challenged, the '298 publication (US 2007/0155298 A1, Exhibit 1011 in IPR2021‑00638) is the '872 patent's own pre‑grant publication and was used as prior art in that IPR. The Samsung IPR2024‑00533/‑00534/‑00535 file histories and the '802 FWD contain expert analysis, claim-construction positions, and prior-art combinations directed at the same specification and the same shared written description relied on by the '872 claims. That is a free head start if the '872 patent (or a reinstated version of it) is ever asserted.
4. Track the family, not the '872 patent. The live assertion risk sits with US 9,724,802, 8,974,270, and 9,138,862. On the '802 patent specifically, the Board's 2025 FWD of unpatentability (and the 2026‑03‑09 CAFC dismissal of appeal No. 2026‑1197) is the operative defensive asset — link to the FWD at USPTO PTAB Decisions (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions) and to the dismissal via CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) before responding to any demand letter that cites the family.
5. No trial-stage milestones to calendar. There is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year FWD due date running against US 7,762,872, because no petition was filed. Any "pending PTAB proceeding" representation by a patent owner or a demand-letter vendor would be false as to this patent and worth documenting.

Explicit statement of uncertainty. I could not locate any AIA proceeding on US 7,762,872 by either the ODP structured data or live web search. I treat that as an absence of evidence rather than proof of nonexistence — PTAB petitions that are denied institution, or voluntarily terminated pre-institution, can be thinly indexed. If you need certainty, run the patent number directly against PTAB E2E and the ODP API proceedings endpoint rather than relying on third-party aggregators, which (as demonstrated above) conflate similarly numbered patents within a family.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,762,872. Let me search the USPTO assignment data and related sources.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and correspondent details.

Let me try to access the USPTO Assignment API and Patent Center records directly.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could pull the Assignment Center reel/frame entries directly. Below is what I can substantiate from the records I did retrieve, with the gaps stated plainly rather than filled in.

Inventors

• Chien‑Min Sung (a/k/a Dr. James Chien‑Min Sung) — sole named inventor. Residence on the face of the patent: Tansui, Taipei County, TW; he later declared (2020) that he is a U.S. citizen residing in Cupertino, CA.

Employer at time of filing (2006‑11‑16): none in the conventional sense. The application was filed with "Individual" as applicant — i.e., Sung filed pro se as a natural person, not as an employee of a corporate assignee. Two contextual anchors:

• Sung's declaration in Sung v. Kinik Co., No. 1:20‑cv‑00247‑RGA (D. Del.) states that on 1996‑10‑28 he entered a joint venture agreement with Kinik Company under which Kinik commercialized his brazed-diamond and CMP pad‑conditioner technology and paid him royalties, and that the JV gave Kinik only a non‑exclusive license — not ownership. He describes himself as an independent licensor/technologist, not a Kinik employee.
• By the early 2010s he is also associated with Rite‑Dia Corporation (Hsin‑Chu, TW), which is named as applicant on PCT/US2011/052627 with Sung as inventor/applicant. That is a later filing (2011), not the '872 filing.

Unusual patterns: the "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire‑sale precursor does not apply here — there is only one inventor and no corporate assignee to depart from. The salient pattern is different and worth flagging: a single professional inventor‑licensor who simultaneously licensed the family to Kinik and later litigated ownership against Kinik, while asserting related family members against third parties (Samsung). That is the founder‑inventor/enforcer posture, not an employee‑inventor one.

Original assignee

Original assignee as recorded: "Individual" — Chien‑Min Sung personally.

• Primary line of business: none. Sung is an independent inventor and technology licensor in diamond/superabrasive and CMP technology (100+ U.S. patents, per his own declaration). He does not himself manufacture.
• Product embodying the claims: the commercial embodiment of this family was made by his licensee, Kinik Company — Kinik's DiaGrid® CMP pad conditioners, manufactured in Taiwan (confirmed in the ITC record, Inv. No. 337‑TA‑…, Pub. 3530, and in PTAB filings). Sung's role was licensor, receiving royalties; he has stated Kinik paid royalties on "four foundational patents," with additional royalty terms for later ones.
• Current status: Sung is a living individual (not a company), so there is no operating/acquired/dissolved/bankrupt status to report for a corporate entity. The recorded current assignee, however, is Kinik Company (TWSE‑listed superabrasive/CMP manufacturer) — but see the contradiction note below.

Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center/Google Patents legal‑events record shows two post‑issuance reassignment events. I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or correspondent fields for either event — the legacy PDF and search interfaces surfaced to me did not return the reel/frame for US 7,762,872. I am stating that as a gap rather than inventing numbers.

1. 2014‑05‑27 (recorded) / execution date not retrieved — Reel: not retrieved / Frame: not retrieved

• Conveyance: Agreements Affecting Interest (a recordation of an agreement — not a plain title transfer)
• Assignor: Sung, Chien‑Min, Dr.
• Assignee: Kinik Company
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: recordation of the long‑running Kinik–Sung joint venture/license arrangement (Sung states the JV was amended between 2003 and 2011), filed roughly 10 weeks before Sung's 2014‑08‑08 Delaware infringement complaint against Kinik — i.e., the parties papered the JV into the USPTO records right as the relationship broke down. Because the conveyance is "agreements affecting interest," this recording does not by itself establish a transfer of title.

2. 2021‑08‑18 (recorded) / execution date not retrieved — Reel: not retrieved / Frame: not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
• Assignor: Sung, Chien‑Min
• Assignee: Kinik Company (as recorded by Google Patents)
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: recorded five days after the 2021‑08‑13 Taiwan Intellectual Property Court Settlement Transcript in the Kinik–Sung ownership litigation. This is the settlement papering event. ⚠️ See contradiction note — the direction recorded here is the opposite of what the settlement document in the PTAB record shows for the sibling patents.

No earlier (pre‑issue) assignment appears — consistent with the "Individual" applicant, there was no inventor‑to‑company assignment at filing.

⚠️ Unverified lead: a search hit surfaced legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-044489-0352.pdf ("REEL: 044489 FRAME: 0359"), a bilingual EN/JP "Assignment and Declaration" form. I could not confirm this document relates to US 7,762,872, so I am not counting it. It is a lead for manual verification only.

⚠️ Contradiction with the previously generated litigation section — flagged explicitly: The prior section states that in the 2021 Taiwan settlement, Kinik disclaimed ownership and assigned to Sung's side. That is supported by the actual assignment document captured in Samsung IPR2024‑00533, Ex. 1003 ('270 file history), which recites: "To the extent that KINIK COMPANY ('Assignor') … has now disclaimed that Assignor has such right, title, and interest … Assignor hereby sells, assigns, transfers and conveys unto Assignee … all of Assignor's right, title, and interest, if any, in and to the Assigned Patents, together with all claims … including the right to sue and collect damages for all past, present and future infringement." That document lists 9868100, 9724802, 8777699, 9138862, 8974270 — and does not list 7,762,872. So either (a) the '872 was handled in a separate document and genuinely moved Sung → Kinik (Google's rendering), or (b) Google's legal‑events parser inverted the direction for this record. These two sources cannot both be right as read, and I could not resolve it. This is the single most important open item in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7762872
    2004 : Priority date from US 10925894
    2006 : Application 11560817 filed as individual
    2010 : US 7762872 issued to inventor
    2014 : Kinik agreement recorded May 27
    2021 : Kinik assignment recorded Aug 18
    2024 : Adjusted expiration Sep 23

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell‑entity transfer — not present. No LLC, no "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" suffix, no registered‑agent service address, no single‑member Delaware/Texas entity appears anywhere in the chain. Both recorded assignee entries name Kinik Company, an established Taiwanese operating manufacturer (TWSE‑listed) with a real plant (No. 64 Chung Shan Road, Taiwan, per the ITC record). Names are not being used to obscure — but I lack the reel/frame fields that would let me confirm the assignee address of record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present (for the enumerated lists). Neither Chien‑Min Sung personally nor Kinik Company matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or a Spangenberg vehicle. Caveat: Sung is a high‑volume individual enforcer in his own name (Sung v. Kinik, Sung v. Samsung), which is functionally similar litigation behavior, but he is an inventor‑licensor rather than a listed NPE. I did not locate a Unified Patents or RPX listing naming Sung or Kinik.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / cannot verify. I could not retrieve the 37 CFR Part 3 correspondence for the 2014 or 2021 recordings. What is visible is a recurring prosecution firm for the whole Sung family: Thorpe North & Western LLP, P.O. Box 1219, Sandy, UT 84091‑1219 (Customer No. 20551; attorney docket prefix 02074‑), which appears as the correspondence address on the '872 siblings' file histories (e.g., App. 13/797,704). Note the distinction: this is the prosecution address of record, not necessarily the attorney who docketed the assignment records — so it does not establish the repeat‑correspondent NPE tell. Report as an open verification item, not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two recorded events, seven years apart (2014, 2021). No chain of LLCs, no <24‑month sequence, no shared correspondent address visible.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — not present (timing noted). The 2014‑05‑27 recording falls ~10 weeks before Sung's 2014‑08‑08 Delaware complaint (inside the 6‑month window), which looks like the tell — but the recorded direction is Sung → Kinik (the defendant), the opposite of an assertion‑enabling transfer, and the '872 was not (per the prior section) a confirmed asserted patent. Timing coincidence, not a signal.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding by either party surfaced.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence Kinik funded or directed an NPE proxy to assert; if anything the alignment ran the other way (Sung vs. Kinik, and Sung vs. Samsung, with Kinik in the middle of a JV dispute).

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

Justification: two reassignment events are recorded — 2014‑05‑27 ("Agreements Affecting Interest," Sung → Kinik) and 2021‑08‑18 ("Assignment of Assignors' Interest," Sung → Kinik) — but I could not retrieve their reel/frame numbers or correspondents from the Assignment Center, and the recorded direction of the 2021 event directly contradicts the settlement assignment document captured at IPR2024‑00533, Ex. 1003 (which shows Kinik assigning away ownership of sibling patents, and does not list the '872). Until that is resolved, the identity of the terminal owner is genuinely ambiguous. On the evidence that is verifiable, every affirmative NPE signal is negative — no shell entity, no listed NPE, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy, no defensive aggregator — so if the 2014/2021 records are confirmed as recorded, the correct re‑classification would be non‑NPE (inventor‑licensor → operating manufacturer), not an NPE pattern.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search Patent No. 7762872; the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html returns the same records). The two fields to pull are the reel/frame and the correspondent of record for each of the 2014 and 2021 conveyances, plus the underlying assignment PDFs, to fix the direction of the 2021 transfer.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 7,762,872 across USPTO and patent-citation databases.

Let me pull the complete cited-references list and details on the key references.

Let me retrieve the full cited-references list and details for the key references.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,762,872 B2 ("Superhard cutters and associated methods")

Note on tool limits: I was able to retrieve the front-page "(56) References Cited" list (from the granted-PDF OCR snippet, Justia's "Referenced Cited" table, and PubChem's citation list) but the document-retrieval step was cut off before I could pull every cited reference's full text. Accordingly, the citation data below is well-grounded, while the §102 mapping is my analytical assessment with explicit confidence levels — I have flagged every place where I could not verify a reference's disclosure.

Also flagging one discrepancy with the previously generated sections: the earlier "Bibliographic summary" lists the claims as "30 total" — confirmed — and states claim 22 is a method claim — confirmed by claim 28 ("The method of claim 22…"). No contradiction found there.

1. What the citation record actually is

US 7,762,872 carries ~56 "References Cited" on its face. In this family the citations are overwhelmingly U.S. patents, which is the signature of an applicant-filed Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) rather than examiner-cited art. This matters for §102 because it tells you the inventor was aware of the entire structured-abrasive and CMP-conditioner field and drafted around it — which is exactly why the issued claim 1 (per the earlier section) is narrower than the published application, adding:

• "formed from a different material than the solidified organic material layer"; and
• "each … being an equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a polycrystalline blank of material shaped as a disk."

Those two limitations are the novelty-defining elements against the art below. Almost none of the cited references discloses a cutting element that is a wedge-shaped sector of a disk-shaped polycrystalline blank, so as a first-order conclusion: the cited art does not anticipate issued claims 1 or 6, and is instead material to (a) the dependent claims, (b) the broader published-application claims, and (c) obviousness under §103. I state this up front because it is the single most important finding.

2. Most relevant cited prior art — ranked, with potential §102 mapping

Tier 1 — Structured/precisely-shaped abrasive composites in an organic (resin) binder

These are the closest art to the core concept (discrete, individually placed, geometrically matched cutting elements held in a resin matrix).

Why Tier 1 matters: these references disclose the "many individually-placed, geometrically-matched abrasive elements in a hardened organic layer" concept. The '872 prosecution added the wedge-sector-of-a-disk limitation precisely to escape this genus. If a petitioner in a future §103 challenge attacked claim 1, Tier 1 would be the primary reference and the wedge-sector feature would be the secondary/obviousness battleground.

Tier 2 — CMP pad conditioners / dressers

Tier 3 — Segregated/engineered superabrasive architectures (Tselesin line)

Tier 4 — Superhard compact / cutting-element art

These establish the PCD/PcBN compact background for claims 26–30 (PCD and PcBN selection).

Potential mapping: these references supply the PCD/PcBN-recitation support relevant to claims 26–30 (and to the "polycrystalline" element of claim 1), but they do not disclose the resin-secured wedge-sector arrangement.

Tier 5 — Applicant's own prior patents (self-citation / patterned placement)

These are cited in the IDS and appear in the inventor's own 2006 conference paper (Diamond Tools with Diamond Grits Set in a Predetermined Pattern, 2006 Powder Metallurgy World Congress). Because they are Sung's own prior patents and were published well more than one year before the Aug. 24, 2004 priority date, they are §102(b) prior art in the ordinary sense — but they disclose patterned grit, not wedge sectors of a disk, so they support §103 combinations, not anticipation of claims 1/6.

3. Two limiters worth calling out

1. The "organic material layer" is the point of novelty vs. Tier 4. The Tier 4 superhard-compact art holds cutting elements in metal (or WC) matrices; the '872 claims require a solidified organic layer. That is a structural distinction, and it is why the Tier 1 (resin-binder) art at 3M is the genuinely dangerous art and Tier 4 is not.
2. The wedge-sector limitation collapses the anticipation case for claims 1 and 6. None of the retrieved references describes a cutting element cut from a disk-shaped polycrystalline blank into equal wedge-shaped sectors. Tselesin's engineered structures come closest conceptually, and 3M's precise-shape composites come closest structurally, but neither reads on that limitation. On my current record, I would not assert that any single cited reference anticipates issued claim 1 or 6.

4. Full front-page cited list, as recorded (for completeness)

US 3,743,489 · 3,767,371 · 3,852,078 · 4,481,016 · 4,662,896 · 4,849,602 · 4,923,490 · 4,925,457 · 4,954,139 · 5,049,165 · 5,137,543 · 5,190,568 · 5,195,403 · 5,195,404 · 5,232,320 · 5,247,765 · 5,374,293 · 5,380,390 · 5,453,106 · 5,486,131 · 5,505,272 · 5,527,424 · 5,536,202 · 5,547,417 · 5,560,745 · 5,560,754 · 5,851,138 · 5,921,856 · 5,924,917 · 5,975,988 · 6,001,008 · 6,027,659 · 6,054,183 · 6,093,280 · 6,190,240 · 6,213,856 · 6,217,413 · 6,224,469 · 2001/0009844 · 6,281,129 · 6,293,854 · 6,299,508 · 6,319,108 · 6,346,202 · 6,354,918 · 6,368,198 · 2002/0042200 · 6,371,838 · 6,371,842 · WO 02/31078 · 6,439,996 (or 6,439,986 per PubChem) · 6,446,740 · 6,478,831 · 2002/0127962 · 6,626,167 · 2002/0173234 · 6,672,943 · 6,694,847 · 6,755,720 · 6,945,857 · 7,021,995 · 7,465,217

Spec-cited (incorporated by reference, not front-page art): US 4,795,678; US 4,390,647; US 5,038,555 (silane coupling agents).

5. Caveats you should carry forward

• I could not verify the full text of every cited reference, so the §102 mappings in Tiers 1–3 are hypotheses keyed to each reference's title/field, not confirmed element-by-element disclosures.
• Two citation-number conflicts surfaced and were NOT auto-corrected, per instruction: (i) the Campbell reference reads 4,481,616 in the granted-PDF OCR but 4,481,016 in Justia/PubChem; (ii) the Myoung conditioner reads 6,439,996 in the OCR but PubChem logs 6,439,986.
• The user-supplied date (April 26, 2026) differs from the environment date (Sept. 29, 2026); it does not affect the prior-art analysis, which is fixed at the Aug. 24, 2004 priority date / Nov. 16, 2006 filing date.
• The cited-art list carries no "Cited By" prosecution history here; to test true anticipation you would want the examiner's Notice of Allowance reasons and the IDS transmittal, which would tell you which references the examiner actually relied on versus which were merely disclosed.

I'll gather prior-art references pertinent to the '872 claims before building the § 103 combinations. Let me run several searches.

Good — I've located several candidate references (notably "Tsai," JP4695236B2, JP2006055943A, and Sung's own earlier patents). Let me pin down the front-page prior art and the "Tsai" reference.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,762,872 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Prepared: April 26, 2026 · Analysis type: Hypothetical/defensive validity assessment

0. Source-integrity note (read first)

The task instructs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." Google Patents does not publish a discrete, labeled "Prior Art" section for this document; what it exposes is (a) a "Prior art keywords" field — cutting elements, cutting, polycrystalline, resins, individual — and (b) citation/similar-document data. I also could not retrieve the granted patent's own front-page "References Cited" listing from the sources available here. Accordingly:

• Statements below grounded in the patent text itself (including its admitted background art) are cited to https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7762872](/patent/US7762872)/en.
• Statements grounded in family/field citations are cited to the "US Patent References" list of sibling U.S. Pat. No. 7,658,666 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7658666.html). These are not asserted to be the references cited on the '872 face. Treat them as candidate art in the same field, with dates as that list displays them.
• Flagged contradiction with the earlier litigation section: the strongly relied-upon "Tsai" reference in the Samsung IPRs (IPR2024-00533/-00534/-00535) is a 2012 journal article (Diamond & Related Materials 23 (2012) 144–149, DOI 10.1016/j.diamond.2011.12.048 — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925963512000106). Under no plausible priority scenario for the '872 patent (earliest claimed priority 2004-08-24; actual filing 2006-11-16) is a 2012 article prior art. The earlier "Points of uncertainty" note that the '872 number appears in the Samsung IPR exhibit record is correct, but Tsai's evidentiary strength against the '802 patent does not transfer to '872. Anyone importing that record wholesale would be committing a date error.

1. Threshold: the critical date, and why it drives everything

Critical issue: independent claims 1 and 6 both carry the limitation that each cutting element is "an equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a polycrystalline blank of material shaped as a disk." If that limitation is supported by the 2004-08-24 priority document, the critical date is 2004-08-24 and all 2005–2006 art is excluded. If it is not supported there (a real risk — the wedge/sector disclosure appears in the '872 drawing set at FIGS. 3A–12 and in the "wedge 32 / wedges 32b–32d" passages), then the effective date for claims 1/6 is at earliest 2005-09-09, and quite possibly 2006-11-16. That would make available, e.g., JP 2006-055943 A (published 2006-03-02, https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2006055943A/en — pad conditioner "divided into a plurality of abrasive grain bonded regions").

This determination should be made first. Everything below assumes the claims are entitled to 2004-08-24 and therefore uses only art published more than one year before that date (i.e., § 102(b) art) unless expressly noted.

Person of ordinary skill (POSITA): bachelor's degree in materials science, mechanical engineering, or chemistry, plus 3–5 years' experience in superabrasive tools and/or CMP pad conditioning; alternatively a master's degree with 1–2 years. This is a mature, crowded, highly incremental art.

2. Claim-construction essentials

• "A base having a solidified organic material layer disposed thereon" — a support + a cured resin/polymer mass. Plain meaning.
• "Individual polycrystalline cutting elements … formed from a different material than the solidified organic material layer … secured in" it — discrete superhard (PCD/PcBN) bodies, not grit entrained in a sintered metal bond. The "different material" clause is a negative limitation that is inherently satisfied by diamond-in-resin.
• "Substantially matching geometric configuration" — the elements match each other; the '872 specification defines "geometric configuration" to include "cubic shapes, polyhedral … shapes, triangular shapes … pyramidal shapes, … rectangles, 'pie' shapes, wedge shapes, octagonal shapes, circles."
• "Equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a polycrystalline blank … shaped as a disk" — the point of novelty post-issuance. Note the published application (US 2007/0155298 A1) did not contain this limitation; it was added during prosecution. Weight the obviousness case here.

3. Prior art of record (candidate references, with what each supplies)

Not prior art — do not use: the 2012 Tsai ODD article; US 2008/0068937, US 2009/0093195, US 2011/288573, US 8,398,466/8,398,934/9,724,802 and the rest of the post-2006 Kinik/Sung mosaic-segment family; US 7,258,708 and US 2006/0143991 (both Sung) are same-inventor documents and, absent a different inventive entity, are unavailable as § 102(a)/(e) art — although their published disclosures remain probative of what the field knew and of secondary-consideration analysis (see § 6).

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 obvious over JP 2001-025957 in view of US 6,884,155/6,368,198 and US 5,247,765 (+ Gardner for the sector limitation)

JP 2001-025957 discloses a base with a solidified organic (phenol resin) layer in which a plurality of identical, shape-replicated abrasive elements are secured, the resin itself providing retention, and made by molding. It does not disclose that the elements are polycrystalline, nor that they are disk sectors.

US 6,884,155 / 6,368,198 cure the "polycrystalline" and "arranged plurality" gaps — patterned superabrasive bodies on a pad-dresser substrate. US 5,247,765 supplies the concept of discrete individual abrasive elements in a resin matrix, and teaches the reason: the resin absorbs impact and resists element loss — precisely the '872 patent's stated purpose ("organic materials … absorb mechanical forces impinging on the cutting elements … and thus spread and equalize such forces").

US 4,841,602 supplies the final step: cutting a superhard blank into individual cutting pieces. On a disk-shaped PCD blank, dividing into n congruent pieces necessarily yields equal, wedge-shaped sectors. That is a product of a known division operation on a known blank geometry, and the count n (8, 12, 16, 2 — the '872 specification itself lists exactly these) is a result-effective-variable-free design choice driven by the cost calculus the specification touts ("the amount polycrystalline material used can be greatly reduced, leading to considerable cost savings").

Ground 2 — Claim 1 obvious over US 5,247,765 (Quintana) in view of WO 02/31078 and US 6,371,842 (Romero)

Quintana discloses the base + resin matrix + discrete individual abrasive elements sub-combination. WO 02/31078 discloses polycrystalline abrasive grits of uniform shape and size. Romero discloses patterned, replicated-geometry abrasive bodies. The residue — "wedge sector of a disk-shaped polycrystalline blank" — is supplied by Gardner (Ground 1) and by the POSITA's ordinary knowledge that PCD compacts are routinely EDM/laser-divided into segments (the '872 specification concedes EDM, laser ablation, plasma etching, oxidation, and hydrogenation as known division techniques).

Ground 3 — Claim 6 (and claims 8, 9) obvious over Grounds 1/2 further in view of US 6,299,508 (Gagliardi) or US 6,027,659 (Billett)

Claim 6 requires only that the elements "include at least one cutting tip, the tips … being aligned in a common plane." Gagliardi discloses integrally molded protrusions whose tips are inherently of controlled, uniform height; Billett discloses integral conditioning points of controlled geometry. Either supplies the leveled-tip element. The motivation is not merely available but stated by the applicant: the '872 Background recites that unleveled tips produce "killer asperities" that "can ruin the polished wafer." AAPA-driven motivation of this kind is ordinarily sufficient under KSR.

• Claim 8–9 (majority protrude to a predetermined height; cutting depth < 20 µm): routine optimization; the '872 specification offers no comparative data (see § 6) and lists the range across four orders of magnitude ("less than about 20 microns" through "up to or more than 50 or 100 microns"), indicating the range is not critical.

Ground 4 — Claims 3, 4, 11 (radial distribution; alternating orientations) obvious over the above in view of US 6,371,838 (Holzapfel) and US 5,536,202 (Appel)

Radial/concentric placement of conditioning elements on a rotating disk is the standard, and in many embodiments the only, way to dress a rotating pad. Appel's conditioning head with "a plurality of geometries formed in a surface thereof" and Holzapfel's cutting-element arrangement supply the placement pattern. Alternating orientations is an arbitrary orientation choice with no asserted result beyond even force distribution — and "even force distribution" is the inherent consequence of rotational symmetry, not of alternation per se.

Ground 5 — Claim 5 (secondary cutting elements on a face of each element) obvious over US 6,299,508 and US 6,027,659

Both disclose surface features/grooves formed on cutting or conditioning surfaces to maintain cutting action — supplying the claimed function ("to maintain a sharpness … during use"). The "10,000 times" cutting-edge-length assertion in the specification is unsupported by data.

Ground 6 — Claim 22 (method) obvious over JP 2001-025957 in view of US 6,884,155/6,368,198

JP 2001-025957 expressly teaches: (i) obtaining a substrate/mold; (ii) arranging a plurality of identical abrasive elements (its "prismatic diamond" is identical across the array) in cavities of a shaped mold; and (iii) securing them with a solidified organic (phenol) layer. That is the method of claim 22 almost verbatim. Sung's diamond-grid patents supply arranging polycrystalline elements in a predetermined pattern. (Claim 22's verbatim text is unavailable in the excerpt supplied to me — it ends mid-claim 12 — so the mapping is against the specification's summary paragraph; this is the weakest-sourced portion of my analysis and should be re-run against the granted PDF.)

Ground 7 — Claims 26–30 (superhard PCD/PcBN) obvious over any of Grounds 1–6 in view of US 4,923,490 and US 5,560,754

PCD and PcBN are the canonical superhard cutting materials of this art; selecting them for a cutting element is the definition of an obvious material choice, especially where the '872 specification claims no property of PCD/PcBN that was not already known (hardness, edge retention to "within a few atoms," energy concentration).

5. Motivation to combine — the KSR framework applied

1. Same field / analogous art. Every reference above is in CMP pad conditioning, superabrasive tool making, or both. The field is not just analogous — it is the same.
2. Common, documented problem. Grit/element pull-out and tip-height non-uniformity are the two classic failure modes recited in the '872 Background by the applicant. Two references addressing the same known failure modes are combinable.
3. Predictable solution, finite set. The available fixes — (a) stronger/geometrically uniform cutting bodies, (b) a compliant organic matrix that absorbs shock, (c) leveling by molding/reverse casting — were all fully enumerated in the prior art. KSR makes a combination of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions obvious.
4. Design incentive / market pressure. The '872 Background itself recites the driver: sub-65 nm nodes, coral-like low-k dielectrics, pressure reduction, finer and denser asperities. That is an express statement of the problem the claimed combination solves — and hence of the reason to combine.
5. Cost. The specification's own justification for the invention is cost savings ("the amount polycrystalline material used can be greatly reduced"). Building a large tool from n small sectors of a small PCD disk rather than a full-face PCD body is a cost-driven design choice, "a predictable variation," not an inventive leap.
6. No teaching away. JP 2001-025957 in fact teaches toward an all-resin body ("there is no possibility that the metal will elute and contaminate the wafer"), i.e., it supports rather than discourages the claimed architecture.

6. Where the case is weak — and the honest limits of this analysis

(a) The "equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector of a disk" limitation is the whole ballgame. I did not locate, within the retrieved record, a single pre-2004-08-24 reference that expressly discloses dividing a disk-shaped PCD compact into equal wedge-shaped sectors and securing those sectors, sector-face-outward, in a resin layer on a separate base. The combination above reaches that limitation by inference (known division technique + known disk blank + known resin-matrix mounting). A patent owner would argue the inference is hindsight-driven, and there is a non-trivial argument that the prior art's teaching of individual grit/particle cutting elements teaches away from large, monolithic wedge sectors (which is precisely the distinction the '872 specification draws repeatedly against "conventional superhard grits," whose widest cross-section sits at the grit midpoint).

(b) No objective evidence of nonobviousness in the specification. The '872 patent presents no comparative data against the closest art. Worse, the applicant states the devices "perform equally well, or nearly equally as well, as conventional cutting devices that utilize 'full-face' polycrystalline cutting or grinding tools." A statement of parity is the opposite of an unexpected result and will not support nonobviousness. The asserted advantages (positive cutting angles, "less tearing," sharper asperities) rest on mechanistic assertion, not measurement.

(c) The strongest real-world evidence cuts both ways. Third-party confirmation that the underlying organic-matrix/leveled-tip concept worked — e.g., the Tsai ODD work (2012, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925963512000106) showing "the burial depth of each diamond is about twice that of the exposed portion" and tip leveling "to less than 15 µm" — is after-the-fact relative to '872 and is therefore not prior art, but it is also not secondary-consideration evidence (it post-dates the invention). It is neutral.

(d) My sourcing limits. I could not retrieve '872's own cited-art list; the reference dates above drawn from the US 7,658,666 citation table are as that table displays them and should be re-verified against each reference's own front page before being relied on.

(e) Deadline/venue note. Because '872 expired (fee-related) with an adjusted expiration of 2024-09-23 per Google Patents' legal-status data, IPR is effectively foreclosed by the nonexistence of enforceable claims; the § 103 analysis above is therefore most useful for ex parte reexamination, defensive/opinion work, or a § 282 invalidity defense in any matter in which the patent's earlier period of enforceability is still at issue.

7. Bottom line

Single most important next step: retrieve '872's granted front page and its prosecution history to (i) collect the art actually cited, (ii) confirm the verbatim text of claim 22, and (iii) determine whether claims 1/6's "equal, divided, wedge-shaped sector" limitation is entitled to the 2004-08-24 priority date. If it is not, the critical date moves to 2005–2006 and the pool of available art — including JP 2006-055943 A (2006-03-02) and any intervening third-party pad-conditioner filings — expands materially, and the obviousness case for claims 1 and 6 becomes considerably stronger than the "moderate" rating above.