US 7845023

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 7845023.

Now let me check for any CAFC/litigation dockets and USPTO official records specific to this patent.

US Patent 7,845,023 — Analyst Summary

Scope note: No CAFC docket, appeal, or PTAB proceeding referencing 7,845,023 surfaced in my searches. I found no 2026 Federal Circuit activity for this patent number, and I will not substitute results for similar numbers (e.g., 7,845,022, 8,099,796, 8,099,797, 8,375,471). Treat the litigation section below as a negative finding plus one clearly labeled unverified lead.

1. Bibliographic Data

Assignment record: Two Nike assignments of interest from Surve were recorded 2021-04-20 (Reel/Frame 055976/0036) and 2021-04-22 (Reel/Frame 056007/0756), each with an effective date of 2002-05-01. Per Google Patents' own disclaimer, assignee listings are not legally certified.

2. Status and Term

• Legal status: Expired – Fee Related.
• Adjusted expiration listed as 2022-02-15.
• A maintenance-fee reminder issued 2022-07-25; the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, with the lapse effective 2022-12-07.
• Practical consequence: the '023 patent is no longer enforceable. Any 2026 appellate activity on this number would be unusual, though the expired status does not by itself disprove a historical appeal.

3. Abstract (as issued)

Fibers, such as textile fibers, having electrical components deposited thereon. One or more electrical components are formed directly onto the surface of at least one fiber. The fiber bearing the component may then be interlaced with other fibers to form a larger piece of fabric usable to produce an article of clothing. A group of transistors and piezoelectric components forming an accelerometer may be woven onto one or more natural or synthetic fibers. The fibers may serve as warp, weft, or both, of a woven fabric, or form a knitted fabric. The fabric can be cut and sewn into a wearable item — shirt, pants, hat, or shoe upper — that includes the accelerometer.

4. Technical Overview

The specification teaches applying the laser-assisted spray deposition of US 6,251,488 B1 (Miller et al., "Precision Spray Process For Direct Write Electronic Components"), expressly incorporated by reference, to deposit electrical structures on a single fiber. The worked example is an NPN bipolar junction transistor built up on a fiber: substrate layer → p-type layer → n⁺ region → n-type layer → p⁺ isolation regions → p-type base → n⁺ collector/emitter → electrodes → optional protective (abrasive/environmental) layer → optional conductive shielding layer. Components named include BJTs, FETs, capacitors, resistors, inductors, antenna elements (patterned line), and piezoelectric crystals. The specification also extends the concept to non-fibrous wearables — leather, plastics, and composite foams — and to knitted as well as woven fabric.

5. Independent Claims in Plain Language

The '023 patent has 25 claims; independent claims are 1, 11, and 13 (claims 10 and 12 are also independent in form as product-by-method claims).

Claim 1 — Method of making an article of wear. Three steps: (a) form at least a transistor on the surface of a single fiber; (b) interlace that fiber with other fibers to make a piece of fabric; (c) form an article of wear from that fabric. The recitation of a transistor is the narrowing point relative to the original application.

Claim 11 — Method of making an article of wear with interconnected components. (a) form a first electronic component on the surface of a single fiber; (b) form a transistor on that same surface; (c) form one or more connection lines on the fiber surface to interconnect the component with the transistor; (d) interlace the fiber with other fibers into a fabric; (e) form an article of wear from the fabric. The novelty emphasis is on on-fiber interconnect routing between a transistor and another component.

Claim 13 — Article of wear (apparatus). A piece of clothing material made from one or more pieces of fabric, where at least one piece of fabric includes a single fiber element having at least a transistor formed on a surface thereof. This is the product claim, and it is satisfied by the fiber-level structure irrespective of how the garment is assembled.

Claim 10 / Claim 12 — An article of wear formed by the method of claim 1 / claim 11, respectively.

Dependent claim tree (brief): Claims 2 (laser-spray deposition of stock material at the fiber), 3 (substrate on the fiber with the transistor on it), 4–5 (protective / insulative layer over the transistor), 6 (shield layer), 7–9 (transistor is a BJT / NPN BJT / FET) hang from claim 1. Claims 14–25 hang from claim 13 and add substrate, protective layer (insulative or shield), BJT / NPN BJT / FET, woven-fabric construction, and on-fiber electronic component plus connection lines.

Claim-scope observation (grounded in the record)

The pre-grant publication US 2009/0053950 A1 (same application 12/258,218) carried claims drafted around a generic "at least one electronic component" and included antenna-element and capacitor independent claims. The issued '023 claims recite "at least a transistor." The transition from generic electronic component to transistor-specific claiming between the published application and the granted patent is visible in the sources retrieved and is a relevant prosecution-history point. I have not reviewed the file wrapper itself, so the reason for the amendment (e.g., prior-art rejection over the Lebby/Post references) is uncertain.

6. Family and Related Cases (for distinguishing IDs)

The '023 is one of five family members (Family ID 40382610), all sharing the Feb. 14, 2002 priority date:

Because these share the 2002 priority date, results for 7,845,022 frequently co-occur with 7,845,023 in search output. They are separate patents and I have not merged their disclosures or claims.

7. Prior Art Cited on the Face of '023 (selected)

• US 6,251,488 B1 — Miller et al., Optomec Design Co., Precision spray processes for direct write electronic components (1999-05-05 / 2001-06-26) — the incorporated-by-reference deposition method.
• US 5,906,004 and US 6,080,690 — Lebby et al., Motorola — conductive-fiber textile fabric.
• US 6,210,771 B1 — Post et al., MIT — electrically active textiles.
• Also cited: US 3,586,597 (Teijin), US 3,632,966 (Arron), US 4,723,589 (Westinghouse), US 5,555,490, US 5,636,378, US 5,655,223, US 5,771,492, US 6,006,357, US 6,472,029, US 6,580,959, US 6,630,290, US 6,620,645, US 6,853,293.
• Non-patent citation of record: an Office Action in continuation application 10/077,548 dated March 17, 2010.

8. Litigation / CAFC Search Result

• No CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or mandamus proceeding was found referencing 7,845,023. Querying the number returned zero relevant hits at the appellate level.
• Given the patent's maintenance-fee lapse effective 2022-12-07, meaningful 2026 appellate activity is unlikely.
• Unverified lead (do not attribute to '023): Pointwise Ventures LLC v. Nike, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-01782 (S.D.N.Y., filed March 4, 2026), is a § 271 patent-infringement suit naming Nike as defendant, with pro hac vice appearances and a June 5, 2026 discontinuance order. I could not confirm which patents are asserted, and I found no evidence linking it to 7,845,023. Listed only to avoid conflating it with this patent.
• Similarly, Nike, Inc. v. Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (C.D. Cal.) 2026 activity concerns the "749, 781, and 511" patents — not 7,845,023.

9. Explicit Uncertainty Statement

• Authoritative: bibliographic data, abstract, claim text, family relationships, cited references, and legal-status/maintenance-fee events above, drawn from the Google Patents full text of US 7,845,023 B2 and corroborated by USPTO PubChem and uspto.report records.
• Not authoritative / not verified: (a) the identity of the examiner of record for '023; (b) the specific rejection grounds that narrowed the generic "electronic component" claims to "transistor" claims; (c) any litigation or appellate proceeding involving this exact number in 2026; (d) any current legal conclusion about validity, enforceability, or assignee ownership.
• Date discrepancy: the supplied session context contains two different dates (April 26, 2026 in the prompt, September 29, 2026 on the fetched record). This does not affect the patent data, all of which predates both.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7845023B2](/patent/US7845023B2)/en · https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-7845023-B2 · https://uspto.report/patent/app/20090053950 · https://patents.justia.com/patent/20110061150 · https://www.patents-review.com/a/20120096743-deposition-electronic-circuits-fibers-materials.html · https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2026cv01782/[659023](/patent/659023)

I'll search for litigation records involving US Patent 7845023.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 7,845,023

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,845,023. I checked the sources I could reach, and none of them returned a case in which this specific patent was asserted, challenged, or named as a subject patent.

What the searches returned (and what they did not)

Important clarification on a potential false positive

One search result appeared on its face to connect "7845023" with litigation: the Justia page for U.S. Pat. No. 9,357,813, which lists "7845023 | December 7, 2010 | Swatee" among references cited in the prosecution/reexamination file of Robert M. Lyden's footwear patents (relating to Lyden v. adidas et al. and reexaminations of U.S. Pat. No. 8,209,883). This is not litigation involving 7,845,023. It is merely a citation to the '023 patent as prior art in a different patent's file history. Similarly, the '023 patent appears as a "cited by" reference in the prosecution of many later patents (e.g., Google LLC's interactive-textile and radar patents, MIT's fiber-computer application US2021/0201121, and others) — citation, not assertion.

Relevant status facts about the patent (US7845023B2)

• Assignee/Owner: Nike, Inc. (original assignee; assignments recorded to NIKE, INC. in 2021 with effective date 2002-05-01)
• Inventor: Swatee N. Surve
• Priority date: 2002-02-14 (continuation of Appl. Ser. No. 10/077,548, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,845,022)
• Grant date: 2010-12-07
• Legal status: Expired – Fee Related. Maintenance fees were paid at years 4 and 8, but the 12-year fee was not paid; per the Google Patents legal-events record, the patent lapsed effective 2022-12-07 ("PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES," entries dated 2023-01-09 and 2023-01-31).

A patent that has been expired for several years and was never, to my knowledge, asserted is consistent with the absence of any infringement litigation.

Caveats and recommended verification steps

I want to be explicit about the limits of this search rather than overstate confidence:

1. I could not exhaustively query the dedicated litigation portals (e.g., the Unified Patents litigation caselist at portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist, Docket Alarm, Lex Machina, PACER, or the CAFC docket system) within this session. Those are the authoritative sources and are partly paywalled/portal-based. My conclusion rests on open-web searches plus the patent-family and citation records above.
2. Absence of evidence is not conclusive. A case could exist that is not well indexed by the sources I reached, is very recent, was filed under a sealing order, or names the patent only in an attachment.
3. Recommended next steps to confirm: run the patent number through (a) Unified Patents Portal litigation/caselist and PTAB caselist; (b) Docket Alarm or Lex Machina "patent" search; (c) PACER/CAFC docket search on "7,845,023"; and (d) USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records and the PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM/reexam) dockets.

Conclusion

Based on the sources I could access as of this search, there is no known litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, or PTAB/reexamination — involving U.S. Patent No. 7,845,023. The only appearance of the number in a litigation-adjacent document is as a cited prior-art reference in the file history of unrelated Lyden footwear patents, which should not be reported as litigation over the '023 patent. I cannot certify this is exhaustive; independent confirmation through the paywalled litigation databases listed above is advised.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" default against live sources before finalizing.

The first search surfaced IPR2013-00067, but that docket concerns Nike's knit-fabric patents, not '023. Let me confirm whether any petition actually targeted '023 or its sibling '022, and check for Unified Patents activity.

IPR2013-00067 is confirmed as adidas AG v. Nike on US 7,347,011 (knit upper) — a different patent. Let me run two final checks: whether '023 has ever been asserted in litigation (which would be the usual IPR trigger), and a direct PTAB docket sweep.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,845,023: 0. No IPRs, no PGRs, no CBM reviews — active (0), claims invalidated (0), claims sustained (0), settled (0), institution denied (0). The structured ODP block in this prompt reports no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest, and my live searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming '023, its parent US 7,845,022, or its continuations (US 8,099,796, US 8,099,797, US 8,375,471). The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "the patent has been hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "the claims are already dead" — it is that the claims are entirely untested at the PTAB, and the asserted term has run out: the patent shows an adjusted expiration of 2022-02-15 and a maintenance-fee lapse effective 2022-12-07, with the "patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees" event docketed 2023-01-09 (37 CFR 1.362). A defendant today is not facing an IPR question at all; it is facing an expired patent.

Disambiguation — IPR2013-00067 is NOT this patent

Web search for "'023 IPR" surfaces IPR2013-00067, which is frequently miscited as Nike fiber/textile PTAB activity. It is a different patent and a different dispute:

• IPR2013-00067 — adidas AG v. Nike, Inc., challenging claims 1–46 of US 7,347,011 B2 ("Article of Footwear Having a Textile Upper," Dua et al. — the Flyknit knit-upper patent). Not '023, not the Surve fiber-deposition family. Source: Decision on Remand, Paper 69, and Nike, Inc. v. adidas AG, 955 F.3d 45 (Fed. Cir. 2020).
• Do not import the '011 outcome into any '023 analysis. The '011 line produced a Federal Circuit appeal and a remand on Nike's motion to amend; none of that reaches '023.

I also found no Unified Patents, RPX, or other defensive-aggregator challenge to '023, and no district-court complaint asserting '023. Nike's enforcement campaigns in this space (e.g., Nike v. Lululemon, January 2023, asserting US 8,266,749, US 9,375,046, US 9,730,484; the earlier adidas footwear litigation) target other patents in the knit-upper and exercise-technology families.

Search caveat: this is a negative finding from the structured block plus targeted web searches, not a certified PTAB clearance. AIA petitions filed in the 2012–2018 window are indexed in PTAB E2E / PTACTS and on CourtListener; a party needing certainty should pull the full docket sheet for each of the five family members directly. I did not find anything to fill in, and I will not invent a proceeding number to fill the section template.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 25 claims UNTESTED, and all 25 now unenforceable-by-expiration. The patent has three independent claims — claim 1 (method of forming an article of wear: forming at least a transistor on a single fiber, interlacing, forming the article), claim 11 (method adding a "first electronic component," a transistor, and connection lines on the single fiber), and claim 13 (article of wear comprising a piece of clothing material including a single fiber element with at least a transistor on its surface). Claims 2–9, 14–25 are dependents; claims 10 and 12 are Beauregard-style "article of wear formed by the method" claims. Not one of these claims has been construed, instituted against, or canceled by the PTAB. There is no FWD to link, no cancellation certificate, and no narrowing amendment. The only claim-validity history in the file is a domestic one: the "Non-Patent Citations" listing shows a single Office Action in the parent US 10/077,548 dated 2010-03-17 — that is prosecution, not contested validity.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue here, because there is no IPR. Because no petitioner ever instituted a trial, no petitioner (or privy, or real party in interest) is estopped from anything. There is no IPR-based estoppel to litigate over, and correspondingly no petitioner-side record to inherit or attack. Any defendant would be starting a validity challenge from scratch, with the full universe of prior art available — which is the opposite of the usual hardened-patent posture. For completeness: had a trial been instituted, § 315(e)(2) would bar the petitioner from raising in district court any ground raised or reasonably raisable; with zero trials, that bar is empty.

Pattern signals: this patent simply was never asserted. Well-asserted patents in this technology space do attract IPRs — IPR2013-00067 arose directly out of adidas/Nike footwear litigation, and the Lululemon suits produced PTAB findings of unpatentability against US 8,266,749. The absence of any '023 IPR is best explained by the absence of any '023 assertion, which is in turn consistent with the patent being a 2002-priority filing that expired on 2022-02-15. There is no repeat petitioner, no PTAB appeal history, and no aggregator in the chain. The 2021 assignment records (Assignor: SURVE, SWATEE N.; nike reel/frame 055976/0036 and 056007/0756, both with a 2002-05-01 effective date) are late-recorded inventor-to-Nike assignments, not litigation-driven transfers.

Recommended next steps

1. If you received a demand letter citing US 7,845,023, lead with expiration, not with PTAB. The structured data shows adjusted expiration 2022-02-15 and a lapse for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2022-12-07, docketed 2023-01-09. An expired, fee-lapsed patent cannot be infringed by post-expiration activity, and damages reach only the period ending at expiration (with § 287 marking and the six-year § 286 bar on top). Confirm the fee status directly in USPTO Patent Center before responding, and confirm whether any petition to revive the lapse was filed.

2. Check the family before you assume the threat is dead. '023 is one of five members sharing the 2002-02-14 priority date: US 7,845,022, US 7,845,023, US 8,099,796, US 8,099,797, US 8,375,471. The structured block lists '022 as "Active" while the other four are "Expired - Fee Related." If an assertion names the family rather than '023 alone, pull the fee and expiration status of each member separately — that is the single highest-value factual check available to you right now.

3. If, contrary to this report, you locate an institution decision on '023, run the standard playbook. Institution decisions issue within six months of the petition's filing; trial then runs on a statutory one-year clock from institution to FWD (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable only for good cause under § 316(a)(11)/§ 326. But treat this as a contingency to verify, not an expectation to plan around.

4. Do not cite IPR2013-00067 in an '023 defense. It concerns US 7,347,011. Citing it would signal that the validity analysis was not read.

5. Verify the negative. For a filing or an opinion you intend to rely on, confirm the docket directly at PTAB E2E / PTACTS and, for any appeal, on the Federal Circuit docket or CourtListener. I found no proceeding to link to, and I am flagging that as a documented null result rather than a claim of exhaustive docket inspection.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for any litigation or NPE activity before writing up the analysis.

Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction — US 7,845,023 B2

Patent: US 7,845,023 B2 — "Deposition of electronic circuits on fibers and other materials"
App. No.: 12/258,218 (continuation of 10/077,548, filed 2002-02-14) · Filed: 2008-10-24 · Issued: 2010-12-07
Priority: 2002-02-14 · Family ID 40382610 (US 7,845,022; 8,099,796; 8,099,797; 8,375,471)

Sourcing note (read first): I could retrieve the legal-events / assignment metadata for this patent (reel-frame numbers, parties, conveyance type, dates) from the Google Patents record, which mirrors USPTO assignment data. I could not open the underlying reel images on Assignment Center, so the correspondent-of-record field is not verified below where marked. I have not guessed at it. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov (legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) by searching patent number 7845023.

Inventors

Pattern observations:

• Single-inventor patent. The "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale tell cannot exist here — there is only one inventor, and she assigned to Nike (inbound employment assignment), not away from it.
• Surve's other listed grants (US 6,306,077; 6,520,905; 6,591,008) are Eastman Kodak-era image/health-sensing patents, with a Rochester, NY residency listed on third-party inventor indexes. That is biographical context only; it is not an ownership finding for this patent, and I have not verified her employment history at filing beyond the recorded Nike assignment.
• The remaining four family members (7,845,022; 8,099,796; 8,099,797; 8,375,471) name the same sole inventor and the same assignee.

Original assignee

Nike, Inc. (Beaverton, Oregon) — named on the face of the issued patent and as the sole assignee on every recorded conveyance.

• Primary line of business: athletic footwear and apparel (public company, NYSE: NKE). Not a licensing vehicle.
• Did Nike ship a product embodying the claims? Unresolved / likely no. The claims require forming a transistor (or other electrical component) on a single fiber and then interlacing that fiber into fabric (claims 1, 11, 13). Nike's commercially shipped wearable electronics of the relevant era (Nike+iPod Sport Kit, circa 2006; Nike+ sensor pods) put an accelerometer in a shoe cavity — that is not "deposition of a circuit on a fiber." I found no evidence Nike ever commercialized the fiber-deposition embodiment, and Nike let the patent lapse rather than maintain it, which is consistent with a defensive/portfolio-filler patent rather than a commercialized one. Treat as not established, not as a negative finding about Nike's general operating status.
• Current status: operating company. No bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution. Two USPTO "reassignment" records in April 2021 simply re-record the original 2002 inventor→Nike conveyance (see below).
• Patent status: Expired — Fee Related. Maintenance fee lapsed; USPTO recorded "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES," effective 2022-12-07 (notice dated 2023-01-09). The 8th-year fee had been paid 2018-05-24.

Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center record for US 7,845,023 contains only the original inventor→Nike conveyance — recorded twice. There is no downstream transfer of any kind.

1) Executed 2002-05-01 / recorded 2021-04-20 — Reel 055976/0036

• Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
• Assignor: SURVE, SWATEE N.
• Assignee: NIKE, INC. (Oregon)
• Correspondent: not exposed in the metadata I retrieved — unverified. The reel image is the only source; no attorney or firm name is available to me.
• Context: Original employment/inbound invention assignment. Note the ~19-year gap between execution (2002-05-01) and recording (2021-04-20) — this reads as an administrative re-recording / records cleanup by Nike's IP department (possibly triggered by a portfolio audit), not a new transfer of rights.

2) Executed 2002-05-01 / recorded 2021-04-22 — Reel 056007/0756

• Conveyance: Assignment (identical caption and party block)
• Assignor: SURVE, SWATEE N.
• Assignee: NIKE, INC. (Oregon)
• Correspondent: not exposed in the metadata I retrieved — unverified.
• Context: Duplicate recording of the same 2002 conveyance, filed two days after reel 055976/0036. Same execution date, same parties, consecutive reel numbers — the signature of a single administrative effort, not an independent transaction. If you pull both images, the correspondent field almost certainly names one firm handling both; that would be an internal-cleanup attorney, not an NPE-assertion correspondent.

No other recorded assignments exist. In particular there is no assignment to any LLC, no security agreement, no merger, no license, no release, and no correction recorded against this patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7845023
    2002 : Surve files priority application
         : Surve assigns rights to Nike Inc
    2008 : Continuation application filed
    2010 : Patent issued to Nike Inc
    2021 : Original 2002 assignment recorded
         : Duplicate recording of same conveyance
    2022 : Maintenance fee lapses
    2023 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
Every recorded conveyance (reel 055976/0036; reel 056007/0756) names NIKE, INC. as assignee. There is no "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" assignee anywhere in the chain, and no single-purpose LLC of record. A registered-agent service address never appears because no such entity exists in this chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
Neither assignor (Surve) nor assignee (Nike, Inc.) appears on any of the referenced NPE directories (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Converso/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities). Nike, Inc. is an operating footwear/apparel manufacturer. No third-party assertion directory surfaced this patent in my searches.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (unverifiable).
The two reels (055976/0036 and 056007/0756) are two days apart and re-record the identical 2002 conveyance, so a single correspondent almost certainly handled both. However, the correspondent field is not present in the metadata available to me, and I will not name an attorney I cannot cite. Pull both reel images on Assignment Center to confirm. Note: even if one firm recurs across both reels, that is recurrence inside a single, identical conveyance by one operating company — it would not satisfy the signal as defined (which requires recurrence across a chain of changing assignees).

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
There is exactly one substantive conveyance in the entire history. No consecutive assignments, no chained LLCs, no shared correspondents across distinct assignees, no 24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
I found no infringement litigation naming US 7,845,023. The 2021 recordings are backdated to a 2002 effective date and postdate issuance by ~10 years; they are not a pre-suit standing-cleanse. (Caution: litigation involving Nike and Polar Electro / Nike and Apple from 2005–2007 concerns the Curtis A. Vock et al. sensor family — e.g., US 7,171,331; 7,457,724; 7,092,846 — not this patent. Do not conflate the two portfolios.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
Nike, Inc. has not filed Chapter 7 or 11. No proceeding-of-record appears.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists in this chain, so there is nothing to privateer. Nike never transferred assertion rights to a third party.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Nike, which then simply allowed the patent to lapse (effective 2022-12-07). Functionally the patent was neutralized by abandonment rather than by aggregation.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

This verdict is applied per the rubric — the entire recorded chain consists of one conveyance (Swatee N. Surve → Nike, Inc.), recorded twice at reel 055976/0036 and reel 056007/0756, both effective 2002-05-01 and both recorded in April 2021. There is no later assignment, so no NPE chain exists to grade. Substantively, the absence of downstream transfers is the finding: Nike retained ownership from 2002 until the patent expired for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2022-12-07, and no shell entity, known asserter, recurring assertion counsel, cascading LLC transfer, pre-suit transfer, bankruptcy sale, or defensive-aggregator acquisition appears anywhere in the record. This patent is not an NPE vehicle.

One caveat worth chasing to closure: the 19-year execution-to-recording gap on both reels is unusual enough to warrant opening the reel images at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov. If one correspondent firm appears on both 055976/0036 and 056007/0756, that is an internal Nike records-cleanup filer, not an assertion correspondent — but confirm rather than assume.

Verification links

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov — search "7845023"
• USPTO Assignment legacy search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents (legal events / family): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7845023/en

I'll research US patent 7845023 and its prior art citations. Let me start with searches to ground my analysis.

I have the authoritative patent text. Let me verify the USPTO record and gather details on the key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,845,023

Sourcing note. I ran searches against the USPTO-derived record for this number and corroborated against the authoritative full text supplied. Identity confirmed: US 7,845,023 B2, "Deposition of Electronic Circuits on Fibers and Other Materials," inventor Swatee N. Surve, assignee Nike, Inc., application 12/258,218 (filed 2008‑10‑24), priority 2002‑02‑14, granted 2010‑12‑07, status Expired – Fee Related (lapse effective 2022‑12‑07). It is a continuation of 10/077,548 (now US 7,845,022). I did not substitute any similar number. Primary record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7845023B2](/patent/US7845023B2) ; bibliographic corroboration: https://uspto.report/patent/app/20090053950

1. What the claims require (the anticipation baseline)

All 25 granted claims of US 7,845,023 require a transistor (or an article made by a method requiring one):

• Claim 1 (independent method): forming at least a transistor on a surface of a single fiber → interlacing the fiber with other fibers to form a piece of fabric → forming an article of wear with the fabric.
• Claim 2: deposition by spraying stock material through a laser.
• Claims 3–6: substrate / protective / insulative / shield layers.
• Claims 7–9: BJT / NPN BJT / FET "completely formed on the surface of the single fiber."
• Claim 10: article made by the method of claim 1.
• Claim 11 (independent method): first electronic component + a transistor + interconnection lines all on the single fiber → interlace → article.
• Claim 12: article made by the method of claim 11.
• Claim 13 (independent article): article of wear whose clothing material includes a fabric having "a single fiber element having at least a transistor formed on a surface thereof."
• Claims 14–25: dependents (substrate, protective/insulative/shield, BJT/NPN/FET, woven fabric, interconnection lines, etc.).

Prosecution insight: The pre‑grant publication US 2009/0053950 A1 claimed the broader concept of "at least one electronic component" on a fiber (see https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20090053950). The granted claims were narrowed to a transistor/active device. This is consistent with the examiner having art showing passive/conductive elements on or in textiles, but no art showing an active transistor formed directly on a single fiber. That framing drives the § 102 result below.

Legal standard applied: a claim is anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102 only if a single reference discloses every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Missing even one element defeats anticipation. Effective prior-art date = 2002‑02‑14.

2. Cited prior art — full citations

The USPTO record for US 7,845,023 lists 17 U.S. patent references (16 in the "Citations" set + US 5,771,492). None is a non‑patent publication except one prosecution document.

Non‑patent citation: Office Action in continuation application U.S. Appl. No. 10/077,548, dated Mar. 17, 2010 — this is prosecution history, not prior art, and cannot anticipate.

(Note: US 6,251,488 – Miller et al. – is both cited and incorporated by reference, giving it heightened relevance as the disclosed deposition technique.)

3. Reference‑by‑reference § 102 analysis

Result headline: No single cited reference anticipates any claim of US 7,845,023, because each claim requires a transistor (active device) formed on a single fiber, and the cited art discloses only conductive fibers, passive textile components, externally soldered ICs, or non‑textile deposition. The mappings below show which claims each reference comes closest to, and the element each is missing.

Group A — Textile + electronics art (closest to the inventive concept)

US 6,210,771 B1 (Post et al., MIT) — most conceptually relevant

• Discloses: conductive fibers woven into a matrix; a fabric that is "a substrate onto which electrical components are connected"; passive components (capacitor, inductor, transformer, resistor) "integrated directly into textiles"; and an integrated circuit soldered to single fibers (Fig. 1A).
• Maps to: the "component-bearing fiber interwoven into fabric" limitation of claims 1/10/11/12/13/21/22.
• Missing for § 102: a transistor formed on the surface of a single fiber. Post's actives are soldered to fibers (not formed on them), and its fiber-borne components are passive. Does not anticipate claims 1, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 18–20, 22–25 or any claim (all depend from a transistor-requiring base).

US 5,906,004 A (Lebby et al., Motorola)

• Discloses: woven textile with electrically conductive fibers used as interconnects/antenna for a portable electronic device; clothing fabricated thereof; "circuits, antennas, or other similar electronic components can be integrated or formed in the textile fabric."
• Maps to: "interlacing fiber with other fibers to form a piece of fabric" and "forming an article of wear" (claims 1/11/13 elements); antenna subject matter of the specification.
• Missing: a transistor (and any semiconductor active device) formed on a single fiber; the conductive fibers are merely conductive strands. Does not anticipate.

US 6,080,690 A (Lebby et al., Motorola)

• Discloses: woven fabric with conductive fibers plus an integrated sensing device; clothing thereof.
• Same deficiency: no transistor formed on the fiber surface. Does not anticipate.

Group B — Deposition methods (relevant to claim 2 only)

US 6,251,488 B1 (Miller et al., Optomec) — incorporation by reference

• Discloses: spraying feedstock through a laser beam to deposit electronic components/lines (resolution to ~0.1 µm) — i.e., exactly the "spraying stock materials at the fiber through a laser" step.
• Maps to: claim 2 (and support for claims 3–6 layer formation).
• Missing: any fiber or textile substrate; it is a deposition process, not an article/method of forming an article of wear. Does not anticipate claim 2 (which requires the full claim‑1 method) and anticipates nothing else.

US 6,472,029 B1 (Skszek, POM) and US 6,580,959 B1 (Mazumder et al., POM)

• Disclose directed‑energy/laser deposition of materials/laminates. Same single-element relevance to the deposition step (claim 2); no fiber, no textile, no transistor. No anticipation.

US 4,723,589 A (Iyer et al., Westinghouse)

• Method of forming a component by spray deposition. Relevant only as method art for claim 2. No anticipation.

Group C — Wearable/garment electronics (relevant to the "article of wear" element)

US 5,555,490 A (Carroll); US 6,853,293 B2 (Swartz, Symbol); US 5,636,378 A (Griffith); US 5,655,223 A & US 5,771,492 A (Cozza); US 6,006,357 A (Mead); US 3,632,966 A (Arron)

• All disclose articles of wear (vests, gloves, mittens, wearable computers/communicators) carrying electronics.
• Maps to: the "forming an article of wear" element of claims 1/10/11/12/13.
• Missing: none discloses a transistor formed on a single fiber that is then interlaced into fabric; the electronics are discrete modules/sensors attached to the garment. No anticipation. (These are at most § 103 secondary‑reference material.)

US 3,586,597 A (Okuhashi/Teijin)

• Antistatic cloth for garments. Relevant only as garment‑fiber background; no electronics. No anticipation.

Group D — Substrate/deposition/line art (relevant to layer and line limitations)

US 6,631,290 B1 (Guck et al., Medtronic)

• Multilayer electrode/substrate structures (cardiac sensing). Relevant to the substrate/protective/shield‑layer concepts (claims 3–6, 14–17) and to deposition on a substrate generally.
• Missing: fiber substrate and transistor; medical electrode, not a wearable textile circuit. No anticipation.

US 6,620,645 B2 (Chandra et al., G.T. Equipment)

• Makes/connects conductive bus bars on solar cells. Relevant to depositing/connecting conductive lines (connection lines of claims 11/22).
• Missing: fiber, textile, transistor, article of wear. No anticipation.

4. Bottom line — most relevant prior art

1. Most relevant overall: US 6,210,771 B1 (Post et al., MIT, 1997/2001) — the closest art on "electrical components associated with woven fibers and fabric‑borne circuitry," but limited to passive components and soldered‑on ICs; it is the reference that most plausibly forced the applicant to narrow the claims from "electronic component" to "transistor."
2. Next: US 5,906,004 A and US 6,080,690 A (Lebby et al., Motorola, 1998/1999–2000) — textiles with conductive fibers/sensors woven into clothing; no active device on the fiber.
3. Key method art: US 6,251,488 B1 (Miller et al., Optomec, 1999/2001) — the laser‑spray deposition technique expressly incorporated and relied on (relevant to claim 2 and layer claims).
4. Secondary/context art: the deposition references (US 4,723,589; US 6,472,029; US 6,580,959; US 6,620,645) and the wearable‑garment references (US 5,555,490; US 6,853,293; US 5,636,378; US 5,655,223; US 5,771,492; US 6,006,357; US 3,632,966), plus the layer/electrode art (US 6,631,290).

§ 102 conclusion: Under the strict "every element in a single reference" test, none of the 17 cited references anticipates any of claims 1–25 of US 7,845,023. Each of the broadest claims (1, 11, 13) requires a transistor formed on the surface of a single fiber that is thereafter interlaced into a fabric/article of wear — an active‑semiconductor‑on‑single‑fiber element absent from every cited reference. The cited art is properly characterized as § 103 combination material (e.g., Lebby/Post for fiber‑borne circuitry + Miller for laser‑spray deposition + a wearable substrate), not § 102 anticipation.

5. Caveats / limitations

• Database access: The live USPTO PatentCenter page was not directly retrievable in this session; I relied on the authoritative full text provided plus USPTO‑mirrored records (Google Patents, uspto.report, patentsencyclopedia). Citation dates above are taken literally from those records and were not corrected.
• § 102(e) nuance: Several references (US 5,853,293; US 6,620,645; US 6,631,290; US 6,580,959; US 6,472,029) granted after the 2002‑02‑14 priority date but are cited as prior art under pre‑AIA § 102(e) by virtue of their earlier filing dates. I have flagged them accordingly rather than treating grant date as controlling.
• Examiner vs. third‑party citations: The record marks some citations "cited by examiner" and others "cited by third party"; I did not attempt to resolve which individual citation triggered the "transistor" narrowing, as the Office Action dated 2010‑03‑17 (U.S. Appl. No. 10/077,548) is referenced but its full text was not available here.
• This is a technical prior‑art assessment, not a legal opinion; claim‑charting for litigation would require the complete prosecution histories of the 10/077,548 family and the full text of each cited reference.

I'll ground this analysis in the references actually listed on the patent page. Let me verify the key prior-art disclosures before mapping them to the claims.

Good grounding on the three primary references. Let me verify a few secondary references used for the dependent claims.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,845,023 B2

"Deposition of electronic circuits on fibers and other materials" (Nike, Inc.; inventor Swatee N. Surve)
Filing 2008‑10‑24 · priority 2002‑02‑14 (continuation of US 10/077,548) · granted 2010‑12‑07 · expired for non‑payment of maintenance fees, lapse effective 2022‑12‑07

1. Bottom line up front

Claims 1–25 are, in my assessment, highly vulnerable under pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). The prior art cited on the face of the patent supplies (a) a complete method of depositing active and passive electronic devices, layer by layer, directly onto essentially any substrate by laser‑assisted spray/direct‑write (US 6,251,488, Miller et al., Optomec), (b) textile fabrics into which circuits, antennas, semiconductor chips and other electronic components are "integrated or formed" and from which clothing is fabricated (US 5,906,004 / US 6,080,690, Lebby et al., Motorola), and (c) fabrics in which electrical components sit "within the matrix of the textile fabric itself," interconnected by conductive fibers, with passive components and semiconductor junctions formed from the textile materials (US 6,210,771, Post et al., MIT).

The only meaningful gap is the combination step — using Miller's deposition technique to build a transistor on the surface of a single fiber and then interlacing that fiber into a fabric. That gap is closed by the patent's own Background section, which expressly identifies the problem ("the fibers do not include complex electrical structures… additional circuitry… must be separately attached") and thereby supplies the motivation.

2. Framework applied

• Governing law: Pre‑AIA § 103(a) (effective filing date 2002‑02‑14). Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations; known technique applied to a known/analogous structure; "obvious to try" where a finite number of predictable solutions exists); MPEP § 2143.
• Hypothetical PHOSITA: a B.S./M.S.‑level engineer with ~3–5 years in one of: (i) textile/electronic‑textile engineering, or (ii) thin‑film/laser direct‑write fabrication; realistically a small multidisciplinary team (an IC/printed‑electronics process engineer plus a textile engineer), which is how such work was actually staffed in 2000–2002.
• Claim construction notes:
  • Claim 1 requires a process order: transistor formed on a single fiber → then interlacing → then forming the article of wear.
  • Claims 7–9 and 18–20 additionally require the transistor to be "completely formed on the surface" of the fiber (BJT / NPN BJT / FET).
  • Claims 2 and 3 track the specification's two stated implementation points (laser spray deposition; substrate layer).
  • Claims 10 and 12 are product‑by‑process claims; claims 13–25 are apparatus claims of the same scope.
  • Nothing in the specification attributes criticality to a parameter range, order, or material — which weakens any nonobviousness argument built on the "on a single fiber" limitation.

3. The prior art of record — what each reference actually teaches

Additional printed publication surfaced on the patent page itself: *Post et al., "E-broidery: Design and fabrication of textile-based computing" (2000)* — a pre‑2002 publication describing textile‑based computing with mounted circuitry; useable as a § 102(b) reference reinforcing the state of the art.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground A — Claims 1, 10, 11, 12: Miller '488 + one of Lebby '004 / Lebby '690 / Post '771

Element mapping (claim 1):

Claim 11 adds only "first electronic component," "transistor," and "connection lines" on the same fiber — all layered‑deposition features of Miller '488 (cl. 13 interconnected circuit pattern; cl. 20 layer‑wise components) plus Post '771 cl. 1 (components interconnected by conductive fibers within the fabric).

Ground B — Claim 2 (deposit "by spraying stock materials at the fiber through a laser")

Directly met by Miller '488. This limitation is not merely suggested — it is the entire point of the Miller reference, and the '023 specification itself cites and incorporates Miller for exactly this step. Claim 2 would fall even on Miller alone combined with the fabric/apparel step of Lebby or Post.

Ground C — Claims 3 and 14 (substrate on the fiber surface, transistor on the substrate)

Miller '488 permits deposition of a first material layer as a base (layer‑wise, multi‑material deposition; substrate list identical to the '023 list); POM '029 cl. 1 teaches building laminate (deposited‑layer‑on‑layer) structures by laser deposition. The '023 specification itself states the substrate is optional and exists only for adhesion and to provide a smooth surface on rough natural fibers — a routine design choice with a stated, predictable benefit (KSR: "known technique… to improve [a device] in the same way").

Ground D — Claims 4–6 and 15–17 (protective / insulative / shield layers)

• Insulative layer: Lebby '004 (insulative overcoating 18 on the conductive fiber); Post '771 (non‑conductive acrylic coating / insulating layer 135 applied over fabric‑mounted components); Miller '488 cl. 6 (dielectric feedstock) — depositing dielectric/passivation material is within the disclosed process.
• Protective layer: Lebby '690's protective overcoating 64 (fabric or plastic) over an electrically active fiber; the '023 specification frames the protective layer as a response to obvious environmental concerns (abrasion from weaving, water/salts/acids in a raincoat) — i.e., a predictable solution to a recognized problem.
• Shield layer: The '023 specification states the shield is "made from a conductive material… as is known in the art" to shield from electromagnetic radiation — an express admission that conductive EMI shielding of a transistor is conventional. Combined with the known abrasion/exposure problem, covering the deposited device with an insulating layer and/or a conductive shield is at most an obvious arrangement of known layers, and the specification itself notes alternative stacking orders, confirming the layers are not critically ordered.

Ground E — Claims 7–9 and 18–20, and 23–25 (BJT / NPN BJT / FET completely formed on the fiber surface)

Miller '488 supplies layer‑wise, multi‑material, patterned deposition with semi‑conductive feedstock (silicon, germanium, gallium nitride) and the express goal of "creating passive and active electronic components." Post '771 goes further and shows semiconductor junctions formed on textile materials — crossing conductive strips coated with n‑type and p‑type material so "a diode is formed." A two‑junction NPN BJT or a gate/modulated FET is a straightforward extension of the same n/p deposition sequence using Miller's layer‑wise CAD‑controlled process, and the '023 specification concedes that every doping step in its FIG. 3A/3B flow is "any suitable conventional doping technique." KSR rationale: using a known technique to make the same type of device in the same way, with predictable results.

Ground F — Claims 13 and 21–22 (article of wear; woven fabric; component + connection lines)

Claim 13's "piece of clothing material made from… fabric… includ[ing] a single fiber element having at least a transistor formed on a surface thereof" is the apparatus counterpart of Ground A. Claim 21 ("fabric woven from a plurality of fiber elements") is met by Lebby '004 (claims 10–11) and Post '771. Claim 22 (component + connection lines on the fiber) is met by Post '771 cl. 1 (components inside the fabric matrix interconnected by conductive fibers) and Miller '488 cl. 13.

Ground G — Claim 12 and product‑by‑process claims generally

Because the underlying processes are obvious, claims 10 and 12 ("article of wear formed by the method of claim 1/11") do not acquire patentability from the process; a product‑by‑process claim is obvious if the process is obvious and the product itself involves no separate inventive contribution.

5. Why a POSHITA would have combined these references

1. Applicant's own statement of the problem and the solution space. The '023 Background expressly names Lebby '004/'690 and Post '771 and criticizes them: "with each of the above‑mentioned techniques, the fibers do not include complex electrical structures. Thus, additional circuitry, such as microprocessors or other control circuits, must be separately attached to the fabric… Accordingly, there is a need to more fully integrate electronic circuits with a variety of wearable items…" That is a textbook motivation statement, supplied by the patent itself, pointing directly to forming the circuitry on the textile structure rather than attaching it.
2. Same field of endeavor / reasonable expectation of success. Miller's stated objects ("eliminating discrete electronic components… fabricated onto any substrate"; "removing the need for printed circuit boards"; components "directly produced on small structures") overlap precisely with the deficiency the '023 identifies in the textile art. Artisans working on wearable electronics in 2000–2002 were explicitly seeking to move the device into the fiber.
3. Feasibility is conceded in the specification. The '023 specification argues that Miller's process resolution (0.1 µm) is far finer than the dimensions of the fibers to be coated (cotton 12.7–228 µm; fine wool ~22 µm). That passage is, in effect, an admission that applying Miller's technique to a fiber is a matter of routine implementation rather than a new discovery.
4. KSR "obvious to try." Faced with the stated need, the artisan had a small, finite set of predictable options: (i) attach discrete devices (already known from Lebby/Post), (ii) weave functional fibers (known), or (iii) deposit the devices directly on the fiber using a known direct‑write process (Miller). Option (iii) was the recognized next step, with a reasonable expectation of success.
5. Design incentives / market pressure. Wearable‑electronics demand (US 5,555,490; US 6,853,293) and the known drawbacks of discrete hardware (bulk, washability, abrasion) supplied the incentive; Post '771 expressly notes the need for fabric devices that "may be routinely washed without compromising electrical capability," pointing to the advantage of a conformally deposited, overcoated device.
6. Old, unrelated art confirms the building blocks. Fiber‑level functional coating of apparel textiles (Teijin '597) and electrical circuits in articles of wear (heated mitten '2966, sensing vest '6378, gloves '5223/'492/'6357) show that neither "coat the fiber" nor "put electronics in clothing" was novel in itself.

6. Anticipated counterarguments and rebuttals

7. Claim‑by‑claim summary

8. Caveats, limits, and status notes

• Scope of verification. I retrieved and relied on the full text of US 6,251,488, US 5,906,004, US 6,080,690, US 6,210,771 and the bibliographic/claim data for US 6,472,029. For the older/auxiliary references (US 3,586,597; US 3,632,966; US 4,723,589; US 5,555,490; US 5,636,378; US 5,655,223; US 5,771,492; US 6,006,357; US 6,631,290; US 6,580,959; US 6,620,645; US 6,853,293) I am relying on the titles and dates as listed on the patent page and have not independently verified their disclosures in this session; treat those as secondary/corroborative only. Notably, I did not verify US 6,631,290 (Medtronic) and would not rest any ground on it.
• One citation I could not review: the page lists a non‑patent citation — "Office Action issued in continuation application, U.S. Appl. No. 10/077,548, dated Mar. 17, 2010." That file history would show the examiner's actual grounds against the same specification. I have not read it, so I cannot say whether the examiner raised a § 103 rejection on these references, nor on what basis the claims were allowed.
• Family note. The '023 shares its specification and 2002‑02‑14 priority with US 7,845,022 B1, US 8,099,796, US 8,099,797 and US 8,375,471. Any obviousness conclusion reached here applies with equal force to those family members.
• Identifiers interpreted literally per instruction. In particular, US 7,845,022 B1 and US 7,845,023 B2 are distinct patents in the same family; the parent is not prior art to the continuation.
• Practical relevance. The '023 lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees (expiration event recorded 2023‑01‑09, effective 2022‑12‑07 per the page's legal events), so this analysis is most useful for retrospective invalidity contentions concerning the family, or for defensive/prior‑art use.
• Contextual note (not prior art). Contemporaneous academic work on "active devices on fiber" (e.g., Gnade et al., Proc. International Interactive Textiles for the Warrior Conference, July 2002, and Dhawan et al. on circuits in woven structures) post‑dates the 2002‑02‑14 priority date and cannot be used as § 102/§ 103 art against these claims; I mention it only to note that the field was converging on the same solution.