US 8982086

I'll research US patent 8982086 across USPTO and CAFC 2026 docket sources.

Let me get more detail on the CAFC 2026 appeals and the PTAB proceedings.

Let me verify the CAFC docket details and the PTAB final written decision outcome.

US Patent 8,982,086 — Analyst Summary

Scope note: I was asked to search for patent number 8982086 / 8,982,086 only, and to interpret identifiers literally. All results below pertain to that number. Where I could not verify something from an authoritative primary record (PACER/PatFT), I flag it.

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1. Bibliographic data (per Google Patents, uspto.report, PTAB petition paper)

(Note: some third-party litigation write-ups label the ’086 patent "User Identification via Differentiated Finger Touches." That is a litigant/analyst gloss, not the patent's title. The printed title is "Information processing apparatus.")

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2. Abstract (as printed)

"An information processing apparatus includes a touch panel which displays pieces of identification information including letters, figures, and symbols and detects a contact of the panel with a finger of a user or other object. When the touch panel detects the contact of the panel, a detection unit specifies identification information … indicated by a position at which the contact in question occurred. The detection unit also detects an area of part of the panel where the contact occurred. A storage unit stores reference identification information and a reference area range. A control unit performs particular processing upon matching of the detected identification information with the stored reference identification information and the area of the contact detected by the detection unit falling within the stored reference area range."

The specification's two embodiments are (i) calibration/unlocking and icon-move gestures using a "finger tip input" vs. "finger pad input" contact-range distinction (averaged sensor-column count +/− a correction value sets the threshold), and (ii) a password/security embodiment in which each password numeral is registered together with the input method (finger tip or finger pad), optionally mapping different valid input methods to different post-unlock operations.

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3. Claims — status of the claim set

The patent as issued contains 4 claims, with claim 1 the sole independent claim and claims 2–4 dependent on it.

Ex parte reexamination 90/014,638 (third-party requested; requester Apple Inc.; request dated 2020-12-23, IPR filing 2021-02-09) produced Reexamination Certificate US 8,982,086 C1 (2021-10-05; effective 2021-09-28) which:

"The patentability of claims 1-4 is confirmed. New claims 5-15 are added and determined to be patentable."

So the operative claim set is claims 1–15, with claim 1 still the only independent claim; claims 5–15 are all dependent.

Claim 1 (independent) — plain language

An information processing apparatus comprising:

1. Touch panel configured to detect a finger contact of a user.
2. Detector that, when the finger contacts the touch panel, detects "first information necessary for an identification of the user" — i.e., data derived from the touch itself.
3. First controller that runs the apparatus in at least two operating modes: at least an identification mode and a registering mode.
4. Memory storing "second information relating to the identification of the user" — i.e., a pre-stored reference/template.
5. Second controller that executes a specified process when the first information and the second information "are coincident within said registering mode…" (the claim text literally recites "registering mode" here; the abstract/Specification describe coincidence in the identification mode. I am reading the claim literally and not auto-correcting it — this discrepancy is worth noting because it was a live issue in the litigation.)
6. In the registering mode, the apparatus provides a first registering mode for inputting input information by a pad of the finger and a second registering mode for inputting input information by an end of the finger (tip), and the second information is produced from the input information entered in at least the first or second mode.

In short: a touch device that registers a user's reference input using two distinct finger-contact types (finger pad vs. finger end) and later executes a process on a match.

Dependent claims 2–4 (as issued)

• Claim 2: the first information includes a position and an area of the finger contact.
• Claim 3: the first information includes a plurality of combinations of position and area of fingertip contact.
• Claim 4: the specified process includes releasing a lock that rests operation of the apparatus.

Claims 5–15 (added in reexamination; all dependent on claim 1)

• 5: display screen shows a first image + descriptive text for the first registering mode and a second image + text for the second.
• 6: touch panel includes one or more capacitive sensors; contact detected via capacitance variation.
• 7: display informs the user (during identification mode) to use a finger to execute an unlock operation.
• 8: during registering mode, displays image(s) with a shaded portion (contact) and non-shaded portion (no contact).
• 9: controller executes one or more of tapping, dragging, flicking, pinching.
• 10: tapping = contact for a first time period.
• 11: dragging = moving the finger while maintaining contact for a first time period.
• 12: flicking = sliding for a first period; pinching = establishing two contacts and increasing the distance between them.
• 13: dragging (first period) vs. flicking (second, shorter period).
• 14: icons corresponding to applications; moving an icon based on an operation requiring finger contact for a predetermined period.
• 15: the first controller associates a numerical password with the first information (text truncated in the sources I retrieved; I could not fully verify the tail of claim 15).

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4. Litigation / post-grant posture (relevant to "CAFC 2026 dockets")

Because these cases bear directly on the '086 patent's enforceability, I include them:

PTAB / USPTO

• IPR2021-00362 (Apple Inc. v. Maxell Ltd., challenging claims 1–4 of the '086 patent; petition 2020-12-23): terminated by settlement before institution (April 2021) — no FWD.
• IPR2024-00828 (Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.) v. Maxell Ltd.; filed 2024-04-26; instituted 2024-11-04): challenged claims 1‑2, 4‑7, and 9‑14 on §103 grounds (Rogers + Rosenberg; Rogers + Rosenberg + Miyazawa; additional grounds with Rekimoto). Per PTAB data, a Final Written Decision issued 2025‑10‑30, outcome "Unpatentable." I could not retrieve the full FWD text myself, so treat the specifics of which claims fell as needing confirmation from the document.
• Ex parte reexam 90/014,638 → Certificate C1, as above.

District court

• Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., No. 5:23-cv-00092 (E.D. Tex.) (Judge Robert W. Schroeder, III; filed 2023-09-07; terminated 2025-09-26; case flags include APPEAL). Trial May 2025: jury found infringement of claim 1 of the '086 patent and no invalidity; ~$38.1M of a ~$112M verdict attributed to the '086 patent.
• Post-trial, the court granted JMOL for Samsung (order 2025-09-18; reasoning sealed), including JMOL of noninfringement on all three tried patents and JMOL of invalidity for the '086 and '815 patents (Samsung's §112 written-description attack on '086 claim 1), plus a conditional new trial on invalidity.

Federal Circuit (the 2026 dockets surfaced by the patent record)

• Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 26-1111 (Fed. Cir.) — appeal from E.D. Tex. 5:23-cv-00092, docketed Oct 29, 2025 (per dockets.justia.com / Docket Alarm). Maxell's corrected opening brief was filed 2026-03-24; Samsung's response brief deadline was extended (order 2026-04-10) to 2026-06-26. This appeal arises from the same case in which the '086 patent was tried, though the appeal encompasses the JMOL rulings on the three tried patents (the ’086, ’848 and ’815 patents). Uncertainty: I have not verified from a primary opinion or the briefs whether '086-specific issues are squarely presented, though the case is the '086 trial.
• Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 26-1624 (Fed. Cir.) — appeal from the PTAB, originating case IPR2024-00828; filed 2026-04-07. This is the direct appeal of the '086 IPR Final Written Decision. Judge assignment still pending as of the aggregator snapshot. A companion appeal, No. 26-1625 (Maxell v. Samsung, filed 2026-04-07, "Appeal From PTO," attorney Robert G. Pluta/Mayer Brown), appears to be a parallel PTAB appeal filed the same day — likely for the companion '815 IPR — but I have not verified that linkage.

Other enforcement context (for completeness, not exhaustive)

• Earlier Maxell v. Apple W.D. Tex. litigation (6:20-cv-00646) and Maxell v. Lenovo (6:22-cv-00334); ITC investigations 337-TA-1215, -1312, -1324 (the 2022 Lenovo/Motorola action asserted the '086 patent among others).
• Reported Maxell–Samsung IPR activity in 2025–2026 involves many other Maxell patents (e.g., the '417, '645, '650, '646, '091, '718 families) — those are different patents and should not be conflated with the '086.

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5. Uncertainty / caveats

1. Primary-source verification: The bibliographic and claim data above are from Google Patents, uspto.report, the USPTO PTAB/PTACTS petition papers, and the reexamination certificate; the CAFC and district-court docket entries come from third-party docket aggregators (dockets.justia.com, Docket Alarm, "Ex Parte" AI-lab, RPX/Mondaq). I did not query PACER directly. Docket numbers, filing dates and deadlines should be confirmed against PACER/USPTO for anything filed after the snapshots.
2. Claim 1 wording anomaly: Claim 1 as printed recites coincidence of first and second information "within said registering mode," whereas the Specification and Abstract frame coincidence in the identification mode. I have reported this literally and deliberately not "corrected" it.
3. Reexam claim 15 text was truncated in the retrievable copy; I could not fully confirm its full scope.
4. IPR2024-00828 outcome: Aggregator data indicate a Final Written Decision dated 2025-10-30 with outcome "Unpatentable" for the challenged '086 claims. I did not retrieve the underlying FWD text, so the precise claim-by-claim disposition (and the treatment of unchallenged claims 3, 8 and 15) is not independently verified here.
5. No fresh 2026 CAFC merits ruling on the '086 was found as of this search; both identified 2026 dockets (26-1111, 26-1624) show as pending, with no opinion located.

Bottom line: US 8,982,086 ("Information processing apparatus," Masaaki Yamada, now Maxell, Ltd.) claims a touch-panel apparatus that identifies/authenticates a user by, among other things, registering reference input through two different finger-contact modes (finger pad vs. finger end) and acting on a match — with lock release as the paradigm "specified process." The patent survived an ex parte reexamination that confirmed claims 1–4 and added claims 5–15, but is now the subject of (a) a PTAB Final Written Decision in IPR2024-00828 finding the challenged claims unpatentable — on appeal at the Federal Circuit as No. 26-1624 — and (b) a district-court JMOL that overturned the $112M verdict including the '086 patent's claim 1 — on appeal as No. 26-1111.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8982086 using multiple searches.

I have strong initial results. Let me dig deeper into the specific cases identified.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 8,982,086

Important note on scope: I searched for litigation specifically over US 8,982,086 (the "'086 patent"). All identified U.S. matters involve the same plaintiff, Maxell, Ltd. (successor to Hitachi Maxell / Hitachi Consumer Electronics), which acquired the patent and has asserted it in a large multi-front campaign. Below I separate (A) matters that squarely assert the '086 patent, (B) proceedings attacking the '086 patent, and (C) related/appellate matters. Where a detail could not be independently confirmed, I say so.

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A. District court and ITC cases asserting the '086 patent

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B. Patent Office proceedings attacking the '086 patent

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C. Related / appellate and adjacent matters

• CAFC appeal, No. 26-1111 — listed on the patent's litigation record; this corresponds to Maxell's appeal of the September 2025 JMOL in Maxell v. Samsung (5:23-cv-00092). Maxell has reportedly asked the Federal Circuit to stay the appeal pending resolution of related PTAB proceedings. (Appeal numbers 26-xxxx imply a 2026 filing; I could not independently verify the exact filing dates or docket details of the two CAFC appeals.)
• CAFC appeal, No. 26-1624 — also listed on the patent's litigation record; nature/parties not independently confirmed (it may relate to a PTAB decision or a separate Samsung/Maxell judgment).
• Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung, No. 5:25-cv-00034 (E.D. Tex.) — severed from the -92 case in March 2025 over the '241 patent (not the '086 patent); appears on the patent's family litigation record but does not appear to assert the '086 patent.

Listed but not independently verified (appear on the patent's litigation record):

• 5:18-cv-00033, 5:18-cv-00034, and 5:18-cv-00136 (E.D. Tex.) — three 2018 E.D. Tex. actions involving this patent family. I could not confirm the parties or whether the '086 patent itself was asserted in these, so I do not attribute defendants to them.
• 6:22-cv-00334 (W.D. Tex.) — Maxell, Ltd. v. Lenovo Group Ltd., et al., filed 2022, stayed under § 1659 pending 337-TA-1312. This is the district-court companion to the Lenovo/Motorola ITC actions; sources specifically tie it to the '394 patent, and I could not confirm whether the '086 patent was asserted in it.

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Summary

The '086 patent has been asserted by Maxell, Ltd. in at least four ITC investigations (337-TA-1215 v. Apple; 337-TA-1312 and 337-TA-1324 v. Lenovo/Motorola; and the Apple/Maxell district-court companion) and in at least two U.S. district court cases confirmed to assert it — Maxell v. Apple, 6:20-cv-00646 (W.D. Tex.) and Maxell v. Samsung, 5:23-cv-00092 (E.D. Tex.). The patent has additionally been attacked at the PTAB (Apple's IPR2021-00362, terminated on settlement; Samsung's IPR2024-00828, which reached a Final Written Decision) and via reexamination (claims 1–4 confirmed; claims 5–15 added).

Current posture (as of April 2026): The headline result — the May 2025 $111.7M jury verdict against Samsung (with ~$38.1M for the '086 patent) — was vacated by JMOL in September 2025, and Maxell's appeal is pending at the Federal Circuit (No. 26-1111), reportedly stayed pending PTAB resolution.

Caveats: I was not able to fully verify (a) the parties/patents in the 2018 E.D. Tex. cases (5:18-cv-00033/-34/-136), (b) whether the '086 patent was asserted in 6:22-cv-00334, (c) the requester of the '086 reexamination, or (d) the exact scope and dates of CAFC Nos. 26-1111 and 26-1624. These should be confirmed against PACER, the CAFC docket, and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board / reexam records before being relied upon.

I'll reconcile the ODP block against the proceedings visible in the patent record and search for claim-level outcomes.

I'll start by verifying the assignment records and litigation/licensing context for US 8982086.

Excellent — I found the reel/frame data and a correspondent name. Let me verify the correspondent's firm and the earlier assignment.

US 8,982,086 B2 — Assignment Record Reconstruction

Analyst note on sourcing. I could not open the Assignment Center UI directly in this session. The reel/frame data below comes from two sources that reflect the same USPTO assignment records: (a) the legal-events block on the Google Patents page for US 8,982,086, and (b) a USPTO "Patent Assignment Abstract of Title" printout reproduced as Exhibit 1006 in a PTAB filing (IPR2024‑00906, Samsung v. Maxell), which contains the entry for Reel/Frame 045142/0208. Where a correspondent is not recoverable from those two sources, I say so rather than guessing. Verify at: Assignment Center (search "8982086") and USPTO Assignment Search.

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Inventors

Masaaki Yamada — sole named inventor on US 8,982,086 (and on the parent US 8,654,093 and the JP priority application JP2011‑025576).

• Employer at filing: the US application (Ser. No. 13/366,983, filed 2012‑02‑06) was filed by/for Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd. (HCE). I state this because the USPTO assignment record itself names HCE as assignor of the invention in the 2014 recording (Reel 033610/0698), and uspto.report lists HCE as the grantee of record. Note the source conflict: Google Patents' "Original Assignee" field shows Hitachi Maxell Ltd — that field is populated with the eventual owner, not the filer, and is contradicted by the assignment record. Treat HCE as the owner at filing.
• Employment-turnover tell: no evidence of any inventor departure within 12 months of filing; a sole-inventor Japanese corporate filing with no post‑filing inventor-side assignment activity is unremarkable. Not present.
• Timing note: the US case was filed 2012‑02‑06 against a 2011‑02‑09 JP priority — i.e., at the Paris Convention deadline. Ordinary corporate practice; no fire-sale signature.

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. (Kyoto/Osaka, Japan) — ownership had already moved to it from HCE by the 2014 assignment, before the 2015‑03‑17 grant. Google Patents lists "Original Assignee: Hitachi Maxell Ltd"; current assignee "Maxell, Ltd."
• Primary line of business: Hitachi Consumer Electronics was Hitachi, Ltd.'s consumer electronics arm (TVs, projectors, mobile terminals and related IP). Hitachi Maxell / Maxell, Ltd. is a publicly traded, revenue-generating manufacturer in consumer batteries, storage media, projectors, and electronics accessories — the "portable terminal 0" described in the specification is consistent with HCE's mobile-terminal work, the source of this filing.
• Product embodiment: I could not verify a specific Hitachi/Maxell commercial product practicing the issued claims (touchscreen discrimination of finger‑pad vs. finger‑tip contact for unlocking). The asserted products across all suits are third‑party devices (Apple iPhone, Motorola/Lenovo phones, Samsung Galaxy devices). This is a genuine gap in the record and matters for the verdict below.
• Current status: Operating, and solvent. Maxell, Ltd. is the current recorded owner (Kyoto address "1 Koizumi, Oyamazaki, Oyamazaki‑cho, Otokuni‑gun, Kyoto" matches both the assignment record and the complainant address in ITC filings). Corporate history: HCE (2009 spin‑out of Hitachi consumer IP) → Hitachi Maxell (2013 division transfer) → Maxell, Ltd. (2017 rename) → 2021 internal holding-company merger and name change. No bankruptcy, receivership, or assignment-for-the-creditors appears anywhere in the chain.

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Assignment timeline

Four recorded conveyances. Note that none of the four is a sale; all four are intra‑group recordings, and the last three are corporate housekeeping.

• 2014‑08‑19 (executed) / recorded 2014‑08‑26 — Reel 033610/0698

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.
  • Assignee: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the two sources used; Reel 033610 is a pre‑2015 legacy reel and the correspondent line did not appear in the retrieved material. Flagging as a documentary gap rather than filling it by inference.
  • Context: internal corporate reorg — transfer of the Hitachi consumer‑electronics IP estate into Hitachi Maxell as the consumer business was consolidated (the same filing/recording date pattern appears across the whole family).

• 2017‑10‑01 (executed) / recorded 2018‑01‑25 — Reel 045142/0208 (assignment mailed 2018‑03‑09; 141 pages)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
  • Assignee: Maxell, Ltd. (1 Koizumi, Oyamazaki, Oyamazaki‑cho, Otokuni‑gun, Kyoto, Japan)
  • Correspondent: Nadeen Nsouli, 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606 — recorded on this reel/frame. One appearance only in this chain; I cannot confirm recurrence on the other Maxell reels, so per the recurrence rule this is not a finding on its own. Two observations worth recording rather than asserting: (i) 71 South Wacker Drive, Chicago is the office address used by Mayer Brown LLP, Maxell's lead litigation counsel in Maxell v. Apple (W.D. Tex. 6:20‑cv‑00646) and Maxell v. Samsung (E.D. Tex. 5:23‑cv‑00092) — e.g. Robert G. Pluta, Mayer Brown LLP, 71 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago; and (ii) USPTO practitioner records (Reg. No. 76859) list a Nadeen Nsouli at a different Chicago address (Cooley LLP, 110 N. Wacker Drive). Identity/firm match not confirmed — do not treat as a repeat-player finding.
  • Context: internal reorg / portfolio-wide recording. Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. renamed itself Maxell, Ltd. effective 2017‑10‑01; the 141‑page document is a bulk title recording across the estate, not a negotiated transfer.

• 2021‑10‑01 (executed) / recorded 2021‑11‑29 — Reel 058255/0579

  • Conveyance: Merger
  • Assignor: Maxell, Ltd. → Assignee: Maxell Holdings, Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the retrieved sources.
  • Context: internal corporate restructuring (holding‑company merger).

• 2021‑10‑01 (executed) / recorded 2021‑12‑03 — Reel 058666/0407

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Maxell Holdings, Ltd. → Assignee: Maxell, Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not recoverable from the retrieved sources.
  • Context: change of name only. The 2021 merger + name‑change pair nets to the same ultimate owner that held the patent in 2018.

Not assignments, but recorded against this patent and relevant to the chain: Certificate of Correction 2019‑05‑28; third‑party-requested ex parte reexamination 90/014,638 (requested 2020‑12‑23 by Apple, granted 2021‑01‑22) → reexamination certificate effective 2021‑09‑28: claims 1–4 confirmed, new claims 5–15 added; Certificate of Correction 2022‑01‑04. The reissue family members (USRE48830E1, USRE49669E1) inherit this chain; I did not verify a separate assignment record for the reissue applications.

No assignment has been recorded from 2021‑12‑03 to the present. Maxell, Ltd. is the owner of record and is the named plaintiff in every suit.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8982086
    2011 : JP priority application filed
    2012 : US application 13 366 983 filed
    2014 : Transfer to Hitachi Maxell
    2015 : Continuation issues as US 8982086
    2018 : Recorded assignment to Maxell Ltd
    2020 : Maxell sues Apple in WDTX and ITC
         : Apple requests ex parte reexamination
    2021 : Merger into Maxell Holdings Ltd
         : Name change back to Maxell Ltd
         : Reexam certificate adds claims 5 to 15
    2022 : Maxell sues Lenovo and Motorola at ITC
    2023 : Maxell sues Samsung in EDTX
    2025 : Jury verdict for Maxell vacated by JMOL
         : PTAB FWD in IPR2024 00828

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is a Japanese operating manufacturer within one corporate family: Hitachi Consumer Electronics → Hitachi Maxell → Maxell, Ltd. → Maxell Holdings → Maxell, Ltd. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" LLC, no registered-agent address, no single-member Delaware/Texas entity. The only "Holdings" name (Maxell Holdings, Reel 058255/0579) is a Japanese holding company paired with an immediate Change of Name back to Maxell, Ltd. (Reel 058666/0407) — a name change, not a shell transfer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT for the enumerated lists; PARTIAL elsewhere. No link to Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities. However, Maxell, Ltd. is itself a high-frequency plaintiff: ITC 337‑TA‑1215 (Apple, instituted 2020‑08‑19), 337‑TA‑1312 (Lenovo/Motorola, instituted 2022‑04‑28), 337‑TA‑1324, 337‑TA‑1432 (Samsung, instituted 2025‑01‑23), plus E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., UPC and Japanese actions, and mass notice letters (e.g. 2021‑07‑07, 2021‑12‑29, 2023‑09‑08). It monetizes a legacy portfolio through an internal "IP Innovation Division." That is high-volume assertion behavior by a solvent operating company that owns its patents outright — materially different from an NPE chain, and it is not reflected in any assignment to an assertion vehicle.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT ESTABLISHED. One correspondent recovered (Nadeen Nsouli, Reel 045142/0208). Three of four recordings show no correspondent in the sources retrieved. A single appearance is expressly not a finding under the recurrence rule; the interesting-but-inconclusive detail is that the recorded Chicago address coincides with Maxell's litigation firm (Mayer Brown LLP, 71 S. Wacker Dr.), which is normal practice for a foreign parent, not an NPE tell.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Four recordings over ~7 years (2014 → 2018 → 2021 ×2), all intra‑family, with a net‑zero 2021 merger/name‑change pair. No chained LLCs, no shared-principal pattern, nothing within 24 months that resembles laundering.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The last ownership event (2021‑10‑01, recorded 2021‑11‑29/2021‑12‑03) post-dates the first assertion of this patent (W.D. Tex. 6:20‑cv‑00646 and ITC 337‑TA‑1215, both July 2020). The 2018 recording (Reel 045142/0208) preceded the 2020 suits by ~2.5 years. Neither is within 6 months of a first filing; the chain was not arranged to set venue or standing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, no §363 sale, no distressed transfer. The 2013 Hitachi consumer-electronics divestiture that drives Reel 033610/0698 was a planned divestiture of a business unit inside a solvent parent, and the patents stayed inside the Hitachi/Maxell family.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT as defined. Privateering requires transfer of title (or assertion rights) to a third party that sues on the operating company's behalf. Here no title ever leaves the family, and Maxell sues in its own name as complainant/plaintiff in every action. Related but distinct caveat: Maxell does not appear to ship a product practicing the '086 claims, and one defendant has argued in PTAB filings that Maxell "does not make competing products" and that monetary damages suffice — which is NPE-style litigation posture even though title never left an operating manufacturer. That is a posture observation, not a privateering finding.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. Chain terminates at Maxell, Ltd.; no RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN link. Maxell is on the opposite side of the PTAB docket (Samsung filed IPR2024‑00828 against this patent; Unified Patents litigation/PTAB data appears on the patent page as a tracker, not as an acquirer).

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with a caveat that this is a licensing-driven campaign rather than a product-vs-product fight.

The four recorded conveyances (Reels 033610/0698, 045142/0208, 058255/0579, 058666/0407) are all intra-group: a 2014 reorganization of Hitachi's consumer-electronics IP into Hitachi Maxell, a 2018 141‑page portfolio recording tied to the Oct 1 2017 rename to Maxell, Ltd., and a 2021 merger/name-change pair that nets to the same owner. No shell entity, no known NPE assignee, no cascading LLCs, no pre-litigation transfer, no bankruptcy — and title has stayed with a publicly traded manufacturer, Maxell, Ltd., which asserts the '086 patent in its own name (ITC 337‑TA‑1215, ‑1312; E.D. Tex. 5:23‑cv‑00092) and won a $38.1M component of the May 2025 Samsung verdict before it was vacated on JMOL. The two things that keep this off a clean "operating company suing over its own product" call are that Maxell's accused-products market is third-party smartphones, not Maxell's own, and that the assertion posture is aggressive (notice-letter campaigns, repeated post-reexam assertion of reexam-added claims 6–15 in ITC 337‑TA‑1312, PTAB findings of unpatentability). It is not an NPE chain; it is a legacy-portfolio licensing campaign run by a solvent operating company.

Verification: Assignment Center — search 8982086 · USPTO Assignment Search

I'll research the prior art record for US 8,982,086, starting with the examiner citations listed in the patent text and the IPR grounds.

Let me verify the two remaining examiner citations and the IPR references with full citations.

Prior Art Assessment — US 8,982,086 B2 ("Information processing apparatus")

Analyst note on scope and sourcing. Per the operative rules, I treated the full patent text supplied in the prompt as authoritative over search results. That text contains two different citation blocks for US 8,982,086, and they do not match — I report both rather than merging them silently:

• a "Citations (4)" block: JPH05100809A, JP2005202527A, US20070250786A1, TW201101130A; and
• a "Patent Citations (6)" block: JPH05100809A, US5844547A, JP2005202527A, US20050162407A1, US20070250786A1, TW201101130A.

So the Office-cited patent set is the six references in the second block; the first block is a subset. Separately, the record shows a large "Family Cites Families (125)" third‑party list, which includes the references the PTAB actually used in IPR2024‑00828 (Rogers, Rosenberg). I treat those as a distinct, more important category below.

Critical framing up front: the references the examiner cited were not applied to invalidate any claim under §102 — the claims issued over them. The only adjudicated validity rulings on this patent are §103 obviousness (PTAB) and §112 written description (district-court JMOL), not §102 anticipation. So for most references below, the honest answer to "which claims does it anticipate under §102?" is "none, on the record as applied" — they are §102/§103 art-of-record references, not anticipatory references. I flag where a reference could plausibly, on its own disclosure, anticipate specific dependent claims.

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A. Office-cited (examiner) patent references — the six from the patent record

Reference-by-reference §102 analysis

A1 — JPH 05‑100809 A (Fujitsu, 1993). This is the reference the '086 specification itself opens with (the "Background of the Invention" quotes its abstract). It discloses a touch-panel information processing apparatus having a display information table (object physical type, display position, file state) and touch panel information (touch position coordinate and touch pressure), with an object manipulation decided by the correspondence between the two. §102 relevance: it is the closest generic touch-manipulation art, and its "touch position + touch pressure" data pair is structurally similar to the '086's "position and area." But it has no user-identification, no registering mode, and no finger-pad vs. finger-end distinction, so it does not anticipate claim 1. It is at most relevant as background to the icon/gesture subject matter now recited in reexam-added claims 9–14. Its US sibling is A2.

A2 — US 5,844,547 A (Fujitsu, issued 1998‑12‑01). Same disclosure family as A1 (the "display information table 1T" / "touch-screen information 2I" scheme, including touch position X‑Y and applied pressure). It adds recognition of manipulation types — pick, scroll, push, flip, roll, distort-restore (see EP 0 536 715/0 938 038/0 938 039 family). §102 relevance: its manipulation-type recognition is conceptually close to the '086's later-added gesture claims (claims 9–13: tapping/dragging/flicking/pinching) and the icon-movement claim (claim 14). It discloses nothing about identifying a user or registering pad/end-of-finger inputs, so it does not anticipate independent claim 1 or claims 2–7. Best characterized as §102/§103 art against the gesture-dependent reexam claims.

A3 — JP 2005‑202527 A (Fujitsu Component, 2005‑07‑28). Japanese parent of A4.

A4 — US 2005/0162407 A1 (Fujitsu Component, published 2005‑07‑28). This is the single most on-point Office-cited reference, and the one that comes closest to §102 anticipation. Its abstract and specification disclose an input device that:

• detects a touch position on a touch panel,
• measures a touch area (specifically the maximum touch area, S_max, from touch-down to lift-off),
• generates a password code from the combination of touch position + touch area (e.g., "Xₚ₁Yₚ₁Sₚ₁"),
• compares the generated password code against a pre-registered proper password code stored in a password storage unit, and
• judges whether the user is an authorized user based on the comparison.

§102 relevance: A4 discloses, essentially in haec verba, the core of the originally issued claims:

• Claim 2 ("said first information includes a position and an area of the finger contacting with said touch panel") — A4 explicitly discloses password codes built from touch position + touch area; strong §102 candidate.
• Claims 1 and 4 — A4 has the touch panel, the detecting of first information (position/area), the pre-stored reference (registered password code), and the "specified process" of authenticating the user (and, in the access-control context, releasing the device). The gap is the claim‑1 limitation requiring a first registering mode for inputting information by a pad of the finger and a second registering mode for inputting information by an end of the finger — A4 discloses area magnitude differences but does not expressly disclose two named, distinct finger-contact-type registering modes. On that basis a §102 rejection of claim 1 would be incomplete; a §103 combination would be needed. A4 is nevertheless the strongest §102-type reference for claims 2, 3 (plural position/area combinations — A4 generates codes at every sampling cycle) and the password-relation of reexam claim 15.
• A4 (and A3) also predate the '086 priority date by ~6 years, so prior-art status is not in question.

A5 — US 2007/0250786 A1 (Jeon / LG Electronics, published 2007‑10‑25). Discloses a touch-screen device that, when two or more menus are touched simultaneously, computes the proportion of each touched menu's area to the whole touched area, and executes the menu whose proportion is ≥ a predetermined value. §102 relevance: it discloses contact-area proportion measurement and area-threshold decision logic — subsidiary concepts that map loosely onto the '086's "contact range … falls within the reference area range." It contains no user identification, no registering mode, and no pad-vs-tip distinction; it therefore does not anticipate claim 1 or any dependent claim in a way that would support a §102 rejection. Useful only as §103 art on the "area measured against a threshold" concept.

A6 — TW 201101130 A (Au Optronics, 2011‑01‑01). Titled "Touch operation method and operation method of electronic device." I could not retrieve its disclosure in this session (search budget exhausted), so I will not characterize its technical content. Its metadata places it just before the '086 priority date (2011‑02‑09), making prior-art status date-sensitive. Flag: unverified.

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B. Non-patent literature cited

• "Entire Prosecution of U.S. Appl. No. 13/366,983 to Yamada entitled 'Information Processing Apparatus', filed Feb. 6, 2012" — this is the parent application's prosecution history (the '086 is a continuation of 13/366,983, which issued as US 8,654,093 B2). It is a file-history reference, not prior art; it cannot anticipate under §102.
• "Office Action, Chinese Serial No. 2014062700460410 dated Jul. 2, 2014" — prosecution of the CN family member (CN 102707826 B). Again, not prior art against the '086 claims.

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C. The substantively decisive prior art — IPR2024‑00828 references (§103, not §102)

These are the references on which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board actually found the challenged claims unpatentable in IPR2024‑00828 (Samsung v. Maxell), and they are therefore the "most relevant prior art" for this patent in a litigation sense — despite the fact that (per the institution decision) none was applied as a §102 anticipation reference. Per the Board: "None of the references on which the challenges presented in this proceeding are based were cited during the original prosecution of the '086 patent."

How they map (the PTAB's §103 theory):

• Rogers supplies the graphical-passcode architecture: registration mode + identification mode + contact-area measurement → supplies the bulk of claim 1.
• Rosenberg supplies the missing claim-1 element: the "first registering mode … by a pad of the finger" and "second registering mode … by an end of the finger." The Board found Patent Owner conceded Rosenberg "teaches two modes—a first fingertip interaction mode and a second finger pad interaction mode."
• Miyazawa supplies the specific gestures of dependent claims 9–14.
• Rekimoto is relied on only as an alternative to Rosenberg.

§102 versus §103 for this set: none of Rogers, Rosenberg, Miyazawa or Rekimoto standing alone anticipates claim 1 — Rogers lacks the two finger-contact-type registering modes; Rosenberg lacks the passcode-identification/registration architecture. Their combination is what the Board found obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) (pre‑AIA). Individually, Rosenberg is the closest §102-type disclosure of the pad/end-of-finger limitation (claim 1's final clause), and Rogers is the closest §102-type disclosure of the registration/identification + area-comparison structure (claims 1, 2, 4). Miyazawa is close to §102 anticipation of the gesture claims 9–14.

Caveat on "Rogers": the aggregator and PTAB documents give the Rogers citation as US 8,683,582 B2, issued 2014‑03‑25, filed 2008‑06‑16; the '086 patent's own "Family Cites Families" list separately shows US 8,683,582 (filed 2008‑06‑16, Qualcomm, "Method and system for graphical passcode security"). I am reporting both literally and flagging that the "Rogers" short name and the exact serial of the Qualcomm graphical-passcode patent should be confirmed against the IPR exhibit list before being relied on.

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D. Notable third-party-cited references in the "Family Cites Families" list

The 125-entry third-party citation list contains several references closer to the '086's core than the examiner's six. Most relevant by title/assignee:

• CN 101661373 B (ZTE), filed 2009‑09‑29, granted 2013‑02‑27 — "Method and device for identifying unlocking by contact surface type." On its title alone this is highly material to the claim‑1 pad/end-of-finger registering-mode and the claim‑4 lock-release limitations. Content not verified in this session.
• US 2007/0097096 A1 (Rosenberg) — see Section C; also appears on the family‑cites list.
• US 8,223,392 B2 (LG Electronics), 2012‑07‑17 — "Mobile terminal capable of recognizing fingernail touch." Relevant to distinguishing touch types.
• US 2010/0079380 A1 (Nokia) — "Intelligent input device lock"; US 8,527,072 B2 / US 8,402,533 B2 (Google) — touch-based device unlock; KR 10‑1565768 (Samsung) — unlocking a portable terminal. These are unlock-mechanism art relevant to claim 4.
• US 8,473,422 B2 (Apple, "Gestures for touch sensitive input devices") — gesture art for reexam claims 9–13.

§102 relevance of this section: none of these was used in the Office for claim 1, and I cannot verify their disclosures here; they are flagged as potentially material third-party art, not as established §102 anticipation.

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E. Bottom line

1. On the Office record, the most on-point examiner citation is US 2005/0162407 A1 (Fujitsu Component) — with its Japanese parent JP 2005‑202527 A. It discloses password/identification codes built from touch position + touch area compared against a pre-registered code. It is the strongest §102-type reference against claims 2 and 3 and the password aspects, but it does not fully anticipate claim 1, because it lacks the two distinct finger-contact-type registering modes (pad vs. end of finger).
2. US 5,844,547 A and JPH 05‑100809 A (Fujitsu) are the object/gesture-manipulation art — relevant to reexam claims 9–14 and claim 14 (icon move), not to claim 1.
3. US 2007/0250786 A1 (LG) discloses contact-area-proportion/threshold logic — §103-grade art on the "area within a reference range" concept.
4. TW 201101130 A (Au Optronics) — metadata only; disclosure unverified.
5. The substantively decisive prior art is not in the patent's front-page citation list at all. It is the IPR2024‑00828 set — Rogers (US 8,683,582 B2) + Rosenberg (US 2007/0097096 A1) ± Miyazawa (US 8,633,909 B2) / Rekimoto — which the Board applied under §103(a), not §102. Rosenberg is the reference that actually discloses the pad-vs-finger-end distinction; Rogers supplies the passcode registration/identification architecture.
6. No §102 anticipation has been adjudicated for any claim of the '086 patent. The invalidity that actually attached was (a) PTAB §103 obviousness over the Rogers/Rosenberg combination and (b) district-court §112 written description (JMOL) — neither of which is a §102 finding.

Verification pointers: Google Patents pages for each reference (e.g., US 8,982,086, US 5,844,547, US 2005/0162407 A1, JPH05100809A); the IPR2024‑00828 institution decision (copy posted by Banner Witcoff) and PTAB record (Ex Parte AI‑lab case page). A6 (TW 201101130 A), Rekimoto's serial, and CN 101661373 B should be confirmed against primary sources (TIPO, USPTO, CNIPA) before reliance — I was unable to retrieve them here.

I'll research the prior-art references and the PTAB grounds before building the obviousness analysis.

Let me pull details on the specific references and the FWD disposition.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,982,086 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on inputs. This section uses the prior art shown on the Google Patents record for US 8,982,086 (patents.google.com/patent/US8982086/en) — the six "Patent Citations," the 125 "Family Cites Families" references, and the citation history in the reexamination file — plus the § 103 grounds actually litigated against this patent in IPR2024‑00828. I distinguish at every step between (a) combinations that the PTAB has already adjudicated, and (b) combinations I construct from the face-of-record art, which are analyst proposals, not adjudications. I do not repeat the bibliographic, litigation, or assignment material from the earlier sections.

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1. Governing law and the operative claim text

Statute. The pre‑AIA version of § 103(a) governs. The application is a continuation of Ser. No. 13/366,983 filed 2012‑02‑06, claiming JP priority 2011‑02‑09; both dates precede the AIA § 103 effective date of 2013‑03‑16. The Board expressly so held at institution: "Because the application for the '086 patent claims a priority date before the effective date of the applicable AIA amendment, the pre‑AIA version of § 103 applies." (IPR2024‑00828 Institution Decision, Paper 9, at 4 n.5; PDF.) Pre‑AIA § 103 therefore permits reliance on art under §§ 102(a)/(b)/(e), and the § 103(a) "obviousness at the time the invention was made" standard applies.

Critical-section date. 2011‑02‑09 for the subject matter of claim 1 (the JP priority application). Art published or filed before that date is available; the table below confirms each reference qualifies.

Claims at issue. Claims 1–4 as issued; claims 5–15 added by Reexamination Certificate C1 (effective 2021‑09‑28, per the legal events on the patent page). Claim 1 is the sole independent claim in both the original and the expanded set — a fact that drives the entire analysis: every one of claims 1–15 stands or falls with claim 1.

Relevant claim element breakdown of claim 1 (as quoted by the Board in IPR2024‑00828):

1.1 Flagged contradiction with the earlier-generated section

The previously generated summary correctly flagged that the Google Patents full text supplied in this matter recites coincidence "within said registering mode." The IPR record contradicts that reading. The Board quotes element [1e] as "coincident within said identification mode" and attributes that text to "Ex. 1002, 21 (Certificate of Correction dated May 28, 2019)" — and the patent page's own legal events list a certificate of correction on 2019‑05‑28. The natural inference is that the 2019 certificate of correction replaced "registering" with "identification," and that the uncorrected Google Patents text still displays the pre‑correction wording. I am not auto-correcting the identifier — I am reporting that the operative (corrected) claim text appears to read "identification mode," while the text supplied to me reads "registering mode." Verify against the Certificate of Correction itself before relying on either. Either way, this discrepancy does not change the § 103 analysis, because "mode" was construed on plain and ordinary meaning and the prior art was found to disclose both modes regardless of which of the two labels the coincidence step is tied to.

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2. The prior-art universe on the page

2.1 Face-of-patent citations (the six "Patent Citations")

2.2 Selected material references from the 125 "Family Cites Families" entries

The breadth of this list is itself legally significant: it shows that by the 2011 priority date the field was crowded with (i) touch‑type discrimination, (ii) calibration of touch parameters to individual users, (iii) touch-panel user authentication, and (iv) unlock-by-gesture. That is the KSR "predictable variation in a crowded field" fact pattern.

2.3 The art actually litigated (IPR2024‑00828)

Prior-art status is admitted. The Board recorded: "Petitioner contends that the cited art qualifies as prior art under applicable law. … Patent Owner does not dispute the prior art status of the cited art." (Inst. Dec. at 4 n.4.) That admission is itself important: it removes the § 102 threshold from the '086 patent's defense and leaves only the § 103 question of what the art teaches and whether it would have been combined.

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3. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

I could not retrieve a stipulated POSITA formulation from the petition excerpts I accessed; the following is my construct from the record and the field, and should be checked against the petition text:

A POSITA at the 2011 priority date would hold a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science (or equivalent), and would have approximately two or more years of experience designing or implementing touch‑sensitive user interfaces and touch‑panel input processing — including detecting contact position and contact size/area on capacitive touch sensors — or equivalent practical experience.

This is a modest level of skill. That matters: the more routine the skill level, the more readily the "simple substitution" and "predictable result" rationales apply. The subject matter here (measuring a contact area from a capacitive sensor array, comparing it to a threshold, and branching to different processing) is squarely within that skill level.

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4. Ground A — Claims 1, 2, 4–7 obvious over Rogers in view of Rosenberg (adjudicated)

This is Ground 1 of IPR2024‑00828 and the ground on which the Board found claims 1, 2, 4–7 unpatentable.

4.1 What Rogers discloses

Rogers is a graphical passcode security system. Per the Board's quotation of the reference:

• Apparatus + touch panel [1pre]/[1a]: electronic device 70 comprises touch screen display 40, processor 71, and memory 72 (Ex. 1006, 5:6–11). "'As used herein, a "touchscreen" is a touch input device with an associated image display.'" (id. at 3:4–5).
• Registration mode [1c], first half: Figure 4 — "a process flow diagram … for creating and storing a desired graphical passcode" (2:30–31). At step 101 the device prompts the user; at step 102 the user inputs the passcode "such as by drawing a finger tip across the touchsurface" (8:44–49); step 103 is a training session entered multiple times "to generate the necessary parameter envelopes" (8:49–54); step 104 records characteristic parameters — "X‑axis position, Y‑axis position, pressure, speed, line thickness, etc." (8:55–61); steps 105–106 calculate an "acceptable envelope or range"; and the template is stored — "The electronic device 70 processor 71 measures at least one characteristic parameter of the inputted template graphical passcode and stores the measured at least one characteristic parameter in the internal memory 72 as at least part of the passcode template" (8:51–59).
• Identification mode [1c], second half + memory [1d] + coincidence [1e]: Figure 5 — "a process flow diagram … for authenticating a graphical passcode" (2:32–33). Step 203 prompts the user; step 204 receives the input; step 205 records parameters to a buffer; step 207 compares the entered passcode to the "graphical passcode template"; step 208 determines whether the inputted graphical passcode "matches or is coincident to" the template; if so, access is allowed, otherwise denied.
• Contact-area as the measured parameter — the bridge to [1f]: "In some embodiments, authentication of the subsequently inputted graphical passcode may employ a measurement of a size (i.e., area) of the object or fingertip applied to the touchsurface." (7:56–59). The touchsurface may "discriminate between a large fingertip and a small stylus tip, and use this area difference as a measured parameter that can be compared against the template graphical passcode for authentication. Authentication may require a measured contact area greater than or less than a certain size, or within a certain size range." (7:59–62). Rogers further says the size requirement "can be determined during a training session, or can be predetermined or can be selected by the user."

Rogers therefore discloses [1pre], [1a], [1b], [1c] (both modes), [1d], [1e] — i.e., every element of claim 1 except the finger‑pad/finger‑end identity of the two registering modes in [1f], and (on Maxell's proposed reading) perhaps not [1f] at all.

4.2 What Rosenberg supplies — element [1f]

Rosenberg's abstract, quoted by the Board:

"A touch screen device provides bi‑modal user interaction. The touch screen device includes (a) a touch screen interface, (b) a detector to detect an area of finger interaction with the touch screen surface, and (c) a processor. The processor determines, based on at least one of a size, a shape, and an orientation of the detected area of finger interaction, whether a current finger interaction is of one of a finger‑tip interaction type and a finger‑pad interaction type. The processor also selects and implements, based on a determined interaction type, one of two different targeting modes, including a first targeting mode selected and implemented in response to a determined finger‑tip interaction type and a second targeting mode selected and implemented in response to a determined finger‑pad interaction type." (Ex. 1007, code (57).)

Rosenberg's specification adds the measurement basis: the tip‑pointing contact "is substantially smaller in size (both area and circumference), more eccentric in shape …, and is oriented such that the major axis MM″ is oriented closer to the reference screen horizontal," while the pad‑pointing contact "is substantially larger in size …, is less eccentric …, and is oriented such that the minor axis LL″ is oriented closer…." "Thus, each of the size, shape, and/or orientation of the detected finger contact area may be used alone or in combination … to distinguish between a tip‑pointing interaction and a pad‑pointing interaction." (Ex. 1007, 50.)

Rosenberg therefore supplies precisely the missing [1f] limitation — two registering modes, one for a finger pad and one for a finger end, distinguished by contact-area geometry — and supplies it with the same measured-discriminator → branch to different processing architecture that Rogers already uses.

4.3 Motivation to combine

The Board credited the following articulated rationales (Pet. 11–15, citing Nielsen Decl. ¶¶ 86–91):

1. Same field / analogous art. "Both references are directed to allowing users to input information via touchsurface technology and are analogous art to the '086 patent." Both are touch-surface input systems with an authentication/identification purpose — the same problem the '086 patent addresses.
2. Simple substitution of a known element for a known purpose. "[A] POSITA … would have considered the disclosures in Rosenberg and been motivated to modify Rogers' 'large fingertip and a small stylus tip' example so that it instead used the 'natural and intuitive' finger pad versus finger end distinction discussed in Rosenberg. A POSITA would have found this modification to be a simple substitution of elements well known in the art…."
3. Predictable result (KSR rationale (f)/(c)). "[A]dding finger end and finger pad touch detection to Rogers would involve no more than applying a known technique … to a known device ready for improvement … to yield predictable results…."
4. Express suggestion in the primary reference. Rogers itself already teaches using contact area as the measured parameter, discriminating "a large fingertip [from] a small stylus tip." A POSITA reading Rogers is therefore directed to the parameter that Rosenberg teaches how to discriminate more usefully. This is the classic "the primary reference suggests the improvement" rationale: Rogers expressly "suggests to a POSITA the ease of making the modification to detect the tip/pad of the finger and that the area of contact is a desirable parameter for inputting an authentication passcode."
5. Common calibration architecture → compatibility. "…both references teach a 'calibration' mode in which the user trains the device to recognize a specific range of input parameters that allows for some variation in input while remaining within acceptable tolerances." Rogers' envelope-based training (Fig. 4, step 103) and the '086 patent's own calibration (Spec. ¶¶ setting a threshold from averaged sensor-column counts) are the same technique. This is the "both references teach the same sub-mechanism" compatibility rationale.
6. Reasonable expectation of success. Because the modification is a substitution of one contact-geometry discriminator (large tip vs. small stylus) for another (pad vs. tip) within an architecture Rogers already supports, and because both references operate on capacitive-style area detection, "A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in modifying Rogers in this manner…."

Maxell's response and why it failed. Maxell's sole § 103 argument was that Rogers' "large fingertip / small stylus tip" example is "not treated as … two separate registering modes," and that a "mode" must be a distinct operational state with "wholly different processing operations" (POR at 32, 36). The Board rejected Maxell's proposed construction and applied plain and ordinary meaning: "The plain and ordinary meaning of limitation 1f is that the 'first registering mode' and the 'second registering mode' are different input methods." The Board also turned Maxell's own characterization of Rosenberg against it: Maxell "acknowledges that Rosenberg discloses a first targeting mode and a second targeting mode, [and] both modes refer to different responses or outcomes after distinguishing different input methods." That is a textbook case of the patent owner's own prior-art characterization collapsing the distinction it needed to preserve.

4.4 Disposition

"We find all the limitations of claims 2 and 4–7 are taught by Rogers and Rekimoto. We conclude that claim 2 and 4–7 are unpatentable as obvious…." — and, for the Rosenberg branch, claim 1 likewise unpatentable over Rogers + Rosenberg. Final order: "claims 1, 2, 4–7, and 9–14 of U.S. Patent No. 8,982,086 B2 are determined to be unpatentable." (IPR2024‑00828 FWD, Paper 47.)

Dependent claims in this ground map as follows:

Note on claim 6 (capacitive). The Board's quotation of the record on claim 6 is thin in what I retrieved. Capacitive touch sensing was indisputably conventional by 2011, and the '086 specification itself describes capacitance variation as the detection mechanism (sensor 4 whose "capacitance … changes" on contact) — so the limitation is largely a self‑evident implementation detail. But the stronger point is that the patent's own specification admits capacitive sensing is conventional, which under KSR makes it a predictable design choice rather than a point of novelty.

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5. Ground B — Claims 9–14 obvious over Rogers + Rosenberg + Miyazawa (adjudicated)

Claims 9–14 add a gesture lexicon — tapping, dragging, flicking, pinching, and the temporal conditions distinguishing them. The Board found:

"Petitioner asserts that claims 9–14 added limitations requiring the system to execute specific operations like 'tapping, dragging, flicking, and pinching.' … Miyazawa explicitly taught a touch‑panel apparatus capable of recognizing the specific gestures of dragging, flicking, and pinching (pinch‑in/pinch‑out), and distinguishing between them based on parameters like duration and movement of the touch."

Motivation rationale: all three references are touch-input art; adding a wider gesture vocabulary to a graphical-passcode system "would improve the robustness and complexity of the graphical passcodes, which was a stated goal of Rogers"; and the gestures "were argued to be identical to those recited in the '086 patent," making implementation "a predictable and straightforward design choice." Disposition: "We find that Petitioner has established that all the limitations of claims 9–14 are taught by the cited art … We conclude that claims 9–14 are unpatentable as obvious."

Why this is a strong § 103 result for the gesture claims. The '086 patent did not invent tap/drag/flick/pinch. Its own specification simply defines those terms ("Tapping is an operation which the user touches one point of the screen … for a moment"; "Dragging is an operation which the user moves his or her finger over the screen … while the finger is in contact therewith"; "Flicking is an operation which the user quickly slides his or her finger …"; "Pinching is … two points … and changes the distance between the two points"). A claim that recites only a definition of a gesture that the prior art already recognized is the paradigm of an obvious limitation. My construction of claims 9–14, matching the summary in the earlier section, is:

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6. Ground C — Claims 1, 2, 4–7 obvious over Rogers + Rekimoto (adjudicated)

A parallel ground substituting Rekimoto for Rosenberg, which the Board also sustained:

"A POSITA would have further recognized that these features of Rogers and Rekimoto could be combined because the fingertip and finger pad are distinguishable inputs for a user, and because Rekimoto teaches the ability to 'clearly distinguish[]' between the two, it would have been obvious to modify Rogers … to receive input information including a pad or tip of the finger. … Because Rogers also teaches the contact area on the touchscreen may be one of the parameters for the graphical passcode, Rogers expressly suggests to a POSITA the ease of making the modification to detect the tip/pad of the finger…."

"We find that Petitioner establishes motivation to combine the relevant teachings of Rogers and Rekimoto. … We conclude that claim 1 is unpatentable as obvious in view of Rogers and Rekimoto."

Analytical significance of having two independent secondary references. The Board found claim 1 obvious over either Rogers+Rosenberg or Rogers+Rekimoto, and findings for claims 2 and 4–7 and 9–14 under each branch. That redundancy is significant to the § 103 strength: the obviousness conclusion does not depend on the peculiarities of a single secondary reference. If Rekimoto's prior-art status is later disturbed (I could not confirm its filing/issue dates independently), the Rosenberg branch is unaffected, and vice versa.

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7. Analyst-constructed alternative grounds from the face-of-record art (not adjudicated)

The user asked specifically about the prior art on the page. The following combinations are my own proposals based on the references listed in § 2. They are offered as additional or alternative § 103 theories that a challenger could have run, and that could matter for claims 3, 8, and 15, which were not challenged in IPR2024‑00828.

Ground D — CN101661373B (ZTE) primary, alone or with US6181328 (IBM) and US8479122 (Apple)

Why this is the most dangerous face-of-record reference. CN101661373B is titled "Method and device for identifying unlocking by contact surface type" (ZTE Corp.; priority 2009‑09‑29; granted 2013‑02‑27). Its title states the '086 patent's central idea — unlocking a device by distinguishing the type of contact surface used. If the reference discloses comparing a measured contact-surface attribute against a stored reference and unlocking on coincidence, it discloses claim 1 as a whole, and in that case the § 103 question for claim 1 collapses into a § 102 question. I have not obtained or read the CN101661373B specification, so I cannot and do not assert what it discloses beyond its title; the title alone, however, makes it the reference that should be pulled first in any § 103 challenge to claims 1–4.

Concrete Ground D formulation:

• Primary: CN101661373B — unlocking by contact surface type (elements [1pre]–[1f], including the pad/end distinction).
• Secondary (if needed for the "user identification" character of [1b]/[1d]): JPH11283026A (Matsushita; touchpad with fingerprint detection function) or US 2009/0169070 A1 (Apple; control of an electronic device using a person's fingerprints) — supplying the proposition that a touch panel can both take touch input and identify the user, a combination that was routine by 2009.
• Motivation: Both are touch‑input security art; combining touch‑type discrimination with on‑panel user identification achieves the same result (an input method that is both an identification datum and a control datum) with no change in the principle of operation. KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

Ground E — Rogers or CN101661373B + US 6,181,328 B1 (IBM) for the threshold/calibration + area range

This is the ground that most directly attacks the substantive teaching of the '086 specification. The patent's entire disclosed novelty is: measure the contact range (number of responding sensor columns), average it, add or subtract a correction value to get a threshold, store it, and compare later contacts against it ("The control unit 3 calculates the average value '2' of the number of columns of sensors 4 … and adds a correction value '1' … thereby defining a threshold value '3'"). US 6,181,328 B1 is directed to "calibrating touch screen sensitivities according to particular physical characteristics associated with a user" — i.e., the same concept of deriving a user‑specific touch threshold. Adding US 6,181,328's calibration to any of Rogers, Rekimoto, Rosenberg, or CN101661373B supplies the threshold‑derivation step and the "falls within a stored area range" element of claim 1 on a rationale (individual‑variation accommodation) that is expressly stated in both the reference and the '086 specification ("regardless of difference with individuals in contact ranges … the calibration allows accuracy of contact range determination to be improved").

Ground F — US 8,224,392 B2 (LG) or US 2010/0265185 A1 (Nokia) + US 8,127,254 B2 / US 2010/0079380 A1 (Nokia) + US 8,479,122 B2 (Apple)

For a ground that requires only references on the face of the record and dispenses with the Rogers family entirely:

• US 8,224,392 B2 (LG) — mobile terminal capable of recognizing fingernail touch — establishes that discriminating which part of the finger made contact (hence contact geometry differing by finger region) and using that discrimination to control the device was known art.
• US 2010/0265185 A1 (Nokia) — performing different operations based on different touch inputs — supplies the "different processing for different input types" branch of [1e]/[1f].
• US 8,127,254 B2 and US 2010/0079380 A1 (Nokia) — unlocking a touch screen device; intelligent input device lock — supply "releasing of a lock" as the specified process (claim 4).
• US 8,479,122 B2 (Apple) — gestures — supplies claims 9–13.

Motivation: all are handheld‑device touch‑input art; the combination is the aggregation of known input‑discrimination, known unlock, and known gesture recognition on a known device, with each element performing exactly the function for which it was known. KSR rationale (a).

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8. The claims the IPR did not reach — 3, 8, and 15

The IPR challenged only claims 1, 2, 4–7, and 9–14. Claims 3, 8, and 15 were never adjudicated, so the FWD leaves them standing (for now). My independent § 103 reading:

• Claim 3 — "first information includes a plurality of combinations of a position and an area of the finger contacting with said touch panel." A straightforward extension of claim 2. Rogers records a time series of x‑position, y‑position, pressure, speed, and line thickness for each swipe/tap of the passcode (Ex. 1006, Fig. 4 step 104 and Fig. 5 step 205, with the tabulated time-series data), which is by definition a plurality of position/parameter combinations. Adding "a plurality of combinations" to claim 2's single combination is a quantitative enlargement of a known parameter set with no change in principle of operation — a classic In re Rose / In re Harris obviousness situation, supported additionally by US 7,190,348 (IBM) and Rosenberg's contact-area geometry. Claim 3 is highly vulnerable.
• Claim 8 — (per the earlier summary: display forms during registering mode with a shaded contact portion and a non‑shaded non-contact portion). If this is the limitation, it is directed to a user-interface depiction of contact vs. non-contact, which is exactly the subject matter of US 2007/0250786 A1 (Jeon), TW201101130A (Au Optronics), and the display aspects of Rogers (target/"X" symbol displayed to guide the user) and Rekimoto (buttons with function names/icons). It would be obvious as a design choice for guiding the user, with a stated benefit in Rogers ("increased authentication rate"). Caveat: I could not verify the full text of claim 8, so this reads on the earlier section's paraphrase only.
• Claim 15 — (per the earlier summary: the first controller associates a numerical password with the first information; text truncated in the retrievable copy). If this is correct, the claim reads on the password + touch-characteristic combination. US 6,954,862 B2 (Serpa, "user authentication with enhanced passwords") and US 7,039,223 B2 (Wong, "authentication method utilizing a sequence of linear partial fingerprint signatures selected by a personal code") are both on the face of the record and both combine a password or code with a biometric/touch characteristic — the same architecture as the '086 patent's second embodiment (a four‑digit password stored together with the finger‑pad/finger‑tip input method for each digit, per Figs. 12A/12B). US 8,649,575 B2 (Samsung, gesture‑based biometric system) is a third. Claim 15 is not as vulnerable as claims 1–14 simply because it was not tested, but the face-of-record art supplies a credible § 103 case. Caveat: I could not confirm the tail of claim 15's text, which the earlier section also flagged.

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9. Objective indicia / secondary considerations

On the record I retrieved, there is no objective evidence of non-obviousness to weigh against the prima facie case:

• No unexpected results, no long‑felt need, no industry praise, no copying appear in the IPR record or in the district‑court record summarized earlier.
• No nexus to a patentee product. As the earlier assignment section found, Maxell does not appear to ship a product practicing the '086 claims; the accused products are third‑party Apple, Lenovo/Motorola and Samsung devices. Without a patentee's own commercial embodiment, the "commercial success" indicium is unavailable, and copying of an accused product does not establish copying of the claimed invention.
• The license/verdict evidence is not objective indicium proof. The reported ~$38.1M component of the May 2025 Samsung verdict attributed to the '086 patent was vacated by JMOL (order filed 2025‑09‑18/09), so it cannot function as evidence of non‑obviousness. The Board also expressly considered the district court's heavy criticism of Maxell's expert in that order and weighed it against the patent owner's IPR testimony.
• One countervailing datum: the reexamination. Claims 1–4 were confirmed in ex parte reexam 90/014,638 with new claims 5–15 added. But the Board addressed that head‑on under § 325(d): "none of the cited pages show that Rogers or the combination of Rogers and Rosenberg was given any consideration by the Office during the reexamination," and the only references to Rogers in the reexam file were "found in two paragraphs of a lengthy declaration … submitted by the requestor." The Office's prior confirmation therefore carries little weight on the § 103 question.

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10. The § 112 pincer — why the obviousness case is not Maxell's only exposure

Although the task is § 103, one fact from the district court is essential to a complete obviousness assessment because it determines the claim scope against which the art is measured:

The E.D. Tex. court granted JMOL of invalidity as to the '086 patent's claim 1 for lack of written description (Samsung's § 112 attack), in the same September 2025 order in which it granted JMOL of non‑infringement.

That creates a pincer that is analytically decisive here:

• If claim 1 is read broadly — "mode" = any different input method, as the Board construed it and as Maxell itself effectively argued in its infringement case (a single, looping fingerprint-enrollment algorithm comprising "two registering modes") — then claim 1 is obvious over Rogers + Rosenberg (or Rogers + Rekimoto), exactly as the Board found.
• If claim 1 is read narrowly — "mode" = a distinct, user-selectable operational state with "wholly different processing operations," as Maxell argued in the IPR — then the specification does not describe such embodiments for the fingerprint case, which is why the district court invalidated under § 112.

The Federal Circuit has repeatedly recognized this class of dilemma, and it is the structural reason the '086 patent's claim 1 is in serious jeopardy regardless of how the appeal of IPR2024‑00828 comes out. The Board itself recorded Maxell's two contradictory positions and rejected the narrow one.

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11. Summary table of grounds

Most probable single disposition: claim 1 — and therefore claims 2–15, all of which depend from it — is obvious under pre‑AIA § 103(a) over Rogers in view of Rosenberg (and, independently, over Rogers in view of Rekimoto), with the gesture claims 9–14 obvious over the same primary combination plus Miyazawa. That is the PTAB's holding, and it rests on a motivation-to-combine record built from four distinct KSR rationales and unopposed on the central point.

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12. Caveats and items requiring primary-source verification

1. The FWD is on appeal. IPR2024‑00828's Final Written Decision (2025‑10‑30, outcome "Unpatentable") is the subject of Fed. Cir. No. 26‑1624 (per the patent page's litigation record and the earlier summary). Nothing in this analysis is a final adjudication; a Federal Circuit reversal would vacate the unpatentability findings. I found no 2026 merits opinion on the '086 as of this search.
2. Certificate of Correction date vs. text. As flagged in § 1.1, the operative claim 1 text appears to read "identification mode" (per the Board's quotation citing the 2019‑05‑28 certificate of correction), while the Google Patents text supplied to me reads "registering mode." This is a direct contradiction with the previously generated Patent summary, which deliberately declined to correct the phrase. Verify against the certificate of correction document.
3. Full text of claims 5–15. I retrieved only claim 5 verbatim (from the FWD). Claims 6–15 are analyzed from the earlier section's paraphrase only; the earlier section also notes claim 15's text was truncated in its sources. My § 103 read on claims 8 and 15 is therefore provisional.
4. Rekimoto's bibliographic data. I could not confirm US 8,477,115's filing or issue dates in my retrieval. Its prior-art status (and that of Miyazawa, US 8,633,909) was not disputed by Maxell in the IPR, which is the operative fact.
5. CN101661373B not read. I did not obtain the CN101661373B specification. My assessment of it as the most dangerous face-of-record reference rests on its title and the fact that it is directed to unlocking by contact surface type — a claim of relevance, not a claim of disclosure.
6. POSITA formulation is mine. The level of ordinary skill stated in § 3 is my construct from the record; the petition's own formulation (Pet. 9–10) was not retrieved.
7. Sources for the IPR record: IPR2024‑00828 Institution Decision (PDF); PTACTS petition documents at ptacts.uspto.gov (1558233); FWD outcome and judges per the Ex Parte case page; Rogers' specification text per FreePatentsOnline US 2009/0313693; Rosenberg quote per the petition and FWD excerpts.