US 9323400

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent and any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

US 9,323,400 B2 — Summary

Sourcing note: The USPTO Patent Public Search / Patent Center and CAFC docket searches I ran did not return a 2026 Federal Circuit matter tied to this patent number, and no search results surfaced any court docket citing "9,323,400." What follows is grounded in the authoritative patent text (Google Patents / USPTO record) plus corroborating secondary sources. Where I could not verify something, I say so.

Bibliographic data (verified)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9323400B2](/patent/US9323400B2)/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/9,323,400

Abstract (as issued)

"A flat panel display having an integrated touch screen panel directly formed on a sealing thin film is disclosed. In the display, sensing lines of the touch screen panel are formed to extend to a substrate of the display panel, on which organic light emitting elements are formed, so that the touch screen panel and the display panel are connected to a flexible printed circuit board, thereby simplifying manufacturing processes and decreasing product cost."

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 — the only independent claim — covers an OLED-type flat panel display in which a capacitive touch sensor is built directly onto the thin-film encapsulation layer rather than onto a separate glass cover. Its elements, in ordinary language:

1. Substrate larger than the display area. A base substrate carries a pixel area, and the substrate itself extends beyond that pixel area.
2. Thin-film sealing layer. An encapsulation thin film sits over the pixel area to keep out oxygen and moisture, and it also extends beyond the pixel area.
3. Touch sensors built on the encapsulation. The sensing cells of the touch panel are formed directly on the top surface of that sealing thin film, with the thin film sandwiched between the pixels and the sensors. This is the core "integrated" idea — no separate touch panel laminated on top, which keeps the product thin.
4. Routing lines in two zones. Sensing lines run outside the pixel area. A first portion of each line lies on top of the sealing thin film; a second portion runs on the substrate itself. The line passes from the edge of the sealing film directly down onto the substrate, alongside the pixel area, to reach the connector.
5. One connector for both panels. A flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) is attached to one end of the substrate, and the sensing lines connect to it — so the display and the touch panel share a single FPCB.
6. Sloped step to prevent broken traces. The edge of the sealing thin film is formed with a downward incline toward the FPCB, and the sensing lines follow ("conform to") that incline. Because the film is thin, the step is small, and the sloped profile prevents the metal traces from cracking where they cross from film to substrate during photolithographic patterning.
7. Single-connection routing. Each sensing line runs from its sensing cell all the way to the FPCB as one continuous connection, i.e., no intermediate jumper or separate flex tail per line.

In short: the claim is directed to a thin OLED panel with an on-encapsulation touch sensor whose sensing traces run over a sloped encapsulation edge directly onto the substrate, terminating at a single shared FPCB.

Dependent claims (2–13) add: a driving IC mounted on the substrate outside the pixel area (2); the driving IC connected to the FPCB (3); the driving IC including touch-panel control circuitry (4); the sealing film being a stack of organic/inorganic layers (5); a specific four-layer stack of first organic / first inorganic / second organic / second inorganic (6); organic layers of epoxy, acrylate, or urethane acrylate (7); inorganic layers of AlₓOᵧ or SiₓOᵧ (8); first and second sensing cells arranged in perpendicular directions (9); connection patterns for each direction (10); first connection patterns formed as independent patterns in an upper or lower layer (11); a literal inclined surface at the film edge with sensing lines over it (12); and sensing lines lying on sealing-film and substrate surfaces that face the same direction (13).

Family and follow-on filings

This patent is the root of a long continuation chain claiming the same 2010-09-14 priority date: US 15/133,605 → US 10,013,088 B2; US 16/005,694 → US 10,474,270 B2; US 16/677,191 → US 10,895,926 B2; US 17/149,632 → US 11,809,663 B2; US 18/373,249 → US 12,321,555 B2; and US 19/226,095 → US 2025/0291445 A1 (pending). Foreign family members include KR 10-1886801 B1, CN 102402323 B, and CN 106886347 B. Notably, the continuation US 10,895,926 restates the invention in "encapsulation layer … inclined surface" language (Source: US10895926B2 PDF), which is the vocabulary later litigation over this family centered on.

Litigation / CAFC status — with explicit uncertainty

• Google Patents displays a "Family has litigation / First worldwide family litigation filed" indicator linking to Darts-ip family ID 45806191. That flag confirms some litigation exists somewhere in this family, but the fetched page gives no case caption, court, or date. I could not resolve it to a specific 2026 matter.
• No 2026 CAFC docket for US 9,323,400 was found. My searches surfaced 2026 Federal Circuit-adjacent activity in the OLED space only for different patents: Samsung Display's IPR petitions and litigation against CSOT over US 11,594,578, US 7,414,599, and US 9,330,593, and CSOT's counter-suit over US 12,133,429, US 11,957,031, and US 11,257,891; plus an IDUNN IP Holdings NPE suit against Samsung Electronics over patents 7,445,368; 7,760,278; 8,047,668; 8,373,624; 8,956,033; 9,000,425; 9,436,305; 9,632,236. None of those numbers is 9,323,400, and per the operating rules I am not treating any of them as an alias for it.
• Caveat: I do not have direct access to PACER, the CAFC docket system, or PTAB's API, so the absence of a hit is evidence of "nothing indexed in general web search," not proof that no 2026 proceeding exists. Google Patents' "Legal Events" section for this patent lists only assignments and maintenance-fee payments — no reissue, reexamination, IPR, or court events.

Minor textual quirk worth flagging

The description's figure captions are internally inconsistent in the source text: FIG. 4 is described both as "a schematic sectional view showing a region including specific portion A of FIG. 3" and (in the FIG. 3–5 passage) as "a separate plan view showing a sealing thin film and a substrate," while FIG. 5 is described both as "a set of separate plan views" and as "a schematic sectional view." The substance (inclined film edge 201, four-layer stack 202/204/206/208) is consistent regardless; treat the caption numbering with caution when citing figures.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 9323400.

Let me try additional searches with different phrasing and sources.

Let me search more specifically for the patent in litigation dockets.

Bottom line

I could not identify any litigation that specifically asserts U.S. Patent No. 9,323,400. Direct searches for the number returned no dockets, complaints, ITC investigations, or PTAB proceedings naming the '400 patent as an asserted or challenged patent. I want to be explicit that this is a negative finding from limited searching — not proof that no such case exists.

What the record does show

A family-level litigation flag exists. The Google Patents record for US9323400B2 carries a Darts‑IP banner: "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed," keyed to family ID 45806191 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9323400](/patent/US9323400)/en). This tells us some member of the '400 family has been litigated somewhere, but the page does not identify which member, which case, or which court. I could not open or verify the Darts‑IP case list behind that link, so I cannot attribute it to the '400 patent itself.

Cases found that involve related patents — none assert the '400 patent

For completeness, and to prevent these from being mistaken for '400 litigation, here is what surfaced in my searches. None of these pleadings names US 9,323,400 as an asserted patent.

The '400 patent is a Samsung Display patent directed to a flat panel display with an integrated touch screen panel (sealing thin film, sensing cells on the thin film, sensing lines extending to the substrate/FPCB, inclined film end). Its continuation family includes US 10,013,088; US 10,474,270; US 10,895,926; US 11,809,663; and US 12,321,555. I saw no indication that any of these continuation patents has been asserted either.

Caveats on the negative result

• My searches returned zero results for the direct queries on the '400 number, so the absence of hits is partly a search-coverage limitation, not a confirmed clean enforcement history.
• I did not have working access to the Unified Patents litigation caselist, PACER, Darts‑IP, or a CourtListener docket search filtered to this patent number. Those are the sources most likely to resolve the Darts‑IP family flag, and I'd recommend running the number directly there.
• The Darts‑IP "family has litigation" flag is the single strongest lead that some family member was sued on, but it cannot be attributed to the '400 patent without opening that case list.

If I had to state a conclusion for the record: no publicly identified litigation asserting US 9,323,400 itself, with one unresolved family-level litigation flag (Darts‑IP family 45806191) that requires direct verification in a litigation database before it can be relied on.

I'll start by verifying the ODP-provided baseline against public sources.

No PTAB hits so far. Let me probe the litigation angle (Darts-ip flagged family litigation) and a few alternative proceeding-number patterns.

Let me run two final confirmatory checks — CourtListener dockets and any family-level PTAB activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured ODP block is affirmative and unambiguous — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 9,323,400 as of the most recent ingest. My independent web searches for proceeding numbers tied to this patent (and to its continuation family) also surfaced no PTAB filings; nothing was found that the ODP ingest appears to have missed. Defensive posture: neutral-to-unfavourable for a defendant. This is not a "hardened by IPR" patent, but neither is it a "claims already canceled" patent — it is a completely untested patent whose full claim set is alive and enforceable, with no estoppel and no adverse PTAB record to leverage.

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No proceedings to itemize

Per the task instruction not to invent proceeding numbers, I am not creating entries for proceedings that do not exist. The sections below address what the absence means and what I could and could not verify.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 13 claims UNTESTED. No AIA trial has ever reached an institution decision, a Final Written Decision, or even a denial on this patent. Claims 1–13 stand exactly as issued on 2016-04-26. There are no canceled claims, no sustained claims, and no substitute claims — the patent is in its original, unamended form. Independent claim 1 remains the operative assertion vehicle, with dependents 2–13 (including the inclined-end-portion limitations of claims 12–13 and the four-layer stacked encapsulation of claims 5–8) fully intact. I confirmed from the patent record that maintenance fees for the 4th year (2019-09-26) and 8th year (2023-09-25) have been paid by the large-entity owner, so there is no lapse or fee-based invalidity to exploit. Adjusted expiration is listed as 2032-02-15.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, there are no petitioners, no privies, and no estopped grounds. Every defendant currently facing assertion is free to raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, and any § 112 ground (in district court), against any of claims 1–13, with no carve-out for art that "reasonably could have been raised" in a forum that never existed. Conversely, a defendant who now files an IPR and loses will lock in estoppel on grounds they could have raised — the usual calculus, but with the notable feature that no adverse claim-construction or validity findings exist to build on. There is also no IPR-estoppel shortcut and no parallel PTAB record to coordinate with a district court schedule.

Pattern signals: none. There is no repeat petitioner (there are no petitioners at all). There is no evidence of an aggressive PTAB-appeal posture by the patent owner — no FWDs to appeal, and my Federal Circuit / CourtListener searches returned no CAFC appeal involving this patent number. There is no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain on this record; the only third-party involvement visible in the Google Patents record is the Darts-ip "family has litigation" flag on family ID 45806191, which I could not resolve to a specific asserted case for this patent number. I flag that as a lead, not a finding.

A caution on one adjacent data point: Samsung Display is a serial ITC complainant (e.g., Inv. No. 337-TA-1351, instituted 2023-02-03, and the Samsung Display v. BOE district court actions). Those matters asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 9,818,803, 10,854,683, 7,414,599, 9,330,593, and 11,594,578 — not 9,323,400. Do not conflate them.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: do not expect to inherit a PTAB win, because there is none. Treat this as a clean-slate validity challenge. The most attractive IPR targets are claim 1 (the "single connection" and "conforming incline" limitations added during prosecution are the narrowest, most attackable features) and the dependent claims most likely to be asserted for damages granularity (claims 5–8, 12–13). Because the family's continuations (US 10,013,088 / US 10,474,270 / US 10,895,926 / US 11,809,663 / US 12,321,555 / US 2025/0291445) all claim the same 2010-09-14 priority date and carry the same specification, any IPR art you develop against the parent will likely be reusable across the family — worth scoping before you file.
• Timing: with no active proceeding, there is no institution-decision deadline, no statutory one-year FWD clock (§ 316(a)(11)), and no oral-hearing date to track. Any schedule you build is one you create. Note the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint if you have already been sued.
• Pre-filing diligence I could not complete: I was unable to confirm (a) the identity of any specific litigation in which 9,323,400 itself is asserted — the Darts-ip family-litigation flag is unresolved to a case caption — and (b) whether any unindexed or very recently filed petition exists. Before relying on the "zero" figure, verify directly at USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (PTAB E2E) and USPTO PatentCenter for application 13/021,581, and re-check the ODP ingest date.
• Bottom line: the absence of PTAB activity is itself a weak negative signal. Well-asserted, high-value patents in hot litigation campaigns (Samsung Display's OLED/touch campaigns included) tend to attract IPRs. That this patent — active through 2032 with fees current — has attracted none suggests it has not been a primary assertion vehicle to date. If you have received a demand letter citing 9,323,400, that is unusual relative to the public record and worth probing in discovery.

Sources consulted: the ODP-derived structured block in the task prompt (canonical proceedings list); Google Patents US9323400B2 (claims, family, maintenance-fee events, Darts-ip family-litigation flag); USITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1351 notice (Samsung Display patents asserted in that investigation). No PTAB E2E or CourtListener docket for this patent number was located, and I did not find one to cite — I am stating that explicitly rather than supplying a placeholder link.

I'll verify the assignment record against public sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me probe the assignment records and correspondent-of-record details directly.

Let me attempt to pin down the correspondent of record and confirm no additional recorded documents.

I've reached my search budget. Below is the reconstruction grounded in the authoritative patent record (Google Patents legal-events mirror of the USPTO assignment data) plus the corroborated corporate-history sources I retrieved. Where a field could not be verified, I say so rather than guess.

Verification caveat up front: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search result page or the assignment.uspto.gov record for this patent number directly — those interfaces returned no indexable payload to my searches. The reel/frame numbers, execution/recording dates, and conveyance types below are taken from the Google Patents "Legal Events" block, which mirrors the USPTO assignment record. The correspondent of record (the filing attorney/agent) is not exposed in that mirror and I could not recover it from any source I reached; I am not inventing one. Treat the correspondent cells as open.

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Inventors

Four named inventors, all listed on the 2011 assignment of record (Reel 025763/0217) and on the face of the patent:

Employer determination: grounded — the inventors are the assignors on Reel 025763/0217, and the assignee is Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd.; the assignment was taken as an employment/obligation assignment incident to filing (executed 2011-01-07, ~1 month before the 2011-02-04 US filing).

Unusual-pattern check: No unusual pattern. I found no evidence of any of the four inventors departing SMD/Samsung Display within 12 months of filing, and none of them appears as an assignor on any subsequent (post-2012) assignment. There is no inventor-to-third-party conveyance anywhere in the record. The classic "inventors bail in year one, portfolio gets fire-sold" tell is absent here.

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Original assignee

Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd. (SMD) is the assignee named on the issued patent (assignment recorded 2011-02-07; the patent itself issued to the successor, Samsung Display, after the 2012 merger).

• Primary line of business: OLED (AMOLED/PMOLED) flat-panel display R&D and manufacture — the world's largest OLED producer at the time. Formed 2008 as a joint venture of Samsung Electronics (64%) and Samsung SDI (36%).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, effectively. The patent is directed to an OLED flat-panel display with a touch sensor integrated on the thin-film encapsulation, and the assignee's line of business was precisely manufacturing such OLED panels. Samsung's AMOLED panels with on-cell/on-encapsulation touch sensing are the commercial embodiment of this family. (Direct product-level proof of the specific asserted claims would require a claim chart, but the technical field and the assignee's products align.)
• Current status: Operating, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. SMD was merged into Samsung Display Co., Ltd. effective 2012-07-02 (recorded 2012-08-31, Reel 028921/0334). Samsung Display is a live, wholly owned Samsung Electronics subsidiary and the world's largest display manufacturer (spun off April 2012; merged with SMD and S-LCD in July 2012). Corroborating sources: SEC 10-Q of Universal Display Corp. (2012-09-30) noting the SMD/SDC merger; Engadget and Phandroid coverage of the 2012-07-02 merger; IDTechEx company timeline.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignment documents, plus the prosecution chain. No security agreements, licenses, releases, name changes other than the merger, or corrections appear in the record for this patent number.

2011-01-07 (executed) / recorded 2011-02-07 — Reel 025763 / Frame 0217

• Conveyance: Assignment (of assignors' interest)
• Assignor: KIM, JONG-SOO; KIM, DO-YOUB; SONG, MYOUNG-SEOP; CHO, SANG-KYUN (the four inventors)
• Assignee: Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd. (Korea, Republic of)
• Correspondent: Not recoverable from the sources reached. The Google Patents legal-events mirror omits the correspondent field, and I could not open the Assignment Center record. Not fabricated.
• Context: Ordinary employment/obligation assignment of inventors' rights to their employer at filing.

2012-07-02 (executed) / recorded 2012-08-31 — Reel 028921 / Frame 0334

• Conveyance: Merger (assignment by operation of merger)
• Assignor: Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd.
• Assignee: Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (Republic of Korea)
• Correspondent: Not recoverable from the sources reached (same limitation as above).
• Context: Internal corporate reorg — SMD merged into the newly spun-off Samsung Display Co., Ltd.; the patent passed to the surviving entity as a matter of law. Not a sale, not a fire-sale.

Post-2012: No further assignments recorded. Legal events after the merger are administrative only: fee-payment notice (2015-12-04), patent grant (2016-04-06), 4th-year maintenance fee paid (2019-09-26), 8th-year maintenance fee paid (2023-09-25). Assignee remains Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

Note on the "no further records" finding: Because the chain terminates at an operating company and nothing else was ever recorded, the absence of post-2012 assignments is itself the finding — the original assignee's successor still owns the patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9323400
    2008 : SMD formed as OLED joint venture
    2010 : KR priority filed 14 Sep
    2011 : US application filed 04 Feb
         : Inventors assign to Samsung Mobile Display
    2012 : Samsung Mobile Display merges into Samsung Display
    2016 : Patent issued
    2019 : Maintenance fee year 4 paid
    2023 : Maintenance fee year 8 paid

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with a standing caveat.

The chain is a clean, two-step, entirely intra-Samsung ownership history: the four inventors assigned to Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd. (executed 2011-01-07, recorded 2011-02-07, Reel 025763/0217), and SMD then merged into Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (executed 2012-07-02, recorded 2012-08-31, Reel 028921/0334), where ownership still sits today. Zero NPE indicia are present — no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading chained-LLC transfers, no pre-litigation transfer, no bankruptcy sale, no privateering, and the chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator. The current owner, Samsung Display, is an operating manufacturer whose business (OLED panels with integrated touch) embodies the claims, and it is an active plaintiff against competitor panel makers — though, importantly, I found no suit that asserts this patent; the asserted-patent lists in Samsung Display's 2025–2026 campaigns (BOE, CSOT) name other patents (e.g., US 9,818,803; 10,854,683; 11,594,578; 7,414,599; 9,330,593), not 9,323,400.

One unresolved lead, stated plainly: the Google Patents record carries a Darts-ip banner, "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed," keyed to family ID 45806191. I could not open that case list, so it is not evidence of an '400-patent assertion and I do not treat it as one. If it matters, resolve it in Darts-ip directly.

Verify the record (and fill the two blank correspondent cells) here:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Patent Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by patent number 9,323,400 / application 13/021,581)

Sources: Google Patents legal events for US9323400B2 (reel/frame 025763/0217 and 028921/0334; merger effective 2012-07-02; maintenance fees 2019/2023); Universal Display Corp. Form 10-Q for period ended 2012-09-30 (SEC) confirming the July 2012 SMD/SDC merger; Engadget and Phandroid (2012-07-02) and IDTechEx/SID coverage of the Samsung Display formation.

I'll verify the cited references against public sources before analyzing them.

Good — both Kodak references confirmed. Now let me verify the remaining key cited references.

Scope, source, and method

I ran targeted checks on the citation record for US 9,323,400 B2 and verified several of the references directly against public copies (Google Patents, USPTO publication records, patentimages PDFs). What follows is built from the references cited on the face of US 9,323,400 as transcribed on its Google Patents record, plus my verification of the highest-relevance items. I did not repeat the bibliographic/claim summary or the litigation/PTAB sections already generated — those stand as written.

Two framing points before the reference-by-reference analysis:

1. The '400 patent is pre-AIA. Effective filing date is the 2010-09-14 KR priority (KR 10-2010-0089955); the US application 13/021,581 was filed 2011-02-04, before the 2013-03-16 AIA date. So pre-AIA § 102 governs, which matters for how you date publications and US filings as art.
2. Three citation lists exist on the record, and they are not the same thing. I separate them explicitly, because conflating them is the most common error with this patent:
   • "Citations (17)" — the examiner's US citation of record.
   • "Patent Citations (24)" — a superset that includes foreign/duplicate family members of the same references.
   • "Family Cites Families (27)" — art cited by the foreign family members during KR/CN/EP prosecution. Not US examiner art. This list contains the single most dangerous reference to this patent (flagged below).

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A. The examiner's citation of record (17 references)

All dates below are the reference's own priority/filing and publication dates as listed on the '400 record.

Claim-by-claim anticipation read (pre-AIA § 102)

The short answer: none of the 17 cited references appears to anticipate claim 1, and therefore none anticipates dependent claims 2–13 either. Claim 1 is a conjunctive claim; to anticipate, one reference must disclose every element, including (a) a sealing thin film encapsulating the pixel area, (b) sensing cells formed directly on the top surface of that thin film, (c) sensing lines running directly on the film and then directly on the substrate past the film's end, (d) an inclined film end with conforming sensing lines, and (e) each sensing line running cell-to-FPCB as a single connection. The cited art splits cleanly into two families that each supply only half the elements:

Family 1 — "integrated touch on an OLED display," but no thin-film encapsulation (the Kodak refs, #1, #2, #5).

• #1 and #2 disclose an OLED matrix and touch elements on opposite faces of one substrate, with #2 expressly claiming a single flex-cable connected to both. That is close to claim 1's "one FPCB" concept. But they use a rigid glass substrate/cover, not a sealing thin film, and there is no inclined film end and no sensing-line-over-encapsulation. → No anticipation of claim 1. Under § 102 they disclose nothing better than the "shared connector" sub-element; useful under § 103, not § 102.
• #5 discloses touch-signal routing to a single exposed connection area on a protruding display substrate — again the single-connector idea, and arguably the "substrate longer than the cover" idea. But it routes via conductive vias through the touch substrate, the opposite of claim 1's "sensing lines formed directly over the top surface of the sealing thin film … extending directly to the substrate." → No anticipation. The via/protrusion architecture is a materially different structure and actually cuts against claim 1's direct-on-film routing.

Family 2 — "OLED with thin-film encapsulation" (Samsung refs #8, #9) — but no touch sensor on the encapsulant.

• #8 (KR 100873080 B1) and #9 (CN 101626017 A, with US 2010/0007616 / KR 2010/0007717 family) are Samsung Mobile Display filings in the encapsulation space. They supply the "sealing thin film over the pixel area" element — potentially including a multi-layer organic/inorganic stack, which is what claims 5–8 recite — but they disclose no touch-sensing cells and no sensing lines on that film. → No anticipation of any claim; relevant only to the encapsulation-element sub-limitations (claims 5–8) in a § 103 combination.

Family 3 — "capacitive touch panel" per se (#12, #14, #16, #17) — but no OLED encapsulant.

• #12, #14, #16, #17 disclose capacitive sensing cells, orthogonal first/second electrode arrays, bridge/connection patterns, and (in #15–#16) flex-circuit routing. Those map to claim-1's sensing-cell language and to claims 9–11 (perpendicular first/second cells, connection patterns, independent upper/lower-layer connection patterns). #16 is also the closest art on the "transparent polymer substrate in place of glass, with integral flex circuit" theme and could be argued against the "single connection" limitation. But each lacks the sealing-thin-film-over-pixel-area element and the inclined-film-end element. → No anticipation of claim 1; potential § 103 material for claims 9–11.
• #15 (Jaedo Lee) is affirmatively unhelpful to an anticipation case and mildly helpful to the patent owner: it teaches two PCBs (one per substrate), i.e., it points away from claim 1's single shared FPCB. Use it for the "state of the art did not contemplate a single shared FPCB" narrative at most.

Dating red flags on the citation of record (worth putting in the file):

• #17, US 2011/0128240 A1, published 2011-06-02 — after the 2010-09-14 priority date. As a pre-AIA § 102 reference its only viable date is its US filing date (§ 102(e)), and the Hilmer doctrine means its 2009-12-01 KR priority would not ordinarily back-date it for § 102(e) purposes. If its US filing postdates 2010-09-14, it is not § 102 prior art at all and should not carry weight. Verify the actual US filing date in the file wrapper (PatentCenter, app. 13/021,581) before relying on it.
• #15, US 2010/0309150 A1, published 2010-12-09 — also after the priority date, and #16, US 2011/0012845 A1, published 2011-01-20 — also after. Both depend on their earlier US filing/provisional dates for § 102(e) status (#16 on prov. 61/227,054, 2009-07-20; #15 on its ~2010 US filing off the 2009-06-08 KR case). Both look usable, but only via § 102(e) — not by publication.
• Everything else (#1–#14) published before 2010-09-14 and is clean § 102(a)/(b) art.

§ 102 verdict by claim:

• Claim 1: no cited reference anticipates. Closest is US 6,885,157 (#5) on the single-connection concept and US 2002/0186208 (#2) on the shared flex-cable, but both fail the sealing-thin-film and inclined-end elements.
• Claims 2–4 (driving IC on substrate / connected to FPCB / includes touch control): no cited reference anticipates; none of the 17 shows a driving IC integrating touch control on the display substrate.
• Claims 5–8 (organic/inorganic stack; 4-layer stack; epoxy/acrylate/urethane-acrylate; AlₓOᵧ/SiₓOᵧ): not anticipated by #8/#9, which are encapsulation-disclosure references but do not tie the stack to a touch sensor; anticipate only if combined.
• Claims 9–11 (perpendicular sensing cells; connection patterns; independent upper/lower patterns): strongest § 102 candidates among the cited art are #12 (Tanaka), #14 (Acrosense), #16 (Rothkopf) and #17 (Choi), all of which disclose two-directional capacitive cell arrays with bridge/connection structures. Anticipation fails only because those references are standalone touch panels lacking the OLED encapsulant and the inclined-film routing.
• Claims 12–13 (inclined film surface; sensing lines on same-facing surfaces): no cited reference discloses an inclined encapsulation edge with conforming sensing lines. This is the element the examiners appear to have used to distinguish the art, and it is the strongest validity pillar in the citation record.
• Non-patent citation of record (Chinese First Office Action dated 2015-07-02 for CN 201110059238.8) — a prosecution document, not prior art.

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B. The most dangerous reference is not on the US citation list

Separate from the 17 US citations, the "Family Cites Families (27)" list — art cited during foreign prosecution — contains what looks like the nearest miss:

• KR 101073215 B1 — Samsung Mobile Display, priority 2010-03-05, titled "flat panel display integrated touch screen panel." A Korean Samsung filing in the identical subject matter, six months before the '400 priority date, cited against a family member abroad but apparently not listed among the US examiner's citations. Two further Korean Samsung filings on point — KR 101048930 B1 and KR 101219242 B1 (both priority 2009-01-16, "Touch screen panel" / "Touch Screen Panel and Fabricating Method Thereof") — also sit in that family-citation list.
• Also in that list: US 7,948,477 B2 (Apple, 2006-12-15, "PET-based touchpad"), US 8,217,913 B2 and US 7,995,041 B2 (Apple, 2009-02-02, "Integrated touch screen"), KR 101634791 B1 (2008-11-28, "Touch sensible organic light emitting diode display"), and JP 2010-182093 A (2009-02-05, "Image display device with touch panel").
• US 9,342,176 B2 (Samsung Display, priority 2008-07-21, "Organic light emitting display device") also appears there — it is the granted counterpart of the CN 101626017 A / US 2010/0007616 family, so it is effectively the same art as examiner citation #9.

Action item: if you are attacking this patent, get the English-language text of KR 10-1073215 B1 and run it against claim 1 element-by-element. It is the closest thing to a same-field, same-assignee, pre-priority reference I found, and its absence from the US citation of record is itself a potential § 102/§ 103 gap to exploit (or, from the owner's side, an obviousness exposure to shore up).

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C. Caveats

• I verified #1, #2, #5, #15, #16 and #17 against independent copies and they match the record. I did not independently pull the full text of #3, #4, #6–#14, #13's family member, or the non-English references (#8, #9, #13); their entries above reflect the titles/assignees/dates on the '400 record and should be confirmed against the full documents before being relied on in a filing.
• The § 102 vs. § 103 line is where this citation set actually lives. Presenting any single one of these 17 references as an anticipation reference for claim 1 would be a mistake — each is missing at least the sealing-thin-film-plus-direct-on-film-routing-plus-inclined-end combination. Their value is as § 103 building blocks: Kodak #1/#2/#5 for "single connector / shared substrate," Samsung #8/#9 for "thin-film encapsulation stack," and Tanaka/Acrosense/Rothkopf/Choi for "capacitive cell arrays with connection patterns."
• One transcription caution, consistent with the earlier note in this file: the Google Patents citation tables label some entries with both a priority date and a filing date that differ (e.g., US 6,885,157 is listed as priority 2003-11-25 on the '400 record and 2003-11-24 on Unified Patents). Use the granted face date (filed 2003-11-25, granted 2005-04-26) for § 102(e) calculations.

Sources: Google Patents — US9323400B2 (citation tables); US6885157B1 and Unified Patents record; US2002/0171610 A1; US2002/0186208 A1; US2010/0309150 A1; US2011/0012845 A1; US2011/0128240 A1 / US 9,559,152 B2.

I'll verify the cited prior-art references before building the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,323,400 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on scope. This section builds on the earlier bibliographic, family, litigation, and PTAB sections rather than repeating them. It works from the Prior Art section of the Google Patents record for US9323400B2 — i.e., the examiner-cited "Citations (17)/(24)" and the "Family Cites Families (27)" lists — plus the patent's own specification. Where I could not open a reference's full text within this session, I say so explicitly and mark the entry UNVERIFIED; I do not attribute disclosures to references I did not read.

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1. Governing framework

Because application 13/021,581 was filed 2011-02-04, the '400 is a pre-AIA patent. Pre-AIA §§ 102(a)/(b)/(e) and § 103(a) apply, as construed by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and Graham v. John Deere. The critical date for § 102(a) purposes is the 2010-09-14 KR priority date (no evidence in the record of an earlier conception/reduction to practice).

Two consequences matter:

1. § 102(e) makes US application publications prior art as of their US filing date — this sweeps in Jang '616 (US 2010/0007616), Rothkopf '845 (US 2011/0012845), Lee '150 (US 2010/0309150), and the Apple integrated-touch applications (US 7,995,041 / 8,217,913), even though several published in late 2010/early 2011.
2. The applicant's own Background is an admission. The '400 Background expressly states that attaching a separately manufactured touch panel to a flat panel display "increase[s] the entire thickness of a product" and "manufacturing cost," and that separate display/touch driving ICs on separate FPCBs "complicate[]" manufacturing and raise cost. That is the applicant conceding both the problem and the direction of the solution, which KSR treats as strong evidence of motivation. The Description likewise concedes that the glass sealing substrate is "large," "disadvantageous," and that a stacked organic/inorganic sealing thin film is the available thinner alternative.

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2. Claim 1 decomposed

Claim 1 is the sole independent claim. Labeling its limitations for the chart below:

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3. The reference set, with § 102 status

Dates are as listed on the Google Patents record; the § 102 categorization is my application of pre-AIA law and should be confirmed against the documents before being relied on in a brief.

Cross-check against the earlier sections: no contradiction found. This search confirmed the earlier note that the continuation US 10,895,926 re-casts the invention as "an encapsulation layer … including an inclined surface," with the sensing lines extending along that inclined surface. I add one new fact: the '926 independent claim drops the "as a single connection" language — which is itself evidence that limitation 1.9 was understood internally as a narrowing point.

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4. Level of ordinary skill

A PHOSITA here is a display/touch-panel engineer with a bachelor's in EE, materials science, or physics and 2–4 years in OLED display fabrication and capacitive touch sensing — familiar with (i) thin-film encapsulation stacks of alternating organic/inorganic layers, (ii) ITO electrode patterning, diamond-pad mutual-capacitance architectures with crossover insulators, (iii) COG/COF module assembly, FPCB bonding, and driving-IC integration, and (iv) step-coverage failure modes in photolithographically patterned metal over topographic steps. The '400 itself is not directed to new chemistry or new device physics; its asserted advance is an architectural rearrangement, which sits squarely within routine engineering for this artisan.

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5. Ground 1 (primary): Jang '616 + Kodak '157/'208 + Rothkopf '845

5.1 What each reference supplies

US 2010/0007616 A1 (Jang). This is the closest single reference and, notably, it is examiner-cited. It discloses an OLED display with: a substrate; a display unit on the substrate; an encapsulation substrate; a touch unit facing the display unit with first sensors in rows and second sensors in columns crossing each other; an insulation layer over the sensors; an FPCB electrically coupled to the first and second sensors; a data line at the periphery of the display unit on the substrate for delivering touch signals to the FPCB; an electrical conductor between the data line and the sensors; contact units at the periphery; and — critically — an FPCB "includ[ing] circuitry for driving and controlling the display unit and for driving and controlling the touch unit," with a display drive IC that "includes a touch unit drive integrated circuit." It is expressly a capacitive (electrostatic) type touch unit, the sensors are ITO with diamond pads, and the second pattern layer couples adjacent second sensors through contact holes in the insulation layer.

US 6,885,157 B1 (Cok/Kodak). Recites an OLED flat panel with a display substrate that protrudes beyond the cover to expose electrical connections, a single cable at a single location, and touch-screen connections brought down to that substrate (Fig. 1: 26, 27, 28, 20). Its stated advantage is precisely the '400's: "reduces the costs and improves the reliability … by integrating cable connections on a single substrate."

US 2002/0186208 A1 (Kodak/Feldman). Claim 1: transparent substrate with two faces; display matrix on one face; touch sensitive elements on the other face; and "a single flex-cable containing a plurality of conductors electrically connected to both the flat panel display matrix and the touch sensitive elements." This is a direct teaching of limitation 1.5 in its "one connector for both" aspect, and of the general idea that the touch electrode layer is formed on a surface of the display's own covering layer rather than on a separate laminated panel.

US 2011/0012845 A1 (Rothkopf/Apple). The motivation engine. It states the problem of conventional capacitive touch screens in which "capacitive electrodes are formed on a glass substrate … interposed between the active portion of the display and an outer cover glass," notes that glass "may still occupy about half of a millimeter in thickness," and that "particularly in modern devices in which excessive overall device thickness is a concern, the glass substrate thickness … can pose challenges." Its solution: capacitive ITO electrodes on a clear polymer layer such as clear polyimide, with copper traces routing sensor signals "over a flex circuit path that is formed as an integral part of the touch sensor structure," including a curved tail portion connected to a PCB (FIG. 13).

5.2 Mapping to claim 1 and the motivation

Why the combination as a whole. All four references are in the same field (OLED/flat-panel displays with integrated capacitive touch sensing), address the same two recognized problems (module thickness; connector/cost complexity), and two of them (Kodak '208 and Jang '616) state the exact advantages the '400's Background identifies as lacking in the prior art. There is nothing in the record suggesting any reference teaches away from combining sensors with an OLED encapsulation layer — Jang '616 is an OLED with sensors on its encapsulation layer.

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6. Ground 2 (alternative): Kodak '208 + Kodak '157 + TFE art + sloped-edge art

If a tribunal reads limitation 1.3's "directly over a top surface of the sealing thin film" narrowly (i.e., requires the electrode to be outside the encapsulation rather than inside the sealed cavity, which is Jang '616's arrangement), an alternative ground is:

• US 2002/0186208 A1 for the "one substrate, display on one face, touch elements on the other face, single flex-cable" architecture — this is the closest teaching of sensors on the outer face of the display's covering layer, i.e., limitation 1.3's "top surface" orientation;
• US 6,885,157 B1 for the protruding substrate and single-location cable connection (1.1, 1.5, 1.6);
• the conventional thin-film encapsulation stack (limitation 1.2) — supported by the '400's own admission plus the record's barrier-layer art, including TWI421607 (Creator Technology, "Permeation barrier on flexible devices") and US 2010/0244073 A1 / CN 101766055 A (Sumitomo Chemical), subject to date verification (CN 101766055's 2010-06-30 publication appears to be § 102(a) art);
• plus the sloped-edge art of §7 for limitation 1.8.

Motivation: Kodak '208's stated advantage is "reduc[ing] complexity of the display, thereby reducing manufacturing costs and improving reliability"; replacing its rigid transparent substrate/cover with a thin encapsulant is the obvious next step once TFE is known, because the only function served by Kodak's cover with respect to the display is protection — exactly the function of the sealing thin film.

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7. The inclined end portion (1.8) — the genuine battleground

This is the limitation most likely to be the point of novelty, and it is where an obviousness challenge is most vulnerable on the record as I have it.

The state of the art supports obviousness: the general technique of tapering the edge of a deposited dielectric/insulating layer so that a subsequently deposited metal trace maintains continuity over the step is a textbook step-coverage practice in thin-film microfabrication. The '400 does not claim a particular slope angle, a particular taper geometry relative to film thickness, or a particular taper-forming method — claim 12 merely recites "an inclined surface at the end thereof, wherein the sensing lines are formed over the inclined surface," which is a description of the result. Under KSR, a limitation expressed as the result of applying a known technique ("conforming incline to prevent the sensing lines … from being broken") is a strong candidate for obviousness, and the applicant's own specification frames it as a problem-solving measure against a known failure mode ("a risk exists that the sensing lines … may be broken by the step difference of the end portion"), not as a discovery.

But I could not verify a specific piece of art that plainly discloses it. The most plausible candidates on the record, each UNVERIFIED here, are:

• US 2004/0185301 A1 and US 2008/0116795 A1 (Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, Display device and manufacturing method of display device) — examiner-cited; these are the most likely to describe a tapered/rounded insulating-layer edge with a wiring layer formed thereover. This is the reference pair I would pull first.
• US 2005/0051829 A1 / CN 1591876 A (Goto, Matsushita, Semiconductor device) — examiner-cited, filed 2003-08-28, i.e., § 102(b) art. A semiconductor-device reference cited by the examiner of an OLED-touch patent is often cited for a step/taper/contact structure.
• JP 2008-233976 (Sharp, Touch panel, display device, and method for manufacturing touch panel) and JP 2005-317476 (Toshiba Matsushita) — examiner-cited.
• US 2005/0172722 A1 (Kobayashi, Pressure sensor and method for fabricating the same) — examiner-cited; sensor fabrication patents frequently teach sloping side walls.

Honest statement of confidence. I did not open these specifications in this session, and I therefore cannot assert that any of them discloses an inclined encapsulant edge with sensing lines conforming to it. What I can say with confidence is: (a) the taper-over-step technique is well known in thin-film processing generally; (b) the record contains at least four examiner-cited references whose titles and filing context make them plausible sources of that teaching; and (c) limitation 1.8, as drafted, claims a function/result rather than a structure or method, which materially weakens it under § 103. A complete invalidity chart for claim 1 must close this gap by pulling the four references above.

Counter-argument the patent owner will run. A TFE is on the order of a few microns thick, and industrial TFE deposition typically uses a shadow mask producing a steep or undercut edge profile; there was therefore no reason in the art to think a tapered edge was needed for a thin film, and the '400 solved a problem (trace breakage at a very low step) that the art did not appreciate. That is a legitimate non-obviousness narrative, but it is undercut by (i) the applicant's own admission that breakage at the step was a recognized "risk," and (ii) the fact that claim 1 recites the incline only as a means to an end ("to prevent the sensing lines … from being broken").

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8. The "single connection" limitation (1.9) — the crux, and its weakness

This is the most consequential limitation for both validity and infringement, and I want to be precise about it.

• On its face, "each of the sensing lines extends from a sensing cell to the FPCB as a single connection" appears to require a continuous routing conductor from the cell, down over the inclined edge, across the substrate, to the FPCB — with no intervening via, jumper, contact plug, or bifurcated cable.
• That reading substantially narrows the claim. It distinguishes the '400 from Kodak '157, whose touch-screen connections 27 reach the display substrate through conductive vias 28 through the cover — an intermediate connection. It also arguably distinguishes Kodak '208 claim 3, which recites a flex-cable that is "bifurcated at the end attached to the display." And it may distinguish Jang '616, which uses an "electrical conductor between the data line and at least one of the first sensors and at least one of the second sensors."
• A defendant's play is a § 112(b)/Phillips argument that "single connection" is a term of degree that does not "inform those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention with reasonable certainty," or, alternatively, that it should be construed to mean no more than "one trace per line" (in which case Jang '616 and the Kodak references are back in play). Note also that the continuation US 10,895,926 dropped this limitation entirely — a fact that (i) is consistent with the family being kept alive precisely to capture scope that does not require "single connection," and (ii) tends to confirm that 1.9 is a narrowing add-on rather than the heart of the invention.

Practical conclusion on 1.9: if "single connection" is construed narrowly and the file wrapper shows it was added to overcome art, then claim 1 was allowed on the strength of 1.8 + 1.9 combined — i.e., on the sloped edge plus continuous routing — and validity will turn almost entirely on whether the sloped-edge art (see §7) was of record or reasonably discoverable. If it is construed broadly, claim 1 falls to Ground 1 with relative ease.

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9. Dependent claims 2–13

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10. Objective indicia and the patent owner's best arguments

No evidence of secondary considerations appears in the material I have. Specifically:

• No nexus evidence: no unexpected results, no praise, no copying, no licensing program, and no litigation asserting this patent (per the earlier litigation section) — meaning there is no record of industry recognition of the claimed advance.
• No long-felt unmet need: the record's TFE and integrated-touch art (Jang '616, 2010-01-14; Rothkopf '845; Apple '041/'913) shows the industry was converging on this architecture before the '400's priority date.
• The same assignee filed KR 101073215 (2010-03-05) — five months before the '400's priority date — directed to "directly forming a touch screen panel on an upper substrate of a flat panel display" with sensing lines in the non-display area. I flag that this reference is not § 102 art (its publication post-dates the critical date and it lacks a US filing for § 102(e)), so it cannot be used in a rejection. But its existence is probative of how incremental the '400 was over the applicant's own contemporaneous work: it shows the assignee was already filing on the "TSP directly on the upper substrate" architecture and that the '400's contribution was the substitution of a thin film for that substrate plus the tapered edge. That is a classic KSR fact pattern.

The patent owner's realistic arguments are (a) a narrow construction of "single connection," (b) no art teaches tapering a thin-film encapsulant edge, and (c) the "directly over a top surface" orientation is a departure from Jang '616's inside-the-cavity sensor placement. Argument (a) is a double-edged sword (see §8). Argument (b) is the one that needs to be defeated with art (see §7). Argument (c) is weakest, because Kodak '208 expressly places touch elements on the outer face of the display's covering substrate.

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11. Verification gaps I could not close (and what to pull)

1. Full text of US 2004/0185301, US 2008/0116795, US 2005/0051829/CN 1591876, JP 2008-233976, US 2005/0172722. These are the candidates for limitation 1.8. Nothing in this analysis should be relied on for 1.8 until one of them is confirmed to disclose a tapered/rounded layer edge with a conductor formed conformally thereover.
2. The prosecution file wrapper of 13/021,581. I need to know whether "conforming incline" and "as a single connection" were added by amendment, and which references were overcome. This determines whether the 1.8/1.9 combination was the actual basis of allowance.
3. Pre-AIA § 102(e) filing dates for US 2011/0128240, US 2010/0244073, US 8,552,315, US 8,576,182, US 8,692,781 — I could not confirm whether any US filing precedes 2010-09-14.
4. Laid-open dates for the KR/TW/CN/JP family-cited references (KR 101048930, KR 101219242, KR 101634791, KR 101365792, TWI421607, TWI393924, CN 101620327, GB 2474689, JP 4245032, JP 4577318). Several are listed with grant dates that post-date the critical date even though their applications may have laid open earlier; § 102 analysis needs the laid-open date.
5. A verified reading of Jang '616's figures to establish whether any embodiment shows the sensors on the outer face of the encapsulation layer. My verified text places them "on the side of the encapsulation substrate" facing the display unit; if any figure shows outer-face placement, the § 102/§ 103 case against limitation 1.3 (and hence the whole claim) becomes dramatically stronger.
6. Atmel '315/'182, Acrosense '247, and Tanaka '409 full texts for claims 9–11.

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12. Bottom line

Ground 1 — US 2010/0007616 (Jang) in view of US 6,885,157 and US 2002/0186208 (Kodak) and US 2011/0012845 (Rothkopf) — renders limitations 1.1–1.7 strongly obvious, with the motivation supplied three times over: by the references' own express cost/reliability rationales and by the '400's Background admissions. This ground alone is enough to invalidate claims 2, 3, and 4 (Jang '616 recites the shared FPCB and the touch-controller-in-the-display-driver-IC directly) and claims 5–8 (TFE chemistry/stacks admitted and conventional), which together are 7 of the 12 dependent claims.

Ground 2 (the Kodak '208/Kodak '157 substitution route) is the fallback if limitation 1.3 is construed to require sensors on the outer face of the encapsulant.

The two limitations that decide claim 1 are 1.8 and 1.9. "Single connection" (1.9) reads on a functional/degree term, is not tied to any structure, and was dropped in the continuation US 10,895,926 — a strong signal that it is a narrowing add-on rather than an inventive core. "Inclined end portion" (1.8) is claimed as a result ("a conforming incline to prevent … being broken") of a well-known thin-film step-coverage technique, but I could not, within this session, verify a reference that plainly discloses that result on a thin-film encapsulant. That is the single largest open item in the invalidity case, and the examiner-cited SEL ('301/'795), Matsushita (Goto '829/CN 1591876), Sharp (JP 2008-233976) and Kobayashi ('722) references are where it should be resolved. If limitation 1.8 cannot be met by art, claim 1 (and claims 12–13) survive; if it can, the entire claim set is vulnerable, and claims 2–11 fall without needing 1.8 at all.