Invalidity dossier
US 9871404
Emergency lighting devices with LED strings
Current assignee: LED-IP MANAGEMENT, LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 4:15:09 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 9,871,404 B2
Title: Emergency lighting devices with LED strings
Patent number: US 9,871,404 B2
Application number: US 13/676,791
Inventor(s): James Andrew McBryde; Jason Taylor
Original assignee: Cree Inc. (later recorded as Cree Lighting USA LLC; a 2019 assignment to IDEAL INDUSTRIES LIGHTING LLC and a 2023 security interest to FGI WORLDWIDE LLC are also noted in the source.)
Priority date: 2011-12-12 (as listed; the source notes priority was also claimed from US 13/466,304, filed 2012-05-08)
Filing date: 2012-11-14
Publication date: 2018-01-16; earlier publication US 2013/0147397 A1 (2013-06-13)
Legal status (as listed): Active, adjusted expiration 2033-04-06
Purpose: The application relates to emergency lighting systems, particularly for solid state apparatus, and related methods. Emergency lighting, sometimes called egress lighting, activates on power loss so occupants can exit a building safely; such lighting is mandated by many electrical codes.
Plain-language scope: The excerpt describes an emergency lighting device having first and second groups of solid state emitters that emit different colors, connected in series (output end of the first group to input end of the second). The first group receives normal operating current from an LED driver and passes it to the driver via the second group. In emergency operation, current from an emergency LED driver enters and exits between the input end of the first group and the output end of the second group; in one configuration the emergency input and output fall within the first group, so only the first color is emitted instead of a color mixture. Other described features include a current shunt across the second group to adjust the emitted color mixture, non-white first and second colors, a ratio of emitters between the emergency input/output chosen to produce a target color, and first/second groups emitting blue shifted yellow (BSY) light.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9871404/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not provide the full claim set, complete specification, or drawings; it does not establish the complete "second group" color description (text is truncated mid-sentence), the full list of claims or their exact scope, or any finding on validity, enforceability, or prior art. The excerpt also does not describe the internal details of the emergency driver/detection circuitry.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:51:02 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.