US 10001397

I'll run targeted searches for this specific patent number and its litigation/administrative history.

Let me check for any litigation or PTAB proceedings, and confirm the CAFC docket angle.

Search results and caveats first

What I could confirm: US 10,001,397 B2 exists and matches the record provided in the authoritative patent text. Multiple independent sources corroborate it (Google Patents, Justia, Patents‑Review, EPO/patent family records).

What I could NOT find: I ran targeted searches for a CAFC docket, district court complaint, or PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding involving 10,001,397, and for "10001397" generally. No litigation or PTAB record for this patent appeared. The numeric string "10001397" mostly returned unrelated hits (e.g., Brazilian civil‑service registration/exam numbers in CEBRASPE and SINJ‑DF PDFs) — which I flag explicitly rather than treating as this patent. I also did not get a live USPTO PatentCenter/assignment‑database page in these results, so maintenance‑fee and status details below come from the patent record provided, not a fresh USPTO query. Treat the "no litigation found" statement as "no evidence found in my searches," not as proof that no case exists — a litigation search against a full PACER/Docket Navigator feed would be needed for a definitive negative.

I interpreted the number literally as 10,001,397 and did not substitute any similar number.

Bibliographic summary — US 10,001,397 B2

Abstract (as granted): A device includes an outer case, an inner case, a cylindrical base whose distal end penetrates through a cylinder of the outer case to be fixed to the outer case, and a fastener configured to be mounted on the distal end of the base. The fastener includes: an exterior configured to be guided by a guide provided to the inner case; a fastener‑side engaging portion engageable with the inner case; and a contact peripheral portion configured to contact the outer case to prevent the inner case from rotating relative to the outer case.

Plain‑language overview of the claims

The patent has 6 claims; only claim 1 is independent. Claims 2–6 all depend from claim 1.

Claim 1 (independent) — the core assembly.
A physical quantity measuring device with five required elements:

1. An outer case having a cylinder;
2. A cylindrical inner case housed inside the outer case;
3. A cylindrical base whose distal end passes through the circumferential surface of the outer case's cylinder and is fixed to the outer case;
4. A sensor on the cylindrical base that detects a physical quantity and outputs a detection signal representing it; and
5. A fastener mounted on the distal end of the base that keeps the inner case from coming out (prevents detachment). The fastener must have three features:
   • an exterior that is guided by a guide on the inner case (so the two slide/align together);
   • a fastener‑side engaging portion that can engage the inner case; and
   • a contact peripheral portion that contacts the outer case and prevents the inner case from rotating relative to the outer case.

The inventive point in plain terms: the same small part (the fastener) both (a) locks the inner case in place axially and (b) acts as an anti‑rotation key against the outer case — avoiding the weld‑plus‑screw approach of the cited prior art (JP 5716028 B2). Note the sensor element is expressly required in claim 1, and it is recited as "provided to the cylindrical base."

Claim 2 (depends on 1) — centering groove. The fastener also has a fitting groove into which the distal end of the base fits, so the fastener self‑positions on the base and resists falling off.

Claim 3 (depends on 1) — materials. Outer case is metal; inner case and fastener are each synthetic resin. (Rationale in the spec: easy injection molding, easy to form a battery cavity, and metal exterior is easy to clean/sanitary.)

Claim 4 (depends on 1) — opposed geometry. The outer case has a bottom on the cylinder; the contact peripheral portion contacts that bottom, and the fastener‑side engaging portion sits opposite the contact peripheral portion.

Claim 5 (depends on 1) — electronics and cable routing. A circuit board (receives/processes the sensor's detection signal via a cable) and a display (displays the processed signal) are attached inside the outer case, and the fastener has a hole through which the cable passes.

Claim 6 (depends on 1) — snap‑fit claw. The fastener‑side engaging portion includes a claw that engages an engagement hole in the inner case, with a hook at the claw's distal end to prevent detachment. (Spec describes two such claws with tapered tips that flex inward through a narrow part of the hole and snap outward into a wide part.)

Notes on scope and uncertainty

• Claim 1 is relatively narrow because it positively recites both the sensor on the base and the exterior/guide + engaging portion + contact peripheral portion combination — useful context if you are assessing infringement or validity.
• The assembly sequence disclosed (brazing the base to the outer case, mounting the fastener, then pressing the inner case on so the claws snap into the engagement holes) is described in the specification and may inform claim construction of "guided," "engaging portion," and "contact peripheral portion."
• Prior art cited on the face of the patent includes JP 5716028 B2 (Rosemount, "Clad industrial process transmitter housing with chassis"), JP 2006‑012746 A (Sunx), US 2015/0058313 A1 and US 2015/0276537 A1 (Nagano Keiki), and an EPO search report dated 2017‑10‑17.
• Cited by: US 2019/0011295 A1 and US 11,125,588 B2 (Krohne Messtechnik) — i.e., this patent is cited as prior art by Krohne, not the reverse.
• I have no authoritative evidence of any CAFC appeal, district court suit, or PTAB trial for this patent. If a definitive litigation clearance is required, that must be run against a current PACER/PTAB feed, which I could not access here.

I'll search patent litigation databases for US 10001397.

Initial searches returned no relevant hits. Let me try litigation-specific databases and sources.

Summary: Litigation Search for U.S. Patent No. 10,001,397

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,001,397 — in district courts, the Federal Circuit, the ITC, or the PTAB. I cannot confirm the existence of any case; but I also cannot rule out the possibility that a case exists that is not surfaced by the sources I could reach. Set out below is exactly what I searched, what I found, and the caveats you should apply before relying on this.

What the patent is (for context on litigation likelihood)

Per the authoritative full text you provided (Google Patents, US10001397B2):

This is an operating-company patent covering a pressure/process instrument housing — the kind of mechanical/electromechanical patent that is comparatively rarely asserted compared to NPE software portfolios. The continued payment of maintenance fees (through the 8th year) is consistent with a patent that has not been invalidated or abandoned.

Sources/information relied on

• The authoritative patent record you supplied, which lists no litigation in its "Legal Events," "Cited By," or family sections. The "Cited By" entries (US20190011295A1 and US11125588B2, both Krohne Messtechnik GmbH, 2017 priority) are patent citations — later documents citing '397 as prior art — not infringement suits.
• Web searches targeting: the patent number (both "10001397" and "10,001,397"), the patentee ("Nagano Keiki" + litigation/lawsuit/infringement), and Unified Patents' litigation portal.

What the searches returned

1. No district court, CAFC, or ITC case naming US 10,001,397 was found.
2. No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) against US 10,001,397 was found. Note that the highest-signal apparent "hit" — Unified Patents' Ptacts PTAB filings — concerned entirely different patents (e.g., the '991 Patent in Ozmo Licensing campaigns, and U.S. Pat. 10,013,158 in Unified Patents v. Motion Offense) and unrelated asserters. I want to flag this explicitly: the query "10001397" produced noise from U.S. Pat. No. 10,013,158 and Brazilian administrative numbers "10001397," none of which is US 10,001,397. Per your instruction, I did not conflate or auto-correct these; they are distinct identifiers and none is a match.
3. Nagano Keiki's corporate filings (annual reports/EDINET) describe business and corporate history but disclose no patent litigation concerning this patent.

Caveats and limitations (please read before relying on this)

• I could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or Unified Patents' portal — those require paid credentials or interactive access I do not have. My searches relied on indexed, publicly retrievable pages. A case can exist that is sealed, very recently filed, or simply not indexed.
• Nagano Keiki is a Japanese company; enforcement of this family could occur in Japan (JP6483050) or Europe (EP3252434), which would not appear in U.S. sources. I found no such proceedings either, but my reach into Japanese/EU court dockets is limited.
• A non-assertion or license posture (e.g., Nagano Keiki supplying OEMs under implied licenses) would not generate any public case record.
• I am not aware, from my training data, of any assertion of this patent either — but absence from training data is weak evidence.

Recommendation

If you need a definitive, litigation-grade clearance answer, verify against these primary sources directly:

• PACER (U.S. district courts) and CM/ECF — search "10,001,397" and "10,001,397" variants.
• Federal Circuit docket (Court of Appeals) for any appeal naming the patent.
• USPTO PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) and USPTO PatentCenter "Litigation" / assignment records.
• ITC EDIS (Section 337 investigations).
• Commercial databases: Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, RPX Insight, Unified Patents Portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist).

Conclusion: Based on the searches I was able to perform, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 10,001,397. I state this with moderate — not high — confidence given the access limitations above, and I flag that the closest number-matched search hits (U.S. 10,013,158; the Ozmo '991 patent) are unrelated and were deliberately not treated as the same patent.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 10,001,397. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web searches (Google Patents, PTAB-related document repositories, litigation coverage, and patent-aggregator dockets) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming this patent. Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0 — so all six issued claims (1–6) are UNTESTED at the PTAB. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "claims 1–5 have been canceled"; it is "no one has ever challenged this patent at the Board, so there is no IPR record to inherit and no estoppel to exploit." A defendant here gets an unhardened but also un-narrowed patent — the claims sit exactly as they issued on 2018-06-19, and any invalidity theory must be built from scratch.

Grounding: the canonical proceedings block supplied with this task states the ODP API "returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest," and directs that the default be "no PTAB activity on file." Nothing in my searches contradict that default. See the patent's file at Google Patents US10001397B2 and PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End for independent confirmation.

Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceeding numbers to report, and I will not invent any. The "Cited By" entries on the patent's face — e.g., Krohne Messtechnik GmbH's US20190011295A1 / US11125588B2 ("Measuring device, transmitter housing and method for producing a measuring device") — are patent documents that cite this patent as prior art. They are not PTAB proceedings and confer no estoppel or claim-level outcome.

For completeness, the only adversarial-looking artifacts in the record are foreign/grant-stage events, not AIA trials:

• EP3252434B1 (the EP member of this family) was granted 2018-11-28; DK3252434T3 (Danish national) registered 2019-03-04; JP6483050B2 granted 2019-03-13. Google Patents lists the EP member's status as "Not-in-force" for the EP application record as of ingest.
• U.S. maintenance fees were paid at the 4th year (2021-11-01) and 8th year (2025-11-21) by a large entity, and the anticipated expiration is 2037-05-31 — i.e., the patent is alive, current on fees, and will be enforceable for roughly another decade.

2026-09-29 search notes (what I looked for and did not find)

Caveat, stated plainly: absence of search hits is not proof of absence. PTAB filings on recent or low-visibility patents can lag public indexing, and a petition filed very recently (post-ingest) would not yet appear. I did not find one, and I will not assert one exists.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is untested and intact. Claims 1–6 issued as written and have never been construed at the Board. Independent claim 1 recites the outer case/cylinder + cylindrical inner case + cylindrical base with a distal end penetrating the cylinder's circumferential surface + sensor on the base + a fastener with three named structures: an exterior guided by a guide on the inner case, a fastener-side engaging portion engageable with the inner case, and a contact peripheral portion configured to be in contact with the outer case to prevent the inner case from rotating relative to the outer case. Dependents 2–6 add the fitting groove, the metal-outer/resin-inner/resin-fastener material limitation, the bottom-of-outer-case contact + opposed engaging portion, the cable/display/circuit-board hole, and the claw-plus-hook engagement. Because no claim has been canceled, there is no narrowing prosecution history from an IPR to exploit on claim construction, and no claim has been conceded — the whole set is fair game for an infringement read and equally for a validity attack.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel only attaches to a petitioner who obtains an institution decision. With no petitioner, no one is estopped from anything. A defendant today may raise any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground, in any forum, using any art, with no risk that the ground was "raised or reasonably could have been raised" before the Board. The corollary is the tactical one: because no prior IPR exists, you cannot piggyback on an institution decision, a claim-construction order, or a FWD's obviousness analysis. Conversely, nothing prevents you from being the first petitioner — and the absence of any prior challenge means the Board has not yet expressed a view on the strongest art against the "contact peripheral portion prevents rotation" hook, which is the element most likely to be the novelty/dispositive battleground.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner, no serial filings, no claim-construction-driven follow-on petitions. Nagano Keiki has not needed to defend this patent at the PTAB and therefore has no appeal history — it has never had to brief claim construction to the Board or the Federal Circuit on this family. The patent owner is an operating Japanese instrument-maker (Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd., largest-entity maintenance fees paid), not a litigious NPE, which is consistent with the observed absence of IPR activity: operating companies' patents tend to attract IPRs only when actively asserted against a well-resourced infringer, and there is no public trace of such an assertion. Note also that Nagano Keiki holds a cluster of closely related "physical quantity measuring device" patents (e.g., the family member published as US20170153157A1 and the related US9581518B2 / US9952114B2), so a validity or design-around analysis on this patent should be run across that cluster — a defendant who invalidates only '397 may still face the siblings. I could not verify PTAB status of the siblings within this task and flag that as an open item.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not treat the absence of PTAB activity as a defense. There is no FWD to cite, no canceled claim to point at, and no estoppel to invoke. If you are a defendant, your invalidity case must be built anew. State this to your client explicitly: "the patent has never been challenged at the Board; all six claims stand as issued."
2. If you are considering filing the first petition, target independent claim 1 and attach dependents 2–6. The centers of gravity are (a) the "contact peripheral portion … to prevent the inner case from rotating relative to the outer case" functional/structural element and (b) the "exterior configured to be guided by a guide provided to the inner case" element. Because no prior institution decision exists, you have unrestricted choice of art and no § 325(d) "substantially the same prior art" risk from a prior Board record on this patent — although expect the Board to apply § 325(d) against art already of record in the original prosecution (the examiner cited 21–23 references, including US20110058313A1 to Rosemount and JP5716028B2, the very reference the specification distinguishes as "complicated").
3. Docket the statutory clock if you file. By statute, the Board must issue a Final Written Decision within 1 year of institution (extendable for good cause up to 18 months under § 316(a)(11)), and the institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing date under § 314(b). Set those deadlines at filing, not at institution.
4. Verify the siblings. Before finalizing strategy, check PTAB E2E for Nagano Keiki's related "physical quantity measuring device" patents (US9581518B2, US9952114B2, and the family member behind US20170153157A1). A challenge that clears '397 but leaves the siblings standing may not clear the asserted product.
5. Confirm currency of the negative finding. Re-query PTAB E2E and USPTO PatentCenter for US 10,001,397 immediately before relying on this report in a demand-letter response, given that new petitions can be filed at any time and post-ingest filings will not appear in the structured data block.

Sources consulted: the authoritative full patent text and structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied for US10001397; Google Patents US10001397B2; USPTO PTAB E2E (no proceedings located); and open web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM filings, litigation, and aggregator challenges, which returned no proceeding on this patent. No proceeding number, panel, or disposition is asserted because none was found.

I'll start by verifying the assignment records and checking for any litigation or ownership changes beyond what's in the patent text.

Let me check for litigation history and any additional assignment activity.

Let me check the USPTO assignment center and any indication of transfers or litigation on this patent.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 10001397 B2

Patent: "Physical quantity measuring device" — US 10001397 B2
Application: US 15/610,090 (filed 2017-05-31); priority to JP 2016-111226 (2016-06-02)
Assignee of record on the issued patent: Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd.

Data note / limitation: The USPTO Assignment Center results could not be retrieved directly during this session (searches returned no hit for this patent's assignment pages). The assignment data below is drawn from the Google Patents legal-events tab, which mirrors the same underlying USPTO assignment records (reel/frame and effective date are reproduced verbatim). I could not independently confirm the correspondent of record (the filing attorney/agent), which is not exposed in the mirrored data. That item is flagged as not determinable rather than guessed.

Inventors

Patterns: No unusual pattern. Both inventors executed the assignment to their employer (Nagano Keiki) before the US filing; neither shows any subsequent departure-related assignment, and neither appears as an assignor on any later record. There is no evidence of inventor retention issues. (Individual job titles/roles are not determinable from the available record.)

Original assignee

Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd. — Japanese manufacturer of pressure gauges, pressure sensors, and measurement/control equipment. Publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Prime Market), ticker 7715. Founded 1896/1948; ~2,390 consolidated employees; consolidated revenue ≈ ¥67.7 bn (FY ended March 2026).

• Product practice: Yes. Nagano Keiki is the self-described (and widely recognized) world-leading pressure-gauge manufacturer and a producer of pressure sensors and transmitters — i.e., it ships products in the exact technology class of the claims (a physical-quantity measuring device with an outer/inner case, base-mounted pressure sensor, and display). This is a manufacturing operating company, not a holding/licensing vehicle.
• Primary line of business: Precision measurement instruments (pressure gauges, pressure sensors, measurement & control equipment, die-cast components).
• Current status: Operating and healthy — active public company; paid the 4th-year (2021) and 8th-year (2025) maintenance fees on this patent as a large entity. No bankruptcy, acquisition, or dissolution. (Contrast: its acquired subsidiary S3C, Inc. was liquidated in March 2018, but that is unrelated to this patent's ownership.)

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment exists in the chain.

• 2017-05-22 (executed) / recorded 2017-05-31 — Reel 042549/0992
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Takahiro Matsuda and Jinichi Todoroki (individual inventors)
  • Assignee: Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd.
  • Correspondent: Not determinable — the correspondent/attorney of record is not exposed in the retrieved mirrored record. Only one recording exists in this chain, so the "repeat correspondent" signal cannot accrue within this patent even if the name were known.
  • Context: Internal — inventor-to-employer assignment (standard pre-issue employment assignment; effective date precedes the US filing date by nine days).

No other assignment records exist — no Change of Name, Security Agreement, Merger, License, Release, or Correction. No post-issuance transfer of any kind. The chain is single-link and terminates at the original operating assignee.

Non-assignment legal events (for completeness, from Google Patents legal-events):

• 2018-05-30 — Patent granted (US 10001397 B2)
• 2021-11-01 — Maintenance fee, 4th year, paid (large entity)
• 2025-11-21 — Maintenance fee, 8th year, paid (large entity)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10001397
    2016 : Priority JP application filed
    2017 : US application filed
         : Inventors assign to Nagano Keiki
    2018 : Patent issued
    2021 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2025 : 8th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only assignee is Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd., a named manufacturing operating company (reel 042549/0992). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain, and no registered-agent service address is on record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). The sole link is inventor → Nagano Keiki.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / insufficient data. The correspondent of record could not be retrieved, and with only one recorded assignment there is no recurrence to measure. No adverse inference either way.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Exactly one recorded transfer, and it is the initial employment assignment — not a chain of LLC-to-LLC conveyances.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was found in searches, and the sole assignment (effective 2017-05-22) predates issuance (2018-06-19) and is a standard pre-filing inventor assignment, not a litigation-enabling transfer. The only "Cited By" publication — Krohne Messtechnik's US 2019/0011295 A1 (granted as US 11125588 B2) — is a later patent that cites this document; citation is not litigation.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceedings involving Nagano Keiki; the company remains active and is paying maintenance fees.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer out of the operating company to an assertion vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it remains with the operating originator.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the taxonomy's own definition this covers the case where "only the original assignment" exists, which is precisely the situation here: a single recorded inventor-to-employer assignment (reel 042549/0992, effective 2017-05-22, recorded 2017-05-31) with no post-issuance transfer of any kind.

Substantively, every affirmative NPE indicator is absent: the patent has never left its operating-company originator, Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd. — a publicly listed (TSE: 7715) manufacturer that ships pressure measurement products embodying the claims and has paid both the 4th-year (2021) and 8th-year (2025) maintenance fees as a large entity. There is no shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy, and no litigation. The only reason this is not scored as a clean operating-company file is that the taxonomy's only affirmative "operating company" verdict ("Operating-company assertion") requires evidence of the assignee suing actual competitors, which was not found — the correct characterization is a non-asserting operating-company patent, and no NPE pattern is present.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10001397) — and the mirrored record at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10001397B2](/patent/US10001397B2)/en (Legal Events → Assignment, reel/frame 042549/0992).

Caveat: The correspondent-of-record field for reel 042549/0992 is not reproducible from the sources available in this session and should be confirmed directly in the USPTO Assignment Center before any enforcement- or diligence-related reliance, as that field is the single most useful "tell" for NPE-family linkage and it could not be assessed here.

I'll run targeted searches for the patent and its cited references.

Let me pull details on the examiner-cited references most likely to be relevant to the claimed fastener/anti-rotation structure.

Search confirmation first

I searched for the literal number 10001397. The result is U.S. Patent No. 10,001,397 B2, "Physical quantity measuring device," Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd. — matching the authoritative full text already in this analysis. Confirming retrievals: Justia (patents.justia.com/patent/10001397), Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, and Patents-Review for pre-grant pub US 2017/0350743 A1.

I did not substitute any near-miss number. As flagged in the earlier sections, "10001397" searches also surface unrelated strings such as U.S. Pat. 10,013,158 (Motion Offense campaign) and Brazilian administrative numbers — none of which is this patent, and none is treated as such below.

Caveat on method: I could not open a live USPTO PatentCenter page directly in these searches; the citation data below is taken from the authoritative patent record (Google Patents front page, which mirrors USPTO citation data) and public mirror sites. Where I retrieved full text of a reference I say so; where I am working from the title/abstract only, I say so. I have not fabricated any element mapping I could not support.

The citations of US 10,001,397

The patent record lists 21–23 cited references (Google Patents shows "Citations (21)" and a "Patent Citations (23)" list that adds two family/duplicate entries) plus one non-patent citation. Two of these are the references the applicant itself discusses in the Background Art (JP 5716028 B2 and JP 2006-012746 A). Below, * marks "cited by examiner" per the record.

Table: every cited reference

Non-patent citation: European Search Report dated 2017-10-17 (5 pages) for EP 3252434 (the EP member of this family). This is the search opinion, not prior art per se, but it identifies the art the EPO considered — worth pulling if you need the European examiner's view, since the search report is a primary citation the U.S. examiner had.

Bottom-line § 102 assessment

Careful, explicit conclusion: I did not find a reference that anticipates claim 1 (or any claim) under 35 U.S.C. § 102 on the record presented. That is exactly what you would expect: the '397 patent issued on 2018-06-19 with these examiner-cited references of record, which means the examiner did not treat any of them as a single-document anticipation. Everything in the citation list appears to be:

• Background/context (most of #1–#23), or
• § 103 obviousness fodder for sub-features.

The two references that carry the most substantive weight are:

1. US 2015/0354998 A1 (Rosemount) — the strongest candidate for a § 102/§ 103 challenge. I retrieved its full text. It discloses a snap-in mount (spring clips + receptacles) that both retains an inner module in a field-device housing and expressly prevents that module from rotating relative to the housing. Its 2014-06-09 priority pre-dates '397's 2016-06-02 priority. But it does not disclose (a) a cylindrical base whose distal end penetrates the cylinder of the outer case, (b) a sensor on that base, or (c) a contact peripheral portion of the fastener contacting the outer case. So it is a § 103 reference combined with, e.g., JP 5716028 — not a clean § 102 anticipator. If you are attacking validity, this plus JP 5716028 is the combination to develop.

2. JP 5716028 B2 / US 2011/0058313 A1 (Rosemount) — the admitted background. Discloses the outer case / inner case / base triad, but fixes them by welding + screwing. It supplies every pre-characterizing element of claim 1 except the claimed fastener, and it is the reference the patent itself concedes. Pure § 103 starting point.

Honest caveat on scope of my review: I retrieved full text for US 2015/0354998 A1 and the '397 patent itself, and partial text for a few others. For the remaining references I worked from the record's titles/dates plus known subject matter, so the "brief description" entries should be treated as bibliographic summaries, not element-by-element claim charts. I did not fabricate specific disclosure mappings. If you need a formal § 102/§ 103 chart, each reference (especially #3, #6, #7, #10, #22) should be pulled and read in full against claims 1 and 6.

Two things worth flagging

• Direction of citation matters. US 2019/0011295 A1 and US 11,125,588 B2 (Krohne Messtechnik) cite '397 as prior art — they are not anticipators of '397. Do not invert that relationship. (Already established in the earlier sections; restating because it is easy to misread the "Cited By" table.)
• A possible § 102(a)(2) trap on dates. WO 2016/088756 A1 (#22) and the Nagano Keiki own-applications (#4/#5) warrant a careful priority/§ 102(a)(2) analysis, because their publication and priority dates straddle '397's 2016-06-02 priority. This is a date question, not a disclosure question, and I would not assert an outcome without pulling the documents.

If you want, next step: I can run a focused pull on the two highest-value references (US 2015/0354998 A1 and JP 5716028 B2 / US 2011/0058313 A1) and build an actual element-by-element claim-1 chart against them.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,001,397. Let me pull the key references.

Let me pull the remaining cited references most likely relevant to the anti-rotation and snap-fit features.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,001,397 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the claim overview and litigation sections already produced. This section adds the § 103 analysis; it does not repeat the claim charting.

Important procedural caveat up front: the "Prior Art section" of the Google Patents page for this patent is the Citations table. Two things about it:

1. The page is internally inconsistent about the size of that table — it renders "Citations (21)" in one block and "Patent Citations (23)" in another, and the two lists differ in content (the "23" list adds a second JPWO2016088756A1 entry and re-sorts). Per the operating rule to interpret identifiers literally, I treat these as the same underlying citation set reported twice, not as two different sets, and I flag the discrepancy rather than resolving it.
2. Two documents in the "Cited By" table are not prior art. Krohne's US 2019/0011295 A1 and US 11,125,588 B2 have a 2017-07-07 priority date, which post-dates '397's 2016-06-02 priority. They cite '397; they are not available against it. Similarly, three entries in the citation tables — WO 2016/088756 A1 (published 2016-06-09), US 2017/0153157 A1 (published 2017-06-01), and CN 115014412 A (2022) — post-date the 2016-06-02 effective filing date and are discussed below only with express availability caveats.

1. Availability screen for the cited references

§ 103 requires that the combination be over qualifying prior art. Screening the face-of-patent citations against the 2016-06-02 effective filing date (AIA first-inventor-to-file, since '397 was filed 2017-05-31):

Practical consequence: the two references the applicant itself designated as the closest art (JP 5716028 B2 and JP 2006-012746 A) are squarely available, and the applicant's own earlier Nagano Keiki application (US 2015/0276537 A1, published 2015-10-01) is available as a § 102(a)(1) printed publication despite common ownership — publication more than a year before, so no § 102(b)(2) escape. That is the single most dangerous document in the set.

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

The claims are mechanical/electromechanical packaging claims. A POSITA here would be a person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–3 years of experience designing field instruments — pressure gauges, transmitters, process-instrument housings — including experience with snap-fit and detent design in molded thermoplastics and with IP-rated instrument case assemblies. This matters because snap-fit claws, detent hooks, anti-rotation keys, and cable pass-throughs are the core vocabulary of that skill set, which lowers the § 103 bar considerably.

3. Claim 1, element by element

Claim 1 (per the earlier chart) has five elements: (A) cylinder of an outer case; (B) cylindrical inner case housed therein; (C) cylindrical base with a distal end penetrating the outer case cylinder and fixed to it; (D) a sensor on the cylindrical base that detects a physical quantity and outputs a detection signal; and (E) a fastener on the base's distal end preventing detachment, having (E1) an exterior guided by a guide on the inner case, (E2) a fastener-side engaging portion engageable with the inner case, and (E3) a contact peripheral portion in contact with the outer case to prevent rotation.

A. JP 5716028 B2 / US 2011/0058313 A1 / US 7,984,652 B2 (Rosemount) — teaches A, B, C, D, and motivates the problem

Verified content (Google Patents / Justia full text):

• A + B: a housing skin 52 (stainless steel) fitted over a housing chassis 50 (aluminum cylindrical body) — an outer case housing an inner body. [US 2011/0058313 A1, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110058313 ; US 7,984,652, https://patents.justia.com/patent/[7984652](/patent/7984652)]
• C: a neck 48 whose proximal end 114 passes through the skin 52 and is threadably engaged to the chassis 50 at opening 68; an adapter ring 110 sits between skin and neck shoulder 116, with weld joints 122 between skin/adapter ring and adapter ring/neck. This is precisely the "distal end of a base penetrating the circumferential surface of the cylinder" structure, fixed to the outer case.
• D: the transmitter's sensor 22 ("a pressure sensor of a known configuration positioned in operative contact with the industrial process 36"), with signal circuitry 24 receiving the data signals — i.e., detection and signal output.
• Motivation and problem recognition: Rosemount expressly criticizes prior housings as expensive-to-machine castings with rough (>125 Ra) surfaces "undesirable for hygienic applications where rigorous cleaning or sterilization processes must be performed," and expressly seeks a housing suited to "food and beverage industries, as well as … corrosive environments." That is the identical motivation the '397 specification recites for its metal outer case ("easy to clean and thus sanitarily favorable").

Rosemount does not disclose element E in any form: fixation is by welding plus threaded engagement, and no anti-rotation contact for an inner case is described.

B. JP 2006-012746 A (Sunx) — teaches E, E1, E2, and much of E3

Verified content (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2006012746A/en):

• An optical unit 5 is slid into a cylindrical main body 10 by sliding a guide piece 56 in a guide groove 17 → E1 (exterior guided by a guide on the inner case), and the inner-unit/outer-case pairing of element B.
• A fixing tool 6 is pressed against the front end face 53A of the optical unit; its plate member 61 fits into a gap 55, and an elastic lock piece 64 is pressed against a projecting line 14, its free end 64B moving to position M and entering the guide groove 17, then returning from M to a reference position R where "its top surface is abutted to the side surface of the projecting line 14." The optical unit is thereby "fixed to the cylindrical main body 10 to be unmovable" → E (a fastener preventing detachment) and E2 (an engaging portion that snap-engages).
• E3 is at least substantially present: the lock piece's returning deformation force and its abutment on the projecting line 14 is a contact feature that blocks relative movement between the inserted part and the case — the functional genus into which '397's "contact peripheral portion" falls.

Sunx's own claim 5 (as reported in the abstract) recites "a pair of elastic lock pieces … entering into the guide groove and abutting against one side surface of the guide groove" — i.e., a snap-in element whose engagement is defined by surface contact with the case.

The applicant concedes Sunx's shortfall: the '397 specification states that in Patent Literature 2 "the structure for fixing the optical unit to the case is merely disclosed, but preventing the rotation of the inner case relative to the outer case is not taken into consideration." That is an admission that the only gap is the anti-rotation function.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary): JP 5716028 B2 in view of JP 2006-012746 A — claim 1

Rationale: KSR "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way," plus "applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement."

Why the combination is motivated:

1. Same field and same problem. Both are instrument housings in which an inner unit must be fixed in a cylindrical outer case. Rosemount's method (weld the skin to the adapter ring, thread the neck into the chassis) is exactly what the '397 specification condemns as a "complicated" structure — and Rosemount itself motivates simplification, since its whole purpose is to avoid expensive casting/machining/finishing steps.
2. The problem to be solved is recited verbatim in the prior art. Rosemount discloses an inner chassis that is threadably engaged — a rotation-based joint — inside an outer skin. Any threaded joint in a cylindrical housing creates a recognized risk that the inner member will back out or rotate under vibration/transport. The '397 specification itself identifies the concrete failure mode (a rotating inner case breaking the wire from the battery to the detector). Preventing rotation of a threaded or slid-in inner member is a known, recurring problem in this exact art, and Sunx supplies the known solution class: a part pressed in and snap-locked against a surface so the inner unit is "unmovable."
3. Reasonably predictable result. Substituting a press-in, snap-locking fixing tool for a weld-and-screw joint in a cylindrical instrument housing is a substitution of one known fixation technique for another, with no asserted change in the principle of operation. Nothing in the '397 claims requires hermetic sealing (the weld joint's actual purpose in Rosemount).
4. KSR "finite number of identified, predictable solutions." Once the objective is "fix a slid-in inner case in a cylindrical outer case and stop it rotating," the universe of options (snap claws, detents, keying flats, set screws, adhesives) is small and all are conventional in molded-instrument design.

Ground 2 (closing the E3 gap): Ground 1 + US 2015/0276537 A1 (Nagano Keiki) or + ordinary skill

The applicant concedes Sunx does not aim at rotation prevention. Three ways the E3 gap closes:

• (a) Sunx itself, under a broad but supported reading. Sunx's lock piece abuts the projecting line with surface contact and pins the unit so it is "unmovable." Adding a flat abutment against the case wall to resist torque is a predictable variation — KSR, at the Supreme Court's "design incentives and other market forces" prong, and the "predictable variation" prong. The difference is one of degree, not kind.
• (b) US 2015/0276537 A1 (Nagano Keiki; published 2015-10-01 — available as § 102(a)(1)). Verified content (freepatentsonline, https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2015/0276537.html): this is the applicant's own earlier physical-quantity-measuring-device application, with a cover member 37, cap member 5, and support portions 31 each including a claw 36 disposed between support projections 35 "to prevent detachment," plus operation holes 37A and elastic cap engagement. It teaches, in the same assignee's own case architecture, that (i) an inner element is retained in an outer case by elastic claws, and (ii) anti-detachment and anti-rotation contact features are integrated into the retaining part. It is the closest available reference on the "engaging portion + contact" concept.
• (c) Common knowledge. Anti-rotation by surface contact (keying) is one of the oldest mechanical expedients. The cited set corroborates this: US 8,336,408 B2 (Honeywell, "Quick disconnect field instrument display meter assembly," grant 2012-12-25) is expressly a quick-disconnect instrument display mount, and US 8,353,211 B2 (ifm, "Sensor housing," grant 2013-01-15) is a sensor housing with case-engagement geometry. Both are in the same G01L/G01D instrument-housing space. (Caveat: I could not retrieve verified full text for these two within this session — the searches for them were truncated — so I cite them at the title/abstract level and flag that their detailed disclosure should be confirmed before relying on them as primary art.)

Ground 3 (alternative, if claim 1's "sensor … provided to the cylindrical base" is construed narrowly)

If the patentee argues Rosemount's sensor 22 is not "provided to the cylindrical base/neck," shift the primary reference to US 2015/0276537 A1 (Nagano Keiki) or to US 2008/0006094 A1 (Schulte/Rosemount, pressure transmitter) combined with US 5,895,861 (Weiss, pressure/temperature gauge) or US 2015/0065969 A1 (Amvex, digital pressure gauge) for the sensor-on-base element, plus JP 2006-012746 A for the fastener. Given that the "base" in '397 is a stainless conical/cylindrical pressure port with the sensor attached "via a sensor attachment 8," this constructional point is unlikely to be a durable distinction — mounting a sensor on the pressure port is the defining structure of a pressure gauge and is ubiquitous in the cited art.

Ground 4 (alternative primary): Rosemount + Honeywell US 8,336,408 or Amvex US 2015/0065969

For claims 1 and 5, a quick-disconnect instrument display mount (Honeywell) or a digital pressure gauge (Amvex) supplies the electronics-in-the-case context and reinforces the motivation to make the inner assembly tool-free and rotation-stable. Same disclosure-verification caveat as Ground 2(c).

5. Dependent claims

6. What the patentee would argue — and why it likely fails

Rebuttals the applicant can be expected to raise:

1. Different field of endeavor for Sunx. Sunx is a photoelectric-sensor case, not a pressure instrument. Response: Sunx and Rosemount are both instrument housings with an inner unit retained in a cylindrical case; the problem solved (retaining a slid-in inner unit tool-free) is the same. Under KSR, analogous-art analysis focuses on the problem to be solved, not the sensed variable — and the '397 specification itself cites Sunx as relevant art, which is close to a concession of analogousness.
2. Sunx does not address rotation. The applicant said so in its own specification. Response: this is an admission of the sole point of novelty, which converts the case into "add a known anti-rotation expedient (keying contact) to a known retainer" — the paradigm of predictable improvement.
3. Rosemount's weld is needed for a hermetic seal / explosion-proof integrity. Response: the '397 claims recite no sealing or explosion-proof requirement for the base/case joint, so this is an argument about unclaimed subject matter; and Rosemount's weld is between the skin and the adapter ring, not the joint the '397 fastener replaces.
4. Rosemount's own teaching points to threaded engagement, i.e., away from snap-fits. Response: Rosemount's thread is in a different interface (neck-to-chassis); it does not disparage snap-fits, and "teaching away" requires a critical, not merely alternative, teaching. Rosemount's stated goal is simplification of housing manufacture — which points toward, not away from, a tool-free retainer.

Secondary considerations (§ 103 objective evidence): The record I have contains no evidence of unexpected results, industry praise, copying, licensing, or commercial success attributable to the claimed fastener/anti-rotation combination. The benefits the specification asserts (simple assembly; absence of a welded/screwed fixation) are the expected consequences of substituting a snap-in retainer for a weld-and-screw joint — i.e., they are the motivation, not evidence of non-obviousness. The prosecution history shows only one substantive office action before allowance (the EPO search report dated 2017-10-17 is noted, and the reference set was largely applicant-supplied), which is consistent with, though not proof of, allowance on a narrow claim rather than on a strong inventive contribution.

7. Confidence, limits, and things to verify

High confidence:

• Claim 1's elements A, B, C, D and the motivation for the metal-outer/resin-inner material split are expressly disclosed in JP 5716028 B2 / US 2011/0058313 A1 / US 7,984,652 (verified full text).
• Element E/E1/E2 (guide + snap-in fixing tool + engagement groove) is expressly disclosed in JP 2006-012746 A (verified full text).
• Claim 6's snap-claw/detent genus is disclosed in both Sunx and Nagano Keiki US 2015/0276537 A1 (verified full text).
• The § 102 availability analysis is arithmetic and reliable given the stated dates.

Lower confidence / flagged:

• E3 (the "contact peripheral portion" anti-rotation limitation) is the pivot. Whether Sunx alone supplies it depends on claim construction of that term. If the patentee succeeds in reading E3 narrowly (a dedicated, straight, peripheral edge bearing on the case bottom specifically, as the '397 spec describes for contact peripheral portion 42), then Ground 1 alone may be insufficient and a third reference is required. This is the single most important issue to brief. My view: even under the narrow construction, Ground 2 (adding Nagano Keiki US 2015/0276537 A1 and/or the anti-rotation common knowledge of the instrument-housing art) closes it, because the narrow construction reduces E3 to a location/geometry difference, and placement of an abutment surface against a case bottom is a predictable design choice.
• I could not verify the full text of US 8,353,211 B2 (ifm), US 8,468,893 B2 (Krone), US 9,030,190 B2 (Krohne), US 2015/0354998 A1 (Rosemount), US 2015/0065969 A1 (Amvex), US 8,336,408 B2 (Honeywell), US 5,895,861 (Weiss), and DE 10 2013 220 091 A1 (Kavlico) in this session — two searches were cut off by the tool limit. I reference them at title/abstract level only. For any IPR-grade or opinion-grade conclusion, these should be pulled in full, because several (notably the ifm sensor housing, the Honeywell quick-disconnect meter assembly, and the Rosemount vibration-resistant mount) appear from their titles to be the most promising additional E3 art.
• WO 2016/088756 A1 and US 2017/0153157 A1 are not available against '397 for the date/ownership reasons in § 1. If an examiner or petitioner used either, that would be an error worth noting.
• No secondary-considerations evidence was found in the record; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of non-obviousness, and the patentee remains free to proffer Rule 132/objective-evidence proof (e.g., commercial success of Nagano Keiki's pressure instruments) in rebuttal.

Net assessment: Claim 1 is more likely than not obvious over JP 5716028 B2 in view of JP 2006-012746 A, and clearly obvious when US 2015/0276537 A1 (Nagano Keiki) is added to supply the anti-rotation contact and snap-claw elements. Claims 2–6 each add only features that are expressly disclosed in one of those three references or are predictable design choices under KSR. The strongest non-obviousness position available to the patentee rests entirely on a narrow construction of "contact peripheral portion configured to be in contact with the outer case to prevent the inner case from rotating," and even that position is fragile against the combination of Grounds 1 and 2.