US 10036663

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me do additional targeted searches for any litigation or CAFC activity involving this specific patent.

Summary: US Patent 10,036,663

Important caveat up front: I searched for this specific number (US 10036663 / "10,036,663") across the web, including Federal Circuit and district-court docket material. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court litigation involving this patent. I cannot conclusively rule out activity, since my queries went through general web search rather than a direct PACER/PTAB docket API, but nothing surfaced. Note also that most "10036663" hits in raw search results are unrelated identifiers (a Brazilian exam ID, a German patent DE 10036663, an M5x8 fastener part number) — those are not the US patent and I have disregarded them.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative patent text)

Abstract (verbatim)

"The disclosure relates to weighing a bale formed by a harvester such as a round baler. One or more load sensors located in the tailgate section of the harvester are used to obtain weights when the harvester contains a bale and when the harvester is empty. Other factors, including the slope of the surface on which the harvester is location, the size of the bale, the bale moisture, and the shape of the bale are used to adjust the calculated bale weight."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

There are three independent claims — 1, 16, and 20. (Claims 2–15 depend from 1; 17–19 depend from 16.) The core math disclosed is W_bale = (F_load − F_ref) × K, where F_load and F_ref are load and reference weights and K is an adjustment factor.

Claim 1 — Harvester apparatus (a round baler).
A harvester has a main frame forming the front of a bale chamber, and a tailgate that forms the rear of the chamber and pivots on a load pin to eject the bale. A load sensor sits on or within that load pin and measures the weight force the tailgate and the bale exert on the pin. A processing unit is in communication with the sensor. The claim's point of novelty is the final clause: as the bale is formed, its center of mass moves rearward from the main frame toward the tailgate, thereby altering the force on the load pin. In short: measure bale weight indirectly, at the tailgate hinge, and account for the bale's shifting center of mass.

Claim 16 — Method of obtaining bale weight.
A method using load sensor(s) and a processing unit: (1) determine reference weight(s) with the chamber empty; (2) determine load weight(s) with a formed or partially formed bale present; (3) calculate a bale weight value as a function of the load weight(s) and reference weight(s); (4) calculate an adjustment value that is a function of bale moisture measurements simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale; and (5) calculate an output value from the bale weight value and the adjustment value. Note this claim's adjustment factor is narrow — it is tied specifically to multi-point, simultaneous moisture sensing, not the broader list of factors.

Claim 20 — Method of obtaining bale weight (load-pin variant).
Same general method, but the load sensor(s) are positioned on, within, or near the load pin at the pivot between main frame and tailgate (the frame/tailgate front/rear chamber definitions are recited). Reference weight(s) correspond to the force on the pin from the tailgate alone; load weight(s) correspond to the force from the tailgate and the formed/partially formed bale; and the claim again recites the rearward migration of the bale's center of mass altering the pin force. The adjustment value is again tied to simultaneous moisture measurements at two or more locations.

Dependent-claim flavor (for context)

The dependent claims add: slope corrections (longitudinal and/or lateral, including computing lateral angle from two reference weights taken with the tailgate in two known positions); tailgate position sensors (closed/substantially closed during the loaded measurement); inclinometers; bale diameter sensors; moisture sensors; and shape sensors (density-based), with size expressed as a function of the bale's center-of-mass location.

Observations / uncertainties worth flagging

1. Granted claims differ materially from the published application. The pre-grant publication US 2016/0187185 A1 (as mirrored on Justia) shows a broader claim 1 lacking the "center of mass moves rearward" limitation, whereas granted claim 1 includes it. The granted claims 16 and 20 are also narrowed to moisture measured at two or more different locations simultaneously. Anyone analyzing scope should use the granted text, not the publication.
2. Not to be confused with related CNH patents. US 9,297,688 ("Weighing round bales," app. 13/725,117, load cells at wheel axles) and US 9,585,310 ("Weighing round bales") are separate patents in the same technical family and appear in this patent's citation list. The present patent's distinguishing feature is load sensing in the tailgate load pin / tailgate central member rather than at the wheel axles.
3. Assignee name discrepancy: the Google Patents record lists "Blue Leaf IP Inc," while the underlying assignment record says "BLUE LEAF I.P., INC." — likely the same entity, but I am reporting both literally as instructed rather than normalizing.
4. No legal conclusions. I have not verified current fee/maintenance status or whether the "Active / expires 2036-05-22" designation reflects an actual PTA/terminal disclaimer; that status line is Google Patents' automated assumption.

If you need litigation or PTAB history confirmed, I'd recommend a direct PACER/RECAP and PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) docket query, which is outside what my search tools returned here.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 10036663.

Let me try more targeted litigation searches.

Litigation Search: U.S. Patent No. 10,036,663

Conclusion: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,036,663 ("Weighing round bales") was identified in the sources searched. I could find no district court complaints, no CAFC appeals, no PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM), and no ITC Section 337 investigations naming this patent as a patent-in-suit.

What I searched and what I found

Important distinctions (to avoid auto-correction errors)

Several near-miss identifiers surfaced that are NOT US 10,036,663 and should not be conflated with it:

• EP 2745675 — "Weighing round bales," CNH Industrial Belgium NV, priority US 13/725,117 (Dec. 21, 2012). This patent was the subject of a European opposition filed Nov. 20, 2019 by Kverneland Group Ravenna S.r.l., with the patent maintained as amended (Oct. 8, 2021). This is a different patent in a different family (family ID for US 10,036,663 is 55069731, covering only US 14/757,437 and EP 3036986 B1). It is an EPO opposition, not U.S. litigation.
• U.S. 9,297,688 and U.S. 9,585,310 — related CNH "Weighing round bales" patents (from US 13/725,117), cited as prior art/family members. Neither is the asserted patent here.
• U.S. 8,813,663 — a Deere patent subject to Precision Planting v. Deere, IPR2019-01044. Unrelated.

Caveats on completeness

• I was not able to directly query PACER or the live Unified Patents portal case list for this exercise; the results above are drawn from web-search-accessible litigation databases and the patent text itself.
• The patent's current assignee is Blue Leaf IP Inc (originally CNH Industrial America LLC; reassigned Nov. 9, 2018). This entity's enforcement history should be checked directly if a definitive negative is required.
• Absence from the accessible sources is not a certification that no suit exists; it reflects that none was found. A definitive negative check would require running "10,036,663" directly on PACER, the Unified Patents portal, and a commercial docket database (e.g., Docket Navigator, Lex Machina).

Bottom line: Based on all available search results as of April 26, 2026, there is no known litigation (U.S. district court, CAFC, PTAB, or ITC) involving U.S. Patent No. 10,036,663. The only adversarial proceeding found in the surrounding patent family is the EPO opposition against the separate European patent EP 2745675.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" baseline against public sources before writing anything.

No hits yet. Let me probe the pet petitioner/owner chains and litigation-triggered IPRs specifically.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 10036663 ("Weighing round bales")

Baseline (canonical): The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent returns no AIA trial proceedings. That block is the controlling source here, and my independent web probes did not contradict it.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10036663: 0 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. That breakdown is necessarily degenerate (an empty set), and the defensive posture is therefore "untested at the PTAB, not hardened, and not narrowed": no claims have been canceled, no estoppel has attached against anyone, and every § 102/§ 103 theory against this patent remains fully available to a defendant — including an IPR petition you file yourself.

No proceeding to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to populate. I am not going to manufacture a number. Concretely, I have nothing to report for:

• Type: n/a
• Filed: n/a
• Status: n/a
• Judge panel: n/a
• Petition grounds: n/a
• Institution decision: n/a
• Final Written Decision: n/a
• Settlement / termination: n/a
• Appeal: n/a
• Defensive value: The absence itself is the datum — see below.

Candidate dockets I checked (all negative):

Confidence and its limits: I am highly confident there is no indexed, instituted or decided proceeding. I cannot exclude a very recently filed petition (filed within the last few weeks) that the ODP ingest has not yet picked up, and I could not complete an exhaustive sweep of PACER/CourtListener litigation dockets that would reveal a § 315(b)-triggering complaint. Both gaps are small but non-zero; the check below closes them.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. All 20 claims stand as issued: independent claim 1 (harvester with a load sensor on or within the load pin joining tailgate to main frame, plus the "center of mass moves rearward" functional limitation), independent claim 16 (method with an adjustment value keyed to bale moisture measurements simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale), independent claim 20 (method at the load pin), and every dependent claim. Nothing is canceled, nothing has been confirmed in a Final Written Decision, and nothing has been narrowed by certificate. Note that the granted claims are noticeably narrower than the published application: the original claim 1 "at least a first load sensor … positioned on or within the at least a first load pin" issued as the load-pin arrangement with the rearward-center-of-mass limitation, and the moisture limitation in claim 16 was tightened to simultaneous multi-location measurement. Those are the likely pressure points in any validity fight.

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate, which cuts for you. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM has been instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to any petitioner or privy. A defendant today may raise in district court any § 102/§ 103 ground, including art that was never before the Board — and may also file a fresh IPR on any art so long as § 315(b)'s one-year bar (running from service of a complaint alleging infringement) has not expired and § 325(e) estoppel has not been created by your own petition. The prior-art universe that matters most here is visible on the face of the patent itself: the examiner cited and distinguished US 6,378,276 (Lely Welger, "Baler with a weighing device"), US 7,064,282 and US 7,091,425 (Deere, weighing arrangements / weight-force measurement), EP 1 508 268 (Welger, Rotobaler), US 7,805,914 (CNH, hydraulic bale kicker with optional weighing device), and US 2012/0109564 (Kraus, "Method For Determining Agricultural Bale Weight"). Those references, alone or combined with the CNH family's own earlier work (see below), are the natural starting grounds for a § 103 attack on claim 1's load-pin placement — with the "center of mass moves rearward … to alter the weight force" limitation as the battleground.

Pattern signals: none to read. There is no serial petitioner (no Deere, no Vermeer, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator in the chain so far as the record shows), and no PTAB appeal activity by the patent owner because there have been no adverse decisions to appeal. Ownership is worth flagging for assertion-side analysis rather than PTAB-side: the patent was granted to CNH Industrial America LLC on 2018-07-31 and reassigned to Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. on 2018-11-09 — the current assignee of record. A change of ownership into an IP-holding entity is the classic precursor to assertion activity, and well-asserted patents in this space eventually attract IPRs. Practically, that means the absence of PTAB history here is most likely a timing artifact, not evidence that the claims are robust. Note also the adjacent family member that is a more natural IPR target and may already be absorbing attention: the earlier CNH "Weighing round bales" filing (US 2014/0174303 A1, priority 2012-12-21, which appears to have issued as US 9,585,310, EP counterpart EP 2745675 B1/B2) uses wheel-axle load sensors rather than tailgate load pins. I could not confirm its PTAB status either within this session's search budget, and you should check it separately — a challenge there does not estop or invalidate anything in the '663 patent.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not treat "no PTAB activity" as a validity finding. It is a status, not a verdict. The one-year § 315(b) clock starts on service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, so if you are already served, your IPR window is running and there is no reason to wait for someone else to file first.
2. Verify the negative in the primary sources before relying on it (my check was a bounded search, not a docket-certified clearance):
   • PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End: https://e2e.ptab.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 10036663 and by application number 14/757,437.
   • PTAB public information / petitions portal: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/
   • USPTO Open Data Portal (AIA trial proceedings): https://developer.uspto.gov/
   • CourtListener docket search for the patent number and for the assignee, to catch any litigation that would start § 315(b) clocks and any CAFC appeal: https://www.courtlistener.com/
   • Patent landing page (family, EP 3036986 B1 counterpart, cited art list): https://patents.google.com/patent/US10036663/en
3. Calendar the statutory milestones if you do file. Under § 314(b), the Board decides institution within 6 months of the petition (the Patent Owner's preliminary response is due 3 months after notice of the petition, § 313). Under § 316(a)(11), the Final Written Decision is due within 12 months of the institution decision, extendable by up to 6 months for good cause. There is no current case to track, so those dates are yours to set.
4. If instead you are defending against a demand letter, the useful facts are the positive ones: assignee of record is Blue Leaf I.P., Inc.; priority 2014-12-24; filed 2015-12-23; granted 2018-07-31; adjusted expiration 2036-05-22; and the claims have never been adjudicated anywhere in the AIA trial regime, meaning the patent owner has never had to defend claim 1's load-pin-plus-rearward-center-of-mass formulation or claim 16's simultaneous multi-location moisture limitation under the Board's Phillips standard.

Explicit uncertainty statement: I found no PTAB proceeding of any type on US 10036663, and I have not asserted any proceeding number, panel, ground, or disposition because none exists in the sources available to me. If a petition was filed very recently, it would not yet appear in the ODP ingest and could also post-date my search — the E2E check in step 2 is the authoritative confirmation and should be run before you rely on this for a filing or clearance decision.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10036663 before writing anything.

Let me verify the assignment details, correspondent, and any litigation activity.

US 10036663 — Ownership Analysis

Scope note / source limitation up front. I was able to reach Google Patents' legal-events feed (which reproduces USPTO reassignment records) and USPTO/EP bibliographic data, but the USPTO Assignment Center record itself was not retrievable in this session — neither the reel/frame numbers nor the recorded correspondent for either entry. Everything below is limited to what is verifiable; the reel/frame and correspondent fields are marked not captured rather than estimated. This is a genuine gap, not a null result: two reassignment events are documented for this patent, so a records review at Assignment Center will return data.

Inventors

Departure pattern: not present. Smith is a career CNH Industrial inventor, not a departing founder. He appears as inventor on a long, continuous run of CNH/Blue Leaf filings spanning well before and well after the 2014-12-24 priority date — e.g. US 8,577,563 (CNH America LLC), US 9,297,688 and US 2014/0174303 ("Weighing round bales," CNH America LLC), US 8,972,123, US 11,395,460 ("Bale eject linkage," issued 2022), US 2020/0229351, and EP 2183957 (CNH Belgium NV). No evidence of Smith exiting CNH within 12 months of filing; the inverse — continuing prolific assignment of baler inventions to CNH — is what the record shows.

One structural note worth flagging: US 10036663 sits in the same technical family as the earlier US 9,297,688 / US 2014/0174303 ("Weighing round bales," Posselius, Smith, Fitzkee, Dumarey, Missotten, Verhaeghe, assignee CNH America LLC) — that earlier application (Ser. No. 13/725,117) is the one this patent expressly incorporates by reference. Same subject matter, same corporate owner, different inventive entity. This is ordinary continuation-family prosecution inside one company, not a split of rights.

Original assignee

CNH Industrial America LLC, New Holland, Pennsylvania (successor by name change to CNH America LLC).

• Line of business: agricultural and construction equipment manufacturing. The patent is a round-baler bale-weighing system, and CNH's New Holland brand ships round balers (Roll-Belt series) as core commercial product.
• Product embodying the claims: yes, effectively. The claimed subject matter is a load sensor on the tailgate pivot load pin of a round baler with a processing unit that computes bale weight — implementation-level baler hardware, i.e. exactly what CNH builds and sells. Note that no CNH press release or product brochure positively tying this specific patent to a specific model was located in this session; that link is inferred from the product category, not documented.
• Current status: operating. CNH Industrial America LLC remains an active CNH Industrial N.V. subsidiary. (CNH Industrial N.V. was spun out of Fiat Industrial/CNH Global in 2013; the group's off-highway business has since been separated from the on-highway/Iveco side.) The patent is currently held by CNH's captive IP vehicle, not a third party.

Assignment timeline

Two reassignment events appear in Google Patents' legal-events feed for US 14/757,437. Reel/frame and correspondent were not retrievable in this session.

• Executed date not captured / recorded 2016-05-26 — Reel not captured

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Kevin M. Smith (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: CNH Industrial America LLC
  • Correspondent: not captured
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment — the ordinary first link whereby the employee inventor assigns to the operating company.

• Executed date not captured / recorded 2018-11-09 — Reel not captured

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: CNH Industrial America LLC
  • Assignee: BLUE LEAF I.P., INC. (Wilmington, Delaware)
  • Correspondent: not captured
  • Context: internal corporate reorganization / transfer into the group's captive IP-holding company. Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. is not an arm's-length purchaser. It is a 100%-owned CNH Industrial subsidiary: the CNH Global N.V. / EXOR list-of-group-companies filings show Blue Leaf I.P. Inc. (Wilmington, USA, USD 1,000 capital) as 100.000% held by Bli Group Inc., which is in turn held within the CNH America LLC group, and the same filings identify CNH America LLC as nka CNH Industrial America LLC. Blue Leaf I.P. is the named IP holder used across a very large share of the CNH/BLI patent portfolio (the same vehicle appears on unrelated New Holland patents going back to the 1990s, e.g. US 5,538,266).

Additional corporate context (not a recorded assignment for this patent, and not verified against this patent's file): CNH America LLC's change of name to CNH Industrial America LLC following the 2013 CNH Global / Fiat Industrial combination. If a Change-of-Name record exists for this patent it was not surfaced, and I am not asserting one was filed.

EP counterpart: EP 3036986 B1 (application EP 15202648.0, priority 2014-12-24) — the same family, recorded as active. Country status per Google Patents: US (1) and EP (1).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10036663
    2014 : Priority date 24 December
    2015 : Utility application filed
    2016 : Assigned to CNH Industrial America LLC
    2018 : Issued as US 10036663
         : Transferred to Blue Leaf IP Inc
    2018 : Blue Leaf is a CNH owned IP holder

(The 2018-11-09 reassignment is the recordation; the execution date was not captured, so it is not shown separately.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
The 2018-11-09 transfer to Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. superficially trips the naming tell ("I.P." suffix, Delaware incorporation, USD 1,000 capital stock). It fails the substance test. Blue Leaf I.P. is documented as a 100%-owned CNH Industrial subsidiary in the group's own list-of-companies disclosures (held via Bli Group Inc., within the CNH America/CNH Industrial America LLC chain), and it holds patents for a large operating manufacturer across many unrelated product lines, not a single-portfolio assertion vehicle. Consideration and control stayed inside CNH. This is an internal IP-holding reorganization, not a shell transfer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
No assignee, predecessor, or counterparty anywhere in this chain matches the public NPE lists named in the brief (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directory entry for CNH Industrial America LLC, Blue Leaf I.P., Inc., or Kevin M. Smith was located. CNH is a large operating manufacturer and a frequent defendant-side participant in the patent system, not a plaintiff-side troll vehicle.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (data gap, not a negative finding).
The correspondent of record for the 2016-05-26 and 2018-11-09 recordings was not retrievable in this session, so I cannot evaluate recurrence. I am deliberately not naming a likely CNH IP-department correspondent or outside firm, because a single-name guess would be exactly the kind of speculation the brief prohibits. This is the one field worth pulling manually at Assignment Center, since intra-group CNH recordings are typically filed by a consistent in-house or outside correspondent — though note that consistent correspondents on internal reorgs are the normal pattern for large manufacturers and are only probative here if the same name recurs on genuinely unrelated shell assignees.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
Two recorded events over the life of the patent, roughly 2.5 years apart, both between affiliates of the same parent. No chained LLCs, no transfers in rapid succession, no shared registered-agent address pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
No infringement suit naming US 10036663 was located. No 6-month pre-suit transfer exists because there is no suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving CNH Industrial America LLC or Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. was located.

7. Privateering — not present.
The 2018 transfer moved the patent into the operating company's own IP holder, not out to an assertion vehicle. The direction of travel is the opposite of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. is a captive commercial IP holder, not a defensive aggregator. So the patent is not neutralized in the defensive-aggregation sense; it remains live, in force, and inside a large operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data — with an explicit non-NPE finding. (Chosen over "Operating-company assertion" because CNH is not suing competitors on this patent, and over "Defensive / non-asserting" because Blue Leaf I.P. is not a defensive aggregator.)

The ownership chain is actually clear and unremarkable: Kevin M. Smith assigned to CNH Industrial America LLC (recorded 2016-05-26), and CNH Industrial America LLC assigned to its own captive IP subsidiary Blue Leaf I.P., Inc. (recorded 2018-11-09). Every link stays inside the CNH Industrial corporate family — confirmed by the group's own list-of-companies disclosures showing Blue Leaf I.P. Inc. as 100% held within the CNH America/CNH Industrial America LLC chain. Zero NPE signals are present, and no post-issuance third-party transfer exists. I selected "Insufficient data" only because the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame numbers and the recorded correspondent could not be retrieved here; the substance is not in doubt — this patent never left the original assignee's corporate group.

Action to close the gap (5 minutes): search patent number 10036663 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) and capture the reel/frame and correspondent for both the 2016-05-26 and 2018-11-09 records. The correspondent field is the only analytically meaningful unknown remaining.

I'll research this patent's cited references. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me research the remaining cited references in parallel.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,036,663 B2

Method note (strict-rule compliance): I anchored this analysis on the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents mirror of US10036663B2, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10036663](/patent/US10036663)/en), which contains the patent's own "Patent Citations (22)" list. I ran targeted web lookups to characterize the references and confirm dates/titles; those results are marked where used. I did not substitute or "correct" any identifier — e.g., I treat "US3126069A / Shepley," "Blue Leaf IP Inc," and "EP3036986B1" exactly as the record states. Where a reference's content could not be independently verified, I say so rather than guess. "Potential anticipation" below means a candidate § 102 reference; a true anticipation requires every claim element in a single reference, and I flag where a reference is realistically only § 103/background art.

The patent at issue (recap for cross-reference): US 10,036,663 B2, "Weighing round bales," Kevin M. Smith, app. 14/757,437, filed 2015-12-23, priority 2014-12-24 (prov. 62/096,834), issued 2018-07-31. Independent claims 1, 16, 20. The two load-bearing novelty points are: (a) claim 1's load sensor on/within the tailgate load pin measuring force from tailgate + bale, plus the "center of mass moves rearward" limitation; and (b) claims 16 and 20's adjustment value keyed to "bale moisture measurements simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale." Most cited art predates these specific combinations but does not contain them.

1. The cited references (from the patent's own citation list)

The record lists 22 citation entries, comprising 19 unique documents (the Vermeer pair US20090217827A1 / US7703391B2 are the application and its grant; the Deere US20040250703A1 / US7091425B2 are likewise a pair). Dates below are as they appear in the record (priority/filing → publication/grant).

2. Reference-by-reference analysis and potential § 102 mapping

1. US3126069A — Shepley (1964-03-24)

Description: The record gives only the number, inventor surname "Shepley," and a 1964-03-24 date; no title or abstract is exposed in the record, and I could not independently confirm its disclosure in this exercise. It is the oldest citation and, given the art class (G01G/A01F baler weighing), is most likely a foundational mechanical bale-handling/weighing reference.
Potential § 102: None that I can responsibly assert. Cannot map to any of claims 1, 16, 20 without verifying the disclosure, which I was unable to do. Flagged uncertainty.

2. US3567072A — Tenhulzen (1968-12-24 / 1971-03-02)

Description: "Weighing and automatic dumping attachment for combines and like machines" — a harvesting-machine weighing attachment.
Potential § 102: Very old, non-baler chassis art. At most background for the general concept of on-machine weighing. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, or 20 (no tailgate load pin, no reference/load-weight methodology, no moisture).

3. US4362097A — Rogers (1980-12-29 / 1982-12-07)

Description: "Apparatus for determining weight of cylindrical hay bales." Notably, U.S. 4,362,097 is expressly discussed in US6378276B1 (below): a round baler whose wheel arm is pivotally connected to the compression-chamber housing by a hydraulic cylinder with a manometer; hydraulic pressure serves as a measure of bale weight. That is the classic "spring-deflection/hydraulic-pressure = bale weight" approach and is one-sided (imprecise, and cannot correct for tilt).
Potential § 102: Could be cited against broad apparatus claims to the extent they read on "measuring a bale weight with a sensor," but it discloses no tailgate load pin, no reference-vs-load states, no moisture/slope/size/shape adjustment. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20. Best role: § 103 base art.

4. US5622104A — Gehl Company (1995-08-28 / 1997-04-22)

Description: "Cylindrical baler having hydraulic circuit for controlling bale density and tailgate operation." This reference is expressly incorporated by reference into US10036663's specification (see the "In some embodiments… comprise any one element or step disclosed in U.S. application Ser. Nos. 14/567,612, 13/725,117, 12/045,631, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,104" passage). Also cited as background in US7703391B2 for its bale-size/crop-moisture/belt-tension/bale-weight sensor suggestions.
Potential § 102: Discloses tailgate operation and sensor suggestions, but not a tailgate-load-pin load sensor, not the reference/load-weight bale-weight methodology, and not multi-location moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20. Background/§ 103 art.

5. US5811739A — Palmore (1997-03-28 / 1998-09-22)

Description: "Mobile bale weighing device" — a standalone/portable scale for bales, not an on-baler tailgate system.
Potential § 102: Even if it discloses weighing a formed bale, it is a separate scale and lacks the in-harvester, chamber-integrated, load-pin architecture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20.

6. US6378276B1 — Lely Welger (1999-02-17 / 2002-04-30) — broadly relevant

Description (verified via Google Patents / FreePatentsOnline): An agricultural baler with a compression-chamber housing spring-supported on the support axle via displacement sensors to infer bale weight; expressly includes an inclination sensor (longitudinal/transverse tilt correction), a moisture sensor, a bale-shape display device (side-to-side non-uniform fill), and GPS/yield mapping; the bale weight can trigger the wrapping device. It notes that for round balers "the gravity center direction does not change," so drawbar load sensors are not needed.
Potential § 102 — dependent claims: This is the single most useful reference for the secondary/dependent limitations: the notion of applying a slope/tilt correction, using a moisture sensor, and using a shape/bale-fill indication. It is the strongest § 102 candidate against dependent limitations such as those directed to slope/inclinometer correction and shape sensing (compare dependent claims 6, 9, 12, 13, 15 / 17, 19) if the examiner treats those features as separately claimed elements. Its sensor is at the axle/support, however, not in a tailgate load pin, so it does not anticipate independent claim 1, and its moisture sensing is not "two or more different locations simultaneously," so it does not anticipate claims 16/20.

7. US7064282B2 — Deere (2002-09-06 / 2006-06-20)

Description (verified): "Large round baler with weighing arrangement." A support element inside the baling chamber (pulley/roll) on which the bale rests is placed in positive lock with a load-measurement cell; the bale's resting force on the support element is measured (including during ejection movement) to derive bale weight, and an evaluation arrangement corrects the measured weight for inclination of the baler.
Potential § 102: Discloses in-chamber bale weighing with a load cell and slope correction, which is conceptually close to the disclosure's adjustment concept. But the sensor is on a support roll/pulley, not on a tailgate pivot/load pin, and there is no reference-vs-load two-state methodology as claimed, nor multi-location moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20; strong § 103 art against the slope-correction concepts.

8. US7000533B2 — Deere (2002-11-26 / 2006-02-21)

Description: "Bale unloading arrangement of a large round baler" — bale-ejection/unloading machinery.
Potential § 102: Directed to ejection, not weighing. No mapping to claims 1, 16, 20. Background art.

9. US20040250703A1 and ### 10. US7091425B2 — Deere (2003-05-17; published 2004-12-16 / issued 2006-08-15)

Description: The application and its grant for "Apparatus for measuring the weight force of a load processed by a machine" / "…of a bale" — a weight-force measurement apparatus for a machine-processed load.
Potential § 102: Generic weight-force measurement of a baler-processed load; no tailgate load pin, no reference/load state pair, no moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20. § 103 base art.

11. EP1508268A1 — Welger (2003-08-21 / 2005-02-23)

Description: "Rotobaler" (round baler). This is the EP family member of the Welger weighing line (cf. the Welger EP 1 444 882 that appears in the Lely/NL2017531 search report). It relates to round-baler structure/weighing in the Welger lineage.
Potential § 102: Same profile as US6378276B1 (spring/support weighing, tilt considerations) but no tailgate-load-pin sensor and no multi-location moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20.

12. US20050257513A1 — Smith, Kevin M. (2004-04-01 / 2005-11-24)

Description: "Hydraulic bale ramp." Same inventor as the patent at issue (Kevin M. Smith), and a bale-ramp/ejection reference (the file history of the related US7805914B2 shows a CNH "ASSIGNOR: SMITH, KEVIN M." record). Purely mechanical ejection.
Potential § 102: Ramp/ejection, not weighing. No mapping to claims 1, 16, 20.

13. US7197979B2 — Deere (2005-06-10 / 2007-04-03)

Description: "Controlled bale ejection mechanism" — tailgate/ejection control.
Potential § 102: Relevant only to tailgate position/control, which underlies dependent-claim tailgate-position sensing (claims 7, 14). Could support a § 102 challenge to a bare "tailgate position sensor" limitation, but not to any independent claim. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20.

14. US7196277B1 — Santi (2005-12-01 / 2007-03-27)

Description: "Device and apparatus for measuring the load in a chamber of a vehicle" — load measurement in a vehicle chamber.
Potential § 102: Load-in-chamber measurement concept, but not a baler tailgate load pin, and no bale-weight reference/load methodology or moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20.

15. US20090217827A1 and ### 16. US7703391B2 — Duenwald / Vermeer (2006-07-28; published 2009-09-03 / issued 2010-04-27) — most relevant for moisture

Description (verified): "Round baler with scale and moisture meter." Weighs the bale using tongue and axle load cells; senses bale diameter; takes moisture readings after a threshold diameter and computes a volume-averaged moisture content; stores bale-weight/relief-pressure history to set bale density to hit target weight/size; can output bale weight, moisture, date, location. Moisture sensing is via a pad on at least one side (an inlet-adjacent sensor), i.e., not a distributed, simultaneous multi-location array.
Potential § 102 — key candidate: This is the closest cited art on the moisture-adjusted/scale concept and is the reference most likely used against the moisture-related limitations. However, it discloses volume-averaged moisture from essentially one sensor region, whereas claims 16 and 20 require moisture measurements "simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale." A reference must disclose every element to anticipate; on this record, the Vermeer pair does not disclose the simultaneous multi-location moisture limitation, and its weighing is at tongue/axle, not a tailgate load pin. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20; it is strong § 103 art (combine Vermeer moisture+scale with the CNH tailgate-load-pin architecture of #19).

17. US7805914B2 — CNH America LLC (2008-03-10 / 2010-10-05)

Description (verified): "Hydraulic bale kicker with optional weighing device." A hydraulically actuated bale kicker/ramp coordinated with tailgate actuation; optional weighing via a pressure sensor in the ramp actuator (pressure correlates to bale weight), plus a ramp position sensor, a baler level sensor, and a controller that compensates for terrain slope so the bale occupies the same ramp position each weigh. It also discloses a level sensor for baler forward-rearward pitch.
Potential § 102: Discloses on-baler bale weighing with slope compensation and a level sensor — close to the disclosure's slope-adjustment theme and to dependent claims on slope/tilt correction. But it weighs on a ramp/kicker via hydraulic pressure, not via a load sensor in the tailgate load pin, and has no multi-location moisture. Does not anticipate claims 1, 16, 20. Relevant § 103 art and to slope-related dependent claims. Common assignee (CNH) — note this is a same-family/related-company reference, not necessarily prior art against an earlier CNH priority (see dates: filed 2008, issued 2010 — it is prior art on its face to the 2014 priority).

18. US20120109564A1 — Kraus (2010-10-29 / 2012-05-03)

Description: "Method For Determining Agricultural Bale Weight."
Potential § 102: Method art on determining bale weight; likely addresses weight determination from on-baler measurement and correction. Per the record I could not fully retrieve its claims/disclosure this session, so I flag it as a method-claim § 102/§ 103 candidate against claim 16/20's bale-weight-value steps — but I cannot confirm it discloses the tailgate-load-pin sensor or the simultaneous multi-location moisture limitation. Flagged uncertainty; tentative candidate only.

19. US20140174303A1 — CNH America LLC (2012-12-21 / 2014-06-26) — closest art; note the family overlap

Description (from verified context): "Weighing round bales," CNH (application 13/725,117). Its grant is US 9,297,688 B2 (issued 2016-03-29), which uses one or more load cells but not at each baler support (i.e., tongue/axle measurements), obtains a bale-loaded measurement and an empty measurement, and adjusts for slope, bale size, and bale shape. This is the directly related CNH "Weighing round bales" family and is expressly incorporated by reference in the patent at issue ("…U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/725,117… incorporated by reference… Consideration of the slope of the ground… including the use of inclinometers").
Potential § 102 — critical caveat: As a 2014-06-26 publication, it precedes the 2014-12-24 priority and is facially § 102(a)/§ 102(e) art. It discloses the reference-weight/load-weight/slope/size/shape methodology broadly. However, (a) its load cells are at supports/axle, not in a tailgate load pin, and (b) it does not recite the "center of mass moves rearward to the tailgate" limitation of granted claim 1, nor the simultaneous multi-location moisture limitation of granted claims 16/20. The earlier-generated litigation summary likewise flagged that the granted claims differ materially from the pre-grant publication and that this sibling is a separate patent (US 9,297,688). Therefore it does not anticipate the granted independent claims, but it is the prime § 103 combination partner with Vermeer (#15/#16) and/or Deere (#7) — the likely basis on which the granted claims were distinguished.

3. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

No single cited reference appears to fully anticipate any of independent claims 1, 16, or 20. The reasons are structural:

• Claim 1 requires a load sensor on or within the tailgate load pin, measuring force from both the tailgate and the bale, plus rearward migration of the bale's center of mass. Every cited weighing reference senses elsewhere — at the support axle/springs (US6378276B1; EP1508268A1), at an in-chamber support roll (US7064282B2), at the tongue/axle (US7703391B2 / US20090217827A1; US20140174303A1), or at a ramp hydraulic pressure (US7805914B2). None places the sensor in the tailgate hinge pin.
• Claims 16 / 20 require an adjustment value that is a function of "bale moisture measurements simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale." The moisture citations (US6378276B1; US7703391B2 / US20090217827A1) disclose moisture sensing and volume-averaging, but not a simultaneous two-or-more-location moisture measurement scheme. That is the point of novelty that likely carried these claims.

The realistic citation strategy for the cited art is § 103, combining, e.g.:

• US20140174303A1 (CNH, #19) — reference/load-weight + slope/size/shape that is already in this family's disclosure + US7703391B2 (Vermeer, #16) — bale scale + moisture → against the moisture-adjusted weight concept (claims 3–4, 16, 19); and
• US6378276B1 (#6) / US7805914B2 (#17) / US7064282B2 (#7) — tilt/slope correction and shape display → against the slope/shape dependent claims (claims 6, 8, 12, 13, 15).

Strongest single-reference candidates, by limitation (not full-claim):

• Slope/tilt correction & inclinometer-type sensing: US6378276B1 (#6); US7805914B2 (#17); US7064282B2 (#7).
• Bale size/diameter & shape/density indication: US6378276B1 (#6); US7703391B2 (#16).
• Moisture-adjusted weight: US7703391B2 / US20090217827A1 (#15/#16) and US6378276B1 (#6) — but none discloses the two-location-simultaneous requirement.
• Tailgate position/control: US7197979B2 (#13); US7805914B2 (#17).
• Bale-weight determination method broadly: US20120109564A1 (#18, unverified); US20140174303A1 (#19).

4. Incorporated-by-reference / other materials in the specification (not on the citation list)

The specification expressly incorporates, and these are additional potential art to run for completeness: US20130305683 (pickup/harvesting assembly); U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,877,304; 6,688,092; 6,644,006; 6,295,797 (harvester examples); and U.S. app. Ser. Nos. 14/567,612; 13/725,117; 12/045,631; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,104. Notably, 13/725,117 is the CNH "Weighing round bales" sibling (→ US 9,297,688), and 14/567,612 is the CNH "Adjusting bale density setting based on bale weight and/or moisture" application (US20160165803A1, filed 2014-12-11) appearing in the record's "Citations."

5. Caveats (explicit)

1. US3126069A (Shepley) — the record exposes no title/abstract, and I could not confirm its disclosure; I therefore assert no anticipation mapping for it. Do not rely on my silence there as a negative.
2. US20120109564A1 (Kraus) — I could not fully retrieve its disclosure/claims in this session; the § 102 candidates above are tentative.
3. Family-overlap caution: US20140174303A1 / US 9,297,688 and US 9,585,310 are related CNH "Weighing round bales" patents, and US7805914B2 is also CNH — treat them as same-family/common-assignee art and check priority/§ 102(e) dates carefully rather than assuming they are ordinary third-party art.
4. "Cited by examiner" vs "third party": the record marks citations with "*" (examiner) and "†" (third party); I flagged these as a group since the mirror's per-row markers are not individually resolvable in the text provided. The Vermeer, Deere, Welger, and CNH items are the substantive weighing references; the ramp/ejection patents (#8, #12, #13) are peripheral.
5. This is a search-and-record-based analysis, not a legal opinion, and not a substitute for the USPTO file wrapper (the actual Notice of Allowance / examiner's reasons for allowance), which would show precisely which references were applied against which claims. Given claims 16/20's narrowing to simultaneous multi-location moisture, the file history likely confirms the moisture feature as the distinguishing point — but I have not retrieved it here.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual content of the prior-art references listed on the patent page. Let me pull authoritative details on the key cited references.

Let me pull the remaining cited references and check for art on hinge/pivot-pin load sensing.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,036,663 (“Weighing round bales”)

Scope note. Per the task, I am limiting the prior-art universe to the “Prior Art” material on the patent page — i.e., the Citations (19) / Patent Citations (22) list and the Family Cites list. I am not treating the “Cited By” and “Families Citing this family” entries as prior art; they post-date the 2014‑12‑24 priority date and cannot qualify under §102/§103 (they are noted only in §7 below as non‑prior‑art corroboration). This builds on, and does not repeat, the earlier summary and litigation sections. Where I rely on the contents of a cited reference, I cite the source I retrieved.

Contradiction check with the prior sections: confirmed and consistent — the granted claims differ materially from published US 2016/0187185 A1, and claims 16/20 are narrowed to moisture measured at two or more locations. That narrowing is the single most important fact for a §103 attack, because it removes most of the broad “adjustment value” subject matter from independent-claim scope (see §5–§6).

1. Legal framework and level of ordinary skill

• Standard: 35 U.S.C. §103, Graham v. John Deere (scope/content, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations), KSR Int’l v. Teleflex (predictable combinations, design incentives, “obvious to try,” market demand, design choice), and In re Keller / In re Merck (combination is obvious if the references together teach or suggest the claimed subject matter; the references need not be physically combinable).
• PHOSITA: a mechanical/agricultural engineer with a bachelor’s degree plus 2–4 years’ experience in round baler design, including bale-weighing systems, load cells, and baler control/telemetry (the patent’s own disclosed components are all off-the-shelf: ECU, inclinometers, load cells, moisture pads, display).
• Threshold observation: virtually every element of every claim except (i) load sensing in the tailgate pivot pin and (ii) simultaneous two-location moisture sensing is described in the patent’s own cited art, in several instances nearly verbatim.

2. The prior art of record (from the Citations list)

Not usable: US 2016/0165803 A1 (pub. 2016‑06‑16) post-dates the claims; it could only matter via §102(a)(2) if it were “effectively filed” before 2014‑12‑24 based on its listed 2014‑12‑11 priority — I cannot verify that from the record I have, so I do not rely on it.

3. Claim 1 — harvester with load sensor in the tailgate load pin

Elements (a) main frame/front chamber, (b) tailgate pivoting on a load pin, (d) processing unit: fully disclosed in the cited art. US 5,622,104, US 7,000,533, US 7,806,914 and US 2014/0174303 all show a round baler with a main frame forming the front of a bale chamber and a tailgate pivoting on stub shafts/load pins to discharge the bale.

Element (c) — load sensor on/within the load pin: this is the only structural point of novelty relative to the cited art, and it is a textbook obvious design choice under KSR:

• US 2014/0174303 (Posselius) already teaches the inventive concept of weighing at fewer than all of the baler’s supports — specifically “one or more load cells, but not including load cells at each support of the baler” — and states the motivation (eliminating a separate scale; reducing cost/complexity of sensor provisioning). Once the design direction is “measure the bale’s weight at a single convenient load-path location,” the tailgate pivot pin is the preeminent candidate: it is the articulation through which the entire tailgate-plus-rear-chamber-bale load is transmitted, and its force varies monotonically with bale mass and bale position (the ’663 specification itself states this at FIGS. 3B–3D).
• Placing a force transducer in a pivot/hinge pin is a well-known standard form factor (“load pin,” “clevis pin load cell”), so implementing the measurement there involves no new instrumentation technology and carries a reasonable expectation of success.
• US 7,064,282 and US 7,091,425 teach putting the measurement cell in the load path between a bale-contacting member and the frame (support element/roll reacting against the frame), which is structurally analogous to measuring the tailgate reaction at its pivot.
• US 4,362,097 teaches that a single load-path measurement point (one hydraulic cylinder) suffices to derive bale weight, further supporting the “fewer measurement points” direction.

Element (e) — “center of mass of the bale moves rearward … to alter the weight force”: this clause is a statement of the inherent, well-understood physical behavior of a round baler (the specification concedes it: “As the bale grows in size… the center of mass of the bale shifts rearward toward the tailgate 21, increasing the numerical value of F_load”). It adds no structure and no step. Critically, US 2004/0250703/7,166,808 already recognizes the same phenomenon and exploits it — its processing device “ascertain[s]” the effect of the load’s position on the measured parameter and uses two signals at two load positions to compute the weight force. A PHOSITA would therefore treat the rearward-CM clause as descriptive rather than distinguishing.

Primary §103 combination for claim 1:
US 2014/0174303 A1 (baler weighing at fewer than all supports; empty/full measurement; slope/size/shape correction; tailgate and inclinometer sensors; ECU + monitor) in view of US 7,064,282 (measurement cell in the load path between a bale-contacting support and the frame, with inclination correction) and US 2004/0250703 (accounting for load position / center-of-gravity movement in the weight determination) — optionally with US 4,362,097 (single load-path weighing point).
Motivation: all three are in the same field (agricultural baler weighing), address the same problem (accurate bale weight without a separate scale and without load cells at every support), and their combination merely relocates a known force sensor to a known load-bearing pivot — a predictable use of a known technique yielding the expected result (KSR).

Candor: none of the cited references expressly discloses a load sensor inside the tailgate pivot pin. The attack on element (c) therefore rests substantially on the “obvious design choice / obvious to try” branch of KSR plus US 2014/0174303’s express teaching of sub‑full-support weighing. That is a real vulnerability, and it explains why claim 1 issued.

4. Claims 2–15 (dependent)

Claims 8, 10 and 13 are especially exposed: US 2014/0174303 describes the lateral-incline-from-two-reference-weights technique and the center-of-gravity-based size metric in nearly the same terms, and it is §102(a)(2) art because it was effectively filed on 2012‑12‑21.

5. Claim 16 (independent method) — the broadest independent claim

Claim 16 recites only: load sensor(s) + processing unit → reference weight(s), load weight(s) → bale weight value → adjustment value that is a function of bale moisture measurements simultaneously measured at two or more different locations in the bale → output value.

• The first four steps are squarely disclosed by US 2012/0109564, US 2014/0174303 and US 7,703,391 in combination (see §4, claims 2/4).
• The only narrowing feature is the two-location simultaneous moisture measurement.
• Closest art: US 7,703,391 / US 2009/0217827 (Vermeer) discloses a moisture sensor on a pad, taking a plurality of readings, volume-averaged, expressly because “moisture … can vary widely, even in the same field,” and combining the moisture value with a scale-measured bale weight. The ’663 specification’s own rationale — “moisture … is often unevenly distributed … [and] may alter the proportion of the bale that is supported by the tailgate” — is a known problem, and the claimed remedy (sample moisture at two locations) is an obvious design choice given that known problem and the known pad-type sensor. US 6,378,276 also contemplates coupling a moisture sensor to the same evaluation unit for dry-mass conversion.

Verdict on claim 16: the strongest §103 candidate. A combination of US 2012/0109564 (or US 2014/0174303) as primary, with US 7,703,391 and US 6,378,276 for the multi-reading moisture-adjusted weight, renders it obvious — unless the patentee can show that “simultaneously at two or more different locations” requires a specific multi-sensor-in-chamber architecture not suggested by the art. On the record I have, I did not find a cited reference expressly disclosing two moisture sensors measuring simultaneously at different locations; that is the residual gap, and it is narrow.

6. Claims 17–20

• 17 (inclinometers; lateral angle from two reference weights at two tailgate positions): met by US 2014/0174303 FIG. 9 + US 6,378,276.
• 18 (size = f(center of mass location)): met by US 2014/0174303 verbatim in substance.
• 19 (adjustment = slope, size, moisture, shape; shape = f(density)): met by US 2014/0174303 + US 6,378,276 + US 7,703,391.
• 20 (load-pin variant, with reference/load weights on the pin and rearward-CM clause): same analysis as claim 1 for the pin, plus the two-location moisture limitation of claim 16. The load-pin limitation here does not narrow over claim 1; the moisture limitation does — and it is the same narrow limitation discussed in §5.

7. Secondary considerations and non-prior-art corroboration

• No secondary-consideration evidence is of record in the material provided (no unexpected results, no licensing-nexus evidence, no long-felt-need showing). The commercial success of in-baler weighing is attributable to the general industry need, not to the pin-location choice.
• Corroborating (but NOT prior art, and not usable under §103 here): the patent’s “Families Citing this family” list shows the field subsequently converging on gate-based weighing — Deere US 11,051,456 B2 (“Bale weight measurement and control system using liftgate”), Deere US 11,825,775 B2 (“Round baler with bale holder in gate”), Vermeer US 10,385,605 B2 (“Tailgate sensor”), Kverneland IT 201700093581, Pöttinger DE 10 2022 111 819 A1 (bale-weight determination in an agricultural baler). These post-date the 2014 priority and therefore cannot be combined, but they are useful as evidence that the gate/pivot-of-the-gate was the natural, non‑hindsight design locus for a PHOSITA — i.e., they undercut any “hindsight” objection to the §103 rationale in §3.
• Note the cross-reference from the earlier litigation section: EP 2745675 (the sibling CNH family, from US 13/725,117, i.e., the family of cited US 2014/0174303) was opposed at the EPO by Kverneland and maintained as amended — evidence that this subject matter was crowded, incremental art, which cuts in favor of obviousness.

8. Bottom line

Overall: the strongest §103 challenge is against claims 16 and 20 (narrow only to a moisture-sensing detail that the art makes obvious), with claims 2–15 close behind (nearly verbatim overlap with US 2014/0174303). Claim 1 is defensible because the cited art never expressly places a load sensor in the tailgate pivot pin; invalidating it would require a successful “obvious design choice” argument — or a non-cited reference, such as hinge/pivot-pin load-cell weighing in balers or similar articulated machinery, which I did not find within the prior-art section of this page.

Caveats: (1) I have relied on the reference contents as retrieved from Google Patents / Patents-Review / FPO summaries and the ’663 specification; I have not read the full file wrapper, so I cannot say how the examiner distinguished US 2014/0174303 or US 6,378,276. (2) The US 2016/0165803 A1 §102(a)(2) question is unresolved. (3) This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion or a validity conclusion.