US 10240954

I'll verify against live sources before summarizing, then build on the authoritative patent text already provided.

Verification note up front

I ran targeted searches for this specific number. Results: I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, Federal Circuit appeal, or PTAB proceeding involving US 10,240,954. My searches for that were inconclusive — I cannot query Docketbird/PACER/PTAB APIs directly from these tools, so I am not certifying that no such proceeding exists; I am reporting that nothing surfaced. What did surface was unrelated (e.g., Converter Manufacturing v. Tekni-Plex IPRs, a Brazilian state registry entry where "10240954" appears as a company registration number — a coincidental match, not this patent). Any litigation/CAFC statement below would be speculation, so I'm omitting it.

Everything else below is grounded in the authoritative full patent text supplied in your message.

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US 10,240,954 B2 — bibliographic summary

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Abstract (as issued)

A dial plate being nonopaque is in a disc shape. A slit member has slits each extending through the slit member in a thickness direction. A light source is located on an opposite side of the slit member from the dial plate. The light source is configured to emit light through the slits of the slit member toward the dial plate to project images on the dial plate.

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Plain-language overview — the sole independent claim

Claim 1 — the core invention. A gauge/indicator assembly with three required elements:

1. A non-opaque dial plate shaped as a disc — i.e., the face the driver looks at is a translucent/clear panel, not a printed opaque dial face;
2. A slit member pierced by multiple slits, each passing all the way through the member's thickness; and
3. A light source on the back side (opposite the dial plate from the slit member).

The light source shines through the slits onto the dial plate, so the slits themselves act as a shadow mask and cast projected images onto the dial plate. Two additional structural limitations were added to claim 1:

• The slit member sits between the dial plate and the light source and is spaced away from both (a non-contact, projection-optics spacing — not a backlit overlay printed on or contacting the dial); and
• The projected images have the same shapes as the slits — i.e., 1:1 shadow-projection fidelity, not magnified or distorted imaging.

Plain-English substance: a "digital-looking" instrument cluster achieved purely optically — a hole-punched mask lit from behind projects tick marks, numbers, and a pointer onto a blank clear face. No printed indicia on the visible surface.

All remaining claims are dependent on claim 1 (there is no second independent claim), covering:

• Tick marks — slits extending radially outward project tick marks (claim 2), onto a disc-shaped non-opaque tick-mark region of the dial (claim 3), which may be dented in a conical shape (claim 4).
• Symbols — slits whose outline forms a symbol project symbols (claim 5) onto a ring-shaped non-opaque symbol region (claim 6).
• Disappearing display — images vanish when the light source is de-energized (claim 7).
• Conical housing with an opening fitted with the dial plate, accommodating the slit member and light source (claim 8).
• Ring-shaped light source, coaxial with the slit member and dial plate (claim 9), optionally with a light conductor directing light toward the slits (claim 10).
• A mechanical pointer at the dial center, rotatable, with a shaft coaxial to the dial plate and slit member (claim 11).
• Two-part slit member — a stationary ring slit member plus a rotatable pointer slit member with a radial pointer slit, so the light projects a moving projected pointer onto the dial (claim 12). This is the second-embodiment structure and is the most commercially distinctive dependent claim: it replaces a physical needle with a projected one.
• A controller that varies the light source's intensity (claim 13).

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Analytical observations (grounded in the text, flagged as my reading)

• Claim 1's "same shapes as the slits" limitation is narrowing and somewhat unusual. It reads as an explicit disclaimer of magnifying/expanding projection optics, and of any arrangement where the slit pattern is not the source of the image shape.
• "Spaced away from both the dial plate and the light source" distinguishes this from backlit-translucent-dial art, where a light guide or printed layer typically contacts the dial. Note that the spec's first embodiment describes the slit member's tube portion 48 as "connected with the rear side of the conical portion 14 of the dial plate 10, such that the slit member 40 is suspended from the dial plate 10" — a mechanical connection via tube 48 while the mask body remains spaced. Whether that satisfies "spaced away from" the dial plate is a potential claim-construction issue worth noting. Similarly, the spec says the light conductor 76 sits on the LED's front surface and the slit member's rear side faces the LED's optical axes — the mask is offset from the emitter but the conductor intervenes.
• Claim 12 vs. FIGS. 6–8: the claim language is generic ("emit light through the pointer slit... to project a pointer on the dial plate") and does not require the projected pointer to move relative to the projected tick marks, though the spec describes such rotation.
• 13 claims, one independent claim. All narrowing is via dependency, so claims 2–6 and 8–13 add meaningful fallback positions on top of claim 1's relatively broad mask-and-project concept.

Textual anomalies in the source (reported literally, not corrected)

These appear verbatim in the patent text and I have not altered them:

• Second-embodiment description: "The ring slit member 246 is located on the radially outside of the ring slit member 246" — the second recitation appears to be intended as the pointer slit member 248, but I read and report the text as given.
• FIG. 3 discussion refers to "the pointer slit 248P" and to "a certain optical axis 74a passes through the tick-mark slit 42a" — the latter numeral appears mis-keyed against the earlier-defined tick-mark slit 44a.
• Controller paragraph states "as the controller 100 reduces or increases an electric power supplied to the LED 74, the pointer 20 reduces or increases intensity of light emitted therefrom" — the "pointer 20" reference is inconsistent with the surrounding LED-intensity discussion.

I flag these as evident drafting/OCR inconsistencies in the published text, not as legal positions.

Uncertainty disclosures

• CAFC 2026 / litigation status: unknown to me; no credible result obtained. I will not assert this patent is or is not the subject of any appeal or district-court action.
• Assignee of record today: the Google Patents page lists "Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate.)" as Denso Corp. and Denso International America, Inc., with the same explicit accuracy caveat. I have not independently verified a current chain of title beyond the two recorded assignments above.
• 2036-08-04 adjusted expiration: this exceeds the 20-year date from the 2016-05-09 filing (2036-05-09) in the opposite direction one would expect from a terminally-disclaimed patent. The listed date implies a PTA-type extension; I have not verified the certificate or any terminal disclaimer, so treat the expiry date as reported, not confirmed.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10240954 across the sources you mentioned.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases for this specific patent.

Let me check the specialized litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 10,240,954

Conclusion: No litigation is known involving US Patent 10,240,954.

After searching patent-litigation aggregators and related sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER-derived docket resources, CourtListener/RECAP, and general litigation reporting), I found no district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which US 10,240,954 is identified as a patent-in-suit, a challenged patent, or otherwise at issue.

What the patent is (for identification purposes)

• Patent: US 10,240,954 B2 — "Indicating device with rear projection structure"
• Application: US 15/149,302; Filed/Priority: 2016-05-09; Granted: 2019-03-26
• Inventors: Marc Arceo
• Current Assignees: Denso Corp (JP); Denso International America, Inc. (US)
• Adjusted expiration: 2036-08-04; status: Active
• Subject matter: A nonopaque dial plate, a slit member with through-slits, and a light source on the opposite side of the slit member that projects images (tick marks, symbols, pointer) onto the dial plate.

Verification notes and non-matches (important — interpreted literally)

To be precise and avoid any misidentification, the following appear in search results but do not involve US 10,240,954:

1. Cellular South Inc. v. Google, LLC, No. 6:24-cv-00245 (W.D. Tex., filed 05/09/2024) — this case asserts US 10,218,954 (see the complaint's Exhibit A, "Patent 10,218,954"), which is a different patent number. Not a match.
2. Denso Corporation v. Qorvo, Inc., No. 5:25-cv-00176 (E.D. Tex., filed 2025) — this Denso action concerns wireless/5G-related patents and is stayed pending a parallel California action; US 10,240,954 is not identified. Not a match.
3. PTAB IPR filings referencing Denso patents and various In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation matters (E.D. Mich., 12-md-02311) — these involve Denso as a party on unrelated products/patents and antitrust claims. Not a match.
4. Denso fuel-pump product-liability class actions (e.g., Cheng v. Toyota/Denso, E.D.N.Y. 20-cv-00629) — not patent litigation and not this patent. Not a match.

The Google Patents record for US 10,240,954 also lists no "Litigation" section — only a single "Cited By" patent (US 2023/0184410 A1 / US 11,821,610 B2, Panasonic Ecology Systems) and 14 cited prior-art references. The absence of a litigation/PTAB entry is consistent with the search results.

Bottom line

Caveats: (1) Docket aggregators can lag, and complaints are sometimes filed without immediate public indexing; a patented-but-never-asserted patent would show no litigation. (2) I could not exhaustively query every paywalled docket source (e.g., full PACER, Docket Alarm, Lex Machina) within this search; if the patent has been asserted very recently, it may not yet appear in the free sources queried. Based on the sources available and reviewed, I have no evidence of any litigation involving US 10,240,954, and I will not fabricate a case. If you'd like, I can run additional targeted queries (e.g., against specific assignee names or the E.D. Tex./D. Del. dockets) to double-check.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" default with targeted web searches before finalizing.

No hits so far. Let me run a few more targeted queries to be thorough before finalizing.

One more check for non-AIA post-grant activity (reexam, disclaimers) before I finalize.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 10,240,954 B2

"Indicating device with rear projection structure" — Denso Corp. / Denso International America, Inc.; inventor Marc Arceo; filed & priority 2016-05-09; granted 2019-03-26; adjusted expiration 2036-08-04; status Active.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (0 IPR, 0 PGR, 0 CBM; 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials) — the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and independent web searching surfaced none. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore the opposite of "hardened-by-survival": all 13 claims (1–13) are completely untested at the Board. Nothing has been canceled, so nothing can be discounted — but nothing has been confirmed either, and a defendant facing assertion today has a full, unburdened set of invalidity theories and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to work around.

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Proceedings

None to report. No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition has been identified against US 10,240,954.

I am deliberately not listing any proceeding number, because no proceeding number exists to list. Per the operating rules, I will not invent one. For completeness, here is what the absence means methodologically:

• Canonical source consulted: the structured USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task → empty. This is the authoritative list.
• Independent verification: targeted web searches for "10,240,954" IPR, Denso + "rear projection structure" + PTAB, and the patent number in combination with IPR/PGR prefixes → no PTAB, E2E, or Docket-Alarm-visible proceeding; no Federal Circuit appeal (there is no FWD to appeal).
• Google Patents record: the page carries no "Litigation" section and no PTAB/AIA trial entries — only a Cited By list (US 2023/0184410 A1 and US 11,821,610 B2, Panasonic Ecology Systems Guangdong) and 14 cited prior-art references.
• Non-matches, called out to prevent misidentification: the search space is polluted by look-alike identifiers. US 10,218,954 (asserted in Cellular South Inc. v. Google, LLC, No. 6:24-cv-00245, W.D. Tex., filed 2024-05-09) is a different patent, not this one. Various Denso matters (Denso v. Qorvo, No. 5:25-cv-00176, E.D. Tex.; In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litig., 12-md-02311, E.D. Mich.) and Denso fuel-pump class actions do not involve this patent.
• Sibling Denso patents that also appear in the "Similar Documents" set (US 9,909,906 "dial plate having grooves"; US 9,803,005 and US 10,077,993 / US 2017/0115140 "see-through configuration"; US 2017/0241816 "light-pickup configuration") likewise show no indication of AIA trials in these results. Denso as a patent owner has not been a serial PTAB litigant on this family.

Caveats, stated plainly: (1) The ODP ingest can lag, and a petition filed very recently may not yet be indexed — but there is no sign of one. (2) I could not exhaustively query paywalled dockets (full PACER, Lex Machina, Docket Alarm) or run a live PTAB E2E search inside this session. (3) I found no evidence of an ex parte reexamination, reissue, or statutory disclaimer affecting these claims, but my last verification query on that point did not complete, so treat that as unconfirmed rather than confirmed-absent.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: 13 of 13 claims UNTESTED; 0 CANCELED; 0 SUSTAINED. Claims 1–13 all stand exactly as granted on 2019-03-26 — the claim set has never been narrowed by reissue, disclaimer, or a Board determination that I can verify. That is a double-edged fact: the patent retains its full breadth, but it also retains every vulnerability the examiner never had to resolve. Claim 1's closing limitation — "the plurality of images projected on the dial plate have the same shapes as the plurality of slits" — plus the requirement that the slit member be "spaced away from both the dial plate and the light source," are the load-bearing structural limitations; any invalidity theory must map them explicitly to the prior art rather than to "general knowledge" (see the Director's 2025-07-31 memorandum enforcing 37 C.F.R. § 42.104(b)(4), which bars using admissions, expert testimony, common sense, or other general knowledge to supply a missing claim limitation — a point patent owners are now actively pressing in their POPRs).

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate for a new petitioner. Because no IPR has been instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no RPI in the chain who is barred from raising § 102 or § 103 art. A defendant sued today can raise any prior-art ground in district court and file a parallel IPR without any estoppel-based risk from an earlier trial. Equally important: because the patent has never been before the Board, there is no FWD narrowing claim construction that would constrain a PTAB attack — the panel would construe the claims fresh (Phillips standard), and the specification's own statements about using "chamfered conical" slit surfaces, "nonopaque" versus "translucent" slits, and "frosted or smoked" dial plating give a petitioner meaningful construction leverage on the claim terms most likely to carry infringement.

The natural art set is already assembled for you. The 14 references the examiner cited (US 4,258,643; US 4,300,470; US 5,842,435; US 6,598,988; US 2003/0079672; US 7,270,434; US 2009/0038535; US 7,624,699; US 7,665,857; US 2013/0314891; US 2016/0245675; US 2017/0115140; US 2017/0241816; US 9,909,906) are the obvious starting corpus, most of them Denso's own earlier filings — a § 102(b) / § 102(a)(2) self-collision theory built on Denso's own published applications (e.g., US 2016/0245675 and US 2017/0241816) is worth developing, since a patent can be attacked with the patent owner's own earlier publications. Citation during prosecution is not a shield; it is a map of where the examiner already looked, and any reference that was cited but not applied to a given claim is fair game.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain, no PTAB appeal history, no parallel district court litigation. This is a patent asserted rarely or never — which is itself the diagnostic signal noted in the task brief: well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs, and this one has not.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat the patent as fully live but PTAB-naked. Nothing is canceled, so do not represent to a client or court that any claim is dead. Conversely, there is no FWD to cite and no invalidation order to lean on — your invalidity case must be built from scratch.
2. Mind the § 315(b) clock. If you are served with a complaint alleging infringement of US 10,240,954, the one-year bar in 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) starts running from service. Because there is no prior petitioner and no privity chain, a first-filed IPR is available and unencumbered.
3. Front-load the institution filing. Note that IPR institution practice has changed materially: Director Squires' 2025-10-16 memorandum moves institution decisions to the Director (with a "summary notice" before referral to a merits panel), and an October 2025 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would bar IPRs against patents that previously survived a validity challenge and would require petitioners to stipulate not to press §§ 102/103 in other venues. (Sourced from secondary reporting — Willkie client alert, 2025-10; BSA submission, 2026-09-02 — flagging as non-primary.) Practical effect for a defendant: the discretionary-denial landscape is now less predictable, a prior district-court validity win for the patent owner could become a bar, and the petition should be drafted to survive a merits-scrutinizing institution gate with tight § 42.104(b)(4) mapping and no reliance on "general knowledge" to fill gaps.
4. If you want the absence confirmed at the source, run a live search at USPTO PTAB E2E and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board statistics/docket pages using application number 15/149,302 and patent number 10,240,954, and check CourtListener's RECAP docket search for any Federal Circuit appeal (courtlistener.com). I could not complete both a PTAB E2E query and the ex parte reexamination/reexam-certificate check within this session, so those two data points remain unverified rather than affirmatively negative.
5. The investment decision: filing a first IPR here is a bet on the merits with no estoppel downside and no prior-panel baggage — a materially better position than attacking a patent that has already survived one or two IPRs. But note the patent's expiration horizon (adjusted expiration 2036-08-04; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2022-09-21, so it is being maintained), meaning the economic exposure window is long enough to justify the filing cost.

No PTAB activity exists on this patent. That is the answer, and it is a favorable one for a defendant. I have not fabricated any proceeding, petitioner, panel, or decision to fill the template.

I'll verify the assignment record and ownership context before writing the analysis.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 10,240,954 B2

"Indicating device with rear projection structure" · App. 15/149,302 · Filed & priority 2016-05-09 · Granted 2019-03-26 · Adjusted expiration 2036-08-04

Sourcing caveat (read first): I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center UI (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) or the Assignment Search API directly in this session — both are dynamic, and the legacy PDF endpoints only resolve for records I already have reel/frame numbers for. The two recorded assignments below are taken from the Google Patents legal-events mirror of the USPTO assignment record, which carries reel/frame, assignor, assignee, execution date, recording date and conveyance type, but does not expose the correspondent of record. Where I state a correspondent, I say so explicitly and mark it as corroborated elsewhere rather than asserted for this patent. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10240954) before relying on the correspondent column.

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Inventors

Sole named inventor: Marc Arceo (address of record in related Denso filings: Livonia, MI, US).

• Employer at time of filing: DENSO International America, Inc. (DIAM), Southfield, MI — DIAM is Denso's North American regional headquarters and engineering center, and its Instrument Cluster team (established in the 1990s per Denso's own corporate history) is where the cluster-design inventions of this era originated. Arceo is listed among the "leading inventors" for applications submitted by DENSO International America, Inc. (patents-review.com applicant profile) and his correlated filings are all DIAM/DC-assigned cluster work.
• Corroborating co-filings from the same design group, all filed within ~10 months of this application and all naming DIAM + Denso Corporation as assignees:
  • US D779,405 S — "Instrument cluster," filed 2015-12-04, inventors Arceo, Suzuki, Garrett, Horvath.
  • US D786,759 S — "Vehicle instrument cluster," filed 2015-08-24, inventors Webb, Arceo, Horvath.
  • US 10,077,993 B2 / US 2016/0245675 A1 — DIAM "Indicating device and pointer for the same" family (cited on this patent's face).
• Unusual-pattern check: not present. There is only one inventor, so the "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" fire-sale precursor cannot arise. Arceo's name continues to appear on Denso cluster filings across the 2015–2017 window; I found no evidence of departure, and no evidence he moved to a third party. His name does not appear on this patent's later Denso-family continuations surfaced in the citation list (e.g., US 2017/0115140, US 2017/0241816, US 9,909,906), which is consistent with a designer rotating off a project rather than a departure signal.

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Original assignee

Two co-assignees, both entities of the same corporate group:

• Primary line of business: Tier-1 automotive supplier. DIAM is described in Denso's own materials as "North American headquarters for Japan-based DENSO Corp." and (in the 2006/2007/2008 annual reports) as the "holding company and regional headquarters for North America… sale of automotive components… engineering services, design, testing." Note the "holding company" label — it is not an IP-holding shell; it is an operating regional HQ with a 212,000 sq ft technical center, ~661–1,500+ employees at Southfield, and 25+ North American manufacturing plants in the group.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — this is a production automotive part. The claims cover a rear-projection instrument cluster (nonopaque dial plate + slit member + ring light source projecting tick marks, symbols and, in the second embodiment, a rotating projected pointer). Denso is a mainstream combination-meter/instrument-cluster supplier: DIAM's cluster team "began design efforts… resulting in several designs, including HVAC, AC and meter cluster units for multiple regional customers," and Denso-sourced "METER ASSY, COMBINATION" parts appear in OEM parts cross-reference data (e.g., Toyota Venza clusters, DENSO vendor codes, NHTSA-published cross-reference guide). The patent's own specification frames the device as "an engine revolution meter for an automobile," i.e., the commercial part, not a paper invention.
• Current status: Operating. Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Denso Corporation remains a listed, going concern; DIAM continues to file US applications through 2026 (most recent publication dates in mid-2026). Denso has been a defendant in In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, 12-md-02311 (E.D. Mich.) and in product-liability matters (e.g., fuel-pump class actions) — none of which is patent litigation and none of which touches this patent's chain of title.

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Assignment timeline

Both recorded conveyances are inventor-to-corporate, at-filing assignments executed four days after the 2016-05-09 filing date. There are no post-issuance assignments, no security interests, no licenses, no mergers, no change-of-name records, and no releases on this patent.

• 2016-05-06 (executed) / recorded 2016-05-09 — Reel 038511/0826

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: ARCEO, MARC
  • Assignee: DENSO INTERNATIONAL AMERICA, INC. (Michigan)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events mirror of this record. For context only: Denso's standard US recording correspondent across its portfolio is HARNESS DICKEY & PIERCE, PLC, 5445 Corporate Drive, Troy, MI 48098 (phone 248-641-1600, fax 248-641-0270, email troymailroom@hdp.com), correspondent field variously rendered as "HARNESS DICKEY (DENSO INTERNATIONAL AMER)" or "STANLEY M. ERJAVAC, Harness Dickey & Pierce, PLC, P.O. Box 828, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303." That is corroborated on other Denso recordings — reel 055473/0508 (recorded 2021-03-03, Denso International America + Denso Corporation as receiving parties) and reel 036813/0798 (Morimoto et al. → Denso Corporation, recorded 2015-10-16) — but I have not verified it against reel 038511/0826. Treat the Denso/HDPI pairing as a portfolio-level expectation, not a finding on this reel.
  • Context: Institutional capture of employee invention rights at filing — routine corporate ownership perfection, not a transfer to a third party.

• 2016-05-06 (executed) / recorded 2016-05-11 — Reel 038543/0079

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: ARCEO, MARC
  • Assignees: DENSO CORPORATION (Japan) and DENSO INTERNATIONAL AMERICA, INC. (Michigan)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed for this record; same HDPI caveat as above.
  • Context: Supplemental/parallel corporate assignment adding the Japanese parent as co-owner — the classic Denso dual-assignment pattern (DIAM records first, then the DIAM + Denso Corporation pair records two days later, both on the 2016-05-06 execution date). Not a reorg, not a sale; it stabilizes title in both group entities for a part engineered in the US and manufactured/licensed group-wide.

Why there is nothing after 2016: the two May-2016 recordings effect one continuous ownership from the sole inventor to the two Denso group entities, and title has never moved. The only downstream legal events are maintenance: 2022-09-21 — maintenance fee paid, 4th year, large entity (per USPTO legal events), with an adjusted expiration of 2036-08-04 (terminal-disclaimer-style adjustment from the 2036-05-09 twenty-year date). A patent still held by its original corporate owner after grant, with fees paid at year 4 and no recorded encumbrances, is the inverse of a fire-sale footprint.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10240954
    2016 : Filed by sole inventor Marc Arceo
         : Assigned to DENSO International America
         : DENSO Corporation added as co assignee
    2019 : Patent granted
    2022 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2036 : Adjusted expiration date

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment) — read as: original-assignee-retained, operating-company-owned patent with no post-issuance transfer chain to assess.

The record contains exactly two assignments — Marc Arceo → DENSO International America, Inc. executed 2016-05-06 and recorded 2016-05-09 at reel 038511/0826, and Marc Arceo → DENSO International America, Inc. + DENSO Corporation executed 2016-05-06 and recorded 2016-05-11 at reel 038543/0079. Both are in-house inventor-to-affiliate captures of employee rights, executed on the same day, days before the 2016-05-09 filing; there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive-aggregator endpoint — so no NPE bucket is supported and the rubric's "NPE — high/moderate confidence" and "Defensive / non-asserting" categories both fail on the evidence. The substantive ownership conclusion is stronger than the verdict label suggests: Denso, an operating Tier-1 supplier that ships the instrument clusters embodying these claims, has held this patent continuously since filing, paid the 4th-year maintenance fee on 2022-09-21, and (per the prior litigation section) has never asserted it. The "Operating-company assertion" category is not selected only because there is no assertion — Denso is not suing competitors on this patent.

One explicit inconsistency flag: the two Denso entities are named as co-assignees in reel 038543/0079 and as original assignees in the Google Patents bibliographic record, while the 2016-05-09 first-filed record at reel 038511/0826 names DIAM alone. This is a normal two-step Denso recording convention (likely a supplemental recording to add Denso Corporation), but because I could not inspect the assignment cover sheets themselves, I cannot state whether reel 038543/0079 is styled as a new assignment, a supplemental assignment, or a corrective record. Anyone relying on the ownership chain should pull both images from Assignment Center and confirm.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 10240954 (or application 15/149,302); the same records are surfaced via https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I'll verify the patent number and then research each cited reference individually.

Good — patent confirmed. Now let me research the remaining cited references in batches.

Step 0 — Confirm the patent number (literal reading)

I searched for the exact identifier 10240954. The result is the correct record and not a near-number:

• US 10,240,954 B2 — "Indicating device with rear projection structure"
• Application US 15/149,302; filed 2016-05-09; priority 2016-05-09; granted 2019-03-26
• Inventor Marc Arceo; original/current assignees Denso Corp. and Denso International America, Inc.
• Pre-grant publication US 2017/0322056 A1 (2017-11-09)
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10240954/en
• Corroborated at FreePatentsOnline: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0322056.html and Patents-Review: https://www.patents-review.com/a/20170322056-indicating-device-rear-projection-structure.html

I did not substitute US 10,218,954, US 10,240,954-as-company-registration, or any other similar string. No other patent shares this number.

Coverage caveat (important): My tool calls were cut off partway through the reference-by-reference retrieval. I fully or substantially retrieved the text of US 4,258,643, US 4,300,470, US 5,842,435, US 6,598,988 and confirmed the bibliographic rows for the rest from the patent page's own citation table. For the remaining references (US 7,270,434; US 2003/0079672; US 7,624,699; US 2009/0038535; US 7,665,857; US 2013/0314891; US 2016/0245675; US 2017/0115140; US 2017/0241816; US 9,909,906) I rely on the citation table plus my prior knowledge of the art. Where my confidence in the substance of a reference is lower, I say so explicitly. Nothing below is invented.

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Step 1 — What the target claim requires (benchmark for the §102 analysis)

Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. §102 requires a single reference to disclose every element of the claim. The sole independent claim, claim 1, requires the combination of:

1. a nonopaque dial plate in a disc shape;
2. a slit member with a plurality of slits each extending through the member in the thickness direction;
3. a light source on the opposite side of the slit member from the dial plate, emitting light through the slits to project images on the dial plate;
4. the slit member between the dial plate and the light source and spaced away from both; and
5. the projected images having the same shapes as the slits.

This is a rear shadow-projection concept. The critical distinguishing element is the combination of (2)+(3)+(5): a perforated mask that casts a 1:1 shadow image onto a clear face. As I read the cited art, no single reference discloses that combination, so the honest answer on §102 is that these are predominantly §103 (obviousness) references, with the caveats noted per reference. I flag that characterizations below are my analysis, not the examiner's — the citation table does not expose the examiner's rejection basis.

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Step 2 — The 14 cited references, one by one

Group A — Illuminated-pointer / transparent-dial art (pre-2000)

A1. US 4,258,643 — "Illuminated indicator gauge with illuminated pointer"

• Citation: US 4,258,643 (Nissan Motor Company, Limited)
• Dates: filing/priority 1978-06-21; issued 1981-03-31
• Description (verified): A transparent dial plate 14 with a graduated layer 16; lamps 24 sit in recesses of laterally projecting light-guiding sections; light travels through the transparent plate to an opening 18 and is reflected by slanted surfaces 18a/18b into the pointer hub, illuminating the pointer. Source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e7/e3/6e/604902c3a31219/US4258643.pdf (see also EP 0006361 family).
• §102 relevance: Discloses a nonopaque (transparent) dial plate with a light source located behind it — arguably touching claim 1's first and third elements. It does not disclose a slit member with a plurality of through-slits projecting 1:1 images. No §102 anticipation of claim 1. Could be cited against claim 11 (coaxial pointer) or as §103 art.

A2. US 4,300,470 — "Luminant pointer for meters"

• Citation: US 4,300,470 (Yazaki Sogyo Kabushiki Kaisha; inventor Noriyuki Furukawa)
• Dates: filed 1979-10-30; issued 1981-11-17
• Description (verified): Light-transmitting plate fixed to the underside of the meter dial; a transparent pointer whose trapezoidal finger portion carries a color-paint layer on its lower face so the upper face glows evenly. Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[4300470](/patent/4300470)
• §102 relevance: Purely a pointer-illumination reference. Neither a slit-member mask nor image projection. No anticipation of any claim; at most background art for claim 11.

A3. US 5,842,435 — "Index for a measuring instrument"

• Citation: US 5,842,435 (Yazaki Corporation)
• Dates: priority/filing 1994-07-28; issued 1998-12-01
• Description (verified): An emission-type index (pointer) integrally molded from transparent resin (acrylic/polycarbonate) with a skirt portion and a high-specific-gravity balancer; a light-receiving face feeds the illuminating portion. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5842435A](/patent/US5842435A)/en
• §102 relevance: Pointer construction, not projection. No anticipation; relevant only as pointer art (claim 11).

Group B — Later illuminated-pointer / display-instrument art (1999–2013)

B1. US 6,598,988 B1 — "Display instrument, in particular in a motor vehicle"

• Citation: US 6,598,988 B1 (Siemens Aktiengesellschaft)
• Dates: priority 1999-11-24; issued 2003-07-29
• Description (verified): A light-guiding pointer rotationally fixed to a pointer shaft acting as a light guide; an LED mounted behind the pointer-shaft end face, on a PCB arranged behind the pointer drive, injects light into the shaft/pointer. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6598988
• §102 relevance: Discloses an LED behind the drive assembly feeding a light path — potentially relevant to claim 9's "light source coaxial with pointer shaft," but there is no slit member and no shadow projection. No anticipation of claim 1.

B2. US 7,270,434 B2 — "Indicator lighting device"

• Citation: US 7,270,434 B2 (Nippon Seiki Co., Ltd.)
• Dates: priority 2003-03-28; published 2007-09-18
• Description (moderate confidence — full text not retrieved this session): A vehicular indicator lighting device for illuminating an indicating needle/instrument.
• §102 relevance: Pointer/instrument lighting. No projection-through-slits disclosure apparent; I could not verify a slit-mask teaching. No anticipation.

B3. US 2003/0079672 A1 — "Instrument panel pointer"

• Citation: US 2003/0079672 A1 (Sergei Kalashnikov)
• Dates: priority 2001-10-31; published 2003-05-01
• Description (lower confidence — not retrieved): An instrument-panel pointer arrangement.
• §102 relevance: Pointer art. No anticipation.

B4. US 2009/0038535 A1 — "Instrument Pointer Assembly"

• Citation: US 2009/0038535 A1 (Jorge Morales)
• Dates: priority 2007-08-07; published 2009-02-12
• Description (lower confidence): An indicator-pointer assembly.
• §102 relevance: Pointer assembly. No anticipation.

B5. US 7,624,699 B2 — "Pointer illuminator"

• Citation: US 7,624,699 B2 (Yazaki Corporation)
• Dates: priority 2007-01-17; issued 2009-12-01
• Description (moderate confidence): Illumination arrangement for a meter pointer.
• §102 relevance: Pointer illumination. No anticipation.

B6. US 7,665,857 B2 — "Illumination device for an indicating needle"

• Citation: US 7,665,857 B2 (Yazaki Corporation)
• Dates: priority 2007-12-12; issued 2010-02-23
• Description (moderate confidence): Needle-illumination device.
• §102 relevance: Pointer illumination. No anticipation.

B7. US 2013/0314891 A1 — "Indicator member, indicator unit and indicator instrument"

• Citation: US 2013/0314891 A1 (Yazaki Corporation)
• Dates: priority 2011-01-26; published 2013-11-28
• Description (moderate confidence): Indicator member/unit for an indicating instrument.
• §102 relevance: Indicator member art. No verified slit-mask projection disclosure → no anticipation.

Group C — The Denso family (same applicant; the legally most significant cites)

These four are all Denso International America, Inc. references. Three carry priorities earlier than 2016-05-09, so they can qualify as prior art under §102(a)(2) (U.S. application publications/patents "effectively filed" before the target's effective filing date), even where their publication postdates 2016-05-09.

C1. US 2016/0245675 A1 — "Indicating device and pointer for the same"

• Citation: US 2016/0245675 A1 (Denso International America, Inc.)
• Dates: priority 2015-02-25; published 2016-08-25 → published before the target's 2016-05-09 filing → qualifies under §102(a)(1) as well.
• Description (moderate confidence; family includes US 9,804,005 B2, listed under "Similar Documents"): A vehicular indicating device with a dedicated pointer construction.
• §102 relevance: Same field, same applicant. Discloses an indicating device + pointer but I have not verified a rear-projection slit member. No confirmed anticipation of claim 1; strong §103 art in combination.

C2. US 2017/0115140 A1 — "Indicating device with see-through configuration and pointer for the same"

• Citation: US 2017/0115140 A1 (Denso International America, Inc.)
• Dates: priority 2015-10-23; published 2017-04-27
• §102 relevance: Publication postdates the target's filing, but the 2015-10-23 priority predates 2016-05-09, so it is available as §102(a)(2) art. Family includes US 10,077,993 B2. It concerns a "see-through" instrument — conceptually adjacent to the target's transparent dial — making it a meaningful §103 (and possible §102(a)(2)) reference. No confirmed anticipation.

C3. US 2017/0241816 A1 — "Indicating device with light-pickup configuration"

• Citation: US 2017/0241816 A1 (Denso International America, Inc.)
• Dates: priority 2016-02-24; published 2017-08-24
• §102 relevance: Priority 2016-02-24 predates 2016-05-09 → §102(a)(2) art. Concerns light pickup/collection in an indicating device — a light-path teaching that could be combined under §103. No confirmed anticipation. (Family: US 9,933,287 B2.)

C4. US 9,909,906 B2 — "Indicating device with dial plate having grooves"

• Citation: US 9,909,906 B2 (Denso International America, Inc.)
• Dates: priority 2016-04-22; issued 2018-03-06
• §102 relevance: Priority 2016-04-22 predates 2016-05-09 → §102(a)(2) art. A dial-plate structure with grooves, sharing the "indicating device" architecture. No confirmed rear-projection slit member → no anticipation of claim 1, but notable §103 art and evidence of the applicant's own contemporaneous work.

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Step 3 — Bottom-line assessment

Most relevant prior art for US 10,240,954: the four Denso International America family references (US 2016/0245675; US 2017/0115140; US 2017/0241816; US 9,909,906), because they are (a) same-field "indicating device" disclosures, (b) the applicant's own co-pending work, and (c) three of them are §102(a)(2)-available via earlier 2015–2016 priorities. On the merits of claim 1's core rear-projection concept, the closer technical art is the transparent-dial/light-guide lineage (US 4,258,643 and US 6,598,988), which disclose a nonopaque dial with a light source behind it but no perforated mask projecting 1:1 images.

Key legal observation: No cited reference, on the text I verified, discloses the combination of claim 1 — in particular the "spaced away from both" slit member casting images "having the same shapes as the slits." That limitation is the patent's principal point of novelty and its principal §103 battleground. I found no reference that anticipates claim 1 or any dependent claim on its face.

Caveats

• Retrieval incomplete. Several references (noted above) were not fully opened this session; their descriptions are marked lower/moderate confidence and their §102 characterizations are provisional. I will not represent them as fully verified.
• §102(a)(2) dates turn on the "effectively filed" priority of each Denso reference (2015-10-23, 2016-02-24, 2016-04-22) relative to the target's 2016-05-09 effective filing date; I used the citation table's stated priorities, not the underlying priority documents.
• Google Patents' own note that "the listed assignees may be inaccurate" applies equally to my assignee attributions above.
• I did not identify any additional prior art beyond the 14 examiner-cited references; this analysis is confined to the citation record you asked about.

I'll ground this analysis in the 14 references listed in the Prior Art section of the record, verifying their disclosures where I can.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,240,954 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope and continuity. This builds on the claim-by-claim reading already produced (summary section) and does not restate it. Two of the anomalies previously flagged in the source text become materially relevant here, and I cross-reference them rather than repeat them: (i) the spec's statement that tube portion 48 "is connected with the rear side of the conical portion 14 of the dial plate 10," and (ii) the "pointer 20" reference in the LED-intensity paragraph. Both bear on claim construction below.

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A. Legal framing and the two limitations that carry the case

Claim 1 has three near-universal elements (nonopaque disc dial plate; slit member with through-slits; light source on the far side of the slit member) and two limitations that do the actual work:

1. "the slit member is disposed between the dial plate and the light source and is spaced away from both the dial plate and the light source"
2. "the plurality of images projected on the dial plate have the same shapes as the plurality of slits"

Together these define lensless shadow projection through an aperture mask — a silhouette, not a backlit overlay and not a magnified image. That is the crux, and it is also the crux of the invalidity question, because the art of record is almost entirely art of illuminated pointers and backlit dials, not of shadow masks. The obviousness case therefore has to be built by combination plus common-sense reasoning under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and it is stronger on some claims than others.

Construction points that cut against the patentee:

• "same shapes as the slits" is arguably inherent. In any lensless, finite-distance shadow arrangement the image is a scaled (and penumbra-softened) silhouette of the aperture. There is no element in claim 1 — no lens, no stated conjugate distances — that could produce a different shape. Read this way, limitation (2) adds essentially nothing over limitation (1) plus a light source, which is a very strong obviousness posture for the examiner. A POSITA who places a slit-bearing plate between a rear light and a translucent face necessarily obtains same-shaped images.
• "spaced away from both" is thin and internally contradicted. The spec has tube 48 tying the slit member to the dial plate and the light conductor 76 sitting on the LED front surface. If "spaced away" means merely "offset/non-laminated," the limitation is nearly free; if it means "no contact whatsoever," the first embodiment arguably does not practice claim 1 (a § 112 / indefiniteness exposure, and a limitation that a POSITA would satisfy trivially by any standoff).

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B. The art of record (14 citations), sorted by what it actually teaches

⚠ Threshold flag: four of the fourteen citations are Denso's own applications and are probably not available as § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 art

US 2016/0245675 (filed 2015‑02‑25), US 2017/0115140 (filed 2015‑10‑23), US 2017/0241816 (filed 2016‑02‑24) and US 9,909,906 (filed 2016‑04‑22) were all filed before the 2016‑05‑09 effective filing date and published after it — so they are only ever § 102(a)(2) art, and § 102(b)(2)(C) removes them if the subject matter and the claimed invention were commonly owned or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person as of the effective filing date. Every one of these is Denso Corp./Denso International America. On the face of the record, they should be disqualified, leaving the § 103 case to rest on the Nissan/Yazaki/Siemens/Nippon Seiki/Morales/Kalashnikov references — none of which discloses a shadow mask. (I could not verify the assignment records for each application; treat this as a flag on the citation set, not a conclusion.)

That is a material weakness in the record as cited, and it is why the analysis below leans on (i) Yazaki US 2013/0314891 for the slit-in-light-path teaching and (ii) explicit common-sense/design-incentive reasoning for the mask.

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C. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Honest assessment: no single one of the fourteen references discloses a projection mask in a gauge. The combination is constructible but requires the examiner to (a) characterize Yazaki's slit-bearing cover as a mask rather than a dust/light-leak cover, and (b) supply the lensless-projection concept from general knowledge. That is defensible under KSR, but it is not a clean anticipation-style case.

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D. The primary combinations

Combination 1 (claim 1) — Yazaki US 2013/0314891 + Siemens US 6,598,988 + Nissan US 4,258,643

Take Yazaki's vehicle indicator instrument (translucent indicator member, opaque slit-bearing cover, dial plate bearing scale marks/numerals, multiple board-mounted light sources in a tapered case) and relocate the opaque slit-bearing member from the front of the pointer to the space between a rear light source and the dial, with the light source behind it per Siemens' rear-LED arrangement, and the pointer shaft coaxial per Nissan.

Motivation:

• Yazaki already teaches that an opaque member with a slit is the mechanism by which light is delivered to the viewer in the correct shape. Moving that same shaping mechanism from the pointer to the dial is a change in the location of a known element performing the same function, i.e. a classic predictable-variation/obvious-substitution situation.
• Siemens supplies the express motivation to place the LED on the far side of the display and to collect its light with a molded non-opaque optical element — the exact rear-source-plus-shaping-element topology claim 1 requires.
• Both references are in the same field (vehicle instrument illumination), address the same problem (making indicia visible against a dark face without printing on the visible surface), and are reasonably pertinent to the problem.

Combination 2 (claims 2, 3, 5, 6, 7) — Combination 1 + a translucent backlit dial

Add the well-known translucent backlit dial (Siemens' display instrument; Nissan US 4,258,643; and the backlit-scaled-dial art cited in the family of the references, e.g. the DE 196 06 245 "Skalenstriche … durchleuchbar" teaching of a scale stroke lit from behind). Tick marks and symbols are then produced as images through radial and symbol-shaped slits rather than as printed or translucent indicia.

• Radial slit → radial tick mark: Yazaki/US 9,909,906 both teach radially-extending indicia formed by transmitted light.
• Symbol-shaped slit → numeral: Yazaki US 2013/0314891 expressly lists "numbers, letters or symbols" as the dial's indexes; transferring the shape to the mask regenerates the same mark.
• Blank face when dark (claim 7): a direct, known consequence of removing all printed indicia from the visible face — no inventive step.

Combination 3 (claims 8, 9, 10, 13) — Combination 1 + Siemens US 6,598,988 + Yazaki case 7

• Conical housing with the dial as the opening (claim 8): Yazaki's case 7 with tapered portion 7a housing the drive and illumination; conical/tapered gauge housings are the norm.
• Ring-shaped coaxial source (claim 9): Siemens' LED behind the dial plus board-mounted sources surrounding the pointer shaft; annular rear light sources behind translucent dials are longstanding (EP 0 497 316 A1, not of record, expressly describes "an annular light source 11 … provided behind the dial 1").
• Light conductor (claim 10): Siemens' lens/reflector that collects and redirects LED light.
• Controller varying intensity (claim 13): variable-brightness lamp drivers in clusters are ubiquitous; the German document surfaced in this search (DE 196 06 245 B4), a backlit-scaled instrument cluster, expressly teaches that "die Lichtquellen der Lichtkammern in ihrer Helligkeit veränderbar sind" — the cluster's light sources are made variable in brightness to signal different display meanings.

Combination 4 (claim 11) — Combination 1 + Nissan US 4,258,643 / Yazaki pointer art

A center-mounted rotatable pointer with a shaft coaxial to the dial plate and slit member. Disclosed essentially verbatim across the record: every reference in the list (Nissan, Yazaki, Nippon Seiki, Siemens, Denso) is a shaft-driven pointer instrument. This is close to inevitable once the mask is made coaxial, because the shaft must pass through or around the mask.

Combination 5 (claim 12) — the hard one

Claim 12's stationary ring slit member + rotatable pointer slit member with a radial pointer slit is the only claim whose subject matter is not fairly suggested by the record's art. The nearest art — Yazaki US 2013/0314891's slit-bearing cover over a luminous rotating indicator body, and US 5,842,435's translucent rotating index — are the opposite architecture (a luminous rotating body, not a rotating occluder projecting an image). A rejection here would need a rotating-mask/gobo teaching, which the record does not supply. Claim 12 is the strongest claim in the patent on § 103 grounds — and, not coincidentally, it is also the one the spec describes as the second embodiment's commercially distinctive feature.

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E. Why a POSITA would have combined these (articulated motivation)

1. Same field, same problem, same solution mechanism. All of the third-party art is vehicle-instrument illumination; all of it is trying to make indicia/pointers visible on a dark face. KSR holds that where the references are in the same field and address the same problem, a POSITA has reason to combine.
2. Known technique, improved in a predictable way. Yazaki already routes light through an aperture in an opaque member to define what the viewer sees. Placing that aperture member behind the dial face and ahead of the source is a re-positioning of a known element performing the same shaping function — the KSR "predictable variation" and "obvious substitution" rationales.
3. Design incentive in the vehicle cluster. A blank, unprinted, unlit-looking dial face is a recognized styling goal (so-called black-panel / disappearing-face clusters). The benefit — the face is featureless when the source is off (the patent's FIG. 5 and FIG. 9 states) — is a design advantage a POSITA would pursue without knowing anything about this application.
4. Cost/parts reduction. Printing or laser-etching an opaque dial, then selectively transmitting light, requires tooling per variant; a single slit mask is one part that can be changed without changing the dial. Both Siemens (cost-effective fabrication, soldered LED, pressed/clipped lens) and Yazaki (avoiding extra parts and man-hours) expressly reason in cost-of-parts terms, which supplies the articulated incentive.
5. "Same shape" comes for free. Once the mask approach is adopted, the KSR "predictable results" rationale covers limitation (2): a POSITA would expect a silhouette to reproduce the aperture's shape; no lens is recited, and none would be added.
6. Interchangeability and coaxiality. Ring LEDs around a shaft, tapered housings, and coaxial pointer shafts are all existing, interchangeable components in this art (Siemens; the EP 0 497 316 annular source; Yazaki case 7), which supplies the "simple substitution of one known element for another" rationale for claims 8–10.

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F. Anticipated non-obviousness arguments and how they fare

Objective indicia (commercial success, long-felt need, failure of others, copying) are not in evidence on this record; the Denso family and the Panasonic cited-by art do not supply a nexus argument.

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G. Bottom line

Procedural caution. Four of the fourteen citations are Denso's own pre-filing-date applications and appear disqualified as § 102(a)(2) art by § 102(b)(2)(C) (common ownership/obligation of assignment). If the record's citation set is the universe of art to be relied on, the § 103 case for claim 1 rests on Yazaki US 2013/0314891 plus general knowledge — workable, and strongest when framed as KSR predictable-variation over a known slit-defined light path, but vulnerable to a hindsight challenge on the "projected images / same shapes" element. Claims 2–11 and 13 are materially easier to invalidate than claim 1's core; claim 12 is the durable claim.

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H. Uncertainty disclosures

• Verification limits. I confirmed the disclosures of US 5,842,435, US 6,598,988, US 2013/0314891, US 9,909,906, US 2017/0115140 and US 2016/0245675 from live sources (URLs above). I did not independently verify the full texts of US 4,258,643, US 4,300,470, US 2003/0079672, US 7,270,434, US 2009/0038535, US 7,624,699 or US 7,665,857 beyond their titles/assignees in the record, and I have not attributed any specific disclosure to them beyond the pointer/illumination subject matter implied by their titles.
• Non-record references. EP 0 497 316 A1 ("annular light source 11 … behind the dial 1") and DE 196 06 245 B4 (variable-brightness cluster light sources; scale strokes lit from behind) surfaced in this research and are not in the record's citation list; I cite them only as corroboration that these features were known, not as of-record art.
• Title-attribution hazard. A search result paired the US 6,598,988 row with the title "Conically graduated display instrument for a motor vehicle." That title belongs to a citing document's citation table, not to US 6,598,988. I therefore do not rely on US 6,598,988 as teaching a conical dial; claim 4's dented conical tick-mark region is instead supported by US 9,909,906's inclined dial surface 16a and the general conical/tapered housing practice.
• Legal-status caveat. As before, I have no verified information on litigation, PTAB or CAFC proceedings touching this patent, and nothing here should be read as a validity opinion or as a prediction of an outcome; it is a prior-art-based exposure assessment on the citations of record only.