US 10386186

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

Let me search specifically for any litigation or PTAB proceedings involving this patent number.

Let me do two final targeted checks for any court or PTAB proceeding tied to this exact number.

US Patent 10,386,186 — Search Results and Summary

Important scope note up front: I searched for the exact string "10386186" / "10,386,186" combined with USPTO, PTAB, CourtListener, and Federal Circuit terms. No district-court litigation, ITC action, PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) proceeding, or CAFC appeal asserting or challenging US 10,386,186 was found. The only "10386186" hits outside the patent itself were unrelated (a Chinese trademark/registration number and an IPR exhibit table). I could not directly query PatentCenter or PACER docket APIs; my conclusion that there is no 2026 CAFC docket is based on negative search results and should be treated as no evidence of litigation rather than affirmative proof. Given the patent's fee lapse in 2023 (below), active enforcement is unlikely.

Everything below is drawn from the authoritative full text supplied (Google Patents rendering) for this exact number.

Bibliographic data (literal)

Note: the "maintenance fees not paid" event means the patent ceased ~2023 despite the nominal 2037 adjusted expiration.

Abstract (as issued)

A physical quantity sensor includes a substrate, a detection flap plate which is disposed facing the substrate, a mass portion which supports the detection flap plate, a beam portion which connects the detection flap plate and the mass portion, and a first regulating portion which is positioned between the detection flap plate and the mass portion and regulates displacement of the detection flap plate in an in-plane direction. In addition, the first regulating portion is provided in a corner portion of the detection flap plate which is formed in a rectangular shape.

Technical field / problem

A capacitance-type MEMS gyro sensor (detects angular velocity ωy about the Y axis). The stated problem is that, under in-plane acceleration, the movable plate can be displaced in-plane, over-flexing and cracking the torsion beam, or collide with the surrounding frame. The prior art cited in the background is JP-T-2008-514968 (the JP national phase of WO 2006/034706 / Conti Temic "Rotation speed sensor"). The stated advantage is improved mechanical strength via stopper ("regulating") members.

Plain-language overview of the three independent claims

Claim 1 — the base case ("corner stopper" claim)
A physical quantity sensor with:

• a substrate;
• a movable plate facing the substrate;
• a support frame that is continuously formed with the movable plate and completely surrounds the movable plate in plan view;
• an elastically deformable beam that is continuously formed with both the movable plate and the support frame, allowing the movable plate to move in the substrate's thickness direction (Z);
• a first regulating member (stopper) continuously formed with the movable plate, positioned to limit in-plane (X/Y) displacement.

The key structural limitations: the movable plate, support frame, beam, and first regulating member are one monolithic body (i.e., etched from a single conductive silicon layer); the regulating member projects outward from the peripheral edge of the movable plate; the plate is quadrangular in plan view; and the regulating member sits on a corner of the plate — so it can bump the surrounding frame on X, Y, or Z-axis rotation (the spec describes the two orthogonal protrusion pieces 611/612 contacting the mass portion).

Claim 9 — the tapered-plate variant
Same preamble as claim 1 (substrate / plate / surrounding support frame / monolithic beam+regulating member / outward-projecting corner stopper), but instead of the "quadrangular + corner" limitation it recites the taper: the movable plate rotates about an axis along the beam, and its width along the rotation axis tapers from the part directly adjacent the beam toward the outer edge. In the spec this is the "trapezoidal" first flap plate of the second embodiment (FIG. 7), which makes contact with the frame less likely and converts glancing contact into surface contact to soften impact.

Claim 12 — the dual-plate / second-stopper variant
Same preamble again, with:

• a first movable plate and a second movable plate placed directly adjacent to each other via the beam;
• a first beam and a second beam, where the first plate is connected to the support frame by only the first beam and the second plate by only the second beam;
• a second regulating member located between the two plates in plan view, limiting their in-plane displacement (this is the third embodiment / FIG. 9, preventing the two flaps from striking each other).

Dependent claims:

• Claim 2 (dep. 1): adds the taper limitation of claim 9.
• Claim 3 (dep. 1): adds the dual-plate + second-regulating-member limitation of claim 12.
• Claim 4 (dep. 3): second regulating member provided on the substrate.
• Claim 5 (dep. 1): electronic device — sensor + a display + a housing.
• Claim 6 (dep. 1): movable object — sensor + a movable body housing it.
• Claim 7 (dep. 1): beam has a slit running along the rotation axis.
• Claim 8 (dep. 7): movable plate has a cutout adjacent to the beam/support-frame connection, parallel to the slit.
• Claims 10–11 (dep. 9): the slit, then the parallel cutout.
• Claims 13–15 (dep. 12): substrate-mounted second regulating member; then the slit; then the parallel cutout.

Points a careful reader should flag

1. Terminology shift between specification and claims. The description consistently calls the surrounding structure a "mass portion (vibration portion) 41" (a driven rectangular frame), while all independent claims recite a "support frame … completely surrounding the movable plate in a plan view." The specification's "mass portion" is itself driven/suspended, not a fixed anchor. A court or examiner could treat "support frame" as narrower or different in scope than the disclosed mass portion; that mapping is not spelled out in the text I have.
2. "Continuously formed … monolithic body." Claims 1, 9, and 12 require the regulating member to be integral (single-piece) with the plate. This excludes the specification's own alternative embodiments in which the regulating portion is formed separately from a soft resin (natural rubber / silicone rubber) for cushioning (FIGS. 5–6 discussion), or mounted on the substrate. Those alternatives are described but not claimed.
3. Non-uniform claim style. Several claim recitations run into the sub-limitation after a semicolon-free transition (e.g., "…projects from a peripheral edge of the movable plate, wherein…"). That is a stylistic artifact of the granted text; I have not independently verified it against the USPTO-issued XML.
4. No prior-art validity assessment is offered here. Cited references of record include JP 2003-101032, JP 2005-283393/US 7,019,231, WO 2006/034706/JP 2008-514968/US 2008/0276706, JP 2010-032345, JP 2011-089822, and Seiko Epson's own US 2013/0192370, US 2013/0276536 and US 2015/0013458. I have not read those references and make no statement as to their bearing on validity.

Uncertainty statement

• I have high confidence in the bibliographic data, abstract, claim text, and status events above, since they come from the authoritative full text you supplied.
• I have no authoritative confirmation of any litigation or CAFC 2026 docket for this number. My searches returned nothing on point, and I did not access PACER/PatentCenter directly. If a proceeding exists, it is not reflected in publicly indexed results I could retrieve.

I'll search litigation databases for any cases involving US Patent 10386186.

Let me search the litigation-specific databases more directly.

Let me run a few final targeted checks on litigation-specific aggregators.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 10,386,186

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 10,386,186.

Despite running multiple targeted searches across litigation resources (Unified Patents litigation portal references, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia dockets, RPX Insight, and general web searches), no district court case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal could be tied to this specific patent number. I want to be explicit that this is a negative finding based on available search results — not affirmative proof that no case exists.

What I checked and what came back

Important filtering note (interpretation of identifiers literally, per instruction): Several results contained the digit string "10386186," but none relate to this patent. These included:

• A Pakistani government retirement order (employee ID No. 10386186) — sindheducation.gov.pk
• A Chinese trademark registration number 10386186
• A UK company number 10386186
• A CourtListener/Unicorn payment transaction number 10386186
• A PubMed PMID 10386186 (an unrelated psychiatry paper)
• A CAS/ChemBridge catalog number 10386186

None of these are the patent. I did not find a case where US 10,386,186 was asserted.

Context relevant to the negative finding

1. Ownership. All search results and the patent's own record confirm the patent is assigned to Seiko Epson Corporation (inventor: Makoto Furuhata). The patent also has a Japanese family member (JP 2015-182058 → JP6597099B2) and a Chinese counterpart (CN107024203A). Seiko Epson is not a typical patent-assertion (NPE) plaintiff, which is consistent with the patent not appearing in mass-assertion dockets.

2. Prosecution history shows no adversarial proceeding. The file history in the records I retrieved reflects only routine events — assignment, notice of allowance, issue fee payment, grant — with no PTAB IPR/PGR, no interference, and no cited litigation stay. The only "citations" recorded are examiner-considered prior art references (e.g., JP-T-2008-514968, US 2013/0192370 A1, US 2013/0276536 A1, US 2015/0013458 A1), which are prior art, not litigation.

3. Patent is expired. The record shows a Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees entered 2023-09-25, with the patent expired due to nonpayment effective 2023-08-20. An expired patent is unlikely to be the subject of live infringement litigation.

Caveats — please read

• This is not a clearance or freedom-to-operate opinion. A negative search result does not guarantee no litigation exists. Patent cases can be filed and settled quietly, appear under a different patent-in-suit caption, or reside in databases not fully indexed by the sources reachable here.
• Search limitations. I was able to reach general web results and some litigation-aggregator content, but I could not guarantee a complete query of the Unified Patents litigation caselist, full PACER ($-gated), Docket Alarm, or RPX Insight records. A definitive check would require direct Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / PACER queries by patent number and assignee.
• Recommended definitive verification steps: (a) Docket Navigator or Lex Machina search by patent number 10,386,186 and by assignee "Seiko Epson"; (b) PACER Case Locator for any case naming the patent; (c) USPTO PTAB "Patent Trial & Appeal Board" search under the patent number; (d) the USPTO Patent Center "Litigation" tab, which lists any court proceedings reported to the Office.

Conclusion: Based on the searches performed, there is no known litigation involving US Patent No. 10,386,186. I cannot state with certainty that no such litigation has ever existed, but no case — plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome — could be identified.

PTAB Proceedings Report — U.S. Patent No. 10,386,186 B2

"Physical quantity sensor, electronic device, and moving object"
Patent Owner: Seiko Epson Corporation · Inventor: Makoto Furuhata
Priority: 2015-09-15 (JP 2015-182058) · Filed: 2016-09-12 · Granted: 2019-08-20
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10386186](/patent/US10386186)/en

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, AIA trial feed) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding — not active, not instituted-and-pending, not FWD'd, not settled, not denied. My independent web searches surfaced no PTAB docket number, no Final Written Decision, no institution decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent. The bottom line for a defendant is therefore not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is that the patent was never PTAB-tested at all, and it lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees in 2023, so it is not a live assertion risk today. The absence of PTAB activity here is a weak signal about the art (well-asserted patents usually attract IPRs); it is explained instead by the fact that this patent appears never to have been commercially asserted — Seiko Epson is a practicing manufacturer, not a monetizer, and it let the patent go abandoned rather than defending it.

Flag — this is the single most important fact for a defendant and it is not a PTAB fact. The ODP legal-events record shows 2023-09-25 — STCH — PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362, effective 2023-08-20, with status Expired - Fee Related. The 3.5-year maintenance fee was never paid. Google's projected Adjusted expiration 2037-04-29 is a statutory-term projection, not a statement that the patent is in force. I state this from the structured record only; I have not verified whether a revival petition under 37 CFR 1.378 was filed, and the 24-month unintentional-delay window keyed to the 2023-08-20 lapse has on its face closed. Treat as high-confidence that the patent is unenforceable for post-2023-08-20 conduct, but verify current fee/revival status in Patent Center before relying on it.

Proceedings

None to report. There are no proceeding numbers to list, and I will not invent them. For completeness against the requested template:

• Type / Filed / Status / Judge panel / Grounds / Institution / FWD / Settlement / Appeal — N/A for all fields. No petition was ever filed on US 10,386,186, so there is no institution decision, no panel, no claim-level disposition, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to describe. Any draft that fills these fields with numbers would be fabricated.

What does appear in the record, and should not be confused with PTAB activity:

• Face-of-patent citations (IDS references, not IPR art): JP 2003-101032, JP 2005-283393, WO 2006/034706, JP 2010-032345, JP 2011-089822, US 2013/0192370 A1, US 2013/0276536 A1, US 2015/0013458 A1.
• Later publications citing it (not challenges): JP 2020-118609 A (Seiko Epson, filed 2019-01-25) and WO 2026/088985 A1 (Murata Manufacturing, filed 2024-10-24).
• Foreign family: JP 6597099 B2 (also recorded not_active — Expired - Fee Related) and CN 107024203 A (active). These are national-phase counterparts, not PTAB matters.
• Ex parte reexamination: not covered by the ODP AIA-trial feed and none surfaced in search; I cannot affirmatively rule one out beyond that.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED, and — subject to the revival caveat above — nothing is enforceable. All 15 claims stand as granted: independent claim 1 (substrate + movable plate + support frame + elastically deformable beam + first regulating member, monolithic body, quadrangular movable plate, regulating member on a corner); independent claim 9 (same core plus tapered width along the rotation axis); independent claim 12 (same core plus first/second movable plates, first/second beams, and a second regulating member between them); and dependents 2–8, 10–11, 13–15, including the electronic-device claim 5 and movable-object claim 6. No claim of this patent has ever been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed in an AIA trial, so there is no FWD to quote and no claim-level disposition to pass through to a defendant. The patent's practical "scope" today is the as-granted claim set read against the 2016-specification disclosure — but the lapse event means a defendant's cleanest answer is a § 41(c)/§ 362 expiration defense plus a Patent Center records check, not an invalidity case.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel runs only against a petitioner (and its real parties in interest and privies) in an instituted IPR, and there has never been one. No defendant inherits a bar, and no ground is "used up." Every § 102/§ 103/§ 112 theory remains nominally open — the face-of-patent references above, the applicants' own Seiko Epson family (e.g., US 2013/0192370, US 2013/0276536, US 2015/0013458, and the JP 2014-194423 / JP 2012-254206 art that EPO and JPO examiners cited against sibling family members), and any prior-art MEMS flap-plate stopper patents. Practically, that availability is academic: if a demand letter cites claims 1–15 of this patent for conduct after 2023-08-20, the expiration/lapse record is the dispositive response, and spending IPR budget would be unnecessary.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has ever filed — no repeat filers, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator in the chain (Unified's public portal shows Seiko Epson physical-quantity-sensor family members as tracked, e.g., CN 105403208 A and US 2016/0195394 A1, but no challenge on the '186 patent). No PTAB appeal history, so no read on how aggressively the patent owner litigates at the Board. The only "pattern" is the patent owner's own conduct: two family members (US '186 and JP 6597099) both lapsed for non-payment, and the record shows a single assignment (Furuhata → Seiko Epson, 2016-08-09) and no reissue or continuation activity from this disclosure. That is the profile of a defensive-portfolio patent that was allowed to die, not a patent being worked.

Recommended next steps

• No PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and lead with the lapse. There is no FWD to link or quote, because none was ever issued. Do not build a defense narrative around an IPR; there isn't one.
• Verify the fee status before anything else. Pull the Patent Center maintenance-fee transaction history for US 10,386,186 and confirm (a) the 3.5-year fee was in fact unpaid, (b) whether any petition under 37 CFR 1.378 to accept late payment / revive was filed, and (c) whether an intervening-rights statement under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(2)/37 CFR 1.378(d) accompanied any revival. The ODP record I was given shows the lapse effective 2023-08-20 and confirmed 2023-09-25; if nothing has changed, a 2026 assertion is meritless for conduct on or after that date.
• If a live assertion exists on pre-2023-08-20 conduct (the only window in which the patent was in force — 2019-08-20 to 2023-08-20), the defensive posture is: (1) liability exposure is capped to that window; (2) the art-of-record from the face of the patent and the sibling-family examinations (JP 2014-194423, JP 2012-254206, US 2008/0276706, US 2010/037690) is a ready § 103 starting kit for a district-court invalidity case, since there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel and no IPR estoppel-savings calculus to run; and (3) an IPR on an expired patent is permissible at the Board but usually pointless here given the lapse.
• Docket check, not PTAB check. Because the patent was never PTAB-tested, the useful background is whether it was ever pleaded in district court or the ITC at all. My searches surfaced no such case, and the ODP trial feed shows none; confirm on Docket Navigator / CourtListener REST search for "10,386,186" before representing to anyone that the patent is unasserted.

Links: Patent record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10386186/en · PTAB E2E search (to independently confirm zero proceedings) — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ · Patent Center (fee/revival status) — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov · CourtListener — https://www.courtlistener.com

Caveat on method: PTAB E2E and the ODP AIA-trial feed do not cover ex parte reexaminations or foreign proceedings, and I hit my search-step ceiling before I could run the last two confirming queries. The zero-proceeding finding rests on the ODP structured block (canonical) plus the searches described. I found no contradicting PTAB or CAFC record — if one exists, it was not indexed anywhere I could reach.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before writing up.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,386,186 B2

Patent: Physical quantity sensor, electronic device, and moving object
App. No.: 15/262,361 · Filed: 2016-09-12 · Issued: 2019-08-20 · Priority: JP 2015-182058 (2015-09-15)
Status (as of today): Expired – Fee Related. Lapsed 2023-08-20 for non-payment of maintenance fees (37 CFR 1.362); USPTO lapsing event recorded 2023-09-25, FP entry effective 2023-08-20.

Method note / limitation up front: I could not retrieve the Assignment Center record page itself (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov returns no indexable record to my queries). The reel/frame, execution date, and recording date below are taken from the USPTO-sourced legal-events table reproduced in the authoritative patent text supplied to me, which mirrors the Assignment Center data. The correspondent of record field was not exposed in any source I could reach, and I have not fabricated one. Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10386186) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Inventors

• Employer is determinable with high confidence. Furuhata is a long-tenured Seiko Epson MEMS inventor: his name appears as inventor on Epson-assigned filings spanning 2015→2025, and a third-party inventor profile lists 43 published applications with top assignees Seiko Epson (23 + 18 records) and Epson Toyocom Corporation (7 records) — the latter being Epson's former crystal-device/sensing subsidiary (merged into Seiko Epson in 2011). See the profile and the co-pending Epson filings listed there (e.g. US 2018/0306581 A1, US 2019/0162749 A1, US 2025/0080083 A1, published 2025-03-06).
• Same inventor is listed on related Epson patents in this family's technology space, e.g. US 9,702,699 B2 ("Makoto Furuhata, Matsumoto (JP)"; assignee Seiko Epson), and US 10,697,773 / EP 3396315 A1 (Furuhata + Kei Kanemoto, applicant Seiko Epson).
• No unusual pattern. The classic red flag — all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, which can precede a portfolio fire-sale — is absent. Furuhata was still filing Seiko Epson applications at least through early 2025, roughly nine years after this filing and roughly two years after this patent was abandoned. This is the profile of a career corporate R&D inventor, not an inventor who walked out with a portfolio.

Original assignee

Seiko Epson Corporation (SEC) — 3-3-5 Owa, Suwa-shi, Nagano-ken 392-8502, Japan. Publicly listed (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6724); original assignee named on the face of the issued patent and ever since.

• Primary line of business: operating industrial manufacturer — inkjet printers and printing systems, projectors/display, watches and microdevices, and semiconductor/sensing products. Its sensing line (MEMS gyroscopes, inertial measurement units, crystal devices, formerly under Epson Toyocom) is directly adjacent to this disclosure.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Partially determinable. The patent claims a capacitive MEMS gyro sensor with monolithic regulating members projecting from the movable plate corners, and the specification expressly frames the devices for digital-camera image stabilization and vehicle posture control — which is precisely SEC's MEMS gyro/IMU product territory. I can confirm SEC is an operating manufacturer of MEMS inertial sensors; I cannot confirm, from the sources retrieved, that any specific shipping Epson part has been claim-mapped to this particular claim set, and I will not assert one.
• Current status: Operating — not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. The corporation remains active and is, if anything, a target of NPEs rather than an NPE (see signal 2 below). The patent is dead; the company is not.
• Terminal disposition: SEC simply stopped paying maintenance fees. The fee reminder mailed 2023-04-10; the patent lapsed 2023-08-20. No transfer, no assertion, no licensing campaign preceded the lapse. The claimed subject matter is now in the public domain.

Assignment timeline

Exactly one recorded assignment exists in the chain. There are no post-issuance assignments, no change-of-name recordals, no security agreements, no license recordals, and no releases.

• 2016-08-09 (executed) / recorded 2016-09-12 — Reel 039701/0408
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Makoto Furuhata (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources retrieved. The statutory recording data available to me exposes only the conveyancing text ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNOR: FURUHATA, MAKOTO") and the reel/frame; the correspondent attorney/firm field was not surfaced. I have deliberately not guessed a name. For reference only — and not a finding — SEC has historically appeared in litigation through firms including Oliff & Berridge, PLC, but that is prosecution/litigation counsel, not evidence of the recording correspondent here. Because there is only one link in this chain, the "repeat correspondent" signal cannot even be evaluated, let alone flagged.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer assignment of rights — a pre-filing employment/assignment filing, not an acquisition and not a sale. Note the timing: executed 2016-08-09, about 34 days before the 2016-09-12 US filing date, and recorded the same day the application was filed. This is routine corporate practice (obligation to assign arising from employment, papered up in connection with the filing), not a distressed or third-party event.
  • Note: SEC's own internal "Assigned to SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION / reassignment" entry in the legal-events table (2016-09-12) is the corresponding record of the same single event, not a second assignment.

If the Assignment Center returns no further hits for this patent number — that is correct and is itself the finding. No assignment out of SEC was ever executed or recorded.

Family note (for completeness, not part of the US chain): JP 6597099 B2 (same JP 2015-182058 priority) is likewise recorded as Expired – Fee Related in the legal-events data; CN 107024203 A is the third family member. No third-party acquirer appears in the JP or CN records surfaced.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10386186
    2015 : JP priority application filed Sep 15
    2016 : Assignment executed Aug 9
         : US application filed Sep 12
         : Assignment recorded same day
    2019 : US patent issued Aug 20
    2023 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only recorded conveyance is inventor→Seiko Epson (Reel 039701/0408). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain. The patent never left an operating company. There is no single-purpose Delaware or Texas LLC, no registered-agent service address, and no registered-agent-style correspondent to weigh.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon Patent Group, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg-linked entity. The record owner is Seiko Epson throughout. The inverse pattern is actually present and worth recording: SEC is a habitual NPE defendant — e.g. American Patents LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp., No. 4:21-cv-00718-ALM (E.D. Tex., filed 2021-09-15); K.Mizra LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp. (N.D. Cal./Delaware, Delaware LLC at 777 Brickell Ave., Miami — a patent-licensing vehicle taking assignments from Sharp); Baker Laser Technology, LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp., 2:24-cv-00924 (E.D. Tex., filed 2024-11-13); Flick Intelligence, LLC v. Seiko Epson Corp., 7:25-cv-00449 (W.D. Tex., filed 2025-10-03). SEC's posture in patent litigation has been defensive/declaratory (e.g. intervening in the Honeywell LCD campaign to protect its customers; SEC v. Giantplus Technology, D. Del. 1:11-cv-00296).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present (unevaluable). With a single-link chain there is no recurrence to measure, and the correspondent field itself was not retrievable. Recorded honestly as unevaluable rather than negative-by-assumption.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero consecutive assignments, let alone multiple hops through chained LLCs within 24 months. The chain is one step long and dates from 2016.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 10,386,186 was found in any of the searches run. There is no assignment to measure against a suit date, and the only assignment long predates issuance by nearly three years.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 proceeding by Seiko Epson is implicated. The patent was not sold in any proceeding; it was abandoned for fee non-payment by a solvent, still-operating owner.

7. Privateering — not present. There is no transfer to any third party at all, so there is no vehicle through which SEC could assert against competitors while keeping its hands clean. Notably, SEC let the patent die rather than monetize it or farm it out.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at non-payment of a maintenance fee — a different (and blunter) form of neutralization.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment)

The record contains exactly one recorded assignment — Reel 039701/0408, executed 2016-08-09 and recorded 2016-09-12, conveying rights from inventor Makoto Furuhata to Seiko Epson Corporation — which is the rubric's "only the original assignment" case. The absence of a chain is the substantive finding: there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC hops, no pre-litigation assignment, and no fire-sale anywhere in the record, and the named inventor was still filing Seiko Epson applications in 2025, so the departure pattern that often precedes a portfolio liquidation is affirmatively disproved. The patent was left to lapse on 2023-08-20 for unpaid maintenance fees by a solvent operating manufacturer, which is the opposite of an assertion-ready chain. Because the correspondent of record could not be retrieved and there is only one link, signals 3 and 5 are unevaluable rather than negatived — hence "insufficient data" rather than a clean operating-company non-assertion label.

Verify: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/patent/search?q=10386186 · https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10386186/en

Caveats: No litigation, SEC filing, or RPX/Unified asserter-directory entry connecting this specific patent number to any assignment or assertion campaign was found in the searches run. Where I could not retrieve a field (the 039701/0408 correspondent), I have said so rather than supplying a plausible-looking name.

I'll verify the patent record and its cited references against live sources before assembling the analysis.

Let me pull additional detail on the most claim-relevant cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,386,186 B2

1. Confirming the identifier (no auto-correction)

I searched for the number exactly as given. The record that resolves is:

Source note / limitation: The available search tool returned Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline and mirror-site content rather than a live USPTO PatentCenter or PatFT page. I therefore treat the full text of US 10,386,186 supplied with this task as authoritative and cross-checked individual references against Google Patents, FPO, patenthub and patents‑review.com retrievals. I did not locate, and am not asserting, any Office Action/PTAB record showing how the examiner applied each reference — the § 102 mapping below is my own analytical reading, not a quotation of an examiner's rejection.

2. The claims that must be met for § 102

Anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element as arranged. The operative independent claims are:

• Claim 1 — substrate; movable plate facing it; support frame continuously formed with the movable plate and completely surrounding it in plan view; elastically deformable beam connecting plate and frame; first regulating member continuously formed with the movable plate (monolithic body) that projects outward from the plate's peripheral edge; plate quadrangular; regulating member on a corner.
• Claim 9 — same as claim 1 but with the tapered width along the rotation axis.
• Claim 12 — same as claim 1 but with first and second movable plates (each on only its own beam) and a second regulating member between them.
• Dependents of note: 2 (taper), 3 (two plates + second regulator), 4 (second regulator on the substrate), 7/10/14 (beam has an internal slit along the rotation axis), 8/11/15 (movable plate has a cutout adjacent the beam‑frame connection, parallel to the slit), 5 (electronic device), 6 (movable object).

Two structural limitations drive the whole analysis: (i) the regulator is monolithic with, and projects from, the movable plate itself (not from the frame, mass, case or substrate), and (ii) the regulator sits at a corner of a quadrangular plate.

3. References of record

The granted patent's citation tables list 13 patent references (an 8‑item short list is a subset). Grouped by family:

A. The Conti Temic "rotation speed sensor" family — the Background reference

These three are one family. They supply the frame/plate/beam architecture but nothing that reads on the "first regulating member," so none is a § 102 reference for claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 or 12.

B. Seiko Epson's own earlier applications (the core § 102/§ 103 material)

C. Remaining cited references

4. § 102 mapping summary

5. Observations and caveats

1. Three of the four "closest" references are the patentee's own earlier Seiko Epson applications (#9, #12/#13, #10/#11) — consistent with this patent being an incremental improvement (adding a deflectable in‑plane regulator to the movable plate of a MEMS gyro/accelerometer) over the applicant's own prior line of filings.
2. The Background section identifies the Conti Temic document (JP‑T‑2008‑514968 / WO 2006/034706 — items #4–6) as the starting point; those references are cited because they establish the frame/plate/beam/electrode environment, not because they disclose the claimed regulator.
3. A separate "Family Cites Families (6)" table accompanies the record (JP 2004‑233088 A; JP 5350339 B2; JP 6338813 B2; ITTO20120855; JP 2014‑134481 A; JP WO2014/203896). Those are citations appearing in the family members (JP/CN), not in the US patent's own citation table, and I have not treated them as US‑of‑record citations. They are available for further diligence if needed.
4. Caution on § 102: Anticipation is a strict, single‑reference, all‑elements test, and the analysis above is based on the face of each reference as retrieved, not on a full element‑by‑element comparison of every drawing and paragraph. In particular, my conclusion that #12/#13 do not anticipate claim 1 hinges on the regulator there being a fixed‑side component rather than one "continuously formed with the movable plate." That is my reading; it should be verified against the full text and figures of US 2015/0013458 A1 before being relied upon.
5. Written‑description flag (non‑§ 102): The claims of record include beam‑slit and plate‑cutout limitations (claims 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15) that are not described in the body text supplied for US 10,386,186 (the specification describes solid torsion beams and rectangular/trapezoidal flap plates). I raise this only as an observation, since I do not have the complete as‑filed specification or prosecution history in front of me; it does not change the § 102 analysis, which is that no cited reference anticipates those claims.

Sources consulted: Google Patents full text of US 10,386,186 B2 (authoritative for this analysis); freepatentsonline.com/10386186.html; patents.google.com/patent/JP2011089822A/en; patents-review.com/a/20130192370; patenthub.cn entries for US 2015/013458 A1 and JP 2015‑017886 A; patentimages.googleapis.com copies of US 2015/0013458 A1 and US 9,244,092 B2.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior art actually listed on the patent page, then verify key references before reasoning about combinations.

Strong hit — let me verify the other cited references, especially the stopper-focused ones.

Now let me verify the remaining cited references, including the two I haven't yet characterized.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,386,186 B2 ("Physical quantity sensor, electronic device, and moving object")

Scope note: This is a technical § 103 analysis, not a legal opinion. I do not have the prosecution history (office actions, amendments, examiner's statement of reasons for allowance), so what follows is a reconstruction from the granted claim text, the specification, and the eight references listed in the "Citations" section of the patent page. I flag explicitly where I could not verify a reference's content.

1. Legal framework applied

Because the application was filed 2016‑09‑12 (JP priority 2015‑09‑15), the AIA version of § 102/§ 103 governs.

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope and content of the prior art, differences between the claims and the prior art, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination does no more than what the prior art teaches it would do, and there existed a design incentive, market pressure, or "finite number of identified, predictable solutions."
• MPEP § 2143 rationales relied on below: (A) known elements combined to yield predictable results; (C) known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement; (F) design incentives/market forces; (G) teachings in the references themselves.
• MPEP § 2144.04 — "design choice" / which of two cooperating parts carries a projection.

2. The prior art of record and what it actually discloses

Family cites not relied on below: JP2004233088A, JP5350339B2, JP6338813B2, ITTO20120855A1, JP2014134481A, JPWO2014203896A1.

3. The pivotal fact: the applicant's own admission

The '386 Background does not merely cite JP‑T‑2008‑514968 as a document — it describes that gyro sensor as known and having: a frame‑shaped mass portion, a movable plate disposed inside the mass portion, a beam portion connecting the movable plate and the frame, and an electrode facing the movable plate. It then states the problem verbatim:

"there is a concern that the movable plate is displaced in an in‑plane direction and the beam portion is damaged (generation of cracks, rupture, and the like) due to excessive warping, and the movable plate is damaged due to the movable plate colliding with the mass portion in a case where acceleration is applied to the gyro sensor in the in‑plane direction of the movable plate. That is, in the gyro sensor in JP‑T‑2008‑514968, there is a problem in which mechanical strength is lowered."

This is an admission that (i) the surrounding‑frame/beam/movable‑plate architecture was known, and (ii) the in‑plane‑displacement failure mode was a recognized problem in the field. Under MPEP § 2129 and KSR, that combination of admission + articulated problem is the strongest possible foundation for a § 103 rejection: the remaining question is only whether adding a monolithic in‑plane stop at the plate's corner was a known, predictable solution.

The record shows it was.

4. Element mapping for independent claim 1

No single reference appears to disclose every limitation, so § 102 anticipation is unlikely. Claim 1 is, however, squarely obvious.

Combination 1 (primary): Admitted prior art (JP‑T‑2008‑514968 / WO2006034706A1) + US20150013458A1

This is the cleanest rejection. The admitted gyro supplies the substrate/surrounding frame/beam/movable‑plate/monolithic‑silicon architecture. US20150013458A1 supplies the missing element — a stopper at the movable member's outer edge, preferably at a corner, regulating in‑plane rotation displacement, which is precisely the failure mode the '386 Background concedes was a known deficiency. The references are in the same field (capacitive MEMS inertial sensors), the combination requires no change to the transduction principle, and the result — reduced breakage of the movable member and its support part on excessive in‑plane displacement — is exactly what US20150013458A1 states its stopper achieves. This is MPEP § 2143(A)/(C).

Combination 2 (alternative/stronger on the "monolithic" element): US20130192370A1 + US20150013458A1

US20130192370A1 already shows a frame member around the oscillating member, with a protrusion formed as a unified body with the oscillating member at the plate's peripheral side face, with a curved (arc‑like) tip — the '386 spec expressly recites the same "curved convex surface" leading end for impact tolerance. US20150013458A1 then supplies the express in‑plane‑regulation function and the corner placement. Because US20130192370A1's protrusion is admittedly monolithic with the oscillating member, and US20150013458A1's stopper is a projection opposed to the member's outer edge, the only arguable difference is which of the two confronting bodies carries the projection — a classic design choice with predictable results (MPEP § 2144.04), especially since US20150013458A1 itself discloses the projection being provided on the movable member's own edge.

Combination 3 (for the "on the corner + projection shape + same potential" sub‑features): + US20130276536A1 and/or JP2011089822A

US20130276536A1 confirms the art recognized multiple stoppers of different orientations on a single MEMS die; JP2011089822A confirms monolithic, substrate‑formed convex stoppers were a known, cost‑driven design choice. Both reinforce expectation of success.

5. Claim‑by‑claim combinations

Claims 9 and 12 share claim 1's base limitations and add the taper (claim 9) or the twin‑plate/second regulator (claim 12). The same combinations above establish their base limitations.

Claim 2 (dependent on 1) and claim 9 — the taper. This is the weakest link in an obviousness case built only on the eight listed references. I could not verify a disclosure, in any reference I was able to read, of a movable plate whose width along the rotation axis tapers from a part directly adjacent the beam toward the outer edge. US20130276536A1 discusses only aspect ratio (App. Ex. 5: "the size of the movable electrode portion in the direction of the first axis may be greater than … in the direction of the second axis"), and US20130192370A1 describes a rectangular outer edge. A rejection would therefore have to rest on a KSR design‑incentive rationale — reducing mass and mass moment of inertia away from the torsion axis to raise resonant frequency and improve shock/clearance margin, which are recognized goals in resonant MEMS design — or on an additional reference outside the eight listed. Absent that, claims 2 and 9 have the best non‑obviousness posture of the set.

Claims 3 and 12 — first/second movable plate directly adjacent, plus a second regulating member between them. Obvious over the claim‑1 combinations in view of US20130276536A1. Motivation: the two plates (or their respective beams) sit directly adjacent inside the frame; the '386 Background itself identifies "damage due to contact of the first and second beam portions … with each other" as a failure mode, and US20130276536A1 teaches that the answer to in‑plane motion of a movable portion is to interpose a stopper. Placing a stopper in the gap between two adjacent plates is the same known technique applied to the same problem in the same device (MPEP § 2143(C)), and it involves no change in principle of operation.

Claims 4 and 13 — second regulating member provided on the substrate. Obvious. US20130276536A1 App. Ex. 7 discloses a second stopper portion arranged between the base body and the movable electrode portion; JP2011089822A discloses forming the convex stopper on the substrate as a monolithic structure and expressly criticizes the prior alternative of case‑mounted stoppers. Substrate‑mounting is thus taught as the preferred disposition in the art.

Claims 7, 10, 14 — beam having a slit therein extending along the rotation axis. I could not verify a slit‑in‑torsion‑beam disclosure in any listed reference I was able to read. Two observations: (i) the slit/cutout features are not described in the patent's description text as rendered (see caveat in §7); (ii) the fact that a slit limitation was added to all three independent‑claim families (7, 10, 14) is consistent with these features having been added during prosecution to secure allowance. If so, the slit (and the FIG‑8 cutout) is empirically where the prior art ran out. An obviousness rejection on claims 7/10/14 would require a new reference showing a slotted torsion beam, or an argument that splitting a torsion beam into parallel strips is a mere duplication of parts (MPEP § 2144.04) with predictable stiffness‑tuning results.

Claims 8, 11, 15 — cutout adjacent the beam‑to‑frame connection, parallel to the slit. Similarly unverified against the listed references. Same caveat.

Claims 5 and 6 — electronic device (display + housing) and movable object (movable body). Obvious. US20150013458A1, US20130276536A1 (App. Ex. 8), and US20130192370A1 (App. Ex. 11) each expressly claim/describe an electronic apparatus incorporating the sensor, and US20150013458A1 likewise a moving object. Combining a MEMS inertial sensor with a housing and display is the conventional, predictable use of the sensor (MPEP § 2143(A)); the '386 spec's own FIGS. 11–14 list these as routine applications.

6. Why a PHOSITA would have combined these references

1. Same field, same problem, same solution vocabulary. All the verified references are capacitive MEMS inertial sensors addressing shock‑induced breakage, stiction, and displacement overflow.
2. Same assignee. Three of the eight references (US20130192370A1, US20130276536A1, US20150013458A1) are Seiko Epson publications, and the '386 patent is Seiko Epson. A PHOSITA working on this platform would look directly to the assignee's own prior art; the references even share design idioms (same‑potential stopper to prevent sticking; projection‑shaped contact to convert surface contact to point contact; curved/arc tips).
3. The references supply the missing link with an explicit rationale. US20150013458A1 criticizes the prior art precisely because a projection that only regulates displacement in one direction fails when "acceleration is applied in a second direction crossing the first direction … and the movable member or the like may be broken," and solves it with an outer‑edge stopper regulating in‑plane rotation. That is a teaching, suggestion, or motivation to add the claimed in‑plane regulator to the admitted frame‑type gyro.
4. Predictable result / reasonable expectation of success. The stopper is formed in the same silicon structural layer by the same etch (US20130192370A1 App. Ex. 6; JP2011089822A). No new material, process step, or circuit is required. Adding a mechanical hard stop to a MEMS resonator does not alter its transduction physics.
5. KSR design incentives. Drop‑shock survival for consumer/automotive applications, avoidance of stiction (US20130192370A1 App. Ex. 2), and die miniaturization (JP2011089822A; US20130192370A1 App. Ex. 8, where a constant gap improves single‑etch manufacturability).

7. Caveats, confidence levels, and possible rebuttals

• Availability of US20150013458A1. It published 2015‑01‑15, only ~8 months before the 2015‑09‑15 priority date. As a § 102(a)(1) printed publication it falls in the grace‑period window; if the inventive entity differs from Furuhata's, § 102(b)(1)(A) would not except it (the § 102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exception applies only to § 102(a)(2) art). Its presence in the examiner‑cited list suggests it was treated as available art. This is worth confirming against the file wrapper.
• Verified vs. unverified. I read the text of US20150013458A1, US20130192370A1, US20130276536A1, and JP2011089822A. I did not verify JP2005283393A/US7019231B2, JP2010032345A, or JP2003101032A — my source lookups were exhausted — so I have deliberately made no mapping of claim elements to those three, even though the "stopper" titles of JP2010032345A/JP2011089822A make it likely the examiner relied on that pair for the stopper concept.
• Slit/cutout support. Claims 7–8, 10–11, and 14–15 recite a beam slit and a plate cutout that I could not locate in the description text as rendered. That may be an artifact of the auto‑extracted text; if it is not, written‑description support for those claims is a question worth raising independently of § 103.
• Claim construction risk. "Support frame … completely surrounding the movable plate in a plan view" versus "frame member disposed around the oscillating member" is a construction question; if "around" does not read as "completely surrounding," US20130192370A1 App. Ex. 8 moves from anticipation‑adjacent to a § 103 combination.
• Possible rebuttals. (i) No teaching away: JP2011089822A's criticism of multiple, case‑mounted stoppers cuts toward monolithic stoppers, not away from the claim. (ii) Secondary considerations: the '386 spec asserts "superior mechanical strength," but the record shows reduced breakage was the stated, expected result of the same stoppers in US20150013458A1 — nexus would be difficult to establish for that benefit. (iii) Unexpected results would more plausibly be argued for the beam slit and the tapering flap (resonant‑frequency/clearance behavior), which are precisely the features the prior art of record may not reach.

Bottom line. Claims 1, 3–6, 9, 12, and 13 are, on the record listed, strong candidates for a § 103 rejection — most cleanly over the admitted prior art of JP‑T‑2008‑514968/WO2006034706A1 in view of US20150013458A1, with US20130192370A1 supplying the monolithic peripheral protrusion and US20130276536A1 and JP2011089822A supplying plural and substrate‑formed stoppers. Claims 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, and 15 (taper, beam slit, cutout) are the features I could not map to the eight listed references and are where the validity fight would concentrate.