US 10451525

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 10451525, including any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to check for litigation and confirm bibliographic data.

US Patent 10,451,525 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: The bibliographic and claim data below are taken from the full patent text supplied in this task (Google Patents rendering of US10451525B2, fetched 2026‑09‑24), which I treat as authoritative. Searches of USPTO/CAFC materials for this specific number returned no litigation or appeal activity (see "Litigation / CAFC" below).

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1. Bibliographic data

Uncertainty flag: The "Individual" assignee entry and the adjusted‑expiration date are Google Patents' algorithmic display, which its own disclaimer states is not a legal conclusion. I have not independently verified current ownership or the exact lapse/reinstatement status through USPTO PatentCenter, and I did not retrieve an assignment record. Also note the patent's own specification contains internal inconsistencies (see §5), which suggests limited formal review of the text.

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2. Abstract (as issued)

"A wheel testing assembly for testing a wheel on a bicycle for a bend includes a clamping unit that is selectively attached to a frame of a bicycle. Moreover, the clamping unit is aligned with a wheel on the bicycle. A gauge is removably coupled to the clamping unit and the gauge is aligned with the wheel. The gauge has a distal end with respect to the clamping unit. The distal end frictionally engages the wheel at a point where the wheel is bent. In this way a roundness of the wheel is tested."

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3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — the broad "assembly" claim (2 elements):

1. A clamping unit that can be selectively attached to a bicycle frame so it lines up with a wheel; and
2. A gauge that is removably coupled to the clamping unit, aligns with the wheel, and has a distal end that frictionally contacts the wheel at the point where it is bent, so wheel roundness (trueness) can be tested.

This is the genus claim and is written very broadly — essentially "a clamp on the bike frame plus a contact probe positioned against the wheel."

Claim 16 — the full-detail "assembly" claim (the de facto commercial embodiment):
Claim 16 repeats claim 1 but spells out the entire mechanical stack described in the specification:

• Pair of straps with first/second ends, a first surface, and a concave arcuate portion, each with a first slot at the first end; the straps face each other (surfaces abutting) so their arcs form a circle around the frame (e.g., chain stay or front fork).
• First fastener through the straps between second end and arcuate portion; second fastener inserted into the first slot — both tightened to clamp the straps onto the bike.
• Peg extending from the strap surface, with a disk on the peg's distal end (disk perimeter overhangs the peg).
• Receiver with a bottom well (receives the peg, allowing rotation about a vertical axis) and a top second slot.
• Third fastener through the receiver engaging the peg (locks receiver orientation; abuts the disk to prevent the receiver slipping off). May be a set screw.
• Rod with upper/lower ends, a downward first tab on the lower end seated in the receiver's second slot; fourth fastener through receiver engaging the first tab so the rod is pivotally coupled and can be locked at a selected angle.
• Then the gauge: collar (inwardly/outwardly facing surfaces) with a second tab on its outer surface seated in a third slot in the rod's upper end; fifth fastener pivotally coupling and locking the collar at a selected angle.
• Threaded cylinder in the collar, its threaded outer surface engaged with the collar's inner surface so it moves axially; knob on the cylinder's second end for manual adjustment of the pin's standoff from the wheel.
• Pin extending from the cylinder's first end, its distal end frictionally contacting the wheel when the wheel rotates, thereby locating a bend — all without removing the wheel from the bicycle.

Net effect: claim 1 is a broad clamp-plus-gauge concept; claim 16 is a narrow, fully structural claim with four pivoting/adjustable joints (strap-to-frame clamp → receiver swivel → rod pivot → collar pivot) plus a threaded fine-adjust cylinder and contact pin.

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4. Dependent claim map (for completeness)

• Claims 2–6 (from claim 1/2): strap geometry, strap pairing/arc circle, first fastener, second fastener/first slot, and the peg + disk.
• Claim 7 (from claim 1): receiver with well and second slot.
• Claim 8 (from claim 7): rod with upper/lower ends, first tab, third slot.
• Claim 9 (from claim 5): fourth fastener pivotally coupling rod to receiver.
• Claims 10–15 (from claim 1/10/11/13): collar, second tab in rod's third slot, fifth fastener, threaded cylinder, knob, and pin.

Drafting defects worth flagging: Several claims recite elements without proper antecedent basis because they depend from the wrong parent. Examples: claim 7 depends on claim 1 but recites "said peg" (the peg is introduced only in claim 6, which depends on claim 2); claim 9 depends on claim 5 but recites "said receiver"; claim 11 depends on claim 10 but introduces "a rod … and a third slot"; claims 12 and 16 use "said coupler" when the element is a "collar." These are claim-clarity issues under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b), though they were evidently not raised to the point of preventing allowance.

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5. Specification notes

• The patent is directed to a bicycle-specific wheel-trueness / bend-detection tool (the examiner's cited art is classic bicycle truing/centering art — e.g., US 3,956,829 "Wheel truing aid for bicycles," US 4,000,639, US 5,201,782, US 5,243,765, US 5,539,988).
• Office action history is minimal: one non-final action mailed 2019‑01‑23, response entered 2019‑05‑04, and notice of allowance in June 2019 — i.e., a single round of prosecution.
• The specification contains numerical-reference errors typical of this drafting style (e.g., the knob is said to urge "the first end 22 of the cylinder"; the pin's distal end is variously "98" and "76"; the collar is called a "coupler"; "when the wheel 18 spin 96 s"). These do not change the claimed subject matter but signal the document's informal quality.

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6. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket search

I searched for Federal Circuit and district-court activity tied to this number (including the April 2026 CAFC weekly summary and general litigation queries). I found no CAFC appeal, IPR, or district-court case naming US 10,451,525. Given the patent's expired-fee status since October 2023 and its individual-inventor ownership, the absence of litigation is consistent with expectations — but I want to be explicit that this is a negative result from a limited search, not a certified docket clearance. If you need a definitive answer, a LexisNexis Docket Navigator / PACER / USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) API query on patent number 10,451,525 and application 15/611,968 should be run directly.

Bottom line: US 10,451,525 is a single-inventor (Everton Pellington), individually-owned mechanical patent for a bicycle-mounted wheel-trueness gauge, filed and issued on schedule in 2017/2019, with 16 claims (broad genus claim 1; detailed structural claim 16). It is expired for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2023‑10‑22, and no CAFC or litigation activity was located.

I'll research this. Let me search the litigation databases for the specific patent number.

Initial searches returned irrelevant results. Let me target the specific litigation databases.

Let me check the patent litigation-specific portals directly.

Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,451,525 ("Wheel testing assembly") was found. I could not identify any district court case, Federal Circuit appeal, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM), or ITC investigation in which US 10,451,525 is or was asserted as a patent‑in‑suit, nor any declaratory‑judgment action naming it.

Because no case exists, I cannot provide the requested plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case number/filing date/outcome fields — there is nothing to populate them with.

What I searched and what came back

Note: my research was cut off before I could finish additional planned checks of the Unified Patents litigation caselist, CourtListener/RECAP, and PACER, so this answer rests on the results above plus the patent record itself.

Important cautions about number-matching

• A red herring you should be aware of: some Chinese patent index pages (patenthub.cn, tmhub.cn) list "US10451525" alongside "Synthetic resin-made sliding bearing," US06918701B2. That is a mis-indexed application serial number (10/451,525) for a 2002 case — not US Patent 10,451,525 and not litigation. Do not treat it as relevant.
• Similarly, several litigation-search hits reference a different patent, US 8,132,515 ("the '515 Patent") in National Steel Car v. FreightCar America (N.D. Ill.) and a related PTAB petition. That is a different patent with a coincidentally similar number and is unrelated to US 10,451,525.

Corroborating context from the patent record

The absence of litigation is consistent with the following record facts (from the authoritative patent text):

• Ownership: Original/current assignee is an individual (inventor Everton Pellington) — no corporate owner with an active licensing/enforcement program.
• Technology: A bicycle‑wheel bend/roundness testing gauge (clamping straps to a bike frame + threaded cylinder/pin gauge). Narrow, inexpensive consumer/mechanic tool.
• Class: G01M17/013 (wheel testing) — not a hot litigation area.
• Status: Expired – Fee Related, maintenance fee lapse effective 2023‑10‑22 (expiration recorded 2037‑11‑25 as adjusted term). A patent that lapsed for non‑payment in 2023 was almost certainly never monetized through litigation.
• Prosecution: Straightforward — one non‑final action, response, then allowance in 2019. No indication of contested proceedings.

Recommendation / verification steps

To reach a properly exhaustive negative, you should confirm against the primary databases (which I was unable to finish querying):

1. Unified Patents Portal – litigation caselist search by patent number.
2. CourtListener / RECAP and PACER – docket search for "10,451,525" and for the assignee "Pellington."
3. USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) – IPR/PGR/CBM search for the patent number.
4. USPTO Patent Assignment / PatentCenter – to confirm no assignment (a transfer often precedes assertion).
5. ITC EDIS – Section 337 investigations.

Based on everything available, my assessment is that US 10,451,525 has never been litigated, but I flag that this conclusion is subject to the database checks above that I was unable to complete.

I'll start by checking whether any AIA trial proceedings exist for this patent, both in the canonical structured block and via web search.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to be thorough — checking the inventor's name, the patent number in alternate formats, and any litigation.

Let me do a final confirmation pass via CourtListener/Federal Circuit and any litigation involving this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 10,451,525 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (PTAB petition documents, PTAB E2E-hosted papers, Federal Circuit / CourtListener dockets, and litigation coverage) surfaced no proceeding naming this patent and no litigation asserting it. There is therefore no breakdown by status, no petitioner, no FWD, and no estoppel to compute. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual but not ambiguous: the patent has not been hardened by surviving IPRs — it has simply never been attacked, and separately (and more importantly) it is expired.

No proceeding-specific subsections follow, because no proceeding exists. I am not supplying any IPR/PGR/CBM numbers for this patent; there are none in the structured data and none I can ground in a public source. Any proceeding number presented for US 10,451,525 would be fabricated.

Evidence base and confidence. High confidence in the zero count. The structured ODP block states no AIA trial proceedings; targeted searches for the patent number, for the inventor/patent owner ("Everton Pellington"), and for the title ("Wheel testing assembly") returned only the patent document itself (Google Patents, Justia, Patents-Review, FreePatentsOnline) and unrelated coincidental uses of the string "10451525" (a Chinese trademark registration, an NSF award ID, an OCLC number). Two final verification queries (CourtListener docket search and litigation search) did not execute because I hit the tool step limit; that leaves a small, residual possibility of an unindexed or very recent filing, which I cannot rule out and which a defendant should re-check in PTAB E2E before relying on this.

Two threshold facts that dominate the analysis (from the structured record, not from any proceeding):

• The patent is expired. Grant date 2019-10-22; maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2023-06-12; LAPS — "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" recorded 2023-11-27, effective 2023-10-22 (first maintenance fee window). Google Patents status: "Expired - Fee Related." The nominal/adjusted expiration of 2037-11-25 is irrelevant — the enforceable term ended in 2023 for non-payment of the 3.5-year maintenance fee. (Revival would require a petition to the USPTO, e.g., an unintentional-delay revival under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378, subject to statutory timing limits — verify current USPTO practice if this matters to your case.)
• Never litigated, per the public record I could reach. Sole assignee is an Individual (the inventor), no corporate owner, no NPE/aggregator chain, and no district court or ITC case surfaced in which the patent is asserted. That is the most likely explanation for the absence of IPR activity: patents with no assertion campaign do not attract IPRs. The absence here is not a sign of a hardened patent.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: 16 of 16 claims UNTESTED at the PTAB — none canceled, none sustained, none narrowed. Claims 1 and 16 are the independents; claims 2–15 depend (with claim 16 reciting the full assembly in omnibus form). Because no FWD has ever issued, there is no claim-level adjudication to quote and I will not attribute one. The complete claim set as granted — including independent claim 1, which is very broad on its face (a clamping unit attachable to a bicycle frame, plus a gauge whose distal end frictionally engages the wheel at the bend) — stands unchallenged. Practically, its breadth is now academic: with the patent expired, there is no prospective injunctive relief, and damages exposure is limited to pre-expiration infringement within the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback from the filing of any complaint. A defendant facing a demand letter today should treat the demand as asserting at most historical damages for conduct before 2023-10-22 (and effectively before the 2023 lapse), not an ongoing royalty.

Estoppel landscape: essentially empty, which cuts both ways. With no IPR filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds no one — there is no petitioner, no privity chain, no real party in interest, and no "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised." That means a defendant is not foreclosed from any prior-art-based invalidity theory in district court. It also means the defendant gets no free kill: there is no prior PTAB cancellation to cite and no FWD to point the court to. Any invalidity case must be built from scratch in the district court, using the art of record plus new art. The art on the face of the patent is a reasonable starting set and is directly on point for wheel-truing/bend-detection devices: US 621,153 (Device for truing wheels, 1899-03-14), US 1,480,777, US 3,956,829 (Wheel truing aid for bicycles, Moxon, 1976-05-18), US 4,000,639 (Tool and method for trueing wheel rims, Postema, 1977-01-04), US 5,008,647, US 5,156,635, US 5,201,782 (Universally-adjustable axle-mountable tool for truing a bicycle wheel, Bartlett, 1993-04-13), US 5,243,765 (Portable truing system, 1993-09-14), US 5,539,988 (Bicycle rim centering device, Braun, 1996-07-30), and third-party-cited CN 203705103 U. Several of these are the classic "gauge mounted to the frame/fork, tip spaced from the rim to reveal a wobble" structure that independent claim 1 appears to cover — a strong § 102/§ 103 starting point. Note that only a subset carry the "cited by examiner" asterisk (US 1,480,777; US 5,008,647; US 5,156,635; CN 203705103 U), so the remainder were of record but not substantively applied — the classic posture in which § 325(d) is not a bar and art can be run affirmatively.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones are present. No repeat petitioner (no petitioner at all). No serial PTAB appeals by the patent owner — no CAFC docket identifiable as arising from this patent. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain; the assignee is the individual inventor and the patent lapsed unpaid, which is inconsistent with either an active assertion program or a funded defensive campaign.

A separate, non-PTAB vulnerability worth flagging for a defendant — the claim set is riddled with antecedent-basis and typographical defects that read like § 112(b) indefiniteness problems and would be fodder for an IPR or a district court § 112 challenge if the patent were still live. For example: claim 7 depends from claim 1 but recites "said peg," while the peg is only introduced in claim 6 (which depends from claim 2); claim 9 depends from claim 5 but recites "said receiver" and "said rod," introduced only in claims 7 and 8; claim 12 recites "said coupler" where the claim element is the collar; claim 4 recites "extending through said of said straps"; claim 3 recites "a frame of a the bicycle." None of this is adjudicated — and none of it matters much against an expired patent — but it tells you the patent was drafted to a low standard by a non-specialist, which is consistent with the absence of any assertion or PTAB history.

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Recommended next steps

1. Re-verify the zero count yourself before relying on it. Search PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) by patent number, and confirm via the ODP API. My final two confirmation queries were cut off by a tool limit, so treat "no PTAB activity" as high-confidence but independently checkable. If a proceeding does surface, revisit § 315(e)(2) estoppel immediately — a prior petitioner and its privies may already be barred, which can be useful to you if you are in privity with them, or irrelevant if you are not.
2. Lead with expiration, not invalidity. The single most valuable fact for a defendant is the 2023-11-27 lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees (effective 2023-10-22). Demand letters on this patent that seek ongoing royalties or threaten injunctive relief are baseless as to post-lapse conduct. Ask the patent owner in writing for (a) proof of current fee status and any revival petition, and (b) the specific pre-2023-10-22 acts and dates they contend infringe. If revival has been attempted, examine whether it complied with 35 U.S.C. § 41 and 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 — a defective or time-barred revival is itself a complete defense.
3. If you must litigate (historical damages only), build the invalidity case in district court, not the PTAB. Because the patent has lapsed, an IPR offers little: no prospective relief to eliminate, and the patent owner cannot amend claims — but the cost/benefit rarely justifies filing. Instead, run the wheel-truing art of record (US 3,956,829; US 4,000,639; US 5,201,782; US 5,243,765; US 5,539,988; US 621,153) plus any pre-2016/2017 bicycle truing-stand products as § 102/§ 103 art, and pair it with the § 112(b) antecedent-basis defects identified above on claims 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, and 12.
4. No estoppel will constrain you, but also no PTAB record will help you — there is no FWD to cite and no claim to quote as canceled. Do not represent to a court or adversary that any claim of US 10,451,525 has been invalidated or canceled; it has not. All 16 claims remain as granted, and the only thing that has changed is that the patent is no longer in force.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,451,525, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing sources.

Important scope note up front

I was able to corroborate the ownership picture from the patent record and third-party indexes, but I could not complete a live, field-by-field query of the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) for this patent — the tool budget for this task was exhausted first. Everything below is grounded in the authoritative patent text supplied for this analysis (Google Patents rendering of US10451525B2, fetched 2026‑09‑24) plus the third-party indexes that mirror the same Assignment Center data (Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Google Patents' "Assignee" and "Applications Claiming Priority" tables). Where a specific Assignment Center field (reel/frame, correspondent) is not derivable from those sources, I say so rather than infer it.

Headline finding: the Assignment Center record for this patent is, on all available evidence, empty. There is no recorded assignment.

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Inventors

• Everton Pellington is the only named inventor on US 10,451,525 (and on the pre-grant publication US 2018/0348089 A1). The case is a single-inventor case, not a team invention.
• The patent text supplied for this analysis does not include the front-page "Assignee" employment field, a "Government Interest" statement, or a "Correspondent" block, so there is no basis in the record to identify an employer relationship at filing. Nothing in the specification (which is written in the first-person singular style common to solo-drafted filings: "a new testing device for testing a wheel on a bicycle for a bend") suggests a corporate R&D program or an employer-owned invention.
• Unusual patterns: None observable. The "all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing" pattern (a fire-sale precursor) is structurally inapplicable here — there was no original corporate assignee and only one inventor. There is no multi-inventor team whose departure pattern could be tracked.
• I did not find a second, related patent or application by this inventor in the same family; the Google Patents "Family" table shows Family ID 64460240 with exactly one application (US 15/611,968).

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Original assignee

There is no corporate original assignee. The entity on the face of the issued patent is listed as "Individual" — i.e., the inventor, Everton Pellington, held the rights directly. Google Patents records both:

• Original Assignee: Individual
• Current Assignee: Individual

This "Individual" designation is Google Patents' rendering of the situation where the applicant is the inventor and no assignment of record exists at filing or since. It is consistent with a sole inventor filing under 35 U.S.C. § 111(a) as the applicant, with a § 1.63 inventor declaration and no assignment to a company ever executed or recorded.

• Did the assignee ship a product embodying the claims? Not determinable from the patent or assignment record. There is no evidence of a commercial product — no product mark, no corporate owner, no trademark or website tied to the patent surfaced in my searches. The invention (a strap-on bicycle-frame clamp with a threaded contact-pin gauge for finding a wheel bend) reads as a garage/independent-inventor tool concept, not a product line of a named company.
• Primary line of business of the assignee: N/A — the assignee is a natural person, not a business.
• Current status: No corporate entity to be operating, acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. The patent itself is Expired – Fee Related: maintenance-fee lapse recorded 2023‑11‑27, "Patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362," with the effective lapse date 2023‑10‑22 (per the Google Patents legal-events table in the supplied text). The lapse is against a microentity-status owner, which is consistent with a solo inventor who did not commercialize or monetize the patent and elected not to pay the ~$1,050 (microentity) 3.5-year maintenance fee. That is itself a strong corroborating signal that no monetization vehicle ever existed behind this patent.

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Assignment timeline

There are no recorded assignments for US 10,451,525.

The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov, mirrored at assignment.uspto.gov) reflects, on all available evidence, no assignment records — no Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction conveyance — naming application 15/611,968 or patent 10,451,525.

Corroborating indicators:

• Google Patents lists the current assignee as "Individual" and reports no assignment events in its legal-events table; the only legal events recorded are prosecution events (non-final action mailed 2019‑01‑23; response entered 2019‑05‑04; notices of allowance mid‑2019; "PATENTED CASE" 2019‑10‑02) and the maintenance-fee lapse events (2023‑06‑12 reminder; 2023‑11‑27 LAPS / STCH; 2023‑12‑19 lapse effective 2023‑10‑22).
• The "Applications Claiming Priority" and "Family Applications" tables show only the single originating application, with no reissue, no continuation, and no successor-owner entity attached.
• Third-party mirrors (Justia patent page for 10451525; FreePatentsOnline y2018/0348089) display the same inventor-owned posture and no assignee transfer entries.

Because the Assignment Center has no records for this patent, I stop the reel/frame enumeration here, per the task instruction. I do not have, and will not fabricate, a reel/frame number, execution date, conveyance type, or correspondent for a record that does not exist.

What this absence means (the actual finding): Under USPTO practice, a patent with no recorded assignment is presumed to be held of record by the original applicant of record. Here that is Everton Pellington, individually. There is no ownership chain to reconstruct beyond the inventor's original, unassigned rights — no corporate original assignee, no intermediate LLC, no asserter, no defensive aggregator, and no security interest.

Correspondent note: I could not determine the correspondent/attorney of record for any recording (there is no recording), nor from the front-page data supplied. I will not guess a firm name. If you need the prosecution correspondent — the attorney or agent who signed the papers during 2018–2019 prosecution — that is a PEDS/ODP "Attorney/Agent" field query, not an Assignment Center query, and it should be pulled directly from USPTO Patent Center for application 15/611,968.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10451525
    2017 : Filed by Everton Pellington as sole inventor
         : No assignment executed at filing
    2018 : Pre-grant publication US 2018 0348089 A1
    2019 : Patent granted 22 October
         : Still inventor owned with no assignment of record
    2023 : Maintenance fee lapse effective 22 October
         : Patent expired for nonpayment

(Note on parseability: em dashes and the commas that would normally separate the publication number and the date have been removed from event text; the year labels are the only delimiters.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Aggregate: 0 of 8 signals present.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

Justification: The record shows no Assignment Center entries at all — only the inventor's original, unassigned ownership (Everton Pellington, listed as assignee "Individual" on both the original and current assignee lines), followed by the maintenance-fee lapse recorded 2023‑11‑27 / effective 2023‑10‑22 under 37 CFR 1.362. There are no reel/frame entries to cite because none exist, and the task says not to fabricate them. This is the "only the original ownership" variant of the insufficient-data verdict — and, affirmatively, every one of the eight NPE-pattern signals tests negative, so while the record is thin, it is thin in a way that excludes rather than supports an NPE characterization: no shell transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-suit transfer, and no litigation anywhere on the patent. The one economically meaningful event in the chain is abandonment for non-payment by a microentity owner — the opposite of the monetization behavior NPE tracking is designed to catch. I could not name a repeat-player attorney or correspondent because there is no recording that names one.

Verification link (recommended, since I could not complete the live query): run the patent number 10451525 (and separately the application number 15/611,968) through the USPTO Assignment Center at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the older UI at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), property type "Patents," and confirm a null result. For the prosecution correspondent (not an assignment field), query USPTO Patent Center / ODP for application 15/611,968.

I'll verify the prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,451,525 against primary sources before analyzing them.

Let me verify the remaining references, including the two older US patents, the wireless monitor reference, and the Chinese utility model.

I hit the search-step limit mid-verification, so I completed the confirmed references and will flag the ones I could not independently open. The citation list itself is taken from the authoritative patent text you supplied.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,451,525 B2 ("Wheel testing assembly")

0. Legal framework (why this matters)

US 10,451,525 was filed 2017-06-02 with no earlier priority claim, so it is a post-AIA application and the prior-art test is 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (publicly available before the effective filing date) and § 102(a)(2) (earlier-filed US patents/applications by another). Every reference on the face of the patent predates 2017 by decades, so all ten are prior art — the only open question is which claims each one anticipates.

Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference to disclose every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Combinations of two or more references can only support a § 103 obviousness challenge, not § 102. That distinction controls the answer below, because the broad independent claim 1 and the detailed independent claim 16 must be treated very differently.

Claim 1 (broad) = 3 elements:

• 1a clamping unit selectively attachable to a bicycle frame (aligned with the wheel);
• 1b a gauge removably coupled to the clamping unit, aligned with the wheel;
• 1c the gauge's distal end frictionally engaging the wheel where it is bent, to test wheel roundness.

Claim 16 (narrow) = claim 1 + the entire mechanical stack: pair of straps (concave arcuate portions + first slot), first/second fasteners, peg, disk, receiver (well + second slot), third fastener, rod (first tab + third slot), fourth fastener, and a gauge comprising a collar (second tab), fifth fastener, threaded cylinder, knob, and pin.

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1. Reference-by-reference

Verification legend: ✅ = description confirmed against the patent/PDF via live search. ⚠️ = content not independently retrieved in this session (description inferred from title/date only) — treat as provisional.

US 621,153 — "Device for truing wheels" — pub. 1899-03-14 ⚠️

• Type: Very early US patent on wheel truing. No inventor/assignee is given in the supplied record.
• Description (provisional): An 1899-era wheel-truing device. Not verified; by title and era it is a truing apparatus rather than a bicycle-frame-mounted bend gauge.
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation of claims 1 or 16. Nothing on the record suggests a frame-clamp plus a removably coupled gauge whose tip engages a flexing wheel. Field/background only.

US 1,480,777 — Meiselbach, "Method and means for building and testing tubular frames" — filed 1920-04-26, pub. 1924-01-15 — (examiner-cited) ⚠️

• Description (provisional): A method/apparatus for testing tubular frames (alignment/true of a bicycle-type frame) — i.e., frame gauging, not wheel testing. (Consistent with contemporaneous bicycle-frame test-table art.)
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation. It does not disclose testing a wheel for a bend, nor a gauge removably coupled to a clamp on the frame with a wheel-contacting distal end. Background/relevance only.

US 3,956,829 — Moxon, "Wheel truing aid for bicycles" — filed 1974-10-21, pub. 1976-05-18 ✅

• Description (confirmed): A base (10) with clips (11, 12) clamped to the bicycle fork or seat stay; a support member pivotally attached to the base and radially disposed toward the wheel; an adjustable straightedge reference member positioned toward/against the wheel rim. The thin-gauge straightedge gives visual and aural indication of rim contact, and is flexible so it is displaced on wheel contact, letting the user evaluate an out-of-true condition.
• § 102 mapping:
  • Claim 1 — potential anticipation (strong). Elements 1a (clips attach to fork/seat stay, i.e., frame), 1b (adjustable reference member mounted on the base and disposed toward the wheel), and 1c (reference edge contacts/moves against the rim when the wheel turns, revealing a bend) are all present in substance.
  • Weakness to note: the gauge is pivotally attached rather than expressly "removably coupled," and the claim's "gauge" reads on a straightedge only broadly. If "removably coupled" is construed strictly, Moxon supports § 103 rather than § 102.
  • Claim 16 — no anticipation. Moxon uses clips, not the claimed pair of concave-arcuate straps with slots, and lacks the peg/disk/receiver/rod/collar/threaded-cylinder/pin stack.

US 4,000,639 — Postema, "Tool and method for trueing wheel rims" — filed 1975-04-08, pub. 1977-01-04 ✅

• Description (confirmed): A rim repair/bending tool: a support bracket with lateral rim-engaging arms, a threaded attaching rod and wing nut (60) that draws a bending member radially outward to bend a damaged rim back to true; works with or without the tire.
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation of claims 1 or 16. It is a bending/repair tool that mounts on the rim itself, not a frame-mounted testing gauge, and it lacks a "gauge removably coupled to a clamping unit." Relevance: its threaded rod + nut adjuster is analogous to the claimed threaded cylinder 88 + knob 94 (claims 13–14) and is a § 103 consideration.

US 5,008,647 — Orleander S.A., "Wireless bicycle wheel monitor system" — filed 1989-02-06, pub. 1991-04-16 — (examiner-cited) ⚠️

• Description (provisional): A wireless electronic bicycle wheel-monitoring system (wheel-mounted sensor/transmitter for speed/rotation), not a mechanical bend gauge.
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation. Different purpose (electronic monitoring vs. mechanical bend/roundness testing); no frame-mounted clamp + contacting gauge. Background only.

US 5,156,635 — Snow Jr., "Bicycle wheel straightener" — filed 1991-11-12, pub. 1992-10-20 — (examiner-cited) ⚠️

• Description (provisional): A tool for straightening (bending back) a bicycle wheel — a repair tool.
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation. A straightening tool is the opposite function (deformation, not detection) and does not disclose a frame-mounted gauge frictionally engaging the wheel to test roundness. Background only.

US 5,201,782 — Bartlett, "Universally-adjustable axle-mountable tool for truing a bicycle wheel" — filed 1992-05-26, pub. 1993-04-13 ✅

• Description (confirmed): At least three elongated, progressively-twisted segments pivotally connected and clamped by threaded stems + knobs, erectable from a nested storage condition to an extended operational condition. One outer end has a notch that mounts to the wheel AXLE; the opposite end has a protruding "indicator ear" with a straight edge used to visually gauge the distance to the tire/rim.
• § 102 mapping:
  • Claim 1 — no anticipation. The device mounts to the wheel axle, not to a "frame of a bicycle," so element 1a is missing.
  • Claim 16 — no anticipation, but this is the most structurally relevant reference to claim 16's adjustable architecture: multi-joint pivot connections locked by clamping mechanisms, internally/externally threaded stems, and knobs parallel the claimed third/fourth/fifth fasteners and the threaded cylinder + knob. It lacks the straps, peg, disk, receiver well/slot, rod tab/slot, collar, and contacting pin. Strong § 103 reference for the pivoting/threaded elements.

US 5,243,765 — Lynch & Friedman, "Portable truing system" — filed 1992-06-26, pub. 1993-09-14 ✅

• Description (confirmed): A body attached by straps (upper 50 / lower 70) to a structural member of the bicycle (fork/frame); a body-carried indicator screw (100) with an adjustment head (106, i.e., a knob) and a contacting tip (104) that is advanced/retracted until it touches the rim. The wheel is rotated, and variations in the gap between the rim and the contacting tip reveal out-of-true areas; claimed/described method includes fastening the system to the frame, aligning the indicator with the rim, and adjusting the indicator to contact the rim.
• § 102 mapping:
  • Claim 1 — strongest single-reference anticipation candidate. 1a (body strapped to the fork/frame structural member), 1b (movable indicator carried by/relative to the body, aligned with the rim), and 1c (tip contacts the rim; rotating the wheel exposes the bend to test trueness/roundness) are all disclosed.
  • Dependent/claim-16-adjacent elements: the straps map to claims 2–3/5 (strap attachment), and the threaded indicator screw + adjustment head (knob) + contacting tip map closely to claims 13–15 (threaded cylinder + knob + pin). Its use of straps is especially notable because the '525 clamping unit is itself strap-based.
  • Claim 16 — no anticipation. It lacks the specific structural combination (concave-arcuate strap pair with first slot; peg; disk; receiver with well + second slot; rod with first tab + third slot; collar with second tab; etc.).

US 5,539,988 — Braun, "Bicycle rim centering device" — filed 1993-06-22, pub. 1996-07-30 ✅

• Description (confirmed): A mounting assembly (two clamp arms with V-shaped jaws + draw rod/tightening screw) fixed to the frame or fork; a pivot arm (two parts clamped by a clamp screw) connected by ball joints at one end to the mounting assembly and at the other end to a dial-gauge holder; the dial gauge's sensor probe is brought into contact with the rim. FIG. 2 expressly addresses out-of-round (diameter) correction.
• § 102 mapping:
  • Claim 1 — strong single-reference anticipation candidate, arguably the best. 1a (clamp assembly on the fork/frame), 1b (a dial gauge — literally a "gauge" — mounted to the clamp assembly via the pivot arm), and 1c (probe frictionally contacting the rim to measure deviation/out-of-round) are all disclosed.
  • Claim 16 — no anticipation, but its pivot arm + ball joints + clamp screw parallel the claimed pivotally-coupled joints locked by fasteners (claims 7–12), making it a good § 103 reference.

CN 203,705,103 U — 见诚自行车（太仓）有限公司 / Jiancheng Bicycle (Taicang) Co., Ltd., "Bicycle aluminum rim jointing force testing fixture" — filed 2014-01-23, pub. 2014-07-09 — (examiner-cited) ⚠️

• Description (provisional): A fixture for testing rim jointing force (the strength/quality of an aluminum rim's joint), not for detecting wheel bends.
• § 102 mapping: No anticipation of claims 1 or 16. Different test purpose, and it is a rim-holding fixture rather than a bicycle-frame-mountable bend gauge. Background only. (Most recent reference; still ~3 years pre-filing, so it is § 102(a)(1) art.)

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2. Summary matrix — which claim each reference potentially anticipates under § 102

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3. Bottom line — most relevant prior art

• For broad independent claim 1: the closest § 102 art is US 5,243,765 (Lynch & Friedman) and US 5,539,988 (Braun), with US 3,956,829 (Moxon) as a secondary candidate. Each independently discloses the core concept: a clamp/attachment placed on the bicycle frame or fork, aligned with the wheel, carrying a movable gauge whose tip contactingly engages the rim so that rotating the wheel exposes a bend/out-of-round. Because claim 1 is drafted at such a high level of generality (essentially "clamp on the bike + a contacting probe"), it sits close to — and arguably reads on — this 1970s–1990s art. That overlap is a genuine validity exposure for claim 1, not just a novelty-informational note.
• For detailed independent claim 16: no single reference anticipates. The reference set is best used in combination (§ 103): US 5,243,765 (straps + threaded screw/knob + contacting tip) in view of US 5,201,782 and/or US 5,539,988 (multi-joint pivoting + threaded stems + clamps) and US 3,956,829 (frame-mounted adjustable reference contacting the rim). The specification's other structural idiosyncrasies (peg + disk captured in a receiver well; tab-in-slot pivots) are not shown by any of the ten references.
• Non-anticipatory references (US 1,480,777; US 5,008,647; US 5,156,635; US 4,000,639; CN 203,705,103 U; US 621,153) serve as background/supporting art — several of the examiner-cited ones (frame testing, wireless wheel monitoring, wheel straightening, rim-joint force) are directed to different problems and do not touch claims 1 or 16.

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4. Caveats you should carry forward

1. Verification coverage: I confirmed the substance of US 3,956,829, US 4,000,639, US 5,201,782, US 5,243,765 and US 5,539,988. I could not open US 621,153, US 1,480,777, US 5,008,647, US 5,156,635 and CN 203,705,103 U before the search limit; for those ⚠️ items the descriptions are inferred from title, date and class, and their § 102 mapping should be treated as provisional pending a direct check of the full documents.
2. Statutory framing: All ten are § 102(a)(1) art (patents/printed publications dated well before 2017-06-02); the US patents are also § 102(a)(2) art. No reference is subject to a § 102(b)(1)/(b)(2) exception on the record.
3. Claim-clarity overlay: The '525 claims have antecedent-basis defects (e.g., claim 7 recites "said peg" though the peg appears only in claim 6; claim 9 recites "said receiver"; claims 12/16 say "said coupler" for the collar). These matter to how broadly claim 1's "removably coupled" and "frictionally engages" are construed — and therefore to how strongly Lynch & Friedman / Braun / Moxon read on claim 1 — and should be factored into any invalidity or infringement posture.
4. I did not auto-correct any identifier. The reference numbers above are reproduced exactly as they appear in the patent's citation list.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the cited prior art by verifying what each reference actually discloses.

Now let me check the remaining cited references for their disclosures.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,451,525 ("Wheel testing assembly") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Sourcing note / scope. This analysis builds on the claim map in §3–4 of the previously generated summary and does not repeat it. It uses (a) the authoritative full patent text supplied in this task and (b) the ten references in the patent's own Citations (10) table — those are the references I treat as "the Prior Art section of this page." I verified the disclosure of five of them by retrieving their texts (Moxon '829, Bartlett '782, Lynch '765, Braun '988, Postema '639); for the other five I could retrieve only bibliographic data/titles, and I flag that expressly below. I did not treat Google Patents' "Similar Documents" list (e.g., US 10,759,041 "Portable workbench assembly," 2020) as prior art — those are algorithmic similarity hits, most post-date the 2017-06-02 critical date and cannot be § 102 art.

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1. Legal framework and analytical approach

Obviousness is judged on the four Graham v. John Deere factual inquiries: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) secondary considerations. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), abolished any rigid teaching–suggestion–motivation requirement and holds that a claimed combination of known elements is obvious where the combination does no more than yield predictable results, where a known technique is used to improve a similar device in the same way, or where the improvement is a matter of design incentive, market pressure, or one of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions. The seven MPEP 2143 rationales are applied below.

Because all ten references are of record on the face of the patent, this analysis is directly reusable in a § 282(b) invalidity defense, a reexam request, or (notwithstanding lapse) any future validity dispute. See KSR, 550 U.S. at 421 ("if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious").

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (Graham factor 3)

The claimed subject matter is a simple, hand-operated mechanical gauge: two clamp straps, four threaded fasteners/pivots, a threaded screw, a knob, and a contact pin. There is no electronics, no materials science, no control theory. A reasonable POSITA definition — and the one most favorable to the patentee's breadth — is:

a person with at least a two-year vocational/technical certificate in mechanics or machining, or 2–3 years of bicycle-mechanic or machinist experience, familiar with bicycle frames/forks, wheel-truing practice, and standard hardware (bolted clamp joints, set screws, threaded fine-adjust screws, ball/slot pivots).

Under either a "bicycle mechanic" or a "mechanical engineer" framing, the level is low, which expands the universe of analogous prior art and makes the asserted design differences (pivots instead of ball joints, a pin instead of a dial-gauge probe) correspondingly less persuasive.

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3. Ground of rejection #1 — Claim 1 is anticipated by, or at minimum obvious over, US 5,243,765 (Lynch & Friedman)

This is the most significant ground and, in my view, the strongest. US 5,243,765 ("Portable truing system," Lynch & Friedman, filed 1992-06-26, issued 1993-09-14) was before the examiner but appears in the citation table without the examiner asterisk, suggesting it was an applicant IDS reference that may not have been substantively applied.

Element-by-element mapping to claim 1:

Conclusion: every element of claim 1, arranged as claimed, is disclosed in Lynch '765. A § 102 rejection appears available if "wheel" is read (as the patent's own specification does — the pin "frictionally engages … the wheel," spec. ¶ in-use section) to include the wheel's rim. If the examiner/patentee were to argue that claim 1's "wheel" excludes the rim, the same mapping establishes § 103 obviousness (the difference, if any, is a nomenclature difference with no structural consequence).

Reference: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b1/c8/92/c41e6646e8e60b/US5243765.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5243765

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4. Ground of rejection #2 — Claim 1 obvious over Moxon '829 alone or in view of Lynch '765

US 3,956,829 (Moxon, "Wheel truing aid for bicycles") discloses:

• a base 10 with clips 11/12 "for clamped attachment to the bicycle fork or seat stay," each clip of unlike curvature for different bicycle components, with oblong slots 13/14 receiving "fastener elements 15 and 16 … and nut elements 17" (this is the claimed strap/fastener/slot structure in embryonic form);
• a support member "pivotally attached to said base intermediate the base ends" and positioned "into radial relationship with the wheel axis";
• "an adjustable straightedge reference member … adjustably mounted on said right angular extension of said support member for positioning toward or away from a wheel rim," providing "both visual and aural indication of rim proximity during wheel rotation."

Claim 1's two elements (frame-attachable clamp aligned with the wheel + an adjustable reference/gauge element ending in a point that contacts the wheel where it deviates) are thus disclosed or rendered obvious by Moxon. The only meaningful gap is the express word "removably," which is met by Lynch '765 and is in any event a functional word covering any detachable coupling.

Motivation to combine (Moxon + Lynch): both references are in the identical field (bicycle wheel trueness gauges that temporarily mount to the bicycle), address the identical problem (detect a bend/out-of-true condition without removing the wheel), and cite each other's art — Lynch's own "Prior Art" section lists Moxon, U.S. Pat. No. 3,956,829, as a relevant reference. That is explicit, textual evidence of a suggestion to look to Moxon.

References: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3956829 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/3956829

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5. Ground of rejection #3 — Claim 16 obvious over Braun '988 + Bartlett '782 + Lynch '765 + Moxon '829, each optionally in further view of Postema '639 and the Meiselbach '487 / Schmidt '153 tubular-frame gauges

Claim 16 is a closed recitation of the full mechanical stack. Every element corresponds to known structure in the same field:

5.1 The frame clamp: "pair of straps, arcuate portion, first slot, first/second fasteners"

A two-piece, slot-and-bolt clamp collar for clamping around a round tube is, independently, one of the most ubiquitous hardware items in existence (the split "P-clamp"/saddle clamp). The patent itself does not assert anything surprising about it.

5.2 The peg/disk and the receiver: "peg with disk, receiver with well + slot, third fastener (set screw), rotatable about a vertical axis"

• Braun '988 discloses a ball pin (30) with a ball-shaped end mounted on the clamp arm, and a dial gauge holder (50) with its own ball pin (60), connected by a pivot arm (33) "comprised of two parts (33a,b), said two parts being urged together by means of a clamp screw (35)," the parts "provided with bore holes for receiving said ball-shaped ends… to form ball joints (30, 60, 80)." That is: a post with an enlarged head seated in a well, held by a fastener that frictionally engages the head, permitting rotation/orientation about an axis and locking at a selected orientation. This reads on claims 6–7 and 9's functional core.
• Bartlett '782 claims 4/12: "each coupling member includes an elongated externally-threaded stem… and a head… being larger in diameter than said stem and said hole so as to abut against said one opposite end portion." That is literally the claimed peg with a disk whose perimeter edge extends beyond the peg, functioning as a retaining shoulder.
• A set screw (claim 16's "third fastener") for locking a stud in a bore is elementary mechanical hardware; MPEP 2144.04 / In re Kuhle, 526 F.2d 553 (CCPA 1975) (design choice among known alternatives with no unexpected result).

5.3 The articulating, angle-lockable arm: "rod with first tab in second slot + fourth fastener; collar with second tab in third slot + fifth fastener"

• Bartlett '782 is squarely on point: "releasably adjustable means for pivotally connecting and clamping said segments to one another so as to permit articulating of said segments about a pair of spaced-apart transversely-extending axes," where "each of said releasably adjustable clamping mechanisms can be selectively released and retightened to adjustably pivot the… segments relative to one another… in order to arrange them in a stationary positional relationship." Claims 4–5 add the threaded stem + knob clamping structure. That is exactly the "pivot, then lock at a selected angle" functionality of claims 8, 9, 11 and 12, in the same field, solving the same problem (get a reference point to any desired stationary position adjacent the tire/rim).
• Moxon '829 supplies the same teaching more simply: "means pivotally attaching the opposite end of the support member to said base… to permit positioning of the support member into radial relationship with the wheel axis."
• The substitution of a tab-and-slot (tongue-and-fork) pivot for Braun's ball joint or Bartlett's bolted planar joints is a mere substitution of one known pivot type for another, achieving the identical result; the "second slot"/"third slot" geometry is a design choice. MPEP 2144.04; MPEP 2143.01(VI).

5.4 The fine-adjust gauge: "threaded cylinder in collar, knob on second end, pin with distal end"

• Lynch '765 discloses this almost verbatim: arm 90 comprises "an indicator positioning means, typically a threaded passage 96. Threaded passage 96 coacts with and positions indicator means, typically indicator screw 100… comprising a threaded shank 102, a contacting tip 104, and an adjustment head 106. One may use the adjustment head 106 to advance or retract the contacting tip 104 with respect to arm 90," and "a slotted adjustment head, a knurled knob adjustment head, a thumbscrew adjustment head, or the like, can be used so that the indicator screw can be manually adjusted by the user." The claimed "collar with an inwardly facing threaded surface" is the functional equivalent of Lynch's arm with a threaded bore; the claimed "knob" is Lynch's knurled-knob/thumbscrew adjustment head; the claimed "pin … spaced a selected distance from the wheel" is Lynch's advancing/retracting contacting tip.
• Postema '639 corroborates the threaded-screw-and-nut adjustment in a bicycle-rim tool: "a threaded nut seated against said central portion and threadedly receiving said threaded attaching rod for advancing said bending member." Postema also confirms the field's practice of working on a rim "either with or without tires," i.e., without wheel removal.
• Moxon '829 supplies the contact-member-plus-yieldable-support concept.

5.5 The remaining cited art (corroborating, low-weight)

I verified only titles/bibliographic data for these; treat them as corroborating the state of the art rather than as primary teaching references:

• US 621,153 (Schmidt, 1899), "Device for truing wheels" — the earliest bicycle wheel-truing device in the citation table (it is cited as "621,153 3/1899 Schmidt" in the Lynch '765 prior-art list).
• US 1,480,777 (Meiselbach, 1924), "Method and means for building and testing tubular frames" — examiner-cited; the title indicates gauging/aligning tubular frames, i.e., prior art on clamping a gauge to a tubular bicycle frame.
• US 5,156,635 (Snow, "Bicycle wheel straightener") — examiner-cited; a wheel-straightening (rim-deforming) tool, analogous to Postema '639.
• US 5,008,647 (Orleander S.A., "Wireless bicycle wheel monitor system") — examiner-cited; directed to wheel-mounted sensing/telemetry, only tangentially relevant (it shows that mounting a sensing element at the bicycle wheel was a known expedient, but I would not rely on it).
• CN 203705103 U (2014), "Bicycle aluminum rim jointing force testing fixture" — examiner-cited; a fixture for testing a bicycle rim, showing a clamping fixture applied to a bicycle rim. Notably it is the only post-2000 reference of record, which underscores how sparse and how old the art in this field is.

Caution on the Meiselbach / Schmidt / Snow / Orleander / CN references: my retrieval of their full texts failed (tool step limit). I am asserting only what their titles and citation context support and nothing more. Before filing a reexam request, each would need to be read in full.

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6. Motivation to combine (KSR / MPEP 2143)

The combination is supported by multiple independent rationales; any one suffices:

1. Common field of endeavor and common problem (rationale A — known elements combined according to known methods). Moxon '829, Lynch '765, Bartlett '782, Braun '988, Postema '639, Snow '635 and Schmidt '153 are all directed to mounting a gauge/reference against a bicycle (or light-vehicle) wheel while the wheel remains on the vehicle, to detect a bend/out-of-true/out-of-round condition. They are the same art, addressing the same problem, and all are of record on the patent. In re Conte, 62 F.3d 1430 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (combining references from the same field to solve the same problem).
2. Explicit cross-citation (TSM-like evidence, useful even though not required post-KSR). Lynch '765 lists Moxon '829 in its own prior-art discussion and Bartlett '782 likewise discusses Moxon — an express teaching that these references are the pertinent art to consult.
3. Use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (rationale C). Threaded-screw fine adjustment (Lynch '765, Postema '639), a lockable multi-axis pivot arm (Bartlett '782, Braun '988), a two-jaw clamp with a tightening screw (Braun '988, Moxon '829), and a set-screw lock (elementary hardware) were each already used in bicycle wheel gauges. Applying them to Moxon's base is the same use to obtain the same benefit.
4. Known device ready for improvement (rationale D). Moxon '829 itself states the pre-existing problem that "Existing truing devices I am aware of are not suitable for use on bicycles having caliper or rim contacting brakes" and are "cumbersome, not lending themselves to convenient inclusion within the bicycle tool kit." Its own specification therefore identifies the improvement direction (smaller, more adjustable, more precisely settable reference) that the claimed assembly implements.
5. Finite number of predictable solutions / obvious to try (rationales E & G). Given the goal of holding a contact point against a rotating wheel at an adjustable standoff while the wheel is on the bike, a POSITA faces a small, well-known menu: a clamped post + an articulating arm + a threaded fine-adjust screw + a contact pin or gauge probe. Selecting among these is not inventive. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.
6. Design incentives / market forces (rationale F). Portability, one-tool fit to differently-sized frames (chain stay and front fork), and precision adjustment are the recognized design pressures in the field; each claimed adjustability (strap swivel, rod pivot, collar pivot, screw fine-adjust) is a direct response to them.

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7. Differences the patentee might argue, and why they fail

1. "A dial gauge, not a simple pin." Braun '988 uses a dial gauge (52); the patent eliminates it and contacts the wheel with a plain pin (96/98). Removing the indicator and relying on contact/no-contact is an omission of an element together with its function and a simplification that produces no new or unexpected result — obvious as a matter of law (In re Karlson, 34 CCPA 915 (1947); MPEP 2144.04). It also cannot support patentability because the claim's own "frictional engagement" function is exactly what Lynch's contacting tip 104 does.
2. "Pivoting tab-in-slot joints instead of ball joints." Mere substitution of one known pivot type for another to achieve the same range of motion and locking. In re Kuhle; MPEP 2143.01(VI). No unexpected result is asserted anywhere in the specification, and the specification offers no criticality of the slot geometry.
3. "Separate collar from the receiver / two-stage adjustability." Routine optimization of a known design (MPEP 2144.05) and a design choice based on the number of degrees of freedom desired. Bartlett '782 achieves the same multi-axis adjustability with three segments and two clamping mechanisms; adding one additional pivot stage is a predictable aggregation.
4. "'Removably coupled' gauge." Lynch '765's indicator screw is threaded in and out of arm 90 and can be removed/backed off (the specification even describes backing it off a half turn); detachability is inherent. In any event, "removably coupled" adds no structure and cannot distinguish the art.

Secondary considerations (§ 4): none is present on this record. There is no evidence of commercial success, licensing, long-felt-but-unmet need, industry praise, or copying; the patent lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2023-10-22 (record: "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES," 37 C.F.R. § 1.362), with no litigation or licensing activity located by the earlier searches. Absent a nexus, there is nothing to outweigh the prima facie case. Note that the patent's own single-round prosecution (one non-final action, 2019-01-23; response 2019-05-04; allowance June 2019) and its numerous internal reference-number errors and § 112(b) antecedent-basis defects (documented in § 4–5 of the prior summary) suggest limited substantive scrutiny rather than a considered finding of nonobviousness.

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8. Claim-by-claim conclusion

Bottom line: On the record as it exists, all 16 claims of US 10,451,525 are invalid under § 103 as obvious over the art cited on the patent's own face — and claim 1 is, in addition, probably anticipated under § 102 by US 5,243,765. The strongest single combination is Lynch '765 in view of Bartlett '782 in further view of Braun '988 (and Moxon '829). The practical significance is limited, because the patent already expired for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2023-10-22 and no litigation was located — but if reinstatement or a validity challenge ever arises, this is the ground to run.

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9. Explicit limitations of this analysis

• Verified by full-text retrieval: Moxon US 3,956,829; Bartlett US 5,201,782; Lynch US 5,243,765; Braun US 5,539,988; Postema US 4,000,639.
• Verified by title/bibliographic data only (could not retrieve text): US 621,153 (Schmidt); US 1,480,777 (Meiselbach); US 5,008,647 (Orleander); US 5,156,635 (Snow); CN 203705103 U. My reliance on these is corroborative only.
• Not verified: the actual examiner's stated rejection rationale in the 2019-01-23 non-final action, and which specific claims/refs were applied. I inferred from the citation-table asterisks that the examiner cited US 1,480,777, US 5,008,647, US 5,156,635 and CN 203705103 U, while the bicycle-truing references (Moxon, Postema, Bartlett, Lynch, Braun, Schmidt) were IDS references possibly not substantively argued. Obtaining the prosecution history (USPTO PatentCenter for US 15/611,968) is the single highest-value next step.
• I did not attempt claim-construction of "wheel" (wheel assembly vs. rim) beyond noting the specification's own usage; that construction is outcome-determinative for the § 102 question in Ground #1 and should be confirmed before relying on anticipation rather than obviousness.