US 10634568

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Let me run more targeted searches for USPTO records and any CAFC/litigation activity.

Let me attempt to retrieve the actual granted claims text and confirm bibliographic data.

US Patent 10,634,568 — Search Results Summary

Search coverage note: I searched for the exact number "10634568" / "US10634568B2" and for CAFC/Federal Circuit docket references. I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity, no PTAB proceeding, and no district-court litigation naming this patent. I also found no USPTO record contradicting the bibliographic data below. Where I could not verify something from an authoritative source, I flag it explicitly.

Bibliographic data (per the patent document itself)

Family confirmation: A same-family Japanese member, JP 6774496 B2, was retrieved, also titled as a method of manufacturing a torque sensor including a step of wrapping the electronic circuit of the sensor. This corroborates the family/assignee linkage. (The US filing date of 2017‑01‑25 with a 2016‑02‑10 priority date is consistent with a PCT national-phase entry, though the PCT number itself was not confirmed by my search.)

Abstract (as published)

A method for manufacturing a torque sensor includes: placing a first slip ring and a second slip ring inside a sensor case, the slip rings being distant from each other and each carrying respectively a first measuring terminal and a second measuring terminal which delimit an air gap therebetween; producing a sensor beam subassembly comprising a Hall effect cell configured to be placed in the air gap and measure the magnetic flux therein, and an electrical connection interface; and introducing the sensor beam into an access orifice which passes through a wall of the sensor case to open on the air gap, so as to place the Hall effect cell in the air gap, then fastening the sensor beam on the sensor case.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim(s)

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: The full text I could access was truncated inside the Description section, so the granted claims were not available to me verbatim. I therefore cannot state with confidence how many independent claims the patent contains (e.g., whether there is also an independent apparatus claim to the sensor obtained by the method). The overview below is reconstructed from the specification's own recitation of the inventive method — the passage "the objects assigned to the invention are achieved by means of a method for manufacturing a torque sensor comprising…characterized in that…" — which mirrors the language of the principal independent method claim.

Independent claim 1 — Method of manufacturing a torque sensor (three steps):

• Step (a) – Prepare the sensor case. Place at least a first slip ring and a second slip ring inside a sensor case. The rings are spaced apart from one another and each carries a respective measuring terminal (first terminal on the first ring, second terminal on the second ring), with the two terminals delimiting an air gap between them.
• Step (b) – Build the "sensor beam." Assemble a sub-assembly that includes at least one Hall effect cell sized/positioned to sit in the air gap and measure magnetic flux there, plus at least one electrical connection interface for connecting the Hall effect cell to a processing unit external to the sensor case. Characterizing feature: during this step the sensor beam is fitted with an adapter designed to cooperate with the case's access orifice so as to divide that orifice into (i) a "preservation cavity" that opens onto the air gap and houses the Hall effect cell, and (ii) a "filling cavity" that communicates with the outside.
• Step (c) – Insert and overmold. Introduce the sensor beam into the access orifice that passes through a wall of the sensor case and opens onto the air gap, so the Hall effect cell lands in the air gap. Then fasten the sensor beam to the sensor case by overmolding — casting a resin-type coating material into the filling cavity to form a plug that links the beam to the case and closes the access orifice — while the adapter blocks the coating material from entering the preservation cavity and wetting the Hall effect cell.

Stated technical advantage: the adapter confines the cast resin to a fixed, known volume, so dosing is reproducible; it holds and locates the beam (and therefore the Hall cell in the air gap) both before and during overmolding; and it keeps the air gap, slip rings, and Hall cells free of resin burrs, preventing later water infiltration or measurement disturbance. The patent notes the same adapter design works for both the "bent sheath" and "straight sheath" variants.

Likely dependent-claim subject matter (from the description; not verified against granted claim text): the adapter formed as two shell parts closed about the beam along a parting line; the inner imprint mating the acquisition circuit board; parting-line assembly clearance ≤ 0.15 mm; baffles in the parting line; crimp/clip retention; an interference collar with martyr rib/flexible lip; anti-rotation ribs; a depression stop and star-arranged lugs; foolproof orientation features (flats, ribs, guide cylinders); thixotropic thermosetting resin (PU, EP, SI) with hardness ≥ 50 Shore D; sheath coating length of 5–15 mm; and the external chute with retaining flange.

What I could not verify

• The verbatim granted claim set and the exact number of independent claims (claims section not included in the material available to me).
• Any CAFC 2026 appeal, IPR/PGR, or district-court case involving patent 10,634,568 — my searches returned none, but absence of search hits is not proof of absence of litigation.
• The PCT application number underlying US 16/077,430.

If you need the granted claims verbatim, the authoritative sources are the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text database for US 10,634,568 and the Google Patents "Claims" tab — I'd recommend pulling those directly rather than relying on this reconstruction.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10634568 across multiple sources.

Initial searches found no relevant hits. Let me search more targeted sources.

Let me try a few more targeted searches on litigation databases.

Litigation Search: US Patent 10,634,568

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation (district court, CAFC, ITC, or PTAB) involving US Patent 10,634,568. Based on my searches, no patent lawsuit asserting or challenging this specific patent appears to exist, and no case listing identifies it as an asserted patent. I want to be explicit: this is a negative finding based on the searches I was able to run, not a certified "no litigation exists" conclusion.

What I searched and what came back

The Unified Patents portal search returned an empty result set, which is consistent with "no challenge on record" (though an empty portal query is not by itself dispositive).

Why the coincidental matches are NOT this patent

I am flagging these so they are not mistaken for relevant hits — a strict reading of each identifier shows they are different things:

• "2012 WL 10634568" (D.N.J. July 13, 2012) — a Westlaw citation number, not the patent. Also pre-dates the patent's 2016 priority date.
• "id 10634568" in a Brazilian TRF-3 decision — a court document ID in an INSS prior-art/administrative matter.
• US 10,891,608 / '608 Patent (Alliance Laundry Sys. v. PayRange-nexus IPRs) and '266 Patent (DMF v. AMP Plus) — different patent numbers entirely.

Identifiers verified for the patent itself (to confirm we are talking about the same right)

• Patent: US 10,634,568 B2 — "Method for manufacturing a torque sensor comprising a step of encapsulating the electronic circuit of the sensor"
• Inventor: Laurent Rey
• Assignee: JTEKT Europe SAS
• Application: US 16/077,430 (PCT national stage)
• Priority: 2016-02-10; Filed: 2017-01-25; Granted: 2020-04-28
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2037-03-05

Caveat on methodology

My ability to reach PACER directly was not available in this session, and the searches that timed out (CourtListener and docket-specific queries) mean my coverage of the litigation databases was incomplete. Accordingly:

• No litigation is known to me for US 10,634,568.
• To confirm a definitive negative, the following should be checked directly: Unified Patents Portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER/RECAP, USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (IPR/PGR), ITC EDIS (§ 337), and CAFC docket. I could not complete all of these within this session.

If you'd like, I can re-run the CourtListener, PACER/RECAP, and PTAB-specific checks individually, since those are the most likely places a challenge to this patent would surface.

I'll start by verifying the structured "no proceedings" signal against live sources, since PTAB filings sometimes lag ODP ingest.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding the absence is real.

No hits so far. Let me try the PTAB E2E / patent-specific searches one more time.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,634,568: zero (0) — no IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been filed, instituted, or terminated against this patent, per the USPTO Open Data Portal structured block in this prompt and confirmed by independent web checks; there are therefore no claims invalidated, none sustained in an FWD, no settlements, and no institution denials. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is "unproven but intact" rather than "hardened": the patent has never been stress-tested at the Board, so its claims carry the full statutory presumption of validity and no § 315(e) estoppel has been generated by anyone — meaning every prior-art ground is still on the table for a first-mover petitioner, but you also have no free roadmap to invalidity from a prior FWD.

Proceedings

None to report. There is no proceeding number to list against US 10,634,568. Per the constraints in this task, I will not invent one.

What I checked and what I found (negative results, stated explicitly):

• USPTO ODP structured block (canonical): returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 10,634,568 as of the most recent ingest. This is the authoritative list and it is empty.
• Web search for "10634568" + IPR / PTAB / petition: surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or termination referencing this patent.
• Web search for JTEKT Europe torque-sensor validity challenges: the only JTEKT PTAB hits retrieved were unrelated matters involving other patents — e.g., JTEKT Corp. v. GKN, IPR2016-00046, which concerns a driveline/dog-clutch patent (the '440 patent), not US 10,634,568. The hall-effect-sensor IPR hits that did appear (Atlas Copco Tools & Assembly Systems LLC v. Wildcat Licensing WI LLC, IPR2020-00891 / IPR2020-00892, on RE47,220 and RE47,232) are a different patent owner, different patent family, and different technology (power torque tools).
• Federal Circuit / CourtListener: no appeal identified that names US 10,634,568. I could not locate a CAFC docket tie-in to this patent number.

Caveat on confidence: I have high confidence in the structured ODP result (it is the canonical source and it says zero). I have moderate confidence in the web-search corroboration, because search engines index PTAB papers imperfectly and a very recently filed petition (within the last few weeks) may not yet be reflected in either ODP ingest or search indices. If a petition was filed in the last ~30–45 days by a defendant you are adverse to, treat this report as "no reported activity" rather than a certified negative.

Strategic summary

Claim status — CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED. All claims of US 10,634,568 are UNTESTED. No claim has been canceled, and no claim has been sustained by a Final Written Decision, because no trial has occurred. The patent issued 2020-04-28 from application US 16/077,430 (filed 2017-01-25, priority 2016-02-10, PCT national stage), currently assigned to JTEKT Europe SAS (original assignee: JTEKT Europe SAS; inventor: Laurent Rey), status Active with an adjusted expiration of 2037-03-05. The claims as described in the specification and abstract are method claims directed to manufacturing a torque sensor — step (a) placing first and second slip rings in a sensor case to delimit an air gap, step (b) producing a "sensor beam" subassembly with a Hall effect cell and an electrical connection interface, step (c) inserting the sensor beam through an access orifice and fastening it — with the characterizing feature being the adapter that subdivides the access orifice into a "preservation cavity" (containing the Hall cell) and a "filling cavity," followed by overmolding a resin coating material into the filling cavity only. Because no FWD exists, I cannot tell you which specific claim numbers are independent vs. dependent from the Board's own words; you should read the printed claims at the USPTO Patent Center / Google Patents link before building any theory.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone — estoppel only attaches to a petitioner that reaches a final written decision, and no one has. Practically, this cuts two ways. For you as a defendant: the entire universe of patents-and-printed-publications prior art is available, and you face no risk that your own side has already burned grounds. Against you: there is no prior petitioner's work product to free-ride on, and the patent owner has no institutional scar tissue or adverse claim constructions to exploit. Note also that § 315(b)'s one-year clock has not started for you unless and until you are served with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent; if you have been served, the clock is running and the petition deadline is one year from service (35 U.S.C. § 315(b)). Since no IPR has ever been filed here, a first-filed IPR would be unconstrained by § 325(d) (nothing has been presented to the Office beyond original prosecution) and would not face General Plastic follow-on-petitioner concerns.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has ever filed against this patent, so there is no "serial petitioner" signal, no joinder history, and no indication of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) having targeted it. JTEKT Europe has not pursued any PTAB appeal on this patent. The relevant commercial context is that this is a component patent for electric power steering torque sensors — the accused products are typically steering columns/sensor assemblies sold to OEMs, which historically makes for indemnification-driven defense and a small pool of potential co-defendants (Tier-1 steering suppliers and OEMs) rather than a broad troll campaign. JTEKT is an operating company, not a monetization entity, which reduces the probability of a wide assertion campaign but does not eliminate OEM supply-chain disputes.

Recommended next steps

1. If you have been served with a complaint on US 10,634,568: calendar the § 315(b) one-year bar immediately. Because the patent has never been before the Board, you are the natural first petitioner and can file without General Plastic or § 325(d) baggage. Pull the issued claims from the USPTO Patent Center for application 16/077,430 and the Google Patents copy and map them element-by-element; the overmolding/adapter limitations ("preservation cavity" vs. "filling cavity," thixotropic coating material, shell with parting line P0, collar with interference fit) are the likely narrow points and the most productive obviousness battleground.

2. If you have not been served: there is no deadline pressure and no bar. The absence of any PTAB activity means the patent is untested, not hardened — a pre-emptive IPR is available but there is no litigation trigger to justify the spend. Monitor the docket instead.

3. Verify the negative before you rely on it. Before filing anything that assumes "no PTAB activity," re-run the check directly against PTAB E2E and the USPTO Open Data Portal using application 16/077,430 and patent 10,634,568, and confirm no petition was filed in the last 45 days that predates the ODP ingest. My web checks found nothing, but I cannot certify a true negative for very recent filings.

4. Do not treat this report as freedom to operate. Zero PTAB proceedings says nothing about infringement risk, license obligations, or the validity of sibling JTEKT patents in this steering-sensor family (e.g., the JTEKT Europe family members that appear in the prosecution-history records I encountered). A clearance/validity opinion should cover the family, not just this one number.

Bottom line for a defendant: claim numbers are neither canceled nor confirmed — everything is live, nothing is estopped, and no FWD exists for you to cite. Your invalidity case will have to be built from scratch, but you will be building it unencumbered.

I'll search for the assignment record details and ownership chain for this patent.

Let me search for the specific assignment record and correspondent details.

Let me try to identify the recording correspondent and any additional assignment links.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis: US 10,634,568 B2

Verification entry point: USPTO Patent Assignment Search, https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10634568 or application 16/077,430). Patent Center record: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ (application 16/077,430).

Important data limitation up front: I was unable to complete a live query of the Assignment Center database in this session. The reel/frame numbers, the execution dates, and the correspondent of record could not be retrieved from the sources I could reach. What follows combines (a) the Google Patents legal-events record embedded in the authoritative patent text, and (b) corroborating public source data. Where a field is not verifiable, I say so rather than filling the gap with a plausible-looking number. This directly limits signal #3 below (repeat correspondent), which is normally the single most valuable tell in this type of analysis.

Inventors

• Sole named inventor. US 10,634,568 names only Laurent Rey; there are no joint inventors, so no intra-team divergence in the assignment chain.
• Employer inference: Rey is a prolific JTEKT Europe inventor. A third-party inventor profile catalogs ~20 published US applications for "Laurent REY / Villeurbanne, FR," listing the assignee for essentially all of them as JTEKT EUROPE (Irigny, France) (source: patents-review.com inventor profile, id 1641849). This is the classic signature of a salaried R&D engineer, not a lone outside contributor.
• Departure pattern: No evidence that Rey left JTEKT Europe within 12 months of filing, and the same-name/JTEKT Europe pairing persists into later filings (e.g., EP 3,449,156, "Cycloidal reducer with backlash self-adjustment," applicant JTEKT Europe, inventor REY Laurent — OJ EPO-adjacent national register listing). No "all inventors departed pre-sale" red flag. Note the standard caveat: I have no employment-directory evidence of his continuing tenure; the inference rests on name-plus-assignee continuity in the patent record, not on HR data.

Original assignee

JTEKT Europe SAS — Irigny, France. Named on the issued patent as both original and current assignee (Google Patents "Info" panel for US10634568B2).

• Line of business: Tier-1 automotive steering and driveline supplier; the European subsidiary of JTEKT Corporation (Osaka, Japan; TSE-listed; historically a Toyota-affiliated group company). JTEKT Europe's own patent profile shows active filings through 2024 and a stated parent of JTEKT Corporation (source: onscope.com IP-owner profile, "JTEKT Europe," parent field = JTEKT Corporation).
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. The patent is a manufacturing method for an electric power steering torque sensor (Hall-effect/magnetic-flux type, mounted on the steering column between input and output shafts). This is core JTEKT steering product hardware, not a speculative filing. JTEKT Europe is an operating manufacturer of electric power steering systems and components.
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, no wind-up, no divestiture surfaced. Public corporate activity (brand/technology license recordations in Brazil through 2024–2025 involving JTEKT Corporation and JTEKT Brasil Ltda.) confirms the group is a going concern (source: INPI Brazil Contratos de Tecnologia publication).
• The patent's legal status is Active, with adjusted expiration 2037-03-05 (per the Google Patents record).

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment appears in the Google Patents legal-events record for this patent. I could not obtain the reel/frame or the correspondent from the Assignment Center in this session; those fields are marked as unretrieved rather than guessed.

• Executed: not shown in the record / recorded 2018-09-26 — Reel not retrieved (Assignment Center query not completed)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: REY, Laurent (the sole named inventor)
  • Assignee: JTEKT EUROPE (JTEKT Europe SAS)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — cannot be assessed (see signal #3)
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer assignment confirming the applicant's rights in the PCT national-stage application. It is not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter event. The roughly 13-month gap between the 2017-01-25 international filing date and the 2018-09-26 recording is consistent with routine recordation at US national-stage entry, not with a strategic transfer.

Failure to obtain reel/frame — plain statement: The USPTO Assignment Center returned no retrievable record through the sources available to me. I am therefore reporting the existence of a single inventor-to-employer assignment as documented in the patent's own legal-events record, and explicitly flagging the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent as unverified. Anyone relying on this should run the patent number directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ to capture those fields.

If, on direct query, the Assignment Center shows no records beyond this one inventor assignment, that is itself the finding: it means the original assignee (JTEKT Europe SAS) has retained ownership continuously since filing, and there is no post-issuance ownership chain to analyze.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10634568
    2016 : Priority date
    2017 : PCT application filed
    2018 : Inventor assignment recorded to JTEKT Europe
         : US national stage entered
    2019 : US application published
    2020 : Patent granted

(Two same-year events are stacked with the colon-lead convention. Event text is kept short and free of parentheses, slashes, and commas. "PCT" and "US" carry no breaking punctuation. The 2019 publication month is omitted for parser safety.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Caveat on naming-based inference: JTEKT Europe SAS is a real operating subsidiary with a French registered address (Irigny), not an anonymous registered-agent LLC. I am not treating the corporate "SAS" suffix as any kind of tell — it is the standard French société par actions simplifiée form.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but leaning operating-company / non-NPE, with low assertion risk.

Justification: The only ownership event the record discloses is the sole inventor's 2018-09-26 assignment of interest to JTEKT Europe SAS, the applicant and current assignee — an ordinary employee-rights confirmation, not a shell transfer, cascade, fire-sale, or privateering step. The assignee is an operating Tier-1 steering supplier (French subsidiary of TSE-listed JTEKT Corporation) that ships products embodying the claimed sensor manufacturing method, and the patent sits at Active status with expiration adjusted to 2037-03-05. I stop short of a clean "operating-company assertion" verdict only because (a) no assertion activity exists to confirm the assertion posture, and (b) the reel/frame and correspondent of record are unverified in this session — recovering those fields at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ is what would move this from "insufficient data" to a fully evidenced "single inventor-to-employer assignment, no post-issuance chain."

Explicit non-findings (so they are not misread as evidence)

• I did not locate any assignment to a licensing LLC, aggregator, or NPE. Absence of such a record is a negative finding, not proof one never existed — but nothing in the sources I reached suggests one does.
• No reel/frame, execution date, or correspondent is asserted above because I could not retrieve them. Any downstream analysis requiring the correspondent should re-run the Assignment Center query directly.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 10,634,568 B2. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me look for the PCT/WO counterpart and its search report, plus the citation lists.

1. The patent, identified literally

I anchored everything to the identifiers exactly as written; I did not auto-correct anything.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10634568/en

2. Transparency note on the citation list — this is the crux of your request

I was not able to retrieve the official front-page "(56) References Cited" list for US 10,634,568 B2. The Google Patents full text supplied to me (and reproduced in your message) is truncated before the citation block, and my web searches did not surface the USPTO front-page citation table for this specific number.

I want to be explicit rather than fabricate: I cannot enumerate "each patent citation for 10634568" with confidence. What I can provide is (a) the family members I verified, and (b) candidate prior-art references that surfaced during searching, clearly labelled as not confirmed to be the examiner-cited references. Any § 102 assignment below is therefore provisional.

3. Family members verified (these are the same invention, not prior art)

4. Candidate prior art surfaced in search (NOT confirmed as cited references)

These appeared in search results in proximity to the '568 family. None is confirmed as an examiner citation against US 10,634,568 B2, and I have not read the full text of any of them.

Coincidental string matches I deliberately excluded (same discipline as in the litigation section): "2012 WL 10634568" (a Westlaw citation), a Brazilian court "id 10634568", and unrelated patents US 10,891,608 / '266.

5. § 102 framework — what any anticipating reference would have to show

Because I could not obtain the granted claim set verbatim, I worked from the characterization clause reproduced in the specification, which states the invention's distinguishing feature. On that basis, claim 1 (as characterized) requires, in combination:

1. Step (a): first and second slip rings placed in the case, axially distant, with measuring terminals delimiting an air gap therebetween;
2. Step (b): producing a "sensor beam" subassembly with ≥1 Hall effect cell and an electrical connection interface to an external processing unit, and equipping that beam with an adapter;
3. Step (c): introducing the beam through an access orifice through the case wall to open on the air gap, then fastening;
4. The adapter subdividing the access orifice into a "preservation cavity" (opens on the air gap, contains the Hall effect cell) and a "filling cavity" (communicates with the outside); and
5. Fastening by overmolding — casting a resin-type coating material into the filling cavity to create a plug linking beam to case and closing the orifice, with the adapter preventing the coating material from filling the preservation cavity and wetting the Hall effect cell.

Realistically, a clean § 102 anticipation would require a single reference disclosing the adapter that partitions the access orifice into two cavities plus the overmolding-into-the-filling-cavity step. General JTEKT molding/overmolding art (e.g., the JP items above) would more naturally be used in a § 103 obviousness combination — e.g., a torque-sensor overmolding method in view of a two-part molding-shell/adapter — than as standalone § 102 art. But I cannot assert that a specific one of them does or does not read on claim 1 without their texts.

Dependent-claim subject matter that likely narrows the § 102 question (from the specification): the sleeve 31 formed in one piece with the case; the shell adapter formed of two shell parts 44/45 with assembly clearance ≤ 0.15 mm; the collar 50 with interference 0.05–0.20 mm (0.5–1 % of section diameter); thixotropic coating; thermosetting PU/EP/SI coating with hardness ≥ 50 Shore D; sheath coating length L25 = 5–15 mm; foolproof structures (orientation flat / rib); the depression stop 55 and lugs 56; and the chute 70 with retaining flange 71.

6. What is needed to finish this properly

To give you a citation-by-citation § 102 table (which is what you actually asked for), these specific sources need to be opened directly — none of which I could complete in this session:

1. USPTO Patent Full-Text (patft) / PatentCenter / the granted-PDF front page for US 10,634,568 B2 → the "(56) References Cited" U.S. and foreign patent documents.
2. WO 2017/137678 A1 international search report and its IPEA/EPO search report — the PCT ISR "Box C" categories (X/Y/A) are the closest thing to an examiner's prior-art mapping for this family.
3. The US file wrapper of US 16/077,430 (examiner's Notices of Allowance, 892/1449 forms) — this is the authoritative list of what was cited against this application.
4. Full texts of the JP/EP candidates in § 4 to confirm content and dates.

Bottom line: I verified the patent's identity and family, but I could not obtain the official prior-art citation list for US 10,634,568 B2, so I am not able to state which claims any given reference "potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102" with the specificity you asked for. I would rather flag that gap than populate the table with fabricated citations. If you can supply the front-page "(56) References Cited" list or the file-wrapper documents, I will produce the full reference-by-reference § 102 analysis immediately.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for this patent rather than reconstructing it from memory. Let me pull the citation/prior-art data.

Good — I now have the prior-art landscape. Let me attempt to retrieve the granted claim set so the analysis is anchored to claim language rather than the specification.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,634,568 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

1. Scope, sourcing, and explicit caveats

What the page's "Prior Art" section actually contained. In the fetched record for US 10,634,568, the Prior Art section supplied only keyword/frequency data — "Prior art keywords: sensor, adapter, sensor beam, Hall effect, coating material," plus concordance counts (method 34, manufacturing process 24, Hall effect 55, magnetic effect 64, flux 42, coating/coating material 61, filling 31, resin 27, insertion 18, mating 9, penetration 7, casting 6, wetting 3, crimping 2, thixotropic 4, sealing 8, etc.). No verbatim citation list ("Citations" table) and no "Cited By" table were present in the material I could access. I am flagging this rather than inventing a citation list. Accordingly, this analysis is built from (i) that keyword set, (ii) the two admitted prior-art methods recited in the '568 Background, and (iii) prior art I retrieved by search and verified by date. Every reference below is identified by number and relationship to the '568 disclosure.

Three further caveats carried forward from the earlier sections:

• The verbatim granted US claim set is still not available to me. I have, however, now retrieved the granted claims of the French family member FR 3 047 560 B1, whose claim 1 uses characterizing language identical to the '568 specification's own "objects assigned to the invention" passage. This corroborates, and does not contradict, the claim-1 reconstruction in the earlier "Patent summary" section. Where I analyze dependent claims I rely on FR 3 047 560 claims 2–7 as a proxy and say so.
• New family confirmation: the Brazilian INPI publication lists "MÉTODO PARA A FABRICAÇÃO DE UM SENSOR DE TORQUE COMPREENDENDO UMA ETAPA DE ENCAPSULAMENTO DO CIRCUITO ELETRÔNICO DO SENSOR," applicant JTEKT EUROPE (FR), with a WO reference — consistent with the PCT national-phase route already noted. The PCT number itself remains unverified.
• The earlier "no litigation found" negative finding is unchanged; nothing in this search round disturbs it.

Governing statute. The '568 has a 2016-02-10 priority date; the AIA applies. Prior-art status below is assessed against an effective filing date of 2016-02-10.

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

A POSITA would be a person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 3–5 years of experience designing magnetic/Hall-effect torque sensors or sensor assemblies for automotive electric power steering, including injection-molding and casting/overmolding processes for encapsulating electronics. This is a mature, crowded, incrementally-improving art — a fact that matters under KSR.

3. The claim under analysis

Claim 1 (method), reconstructed from the specification's mirror language and confirmed against FR 3 047 560 B1 claim 1:

I treat 1(c)+1(d) (the adapter/partition/selective-fill limitation) as the only genuinely distinguishing subject matter. Elements 1(a) and 1(b), and "overmolding the Hall cell into the sensor case," are squarely in the art.

4. Prior art relied upon

Note on the French family member. FR 3 047 560 B1 itself is the priority document of the same invention and therefore is not prior art against the '568. I use it only as a claim-language proxy.

5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary): A2 (admitted overmolding method) or C, in view of D; further in view of E

C (or A2) discloses 1(a), 1(b) and the "overmold the Hall cell into the case in the air gap" substance of 1(c)/1(d). C additionally discloses the pre-molding of the Hall element plus connecting part into a resin body before the assembly is placed in the mold — a two-stage molding with a resin housing already surrounding the cell.

The only missing element is the adapter that partitions the orifice into a preservation cavity and a filling cavity.

D supplies it. D discloses a two-part holder that closes about the sensor circuit, is placed in the mold, and whose walls, under resin pressure, seal against one another and prevent the insert-molding resin from intruding into the inner space occupied by the Hall ICs. Functionally, D's holder outer surface is exactly the claimed adapter's outer surface: it defines the boundary of the region the coating material may occupy and leaves the Hall-cell region unfilled. Placed in a case whose sensor unit is inserted through an insertion hole (E), the holder necessarily cooperates with that orifice to subdivide it — which is precisely claim 1(c)'s "preservation cavity"/"filling cavity" partition, expressed in the '568 as a naming convention for the two regions on either side of the partition.

Motivation (KSR rationales, all available):

1. The problem was known and expressly articulated in the art. C states that molding pressure deviates the sensitive device's position relative to the collecting rings, degrading detection. D states that resin intrusion melts solder, applies pressure, and heat-degrades the Hall IC. The '568's own Background recites the identical concerns — cumulative shrinkage stresses, 290–330 °C injection heat, resin migrating beyond the air gap, burrs, air bubbles, and unpredictable dosing. KSR holds that a known problem supplies the motivation to combine.
2. Use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way. C used a resin body to shield/enclose the cell; D used a holder to keep molding resin off the circuit. Applying that known technique to the overmolding step of A2 yields a predictable result.
3. Design incentive / predictable variation. Confining a cast resin to a fixed, closed volume to control dosage and avoid flash is elementary casting practice; the '568 itself concedes the benefit ("dosing… perfectly controlled and identical") is the inherent geometric consequence of the partition, not an independent invention.
4. No teaching away. C and D criticize unprotected high-pressure/high-temperature overmolding of a bare cell; that criticism points toward a protective shell plus low-pressure casting — the claimed direction. That is motivation, not teaching away. (Contrast the '568: it reaches the same conclusion and reserves low-pressure thermosetting resin for the plug.)

Ground 2: B in view of D (and optionally C)

B discloses the whole "cavity + Hall IC + carrier/PCB + fluid-tight closure" arrangement and, critically, an alternative in which the cover is formed as part of the housing during overmolding and the Hall IC is secured within the housing during the overmolding. D supplies the shell that defines which region the overmold may enter. A POSITA wishing to convert B's laser-welded-cover embodiment to an overmolded-cover embodiment — expressly contemplated by B itself — while avoiding resin contact with the Hall IC, would predictably interpose D's holder. B also sells the replacement of a discrete cover + seal by an overmold, which supplies the very motivation to abandon the O-ring approach of A1.

Ground 3: A2 in view of F or G or H

F teaches unitizing the magnetic sensor and the flux-collecting members as a single piece integrally covered by molded resin, with the signal cable and terminal embedded in the resin; G teaches integrating the detecting unit and circuit board with a mold member, plus a retainer with locating faces and a sealing member; H teaches unitizing the Hall element with a resin member. Combining "pre-mold the sensor subassembly into a resin body" (F/G/H) with "overmold that subassembly into the case" (A2) produces a two-stage molding in which the first-stage resin body is the partition — i.e., claim 1.

Ground 4: A1 in view of C/D and B (substitution rationale)

A1 uses a screwed fastening plate plus compressed O-ring. B teaches replacing a discrete cover/seal with an overmold; D teaches a holder that shields the cell during molding; E teaches insertion of the unit through an insertion hole. Replacing the plate-and-O-ring seal at the case wall with an overmolded plug confined by an adapter collar, filling the same sealing function at the same interface, is a simple substitution of one known element for another, with predictable results.

6. Dependent claims

7. What would strengthen or defeat the case, and the caveats I will not paper over

§102(b)(2)(C) / common-ownership risk on Reference D — the single most important caveat. D (US 2017/0160151 A1) is available only as §102(a)(2) art (its 2017 publication post-dates the '568 priority date; only its Dec. 3, 2015 / Jan. 14, 2016 JP priorities reach back). Two consequences:

• Its availability depends on the JP priority applications (JP 2015-236656, JP 2016-005565, incorporated by reference) supporting the specific relied-upon disclosure (the holder blocking resin intrusion). That must be verified against the JP texts; I have not verified it.
• Because it is §102(a)(2) art, §102(b)(2)(C) disqualifies it if the disclosed subject matter and the claimed invention were, by the effective filing date, owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person. '568 is assigned to JTEKT Europe SAS; D is a JTEKT CORPORATION (Japan) application. These are different legal entities, so on the face of the record §102(b)(2)(C) does not apply. But if common ownership or a common assignment obligation within the JTEKT group can be shown, Ground 1 and Ground 2 lose their principal reference and the case weakens to Grounds 3/4. This is a documentable, decisive issue — it should be checked in the assignment records before any rejection is served.

Verification still required: (i) the verbatim US granted claims and independent-claim count; (ii) whether E (US 2013/0220030) and US 2017/0312955 have effective dates before 2016-02-10 for their relied-upon teachings (US 2017/0312955 in particular is date-uncertain and I do not rely on it); (iii) whether the JTEKT Engineering Journal article "Development of Torque Sensor Integrated with Plastic Sensor Housing" has an edition predating 2016-02-10 — the copy I retrieved is No. 1015E (2018) and therefore, on its face, is not prior art; I have not relied on it.

Anticipation note. I do not see a clean single-reference anticipation: D's unit is placed in a mold, not inserted into an "access orifice" through a case wall opening onto an air gap between slip rings, and D does not recite the slip-ring/measuring-terminal/air-gap architecture of step 1(a). A §102 challenge would require at least D + C. The case is therefore a §103 case.

Likely patent-owner rebuttals and my assessment:

• "The art teaches away from overmolding Hall cells" (relying on the shrinkage/heat/pressure criticisms in C, D and the '568 Background). Weak. Those passages criticize unprotected overmolding and supply the motivation to add a protective shell/reduce pressure — the claimed direction.
• "The adapter does more than shield: it locates the beam, holds it pre-mold, and meters the resin dose." Partly persuasive as a secondary-consideration argument, but not as a patentability argument, because each of those functions is either disclosed (D's holder locates and holds the circuit during molding; G's locating faces) or is the inherent geometric consequence of the partition the '568 itself describes.
• "0.15 mm clearance and 50 Shore D are critical." The most credible non-obviousness argument in the set. It would need evidence of a criticality/non-linear effect across the claimed boundary; the specification recites the numbers as preferences with rationale, which cuts against criticality. Expect this to be the battleground for the FR cl. 3-type dependent claim.
• Commercial success / long-felt need. JTEKT's mass production of an integrated resin-housing torque sensor is documented, but the nexus is weak: the commercial product is described as covering the Hall IC/circuit with a holder and molding the housing on that holder — a design that reads on the prior art (D) rather than uniquely on the '568's partition, and the supporting publication post-dates the priority date. No evidence of record of unexpected results, licensing, or copying.

Bottom line. Claim 1 as reconstructed, and the ordinary mechanical/material dependent claims, are highly likely obvious over A2/C in view of D (with E for the insertion-orifice aspect), for the reasons the '568 itself concedes in its Background and for the express motivations stated in C and D. The obviousness case is strongest where it rests on the artwork's own recognized problem (resin reaching and disturbing the Hall cell during encapsulation) and on B's admitted overmolding-of-the-cover alternative. The case is weakest — and genuinely contestable — for the numeric dependent claims (parting-line clearance ≤ 0.15 mm; interference 0.05–0.20 mm; ≥50 Shore D), and it is contingent on the §102(b)(2)(C) ownership question concerning US 2017/0160151 A1, which I flag rather than resolve.