US 10648873

I'll verify against live sources and check for any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me run two more targeted checks — one for litigation/PTAB and one to distinguish the near-identical sibling patent number.

US Patent 10,648,873 — Verification Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the exact number 10648873 / 10,648,873. Results returned only this patent and its own family members. No USPTO/PTAB proceeding and no CAFC 2026 docket entry referencing this patent was found (see "Litigation status" below — a negative finding, not a certification).

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1. Bibliographic data

Source note / discrepancy: The authoritative full text supplied (Google Patents) states priority 2015-12-11, filing 2016-12-09, grant 2020-05-12, expiration 2037-01-08. The Unified Patents portal page shows priority 2015-12-10, application date 2016-12-08, grant 2020-05-11, expiration 2037-01-07 — a one-day shift consistent with a Korea Standard Time vs. UTC/US-Eastern conversion. I am reporting the Google Patents values as authoritative per instructions and flagging the offset rather than treating it as a substantive conflict.

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"A sensor device may detect pressure. The sensor device may comprise: an elastic dielectric; a first wiring formed on one surface of the elastic dielectric; a second wiring formed on another surface of the elastic dielectric facing the surface on which the first wiring is formed; and a flexible printed circuit board, which is connected to the first wiring and the second wiring, for receiving signals transferred from the first wiring and the second wiring."

Note the abstract describes the broad concept, whereas claim 1 is materially narrower than the abstract (it adds the elastic body sub-feature, wirings "extending away from" their respective surfaces, and an FPCB "spaced away from a side of the elastic body" with defined first/second board surfaces). Claim scope should be read from the claims, not the abstract.

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3. Plain-language overview of the claims

There is one independent claim (claim 1). All other claims depend from it.

Claim 1 — the core device. A pressure sensor made of:

1. an elastic dielectric that has an elastic body (e.g., foam, non-woven, nanoweb, polyurethane/nylon/PET/polyester fiber, natural fiber, elastomer, rubber, urethane);
2. a first wiring on a first surface of that elastic body, with the wiring extending away from that surface;
3. a second wiring on the opposite (facing) second surface, also extending away from that surface; and
4. a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) positioned to the side of, and spaced away from, the elastic body, having two opposite board surfaces. A first connection terminal on the first board surface connects to the first wiring, and a second connection terminal connects to the second wiring. The terminals receive the signals from the two wirings.

The inventive emphasis in the specification is on how the FPCB is mechanically/electrically joined to the fiber wirings (the "fixing member"/tape arrangement at the connection) while preserving flexibility, and on the sensing mechanism (compression of the elastic dielectric changes its thickness/permittivity, which changes the capacitance between the two wirings).

Key point on claim-1 breadth: claim 1 does not specify where the second connection terminal sits — same board surface or opposite surface are both left open. That limitation is added by dependent claims 2 and 3, which are therefore the ones that distinguish double-sided from single-sided FPCB configurations.

Dependent claims, in plain terms:

• Claim 2 — the second connection terminal is on the second (opposite) board surface ⇒ the double-sided FPCB embodiment (FIGS. 3–4).
• Claim 3 — both terminals are on the same (first) board surface, and the second wiring reaches its terminal by passing through a through-hole in the FPCB (entering at the first surface and exiting at the second surface) ⇒ the single-sided FPCB embodiment (FIGS. 5–8). The specification touts this variant for lower cost/simpler processing and for reduced parasitic-capacitance noise.
• Claim 4 — the elastic dielectric changes shape under applied pressure, and permittivity changes at the point of deformation. (Drafting note: as printed, this claim reads "…and permittivity at a point at which the shape is changed," with no verb — I read it as an intended "permittivity … changes." I flag this as an apparent typographical omission in the granted text rather than silently correcting it.)
• Claim 5 — the operative sensing law: deformation of the dielectric between the wirings causes a capacitance change between them, and a signal generated from that change is transmitted to the FPCB via at least one of the wirings.
• Claim 6 — the wirings include adhesive layers bonding them to the elastic body.
• Claim 7 — the wirings are conductive fiber materials.
• Claim 8 — a fixing member (the spec describes tape) attaching the wiring(s) to both the elastic body and the FPCB.
• Claim 9 — elastic dielectric thickness of 1–4 mm (printed as "thickness of the elastic dielectric is within 1 to 4 mm," missing the indefinite article).
• Claim 10 — the dielectric comprises the elastic body plus conductive composites dispersed within it.
• Claim 11 — as claim 10, where the conductive composites are conductive polymers and conductive powder (polyaniline/polypyrrole; Au, Ag, Cu, Ni, CNT, graphene, ceramic filler).
• Claim 12 — as claim 10, where the composites are 1–10 wt % of the elastic body.
• Claim 13 — as claim 11 with conductive powder diameter 10 nm – 500 µm.

Bottom line on scope: the enforceable monopoly, if it were live, would read on a capacitive pressure sensor with two conductive-fiber electrodes sandwiching an elastic dielectric body, terminating at a side-mounted FPCB; claims 2 and 3 separate the double-sided and through-hole single-sided wiring topologies.

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4. Litigation and post-grant status

• CAFC 2026 dockets: No 2026 Federal Circuit appeal or docket entry naming patent 10,648,873 was found. LG Innotek's publicly reported US patent litigation activity (e.g., the July 2018 UV-LED suits against Evergreat in N.D. Cal. and C.D. Cal., and the 2011 LED § 337 ITC investigations) does not involve this patent.
• PTAB: No IPR/PGR petition naming this patent was found.
• USPTO maintenance: The patent lapsed 2024-06-17 for nonpayment of maintenance fees, effective 2024-05-12 ("Expired – Fee Related"). A 2024-01-01 reminder was mailed. Absent reinstatement/revival, the claims are unenforceable; the nominal/adjusted expiration would otherwise have been 2037-01-08.

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5. Identifiers I deliberately did not conflate

Because you asked for strict literal treatment of the number, these near-miss identifiers are different documents and were excluded:

• US 10,648,872 B2 — "Sensor device for detecting pressure," same assignee, issued the same day (2020-05-12); a sibling, not this patent.
• US 2018/0356300 A1 — a different LG Innotek application also titled "Sensor device for detecting pressure," whose disclosure is framed around a "sensing portion" plus first/second connection terminals and includes side-surface connection FIGs. 7–8. Its spec text overlaps heavily with the '873 text, so it is easy to misattribute; it is not US 10,648,873.
• US 10,876,907 B2 — "Pressure detection sensor having a plurality of dielectric layers…", same assignee, PCT/KR2017/005329.
• The '873 patent's own pre-grant publication is US 2018/0364112 A1 (not 2018/0356300).

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6. Stated uncertainties

1. I did not retrieve the USPTO Patent Center/Public PAIR record directly for application 16/061,066; bibliographic data above comes from the authoritative full text you supplied, with cross-checks against third-party databases. The one-day date offsets noted in §1 are unexplained in source but are most plausibly time-zone artifacts.
2. "No CAFC 2026 docket" is a negative search result, not proof of nonexistence. Free-text web search does not reliably index every docketed appeal; a definitive check would require the CAFC docket system (e.g., CM/ECF / PACER) or a docket-alert service queried by patent number.
3. Claim 4's grammatical defect and the article omissions in claims 9–13 are reproduced literally from the granted text as provided; I have interpreted them but have not verified against the official USPTO-issued PDF, which would be the controlling artifact.
4. The examiner name and some expiry/rating fields come from a third-party analytics page (Unified Patents) and are lower-confidence than the patent's own front page.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10648873.

Let me dig deeper into litigation-specific databases.

Let me check court records and patent litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 10,648,873

Bottom line: I found no litigation, and no PTAB/post-grant proceedings, involving U.S. Patent No. 10,648,873. I searched specifically for the exact number 10,648,873 (and its variants) across web sources including the Unified Patents patent/litigation portal, PTAB filings, CourtListener/CourtListener RECAP, and general litigation news. Every returned hit for the number was a patent document page, not a case. I am stating this as "no litigation found," not as a verified negative from a complete litigation database.

What the searches actually returned

Correctly-identified false positives (excluded)

To be explicit, the following surfaced during searching and are not about this patent — I excluded them per your instruction not to return similar numbers:

• Unified Patents, LLC v. E-Vision Smart Optics (IPR2025-00216) — U.S. Patent No. 11,487,138.
• Ideahub Inc. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024-1684 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 10, 2026) — PGR2022-00044, U.S. Patent No. 8,605,794.
• N.J. Docket 2:22-cv-06424 (the '420/'631 patent estoppel motion).
• MCOM IP, Charge Fusion Technologies, Unified v. Bradium, etc. — different patents entirely.

None of these involve 10,648,873. I am not reporting them as "cases for" this patent.

Important context bearing on the licensing/enforcement posture

• Owner: LG Innotek Co., Ltd. (original and current assignee). Inventors: Yong Hwa Park, Bi Yi Kim, Seung Jin Kim, Hyun Gyu Park, Hyung Yoon, In Hee Cho.
• The patent is expired. Google Patents legal events show: maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2024-01-01; lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees 2024-06-17; "Patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees" effective 2024-05-12. The Unified Patents patent page corroborates this with "Lifetime Renewal Fees: $0." A patent that lapsed in mid-2024 is unlikely to be the subject of pending infringement litigation.
• Related sibling patent: U.S. Patent No. 10,648,872 (also "Sensor device for detecting pressure," LG Innotek) and U.S. Pub. 2018/0356300 share this family. A related co-pending application, U.S. Appl. No. 16/061,035, was the subject of a USPTO Office Action dated 2019-09-19 (cited in the '873 file as a non-patent citation) — that is prosecution, not litigation.
• Source discrepancy (flagged, not corrected): The Unified Patents page lists priority date 2015-12-10, application date 2016-12-08, grant date 2020-05-11, and expiration 2037-01-07, whereas the authoritative Google Patents text for US10648873B2 lists priority date 2015-12-11, filing date 2016-12-09, grant date 2020-05-12, and adjusted expiration 2037-01-08. I am reporting both as-is rather than reconciling them.

Confidence and limitations — stated honestly

• High confidence: No litigation appears anywhere in the accessible public record I could reach, and the patent lapsed for non-payment in 2024.
• Not verified against complete databases: I could not run a native, exhaustive query against PACER (paywalled) or Docket Navigator / RPX / Lex Machina (subscription). My search was via public web results, which may not surface every district-court docket, especially older, sealed, or settled cases, or ITC Section 337 actions. Docket Navigator is the authoritative source here and I did not have direct query access to it.
• If you need a verified negative: run the exact string 10,648,873 in Docket Navigator's "Patent" field (or PACER's "Nature of Suit 830" search plus a party search for LG Innotek Co., Ltd.), covering all district courts, the ITC (EDIS), and PTAB. Based on the record above, I would expect that to return zero results.

Conclusion: Based on available public records, no litigation (district court, ITC, or PTAB) is known or identifiable involving U.S. Patent No. 10,648,873.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB activity" baseline against what's publicly searchable.

Let me dig further into PTAB dockets and litigation activity.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block for US 10,648,873 — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM, and my independent web checks corroborate that (no hits on PTAB dockets, PTAB decisions databases, CourtListener, or news coverage tying "10,648,873" / "IPR" to this patent). Breakdown by status: active 0; claims invalidated 0; claims sustained 0; settled 0; institution denied 0. My web searching surfaced a Unified Patents patent profile page for US-10648873-B2 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10648873-B2) — that is a database listing of the patent, not evidence that Unified filed an IPR; no proceeding number is associated with it and you should not treat it as a challenge on file.

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not a "hardened after surviving IPRs" patent, and it is not a troll patent with canceled claims. It is an untested, never-challenged patent that its own owner let lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees. That is the single most important fact for a defendant.

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No proceedings to report

There is no proceeding number to list, and I will not manufacture one. For completeness, here is what the public record shows instead:

• Patent: US 10,648,873 B2, "Sensor device for detecting pressure"
• Patent owner: LG Innotek Co., Ltd. (original and current assignee)
• Application: 16/061,066 (U.S. national stage of PCT/KR2016/014425, filed 2016-12-09)
• Priority: 2015-12-11 (KR 10-2015-0177174)
• Granted: 2020-05-12 · 13 claims (1 independent claim; claims 2–13 dependent)
• Legal status (verbatim from source): "Expired - Fee Related"
• Lapse event: "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES (ORIGINAL CODE: EXP.)" recorded 2024-06-17, with the lapse effective 2024-05-12. Adjusted expiration on the face of the record is 2037-01-08, but the patent is not presently in force.
• Post-grant window: closed. PGR eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 321(c) ran nine months from grant, i.e., on or about 2021-02-12. No PGR was filed.
• Sibling patents worth a family-level search (same title/inventors, LG Innotek, all still apparently unadjudicated at the PTAB): US 10,648,872 B2 (app. 16/061,035) and US 10,641,666 B2. The '873 file itself references a co-pending Office Action in U.S. Appl. No. 16/061,035 (dated 2019-09-19), confirming the two are parallel national-stage sisters. I found no IPR against either, but if you are facing family-wide assertion, run each sibling's number through PTAB E2E before you assume they are equally untested.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All 13 claims are UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none construed by the Board, none construed by any district court that I could find. There is no claim-level outcome to quote because no FWD exists. Independent claim 1 covers the core combination: an elastic dielectric with an elastic body, first and second wirings on opposing faces of the body and extending away from it, and a flexible printed circuit board spaced away from a side of the elastic body with connection terminals receiving the wiring signals. Claims 3 (through-hole routing of the second wiring to the same FPC surface) and 8 (fixing member) are the narrowest structural limitations and would drive any invalidity or non-infringement analysis.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is inapplicable to everyone — no petitioner exists, so no party is barred from raising anything. That cuts both ways: no one has burned prior art, and no one has built a Board-endorsed invalidity record that a defendant could import into litigation. If you file an IPR now, you start from a blank slate; you are also free to choose between IPR and a district-court § 282 defense without any estoppel constraint. Note one procedural trap: § 112 indefiniteness is not available in an IPR (35 U.S.C. § 311(b) limits IPR to § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications), and the PGR window closed in 2021. Claims 4 and 5 read defectively on their face — claim 4 ends "…and permittivity at a point at which the shape is changed" and claim 5 is a fragment — so if indefiniteness is part of your theory, it has to be raised in district court or an ITC action, not at the Board.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (there are no petitioners). No PTAB appeal history — LG Innotek has never had to defend this patent at the Board on the merits, so there is no Federal Circuit docket number to cite and no appellate narrowing. No defensive aggregator in the chain; Unified's involvement appears limited to maintaining a public profile page. The most telling signal is the opposite of a hardened patent: LG Innotek, a large-entity owner with the resources to maintain its portfolio, chose to abandon this patent at the first maintenance-fee window in 2024 — before the patent was even arguably valuable enough to litigate. This is consistent with a patent that was never asserted.

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Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the lapse. The patent is recorded as expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, effective 2024-05-12 (lapse noticed 2024-06-17). If a demand letter cites US 10,648,873 today, the demand is directed at a patent that is not in force. Infringement liability under § 271 attaches only to acts performed while the patent was in force, so the realistic exposure is pre-lapse conduct, subject to the six-year damages lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 (which reaches back to 2020-09-29 as of today) — not ongoing or future sales.

2. Confirm revival risk before you bank on the lapse. A patent that lapsed can be revived by petition under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 on a showing of unintentional delay, and revival would restore it as though it had never lapsed. I do not have high confidence on the exact regulatory deadline that applies here and I would not represent to a client that revival is time-barred — verify the current revival window and any resulting intervening-rights exposure (35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(2)) in the USPTO PatentCenter file for 16/061,066 before relying solely on the lapse. Intervening rights can protect conduct begun between the lapse and any revival.

3. Do not treat "no IPRs" as a validity endorsement. The absence of PTAB activity here reflects abandonment, not adjudicated strength. The 16 references cited on the face of the patent are the obvious starting set for a § 102/§ 103 chart — particularly US 2014/0150571 A1 (Nippon Mektron, "Pressure sensor, method for manufacture thereof, and pressure detection module"), US 2014/0090884 A1 (Tokai Rubber, "Elastic conductive material"), US 8,287,289 B2 (Molex), and the Sumitomo Riko/Tokai Rubber family around US 9,136,035 B2, all of which sit squarely in the elastomeric-dielectric-plus-flexible-circuit space.

4. If you do petition, watch the clock mechanics. If an IPR is ever filed, the Board's institution decision is due within six months of the petition's filing date, and the Final Written Decision is due within one year of institution (35 U.S.C. §§ 314(b), 316(a)(11)), extendable by up to six months for good cause. None of those milestones is currently running for this patent — there is no proceeding.

5. Source hygiene. Because the ODP block returns no proceedings, the correct statement in any client memo is: "no AIA trial proceedings on file as of the ODP ingest, corroborated by independent search." Re-run PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and the PTAB decisions search before filing anything that asserts the patent is unchallenged, in case a recent petition has not yet been indexed.

I'll start by verifying the assignment record and checking for any litigation or NPE activity involving this patent.

Let me verify the assignment records database and check for any litigation involving this patent.

Let me do a final check on the assignment database and any litigation records.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,648,873

Patent: US 10,648,873 B2 — "Sensor device for detecting pressure"
App. No.: 16/061,066 (35 U.S.C. § 371 national stage of PCT/KR2016/014425)
Filed: 2016-12-09 · Granted: 2020-05-12 · Assignee of record: LG Innotek Co., Ltd.
Adjusted expiration: 2037-01-08 · Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2024)

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Inventors

Notes / discrepancies:

• The Google Patents bibliographic record renders inventor 5 as "Hyung YOON"; Unified Patents renders it "Yoon Hyung"; PatentLeaderboard renders it "Hyung Ki Yoon." The legal name is not settled across sources — flagging rather than auto-correcting.
• No independent evidence of any inventor departing LG Innotek within 12 months of filing was found. I did not find any departure/attrition pattern, so I make no finding on the "fire-sale precursor" tell. This is a not-determinable, not a not-present.
• The recorded assignment PDF (see timeline) names only three of the six inventors as assignors (Kim Bi Yim, Kim Seung Jin, Cho In Hee). The other three inventors' rights are not reflected in that single recording. This is either a partial recording or separate contemporaneous recordings for the co-inventors; the available sources do not resolve it. Treat chain-of-title diligence on the remaining three inventors as open.

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Original assignee

LG Innotek Co., Ltd. (LG INNOTEK CO., LTD., Seoul, Republic of Korea) — named applicant at filing and assignee on the issued patent.

• Primary line of business: Operating components manufacturer; a listed affiliate of the LG Group (KRX: 011070). Product lines include camera modules, LED/lighting components, semiconductor substrates, and automotive electronic modules/sensors.
• Shipped a product embodying the claims? No evidence found of a commercial product practicing the specific claim set (elastic-dielectric + conductive-fiber wiring + FPCB interconnect). The specification's own use cases are a chair seat and a shoe insole; the thickness discussion ("difficult to apply ... to an inside of a shoe") suggests an early-stage sensor concept. I am not able to confirm commercialization — this is an honest "unknown," not a finding of non-practice.
• Current status: Operating. No acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy proceeding surfaced for LG Innotek itself. The patent is dead — maintenance fees were not paid and it expired effective 2024-05-12.

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Assignment timeline

USPTO Assignment Center / Google Patents legal events surface exactly one recorded assignment for this patent. The chain is a single link: inventors → operating company. There is no downstream transfer.

• 2018-05-25 to 2018-09-20 (executed) / recorded 2019-05-23 — Reel 049264 / 0446
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: KIM, BI YIM; KIM, SEUNG JIN; CHO, IN HEE (per the recorded-event text)
  • Assignee: LG INNOTEK CO., LTD.
  • Correspondent: Not surfaced. The Google Patents legal-event rendering of Reel 049264/0446 does not expose the recording correspondent, and I could not retrieve the Assignment Center abstract sheet to extract it. I will not guess at a firm name. If the correspondent matters to your diligence, pull the reel/frame abstract directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.
  • Context: Routine formalization of the inventor→employer chain of title for a § 371 national-stage application. This is the standard "inventors assign to the company that filed the PCT" record — not a fire-sale, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter. Note the ~6-to-12-month lag between the 2018 execution dates and the 2019 recording date, which is common for Korean-origin national-stage cases.

No other assignments (security agreements, mergers, change of name, licenses, releases, corrections) are recorded. No assignment out of LG Innotek exists. For reference, the sibling application cited in the file's non-patent literature, U.S. App. 16/061,035, is a separate prosecution — not a link in this chain.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10648873
    2015 : Korean priority application filed
         : Six inventors named
    2016 : PCT application filed
         : US national stage filed
    2018 : Inventors execute assignment to LG Innotek
    2019 : Assignment recorded at USPTO reel 049264 frame 0446
    2020 : US patent granted
    2024 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — in the specific sense the rubric defines it: only the original assignment exists.

This is a single-owner chain. The sole recorded conveyance is Reel 049264/0446 (executed 2018-05-25 to 2018-09-20; recorded 2019-05-23), moving rights from the named inventors to LG Innotek Co., Ltd., the operating company that filed the PCT and the national-stage application. There is no downstream assignment, no NPE acquisition, no shell-entity hop, and no assertion activity — so none of the eight troll-pattern signals is affirmatively present. The absence of post-issuance transfers means LG Innotek remained the owner of record through the patent's lapse for unpaid maintenance fees (effective 2024-05-12), after which the claims entered the public domain. Two caveats for your file: (a) the recorded assignment names only three of six inventors, leaving chain-of-title for the other three open; and (b) the recording correspondent was not retrievable from the sources used, so it should be pulled directly.

Verify:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search Patent No. 10648873)
• Legacy assignment search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Unified Patents patent portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10648873-B2

A note on scope: this analysis is limited to what the retrieved records show. I did not fabricate any reel/frame, correspondent, or assignment, and where a source was silent (correspondent; commercialization; inventor attrition) I have said so explicitly rather than inferring.

I'll verify the patent record and the substance of each cited reference against live sources before mapping them to claims.

Let me pull the substance of the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,648,873 B2

Builds on the previously generated sections. The claim-by-claim breakdown, bibliographic verification, and litigation/no-litigation findings already produced are treated as settled here and are not repeated. This section addresses only the current task: identifying the prior art cited on the face of US 10,648,873 and assessing each reference against the claims.

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0. Method, scope, and honesty flags

• USPTO check for 10648873: the record resolves to US10648873B2, application 16/061,066, "Sensor device for detecting pressure," LG Innotek Co., Ltd. The Unified Patents portal page returned for the exact number US-10648873-B2 (application number 16061066, inventor set {Yoon Hyung; Kim Bi Yi; Park Yong Hwa; Park Hyun Gyu; Cho In Hee; Seung Jin Kim}, examiner Hollington, Octavia) corroborates the identity. No substitute numbers were accepted.
• Source for the citation list: the "Citations (16)" block of the authoritative Google Patents text supplied. Discrepancy flagged: the header says "16," but the enumerated list contains 15 patent-document citations. I could not reconcile the count from the supplied text; I analyze all 15 enumerated references plus the one "Family Cites Families" item, and note the arithmetic gap rather than papering over it.
• Verification depth is uneven and I will not pretend otherwise. I retrieved and read substantive text (abstract/claims/description) for US20140150571A1 (Nippon Mektron) and US20120026700A1 (Tokai Rubber), and confirmed the identity/abstract of US8287289B2 (Molex) and US10648872B2. For the remaining references, my description rests on the title as printed in the patent's own citation table plus my background knowledge, and for the JP/KR-language documents I did not retrieve the original specification text. Those entries are marked [title-derived — lower confidence].
• Legal framing: '873 has an effective filing date of 2015-12-11 and is therefore an AIA patent. Every listed citation except one published before 2015-12-11, so they are § 102(a)(1) art on their face. The exception (US10251262B2) is discussed in its entry.
• Critical caveat on "anticipates": § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim as arranged. On the record available to me, no cited reference appears to anticipate granted claim 1, and I say so explicitly below. The realistic attack on these claims is § 103, and my per-claim § 102 tags should be read as "this reference is the closest single-reference hit for these claims," not as a conclusion of anticipation.

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1. The cited references — full citations and one-line identities

Non-patent citations on the face (2):

• International Search Report (with English translation) and Written Opinion dated 2017-03-09 in PCT/KR2016/014425 — the ISR is itself an art-listing document and may name further references not reproduced in the Google Patents table.
• USPTO Office Action dated 2019-09-19 in U.S. Appl. No. 16/061,035 — a sibling prosecution citation, not prior art.

Cross-entity observation worth recording: entries 5, 6 and 10 are all Tokai Rubber Industries, and entry 8 is Sumitomo Riko — the same corporate family (Tokai Rubber renamed Sumitomo Riko). Three of the fifteen cited references share one corporate origin, which tells you the examiner treated that family as the primary disclosure of "stretchable/elastic wiring + conductive elastomer + elastic transducer." That is a meaningful signal about where the real blocking art sits.

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2. Reference-by-reference analysis

Most relevant tier

(9) US 2014/0150571 A1 — Nippon Mektron, Ltd. — "Pressure sensor, method for manufacture thereof, and pressure detection module" (verified from the specification text)

• Full citation / dates: US 2014/0150571 A1; App. No. 14/123,126; PCT/JP2012/060738 filed 2012-04-20; published 2014-06-05; granted US 9,423,309 B2 (2016-08-23); JP priority 2011-05-30 (JP 2012-247372 A). Applicants also include the Univ. of Tokyo and AIST.
• Description: A pressure distribution sensor formed integrally with a flexible circuit board. A base film carries a conductor pattern with one or more electrodes; a cover film is laminated over the electrodes; a spacer creates a hollow portion giving a gap; the cover-film portion over the hollow deforms and its contact resistance with the electrode changes with pressure. The express object is a pressure sensor "molded or formed with components of a flexible circuit board," with high flexibility, miniaturization and high packaging density.
• § 102 relevance: the closest single reference for the FPC-integrated-sensor concept. Its background expressly discusses the alternative "electrostatic capacitive type sensor in which an elastic dielectric material is sandwiched between films at opposite sides," which is a textbook § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 disclosure of the claim-1 capacitor stack.
  • Claim 1 — discloses an electrode/conductor pattern on a film, a second film, deformation with pressure, and a flexible-circuit-board integration. But it is a contact-resistance device with electrodes on one base film; it does not disclose two wirings on opposite faces of an elastic dielectric body, nor a board "spaced away from a side of the elastic body" with first/second terminals as claimed. Not a clean anticipation; strong § 103 combination art.
  • Claims 4, 5 — the capacitive-elastic-dielectric structure is described in its background (permittivity/thickness-driven capacitance change). Good § 102/§ 103 art for claim 5's sensing law.
  • Claims 7, 8 — conductor pattern formed like ordinary flexible-circuit-board wiring layers; described as thin, flexible, with electrodes on the base film. Relevant to the conductive-wiring/fixing-member concepts.

(6) US 2012/0026700 A1 — Tokai Rubber Industries, Ltd. — "Wiring body connection structure" (verified from the specification text)

• Full citation / dates: US 2012/0026700 A1; filed 2010-07-29; published 2012-02-02; JP-applicant Tokai Rubber Industries, Ltd.
• Description: A structure for connecting a first wiring body (elastomer base material + a wiring that itself contains an elastomer and a conductive material, i.e., a stretchable conductive wiring) to a second wiring body (an FFC or FPC) over a laminated section, using a cover member interposed between the forefront of the second end and the first wiring, plus a conductive adhesive layer that bonds the two ends while maintaining conductivity. The stated problem is precisely the one the '873 background recites: an elastomer-based flexible wiring body cannot be reliably connected to existing connectors, so it is routed through an FFC/FPC.
• § 102 relevance:
  • Claim 1 — discloses an elastomer-based wiring body joined to an FPC wiring body, but the first body's elastomer is a base material for the wiring, not an elastic dielectric sandwiched between two wirings. Element missing → § 103, not § 102.
  • Claim 6 (adhesive layers) — the conductive adhesive layer bonding the wiring bodies is squarely on point; strong § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 art.
  • Claim 8 (fixing member attaching wiring to elastic body and to the FPC) — the cover member + conductive adhesive layer over the laminated section is a good § 103 analogue of the claimed "fixing member."
  • Claim 7 (conductive fiber materials) — the elastomer/conductive-material wiring is close art.

(8) US 9,136,035 B2 — Sumitomo Riko Co., Ltd. — "Flexible conductive material and transducer, flexible wiring board, and electromagnetic shield using the same"

• Full citation / dates: US 9,136,035 B2; priority 2010-10-13; granted 2015-09-15.
• Description: A flexible/elastic conductive material, and a transducer and flexible wiring board made with it. Dielectric-elastomer transducer constructions of this family operate by applying electrodes to opposed faces of an elastic dielectric and reading the capacitance/electrical change on deformation.
• § 102 relevance: [title-derived — lower confidence on internal detail.]
  • Claims 1, 4, 5 — best single-reference candidate for the combination "elastic dielectric body + electrodes on opposed faces + transducer output," which is the heart of claims 1 and 5.
  • Claims 6, 7 — flexible conductive material for wirings.
  • Claims 10–13 — the family's elastic-conductive composites (elastomer + conductive filler) map onto the "elastic body + conductive composites dispersed within the elastic body."

(12) KR 101254623 B1 — 주식회사 플렉스컴 (Flexcom) — "Flexible printed circuit having capacitor and method the same"

• Full citation / dates: KR 101254623 B1; priority 2012-07-19; registered/public 2013-04-15.
• Description: A flexible printed circuit with an integrated capacitor (integral capacitance in the FPC).
• § 102 relevance: [title-derived — lower confidence.] This is the most directly probative citation for the FPCB-parasitic-capacitance teaching that the '873 specification itself discusses (the double-sided FPCB "adds" capacitance; the single-sided FPCB avoids it).
  • Claims 2 and 3 — relevant to the board-surface topology (terminals on opposite surfaces vs. same surface) and to whether the FPC deliberately contributes capacitance.
  • Claim 1 — the notion of an FPC with capacitive structure interacting with the sensor circuit.

Structural / connection-art tier

(2) KR 100834337 B1 — KEC — "Pressure sensor device and manufacturing method thereof" (title confirmed via a third-party citation listing as "압력 센서 장치 및 그 제조 방법")

• Dates: priority 2006-09-29; publication 2008-06-02.
• Description: A pressure sensor device and its manufacturing method. [title-derived — lower confidence on internal detail.]
• § 102 relevance: general-purpose pressure-sensor device art. Potentially relevant to claims 1, 5, 7 at the level of "pressure sensor device + wiring + signal output," but I cannot represent what it discloses element-by-element. Treat as § 103 context, not an anticipation candidate, on this record.

(11) JP 2013-152129 A — Seiko Epson Corp. — "Force detector, pressure detector, electronic apparatus and robot"

• Dates: priority 2012-01-25; published 2013-08-08.
• Description: A force/pressure detector configured with detecting electrodes and an external connection/board, applied to electronic apparatus and robots. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: likely relevant to claims 1, 5, 8 at the level of a force/pressure detector whose electrode signals are routed outward. Not a claim-1 anticipation candidate absent the elastic-dielectric-between-two-wirings disclosure.

(5) JP 2012-007988 A — Tokai Rubber Ind. Ltd. — "Input interface device"

• Dates: priority 2010-06-24; published 2012-01-12.
• Description: An input interface device from the same corporate family as the stretchable-wiring art. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: relevant to claims 1 and 5 as an elastic/deformable input device with wiring output; § 103 context.

(13) JP 2014-142193 A — Oga Inc. — "Load distribution detector"

• Dates: priority 2013-01-22; published 2014-08-07.
• Description: A load-distribution detector (the seating/pressure-mat genre the '873 specification invokes with its chair example, FIGS. 9–10). [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: relevant to claim 1 as a load/pressure-distribution detector with signal wiring; § 103 context. Notably close to the '873's own disclosed application (seating).

(15) US 10,251,262 B2 — Fujikura Ltd. — "Stretchable wiring board"

• Dates: priority 2015-02-02; granted 2019-04-02.
• Description: A stretchable circuit board with a stretchable base, a stretchable interconnect part, an external terminal, a reinforcing area with higher in-plane rigidity, and a stretchable area, with a stretchable auxiliary member at the reinforcing/stretchable boundary.
• § 102 relevance / date caveat: the grant date (2019) postdates the '873 priority date (2015-12-11), so it is not § 102(a)(1) art. It is only available if it qualifies under § 102(a)(2) — i.e., if it is "effectively filed" (per § 102(d), earliest priority = 2015-02-02) before 2015-12-11, which is plausible via its JP priority, but this depends on its US/PCT filing chain, which I did not verify. I flag this reference as a timing question, not a settled citation.
  • If available: relevant to claims 1 and 8 (a stretchable wiring board joined to a stretchable circuit, with a rigidified/reinforced region — structurally analogous to the board/sensor junction). If not available: it drops out entirely.

(4) KR 101001360 B1 — GigaLane — "Printed circuit board electrically connected to the ground of electronic equipment"

• Dates: priority 2008-06-16; publication 2010-12-14.
• Description: A PCB/FPCB grounding-connection arrangement. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: supports the FPCB construction aspects of claim 1 (board surfaces, conductive connections) at a generic level. Weak; § 103 context only.

(14) KR 101468611 B1 — MELFAS — "Input sensor and input sensing apparatus including same"

• Dates: priority 2008-04-30; publication 2014-12-10.
• Description: A capacitive touch/input sensor and apparatus. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: relevant to claims 4 and 5 for capacitive sensing of deformation/touch and electrode wiring; and to claim 1 for sensor-with-wiring output. § 103 context.

Materials tier (mostly aimed at claims 9–13)

(1) US 7,247,590 B2 — TDK Corp. — "Composite dielectric, composite dielectric sheet, composite dielectric paste, metal-layered composite dielectric, wiring board and multilayer wiring board"

• Dates: priority 2003-07-04; granted 2007-07-24.
• Description: Composite dielectrics in sheet/paste form with dispersed filler, plus metal-layered composite dielectrics and wiring/multilayer boards made from them, engineered to control dielectric properties.
• § 102 relevance: [title-derived — lower confidence.] Aimed squarely at the dielectric-composite dependent claims:
  • Claims 10, 11, 12, 13 — a dielectric composite with a dispersed conductive/filler phase is the same species of disclosure as "elastic body + conductive composites dispersed within the elastic body" (claims 10/11) and the 1–10 wt % / particle-size limitations (claims 12/13). § 103 is the realistic basis; a § 102 hit would require the reference to also supply the elastic/restoration behavior and the sensor context, which a wiring-board dielectric patent likely does not.

(7) US 2013/0209741 A1 — Nitto Denko Corp. — "Porous resin sheet and method for producing the same"

• Dates: priority 2010-09-11; published 2013-08-15.
• Description: A porous resin sheet and its production method.
• § 102 relevance: [title-derived — lower confidence.] The '873 elastic dielectric is expressly a porous material "includ[ing] micro air holes" (foam, non-woven, nanoweb). A porous resin sheet is § 103 art for claims 9 and 10 (the elastic dielectric body and its air-hole/porosity character), and for the "elastic body" sub-feature of claim 1.

(10) US 2014/0090884 A1 — Tokai Rubber Industries, Ltd. — "Elastic conductive material"

• Dates: priority 2011-08-10; published 2014-04-03.
• Description: An elastic (stretchable) conductive material — elastomer with conductive filler. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: directed at claims 6, 7 (conductive, bondable wiring materials) and claims 10–12 (elastic body + conductive composites). § 103 basis.

(3) US 7,518,202 B2 — Hitachi, Ltd. — "Mechanical quantity measuring apparatus"

• Dates: priority 2005-03-22; granted 2009-04-14.
• Description: An apparatus for measuring a mechanical quantity (deformation/strain) from an electrical response. [title-derived — lower confidence.]
• § 102 relevance: generic deformation-to-electrical-signal art; relevant only in a § 103 combination for claims 4 and 5. Not a serious claim-1 reference.

Family-cited item (not one of the 15)

KR 101549414 B1 — Koninklijke Philips N.V. — "Electronic assembly for attachment to a fabric substrate, electronic textile and method of manufacturing such an electronic textile" — priority 2007-03-29; publication 2015-09-02. This appears under "Family Cites Families," i.e., cited by a family member rather than by the '873 examiner. It is e-textile attachment art — directly in the '873's stated field ("electronic fiber… micro electronic component… coupled to a product to which electronic fibers are applied") and thus § 103 context for claim 1's "electronics attached to a fabric/fiber substrate" framing. It should not be conflated with the examiner-cited list.

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3. Claim-by-claim § 102 matrix against the cited art

Legend: A = arguable single-reference § 102 (all elements plausibly present); C = § 103 combination art; — = no meaningful disclosure found.

No cell in the matrix is a confident single-reference anticipation of claim 1. That is consistent with the prosecution history on the face of the patent (one non-final action, response, then notice of allowance on 2020-03-06), i.e., the examiner evidently treated the cited art as combination art rather than as anticipatory.

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4. Ranked takeaway

1. US 2014/0150571 A1 (Nippon Mektron) — the most probative reference: it is the same problem (pressure sensor integrated with a flexible circuit board) and its background expressly recites the capacitive elastic-dielectric-sandwich architecture of claim 1/claim 5.
2. US 2012/0026700 A1 (Tokai Rubber) — the most probative reference on the connection claims (6 and 8): conductive-adhesive + cover-member joining of a stretchable elastomer wiring body to an FPC, which is exactly the '873 "fixing member / adhesive layer" concept.
3. US 9,136,035 B2 (Sumitomo Riko) — best reference on the elastic-dielectric transducer stack and on the conductive-composite dependent claims.
4. KR 101254623 B1 (Flexcom) — the targeted reference for the FPCB-capacitance aspect behind claims 2 and 3.
5. Material/porosity references US 7,247,590 B2 (TDK) and US 2013/0209741 A1 (Nitto Denko) — the § 103 backbone for claims 9–13.
6. US 10,251,262 B2 (Fujikura) — potentially useful, but its availability as prior art turns on a § 102(a)(2)/§ 102(d) timing question I did not resolve and it should not be relied on without checking its US filing chain.

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5. Stated limitations

1. I did not retrieve the original specifications of the JP- and KR-language citations, nor of US 7,247,590, US 7,518,202, US 2013/0209741, US 2014/0090884, US 9,136,035 or US 10,251,262. Every entry marked [title-derived — lower confidence] is a hypothesis about disclosure scope, not a verified reading. Element-by-element § 102 conclusions for those references cannot be responsibly drawn from titles alone.
2. The "Citations (16)" header vs. the 15 enumerated entries is an unexplained discrepancy in the supplied text; I did not resolve it, and I did not add a reference to force the count to 16.
3. No anticipation of claim 1 is asserted. My matrix deliberately labels the crowded cells as § 103 combination art.
4. The ISR dated 2017-03-09 may itself name references not reproduced in the Google Patents citation table; the authoritative prior-art list for prosecution purposes is the IDS/1449 record and the ISR, neither of which I retrieved.
5. Relevant cross-reference: the sibling US 10,648,872 B2 and publication US 2018/0356300 A1 (both LG Innotek, same 2015-12-11 priority) appear in the "Similar Documents" block. They share the effective filing date and are not prior art to '873; they should not be cited as such.

I'll verify the disclosures of the key prior-art references before building the obviousness combinations, since I only have titles and assignees from the patent page.

Let me verify a few more key references, particularly the Tokai Rubber input interface device, the Molex capacitively-coupled connector, and the KEC pressure sensor.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,648,873 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This section builds on the claim-scope, bibliographic, and litigation sections already produced. I do not repeat the claim-by-claim plain-language summary; I assume it and use it.

Flagged discrepancies (not auto-corrected):

• The task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the session context states 2026-09-29. I treat the analysis date as 2026 and note the inconsistency rather than picking one silently. It does not change the result, because the operative date is the effective filing date, 2015-12-11 (KR 10-2015-0177174 priority).
• The one-day Google Patents vs. Unified Patents date offset flagged in the prior sections persists. I use Google Patents dates below.

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1. Governing legal framework

The application was filed 2016-12-09, after 2013-03-16, with a KR priority of 2015-12-11. AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102/§ 103 governs. Prior art therefore comprises:

• §102(a)(1): patents, printed publications, public uses on sale, or otherwise available to the public before 2015-12-11; and
• §102(a)(2): U.S. patents, U.S. application publications, and WIPO publications designating the U.S., effectively filed before 2015-12-11 — but only as to subject matter supported by that earlier filing.

Because the references here are almost all mechanical/electrical structural disclosures, §103 requires: (1) the claimed subject matter as a whole is the sum of the teachings; (2) a POSITA would have had a motivation to combine with a reasonable expectation of success; and (3) the combination satisfies at least one KSR rationale — (A) known elements combined by known methods yielding predictable results; (B) simple substitution of a known element; (C) known technique improving a similar device in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try" over a finite set of predictable solutions; or (F) known work in one field prompting design-incentive/market-force variation. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).

Threshold point on claim 1 breadth: Claim 1 recites no capacitance function, no conductive-fiber material, and no numeric limits. It is a bare structural claim to (i) an elastic-bodied dielectric, (ii) two wirings on facing surfaces extending away from those surfaces, and (iii) a side-mounted FPCB with first/second terminals on first/second board surfaces. Broad claims like this are the easiest to invalidate; every narrowing feature lives in dependent claims 4–13. This shapes the analysis below: the strongest §103 case is against claims 1–3 and 9–13.

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2. Prior-art qualification

Derived from the "Citations (16)" and "Family Cites Families" tables on the patent page.

Expressly excluded as non-art: US 10,648,872 B2, US 2018/0356300 A1, KR 10-2382320 B1, and WO 2017/099508 A1 — all same-family/same-applicant, same effective date; they are not prior art against the '873. (Consistent with the earlier "identifiers I did not conflate" section.)

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3. What each key reference actually teaches (verification status)

Verified from full text/abstract (high confidence):

• US 2014/0150571 A1 (Nippon Mektron) — Pressure sensor formed integrally with a flexible circuit board, "suitable for… a flexible curved surface." Discloses a pressure detection module 100 with a flexible circuit board 110 having multiple belt-shaped portions 111 (tree structure), communication terminals 120, wiring 130, and electronic circuit portions 140 that transmit sensor information to the terminals. Its background expressly acknowledges the capacitive prior art: "in an electrostatic capacitive type sensor in which an elastic dielectric material is sandwiched between films at opposite sides, electrodes and wiring are required to be disposed on the films at opposite sides…" It also criticizes existing sheet sensors because "each sensor has to be connected to a signal processing device through a large-sized connector." (Sources: Google Patents US20140150571A1; FPO; JP counterpart JP2012247372A.)

• US 2012/0026700 A1 (Tokai Rubber) — Wiring body connection structure. A first wiring body 2 = flexible base material 20 (elastomer) + flexible wiring 21 (elastomer + conductive material) + cover film 22; a second wiring body 3 = FFC, and expressly "an existing wiring body such as an FFC or an FPC can be used." Joining is by a conductive adhesive layer 30 at a laminated section where the two bodies' ends overlap front-to-rear, with a cover member interposed to prevent wiring breakage. Stated purpose: to indirectly connect an extendable/contractible elastomer wiring body to a connector on a circuit board with high reliability and low cost. (Sources: Google Patents US20120026700; FPO.)

• US 2012/0241689 A1 / US 9,136,035 B2 (Sumitomo Riko) — Flexible conductive material = elastomer + conductive agent filled in the elastomer. Explicitly discloses a capacitance-type sensor (second embodiment): a dielectric film 20 of H-NBR elastomer (≈300 µm), a pair of electrodes 21a (upper surface) and 21b (lower surface) opposing one another, wirings 22a, 22b, and cover films 23a, 23b; also an actuator with dielectric film 10 between electrodes 11a/11b and wirings 12a/12b connected to a source. Electrodes are screen-printed on the elastomer film. (Sources: US9136035 PDF; US20120241689A1 record.)

• US 10,251,262 B2 (Fujikura) — Stretchable wiring board: stretchable base, stretchable wiring having a wiring section and an electrode terminal section, and a poorly-stretchable member overlapping the wiring to suppress resistance change. Conductive material includes conductive particles and an elastomer. (Source: Google Patents US10251262B2.) Caveat: post-priority publication; usable only via its 2015-02-02 JP priority under §102(a)(2).

Not verified (title/CPC-inferred only — treat as lower confidence):

• KR 100834337 B1 (KEC) — "Pressure sensor device and manufacturing method thereof." Title and filing era are consistent with a capacitive or piezoresistive flexible pressure sensor, but I retrieved no text. I treat its content as unverified and do not rely on it as a primary reference.
• US 8,287,289 B2 (Molex) — "Elastic-cushioned capacitively-coupled connector." The title suggests an elastic cushion between capacitively-coupled plates in a connector — potentially relevant to the elastic-body-between-two-conductive-members concept and to FPCB edge connections. Unverified.
• JP 2012-007988 A (Tokai Rubber) — "Input interface device." Plausibly a capacitive input/pressure interface with an FPC tail. Unverified.
• JP 2013-152129 A (Seiko Epson); JP 2014-142193 A (Oga); KR 101254623 B1 (Flexcom); KR 101468611 B1 (MELFAS); US 2013/0209741 A1 (Nitto Denko); US 2014/0090884 A1 (Tokai Rubber); US 7,247,590 B2 (TDK); KR 101549414 B1 (Philips) — used below only for the specific propositions their titles/classes plainly support (e.g., TDK = composite dielectric with filler; Nitto Denko = porous resin sheet; Philips = electronics on a fabric substrate). Content beyond the title is flagged unverified.

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4. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Conclusion from the chart: no single reference in the record discloses all of claim 1. The invention lies in the juxtaposition of an elastic-dielectric two-sided-electrode sensor (Sumitomo Riko) with a side-mounted FPCB termination (Tokai Rubber / Nippon Mektron). That is a classic §103 combination, not a §102 anticipation.

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5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary, 2 references) — Tokai Rubber '700 in view of Sumitomo Riko '689/'035

Rejection target: claims 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11.

Rationale (KSR (A), (C), (F)): Elements (a)–(c) come from Sumitomo Riko's capacitance-type sensor, which discloses an elastomer dielectric film sandwiched between a pair of opposing electrodes on its upper and lower surfaces, with wirings extending away from each surface — the exact architecture of claim 1 and the exact capacitance mechanism of claims 4–5. Elements (d)–(g) come from Tokai Rubber, which discloses fixing a flexible printed circuit / FFC to a side of an elastomer wiring body via a conductive adhesive layer and a cover member, so that the elastomer wirings can reach a circuit-board connector.

Motivation: Sumitomo Riko's wirings 22a/22b must connect to external measurement circuitry. Tokai Rubber was written to solve precisely that interface — its stated purpose is that "the extendable and contractible first wiring body can be indirectly connected to the connector on the circuit board," using "an existing wiring body such as an FFC or FPC" and "highly reliable existing connection technologies." Both references are in the same field of flexible/stretchable electromechanical devices using elastomer conductors. Market and design forces (wearables, curved-surface pressure mapping, seating/health monitoring) independently drove integration of elastomeric sensors with FPCBs — KSR rationale (F).

Reasonable expectation of success: High. Tokai Rubber reports the connection works and explains how (adhesive + cover member to prevent wiring fracture); Sumitomo Riko already prints elastomer electrodes and wirings by screen printing. Joining the two is a mechanical step with predictable results.

Anticipation of the "extending away" limitation: Both references show wirings running laterally off their respective surfaces rather than terminating at the dielectric edge — which is exactly why the claim's "extending away from the first/second surface" language is met.

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Ground 2 (3 references) — Nippon Mektron '571 + Sumitomo Riko '689/'035 + Tokai Rubber '700

Rejection target: claims 1–3, 4, 5, 8.

This ground is stronger on the FPCB limitations than Ground 1 because Nippon Mektron directly discloses the "pressure detection module" framing: a pressure sensor, a flexible circuit board with side-extending belt-shaped portions, communication terminals, and electronic circuit portions receiving and transmitting sensor information to those terminals. That maps with unusual precision onto claim 1's "flexible printed circuit board spaced away from a side of the elastic body" and "terminals to receive signals."

Nippon Mektron's own background supplies the express motivation to use a capacitive elastic-dielectric sensor: it identifies the capacitive sandwich as a known flexible pressure-sensing approach and identifies the problem to be solved (thick/rigid film stacks, large connectors). Sumitomo Riko supplies the working capacitive elastomer embodiment; Tokai Rubber supplies the reliable FPCB-to-elastomer-wiring joint.

Rationale: KSR (A) known elements/known methods; (D) applying a known FPCB-integration technique to a known elastomeric pressure sensor ready for improvement; (G) express suggestion in Nippon Mektron that flexible-circuit-board integration is the desired direction.

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Ground 3 (claim 3 only — the through-hole single-sided FPCB)

Claim 3 requires both terminals on the same board surface, with the second wiring passing through a through-hole to reach its terminal and to prove the claim requires the wiring pass through at both the first and second circuit board surfaces.

Honest assessment: I did not find a reference in this record that expressly discloses routing a sensor electrode wiring through an FPCB through-hole to a same-surface terminal. The closest candidates are:

• KR 101254623 B1 (Flexcom) — "Flexible printed circuit having capacitor" (FPC with an integrated capacitor; likely uses plated through features) — unverified.
• US 7,247,590 B2 (TDK) — "…wiring board and multilayer wiring board" — multilayer boards entail interlayer connection features — unverified.
• US 8,287,289 B2 (Molex) — elastic-cushioned capacitively-coupled connector — unverified.

If those references teach or suggest through-hole/interlayer routing in an FPC, claim 3 falls under KSR (C)/(E): through-hole vias are among the most familiar techniques in printed-circuit fabrication (indeed, the '873's own CPC schedule includes H05K 1/11 "printed elements for providing electric connections to or between printed circuits," H05K 1/112 "pads… combined with via connections," H05K 1/114 "pad being close to via," and H05K 1/18 "printed circuits structurally associated with non-printed electric components"). A POSITA assembling a single-sided FPCB faced with routing a back-side wiring to a front-side pad would select through-holing as one of a finite number of predictable options.

This is the weakest link in the record. I would rate claim 3 as the claim most likely to survive a §103 challenge on this evidence set alone, while remaining vulnerable on the law of routine techniques.

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Ground 4 (claims 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 — numeric and chemistry limitations)

The claim-drafting pattern here (a bare claim 1 plus cascading numeric/chemistry ranges) is characteristic of claims that were allowed on the combination rather than on any single element, which is why the narrow range claims are the ones with the least independent footing.

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6. Dependent-claim summary

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7. The patentee's best rebuttals, and why they likely fail

(a) "Nippon Mektron teaches away." This is the strongest substantive counter. Nippon Mektron's background states that in "an electrostatic capacitive type sensor in which an elastic dielectric material is sandwiched between films at opposite sides… the sensor becomes thick and the flexibility thereof deteriorates." A patentee would argue the primary FPCB reference disparages the very two-sided-electrode architecture of claim 1.

Rebuttal: Under In re Fulton and KSR, a reference teaches away only if it "criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages" the claimed solution. Nippon Mektron's criticism is directed at a specific PET-film-based implementation producing internal bending pressure — not at the capacitive principle, and not at the '873's elastic-fiber wirings on an elastomeric body, which is the very variation that mitigates the criticized problem. Moreover, the criticism is not needed at all: Ground 1 uses Sumitomo Riko, not Nippon Mektron, as the capacitive primary. And Nippon Mektron elsewhere affirmatively advocates flexible-circuit-board integration, i.e., it points toward the claimed combination.

(b) Secondary considerations. No evidence in the record supports any Graham factor:

• No commercial success evidence, no licensing, no copying, no industry praise, and no long-felt need was identified.
• No nexus could be shown in any event, because the claimed features are the disclosed functions of the references.
• The patent lapsed 2024-06-17 (effective 2024-05-12) for failure to pay maintenance fees, and no litigation or PTAB proceeding was found in the prior analysis — so there is no litigation record from which objective indicia could be drawn.

(c) "The examiner considered all 16 references and allowed." True — the file shows a non-final action (2019-09-17), a response (2019-12-17), and allowance (2020-03-06) over this exact art set. That is some evidence of non-obviousness at the time. But allowance on a first action with a short response is weak evidence where, as here, the examiner's own citations include the closest sensory structure (Sumitomo Riko '035/'689) and the closest FPCB-connection structure (Tokai Rubber '700) but no explicit reason for combining them was developed. A challenger would also look outside the record — most obviously JP 2012-007988 (Tokai Rubber, "Input interface device"), which the examiner cited but which I could not verify, and which is the single most promising candidate for a two-reference combination against claims 1–6.

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8. Bottom line

Claim 1 is very likely invalid under §103 over Tokai Rubber US 2012/0026700 in view of Sumitomo Riko US 2012/0241689 (= US 9,136,035), with Nippon Mektron US 2014/0150571 as a reinforcing third reference supplying the FPCB-integration motivation and the signal-receiving terminal structure. The combination is supported by KSR rationales (A), (C), (D), (F), and (G), and no reference teaches away from the claimed elastic-body/conductive-fiber implementation.

Claims 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 11 are strong §103 candidates on the same or a slightly extended combination.

Claims 3, 7, 9, 12, and 13 are the vulnerable-but-survivable set on this record: claim 3 and claim 7 need references (Flexcom '623, TDK '590, Molex '289, and Philips '549414, respectively) whose full text I could not verify; claims 9 and 12 assert numeric ranges for which no reference in this record discloses an in-range value, leaving only the routine-optimization/design-need doctrine, which is a weaker but still viable theory.

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9. Stated uncertainties and limitations — read before relying on this

1. Unverified references. I obtained full or abstract text for four references (Nippon Mektron '571, Tokai Rubber '700, Sumitomo Riko '689/'035, Fujikura '262). For the remaining twelve, including the ones most important to claims 3, 7, 9, and 12, I worked only from titles and CPC context. Those mappings are provisional. In particular, my treatment of KR 100834337 (KEC), KR 101254623 (Flexcom), US 8,287,289 (Molex), and JP 2012-007988 (Tokai Rubber) is inferential.
2. The §102(a)(2) problem with Fujikura '262. It published 2019-04-02 — after the 2015-12-11 priority date. It is usable only to the extent its disclosure is supported by the 2015-02-02 JP priority. Any obviousness theory resting on matter added in the U.S. filing would be improper. I flag this because it is an easy error to make.
3. Family references excluded. US 10,648,872, US 2018/0356300, KR 10-2382320, and WO 2017/099508 are not prior art against the '873 and must not be cited as such, notwithstanding their near-identical disclosures.
4. Date inconsistency. The task states April 26, 2026; the session context states 2026-09-29. I did not reconcile them. Neither affects an analysis anchored to the 2015-12-11 priority date.
5. Practical significance is limited. The '873 lapsed in 2024 and no litigation was found. If the objective is to challenge live rights, the Korean counterpart KR 10-2382320 B1 is shown as "active" on the patent page, and the sibling US 10,648,872 B2 issued the same day — its maintenance status was not verified here and should be checked. Obviousness/inventive-step attacks on those would follow a materially similar blueprint but must be re-run against their own claim sets and prosecution histories.