US 10663249

I'll verify the patent details against live sources before summarizing.

Now let me check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity or litigation involving this patent.

US 10,663,249 — verification summary

Caveat on method: I do not have direct API access to USPTO PatentCenter/PACER or the CAFC docket system; I ran web searches against Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Patents‑Review, and CAFC/Fed. Cir. docket and case‑summary sources. Google Patents shows separate "Cited By"/"Patent Citations" tabs that reflect post‑grant citations, which is indirect evidence of no reissue/reexam activity, not proof. See the "Uncertainty" section at the end.

Bibliographic data (per the authoritative patent text and corroborating sources)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10663249B1](/patent/US10663249B1)/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[10663249](/patent/10663249) ; https://www.ipqwery.com/ipowner/en/owner/ip/[1051721](/patent/1051721)-poe-lang-enterprise-co-ltd.html

Abstract (verbatim)

"A crossbow includes a barrel, a cocking device, a bow device, a link device and a cartridge. The retention member is moved by the operation of the string of the bow device. The cocking device detachably holds the string. By repeatedly operating the link device and pulling the trigger, the cocking device is moved back and forth repeatedly, and the retention member moves back and forth to control the restriction member to pivot so that the bullets continuously drop to the groove and located in front of the retention member. Therefore, the crossbow can shoot the bullets continuously. The bullets are allowed to be fed into the cartridge one time of feeding."

Plain-language overview of the independent claim (claim 1)

Claim 1 is a single apparatus claim to a crossbow with five cooperating subsystems:

1. Barrel — front end, rear end; a top track that opens through the front end; a handle on the underside of the rear end.
2. Cocking device (above the handle) — comprising (a) a slide riding in the track with a groove; (b) a frame whose first end is at the track near the handle and whose second end protrudes beyond the track, defining a "room" between the frame and the barrel top; (c) a positioning member pivoted inside the frame in that room, biased by a resilient member mounted between the frame and the positioning member; and (d) a trigger whose upper end enters the track from below and pivots against the positioning member, with the lower end projecting below the barrel. Pulling the trigger pivots the positioning member; the resilient member returns both.
3. Bow device — a bow on the barrel, a string between the bow's ends, and a retention member slidably engaged in the slide's groove with an engaging portion. The string passes through the retention member. When the engaging portion is moved away from the bow it engages the cocking device so the string can be pulled.
4. Cartridge — mounted on the barrel top and fixed to the slide; it has a storage space with an entrance at one end and an outlet at the other, and a restriction member near the outlet having a contact end, a push end, and a recess between them. When the retention member moves rearward it pushes the push end and pivots the restriction member; the contact end blocks the stack of bullets while the recess aligns with the outlet, so one bullet drops into the slide's groove ahead of the retention member. When the cocking device pivots free of the engaging portion the retention member fires the bullet.
5. Functional/result language (the "wherein" clause) — the retention member is repeatedly moved to pivot the restriction member by engaging/disengaging the string with the cocking device, so bullets continuously drop into the groove ahead of the retention member and are shot; and the cartridge is fed with multiple bullets in one loading operation.

Practical effect: an auto‑feeding, one‑bullet‑per‑cycle magazine (cartridge) whose feed is timed mechanically off the reciprocal motion of the sliding bowstring retainer — i.e., a "repeating crossbow" that fires balls/beads rather than arrows, with the string's recovery force as the firing energy source. Note that claim 1 recites "bullet(s)" throughout, while the patent is classified under F41B 5/126 (repeating crossbows with magazines).

Dependent claims (brief): cl. 2 adds the return spring between the restriction member's push end and the storage‑space interior; cl. 3 adds a seal at the entrance; cl. 4 adds an underside passage in the cartridge, parallel to and communicating with the storage space/outlet, housing the retention member and the frame's second end (with a separation plate between passage and storage space); cl. 5 adds the retention member's front head with an embedded magnet and an elongate hole the string passes through, plus two lateral ridges on the engaging portion; cl. 6 states the bullet‑to‑magnet attraction force is less than the string's recovery force; cl. 7 adds the bolted block/extension‑plate mounting of the cartridge to the slide/frame; cl. 8 adds the entire link device (pivot bar, first link, second link, trigger guard, board, through hole, slot, pin) as the cocking actuator; cl. 9 adds an optional aim device on the cartridge top.

Notable drafting issues in the authoritative text (relevant to any construction/infringement analysis)

• Several apparent typographical errors in the specification, some of which carry into the claims: "elongate hoe" (claim 5; spec) for "elongate hole 433"; "groove 311" (spec) for groove 211; "restriction member 54" (spec) for 64; "pivot bar 53" for 51; and "A is connected to the barrel" (spec/abstract origin) — the antecedent for the bow device was dropped.
• The final clause of claim 1 ("…when the cocking device is pivoted and disengaged from the engaging portion;") trails without a stated consequence, and "a bullet" / "the bullets" are used inconsistently; also "the cartridge are fed with multiple bullets" is a grammatical/antecedent mismatch. These may create indefiniteness exposure but I make no legal conclusion.

CAFC 2026 docket search for this patent

My searches located no CAFC appeal, PTAB/IPR, or active district‑court case naming US 10,663,249. Specifics:

• The CAFC scheduled‑cases listings I retrieved (e.g., June 2026 panels) and the weekly Fed. Cir. summaries for 2026 contain numerous patent cases but none captioned to this patent or to Poe Lang Enterprise.
• The only 2026 crossbow‑related Federal Circuit item I found is Ravin Crossbows, LLC v. Squires (Fed. Cir., Aug. 6, 2026, nonprecedential; IPR of US 9,354,015) — a different patent and different parties. https://fedcircuitblog.com/2026/08/06/opinions-orders-august-6-2026/
• Google Patents' "Cited By" list shows the '249 patent is cited by later Poe Lang/Liu applications (e.g., US 20220113107, US 11761727, US 20220412687, US 20250155219, US 20250321072/073, and others), which is evidence of it being live prior art, not of litigation.

Uncertainty / limits of this answer

1. I cannot confirm an exhaustive CAFC docket check — only that targeted searches surfaced nothing for this number. A definitive check requires the CAFC/PACER docket by case name or by patent number in the originating district case, which I could not query directly.
2. The Google Patents record lists only one family member and one country (US); I did not verify Taiwanese or other counterpart filings by number.
3. Maintenance‑fee status is stated as of the last recorded event (4th year, 2023‑11‑14). I cannot verify whether the next (7.5‑year) fee has since been paid; that will determine whether "Active" remains accurate.
4. All quoted text above is taken from the patent document you supplied (authoritative). Where web sources (Justia, IPQWery) agree with it, they are cited only as corroboration.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10,663,249.

Let me search more specifically for litigation records and the patent owner.

Let me try the litigation-specific databases directly.

Findings: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,663,249

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,663,249 was found.

I searched litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, general web indexes that surface PACER/Justia/CourtListener dockets, and CAFC-related results) and could not identify any case — district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit — in which U.S. Patent No. 10,663,249 is asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

What the searches did return (and why it is NOT the '249 patent)

• The Google Patents page for US10663249B1 itself — patent text, claims, and citation data, but no litigation section and no case entries.
• The PTAB-style "cited by" / "citations" tables carried on the patent page. These are patent document citations, not litigation. Notably, several citing documents are later Poe Lang / Chi-Chang Liu crossbow applications (e.g., US20220113107A1, US11761727B2, US20250321072A1), but citation by an examiner is not litigation.
• Unrelated crossbow litigations that matched on the keyword "crossbow," e.g.:
  • MCP IP, LLC v. Ravin Crossbows, LLC, No. 3:22-cv-00004 (W.D. Wis.) — about different patents (cable positioner / stock-overlap families).
  • TenPoint v. Parker Compound Bows (W.D. Va.) — different patents.
  • Ravin / Bear Archery crossbow disputes — different patents (e.g., a '693 patent).
  • Ocean Semiconductor v. Applied Materials IPR — matched only on a numeric artifact, not the '249 patent.
• A "10663249" hit in a neurosurgery bibliography — a PMID, not the patent.

None of these involve U.S. Patent No. 10,663,249.

Important context on the patent (from the authoritative full text)

• Title: "Crossbow with quick-shooting device"
• Patent no.: US 10,663,249 B1
• Application no.: US 16/248,701
• Filing / priority date: 2019-01-15
• Grant date: 2020-05-26
• Inventor: Chi-Chang Liu
• Original assignee: Individual; currently assigned to Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. (Taichung, Taiwan)
• Status: Active; maintenance fee paid (4th year, 2023-11-14); anticipated expiration 2039-01-15

The owner (Poe Lang) and inventor (Chi-Chang Liu) are prolific in this space — the later citing applications in the same family suggest continued prosecution activity, but prosecution and citation activity is not litigation. I found no record that Poe Lang (or Liu) has filed suit asserting the '249 patent, and no record of a declaratory-judgment, IPR/PGR, or ITC action against it.

Caveats (please read)

1. Negative findings are not proof of absence. Not every district court complaint is fully indexed in free databases, and sealed, settled, or recently filed cases may not appear. Docket Navigator (paid) and PACER's own docket search would be the definitive check.
2. I was unable to complete a direct, authenticated query of the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com) or PACER for this specific patent; a couple of my follow-up searches were cut off before returning results. My conclusion rests on the results I did obtain.
3. Per your instruction, I did not auto-correct any identifier. US 10,663,249 has been treated literally throughout, and I excluded all results referring to other patent numbers (e.g., '546, '491, '693, '435, '893, '056, '375, '433, '939, etc.).

Recommendation

To obtain a definitive answer, run the number directly in:

• PACER "Search Dockets / Find a Case," plus the USPTO Patent Litigation Docket Report and PatentCenter "Litigation" tab for patent 10,663,249;
• Docket Navigator (litigation) and Unified Patents portal (litigation + IPR);
• CAFC docket search (for any appeal).

If those also return nothing, the correct statement is: there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,663,249 as of April 26, 2026.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against live sources before writing.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) block supplied in the prompt returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 10,663,249, and my independent web checks surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent as of 2026-09-30 (breakdown: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0).

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no claim-level PTAB result to lean on, and no estoppel to exploit. All nine claims — claim 1 independent, claims 2–9 dependent — are UNTESTED in an AIA trial. Do not assume from this that the patent is "hardened." The more accurate read is that the patent has simply never been challenged at the Board, which is common for a niche, relatively low-volume consumer crossbow patent that has not (on the public record I could find) been the subject of a wide assertion campaign. Any defensive posture you build must rest on your own prior-art search and, if your budget and the litigation posture allow, on a petition you file — not on an existing FWD.

Framing caution: the task template's example phrasing ("the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened" / "claims 1–5 have been canceled") describes possible outcomes, not this patent's history. US 10,663,249 has no PTAB history at all. I flag this explicitly so no one downstream repeats a fabricated proceeding number.

No proceedings to report

There is no IPR20XX-#####, PGR20XX-#####, or CBM20XX-##### number to list for US 10,663,249. Accordingly, the per-proceeding fields requested (judge panel, petition grounds, institution decision, FWD, settlement, appeal) are not applicable — there is no record to populate, and I will not invent one.

Verification basis and its limits. The canonical source is the ODP structured block in the prompt ("The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest"). I ran four targeted web searches (patent number alone and in combination with "IPR," "PTAB," "IPR2020–IPR2024," "Poe Lang," "petition," "institution," and "crossbow"). Every hit for "10663249" resolved to either (a) the Google Patents page for this patent, (b) cited-by references in later crossbow patents, or (c) an unrelated NSF award ID bearing the same numeric string. No PTAB docket, institution decision, FWD, or CAFC opinion referencing this patent appeared. I could not query PTAB E2E or the CAFC docket directly with the tools available, so I state this as high-but-not-absolute confidence: absence of evidence in the indexed web plus affirmative ODP null result.

What the record does show (useful context)

• Prosecution/ownership: Filed 2019-01-15 as US 16/248,701; granted 2020-05-26 as US 10,663,249 B1. Inventor Chi-Chang Liu; assigned on filing to Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. (Taiwan). Sole patent in its family (Family ID 70775137). No continuation/divisional of this patent is listed.
• Status/extinction: Active; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2023-11-14 (small entity). Anticipated expiration 2039-01-15 per the ODP record — i.e., roughly 12+ years of runway remain.
• No reexamination or reissue on the face of the record either. So the validity of claims 1–9 has been tested neither at the Board nor in an ex parte posture.
• Prior art already before the Examiner. Thirty references are listed in the "Citations" table (e.g., US 2,918,050 Kopman "Repeating cross bow"; US 3,739,765 Moore "Automatic loading cross-bow"; US 6,868,845 Moore "Automatic loading cross-bow"; US 9,395,142 NXT Generation; US 2019/0331453 Zou "Multi-shot crossbow"; and the patent owner's own US 10,378,853 / US 10,408,561 / US 10,495,403). This matters for strategy: a future petitioner relying on any of these faces a § 325(d) discretionary-denial fight under Advanced Bionics unless it can show the Office materially erred or that its combination/argument is materially different.
• Forward citation pressure. The "Cited By" list shows at least 14 later documents citing this patent, including competitors' rapid-fire crossbow work — US 11,428,495 / US 11,692,787 / US 11,959,722 (Limin' Innovations "semi-automatic crossbow"), US 11,828,565 (Barnett Outdoors "Repeating toy crossbow"), WO 2025/007177 (Steambow GmbH "Bullet magazine for crossbows"), and US 11,906,261 (Mey Chair Systems "Magazine, weapon…"). These are evidence the patent sits in the live prior-art stream for this space, which cuts both ways: it confirms the field is active enough to attract challenges, and it gives a defendant a rich set of later filings to mine for obviousness-type double-checking (though later publications are not § 102 art against this patent).

Strategic summary

Claim status. There is nothing new to subtract: claims 1–9 of US 10,663,249 stand exactly as issued. Claim 1 covers the combination of barrel + track, a cocking device (slide with groove, frame with room, pivotable positioning member biased by a resilient member, trigger driving the positioning member), a bow device with a retention member having an engaging portion and the string passing through it, and a cartridge with a storage space (entrance/outlet) and a pivoting restriction member with a contact end, push end, and intervening recess. Claims 2–9 add the return spring (2), the seal at the entrance (3), the cartridge passage / separation plate / frame-second-end-in-passage arrangement (4), the front head with magnet + elongate hole + two ridges on the engaging portion (5), the "magnet attraction force < string recovery force" limitation (6), the block/protrusion/extension-plate bolt mounting (7), the full link device (pivot bar, first and second links, trigger guard, board, through hole, slot, pin) (8), and the aim device on the cartridge top (9). Claim 6 is worth noting: it is a numerical/comparative limitation and a natural target for a § 112 or § 103 attack.

Estoppel landscape — none exists. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is inapplicable: no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any ground, and no district-court defendant inherits a narrowed art set from a prior Board trial. Correspondingly, there is no "IPR-survivor" claim set that a plaintiff can wave at you, and no FWD to cite. Every prior-art ground, including the thirty references already cited during prosecution, remains available to you — subject only to the § 325(d) and § 314(a) Fintiv-style discretion a panel may apply if you file. A § 325(d) argument is likely if you lead with art the Examiner already considered; the safer path is materially new art or a materially different combination and motivation.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (there are no petitioners). No patent-owner appellate activity on this patent (nothing to appeal). No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents or any similar entity does not appear anywhere in the chain for this patent; the only assignments of record are the inventor's original assignment to Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. Note the surrounding family dynamic instead: Poe Lang/Liu have been serial filers of follow-on rapid-fire and arrow-feeding crossbow applications (US 2022/0113107, US 2022/0128328, US 2022/0412687, US 2023/0331053-style continuations, and post-2023 filings such as US 2025/0155219, US 2025/0321072, US 2025/0321073), several of which have themselves drawn IPR or become cited art. That suggests the portfolio is being actively prosecuted and commercialized, and that a future IPR against this patent is more likely to come from a competitor defendant in litigation than from a defensive aggregator.

Recommended next steps

1. State the null result plainly in any opinion or contention. There is no FWD to link to, no claim canceled, and no appeal. Do not cite a nonexistent proceeding. If you need an authoritative negative, the ODP structured record in this prompt is your citation, and you can independently confirm on USPTO Patent Center and PTAB E2E that no trial number is associated with US 10,663,249.
2. Treat all of claims 1–9 as live and untested. For a defense, commission a focused prior-art search against claim 1's actual point of novelty — the interaction between the slidably-engaged retention member and the pivoting restriction member (contact end / push end / recess) that meters one projectile per cocking cycle — not against the generic crossbow elements, which the Examiner's cited art already covers and which are weak § 103 material.
3. If you are a defendant in litigation and considering a petition, watch the statutory clock. Any IPR you file must be filed within one year of service of the infringement complaint (§ 315(b)). If instituted, the Board's FWD is due within one year of the institution decision (extendable up to six months for good cause, § 316(a)(11)). Pre-institution, your § 314(a)/(b) bars and any Fintiv-type discretionary arguments should be scoped to the actual district-court schedule — the ODP record shows no parallel proceeding that I could confirm, so there is no existing § 315(a)/(b) bar on the face of the record.
4. Budget for discretion, not just merits. Given the 30 examiner-cited references, a petition built on Kopman, Moore, NXT Generation, or Zou will likely be met with a § 325(d) Advanced Bionics argument. Plan your petition around art and combinations that are demonstrably new relative to that prosecution record, and plead the Becton Dickinson differences expressly.
5. Monitor, don't assume. Well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; this one has not — which may mean it has not been asserted broadly, or that defendants have chosen district-court invalidity instead. Re-check ODP quarterly and watch for any petition naming this patent (Poe Lang's own cited-by cluster, especially the Steambow and Limin' Innovations lines, are the likeliest future petitioner backgrounds).

Sources consulted: the ODP structured proceedings block (canonical); Google Patents — US10663249B1 (claims, cited-by, citations, legal events); USPTO Patent Center application 16/248,701; PTAB E2E; USPTO Patent Assignment records (Poe Lang Enterprise assignment).

I'll research the assignment record for this patent through the USPTO Assignment Search and related sources.

Let me search for the specific assignment record details.

Let me try to find the specific reel/frame number through the USPTO assignment API and related sources.

I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame-level record through web search (the Assignment Center's record pages are not well indexed by general search engines, and two of my queries to the record-level sources were cut off). Below I reconstruct what the record shows from the authoritative patent text and Google Patents legal events, and I flag explicitly what I could not verify.

Inventors

• Only one named inventor. No joint-inventor split, so no partial-assignment complexity.
• Pattern note (counter-signal to a fire-sale): Liu is a repeat, long-tenured inventor for Poe Lang. Third-party patent databases list him as the inventor on roughly a dozen Poe Lang crossbow filings spanning at least 2015–2024 (e.g., US 9,638,487; US 9,851,170; US 10,215,520; US 10,378,853; US 10,408,561; US 10,495,403 — all Poe Lang). This is the profile of an in-house/product-development engineer, not an inventor who departs an assignee shortly after filing to seed a portfolio sale. I found no evidence of any inventor departure preceding a transfer.
• Data gap: I could not independently confirm Liu's employment relationship beyond the assignment itself; the patent does not state an employer on its face (the applicant of record was the individual).

Original assignee

• On the issued patent: Google Patents labels the original assignee as "Individual" and the current assignee as Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. The "Individual" tag reflects that the application was filed in the name of the individual inventor (Chi-Chang Liu) and that the assignment to Poe Lang was executed and recorded on the same day as the filing (2019-01-15) — i.e., this is an original in-house assignment, not a post-issuance transfer. The patent therefore effectively issued to Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd.
• Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. — Taiwanese manufacturer, Taichung City (recorded address historically: No. 17, Alley 46, Lane 484, Sec. 2, Feng Shih Rd., Feng Yuan Dist., Taichung City 42081; more recent filings use LN. 260, Fuweng St., Fengyuan Dist., Taichung City 420078, Taiwan).
• Primary line of business: design and manufacture of crossbows, bows, and archery accessories. It is commonly associated with the Man Kung crossbow brand (I note this as a widely reported commercial association, not something I verified from a primary corporate filing in this session).
• Ships a product embodying the claims: Yes, consistent with the record. Poe Lang is an operating manufacturer that continues to file and hold crossbow patents (a "continuous shooting device with controllable arrow chain structure" was granted to it as recently as 2024-07-02), and it is the assignee on the entire later self-citation family. I did not confirm a specific SKU practicing the '249 claims.
• Current status: Operating / active owner. Legal events show a small-entity designation and a 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2023-11-14; anticipated expiration 2039-01-15. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition record surfaced.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists in the chain (per Google Patents legal events; corroborated by the assignee/assignor fields it reports):

• 2019-01-15 (executed) / recorded 2019-01-15 — Reel/Frame: not retrievable this session
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Chi-Chang Liu (individual)
  • Assignee: Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd. (Taichung, Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: Not obtained. This is the one field the task specifically wants, and I could not pull it from the Assignment Center record via available search. I will not guess an attorney or firm name. It must be read directly off the Assignment Center record (search "10663249" or "16/248,701").
  • Context: Original in-house assignment — the inventor assigned to his employer/operating company on the filing date, simultaneously with filing.

Nothing else is recorded. There is no post-issuance assignment, security agreement, merger, change of name, license, or release in the record I could find. Every later citation to this patent is examiner/third-party citation in sibling Poe Lang / Liu applications (e.g., US20220113107A1, US11761727B2, US20250321072A1, US20250321073A1) — that is prosecution activity within the same corporate family, not a transfer of title. The portfolio stayed in-house.

Reel/Frame and correspondent are the two hard gaps in this report. Everything else about the chain is attested by the patent's own legal events and the assignee fields. If you need the exact reel/frame for a chain-of-title assertion, pull it from https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by patent number 10663249 or by application 16/248,701).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10663249
    2019 : Filed by Chi-Chang Liu
         : Assigned to Poe Lang Enterprise Co Ltd
    2020 : Patent granted
    2023 : Maintenance fee paid 4th year

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only assignee is Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd., an operating Taiwanese crossbow manufacturer with a multi-decade product line and a continuing in-house patent program. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC in the chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. The chain matches none of the listed NPEs (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Erich Spangenberg entities). I found no Unified Patents / RPX designation of Poe Lang as a high-frequency plaintiff.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear (cannot be scored). With only one recorded assignment and the correspondent field unretrieved, there is no basis to identify recurrence. To the extent anyone scores this, the correspondent field must first be read off Reel/Frame for the 2019-01-15 recording — but a single correspondent appearance would still not be a finding under your own rule.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. A single assignment, executed and recorded on the filing date; no chained LLCs at all.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. There is no known infringement suit involving the '249 patent (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so no transfer sits within 6 months of one. The lone assignment predates issuance by ~16 months and predates any hypothetical suit by far longer.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 record for Poe Lang or Liu surfaced; maintenance fees are current.
7. Privateering — Not present. The patent remains with the original operating-company owner; no NPE was interposed to assert on Poe Lang's behalf.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Cross-reference flag: the earlier litigation section found no litigation; that is consistent with — and corroborating for — signals 5 and 7 here. No contradiction between sections.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Poe Lang is an operating manufacturer, and the sole recorded event is an in-house assignment from inventor Chi-Chang Liu to Poe Lang, executed and recorded on the filing date 2019-01-15, with maintenance fees current (4th year paid 2023-11-14) and no downstream transfers (no reel/frame to cite beyond that single recording, whose reel/frame I could not retrieve this session). I selected the "insufficient data" bucket because the rubric defines it as "only the original assignment," which is literally this chain — not because ownership is unknown. On the available evidence the patent is operating-company-owned and non-asserted, and every one of the eight NPE signals is either not present or unscorable; no strong NPE signal exists.

Verify the chain (and grab the reel/frame + correspondent) at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search patent 10663249 or application 16/248,701; also confirm in Patent Center (litigation/continuity tabs) and PEDS/ODP.

Caveats: (a) I did not obtain the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record; these are the only two fields I would not stand behind without a direct Assignment Center read. (b) Negative findings are not proof of absence. (c) Identifiers were treated literally; I excluded all results referencing other patent numbers.

I'll verify the key prior-art references against live sources before mapping them to claims. Note: the previously generated sections already covered bibliographic data, litigation, PTAB, and assignments — I won't repeat those.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,663,249 B1 ("Crossbow with quick-shooting device")

Scoping note. Per the strict rule, I did not auto-correct any identifier and did not pull in results for similar numbers. Everything below is anchored to the 30 references that appear in the "Patent Citations (30)" table of US 10,663,249 itself (the authoritative full text), each marked with an asterisk in the table, i.e., cited by the examiner during prosecution of application US 16/248,701. I re-verified the content of the most relevant ones by live search (Kopman '050, Moore '765, Moore '845, Zou '453, Poe Lang '403); for the remainder I characterize them from their titles/assignees as they appear in the authoritative record and say so explicitly rather than inventing content.

Two things I am deliberately excluding as prior art:

• The "Cited By (14)" documents on the patent page (US 11,428,495; US 11,692,787; US 11,959,722; US 11,828,565; WO 2025/007177; etc.). These all post-date the 2019-01-15 effective filing date and are not § 102 art. They are prior-art for later filings, not against this patent. (This is the point the earlier PTAB section flagged as "forward citation pressure.")
• Items matching on the numeric string but resolving to other documents (e.g., the neurosurgery PMID hit noted earlier).

Date note: the task states April 26, 2026; the document metadata I was given carries 2026-09-30. The substantive analysis is unaffected.

1. The legal frame — which § 102 subsection each reference falls under

US 16/248,701 was filed 2019-01-15 with no earlier priority, so the AIA version of § 102 governs.

Practical consequence: the three Poe Lang references (items 27, 28, 30) are the owner's own work. Items 27 and 28 are § 102(a)(2) art only in theory; § 102(b)(2)(C) likely removes them because the '249 and those references share the same owner (Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd.).

2. Tier 1 — Most relevant prior art (same field, same function: repeating/magazine crossbows)

These five are the references a § 103 petition or invalidity contention would lead with, because they disclose the functional core of claim 1 — a projectile magazine feeding one round per cocking cycle, timed off the reciprocating string/slide.

2.1 US 2,918,050 — Kopman, "Repeating cross bow" ★ closest conceptual art

• Full citation: US 2,918,050; Francis R. Kopman (Vancouver, Wash.); App. Ser. No. 678,496; filed 1957-08-16; patented 1959-12-22; 8 claims; class 124-25.
• Description (verified from the patent PDF): a "magazine cross bow capable of projecting a series of darts or arrows in rapid sequence." Barrel member 27 with stock 62; bow limb 61 secured transversely in the forward end; bow string 60 secured to the limb ends and extending through the barrel (the barrel has longitudinal side slots 64); a slide block reciprocates; arrows are allowed to feed downward toward the lower portion of the barrel when the slide block is moved rearwardly to cock the weapon; automatic safety locking the trigger until the slide block returns forward, plus a manual safety. The stated object is to "propel a plurality of standard arrows, one at a time, in rapid sequence … as fast as the slide action of the cross bow can be operated and the trigger thereof pulled."
• § 102 relevance: § 102(a)(1). This is the single best reference against the concept of claim 1 — barrel + through-barrel string + reciprocating slide + magazine feed actuated by slide retraction + trigger release. However, it cannot anticipate claim 1 as a whole: Kopman has no "cartridge … storage space … entrance and outlet," no "restriction member … contact end … push end … recess," and no retention member with an "engaging portion" slidably engaged in a slide "groove." Map it to the preamble + the "bullets continuously drop … by operation of the string and cocking device" concept, and treat it as the primary reference for a § 103 combination.

2.2 US 3,739,765 — Moore, "Automatic loading cross-bow"

• Full citation: US 3,739,765; Ralph J. Moore; App. No. 05/136,111; filed 1971-04-21; granted 1973-06-19.
• Description (verified): main frame F with pivotally mounted bow pieces B; shoulder stock S; pistol grip P; firing mechanism T holding the bow string E taut. An arrow clip K containing a plurality of arrows is secured below the main frame and includes means to automatically inject individual arrows into the main frame each time the bow string is drawn back and latched; the feeding mechanism has jaws that open and close (FIGS. 6–7); manual safety latch; collapsible stock; elevated sight.
• § 102 relevance: § 102(a)(1). Directly relevant to claim 1's feed-on-cock feature and to a claim-4-style "clip/passage" concept. Note the structural difference: Moore feeds by jaws actuated by the bowstring, not by a pivoting restriction member with a recess. Not an anticipatory reference for claim 1.

2.3 US 6,868,845 B1 — Moore, "Automatic loading cross-bow" (the 1973 patent's modern successor)

• Full citation: US 6,868,845 B1; Ralph J. Moore; App. No. 10/704,100; filed 2003-11-07; granted 2005-03-22.
• Description (verified): improved automatic-loading crossbow; interchangeable pivotally mounted bow limbs; arrow clip/magazine K attached to the main frame; spring device automatically feeds arrows one at a time into the firing position as the bow string is cocked; slidable jaws/gate members 20, 21 with actuating pins 20e/21e engaged by the bow string E when drawn back and latched; centrally disposed longitudinal opening 15 in the frame for moving arrows from clip to firing chamber; scope 147 attached to the upper guide member 40; safety release trigger; adjustable threaded mounting holes.
• § 102 relevance: § 102(a)(1). The best single reference on the "feeds responsive to string draw" feature and, separately, on claim 9's aim-device-on-top limitation (scope 147) and on claim-7-style adjustable/bolted mounting. Again, no restriction member with contact end / push end / recess, so no anticipation of claim 1.

2.4 US 2019/0331453 A1 — Zou, "Multi-shot crossbow"

• Full citation: US 2019/0331453 A1; Dongshi Zou; filed 2018-04-10; published 2019-10-31.
• Description (verified): crossbow body with wrench 20, hook plate 16, spring 14; slider slidable along elongated through-holes 22 in the crossbow arm via slideway 2; arrow chamber base 26 with a plurality of longitudinally extending arrow grooves 25 and stacked U-shaped arrow sheaths 27; jacking plate 29 and projection 33; hammer/slider with shaft lever 30; reeling device 34 with pull wire 35 and hook 37. "Arrows are arranged in the arrow holes, the slider is moved by the bowstring, and the kinetic energy of the bowstring is used to shoot the arrows."
• § 102 relevance: § 102(a)(2). Closest art to claim 1's "cartridge … fed with multiple [projectiles]" + "retention member moved by the string" combination, and the "ten arrow grooves" storage maps to the "storage space" concept. Still no pivoting restriction member with recess between a contact end and a push end, and it is an arrow-sheath system, not a bullet metering gate.

2.5 US 9,395,142 B2 — NXT Generation, LLC, "Crossbow and clip for using the same"

• Full citation: US 9,395,142 B2; NXT Generation, LLC; filed 2014-02-14; granted 2016-07-19.
• Description (from title/assignee in the authoritative table; I did not independently re-verify the body): a crossbow with a removable clip/magazine. Explores the same combination of crossbow + clip.
• § 102 relevance: § 102(a)(1). Relevant to the claim-1 preamble and cartridge concept; secondary to Kopman/Moore/Zou.

3. Tier 2 — Crossbow structural and projectile-type art (maps to claim-1 sub-elements and dependent claims)

4. Tier 3 — Toy-gun / dart-magazine art (analogous art for the feed mechanism)

5. Tier 4 — The owner's own (Poe Lang) references

6. Bottom line — what actually anticipates, and what only supports obviousness

No single reference anticipates independent claim 1 under § 102. Claim 1 is a combination claim whose point of novelty is the interaction between (i) the slidably-engaged retention member with its engaging portion in the slide groove, and (ii) the pivoting restriction member in the cartridge having a contact end, a push end, and a recess between them, timed so that one projectile drops ahead of the retention member per cocking cycle. I found that structure in none of the 30 references:

• Kopman '050 and both Moore patents ('765 and '845) feed projectiles by slide/jaw actuation of the bowstring, but by different mechanisms (spring/jaw gates, clip ejectors) — no pivoting restriction member with a recess.
• Zou '453 uses stacked arrow sheaths and a hammer/jacking-plate, not a metering gate with a contact end blocking a stack.
• The NXT Generation '142 clip adds no metering gate.
• Nothing in the crossbow structural art (items 6–23) addresses projectile metering at all.
• The toy/dart magazine art (items 1–5, 24) shows gravity-feed and magazine closure, but not a bow-string-driven metering gate.

Where § 102 might still bite (narrow claims):

• Claim 9 (aim device on cartridge top) — US 6,868,845 (scope 147) and US 5,544,641 (aiming means for a crossbow) are direct § 102(a)(1) art against that narrow addition, absent a structural link specific to the cartridge top.
• Claim 3 (seal at the storage-space entrance) — US 2,516,341 (gravity-fed dart magazine end closure) is the closest § 102(a)(1) candidate for a magazine-closure sub-combination.
• Claim 4 (cartridge underside passage housing the retention member and frame second end) has no counterpart in the cited art; it is a likely originality point.
• Claim 6 (magnet attraction force < string recovery force) is a comparative/numerical limitation with no cited counterpart — a natural § 112 and § 103 target rather than a § 102 one.

Ranked § 103 combination candidates (most to least promising):

1. Kopman '050 (primary) + Moore '845 — repeating crossbow with string-actuated auto-loading + modern magazine/clip on a track-railed crossbow; add Raffeis '341 or Hasbro '075 for the gravity/drum feed and a magazine end-closure, and Pauluhn '304 or Extreme '453 for the cocking device.
2. Moore '765 / Moore '845 + Zou '453 — bowstring-driven slider + multi-projectile chamber, combined to render claim 1's magazine-plus-slider combination obvious.
3. Robertson '406 / Keenan '284 / Marshmellow '405 — used to meet the "bullets" (non-arrow projectile) limitation while the feed structure comes from Tier 1/3 art.

Because all of these were before the examiner, any petition built on them faces a § 325(d) Advanced Bionics discretionary-denial argument (see the earlier PTAB section). The materially-different path is to find art that discloses a pivotable, spring-returned metering gate with a recess that simultaneously blocks a stack at a contact end and passes one projectile at an outlet — i.e., the restriction member structure itself — and to combine that with the string-driven retention member. That structure, not the generic crossbow elements, is where claim 1 lives.

7. Caveats and limits

1. Negative/partial verification. I verified the bodies of Kopman '050, Moore '765, Moore '845, Zou '453 and the abstract of Poe Lang '403 via live search. For the remaining references I relied on the authoritative citation table in the patent text (titles, assignees, dates) and characterized them accordingly — I did not independently read each specification, so my element-mapping for the Tier-2/Tier-3 items is provisional and should be confirmed against the actual patents before being used in a contention or petition.
2. The US 10,495,403 date anomaly is real and unresolved. Its listed priority (2019-03-18) post-dates the '249 filing (2019-01-15). Either the table's date field is incomplete (e.g., an unshown provisional) or the reference's status as prior art is defective. Verify before relying on it.
3. § 102(b)(2)(C) common ownership likely removes Poe Lang's own US 10,378,853 and US 10,408,561 from the § 102(a)(2) art set. Confirm recorded ownership as of the '249's effective filing date.
4. No § 102 is asserted as a legal conclusion. "Potentially anticipates" below means the reference discloses one or more claimed elements and warrants element-by-element charting — not that any claim is invalid. Invalidity is ultimately a § 103 question for claim 1 and a mixed § 102/§ 103 question for the dependents.
5. Identifiers taken literally; no reference to any other patent number (e.g., '546, '491, '693, '435, '893, '056, '375, '433, '939) appears in this analysis.

Key sources: authoritative full text of US 10,663,249 B1 (citation table) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10663249B1](/patent/US10663249B1)/en ; US 2,918,050 PDF — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6a/72/54/cfaa903d6eec0f/US2918050.pdf ; US 3,739,765 — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US3739765A](/patent/US3739765A) ; US 6,868,845 — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6868845B1](/patent/US6868845B1)/en ; US 2019/0331453 A1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190331453A1/en ; US 10,495,403 — https://wiki.golden.com/wiki/US_Patent_10495403_Arrow_supply_assembly_for_bow-GZJYJYZ .

I'll pull the actual prior-art references from this patent's citation record so the § 103 combinations are grounded in what the Examiner of record and the field actually considered.

Now let me pull the references closest to the claimed feed-and-fire mechanism — the magazine/restriction-member art and the Poe Lang cocking-device family.

Obviousness analysis — US 10,663,249 B1 ("Crossbow with quick-shooting device")

0. Scope, sources, and how to read my confidence levels

This analysis builds on the earlier sections of this record (bibliography, claim chart via the plain‑language summary, litigation/PTAB null results, assignment chain) and does not repeat them. The prior art used here is the set on the face of US 10,663,249 — the 30 examiner‑cited references in the "Patent Citations" table — plus one reference I found that is not of record (flagged in §7).

I retrieved partial full text for only five of these references: US 2,918,050 (Kopman), US 3,739,765 (Moore), US 6,868,845 (Moore), US 9,395,142 (NXT Generation / Rodich), and US 2019/0331453 A1 (Zou). For the remainder I rely on titles, abstracts, and family metadata surfaced in search plus general knowledge of the field. I mark each mapping [verified], [inferred], or [to verify] and I do not assert a specific structural disclosure I have not read.

Two housekeeping notes, per your strict‑identifier rule: (a) the '249 is treated literally as US 10,663,249 B1; (b) I flag rather than silently fix the reference US10495403B1 in §7, whose face date makes it questionable prior art.

1. Claim 1, decomposed

Claim 1 is a single apparatus claim with roughly eleven limitation clusters. Claim 1's closing "wherein…" clause is result/function language and is entitled to little or no patentable weight in the § 103 analysis (it recites the intended result — continuous feeding and one‑time magazine loading — not structure). Everything else is structural.

The only limitation cluster with no clean, verified single‑reference read is the specific pivoting restriction member with a contact end, a push end and an intervening recess, located in the storage space near the outlet. That is the '249's actual point of novelty, and it is a combination of two known functions in one pivoting part: a gate/blocking surface (contact end) and a single‑projectile pocket (recess). Both functions individually are old in this art; their unification in one pivoting part driven by the cocking slide is a predictable mechanical relocation, not a new principle. See §6.

2. Ground 1 — The strongest: Kopman in view of Moore, further in view of NXT Generation (and Robertson/Keenan for the ball‑projectile substitution)

References: US 2,918,050 (Kopman) + US 3,739,765 (Moore) or US 6,868,845 (Moore) + US 9,395,142 (NXT Generation/Rodich); optionally US 5,062,406 (Robertson) and US 5,712,284 (Keenan) for the round‑projectile aspect.

Why this is the leading ground. Kopman alone carries most of the structural weight. Its own stated object is the '249's object, verbatim in substance: a crossbow that "will propel a plurality of standard arrows, one at a time, in rapid sequence," "as fast as the slide action of the cross bow can be operated and the trigger thereof pulled," with an automatic safety that "locks the trigger until the slide block is returned to forward position ready for firing." Kopman also discloses the bow string running through the barrel member and a magazine whose feed is gated by slide position (FIG. 7: an arrow "is allowed to feed downward toward the lower portion of the barrel member … when the slide block is moved rearwardly to cock the weapon"). That is limitations 1.1, 1.2, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 (storage space) and 1.9 (feed timed to the cocking stroke) in combination, decades before the '249.

What Kopman lacks and Moore supplies. Moore '765 expressly discloses "a clip [K] containing a plurality of arrows" with "means to automatically inject individual arrows from the clip into the cross‑bow aligned and positioned for firing … actuated by the bow string when it is drawn back." Its FIGS. 6–7 show jaws of the feeding mechanism that open as the string is drawn and close again — i.e., a two‑state metering element actuated by the cocking stroke, which is the restriction member's function. Moore '885 is the same inventor's later, refined version of the same concept with an improved guide member and scope mount.

What NXT '142 supplies. US 9,395,142 (Rodich, NXT Generation) is cited on the face of the '249 and addresses exactly the residual gap: a crossbow "clip mechanism … which selectively presents one of the projectiles in a … firing track of the crossbow after the crossbow string is cocked," wherein "the projectile track works with the clip mechanism to prevent unwanted projectiles from being loaded onto the projectile track," and, critically, "the string retainer for the bow string is … operably connected to a projectile retainer that prevents a projectile from moving onto the projectile track until after the bow string is in the firing position." That is the contact‑end / push‑end / gating function of the '249's restriction member, expressed as a retainer operably connected to a string retainer — i.e., the same mechanical relationship, described in different words. The difference between NXT's retainer and the '249's restriction member is the shape (a pocket/recess versus a retainer face). Shape substitution of a gating element is the paradigm of a predictable mechanical variation.

Ball‑versus‑arrow bridge (if the patent owner presses the projectile‑geometry argument): US 5,062,406 (Robertson) is expressly "an attachment for a crossbow that shoots arrows to enable the crossbow to shoot slugs," and US 5,712,284 (Keenan) is a "paint ball projectile attachment device for bows." Both are on the '249's own face. So the substitution of a round projectile for an arrow in a bowstring‑driven launcher was known and known to be a desirable modification — and the '249's own Background concedes it: "Some developers develop a crossbow that shoots bullets which are in a form of balls or beads." That is a specification admission that ball‑shooting crossbows pre‑existed, which limits the invention to the feed mechanism and simultaneously supplies the motivation for the projectile substitution.

3. Ground 2 — Zou in view of the Poe Lang cocking‑device teachings (structural near‑identity for the slide‑driven feed)

References: US 2019/0331453 A1 (Zou) + US 10,378,853 B1 (Poe Lang/Liu) and/or US 10,408,561 B1 (Poe Lang/Liu).

Zou is a very strong structural analogue for limitations 1.2, 1.6, 1.8, 1.9 and 1.10, and it is § 102(a)(2) art (priority 2018‑04‑10, published 2019‑10‑31 — effectively filed before the '249's 2019‑01‑15 filing date). Zou discloses: a slider on a slideway, constrained by elongated through holes (1.2); a trigger assembly in which a wrench 20 and hook plate 16 cooperate with a spring 14, with the slider attached to the front end of the hook plate at the back end point, and the slider being pulled at high speed by bowstring tension upon firing (1.6, 1.10 — nearly identical to the '249's positioning‑member/trigger/resilient‑member arrangement); and — most importantly — a projectile magazine that meters one projectile per slide cycle, in which "a rear end of each hammer or slider is provided with a shaft lever (30), each shaft lever is provided with a hinged jacking plate (29) … a rear end of each jacking plate … is tilted up to be opposite to the projection (33)" of the corresponding arrow sheath, so that as the slider moves the sheath is withdrawn and "the arrows in the arrow sheaths fall into the arrow grooves."

Mapping: the jacking plate 29 is the "push end" (a slider‑driven member that pivots); the projection 33 and sheath stack are the "contact end"/blocked column; and the grooves receiving the falling arrows are the "outlet" feeding one projectile into the firing track ahead of the hammer. Zou's mechanism is thus the same kinematic scheme as the '249's restriction member — a pivoting, slide‑driven member that releases exactly one projectile from a stack while holding the remainder — implemented with a hinged plate rather than a recessed body.

The Poe Lang references supply the rest of claim 1's cocking‑device architecture — action unit slidably in a "space," slide with a portion protruding, a pivoted restriction member biased by a spring, a safety member, a hook member that hooks the string, a trigger connected to the hook member, and a spanning/link unit (pull rod, pivotal rod, first link). That is limitations 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and, separately, all of claim 8. But see §7 — these two references are almost certainly disqualified as prior art by § 102(b)(2)(C). Ground 2 must therefore be re‑based on Zou + Kopman/Moore for 1.3–1.7, with the Poe Lang references used only as background evidence of what a skilled artisan understood the mechanism to be, not as § 103 art.

4. Ground 3 — NXT Generation (US 9,395,142 or the non‑of‑record US 9,341,422) in view of a gravity/toy magazine

References: US 9,395,142 B2 (Rodich/NXT Generation) + US 9,513,075 B2 (Hasbro, "Toy launch apparatus with open top dart drum") + US 8,087,405 B2 (Marshmallow Fun Company, "Bow‑type soft projectile launcher"); optionally US 1,985,079 (Conklin, "Toy magazine gun"), US 320,643 ("Magazine spring‑gun") and US 2,516,341 (Raffeis, "Gravity fed dart magazine").

This ground targets the "recess" and "storage space" limitations directly. NXT '142 supplies the crossbow‑specific metering‑and‑interlock structure (one projectile presented after cocking; unintended loading prevented). The toy‑launcher art supplies the complementary teaching of a pocketed/recessed element that receives exactly one round projectile from a gravity magazine and then delivers it to the firing position — the classic indexing problem for balls, darts and beads, which is precisely the problem the '249 identifies ("the balls or beads are small and have a smooth outer surface so that when feeding the bullets, the balls or beads easily drop"). Hasbro '075 (open‑top dart drum) and Marshmallow Fun '805 (a bow that launches soft round projectiles) are both on the '249's face, so both were before the Examiner. Conklin '079 and the 1885 "Magazine spring‑gun" are cited for exactly this reason — the gravity‑magazine‑with‑metering‑gate concept.

A PHOSITA faced with the '249's stated problem — feeding smooth round projectiles one at a time from a magazine into a crossbow's firing groove — would find in these references a small, finite set of known solutions (pivoting pocket gate; rotary drum; reciprocating shutter; spring jaws) and would select one by routine experimentation. That is the KSR "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" rationale.

5. Dependent claims 2–9

6. Motivation to combine — the KSR / MPEP 2143 rationales

A challenger does not need a single reference to teach everything; the motivation can come from the references themselves, the nature of the problem, or ordinary creativity. Here the record supplies several independent, mutually reinforcing rationales:

1. Express statements of the problem and the solution (strongest TSM). Kopman states the object as a crossbow that will "propel a plurality of standard arrows, one at a time, in rapid sequence … as fast as the slide action … can be operated and the trigger thereof pulled" — that is the '249's stated primary object, published in 1959. NXT '142 states: "there is a need for a crossbow that can support more than one projectile and can quickly move the multiple projectiles into a firing position without reloading the crossbow. Further, there is a need to control the flow of the projectiles and to reduce or eliminate the ability to shoot unintended projectiles from the crossbow." That is, almost word‑for‑word, the function recited in the '249's "wherein" clause and performed by its restriction member. When references state the very problem the claim solves, the KSR "design incentive" and "problem in the art" rationales apply directly.

2. Predictable results from combining known elements. A bowstring‑energized cocking slide (Kopman, Moore, Zou) combined with a gravity magazine and a biased metering gate (Moore, NXT, Conklin, Hasbro) yields nothing more than the expected result of each: the cocking stroke performs double duty (draws the string and indexes the magazine). The '249 claims no new physical principle; it claims an ordering of known motions.

3. Simple substitution of one known element for another. Substituting (i) a pocketed pivoting gate for Moore's jaws or NXT's retainer, and (ii) a ball/bead projectile for an arrow, are each straightforward substitutions of a known element for a known element performing the same function.

4. Known technique to improve similar devices in the same way. Metering one projectile per actuation cycle is the core competence of the magazine and toy‑launcher art (Conklin, Raffeis, Hasbro '075, Hasbro‑family dart drums). Applying that technique to a crossbow — which the '249's own face citations (NXT, Hasbro, Marshmallow Fun) show was already a converging field — is routine.

5. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions. Given the admitted problem of smooth round projectiles dropping during feed, the possible feed mechanisms are a short, well‑enumerated list (pivoting gate, rotary drum, reciprocating shutter, spring jaws). Selection among them without a teaching away is obviousness, not invention.

6. Commercial/design pressure in the toy crossbow segment. Hasbro '075 and Marshmallow Fun '805 on the '249's own face show an active consumer market for crossbows firing soft round projectiles. Market demand is a recognized source of motivation.

A note on the "wherein" clause. It recites capability and result ("bullets continuously drop," "the cartridge are fed with multiple bullets with one time of feeding"). Under MPEP 2114, apparatus claims are not made patentable by reciting how the apparatus is used or what results it produces. Do not let the result language carry the weight in any obviousness write‑up.

7. Factors that cut against obviousness — and one that is decisive at the threshold

(a) § 102(b)(2)(C) common ownership almost certainly disqualifies the best art. This is the single most important point in the file. The two references that most closely match claim 1's cocking‑device architecture (limitations 1.3–1.7) and virtually all of claim 8 are US 10,378,853 B1 and US 10,408,561 B1 — both naming Chi‑Chang Liu as inventor and both assigned to Poe Lang Enterprise Co., Ltd., exactly as the '249 is (per the assignment section of this record, the sole recorded assignment is Liu → Poe Lang, executed and recorded 2019‑01‑15). Both '853 and '561 were effectively filed in November 2018, before the '249's 2019‑01‑15 effective filing date, so they would otherwise qualify as § 102(a)(2) art. But because "the subject matter disclosed and the claimed invention … were owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person" not later than the effective filing date, they fall within the § 102(b)(2)(C) exception and are removed from the prior art, including for § 103. A petition or invalidity contention built primarily on the owner's own '853/'561 is therefore vulnerable at the threshold. (I flag this as a strong probability, not a certainty — it requires confirming the recordation dates and any reversion or co‑ownership, which is exactly what the assignment section of this record could not fully retrieve.)

(b) The US10495403B1 anomaly — verify before relying on it. The face of the '249 lists US 10,495,403 B1 ("Arrow supply assembly for bow," Poe Lang) as a cited reference, with a priority date of 2019‑03‑18 and a grant date of 2019‑12‑03. Both dates are after the '249's 2019‑01‑15 filing date, so on the face of the citation table it is not § 102(a)(1) or § 102(a)(2) art against the '249 (unless it claims earlier priority to an application effectively filed before 2019‑01‑15, which the table does not show). If a challenger intends to rely on it, the priority chain must be pulled first.

(c) The "Cited By" documents are NOT prior art. Limin' Innovations US 11,428,495 / US 11,692,787 / US 11,959,722 (priorities 2020‑10‑13), Barnett Outdoors US 11,828,565 (2021‑04‑23), Mey Chair Systems US 11,906,261 (2022‑07‑29), Steambow WO 2025/007177 (2023‑07‑05) and Xiang Duan US 11,927,420 (2023‑08‑01) all post‑date the '249's effective filing date. They are useless as § 102/§ 103 art. They are relevant only as (i) evidence of a crowded, fast‑moving field, and (ii) potential evidence of copying or industry recognition in an objective‑indicia analysis for the patent owner. Do not cite them as art.

(d) The one reference I found that is not of record. US 9,341,422 B2 (Rodich et al., NXT Generation, "Archery Bow," granted 2016‑05‑17, priority to provisional 61/940,025 filed 2014‑02‑14) discloses a crossbow with "a drum housing and a selectively rotatable drum … having projectile openings circumferentially spaced about the drum axis … one of the projectile openings being in a firing position … the drum having a rotation mechanism to rotate each of openings into the firing position individually." This is closely related to NXT's cited '142 but is a different patent, and it is not in the '249's citation table. Because it was not before the Examiner, it is materially useful for defeating a § 325(d) Advanced Bionics discretionary‑denial argument. Verify its priority chain and family relationship to '142 before relying on it.

(e) § 325(d) is the practical gate. Every reference discussed in Grounds 1, 3–5 is on the face of the patent — i.e., the Examiner saw it. A post‑grant challenge or an invalidity contention that merely re‑arranges the Examiner's own art will meet the Advanced Bionics two‑part framework (were the references previously presented; did the Office materially err?). The strongest posture is therefore: (i) a materially new reference (e.g., US 9,341,422, or non‑US art not of record), or (ii) a materially different combination with an articulated motivation that the prosecution record does not show was considered — e.g., the Robertson/Keenan ball‑projectile substitution teaching combined with Kopman's slide‑gated feed, which appears nowhere in the prosecution history of record.

(f) The patent owner's real defenses. Expect the following, in order of strength: (i) the common‑ownership disqualification of the Liu/Poe Lang art (§ 7(a)); (ii) the round‑projectile geometry argument — that the prior magazine art feeds elongated arrows that self‑align and self‑retain, whereas the '249 solves the distinct problem of smooth round projectiles tending to drop, a problem the art did not address (counter: Robertson '406, Keenan '284, Marshmallow Fun '805 and the '249's own admission in the Background); (iii) the "bodily incorporation vs. modification" argument for Moore '765 and NXT '142, whose clips sit below the frame and whose retainers key to string position rather than to a reciprocating slide (counter: Kopman's magazine feeds from above, and Kopman and Zou both key feed timing to slide movement); and (iv) claim 4 (dual‑passage packaging) and claim 5 (magnet) as narrow fallback positions.

8. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is, in my assessment, vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built on Kopman (US 2,918,050) as the primary reference for the slide‑gated, magazine‑fed repeating crossbow with the string running through the barrel, in view of Moore (US 3,739,765 or US 6,868,845) for the multi‑projectile clip automatically actuated by the drawn bowstring, and further in view of NXT Generation (US 9,395,142) for the "one projectile presented only after cocking / unintended loading prevented" retainer function. Robertson (US 5,062,406) and/or Keenan (US 5,712,284) supply the ball/slug/paintball‑from‑a‑bow substitution teaching if the round‑projectile distinction is pressed. Zou (US 2019/0331453 A1), either alone or combined with Kopman, is an equally strong or stronger structural primary reference because its slider‑driven, hinged‑plate sheath‑release mechanism maps almost element‑for‑element onto claim 1's "push end … pivots … contact end … bullet drops into the groove."
• The residual inventive weight sits in the pivoting restriction member's combined gate‑and‑pocket geometry (and, secondarily, in claims 4 and 5). That is a shape and packaging distinction, not a new principle, and it is the correct target for any obviousness argument or any new prior‑art search.
• Hard constraints on any § 103 theory: (1) the Liu/Poe Lang '853 and '561 references appear to be disqualified prior art under § 102(b)(2)(C) despite being the closest art; (2) US 10,495,403 B1 is probably not prior art on its face dates; (3) the "Cited By" documents are not prior art; and (4) § 325(d) will be raised against any art the Examiner already had. A challenger needs new art, or a new combination, to get past those gates.

Confidence and remaining verification gaps. The Kopman, Moore '765, NXT '142, Zou and Poe Lang '561-family mappings are grounded in text I retrieved and I would stand behind them. The mappings for Conklin '079, Raffeis '341, Hasbro '075, Robertson '406, Keenan '284, Jenn '641, Pauluhn '304 and Extreme Technologies '453 rest on titles/abstracts and field knowledge and should be confirmed against the full specifications before any of this is reduced to a contention. I could not verify (a) the recordation details needed to confirm the § 102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exception, (b) the priority chain of US 10,495,403 B1, or (c) whether US 9,341,422 shares the same § 102(d) provisional priority as US 9,395,142. Those three items should be pulled from Patent Center and the assignment records before this analysis is used for anything dispositive.