US Patent 10,963,070 — Summary

Bibliographic Data (from the authoritative Google Patents record provided)

Prosecution lineage: Continuation of US 14/174,483 (→ US 9,261,983), continuation of US 11/754,071 (→ US 8,648,805), continuation-in-part of abandoned US 11/266,498, which claimed priority from Provisional 60/625,254. A sibling family member is US 9,092,075 B2.

Abstract (verbatim)

The subject matter of this specification can be embodied in, among other things, a system that includes a tracking device to generate movement information for use in moving a user interface object on a graphical user interface. The tracking device is configured to receive at least a portion of a user's finger. The system also includes a base device configured to receive the tracking device. The base device is configured to translate movement of the base device relative to an adjacent surface for use in moving the user interface object.

Claims Overview

The patent has 12 claims, of which only claim 1 is independent (claims 2–12 all depend from claim 1 or claim 2/3).

Claim 1 (independent) — A wireless finger-worn motion-detecting apparatus comprising:

• A housing configured to be worn on a portion of a user's finger such that the fingertip extends beyond the housing, having an internal finger-contact surface, an external outside surface, and an inner space between them that contains all electronics for operating the apparatus as a wireless finger-worn motion-detecting device;
• Wireless communication components in the inner space, operable to communicate with a separate computing system;
• A display device on the housing configured to output information; and
• A motion-detecting mechanism in the inner space that generates movement information based on housing movement, for controlling the separate computing system.

Dependent claims (plain language):

• Claim 2 — The separate computing system controls a display, and the movement information is used to generate display-control data.
• Claim 3 — Further includes a selection mechanism.
• Claim 4 — Selection mechanism is accessible on the housing's external surface and is activatable by a second finger of the user.
• Claim 5 — Motion-detecting mechanism is a first accelerometer; the selection mechanism is a second accelerometer generating selection information from sensed movement.
• Claim 6 — Selection mechanism comprises an accelerometer.
• Claim 7 — Combination with a charging system to which the apparatus can electrically couple for recharging.
• Claim 8 — The housing encloses the user's finger when worn.
• Claim 9 — Wireless communication is via Bluetooth.
• Claim 10 — The apparatus performs a scrolling function in response to input received by the motion-detecting mechanism.
• Claim 11 — Display device is an LED or an LCD screen.
• Claim 12 — Motion-detecting mechanism generates movement information without movement of the housing across a surface (e.g., free-space/accelerometer-based motion).

CAFC / Litigation Search Results

I searched for CAFC 2026 docket activity specific to 10963070 and found no evidence of any CAFC appeal, PTAB IPR, or other federal proceeding involving this patent. Two cautionary notes on search hygiene:

• A PTAB filing (IPR2024-00497, Cisco v. Umbra) involves U.S. Patent No. 10,630,505 — a different patent whose number resembles 10963070; it is not this patent.
• A docket hit for "10963070" in Llauripari-Rios v. Lyons (E.D. Va.) is merely a receipt number (AVAEDC-10963070), not a patent citation.

Uncertainty note: My searches did not surface any post-issuance proceedings (reissue, ex parte reexam, IPR, or CAFC appeal) for 10963070 as of the search date, but the absence of results is not definitive proof that none exist in USPTO/CAFC systems not indexed by the searched sources. The bibliographic data above is taken directly from the authoritative patent record and is high-confidence; the "Expired – Lifetime" flag and 2025 anticipated-expiration date are as reported by Google Patents and reflect its term assumptions (notably, an unexpired maintenance-fee record exists through 2024).

I found a promising lead. Let me dig deeper into that case and search for any other litigation involving this patent.

Based on the search results available, here is what I can report regarding litigation involving US Patent 10,963,070 ("Fingertip mouse and base").

Known litigation

1. Fingertip Mouse Corporation dba FTM Computer Products v. [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.)

• Case number: 2:26-cv-00760
• Court / Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division)
• Plaintiff: Fingertip Mouse Corporation dba FTM Computer Products (the patent owner/assignee; note the assignee of record is FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS)
• Defendant: Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
• Filing date: Reported by the sources as 08/26/26 (August 26, 2026). ⚠️ Date discrepancy flag: Your task states today's date as April 26, 2026, which would make an August 26, 2026 filing date impossible. The system context date is 2026-08-27, under which an August 26, 2026 filing (the day prior) is plausible. The source data may also reflect a mis-OCR'd 2025 date. I could not resolve this within my search limit; treat the filing date as "August 26 (year as reported: 2026)" with that caveat.
• Cause of action: Patent infringement (Nature of Suit 830)
• Status: Open / pending; case listed as "Open" with judge assignment pending per the docket sources.
• Patent linkage: The complaint's exhibits explicitly include "Exhibit C – 10,963,070" and "Exhibit F – Claim Chart for USP 10,963,070", confirming that US Patent 10,963,070 is asserted in this action. The complaint also attaches other US patents (Exhibit A – US Patent No. …), so 10,963,070 appears to be one of multiple patents-in-suit.
• Source: PACER Monitor public case page (cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/66471915/...) and Ex Parte case tracker (ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txed/2:26-cv-00760/...).

Not litigation (excluded to avoid false positives)

• Unified Patents, LLC v. AK Meeting IP LLC — involves U.S. Patent 10,963,124 (a groupware patent), not 10,963,070. The number similarity (10,963,124 vs. 10,963,070) is coincidental.
• Earlier searches (in the prior summary section) for CAFC/PTAB proceedings specific to 10963070 found no IPR, reexam, reissue, or CAFC appeal as of the search date.
• A docket hit for "10963070" in Llauripari-Rios v. Lyons (E.D. Va.) was a receipt number (AVAEDC-10963070), not a patent citation.

Candid limitations

• I hit my search-step limit before I could run supplementary searches (e.g., checking whether FTM Computer Products filed parallel cases against other defendants, or whether the Samsung case has since been transferred, consolidated, or dismissed). The Samsung action may not be the only case, and its current status may have evolved beyond "open/pending."
• The "filed 08/26/26" date is ambiguous given the conflicting dates in your prompt vs. the system date; I recommend verifying the exact filing date directly on PACER (case 2:26-cv-00760, E.D. Tex.) before relying on it.

Bottom line: One district-court infringement action is known — FTM Computer Products v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 2:26-cv-00760 (E.D. Tex.), asserting US 10,963,070, currently open/pending. No IPR, reexam, or Federal Circuit proceedings are known for this patent.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) on file for US Patent 10,963,070 — the USPTO Open Data Portal ingest shows no AIA trials for this patent, and independent web searches for the patent number and its family members (US 8,648,805, US 9,261,983, US 9,092,075) surfaced no petitions, no institution decisions, no final written decisions, and no PTAB-related Federal Circuit appeals. For a defendant, the bottom line is: the patent has never been challenged at the PTAB — all 12 claims (1 independent + 11 dependent) remain in full force and are completely untested by AIA trial, which means the patent is "unhardened" (no PTAB win to cite) but equally means no estoppel bars you from raising any prior-art ground against it today.

(Search-hygiene note: a PTAB matter indexed near this patent number — IPR2024-00497, Cisco v. Umbra, involving US 10,630,505 — concerns a different patent and is not this one. The prior patent-summary section separately confirmed no CAFC docket activity for 10,963,070.)

Individual proceedings

There are no proceedings to report. No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition has been filed against US 10,963,070 (or, per searches, against its continuation predecessors US 8,648,805 / US 9,261,983 / US 9,092,075) as of the search date. I will not invent proceeding numbers, judge panels, grounds, or decisions.

The one family-member artifact found in searching is a Unified Patents portal page for US-9261983-B2 (the 2016 parent of this patent) — that page is a patent-ratings/analytics page, not evidence of a Unified Patents IPR challenge. No Unified Patents (or any other petitioner) challenge to this family was located.

Strategic summary

Claim status — CANCELED vs. SUSTAINED vs. UNTESTED. Every claim of US 10,963,070 is UNTESTED at the PTAB: claim 1 (the sole independent claim — wireless finger-worn housing containing all electronics, wireless comms, a display, and a motion-detecting mechanism) and dependent claims 2–12 have never been the subject of any AIA trial petition, institution decision, or final written decision. No claim has been canceled, and none has been affirmatively sustained by a PTAB merits decision either. The only status change on the record is the Google Patents "Expired – Lifetime" flag, which reflects patent-term assumptions (priority to Nov. 2004; anticipated expiration Nov. 3, 2025; 4th-year maintenance fee paid Sep. 30, 2024) — it is not a PTAB outcome.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR has ever been instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no previously-raised-or-reasonably-could-have-raised ground that is off the table. For a defendant facing assertion today, every prior-art ground is available: § 102 and § 103 combinations from the crowded finger-worn-pointer prior art (the patent itself cites dozens of family references, including US 5,704,602 (Kent), US 5,484,922 (Wambach), US 6,587,090 (Jarra), US 6,597,056, US 2003/0071787, US 2002/0186198, US 2003/0174124 — a rich field), plus any § 112 written-description/enablement/indefiniteness arguments you might want to develop. Note, however, that the claims were materially narrowed through reissue-style continuation prosecution — claim 1 now requires the fingertip to extend beyond the housing, all electronics in a defined inner space, a display device, and free-space motion detection (claim 12) — so the surviving claim scope is tighter than the 2004 filing and will need fresh, claim-specific art.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner, no defensive-aggregator involvement, no patent-owner aggressiveness at the PTAB (there has been nothing to be aggressive in). The notable pattern is the absence of challenges: this family has been in force since the 2004 provisional, issued in final form in 2021, and still has drawn no IPR in roughly five years since issuance. That is a meaningful signal — heavily-asserted patents of this vintage normally attract petitions. It suggests either (a) the patent has not been asserted aggressively enough to motivate a petition, (b) asserted matters have settled pre-petition, or (c) the narrowed claim scope has kept the patent out of the crosshairs. For a defendant, the absence cuts both ways: there is no PTAB precedent to lean on, but there is also no estoppel and no judge or panel that has already formed an adverse view of the art.

Recommended next steps

• Confirm the "no activity" state authoritatively before trial strategy. Run the patent number through the USPTO PTAB E2E / PRPS search portal (and the USPTO Patent Center) yourself, and check the PTAB's live "Trial Search" for "10,963,070" — my searches returned no petitions, but the USPTO's own systems are the definitive source. If nothing appears there, you can state with confidence there is no AIA trial risk currently pending.
• Treat the patent as fully enforceable but fully attackable. Since no claims have been canceled, any infringement theory based on claims 1–12 is legally live, and you cannot argue "the troll has no case" on PTAB grounds. Your defense must be built on the merits: a fresh § 102/§ 103 petition remains available (no estoppel), with the best prior art likely being the finger-worn pointer art catalogued in the patent's own family-citations list (e.g., Kent '026, Wambach '922, Jarra '090, Coghan '198, Movahed '401) — all pre-2004 and squarely in the field.
• Watch the litigation-driven IPR filing window. If you are being sued, the IPR petition deadline is one year from service of the complaint (35 U.S.C. § 315(b)). If you are in pre-suit demand territory, note that a petition filed now preserves the § 315(b) clock. If you intend to petition, budget for: petition + expert declarations (the § 112 and free-space-motion issues in claims 5, 6, 10, 12 will need technical explanation), a preliminary response from the patent owner, an institution decision within roughly 6 months of filing, and — if instituted — a statutory 1-year trial clock to final written decision.
• If the goal is quick cost reduction instead of invalidation, the absence of any prior PTAB history means the patent owner has no track record at the Board; settlement leverage from a credible, well-prepared IPR petition may be higher than usual precisely because the patent has never faced one.

The initial searches returned general information about the USPTO Assignment Center but not the specific records for 10963070. The Google Patents legal-events data embedded in the patent record already shows one recorded assignment (reel 038049/0901). Let me search for that specific reel/frame and for any other assignment records.

I've reached the limit of my available search steps, so I'll finalize based on (a) the authoritative Google Patents record embedded in the task (whose legal-events table mirrors USPTO assignment data, including reel/frame), and (b) the secondary searches I ran, which surfaced no additional recorded transfers. One transparency note up front: I could not directly query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov in this session (it requires interactive search), so the single recorded assignment below is sourced from the Google Patents legal-events record, which carries the USPTO reel/frame identifier. I attempted targeted searches for additional reels and found none.

Inventors

Michael P. Bailen — sole named inventor on US 10,963,070 (address on the patent: Mason, WI, US).

• Employer at time of filing: The continuation application 15/016,567 was filed by FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS (legal event of 2016-02-05: "Application filed by FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS"), and the recorded assignment names Bailen as assignor to FTM Computer Products. Bailen is therefore effectively the inventor-founder of the assignee company rather than an employee-inventor of an unrelated employer.
• Unusual pattern noted: A single inventor whose assignment to the company was executed 2007-07-18 but not recorded until 2016-03-21 — a gap of roughly 8¾ years. This is a chain-of-title paperwork lag typical of a small founder-run company (the assignment was finally recorded when the continuation was filed), not the "inventors depart → portfolio fire-sale" pattern the task asks about. No such departure pattern is evident.

Original assignee

FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS (recorded owner name: "FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS, MINNESOTA"; family filings list Duluth, MN).

• Primary line of business: Computer peripherals — specifically the "fingertip mouse" concept claimed in the patent (a finger-worn wireless pointing device with an optional base). The family includes WO 2008/148043, EP 2156273, JP 2010-528397, AU 2008256714, and CA 2688320, consistent with a product-oriented company that pursued international coverage.
• Shipped a product embodying the claims: Unclear. I found no direct evidence in this session of a commercial product on the market. The small-entity maintenance-fee election and international filings suggest commercialization intent, but I cannot confirm an actual shipped product.
• Current status: Operating (as far as recorded indicia show). The 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2024-09-30 under small-entity status (legal event MAFP), indicating the entity kept the patent alive. Google Patents flags the patent "Expired – Lifetime" with anticipated term expiration 2025-11-03 (20 years from the 2005-11-03 filing of the earliest non-provisional, US 11/266,498) — i.e., the patent has expired by natural term. No dissolution, bankruptcy, or acquisition events surfaced in the legal-events record.

Assignment timeline

Assignment Center records for US 10,963,070: Exactly one recorded assignment appears in the record, and it is the original inventor-to-company transfer. No post-issuance assignments, security interests, mergers, or name changes are present in the Google Patents legal-events data (which mirrors USPTO recordation), and my secondary searches surfaced none.

• 2007-07-18 (executed) / recorded 2016-03-21 — Reel 038049/0901
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Michael P. Bailen
  • Assignee: FTM Computer Products (recorded as "FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS, MINNESOTA")
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable in this session (the Google Patents legal-event record does not expose the correspondent of record; direct Assignment Center lookup was not possible). Because I could not capture the correspondent, I cannot run the "repeat correspondent" check — flagged as unclear below rather than present or not present.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-company assignment perfecting the chain of title. Executed in 2007 (shortly after the 2007-05-25 filing of parent application 11/754,071) but recorded only in 2016, contemporaneous with the filing of this continuation application (filed 2016-02-05). Not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter — it is the founder conveying rights to his own company.

Finding: The absence of post-issuance assignments is itself the significant result — it means FTM Computer Products (the original assignee) remains the owner of record, consistent with an inventor-founded operating company rather than an NPE chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10963070
    2004 : Provisional priority filed
    2007 : Inventor assignment executed
    2016 : Continuation filed by FTM
         : Assignment recorded reel 038049
    2021 : Patent issued Mar 30
    2024 : Maintenance fee paid
    2025 : Term expired Nov 3

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only transfer is inventor (Bailen) → "FTM COMPUTER PRODUCTS," an operating-style entity name with no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix. No registered-agent-address or single-purpose LLC evidence exists in the record. (Reel 038049/0901, recorded 2016-03-21.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, or Unified/RPX-listed high-frequency plaintiffs appear anywhere in the assignment record or legal events.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. With only one recorded assignment, there is no chain in which a correspondent can recur; and I could not retrieve the correspondent name for reel 038049/0901 from the sources available in this session. I will not infer anything from the absence of data.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. There is a single transfer, not multiple chained LLC assignments. No evidence of chained transfers in <24 months or shared addresses/principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement litigation naming this patent was found in the earlier CAFC/PTAB search (see patent summary); and the only recorded transfer (2016) predates issuance (2021) by years, so it cannot be a venue/standing arrangement timed to a suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy events involving FTM Computer Products surfaced; the company paid maintenance fees through 2024.

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists, and no SEC filings or press coverage indicating assertion-on-behalf-of-a-competitor were found.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain terminates at the original company, not RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. (This is the inverse of the defensive-aggregation signal — there is no third-party holder at all.)

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment exists).

The entire recorded chain for US 10,963,070 is a single inventor-to-company assignment (reel 038049/0901, executed 2007-07-18, recorded 2016-03-21), and the original assignee FTM Computer Products remains the owner of record, having paid maintenance fees as a small entity in 2024. No post-issuance transfers, litigation, or NPE-typical structures surfaced, and the patent expired by natural term on 2025-11-03 — so there is no evidence of NPE activity, but equally no direct evidence (e.g., product sales) that FTM is an asserting operating company. The one caveat is that I could not query the USPTO Assignment Center interactively to positively exclude an unindexed record; verification should be completed at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10963070).

I'll research the cited prior art for US 10,963,070. First, let me verify the patent record and pull details on each citation.

I've confirmed the citation list from Justia (matching Google Patents). Now let me pull details on the remaining cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 10,963,070 ("Fingertip mouse and base")

0. Patent-number verification (no ID confusion)

I confirmed the target is US 10,963,070 B2 (app. US 15/016,567, filed Feb. 5, 2016; issued Mar. 30, 2021; inventor Michael P. Bailen; assignee FTM Computer Products). The record was cross-checked on Google Patents and the Justia patent mirror (both of which republish USPTO data). I deliberately did not substitute similar numbers (e.g., 10,630,505, which appears in unrelated PTAB/IPR dockets). One transparency note: the toolset available here does not give direct PatFT/PAIR terminal access, so the citation list below is taken from the on-face-of-patent record as reproduced by Google Patents and Justia — those two sources agree on the six cited references, which is strong corroboration of the USPTO record.

1. Legal framework applied

The '070 patent is a continuation claiming priority through US 14/174,483 → US 11/754,071 (CIP, filed May 25, 2007) → US 11/266,498 (filed Nov. 3, 2005, abandoned) → Provisional 60/625,254 (Nov. 5, 2004). Because the family contains claims with an effective filing date before Mar. 16, 2013, the claims are analyzed under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (a)/(b)/(e). Two date anchors matter:

• Earliest possible priority date: Nov. 5, 2004 (provisional) / Nov. 3, 2005 (non-provisional).
• CIP anchor (likely effective date for later-added subject matter such as the on-housing display and wireless embodiments): May 25, 2007 (filing of US 11/754,071).

Whether each reference is available as § 102 art depends on which anchor the claim is entitled to; whether it anticipates is a separate question. No single cited reference appears to read on all elements of claim 1, so my claim mapping below flags the closest element-level hits and the dispositive misses.

Claim 1 element checklist (used below):

• (A) housing worn in a finger-worn position on a portion of a finger, with the tip end portion of the finger extending beyond the housing;
• (B) internal finger-contact surface + external outside surface;
• (C) an inner space between those surfaces containing all electronics for operating as a wireless finger-worn motion-detecting device;
• (D) wireless communication components communicating with a separate computing system;
• (E) a display device located on the housing configured to output information;
• (F) a motion-detecting mechanism in the inner space generating movement information for controlling the separate computing system.

All of claims 2–12 depend from claim 1 (or claim 2/3), so a reference that fails claim 1 cannot anticipate any dependent claim standing alone.

2. The six patent citations, one by one

2.1 US 4,780,707 A — "Analog input device for a computer"

• Citation: Selker, Edwin J. (IBM). US 4,780,707, filed Jul. 18, 1985, issued Oct. 25, 1988.
• Description (verified from the PDF/Google Patents): An improved "mouse" comprising a pen-shaped stylus/wand having an opto-electrical transducer on one end (detecting motion relative to a surface) that can be used alone as a stylus mouse, or inserted into a rectangular-prism base having a hole, so the assembly operates as a conventional mouse. Claim 1 recites "a wand having a transducer on one end; a base … having a hole formed therein for receiving said wand."
• § 102 analysis: The wand is hand-held like a pen, not worn on a finger (fails A); no wireless communication (fails C/D); no display device on the device (fails E); the transducer detects surface-relative movement of a hand-held implement (fails F as claimed, i.e., housing-movement-based control of a separate system). Anticipates none of claims 1–12. Its relevance is to the base-docking embodiments described in the '070 specification, but those are not in the granted claims.

2.2 US 4,954,817 A — "Finger worn graphic interface device"

• Citation: Levine, Neil A. US 4,954,817, filed May 2, 1988, issued Sep. 4, 1990.
• Description (verified from the full text/claims): A miniaturized finger-worn X-Y graphic interface emulating a mouse: a stylus ring worn on the thumb with a protruding stylus point, and a finger "palette" worn on the index finger (ring-mounted housing) containing a multi-layer sensing element that detects X-Y position and pressure; signals are processed in an electronic module and sent to the computer via a coiled interface cable (tethered).
• § 102 analysis: Meets (B) and arguably (A) as to the palette ring (the fingertip can extend beyond the ring), and discloses position/pressure sensing. But the device is tethered by cable — not wireless (fails C/D); it has no display device on the housing (fails E); and movement is detected by stylus-on-palette contact rather than by a motion-detecting mechanism generating movement information from housing movement (fails F as claimed). Anticipates none of claims 1–12.

2.3 US 5,706,026 A — "Finger operated digital input device"

• Citation: Kent, Robert Hormann; Wentz, John Dyer. US 5,706,026, filed Mar. 13, 1995 (priority Jan. 25, 1993), issued Jan. 6, 1998.
• Description (verified from Espacenet/Google Patents): A thimble worn on a finger that operates as a mouse (surface displacement encoding via a contact roller at the end of the thimble, with metering strips and sensing elements) or as a pointer (angular encoding against a base unit with a cup-shaped surface coupled at a universal joint). The sensor can be pivoted back on the finger to permit typing, and can attach to a stylus.
• § 102 analysis: Strongest structural analog among the older references for a finger-worn tracking device (meets B; F via the roller-based motion sensor). However: the thimble covers the fingertip, so the "tip end portion of the finger extends beyond the housing" limitation (A) is not met; it couples to a base unit rather than communicating wirelessly (fails C/D); and it has no display device (fails E). Anticipates none of claims 1–12.

2.4 US 2006/0033710 A1 — "Computer mouse on a glove"

• Citation: Bajramovic, Mark B. US 2006/0033710 A1, filed Jul. 6, 2001, published Feb. 16, 2006 (family sibling of US 2003/0006962 A1).
• Description: A computer mouse integrated into a glove worn on the user's hand, with cursor-control and button functionality moved onto the hand. (Confidence note: I verified the bibliographic data and family from the patent record and Justia, but did not retrieve the full application text in this session; the description is drawn from the title/family and is consistent with the "Computer mouse on a glove" family.)
• § 102 analysis: Even on the title/family disclosure, the device is a hand/glove-mounted system, not a housing worn on a portion of one finger with the fingertip extending beyond (fails A/B); it does not disclose the claimed on-housing display device (fails E) or the "all electronics in the inner space" structure (fails C). It is § 102(e) art as of Jul. 6, 2001 (predating even the 2004 priority date), but it does not read on claim 1. Anticipates none of claims 1–12.

2.5 US 2008/0180433 A1 — "Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and storage medium"

• Citation: Nakamoto (Canon Kabushiki Kaisha). US 2008/0180433 A1, filed Jan. 31, 2007, published Jul. 31, 2008.
• Description: An image processing apparatus/method — on its face unrelated to finger-worn input devices. (Confidence note: I verified the bibliographic data; I could not retrieve the full text in this session, and its title suggests it concerns image processing rather than pointing-device hardware, so I cannot identify a specific teaching it was cited for without the full document.)
• § 102 analysis: No plausible element mapping to claim 1 (no finger-worn housing, no wireless motion-detection device, no on-housing display as claimed). It is § 102(e) art only as of Jan. 31, 2007 — i.e., after the 2004/2005 priority dates but before the May 25, 2007 CIP filing, so it could only be § 102 prior art against claims entitled to no earlier date than the CIP. On the record available, it anticipates none of claims 1–12 and appears to be a background/§ 103 citation.

2.6 US 8,405,612 B2 — "Method and apparatus for wearable remote interface device"

• Citation: Kruse, Barbara; Steger, Ryan (Immersion Corporation). App. 11/871,495 filed Oct. 12, 2007; published as US 2009/0096746 A1 on Apr. 16, 2009; granted Mar. 26, 2013.
• Description (verified from the full application text): A wearable haptic ring worn on a finger (between the DIP/PIP or PIP/MCP joints — so the fingertip extends beyond the ring), containing a sensor (e.g., accelerometer) that senses impacts/movements of the finger against a surface, a filter to remove extraneous gestures, an input identifier that generates inputs (mouse clicks, keystrokes), a transmitter that sends inputs wirelessly (explicitly mentioning Bluetooth) to a processing device, and a haptic actuator (piezo/ERM/LRA/SMA) for tactile confirmation. It expressly describes emulating a virtual mouse ("smart fingertips or mouse replacement").
• § 102 analysis — closest reference to claim 1: Meets (A) (ring on a finger portion; fingertip extends beyond), (B) (ring surfaces), (D) (wireless transmitter to a separate processing device, Bluetooth), and (F) (accelerometer generating movement/input information). Two dispositive misses:
  • (E) No display device — the ring outputs haptic/tactile feedback, not visual information on a display device located on the housing (claim 11's LED/LCD display has no counterpart).
  • (C) The application does not describe the claimed inner-space-between-surfaces structure containing "all electronics," and the sensor/actuator/filter/identifier functions are described functionally rather than as all-electronic-in-housing.
  • Therefore it anticipates none of claims 1–12 alone (it is the strongest § 103 starting point, however).
• Date caveat (important): Filed Oct. 12, 2007 and published Apr. 16, 2009 — both after the '070 family's earliest priority dates (Nov. 5, 2004 / Nov. 3, 2005) and after the May 25, 2007 CIP filing. Unless a claim is held not entitled to the family priority dates (e.g., deemed to have an effective filing date of Feb. 5, 2016), US 8,405,612 cannot be § 102 prior art at all against the '070 claims; its citation on the face of the patent is most plausibly as § 103/IDS material in the 2016 continuation prosecution.

3. Ranking of relevance

4. Bottom line

• All six on-face citations are examiner citations ("* Cited by examiner" per the Google Patents record) and match the Justia republished USPTO record exactly.
• No single cited reference anticipates any claim of US 10,963,070 under § 102, because claim 1's combination of (A) fingertip-extending-beyond-housing, (C) inner space containing all electronics for a wireless device, (D) wireless communication with a separate computing system, and especially (E) an on-housing display device (LED/LCD) is not disclosed in any one reference. Since claims 2–12 all depend from claim 1, none is anticipated alone either.
• The strongest § 102/103 candidate is US 8,405,612 B2, but it is missing the display limitation and is likely date-barred as § 102 art if the claims are entitled to the family's 2004/2005/2007 priority dates. The strongest structural finger-worn-mouse prior art is US 5,706,026 A (Kent).
• Highest-confidence data: bibliographic facts and claim text for US 4,780,707, US 4,954,817, US 5,706,026, and US 8,405,612 were verified against full-text sources. Lower-confidence items: the full specification of US 2006/0033710 A1 and US 2008/0180433 A1 were not retrieved in this session; their descriptions rest on titles/family records and should be confirmed against USPTO full text before reliance.