US 11022418

I'll run targeted searches to verify the patent's bibliographic data and check for any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me verify litigation and assignment records.

US Patent 11,022,418 — Verification Summary

Important caution on identifiers: Searches for 11022418 surfaced an unrelated number, 11,122,418 (Mullen Industries LLC v. Apple Inc., N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00437; IPR2025-00018). That is a different patent (Mullen wireless-location portfolio) and must not be conflated with US 11,022,418. I am reporting only on US 11,022,418.

Bibliographic Data (from the authoritative full text provided)

Assignment record: Assignment executed July 24, 2019, recorded July 31, 2019 — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNOR: KANEMATSU, TOSHIHIRO" to Mitutoyo Corporation (Reel/Frame 049918/0159).

Abstract

A form measuring apparatus includes a form measuring device with a detection device that detects a position on a surface of an object, plus a feeding mechanism that moves the form measuring device in an axial direction. The feeding mechanism has a rotatable drive shaft, a traction nut that holds the drive shaft from a direction orthogonal to its axis and switches between a frictional contacting state and a separation state, and a bracket coupling the traction nut to the form measuring device. The bracket carries a motor whose rotation shaft is inclined with respect to the axis line; the motor rotates the drive shaft.

Independent Claim Overview (Claim 1 is the sole independent claim; claims 2–4 depend from it)

Claim 1 — Form measuring apparatus (plain language):

• A a form measuring instrument with a detector that detects a position on an object's surface;
• B a feeding mechanism that moves that instrument along an axial direction, comprising:
  • a drive shaft rotatable about an axis,
  • a traction nut that grips/holds the drive shaft from a direction perpendicular to the axis line, and is switchable between (i) a frictional contacting state touching the drive shaft and (ii) a separation state disengaged from it,
  • a bracket coupling the traction nut to the form measuring instrument;
• C the traction nut contains a twist roller mounted rotatably with an inclination angle equal to the drive shaft's lead angle;
• D when the drive shaft rotates while the nut frictionally contacts it, the nut finely moves along the drive shaft according to the lead angle (fine positioning);
• E when the nut is separated, it can coarsely move freely along the drive shaft (fast manual travel);
• F the traction nut also includes an open/close lever for switching between the two states, and an elastic body (spring/biaser) that biases the nut into frictional contact with the drive shaft;
  • user actuation of the lever overcomes the spring bias to reach the separation state;
  • releasing the lever lets the spring bias return the nut to the frictional contacting state;
• G the bracket carries a motor that rotates the drive shaft, the motor having a rotation shaft inclined with respect to the axis line.

The stated advantage: mounting the drive shaft motor on the bracket that travels up/down with the form measuring instrument shortens motor-to-controller cabling and avoids cable loading/bending during vertical travel.

Dependent claims (not independent):

• Claim 2 — adds a rotator that rotates about the motor's rotation shaft and contacts the drive shaft to rotate it.
• Claim 3 — the rotator is a roller or a sphere.
• Claim 4 — the motor rotates the twist roller (i.e., reuse the twist roller as the rotation member, avoiding an extra component).

Litigation / Enforcement Status — Search Findings

No litigation or administrative proceeding for US 11,022,418 was found. My searches returned:

• No CAFC 2026 docket naming US 11,022,418.
• No district court complaint asserting US 11,022,418.
• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) involving US 11,022,418.

Uncertainty statement: I could not directly query the USPTO Patent Public Search / PTAB APIs or the CAFC docket system in this session; I relied on web search. A null result from web search is not proof of no litigation, particularly for very recent (2026) filings that may not yet be indexed. If a definitive litigation check is required, the authoritative sources are: USPTO Patent Public Search (patent number → "Litigation" tab), the PTAB End-to-End (e2e) system, and the CAFC's own docket/recent-decisions listings.

Notable Context from the Record

• The patent cites JP 6168946 B2 and US 9,441,715 B2 (Mitutoyo, "Moving mechanism and form measuring apparatus") — the twist-roller traction-nut concept that claim 1 builds upon is thus Mitutoyo's own earlier work, with the claimed novelty centered on locating the drive-shaft drive motor on the moving bracket.
• Cited-by references include US 11,353,312 (Mitutoyo "Roughness tester") and Carl Zeiss US 2021/0299891 / US 11,685,064.
• Maintenance fee for the 4th year was paid on Nov. 21, 2024, consistent with the "Active" status.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11022418.

The first results returned a different patent number (11122418), which the strict rule says I must not conflate. Let me search more specifically.

No direct hits yet. Let me try litigation-specific databases and CourtListener.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 11,022,418

Result: No litigation or post-grant proceedings involving US 11,022,418 were found.

I searched litigation-focused sources (Docket Alarm's all-courts search, Unified Patents' litigation/PTAB caselist, CourtListener, and general web searches) using the exact number "11022418." I could not identify any district court case, ITC action, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), or Federal Circuit appeal naming US 11,022,418 as an asserted or challenged patent.

Important disambiguation warning

My searches repeatedly surfaced records for a different patent, US 11,122,418 — not US 11,022,418. Per your strict rule against auto-correcting or conflating identifiers, I am flagging these rather than reporting them as hits:

• Mullen Industries LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 3:23-cv-00437 (N.D. Cal.) — patent-in-suit list includes 11,122,418 (among many others: 8,374,575; 9,204,283; 9,635,540; 11,096,039; 11,109,218; 11,190,633; 11,234,117; 11,246,024). Flags: CLOSED.
• Google LLC v. Mullen Industries LLC, IPR2025-00018 (PTAB) — concerns 11,122,418.
• PTAB dockets IPR2023-00090, IPR2025-00018 referencing 11,122,418 / Mullen Industries.

These involve 11,122,418, a different patent number (note the differing digit positions: 11,122,418 vs. 11,022,418), owned by a different party (Mullen Industries, not Mitutoyo). They are not litigation against US 11,022,418 and should not be reported as such.

Context on US 11,022,418 (for completeness)

• Title: "Form measuring apparatus"
• Assignee: Mitutoyo Corporation
• Inventor: Toshihiro Kanematsu
• Priority date: 2018-08-06 (JP 2018-147879)
• Filing date: 2019-07-31; Granted: 2021-06-01
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2040-01-02
• Family: JP7094821B2, CN110806190B, DE102019211767A1
• Cited-by (post-issuance) publications (not litigation): US20210299891A1 (Carl Zeiss), US11353312B2 (Mitutoyo, "Roughness tester"), US20230064860A1 (Tokyo Seimitsu).

The "Cited By" and "Citations" entries in the patent record are prior-art/publication citations, not evidence of litigation.

Caveats

• I could not access PACER directly; my searches rely on secondary aggregators (Docket Alarm, Unified Patents portal, CourtListener) that may not surface recent or sealed filings.
• A party's mere ownership of a patent, or its citation by later patents, does not indicate litigation.
• If litigation exists that is very recent, sealed, or filed under a case caption that does not name the patent number, my searches may have missed it.

Bottom line: On the available evidence, there is no known litigation involving US Patent No. 11,022,418. I recommend a direct PACER/Unified Patents litigation-portal query by patent number to confirm, given the potential for confusion with the similarly numbered US 11,122,418.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" signal against public sources before writing up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

One more confirming pass on litigation and PTAB docket linkage.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — US Patent 11,022,418 ("Form Measuring Apparatus," Mitutoyo Corp.)

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 11,022,418, and independent web checks surfaced none — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims-invalidated / 0 claims-sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. The defensive bottom line is unusual and should be read carefully: all four claims of this patent — claims 1–4 — are UNTESTED. There is no IPR-derived narrowing to exploit, but also no IPR-derived estoppel binding anyone, which means a defendant's invalidity challenge is fully unconstrained by § 315(e)(2) and can be built from scratch. This is not a "hardened patent" signal; it is a "never-been-challenged patent" signal. The claims are as broad as they were on 2021-06-01.

No proceedings to report

No IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding has been identified for US 11,022,418 as of 2026-09-29. I will not manufacture a proceeding number, panel, or FWD to fill this section. For reference, the canonical sources that would list such a proceeding show nothing:

• PTAB E2E / PTAB Public Information: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ (no petition, decision, or FWD referencing U.S. Patent No. 11,022,418)
• The patent's own docket record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11022418/en (lists three "Cited By" and fifteen "Citations," but no AIA trial proceeding)

False positive flagged — do not conflate. Several search hits reference US 11,122,418 (Mullen Industries LLC, asserted against Apple, and subject to Google LLC v. Mullen Industries LLC, IPR2025-00018). That is a different patent — a transposition of two digits — and has nothing to do with Mitutoyo or form measuring. Do not cite IPR2025-00018 against US 11,022,418.

Strategic summary

Claim status: claims 1–4 all UNTESTED; none canceled, none confirmed by the Board. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim and it is broad — it recites a form measuring instrument with a detector plus a feeding mechanism comprising a drive shaft, a traction nut switchable between frictional-contact and separation states, a twist roller inclined at the lead angle, an open/close lever, an elastic body biasing the nut into contact, and a motor mounted on the bracket, with a rotation shaft inclined with respect to the axis line, that rotates the drive shaft. Claims 2–4 add a rotator on the motor shaft (claim 2), a roller-or-sphere limitation on that rotator (claim 3), and the alternative in which the motor drives the twist roller itself (claim 4). The motor-on-the-bracket limitation is the commercial heart of the patent — the spec frames the entire invention as solving the cable-routing/tension problem created by putting a Z-axis motor on a moving measuring column (see "the cables between the motor 480 and the controller can be short and a load is not applied to the cables even when the form measuring device moves vertically"). Every one of these limitations is untested art.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate, in both directions. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted against this patent, no petitioner is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel, and no patent-owner-side IPR-driven prosecution disclaimer or narrowing amendment exists. A defendant today can: (a) file an IPR on § 102/§ 103 grounds using any patents or printed publications, including art that Mitutoyo may have already seen in district court; (b) run any art-based district-court invalidity theory, including system-art, public-use, and on-sale art that an IPR petition cannot reach under § 311(b); and (c) raise § 112 written-description/enablement and § 101 challenges, which were never litigated anywhere. The trade-off is that there is no PTAB record of claim construction to borrow — the parties will build the "inclined rotation shaft" and "equivalent to a lead angle" constructions from zero. Note also the domestic/foreign family: the U.S. case claims priority to JP 2018-147879 (issued as JP 7094821 B2), and the family has a Chinese counterpart (CN 110806190 B) and a German counterpart (DE 10 2019 211 767 A1, status Pending). A JPO invalidity trial (無効審判) or a CNIPA invalidation against the counterparts could generate useful art and claim-construction reasoning that is not barred by U.S. estoppel.

Pattern signals: none. No serial petitioner, no repeat challenger, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity) in the chain. The 15 listed references are prosecution-era citations (e.g., US 4,265,022; US 5,044,030; US 5,724,745; US 6,327,788; US 8,065,812; US 9,227,286; US 9,441,715; US 2018/0340798 A1), all resolved years before this patent issued. The single most significant prior-art adjacency is JP 6168946 B2 (Mitutoyo) — the traction-nut feed mechanism that the patent's own Background section credits and that corresponds to the family of US 9,441,715 — plus Mitutoyo's own US 2015/0082926 A1 ("Moving mechanism and form measuring apparatus"). These are the natural § 102/§ 103 springboards against claim 1, but they were never pressed in an AIA trial. Nor has the patent owner pursued any PTAB appeal from this patent, because there is nothing to appeal.

One caveat on scope of search. My searches did not surface any U.S. district court assertion of US 11,022,418 either. A patent that issues in 2021 and is never asserted and never challenged is consistent with a captive-use strategy (Mitutoyo asserting against imports at the ITC, or only via its foreign counterparts) — but I cannot confirm that with high confidence from public sources, and absence of a hit is weaker evidence than absence of a PTAB filing, which is a single authoritative query.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and have received a demand or complaint asserting US 11,022,418:

1. Do not assume a PTAB record exists. There is none. Confirm on PTAB E2E before you draft anything: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/. Any brief that opens by citing an FWD on this patent would be citing a decision that does not exist.
2. Attack claim 1 on the motor-on-bracket limitation. The patent's own Background concedes that motor-controlled "electrical columns" for high-speed/low-speed Z-axis movement were already "considered" in the art. That admission, combined with the traction-nut art in JP 6168946 B2 / US 9,441,715 and US 2015/0082926 A1, is the obviousness lane. Art-based IPR is fully available — no estoppel bar on anyone.
3. Preserve non-IPR art. Because no IPR has been filed, you still have the full menu: system prior art, public use/on-sale art, and § 112 / § 101. Those are unavailable or limited in an IPR under § 311(b) and § 324(e), so if you go the PTAB route, keep a parallel district-court theory alive rather than stipulating away your art (a Sotera-style stipulation would evaporate your non-patent-art defenses).
4. Budget the full statutory clock if you file. The PTAB's statutory deadlines would run from your own institution date — preliminary response (~3 months), institution decision (~6 months from petition), and FWD no later than 12 months from institution under § 316(a)(11). Nothing is pending today, so there is no scheduled oral hearing, no FWD due date, and no institution deadline currently running.
5. Check the foreign counterparts. JP 7094821 B2, CN 110806190 B, and DE 10 2019 211 767 A1 all cover the same disclosure. Foreign revocation/opposition outcomes are probative, are not estopped, and can supply prior art and claim-construction reasoning for the U.S. case.

If you are evaluating this patent as a freedom-to-operate risk: the clean PTAB slate cuts against the patent owner as much as for it. A patent never tested at the Board is one whose claim scope has never been narrowed to survive a validity challenge — and claim 1's "equivalent to a lead angle" and "rotation shaft inclined with respect to the axis line" limitations are the kind of functional-ish geometric language that usually invites a § 112 indefiniteness fight the first time it is litigated. The absence of any IPR on a five-year-old, commercially-backed Mitutoyo patent is itself the signal: either the patent is not being asserted, or anyone feeling threatened has chosen to settle, design around, or fight elsewhere.

I'll ground this in the authoritative sources. Let me run targeted searches on the assignment record, the assignee, and any litigation/assertion history.

Let me try to pin down the correspondent of record and confirm there are no post-issuance transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,022,418 B2

Patent: US 11,022,418 B2 — "Form measuring apparatus"
Application: US 16/527,438 · filed 2019-07-31 · granted 2021-06-01
Priority: JP 2018-147879 (2018-08-06)
Current assignee of record (per Google Patents legal events): Mitutoyo Corporation

Data limitation up front: I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center record directly (the Assignment Center UI is not machine-queryable from here, and targeted web searches for the reel/frame did not surface the correspondent field). Everything below is drawn from the Google Patents legal-events ledger embedded in the authoritative patent text plus corroborating public sources. Where a field (e.g., correspondent of record) is not available, I say so rather than infer.

Inventors

• The assignment instrument (reel 049918/0159, executed 2019-07-24) is signed by KANEMATSU, TOSHIHIRO as assignor and recorded against MITUTOYO CORPORATION as assignee — i.e., the inventor assigned to his employer, the classic employee-inventor → operating-company pattern. The execution date (2019-07-24) precedes the US filing date (2019-07-31) by one week, consistent with an assignment taken at the time of filing.
• Residence for the Mitutoyo "Toshihiro Kanematsu" is listed as Miyazaki-Shi, JP in related Mitutoyo filings (e.g., US 2010/0018298), matching Mitutoyo's Miyazaki-based surface-texture instrument operation.
• Caveat on identity: third-party inventor aggregators (e.g. Patent Leaderboard) conflate this inventor with a separate "Toshihiro Kanematsu" who has Ricoh / Fujifilm Business Innovation image-forming patents. The Mitutoyo metrology inventor (surface texture, form measuring, drive-stage control) is the relevant one here; the aggregation is an artifact, not evidence of a common assignee.
• Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of inventors departing the original assignee. Kanematsu continued filing Mitutoyo applications well after this patent (e.g., US 18/613,643, filed 2024-03-22, Mitutoyo). Not present.

Original assignee

Mitutoyo Corporation (Kabushiki Kaisha Mitutoyo), Kawasaki, Japan.

• Business: The world's largest metrology / precision-measurement manufacturer — calipers, micrometers, coordinate measuring machines, surface-texture and form/roughness instruments. This patent sits squarely in the company's flagship product line.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes — this is a form/roughness measuring apparatus with a powered Z-column and traction-nut feed. Mitutoyo's commercial surface-texture / form measuring instrument (Surftest / Formtracer / "Roundtest"-class) families are the product channel; the family member US 11,353,312 B2 ("Roughness tester," Mitutoyo, granted 2022-06-07) is a direct commercial sibling. Mitutoyo actively sells and services these instruments through Mitutoyo America Corporation (Aurora, IL) and a global subsidiary network.
• Status: Operating. No acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy events. Mitutoyo has a long history of enforcing its own patents as a practicing entity (e.g., Mitutoyo Corp. v. Central Purchasing, LLC, N.D. Ill. No. 1:03-cv-00990, aff'd in relevant part 499 F.3d 1284 (Fed. Cir. 2007)) — the opposite of a selling posture.

Assignment timeline

A complete review of the legal-events ledger for US 11,022,418 yields exactly one recorded assignment — the original inventor→company transfer. There are no post-issuance assignments, no security interests, no name changes, no licenses, and no releases recorded.

• 2019-07-24 (executed) / recorded 2019-07-31 — Reel 049918/0159
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Toshihiro Kanematsu (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Mitutoyo Corporation (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources available to me. The reel/frame 049918/0159 is confirmed in the ledger, but the correspondent-of-record field was not exposed in any source I could retrieve, and I will not invent it. (This is the one field that would need a direct Assignment Center pull to complete.) Consequence for Signal 3 below: the carry-forward correspondent analysis cannot be performed on this patent.
  • Context: Initial assignment of invention from employee-inventor to employer — the standard, non-adversarial baseline. Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Supporting non-assignment legal events (corroborating continued ownership):

Family / parallel filings (all Mitutoyo, all active, none reassigned): JP 7094821 B2; CN 110806190 B; DE 10 2019 211 767 A1.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11022418
    2018 : Priority filing in Japan
    2019 : Inventor assigns to Mitutoyo
         : Reel 049918 frame 0159
         : US application filed
    2021 : Patent granted to Mitutoyo
    2024 : Maintenance fee paid by Mitutoyo

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — in the specific sense the rubric defines it: only the original assignment is on record. US 11,022,418 shows a single recorded assignment (reel 049918/0159, executed 2019-07-24, recorded 2019-07-31) moving the invention from sole inventor Toshihiro Kanematsu to his employer Mitutoyo Corporation, with no subsequent transfers, encumbrances, or name changes documented through the 2024-11-21 4th-year maintenance-fee payment. All eight NPE signals are not present or, for the single-link correspondent check, not assessable — so there is no basis for an NPE verdict in either direction.

Practical reading: this is the ownership profile of a practicing operating company retaining its own patent, not an assertion vehicle. Mitutoyo still owns the patent, still ships the instruments the claims cover, and has historically enforced its metrology patents in its own name. Nothing here suggests the patent has been, or will be, fed into an assertion chain.

To close the one open field (correspondent of record for reel 049918/0159), pull the record directly:

• Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — query 11022418 or application 16527438
• Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Patent Center (document-level, will show the recorded assignment PDF and its cover-sheet correspondent): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/

I'll research the cited prior art references to give you accurate, grounded analysis. Let me run targeted searches on the most technically relevant references.

Let me verify the remaining cited references to characterize them accurately.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent No. 11,022,418 B2 ("Form measuring apparatus")

Scope and method

I analyzed the 16 patent citations listed on the face of US 11,022,418 B2 (the Google Patents record labels the list both "Citations (15)" and "Patent Citations (16)"; the discrepancy is because JP 6168946 B2 appears in the "Patent Citations" table but not in the shorter "Citations" list). All 16 are reproduced and analyzed below.

Key threshold point: US 11,022,418 has a priority date of August 6, 2018 and a filing date of July 31, 2019. It is therefore an AIA (first-inventor-to-file) patent, so the operative provisions are 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2). Every cited reference predates the 2018 effective filing date, so all are available as prior art. The question is whether any anticipates (discloses every element of) a claim — or, more realistically, whether they support a § 103 obviousness combination.

Important family observation: Two of the 16 references — JP 6168946 B2 and US 9,441,715 B2 — share the same Japanese priority application, JP 2013-197317 (filed Sept. 24, 2013), and the same inventors (Onodera, Shindo, Izumi). They are JP and US counterparts of a single invention, not two independent references. Treating them as separate prior art would be double-counting. US 2015/0082926 A1 is the pre-grant publication of US 9,441,715 B2.

Prioritization table

Detailed analysis — Tier 1 (closest prior art)

US 9,441,715 B2 — "Moving mechanism and form measuring apparatus" (Mitutoyo)

• Full citation: US 9,441,715 B2; inventors Onodera et al.; assignee Mitutoyo Corporation; filed 2014 (US app.), priority JP 2013-197317 filed 2013-09-24; granted 2016-09-13. (Pre-grant pub. US 2015/0082926 A1.)
• Disclosure: A drive shaft rotatable about an axis; a traction nut portion that holds the drive shaft from a direction orthogonal to the axis and switches between a friction-contact state and a disengaged/separation state; twist rollers pivotally supported at an inclination angle equal to the lead angle; fine movement by rotating the drive shaft while in friction contact; free rough/coarse movement when disengaged; an open/close lever; a spring (biasing tool); a handle; and a form measurer (11) provided to the traction nut portion (the bracket/lift member couples the nut to the measurer). This is the substantive disclosure of the characterising portion of claim 1. (Google Patents; FPO)
• Anticipation analysis:
  • Claim 1 — NO full anticipation. This reference discloses elements A, B (drive shaft, traction nut, bracket), C, D, E, and F of claim 1, but does not disclose element G: a motor mounted on the bracket whose rotation shaft is inclined with respect to the axis line and which rotates the drive shaft. Its drive is manual (handle) plus an X-axis motor for the measuring arm, not a Z-axis drive-shaft motor. It is the strongest § 103 base reference for claim 1, not a § 102 reference.
  • Claim 4 — potential § 102/§ 103 relevance: it discloses the twist roller and its hand-driven operation, but not a motor that rotates the twist roller, so no anticipation; strong § 103 support.
• Confidence: High (full text located and read).

JP 6168946 B2 — "Feed mechanism, shape measuring machine" (Mitutoyo)

• Full citation: JP Patent 6168946 B2 (特許第6168946号); app. no. JP 2013-197317; filed 2013-09-24; published as JP 2015-064240 A; registered/granted 2017-07-26. Assignee 株式会社ミツトヨ (Mitutoyo Corp.).
• Disclosure (verbatim structure): Claim 1 recites 回転可能に設けられたドライブシャフト (rotatable drive shaft); 軸線に直交する方向から挟持する…トラクションナット部 (traction nut holding the drive shaft orthogonally, switchable between 摩擦接触状態 and 離間状態); リード角相当の傾斜角…ツイストローラ; 微動 (fine movement) / フリーに粗動 (free coarse movement); 開閉レバー (open/close lever); 付勢手段 (biasing means) — with the lever overriding the bias to separate and release restoring friction contact. This is word-for-word the antecedent of claim 1's characterising portion. (Google Patents JP6168946B2; PDF)
• Anticipation analysis:
  • Claim 1 — NO full anticipation, for the same reason as US 9,441,715 B2 (same family): the bracket-mounted drive-shaft motor with an inclined rotation shaft is absent. Note the patent itself cites JP 6168946 in its own "Description of Related Art" (¶ [0004]) as the starting point, confirming the sole point of novelty is locating the drive motor on the moving bracket.
  • Claim 4 — no anticipation; § 103 support only.
• Confidence: High (primary JP text located).

US 2018/0340798 A1 — "Surface texture measuring apparatus" (Mitutoyo)

• Full citation: US 2018/0340798 A1; assignee Mitutoyo; filed 2017-05-24; published 2018-11-29 (i.e., pre-dates the 2018-08-06 priority date but is within the grace/prior-art window; as an AIA § 102(a)(2)-type publication it is prior art if earlier-filed, which it is). Note: this is a Mitutoyo application published before the subject patent's priority date.
• Disclosure: A measurement device (70) having a bracket (72) suspended on an X slider, and a feeding mechanism (53) comprising a feed screw shaft (54), a motor (55), and a transmitting mechanism (56) — i.e., the motor is carried on the moving carriage/slider together with the measurement device. (Patents-Review)
• Anticipation analysis:
  • Claim 1 — NO anticipation (no twist roller, no traction nut, no changeover of frictional/separation states). However, it is the most relevant cited art for the "motor on the moving bracket" concept (element G), and is a likely § 103 secondary reference to combine with JP 6168946/US 9,441,715.
  • Confidence: Medium-High (abstract/description located; not the full claim set).

Detailed analysis — Tier 2 (supporting/context art)

US 9,227,286 B2 — "Precision feeding device and precision transfer equipment" (Mitutoyo)

• Citation: US 9,227,286 B2; Mitutoyo; priority 2011-09-20; granted 2016-01-05 (pub. US 2013/0068051 A1).
• Disclosure: An electrically driven feeding device with a drive source (linear motor or friction drive roller) moving a driving body/movable body, with a laser interferometer displacement detector whose laser path passes through the driving body to align the moving/thrust/detection axes. (Google Patents)
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation. It is directed to axis-alignment/position-detection, not a twist-roller traction nut. Relevant only as background evidencing Mitutoyo's electric-column/automated-Z-feed work; possible § 103 support for the general notion of motorized feeding.
• Confidence: High.

US 5,724,745 A — "Method and manually guided coordinate measuring apparatus…" (Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung)

• Citation: US 5,724,745 A; inventors Brenner, Seitz, Herzog, Lotze; assignee Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung; filed 1995-09-25; priority DE 44 33 917.8 (1994-09-23); granted 1998-03-10.
• Disclosure: A manually guided CMM with a carrier (4) movable in elevation along a vertical column, driven by a drive 2/motor (claims 13, 14, 16 recite "a motor for effecting the movement of said carrier in elevation relative to said base" and "a drive for effecting the movement of said carrier in elevation"). An operating handle is mounted on the probe/probe pin and is force-decoupled from the probe pin. (Google Patents; uspto.report)
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation. No twist roller, no traction nut, no inclined-rotor friction drive. Relevant only as prior art for (i) a motorized Z-carrier and (ii) a handle co-located with the movable measuring head. It is a plausible § 103 support reference for element G/general elevation-drive context, but does not disclose the claimed arrangement.
• Confidence: High.

US 5,040,308 A — "Device for measuring distances" (Hans Meyer)

• Citation: US 5,040,308 A; inventor Hans Meyer; filed 1989-10-04; granted 1991-08-20.
• Disclosure: A distance/height measuring device with a vertically movable measuring carriage fed along a column — background art for column/elevation feed of a measuring member.
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation; background only (no twist roller/traction nut/inclined motor shaft). § 103 relevance limited.
• Confidence: Medium (characterized from citation data; full text not independently retrieved in this session).

US 4,265,022 A — "Contour measuring apparatus" (M.T.I. Corporation)

• Citation: US 4,265,022 A; M.T.I. Corporation; filed 1978-02-22; granted 1981-05-05.
• Disclosure: A contour (form) measuring apparatus with a stylus-bearing detector traversing a workpiece — cited as early background for form/contour measurement with a contacting stylus.
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation; background art for the "form measuring instrument with a detector" element (A). No friction-drive traction nut.
• Confidence: Medium.

GB 2,167,559 A — "Three-dimensional measuring apparatus" (Mitutoyo Mfg. Co. Ltd.)

• Citation: GB 2,167,559 A; applicant Mitutoyo Mfg. Co. Ltd.; filed 1984-04-20; published 1986-05-29.
• Disclosure: A 3-D coordinate measuring apparatus — background art for multi-axis measuring machines.
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation. Background only.
• Confidence: Medium.

US 6,327,788 B1 — "Surface form measurement" (Taylor Hobson Limited)

• Citation: US 6,327,788 B1; Taylor Hobson Limited; filed 1995-12-07; granted 2001-12-11.
• Disclosure: Surface form measurement instrumentation (stylus/traverse-based form metrology) — background art.
• Anticipation analysis: No claim anticipation; background art for the metrological context.
• Confidence: Medium.

Detailed analysis — Tier 3 (peripheral / background)

(Full texts of several Tier-3 items were not independently retrieved in this session; descriptions are based on their titles, assignees, and citation metadata. Confidence: Low–Medium.)

Bottom line under 35 U.S.C. § 102

No cited reference anticipates any claim of US 11,022,418 under § 102. The claim-1 combination is:

1. the twist-roller traction nut with open/close lever + elastic-body bias (claims 1(C)–(F) elements), and
2. the motor mounted on the bracket that travels with the form measuring instrument, whose rotation shaft is inclined with respect to the drive-shaft axis (element G).

• Elements (1) are fully disclosed by JP 6168946 B2 / US 9,441,715 B2 (one family). But neither discloses element (2) — the bracket-mounted inclined-shaft drive motor. Therefore no § 102 anticipation; these are the primary § 103(base) references.
• US 2018/0340798 A1 supplies the "motor carried on the moving bracket/carriage" concept for a § 103 combination, but is directed to a feed-screw drive, not a twist-roller traction nut — so it does not itself anticipate.
• Dependent claims 2 and 3 (a rotator — roller or sphere — on the motor shaft contacting the drive shaft) are generic friction-drive features that a broad reading of the cited art could arguably reach; but no single cited reference discloses them in the claimed combination, so § 102 is still not met; § 103 is the realistic challenge.
• Dependent claim 4 (the motor rotates the twist roller itself) is the most specific point of novelty and is not anticipated by any cited reference.

Net: the 16 citations establish a strong § 103 obviousness landscape around Mitutoyo's own twist-roller feed (JP 6168946 / US 9,441,715) combined with a motorized-bracket feed (US 2018/0340798), but none is a § 102 reference. The commercially salient "prior art keywords" on the record — drive shaft, traction nut, motor, measuring device — map almost entirely onto the Mitutoyo family references (#14/#15).

Caveats on this analysis

• I could not access the USPTO Patent Public Search "Patent Citations" annotations (examiner category X/Y/A tags) or the file wrapper in this session, so I cannot report which references the examiner formally designated as anticipatory (X) versus merely technological background (A). My § 102/§ 103 assignments are independent analyst assessments of disclosure content, not the examiner's record.
• Descriptions for the Tier-3 references rely on citation metadata rather than fully retrieved texts; they are flagged accordingly.
• US 11,022,418 is closely related to, but distinct from, similarly numbered patents (e.g., US 11,122,418, a Mullen Industries wireless-location patent). No data for US 11,122,418 has been used here.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record by verifying the key references cited on the patent's face.

Good — I have strong grounding on the primary reference. Let me verify the secondary-reference candidates cited on the patent's face that could supply the missing motor-on-bracket teaching.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,022,418 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the earlier claim-chart and litigation sections above. No contradiction found between my prior findings and the record below; one consistency note is flagged at §8. Note: the task header gives "April 26, 2026" while the system date is 2026-09-29 — immaterial to this analysis, which is date-independent as to prior art (all references predate the 2018-08-06 priority date).

1. Analytical framework and assumptions

Key structural observation: the '418's claim 1 language is almost verbatim the claim 1 of JP 6168946 B2 (Mitutoyo, JP 2013-197317, published as JP 2015-064240 A on 2015-04-09; registered 2017-07-07) and of its US family member US 9,441,715 B2 (issued 2016-09-13). Compare the claim-1 text of JP 6168946:

「…軸まわりに回転可能に設けられたドライブシャフトと、…トラクションナット部…と…ツイストローラ…リード角相当の傾斜角…開閉レバーと、…付勢手段と…摩擦接触状態に復帰する…送り機構。」
(https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bb/1e/cb/cc8b67e9e93b75/JP6168946B2.pdf)

with '418 claim 1. Every limitation of '418 claim 1 appears in JP 6168946 claim 1 except the final bracket-and-motor clause. US 9,441,715 claim 6 supplies the same combination in apparatus form ("a form measurer connected to the traction nut"), and its claim 5 expressly recites the vertical orientation ("the drive shaft extends in an up/down direction and the traction nut advances and retracts in the up/down direction"). See https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9441715B2](/patent/US9441715B2)/en.

This makes the § 103 case essentially a one-limitation-difference case.

2. Element mapping — what the primary reference already discloses

Using the plain-language chart in the earlier section (§"Independent Claim Overview"):

The only gap is limitation G.

3. Why limitation G would have been obvious

There are at least five independent, mutually reinforcing rationales, each of which alone supplies the required articulated reasoning (KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)).

(a) The primary reference itself already motorizes a positioning axis of the same machine, for the same purpose.
US 9,441,715 discloses motor 286 driving the moving screw 285 (via gear 287) to advance/retract the measuring arm, driven from a PC or remote controller, and a rotary switch 500 with a jog and shuttle providing fine and rough electrical movement and a detent-like shuttle return. The '715 patent therefore teaches, in the same apparatus, (i) electrical positioning, (ii) motor-driven rotation of a feed shaft, and (iii) user-selectable fine vs. rough electrical motion. Extending that same known technique to the other positioning axis (the column/Z axis) that the '715 patent already implements with the traction nut is the paradigmatic "known technique applied to a known structure, yielding predictable results" rationale. The two axes present the identical engineering problem (rapid repositioning + fine final positioning of the measuring head).

(b) The drive-shaft-rotation input is already disclosed; only the prime mover changes.
The '715 machine already rotates the drive shaft 310 as the fine-movement input — manually, via knob 311 at the top of the shaft. Substituting a motor for a hand knob is a mere substitution of one known actuator for another (performed commonly in the art — see the electric-column discussion below), with no change in the operating principle of the twist-roller feed. KSR ("if a technique has been used to improve one device… a person of ordinary skill… would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way").

(c) The applicant's own background admits the motorized column is known and desirable.
The '418 specification states: "progress is made in automation of positioning the detection device in the Z-axis direction, and a system is considered in which a high speed movement and a low speed movement in a full stroke range or a partial stroke range of a column axis is enabled by an electrical column that motor controls a column axis." This is a binding admission of the state of the art and of the recognized need, usable against the applicant — the motivation to motorize the column axis pre-exists the invention; only placement of the motor remained.

(d) The inclined rotation-shaft limitation is supplied by the primary reference's own geometry.
The '715 traction nut already contains inclined friction rollers in contact with the drive shaft (twist rollers 451–456, inclined at the lead angle). The shaft↔roller frictional couple is symmetric: rotating the shaft drives the nut; driving a roller rotates the shaft. A PHOSITA motorizing the drive shaft would therefore naturally (i) mount the motor on the bracket 411 that already carries the nut/twist-roller assembly, and (ii) use an inclined friction roller as the transmission element — which is the claimed "rotation shaft inclined with respect to the axis line." The '418's own FIG. 7 confirms this is exactly what the inventor did (reusing twist roller 451 as the driven member). Nothing more than the reference's existing geometry plus a motor is required. Indeed, claim 4 ("the motor rotates the twist roller") is the direct reading of this rationale, and once claim 4's arrangement is reached, claim 1's "inclined rotation shaft" limitation is met automatically (a twist roller is by definition inclined at the lead angle).

(e) Locating a drive motor on the traveling member is a routine engineering design choice, and the bracket is the pre-existing mounting point.
The '715 bracket 411 is the structural part that travels up and down with the lift member/nut and is already used to mount the nut to the movable structure. Mounting the drive motor there (i) requires no new moving parts, (ii) preserves the tangent contact between roller and shaft at every height, and (iii) is a recognized way to keep cable runs short on a reciprocating axis — the same objective the '418 states. That the '418's stated benefit (short cables / no cable loading) is a predictable consequence of the chosen location, not an unexpected result, matters: absent evidence of unexpected results, a mere change in location of a known component with no change in function is an obvious design choice.

4. Specific combinations that render claim 1 obvious

Combination A — US 9,441,715 B2 (or JP 6168946 B2) alone, in view of the admitted state of the art (electric/motorized columns) and the ordinary skill of the artisan.
Single-reference case plus Official Notice / admission. The only missing limitation is the bracket-mounted drive-shaft motor; the reference teaches every other limitation, teaches motorizing the machine's other positioning axis with fine/rough electrical control, and teaches drive-shaft rotation as the fine-movement input.

Combination B — JP 3,988,860 B2 (Mitutoyo, "Friction drive device and measuring machine using the same") for the motorized vertical drive.
Retrieved text (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP3988860B2/en) describes the conventional Z-direction drive mechanism of a measuring machine: a vertically supported Z-axis spindle 12, a ball-screw shaft 221 parallel to the spindle's movement axis, a ball-screw nut 222 fixed to the spindle via coupling 121, and a drive motor 223 that rotationally drives the shaft (belt 224), with an air-balance. Mitutoyo's stated object is a friction-drive replacement for that motorized ball-screw Z drive. A PHOSITA combining this with '715 (both Mitutoyo measuring-machine Z/column feed systems addressing raising/lowering a measuring spindle) would predictably arrive at a motor rotating a feed/drive shaft parallel to the column, with the friction (roller) transmission of the '418 as the Mitutoyo-described alternative to ball screws. Motivation: same field, same problem (motorized Z positioning), same assignee's prior work, and the express desire in JP 3,988,860 to avoid the ball-screw's drawbacks using friction drive.
Caveat: I retrieved only the background/abstract of JP 3,988,860; its full claims were not verified (see §7).

Combination C — US 2018/0340798 A1 (Mitutoyo, "Surface texture measuring apparatus," pub. 2018-11-29; priority 2017-05-24) for the motorized feed and the bracket-coupling.
Its feeding mechanism 53 comprises a feed screw shaft 54, motor 55, and transmitting mechanism 56; its measurement device 70 is carried by a bracket 72 coupled to the moving X slider 52 (https://www.patents-review.com/a/20180340798-surface-texture-measuring-apparatus.html). This supplies both (i) "bracket carries/couples the measuring device" and (ii) "motor driving a feed shaft of a form/texture measuring machine."
Caveat: because both '798 and the '418 are Mitutoyo applications with effective filing dates before 2018-08-06, '798 is § 102(a)(2) art but is potentially removed by the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception. Treat '798 as a supporting reference / evidence of the art, not as the linchpin of a rejection.

Combination D — US 9,227,286 B2 (Mitutoyo, "Precision feeding device and precision transfer equipment," issued 2016-01-05) for the general motorized-drive context.
Its background expressly treats a "frictional drive roller" and a ball feed screw as conventional drive mechanisms in precision feeding devices, and discusses motor/actuator-driven positioning (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9227286). Useful to show that replacing manual or screw feed with a motorized/friction drive was a recognized option — i.e., the motivation element — rather than the specific placement.

Combination E (unverified candidates) — US 5,724,745 (Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, hand-guided CMM), US 6,625,894 B1 (Kennametal, position-adjusting device), US 2004/0221465 A1 (closed-loop actuator for surface profilometry), US 8,065,812 B2 (detecting apparatus).
These are all cited on the '418 face and each plausibly supplies a motorized/closed-loop positioning teaching for a measuring instrument's probe-holding member. I was unable to retrieve their text (search budget exhausted — see §7); they should be screened before being relied on.

5. Dependent claims 2–4

Claim 2 — "a rotator that rotates centered on the rotation shaft of the motor and contacts the drive shaft to rotate the drive shaft."
Obvious over Combination A/B: once the motor is bracket-mounted to rotate the drive shaft, a friction roller on the motor shaft in tangent contact with the drive shaft is the only conventional way to do it without adding gearing or a belt — and the primary reference already contains precisely such tangent frictional roller/shaft couples (twist rollers 451–456 against shaft 310). Known friction-wheel transmission applied to a known friction-drive mechanism = predictable result. JP 3,988,860 (friction drive device) supplies further express support for friction (roller) transmission to a measuring-machine vertical drive.

Claim 3 — "the rotator is one of a roller or a sphere."
Roller is met by the same reasoning as claim 2 (and by the '418's own FIG. 2 roller 482). Sphere: point contact instead of line contact, giving lower contact area, lower wear, and packaging compactness — the '418 itself states only that the sphere "can be reduced in size compared to the roller" and that "the surface of the drive shaft and the rotation member are in point contact with each other and wear is suppressed." That is an expressly recognized, predictable trade-off (size/wear vs. torque capacity), i.e., a result-effective variable optimized by routine experimentation. A bounded, finite set of two conventional friction-transmission elements (roller, sphere/ball) disclosed as alternatives is obvious to try.

Claim 4 — "the motor rotates the twist roller."
This is the strongest obviousness case of the set: the primary reference already discloses twist rollers inclined at the lead angle and in frictional contact with the drive shaft, and discloses that rotating one element of that frictional couple moves the other. Driving the existing twist roller with the motor avoids adding a part — an express design-incentive rationale ("it is not necessary to add a separate member to convey the rotation of the motor 480 to the drive shaft 310," '418 ¶ Other Examples of Rotation Member). Claim 4 also renders claim 1's "inclined rotation shaft" limitation automatic (£§4(d) above).
Flag: claim 4 deserves a separate § 112(a)/112(b) look, because if the bracket-mounted motor rotationally drives a twist roller that is itself part of the nut's traction couple, the same frictional interface is simultaneously the drive input and the traction/lead mechanism — the specification's FIG. 7 embodiment asserts this works, but the description of how the lead-angle traction is not cancelled out is thin. That is a written-description/clarity observation, not an obviousness one, and I raise it only as a cross-check item.

6. Non-obviousness counterarguments and how they should be evaluated

1. "Placement on the moving bracket is counterintuitive — the natural design is a motor fixed to the base/column." This is the strongest counterargument. A motor fixed at the base (or at the top of the drive shaft, replacing knob 311) would rotate the shaft with zero flexing cable at all, arguably a cleaner solution to the very problem the '418 identifies. Expect the applicant to argue this. Rebuttal: (i) the bracket 411 already exists as the traveling mounting point in the primary reference, so no new moving mass or moving interface is created; (ii) keeping the drive roller co-moving with the nut preserves roller/shaft tangency at all heights along a long (full-column) drive shaft, which a single fixed roller cannot do; (iii) KSR teaches that a mere change in a known element's location, absent a change in function or an unexpected result, is an obvious design choice. Strength of rebuttal: moderate. This should be the focus of any formal rejection.
2. "The modification creates its own problem (cables to a moving part)." Weak: the '418's own answer is simply to keep the cable short — the problem is acknowledged and solved by the same placement choice, and no unexpected result is shown. Also, cables to moving measuring heads are ubiquitous in this art (e.g., the '418's own FIG. 6 architecture; '715's remote/PC/rotary-switch control of motor 286).
3. "Teaching away." None found. The '715 reference teaches the manual knob 311 as an option alongside electrical control of another axis; it does not criticize motorized drive of the column, and neither JP 3,988,860 nor US 9,227,286 disparages motorized/friction drive.
4. Secondary considerations (Graham factors). The record shows no commercial-success, licensing, copying, industry-praise, or unexpected-results evidence. The only asserted advantage (shorter cabling, no cable load, no cable routing design work) is the predictable consequence of the location choice and is not commensurate with the claims. There is no evidence of a long-felt-but-unsolved need — only an admitted, known need being satisfied by a known technique.
5. § 102 fallback worth checking. If JP 6168946's description (or the '715 specification) discloses any motor that rotates the drive shaft 310 — e.g., for an "electric column" variant, or the motor 480 of the '418's own FIG. 6 — then claim 1 moves from obvious to anticipated under § 102(a)(1). I retrieved only JP 6168946's claim 1 and part of claim 2, and the '715 motor 286 is disclosed as driving the X screw only. This check should be done before settling on a § 103 posture. (The '418's own Motor 480 is, of course, its disclosure, not prior art.)

7. Evidence gaps / verification to-dos (stated explicitly rather than assumed)

• Not retrieved / unverified: JP 3,988,860 B2 full claims (background/abstract only); US 5,724,745; US 6,625,894 B1; US 2004/0221465 A1; US 8,065,812 B2; US 2001/0008047 A1; US 2018/0340798 A1 full text. My verification searches for several of these were truncated by a tool-step limit, so their specific teachings are plausible but not confirmed here. Do not cite them as verified teachings without a direct look-up.
• Not verified: whether JP 6168946's or US 9,441,715's full descriptions disclose motorized drive of drive shaft 310 (see §6.5).
• Not addressed: CN 201463874 U ("driving device for a surface roughness measuring instrument," 2010) and CN 204228110 U — family-cited references that may add motorized-drive teachings; not retrieved.
• Unverified secondary consideration evidence: no search for commercial success, copying, or industry recognition was performed for this analysis.

8. Consistency notes and identifier hygiene

• Do not conflate JP 6168946 B2 (prior art — Mitutoyo, 2013 priority, "Feed mechanism, shape measuring machine") with JP 7094821 B2 ("Shape measuring device," 2018 priority), which is the JP family member of the '418 itself. Their titles are similar; the dates disambiguate them. Likewise US 2020/0041246 A1 is the '418's own pre-grant publication, not prior art.
• Do not conflate US 11,022,418 with US 11,122,418 (Mullen Industries v. Apple, N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00437; IPR2025-00018) — a different patent, different owner, as flagged in the prior sections. Nothing in this § 103 analysis depends on the Mullen patent, and no litigation involving US 11,022,418 was found in the earlier search.
• US 9,441,715 B2 and JP 6168946 B2 are actually separate Mitutoyo filings sharing JP priority 2013-197317 (US 14/487,380 filed 2014-09-16 / JP 2013-197317 filed 2013-09-24); the record's "Cited By/Family Cites" listings place them near each other, and the same reference numerals (300, 310, 400, 410–462, 470) appear in both — consistent with a shared family disclosure. Both qualify as § 102(a)(1) art (published 2015-04-09 / issued 2016-09-13, well before 2018-08-06).

9. Bottom line

Claim 1 is likely obvious under § 103 over US 9,441,715 B2 / JP 6168946 B2 (which disclose every limitation but the motorized, inclined-shaft drive of the drive shaft) in view of the admitted state of the art (motorized "electrical column" positioning), and/or in further view of JP 3,988,860 B2 (motor-driven Z-axis of a measuring machine) and/or US 2018/0340798 A1 (motorized feed + bracket-carried measuring device, subject to the § 102(b)(2)(C) caveat). The motivations are: the same reference already motorizes the machine's other positioning axis with jog/shuttle fine-and-rough control; drive-shaft rotation is already the disclosed fine-movement input (knob 311); the applicant's own background admits motorized columns are known and sought; the inclined friction roller needed to satisfy the inclined-shaft limitation is already present in the primary reference's twist-roller nut; and mounting the motor on the existing traveling bracket is a routine design choice with only predictable benefits.

Claims 2 and 3 are obvious (conventional friction-wheel/point-contact rotators — a two-element finite set expressly justified in the specification only by size/wear trade-offs). Claim 4 is the most clearly obvious of all (driving an already-disclosed twist roller; express part-count-reduction rationale) but carries a § 112 cross-check.

The single point of genuine resistance is the motor's location on the moving bracket rather than at a fixed point on the column — a non-obviousness argument the applicant can press, since a fixed motor would arguably avoid moving cables entirely. That argument is answerable under KSR's location-change and predictable-results principles, but the rejection should be written to confront it head-on, and the verification items in §7 should be completed first.