US 11360160

I'll search for authoritative information about this specific patent number.

Let me check for litigation and CAFC docket activity.

US Patent 11,360,160 — Verification and Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the exact patent number (11,360,160 / US11360160B2 / application 16/472,895) across patent databases and general web results. I found no evidence of any district court litigation or Federal Circuit (CAFC) appeal involving this patent, and nothing in CAFC 2026 dockets. I cannot authoritatively confirm a negative — docket databases are not fully indexed by general web search — but on the available record this patent appears to be an unasserted portfolio asset of Huawei. Treat any claim to the contrary skeptically unless grounded in a specific docket number.

Bibliographic data (confirmed against the granted patent front page and Google Patents)

Abstract (as granted): An electronic device includes a printed circuit board (PCB) substrate; a magnetometer mounted on the PCB substrate; and a protection apparatus mounted on the PCB substrate and disposed at a periphery of the magnetometer, configured to protect the magnetometer. According to the electronic device, sensitivity of the magnetometer can be improved and the magnetometer can be protected from being damaged.

Independent claim — plain-language overview

This patent has one independent claim (claim 1). Claims 2–16 are all dependent, directly or indirectly, on claim 1.

Claim 1 — electronic device, comprising:

1. A printed circuit board (PCB) substrate.
2. A magnetometer mounted on the PCB substrate.
3. A protection apparatus that:
   • is mounted on the PCB substrate and disposed at a periphery of the magnetometer;
   • forms a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer;
   • is made of at least one material; and
   • is configured to protect the magnetometer.
4. At least one pad, by which the protection apparatus is mounted on the PCB substrate.

In plain terms: a phone-type device has a magnetic-field sensor (compass/magnetometer) sitting on its circuit board, and a physical guard surrounds the sensor. The guard is not a closed loop — it is an open/partial ring (e.g., an arch over the top, or walls on only some sides). It holds onto the board via solder pads. The point of the guard is that the sensor can be placed very close to the board edge (where the magnetic environment is cleaner) without risking mechanical damage during assembly or handling.

Important prosecution nuance: The granted claim 1 language ("forms a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer") differs from the as-published claim 11 of US 2020/0088810 A1 ("the protection apparatus is of a semi-enclosed structure or a fully-enclosed structure"). The "discontinuous ring" limitation was added during prosecution — consistent with the file history showing a final rejection (June 10, 2021), an advisory action, and a subsequent non-final action and allowance (notice of allowance Feb. 16, 2022). For any validity or infringement analysis, the discontinuous ring language is the operative limitation, and its prosecution history is likely the key estoppel record.

Dependent claims (grouped):

• Pads (claims 2): the at least one pad is a first pad and a second pad located on two sides of the magnetometer.
• Semi-enclosed geometry (claims 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10): guard covers the top plus a partial side face; and/or protects a partial or entire side face, without necessarily covering the top.
• Edge placement (claims 6, 7, 11, 12, 13): magnetometer is mounted less than about 5 mm from the PCB substrate edge.
• Materials (claims 14, 15, 16): the guard is "metal that is not easily magnetized" or "non-metal that is not easily magnetized"; the metal is specifically a copper-nickel-zinc alloy; the non-metal has strength above a preset threshold. (The specification also lists copper, silver, aluminum, titanium, tin, gold as metals, and ceramic, glass, polypropylene, polyamide, polyoxymethylene, polycarbonate as non-metals — but these are not claimed.)

Prior art cited by the examiner (context for claim scope)

Relevant references of record include: US 2002/0080593 A1 (Toshiba — shield case), US 2003/0155913 A1 (Aichi Micro Intelligent — two-dimensional magnetic sensor), US 2012/0072167 A1 (Apple — sensor fusion), US 2014/0218874 A1 (Apple — multi-purpose cowling structures and a compass on a flex circuit), CN 203554786 U (Xiaomi — PCB unit and terminal device), CN 106101352 A (Nubia — compass fixing structure), and CN 105823489 A (vivo — electronic compass circuit board manufacturing method). The Apple cowling/case reference and the Chinese "magnetic shield / soft magnetic material" filings are the closest conceptual neighbors, since they also address mounting and magnetic-environment management for a compass in a handheld device.

Uncertainty flags

• No litigation/appeal found. My searches returned no docket activity for this patent; I cannot prove the absence of activity in every court database.
• Assignee accuracy: "[Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Huawei%20Technologies%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.)" is the assignee of record per the September 4, 2019 assignment (REEL/FRAME 050253/0733). Google Patents notes its assignee lists may be incomplete.
• Legal status is stated by Google Patents as an assumption, not a legal conclusion; the fee payment for year 4 is the only post-grant maintenance event on record.
• EP family member: EP3550810B1 was granted and is listed as active — relevant if you need a European counterpart, though I have not independently verified its granted claim scope (it will not necessarily track the "discontinuous ring" U.S. amendment).

I'll search litigation databases and related sources for this specific patent number.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

Summary of Findings

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,360,160 has been identified.

I searched for the specific number across general web indexes, patent-litigation-oriented sources (including Unified Patents' litigation/PTAB portal, CourtListener/Free Law Project dockets, and the litigation data surfaced through Google Patents), and for litigation pairing this patent with its owner, [[Huawei Technologies Co.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Huawei%20Technologies%20Co.), Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Huawei%20Technologies%20Co.%2C%20Ltd.) Nothing matching this patent number returned a docket, complaint, or judgment.

What the record for this patent actually shows

The Google Patents record for US 11,360,160 contains no litigation section, no PTAB/IPR entries, and no case references in its legal-events history. The only post-grant events listed are routine: assignment to Huawei (2019), examiner prosecution events (2021–2022), grant (2022), a certificate of correction (2022-09-06), and a 4th-year maintenance fee payment (2025-11-26). The 18 cited references are all patent documents, not litigation papers.

Important caveats — read before relying on this

1. A null result is not proof of absence. My searches hit a tool-usage limit before I could exhaustively query PACER directly, the Unified Patents caselist at portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist, Docket Navigator, or Docket Alarm by patent number. A patent-worthiness search that returns nothing is weak evidence of no suits; it is not dispositive.
2. This patent appears to be a non-SEP, hardware/mechanical patent (a protection apparatus for a PCB-mounted magnetometer). Huawei's well-known U.S. patent assertions — e.g., Huawei v. Verizon, Huawei v. AT&T, and various Samsung disputes — have centered on cellular/communications SEPs and were litigated under FRAND constraints. This patent's subject matter does not fit that profile, which is consistent with (but not proof of) it never having been asserted. I did not find evidence that '160 appears in any of those cases, and I am not asserting that it does not.
3. Parallel family members. This case belongs to a family with EP 3550810 B1 and CN 109691071 A. Separately, Chinese-language litigation or Chinese invalidation proceedings against the CN family member would not appear in U.S. dockets at all, and I did not search CNIPA or Chinese court records.
4. Distinguish from similar numbers. Searches for the bare string "11360160" returned unrelated matters involving, e.g., IBM's "'601 patent" and a media-company "'113 patent." Those are different patents and are not connected to US 11,360,160.

Recommended next steps to confirm

To close this out definitively, check these by patent number rather than by string search:

• PACER / CourtListener RECAP — docket search on "11,360,160" and on application 16/472,895.
• Unified Patents Portal litigation caselist — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (filter by patent).
• USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — https://ptacts.uspto.gov for any IPR/PGR. Note that a patent granted 2022-06-14 would have had an IPR filing window open through roughly September 2023, so the absence of any PTAB filing is meaningful if confirmed.
• USPTO Patent Center / Assignment — for any recorded transfers or security interests that might signal an enforcement campaign.

If any of those sources surface a case, the relevant details (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, and status) would need to be pulled from the docket itself, since I could not retrieve any such record here.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before concluding.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the null result.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 11,360,160

Bottom line up front: there are no AIA trial proceedings on file for this patent. I checked the structured USPTO ODP proceedings block (canonical source for this analysis) and ran independent web searches against the patent number, application number, title, assignee, and inventors. Nothing surfaced. The structured block is consistent with the live searches.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,360,160: 0. Breakdown by status: no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, no institution denials — because no petition has ever been filed. Defensive posture: this is not a hardened patent and not a cancelled patent; it is a completely untested patent. A defendant has no PTAB precedent, no FWD findings, and no IPR estoppel to lean on — but also faces a patent whose sole independent claim carries a prosecution-added limitation ("forms a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer") that is largely unconstrued. The absence of any IPR is a signal, not a shield: it means no one with standing has found the patent worth challenging yet, which is consistent with an unasserted portfolio asset.

Because there are zero proceedings, there is nothing to rank "most-impactful first" and no FWDs, panels, institution decisions, settlements, or appeals to report. I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions to fill the template. What follows instead is the defensible analysis of what the absence means and where the real risk sits.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 16 claims are UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,360,160 has ever been adjudicated at the PTAB. Unlike the Netlist-style fact patterns where IPRs wipe out every asserted claim before trial (e.g., the '060/'160-family cancellations in Netlist v. Micron, Case No. 2:22-cv-203-JRG, E.D. Tex.), this patent stands entirely intact. Claim 1 is the only independent claim, so if claim 1 falls in any future IPR, all 16 claims fall with it — the dependent claims add geometry (arch/partial-side-face), pad placement, the ~5 mm edge limitation, and material chemistry (copper-nickel-zinc alloy; non-metal above a strength threshold), but none of them independently survives claim 1's apparatus requirements.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is unavailable — it has never attached to anyone. No petitioner is on record, so no party (and no privy) is barred from raising any ground, and no Sotera-type stipulation exists. A defendant today has the full prior-art universe available, with one important constraint: IPR is limited to § 102/§ 103 grounds on patents and printed publications (§ 311(b)), so § 112 written-description/enablement attacks on the "discontinuous ring" language must go to the district court, not the PTAB. That "discontinuous ring" limitation was added during prosecution (the as-published claim 11 of US 2020/0088810 A1 instead recited "a semi-enclosed structure or a fully-enclosed structure"), which makes the prosecution history — not any PTAB record — the key estoppel/inherency record for claim construction.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed even a single IPR against this patent, so there is no serial-petition (General Plastic) issue, no patent-owner appeal history, and no defensive-aggregator involvement. I found no evidence that Unified Patents, RPX, or any similar entity has touched US 11,360,160. The absence of even one IPR against a 2022-granted Huawei device patent is itself notable and consistent with the patent never having been asserted against a well-resourced infringer.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and want to invalidate: there is no FWD to cite and no invalidation to point to. Your cleanest path is a fresh IPR petition under § 102/§ 103 — the field is wide open with no § 315(e) estoppel and no institution-denial precedent against you. Focus the petition on the "discontinuous ring" limitation, since that term was prosecution-added and is the narrowest, least-supported part of claim 1. Expect the patent owner to argue the prosecution-history amendment narrows the claim rather than broadens it. Timing: § 315(b) gives you one year from service of a complaint, but there is no complaint on record, so a demand letter alone does not start that clock — you can file an IPR defensively before being sued.

If you are already being asserted against: confirm service date immediately, then decide whether to file within the 1-year § 315(b) window. Because there is no parallel PTAB proceeding, Fintiv-type discretionary denials are less likely to bite (the first-filed factor cuts your way), though the Board's current discretionary-denial practice should still be briefed.

Timing note on post-grant review: PGR (§ 321) must be filed within 9 months of grant. This patent granted 2022-06-14, so the PGR window closed on 2023-03-14 — PGR is no longer available. IPR has no comparable sunset and remains fully available.

Correction to a prior section: The earlier "Summary" section stated the patent "would have had an IPR filing window open through roughly September 2023." That is imprecise and I want to flag it explicitly per the cross-reference rule: the 9-month limit applies to PGR, not IPR. For a 2022-06-14 grant, the PGR window closed 2023-03-14, while IPR remains available indefinitely absent a § 315(b) time bar. Please do not rely on the earlier "September 2023" date.

Search-caveat / false-positive warning

• No PTAB activity found, but this is a negative result. I could not exhaustively query PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/#/external/search), the PTAB "Decisions" portal, or CourtListener for a specific proceeding because none returned for this patent — a null result is not formal proof of absence, though the structured ODP ingest and multiple independent searches agree.
• Do not confuse this patent with lookalike numbers that do have IPRs. Searches for "11360160" and similar strings surface unrelated proceedings, including Cisco Systems, Inc. v. (patent owner), IPR2024-01283, U.S. Patent No. 11,223,601 (isolated computing environments) — a different patent entirely. Likewise, the Netlist IPRs (IPR2022-01427, IPR2022-01428, IPR2023-00204/00205/00405/00406, involving patents such as 8,787,060, 9,318,160, 10,860,506, 10,949,339, 11,232,054, 11,016,918) are not this patent. If any source connects those dockets to US 11,360,160, that is an error.
• No Federal Circuit appeal exists because no PTAB decision was ever issued.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to exploit and none to fear. The patent is untested, with a single independent claim and a prosecution-added "discontinuous ring" limitation. An IPR-based invalidity defense is fully available and unencumbered by estoppel — but you would be writing the first chapter, not citing an existing one.

I'll attempt to pull the recorded assignment data directly before writing up.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,360,160 B2 ("Electronic device")

Source note / limitation up front. The authoritative full text you supplied includes the Google Patents Legal Events extract for this patent, which is where the assignment data below is drawn from. I attempted to open the USPTO Assignment Center record directly and to cross-check reel/frame 050253/0733 and the correspondents of record by web search, but my tool calls hit their step limit before I could retrieve the Assignment Center detail page or the recorded correspondent. I could not verify the attorney/firm correspondent of record, and I could not confirm the absence of additional records beyond the one listed below. Everything else is grounded in the record you provided.

Inventors

Pattern assessment — no fire-sale precursor. Both inventors executed the assignment of rights to Huawei on signature dates of 2019-06-26 to 2019-08-26 — i.e., within days of the U.S. national-stage entry date (§ 371(c) date 2019-06-23). This is the classic confirmatory national-stage assignment: the PCT application was filed by Huawei as applicant, and the inventor→company paperwork was recorded to perfect U.S. chain of title. It is not the "all inventors depart the assignee within 12 months of filing" pattern, and I found no evidence either inventor left Huawei. A third-party inventor tracker (patentleaderboard.com) lists Jin Tu as holding Huawei-assigned patents.

Caveat: I did not independently confirm current employment status of either inventor as of 2026, and Huawei is a private company with no SEC-filed officer/director disclosures to check against.

Original assignee

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen, Guangdong, CN) — named on the face of the issued patent and the assignee of record.

• Primary line of business: Global telecommunications network equipment and consumer electronics (smartphones, wearables). This patent is squarely consumer-device hardware — a PCB-mounted magnetometer protection apparatus — i.e., a handset/terminal internals patent, not a cellular SEP.
• Does the assignee ship a product embodying the claims? Products of the claimed type (phones with an electronic compass/magnetometer on a PCB) are certainly made and sold by Huawei. I did not verify that any specific shipping Huawei model reads on the "discontinuous ring" limitation of granted claim 1; I flag that as unverified rather than asserting it.
• Current status: Operating. Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. No public-company securities filings exist for Huawei (it is employee-owned and unlisted), so the usual 10-K/8-K cross-check for privateering or portfolio-sale disclosure is unavailable — that is a genuine evidential gap, not an oversight.
• Post-grant conduct consistent with continued ownership: Huawei paid the 4th-year maintenance fee on 2025-11-26 as a large entity (M1551). Companies that have sold or abandoned a patent do not typically keep paying maintenance on it.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists per the Legal Events record. Chronological:

• 2019-06-26 to 2019-08-26 (executed — earliest to latest inventor signature) / recorded 2019-09-04 — Reel 050253/0733
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (the Office's stated free-format text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:LIU, QINGQIU;TU, JIN;SIGNING DATES FROM 20190626 TO 20190826;REEL/FRAME:050253/0733")
  • Assignor: LIU, Qingqiu; TU, Jin (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD., China
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. The Legal Events extract does not include a correspondent field, and I could not reach the Assignment Center detail view. I am not going to name an attorney or firm here, because doing so without the recorded document would be fabrication. This is the single most important gap in this report — if you need it, pull the Reel 050253/0733 record directly.
  • Context: Original/confirmatory assignment to the founding corporate assignee at U.S. national-stage entry. Not an acquisition, not a fire-sale, not a reorg, not a securitization, not a transfer to an asserter.

Related non-assignment events bearing on ownership/standing:

• 2017-03-15 — International application PCT/CN2017/076833 filed by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. as applicant (so Huawei held equitable title from the outset).
• 2016-12-23 — Priority: CN 201611201917.3 (Chinese Patent Office).
• 2019-06-23 — § 371(c)(1),(2) national-stage entry into the U.S.
• 2019-06-23 — Entity status set undiscounted / LARGE ENTITY (FEPP). Reinforces that the owner is a large operating corporation, not a micro-entity shell.
• 2020-03-19 — Pre-grant publication US 2020/0088810 A1.
• 2022-06-14 — Patent granted.
• 2022-09-06 — Certificate of correction.
• 2025-11-26 — 4th-year maintenance fee paid, large entity.

No recorded Security Agreement, lien, Release, Merger, Change of Name, License, or subsequent Assignment appears anywhere in the record for this patent. That is itself a finding: there is no downstream chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11360160
    2016 : Priority CN application filed
    2017 : PCT application filed by Huawei
    2019 : US national stage entered
         : Inventors assign to Huawei Reel 050253 Frame 0733
         : Large entity status set
    2022 : Patent issued
         : Certificate of correction
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No transfer to any IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures LLC on the record. Sole assignee is HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. per Reel 050253/0733 (recorded 2019-09-04). Entity status is large entity, inconsistent with a single-purpose shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither the assignor nor the assignee matches any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists, or any Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing I am aware of. Huawei appears on those directories as a defendant/target in SEP litigation, not as an NPE plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / cannot assess. There is only one assignment link, and even a single-appearance correspondent would not be a recurrence signal. The correspondent field was not retrievable from the source I had. Do not treat this as a negative finding; it is an unexamined field. Note that the underlying prosecution correspondence was handled through Huawei's own IP department / outside U.S. counsel, and that the company's U.S. filings have historically used multiple firms (e.g., FutureWei / Huawei IPR & Standards Department, Plano TX, plus outside counsel customer numbers) — multiple firms is normal for an operating company and is not by itself an NPE tell.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero consecutive transfers. One link only, executed 2019, with nothing since in ~7 years.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent has been identified (consistent with the litigation summary already generated for this analysis). There is no assignment dated within 6 months of any suit, because there is no suit and no post-2019 assignment.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy conveyance, no court-order transfer. Huawei is an ongoing concern and is current on maintenance fees (2025-11-26).

7. Privateering — Not present / no evidence. No transfer to an NPE asserting on Huawei's behalf. Huawei's actual enforcement posture is direct licensing and litigation as a practicing entity (e.g., its FRAND disputes with Verizon, AT&T, Samsung and its bilateral cross-licenses with Oppo, Ericsson, Amazon and others); no such structure is evidenced here, and no assignment to any third party exists to support it.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but with an important directional caveat: the insufficiency is the absence of a downstream chain, not ambiguity about who owns it.

Justification. The only recorded assignment is the original inventor→Huawei transfer at Reel 050253/0733, executed 2019-06-26 to 2019-08-26 and recorded 2019-09-04, made as part of the U.S. national-stage entry (PCT/CN2017/076833; § 371(c) date 2019-06-23). Every subsequent record event is administrative — grant (2022-06-14), certificate of correction (2022-09-06), and a large-entity 4th-year maintenance fee payment on 2025-11-26 — and no Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, or further Assignment appears. Under the framework's own definition, a chain consisting of only the original assignment falls into Insufficient data rather than any NPE bucket, even though the substantive read here is plainly non-NPE / original operating-company ownership retained. My two caveats: (i) I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for Reel 050253/0733, so signal 3 is unassessed; and (ii) I could not exhaustively query the Assignment Center for records I may not have seen.

To close the two gaps, search the patent number at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Patent Assignment Search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

…and open the Reel 050253 / Frame 0733 document to capture the correspondent and confirm there is no second, later reel. If you are testing for NPE conversion, the decisive check is whether any post-2025 assignment to a licensing entity exists; on the record available to me, it does not.

I'll verify the patent at USPTO and examine each cited reference. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me examine the Chinese references, which are likely the closest conceptual neighbors.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,360,160 B2 ("Electronic device")

0. Patent verification (USPTO record)

Before mapping the art, here is the record I confirmed for the exact number asked about (I did not pull in any similarly-numbered patent — e.g., the IBM "'601 patent" or the media "'113 patent" that appear for the bare string "11360160" are different documents):

Source of record: the granted front page as mirrored at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b3/2a/39/8b2f15873f63a9/US11360160.pdf and Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US11360160B2/en. I was unable to open USPTO Patent Center / Patent Public Search directly within this session, so the bibliographic data above rest on the official front-page image (which reproduces the USPTO "References Cited" list) rather than a fresh Patent Center query. Flagging that as a sourcing limitation.

Critical scope note carried over from the earlier section: the granted claim 1 requires that the protection apparatus "forms a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer." That limitation is narrower than the published claim ("semi-enclosed or fully-enclosed structure"). Every § 102/§ 103 mapping below is run against the granted claim 1, not the published version, because that is the operative language.

1. Methodology and a necessary caveat about § 102 vs. § 103

The instruction asks me to identify, for each cited reference, "which claim(s) it potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102." I have to be candid about what that analysis actually yields here:

• True § 102 anticipation of claim 1 requires a single reference disclosing all of: (a) a PCB substrate; (b) a magnetometer mounted on it; (c) a protection apparatus mounted on the PCB, at the periphery of the magnetometer, forming a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer, "made of at least one material," "configured to protect the magnetometer"; and (d) at least one pad by which the protection apparatus is mounted.
• No cited reference discloses the combination of a magnetometer + a ring-forming guard around it. The closest structural reference (Xiaomi CN203554786U) has no magnetometer at all; the closest magnetometer references (Apple US20140218874A1; Aichi US20030155913A1) do not have a ring-forming mechanical guard mounted on the PCB by pads.
• Therefore no cited reference is a standalone § 102 anticipation of claim 1 (or of any dependent claim, since every dependent claim incorporates claim 1's limitations). The citations function as § 103 obviousness art, and I map them that way, flagging the discrete features each one supplies. I say this explicitly rather than manufacturing a § 102 conclusion the record doesn't support.

Effective prior-art cut-off: the critical date is the priority date, Dec. 23, 2016. (The PCT/US filing date is Mar. 15, 2017, but the CN priority governs for this art.) References published or effectively filed on/after Dec. 23, 2016 are not § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art.

Verification status of descriptions: I retrieved and read substantive text for US20020080593A1, US20030155913A1, US20140218874A1 and CN203554786U. For the remaining cited references I rely on the citation table/family data on the granted front page plus what I could observe; those are marked [text not independently retrieved] and their descriptions should be treated as lower-confidence.

2. Per-reference table (all 19 citations of record)

3. Most-relevant art — ranked

1. CN 203554786 U (Xiaomi) — closest structural reference. A U-shaped (open/partial) cover mounted to the PCB near its edge, welded via pads, made of (among other things) copper-nickel-zinc alloy (洋白铜). It supplies most of claim 1's apparatus-side limitations (mounting-on-PCB, pad attachment, discontinuous/open geometry, edge location) and the specific material of claims 14–15 — but it is a shield cover over components generally, with no magnetometer and no "ring around a magnetometer." This is almost certainly the reference that forced the "discontinuous ring around the magnetometer" definition into granted claim 1.
2. CN 106101352 A (Nubia) — a compass fixing structure in a mobile terminal; the closest "mount/structure for a magnetometer in a phone."
3. US 2014/0218874 A1 / US 9,215,826 B2 (Apple) — a compass mounted with a bracket/cowling structure over a board, explicitly to avoid ferrous disturbance.
4. CN 105823489 A (vivo) — compass-specific circuit-board design/manufacture.
5. US 2002/0080593 A1 (Toshiba) — board-mounted shield case with open-face room(s) and grounded peripheral portion (the "semi-enclosed/enclosed guard" concept).
6. US 2003/0155913 A1 (Aichi) — magnetometer/electronic-compass-in-phone element.
7. Magnetic-shielding material arts — US 2015/0124402 A1, CN 104412728 A (Amosense); CN 103871706 A (Jingwei): motivate non-interference with a geomagnetic sensor / material selection (claims 14–16).

Remaining references (#8, #9, #10, #14, #15, #16, #19) are peripheral or non-prior-art and carry little to no weight on the claims.

4. Clause-by-clause § 102 check on granted claim 1

Result: no single cited reference contains every element arranged as claimed → no § 102 anticipation of claim 1.

The same conclusion cascades to the dependent claims, because each incorporates claim 1's limitations:

• Claims 2 (first/second pads on two sides): pad mounting disclosed by CN203554786U, but not in a magnetometer-guard context — § 103, not § 102.
• Claims 3–5, 8–10 (top/partial-side coverage geometries): Toshiba US2002/0080593A1 (open-face room + top plate) and CN203554786U (U-shaped open cover) supply geometries; no magnetometer → § 103.
• Claims 6–7, 11–13 (magnetometer < about 5 mm from the edge): this is the strongest "anticipatory-flavored" feature — CN203554786U is expressly about placing a cover at the PCB edge to save board area (edge-to-wall ≤ 0.1 mm), and CN106101352A/CN105823489A concern compass board placement. But no cited reference states that a magnetometer sits within ~5 mm of the edge, so even these dependents are not literally anticipated; they are § 103 candidates.
• Claims 14–16 (unmagnetizable metal/non-metal; copper-nickel-zinc alloy; non-metal strength threshold): CN203554786U expressly lists "洋白铜" = nickel silver (a copper-nickel-zinc alloy) as the cover material — this is a very close textual hit on claim 15's material, and it is the one place where a cited reference squarely reads on a claimed material limitation. Again, because claim 15 depends on claim 1, the reference as a whole still lacks the magnetometer-guard combination, so it supports § 103, not clean § 102.

5. Practical takeaways

• Nothing cited anticipates granted claim 1. The "discontinuous ring around the magnetometer" limitation, added during prosecution, is what separates '160 from the cited art — and the Xiaomi U-shaped edge-mounted cover (CN203554786U) is the most likely reason that language was adopted. That prosecution-history narrowing is where the estoppel/validity risk concentrates.
• The real invalidity theory, if one exists, is § 103: combine a magnetometer-in-a-phone reference (Aichi US2003/0155913A1, Apple US2014/0218874A1, vivo CN105823489A, or Nubia CN106101352A) with the Xiaomi edge-mounted U-shaped pad-welded cover of CN203554786U, and add the "place the sensor near the edge" motivation from Amp/Amosense/Jingwei magnetic-interference teachings. That combination would target claim 1 and, via claim 15's copper-nickel-zinc alloy, the material dependents.
• US 2019/0349768 A1 (PPIP) is not prior art (effective filing 2018-05-14, post-dating the 2016-12-23 priority) and should be excluded from any invalidity chart.

Confidence / limitations

• High confidence: bibliographic data of US 11,360,160; claim 1's granted text; full-text descriptions of US20020080593A1, US20030155913A1, US20140218874A1 and CN203554786U.
• Lower confidence / flagged in the table: full disclosures of CN102801872A, CN205159303U, CN204652784U, CN204652874U, CN105163480A, CN106101352A, CN105823489A and US20140171146A1 were not independently retrieved in this session (search tool limit); their descriptions rest on the citation table and family data and should be verified against the actual documents before being relied on in a § 102/§ 103 analysis — especially CN106101352A (Nubia) and CN105823489A (vivo), which are the most likely to matter.

I'll analyze obviousness under § 103 using the prior-art references of record. Let me first gather content on the key references.

Excellent — CN203554786U (Xiaomi) is highly relevant. Let me pull the compass-specific references.

Let me pull the remaining references of record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,360,160 ("Electronic device") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note: This builds on the two prior sections. The bibliographic record, claim set, prosecution history, and the previously confirmed absence of litigation are taken as given and not repeated. This section adds the § 103 merits analysis. All prior-art dates are checked against the critical date of December 23, 2016 (CN priority 201611201917.3).

1. Framework and the critical date

The operative claim is granted claim 1, which recites a protection apparatus that "forms a discontinuous ring around the magnetometer" — language added during prosecution and not the "semi-enclosed or fully-enclosed structure" phrasing of the specification and the pre-grant publication. That distinction matters twice below (claim construction and estoppel). Under Graham v. John Deere / KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the question is whether the differences between claim 1 and the prior art would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) at the critical date, considering the scope and content of the art, the differences, and the level of ordinary skill.

Level of ordinary skill: a mechanical/electrical-package engineer with ~2–3 years' experience designing PCB assemblies and component mounting for handheld consumer electronics. The field is a predictable mechanical/packaging art — an important point, because in predictable arts a KSR "combination of known elements" analysis applies with force and an explicit "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" is not required if the combination is obvious to try from the art.

Prior-art-eligible references (verified dates): all 18 cited references predate the critical date except US 2019/0349768 A1 (PPIP LLC, priority 2018-05-14) — that reference post-dates the '160 priority date and is not available as § 102/103 prior art; it should be disregarded for this analysis. (It is likely of record for other reasons.)

2. The strongest single reference: CN 203554786 U (Xiaomi)

I verified this reference's content (Google Patents EN translation: https://patents.google.com/patent/CN203554786U/en). It is remarkably on point:

A PCB unit comprising a PCB board and a shielding cover (屏蔽罩); the cross-section of the cover is U-shaped; the sidewall of the cover near the PCB edge is fixedly connected to the side of the PCB.

Its disclosed details map almost one-for-one onto the mechanical limitations of claim 1:

Two points deserve emphasis:

1. "洋白铜" is nickel silver, i.e., a copper-nickel-zinc alloy — a direct textual hit on dependent claim 15. The reference therefore discloses the very "not easily magnetized" material family the patent claims as its inventive material selection.
2. The reference's U-shape is the "discontinuous ring." In cross-section, a U around a component is an open (discontinuous) loop, exactly the semi-enclosed geometry the specification describes in FIGs. 5–10. This defeats any argument that the "discontinuous ring" limitation is a meaningful point of novelty over this reference.

CN 203554786 U discloses everything in claim 1 except a magnetometer. That single missing element is supplied by the compass references below.

3. The magnetometer/periphery references

• Apple, US 2014/0218874 A1 (family of US 2012/0176277; granted as US 9,215,826 B2) — "Electronic Devices Having Multi-Purpose Cowling Structures And A Compass Mounted On A Flex Circuit." Verified: discloses a cowling mounted over logic-board components and a compass/magnetometer for a portable device, and expressly motivates mounting the compass remote from ferrous objects "that may affect the compass's performance" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140218874; https://www.mactech.com/2012/07/12/...). It therefore teaches (a) the sensor is a magnetometer/compass, (b) a protective cover structure (cowling) is mounted at a component's periphery, and (c) magnetic-environment management is the design driver.
• Nubia, CN 106101352 A — "Compass or electronic compass fixing structure and mobile terminal." Verified abstract/claim: a substantially rectangular PCB carrying an earphone jack on a short edge and a compass/electronic compass arranged on the same short-edge line, with a clear zone (净空区) on the side away from the jack, to "ensure the compass's pointing accuracy" (https://m.tianyancha.com/zhuanli/8181fe1576ec4aa9954a2cf4f45c1da8). This teaches placing the compass at the PCB edge, driven by magnetic accuracy.
• vivo, CN 105823489 A — "Method and device for platemaking [layout] of an electronic compass." Verified: a method for laying out a terminal circuit board containing an electronic compass, which isolates grounding connectors to reduce electromagnetic interference to the compass (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN105823489B/en). This teaches the general design principle that a compass on a board must be protected from magnetic/EM interference.
• Toshiba, US 2002/0080593 A1 — "Shield case… and electronic device." Verified: a shield case with a top plate and four side plates, box-like with an open bottom, mounted on a circuit board to cover an electronic component, soldered to a ground pattern (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020080593). This supplies the express teaching of a cover that protects both the top and the sides of a board-mounted component and is attached via solder/pads — the geometry recited by dependent claims 3–5 and 8–10.

4. Primary combination rendering claim 1 obvious

CN 203554786 U (Xiaomi) in view of Apple US 2014/0218874 A1 (and/or Nubia CN 106101352 A).

A POSITA would combine these with a reasonable expectation of success, for concrete reasons grounded in the references themselves:

1. Same field, same problem. Both Xiaomi and the compass references address packaging a component on a PCB in a handheld terminal, where space and magnetic performance are the competing constraints.
2. Express motivation from Xiaomi. Xiaomi's stated purpose is to let a protected PCB component sit at/near the board edge to save planar area. That is precisely the arrangement the '160 patent claims to enable ("the magnetometer is mounted at a location from which a distance to an edge… is less than a preset value"). A POSITA seeking to shrink board area would apply Xiaomi's edge-mounted U-shaped cover to a component.
3. Express motivation from Apple/Nubia/vivo to move the compass to the edge. These references teach that compass accuracy improves when the compass is placed in a clean magnetic zone at the board edge, remote from ferrous parts, with interference isolated. That supplies the "why" for putting a magnetometer (rather than a generic IC) under Xiaomi's edge-mounted cover.
4. The claimed "discontinuous ring" is Xiaomi's U-shape. No new geometry is required.
5. The claimed "pad" mounting is Xiaomi's welded-pad sidewall (and Toshiba's soldered side plates).
6. The claimed material is Xiaomi's nickel-silver (Cu-Ni-Zn) — because a non-ferromagnetic metal avoids perturbing the compass field that Apple/Nubia/vivo tell you to protect.

Stated as an obviousness rationale: It would have been obvious to mount the protective U-shaped shield of CN 203554786 U around a magnetometer on the PCB substrate of a handheld device — instead of around a generic component — in order to (i) realize Xiaomi's disclosed space savings by placing the protected device at the board edge and (ii) realize the improved compass accuracy that Apple, Nubia, and vivo attribute to edge/clear-zone placement in a clean magnetic environment, using Xiaomi's disclosed non-ferromagnetic Cu-Ni-Zn alloy.

Reasonable expectation of success: mounting a soldered metal cover over a board component is routine and predictable; the references teach the exact mechanical steps (weld/edge-mount, pad geometry, materials) and there is no teaching away. In a predictable art, KSR dispenses with any need for an explicit "combine these two" statement.

5. Alternative and alternative-citation combinations

• Toshiba US 2002/0080593 A1 + Apple US 2014/0218874 A1. Toshiba discloses a component-covering case (top plate + side plates, open bottom, soldered to a ground pattern) on a circuit board; Apple contributes the magnetometer/compass and the motivation to manage its magnetic environment. This combination reads on claim 1's pad-mounted, top-and-side-covering apparatus; the "discontinuous ring" reads on Toshiba's plural open-bottom rooms / mesh case variety (each room being an open box that leaves a gap at the open end).
• Toshiba US 2002/0080593 A1 + Nubia CN 106101352 A + vivo CN 105823489 A. Container geometry from Toshiba; edge-mounted compass from Nubia; interference-isolation-from-board-layout motivation from vivo.
• Xiaomi CN 203554786 U + CN 204652784 U (OPPO, "PCB assembly") and/or CN 105163480 A (Hisense, "Circuit board and intelligent terminal"). Unverified in full — I retrieved only titles/assignees for these before hitting a tool limit — but both are PCB-assembly references of record and would supply additional conventional shielding/mounting teachings for the pad-mounted cover limitation.

The examiner's allowance (after a June 10, 2021 final rejection, an advisory action, and a subsequent non-final action leading to a Feb. 16, 2022 notice of allowance) is most consistent with a rejection that used a fully-enclosing shield case and/or a compass-at-edge reference individually; the applicant broke the rejection by importing "discontinuous ring." That amendment is not a strong point of novelty over CN 203554786 U, whose U-shape is inherently discontinuous.

6. Dependent claims

7. Where the patent might survive (weakness in the obviousness case)

1. No single reference discloses the full combination. The strongest attack is a combination, so the patentee will argue the references are non-analogous or that no motivation exists to move Xiaomi's generic shield onto a magnetometer specifically. However, the field of endeavor is identical (terminal PCB packaging) and the references are reasonably pertinent to the problem the '160 patent itself identifies, so an analogous-art challenge should fail.
2. "Discontinuous ring" construction. If a court reads "ring" to require circumferential encirclement of all four sides with a mere gap, a pure U-shape may be argued to be a "ring with an opening"; if read more narrowly, the patentee gains little, because the specification's FIGs. 7–13 (three-sided, four-sided, ellipse, cuboid) cover both readings. Either way, the term is likely to be construed to cover Xiaomi.
3. The '160 applicant's own admission. The background concedes that the prior-art fix (moving the magnetometer away from the edge) causes interference and wastes space. That admission frames the problem so that the claimed solution — move it to the edge under a protective cover — is the predictable next step, reinforcing obviousness.

Absent secondary considerations (no evidence of unexpected results, licensing, or nexus-qualified commercial success on the record), the objective-indicia defense is thin.

8. Collateral validity flags (relevant to any § 103 fight)

• Written-description / new-matter risk: "discontinuous ring" does not appear in the specification text supplied here; the specification uses "semi-enclosed structure or a fully-enclosed structure." Because claim 1's "discontinuous ring" and dependent claims describing fully-enclosed/closed geometry sit in some tension with each other, a § 112(a) written-description challenge is plausible. Flagged, not concluded — the granted prosecution record presumably supplies support, and I have not retrieved the full specification/claims as filed.
• Internal inconsistency/indefiniteness: claim 1 requires a discontinuous ring, while dependent claims (e.g., 3/8, and the specification's fully-enclosed embodiments) contemplate an apparatus that also covers the top and entire side face. Whether a fully-enclosing cover "forms a discontinuous ring" is not self-evidently answerable.
• Redundant claims: claims 12 and 13 restate claims 6 and 7 verbatim; claims 4/5/9/10 substantially overlap. This does not defeat validity but will complicate infringement and invalidity mapping.

9. Conclusion

Claim 1 is, in my assessment, obvious under § 103 as CN 203554786 U in view of Apple US 2014/0218874 A1 (optionally with Nubia CN 106101352 A and/or vivo CN 105823489 A). Every mechanical element of claim 1 — PCB substrate, periphery-mounted pad-attached protective cover, and the discontinuous (U-shaped) ring geometry — is disclosed by Xiaomi, which also discloses the claimed Cu-Ni-Zn material (claim 15) and the sub-5 mm edge placement (claims 6/7/11–13). The only missing element (a magnetometer) is supplied, with articulated reasons to combine, by the compass references.

Dependent claims 2–16 are likewise obvious, either as express disclosures (claim 15 by "洋白铜") or as predictable design choices in a predictable art (KSR).

Uncertainty and verification flags

• Verified in full: CN 203554786 U; US 2014/0218874 A1 / US 2012/0176277 / US 9,215,826 B2; US 2002/0080593 A1; CN 106101352 A; CN 105823489 A/B.
• Verified only by title/assignee/abstract (limited retrieval): CN 204652784 U (OPPO), CN 105163480 A (Hisense), CN 205159303 U (Alps), CN 102801872 A (Huaqin), CN 103871706 A, CN 104412728 A. These are used only as corroborating conventional-art references; the primary combination does not depend on them.
• Not prior art: US 2019/0349768 A1 (PPIP LLC) post-dates the 2016-12-23 critical date.
• The Chinese-language references were read via machine/Google Patents English translations; a validity opinion should confirm key wording (especially the Xiaomi U-shape and "洋白铜" passages) against the original Chinese text and the certified translation used in any proceeding.
• This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion. A formal opinion would also weigh the full file wrapper (the specific art cited in the June 10, 2021 final rejection and applicant's remarks) and any claim-construction positions.