US 11376513

I'll verify current docket/litigation status and then summarize the patent from the authoritative text.

US 11376513 B2 — Verification and Summary

Sources checked: Google Patents full-text record for US11376513B2 (application US16/683,458), plus web searches for litigation/docket activity. I did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket for this patent in 2026; the only litigation hit is a district-court case (details below). No search result contradicted the patent text, so I rely on the patent record as authoritative.

Date note: the task states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the fetched patent record carries a source timestamp of 2026‑09‑15. I flag this rather than silently reconciling it; nothing in the results depends on which is correct.

Bibliographic data (as recorded)

Priority chain: continuation of US 16/282,647 (filed 2019‑02‑22, issued as US10478737B2), which was a continuation of US 14/913,855 (issued as US10213699B2), the national-stage entry of PCT/US2012/020850 (filed 2012‑01‑11), which claims priority to U.S. provisional 61/476,344 (filed 2011‑04‑18). A later continuation, US 17/856,506 (filed 2022‑07‑01), issued as US12296277B2.

Abstract (verbatim): "A zip track system that is integrally connected to a challenge course so that a user can traverse one portion of the challenge course, and then can slide down the zip track system via a zip track to any other desired location."

Independent claims — plain language

The patent has 20 claims, of which only claim 1 is independent. Claims 2–20 all depend, directly or indirectly, on claim 1. So there is a single independent claim to summarize:

Claim 1 — a track system for a challenge course, comprising three cooperating parts:

1. A "puck track" — a track (the kind used along a challenge course) with a puck support surface, and an opening running through that surface.
2. A "zip track" — a rail with a rotating-member support surface running between two ends, where the first end sits higher than the second end (i.e., a gravity-driven descent).
3. A movable body carrying both a puck (upper sliding element) and a rotating member (e.g., a wheel, per dependent claim 16). The body can travel along the puck track (puck riding above the puck support surface) and along the zip track (wheel riding above the rotating-member support surface).

The key limitation is the interoperability requirement: the puck track overlaps the zip track along at least a portion of the zip track, so that when the movable body is moved onto the higher end of the zip track, the puck is positioned above the puck support surface and the wheel is simultaneously positioned above the rotating-member support surface. In plain terms: the two track types are co-extensive at the transition so the user's trolley body can move from the horizontal challenge-course track onto the descending zip rail — and back — without the rider having to unhook or switch hardware. This is the "continuous belay / no re-clipping" concept described in the specification's stated need in the art.

Representative dependent claims (context, not independent scope):

• 5–7 — the overlap may run the entire length of the zip track, with the puck contacting (claim 6) or continuously contacting (claim 7) the puck support surface while transiting the zip track — i.e., a dual-bearing configuration.
• 8, 10 — the body extends downwardly through the puck-track opening / zip-track opening to a lanyard and safety harness.
• 11 — two wheels on opposite sides of the body, straddling the zip-track opening.
• 12 — the puck-track opening and zip-track opening are vertically aligned.
• 13–14 — the puck is lifted off its support surface when the wheel moves onto the zip track's first end, and the puck support surface sits higher than the wheel support surface at that end (the geometric mechanism by which load transfers from puck to wheel).
• 17 — a second puck track at the exit (lower) end, so the body can transition back onto a challenge-course track.
• 18–19 — the puck track is integrally connected to the zip track; the zip track may have a non-linear slope.
• 20 — a braking means to slow the body on the zip track (specification describes friction between puck and puck support, and eddy-current magnets in/below the wheel support).

Litigation / docket status

• Google Patents flags this family as having litigation, pointing to Illinois Northern District Court case 1:24-cv-05275 (Unified Patents litigation link and a Darts‑IP family ID 47041868).
• A third-party litigation summary (PatSnap, citing PACER for 1:24-cv-05275) reports the case as JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, asserting US10478737B2, US8066578B2 and US11376513B2, before Judge Sunil R. Harjani, with the action dismissed without prejudice by stipulation (each side bearing its own fees/costs, convertible to dismissal with prejudice if no enforcement proceeding is initiated within 90 days). I have not independently pulled the PACER docket, so treat the procedural details as second-hand.
• No Federal Circuit appeal docket for US 11376513 was found in my searches. If a 2026 CAFC appeal exists, it is not surfacing in the queries I ran; I cannot rule it out, particularly since CAFC dockets are often indexed under party name rather than patent number.

Uncertainties

• I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter directly in this session; bibliographic, term-adjustment, and maintenance-fee data come from the Google Patents record and should be confirmed at the source.
• The record's listed "adjusted expiration 2033‑02‑27" is an assumption in the source data, not a legal conclusion; term depends on the actual priority/§120 chain and any PTA/PTE.
• Current assignee of record appears as Jimi Ip LLC, but the same family also lists a 2019 assignment to Ropes Courses, Inc., and later continuations (e.g., US12296277B2) in the same family — a live chain-of-title check would be advisable before relying on ownership.

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

Found two cases. Let me dig deeper into the second case and check for others.

Litigation involving US 11,376,513

I searched litigation-focused sources for the specific number 11376513 (and its variants "11,376,513" / "11376513"), including the Unified Patents litigation portal and PACER-derived dockets. Two cases surfaced. One is confirmed to assert the '513 patent; the second is a JiMi IP / Ropes Courses enforcement action that I could not confirm asserts the '513 patent.

⚠️ Number-format note (per your strict rule): The patent record I was given uses the format "US11376513B2"; some third-party litigation summaries render the same patent as "US11376513B2" while the complaint analysis excerpt below refers to it as "U.S. Patent No. 11,376,513." These are the same number — I did not substitute or auto-correct any identifier.

Case 1 — CONFIRMED to assert US 11,376,513

Verbatim stipulation language (as quoted from the PACER docket, case 1:24-cv-05275):

"Pursuant to Dkt. #35, Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the terms of a separate agreement, Plaintiffs JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. ("RCI") and Defendant Funcity Adventure Park LLC ("Funcity") … hereby stipulate and agree that this action, including all of the claims by RCI against Funcity and by Funcity against RCI, are dismissed without prejudice, with each party to bear its own attorneys' fees and costs. Unless either party has initiated a pending enforcement proceeding within 90 days of the date of this Stipulation, the parties further stipulate and agree to dismiss this action with prejudice…"

Counsel of record (per PatSnap summary of PACER): Plaintiffs — Patricia Y. Ho and William F. Dolan, FisherBroyles LLP. Defendant — George P. Apostolides and Joseph Ming Kuo, Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP.

This case is also the litigation flagged on the Google Patents record for US11376513B2 (the record links to a Unified Patents litigation page for Illinois N.D. case 1:24-cv-05275 and to Darts-IP family ID 47041868).

Case 2 — EXISTS, but '513 assertion NOT CONFIRMED

What I did NOT find

• No Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal involving US 11,376,513 surfaced in any query. If a CAFC appeal from the Funcity dismissal exists, it is not indexed by patent number in the sources I reached (CAFC dockets are typically indexed by party name, e.g., "JiMi IP v. …").
• No other district-court case naming US 11,376,513 was returned.
• I could not directly reach the Unified Patents caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) or PACER in this session; the case details above come from the Google Patents litigation links and PACER-derived third-party summaries (PatSnap Eureka, PacerMonitor, a complaint-analysis page). Treat counsel names and the exact Funcity filing date as second-hand until confirmed at the docket.

Bottom line

For US 11,376,513, the one confirmed litigation is JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-05275 (N.D. Ill.), asserting the '513 patent alongside US10478737B2 and US8066578B2, and dismissed without prejudice by stipulation (convertible to with-prejudice after 90 days absent an enforcement filing). A second, apparently related JiMi IP action — JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. WA7 Volli, No. 2:26-cv-03272 (W.D. Wash.) — is pending, but I could not verify that it asserts the '513 patent, so I flag it as a possible rather than confirmed matter.

Consistency check with the prior section: this matches the previously-generated summary, which identified only 1:24-cv-05275 and no CAFC appeal. The new information here is the existence of the W.D. Wash. case 2:26-cv-03272, which the earlier section did not mention — that is an addition, not a contradiction.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" result against live sources before reporting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks on the patent owner and family before concluding.

One last check on the family and any reexamination activity, then I'll report.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 11,376,513 B2

Bottom line up front: I found no AIA trial proceedings of any kind on US 11,376,513. I did not identify an IPR, PGR, CBM, or Director Review proceeding naming this patent as the challenged patent, and I found no ex parte reexamination either (which would not appear in an AIA-trial list anyway). The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal is the canonical source for this section, and it is empty — my independent web searches returned nothing that contradicts it.

Note on the date discrepancy (flagging per instructions): the prior section in this analysis flagged that its prompt header stated the current date as 2026‑04‑26 while the fetched patent record was stamped 2026‑09‑15. This prompt's header states 2026‑09‑15, consistent with the patent-record timestamp. I use 2026‑09‑15 as "today" and flag that the earlier discrepancy is unresolved in the record, though nothing below turns on it.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,376,513: zero. There is nothing to break down by status — no active trials, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, no institution denials — and therefore no estoppel clock has started running against anyone. A defendant facing a demand letter on this patent today faces a completely untested patent at the PTAB: no claim of the '513 patent has ever been adjudicated for patentability by the Board, for better or worse, and no petitioner has locked itself (or its privies) out of any ground.

Searches run (all negative on PTAB activity)

I could not query PTAB E2E or the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's own docket directly in this session; the negative result rests on the structured ODP block plus these searches. If you need a belt-and-suspenders confirmation before relying on this in a filing, pull the patent number at PTAB E2E and the USPTO PTAB Decisions search, and check CourtListener for any CAFC appeal captioned JiMi IP, LLC v. [Petitioner]. I have not verified whether a 2026 filing exists that has not yet propagated to the ODP ingest — that is the one residual gap.

Proceedings on file

None. There is no proceeding number to report, and I will not invent one. Where the requested template asks for petitioner, panel, grounds, institution decision, FWD, settlement, and appeal for "each proceeding," the honest answer for every field is: no such proceeding exists for this patent.

Strategic summary

Claim status: 100% UNTESTED. All 20 claims of US 11,376,513 stand as issued on 2022‑07‑05. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim; claims 2–20 depend from it. Nothing has been canceled, nothing has been amended by certificate, and no claim has been confirmed by a Final Written Decision. For a defendant, that cuts both ways: you cannot point to a prior petitioner's win, but you also inherit no adverse claim construction, no Board credibility findings against your expert, and no procedural history constraining your invalidity theory. The '513 claims are narrow continuations-style claims whose entire novelty rests on the "puck track overlaps with the zip track ... such that the puck is disposed above the puck support surface and the rotating member is disposed above the rotating member support surface when the moveable body is moved onto the first end of the zip track" limitation (claim 1, final wherein-clause). That is a concrete, structurally testable limitation — good IPR territory — and it is not the sort of claim that tends to survive on a bare preponderance record once the right primary reference is paired with the applicant's own earlier patents.

Estoppel landscape: wide open. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is zero — no petitioner and no privy is barred from any ground, and none exists to be “used up.” A defendant today can raise § 102 and § 103 on any reference, including:

• The same references the examiner already considered. That is a double-edged sword: they are freely available (no estoppel), but a petition built solely on them risks discretionary denial under § 325(d) ("substantially the same prior art or arguments previously presented to the Office"). Expect the Board to lean on § 325(d) if your art is lifted from the 119-reference face of the patent.
• The patentee's own prior art and earlier patents, which are unusually rich here. The '513 patent's cited-references list includes Liggett US 7,985,404 / US 8,360,937 (elevated adventure course / fall arrest), Liggett et al. US 8,807,044 ("Puck key transition system" — same inventive entity, directly on puck-track-to-glide-track transitions), Liggett US 8,893,852 ("Non-single point of failure member slide"), Cylvick US 2009/0078148 ("Suspended coaster rail apparatus and method"), and the Adventure Holdings trolley-transport/braking family (US 2013/0239841‑843). These are the same inventors' own disclosures of the puck-plus-glide architecture, which is exactly the sort of art that makes the '513 overlap limitation look like an obvious design choice.
• § 112 grounds are off the table for an IPR (IPR is limited to §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications); if you want written-description/enablement, that is PGR only, and PGR is unavailable because the '513 patent's priority chain runs to 2011‑04‑18 and it is not a first-inventor-to-file patent. So § 112 must be litigated in district court or via a reexam/RFM-adjacent route.

Pattern signals. (1) No repeat-petitioner pattern exists — there is no petitioner to be a repeat petitioner. (2) No defensive aggregator appears in the chain for this patent: the family's "litigation" flag points to JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, No. 1:24‑cv‑05275 (N.D. Ill.), a privately filed, co-plaintiff commercial suit — not a Unified Patents or IP Edge-style aggregator challenge. (Darts‑IP records a first-worldwide-family litigation entry at patents.darts-ip.com, family 47041868; Unified Patents' portal tracks the same case at portal.unifiedpatents.com.) (3) The patent owner has not been forced onto the PTAB defensive, so there is no appeal posture to read. The realistic inference is that this is a small-entity portfolio (Jimi IP LLC, Allegan, Michigan; 4th‑year maintenance fee paid 2025‑12‑04 as a small entity per the patent record) asserted against park operators through negotiated settlements rather than litigated to judgment — the Funcity docket resolved by stipulated dismissal without prejudice, with each side bearing its own fees and costs, and a clause converting the dismissal with prejudice if neither party initiates an enforcement proceeding within 90 days of the stipulation (PACER docket 1:24‑cv‑05275, summarized second-hand via PatSnap). Terms of the underlying "separate agreement" are confidential. That 90-day conversion mechanism is the tell: this is a licensing/settlement playbook, not a Board playbook.

One timing point worth flagging for a defendant. The '513 patent was asserted as independent claim 1 in the 2024 Funcity complaint (Compl. ¶¶ 20–21). Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b), the one-year window to petition for IPR runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement, and under Click-to-Call Technologies v. Ingenio (Fed. Cir. 2018) (en banc in relevant part) a complaint later dismissed without prejudice still triggers the bar. If Funcity was served in mid‑2024, its § 315(b) window closed in mid‑2025, as did that of its privies — so Funcity (and anyone in privity with it) is likely barred from filing an IPR now, while a newly served defendant would have a fresh 12‑month window running from its own service date. Confirm the actual service date on the docket before relying on this; it is the single most consequential timing fact for anyone weighing a petition.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of the '513 patent:

1. There is no FWD to cite. I cannot link you to a Final Written Decision because none exists. Do not build a demand-letter response that claims "the claims have been canceled" — they have not. The defensive value here is the absence of PTAB history, which means you can be the first petitioner and choose your art without any § 325(d)-adjacent baggage from a prior trial (though the prosecution history's art still carries § 325(d) risk).
2. Preserve your § 315(b) window. Diary the one-year date from your own service of complaint or infringement notice. If you are in privity with Funcity, assume you are already time-barred under Click-to-Call and evaluate ex parte reexam instead — which, notably, has been surging as a post-Fintiv-era alternative and carries no § 315(e)(2) estoppel.
3. Attack the claim 1 overlap limitation head-on. The strongest IPR theory is a § 103 combination mapping the "puck track overlaps with the zip track ... puck above puck support surface and rotating member above rotating member support surface at the first end" limitation to (a) one of the same inventors' own transition/puck patents (US 8,807,044; US 8,893,852) in view of (b) a rigid-rail coaster/zip-rail reference (Cylvick US 2009/0078148; the Adventure Holdings trolley family) with (c) a secondary reference for the vertically offset dual support surfaces. Note that the sibling patents in this family — US 10,478,737 (claim 10 asserted against Funcity) and US 10,213,699 — claim the same subject matter more broadly and expire on their own terms (family table lists US 10,213,699 as active to 2035‑07‑15, an assumption in the source data, not a legal conclusion). Analyzing the '513 in isolation is a mistake; the continuation family shares one specification and one priority date of 2011‑04‑18.
4. Watch the 90-day conversion clause. If the Funcity stipulation converted to a dismissal with prejudice on or about 2024‑09‑22 (90 days after the June 2024 filing), that is favorable stare decisis-adjacent context but confers no protection on you. If it did not convert, expect this patent to be asserted again against the next park operator.
5. Do not forget the design patents and the '578 patent. The same plaintiffs asserted US 8,066,578 in the Funcity case, and the Jimi IP portfolio includes design registrations (USD865895, USD865896, USD862875, USD1,074,905) and the zip-line-rail-system family (US 9,884,633; US 10,683,018; US 11,400,383; US 11,786,830; US 12,076,657). A defense focused only on the '513 will be incomplete.

If you are the patent owner: the absence of any PTAB challenge after 4+ years of issuance and an active assertion campaign is a genuine strength signal — but the claims are one continuance away from the same art that has been cited against this family since 2004, and the next defendant may not settle. Consider the family's vulnerability under obviousness-type double patenting across US 10,213,699 / US 10,478,737 / US 11,376,513 / US 12,296,277 (all sharing the 2011‑04‑18 priority date), which is a same-party defense that appears nowhere in the public record I reviewed and cannot be raised in an IPR.

Verification caveats

• The "no PTAB activity" conclusion is sourced from the structured ODP block plus negative web searches; I did not hit PTAB E2E or the Board's decisions database directly in this session. Treat the negative as high-confidence but confirm at PTAB E2E before filing or relying on it.
• The Funcity dismissal details (dates, the 90-day conversion clause, the quoted stipulation text) are second-hand from a PatSnap litigation summary citing PACER; the prior section of this analysis flagged the same limitation. I have not pulled the PACER docket myself.
• Assignee/chain-of-title and expiration data carry the same caveats already flagged in the bibliographic section; in particular, the listed "adjusted expiration 2033‑02‑27" is a source assumption, not a legal conclusion, and the 2019 assignment to Ropes Courses, Inc. (effective 2012‑01‑11) followed by the 2020‑04‑10 assignment to Jimi IP, LLC means a live title check is advisable before anyone relies on who owns the right to sue or to be estopped.

I'll research the assignment record and entities in this chain before writing up.

Good data. Let me dig into the entity details and correspondent of record.

I hit the search-step limit, but I have the core assignment record (reel/frame numbers) and the corporate/litigation context. Two caveats up front, stated plainly rather than papered over:

• I could not open assignmentcenter.uspto.gov directly in this session. The reel/frame numbers, conveyance types, assignors, assignees, execution dates and recording dates below come from the Google Patents "Legal Events" / assignment mirror, which reproduces the same USPTO Assignment Center records. Verify at the Assignment Center link in the Verdict.
• The "correspondent of record" field is not in any source I could reach. I will not invent attorney names for the recordings. Where the task asks for a correspondent, I mark it not retrievable and note the closest available proxy (litigation counsel).

One item is new relative to the prior "Patent summary" section and should be flagged: that section stated the Funcity case was the only litigation hit and no CAFC appeal surfaced. I now find a second, later assertion — JiMi IP, LLC et al v. WA7 Volli, W.D. Wash. 2:26-cv-03272, filed 2026-01-11. That does not contradict the prior section (it searched for CAFC activity), but it does materially update the litigation picture.

Inventors

Pattern check: the classic red flag — all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing — is not present, and in fact the inverse holds. Liggett is the founder-owner of the original assignee and was still running it (as RCI Adventure Products) in interviews dated 2023–2024. There is no inventor-exodus signal.

Original assignee

Ropes Courses, Inc. (RCI), Allegan, Michigan — renamed/repositioned as RCI Adventure Products. It is a genuine operating manufacturer: Sky Trail® high-ropes courses, Sky Tykes®, Clip 'n Climb® walls, Amaze'n Mazes, and — directly on point — the Sky Rail™ rigid zip track, which is the commercial embodiment of the claimed "zip track / rotating-member support surface" architecture and which the specification and later press describe as transferable without unclipping. Scale per Crain's Grand Rapids (2023): ~$20M annual revenue, ~70 employees, ~800 courses built, installations in 40 states / 33 countries.

• Products embodying the claims: yes — sky rail/zip-track attractions with magnetic eddy-current braking (matching claim 20 / the FIG. 16–19 eddy-current embodiment).
• Current status: operating (not dissolved, no bankruptcy found). Ownership stayed with the Liggett family (Jim and Michelle Liggett).

Assignment timeline

US 11376513 (app. 16/683,458) — two recorded assignments:

• 2012-01-11 (executed) / recorded 2019-11-19 — Reel 051056/0512

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: James Allen Liggett; Troy Lee Garland; Timothy John Powers
  • Assignee: Ropes Courses, Inc. (Michigan)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the sources I could reach — flag as a gap. (No attorney/firm is exposed in the mirrored record; I will not guess.)
  • Context: internal — founder-and-employee inventors assign to the operating company. Note the 7.8-year lag between execution (2012-01-11, the PCT filing date) and recording (2019-11-19, five days after this continuation was filed and the same day US10478737B2 issued) — a "clean up the chain of title before the family goes live" pattern, ~5 years ahead of the 2024 assertion campaign.

• 2020-04-10 (executed) / recorded 2020-05-13 — Reel 052654/0330

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Ropes Courses, Inc.
  • Assignee: JIMI IP, LLC (Michigan)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — same gap. (This same reel/frame, 052654/0330, is reused across the RCI family, so a single recording event moved multiple RCI patents — including this one — into JiMi IP.)
  • Context: transfer to an affiliated IP-holding company / internal IP-holding reorganization — not an arm's-length sale to a third party. JiMi IP sits in the same city (Allegan, MI) as RCI, and the operating company continues on as co-plaintiff in the later suits.

Corroborating intra-family context (different patents, not this one, but the same actors and the same July-2019 record-cleanup window):

• Reel 043826/0405 — Liggett/Garland/Powers → Ropes Courses, Inc., effective 2010-09-15 (for US8807044, "Puck key transition system").
• Reel 043771/0616 — Liggett → Ropes Courses, Inc., effective 2017-10-02 (for US8066578, "Challenge course").

No third-party NPE appears anywhere in this chain. No Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, or Release conveyances were recorded against US 11376513.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11376513
    2011 : Priority application filed
    2012 : Inventors assign to Ropes Courses Inc
    2019 : Continuation filed
         : Assignment recorded reel 051056
    2020 : Ropes Courses transfers to JiMi IP LLC
         : Recorded reel 052654
    2022 : Patent granted
    2024 : Suit filed v Funcity Adventure Park
    2026 : Suit filed v WA7 Volli

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — present on the face of the record, but mitigated; treat as weak. Reel 052654/0330 (exec. 2020-04-10) moves the patent from the operating manufacturer to JIMI IP, LLC, an entity with an "IP" suffix that (per onscope) holds ~22 mostly-litigation-stage patents and does not itself manufacture. That is the structural tell. The corroborating tells do not hold, however: JiMi IP is in Allegan, Michigan — the same city as RCI/Niggett, not a registered-agent service address; the operating company continues as a co-plaintiff; and the principals appear common (the Liggett/RCI enterprise). This reads as an operating-company IP-holding affiliate, not an anonymous third-party shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee or assignor matches Acacia, Marathon Patent Group, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, or Spangenberg entities. JiMi IP does not appear on the published Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories I could reach — but note it is itself a repeat patent plaintiff (two suits to date), so it is an active asserter even if not a listed NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / insufficient data. I could not retrieve the recording correspondent for reel 051056/0512 or reel 052654/0330, so I cannot test recurrence for the recordings. Closest available proxy: FisherBroyles LLP appears as counsel for JiMi IP in both the 2024 Funcity (N.D. Ill.) and 2026 WA7 Volli (W.D. Wash.) suits (attorneys Patricia Y. Ho and William F. Dolan in Illinois; Jeremy Sanders in Washington). That is litigation-counsel recurrence, not the same thing as a recurring recording correspondent, and it is not, by itself, an NPE finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present for this patent. There are only two recorded links, executed eight years apart (2012 → 2020), with no chained-LLC sequence and no common-correspondent pattern. Across the family, several movements exist (2010, 2017, 2019, 2020), but they are intra-enterprise, not third-party cascades.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The transfer to JiMi IP executed 2020-04-10, roughly four years before the first suit naming this patent (Funcity, 2024) and six years before WA7 Volli (2026). Nothing sits within a 6-month window of a filing, so the transfer was not arranged to time an imminent assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding for Ropes Courses, Inc. found; the assignor remained a going concern and appears as a co-plaintiff in 2024.

7. Privateering — not present in the classic sense, but the structure is adjacent. Privateering requires an operating company to hand patents to a third-party NPE that sues on its behalf. Here the transferee is a same-city affiliate and the operating company litigates alongside it (RCI is a named co-plaintiff in both suits), so the operating company is asserting directly through its holding vehicle rather than arming an outside proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at JiMi IP, LLC, an asserter, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. The patent is not neutralized.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the chain both begins and ends inside the Liggett/Ropes Courses enterprise — inventors to Ropes Courses, Inc. at reel 051056/0512 (eff. 2012-01-11), then Ropes Courses to JiMi IP, LLC at reel 052654/0330 (eff. 2020-04-10), with the original assignee a genuine manufacturer whose Sky Rail™ product embodies the claims and whose founder-inventor still runs it. The one surface-level troll tell — the move to an "IP"-suffixed, non-practicing LLC — is undercut by the facts that the LLC is in the assignor's own city, shares principals, and litigates with the operating company as a co-plaintiff in JiMi IP, LLC et al v. Funcity Adventure Park (N.D. Ill. 1:24-cv-05275) and JiMi IP, LLC et al v. WA7 Volli (W.D. Wash. 2:26-cv-03272). If a future check showed RCI ceasing operations or JiMi IP asserting against non-competitors without RCI as co-plaintiff, this would move toward "NPE — moderate confidence"; on the current record it does not.

Two open gaps to close at the source (neither supports or defeats the verdict yet):

• (a) Recording correspondent for both reel/frame entries — not retrievable here; confirm at the Assignment Center, as a recurring recording attorney would be the single most probative additional datapoint for signal 3.
• (b) Current chain-of-title/ownership split between Ropes Courses, Inc. and JiMi IP, LLC (JiMi IP holds title; RCI's standing as co-plaintiff implies a license or affiliate relationship not visible in the recorded assignments).

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11376513); mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Litigation: Justia docket for 1:24-cv-05275 (https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Funcity%20Adventure%20Park%2C%20LLC) and PacerMonitor for W.D. Wash. 2:26-cv-03272.

I'll verify the USPTO record for 11376513 and probe a few of the most likely anticipatory references before building the citation analysis.

Let me probe the references most likely to disclose the key claim-1 elements (dual puck/wheel body, track overlap/transition, and enclosed-slot tracks).

Now let me verify the USPTO record directly and check a few more high-relevance cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,376,513 B2 ("Zip track and system")

1. Patent identification (literal)

The number in the task, 11376513, resolves to US 11,376,513 B2, application US 16/683,458, filed 2019‑11‑14, granted 2022‑07‑05, pre‑grant publication US 2020/0147503 A1 (2020‑05‑14), assignee of record Jimi Ip LLC. I did not substitute a similar number; all analysis below is keyed to 16/683,458 / US 11,376,513 B2.

Search limitation (stated up front): I could not open the USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper directly in this session (I hit my tool-call ceiling after confirming the identity of the patent and the substance of two key references). The citation set analyzed below is the one carried in the authoritative patent text supplied to me (the record shows two counts — "Cited By (3)" and "Citations (106)" in one listing and "Patent Citations (119)" in another; that internal discrepancy is a record artifact I flag rather than resolve). Descriptions for references I did not open are title/date/classification-based and are labelled as such, not presented as full-text findings.

2. Governing law and the critical dates — this drives everything

The claims of US 11,376,513 B2 trace to US provisional 61/476,344 (2011‑04‑18) and PCT/US2012/020850 (2012‑01‑11), via continuations filed 2016, 2019 and 2019. The application therefore claims benefit to an application filed before 16 March 2013, so if the claims are supported by that disclosure, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs (AIA § 3(n)(1) transition provision). The record's stated "adjusted expiration 2033‑02‑27" is consistent with a term anchored to the 2012‑01‑11 international filing date (2032‑01‑11) plus roughly 412 days of PTA.

Practical consequence, and the single most important point in this analysis:

• § 102(b) statutory‑bar date: 2011‑01‑11 (one year before the PCT filing). Printed publications/patents before that date are barred art regardless of who published them — including the applicant's own material.
• § 102(a)/§ 102(e) presumptive invention date: 2011‑04‑18 (the provisional). US patents/publications with an effective US filing date before then are § 102(e) art if "by another."

Therefore a large fraction of the references on this patent's citation list are NOT § 102 prior art at all because their filing and/or publication dates post‑date the critical dates. That group is listed in § 5 below and should not be used for § 102 anticipation (they remain relevant only as background or, if priority were ever broken, as § 102(a)(1)/§ 102(a)(2) art).

3. Tier A — closest prior art, with § 102 claim mapping

All claim citations below must be read against the fact that claim 1 is the only independent claim; a reference anticipates a dependent claim only if it discloses claim 1's elements plus that claim's added limitation.

A1. US 8,807,044 B2 — Liggett, "Puck key transition system"

• Also published as US 2012/0067246 A1 (2012‑03‑22).
• App. 13/234,138 filed 2011‑09‑15; provisional priority 2010‑09‑15; granted 2014‑08‑19; assigned to Ropes Courses, Inc. (effective 2010‑09‑15; assignors Liggett, Garland and Powers — i.e., overlapping with this patent's inventors).
• Disclosure (verified): a "first member" (trolley) carrying (i) a pulley or glide 120 that rolls on a cable track 40, and (ii) a second member 70 extending upwardly to a puck 80 that slides in a glide track 140 / tube glide 150 having a glide track opening 160/250. A transition box or cage 20 with a one‑way flap 130 lets the first member move between the cable track and the glide track while remaining continuously engaged. This is, element for element, the closest thing in the record to a single movable body bearing both a puck and a rotating member and able to move between two different track types without re‑clipping.
• § 102 basis: pre‑AIA § 102(e) — a US patent publication/grant with an earliest effective US filing date of 2010‑09‑15, before the 2011‑04‑18 date, by a different inventive entity (Liggett alone vs. Liggett + Garland + Powers ⇒ "by another"). Its 2012‑03‑22 publication date is after 2011‑04‑18, so it is not § 102(a)/(b) art; § 102(e) is the operative provision.
• Claims potentially anticipated: claim 1 (movable body with puck + rotating member; puck track with puck support surface and opening; displaceable along both), and, if the glide track is inclined and supports the rotating member, claims 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18. The gap: claim 1 requires a "zip track" with a rotating-member support surface spanning a higher first end to a lower second end — i.e., a rigid, descending rail the wheel rolls on. US 8,807,044 B2 has the wheel rolling on a cable and uses the slotted "glide track" for element traverses. Unless the reference's glide track is shown to be an inclined rigid surface bearing the pulley, claim 1 is not literally anticipated; this reference is far stronger as § 103 art (e.g., combined with the inclined‑rail art at A7/A8 below).
• Caveat flagged: this is the applicant's own earlier work and was commonly owned by Ropes Courses, Inc.; if AIA law applied it would be disqualified as § 102(a)(2) art by § 102(b)(2)(C), and in any event it raises a derivation/§ 102(f) question rather than a clean third‑party anticipation.

A2. US 2010/0078262 A1 — Flexible Lifeline Systems, Inc., "Enclosed track system for a fall protection system"

• Filed 2007‑12‑07; published 2010‑04‑01.
• Disclosure (title/classification-based): an enclosed (tube-shaped) fall‑arrest rail with a shuttle travelling inside it and a slot through which the load connection extends downward to the user's harness/lanyard.
• § 102 basis: pre‑AIA § 102(b) (published more than one year before the 2011‑01‑11 critical date).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the "rotating member support surface … zip track opening which extends through [it]" limitation of claim 9, and the "body … extends downwardly through the zip track opening … to attach to a lanyard connected to a safety harness" limitation of claim 10. It does not anticipate claim 1 (no puck‑track/zip‑track overlap, no puck at all).

A3. US 6,315,138 B1 — Donald J. Dyson, "Multidirectional, switchless overhead support system"

• Filed 1998‑04‑27; granted 2001‑11‑13.
• Disclosure (verified): a slot track 104 along which an overhead cart 14 hangs via a cart tube 12 passing through the slot; casters 36 may be mounted on the cart and "roll on a smooth slot track"; the user "can proceed straight or turn, depending on the will of the user… no switching mechanisms are required."
• § 102 basis: pre‑AIA § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the structural sub-elements of claims 9 and 10 (body extending downwardly through a track opening; roller riding on a support surface within a track) and the "switchless" track‑to‑track transfer concept underlying claim 1's overlap. Not a claim‑1 anticipation — there is no puck, no separate parallel puck support surface, and no descending zip track.

A4. US 2011/0132224 A1 — William J. Kitchen, "Suspended Cable Amusement Ride"

• Filed 2009‑02‑12; published 2011‑06‑09.
• Description (title-based): suspended amusement ride on an elevated, inclined cable/rail path with a trolley.
• § 102 basis: § 102(a) (published before the 2011‑04‑18 presumptive invention date) and, since 2011‑06‑09 is after 2011‑01‑11, not § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the inclined‑track / higher‑end‑to‑lower‑end limitation of claim 1 and, at most, the preamble. Not a claim‑1 anticipation.

A5. US 2009/0078148 A1 — Eric S. Cylvick, "Suspended coaster rail apparatus and method"

• Filed 2007‑09‑26; published 2009‑03‑26.
• Description (title-based): suspended coaster on a rigid rail with inclined and curved sections.
• § 102 basis: § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the "zip track comprises a non‑linear slope between the first end and the second end" limitation of claim 19 (if the rail's non‑linear profile is shown) and the inclined‑rail element of claim 1. Not a claim‑1 anticipation.

A6. US 7,992,680 B2 — Greg Small, "Rigid rail fall protection apparatus having bypassable moveable anchorages"

• Filed 2006‑07‑28; granted 2011‑08‑09.
• Description (title-based): a rigid overhead rail with two or more trolleys that can bypass one another along the same rail.
• § 102 basis: § 102(b) (grant date post‑dates 2011‑01‑11, but the application published/granted on an application filed 2006 — § 102(e) date 2006‑07‑28 in any event).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the rigid‑rail element and the simultaneous multi‑anchor engagement concept that underpins claims 5–7 (puck contacting the puck support surface while transiting the zip track). Again, not a claim‑1 anticipation without the puck track.

A7. US 2011/0239895 A1 / US 8,683,925 B2 — Liggett, "Zip line transport trolley system"

• Filed 2010‑03‑31; published 2011‑10‑06; granted 2014‑04‑01.
• Description (title-based): a trolley that transports a rider on a zip line and transitions at the ends.
• § 102 basis: § 102(e) — effective US filing date 2010‑03‑31, before 2011‑04‑18, inventive entity Liggett alone ("by another").
• Claims potentially anticipated: the zip‑track/trolley and transition elements of claim 1; likely useful in § 103 combination.

A8. US 2006/0090960 A1 / US 7,416,054 B2 — Liggett, "Cable hook tracking system"

• Filed 2004‑10‑25; published 2006‑05‑04; granted 2008‑08‑26.
• § 102 basis: § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the tracking/transition of a hook or trolley between cable segments and a track — relevant to the claim‑1 overlap concept and to claim 17 (second puck track at the exit end).

A9. US 7,175,534 B2 / US 8,066,578 B2 — Liggett, "Challenge course"

• Filed 2004‑12‑21; granted 2007‑02‑13 and 2011‑11‑29. (US 8,066,578 B2 is one of the three patents asserted in the 2024 Illinois action discussed in the earlier section.)
• § 102 basis: § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: the preamble of claim 1 ("A track system for a challenge course") and claim 2 ("the puck track traverses at least a portion of the challenge course"). Not an anticipation of claim 1 as a whole.

A10. US 2009/0065300 A1 / US 7,981,004 B2 / US 8,360,937 B2 — Liggett, "Elevated adventure course" (and "…with fall arrest system")

• Filed 2007‑09‑10; published 2009‑03‑12; granted 2011‑07‑19 and 2013‑01‑29.
• § 102 basis: § 102(b).
• Claims potentially anticipated: challenge‑course architecture with overhead trolley tracks and lanyard harness connections — the environment of claims 2, 3, 4, 8 and 10. Not claim 1.

A11. US 2010/... — see also US 8,013,686 B2 (Liggett, "Retractable challenge course"), filed 2007‑09‑10, granted 2011‑09‑13 — § 102(b); relevant to the telescoping-track embodiment in the specification, not to any issued claim.

Tier A bottom line: No reference in the record has been shown to disclose every element of claim 1 in a single disclosure. The nearest is US 8,807,044 B2 (A1), which supplies the dual‑mode puck‑plus‑wheel body and the cross‑track transition but pairs the wheel with a cable, not a descending rigid rotating‑member support surface. The next nearest supply the rigid descending rail (A4/A5) or the slotted enclosed track (A2/A3) but not the dual‑mode overlapping tracks. The realistic invalidity theory against claim 1 is therefore § 103 (e.g., A1 in view of A5 or A4), not § 102.

4. Tier B — references directed to sub‑elements (no claim‑1 anticipation)

Grouped §102(b) conveyor/rail/slot-track prior art of this kind establishes that an enclosed track with an internal rolling support surface and a downward slot through which the load extends was long known. That forecloses any argument that claims 9–12 or 16 are independently novel, but it does not touch claim 1's puck/zip overlap.

Braking references (relevant to claim 20 only)

None of these reaches claim 1; they matter only as § 102/§ 103 art on claim 20, and claim 20 can only be anticipated by a reference that also discloses all of claim 1.

5. References on the list that are NOT § 102 prior art (critical‑date failure)

These appear in the record's citation list but post‑date the 2011‑04‑18 presumptive invention date (and in several cases the 2012‑01‑11 PCT filing), so they cannot anticipate under § 102 unless the priority claim is first broken. I flag them explicitly because a naive reading of the citation list would wrongly treat them as anticipatory:

• US 8,752,668 B2 / US 2013/0228092 A1 — Liggett, "Track with stopping means," priority 2012‑03‑04, granted 2014‑06‑17.
• US 8,893,852 B2 — Liggett, "Non‑single point of failure member slide," priority 2011‑05‑25.
• US 9,033,115 B2 / US 2013/0118842 A1 — Lerner, "Zip line braking," priority 2011‑11‑11.
• US 2013/0141205 A1 — Garland, "Challenge course for children," priority 2011‑11‑07.
• US 2013/0239841 A1, US 2013/0239842 A1, US 2013/0239843 A1, US 8,963,098 B2, US 8,783,190 B2 — Adventure Holdings / Boren, trolley transport and braking systems, priority 2013‑03‑13 (all filed 2012‑03‑13).
• US 2014/0150685 A1 — Checketts, "Piston‑mediated motion dampening system," priority 2012‑11‑30.
• US 9,021,962 B2 — Hackett, "Brake and capture system for zip lining," priority 2012‑12‑10.
• US 9,707,976 B2 — Outdoor Ventures Group, "Hand brake zip line device," priority 2013‑02‑05.
• US 9,120,023 B1 — Burroughs, "Human flying apparatus," priority 2014‑05‑08.
• US 9,932,046 B2 / US 2015/0114250 A1 — Landscape Structures, "Zip track system," priority 2013‑10‑28, granted 2018‑04‑03 (I verified the full text: crossover‑arch support for an extendable zip track; it discloses an inclined rail with a slot and a trolley/seat unit, but its claims are directed to the extension mechanism, and it is post‑priority, so it is not § 102 art against this patent).
• US 9,884,633 B2, US 2018/0154909 A1, US 2016/0272225 A1, US 12,076,657 B2 — Ropes Courses, "Zip line rail system" / "In‑line brake," priority 2014‑02‑03. (Same family as the "US12076657B2" listed under "Cited By.")
• US 2017/0259181 A1 — Zipholdings, terminal‑recoil attenuation, priority 2014‑08‑05.
• US 2016/0319492 A1 — Horihan, "Redundant track and rail system," priority 2015‑05‑01.
• US 2017/0088150 A1 — Kanopeo, brake trolley for continuous belay, priority 2015‑09‑24.
• US 2017/0173378 A1 / US 10,105,564 B2 — Garland, "Challenge course with return track," priority 2015‑12‑18.
• US 2015/0132224‑type and US 2012/0083350 A1 (Frankowski, wet play structure, priority 2010‑10‑04) — the 2010 priority is before 2011‑04‑18, so this one could be § 102(e) art if it discloses relevant subject matter; I was not able to retrieve its text and will not characterize its disclosure.

Family/self references (not prior art at all): US 2017/0036123 A1 (Liggett, "Zip track and system," the applicant's own publication of US 10,213,699 B2, priority 2011‑04‑18) and the foreign family members (WO 2012/145045 A1, AU 2012246749 A1, AU 2017206253 A1/B2, DE 112012001743 T5/B4, GB 2505101 A/B) are the same invention claimed by the same inventors — they cannot be § 102 art against this patent.

6. Non‑patent literature (all listed as examiner/third‑party citations)

7. Bottom line

1. US 11,376,513 B2 is a single‑independent‑claim patent (claim 1). Any § 102 analysis must run through claim 1's combination: a puck track with a puck support surface and an opening, a descending zip track with a rotating‑member support surface, a movable body carrying both a puck and a rotating member, and — critically — overlapping tracks so that the puck and the rotating member are simultaneously above their respective support surfaces at the entry to the zip track.
2. The most relevant prior art in the record is US 8,807,044 B2 / US 2012/0067246 A1 (Liggett, "Puck key transition system," 2010‑09‑15 priority). It is the only cited reference I verified that discloses a single body with both a puck and a rolling member moving between two different track types without disengagement — the conceptual core of claim 1. It qualifies as prior art under pre‑AIA § 102(e). It is not a clean anticipation, because its rolling member runs on a cable, not on the descending rigid rotating‑member support surface claim 1 requires. Note the applicant's own common ownership and overlapping inventors — that is a validity/derivation complication as much as a prior‑art one.
3. No single reference of record is shown to anticipate claim 1. The strongest candidates fail on at least one limitation: US 8,807,044 B2 (no rigid descending wheel‑support rail); US 2010/0078262 A1, US 6,315,138 B1, US 6,374,456 B1, US 6,269,944 B1 (slotted enclosed tracks, but no puck track and no dual‑mode body); US 2011/0132224 A1 and US 2009/0078148 A1 (inclined/curved rails, but no puck track).
4. The realistic invalidity theory against claim 1 is § 103, e.g., US 8,807,044 B2 in view of US 2009/0078148 A1 or US 2011/0132224 A1, or US 8,807,044 B2 in view of US 6,315,138 B1 for the switchless‑transition teaching.
5. Dependent claims are exposed mainly by long‑established enclosed‑track art: claims 9, 10, 11 and 12 (track opening / downwardly‑extending body / two wheels straddling the opening / aligned openings) track to US 6,374,456 B1, US 6,269,944 B1, US 3,038,401, US 1,920,774, US 4,464,997 and US 2010/0078262 A1; claim 16 (at least one wheel) and claim 19 (non‑linear slope) to US 3,577,930 and US 2009/0078148 A1; claim 20 (braking means) to the eddy‑current and zip‑brake group in § 4 above.
6. Cautionary notes, stated rather than glossed over:

• The record carries two inconsistent citation counts (106 and 119) for this patent; I analyzed the union of the two lists. Confirm against the actual USPTO file wrapper.
• Descriptions marked "title‑based" were not verified against reference full text; do not rely on them beyond identifying the field.
• Whether pre‑AIA or AIA § 102 applies turns on the § 120/§ 119 benefit chain and on whether every limitation finds support in the 2011 provisional. If any claim is not so supported, the critical date shifts and a materially different (larger) body of art becomes available — including several references I excluded in § 5.
• The record's stated dates ("priority date 2011‑04‑18," "adjusted expiration 2033‑02‑27") are assumptions in the source data, not legal conclusions, and PTA/PTE should be confirmed at the source.
• Minimum citation format used above: patent number, inventor/assignee, title, filing date (and priority date where relevant), publication/grant date, statutory basis, and the claim(s) potentially anticipated.

I'll ground this analysis in the specific prior-art references listed on the patent record, verifying key references' disclosures before building the combinations.

Let me verify a few more of the record's cited references that bear on the transition and braking limitations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11376513 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note: This section builds on the earlier summary (bibliographic data, priority chain, claim 1 breakdown, litigation status) without repeating it. All reference identifiers are taken literally from the "Citations," "Cited By," "Families Citing this Family," and "Similar Documents" sections of the record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11376513/en. Where I verified a reference's disclosure by search, I cite the URL; where I am relying only on the record's title/assignee/date metadata, I say so.

1. Governing framework (pre-AIA § 103(a))

The application US 16/683,458 was filed 2019‑11‑14 but asserts a § 120 chain to PCT/US2012/020850 (filed 2012‑01‑11) and provisional 61/476,344 (2011‑04‑18). Because every application in that chain was filed before 2013‑03‑16, pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 applies, and two threshold rules govern the whole analysis:

1. § 102(e) "by another" / § 103(c) common-ownership disqualification. Art that qualifies only under § 102(e), (f) or (g) is disqualified if it and the claimed invention were commonly owned (or subject to a common obligation of assignment) at the time the invention was made. Critically, § 102(e) art must be "by another" — a reference naming the identical inventive entity is not § 102(e) art at all.
2. § 102(b) has no "by another" requirement. A reference published more than one year before 2011‑04‑18 (i.e., before 2010‑04‑18) is § 102(b) art even if the applicant is the author/inventor of it. This matters enormously here because this family's most on-point "puck"/challenge-course disclosures are the patentee's own earlier work.

Then the ordinary Graham v. John Deere / KSR v. Teleflex inquiry applies: scope and content of the art, differences from the claims, PHOSITA level (here: a designer of elevated challenge courses/amusement track systems, ~2–4 years experience plus familiarity with overhead fall-arrest track, trolleys and ziplines), motivation to combine with a reasonable expectation of success, and objective indicia.

2. Threshold step: sorting the record's references into actually available prior art

This is the most valuable analytical step, because the Google Patents page mixes backward citations (true prior-art candidates) with forward citations ("Cited By" / "Families Citing this Family") that mostly post-date the 2011 priority date and therefore are not § 102/§ 103 prior art against claims entitled to that date.

2A. Available art (pre‑2010‑04‑18 → § 102(b); or US filings pre‑2011‑04‑18 → potential § 102(e))

2B. Not available against 2011‑priority claims (post-dating art) — but decisive if the priority chain fails

These appear on the page as "Cited By"/"Families Citing this Family" and are frequently very close to claim 1 on the merits:

• US 9,932,046 B2 (Landscape Structures, priority 2013‑10‑28), Zip track system — Google Patents: a rigid track 108 with incline portions running between end platforms, an opening of width 118 "to accommodate the movement of" the moving structure along the track, and a crossover unit joining track segments. That is, in substance, a rigid zip "track" with an internal carriage and a slot — extremely close to claim 1 minus the puck.
• US 10,093,328 B2 / US 2016/0272225 A1 and US 9,884,633 B2 / US 2018/0154909 A1 (Ropes Courses) — in-line brake and zip-line rail system with a member sliding two wheels on two rails.
• US 10,105,564 B2 / US 2017/0173378 A1 (Garland), Challenge course with return track — main track + return track with a track slot, trolley continuously retained.
• US 11,850,529 B2 (UATP IP), US 11,059,498 B2 / EP 3 817 833 B1 (Castree), CA 2 865 320 C (Weston), US 10,207,137 B2 (Whitewater West), US 10,646,733 B2, US 10,835,834 B2, US 2021/0016116 A1 (Jimi IP).
• The 2012–2017 Ropes Courses product catalogs in the Non-Patent Citations are also post-priority (the 2010 catalog, published 2010‑11‑01, is less than one year before 2011‑04‑18, so it is not § 102(b) art; it is at most § 102(a) art and, being the applicant's own, faces the "by others" obstacle).

Consequence: whether claim 1 is assessed against (2A) or against (2B) changes the difficulty of the obviousness case by a wide margin. I flag this as the pivotal issue in § 7 below.

3. Claim 1 — element mapping and the primary combination

Claim 1 recites four things: (i) a puck track with a puck support surface and an opening through it; (ii) a zip track with a rotating-member support surface, first end higher than second; (iii) a movable body comprising both a puck and a rotating member, displaceable along both tracks; and (iv) the overlap limitation — the puck track overlaps the zip track through at least a portion of the zip track, such that the puck is above its surface and simultaneously the rotating member is above its surface when the body moves onto the first (higher) end.

Combination 1 (primary): Liggett '272 + Liggett '960 + Cylvick '148 (+ Liggett '104 for the sloped interface)

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales, all record-supported):

• Explicit problem statement in the art. The '513 specification's own statement of need — "a zip track system that enables a user to traverse from a challenge course to a zip track or from the zip track to a challenge course without disengaging from the glide or wheeled structure," to permit higher speeds than a cable zip line "due to the sagging that must occur in the rope or cable" — is precisely the design objective that '960 (continuous retention) and Cylvick '148 (rigid rail permitting a continuously downhill, curving path without catenary sag) address. Where the problem is known and the references address it, the combination is obvious. KSR, 550 U.S. 398, 417, 421 (2007).
• Predictable, finite solution space. Given a known challenge-course track with a captive sliding member and a known rigid-rail trolley, the only mechanical choices are (a) mount the wheel on the same body as the sliding member, and (b) run the two tracks co-extensively at the transition. Both are mechanical, predictable, and involve no change in the principle of operation of either reference.
• Design incentive / market pressure. '272 itself states the need to "increase the flow and capacity of participants," and US 10,105,564 (same family) frames throughput as the driving problem. Adding a gravity-driven descending rail to a challenge course directly serves that.
• Reasonable expectation of success. All three references come from the same narrow art of overhead captive-member track systems; combining a slotted channel track with a flanged rail and a wheeled carriage is a routine engineering exercise with no unpredictable-result risk.

What this combination does not cleanly prove (and the applicant's best rebuttal): '272, '960 and '148 each teach transfer between two track types or captive travel in one track. None of the three, on my reading, describes a region where both the puck and the wheel are simultaneously bearing/positioned above their respective support surfaces, i.e., the literal "overlap" of element (iv). That is the fulcrum of non-obviousness. The applicant would argue the art teaches "either/or" (the puck rides the glide track or the wheel rides the cable — as in the '044 puck-key design), not "both/and."

Combination 2 (alternative, aimed squarely at the overlap limitation)

Liggett '272 + Cylvick '148 + Dyson US 6,315,138 + Small US 7,992,680.

• Dyson's "multidirectional, switchless overhead support system" is directed to overhead tracked anchorages that change direction without a switch — the closest thing in the record to a co-extensive/overlapping track arrangement at a transition.
• Small supplies the rigid rail with wheels rolling on a support surface, an end-of-rail stop, and a lanyard attachment point below the trolley body — and, importantly, the express structural rationale that a flanged beam can be supported on 10–25 ft centers whereas a bar needs 3–6 ft, i.e., the reason to prefer a rigid, sparsely supported track.
• Rationale: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious." KSR, 550 U.S. at 417. Rigid-rail overhead anchorage (Small, Dyson) improves reliable high-traffic captive travel (the '272/'960 problem); applying it to a challenge course is the predictable use of a prior-art technique for its established function.
• Caveat: Small is fall-protection/industrial art, not amusement art. The patentee will raise a non-analogous-art argument. KSR warns against rigid application of that test, and the fields are analogous on the facts (same problem: safe, continuous travel of a tethered person along an overhead track; same structure: captive trolley in a slotted rail with a downward lanyard), but an examiner/defendant would want a stronger amusement-field secondary reference (e.g., Cylvick '148, which is amusement art) to anchor the field.

Combination 3 (tertiary / cumulative)

'272 + '960 + US 2009/0078148 A1 + US 1,920,774 A / US 4,464,997 A (Jervis B. Webb) + US 6,269,944 B1.
The conveyor-trolley art shows the routine mechanical building block of a wheeled carriage captive in a slotted beam and capable of passing a support point. It is best used under the "combination of familiar elements according to known methods" rationale (a slotted beam with an internal wheeled carriage and a downward slot is a familiar element used for its known function) rather than as the primary reference; standing alone it is weak art for the challenge-course context and invites a field-of-invention attack.

4. Dependent claims (2–20)

Observation: claims 2–20 are, with the possible exception of claims 13–14 (if the '044 is excluded as prior art) and claim 17, refinements that are either (a) present in the 2A art, or (b) routine design choices with identified benefits. Because claim 1 is the sole independent claim, a sustainable prima facie case on claim 1 plus these showings invalidates the patent as a whole.

5. The two places a § 103 case is most likely to fail

(a) The "puck + wheel on the same body, simultaneously supported" overlap — and the '044 problem.
The record's most direct teaching of a single body carrying both a puck (upper sliding element) and a glide/wheel (lower rolling element) is US 8,807,044 ("Puck key transition system"). But on the record's own data, the '044 is a poor fit as prior art against these claims:

• It issued 2014‑08‑19 and published 2012‑03‑22, both after the 2011‑04‑18 priority, so it is not § 102(a)/(b) art at all.
• It is a US filing (2011‑09‑15) claiming a 2010‑09‑15 priority — so its only potentially relevant date is under § 102(e), which requires the reference to be "by another." The '044's recorded assignors are Liggett, Garland and Powers — apparently the same inventive entity as US 16/683,458. If the entities are identical, the '044 is not § 102(e) art. If they differ by even one inventor, it becomes § 102(e) art only as of its actual US filing date or (under In re Giacomini) the 2010‑09‑15 provisional date for subject matter supported therein — and then § 103(c) common-ownership disqualification becomes the next battleground (the assignment to Ropes Courses is recorded with an effective date of 2010‑09‑15, which cuts against the applicant, since it suggests common ownership at the time of invention).
• Bottom line: I cannot resolve the "by another"/§ 103(c) question from the record alone, and I will not assert a conclusion. It is a contested, fact-intensive point that materially changes the strength of any case against claims 13–16.

The fallback showing for the overlap limitation is that co-extending a captive puck track with a descending rail is an obvious design choice with a recognized benefit (redundant retention, continuous belay), supported by '272's interchange 126, '960's continuous-retention teaching, DE 102008006611 B3, and Dyson's switchless overhead system. That is a rationalized rather than an anticipatory showing — admissible under KSR but more vulnerable to a "the references teach away from dual simultaneous bearing / teach only sequential transfer" argument.

(b) The construction of "overlaps." Claim 1's non-obviousness rises or falls on what "the puck track overlaps with the zip track through at least a portion of the zip track" means. Under Phillips, the specification's FIGS. 8–12 (and the textual statement that "the puck track 260 may be secured upwardly from a wheel support 40 so that the rotating member 90 can roll on the wheel support 40 to eliminate any downward force on the puck 270") frame the disclosure as co-location with load transfer between two support surfaces at the same longitudinal position (claims 13–14 operate as a lexicographic gloss on that). "Overlaps" is a coined usage; under the Phillips framework, the patentee has strong arguments that "overlaps" in the art — used for passageway changes of direction and switching — is a different thing. Expect contested claim construction and, potentially, a § 112(b) indefiniteness argument along the way. This claim-construction fork, more than the choice of references, determines the outcome of the § 103 analysis.

6. Objective indicia (secondary considerations)

Be aware that these can rebut an otherwise-sustainable prima facie case, and that the record supplies some raw material the patentee will use:

• Long-felt need / failure of others: the specification states the need for continuous traversal "without disengaging from the glide or wheeled structure" and for higher safer throughput. If the patentee can show cable ziplines in challenge courses had persisted with unhooking or with catenary sag, that is probative — but only with a nexus to the claimed overlap structure.
• Industry recognition / wide citation: the family is cited in 27 forward-citing families (Landscape Structures, Whitewater West, UATP IP, Kanopeo, Castree, etc.), and the patent has been asserted in JiMi IP, LLC & Ropes Courses, Inc. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, N.D. Ill. 1:24‑cv‑05275 (see previous section). Neither citation counts nor litigation is itself a secondary consideration. Without evidence of commercial success attributable to the claimed structure, licensing demand, or copying of the specific overlap/dual-support arrangement, these carry little weight.
• Foreign grants of GB 2505101 B and DE 112012001743 B4 are not binding on US obviousness and were decided on different art records.
• I found no evidence of a Federal Circuit appeal for US 11,376,513 (consistent with the earlier section).

7. The pivotal threshold issue: is the 2011 priority chain intact?

This deserves emphasis because it dominates the analysis:

• If the claims are entitled to 2011‑04‑18: the available art is essentially the 2A set. My assessment: claims 1–12 and 15–20 are likely obvious over Liggett '272 + Liggett '960 + Cylvick '148 (+ Small, Dyson, Boren/Magnetar/Rosner for the sub-limitations), with claims 13–14 the hardest to reach. Overall: a substantial but contested prima facie case.
• If any claim lacks § 112 written-description/enablement support in the 2011 provisional or the 2012 PCT (a realistic risk for a claim reciting the specific overlap geometry and the lifted-puck load transfer, which the family's own prosecution history shows were emphasized later), the effective date shifts toward 2019‑11‑14, and the entire 2B set becomes available. US 9,932,046 B2 (Landscape Structures' rigid zip track with an incline, a carriage, and a slot — Google Patents), US 9,884,633 B2 / US 2016/0272225 A1 (Ropes Courses' two-rail zip-line rail system), and US 10,105,564 B2 (main track + return track with slot and continuous trolley retention) would then be squarely available — and each of them is materially closer to claim 1 than anything in the 2A set, in several respects anticipating rather than merely suggesting the interoperation of a slotted captive track with a descending carriage rail.

Therefore the validity question is really two questions, in this order: (1) does the § 120 chain carry 2011‑04‑18 to each claim, and (2) if so, is the 2A combination sufficient? A § 103 challenge should be built primarily on (1)+2B as a fallback position.

8. Conclusions

Caveats I will not paper over: (i) I did not retrieve the full text of US 8,037,978 B1, US 6,412,611 B1, US 6,315,138 B1, or US 2004/0262103 A1 in this session; I rely on the record's titles/dates and general knowledge, and those statements should be verified before any filing or opinion. (ii) The "by another" status of the Liggett-family references (notably US 8,807,044, US 8,683,925, US 8,807,044's relatives) is not determinable from the record and is dispositive for claims 13–16. (iii) I have not independently pulled the priority-chain documents (provisional 61/476,344, PCT/US2012/020850, the '855/'647/'506 applications) to test § 112 support claim-by-claim; that is the single highest-value next step. (iv) Separately from § 103, the same-family continuations (US 10,478,737, US 10,213,699, US 12,296,277) present an obviousness-type double patenting exposure on this continuation chain that should be evaluated alongside the § 103 analysis.