US 11833952

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

Let me do a couple more targeted searches for litigation or court dockets.

US Patent 11,833,952 — Analyst Summary

Search note on scope: I searched for this specific number (11833952 / 11,833,952) across general web, USPTO-derived sources (Google Patents, Justia, FPO, PTAB document repositories) and CAFC 2026 docket references. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or litigation involving US 11,833,952. I cannot prove a negative, but I have no authoritative evidence of any Federal Circuit proceeding for this patent. The closest results returned were unrelated CAFC cases (e.g., Tesla v. Charge Fusion, No. 24-2015; AudienceScience v. Google) and unrelated dockets — none mention this patent. Treat any assertion of an appeal as unverified.

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Bibliographic Data

Family / priority chain (per Google Patents): Continuation of US 17/895,374 (abandoned) → which claims benefit of PCT/US2021/020281 (WO2021178308A1) → which claims benefit of US 16/808,610, issued as US 11,214,186 (the original filing, 2020-03-04). Later family members include US 18/481,037 (US20240025327A1) and US 18/394,863 (US20240123891A1), both abandoned. Foreign counterparts: CA 3,170,428 (CA3170428C, active) and MX 2022010837A. Classification: B60P 1/64, B60P 1/16, B60P 3/42.

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Abstract (verbatim)

A hoist for raising and mounting an interchangeable vehicle body onto a vehicle chassis. The hoist includes a hoist frame having a pivot end and an elevated end for slidably supporting the interchangeable body. A subframe with a bolt-on assembly is provided for fixedly connecting to the vehicle chassis. A linkage connects the hoist frame to the subframe. The linkage also includes a hinge joint member for raising the elevated end of the hoist frame. A hinge assembly pivotally connects to the pivot end of the hoist frame. The hinge assembly has a bolt-on mounting bracket for fixedly connecting to the vehicle chassis. A winch assembly is retained in the elevated end of the hoist frame and extending beyond the pivot end for raising the interchangeable body onto the hoist frame.

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Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claim

There is only one independent claim — claim 1. Claims 2–30 all depend, directly or indirectly, from claim 1. The overview below tracks the claim-1 elements in order.

Claim 1 — the "system" claim. It covers a truck hoist for lifting and mounting a swap-in/swap-out cargo body on a truck chassis. Its required elements are:

1. Hoist frame — two parallel frame members running along the length of the unit between an elevated end (the end that gets raised) and a pivot end (the end that stays hinged down). This frame is what the interchangeable body slides along.
2. Subframe — two parallel subframe members, each carrying mounting portions with a series of bolt holes so the whole thing bolts to the chassis rather than being welded.
3. Pivotal connection — joins the pivot end of the hoist frame to the subframe (so the frame can tilt).
4. Linkage — connects the hoist frame to the subframe and specifically includes a hinge joint member with an upper leaf pivotally joined to a lower leaf, used to raise the elevated end. The linkage further requires a first pivot bar connecting the upper leaf to the two parallel hoist-frame members and a second pivot bar connecting the lower leaf to the two parallel subframe members.
5. A plurality of connection brackets at bracket locations — bolted connections that clamp the first and second pivot bars to the hoist frame and subframe, thereby supporting the linkage at selected positions along those members so the system can be set to a chosen configuration.
6. Winch assembly — held in the elevated end of the hoist frame and running past the pivot end, used to pull the interchangeable body up onto the frame.

Core inventive theme (from the specification's stated "aspects"): a hoist that installs without welding to the chassis, can be dealer-installed, does not permanently dedicate the truck to interchangeable-body use, resists damage from repeated body swaps, and is modular — the pivot-bar/bracket positions and linkage size can be changed to suit different body lengths, weights, dump capacities, and dump angles.

Dependent claim clusters (context for the single claim 1):

• Ground-engaging/anti-friction features: greaseless slide pads (cl. 3), greaseless slide strips (cl. 4), greaseless cast pivot-end pulleys/rollers (cl. 18–20), Nylatron/polymer V-roller for the winch cable (cl. 21–22).
• Lift actuation & packaging: hydraulic cylinder connected to the subframe (cl. 5), tubing/wiring support section (cl. 6–7), pump plate cover with slanted side portions (cl. 8–10).
• Body securement: body hold-down acting as a forward stop (cl. 2), C-section side-channel "multi-lock" hold-downs (cl. 23–25), body lock with hook (cl. 14), replaceable greaseable lock shaft (cl. 15), winch-stop switch (cl. 16), quick-release pin (cl. 17).
• Winch mounting: two-plane winch plate with oblong holes (cl. 26), winch motor feeding cable to a hook (cl. 27), cable tensioning/stow component (cl. 28).
• Fenders and chassis interface: fender mounts and fender assembly (cl. 11–13), integral mounting bracket with mounting holes (cl. 29–30).

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Confidence & Caveats

• The bibliographic data, abstract, and claim text above are drawn from the authoritative full patent text supplied (Google Patents HTML for US11833952B2, fetched 2026-09-27) and corroborated by Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and Golden wiki listings. High confidence.
• The assignee is Deist Industries, Inc.; Google Patents adds the standard disclaimer that assignee listings "may be inaccurate." Public sources also tie Deist to the "Buck's Fabricating" trade name. Moderate-high confidence.
• The patent is a continuation, so its claims are not necessarily identical in scope to US 11,214,186; the two should not be conflated. Note this explicitly — claim 1 here is drafted around the pivot bars + bolted connection brackets + subframe mounting portions combination.
• No authoritative information located regarding any CAFC 2026 (or other) appeal, PTAB trial, or district-court litigation specifically involving US 11,833,952. I am not able to confirm such a proceeding exists or does not exist beyond the absence of results.
• A separate, later Deist application appears under the title "Hoist system for Class 3 vehicle" (publication cited in search results as US 2025/0121762) whose claim 1 shares the same preamble/elements as claim 1 here plus a body-lock mechanism — I flag this as a related but distinct filing; I have not verified its full bibliographic record.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11833952. Let me run several targeted searches.

Initial searches returned mostly noise (many unrelated "952" patents). Let me search litigation-specific databases directly.

I've reached my search limit. Based on my research, here are my findings:

Litigation Involving US Patent No. 11,833,952

No patent infringement litigation or other court proceedings asserting, challenging, or otherwise involving US Patent No. 11,833,952 were found.

What I searched (and why the result is a negative finding)

I searched for the exact identifiers and assignee across litigation-focused sources:

• Google Patents (authoritative full text) for US 11,833,952
• CourtListener / PACER-indexed dockets
• Unified Patents litigation materials
• Deist Industries / Switch-N-Go as plaintiff or defendant
• General district-court and ITC complaint searches

Corroborating evidence from the sources I did find

1. The Google Patents page for US 11,833,952 itself lists no litigation. Its "Cited By," "Citations," and related-application tables show only patent-family activity (continuations US20230114428A1, US20240025327A1, US20240123891A1, the parent US11214186B2, and CA/MX/WO counterparts). There is no "Litigation" section or any court-case linkage — a signal that no litigation has been recorded against this patent.

2. The patent is a continuation with a comparatively short enforcement window. US 11,833,952 granted December 5, 2023 (from App. Ser. No. 18/081,291, filed December 14, 2022), tracing priority to March 4, 2020. It is a member of the Deist Industries "Hoist for vehicle with interchangeable body" family that includes the parent US 11,214,186 B2 and several continuation publications (US 2022/0402422 A1, US 2023/0114428 A1, US 2024/0025327 A1, US 2024/0123891 A1). None of these family members surfaced in any litigation docket either.

3. The only "Deist" federal cases my searches returned are unrelated — e.g., Deist v. 3M Company (JPML, FLN/8:20-CV-98025), a personal-injury MDL matter involving individual plaintiffs named Deist, and Deist et al v. United States (D. Mont. 9:25-cv-00171), a pro se tort claim. Neither involves Deist Industries, Inc. or any patent.

4. No PTAB proceedings found. No IPR/PGR petition against US 11,833,952 (or its family members) appeared in the PTAB materials I reviewed.

Important caveats — please read

• This is a negative finding based on publicly indexed sources, not a clearance opinion. Litigation databases I could reach through general web search are incomplete. Federal district-court complaints are not reliably full-text indexed; many patent suits are filed and appear only in PACER/Docket Navigator/Lexis Litigation or Westlaw, which are paywalled and not fully web-searchable. A definitive answer requires a direct query of PACER, Docket Navigator, LexisNexis IP Litigation, Westlaw Litigation Analytics, and the Unified Patents Portal case list with the exact patent number.

• The patent is recent and actively maintained. Legal status is "Active," with an adjusted expiration of March 4, 2040. Because it issued only in December 2023, any asserting litigation may simply not have been filed yet, may be in pre-suit notice/licensing stages, or may exist only under seal.

• Do not rely on my search for a "similar number." Per your instruction, I limited to the exact number 11,833,952. My searches returned a large amount of noise for other "952" patents (e.g., US 7,652,952, US 7,169,952, US 8,132,952, US 10,993,952, US 11,389,328) — none of which are US 11,833,952, and none of which I treated as relevant.

Recommended next steps to confirm

1. Run the exact number 11,833,952 in the Unified Patents Portal case list (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist).
2. Query PACER (Case Locator, "Nature of Suit" = 830 patent) and CourtListener RECAP for both "Deist Industries" and the patent number.
3. Check the USPTO Patent Assignment and PTAB records for this patent to see whether any license/transfer or AIA trial references litigation.
4. Confirm via Docket Navigator or Lexis IP Litigation for any sealed or recently filed complaints.

If you'd like, I can attempt additional targeted searches on any specific source you name.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,833,952: 0.

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) as of the most recent ingest — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings naming US 11,833,952. My independent web searches (Google Patents litigation/proceeding metadata for the patent page, PTAB petition/Document repositories indexed by search, Justia assignee records for Deist Industries, and general queries pairing the patent number, the patent owner, and PTAB proceeding-number patterns) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, notice of appeal, or CourtListener/Federal Circuit docket referencing this patent or its parent, US 11,214,186. The breakdown is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent has not been tested at the PTAB at all. Every one of the 30 claims — including independent claim 1 and all 29 dependents — is untested, and no petitioner has generated any estoppel, adverse institution decision, or claim-cancellation record you can borrow. This is not the "patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened" scenario, and it is not the "claims 1-5 have been canceled" scenario. It is the third, less comfortable posture: a live, un-amended, un-challenged patent with a 2020-03-04 priority date, a statutory term running to 2040-03-04, and § 315(b) clock considerations that are entirely in your control. Green-field for an IPR petition; also green-field for the patent owner, who has no IPR record to defend against.

Template note: the per-proceeding block below is not populated because there are no proceedings to describe. Per your constraint "don't fabricate," I have not manufactured a proceeding number, panel, or FWD. The single top-level heading is retained solely to make the absence explicit.

No proceedings — explicit null result

• Type: n/a (no IPR / PGR / CBM on file)
• Filed: n/a
• Status: n/a — canonical ODP list is empty; corroborated by web search, 2026-09-27
• Judge panel: n/a
• Petition grounds: n/a
• Institution decision: n/a
• Final Written Decision: n/a — no claim of US 11,833,952 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board
• Settlement / termination: n/a
• Appeal: n/a — no FWD, therefore nothing appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A)
• Defensive value: none yet. Nothing in the file helps you, and nothing in the file hurts you. Your validity defense is a blank slate.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. US 11,833,952 issued 2023-12-05 with 30 claims. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim; claims 2-30 are dependents. No claim has been canceled, amended, disclaimed, or adjudicated. Practically, that means the demand letter you received (if any) can cite any of claims 1-30 and the patent owner bears no IPR baggage — but also enjoys no IPR-hardened credibility. Note one drafting irregularity visible on the face of the claims: claim 22 depends from claim 20 and recites the "V-roller," while the V-roller is introduced in claim 21. Claim 20 depends from claim 18 and recites castings for the pulleys. That looks like a dependency error, which is a real § 112(b)/informality argument to keep in your back pocket, not a PTAB outcome. Treat it as an observation from the published claim set, not an adjudicated finding.

Estoppel: zero. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted (or even filed), § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not attached to anyone. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground. Conversely, you are not estopped either. Every printed-publication and patent-based ground is available to you today, subject only to the ordinary IPR limits: § 311(b) confines IPR to §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications — no § 112, no on-sale/public-use, no prior-product-use arguments in an IPR. The PGR window closed on 2024-09-05 (nine months after the 2023-12-05 grant), so the broader PGR ground set is gone. CBM review is unavailable (the AIA § 18 transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16, and this is not a financial-services patent in any event).

Pattern signals: the patent owner is systematically thicketing, not litigating at the Board. Family records show Deist Industries has filed a steady stream of continuations and new applications around this disclosure — including the abandoned siblings US 17/895,374, US 18/481,037, and US 18/394,863 (all claiming the 2020-03-04 priority date), and a still-active collateral line (US 18/915,006, "HOIST SYSTEM FOR CLASS 3 VEHICLE," published 2025-04-17 as US20250121762A1; plus US 18/980,616 and US 19/068,083 on an "ANGULARLY ADJUSTABLE MOUNTING POINT"). Foreign counterparts are live too (CA 3170428C active; MX 2022010837A unknown). No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears anywhere in this chain — no IPR was filed, so there is no aggregator footprint to inherit. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs, because none has filed one. The patent owner has not pursued any PTAB appeal, because there is no FWD. The absence of any IPR on a patent already ~2.8 years post-grant, in a family this aggressively continued, is the signal worth dwelling on: nobody has yet chosen to spend the money to challenge this patent at the Board, which usually means either (a) the patent has not been asserted in a way that triggered a § 315(b) clock, or (b) targets have been negotiating rather than fighting. My searches did not conclusively establish litigation status either way — I found no confirmed district-court or ITC assertion of US 11,833,952, but absence of indexed evidence is not proof of absence, and you should run a PACER/Docket Navigator check before relying on it.

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Recommended next steps

1. Nothing to link to. There is no FWD, no institution decision, and no CAFC opinion to cite, quote, or distinguish — for this patent or its parent US 11,214,186. Do not let opposing counsel (or an internal summary) imply otherwise. If the patent owner suggests the patent has "survived IPR," that is false on this record.

2. If you are a defendant, your § 315(b) clock is the whole game. IPR must be filed within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent (or a real party in interest/privy being served). Once served, calendar your one-year bar date immediately; there is no other pending proceeding to piggyback on, and no institution-driven one-year trial deadline is running. If you file, the Board's statutory path is institution within 6 months of the petition and an FWD within 12 months of institution (35 U.S.C. §§ 314(b), 316(a)(11)).

3. Ground-set to prepare now. All grounds are open. Build your § 102/§ 103 case from patents and printed publications only. The nine pre-2020 references already cited in the '952 file — particularly US 4,015,879 (Shonkwiler), US 5,836,657 (Omaha Standard), US 6,789,829 (Kapels), US 7,090,305 (Stealth Dump Trucks), US 8,393,686 (Gladiator), EP 2,946,970 B1 (Pris-Mag), and US 2020/0307435 A1 (Wastequip) — are examiner-cited and therefore only a starting point, not a strong IPR backbone. The more useful prior-art hunting ground is the family-cited art (the "Family Cites Families" list), e.g., US 4,750,855 (Anderson), US 5,048,896 (Channell, "Minimum profile hoist"), US 5,829,946 (McNeilus, "Detachable truck body and handling mechanism"), US 6,401,275 (The Heil Company), US 6,641,353 (On-Trux), US 10,029,603 (NR-LOK), and CA 2,348,561 — none of which appears to have been before the examiner in the '952 prosecution.

4. Construing claim 1 will decide the case. Claim 1 is a structural assembly claim whose novelty weight rests on (i) the hinge joint member with upper/lower leaf members, (ii) the first and second pivot bars tying the leaf members to the frame members and subframe members, and (iii) the plurality of connection brackets at bracket locations enabling selectable configurations. The specification's "plurality of modular self-locating holes" and "modular etchings" (§ IV) is where the written description and the claims meet — pin down whether "bracket locations" requires the self-locating holes, and whether the winch assembly "extending beyond the pivot end" (claim 1) is supported consistently with the abstract's "extending beyond the pivot end" versus the summary's "extending to the pivot end." That internal inconsistency is worth probing on § 112 and claim-construction grounds.

5. Watch the continuations. Because Deist is actively continuing, a narrow IPR win on the '952 claims may simply invite a new continuation with narrowed claims claiming the same priority. Budget for that, and consider whether an IPR (with its § 315(e)(2) estoppel) or a district-court § 282 invalidity case gives you better coverage of the family.

6. Sourcing caveat, stated plainly. I could not confirm from a primary source (PTAB E2E / USPTO PTAB Decisions / CourtListener) that zero AIA proceedings exist; my conclusion rests on the ODP-derived structured block plus the absence of any indexed petition or decision. If you need a hard certification for a diligence memo, pull the patent's PTAB E2E "Proceedings" tab directly at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and the patent's USPTO PatentCenter record, and re-run a Docket Navigator / Lex Machina PTAB search on patent numbers 11,833,952, 11,214,186, and application numbers 18/081,291, 17/895,374, 16/808,610.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 11,833,952. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig into the assignment records and the correspondent/attorney of record.

I found a significant lead — a possible acquisition by Federal Signal Corporation. Let me verify and pin down the correspondent.

Inventors

Pattern check: No inventor-departure signal is visible. All three are consistent Deist/Switch-N-Go personnel across the 2020 parent and the 2022–2023 continuations. The one anomaly worth noting is a timing anomaly rather than a personnel one: the underlying business was sold to Federal Signal Corp. on 2021-12-30, yet the continuation application here was filed 2022-12-14 and still named Deist Industries, Inc. as applicant/assignee (see below). I could not confirm from accessible sources whether employment transferred with the asset sale.

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Original assignee

Deist Industries, Inc., d/b/a Buck's Fabricating (a Pennsylvania corporation) — named on the face of US 11,833,952 and recorded as assignee 2022-12-14 (per Google Patents legal events).

• Line of business: Operating manufacturer. A holding company for Buck's Fabricating (roll-off containers, 2–10 yd dumpsters) and Switch-N-Go® (interchangeable truck bodies and hoists for Class 3–7 chassis). The Switch-N-Go division launched in 2002; ~$41M revenue in 2020.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. Switch-N-Go® hoist systems are sold commercially through 100+ authorized dealers, and the company's own marketing materials cite the family patents (US 11,214,186 B2, US 11,247,623 B2, US 11,433,837 B1) as protecting the hoist and bumper systems.
• Current status: Acquired. On 2021-11-09 Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE: FSS) signed a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all the assets and operations of Deist Industries, Inc., Bucks Fabricating, LLC, Roll-Off Parts, LLC, and Switch-N-Go, LLC; the deal closed 2021-12-30/31 for ~$40M and the brands were folded into Federal Signal's Truck Bodies & Equipment International (TBEI) subsidiary. Deist Industries now presents as Deist Industries, LLC (Hadley, PA). Not a bankruptcy; a solvent strategic tuck-in.

Contradiction flag (must be resolved before relying on ownership): The asset sale closed 2021-12-30, but this continuation was filed 2022-12-14 and issued 2023-12-05 naming Deist Industries, Inc. as assignee, with no assignment to Federal Signal or TBEI recorded on this patent in the sources I could reach. Either (a) the patent applications were carved out of / not yet conveyed by the asset purchase, (b) the family was later conveyed to a Federal Signal entity by a separate instrument not surfaced here, or (c) the selling entity retained the IP. This is the single most important open item in the chain and should be confirmed against the Assignment Center and the Federal Signal/TBEI IP assignment records.

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Assignment timeline

Sourcing caveat (read first): The USPTO Assignment Center is a JavaScript application that I could not query directly in this session, and my search budget was exhausted before I could pull the reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent text. The entries below are reconstructed from Google Patents legal events, PatentGuru's US 11,833,952 record, the OnScope owner file, and Federal Signal's SEC/press materials. Reel/frame numbers are not reproduced because I could not verify them — I will not invent them.

• 2022-12-14 (executed) / recorded 2022-12-14 — Reel/Frame: not retrievable in this session

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor → assignee, original filing assignment)
  • Assignor: Brian L. Jarrett; Andrew J. Schumacher; Jeffrey M. Burns
  • Assignee: Deist Industries, Inc. (Hadley/Saegertown, PA)
  • Correspondent: The prosecution/agent firm of record for this patent appears to be Emerson, Thomson & Bennett, LLC (Akron, OH) — PatentGuru lists "Emerson, Thomson & Bennett, LLC" in the assignee/correspondent field for US 11,833,952. Single appearance only; no recurrence within this chain (this is the only recorded link), so per the task's own rule this is not yet a repeat-correspondent finding.
  • Context: Original inventor assignment to the operating company — routine, not an acquisition or reorg. Note this was recorded ~11.5 months after the Federal Signal asset purchase closed, which is the anomaly flagged above.

• No post-issuance assignment recorded. Google Patents' legal-events table for US 11,833,952 shows no conveyance after the 2022-12-14 filing assignment, and no security agreement, merger, change of name, license, or release. The chain therefore terminates at Deist Industries, Inc. on the record available to me.

• Related family activity (context only — not assignments on this patent): the sibling continuations US 18/481,037 (US 2024/0025327 A1) and US 18/394,863 (US 2024/0123891 A1) also list Deist Industries, Inc. as assignee. The parents US 16/808,610 (US 11,214,186 B2) and US 17/895,374 (abandoned) likewise name Deist. I found no recorded assignment of any family member to Federal Signal Corporation or TBEI in the accessible sources.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11833952
    2020 : Parent application filed by Deist Industries Inc
    2021 : Federal Signal agrees to buy Deist assets
         : Deal closes as asset purchase
    2022 : Continuation application filed by Deist
         : Inventors assign rights to Deist Industries Inc
    2023 : US 11833952 granted to Deist Industries Inc

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded assignee is Deist Industries, Inc. (d/b/a Buck's Fabricating), a Pennsylvania operating manufacturer with a 67,500-sq-ft plant, a dealer network, and a live product line (Switch-N-Go®). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" successor appears. No single-purpose LLC in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee in this chain or its family matches the named NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities), and none surfaced from RPX/Unified-style directories. The ultimate parent, Federal Signal Corp. (NYSE: FSS), is a ~$1.3B-revenue public operating company — the opposite of an NPE profile.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not established. The correspondent of record appears to be Emerson, Thomson & Bennett, LLC, but this is a single appearance in the only recorded link. Per the task's own caution, one appearance is not a finding. To call this signal I would need the reel/frame correspondent strings for the sibling continuations (US 18/481,037, US 18/394,863) and the parent, which I could not retrieve.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One recorded assignment in the entire chain (2022-12-14). No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent address across links.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. Building on the prior litigation section, no infringement suit naming this patent was found; and there is no assignment dated within 6 months of any suit (there is no downstream assignment at all).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. The 2021 Deist transaction was a solvent strategic asset sale to Federal Signal, announced 2021-11-09 and closed 2021-12-30; no Chapter 7/11 proceeding is implicated. Contrast the classic Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid pattern, which does not appear here.

7. Privateering — Not present. Federal Signal is a direct-market operating company selling hoists/bodies under its own Switch-N-Go and TBEI brands; there is no transfer to an assertion vehicle and no competitor-targeting suit.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. If anything, the family sits inside a large operating acquirer, which is the inverse of a defensive-aggregation outcome.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment is recorded).

Justification: The sole recorded conveyance on US 11,833,952 is the 2022-12-14 inventor-to-Deist Industries, Inc. assignment; the chain terminates at that operating company, and the sibling continuations name the same assignee. Every NPE signal in the checklist is not present — the owner is an operating manufacturer with a shipping product (Switch-N-Go®), the family was rolled into Federal Signal / TBEI via a solvent 2021 asset purchase, and no licensing-LLC, repeat NPE correspondent, or cascading transfer appears. The verdict is "Insufficient data" rather than "Operating-company assertion" only because there is no litigation and, critically, the record does not show whether the 2021 asset sale conveyed these applications to Federal Signal or left them with Deist Industries, Inc. — that missing conveyance is the decisive gap and should be closed before any ownership conclusion is drawn.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center, search by patent number 11833952 — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

Specific next steps to close the gap:

1. Pull the reel/frame string and the correspondent name for the 2022-12-14 recording, and for the sibling applications US 18/481,037 and US 18/394,863.
2. Search the Assignment Center by assignor "Deist Industries" (all variants: Inc., LLC, Bucks Fabricating) for any post-2021-12-30 conveyance to Federal Signal Corporation, TBEI, or a subsidiary.
3. Confirm against the Federal Signal 10-K/8-K purchase-agreement exhibits whether the Deist patent family (including this continuation) was included in the acquired assets.
4. Check USPTO PEDS/ODP for any change-of-owner or small-entity-status update after issuance.

I'll research the prior-art citations listed on US 11,833,952. Let me run targeted searches on the substantive references.

Let me research the remaining substantive references.

I've reached the research limit for additional lookups, so I'll build this section from the authoritative citation list in the full patent text (Google Patents / USPTO-derived) plus the reference details I was able to retrieve. Where I could not independently verify a reference, I say so explicitly.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,833,952 B2

Note on method and scope. US 11,833,952 issued from App. Ser. No. 18/081,291 (filed 2022-12-14), priority 2020-03-04, entitled "Hoist for vehicle with interchangeable body," assignee Deist Industries, Inc. Per the authoritative patent text you supplied, the front-page "Citations (18)" list is reproduced below verbatim and literally, without correcting any identifiers. I did not substitute numbers for "similar" patents. Two categories of caveat apply and are flagged at the end: (i) several listed citations appear to be data artifacts, and (ii) a single reference must disclose every element of a claim to anticipate it under § 102 — so most of this art is properly a § 103 obviousness / background story rather than true § 102 anticipation of claim 1.

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1. Complete citation list for US 11,833,952 (as printed)

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2. The nine 19th-century references (#1–#9 are anomalies)

Critical flag — these are not meaningful prior art. References US100296A, US126926A, US278971A, US475085A, US582994A, US640927A, US643157A, US703706A, and US735745A are 19th-century patents (1861–1903) directed to filters, vehicle springs, typewriters, sewing-machine hardware, rubber tires, gates, oil burners, and thread-dressing machines — none of them remotely in the vehicle-body-hoist field. Their real titles are wholly non-analogous to a hoist for interchangeable truck bodies.

These entries appear to be garbled/truncated citation records (a known artifact pattern where 6-digit prefixes of later 7-digit US numbers — e.g., "US1269265A Interchangeable and removable truck-body," "US4750855A Retrofittable vehicle framework," "US5829946A Detachable truck body and handling mechanism," "US6431577B1," "US6409275B1," "US7357457B2 Vehicle with interchangeable truck bed" — bleed into the list). I am flagging this rather than silently "fixing" it, per the strict instruction to interpret identifiers literally.

Claim mapping: none. These references cannot anticipate any of claims 1–30. They disclose no hoist frame, subframe, pivot bar, connection bracket, or winch.

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3. Substantive references — detailed analysis

For each, I give the element of claim 1 it touches. Claim 1 requires all six elements: (a) parallel-member hoist frame with elevated + pivot ends; (b) parallel-member subframe with bolted mounting portions; (c) pivotal connection of pivot end to subframe; (d) linkage = hinge joint member (upper leaf + lower leaf) + first pivot bar (to frame members) + second pivot bar (to subframe members); (e) plurality of connection brackets bolting the pivot bars at selectable positions; (f) winch assembly at the elevated end extending beyond the pivot end.

US 5836657A — Omaha Standard (1998-11-17) — the closest single reference

Discloses a detachable dumping apparatus with a container support frame split into an upper frame section hingedly connected to a lower frame section, hoist unit including a non-lifting stabilizing frame having a lower arm, an upper arm and a central hinge hingedly connecting the lower and upper arms (claim 5 of that patent), hydraulic cylinders, and frame-mount connectors for removably mounting the apparatus on a trailer (i.e., detachment/bolt-on ethos).

• Element (b)/(c): detachable, sectioned frame with hinged upper/lower sections → supportive of § 103 on the "bolt-on, no-weld" and pivotal-connection concepts.
• Element (d): the "lower arm / upper arm / central hinge" hinged stabilizing frame is the most structurally analogous disclosure to claim 1's "hinge joint member having an upper leaf… pivotally connected to a lower leaf."
• Potential § 102 relevance: if one treats the two-section hinged frame as the claimed "hinge joint member," this reference is the closest to reading on the linkage sub-element of claim 1 and on claim 5 (hydraulic cylinder). But it does not disclose the two-piece winch assembly (element f), nor the first/second pivot bars + bolted connection brackets at selectable positions (elements d-monolithic/e). Not a full § 102 anticipation of claim 1.

US 7090305B2 — Stealth Dump Trucks (2006-08-15)

An aftermarket kit to convert a pickup to a dump truck "without modification of the vehicle's structural components," comprising (i) at least one hinge assembly attaching the body to the frame and (ii) a scissor hoist with a lower end pivotally attached to the vehicle frame and an upper end pivotally attached to the dump body.

• Element (b)/(c)/(d): hinge-assembly + scissor-hoist linkage, and the explicit no-vehicle-modification teaching bears directly on claim 1's bolt-on premise and the stated inventive "aspects" (no welding, dealer-installable).
• Potential § 102/§ 103 relevance: strong § 103 art against claims 1, 5 (hydraulic hoist) and the hinge/linkage concepts. Does not disclose the winch assembly or the subframe mounting-portion structure. Not full anticipation of claim 1.

US 6789829B1 — Kapels (2004-09-14)

"Lift and dump bed" with four scissor arms pivotally joined, selectively secured to bed and frame via removable pins (38, 40) and selective pivotal connection of scissor arms to bed/frame, plus hydraulic cylinders.

• Element (d)/(e): the selective, re-positionable pinned connections to switch between lift and dump configurations is analogous to claim 1's modular pivot-bar / connection-bracket scheme that lets the operator "enable a respective configuration of the hoist system."
• Potential § 102/§ 103 relevance: notable § 103 art against the modularity/selective-positioning concept of claim 1 element (e) and against the scissor-linkage aspect. Not anticipation of claim 1.

US 4015879A — Shonkwiler (1977-04-05)

Convertible adjustable tilting bed with folding support means (L-shaped arm 42 + arm 50), a hydraulic cylinder (54/56), and removable pivot pins (32).

• Element (a)/(c): tilting bed frame pivotally mounted with an elevating linkage and a hydraulic actuator → § 102/§ 103 relevance to claim 5 (hydraulic cylinder) and the general pivot-elevate architecture. No subframe-bolt-on, no winch, no leaf-type hinge joint member. Not anticipation of claim 1.

US 8393686B2 — Gladiator Equipment (2013-03-12)

Hoist with a hoist frame, torque arm and lift arm linkage, and a multi-piston hydraulic cylinder; hoist frame brackets (110) couple the hoist frame to the vehicle chassis.

• Element (a)/(c): hoist frame + bracket mounting to chassis + lift-arm linkage, and a cylinder → § 103 background on the frame/linkage/actuator. Not anticipation of claim 1.

US 20200307435A1 — Wastequip, LLC (filed 2019-03-29; pub. 2020-10-01)

"Hoist Apparatus Securement System and Method." Because it was filed before the 2020-03-04 priority date, it is potentially available as § 102(a)(2) art (US pre-grant publication) if its disclosure is enabling as to securement.

• Element (b): directed to the securement of a hoist apparatus to a vehicle — the closest thematic match to claim 1's bolted subframe mounting portions and mounting brackets (claims 29–30).
• Confidence caveat: I could not retrieve its full disclosure before the research limit; I did not verify whether it discloses a truck-interchangeable-body hoist specifically. Treat as possibly relevant § 103 background on securement, not verified § 102.

WO 2001038136A1 — Albert Kirk Jacob (2001-05-31)

"Multi-task truck." Broad interchangeable-body/multi-task vehicle concept.

• Field/background only. Not verified against claim elements; no § 102 mapping supported on the record I retrieved.

EP 2946970B1 — Pris-Mag S.r.l. (2019-07-10)

"Truck provided with an apparatus for moving bodies."

• Field/background only (interchangeable-body moving apparatus). Same confidence caveat — I could not retrieve its disclosure; no § 102 mapping supported on the record I retrieved.

US 11214186B2 — Deist Industries (2022-01-04) — NOT prior art

This is the family root (the original 2020-03-04 filing; the present patent is a continuation chain member: US 16/808,610 → PCT/US2021/020281 → US 17/895,374 → US 18/081,291). It shares the same assignee and inventors. It is not "prior art" for anticipation purposes against its own continuation; it is listed because it is the parent/priority document.

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4. Family-cited art (IDS references in the parent) — often more on-point than the front-page list

The patent text also reproduces a "Family Cites Families (33)" list, i.e., art cited in the parent US 11,214,186's IDS. Several of these are far closer to the inventive field of interchangeable truck bodies than the 19th-century anomaly entries, and a full prior-art study should include them. Verbatim highlights:

• US1269265A — W.T. Duggan, "Interchangeable and removable truck-body," 1918.
• US2789715A — J.W. Filipoff, "Interchangeable truck body," 1957.
• US4750855A — L.E. Anderson, "Retrofittable vehicle framework means and method for interchangeable use with a variety of attachment units," 1988.
• US5088875A / US4986719A — Galbreath Inc., "Roll-off hoist for variable positioning of containers."
• US5829946A — McNeilus Truck & Mfg., "Detachable truck body and handling mechanism," 1998.
• US6409275B1 — The Heil Company, "Frame attachment for vehicle," 2002.
• US6641353B2 — On-Trux Limited, "Truck having an extendable and retractable truck bed to receive truck boxes of different lengths…," 2003.
• CA2347561A1 — Wilhelm A. Benedikt, "Hoist for pickup truck," 2002.
• US7357457B2 — Thomas Quick Change, LLC, "Vehicle with interchangeable truck bed," 2008.
• US10029603B2 — NR-LOK, Corp., "Interchangeable truck bed," 2018.

These are the references most likely to be cited in any § 103 rejection of claim 1's replaceable-body and detachable-mounting subject matter, because they directly address interchangeable/removable truck bodies and detachable hoist/handling mechanisms. I flag them as the more pertinent art family even though they sit in the family-citation list rather than the front-page "Cited By examiner" list.

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5. Bottom line — § 102 vs § 103

No single cited reference anticipates (fully discloses every element of) independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Claim 1's novelty rests on the combination of: parallel-member subframe with bolted mounting portions (b) + leaf-type hinge joint member with paired first/second pivot bars (d) + a plurality of bolted connection brackets enabling selectable linkage positions (e) + a winch retained at the elevated end extending beyond the pivot end (f). The closest single reference (US 5836657A) supplies a hinged two-arm stabilizing frame and detachable mounting but lacks the winch assembly and the modular pivot-bar/bracket arrangement. My § 102 labels above for dependent-claim subject matter (e.g., claim 5's hydraulic cylinder) apply only conceptually — because claims 2–30 all depend from claim 1, a reference can only anticipate a dependent claim if it also discloses all of claim 1.

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6. Confidence and caveats

• High confidence: the identity, dates, and titles of the 18 cited references and the claim-element mapping — taken from the authoritative full patent text you supplied and corroborated by the Google Patents PDFs for US 4015879A, US 5836657A, US 6789829B1, US 7090305B2, and US 8393686B2.
• Reduced confidence (could not retrieve full text before step limit): EP 2946970B1, US 20200307435A1, and WO 2001038136A1. I have flagged these as background/possible rather than asserting specific § 102 anticipation.
• Explicit non-correction: per the operating rule, I did not auto-correct US 100296A, US 126926A, US 278971A, US 475085A, US 582994A, US 640927A, US 643157A, US 703706A, or US 735745A. I list them literally as cited and separately flag them as anomalous artifact/non-analogous entries.
• No contradiction with the earlier sections: this analysis is consistent with the earlier "Patent summary" (30 claims, 1 independent claim 1, continuation-of-US 17/895,374, family root US 11,214,186). One minor note — the earlier summary's caveat that the continuation's claim scope should not be conflated with US 11,214,186 is reinforced here: US 11,214,186 is the family root, not anticipatory art against its own continuation.
• Not a validity/clearance opinion. This maps cited art to claim elements; it does not substitute for a full freedom-to-operate or invalidity search, and it does not address uncited art, foreign art, or public uses.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the references cited of record on this patent's page. Let me pull detail on the most technically relevant ones.

Let me pull the remaining cited references to complete the mapping.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,833,952 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note. This is a prosecution/post-grant validity-style analysis built on the prior-art citations of record on the patent's Google Patents page (18 "Citations" entries) plus the "Family Cites Families" list, which reflects references cited in the parent prosecution. No litigation or PTAB proceeding of record exists (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so this is a notional Graham/KSR challenge, not a summary of an actual written decision. Where I could not retrieve full text of a reference, I say so.

Confidence convention: ✅ = full text retrieved and relied on · ◐ = abstract/claims retrieved, structure inferred · ▢ = title/assignee only.

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I. The Legal Framework Applied

Obviousness requires the four Graham factors (Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966)): (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a combination is obvious where the elements were known and the combination is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," or where there was an "apparent reason" — including market demand, design incentives, and art-recognized problem — to combine. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981), permits combining references where the claimed structure is disclosed in the combination even if not in any one reference.

Critical date: The '952 continuation chain carries the effective filing date of March 4, 2020 (US 16/808,610 → PCT/US2021/020281 → US 17/895,374 → US 18/081,291). Only art predating that date is available.

⚠️ Flag on one citation's status. US 2020/0307435 A1 (Wastequip) published 2020-10-01 — after the critical date — but was filed 2019-03-29. It therefore qualifies only as §102(a)(2) art (U.S. application publication effectively filed before the claimed invention's filing date), not §102(a)(1). The exception in §102(b)(2)(C) is unavailable because the assignees differ (Wastequip vs. Deist). This matters: a §103 challenge using '435 must rest on its filing date, not its publication date.

⚠️ Flag on the parent. US 11,214,186 B2 appears in the "Citations" list, but it shares the same 2020-03-04 effective filing date and same assignee. It is not prior art to the '952 continuation (it is the family's original grant). It should not be used under §102/§103; its only relevance is claim-scope comparison. Its appearance in the citation table is likely an examiner/IDS artifact.

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II. Level of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA)

The art is highly mature and mechanical (CPC B60P 1/64; US Class 298 subclasses 14, 17, 38). A POSITA would be:

• a mechanical engineer (B.S. or equivalent) with 2–4 years in truck-body/hoist equipment design, or an experienced truck-equipment designer/fabricator (5+ years) who has worked with dump bodies, roll-off/cable hoists, and demountable ("interchangeable") body systems;
• familiar with: hydraulic actuation, cable winches and sheave/roller routing, bolted vs. welded chassis interfaces, SAE/ISO chassis-rail interfaces, and the use of low-friction/nylon wear surfaces in sliding joints.

This is not a high-skill threshold. Almost all the references below are from the same small group of companies (Galbreath, Omaha Standard, Heil, Wastequip, McNeilus) that a POSITA would be tracking as competitors.

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III. Scope of Claim 1 (the sole independent claim)

Claim 1 is a system claim with six limitations. I annotate each with an internal shorthand used below:

⚠️ Internal inconsistency to note: the Abstract says the winch assembly extends "beyond the pivot end," the Summary says "to the pivot end," and dependent claim 27 recites a cable that "extends along the longitudinal axis … to the pivot end." "Beyond" (claim 1) vs. "to" (claim 27) are different physical positions; a challenger or a claim-construction court would likely treat the claim-1 word "beyond" literally while reading claim 27 as a cable-path limitation, not a winch-housing location. This ambiguity is itself a vulnerability.

⚠️ Apparent dependency defect: claim 22 ("The hoist system of claim 20, wherein the V-roller comprises a 'V-shaped' profile…") depends on claim 20 (which is directed to castings for pulleys), not on claim 21 (which introduces the V-roller). This is a statutory §112(d) defect, not an obviousness point, but it affects how the V-roller limitation would be construed.

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IV. The Prior Art of Record

A. Technically relevant references

1. US 5,836,657 A — Omaha Standard, Inc. (Tilley & Meyer), filed 1996-05-01, issued 1998-11-17 ✅ — "Detachable stabilized intermodal container dumping apparatus." This is the single closest structural reference.

• Container support frame with a lower frame section and an upper frame section "hingedly connected to the lower frame section adjacent the rearward end … along a hinge pivot axis." (Source: Justia 5836657; PDF.)
• Lower section = two lower long sill members 22a, 22b + crossbeams (parallel subframe members); upper section = two upper long sill members + crossbeams (parallel hoist frame members).
• Claim 5: the hoist unit's "non-lifting stabilized frame of said hoist unit comprises a hinged stabilizing frame having a lower arm, an upper arm and a central hinge hingedly connecting the lower arm and the upper arm, and said lifting device comprises at least one hydraulic cylinder." — i.e., an upper leaf pivotally connected to a lower leaf, exactly the claim-1 "hinge joint member."
• The hoist unit is "connected at a respective connection point to each of said lower and upper frame sections forward of the hinge pivot axis" — the two pivot-bar connection concept of claim 1 element D.
• Detachable/releasable mounting: front/rear frame mount connectors 30a/30b, 40a/40b (ISO corner castings) secure the apparatus to a standard trailer — the "bolt-on, no-weld" concept.
• The reference is expressly motivated by interchangeability: "There is therefore a need for a hoist system which can be used in a variety of situations and can be removed from a trailer when it is no longer needed."

2. US 4,015,879 A — Shonkwiler (Forest M.), filed 1976-02-26, issued 1977-04-05 ✅ — "Convertible adjustable tilting bed for vehicles."

• Adjustable pivot locations: rear pivot members/pins 32 through apertures 28/30; folding support means 40 with arm 42 pivoted at 46 to the bed frame member and arm 50 pivoted at 52 to the vehicle frame member; a retractable interlocking pin 66 through apertures 62/64 "equally spaced from the pivot axis 52."
• Power: "pair of similar double-acting hydraulic extensible members" (cylinder 54 / piston rod 56).
• The reference teaches making the pivot/arm connection selectable among positions to reconfigure the machine between dump, ramp, and transport modes — a direct teaching of the modular repositioning idea in claim 1 element E.

3. US 6,789,829 B1 — Kapels (Cory S.), filed 2003-02-28, issued 2004-09-14 ✅ — "Lift and dump bed."

• First/second/third/fourth scissor arms "pivotally connected, intermediate the lengths thereof"; rearward ends "in selective movable engagement with the bed … and with the frame."
• Removable pins 38, 40 selectively pivotally secure the bed to the frame supports 30/32; the forward ends of the third/fourth scissor arms are "selectively pivotally secured to the bed." The amendment mode (lift vs. dump) is selected by re-pinning the linkage. (Source: PDF.)
• Reinforces element D/E: a reconfigurable linkage whose pivots are bolted/pinned at selectable locations.

4. US 2020/0307435 A1 — Wastequip, LLC, filed 2019-03-29, published 2020-10-01 ✅ — "Hoist Apparatus Securement System and Method."

• Expressly solves the same problem the '952 patent states in its own Background: "installation will require that cuts be made to the vehicle frame. Further, at least some welding is often required to secure the lift system (or a sub-frame thereof) to the vehicle frame … neither cutting of a vehicle chassis nor welding is required." A hoist "may be appropriately secured to vehicle frames of differing dimensions using only suitable fasteners, such as but not limited to bolts."
• Structure: cable hoist with main frame 14 pivotably connected with a sub-frame 16 "by pivotal mounts 18"; linear actuators 20, such as hydraulic cylinders; securement system with apron plate 106, first brackets 108 (each a plate 132 + stem 134 at a right angle), second brackets 110, and fasteners 112; apertures 140/142/144/146 drilled to align. (Justia 20200307435; FPO.) Granted as US 11,142,111 (2021-10-12).
• This is the motivation engine for the whole "bolt-on / no-weld / multi-vehicle" theme.

5. US 9,004,842 B2 — Wastequip, LLC ◐ — "Hoist apparatus." Retrieved via FPO in the same search stream (FPO 9004842). Discloses a hoist "that includes a pair of pulleys or sheaves"; main-frame 32 with a pair of frame rails 110 "define a support surface adapted to receive and support a container … that is rolled or slid onto the main-frame"; rollers 112 located on the side of the frame rails for assisting in supporting the container, and rear roller 114; cable winch system 70 with cable 72 and container-attachment element 170. (Not itself in the '952 citation list, but it is the family member of the cited '435 and is the best evidence on the roller/winch limitations.)

6. US 2019/0047459 A1 / US 10,377,292 B2 — Wastequip, LLC ✅ (fragments) — "Hoist Mechanism Locking Assembly." Discloses four nylon wear pads 34/36 on the interior/exterior of a jib sleeve "to enhance the telescopic sliding action," i.e., greaseless low-friction polymer wear surfaces in the same field. (FPO.) Directly supports dependent claims 3, 4 and the polymer V-roller of claim 21.

7. EP 2 946 970 B1 — Pris-Mag S.r.l., filed 2014-05-21, granted 2019-07-10 ◐ — "Truck provided with an apparatus for moving bodies." Retrieved from EPO: "a truck … provided with an apparatus for moving a body, in particular a demountable or interchangeable body; … a pair of hydraulic cylinders laterally attached to the sidebars of the chassis at the rear side of the truck and a hydraulic device placed above the chassis at the front side." (Source: EPO PISE PDF; note the EPO record literally states it is "Cited by US11214186B2; US11833952B2.") Perfect field match for limitations A/C/E (lift apparatus on a demountable-body truck).

B. Family-cited references (cited in the parent prosecution; same field)

8. US 4,988,881 A / US 5,088,875 A — Galbreath Incorporated ◐ — "Roll-off hoist for variable positioning of containers." The very title teaches positioning the hoist/frame at variable locations to accommodate different container configurations — the modularity rationale.

9. US 5,829,946 A — McNeilus Truck & Mfg. ◐ — "Detachable truck body and handling mechanism." ▢ Structure not retrieved; supports the interchangeable-body + handling-mechanism (winch/lift) context.

10. US 5,049,896 A — Channell (Glenn L.) ◐ — "Minimum profile hoist" (low stow height). Relevant to the "collapsed state" packaging of the linkage.

11. US 5,163,633 A — Jerr-Dan Corp. ◐ — "Low-angle slidably supported roll-back vehicle transport apparatus." Sliding tilt frame on a subframe.

12. US 6,640,753 B1 — The Heil Company ◐ — "Frame attachment for vehicle." Directly on the subframe-to-chassis attachment interface (element B).

13. US 6,641,353 B2 — On-Trux Limited ◐ — truck bed "to receive truck boxes of different lengths." Teaches the very problem the '952 background identifies ("previous type welded hoist systems are specifically sized to only permit a single length of interchangeable body").

14. US 10,029,603 B2 — NR-LOK, Corp. ▢ / US 7,357,457 B2 — Thomas Quick Change, LLC ▢ / US 5,405,233 — Cordell ▢ / US 5,160,000-family ▢ — interchangeable truck beds / dumpster handling. Context only.

C. The nine pre-1904 "citations"

US 100,296 ("Ments to samuel b"); US 126,926 ("Improvement in filters"); US 278,971 ("Vehicle-spring"); US 475,085 ("Type-writing machine"); US 582,994 ("Hook-and-eye holder for sewing-machines"); US 640,927 ("Shielded rubber tire for vehicles"); US 643,157 ("Gate"); US 703,706 ("Crude-oil burner"); US 735,745 ("Thread-dressing machine").

Taken literally, as instructed, none of these is reasonably pertinent to the problem of mounting an interchangeable truck body on a chassis. Under the In re Clay / In re Oetiker "reasonably pertinent" test, and the In re Wood field-of-endeavor test, none could supply any limitation of claim 1 and none would properly appear in a §103 combination. I treat them as citation-table artifacts (likely OCR/quoting noise) and exclude them from every combination below. If a challenger were to rely on any of them, a motion to strike would be warranted.

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V. Element Mapping — Claim 1

Result: every limitation of claim 1 is disclosed, in substance, across the references of record.

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VI. The Obviousness Combinations and the Motivation to Combine

Combination 1 (primary) — Wastequip '435 + Omaha Standard '657 + Shonkwiler '879

Structure of the argument. Use Wastequip '435 as the base: a cable hoist with a main frame pivotably mounted to a sub-frame via pivotal mounts, raised by hydraulic cylinders, secured to a chassis with brackets and bolts only (no cutting, no welding), expressly to fit frames of differing dimensions. Substitute/incorporate the Omaha '657 architecture for the linkage: a two-part frame hingedly connected at a rear pivot axis, raised by a hoist unit whose stabilizing frame comprises a lower arm, an upper arm, and a central hinge connected to each of the lower and upper frame sections. Then, per Shonkwiler '879 (and Kapels '829, and Galbreath's "variable positioning"), make the upper- and lower-arm pivot attachments selectable among a plurality of aperture/bracket locations using removable pins, so the machine can be reconfigured for different bodies/loads/dump angles.

Motivation / rationale (KSR factors):

1. Same field of endeavor, common problem. All three are truck-mounted tilting/hoisting or demountable-body apparatus; all cite to B60P 1/64-type art or US Class 298. Omaha '657 and Wastequip '435 are direct competitors' solutions to the identical problem: mounting a lifting/tilting frame on a truck chassis so a body/container can be loaded, transported, dumped, and swapped.
2. The problem is expressly articulated in the references themselves. Wastequip '435: "installation will require that cuts be made to the vehicle frame. Further, at least some welding is often required … neither cutting of a vehicle chassis nor welding is required." Omaha '657: a hoist "which can be used in a variety of situations and can be removed … when it is no longer needed." Galbreath: "variable positioning of containers." On-Trux: boxes "of different lengths." These are art-recognized design incentives, not hindsight.
3. Predictable use of known elements. Each claimed element performs its established function without change of principle: bolts fasten (Wastequip), a two-leaf hinge raises a frame (Omaha '657), and a removable pin at one of several holes repositions a pivot (Shonkwiler/Kapels). KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 ("predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"). Nothing in the combination changes the way any sub-element works.
4. Reasonable expectation of success. A POSITA would expect that a two-leaf linkage bolted at selectable locations between a bolted-on subframe and a hoist frame would do exactly what each reference says its own version does. There is no technological incompatibility (all are steel, hydraulic, bolt-and-pin mechanical systems) and no criticality asserted in the '952 specification for the specific "chevron-shaped" bracket geometry.
5. Commercial/design pressure. The field is a small, competitive set (Galbreath, Omaha Standard, Heil, Wastequip, McNeilus, Deist/Buck's). KSR recognizes market demand and "design incentives" as legitimate motivations.

Combination 2 (alternative, arguably cleaner on the linkage) — EP 2 946 970 B1 + Wastequip '435 + Shonkwiler '879 + a winch reference

Substitute EP '970 for Omaha '657: it is a truck with a demonstrable/interchangeable body whose moving apparatus comprises "a pair of hydraulic cylinders laterally attached to the sidebars of the chassis at the rear side … and a hydraulic device placed above the chassis at the front side." Combined with Wastequip '435 (bolt-on, multi-vehicle securement) and Shonkwiler '879 (selectable pivots), the same result follows. EP '970 is especially useful because the EPO's own record identifies it as cited against this family — it is the most on-point "interchangeable body + chassis-mounted lift cylinders" art in the citation set. ◐

Combination 3 (secondary, on the winch/roller limitations)

Add US 9,004,842 (Wastequip cable hoist: cable winch system 70, cable 72, container attachment element 170; rollers 112 on the frame rails and rear roller 114) to satisfy limitation F and to feed the dependent claims (18–22, 27–28). Any of McNeilus '946 or Channell '896 can substitute. ◐

Non-analogous-art exclusion

For the reasons in §IV.C, the nine pre-1904 references are excluded. They cannot legally appear in any §103 combination.

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VII. Dependent Claims — Obviousness Assessment

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VIII. Counterarguments the Patent Owner Would Raise (and responses)

1. "The references don't disclose connection brackets at bracket locations enabling a respective configuration."
   Response: Shonkwiler '879's selectable apertures with retractable pins, Kapels's removable pins, and Galbreath's "variable positioning" hoist teach exactly that a POSITA can position a linkage connection at one of several locations to reconfigure. "Bracket" is a broad structural term; Wastequip '435's brackets 108/110 (plate + right-angle stem) are brackets used to bolt a frame member to a chassis. A POSITA would view "bracket" vs. "pin block" vs. "chevron plate" as equivalent ways to make the same connection.

2. "Omaha '657 welds its braces (diagonal braces 28a/28b are 'secured … although welding is preferred')."
   Response: that welding is internal to the apparatus, not to the vehicle chassis. The claimed invention's only welding is also internal (the spec says parallel frame members "receive welded-on chevron-shaped plates"). Wastequip '435 separately teaches away from chassis welding. There is no teaching away from the claimed combination.

3. "The '952 solved a long-felt need (chassis damage from re-welding, vehicle down-time, dealer installability)."
   Response: The alleged need was already recognized and addressed in the prior art — most explicitly in Wastequip '435 ("neither cutting … nor welding is required," multi-dimension adaptability) and Omaha '657 (a removable hoist). Where the problem is known and a reference teaches the solution, long-felt need is not a strong Graham factor.

4. "The specific bolted, modular pivot-bar + bracket architecture yields unexpected capability."
   Response: No unexpected result is asserted in the specification, and no comparative data is of record. The stated benefits (multi-body-length, multi-capacity, multi-dump-angle) are precisely what one would predict from making pivot locations selectable — which Galbreath, Kapels, Shonkwiler, and On-Trux already taught.

5. Objective indicia generally. I have no verifiable evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, praise, or nexus in the materials reviewed — and, as covered in the earlier litigation section, no litigation or PTAB record exists that would have surfaced such evidence. If the patent owner develops a commercial-success case, a nexus showing tied to the claimed modular bracket/subframe combination (rather than to the Deist/Buck's brand or the general demand for interchangeable-body trucks) would be required.

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IX. Conclusion

• Claim 1: strong prima facie case of obviousness. The elements are drawn from a small, tightly related body of prior art in the same field — US 2020/0307435 A1 (Wastequip) for the bolted, no-weld, multi-vehicle subframe and the pivotable main-frame/sub-frame/cylinder/winch architecture; US 5,836,657 (Omaha Standard) for the upper-leaf/lower-leaf (upper arm/lower arm/central hinge) linkage and the two-section hinged frame; and US 4,015,879 (Shonkwiler) and/or US 6,789,829 (Kapels) and/or US 4,988,881 (Galbreath) for selectable pivot locations (the "modular brackets" limitation). The motivation is explicit in the references themselves and in market/design pressure, and the combination is the predictable use of known elements per KSR.
• Alternative primary combination: EP 2 946 970 B1 (Pris-Mag) + Wastequip '435 + Shonkwiler '879 (with Wastequip '842 for the winch/rollers). EP '970 is the most field-perfect item in the citation set for a demountable-body truck with chassis-mounted lift cylinders.
• Dependent claims 3, 4, 5, 11–13, 18–20, 27, 29, 30 are the most vulnerable (nylon wear pads; subframe-mounted hydraulic cylinder; off-the-shelf fender assemblies; frame-rail rollers/pulleys; cable winch to a hook; integral mounting brackets with bolt holes). Claims 6–10, 21–22, 26, 28 rest on conventional packaging/design details with no asserted criticality.
• Caveats I will not elide: (a) I could not retrieve full texts of US 7,090,305, US 8,393,686, WO 2001/038136, US 5,829,946, US 5,049,896 and several Galbreath/Heil/Jerr-Dan family cites, so those are characterized at title/abstract level only; (b) US 2020/0307435 qualifies only as §102(a)(2) art (pre-critical-date filing, post-critical-date publication); (c) US 11,214,186 is not prior art to this continuation despite appearing in the citation table; (d) the nine pre-1904 citations are non-analogous artifacts and legally unusable; and (e) the examiner did allow this claim over at least some of these references, so any challenge must be aimed at the specific "plurality of connection brackets at bracket locations … enabling a respective configuration" limitation and the specific pivot-bar-to-leaf architecture, not at the general hoist/subframe/linkage/winch concept, which the '952 Background itself concedes was known.