US 2148038

I'll verify the identifier against live sources before summarizing.

Verification note (source hierarchy)

The identifier supplied — 2148038 — maps literally to US 2,148,038 (publication US2148038A). I confirmed this against (a) the Google Patents full text for US2148038A and (b) the USPTO-hosted facsimile PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/22/76/b8/4753f0ed99e320/US2148038.pdf. Both agree on number, title, inventor, assignee, and dates, so the identification is high-confidence. I did not substitute any "similar" number (e.g., US 2,163,810 or US 2,214,177, which surfaced in searches as different Raybould-family patents).

Bibliographic data (authoritative)

Abstract: ⚠️ There is no abstract. This is a 1939-issue patent; abstracts were not required of US applications at that time, and both the official facsimile and the Google Patents record show no abstract field. I will not fabricate one. The closest thing to an abstract is the "objects of the invention" discussion in the specification (col. 1).

Plain-language overview of the invention

The patent covers a pipe coupling that joins an inner member to an outer tubular member purely by friction and radial compression, with no threads, no direct positive interlock, and no mechanical fastening between the pipes themselves. Its headline commercial purpose is joining ordinary standard bell-and-spigot pipe — which the specification states had previously required specially formed (non-standard) bell and spigot ends to get a satisfactory joint.

The core structure is a "bushing unit" sandwiched in the annular gap:

1. A compression ring of "bodily distortable" material — preferably resilient rubber — which is substantially incompressible but flows radially when squeezed axially.
2. Split or slotted metallic bushings that wrap circumferentially around the ring and turn angularly over its corners, confining the rubber so axial squeeze is converted into radial expansion.
3. Optional split reinforcing rings seated in the crotch of the bushings, optionally with a sleeve spanning the split so the ring can slide/expand without letting rubber extrude through the gap.
4. A deformable seal (e.g., lead) placed in the bushing slot so that when the slot closes under pressure the seal is crushed and blocks extrusion.
5. A bushing guard — an L-section ring that laps over the bushing edge to stop rubber escaping around the bushing ends, allowing standard bushings to be used across wide pipe-tolerance ranges.
6. A bell-end spacer that backs up the far end of the bushing unit against the bell shoulder, centers the spigot, permits normal thermal expansion/contraction of the pipe, and acts as a retaining wall against extrusion.

Pressure is applied by a follower ring drawn toward the bell by a circle of bolts threaded into the bell (threaded openings 16, bolts 17), squeezing the unit axially so it expands radially and bites into both the spigot OD and the bell ID. The specification stresses that the resulting joint is high in tensile strength and cannot release under service loads without backing off the follower bolts.

Independent claims — plain language

All six claims are independent (each reads "In a coupling, the combination of …" or equivalent).

Claim 1 — Bushing guard in a plain-member coupling.
The combination of: an outer tubular member; an inner member; a bushing unit having (a) a compression ring of bodily distortable material between the two members and (b) multiple split bushings running circumferentially around the ring and bending angularly around a portion of it; a bushing guard running circumferentially around the unit and angularly about an edge of it; and pressure means to contract the unit axially and expand it radially. The claim specifically requires that part of the guard projects beyond the edge of one of the split bushings.

Claim 2 — Slot seal for the split bushings.
Same outer/inner member and bushing-unit foundation (compression ring plus multiple split bushings turning angularly about the ring's edges), plus a seal of deformable material supported between the ends of at least one split bushing, and pressure means. Functionally recited: as axial pressure drives the bushing ends together, they clamp and deform the seal, thereby sealing the bushing gap itself. (This is the anti-extrusion seal 19 of Figures 9–11.)

Claim 3 — Bell-and-spigot plus spacer (broadest form).
A pipe with a bell end; a second pipe with a spigot end fitting into the bell; a bushing unit with a compression ring of bodily distortable material inside the bell around the spigot; pressure means abutting one end of the unit; and a spacer member engaging the other end of the unit and extending between the unit and the shoulder of the bell. Notably, this claim does not require bushings, reinforcing rings, seal, or guard.

Claim 4 — Bell-and-spigot plus spacer plus at least one bushing.
Adds to Claim 3's combination at least one bushing running circumferentially around the compression ring and angularly around its edge; pressure means exerting axial pressure on one end of the unit; and a spacer engaging the other end and abutting the bell shoulder.

Claim 5 — Split reinforcing ring with sliding sleeve, in bell-and-spigot pipe.
A compression ring between the bell face and spigot face; a split reinforcing ring circumferentially around the ring adjacent an edge, provided with a sleeve cooperating with its ends so at least one end can slide in the sleeve as the ring is compressed; pressure means acting on one end of the compression ring; and a spacer cooperating with the other end and abutting the bell shoulder to support the ring against applied pressure.

Claim 6 — Full bell-and-spigot assembly (narrowest / most specific).
A bell-end pipe; a spigot-end pipe fitting therein; a bushing unit with a compression ring inside the bell around the spigot and a plurality of bushings running circumferentially around the ring and angularly about its edges; a bushing guard circumferentially around the unit and angularly about an edge; pressure means exerting axial pressure on one end of the unit; and a spacer engaging the other end and abutting the bell shoulder. This is essentially the complete Figure 1 commercial embodiment.

Docket / litigation check

No CAFC 2026 docket, PTAB proceeding, or district court case involving US 2,148,038 was found. This is consistent with the record: the patent's term ran from 21 Feb 1939 and the "anticipated expiration" is 21 Feb 1956, so it has been expired for roughly 70 years and is long outside any litigation window. I want to be explicit that absence of a hit in my searches is not the same as a certified negative — I did not access a paywalled docketing database (e.g., PACER/Docket Navigator) directly, and I cannot rule out an obscure reference to the number in a brief or prior-art citation. But no active 2026 appellate matter exists on the face of the public sources I checked.

Caveats and uncertainties

• No abstract exists for this patent; any "abstract" you see elsewhere is a modern retro-summary, not part of the original document.
• The Google Patents full text I was given contains OCR errors (numerals rendered as "1" for 7, and "I" for 10; "polygon in cross-sectional shape" is likely "polygonal"). The claim language itself is reliable — I cross-verified claims 1–6 against two independent renderings (the Google Patents transcription and the USPTO facsimile PDF text), and they match substantively.
• The assignee name of record is "Raybould Coupling Company" as spelled in the patent grant. The Google Patents assignee field renders it "RAYBOULD COUPLING Co"; these are the same entity, and I have not "corrected" either.
• I found no evidence of a recorded reassignment post-issue. The Google Patents "Current Assignee" field is explicitly flagged by Google as an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 2148038.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check the Unified Patents litigation portal and other patent litigation sources directly.

Litigation Search: US Patent 2,148,038 ("Coupling," Frank J. Raybould)

Bottom line: I found no record of any litigation involving US Patent 2,148,038.

What I searched and what came back

I queried multiple litigation-oriented sources (including the Unified Patents litigation portal / caselist, PACER-adjacent/CAFC-type results, CourtListener, and general web searches keyed to the exact number 2148038 and to the patent owner "Raybould Coupling"). Results:

• No district court case, no CAFC appeal, no PTAB proceeding, and no ITC investigation naming US 2,148,038 was returned.

• The literal string "2148038" did surface in unrelated contexts that are not this patent and not US patent litigation:

  • A Brazilian Superior Tribunal de Justiça docket (Recurso Especial nº 2148038) — an unrelated Brazilian proceeding, not US patent litigation.
  • A French trademark file (INPI, dossier n° 2148038) — a trademark record, not a patent case.
  • A Czech public-contracts registry ID (2148038) — unrelated.

  Per your strict rule, I am reporting these literally and NOT treating them as litigation on the '038 patent; they merely happen to share the numeric string.

Why this is the expected result (contextual, not a substitute for a search)

• The patent issued February 21, 1939, from an application filed November 25, 1936, and its term expired February 21, 1956. Any infringement suit would therefore be a mid-20th-century action, long predating the electronic dockets (PACER, CourtListener, Unified Patents portal, Docket Alarm, etc.) that the tools above index. Pre-1956 litigation is generally not discoverable through the modern databases you asked me to check unless it was separately reported in case reporters or the patent's own file history.
• The only post-issuance relationship visible in the Google Patents record is citation-based: the '038 patent is cited by 16–20 later patents (e.g., US2622905, US3106407, US6026803, US10550976B2, the Mueller International mechanical-joint-restraint family). Being cited as prior art is not litigation and does not indicate any suit.

What I could not verify (explicit uncertainty)

• I did not exhaustively search pre-1956 paper sources (e.g., the Federal Reporter/F.Supp. volumes, the USPTO's own litigation file, or the Decisions of the Commissioner / old equity cases) that would be the places an old infringement action against Frank J. Raybould / Raybould Coupling Company would appear. My searches were limited to modern online sources.
• I did not complete every planned query before the search budget was exhausted, so I cannot rule out a pre-1956 action that exists only in offline records. I found none, and I have no high-confidence evidence one exists.

If you need to be certain about pre-1956 actions

Because this patent predates electronic dockets by decades, a negative result in modern databases is weaker than usual. To confirm absence of litigation you would need to check, manually:

1. The patent's USPTO file wrapper / assignment and litigation records at the National Archives or PatentCenter for any recorded suits.
2. Old case reporters (Federal Reporter, F. Supp., and regional reporters) for 1939–1956 indexed under "Raybould Coupling" or "Raybould."
3. Frank J. Raybould's related patent US 1,955,831 (referenced in the specification), which may share any enforcement activity.

Statement of confidence: Low-to-moderate confidence that no litigation exists, precisely because the pre-1956 gap is a blind spot. What I can state with high confidence is that no litigation involving US Patent 2,148,038 appears in any of the modern litigation databases searched, and none was reported in the sources returned for the exact number 2148038.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against public sources before drafting.

PTAB Proceedings on US Patent 2,148,038

Verification note before the analysis: I re-ran web searches against the exact patent number, the inventor/owner name, and PTAB-specific phrasing. Every query returned zero hits tying US 2,148,038 or Raybould Coupling Company to any AIA trial. That matches the canonical structured block in this prompt: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." Unlike the litigation section's pre-1956 blind spot, the negative result here is high confidence and near-complete, because AIA trials did not legally exist before 2012-09-16 — there is no "old paper record" in which a PTAB proceeding could be hiding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 2,148,038: zero (0). Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims 1–5 are canceled" — it is the third case the prompt's template doesn't cover: there is no PTAB record at all, because this patent expired on 1956-02-21, six decades before the IPR regime existed. Any demand letter asserting US 2,148,038 against current conduct is asserting an expired patent (term ran 1939-02-21 through 1956-02-21; pre-1995 law gave 17 years from grant, and maintenance fees never applied to patents filed before 1980-12-12). You cannot file an IPR to kill a claim that has already died of old age — but you also do not need to, because there is no live infringement theory to defend against.

No proceedings to report

The template calls for one ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} block per proceeding. There are none, and I will not manufacture placeholder numbers to fill the format. For completeness, here is the empty-result stub:

(no entries — structured PTAB data and independent web search both return an empty set)

Why each AIA trial type was foreclosed in any event (this is the "what actually happened" answer — nothing happened, and nothing could have):

Strategic summary

Claim status: all six claims of US 2,148,038 — claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 — stand exactly as issued on 1939-02-21, with zero PTAB attrition. That is not a good fact for a patent owner; it is a nullity. Not one claim was canceled, not one was confirmed in an FWD, and not one was construed by the Board, because no petition was ever filed. The claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB and simultaneously unenforceable-by-expiration in the district courts. For a defendant, the correct framing is: the claims were never tested because they were never worth testing — the patent's enforceable life ended before the Federal Circuit itself existed (created 1982).

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) is a dead letter here. There is no petitioner, no privity chain, and therefore no estoppel attaching to anyone. Conversely, there is no § 315(b) one-year bar, no § 325(d) discretionary framework, and no Fintiv-style analysis to litigate — the entire AIA framework presupposes a petition that was never filed. If you are drafting an invalidity position and reach for the IPR statute, note that you are in the wrong procedural posture entirely.

Pattern signals: none, and the reason is structural. No repeat petitioner exists (there is no petitioner). The patent owner never pursued a PTAB appeal (there is no FWD to appeal, and the patent's owner of record, Raybould Coupling Company, is a 1930s-era Pennsylvania corporation). No defensive aggregator — not Unified Patents, RPX, or any similar entity — appears in the chain: those organizations were founded in the 2010s to attack live patents, and this one had been expired for roughly half a century by then. The '038 patent's actual modern relevance runs in the opposite direction: it is a cited prior-art reference, not an asserted patent. Google Patents shows it cited by 16–20 later documents, including US2622905 (Sealing ring), US3106407 (Packing ring with anti-extrusion end rings), US6026803 (Coupling with built-in gasket and mechanical locking device), US10550976B2 (Jiangsu Beite, high-pressure leakage-proof sleeve compensator), and the Mueller International mechanical-joint-restraint family (US20200370686A1, US11808386B2, US11920706B2, US12510194B2, US12546416B1). If you are a defendant in a case where a modern patent claims priority over or cites '038, your attack is on that modern patent's claims — via an IPR against that patent — not on '038.

Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter or complaint cites US 2,148,038 against current conduct: it is facially baseless. The patent issued 1939-02-21 and expired 1956-02-21. Damages for post-1956 activity are legally impossible; the six claims (reproduced verbatim in the full text above) cannot be infringed. Do not spend budget on an IPR — there is nothing to invalidate that isn't already dead. Send a Rule 11 / § 285-style response demanding withdrawal and preserving a fee-shifting record if the assertion is repeated.
2. If the assertion is actually about a modern patent that cites '038, redirect to that patent. Pull the PTAB proceeding list for the asserted patent number and evaluate IPR there. Use US 2,148,038 itself as § 102(a)/(b) prior art only if its 1936-11-25 filing / 1939-02-21 publication date and public accessibility can be established — a question for the district court or the IPR of the citing patent, not a proceeding on '038.
3. No trial-stage milestones exist to monitor. There is no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no 1-year FWD due date, because no petition was filed and no trial was instituted.
4. Item I could not verify from the sources provided: ex parte reexamination. The structured block and PTAB E2E cover AIA trials (IPR/PGR/CBM/derivation), which are PTAB matters. Ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. § 302) is handled by the Central Reexamination Unit, not the PTAB, and would therefore not surface in PTAB data. Given the 1956 expiration, a reexam would have been purposeless, and I found no evidence of one in web search — but I am flagging it explicitly rather than asserting a clean negative on a record I did not personally inspect. To rule it out conclusively, check the '038 file wrapper via USPTO PatentCenter / Global Dossier (links on the Google Patents page: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2148038/en).

Sources consulted: structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest); Google Patents record for US2148038A, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2148038/en (claims, dates, cited-by list); USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions, https://ptacts.uspto.gov; CourtListener, https://www.courtlistener.com (searched for proceedings and appeals involving this patent — none returned). No final written decision, institution decision, or Federal Circuit opinion exists to link, because no proceeding was ever filed.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership history for US 2,148,038.

Assignment Record — US Patent 2,148,038 ("Coupling," Frank J. Raybould)

Critical data-availability caveat before anything else. I was unable to retrieve any reel/frame record for this patent. My searches against the USPTO Assignment Center index (assignment.uspto.gov / assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and general web queries keyed to the exact number 2148038 returned zero assignment records. The Assignment Center is a JavaScript application whose records are not exposed to the search tools I have available, and my tool budget was exhausted before I could complete the planned query set. I will not invent reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or correspondent names. Everything below is limited to what is documented on the face of the patent, in the sibling Raybould-family patents, and in the corporate-registration hit I did obtain. Treat this section as a partial record, not a negative finding.

Inventors

Cross-patent employment pattern (documented, not inferred):

• On his earlier patents — e.g., US 1,788,408 "Screw-Retaining Device" (filed 1927-05-13, issued 1931-01-13) and US 1,814,480 "Conduit Fitting" (filed 1927-09-08, issued 1931-07-14, co-inventor George Ralph Metcalf, Jr.) — Raybould is recorded as "of Erie, Pennsylvania, assignor to Erie Malleable Iron Company, of Erie, Pennsylvania." So his pre-1936 employer was Erie Malleable Iron Company, not the '038 assignee.
• By the 1936-11-25 filing of the '038 application, he had moved his inventive output to Raybould Coupling Company of Meadville, PA, a company bearing his own surname.

Pattern note (the one you asked me to flag): this is the inverse of the "inventors depart the assignee" tell. Here the inventor left his prior corporate employer (Erie Malleable Iron) and founded/joined the company that became the assignee. There is no evidence of any inventor departing Raybould Coupling Company within 12 months of filing — likewise, no evidence they stayed; I simply have no personnel records. Do not read this as a fire-sale precursor.

Name-variant flag: the GoodIP assignee page for Raybould Coupling Company lists top inventors as "Raybould Frank J" (8 patents) and "Raybould Frank James" (4 patents) as if they were two people. Given identical surname, identical Erie/PA venue, and overlapping coupling subject matter, these are almost certainly the same individual under two name-normalization forms. I am reporting the discrepancy literally rather than silently merging them.

Original assignee

Raybould Coupling Company, Meadville, Pennsylvania, a corporation of Pennsylvania — named on the issued patent via the "assignor to" recital.

• Primary line of business: manufacture/sale of threadless pipe and rod couplings — specifically compression-ring couplings for joining pipe without threads or positive interlocking. The company name is descriptive of the line, and its patent portfolio (17 applications per GoodIP, spanning US, Canada, and the United Kingdom) is a single-technology portfolio in pipe/rod couplings, valves, and compression rings.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Likely yes, but not independently verified. The strongest evidence is in-specification: sibling patent US 2,205,910 ("Coupling Compression Ring," Raybould, issued 1940-06-25) devotes substantial text to manufacturing economics — mold sizes, vulcanizing rubber directly to the metallic bushing, and the statement that producing compression rings over 24 inches in diameter "has not been considered commercially feasible… heretofore." That is production-costing language from a manufacturer, not a paper patent. This is consistent with commercial manufacture but is not a product record. I have no sales literature, catalog, or trade-press citation.
• Current status: the patent expired 1956-02-21, and the assignee entity's modern viability is unverified. The one registry hit I obtained — city-data.com entity #298146, "RAYBOULD COUPLING COMPANY," Business Corporation, Status: Active, address "RM 215 TR CO BLDG, 231 CHESTNUT ST, MEADVILLE, PA" — is a mirror of a Pennsylvania Department of State registration. ⚠️ Flag: city-data's corporate-registry mirrors are frequently years stale, and a state registration status of "Active" is not evidence that the company is trading or has any employees. I could not reach the PA Department of State directly to confirm currency. Not determinable: operating / acquired / dissolved / bankrupt.

Assignment timeline

I could retrieve no reel/frame entries for US 2,148,038. Stating this plainly, as instructed:

• No post-issuance assignment records were surfaced by any search I ran.
• The only assignment evidenced anywhere in my sources is the inventor → original assignee conveyance recited on the printed patent itself: "Frank J. Raybould, Erie, Pa., assignor to Raybould Coupling Company, Meadville, Pa., a corporation of Pennsylvania." That recital establishes an assignment was executed and recorded on or before the 1939-02-21 grant date, but I did not obtain its reel/frame, execution date, recording date, or correspondent, so I am not listing it as a formatted entry — that would require fabrication.
• No correspondent of record was retrievable. The only attorney name appearing anywhere in the family material I pulled is on the OCR of sibling patent US 2,203,237, whose drawing sheet text renders as "by Herbert Hanke … attorney." ⚠️ Low confidence — that string is heavily OCR-degraded, may be misread, and is not this patent. I am flagging it only as a lead for a manual file-wrapper pull, not as the '038 correspondent.

To complete this section you must query the Assignment Center manually: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html → search 2148038. Historical records for this era also live in the USPTO file wrapper / microfilm reels for Serial No. 112,727 at PatentCenter, which is the authoritative source the online index may not fully carry.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 2148038
    1927 : Raybould patents assigned to Erie Malleable Iron
    1936 : App filed by Raybould for Raybould Coupling Co
    1939 : Patent issued to Raybould Coupling Company
    1956 : Patent term expires

I deliberately omitted the 1956-02-21 expiration as an "event" in the chain above only in the sense that it is a legal date, not a transfer; it is retained because it bounds every NPE question below. No assignment events could be plotted because none were retrieved.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal is assessed against the constraint that the patent expired February 21, 1956 — roughly four decades before the modern NPE assertion model and the LLC-shell recording practices it depends on.

Additional contextual non-signal worth recording: the '038 patent is cited by 16–20 later patents, including US 2,626,905, US 3,106,407, US 6,026,803, US 10,550,976 B2, and the Mueller International mechanical-joint-restraint family (US 11,808,386; US 11,920,706; US 12,510,194; US 12,546,416). Being cited as prior art by a modern pipe-coupling incumbent is not litigation, not ownership, and not an NPE signal — it just shows the '038 disclosure remains technically relevant to bell-and-spigot restraint design. Per the prior section, none of the citing parties holds title.

Verdict

Insufficient data — no records retrieved beyond the original assignment record recited on the face of the patent.

The only ownership fact established is the inventor-to-Raybould Coupling Company conveyance recited on the granted patent (filed 1936-11-25, Serial No. 112,727, issued 1939-02-21), and I could not obtain its reel/frame, dates, or correspondent. No post-issuance assignment of any kind was found, and every NPE signal scores "not present" or "unclear" — but that is a low-information result rather than a clean bill of health, because this patent's entire commercial life (1939–1956) precedes electronic dockets and modern assignment indexing by decades, which is the same pre-1956 blind spot flagged in the litigation section. There is no evidence of shell-entity transfer, asserter ownership, cascading transfers, bankruptcy sale, privateering, or defensive aggregation, and the elapsed term makes all seven of those categories chronologically implausible rather than merely unproven.

Verification link: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search 2148038. Use the Patents → Search by Patent Number field; if the index returns nothing, the assignment, if any, must be confirmed via the Serial No. 112,727 file wrapper at USPTO PatentCenter or the microfilm assignment reels for the 1936–1939 window.

Contradictions with previously generated sections

None found. This section is consistent with the prior "Bibliographic data" and "Caveats" sections, which likewise recorded no post-issuance reassignment and flagged the Google Patents "Current Assignee" field as an assumption. One item to note for the record: the prior section described the relationship to US 1,955,831 as "continuation-in-family." The sibling patents actually cited in the 1936–1939 Raybould specifications are US 1,955,832, and the same-day co-pending application Serial No. 112,728 (which issued as US 2,163,810 on 1939-06-27). The number 1,955,831 does appear in the '038 specification text as given, so I have not corrected it per your literal-interpretation rule — but the 1,955,832 references in the sibling patents suggest a possible OCR digit transposition of the last digit in the '038 text. Flagging, not resolving.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 2,148,038 against USPTO and other authoritative sources.

Let me verify the front-page references and check the USPTO/facsimile record directly.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 2,148,038 ("Coupling," Frank J. Raybould)

1. Identifier verification (literal)

The identifier 2148038 maps literally to US 2,148,038 / US2148038A — "Coupling," Frank J. Raybould, filed Nov. 25, 1936 (Serial No. 112,727), issued Feb. 21, 1939, assignee Raybould Coupling Company. No number substitution was made. This is consistent with the previously generated sections.

Note on the search attempt: I was not able to complete a direct query of the USPTO Patent Public Search (PPUBS) interface before the search budget was exhausted. What I did retrieve is the Google Patents record, which ingests the USPTO front-page (bibliographic) data, plus the authoritative full text supplied in the task. Direct USPTO confirmation of the front page is therefore incomplete and flagged below.

2. Critical finding: the '038 patent has no prior-art citations of record in the digitized record

The full text supplied for US2148038A contains these sections:

• Definitions, Classifications, Description, Claims
• "Cited By (16)" and a second "Cited By (20)" list
• "Similar Documents" (a Google algorithmic list)

It contains no "Citations" / "Patent Citations" / "References Cited" section at all. In the Google Patents schema, backward (prior-art) citations would appear there. Their absence indicates that the '038 patent's front page carries no examiner- or applicant-identified prior-art references in this record — which is not unusual for a 1939-issue grant, but which means there is no citation-by-citation prior-art table to reproduce. I will not invent one.

⚠️ Contradiction flagged: the two "Cited By" lists in the fetched record are labeled (16) and (20) respectively and differ in content (e.g., US7891711B2, US10815983B2, US11808386B2, US12510194B2 appear only in the second list). This is an internal inconsistency in the fetched Google Patents data, not a claim about the patent. I am reporting it rather than reconciling it.

3. The two categories the user asked about — do not conflate them

If any downstream reader treats the "Cited By" list as the '038 patent's prior art, that would be a backwards reading — those are the patents that came after.

4. The only prior art the '038 patent itself identifies

The specification names exactly one reference:

"In my prior Patent No. 1,955,831, I have shown a coupling which overcomes many of the difficulties encountered with the prior art couplings. The present invention relates to couplings of this character…"

Reference A — US 1,955,831 ("Connecter," Frank J. Raybould)

§102 assessment of US 1,955,831 against the '038 claims

Conclusion: does not anticipate any of claims 1–6. Every '038 claim recites at least one element absent from '831:

But note the §102(b) statutory-bar issue: '831 issued April 24, 1934; '038 was filed November 25, 1936 — about 2 years 7 months. Under the statute then governing (R.S. 4886, pre-1952, which allowed a two-year grace period for the inventor's own patent), '831 sits outside that grace period. So '831 is properly treated as available prior art for §103 obviousness purposes and as a potential statutory bar to any '038 claim it fully discloses — but on the claim language as written, it discloses none of the six claims in full. It is the strongest §103 reference, not a §102 reference.

Reference B — Raybould application Serial No. 498,419 (filed Nov. 26, 1930)

Disclosed within, and described by, US 1,955,831 (distortable bushing + flanged contractible clamping bands in a gland, compressed axially to expand radially). This predates the '038 filing by ~6 years. Its content is thus prior art to '038 via the '831 patent's description; if it issued as a patent, that patent would be an additional reference. ⚠️ I could not verify within budget whether Serial No. 498,419 ever issued, nor its patent number. Do not assume one.

5. Same-family / adjacent Raybould disclosures — NOT prior art (flagged to prevent error)

These surfaced in searches and are easy to mistake for prior art. All are excluded:

⚠️ Flagged ambiguity (do not auto-correct): US 2,163,810 and US 2,203,237 both refer in their specifications to "my prior Patent No. 1,955,832," whereas the patent I verified as the "Connecter" is 1,955,831. These are two different literal numbers appearing in the record. It is possible (a) Raybould had two patents issued April 24, 1934, numbered 1,955,831 and 1,955,832, or (b) the digits differ only by OCR. I did not verify the existence or content of a 1,955,832. Per the strict-rule, I report both numbers literally and have corrected neither.

6. Pre-1936 references worth manual verification as genuine §102 art

From the Google "Similar Documents" list, the following predate the Nov. 25, 1936 filing date and could theoretically be §102 art. I could not verify their disclosure content within budget, so these are leads, not findings:

Everything else in that list (US 2,451,070; US 2,460,032; US 2,533,277; US 2,535,694; US 2,739,992; US 2,769,648; US 2,793,883; US 2,887,328; US 3,142,860; US 3,186,741; US 3,302,953; US 3,455,581; US 3,524,662; US 3,554,581; US 3,664,691; US 3,684,188; US 3,704,034; US 3,877,733; and US2163810A itself) postdates the 1936 filing date and is therefore not prior art.

7. Bottom line

1. US 2,148,038 has no listed prior-art citations of record in the digitized (Google Patents / USPTO-derived) front page. There is no citation table to walk through.
2. The only reference the patent itself identifies is US 1,955,831 ("Connecter," filed Sept. 3, 1931, issued April 24, 1934) — the inventor's own earlier patent.
3. US 1,955,831 does not anticipate any of claims 1–6 under §102: it lacks the bushing guard and its projecting portion (claims 1, 6), the inter-bushing deformable seal (claim 2), the bell-and-spigot-plus-shoulder-spacer combination (claims 3, 4, 6), and the sleeved split reinforcing ring (claim 5). It is better characterized as a §103 obviousness reference and a possible §102(b)-era statutory bar on its own disclosure (issued >2 years before the '038 filing under the then-applicable pre-1952 two-year rule).
4. The "Cited By" (16/20) references are forward citations and are not prior art to '038 — all postdate it. The same is true of nearly all "Similar Documents."
5. The same-day sibling Serial No. 112,728 (US 2,163,810) is not §102 art; it is interference-type material.
6. Four pre-1936 references (US 1,821,866; US 1,873,855; US 1,926,107; US 2,014,313) are flagged as unverified §102 candidates requiring manual review.

8. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence that the literal identifier is US 2,148,038 and that the specification cites only US 1,955,831 as prior art.
• High confidence in the claim-element comparison against '831, since claims 1–6 were cross-verified in the earlier section.
• Low-to-moderate confidence on the "no citations of record" point, because (a) I could not complete a direct USPTO PPUBS front-page check, and (b) old patents' front-page reference lists are sometimes omitted by OCR-derived databases. If a paper front page exists with references, my analysis above would need revision.
• Not verified: the existence of a "US 1,955,832"; whether Serial No. 498,419 issued; and the disclosure content of the four pre-1936 "similar documents."
• Discrepancy noted: the task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating context gives today as 2026-09-30. This does not affect the analysis (the patent expired Feb. 21, 1956 either way) but is flagged per the contradiction-reporting rule.

I'll ground the prior-art references on the page before analyzing. Let me pull the key candidate references.

Interesting — US2163810 turns out to be a same-day sibling Raybould application. Let me verify the pre-1936 date references and check the bell-and-spigot art.

Preliminary: how I'm reading "the Prior Art section of this page"

Two framing points before the merits, because they materially constrain the analysis.

1. What the page's prior-art material actually consists of. The Google Patents record for US2148038A supplies (a) four "Prior art keywords" (pipe, bell, bushing, compression ring, bushing unit), (b) a "Cited By" list of 16–20 documents, and (c) a "Similar Documents" list of 25 documents. There is no examiner "References Cited" list in the transcription — i.e., the '038 front page as rendered lists no patent references. Crucially:

• "Cited By" documents cannot be prior art against '038. Every entry post-dates it (earliest: US2622905, priority 1948-12-23; latest: US12546416B1, 2024). They are forward citations only.
• "Similar Documents" is a machine-similarity list, not an examiner's citation list. It is a mixed bag of dates, and most entries post-date the '038 critical date.

2. Date filter and the critical date. The page states "Prior art date 1936-11-25," which is the filing date (Serial No. 112,727). Under the statute in force for a 1936 application (R.S. 4886), the bar for printed publications/patents was one year before filing — i.e., 1935-11-25 — absent proof of earlier invention. Applying that literal filter to the page's lists:

This is a thin estate of true prior art. The only substantive pre-1936 references available from the page are the Raybould family's own earlier work (not on the page, but admitted in the specification) plus four pipe/flange-joint documents from the "Similar Documents" list. I say so plainly rather than manufacturing hits.

Correction to a flagged item from the earlier section

The earlier section described '038 as a "continuation-in-family of … US 1,955,831." The specification does not establish any formal continuation relationship. It states only: "In my prior Patent No. 1,955,831, I have shown a coupling which overcomes many of the difficulties encountered with the prior art couplings." That is an admission/reference to a separate earlier patent, not a continuation. Separately, searching surfaces that the Raybould family contains two adjacent grants, US 1,955,831 ("Connecter," filed 1931-09-03, Serial 560,992, granted 1934-04-24, 4 claims, Class 285-166) and US 1,955,832, and that Raybould's later patents (US 2,163,810; US 2,203,237) cite 1,955,832 while '038 cites 1,955,831. I verified the content of '831 directly; I did not independently verify the content of '832 and will not attribute subject matter to it.

I also found, and this matters a great deal, that US 2,163,810 ("Coupling," Raybould) appears to be a same-day sibling application (Serial No. 112,728, filed 1936-11-25) — one serial number away from '038's Serial 112,727. Raybould's US 2,203,237 states: "Couplings of this character are shown and described in my prior Patent No. 1,955,832 and in my copending application Serial No. 112,728 filed November 25, 1936." US 2,163,810's own text describes a bushing unit with a compression ring, split bushings "extend[ing] circumferentially around and angularly about the edges thereof," split reinforcing rings in the bushing angles, and a spacer ring abutting one end of the bushing unit to transmit pressure. That is very close to the '038 disclosure. I flag this as moderate confidence on the serial-number match (inferred from '237's cross-reference, not from '810's face). If correct, it is not available as §102/§103 prior art (same-day filing by the same inventor; and for a 1936 filing, pre-1952 law furnished no §102(e)-equivalent "as-of-filing-date" attribution — I do not rely on filing dates here). It is, however, strong evidence of what the inventor and the art regarded as routine.

The legal frame (stated briefly, since it changes the vocabulary)

• '038 was filed 1936-11-25 and issued 1939-02-21 — before the 1952 Patent Act. Its validity was measured against R.S. 4886's "invention" requirement, not codified §103. §103 as such did not govern. Modern retrospective obviousness analysis (Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007)) is the accepted proxy, because §103 is understood to have codified existing law — but a 1936-filing analysis is, strictly, anachronistic.
• The patent expired 1956-02-21. Obviousness today matters only in a derivative sense (e.g., whether '038 is a valid reference against later art — it remains a printed publication/patent regardless of validity, so this is largely academic).
• All six claims are independent apparatus claims; there is no means-plus-function issue.

Claim-by-claim §103 analysis

Base reference to be used throughout: US 1,955,831 (Raybould)

Verified content: a distortable bushing between an "outer" and an "inner member," with contractible split bands on the inner and outer periphery of the bushing, each having flanged (indeed beveled-flanged) ends engaging the bushing, plus means confining and exerting end pressure to expand the bushing radially and clamp the bands. Claims recite "contractible telescoping bands," "split bands on the inner and outer periphery of the bushing each having end flanges engaging the bushing," and the beveled-flange variant. It also (a) is expressly the starting point the '038 specification admits, and (b) itself acknowledges a predecessor, Serial No. 498,419 filed 1930-11-26.

So '831 already supplies, for §103 purposes: compression ring + circumferentially-arranged split bushings that turn over the ring's edges + axial-pressure-to-radial-expansion mechanism. The '038 claims reduce to: (i) re-express that in bell-and-spigot geometry, (ii) add a spacer/back-up against the bell shoulder, and (iii) in some claims, add one or more anti-extrusion/retention expedients (guard, reinforcing ring with sleeve, soft-metal seal).

Claim 3 — the broadest claim (and the real battleground)

bell-end pipe + spigot-end pipe + compression ring of bodily distortable material inside the bell around the spigot + pressure means abutting one end of the unit + spacer member engaging the other end and extending between the unit and the shoulder of the bell.

Differences over '831: (a) bell-and-spigot context; (b) a spacer at the reaction end.

Combination that renders it obvious — two available routes:

1. US 1,955,831 in view of US 1,873,855 (and its sibling US 1,826,866). The '855/'866 disclosure is a pipe joint in which malleable sealing rings are expanded and contracted by drawing the pipe ends together, with an "abutment ring 33/53 … of such dimensions and material that it is not adapted to be either expanded or contracted," which engages the bottoms of the recesses and "produce[s] a certain amount of seal." That is a non-distortable back-up/retaining member performing the same function the '038 spacer performs — reacting the closing force and confining the sealing element against a wall.

2. US 1,955,831 in view of US 2,014,313 (Damsel, bell-mouthed pipe). '313 discloses an elastic rubber ring seated in an annular internal groove formed by the enlarged (bell) pipe ends, an external annular shoulder 9 at the bell, and "a metal reinforcing ring … in the groove [which] will not only limit the expansion of the central portion of the sealing ring, but will act as a guide for the pipe ends during expansion and contraction." That is the bell + shoulder + retention/guidance concept, applied to bell-mouthed pipe, less than three months before the one-year bar.

Motivation (KSR rationales, applied):

• The specification itself frames the problem: "Heretofore no satisfactory coupling has been found for joining together the bell and spigot ends of ordinary standard bell and spigot pipe. Heretofore it has always been necessary to provide specially formed bell and spigot ends." A named, recognized, long-standing problem in the same field is the classic "design incentive."
• The established function of the bell shoulder in the pre-existing lead-and-oakum caulked bell-and-spigot joint (the universal prior practice) was precisely to serve as a retaining wall for the jointing material. Using the shoulder as the reaction surface for an axially-compressed sealing element is the use of a known element for its known purpose.
• The spacer's recital of functions in '038 — backing the unit against the applied pressure, centering the spigot, allowing clearance for expansion/contraction, and acting as a retaining wall against extrusion — are all predictable consequences, each independently identified in the reference set ('855/'866 abutment ring and floating sealing rings that "automatically align the pipe ends"; '313's guide function for expansion/contraction).

Verdict: Claim 3 is highly vulnerable to §103. The only element beyond '831 is a spacer whose function is (a) inherent in bell geometry and (b) expressly taught as an abutment/guide element in '855/'866 and '313.

Claim 4 — adds "at least one bushing … angularly around an edge" of the ring

This is US 1,955,831's flanged contractible split band, verbatim in substance (bands on the periphery of the distortable bushing, with end flanges engaging the bushing), plus the claim-3 spacer. Obviousness follows a fortiori from the claim-3 combination. No new motivation is needed; combining '831 + ('855 or '313) disposes of claim 4.

Verdict: Obvious.

Claim 6 — full bell-and-spigot assembly (compression ring + plurality of bushings + bushing guard + pressure means + spacer)

Adds only the bushing guard (circumferentially around the unit, angularly about an edge). The page's reference set offers:

• US 1,873,855 mentions a "guard ring … as in Fig. 5" — but caution: on the face of the text, its stated function is to relieve the expanded ring of tensile duty, not to prevent extrusion of a distortable element. Same word, different job. I do not treat this as a clean teaching of the '038 guard.
• US 2,014,313's outer endless band 20 over a split inner band 19 is a retaining/housing ring that holds split segments in assembled relation and confines the sealing ring — structurally and functionally closer to a guard.

Where a challenger would be strongest: the guard's stated purpose — preventing extrusion of the distortable ring around the metal bushing edges — is the same problem '831 itself was fighting (it discusses the bands' flanged ends shearing/being clamped, and by 1939 Raybould's US 2,203,237 states the reinforcing rings exist "to reinforce the compression ring against extrusion between the free clearances"). Anti-extrusion by edge-confinement is a recognized problem with a recognized remedy in packing/gland art. And the specification gives an added design incentive: the guard "enables the use of a standard bushing in various installations, for example, in bell and spigot pipe connections where the pipe sizes vary materially between wide manufacturing tolerances" — i.e., it substitutes a cheap standard part for a custom one, which is textbook obvious design choice.

Verdict: Obvious, but with a softer record. The best combination is '831 + '313 (+ '855/'866 for the spacer), with the guard supplied as an anti-extrusion/retainer whose need is admitted in the art. A challenger would want an explicit anti-extrusion-ring reference from stuffing-box or packing-ring art (absent from this page's lists) to make claim 6 airtight.

Claim 5 — split reinforcing ring with a sleeve cooperating with its ends so one end can slide

Elements: compression ring; split reinforcing ring adjacent an edge; sleeve cooperating with the ring's ends permitting sliding; pressure means; spacer abutting bell shoulder.

• Split reinforcing ring adjacent the edge of a resilient pipe-sealing ring: US 2,014,313 expressly places a metal reinforcing ring 17 in a groove of the elastic sealing ring; US 1,873,855/'866 use guard/abutment rings. Combined with '831's split contractible bands, this is straightforward.
• The sleeve across the split is the weakest link in the entire claim set. None of the pre-1936 references on the page shows a sleeve cooperating with the ends of a split ring to permit sliding while blocking extrusion. The closest items on the page — US 2,622,905 ("Sealing ring," 1952) and US 3,106,407 ("Packing ring with anti-extrusion end rings," 1963) — post-date '038 and cannot be used, which is exactly the kind of trap this page's lists invite.

Verdict: The combination gets to the reinforcing ring but not cleanly to the sleeve. Under KSR, telescoping/overlapping ends on a split ring (a "split-ring with a slip sleeve") is arguably a "known technique … used to improve similar devices in the same way," and the '038 specification gives the motivation on its face ("a sleeve may extend between the ends so that there will be no opportunity for extrusion of the compression ring between the ends thereof"). But on this page's record alone, claim 5 is the strongest of the six. Moderate vulnerability.

Claim 1 — bushing guard, with the limitation that a portion of the guard extends beyond an edge of one of the split bushings

Same analysis as claim 6, plus a purely dimensional/positional limitation ("extends beyond an edge"). The guard's function — lapping over and past the bushing edge — is the reason it is a guard at all (the specification: face 22 "extend[s] beyond the upper end of the bushing 24"). A claim whose distinguishing limitation is coterminous with the stated purpose of the element is weak under §103: the "extension beyond" is the inherent and necessary configuration for the recited function to be performed.

Verdict: Obvious on the same '831 + '313 combination, with the same caveat that no pre-1936 reference on the page squarely discloses an anti-extrusion guard.

Claim 2 — a deformable seal supported between the ends of the split bushings, deformed when the ends are driven together

Elements: split bushings turning angularly about the ring edges; deformable seal between the ends of at least one bushing; pressure means; the ends squeeze and deform the seal to seal the gap.

This is the most structurally particularized claim and the one with the weakest page-record support. What is available:

• US 1,873,855 / US 1,826,866 teach that the material of the rings should be malleable/ductile/worked metal, "similar to, or somewhat softer than, the pipes to be joined," with copper usable — i.e., soft-metal sealing elements crushed by drawing the joint up.
• US 1,888,868 (Montgomery; surfaced in my searches, though not on the page) shows soft-metal (copper) inserts 18 in annular grooves of a sealing sleeve — a soft-metal insert seated in a groove of a jointing element.
• The classic lead-caulked bell-and-spigot joint is the baseline general knowledge: lead is driven into the annular gap where it deforms and blocks the clearance.
• US 1,791,810 teaches lead wire in grooves as a seal against escape of a sealing medium.

But none of the page's pre-1936 references discloses a seal positioned between the butting ends of a split bushing, let alone the functional recitation that the bushing ends themselves clamp and deform it as axial pressure is applied. '831's own discussion of the flanged band ends being clamped/sheared identifies the problem in the same location, which supplies motivation, but the specific placement is supplied only by the '038 specification's self-description.

Verdict: This is the least certifiably obvious claim on the record provided. A challenger would need (i) packing/gland art showing soft-metal seals in the joints between split packing segments, or (ii) stuffing-box art showing deformable seals crushed between approaching split-ring ends. Low-to-moderate vulnerability on this page's art; not established.

Summary of combinations and confidence

No anticipation. I found no single reference in the page's lists, or in the specification's admissions, disclosing every element of any one claim. This is a §103 case, not a §102 case.

Secondary considerations

Favoring non-obviousness:

• Long-felt need, expressly stated in the specification. '038 asserts that no satisfactory coupling had been found for ordinary standard bell-and-spigot pipe and that specially formed ends had always been required. That is the strongest Graham factor available to the patentee.
• The specification asserts the joint "is exceedingly high in tensile strength." Raybould's later US 2,203,237 quantifies a 4×–6× improvement in pull-out resistance (≈600 lb → ≈2800 lb) over prior art — though that data is attributed to a different (middle-ring) structure, not to the '038 structure, and I would not import it as evidence of the '038 claims' non-obviousness (no nexus).

Cutting against:

• The long-felt need had been met incrementally by the inventor's own '831/'832 predecessors, and the same-day sibling '810 apparently contained the bushing-unit + spacer combination. Where the "need" is being solved within the same workshop within the same years, the long-felt-need inference is correspondingly weaker.
• No evidence of commercial success, copying, or unexpected results specific to the claimed subject matter is available to me. I will not assert any.
• KSR supplies the counterweight here regardless: where the only differences are (i) adapting a known compression coupling to a known pipe geometry, (ii) adding a back-up ring whose function is dictated by that geometry, and (iii) adding edge-confinement against a long-recognized extrusion problem, the improvement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

One procedural point worth noting (not §103, but it would have been the natural real-world attack): because US 2,163,810 appears to be a same-day co-pending Raybould application with overlapping disclosure, the Patent Office's tool in 1936–39 was an obviousness-type double-patenting / copending-application rejection, not a §103 rejection — and same-day co-pending applications cannot be combined with each other for §103 purposes. That is a structural limit on any obviousness theory built from the Raybould family.

Explicit statement of what I could not establish

• I could not verify the content of US 1,955,832, and so I do not rely on it despite the siblings' citations to it.
• I could not confirm the serial number of US 2,163,810 from its own face; the "Serial 112,728, filed 1936-11-25" attribution is inferred from US 2,203,237's cross-reference and is moderate-confidence.
• No pre-1936 reference on this page discloses (a) a bushing guard lapping past a split-bushing edge, (b) a sleeve cooperating with the ends of a split reinforcing ring, or (c) a deformable seal seated between split-bushing ends. Claims 5, 1 and especially 2 therefore rest on motivation-plus-known-expedients reasoning, not on a clean element-by-element reference mapping. A rigorous invalidity contention would need packing-ring/stuffing-box art (e.g., anti-extrusion ring and split-ring-end seal art) that is not present in the "Prior Art" section of this page.
• The page's "Cited By" and "Similar Documents" lists are not prior art to '038 except as tabulated above. Anyone using this page as an obviousness chart should treat the 1948–2026 entries as forward citations only.

Overall conclusion: Under a KSR/Graham analysis applied retrospectively, claims 3 and 4 would very likely have been held obvious over US 1,955,831 in view of the bell-mouth/abutment-ring art (US 1,873,855 / US 1,826,866 / US 2,014,313). Claims 1 and 6 are probably obvious on the same combinations plus the admitted anti-extrusion design problem, though the guard element is not cleanly met by the page's references. Claim 5 is a closer call, and claim 2 is the most defensible claim on the record available from this page — but I would not describe claim 2 as non-obvious with high confidence either, only as unproven on this record.