Invalidity dossier
US 2868722
Method for producing a stabilized cracked distillate fuel oil
Current assignee: ExxonMobil Oil Corp
Added 9/23/2026, 7:30:49 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
US 2868722 — Concise Patent Overview
Title: Method for producing a stabilized cracked distillate fuel oil
Patent number: US2868722A (application US388385A)
Original assignee: Socony Mobil Oil Co Inc. Current assignee listed in the source: ExxonMobil Oil Corp (source notes assignee lists "may be inaccurate"; no legal analysis made).
Key dates (per source, assumptions noted there): Priority/filing 1953-10-25; granted and published 1959-01-13; anticipated expiration 1976-01-13. Legal status listed as "Expired – Lifetime."
Inventors: Jr Frank W Brooks; Jr Claiborne A Duval.
Purpose: To produce a stabilized cracked distillate fuel oil. The text's prior-art keywords — alkali metal, fuel oil, solution, oil, aqueous — and indexed terms such as alkali metal hydroxides, aqueous solution, phenols/alkyl phenols, extraction, storage, and sediment indicate a treatment process directed at stabilizing cracked distillate fuel oil.
Plain-language scope (as far as the excerpt shows): The document presents a method for making a stabilized cracked distillate fuel oil. Indexed subject matter includes alkali metal hydroxides (notably potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide), aqueous solutions and extraction, acidification effects, phenols, storage, mixing, washing, separation, and sediment/contaminants, and mentions of phenolate, potassium phenoxide, and potassium salts. The classification terms imply an aqueous alkaline treatment combined with acidification and separation steps, but the excerpt does not reproduce the claims or a step-by-step description. No claims text appears in the supplied material, so the exact claimed scope cannot be stated verbatim.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2868722/en (fetched 2026-09-23).
What the excerpt does not establish:
- The wording or number of the actual claims.
- The specific process sequence, reagent concentrations, temperatures, or proportions.
- Examples, test data, or measured stability results.
- The full specification, drawings, or figure contents.
- Inventorship, ownership, or validity conclusions (explicitly out of scope).
- That any listed term reflects a limiting claim element rather than merely indexed content.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:42:00 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.