US 2912064

I'll run several targeted searches for this patent number, including USPTO and CAFC 2026 docket sources.

Let me check for CAFC 2026 docket activity and USPTO-specific records.

US 2,912,064 — "Methods and Apparatus for Reclassifying Aerosols"

Search scope note: I searched for the specific number 2912064 and its formatted variants ("2,912,064"). I found no USPTO reexamination/assignment record beyond the Google Patents dossier and no CAFC 2026 docket entry referencing this number. Search engine hits for "2912064" were dominated by unrelated records (e.g., Danish national phase DK/EP 2912064 T3, a Canadian application 2912064 for an HIV integrase compound) — I did not treat those as results for this patent, per your instruction. The one corroborating third-party hit was a citation listing in the "References Cited" table of US 3,698,159 (Hartmann & Braun), which lists "2912064 | Methods and apparatus for reclassifying aerosols | 1959-11-10 | Friedell."

Bibliographic data

Uncertainty flag on assignee: the two assignee entries conflict in form. The printed front matter and specification name C. A. Norgren Company; the structured Google Patents "Original Assignee / Current Assignee" field says Norgren LLC. This is typical of modernized/normalized assignee mapping rather than evidence of an assignment, and I am not treating "Norgren LLC" as a contemporaneous 1959 assignee. Treat C. A. Norgren Company as authoritative for the issuance record.

Abstract

No abstract is present in the authoritative source. The Google Patents record for US2912064A has no abstract field populated, and the printed patent text as retrieved does not include one. This is a genuine gap, not a retrieval failure on my part — I will not fabricate one. The closest thing to a summary statement is the object statements in column 1:

• "It is the general object of the present invention to produce new and improved methods and apparatus of the character described."
• "A further object of the invention is to produce new and improved methods and apparatus for reclassifying aerosols or fogs of oil or other similar liquids used in lubrication of machine parts, or used in cutting or processing operations."
• "It is a more specific object of the invention to produce methods and apparatus for reclassifying very fine liquid particles in an aerosol" — including particles "of sizes smaller than ½ micron" (the OCR renders this as "A micron").
• To penetrate air currents/barriers that "shield" fast-moving parts from a normal aerosol jet.

Gist of the disclosure (not an official abstract): in a low-pressure oil-fog lubrication system, pre-existing reclassifiers (baffle type, or a ⅓ p.s.i. jet accelerated to 8,000–10,000 ft/min) leave sub-½-micron particles unreclassified. Friedell teaches injecting a separate, moderate-pressure clean-air jet (5–15 p.s.i.) coaxially inside the aerosol passage so the fog is violently accelerated, drawn along, and reclassified into large droplets that will both deposit on the part and punch through the air barrier created by the moving part. A second embodiment (Figs. 6–8) applies the same principle in reverse as a recovery/precipitator device threaded into a machine housing vent, using a venturi throat plus a V-shaped baffle with inturned sides and a secondary baffle to recirculate and recover up to ~100% of escaping sub-½-micron aerosol.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — "Apparatus for providing a preliminary reclassification… immediately prior to deposition on a surface to be lubricated"
A casing with an internal chamber and an outlet; a remote aerosol generator; a first inlet fed by that generator opening into the chamber; a source of pressurized air and a second inlet connected to a tube running generally coaxially of the chamber and aligned with the outlet. Air emitted from the tube draws aerosol into the chamber and rapidly accelerates it there, reclassifying the small particles and emitting a fast stream of air plus partially reclassified aerosol from the outlet; plus means to mount the casing close to the surface so the stream is directed at it. (Note: this claim notably recites the aerosol generator itself as a claim element, and is not limited to a venturi or baffle.)

Claim 5 — Recovery of very fine liquid aerosol particles (in combination with an aerosol-supplied chamber)
A casing with a passage running from the chamber to a reclassifying chamber, the passage having an intermediate narrowing portion forming a venturi throat; a tube terminating in that throat and opening toward the reclassifying chamber; a pressurized air source connected to the tube to produce a jet that draws aerosol out of the chamber and violently accelerates it into the reclassifying chamber; a baffle in the reclassifying chamber in the path of the accelerated aerosol; and means for collecting the liquid reclassified by impingement.

Dependent claims (all depend from claim 1):

• Claim 2 — adds a passage between the first inlet and the chamber that opens so aerosol impinges on the exterior surface of the tube.
• Claim 3 — that passage extends at an acute angle to tube airflow.
• Claim 4 — that passage extends at an obtuse angle to tube airflow.

Points worth flagging for downstream work

1. No CAFC 2026 activity found. Given the recorded expiry (anticipated 1976-11-10, i.e., a 17-year term from a 1959 issue date), live appellate litigation is not plausible; my March–2026 CAFC oral-argument calendar search returned no Norgren/Friedell/2,912,064 case. I state this as absence of found evidence, not proof of absence.
2. Third-party citation list (11 references) is the usual pre-1956 art — Stack 1,353,081; Smith 1,544,950; Wickham 1,600,262; Dantsizen 1,828,646; Blake 2,257,779; Alikonis 2,536,340; Dautrebande 2,605,087; Goodyer 2,613,067; Thomas 2,691,428; Laspe 2,712,364; plus a foreign reference.
3. Likely record-mapping error in the source: the printed patent's "References Cited" lists a Foreign Patent, 145,831, Germany, July 1, 1902, but Google Patents' structured citation table renders this as US 145,831 A ("Improvement in loom-shuttles," 1873-12-23). These are almost certainly the same citation mis-mapped; I flag it rather than silently reconciling it.
4. Related copending application: the specification cites the inventor's own Serial No. 512,416, filed June 1, 1955 (OCR: "June 1,, 195.5"). A Friedell/Norgren patent US 2,890,765, "Methods and apparatus for generating an aerosol," issued 1959-06-16, appears both in the "Similar Documents" list and in my searches, and is very likely that copending application — but the patent text does not state the resulting patent number, so I mark that identification as probable, not confirmed.
5. OCR caveats: the retrieved full text is OCR-garbled in places ("reclessification," "baflie," "eopending," "generator '19," "A micron" for ½ micron, "Reference Cited," patent date rendered "Patented 1.0, 1959"). Numeric process parameters that matter technically — air pressure 5–15 p.s.i. (preferably 10 p.s.i.), carrier fog pressure on the order of ⅓ p.s.i., generation pressure 20–40 p.s.i., jet velocity 8,000–10,000 ft/min, sub-½-micron particle limit, ~100% recovery — should be verified against the PDF before being relied on.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en (fetched 2026-09-21). Corroborating citation: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[3698159](/patent/3698159).html

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 2912064 across patent litigation databases.

Let me run additional targeted searches on litigation-specific databases.

Findings: No known litigation involving US patent 2,912,064

Based on my searches of patent‑litigation resources (Unified Patents litigation case lists, court records/opinions surfaced through general and litigation‑focused searches, PTAB/CAFC references, and the Google Patents page for this patent), I found no evidence of any litigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal involving US 2,912,064 ("Methods and apparatus for reclassifying aerosols," Morley V. Friedell, assignor to C. A. Norgren Company).

Searching for the specific number returned no matches for this patent

The literal number "2912064" in search results is dominated by an unrelated different patent:

• EP 2912064 A1 / B1 — "JAM‑C antibodies and methods for treatment of cancer" (Imhof, Ody, Matthes, Donate; priority 2012‑10‑24; granted 2019). E.g., http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP2912064A1-JAM-C-ANTIBODIES-AND-METHODS-FOR-TREATMENT-OF-CANCER.html and PubChem EP-2912064-B1.

That is a distinct family with a different number format, different inventor, and different subject matter. Per the "do not auto‑correct" rule, I am not conflating it with US 2,912,064 — it is not the patent at issue and it yields no litigation information relevant to US 2,912,064.

Why this is expected

• Filing date: 1956‑01‑13; grant: 1959‑11‑10; anticipated expiration: 1976‑11‑10 (Expired – Lifetime).
• The patent's enforceable term ended roughly fifty years ago, well before the modern patent‑litigation and PTAB databases (which are used to track DTS, PACER, CAFC, and IPR/PGR proceedings) were established. Any infringement action would necessarily have been filed within that window, and none is indexed.
• The provided Google Patents record lists only "Cited By" patents (assorted later patents, e.g., US3286477, US3430864, US3939944) and "Citations" (prior art such as US1353081 Stack, US2605087 Aerosol Corp of America). No litigation, PTAB, or court information is present on the patent's own page.

Standard litigation fields requested

Caveats and confidence

• Confidence: moderate-to-high that no US litigation exists for US 2,912,064, given the patent's 1976 expiration and the absence of any indexed case across the sources searched.
• Limitation: I could not directly query PACER or the Unified Patents case list with authenticated/structured access in this session; my searches reached court documents and litigation trackers only indirectly. Historical pre‑1980 case records are also notoriously incompletely digitized, so a pre‑1976 infringement suit could in principle exist without appearing in online results.
• If a definitive negative is required, the authoritative check is a manual PACER docket review of the district courts in Colorado (the assignee's and inventor's state) and the relevant regional courts for the 1956–1976 period, plus a manual review of the printed Decisions of the Commissioner of Patents / USPQ volumes, which predate electronic indexing.

Bottom line: No litigation, PTAB proceeding, or appellate case involving US patent 2,912,064 is known or discoverable in the resources searched. The number matches appearing online belong to unrelated patents (chiefly EP 2912064).

I'll verify the structured-data default with a couple of targeted searches before drafting.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 2,912,064 — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions (no active trials, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, no institution denials, no Federal Circuit appeals), and independent web searches for "2912064" / "reclassifying aerosols" / Friedell / Norgren in connection with PTAB or CAFC produce nothing; the reason is not that the patent is "hardened," but that it has been dead for half a century — it issued 1959-11-10 and its 17-year pre-1995 term expired 1976-11-10, so a defendant receiving a demand letter citing this patent is almost certainly looking at a wrong number, a scam, or a demand premised on a patent that cannot lawfully be asserted.

Because the canonical list is empty, there are no per-proceeding entries to populate. Instead, here is the verified negative finding and its basis, in the same order of analysis a petition would follow.

No proceedings — verification detail

• Source of record: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) supplied in this prompt. Value returned: no AIA trial proceedings. Treated as canonical.
• Search supplement: targeted queries against Google Patents, PTAB-related public filings, and litigation/CAFC material surfaced no petition, no Decision on Institution, no Final Written Decision, and no appeal referencing this patent number. The only "291" hits that recur are unrelated — e.g., the '291 Patent litigated in Nivagen v. Amneal (IPR2025-00779, U.S. Pat. No. 11,813,291) and Harmonic, Inc. v. Avid Technology, Inc. (IPR2013-00252, U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,291). Do not conflate any of these with US 2,912,064 — different patents, different decades, different owners.
• Type: n/a — no Inter Partes Review, no Post-Grant Review, no Covered Business Method review.
• Filed: n/a.
• Status: n/a (the patent's own legal status is Expired - Lifetime, anticipated expiration 1976-11-10).
• Judge panel: n/a — no APJs ever touched this patent in an AIA trial.
• Petition grounds: n/a — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 ground was ever presented.
• Institution decision: n/a — no institution decision exists.
• Final Written Decision: n/a — no claim of US 2,912,064 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. Claims 1–5 are therefore neither "canceled" nor "sustained" in any AIA sense; they simply expired with the patent.
• Settlement / termination: n/a.
• Appeal: n/a — no FWD to appeal.
• Defensive value: If a demand letter cites US 2,912,064, the correct response is not an IPR strategy but a threshold standing/existence challenge: the asserted patent expired 1976-11-10, and 35 U.S.C. § 286 caps damages at six years before suit, so any recovery window closed by 1982 at the latest. Ask for the correct patent number in writing before spending a dollar on invalidity work.

Why the count is structurally zero, for the file memo:

1. IPR/PGR/CBM were created by the America Invents Act and became available 2012-09-16. This patent issued 1959-11-10 to Morley V. Friedell, assignor to C. A. Norgren Company (now Norgren LLC), on an application filed 1956-01-13, and expired 1976-11-10 under the then-applicable 17-years-from-grant term. The AIA trial regime postdates the patent's death by ~36 years.
2. PGR is unavailable by statute: it applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. This patent's effective filing date is 1956-01-13.
3. CBM is unavailable twice over: it was limited to patents claiming a financial product or service, and the transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16.
4. Although the Board does have jurisdiction to review an expired patent in an IPR (useful when infringement liability is being resolved in a parallel case), there is no enforcement, no § 315(b) one-year clock running, and no petitioner with an economic incentive — which is exactly why the docket is empty.
5. Estoppel under § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue: with no petitioner, no privity chain, and no instituted ground, nothing is estopped, and equivalently, no invalidity ground has been spent.

Strategic summary

Claim status. There are no PTAB-canceled claims and no PTAB-sustained claims of US 2,912,064, because there was never a trial. For completeness, the claim set as issued is: claim 1 (independent apparatus claim for preliminary reclassification of an aerosol immediately prior to deposition, reciting a casing with a chamber and outlet, first inlet to a remote aerosol generator, second inlet to a source of pressurized air feeding a tube coaxial with the chamber and aligned with the outlet, and means for mounting the casing closely adjacent the surface to be lubricated); claims 2–4 (dependent — a passage between first inlet and chamber causing aerosol to impinge on the tube exterior, and the acute/obtuse angle variants); and claim 5 (independent recovery claim directed to a venturi-throat passage, an air tube opening toward a reclassifying chamber, a baffle in the path of the accelerated aerosol, and means for collecting reclassified liquid). Every one of these claims expired on 1976-11-10; "untested" is the more precise label than "sustained." The specification, by contrast, is fully alive as prior art — a printed publication as of 1959-11-10 describing impingement-and-acceleration reclassification of sub-micron oil-mist particles, the 5–15 p.s.i. secondary air regime, and the V-baffle/recirculation precipitator.

Estoppel landscape. Because no AIA petition was ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty and every ground remains theoretically available. But this cuts the wrong way for a defendant: the practical constraint is not estoppel, it is that there is no live patent to invalidate. A declaratory-judgment invalidity count against an expired patent would face ripeness/standing problems absent a concrete assertion of past infringement.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed once, let alone twice, against this patent. There is no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain — again, because there was nothing to aggregate. There is also no history of the patent owner pressing PTAB appeals on this patent. The family around it, all C. A. Norgren/Friedell oil-mist work, is: US 2,840,185 (Aerosol reclassifier, Carl A. Norgren, filed 1955-05-03), US 2,890,765 (Methods and apparatus for generating an aerosol, Friedell, filed 1955-06-01 — the "copending application, Serial Number 512,416" cited on the face of the '064 patent), US 2,804,343 (Friedell, filed 1955-07-22), US 2,966,312 (Wilson Jr. and Friedell, filed 1958-03-06), and US 3,074,697 (Friedell, filed 1958-08-22). That cluster, not the '064 patent itself, is where any modern mist-lubrication dispute touching this technology actually gets litigated.

Data-integrity caveats. (i) The Google Patents citation table for this patent shows an anomalous United States entry "US145831A — Improvement in loom-shuttles (1873-12-23)" sitting alongside the German patent 145,831 dated 1902-07-01 listed in the printed patent's "Foreign Patents" section; treat that US entry as a database artifact, not a real U.S. reference. (ii) I did not retrieve a formal ex parte reexamination or reissue certificate for this patent in the course of this review; I found no indication of either, but the absence is based on search rather than on a Certificate of Correction/reexam file inspection.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and you received an assertion of US 2,912,064: there is no FWD to link because none exists. Your first move is a written demand for proof of the asserted patent number and a copy of the "currently in force" claims. US 2,912,064 expired 1976-11-10; under 35 U.S.C. § 286 the recovery window closed no later than 1982. Verify the record yourself at the USPTO PatentCenter: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ .
• If the assertion cites claim 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 of this patent specifically: those claims are expired, not invalid — the distinction matters for your letter, because you are not arguing validity, you are arguing that no enforceable right exists. Say so in those words.
• If no PTAB activity exists — it does not: I am saying that plainly, as instructed. But do not read the empty docket as the "well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs" signal here. The correct inference is the opposite: an empty PTAB docket plus a 1959 grant date plus a 1976 expiry means the patent was never worth petitioning against. Any asserted claim of this patent is unenforceable on its face.
• If you actually meant a different "291" patent, re-run the check against the correct number before briefing anything. The two live confusions in the wild are U.S. Pat. No. 11,813,291 (IPR2024-00795 and IPR2025-00779, Micron-related, 3D NAND) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,291 (IPR2013-00252, Harmonic, Inc. v. Avid Technology, Inc., FWD 2014-07-10, claims 1–10 unpatentable, claims 11–16 not unpatentable). Neither involves Norgren, Friedell, oil mist, or the 1950s.
• If you are doing freedom-to-operate or IPR-target work in mist lubrication (F16N7/32): stop treating the '064 patent as a risk and start treating it as ammunition. It published 1959-11-10 and is prior art against anything later; pull the whole Norgren/Friedell cluster (US 2,840,185; 2,890,765; 2,804,343; 2,966,312; 3,074,697) as a § 102/§ 103 combination set for reclassifier claims in modern oil-mist systems.
• Entry points for your own verification: PTAB E2E / PTAB Center — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ ; CourtListener full-text search for the number — https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%222912064%22 ; patent text of record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en . I am citing these as search locations rather than as specific opinions, because no opinion, institution decision, or FWD for US 2,912,064 is known to exist.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 2,912,064, starting with the assignment record and the corporate history of the original assignee.

Ownership Analysis — US 2,912,064 ("Methods and apparatus for reclassifying aerosols")

Important methodological note before the sections below. I was unable to retrieve a single recorded-assignment (reel/frame) entry for US 2,912,064 from any source reachable in this session. I could not issue a structured query against the USPTO Assignment Center API, and searches for the literal string "2912064" are dominated by the unrelated EP 2912064 (JAM-C antibodies) family — the same collision flagged in the litigation section. Because the negative is unverified rather than confirmed, I am not invoking the "say so and stop" rule; instead I present the full structure with every unverified field explicitly marked. No reel/frame numbers, correspondent names, or execution dates are fabricated below.

Inventors

• The printed patent states: "Morley V. Friedell, Wheatridge, Colo., assignor to C. A. Norgren Company, a corporation of Colorado."
• No unusual inventor-departure pattern. This is the inverse of the fire-sale tell. Friedell remained at Norgren and kept assigning to it: the GoodIP assignee page for "NORGREN CO C A" lists Friedell Morley V with 22 patents, and he co-invented later Norgren filings including US 2,966,312 (filed 1958-03-06, with Jesse A. Wilson Jr.) and US 3,074,697 (filed 1958-08-22). He was still filing for Norgren more than two years after the 1956-01-13 filing date of the patent at issue.
• The application cross-references Friedell's own earlier Norgren application, Serial No. 512,416, filed 1955-06-01 (which issued as US 2,890,765, "Methods and apparatus for generating an aerosol," assigned to C. A. Norgren Company) — a same-inventor, same-assignee family, consistent with routine in-house prosecution, not with portfolio assembly for resale.

Original assignee

C. A. Norgren Company, a Colorado corporation (Denver metro; the company's Littleton, Colorado plant and R&D lab were completed in the early 1960s).

• Primary line of business (at issue date): compressed-air / pneumatic components — air-line lubricators, filters, regulators, mist (aerosol) lubrication systems, air control valves. Founded by Carl A. Norgren around 1925 on the strength of the first automatic air-line lubricator; the patent at issue is squarely in the core product line (mist lubrication, classification F16N 7/32 — "Mist lubrication," and F16N 2210/33 applications for chains).

• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in substance. The patent's own specification describes the reclassifier as hardware mounted on real machines (a chain-and-sprocket drive, Figs. 1–2) and the assignee was a commercial manufacturer selling air-line lubrication equipment worldwide (representatives/distributors in 46 U.S. cities and 50 countries by 1964). I have, however, not verified a specific part number or catalog listing for the reclassifier of Figs. 2, 3, 4, or 6.

• Current status of the original entity: Absorbed into a large operating industrial group; the business is still operating. Corporate lineage (from IMI plc's own history page and Grace's Guide):

  1. 1972 — Imperial Metal Industries (later IMI plc) acquired Norgren (announced per The Times, 1972-11-03), including its U.S. associate C. A. Norgren; Norgren became IMI's fluid-power division.
  2. Later rebranded IMI Norgren / IMI Precision Engineering; IMI announced the divisional name change effective January 2015.
  3. Today IMI Norgren is an operating brand of IMI plc, with U.S. entities including Norgren Automation Solutions, LLC (Rochester Hills, MI) and Norgren LLC.

• Google Patents lists both "Current Assignee" and "Original Assignee" as Norgren LLC. That is a Google normalization artifact. The authoritative printed patent says C. A. Norgren Company, and Google's own "Legal Events" for the patent contain no reassignment event at all — only filed (1956-01-13), priority, granted (1959-11-10), and anticipated expiration (1976-11-10). Treat "Norgren LLC" as the modern corporate successor name for the same Norgren business, not as evidence of a recorded assignment.

Assignment timeline

Plain finding: no post-issuance assignment record for US 2,912,064 was retrievable from any source I could reach. Specifically:

• The Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en) shows a "Legal Events" list limited to filing, priority, grant, and expiration — there is no "Assignment" or "Change of Name" event, which is where Google would surface a recorded transfer.
• The page lists a "Family Applications (1)" and "Publications (1)" — a single-member family, no divisional/continuation records hinting at a later transfer transaction.
• I could not obtain any reel/frame, conveyance type, assignor/assignee, execution/recording dates, or correspondent of record entries from https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Every such field is therefore reported as "not retrievable," not as "none."

The single assignment that certainly exists is the pre-issuance one recited on the face of the patent:

• Executed date: not stated on the patent face / recorded date unknown — Reel not retrievable
  • Conveyance: Assignment (of applicant's entire interest to the assignee) — inferred from the printed "assignor to" recital; the recording itself was not retrieved
  • Assignor: Morley V. Friedell
  • Assignee: C. A. Norgren Company, a corporation of Colorado
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — no cover-sheet data obtained. I will not guess an attorney name or firm.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment at or before filing; standard 1950s corporate practice (the patent was filed 1956-01-13 and issued 1959-11-10).

Subsequent corporate ownership changes (not verified as recorded patent assignments, and therefore not asserted as reel/frame links):

• 1972 — Acquisition of Norgren (incl. C. A. Norgren) by Imperial Metal Industries / IMI plc. Because this was a share/acquisition transaction of an operating group, it is very commonly handled by a name-change or merger recording rather than an asset assignment — but I have no recording evidence for this patent either way.
• 2015 (onward) — Rebranding of Norgren to IMI Precision Engineering / IMI Norgren; a pure change of name marketing event that does not by itself transfer patent title.

Why the record may be thin or absent, plainly stated: the patent expired 1976-11-10. The Assignment Center's digitized holdings are sparse for 1950s–early-1970s paper recordings, and there was no economic reason for anyone to record a transfer of an expired patent after the mid-1970s. Absence of a retrievable record here therefore is much more likely to reflect digitization gaps than an attempted title laundering.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 2912064
    1955 : Friedell files related Norgren application
    1956 : Application filed January 13
    1959 : Patent issued November 10
    1972 : Norgren acquired by IMI plc
    1976 : Patent term expires November 10
    2015 : Norgren rebranded IMI Precision Engineering

Note: the 1972 and 2015 entries are corporate-history events, not verified recorded patent assignments; they are included because no reel/frame-specific events could be confirmed.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (the permitted case of "no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification. The only ownership link I can affirm is the sole pre-issuance assignment recited on the face of the patent — Morley V. Friedell "assignor to C. A. Norgren Company, a corporation of Colorado," for an application filed 1956-01-13 and issued 1959-11-10 — and Google Patents' legal-event list for the patent contains no assignment or change-of-name event after grant, only filing, grant, and anticipated expiration on 1976-11-10. I could not retrieve any reel/frame, correspondent, or execution date from the USPTO Assignment Center in this session, so I cannot rule out an un-digitized recording from the 1972 IMI acquisition era; a manual search of the Assignment Center and of the microfilm/paper reels (and of Colorado corporate records for C. A. Norgren Company name changes) would be needed for a definitive chain. Nothing in the evidence suggests an NPE: the counterparty in the record is a Colorado compressed-air equipment manufacturer that shipped air-line lubrication products embodying this reclassifier technology, was acquired as a going concern by IMI plc in 1972, and still operates today as IMI Norgren / IMI Precision Engineering — i.e., an operating-company chain, with no litigation ever filed.

Verification link (requires direct query; I could not execute it here): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 2912064; mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Patent source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en

Confidence: high on the inventor and original-assignee facts and on the absence of NPE indicators; low on the completeness of the assignment chain, solely because the reel/frame and correspondent data were not retrievable rather than because they are known to be absent.

I'll run targeted searches to verify the patent record via USPTO sources and to characterize each cited reference.

Let me verify the remaining cited references individually.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 2,912,064

0. Search status and scope (read this first)

What I could and could not do. I could not reach an authenticated USPTO Patent Center / Patent Full‑Text (PatFT) query in this session. What I could verify is the citation record as it is printed on the face of the patent and as mirrored in third‑party databases. Specifically:

• The patent's existence, number, title, inventor, filing/issue dates and its own "References Cited" table come from the authoritative full text supplied to me (https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en, fetched 2026‑09‑21).
• I corroborated individual citations where search permitted: US 2,605,087 (Aerosol Corp. of America, "Apparatus for obtaining aerosols," filed 1948‑07‑27 / issued 1952‑07‑29 — confirmed via US2605088A, US2605089A family listings) and US 2,691,428 (Thomas R. Thomas, "Lubrication," Auto Research Corp., filed 1949‑01‑11 / issued 1954‑10‑12, class F16N7/34 — confirmed via https://www.sumobrain.com/patents/us/Lubrication/2691428.html).
• US 2,613,067 is confirmed as in the same citation network in the other direction: its Google Patents page lists "US2912064A … C A Norgren Company … Methods and apparatus for reclassifying aerosols" among its cited‑by entries (https://patents.google.com/patent/US2613067A/en). Likewise https://patents.justia.com/patent/4787404 reproduces the citation row "2912064 | November 1959 | Friedell."

Literal-number discipline. Searching the bare string "2912064" returns, overwhelmingly, EP 2912064 A1/B1 — "JAM‑C antibodies and methods for treatment of cancer" (Imhof et al.), plus a Danish national‑phase DK/EP 2912064 T3 and a Canadian application 2912064 (HIV integrase). None of these is US 2,912,064, none shares inventor, assignee, filing date or subject matter, and I have not substituted any of them. Per the "no auto‑correction" rule they are reported only as noise to be excluded.

Minor internal inconsistency (flagged, not reconciled): the task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the authoritative fetch timestamp on the source page is 2026‑09‑21. I use the source‑page date for all "as‑of" statements and flag the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

1. Legal framework — and why "anticipates" needs care here

The application was filed 1956‑01‑13, i.e. under the 1952 Patent Act. Accordingly the §102 the examiner applied was pre‑AIA §102 (the 1956‑filed case predates §§102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and the 2011 AIA entirely). For each reference I therefore give both the substantive question (does it disclose every element?) and the statutory category the reference could occupy:

• §102(b) — printed publication/patent dated more than one year before 1956‑01‑13, i.e. before 1955‑01‑13.
• §102(a) — patent/publication before the applicant's invention date (unknown on the record; not reconstructed here).
• §102(e) — patent granted on a U.S. application filed by another before Friedell's invention date (the amendment effective 1953).

Critical threshold point: every reference below clears §102(b) except one. US 2,712,364 (Laspe), issued 1955‑07‑05, is only ~6 months before the filing date, so it is not §102(b) art; it can only be §102(a) or §102(e) art. That is a real distinction a reexamination‑style analysis must preserve, and it is easy to lose if one simply lists "prior art by issue date."

Anticipation standard. To anticipate under §102 a single reference must disclose every element of the claim as arranged. For the claims at issue:

• Claim 1 is apparatus‑specific and element‑heavy: a casing with a chamber and outlet; an aerosol generator remote from the chamber; a first inlet from that generator; a source of air under pressure; a second inlet feeding a tube extending generally coaxially of the chamber and aligned with the outlet; and means for mounting the casing closely adjacent the surface to be lubricated.
• Claims 2–4 add a passage from first inlet to chamber that directs aerosol to impinge on the exterior of the tube, at an acute (§3) or obtuse (§4) angle.
• Claim 5 is a venturi‑throat + baffle + collection recovery apparatus in combination with an aerosol‑supplied chamber.

Bottom line stated up front, with confidence: none of the eleven cited references anticipates claim 1 or claim 5 as a whole. All are cited as background/§103‑type art (and several are plainly cumulative), not as complete anticipations. The reason is structural: claim 1's combination of (i) a remote aerosol generator, (ii) an independent pressurized‑air nozzle coaxial with and aligned to the outlet, and (iii) means mounting the casing at the surface, did not exist in the 1902–1955 art, which either injected oil into steam (the lubricator cluster), generated aerosol (the nebulizer cluster), or separated mist from gas (the scrubber cluster) — but not the three together.

2. The cited references, one by one

Dates below are the filing/priority date and the publication (issue) date as recorded in the patent's citation table and corroborated where noted. "Potentially anticipates" is my assessment of the strongest §102 theory available on the printed record; because I did not obtain the full text of every reference, each is assigned an explicit confidence band.

A. The "oil/steam lubricator" cluster — most likely cited as background

1. US 1,353,081 — Stack, William Francis, "Method of and means for feeding lubricant to steam‑engines"

• Filed/priority: 1918‑08‑06 · Issued: 1920‑09‑14 · §102(b): yes (§102(a) too).
• Description (medium confidence): a steam‑engine lubricator feeding oil into the steam line so the oil is entrained and carried to the cylinders — i.e. lubricant entrained in a moving gas stream, the conceptual ancestor of oil‑mist lubrication. The related field literature and the US773545/US1026867 specimens surfaced in search show this genre consistently relies on steam, not a separate moderated‑pressure air jet, as the carrying/atomizing medium.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5 on the record; the reference lacks the independent air‑pressure nozzle, the coaxial tube/outlet alignment, the reclassification chamber, and (for claim 5) the venturi throat and baffle. Best role is §103 background on the "lubricant‑in‑gas‑stream" concept. Confidence: moderate (bibliographic data certain; technical description inferred from title/gente).

2. US 1,600,262 — Wickham, John James, "Automatic lubricator"

• Filed/priority: 1925‑09‑11 · Issued: 1926‑09‑21 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (medium confidence): an automatic/self‑acting lubricator for feeding oil to a machine part — automatic feed, not aerosol reclassification.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5. Cumulative with Stack. Confidence: moderate.

3. US 2,257,779 — Blake, "Monotype mold blade lubricator" (Waverly Press, Inc.)

• Filed/priority: 1940‑11‑14 · Issued: 1941‑10‑07 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (medium confidence): a lubricator applied to a specific moving machine element (a Monotype casting‑machine mold blade). This is the closest analogue to the application recited in claim 1 ("means for mounting the casing closely adjacent the surface to be lubricated") — lubricating a fast‑moving part.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5 in full. It is relevant to the "mounting/lubricating a moving part" element only, and only as §103 background; it discloses no reclassifier. Confidence: moderate.

4. US 2,712,364 — Laspe, "Lubricating apparatus" (Lincoln Engineering Co.)

• Filed/priority: 1954‑03‑12 · Issued: 1955‑07‑05 · §102(b): NO — issued ~6 months before the 1956‑01‑13 filing, inside the one‑year grace window. Only §102(a)/(e) art.
• Description (medium confidence): commercial oil‑mist/lubricating apparatus of the Lincoln (later Lincoln‑Norgren) line — the closest commercial‑era competitor art in the same field as the patent's own assignee.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5 in full, and its statutory status is weaker than the rest (not §102(b)). Even if it discloses a lubricant‑investment nozzle, claim 1 requires the remote generator + separate pressurized air tube coaxial with the outlet + reclassifying chamber, which a conventional lubricator need not have. Most useful as §103 art on oil‑mist delivery. Confidence: moderate on bibliographic status (high — the one‑year point is arithmetic), lower on disclosure content.

B. The "aerosol generation" cluster — the most technically on‑point

5. US 2,605,087 — Dautrebande, "Apparatus for obtaining aerosols" (Aerosol Corp. of America)

• Filed/priority: 1948‑07‑27 · Issued: 1952‑07‑29 · §102(b): yes. (Family siblings US 2,605,088 and US 2,605,089, same assignee, same 1948‑07‑27 filing and 1952‑07‑29 issue, exist and share the title.)
• Description (higher confidence — I retrieved substantive text from the 2,605,088 sibling): an aerosol generator using an air jet through constricted/enlarged sections to disperse liquid, producing aerosols of mean particle size ~0.43 micron with "substantially all particles less than 1 micron," at air pressures "of the order of 7 to 55 p.s.i.g.," with constricted sections forming a constriction/bulb geometry and explicit discussion of particle coalescence into liquid layers at barriers.
• Potentially anticipates: this is the single most dangerous §102 reference, but still not a full anticipation of claim 1 or claim 5. It uses a jet + constrictions to create aerosol (the opposite direction of Friedell's reclassification), and it lacks a remote aerosol generator feeding a separate inlet, lacks the claim‑1 mounting means at a surface to be lubricated, and (for claim 5) lacks the specific V‑shaped baffle with inturned sides plus secondary baffle and drain combination. It is, however, strong §103 art against (a) the "air‑jet‑through‑constriction" concept common to claim 5's venturi throat and (b) the acknowledgment in Friedell's spec that sub‑½‑micron particles resist reclassification — Dautrebande's data quantify exactly that sub‑micron population. Confidence: moderate‑to‑high on disclosure; high on dates.

6. US 2,536,340 — Alikonis, "Method and apparatus for making confectionery" (Paul F. Beich Co.)

• Filed/priority: 1947‑07-01 · Issued: 1951‑01‑02 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (low‑to‑medium confidence): confectionery‑manufacturing apparatus; the relevant overlap is the spray/atomization of a liquid into a gas (e.g. coating/panning), not lubrication or reclassification.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5. It is cross‑field, cited for atomization/nozzle technique. Confidence: low on technical content — I could not retrieve the text, and I will not invent a disclosure for it.

C. The "mist/gas separation" cluster — on‑point for claim 5's purpose

7. US 1,544,950 — Smith, "Gas purification" (Gas Research Co. — assignee as indexed)

• Filed/priority: 1921‑07-05 · Issued: 1925‑07-07 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (low‑to‑medium confidence): gas purification, i.e. removing entrained liquid/particulate from a gas stream — the same functional objective as claim 5 (recovering fine liquid particles from a gas).
• Potentially anticipates: relevant to claim 5's purpose, not its structure. Claim 5 specifically requires a venturi throat with the air‑tube terminating in the throat, a baffle positioned in the path of the accelerated aerosol, and means for collecting the reclassified liquid. A 1925 gas purifier may show impingement separation; it will not show the jet‑in‑throat aspiration arrangement. §103 background, not anticipation. Confidence: low‑to‑moderate.

8. US 1,828,646 — Dantsizen, "Apparatus for and process of removing soot" (General Electric Co.)

• Filed/priority: 1928‑02‑14 · Issued: 1931‑10‑20 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (low‑to‑medium confidence): apparatus/process for removing soot from a gas — again particulate removal by impingement, cross‑field to lubrication.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5 in full; tangential support for the impingement‑separation principle underlying claim 5's baffle and for why a baffle‑type reclassifier (the prior art Friedell criticizes) reclassifies only "a small portion" of the aerosol. Confidence: low‑to‑moderate.

D. The "aspiration/atomizing injector" cluster — closest on the coaxial‑tube concept

9. US 2,613,067 — Goodyer, "Device for introducing atomized liquid into gas under pressure" (Hills‑McCanna Co.)

• Filed/priority: 1950‑01‑21 · Issued: 1952‑10‑07 · §102(b): yes.
• Description (medium‑to‑higher confidence, inferred from title + confirmed cross‑citation): a device that atomizes a liquid and introduces it into a pressurized gas stream — i.e., a liquid‑into‑gas injector. Its Google Patents page explicitly lists US2912064A (Friedell, C A Norgren Company) among the documents citing it (https://patents.google.com/patent/US2613067A/en), confirming it is genuine §102(b) art of record against Friedell.
• Potentially anticipates: the strongest §102 candidate against claim 1's "second inlet + tube emitting air that draws aerosol" sub‑combination, because an injector inherently combines a liquid inlet and a pressurized‑gas path in one body. It still does not anticipate claim 1 as a whole: claim 1 requires the aerosol generator to be remote and the tube to extend generally coaxially of the chamber and be aligned with the outlet so that the emitted air draws aerosol into the chamber and accelerates it there — an aspiration‑and‑reclassification function, not merely liquid injection. Best §103 combination partner with (5) Dautrebande. Confidence: moderate.

10. US 2,691,428 — Thomas, Thomas R., "Lubrication" (Auto Research Corp.)

• Filed/priority: 1949‑01‑11 · Issued: 1954‑10‑12 · §102(b): yes. (Verified independently: SumoBrain record, assignee Auto Research Corp., class F16N7/34; also cited in later Auto Research patents such as US 3,245,621 and US 3,191,575.)
• Description (medium confidence): a lubrication patent in the oil‑mist/metered‑lubricant delivery field (F16N7/34 subclass covers air‑line/mist lubricators); the family's later "metering block nozzle" patents indicate metered lubricant delivery to machine parts.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5 in full. It is same‑field oil‑mist lubrication art and is the most relevant §103 reference on the general idea of delivering metered lubricant entrained in air to a machine part — i.e., against claim 1's "means for mounting the casing closely adjacent the surface to be lubricated." Confidence: moderate (dates/assignee high; disclosure content inferred).

E. The foreign reference — and a record‑mapping conflict I will not silently resolve

11. Foreign Patent — Germany 145,831, July 1, 1902

• §102(b): yes — a foreign printed publication/patent dated 1902, far more than one year before filing, and admissible as a foreign printed publication under the 1952 Act's §102(a)/(b).
• Description: I cannot characterize the disclosure. The printed patent cites it only as "FOREIGN PATENTS — 145,831 — Germany — July 1, 1902," with no title.
• Potentially anticipates: cannot be assessed on the record. Confidence: high that it is cited; ZERO confidence as to what it discloses — I will not speculate.

Record‑mapping conflict (building on the earlier section, not repeating it): the earlier-generated summary flagged that the printed patent's German 145,831 (1902) is rendered in Google Patents' structured citation table as US 145,831 A, "Improvement in loom‑shuttles," 1873‑12‑23. I carry that flag forward unchanged and add the consequence for this prior‑art analysis: these are analytically incompatible. A German 1902 publication would be counsel's/examiner's foreign art of unknown content; a US 1873 loom‑shuttle patent is a categorically different, textile‑field reference of essentially no lubricant significance. If the Google rendering is the operative record, then a purported §102 reference for a lubrication claim reduces to an 1873 loom‑shuttle improvement — which would be non‑sensical as §102 art. The only safe statement is that the citation exists, its identity is disputed between two sources, and the two candidate identities are not reconcilable on their face.

3. Summary table

Numbering above differs from the patent's own citation order; I grouped by technical family for analytical clarity.

4. Best available §102 theories (ranked, with the limits stated)

1. US 2,605,087 (Dautrebande) — the only reference whose substantive technical disclosure approaches a claim element of Friedell's claim 5 (jet‑driven aerosol through a constriction, with sub‑micron particle behavior expressly measured). Theory: §102(b) against claims 5 and the "violent acceleration of the aerosol" limitation. Why it likely fails as anticipation: it generates rather than reclassifies; no baffle‑with‑inturned‑sides, no secondary baffle, no drain, no upstream machine‑housing chamber.
2. US 2,613,067 (Goodyer) — best candidate against claim 1's dual‑inlet/coaxial‑gas‑tube sub‑combination. Theory: §102(b) or §103 with Dautrebande. Why it likely fails as anticipation: no remote aerosol generator recited as an element, no reclassification chamber, no outlet‑alignment/mounting means.
3. US 2,691,428 (Thomas) — best same‑field candidate on the oil‑mist‑to‑a‑part environment of claim 1. Theory: §103 with Laspe or Goodyer. Fails as anticipation for want of the separate pressurized air tube coaxial with the outlet.
4. US 2,712,364 (Laspe) — useful §103 art, but statutorily the weakest because it falls inside the 1955‑01‑13 §102(b) cutoff.

My overall conclusion: the eleven references were cited as a background and obviousness mosaic for a 1956 oil‑mist reclassifier, not as anticipations. Given claim 1's recitation of the remote aerosol generator as a claim element (a drafting choice the earlier summary correctly highlighted) and claim 5's specific venturi‑throat + V‑baffle + secondary‑baffle + drain structure, no single cited reference discloses every element of, and therefore anticipates, any of claims 1–5. I state this as an assessment of the printed record, not as verification that I have read the full text of all eleven references.

5. Explicit gaps and limitations

• Unverified reference texts. I obtained substantive text for the 2,605,088 sibling of Dautrebande and bibliographic confirmation for Thomas 2,691,428, and citation‑network confirmation for Goodyer 2,613,067. For Stack 1,353,081, Smith 1,544,950, Wickham 1,600,262, Dantsizen 1,828,646, Blake 2,257,779, Alikonis 2,536,340 and Laspe 2,712,364 I have titles, dates, assignees and indexing only. Every "description" for those is labelled as inferred and confidence‑banded; none of it should be quoted as the reference's actual disclosure.
• No USPTO database query was completed. Treat the citation table above as the art of record on the patent's face, not as a reconstruction of the examiner's rejection.
• The 1902 German reference is unassessable and is the one citation I flag as an identity conflict rather than a description.
• Date discrepancy between the task header (April 26, 2026) and the source fetch (2026‑09‑21) is flagged above.
• The OCR caveats from the prior section remain in force for every numeric parameter cited (5–15 p.s.i., preferably 10 p.s.i.; ~⅓ p.s.i. carrier; 20–40 p.s.i. generation; 8,000–10,000 ft/min; sub‑½‑micron; ~100% recovery). I have not relied on any OCR‑derived number as a limitation in this §102 analysis beyond quoting them as the patent's own statements.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en (fetched 2026‑09‑21). Corroborating: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/3698159.html; https://patents.google.com/patent/US2613067A/en; https://www.sumobrain.com/patents/us/Lubrication/2691428.html; https://patents.justia.com/patent/4787404; https://patents.google.com/patent/US2605088 (Dautrebande‑family sibling).

I'll ground the prior-art reference disclosures before building the § 103 combinations.

Let me pull the remaining cited references.

Date-cross-reference flag

Before the analysis: the task header for this section states Current Date: April 26, 2026, while the two previously generated sections were dated 2026-09-21 (the Google Patents fetch timestamp). I flag this rather than silently reconciling it, per the cross-reference rule. It does not affect any substantive conclusion below — the patent expired in 1976 and all cited art predates the 1956 filing.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 2,912,064

0. Analytical frame and hard limits

Governing law. The application was filed 1956-01-13 and granted 1959-11-10, so the controlling statute is 35 U.S.C. § 103 as enacted in the 1952 Act (pre-AIA). The modern Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) factors and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) remain the standard analytical vocabulary; contemporaneous 1950s–60s CCPA practice also required some "teaching or suggestion" in the references, so I present both a motivation-based case and a contemporaneous "suggestion in the art" case for each combination.

Two structural facts drive the whole analysis:

1. Every numerical process limit in this patent is unclaimed. The 5–15 p.s.i. air range (preferably 10 p.s.i.), the ⅓ p.s.i. carrier-fog pressure, the 20–40 p.s.i. generation pressure, the 8,000–10,000 ft/min jet velocity, the "sub-½-micron" particle limit, and the "~100% recovery" figure appear only in the specification. Claims 1–5 recite no pressure, velocity, or particle-size range. Therefore the In re Aller / In re Peterson "range in the prior art" lines of attack never become necessary, and conversely the applicant cannot rely on those numbers for patentable distinction via the claims as written.
2. Claim 1 recites the aerosol generator itself as a claim element, and claims 1–4 all terminate in a means-plus-function element ("means for mounting the casing closely adjacent the surface to be lubricated") governed by 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6 (1952 Act). Claim 5's preamble ("In combination with a device having a chamber supplied with aerosol") expressly makes the surrounding aerosol-supplied environment a claim element.

Scope of art considered. Per the "use the results from the Prior Art section" instruction, I confine the combinations to the 11 US references + 1 foreign reference listed in the printed patent's "References Cited." I do not import later art (e.g., the "Cited By" patents US 3,289,944, US 4,179,068, etc.), because those post-date the 1956 filing and are not available as § 102/§ 103 art.

Verification status of the cited references (important)

Two of my searches returned material adjacent to Laspe but not Laspe itself (US 2,206,335, US 3,098,023, and the Lincoln Co. v. Stewart-Warner line of cases). I will not describe Laspe's disclosure. It is usable only as "a lubricating apparatus from a mist-lubrication assignee," which I treat as background, not as a load-bearing reference.

One search result did surface a legally significant, on-point case that is not patent art — I use it below: Lincoln Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp., 303 U.S. 545 (1938) (https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep303/usrep303545/usrep303545.pdf).

1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA), 1956

A mechanical or lubrication engineer with roughly 3–5 years' experience in industrial oil-fog (oil-mist) lubrication systems, including: pneumatic (Venturi/aspirator) atomizers; mist distribution piping at sub-atmospheric to low gauge pressure; mist reclassifiers/nozzles at points of application; and separators/coalescers for recovering entrained mist. This is a mature, crowded, highly incremental art by 1956 — the patent's own background section concedes that baffle-type reclassifiers and jet reclassifiers were already known, that "only a small portion of the aerosol is reclassified" with baffles, and that sub-½-micron particles escaped both types.

2. Claim-element mapping to the primary references

2a. US 2,257,779 (Blake) — the closest structural reference

Blake's disclosure, as retrieved, states: the pump "has the small air nozzle 16 placed in the entrance to the larger open pipe 17 and with each blast of air exiting from the nozzle 16 oil is drawn from the well 8 through pipe 15 into the pipe 17 in atomized form, it being a mixture of oil and air that travels, by pressure, through the pipe 17." Downstream, cover block 18 carries passage 19 with branches 20, 21 that "discharge oil in very fine particles, being atomized, against the [blade]"; and in the Fig. 10 alternative, "branches 26 … preferably terminate at an acute angle to the channel so that the oil atomized in the air will be sprayed forward toward the mold blade face as it is forced from the passage."

That single reference discloses, structurally:

What Blake lacks: (i) a remote aerosol generator producing a pre-formed fine fog (Blake generates/atomizes in situ at the nozzle); (ii) any express "reclassification" step or statement about coalescing sub-micron particles into deposit-capable droplets. These two gaps are exactly what the other references supply.

2b. US 2,605,087 (Dautrebande) — reclassification, coalescence, and the sub-micron problem

The Dautrebande family (US 2,605,088 / 2,605,089, same subject matter) teaches the physical mechanism Friedell relies on. Retrieved text: the jet "dispers[es] liquid … in the form of a cloud or mist"; the cloud "contains a substantial amount of unstable liquid particles, which coalesce and form a very turbulent liquid body"; "[i]n this turbulent liquid body, the larger and unstable particles are removed from the cloud"; "the aerosol leaving member 6 is directed against the inner side of the back of the box-like baffle member 9, and must make at least one right angle change of direction… If any unstable particles are present in the aerosol, these particles will tend to deposit and coalesce." Downstream recirculation and coalescence is expressly taught: the jets draw liquid by Bernoulli effect and "excess droplets … are returned to the reservoir through the drain holes," with particle production by "passing through successive liquid-turbulent barriers." The Dautrebande literature likewise establishes that these generators produce 0.2–0.5 µm and finer particles, i.e., the same sub-micron population Friedell identifies as the unreclassified fraction.

The search also retrieved an independent corroboration of Dautrebande generator performance in the technical literature (Mercer et al., Operating Characteristics of the Lauterbach and Dautrebande Aerosol Generators; and an environmental-chamber description of the D-30 generator: "Micron-sized aerosols are produced as the result of passing through successive liquid-turbulent barriers"). This matters for level of ordinary skill and for the known-technique leg of the motivation analysis.

2c. US 2,613,067 (Goodyer) — venturi throat + suction tube + baffle in a casing

Goodyer's device, from the retrieved text of the patent and its reissue RE 24,291: a casing (inverted cup-shaped housing 8) with an inlet duct 17, outlet duct 18, a partition 19 with a central aperture 20, a chamber 23, a Venturi tube 11, a suction tube 12, a baffle plate 10 at the lower margin of the housing/sump interface, a sump-like oil receptacle 9, and a valve assembly. It is designed for use in a line between an air compressor and a pneumatic tool and "serves … to introduce into the air under pressure in transit through the pipe system atomized oil for lubricating the tool."

So Goodyer supplies, in one reference: a casing chamber; a venturi-type aspiration/entrainment element in which a pressurized air jet draws liquid up a suction tube and atomizes it into the air stream; and a baffle disposed relative to the housing and sump. Its differences from Friedell claim 5 are (i) the flow direction/orientation (Goodyer entrains liquid into air as an in-line lubricator; Friedell draws aerosol out of a chamber into a reclassifying chamber), and (ii) the absence of an explicit "reclassifying chamber" with a baffle in the path of the accelerated aerosol downstream of the throat.

2d. US 2,691,428 (Thomas) — the "chamber supplied with aerosol" environment

Thomas's claims, as retrieved, recite "A fog lubrication installation, comprising a machine casing enclosing bearings to be lubricated by a lubricant fog, a fog producing element mounted to inject a fog into said casing, an air and lubricant pump…" and, in the divisional US 2,917,132, "the excess lubricant and fog will flow back into the reservoir 710 through the pipe 730," with the fog "forced into the passage 720 to the coupling connection 721 and the tubing 722 … to the nozzles 726, 727 and 728 inside of the housing 725."

This is a direct disclosure of a remote fog generator feeding nozzles inside a machine chamber, and of the excess-fog return pathway — i.e., the environment that claim 5's preamble presupposes, and the environment in which the unreclassified-fog loss problem (venting) arises.

3. Primary combinations rendering the claims obvious

Combination A — Claim 1 (and claims 2 and 3)

Blake US 2,257,779 + Thomas US 2,691,428 + Dautrebande US 2,605,087

Why claim 1 is obvious over the combination. Thomas '428 supplies the only element Blake lacks: a remote aerosol (fog) generator whose output is piped to a nozzle structure at the point of use, mounted at/in a casing, with excess fog returning to the reservoir. Blake supplies the complete coaxial-jet-drawing-into-a-larger-aligned-passage geometry of claim 1, plus the mounting of the discharge structure immediately adjacent the surface to be lubricated (the mold blade face). Dautrebande supplies the why: a jet-drawn mist contains unstable particles that coalesce under violent velocity change and impingement, and the coalesced larger droplets are the deposit-capable fraction.

Substituting Blake's in-situ oil well + nozzle for Thomas's remote fog generator output at the first inlet is a substitution of one known lubricant-supply source for another in the same art for the same purpose — the classic KSR "interchangeability of old elements with predictable results" and, in 1950s CCPA terms, a change with no new cooperative function.

Why claims 2 and 3 are obvious. Claim 3 (acute angle) is met almost verbatim by Blake's Fig. 10: branches 26 "terminate at an acute angle to the channel so that the oil atomized in the air will be sprayed forward toward the mold blade face." Claim 2 (passage opening into the chamber so aerosol "impinge[s] upon the exterior surfaces of the tube") is the inevitable geometry of Blake's arrangement, in which the oil feed enters at the entrance to the larger pipe 17 where the nozzle 16 sits, so that the liquid necessarily contacts the nozzle exterior before being entrained. At minimum, directing a liquid/aerosol feed at the exterior of a coaxial jet tube to promote break-up/entrainment was a known expedient, and adding impingement to the Blake structure would be the obvious use of a known technique to improve the result.

Alternative for claim 3: Dautrebande's right-angle baffle turns (baffle member 9) are also angled impingement surfaces, reinforcing that angled introduction of aerosol against a surface was a recognized coalescence technique.

Combination B — Claim 4 (obtuse angle)

Blake US 2,257,779 + Dautrebande US 2,605,087 (+ the applicant's own Fig. 4–5 arrangement as a design-confirmation)

Claim 4 is the mere alternative orientation of claim 3: "obtuse" instead of "acute." Nothing in the specification attributes to the obtuse arrangement any different or unexpected result; the specification's only discussion of the opposed-flow arrangement (Figs. 4–5: passageways 45–47 "directed against the general flow through the passages") states a quantitative consequence ("reclassification … may be quite high, of the order of … or more") but no qualitative difference from the acute-angle case. A POSITA selecting between an acute and an obtuse presentation angle of an aerosol feed relative to a coaxial air jet is making a predictable design choice among a limited number of identified, equivalent alternatives, with the expected trade-off (more impingement/coalescence on the tube wall versus less interference with the jet). That is a § 103 conclusion under KSR, and it was equally a "mere matter of mechanical choice" under pre-1966 practice.

Combination C — Claim 5

Goodyer US 2,613,067 + Dautrebande US 2,605,087 + Thomas US 2,691,428

Element-by-element:

No single reference anticipates claim 5 (Goodyer lacks the aerosol-supplied chamber and the reclassifying-chamber/baffle downstream of the throat; Dautrebande is an aerosol producer, not a recoverer). The rejection is therefore a proper § 103 combination, not a § 102 rejection.

Motivation to combine (claim 5). The patent's own stated problem supplies the objective, and the references supply the solution structure:

1. The problem was known and articulated. Friedell's background section concedes that "very fine particles, of the order of less than ½ micron, will not be reclassified or deposited by the systems used." Dautrebande had already characterized the same sub-micron population (0.3–0.5 µm and finer) and had already taught that unstable fine particles coalesce when the aerosol is passed through turbulent liquid barriers and forced through successive direction changes against baffles. A POSITA confronting vented sub-micron fog in an Auto Research-style fog-lubricated housing would look directly to Dautrebande's coalescence teachings.
2. The recovery problem is inherent in Thomas '428's environment. Thomas '428 expressly provides for "excess lubricant and fog" flowing back to the reservoir and for a return pipe; a recovery device threaded into a housing vent (Friedell's Fig. 6 recovery reclassifier 62 into threaded vent opening 61) is the ordinary, predictable way to capture what the system already returns by design.
3. The component structures are all conventional and were combined for their known functions. Goodyer's venturi/suction-tube aspirator is used for what venturi aspirators are used for (drawing and entraining a liquid into a gas stream). Dautrebande's baffles and right-angle turns are used for what baffles are used for (impaction and coalescence of the larger/unstable droplets). No reference is being asked to perform a function it did not already perform — which is the KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
4. The collection/recirculation concept is expressly prefigured. Dautrebande's drains return excess droplets to the reservoir; Goodyer has a sump. Adding a drain 71 at the bottom of a reclassifying chamber to reuse the reclassified oil is the natural completion of those teachings, not an inventive addition.
5. Contemporaneous "suggestion" framing. Even under the stricter pre-KSR CCPA approach, the suggestion is present in the art itself: Dautrebande's teaching that baffle impingement and direction change cause coalescence and deposition is a direct suggestion to place a baffle in the path of an accelerated aerosol in order to coalesce it, which is precisely claim 5's characterizing combination.

4. Aggregation / "no new function" theory (applies to claim 1 in particular)

Claim 1's addition over Blake is essentially the characterization of an existing acceleration event as "reclassification" plus the recited presence of a remote, old aerosol generator. If the generator and the coaxial-jet structure are both old and each performs only its own pre-existing function in the claimed combination, an aggregation attack lies independently of § 103.

Lincoln Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp., 303 U.S. 545 (1938), which surfaced in my searches, is directly on point and is the strongest single legal authority against claim 1's scope: the combination of pump, conduit, coupler and fitting was old; the Court held that claiming a genuine improvement ("chuck") in combination with "old elements which performed no new function in his claimed combination" renders the patent "void as claiming more than the applicant invented," because "[t]he mere aggregation of a number of old parts or elements which, in the aggregation, perform or produce no new or different function or operation than that theretofore performed or produced by them, is not patentable invention."

Applied here: the aerosol generator performs its old function (making fog); the coaxial tube performs Blake's old function (aspirating and entraining); the casing/outlet performs its old function (directing the stream). The asserted new result — penetration of the air barrier created by a fast-moving chain — is the inherent consequence of discharging larger, higher-momentum droplets, which is precisely the coalescence behavior Dautrebande already described. That is a strong argument that claim 1 is an aggregation of old elements with no new cooperative function.

5. Points that cut against the § 103 rejection (defenses to anticipate)

For balance, the applicant/patentee's strongest non-obviousness responses:

1. The functional shift to "penetration of an air barrier." Friedell's asserted advance is depositing lubricant on a part whose own motion generates a shielding air current (arrow 12 of Fig. 1). None of the verified references addresses reclassification specifically to overcome a self-generated aerodynamic barrier. This is the best candidate for a "new result" argument — but it is a use argument, and claim 1's preamble ("immediately prior to the deposition of the aerosol on a surface to be lubricated") states the environment/use without reciting any air-barrier parameter or structural means for coping with one. Overcome by the counter-argument that a higher-momentum droplet cloud necessarily resists deflection more than a low-velocity fog — a relationship well within the ordinary skill level.
2. The claim 5 recovery embodiment's reported ~100% recovery. If substantiated by comparative data (rather than an unsupported assertion in the specification), a showing that the venturi-throat + V-baffle-with-inturned-sides (69) + secondary baffle (70) combination recovers substantially all sub-½-micron aerosol where the prior baffle-type and jet reclassifiers recovered only a small portion could support a KSR "unexpected results" rebuttal. Critically: the specification as retrieved contains no comparative data, no test results, and no measured baseline for the prior reclassifiers — the "5 to 100%" figures read as asserted performance, not demonstrated performance. Weight: weak-to-moderate, and it is a specification argument, not claim wording.
3. The V-shaped baffle with inturned sides plus the secondary baffle extending "a distance greater than the spacing of the sides 69." This specific recirculation geometry is the most structurally detailed feature in the patent — but it appears only in the specification, and claim 5 recites only "a baffle … positioned in the path of movement of the accelerated aerosol." Nothing in claim 5 captures the inturned sides, the secondary baffle, or the stated dimensional relationship. Under the rule that claims measure the patentee's right to exclude, this detailed geometry cannot save claim 5.
4. Absence of a single-reference § 102 position. Neither claim 1 nor claim 5 is anticipated by any verified reference. If the patentee persuades the trier that the TSM-type "suggestion" requirement of the era was unmet, the combination attack could fail on that procedural ground. This is the practical weak point of the rejection, and it is why Combination C is built to show the suggestion inside Dautrebande's own text (baffle impingement → coalescence) rather than relying only on the applicant's problem statement.
5. Secondary considerations. I found no evidence of commercial success, copying, licensing, or industry praise in the sources searched, and Friedell's patent does not appear in the "Cited By" lists of any dominant mist-lubrication patent in a way that suggests the market adopted the Fig. 1–5 point-of-use reclassifier. Nexus and weight are unestablished either way. Note: the patent's own "Cited By" list (US 3,289,944 Bryant Grinder oil-mist system; US 4,179,068 liquid spray devices; US 5,023,036 Siemens piezoelectric lubricating device) shows citation by later, unrelated assignees, which is evidence of art relevance, not of commercial success.

6. Conclusion

Overall assessment: claims 1–5 would very likely have been held obvious under § 103, with claim 3 the weakest claim (its distinguishing acute-angle feature is expressly disclosed in Blake) and claim 5 the claim with the most defensible — but still submarginal — non-obviousness argument (the specific venturi-throat + reclassifying-chamber + baffle + collector combination is more than a bare substitution, and the ~100%-recovery result is asserted as unexpected, though unsupported by data in the specification).

Two structural defects make the patent especially vulnerable to a combination attack: (a) the claims contain no numerical limitations at all, so the process parameters on which the specification's argument depends are unavailable; and (b) claim 1's means-plus-function "mounting" element covers any structure performing the recited function, so Blake's cover block screwed to the mold (and Goodyer's threaded housing, and Thomas's casing-mounted nozzles) all read on it.

7. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence in the Blake-based analysis for claims 1–4: I retrieved Blake's full text, and its coaxial-nozzle-in-larger-pipe structure and acute-angle passage language are unambiguous.
• Moderate confidence on Combination C (claim 5): Goodyer's and Dautrebande's disclosures are verified in text, but my reconstruction of Goodyer's exact flow path (which side of the venturi the oil enters, and the precise position of baffle plate 10 relative to chamber 23) is based on retrieved description and abstract rather than a line-by-line read of the drawings. A formal rejection would require figure-level verification of Goodyer against Friedell's Fig. 6.
• Not verified: US 2,712,364 (Laspe). I could not retrieve its disclosure in this session and therefore make no assertion about what it teaches. It is not load-bearing in any combination above.
• Not verified: US 1,353,081 (Stack), US 1,544,950 (Smith), US 1,600,262 (Wickham), US 1,828,646 (Dantsizen), US 2,536,340 (Alikonis). These are cited in the patent but I have not read them; any of them could strengthen or weaken the above, particularly Smith 1,544,950 ("Gas purification"), whose title suggests a venturi scrubber/aspirator that could be a better venturi-throat reference for claim 5 than Goodyer, and Dantsizen 1,828,646 ("removing soot"), which by title/assignee suggests electrical precipitation of fine particulates and could bear on the fine-particle recovery rationale. These are potentially significant gaps and should be closed before the analysis is relied upon.
• Excluded on the record-mapping flag: the foreign reference. The printed patent lists "Foreign Patent, 145,831, Germany, July 1, 1902," while Google's structured table renders it as US 145,831 A ("Improvement in loom-shuttles," 1873-12-23). Per the no-auto-correct rule I treat these as two different citations that the source has conflated. The 1873 loom-shuttle reference has no bearing on aerosol reclassification; the 1902 German reference's disclosure is unavailable to me and I do not rely on it.
• Excluded on legal grounds: Friedell's own copending application Serial No. 512,416, filed June 1, 1955 (probably US 2,890,765, issued 1959-06-16 — flagged as probable, not confirmed in the prior sections). Because pre-AIA § 102(e) requires a patent "granted on an application … by another," a grant to the same inventive entity is not § 102(e) art, and therefore (absent a § 102(b) publication or an obviousness-type double-patenting theory) is not available as § 103 art against these claims. I note it so it is not mistakenly folded into a combination.

Sources relied upon (URLs):

• US 2,912,064: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2912064/en
• US 2,257,779 (Blake): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US2257779A](/patent/US2257779A)/en and https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4b/33/30/378bfbccd4ffa4/US2257779.pdf
• US 2,613,067 (Goodyer): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US2613067A](/patent/US2613067A)/en , https://www.sumobrain.com/patents/us/Device-introducing-atomized-liquid-into/[2613067](/patent/2613067).html , and the reissue text at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0a/de/dd/b23be35aaddbb7/[USRE24291](/patent/USRE24291).pdf
• US 2,605,087/2,605,088 (Dautrebande): https://patents.google.com/patent/US2605088 , https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2e/41/38/950379c6e31aaa/US2605089.pdf
• US 2,691,428 (Thomas) and divisional US 2,917,132: https://www.sumobrain.com/patents/us/Lubrication/[2691428](/patent/2691428).html , http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c0/31/5b/d2ff07502858f0/US2917132.pdf
• Lincoln Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp., 303 U.S. 545 (1938): https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep303/usrep303545/usrep303545.pdf