US 3422507

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

US 3,422,507 — Search Findings

Search scope note: I ran searches for the literal identifier "3422507" against web-accessible patent and docket material. I did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket entry, complaint, or appeal involving this patent number. The likely explanation is the patent's age and status: it is recorded as "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 1986‑01‑21, and any presumptive term for a 1969 patent would have long since lapsed. I have no authoritative evidence of litigation, so I state that as an absence of findings rather than an affirmative "never litigated." Likewise, I found no USPTO reissue, reexamination, or assignment-record activity beyond what is reproduced below.

Bibliographic Data

Abstract (as published)

A band provided with a buckle for loose and tight fastening, capable of being fastened by (1) inserting check pieces — opposed to one another along the edges at both sides of an openable plate fitted openably to the buckle — into grooves in the edges at both sides of the band so the check pieces can slide along the grooves, (2) setting a supporting plate formed by bending an end of the openable plate into depressions in the base plate of the buckle, and (3) thrusting a click at the top of a spring plate fitted to the base plate into one of the tightening (fastening) grooves of the band through the small hole in the openable plate.

Plain-Language Overview of the Claims

The patent has two claims: claim 1 (independent) and claim 2 (dependent, referring back to claim 1).

Claim 1 — the buckle-and-band assembly. In plain terms, this covers a buckle whose base plate has:

• Band connecting pieces and upright side plates formed integrally on either side of the base plate;
• A supporting part at the connecting-piece end, made by bending the ends of the side plates inward to create depressions/supporting pieces;
• A shaft at the opposite (free) end of the side plates, and on that single shaft are pivoted both (a) an arc-shaped spring plate topped with a click and (b) an openable plate ("lid"/closure plate) that carries U-shaped check pieces facing one another along its side edges, with the plate's inside face acting as a sliding surface for the band, and a supporting plate at its front edge with a hole near it;
• A lid over the supporting part, with a hole in it.
• The functional result: when the openable plate is closed, the spring plate's click passes through the lid's hole and the openable plate's hole and drops into a fastening hole in the band that is attached to the buckle's connecting pieces — thereby locking the band at a selected position. The protruding strip on the openable plate's support plate seats in the base plate's depressions, keeping the buckle closed and preventing loosening.

So claim 1 is essentially: buckle base + bent side plates forming a support + single pivot shaft carrying both the click-spring and the hinged clamp plate + dual-hole click engagement into the band's fastening holes.

Claim 2 — the link/segment variant. This adds the limitation that the band itself is made of multiple connecting pieces (links), and that the clearances between adjacent connecting pieces serve as the fastening grooves into which the click engages — i.e., no dedicated punched fastening hole is needed because the inter-link gaps perform that role.

Technical Points Worth Flagging

• One shaft, two functions: both the spring plate base (16) and the openable plate base (20) are loosely fitted on the same shaft (13) at the free ends of side plates 6/7. That stacked-pivot arrangement is the core structural idea distinguishing it from the cited clasp references.
• Directional locking: the arc-bent spring plate allows the band to be pulled one way (compressing the click) but not back the other way (click caught in a hole/gap). The specification describes this as a one-way ratchet-like hold that is nonetheless releasable by lifting the openable plate.
• Aesthetic/functional intent stated in the spec: the buckle sits beneath the band so it is hidden when worn, avoiding snagging and protrusion.

Uncertainty / Caveats

• Assignee information is inconsistent across sources (Google Patents says "Individual"/"Individual"; FreePatentsOnline says "Hideo, Ikeda"). The safest reading is that this was an unassigned individual filing by the inventor, Hideo Ikeda — not a corporate-owned patent.
• The "Application Number" field is rendered variously as US 665,034 A and US3422507DA; these are different identifiers (the latter appears to be a Google/USPTO artifact combining the patent number and a document-type suffix). I have not auto-corrected either.
• I found no CAFC 2026 docket material for this number. Because the patent expired in 1986, the absence of litigation is consistent with its status, but I cannot rule out old, un-indexed District Court actions from the 1969–1986 window.
• The Family/Citing data shows 10–11 third-party citations (e.g., US 3,574,903 — Tonan Kinzoku Kogyo, 1971) and one family member citing it (FR 2,699,796 B1, 1995), which is normal downstream citation, not evidence of validity challenge.

Sources: Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en; FreePatentsOnline, https://www.freepatentsonline.com/3422507.html.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 3422507.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me check a few more litigation-specific databases.

Litigation Search Result for US Patent 3,422,507

No litigation involving US Patent 3,422,507 was found.

I searched for records of infringement actions, declaratory judgment actions, and other court proceedings referencing this patent number. I was unable to locate any case — no plaintiff, no defendant, no docket, no jurisdiction, no outcome — in any of the accessible sources.

Searches performed

• General web searches combining the patent numbers "3422507" / "3,422,507" / "US3422507" with terms such as "litigation," "lawsuit," "infringement," "docket," and "case."
• Searches on litigation-focused/patent-database sources (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia Patents) and attempts directed at the Unified Patents litigation portal and CourtListener.
• Searches pairing the patent title and inventor name ("Hideo Ikeda," "Band provided with a buckle for loose and tight fastening") with litigation terms.

All results returned only prosecution/bibliographic and citation data, or unrelated identifier collisions (e.g., an unrelated European patent EP 3422507 B1, a Florida LLC FEI number, and a Texas state-tax case). None of these concern US 3,422,507, and I have excluded them.

Contextual notes (why no litigation is expected)

Per the authoritative record for this patent:

• Inventor / assignee: Hideo Ikeda (an individual; original assignee "Individual"). There is no corporate assignee that would be a likely litigation plaintiff.
• Priority: 1966‑10‑13 (JP6711166); filed: 1967‑09‑01; granted: 1969‑01‑21.
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 1986‑01‑21. A patent that expired in 1986 could not support an infringement action filed after that date (35 U.S.C. § 271 damages recoverable generally only for infringement occurring during the term).
• Foreign family members exist (CH462516A, DE1557468A1) — these are foreign counterparts, not US litigation.
• The patent is cited as prior art by later patents (e.g., US3574903A, WO1985004559A1, US9609922B2) and its listed references are US1591295, US1632178, US1682450, and US2654934. Prior‑art citation is not litigation.

Caveats and limitations

• This is a negative finding based on publicly indexed sources. I do not have direct query access to PACER, Docket Navigator, LexisNexis/Derwent, or Westlaw. It is possible that a very old, low‑profile, or unindexed action exists that would not appear in open web results.
• I was unable to reach the Unified Patents litigation portal or CourtListener directly before exhausting my search steps, so those specific databases were not exhaustively queried.

Conclusion: Based on the available information, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 3,422,507. If a definitive answer is required, a paid docket service (PACER, Docket Navigator) or a professional search firm should be engaged, but given the patent's 1986 expiration and individual ownership, the probability of any such suit is very low. If you have a specific case number or party in mind, I can re‑run a targeted search.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before drafting.

PTAB Proceedings Report — US 3,422,507 ("Band provided with a buckle for loose and tight fastening")

Verification basis: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP ingest) returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 3,422,507. I ran targeted web searches against PTAB/PTACTS petition text, Federal Circuit and reexamination material, and general patent-aggregator pages. Nothing surfaced. I did not invent proceeding numbers, and I found no IPR/PGR/CBM docket to report.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. Breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and blunt: this is not a "hardened patent" case and it is not an "IPR-narrowed" case — it is a patent that was already 26 years expired before IPR even existed, so there is nothing for the Board to have done and nothing for a defendant to fear from the claims. Anyone asserting US 3,422,507 today is asserting an expired, unenforceable-in-fact patent (see dates below); the absence of PTAB activity is not a sign of a patent that "survived" challenge — it is a consequence of the patent predating the entire AIA trial regime.

Key date facts (from the authoritative Google Patents record, https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en):

• Priority: 1966-10-13 (JP 6711166); Filed: 1967-09-01; Granted/Published: 1969-01-21.
• Anticipated expiration: 1986-01-21 — a pre-1995 grant, so term = 17 years from issue. Patents issued before 1980-12-12 were not subject to maintenance fees, so there is no early-lapse-for-nonpayment wrinkle; the term ran to its natural 17-year end.
• AIA trials became available 2012-09-16 (AIA § 6(c)(2)(A)), i.e., ~26.7 years after expiry.

No proceeding to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to populate, because none exists. Rather than fabricate a caption, here is why each AIA vehicle was structurally unavailable:

Caveat, stated plainly: I could not query PTAB E2E / PTAB API and the reexamination certificate database directly in this session; my conclusion rests on the canonical ODP structured block (which is dispositive for AIA trials) plus targeted searches that returned nothing on point. A reexamination certificate, if one ever issued, would appear on the patent's face at https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en under "Reexamination Certificate" — worth a 30-second PatentCenter/Global Dossier check (https://globaldossier.uspto.gov/) before relying on this in a brief.

What is on the public record (web-search confirmed, but these are not proceedings):

• Family members, all long expired: CH462516A (published 1968-09-15), DE1557468A1 (published 1970-04-02).
• Only four prior-art references were cited on the face of the patent: US 1,591,295 (Donaldson, 1926-07-06), US 1,632,178 (S&B Lederer, 1927-06-14), US 1,682,450 (Wanninger, 1928-08-28), US 2,654,934 (Forstner Chain, 1953-10-13).
• The patent is cited as prior art by 11 later references, including US 3,574,903 (Tonan Kinzoku Kogyo, granted 1971-04-13 — a fastening device for wristwatch bands) and several design patents/design registrations (USD279555, USD335835, USD879653, USD912563, USD988901 — e.g., https://patents.justia.com/patent/D879653, which lists "3422507 | January 1969 | Ikeda"). Citation as prior art is not a PTAB challenge — do not let an adversary dress citations up as validity proceedings.

Strategic summary

Claim status: both claims UNTESTED before the PTAB — because the Board never had jurisdiction in time. Claims 1 and 2 were never canceled, never confirmed, and never construed by any APJ panel. That is not a signal of strength. Claims 1 and 2 both lapsed with the patent on 1986-01-21 and are now in the public domain along with the whole disclosure (the drawing figures and the "Definitions" abstract are free to practice). Any invalidity analysis you build should be for historic exposure only — e.g., if an adversary is chasing royalties over sales made in the 1970s–early 1980s — and not for present-day conduct.

Estoppel landscape: nothing to estop and nothing estopped. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against any defendant, because estoppel requires an IPR "that results in a final written decision under section 318(a)." No FWD exists. Reciprocally, no petitioner is barred — but that is cold comfort, since there is no live patent to challenge. Every prior-art ground remains nominally "available" and simultaneously worthless: the statute of limitations and the § 286 six-year damages lookback (35 U.S.C. § 286) mean a complaint filed in 2026 could, at most, reach alleged infringement from 2020 forward — years in which the patent did not exist. Practically: zero recoverable damages period. The same logic defeats any injunction theory.

Pattern signals: none, and none possible. No serial petitioner, no repeat filer, no Unified Patents–style defensive aggregator, no PTAB appeal history, no Federal Circuit docket, and no patent owner appellate activity. The patent is held by an individual (Hideo Ikeda, per the ODP assignment field; original assignee "Individual"). The only trace of the patent in modern prosecution is as a citation in third-party design patents for strap buckles and watches — the "small c" prior-art role, not the "challenged patent" role.

Recommended next steps

1. If you have received a demand letter or complaint citing US 3,422,507: treat it as a red flag. Confirm the face-of-patent data at https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en (grant 1969-01-21; anticipated expiration 1986-01-21) and pull the PatentCenter / Global Dossier record (https://globaldossier.uspto.gov/) to confirm no reexamination certificate ever modified the claims. Then move promptly — a Rule 12(b)(6) motion (expired patent, no actionable infringement) plus a fee/§ 285 or Rule 11 letter is the efficient path; do not budget for an IPR you cannot file on an expired, non-asserted-in-good-faith patent.
2. Confirm the negative on PTAB activity yourself before filing anything that characterizes the record: search PTAB E2E and the PTAB API/ODP for "3422507" and for the caption "Ikeda," and check the PTAB decisions page (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) for any ex parte appeal or reexamination appeal touching the patent. Also check CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) and Docket Navigator/Alarm for any district-court docket naming "3,422,507." I found nothing, and I want that corroborated rather than assumed.
3. If a historic-infringement claim is threatened (pre-1986 conduct): the limitations and laches analysis, not the PTAB, is your battlefield. Note that no AIA trial ground is available to you, and no estoppel cuts either way — the defense is the expiration date and the damages window, not prior art.
4. If you are counseling a manufacturer of modern watch bands/strap buckles: the practical IP risk from this patent is nil, but its disclosure (U-shaped check pieces sliding in band edge grooves, spring-plate click engaging fastening holes, openable plate with supporting strip in base-plate depressions) is now fair game as prior art against others' later patents — the 11 forward citations above show the art has been used that way. Consider it a § 102(b) reference, not a threat.

Bottom line for the client: the USPTO ODP shows no AIA trial proceedings on US 3,422,507, and my searches found none either. There is no FWD to point to, no claim cancellation to cite, and no estoppel to exploit. The dispositive fact is the calendar: granted 1969-01-21, expired 1986-01-21, and unreachable by IPR/PGR/CBM as a practical matter. If a demand letter cites these claims, the patent is expired and the assertion should be challenged head-on — not IPR'd.

I'll verify the assignment record before writing anything. Let me check the primary sources.

Ownership Analysis — US 3422507

Patent: US 3,422,507 — "Band provided with a buckle for loose and tight fastening"
Inventor: Hideo Ikeda · Filed: 1967-09-01 · Issued: 1969-01-21 · Anticipated expiration: 1986-01-21
Sources consulted: Google Patents US3422507, USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov), legacy assignment.uspto.gov index, FreePatentsOnline, Justia Patents.

Up-front verification caveat: I could not retrieve any recorded assignment from the USPTO Assignment Center for this patent — the queries returned no results, so I am reporting the absence of records rather than an empty chain I inspected directly. For a US patent issued in 1969, this is expected and only weakly probative: digitized reel/frame coverage in the modern Assignment Center is materially incomplete for pre‑1970 issuances, where assignments frequently exist only in paper-era Official Gazette notices. Read "no records" below as "no digitized records found," not as a certified clean chain.

Inventors

Notes on unusual patterns:

• No employee-assignment trail exists to trace. There is no corporate assignor anywhere in the record, so the classic "all inventors departed the original assignee within 12 months of filing" precursor to a portfolio fire-sale is not applicable — there was no employer to depart from.
• A foreign priority claim to JP6711166, priority date 1966-10-13, is recorded, consistent with a Japanese filing (Showa 41, 1966). I could not verify the Japanese applicant of record; if the JP filing named a company while the US filing named only the individual, that would be a noteworthy divergence — but I have no evidence for it and will not speculate.
• Canadian/EP family members share the same inventor-owner posture (no assignee shown for CH462516A or DE1557468A1 in the data retrieved).

Original assignee

Individual — Hideo Ikeda.

• Entity named on the issued patent: none corporate. The patent issued to the inventor as an individual. Google Patents' listed "Current Assignee: Individual" carries the site's own disclaimer that listed assignees may be inaccurate, and here it is simply a restatement of the inventor's name, not a corporate successor.
• Primary line of business / product embodying the claims: The claimed subject matter is a watch-band / waist-belt buckle (IPC A44C5/22, A44C5/24; US Cl. 24/265) with a spring-plate click, an openable plate with U-shaped check pieces, and a sliding band engagement. There is no evidence that any operating company ever commercialized this specific claim set under the inventor's ownership, and no corporate entity is recorded as shipping a product.
• Current status: The patent is Expired – Lifetime with an anticipated expiration of 1986-01-21. Any enforcement window closed ~40 years ago. No successor entity is recorded as holding the asset; absent records, the rights lapsed with the inventor's own ownership.

(Forward-citation context, not ownership: later design patents by Citizen Watch Co., Ltd. (USD279555) and Marui Ltd. (USD335835) cite US3422507 as prior art. Citation is not assignment and does not indicate any transfer.)

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments were found for US 3422507.

• The Google Patents legal-events block for this patent lists only: application filed 1967-09-01, granted 1969-01-21, published 1969-01-21, anticipated expiration 1986-01-21. No assignment, security-interest, merger, change-of-name, or license event appears.
• Queries against the USPTO Assignment Center / legacy assignment index returned no reel/frame records, and therefore no correspondent of record to report.
• Family members CH462516A (published 1968-09-15) and DE1557468A1 (published 1970-04-02) likewise show no assignee of record in the retrieved data.

Finding: on the available record, this patent remained with the individual inventor for its entire life and lapsed on expiration. That is itself the substantive result — it is the ordinary profile of a lone-inventor mechanical patent from 1969, not a truncated ownership chain. Because I cannot rule out undigitized paper-era records, I will not characterize the chain as affirmatively "clean."

Per the stated output spec, the remaining sections are gated on the existence of assignment records. I have not fabricated any; the prescribed verdict for the no-records case is stated below for completeness.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 3422507
    1966 : Japanese priority application filed
    1967 : US application filed by Hideo Ikeda
    1969 : US 3422507 issued to the individual inventor
    1986 : Patent expired
         : No assignments ever recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — the record contains no assignment events at all, and the prescribed outcome for a no-records patent is "insufficient data" rather than a clean bill of health. The evidence that does exist (individual inventorship, no corporate assignee on the face of the patent, expiry on 1986-01-21, zero litigation) points toward a non-asserting, never-transferred lone-inventor asset — the opposite of an NPE profile, but established by absence rather than by affirmative reel/frame documentation. To upgrade this to a definitive chain-of-title finding, a manual pull of pre-1970 paper assignment records (or the JP priority application JP6711166) would be required; the modern Assignment Center does not appear to hold digitized records for this issuance.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 3422507) → expect zero results, which would confirm the finding above; and https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en → Legal Events.

I'll search for authoritative material on US 3,422,507 and its cited references.

Let me pull details on the remaining three cited references.

Let me confirm the connector reference and check the USPTO record.

Prior Art Analysis — US 3,422,507

Scope and method note (read this first)

Two limitations on this pass, stated plainly rather than papered over:

1. USPTO direct access was not completed. I was not able to reach a live PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text (patft) record for this number within the search budget. The authoritative bibliographic and citation data below come from the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en), which is sourced from USPTO data, cross-checked against FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/3422507.html) and confirming references on Justia (D879653 cites "3422507 | January 1969 | Ikeda"). Both primary records agree on the number, title, inventor, dates, and the four U.S. patent references cited on the face. Treat the following as high-confidence but not as a substitute for the certified file wrapper.

2. "Potentially anticipates" is answered honestly, not generously. I applied the actual §102 test — a reference anticipates only if it discloses every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. On the face of these four documents, none of them anticipates either claim. They are §103/background art. I explain why per reference below rather than forcing an anticipation label.

Number verified literally: application serial 665,034, filed 1967‑09‑01, JP priority 1966‑10‑13 (JP6711166), issued 1969‑01‑21, 2 claims, Examiner Donald A. Griffin. Issued 1969 so it is pre‑AIA; §§102/103 (pre‑AIA) and §112 govern. No CAFC 2026 docket exists for this number (per the previously generated section, consistent with an expiration of 1986‑01‑21).

The complete prior art of record

The patent cites exactly four U.S. references. There is no foreign art cited on the face, and no non-patent literature. All four are listed on the Google Patents page under "Patent Citations (4)" and on the FPO record under "US Patent References."

Chronology is worth noting: the newest reference is 1953 — sixteen years before the 1969 grant, and a decade before the 1966 priority date. The examiner reached back 43 years for the oldest. That pattern (old, single-feature references) is itself a tell that these were assembled as §103 obviousness-type art or background, not as anticipatory art.

Reference-by-reference analysis

1. US 1,591,295 — Donaldson, "Clasp for bracelets"

• Full citation: US 1,591,295 A; filed 1925‑12‑26; issued 1926‑07‑06; inventor Donaldson, Edward Brasier. (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US1591295.)
• Disclosure: A jewelry clasp whose housing (2) has a hinged cover (3) and side walls (8) pierced with notches (7) — shown as six notches in three pairs, providing "three adjustments of the length of the bracelet." The mating inner member (1) is a flat plate with tenons/projections (9) that seat in the notches. The cover is hinged (6) and closes against the side walls to hold the projections and depressions in engagement. Variants use undercut notches so bracelet tension increases security (Fig. 5) and partially-cut notches to hide the adjustability (Fig. 6). The reference also cross-cites Donaldson's own co-pending Ser. 35,302 of 1925‑06‑06.
• Mapping to claim 1: This is the closest of the four on the two-part locking architecture. It discloses a base/housing with side walls (cf. side plates 6/7), an openable cover plate (cf. openable plate 19), and positive projection-into-depression engagement that the closed cover holds in place (cf. protruding strip 23 seating in depressions 8/9 of supporting pieces 10/11). The stated benefit — that bracelet tension increases the security of engagement — parallels Ikeda's "completely eliminating the fear for getting loose."
• Anticipation verdict: No — does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 2. Donaldson is missing the entire click-and-spring subassembly that claim 1 recites: there is no shaft at the free ends of side plates carrying both an arc-bent spring plate with a click and the openable plate on the same pivot, no U‑shaped check pieces facing one another along the edges of the openable plate, no sliding surface for a band, no lid with a hole through which a click emerges, and no click engaging fastening holes in the band. Donaldson's adjustment is achieved by choosing which notch pair the tenons enter — a discrete, manual, tool-free re-seating — rather than by a one‑way, spring‑biased click that permits sliding in one direction and blocks the other.
• Best use in prosecution: §103, as a secondary reference showing that a hinged cover closing over interengaging projections/depressions was known for holding a bracelet/strap adjustment against loosening. It does not supply the spring-plate/click element.

2. US 1,632,178 — S & B Lederer Co., "Connecter for wrist-watch straps"

• Full citation: US 1,632,178 A; filed 1926‑04‑08; issued 1927‑06‑14; S & B Lederer Co. (Confirms its citation status: the Google Patents page for US 2,399,667 lists "US1632178A (en) | Connecter for wrist-watch straps".)
• Disclosure: A connector for joining a wrist-watch strap end. Lederer was an active Providence, RI strap house of the era (cf. US 2,191,314, "Wrist watch strap construction," assigned to S. & B. Lederer Company). The reference is directed to strap-end attachment hardware — the class of structure Ikeda calls "connecting pieces."
• Mapping to claim 1: At most, it maps to the element "a buckle base plate provided with band connecting pieces … as their integral parts." That is a single, largely conventional element.
• Anticipation verdict: No — does not anticipate either claim. A strap-end connector discloses no spring plate, no click, no coaxial dual-pivot shaft, no U-shaped check pieces, no sliding surface, no lid-with-hole, and no fastening-hole engagement.
• Best use in prosecution: §103 background only, and weak even at that — a one-element reference cannot carry a combination. I would not rely on it.

3. US 1,682,450 — Wanninger et al., "Belt buckle"

• Full citation: US 1,682,450 A; Application filed 1927‑05‑26, Ser. No. 194,484; issued 1928‑08‑28; inventors Curt K. Wanninger and (per FPO) Herbert Hofmann. IPC A44B11/22 — the same IPC subclass/subgroup as Ikeda's primary classification.
• Disclosure: A belt buckle in two cooperating plates. A hook plate with hook (8) is anchored in any one of several openings (7) near one belt end, giving coarse longitudinal adjustment. The opposite belt end (12) carries an eye plate (13) with an eye portion (14) and multiple eye openings (22); the hook engages one of the openings (22) to give "take‑up" fine adjustment. The eye plate also has a rear protective portion (15) that turns over the belt edge (17) to prevent fraying.
• Mapping to claim 1: Maps to the functional core of "engage with one of the fastening holes" — a protrusion selectively entering one of a plurality of holes in a band to fix position, with multiple discrete adjustment positions and no need for a separate buckle tongue. It is genuinely relevant to the "loose and tight fastening at any optional position" objective recited in Ikeda's specification.
• Anticipation verdict: No — does not anticipate either claim. The Wanninger projection is a static hook on a plate, not a spring-biased click riding an arc-bent spring plate pivoted on the same shaft as the openable plate. It has no openable plate with U-shaped check pieces, no sliding surface, no lid-with-hole, and its adjustment is by deliberate re-hooking rather than by one-way sliding. It also has nothing corresponding to claim 2's link-clearance grooves.
• Best use in prosecution: §103 secondary art on the proposition that a projection entering one of a series of band holes for position adjustment was old. Note the classification overlap (A44B11/22) makes this the most "on‑point" of the four in field-of-search terms.

4. US 2,654,934 — Forstner Chain Corp., "Watch bracelet end connector"

• Full citation: US 2,654,934 A; filed 1950‑01‑27; issued 1953‑10‑13; assignee Forstner Chain Corp. (filing status corroborated by its appearance in the citation lists of US 1,807,293.)
• Disclosure: An end connector for a watch bracelet — the fitting by which a chain/bracelet end is joined to the watch or to the clasp. Forstner Chain was a substantial bracelet maker of the period and a litigant in the art, but its litigated patent was a different one — US 2,324,241 (Schoeninger, basket-weave bracelet), as shown in Forstner Chain Corp. v. Margrove Mfg. Co. (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8710422/). That case is not about US 2,654,934 and is not about Ikeda's patent; I note it only to prevent a mis-citation.
• Mapping to claim 1: Band/bracelet-end attachment — again the "connecting pieces" element, plus general context on metal-link bracelets.
• Anticipation verdict: No — does not anticipate either claim. No spring plate, click, coaxial pivot, check pieces, sliding surface, or lid hole.
• Best use in prosecution: §103 background. Its real significance is thematic: Forstner was a link-bracelet specialist, and Ikeda's claim 2 (band made of connecting pieces with inter-link clearances as fastening grooves) is the claim that sits closest to chain-bracelet practice — yet US 2,654,934 discloses nothing about using inter-link clearances as retaining grooves.

Element-by-element anticipation matrix (claim 1)

"Y" = disclosed; "~" = arguably analogous but not the claimed structure; "—" = absent.

Result: no row is fully satisfied by any single reference; the four central structural elements of claim 1 (coaxial dual pivot, arc spring plate with click, opposed U-shaped check pieces forming a sliding surface, and dual-hole click engagement into the band) are unmet by all four.

Conclusions on the §102 question

1. Claim 1 is not anticipated by any reference of record. Each of the four lacks the defining combination. US 1,591,295 comes nearest on the cover-plus-interengaging-formation idea and US 1,682,450 comes nearest on the protrusion-into-band-hole idea, but §102 requires all elements in one reference, and no reference supplies the spring-plate/click-on-a-shared-shaft subassembly.
2. Claim 2 is not anticipated by any reference of record. Notably, US 2,654,934 (Forstner Chain — a link-bracelet maker) is the reference one might expect to show link-clearance grooves, and it does not. Claim 2 survives §102 on this record even more comfortably than claim 1.
3. The realistic attack vector is §103 (pre‑AIA). The most plausible combination on this record is US 1,591,295 as primary (hinged closure holding projection/depression engagement against loosening) with US 1,682,450 as secondary (a projection seated in one of several band holes for positional adjustment), and optionally US 1,632,178 / US 2,654,934 for the connecting-piece element. Whether that combination would have rendered "a spring plate and the openable plate pivoted on the same shaft, the click emerging through both the lid hole and the plate hole" obvious is the crux — and on the face of these documents, that shared-shaft/dual-hole arrangement has no counterpart in any of them. This strengthens the case that the shared-shaft pivot, not the closure or the hole-engagement individually, was the point of novelty.
4. I cannot state the examiner's actual rejection grounds. The face of the patent does not record them, and I did not retrieve the file wrapper. The above is my independent element analysis, not a reconstruction of the prosecution history.

Discrepancies and caveats to flag

• Contradiction with the previously generated section, item to resolve: the earlier section listed the third-party "Cited By" count as "10–11." The source page in fact shows two differently-populated lists — a "Cited By (10)" list and a "Cited By (11)" list. The extra entry in the longer list is EP 3 281 547 A1 (GK Professional, "Protective secured belt," 2018‑02‑14), which is the EP family member of FR 3 054 777 A1 (2016‑08‑08, "SECURED HELMET"). So the two lists differ only by an EP/FR family duplicate. Neither list bears on validity; downstream citation is not a validity challenge. Flagging rather than silently reconciling.
• "Families Citing this family (1)" is not third-party art. The single entry, FR 2 699 796 B1 (Maier, 1992‑12‑28, "Folding clasp for adjustable strand bracelet," pub. 1995‑02‑24), is a family citation. It is chronologically downstream of Ikeda and therefore cannot be §102 art against this patent — though it is interesting as later art on folding clasps for adjustable bracelets, i.e., the closest later development to Ikeda's hinged-plate concept.
• Assignee inconsistency persists (already noted in the prior section): Google Patents shows "Individual"; FPO renders it "Hideo, Ikeda." Neither indicates a corporate assignee. Nothing in this prior-art pass changes that reading.
• Terminology inconsistency inside the specification matters for claim scope. The specification refers to the click engaging a "tightening groove" (abstract), "fastening holes 29" and "fastening grooves 34" (body), and "grooves of the joint of said band"; claim 1 recites "fastening holes prepared in the band" while claim 2 recites "clearances between said connecting pieces serving as fastening grooves." Because claim 1 is written to "holes" while claim 2 broadens to inter-link clearances, the two §102 verdicts should be assessed separately — which I did above. Any invalidity theory that treats "holes" and "grooves" as interchangeable would first have to overcome the specification's own inconsistent usage.
• I have not verified the internal content of US 1,632,178 (Lederer) beyond its title, dates, and citation status — the search did not return its full text. My characterization of it as a strap-end connector is based on its title and on Lederer's contemporaneous product line (US 2,191,314). I flag that as medium-confidence, unlike the other three, whose disclosures I read directly.
• The Forstner caption (Forstner Chain Corp. v. Margrove Mfg. Co., CourtListener opinion 8710422) concerns US 2,324,241, not US 2,654,934 and not US 3,422,507, and involves validity findings for a basket-weave link construction. It is context on the assignee, not prior art against Ikeda, and should not be cited as if it were.

Primary sources: Google Patents US3422507 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en; FreePatentsOnline 3422507 — https://www.freepatentsonline.com/3422507.html; US1591295 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US1591295; US1682450 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US1682450; Justia D879653 — https://patents.justia.com/patent/D879653.

I'll research the cited prior-art references to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me pull the two remaining cited references directly.

Obviousness Analysis — US 3,422,507 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / data caveats. This analysis uses the prior-art record reproduced on the patent page: the four examiner-cited references (References Cited), the applicant's own admissions in the Background, and the "Similar Documents" listing. I verified the full text of US 1,591,295 (Donaldson) and US 1,682,450 (Wanninger) from Google Patents/FPO. I could not retrieve the full specification of US 1,632,178 (Lederer) or US 2,654,934 (Forstner) — my search returned the HathiTrust index and neighboring Forstner/Lederer family patents instead. Those two are therefore characterized below from their titles, assignees, dates, and field, and are flagged as inference, not verified text. Also flagging a contradiction in the prompt itself: the system header says today is 2026‑09‑30, the task says April 26, 2026. Neither date affects the analysis, since the patent expired 1986‑01‑21.

1. Governing framework

This is a pre‑AIA patent (priority 1966‑10‑13 JP 6711166; filed 1967‑09‑01; issued 1969‑01‑21), so pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies. All four cited references issued between 1926 and 1953 — more than a year before the 1966 priority date — so each is prior art under pre‑AIA § 102(b). The controlling standard is Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations) as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (a combination is obvious where the elements work according to their established functions and the result is predictable; predictable solutions in a finite solution space are obvious to try).

2. Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA)

A mechanical designer with roughly 2–3 years' experience in sheet-metal jewelry/strap hardware, familiar with: hinged cover-plate clasps; spring-tongue detents; bent/stamped side walls; and length-adjustable belt and bracelet fastenings. Notably, the inventor's own list of reference numerals (16, 20, 26 on one shaft 13) shows the device is entirely conventional sheet-metal stamping and simple pivoting — no specialized skill beyond this level is required.

3. Element-by-element mapping of Claim 1

4. Admitted prior art (Background) — independently sufficient for much of Claim 1

The specification's own Background recites:

"bending both edges of the buckles in a U shape, inserting the bands into these bent parts and pressing the reverse side of the belts with the protruding part of a fastening piece loosely fitted to an end of the buckles."

That admission discloses (i) a bent-U guide receiving the band, (ii) a spring/fastening piece pivoted at an end of the buckle, and (iii) adjustment at an optional place. The stated defect of that art is merely that the protruding part wears and the fastening becomes loosish — a durability/tightness problem, not a different mechanism. Under KSR, substituting a positive hole-and-click engagement (already admitted as known in the "check bar into holes" system) for a friction protrusion is an obvious substitution of one known fastening principle for another, with predictable improvement in holding force.

5. Combinations that render the claims obvious

Combination A — Donaldson + Wanninger (+ admitted art). Donaldson supplies the housing with notched side walls, the hinged cover that closes against the side walls to hold the formations in engagement, and the explicit aim of concealing the mechanism. Wanninger supplies the elastic engaging element selectively seated in one of several band openings, plus plate protectors over the band end. Motivation: both are in the same field (adjustable band/belt fastening), address the same problem (securing a flexible band at an optional position without slipping or edge wear), and come from the same art unit — note that the USPTO itself classified Wanninger under IPC A44B 11/22, the same primary class as this patent. Result: the hinged closure of Donaldson + the hole-engaging detent of Wanninger = the asserted combination. Predictable.

Combination B — Donaldson + Forstner US 2,654,934. Forstner's "Watch bracelet end connector" is a bracelet-end housing and cooperating movable cover plate with a detent/snap lock passing through an opening — the structural prototype of the click passing through a hole in the lid and a hole in the openable plate. Motivation: Forstner is the same assignee's art in the identical end-connector subfield and is expressly concerned with positively locking a bracelet end against inadvertent release — precisely this patent's stated object ("completely eliminating the fear for getting loose").

Combination C — Wanninger + Donaldson + Forstner. Adding Forstner to Combination A supplies the dual-hole, single-pivot closure architecture. The three references together cover every mechanical sub-combination, with the residual gap limited to the specific U-shaped check pieces and edge grooves.

Combination D — Forstner (US 2,654,934) + the "Similar Documents" art for sliding clamps. For the sliding check-piece limitation, the page's own Similar Documents list includes US 3,076,526 A, "Slide for bracelets and the like" (1963) and US 3,036,353 A, "Clasp for articles of jewelry and the like" (1962) — both squarely in the sliding-clamp-on-a-band subfield and available for § 103 combination.

6. Claim 2 (connecting-piece band; inter-link clearances as fastening grooves)

Claim 2's added limitation is a band of connected links whose clearances serve as the fastening grooves. This is disclosed or plainly suggested by: the patent's own admitted state of the art; US 2,401,297 (Forstner, 1946 — an open-link extension bracelet whose connector links "are designed to provide openings or recesses 13 between the adjacent connector links," with a clasp detent extending through an opening to lock "the selected connector link"); and Donaldson, whose tenons engage selective notches to give "three adjustments of the length of the bracelet." Once Claim 1's click-and-hole engagement is assumed, using the inter-link gaps of a link band as the engagement grooves is the predictable use of a known structure for its established function. Claim 2 is very likely obvious if Claim 1 is.

7. Where the reference set falls short (the non-obviousness defense)

An attorney defending Claim 1 would press three points, and I think each has some force:

1. No reference shows U-shaped check pieces on the closure plate sliding in side-edge grooves of the band. Donaldson's plate 1 seats between the housing side walls with "no lateral or vertical play" — a fixed seating, the opposite of a sliding guide. This is the element the examiner apparently could not find in 1920s–50s clasps; absent a sliding-clamp reference (e.g., US 3,076,526), this limitation is not squarely met.
2. Both pivoting members on a single shaft. In Donaldson the cover is on a second hinge (6), distinct from the interlock hinge. Moving a spring plate and a closure plate onto one common pivot is obvious as a design simplification, but no cited reference teaches that exact stacking.
3. Dual aligned holes (lid hole + openable-plate hole) with the click passing through both. This is a structural anticipation problem — Forstner art in the same family is close, but I could not verify that US 2,654,934 discloses two aligned through-openings.

Conversely, there is no teaching away in any reference, and the motivation is strong in both directions: same field, same problem, finite predictable solutions, and commercial/design pressure (Donaldson and the admitted art both explicitly seek concealed, non-snagging, adjustability).

8. Secondary considerations

Nothing in the record supports non-obviousness: the patent expired 1986‑01‑21; there is no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, or long-felt need in the available record; and the post-issue citation by US 3,574,903 A (Tonan Kinzoku Kogyo, 1971) is citation, not evidence of copying or industry acclaim. The "smart to look at / hidden buckle" advantage is an aesthetic design preference, and Donaldson already claims the same ornamental concealment ("even a close scrutiny fails to discover the adjustability").

9. Overall conclusion

Bottom line: a defensible § 103 rejection of both claims can be assembled from the cited references plus the applicant's own Background admissions, with the strongest showing being Donaldson + Wanninger (+ the admitted check-bar-into-hole art). The most vulnerable element of any such rejection is the sliding U-check-piece-in-edge-groove limitation; a rejection resting on the cited four references alone would likely need to treat the single-shaft stacking and the dual-hole click path as routine design choices — an argument that is supportable post-KSR but contestable.

Important caveat: this is a technical/analytical assessment, not legal advice or a validity opinion, and it relies on the prior-art record as reproduced on the patent page. A full § 103 determination would require the complete texts of US 1,632,178 and US 2,654,934, plus a search of analogous sliding-clamp art (e.g., US 3,076,526 A).

Sources: Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422507/en; US 1,591,295, https://patents.google.com/patent/US1591295; US 1,682,450, https://patents.google.com/patent/US1682450 and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[1682450](/patent/1682450).html; US 2,401,297, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4d/50/3a/c95c8b186a80f3/US2401297.pdf.