US 3498701

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Now let me check for any litigation or CAFC/appeal activity involving this patent, and verify the USPTO record.

Let me check the Federal Register listing that referenced this patent number and look for a litigation docket record.

Search scope and confidence note

I searched for the literal identifier 3498701 / US3498701A and filtered out results that merely share similar digits or reuse "3498701" as a non-patent identifier — namely (a) an OBO fastener "article number 3498701," (b) Belgian publication number 3498701 (2023), (c) a Justia "InventorID: 3498701" profile for a different inventor (Aristotele Hadjichristos / Qualcomm), and (d) an unrelated German datasheet. None of those is US Patent 3,498,701.

Authoritative source used: the full grant text and bibliographic record at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US3498701](/patent/US3498701)/en (the same content reproduces the printed patent front page, including the "References Cited" and "I claim" sections).

Bibliographic summary — US 3,498,701

Abstract (as printed)

"A multi-focal eyeglass construction comprising a frame including a pair of primary generally semi-circular lenses, and a pair of segmental secondary lenses pivoted to the rims of the primary lenses, and movable from a position overlying the lower portion of the primary lenses to a position above the primary lenses, a receptacle being provided in the top of the frame for the reception of the secondary lenses when in the upper position."

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 (the only independent claim) covers a spectacle assembly with these elements:

1. A frame with a top bar that contains a transverse receptacle (a pocket running across the top of the frame).
2. Generally semicircular lens rims secured to and depending from that bar, with primary lenses mounted in them (the normal distance-vision lenses).
3. Supplemental semicircular lens rims hinged to intermediate portions of the primary rims — i.e., the add-on holders pivot on the main frame, not on the temples.
4. Segmental lenses carried in those supplemental rims, foldable outwardly into and out of a stored position inside the receptacle, and into a working position overlying the bottom portion of the primary lenses, so both lenses stack to form a multiple-lens (bifocal/tri-focal) assembly for close viewing such as reading.
5. The receptacle is dimensioned so the segmental lenses and their supplemental rims interfit inside it when folded up.
6. Hinged cover means for the receptacle that swings outwardly — so when the auxiliary lenses are stowed, the cover conceals them.

Dependent claims

• Claim 2: adds finger-engaging portions on the cover to facilitate pivoting it.
• Claim 3: adds magnetic holding means to hold the supplemental lens frames in the operative (reading) position.
• Claim 4: specifies the hinge location — the supplemental rims are hinged to the primary rims at substantially the end of the transverse axis of the generally semicircular lens.

Supporting disclosure in the specification

Top bar 11 is hollow and defines the receptacle 16, closed by cover plate 17 on wire hinges 18 with finger grips 19. Supplemental rims 20 hinge at 21, with a connecting bar 21a so both sides move together. Magnets 23 are embedded in frames 14; where the supplemental rims are plastic or non-magnetic, confronting metal plates may be used. Nose pads 24 are optional. The specification describes use as an immediate conversion between distance viewing and reading — the upper part of lens 14a remains clear for distance vision while the segmental lens 22 provides the near addition.

Prior art cited on the face of the patent

• US 2,282,637 — Bausch & Lomb, "Ophthalmic mounting" (1942)
• US 2,326,787 — Alvin I. Lorig, "Detachable bifocals" (1943)
• US 2,393,959 — Samuel J. Blumenthal, "Spectacles" (1946)
• US 2,737,847 — Nicholas Tesauro, "Magnetic bi-focal lens holder" (1956)
• Foreign: a Great Britain reference dated "3/1858" as printed (the OCR of the number is garbled — I cannot verify this citation).

Litigation / CAFC docket check

• No CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court litigation involving US 3,498,701 was found in my searches. This is consistent with the record: the patent's anticipated expiration is March 3, 1987, and it is flagged "Expired – Lifetime," so it could not support a live infringement action today.
• Important caveat: I do not have direct query access to the CAFC docket system or PACER. I can confirm only that no 2026 Federal Circuit activity for this patent number surfaced in my searches, not that I exhaustively verified every docket. Treat "no CAFC 2026 activity" as a high-confidence-but-not-certified finding.
• The patent is, however, still cited as prior art: Google Patents lists it among documents cited by later eyeglass patents (e.g., US 7,114,806 and US 7,140,727, both listing "3498701 | March 1970 | Miller" in their references), and it appears in the citation record of the Contour Optik / Aspex / Chic Optic magnetic-auxiliary-lens family. The page displays both "Cited By (29)" and "Cited By (54)" in different renderings of the same list; the discrepancy in that count is unexplained on the page and I did not attempt to reconcile it.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Assignee is conflicting in the record. The authoritative printed patent text states the inventor is "Mary Louise Miller … assignor to Donald S. Miller, Centre County, Pa.," while Google Patents' machine-generated assignee field says "Individual" (with a disclaimer that listed assignees may be inaccurate). I could not reach the USPTO Patent Center / Assignment record for reel-frame data to confirm the recorded assignment. The safe statement is: assignment to Donald S. Miller is recited on the face of the patent; the database "assignee" field is unreliable here.
2. The Great Britain foreign reference ("3/1858") is OCR-mangled and unverified.
3. Inventorship discrepancy between the abstract/claims text and the drawing description is an OCR artifact only — no substantive discrepancy exists.
4. One unrelated hit, a Federal Register notice (FR-2008-05-06) that prints "3498701" in a comma-separated list alongside numbers such as 3,508,231 / 3,496,913, appeared in results. I could not retrieve the surrounding context, and I cannot confirm whether that notice actually refers to US 3,498,701 or is a coincidental numeric string. Do not treat it as evidence of any post-1987 legal event without further verification.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 3498701 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

One result (a 2008 Federal Register) pairs this patent number with other old patents. Let me investigate that and check litigation databases more directly.

Litigation Search: U.S. Patent No. 3,498,701

Bottom line

I found no record of any litigation — district court, ITC, PTAB, or CAFC — involving U.S. Patent No. 3,498,701. No case, no plaintiff/defendant pairing, no case number, and no docket appears anywhere in the sources I searched. I am answering "no litigation known" rather than reporting a case, because reporting a fabricated case would be worse than reporting none.

I want to be explicit about the limits of that answer, per your instruction not to guess.

What the patent is (why litigation is unlikely)

Grounding this in the authoritative patent text you supplied:

The patent is an eyeglass frame with pivoting supplemental reading segments that fold into a hollow top bar. Its 17‑year term ran out on March 3, 1987 (assuming payment of maintenance fees; the record shows anticipated expiration of that date). Because it expired nearly 40 years ago, any infringement suit would have had to be filed before 1987, and it would have to have been filed by the inventor or her assignee — an individual, not a corporate patent-enforcement entity. That is an unusual profile for a litigated patent, and modern litigation databases generally have thin coverage of 1970s–80s individual-inventor suit records.

Sources I searched and what they returned

• Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/…) — no hit for 3498701 or 3,498,701.
• General litigation searches for the patent number — returned unrelated matters with similar-looking numbers (e.g., the '930 patent in Network‑1 Technologies v. Hewlett‑Packard, E.D. Tex. 6:13‑cv‑00072; the '349 patent in Mojo Mobility v. Samsung) and nothing tied to 3,498,701. I did not substitute these, since you asked for results for this specific number only.
• Google Patents "Cited By" / "Citations" lists for US3498701 — these list later patents (e.g., US 6,109,747; US RE37,545; US 10,156,738), not litigation. (Note: Google Patents sometimes labels the examiner-cited versus third-party-cited references, but the "(29)" and "(54)" figure counts in the page text are inconsistent; the substantive point is that these are document citations, not cases.)
• CourtListener / Justia / Dockets.justia.com — no match for this patent number.
• One ambiguous lead, which I could not confirm and am not reporting as litigation: a 2008 Federal Register notice (FR‑2008‑05‑06, govinfo.gov) lists "…3498701; 630247…" alongside other mid-century patent numbers (e.g., 3,516,266; 3,514,013; 3,498,558). The formatting pairs each patent number with a separate serial-style number. This is characteristic of USPTO administrative notices (e.g., reexamination or fee/expiration listings), not a litigation caption. I was unable to retrieve the surrounding context to confirm what proceeding that list belongs to, so I treat it as an unresolved lead, not an outcome. If you need certainty on this one document, the next step is to open the govinfo PDF and read the notice heading.

Caveats you should weigh

1. Search, not exhaustive records retrieval. I relied on web search hits and the patent text. I did not query PACER dockets directly (PACER requires authentication and per-page fees), and I could not run the follow-up searches I had queued before hitting the tool limit. A negative web result is not proof of no suit.
2. Pre‑1987 coverage is weak. Historical district court filings from the 1970s–80s are frequently not digitized in the free litigation aggregators. If any suit exists, it would most plausibly live in paper or microfilm docket records of the relevant district court, or in the patent's own assignment/chain-of-title file at the USPTO.
3. No assertions located. I found no evidence that this patent was ever asserted, licensed for enforcement, or acquired by a monetization entity.

Recommended next steps if you need a definitive negative

• Pull the USPTO Patent Assignment and "Patent Litigation" (patent-examination-related) records for patent 3,498,701 to see if any assignment or court-order record was filed.
• Check PACER for the named parties (Mary Louise Miller / Donald S. Miller) as plaintiffs in 35 U.S.C. § 271 actions pre‑1987.
• Read the FR‑2008‑05‑06 notice to resolve the one lead noted above.

If you want, I can draft the specific PACER/assignment queries or continue once the search tool resets.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" result against public sources before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 3,498,701: zero. The USPTO ODP structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web checks (PTAB-framework searches, CAFC/CourtListener docket hits, litigation searches) surfaced nothing tied to this patent number — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials, and the defensive posture is not "hardened patent" or "dead claims" but the more fundamental fact that US 3,498,701 has been expired since 1987-03-03 and is not assertable by anyone.

Proceedings

None. There is no proceeding number to report, and I will not manufacture one.

Verification performed (and the false-positive trap to avoid): searching on "the '349 patent" / "'349 patent IPR" returns a large volume of unrelated material, because at least three different, much later patents share the trailing digits "349":

If a demand letter or claim chart in the auxiliary-magnet-eyewear space cites "the '701 patent," there is a real chance it means US 7,140,727 (ISL Technologies) — a live member of the Contour Optik / Aspex / Chic Optic / ISL magnet-attachment family, dozens of whose patents cite US 3,498,701. Confirm the full number before reacting.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 3,498,701: all four claims (1–4) are UNTESTED and permanently unassertable. No claim was ever canceled — not by the PTAB, not by reexamination, not by a court. Claim 1 (the independent claim: top bar with transverse receptacle, semicircular lens rims depending from it, supplemental semicircular rims hinged to intermediate portions, segmental lenses foldable into and out of the receptacle, hinged cover) and dependent claims 2 (finger-engaging cover portions), 3 (magnetic holding means), and 4 (hinge at the end of the transverse axis) issued on 1970-03-03 from application 697,179 filed 1968-01-11, and reached anticipated expiration on 1987-03-03 — 17 years from grant. Google Patents' legal status reads "Expired - Lifetime." There is no live claim to attack and no live claim to infringe.

Estoppel landscape: inapplicable. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no § 325(e)(2) estoppel, and no estoppel-adjacent Federal Circuit mandate attaching to this patent. Likewise there is no § 315(b) one-year bar, no Fintiv/discretionary-denial record, and no POP/Director-review precedent to inherit. Two structural points explain the void: PGR is unavailable by statute (it reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16; this one is 1968), and CBM is unavailable by subject matter (eyeglass frames are not a "financial product or service"). IPR has no equivalent effective-filing-date gate and the Board has permitted IPRs on expired patents (no amendment available), so the absence of any IPR here is economic, not jurisdictional — nobody pays $41,500 to challenge a frame patent that stopped generating royalties in 1987. For completeness: the six-year damages lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 closed in 1993, and laches/enforceability issues are academic for a patent that has been in the public domain for 39 years.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. The patent owner of record is an individual (Mary Louise Miller of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, assignor to Donald S. Miller per the printed patent; Google Patents lists "Individual" with no current corporate assignee). There is no defensive aggregator — no Unified Patents, no RPX, no AST — anywhere near this file, no serial petitioner, and no PTAB-appeal history. What the record does show is that US 3,498,701 has become a heavily-cited prior-art anchor: the Citations/Cited By data lists dozens of later references, including US 2,326,787 (Lorig, Detachable bifocals), US 2,282,637 (Bausch & Lomb), US 2,393,959 (Blumenthal), and US 2,737,847 (Tesauro, Magnetic bi-focal lens holder) as its own cited art, and modern magnet-eyewear and foldable-eyewear filings — including US 10,156,738 B1 (Visual Persuasion Ltd., Foldable lenses and novel trifocal eyeglasses, priority 2016-09-12) — citing it. That is where this reference's value lies today.

Recommended next steps

1. Your defensive asset here is § 102(b) art, not an invalidity defense. Treat US 3,498,701 as a printed publication available as prior art as of at least 1968-01-11 (filing) / 1970-03-03 (issue). If you are accused of infringing a modern claim covering foldable/drawer-stored supplemental lenses, magnetic auxiliary-lens retention, or a cover that conceals stowed lenses, this patent's Figure 1/2 disclosure and claim 1 elements are directly on point. Source document: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3498701/en (see the cited-by list at that URL, which includes the Contour Optik / Aspex / Chic Optic / ISL and Visual Persuasion families).

2. If you receive a demand citing "the '701 patent," verify the number first. If it is literally US 3,498,701, the complete response is that the patent expired 1987-03-03 and has been public domain since — no IPR is needed and no invalidity analysis is needed. If the demand actually concerns US 7,140,727 or another member of the magnet-eyewear family, treat it as a different matter entirely; that family has generated substantial PTAB activity, and it is where the real § 315(b) deadlines and IPR opportunities sit.

3. No trial-stage calendar to track. With no institution decision, no oral hearing date, and no FWD due date outstanding for this patent, there is nothing to docket. The absence of any AIA challenge is a deliberate signal about value, not about strength: a patent that expired four decades ago generates no assertion pressure and therefore never attracted (and never will attract) an IPR.

Caveats and limits on my confidence: I could not query PTAB E2E or the ODP API directly in this session; the "no proceedings" conclusion rests on the ODP structured block supplied in this prompt plus web searches that returned no PTAB, CAFC, or district-court activity keyed to US 3,498,701. Public PTAB decisions are at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions and the trial docket is at https://ptab.uspto.gov. A pre-1981 patent would in any event have generated, if anything, old-style ex parte reexamination rather than an AIA trial — and no such reexamination certificate appears in the file wrapper data either. I found no Federal Circuit appeal to report and am not supplying a docket number, because there is none.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 3,498,701, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and Google Patents legal events.

Initial hits show the patent front page names an assignee (Donald S. Miller) but no recorded post-issuance assignments. Let me query the assignment records and the parties directly.

No assignment records surfaced. Let me probe the USPTO Assignment API, aggregator records, and resolve the one open lead from the earlier litigation section.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 3,498,701

Tool-limit note: my search budget for this task was exhausted before I could complete the queued direct queries against Assignment Center. What follows distinguishes clearly between (a) what the authoritative patent text and retrieved sources show, and (b) what I could not retrieve. I have not invented any reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

• Only one inventor is named on the patent. The "all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months" pattern you asked me to watch for is inapplicable — there is no multi-inventor team to track, and the assignee is an individual rather than an employer.
• Bellefonte is the county seat of Centre County, PA, and Pennsylvania State University (State College) sits in the same county. That is a geographic coincidence only; I found no evidence that either Miller worked for Penn State, and I am not asserting it.
• The inventor and the assignee share a surname and the same county of residence (Centre County, PA). The reference to "Centre County" as the assignee's address on the face of the patent is consistent with a family/spousal assignment rather than an employer→company transfer, but I cannot confirm the relationship from the record.

Original assignee

• Named on the issued patent: Donald S. Miller, Centre County, Pennsylvania — an individual, not a corporation. The patent states: "Mary Louise Miller, Bellefonte, Pa., assignor to Donald S. Miller, Centre County, Pa."
• Google Patents rendering: both "Original Assignee" and "Current Assignee" are listed as "Individual" (Google itself flags that listed assignees "may be inaccurate"). Notably, this is derived from the front-of-patent assignee notation — not from an assignment event in Google's Legal Events table.
• Product embodying the claims: No evidence of any shipped product. The specification describes a manufacturable spectacle frame (claims 1–4 cover the frame, the foldable segmental lens rims, the top-bar receptacle, the hinged cover, finger grips, and magnetic holders), and it recites "commercial importance" boilerplate, but I found no commercial embodiment, catalog listing, trade name, or manufacturer attribution. An individual patentee of a 1968 eyeglass-frame patent with no corporate assignee and no product trail is not a "shipping company."
• Primary line of business: Not determinable — there is no corporate entity in the record.
• Current status: The patent is Expired – Lifetime, with an anticipated expiration of 1987-03-03 (i.e., the full 17-year term from the 1970-03-03 grant, consistent with maintenance fees having been paid or with the pre-1980 regime). Whether the individual assignee is living, and whether any residual rights or goodwill exist, is not determinable from the sources available to me.

Assignment timeline

Finding, stated plainly: I located no recorded post-issuance assignment for US 3,498,701, and I was unable to retrieve any reel/frame record from the USPTO Assignment Center.

What I can and cannot establish, with exact provenance:

1. One pre-issuance assignment is evidenced on the face of the patent. The printed patent identifies Mary Louise Miller (assignor) → Donald S. Miller (assignee). USPTO practice was (and is) to print an assignee on the patent only where the assignment was recorded before issuance. So a recorded assignment almost certainly exists — but I could not retrieve its executed date, recording date, or Reel/Frame number, and I will not guess one. A 1968–1970 recording would be a paper/microfilm transaction, which is exactly the era that is sparsely indexed in free aggregators.
2. No event appears in Google Patents' Legal Events for this patent beyond the filing (1968-01-11), the grant/publication (1970-03-03), and the anticipated-expiration/expired entries (1987-03-03). Google's "Legal Events" table draws on the USPTO patent-assignment dataset; the absence of any assignment ("AS") entry is consistent with the pre-issue assignment not being in that dataset's indexed window — but it is not affirmative proof of no record.
3. No post-issuance assignment of any kind surfaced. Searches for the patent number against assignment records, aggregator pages, and general web indexes returned no conveyance — no security agreement, no merger, no change of name, no license, no release, no correction, and no correspondent of record to report.
4. The single unresolved lead from the earlier litigation section: a 2008 Federal Register notice (FR-2008-05-06, govinfo.gov) lists "…3498701; 630247…" alongside other 1969–70-era patent numbers (3,510,317; 3,508,231; 3,496,913; 3,514,013; 3,510,266; 3,508,130; 3,498,558) each paired with a six-digit number in the 626,4xx–638,7xx band. This is a list-style administrative compilation (patent-number-to-six-digit-identifier pairs from a narrow 1969–70 vintage band), not a litigation caption and not an assignment record. I could not retrieve the notice heading to identify the proceeding, and I did not confirm that the "630247" pairing is even the correct one — treat it as an unresolved lead, not ownership evidence.

What this means

Because no post-issuance instruments were found, the most likely chain is a single, static ownership structure that never changed after the 1970 grant: inventor → individual (Donald S. Miller) → patent expires 1987 with the individual (or her/his successor-in-interest) still holding it. Per your instruction, however, I am not converting "I found nothing" into "nothing exists" — pre-1987 paper recordings are the weakest-covered category in the free databases.

Verification links:

• Assignment Center (search patent number 3498701): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Alternate Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents record and Legal Events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3498701/en

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 3498701
    1968 : Application filed by Mary Louise Miller
         : Rights assigned to Donald S Miller
    1970 : Patent issued 17 year term
    1987 : Patent expired

Caveat: the second 1968 event reflects the assignment recited on the face of the patent; the*execution date is not retrievable and the year is inferred from the filing-year context only. No later owner events exist to add.*

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Ownership here is an individual patentee, not an entity, and the patent has been expired for ~39 years — so most NPE signals are structurally inapplicable. Marked honestly rather than by default:

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No licensing-only LLC, no "IP/Patents/Holdings/Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address, no Delaware/Texas single-member LLC appears anywhere in the record. The only assignee is a natural person in Centre County, PA.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither "Mary Louise Miller" nor "Donald S. Miller" matches any entity on the Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg lists, and no such entity appears as assignee at any point. Caution: the 54 later documents that cite US 3,498,701 (e.g., US 6,109,747; US RE37,545; US 10,156,738) are patent citations, not assignees — several of those later patents are tied to known magnet-clip-eyewear assertion campaigns, but that activity belongs to the citing patents' owners, not to this patent's chain. Do not conflate them.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not present. No correspondent of record is retrievable, because no assignment record is retrievable. A one-link chain also cannot exhibit recurrence.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. There is no series of assignments, let alone multiple chained LLCs inside 24 months.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present / inapplicable. No litigation involving this patent is known (consistent with the earlier litigation section), so there is no suit to pre-date; and the only transfer is a 1968–70 family assignment, decades before any conceivable assertion window.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No corporate assignee ever existed here, so there is no Chapter 7/11 estate, no Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style sale, and no sign of a portfolio divestiture.
7. Privateering — Not present. No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE for assertion. There is no operating company in the chain at all. (Also note: the patent is expired, which would defeat any modern assertion.)
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. There is no evidence any such entity acquired it.

Verdict

Insufficient data — with an operating-company-ownership overlay.

Justification: The record shows exactly one owner event — the pre-issuance assignment from inventor Mary Louise Miller to individual assignee Donald S. Miller (Centre County, PA), recited on the face of the 1970-03-03 patent (reel/frame not retrievable from the sources available to me), with no post-issuance assignments found and the patent expiring 1987-03-03. There is no LLC, no licensing entity, no known asserter, no correspondent recurrence, no cascading transfer, and no defensive aggregator — so zero of the eight NPE signals are affirmatively present, and calling this an NPE chain would be fabrication. The correct label is Insufficient data / non-asserting individual ownership, not any NPE tier.

To close this definitively, the next three queries are:

1. USPTO Assignment Center, patent 3498701 — pull the 1968–70 reel/frame for the Miller→Miller assignment and capture the correspondent of record (pre-issue recordings from that era often name a local Bellefonte/Centre County attorney rather than an IP firm — a useful negative tell if any later recording exists).
2. USPTO Patent Assignment Division paper/microfilm order for the recorded assignment abstract of title, which predates the electronic dataset.
3. PACER/assignment-file check for the names Mary Louise Miller and Donald S. Miller as plaintiffs or assignors post-1970, to rule out any recorded transfer of the expired patent.

Note on internal consistency: this finding does not contradict the earlier "no litigation known" section — it reinforces it, since an individual-held patent that expired in 1987 and never left family ownership has no plausible litigation footprint.

I'll verify the patent and its cited references against live sources before analyzing.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 3,498,701

1. Record confirmation (target patent)

Searched by the exact number 3498701. The record returned is the one below; no similar-number records (e.g., 3,498,558; 3,498,700) are treated as hits.

Metadata flag (contradiction to record explicitly): Google Patents' structured assignee field reads "Individual / Individual (original and current)," whereas the printed front page states the inventor assigned to Donald S. Miller. This is a metadata simplification, not a substantive conflict, but it should not be quoted as the assignee of record. (This also re-confirms the ownership picture in the earlier litigation section, which used the printed assignment.)

2. The prior-art set for 3,498,701

The prior art of record is not a search result I assembled — it is the citation list the examiner placed on the face of the patent. Per the authoritative patent text, the "References Cited / UNITED STATES PATENTS" table is:

• 2,282,637 — 5/1942 — Bouchard — 351-58
• 2,326,787 — 8/1943 — Lorig — 351-57
• 2,393,959 — 2/1946 — Blumenthal — 351-57
• 2,737,847 — 3/1956 — Tesauro — 351-57

FOREIGN PATENTS: 3/1858 — Great Britain.

Google Patents' structured "Patent Citations (4)" list matches these four U.S. numbers exactly — but its structured data appears to omit the British foreign reference, which survives only in the OCR of the printed front page. So the authoritative count is 4 U.S. + 1 GB, not 4.

(Distinct from these: the "Cited By" entries — US 6,012,811; US 6,109,747; US RE37,545; US 10,156,738; etc. — are later patents that cite 3,498,701. They are not prior art against it and are excluded from the § 102 analysis.)

3. Reference-by-reference analysis

(a) US 2,326,787 A — "Detachable bifocals"

• Full citation: Alvin I. Lorig, Washington, D.C., U.S. Patent 2,326,787; Application Serial No. 353,567; 3 claims; US Cl. 351-57 / G02C7/06, G02C7/10.
• Dates: Filed 1940-08-21; granted 1943-08-17.
• Description (verified against the specification): A supplementary frame (17) carrying supplementary lenses (18) at its lower end, positioned to extend across the bottom portion of the primary lenses (19) of the eyeglass frame (15), thereby adapting ordinary eyeglasses to serve as bifocals. Attachment is by an inverted, spring-pressed pinch clamp gripping the bridge portion, which the claims state constitutes "the sole supporting and connecting means." The supplementary lenses may be tinted to act as a shade/sun lens.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant only to one element of claim 1 — supplemental lenses overlying the bottom portion of the primary lenses for close work. It discloses no hinge between rims, no top-bar transverse receptacle, no folding of the supplemental assembly into the frame, and no hinged cover. Does not anticipate any of claims 1–4. It is § 103 background art at most.

(b) US 2,393,959 A — "Spectacles"

• Full citation: Samuel J. Blumenthal, U.S. Patent 2,393,959; filed 1942-12-24; 11 claims; US Cl. 351-57.

• Dates: Filed 1942-12-24; granted 1946-02-05.

• Description (verified against the specification and claims): Multifocal-type spectacles having a frame (10) with two lens-supporting rings (11) joined by a bridge (12). The frame carries a channel (13) closed by front and rear plates (16, 17), opening through the top of the body and inwardly toward the lens — characterized in the claims as a "hood portion." A primary lens sits in the frame; a secondary lens is movable over one surface of the primary lens, with a single pivot for "swingably moving the secondary lens into two focal stations on the primary lens," the pivot socket being arranged "in horizontal alinement with the focal center of the primary lens." Means retain the secondary lens against accidental displacement in each station, and means allow sliding movement to dispose the secondary lens entirely within the hood portion when not in use. The secondary lens may be extended beyond the limits of the frame/hood through a peripheral opening for cleaning, and the shield portions sit at the upper outer corner of the frame and are of greater thickness than the rest of the frame.

• § 102 assessment: This is the closest reference of record, and the one the claim most plausibly had to be drafted around. It discloses the two-lens close-work/reading concept, a pivot, two focal stations, a housing ("hood") that conceals/stows the secondary lens when not in use, and retention means. It does not disclose, in the terms of claim 1:

  1. a "top bar having a transverse receptacle therein" (Blumenthal's hood is a peripheral channel integral with the lens frame, not a top-bar receptacle);
  2. "supplemental semicircular lens rims" hinged to the primary rims (Blumenthal moves a bare lens on a pivot in grooves, with no supplemental rim);
  3. folding "into a position in said receptacle," with the receptacle dimensioned so that the segmental lenses and the supplemental rims interfit therewithin;
  4. "hinged cover means for said receptacle swingable outwardly therefrom."

  Does not anticipate claim 1 (or dependent claims 2–4). It is the primary § 103 reference. Note claim 4's "hinged to the generally semicircular lens rims at substantially the end of the transverse axis" tracks Blumenthal's pivot "in horizontal alinement with the focal center of the primary lens" closely enough that claim 4's added feature is largely met; the claim survives only because it incorporates all of claim 1.

(c) US 2,282,637 A — "Ophthalmic mounting"

• Full citation: Samuel E. Bouchard, assignor to Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, Rochester, N.Y., U.S. Patent 2,282,637; US Cl. 351-58 (as printed in the patent's reference table).
• Dates: Filed 1941-01-17; granted 1942-05-12.
• Description: I was able to verify only the bibliographic record (inventor, assignee, dates, title, class). I could not retrieve or read the specification of 2,282,637, so I am not going to characterize its disclosure. What can be said from the record: it is a Bausch & Lomb ophthalmic-mounting case in class 351-58, cited as frame/rim mounting art (the same Bausch & Lomb inventorship line as Bouchard's 1,785,929 and 2,439,357 mountings).
• § 102 assessment: Cannot be assessed on the merits from the material available to me. Based on its class and title it appears to be mounting/rim structure art bearing on the claim-1 element "generally semicircular lens rims secured to and depending from said bar," but I will not assert that it discloses that element, and I expressly do not find anticipation of any claim. Treat as background mounting art unless the specification is pulled.

(d) US 2,737,847 A — "Magnetic bi-focal lens holder"

• Full citation: Tesauro Nicholas, U.S. Patent 2,737,847; US Cl. 351-57.
• Dates: Filed 1952-10-20; granted 1956-03-13.
• Description: Verified bibliographically only (title, inventor, dates, class). The title establishes the subject matter as a holder that retains a bifocal (supplemental) lens by magnetic force. I could not retrieve the specification, so I will not describe its structure beyond that.
• § 102 assessment: The title-level subject matter corresponds to the added feature of claim 3 ("magnetic holding means … for holding said supplemental lens frames in operative position"). But claim 3 depends from claim 1 and carries every claim-1 element, including the top-bar receptacle and hinged cover that Tesauro does not supply (and cannot, on a magnetic-holder disclosure). Tesauro therefore does not anticipate claim 3 or any other claim. Its correct role is as evidence that magnetic retention of an auxiliary bifocal lens was known, which supports a § 103 obviousness attack on claim 3 (and, via the same reasoning, the patent's stated objective of a "magnetic catch"). I flag again: unverified beyond the bibliographic record.

(e) Great Britain — March 1858 (printed foreign reference)

• Full citation as printed: "FOREIGN PATENTS — 3/1858 — Great Britain." The OCR of the printed front page renders the number as a broken "5 647," i.e. apparently GB Patent No. 5647 of 1858 — but the digit string is garbled and OCR-uncertain, and I could not retrieve the document to confirm either the number or the subject matter.
• Dates: March 1858 (as printed).
• Description: Not verifiable from the material available. Mid-19th-century British spectacle patents of this era typically concern frame/hinge/lens-mounting mechanics, but I will not attribute any specific disclosure to this document.
• § 102 assessment: A British patent printed in 1858 would be a "printed publication" qualifying as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b) (and § 102(a)) against a 1968-01-11 filing date, if its disclosure is enabling as to the claimed subject matter. On the record available I cannot assess anticipation, and I make no finding. If you need this disposed of, the document must be pulled (e.g., via the British Library/Espacenet GB 1858 numbered set) — and its number first confirmed from the printed patent, since the OCR string "5 647" is unreliable.

4. Claim-by-claim § 102 chart

Legend: "?" = reference document not retrievable; no finding made.

5. Conclusion

• No cited reference, alone, anticipates claim 1. The claim's distinguishing combination is the hollow top bar defining a transverse receptacle + supplemental rims (not bare lenses) hinged to the primary rims + a hinged cover swingable outwardly + receptacle dimensioned to receive the rims and segmental lenses together. None of Lorig, Blumenthal, Bouchard, or Tesauro is shown to disclose all four; the four U.S. references predate the 1968-01-11 filing by 12–28 years and were squarely before the examiner, who nonetheless allowed the claims.
• Closest prior art ranking: 1) US 2,393,959 (Blumenthal) — two-station pivoting secondary lens with stowage "hood"; 2) US 2,326,787 (Lorig) — supplemental bifocal segment overlying the lower lens portion; 3) US 2,737,847 (Tesauro) — magnetic retention of a bifocal attachment (bear only on claim 3); 4) US 2,282,637 (Bouchard) and the GB March 1858 reference — unverified; background/mounting art at best.
• The realistic invalidity theory is § 103, not § 102: Blumenthal (pivot + stowage hood) in view of Lorig (supplemental segment over the lower lens portion) and Tesauro (magnetic retention), with the top-bar receptacle + hinged cover treated as an obvious storage expedient. Whether that combination would have been "obvious" in 1968 is the only genuinely contestable question, and the examiner evidently answered it in the negative.
• Claim 4 is the most exposed claim on the merits, because Blumenthal's pivot location ("horizontal alinement with the focal center of the primary lens," i.e. the transverse axis) is close to the claim's "substantially the end of the transverse axis" limitation — but claim 4 still requires all of claim 1.

6. Limitations of this analysis (stated explicitly, per instruction)

1. I read the full text of only US 2,326,787 and US 2,393,959 from the citing record; their descriptions above are grounded in retrieved specification/claim text.
2. US 2,282,637 and US 2,737,847 were verified bibliographically only (number, title, inventor, assignee, dates, class). I did not retrieve their specifications and have deliberately not described what they disclose. Any § 102 statement about them is limited to what is stated above.
3. The GB March 1858 reference is unverified in both number and content. The OCR number "5 647" should not be quoted as a confirmed GB number.
4. All four U.S. references qualify as prior art by date under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) (each granted well over one year before the 1968-01-11 filing); the analysis therefore turns on scope, not availability.
5. The citation bibliographies on the Google Patents page for US3498701A and the "References Cited" table in the printed patent are consistent on the four U.S. numbers; they diverge only in that Google's structured citation data drops the British foreign reference.

Next steps if you want the gaps closed: (i) pull the full texts of US 2,282,637 and US 2,737,847 and chart them against claim 1's rim/mounting elements; (ii) confirm the British patent number from the paper copy of the 3,498,701 front page and retrieve the corresponding 1858 GB specification; (iii) if the goal is an invalidity position rather than a validity survey, extend beyond the examiner's citations, since the examiner's own list is by definition already-before-the-office art.

I'll verify the four U.S. references cited on the face of the patent so the obviousness analysis rests on actual disclosure, not titles alone.

Let me pin down the Bausch & Lomb reference (US2282637) and probe the garbled British foreign citation.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 3,498,701 ("Multi-focal eyeglass assembly")

Scope note. This analysis builds on the bibliographic, claim-construction, and prior-art sections already generated. I am using only the four U.S. references printed in the "References Cited" section of the patent (US2326787, US2282637, US2393959, US2737847) plus the unverified British foreign citation. I verified three of the four by retrieving their texts; see the caveats at the end.

1. The governing framework and the hypothetical person of ordinary skill

The application was filed January 11, 1968, so pre-AIA § 103 applies. All four U.S. references issued 1942–1956 — more than one year before filing — making each a § 102(b) printed publication available as prior art.

POSITA (hypothetical): a spectacle-frame designer/optical mechanic with a few years' experience in ophthalmic mounting design, including auxiliary and multifocal lens attachments, and familiarity with hinged, magnetic, and clip-on auxiliary lens systems. All four references sit squarely in that person's field — spectacle frames and supplemental-lens mountings. This matters: it is the strongest fact for the obviousness case, because it is not a "field of endeavour" or "reasonably pertinent" dispute at all.

Graham factors: (1) scope and content of prior art — below; (2) differences between prior art and claims — the element chart; (3) level of ordinary skill — above; (4) secondary considerations — none of record, discussed in § 6.

2. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Bottom line: no single reference anticipates claim 1. Blumenthal lacks the hinged cover; Tesauro lacks the pivot; Lorig lacks both stowage and pivot. The question is purely one of combination.

3. Primary combination: Blumenthal '959 + Tesauro '847

Take Blumenthal as the primary reference (frame-mounted pivoted secondary lens stored in a frame housing) and Tesauro for the stowage-and-retention teaching.

Motivation, from the references themselves:

• Blumenthal states its own object: "means is provided for supporting the secondary lenses within housing portions on the spectacle frame when not in use, and means is also provided to retain the secondary lenses in different positions." Its stated advantages are consistent with the '701 patent's stated objects — avoiding the head-tilting and cost problems of conventional bifocals.
• Tesauro states its object in almost the exact terms of the '701 patent: a "movable plus lens which may be readily placed in front of the ordinary lens… positioned in any desired place as for reading purposes, and can thereafter be removed and placed in a storage pocket in the eye glass frame and be held in storage position through the same means that holds the lens in reading position."
• Tesauro's stated reason for a removable rather than built-in bifocal — that "in stronger glasses the added bifocal portion of the glass may at times result in confusion in the vision, stumbling or falling" — is the same usability concern the '701 patent addresses.

The KSR rationales that apply:

• (A) Known technique to improve similar device, yielding predictable results. Blumenthal's pivoted secondary lens and Tesauro's concealment pocket are two well-known solutions to the same problem (stowing a near-vision addition); combining them is the paradigm predictable combination.
• (C) Obvious to try over a finite number of identified, predictable solutions. The only real design choice is where the pocket goes — Tesauro puts it in the temple, the '701 patent in the top bar. Relocating a stowage pocket from the temple arm to the top bar is a placement choice within the ordinary skill of a frame designer, not an inventive step. Tesauro's own logic (stow the lens in the frame, held by the same means that holds it in use) is indifferent to pocket location.
• (D/F) Design incentives and market forces — the express aim of both references is single-frame conversion between distance and near vision without a separate pair of reading glasses.
• Reasonable expectation of success: high. Both references are mechanical, not unpredictable, arts.

Where the combination is genuinely thin — and I want to be candid about it:

Claim 1's "hinged cover means for said receptacle swingable outwardly" is not taught or suggested by any of the four references of record. Blumenthal's channel is closed by fixed plates 16/17; Tesauro's pocket is open at the top edge. The closest thing in the record is Blumenthal's "peripheral opening" through which the secondary lens is extended for cleaning — the opposite of a closure. This is the element on which a § 103 rejection built solely on the cited art is most vulnerable.

The counter-argument is ordinary-design-expedient reasoning: a hinged lid on a receptacle is among the most familiar mechanical closures in existence (spectacle cases, boxes, instrument covers), and claim 1 recites the cover in purely functional terms ("hinged cover means… swingable outwardly") with no structural particularity. KSR permits "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." A reasonably strong rebuttal exists, but an examiner or court could equally find this element supplies the inventive contribution — it is precisely the feature that gives the '701 patent its stated advantage of making the stowed lenses "completely out of the way in invisible position." Notably, this is the one object asserted in the specification that the cited art does not deliver.

4. Secondary combination for the "segmental / bottom portion" limint: + Lorig '787

If a rejection required explicit teaching of segmental lenses overlying only the bottom portion of the primary lenses, Lorig supplies it directly: supplementary lenses 18 "extend across the bottom portion of the lenses 19," converting ordinary eyeglasses to bifocals, and Lorig even notes the supplements may be colored to serve as sunglasses. Lorig's teaching is interchangeable with, and cumulative of, Blumenthal's disclosure of secondary lenses "made to prescribe the required correction needed for reading or close-up work." Adding Lorig is a third-reference combination but requires no new motivation: Lorig is in the same field, addresses the same problem, and its disclosure is directed to the identical sub-element.

5. Dependent claims — and a note on unclaimed features

Claim 3 (magnetic holding means) — the strongest obviousness case in the patent. Tesauro discloses the identical structure for the identical purpose: magnets 16/17 on the plus lens, magnetically attractive strips 11/12 on the spectacle lenses "adjacent the lower edge… on the vertical center line thereof," plus a magnetic piece at the pocket edge to hold the lens in storage. Claim 3 adds nothing to Tesauro's teaching. In a live prosecution, claim 3 would be the first claim rejected, and the rejection would be difficult to overcome. Tesauro even anticipates the '701 specification's plastic-rim contingency — the '701 patent says "small metal plates may be positioned in confronting relation with magnets 23 if desired," which is Tesauro's metal-strip arrangement.

Claim 4 (hinge at substantially the end of the transverse axis) — obvious as a matter of geometry. Blumenthal discloses "a single pivot" for swinging the secondary lens. Miller's added limitation is where to put that pivot. If a semicircular supplemental rim is to swing from a position overlying the bottom half of the primary lens up into a bar across the top of the frame, the pivot must lie on or near the horizontal (transverse) diameter of the semicircle — otherwise the segment cannot clear the primary lens and stow. Given the claimed geometry, the recited location is the predictable, if not the only, workable placement: a design choice dictated by function (In re Kuhle-type optimization). This is not a strong non-obviousness position. That Miller separately discloses (but does not claim) a connecting bar 21a so both rims move simultaneously reinforces the point — under In re Self / CFMT v. Yieldup, unclaimed features cannot supply non-obviousness.

Claim 2 (finger-engaging portions on the cover) — obvious. Adding a handling tab or grip to a lid is a routine mechanical expedient with a predictable result; the record does not even need a reference for this, and KSR expressly allows resort to "common sense" for such trivial additions.

6. Secondary considerations

I found no evidence of nexus-bearing secondary considerations:

• No commercial success evidence tied to the claims. The patent expired March 3, 1987 (per the earlier sections), and the later magnetic-auxiliary-eyewear boom (the Contour Optik / Chic Optic / Aspex family that cites '701) post-dates expiry by decades, so no nexus can be drawn between the '701 claims and that market.
• No long-felt-but-unmet-need showing. The need was demonstrably met before 1968 — Tesauro and Blumenthal both address it.
• No copying, licensing-for-enforcement, or industry-praise evidence surfaced in any search (consistent with the earlier litigation section finding no assertion activity).
• Google Patents' "Cited By" lists (29 vs. 54 renders, a discrepancy already flagged in the earlier sections) show later patents citing '701 as prior art. That is evidence of the art's development, not evidence of non-obviousness, and I have not treated it as such.

7. Conclusion

Overall: Claims 2, 3, and 4 would very likely be held obvious. Claim 1 is the close call, and it turns almost entirely on the hinged, swingable cover for the top-bar receptacle. Absent a secondary reference showing a hinged closure on a spectacle-frame receptacle (which I did not find in the four of-record references), a § 103 rejection as to claim 1 rests on the "familiar mechanical expedient / predictable use of prior art elements" branch of KSR — a defensible but contestable position.

8. Explicit caveats and contradictions

1. US2282637 (Bausch & Lomb, "Ophthalmic mounting," 1942) — I could not retrieve its full text. My searches returned other Bausch & Lomb mountings (e.g., US 1,985,499/Hommel 1935; US 2,203,408/Ellestad 1940; US 2,456,293), which are different patents and must not be substituted for the cited reference. I therefore do not rely on US2282637 for any limitation and treat it only as corroborating the maturity of ophthalmic-mounting art. Anyone pressing this analysis should pull its actual text before using it in a rejection.
2. The Great Britain foreign reference printed as "3/1858" remains OCR-mangled and unverified, as already flagged in the prior sections. I did not succeed in resolving it. I do not use it in this analysis; if it is a genuine mid-19th-century publication, it would be § 102(b) art if it discloses the subject matter, but that is speculation I will not build on.
3. No contradiction with the earlier sections. The earlier-noted assignee discrepancy and the "Cited By (29)/(54)" count discrepancy stand as previously described and are unaffected by this analysis.
4. I retrieved partial (not complete) texts of Blumenthal '959 and Tesauro '847 via Google Patents. Quoted passages are verbatim from what I retrieved; the element chart should be re-verified against the full printed specifications before being used in a formal validity or invalidity position.