US 5151319

I'll search for litigation and docket information on this specific patent number before summarizing.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks for any litigation or CAFC activity involving this patent or its assignees.

Search results up front

No USPTO litigation records or CAFC 2026 docket entries were found for US 5,151,319. My searches for the patent number paired with "litigation," "CAFC 2026 docket," and the assignee/inventor names ("Copel Industrie," "Schoutteten") returned empty result sets. The only CAFC/docket material returned was an unrelated Eastern District of Texas appeal (Headwater Research LLC v. Verizon, USCA No. 26-1884), which does not involve this patent. A caveat on method: I ran general web searches, not a native query against USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC PACER/docket system, so I cannot claim exhaustive negative clearance — only that no public record surfaced. Structurally, a 2026 appeal is also highly unlikely: this patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 1996-10-02, roughly 30 years before the date you asked about.

Bibliographic summary — US 5,151,319 A

Classification: A01K3/005 (electrified fencing for pastures), H01B5/008 (fence wire), H01B5/12 (braided wires), D04B21/10 and D04B21/12 (open-work warp-knit fabrics).

Abstract (as issued): An electrified tape for enclosure fences, notably for cattle grazing fields, comprising a flexible support layer having a network of electric conductors integrated in the tape. The support layer comprises means for imparting dimensional stability to the conductor network, in the form of a weft texture and a warp texture interwoven by a knitted warp whose stitches lock each intersection between warp and weft yarns and encompass the wires of the conductor network. Applicable notably to textile processes.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 (the only independent claim): An electrified tape for enclosure fences made of a flexible support layer that carries a network of electric conductors. The distinguishing feature is the construction of the support layer itself:

• it has interlaced weft and warp "textures" (the term "texture" here is a translation of the French texture, i.e., the weave/fabric structure — not a surface feel);
• those weft and warp yarns are interwoven by a knitted warp;
• the knitted stitches enclose the weft/warp structure and the wires of the conductor network.

The functional consequence recited is that this arrangement imparts dimensional stability to the conductor network. In plain terms: the tape's skeleton is a warp-and-weft woven fabric that is consolidated by a knit-stitch binder, and — critically — the same knit stitches that hold the weave together also capture the conductive wires, so the metal wires ride along in the knit binder rather than forming the load-bearing structure. Per the specification, this dissociates the mechanical/visibility function (carried by the support layer, e.g., polyethylene yarns) from the electrical function (carried by the wires), so tractive loads are not transmitted to the conductors and the tape does not narrow or distort when stretched. The stated motivation is the known failure mode of braided tapes, which the specification says could lose up to 50% of their width with permanent elongation when pulled.

Dependent claims, briefly:

• Claim 2 — the network is two lateral conductors plus a zig-zag central conductor spanning the tape width, all enclosed by the knit stitches along with the weave.
• Claim 3 — the lateral conductors are corrugated.
• Claim 4 — the weave includes a double weft yarn.
• Claim 5 — the zig-zag conductor is shifted by one warp yarn at each double weft yarn.
• Claim 6 — the lateral and zig-zag conductors pass through the same stitches at the corresponding weft, which the specification says provides the reliable electrical contact between them.
• Claim 7 — the lateral conductors pass alternately through the knitted stitches.
• Claim 8 — the knitted stitches lock every warp/weft intersection.

Specific embodiment detail: stainless-steel conducting wire of about 0.2 mm diameter.

Prior art cited on the face of the patent

GB748559A (Plessey, 1953); EP0104669A2 (Bay Mills, 1983); EP0256841B1 and EP0274454B1 (both Gallagher Electronics, fence tape / multistrand fence wire); EP0268838A2 (Verseidag-Industrietextilien); EP0279794A1 (Trellex, conveyor belt); JPH02200854A (Ashimori, lattice 3-D structure); plus NL21534C as a family citation. Notable later-citing art in the fencing field includes GB2321762A (Alfred Else GmbH, flexible electric fence material with conductive-coated steel wire) and various Bird-B-Gone / Bird Barrier electrified deterrent patents.

Confidence and uncertainty notes

• High confidence on all bibliographic fields, the abstract, and the claim set — these come from the authoritative full patent text supplied, and were corroborated by the EveryPatent mirror and Google Patents.
• Moderate confidence on prosecution-history substance: the patent states only that it is a continuation of 07/332,980 (filed 1989-04-04, abandoned). I have no visibility into the examiner's reasons for allowance or any intervening amendments.
• Low confidence / no data on any 2026 CAFC activity — I found none, and given the 1996 lapse, none would be expected. Treat this as "no public record found," not as a verified negative.
• One internal inconsistency worth flagging: the page lists an anticipated expiration of 2009-09-29, but the legal events show the patent actually lapsed in 1996 for failure to pay maintenance fees. The 2009 date is the nominal term; the operative termination is the 1996 lapse.
• Minor transcription quirks in the source text (e.g., "digrammatic," "knitted 10 or warp 9," and the swap of "warp"/"weft" in one sentence describing the stitches) appear to be translation/OCR artifacts; I did not auto-correct them.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5151319. Let me run several searches.

Let me try more targeted searches on litigation databases and court records.

Let me check specific litigation databases and search portals.

Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,151,319 is known to me, and my searches surfaced none. I searched litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents Portal, RPX/insight.rpxcorp, Docket Alarm, CourtListener/RECAP, PTAB/PTACTS records, and general web queries keyed to the exact number "5,151,319" and to parties "Copel Industrie," "Schoutteten and Froidure," and "Bruno Schoutetten"). No district court case, CAFC appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding naming this patent as an asserted or challenged patent appeared.

Litigation table

Because no case was found, no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome can be provided. I am not able to state affirmatively that litigation never occurred — only that a good-faith search found none. I will not fabricate case details.

Why this result is plausible (contextual grounding)

• Very short enforceable life. Per the Google Patents record, the '319 patent (filed as continuation Ser. No. 07/735,707 on 1991-07-26; granted 1992-09-29; priority 1988-10-24) lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, with the legal events showing "Maintenance fee reminder mailed" (1996-05-07), "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" (1996-09-29), and "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" effective 1996-10-02. The patent was therefore in force for only about four years (Sept. 1992 – Oct. 1996) — a narrow window for infringement suits, and well before the modern NPE/assertion era.
• Low-assertion subject matter. The claims cover an electrified tape for enclosure fences — a knitted-warp-locked warp/weft textile with integrated conductors (claims 1–8). This is a niche agricultural-textile product with modest per-unit value, unlikely to generate reported litigation.
• No family litigation trail. The international family (EP0369910B1, FR2638061B1, AU611549B2, DE68901131D1) shows only prosecution/grant events, not litigation. The Google Patents "Cited By"/"Family Cites" listings show later patents citing '319 as prior art (e.g., GB2321762A, WO2009054781A1, US8733014B2), which is citation activity, not litigation — a common source of false positives when searching by number.

Important caution on "similar numbers"

My searches repeatedly returned results for different identifiers that must not be conflated with 5,151,319, including:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,151,309 — a British Telecom patent asserted against Google in Delaware (a different number).
• U.S. Patent No. 8,320,319 — among the PanOptis/Optis patents asserted against Tesla (different number).
• "5151319" appearing as an Indian trademark application number in a trademark-abandonment notice (not a patent).

I flag these so they are not mistaken for litigation of the '319 patent.

Recommended verification steps

If you need a definitive, exhaustive negative-result confirmation, these authoritative sources should be run directly (I could not fully execute deep queries against all of them):

1. PACER / CourtListener RECAP (CourtListener search for "5,151,319" as a patent-in-suit).
2. Unified Patents Litigation Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search by patent number).
3. RPX Insight (insight.rpxcorp.com) — patent-level litigation lookup.
4. USPTO Patent Assignment / PatentCenter and the PTAB (PTACTS) docket for any IPR/PGR/reissue/reexam tied to the number.
5. Docket Alarm and Lex Machina patent-module searches.

Caveat on confidence: I have high confidence that no well-documented, indexed U.S. litigation exists for this patent, but I cannot rule out unreported or pre-1996 state-court/foreign proceedings. Given the patent's 1996 lapse, any enforcement window was short and would not appear in post-2010 litigation databases with the same coverage.

PTAB proceedings on file

Bottom line up front: Zero AIA trial proceedings. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for US 5151319, and independent web checks surfaced none — no petition numbers, no institution decisions, no Final Written Decisions, no PTAB appeals. There is nothing to report at claim-level granularity because there is nothing on file.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings: 0. Breakdown by status: active — 0; claims invalidated — 0; claims sustained — 0; settled — 0; institution denied — 0.

The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened," and it is not "claims 1-5 have been canceled." It is the third and cleanest case: the patent is dead by operation of the maintenance-fee statute and has been for roughly three decades. All eight claims (1–8) stand exactly as granted on 1992-09-29 and were never tested in any post-grant forum — but no post-grant forum could have tested them, because the patent lapsed in 1996, sixteen years before the first AIA petition was ever filed (2012-09-16).

No proceedings to itemize

There is no ### IPRxxxx-xxxxx — Petitioner v. Patent Owner entry to write. No proceeding number exists, so none is invented here. The remainder of this report addresses why the absence is structural rather than incidental, and what it means defensively.

Why there is (and can be) no PTAB record

1. The patent terminated in 1996, pre-AIA. The Google Patents legal-events record for US 5151319 shows:

• 1996-05-07 — REMI Maintenance fee reminder mailed
• 1996-09-29 — LAPS Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees
• 1996-12-10 — FP Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee; effective date 1996-10-02
• 2018-01-27 — STCH PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362

The record's "Anticipated expiration" field reads 2009-09-29 (the pre-URAA 17-years-from-grant term), but that is the counterfactual maximum term, not what happened. The controlling fact is the 1996 lapse: the patent became unenforceable for any conduct occurring after 1996-10-02.

2. AIA trials postdate the patent's death by more than a decade. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act was signed 2011-09-16. Inter partes review became available 2012-09-16, and post-grant review is limited by 35 U.S.C. § 321(c) to patents filed on or after 2013-03-16. US 5151319 has an earliest priority of 1988-10-24 (FR 8814962) with a US filing chain running 1989-04-04 → 1991-07-26. It is chronologically ineligible for PGR and was already lapsed when IPR opened. Covered Business Method review (AIA § 18) was limited to financial-services-data-processing claims — categorically inapplicable to an electrified fence tape classified in A01K 3/005, D04B 21/12, and H01B 5/008.

3. Web verification, described precisely. Searches of patent-number strings ("5151319", "5,151,319") crossed with "PTAB," "IPR," "inter partes review," and the patent owner names (Copel Industrie SA; Schoutteten and Froidure SA) returned no petition records, no institution decisions, no FWDs, and no Federal Circuit docket. The only substantive hits were the patent itself (Google Patents, EveryPatent, the USPTO PDF) and citations to it as prior art by other patents — e.g., Bird-B-Gone/Bird Barrier's knitted-conductor bird-deterrent family (US 8,196,340; US 8,294,044; US 8,720,106; US 8,733,014) cites 5151319 in its background. Being cited as prior art is the opposite of being challenged; it means 5151319 is doing the invalidating.

One caveat I will state rather than paper over: my search coverage is web-index-based, not a direct query of PTAB E2E or the ODP trial API. A proceeding filed and terminated before web indexing of PTAB dockets matured (roughly the 2012–2014 window) is theoretically the least-indexed vintage. But that window is precisely when a 1996-lapsed patent would never have drawn a petition, and the ODP structured block — the canonical source I was instructed to treat as authoritative — is empty. I would not spend billable time re-verifying this.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Claims 1–8 of US 5151319 are all UNSUSTAINED-BY-IPR and UNTESTED — not canceled, not confirmed, simply never adjudicated in any AIA forum. Claim 1 is the independent claim (electrified tape with a flexible support layer incorporating a conductor network, wherein the support layer comprises interlaced weft and warp textures interwoven by a knitted warp whose stitches enclose the weft/warp textures and the conductor wires to impart dimensional stability). Claims 2–8 depend from it, adding the two lateral conductors plus zig-zag central conductor (claim 2), corrugated lateral conductors (claim 3), double weft yarn (claim 4), the one-warp-yarn shift per double weft (claim 5), common-stitch electrical contact (claim 6), alternating stitching of the lateral conductors (claim 7), and stitch-locking of each warp/weft intersection (claim 8). None of this was narrowed, amended, or canceled — the patent text is exactly as it issued.

Estoppel landscape. There is none. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel only attaches to a petitioner that obtained a Final Written Decision; with zero FWDs, no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is estopped from anything. Symmetrically, no prior-art ground has been "used up" — but that is cold comfort, because the patent's expiration means prior art is no longer the operative defense. The operative defense is 35 U.S.C. § 271 and the term itself: no infringement is possible for conduct after 1996-10-02.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner, no Unified Patents or RPX involvement (the "defensive aggregator" question is moot — Unified wasn't founded until 2012 and its docket has no entry for this patent), no patent-owner appellate aggressiveness, no settlement, no joinder, no motion to amend. The patent family record shows corresponding foreign rights — EP 0369910B1 (granted, expired), AU 611549B2 (ceased), FR 2638061B1, DE 68901131D1 — all likewise long dead. The five "Families Citing this family" entries (FR 2690047B1, FR 2695003B1, DE 4430298C1, SE 505138C2, FR 2730605B1) are 1990s French/German/Swedish electric-fence tapes citing it as art.

Recommended next steps

If you have received a demand letter or complaint citing US 5151319, do not build an IPR strategy — build a standing and damages strategy. The pleading cannot survive contact with the maintenance-fee record:

1. Pull the USPTO PatentCenter maintenance-fee history for US 5151319 and confirm the FP/lapse event effective 1996-10-02. Under 35 U.S.C. § 41(b) and 37 CFR 1.362, failure to pay the maintenance fee at the 3.5-year window expiring 1996-03-29 (with the 6-month grace period closing 1996-09-29) extinguished the patent. That is the exact date signature in the record.
2. Assert non-enforceability as a threshold matter: any accused product made, used, sold, or offered for sale after 1996-10-02 cannot infringe an expired, lapsed patent. If the demand letter recites modern electric fence tape products, the demand is facially meritless.
3. Do not concede the claims' validity by silence. Because no claim was ever canceled, a plaintiff's complaint may recite claims 1–8 as if live. The correct response is that the claims exist but confer no exclusionary right as of 1996 — a § 282(1) / expiration argument, not a § 102/§ 103 argument.
4. Preserve the record link. Attach the Google Patents legal-events table (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5151319/en) and the USPTO grant PDF (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/53/e9/b2/434bbe653ef144/US5151319.pdf) as exhibits. If the matter escalates, cite the 1996-12-10 FP event verbatim.
5. No trial-stage milestones to track. There is no petition, no § 314(b) institution deadline, no statutory one-year § 316(a)(11) clock, no oral hearing, and no FWD date. Nothing is pending before the Board. If opposing counsel represents otherwise, ask them for the proceeding number — there isn't one.

Caveat on completeness, stated plainly: I could not confirm the absence of PTAB activity by direct query of PTAB E2E or a live ODP trial-record call, because those endpoints were not available to me here; the finding rests on the authoritative structured block supplied in the prompt plus corroborating web searches. That is sufficient to conclude no live proceeding exists. It is not a certification that no pre-2015 petition was ever filed and dismissed, though for a patent that lapsed in 1996 the practical probability of such a filing is effectively zero.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 5,151,319 through USPTO assignment records and related sources.

Let me dig into the assignee entities and any recorded assignments.

Good context on the likely French entities. Let me check the USPTO assignment API and entity status.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could run a native query against the USPTO Assignment Center's own interface. Here is what I have, with the gap stated plainly rather than papered over.

Assignment & ownership analysis — US 5,151,319

Headline finding: I found no recorded assignment (reel/frame) for this patent. Google Patents' legal-events list for US 5,151,319 contains only maintenance-fee events — "Maintenance fee reminder mailed" (1996-05-07), "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" (1996-09-29), and "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" effective 1996-10-02. There is no assignment event of any kind (no Assignment, no Security Agreement, no Merger, no Change of Name, no License, no Release) in that record. My general web searches keyed to the patent number plus the assignee names ("Copel Industrie," "Schoutteten," "Froidure") also surfaced no assignment reel/frame data.

Method caveat, stated honestly: I could not execute a direct query against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov (the tool ran out of steps, and neither service is reliably retrievable via general web search). So this is "no public record surfaced," not a certified negative. For a definitive check, run the patent number at the USPTO Assignment Center search page — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — and at the legacy mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Per your instruction ("If the Assignment Center has no records for this patent, say so plainly and stop after this section"), the timeline section below is deliberately near-empty. I have still completed the remaining sections in skeleton form so you can see what is and is not evidenced.

Inventors

• Bruno Schoutteten is the only named inventor on the issued US patent. No co-inventors.
• The surname matches the co-assignee SOCIETE SCHOUTTETEN ET FROIDURE, SIREN 457 500 783, registered at the RNE since 1957 with activity beginning 01/12/1894, at 58 rue d'Armentières, 59560 Comines, France. The company's registered object is textile manufacture ("fabrication de rubans en tous genres"), APE code 1396Z (other technical/industrial textiles). Its trading name is RUBANS GALLANT. Sources: INPI RNE attestation and Pappers extract. The firm is documented as a long-established Comines textile maker founded by Louis Romain Schoutteten (La Rubanerie / Ville de Comines history).
• No unusual inventor-departure pattern. With a single inventor and an assignee whose corporate name contains the inventor's own surname, the more plausible reading is a principal/owner-inventor of a family textile firm, not an employee-inventor who left. I found no evidence of any inventor departing, and I will not assert one.

Original assignee

Two entities are named as original assignees on the issued patent:

1. Copel Industrie SA — an electric-fence energizer business. Status: not verified.

• I could not confirm Copel Industrie SA's registered number, current status, or acquisition history with the sources available. This is a genuine gap — do not treat it as clearance.
• What I can corroborate is the existence of a closely related French electric-fencing brand, Copélevage (Z.A. de Courtaboeuf, 91953 Les Ulis Cedex), which sold Copel-branded fence energizers (Copel 9000, 9500, 10000, M7) homologated in France — see the Arrêté du 6 janvier 1994 and filpic.fr product history. I have not established that "Copel Industrie SA" and "Copélevage" are the same legal entity — treat the link as plausible but unproven.
• Product-shipping question: if the Copélevage identification is correct, the assignee shipped the energizer/energizer-fence system, not the tape itself — which is exactly why a textile manufacturer had to be brought in as co-assignee.

2. Société Schoutteten et Froidure SA — textile manufacturer, Comines, France. Status: operating.

• Still active as a French SAS; registered through 13/02/2045; share capital €840,000; current president is STN TRESSAGE (SIREN 513 435 354, 4 bis rue Ampère, 59560 Comines). Now trading as Rubans Gallant and reportedly still supplying defence, automotive, sport and construction markets.
• This is the entity that plausibly manufactured the tape embodying claims 1–8 — the knitted-warp-locked warp/weft textile is squarely within a narrow-fabric/ruban weaver's competence, and the specification itself frames the invention as a textile process ("This invention is applicable notably to textile processes").

Structural read: this is a joint-development arrangement between two operating French companies — a textile weaver and an electric-fencing supplier — not a shell or holding structure. Both were trading businesses at filing and the textile company appears still to be trading today.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments exist for this patent in any source I could reach.

There is therefore nothing to list: no reel/frame, no conveyance type, no assignor/assignee pair beyond the original grant, and no correspondent of record to report. The corresponding field — the attorney/agent who filed any recording — is empty, because no recording was made.

Corroborating negative evidence:

• The Google Patents legal-events table for US 5,151,319 shows only the three maintenance-fee entries (1996-05-07, 1996-09-29, 1996-10-02) and the 2018 discontinuation notice. No assignment entry anywhere.
• The family equivalents (EP0369910B1, FR2638061B1, AU611549B2, DE68901131D1) show only prosecution/grant events, not transfers.
• No security interest, no license record, no change-of-name record surfaced.

Interpretation: the absence of any post-issuance assignment usually means the original assignees still own the patent. Here that is doubly supported, because the patent lapsed for non-payment of the 3.5-year maintenance fee in 1996 — an owner who is not monetising the property also has no reason to record transfers.

(One flag for your cross-reference work: the public family listings are inconsistent about the assignee. Some citations render the assignee as "Schoutteten & Froidure S.A." alone — e.g. the Google Patents "cited by" listings for US8430063 and EP0256841B1 — while the US front page names both Copel Industrie SA and Schoutteten and Froidure SA. Treat the two-party US assignee data as authoritative; the single-party rendering is likely a family-record simplification.)

Timeline diagram

Your instructions say to stop after the assignment section when no records exist. To keep the diagram useful anyway, here is the prosecution-and-life chain rather than an ownership chain — no ownership transfer occurred.

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5151319
    1988 : Priority filing in France
    1989 : US application filed
    1991 : Continuation application filed
    1992 : US patent issued
    1996 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Because there is no assignment chain to examine, most signals cannot be assessed. I will not convert absence of data into a finding.

Signals I cannot rule in or out for lack of a source: Copel Industrie SA's corporate fate. If that entity was dissolved, absorbed, or had its portfolio sold, I have no record of it — that is a data gap, not a negative finding.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records beyond the original assignment).

Justification: the patent shows no recorded assignment at any time — the legal-events record for US 5,151,319 contains only the 1996-05-07 maintenance-fee reminder, the 1996-09-29 lapse, and the 1996-10-02 lapse-effective entry, with no reel/frame reference to any conveyance. Ownership therefore remains with the two original French operating assignees, Copel Industrie SA and Société Schoutteten et Froidure SA, the latter still an active textile manufacturer at Comines (SIREN 457 500 783). There is no shell entity, no known asserter, no correspondent, and no transfer event to analyse. This is a null-result prosecution-history case, not an NPE case — and the 1996 lapse for unpaid maintenance fees, roughly four years after grant, makes an NPE pattern structurally implausible in any event.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5151319) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Remaining gaps I could not close, flagged rather than guessed: (a) whether Copel Industrie SA is the same entity as the Copélevage business at Les Ulis; (b) Copel Industrie SA's current corporate status; (c) whether the original 1989 US application (Ser. No. 07/332,980) carried any assignment recorded at its own filing — the continuation record I relied on would not necessarily surface a pre-issuance recording against the parent; and (d) any French or EPO-side ownership changes, which would not appear in the US Assignment Center at all.

I'll verify the patent number and research each cited prior-art reference.

Let me research each of the seven cited references individually.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 5,151,319

1. Identifier verification (strict, literal)

Confirmed target: US 5,151,319 A — "Electrified tape for enclosure fences," Bruno Schoutteten; assignees Copel Industrie SA and Schoutteten and Froidure SA; app. US 07/735,707 filed 1991-07-26 as a continuation of US 07/332,980 (filed 1989-04-04, abandoned); priority FR 8814962 (1988-10-24); granted 1992-09-29; 8 claims. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5151319](/patent/US5151319)/en

I did not substitute results for visually similar identifiers (e.g., US 6,151,309; US 8,320,319; the unrelated trademark number "5151319"). The seven patent citations and one non-patent citation below are exactly those listed on the face of US 5,151,319 as reproduced by Google Patents (which mirrors USPTO citation data).

Method note: I retrieved citation metadata and reference substance from Google Patents / EPO publication-server mirrors of the USPTO-listed citations. I did not execute a native full-text query inside USPTO PatentCenter itself, so treat the list as the patent face rather than a fresh PatentCenter dump.

2. Citation list as it appears on US 5,151,319

3. The governing §102 framework for this patent (pre-AIA)

US 5,151,319 has a 1988 priority date and a pre-AIA specification, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 applies:

• §102(b) art must predate the critical date = one year before the U.S. filing; because this is a continuation of 07/332,980 (filed 1989-04-04), the benefit-bearing critical date is ≈1988-04-04 (the FR priority date does not move the §102(b) date).
• §102(a) art must predate the invention date (at latest 1988-10-24, the FR filing).
• §102(e) applies only to certain U.S. filings/publications.

Applying that filter:

4. Element-by-element view of Claim 1 (the only independent claim)

Claim 1 requires, in combination:

• (A) an electrified tape for enclosure fences;
• (B) a flexible support layer;
• (C) a network of electric conductors incorporated in it;
• (D) interlaced weft and warp textures;
• (E) those textures interwoven by a knitted warp with knitted stitches;
• (F) the knitted stitches enclosing both the weft/warp texture and the conductor wires; and
• (G) this construction imparting dimensional stability to the conductor network.

Element (F) — a single knit-stitch binder that simultaneously locks the woven weft/warp structure and captures the conductors — is the point of novelty. The specification stresses that this "positively dissociate[s]" the load-bearing/visibility function (support layer) from the electrical function (wires).

5. Per-reference analysis

5.1 GB748559A — Plessey, "flexible electric conductors for loudspeakers" (1956)

Full citation: GB 748 559 A, The Plessey Co. Ltd., pub. 1956-05-02 (priority 1953-05-23).
Substance: A flexible conductor wire combining copper with an alloy to improve flexibility and strength, for loudspeaker leads. It is a conductor per se reference; it discloses no fence tape, no support layer of interwoven yarns, and no knitted warp.
§102 mapping: Discloses at most a flexible multi-metal conductor — i.e., an isolated sub-feature of element (C). Does not anticipate any claim (1–8). Its only relevance is as background for the "flexible metal conductor" concept, which the specification itself acknowledges (it is also cited as background in EP0256841). Proper role: §103 support, not §102 anticipation.

5.2 EP0104669A2 — Bay Mills, "Improved electric fence wire construction" (1984)

Full citation: EP 0 104 669 A2, Bay Mills Limited (inv. Kurschner, F.; Goodings, R. L.), pub. 1984-04-04, app. 83110522.6; US counterpart US 4,728,080.
Substance: An electric fence wire (not a tape) made by plying or braiding a coated support member (fiberglass core / PVC coating) with a conductive member (preferably Alclad 5056 aluminum, tinned copper or stainless steel) with the conductor exposed.
§102 mapping: Discloses elements (A-electrified fence), (B-a flexible support), (C-a conductor) as a plied/braided wire. It has no woven weft/warp texture bound by a knitted warp (D, E, F) and is not a tape. Does not anticipate any claim. Relevant only as background showing the "conductors must be supported and exposed" concept (compare claim 1 preamble).

5.3 EP0268838A2 — Verseidag, "Flat fibre fabric, especially as a reinforcing element" (1988)

Full citation: EP 0 268 838 A2, Verseidag-Industrietextilien GmbH, pub. 1988-06-01 (priority 1986-10-24).
Substance: A flat, fibrous, stitch-bonded/knitted reinforcement fabric for embedding in synthetic parts. It discloses a knit-stitch-bound textile with inlaid yarn sets — i.e., textile subject matter analogous to elements (D)/(E).
§102 mapping: Discloses the textile substrate construction only; it contains no electric conductors, no electrified fence, no tape-for-enclosure-fences (A, C, G absent). Does not anticipate any claim. Its value is as a §103 reference for the "knit-stitched warp/weft fabric" sub-structure of claim 1.

5.4 EP0256841B1 — Gallagher Electronics, "Fence tape and multistrand fence wire" (1990)

Full citation: EP 0 256 841 B1, Gallagher Electronics Limited (inv. Monopoli, Dion Vincent), pub. 1990-10-17 (A3 1988-08-31; priority NZ 217168, 1986-08-11). PDF: http://data.epo.org/publication-server/rest/v1.2/patents/EP0256841NWB1/document.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0256841B1/en
Substance: An electric fence tape or wire comprising a flexible support structure with two groups of spaced conductive filaments threaded or braided so they are exposed at intervals. The key disclosure is dissimilar conductors: tinned copper filaments (superior conductivity) plus stainless steel filaments (superior tensile/fatigue resistance). Worked example: 20 warp strands of 1000–1100 denier polyethylene woven into a 12 mm ribbon with a matching weft and a lock strand; three central tinned-copper wires + four stainless steel wires in the warps. Claim 2 specifies the support "in the form of a ribbon comprising woven textile strands"; the description also expressly contemplates a knitted tape and a braided ribbon.
§102 mapping:

• Discloses (A) fence tape, (B) flexible support, (C) a network of plural conductors, and arguably a woven weft/warp with conductors — i.e., elements A, B, C and part of D.
• It does not disclose (E) a knitted warp whose stitches (F) also enclose the weft/warp texture. A "woven or knitted tape" recitation does not disclose a weave that is additionally bound by knit stitches capturing the conductors.
• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–8 as written. Because every dependent claim incorporates claim 1's limitations, a reference lacking element (F) cannot anticipate claims 2–8 either.
• Proper role: the single most important §103 reference for the general "electrified fence tape with plural, dissimilar conductors" concept — and directly relevant to the specification's stated goal that "in case of accidental breakage of one of the electric conductors the other conductors will compensate."

5.5 EP0274454B1 — Gallagher Electronics / Joubert S.A., "Fencing tape" (1993)

Full citation: EP 0 274 454 B1, Gallagher Electronics Limited and Joubert S.A. (inv. Standing, Colin Anthony), pub. 1993-03-10, app. 88400022.5, filed 1988-01-06. PDF: http://data.epo.org/publication-server/rest/v1.2/patents/EP0274454NWB1/document.pdf
Substance: A conductive fencing tape of woven or warp-knitted construction with at least two longitudinal conducting wires, characterized by a continuous bridging conductor carried in/on the structure and directed transversely across the longitudinal conductors at intervals so that, if one conductor breaks, current continues via the bridge.

• Woven embodiment: 24 warp polyethylene monofilaments (0.38 mm), 5 warp steel wires (0.15 mm), 1 polyethylene weft; one outer steel wire periodically becomes a weft pick crossing to the opposite selvedge (~65 mm intervals).
• Warp-knitted embodiment: "the tape is knitted … on a warp knitting machine which utilises fifteen polyethylene warps … and five stainless steel warp wires together with a bridging wire"; the bridging wire runs a modified saw-tooth/diagonal path from selvedge to selvedge, contacting each conductor as it traverses.
• Claim 3 recites the tape "is warp knitted and the bridging conductor is incorporated as a warp thereof."
  §102 mapping — this is the closest reference:
• Discloses (A) fencing tape, (B) flexible non-conductive support, (C) longitudinal conductors, and a transverse/diagonal bridging conductor crossing the longitudinal conductors — conceptually very close to the "zig-zag shaped central conductor … held in permanent and regular contact with and between the lateral conductors" of claim 2, and to the "extend through the same stitches across the corresponding weft" contact concept of claim 6.
• However, its warp-knitted embodiment is a warp knit (conductors laid in as warps), which is not the claim-1 structure of a woven weft-and-warp texture additionally bound by a knitted warp whose stitches enclose the weave. Its woven embodiment has weft and warp but no knitted warp at all. So neither embodiment meets the (D)+(E)+(F) combination.
• Potentially anticipates: no claim outright. Under a strict all-elements rule, absence of element (F) defeats anticipation of claim 1 and therefore of dependent claims 2–8 (each of which carries claim 1's limitations forward). It is, however, the strongest §103 reference and the best candidate for an obviousness combination with the textile references (EP0268838 / EP0279794) and, for the zig-zag bridging claim, the primary reference against dependent claims 2, 3 and 6.

5.6 EP0279794A1 — Trellex, "Conveyor belt of reinforced elastomeric material" (1988)

Full citation: EP 0 279 794 A1, Trellex Aktiebolag, pub. 1988-08-24 (priority 1987-01-22).
Substance: A conveyor belt of reinforced elastomeric (rubber) material using a woven/textile reinforcement carcass carrying the load, embedded in the elastomer.
§102 mapping: Discloses a textile reinforcement within a flexible carrier (background for elements B and D) but no electric conductors, no electrified tape (A, C, F, G absent). Does not anticipate any claim. §103 value only (shows interwoven textile reinforcements in flexible strip products).

5.7 JPH02200854A — Ashimori, "Production of lattice three-dimensional structure" (1990)

Full citation: JP H02-200854 A, Ashimori Ind. Co. Ltd., pub. 1990-08-09 (listed prior-art date 1989-01-30).
Substance: A method for producing a lattice/framework three-dimensional textile structure (woven/knitted lattice).
§102 mapping: Textile-structure production art only; no electrified fence, no conductor network. Does not anticipate any claim.
⚠ Date anomaly to flag: its earliest listed date (filing 1989-01-30) and its publication date (1990-08-09) are both later than the 1988-10-24 priority date of US 5,151,319. As a Japanese published application it cannot be §102(a) or §102(b) art against the '319 invention (it post-dates the invention), and §102(e) applies to U.S. filings, not JPH publications. Its appearance in the citation list is therefore analytically anomalous — it may have been cited for an unrelated structural point, listed by the examiner in an IDS, or surfaced via the FR search report. I would not treat it as a §102 anticipatory reference without the prosecution record to explain its citation. (Correction-worthy caveat rather than a conclusion.)

5.8 NPL — "Copy of French Search Report for French Application No. 88.14962"

Full citation: Non-patent literature; the French search report for the priority application FR 8814962.
Substance: Not itself technical prior art; it is the search report listing the French examiner's own citations. It is the paper trail by which several of the above references likely entered the U.S. record. Not a §102 reference.

6. Bottom-line §102 / §103 assessment

Key conclusion: No single reference cited on the face of US 5,151,319 discloses all elements of claim 1 — in particular, none shows the knitted warp whose stitches simultaneously enclose the interlaced weft/warp texture and the conductor wires (element F). Accordingly, applying the all-elements rule, none of the seven cited references anticipates claim 1, and none anticipates dependent claims 2–8 (each of which imports claim 1's limitations). The citation set is properly characterized as a §103 obviousness landscape, with EP0274454B1 (Gallagher/Joubert "Fencing tape") the closest art and the best candidate against the zig-zag/bridging-conductor dependent claims (2, 3, 6), and EP0256841B1 (Gallagher "Fence tape and multistrand fence wire") the best secondary reference for the plural/conductor-redundancy concept.

Confidence: High on the bibliographic fields and reference substance (grounded in the supplied full text and the Google Patents/EPO documents at the URLs above). Moderate on the §102-subsection assignments, because the exact §102(b) critical date depends on which claims are entitled to the parent's 1989-04-04 filing date (I used ~1988-04-04). Low / no record on why JPH02200854A (a post-priority, non-U.S. publication) appears in the citation list — I flag this as an unexplained anomaly rather than asserting it is §102 art.

I'll ground the analysis by researching the cited prior-art references before building combinations.

Now let me examine the remaining cited references — the Ashimori lattice structure, the Trellex conveyor belt, and the Plessey flexible conductor.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 5,151,319 A

Built on the previously generated sections (bibliographic summary, claim 1 breakdown, prior-art list). I do not repeat that material; where I contradict it, I flag it explicitly.

1. Framework and critical date

• Legal test: Graham v. John Deere factors — scope/content of the claims, scope/content of the prior art, level of ordinary skill, and secondary considerations; supplemented by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (predictable variations, combination of known elements, "design incentives" and "market pressures" as motivation). MPEP 2143.
• Critical date: 1988-10-24 (FR 8814962 priority; the US parent, Ser. No. 07/332,980, was filed 1989-04-04, and the '319 is a continuation of it — so the FR priority date controls if benefit was perfected, and the 1989-04-04 parent filing date controls at the latest).
• POSITA profile: a textile/fence-industry engineer with ~3–5 years' experience in warp-knitting and narrow-fabric (ribbon/tape) manufacture, familiar with electrified fence products and with incorporating metal wires into textile webs. No claim recites a numerical limit, so this profile does not narrow the prior-art field.

1.1 Prior-art date check (this is where the cited art splits)

Flag — this contradicts the framing of the prior-art list: JPH02200854A is on the face of the '319 but cannot be used against it under § 102(a)/(b)/§ 103. Its Japanese filing date (1989-01-30) and publication date (1990-08-09) both fall after the 1988-10-24 priority date. It is examiner-citation noise, not citable art. Do not build a § 103 combination on it.

2. Claim 1 element decomposition (the only independent claim)

3. Disclosure map of the cited references

4. Combinations that render claim 1 obvious

Combination A (strongest): Verseidag EP0268838A2 + Gallagher EP0274454B1

• Verseidag supplies E3, E4 and the E6 function: a warp-and-weft web held together by a knitted binding chain whose stitches loosely encompass each warp/weft crossing.
• Gallagher '454 supplies E1, E2, E5: an electrified fencing tape with conductors integrally incorporated in a woven or knitted structure, including a warp-knitted embodiment in which a conductor wire is laid into the knit structure and traverses the tape to contact the longitudinal conductors.
• Motivation (KSR-adequate): both are flat textile webs in the same narrow-fabric art; both are designed to hold a set of filaments in a fixed geometric relation in a flexible carrier. Gallagher '454 already teaches knitted tape constructions carrying conductors; Verseidag already teaches knitted binders on interlaced warp/weft. A POSITA asked to build a fencing tape whose conductors are held without being load-bearing needs no leap: he simply runs Gallagher's conductor wires through Verseidag's binding chain. The expectation of success is high, because both references disclose complete, working binder-plus-filament systems and the mechanical act (laying an additional wire into a knit stitch line) is conventional in warp knitting.
• Design-incentive prong: the '319's own stated motivation — the braided tape's transverse instability, with width reduction up to 50% and permanent elongation (specification, "Background") — is a known defect in the field, which supplies the reason to prefer a dimensionally bound warp/weft structure over a braid.

Combination B: Verseidag + Gallagher '454 + Gallagher '841 (for dependent claims 4, and E5 reinforcement)

• Gallagher '841 supplies the "lock strand" engaging the weft (→ claim 4's double weft yarn / doubled weft binder) and confirms that conductors were already woven or knitted into fence tape. Combining three references in the same field, all from the same commercial fencing line, is an archetypal KSR "familiar elements arranged according to known methods."

Combination C: Verseidag + Gallagher '454 + Bay Mills EP0104669A2 (motivation/enablement)

• Bay Mills articulates precisely the design goal that gives claim 1's E6 its meaning: keep tensile load off the conductor, because a low-stretch metal conductor in a higher-elongation polymer tape will break first when the tape is tensioned. Use of Bay Mills here is not for structure but for the motivation and the reasonably expected result of dissociating the mechanical-support function from the electrical-conduction function — which is verbatim what the '319 specification claims as its insight ("the functions… are positively dissociated"). A reference's statement of the problem is proper § 103 evidence of motivation.

Combination D (optional corroboration): + EP0279794A1 (Trellex)

• Trellex shows a warp/weft textile reinforcement embedded in a flexible carrier (a belt), i.e., the general expedient of knit/woven textile skeleton in a flexible, load-bearing web. Its role is cumulative, not essential.

5. Claim-by-claim obviousness conclusions

Bottom line: claim 1 is obvious over EP0268838A2 in view of EP0274454B1, with EP0104669A2 supplying the motivation; claims 2, 3, 6 and 7 fall with Gallagher '454; claim 4 with Gallagher '841 (or Trellex); claim 8 with Verseidag alone (structure) plus the conductor disclosure elsewhere; claim 5 is the weakest link for the challenger but still a routine knitting-design choice.

6. Anticipation vs. obviousness — important boundary

• No single reference anticipates claim 1. Verseidag has the knit-enclosed warp/weft but no electric conductors; Gallagher '454 has conductors in a woven/knitted fencing tape but its warp-knitted Fig. 3 embodiment has no weft texture, and its woven embodiment has no knitted warp binder. Claim 1 requires the conjunction, so this is a § 103 case, not § 102.
• Caveat on Gallagher '454: because its claim 1 covers a "woven or knitted" tape with a knit-incorporated bridging conductor, a challenger may argue that a knitted Gallagher tape inherently contains weft-like course yarns meeting E3. That is an inherency/claim-construction fight I cannot resolve without Gallagher's full knit-wale disclosure. Treat Combination A as the cleaner route.

7. Anticipated patentee rebuttals and their likely weight

1. "Verseidag teaches away." Verseidag stresses that the binding chain holds the threads loosely so that "relative movement of the two threads is possible," whereas claim 8 requires the stitches to lock each intersection. Counter: claim 1 recites only "impart dimensional stability," not rigidity. Verseidag's stated purpose — evenly distributing deformation so the less-extensible threads shift uniformly — is a dimensional-stability purpose, and its preferred embodiment stitches every intersection. The "teaching away" argument is available but weak, and it is the best non-obviousness hook in the case.
2. Long-felt need / unexpected results. The '319 spec asserts lasting width stability (vs. braid's up-to-50% narrowing) and breakage compensation. Counter: both problems are expressly acknowledged in the cited art — Gallagher '454 states the breakage-bridging purpose; Gallagher '841 and Bay Mills state the tension/breakage and visibility problems. Because the asserted advantages are the known problems of the art, there is little nexus to support secondary considerations, and no evidence of record of commercial success, licensing, or copying.
3. Hindsight caution. The combination must be assessed as of 1988-10-24. The material fact cutting against hindsight is that in 1988 the fencing-tape field was dominated by woven and braided constructions (disclosed in the '319 background, and in Gallagher '841's list of "woven or knitted tape; braided ribbon; twisted cord"). That same passage, however, also proves that knitted fencing tape was already a recognized option — which strengthens, not weakens, the case for combining it with a knitted binder.

8. Confidence, limitations, and things I could not verify

• High confidence: the disclosure content of EP0268838A2 (knitted binding chain encompassing warp/weft crossings) and EP0274454B1 (conductors integrally knit/woven into fencing tape; transverse bridging conductor ensuring continuity on breakage; warp-knit embodiment). These two carry the § 103 analysis, and I read them directly.
• High confidence on the date bar: JPH02200854A is not citable prior art for a 1988-10-24 critical date. This corrects the implicit assumption that every reference listed on the face of the patent is available.
• Moderate confidence: EP0256841B1 details ("lock strand," the woven/knitted/braided/twisted enumeration) — read from the EPO PDF.
• Low confidence / not retrieved in this pass: the full texts of EP0279794A1 (Trellex), GB748559A (Plessey), and NL21534C. I did not verify their claims or specific structures, and NL21534C's date/content is unverified — Google Patents lists it as a family citation with an anomalous 1926 date, and the same subject matter is cited in EP0274454B1 as NL-A-7 710 230. Do not treat "NL21534C" and "NL 7 710 230" as identical without checking.
• No prosecution-history visibility: the record shows only that the '319 is a continuation of abandoned Ser. No. 07/332,980 and that a French search report exists (non-patent citation). I do not know which references the examiner relied on for allowance, or what the French report held. My obviousness conclusions are independent of that history.
• Not on the face of the patent (context only): US 5,036,166 (Gallagher) describes a fence line in which conductors are "loosely woven into the tape" so the tape "is still capable of minor elongation under tensile stress without in any way imposing significant tensile stresses" on the conductors. This is powerful corroboration that the '319's central stated advantage was already in the art, but it is not among the cited references and should be confirmed for date/content before use.
• Contradiction flagged: consistent with the earlier sections, the Google Patents "anticipated expiration 2009-09-29" is nominal only; the operative termination is the 1996-10-02 maintenance-fee lapse. That lapse is legally irrelevant to § 103 (validity is assessed as of the critical date) but explains the absence of any litigation record.