US 5513995

I'll verify against live sources, then summarize from the authoritative full text provided.

US 5,513,995 — Verification & Summary

Verification note: I checked this against Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5513995A](/patent/US5513995A)/en), FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5513995](/patent/5513995).html), and a secondary patent-profile aggregator (idiyas.com/patent/badge/5513995). All three agree on the bibliographic data below. I did not have direct query access to USPTO PatentCenter or CAFC/PACER dockets in this session — see the "Uncertainty" section at the end.

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1. Bibliographic Data

2. Abstract (as printed)

An electrical connecting arrangement is provided for establishing electrical connections of electronic printed-circuit boards detachably mounted in a cabinet of an electronic installation at a front side thereof. For the establishment of electrical connections, at least one connector is used, and a connector support member is attached to a rear side of the cabinet. The connector includes two connector halves to be coupled to each other. One of the connector halves is detachably attached to and supported by the support member, and is joined to an end of an electrical cable. The other connector half is securely attached to and by a rear side of the printed-circuit board. The connector halves are aligned with each other upon mounting the printed-circuit board in the cabinet, to thereby ensure coupling of the connector halves.

3. Plain-Language Overview

The problem being solved

In the conventional architecture, each plug-in circuit board needed two connectors: an "inner" connector (board-to-backplane) plus an "outer" connector (backplane-to-cable). That doubles connector count across a fully populated cabinet. This patent eliminates the backplane connector entirely: the board-side connector half mates directly with a cable-side connector half that is held on a floating bracket at the rear of the cabinet frame. Result: roughly half the connectors, and no backplane connector hardware at all.

How it physically works

A single molded connector support member (an elongated resin bar with rectangular and circular openings) spans upper and lower rear frame members, held by screws. The cable-terminated connector halves (female multi-connector halves and male coaxial connector halves) snap into that bar. The board carries the mating halves (male multi-connector halves and female coaxial halves) soldered to its rear edge, protected by a cover. A guide pin on the board cover enters a guide pin receiving hole in the bar so the halves align as the board slides down its rails. The bar's mounting holes are oversized relative to a shouldered sleeve, so the bar can be floated into position against a loosely/preliminarily tightened screw before final tightening — which is the point of the "adjustment means."

Independent claim 1 — the core arrangement

A front-loading, plug-in board arrangement having:

• a connector support member with a sleeve hole of a given internal diameter;
• a sleeve member comprising a sleeve portion and a flange portion, where the sleeve portion's outside diameter is less than the hole's internal diameter and the flange's external diameter is greater than the hole's internal diameter, and the sleeve member attaches the support member to the cabinet; and
• at least one connector with a first half detachably attached to and supported by the support member, and a second half fixed to the rear side of the board, the two halves aligning upon board insertion to ensure coupling.

Plain reading: a rear bracket that holds cable-side connector halves, mounted to the cabinet through a flanged, loose-fitting sleeve so the bracket can be shifted to line the halves up as the board is inserted.

Independent claim 9 — the support bracket claimed on its own

A connector supporting device for detachably holding a first connector half that is to mate with a second connector half. Same sleeve-hole/flange-sleeve mounting limitation as claim 1, plus:

• the support member has an opening for accommodating the first connector half; and
• detachable engagement means in that opening that engages the first connector half when it is inserted, so the second half can be coupled to the held first half.

Plain reading: the bracket itself — a snap-in receptacle/holder for connector halves — claimed independently of the board and cabinet.

Independent claim 16 — the system-level claim

An arrangement comprising:

• a connector support and a frame support;
• sleeve means with a flange for adjustably connecting the connector support to the frame support, permitting the two supports to move in both a horizontal and vertical direction relative to one another during a preliminary tightening phase;
• a coaxial connector half mounted in the connector support;
• a spring element between a portion of that coaxial connector half and the connector support; and
• a multi-connector half with resilient arms mounted in the connector support.

Plain reading: the broadest, most structural statement of the concept — a two-axis floating bracket mount plus a spring-retained coaxial half plus a snap-in resilient-arm multi-connector half. This is the claim that expressly recites the X-Y float accomplished by the loosely tightened screw.

Notable dependent claims

• Claim 3 (dep. 1): adds alignment means; claim 4 locates it as guide means between the support member and the board's rear side — i.e., the guide pin/hole.
• Claim 6 (dep. 1): adds both a multi-connector and a coaxial connector, plus alignment means. This corresponds to the third "aspect" described in the specification, which was drafted as a dependent claim rather than an independent one.
• Claims 11 & 13: the two snap-in retention mechanisms — resilient arms engaging projections (multi-connector), and an enlarged head clearing a split collar-like spring element (coaxial), with removal by the sliding sleeve.
• Claims 14 & 15: claim the two connector halves themselves as adapted for such an opening.

4. Uncertainty / Caveats

1. Database coverage. I could not issue direct queries against USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket in this session; the bibliographic data above comes from Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, and a derivative patent-profile site, which agree. Treat claim text and dates as reliable (the full specification and all 16 claims were available in the primary source).
2. Litigation. I found no evidence of any CAFC appeal or district court litigation involving US 5,513,995 in the sources retrieved. That is a negative search result, not proof of absence — a PACER/CAFC-docket check would be needed to state this definitively.
3. Assignee status. "Fujitsu Ltd" is what the record lists; no assignment/reassignment away from Fujitsu appears in the legal events.
4. Literal-reading artifacts. The granted claim text contains typographical errors that I have not corrected, per instruction: claim 13 depends on "claim 10" yet describes a coaxial connector half (claim 12 is the coaxial claim — the dependency is internally inconsistent on its face); claim 14 recites "tow projections"; and the patent uses "halve"/"calbe"/"front removable" style spellings. Any infringement or validity analysis should work from the official USPTO-issued claim text, not a re-typeset copy.
5. Status. "Expired – Fee Related" reflects the maintenance-fee lapse effective 2004-05-07; the 2014-04-22 anticipated expiration is the 20-year term from filing. Both are as listed and are assumptions, not legal conclusions, per the source's own disclaimer.

I'll search for litigation records specifically involving US Patent 5513995.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

Let me check dedicated litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent No. 5,513,995

Bottom line: No litigation involving US Patent No. 5,513,995 was found.

What I searched

I ran multiple targeted queries against publicly indexed sources that cover patent litigation and patent records, including:

• General queries combining the patent number with litigation/ infringement / lawsuit terms (e.g., US patent 5513995 litigation lawsuit, "5513995" patent infringement case)
• Fujitsu-specific assertion queries (Fujitsu patent 5513995 electrical connecting arrangement printed circuit boards assertion)
• Formatted-number variants ("5,513,995" OR "5513995")
• The USTPO PTAB / Unified Patents-style litigation coverage referenced in the prompt

What the results showed

Every result returned for this number was a patent-document record, not a litigation record. Specifically:

Notably, the patent itself shows a "Cited By" list of 20 later patents and a "Citations" list of 27 earlier references — these are patent-to-patent citations, which are frequently misread as litigation activity, but they are not lawsuits.

Why this is plausible

Several objective facts are consistent with a clean litigation history:

1. Status: "Expired - Fee Related." The patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, with a lapse date of 2004-05-07 (per the legal events: REMI 2003-11-26 → LAPS 2004-05-07 → FP 2004-07-06). A patent that went abandoned in 2004 and reached its 20-year term on 2014-04-22 has limited practical assertion value.
2. Subject matter. The claims (1–16) cover mechanical connector-support hardware — a connector support member with a sleeve hole, sleeve member with flange, multi-connector and coaxial connector halves with resilient-arm and split-collar spring retention, and adjustable sleeve attachment permitting horizontal/vertical movement during preliminary tightening (claim 16). This is component-level hardware, not a high-value standards-essential or software patent that typically attracts assertion campaigns.
3. Assignee. Original and current assignee is Fujitsu Limited; there is no indication of assignment to a monetization entity / NPE.

Important caveats

• I could not access the dedicated litigation databases directly. My queries against Unified Patents' litigation portal and CourtListener (RECAP) did not return usable case data before my search budget was exhausted. These are the authoritative sources for PACER/CAFC docket records.
• A negative search result is not proof of absence. District court complaints, ITC Section 337 investigations, and CAFC appeals are not always fully indexed by general web search engines. Assignments of the patent (which would reveal an NPE acquiring it for assertion) also would not necessarily appear in the patent record.
• One caution on the results. My search surfaced a PTAB Final Written Decision in IPR2015-01292 concerning U.S. Patent No. 6,586,890 (not 5,513,995). That is a different patent number and I am reporting it here only to flag it as not relevant — it must not be attributed to US 5,513,995.

Recommended next steps to confirm

For a definitive negative, you should query these sources directly by patent number:

Conclusion: Based on the searches performed, no litigation is known involving US Patent No. 5,513,995. If you require a court-admissible negative, the PACER/Unified Patents/CourtListener queries above should be run and the results certified.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before writing anything up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks — including the sibling family member and any litigation that could have spawned an IPR.

Proceedings overview

Zero. The structured PTAB source states there are no AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5513995 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM — and my independent searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is therefore unusual: there is no PTAB record at all, and that absence is explained by the patent itself rather than by any trial outcome — US 5513995 lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2004-05-07, roughly eight years into its term. This is not a "hardened, IPR-surviving" patent; it is a dead one. No claim has ever been tested at the Board, so there is no FWD to quote and no claim-level holding to rely on. The practical consequence is the reverse of what a defendant usually wants from this analysis: you have no PTAB victory to point to, but you almost certainly don't need one, because the patent has been unenforceable for over two decades.

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No proceedings to enumerate

There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, ground, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to report. I am not filling this section with invented entries. For completeness, here is what I checked and what I ruled out:

• Structured source (canonical). USPTO ODP / PTAB via the "PTAB proceedings on file" block: no AIA trials. This governs.
• Independent web verification (2026-09-29). Searches for US5513995 / "5,513,995" combined with IPR/PGR/CBM year ranges returned no PTAB docket entry. The Google Patents record (US5513995A) lists no PTAB "Cited By"/proceeding tab, and its legal-events history contains only fee payment and lapse entries — no trial events.

False positives I affirmatively excluded — do not conflate these with your patent:

A keyword search for "5513995 IPR" returns the Spero lighting IPRs on page one. Any docket summary that cites those proceedings as belonging to your patent is wrong.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on US 5513995. Because no AIA trial was ever filed, all 16 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB — nothing is canceled and nothing is sustained by any Board decision. Claims 1–8 are the arrangement/detachable-connector-half claims (claim 1 reciting the sleeve-hole/sleeve-member/flange attachment, claims 3 and 6 the alignment-means and multi-connector-plus-coaxial variants); claims 9–15 are the standalone connector-supporting-device claims; claim 16 is the broadly-worded "sleeve means ... permitting said connector and frame supports to be moved in both a horizontal and vertical direction ... during a preliminary tightening phase" claim. None of them has been adjudicated. Separately, the sibling and family filings — JP 3091857B2, GB 2281451B, and DE 4415009A1 (withdrawn) — likewise show no PTAB analogue, which is expected since AIA trials only apply to US patents.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to map, because there were no petitioners and therefore no petitioner privies. For a defendant being asserted against today, that cuts both ways: no ground is foreclosed, but none of the efficiencies of an existing IPR record are available either. Practically, estoppel is irrelevant here — see the lapse point below.

The controlling fact the docket conceals. US 5513995 issued 1996-05-07 and, per the recorded legal events, the year-4 maintenance fee was paid 1999-11-01, a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2003-11-26, and the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2004-05-07 (FP entry 2004-07-06; a 2018-01-26 STCH entry restates "patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362"). Status is Expired – Fee Related. That does two things for a defendant: (i) no damages can accrue after 2004-05-07, and any claim reaching acts before that date faces the six-year bar of 35 U.S.C. § 286; and (ii) the patent cannot be asserted for present-day products at all. The Google Patents field "anticipated expiration 2014-04-22" (20 years from the 1994-04-22 filing date) is a projected term that the patent never reached — do not treat it as the effective end date. Note also that because the patent is pre-AIA (priority 1993-08-13), the AIA IPR/PGR/CBM regimes largely didn't exist during its enforceable life; that alone explains the empty PTAB docket better than any litigation-strategy story.

Pattern signals. None to report. No repeat petitioner, no serial petitions, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain — Unified's own PTAB portal does not list this patent. No patent-owner appellate activity. The patent owner of record throughout is Fujitsu Limited; the inventors are Kurotori, Takahashi, Miyazawa, Nakama, Shimada, Suzuki, and Oorui. I found no district-court assertion of US 5513995. Earlier Fujitsu connector litigation I surfaced (e.g., Amp Inc. v. Fujitsu Microelectronics) concerns a different patent (a '500 patent) and is not probative here.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and received a demand citing US 5513995: verify the lapse before anything else. Pull the Google Patents legal-events record (or the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee history) and confirm the 2004-05-07 lapse. A demand letter asserting this patent against current products is defective on its face. A "troll has no case" posture applies — but note the distinction from the usual framing: the claims weren't canceled by a PTAB FWD, they were abandoned by the owner. Don't tell a court or opposing counsel that "the claims were invalidated"; they weren't. Say the patent expired for non-payment, which is a complete defense under § 271/§ 286 and deprives any pre-2004 theory of damages of a six-year window.
2. There is no FWD to link, because none exists. I deliberately am not quoting a disposition — there is nothing to quote. If opposing counsel points you to a "551 FWD" (e.g., the Mercedes-Benz v. Spero decision in IPR2023-01039 regarding US 9,955,551), that is a different patent; say so explicitly.
3. If you instead meant a different patent number — the two most likely intended targets given search-result collisions are US 9,955,551 (Spero/Torchlight, with six IPRs and an all-claims-unpatentable FWD in IPR2023-01039) or US 5,991,399 (Plano Encryption, IPR2017-01721) — confirm the number and I can run the full claim-level PTAB analysis on that patent. Please don't act on this memo for a patent other than the one actually in the demand.
4. No trial-stage milestones to calendar. With no pending proceeding, there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year § 316(a)(11) FWD clock running. And practically, no petitioner would file now: the patent has been expired since 2004, so there is no live infringement exposure to defend.

Confidence note. I am confident there is no PTAB activity on US 5513995, based on the structured ODP-derived source plus multiple corroborating searches. I could not locate a complete, authoritative PTAB E2E docket page for this patent to display, because no such proceeding exists. If you need certainty beyond what is available publicly, a direct PTAB E2E "Patent Number" search for 5513995 will return an empty result set — consistent with this memo.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before producing the analysis.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 5513995

Verification note. I could not run an interactive query against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov with the tools available here (it is a session-based search UI, not a fetchable page). What follows is grounded in the assignment data mirror that is in the record I can read: the Google Patents Legal Events table for US5513995A, which reproduces the USPTO assignment record book entries (reel/frame, assignors, effective date) plus the fee/lapse events. Every reel/frame cited below is taken verbatim from that table. Where the Assignment Center would show a correspondent of record and my source does not, I say so rather than inventing a name. Please re-run the search directly at the Assignment Center to confirm the single entry.

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Inventors

All seven named inventors, listed on the face of US5513995A:

Basis for employer: the recorded assignment (reel 006971/0258, effective 1994-04-13, recorded 1994-04-22) names all seven as assignors conveying to FUJITSU LIMITED — a standard employee-invention assignment executed three months before US filing. Independent corroboration: PatentLeaderboard's inventor profile for Noboru Nakama lists 7 US patents all granted while at Fujitsu Limited, including this one.

Unusual patterns: none detectable. There is no inventor-turned-plaintiff activity, no partial inventor retention, no reversion, and no post-filing inventor-initiated assignment. All seven were still Fujitsu-side assignors on the original instrument. The "all inventors gone within 12 months" fire-sale tell is not present in any form I can evidence — I have no departure data and will not speculate.

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Original assignee

Fujitsu Limited (Kawasaki, Japan) — named as original assignee on the issued patent and on the face of the record; also original assignee of the priority JP application JP5-201618 (JP3091857B2).

• Primary line of business: computing and telecommunications hardware — mainframe computers, digital transmission apparatus, and the rack-mounted printed-circuit-board chassis that this patent's Background section expressly names as the use environment ("a digital transmission apparatus, a main frame computer or the like"). The claimed subject matter (a cabinet-mounted connector support member carrying cable-terminated connector halves that mate with board-mounted halves, replacing a backplane-plus-outer-connector pair) is an internal equipment-design patent, not a standalone saleable article.
• Product embodying the claims: the specification describes insertion-guide rails, a connector support member spanning rear frame members, female multi-connector halves and male coaxial halves clipped into that support, and a board-side cover with a guide pin. This is consistent with Fujitsu's own rack/backplane design practice, but no specific commercial product is identified in the record, and I have no reliable evidence of a shipped part number. Treat "shipped a product embodying the claims" as unverified, not as a negative finding.
• Current status: operating. Fujitsu Limited remains an active listed company. Note for the ownership chain, however, that this patent had already lapsed by 2004 (below), so Fujitsu's later corporate divestitures (Frontech, Fsas, etc.) never touched it.

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Assignment timeline

The record contains exactly one recorded assignment — the original inventor-to-company conveyance. There is no post-issuance transfer of any kind.

• 1994-04-13 (executed) / recorded 1994-04-22 — Reel 006971/0258
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Kurotori, Fumio; Takahashi, Norihiro; Miyazawa, Hideo; Nakama, Noboru; Shimada, Shozo; Suzuki, Norio; Oorui, Kazuya — all seven jointly
  • Assignee: FUJITSU LIMITED (Japan)
  • Correspondent: not disclosed in the available record. The legal-events mirror gives the reel/frame and assignor list but not the recording correspondent. I am not going to guess a firm. This is the one field you must pull directly from the Assignment Center.
  • Context: original employment/confirmation assignment — the standard inventor-to-employer conveyance; not a fire-sale, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter.

Downstream events (fee/lapse, not assignments):

• 1995-12-06 / 1996-12-01 / 1996-12-02 / 1996-12-06 — Fee payment procedure entries; payor number assigned, entity status: LARGE ENTITY. Administrative only; no change of ownership.
• 1999-11-01 — Fee payment, year of fee payment 4. Ownership unchanged.
• 2003-11-26 — Maintenance fee reminder mailed.
• 2004-05-07 — Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees (effective 2004-05-07).
• 2004-07-06 — Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee.
• 2018-01-26 — Status confirmation: patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362.

Family-level check (no reassignment anywhere in the family): JP3091857B2, DE4415009A1 (status Withdrawn), GB2281451B, GB2281451A, JPH0757823A. Google Patents' "Also Published As" and "Country Status" tables show no assignee changes on the family documents. Nothing was carved out and sold jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction, which is a common NPE-adjacent pattern and is absent here.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5513995
    1993 : JP priority filed JP5-201618
    1994 : Seven inventors assign to Fujitsu Ltd
         : Reel 006971 frame 0258 recorded
    1996 : US 5513995 issues to Fujitsu
    1999 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid
    2003 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed
    2004 : Patent lapses for nonpayment

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment to any LLC exists in the record. The chain is a single link from seven individual inventors to an operating multinational, reel 006971/0258, and it never moves again.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The only assignee ever of record is Fujitsu Limited. No match to Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg-linked entity. Nothing in the Google Patents "Cited By" set (20 items) reflects an NPE acquiring this patent either — those are third parties citing it as prior art, not successors in interest.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / cannot be scored. With a single assignment, recurrence is impossible to establish by definition. The correspondent of record for reel 006971/0258 is not exposed in the source I can read. There is no repeat-player pattern here to flag, but the absence is structural (one entry), not evidentiary.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero consecutive assignments, let alone chained LLCs within 24 months. The only post-issuance activity is fee payments and then lapse.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. There is no infringement suit naming this patent that I can find, and the patent lapsed in 2004. A chain "arranged to enable assertion" would require a transfer in the record; there is none.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Fujitsu Limited did not file Chapter 7/11, and this patent was not sold in any proceeding. It went abandoned for nonpayment of a maintenance fee in 2004 — the opposite of a monetization exit.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer, no SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of a patent sale, no Patent Progress/EFF coverage. Fujitsu retained the patent until it expired.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. No RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN acquisition. The chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator; it terminates by abandonment.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — under the rubric, this is the correct bin precisely because the record contains only the original assignment. To be explicit about what that means here: it is not an adverse finding. There is no NPE signal of any kind. The single recorded instrument (reel 006971/0258, executed 1994-04-13, recorded 1994-04-22) moves the patent from its seven employee-inventors to Fujitsu Limited, and nothing follows it — no shell transfer, no asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-suit transfer. Fujitsu then let the patent lapse on 2004-05-07 for nonpayment of the maintenance fee, and the USPTO confirmed expiry on 2018-01-26. An operating assignee that abandons a patent rather than monetizing it is the strongest available evidence of a non-assertion posture.

Confidence and limitation: moderate-to-high on the negative finding, limited by (a) my inability to execute the Assignment Center query directly in this session and (b) the missing correspondent field for the one recorded entry. Re-verify at USPTO Assignment Center or the indexed Assignment Search using patent number 5513995; per the record I read, a search should return one hit, reel 006971 frame 0258, assignee FUJITSU LIMITED.

I'll research this patent and its cited prior art. Let me start with searches to ground the analysis.

Let me research the key prior art references cited against this patent.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 5,513,995

Note on search scope: I retrieved the authoritative full text (claims, description, and the complete citation lists) from Google Patents and Fatepatentsonline, and ran targeted searches on the highest-relevance cited references. My web-search allocation was exhausted before I could pull the full text of every one of the ~28 cited references, so for references where I have only the front-page title/assignee/date, I flag my confidence explicitly rather than inventing disclosures.

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1. Patent Identification (literal, not corrected)

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2. The Claim Set (what prior art must be measured against)

The 16 claims fall into three families. The sleeve-hole / sleeve-member-with-flange limitation is the point of novelty that distinguishes Claim 1 and Claim 9 from the "floating mount" art:

• Claims 1–2 — Arrangement: support member + sleeve hole + sleeve member (sleeve portion + flange portion) mounting the support member to the cabinet; a connector whose first half is detachably held by the support member and whose second half is fixed to the rear of the PCB; halves aligned on board insertion. Claim 2 adds "joined to an end of a cable."
• Claims 3–5 — Claim 1 + alignment means (Claim 4: guide means between support member and PCB rear; Claim 5: cable).
• Claims 6–8 — Claim 1 + at least one multi-connector + at least one coaxial connector + alignment means (Claim 7: guide means; Claim 8: multi-cable/coaxial cable).
• Claims 9–15 — "Connector supporting device": support member with sleeve hole/sleeve-member-flange, an opening to accommodate the first connector half, and detachable engagement means inside the opening.
  • Claim 10: female/male multi-connector halves. Claim 11: two resilient arm elements on the female half engaging projections in the opening.
  • Claim 12: male/female coaxial halves. Claim 13: male coaxial with enlarged head + slidable sleeve element and a split collar-like spring element.
  • Claims 14–15: the female multi-connector half and the male coaxial half as independent sub-assemblies.
• Claim 16 — Arrangement: connector support + frame support + flanged sleeve means for adjustable connection allowing movement in horizontal and vertical directions during a preliminary tightening phase + a coaxial connector half with a spring element + a multi-connector half with resilient arms.

Legal caution: § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim. Most references below are better characterized as § 103 obviousness art (or as art relevant to a sub-combination of claims). I mark each with what it actually can support.

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3. The Cited Prior Art (27–28 references, as listed on the patent)

Group A — Backplane / rack connector-mounting art (most relevant to Claim 1 & Claim 6)

Group B — Floating mount / positional-adjustment art (the art the claim amendments were designed to escape)

Group C — Connector-holding frame / panel-mount / snap-in engagement art (Claim 9–15)

Group D — Rack/guide-rail and module-insertion art (Claim 1 context / preamble)

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4. Assessment — Most Relevant Prior Art

Ranked by relevance to the surviving claim language:

1. US 5,234,348 (Trw / Northrop) — the closest overall architecture: front-removable modules, rear frame-mounted connectors, RF cable connectors, alignment pins, floating fasteners. Best § 103 art against Claims 1, 6; potentially § 102 against any claim not requiring the sleeve-hole/sleeve-flange limitation.
2. US 4,963,098 (AMP) — the closest structural analogue to the floating support member + alignment post + blind mate of Claims 1, 3, 4 and the detachable-holding concept of Claim 9.
3. US 4,834,789 (AMP) — the closest art to the alignment means / guide means of Claims 3, 4, 6, 7 (guide tracks located relative to the mating connector so the board connector aligns on insertion).
4. US 5,184,961 (Burndy, "Modular connector frame") — the closest art to Claim 9 (a frame that holds connector halves).
5. US 4,940,428 (Weidmueller, "resilient retaining means") and GB 2,113,478 (WKR, panel-mount connector + clip) — closest art to Claims 11 and 14 (resilient arms / snap-in detent engagement).
6. EP 0 349 134 (Whitaker, "Floating mounting means") and US 4,940,417 (Yazaki, "fitting adjustment mechanism") — the art that the sleeve hole / sleeve member with flange language in Claims 1, 9, and 16 appears to have been added to distinguish. Expect these to be the examiner's § 103 combination base for the mount-adjustment concept.

Point of novelty: The distinguishing feature of Claim 1/Claim 9 is not the general "connector half held on a support at the rear of the cabinet" idea — that is well taught by US 5,234,348, US 4,963,098 and others. It is the specific sleeve hole (36) with internal diameter D; sleeve member (74) having a sleeve portion of outside diameter < D and a flange portion (74a) of external diameter > D, so that the support member floats for horizontal/vertical adjustment, combined with detachable engagement of the connector half in the opening. Claim 16 recites this floating adjustment explicitly ("permitting said connector and frame supports to be moved in both a horizontal and vertical direction relative to one another during a preliminary tightening phase"). No single cited reference I retrieved discloses this combination, which is consistent with the claims having issued over all 27–28 references.

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5. Caveats and Confidence

• The claim-to-reference § 102 assignments above are potential, not adjudicated. I did not retrieve the claim text of the cited references, and full anticipation analysis requires element-by-element comparison against each reference's claims and disclosure.
• References #4 (GB 2,166,301), #5 (EP 0 349 134), #7 (GB 2,224,891), #8 (US 5,184,961), #19 (GB 2,027,289) and the remaining title-only entries are assessed from title/assignee/date metadata, not from their specifications. Confidence is medium-to-low for those and I have flagged it accordingly.
• Dates shown are the priority date / publication date exactly as listed in the US 5,513,995 citation record; I did not independently verify each.
• For the references I did pull in full (US 4,834,789, US 4,963,098, US 4,940,417, US 5,234,348), the descriptions above are grounded in the retrieved text, including the Google Patents US5234348 entry, the US4836789 record, and the US4963098 PDF text.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis in the actual cited prior art. Let me verify the disclosure of the key references from the "Citations (27/28)" section of the patent page.

Excellent grounding. Let me verify the remaining key references — particularly the snap-in retention and alignment references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,513,995 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 5,513,995 A ("Electrical connecting arrangement for establishment of electrical connections of electronic printed circuit boards detachably mounted in cabinet")
Assignee: Fujitsu Limited | Priority: 1993‑08‑13 (JP 5‑201618) | Filed: 1994‑04‑22 | Granted: 1996‑05‑07 | Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2004‑05‑07)

Note on posture: Per the previously generated Litigation summary, no litigation involving this patent was found, so there is no actual § 103 challenge of record. What follows is an independent, ex‑parte‑style obviousness assessment built entirely from the "Citations (27/28)" prior‑art section of the Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5513995/en), which is the only prior art the user directed me to use. This is an analyst opinion, not a legal conclusion.

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1. Evidentiary sources and verification status

Because I am required to interpret identifiers literally and not fabricate disclosures, I flag what I actually verified versus what I am inferring from title/assignee alone.

I could not retrieve full text for the ○ references (search budget exhausted). Any mapping I make to those is expressly flagged as title‑level inference, and should be re‑verified against the actual specifications before being relied on in a filing.

Critical‑date check. All cited references pre‑date the 1993‑08‑13 JP priority date except US 5,234,348 (granted 1993‑08‑10, three days earlier by publication; but its application was filed 1992‑05‑20, so its pre‑AIA § 102(e) date is 1992‑05‑20). There is therefore no critical‑date gap for US 5,234,348 — it is fully available as prior art. This is worth stating explicitly because the three‑day publication margin would otherwise look like a vulnerability.

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2. Claim construction — the four limitations that matter

Claim 1 (independent) breaks into:

Key observation for § 103: Limitation C is the only structural feature that distinguishes claim 1 over an ordinary rack‑and‑panel connector. The specification confirms this by conceding the purpose: "This is very significant because the threaded hole can be formed without the need for close tolerances." That is a tolerance‑absorption rationale, and tolerance absorption via oversized holes and flanged/shouldered fasteners is one of the oldest and most thoroughly documented devices in the rack‑and‑panel connector art — as the patent's own citation list confirms.

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3. The prior‑art reference map

3.1 Verified references and what they actually teach

US 4,836,789 (AMP, "Alignment system for line replaceable modules") — the most damaging single reference. Its background expressly describes the invention's core combination as known art:

"Rack and panel or drawer connectors are known wherein one of a mating pair includes integral alignment posts extending forwardly therefrom to enter corresponding apertures of the other, for connector self‑aligning during mating. At least one of the mating connectors is float mounted either on a panel or on framework … by shoulder screws through enlarged diameter holes through connector flanges, enabling incremental lateral movement caused by bearing engagement of the alignment posts and apertures."

And it identifies the exact problem the '995 patent solves:

"the channel locations are not particularly precisely located with respect to the mother board connectors; the LRM flanges are constrained to move therealong which results in the LRM also being not particularly precisely aligned with the respective mother board connector. As a result … either the mother board connector or the LRM connector must be capable of incremental lateral movement during mating…"

It also discloses a connector fixedly mounted to a mother board/panel affixed to a framework, a module insertable from the front, and a first connector "disposed precisely located" on the panel.

EP 0 349 134 A1 (AMP/Whitaker, "Floating mounting means") — supplies the motivation to combine, expressly. Verified quotes:

• "the opening in the panel is larger than the outer contours of the first electrical connector, such that the first electrical connector may float within the plane of the panel … within the limits of the opening therein";
• the floating mount exists "whereby the floating receptacle and the contacts carried thereby accommodate tolerance accumulations between the first and second electrical apparatuses";
• "Guide pins extend forwardly of the plug housing and are received in respective alignment recesses in the receptacle housing, thereby tending to cam the plug into alignment … once the plug is received into the receptacle, the nuts are thereafter tightened on the respective shoulder screws to solidly retain the plug and connector";
• it is a blind‑mate arrangement ("substantially accommodate a blind mating therebetween");
• and — decisive for motivation — the specification states the teachings "are equally applicable to a wide variety of electrical apparatuses; as for example, the following: drawers in a rack; cable‑to‑cabinet connectors; cabinet‑to‑cabinet connections; modular electrical (or electronic) equipment; and the like." It also expressly names "a backplane adapted to be energized by the power supply."

US 4,940,417 (Yazaki, "Connector device with fitting adjustment mechanism"). Verified: a flange member 3 carrying the connector is surrounded by first frame 5 and second frame 8 whose interior spaces are larger than the flange, forming "a ring‑shaped space"; the connector is supported only by protrusion/recess engagement and can be "displaced to an adjacent recess step‑by‑step" in X and Y directions by external force; the outer frame has tabs 9 with screw holes for mounting "to a body of a vehicle or the like." This is an adjustable, two‑axis float mount for a connector on a bracket — the functional core of claim 16's "sleeve means … permitting said connector and frame supports to be moved in both a horizontal and vertical direction."

US 5,234,348 (TRW, "Front removable/serviceable RF backplane"). Verified: LRMs "plug into the backplane from the front"; "keying and alignment pins 42 on LRMs 32 further ensure that RF connecting pins 60 on LRMs 32 accurately mate with RF cable connectors 56 on the fixed frame"; "cables 52, 54" attach to the back surface of the frame; there is a "blind mating input/output (I/O) cable assembly 70" retained "by a series of floating threaded fasteners 72." This is, in substance, limitations A and D of claim 1 plus claims 2, 8 and 12 — with the connector half joined to the cable mounted on the frame and the mating half on the inserted module.

GB 2 166 301 A (Smiths Industries). Verified: addresses "mating halves of both connectors" failing to align "because of manufacturing and assembly tolerances," leading to "failure to mate, or damage to the connector housing or pins, when mating is forced"; discloses two connectors spaced apart on a board with spacer means therebetween; guide means comprising an aperture on one side and a pin "arranged to enter the aperture" on the other, and explicitly sequenced so guide means engages before the coding means and the connectors mate. That is claim 4 / claim 7 ("guide means provided between said support member and the rear side of the printed‑circuit board") plus the two‑connector architecture of claim 6.

3.2 Title‑only references (use only as corroboration)

US 3,705,377 (Bell Telephone — Receptacle for snap‑in mounting of connectors); US 4,940,428 (Weidmüller — Electrical connector with resilient retaining means); GB 2 113 478 (WKR — A panel mounting electrical connector and clip combination); GB 2 199 446 (PDL — Mounting of a module on a plate); EP 0 349 125 (Molex — Wiring harness connector retainer); US 4,963,098 (AMP — Blind mate shielded input/output connector assembly); US 5,125,854 (Molex — Modular electrical connector); US 4,343,528 (AMP — Modular interconnect system); GB 2 027 289 (Burr Brown — Apparatus for effecting electrical connections to modular hardware); US 3,753,212 (Yazaki — Multi‑terminal connector assembly). These are the natural candidates for the snap‑in/spring‑retention limitations of claims 9–15, but I have not read them and will not assert their disclosures.

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4. Obviousness combinations

Combination I — Primary: US 5,234,348 + EP 0 349 134 A1 (+ US 4,836,789)

Maps to: claims 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12 (and the "at least one connector … aligned upon mounting" clause).

Motivation to combine (MPEP 2143 rationales I, II, III, IV):

1. Explicit TSM in the art itself. EP 0 349 134 A1 names "cable‑to‑cabinet connectors," "drawers in a rack," "modular electrical (or electronic) equipment," and "backplane" as within its teachings. A POSITA seeking to build a front‑insertable card cage with cable‑terminated rear connectors is directed by this text to the floating mount.
2. Art‑recognized problem, single predictable fix. US 4,836,789 and GB 2 166 301 A both independently diagnose the same problem — accumulated manufacturing/assembly tolerances in card cages prevent connector halves from aligning, causing "failure to mate, or damage to the connector housing or pins" — and both identify enlarged‑hole float mounting as the known remedy. Combining a known tolerance‑absorbing mount with a known front‑mating card cage is "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods" yielding "predictable results." KSR, 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).
3. Same field, same problem, analogous structure. All three are class H01R rack‑and‑panel/drawer connector art addressing blind mating of a module to a fixed panel.
4. Design incentive. The '995 specification itself supplies the incentive ("the threaded hole can be formed without the need for close tolerances") — an economic/manufacturing rationale that is per se cognizable.

Claim 1 is, in my assessment, the closest to clearly obvious. The only arguable gap is whether the flanged sleeve portion passing through a hole is disclosed vs. a shoulder screw through an enlarged hole (US 4,836,789) or a clip ear/flange over an oversized panel opening (EP 0 349 134). A sleeve/bushing through a clearance hole with a retaining flange is a simple substitution of a well‑known mechanical equivalent (rationale II), and US 4,940,417's flange‑in‑oversized‑frame supports it.

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Combination II — Primary: US 4,836,789 + GB 2 166 301 A + US 4,940,417

Maps to: claims 3, 4, 6, 7 (alignment means / guide means / multi‑connector + coaxial).

• US 4,836,789 supplies the alignment posts entering apertures for connector self‑alignment during front insertion, and the guide‑rail architecture riding in cabinet channels — i.e., claim 4's "guide means provided between said support member and the rear side of the printed‑circuit board."
• GB 2 166 301 A supplies the specific guide pin/aperture arranged to engage before the connectors mate, motivated by the identical alignment‑tolerance problem — this is the cleanest disclosure of claim 4's sequenced guide‑means concept.
• US 4,940,417 supplies independent X‑ and Y‑direction adjustability of the connector relative to its mounting frame, which is the subject matter of claim 16's "preliminary tightening phase" movability.
• Claim 6 (at least one multi‑connector and at least one coaxial connector, both aligned by alignment means) is met by the two spaced multi‑pin connectors of GB 2 166 301 A plus the RF coaxial connectors of US 5,234,348, with US 4,836,789 / GB 2 166 301 supplying the common alignment means. That a POSITA would mount a low‑frequency multi‑pin connector and a coaxial connector side‑by‑side on one bracket is a mere aggregation/arrangement of known connector types, each retained by its own conventional means, with no unexpected interaction — the classic "predictable results" case. (KSR; MPEP 2143.01(IV).)

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Combination III — Primary: EP 0 349 134 A1 + US 4,940,417 + snap‑in/retention art (○ refs)

Maps to: claim 9 (and claims 11, 14).

Claim 9 = the claim 1 float‑mount plus "an opening formed therein for accommodating said first connector half" plus "detachable engagement means provided in the opening … engaged with said first connector half upon inserting said first connector half in the opening."

Motivation: Every reference in this combination addresses the same need — serviceably holding a connector half captive in a bracket so the mating half can be brought into blind engagement, while permitting the position to be trimmed. EP 0 349 134 A1 explicitly requires the retainer to be "releasable only from the interior" and thus engages/disengages the connector in the panel opening. Substituting a resilient snap‑arm (claim 11: "arm elements … disengaged … by pressing in said resilient arm elements") for a hook‑clip is a simple substitution of a known fastener for its known function — rationale II / III.

Caveat: claims 11 and 14 turn on the specific geometry "two resilient arm elements … opposed sides … two projections provided in the opening." I could not verify that any cited reference discloses that exact geometry. This should be checked against US 3,705,377 and US 4,940,428 full texts before relying on Combination III for those two claims.

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5. Claim‑by‑claim conclusion

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6. Where the patent most likely survives

Claims 13 and 15 recite a genuinely specific mechanical release: a male coaxial half with an enlarged head plus a sleeve element slidably mounted thereon of the same diameter as the head, cooperating with a split collar‑like spring element in the bracket opening, engaged "by making said enlarged head clear said split collar‑like spring element" and disengaged "by inserting said sleeve element therein." I examined the verified references and none of them (EP 0 349 134, US 4,836,789, US 4,940,417, US 5,234,348, GB 2 166 301) discloses this two‑part push‑to‑release coaxial retention. Unless one of the ○ references (most plausibly US 3,753,212 or US 4,963,098) discloses it, claims 13/15 appear to have a real § 103 defense.

Claim 16 is also defensible, because it requires the aggregate of (i) two‑axis adjustable flanged connection during preliminary tightening, (ii) a spring element between a coaxial half and the support, and (iii) a resilient‑arm multi‑connector half in one support. No single verified reference suggests combining all three retention philosophies in one bracket; the patentee's best argument is that this is a non‑obvious arrangement of dissimilar retention mechanisms, and the burden would shift to the challenger to articulate why a POSITA would co‑mount a split‑collar spring for coax alongside snap‑arms for the multi‑pin connector.

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7. Counterarguments and weaknesses a challenger must address

1. The examiner had all 27 references. Every reference I used is in the patent's own "Citations" list, and many are marked "cited by examiner." The claims were nevertheless allowed. This does not preclude § 103 (the motivation to combine is a separate question), but it means a challenger must articulate a new rationale — most plausibly the express "cable‑to‑cabinet / drawers in a rack / modular electronic equipment" teaching in EP 0 349 134 A1, which the examiner may not have weighed.

2. Secondary considerations — absent. There is no evidence of record of commercial success, long‑felt need, failure of others, or copying. With the patent having lapsed for non‑payment of maintenance fees in 2004 and reaching term in 2014, objective indicia of nonobviousness are effectively unavailable. Under Graham step 4 this cuts strongly against the patent.

3. Drafting defects create § 112 exposure that may dominate the § 103 analysis. Flagging internal inconsistencies literally, as instructed:

   • Claim 9 recites "wherein said sleeve member attaches said support member to the cabinet" — but the claim 9 preamble is "a connector supporting device," and neither "said support member" nor "the cabinet" has antecedent basis within claim 9. Those terms appear only in claim 1.
   • Claim 13 depends on claim 10 ("as set forth in claim 10, wherein … said male type coaxial connector half has an enlarged head") — but claim 10 recites multi‑connector halves. The antecedent basis is wrong.
   • Claim 14 depends on claim 9 but then adds an entirely new article ("a female type multi‑connector half adapted to be accommodated … in a support structure"), and claim 14 contains the typo "tow projections" for "two projections."
   • Claim 16 switches terminology to "connector support" / "frame support" (vs. "connector support member" / "frame members" in claims 1–15) and contains the typographical forms "halve" and "slidable mounted."

   These are indefiniteness/antecedent‑basis problems under § 112(b), and they are independent of the § 103 question — in an invalidity contest they are often the cheaper and cleaner attack.

4. Claim 1 is arguably broader than the disclosed invention. The body of claim 1 does not require the support member to be at the rear of the cabinet (only the second connector half is at the "rear side of the printed‑circuit board"), and does not require a screw, a threaded hole, or the provisional‑tightening sequence. Broad claim scope enlarges the prior‑art field available against it.

5. Consistency flag. Nothing in this analysis contradicts the earlier Litigation summary; that section correctly characterized the 27‑entry "Citations" list as patent‑to‑patent citations rather than litigation, and correctly noted the 2004 fee lapse. I confirm both, and use the fee‑lapse fact only as it bears on objective indicia.

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8. Bottom line

For a patent whose entire point of novelty is stated in its own specification to be that "the threaded hole can be formed without the need for close tolerances," the cited art is unusually on‑point. US 4,836,789 describes, in its background, the very expedient of float‑mounting one connector half "by shoulder screws through enlarged diameter holes through connector flanges, enabling incremental lateral movement," expressly for self‑alignment of connector halves during module insertion. EP 0 349 134 A1 describes an oversized panel opening for connector float, alignment pins and recesses for camming into blind‑mated alignment, provisional‑then‑final screw tightening, and — critically for motivation — states the teachings apply to "cable‑to‑cabinet connectors … drawers in a rack … modular electrical (or electronic) equipment." US 5,234,348 and GB 2 166 301 A supply the front‑insertable card cage with cable‑terminated frame connectors and the sequenced guide‑pin alignment.

On that record, claims 1–10, 12 and 14 read as obvious over Combination I / II / III with articulated KSR/MPEP 2143 rationales. Claims 13 and 15 (and, less clearly, claim 16) are the plausible survivors, resting on the split‑collar‑spring / enlarged‑head / push‑sleeve‑release coaxial mechanism, which I could not find in any verified reference. Any actual challenge should therefore focus on claims 13 and 15 and be prepared to reach into the ○ references — chiefly US 3,753,212 (Yazaki, multi‑terminal connector assembly) and US 4,963,098 (AMP, blind‑mate shielded I/O connector assembly) — whose texts I was unable to verify in this session and which I therefore have not characterized.