US 5669685

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation or CAFC docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation/PTAB/CAFC activity and confirm the granted patent metadata.

Search results: USPTO / CAFC 2026 docket activity

I was unable to find any Federal Circuit (CAFC) or other litigation docket, PTAB proceeding, or 2026 court activity involving U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685. The searches I ran returned:

• The patent's own Google Patents, Justia, and EveryPatent records (metadata and full text).
• Unrelated hit-string collisions I want to flag explicitly, because they are not this patent:
  • JP 5669685 U — a Japanese utility model (JPS61173922U) whose application number happens to read "5669685." Different jurisdiction, different register.
  • 2012 WL 5669685 — a Westlaw citation number in Barabin v. AstenJohnson (9th Cir.), unrelated.
  • Konami Gaming Inc. v. High 5 Games, LLC (CAFC Nos. 22-1370, 22-1249; dist. ct. D. Nev. 2:14-cv-01483) — a real Konami patent appeal, but the asserted patents are Konami's slot-machine patents (e.g., the "'869 patent"), not US 5,669,685. I did not verify at what point any of those patents is 5,669,685, and on the record I retrieved it is not.

So: no confirmed 2026 docket or litigation history for 5,669,685. Treat that as "no evidence found," not as proof of absence.

Bibliographic data for US 5,669,685

Abstract (as granted): "A game machine includes a diorama mounting cabinet on the front side containing a diorama object and a semitransparent mirror and a projector mounting cabinet on the rear side containing a cathode ray tube and a screen. An image displayed on the cathode ray tube is projected onto the screen in such a way that it is superimposed on a virtual image of the diorama object, as viewed form a player. The cathode ray tube and screen are integrally mounted in a projector housing which is made movable within the projector mounting cabinet. This makes it possible to vary relative positions of the individual images in depth directions so that depth relationships therebetween can be changed to provide increased reality and flexibility in three-dimensional visual presentation." (The "form a player" typo is in the granted text.)

Independent claim — plain-language overview

Claim 1 is the only independent claim in the patent. Claims 2–12 are all dependent (2 on 1; 3 on 1; 4 on 3; 5 on 3; 6 and 7 on 5; 8 on 7; 9 on 1; 10 on 9; 11 and 12 on 10). I note this because dependent claims 3 and 9 recite substantial additional structure and are easy to mistake for independent claims.

Claim 1 — a game machine with just two required elements:

1. A diorama object (a physical, three-dimensional model/scene element).
2. An image generator positioned behind the diorama object, arranged so that:
   • the image it forms is superimposed on the image of the diorama object in a specified depth relation, and
   • the two images are movable in depth directions relative to each other.

The point of novelty over the prior art (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 3-131288 and 4-134489, both discussed in the specification) is the relative depth adjustability — prior systems superimposed a diorama image and a CRT image at fixed relative depth.

Substantive dependent claims worth noting

• Claim 3 (dep. 1): diorama object placed outside the viewing zone of the generated image, plus a virtual image forming device that projects a virtual image of the diorama object over the generated image.
• Claim 4 (dep. 3): the virtual image forming device is a semitransparent mirror between the diorama object and the image, angled to reflect the diorama image to the player (the "Pepper's Ghost" arrangement).
• Claim 5 (dep. 3): face-shaped diorama object + generated eye image aligned to the virtual image.
• Claims 6/7 (dep. 5): relative movement range constrained so the eye image is behind (claim 6) or in front of (claim 7) the virtual diorama image — the "recessed vs. projected eyes" effect.
• Claim 9 (dep. 1): the image generator itself is movable in depth.
• Claim 10 (dep. 9): image generator = movable projector housing + screen in the housing + projector projecting onto the screen.
• Claim 11 (dep. 10): a diorama housing with multiple holding positions at different depths for the projector housing (the screw-hole/bracket positioning described at 48A/48B/48C).
• Claim 12 (dep. 10): a drive mechanism (the rack 52 / pinion 54 / motor 56 embodiment of FIG. 4) to move the projector housing.

Uncertainty / caveats

• No authoritative docket confirmation. I found no CAFC, district court, or PTAB record asserting or challenging 5,669,685. Any statement that it has been litigated (or not) in 2026 is something I could not verify from the sources retrieved.
• The Konami CAFC appeals surfaced by search involve different patents; I am not asserting any connection to 5,669,685.
• Claim count (12), claim dependencies, inventors, dates, and assignee data above are drawn from the granted patent text and the Google Patents/Justia records, which agree with each other. For any filing/deadline-critical purpose, the USPTO Patent Center record should be checked directly.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me run more targeted litigation-database searches for this exact patent number.

Let me try the litigation portals directly and a docket-oriented search.

Litigation search results — U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685

Bottom line

No litigation, PTAB proceeding, ITC investigation, or CAFC appeal involving U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685 could be found. I am reporting this as "no evidence found," not as affirmative proof that none exists — see the methodology limits in §5.

Since I am asked to list cases with plaintiff / defendant / jurisdiction / case number / filing date / status, the honest answer is: there is no such list. Everything the searches returned for the literal string "5669685" was either this patent's own bibliographic record or an unrelated identifier collision.

1. What I searched

Google Patents populates a litigation section from third-party litigation datasets (Unified Patents / Docket Alarm lineage). Its complete absence on the US5669685 record is corroborative but not dispositive.

2. False positives — do NOT auto-correct these

These are the items that surface on a literal "5669685" search. None of them is U.S. Patent 5,669,685. I flag them precisely because the standing rule is to interpret identifiers literally:

Additional near-miss now confirmed: Taction Technology, Inc. v. Apple Inc. asserts U.S. Patent Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117 (S.D. Cal., filed 2021; jury verdict Sept. 25, 2026, ~$5.72B; found non-willful; Apple has stated it will appeal). Those numbers are 10,659,885 / 10,820,117 — superficially similar digit strings to 5,669,685 but entirely unrelated patents.

3. The one Konami dispute found — and why it is not this patent

Hargabus v. Cedar Fair, LP; Konami; Great Bear Lodge of Sandusky, LLC; Alpha-Bet Entertainment, LLC (N.D. Ohio; complaint filed Aug. 27, 2004; amended complaint Jan. 4, 2005; summary-judgment/Markman rulings Sept. 14, 2005).

• Konami here was a defendant, not the patent owner.
• The asserted patent was Hargabus's '004 patent, directed to an "infinity mirror" display, asserted against Konami's Dance Dance Revolution arcade cabinet.
• U.S. 5,669,685 was not the patent-in-suit and is not implicated.

I include it only because it is Konami-adjacent and litigation-oriented, and it is the kind of hit that could be mistaken for a match. It is not one.

4. Why the absence is substantively plausible (not just "search noise")

This analysis is consistent with the patent's own record:

1. Expiration. Anticipated expiration February 16, 2016 (20 years from the Feb. 16, 1996 filing). Google Patents lists status "Expired – Lifetime." Any hypothetical damages window closed a decade ago; the only maintenance-fee event in the record after the 12-year payment (2009-02-18) is the anticipated-expiration entry.
2. No reissue/reexam trail. No reexamination certificate is reflected in the record, which is what one would expect to see if the patent had been pulled into a validity fight.
3. Enforcement posture. Konami is a practicing arcade/amusement manufacturer, not an NPE; its U.S. enforcement of an expired 1997 arcade-cabinet patent in 2026 would be economically pointless.
4. Foreign counterparts also lapsed. EP 0727245 B1 (filed Feb. 15, 1996), DE 69608478 T2, TW 293780 B, and JP 2681006 B2 belong to the same family; a UPC action on EP 0727245 B1 is not possible on this record because the EP member's 20-year term likewise ran out in 2016, well before the UPC opened in 2023.

5. Limits of this search — read before relying on it

• I did not query PACER or Docket Navigator directly. PACER is paywalled/behind authentication and Docket Navigator and Lex Machina are subscription services; the searches above were web-index searches of litigation-aggregator content. A negative web result is weak evidence of a negative docket result.
• Terminal-date caveat, flagging an internal inconsistency. The task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the authoritative patent record supplied to me was fetched 2026-09-27 and the search environment's date is 2026-09-27. I have treated the later date as operative. If the April 26, 2026 date is the intended cutoff, the practical effect here is nil (no case found either way), but I flag the contradiction rather than silently reconciling it.
• "Not found" ≠ "does not exist." A sealed settlement, an arbitration/litigation that never generated indexed pleadings, a foreign proceeding, or a case where 5,669,685 was cited only as prior art (rather than asserted) would not necessarily appear in any of these sources.

6. Recommended verification steps before you rely on this

If this is for a freedom-to-operate, diligence, or litigation-history representation where a negative must be verified, do the following rather than relying on my search:

1. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — full-text docket search on 5,669,685 and 5669685 across all district courts and the CAFC.
2. USPTO Patent Center — confirm the maintenance-fee and expiration record, and confirm no reissue, reexam, IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding exists.
3. Unified Patents litigation portal — run the patent number through https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist.
4. Assignment records — the Nov. 17, 2008 assignment to Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. (effective Oct. 24, 2008) is the last recorded transfer; confirm no later security interest or assignment that would imply monetization.
5. Foreign registers — JPO, EPO, TIPO, DPMA for JP 2681006 B2, EP 0727245 B1, TW 293780 B, DE 69608478 T2, to confirm lapse and rule out foreign enforcement.

Summary table

No litigation is known to me involving U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685. Assert this as "no evidence of litigation located via web-indexed litigation sources," and verify through PACER/Docket Navigator before treating it as conclusive.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" result against live sources before finalizing.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,669,685: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal records no IPRs, no PGRs, and no CBM reviews for this patent, and my independent web checks (Google Patents "Cited By"/litigation tabs, EveryPatent, CourtListener-style searches, and PTAB petition-text searches) surfaced no petition ever naming 5,669,685. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is therefore not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is "no one has ever tested these claims at the Board, and the patent is now dead by expiration (2016-02-16), so its only remaining relevance is retrospective damages for pre-expiration conduct."

There are consequently no per-proceeding entries to write. Per the task constraints, I am not going to manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or grounds to fill the template — the absence of the structured data is itself the finding.

No proceedings to detail

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (the canonical ODP-derived list) is empty. Nothing in the record supports an entry for:

• an IPR under 35 U.S.C. § 311 (available against this pre-AIA patent, but never filed);
• a PGR under § 321 (not available — the application was filed 1996-02-16, far before the 2012-03-16 AIA cutover, so the patent is not a "first-inventor-to-file" patent);
• a CBM under AIA § 18 (this patent is directed to a game machine / optical diorama presentation — a "technological invention," not a financial product or service; it was never CBM-eligible, and the CBM program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16 in any event).

I want to be explicit about one thing per the operating rules: "no evidence found" ≠ "proof of absence." If a proceeding were filed and terminated without a published FWD (e.g., a pre-institution settlement-adjacent termination), it could exist outside my retrieved sources. But the ODP ingest is empty and nothing in the public web corroborates a filing, so the working assumption is zero.

Strategic summary

Claim status across the record. Because there has been no PTAB proceeding, no claim of 5,669,685 is cancelled and no claim is judicially confirmed: all of claims 1–12 sit exactly as granted (1 independent; 2–12 dependent as mapped in the earlier section — 2→1, 3→1, 4→3, 5→3, 6→5, 7→5, 8→7, 9→1, 10→9, 11→10, 12→10). The only status change of record is the anticipated expiration on 2016-02-16, which the ODP/Google Patents legal-status feed confirms as "Expired – Lifetime." For a defendant today, the practical consequence is that there is no live injunctive or forward-looking royalty exposure; the patent's residual value is limited to pre-2016 damages claims (and six-year § 286 lookback on that), which is the posture in which a § 315(b) one-year IPR clock would have mattered — but no complaint of which I am aware triggered it, and the patent expired long enough ago that most § 315(b)-eligible windows have closed.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel in existence for this patent, because there is no petitioner and no final written decision. That cuts both ways: (a) no petitioner is precluded from running any § 102/§ 103 ground, and (b) no prior petitioner has already burned the best art, so a defendant who wanted to challenge validity would be starting from scratch — subject to the practical reality that IPR of an expired patent is rarely worth the filing fees absent live past-damages litigation. If you are defending a backward-looking damages suit, your invalidity grounds are entirely untapped and unburdened by estoppel; the same is true for the § 101/§ 112 and on-sale/enablement-type defenses that an IPR could never have reached anyway. Note also that § 315(e) estoppel is inapplicable in ITC proceedings (§ 315(e)(1) applies only to Board proceedings; the Federal Circuit's Ajax line limited (e)(2)'s reach to district-court-style forums), so there is no forum-specific estoppel trap here regardless.

Pattern signals. None of the classic multi-petition or aggregator signals appear. There is no repeated petitioner, no Unified Patents–type defensive filing for Konami's coin-op patents on this record, and no patent-owner appeal. The most adjacent activity surfaced by search involves Konami Gaming's slot-machine litigation with High 5 Games (D. Nev. 2:14-cv-01483; CAFC Nos. 22-1370 / 22-1249) and the Babbage Holdings v. Konami Digital Entertainment line — the former, per the search results, ended with the asserted Konami slot patents invalidated under Alice and affirmed by the Federal Circuit in a nonprecedential order. Neither of those matters involves 5,669,685, and I flag the coincidence only to prevent an analyst from conflating them; the earlier summary section already flagged this collision and I am adopting that characterization rather than restating the underlying record. The broader "Pepper's Ghost" family here (EP 0727245 B1, DE 69608478 T2, TW 293780 B) also shows no opposition or revocation activity in the sources retrieved — again a "no evidence found" statement, not a certified absence.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and received a demand citing 5,669,685: the patent is expired as of 2016-02-16 (confirmed by the ODP/Google Patents status field). The first-line response is that no prospective relief is available and any damages theory is limited to pre-expiration, unlicensed conduct within the § 286 six-year lookback. Pull the asserted claims (likely claim 1, and if a "Pepper's Ghost" or "recessed eyes" story is pleaded, claims 3–7; if a movable-projection story, claims 9–12) and check that the accused product maps to the full claim — note that claims 3 and 9 add substantial structure and are frequently misread as independent.

2. If you are contemplating a validity challenge: there is no PTAB activity and no estoppel on this patent. You can raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, plus § 101/§ 112 grounds an IPR could not have reached. Check the four prior-art references the examiner actually applied (US 4,306,768 (Eggins); EP 0 477 861 / JP 3-131288 (Namco); US 5,221,083 / JP 4-134489 (Sega); AU-B-594 302 (Taito)) — these were cited "A"/"D" (background) in the EP search report (EP 0 727 245 A3, published 1996-09-25), which signals the examiner treated them as non-material, an inviting starting point for a § 103 combination.

3. Procedural posture if litigation is live: because no IPR petition exists, there is no § 315(b) one-year bar running against you from a prior petition, and no § 315(e) estoppel to worry about. If you are served with a complaint asserting 5,669,685, your own § 315(b) clock would run from that service — but given expiration, the rational path is a district-court invalidity/non-infringement posture rather than an IPR.

4. Verify against primary sources before relying on this: the ODP-derived block is empty and I could not corroborate any filing via web search; the authoritative confirmations to cite are the USPTO Patent Center record for US 08/602,646 (file history and any trial certificates) and the PTAB E2E / "Patent Trial and Appeal Board" search for proceeding numbers naming 5,669,685. The patent's own Google Patents page is here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5669685/en. CourtListener docket search for the Federal Circuit shows no appeal rooted in a 5,669,685 PTAB decision (there is none to appeal).

Plainest statement of the finding: no AIA trial proceeding has ever been instituted against US 5,669,685, no claim has been cancelled or confirmed through PTAB, and the patent expired 2016-02-16 — so the "PTAB story" for this patent is genuinely a story of absence, not one of outcomes.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me verify the assignment correspondents and check for any additional recorded transfers.

Let me check the assignment-record aggregators for any additional liens or transfers.

I've exhausted my search budget. Here is the ownership reconstruction, built on the reel/frame data mirrored from the USPTO assignment records plus the corroborating corporate-chain evidence I retrieved.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 5,669,685

Verification basis. The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) and the legacy https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html search interfaces were not directly queryable in this session, so I reconstructed the chain from the reel/frame identifiers and assignment events mirrored on the patent's own record (Google Patents legal-events feed, which reproduces the USPTO assignment abstract including reel/frame and effective date) and corroborated the parties and counsel against independent records. Every reel/frame below is taken verbatim from that data; where I could not read a field (notably the correspondent), I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

Pattern assessment — no anomaly. Both inventors are named on the executed assignment (reel 007848/0861) and both assigned to Konami Co., Ltd. before the US filing date, which is the standard Japanese employee-invention practice (the JP priority application JP 7-029743 was filed 1995-02-17; the assignment to the employer was executed 1996-01-29, eighteen days before the US filing on 1996-02-16). There is no evidence found of either inventor departing Konami within 12 months of filing, and there is no evidence of a subsequent inventor-originated assignment, which is the classic precursor to a portfolio fire-sale. Both inventors are listed only on the single Konami/Namco-family arcade-cabinet art, consistent with in-house R&D staff rather than a serial-inventor licensing operation.

Caveat: I could not independently verify either inventor's continued employment post-1996; the "no departure" statement is an absence-of-evidence finding, not a record-confirmed one.

Original assignee

Konami Co., Ltd. (コナミ株式会社), Hyogo-ken / Kobe, Japan — printed on the granted patent as "Konami Co., Ltd. (Hyogo-ken)."

• Primary line of business: coin-operated amusement/arcade machine manufacturing and video game publishing — squarely an operating company, and one whose principal 1990s business was the arcade cabinets this patent describes.
• Status: Operating, not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Konami has been continuously listed (Tokyo Stock Exchange; Osaka 1984; London 1999; NYSE from 2002-09) and has never filed Chapter 7/11 or any insolvency proceeding of record. It is a reporting issuer with SEC filings of record (EDGAR CIK associated with Konami Corporation appears in the corporate-name register data retrieved).
• Corporate-name history relevant to this chain (from Konami's own corporate-history disclosures):
  • 1991-06 — Konami Industrial Co., Ltd. renamed Konami Co., Ltd.
  • 2006-03 — Konami's digital-entertainment business spun off as Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. (会社分割 / company split); Konami Co., Ltd. became a pure holding company.
  • 2015-10 — Konami Corporation renamed Konami Holdings Corporation.
  • 2022-07-01 — Konami Holdings Corporation renamed Konami Group Corporation (the name now appearing as a co-listed "current assignee" on the Google Patents record, even though no recorded assignment on this patent names Konami Group Corporation).
  • 2016-11 — group reorganization; arcade/amusement operations consolidated into Konami Amusement Co., Ltd. (no assignment of this patent to Konami Amusement is of record).
• Product practice: I could not document a specific commercial arcade title embodying these claims from the sources retrieved; I therefore do not assert one. What is documented is that Konami was a high-volume arcade-cabinet manufacturer and a practicing entity that enforces its patents offensively — Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. and Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. v. Viacom, Inc. (E.D. Tex., No. 6:08-cv-00286, Tyler Division), where Konami's own prosecution firm Jordan & Hamburg was subpoenaed as a non-party. I did not verify that US 5,669,685 was among the patents-in-suit in that case — flagging that explicitly so it is not assumed.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignments during the patent's life. Nothing after 2008.

1. 1996-01-29 (executed) / recorded 1996-02-16 — Reel 007848/0861

• Conveyance: Assignment — "Assignment of Assignors' Interest"
• Assignor: Hideki Kotani; Kuniaki Kakuwa (inventors, jointly)
• Assignee: Konami Co., Ltd., Hyogo-ken, Japan
• Correspondent: Not reproduced in the data I could retrieve for this reel/frame. The law firm of record on the patent face is Jordan and Hamburg (New York), which was Konami's standing US prosecution counsel through this era — the same firm appears as attorney/agent of record on numerous contemporaneous Konami US patents and, separately, as the recorded correspondent (Frank J. Jordan, Jordan and Hamburg, 122 East 42nd Street, Chanin Bldg Ste 4000, New York, NY 10168) on a later Konami assignment (reel 10089/146, recorded 2000-11-29, assignee "Konami Company, Ltd., 7-3-2 Minatojima-nakamachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650"). Flagged as a reasonable inference, not a verified reading of reel 007848/0861. Recurrence note: Jordan and Hamburg recurs across Konami's US prosecution and assignment work — but always for the single Konami corporate family, which is the normal operating-company pattern and not the "one lawyer running many unrelated shell LLCs" NPE pattern the recurrence test is designed to catch.
• Context: Ordinary pre-filing employer assignment of employee inventions (assign-before-filing), US counterpart of JP 7-029743.

2. 2008-10-24 (executed/effective) / recorded 2008-11-17 — Reel 021861/0372

• Conveyance: Assignment — "Assignment of Assignors' Interest"
• Assignor: Konami Corporation (recorded as "also known as Konami Co., Ltd.")
• Assignee: Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd., Japan
• Correspondent: Not reproduced in the data I could retrieve for this reel/frame; on Konami's pattern, likely Jordan and Hamburg LLP (now Jordan and Hamburg LLP), the firm that continues to appear as attorney of record on Konami Digital Entertainment patents filed years later. Flagged as unverified.
• Context: Internal corporate reorganization — the papering-up at the USPTO of the intra-group transfer implementing Konami's 2006 company split (digital-entertainment business carved out of Konami Co., Ltd.). Not an arm's-length sale; no consideration to a third party and no change in ultimate beneficial ownership. Inconsistency worth flagging: Konami's own corporate history places the split in March 2006, and a Canadian trademark register entry records the same Konami Corporation → Konami Digital Entertainment change of title with a change date of 2007-05-25 (registered 2007-12-13), whereas this US patent record carries an effective date of 2008-10-24. These are most plausibly successive tranches / confirmatory assignments of different asset classes, but the dates do not reconcile to a single event and should not be treated as interchangeable.

No third recorded link exists. Specifically, no security agreement, license, merger, release, correction, or change-of-name record is of record against US 5,669,685, and no assignment to Konami Amusement Co., Ltd. or Konami Group Corporation appears. The patent's US assignment history terminates at Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. in 2008 and it expired 2016-02-16 while still held there.

Cross-reference to the family: the same alignment holds abroad — JP 2681006 B2, EP 0727245 B1, DE 69608478 T2 and TW 293780 B all remained with the Konami family and were allowed to lapse (EP/DE/TW/JP all "not active," per the family status table) rather than being sold, securitized, or transferred to an assertion vehicle. That is a meaningful negative signal on monetization.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5669685
    1996 : Inventors assign to Konami Co Ltd
         : Reel 007848 frame 0861
    1997 : US patent issued September 23
    2006 : Konami splits off digital entertainment unit
    2008 : Assigned to Konami Digital Entertainment
         : Reel 021861 frame 0372
    2016 : Patent expired February 16
    2022 : Parent renamed Konami Group Corp

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The chain ends at Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. (reel 021861/0372, 2008-11-17), a wholly owned holding-company operating subsidiary of the Tokyo-listed Konami group — a game publisher/arcade manufacturer, not a licensing-only vehicle. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent-service address, no single-member Delaware/Texas LLC appears anywhere in the chain. The only address of record is a corporate Kobe/Tokyo address (e.g., "7-3-2 Minatojima-nakamachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650" on the related Konami assignment 10089/146).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
Neither assignee — Konami Co., Ltd. (reel 007848/0861) nor Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. (reel 021861/0372) — matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Konami is a practicing manufacturer. Adjacent-but-distinct: the Konami slot-machine litigation with High 5 Games (D. Nev. 2:14-cv-01483; CAFC Nos. 22-1370 / 22-1249) and the Babbage Holdings v. Konami Digital Entertainment line involve entirely different patents and, in Babbage, cast Konami as an NPE target, not an asserter — neither touches 5,669,685.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT as an NPE signal (one observation).
The chain has only two links, and I could not read the correspondent field on either. The firm of record on the patent face and across Konami's US portfolio of this era is Jordan and Hamburg (Frank J. Jordan, 122 East 42nd Street, Chanin Bldg Ste 4000, New York, NY 10168), which also appears as the recorded correspondent on Konami assignment 10089/146 (recorded 2000-11-29). That is recurrence within a single corporate family, which is the expected operating-company pattern — the test's target is one attorney running unrelated shell LLCs, and there is no such multi-entity pattern here. I also found no Unified Patents / RPX / Patent Progress NPE-assertion-list appearance for Jordan, Hamburg, or the firm by name.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Two assignments across ~12 years 9 months, both intra-family, with no chained LLCs, no shared correspondent address among competing assignees, and no common principals outside the Konami group. There is no sub-24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No infringement suit naming US 5,669,685 was found in any forum (consistent with the previously generated litigation and PTAB sections of this analysis, which found zero dockets and zero AIA proceedings). The last transfer (reel 021861/0372, effective 2008-10-24) occurred roughly eleven years after issue and seven-plus years before expiration, and was an internal reorganization rather than an assertion-enabling transfer to a clean-standing vehicle.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
Konami never filed Chapter 7/11; it has been continuously listed and profitable across the asset's entire life. No trustee sale, no § 363 sale, no assignment from an estate appears.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer, license, or assignment to any third-party assertion entity is of record. There is no evidence found of a Konami-to-NPE transfer in SEC filings or in EFF / Patent Progress coverage.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent was simply held to expiry by its operating-company owner; the foreign family members were abandoned rather than consigned to a defensive pool.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the entire recorded chain — reel 007848/0861 (inventors → Konami Co., Ltd., executed 1996-01-29, recorded 1996-02-16) and reel 021861/0372 (Konami Corporation → Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd., effective 2008-10-24, recorded 2008-11-17) — is a two-link, purely intra-Konami chain between operating entities, with no shell transfer, no known NPE assignee, no cascading LLCs, no security interest, no pre-litigation flip, and no defensive-aggregator terminus. Important qualification: "assertion" here describes Konami's posture as a practicing manufacturer that does enforce patents offensively (e.g., its E.D. Tex. action against Viacom), not litigation of this patent — US 5,669,685 was never asserted in any forum that I could locate and it expired 2016-02-16, so the practical answer to the NPE question is simply that there is no NPE involvement whatsoever; the ownership story is an ordinary Japanese employee-invention assignment followed by a single internal reorganization transfer, and the only residual exposure is retrospective pre-2016 damages.

Verify at source: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy interface: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — search by patent number 5669685 / application 08/602,646, and pull the correspondent field on reels 007848/0861 and 021861/0372, which is the one field I could not read directly and which is the load-bearing gap in this reconstruction.

I'll ground this § 102 analysis in the actual cited references. Let me pull the details for each reference of record.

Now let me pull the remaining cited references, including the two admitted-prior-art Japanese publications and their US counterparts.

§102 Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685

Bottom line up front: I searched for the literal number 5669685 and report only that patent. Its own record (15 cited references in the fuller table) is unusually well-populated, but no reference of record anticipates all elements of claim 1 — every one of them fails on the same single element: "movable in depth directions relative to each other." The closest § 102 candidate is US 4,306,768 (Egging / Taito America), and the most damaging art is the applicant's own admitted prior art (Sega JP 3-131,288 / US 5,221,083 and Namco JP 4-134,489 / EP 0 477 861 / US 5,190,286), which the specification concedes discloses everything in claim 1 except depth movability. Details and per-reference mapping follow.

0. USPTO search on 5669685 — literal match only

Per the standing rule, I did not auto-correct or substitute look-alike identifiers. These surface on a literal "5669685" search and are not this patent: U.S. trademark Reg. No. 5,669,685 (HEPIDEM, Shen Zhen Shuo Guo Glasses); JP 5669685 B2 (ozone generator); AU 765,695 (Konami, "Game machine" — a citation on the '685 record, not the patent itself); 2012 WL 5669685 (Barabin v. AstenJohnson). The earlier sections flagged these same collisions; I adopt their characterization and do not restate it.

Contradiction flagged (date): this task header says April 26, 2026; the earlier sections recorded the operative date as 2026-09-27 (the fetch/session date). I use the header date here. Immaterial to a § 102 analysis of a patent expired 2016-02-16.

1. Framework applied

• Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 applies. Application filed 1996-02-16; earliest priority JP 7-029,743, filed 1995-02-17. All of-record references published/granted before 1995-02-17 are § 102(a)/(b) art.
• Anticipation test: § 102 requires every element of a claim, arranged as in the claim, disclosed in a single reference. A reference that discloses all but one claim-1 element is an anticipation near miss — § 103 material, not § 102.
• Citation tables — note the discrepancy in the record itself. The Google Patents page shows two tables: a 12-entry "Citations" table and a 15-entry "Patent Citations" table. The 15-entry union adds US 5,221,083 (Sega), JP 4-134,489 (Namco), and US 5,190,286 (Namco) — i.e., the US/JP counterparts of two references already in the 12-entry table. I analyze the 15-entry union; nothing substantive changes.
• Admissions count as prior art. The '685 specification's Background expressly characterizes JP 3-131,288 and JP 4-134,489. Under MPEP 2129, that characterization is an admission usable in § 102 and § 103.

2. Master table — all 15 cited references

3. Per-reference detail (description and § 102 mapping)

3.3 — US 4,306,768 (Egging / Taito America) — the closest § 102 candidate

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 4,306,768, "Creation of multiplanular images," granted Dec. 22, 1981; inventor Keith J. Egging (Milwaukee, WI); appl. 06/029,439 filed Apr. 13, 1979; assignee Taito America Corp. (Chicago).
• Disclosure (verified): a housing with a viewing port and primary/secondary image-generation chambers divided into cells by angled light-transmissive two-way mirrors. Image sources may be "a projection on a screen and/or video display tube … or actual physical objects disposed within the cells themselves." Capacity for continuing movement is extraordinary:
  • "It may also be desirable to provide the illusion of movement of one image relative to another when, in fact, the image sources are fixed in space. In the present embodiment, this is accomplished by mounting the reflective surfaces so they are selectively movable relative to each other."
  • Claim 5: "means to shift the path of said reflected image to provide a perceived illusion of image movement … comprising means to move said light transmissive mirrors within said chamber."
  • Shelves 39–41 on an endless belt 49 driven by an electric motor 51 actuatable by a switch 52 "to translate the shelves … This provides movement of the sets of multiplanular images away from or toward the viewer."
  • FIG. 4 depicts an amusement/shooting gallery ("pipes, ducks and bottles") with "a gun or other input … positioned external to viewing port 5."
  • FIG. 5 elongates individual image paths to increase "perceived depth."
• § 102 mapping: Claim 1 is the only claim it could plausibly anticipate, and even that is contestable. Mapping: "game machine" ← amusement shooting gallery with gun input; "diorama object" ← the physical objects in the cells; "image generator" ← the video display tube; "superimposed … in a specified depth relation" ← multiplanular composite at the common viewing port; "movable in depth directions relative to each other" ← movable relative to one another and, separately, belt-driven translation toward/away from the viewer.
  • Why it likely fails as strict anticipation: the claim requires the two images to be relatively movable in depth; the reference's movable mirrors are described primarily as producing an illusion of relative movement (not expressly depth displacement between the two combined images), and its depth movement (belt 49) moves image sets relative to the viewer, not expressly relative to a second superimposed image. Whether a court collapses those into "movable in depth directions relative to each other" is a genuine construction fight. Characterize as a strong § 103 reference and a debated § 102 candidate — not a clean anticipant.
  • Claim 9 (image generator movable in depth): marginal — the CRT face is fixed; the movable sources are the physical shelves.
  • Claims 2–8, 10–12: not anticipated. No face, no eyes, no virtual-image device, no semitransparent mirror "behind the diorama object," no projector housing/screen, no multi-position housing mount, no drive moving a projector housing.
• Source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6d/a2/25/30c3306dd72a62/US4306768.pdf ; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/4306768.html

3.8 / 3.9 — Sega JP 3-131,288 and US 5,221,083 (admitted prior art)

• Full citations: JP 3-131,288 A (Sega Enterprises), published 1991-06-04; US 5,221,083, Dote, "Medal game machine," Sega Enterprises, Ltd., priority 1989-10-17, granted 1993-06-22.
• Disclosure (per the applicant's own admission): 45° semitransparent mirror; CRT screen above the mirror; diorama object behind the mirror as seen from the player's position; the diorama image passes through the mirror while the CRT image is reflected to the front, so the player sees a single combined pictorial composition — in a game machine.
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated, but this is the most significant admission in the record. Every element of claim 1 is present except "the image of the diorama object and the image formed by the image generator are movable in depth directions relative to each other." The specification concedes precisely this: "neither of them can represent variations in depth relationships between the two images." That concession strips the patent of any novelty argument built on the combination itself and leaves a one-element § 102/§ 103 fight.

3.10 / 3.11 / 3.12 — Namco EP 0 477 861, JP 4-134,489, US 5,190,286 (admitted prior art)

• Full citations: EP 0 477 861 A2 (Namco, Ltd.), priority 1990-09-27, published 1992-04-01; JP 4-134,489 A (Namco, Ltd.), published 1992-05-08; US 5,190,286, Watanabe et al., "Image synthesizing system and shooting game machine using the same," Namco, Ltd., priority 1990-09-27, granted 1993-03-02.
• Disclosure: 45° semitransparent mirror with the diorama object below it and the CRT beside it; the combined image is reflected forward to the player by a total-reflection mirror; expressly a shooting game machine.
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated — same single missing element (relative depth movability). Secondary value: it demonstrates that the total-reflection-mirror fold (already used in the '685's own projector housing at element 42) was routine in this exact field before the priority date.

3.13 — US 5,221,937 (Machtig, "Video mannequin")

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 5,221,937, granted June 22, 1993; inventor Jeffrey S. Machtig; appl. 739,606 filed July 31, 1991; assistant examiner of record William C. Dowling (the same examiner named on the '685 patent).
• Disclosure (verified, quoted): a molded 3-D plastic headshell ("headscreen") onto which an LCD video image of a face, including eyes, is rear-projected. The background frames the exact problem claim 2/5 targets: "When the apparatus which projects the image of a person's face onto a headscreen requires a predetermined distance to properly locate the projected eyes, clarity may be lost if placement of the eyes in the headscreen is not proper." Projector base has "means 27 for slidable movement of projector 26 toward and away from mirror 30."
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated. Claim 2 and claim 5 both depend from claims that require a game machine, a diorama object, and relative depth movability — none present. Critically, in Machtig the face shell is the projection screen; there is no separate diorama object whose image is combined with a generated image. This is a § 103 reference, not an anticipator.
• Sources: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5221937.html ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5221937.html

3.4 — US 4,490,745 (Erickson)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 4,490,745, "Illusion creating visual display device," appl. filed 1982-07-26, granted 1984-12-25.
• Disclosure (verified, quoted): cabinet 10 with viewing window 14; CRT as the light source; a pair of mirrors 24/26 "placed in predetermined positions," at least one "partially reflective"; fields separated by color filters or by a polarizing mask; "To enhance the effect, the virtual images may be superimposed upon a model 32, formed of plaster or styrofoam or the like, designed to simulate a landscape or the like. In this latter case, both mirrors 26 and 28 will necessarily be semi-reflective in order that the model be viewed by the viewer." Also: "Alternate illusions can be created merely by repositioning the mirrors to alter the location of the respective virtual images." And: the invention "has ready application to video games," with controls 18 "operate[d] … through a microprocessor."
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated. It comes closest to claims 3–4 in spirit, but the ordering is inverted: in Erickson the generated image is the virtual image and the model is viewed directly, whereas claim 3 requires a virtual image of the diorama object formed over the generated image. Claim 4's "semitransparent mirror … reflect[ing] the image of the diorama object to a player" is likewise not met in the claimed direction. The "repositioning the mirrors" disclosure is a set-up adjustment, not the claimed relative movability — so claim 1 is not anticipated either. Strong § 103 reference for claims 3–4 and for motivation.

3.14 — US 5,368,309 (Disney, Monroe & Fink)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 5,368,309, "Method and apparatus for a virtual video game," filed 1993-05-13/14 (appl. 08/062,304), granted 1994-11-29 (record also shows 1994-11-28); inventors Fink, David and Monroe, Marshall; The Walt Disney Company.
• Disclosure (verified): interactive game where players seated opposite one another "view the game and each other through a semi-transparent image generated in real-time through the use of a first-surface reflection"; opposing heads-up displays suspend an image "apparently … between two players"; the surface's transparency lets each see the opponent "along with the image"; the image is "superimposed on the opponent."
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated. It is a game machine with real-time superimposition of a generated image on a physical scene, but the physical "object" is a live player rather than a diorama object, and there is no relative depth movability. Useful § 103/§ 112 context for how the art viewed "semi-transparent superimposition in a game."

3.15 — US 5,457,508 (Dentsu Prox / Hayashi)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 5,457,508, "Display devices," granted 1995-10-10; JP priority 1994-11-18; assignee Dentsu Prox Inc. US filing date not verified in this session.
• Disclosure (verified from the grant text): "projector, a translucent hemispherical screen … and a semitransparent mirror disposed opposite to the hemispherical screen, aslant to the axis of the hemisphere and in front of a viewer"; semitransparent mirror transmittivity 30–60%, reflectivity 30–50%, tilt 45–135°; black box with observation window.
• § 102 mapping: No claim anticipated — no game machine, no diorama object, and no movable projector housing containing both a screen and a projector (claim 10), let alone the multi-position mount (claim 11) or drive (claim 12).
• § 102 date problem — flag prominently. Granted 1995-10-10, i.e., after the 1995-02-17 priority date. It therefore cannot be § 102(a)/(b) art on that date. Its JP application would have published around mid-1996 (18 months from Nov. 1994) — also too late. The only route is pre-AIA § 102(e) (US filing date before the applicant's invention date). I could not verify its US filing date; the earlier Obviousness section flagged the same gap. Note also the pre-AIA Hilmer doctrine issue: a § 119 foreign priority date generally could not be used to antedate a § 102(e) reference — but verify this before relying on either direction. Do not treat this reference as load-bearing.

3.1, 3.2, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 — background references (no anticipation)

• US 3,707,115 (Rush, Method for producing a three-dimensional diorama, 1971-02-18 → 1972-12-26): diorama fabrication. Anticipates no claim; supplies only the "diorama" concept. Full text not retrieved.
• US 4,189,145 (Stubben et al., Apparatus for continuous rotation simulation of video images, Atari, Inc., 1978-01-23 → 1980-02-19): video-image motion apparatus, classified 273/DIG.28. Anticipates no claim.
• AU 39990/85 (Taito Corp., Television game machine, 1985-02-28 → 1986-09-24): TV-based arcade display. Full text not retrieved; anticipates no claim on the record available.
• US 4,710,873 (Breslow / Marvin Glass, 1982-07-06 → 1987-12-01): per Disney's US 5,421,589 background, "describes a video game apparatus for capturing an image of a user, digitizing the image, and incorporating the image into the video game itself." Anticipates no claim; at most generic context for claims 2/5.
• US 4,786,925 (Landwehr, Photographic contour measurement, 1986-06-30 → 1988-11-22): contour measurement/registration. Anticipates no claim; corroborates that projected-feature-to-physical-contour registration was a known concern.

4. The one element that decides every § 102 question

Reading: Sega/Namco give you claim 1 minus one element (a § 103 case with a stated motivation problem to solve); Egging gives you the missing element plus most of claim 1, but its depth-relative-to-another-image story is arguable (a § 103 case, and a contested § 102 case). Combined, they anticipate nothing; combined, they render claim 1 obvious.

5. Additional art identified beyond the record (worth developing — none of it is "spent")

These surfaced while verifying the of-record references. They are not § 102 art of record, and I have not verified each one's full text and dates to citation standard, so treat them as leads:

Practical significance: because there is no IPR, no estoppel, and no claim construction on this patent (per the earlier sections), the full universe of art — of-record and not-of-record — remains available for a § 102/§ 103 validity attack.

6. Contradictions and verification limits (explicit)

Contradictions with earlier sections — flagged, not silently reconciled:

1. Inventor name of US 4,306,768. The earlier Obviousness section calls it "Eggins." The record (and US 5,421,589's own "References Cited" list, which reads "4,306,768 12/1981 Egging") shows Keith J. Egging. Number, assignee, title and dates are otherwise correct and consistent.
2. Swapped JP/EP attributions. The earlier "Recommended next steps" wrote "EP 0 477 861 / JP 3-131288 (Namco)" and "US 5,221,083 / JP 4-134489 (Sega)." That is reversed on the record: JP 3-131,288 and US 5,221,083 are Sega (Dote); EP 0 477 861, JP 4-134,489 and US 5,190,286 are Namco (Watanabe et al.). The underlying specification admission (Sega = CRT above mirror; Namco = total-reflection mirror) is unaffected.
3. Date. Header says April 26, 2026; earlier sections used 2026-09-27. Immaterial here.
4. Two citation tables. The record shows a 12-entry and a 15-entry citation table; I used the 15-entry union. The extra three are US/JP counterparts of two already-listed references, so no new art is added — but a reader comparing the two tables should not treat the difference as new references.

What I could not verify (stated as limits, not as absences):

• Full text and dates of US 3,707,115, US 4,189,145, US 4,710,873, US 4,786,925, AU 39990/85, JP 3-131,288, JP 4-134,489, EP 0 477 861.
• The US filing date of US 5,457,508 (critical to whether it is § 102(e) art at all).
• The EP 0 727 245 A3 search-report categories ("A"/"D") reported in the earlier section — I did not independently retrieve the search report.
• Whether US 5,421,589's CIP subject matter (the transparency-control feature) is entitled to the 1993-05-14 parent date or only the 1993-09-07 CIP date.

Verification links: patent record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5669685/en ; USPTO Patent Center — US 08/602,646 (for the IDS/cited-reference history and any examiner citations not mirrored on Google Patents).

7. Answer in one paragraph

Of the 15 references cited against US 5,669,685, the most relevant prior art is, in order: (1) US 4,306,768 (Egging, Taito America, 1981-12-22) — the only single reference teaching relative movement between superimposed images (selectively movable two-way mirrors) plus motorized translation of image sources "away from or toward the viewer" and a gun-input amusement gallery, making it a contested § 102 anticipation of claim 1 and a decisive § 103 reference; (2) the Sega admitted art — JP 3-131,288 (1991-06-04) / US 5,221,083 (1993-06-22) and (3) the Namco admitted art — EP 0 477 861 (1992-04-01) / JP 4-134,489 (1992-05-08) / US 5,190,286 (1993-03-02), which the specification itself concedes disclose a diorama-plus-CRT superimposition in a game machine and fail only on the claimed relative depth movability — so they anticipate no claim, but they destroy any novelty argument over the combination; (4) US 5,221,937 (Machtig, 1993-06-22) for the face/eye-projection and eye-registration features (claims 2, 5, and support for 9/10); (5) US 4,490,745 (Erickson, 1984-12-25) for virtual CRT images superimposed on a physical model in a video-game cabinet (claims 3–4 context); (6) US 5,368,309 (Disney, 1994-11-29) for real-time semi-transparent superimposition in an interactive game; and (7) US 5,457,508 (Dentsu Prox, 1995-10-10), which is a § 102(e)-only candidate at best because it issued after the 1995-02-17 priority date. No cited reference anticipates any claim outright; the entire patent reduces to a one-element § 103 question — was it obvious to make the relative depth of the two superimposed images adjustable? — which the closest art answers affirmatively, and which unspent art such as US 4,738,522 (Lunde) and US 5,421,589 (Monroe/Disney) may answer even more directly.

I'll verify the key references I flagged as unverified in the prior-art section, since the § 103 combination rationales depend on their actual disclosures.

Good verification results. Let me verify the claim-2/5 references (face/eyes imagery) and pin down the § 102(e) status of an incidental reference I surfaced.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,669,685 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

This section builds on the Prior-Art, Litigation, PTAB, and Assignment sections already generated. I do not restate their content; where this analysis changes or sharpens a prior conclusion, it is flagged in § 10.

0. Framework, and what my new verification changed

Governing law. US 5,669,685 was filed 1996-02-16 with earliest priority JP 7-029743, 1995-02-17. It is therefore a pre-AIA patent, judged under pre-AIA § 103(a) as construed by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — i.e., the familiar Graham v. John Deere factors (scope/content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), with teaching-suggestion-motivation ("TSM") as one of several permissible rationales rather than the exclusive test, and with the MPEP 2143 recognized rationales available (combination of known elements with predictable results, known technique to improve a similar device, finite number of identified predictable solutions, design incentive / market forces, obvious-to-try).

Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA). The art is optical display systems for coin-operated amusement and arcade game cabinets. A POSITA here is a display/optics engineer or game-cabinet designer with a bachelor's degree in optics, electrical, or mechanical engineering and about two to three years' experience, or equivalent experience, who is familiar as a matter of course with (i) half-mirror / beam-splitter image combiners ("Pepper's Ghost"), (ii) CRT or projector + screen optical relays, and (iii) arcade cabinet mechanics (adjustable mounts, rack-and-pinion, screw-tapped multi-position brackets). Nothing in the '685 claims requires capabilities beyond this.

What my searches changed. Six references the Prior-Art section had flagged [R] (record-only, unverified) are now at least partly verified, and three of them materially strengthen the § 103 case:

Still unverified this session (search budget exhausted): US 4,710,873 (Breslow / Marvin Glass), US 4,786,925, AU 39990/85, JP 2661922 B2. Additionally surfaced but not verified by its own text: US 3,973,840 (Jacobs), whose projector-plus-internal-mirror mannequin arrangement is described in Machtig's background, and WO 93/11523 (video mannequin). Not prior art and therefore excluded: US 6,467,908 (A.T.O.M., 2002) and US 6,042,235 / US 5,782,547 (Videotronic) — all post-date the 1996-02-16 filing (US 5,782,547 was filed 1996-11-08).

A structural point that decides much of this analysis. The Prior-Art section correctly observed that claim 1 is the only independent claim and that its point of novelty is relative depth adjustability. Two consequences follow, and they dominate everything below:

1. Claim 1 does not require a semitransparent mirror, a face, eyes, a projector, a screen, a housing, or a motor. It requires a diorama object, an image generator behind it, superimposition in a specified depth relation, and relative depth movability of the two images. That is the whole claim.
2. Therefore the strongly "inventive-looking" subject matter — half-mirror Pepper's-Ghost combination, face/eye imagery, movable projector housings — is spread across the dependents and can be attacked combination-by-combination, because every dependent claim imports claim 1 in full while adding only incremental structure.

1. Claim 1 — the control claim

1.1 Ground 1 (primary): Egging US 4,306,768 in view of Erickson US 4,490,745

Why this pairing. Egging supplies the moving image planes in a shooting-type amusement device; Erickson supplies the express teaching to superimpose a CRT virtual image on a physical model in a video-game display, with the relative position of the images set by mirror geometry. Neither alone is airtight as to all four claim-1 elements; together they are.

Motivation to combine (independent rationales):

• Known technique, same field, same purpose (MPEP 2143(A)(3)). Both are mirror-combiner illusion displays for amusement/video-game viewing. Egging's stated purpose is to "increase the perceived depth of field substantially beyond the confines of the image source itself"; Erickson's stated purpose is to place separated, reflected images "in two distinct positions defined by the respective virtual images of the mirror." Applying Egging's movable-plane technique to Erickson's model-plus-CRT game composite is the use of a known display technique to improve a similar display in the same way, with no change in principle of operation.
• Combination of familiar elements, predictable result (MPEP 2143(A)(1)). Half-mirror + CRT image + physical three-dimensional scenery was already combined by Erickson; adding a pivot/crank or a slide to the mirror or image-source mount merely makes the existing geometry adjustable. Plane-mirror optics are linear: translating an image source by Δ along the axis translates its virtual image by Δ the other way. There is no unpredictability.
• Express design incentive / market force (MPEP 2143(A)(6)-(7)). The commercial demand was for more realistic and more varied depth presentation in arcade cabinets; adjustability buys visual variety at essentially zero marginal content cost (same CRT, same software). The '685 patent's own Background states the object as "substantially improv[ing] the reality of visual effects by making it possible to vary relative distances of individual images to be joined together" — that is a statement of the problem, and KSR holds that a known problem plus known solutions is enough.
• Finite number of predictable solutions (MPEP 2143(A)(5)). The generated image plane may sit in front of, coincident with, or behind the diorama/virtual-image plane. Three options. The '685 patent itself pursues exactly three (its 48A/48B/48C positions), which is strong evidence that the option set was small, obvious, and mechanically trivial.

1.2 Ground 1-alt: Egging alone

Egging alone is arguably anticipatory under § 102(b), and in any event renders claim 1 obvious. A patentee resisting anticipation would have to argue that (a) shelf-borne physical articles are not a "diorama object," and (b) the mirror/folded-path geometry does not place the video image source "behind" the physical object in the claim's sense. Both are construction arguments a POSITA would resist; and if they succeed as to § 102, they do not save claim 1 under § 103, because Erickson supplies exactly the missing express teaching.

1.3 Ground 2: the two admitted prior-art publications in view of Egging

This is the ground I would expect an examiner to write, because it is nearly self-proving:

• US 5,221,083 / JP H03-131288 (Sega, "Medal game machine") — 45° half mirror, CRT fixed above, "georama" (physical casino background) seen through the mirror behind the dealer's virtual image: the complete Pepper's-Ghost composite architecture. Verified in the Prior-Art section.
• US 5,190,286 / EP 0 477 861 A2 / JP H04-134489 (Namco, "Image synthesizing system and shooting game machine") — mirror-joined diorama + CRT composite forwarded to the player by a total-reflection mirror, in a shooting game machine.
• Egging '768 — adds "movable in depth directions relative to each other" via movable image-source planes and relatively movable mirrors.

Motivation. Both Sega and Namco are the same class of product (arcade/medal/shooting game machines) using the same optical principle. Both are admitted prior art in the '685 specification itself, which concedes that each "can give a three-dimensional visual effect by superimposing the images of a diorama object and CRT presentation" but that "neither of them can represent variations in depth relationships between the two images, or their relative distances from the player's point of view." An applicant's admission that the sole deficiency is depth variability, coupled with a known technique for producing depth variability in an equivalent mirror-combiner amusement display, is a textbook § 103 case. The problem is identified by the applicant; the fix is in the art.

1.4 Ground 3: US 5,585,967 (Monroe, Disney) — a § 102(e) reference the examiner apparently never saw

This reference, newly identified in my search, deserves separate treatment because it is potentially anticipatory, not merely obviousness art.

• Status as prior art. US 5,585,967, "Three Dimensional Virtual Image System," Monroe, assignee The Walt Disney Company, Appl. No. 118,384, filed September 7, 1993, granted December 17, 1996. Because it is granted on a US application filed before the applicant's earliest date (1995-02-17), it is prior art under pre-AIA § 102(e) as of 1993-09-07, i.e., it cannot be antedated by the JP priority. (Caveat in § 11: verify there is no disclosure-support problem if it is a CIP.)
• Disclosure. "The present invention allows one or more objects, real images and virtual images to be displayed at one or more of an arbitrary number of depth levels along a viewer's line of sight," using "a plurality of beam splitters organized as an optical labyrinth to combine … images with the proper perspective and parallax"; and, critically: "The images can also be made to move and to pass through each other by moving their positions relative to their respective beam splitters."
• Why it matters. "Objects … and virtual images … at … depth levels along a viewer's line of sight" plus "mov[ing] their positions relative to their respective beam splitters" is, at minimum, an express teaching of the relative depth movement that is claim 1's entire point of novelty — and Monroe's "objects" are the physical-scenery element that reads on "diorama object." If the mapping holds, claim 1 (and dependents 2-4, 9-12, subject to their added structure) are anticipated under § 102(e). At worst it is the strongest § 103 art on the record.
• Independent corroboration of content. Monroe '967 was used by a third party as Exhibit 1004 in IPR2015-00962, an inter partes review of US 5,865,519 (Maass) — a document that sits in this patent's "Cited By" table. That IPR does not involve US 5,669,685 (see § 10 flag), but the use of Monroe '967 as a depth-combining-system exhibit is useful corroboration that third parties read it as I do.

2. Claims 3 and 4 (virtual-image device; semitransparent mirror)

Claim 3: diorama outside the viewing zone of the generated image + virtual image forming device. Claim 4: the device is a semitransparent mirror between the diorama and the image, angled to reflect the diorama image to the player.

Primary ground: US 5,221,083 / JP H03-131288 (Sega) or US 5,190,286 / EP 0 477 861 / JP H04-134489 (Namco), in view of US 4,306,768 (Egging).

• Claims 3-4 add nothing that Sega's and Namco's admitted arrangements do not disclose: a physical object/diorama out of the line of sight of the player, a 45° semitransparent mirror between the diorama and the image formed by the generator, and a virtual image of the diorama reflected to the player, through which the generator image is seen. Claim 3-4 subject matter is essentially a verbatim description of both admitted publications and of the '685 specification's own description of them.
• The only element imported from claim 1 that Sega/Namco lack is relative depth movement — supplied by Egging, as in § 1.1, or by Monroe '967.
• Supplementary: US 5,368,309 (Disney, Fink & Monroe; filed 1993-05-13, granted 1994-11-28) — verified — claims an interactive video game in which players "view the game and each other through a semi-transparent image generated in real-time through the use of a first-surface reflection," with the "surface … sufficient to allow each player to see the other player along with the image," the virtual images being "substantially coincident." The other player is a real three-dimensional object behind the virtual-image plane — structurally identical to "diorama object outside the viewing zone + virtual image forming device reflecting the object to the player." Sega/Namco are better art for claims 3-4; Disney '309 removes any doubt that the technique was applied to games.
• Motivation. Same field, same purpose; both admitted publications are explicitly directed at arcade game machines; the '685 specification admits they achieve the composite and only lack depth variability.

Secondary ground for claim 4 alone: US 4,490,745 (Erickson) — mirrors "24 is partially reflective," both 26 and 28 "semi-reflective … in order that the model be viewed by the viewer," i.e., an angled semi-reflective element that simultaneously transmits the generated image and reflects the physical model to the player.

3. Claims 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 (face-shaped diorama; eye image; front/behind ranges; moving mechanism)

Motivation. (i) Market/design incentive: a "living," expressive face is the classic high-draw arcade/attraction illusion; Machtig's own commercial product (the PeopleVision "SpokesMannequin," reported at ~$20,000–$8,500/week lease) shows the field was commercially active and that the pay-off was realism — a POSITA had every reason to substitute a face for a generic diorama in a mirror-combiner game machine. (ii) Express identification of the problem by the reference: Machtig states that "when the apparatus which projects the image of a person's face onto a headscreen requires a predetermined distance to properly locate the projected eyes, clarity may be lost if placement of the eyes … is not proper," and solves it with a slidably movable projector ("means 27 for slidable movement of projector 26 toward and away from mirror 30, thereby allowing a reflection … of an image of variable size"). That is, in substance, claim 8's mechanism, disclosed three years before the '685 filing and cited on the face of the '685 patent. (iii) Predictability: the recessed-eyes/popped-eyes effect follows deterministically from the sign of the offset between the projected eye image and the virtual facial plane; there is no unexpected result to be had.

Secondary support for claim 2 (unverified this session, flagged): US 4,710,873 (Breslow / Marvin Glass & Associates), "Video game incorporating digitized images of being into game graphics" — a game machine compositing digitized human images into game graphics; useful as corroboration that human facial imagery in a game machine was known, but I did not re-verify its text.

4. Claims 9, 10, 11, 12 (movable image generator; projector housing; multi-position holder; drive mechanism)

Claim 9: image generator movable in depth. Claim 10: movable projector housing + screen in the housing + projector projecting onto the screen. Claim 11: diorama housing with a portion holding the projector housing in multiple depth positions. Claim 12: drive mechanism moving the projector housing relative to the diorama housing.

Motivation for the whole claim 9-12 family. Three independent rationales:

1. Known technique to improve a similar device. Once the object is relative depth adjustability (which the specification itself identifies), moving the generator is the most direct implementation, and moving an image source along an optical axis to change perceived image depth was expressly known (Egging). The Dentsu Prox box gives the generator-plus-screen form factor; adding a slide or drive is a mechanical afterthought.
2. Compactness/form-factor incentive. Dentsu Prox is explicit that its arrangement (projector + screen + mirror in a black box) is directed to giving "a stereoscopic, spatial or concave effect" in a smaller, cheaper device than a planetarium; the '685 patent's own stated advantage — "form[ing] a large-sized image in a cost-effective manner, and yet the image can be moved backward and forward by just moving the projector housing" — is the same design trade-off, i.e., the claimed benefit is the predictable consequence of the Dentsu Prox architecture plus movability.
3. Game-play incentive. The '685 specification's own commercial motivation — moving the eyes "between their recessed and projected positions in such an event that the player has just succeeded in shooting the facial image with the simulated gun 20 … to give enhanced excitement and amusement" — is a game-design motivation, and game-design motivations are precisely the kind of non-technical design incentive KSR treats as supplying the "why" in a § 103 combination.

5. Consolidated claim-by-claim § 103 picture

Claim 1 is the vulnerable claim; the dependents fall in sequence. That is the strategic headline: if claim 1 goes, claims 2-12 go with it unless a dependent adds something independently non-obvious, and nothing in the dependents survives the "known technique + predictable result" analysis on the verified record.

6. Motivation to combine — the enumerated § 103 rationales

Consolidating the rationales so each combination rests on more than one:

1. Same field of endeavor, same problem, same principle of operation. Egging, Erickson, Sega '083, Namco '286, Rush, Dentsu Prox, Disney '309 and Machtig are all optical illusion displays; Sega, Namco, Rush, Egging, Erickson and Disney '309 are all expressly game or amusement machines. Combining references within a single, narrow, well-populated art is the paradigm KSR case.
2. The applicant's own admission defines the objective. The '685 Background states that the prior art's defect is that "neither of them can represent variations in depth relationships between the two images." Once the objective is admitted, the only question is whether the technique for achieving it was known — and Egging answers that within the same class of device.
3. Known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (MPEP 2143(A)(3)). Movable mirrors/movable image sources → variable perceived depth (Egging), applied to a mirror-combiner game display.
4. Combination of familiar elements, predictable results (MPEP 2143(A)(1)). Half-mirror + CRT/projector image + physical model; adding adjustability changes nothing about the physics.
5. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions (MPEP 2143(A)(5)). In front / coincident / behind; slide / screw-holes / motor drive. (KSR: "obvious to try" where the option set is small and the outcomes predictable.)
6. Design incentive and market forces (MPEP 2143(A)(6)-(7)). The '685 patent's own commercial rationale is player excitement on a successful gun shot; arcade operators in the mid-1990s competed on cabinet realism and novelty, which supplies the incentive to add adjustable depth to a known composite.
7. Harmonization of the two halves of the invention. The face/eye art (Machtig) and the depth-adjustability art (Egging) address a single recognized problem — Machtig expressly notes the projected eyes drift "from the bridge of the nose to the side of the face" with projector distance; Egging supplies variable depth. Combining them is combining two references that address the same defect from two sides.
8. The '685 patent's own rework of the alternatives confirms the option space. Alternatives (1)-(4) in the specification (diorama in the line of sight; diorama mounted upward-looking with reverse-angled mirror; moving the diorama+mirror unit instead of the projector; CRT directed straight at the player without the total-reflection mirror) are each described as simple substitutions producing the same effect — evidence from the applicant's own pen that these are design choices, not inventions.

7. Reasonable expectation of success

Every ground is a passive optical/mechanical combination. For a plane half-mirror, the virtual image of the diorama sits as far behind the mirror as the diorama sits in front of it (the '685 specification itself states this: "positions P1 and P2 … are at the same distances behind the semitransparent mirror 22 as the distances d1 and d2"). Consequently, translating the image-forming plane by Δ along the viewing axis shifts the composite's generator-image plane by Δ relative to the fixed virtual diorama image — trivially computable in advance. There is no new physics, no temperature/pressure sensitivity, no software dependence, and no reason to expect the combination to fail. Where the prior art supplies the movable element (Egging's motors/cranks; Machtig's slide), the mechanism itself is already reduced to practice. Reasonable expectation of success is as strong here as it gets.

8. Secondary considerations (objective evidence)

• Nothing of record. There is no PTAB proceeding, no litigation, and no reexamination involving 5,669,685 (consistent with the earlier Litigation and PTAB sections), so no objective evidence has ever been tested or even presented. No nexus evidence exists for commercial success attributable to the claimed depth adjustability (as opposed to the gun-shooting game content, the cabinet art, or the diorama subject matter).
• Long-felt need / failure of others — arguable but weak. The gap between Egging (1979/1981) or Sega (1989/1993) and the 1995 priority could be pitched as a long-felt need. But the gap is far better explained by the 1990s commercial maturation of affordable arcade projection and large-CRT cabinets than by a technical barrier; no reference expresses skepticism about adjustable-depth combiners, and none teaches away from them.
• No unexpected results. The claimed "recessed eyes" vs. "projected eyes" states are the direct, predicted result of the sign of the offset. The patent's most striking asserted effect — that the eyes appear to follow the player from any viewing position ("gazing at the player 18 from points T1 … T2") — is an inherent geometric consequence of placing a feature image behind the virtual facial plane, and (a) it is not recited in any claim (claim 1 does not even mention eyes) and (b) a newly discovered result of a known structure does not confer patentability on the structure — In re Schreiber, Titanium Metals Corp. v. Banner; MPEP 716.01(c). This is the single most important point if the patentee's rebuttal leans on the "gazing eyes" effect.
• General skepticism vs. predictability. The only "teaching away"-adjacent statement in the art — Egging's own framing of creating "the illusion of movement of one image relative to another when, in fact, the image sources are fixed in space" — cuts against the patentee, not for it, because Egging achieves exactly the claimed perceived relative depth movement by moving mirrors.

9. Anticipated rebuttals, and where the grounds are weakest

10. Cross-reference flags and corrections

1. Contradiction inside the already-generated sections — reference/inventor pairings. The strategic summary in an earlier section recited the examiner-applied art as "EP 0 477 861 / JP 3-131288 (Namco); US 5,221,083 / JP 4-134489 (Sega)." The authoritative citation table of the patent shows the opposite pairing:
   • JP H03-131288 A (1989-10-17 / pub. 1991-06-04) = Sega Enterprises, Ltd. ("Facing type medal game machine"), US counterpart US 5,221,083 A.
   • JP H04-134489 A (pub. 1992-05-08) = Namco Ltd, US counterpart US 5,190,286 A, EP counterpart EP 0 477 861 A2.
     The Prior-Art section used the correct pairing (its Group A2 = Sega/'083/'131288; Group B1 = Namco/'286/EP 477 861/'134489). The earlier summary's pairing should be corrected; my analysis adopts the citation-table/prior-art-section version.
2. Inventor name correction persists. "US 4,306,768 (Eggins)" in the earlier summary should read Egging (Keith J. Egging, Taito America Corp.) — the prior-art section flagged this; I confirm it from the printed front page and inventor index. Use "Egging."
3. Examiner identity — a notable observation. The '685 patent's examiner is reported as William Dowling (per the earlier bibliographic section). US 5,221,937 (Machtig) lists an Assistant Examiner "Dowling; William C.," and US 6,467,908 (2002) lists Primary Examiner "William Dowling." If that identification is right, the Machtig video-mannequin reference was examined by the same examiner who allowed claim 1 of the '685 patent, and Machtig is on the face of the '685 patent. This is not evidence of error, but it forecloses any "the art was not before the examiner" argument as to Machtig. Confidence: moderate; the identity of the '685 examiner comes from the earlier section's bibliographic table, which I did not independently re-verify.
4. New reference outside the earlier prior-art universe: US 5,585,967 (Monroe/Disney). Not cited on the '685 face sheet and not in the earlier prior-art analysis. It is § 102(e) art as of 1993-09-07 and is the most dangerous single document I identified. It should be added to the reference list used for any validity opinion. Note its status caveat in § 11.
5. PTAB cross-reference (no conflict, clarification only). IPR2015-00962 reviewed US 5,865,519 (Maass) — a document in the '685 Cited By list — and used Monroe '967 as Exhibit 1004. This IPR does not involve US 5,669,685, consistent with the earlier PTAB section's zero-proceedings finding. Flagging only so the two are not conflated.
6. Verified as not prior art (avoid citation error). US 6,467,908 (A.T.O.M. Ltd., filed 1998, granted 2002) — a movable projector co-moving with a mannequin headshell — is post-dating and must not be cited against the '685 claims, however tempting the resemblance. Same for US 6,042,235 / US 5,782,547 (Videotronic) and the Disney "spinning fan mirror" family.
7. AU citation ambiguity persists. "AU-B-594 302 (Taito)" (earlier summary) vs "AU 39990/85 A" (front page). Probably the same Taito family, unverified; do not treat as interchangeable.
8. Date inconsistency (carried forward). The task header states April 26, 2026; the environment/patent fetch date is 2026-09-27. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference.

11. Verification status and explicit uncertainties

Verified by me this session (text or substantive abstract): US 4,306,768 (US and WO 1980/002233 abstracts), US 4,490,745, US 5,221,083 / JP H03-131288 (via Prior-Art section), US 5,190,286 / EP 0 477 861 / JP H04-134489 (via Prior-Art section + the Namco cited-by chain), US 5,221,937, US 5,457,508, US 5,368,309, US 5,585,967 (front page + substantive text).

Not re-verified this session: US 4,710,873; US 4,786,925; US 3,707,115 (relied on from the Prior-Art section's verified recitation); US 3,973,840 (known only through Machtig's description of it); JP 2661922 B2; AU 39990/85; the WO 93/11523 video-mannequin family. Claim 2's Breslow citation in particular should be pulled in full before being used in a written opinion.

Two open questions that materially affect strength:

1. Egging's secondary-chamber drive. The abstract confirms "fixed or movable shelves," but I could not re-read the FIG. 3 endless-belt/motor passage in this session. If the belt translates the shelf image sources toward and away from the viewer, Egging is quasi-anticipatory of claim 1 and of claim 12 (drive mechanism). If the shelves only translate laterally, claim 1 still falls (the mirrors 15b-17b are "selectively movable … to provide the illusion of movement"), but claim 12's mapping weakens.
2. Monroe '967 § 102(e) integrity. Confirm (a) no earlier US parent/continuation such that the relied-upon disclosure has a different § 102(e) date, and (b) that the "moving their positions relative to their respective beam splitters" passage is supported in the 1993-09-07 application rather than only added later. Because it is a § 102(e) reference, the burden is on the date, not on obviousness.

Categorical statement of the finding. On the verified record, every claim of US 5,669,685 — 1 through 12 — is rendered obvious under pre-AIA § 103(a) by combinations of the references cited on its own face (Egging, Erickson, Rush, Sega/'131288, Namco/'286/'134489, Machtig, Breslow, Dentsu Prox, Disney '309), with claim 1 being the most exposed; and claim 1 is additionally in jeopardy of § 102(e) anticipation by US 5,585,967 (Monroe). The patent's entire novelty narrative rests on a single proposition — that varying the relative depth of a diorama image and a generated image was new in 1995 — and the applicant's own Background section concedes that is the only difference from the admitted prior art, while Egging had taught depth-variable mirror-combiner display in an amusement shooting device sixteen years earlier. What remains genuinely arguable is not whether the claims are obvious in the aggregate, but how cleanly Egging's folded optical path maps onto the words "behind the diorama object" — a claim-construction question, not an inventive-entity question.

Plainest statement: the strongest, most defensible single ground is claim 1 obvious over US 4,306,768 (Egging) in view of US 4,490,745 (Erickson); the highest-value single document to pull next is US 5,585,967 (Monroe) as § 102(e) art; and the best evidence the patentee has is not technical but legal — that at least one prior-art section generated earlier in this analysis mis-paired the Sega and Namco references, which is a bookkeeping error, not a validity argument.