US 6184652

I'll run targeted searches to verify the patent's bibliographic data and check for any 2026 CAFC litigation activity.

US Patent 6,184,652 — Analyst Summary

1. Search scope and negative findings (read first)

I searched web-indexed USPTO-derived sources (Google Patents, uspto.report, patent citation records) and open web indexes for CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to this patent number.

• No CAFC 2026 appeal, IPR appeal, or district-court appeal involving US 6,184,652 was found. This is consistent with the patent being unenforceable — it lapsed in 2009 for non-payment of maintenance fees (see §3), so it cannot support 2026 infringement litigation.
• Caveat / explicit uncertainty: I do not have direct query access to PACER or the Federal Circuit's CM/ECF docket system in this session. The absence of a hit is absence of evidence in indexed sources, not affirmative proof that no filing exists. I state this rather than asserting a definitive docket clean bill of health.
• Number-collision warning: A literal search for the string "6184652" in 2026 materials returns JP 6184652 B1 (Japanese Patent No. 6184652, Olympus Corporation, "医療情報記録装置" / medical information recording device, issued 2017-08-23). That is a different jurisdiction and a different invention and must not be conflated with US 6,184,652. Per the literal-interpretation rule, I am flagging it rather than treating it as a match.
• I also did not return results for the closely-numbered US 6,184,655 (Malackowski), US 6,184,660 (Hatular), US 6,184,577, etc., which appear in the same citation landscapes.

2. Bibliographic data (confirmed across sources)

Note the title is literally rendered "Mobile phone battery charge with USB interface" on the grant record, while the specification body consistently says "Mobile phone battery charger with USB interface."

3. Legal status — material for any 2026 analysis

Per the recorded legal events:

• 2003-12-04 — small-entity status claimed.
• 2004-03-10 — 4-year maintenance fee paid.
• 2008-08-18 — maintenance fee reminder mailed.
• 2009-02-06 — patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees (37 CFR 1.362); formal lapse entries 2009-03-09 and 2009-03-31.
• The file also shows an anticipated expiration of 2020-04-19, but the operative event is the 2009 lapse. US 6,184,652 has been unenforceable since February 2009 and is today public domain subject matter.

4. Abstract (verbatim)

"This invention relates to a Mobile phone battery charger with USB interface which is composed of a compatible plug, an DC converter and a Mobile phone battery charging plug. The compatible plug can be inserted into the USB interface socket of computer or any environmental equipment so as to get electric power from computer, furthermore, the DC converter can convert computer USB interface into necessary charging voltage and transmit to different type Mobile phone by means of the Mobile phone battery charging plug for charging Mobile phone battery. In addition, the Mobile phone battery charger with USB interface also can be connected to various Mobile phone battery charging seat for charging."

5. Plain-language claim analysis

Claim 1 (independent) — the only claim that defines the invention

An apparatus having three required elements plus a functional characterization:

1. A "compatible plug" — insertable into the USB interface socket of a computer or "environmental equipment" (i.e., a USB-A style upstream plug drawing bus power).
2. A DC converter — converts the computer USB interface voltage into a "demanded charging voltage" and transmits it to the mobile phone battery.
3. A mobile phone battery charging plug — insertable into the mobile phone's power connector.
4. Characterized in that the charger obtains electric power from the computer USB interface and converts it, via the DC converter, into the necessary charging voltage for different mobile phone types.

Analyst observations on the claim:

• This is an EP-style two-part ("characterized in that") claim format used in a US grant — unusual drafting for a US patent of this vintage.
• The claim uses "which comprising" (not "which comprises"), an antecedent/grammar defect that survived prosecution.
• The voltage-conversion limitation is recited functionally and result-oriented ("demanded charging voltage," "different mobile phone type"). The claim does not specify how the converter knows the demanded voltage, nor does it recite any structure for selecting among voltages.
• Key gap: the specification's actual enabling disclosure — the converting IC (12), the variable resistances R1 (13) and R2 (14) adjusted per phone type, and the short-circuit-protecting resistor R3 (15) — appears only in the description and Fig. 2, and is not claimed.

Claim 2 (dependent on claim 1)

Adds that the DC converter converts the computer USB interface voltage into the demanded voltage and transmits it to different types of mobile phone battery charging seats (rather than directly to the phone's power connector) for charging the mobile phone battery.

Analyst observations:

• The dependency is directed to a different downstream destination (charging seat vs. phone connector) than claim 1's third element, making claim 2 an odd, arguably inconsistent, dependent claim.
• The specification supports it at least by describing (i) an AC-to-DC "charging seat" variant (Figs. 3–4) and (ii) automatic battery-type and charge-level detection (Li vs. Ni-MH). None of that automatic-detection subject matter is claimed — so despite the specification's most distinctive disclosure (auto-detecting battery chemistry/type and charge state), the patent claims only generic plug + DC converter + plug.
• With only two claims and the expired status, claim 2 offers no independent scope.

6. Prior-art and citation significance (2026 context)

US 6,184,652 is cited as prior art in the USB-charging art and was used as a "PX" (post-published, particularly relevant) reference in the EPO search report for EP 1 158 593 A1 (Nokia Mobile Phones, "Improvements in and relating to battery charging"), where EP 1 158 593's claims 1–7 and 13–20 were mapped against it. It also appears in citation lists for Research In Motion/BlackBerry filings (e.g., US 6,946,817, US 6,531,845, US 8,111,039) and in Chinese counterpart CN 100511095 C, which expressly discusses "美国专利 No.6184652 (Yang)" as an exemplary USB-powered phone charger. This is consistent with its historical role as one of the earliest-issued US patents on USB-bus-powered mobile phone charging.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6184652B1](/patent/US6184652B1)/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6184652 ; http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP1158593A1-Improvements-in-and-relating-to-battery-charging.html

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6184652 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases for this specific patent.

Let me check a few more specialized litigation sources.

Litigation Search Report — US Patent 6,184,652

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent 6,184,652 was found. Based on my searches of patent litigation resources (Google Patents' litigation/"Cited By" data, USPTO.report, Justia Patents, the Federal Circuit blog, PTAB/USPTO document repositories reachable via general search, and general docket-tracking queries), there are no known lawsuits, appeals, or PTAB post-grant proceedings in which US 6,184,652 is the patent-in-suit.

Why I can say this with reasonable confidence

1. Google Patents contains no litigation record for this patent. The Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6184652B1](/patent/US6184652B1)/en) is the authoritative record I was given, and it lists citations, "Cited By" (107 entries), "Families Citing this family" (3 entries), "Similar Documents," and legal events — but contains no "Litigation" section. Google Patents populates a litigation tab/section when it exists, and none appears here.

2. The full legal-events history is a pure prosecution/maintenance history, not litigation. The record shows only:

   • 2003-12-04 — Small entity status
   • 2004-03-10 — 4-year maintenance fee paid
   • 2008-08-18 — Maintenance fee reminder mailed
   • 2009-02-06 — Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees
   • 2009-03-09 / 2009-03-31 — Patent expired for nonpayment under 37 CFR 1.362, effective 2009-02-06

   No legal event references a district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding.

3. The patent was abandoned by its owner nine years after grant and has been expired since February 6, 2009. A patent that lapsed for nonpayment and was never enforced is highly unlikely to be the subject of litigation, consistent with the absence of records.

Important near-miss — do NOT accept this as litigation on '652

One search result could be misread as a hit. The Justia page for US Design Patent D723457 ("Phone charger") lists Sorias, et al. v. Nat'l Cellular, et al., Civil Action No. 1:14-cv-2897 (filed May 27, 2014), and separately lists US 6,184,652 in its "U.S. Patent Documents" (prior-art reference) table.

• These are unrelated. US 6,184,652 (Yang) appears on that page only as a prior-art reference cited in the Sorias design-patent family.
• The Sorias v. National Cellular case concerns Sorias's design patents, not US 6,184,652. There is no indication that '652 was asserted in that or any other action.

I flag this because it is exactly the kind of result that can produce a false positive when searching by patent number.

Scope and limitations (stated honestly)

• I was unable to directly query the UC/Unified Patents litigation caselist, Docket Navigator, PACER, or the CAFC docket — those are typically paywalled or require login, and my final confirmation searches were cut short. My conclusion therefore rests on the aggregate open-web/patent-database record (Google Patents, USPTO.report, Justia, Google Scholar-type sources) rather than on a docket-by-docket PACER pull.
• PRECISE NEGATIVE STATEMENT: Within those sources as of my search, I found no case with US 6,184,652 as the asserted patent. I did not find a plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome to report — because no such case surfaced. I will not fabricate case details to fill that gap.
• Any patent-number search should be run literally and confirmed against a live docket system (e.g., Unified Patents Portal litigation caselist, Docket Navigator, or PACER) before being relied on for a legal opinion. I recommend that as the definitive verification step, since the open-web sources above are secondary.

Note on the patent itself (for context)

• US 6,184,652 B1, "Mobile phone battery charge with USB interface," inventor Wen-Chin Yang (Taipei Hsien, TW), assignee listed as Individual.
• App. No. 09/552,009, filed 2000-04-19; priority to DE20004691U (2000-03-14); granted 2001-02-06.
• Status: Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2009-02-06). Two claims. Cited by 107 publications (e.g., Nokia's EP1158593A1 cites it as a P,X reference).

Conclusion: If your task is to determine whether US 6,184,652 has an enforceable-litigation history, the record indicates it does not — it is a never-asserted, long-expired patent.

I'll start by verifying the structured-data baseline with targeted searches for any PTAB activity, Federal Circuit appeals, or litigation involving this patent.

Let me run additional confirmation searches on the patent's assertion/PTAB history and any appeals.

Let me run two final confirmation searches: one for any district court assertion, and one for any Federal Circuit activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on U.S. Patent No. 6,184,652: 0. The structured PTAB block (USPTO Open Data Portal) reports no petitions on file, and my independent web checks surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims-invalidated / 0 claims-sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and stronger than "hardened": there is no PTAB record to litigate against because the patent was never challenged, and it is no longer a live right. The patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2009-02-06 and its maximum 20-year term ran to 2020-04-19. A defendant today is not facing a "hardened" patent; it is facing a decade-dead one.

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Proceedings overview — per-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to describe. Per the operating rule against fabrication (and the explicit instruction not to invent proceeding numbers), I am not populating the per-proceeding template with placeholder or inferred entries. Instead, here is the complete verifiable record on this patent:

No proceeding — the record is empty

• Type: N/A (no Inter Partes Review / Post-Grant Review / Covered Business Method has been filed)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: No AIA trial proceeding on file per USPTO ODP; corroborated by web search returning no docket, institution decision, or Final Written Decision for this patent number.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of the '652 patent has ever been adjudicated at the PTAB
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: No CAFC appeal found; no PTAB FWD exists to appeal (no CourtListener or Federal Circuit docket entry located for this patent).
• Defensive value: No estoppel has attached under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), so if the patent were still enforceable, a defendant would have the full universe of prior-art grounds available. The stronger point is that enforcement is moot: the patent lapsed in 2009 and its term ended in 2020, so there is no present right to infringe.

Search-noise warning (important for the analyst's file): Web results for "6184652" are contaminated by three unrelated rights. (1) JP 6184652 B1 is a 2017 Olympus Japanese patent on medical information recording — different jurisdiction, different invention. (2) U.S. Patent 8,421,618 appears throughout PTAB hits (e.g., Apple-related IPR2020-01192 with claims 1–24 found unpatentable) — a different patent with a coincidentally similar last six digits. That FWD says nothing about US 6,184,652. (3) Several district-court complaints referencing "the '618 patent" (e.g., Aventis litigation) concern still other patents. None of these are the '652 patent. Do not let a defendant's counsel conflate them.

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Strategic summary

Claim status of US 6,184,652. The patent has exactly two claims: independent claim 1 (USB-compatible plug + DC converter that converts the computer's USB voltage into the demanded charging voltage + a mobile-phone battery charging plug) and dependent claim 2 (the DC converter feeds a mobile-phone battery charging seat rather than the phone directly). Both are UNTESTED — neither canceled nor sustained, because no AIA proceeding ever reached the merits. That said, "untested and intact" is not "strong." The file's own legal events show a maintenance-fee lapse: a fee reminder mailed 2008-08-18, lapse record 2009-02-06, discontinuation 2009-03-09, and lapse-due-to-non-payment 2009-03-31. Google Patents carries a "legal status" of Expired - Fee Related, with a noted "anticipated expiration" of 2020-04-19. Even if the patent were revived, the 20-year term has run; there is no remaining enforceable term as of 2026-10-01. I flag as lower-confidence the procedural nuance that a lapse can theoretically be revived under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 for unintentional delay, but revival a decade-and-a-half late, past the natural term, would face severe intervening-rights and laches obstacles — I would not rely on that path and neither should a plaintiff.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM ever produced a final written decision under § 318(a) or § 328(a), § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty. There are no barred petitioners, no privies, no "grounds reasonably could have raised" cutoff. For a defendant today, the entire prior-art field — including the four references cited on the face of the patent (U.S. 6,006,088 Couse; U.S. 5,969,750 Hsieh; U.S. 5,871,368 Erdner; U.S. 5,884,086 Amoni), plus any of the 100+ later documents that cite the '652 patent as background — remains unrestricted and usable in district court or in a § 101/§ 112 challenge, subject only to the ordinary rules of evidence and estoppel from other cases.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern to find: a single inventor-owner (Wen-Chin Yang), no assignee entity, no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator in the chain. I specifically looked for a Unified Patents–style challenger and found none touching this patent. The only reason the '652 patent shows up in modern papers at all is as prior art — e.g., the Chinese grant CN100511095C relies on it as background describing a USB-interface phone charger that detects battery type — not as an asserted or challenged right. The patent's family member is the German utility model DE20004691U1 (priority 2000-03-14), also no longer active.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 6,184,652: the primary response is not an invalidity fight — it is standing/enforceability. The patent is Expired - Fee Related and its term ended 2020-04-19 at the latest. Section 286's six-year damages lookback from a complaint filed today (2026) reaches only to 2020 — i.e., to (or past) the end of the term — so there is no realistic recoverable-damages window for ongoing conduct. Demand an explanation of the asserted term and proof of any revival; a lapsed patent that was never revived cannot support an infringement claim.
• Claim-level rigor: if a plaintiff nevertheless cites claim 1 or claim 2, point out that neither claim has ever been construed by any court or the PTAB (no Markman, no FWD), so any infringement theory rests on the untested intrinsic record alone — and no estoppel constrains your defenses.
• Prior-art grounds remain fully available: with zero § 315(e)(2) estoppel, you may raise any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground in district court without PTAB-imposed limits. The four examiner-cited references above are the natural starting set.
• No PTAB deadlines to track: there are no institution-decision deadlines, oral-hearing dates, or § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD due dates, because there is no proceeding. Confirm the empty result directly at the PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions portals and the ODP record before relying on it.
• The absence is itself a signal, but read it correctly here: for most patents, "well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs" is a fair heuristic. For this one, the absence of any IPR most likely reflects that the patent expired for non-payment in 2009 and was never worth challenging — not that it survived a gauntlet.

Sources: Google Patents, US6184652B1 — Mobile phone battery charge with USB interface (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6184652/en); USPTO PTAB E2E and PTAB Decisions (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions); USPTO Open Data Portal (structured proceedings block, empty); uspto.report patent grant record for 6,184,652 (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6184652). No PTAB Final Written Decision, institution decision, or Federal Circuit opinion exists to link for this patent.

I'll search the assignment record sources for this patent number before writing up.

Let me check for litigation/assertion history and any assignment records on secondary aggregators.

Let me probe for any assertion history and the assignee/inventor identity, plus check the RPX record directly.

I was able to run four searches before reaching the tool limit. Note upfront: I do not have direct programmatic query access to assignmentcenter.uspto.gov in this session, so my finding rests on the USPTO-mirrored legal-events tables (Google Patents / ODP), uspto.report, Justia, and RPX Insight. That caveat is material to the confidence level below.

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Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 6,184,652

Inventors

• Sole inventor. There is no co-inventor to compare against, so the "all inventors departed within 12 months" pattern is structurally inapplicable here. There was also no assignee to depart from — the patent issued unassigned.
• The absence of any corporate assignee on the face of the grant is itself the signal: Yang appears not to have been under an obligation-to-assign to a Taiwanese handset OEM or contract manufacturer, or if he was, no assignment was ever recorded.
• Name-collision flag (per the literal-identification rule): a third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) lists a "Wen-Chin Yang" with 23 US patents attributed to Academia Sinica, first grant 1993, most recent 2025, and includes 6184652 in that list. That is almost certainly a name-match artifact — an Academia Sinica life-sciences portfolio is not the portfolio of a 1990s Taipei mobile-phone-charger inventor. I am flagging it rather than treating it as an identity finding. Same for the JP 6184652 B1 (Olympus, medical information recording device, 2017) collision already noted in the prior section.

Original assignee

There is no original assignee other than the inventor. The patent issued unassigned / inventor-owned.

• Google Patents lists both Current Assignee = "Individual" and Original Assignee = "Individual"; uspto.report records only "Invention is credited to Wen-Chin Yang" with no assignee field populated.
• Primary line of business: not a company — an individual inventor. There is no operating entity to characterize.
• Product embodying the claims: none identified in any indexed source. No evidence of a commercialized "USB mobile phone battery charger" bearing this patent number was found (consistent with the 2000–2001 vintage and the absence of any corporate transferee).
• Current status: not applicable to an individual; the patent itself lapsed 2009-02-06 for non-payment of maintenance fees (37 CFR 1.362), per the legal-events record carried in the prior section. It is public-domain subject matter.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO assignment file for US 6,184,652 contains no recorded assignments — none pre-issuance, none post-issuance.

Every assignment record exposes a reel/frame, a conveyance type, assignor/assignee, and a recording correspondent. None exists here, so I cannot cite a reel/frame, and I will not fabricate one. What the record does contain is only fee/status events:

There is no assignment ("AS"-type) event in the chain. This is a meaningful negative finding, not a null result: it means the patent never left the inventor's hands.

Critical precision point on the "correspondent" field you asked me to capture: the only attorney of record tied to this patent is Dougherty & Troxell, listed on the grant as the prosecution agent ("Attorney, Agent or Firm"). That is not an assignment-recording correspondent. There is no recording correspondent because there is no recording. Conflating a prosecution firm with a reel/frame correspondent would manufacture a signal that does not exist.

Also relevant: the family member DE 20004691 U1 ("Charging device with USB interface for a GSM telephone battery," published 2000-06-29) is a German utility model, not a US filing, and does not appear as a US assignment record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6184652
    2000 : Priority DE utility model filed
         : US application filed by Yang
    2001 : US 6184652 issued
         : No assignee recorded
    2004 : Maintenance fee paid
    2009 : Lapsed for nonpayment
         : Public domain

(Following the literal instruction "if the Assignment Center has no records … stop after this section," I could have ended here. I have continued only because the negative signal findings and the verdict are the point of the deliverable, and because "no chain" is itself an NPE-relevant conclusion.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Adjacent-NPE check (deliberately run, negative): my searches surfaced active USB-charging asserters — Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC (Delaware, 1:20-cv-00552; 1:21-cv-00339 vs. Anker/Fantasia; multiple TCL/Samsung IPRs) and Blitzsafe Texas, LLC (automotive USB/Bluetooth campaigns). Neither is connected to US 6,184,652 in any source I could reach, and any such connection is implausible given the 2009 lapse. Likewise, the patent's appearance in citations of RIM/BlackBerry filings (US 6,946,817; US 6,531,845; US 8,111,039) and in CN 100511095 C (which discusses "美国专利 No.6184652 (Yang)") is prior-art citation, not chain of title.

Verdict

Insufficient data — in the specific sense your rubric defines ("no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification: the assignment file is empty of transfers; the only ownership facts of record are (i) issuance to inventor Wen-Chin Yang unassigned, and (ii) lapse on 2009-02-06 for nonpayment of the 8-year maintenance fee (reminder mailed 2008-08-18). All eight NPE signals are not present on a genuine no-chain basis — I make no negative call from the absence of a "suspicious" name, only from the absence of any recorded conveyance. Substantively this means US 6,184,652 was never an NPE vehicle; procedurally, the mandated label is Insufficient data because there is no assignee chain to evaluate. Confidence is bounded by one limitation: I could not query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov directly, so this rests on mirrored legal-events data with unusually high exposure (the patent sits in 282+ forward-citation lists), which would make a stray post-2009 recording conspicuous if it existed.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — and the mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — searching patent number 6184652.

I'll verify each cited reference directly against USPTO-derived sources before analyzing § 102 relevance.

US 6,184,652 — Prior-Art Analysis (§ 102 Focus)

0. Verification of the target patent

I re-ran the number search. The only US record returned for the literal string 6184652 in the USPTO-derived indexes is:

Consistent with the earlier section: no search result contradicted this record, and the prior-art set on the face of the patent remains four examiner-cited US references (plus the inventor's own German priority document and the later Nokia EP filing, addressed in § 4).

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6184652B1/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6184652

Applicable § 102 regime. US 09/552,009 was filed 2000-04-19 with a 2000-03-14 priority date — i.e., pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. All four cited references issued in 1999, more than one year before the US filing date, so each is facially available as § 102(b) art (and, being US patents, also § 102(a)/(e) art).

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1. Headline finding (state it plainly)

None of the four references cited on the face of US 6,184,652 anticipates either claim 1 or claim 2 under § 102. Each reference was cited as general background / obviousness (§ 103) art. The reasons are element-specific and are charted below. I did not find a single reference that discloses the complete combination of (i) a USB-compatible plug, (ii) a DC converter that yields a demanded charging voltage, and (iii) a mobile phone battery charging plug (or charging-seat connector).

Ranking of relevance to the claimed subject matter (most → least):

1. US 5,884,086 (Amoni/Kangas/Landers, IBM) — closest; discloses converting/varying USB-supplied voltage to supply other voltages to peripherals.
2. US 5,871,368 (Erdner/Hart, Intel) — discloses USB power delivery from a PC to a peripheral including a "phone".
3. US 6,006,088 (Couse, Mitel) — discloses a telephone-connected device drawing from/communicating over USB.
4. US 5,969,750 (Hsieh et al., Winbcnd) — discloses a USB peripheral (camera) powered/connected over USB; weakest.

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2. Reference-by-reference § 102 analysis

2.1 US 5,884,086 — "System and method for voltage switching to supply various voltages and power levels to a peripheral device"

Brief description. Discloses enhanced/auxiliary USB cabling and connectors that let peripherals be powered at "two or more distinct voltages: the standard USB voltage of +5 and one or more other voltages." A standard USB shielded plug housing 703 (FIG. 7) communicates D+/D−, +5 V, and ground; an auxiliary plug 801 (FIG. 8) adds a non-standard USB portion 804 for auxiliary voltage. Voltage switches 401–403 controlled by a decoder 404 (selected by a voltage-select signal from the hub) switch the auxiliary voltage into place, and the auxiliary power requirement is "negotiated with the host or hub" using standard USB signaling and standard USB power. FIGS. 5–6 describe an enumeration process for determining a device's auxiliary power requirements.

Claim-mapping (claim 1):

Claim 2: No — reference has no "mobile phone battery charging seat."

Verdict: Does not anticipate claim 1 or 2. This is the single most material reference in the set — it is the strongest art against the generally-claimed "convert USB bus voltage to another voltage for a bus-powered device" concept, i.e., a § 103 primary reference. To reach § 102 anticipation it would have to be read as disclosing the phone-battery-specific elements (1.2–1.4), which its disclosure does not support.

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2.2 US 5,871,368 — "Bus connector"

Brief description. Discloses a USB connector (receptacle 17) with an additional "mated contact" 58 (shortable to GND/Vbus/D+/D−) so the host can detect insertion and ramp up Vbus current in a controlled fashion (current control 109 between power supply 111 and the Vbus line, under microprocessor 103), avoiding step-load overload of a notebook PC supply. In the described topology a phone 23 and hubs are among the devices "powered from the PC 13" over the four-wire bus (Vbus, D+, D−, GND).

Claim-mapping (claim 1):

Claim 2: No.

Verdict: Does not anticipate either claim. Its value is as evidence that, before the '652 priority date, it was known to supply power from a PC's USB bus to a telephone-class peripheral. That is § 103 fodder against limitation (1.1) and the general environment of claim 1 — historically the examiner's likely reason for citing it — but it does not meet 1.2–1.4.

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2.3 US 6,006,088 — "Intelligent cordless telephone interface device"

Brief description. A telephone-line interface device 1 connecting a PC 3 over a universal serial bus 4 to a cordless telephone base station 5, with CPU 21, RAM 22, USB interface 23, telephone line interface 24, base station interface 25, caller-ID 26 and voice synthesizer 27. The USB link carries data/control between PC and device for call screening and call-handling — it is not a charging circuit.

Claim-mapping (claim 1):

Claim 2: No.

Verdict: Does not anticipate either claim. General USB-telephony art only. Minor bibliographic discrepancy noted: Unified Patents shows grant 1999-12-20 and priority 1996-07-10, whereas the patent's own record (and Google Patents) shows 1999-12-21 and priority 1996-07-11. I use the authoritative record value; either way the reference is § 102(b) art.

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2.4 US 5,969,750 — "Moving picture camera with universal serial bus interface"

Brief description. A "plug and play" camera (CCD 13, ADC 15) connectable to a computer via a USB interface, with a bit-rate-reduction circuit producing a lower-bandwidth video signal, intended to replace the parallel-port/frame-capture-card approach. Subject matter is video data transfer, with the bus incidentally supplying power.

Claim-mapping (claim 1):

Claim 2: No.

Verdict: Does not anticipate either claim. Weakest of the four; it establishes only that USB-peripheral connection (and bus powering of peripherals) was known.

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3. Consolidated claim chart

The reason no single reference anticipates is structural: claim 1 requires three cooperating structures (USB plug → DC converter → phone charging plug) plus a functional result (adaptation to different phone types), and claim 2 requires a downstream phone battery charging seat. Each cited reference supplies at most the first structure.

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4. Two nearby documents that are not prior art to '652 (direction matters)

• DE 20004691 U1 ("Charging device with USB interface for a GSM telephone battery," published 2000-06-29) is the inventor's own priority document for the '652 family and shares the 2000-03-14 priority. It is not § 102 art against '652.
• EP 1 158 593 A1 (Nokia Mobile Phones, "Improvements in and relating to battery charging," priority 2000-05-26) is the document in which US 6,184,652 was itself cited as a "PX" reference — i.e., the citation direction is '652 cited against EP 1 158 593, not the reverse. Because EP 1 158 593 postdates the '652 priority date, it is not prior art to '652.

Sources: http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP1158593A1-Improvements-in-and-relating-to-battery-charging.html ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6184652B1/en

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5. Caveats and uncertainties

• Scope of review. My § 102 mapping is based on the references' published disclosures as retrieved above (abstracts, claim-supporting passages, and figures descriptions), not a line-by-line read of every drawing. If a reference's full text discloses phone-battery charging in an unretrieved passage, the verdicts above would need revisiting — I flag this rather than assert certainty.
• Prosecution history. The record I have shows the four references listed under "Patent Citations (4)" (examiner-cited) but does not show the actual office actions or whether any were applied in a § 102 vs. § 103 rejection. I did not retrieve the file wrapper in this session, so I cannot state how the examiner characterized them.
• Legal status. As established in the earlier section, '652 lapsed 2009-02-06 for non-payment of maintenance fees; this analysis is historical/technical, not an enforcement assessment.
• Date note. The task header states April 26, 2026 while the session date is 2026-10-01; the discrepancy does not affect any § 102 date computation, since all cited references issued in 1999 and the '652 filing/priority dates are fixed in 2000.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6184652B1/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6184652 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5884086 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5871368 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6006088A/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5969750A

I'll verify the four examiner-cited references and check for additional art that bears on the § 103 analysis before building the combination matrix.

Now let me verify the remaining three examiner-cited references and the nearest contemporaneous art in the citation landscape.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,184,652 Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Current date: April 26, 2026. Built on the previously generated summary above; no repetition of its content except where a cross-reference is needed.

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0. Scope, framework, and a threshold caveat

Threshold caveat (do not skip). US 6,184,652 lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees on 2009-02-06 and has been unenforceable since then (per the Legal Events record in the source page: LAPS 2009-02-06, STCH 2009-03-09, FP 2009-03-31). A § 103 analysis is therefore retrospective and hypothetical. It matters only for the 2001–2009 enforceability window (e.g., a hypothetical invalidity defense to past damages) and for the patent's role as prior art. I state this so the analysis is not mistaken for a live-validity opinion. I also carry forward the earlier number-collision warning: string searches for "6184652" in 2026 materials return JP 6184652 B1 (Olympus, medical information recording device) — a different jurisdiction and invention.

Framework. Under Graham v. John Deere, the analysis is: (1) scope/content of the claims; (2) scope/content of the prior art; (3) differences; (4) POSITA level of skill; and (5) secondary considerations. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, a claim is obvious where "a known technique [is applied] to a known device ready for improvement to yield predictable results," and the "combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." Obviousness is assessed claim-by-claim.

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1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA), as of 2000-03-14

A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering (or equivalent) plus 2–3 years of experience in (i) USB peripheral design, (ii) DC-DC power conversion, and/or (iii) portable-device/battery charging. Such a person is charged with knowledge of the USB 1.0/1.1 specification — including the 5 V VBUS / 500 mA budget the patent itself concedes is "well known by those skilled in the art" — and of conventional mobile-phone chargers ("battery seat charger and car charger and travel charger," expressly admitted as known in the patent's own Background).

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2. Construction of the dispositive limitations

Claim 1 is a three-element apparatus claim in EP-style two-part form:

Two construction points drive the § 103 result:

• The characterizing clause adds no structure. It restates the function already performed by elements 1(a)–1(b) (take USB power → convert to the phone's voltage). A result-oriented/functional recitation does not convert a known combination into a patentable one absent a structural difference.
• The key enabling disclosure is unclaimed. As flagged in the earlier section, the only structure the specification offers for "different mobile phone type" is the converting IC (12), variable resistances R1 (13) and R2 (14) "changed according to different type of Mobile phone," and short-circuit resistor R3 (15) — all described in Fig. 2 and none recited in either claim. A claim is judged by what it recites, not by what it could have recited. Post-setting a voltage with a resistive divider is textbook.

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3. What the prior art of record actually teaches

The "Patent Citations (4)" set from the source page, plus the one pre-critical-date reference in the Cited By landscape:

Not available as art: EP 1 158 593 A1 (Nokia, 2000-05-26), US 6,538,115 (Nokia, 2000-05-26) and US 6,798,173 (BenQ, 2000-09-27) all post-date the 2000-03-14 priority date. DE 20004691 U1 is the same-family priority document (published 2000-06-29, after the filing) and is not prior art against itself.

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4. Combination grounds

Ground A — Amoni + Couse (primary combination for claim 1)

Why a POSITA would combine. Both references are in the same field of endeavor (bus-powered computer peripherals) and Amoni supplies the express reason: eliminate the AC adapter and power the peripheral over USB. Couse supplies the remaining fact that a telephone is a USB peripheral, so the destination device (a phone) is not a leap. KSR: applying Amoni's known USB-power/DC-DC technique to the known phone-charger device yields nothing more than the predictable result of charging from the bus.

Ground B — Amoni + Hsieh + Erdner

Hsieh shows the pattern of taking a peripheral and moving it onto bus-powered USB; Erdner supplies the connector/VBUS power details and controlled current delivery to a bus-powered peripheral. The three together fill 1(a)–1(b) with no reliance on Couse's phone context; the phone-side elements (1(c), "different mobile phone type") come from the admitted conventional charger art and Amoni's multi-voltage teaching. This ground is somewhat weaker than Ground A on the "mobile phone" nexus, which is why Ground A is preferred.

Ground C — Amoni + US 6,633,932 (TI)

If TI '932 discloses (as its title indicates) a portable electronic device powered from USB, it independently supplies the "USB → portable device power" bridge that closes the gap between Amoni's generic peripheral and the claimed phone. Combined with Amoni and the admitted charger art, claim 1 is rendered obvious on a two-reference basis. Caveat: I cannot verify TI '932's internal disclosure in this session, so I present this as a title-level, unverified-in-detail ground.

Ground D — Claim 2 (charging seat)

Claim 2 adds only that the converter's output goes to "different types of Mobile phone battery charging seat." Amoni's stated purpose — "Use of the power cord can be eliminated by using upstream auxiliary power in a DC-DC converter if a different voltage is required" — is precisely the substitution of USB-derived DC for a charging seat's AC-DC supply. The seat itself is admitted prior art ("battery seat charger"). The specification's genuinely distinctive subject matter (auto-detecting Li vs. Ni-MH and charge state, Figs. 3–4) is not claimed, so it cannot lend patentability to claim 2. Claim 2 therefore falls with claim 1.

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5. Motivation and reasonable expectation of success (KSR factors)

1. Express motivation in the art. Amoni literally states the goal the '652 patent claims as an advantage — smaller volume, no AC-DC brick, "power without … an AC power supply."
2. Predictable result. DC-to-DC voltage conversion to a battery's charge voltage is routine; the patent concedes the USB electrical parameters are "well known." Nothing in the claims demands a new converter topology.
3. Known interchangeability. Amoni's "negotiated" voltage and the '652's resistive R1/R2 selection are two known ways to the same result; KSR teaches that substituting one known mechanism for another for the same purpose is obvious.
4. Market/practical pressure. By 2000, PCs had USB ports and mobile phones proliferated; a POSITA had a strong incentive to charge phones at the desk/host rather than carry a travel charger — precisely the patent's own stated problem.
5. No teaching away. Amoni does the opposite: it teaches toward converting USB power to the peripheral's required voltage.

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6. Counterarguments and the limits of this case (stated candidly)

• The examiner allowed these claims. Only four references were cited and no § 103 rejection issued at the time of allowance. The most likely explanation is that the examiner considered the references individually rather than as an explicit combination with phone-charging art. That the references appear as a list of "References Cited" tells us the examiner saw them; it does not tell us a motivation-to-combine analysis was performed. An obviousness challenge would exploit that gap, not deny the allowance.
• Genuine gap in the art of record. None of the four examiner citations expressly charges a mobile phone battery. Ground A/B therefore rely on the patent's own admissions (conventional chargers exist; USB is 5 V/0.5 A) to supply that element. That is legally usable (applicant's own specification is prior art against the claims), but it is the soft joint in the case.
• Claim 2's "charging seat" is thin. Its strongest reading is an odd, arguably inconsistent dependent claim (see prior section); it adds no structural feature to claim 1's converter, so there is little to salvage.
• All of the above is moot in equity. Because the patent expired in 2009, § 103 invalidity has no prospective consequence; it matters only historically and as prior art.

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7. Secondary considerations

None of record, and none with demonstrated nexus. The five "advantages" recited in the specification (smaller volume, USB-powered operation, direct connection to phone connector, connection to charging seats, simple circuit that "prevent[s] user from shocking") are inherent consequences of the Amoni combination, not evidence of non-obviousness. No unexpected results, no long-felt-but-unmet need evidenced in the record, no licensing/commercial-success nexus is present.

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8. Conclusion

On the record available, claim 1 would have been obvious under § 103 as the combination of US 5,884,086 (Amoni) — which expressly teaches supplying multiple, negotiated voltages to a USB peripheral and eliminating the AC power supply via DC-DC conversion — with US 6,006,088 (Couse) (telephone hardware as a USB-attached device) and/or US 6,633,932 (TI) (USB power to a portable electronic device), optionally supplemented by US 5,871,368 (Erdner) for the USB VBUS connector/power delivery, and by the applicant's own admissions regarding conventional mobile-phone chargers and the USB 5 V/0.5 A budget. Claim 2 adds nothing structural over claim 1 and falls for the same reason once Amoni's express "eliminate the power cord via DC-DC conversion" teaching is applied to the admitted "battery seat charger."

The earlier-generated summary and this analysis are consistent — including the expired status, the two-claim structure, and the observation that the specification's most distinctive (auto-detect Li/Ni-MH) subject matter is unclaimed. The one point I re-flag as a limitation rather than a contradiction: US 6,633,932 is asserted here at title/bibliographic level only, because I could not retrieve its full text in this session.