US 6262374

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to confirm litigation/appeal activity and the patent's status.

US Patent 6,262,374 — Verified Summary

Search coverage note: I searched for the literal number 6262374 (and the formatted 6,262,374) against patent databases and Federal Circuit / PTAB 2026 materials. No 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or PTAB proceeding involving this patent was found. Two apparent "hits" on the bare string "6262374" were false positives and are not this patent: (a) CourtListener docket #6262374 (NXP B.V. v. Dell Inc., D.D.C. 1:15-mc-01131 — a docket-number coincidence), and (b) a Turkish Patent Office listing in which "6262374" is an ETHICON LLC registry/entity number in a suture-device record. Neither concerns US 6,262,374.

Bibliographic data

Uncertainty flag on dates: Sources disagree by one day. Google Patents and Justia give priority 1998-10-13, filing 1999-10-12, issue 2001-07-17. Unified Patents' portal gives priority 1998-10-12, application date 1999-10-11, grant date 2001-07-16, expiration 2019-10-11. I cannot resolve which is formally correct from the tools available; the Google Patents/Justia figures are used in the table above. The Japanese priority application number (JP 10-291096) is consistent across sources.

Abstract (as issued)

A connecting structure for a shielded cable having a braid. The structure includes a cable insertion hole, a hollow pressure member, a shield connection member, and a hollow bolt. The cable insertion hole has a female threaded part and a shield connection part with an inclined surface. The hollow pressure member is inserted into the shield connection part, with the cable passing through it. The shield connection member is connected to the braid and has an inclined part; it is inserted so its inclined part sits between the inclined surface of the shield connection part and the hollow pressure member. The hollow bolt is threaded into the female threaded part, and tightening it presses the hollow pressure member, which in turn presses the shield connection member's inclined part against the inclined surface to electrically connect the braid to the cable insertion hole.

Claim set structure

There is one independent claim (claim 1). Claims 2–5 and 6–10 are dependent:

• 2 → depends on 1; 3 → depends on 2; 4 → depends on 3; 5 → depends on 3
• 6 → depends on 1; 7 → depends on 6; 8 → depends on 7; 9 → depends on 7; 10 → depends on 7

Independent claim 1 — plain language

A connector for a braided (shielded) cable, made of four cooperating parts:

1. A cable insertion hole in the equipment (e.g., EV motor case) that has both (a) an internally threaded section and (b) a "shield connection part" that presents an inclined (conical) surface.
2. A hollow pressure member — a sleeve the cable passes through — inserted into the shield connection part.
3. A shield connection member fastened to the cable's braid, which has its own inclined part. It is inserted into the hole so that its inclined part is sandwiched between the hole's inclined surface and the hollow pressure member.
4. A hollow bolt that the cable also passes through, threaded into the hole's female thread.

The mechanism: tightening the hollow bolt pushes the hollow pressure member axially, which wedges the shield connection member's inclined part against the hole's inclined surface, establishing (and maintaining) an electrical path from the braid into the equipment. The key point is that the clamping force is generated by a bolt installed coaxially around the cable, rather than by a separate flanged housing bolted to the case.

Dependent claim highlights (context for the disclosure)

• Result of claim 2/3/5: the hole has a smaller "shield connection member housing part" joined to the larger shield connection part by the inclined surface; the shield connection member is a small cylinder + inclined part + larger cylinder, and the pressure member has a depression that accommodates the larger cylinder.
• Claim 4: adds a resilient shield pipe crimped/fitted around the small cylinder to grip the braid.
• Claims 6–9 (sealing): an annular groove + seal (O-ring per claim 8, or conical-cross-section seal per claim 9) on the pressure member's outer surface seals against the equipment; an L-shaped annular groove + seal on the inner surface seals against the cable.
• Claim 10: a ring between the pressure member and the hollow bolt that contacts the inner seal, so tightening the bolt does not apply direct torsional force to that seal.

Background / stated advantage (from the specification)

The patent frames itself as an improvement over JP H10-112924 (also a Yazaki reference), which used a spring-resilient shield connection ring that could fatigue over time and relied on the same case surface for both shielding and O-ring sealing — risking damage to the sealing surface during bolted assembly, and requiring extra mounting space for a flanged housing (see the specification's discussion of prior-art FIGS. 1–2B). The '374 approach uses axial bolt tightening to create a metal-to-metal conical wedge contact, separates the shield-contact surface from the O-ring seal surface, and eliminates the flanged, side-bolted housing for a more compact envelope.

Cited prior art (examiner-cited): US 3,448,430; US 3,603,912; US 3,833,754; US 4,022,966; US 4,090,029; GB 2,104,306; US 4,739,126; JP H09-180824; JP H10-112924. Cited-by includes later Yazaki and Toyota shielding-connector cases (e.g., US 6,784,368; US 8,462,015; US 8,602,797).

Bottom line on the litigation question

For US 6,262,374 specifically, I found no Federal Circuit appeal, no 2026 CAFC docket entry, and no PTAB/IPR activity. The patent expired in 2019 for failure to pay maintenance fees past the 12-year window, which is consistent with there being no live appellate activity today. If the user's interest is a different proceeding that merely references this number (for example, a docket number, an ETHICON entity ID, or a patent cited as prior art in a 2026 appeal), I'd need the case name or the citing document to confirm — I did not find one linking to this patent.

I'll search litigation databases for this specific patent number, using the sources you named plus CAFC/PACER-type aggregators.

Let me run additional targeted checks against the litigation aggregators and the Unified Patents caselist directly.

One more confirmatory pass on the litigation aggregators and the patent's title as an asserted patent.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent 6,262,374

Bottom line: No litigation is known involving US Patent 6,262,374. I found no district court action, no Federal Circuit appeal, no ITC investigation, and no PTAB proceeding in which US 6,262,374 is the patent-in-suit.

Search coverage (what was actually checked)

The three false positives — explicitly NOT this patent

1. CourtListener docket #6262374 — NXP B.V. v. Dell Inc., No. 1:15-mc-01131 (D.D.C.). The string "6262374" here is CourtListener's internal docket ID, not a patent number. Subject matter is a Hague Convention letter rogatory; unrelated to cabling. URL: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6262374/nxp-bv-v-dell-inc/
2. Turkish Patent Office (TurkPatent) records for EP 2526975 and EP 1761176 — "6262374" appears as an ETHICON LLC registry/entity number on suture-device filings. Not a patent citation.
3. A German-language PDF (Donau-Silphie agricultural circular) where "6262374" is part of a telephone number.

None of these references US 6,262,374 as a patent.

Why the absence of litigation is consistent with the record

The lack of any case is corroborated by the patent's own transactional history:

• Status: Expired – Lifetime. Maintenance fees paid at the 4-year (2005-01-18), 8-year (2009-01-20), and 12-year (2012-12-19) windows only. No 3.5-year, 7.5-year, or 11.5-year post-12-year payments appear, and the anticipated expiration is 2019-10-12. Unified Patents' profile independently shows "Lifetime Renewal Fees: $0" and expiration 2019-10-11.
• The patent expired on its own terms ~6.5 years before today's date (April 26, 2026), so the asserted-patent window has long closed. A null claim count of live litigation is expected.
• Assignees are Yazaki Corporation and Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Both are operating manufacturers, not patent-assertion entities. Yazaki/Nissan have not been identified as asserting this patent.

Requested table

Caveats

• Search-execution caveat: My final two confirmatory queries (a direct portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=6262374 URL check and a title-based assertion search) were cut off by a tool-step limit, so those two specific retrievals did not complete. However, the Unified Patents patent profile page for US-6262374-B1 did return fully, and a patent with any asserted-case history would ordinarily list it there — it did not.
• Coverage limitation: Unified Patents' caselist covers US district court and PTAB matters that its system captures; it is not a certified PACER substitute. Older, settled, or unreported actions (1999–2005 vintage) are the least likely to be comprehensively indexed. I cannot state with 100% certainty that no such early case ever existed, only that none is discoverable in the searched public sources.
• Date discrepancy flagged (carried forward from the prior section): Unified Patents lists priority 1998-10-12 / application 1999-10-11 / grant 2001-07-16 / expiration 2019-10-11, while Google Patents and Justia give 1998-10-13 / 1999-10-12 / 2001-07-17. This one-day divergence does not affect the conclusion: the patent is expired either way.
• Note this is not a legal conclusion. Absence of record in public litigation databases does not foreclose the possibility of an unindexed, sealed, or very old proceeding. A PACER global docket search on US 6,262,374 would be the definitive check if one is required.

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

Nothing PTAB-related surfaced. Let me probe a few more angles to be thorough.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,262,374: zero — no inter partes reviews, no post-grant reviews, no covered business method reviews; therefore there are no claims invalidated at the PTAB, none sustained, none settled, and no institution decisions (denials or grants), and the defensive posture is not "hardened" or "broken" by PTAB litigation at all — it is simply untested at the Board, and moot in practice because the patent's 20-year term ran out on 2019-10-12.

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list) returns no records, and I independently corroborated that negative with targeted searches. The correct output of this task is therefore a documented absence, not a proceeding-by-proceeding history.

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No proceeding sections are possible — the underlying data set is empty

The requested per-proceeding template (proceeding number, panel, grounds, institution decision, FWD, appeal) is inapplicable: every field would have to be invented to fill it, and the operating constraints forbid that. What follows documents the negative and explains why the absence is expected.

Coverage and methodology

Documented false positives — none of these are PTAB proceedings on this patent:

• CourtListener docket #6262374 — coincidental docket number in NXP B.V. v. Dell Inc. (D.D.C. 1:15-mc-01131). Unrelated to this patent.
• Registration 6262374 — a U.S. trademark registration for "DECIBEL PARTNERS" (Catalyst Labs, LLC), not a patent proceeding.
• PMID 6262374 — a 1980 J. Muscle Res. Cell Motil. citation; and an accuRx support-article ID …/articles/6262374-…. Both are numeric coincidences.
• A Turkish Patent Office listing in which "6262374" is an ETHICON LLC entity/registry number.

If anyone asserts that "there's an IPR on 6,262,374," ask for the proceeding number (IPR20XX-#####). On the evidence available, no such number exists.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 10 claims UNTESTED at the PTAB — nothing canceled, nothing sustained, nothing construed by the Board. Claims 1–10 stand as issued, for whatever they are worth given expiration. There is no FWD to link to, no panel reasoning to quote, and no claim-level disposition to report. Since the patent's only independent claim is claim 1, and claims 2–5 and 6–10 depend from it (via claim 2 and claim 6 respectively), a hypothetical PTAB loss on claim 1 would have taken the entire claim set with it — which is precisely why the complete absence of petitions matters: no aggressor ever spent the money, and we cannot know how the Board would have read the "inclined surface" / "inclined part" wedge limitation against the cited art (US 3,448,430; US 3,603,912; US 4,022,966; US 4,090,029; GB 2,104,306; US 4,739,126; JP H09-180824; JP H10-112924).

Estoppel landscape: empty. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only against a petitioner that obtains a final written decision. With zero petitioners and zero FWDs, no one is estopped — and symmetrically, no prior-art ground was ever "reasonably could have raised"-ed away. A defendant today faces no IPR-narrowed claim set and no estoppel-frozen record; it is a clean slate, which cuts against a patent owner on nothing and for a defendant on nothing, because there is no live controversy left to litigate.

Why the absence is expected rather than surprising. Three structural reasons, in order of weight:

1. The patent expired on 2019-10-12 (20 years from the 1999-10-12 filing date; the three maintenance fees due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years post-grant were all paid — 2005-01-18, 2009-01-20, 2012-12-19 — so this was a full-term expiration, not a fee lapse). An IPR campaign against an expired patent buys a validity holding and little else; even the § 286 six-year lookback for pre-expiration damages has now closed as of 2026-09-30, so the economic motive that drives most IPRs never crystallized here.
2. No litigation ever attached to it. IPRs overwhelmingly follow district-court complaints and ITC actions, usually within the § 315(b) one-year window. No assertion activity on this patent appears in any source checked, so there was no filing trigger.
3. AIA-trial eligibility was always narrow for this patent. Filed 1999-10-12, it is a pre-AIA patent: PGR was never available (no claim has an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16), and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 and in any event would not have reached a shielded-cable connector (not a covered business method patent; a "technological invention"). IPR was the only realistic vehicle — and nobody filed one.

No pattern signals to report: no repeat petitioner, no serial/IPR-cluster behavior, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents appears in the record only as a data source hosting the patent's bibliographic page — there is no Unified-filed IPR on this patent; do not read the portal hit as aggregator involvement), and no patent-owner appellate aggression, since there was never an adverse PTAB outcome to appeal.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing an assertion of US 6,262,374: say so plainly and move to dismiss/close. There is no PTAB proceeding to cite, but you do not need one. The patent expired 2019-10-12 at the end of its 20-year term, and the § 286 six-year damages lookback for pre-expiration conduct has also run as of 2026-09-30. An infringement theory on the expired claims has no available remedy to support it; an IPR petition would be an expensive way to obtain a validity ruling with no practical upside.
• Do not commission an IPR to "clean up" the file. With no FWD, there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel benefit, and no parallel litigation to stay.
• If the demand letter or complaint cites a PTAB proceeding number for this patent, treat it as a red flag and demand the number. My searches surfaced only numeric coincidences (docket #6262374, trademark reg. 6262374, PMID 6262374, an ETHICON entity ID). A citation to "IPR…-6262374" would not correspond to any real Board proceeding that I can find.
• For ongoing monitoring: the authoritative negative source is the USPTO PTAB E2E trial search at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ (and the Open Data Portal API feeding the structured block above); Federal Circuit activity is at https://cafc.uscourts.gov and https://www.courtlistener.com. A saved query on the patent number at both is sufficient — given the expiration, the expected result remains zero indefinitely.

Two corrections / flags against the earlier-generated sections

1. Maintenance-fee characterization (contradiction flagged). The previously generated summary states the patent "expired in 2019 for failure to pay maintenance fees past the 12-year window." That is not correct on the record here. U.S. maintenance fees are due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after grant; no fee is due after 11.5 years. All three were paid (2005-01-18, 2009-01-20, 2012-12-19), and the 2019-10-12 termination coincides exactly with 20 years from the 1999-10-12 filing date. This was natural full-term expiration, not a fee lapse. The distinction matters if anyone argues about intervening rights or laches.
2. One-day date discrepancy (unchanged from prior summary). Google Patents gives filing 1999-10-12 / grant 2001-07-17; Unified Patents' portal gives application date 1999-10-11 / grant 2001-07-16 / expiration 2019-10-11. I still cannot resolve which is formally correct with the tools available. Nothing in the "no PTAB proceedings" conclusion turns on the one-day difference.

Bottom line: there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 6,262,374 — no IPR, PGR, or CBM, ever. The absence is real, sourced, and explained by the patent's expiration and complete lack of assertion history. A defendant's posture is not "hardened patent" or "dead claims," but "expired patent, no PTAB record, no live remedy."

I'll reconstruct the assignment record, starting with the Assignment Center / Google Patents legal events and cross-checks on the assignees.

Let me try to pull the actual Assignment Center record and the correspondent details.

Inventors

All eight named inventors are listed on the issued patent and on the single recorded assignment (reel 010588/0627). Their residences, per the Justia/Google Patents front-page data, cluster into two groups that map onto the two co-assignees:

Pattern note: the three Shizuoka residents are consistent with Yazaki's core wiring-harness/connector engineering base in Shizuoka Prefecture; the five Kanagawa/Ibaraki residents are consistent with Nissan technical operations. This geography signature plus the joint grant to both companies indicates a co-developed part (a Yazaki-made connector built into a Nissan vehicle platform), not an acquisition or a licensing arrangement.

Employer attribution is my inference from residence, not a record I could verify — the assignment instrument names the inventors as assignors but does not state their employer of record. I found no evidence of any inventor departing an assignee within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-to-inventor transfer activity. Note also that "employer at time of filing" is not determinable from the Assignment Center data itself; the two-assignee structure is the only direct evidence of who the inventors worked for.

Original assignee

Two joint original assignees, both operating companies:

• Yazaki Corporation (Tokyo; now Mita 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8333). The world's largest automotive wiring-harness, connector, and cable-assembly manufacturer; a Tier-1 supplier founded 1929. Operating, active, and prolific: independent profiles show ~4,845 US grants with a last grant date of 2026-05-26 and ~5,804 published applications with publications as recent as 2026-09-24. It ships cable/connector products that are the commercial embodiment of a "shielded cable connecting structure."
• Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (Yokohama, Kanagawa). Major global automaker; the claimed structure is the motor-case/braid interface of an EV drive unit, i.e., a part Nissan builds into vehicles. Operating, though it has been under significant financial strain in the 2020s. No bankruptcy filing by either assignee is reflected in the record, and neither has divested this patent.

Current owner of record: Yazaki + Nissan, jointly. Unified Patents' profile lists their "parent company" fields as Yazaki Corp and Nissan Motor Co Ltd and its snippet left "Current Assignee" blank; Google Patents' legal events show no transfer away from the original pair. There is no NPE anywhere in this chain.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists. The Assignment Center / Google Patents legal event is a pre-issuance inventor-to-company assignment recorded shortly after filing — the normal employment/co-development instrument, not a post-issuance transfer.

• 2000-01-28 to 2000-01-29 (executed) / recorded 2000-02-04 — Reel 010588 / 0627
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Mitsuhiro Matsumoto, Masahiro Deno, Kazuhisa Ishizaki, Toshihiro Hirai, Yoshihisa Okuhata, Hiroki Nishi, Haruki Hamada, Masayoshi Tashiro (all inventors, joint)
  • Assignee: YAZAKI CORPORATION (Japan) and NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD. (Japan), jointly
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources retrieved. I could not surface the recorded correspondent-of-record for reel 010588/0627; the Assignment Center entry as indexed by Google Patents exposes only the assignors, assignees, execution dates, and reel/frame. Prosecution-side, Justia lists the agent of record as Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, L.L.P. — but the attorney who prosecuted the application is not necessarily the attorney who recorded the assignment, so I am not asserting Finnegan as the filing correspondent. Flagged explicitly rather than guessed.
  • Context: Ordinary invention-to-employer assignment of a jointly developed project; not a fire-sale, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter.

Post-issuance: No further assignments, security interests, mergers, name changes, releases, or corrections are recorded for US 6,262,374. Maintenance fees were paid at the 4-, 8-, and 12-year windows only (2005-01-18; 2009-01-20; 2012-12-19), and the patent expired 2019-10 for non-payment after the 12-year window.

⚠️ Contradiction to flag: the previously generated Litigation summary states the patent "expired on its own terms ~6.5 years before today's date (April 26, 2026)." Today's date is 2026-09-30 — a ~7-year gap, and the stated "today" is wrong. The substantive point (the patent is long expired) is unaffected. The one-day date divergence (Google Patents/Justia: priority 1998-10-13, filing 1999-10-12, issue 2001-07-17, expiration 2019-10-12 vs. Unified Patents: 1998-10-12 / 1999-10-11 / 2001-07-16 / 2019-10-11) also carries forward unresolved.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6262374
    1998 : JP priority application filed
    1999 : US application 09 415 505 filed
    2000 : Inventors assign to Yazaki and Nissan
         : Recorded reel 010588 frame 0627
    2001 : US patent 6262374 issues
    2019 : Patent expires for non payment

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Supporting reel/frame citations for the above: the entire analysis rests on the single entry reel 010588, frame 0627, executed 2000-01-28/29, recorded 2000-02-04, inventors → Yazaki Corporation + Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. The absence of any later entry is itself the finding.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the stated rule, a chain consisting of "only the original assignment" falls in this bucket, and that is precisely this record: one inventor-to-employer instrument at reel 010588/0627 (executed 2000-01-28/29, recorded 2000-02-04), nothing after it, and no litigation to anchor a pre-suit transfer analysis. Substantively, every NPE signal is not present, and the co-owners are two product-shipping manufacturers, so the evidence affirmatively cuts against an NPE characterization — the "insufficient data" label reflects the thinness of the chain (and the unrecoverable correspondent), not any suspicion of troll activity. The patent expired in October 2019 for failure to pay maintenance past the 12-year window, closing the assertion window regardless of ownership.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent no. 6262374) and the public mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search/result?q=[6262374](/patent/6262374) — cross-checked against Google Patents legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6262374B1](/patent/US6262374B1)/en and the Unified Patents profile at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6262374-B1

Two open items I could not close: (a) the correspondent of record on reel 010588/0627 — not exposed in any source I retrieved, so the "repeat correspondent" tell (the single most useful NPE signal per the brief) is untestable here; (b) whether Yazaki and Nissan recorded any intra-company or inter-company confirmation of their joint ownership that never surfaced as a discrete Assignment Center event — I found none, but a PACER/Assignment-Center direct query on the reel would be the definitive check.

I'll verify the citation details for each examiner-cited reference before analyzing them against the claims.

Now the remaining cited references, including the two Japanese Yazaki references that form the disclosed background art.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 6,262,374 B1 ("Shielded cable connecting structure")

What this section does: it takes the nine examiner‑cited references listed on the face of US 6,262,374 (per the Google Patents record) and maps each against the issued claims. It builds on the earlier bibliographic and litigation sections and does not repeat them.

Two scope limitations I want to state up front, because they affect how the § 102 answers should be read:

1. I could not retrieve the actual USPTO file wrapper / Office Action. The tools returned the patent text and the citation list, but not the examiner's stated reasons for citing each reference (Form PTO‑892 or the rejection). Everything below is my own element‑by‑element reading of each reference against the claims, not a recitation of what the examiner actually held.
2. Verification level varies by reference. I confirmed substantive descriptions for US 3,448,430 / US 3,603,912 / US 3,833,754 / US 4,022,966 / US 4,090,029. For US 4,739,126, GB 2,104,306 A, JP H09‑180824 and JP H10‑112924 I am working from the citation table and, for the last, the patent's own specification — I flag each explicitly below where I am describing title/date only.

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1. The nine cited references at a glance

Date arithmetic relevant to § 102: under pre‑AIA § 102 (the statute governing this 1998‑priority case), items 1–7 all issued/published more than one year before the 1998‑10‑13 JP priority date and the 1999‑10‑12 US filing date, so each is § 102(b) art on its face. Item 8 (JP H09‑180824, published 1997‑07‑11) likewise predates the US filing by more than a year → § 102(b). Item 9 (JP H10‑112924, published 1998‑04‑28) published less than one year before the 1999‑10‑12 US filing, so it is § 102(a) art, not § 102(b) — and because it is Yazaki's own publication, the "by others" qualifier could have been contested but for the fact that the applicant expressly admitted it as prior art in the specification ("A shielded cable connecting structure that provides electromagnetic shielding and waterproofing is disclosed in the Japanese laid open patent application publication H10‑112924…"), which is an admission usable regardless.

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2. Critical structural point before the per‑reference analysis

A dependent claim can only be "anticipated" by a reference that also discloses every limitation of the claim(s) from which it depends. Claims 2–10 all depend (directly or indirectly) from claim 1. So a reference that lacks an element of claim 1 cannot anticipate claim 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 either, no matter how well it matches the added limitation.

Claim 1 requires, in combination:

• (a) a cable insertion hole in the equipment containing both a female threaded part and a shield connection part with an inclined surface;
• (b) a hollow pressure member through which the cable passes, inserted into the shield connection part;
• (c) a shield connection member connected to the braid with its own inclined part sandwiched between the inclined surface and the pressure member;
• (d) a hollow bolt through which the cable passes, threaded into the female threaded part of the hole in the equipment, such that tightening it presses the pressure member, which wedges the inclined part against the inclined surface to electrically connect the braid to the hole.

None of the nine references discloses element (d) — a hollow bolt threaded into a female thread formed in the equipment's own cable insertion hole — and none discloses the claim‑1 combination (a)+(b)+(c) with the wedge acting as the shield connection. That is the point of novelty the '374 specification itself frames as the advance over H10‑112924. Consequently:

My conclusion: no cited reference, alone or as I can read it, anticipates any of claims 1–10 under § 102. The reference set is best characterized as a § 103 obviousness set (plus background art), not an anticipation set.

The per‑reference detail below identifies, for each, the specific claim limitations it does disclose (i.e., the raw material a § 103 rejection would draw on) and where it fails as an anticipation.

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3. Reference‑by‑reference

3.1 US 3,448,430 A — Thomas & Betts, "Ground connector" (1967‑01‑23 / 1969‑06‑03)

Description (verified): A watertight, strain‑relieved, grounded connector for jacketed metal‑clad (armored) cable. A split ground ring 10 has a rim 12 with longitudinal slits 14 defining flared fingers 15, plus a pointed tooth 17 with a bend 18 that is inserted between the cable's outer armor shell 25 and inner jacket 26. A gland nut 30 threads onto the connector body 31, compressing a grommet 32 and seating the ring's fingers against a seat 36 in the body. The split ring is said to avoid hysteresis heat rise on single‑conductor cable.

Claim mapping: Relevant to the concept of a ring/finger member that grips the cable's conductive layer and makes a ground path to a metal body — i.e., background for claim 1's "shield connection member" and for claim 4's gripping of the braid. However:

• The grounding element is a spring/finger ring that contacts the bore of the connector body, not an inclined‑surface wedge.
• The loading member is a gland nut threaded onto the connector body, which is itself a separate part fastened to the enclosure — not a hollow bolt threaded into the equipment.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none. It lacks claim 1's inclined surface/inclined part wedge (elements a/c) and the hollow bolt‑into‑equipment‑thread (element d). It is at best § 103 support for "a resilient ring grips the shield layer and grounds to a conductive body" — which is precisely the fatiguing‑spring approach the '374 specification criticizes.

3.2 US 3,603,912 A — Thomas & Betts, "Raceway terminator" (1969‑08‑25 / 1971‑09‑07)

Description (verified): The closest US structural analogue. Body member 12 has an externally threaded portion 14 inserted into the knockout/socket of an electrical enclosure and secured by a locknut; a second externally threaded portion 16 receives gland nut 54 (with internal annular rib 60). Internal passage 20 terminates in an enlarged cavity 22 having an outwardly tapered entrance 24. A grounding cone 26 has an outer sleeve 28 tapered at 30 and proportioned to fit wholly within cavity 22, plus an inner sleeve 32 with an outwardly extending rib 38 that contacts the voids between convolutions of the raceway core. A sealing ring 40 with tapered leading/trailing edges 42/44 seats in the taper and is forced against the cone when the gland nut is tightened, producing plastic‑to‑metal seals and improving the ground path from the raceway core to the body member.

Claim mapping: This reference discloses a tapered cavity (24) cooperating with a tapered member (30) seated therein, and a threaded nut tightened to force parts axially into that taper — conceptually parallel to claim 1's inclined surface 12d / inclined part 14b and to claim 2's inclined boundary. It also discloses a sealing member forced into the taper (compare claim 6's seal). But:

• The tapered members do not create the shield connection; the ground path runs through the cone/rib and the mass of the body member.
• The "hollow bolt" equivalent is a gland nut threaded onto the body member's own external thread 16, and the body member is mounted to the enclosure through the knockout with a locknut — there is no female thread in the enclosure receiving a hollow bolt.
• No "hollow pressure member inserted into a shield connection part of the cable insertion hole" in the claim‑1 sense.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none as to any claim. Strongest single‑reference § 103 candidate for the inclined‑wedge concept in combination with the H10‑112924 housing/mounting arrangement.

3.3 US 3,833,754 A — General Signal, "Grounding connector for strand cable assembly" (1973‑04‑23 / 1974‑09‑03)

Description (verified): A cable connector in which the fanned‑out strands of the grounding conductors are sandwiched and clamped between a pair of flat plates/washers, which abut a hub on an intermediate hollow body; an adapter/connector body with an internally threaded hub then surrounds and threads over the hub at the inner end of the fitting. The connector also provides strain relief via the rings (and a grommet for dirt/moisture). The stated advantage is that the clamping rings can be held "out in the open" during installation because they are the same diameter as the hub, unlike prior art where the rings must be pulled into the bore.

Claim mapping: Directly relevant to the "hold the conductive shield layer between two cooperating members" idea — compare claim 1's shield connection member + claim 4's shield pipe gripping the braid, and the general concept of clamping the shield between coaxial rings. It is also relevant to claim 3's cylinder geometry and the fitting/body threading arrangement. But it has no inclined‑surface wedge, no shield connection part in an equipment hole, and no hollow bolt threaded into the equipment.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none. § 103 support for "sandwich the shield layer between concentric members" (claims 3–4 raw material).

3.4 US 4,022,966 A — I‑T‑E Imperial (Efcor Div.), "Ground connector" (1976‑06‑16 / 1977‑05‑10)

Description (verified): A grounding connector for jacketed, interlocked armored cable, comprising a metallic body portion 12 with external threads 14 (to the utilization device, e.g., a junction box) and external threads 16, a compression nut 20, a cup‑shaped conical friction washer 24, a tapered grommet 28, and a longitudinally split metallic grounding ring 34 with a partially circumferential wall 36 whose flat end 40 seats against a transverse internal seat 46 in the body. Resilient fingers 44 extend in the cable‑insertion direction and bite into/contact the armor. A key stated object is that the grommet is used solely for sealing and is axially spaced from the grounding ring, so the ground path does not depend on grommet compression — and the ring's fingers point the same direction as cable insertion.

Claim mapping: Discloses a transverse seat in the connector body receiving a flat end of a grounding member, and a conical bore (50) receiving a conical grommet surface (30) — again the inclined‑mating‑surface motif (claim 2 background). Also relevant to the general "grounding member seated in a bore of a body" idea. It lacks the wedge‑as‑shield‑connection, and there is no hollow bolt threaded into an equipment hole.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none. § 103 support, at the level of "conical surface mating in a connector body" and "grounding element seated on a transverse shoulder."

3.5 US 4,090,029 A — I‑T‑E Imperial (Efcor Div.), "Liquid tight connector with improved ground conductivity" (1976‑04‑15 / 1978‑05‑16)

Description (verified): This is the most on‑point reference for the sealing claims. The fitting joins jacketed flexible conduit 11 to a rigid metallic panel 12 and comprises a gland nut 13, an optional washer 14, a compressible elastomeric sealing element 15, a ground ferrule 16, a body member 17, an O‑ring 18, and a lock nut 19. The core teaching: the O‑ring 18 sits in a groove 21 in the body's planar (or shaped) surface, the groove depth being slightly less than the O‑ring cross‑section, so that when the O‑ring forms a liquid‑tight seal the metal surfaces (e.g., 24/24c and 25/25c) are simultaneously in metal‑to‑metal contact, thereby preserving/increasing fault‑current conductivity — i.e., sealing and grounding are achieved at the same joint by design, with the O‑ring protecting the contact area from corrosion. It also discloses alternative constructions using a grounding ring 36 with an O‑ring seat 37a (outer) or 37b (inner), and notes that the mating surfaces "may be inclined at slight relative angles to improve the ability to chip or scrape paint and increase initial per unit contact pressure."

Claim mapping — the strongest individual‑limitation hits in the set:

• Claim 6 (annular groove on the outer surface of the hollow pressure member + sealing member sealing the shield connection part to the pressure member): the reference's groove‑21‑with‑O‑ring‑18 in the body surface sealing against the panel is the same seal‑in‑groove‑against‑the‑conductive‑housing architecture, and it expressly ties seal depth to metal‑to‑metal ground contact — a teaching directly implicating claim 6 and the motivation behind it.
• Claim 7/8 (L‑shaped inner groove + seal / O‑rings): the reference's outer/inner seat variants (37a/37b i.e. FIG. 8A/8B) and its discussion of placing the seal inside vs. outside the contact area are relevant to the inner‑seal concept, though the reference's inner/outer distinction is about seat location on a grounding ring, not an L‑shaped groove on a pressure member.
• Claim 2's "inclined" surface is echoed by the reference's note that mating surfaces "may be inclined at slight relative angles."

Why it still does not anticipate: claim 6/7/8 incorporate all of claim 1, and this reference has no hollow bolt threaded into a female threaded part of the equipment's cable insertion hole and no inclined‑part/inclined‑surface wedge effecting the shield connection (its ground path is the planar face contact plus an external ground lug 41/set screw 45).

Potential § 102 anticipation: none as a claim‑level anticipation. This is the single most dangerous § 103 reference against claims 6–9, and a § 103 combination of US 4,090,029 (seal‑in‑groove with metal‑to‑metal ground contact) with H10‑112924 (the same‑assignee housing/braid‑connection architecture) would be the most likely line of attack against the sealing features.

3.6 GB 2,104,306 A — Hawke Cable Glands Ltd., "Electrical cable barrier" (1981‑07‑08 / 1983‑03‑02)

Verification caveat: I did not retrieve the specification of GB 2,104,306 A; the description below is title‑ and assignee‑level only and should be treated as unconfirmed. Based on title and the nature of Hawke's business (industrial cable glands), this is a cable gland incorporating a barrier (typically a compound/barrier seal against gas, flame, or moisture migration through the cable), i.e., a sealing‑and‑retention fitting rather than a shield‑connection device.

Claim mapping: On that basis, its plausible relevance is to the waterproofing/sealing aspects — the general concept of sealing a cable entry in a gland and of a barrier member in the cable path — i.e., background for claims 6–9's seals. It does not (on title alone) disclose an inclined‑surface shield wedge or a hollow bolt threaded into an equipment hole.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none (subject to the verification caveat). Treat as § 103 background for the sealing features only; the examiner's specific reliance on it cannot be confirmed without the file wrapper or the document itself.

3.7 US 4,739,126 A — AMP Incorporated, "Panel mount ground termination apparatus" (1987‑01‑16 / 1988‑04‑19)

Verification caveat: I did not retrieve the specification; description is title‑level only. A "panel‑mount ground termination apparatus" is, on its face, an arrangement for terminating a cable's ground/shield to a panel and mounting through it.

Claim mapping: Title‑level relevance is to the "connect a shield/ground termination to an equipment panel through a mounting opening" concept — i.e., the general field of claim 1 (equipment‑side ground termination through an opening). Whether it discloses a threaded mounting with an inclined‑surface wedge cannot be determined from what I retrieved.

Potential § 102 anticipation: cannot be assessed / none on the available evidence. Flagged as a reference the file wrapper should be checked on before any reliance is placed on it either way.

3.8 JP H09‑180824 A — Yazaki Corp., "Shield structure" (1995‑12‑26 / 1997‑07‑11)

Verification caveat: I did not retrieve the specification. The '374 specification itself describes it only as "[a]rt similar the above‑noted shielded cable connecting structure" — i.e., the applicant characterizes it as analogous Yazaki shield‑connection art in the same family of approaches as H10‑112924, without distinguishing it. Its publication date (1997‑07‑11) is more than one year before the US filing, so it is § 102(b) art.

Claim mapping: On the applicant's own characterization, this reference relates to the same problem and the same general structural approach (shield connection through an insertion hole with a connecting member) as H10‑112924. Its actual element content is unverified here.

Potential § 102 anticipation: none demonstrated. Most likely role is § 103 background corroborating that the housing‑type shield‑connection architecture was known in the art and was the applicant's own starting point.

3.9 JP H10‑112924 A — Yazaki Corp., "Termination structure of shielded wires" (1996‑10‑03 / 1998‑04‑28) — the primary reference

Description (verified — from the '374 specification's own detailed discussion and FIGS. 1, 2A, 2B): Within a cable insertion hole 2a in motor case 2, connection is made to braid 6a of shielded cable 6 via a substantially cylindrical housing 3, a bolt 4, and a shield connection ring 5 serving as the shield connection member. The housing's outer peripheral surface 3a fits into hole 2a, and a mounting flange 3b is held fast by bolt 4 so the housing is mounted to the case. The braid 6a is folded back onto a peripheral depression 3c at the end of the housing and sandwiched by the shield connection ring 5 (a resilient metal ring with a gap, a plurality of spring pieces 5a and a fang piece 5b) fitted over that depression, holding the braid against pull‑out. Each spring piece 5a is in resilient contact with the cable insertion hole 2a of the motor case, thereby grounding the braid via the case. An annular groove 3d in the housing's outer surface holds an O‑ring 7 sealing the housing to the case, and a substantially cylindrical waterproof cover 8 is inserted between the cable's outer insulation covering 6b and the housing 3. The cable runs through a corrugated tube 9.

Claim mapping:

• Discloses a cable insertion hole in equipment through which the shielded cable passes with the braid connected to a position of the hole via a shield connection member (claim 1's preamble and parts of elements a–c, at a high level).
• Discloses sealing between the assembly and the case (O‑ring 7) and between the assembly and the cable (waterproof cover 8) — background to claims 6–9.
• Expressly lacks: a female threaded part in the cable insertion hole of the equipment; a hollow bolt through which the cable passes and which threads into that female thread; a hollow pressure member inserted into a shield connection part; and an inclined surface / inclined part wedge as the mechanism producing the shield connection. Its connection is made by spring‑finger resilience (5a) against the bore, with the housing held by a side‑mounted flange 3b + bolt 4.

The '374 specification's own criticisms of this reference (the stated motivation): (i) reliance on spring force risks fatigue of the spring characteristics over time and consequent shielding degradation; (ii) the same case surface serves both as the braid‑shielding surface and as the O‑ring sealing surface, so bolting the housing on can damage the waterproofing surface and worsen waterproofness; and (iii) the flange 3b + bolt 4 mounting requires additional mounting space, increasing overall size.

Potential § 102 anticipation: None as to any claim. Because it is the applicant's admitted starting point and is the same assignee/same field, it is the most relevant single prior‑art reference in the set — but it is missing claim 1's defining combination (female thread in the equipment + hollow bolt + inclined wedge + hollow pressure member). Its proper role is as the primary reference in a § 103 rejection against claims 1–10, to be combined with a secondary reference (e.g., US 3,603,912 or US 4,022,966 for the conical‑mating structure; US 4,090,029 for the seal‑in‑groove‑with‑metal‑contact) to supply the missing elements.

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4. Ranking of relevance to US 6,262,374

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5. § 102 anticipation verdict, claim by claim

Bottom line: the nine references are an obviousness/background set, not an anticipation set. The claim‑1 hook that all nine miss is the coaxial hollow bolt threaded into a female thread formed in the equipment's cable insertion hole, which converts tightening torque into the axial force that wedges the shield connection member's inclined part against the hole's inclined surface — the mechanism the '374 specification presents as its advance over H10‑112924.

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6. Items that are not prior art (frequently confused with it) — flagging for completeness

• JP 3792914 B2 (2006‑07‑05) and JP 2000‑123924 A (2000‑04‑28) are the Japanese family members of this same invention (the JP counterpart and its publication). They post‑date the 1998‑10‑13 priority date and are not prior art to US 6,262,374; JP 10‑291096 is merely the priority application number.
• The 12 "Cited By" documents listed on the Google Patents record — e.g., US 20030094767 A1 (Alcatel), US 20040011550 A1 / US 6,784,368 (Toyota), US 7,097,499 B1, US 20060288542 A1 / US 7,307,218 B2, US 20100200292 A1, US 20120058674 A1 / US 8,460,015 B2, US 20120190238 A1 / US 8,602,797 B2 (Yazaki), FR 2,982,094 A1 (Valeo), EP 3,166,184 A1 / US 10,014,678 B2 (Siemens), US 20240047917 A1 / US 12,597,733 B2 (TE Connectivity), US 12,142,874 B2 (Yazaki, 2024) — are all later in date and therefore are forward citations only. They are not prior art; they are evidence of the '374 patent's continued technological relevance in EV/rail shielding (Yazaki, Toyota, Siemens, Valeo, TE Connectivity).

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7. Caveats and where I would go next

1. No file wrapper was obtained, so I cannot state which references the examiner actually applied to which claims, or whether the rejections were § 102 or § 103. The mapping above is my own reading. To close this gap, pull the patent's Image File Wrapper (IFW) on USPTO Patent Center for application 09/415,505 and read the non‑final/final Office Actions and the Form PTO‑892.
2. US 4,739,126 A and GB 2,104,306 A were not substantively verified (search step limit reached before retrieval). Their analysis here is title/date‑level. Retrieve both before relying on them.
3. JP H09‑180824 A and JP H10‑112924 A were not retrieved in their original Japanese texts; H10‑112924 is analyzed from the '374 specification's own detailed description (which is authoritative for what the '374 applicant understood it to disclose), and H09‑180824 from the applicant's one‑sentence characterization. Neither is a substitute for reading the originals.
4. Minor date discrepancies exist between Google Patents and other aggregators (carried forward from the earlier sections) — typically ±1 day on US 4,022,966 (Google: issued 1977‑05‑10; Unified Patents: granted 1977‑05‑09) and US 6,262,374 itself. These do not change any § 102 analysis; every cited reference is § 102(b) art on any of the candidate dates.

I'll research the cited prior art references to ground the obviousness analysis in what these references actually disclose.

Let me pull the remaining references, including the two Japanese Yazaki references that form the closest art.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,262,374 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope and evidence. This analysis builds on the claim-set structure, the independent-claim plain-language reading, and the background/advantage discussion already established in the prior sections — I do not repeat them. The obviousness theory below is grounded in the nine references on the face of the patent (the "Citations (9)" and "Patent Citations (9)" lists on the Google Patents page), plus the two Yazaki Japanese references that the specification itself adopts as admitted background art.

Verification caveat (flagged explicitly): In this session I retrieved and read the substance of US 3,448,430, US 3,603,912, US 3,833,754, US 4,090,029, and US 4,739,126, plus the specification's own detailed description of JP H10-112924 (the FIG. 1 / FIG. 2A–2B prior art). I could not retrieve the full text of US 4,022,966, GB 2,104,306, JP H09-180824, or JP 10-112924 in the original Japanese. Where I rely on those, I say so and treat them as supporting rather than primary references. This limitation is material to how confident I am in each combination, and I flag it again at the weak points.

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1. The legal framework applied

• 35 U.S.C. § 103, as construed in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a claim is obvious if the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill at the time of the invention. KSR rejects a rigid TSM test and permits the exemplary rationales catalogued in MPEP § 2143: (A) combining prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try" where a finite number of predictable solutions exist; (F) design incentives / market forces; (G) some teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the prior art.
• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) factors: scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; and secondary considerations.
• Prior-art status. Every reference is dated well before the 1998-10-13 priority date and therefore qualifies under § 102(a) or § 102(b), as noted below. There is no § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) complication and no derivation issue.

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here would be a mechanical/electrical-connector design engineer with roughly 2–4 years of experience in cable glands, shielded-cable terminations, and liquid-tight fittings for automotive or industrial equipment, or a bachelor's degree in mechanical/electrical engineering plus 1–2 years of such experience. Critically, this POSITA would be intimately familiar with (i) the conventional gland-nut / body / cone ("grounding cone") family of liquid-tight conduit fittings, and (ii) O-ring groove design for simultaneously sealing and grounding, because both were mature, catalog-level technologies by 1998 (see, e.g., the 1967 AMP Terminal and Connector Handbook surfaced in the search, and the 1969–1988 Thomas & Betts / General Signal / AMP patent family).

This skill level is the patent's own implicit POSITA: the specification's Background describes FIGS. 1–2B fittings as routine, and its stated problem is one of refinement (spring fatigue, shared sealing/shield surface, packaging space), not of a new field.

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3. Scope and content of the prior art

Threshold observation: The primary reference is the patent's own admitted background art (H10-112924) — this is a powerful starting point because the problem (spring-force fatigue; a single case surface doing double duty as shield contact and seal seat; bulky flanged mounting) and the goal (reliable shield + reliable seal + smaller envelope) are admitted to have been recognized in the art before the invention. That removes any dispute about the "design incentive" prong of KSR.

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4. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1 — the primary combination

Primary combination ("Ground A"): JP H10-112924 (base) + US 3,603,912 + US 4,739,126 + US 4,090,029, with the female-thread/hollow-bolt feature supplied by the ordinary skill of reversing/flipping the threaded joint that H10-112924's own housing and these references each use.

Result. Every element of claim 1 appears in this four-reference set except the gender of the threaded joint (female thread in the equipment hole + male-threaded hollow bolt). That single feature is addressed in § 6 below.

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5. Motivation to combine — why a POSITA would have done this

The combination is supported by several independent KSR rationales. Any one suffices; together they are strong.

(A) Combining known elements by known methods, predictable result (MPEP 2143(A)). Each reference contributes a complete, self-contained sub-function that is unchanged in the combination:

• H10-112924 supplies the environment and objective: shielded cable through a case wall, braid grounded to the case, liquid-tight seal.
• US 3,603,912 supplies the wedge: an inclined grounding member seated in an inclined seat, closed by an axially tightened hollow nut — a purely mechanical, predictable contact.
• US 4,739,126 supplies the drive train: a hollow, internally-threaded, rotatable member whose shoulder pushes a tubular pressure member axially, without the cable rotating.
• US 4,090,029 supplies the seal/ground co-design: a controlled-depth O-ring groove that preserves metal-to-metal contact for grounding while sealing.
  Bolting these together is a mechanical assembly, not a chemical or unpredictable one; the result (a conical metal-to-metal ground seal plus an O-ring environmental seal) is exactly what each reference teaches its own part to do.

(B) Known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (MPEP 2143(C)). The H10-112924 fitting and the US 3,603,912 / US 4,739,126 / US 4,090,029 fittings are the same kind of device (hollow, cable-passing terminations fastened to a wall/panel/enclosure that both grip the shield and seal out moisture). Improving the H10-112924 fitting by substituting axial threaded clamping of a conical metal seat for radial resilient spring contact is precisely the "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way."

(C) The problem was recognized in the art — applying a known fix to a device ready for improvement (MPEP 2143(D)). The patent's own specification establishes that the art recognized: (i) spring-characteristic fatigue degrading shielding; (ii) the danger of damaging the O-ring sealing surface when the housing is mounted; and (iii) the space cost of the flange-and-side-bolt mounting. Each of these was already solved in the gland art by the very mechanism claimed: a positive, non-resilient axial metal-to-metal conical wedge (US 3,603,912; US 4,739,126), separated seal and contact surfaces (US 4,090,029 teaches deliberate placement of the grounding contact inside/outside the O-ring and the depth relationship), and threaded axial retention, which is inherently more compact than a radial flange.

(D) Express teaching/suggestion in the art (MPEP 2143(G)).

• US 4,090,029 expressly teaches that the surfaces providing electrical continuity "may be inclined at slight relative angles to improve the ability to chip or scrape paint and increase initial per unit contact pressure" — a direct suggestion to make the grounding interface inclined.
• US 3,603,912 expressly discloses a tapered grounding cone seated in a tapered cavity (elements 30 / 24), i.e., the exact inclined-pair geometry of claim 1, and the hollow-nut axial closure.
• US 4,739,126 expressly discloses the hollow pressure member and the threaded drive member of claim 1(d).
  So no reference needs to be stretched; each states the function it is being borrowed for.

(E) Market forces / design incentives (MPEP 2143(F)). Package size is a classic KSR design incentive. H10-112924 requires a mounting flange plus a bolt boss on the case, i.e., extra radial space; a coaxial threaded connection occupies only the diameter of the hole. A POSITA seeking the stated goal (compactness) has a strong, articulated reason to convert the flange joint to a threaded joint.

(F) "Obvious to try" (MPEP 2143(E)). By 1998 there were a small, finite, well-known ways to fasten a hollow cable fitting to a wall and to establish a shield ground through it: (1) flanged + bolted (H10-112924); (2) threaded gland body + locknut (US 3,603,912; US 4,090,029; US 4,022,966; GB 2,104,306; the AMP handbook art); (3) crimp/compression sleeve (US 4,739,126; US 3,833,754). Where the prior art identifies few solutions and all are predictable in result, KSR makes the selection obvious to try.

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6. The one weak element — the "female threaded part in the cable insertion hole" and "hollow bolt threaded into" it

This is the element that most plausibly supported allowance, and any § 103 challenge must meet it head-on. Three independent lines of reasoning reach it:

1. Reversal of parts / mere design choice (MPEP 2143.01(VI)). US 3,603,912 discloses the case in which the fitting body carries the external thread and enters the enclosure (portion 14 into the knockout, retained by a locknut), and in which the nut is internally threaded (gland nut 54; cf. US 4,739,126 closure member 18, internally threaded at 32). Whether a given threaded joint places the external thread on the hollow fastener or on the surrounding wall is a gender reversal that produces no new result — the join is identical, the sealing/grounding function is identical, and the choice is dictated purely by which part is easier to machine. This is the In re Rose / MPEP 2143.01 reversal-of-parts principle.
2. The "hollow bolt" is a notorious mechanical expedient. A bolt with an axial through-bore, threaded into a tapped hole, is standard hardware. Nothing in claim 1 assigns the hollow bolt any function beyond passing the cable and applying axial force — both of which the gland nuts of US 3,603,912 and US 4,739,126 already perform. Substituting a tapped-hole/hollow-bolt pair for the nut-on-nipple pair is a simple substitution of a known element for another (MPEP 2143(B)) with predictable results.
3. H10-112924 itself is "ready for improvement" only in its retention scheme. Its housing 3 already enters the hole 2a; only the retention (flange 3b + bolt 4) is non-threaded. Converting the retention to a threaded engagement is a one-part change to an otherwise-adopted structure, with the predictable benefit of eliminating the flange and its bolt boss.

Candid assessment: If the claims survive a § 103 challenge, they most likely survive here and in the specific co-location requirement of claim 1(c) — that the shield connection member's inclined part sit between the inclined surface of the equipment hole and the pressure member. My verified references place the tapered seat in the fitting body (US 3,603,912 taper 24 in body 12; US 4,739,126 taper 57 in compression member 16), not in the equipment wall material. Placing the seat directly in the equipment (so the equipment itself is the female-threaded and inclined-seat body) is arguably a simplification by deletion of a part — but it is also arguably where the non-obviousness resides, because it changes which member forms the ground path and the seal seat. I would not overstate confidence on this narrow point.

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7. Second and third alternative combinations

Ground B — US 4,739,126 as primary + H10-112924 + US 4,090,029.
US 4,739,126 supplies claim 1's hollow pressure member (16), hollow threaded drive member (18), and shield connection member clamping the braid (14/46/43). H10-112924 supplies the equipment environment, the cable insertion hole, and braid-to-case grounding objective. US 4,090,029 supplies the inclined-interface teaching and the controlled-depth O-ring groove. The only missing structural element is again the inclined seat on the hole's shield connection part, which US 3,603,912 (or US 4,090,029's express "inclined ... relative angles" teaching) supplies. Ground B is slightly weaker than Ground A on claim 1's wedge geometry but stronger on the pressure-member/hollow-drive-member limitations, and it is therefore a good primary combination for dependent claims 6, 7, and 10.

Ground C — JP H09-180824 as primary + US 3,603,912 + US 4,090,029.
H09-180824 is Yazaki's own earlier "shield structure," cited by the examiner and described in the specification as "art similar [to] the above-noted shielded cable connecting structure." If H09-180824 (like H10-112924) discloses a braid-to-case shield connection through a case opening, then the same wedge-and-seal reasoning applies, and it reinforces that the assignee's own prior filings already occupied the problem space. I could not retrieve H09-180824 or H10-112924's original text, so I present Ground C as a supporting, not primary, combination.

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8. Dependent claims 2–10

Using the claim-tree already established (2→1; 3→2; 4→3; 5→3; 6→1; 7→6; 8→7; 9→7; 10→7):

Net effect: dependent claims 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are, in my assessment, highly vulnerable — claim 2 in particular reads almost directly onto US 3,603,912's cavity/taper geometry, and claim 6 reads almost directly onto US 4,090,029's groove-and-O-ring arrangement. Claims 5 and 7 are somewhat more robust but still strong candidates for obviousness as design choices within a known sealing architecture.

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9. Where the obviousness case is weakest (counter-arguments to expect)

1. The co-located inclined seat in the equipment (claim 1(c)) rather than in an intervening fitting body. Every verified reference puts the tapered seat in the fitting, not in the enclosure wall material. Applicant would argue that moving the seat into the equipment wall and making the equipment the female-threaded ground body is not a mere substitution but a re-architecture of the ground return path, and that the art as a whole (H10-112924 especially) teaches against using the equipment surface for the shield contact because that surface is also damaged during mounting. This is a genuine, if weak, non-obviousness argument.
2. Teaching away. H10-112924's design deliberately separates the shield contact (spring ring against the bore) from the seal (O-ring in the housing groove) with a distinct housing; a challenger must show that the art suggested collapsing the housing into the hole. US 4,090,029's contribution (keeping the fitting body as the ground member against the panel) can be read as context that cuts the other way. I do not think this rises to a true teaching away — the art does not disparage threaded-in-hole fittings — but it is the best available response.
3. No objective indicia of record. Consistent with the earlier section's finding of no litigation, no PTAB activity, and expiration in 2019, there is no evidence in the public record of commercial success, copying, licensing, or industry praise. Absence of secondary considerations means there is nothing on the Graham record to rebut a prima facie case — but it also means a challenger cannot point to objective evidence supporting obviousness. The record is simply bare.
4. Reference-retrieval gaps. My inability to read US 4,022,966, GB 2,104,306, JP H09-180824, and the Japanese text of JP H10-112924 in this session is a real limitation. I expect US 4,022,966 and GB 2,104,306 to strongly reinforce the "hollow threaded fitting to a wall + cone/compression ring" teaching (Hawke barrier glands are textbook examples), but I cannot assert their contents with the confidence I have in US 3,603,912 / US 4,739,126 / US 4,090,029.
5. Date discrepancy carried forward. The one-day divergence flagged in the earlier section (Google Patents/Justia 1998-10-13 vs. Unified Patents 1998-10-12) is immaterial to § 103 because every reference predates both dates by decades or, for H10-112924, predates them by ~5.5 months. H10-112924 is § 102(a) art and is in any event admitted prior art in the specification, so its status is uncontestable.

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10. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is, in my assessment, likely obvious over JP H10-112924 (admitted art) in view of US 3,603,912 and US 4,739,126, further in view of US 4,090,029 — the four references together supply every structural element and every functional relationship, and the KSR rationales (known-technique-improving-similar-device, known problem/known solution, express suggestion of inclined grounding interfaces in US 4,090,029, design incentive for compactness, and obvious-to-try) supply the motivation. The only element not literally disclosed by a verified reference is the gender of the threaded joint (female thread in the equipment hole + hollow bolt), which is addressed as a reversal of parts / design choice.
• Claim 1's strongest non-obviousness foothold is the requirement that the inclined seat be part of the equipment's own cable insertion hole and that the shield connection member's inclined part be sandwiched between that seat and the pressure member — none of the verified references places the wedge seat in the equipment wall.
• Dependent claims 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 are highly vulnerable, with claim 2 (US 3,603,912's passage-20/cavity-22/taper-24 geometry) and claim 6 (US 4,090,029's groove-21/O-ring-18 metal-to-metal-plus-seal arrangement) reading nearly directly onto verified disclosures.
• Confidence is constrained by my inability to retrieve US 4,022,966, GB 2,104,306, JP H09-180824, and the Japanese text of JP H10-112924 in this session; those are the references on the face of the patent that I would most want to read in full before finalizing a validity opinion, and I have flagged every point at which the analysis leans on them.