US 6742973

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 6742973, including USPTO records and any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me run additional targeted searches to check for any litigation or CAFC activity, and to confirm the assignee/inventor record.

US Patent 6,742,973 — Analyst Summary

Important scope note on sourcing: I searched for USPTO records, Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and CAFC 2026 opinion/order materials. The patent bibliographic data below is confirmed from the authoritative full text you supplied (fetched from Google Patents) plus corroborating mirrors (Justia, FPO). I found no CAFC 2026 docket or appellate activity involving this patent — see the litigation section below.

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Bibliographic Data

Abstract (as issued)

A device for anchoring and safely transporting equipment in land or water vehicles. It comprises a metal hanger welded on one side to a flat steel bar bent into an offset U-shape whose top extends further than its bottom to support a load. The device includes a metal bolt as clamping means, a movable metal rod in a T configuration on the bottom of the bolt, elastomeric fastening means, and a swivel head crimped to the top of the bolt so the bolt and rod securely attach the hanger to a vehicle rail. The elastomeric fastening means attaches to the hanger and is laterally stretched across an item to hold it in place during transport.

Plain-Language Overview of Each Independent Claim

Claim 1 — "Carrying apparatus" (device). A U-shaped hanger (one horizontal span, two roughly equal vertical spans) is welded to a flat steel bar bent into an offset U-shape whose top extends beyond its bottom so the top can carry the load. The bottom of that flat bar has a drilled hole receiving a threaded metal bolt (the clamping means). The bolt has a movable metal rod perpendicular at its bottom (a "T") and a swivel head crimped at its top, so the bolt-and-rod assembly clamps the hanger to a vertical rail inside the vehicle. A stretchable elastomeric strap is attached to the inner part of the hanger's horizontal span and is stretched sideways across the items to hold them.

Claim 12 — "Anchoring device" (device). Substantively the same hardware, recharacterized as an anchoring device: a U-shaped hanger welded to an offset-U flat steel bar (top longer than bottom, to support a load), attached to clamping means that includes a separate threaded metal bolt with a T-configuration movable rod at its bottom and a swivel head crimped at its top to clamp the device to an inside rail of a vehicle, plus a stretchable rubber fastening means on an inner portion of the hanger's horizontal span to hold the load.

Claim 16 — "Method" (process). A three-plus-step method: (1) attach a pair of the devices at opposite ends of the vehicle rail, each device's clamping means being attached to the rail by the swivel head of a metal bolt and permanently attached to a U-shaped hanging means carrying a flexible fastening device; (2) place the elongated item so each end sits in one of the U-shaped hangers; (3) fasten by pulling the flexible fastening device laterally across the item; and (4) transport it.

Dependent claims narrow these: material/size ranges (claims 2–5), item types incl. elongated gear and coiled cords/hose/tubing (6–7), foam-rubber tube wrap (8, 13), lateral-pull fastening details (9, 14), manual/tool-free swivel-head attachment (10, 18), temporary mounting locations — pickup bed rail, roof rack, boat gunwale (11), replaceable foam/strap (15), and vehicle types incl. multi-rail pickup carrying multiple groups of items (17, 19).

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Litigation / CAFC 2026 Docket Check

• No CAFC or PTAB proceeding for US 6,742,973 was found. Searches of Federal Circuit 2026 opinions/orders and general litigation queries returned unrelated matters (e.g., Spero v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, Nos. 2025-1470/1472, Rule 36 affirmance dated 2026-05-14 — a different, unrelated patent). None referenced 6,742,973.
• There is no evidence of record that this patent was ever asserted in litigation. It is cited in the "Cited By" lists of later patents (e.g., US 2007/0183860 A1, Lund/Roll-N-Lock family documents), but citation ≠ litigation.
• Uncertainty: I cannot definitively rule out an unindexed or very recent docket entry. Given the patent is expired (term ended 2022-05-14) and its prosecution history shows it was maintained only through the 12th-year window, active 2026 appellate activity on this patent is unlikely.

Prosecution / Maintenance-Fee Notes

Cited prior art includes US 6,256,844 (Wheatley, tie-down anchor assembly), US 6,170,897 (Karrer, cargo anchoring/protection with bed liner), and non-patent items (Cabela's 2001 Archery Catalog; Cabela's Master Catalog Spring 2002; Keeper and Fentress RoofRak web pages). Maintenance fees were paid at 4 years (2007-06-15), 8 years (2011-11-30), and 12 years (paid 2016-07-10 after a lapse/reinstatement event on 2016-06-01). Status is Expired – Lifetime.

Caveat: Per your strict rule, all identifiers above are reproduced literally as they appear in the authoritative text (including "US 6,742,973 B1" and application "10/144,967"). I did not auto-correct any number.

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

The broad searches returned unrelated "973" patents. Let me run patent-number-specific and inventor-specific queries.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent 6,742,973

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving US 6,742,973.

I searched for the patent number and for the inventors against litigation-oriented sources (CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Google Patents' "Cited By"/"Similar Documents" tables, and general queries aimed at Unified Patents' portal, RPX, PACER and CAFC materials). No case — in a U.S. district court, the Court of Federal Claims, the ITC, the PTAB, or the Federal Circuit — came back with this patent as an asserted patent, a patent-in-suit, or a challenged patent.

Case-by-case table

What the searches did and did not establish

• No district-court or appellate docket entry referencing "6,742,973" or "6742973" surfaced. The Google Patents page for the patent lists only citing documents (e.g., US 2007/0183860 A1; the Lund Motion Products / Roll-N-Lock families), which is citation, not litigation.
• Unified Patents portal: I could not retrieve a case-list result for this number. The Unified portal materials that came back referenced unrelated patents (e.g., 7,020,252; 10,311,073; 9,357,217; 7,454,002) — none is 6,742,973.
• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) for this patent appeared in any returned result.

Important false-positive warning (do not conflate)

Several hot-litigated patents share the trailing digits "973" but are different patents owned by different parties — these are not US 6,742,973:

• Warsaw Orthopedic, Inc. v. NuVasive, Inc., No. 3:08-cv-01512 (S.D. Cal.) — involved Warsaw's "'973 patent" (a spinal-implant patent), plus the '933 and '236 patents; Fed. Cir. appeal (2014). This is a medical device patent, not the Hendrix cargo carrier.
• US 6,742,973 (Hendrix) is a vehicle cargo/gear carrying apparatus (B60P classification) — an entirely different field and party.

Per your strict rule, I have interpreted "6742973" literally and did not merge any similar-numbered cases into it.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence that no litigation is indexed for this patent in the sources searched. The patent is Expired – Lifetime (term ended 2022-05-14 per the record), and its prosecution/maintenance history shows maintenance through the 12th-year payment only. Enforcement activity in 2026 is therefore improbable.
• I cannot definitively rule out an unindexed, sealed, or very recent filing, or a case where the patent was asserted but the docket is not in a coverage database. I also could not directly load a live Unified Patents caselist page for this number; my conclusion rests on the absence of any matching hit across the queries and mirrors above.

Note on dates (flagged discrepancy)

Your task prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the system context for this session states September 30, 2026. That inconsistency does not change this result — the patent expired in 2022 — but I flag it so the analysis date is not mis-recorded. This is also consistent with the earlier-generated summary in this analysis, which likewise found no litigation and no CAFC 2026 activity; no contradiction exists between that section and this one.

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

Let me run two more confirmatory searches — one on the patent owner's name paired with PTAB, one on PTAB E2E / CourtListener for any challenge.

I ran four targeted confirmatory searches (Google Patents legal events, PTAB/P-TACTS document hits, "Hendrix" + patent number, and general IPR queries). No result referenced an AIA trial on US 6,742,973 B1. The only "''973"-adjacent hits were unrelated patents — e.g., U.S. 7,434,973 B2 in IPR2015-00506, and U.S. 12,096,973 in Aerin Medical v. Neurent — and an FDA FAERS record that happens to carry the number 6742973. None involve this patent.

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings have ever been filed against US 6,742,973 B1 — per the canonical PTAB proceedings list from the USPTO Open Data Portal supplied in this prompt (no entries), which my independent web checks did not contradict: no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBM reviews, no derivations, no terminations, no settlements, no FWDs, no Federal Circuit appeals arising from a Board trial. The defensive posture this creates is "untested patent, not a hardened one." Unlike a patent that has survived two IPRs, there is no PTAB record of validity and no estoppel shield for anyone — but also no canceled claims, meaning every one of claims 1–19 is still presumptively valid and available to a plaintiff (to the extent the expired term permits enforcement).

Why the per-proceeding template is empty (and what that means)

There is no proceeding to write up. For the record, the format requested — proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, appeal — has no entries for this patent. I did not invent any. If you need to double-check me, the authoritative sources are:

• USPTO PTAB Decisions / AIA trial docket: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions and the trial portal at https://ptacts.uspto.gov (P-TACTS, the 2025 successor to PTAB E2E).
• Google Patents legal events for the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6742973/en — the legal-events feed shows only fee-payment, lapse/reinstatement, and status entries (FPAY, FEPP, REMI, LAPS, REIN, PRDP, STCF, SULP). No AIA-trial event codes and no reexamination or reissue events appear.
• CourtListener for any CAFC appeal: https://www.courtlistener.com — nothing found.

Why the AIA toolbox was narrow here (availability analysis)

This matters for the "absence is a signal" question, because for this patent the absence is partly structural:

So the correct reading is: IPR was the only realistic AIA vehicle, nobody ever pulled the trigger, and the window has effectively closed by expiration. That is a weaker signal than "this patent fended off multiple IPRs" — it is closer to "nobody ever cared enough to file, or the commercial stakes never justified the filing fee."

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Strategic summary

Claim status — everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 6,742,973 has been canceled, none has been sustained in an AIA trial, and none has been narrowed by a certificate of correction or reexamination on this record. All 19 claims stand as issued (3 independent — claims 1, 12, 16 — and 16 dependents). For a defendant being asserted against today, there is no PTAB disposition you can point to and say "claim 1 is dead." Your invalidity case must be built from scratch.

The clock has run, and that cuts both ways. The patent's term is on the record as Expired – Lifetime, with anticipated expiration 2022-05-14 (20 years from the 2002-05-14 filing). Two consequences: (1) damages exposure is limited to pre-expiration infringement, which sharply reduces the economic reason to file a defensive IPR now; and (2) if you nevertheless file one, Board practice — following In re Rambus (Fed. Cir. 2012) — is to apply the Phillips claim-construction standard rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation, because the claims are no longer amendable. Note the file's maintenance-fee history includes a lapse on 2016-06-01 followed by reinstatement on 2016-07-10 (12-year fee paid, with a late-payment surcharge). If the exact expiration date becomes outcome-determinative for a damages theory, pull the official fee record from USPTO Patent Center rather than relying on the aggregate "Expired – Lifetime" label — Google's legal-events feed shows a trailing "lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" entry effective 2016-06-01 that is in tension with the 2022-05-14 anticipated expiration.

Estoppel landscape — there is none, in either direction. Because no IPR was ever instituted and no FWD ever issued, no petitioner is estopped under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), and no real party in interest or privy is estopped. Every § 102/§ 103 ground on patents and printed publications remains available to any defendant. Practically, that means you are not confined to "art the Board never saw." You can also freely assert § 112 grounds (written description, enablement, indefiniteness) in district court — those were never available in an IPR anyway under § 311(b) — and there is no IPR record for a plaintiff to hold up as "the Board already blessed this claim."

Pattern signals — all negative. No petitioner has filed once, let alone repeatedly, so there is no General Plastic / follow-on petition story. The patent owner (individual inventors Carl M. and Keith A. Hendrix) has never defended at the PTAB, so there is no track record of aggressive appeal behavior and no reason to expect a well-funded litigation posture. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain — the patent appears in the "Cited By" lists of later Lund Motion Products / Roll-N-Lock and other cargo-management patents, but citation is not a challenge and those families are unrelated patentees. Put simply: this reads as a small, individual-owned, expired utility patent in a low-commercial-value niche, not a troll asset with a PTAB history.

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Recommended next steps

1. State the negative plainly to your client. There is no IPR to rely on, no FWD to cite, and no canceled claim to quote. If a demand letter accuses your product of claims 1, 12, or 16, you cannot respond "those claims were invalidated" — they were not. Confirm this yourself against USPTO PTAB Decisions and the P-TACTS portal at https://ptacts.uspto.gov before you commit to that position in writing.

2. Check non-AIA Office proceedings, which the Google Patents event feed does not fully surface. My searches found no evidence of ex parte reexamination or reissue on this patent, but Google's legal-events list is not a substitute for the file wrapper. Pull the full Patent Center file history (and the "Patent Family / Legal Events" tab) to rule out a reexam certificate that quietly narrowed or canceled claims. This is the one place where my "no proceedings" finding could be incomplete, and I flag it as such.

3. Do not plan an IPR as your lead defense. The patent is expired; the only realistic value is a pre-expiration damages shield, and even that is marginal. Also weigh the current institution environment: under the Director's 2025-10-16 memorandum, the decision to institute is now made by the Director (in consultation with at least three judges) rather than by the merits panel, and the USPTO's 2025-10-15 proposed rules would bar IPR against a patent that had already survived a validity challenge and would require petitioners to stipulate off all § 102/§ 103 arguments in other venues. None of that bars you here (no prior validity adjudication exists), but it changes the cost/benefit calculus. See the Director's October 2025 policy materials summarized at https://www.willkie.com/publications/2025/10/ptab-announces-new-institution-policy.

4. If you do litigate, build around the prosecution record, not around the Board. The examiner's cited art is your starting inventory: US 6,256,844 (Wheatley, tie-down anchor assembly), US 6,170,897 (Karrer, cargo anchoring/protection bed liner), plus a long list of truck-bed tie-down and clamp patents (US 3,950,010; 4,126,095; 4,607,991; 4,685,646; 4,812,093; 4,850,770; 5,310,238; 5,443,341; 5,560,576; 6,039,520; 6,059,159; 6,196,777; 6,230,153; 6,270,301; 6,349,910; 6,547,311) and the non-patent printed publications the examiner cited (Cabela's 2001 Archery Catalog, Cabela's Master Catalog Spring 2002, and the Keeper / Fentress RoofRak web pages dated 2002-04-18 and 2002-03-22). Because those references are already of record, expect a § 325(d) argument from the patent owner in any IPR — the answer is to lead with art and claim limitations the examiner never confronted, especially around the "offset U-shape," the crimped swivel-head T-bolt, and the laterally-stretched elastomeric strap.

5. Preserve your § 315(b) and § 325(a) clocks even if you intend to stay in court. If a complaint is served, the one-year IPR bar starts running on service. If IPR is off the table commercially, that is fine — but make the decision deliberately and document it, rather than losing the option by default.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,742,973 across USPTO Assignment Center, Google Patents legal events, and NPE directories.

Let me search the USPTO assignment database, PEDS, and NPE directories directly.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,742,973 (Hendrix, "Carrying apparatus, device and method for use")

Sourcing note (material limitation). The primary source you specified is the USPTO Patent Assignment Search at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov and its legacy mirror assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. In this session I was not able to execute a live, direct query against those portals — the queries I ran did not return an Assignment Center record page for "6742973." Accordingly, my conclusion below rests on (a) the Google Patents Legal Events table for this patent (which independently surfaces recorded-assignment event codes when they exist), (b) the USPTO Official Gazette issue entry for US 6,742,973 B1, and (c) the absence of any assignment record across indexed mirrors. I flag this so you can re-run the direct reel/frame pull to confirm.

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Inventors

Source: USPTO Official Gazette issue 1283-1 entry for US 6,742,973 B1 (mirrored at the Indiana University virtual disk library, us06742973-20040601.html), confirming both inventors' names and Oregon addresses. Google Patents and FreePatentsOnline likewise list the inventors as Carl M. Hendrix; Keith A. Hendrix with assignee shown as "Individual."

Pattern notes:

• Shared surname + shared small-town address (Philomath, OR) indicates a family/related-party inventive pair, not an arm's-length corporate R&D team. This is consistent with a self-funded independent inventor filing, not a corporate filing where an employer would be the assignee.
• No "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale pattern is observable, because there was no corporate assignee to depart from. There is no evidence of any employer-ownership layer that could later be sold.
• ⚠️ Do not conflate with a different Hendrix inventor. A separate patent, US 6,592,135 / US 2002/0195792 A1 ("Vehicle running board detachable for use as loading ramp"), names inventor Hendrix, Theron V. This is a different individual in the same general field (vehicle accessories). Consistent with your literal-interpretation rule, I have not merged this into the chain.

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Original assignee

Assignee of record: "Individual" (no entity assignee). The patent issued to the inventors themselves; the Google Patents record states both "Original Assignee: Individual" and "Current Assignee: Individual." The USPTO Official Gazette entry lists the inventors by their personal home/postal addresses — the classic indicia of an unassigned, individually owned patent.

• Products embodying the claims: Unknown at entity level, but the specification affirmatively asserts a commercial product: "The apparatus of the invention is sold in pairs and designed to securely hold items while being transported in a vehicle." So a product was contemplated/sold, but no company name, DBA, or corporate entity is named anywhere in the patent — there is no assignable operating company of record.
• Primary line of business: Not a corporation. On the record, this is an individual/small-business venture (pickup-truck and boat rack accessory for sporting and construction gear).
• Current status: No corporate entity to be operating, acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. The patent itself is Expired – Lifetime, with term ending 2022-05-14. Maintenance fees were paid at 4 years (2007-06-15), 8 years (2011-11-30), and 12 years (paid 2016-07-10, after a lapse/reinstatement sequence in 2016). All of these appear in the Google Patents Legal Events table as fee-payment events only.

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Assignment timeline

Finding: No recorded assignments were located for US 6,742,973.

• The Google Patents Legal Events table for this patent contains only maintenance-fee and status events (FPAY, FEPP, REMI, LAPS, REIN, PRDP, STCF, SULP). It contains no "Assignment" / "ASGN" event, which Google Patents surfaces whenever an assignment is recorded against the patent or its application.
• No reel/frame entry, assignor, assignee, conveyance type, or correspondent is available to report. Because there is no assignment record, there is no correspondent of record (no recording attorney or agent) to capture — the "repeat-player NPE attorney" tell you asked me to look for cannot be evaluated, because no assignment filing exists to bear a correspondent signature.
• The chain of title therefore appears to be unbroken individual ownership by Carl M. Hendrix and Keith A. Hendrix from filing (2002-05-14) through issuance (2004-06-01) and to expiration (2022-05-14).

Per your instruction, I state plainly that the Assignment Center has no records for this patent (as located), and I stop the ownership-chain reconstruction here. I nonetheless complete the remaining sections below in condensed form, because your verdict scale explicitly contemplates a "no records" outcome and because the absence of a chain is itself the finding.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6742973
    2002 : Filed by Carl M Hendrix
         : and Keith A Hendrix as individuals
    2004 : Patent issued to the same individuals
    2007 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid
    2011 : Eighth year maintenance fee paid
    2016 : Twelfth year maintenance fee paid
    2022 : Patent term expired
    2026 : No recorded assignment found

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment of any kind is of record; the patent never moved to an "IP / Patents / Holdings / Ventures" LLC. There is no reel/frame to cite because none exists.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither the named inventors nor "Individual" matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities, or Unified/RPX high-frequency-plaintiff lists). No assignee exists to compare.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / not evaluable. No assignment filings = no correspondent signatures. No attorney-of-record name appears in the assignment data. (A prosecution attorney, if any, would appear on the patent face rather than in an assignment record; none is disclosed in the authoritative text supplied.)
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero transfers; nothing chained within 24 months or otherwise.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. Consistent with the earlier litigation section of this analysis, no infringement suit naming this patent was located; with no transfer and no suit, the signal cannot arise.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No corporate assignee, no bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11 sale of record.
7. Privateering — not present. No operating company transferred anything to anyone.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at the original individual inventors.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

The affirmative, evidence-based finding is that US 6,742,973 has no recorded assignment chain at all: the Google Patents Legal Events table for the patent contains only maintenance-fee events (4-year 2007-06-15; 8-year 2011-11-30; 12-year 2016-07-10, following a 2016 lapse/reinstatement) and no assignment event, and the issue record names Carl M. Hendrix and Keith A. Hendrix at their personal Oregon addresses with the assignee designated simply "Individual." With no post-issuance transfers, no shell entity, no known asserter, no correspondent of record, and (per the prior litigation section) no assertion activity, every NPE-pattern signal is "not present" rather than "unclear" — the patent simply remained in the hands of its individual inventors until expiration on 2022-05-14. This verdict is negative-ownership rather than unknown-ownership; the practical takeaway for a troll-tracking purpose is that this patent is not an NPE asset and never became one.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center — search by patent number 6742973 (also assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Cross-reference: Google Patents US6742973B1 legal events.

Caveats: (a) I could not complete a live direct query of the Assignment Center in this session, so treat "no records" as no records located pending your reel/frame confirmation; (b) a security interest or other non-assignment filing, if ever recorded, would appear as a distinct conveyance type and was not surfaced — none was found; (c) all patent/application identifiers above are reproduced literally as issued, without auto-correction.

I'll research the cited prior art references to provide accurate descriptions and anticipation analysis. Let me start with targeted searches on the key references.

Let me research the additional cited references that are most relevant to the claim elements.

I've reached the research step limit, so I'll now compile the prior-art analysis from the authoritative citation data in the patent text plus the references I verified via search. Note: I was unable to run live re-verification on every one of the 22 references; I flag below where my description rests on the title/bibliographic data in the patent record rather than a fetched document.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,742,973 B1 (Hendrix et al.)

Important framework note (pre-AIA § 102). Application 10/144,967 was filed 2002-05-14 with no earlier priority claim, so the pre-AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. For a reference to anticipate a claim under § 102, a single reference must disclose each and every limitation of that claim, arranged as in the claim. References that disclose only some elements are properly § 103 obviousness art, not § 102 art. I do not have the actual Office actions for this patent, so the "potentially anticipates" column below is my analytical mapping of each reference's disclosure to the claims — not a reproduction of an examiner's rejection.

Date discrepancy flag (carried over). The task prompt says the current date is April 26, 2026, while the session context says September 30, 2026. As noted in the earlier-generated litigation section, this does not affect the analysis (the patent expired 2022-05-14) but is recorded for accuracy. No contradiction with the prior sections.

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A. Patent references cited on the face of US 6,742,973 (22 U.S. patents)

The patent's own "Patent Citations (22)" table is the authoritative source for the list. I reproduce the numbers literally.

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B. Non-patent references cited (3)

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C. Overall § 102 assessment — the honest bottom line

No single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claims 1, 12, or 16. The reason is that each independent claim requires a specific combination that no one reference shows:

• a U-shaped wire hanger with a horizontal span and two equal vertical spans (claim 1(a));
• welded to a flat steel bar bent into an offset U-shape whose top extends beyond its bottom to cradle the load (claim 1(b));
• a drilled hole receiving a threaded bolt whose bottom carries a perpendicular movable T-rod and whose top carries a crimped swivel head (claim 1(c)–(d)); and
• a stretchable elastomeric (rubber) strap on the inner span, pulled laterally across the item (claim 1(e)).

Mapping the elements to the closest references:

Which claims are the most vulnerable (highest § 102/§ 103 risk)?

• Claims 6 and 7 (recitations of transported-item types — fishing rods, bows, tools; and coiled cords/hose/tubing) are the weakest: Ross '287 and Sammons '506 disclose fishing-pole transport, and the Cabela's catalogs show sporting-gear carriage. Item-type claims of this "selected from the group consisting of" form are frequently challenged as adding nothing patentably to the apparatus.
• Claim 10 (manual adjustment of the clamp to the underside of the rail) is closely approached by Ronbil '010 (nut 40 tightened to lock against the opening) and the Wheatley clamps, though "swivel head specifically crimped to the top of the bolt" is the applicant's distinguishing detail.
• Claim 11 (mounting locations: pickup bed rail, roof rack, boat gunwale) is largely environmental and is heavily populated by the cited art (Wheatley '238, Millar '093/'770, Karrer '897, Tracrac '311) plus the Fentress non-patent reference.

Which claim(s) an examiner would most likely have rejected, and on what: Without the Office actions I cannot state this with certainty, but the record pattern (22 patent references spanning clamp-on rail anchors, T-bolt stake-pocket clamps, tie-down anchors, and two inventors' own products named in the specification) is consistent with § 103 obviousness rejections combining a rail-clamping anchor (e.g., Wheatley '844 or Ronbil '010) with a load-holding cradle and a flexible tie — not clean § 102 anticipation. The swivel head crimped to the bolt top and the laterally-stretched elastomeric strap are the elements that most plausibly carried the claims to allowance.

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D. Caveats and confidence

1. Sourcing. The 22-reference list, their titles, and dates are taken from the authoritative Google Patents full text you supplied. I independently fetched and confirmed the disclosures of Wheatley '844, Karrer '897, Ronbil '010, Porter '991, Wheatley '238, and several family members. Descriptions marked "based on title; not separately fetched" (e.g., Tillery '095, Willemain '829, Universal Consolidated '820, Hamilton '341, Cheng '520, Fisher '159, Price '777, Dunlop '301, White '910, Ross '287, Sammons '506) rest on the citation titles plus secondary classification data and should be treated as lower-confidence.
2. I do not have the actual examiner rejections or the applicant's remarks, so the "potentially anticipates" mappings are my own § 102 element-by-element analysis, not a reproduction of the prosecution record.
3. Literal identifiers preserved. All patent numbers are reproduced exactly as they appear in the source (e.g., "US 6,742,973 B1," "US 6,256,844 B1," "US 6,170,897 B1," "US 3,950,010 A"). I did not auto-correct any number.
4. Standard. Pre-AIA § 102 applies (filing 2002-05-14). Anticipation requires all elements in a single reference; absent that, references are § 103 art. Per your rule, if live results had contradicted the patent text I would have deferred to the results — here they were consistent.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis by examining the key prior-art references cited on the face of US 6,742,973.

Now let me examine the fishing-pole-holder and cargo-restraint references, which are the closest art for the U-shaped hanger + elastomeric strap subcombination.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,742,973 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the prior sections: the bibliographic, claim-structure, and litigation sections above are treated as authoritative and are not repeated here. This section adds the § 103 merits analysis, using the Prior Art section of the patent page — i.e., the 22 U.S. patent citations listed under "Citations" and the 3 non-patent citations — as the evidentiary universe. No new § 102/§ 103 art is imported from outside that list except where noted.

Date flag (carried forward, not resolved): the task prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the session context states September 30, 2026. As previously flagged, this does not affect the result. No new contradiction with the earlier-generated sections was found.

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1. Legal framework applied

This application was filed 2002-05-14 and issued 2004-06-01, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs. The analysis applies the four Graham factors (Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966)) as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007):

1. scope and content of the prior art;
2. differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art; and
4. objective (secondary) considerations.

KSR requires an articulated reason with a rational underpinning to combine, and confirms that a combination of known elements, each performing its known function, is likely obvious where the improvement is a "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Design incentives, market demand, and the "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" all supply motivation.

Analogy: every reference on the face of this patent is either (a) from the same field of endeavor — vehicle-mounted cargo restrainers, tie-down anchors, and rail-mounted carriers — or (b) reasonably pertinent to the problem the inventor faced (holding an elongated article on a vehicle rail without drilling or damage). Both tests are met for the rail-anchor and rod-holder references. In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004); In re Clay, 966 F.2d 656 (Fed. Cir. 1992).

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

The claimed subject matter is entirely mechanical sheet-metal/wire-form hardware. Based on the references and the specification's own discussion of "what the manufacturer would easily vary," a PHOSITA here is:

• a mechanical designer or tooling/fabrication engineer with roughly 2–3 years of experience in aftermarket vehicle accessories (clamp-on tie-downs, bed rails, roof racks, rod/gun racks), or a skilled metal fabricator of such accessories;
• familiar as a matter of routine design with: (i) clamp-on rail anchors using a threaded bolt and a bearing/clamp member; (ii) U-shaped rod/bow cradles; (iii) elastic (bungee/spring) retention straps; (iv) foam and vinyl protective padding/coatings; and (v) rust-preventive treatments (zinc coating, plating, paint).

This is a low-to-moderate skill level, which cuts toward obviousness: the elements are all off-the-shelf, and the asserted advance is one of arrangement, not of mechanism.

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3. Scope and content of the prior art (from the Prior Art section)

The patent's own "Citations" list supplies the four building blocks the claims combine. I verified content for the starred items directly:

Content of the prior art, summarized: by 2002 the art already contained (i) bolt-and-clamp rail anchors that grip a pickup side rail from inside without drilling (Wheatley '844, Millar '770, Cargill '576, Hamilton '341, Price '777); (ii) U-shaped cradles for elongated sporting articles mounted on vehicle bodies (Sammons '2907506, Ross '2887287, and the Cabela's/Fentress commercial racks); and (iii) elastic tensioned retention elements stretched over the carried article (Sammons' spring-and-chain; the Velcro® straps and bungee tie-downs the applicant itself acknowledges).

What is not found in any single reference: a rail clamp whose base carries a U-shaped item-supporting hanger, with an elastic strap hooked over the hanger's front bar. That is the point of novelty. It is a combination of three known means, each performing its own known function.

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4. Difference analysis — independent claim 1

Claim 1 element-by-element against the two strongest combinations:

Difference remaining after Combination B: none of substance. Millar '770 supplies the offset-U rail clamp with a vertical bolt and a foam protective pad; Sammons supplies the U-cradle over a rail with an elastic tensioned element stretched across the rods. Combination A requires only that the T-bar of Ronbil replace the nut of Wheatley — a substitution of one known clamping expedient for another.

On the applicant's asserted distinctions (from the specification, not the claims):

• "The device of the instant invention does not use hooks… and does not use Velcro®, but uses an elastomeric device." Sammons' spring-and-chain is a resilient, contractile, tensioned strap performing the identical function; and the Keeper/Fentress/Cabela's NPL shows elastic and hook-and-loop tie-downs were staple commercial items. The substitution of a rubber strap for a spring/chain, or for a Velcro strap, is a predictable substitution of one known retention element for another — and the specification's own disparagement of Velcro® is an admission that elastic/bungee retention was well known.
• "The bolt as described in '644 clamps to the top of a side of a pickup truck bed rail and not straight up and down as does the securing bolt of the present invention." This distinction is not commensurate with claim 1, and it is factually undercut by Millar '770, whose bolt 38 passes vertically through the horizontal leg 14 of the L-member to clamp the rail from below. A change in the axis along which a clamp bolt is tightened, with the same clamping result, is a mere change in orientation/position of a known part and is not patentably distinct.
• "Wheatley… requires tools." Claim 1 recites no tool-free limitation (that appears only in dependent claims 10 and 18, and even there only as "manually adjusting the swivel head"). Sammons uses wing nuts 44 — hand-adjustable threaded fasteners.

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5. Motivation to combine (articulated rationale)

The KSR rationales are satisfied on this record:

1. Same field of endeavor and same problem. Sammons '2907506 is a vehicle-mounted carrier for fishing poles — precisely the elongated sporting item the patent's claims 6 and 17 name, and precisely the vehicle (automobile) named in claim 17. Millar '770 and Wheatley '844 solve the identical sub-problem the patent states in its Background: anchoring to a pickup bed side rail without drilling and without the "bending load" drawbacks both references discuss. A PHOSITA seeking to mount a rod/bow cradle on a truck rail would look to both bodies of art without prompting.
2. Predictable combination of known elements. Each element performs exactly its known function: the clamp grips the rail; the U-cradle cradles the rod; the elastic strap holds it down; the foam pad protects the finish. There is no change in the principle of operation of any element. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.
3. Market demand / design incentive. The Background of the patent itself catalogues the commercial market (Cabela's Pack-Rack™, Rackmount™, Fentress Roof Rack, Keeper®) — i.e., a recognized, unmet need for a rail-mounted, drill-free carrier for elongated gear. Market demand is an express KSR rationale.
4. Finite, predictable solutions. The available approaches to "hold a rod on a rail" were few (clamp-on rail anchor + cradle + elastic strap), which KSR treats as evidence of obviousness.
5. No teaching away. Wheatley '844 teaches that clamp-on anchors can be positioned "at any point along the length of the side rail," and Millar '770 stresses easy install/removal "without modification… such as holes drilled in the bed." Both encourage the very flexibility the Hendrix device claims (temporary mounting at any rail location). Millar '770's foam-rubber pad teaches the claimed protection feature rather than away from it.
6. Reasonable expectation of success. The combination is a purely mechanical assembly of sheet/wire-form steel and rubber — high predictability.

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6. Dependent claims of the apparatus group (claims 2–11)

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7. Independent claim 12 and its dependents (13–15)

Claim 12 is claim 1 restated in "anchoring device" form — identical structure (offset-U flat bar welded to a U-hanger; hole; threaded bolt with T-configured movable rod and crimped swivel head clamping to an inside rail; stretchable rubber fastening means on the inner portion of the horizontal span). It is obvious for the same reasons and over the same combinations as claim 1; indeed, claim 12 is broader in that it does not require "approximately equal" vertical spans.

• Claim 13 — foam-filled rubber tube on the horizontal span: Millar '770 foam pad.
• Claim 14 — strap pulled laterally and manually attached to the top of the hanger: Sammons (spring tensioned over the rods, hooked into plates).
• Claim 15 — foam tube and strap removable/replaceable: Millar '770's pad is adhesively added (i.e., an attached, replaceable part); making a wear item removable for replacement is a recognized design expedient with no unexpected result.

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8. Independent claim 16 (method) and dependents 17–19

Claim 16 steps: (1) attach a pair of devices at opposite ends of the rail, each clamped by the swivel head of a metal bolt of clamping means permanently attached to a U-shaped hanging means carrying a flexible fastening device; (2) place the elongated item so each end lies in one of the U-shaped hangers; (3) fasten by pulling the flexible fastening device laterally across the item; (4) transport.

• Step (1) is taught by Wheatley '844 and Millar '770 (bolt-and-clamp rail anchor, permanently mounted to a hanger/plate).
• Steps (2)–(3) are taught in terms by Sammons '2907506: a plurality of identical carriers "spaced longitudinally" on the vehicle, each with a U-shaped cradle receiving the rods, and a resilient tensioned element pulled across the rods and locked — i.e., placing each end of the item in a cradle and laterally tensioning an elastic element over it.
• Step (4) is the inherent intended use of the references (Sammons FIG. 1 shows the vehicle carrying poles; Wheatley/Millar are tie-downs for transport).

Per KSR, where a method claim recites the inherent or conventional steps of using a device for its known purpose, the method is obvious with the device. The motivation is the same as in § 5 — same field, same problem, predictable steps.

• Claim 17 (pickup truck / automobile roof rack / boat): Sammons = automobile; Wheatley/Millar = pickup; boats are the acknowledged context of the patent's own Background ("land or water vehicles").
• Claim 18 (manual attachment by adjusting the swivel head): Sammons' wing nuts 44; Wheatley's threaded fastener.
• Claim 19 (pickup with a pair of rails; four devices; two groups of items): a pickup bed inherently has two rails; Karrer US 6,170,897 / US 6,238,153 (bed liner / rail cap systems) and the cited tie-down references show multiple anchors per rail; increasing the number of identical devices on a second, identical rail is mere duplication of parts. KSR: where a technique has been used to improve one device, applying it to the duplicate structure is obvious.

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9. Objective (secondary) considerations — record review

No objective evidence appears anywhere in the materials available to me:

• No unexpected results are asserted; the specification's "Scope of the Invention" offers only boilerplate about equivalents and modifications.
• No evidence of commercial success tied by nexus to the claimed combination (the Cabela's/Keeper/Fentress NPL documents are prior commercial art, not evidence of the patentee's success).
• No licensing, copying, industry praise, or long-felt-but-unmet-need evidence in the file materials I have.
• The applicant's arguments in the specification are attorney argument about structural distinctions, not objective evidence, and (as shown in § 4) two of them are undercut by the cited art.

Absent such evidence, the Graham factors 1–3 control.

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10. Conclusion on § 103

Overall: the process has broad range and all a structure of the elements of the asserted for combination was present in the prior art and addressed to the same field of endeavor and same problem. The applicant's real contribution was the arrangement, and under KSR an arrangement of known elements each performing its known function, with a design incentive supplied by the market the patent itself describes, does not rise to the level of a patentable invention.

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11. Caveats, sourcing, and uncertainties

• Sourcing: the bibliographic data, claim text, and the reference list are taken from the authoritative full text (Google Patents US6742973). Content of US 6,256,844, US 4,850,770, US 4,607,991, US 3,950,010, and US 2,907,506 was verified against the full texts at the linked sources (Google Patents / FPO / patentimages). Content of the remaining 17 citations and the 3 NPL items is stated only at the level of title, date, and assignee/inventor as listed on the patent page — I did not retrieve their full texts, so no element-by-element mapping is asserted for them. Where I have not verified a reference's disclosure, I say so rather than infer it.
• Identifiers reproduced literally: "US 6,742,973 B1", application "US 10/144,967", "U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,844", "U.S. Pat. No. 6,170,897", and the reference "US 6,547,311" are given exactly as they appear. Note that the patent's own description refers to Wheatley as "U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,844" and its Background calls it "the '644 patent" — these are the same document as the citation US6256844B1; I have not altered either rendering.
• Possible typographical discrepancies in the source (flagged, not corrected): claim 2 recites "about two inches to about three inches," while the specification paragraph reads "about two inches to about tree inches"; and the Description states the device "also allows for the safe transport of large coiled objects." Both are reproduced literally; the claims control for infringement/validity purposes.
• Prosecution history unavailable: I do not have the Office actions or the applicant's remarks. Whether the examiner considered (or rebutted) these specific combinations cannot be determined from the materials available; this is a de novo § 103 analysis. The mere issuance of the patent in 2004 is not evidence that the Office considered Millar '770 + Sammons '2907506 together — both are cited as prior art on the face of the patent, which at minimum confirms they were before the examiner.
• Unverified inference: my characterization of a "swivel head crimped to the top of the bolt" as a conventional swivel-pad clamp screw is an engineering-knowledge inference; I did not locate a specific one of the 22 citations that discloses a crimped swivel head by that name. If no cited reference discloses it, that single element would be a candidate for a narrow, non-obviousness-supporting distinction — though as an isolated mechanical expedient it would likely still be held a predictable variation under KSR, absent objective evidence.
• No litigation interplay: as established in the earlier sections (unchanged, no contradiction), there is no litigation or Federal Circuit/PTAB activity on this patent, so there is no court construction of these claims to inform the analysis. The patent is Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2022-05-14), so this analysis is of historical/validity interest only.