US 7052038

Patent Overview — US 7,052,038 B2

Title: "Side impact sensor systems"

Assignee (current, as listed): American Vehicular Sciences LLC; original assignee Automotive Technologies International Inc. Inventors: David S. Breed, Vittorio Castelli, Anthony S. Pruszenski, Jr. Application no.: US 10/768,791; filed 2004-01-30; published as US 2004/0183287 A1 on 2004-09-23; granted 2006-05-30. Priority date: 1993-09-16 (claimed from US 08/101,017; also from US 09/114,962). Status: expired — fee related, with adjusted expiration 2014-03-11. Primary classifications: B60R 21/0132, B60R 21/21, B60R 2021/0006.

Purpose and plain-language scope. The excerpt states the invention "relates to side impact crash sensors for vehicles and side impact airbag systems," and is "primarily concerned with a novel self-contained airbag system for protecting occupants in side impacts," and "secondarily concerned with applying some of the features of the novel side impact system to solving some of the problems of prior art mechanical airbag systems." The described side-impact system "consists of a sensor having a movable sensing mass, means to sense the position of the sensing mass to determine if the airbag should be deployed, a sealed housing, a gas generator for producing the gas to inflate the airbag, an airbag, and mounting hardware." Sensors "used here" are "either electronic, electro-mechanical or mechanical but all have a movable mass where the motion of the mass is sensed either electronically or mechanically"; one embodiment "includes a side impact crash sensor, a transfer st[r]ucture…" (excerpt truncated).

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7052038/en

What the excerpt does not establish: the full text of the claims, the complete specification/description, any drawings' content, the full inventor/assignee history, litigation outcomes, patent validity, enforceability, or comparisons against specific prior art.