US 7152260

I'll search for authoritative information on US 7152260, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me check for any CAFC 2026 docket activity and litigation involving this patent.

The CAFC search returned nothing for this patent. However, one result referenced a "'260 Patent" in a Chrimar/Foundry Networks case involving Ethernet technology — which appears inconsistent with the bedding patent. Let me investigate that discrepancy carefully.

Search Results Summary — US Patent No. 7152260

Important framing note: I searched for the exact identifier 7152260 (displayed on the document as US7152260B2, i.e., US 7,152,260 B2). I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket or Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent. One search result surfaced a "Chrimar '260 patent" (Chrimar Systems v. Cisco / Foundry Networks), but I confirmed that patent is U.S. Patent No. 5,406,260 — a different patent (network security system), not the number you asked about. I flag this only to prevent a mix-up; per your instruction I did not treat it as the same patent.

Identifiers (per the source document)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7152260/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/7152260 (Patent History block).

Abstract (as issued)

A holding appliance for bedding including a belt wound around a bottom surface of a bed, two hook devices at both belt terminals, and two fastening devices for holding/fastening portions of the periphery of the bedding, the fastening devices being caught by the hook devices. In alternate embodiments: (a) a hook member placed between a bed base and mattress with a fastening device caught by the hooking member; and (b) a body placed between the bed base and mattress with a fastening device pivotally supported to the body. Each fastening device has a substantially ring-like body with a pair of spaced-apart first portions, a second portion interconnecting the first ends, a third portion interconnecting the second ends, and a holding member bridged between the first portions and slidable along them.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim(s)

The issued patent contains a single independent claim: claim 1. Claims 2–40 are all dependent (each depends on an earlier claim), so there are no other independent claims in the granted patent. (Note: the pre-grant publication US 2006/0000061 A1 appears to have been filed with a much larger, multi-independent-claim set — e.g., published claim 71 mirrors granted claim 1 — reflecting a narrowing/restriction during prosecution. I state this as an inference from the two documents; treat it as likely rather than certain.)

Claim 1 (the sole independent claim) — plain language:
A bedding holder made of two cooperating parts:

1. A body designed to be slipped/placed between a bed base (box spring/frame) and the mattress. This is the anchor that stays put by being trapped under the mattress.
2. A fastener pivotally attached to that body, used to grip and hold a part of the bedding's edge/periphery. The pivot allows the fastener to swing/rotate relative to the body.

The fastener itself has:

• a generally ring-shaped frame with two parallel "first" side rails; a second portion joining one pair of ends of those rails; and a third portion joining the other pair of ends; plus
• a holding member (a cross-bar/clamp plate) spanning the two side rails and able to slide along them.

The claim then recites the method of using the fastener to hold the bedding (a "wherein" functional limitation):

• with the second portion up, feed the bedding edge through the gap between the second portion and the sliding holding member;
• drape the bedding over the holding member;
• feed it through the second gap between the holding member and the third portion;
• slide the holding member toward the third portion so the bedding is clamped between the holding member and the third portion; and
• turn the fastener so the second portion is now down, which wraps/cinches the bedding around the third portion so it cannot slip out.

In short: the independent claim is a mattress-sandwiched anchor body + a pivotally mounted, sliding-clamp ring that grips and self-tightens on the bedding edge by flipping over.

Dependent-claim coverage of interest (for context on scope):

• Cl. 2: the side rails are tapered so the gap widens toward the third portion (a cam/wedge effect that resists accidental unclamping).
• Cl. 3/4: the fastener pivots on its second portion.
• Cl. 5–8: the holding member and third portion are angular (flat/cornered, for a tighter grip).
• Cl. 9–24: the body is strip-shaped, attached at one end; the strip may be high-friction material.
• Cl. 25–32: body = strip-shaped core + coating layer of high-friction material on at least one face.
• Cl. 33–40: body = strip-shaped core inside an endless belt-shaped high-friction coating layer.

Key uncertainty / caveats

• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Federal Circuit activity for this patent. Because CAFC docket data is not comprehensively indexed by general web search, I cannot rule out an obscure/very recent filing — but there is no positive evidence of any. Given the patent is Expired – Fee Related (maintenance fees unpaid, expiration adjusted to 2025-03-30), active 2026 appellate litigation is unlikely.
• Multiple independent claims: the granted patent has one independent claim (claim 1). The published application showed a larger claim set; I could not fully verify the exact independent-claim numbering of the published version from the retrieved text, so I present that as an inference.
• All bibliographic data above is drawn from the Google Patents page and the Justia "Patent History" block; the belt + two hook means and hook-member-between-mattress variations appear in the specification and abstract but are not claimed as independent claims in the issued patent — they are described as first/second/third embodiments.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7152260 across patent litigation sources.

The initial broad searches returned only irrelevant foreign registry documents. Let me search the specific litigation databases.

Results so far are noise (foreign corporate registries, FDA reports). Let me query litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Report — US Patent No. 7152260

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving US Patent No. 7152260. No district court case, no CAFC appeal, no ITC investigation, and no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) naming this patent appeared in any of the searches I ran.

What I searched

I ran targeted queries against the specific identifier 7152260 and its formatted variants (US 7,152,260 B2, application 10/928,336, publication US 2006/0000061 A1), combined with litigation-oriented terms (patent litigation, infringement complaint, district court, CAFC) and against litigation-database surfaces including portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation, CourtListener, Docket Alarm, and PACER-adjacent results.

What came back

The searches returned only false-positive noise, none of which is litigation against this patent:

• A Brazilian corporate registry PDF (JUCIS-RS) listing an unrelated registration number "7152260."
• A Lithuanian legal-entities registry notice referencing a notice number "7152260."
• An FDA adverse-event report (FAERS) citing a case number "7152260."
• A Canadian borehole-information table listing "7152260" as a data value.
• A Taiwan administrative-enforcement office notice whose fax number is "07-7152260."
• Unified Patents / PTAB / Docket Alarm pages referencing other patents (e.g., 10,621,228; 9,253,239; 7,020,252) — none of which is US 7,152,260.

Per your instruction, I did not expand to similar numbers; I treated only literal matches to 7152260.

The one substantive hit (a citation, not litigation)

The only relevant reference to the patent in my results was a prior-art citation. U.S. Patent No. 8,745,787 ("Bed sheet anchoring system," Heimlich) lists "U.S. Pat. No. 7,152,260 issued to Ota" among its cited prior art (https://patents.justia.com/patent/8745787). Being cited as prior art in a later patent is not litigation and creates no case.

Note this is consistent with the "Cited By" and "Citations" tables on the Google Patents page, which show only patent-document citations (forward/backward), with no "Litigation" or "Also Published As / Related Litigation" entries.

Required case-by-case fields

Because no case exists, I cannot populate plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case number/filing date/outcome:

Caveats (stated explicitly, per operating rules)

1. No positive evidence of litigation does not equal proof of none. PACER's full docket text, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, and RPX are paywalled/comprehensively indexed only through subscription tools, and general web search does not reliably surface every complaint or every CAFC appeal. There could be an obscure or very recent filing that my searches did not reach.
2. Consistency with the prior section: the earlier summary reached the same conclusion — no CAFC 2026 docket activity — and I found nothing to contradict it. I therefore remain consistent rather than contradicting it.
3. Context suggesting litigation is unlikely: the Google Patents record shows this patent as "Expired – Fee Related" (maintenance fees unpaid; adjusted expiration 2025-03-30). An expired patent with a Japanese bedding-accessory assignee (Ota Kosan Corporation) and no forward patent-family proliferation is a weak candidate for active assertion litigation, which is consistent with the absence of any hits.
4. One mix-up I affirmatively guarded against: earlier searches surfaced a "Chrimar '260 patent" (Chrimar Systems v. Cisco/Foundry Networks). That is U.S. Patent No. 5,406,260 (network security), a different number, and I have not treated it as this patent.

Conclusion: Based on the searches performed, no litigation involving US Patent No. 7152260 is known.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 7,152,260 — no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM. The canonical source for this task (the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block drawn from the USPTO Open Data Portal) returns an empty set, and independent web searching for a petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming this patent (or naming the patent owner, Ota Kosan Corporation) surfaced nothing. Breakdown by status: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on — the patent has not been tested, narrowed, or invalidated in any AIA trial. A defendant cannot point to a petitioner's FWD and say "claim 1 is already dead." Conversely, the patent's own prosecution history and prior art remain fully available to a defendant challenging it, because no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to anyone — nobody has been a petitioner. Combined with the fact that the patent is Expired – Fee Related (maintenance fees unpaid; expiration adjusted to 2025-03-30), active 2026 assertion is unlikely, but if it happens, the invalidity defense is wide open.

No proceedings to describe

There are no IPR / PGR / CBM dockets to list. I did not invent proceeding numbers for this patent, and I declined to import identifiers from unrelated matters.

Two false positives I checked and rejected (flagging so they don't get mixed into your file):

1. IPR2024-00421 / IPR2024-00422 ("the '260 patent"). A search surfaced a Final Written Decision in these two proceedings holding "claims 1–152 of the '260 patent … unpatentable" (petitioner's counsel: Banner & Witcoff; patent owner's counsel: Russ, August & Kabat). That is a different patent — U.S. Patent No. 7,861,260 B2 — with 152 claims, not US 7,152,260 (40 claims, bedding holder). The shared "260" suffix is a coincidence of numbering. Source: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1555169](/patent/1555169)/download-documents (docket text listing "IPR2024-00421 IPR2024-00422 Patent 7,861,260 B2").
2. Chrimar "260 patent." As noted in the previously generated summary, this is U.S. Patent No. 5,406,260 (network security), not this patent.

Non-AIA challenge check: I found no ex parte reexamination certificate, no reissue, and no district-court docket for this patent. A 2022-era search hit for "Ohta Kosan KK / Ota Kosan" is a patent-portfolio page (130 patents; later work on fluorescent-lamp tools), not litigation: https://discovery-patsnap-com.libproxy.mit.edu/company/ota-kosan. I could not complete a dedicated litigation-docket sweep before running out of search steps — treat "no district-court litigation" as no evidence found, not as a verified negative.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED before the PTAB. There is no IPR/PGR/CBM FWD, so none of claims 1–40 has been canceled, and none has been confirmed. Claim 1 remains the sole independent claim exactly as it issued on 2006-12-26 (the specification's belt/hook and hook-member-between-mattress variations are described as embodiments 1–3 but are not independent claims in the granted patent). The patent's only public "wiggle" is at the prosecution stage: the pre-grant publication US 2006/0000061 A1 appears to have carried a much larger claim set, so the issued 40-claim set reflects a narrowing during prosecution — but that is inference from the two documents, not a PTAB outcome, and it should not be characterized as an invalidity event.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Because no one has ever been a petitioner on this patent, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding any party, no § 325(e) PGR estoppel, and no IPR-time-bar problems to inherit. For a defendant asserted against today, every prior-art ground is still available — § 102 and § 103 challenges built on the long pre-2004 bedding-holder art cited on the face of the patent (e.g., US 4,541,137 Bedding holder; US 5,072,470 Device for holding bedclothes in a fixed position on a bed; and the 1890–1949 bedclothes-clamp family) can be raised in an IPR, a PGR (unlikely — the 2004 priority date predates AIA first-inventor-to-file), or in district court. The one practical ceiling: with the patent expired, the only live IPR/PGR value is a prospective or ongoing damages claim; CBM is unavailable because the technology (A47C 21/022 bed-cover holders) is not a "financial product or service."

Pattern signals: none. There is no repeat petitioner, no serial IPR campaign, no PTAB-vs.-district-court parallel track, no PTAB appeal activity, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. The absence here is a genuine signal: this patent was never commercially significant enough to attract an AIA challenge — it is a niche Japanese-origin bedding-accessory patent that expired for nonpayment of maintenance fees.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 7,152,260: the accurate line is "no PTAB proceedings exist; no claims have been canceled." Do not represent that claims 1–40 are invalidated — they aren't. Your leverage is (a) the patent's expired-fee / lapsed status (adjusted expiration 2025-03-30, per Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7152260/en), which limits recoverable damages to past infringement within the limitations period, and (b) a clean, unencumbered invalidity record — no estoppel constrains you.
• If you are considering an IPR filing: confirm standing/real-party and the § 315(b) one-year bar from any served complaint, and note that because the patent is expired, an IPR is only worth filing to knock out past-damages exposure. The strongest art is the bedclothes-holder prior art already cited on the face of the patent plus the 1900s–1980s clamp-family references listed in its "Citations (67)" table on Google Patents.
• Verification step I could not complete: run the patent number directly through PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and Docket Navigator / CourtListener to confirm the zero count and to rule out a very recent (2026) filing that the ODP ingest may not yet reflect. My searches returned no evidence of any proceeding, but PTAB E2E is the authoritative live check.

Caveat, stated plainly: I found no PTAB activity and no evidence of litigation, but I could not exhaustively query every district-court docket or the very latest PTAB filings within my search budget. Where the record is silent, I have said "no evidence found" rather than asserting an absolute negative.

I'll reconstruct the assignment chain from USPTO records and cross-reference ownership signals.

Assignment / Ownership Analysis — US 7,152,260 B2

Evidence limitation up front (read this first). I was unable to pull the live USPTO Patent Assignment Search record for this patent. My working tools returned no hit against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov for this number, and I could not independently verify a reel/frame. The single assignment event below is drawn from the Google Patents "Legal Events" reconstruction of the USPTO assignment record, which lists the event and the parties but (in the retrieved text) omits the reel/frame number. I will not invent a reel/frame. Where the task template asks for one, I mark it [reel/frame not retrieved]. Any statement I cannot ground is labeled as such.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: None detected. This is a single-inventor patent — there is no multi-inventor team to observe departing within 12 months, and no evidence of any inventor departure. There is also no indication of inventor-side retention of rights; the inventor assigned to the company immediately. The only "pattern" worth noting is the opposite of a red flag: the inventor appears to be the principal of the assignee, a tight founder-owned filing typical of small tool manufacturers.

Caveat: corporate affiliation is inferred from the assignment record plus parallel Ota Kosan filings naming the same inventor; I did not locate an employment agreement or corporate registry document confirming his title.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Ota Kosan Corporation (Tokyo, Japan). Also the original assignee of record at grant.
• Line of business: Japanese manufacturer of hand tools, garden tools, and domestic/industrial implements. Public evidence: US D480,281 S ("Weeder," Ota Kosan assignee); JP 2011/129018 ("Tool for attaching, detaching, and replacing straight tube fluorescent lamp"); JP 2011/024322 ("Pole tool for lifting working tool up to high position"). The bedding-holding appliance of this patent fits that same small-implement / household-goods profile. Third-party indexing (PatSnap) put the portfolio at roughly 130 patents — a small, single-family, non-conglomerate portfolio.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear / not verified. The specification is written as a commercial product ("holding means," specific dimensions of the strip body at 21.5 × 2.5 × 0.6 cm), which is consistent with a manufacturable good, but I found no verifiable US commercial listing or catalogue for this bedding holder under Ota Kosan branding. I will not assert product shipment either way.
• Current status: No record found of acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy. Ota Kosan appears to have continued filing through at least ~2011 (later JP filings above). It is a private Japanese company and not an SEC registrant, so there are no 10-K/8-K filings to cross-check; SEC-based diligence is a dead end here.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists; there are no post-issuance transfers.

• Executed: [not stated in retrieved record] / Recorded: 2004-09-20 — Reel [reel/frame not retrieved]
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: Ota, Kinjiro
  • Assignee: Ota Kosan Corporation
  • Correspondent: Not captured in the record I could retrieve. Prosecution counsel of record on the face of the patent is Dann, Dorfman, Herrell and Skillman, P.C. (Philadelphia, PA) — the same firm appears as attorney/agent of record on the related Ota Kosan patent US D480,281 S. If the assignment was recorded by counsel (the usual practice), this firm is the likely filer, but I flag this as inference, not a verified correspondent-of-record.
  • Context: Routine inventor-to-employer assignment contemporaneous with the 2004-08-27 US filing. Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

No later assignment events. Google Patents' event history for US 7,152,260 shows the 2004-09-20 reassignment and then only prosecution/issue/expiry events (publication 2006-01-05; grant 2006-12-26; adjusted expiration 2025-03-30). Current assignee of record remains Ota Kosan Corp. That is itself the finding: ownership never left the original operating company.

Note on tooling: because I could not confirm the reel/frame live, anyone relying on this chain for standing/chain-of-title should re-run the search at the USPTO Assignment Center (link in Verdict) and confirm the reel/frame against the face of the recorded document. The parties, date, and conveyance type I report are consistent across the Google Patents legal-events record; the reel/frame is the one field I could not source.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7152260
    2004 : JP priority filings June and July
         : US application filed August 27
         : Inventor Ota assigns to Ota Kosan Corp
    2006 : US patent 7152260 B2 issues Dec 26
    2025 : Patent expires fee related March 30

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Assessed against the single 2004-09-20 assignment and the absence of any later transfer. Bear in mind the assessment is thin because the chain is only one link long.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but with the substantive finding that the ownership chain never left the original operating company.

Justification: the only recorded assignment is the 2004-09-20 inventor-to-employer transfer from Kinjiro Ota to Ota Kosan Corporation (reel/frame not retrieved), with no subsequent assignment in the Google Patents legal-event history and Ota Kosan Corp still listed as current assignee. There are no NPE signals to evaluate — no shell-entity transfer, no asserter in the chain, no cascading transfers, no bankruptcy, no litigation-driven transfer. The patent is Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2025-03-30), which further moots any assertion-based ownership scenario.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7152260) — and confirm the reel/frame I could not source, then cross-check the same number at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and the Google Patents legal-events tab: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7152260/en

Consistency check with prior sections: this conclusion aligns with the earlier summary (no CAFC 2026 activity; sole independent claim 1; assignee Ota Kosan). No contradiction found — though I note the earlier section listed the Patent History block via Justia; I could not re-pull Justia to reconcile the reel/frame, so if Justia's "Patent History" shows a reel/frame, that field should be treated as authoritative over my "[not retrieved]" notation.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 7,152,260. Let me run targeted searches against the patent record and citation databases.

I have most of the citation list. Let me retrieve the balance of the cited references (the post-1985 portion) from the patent record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 7,152,260 B2

Patent: US 7,152,260 B2 — Holding means for use in blanket or coverlet and the like
Appl. No.: 10/928,336 | Filed: Aug. 27, 2004 | Priority: JP 2004-194961 (2004-06-30); JP 2004-207685 (2004-07-14)
Assignee: Ota Kosan Corporation | Inventor: Kinjiro Ota
Sole independent claim: claim 1 (claims 2–40 all dependent — consistent with the prior section)

1. Method and scope

I searched the patent records (USPTO front-page "(56) References Cited," Google Patents, and Justia's "Referenced Cited" block) for the references of record for US 7,152,260 (application 10/928,336). I did not substitute or auto-correct the number, and I did not pull in "similar" numbers.

Two important framing points:

(a) "Patent citations for 7152260" = the backward references cited on the patent's face (the prior art). These are the ~58–67 documents the examiner/applicant listed in the "(56) References Cited" section. These are the references relevant to an anticipation analysis. I distinguish these from the forward "Cited By" (11 documents) and "Families Citing this family" (6 documents) lists, which are later publications — they are not prior art to US 7,152,260 (they post-date it) and therefore cannot anticipate it.

(b) Every retrieved cited reference is pre-1989, i.e., more than one year before the Aug. 27, 2004 filing date. Under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (which governs this 2004 application), each qualifies as § 102(b) prior art (patented/published more than one year before filing). None is a § 102(a) or § 102(e) reference, because none was published between Aug. 27, 2003 and the filing date.

Critical caveat on "anticipation": the task asks which claims each reference "potentially anticipates." True § 102 anticipation requires that a single reference disclose every element of the claim as arranged. I have citation data and titles for these references, but I was not able to retrieve the full text/figure set of each cited reference within the search budget. Accordingly, the mappings below are preliminary candidates keyed to subject matter — not verified element-by-element anticipation — and I flag this wherever relevant. I do not assert anticipation as a conclusion.

2. Summary of the claim that must be anticipated

To make the mapping meaningful, recall that issued claim 1 (the only independent claim) covers the "body-between-mattress-and-base + pivotally mounted fastening means" aspect:

• a body interposed between a bed base and a mattress;
• a fastening means pivotally supported to that body, the fastening means having:
  • a ring-shaped frame (two "first" spaced-apart side rails; a second portion joining one pair of ends; a third portion joining the other pair of ends); and
  • a holding member bridging the side rails and slidable along them;
• plus the functional "wherein" method: second-portion-up loading → drape over holding member → slide holding member toward third portion to clamp → flip the fastener (second portion now down) to wrap the bedding around the third portion.

Notably, the belt embodiment and the hook-member-between-mattress embodiment described in the specification are not claimed as independent claims in the issued patent — so the acknowledged Japanese art (below), which relates to the belt/clip approach, is most relevant to unclaimed subject matter and to the prosecution narrative rather than to issued claim 1.

3. Prior-art references of record (retrieved) — citation, date, description, potential § 102 relevance

The front page lists 58 patent citations (Google Patents) / 67 citations total. I retrieved the following ~34 US citations plus one foreign document; the balance could not be retrieved within the search budget and is noted in § 6.

Acknowledged background art (cited in the specification text itself, and the closest art per the inventor):

These two JP publications are the art the patent expressly distinguishes over (Background: clips don't hold against pulling force; hook-loop requires attaching to the blanket, defeating laundering; the adjuster is remote from the clips, making length adjustment laborious). They are the most relevant prior art to the unclaimed belt embodiment, but they do not disclose the issued claim-1 combination (mattress-trapped body + pivotally supported sliding-clamp ring with the flip-and-wrap action).

4. Preliminary "most relevant prior art" ranking

Because § 102 anticipation is element-by-element, the references most worth a full-text check against claim 1 are:

1. US 4,541,137 (Murray, 1985) — "Bedding holder." Title and field overlap the claimed subject matter most closely among the retrieved US references. [Verify: does it show a body trapped between mattress and bed base with a pivotally attached clamp?]
2. US 4,782,543 (Hutton, 1988) — "Attachment of flat sheets to waterbeds" and US 2,931,084 (De Witt, 1960) — "Sheeting holder." Both concern holding bedding relative to a mattress — candidates for the "body between bed base and mattress" limitation.
3. US 2,791,784 (Tomsic, 1957) — "Sheets for mattresses." Mattress-associated sheet holding.
4. US 2,772,460 (Berkowicz et al., 1956) — "Clamping strap for blankets." Candidate for the sliding-clamp-on-blanket concept.
5. US 1,950,084 (Halsey, 1934) — "Bedclothes clamp." Candidate for the clamp concept.
6. JP Hei. 10-337233 / JP 2001-321255 — closest art to the belt aspect (not to issued claim 1).
7. GB 558,402 (Schwarz, 1944) — foreign art on the anti-slip problem.

No single retrieved reference appears, on its face, to disclose the full claim-1 combination — specifically the slidable holding member bridging two side rails of a ring frame that is flipped to wrap and self-clamp the bedding, pivotally mounted on a mattress-trapped body. That specific "ring + sliding cross-bar + flip-to-cinch" mechanism is what distinguishes claim 1 from this largely 1890–1988 field of clips, clamps, straps, and mattress anchors. This is why the reference value of the cited art is more likely in an obviousness (§ 103) combination than in clean § 102 anticipation — but a definitive call requires the full texts.

Dependent-claim § 102 notes:

• Claim 2 (side rails taper/widen toward the third portion) and claims 5–8 (holding member and third portion are "angular") recite specific geometry unlikely to be found in the old clip/clamp references; anticipation unlikely from the retrieved set.
• Claims 9–24 (strip-shaped body; high-friction material), claims 25–32 (strip-shaped core + high-friction coating on at least one face), and claims 33–40 (core inside an endless belt-shaped coating layer): the "high-friction coating" concept could be informed by the coating/friction art, but the strip-core-plus-coating structures are a later development; § 102 anticipation from these old references is improbable.
• Claims 3–4, 9–16 (pivot at the second portion; strip body pivotally supporting the fastener): potentially the closest to the mattress-trapped-holder references (#2, #3, #22 above) if those show a pivoted connection; needs verification.

5. What this section does not claim

• I am not asserting that any reference does anticipate any claim. The mapping is a ranked candidate list for full-text, element-by-element verification.
• I could not retrieve full texts/figures for most cited references; descriptions marked italic/inferred are based on titles and field, not on examined disclosure.
• The task's framing ("which claim(s) it potentially anticipates") is answered as potential/candidate relevance, not as a legal conclusion.

6. Gaps and caveats (explicit)

1. Incomplete citation retrieval. The front page shows 58 patent citations / 67 total citations; I retrieved ~34 US citations and one foreign document (GB 558,402 A). The remaining ~24 cited documents (including additional post-1988 US patents and the Japanese/other foreign patent documents, and very likely JP Hei. 10-337233 and JP 2001-321255 that the specification names) were not retrieved within the search budget. Their omission is a budget limitation, not evidence they don't exist. A complete analysis should pull each remaining reference from the patent's front page at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7152260/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/7152260.
2. Citation counts differ by source. Google Patents shows "Patent Citations (58)"; the patent-data extract shows "Citations (67)." The difference is explained by foreign patent documents / non-patent items; I flag this rather than reconcile it silently.
3. Forward vs. backward confusion risk (affirmatively guarded against). The "Cited By (11)" and "Families Citing this family (6)" entries — e.g., US 7,698,759 (Frasier, bed-sheet securing assembly), US 8,745,787 (Heimlich, bed-sheet anchoring system), US 11,382,435 (Maurer), US 2013/0167297 (Kaminski), GB 2,477,950 (Stay Made Ltd.) — are later publications and are not prior art to US 7,152,260; they cannot anticipate it and are excluded from the table above.
4. Number discipline. I did not auto-correct or expand any identifier. Any reference not literally appearing in the patent's citation record is not included. (As in the earlier section, I note the unrelated "Chrimar '260 patent," U.S. 5,406,260, is a different patent and was not used.)
5. Contradiction check vs. prior sections: none found. This section is consistent with the prior summary that claim 1 is the sole independent claim and that the belt and hook-member embodiments are described but not claimed; accordingly, the Japanese belt-art references are most relevant to unclaimed subject matter, not to claim 1.

Bottom line: The prior-art citations for US 7,152,260 are an old (1890–1988), dense field of bedclothes holders/clamps/straps and mattress anchors, plus two Japanese laid-open applications the inventor acknowledged and distinguished over. On the retrieved record, the most relevant references to examine are US 4,541,137 (Murray), US 4,782,543 (Hutton), US 2,931,084 (De Witt), US 2,791,784 (Tomsic), US 2,772,460 (Berkowicz), and the acknowledged JP Hei. 10-337233 / JP 2001-321255; none, on its face, appears to disclose the full issued claim-1 combination (mattress-trapped body + pivotally mounted sliding-clamp ring that is flipped to wrap and self-clamp the bedding). A verified § 102/§ 103 conclusion requires element-by-element comparison with the full texts of all 58 cited references — which is beyond what the retrieved record supports.

I'll gather the prior-art references cited on this patent's face and fill in the details I need for a § 103 mapping.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,152,260 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Holding means for use in blanket or coverlet and the like — Ota Kosan Corporation; priority JP 2004‑194961 (2004‑06‑30) / JP 2004‑207685 (2004‑07‑14); US filing 2004‑08‑27; issued 2006‑12‑26.
Governing law: pre‑AIA § 103(a) (application filed 2004). The Graham factors plus KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and MPEP §§ 2141–2144 control.
Source of the patent text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7152260/en

Scope note (important): the "Citations (67)" table in the retrieved patent record is truncated at GB 558,402 (1944) — I cannot see citations 24–67. Two references (US 4,541,137 Murray; US 5,072,470 Lysiak) are confirmed to be in this patent's citation chain by cross‑citation evidence and are treated as of record. US 2,223,412 (Gartz), US 1,950,084 (Halsey), and the two JP applications are also anchored in the record. Other references discussed below (US 2,507,091; US 5,218,729; US 863/873,777; US 2,860,352; US 4,662,016) are treated as analogous art in the same field and classification (A47C 21/02, USPC 5/498, 24/72.5) whether or not formally of record. I flag each instance of uncertainty rather than asserting citation status I could not verify.

1. What claim 1 actually requires

There is one independent claim (claim 1); claims 2–40 are all dependent. Claim 1 reads on the third embodiment (FIGS. 20–27: strip‑like body 8 between bed base B1 and mattress B2, fastening device 4 pivotally supported through the unbonded loop section 80b′).

Claim 1 requires, in substance:

Two claim‑construction points drive the whole analysis:

1. The "wherein" clause is a method‑of‑use recital of the structure. It describes the manual operation the claimed geometry is built to perform. Where the steps follow inevitably from the recited structure (a ring frame with a bar slidable on two rails, mounted to pivot), the clause adds no structural weight. In re Casey, 165 F.2d 1010 (CCPA 1948); MPEP § 2111.04. It cannot rescue claim 1 if A–D are taught.
2. Limitation B is narrow. The specification's first and second embodiments (belt + hook 3, and hook member 6 caught by fastener 4) do not pivotally support the fastener to the body — only the third embodiment does. Claim 1 is therefore directed to the Lysiak‑type architecture: an under‑mattress anchor body with a pivoting clamp at its end.

2. The prior‑art references and what each teaches

Admitted prior art in the patent's own § 1 background — JP Laid‑Open Hei. 10‑337233 and JP 2001‑321255 (flat belt under/between bed and mattress extending crosswise; adjusting device; holding members = alligator clips or hook‑and‑loop fasteners holding the periphery of the blanket). This is the applicant's own characterization of the state of the art and is a binding admission as to what was known. Critically, it already discloses limitation A (belt body between bed and mattress) plus a hook means that catches a bedding‑holding member.

US 4,541,137 (Murray, 1985) — Bedding holder
Long flat arm 12 inserted between mattress 58 and box spring 60; a deep U‑shaped member at the arm's end, open end up, whose legs 16/20 have inwardly directed cooperating projections 24/26/28 that clamp the bed‑covers; a latch member 34 extending between the legs to close them; arm corrugations 54 to resist displacement.
URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4541137 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[4541137](/patent/4541137).html
→ Teaches A, and a two‑leg frame joined at one end with a bedding‑clamping region at the other (a structural analogue of limitations C and the "clamp by the third portion" step).

US 5,072,470 (Lysiak, 1991) — Device for holding bedclothes in a fixed position on a bed — the single most on‑point reference.
Anchor means 8 lying entirely under the uppermost cushioned structure of the bed; elastic retaining members 7 with length‑adjusting mechanism 22 and cooperable fasteners, where claim 8 recites the first member as "a ring" and claims 11–12 recite snap hook fasteners; and clamps 24 with first and second pivotally connected gripping segments 25, 26, a closure‑forcing element 27, and an independent coupling element 37/bar 5 around which the bedclothes are wrapped and then inserted into the clamp.
URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5072470 ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5072470.html
→ Teaches A, the pivot concept (B), ring/hook catching, length adjustment, and — decisively — the wrap‑around‑a‑bar‑then‑clamp operation that is the core of the "wherein" clause (E).

US 2,223,412 (Gartz / Burton‑Dixie, 1940) — Comforter anchor
Flat resilient rubber pad 11 with gripping fingers 12, placed beneath the mattress, the weight of the mattress preventing dislocation; elastic band 13; detachable two‑part snap fastener to the comforter.
URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2223412 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100269259 (citation table)
→ Teaches A, detachable bedding attachment, and — expressly — high‑friction material chosen to prevent the anchor from migrating. (Also the genesis of dependent claims 17–32.)

US 1,950,084 (Halsey, 1934) — Bedclothes clamp
Two opposed stiff clamping strips 1/2 with beveled/grooved jaws gripping the covers; a skeleton outrigger laid on top of the spring, held down by the mattress; and a mechanism whose stated object is to "securely hold the covers … until purposely released by a simple flip or turn of an operating handle."
URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1950084 ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/65/20/47/2e5f9191db2cae/US1950084.pdf
→ Teaches mattress‑weight anchoring (A), opposed jaw clamping, and the flip‑to‑lock concept (E).

US 2,507,091 (May, 1950) — Bedclothes holder
Bar 20 assembled with clamping plate 25 (reverse bend 26, flange 27); the blanket end "extended around the reverse bend 26 of the plate and then back over the flange 27 and over the top of the bar 20 and then around its exposed edge to pass between the bar and the plate body 25"; holder "frictionally held in place, the weight of the superposed mattress assuring its retention."
URL: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ae/7f/d8/a4cecfecf2b9c3/US2507091.pdf
→ A near‑verbatim teaching of the "stride the bedding over the bar, then clamp it between the bar and the frame" steps. Citation status on US 7,152,260 unverified; analogous art in any event.

US 5,218,729 (Walton, 1993) — Bed sheet clamping holder
Rail 14 on a base with clamps; a spring clip held slidably by the rear gripping member and movable between open and closed positions; class A47C 21/02.
URL: http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5218729.html
→ Teaches the slidable retaining/clamping member (limitation D) on a bedding clamp.

US 873,777 (Parker & Dickson, 1907) — Mattress and bedclothes holder — wire body 1 with upright clamping member 2 and a clamping section 3 hinged at 4 upon the body, the outer end of the hinged section bent over in the form of a hook 5; clamp opened by swinging section 3 out and closed by swinging it in. URL: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/9e/4a/02/720372909d6e34/[US873777](/patent/US873777).pdf → Teaches pivotally mounted clamp section cooperating with a fixed member (limitation B).

Also of record (visible portion of the citation list): the 1890–1944 bedclothes‑clamp family — US 420,083; 443,742; 557,456; 829,118 (Meek); 852,180 (Hoffman, Bedclothes‑fastener); 1,195,874; 1,365,169 (Goldberg); 1,438,475 (Bisbing, Bedcover‑holding device); 1,602,305; 2,023,412; 2,155,690 (Simpson); 2,284,778 (Treiber, Sheet holder for beds); 2,321,394 (Hobar, Bedclothes control); 2,326,399 (Shields, Bedclothes harness); GB 558,402 (Schwarz). These collectively establish that clamping the periphery of bed covers to a bed‑mounted holder was a century‑old, crowded art by 2004.

3. Claim chart and proposed grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary) — Murray '137 + Lysiak '470 + JP 2001‑321255 (or Hei. 10‑337233)

Why a POSITA would have combined them. (i) All references are in the same field of endeavor and address the identical problem — bedding pulled loose by a sleeper's movement (Murray: "one's normal changing of position while sleeping tends to pull the tucked in bedding loose to expose one to the cold"; Halsey: "securely hold the covers … until purposely released"; Lysiak: "the bedclothes do not fall off of him/her during use"; Gartz: smooth‑surfaced comforters slipping). They are analogous art as a matter of law (MPEP § 2141.01(a)). (ii) The patent's own stated problem — that the admitted alligator‑clip holders "can not exhibit holding force enough to still hold the blanket when the pulling force is applied" — is a design incentive to substitute a positive clamp for a friction clip. (iii) The result is predictable: mattress‑weight anchoring (Gartz, Halsey, May, Murray) plus a bar‑and‑jaw clamp (Halsey, Murray, May, Lysiak) had all been used for the same purpose.

KSR rationales engaged: (A) combination of known elements with predictable result; (B) substitution of a known clamping element (Lysiak/May) for the admitted alligator clip; (C)/(D) known technique (under‑mattress anchoring) applied to a known device (peripheral bedclothes clamp) ready for improvement; (F) design incentives toward easy bed‑making and adjustability, the very motivations recited in the patent.

Ground 2 — Gartz '412 + Halsey '084 + Lysiak '470

Gartz supplies the mattress‑sandwiched body held by mattress weight and expressly friction‑enhanced (limitation A and dependent claims 17–32); Halsey supplies opposed clamping jaws gripping the covers plus the flip‑to‑lock/release action; Lysiak supplies the pivot and the wrap‑around‑bar clamp. Gartz's express statement that "the weight of the mattress prevents unintentional dislocation of the pad" is a teaching, suggestion, or motivation to use mattress weight as the anchoring force — the precise function claim 1 assigns to its body.

Ground 3 — Murray '137 + May '091 (+ Walton '729)

Murray alone teaches the full architecture — arm between mattress and support, clamping frame at the free end with cooperating projections — and May '091 and Walton '729 supply the specific slidable bar and wrap‑the‑blanket‑around‑the‑bar operation. This ground is the most structurally complete, relying mostly on references confirmed to be of record.

Ground 4 (alternative) — Lysiak '470 in view of the JP admitted prior art

Lysiak's anchor/retaining/adjusting assembly maps onto JP '255's belt/adjusting device; substituting Lysiak's pivoting bar‑and‑jaw clamp for the admitted alligator clip is a one‑for‑one substitution of a known gripping element to obtain a predictable improvement in holding force.

4. Dependent claims

Claims 25–32 and 33–40 differ from one another only in the coating geometry (coating on at least one surface vs. an endless belt‑shaped coating layer enclosing the core). That is a design‑choice distinction with no asserted functional difference — a classic § 103 rejection under MPEP § 2144.04.

5. Anticipated counterarguments and where they are weak or strong

Arguments a patent owner would make, and an assessment:

1. "No single reference discloses the D‑shaped ring whose second portion pivots on a mattress‑sandwiched strip, with a sliding bar that flips over to cinch." Partially fair. No one reference shows the exact assembly. But § 103 does not require a single reference, and the combination of Murray (mattress arm + U‑frame + clamp), Lysiak (pivot + wrap‑around bar), May (bar + plate wrap and clamp) and Gartz/Halsey (mattress‑weight anchoring, flip‑to‑lock) covers every limitation. The proper question under KSR is whether the combination was predictable, not whether it is literally disclosed.
2. "The step order in the wherein clause (insert → stride → insert → slide → turn) is a specific new process." Weak. The steps are the necessary manual sequence for using the recited geometry; they add no structural limitation. The patent specification itself presents them as instructions for use, not as a separate process invention.
3. "Secondary considerations." No evidence in the record. The patent is Expired – Fee Related (maintenance fees unpaid; adjusted expiration 2025‑03‑30), there is no litigation, no PTAB proceeding, and no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, or long‑felt need in anything I retrieved. There is thus nothing to rebut the prima facie case. This is a "no evidence found" statement, not proof of a negative.
4. Genuine weakness in the record I must flag: I could not retrieve the full text or the actual disclosure of JP Hei. 10‑337233 and JP 2001‑321255, which the specification summarizes in the § 1 background. My treatment of them rests entirely on the applicant's own characterization. Likewise, I could not see citations 24–67 of the "Citations (67)" table (the retrieved text truncates at GB 558,402), so the citation‑of‑record status of May '091, Walton '729, Parker & Dickson '777, and US 2,860,352 is unverified. The strongest verified grounds (1 and 3) rely on references confirmed to be in the record.

6. Bottom line

On the face of the retrieved prior art, claim 1 would likely have been held obvious under § 103(a) over a combination of US 4,541,137 (Murray) + US 5,072,470 (Lysiak), optionally supplemented by the JP Hei. 10‑337233 / JP 2001‑321255 admitted prior art, US 2,223,412 (Gartz), US 1,950,084 (Halsey), and US 2,507,091 (May). Every structural limitation (mattress‑sandwiched body; pivotally mounted clamp; two‑rail frame with end connectors; slidable holding bar) and every step of the functional clause (wrap the bedding around a bar and clamp it, then flip the assembly to lock) is individually and collectively taught in the same crowded field, and the KSR rationales of predictable combination, simple substitution of a known gripping element for the admitted alligator clip, and application of mattress‑weight anchoring to a known bedclothes clamp all apply. Dependent claims 2–40 add only taper geometry, pivot location, angularity, strip/laminate construction, and friction‑material selection — each a routine design choice or an express teaching of Gartz and Murray.

Consistency with the previously generated sections: this analysis is consistent with the earlier findings that (i) claim 1 is the sole independent claim and reads on the third embodiment, (ii) the belt/hook and hook‑member‑between‑mattress variations are embodiments only, and (iii) the patent has no PTAB or litigation record, meaning no claim has been tested, narrowed, or invalidated — so this is a hypothetical/defensive obviousness analysis, not a report of an adjudicated outcome. I did not identify anything contradicting the earlier sections.

Confidence: high as to the claim‑element mapping against Murray, Lysiak, Gartz, Halsey and May; moderate as to the citation‑of‑record status of May '091, Walton '729, Parker & Dickson '777 and US 2,860,352 (the citation table is truncated in the source I retrieved); low as to the substantive content of the two JP references, which I know only from the applicant's own summary.