US 7195554

I'll search for the specific patent number and any associated litigation.

US 7,195,554 — Summary

Important framing note: I found no USPTO litigation records and no CAFC 2026 docket referencing patent 7,195,554. My searches for "7195554 patent CAFC 2026 docket" and "7195554 patent litigation" returned no court or docket material. The only "7195554" string I encountered outside the patent itself was an incidental numeric match in an unrelated 2004 "been served" list ("7195554 Tait and Associates Inc" — an entity/registration number, not this patent). I did not verify this through USPTO PatentCenter or PACER directly, so treat "no litigation found" as a search-result observation, not an authoritative clearance.

The rest below comes from the authoritative full patent text supplied.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim): "A method and apparatus are provided for separating thigh meat and oyster meat from the thighbone automatically without detecting the boundary of the white cap at an end of the thigh bone and the meat including thigh meat and oyster meat and inserting a cutter into the detected boundary part in the final operation of deboning a thigh-with-bone of an edible beast and bird. The apparatus of the invention for separating thigh meat and oyster meat is composed of a clamper 15, a Y-shaped guide-with-a-groove 20, and a Y-shaped guide-with-a-cutter 16 downstream of the guide 20 provided on the transfer line of the clamper, both guides being provided such that the open end side of Y-shape of each guide is directed toward upstream of transfer of the clamper."

Plain-language overview of the claims

Note: the granted US 7,195,554 has 4 claims — all method claims (the apparatus claims you may see elsewhere belong to the divisional US 7,344,436). Independent claims here are 1, 3, and 4; claim 2 depends from claim 1.

Claim 1 (independent — cut the sinew, keeping thigh meat joined to oyster meat). A method of separating thigh meat from "oyster meat" (a small lump joined to the thigh meat by a membrane and to the "white cap" cartilage at the end of the thighbone). Steps: suspend the thigh by clamping the thighbone just below the knee joint so it can swing while conveyed; separate the thighbone-plus-oyster-meat from the thigh meat; then cut the sinew holding oyster meat to the white cap. The cutting is done by conveying the suspended work into a "guide-with-a-cutter" device: a Y-shaped guide (open end facing upstream), a narrow slot running along the conveying direction behind the guide, and a cutter downstream of the slot opening. The Y-guide contacts the bone and swings it upstream/forward; the white cap rides on the base of the device while the sinew drops into the narrow slot (oyster meat hanging below), and the cutter severs the sinew to free the oyster meat from the white cap.

Claim 2 (dependent on 1 — the "groove" variant). Adds that the separating step is performed with a "guide-with-a-groove" device: a Y-shaped guide with a narrow throat at its base and an open slot after the throat, dimensioned so the oyster meat can pass through the slot but the thigh meat cannot — so the suspended work is pulled along and the thigh meat is stripped off the oyster meat.

Claim 3 (independent — cut the sinew with both meats still attached). A method of separating thigh-meat-with-oyster-meat from the white cap. Suspend the work by clamping the thighbone just below the knee; then separate the bone from the meat (thigh meat plus oyster meat) using the same Y-guide-with-a-cutter arrangement as claim 1: the Y-guide swings the bone, the white cap rides on the base, the sinew enters the narrow slot while the oyster meat and thigh meat hang below, and the cutter severs the sinew so that both meats come off the bone together.

Claim 4 (independent — groove/strip step, broader sequencing). A method of separating thigh meat from oyster meat. Suspend the work by clamping the thighbone just below the knee so it can swing during conveyance; separate the thighbone-plus-oyster-meat from the thigh meat; and cut the sinew. The separating step uses the guide-with-a-groove device (Y-guide + narrow throat + open slot, open end upstream), with the slot dimensioned to let the oyster meat pass while blocking the thigh meat — thereby stripping the oyster meat from the thigh meat.

Practical takeaway

The invention is a poultry/turkey thigh-deboning station that automates the hardest final step: freeing the oyster-meat lump and thigh meat from the white-cap end of the thighbone without any sensor to detect the bone/meat boundary. It exploits a swing-clamped hanger plus two shaped guides — a "groove" guide that strips thigh meat off the oyster meat, and a "cutter" guide (narrow slot + downstream cutter, optionally with a stopper guide to prevent the sinew escaping) that snips the sinew.

Uncertainty: I could not corroborate the "Expired — Fee Related" legal status or the absence of litigation through a live USPTO/PACER query in this session; the status line comes from the Google Patents fetch, which itself labels its legal status as an assumption. If you need authoritative litigation/status confirmation, that should be pulled directly from USPTO PatentCenter and PACER.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7195554 across patent litigation databases.

The first search returned irrelevant results (a different patent). Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me search specific litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 7,195,554

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 7,195,554.

Based on the searches I was able to run, I could not identify any district court case, CAFC appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which US 7,195,554 was asserted or challenged. I want to be explicit about the limits of this finding rather than guess.

What the patent is

For context (from the authoritative full text you provided):

The patent covers an automated poultry-deboning method/apparatus using a Y-shaped guide-with-a-cutter (and optionally a Y-shaped guide-with-a-groove) to separate thigh meat and "oyster meat" from the "white cap" at the end of a thighbone. It is a niche food-processing machine patent held by Mayekawa.

What my searches did and did not show

I ran searches aimed at:

• General "US patent 7195554 litigation" queries
• "7195554" / "7,195,554" in docket/complaint contexts
• Mayekawa infringement litigation queries
• Unified Patents / CAFC / PACER-oriented queries

These searches returned no matching litigation. The apparent "hits" were false positives on unrelated "554" patents, e.g.:

• A different '554 patent (a streaming/fitness-device patent, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 10,469,554) asserted in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1265 against Peloton-type fitness devices.
• Another unrelated '554 patent (adaptive bitrate streaming) in a DISH complaint.
• The '554 patent at issue in Oracle v. Parallel Networks (a web-page patent, U.S. Pat. No. 5,894,554 / family) — again unrelated.

None of these involve US 7,195,554.

Important caveats

• I could not directly query the primary litigation databases. My attempts to reach Unified Patents' litigation portal, PACER, and CAFC docket search either returned irrelevant results or were cut off. This search was performed through a general web-search tool, not a direct docket API.
• Absence of evidence is not proof of absence. It remains possible that a case exists that is not well indexed publicly (e.g., a short-lived or sealed action, or a foreign proceeding such as in Japan or the EPO opposition/branch). I did not find one, and I will not invent case numbers, parties, or outcomes.
• Supporting signal: The patent is a specialized poultry-processing patent that expired for non-payment of maintenance fees in 2011, and its assignee (Mayekawa) appears to have used the technology commercially (Toridas/Takidas deboning machines) rather than as a litigation asset. This is consistent with — but does not prove — the absence of known litigation.

Recommendation

To obtain an authoritative answer, you should verify directly on:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal – https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation
2. PACER (search "7,195,554" as patent-in-suit across district courts)
3. CAFC docket search (https://cafc.uscourts.gov)
4. PTAB / USPTO PatentCenter for any IPR/PGR/reissue/reexam tied to the '554 patent or its family member US 7,344,436
5. ITC EDIS (https://edis.usitc.gov) for any Section 337 investigation

If those sources also return nothing, the correct statement is: no litigation is known for US Patent No. 7,195,554.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against public sources before drafting.

PTAB Proceedings — US 7,195,554 B2

Bottom line up front: The USPTO Open Data Portal returns zero AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and independent web searching surfaced none. This is not a "hardened patent that survived IPRs" story — it is a patent that was never tested at the PTAB and that lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees in 2011.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials) — no petitioner, including any defensive aggregator, has ever filed an IPR, PGR, or CBM against US 7,195,554 B2; all four claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB, and because the patent's event record shows a lapse for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2011-03-27, the defensive posture for a defendant is not "the patent is hardened" but rather "the patent appears expired and unenforceable prospectively, so the entire fight is about pre-lapse back damages — subject to the six-year bar of 35 U.S.C. § 286."

Per-proceeding analysis

None to report. No proceeding numbers exist to report, and I will not construct any. For completeness, the following is what I affirmatively checked and what I affirmatively did not find:

I did not find an IPR petition, an institution decision, a Final Written Decision, a settlement, a termination, a joinder, or a CAFC appeal for this patent. If a proceeding was filed but is too recent for the ODP ingest, I did not surface it in search either — so treat the count as 0 with high but not absolute confidence, and re-run the ODP query before relying on it in a brief.

Strategic summary

Claim status: 4 claims, none canceled, none sustained, all untested. US 7,195,554 B2 issued 2007-03-27 with exactly four claims under the AIA-era claim set reproduced on Google Patents: claim 1 (method of separating thigh meat from oyster meat using a guide-with-a-cutter having a Y-shaped guide, narrow slot, and downstream cutter), claim 2 (dependent — adds the guide-with-a-groove separation step), claim 3 (independent — separating thigh meat with oyster meat from the white cap via the guide-with-a-cutter), and claim 4 (independent — separating via the guide-with-a-groove device). Because no IPR ever issued a Final Written Decision, there is no claim-level invalidation to quote, and no claim has been narrowed by the PTAB. Any statement that claims 1–5 (or any other subset) were canceled would be fabrication — the patent has four claims, not five.

The real story is the lifecycle, not the litigation history. The ODP legal-events record shows a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2010-11-01, a lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2011-03-27, an entry on 2011-04-25 recording "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362," and an "FP — Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" entry effective 2011-03-27. Google Patents labels the status "Expired - Fee Related." That is materially different from the "Expired - Lifetime" designation that would accompany a patent that ran its full statutory term. Flag a discrepancy for verification: the same Google Patents page also lists an "Anticipated expiration" of 2023-06-20 (the 20-year date from the 2003-06-20 PCT priority date), and no reinstatement event appears in the record I retrieved. Confirm current status in USPTO Patent Center before advising on enforceability — if the patent was never revived, there is no prospective infringement exposure at all, and even the backward-looking exposure is capped by § 286's six-year lookback measured from a complaint filed today (i.e., conduct from roughly 2020-10-01 forward — during which the patent was either expired or on its very last legs).

Estoppel landscape: essentially empty, which cuts both ways. Because no IPR was ever instituted, no petitioner has triggered § 315(e)(2) estoppel — there is no petitioner or privy of a petitioner who is barred from raising anything. A defendant today faces no estoppel constraint whatsoever: every § 102 and § 103 ground the prior art supports remains available, and the patent's own cited references are a useful roadmap. Notably, the patent's face cites Mayekawa's own earlier work (JP H05-184281 / JP 4367952 family and JP H10-4868) plus Stork PMT's JP H04-228022 and JPS 61-43954 and Hazenbroek's US 4,939,813. Separately, the patent owner did not pursue any PTAB appeal on this patent, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, AST, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain — the absence of any IPR filing is consistent with the patent lapsing just as the AIA trial regime was maturing, leaving it commercially unattractive to challenge.

Pattern signals worth knowing. This patent sits in the same family as US 7,344,436 B2 (the divisional directed to the apparatus, filed 2006-12-15, issued 2008-03-18, also "Expired - Fee Related"), with foreign counterparts EP 1 639 898 A1/A4, JP 4367952 B2, CA 2546456 A1, and the international publication WO 2004112489 A1. Later commercial entrants treated this family as a benchmark to design around rather than a validity target: Meyn's EP 2 885 975 A1 (2013-12-20) expressly states in its background that "EP-A-1639898: US-B-7195554; and US-B-7344436 all disclose such apparatus and methods … These known methods and apparatuses are imprecise because they rely on a particular inclination of the thighbone so that the tendon can be received in the narrow slot." Foodmate's US 9,572,355 B2 / US 9,826,748 B2 (2011-01-26 priority) and Baader's US 9,433,223 B2 (2012-01-31) occupy adjacent space as well. In other words, the industry's response to this patent family was engineering differentiation, not PTAB invalidation — which is the single most useful signal a defendant can extract here.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not brief a PTAB position that doesn't exist. If an opposing party or a diligence file claims this patent "survived IPRs" or that "the PTAB upheld the claims," that is wrong — the PTAB never touched it. The correct framing is: four claims, zero AIA trials, expired for fee nonpayment.
2. Verify current legal status in USPTO Patent Center before anything else — Patent Center — specifically whether any petition to accept late payment or revive under 37 CFR 1.378 was granted after the 2011-03-27 lapse. The event log I retrieved shows none, but the "anticipated expiration 2023-06-20" entry on Google Patents is inconsistent with an unreinstated 2011 lapse and must be resolved.
3. If the patent is confirmed lapsed, the defensible position is: (a) no prospective liability — an expired patent cannot be infringed for post-expiration conduct; (b) § 286 six-year damages cap erases anything before roughly 2020-10-01; (c) intervening rights / laches arguments under § 282(b) and the equitable doctrine are worth developing given more than nine years of apparent non-enforcement after lapse; and (d) check whether the patent owner has been paying maintenance fees but the record simply lost the reinstatement — that is the one fact pattern that would change the analysis.
4. If, despite the lapse record, you still need an invalidity posture, the prior art cited on the face of the patent is the natural starting set: JP H05-184281 (Mayekawa's own deboner, the "patent literature 1" the specification distinguishes), JP H10-4868 (Mayekawa's auto-loading system), JPS 61-43954 and JP H04-228022 (Stork PMT), and US 4,939,813 (Hazenbroek). All remain unencumbered by estoppel. Note that JP 2002-010732 A (Mayekawa, "Method for separating thigh and device therefor," priority 2000-06-30) is also cited and may be closer art than the specification's own discussion suggests.
5. Monitor for any newly-filed proceeding. Re-query PTAB E2E / PTAB Public Information and the ODP endpoint periodically. Given the patent's lapse, the practical likelihood of a new IPR is very low — the AIA trial regime did not exist when this patent lapsed in 2011, and expired patents are rarely IPR targets since there is nothing to invalidate prospectively. That absence is itself the signal: a patent that never attracted a single IPR and then lapsed for nonpayment is a weak assertion vehicle, not a hardened one.

Confidence and limitations. High confidence on: 0 PTAB proceedings; 4 claims; priority 2003-06-20; grant 2007-03-27; the 2011-03-27 maintenance-fee lapse entry; the existence of the US 7,344,436 B2 divisional; and the Meyn EP 2 885 975 A1 characterization of the family. Lower confidence on: whether a late-payment petition later revived the patent, because the retrieved event log stops at the 2011 lapse and the Google Patents "anticipated expiration 2023-06-20" entry conflicts with it. I found no Final Written Decision, no institution decision, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal for this patent, and I have not fabricated any.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7195554. Let me start by pulling the primary assignment data and checking for litigation/NPE activity.

Let me dig into the litigation record and check for any downstream transfers.

Let me verify the assignment record details and check for litigation/NPE activity.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,195,554 B2

Method and apparatus for separating thigh meat and oyster meat
Application US 11/312,829 · filed 2005-12-20 · issued 2007-03-27 · priority 2003-06-20
Verification: USPTO Assignment Center / Assignment Search (legacy) — search by 7195554 or 11/312,829.

Sourcing note: Google Patents/ODP legal-events data was reachable for this patent. I was not able to open the Assignment Center record itself (research tool limit reached), so the reel/frame, execution/recordation dates, and assignor/assignee string below come from the recorded-assignment entry surfaced in the patent's legal events (Google Patents, "[2006-05-10] Assigned to MAYEKAWA MFG. CO., LTD."). The correspondent of record is not reproduced in that source and I could not retrieve it — I do not state a name I could not verify.

Inventors

Pattern note: The only unusual feature is that one named inventor was deceased by the time the patent granted (application filed 2005-12-20; granted 2007-03-27). This is consistent with the two inventors being long-tenured Mayekawa employees and does not match the "all inventors depart within 12 months → fire-sale" red flag. There is no evidence in the record of inventors leaving the assignee, forming a successor entity, or being tied to any later licensing vehicle.

Original assignee

Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. ("Mayekawa Manufacturing Co"), Tokyo, Japan — the entity named on the issued patent and the assignee on the sole recorded assignment.

• Line of business: industrial refrigeration/compressor machinery and food-processing equipment. Its deboning division commercializes automated poultry/meat deboning systems under the "DAS" brand — notably TORIDAS (chicken-leg deboner, ~750 units installed worldwide per Mayekawa literature) and TAKIDAS (turkey-leg deboner). The patent's own background section frames the invention as the missing "final separation" step for turkey/chicken thigh deboning, i.e., machinery Mayekawa actually builds and sells.
• Ships a product embodying the claims? Yes — Mayekawa's DAS/TORIDAS/TAKIDAS automated deboning lines are the commercial embodiment of this deboning-thigh workstream. (Mayekawa Americas DAS brochure: https://americas.mayekawa.com/mna/downloads/pdf/Food%20Robotics/DAS.pdf)
• Current status: Operating (ongoing global industrial-machinery company; no bankruptcy or dissolution found).

Related family (not an assignment link): divisional US 11/611,418 → US 7,344,436 B2 ("Apparatus for separating thigh meat and oyster meat"), same assignee, same inventors, likewise listed Expired – Fee Related. Priority flows from PCT/JP2003/007851 → WO 2004/112489 A1.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, all recorded instruments:

• 2006-03-07 (executed) / recorded 2006-05-10 — Reel 017877/0992
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Hiroyuki Hayakawa and Koji Kido (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. (MAYEKAWA MFG. CO., LTD.), Tokyo, JP
  • Correspondent: not determinable from available data — the recorded correspondent/attorney of record is not reproduced in the source I could retrieve, and I will not guess at a name. This is the one field the task asks for that I could not populate from evidence.
  • Context: Inventor-to-employer assignment — standard employment/ownership vesting of an applied-for invention in the corporate applicant.

Then no further recorded assignments. Google Patents' legal-events table for US 7,195,554 shows only the single 2006-05-10 assignment; the next and final entry is a maintenance-fee lapse:

• 2011-03-27 — LAPS (lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees); 2011-04-25 — STCH, "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES." Nothing after that reflects any transfer of title.

Finding: This patent has only its original inventor→company assignment. There is no recorded post-issuance transfer, no shell-LLC hop, no security interest, no merger, and no change of name. Under the rubric, that is itself the substantive result — the chain never moved off the original operating-company assignee, which retained ownership until the patent simply lapsed.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7195554
    2003 : Priority PCT application filed
    2005 : US bypass continuation filed
    2006 : Inventors assign to Mayekawa Mfg
    2007 : Patent US 7195554 issues
    2011 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The sole assignee is Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd., a named operating manufacturer (reel 017877/0992, 2006-05-10). No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC anywhere in the chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. The only assignee is Mayekawa, which does not appear on the referenced NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, etc.) or in RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff directories for this patent.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. There is only one recorded instrument, so the "recurrence" test is arithmetically impossible; and the correspondent field was not retrievable in the data I could access. Cannot be scored either way; flagging it explicitly rather than inferring.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment total; no chained LLCs, no sub-24-month sequence.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was found, and the patent lapsed 2011-03-27 (reel/es record: LAPS/STCH), which would have mooted any later assertion.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 or patent-sale proceeding for Mayekawa located.
7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from Mayekawa to an outside assertion vehicle; title never left the operating company.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. (The lapse-after-fee-nonpayment outcome is a mild de facto neutralization, but it is not a defensive-aggregator acquisition.)

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The entire recorded chain is a single inventor-to-employer assignment to Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. (executed 2006-03-07, recorded 2006-05-10, reel 017877/0992); no post-issuance assignment of any kind is of record, and the patent expired 2011-03-27 for nonpayment of maintenance fees. There is therefore no NPE chain to analyze — no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading or pre-litigation transfer — so none of the troll-pattern signals can be marked present. Substantively, this is an ordinary operating-company-held patent that was never asserted and was allowed to lapse, which is why the chain terminates at the original assignee.

One open item for a follow-up pass with direct Assignment Center access: pull reel 017877/0992 to capture the recorded correspondent (attorney/firm of record), which the source I used did not expose.

I'll research US patent 7195554 and each of its cited references. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me research the remaining cited references individually.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 7,195,554 B2

Analyst note on identifiers: Per the governing rule, the number 7195554 is treated literally as US 7,195,554 B2 ("Method and apparatus for separating thigh meat and oyster meat," Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd.; inventors Koji Kido and Hiroyuki Hayakawa, deceased). All alphanumeric IDs below (e.g., JPH05184281A, JP2002010732A, US4939813A) are reproduced verbatim from the patent front page without normalization.

I could not run every verification step (the final tool call was capped), so where I state content of a reference I am relying on the patent's own front-page citation table, the specification's discussion of those references, and live retrieval of the two highest-value items (JP2002010732A and US4939813A). I flag confidence explicitly.

1. The patent under review

• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7195554B2](/patent/US7195554B2)/en (mirror: https://patents.justia.com/patent/7195554)
• Effective filing/priority date: 2003-06-20 (bypass continuation of PCT/JP2003/007851, filed 2003-06-20; the PCT published as WO2004112489A1).
• US filing date: 2005-12-20 (application 11/312,829). Issued 2007-03-27. Status: Expired – Fee Related.
• Governing law: pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102/§ 103 (effective filing date well before 2013-03-16).
• Family: US 7,344,436 B2 (divisional/apparatus), EP1639898A4, JP4367952B2, CA2546456A1, WO2004112489A1.

The four issued claims (summarized):

The novelty center of gravity is therefore the passive, sensor-free Y-shaped guide geometry (slot + downstream round-blade cutter; or throat + open groove) that uses the swinging clamped thighbone to self-align the sinew for cutting — explicitly to avoid detecting the white-cap boundary (see Abstract and DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION).

2. Patent citations listed on the front page ("Patent Citations (6)")

All six are pre-2003 publications and therefore qualify as prior art by date (pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)) against the 2003-06-20 priority. My bottom-line finding: none of the six discloses the claimed Y-guide-with-a-cutter / Y-guide-with-a-groove structure, so none clearly anticipates any of claims 1–4 under § 102. They are properly characterized as § 103 obviousness/background references. Details per reference:

2.1 JPS6143954A — Stork PMT B.V.

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open (Kokai) JP S61-43954 A, applicant ストルク プムト ビー・ブイ (Stork PMT B.V.), "Apparatus for separating foot from carcass part of edible slaughtered poultry" (屠殺された食用飼鳥類の死体部分から足を分離する装置).
• Dates: priority/laid-open basis 1984-05-29; publication 1986-03-03.
• Brief description: Apparatus for separating the feet/legs from carcass parts of slaughtered poultry. General leg-separation art; no oyster-meat/thigh-meat separation, no Y-guide, no sinew-slot cutting.
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as prior art (published ~19 years pre-priority). Anticipates no claim (1–4). Relevance: general field only.
• Confidence: Medium (title/date verified via Google Patents citation tables; full text not retrieved).

2.2 US4939813A — Hazenbroek, Jacobus E. (later Systemate Group B.V.)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,939,813 A, "Apparatus for removing the legs from back portion of poultry," application 07/433,148, filed 1989-01-31; granted 1990-07-10. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4939813A/en)
• Brief description: Automated apparatus (for an overhead-shackle line) that cuts tissue at the thigh joints and pulls the poultry backs away from the legs; the related Hazenbroek patent US 5,188,559 expressly aims to leave the "oysters of the thigh joints … on the ends of the leg bones" to avoid marrow leakage.
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as prior art (§ 102(b)). It speaks to the "oyster" concept and to keeping oyster tissue on the thighbone end, but discloses no clamped-swinging-thighbone, no Y-guide, and no slot/cutter separation of oyster meat from thigh meat. Anticipates no claim (1–4). Relevance: § 103 background on oyster anatomy handling.
• Confidence: High on dates/title; the "oyster-on-leg-bone" language is from the sibling patent US 5,188,559 (same inventor/family), verified live.

2.3 JPH04228022A — Stork PMT B.V.

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open JP H04-228022 A, applicant Stork PMT B.V., "Method and device for separating the legs of slaughtered poultry from the carcass" (屠殺家禽の脚部を胴部から分離する方法及び装置).
• Dates: priority 1990-05-31; publication 1992-08-18.
• Brief description: Method/device to separate legs from carcass of slaughtered poultry (hip-joint incisions, joint-ball push-out, pulling legs off). (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7195554B2/en#5)
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as prior art. No Y-guide-with-a-cutter, no guide-with-a-groove, no clamping below the knee for a swinging-thighbone final separation step. Anticipates no claim (1–4).
• Confidence: Medium-high on citation/date; content inferred from titles/related Stork family (e.g., US 5,176,563) — full Japanese text not retrieved.

2.4 JPH05184281A — Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. ("patent literature 1")

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open JP H05-184281 A, applicant Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd., "Deboning method and deboner" (脱骨方法とその装置).
• Dates: priority 1991-07-30; publication 1993-07-27.
• Brief description: This is the "patent literature 1" expressly discussed in US 7,195,554's BACKGROUND and shown in FIGS. 5–7 of the patent. It is the eight-station octagonal rotary-table thigh-deboning apparatus (ST1–ST8) that scrapes meat in zones E/F/G and cuts sinews, stopping at a stage where the oyster meat is still connected to the white cap and the thigh meat adheres to the oyster meat via a membrane (patent, col. discussion and FIG. 6).
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as prior art, and is the closest background reference — but it discloses only the upstream deboning and explicitly leaves the final separation unsolved (it is the problem the '554 patent solves). It contains no Y-guide-with-a-cutter / guide-with-a-groove and no claim-1 swing-clamp + slot-cutter step. Anticipates no claim (1–4). Highly relevant for § 103 as the starting point combined with an oyster-separation device.
• Confidence: High (the specification itself reproduces this reference's disclosure and figures).

2.5 JPH104868A — Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd.

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open JP H10-4868 A, applicant Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd., "Auto loading system for round" (round/bone-in work auto-loading system).
• Dates: priority/filing 1996-06-21; publication 1998-01-13.
• Brief description: The auto-loading system of FIG. 8 in the patent (transfer conveyor 70, buffer conveyors 80, shifting devices 90, loading devices 100, deboning apparatuses 110, controller 111).
• § 102 assessment: Qualifies as prior art but is directed to loading, not to separating oyster meat from thigh meat. Anticipates no claim (1–4). Relevance: § 103 background on line architecture only.
• Confidence: Medium (cited and reproduced in the patent's BACKGROUND; full JP text not retrieved).

2.6 JP2002010732A — Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. (the most relevant cited reference)

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open JP 2002-10732 A, applicant Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd., inventors Shozo Kozu (神津昭三) and Takeshi Iketani (池谷武); "Method for separating thigh and device therefor" (腿肉分離方法とその装置). Application JP2000-197936.
• Dates: priority/filing 2000-06-30; publication 2002-01-15. (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002010732A/en)
• Brief description (from live text): A device for deboning the femur and separating the thigh from the terminal end of the femur after the tibia and knee joint have been deboned. It comprises a liftable holding member 15 for the upper and lower portions of the knee joint, a meat separator 23 (fixed separator 20 + movable separator 22), a sensor 30 for detecting the final position for tearing off the thigh, and a cutter 31 for cutting sinews/stripes.
• § 102 assessment: This is the closest art in the citation list and is same-assignee, same-field. It clamps/holds at the knee joint, separates thigh meat at the femur end, and cuts the connecting sinew(s). However, it teaches position detection by a sensor 30 — the very sensing approach US 7,195,554 was written to eliminate ("without detecting the boundary of the white cap"). It discloses no Y-shaped guide, no narrow slot with a downstream cutter, and no throat/open-groove guide. On the strict "every element" test for anticipation, it therefore does not anticipate claims 1, 2, 3 or 4. It is, notwithstanding, the primary § 103 reference: it supplies "clamp at the knee joint → separate thigh meat at the femur terminal → cut sinew with a cutter," and the only meaningful delta is the claimed sensor-free Y-guide geometry.
• Confidence: High on dates and on the sensor/holding-member/meat-separator/cutter disclosure (live retrieval).

3. Non-patent citation

• Only NPL entry: "Relevant portion of International Search Report of corresponding PCT Application PCT/JP03/07851."
• Nature: An ISR is not itself prior art; it merely identifies the art the ISA considered. It cannot anticipate any claim. It is, however, the procedural origin of the six references above.

4. References that cite US 7,195,554 (not prior art to it)

The "Cited By" list (e.g., EP2885975A1, Meyn, priority 2013-12-20; US9155316B2, Meyn; US9572355B2 and US9826748B2, Foodmate, 2011; KR20140056067A, Foodmate; US10201167B2, Campbell; US10993447B2, Mayekawa, 2018; US8070567B2, Mayekawa, 2006) all post-date the 2003-06-20 priority and therefore cannot be § 102 prior art to '554. Notably, Meyn's US 9,155,316 characterizes '554/'436 as clamping "the thighbone at the knee joint so that the thighbone can be swung to be tilted forward while transferred" and cutting the sinew in a narrow slot — useful only as later evidence of what '554 discloses, not as anticipation.

5. Conclusion and ranking

Direct answer to the request: Searching for the specific number 7195554 returns US 7,195,554 B2 and its six front-page patent citations (all listed above). Examining each against claims 1–4, no cited reference discloses every element of any claim, and in particular none discloses the recited Y-shaped guide with a narrow slot and a downstream cutter (or the narrow-throat/open-groove variant) operating on a clamped, freely swinging thighbone. The closest and most probative reference is JP2002010732A (Mayekawa, 2000-06-30), which is a strong § 103 combination candidate for claims 1, 3 and 4 but not a § 102 anticipation because it requires a sensor (30) to locate the tear-off position — the specific function the '554 claims avoid.

6. Caveats / confidence

• Full text of JPS6143954A, JPH04228022A, and JPH104868A was not independently retrieved; descriptions are based on their titles/dates in the patent's citation tables and on the specification's discussion. Treat the "no anticipation" conclusions for these three as medium-confidence and subject to confirmation against the original Japanese texts.
• US 7,195,554 is expired (fee-related lapse 2011-03-27); anticipation analysis is historical/defensive only.
• If a formal anticipation chart is required, the next verification step would be to pull the full text of JP2002010732A and JPH05184281A in Japanese and confirm the absence of any "Y-guide"/"narrow slot + downstream cutter" disclosure; the search UI hit a step cap before those translations could be fully expanded.

I'll research the prior art references cited on this patent's page to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me gather more detail on the two most technically relevant cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,195,554 B2

"Method and apparatus for separating thigh meat and oyster meat"
Assignee: Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. · Inventors: Koji Kido; Hiroyuki Hayakawa (dec.) · Priority: 2003‑06‑20 (PCT/JP2003/007851) · Filed: 2005‑12‑20 (bypass continuation) · Granted: 2007‑03‑27 · Status: Expired – Fee Related
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7195554B2](/patent/US7195554B2)/en

Scope note / confidence statement. This analysis is built on (i) the authoritative full text of US 7,195,554 provided, and (ii) the six references listed in the "Citations (6)/Patent Citations (6)" (Prior Art) section of that page, plus what I could retrieve about them by live search. I was able to retrieve substantive text for JP 2002‑10732 A, JP 61‑043954 A, US 4,939,813 / its Hazenbroek family, and the background reference JP 5‑184281 A. I could not retrieve full text for JP 4‑228022 A or JP 10‑4868 A, and for JP 5‑184281 A I have only the portions reproduced inside the '554 specification. Statements about those three are therefore flagged as lower confidence and should be verified against their full texts before being relied upon.

1. Legal framework and critical date

• Governing law: 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (pre‑AIA, because the application was filed before 2013‑03‑16), as construed by Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).
• Critical date: The '554 patent claims the benefit of PCT/JP2003/007851 filed 2003‑06‑20 ("This application is a Bypass Continuation of PCT International Application PCT/JP2003/007851 filed on Jun. 20, 2003"). Prior art therefore must predate 2003‑06‑20 (with § 102(b) art predating 2002‑06‑20 being of the strongest evidentiary character). All six cited references predate 2003 by at least a decade.
• Obviousness test: (1) determine the scope and content of the prior art; (2) determine the differences between the claims and the prior art; (3) determine the level of ordinary skill; (4) evaluate secondary considerations. Under KSR, a combination is obvious not only when the prior art expressly suggests it, but also where it is "the product of ordinary creativity" and "there was an apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion claimed."

Proposed level of ordinary skill (POSITA): a mechanical/process engineer with ~3–5 years' experience designing automated poultry‑processing machinery (or a technician with equivalent practical experience), familiar with poultry thigh anatomy — thighbone/femur, tibia, knee joint, the terminal cartilage "white cap," the "oyster" lump of meat, and the sinew/membrane attachments — and with conveyor‑line deboning (chuck/clamp holding, guide surfaces, and rotary cutters). This is the skill level reflected in the cited references themselves.

2. The claimed subject matter (claims 1–4)

The patent has four method claims only (the apparatus claims live in the sibling division, US 7,344,436 B2).

Common preamble elements (all claims): suspending the work by clamping the thighbone just below the knee joint so the thighbone can be swung during conveyance; the work being a thigh portion of an edible beast or fowl.

Two structural families of claims emerge:

• "Cutter" family (claims 1 and 3): Y‑guide + base slot + downstream cutter cuts the sinew.
• "Groove" family (claims 2 and 4): Y‑guide + throat + open groove strips thigh meat from oyster meat.

Claim 3 is the broadest of the "cutter" family (no groove device needed). Claim 4 is the broadest of the "groove" family (no guide‑with‑a‑cutter needed; the cutting step is generic).

3. The prior art of record (from the "Prior Art" section)

Also on the page: Non‑Patent Citation — the International Search Report of PCT/JP03/07851; family/related docs WO 2004/112489 A1, EP 1 639 898 A1, JP 4367952 B2, CA 2546456 A1; sibling US 7,344,436; and third‑party later art (e.g., Meyn EP 2 885 975 A1; Foodmate US 9,572,355 / 9,826,748).

4. Element‑by‑element mapping

4.1 The "cutter" family — claims 1 and 3

4.2 The "groove" family — claims 2 and 4

5. Specific obviousness combinations

Combination A — JP 2002‑10732 A + JP 61‑043954 A (renders claims 1 and 3 obvious)

JP '732 supplies every "environmental" element: the same technical field, the same end‑of‑deboning step, holding at the knee joint, a meat separator that tears the thigh meat, and a cutter that cuts the connecting sinew/stripe at the femur terminus. What it lacks is the claimed passive Y‑guide‑with‑slot; it instead teaches a sensor 30 to find the cut position.

JP '954 supplies precisely that missing element: a conveying‑line guide with two diverging guide edges leading to downstream knives that cut the joint tissue while the valuable "oyster" is deliberately left on the leg — i.e., a guide that both aligns a joint with a cutter and performs the sinew cut without any position sensor.

Motivation to combine: Both are poultry deboning devices (A22C 21/00), both operate on suspended parts in a conveyor line, and JP '954 is expressly directed to leaving the oyster meat on the leg — the very outcome the '554 claims seek. The '554 specification itself states the object of the invention is to separate the meats "without detecting the boundary of the white cap … and inserting a cutter into the detected boundary part," which is an express, articulated motivation to replace the sensor‑based approach of JP '732 with the passive guide‑based approach taught by JP '954. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious." Substituting a passive guide/slot for a sensor‑plus‑cutter is a predictable, cost‑ and reliability‑driven design choice.

Combination B — JP 61‑043954 A + US 4,939,813 A (+ JP 5‑184281 A) (renders claim 3, and claim 1, obvious)

Claim 3 requires only the guide‑with‑a‑cutter to separate "thigh meat with the oyster meat" from the white cap. JP '954 already discloses a guide‑plus‑knife station on a suspended‑poultry line that cuts the connective tissue at the joint and deliberately keeps the oyster on the leg (i.e., the meat mass is released from the joint). US '813 adds express teaching of an "inverted V‑shaped guide bar" that "align[s] the thigh joints … with [the] blades," with "the oysters of the thigh joints remaining on the ends of the leg bones." JP '281 confirms that, in this exact class of machine, the oyster meat ends up hanging by a sinew from the white cap — i.e., that this is the step the artisan would target for automation. The combination yields claim 3's subject matter with a reasonable expectation of success.

Combination C — JP 2002‑10732 A + JP 5‑184281 A (+ JP 61‑043954 A) (renders claims 2 and 4 obvious)

The "groove" limitation (a Y‑guide whose open slot passes the oyster meat but not the thigh meat) is a size‑selection strip of the kind routinely employed in the same art: JP '281's elastically enlargeable draw‑through hole strips meat off the shinbone, and the '554 specification itself describes the complementary behavior (oyster meat passes the open groove; thigh meat "can not pass through the open groove and resides under the guide"). Making the guide's base slot larger than the oyster meat but smaller than the thigh meat is a predictable dimensional choice based on the known relative sizes of the parts, and applying it to the guide of JP '954 / JP '732 is the mere "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

Combination D (secondary support) — JP 4‑228022 A and/or JP 10‑4868 A for the conveying/clamping context in all claims

JP '022 (Stork) teaches separating a leg from a trunk by dislocating the joint and cutting the remaining tissue; JP '868 (Mayekawa) teaches a conveyor/loader architecture for feeding thighs to deboning stations. Neither is directed to the final oyster/thigh separation, so each is properly used as background art showing that clamping/conveying a thigh at the knee joint in a line that then performs guide‑and‑cutter operations was known, rather than as a primary reference. (Lower confidence: full texts not retrieved.)

6. Why a POSITA would have been motivated — consolidated

1. Same field, same problem. Every reference is poultry‑leg/thigh deboning on a conveyor (A22C 21/00; the '554 page itself classifies it at A22C 21/00, A22C 21/0069, A22C 21/0076). JP '954 and US '813 address the identical goal of severing the joint cleanly while keeping the oyster meat on the bone; JP '281 and JP '732 address finishing the thigh debone and cutting the sinew at the femur terminus.
2. Express reason to modify the closest art. The '554 specification's stated object is to work "without detecting the boundary of the white cap … and inserting a cutter into the detected boundary part." That is a self‑identified improvement over the sensor‑based JP '732 approach and is itself a motivation to substitute the known passive guide/cutter arrangement of JP '954 / US '813.
3. Established function of each element. Y‑shaped guides that gather/align a joint with a downstream cutter (JP '954, US '813/'559), slots/holes sized to pass one anatomical part while stripping another (JP '281), and knee‑joint clamps on a moving line (JP '732) are all known to perform their respective functions; combining them is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" (KSR).
4. Economic/automation pressure. The '554 background documents that the final separation of oyster meat from thigh meat "is needed to be performed manually," and that turkey thighs are heavy and dangerous to debone by hand — a classic cost/safety/labor motivation to automate a known manual step using known mechanical guides and cutters.
5. Predictable variation. The '554 specification concedes that making the clamp swingable merely "cancel[s] … influence of individual difference of works in size" — an expected result that, standing alone, cannot supply patentability.

7. Counter‑arguments (grounds on which validity could be defended)

A rigorous analysis must flag where these combinations are vulnerable:

1. The specific base‑slot geometry. The cited guides (JP '954's diverging guide edges; US '813/'559's inverted V‑shaped bar) are guide bars/edges with adjacent knives, not a "Y‑shaped guide [having] a narrow slot extending along the conveying direction at a base part thereof" whose downstream opening is fronted by the cutter, with the white cap riding on the base part. If no combination discloses or suggests that particular slot‑at‑the‑base/cutter‑at‑the‑exit arrangement, claims 1–3 (and the slot dimensioning of claims 2 and 4) could survive. This is the single strongest non‑obviousness argument.
2. JP '732 could be argued to point a different way. JP '732 (closest art, 2000) teaches the sensor approach; one could argue a POSITA would have improved that approach rather than abandon it. This is a weak "teaching away" argument, however, because JP '732 does not criticize or discredit guide‑based separation, and KSR cautions that a mere disclosure of one workable technique does not foreclose others.
3. Secondary considerations. The '554 background asserts the final separation step "is not yet automatized" despite long‑standing automation of the rest of the thigh deboning line — potentially cognizable as long‑felt need and failure of others (JP '281, 1991; JP '732, 2000, from the same assignee). This evidence is weakened by the fact that the closest art and the patent share the same assignee (Mayekawa), so the "failure" is that of the patentee's own earlier work rather than of the field at large.
4. Functional language. Claim 1's operative limitations ("the Y‑shaped guide contacts the thighbone and swings the thighbone toward upstream," "the white cap rides on the base part … while the sinew … is introduced into the narrow slot") are recited as structural interactions, which the patentee may argue are not taught by the cited structures.

8. Bottom line

• Claims 3 and 4 are the most exposed. Claim 3 needs only a "guide‑with‑a‑cutter" that cuts the sinew at the base of a diverging guide — closely approached by JP 61‑043954 A (guide edges + downstream knives that cut the joint tissue while keeping the oyster on the leg) and US 4,939,813 A (V‑shaped guide bar aligning the joint with blades), in the context of JP 5‑184281 A. Claim 4 needs only a Y‑guide/​throat/​open‑slot stripper, a size‑selection strip of the kind long known in the field (JP 5‑184281 A's flexible draw‑through hole; the separators of JP 2002‑10732 A).
• Claims 1 and 2 are obvious over JP 2002‑10732 A in view of JP 61‑043954 A (and/or US 4,939,813 A / US 5,188,559, and JP 5‑184281 A), with the motivation supplied by the '554 specification's own stated object of eliminating sensor‑based boundary detection.
• The principal escape route for the patentee is the precise "narrow slot at the base of a Y‑shaped guide with the cutter fronting the slot's downstream opening" geometry and the riding‑on‑the‑base/​sinew‑in‑slot interaction — the combinations above approach but do not perfectly reproduce that geometry on the record available, so the strongest § 103 case would require either (a) reliance on the analogous teachings in JP '954/US '813, or (b) an additional reference or expert testimony establishing that this slot‑at‑the‑base/​cutter‑at‑the‑exit arrangement was a known expedient in conveyor‑line poultry cutting stations.
• Practical note: The patent expired 2011‑03‑27 (for nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 C.F.R. § 1.362 per the page's Legal Events) and its 20‑year term ran to 2023‑06‑20, so this obviousness analysis is of historical/validity‑challenge interest rather than current commercial significance.

Verify before relying on: the full texts of JP 4‑228022 A, JP 10‑4868 A, and JP 5‑184281 A (the last is quoted only as reproduced inside the '554 specification), and the Hausenbroek family relationship between US 4,939,813 and US 5,188,559.