US 7225787

I'll search for the specific patent number and any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me run a couple of targeted follow-up searches to confirm docket status.

Let me check whether the full claim set (claims 3–9) and any '787-specific docket activity is available.

US Patent 7,225,787 — Analyst Summary

Search scope note up front: I searched for this exact number (no fuzzy matching to neighbors). I found no CAFC 2026 docket and no live Federal Circuit appeal naming U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787 as a patent-in-suit. The 2026 activity in this patent family concerns different patents (see "Litigation/docket status" below). Treat all docket statements as search-derived, not authoritative court-record citations.

Bibliographic data (from the patent record)

Continuity (confirmed by USPTO file-history records surfaced in search): The '787 is a continuation-in-part of 10/991,774 (filed 2004-11-18, now U.S. 7,314,033). It is itself the parent of 11/758,157 (abandoned) → 12/701,034 (U.S. 8,468,983) → 13/546,220 → 14/220,529 → 14/807,125 (U.S. 9,708,965) and related chains. This matches the "CIP of 10/991,774; PAT 7314033" line in the file-history excerpt.

Abstract (verbatim)

Fuel management system for enhanced operation of a spark ignition gasoline engine. Injectors inject an anti-knock agent such as ethanol directly into a cylinder. It is preferred that the direct injection occur after the inlet valve is closed. It is also preferred that stoichiometric operation with a three way catalyst be used to minimize emissions. In addition, it is also preferred that the anti-knock agents have a heat of vaporization per unit of combustion energy that is at least three times that of gasoline.

Plain-language overview of the claims

Important caveat on completeness: The patent text available to me renders claim 1 in full but truncates claim 2 mid-sentence, and does not show claims 3–9. So I can give a complete plain-language read of claim 1 only; for claim 2 I can characterize it only from its preamble and opening limitations. I cannot verify the scope of claims 3–9 from primary text. (USPTO records do confirm the '787 has claims 1–9, and that "claims 1–9 of U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787" were cited as double-patenting reference in later applications — consistent with all 9 claims being the '787 claim set.)

Claim 1 (independent) — an extraordinarily long "kitchen-sink" system claim

Claim 1 is a single turbocharged-engine system claim that layers many separate limitations, each introduced by "wherein." In plain terms it covers:

• The engine platform: a spark-ignition engine with a compression ratio of 11:1 or greater, plus a turbocharger.
• Two fueling paths: port fuel injection of gasoline from a first source and direct injection of liquid E85 from a second source; both used together during part of engine operation.
• Two quantitative thresholds: at some operating conditions the instantaneous ethanol-to-total-fuel energy ratio is ≥ 20%, and the directly injected E85 raises the fuel octane number by ≥ 20 octane numbers versus port-fueled gasoline alone.
• A control architecture: a microprocessor fuel-management system that raises the E85/gasoline ratio to prevent knock as boost/manifold pressure rises, using both open-loop control (lookup table) and closed-loop control (knock sensor) to vary the ratio and to minimize E85 consumption.
• Stoichiometry + three-way catalyst: the system meters air, gasoline, and E85 to hold a substantially stoichiometric air/fuel ratio during all or part of ethanol injection, based on the knock sensor, an oxygen sensor, and the lookup table, thereby enabling a three-way catalyst.
• Fallback / "no ethanol available" behavior: if the E85 source is empty, gasoline is directly injected, and the vehicle runs at higher loads than with port-fueled gasoline alone; turbocharging is reduced or eliminated and spark retard is increased; the amount of E85 remaining is an input used to modulate turbocharging and spark retard.
• Driver-selectable tradeoff: the driver can set the maximum level of turbocharging, permitting a continuous tradeoff between the E85/gasoline consumption ratio and maximum torque/horsepower.
• Flex-fuel operation: the engine may run on more E85 than needed for knock prevention, or solely on E85.
• Cold start: a greater-than-ordinary gasoline fraction is used during the first 30 seconds of operation.
• Packaging: the two sources are separate compartments of one fuel tank; denatured ethanol can be supplied by containers.
• Efficiency-increase proviso: with direct ethanol injection the engine delivers the same horsepower with at least 20% better efficiency than an engine of at least twice the cylinder volume running on port-fuel injected gasoline alone.

Claim 2 (independent) — apparent sibling of claim 1

The preamble indicates it is the same turbocharged, high-compression-ratio (≥11:1) dual-fuel engine concept, but reciting "liquid denatured ethanol" from the second source rather than "E85." Its text is truncated in the record before me, so I cannot state the full scope with confidence.

Claims 3–9

Not visible in the source text available. Given established practice in this family (heavily "wherein"-layered independent claims with dependent claims hanging off them), these are likely dependents, but I do not have authoritative text — flagging as unverified.

Litigation / docket status (search-derived)

• No CAFC 2026 docket for 7,225,787 found. The nearest Federal Circuit activity is Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., Nos. 2024-1381, -1382, -1383 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 23, 2025) — a precedential opinion (Judge Chen, joined by Clevenger and Hughes) affirming PTAB obviousness invalidation of U.S. 10,619,580, 10,781,760, and 9,708,965. The '787 is not one of the patents on appeal. (Note: one secondary source rendered the '760 patent as "10,791,760"; the PTAB/CAFC materials say 10,781,760. I am not auto-correcting either figure — flagging the discrepancy.)
• The '787 appears only as evidence, not as a patent-in-suit: its file history was submitted as Exhibit 1021 in IPR2021-00339 (Ford Motor Co. v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology), which concerned the '580 patent. The '787 was also used as a double-patenting reference against later MIT applications, prompting terminal disclaimers over the '787 filed by applicants (e.g., January 20, 2010).
• Real parties in interest in the IPRs: MIT (patent owner) and Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (exclusive licensee). District case: Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC et al. v. Ford Motor Company, No. 1:20-cv-00706-CFC (D. Del.), stayed pending IPR.
• Why no '787 appeal in 2026: the patent's legal status is Expired – Fee Related with an adjusted expiration of 2024-12-19, so it is not a plausible candidate for live 2026 enforcement/appeal activity.

Reliability notes / uncertainties

• Title, inventors, assignee, dates, application number, pre-grant publication, claim count, classifications, and abstract are all taken from the patent record supplied in the task and are high confidence.
• The plain-language claim analysis is complete only for claim 1; claims 2–9 are partially or wholly absent from the available text. Do not rely on my claim 2 characterization as a scope statement.
• The negative docket finding ("no CAFC 2026 docket for '787") reflects targeted search results; it is a good-faith negative, not a certified court-records clearance. Official confirmation would require a Docket Alarm / PACER / CAFC CM-ECF lookup under the exact string "7,225,787."
• The expiration date is a legal-status field value from the patent record and is explicitly an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7225787. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me refine my searches to focus specifically on this patent number.

Let me search for whether the '787 patent itself was ever asserted, and for the related 2019 case.

I was able to complete several searches before hitting the tool-call limit. Here is what the record shows — with an important caveat up front.

Bottom line

I could not find any district-court litigation or PTAB proceeding in which U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787 itself was the asserted/challenged patent. The well-publicized enforcement campaign involving this technology — Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS) & MIT v. Ford Motor Co. — was litigated on later patents in the same family ('965, '580, '760), not on the '787 patent. If '787 was ever asserted in a suit or challenged in an IPR, that fact did not surface in my searches, and I am not going to fabricate a case for it.

Note also that '787 is now "Expired – Fee Related" (adjusted expiration 2024‑12‑19 per Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7225787](/patent/US7225787)/en), which materially limits its current litigation value.

What I did find (family enforcement — NOT '787 itself)

1. Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC & MIT v. Ford Motor Co. — District Court (the 2020 case)

• Plaintiffs: Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (owner; EBS exclusive licensee)
• Defendant: Ford Motor Company
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court (Delaware — case number not confirmed in my results; docket is the source of the J.A. cited in the CAFC opinion)
• Filed: October 2020
• Patents asserted: U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,708,965, 10,619,580, and 10,781,760 — not 7,225,787
• Outcome: District court adopted Ford's claim construction (requiring the direct-injected fuel to differ from the port-injected fuel and to contain a non-gasoline anti-knock agent) and entered a stipulated final judgment of non-infringement (April 16, 2021). Vacated/remanded by the Federal Circuit on the "different fuel" issue. See EBS I, No. 21‑1949, 2022 WL 2798395 (Fed. Cir. July 18, 2022) (also reported at 831 F. App'x 505).
• Source: CAFC opinion, https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1381.OPINION.12-23-2025_2623346.pdf

2. The related IPRs (Ford v. MIT) — PTAB

• Petitioner: Ford Motor Company; Patent Owner: MIT (EBS licensee)
• Filed: December 24, 2020 (petitions; numbers referenced in the record include IPR2021‑00339 and IPR2021‑00340)
• Initially denied: July 2, 2021; rehearing granted / instituted: November 21, 2022
• Final written decisions: November 2023 — all challenged claims unpatentable as obvious
• Sources: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00339/Ford_Motor_Company_v._Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology/ ; https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00340/Ford_Motor_Company_v._Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology/

3. CAFC appeals — Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Co.

• Nos. 2024‑1381, ‑1382, ‑1383 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 23, 2025) — precedential (Chen, Clevenger, Hughes, JJ.)
• Outcome: Affirmed all three PTAB obviousness holdings; rejected EBS's challenges under 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) to institution timing and its claim-construction/mandate-rule arguments. Ford's counsel: Alston & Bird.
• Sources: https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1381.OPINION.12-23-2025_2623346.pdf ; https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/12/29/cafc-affirms-ptab-invalidation-mits-fuel-management-patents-dispute-ford/ ; https://www.alston.com/en/insights/news/2026/01/precedential-ip-win-ford-motor-company

4. Earlier case (pre-2020)

Several sources state the 2020 case "stems from a suit filed in 2019 against Ford Motor Company on related patents, which Alston & Bird won after an affirmance at the Federal Circuit in 2020" (the EBS I appeal). The specific patents asserted in the 2019 action were not identified in my search results, and I cannot confirm whether '787 was among them. Source: Alston & Bird (link above).

Caveats and what I could not confirm

• No case number and no court/division for the 2020 district-court action appeared in my results (only the appeal numbers 21‑1949 and 24‑1381/‑1382/‑1383). I did not reach PACER or Unified Patents' litigation portal before the tool limit, so I cannot give you the docket number you asked for.
• The CAFC opinion frames Ford's IPR petitions as being on "all three patents" ('965, '580, '760). No IPR on '787 appeared.
• Whether '787 was ever separately asserted or challenged remains unverified. Given the family relationship (the asserted '965 appears to descend from the '787 family), it is plausible but not established that '787 was asserted in the pre-2020 or 2020 actions; I am not asserting that it was.
• I did not verify the '787 patent's ownership history beyond MIT / EBS as reported.

Recommendation

To close the gaps, the authoritative sources to check directly are:

1. PACER — D. Del. docket for EBS/MIT v. Ford (2020) and the 2019 predecessor case, to confirm which patents were asserted.
2. Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — filter by patent number 7,225,787.
3. PTAB (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and USPTO PatentCenter — search '787 for any IPR/PGR and for assignment/licensing records.

If you can grant me additional searches, I'll pull the D. Del. docket numbers and confirm definitively whether '787 was ever asserted.

I'll verify the PTAB landscape for this patent before writing anything. Let me start with targeted searches.

Key lead: Ford filed a wave of IPRs against MIT/EBS patents in this family. Let me pin down whether any targeted the '787 patent itself.

Let me verify whether any petition ever targeted the '787 patent itself, versus only its continuations.

I hit my search-step limit before I could run every confirmation query, so I'm flagging confidence levels explicitly below. I did not find — and cannot manufacture — any AIA trial naming the '787 patent as the challenged patent.

PTAB proceedings on US 7,225,787 (Bromberg, Cohn & Heywood / MIT)

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,225,787: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent, and my independent web searches corroborated that — every Ford Motor Company petition in this patent family targeted continuations of the '787, not the '787 itself. There are therefore no claim-level outcomes (canceled / sustained / settled / institution-denied) to report for this patent. The defensive read: the '787 patent's claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB — not "hardened" and not "dead." A defendant gets neither a free invalidate-by-estoppel argument nor a hardship premium; it gets a clean slate on the claims, but a heavily-litigated family whose invalidity record is a roadmap.

Proceedings on the '787 patent itself

None. Specifically:

• No petition has named U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787 as the challenged patent in an IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding that I could locate.
• The '787 appears in PTAB records only as prior art and as a priority/specification reference, not as the patent under review. In Ford's early-wave petitions, "Bromberg" is defined as U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787, and it was asserted as a § 102 anticipation ground against the patent owner's own later patents (e.g., Ground 1: Claims 1–8 are anticipated by Bromberg in Ford's petition against U.S. Patent No. 8,069,839).

Caveat: My search budget ran out before I could exhaustively check Docket Alarm / PTAB E2E case-by-case for a stray '787 petition from a non-Ford party. The ODP block is the canonical source and says zero; I found nothing contradicting it.

Adjacent family proceedings (NOT proceedings on '787 — context only)

These matter to a '787 defendant because they are the same specification, same inventors, same owner (MIT), same exclusive licensee (Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC), and because several of them are what the Federal Circuit has now decided. None of the outcomes below legally cancels any claim of the '787.

IPR2021-00339 / ‑00340 / ‑00341 — Ford Motor Company v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EBS joined)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (three parallel proceedings)
• Patents challenged: U.S. 10,619,580 (‑339), U.S. 10,781,760 (‑340), U.S. 9,708,965 (‑341)
• Filed: 2020-12-24
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; appealed and affirmed
• Petition grounds: § 103(a) obviousness — e.g., in the '580 IPR, Ground 1 over Schray in view of Miura; Ground 2 over Rubbert in view of Yuushiro and Bosch; Ground 3 over Ohtani in view of Zhao (pre-AIA § 103). All patents post-date the '774 CIP chain and Ford argued the claims were not entitled to the 2004 priority date.
• Institution decision: Denied initially (July 2021) — the Board adopted the district court's construction of the "DI Fuel" terms (requiring the directly injected fuel to be different from the port-injected fuel and to contain a non-gasoline anti-knock agent) and found no reasonable likelihood of prevailing. Ford requested rehearing and asked the Board to hold it in abeyance pending the Federal Circuit appeal of that construction. After EBS I (Fed. Cir. 2022-07-18) reversed the district court's "different fuel" requirement, the Board granted rehearing and instituted on 2022-11-21. EBS unsuccessfully sought mandamus to terminate (In re Ethanol Boosting Systems, Fed. Cir., denied 2023-03-23) and a POP request was denied 2023-01-25.
• Final Written Decision: 2023-11-20 — all challenged claims of all three patents held unpatentable as obvious. (Reported as "all challenged claims"; I did not verify every claim number in the FWD text itself.)
• Settlement / termination: none.
• Appeal: *Fed. Cir. No. 24-1381 — Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., decided 2025-12-23 (Chen, J.) — AFFIRMED.* The court rejected EBS's arguments that the Board lacked authority to grant rehearing after the initial denial and was bound by the non-appealed portion of the district court's construction, adopted plain-and-ordinary meaning of the disputed terms, and found substantial evidence for the obviousness findings.
  • Opinion: https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1381.OPINION.12-23-2025_2623346.pdf
  • CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10763818](/patent/10763818)/ethanol-boosting-systems-llc-v-ford-motor-company/
• Judge panel: not confirmed from my sources (the institution-denial panels in the second wave were Barrett, Browne, and Mayberry). Do not assume these are the FWD panels — I could not verify.
• Defensive value: strong family precedent, zero claim-level effect on the '787.

IPR2019-01399 / ‑01401 / ‑01402 — Ford v. MIT (first wave)

• Patents: U.S. 9,810,166 (‑1399), U.S. 9,255,519 (‑1401), U.S. 10,138,826 (‑1402)
• Filed: 2019-07-26 to 2019-08-02 (petitions dated ~Jul 26/Aug 2, 2019)
• Final Written Decisions: 2021-02-12 — all challenged claims unpatentable over Rubbert (DE 198 53 799 A1) in view of Yuushiro (JP H10‑252512) and the Bosch Automotive Handbook (3d ed. 1993).
• Appeal: not appealed. (Per Ford's updated mandatory notice, "The Final Written Decisions were not appealed.")
• Defensive value: these are now final, unappealable claim cancellations in the family — usable as support for an obviousness narrative against '787, though they carry no estoppel or preclusive effect as to '787.

IPR2019-01400 — Ford v. MIT

• A fourth first-wave petition; it did not result in a final written decision finding claims unpatentable (the mandatory notice lists only the three above as concluding in FWDs). Flagged as medium-confidence on the underlying patent and disposition.

IPR2020-00010 / ‑00011 / ‑00012 / ‑00013 — Ford v. MIT (second wave)

• Patents: '166, '519, '826, '839 respectively
• Filed: 2019-10-16
• Status: Institution DENIED (e.g., IPR2020-00010, Panel: Barrett, Browne, Mayberry — denial under § 314(a), including discretionary denial), largely tracking the same claim-construction problem that later sank the initial institution decisions in the 2021 IPRs.
• Defensive value: a reminder that this owner successfully used claim construction to defeat institution until the Federal Circuit intervened. That lever is now gone in the family.

Strategic summary

Claim status of '787. UNTESTED. No claim of 7,225,787 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. All claims 1–9 as issued remain on the books. But note the legal status from the structured data: "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024-12-19." The patent has lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, which means (a) no ongoing royalty exposure and no injunction, only past damages for any pre-expiration infringement, and (b) an IPR would be of limited practical value given the cost. Much of the family (the '166, '519, '826, '965, '580, '760) has been invalidated — a pattern that should inform any damages negotiation, because the '787 shares the same specification and the same 2004/2005 priority chain that Ford successfully attacked on § 112 priority grounds in the other proceedings.

Estoppel landscape. Because there is no IPR on the '787, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not apply to this patent at all. Ford's estoppel from the family IPRs attaches to the grounds it raised or reasonably could have raised against the '580/'760/'965 and the '166/'519/'826 — not to '787. Practically, § 315(e)(2) estoppel mostly runs against Ford in the family, but a new defendant being asserted on '787 is under no estoppel constraint and may raise any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 art it can find. The Rubbert–Yuushiro–Bosch and Schray–Miura combinations that killed the children are the natural starting point for an invalidity theory against '787's claims — but they were applied to later, narrower claims, so a '787-specific analysis (and its 2004-11-18 priority date, which is the earliest date in the family and therefore the hardest to antedate) is required. Note also the § 315(b) one-year bar: if you have been served with a complaint asserting '787, your clock is running.

Pattern signals. One petitioner, Ford Motor Company, drove essentially all of the family's PTAB activity across two dockets (D. Del. C.A. Nos. 1:19‑cv‑00196‑CFC, "Ford I," and 1:20‑cv‑00706‑CFC, "Ford II") and two IPR waves. The same petitioner filed multiple IPRs on the same patent (duplicate waves on '166/'519/'826/'839 — second wave denied), a hallmark of a well-funded defendant grinding down a portfolio. The patent owner (MIT/EBS) did litigate aggressively: appeals in 2020‑1472 (Rule 36 affirmance 2020‑12‑11), 2021‑1949 (Fed. Cir. 2022‑07‑18, vacating the district court's "different fuel" construction), a mandamus petition to terminate the IPRs, and the 2024‑1381 appeal of the FWDs — all unsuccessful except EBS I. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain; this was Ford-versus-MIT/EBS throughout.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not rely on PTAB outcomes for the '787. There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM on this patent; the FWDs invalidating the '580, '760, '965, '166, '519, and '826 do not cancel any '787 claim. Anyone claiming the '787 "has been invalidated" is wrong.
2. Check the expiration and the damages window first. The structured data states the patent is "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024‑12‑19." Confirm via USPTO Patent Center / maintenance-fee records that it lapsed; if so, your exposure is limited to pre‑expiration past damages, and the exemption from ongoing license negotiations is substantial.
3. Build an invalidity case against the '787's actual claims — in the district court, not the PTAB. Claim 1 is a turbocharged, compression-ratio‑≥11 spark-ignition engine with port gasoline injection plus direct E85 injection (≥20% instantaneous ethanol energy fraction, ≥20‑octane enhancement), knock-sensor closed-loop plus open-loop lookup control, stoichiometric operation with a three-way catalyst, and dual-compartment tank. Because the '787 is the CIP parent, its priority date of 2004‑11‑18 is the earliest in the chain and cannot be attacked via the "not entitled to the '774 filing date" theory Ford used against the later patents — that theory wins only for claims first supported in the 2005 CIP. Consider whether the '787's own claims 1–9 suffer the same written-description/§ 112 problems the Board and district court identified for the DI Fuel terms.
4. Mine the existing record rather than reinventing it. The Ford petitions, the Clark declarations, the EBS I and 24‑1381 opinions, and the three unappealed 2021‑02‑12 FWDs are a ready-made invalidity roadmap. Start with: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00339/Ford_Motor_Company_v._Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology/ and the Federal Circuit opinion at https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1381.OPINION.12-23-2025_2623346.pdf.
5. If a '787 IPR is contemplated, verify patent availability and confirm no § 315(b) bar; note that instituting against an expired patent is generally permitted but of questionable ROI, and the Board's § 314(a)/§ 325(d) discretionary-denial practice (as seen in IPR2020‑00010) is a live risk.

Two caveats on my research: (i) I stopped at my tool-step limit before completing exhaustive PTAB E2E / Docket Alarm sweeps, so treat "zero proceedings" as corroborated-but-not-exhaustive, consistent with the canonical ODP block; (ii) I could not confirm the APJ panels or verbatim claim-by-claim dispositions of the 2023‑11‑20 FWDs — I have reported them only at the "all challenged claims unpatentable" level, which is what the Federal Circuit opinion states.

I'll research this patent's ownership chain. Let me start with targeted searches.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,225,787 B2

Scope limitation up front: I was unable to open the USPTO Assignment Center record directly through the available tools (assignment.uspto.gov / assignmentcenter.uspto.gov block programmatic retrieval, and the search layer returned no reel/frame detail). The findings below are grounded in the Google Patents legal-events record for the patent (fetched 2026-09-24) and in the IPR/litigation record. No reel/frame numbers are stated because I could not verify them; I will not invent them. Where a reel/frame would normally appear, the entry is flagged as [reel/frame not retrieved].

Inventors

All three are career MIT personnel (two laboratory researchers plus a tenured engine-science professor), which is why the application was assigned to MIT on filing rather than to a company. Residence data comes from the file-history declarations (App. 11/100,026 and its continuations).

Unusual-pattern note: There is no inventor-departure signal here. The inventors did not leave the original assignee within 12 months — they are the assignee's own faculty/researchers, and they appear as inventors across the entire continuation family (Bromberg, Cohn, Heywood repeatedly). Bromberg and Cohn additionally went on to co-found the exclusive licensee (Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC), which is a commercialization link, not a fire-sale precursor.

Original assignee

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) — named assignee on the face of the issued patent and current owner of record.

• Products embodying the claims: No. MIT is a research university and does not manufacture engines or fuel-management systems. The claimed system (turbocharged, compression ratio ≥ 11, port-injected gasoline + directly injected E85, three-way catalyst) was reduced to a computer model and licensed for commercialization, not built by MIT.
• Primary line of business: Higher education and sponsored research; MIT's Technology Licensing Office (One Cambridge Center, Kendall Square, NE18-501, Cambridge, MA 02142) manages the portfolio.
• Commercialization path: MIT exclusively licensed the family to Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS), a startup formed to commercialize direct-injection ethanol boosting (covered by Green Car Congress, Oct. 25, 2006). EBS is described in the PTAB mandatory notices as the exclusive licensee, with the right to sue for infringement and the exclusive right to sublicense — i.e., a licensee interest, not an assigned ownership interest. That distinction matters below: no transfer of title to EBS appears in the ownership record.
• Current status: MIT — operating (university). EBS — private; its asserted patents were held unpatentable (see below). The '787 patent itself is recorded on Google Patents as "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024-12-19," i.e., it lapsed via maintenance-fee non-payment rather than being litigated to judgment to its own term.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists for this patent — the original inventor-to-MIT assignment. No post-issuance assignment (no transfer to EBS, no LLC, no aggregator) appears in the patent's legal-events record.

• 2005-07-08 (executed/recorded date as shown in Google Patents legal events; execution date not separately confirmed) — Reel [reel/frame not retrieved]
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS")
  • Assignor: Leslie Bromberg; Daniel R. Cohn; John B. Heywood (individually)
  • Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from available records — I could not retrieve the correspondent of record. (For context only, MIT's own Technology Licensing Office address, One Cambridge Center, Kendall Square, NE18-501, Cambridge, MA 02142, appears in the prosecution file histories.) I decline to name an attorney I cannot verify.
  • Context: Inventor assignment of employment/obligation — standard university title-taking on filing; the parent application 10/991,774 (filed 2004-11-18) and this CIP both vested in MIT.

No further recorded assignments. The 2019 and 2020 Ford suits, and the EBS exclusive-license relationship described in the PTAB filings, are not reflected as recorded assignments. Under the rubric, "only the original assignment" is itself the finding: title never left MIT.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7225787
    2004 : Priority application filed
    2005 : CIP application filed
         : Inventors assign to MIT
    2006 : Exclusive license to EBS
    2007 : Patent issued
    2019 : MIT and EBS sue Ford
    2020 : Second Ford suit filed
    2024 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignee with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in the chain. Title remains with MIT per the single recorded assignment (2005-07-08, [reel/frame not retrieved]). EBS holds a license, not title, and is not a recorded assignee.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee or recorded interest matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, or an Erich Spangenberg entity. The asserting party of record is MIT + its exclusive licensee EBS, which do not appear on the RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff lists I can access.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. With only one recorded assignment and the correspondent field unretrieved, recurrence cannot be established. A single appearance would not be a finding in any event.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No chained LLC transfers; nothing in the record shows consecutive assignments within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The first suits were filed in 2019 and 2020, yet no assignment is recorded near either date. Ownership was unchanged from 2005 through the litigation, so the chain was not rearranged to establish standing or venue.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11, no sale of assets in proceedings, no Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style event involving MIT or EBS.

7. Privateering — unclear/weak. MIT (a non-manufacturing research institution) exclusively licensed the technology to an entity that asserts it against automakers, with the licensee holding the right to sue and sublicense. That is structurally adjacent to privateering, but the classic privateering tell — an operating company transferring to an NPE that sues competitors on its behalf, surfaced in an SEC filing — is absent: MIT is not a competitor of Ford, no SEC-disclosed transfer exists, and EBS was founded by the inventors for genuine commercialization (2006 Green Car Congress coverage) rather than as a bare assertion vehicle. I do not score this as a present signal.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. However, note the functional neutralization: the asserted continuation patents (10,619,580; 10,781,760; 9,708,965) were held unpatentable as obvious, affirmed by the Federal Circuit on 2025-12-23, and this '787 patent was allowed to lapse for non-payment around 2024-12-19.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The assignment record for US 7,225,787 consists of a single conveyance — the 2005-07-08 inventor-to-MIT assignment [reel/frame not retrieved] — with no subsequent transfer of title, and therefore no shell-entity, cascading, pre-litigation, or aggregator link to score. Critically, the known assertion activity is not an NPE assignment chain: MIT retained title throughout, and it was MIT's exclusive licensee (Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC) that asserted the continuation patents against Ford in the 2019/2020 Delaware suits — a university tech-transfer/co-plaintiff posture, not a transfer-to-asserter. I note frankly that EBS is a non-practicing licensee litigating the family, which is NPE-adjacent; but because the rubric's NPE call is assignment-chain-based, and this chain has exactly one (original) assignment, the correct categorical answer is insufficient data. Verify the single record and confirm no EBS assignment via the USPTO Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7225787," then "11/100,026").

Grounding: Google Patents legal events for US7225787B2 (single 2005-07-08 assignment to MIT; "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024-12-19") — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7225787/en ; PTAB IPR2021-00339 mandatory notice (EBS as exclusive licensee with right to sue) — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2021-00339/ ; CAFC Nos. 24-1381/-1382/-1383 (Dec. 23, 2025) — https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1381.OPINION.12-23-2025_2623346.pdf ; IPWatchdog coverage — https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/12/29/cafc-affirms-ptab-invalidation-mits-fuel-management-patents-dispute-ford/

I'll search for the specific patent and its citation records.

Let me retrieve the specific citation record for the '787.

Scope, and a candid statement of the evidentiary gap

Two things up front, because they govern everything below.

1. What I could and could not retrieve. I ran targeted searches for the exact string 7225787 / US7225787B2. I was able to pull (a) the authoritative full text you supplied, (b) Google Patents page fragments (classifications, family/priority, "Definitions"), and (c) third-party documents that cite the '787. I was not able to pull the front-page "References Cited / Patent Citations" table of the '787 itself — i.e., the examiner-cited U.S. patent documents that appear under "References Cited" on the printed patent and under "Patent Citations" on the Google Patents page. My search budget ended before I could surface that specific table, and I will not reconstruct it from memory. That is a hard gap, and it is the single most important limitation on this answer.

2. What that means for your question. You asked me to go "patent citation by patent citation" for the '787. I can do that only for the documents that are demonstrably linked to the '787 by primary text or by verifiable third-party record. For the examiner's own list, the correct answer is: not retrieved — verified negative on my search, not a claim that the list is empty.

(Housekeeping flag: your prompt sets "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the system date is 2026-09-29. Immaterial to the substance, but noting the contradiction as instructed.)

Guardrail: three unrelated documents share the string "7225787"

Per the strict literal-identifier rule, these are different documents and must not be conflated with U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787:

I am excluding all of the above — they are "similar numbers," not the patent.

Section 1 — Patent documents explicitly cited inside the '787 disclosure

This is the only patent document I can tie to the '787 from primary text. It is cited in the specification's discussion of on-board fuel separation (filed 2005-04-06; priority 2004-11-18):

Section 2 — Non-patent literature cited in the '787 (all with dates)

These are "citations for 7225787" in a literal sense — they are the references the patent itself cites and incorporates. All are in the public domain and mostly pre-date priority.

Section 3 — The examiner-cited list: not retrieved

The '787 is a 9-claim patent, and its printed face carries a "References Cited" section listing the U.S. patent documents and publications the examiner considered. I did not obtain that list and am not going to guess at it. To complete the task as you specified (reference-by-reference), that table must be pulled from one of:

• USPTO Patent Public Search (ppubs.uspto.gov) — search 7225787, open the full document, "Referenced By / References Cited" tabs;
• USPTO PatentCenter for application 11/100,026 — the file wrapper's Form PTO-892/PTO-1449 lists every reference actually considered;
• Google Patents → US7225787B2 → "Patent Citations" table (the page I could only partially surface);
• FreePatentsOnline / Justia patent/7225787 — "Patent Citations" and "Referenced By" tabs.

Reliability note: everything in Sections 1–2 is grounded in the authoritative full text you supplied. Everything in Section 3 is a verified negative on my tooling, not evidence the list is empty.

Section 4 — Third-party prior art actually asserted against the '787 and its family (the practical "most relevant prior art")

This is the closest verifiable answer to "most relevant prior art," because it reflects real invalidity positions taken in litigation/IPR rather than my inference.

(a) The '787 is itself the primary prior-art reference against its own later family patents. In the Ford v. MIT PTAB petitions, a "Bromberg" reference is used as the lead anticipation reference against later MIT claims, cited by column/line (e.g., "Ex. 1140, Claim 1, 1:43-52, 2:20-21, 3:1-13, 7:46-49, 9:36-47" — this is the '787/Bromberg specification text, including the "determining when and how much E85 must be used to prevent knock" and "open loop control with a look up table and closed loop control with information from a knock sensor" language that is verbatim claim 1 of the '787). Source: ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1529882/... and /1529881/..., /1529901/....
→ Significance: the '787's own disclosure is § 102/§ 103 art against later members (US 10,619,580; 10,781,760; 9,708,965; 9,810,166; etc.). It is not prior art against the '787 itself.

(b) Ford's Initial Invalidity Contentions in Ethanol Boosting Systems LLC & MIT v. Ford, No. 19-cv-196-CFC (D. Del.), Aug. 30, 2019, with Exhibits A–N. These were submitted into the record of US 10,619,580 B2 ("References Cited" cites "The Ford Motor Co.'s Initial Invalidity Contentions… and associated Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, K, L, M, and N"). This is the definitive collection of references Ford contended invalidate the family.
(I did not retrieve the exhibit-by-exhibit reference list within my search budget — flagging as the direct next lookup.)

(c) Document cited in the '787's own IPR/prosecution record: the '787 file history was filed as Exhibit 1021 in IPR2021-00339 (Ford v. MIT) concerning US 10,619,580, and the '787 was used as a double-patenting reference against later MIT applications (terminal disclaimers filed over the '787, e.g., Jan. 20, 2010; also Exhibit 1018 in IPR2021-00340). These are prosecution events, not prior art.

(d) § 102-relevant reference-type art appearing in the related Ford patent US 7,600,503 (where the '787 is a forward-cited reference). To be clear: these are the citations of US 7,600,503, not of the '787 — I list them only because they are the art the field was using against the same problem space, and they may overlap with the '787's examiner list:

Of these, US 6,951,202 B2 (Toyota, "Knocking control system and method for internal combustion engine using multiple fuels") is the most § 102-relevant type of document to the '787's core: multi-fuel knock control. But note its publication date (2005-10-04) is after the '787 priority date (2004-11-18) — so as a patent publication it is not pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) art against the '787. It could only matter via § 102(e) if its underlying application was filed before the '787's priority date with a different inventive entity; I have not verified its filing date. Treat as § 103 art only without further verification.

Section 5 — § 102 analysis, limitation-by-limitation, against claim 1

Caveat that controls this section: the earlier-generated summary (authoritative for cross-reference) establishes that the available record renders claim 1 in full, claim 2 truncated, and claims 3–9 not visible. I therefore can only map references to claim 1 with confidence. Any statement about claims 3–9 would be fabrication, so there is none below.

Legal framing (pre-AIA, consistent with the 2004-11-18 priority date): the '787 is pre-AIA because it was filed 2005-04-06 / priority 2004-11-18. Anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation, arranged as claimed. The Corroborating data bar is high here because claim 1 is an extreme "kitchen-sink" claim — 20+ independently recited limitations including: turbocharger; CR ≥ 11; PFI gasoline source 1; DI liquid E85 source 2; both used during part of operation; instantaneous ethanol energy ratio ≥ 20%; octane enhancement ≥ 20 ON vs. PFI gasoline alone; DI gasoline means; microprocessor FMS raising the E85/gasoline ratio to prevent knock as turbo boost rises; combined open-loop (lookup table) + closed-loop (knock sensor) control; E85 minimization via knock sensor; stoichiometric control via knock sensor + O₂ sensor + lookup table to enable a three-way catalyst; gasoline-DI fallback; higher-load operation on DI gasoline; E85 level as input to turbocharging; turbo reduce/eliminate when no E85; spark-retard increase when no E85; E85 level as input to spark retard; driver-selectable max turbo; E85/gasoline-consumption-vs-torque tradeoff; run on surplus E85; run solely on E85; >ordinary gasoline for the first 30 seconds; separate compartments in one fuel tank; denatured ethanol from containers; and same horsepower with ≥ 20% better efficiency than a ≥ 2× larger PFI-gasoline engine.

Result: None of the references documented in Sections 1–4 appears to anticipate claim 1 as a single reference. Specifically:

Where § 102 anticipation could theoretically arise: the only documents that literally recite claim 1's unusual combination are the '787's own family publications — US 2006/0102136 A1 (the '787's own pre-grant publication, pub. 2006-05-18), US 2006/0102145 A1 (now US 7,314,033) and US 2006/0102146 A1 (now US 7,444,987). All three published after the 2004-11-18 priority date and share the same MIT inventive entity → they are not prior art to the '787 (and the '787 is a CIP of the parent 10/991,774). Confirmed by the Espacenet cited-documents listing pairing "US2006102136 (A1) 2006-05-18 / US7225787 (B2) 2007-06-05 / priority 2004-11-18." This is an affirmative "no anticipation" finding, not a gap.

Bottom line

1. I could not retrieve the '787's examiner-cited "References Cited" table, and I am reporting that as a gap rather than filling it with recollection. That table is the direct answer to your literal question and must be pulled from USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter (app. 11/100,026) or the Google Patents/Justia citation tabs.
2. Documentable patent citation for the '787: US 6,332,448 B1 (cited in-spec as "Ilyama et al"). It predates priority, is directed to fuel supply/separation, and does not anticipate claim 1; § 103 secondary-reference material at best.
3. Documentable NPL citations: Curran et al. 2002; CHEMKIN 4.0 (2004); SAE 2003-01-0542; SAE 2000-01-2902; 2003 DEER EtOH-SCR; SAE J1297 (Sept 2002). None anticipates any claim.
4. The genuinely "most relevant prior art" for this family, verifiably, is not in the '787's citation list — it is the '787 itself, which Ford uses as the lead reference against the later MIT patents (US 10,619,580; 10,781,760; 9,708,965; 9,810,166) in IPR2020-00012 / IPR2021-00339 / IPR2021-00340. The full Ford invalidity reference set is in Ethanol Boosting Systems v. Ford, No. 19-cv-196-CFC, Initial Invalidity Contentions, Aug. 30, 2019, Exhibits A–N (unretrieved exhibit-by-exhibit within budget).
5. § 102 status of claim 1: no anticipation identified from any documented reference. Claims 2 and 3–9 could not be analyzed — claim 2 is truncated and 3–9 are absent from the available record; asserting their scope or which reference anticipates them would be fabrication.

Net reliability statement: Items in Sections 1–2 and 5 and the "no anticipation" family finding are anchored in the authoritative patent text and cited records (URLs given). Section 4(a)–(b) is anchored in PTAB/PACER-mirror documents. The examiner-cited list, the '787's § 102(e) exposure, and any claim 2–9 mapping are unverified and should be treated as open items, not conclusions.

I'll ground this in the actual prior-art references of record for the '787 rather than working from memory. Let me pull the "References Cited" / Citations section and any prosecution history.

Good — I now have the family's cited-reference lists. Let me pin down the '787's own face references and the actual prior-art combinations used in the family's IPRs, plus the examiner's citation of Watanabe against the parent.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,225,787 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Analyst note on inputs. This builds on the earlier-generated summary for this patent (bibliographic data, claim 1 text, docket posture). Two things carried forward: (a) only claim 1 is fully available to me — claim 2 is truncated and claims 3–9 are absent from the source text; (b) the Federal Circuit Ethanol Boosting Systems v. Ford decision concerns sibling patents, not the '787, so it is persuasive context, not controlling precedent for this claim set.

On "the Prior Art section of this page": the Google Patents page supplied in the task renders only prior-art keywords (ethanol, gasoline, fuel, engine, knock) — no (56) citation table. I therefore reconstructed the prior art of record from the family's USPTO citation lists and from IPR/file-history exhibits surfaced in search. Provenance caveats are flagged inline, because the lists I retrieved are cumulative across the family and therefore include documents that are not prior art to the '787 (e.g., Ford Global Technologies' later patents; the applicants' own 2006 MIT report).

1. Legal framework

• Priority date: 2004-11-18 (CIP of 10/991,774). Pre-AIA § 103 governs; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex still supplies the operative standard (flexible motivation; not limited to explicit teaching/teaching/suggestion).
• PHOSITA: a person with an M.S. in mechanical engineering (or equivalent) and ~2 years' experience in spark-ignition combustion and engine calibration.
• Graham factors applied below: scope/content of prior art; differences from claim 1; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations (§ 8).

2. Prior art of record (with provenance)

A. Cited on the face of the family / applied in prosecution

B. Non-patent literature of record

• Modak & Carletto, "Engine Cooling by Direct Injection of Cooling Water," SAE 700887 (1970) — direct injection of a high-latent-heat fluid into the cylinder for charge cooling to suppress knock.
• LoRusso et al., "Direct Injection Ignition Assisted Alcohol Engine," SAE (1998) — direct injection of alcohol in a spark-ignited engine.
• Stan et al., "Internal Mixture Formation and Combustion — from Gasoline to Ethanol," SAE (2001) — DI ethanol; fuel-mixture formation.
• Grandin et al., "Knock Suppression in a Turbocharged SI Engine by Using Cooled EGR," SAE (1998); Grandin et al., "Replacing Fuel Enrichment in a Turbo-Charged SI Engine…," SAE (1999).
• Yuksel et al., "The Use of Ethanol-Gasoline Blend as a Fuel in an SI Engine," Renewable Energy (2004).
• Stokes, Lake & Osborne, "…The Lean Boost System," SAE 2000-01-2902 (cited by applicants).
• Lecointe & Monnier, "Downsizing a Gasoline Engine Using Turbocharging with Direct Injection," SAE 2003-01-0542 (cited by applicants).
• Heywood, Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals (1988), p. 477.
• Bosch Automotive Handbook, 3rd ed. (1993) — not confirmed on the '787 face; it appears in Ford's IPR grounds.

C. Litigation-derived art (not confirmed as '787 record art)
Ford's IPR2019-01399 / -01401 / -01402 final written decisions held family claims unpatentable over Rubbert + Yuushiro (JP H10-252512) + Bosch, and were not appealed (Petitioner's Updated Mandatory Notices, IPR2021-00339). Note: "Yuushiro (JP H10-252512)" is a different document from the JP S63-230920 A on the '787's family list — I do not conflate them.

3. Claim 1 mapped to the art

Notably, claim 1 does not recite "late" injection after intake-valve closing — the patent's principal teaching-away argument therefore cannot be used against claim 1. That point matters (see § 7).

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Rubbert + Watanabe + Modak (+ Lecointe)

Rubbert shows the turbocharged SI architecture with fuel used to manage knock; Watanabe shows dual-fuel operation with direct injection of gasoline and an alcohol/ethanol injection strategy placing ethanol near the cylinder walls, plus a gasoline-only fallback at reduced torque/hp; Modak teaches that direct injection of a high-latent-heat fluid cools the charge and suppresses knock, permitting more aggressive compression/boost; Lecointe supplies the market-driven downsizing/boost rationale. Method: MPEP 2143(A)–(D).

Ground 2 — LoRusso + Stan + Stokes '908 + Yuksel (+ Ilyama)

LoRusso and Stan disclose DI of alcohol/ethanol in a spark-ignition engine and the mixture-formation consequences; Stokes '908 supplies knock/spark control; Yuksel shows ethanol/gasoline blends in SI engines; Ilyama shows a two-source fuel supply with separation. Method: simple substitution of a known anti-knock fuel and use of a known technique to improve a known device.

Ground 3 — Noguchi/Jessel/Takeda/Chivilo (dual-fuel alcohol engines) + Modak + Grandin + Heywood

Alcohol-capable multi-fuel SI engines with fuel metering; Modak for evaporative knock suppression; Grandin for turbo knock suppression and downsizing; Heywood for the baseline stoichiometric/TWC control. Method: obvious-to-try with a finite, identified set of solutions.

Ground 4 — Rubbert + Yuushiro + Bosch (the Ford I combination)

The PTAB, in unappealed final written decisions, held claims of sibling family patents unpatentable over this exact triad (ethanol/methanol/ethers as anti-knock additives; fuel maps; direct-injection knock management). While not binding on the '787's distinct claim set, it is strong evidence of what the art as a whole taught as of the 2004 priority date.

5. Motivation to combine (KSR-aligned)

1. Same field, same problem: all references address knock-limited SI combustion; no field-of-endeavor gap.
2. Predictable result: adding a high-octane, high-latent-heat fuel suppresses knock — the '787's own Table 3 concedes this is a known property of ethanol (ΔT_air = −138 K).
3. Market/regulatory pressure: fuel-economy (CAFE) incentives to downsize + boost (Lecointe; Stokes Lean Boost) made knock suppression the recognized bottleneck.
4. Finite, identified solutions: among candidate fuels, alcohols (ethanol, methanol) and ethers (MTBE/ETBE/TAME) are the enumerated class in the art and in the patent's own Table 3 — a classic "one of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" (KSR).
5. Design incentive to meter the scarce/expensive second fuel: drives the closed-loop knock-sensor control and the boost/spark-retard fallback logic, and the driver-selectable tradeoff.
6. The reference itself supplies the CR linkage: the '787 states CR ≥ 11 is enabled by the octane enhancement — i.e., the claimed CR is a result-effective variable of the claimed cooling, not an independent invention.

6. Numerical thresholds (§ 103 range analysis)

• CR "11 or greater," "≥ 20%" ethanol energy, "≥ 20 octane numbers," "≥ 20%/30% efficiency," "first 30 seconds" — each is an open-ended ("at least") limit. Under In re Peterson / In re Woodruff / In re Geisler, an open-ended range overlapping or adjacent a prior-art range is prima facie obvious, and optimizing a result-effective variable by routine engine calibration is § 103 routine. The burden then shifts to applicant to show criticality, which the '787 record (as available to me) does not appear to do — the specification asserts the benefits but does not establish that the thresholds are critical as opposed to exemplary.
• "Three times [heat of vaporization per unit combustion energy] of gasoline" (abstract/claims-adjacent language) is a measured, inherent property of ethanol vs. gasoline, not a design limit.

7. Weak points / where a patent owner would fight

1. Evaporative-cooling-dominated octane boost. MIT/EBS have consistently argued that the art recognized ethanol's chemical octane but not that charge cooling, not octane number, drives the large knock suppression — and that the art taught early injection for mixing. This is the strongest rebuttal, but it does not reach claim 1 of the '787, which requires only direct injection of E85, not late (post-IVC) injection. It reaches only dependent/other claims — which I cannot see (claims 3–9 unavailable).
2. Unexpected results — the '787's Table 2 (knock-free manifold pressure 1.05 → 2.4 → 4.0 bar) could support non-obviousness if a nexus is shown to the claimed combination. But claim 1 does not require post-IVC injection or the specific pressures, weakening nexus.
3. "No ethanol" fallback + driver-selectable boost limit are arguably not suggested by the art of record in this exact configuration, though flex-fuel mode logic makes them predictable.
4. § 112 and double patenting issues (the family saw restriction requirements and terminal disclaimers over the '787) are relevant to prosecution but not to § 103.

8. Secondary considerations

I found no reliable evidence in the available record of unexpected results, long-felt need, licensing-over-others, industry praise, or copying that would rebut prima facie obviousness for this claim set. Any affirmative case would need the prosecution history of 11/100,026 (Rule 132 declarations, applicant remarks) — which I have not seen, so I flag this as an open item rather than a negative finding.

9. Bottom line

On the art of record, claim 1 of the '787 is more likely than not invalid under § 103 as an obvious combination of (i) a turbocharged high-compression SI platform motivated by downsizing (Rubbert; Lecointe; Stokes Lean Boost; Grandin), (ii) dual-fuel PFI-gasoline + DI-alcohol/ethanol practice (Watanabe; LoRusso; Stan; Ilyama; Yuksel), (iii) evaporative-charge-cooling knock suppression (Modak), and (iv) conventional stoichiometric/three-way-catalyst ECU control with knock-sensor closed loop. The strongest survivable subject matter in this family was the evaporative-cooling / post-IVC-injection insight — which the '787's own claim 1, as written, does not capture.

10. Verification gaps (stated, not papered over)

• The (56) list of the '787 itself was not directly retrievable; I relied on family-member lists and IPR exhibits. Some entries I used (Bosch; Yuushiro JP H10-252512) appear in Ford's IPR grounds, not on the '787's face.
• I have not read the full text of Rubbert, Watanabe, Ilyama, or the SAE papers. My characterizations rest on titles, the '787 specification's own descriptions, and the PTAB/party characterizations — not on independent reading.
• Claims 3–9 are unavailable; the analysis covers claim 1 only. Claim 2 is truncated mid-sentence in the source.
• Docket contradiction flagged (carried forward, now sharpened): the prior summary correctly noted the 10,781,760 / 10,791,760 discrepancy. The primary documents themselves disagree — the PTAB mandatory notice cites 10,781,760, while the Federal Circuit opinion transcription renders the appeal as addressing "U.S. Patent No. 10,791,760." Per operating rules I do not auto-correct either; both are reported as found.
• The '787's legal status is Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2024-12-19), so a live IPR/validity challenge to these claims is not available; this is a retrospective § 103 analysis.