US 7327268

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation dockets.

Now let me check for any litigation or CAFC dockets involving this specific patent.

US 7,327,268 B2 — Verification and Summary

I searched for this exact number (and confirmed the distinctions from look-alikes: 6,922,728 / 8,013,732 / 9,185,268 / JP 7327268 B2 / the Brazilian registry entry "7327268 LULI PARTICIPACOES" — none of which are this patent). Below is grounded in the full text you supplied plus the Google Patents record.

Bibliographic data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7327268/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/app/20030025601 (parent 09/917,822).

Abstract (as issued)

"A system (and method) includes a seating platform, at least one sensor for detecting a state of the seating platform connected to a first wireless communications device, the first wireless communications device for conveying information on the state of the seating platform, and a second wireless communications device for receiving information from the first wireless communications device, and a computing system. The second wireless communications device is for receiving the information carrying signal and is connected to the computing system. The computing system is for initiating an action based upon the information."

Important drafting note: the abstract describes the parent application's subject matter (sensing + communications). The issued claims of 7,327,268 are directed to the wireless power/energy-transfer aspect, not to the sensor/communications aspect.

Plain-language overview of each independent claim

Claim 1 (system — wireless power):
A movable seating platform (e.g., an office chair on wheels); a wireless power supply coupled to the platform to power it, where the platform can be moved relative to the position of the wireless power supply; plus a remote system that receives a communication from the platform. The final limitation requires that while power is being delivered, the movable platform is aligned with the wireless power supply (i.e., the chair must be positioned over/at the power source when it is being powered).

Independent claims 11 and 12 (both titled only "A system, comprising") are directed to the energy-transfer variant rather than the communications variant:

• Claim 11: a movable seating platform; electronic devices inside the platform requiring energy; and a wireless energy transfer device for transferring energy to those devices, the platform being movable relative to the position of the transfer device; with the same "aligned" requirement during transfer. Drafting note (literal reading): the wherein-clause refers to "said wireless power supply," but the only element introduced in this claim is a "wireless energy transfer device" — an apparent antecedent-basis inconsistency in the issued text. Claim 12 repeats the same language.
• Claim 12: everything in claim 11, further requiring that the wireless energy transfer employ inductive coupling, and that the coupling use a coil associated with the floor on which the seating platform is located.

Dependent claims 2–10 add: embedded energy storage (2); solar cells (3); occupant-movement generation (4); seating-platform-movement generation (5); movable chair elements that move relative to one another when the occupant moves (6) or leans forward/backward (7); wheel-rotation generation (8); and first/second inductively coupled power coils, with the second coil embedded in the surface the platform moves over (9–10).

Additional technical observations

• The described inductive power link is a floor-side primary (AC source 124 + primary transformer 122) and a chair-side secondary/DC supply 120, citing US 3,418,552 (Holmes) and US 4,942,352 (Sano). Alternative energy sources disclosed: solar cells (citing US 5,936,380), occupant-motion linear generation (US 5,818,132), and wheel rotation (US 5,536,026).
• Wireless comms contemplated: IrDA, Bluetooth (stated preferred for radio), IEEE 802.11, cellular, and the "iBean" radio from Millennial Net.
• Minor textual typos in the issued claims (reproduced literally, not corrected): "moveable elements" (claims 6–7); "movable seating" (claims 9–10) versus "movable seating platform"; and "powering said seated platform" (claim 9).

Litigation / CAFC 2026 dockets — negative finding

Searches of public sources for CAFC 2026 dockets and infringement litigation involving 7,327,268 returned no matches. Hits on "'732 patent" and "'268 patent" in 2026 proceedings resolve to different patents — e.g., SIPCO's US 8,013,732 (IPR2017-00216), InterDigital's US 9,185,268 in InterDigital v. The Walt Disney Co., No. 2:25-cv-00895 (C.D. Cal.) (stayed 2026-06-10), and KAIFI's US 6,922,728 in T-Mobile v. KAIFI (Fed. Cir., transferred to the Fifth Circuit, Aug. 2026).

Caveat / uncertainty: I could not query PACER, USPTO Patent Center, or the CAFC docket system directly in this session; I relied on web-indexed sources. A docket-scoped search (e.g., Docket Navigator, PACER "Patent Number" field, or the CAFC's own docket search) would be required to state affirmatively that this patent has never been litigated. What I can say with confidence is that my searches identified no litigation or Federal Circuit appeal citing US 7,327,268, and no PTAB proceeding on it — consistent with the patent having expired in 2022 while under IBM/Facebook/Meta ownership.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7327268. Let me run several targeted searches.

Initial results returned only unrelated numbers (JP7327268B2 "Stator manufacturing equipment," FR7327268A, and US7,326,708 — a different patent in Google v. Sonos). Let me refine and check litigation databases directly.

Let me try more specific litigation databases and the parent patent.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 7,327,268

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,327,268. Based on the searches I was able to run, no district court case, Federal Circuit appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding naming this patent has surfaced. I cannot affirmatively rule out that litigation exists — see the caveats below — but there is no positive evidence of any.

What I searched and what came back

I ran multiple queries against litigation-oriented and general sources (including searches targeting the Unified Patents litigation portal, Docket Alarm, Justia dockets and PACER-derived records, PTAB filings, and general web). Every hit on the string "7327268" was either unrelated or a false-positive match to a different patent number:

I also found no PTAB IPR/PGR or reexamination referencing the '268 patent. The PTAB documents that surfaced concerned entirely different patents (e.g., U.S. 9,922,395; 8,326,611; 10,621,228; 9,729,891).

Context on the patent (from the prosecution/publication record)

• Patent: US 7,327,268 B2, "System for wireless mobile seating platform"
• Inventors: Marco O. Gruteser, Anthony Levas, Herbert Scott McFaddin, Paul Andrew Moskowitz, Danny Chan Yong Wong
• Original assignee: International Business Machines Corp. → assigned to Facebook, Inc. (recorded 2012-04-09, effective 2012-03-27) → name changed to Meta Platforms, Inc. (effective 2021-10-28)
• Priority date: 2001-07-31 (divisional of Ser. No. 09/917,822, now US 6,870,477); filed 2004-12-02; granted 2008-02-05
• Status: Expired – Lifetime; adjusted expiration 2022-10-21

So the patent has been expired for roughly three and a half years. That is consistent with a patent that was never a significant commercial assertion vehicle. The patent's family did generate follow-on patents (US 7,477,153; US 7,508,309; plus abandoned publications 2008/0048859 and 2008/0198008), but I found no assertion activity for any of them either.

Important caveats — please read before relying on this

1. I could not complete the searches you asked for. My access was limited and I was cut off before I could run direct, structured queries against the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER, Docket Alarm, or CourtListener's API. Those are the authoritative sources for this question.
2. Negative results from open-web search are weak evidence here. Patent infringement complaints are frequently filed under an abbreviated patent reference ("the '268 patent") or without quoting the full number, so a string search on "7,326,268" will miss cases that assert it. A proper search must be run on the patent number field in a litigation database, which I could not do.
3. Recommendation: To get a definitive answer, query, by patent number:
   • Docket Alarm or Unified Patents Portal (patent-centric litigation tabs), and
   • PACER / CourtListener RECAP for the patent number, plus
   • PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) for IPR/PGR/CBM involving the number.

I have deliberately not fabricated plaintiff/defendant names, case numbers, jurisdictions, filing dates, or outcomes for this patent. If you can supply access to a litigation database or run those fielded queries, I'll organize the results in the plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case number/filing date/status table you requested.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before reporting.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 7,327,268

Verification basis: USPTO Open Data Portal structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (canonical list, ingested as of the most recent ODP refresh) + independent web searching on 2026-09-19 across PTAB petition/decision documents, USPTO hearing schedules, and litigation filings that reference the '268 patent family. The ODP block returns zero AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and my searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming U.S. Patent No. 7,327,268 as the challenged patent.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file — 0 active, 0 instituted, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and is not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened" — it is "the patent was never challenged at the PTAB at all, and it is now expired (adjusted expiration 2022-10-21), so the practical defense is temporal and judicial, not administrative."

That absence is the single most important fact for a defendant. There is no Final Written Decision to cite, no cancellation certificate to rely on, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to worry about — but also no PTAB precedent construing any of the 12 claims. Any invalidity theory you want to run is still fully available and untested at the Board.

Proceedings

None. There are no proceeding numbers to report, and I will not manufacture any. The heading list below is deliberately empty because the underlying data is empty:

— No IPR / PGR / CBM proceedings on file for US 7,327,268 —

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A (structured source: no AIA trial proceedings)
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel has ever been assigned to this patent
• Petition grounds: N/A — no petition has ever been filed
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no FWD exists for this patent, so no claim of US 7,327,268 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no IPR FWD, therefore no CAFC appeal of an IPR FWD
• Defensive value: Because the Board has never construed these claims, you get no free claim-construction benefit and no prosecution-history estoppel. Conversely, you also face no "hardened patent" optics — this patent has never been stress-tested in an AIA trial.

Lookalike dockets — do NOT cite these as proceedings on US 7,327,268

Search noise around the string "'268 patent" / "'728 patent" is severe in this technology space. Every one of the following is a different patent; conflating them would be a substantive error in a brief:

If a demand letter or a vendor's IP analysis tells you the '268 patent "has been through the PTAB," ask them to produce the proceeding number. On the record I can access, it does not exist.

Strategic summary

Claim status — all 12 claims UNTESTED, none canceled, none confirmed.

US 7,327,268 issued 2008-02-05 with 12 claims (claim 1, claim 11, and claim 12 are the independents; claims 2–10 depend from claim 1). The Google Patents/ODP record for this patent shows no adverse administrative outcome of any kind: no IPR certificate, no reexamination certificate, no disclaimer of record cited in the legal events. All events in the file are maintenance fees (2012-02-04, 2015-07-22, 2019-07-29) and the two ownership transfers — IBM → Facebook, Inc. (recorded 2012-04-09, effective 2012-03-27, Reel/Frame 028011/0666) and Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc. (recorded 2021-12-20, effective 2021-10-28, Reel/Frame 058553/0802). Status is Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2022-10-21.

The expiration point dominates everything. Because the adjusted expiration date has passed, claims 1–12 are no longer enforceable for ongoing conduct. A defendant's damages exposure, if any, is confined to the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 running backward from the date suit is filed — i.e., only pre-expiration acts after roughly 2020-09-19 on the earliest possible reading, and only up to 2022-10-21. This is a materially better posture than an IPR-based defense, because it does not require you to win anything. Confirm the PTA calculation independently off the face of the patent before you rely on it.

Estoppel landscape — clean slate. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is triggered only by an instituted IPR that reaches a Final Written Decision. Since no IPR was ever instituted (or filed), no petitioner is estopped from anything, and there is no privity chain to trace on this patent. Practically this cuts both ways: the patent owner cannot argue that "the prior art was already considered and rejected by the Board," and you are free to raise any § 102/§ 103 ground based on patents and printed publications in district court, in an ex parte reexamination, or — if a live controversy supporting institution still exists — in a late-filed IPR.

Pattern signals — none. No petitioner has filed once, let alone twice, against this patent. No PTAB appeal has ever been taken on it. There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, RPX, Askeladden) in the chain on this patent — the family shows only IBM's original ownership and the two downstream corporate reassignments to Facebook/Meta. The related family members (US 6,870,477; US 7,477,153; US 7,508,309, plus abandoned publications US 2008/0048859 A1 and US 2008/0198008 A1) likewise surfaced no AIA trial activity in my searches, so this appears to be a family that was never targeted at the Board. Note the family is large and parallel: claim scope across these siblings overlaps substantially, so if a counterparty asserts the '268 patent, check whether it simultaneously asserts a sibling — the same expiration analysis will control, but the claim language differs (see, e.g., the US 2008/0198008 A1 continuation, whose claims 1–13 split the "movable" and "aligned during powering" limitations into separate dependent claims rather than importing them into independent claim 1 as the '268 patent does).

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiration, not validity. The '268 patent's adjusted expiration is 2022-10-21 (Expired – Lifetime). Get the front-page PTA figure and the maintenance-fee history from PAIR/PatentCenter and confirm. If a plaintiff is asserting claims 1–12 against current conduct, that theory fails on its face; the only live question is the § 286 damages window.

2. Do not plead or brief a PTAB outcome — there is none. If you are drafting an invalidity contention, a stay motion, or an IPR petition, do not cite a "Final Written Decision on the '268 patent." There is no such document. Cite the absence accurately; a fabricated or mis-attributed proceeding number is sanctions exposure.

3. Confirm the counterparty's citation before you respond. Demand letters in the office-furniture / IoT-seating / wireless-power space routinely mis-number the '268 family. Ask for the patent number and the asserted claim numbers in writing. Given the lookalike dockets in the table above, verify whether the assertion is actually US 7,327,268, US 7,477,153, or US 7,508,309.

4. If you need an administrative record, use ex parte reexamination, not IPR. Requests for ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. § 302 based on patents and printed publications can be filed by anyone at any time and do not require a live infringement controversy. Given expiration, a reexamination's practical value is mostly evidentiary — it creates a PTAB/USPTO record on the claims — and it should be weighed against its cost and the absence of any estoppel benefit. I would not recommend this absent a specific litigation need; I am not aware of authority definitively resolving whether the Board will institute a brand-new IPR on an expired patent where no infringement controversy remains, so treat that as an open question rather than a known bar.

5. Preserve district-court invalidity theories wholesale. Nothing has been adjudicated, so § 282 burden allocation, the full prior-art universe (the '268 patent's own cited art includes Holmes US 3,418,552 and Sano US 4,942,352 for inductive coupling, Konotchick US 5,813,132 for linear-motion generation, Pozzobon US 5,536,026 for wheel-driven generation, and Parrish US 5,936,380 for solar), and § 112 defenses are all untouched and un-estopped.

6. If you learn of a recently filed petition the ODP has not indexed, re-run this check against PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and the USPTO PTAB Decisions page before filing anything. My conclusion is source-limited: it rests on the ODP structured data plus searches conducted on 2026-09-19, and I found no contradicting proceeding. If new information surfaces showing an AIA trial on this patent, the analysis above must be redone and the proceeding treated as most-impactful if it produced a cancellation.

Confidence note: I have high confidence there is no PTAB proceeding on US 7,327,268 in the available record. I do not have high confidence about whether the '268 patent has ever been asserted in district court litigation — my searches found no such case, but the ODP block does not cover litigation and I did not exhaustively query PACER or CourtListener for this patent number. Verify that separately before relying on a "never asserted" narrative.

I'll verify the assignment chain against live sources before writing.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,327,268 B2

"System for wireless mobile seating platform" · App. 11/001,129 · filed 2004-12-02 · issued 2008-02-05 · priority 2001-07-31 (divisional of 09/917,822, now US 6,870,477 B2)

Provenance note. USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, and the legacy mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) was not directly queryable in this session; the recorded reel/frame data below is taken from the legal-events records that USPTO assignment data is republished into at patents.google.com/patent/US7327268B2 and patents.google.com/patent/US6870477. Reel/frame values are quoted as recorded there. Correspondent-of-record fields were not reproduced in those sources — see signal 3 below, where I decline to guess.

Inventors

Pattern notes.

• All five are IBM research staff; four share the Yorktown Heights address, which is the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The application was assigned to IBM by the inventors on the filing date itself (see timeline).
• No 12-month mass-departure pattern. Gruteser later surfaced as a Rutgers University (WINLAB) inventor, but his Rutgers-era filings are a decade-plus after 2001 — this is an ordinary academic transition, not a pre-sale exodus. The other four show no independent post-filing filing activity that I could verify.
• The unusual pattern here is the reverse of the fire-sale tell: the entire family stayed inside IBM for 11 years and generated four continuation/divisional filings (two of which were abandoned), i.e., sustained prosecution interest with no commercial product.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY) — named assignee on the face of the patent.

• Product embodying the claims: none identified. The specification's own enabling references for non-contact power are third-party patents (Holmes US 3,418,552; Sano US 4,942,352), and IBM never marketed a wirelessly powered, sensor-instrumented chair. This reads as a research/defensive filing from Watson, not a product patent. I found no evidence of an IBM chair product and state that as a negative finding rather than a certainty.
• Primary line of business: enterprise computing — hardware, software, cloud, and services; historically the largest US patent filer, with a long-standing practice of monetizing its portfolio by sale and cross-license.
• Current status: operating, publicly traded (NYSE: IBM). No bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11, no distressed sale at any point in this chain.

Assignment timeline

Three recorded events touch this family. Two are recorded against the '268/its siblings; one is the inventors' original conveyance recorded against the parent '477.

• 2001-07-31 (executed) / recorded on the parent's record — Reel 012294/0584

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Gruteser, Marco O.; Levas, Anthony; McFaddin, Herbert Scott; and others (i.e., Moskowitz, Wong)
  • Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation, New York
  • Correspondent: not reproduced in the sources used. For completeness: the prosecution correspondence address of record on the published family applications (e.g., US 2008/0204227 A1) is McGinn Intellectual Property Law Group, PLLC, 8321 Old Courthouse Road, Suite 200, Vienna, VA 22182-3817 — this is the IBM-side prosecuting firm, not a verified assignment-recording correspondent. Do not treat it as the reel 012294/0584 correspondent.
  • Context: original employer assignment, executed on the parent filing date (the classic inventor→IBM conveyance).
  • Caveat: this event is visible in the legal-events record of the parent US 6,870,477; I could not confirm a separate reel for the '268 divisional itself. Treat the '268-specific inventor assignment as unverified rather than absent.

• 2012-03-27 (executed) / recorded 2012-04-09 — Reel 028011/0666

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: International Business Machines Corporation
  • Assignee: Facebook, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the sources used. One appearance, no recurrence to flag.
  • Context: strategic portfolio sale — not distress. This is one of the ~750 IBM patents Facebook bought in the March 2012 transaction (announced 2012-03-22, reported by Reuters and BBC News); the 2012-03-27 execution date sits squarely inside that deal, which Facebook made to build counter-assertion capacity two weeks after Yahoo sued it. Reported price was on the order of ~$83M for the whole package, not per patent. I flag the 750-patent deal linkage as a strongly corroborated inference, not as a recorded fact on the face of reel 028011/0666.

• 2021-10-28 (executed) / recorded 2021-12-20 — Reel 058553/0802

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an assignment — no change in beneficial owner)
  • Assignor: Facebook, Inc.
  • Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the sources used.
  • Context: internal corporate renaming only. Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc. Same legal entity, same ownership. Not a transfer to an asserter and not a shell-entity step.

Status of record: Expired – Lifetime; adjusted expiration 2022-10-21. Maintenance fees were paid on the '268 (4th year 2012-02-04 with late-payment surcharge; 8th year 2015-07-22; 12th year 2019-07-29) — so the '268 ran its full term. Contrast the parent US 6,870,477, which lapsed for failure to pay the 4-year maintenance fee effective 2009-03-22, i.e., IBM let the parent go while it still owned it. That is itself a modest non-assertion signal on the family.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7327268
    2001 : Inventors assign rights to IBM
         : Reel 012294 frame 0584
    2008 : 7327268 issues to IBM
    2012 : IBM to Facebook Inc
         : Reel 028011 frame 0666
         : Part of 750 patent IBM sale
    2021 : Facebook renamed Meta Platforms
         : Change of name reel 058553 frame 0802
    2022 : Term expires 21 Oct

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The chain is IBM → Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms, Inc. (reels 028011/0666 and 058553/0802). There is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity anywhere, no single-member LLC, and no registered-agent address in the record. Both assignees are large operating corporations with publicly traded predecessors.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither IBM, Facebook, Inc., nor Meta Platforms, Inc. appears on the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Document Generation / Spangenberg rosters, nor did they surface from Unified Patents or RPX as high-frequency plaintiffs on this patent. No NPE entity of any kind touches this chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. This is the one signal I cannot responsibly resolve: the Assignment Center correspondent-of-record fields are not reproduced in the republished USPTO data I could retrieve, and I declined to guess. What is verifiable: the prosecution correspondence address of record for the family is McGinn IP Law Group, PLLC (Vienna, VA), and FreePatentsOnline's attorney field for the sibling publication US 2008/0204227 A1 now reads "BAKER BOTTS L.L.P./Meta Platforms, Inc." — consistent with Meta's outside-counsel power of attorney being updated post-2021. Neither is an assignment-recording correspondent, neither recurs in a pattern, and neither is an NPE-assertion name. Marked unclear, not present as a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Two events, 9.5 years apart (2012-03-27 and 2021-10-28). No chained LLCs, no common-principal cluster, no sub-24-month sequence. The 2021 event is a change of name, which transfers no interest at all.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement action naming US 7,327,268 surfaced in the searches run for this analysis, so there is no suit for a transfer to precede. Note the temporal coincidence and then discard it: the 2012 IBM→Facebook assignment was contemporaneous with Yahoo v. Facebook, but Yahoo's ten asserted patents were advertising, privacy, and messaging patents — not this one (BBC). The '268 was acquired as portfolio ballast for a counter-assertion strategy.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No assignor in the chain has filed Chapter 7 or 11. IBM's 2012 divestiture was ordinary portfolio monetization; Facebook bought 750 patents and separately paid $550M to Microsoft for 650 patents plus licenses in the same period (BBC) — a solvent buyer, not a distressed seller's counterparty.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. This is arguably the inverse: an operating company (Facebook) acquired operating-company patents (IBM's) to defend against another operating company (Yahoo), with no NPE interposed and no revenue-sharing assertion vehicle created. Nothing in the SEC-reporting record or press coverage describes Meta licensing this family for enforcement.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Meta Platforms, Inc., which is not RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent was not neutralized by transfer to a defensive aggregator; it was simply never asserted and expired on 2022-10-21.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: the complete recorded chain is IBM → Facebook, Inc. (reel 028011/0666, executed 2012-03-27, recorded 2012-04-09) → Meta Platforms, Inc. by change of name only (reel 058553/0802, executed 2021-10-28) — two events, no LLC, no licensing entity, no NPE on any public roster, and no infringement action naming the patent. The 2012 transfer was an operating-company-to-operating-company portfolio purchase made for counter-assertion, not assertion, and the patent ran its full term and expired 2022-10-21. Taxonomy caveat: the chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator as the category definition contemplates — Meta is an operating company — so this verdict reflects the non-asserting posture (never litigated, fully expired) rather than identity of the terminal assignee; the "Operating-company assertion" category is unavailable because Meta ships no product embodying claims 1–12 and has sued no one on this patent.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (query "7327268"; the family patents US 6,870,477 / 7,477,153 / 7,508,309 share this chain). Republished mirror used above: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7327268/en

Limits on this analysis: I did not open the Assignment Center record directly, so (a) the correspondent-of-record for each reel, (b) any reel recorded only against the '268 divisional and not the parent, and (c) any unrecorded (nunc pro tunc or side-letter) interests are outside what I can assert. If the Assignment Center shows a reel for the '268 inventor assignment distinct from 012294/0584, that is an addition to — not a contradiction of — the timeline above.

I'll verify the patent record and the key cited references against live sources before building the per-reference § 102 mapping.

Key primary references verified. Now let me verify the dependent-claim references (energy harvesting, solar, chair instrumentation, occupant sensing).

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,327,268 B2

Interpreting "7327268" literally as US 7,327,268 B2. All search hits on that string that resolve to other numbers are excluded and listed in § 5 below.

Provenance / honesty note. My tool budget was exhausted mid-verification. The patent record and the 21-reference citation list below are taken from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7327268/en). I independently retrieved and quoted the full texts of four references this session (Sano, NEC, Holmes, Parrish). Five more were quoted with operative passages in the earlier "Obviousness" section of this same analysis (Edwards, Myllymäki, Sextant Avionique, Karamer, and the spec-level characterizations of Alberti/Wakefield/Case/Matushita/Tingley/Betcher/Alere/Sabolich/Cardiomedix/Staodyn/Sensable/Konotchick/Pozzobon). I did not open PatentCenter/PAIR directly, so the prosecution history and the examiner's reasons for allowance remain unverified. Verification status is marked per reference.

1. Threshold point that governs the entire § 102 analysis

The citation list is a parent-application citation list. The issued claims are not.

The 21 references on the face of 7,327,268 were cited against the sensor-and-communications disclosure that the specification inherits from the parent, US 09/917,822 (now US 6,870,477). But the issued claims are directed to the wireless power/energy-transfer invention:

Legal consequence. Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference that discloses every limitation, arranged as in the claim. Net MoneyIN, Inc. v. VeriSign, Inc., 545 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2008); Schering Corp. v. Geneva Pharms., Inc., 339 F.3d 1373, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Because claims 2–10 depend from claim 1, a reference anticipates a dependent claim only if it discloses all of claim 1 plus the dependent limitation.

Applied here, the answer is unambiguous: no reference on the face of 7,327,268 anticipates any of claims 1–12. Every one of the 21 misses at least the "movable seating platform" element, and none discloses the full combination of (a) a seating platform, (b) a wireless power supply, (c) relative movability, (d) a remote system receiving a communication from it, and (e) alignment during powering. The closest single references are Sano (US 4,942,352) and Goto/NEC (US 5,600,225), and both fail on the same element — the powered article is a portable electronic device, not a seat.

This is worth stating plainly rather than hedging: the examiner's cited art is materially mismatched to the issued claims. That is itself the most useful finding in this report, because it means (i) the § 102 case is empty, (ii) the § 103 case (built in the earlier section) must carry the load, and (iii) art outside the cited record — e.g., Sabo, US 6,803,744 B1, "Alignment independent and self aligning inductive power transfer system," filed 2000-10-31 — is more on-point to the "aligned" limitation than anything the examiner cited.

2. Reference-by-reference analysis

Dates below are reproduced literally from the citation table (columns: priority date | publication/issue date). Where the actual US filing date differs from the priority date, I flag it, because that distinction controls § 102(e) vs. § 102(b).

Verification key: ✔ full text retrieved and quoted in this session · ◐ corroborated from the earlier verified section of this analysis · ○ not independently verified (title/date from the patent's own citation table; description from the specification's characterization)

2.1 The two most relevant references

① US 4,942,352 A — "Non-contacting power supplying system" ✔

• Inventor / assignee: Shigeaki Sano / Toppan Moore Co., Ltd. (Tokyo)
• Dates: priority 1988-09-08; US application filed 1988-09-09; issued 1990-07-17 (the table's "1988-09-09" is the US filing; Unified Patents/RPX list the same filing as 1988-09-08 — a one-day convention discrepancy, immaterial)
• § 102 subsection: § 102(b) (issued more than one year before 2001-07-31)
• Description (verified): A power-supplying apparatus (10) with a power-supplying coil (18) and a separately provided, portable power-receiving apparatus (50) that is "positionable on the top of the power supplying apparatus (10)." The coil is in "spaced-apart juxtaposition" with a receiving coil (54) when the receiving apparatus is in a "predetermined position relative to" the supply. Critically: "a power supplying coil is energized at a predetermined frequency only when the power receiving apparatus is in a predetermined positional relationship relative to the power supplying apparatus." A rectifier/filter (56) charges a rechargeable battery (58) inside the movable apparatus. Position detection is by "magnets mounted in said portable power receiving apparatus and one or more magnetically operated switching means mounted in said power supplying apparatus" (claims 11/13). A monitoring circuit (64) supplies "a signal representative of the charge status of the rechargeable battery (58)" coupled to the power supplying apparatus without the use of electrical contacts. Coil core (19) is "mounted below or flush with the upper surface" of housing 10A.
• § 102 assessment — anticipates NONE of claims 1–12. The powered article is a "portable power receiving apparatus" for "virtually any battery operated device" — not a seating platform. Sano therefore fails the very first limitation of claim 1 ("a movable seating platform") and of claims 11–12.
• What it does establish: it is the single most relevant reference to the issued claims. It discloses the wireless/inductive supply, relative movability, the alignment-during-powering condition, the in-article rechargeable battery (claim 2), the coil pair (claim 9), and a floor-adjacent flush coil (claim 10 / claim 12's "coil associated with a floor"). It is a § 103 linchpin, not a § 102 reference.

② US 5,600,225 A — "Noncontacting charging device" ✔

• Inventor / assignee: Goto / Nippon Electric Co. (NEC)
• Dates: JP priority 1994-06-30; US filing 1995-06-20; issued 1997-02-04
• § 102 subsection: § 102(b) as issued. Note the trap: the citation table's "1994-06-30" is the Japanese priority date, not the US filing date. Anyone pleading § 102(e) (which requires a US filing) must use 1995-06-20.
• Description (verified): Charger base case (101) with a depression (102) into which the portable device is inserted; primary coil (103) in the base driven by oscillating circuit (104); the radiotelephone carries secondary coil (212), storage battery (210) and AC-DC circuit (211). A "halt signal" is generated in the radiotelephone (console key 203, or automatically on detecting an incoming call) and transmitted optically — light-emitting element (213) through window (215), received by light-receiving element (107) through window (108) — to halt AC power to the primary coil.
• § 102 assessment — anticipates NONE of claims 1–12. The movable article is a radiotelephone, not a seating platform.
• What it does establish: an alignment-by-docking inductive charging scheme (the depression is the alignment structure) plus a non-contact communication from the movable, battery-equipped device back to the stationary power source — directly relevant to claim 1(d) ("remote system for receiving a communication from said seating platform," if construed broadly) and to claims 2, 9, 11.

2.2 The separable-transformer and structural references

③ US 3,418,552 A — "Separable transformer battery charger" ✔

• Inventor / assignee: Robert G. Holmes / General Electric Company
• Dates: filed 1965-06-08; issued 1968-12-24 · § 102(b)
• Description (verified): A charger base (B) with a well (16) receiving the handle (H) of a battery-operated device (electric toothbrush). A primary winding (36) in the base and a secondary winding (S) in the handle are flux-linked through a common magnetic stud/receptacle when the handle is inserted — "the primary and secondary windings are effectively wound on a common core." The secondary output passes through a rectifier to recharge the batteries. No electrical contacts.
• § 102: None. No seating platform; no remote system. Relevant to claims 9–10 (coil pair / separable transformer) and 11–12 (inductive coupling), and to claim 2 (battery in the powered article). A § 103 architectural reference only.

④ US 6,220,382 B1 — "Powered wheelchair with separating frame" ◐

• Inventor / assignee: Spec says "issued to Karamer, Jr. et al."; the citation table lists Burke Mobility Products, Inc. (do not auto-correct — see § 5)
• Dates: filed 1998-11-17; issued 2001-04-24 · § 102(e) (filed 1998-11-17, predating 2001-07-31; issued inside the one-year grace window, so not § 102(b))
• Description: A powered, wheeled, occupant-bearing wheelchair whose frame is constructed to separate — i.e., chair elements that move with respect to one another, and the only cited reference that is simultaneously (a) a seating platform and (b) electrically powered and movable.
• § 102: None — no wireless power supply and no "remote system for receiving a communication." It is the best cited reference for claim 1(a) ("movable seating platform") and for claim 6 ("movable elements that move with respect to one another").

⑤ US 4,180,062 A — "Portable childbirth chair with electronic monitoring apparatus" ○

• Inventor / assignee: James Alberti et al.
• Dates: filed 1978-04-10; issued 1979-12-25 · § 102(b)
• Description: A chair (birthing chair) with integrated electronic monitoring apparatus — a seating platform carrying electronics.
• § 102: None (no wireless power, no remote communication). Spec-level support for the "chair as electronics platform" premise only.

⑥ US 5,630,566 A — "Portable ergonomic work station" ○

• Inventor: Laura Case · Dates: filed 1995-05-30; issued 1997-05-20 · § 102(b)
• Description: A portable, chair-based ergonomic work station.
• § 102: None. Chair-as-electronics-platform relevance only.

2.3 The communications / remote-system references

⑦ US 5,961,561 A — "Method and apparatus for remote maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair of a motorized wheelchair" ○

• Assignee: Invacare Corporation · Dates: filed 1997-08-14; issued 1999-10-05 · § 102(b)
• Description: A remote (communications-based) maintenance/troubleshooting/repair system for a motorized wheelchair — a remote system receiving information from a movable, occupant-bearing seating platform.
• § 102: None of claims 1–12 (no wireless power supply). One of the two best cited references for claim 1(d) and for the specification's network-relay disclosure.

⑧ US 6,348,867 B1 — "Control system for building automation controlled by human physiological signals" ◐

• Inventor / assignee: IST International Security Technology Oy (Myllymäki) · Dates: filed 1998-04-09; issued 2002-02-19
• § 102 subsection — flag this carefully: the issue date 2002-02-19 is AFTER the 2001-07-31 critical date. It is therefore not § 102(a) or § 102(b) art; it qualifies only as § 102(e) art as of its 1998-04-09 US filing. Pleading it as § 102(b) would be a substantive error.
• Description: Sensor/transmitter unit with heart-rate, skin-conductivity and motion sensors transmitting "short telegrams" by radio to a receiver/control apparatus with control outputs; performs "automatically control selections on the basis of the physiological condition of a user" and "on-line control of said actuators and security devices," controlling lighting and HVAC; a PC-based central unit; optional voice feedback to the user.
• § 102: None of the issued '268 claims. It is the best cited reference for the specification's complete loop (sensor → wireless → computing system → effectors) and for claim 1(d), and it would be the most dangerous reference against the parent's and siblings' broader claims.

⑨ US 5,544,649 A — "Ambulatory patient health monitoring techniques utilizing interactive visual communication" ○

• Assignee: Cardiomedix, Inc. · Dates: filed 1992-03-25; issued 1996-08-13 · § 102(b)
• Description: Remote ambulatory patient monitoring with interactive visual communication between patient and central station.
• § 102: None. Remote-comms relevance only.

2.4 The occupancy-sensing / seat-monitoring references

⑩ US 6,204,767 B1 — "Chair monitor" ◐

• Inventor / assignee: Citation table lists Donald A. Edwards; the specification says "issued to Sparks" (do not auto-correct)
• Dates: filed 1999-06-04; issued 2001-03-20 · § 102(e) (filed 1999-06-04; issued inside the grace window, so not § 102(b))
• Description: A contactless monitoring system for an individual seated in a seat, with a controller mounted on the chair (stationary chair or wheelchair) and an alarm generator.
• § 102: None of claims 1–12 (no wireless power supply). Relevant to claim 1(d) and to the specification's occupancy detection.

⑪ US 6,255,956 B1 — "Seat operated switch and warning system" ○

• Inventor: Gloria J. Tingley · Dates: filed 1999-08-27; issued 2001-07-03 · § 102(e) (issued inside the grace window)
• Description: A seat-operated switch and warning system.
• § 102: None.

⑫ US 5,404,128 A — "Presence detecting and safety control apparatus" ○

• Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. · Dates: filed 1992-03-13; issued 1995-04-04 · § 102(b)
• Description: Detection of a being based on life activity including heartbeat; presence detection and safety control. The specification cites it for the heartbeat sensor.
• § 102: None. Note the issued '268 claims recite no sensor limitation at all, so this reference cannot defeat claim 1 by supplying or omitting sensing.

⑬ US 6,287,253 B1 — "Pressure ulcer condition sensing and monitoring" ○

• Assignee: Sabolich Research & Development · Dates: filed 1999-06-25; issued 2001-09-11
• § 102 subsection: issue date is after the critical date → § 102(e) only (filed 1999-06-25)
• Description: Sensing/monitoring of pressure conditions of a seated person (ulcer risk).
• § 102: None.

⑭ US 6,080,106 A — "Patient interface system with a scale" ○

• Assignee: Alere Incorporated · Dates: filed 1997-10-28; issued 2000-06-27 · § 102(b)
• Description: Patient monitoring interface including a scale — weight sensing of a person with data capture.
• § 102: None. Weight-sensor relevance to the specification only.

⑮ US 6,163,249 A — "Alert system for handicapped individual" ○

• Inventor: Betcher, III, Orley O. · Dates: filed 1997-04-22; issued 2000-12-19 · § 102(b)
• Description: Alert/occupancy system for a handicapped individual.
• § 102: None.

⑯ US 5,113,176 A — "Lumbar roll with audible alerting capability" ○

• Assignee: Staodyn, Inc. · Dates: filed 1990-11-13; issued 1992-05-12 · § 102(b)
• Description: A lumbar support (cushion) with an audible alert — posture/seating accessory with electronics.
• § 102: None.

2.5 The energy-generation / energy-source references

⑰ US 5,936,380 A — "Alternative power for a portable computer via solar cells" ✔

• Inventor / assignee: Sean T. Parrish / Micron Electronics, Inc. (later recorded to Mei California Inc.)
• Dates: filed 1997-09-12; issued 1999-08-10 · § 102(b)
• Description (verified): Solar cells incorporated into a portable computer's chassis or display panel to recharge the battery and/or power components; in one embodiment solar cells capture otherwise-wasted light from the display light source ("solar" means any photoelectric device converting light to electricity, including from a lamp).
• § 102 assessment — anticipates NONE. Claim 3 ("said wireless power supply employs solar cells") depends from claim 1 and therefore requires the movable seating platform, the wireless supply, and the remote system. Parrish has none of them; its host is a notebook computer.
• What it does establish: direct motivation and enablement for the claim-3 feature (used in the § 103 ground in the earlier section).

⑱ US 5,818,132 A — "Linear motion electric power generator" ○

• Inventor: Konotchick, John A. · Dates: filed 1997-01-13; issued 1998-10-06 · § 102(b)
• Description: Generating electricity from the linear (relative) motion of elements. (The specification miscites the title as "Linear electric power supply generator.")
• § 102: None (no seating platform, no wireless supply). It is the § 103 reference for claims 4, 5, 6, 7 (energy harvested from occupant motion / platform motion / relatively-movable elements, including lean-forward-and-back).

⑲ US 5,536,026 A — "Power generator device particularly for wheeled sport implements" ○

• Inventor / assignee: Pozzobon et al. / Nordica S.p.A. · Dates: filed 1991-09-06; issued 1996-07-16 · § 102(b)
• Description: A generator driven by rotation of a wheel on a wheeled implement (in-line skate / roller).
• § 102: None (no seating platform, no wireless supply). § 103 reference for claim 8 (wheels + generation from wheel rotation) and claim 5.

⑳ US 6,191,796 B1 — "Method and apparatus for generating and interfacing with rigid and deformable surfaces in a haptic virtual reality environment" ○

• Assignee: Sensable Technologies, Inc. · Dates: filed 1998-01-21; issued 2001-02-20 · § 102(e) (issued inside the grace window)
• Description: Haptic interface with deformable surfaces.
• § 102: None. Relevant only to the specification's deformable-haptic-device paragraph — no issued '268 claim recites haptics.

㉑ US 5,172,056 A — "Magnetic field transmitter and receiver using Helmholtz coils for detecting object position and orientation" ◐

• Assignee: Sextant Avionique (spec says "issued to Voison" — do not auto-correct)
• Dates: filed 1990-08-03; issued 1992-12-15 · § 102(b)
• Description: Wireless magnetic-field determination of object position and orientation using Helmholtz coils (helmet-mounted viewfinders).
• § 102: None (no power transfer, no seating platform). Potentially relevant to how the "aligned" limitation of claim 1 could be detected/verified, and to the specification's chair-position/orientation sensing.

3. § 102 mapping table — bottom line per claim

Net § 102 result: 0 of 12 claims anticipated by any reference cited on the face of the patent.

4. "Most relevant prior art," ranked

Ranked by closeness to the issued '268 claims (not to the specification):

References 11–21 (Alberti, Case, Myllymäki aside, Matsushita, Cardiomedix, Tingley, Betcher, Alere, Sabolich, Staodyn, Sensable, Sextant Avionique) are relevant to the specification's disclosure and to the parent's/siblings' broader claims, but each is irrelevant to the issued power claims except as background.

5. Number / attribution discipline — look-alikes excluded, discrepancies flagged

Excluded as different patents or identifiers (not returned in place of 7,327,268): JP 7327268 B2 (stator manufacturing equipment); US 7,326,708 (transposed digits — asserted in Google LLC v. Sonos, Inc., No. 3:20-cv-06754); FR7327268A; US 6,922,728; US 8,013,732; US 9,185,268; the Brazilian registry entry "7327268 LULI PARTICIPACOES." None is 7,327,268.

Internal discrepancies I reproduce literally and do not auto-correct:

1. Inventor attribution. The specification names inventors that do not match the citation table or public records: "6,204,767 … issued to Sparks" vs. Donald A. Edwards; "5,172,056, issued to Voison" vs. Sextant Avionique; "6,220,382 … issued to Karamer, Jr. et al." vs. Burke Mobility Products, Inc.; "5,818,132 entitled 'Linear electric power supply generator'" vs. the table's "Linear motion electric power generator." A contention that repeats the spec's mis-citations is an avoidable credibility problem.
2. Priority-vs-filing dates. The citation table's first date column is the priority date, which for US 5,600,225 is the JP priority (1994-06-30), not the US filing (1995-06-20). § 102(e) analyses must use the US filing date.
3. Publication date after the critical date. US 6,348,867 (2002-02-19) and US 6,287,253 (2001-09-11) issued after 2001-07-31 and are therefore § 102(e)-only art.
4. Date of this analysis. The task states 2026-04-26; the earlier sections of this analysis are timestamped 2026-09-19. Both post-date the patent's 2022-10-21 adjusted expiration, so nothing here changes — but they cannot both be the analysis date.
5. Antecedent-basis defect in claims 11–12. As flagged in the earlier "Patent summary" section, the wherein-clauses of claims 11 and 12 refer to "said wireless power supply" although the only element introduced is a "wireless energy transfer device." For § 102 this does not aid the patent owner — no cited reference meets either reading — but it is preserved as a § 112(b) alternative.

6. Bottom line

• Search target confirmed: US 7,327,268 B2, "System for wireless mobile seating platform," App. 11/001,129, filed 2004-12-02, issued 2008-02-05, priority 2001-07-31, 12 claims (independents 1, 11, 12).
• 21 references are cited on its face. Full citations, dates, descriptions and § 102 assessments are given above.
• No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–12. Every reference misses at minimum the "movable seating platform" limitation, and none discloses the full claim-1 combination.
• Most relevant prior art: Sano, US 4,942,352 (rank 1) and Goto/NEC, US 5,600,225 (rank 2) — both are § 103 references, not § 102 references, against these claims.
• The citation list is mismatched to the issued claims. It reflects the parent's sensor/communications subject matter. The "aligned" limitation of claims 1/11/12 is addressed by Sano, and even better by uncited art such as Sabo, US 6,803,744 B1 (filed 2000-10-31).
• Residual uncertainty: I could not open PatentCenter/PAIR in this session (tool limit reached), so the examiner's reasons for allowance and the full prosecution history remain unverified. Descriptions marked ○ above are drawn from titles, dates and the specification's own characterizations and must be re-verified against full text before being placed in any contention.

I'll verify the substance of the key prior-art references before building the § 103 combinations, since the analysis depends on what each reference actually teaches.

Verified the core references. Let me ground the dependent-claim references (energy harvesting, solar, electrified seating) as well.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,327,268 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 7,327,268 B2, "System for wireless mobile seating platform" · App. 11/001,129 · filed 2004-12-02 · priority 2001-07-31 (divisional of 09/917,822, now US 6,870,477) · issued 2008-02-05 · 12 claims (independents: 1, 11, 12) · expired 2022-10-21.

Prior art considered: the 21 references cited on the face of the patent (the "Prior Art" section of the page supplied), plus the specification's own admissions about the state of the art.

Two contradictions to flag before I start, per your instruction not to silently resolve them:

1. Date discrepancy. This task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," whereas the previously generated sections of this analysis (PTAB, assignment, litigation) were run on 2026-09-19. Both post-date the patent's 2022-10-21 expiration, so the § 103 analysis is unaffected — but the two dates cannot both be the analysis date, and the earlier sections' "searches conducted on 2026-09-19" timestamp should be treated as the operative one.
2. Reference-attribution discrepancies in the specification. The '268 specification names inventors for several cited references in a way that does not match the patent's own citation table or the public records. I reproduce both literally and do not auto-correct: "U.S. Pat. No. 6,204,767 … issued to Sparks" (spec) vs. Donald A. Edwards as inventor in the '268 citation table and on Google Patents; "U.S. Pat. No. 5,172,056 … issued to Voison" (spec) vs. Sextant Avionique as assignee; "U.S. Pat. No. 6,220,382 … issued to Karamer, Jr. et al." (spec) vs. Burke Mobility Products, Inc. as assignee; "U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,132 … entitled 'Linear electric power supply generator'" (spec) vs. "Linear motion electric power generator" in the citation table. None of these affect the § 103 analysis (the references are identified by number and title), but a contention that mis-cites an inventor is an avoidable credibility problem.

1. Threshold point: the claims are narrower than the abstract

Build this into the obviousness theory from the outset. The abstract and the Summary of the Invention describe the parent's sensor/communications invention, but the issued claims of 7,327,268 are directed to the wireless power/energy-transfer invention. Claim 1 requires only:

Critically, claim 1 does not require any sensor, any occupant detection, any identification, any environmental effector, or any network relay. That is the whole of the independent claim. Claims 11 and 12 are the same idea expressed as "electronic devices within said movable seating platform and requiring energy" plus a "wireless energy transfer device."

Consequence for § 103: the non-obviousness story collapses to a single question — was it obvious by 2001-07-31 to power a movable chair without wires by a scheme that requires the chair to be aligned with the power source while power flows, and to have a remote system receive a communication from the chair? Every element of that question was independently known, and the alignment requirement is the express operating condition of the pre-existing inductive-charging art.

2. The prior-art universe and its § 102 status

All 21 cited references have effective dates before the 2001-07-31 priority date and therefore qualify under § 102, though not uniformly under the same subsection. Note the nuance: several issued within the one-year grace window (e.g., US 6,204,767 filed 1999-06-04 / issued 2001-03-20; US 6,255,956 filed 1999-08-27 / issued 2001-07-03; US 6,220,382 issued 2001-04-24), so their § 102(b) status is date-sensitive — but each still qualifies as § 102(e) art as of its filing date, which predates 2001-07-31. A contention should plead the subsection it actually relies on rather than generically calling everything § 102(b).

Grouped by function:

What the two most load-bearing references actually disclose (verified this session)

Sano, US 4,942,352 — this is the linchpin reference, and it discloses the "alignment during powering" limitation almost verbatim. Verified from the patent text and Google Patents / FPO:

• A power supplying apparatus (10) with a power supplying coil (18) and a separately provided portable power receiving apparatus (50) that is "positionable on the top of the power supplying apparatus (10)" — i.e., movable relative to the position of the power supply.
• "a power supplying coil (18) of the power supplying apparatus (10) is in spaced-apart juxtaposition with a power receiving coil (54) of the portable power receiving apparatus when the power receiving apparatus (50) is in a predetermined position relative to the power supplying apparatus (10)."
• "in the disclosed arrangements, a power supplying coil is energized at a predetermined frequency only when the power receiving apparatus is in a predetermined positional relationship relative to the power supplying apparatus."
• The coil "18 is wound around a ferrite core 19, which preferably is mounted below or flush with the upper surface 10 of a housing 10A of the power supplying apparatus 10" — i.e., a coil associated with the surface the movable device occupies.
• A rechargeable battery (58) inside the receiving apparatus, charged via a rectifier/filter circuit — an energy storage device embedded in the powered movable article.
• Position-detection means implemented as "magnets mounted in said portable power receiving apparatus and one or more magnetically operated switching means mounted in said power supplying apparatus" supplying "a position detection signal to said logic means when said portable power receiving apparatus is in said predetermined spatial orientation with said power supplying apparatus" (claims 11/13) — literal disclosure of detecting the alignment condition.
• A monitoring circuit (64) supplying "a signal representative of the charge status of the rechargeable battery (58)" coupled to the power supplying apparatus without the use of electrical contacts — a communication from the powered movable apparatus back to the power side.

Nippon Electric, US 5,600,225 — supplies the "alignment by docking" variant and the two-way link. Verified: charger base case (101) with a depression (102) into which the movable device is inserted; primary coil (103) in the base, secondary coil (212) in the device's base portion; storage battery (210) in the device; and a light-emitting element circuit (213) in the device communicating a halt signal to a light-receiving element circuit (107) in the charger — i.e., short-range communication from the movable, battery-equipped, inductively charged device to the stationary side.

IST International / Myllymäki, US 6,348,867 — supplies occupant-sensing, wireless telemetry, and automated environment control. Verified: a wrist-worn sensor and transmitter unit (11) with heart-rate, skin-conductivity and motion sensors transmits "short telegrams" by radio (5) to a receiver and control apparatus (12) with a processor (8) and control outputs (10); the system performs "automatically control selections on the basis of the physiological condition of a user" and "actively the on-line control of said actuators and security devices"; it controls HPAE (Heating, Plumbing, Air conditioning, Electricity) — specifically "automatic switch-on and -off action of lights depending on where a person is moving" and "the air conditioning/heating of a space is controlled in accordance with the physiological condition of a person"; it tracks the user's location by comparing signal strengths across receivers; a PC-based central unit (26) is provided; and feedback to the user can be delivered as voice messages.

Edwards, US 6,204,767 — supplies the instrumented chair with a wireless warning function. Verified: a contactless monitoring system for an individual seated in a seat, a controller mounted on the chair (expressly including "a stationary chair and a wheelchair"), and an alarm generator producing an alarm signal — and the '268's sibling family art (e.g., the wheelchair alarm disclosure surfaced in search, US 6,963,286) confirms the routine practice of a "wireless signal to a remote device" for a seating alarm.

3. Grounds of rejection

I set out four independent, mutually reinforcing grounds. Under KSR, any one suffices; I list the strongest first. Element-by-element charts use the claim-1 limitations (a)–(e) from § 1.

Ground 1 — Sano in view of Karamer and Wakefield (claims 1, 2, 9, 10, and 11–12 by extension)

Motivation to combine (the strongest part of this ground). The motivation is not reconstructed — it is stated in the field and admitted by the patent itself. The '268 Background of the Invention concedes: "Typically, chairs in such an environment are free to move. Input/output systems that depend on wires are ruled out. Devices built into chairs must have a source of energy. Again, wired energy sources are ruled out." It further admits that "to equip the chair with heavy and space consuming batteries, or to attach wired sources of energy to the chair pose their own drawbacks… Batteries must be recharged by plugging them into power sources or they must be replaced periodically." A patent's own characterization of the problem and of the prior art is a proper source of the motivation to combine. See K/S HIMPP v. Hear-Wear Techs., LLC, 751 F.3d 1362, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (applicant's admissions in the specification are prior art).

Layered on that are Sano's own stated purposes: avoiding "external electric terminals," avoiding the reliability failure of contacts that "may be needed as often as once to several times each day," and avoiding "an access port for battery exchange." Karamer supplies the movable, wheeled, occupant-bearing platform that has exactly those problems; Sano supplies the known solution; Wakefield supplies the known remote-link function for such a platform.

Reasonable expectation of success. High and documented: Holmes (US 3,418,552, 1968) and Sano (1990) show the technique was mature and commercially deployed decades before the priority date, and the power draw of a chair-mounted sensor/radio module is in the milliamp-to-microwatt class — far below the battery-charging loads Sano was already handling.

Predictable result. The combination yields no more than the expected sum of the parts: a chair that can be charged without contacts and that reports to a remote system.

Ground 2 — Nippon Electric US 5,600,225 in view of Karamer and Wakefield (claims 1, 2, 9, 11)

Same chart as Ground 1, but substituting NEC for Sano for elements (b), (c) and (e):

• (b) primary coil 103 + secondary coil 212 + AC-DC circuit 211 + storage battery 210 → wireless transfer to a movable, self-powered device.
• (c) the radiotelephone is inserted into and removed from depression 102 — movable relative to the charger.
• (e) the depression itself is the aligning structure; charging occurs only when the device is seated in it.
• Extra: NEC independently teaches the communication-from-the-movable-device concept via the light-emitting element 213 / light-receiving element 107 pair.

Why a POSITA would combine. NEC expressly frames the problem as repeated coupling operations and the desire to avoid contacts — the identical problem in Karamer's wheelchair and in any instrumented chair. It is a simple substitution of one known non-contact charging scheme for another (KSR, 550 U.S. at 416), and NEC's docking geometry is, if anything, a closer structural analogue to a chair rolled onto a floor pad than Sano's "place on top" geometry.

Ground 3 — Sano (or NEC) in view of Myllymäki and Edwards (claims 1, 11, 12)

Use this ground when the patent owner argues that claim 1's "remote system for receiving a communication from said seating platform" imports the system context of the specification (sensor → wireless → remote computing system → effectors):

• Myllymäki US 6,348,867 teaches the complete loop: sensed physiological condition → radio telegrams → receiver/control apparatus → automatic control of lighting and HVAC → optional voice feedback → PC-based central unit. Its claim 1 language — "the on-line control of said actuators and security devices in accordance with the physiological condition of a person" — is materially the '268 specification's step 335.
• Edwards US 6,204,767 teaches the chair-based version: a monitor mounted on the chair that detects and reports the state of a seated individual and generates an alarm.

Motivation. Myllymäki's own stated object is automation in "homes and offices" keyed to "the location of people present in a space"; offices are, per the '268 specification, where chairs are and where they move. Edwards explains the specific advantage of instrumenting the chair itself. A POSITA seeking to instrument office seating with sensed-state reporting would look directly to these two.

Anticipated objection and response. The patent owner will say Myllymäki senses a wrist-worn unit, not a chair. Response: claim 1 contains no sensor limitation at all; the "communication from said seating platform" is met by any of Edwards' chair-mounted alarm/monitor link, Wakefield's wheelchair telemetry, or NEC/Sano's non-contact status signalling. The wrist-vs-chair distinction is immaterial to the claim as issued.

Ground 4 (alternative, "old device for its known function") — Sano in view of Alberti or Karamer, standing alone for claims 11–12

Claims 11 and 12 require only: a movable seating platform; electronic devices inside it requiring energy; a wireless energy transfer device; relative movability; alignment during transfer (11); plus inductive coupling and a floor coil (12).

Sano alone discloses every element except the "seating platform" label — his "utilization device 60 … virtually any battery operated device" is the "electronic devices … requiring energy," coils 18/54 are the "wireless energy transfer device," the "predetermined positional relationship" is the alignment limitation, and the floor-adjacent flush-mounted coil (core 19 mounted below/flush with the upper surface of housing 10A) is the claim-12 "coil associated with a floor."

The only step left is substituting a chair for the terminal apparatus. That is the paradigm KSR case: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results," and "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." 550 U.S. at 416–17. Applying a known non-contact charging pad to a mobile chair uses Sano's device for precisely its established function.

Note on claim 11/12 and the '268's own § 112 defect. As flagged in the earlier "Patent summary" section, the wherein-clauses of claims 11 and 12 refer to "said wireless power supply" although the only element introduced is a "wireless energy transfer device" — an antecedent-basis gap. For § 103 purposes this is not fatal; a POSITA and a fact-finder would construe "said wireless power supply" as referring back to the wireless energy transfer device (the specification equates "wireless power supply 205" with the energy-transfer unit). But it is a claim-construction vulnerability worth preserving separately under § 112(b) and as an indefiniteness argument in the alternative.

4. Dependent claims 2–10 — element charts and motivations

Two of these merit emphasis.

• Claim 2 is squarely anticipated in substance by Sano and NEC, not merely obvious. The "energy storage device embedded within the seating platform" is Sano's battery 58 in housing 52 and NEC's battery 210 in case 201. On a Karamer wheelchair platform, claim 2 reads on the combination directly.
• Claim 6's "separating frame" point is unusually strong. Karamer's title is "Powered wheelchair with separating frame" — chair elements that move relative to one another. Read together with Konotchick's linear-motion generator, claim 6 requires nothing beyond the predictable combination of two references addressing the same mechanical phenomenon.

5. Secondary considerations

There is nothing in the record of this patent that supports patentability under Graham / KSR factor (4), and two things cut against it:

1. No unexpected results are alleged. The '268 specification asserts only advantages that are the expected consequences of its own stated premise — chairs move, wires are ruled out, batteries are inconvenient. There is no comparative data, no criticality of any parameter, and no result that would surprise a POSITA.
2. No nexus to commercial success. As established in the earlier "Assignment history" section, no IBM, Facebook, or Meta product embodies claims 1–12 — IBM never marketed a wirelessly powered sensor-instrumented chair, and the patent was acquired as portfolio ballast and never asserted. Commercial-success evidence requires a nexus between the claimed invention and the success; there is no product to attach it to.
3. Sano's alignment requirement is a narrowing design constraint, not an inventive contribution. The final wherein-clause of claim 1 requires the platform to be aligned during powering — i.e., it excludes the free-powering case. The patent owner cannot claim credit for a limitation that the primary reference discloses as its express operating condition while simultaneously arguing the combination of that reference with a chair would not have been made.
4. No teaching away. Nothing in Sano, NEC, Holmes, Karamer, Edwards, or Myllymäki disparages applying non-contact power or wireless reporting to seating. Sano's warnings are about the engineering of the receiving apparatus (leakage inductance, coil inductance, ≥15 kHz operating frequency), which are design considerations, not statements that the approach should not be used with other movable articles.

6. Claim-construction issues that affect the § 103 mapping

These should be pleaded in the alternative, because if the patent owner wins a narrow construction the grounds above still stand — but the constructions need to be pinned down:

1. "aligned with" (claim 1) and "aligned with said wireless power supply" (claims 11–12). If construed to require precise alignment, Sano's "predetermined positional relationship" and magnet/reed-switch position-detection circuitry meet it; NEC's depression geometry meets it. If construed loosely (proximate/registered), both references meet it a fortiori. There is no construction under which the limitation distinguishes the references.
2. "remote system" (claim 1). If broad (any system separate from the chair), Sano's power-supplying control circuit 24/28 and NEC's charger-side control meet it — each receives a signal that originated in the movable apparatus. If narrow (a distinct computing system over a distance), Wakefield and Myllymäki meet it. The ground is robust either way.
3. "wireless power supply … coupled to said movable seating platform" (claim 1). "Coupled" is broad enough to cover inductive coupling with no physical contact — which is the only reading consistent with the specification's own usage.
4. "said wireless power supply" in claims 11–12. As noted, this lacks a literal antecedent. Treat as an alternative indefiniteness ground under § 112(b) rather than letting a § 103 argument founder on it.

7. Additional art outside the cited list (flagged, not relied upon)

The task limits me to the Prior Art section of this page, so these are noted only as lead-generation, each requiring its own verification before use:

• US 6,803,744 B1 (Sabo), "Alignment independent and self aligning inductive power transfer system," filed 2000-10-31 — an array of inductors as the primary, a secondary coil in the appliance, and power transferred "with the respective coils in alignment." Filed before 2001-07-31, so it qualifies as § 102(e) art. This is directed at the precise subject matter of claim 1's alignment limitation and would be a strong supplemental reference. It was not cited by the examiner.
• US 5,923,544 and US 5,929,598 (noncontact power transmitting/charging apparatus with facing sheet coils) surfaced incidentally and address the claim-10 facing-coil geometry.
• US 6,963,286 (wheelchair alarm with a "wireless signal to a remote device") surfaced incidentally and would strengthen the claim-1(d) mapping for a wheeled platform.

Because these are outside the cited record and I did not retrieve their full texts, they should be treated as unverified leads, not as grounds.

8. Bottom line

Claims 1–12 of US 7,327,268 are, on the cited record, prima facie obvious under § 103.

• Claim 1 is obvious over Sano (US 4,942,352) in view of Karamer (US 6,220,382) and Wakefield (US 5,961,561). Sano supplies the wireless/inductive power supply, the relative movability of the powered article, the rechargeable battery inside it, and — critically — the express requirement that the coil be energized only when the article is in a predetermined positional relationship with the supply, with magnet/reed-switch position detection. Karamer supplies the wheeled, occupant-bearing, electronically equipped seating platform. Wakefield supplies the remote communication from that platform. The motivation is not merely inferable; it is admitted in the '268 specification's own Background, which states that wires and wired energy sources "are ruled out" for movable chairs and that batteries must be recharged or replaced. Alternative and equally sufficient grounds exist over NEC US 5,600,225 (depression-aligned inductive charging of a battery-powered movable device with a device-to-base optical signal) and over Sano in view of Myllymäki US 6,348,867 and Edwards US 6,204,767.
• Claim 2 is effectively anticipated in substance (Sano's battery 58; NEC's battery 210).
• Claims 3–8 are obvious additions over Parrish (US 5,936,380), Konotchick (US 5,818,132), and Pozzobon (US 5,536,026), each of which teaches the recited energy-generation mechanism for the established function of harvesting otherwise-wasted energy in a movable article; Karamer's "separating frame" supplies claim 6's relatively-movable chair elements.
• Claims 9–10 recite the coil architecture and floor adjacency that Sano, Holmes, and NEC already employ.
• Claims 11–12 are obvious over Sano (or NEC) in view of Karamer or Alberti under the KSR "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" rationale — the only missing element is the substitution of a chair for the general "battery operated device," which Sano expressly contemplates ("virtually any battery operated device").

Confidence and limitations. I have high confidence in the element mappings for Sano (US 4,942,352), NEC (US 5,600,225), Edwards (US 6,204,767), Myllymäki (US 6,348,867), and Sextant Avionique (US 5,172,056), because I retrieved their abstracts, claim language, and specifications in this session and quoted the operative passages above. I have moderate confidence for Holmes, Karamer, Alberti, Wakefield, Parrish, Konotchick, Pozzobon, Case, Matsushita, Tingley, Betcher, Alere, Sabolich, Cardiomedix, Staodyn, and Sensable, because my verification calls for those references were cut off by the tool-step limit and I am relying on the '268 specification's characterizations of them, plus the titles and dates in the patent's own citation table. Every "teaches" statement for those references must be re-verified against the full text with column/line citations before being placed in an invalidity contention. I also could not retrieve the prosecution file history or the examiner's reasons for allowance, so I cannot explain why these 21 references did not result in a rejection during prosecution — that gap matters, because the examiner's reasons (if articulated) may identify a distinction that is not visible on the face of the claims, and it should be pulled from PAIR/PatentCenter before any contention is finalized. Finally, one important practical caveat carried over from the earlier sections: the patent expired 2022-10-21, so a § 103 invalidity finding would now matter only to the § 286 six-year damages window (roughly post-2020-09-19 pre-expiration conduct) or to a defensive-use/estoppel purpose — not to prospective conduct.