US 7492130

I'll run searches against the requested sources for patent number 7492130.

Both returned empty. Let me try alternate query formulations.

Search results and caveats

I ran searches against Google Patents, USPTO-derived sources (uspto.report, PatentCenter-linked material), and general web/CAFC-oriented queries for the literal number 7492130.

• USPTO / patent databases: Confirmed records found (Google Patents, uspto.report, Justia, EPO citation records).
• CAFC 2026 dockets: My searches returned no results tying patent 7,492,130 to any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, in 2026 or any other year. I cannot claim a definitive negative — my search tools are not a direct PACER/CAFC docket query — but nothing in any source I retrieved indicates CAFC litigation or appeal activity involving this patent. Treat "no CAFC activity found" as a search-result observation, not an authoritative docket clearance.

Everything below is grounded in the authoritative full patent text supplied, cross-checked against search results. Where searches and the text differ, I flag it.

US 7,492,130 B2 — bibliographic summary

Legal status — important: The patent is Expired – Fee Related. Legal events show maintenance fees paid at years 4 and 8, a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2020‑10‑05, and a lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2021‑02‑17 (expired under 37 CFR 1.362; "FP" event dated 2021‑04‑13). Anticipated expiration would have been 2025‑04‑04. There was also a certificate of correction on 2009‑06‑23.

Uncertainty note: Google's "current assignee" field (Ampure Charging Systems Inc.) and the recorded assignment (Webasto Charging Systems, Inc.) are not identical. Both appear to trace to AeroVironment's charging-systems business; I cannot resolve the discrepancy authoritatively from the sources retrieved.

Abstract (as issued)

"An apparatus including an energy storage device and a power processing unit that is coupled to the energy storage device. The energy storage device is configured to deliver electrical energy to a load. The energy storage device also is configured to receive electrical energy from a source. The power processing unit is configured to control a fluctuation in voltage across the energy storage device while electrical energy is received by the energy storage device, or while electrical energy is delivered from the energy storage device to the load."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the power processing unit itself.
A power processing unit (PPU) that couples to an energy storage device (one that both delivers energy to a load and receives energy from a source). The PPU has:

• a switching module containing an inductor and multiple switches coupled to that inductor;
• a control module containing a pulse generator coupled to those switches; and
• first and second terminals.

The point of novelty is functional: the PPU regulates the voltage measured across its own first and second terminals so that it stays at approximately a prescribed value, and it does so even though the voltage across the energy storage device is fluctuating — whether the storage device is being charged or is discharging into a load.

Claim 10 — the corresponding method.
A method of regulating a voltage: provide an energy storage device; provide a PPU coupled to it, the PPU having (i) a switching module with multiple switches, (ii) a control module coupled to the switching module, and (iii) first and second terminals. Then: the control module generates a switch control signal, that signal is coupled into one of the switches, and it controls that switch so that the voltage across the PPU's first and second terminals is regulated to approximately a prescribed value despite fluctuation in the storage-device voltage during charging or discharging.

Claim 18 — the PPU with the specific H-bridge switch topology (capacitor form).
A PPU for controlling voltage fluctuation across a capacitor having a first lead and a second lead, comprising a switching module (an inductor with first and second leads, plus multiple switches), a control module with a pulse generator coupled to the switches, and first and second PPU terminals. The claim is distinguished by where the four switches sit:

• first switch — between the inductor's first lead and the capacitor's first lead;
• second switch — between the inductor's first lead and the capacitor's second lead;
• third switch — between the inductor's second lead and the PPU's first terminal; and
• fourth switch — between the inductor's second lead and the PPU's second terminal.

This is the H-bridge (four-switch, single-inductor) bidirectional buck/boost arrangement shown in FIG. 5 of the specification — the structure that lets energy flow in either direction regardless of whether the capacitor voltage is above or below the output voltage, which conventional boost topologies cannot do.

The dependent claims, in brief

• Claims 2–3 / 11–12: energy storage device is a capacitor, specifically an ultracapacitor.
• Claims 4 / 13: add a dissipative element in parallel with the capacitor (the balancing/discharge element).
• Claims 5–9 / 14–17 & 19–22: add the specific four-switch placement and the cascaded control architecture — first adder → voltage regulator → second adder → current regulator → pulse generator, with the reference voltage into the first adder, the terminal voltage feedback into the first adder's second input, and the inductor-current-representative voltage into the second adder's second input; and the pulse generator's four outputs driving the four switches (where a switch control signal turns a given switch on to enable current flow).

Technical context (from the specification, for the record)

The patent addresses the well-known ultracapacitor problem that terminal voltage falls as energy is withdrawn (when ~75% of stored energy is used, voltage drops to half). The claimed PPU holds the output voltage roughly constant while the capacitor's own voltage swings. Key disclosed details: 1,500 F–5,000 F ultracapacitors (e.g., NESSCAP ESHSP-5000C0-002R7); switches that may be BJTs or MOSFETs (e.g., Powerex CM400DU-12F); the governing relation Vo = (D₁/D₂)·Vcap; a cascaded (outer voltage / inner current) control loop with a current-limiting character; bidirectional operation; and output ripple under ~0.5% of full scale. The specification also states the applicable class of devices is energy storage that experiences large voltage fluctuation, e.g., ±20%, during charge/discharge.

One inconsistency worth flagging

The pre-grant publication US 2008/0018308 A1, as surfaced in my searches (Justia), appears to show an independent claim 13 reciting "a power processing unit configured to control a fluctuation in voltage across an energy storage device..." without the "approximately a prescribed value / despite a fluctuation" limitation, and appearing to carry only ~15 claims. The granted patent has 22 claims with independent claims 1, 10, and 18, and claim 1/10/18 each recite the prescribed-value regulation limitation. This is consistent with claim amendment/renumbering during prosecution, but I cannot verify the exact amendment history from the sources retrieved — treat the granted claim text (provided above) as controlling, and treat the publication's claim set as the pre-issuance version.

Bottom line

US 7,492,130 is a 2009 AeroVironment (inventor Zaher Daboussi) division patent on a bidirectional H-bridge DC-DC power processing unit with cascaded voltage/current control that keeps output voltage at a prescribed value despite the large terminal-voltage swing of an ultracapacitor or similar storage device. It is expired for non-payment of maintenance fees (effective 2021‑02‑17), and I found no CAFC 2026 docket or any Federal Circuit activity involving it.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7492130. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search litigation-specific databases.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to be thorough.

Litigation Search — U.S. Patent No. 7,492,130

Bottom line

I found no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,492,130. No district court complaints, declaratory judgment actions, ITC investigations, PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM), or Federal Circuit appeals were located that name the '130 patent as an asserted or challenged patent.

What the search covered

I searched litigation-oriented and patent-data sources for the specific number and its variants, including:

• Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/caselist) — no case list entries returned for 7,492,130
• Docket Alarm, USPTO.report, Justia/Google Patents, and general web searches for "7492130", "7,492,130", and combinations with "litigation," "infringement," "complaint," "lawsuit," and "case number"
• Assignee-based queries (AeroVironment, Inc.; Ampure Charging Systems Inc.; Webasto Charging Systems, Inc.)

Results for "7492130" outside the U.S. patent context were all unrelated (e.g., Brazilian and Lithuanian corporate/trademark registries, a Polish procurement document, an Indian trademark hearing notice). None were patent litigation.

Important caution — do not confuse with the nearby AeroVironment cases

Because the '130 patent's original assignee, AeroVironment, Inc., has been a frequent litigant, searches surface prominent AeroVironment patent cases that are not about this patent:

• Arlton v. AeroVironment, Inc. — C.D. Cal. (filed Aug. 2020; Fed. Cir. appeal Nos. 21-2049 et al., affirmed Feb. 4, 2026). This concerns U.S. Patent No. 8,042,763 ("Rotary Wing Vehicle") and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, resolved on a § 1498 government-contractor immunity defense. The patent number is materially different from 7,492,130.
• Various Qnovo Inc. battery/cell cases appear in the "Cited By" family listing for the '130 patent (e.g., patents 8,368,357; 8,638,070). Those are citations to the '130 patent's disclosure, not assertions of the '130 patent itself.

Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct, I am not treating these as litigation on 7,492,130.

Patent status context (relevant to why no litigation appears)

The patent's expiration/lapse in 2021 and its relationship as a division of US 7,436,150 B2 (which itself was not asserted in any litigation I could identify) are consistent with there being no asserted litigation on the '130 patent.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence in the conclusion of no known litigation, based on multiple searches across the sources you named.
• Caveat: I could not directly load the Unified Patents portal case list or PACER dockets (search steps were exhausted before those direct lookups completed). Unified's portal tracks PTAB filings and many district court cases but is not exhaustive of all district court dockets. A definitive negative would require a paid PACER/Docket Navigator/Lexis CourtLink search across all 94 district courts using patent-number fields (e.g., variations including "7,492,130," "7492130," and "7:492,130").
• If you need a formal clearance opinion or litigation-history certification, I recommend running that PACER/Docket Navigator query directly; I can draft the search parameters if useful.

If you intended a different patent number (for example, the sibling US 7,436,150, or 7,492,130-era AeroVironment patents), tell me which and I'll search that specific number — I will not substitute one number for another on my own.

I'll verify the structured block's default with targeted searches before concluding.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before I finalize the "no activity" conclusion.

PTAB Proceedings on US 7,492,130

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 7,492,130 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, whether active, settled, denied, or decided — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials, and the bottom-line posture for a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPR"; it is that the claims were never tested at the PTAB and the patent itself lapsed in 2021 for failure to pay maintenance fees, which is a far stronger defense than any IPR outcome would have been.

⚠️ Important caveat on the structured source. The canonical list from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of its most recent ingest. This patent issued 2009-02-17 and its 1-year § 315(b) windows have long since closed for any real-world accused infringer, so the absence is expected rather than surprising. I was able to corroborate the absence with web searches, but I could not run a live query against PTAB E2E or a paid docket service (both are outside this session's tooling). Treat the count as "none found," strongly supported but not exhaustively verified, rather than as a certified null result.

⚠️ False-positive warning for anyone repeating this search. Digging through the noise, most hits for "749" + "IPR" are not this patent. They are Nike's US 8,498,749 — e.g., lululemon USA Inc. v. Nike, Inc., IPR2023-01460, and Skechers IPR2025-00141 / lululemon IPR2024-00460 against Nike's '749 patent. That is a different patent, different owner, different technology. Do not cite those proceedings against US 7,492,130. The number string "7492130" also collides with Brazilian state corporate-registry filings (JUCEC atos decisórios) that are pure noise.

No proceeding entries to report

Because the count is zero, there is no proceeding for which I can supply — and I will not fabricate — a petitioner name, docket number, filing date, APJ panel, institution decision, Final Written Decision, settlement, or CAFC appeal. Any such detail appearing in an AIA-proceeding template for this patent would be invented.

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing canceled, nothing sustained, nothing tested — and nothing enforceable. All 22 claims (independent claims 1, 10, and 18, with dependents 2–9, 11–17, and 19–22) stand exactly as they issued on 2009-02-17. No claim has been canceled or narrowed by the Board, because no petition ever reached the Board. The far more consequential fact is the legal-status record in the structured data: "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" (code LAPS), "Patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362" (code STCH), effective 2021-02-17, with the lapse entered 2021-04-13 after the 11.5-year fee reminder mailed 2020-10-05. The 3.5-year fee (paid 2012-09-14, with a late-payment surcharge) and the 7.5-year fee (paid 2016-06-24) were both paid; the next one was not. Anticipated expiration on the face of the record is 2025-04-04 (20 years from the 2005-04-04 priority date). An expired-for-fee-lapse patent forecloses infringement liability for acts after the lapse — this is a § 292/§ 271 subject-matter problem for any plaintiff, not merely a damages haircut. Note also that a certificate of correction issued 2009-06-23 and the patent was assigned from AeroVironment, Inc. to Webasto Charging Systems, Inc. (recorded 2018-08-29, effective 2018-06-29); Google's page additionally lists the current assignee as Ampure Charging Systems Inc. Verify present ownership through USPTO Assignment before directing any correspondence.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, because there is no petitioner. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is petitioner-specific and attaches only to a petitioner who obtained a Final Written Decision — with zero FWDs, no party is estopped from anything. The full universe of prior art remains available to a defendant: the 22 references cited on the face of the patent (including Windes US 5,572,108; Jeol US 5,528,121 and EP 1 033 730; General Electric's bidirectional buck-boost converter US 5,734,258; Linear Technology US 5,731,694; Toyota EP 1 248 345; and Good Ideas' ultracapacitor balancing circuit WO 2003/100939) and, critically, the two non-patent publications that appear to be the closest art but were never run through a PTAB trial: Caricchi et al., "20 kW water-cooled prototype of a buck-boost bidirectional DC-DC converter topology for electrical vehicle motor drives," APEC '95, pp. 887–892, and Schupbach & Balda, "Comparing DC-DC converters for power management in hybrid electric vehicles," IEMDC '03, IEEE International, vol. 3, pp. 1369–1374. Both are § 102(b) art relative to the April 2005 filing and both go directly to the bidirectional buck/boost H-bridge of claim 18 and the cascaded voltage/current-loop control of claims 6–9 and 15–17. A § 103 combination built on Caricchi or Schupbach as primary reference is essentially untouched ground. If you nonetheless want an IPR instead of a district-court invalidity case, remember § 315(b): the 1-year clock runs from service of the complaint, and the lapse-for-fee issue may moot the whole exercise.

Pattern signals: essentially none. No petitioner has filed even one IPR against this patent, so there is no serial-petitioner pattern to analyze. No Unified Patents (or comparable defensive aggregator) filing appears in the record. There is no CAFC appeal of any PTAB decision on this patent, because no PTAB decision exists. The one related patent worth tracking is the parent, US 7,436,150 B2 ("Energy storage apparatus having a power processing unit"), filed 2005-04-04 and granted 2008-10-14, from which this patent is a division (application 11/098,778 → divisional 11/853,664); the family also includes PCT publication WO 2006/108020 A1. The parent shares the same specification and much of the same claim scope, and it is separately classified as lapsed — but if you are defending an assertion involving the AeroVironment ultracapacitor energy-pack family, confirm the status of both members before assuming the family is dead. The complete absence of PTAB activity over ~16 years of enforceability is itself informative: this family was never asserted in a way that provoked a serious invalidity challenge, which usually means either narrow commercial relevance or prompt resolution in the trenches.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted against today. Do not build a defense on PTAB outcomes — there are none to borrow. Build it on status. Demand the plaintiff produce the maintenance-fee payment record and the chain of title, and confirm the lapse at USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/) for application/patent 7,492,130, and the current ownership at USPTO Assignment (https://assignment.uspto.gov/). The record here shows LAPS/STCH entries effective 2021-02-17, so any infringement theory premised on post-lapse conduct should be dead on arrival, and any pre-lapse claim faces a patent that was never PTAB-sanctioned and whose closest art (Caricchi, Schupbach) was cited of record but never adjudicated. There is no FWD to link or quote; do not represent otherwise in a brief.

If you are considering filing an IPR. Two gates: (1) § 315(b)'s one-year clock from service of a complaint asserting this patent, and (2) whether the patent's expired status gives you a cheaper district-court or Rule 12 dismissal path that avoids Board fees and estoppel entirely. As of 2026-09-29 no IPR has ever been filed on this patent. If you do file, the natural grounds are § 103 over Caricchi '95 and/or Schupbach '03, alone or in combination with the secondary references already of record (Miyazaki US 2003/0044689; Staib US 2003/0011346; the ISE Research ultracapacitor pack publications US 2003/0067281 and US 2003/0067735).

What to verify against primary sources (I could not, in this session). PTAB E2E public search (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptab-web/#/search/decisions) filtered on patent 7,492,130, and separately on 7,436,150; CourtListener docket search (https://www.courtlistener.com/) for "7,492,130" and for Webasto Charging Systems / Ampure Charging Systems / AeroVironment as parties; and the Federal Circuit's docket for any appeal naming this patent. If any of those surfaces a proceeding, the section above must be revised — but as of the sources available to me, the answer is zero PTAB proceedings, a 2021 failure-to-pay lapse, and an anticipated expiration of 2025-04-04.

Explicit non-fabrication statement. I have not supplied petitioner names, docket numbers, APJ panels, institution dates, FWD dispositions, settlements, or appeal numbers, because none exist on the record available to me. Any version of this memo that contains an IPR20XX-XXXXX entry for US 7,492,130 should be treated as hallucinated until a PTAB E2E lookup confirms it.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership history for US 7492130.

Let me dig into the correspondent of record and any additional assignments, plus the AeroVironment/Ampure entity history.

Let me attempt to identify the recording correspondent and confirm whether any further assignments exist post-2018.

US 7492130 — Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction

Important sourcing caveat up front: the authoritative patent text I was given (USPTO/Google Patents legal-events table) records only one post-issuance assignment for this patent. I could not retrieve the recorded correspondent of record for that assignment — Google Patents' legal-events feed does not carry the correspondent field, and my targeted searches for the reel/frame correspondent returned no hits. I therefore do not state a correspondent name rather than guess one. The reel/frame (046970/0124), assignor, assignee, execution date and recording date below are taken directly from the patent record.

Inventors

• Zaher Daboussi — sole named inventor on US 7492130 (application 11/853,664).

Employer at time of filing: AeroVironment, Inc. (Monrovia, CA). The application was filed as a division of US Application 11/098,778 (filed 2005-04-04), which issued as US 7436150 B2, "Energy storage apparatus having a power processing unit," with AeroVironment as original assignee. The subject matter (ultracapacitor energy packs + power processing unit) maps directly to AeroVironment's then‑current Efficient Energy Systems (EES) commercial line (EV/industrial charging, sold under the Ampure/PosiCharge brands).

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of the classic "inventor exodus precedes portfolio fire-sale" pattern. This is a sole-inventor corporate filing, assigned on its face to the operating employer. I have no evidence of inventors departing AeroVironment within 12 months of the 2005 parent filing or the 2007 divisional filing. (Stated as not found, not as verified absent.)

Original assignee

AeroVironment, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVAV), Monrovia, California — named on the issued patent (granted 2009-02-17).

• Primary line of business: Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drones), tactical missile systems, and — at the time of filing — the Efficient Energy Systems (EES) segment (EV charging & test systems, incl. ultracapacitor-based industrial fast-charging under the PosiCharge brand).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — the EES business sold commercial EV and industrial charging equipment; the claims (a power processing unit regulating output voltage across an energy-storage device despite source-voltage fluctuation) are directed at that product line's power-conversion architecture.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded (AVAV). The relevant business unit, however, was divested in 2018 (see timeline). Subsequent corporate history of that unit: Webasto Charging Systems, Inc. → (2024, Transom Capital Group majority buy) → rebranded Ampure (Google Patents lists "Ampure Charging Systems Inc" as current assignee, though no assignment to Ampure is recorded in the legal-events table — see caveats).

Assignment timeline

Note: A Certificate of Correction issued 2009-06-23. This is a document correction, not an assignment, and is excluded.

Recorded post-issuance assignments found: 1.

• 2018-06-29 (executed) / recorded 2018-08-29 — Reel 046970/0124
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"; underlying transaction = asset purchase of the EES business)
  • Assignor: AeroVironment, Inc.
  • Assignee: Webasto Charging Systems, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources I could access. Do not treat this as "none" — it is simply unconfirmed here and should be pulled directly from the Assignment Center record for reel 046970/0124.
  • Context: Commercial divestiture — Webasto Group acquired AeroVironment's Efficient Energy Systems (EES) business segment; announced 2018-06-04 at ~$35M, closed 2018-06-29 with ~$32M cash at close (per AeroVironment 8-K / 10-Q disclosures). A routine asset sale, not a fire-sale, securitization, or shell transfer.

No other recorded assignments appear in the patent's legal-events history. In particular, there is no recorded assignment reflecting the 2024 Transom Capital acquisition of Webasto Charging Solutions/Webasto Charging Systems, Inc., and no recorded assignment to "Ampure." The Google Patents "current assignee" field showing Ampure Charging Systems Inc appears to be a derivation/inference rather than a recorded event; treat as unconfirmed at the USPTO record level.

Family note: the parent, US 7436150 B2, and the PCT counterpart WO2006108020A1 sit in the same family; assignment activity for the parent should be checked separately and typically mirrors this chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7492130
    2005 : Parent app filed by AeroVironment
    2007 : Divisional app filed
    2009 : Patent US 7492130 granted
    2018 : Divested to Webasto Charging Systems
    2024 : Business rebranded as Ampure
    2021 : Expired for unpaid maintenance fees

(Note: the 2024 Ampure rebrand is a business-name change of the same operating entity — it is not a recorded USPTO assignment; it is shown for continuity only. The 2021 expiration is a USPTO maintenance-fee lapse, not an ownership event.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional neutral fact worth recording: the patent expired 2021-02-17 for failure to pay maintenance fees (LAPS 2021-03-22; FP 2021-04-13). An expired patent cannot be asserted, which caps any future NPE-assertion risk on this asset.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — but read the caveat: the patent is an operating-company product asset with no assertion and no NPE anywhere in the chain.

The chain is a single, plainly documented commercial divestiture: AeroVironment, Inc. → Webasto Charging Systems, Inc., executed 2018-06-29, recorded 2018-08-29, reel 046970/0124 — a business-unit sale of AeroVironment's EES charging segment, not a shell/asserter transfer. None of the eight NPE signals is present; the only litigation touching this business (Webasto v. AeroVironment, Feb 2019) is a contract dispute, not a patent suit, and the patent has been expired since 2021. The one label element that is not satisfied is the "assertion" prong — no infringement action on this patent is on record — so the accurate characterization is "operating-company ownership, non-asserted."

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7492130 / reel 046970 frame 0124)
• USPTO legacy assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (used here): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7492130/en

Open item to close the record: retrieve the correspondent of record for reel 046970/0124 directly from the Assignment Center, and confirm whether any assignment to Ampure / Ampure Charging Systems Inc was ever recorded (currently not reflected in the legal-events table).

I'll verify the patent record and gather details on the cited prior-art references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 7,492,130 B2

1. Patent identification (verified against the record)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7492130/en and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7492130](/patent/7492130)

Because the effective priority date is 2005-04-04, every reference below (all published/patented well before 2004-04-04) qualifies as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (printed publication/patent more than one year before the US filing date). None of these references is affected by the AIA changes.

2. Methodological caveat — § 102 is a strict test

Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference to disclose each and every limitation, arranged as in the claim. The references below were cited by the examiner largely as background and as § 103 obviousness evidence, not as complete anticipations. In my assessment:

• No single cited reference anticipates independent claims 1, 10, or 18 in full — each fails on at least the "regulate … to approximately a prescribed value despite a fluctuation in voltage across the energy storage device" limitation and/or the specific four-switch/inductor topology combined with a feedback control module and pulse generator.
• The strongest § 102 candidates are limited to dependent claims (topology claims 5/18, switch-drive claims 8/9/21/22) or to combinations that are properly § 103 arguments.
• I flag below where anticipation is plausible vs. where the reference is only relevant to a limitation.

3. Cited references — full citations, dates, descriptions, and claim mapping

3A. Primary / most-relevant references

3B. Secondary references (single limitations / background)

3C. Non-patent literature

4. Bottom line on the "most relevant" art

1. US 5,734,258 (GE) is the single most material reference. Its two half-bridge + interposed-inductor arrangement maps closely onto the claim 5/18 topology (first switch inductor-lead-1→cap-lead-1; second switch inductor-lead-1→cap-lead-2; third switch inductor-lead-2→terminal-1; fourth switch inductor-lead-2→terminal-2), and it explicitly describes use with an ultracapacitor and gating-circuit switch control. Best § 102 candidate for claims 5, 8, 9, 18, 21, 22.

2. US 6,370,046 and US 6,265,851 are the closest art for the energy-storage-side limitations (ultracapacitor + dynamically regulated conversion of a widely varying source) — relevant to claims 1–3.

3. US 5,731,694, US 6,163,142, US 6,310,789, and US 2002/0118551 supply the cascaded voltage/current feedback control module (adders, voltage regulator, current regulator, pulse generator) of claims 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 20 — again, § 103 combination territory.

4. WO 03/100939, US 2003/0067281, US 2003/0067735, and US 2003/0044689 supply the balancing/dissipative element across each capacitor of claim 4 (and the energy-management unit recited in the specification).

5. The remaining references (Randall '615, Staib, Jeol '121 and EP 1 033 730, Fuji JP 2000-295715, NEC Tokin EP 1 366 948, Nebrigic, AeroVironment '942) are background/peripheral and would not, standing alone, anticipate the independent claims.

Opinion: On the record as cited, no single reference anticipates claims 1, 10, or 18. The patent's inventive weight rests on the combination of (a) a bidirectional four-switch/inductor H-bridge that is not constrained to the Vout > Vin relationship of a conventional boost, with (b) a cascaded voltage/current control loop regulating the output to a prescribed value despite the ±large fluctuation in capacitor voltage. That combination is most vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built from GE '258 + Linear Technology '694 (or Toyoda '142/Schupbach), not to a clean § 102 rejection.

Caveat: this is a preliminary analyst assessment, not a legal conclusion. A definitive anticipation opinion requires the full text/claims of each reference and, ideally, the examiner's original Office actions (available via USPTO PatentCenter / Global Dossier for application 11/853,664).

I'll ground my analysis by verifying the key prior-art references cited on the patent page.

Let me verify the control-loop and balancing references cited on the patent page.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,492,130 B2

Patent: Power processing unit and related method for regulating a voltage despite voltage fluctuations across an energy storage device
Inventor: Zaher Daboussi · Original assignee: AeroVironment, Inc. · Current assignee: Webasto Charging Systems, Inc.
Priority: 2005‑04‑04 (division of US 11/098,778, now US 7,436,150 B2) · Filed: 2007‑09‑11 · Granted: 2009‑02‑17 · Status: Expired – fee related (lapsed 2021‑02‑17)
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7492130](/patent/US7492130)/en

Note on method: Per your instruction, this analysis uses only the references appearing in the "Citations / Patent Citations / Non-Patent Citations" section of the patent page. Patents 5,734,258; 6,370,046; 6,163,142; 6,268,666 and the Caricchi paper were independently verified by search this session; the remaining cited references are characterized from their title/assignee/date as listed on the page, and where I have not verified full text I say so.

1. The claimed subject matter, distilled

Person of ordinary skill (POSITA): a power-electronics engineer with ~2–3 years of experience (or an M.S.) in DC/DC converter and battery/ultracapacitor energy-storage design — comfortably able to implement bidirectional buck-boost converters and current-mode control loops. All cited art predates the 2005‑04‑04 priority date.

2. The two references that do most of the work

US 5,734,258 A — Esser / General Electric, "Bidirectional buck boost converter" (1996‑06‑03; granted 1998‑03‑31)

Verified: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5734258 ; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/[871451](/patent/871451) ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5734258

This reference is strikingly close to the patent's structural core. It discloses:

• A first pair of switching devices (Q1, Q2) in series across a first voltage source and a second pair (Q3, Q4) in series across a second voltage source, with an inductor L coupled between the Q1/Q2 junction and the Q3/Q4 junction — i.e., precisely the H‑bridge/dual-half-bridge arrangement recited in claims 5 and 18.
• A gate pulse generator 20 responsive to "the magnitude and direction of current through inductor L, the magnitude of voltage at each of voltage sources V1 and V2, and external commands indicating the level of voltage to be developed at either of voltage sources V1 or V2" — i.e., a pulse generator whose duty is set to hold a commanded voltage.
• Expressly an ultracapacitor bank 22 as the energy-storage element (col. describing V2 = ultracapacitor bank used as auxiliary energy storage supplying/receiving power from motor 24), and express acknowledgment that "the voltage at terminals… can vary over a wide range."
• Bidirectional, buck-and-boost operation independent of the relative magnitudes of V1 and V2 — the very problem the '130 patent frames as its motivation.

Mapping claim 5/18 onto Fig. 1 of US 5,734,258: C1 = claimed capacitor; Q1 = first switch (inductor lead 1 ↔ cap lead 1); Q2 = second switch (inductor lead 1 ↔ cap lead 2); Q3 = third switch (inductor lead 2 ↔ PPU terminal 1); Q4 = fourth switch (inductor lead 2 ↔ PPU terminal 2). The match is element-for-element, including the "either the negative or positive terminal of each pair of voltage sources is common" configuration of the PPU terminals.

Consequence: claims 5 and 18 (and, by their incorporation, claims 8–9 and 21–22) are at minimum rendered obvious by US 5,734,258 alone, and are arguably anticipated. Claim 1's structural elements (switching module with inductor + switches; control module with pulse generator coupled to the switches; first/second terminals) are likewise all present.

US 6,370,046 B1 — Nebrigic et al. / Univ. of Illinois, "Ultra-capacitor based dynamically regulated charge pump power converter" (2002‑04‑09)

Verified: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6370046 (family sibling US 6,310,789 B1 also cited on the page)

This reference supplies the functional limitation of claim 1: "closed‑loop dynamic control allows for maintaining a desired output voltage even with variations in the input voltage," by sensing the output voltage against a reference VREF and modulating the switching of a capacitor matrix. It also teaches the ultracapacitor element (claims 2–3) and closed-loop regulation of a device built around an energy-storage capacitor.

Its converter is a switched-capacitor (charge-pump) topology rather than an inductor-based one, but it is directly on point for the objective (hold output at a prescribed value as the source/storage voltage moves) and for the means (sense output vs. reference → vary switching).

Combination 1 (core claims 1, 2, 5, 18): US 5,734,258 + US 6,370,046 (+ US 6,268,666, below).

• Motivation: US 5,734,258 itself supplies the bidirectional buck-boost H-bridge for an ultracapacitor whose voltage "can vary over a wide range" and whose gate logic responds to a commanded output level; US 6,370,046 supplies the recognized closed-loop technique for holding a desired output despite input-voltage variation, expressly in an ultracapacitor-based converter. Combining a known converter topology with a known output-voltage-regulating control that the same art says is needed is the paradigm of KSR (known elements, known method, predictable result — a regulated output).

3. Claim-by-claim obviousness map

Claim 1 — PPU with inductor+switches, pulse generator, and terminal-voltage regulation despite storage-voltage fluctuation

• US 5,734,258 discloses every structural element and the FIG. 1 topology; its gate pulse generator is responsive to inductor current, both source voltages, and "external commands indicating the level of voltage to be developed."
• US 6,268,666 B1 (Southwest Research, 2001‑07‑31; verified at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6268666B1](/patent/US6268666B1)/en) expressly teaches a bi-directional converter with buck/boost capability "irrespective of the direction of power flow" for combining an ultracapacitor auxiliary source with a bus, and explains that because ultracapacitor voltage varies as it discharges, "some kind of interface is required between the auxiliary storage device (e.g. ultracapacitors) and the battery-powered bus." This is a direct, explicit statement of the problem the '130 patent addresses and of the solution type.
• US 6,370,046 supplies the closed-loop "hold the output despite input variation" teaching.
• Conclusion: obvious over US 5,734,258 in view of US 6,370,046; alternatively US 5,734,258 + US 6,268,666. Motivation: the acknowledged need (in the references themselves) to interface a varying-voltage ultracapacitor to a load while delivering a stable output.

Claims 2–3 — capacitor / ultracapacitor

• US 5,734,258 expressly names an ultracapacitor bank as the energy-storage device; US 6,268,666 and US 6,370,046 are ultracapacitor-centric; US 6,265,851 B1 ("Ultracapacitor power supply for an electric vehicle," PRI Automation, 2001) and US 5,528,121 A (Jeol, "Storage capacitor power supply," 1996) are additional capsule references. Obvious.

Claim 4 — dissipative element in parallel with the capacitor

• The '130 specification equates this to a balancing resistor across each ultracapacitor (or a resistor + switch). The page cites WO 2003/100939 A2 ("Ultracapacitor balancing circuit," Good Ideas LLC, 2003), and US 2003/0067735 A1 / US 2003/0067281 A1 (ISE Research: ultracapacitor energy-storage cell pack; system for monitoring/controlling an energy-storage cell pack) and US 2003/0011346 A1 (Staib, "Circuit arrangement comprising a chain of capacitors") and EP 1 033 730 A2 (Jeol capacitor module) — all directed to series-capacitor balancing/equalization.
• Motivation: equalizing voltage across series-connected ultracapacitors to prevent overvoltage and extend life is a recognized, well-understood requirement (stated in the references themselves). Placing a dissipative/balancing element in parallel with each capacitor is the routine implementation. Claim 4 is obvious over US 5,734,258 + WO 2003/100939 A2 (or the ISE publications).
• Caveat: I did not verify the full text of WO 2003/100939 A2 or the ISE publications in this session; the characterization rests on the citation list and their titles. The balancing principle is nonetheless long-standing.

Claim 5 — the H-bridge switch map

As shown above, US 5,734,258 discloses this element-for-element; the Caricchi APEC '95 paper (non-patent literature, below) discloses the same bidirectional buck-boost topology. Anticipated/obvious.

Claims 6 & 7 — cascaded control module (adders, voltage regulator, current regulator, pulse generator; Vref and Vo feedback to the first adder, inductor-current feedback to the second adder)

This is the patent's principal potential point of novelty, and the cited art meets it:

• US 6,163,142 A (Kabushiki Kaisha Toyoda Jidoshokki Seisakusho, 2000‑12‑19; verified at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6163142) is a current-mode controller: an error amplifier compares the output voltage V_out against a reference voltage V_ref and produces a current instruction value I_cnt; a comparator compares the inductor current I_L to I_cnt; a flip-flop/oscillator then sets the switch on/off (duty). That is functionally: first adder + voltage regulator (outer loop) → second adder + current regulator/comparator (inner loop) → pulse generator, exactly as recited in claim 6, with the feedback routing of claim 7 (Vref and output-voltage feedback to the voltage loop; inductor-current feedback to the inner loop). The patent's own text confirms its loops are PI controllers — a standard current-mode-control implementation.
• US 5,731,694 A (Linear Technology, 1998‑03‑24) — "Control circuit and method for maintaining high efficiency over broad current ranges in a switching regulator circuit" (title/assignee as listed on the page; full text not verified this session) — is further corroboration that cascaded/current-mode regulator control with voltage and current feedback was routine.
• Motivation: current-mode (cascaded voltage-outer/current-inner) control was a well-known technique by the priority date for obtaining fast, tight regulation with inherent current limiting — which the '130 patent itself lists as the advantage ("tight and fast-responding voltage regulation with an inherent current limiting capability"). A POSITA seeking to regulate the US 5,734,258 converter's output would predictably apply the known current-mode control architecture of US 6,163,142 to the known H-bridge. Claims 6 and 7 are obvious over US 5,734,258 + US 6,163,142 (further in view of US 5,731,694).

Claims 8–9 — pulse-generator outputs to the four switches; switch control signal enables current flow

US 5,734,258's gate pulse generator drives Q1–Q4 with gating pulses that gate each device into/out of conduction. Obvious/anticipated.

Claims 10–17 — method claims

These mirror claims 1–9; the same combinations apply (US 5,734,258 for the topology and switching, US 6,163,142 for the generate-switch-control-signal/cascaded-loop steps, US 6,370,046 for the "regulate despite fluctuation" result). Obvious for the same reasons.

Claims 18–22 — PPU claims parallel to 5–9

Same analysis as claims 5–9; US 5,734,258 disposes of the topology (claim 18), and US 5,734,258 + US 6,163,142 disposes of the control claims (19–22).

4. Non-patent literature reinforcing the motivation

• Caricchi, Crescimbini & Di Napoli, "20 kW water-cooled prototype of a buck-boost bidirectional DC-DC converter topology for electrical vehicle motor drives," IEEE APEC '95, pp. 887–892 (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/[469045](/patent/469045)/). Verified abstract: a buck-boost bidirectional DC-DC converter to control both motoring and regenerative-braking operation of an EV PM motor drive, with a 20 kW prototype. This establishes that the bidirectional buck-boost converter (of the US 5,734,258 type) for buffering a varying-voltage source against a load was a known, reduced-to-practice topology in the same application space.
• Schupbach & Balda, "Comparing DC-DC converters for power management in hybrid electric vehicles," IEEE IEMDC '03, pp. 1369–1374 (cited on the page; full text not verified this session). A comparative study of converter topologies for energy management strongly evidences that selecting a bidirectional buck-boost for a varying ultracapacitor voltage was within the ordinary skill and design incentive of the POSITA.

Together these supplies the "why combine" rationale directly: engineers in this field were already (a) using bidirectional buck-boost converters, (b) for energy-storage devices whose voltage swings, and (c) seeking a stable bus/load voltage.

5. KSR-style motivation-to-combine summary

6. Rebuttal considerations and a candid strength assessment

Arguments the patentee could raise:

1. No single reference discloses the cascaded control architecture in combination with the H-bridge ultracapacitor topology. Correct — claims 6/7 rest on a two-reference combination (plus the NPL as motivation). But under KSR, combining US 5,734,258's converter with US 6,163,142's current-mode control yields nothing more than the predictable aggregation of known elements, and does so to solve the same problem the references already address.

2. "Regulate … at approximately a prescribed value despite fluctuation" (claim 1). US 5,734,258's "external commands indicating the level of voltage to be developed" and its "voltage levels can change widely and rapidly, without affecting power flow direction," plus US 6,370,046's "maintaining a desired output voltage even with variations in the input voltage," largely foreclose this. This limitation is the weakest basis for patentability.

3. The specific PI implementation and 8 V/5 V switch thresholds (described in the specification but not claimed) are not part of the § 103 analysis; the claims recite functional blocks, which read on the cited current-mode controller.

4. Objective evidence. The patent lists high cycle life, constant output voltage, low ripple (<0.5%), and bidirectional operation. However, ultracapacitor cycle life and bidirectionality are inherent properties of the storage element and the US 5,734,258 topology, and low ripple/tight regulation is the expected result of the claimed cascaded loop. No nexus to a specific claimed feature distinguishing over the art is evident on the face of the patent. (Note: the specification quantifies < 0.5% voltage and current ripple, ~5–20 Wh/kg system specific energy, and 50,000–100,000 cycles, but these are stated results rather than claimed distinctions.)

Strength-of-case by claim group:

• Strongest: claims 5, 8–9, 18, 21–22 — US 5,734,258 matches the H-bridge topology and gate-pulse generation element-for-element (near-anticipation, at minimum obviousness).
• Strong: claims 1, 2, 10–12, 18 — combination of a known bidirectional buck-boost with the known closed-loop output-regulation technique, with explicit motivation in US 6,268,666 and US 6,370,046.
• Moderate–strong: claims 6–7, 15–16, 19–20 — US 6,163,142 supplies the cascaded/current-mode control structure and feedback routing; the combination with the converter topology is predictable.
• Moderate: claim 4 / 13 — balancing/dissipative elements across series ultracapacitors; well-known principle, but I did not verify the full text of the balancing references this session.

Bottom line. US 7,492,130 appears highly vulnerable under § 103. Its structural claims (5, 18, and the dependent 8–9, 21–22) are essentially disclosed by US 5,734,258 A (with the Caricchi APEC '95 paper as corroborating NPL). Its functional claim 1 is met by combining that topology with the closed-loop output-regulation teaching of US 6,370,046 and/or the ultracapacitor/bus-interface teaching of US 6,268,666. Its control claims (6–7 and 15–16, 19–20) are met by further combining the well-known current-mode cascaded control of US 6,163,142 (and US 5,731,694). Claim 4/13 are met by the cited balancing art. In each case the motivation is supplied not by hindsight but by the cited references themselves, which expressly identify the varying-ultracapacitor-voltage/bus-interface problem and the need for a stable regulated output — the classic KSR posture.

Confidence / limitations. I verified by search the content of US 5,734,258 A, US 6,370,046 B1, US 6,163,142 A, US 6,268,666 B1, and the Caricchi APEC '95 paper abstract. Descriptions of US 5,731,694 A, US 6,265,851 B1, US 5,528,121 A, WO 2003/100939 A2, US 2003/0067735 A1, US 2003/0067281 A1, US 2003/0011346 A1, EP 1 033 730 A2, and Schupbach 2003 rely on the title/assignee/date as listed in the patent's own citation section and on their well-understood subject matter; their full texts were not independently re-verified in this session. This is a technical obviousness analysis of prior-art citations, not a legal opinion or a validity determination.