US 8333229

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC activity involving this patent.

US Patent 8,333,229 — Summary

Caveat on the litigation search: I ran searches aimed at USPTO records and CAFC 2026 dockets. I found no authoritative evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit proceeding, appeal, or district-court litigation involving patent 8,333,229 as of my searches. I could not access a live CAFC docket directly, and my targeted queries returned no hits. I therefore report no confirmed litigation rather than asserting there is none. (I also did not find any instance of a different patent number being mislabeled as 8333229, so the number appears sound.)

Bibliographic data (per Google Patents and FreePatentsOnline)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8333229/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8333229.html ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/8333229

Abstract (as issued)

"A draft arrester for an overhead door. An exemplary embodiment may include a flexible draft curtain extending between a ceiling structure and a wound-up portion of the overhead door. The draft arrester may include a follower assembly, which may include one or more rollers arranged to roll against the overhead door. An exemplary embodiment may include a repositionable arm arranged to press the rollers against the wound-up portion of the door."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Draft arrester (apparatus). A flexible draft curtain having an upper and lower end. A first pair of spaced-apart wheels is attached to the lower end and pressed against the roll-up door. A curtain support is attached to the upper end and is designed to mount to the door header, which has a top panel. The curtain is arranged to substantially span the gap between (a) the top panel of the header and (b) either the portion of the door wound on the roller or the roller itself. Critically, the curtain must be able to dynamically flex and extend as the door winds and unwinds (i.e., as the roll's effective diameter changes).

Claim 7 — Overhead door assembly (system). A rollable overhead door on a rotatable roller, with top, bottom, and side edges, where the bottom edge moves vertically to cover/uncover an opening. A header houses at least part of the roller and any wound door material. A first wheeled follower is biased against the wound door portion and/or the roller. A draft curtain runs vertically between the wheeled follower and the header while also running horizontally approximately the full width of the opening, with one end substantially touching an uppermost portion of the header.

Claim 15 — Draftless overhead door (system). A flexible overhead door wound/unwound on a rotatable roller by a motor, guided by a vertical door track. A header houses at least part of the roller, the motor, and any wound door material. A wheel is biased against the wound door portion or the roller, and a curtain is attached to and runs vertically between an uppermost panel of the header and the wheel, while extending horizontally across roughly the door's width.

Common inventive thread: all three independents pair (i) a biased wheel/roller follower that rides on the changing-diameter door roll with (ii) a flexible curtain that spans the header-to-roll gap across the door width, to arrest drafts in that gap. Claim 1 frames it as a sub-assembly mountable to a header; claims 7 and 15 frame it as a complete door assembly.

Notes and uncertainties

• Claim-drafting artifacts: claim 16 recites "a spring component arranged to bias the roller towards the rotatable roller," which reads as an apparent typographical error (context, and the corresponding specification/claim 5 language, indicates the intended object is the wheel). Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally, I am reporting the claim text as written rather than correcting it.
• Dependent-claim highlights: claims 4–6 add the pivotable repositionable arm, spring bias, and weighted-wheel bias; claims 10–14 add the same to the assembly claim, plus a horizontal rail spanning between two wheeled followers; claims 3 and 19 add that the curtain/rail extends substantially the entire door width.
• Assignee history: MIDWEST INDUSTRIAL DOOR, INC. appears as an original assignee in the chain, later assigned to RYTEC CORPORATION. Google Patents' "Current Assignee" field lists Rytec Corp.
• I have no authoritative confirmation of pending litigation, IPR/PGR proceedings, or CAFC appeals involving this patent; treat the absence of such results as "not found," not as proof of non-existence. A definitive check would require the USPTO Patent Public Search / Patent Center and PACER/CAFC docket databases directly.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 8333229.

Let me dig deeper into litigation-specific databases.

Let me try litigation-specific databases and search engines.

Summary: No litigation found for US 8,333,229

I ran multiple targeted searches for litigation involving US 8,333,229 (the "Draft arrester" patent) — including searches framed to surface the Unified Patents litigation caselist, Docket Alarm, CourtListener/RECAP, and general patent-litigation coverage. I found no district court case, CAFC appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding in which US 8,333,229 is identified as an asserted or challenged patent.

I want to be explicit about the limits of this finding, because the absence of results is not proof of absence:

• My available search tooling surfaced patent documents, assignment records, and PTAB filings for other patents, but returned no docket or complaint records naming this patent.
• The commercial docket databases that would be authoritative (Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, Unified Patents Portal litigation caselist, PACER) are largely behind paywalls or require case-specific queries, so I could not exhaustively query them. I do not have direct authenticated API access to the Unified Patents litigation caselist URL you provided.
• I therefore cannot state with high confidence that no litigation has ever occurred; I can only report that I found none.

If you need a definitive negative, the patent should be run directly against: (1) the Unified Patents Portal litigation caselist, (2) PACER for any case naming Rytec Corporation (or its predecessors Midwest Industrial Door, Inc.), and (3) Docket Navigator / Lex Machina by patent number and by assignee.

What the record does show (not litigation)

For completeness, the following events appear in the patent's file history and are not litigation — they are assignments, security interests, and maintenance-fee payments:

Prosecution/family facts (also not litigation):

• Application: 12/381,984, filed 2009-03-18; granted 2012-12-18; priority to provisional 61/069,969 (2008-03-18); inventor Thomas Terrence (Terrance) Kimener.
• Continuation: 13/717,158, filed 2012-12-17, which issued as US 8,857,491 B2 ("Draft arrester") on 2014-10-14.
• Legal status: Active; adjusted expiration listed as 2029-05-16.
• The 10 third-party "Cited By" entries on the Google Patents page are later patent publications that cite this patent (e.g., US 20130105093 A1, which is Rytec's own continuation publication; Raynor Mfg. US 20180044977 A1; Rite-Hite US 20220356758 A1). Citation is not evidence of litigation.

Bottom line

Based on the sources I could reach, no litigation involving US 8,333,229 is known to me. I did not locate any plaintiff/defendant pair, jurisdiction, case number, or filing date to report. I'd flag this as "no results found in the sources searched" rather than a certified clean litigation history, and recommend confirming against the paywalled docket databases named above — with particular attention to Rytec Corporation (and Midwest Industrial Door, Inc.) as the likely asserting party, since Rytec is the current assignee and the patent's continuation US 8,857,491 would likely be asserted alongside it if this family were ever enforced.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings on file" result against live sources before writing this up.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 8,333,229. The canonical structured data block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) API — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings naming this patent as the challenged patent. Live web searches (PTAB-related queries, "draft arrester" + IPR, patent-number queries, and Rytec litigation queries) surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal involving the '229 patent. Bottom line for a defendant: the patent is untested at the PTAB. There is no canceled claim to point to, no estoppel wall erected by a prior petitioner, and no Board precedent construing the claims — which means both (a) the patent owner carries no administrative "hardening," and (b) you are free to be the first petitioner with a clean slate.

No proceedings to enumerate

There are no proceeding headers to list. Per the operating rules, I will not invent proceeding numbers, petitioner names, panels, or dispositions. The structured block is controlling: the default result here is "no PTAB activity on file," and the live searches did not override it.

What I can report on the surrounding enforcement/validity context, clearly labeled as not PTAB proceedings:

• No confirmed district-court or CAFC litigation found. My searches for Rytec enforcement activity and for Federal Circuit appeals involving this drafting family returned nothing citable. This is a "not found" result, not proof of non-existence — a definitive check requires PACER/Docket Navigator and the CAFC docket directly.
• Related family member. Continuation US 8,857,491 B2 (application 13/717,158, filed 2012-12-17, issued 2014-10-14, same title "Draft arrester," priority 2008-03-18) lists the '229 patent as a parent. No PTAB proceedings were found against the '491 patent either. If you are evaluating freedom-to-operate, both family members should be cleared, because an IPR against '229 alone would not touch '491's claims.
• IF the PTAB number appears anywhere in a demand letter. The '229 patent has been cited by later patents (e.g., the Raynor "Rolling door construction for controlling air leakage" publication, US 2018/0044977 A1, and a Clark Door Limited "Door assembly" publication, US 2022/0235604 A1), which is a sign of a live, commercially relevant technology space — not a sign of litigation.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is untested. All 19 claims stand as issued. None are canceled, none have been held unpatentable, and none have been confirmed by the Board in an FWD. The three independents — claim 1 (draft arrester sub-assembly), claim 7 (overhead door assembly), and claim 15 (draftless overhead door) — are all fully live. That matters because claim 1 is drafted narrowly at the point of novelty: it requires the curtain to be "capable of dynamically flexing and extending in response to the door panel winding and unwinding around the rotatable roller." A prior-art invalidity theory that ignores the dynamic-flex limitation is likely to lose on the merits, and the '229 prosecution history is the place to look for the applicant's own arguments distinguishing static gap-seals.

Estoppel landscape: a blank field — with one caution. Because no petitioner has ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not attached to anyone with respect to the '229 patent. There is no prior petitioner/privy barring you from raising § 102/§ 103 grounds that "reasonably could have been raised." This is the opposite of the usual "the art was already run" situation: you have the full universe of prior art available, subject only to the normal § 325(d) discretion (whether the same art/arguments were already before the examiner) and the Fintiv/discretionary-denial framework if you are in parallel district-court litigation. Check the '229 file wrapper — the examiner cited a substantial body of art (the citation list runs to 56+ references, including Nergeco US 5,183,093 "Removable sealing device for a raisable-curtain industrial door," Crider US 5,566,736 "Sealable curtain," and various roller-blind/insulation-shade references). Art that was before the examiner is more vulnerable to a § 325(d) discretionary denial, so your strongest petition likely needs new art not in the record.

Pattern signals: none — no petitioner, no aggregator, no appeal. There is no repeat-petitioner signature, no Unified Patents/RPX-style defensive aggregator in the chain, and no evidence the patent owner has had to defend its claims at the Board. Combined with the long active life (adjusted expiration 2029-05-16, with 4th/8th/12th-year maintenance fees paid in 2016, 2020, and 2024) and a security-interest history (BMO Harris Bank N.A. lien recorded 2020-12-20, released 2024-07-23), the picture is a quietly maintained, never-attacked patent — typical of a patent enforced only through licensing/negotiation, or not enforced at all.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not represent that any claim has been invalidated. There is no FWD, no certificate of cancellation, and no Federal Circuit mandate to cite. Any statement that "claims 1–5 are canceled" would be false as to this patent. If you need a citable adverse record, you will have to create one.
2. Verify the negative yourself before relying on it. The ODP ingest can lag. Confirm directly via PTAB E2E / USPTO Patent Center for application 12/381,984 and Patent No. 8,333,229, and cross-check the continuation 8,857,491. I could not open those dockets live, so treat my "no proceedings" finding as high-confidence-but-unverified.
3. If you are a defendant facing assertion — assess IPR timing first. With no prior petition, you are free to file, but note: (i) § 315(b)'s one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement; (ii) if you file a PGR, it must be within 9 months of grant — a window that closed long ago (grant 2012-12-18), so only IPR is available; (iii) CBM review is not available, since this is a door-hardware patent that does not meet the "financial product or service" requirement of AIA § 18(d)(1).
4. Mine the prosecution history and the family. The strongest invalidity theories here will turn on the "dynamically flexing and extending" limitation in claim 1 and its counterparts in claims 7 and 15. Pull the '229 file wrapper and the '491 file wrapper from Patent Center, identify what the examiner considered, and build your § 103 combination around art that was not of record to minimize § 325(d) risk.
5. Watch for future filings. The absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal: genuinely asserted patents in active industries tend to attract IPRs once litigation starts. If a complaint against your client is served today, expect that you may be the first-mover — and that any later-filed IPR by a competitor would have to contend with your prior art and arguments.

Sources and caveats. Canonical proceedings list: USPTO Open Data Portal structured block (no AIA trials on file). Bibliographic and citation data: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8333229/en. Related continuation: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8857491B2](/patent/US8857491B2)/en. Because no proceeding exists, I have no Final Written Decision, institution decision, or CAFC opinion to link to — there is nothing on PTAB E2E or CourtListener for this patent to cite. The litigation search was inconclusive: I found no authoritative evidence of litigation, but I could not reach PACER, Docket Navigator, or the CAFC docket directly, so treat that as "not found" rather than "does not exist."

I'll research the assignment chain and correspondent records for US 8,333,229.

Let me look for the assignment records and correspondent details more specifically.

Note on sourcing: My session's web tools returned the USPTO Assignment Center's index pages only indirectly. I was able to confirm the reel/frame numbers, dates, conveyances, assignors, and assignees from the legal-events record embedded in the authoritative patent text, but I was not able to retrieve the correspondent-of-record fields in this session. Where the correspondent is unknown, I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

• Name variant flag: the issued patent and Reel 022721/0160 spell the inventor "Thomas Terrance / Thomas Terrence Kimener"; related Midwest Industrial Door filings spell it "Thomas Terrance Kimener." Same individual.
• No departure signal. Kimener did not appear to leave the original assignee's orbit within 12 months of filing. He is a repeat inventor across the Midwest Industrial Door family (e.g., US 8,056,174 Repositionable pit seal, filed 2010‑01‑13; US 6,837,296 Safety barrier assembly) and later appears on Stabilock, LLC filings alongside R. Peter Kimener and Kenneth A. Frank — i.e., he continued inventing with the same principals. This is the opposite of the "inventor bails out pre-fire-sale" pattern the brief flags.

Original assignee

Midwest Industrial Door, Inc. (Loveland, OH) is the entity on the first recorded assignment (Reel 022721/0160, executed 2009‑05‑05, recorded 2009‑05‑21). Its line of business was industrial/loading-dock safety and door equipment — mezzanine safety barrier assemblies, loading-dock pit seals, and trailer stabilizers — and it appears to have shipped product in that space. Note the discrepancy already flagged in the prior section: Google Patents lists the "original assignee" as Rytec Corp, while the recorded chain shows Midwest Industrial Door as the first assignee and Rytec as the successor. The recorded assignment record controls.

Current status of the original assignee: unclear. This patent was transferred out to Rytec in 2010 (Reel 024565/0757), but I found no authoritative record of Midwest Industrial Door being dissolved, bankrupt, or acquired. Treat its status as "not confirmed," not as "defunct."

Assignment timeline

Four assignments are recorded against this patent per the legal-events record. All four are reflected below; correspondent of record was not retrievable in this session for any of them.

• 2009‑05‑05 (executed) / recorded 2009‑05‑21 — Reel 022721/0160

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of inventors' interest)
  • Assignor: Kimener, Thomas Terrance (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Midwest Industrial Door, Inc., Ohio
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — correspondent field could not be confirmed this session.
  • Context: standard employment/inventor-to-company assignment; the inventor assigns to the company that filed the application (the original assignee).

• 2010‑06‑09 (executed) / recorded 2010‑06‑21 — Reel 024565/0757

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Midwest Industrial Door, Inc.
  • Assignee: Rytec Corporation, Wisconsin (Jackson, WI)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: corporate acquisition / portfolio transfer — the door-art IP moved from Midwest Industrial Door to Rytec, an operating door manufacturer. (Two owner-name entries appear on this reel; both name Rytec as assignee, effective 2010‑06‑09.)

• 2020‑12‑17 (executed) / recorded 2020‑12‑20 — Reel 054703/0525

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (grant of security interest, not a title transfer)
  • Assignor: Rytec Corporation
  • Assignee: BMO Harris Bank N.A., Illinois
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: securitization / collateral pledge — Rytec encumbered its IP to secure a lender facility. Title stayed with Rytec.

• 2024‑07‑23 (executed) / recorded 2024‑07‑23 — Reel 068061/0048

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (and a companion release of security interest, same reel/frame)
  • Assignor: BMO Bank N.A. (f/k/a BMO Harris Bank N.A.)
  • Assignee: Rytec Corporation, Wisconsin
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: lien payoff / release — the BMO security interest was terminated. Timing aligns with the reported Nucor acquisition closing (see below); no title-transfer assignment was recorded, which is expected when a buyer acquires the company rather than the patents individually.

Net title position: Rytec Corporation is the assignee of record (no post‑2010 title transfer was recorded for this patent). Notably, the reported Nucor Corporation acquisition of Rytec (agreement announced 2024‑06‑03, all‑cash, ~$565M) was structured as a stock/entity acquisition, so it would not generate a patent-by-patent assignment record for US 8,333,229 — meaning the Assignment Center likely still shows Rytec. That is an explanatory observation about the record gap, not a recorded assignment.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8333229
    2008 : Provisional 61 069969 filed
    2009 : Application 12 381984 filed
         : Kimener assigns to Midwest Industrial Door
         : Published as US 2009 0236053 A1
    2010 : Midwest Industrial Door assigns to Rytec
    2012 : Patent US 8333229 issues
    2013 : Continuation published as US 2013 0105093
    2014 : Continuation US 8857491 issues
    2020 : Rytec grants security interest to BMO Harris
    2024 : BMO releases security interest
         : Nucor agrees to acquire Rytec

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every assignee in the chain is identifiable as either an operating company (Midwest Industrial Door, Rytec Corporation) or a chartered bank (BMO Harris Bank N.A.). No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears; no single-purpose LLC appears. Reels 022721/0160 and 024565/0757.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee on reels 022721/0160, 024565/0757, 054703/0525, or 068061/0048 matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, or any Spangenberg entity. I also found no Unified Patents or RPX listing associating this patent with a high-frequency plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. The Assignment Center exposes a correspondent-of-record for each recording, and that is the highest-value tell here — but I could not retrieve the correspondent fields for any of the four recordings in this session. I will not infer a name. On the available evidence there is nothing to flag, but this is a data gap, not a clean negative. Verification step: open each reel/frame (022721/0160, 024565/0757, 054703/0525, 068061/0048) in Assignment Center and read the correspondent box.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is exactly one title-transfer link (Midwest → Rytec, 2010) in the entire chain; the other two third-party recordings are a pledge (2020) and its release (2024). No chained LLC-to-LLC sequence in <24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit, ITC action, or post‑grant proceeding involving this patent was found. The most recent title-adjacent event (2024 lien release) aligns with a corporate acquisition, not with an assertion campaign.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding is associated with Midwest Industrial Door, Rytec, or this patent. The 2010 transfer reads as an ordinary commercial acquisition, executed ~14 months after the first assignment and ~2 years before issuance.

7. Privateering — not present. The patent is held by the operating company that makes the covered product (Rytec, high-speed Spiral® rolling doors and fabric doors). There is no transfer to an NPE asserting on Rytec's behalf; no SEC filing, EFF, or Patent Progress coverage surfaces on this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at Rytec Corporation (an operating company), not at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Inverse-signal conclusion does not apply; the patent remains in operating-company hands.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with a stated caveat.

Justification: The full recorded chain (Reel 022721/0160 → Reel 024565/0757 → Reels 054703/0525 + 068061/0048) is a textbook operating-company ownership chain: inventor → employer (Midwest Industrial Door) → acquirer (Rytec Corporation), plus a lender pledge and its release. Rytec is a genuine manufacturer that ships products embodying the claims (high-speed rolling and fabric doors) and is now the assignee of record, consistent with the reported 2024 Nucor acquisition of Rytec. Zero NPE signals are present — no shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLC transfers, no bankruptcy, no defensive aggregator. Caveat: the verdict taxonomy's "assertion" prong requires a live suit against competitors, and I found no litigation naming this patent; only the "operating company ships the product" prong is satisfied. I also could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record, so signal 3 remains a data gap, not a cleared negative.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center search: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 8333229)
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8333229/en
• Continuation family member (US 8,857,491 B2): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8857491B2](/patent/US8857491B2)/en

I'll search for authoritative details on US 8,333,229 and its cited prior art, focusing on the references most likely to bear on the independent claims.

Let me examine more of the key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,333,229 B2 ("Draft arrester")

0. Number verification (per your strict rule)

I searched for the literal number 8333229. The records I retrieved all correspond to the same document, so the number is sound and I am not substituting any similar number:

• Google Patents: US8333229B2, app. US12/381,984, filed 2009‑03‑18, granted 2012‑12‑18 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8333229/en
• FreePatentsOnline: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8333229.html
• Justia: https://patents.justia.com/patent/8333229

No contradictory record was returned for this number.

Methodology / caveats (important):

1. I worked from the authoritative full text supplied to me (Google Patents front page + claims + description), which carries the complete 62‑item citation table with priority dates, publication dates, assignees and titles. That table is my primary source for the per‑reference data below.
2. I attempted live retrieval of individual reference texts but hit a search‑step cap partway through. I was able to pull full text for four key references — US 5,183,093 (Nergeco), US 5,456,890 (Rite‑Hite), US 5,566,736 (Crider) and US 6,357,507 / US 2002/0059985 (Räsontec‑Stoebich). For all others I rely on the titles/dates in the patent's own citation table plus my background knowledge; I flag where my confidence is lower.
3. Legal standard reminder: a reference "anticipates" under §102 only if a single reference discloses every limitation of the claim, arranged as claimed. Almost none of the cited references do — the overwhelming majority are §103 (obviousness) references or mere background. Below I distinguish "genuine §102 candidate" from "§103‑only." Where I name a claim under §102, I say why a single reference might read on it.
4. Date qualification: references whose publication post‑dates the 2008‑03‑18 priority date can still be prior art under §102(e)/§102(a)(2) if their effective filing/priority date predates 2008‑03‑18. Only one cited item, US 2012/0012262 A1 (Comfortex, priority 2010‑07‑13), post‑dates the priority date on both counts and is therefore not prior art to the '329 patent.

1. Independent claims at issue (the "target" limitations)

For mapping purposes, the limitations that do the real work are:

• Claim 1: flexible draft curtain (upper + lower ends); first pair of spaced‑apart wheels operatively coupled to the lower end and biased against the wound door; curtain support at the upper end mounted to a header having a top panel; curtain spanning header‑top‑panel ↔ door roll/roller; and the curtain "capable of dynamically flexing and extending" as the door winds/unwinds.
• Claim 7: roller + windable door with top/bottom/side edges; header housing the roller and wound door; first wheeled follower biased against wound door or roller; draft curtain spanning vertically between follower and header and horizontally ≈ the opening width, with one end substantially touching an uppermost portion of the header.
• Claim 15: flexible door + roller + motor + vertical track; header housing roller, motor and wound door; wheel biased against wound door or roller; curtain attached to and spanning an uppermost panel of the header ↔ the wheel, extending horizontally across ≈ the door width.

2. Tier 1 — References with genuine §102 / high‑materiality potential

2.1 US 5,183,093 A — Nergeco (Kraeutler) — the most material reference

• Full citation: US 5,183,093 A, "Removable sealing device for a raisable‑curtain industrial door," Bernard Kraeutler, assignee Nergeco (Société Anonyme).
• Priority/filing: priority 1991‑03‑05; filed 1992‑03‑04; published/issued 1993‑02‑02.
• Description: A roll‑up/fold‑up industrial door has a downwardly open channel cross‑member at the top (a header housing the wind‑up shaft, motor and transmission). To close the gap between the cross‑member (header) and the top of the curtain, a cover 15/35 is fastened at its top edge to the bottom edge of the cross‑member flange and hangs down so its bottom edge rests against the top portion of the curtain, "provid[ing] continuous closure between the cross‑member and the curtain." In the "curtain moving" embodiment the bottom edge of the cover "may be provided with rotatably‑mounted rollers or wheels" and a sealing gasket; a 180° fold couples the cover to the cross‑member.
• Potential §102 exposure:
  • Claim 1 — Strongest single‑reference exposure in the set. Map: "cover" → draft curtain; "top edge fastened to the cross‑member flange" → curtain support mounted to the door header; "bottom edge placed against the top portion of the curtain" + "rotatably‑mounted rollers or wheels" → lower‑end wheels biased against the door; the moving‑curtain embodiment inherently flexes as the roll changes diameter. The gap is the "pair of spaced‑apart wheels" limitation and the explicit "biased" limitation — Nergeco's disclosure is a wheel(s)‑lined edge rather than a recited pair biased against the wound portion. Whether it anticipates or merely renders obvious turns on claim construction of "pair of spaced‑apart wheels." I would characterize it as a very strong §103 reference and a colorable §102 reference.
  • Claim 7 / Claim 15 — Material for the "curtain spanning header ↔ roll/roller across the opening width" concept, but Nergeco does not recite a motorized roller housed in a header plus a biased wheeled follower in the claimed arrangement, so these are §103, not clean §102.
• Note: the EP counterpart EP 0 502 758 A1 appears in the art but is not in the '329 citation table.

2.2 US 6,357,507 B1 — Räsontec (Stöebich et al.)

• Full citation: US 6,357,507 B1, "Curtain arrangement for preventing spread of smoke," Jochen Stöebich et al., assignee Räsontec N.V. Rabobank Trust Comp. Curaçao N.V.
• Priority/filing: priority 1995‑03‑22 (CH 00815/95‑0; DE 195 12 355); filed (as CIP chain) 1999‑01‑22; published/issued 2002‑03‑19. Divisional counterpart published as US 2002/0059985 A1 (2002‑05‑23).
• Description: A temperature‑resistant curtain web wound on and unwound from a coil on a coil core, with a guidance system (height‑adjustable core support and/or lateral guide bars and a common end bar/weight) that keeps the web taut and planar even under strong air currents — i.e., a flexible curtain unwound from a coil, deliberately held in sealing contact to block smoke/air.
• Potential §102 exposure:
  • Claim 1 / Claim 9 / Claim 15 (flexible‑curtain portion) — Relevant only to the generic idea of a flexible curtain paid off a coil and tensioned to block air. It does not disclose wheels biased against the wound door or a header‑to‑roll curtain. §103 only; its chief value is showing a flexible sealing curtain on a roll was known.
  • It is a more natural §103 reference in combination with a biased‑follower reference (e.g., 2.1 or the Tier‑2 wheeled/follower art).

2.3 US 7,918,263 B2 — Nergeco (Kraeutler), "High‑speed door with a flexible curtain"

• Priority 2005‑10‑28; published/issued 2011‑04‑05.
• Description: A high‑speed industrial door with a flexible curtain (roll‑up), i.e., the same general architecture as the '329 door environment.
• Potential §102 exposure: None directly against the independent claims; it lacks the header‑to‑roll draft curtain/follower. §103 background for the "flexible roll‑up industrial door" preamble of claims 7/15.

2.4 US 7,698,088 B2 — Dynaco (Coenraets), "Door assembly" — and US 2010/0101739 A1 — Dynaco (Coenraets), "Device With a Shutter Which May Be Wound Around a Drum"

• US 7,698,088 B2: priority 2002‑04‑10; issued 2010‑04‑20. US 2010/0101739 A1: priority 2007‑02‑07; published 2010‑04‑29.
• Description: Roll‑up door/shutter assemblies in which a flexible shutter is wound around a drum, with edge/sealing details around the drum.
• Potential §102 exposure: Relevant to claim 15's "drum/roller + wound shutter" preamble and to the notion of sealing at the roll; they do not disclose a header‑anchored flexible curtain biased against the roll by a wheeled follower. §103 combination candidates, not anticipatory.

3. Tier 2 — Strong §103 (obviousness) combination references

These are the references a challenger would most plausibly combine with one another or with Tier 1. For each: citation, dates, description, and the claims they most bear on.

4. Tier 3 — Secondary / background references (grouped)

Full citation, dates and title are taken verbatim from the '329 citation table. My mapping column states the realistic role. All are §103 background at most; none alone anticipates an independent claim.

4a. Early window‑shade / insulation "sealing" art (the "seal a movable panel to its surround" lineage):

4b. Window/mounting and section hardware:

4c. Breakaway / release‑mechanism art (guide and impact lineage):

4d. Blinds / roller‑blind mechanisms (mostly after‑arising, low relevance):

4e. Shutters / collapsible doors / other:

5. Bottom line: claim‑by‑claim anticipation assessment

• No single cited reference anticipates claim 1, 7 or 15 as a whole. Each independent claim requires all of: (i) a flexible curtain that spans the header‑top/upper structure and the wound door roll (or roller) across the door width, and (ii) a biased wheel/roller follower riding the wound roll, with the curtain dynamically flexing as the roll diameter changes. The cited art generally supplies these features separately, not in one reference.
• Closest §102 candidate: US 5,183,093 (Nergeco, Kraeutler). Its cover/edge‑closure between the cross‑member (header) and the moving curtain, including an embodiment whose bottom edge carries rotatably‑mounted rollers/wheels bearing on the curtain, is the nearest single disclosure to claim 1 — subject to the "pair of spaced‑apart wheels" and "biased" limitations. I would treat it as highly material under §103 and colorable (not clean) under §102 for claim 1.
• Secondary candidates (better as §103): US 6,357,507 / US 2002/0059985 (flexible coil‑wound sealing curtain), US 5,566,736 (biased roller(s) tensioning/sealing a flexible curtain), US 5,456,890 (roller‑wound air‑blocking flexible curtain), US 6,551,191 (roller forming a weather seal at a gap), US 7,698,088 & US 2010/0101739 (drum‑wound shutter) — combinable to reach claims 7/15's system architecture.
• The dependent‑claim features are well covered by art: the repositionable pivoted arm and spring/weighted bias (claims 4–6, 10–12, 16–18) are conventional spring/weight biasing, and the "horizontal rail between two wheeled followers" (claims 3, 13, 14, 19) is a routine engineering aggregation — expect these to be the first to fall under §103.

6. Contradictions / notes flagged

• No contradiction between the earlier-generated summary sections and the authoritative full text on bibliographic data, claims, assignee chain or family. The earlier "no litigation found" finding is unaffected by this prior‑art exercise.
• Internal specification/claim tension (flagging, not correcting): the Background/Field describes the disclosure as directed to "non‑contact draft arresters," yet claims 1/7/15 all recite wheels/rollers bearing (biased) against the door roll — i.e., contact followers. That inconsistency in the source text may be probed in any validity dispute. I am reporting the text as written.
• Claim 16 typo (repeat of prior flag): claim 16 recites "a spring component arranged to bias the roller towards the rotatable roller." Per your rule I report it literally; the context (claim 5, claim 11, spec) indicates the intended object is the wheel.
• Prior‑art date caveat: for the references in §4d/§4e that published after 2008‑03‑18 (e.g., US 7,806,160; US 7,810,544; US 7,828,037; US 7,938,162; US 2010/0101739; US 7,918,263; US 2009/0159218), prior‑art status depends on their effective filing dates (§102(e)/(a)(2)), which I have taken from the '329 citation table but did not independently re‑verify against USPTO Patent Center. The only cited item that fails on both priority and publication is US 2012/0012262 A1 (Comfortex).
• Coverage disclaimer: I could not retrieve and read the full text of every one of the 62 citations (search‑step cap). Descriptions for Tier‑2/Tier‑3 references beyond the four retrieved in full rely on their titles/dates as recorded in the '329 citation table plus my background knowledge; treat those characterizations as provisional and verify against the individual documents (USPTO Patent Public Search / Patent Center) before relying on them in any filing or opinion.

I'll research the key prior-art references cited on this patent's face before building the obviousness analysis.

Now let me research additional key references on the cited-art list.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,333,229 B2 ("Draft arrester")

35 U.S.C. § 103 (pre-AIA), based on the prior art cited on the face of the patent

0. Scope, and what I could and could not verify

This analysis builds on the two prior sections (bibliographic/claim overview and litigation summary) and does not repeat them. Two procedural points carry over:

• The patent numbers and identifiers in the Cited-Art lists are reported literally. Where a reference's content matters to the § 103 mapping, I fetched it; I flag at the end exactly which references I verified and which I am characterizing only from title/family metadata. Searches for US 6,550,191 (Rite‑Hite), US 733,956 (Glackin) and US 5,566,736 (Crider "Sealable curtain") returned no usable content before my tool budget ran out — I therefore treat those three as unverified and do not rely on them for any element of the rejections below.
• Priority/effective date. Application 12/381,984 was filed 2009‑03‑18 with benefit of provisional 61/069,969 (2008‑03‑18). Because the application was filed before 2013‑03‑16, pre-AIA §§ 102/103 govern — including pre-AIA § 102(e) for U.S. patent documents, and the KSR gloss on § 103 (not the AIA's "otherwise available to the public" formulation). One caveat worth flagging: several claim limitations (e.g., "header having a top panel," "header housing at least a portion of the rotatable roller," "one end substantially touching an upper most portion of the header") appear to have been added during prosecution; if any of them lack written-description support in the 2008 provisional, the effective date for those claims slides to 2009‑03‑18. This matters only marginally, because essentially all of the art relied on below predates March 2008.

Reference-shortlist and status

1. Legal framework applied

Under Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), the analysis proceeds through: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) the level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a claimed combination may be obvious where:

• the prior art elements are combined "according to known methods" to yield no more than predictable results;
• a known element is substituted for another to obtain a predictable result;
• a known technique is applied to a known device "ready for improvement" to yield a predictable result;
• the combination is "obvious to try" — i.e., a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; or
• the change is a matter of "design incentives and other market forces," including a predictable variation of a known device.

I do not require an explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation; KSR makes TSM just one of several rationales. The strongest rationales here are (i) known‑technique/known‑element and (ii) a recognized design need in a crowded, mature art.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

For an early‑2008 critical date, a PHOSITA in the field of roll‑up overhead doors and industrial closures would have:

• a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering (or equivalent shop/design experience) and 2–4 years designing door and closure hardware, or 5+ years of practical experience in industrial roll‑up door design;
• working familiarity with: the classical "curtain‑on‑a‑roller‑tube" architecture; the draft/thermal-leakage problem at door perimeters (a decades‑old topic, per the 1903–1990 references cited on the face of the patent, e.g. US 733,956; US 1,007,339; US 2,548,040; US 4,433,712); and the standard expedients of spring biasing, gravity/counterweight biasing, cam/pivot followers, and rolling contact to absorb a changing dimension.
• awareness that the same seal‑the‑gap problem arises in the analogous closure arts: window shades, movable insulation, and smoke/fire curtains — all of which are cited on the face of the patent.

Critically, this PHOSITA would know that the gap between the door roll and the header is not constant, because roll diameter grows from ~the tube diameter to (possibly) the full wrapped stack. The specification itself concedes this: "the gap between the door roll and the header may vary and may be quite substantial."

3. Claim construction of the terms that decide the case

Internal inconsistency to flag (new, not in the prior summaries): the Background states the disclosure is directed to "non‑contact draft arresters," yet every independent claim recites a wheel/roller "biased against" the door. The 2008 provisional lineage and the Summary use contact wheels. This is a drafting artifact, but a skilled advocate could invoke it either way (broadening for infringement, or to argue the art's contact seals are different). It does not change the § 103 result.

4. The core combination and why it is obvious

4.1 Primary combination A — Nergeco '093 in view of Marquez '430 (and Morse '804)

Targets: independent claims 1 and 7.

US 5,183,093 (Nergeco / Kraeutler) — verified content:

• A raisable‑curtain industrial door with a rigid frame whose uprights are "interconnected at their top ends by a downwardly‑open channel‑section cross‑member 3" (i.e., a header) housing the wind‑up shaft 11 and motor 12.
• The patent expressly identifies the problem: "If there were no cover, it would be necessary to attach the top edge of the curtain to the web of the cross‑member since otherwise there would be a large passage for air flow through the top of the cross‑member."
• The solution: a cover 15 whose top edge "is fastened via its top edge to the bottom edge of one of the flanges of the cross‑member," with its bottom edge "placed against the top portion of the curtain so as to provide continuous closure between the cross‑member and the curtain."
• FIG. 3 is expressly "a variant embodiment in which the curtain is raised by being wound up at the top of the door" — i.e., a roll‑up door with a door roll — and in that embodiment "the bottom edge of the cover being maintained in the proximity of said substantially stationary position."
• And, decisively: "the bottom edge of the cover may be provided with rotatably‑mounted rollers or wheels."
• Gaskets, rubber rims, bristle rows, and shock‑absorber components at the cover's bottom edge are also disclosed.

Mapping to claim 1:

Why a PHOSITA would combine / why this is predictable: Nergeco is not merely analogous art — it is the same art (industrial raisable‑curtain doors) addressing the same problem (air passage between the head structure and the curtain). Substituting Marquez's resilient baffle‑and‑lip arrangement (US 4,597,430: "[t]he lip should come in brushing contact with the roller to provide a positive seal"; "the upper baffle could be mounted to a horizontal surface with the lip depending into contact with the shade roller"; "some type of extension, preferably somewhat resilient, which extends from the base out into contact with the shade roller") for Nergeco's gasket/cover bottom edge is a substitution of one known sealing element for another to obtain the same predictable result — closure of the head gap against air flow. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416–17, 421.

Morse '804 supplies the "flexible shield on a roller" plus resilient end seals and the multi‑roller housing: "a plastic shield for covering the complete inner surface of a window frame wherein the side edges are frictionally held … and the upper and lower ends are sealed with strips of resilient material," with the shield, screen and shade all mounted on rollers at the "upper panel" of the frame. Morse reinforces that sealing the head gap of a roll‑mounted web with a resilient element is a long‑known, standardized expedient (1951).

4.2 Primary combination B — the roll‑up door platform + Nergeco/Marquez

Targets: independent claims 7 and 15.

Claims 7 and 15 require the environment: a rotatable roller; a door with top/bottom/side edges windable onto the roller; a header housing the roller (and, in claim 15, the motor); a motor; and a vertical door track. This is the generic, saturated state of the art in 2008, and it is supplied on the face of the patent by the door‑platform references — e.g. US 5,632,317 (Overhead Door Corp., "Roll‑up door"), US 5,758,705 (Kelley, "Roll‑up door"), US 5,445,209 (Lichy, "Guide system for vertically moveable flexible door"), US 6,942,003 (Service Door Industries, "Roll‑up door curtain and guides and bottom bar therefor"), and US 6,357,507 / US 2002/0059985 (Räsontec, smoke curtain with a coil, motorized drive, lateral guide bars, and a supporting arrangement using rollers).

A PHOSITA seeking to reduce the draft at the head of a motorized roll‑up door has a finite, identified set of conventional solutions (resilient lip/baffle; brush/gasket; cover plate; flexible apron), and the art of record demonstrates each of them in an analogous closure. That is the KSR "obvious to try" and "design incentives" situation: the specification itself supplies the market driver ("the building may be a drive‑through car wash," liquids escaping, energy loss), which is precisely a known problem with an obvious engineering response.

4.3 The "biased follower" element (claims 1, 7, 15; emphasized in 4–6, 10–12)

Even if Nergeco's rollers are read as passively positioned rather than "biased," the biasing limitation is met by well‑known expedients in the cited art and in the specification's own admission:

• The specification concedes bias may be achieved by "weighted wheels that gravity directs against the door roll" or "a spring biasing structure … circumscribing the bolt." A claim element that the inventor describes as satisfiable by either of two routine mechanical choices is, by definition, an obvious design choice.
• The Räsontec/Stoebich smoke‑curtain family discloses a curtain held tight against air currents by a common end bar forming a weight, plus a supporting arrangement with supporting rollers/belts, and lateral guide bars — i.e., the use of gravity/rollers to keep a flexible web pressed into sealing position. (Verification caveat in §8.)
• Door‑hardware references on the face of the patent — e.g. US 6,574,832 ("Yieldable guide for a door"), US 6,089,305 (selectively tensioned leading edge), US 6,715,531 and US 6,481,487 (Simon: flexible‑curtain guide mechanisms with deflecting plates), US 5,222,541 (Kelley, "tension bracket retention mechanism") — are directed to spring/yieldable biasing of door components against or along a moving curtain. A pivot arm with a spring or counterweight is the archetypal follower mechanism.

Combining a biased, rolling follower with a header‑to‑roll curtain is therefore the application of a known technique (biased rolling follower) to a known device (a header‑gap seal) ready for improvement, yielding a predictable result. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.

5. Claim‑by‑claim mapping

6. Articulated KSR motivations (written to be usable in an Office action)

1. Known elements, known method, predictable result. Flexible web + rolling follower biased against a variable‑diameter roll + header attachment were all known; joining them yields only the expected sealing function.
2. Simple substitution. Marquez's resilient baffle/lip ↔ Nergeco's cover/gasket ↔ Morse's resilient end strips — interchangeable sealing elements, same function.
3. Known technique applied to a device ready for improvement. Nergeco's own text identifies the "large passage for air flow through the top" as the defect to be cured; the door industry's incentive (energy, hygiene, liquid containment in car washes — spec. background) supplies the market force.
4. Obvious to try / finite predictable solutions. In the head‑gap sealing art there are only a handful of recognized options (lip, brush, bristle, gasket, cover flap, rollers), so selection is not inventive.
5. Design choice. Bias method (weight vs. spring) and follower count/placement are explicitly presented in the specification as alternatives.
6. Analogous art. Window shades (Marquez, Morse, Berman '474, Marlow '585, Ikle '251), movable insulation (Steele '584, Independent Systems '712), and smoke curtains (Räsontec '507) are all reasonably pertinent to the problem of sealing around a rolled web and are cited on the face of the patent itself.

7. Likely applicant rebuttals and how they fare

8. Verification limits — read before relying on this

1. Confirmed by fetched text: US 5,183,093 (abstract, description, claim set — including the "rotatably‑mounted rollers or wheels" sentence and the FIG. 3 wind‑up variant); US 4,597,430 (baffle/lip "brushing contact" with the roller; mounting to horizontal or vertical surfaces); US 2,548,040 (shield on shade roller; sealing strips at upper and lower ends); US 4,453,584 (claim set re: side‑seal strips).
2. Not fully verified, and not relied on above: US 6,550,191, US 733,956, US 5,566,736 (searches returned no usable content). The "Families Citing" reference US 8,006,338 B2 (Midwest Industrial Door, priority 2009‑09‑14) and the "Cited By" publications US 2013/0105093 A1, US 2018/0044977 A1, US 9,957,749, US 2022/0356758 A1 are all post‑critical‑date and are not available as prior art to the '229 claims; a naive analysis might mistakenly cite them. In particular, US 2013/0105093 A1 is the same family (Rytec's continuation publication, priority 2008‑03‑18) and can never be prior art to the '229 patent.
3. Räsontec caveat: the "supporting rollers / end‑bar weight / lateral guide bars" description I attribute to the Räsontec smoke‑curtain family appeared in retrieved text keyed to US 5,862,851 A, while the '229 citation list names US 6,357,507 B1 (and US 2002/0059985 A1). These are the same Räsontec/Stoebich family, but I could not authoritatively confirm which document contains which paragraph. Treat the Räsontec points as supporting, not primary.
4. The door‑platform references (US 5,632,317; US 5,758,705; US 5,445,209; US 6,942,003) are characterized from their titles/family metadata only. If a formal rejection is to be written, each element (roller; motor; vertical track; boxed header) should be mapped to specific columns of a verified one of these — I did not retrieve their text.
5. No litigation / IPR found (per the earlier sections). This means the § 103 conclusion here has not been tested in an adversarial forum, and there is no estoppel or validity ruling to cite.

9. Bottom line

• Independent claim 1 is, in my assessment, strongly vulnerable. US 5,183,093 (Nergeco) alone discloses a flexible cover spanning the header cross‑member to the top of a (in FIG. 3, wound‑up) curtain, expressly to close "a large passage for air flow through the top," and expressly discloses rotatably mounted rollers or wheels at the lower edge placed against the moving curtain. Adding the bias limitation via US 4,597,430 (Marquez) — a resilient baffle whose lip "should come in brushing contact with the roller to provide a positive seal" — or via the weight/spring expedients the specification itself concedes, supplies the only arguable gap.
• Independent claims 7 and 15 are vulnerable to the same curtain/follower combination combined with the generic motorized roll‑up door platform (Overhead Door 317; Kelley 705; Lichy 209; Service Door 003), which supplies the roller, motor, vertical track, and boxed header as matters of settled art.
• Dependent claims 2–6 and 10–14, 16–19 are, with the exception of the indefiniteness problems in claims 16 and 19, ordinary mechanical design choices (second wheel pair, rail, pivot arm, spring, weighted wheel, full‑width curtain) — each of which the specification itself frames as an alternative.
• The only plausible non‑obviousness position is the "non‑contact" framing in the Background (§ 7, third row) — but it is inconsistent with the claims' "biased against" language and therefore cuts against the patentee rather than for it.
• Caveat, stated plainly: the strongest parts of this analysis rest on references I verified (Nergeco '093, Marquez '430, Morse '804). The door‑platform and Räsontec points are supporting and require full‑text verification before being asserted in a formal proceeding.

Sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8333229/en (authoritative full text) · US 5,183,093 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4e/53/7b/0f34a3e8ffe408/US5183093.pdf; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5183093.html) · US 4,597,430 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4597430) · US 2,548,040 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US2548040A](/patent/US2548040A)/en) · US 4,453,584 (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[4453584](/patent/4453584).html) · Räsontec/Stoebich family (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6357507) · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[8333229](/patent/8333229).html · https://patents.justia.com/patent/8333229