US 8801533

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

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

US Patent 8,801,533 B2 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: My available tool is general web search (which surfaced the Google Patents record and mirrored USPTO bibliographic data), not a direct USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB or CAFC docket API. I could not query USPTO or CAFC dockets directly, and I found no CAFC 2026 (or any year) docket activity specific to 8,801,533. Details below flag exactly where my confidence is lower.

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1. Bibliographic data

2. Abstract (as published)

Golf club heads having sensors configured to measure one or more swing parameters. The club head may include several gyroscopes and accelerometers; in one embodiment three gyroscopes measure angular rate data along different orthogonal axes, and at least one gyroscope may be an analog gyroscope. Accelerometers provide data regarding the three orthogonal axes associated with the gyroscopes. The club head may further include software and/or hardware performing computer-executed methods for determining swing parameters, and may include a display device for displaying an output of the swing parameter(s). Further aspects relate to novel methods and algorithms for calculating measurements relating to the swing parameters.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The issued patent has 17 claims. Based on the authoritative full text I have, there are at least two independent claims: claim 1 and claim 7. (See uncertainty note below.)

Claim 1 — a non-transitory computer-readable medium (i.e., a software/firmware claim)

The instructions, when run by a processor, cause the device to:

1. Collect angular rate data from at least one gyroscope inside a golf club head, where that data spans three different orthogonal axes;
2. Collect acceleration data from at least one accelerometer, likewise along each of the three orthogonal axes associated with the gyroscope data;
3. Repair saturated sensor data. When a sensor "pegs" (saturates) during the swing, the instructions reconstruct the missing portion using what is known about club-head angular velocities, specifically by:
   • identifying when the saturation event started (first time-frame) and ended (second time-frame);
   • fitting first-order (straight-line) regressions to data points before the start and after the end, giving two regression lines;
   • finding the intersection point of those two lines; and
   • fitting a second-order polynomial through that intersection point and the two saturation end-points to generate replacement data points across the saturated interval; and
4. Only after determining an impact event occurred, use roll and pitch data plus space-fixed coordinates to compute at least one of lie angle, club face angle, and/or loft angle of the club head.

In short: claim 1 is directed to on-club software that fuses 3-axis gyro + 3-axis accelerometer data, mathematically reconstructs clipped/saturated gyro signals, and only then computes the club's lie/face/loft angles at impact.

Claim 7 — a golf club head (i.e., an apparatus claim)

The physical club head comprises:

• at least one gyroscope measuring angular rate data along three different orthogonal axes;
• at least one accelerometer providing data regarding those three orthogonal axes; and
• a non-transitory computer-readable medium with instructions that, when executed, (a) determine that an impact event has occurred and, in response, (b) use roll and pitch data and space-fixed coordinates to calculate at least one of lie angle, club face angle, and loft angle, and (c) reconstruct saturated sensor data based on known club-head angular velocities during the swing — using the same saturation-reconstruction recipe recited in claim 1 (detect start/end of saturation, first-order regressions, find intersection, second-order polynomial fit across the saturated interval).

In plain terms: claim 7 covers the instrumented club head itself — gyro + accelerometer + embedded processing that detects impact, computes swing angles, and repairs saturated signals.

Dependent claims (illustrative, from the text supplied): predefined time windows before/after impact (claim 2), a 3.9–4.0 s-before / 0.1–1.0 s-after window (claim 3), applying roll/pitch data to a sliding mode observer with discontinuous input to reduce noise (claim 4), an on-head display of the computed angles (claim 5), and handling analog-format gyro data via integration and analog-to-digital conversion (claim 6).

4. Litigation / docket findings

• No CAFC 2026 docket activity involving 8,801,533 was found. I could not confirm any appeal, IPR, or district-court case citing this specific number.
• One search returned Karsten Manufacturing Corp. v. Cleveland Golf Co. (Fed. Cir.), but that case concerns a different patent (an iron-type club-head "correlated set" patent, referred to as the '813 patent) and is not related to 8,801,533. I am explicitly flagging this so it is not mistaken for this patent's history.
• The only litigation-adjacent signal found is the 2017 Nike → Karsten assignment, which is a routine corporate transfer, not a dispute.

5. Uncertainty / caveats (read before citing)

1. Claim 7 text is truncated in my source. The authoritative text I have cuts off mid-claim-7 ("...over a time period between the first time-frame and the second time frame of the saturati"). My reconstruction of claim 7's tail is inferred from the parallel language in claim 1. I cannot verify the exact wording of claims 8–17, nor rule out that one of them is a further independent claim (e.g., a method claim). Verify against the USPTO PatentCenter full-text or the issued patent PDF.
2. Claim numbering differs between the pre-grant publication and the issued patent. US 2013/0303295 A1 (a Google/Justia rendering) shows a different claim set (e.g., a 9-claim structure with the saturation-reconstruction as a separate dependent claim). That is the application publication, not the granted patent. Use only the granted B2 claim set when assessing scope.
3. Assignee wording. "Original assignee = Nike, Inc." and "current assignee (listed) = Karsten Manufacturing Corporation" is listing data per the source; it is not a legal conclusion of current ownership, and the record itself disclaims any legal analysis.
4. Dockets. I have no authoritative CAFC or USPTO docket result for this patent. Treat "no 2026 CAFC activity found" as "not found with available tools," not as a verified negative.
5. Dates (filing July 16, 2013; issue August 12, 2014; priority August 27, 2009; assignment February 27, 2017) are taken literally from the source and have not been independently double-checked against a second authoritative database.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 8801533. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specific sources.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and the Google Patents litigation tab.

Litigation Search for U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533

Patent identified (to confirm scope of the search):

• U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533 B2 — "Golf clubs and golf club heads having digital lie and/or other angle measuring equipment"
• Application No. 13/943,463; filed July 16, 2013; issued August 12, 2014
• Earliest priority: August 27, 2009 (continuation chain from U.S. Pat. No. 8,257,191)
• Original assignee: Nike, Inc.; reassigned to Karsten Manufacturing Corporation on February 27, 2017
• Current legal status (per Google Patents): Active; anticipated expiration August 27, 2029

Search performed. I ran multiple searches across patent-litigation-oriented and general sources, including the RPX Insight patent page for US8801533B2, Unified Patents-style litigation queries, and general web searches keyed to the literal identifiers "8801533" and "8,801,533" combined with litigation terms.

Result: I found no litigation specifically involving U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533.

Specifically:

• My searches returned no district court complaint, ITC action, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal in which U.S. 8,801,533 was identified as an asserted patent.
• The closest hits were unrelated: the RPX Insight page for US8801533B2 (bibliographic/claims data only, no case list surfaced); the SightSound.com cases over U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,191,573/5,965,440; and Karsten Manufacturing Corp. v. Cleveland Golf Co., 242 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2001) — which involved Karsten's U.S. Pat. Nos. '813 and '805, not 8,801,533. I also saw a news item regarding Nike v. Lululemon (fitness-tracking patents), which likewise does not concern 8,801,533.

Important caveats (please treat these as material):

1. Not an exhaustive negative. My web-based search was interrupted/maxed out on several queries, so I could not run a full systematic sweep of PACER, Docket Navigator, Lexis CourtLink, or Westlaw KeyCite. A definitive "no litigation" conclusion should be confirmed by running the patent number directly in those databases (and in the Google Patents "Litigation" tab and Unified Patents litigation portal).
2. Ownership history matters. Because this patent moved from Nike to Karsten Manufacturing in 2017, any litigation post-2017 would likely name Karsten (PING) as plaintiff/patent owner, while pre-2017 suits would name Nike. If you have specific defendants in mind (e.g., golf-tech sensor companies), I can target those.
3. No case numbers, plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, filing dates, or outcomes can be reported, because I did not identify any qualifying case. I will not fabricate case details.

Recommended next steps to definitively confirm the negative:

• PACER search on patent number 8,801,533.
• Docket Navigator / Unified Patents litigation caselist search for "8801533."
• USPTO Patent Assignment and PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) searches for the patent.
• Direct query of the Google Patents US8801533B2 page's "Litigation" section.

If you can point me to a specific court or party, I can narrow the search further. Based on what I was able to retrieve, the honest answer is that no litigation involving U.S. 8,801,533 has been identified in my search, and I cannot confirm any such case exists.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" baseline against public sources before writing anything up.

Baseline check is consistent with ODP so far. Let me run targeted cross-checks on the patent number itself and on assertion history that would have triggered an IPR.

No hits yet. Two more checks: the family/related patents and patent-owner assertion history that would have drawn a petition.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,801,533, and my independent web checks surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming the '533 patent — so there is no active proceeding, no claims-invalidated proceeding, no claims-sustained proceeding, no settlement, and no institution denial to report. The bottom-line defensive posture is the inverse of a hardened patent: the '533 patent has never been stress-tested at the Board, so there is no PTAB estoppel, no canceled claim, and no adverse panel reasoning to build on — but also no free win. A defendant today must litigate validity from scratch, in district court or in a first-ever IPR petition.

A note on method, because the answer here is a negative finding and negatives deserve skepticism:

• The canonical source for this prompt — the ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block — states no AIA trial proceedings are on file. I treated that as the baseline rather than a conclusion.
• I ran targeted searches against the patent number itself ("8801533" / "8,801,533" combined with IPR / PGR / CBM / PTAB / "final written decision"), against petitioner-side naming patterns, and against the patent owner and the family members. Every query returned either the patent's own Google Patents page, family-member prosecution documents, or unrelated proceedings on other patents (e.g., IPR2023-00242 on U.S. 8,881,048; the CBM/IPR exhibit table on the Nasdaq v. IEX docket, which lists CBM2018-00039/41/42/45 and IPR2018-01796 on entirely different patents — none of them the '533).
• Residual uncertainty I cannot eliminate: I could not issue a direct structured query to PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End for this patent number, and the Docket Alarm and Unified Patents listings surfaced only as generic platform pages rather than a per-patent proceeding list. A just-filed petition (post-dating the ODP ingest) or a very low-profile proceeding could in principle exist outside what I could retrieve. I found no evidence of one, and I am not going to manufacture a proceeding number to fill the template.

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Proceedings

None to list. The requested per-proceeding block (### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner}) is omitted in its entirety because there is no proceeding number to anchor it, and fabricating one would be worse than useless to a defendant relying on this memo. Specifically, per the template's own fields, I have no:

• proceeding number, type, filing date, or status to report from structured data;
• APJ panel, petition grounds, or institution decision — there is no panel and no decision;
• Final Written Decision — nothing has been canceled, nothing sustained; and
• PTAB appeal — no FWD exists to appeal, so any Federal Circuit docket number would be invented. There is none.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. The '533 patent issued 2014-08-12 with 17 claims. Independent claim 1 is drawn to a non-transitory computer-readable medium that collects angular rate data from at least one gyroscope in a golf club head (three orthogonal axes), collects accelerometer data on the same axes, reconstructs saturated sensor data via the specific two-step method (first-order regressions on either side of the saturation event → intersection point → second-order polynomial fit through the intersection and the two saturation end-points), and, after detecting an impact event, uses roll and pitch data with space-fixed coordinates to compute lie angle, club face angle, and/or loft angle. Claim 7 is the apparatus counterpart — a golf club head with the gyroscope/accelerometer set and the same computer-executable instructions. Dependent claims 2–6 (and the dependents of claim 7) are directed at, inter alia, the predefined post-impact data window (3.9–4.0 s before / 0.1–1.0 s after), a sliding-mode observer with discontinuous input to suppress noise, on-club-head display of the computed angles, and the analog-gyroscope integrate/convert path. Because no claim has ever been before the Board, none of claims 1–17 are canceled, none are confirmed, and none have survived scrutiny — the whole claim set is untested. (Caveat: the authoritative full text supplied to me truncates inside claim 7, so I am not characterizing the content of claims 8–17 beyond noting they are dependent claims; do not rely on this memo for their scope.)

Estoppel landscape: empty, and unusually favorable to a challenger. With zero IPRs and zero PGRs, no party is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no SAS-style partial-institution footprint exists, and no petitioner has burned prior art before the Board. Every printed-publication and patent ground — § 102 and § 103 — remains available in both district court and a first IPR. Conversely, § 315(b)'s one-year bar is the live trap: any defendant served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '533 patent more than one year ago is already time-barred from petitioning, and the absence of any past petition means there is no prior petitioner whose privity or real-party-in-interest analysis you could borrow. If you are inside the one-year window, the entire prior-art universe is yours to work with.

Pattern signals. There is no petitioner pattern to describe — no repeat filer, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX-style entity) in the chain, and no patent-owner appeal history, because there has been no proceeding to appeal. The more significant structural fact is ownership: the '533 patent was originally assigned to Nike, Inc. and was reassigned to Karsten Manufacturing Corporation on 2017-02-27 (see the assignment entry on the Google Patents record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8801533/en). Karsten/PING is an operating company, and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies Karsten as a "product company" asserter (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/karsten-manufacturing-corporation), not a troll. Practically, that means (i) you are likely dealing with a competitor's portfolio rather than a monetization vehicle, and (ii) a future IPR would face the discretionary-denial gauntlet — the patent's 2009-08-27 priority date makes it roughly 17 years old as of 2026-09-28, squarely inside the "settled expectations" factor that the Office has been weighing heavily since 2025 (see https://irwinip.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/PTAB-2025-Review-Article-4926-2114-7521.1.pdf, describing the 2025 Director practice of denying institution on patent age and the near-zero institution posture). An IPR on this patent filed today is a materially harder sell than it would have been in 2019, notwithstanding the untested claims. Also note the family: this patent sits in a continuation chain (application 13/943,463 ← 13/603,131 ← 12/549,224, now U.S. 8,257,191, priority 2009-08-27), with continuation-family issuances including U.S. 9,421,429 and U.S. 9,884,233, and later Nike/Karsten sensor filings (e.g., U.S. 10,226,681). If you are accused on a sensor-in-club theory, validating the '533 in isolation is likely to be insufficient — map the family first.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not expect a free kill. There is no FWD to link, no canceled claim to quote, and no Board reasoning to adopt or distinguish. I deliberately cite no final written decision because none exists; any memo in your file that quotes one is wrong.
2. Run the one-year clock first. Determine the service date of the earliest complaint asserting the '533 patent. Inside one year → preserve the IPR option and start prior-art mapping now. Outside one year → § 315(b) forecloses an IPR by you or your privies, and invalidity must be proved in court (or by ex parte reexamination, which carries no § 315(b) bar and is worth considering given the age of the art and the § 315(e)(2) estoppel-free field).
3. Attack the narrowest, most technical limitation. Claim 1's saturation-reconstruction algorithm (regression lines → intersection → second-order polynomial with matched end-point slopes) and its impact-triggered, time-windowed data selection are the specific, quotable limitations; expect validity to rise or fall on whether the prior art teaches the reconstruction math and the impact-detection trigger, not on the generic "gyroscope in a golf club" concept.
4. Re-verify before filing anything dispositive. Before a petition or an invalidity contention is served, re-run the search directly on PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board Center and the ODP API against both 8,801,533 and its family members (8,257,191; 9,421,429; 9,884,233) — a petition filed in the last few months could sit outside the ODP ingest I had access to, and my inability to query PTAB E2E directly is the single largest gap in this memo.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8,801,533. Let me run targeted searches.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533 B2

Verification link: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — query "8801533" (mirror: assignment.uspto.gov)

Data-access caveat up front (material): I was not able to retrieve the underlying Assignment Center record entries (reel/frame and correspondent fields) for this patent — my retrieval of the Assignment Center / AOTW index did not return the per-property record set. The reconstruction below is anchored on (a) the authoritative full patent text supplied for this analysis, whose "Legal Events" table carries the recorded reassignment, and (b) contemporaneous press coverage of the Nike→Karsten transaction. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record are therefore reported as "not retrieved," not as "none exists." Anyone acting on this should pull the two records directly from the Assignment Center before relying on the chain.

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Inventors

Per the "Inventor" field of US 8,801,533 B2 (Application No. 13/943,463):

Basis for the employer call: the application was filed 2013-07-16 by Nike, Inc. as applicant/assignee (Google Patents legal events: "2013-07-16 Application filed by Nike Inc"), and the issued patent's original assignee is Nike, Inc. An eight-inventor team assigning to a single corporate applicant at filing is the standard employee-invention pattern; the inventors' residential cities (several in the Beaverton/Portland, OR area and several in the Fort Worth, TX area, consistent with Nike Golf's Beaverton HQ and its Fort Worth club R&D facility) could not be independently confirmed from the record set I retrieved.

Unusual patterns: None identified. Specifically, there is no evidence any named inventor departed Nike within 12 months of the 2013-07-16 filing, and no evidence of a mass resignation or inventor-side assignment to a third party. The disruption in this chain is corporate, not personnel: Nike announced its exit from the golf equipment (club and ball) business in August 2016, roughly three years after this continuation was filed, and the IP sale followed in early 2017. That is a division wind-down trigger, not an inventor-departure trigger.

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Original assignee

Nike, Inc. (Beaverton, Oregon) — named on the issued patent as original assignee; the application was filed by Nike and prosecuted as a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 8,257,191 (Ser. No. 12/549,224) via Ser. No. 13/603,131.

• Primary line of business: athletic footwear and apparel; the relevant unit here was Nike Golf, which designed and sold golf clubs and balls.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? No — and this is a notable point. The claims (see below) cover a club-head-mounted sensor package (three-axis gyroscopes + accelerometers), a saturation-reconstruction algorithm, and impact-triggered lie/face/loft angle computation. Nike Golf commercialized Nike Covert / Vapor series clubs and the RZN ball lines, and Nike held sensor-equipped "smart club" IP (the press coverage of the 2017 sale explicitly notes Nike "patented everything from smart golf clubs to a driver with fins"), but I found no evidence in the record set I retrieved that a commercial Nike club shipped with the claimed three-gyroscope lie/loft/face-angle measurement package. Treat that as "not established" rather than "disproven."
• Current status: Operating. Nike, Inc. remains a large publicly traded, solvent operating company (golf footwear and apparel only after 2016). It is not in bankruptcy, not dissolved, and not acquired.

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Assignment timeline

Two ownership events are supported by the record; a third (the inventors→Nike assignment of the original 2009 application) is the presumptive progenitor but I could not pull its reel/frame.

• 2009-08-27 (executed/filed) / recorded date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (presumptive; inventors → applicant)
  • Assignor: John T. Stites; Jeremy Snyder; James S. Thomas; Jeffrey A. Hadden; Bradley C. Glenn; Daniel J. Simpson; Daniel A. Roberts; Douglas A. Thornton
  • Assignee: Nike, Inc., Beaverton, Oregon
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Flag: Nike's golf-club filings of this era were prosecuted through Nike's in-house/outside counsel of record; I could not confirm the recording correspondent for this file.
  • Context: Ordinary employee-invention assignment at filing — not a fire-sale, reorg, or securitization.

• 2017-02-27 (recorded; execution date not retrieved) / — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: NIKE, INC.
  • Assignee: KARSTEN MANUFACTURING CORPORATION (2201 W. Desert Cove, Phoenix, AZ 85029 — PING's parent)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Comparative note, clearly flagged as a different record: on Karsten's own later employee assignments the recording correspondent is Mary Jo Mendez, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation Legal Department (e.g., EPAS record for App. No. 16/875,632, Reel 054056/0096, executed 2020), and Karsten's trademark correspondent of record is Paul A. Jenny (e.g., Reel 1549/0687 in the PING registration file). I could not confirm either name as the correspondent on this patent's 2017 reel — flagging them only as the recurring Karsten recording contacts, not as a verified entry on this chain.
  • Context: Strategic portfolio purchase following a division wind-down. Nike announced its exit from golf equipment in August 2016; the transfer is part of the sale of at least five Nike club-technology patents to Karsten, confirmed publicly by PING President John K. Solheim ("We see this as an opportunity to add utility patents to our already significant intellectual property portfolio"). A PING spokesman stated additional Nike golf-equipment patents had been purchased but were "not yet reflected in patent records." Announced/reported publicly in late April 2017.

Family note (not a separate assignment event, but relevant to chain integrity): this patent sits in a continuation chain — 12/549,224 (→ U.S. 8,257,191, filed 2009-08-27) → 13/603,131 → 13/943,463 (this patent, issued 2014-08-12) — with two further continuations filed 2014-07-10 (Ser. No. 14/327,697 → U.S. 9,421,429) and 2016-07-25 (Ser. No. 15/218,328 → U.S. 9,884,233). The 2016-07-25 filing post-dates the Nike golf-exit decision (Aug 2016 announcement) by only a month on the wrong side of the calendar — i.e., it was filed while Nike still owned the family — so a Nike→Karsten transfer almost certainly sweeps in more than one member of this family. Confirm each family member's title separately.

If the Assignment Center returns no record entries when you query 8801533 directly, treat that as an index gap rather than a finding: the recorded 2017-02-27 reassignment is affirmatively reported in the patent's own legal-events data.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8801533
    2009 : Filed by Nike Inc
         : Inventors assign to Nike
    2013 : Continuation filed
         : US20130303295A1 published
    2014 : Patent US8801533B2 issued
    2016 : Nike exits golf equipment business
    2017 : Nike assigns to Karsten Manufacturing
         : Announced as part of multi-patent sale

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain contains zero NPE signals: the sole recorded post-issuance transfer (recorded 2017-02-27) moved U.S. 8,801,533 from Nike, Inc. to Karsten Manufacturing Corporation (PING) — two practicing, product-shipping golf-equipment manufacturers — with no shell LLC, no aggregator, no cascade, no bankruptcy, and no identifiable pre-suit transfer. Karsten holds the patent as part of a $multi-patent strategic purchase announced in April 2017 following Nike's August 2016 exit from golf equipment, and its historical assertion posture (Karsten v. Cleveland Golf) is that of an operating company policing a competitor.

Required caveat on this verdict: the "assertion" prong is not documented for this specific patent — no suit naming U.S. 8,801,533 was identified, and I could not retrieve the reel/frame or correspondent entries that would close the record. The verdict is therefore driven by the ownership half of the definition (patent resides with a practicing competitor in the relevant market) and by the total absence of NPE-pattern evidence. If you need the verdict hardened, pull the two Assignment Center records for 8801533 and confirm title on the sibling family members (U.S. 8,257,191 / 9,421,429 / 9,884,233); a Karsten-owned continuation family with no assertion history is the expected — and benign — result.

I'll search for the specific patent's citation data, being careful to key on the literal number 8801533.

Let me target the citation listings directly on databases that publish "Patent Citations" / "Referenced By" tables.

I have not yet surfaced the actual "References Cited" table for 8,801,533. Let me try to reach the issued patent front page (which lists cited U.S. patents) and the Espacenet/Justia citation tables.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533 B2

⚠️ Search-status disclosure (read first)

You asked me to (a) search USPTO for the exact number 8801533, and (b) walk the patent citations of 8801533 one by one with dates, descriptions, and § 102 claim mapping.

I was able to confirm the patent's identity, but I was not able to retrieve its "References Cited" (front-page citation) list. I am therefore declining to enumerate individual prior-art references and their § 102 mappings, because doing so without the actual citation table would mean inventing patent numbers and dates — which violates the operating rule against fabrication.

Two independent reasons the citation list was unavailable:

1. The authoritative full text supplied for this analysis omits the front page. The Google Patents scrape you provided begins at the "Definitions" section and never includes the (56) References Cited block. So the primary source I was told to treat as authoritative simply does not contain the citation table.
2. My tool is general web search — not a USPTO API, PatentCenter, PatFT/AppFT, or Espacenet OPS query. Repeated targeted searches (including US8801533 "References Cited", espacenet US8801533 cited documents, and patentimages US8801533.pdf) returned the patent's description text and unrelated documents, but never the (56) table. One Espacenet-oriented query hit the "maximum number of steps" limit and returned no useful payload.

I will not fill this gap with guesses. Below is what I can substantiate, followed by the exact way to close the gap.

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1. Confirmation that the literal number 8801533 was searched correctly

Per the authoritative text supplied (interpreted literally, no auto-correction):

This matches the number you specified. No similarly-numbered patent (e.g., 8,801,833 or 8,810,533) was substituted.

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2. What is verifiable from my searches (and what it is not)

The only citation-type data my searches surfaced was forward material (documents citing 8801533) and family material — neither of which is § 102 prior art against 8801533:

• Documents citing US8801533B2 (forward citations, not prior art):
  • US 2013/0303295 A1 and US 8,801,533 B2 appear in the citation table of a patent titled "Proprioceptive golf club with analysis, correction and control capabilities" (listed as US 2002/0077189). Because 8801533 postdates 2002, this is a Google Patents family/related-listing artifact, not evidence 8801533 was anticipated. Treat as data hygiene, not validity evidence.
  • TWI574012B ("Calibration Method and Sport Equipment") cites US8801533B2 — again a forward citation.
• Same-family patents (continuations), not prior art: US 9,421,429 B2 and US 9,884,233 B2 are listed as downstream continuations of 8801533. Under § 102(b)/§ 102(a), a parent/child in the same chain claiming the same invention is not anticipatory prior art (and same-inventor/same-family art also raises § 102(b)(2)(C) commonly-owned exceptions). They are relevant only to double-patenting / obviousness-type double-patenting, not § 102 anticipation.

None of the above is a "patent citation for 8801533."

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3. The one admitted-prior-art discussion that is in the authoritative text

The specification you supplied contains the applicant's own characterization of the prior art — this is "admitted prior art" and is the only prior-art analysis I can ground in the text you gave me:

• Subject matter: the impact-tape / "green gauge" lie-angle fitting method (FIGS. 2A–2B, discussed at length in the Background).
• What it discloses (as described by the applicant): locking a club with a known lie angle ("green gauge"), eye-balling the geometric face center, applying impact tape to the sole, hitting off an impact board, and estimating lie angle from the resulting line/degree markings.
• § 102 relevance, stated honestly: This admitted art cannot anticipate claims 1 or 7 as issued, because the issued independent claims recite (i) in-club gyroscope and accelerometer data collection across three orthogonal axes, (ii) saturation-reconstruction via first-order regressions + second-order polynomial fit, and (iii) computing lie/face/loft from roll and pitch data plus space-fixed coordinates after detected impact. The impact-tape method discloses none of these elements; § 102 requires every limitation in a single reference. At most, the admitted art is § 103 background for the general "club-fitting / lie-angle measurement" objective — and even that is weak, since the problem is solved by a wholly different mechanism.
• Caveat: this is my characterization of the applicant's own admission, not a citation I extracted from the (56) table.

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4. Why I cannot do the requested per-reference § 102 mapping

The task hinges on the (56) "References Cited" list. Without it I have no verified patent numbers, publication dates, or examiner-applied categories (X/Y/A). Producing a table of plausible-looking references and asserting they "potentially anticipate claim 1 under § 102" would be fabrication dressed as analysis. Given the operating rules, the correct output is an explicit gap, not a filled-in guess.

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5. How to obtain the authoritative citation list (and get the analysis you want)

Any one of these will yield the exact (56) table, after which I can do the per-reference § 102 mapping properly:

1. USPTO PatentCenter → Application 13/943,463 → "References Cited" / IFW → the PTO-892 (Notice of References Cited) forms give the examiner-cited references with X/Y/A categories, which map directly to § 102 vs. § 103.
2. USPTO Patent Public Search (PatFT successor) → query US-8801533-B2 → "Front page" tab → (56) block.
3. Google Patents → US8801533B2 → "Patent Citations" tab → gives "Cited By" and citation lists (my searches could not render this tab; it is the fastest fix).
4. Espacenet → US8801533 (B2) → "Cited documents" (OPS endpoint publication EP... / also published as US8801533) → includes the "also published as" and search-report citations.
5. USPTO Assignment / PTAB records if you also want the litigation/history angle (the earlier section found none).

If you paste the (56) list — or the PTO-892 forms — I will produce exactly what you asked: full citation, publication/filing date, brief description, and, for each reference, whether it is a § 102 anticipatory candidate (and against which of claims 1–17), keeping in mind that independent claims 1 and 7 are the operative scope and that claims 2–6 are dependent on claim 1 (claim 8 onward could not be verified because your supplied text truncates at the end of claim 7).

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6. Bottom line

• Patent 8801533: correctly identified. ✔
• Its prior-art citation list: NOT retrieved. I could not pull the (56) table from the authoritative text (it was omitted) or from web search (tool/step limits).
• Therefore no per-reference § 102 analysis is offered — the only defensible prior-art statement is the applicant-admitted impact-tape/green-gauge background, which does not anticipate claims 1 or 7.
• Uncertainty flag (carried forward): the claim text I have is truncated mid-claim-7, and the issued-claim set (17 claims) differs from the pre-grant publication's claim set; any § 102 mapping must be re-verified against the granted claims once the citation list is in hand.

I'll research the prior-art landscape for this patent before building the §103 analysis.

Let me pull the specific prior-art references cited in this family's international search report so I can ground the combination analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,801,533 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Sourcing note / scope: This analysis builds on the previously generated sections (bibliographic data, abstract, claim construction of independent claims 1 and 7, litigation findings) and does not repeat them. Where I refer to a reference's disclosure I cite the specific document and URL I retrieved. Several of the references in the family's search report (noted below) I could not open in full text; I flag those explicitly rather than paraphrase them. I do not fabricate claim language or quotations.

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1. Threshold legal questions (decide these first — they change the whole analysis)

1.1 Pre‑AIA or AIA § 103?

US 8,801,533 was filed July 16, 2013 — after the AIA's March 16, 2013 first‑inventor‑to‑file cutoff — but it is a continuation of 13/603,131 → 12/549,224 (filed Aug. 27, 2009, now US 8,257,191). Under AIA § 3(n)(1), the new §§ 102/103 govern an application that "contains or contained at any time" a claim with an effective filing date on or after March 16, 2013. Every limitation of claim 1 and claim 7 appears in the 2009 specification — including the saturation‑reconstruction steps, which appear verbatim in the '191 specification ("a first‑order line regression may be calculated from data points before and/or after the saturation event … a second‑order polynomial function may then be implemented to fit the intersection point … and the two end points of the saturation event, with the constraint that the slopes … are the same as those for the two regression lines," https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/52/19/50/55e47c4b6c885e/US8257191.pdf).

Conclusion (subject to a written‑description check by the examiner): the '533 claims carry an effective filing date of Aug. 27, 2009, so pre‑AIA § 103 applies. This matters because pre‑AIA § 103(c) and the "by another" requirement in § 102(e) become available defences to the patentee.

1.2 The single most important consequence: the '191 family is not § 103 prior art

The obvious primary reference against claim 1 looks like it should be US 8,257,191 / US 2011/0053698 A1 / WO 2011/028357 A1 (the same family, same specification). It is not usable:

• § 102(e) requires "by another." The '191 inventors (Stites, Snyder, Thomas, Hadden, Glenn, Simpson, Roberts, Thornton) are the same inventive entity as the '533 (per the '533 front page, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8801533). Same entity ⇒ not "by another" ⇒ no § 102(e) date.
• Even if the entity were different, pre‑AIA § 103(c) disqualifies subject matter that qualifies as prior art only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g) and was commonly owned when the invention was made. Both were owned by Nike, Inc. until the 2017 Karsten assignment.
• The '191 publication (Mar. 3, 2011) and WO '357 (Mar. 10, 2011) post‑date the Aug. 27, 2009 priority date anyway, so they are not § 102(a)/(b) art either.

Therefore the entire § 103 question collapses onto the limitations that were added when the '533 claim set was written: the saturation‑reconstruction algorithm (claims 1 and 7) and the narrow dependents. Everything else — 3‑axis gyro + 3‑axis accelerometer in a club head, impact detection, roll/pitch + space‑fixed coordinates → lie/face/loft angle — was already claimed in '191 and is squarely met by third‑party art.

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

A POSITA as of Aug. 2009 would be a person with (a) a bachelor's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years' experience, or a master's degree with less experience, in inertial sensor systems and/or sports‑implement motion measurement; and would be familiar with: MEMS rate gyroscopes (e.g., Analog Devices ADXRS150/ADXRS160), MEMS accelerometers (e.g., ADXL210e), strapdown attitude estimation (Euler angles, quaternion/DCM propagation, roll/pitch from gravity vector, gyro integration), sensor fusion filters (Kalman/extended Kalman, complementary filters, Luenberger and sliding‑mode observers), and standard signal‑conditioning/curve‑fitting mathematics (regression, polynomial interpolation, Savitzky–Golay smoothing). This is a mature, cross‑disciplinary, incremental field — the KSR conditions ("ordinary creativity," "familiar elements according to known methods") apply with full force.

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3. Claim‑element breakdown (the "Graham factors" step 1–2)

The only elements with any colour of novelty are D–F as an ordered recipe (and only weakly so). A, B, C and G are each individually disclosed in the art below.

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4. The prior art (Graham factor 3): what each reference actually teaches

I use the references from this family's own search report (the EP counterpart, EP 2 470 276 B1, lists the ISR citations: US 2007/073482 A1 (Churchill), WO 2005/025681 A2 (Boscha), US 2006/084516 A1 (Eyestone), US 2002/077189 A1 (Tuer), US 2004/259651 A1 (Storek) — see http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP2470276B1 and https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2470276B1/en), plus well‑documented field art.

4.1 US 2006/0084516 A1 — Eyestone et al. (SmartSwing) — primary reference

(https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/62/c1/f0/dfa55b54de1132/US20060084516A1.pdf)

This single reference carries nearly the whole of elements A, B and G:

• Six‑DOF IMU inside the club — "IMU 53 … measures linear acceleration along axes Cx, Cy, and Cz … and … angular rate (rotation speed) around axes Cx, Cy, and Cz," ¶ [0080]. Orientation and position of the club follow "using algorithms known to those well versed in the art of IMUs," ¶ [0080].
• Three separate gyroscopes + accelerometers — "three solid‑state gyroscopes, such as Analog Devices' ADXRS160," one per Cx/Cy/Cz axis, ¶ [0047]; "two dual‑axis accelerometers, such as Analog Devices ADXL210e," covering Cx, Cy, Cz, ¶ [0049]. Note the express gyro‑range discussion: gyros "are configured with a bandwidth of 1320 degrees per second in order to record a typical golf swing, although other bandwidths are possible," ¶ [0048]. This is the saturation problem in the patentee's own field, acknowledged by a 2006 reference.
• Two frames of reference / space‑fixed coordinates — explicit club frame (Cx, Cy, Cz) vs. world/gravity frame (Gx, Gy, Gz), ¶¶ [0037], [0054]–[0055] — i.e., resolving body‑frame angular rates into space‑fixed coordinates.
• Roll/pitch from gravity — "the ability to measure the effects of gravity allows for the resolution of a gravity vector that in effect tells IGC 18 which direction is down with respect to the surrounding world," ¶ [0049]; the address algorithm resolves the gravity vector to fix initial orientation, ¶ [0093]–[0102].
• Impact detection and windowing — the impact algorithm detects "a shock vibration measurement within said acceleration measurements stream" and relates it to the impact position, ¶¶ [0011], [0105]–[0114]; the swing is segmented into address / backswing / downswing / follow‑through segments, ¶ [0098].
• Sampling rate and buffering — 2 kHz sample rate storing a per‑swing record, ¶¶ [0083], [0087].
• Temperature compensation of sensors — a temperature data element "for use in analyzing output from the accelerometers and gyroscopes," ¶¶ [0084], [0044] (this mirrors the '533's temperature‑compensation circuitry).
• Explicit motivation to correct sensor error — the reference devotes a whole section to "correcting swing analysis data" (orientation correction from gyro integration; acceleration correction), ¶¶ [0115]–[0151], and notes that "at impact, the vibration … substantially limits inertial measurement analysis after the impact position … measurements after impact often unreliable," ¶ [0090]. That is an express reason a POSITA would want to repair corrupted sensor segments.

Eyestone alone discloses A, B, and the bulk of G (orientation/orientation‑change determination in a world frame around a detected impact).

4.2 US 2004/0259651 A1 — Storek (SE) — secondary reference, carries the angle outputs

(https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4a/f6/bf/294805cd11ca70/US20040259651A1.pdf)

• A golf club with an Inertial Navigation System "comprising a number of sensors for measuring … acceleration, angular velocity and effect of attraction of gravity," claim 22; "a minimum sensor set up comprises at least one accelerometer, temperature sensor, gyroscope, amplifiers and filters," claim 25.
• Filtering: "said filter is an extended Kalman filter, comprising a sensor model, a measurement noise model, a processor for dynamics and a processor for noise model," claim 29 — i.e., the very filter the '533 patent disparages in favour of a sliding‑mode observer.
• Coordinate transformation: "said sensor system has a specific coordinate system, which is transformed to a fixed coordinate system with respect to a fixed point in an environment of said equipment," claim 18 — i.e., space‑fixed coordinates.
• Exactly the outputs claimed: "the navigation system defines a position of the club [and] an angle of a club head with respect to a ball," claim 32; "a loft/lie angle is within ±1°, preferably within ±0.5°," claim 40; "an open/close angle is resolved to within ±0.5°," claim 41.
• Sensors are "arranged in at least one of a handle, shaft or head of said golf club," claim 33 — in‑head placement.

Storek thus supplies element G literally (lie angle, face/open‑close angle, loft angle, in a fixed coordinate system), plus alternative filtering.

4.3 The other search‑report references

• WO 2005/025681 A2 — Boscha (Boogie) — instrumented golf club; the WO '967 ISR cites Boscha's US 2002/173365 A1 and US 2006/029916 A1 as X (single‑reference) art against gyroscope‑based golf swing‑plane measurement (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/36/89/08/ac18ac98edb5cd/WO2008066967A1.pdf). I could not retrieve the Boscha texts in full; treat as corroborating field art, not the linchpin.
• US 2007/0073482 A1 — Churchill and US 2002/0077189 A1 — Tuer — cited in the same ISR family. I could not verify their disclosures with the tools available. I will not attribute specific teachings to them.
• US 4,017,083 (Johnson) and US 5,941,779 (Zeiner‑Gundersen) and JP 09‑000672 (Inoue) — cited (A/X categories) in the same search reports as golf‑swing/club‑mounted gyroscopic instrumentation.

4.4 Corroborating art outside the search report (all pre‑2009)

• US 6,441,745 (Gates) — "instrumented golf club and associated data acquisition and processing means," linear accelerometers mounted "on the shaft and in close proximity to the club head" (quoted in PTAB petition materials, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1461352](/patent/1461352)/download-documents).
• US 7,264,554 B2 (Bentley Kinetics) — golf‑swing analysis using "instrumented inertial sensors," https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7,264,554](/patent/7264554).
• WO 2008/066967 A1 — golf swing training aid using "a gyroscope mounted to an end section of said shaft."

4.5 The saturation‑reconstruction technique (elements C–F)

This is where the § 103 argument must be strongest, and it must be carefully sourced because the patentee's priority date is Aug. 27, 2009.

• The generic technique — filling a clipped/saturated sensor interval by fitting a polynomial through the surrounding valid data — is old instrumentation practice. But note the dating caution: the documents I retrieved that describe it most cleanly (an Idaho National Laboratory report describing "curve fitting … to fill in a portion of data from a saturated accelerometer … A third order (cubic) polynomial fit was performed to generate an expression for the data in the saturated region," https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/[990959](/patent/990959)-EqELob/; and US 9,715,480, "Method for analytical reconstruction of digital signals via stitched polynomial fitting," https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/89/be/1c/6f6b70d7f183f8/US9715480.pdf) are 2010 and 2017 respectively and therefore are not themselves § 102 art to a 2009 priority date. They are, however, admissible as evidence of the level of ordinary skill and of what was "well known" if earlier corroboration exists.
• The mathematics recited in the claims is textbook: a least‑squares line through pre‑saturation points and another through post‑saturation points, their intersection, and a quadratic through three points with prescribed endpoint slopes is exactly piecewise quadratic Hermite interpolation — a standard numerical‑methods construction (it is the k = 2 case of the general polynomial‑fit‑and‑stitch family). Nothing in claims 1 or 7 requires any non‑standard implementation, and the specification itself concedes that "other analytical expressions may be used in addition to or in combination with one or more steps."

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5. Combinations and motivations (Graham factor 4 / KSR rationales)

Combination 1 — Eyestone + Storek (independent claims 1 and 7, except elements C–F)

Motivation to combine (explicit and articulated, not hindsight):

1. Same field of endeavour / same problem. Both are instrumented golf clubs whose purpose is to measure club motion during a swing so that a fitter or instructor can see what the club actually did. Storek states the goal of resolving "a loft/lie angle … within ±1°" and an "open/close angle … within ±0.5°"; Eyestone states the goal of accurate club orientation/position "as a function of time relative to its initial position."
2. Express market pressure. The '533 specification itself sets out the motivation (the "impact tape"/"green gauge" fitting procedure is "outdated and … can be inaccurate and not very repeatable"). Eyestone's background makes the identical criticism of external motion‑capture systems. A POSITA facing that demand would look to the other in‑club inertial‑sensing disclosures.
3. Complementary disclosures, not overlapping ones. Eyestone supplies the in‑club six‑DOF hardware, frame transformation, gravity‑based initialisation and impact segmentation; Storek supplies the fixed‑coordinate transformation, the filter, and — critically — the lie/loft/face angle outputs at a specified accuracy to a ball. Combining them is "a simple substitution of one known element for another" and "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way."
4. Storek even discloses a temperature sensor in the minimum sensor set, matching the '533's temperature‑compensation element.

Result: Every element of claim 1 and claim 7 except the ordered saturation‑reconstruction recipe (C–F) is disclosed or obvious from Eyestone + Storek, and element C ("reconstruct … based upon known factors relating to angular velocities of the club head during a swing") is disclosed in substance by Eyestone's expressed need to correct/repair erroneous gyro and accelerometer data across the impact region (¶¶ [0090], [0115]–[0151]).

Combination 2 — Eyestone + Storek further in view of the well‑known technique of polynomial reconstruction of a clipped sensor interval (elements C–F)

This is the decisive combination. The KSR rationales:

• "Known problem, finite number of identified, predictable solutions." A POSITA told to measure lie/face/loft at impact with a MEMS rate gyro inevitably confronts gyro saturation at exactly the moment of interest: peak angular rate occurs in the downswing near impact, and Eyestone discloses that its gyros had to be specified at 1320 °/s — with the admission that band limitation was a design constraint ("although other bandwidths are possible," ¶ [0048]). The '533 specification makes the same confession: "depending on the range of the gyroscope(s) used, there may be instances where the gyroscope(s) saturates." The field thus presents a recognised problem (clipping) with a small, well‑known solution set: clip‑and‑ignore; extrapolate; low‑order polynomial/spline fit across the gap with boundary‑value and slope matching; or a model‑based (observer) reconstruction. Choosing one of these is ordinary engineering.
• "Obvious to try" + predictable results. Fitting a curve through a gap using the data on both sides is the archetypal predictable exercise; the intersection‑finding and slope‑continuity constraints are the standard way to avoid discontinuities at the splice points. The patent claims no criticality, no unexpected result, and no numerical threshold for any of these steps. The claim explicitly declines to require how saturation is detected ("determining that a saturation event was initiated …"), only that the two endpoints are identified.
• Design incentive / optimisation. Because the specification itself concedes "other analytical expressions may be used," the specific choice of a second‑order (as opposed to first‑ or third‑order) polynomial is a range optimisation — obvious under In re Aller/In re Boesch and KSR ("when a work is available in one field … design incentives and other market forces can prompt variations").
• Cross‑domain analogy is appropriate here. Unlike In re Icon Health (where a treadmill‑fall‑detection patent could not be met by a camera‑based system with a different architecture), the reconstruction technique is being applied to the same device, in the same signal, for the same purpose — the closest possible situation, so the analogy is proper.

Independent‑claim conclusion: Claims 1 and 7 are prima facie obvious under §§ 103(a) over Eyestone + Storek + the known curve‑fit technique — provided the patentee is given every reasonable inference on the saturation‑reconstruction sub‑steps.

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6. Dependent claims

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7. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4 — rebuttal side)

1. Long‑felt need / failure of others. The patentee asserts a long‑felt need (impact‑tape fitting is "outdated," "inaccurate," "not very repeatable"). This cuts against patentability, because the need was already being met before Aug. 2009 by Eyestone (in‑club 6‑DOF IMU with real‑time feedback) and Storek (in‑club INS resolving loft/lie to ±1° and open/close to ±0.5°). A need already solved in the art cannot be a nexus‑bearing long‑felt need for the '533 claims.
2. Unexpected results. None asserted. The specification presents the reconstruction as producing a curve that "may be substituted for the gyro outputs" — no data, no comparative accuracy, no criticality. The only accuracy figures in the family (Storek's ±1°/±0.5°) belong to the prior art.
3. Commercial success / licensing. Unknown to me; the 2017 Nike → Karsten assignment is a corporate transfer, not evidence of nexus. See the prior litigation section of this analysis.
4. Teaching away. None identified. If anything, the field taught toward compensating sensor limitations (Eyestone's error‑correction section; Eyestone's gyro‑bandwidth discussion; Storek's Kalman filter for noise).

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8. Honest weaknesses in the § 103 case (read before relying on this)

1. The strongest reference is the patentee's own family, and it is unavailable. If an examiner or challenger builds the case on US 8,257,191 / US 2011/0053698 / WO 2011/028357, the patentee wins on "by another" (§ 102(e)) and, in the alternative, on pre‑AIA § 103(c) common ownership. The case must be built on third‑party art (Eyestone + Storek + others).
2. I could not retrieve Boscha (WO 2005/025681), Churchill (US 2007/0073482), or Tuer (US 2002/0077189) in full. They are in this family's search report, but I cannot responsibly assert what they disclose. Before relying on the combination above, pull those three documents — Tuer in particular (Kevin Tuer's motion‑tracking work is a likely source of sensor‑error/reconstruction teaching) and Boscha (likely instrumented‑club hardware).
3. Date problem for elements C–F. The cleanest documents I found describing polynomial reconstruction of a saturated inertial sensor are later than Aug. 27, 2009 (the OSTI/INL report, https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/990959-EqELob/; US 9,715,480). Under pre‑AIA § 102 they cannot be prior art. They can support the level of ordinary skill argument, but the strongest form of the argument needs pre‑August‑2009 documentary evidence that gap‑filling a clipped rate signal by a boundary‑matched polynomial fit was known — e.g., 1990s inertial‑navigation or instrumentation literature, or a pre‑2009 patent. I did not find such a document with the tools available, and I will not assert one exists.
4. A genuine non‑obviousness argument remains available to the patentee on elements D–F as an ordered combination: identifying the exact saturation start/end frames, then two independent first‑order regressions, then an intersection, then a slope‑constrained quadratic across the gap. The patentee can argue no reference teaches the sequence, and that the constraint that "slopes throughout the end points are the same as those for the two regression lines" reflects a specific insight about the smoothness of club‑head angular‑velocity waveforms (which the specification attributes to the inventors' own discovery that "the waveforms of angular rate signals from the gyroscope(s) are qualitatively similar"). That is the argument against obviousness, and it must be met with a pre‑2009 reference or with the "predictable solution" rationale rather than with the later documents cited above.
5. Pre‑AIA vs. AIA. If an examiner were to find that any claim lacks written‑description support in the Aug. 27, 2009 application (e.g., a limitation arguably added only in the 2013 continuation), the AIA would apply, § 103(c)/§ 102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exceptions would be replaced by AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) (substantively similar), and the analysis above would be largely unchanged — but the effective prior‑art date would move to July 16, 2013, which would enlarge the pool of available § 102(a)(2) art.

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9. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 7 are prima facie obvious under pre‑AIA § 103(a) over Eyestone (US 2006/0084516 A1) in view of Storek (US 2004/0259651 A1), further in view of the well‑known technique of reconstructing a saturated/clipped inertial‑sensor interval by a boundary‑matched polynomial fit; and alternatively over Eyestone + Storek + Tuer/Boscha if those references, upon full retrieval, disclose sensor‑error correction.
• Claims 2, 3, 5 and 6 are obvious as pure design choices/range optimisations with the motivations expressly recited in the references themselves.
• Claim 4 is obvious as a substitution of a known estimator (SMO) for another known estimator (extended Kalman filter, disclosed in Storek) with predictable results — a substitution the '533 specification itself justifies only by preference.
• Claims 8–17 follow claim 7.
• The only defensible non‑obviousness position is elements D–F as an ordered, slope‑constrained reconstruction recipe; the case there turns entirely on pre‑August‑2009 evidence of polynomial gap‑filling for clipped rate signals, which I was unable to identify with the tools available. That gap should be closed before this analysis is relied on for a validity opinion or a challenge.

Key URLs used: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8801533 · https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US8801533B2 · https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US9421429B2 · https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2470276B1/en · http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP2470276B1 · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/62/c1/f0/dfa55b54de1132/US20060084516A1.pdf · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4a/f6/bf/294805cd11ca70/US20040259651A1.pdf · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/52/19/50/55e47c4b6c885e/US8257191.pdf · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/36/89/08/ac18ac98edb5cd/WO2008066967A1.pdf · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7,264,554 · https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1461352/download-documents · https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/990959-EqELob/