Patent 8842454

Prior art

Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.

Active provider: Google · gemini-2.5-flash

Prior art

Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.

✓ Generated

To find the most relevant prior art for US patent 8842454, I will use the patent's own citations. The full patent text provided lists a "Citations" section. I will analyze these cited patents to identify those most relevant to the claims of US8842454. I will then extract the required information for each.

Based on the provided patent text, I will now list the patent citations for US8842454, along with the requested details. Since I do not have direct access to the USPTO database for real-time searching and claim-by-claim analysis against each prior art, I will focus on providing the available information from the "Citations" section within the patent document itself. I will identify potential anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 based on the brief descriptions and the claims of US8842454.

Please note that a definitive anticipation analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a detailed review of each prior art document's full disclosure and a comparison with each claim element of US8842454, which goes beyond the scope of a brief summary. The "which claim(s) it potentially anticipates" will be an informed estimation based on the titles and descriptions provided in the patent itself.

Here are some of the patent citations from US8842454, along with the requested information:

Most Relevant Prior Art for US Patent 8842454

  • US4994953A

    • Full Citation: US4994953A, "DC power supply for high power applications"
    • Publication Date: 1991-02-19
    • Filing Date: 1989-08-15
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a DC power supply system for high-power applications.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Potentially relevant to the general concept of DC power supply and conversion, particularly as it relates to the input stage of the inverters in US8842454 (e.g., receiving DC power from a DC power source). Might be relevant to claims 1, 10, and 17 in their broadest sense of handling DC power.

  • US5677833A

    • Full Citation: US5677833A, "Power conditioning system for a four quadrant photovoltaic array with an inverter for each array quadrant"
    • Publication Date: 1997-10-14
    • Filing Date: 1995-05-16
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a power conditioning system specifically for photovoltaic arrays, where an inverter is provided for each quadrant of the array.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Highly relevant to US8842454, especially the concept of a plurality of inverters associated with photovoltaic cells. This could potentially anticipate aspects of claims 1, 10, and 17, particularly where the DC power source is explicitly a photovoltaic source (as detailed in the description of US8842454). The distributed inverter architecture is a key overlap.

  • US6169678B1

    • Full Citation: US6169678B1, "Photovoltaic power generation apparatus and control method thereof"
    • Publication Date: 2001-01-02
    • Filing Date: 1999-01-28
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a photovoltaic power generation apparatus and its control method.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Very relevant due to its focus on photovoltaic power generation and control. Aspects of this patent describing conversion of DC to AC power and overall system control could potentially anticipate elements of claims 1, 10, and 17, especially regarding the generation of control signals and managing output power from PV sources.

  • US6259017B1

    • Full Citation: US6259017B1, "Solar power generation apparatus and control method therefor"
    • Publication Date: 2001-07-10
    • Filing Date: 1998-10-15
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a solar power generation apparatus and its control method.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Similar to US6169678B1, this patent is highly relevant to the core subject matter of US8842454. It could potentially anticipate the elements of claims 1, 10, and 17 that relate to controlling AC power from solar sources using inverters and control signals.

  • US20030231517A1

    • Full Citation: US20030231517A1, "System and method for regenerative PWM AC power conversion"
    • Publication Date: 2003-12-18
    • Filing Date: 2001-01-02
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a system and method for regenerative Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) AC power conversion.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): Relevant to the "controlling respective output AC power of each inverter... based on a corresponding one of the second control signals" aspect of US8842454 (claims 1, 10, 17), especially where PWM signals are used for control (as described in the detailed description of US8842454).

  • US20040208029A1

    • Full Citation: US20040208029A1, "Method and apparatus for transmitting data"
    • Publication Date: 2004-10-21
    • Filing Date: 1999-12-16
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a method and apparatus for transmitting data.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): This citation seems less directly related to the core power conversion and control aspects of US8842454, based purely on the title. However, if "transmitting data" involves communication between distributed control elements, it might have a very broad relevance to how control signals are communicated between the primary and secondary controllers (claims 1, 10, 17). Further review of the full document would be needed to determine specific anticipation.

  • US20120134186A1

    • Full Citation: US20120134186A1, "Inverter array with localized inverter control"
    • Publication Date: 2012-05-31
    • Filing Date: 2010-11-29 (Note: This is an earlier publication of the same patent family, claiming priority to the same provisional application as US8842454).
    • Brief Description: This is an earlier publication of US8842454 itself, indicating it describes an inverter array with localized inverter control.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): This document is the patent application publication for US8842454. It serves as self-prior art (if the claims changed substantially from application to grant) or is merely a procedural citation as part of the same patent family. It cannot anticipate US8842454 under 35 U.S.C. § 102 unless the claims in the granted patent are broader than what was enabled/described in this earlier publication AND the earlier publication was by a different inventive entity or filed later than other prior art. Given it's the same patent family, it's typically cited for continuity and not as anticipatory prior art in the traditional sense.

  • US8223515B2

    • Full Citation: US8223515B2, "Pre-charging an inverter using an auxiliary winding"
    • Publication Date: 2012-07-17
    • Filing Date: 2009-02-26
    • Brief Description: This patent describes a method for pre-charging an inverter using an auxiliary winding.
    • Potential Anticipation (35 U.S.C. § 102): This patent might be relevant to specific implementation details of the inverters within US8842454, particularly regarding their startup or operational efficiency. If "pre-charging" is a necessary or inherent function of the inverters in US8842454, it could potentially anticipate specific claim elements related to inverter operation (claims 1, 10, 17), but likely not the overall control architecture.

This analysis provides an overview of the most relevant prior art cited in US8842454 based on their titles and brief descriptions, with an estimation of which claims they might potentially anticipate. A full legal analysis would require a deeper dive into the full text of each cited patent.

Generated 5/24/2026, 6:45:45 PM