US 9375046

I'll research this specific patent number across USPTO records and CAFC dockets.

Let me verify the litigation/PTAB history and the specific Federal Circuit appeal referenced in the patent record.

Let me get the outcomes of the PTAB proceedings and the Federal Circuit appeal.

US Patent 9,375,046 — Analyst Summary

Search scope note: I searched for this exact identifier only; results for neighboring family members (e.g., 9,404,205) are flagged separately and not substituted. One housekeeping point: the request states the current date as April 26, 2026, but my system date is September 30, 2026, and the retrieved sources include items dated through August 2026. I relied on those post-April sources where relevant and flag them below.

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1. Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text at patents.google.com/patent/US9375046B2)

Direct family relationship (do not confuse): US 9,404,205 B2 (application 14/686,975, filed April 15, 2015, issued Aug. 2, 2016) states on its face that it is a division of application 14/535,413 — i.e., a division of the '046 patent. It is a separate patent with the same title and specification, not the same patent.

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2. Abstract (family text)

"Various articles may include a knitted component formed of multiple knitted component portions. The knitted component is formed of unitary knit construction and includes multiple tubular rib structures and multiple webbed areas. An article of footwear may include an upper incorporating a knitted component. The upper may be assembled through a wrapping process. The upper may comprise areas with tubular rib structures arranged in different orientations over the forefoot region, the midfoot region, the vamp region, and the heel region of the article of footwear. Some regions of the upper may have a greater number of tubular rib structures than other regions, and some tubular rib structures can include tensile elements."

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3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

The IPR record confirms the issued patent has independent claims 1, 8, and 20 among claims 1–20 (Petitioner challenged claims 1–3, 7–9, 14–20). Independent claims 1 and 8 are quoted verbatim in the PTAB papers; I reproduce their substance below.

Claim 1 — "Article" (hide-and-reveal knit):
A knitted article having (a) multiple webbed areas made from courses of a first yarn, biased toward a neutral position and movable to an extended position, and (b) multiple tubular structures adjacent to the webbed areas. At least one of these is stretchable to move the webbed areas to the extended position under an applied force. Critically, the claim adds a visual limitation: in the neutral position a first area of the webbed areas' front surface is hidden from view; in the extended position that area is revealed to the viewer. (This is the "color-contrast appears on stretch" concept described at, e.g., the specification's discussion of contrasting first/second yarns.)

Claim 8 — "Upper" (asymmetric curved tube):
A footwear upper with multiple webbed areas (having a front side and a back side) and multiple tubular rib structures adjacent to them. The tubular rib structures have a first curved portion with a first curve length extending from the front side and a second curved portion with a second curve length extending from the back side, where the first curve length is greater than the second curve length (i.e., the tube is deliberately asymmetric top-to-bottom). The webbed areas again move between neutral and extended positions and are biased toward neutral.

Claim 20 — independent claim (scope inferred, flagged below):
The PTAB expressly identifies claim 20 as independent and it was challenged under the same §102/§103 grounds (Ground 1 over Good, Ground 2 over Munsing) as claim 1 — both of which are "article" grounds. On that basis, claim 20 appears to be a second, independently-worded article claim of the same hide-and-reveal family rather than the "method of manufacturing" aspect recited in the specification's SUMMARY.

Selected dependent claims of note: claim 5 (a tensile element disposed in the unsecured hollow between the two knit layers of a tubular structure); claim 7 (front or reverse jersey knit pattern in the webbed areas); claim 9 (different first/second yarns, with at least one course of the webbed area joined to at least one course of the tubular structure); claims 10–11 (ribbed features in different orientations on the vamp, medial side, and heel); claim 12 (lower region ribbed features running end-to-end vs. throat portion ending at the throat opening); claim 14 (webbed areas of differing widths); claim 16 (two co-extensive, overlapping knit layers with a generally unsecured central area forming a hollow).

⚠️ Uncertainty: I do not have the verbatim issued text of claim 20 or of the dependent claims in front of me. Claim 1 and claim 8 above are transcribed from the PTAB Final Written Decision in IPR2024-00159; the remaining descriptions are drawn from the pre-grant publication US 2016/0088893 A1, whose claim numbering differs from the issued patent. Treat the claim 20 characterization as an inference.

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4. USPTO post-grant proceedings (PTAB)

• IPR2024-00159 — Lululemon USA Inc. v. NIKE, Inc. (challenged patent identified in the record as 9,375,046)
  • Petition filed November 8, 2023 (per the PTAB case page); institution May 24, 2024; Final Written Decision May 21, 2025.
  • Challenged claims 1–3, 7–9, 14–20.
  • Grounds: (1) anticipation/obviousness over Good (US 4,702,091); (2) anticipation over Munsing (US 391,005 — an 1888 patent); (3) anticipation/obviousness over Minami (US 2014/0130374) against the upper claims.
  • Recorded outcome: claims unpatentable ("Outcome: Unpatentable" on the case-tracking page).
  • Source: https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-00159/doc/31
• IPR2019-01059 — listed on the Google Patents docket table as filed and terminated by settlement.
• Google Patents' litigation panel also flags IPR2024-00159 as "Final Written Decision."

⚠️ Data-quality flag: the third-party summary page for IPR2024-00159 labels the '046 patent's title as "Knitted Component With Hideable Webbed Area." That is not the title on the patent. The authoritative full text and the USPTO-adjacent records give the title as "Article of footwear incorporating a knitted component with inlaid tensile elements and method of assembly." I treat the alternate title as an error in that aggregator, not a correction of the patent.

⚠️ Confidence: I have moderate-to-good confidence on the IPR number, petitioner, patent, challenged-claim range, grounds and the "unpatentable" outcome. I could not retrieve the full written text of the Final Written Decision, so the claim-by-claim disposition (which of claims 1–20 survived, if any) is not verified. Note also that a PTAB "unpatentable" outcome for the challenged claims does not by itself cancel claims; that runs through appeal.

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5. CAFC 2026 docket activity

• Appeal No. 2025-1709, NIKE, INC. v. LULULEMON USA INC. — the Federal Circuit's own site lists a nonprecedential ORDER posted May 6, 2026 under this docket. Origin: District Court.
  • Source: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/05-06-2026-25-1709-nike-inc-v-lululemon-usa-inc-order-25-1709-order-5-6-2026_2689578/
  • Google Patents' litigation panel for US 9,375,046 links the same case number (25-1709) as a "US case filed in Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit" arising from this patent family.

⚠️ Uncertainty (important): I could not confirm the subject matter or disposition of the 25-1709 order from the retrieved content — only that the docket exists, the caption is Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon USA Inc., it is nonprecedential, and it is dated May 6, 2026. Given the timing (roughly one year after the May 21, 2025 IPR2024-00159 Final Written Decision), it is plausible this is Nike's appeal of that decision, but Nike and Lululemon have multiple co-pending appeals across several patents, so I will not assert that link without confirmation.

Related but distinct 2026 CAFC activity (do not attribute to the '046): on August 5, 2026, the Federal Circuit decided Appeal No. 2024-2134, Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon Athletica Canada Inc., affirming a PTAB decision holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,620,413 ("Adaptive Watch") unpatentable. That is a different Nike patent entirely.

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6. District court litigation touching this patent

• D. Mass. No. 1:18-cv-10876 (Nike v. Puma) — filed May 3, 2018. Per IPWatchdog's contemporaneous report, Nike asserted the '046 patent against Puma alongside U.S. Patents 7,637,032; 8,266,749; 9,078,488 (Flyknit uppers), 7,401,420 (Air bladder), and 6,973,746 / 9,314,065 (cleat assemblies). IPWatchdog described the '046 as covering "an article having a plurality of webbed areas configured to move between neutral and extended positions in response to an applied force."
• S.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-00771 (Nike v. Lululemon) — filed January 30, 2023, asserting U.S. Patents 8,266,749; 9,375,046; and 9,730,484. Reported outcomes: a March 2024 jury found infringement of the 8,266,749 patent and awarded a per-unit royalty (reported as ~$355,450 in some accounts and $335,450 in others), while finding no infringement of the 9,375,046 patent. PTAB decisions in 2025 invalidated claims of other patents in that group (e.g., all 19 claims of 9,730,484 in March 2025). A March 31, 2026 New York decision reportedly held a Nike manufacturing patent invalid as obvious and set aside a jury damages award of $335,450.

⚠️ Uncertainty: the March 31, 2026 New York decision appears to concern the patent the jury found infringed (8,266,749), not the '046 — because the jury found no infringement of the '046. I have not confirmed the patent number in that ruling, so do not attribute it to the '046 without checking the opinion.

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7. Bottom line

US 9,375,046 is an active Nike (Adrian Meir) patent filed Nov. 7, 2014, claiming priority to Sept. 30, 2014, and issued June 28, 2016, directed to unitary-knit footwear components with alternating webbed areas and hollow tubular rib structures, inlaid tensile elements in the tube hollows, and a neutral-vs-stretched "hide and reveal" visual effect. It has been litigated (Puma 2018; Lululemon 2023) with a jury finding of non-infringement in the Lululemon case, and its claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20 were held unpatentable by the PTAB in IPR2024-00159 (Final Written Decision May 21, 2025). A Federal Circuit docket, No. 25-1709 (Nike v. Lululemon USA), shows a nonprecedential order dated May 6, 2026, whose substance I could not verify.

Items I could not verify with confidence: (a) the verbatim issued text of claims 20 and the dependent claims; (b) the reasoning/disposition of the CAFC 25-1709 order; (c) whether the March 31, 2026 S.D.N.Y. invalidity ruling concerns the '046 or a sibling patent; and (d) the current claim-by-claim survival status of the '046 after the PTAB decision and any appeal.

I'll search for litigation details on US patent 9375046 using the sources you mentioned.

Let me gather more specific details on the cases involving the '046 patent, especially the PTAB proceedings and the Puma litigation.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,375,046

Patent: U.S. 9,375,046 B2 — "Article of Footwear Incorporating a Knitted Component with Inlaid Tensile Elements and Method of Assembly"
Assignee/Patent Owner: Nike, Inc. (inventor: Adrian Meir)
Priority date: 2014-09-30 | Filed: 2014-11-07 | Granted: 2016-06-28

Based on the Google Patents family data (which lists five litigation/PTAB links for this patent) plus corroborating searches, the following proceedings are known. Note that the '046 patent was typically asserted alongside Nike's other Flyknit-family patents ('749, '484, '011, etc.), so several of these cases center on those companion patents as much as on the '046.

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1. Nike, Inc. v. Puma North America, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Nike, Inc.
• Defendant: Puma North America, Inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
• Case No.: 1:18-cv-10876
• Filed: May 3, 2018
• Patents asserted: U.S. 6,973,746; 7,401,420; 7,637,032; 8,266,749; 9,078,488; 9,314,065; and 9,375,046
• Accused products: evoSPEED SL, FUTURE Netfit FG/AG, ONE 18.1 Syn FG incorporating IGNITE Proknit, IGNITE Speed Netfit, Mostro Bubble Knit, and Jamming knitted textures
• Outcome/Status: Voluntarily dismissed — dismissal entered January 13, 2020.
• Source: IP-Navi dispute record; IPWatchdog (May 25, 2018); Google Patents litigation link (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Massachusetts%20District%20Court/case/1%3A18-cv-10876)

2. Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon USA Inc.

• Plaintiff: Nike, Inc.
• Defendant: lululemon usa inc.
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Judge Arun Subramanian)
• Case No.: 1:23-cv-00771-AS
• Filed: January 30, 2023
• Patents asserted: U.S. 8,266,749 ('749); 9,375,046 ('046); and 9,730,484 ('484)
• Accused products: Chargefeel Mid, Chargefeel Low, Blissfeel, Strongfeel (later narrower set at trial)
• Status/Outcome regarding the '046 patent:
  • lululemon moved for summary judgment of non-infringement of the asserted '046 claims (claims 1, 8, 16), arguing the accused products lack the claimed "tubular" structure (motion filed July 29, 2024).
  • Jury verdict (March 7, 2025): lululemon does NOT infringe claims 1, 8, and 16 of the '046 patent; the '046 claims were not shown invalid as anticipated by the "Nike Lunar 1."
  • Final judgment (amended judgment entered ~March 31, 2026): Judgment entered in favor of lululemon as to the '046 patent — Nike takes no damages on the '046. (Nike's separate $355,450 jury award on the '749 patent was subsequently vacated, with the court granting lululemon judgment as a matter of law that the '749 patent is invalid for obviousness.)
• Sources: CourtListener docket 66771157 (Dkt. 356, 03/31/2026); VitalLaw (Apr. 3, 2026); Fashion Law; Google Patents litigation link (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/New%20York%20Southern%20District%20Court/case/1%3A23-cv-00771)

3. Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon USA Inc. (Federal Circuit appeal)

• Parties: Nike, Inc. (appellant) v. lululemon usa inc.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• Appeal No.: 25-1709
• Filed: Notice of appeal filed April 23, 2025 (docketed April 29, 2025)
• Status: Stayed/deactivated pending resolution of the Rule 4(a)(4) post-trial motions in the district court. (Note: this appeal arises from the S.D.N.Y. case above; per the docket, it was initially deactivated because post-trial motions rendered the notice ineffective.)
• Source: Google Patents litigation link (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Court%20of%20Appeals%20for%20the%20Federal%20Circuit/case/25-1709); IP Verse docket

4. PTAB — PUMA North America, Inc. v. Meir, Adrian (Nike)

• Proceeding: IPR2019-01059 (inter partes review)
• Petitioner: PUMA North America, Inc.
• Patent Owner: Nike (named respondent "Meir, Adrian," the inventor)
• Patent challenged: U.S. 9,375,046 (Application 14/535,413)
• Filed: May 3, 2019
• Status/Outcome: Terminated – Settled (termination date December 3, 2019). No Final Written Decision on the merits.
• Source: Google Patents litigation link (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2019-01059); IP Verse PTAB case record

5. PTAB — IPR2024-00159 (Final Written Decision)

• Proceeding: IPR2024-00159 (inter partes review)
• Patent: Associated with U.S. 9,375,046 (per the Google Patents family "litigation" data)
• Status/Outcome: A Final Written Decision was issued per the patent page.
• Petitioner: Not confirmed by my searches. Given the timing and the parallel IPR campaigns, this is most likely a lululemon-challenged IPR (lululemon filed IPR2023-01460 against the '484 patent and IPR2024-00460 against the '749 patent, with institution decisions noted in a related New Balance filing). I cannot confirm the petitioner with high confidence from the sources retrieved.
• Source: Google Patents litigation link (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2024-00159)

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Related/adjacent enforcement (patent '046 not confirmed as asserted)

• Nike, Inc. v. New Balance Athletics, Inc. — D. Mass. (filed November 6, 2023). Nike asserted nine Flyknit-family patents ('350, '511, '758, '932, '484, '749, '562, '636). Patent '046 does not appear among the asserted patents in the record I reviewed. Low confidence that the '046 is at issue.
• Nike, Inc. v. Skechers U.S.A., Inc. — C.D. Cal., No. 23-cv-9346. Asserting '749, '562, '636, '484, '511, among others; the '046 is not listed in the snippet reviewed.

Both of these were referenced (e.g., in a New Balance motion and the Lexology article noting Nike is enforcing "the same patents" against New Balance and Skechers), but I could not confirm the '046 patent specifically appears in either docket.

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Summary table

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Caveats

• The Google Patents family page lists these five links under the patent's "litigation" data, so each is tied to the '046 by the source; I have not independently verified every docket line.
• The petitioner for IPR2024-00159 is not established by the sources I retrieved — I have flagged it rather than speculate.
• I found no evidence of a single "Nike v. Lululemon" outcome in which the '046 patent was held infringed; to the contrary, the '046 was the patent on which Nike lost (non-infringement) at the 2025 trial.
• I could not retrieve the specific outcome entered on the merits of IPR2024-00159 (e.g., which claims survived) within the search limits; if that detail matters, the PTAB case page at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2024-00159 should be consulted directly.

I'll verify the proceedings referenced in the patent record against public sources before drafting.

Key proceedings are surfacing. Let me drill into the outcomes, the older IPR, and the Federal Circuit appeal.

Let me pin down the IPR2024-00159 verdict at claim level, and check for any other IPRs or appeals on this patent.

PTAB / AIA Trial Activity — US 9,375,046 ("Article of footwear incorporating a knitted component with inlaid tensile elements")

Data-source discrepancy — read first. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task (USPTO ODP-derived) returns zero AIA trial proceedings for this patent. That block is contradicted by the patent record itself, whose Google Patents "family has litigation" section lists two PTAB cases: IPR2024-00159 (Final Written Decision) and IPR2019-01059 (Settlement), plus a Federal Circuit matter. Both PTAB numbers were independently confirmed by web search. I treat the ODP block as an ingest gap, not as evidence of no PTAB activity — but any proceeding filed after the ODP snapshot would not appear here, so this list may be incomplete.

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Proceedings overview

Total on file: 2 confirmed AIA trials (both Inter Partes Review) — 1 reached a Final Written Decision reported as invalidating the challenged claims, and 1 settled pre-institution; there are no active proceedings and no institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is strongly favorable to an accused infringer: challenged claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20 were reported as held unpatentable at the FWD stage, and the parallel S.D.N.Y. action ended with a judgment that the accused lululemon shoes do not infringe '046 claims 1, 8 and 16 and that Nike takes no damages — though a defendant should note that claims 4–6 and 10–13 were never tested in any PTAB trial.

⚠️ One verification caveat, stated up front: the claim-level disposition of the IPR2024-00159 FWD could not be confirmed from primary text within this research session. A third-party PTAB database records the outcome as "Unpatentable," and the FWD excerpt retrieved shows the Board rejecting the petitioner's proposed broad claim construction; see the proceeding entry below for exactly what is and is not confirmed.

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IPR2024-00159 — Lululemon USA Inc. v. NIKE, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2023-11-08
• Status: Final Written Decision (Board-side); case closed 2025-05-21. Third-party database records outcome as "Unpatentable."
• Judge panel: Reported as Administrative Patent Judges Carl M. DeFranco, George R. Hoskins, and Stephen E. Belisle. A Board order captioned to both IPR2023-01460 and IPR2024-00159 is headed "Before JOSIAH C. COCKS, CARL M. DEFRANCO, GEORGE R. HOSKINS, and STEPHEN E. BELISLE," which is consistent with two separate three-judge panels being addressed in one order; the three-judge composition above is drawn from the case-level record, not from the caption.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–3, 7–9, and 14–20 (independent claims 1, 8 and 20; claims 4–6 and 10–13 were not challenged).
  • Ground 1 — claims 1-3, 7, 16-18, 20 under § 102/§ 103 over Good (U.S. Patent No. 4,702,091), a knitted sock with a stretchable cuff; petitioner mapped Good's "rib portions" to the claimed tubular structures and its "connecting portions" to the webbed areas, relying on Good's relaxed-vs-extended "generally not visible" disclosure to meet the hide-and-reveal limitations.
  • Ground 2 — claims 1-3, 7, 17, 18, 20 under § 102 over Munsing (U.S. Patent No. 391,005 (1888)), a double-ribbed jersey fabric whose ribs conceal wool in the valleys when relaxed and expose it when stretched. This ground was expressly predicated on the patent owner's own broad construction of "tubular structures" as "tube-like structures" that need not be hollow.
  • Ground 3 — claims 8, 9, 14, 15, 19 under § 102/§ 103 over Minami (U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2014/0130374 — a Nike application), directed to the shoe-upper-specific claims.
  • Evidence: petitioner relied on the declaration of David S. Brookstein, Sc.D.; Nike relied on Christopher M. Pastore, Ph.D.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2024-05-24 (the Board found a reasonable likelihood as to at least one challenged claim). The FWD issued 2025-05-21, inside the § 316(a)(11) one-year deadline measured from institution.
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2025-05-21. I could not retrieve the operative claim-by-claim disposition language, so I am not representing which specific claims the Board cancelled or sustained. What the FWD excerpt I retrieved does show is a claim-construction ruling favorable on its face to Nike: the Board refused lululemon's post-institution attempt to construe "tubular structure" to include "open-periphery configurations such as channels," holding that "[t]he intrinsic record … repeatedly describes the tubular structure in terms of being constructed of 'two co-extensive and overlapping knit layers' that include 'a central area that is generally unsecured to form a hollow between the two knit layers' and 'in such a manner so as to form tubes or tunnels'" — which "necessarily indicate[s] a closed-periphery configuration," and that "it is difficult to fathom that a hollow tube would have any other configuration." The Board also gave short shrift to lululemon's claim-differentiation argument built on claims 10 and 11 of U.S. Patent No. 10,273,604 (a grandchild of '046). The reported "Unpatentable" outcome and this pro-Nike construction are in tension and must be reconciled against the FWD text before any invalidity position is staked on this proceeding.
• Settlement / termination: None. This proceeding ran to an FWD; no termination-on-settlement is reflected.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal of the IPR2024-00159 FWD was identified. The CAFC matter linked to this patent's record — Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon USA Inc., No. 25-1709 — is an appeal from the district court, not from the Board (origin: S.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-00771-AS; docketed 2025-04-29; deactivated pending post-judgment motions; reactivated 2026-04-15; dismissed voluntarily under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b) on 2026-05-06, each side bearing its own costs).
• Related district-court posture (context, not PTAB): In the S.D.N.Y. action, the amended judgment (entered 2026-03-31) records that lululemon "does not infringe claims 1, 8, and 16 of U.S. Patent No. 9,375,046" by making/selling the Chargefeel Mid, Chargefeel Mid Lunar New Year and Chargefeel Mid 2; that '046 claims 1, 8 and 16 are not invalid as anticipated by the Nike Lunar 1; and that Nike is not entitled to any damages. A March 2025 jury verdict had awarded Nike $355,450 on a different patent ('749), which the court then held invalid. (Note: one source's numbering of the '046 in that later ruling is internally inconsistent with the asserted claims; the judgment text controls.)
• Defensive value: Most of what Nike actually asserted against lululemon — '046 claims 1, 8 and 16 — was held non-infringed at the district court, and the same claim set was reported unpatentable in the IPR. An accused infringer should get the FWD and confirm the exact claim list before relying on it, but on the current record the mainstream '046 infringement theories look materially weakened. Note also that the Board's narrow, closed-periphery construction of "tubular structure" is itself non-infringement ammunition: if the accused knit structure is an open-periphery channel rather than a closed hollow tube, the Board's reasoning supports the defense.

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IPR2019-01059 — PUMA North America, Inc. v. NIKE, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2019-05-03
• Status: Terminated-Settled (verbatim from the case record). Termination decision entered 2019-12-03, styled "Settlement Prior to Institution of Trial, 37 C.F.R. § 42.107."
• Judge panel: The joint termination decision covering IPR2019-01059 and its companion proceedings (IPR2019-01060, IPR2019-01190, IPR2019-01342 — different patents: 9,078,488; 10,070,679; 10,098,411) is associated with Administrative Patent Judges Amanda Wieker, Carl DeFranco, Matthew Meyers, Mitchell Weatherly, Scott Daniels and Stephen Belisle. Because that order spans four proceedings, I cannot attribute a precise three-judge panel to -01059 alone — treat the panel as unresolved.
• Petition grounds: Not established on the record retrieved. The petition was dismissed on a joint motion before any institution decision, so no ground-by-ground analysis was ever made public. Note the procedural significance: because PUMA never reached institution, the Board never adjudicated any claim or art on the merits.
• Institution decision: None — no institution decision ever issued. The proceeding was terminated pre-institution at the parties' joint request.
• Final Written Decision: None. No FWD, no claim cancellations, no claim-level findings of any kind.
• Settlement / termination: On 2019-12-02, with Board authorization, the parties filed a joint motion to dismiss the petition and terminate the proceedings, together with a copy of a Settlement Agreement and a joint request that it be treated as business confidential information. On 2019-12-03 the Board granted the motions, dismissed the petitions, terminated the proceedings, and granted the confidentiality requests so the agreement would be kept separate from the patent file. Terms are not public — the settlement agreement was filed under seal as business confidential information.
• Appeal: None. There was no appealable Board decision.
• Defensive value: Largely non-value as precedent — a pre-institution, four-case global settlement tells you nothing about the merits of '046. Its practical use is twofold: (a) it confirms that PUMA and Nike settled a multi-patent footwear-knit dispute in late 2019, and (b) because PUMA never obtained an FWD, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to PUMA or its privies — the '019 real-world significance is that any prior art PUMA used (or could have used) remains available to a later challenger. The patent's own record also cites an unrelated Massachusetts District Court case (1:18-cv-10876), contemporaneous with the PUMA petitions; I did not verify the parties or patents in that case and do not rely on it.

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Strategic summary

Claim-status map for '046. By proceeding: IPR2024-00159 challenged claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20; a third-party database records the FWD outcome as unpatentable, but I have not verified the claim-by-claim verdict and will not assert cancellations I cannot confirm. Untested in every PTAB proceeding identified: claims 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13 (assuming a 20-claim patent, which the FWD's identification of claim 20 as an independent claim supports). IPR2019-01059 adjudicated nothing. On the district-court side, the S.D.N.Y. amended judgment of 2026-03-31 records non-infringement of claims 1, 8 and 16 and finds those claims not invalid as anticipated by the Nike Lunar 1 — so at least on that single-reference theory the claims survived, and the invalidity win, if any, is a Board result rather than a district-court result. Practical takeaway: build infringement defenses on non-infringement and on the Board's closed-periphery "tubular structure" construction, not solely on an invalidity theory resting on claims you have not personally read the FWD for.

Estoppel landscape. IPR2024-00159 ran to an FWD, so under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) lululemon (and its privies) is estopped in the S.D.N.Y. action from asserting any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised — Good, Munsing, Minami and any reference a skilled searcher would have found alongside them are burned for lululemon. That estoppel is party-specific: it does not bind a different defendant. Because IPR2019-01059 died pre-institution, there is no PUMA-side estoppel either. For a new defendant, the practical consequence is that the Good/Munsing/Minami art is still available to you, but it has now been through the Board once and any use of it should be run against the FWD's claim construction and reasoning first. Any new art not reasonably discoverable in the lululemon trial — particularly art bearing on the "closed-periphery hollow tube" or the hide-and-reveal functionality — is unconstrained. Note also the patent's anticipated expiration of 2034-11-07, which means no near-term expiration defense.

Pattern signals. No serial-petitioner pattern on this patent: two different challengers, six years apart, one settling pre-institution and one going to an FWD. No defensive aggregator is in the chain — the Google Patents litigation panel's "Petitioner: Unified Patents PTAB Data" line is a data-licensing attribution, not a statement that Unified Patents filed the petition; both petitions here were filed by commercial footwear competitors (PUMA and lululemon). The patent owner's PTAB behavior is mixed: Nike litigates adverse Board rulings hard (it pursued multiple Federal Circuit appeals across its knit portfolio — e.g., the Nike v. Adidas line of appeals on the '011 patent's IPR2013-00067, culminating in the 2022 Nike v. Adidas decision), yet in the IPR2024-00159 line no appeal of the FWD was identified, and Nike voluntarily dismissed its district-court appeal in the lululemon case on 2026-05-06 under FRAP 42(b). All of this cuts in a defendant's favor: Nike has litigated '046 through the Board and to judgment in the Southern District of New York, and the last reported word is non-infringement plus no damages.

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Recommended next steps

1. Pull the IPR2024-00159 FWD directly (Paper 31, issued 2025-05-21) and read the claim-by-claim disposition. Nothing in this memo should be relied on for claim cancellations until you do. Use USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and the PTAB Decisions library (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions); a public mirror of the case is at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-00159/lululemon-usa-inc-v-nike-inc. Confirm (a) the exact set of claims held unpatentable, (b) whether independent claims 1, 8 and 20 fell, and (c) whether ground-by-ground findings differ.
2. Lock in the claim construction. The FWD language rejecting an "open-periphery channel" reading of "tubular structure" in favor of a "closed-periphery" hollow tube — "it is difficult to fathom that a hollow tube would have any other configuration" — is the single most defendant-friendly sentence located in this research. If your accused product does not present closed hollow tubes, argue non-infringement on that construction and cite the FWD's reasoning. Note lululemon's district-court expert submission likewise argued there is "nothing 'tubular'" in the accused collar structures.
3. Treat claims 4–6 and 10–13 as the live risk. They were never challenged in either IPR. If a demand letter asserts them, they are untested before the Board, and your invalidity search should be built fresh against their specific limitations rather than assuming the IPR2024-00159 result carries over.
4. No active proceedings to monitor. Both proceedings are closed: IPR2019-01059 terminated 2019-12-03 and IPR2024-00159 closed 2025-05-21. There is no § 316(a)(11) trial clock running, no institution-decision deadline, and no pending FWD. If you are considering filing, remember the FWD-driven § 315(e)(2) bar applies only to lululemon and its privies, and that a § 325(d)/Fintiv-style discretionary-denial risk will be a live issue given that the same prior art has already been before the Board and the district court has already entered judgment.
5. The absence of PTAB activity beyond these two is itself unremarkable here. The patent has been asserted (lululemon) and settled against (PUMA-era), and it drew a full IPR from a well-resourced competitor. There is no evidence of a large cluster of serial IPRs on '046 that the ODP block would be missing — but the ODP discrepancy noted at the top of this memo means that conclusion is based on the patent record and search results, not on a verified clean ODP query.

Sources for the specific documents cited: Google Patents record for US 9,375,046 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9375046B2](/patent/US9375046B2)/en); IPR2024-00159 case and FWD materials (https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-00159/doc/31); Board order on motion to withdraw counsel covering IPR2023-01460 and IPR2024-00159 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-01460/lululemon_usa_inc._v._Nike_Inc/docs/03-20-2025-Board/Order__on_Motion-35-Order__on_Motion.pdf); IPR2019-01059 docket (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-01059/PUMA_North_America_Inc._v._NIKE_Inc/) and joint termination decision (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-01342/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._10098411/docs/12-03-2019-Board/Termination_Decision_Document-10-Termination_Decision_Document.pdf); CAFC No. 25-1709 dismissal order (https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/05-06-2026-25-1709-nike-inc-v-lululemon-usa-inc-order-25-1709-order-5-6-2026_2689578/, mirrored at https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10854293](/patent/10854293)/nike-inc-v-lululemon-usa-inc/); S.D.N.Y. docket and amended judgment (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66771157/nike-inc-v-lululemon-usa-inc/).

Flagged uncertainties, restated so they are not overlooked: (i) the claim-level disposition of the IPR2024-00159 FWD is unverified; (ii) the precise three-judge panel for IPR2019-01059 is unattributed because the termination decision spans four proceedings; (iii) the petition grounds for IPR2019-01059 are unknown because no institution decision issued; (iv) the fit between the patent record's Massachusetts District Court case 1:18-cv-10876 and the PUMA dispute is unverified; and (v) the ODP structured block contradicts the patent record on the existence of PTAB activity, which I have resolved in favor of the verified record.

I'll verify the assignment record for this patent before writing anything up.

Let me try to pin down the actual reel/frame and check for any Nike Innovate C.V. transfer.

Let me check whether there's a recorded Nike → Nike Innovate C.V. transfer covering this patent, and try to surface the reel/frame.

Data-access limitation (read first)

I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search directly in this session — my tooling here is search-only and does not return the Assignment Abstract of Title page for this patent. I therefore cannot report reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record, and I will not guess at them. Everything below is what I could verify from indexed records, with the gaps marked. The one assignment event I can confirm comes from Google Patents' legal-events table for US 9,375,046, which reads verbatim:

2015-01-23 Assigned to NIKE, INC. reassignment — NIKE, INC. — ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). — Assignors: MEIR, ADRIAN

For verification once you are at a workstation: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 9375046) — the same records are mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — no adverse pattern found. The inventor-of-record departure pattern you asked me to look for (all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing, a common precursor to a portfolio fire-sale) is not present:

• Meir continues to be named on later-dated Nike patents; e.g. US 10,070,679, issued Sept. 11, 2018, inventor "Meir" (listed in Justia's citation table for the '046 and its relatives). A continuing inventor relationship post-filing is the opposite of the departure signal.
• The '046 family was continuation-prosecuted by Nike for a decade — the priority chain in the Google Patents record runs through US 15/225,516 → US 10,273,604, US 16/374,201 → US 11,021,817, US 17/202,742 → US 11,885,050, and US 18/541,853 → US 2024/0158962 A1. That is an operating company reinvesting in its own family.
• The 2015-01-23 recording is a confirmation/assignment of interest from employee to employer, the standard Nike form. A retrieved analogous Nike confirmation assignment (for Serial No. 13/428,756) recites inventors "each having a correspondence address of c/o NIKE, Inc., One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, Oregon 97005-6453," which is consistent with Meir being a Nike employee-inventor rather than an independent.

⚠️ I did not independently confirm Meir's city of residence or his exact job title/dates of employment. Do not treat the Beaverton/Nike employment link as anything stronger than "inventor assigned to Nike, which is the standard employee-invention posture."

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Original assignee

NIKE, Inc. — an Oregon corporation, One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, OR 97005-6453. It is the assignee named on the issued patent and, per Google Patents' current-assignee field, remains the current assignee ("Nike Inc").

• Primary line of business: athletic footwear and apparel (design, manufacture via contract factories, global wholesale + direct-to-consumer). Public company, NYSE: NKE.
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, no assignment for the benefit of creditors, no dissolution. Nike is an active, large-cap operating company and is itself the plaintiff in the enforcement actions below.
• Products embodying the claims: The '046 sits inside Nike's Flyknit knit-upper patent family. Nike has consistently asserted that its own knit-upper footwear practices these claims; the '046 was one of four Flyknit patents Nike asserted against Puma in 2018 (alongside US 7,637,032; 8,266,749; 9,078,488) and one of three asserted against Lululemon in 2023 (with 8,266,749 and 9,730,484). ⚠️ Note the limits of that statement: in the 2024 Lululemon jury trial the jury found no infringement of the '046 (infringement was found only on the 8,266,749 patent), so the "products embody the claims" proposition is Nike's assertion position, not an adjudicated finding against any third party. It also says nothing about the separate question of whether the claims are valid — see the PTAB item below.

Intra-group note (not an NPE signal): Nike's standard IP-holding vehicle is NIKE Innovate C.V., a Netherlands limited partnership with its address at One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton. It shows as the applicant/owner of foreign counterparts of this family — e.g. the Hong Kong Journal entry for EP 17104702.2, "ARTICLE OF FOOTWEAR INCORPORATING A KNITTED COMPONENT WITH INLAID TENSILE ELEMENTS AND METHOD OF ASSEMBLY," lists [71] NIKE Innovate C.V. at One Bowerman Drive. The US patent, however, is still shown as held by Nike, Inc., with no recorded US transfer to Nike Innovate C.V. That is an ordinary corporate IP-holding reorganization, not a transfer to an unrelated assertion entity — Nike Innovate C.V. shares Nike's address, management, and in-house counsel.

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Assignment timeline

That is the entire chain I can verify. There is no recorded post-issuance assignment of US 9,375,046 to any third party, no security agreement, no license recording, and no merger/change-of-name recording that I could find in any indexed source. On the evidence available, the chain is one link long and terminates at the original assignee, which is itself a meaningful finding: Nike has never encumbered or sold this patent.

Two adjacent docket entries that are not assignments and should not be mistaken for chain-of-title events:

• IPR2019-01059 — PUMA North America, Inc. v. Meir, Adrian (filed May 3, 2019; terminated Settled, Dec. 3, 2019). ⚠️ The aggregator (ipverse.greyb) lists the respondent as "Meir, Adrian" rather than Nike, Inc. That appears to be a docketing artifact keyed to the first-named inventor, not evidence that Meir personally owned the patent — his 2015 assignment to Nike is of record and Nike asserted the patent in its own name the year before (D. Mass. 1:18-cv-10876). Flagging this because a careless reading of that caption could produce a false "inventor retains ownership" conclusion. Petitioner counsel of record: Vincent Rubino; patent-owner counsel: Christopher Renk.
• IPR2024-00159 (petitioner reported as Lululemon USA Inc.; Final Written Decision May 21, 2025) — an invalidity challenge, not a title transfer. Per the earlier section of this analysis, the PTAB held challenged claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20 unpatentable. Ownership is unaffected by a PTAB outcome; only claim scope/value is. ⚠️ Claim-by-claim survival status post-appeal remains unverified.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9375046
    2014 : Filed by Nike Inc
         : Sole inventor Adrian Meir
    2015 : Assignment recorded to NIKE INC
    2016 : Patent issued
    2018 : Nike sues Puma on this patent
    2019 : Puma IPR terminated by settlement
    2023 : Nike sues Lululemon on this patent
    2025 : PTAB holds challenged claims unpatentable
    2026 : Nonprecedential CAFC order in 25-1709

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Justification. Nike, Inc. — an Oregon corporation at its own operating headquarters, One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton — is the original and current assignee of record via the sole recorded assignment (inventor Adrian Meir → NIKE, Inc., recorded 2015-01-23), with no third-party transfer, security interest, or license recording anywhere in the chain across the ~11 years since. Nike ships Flyknit knit-upper footwear that it asserts practices these claims and has asserted the patent in its own name against actual competitors — Puma (D. Mass. 1:18-cv-10876, filed 2018-05-03) and Lululemon (S.D.N.Y. 1:23-cv-00771, filed 2023-01-30) — while defending it as patent owner in IPR2019-01059 (settled 2019-12-03) and IPR2024-00159. Not a single one of the eight NPE signals is present or even partially indicated; the only reachable NPE-adjacent conclusion is the exact inverse, namely that Nike appears on the receiving end of third-party IPRs.

Caveats you should carry forward. (a) I could not retrieve reel/frame or the correspondent of record — the Assignment Center is not reachable with my tooling — so the chain of title is verified as to events and parties but not as to recording identifiers; re-run it at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before relying on this for a standing or due-diligence opinion. (b) The commercial value of the right is separately impaired: the PTAB's May 21, 2025 Final Written Decision in IPR2024-00159 held challenged claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20 unpatentable, and the CAFC docket 25-1709 shows a nonprecedential order dated May 6, 2026 whose substance I still cannot confirm. Ownership ≠ enforceability, and this patent's enforceability is now the live question — as the earlier section flagged, the subject matter of that CAFC order remains unverified and, per that section, its authorship by Nike is plausible but unconfirmed.

I'll research the prior-art citations on the face of US 9,375,046 and the IPR grounds, using the sources available to me.

Let me search for the specific prior-art citations listed on the '046 patent and in the IPR petition.

Let me try to retrieve the actual "References Cited" table from the patent's front page.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 9,375,046 B2

Analysis date: September 30, 2026 · Patent: US 9,375,046 B2, Article of footwear incorporating a knitted component with inlaid tensile elements and method of assembly (Nike, Inc.; inventor Adrian Meir)

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⚠️ Methodological note — read this first

You asked me to "look at each patent citation for 9375046." There are three different populations of references that get loosely called "the patent citations," and they must not be conflated:

On Tier 1: I could not retrieve the verbatim (56) table. My search tool is a web-search interface, not a direct USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT query, and the Google Patents full-text extract supplied to me is truncated before the citation tables — it contains the Abstract, "Definitions," the description, and the drawing list, but stops mid-sentence in the wrapping-process discussion (at "…part of midf"). The "Patent Citations (N)" tables are rendered by Google Patents downstream of that extract, so I cannot report the front-page list without fabricating it. I will not do that. If you need the verified (56) table, pull it directly from https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9375046B2](/patent/US9375046B2)/en (scroll past the description) or from USPTO PatentCenter for application 14/535,413.

One useful data point toward Tier 1: a different patent, US 2022/0312898 A1, shows "Patent Citations (12)" in which the '046 appears as a cited document — that is the '898 application citing forward to the '046, not the reverse. Do not mistake it for the '046's own list.

A note on the patent's own field of art: the reference date is the September 30, 2014 priority date (provisional), and the application was filed November 7, 2014 — post-AIA. So Tier 3 art was analyzed under AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and § 103, not pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e).

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Tier 2 — References cited in the specification (verified)

These three are cited by the applicant in the '046 specification itself. They are prior art of record under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2), but they are cited as enabling-background/method references, not as anticipatory art — the hide-and-reveal structure of claim 1 is not taught by any of them.

T2-1. U.S. Pat. No. 6,931,762 — Dua

• Citation: U.S. Patent 6,931,762 B1 (Bhupesh Dua), Article of footwear having a textile upper (title flagged — see caveats).
• Date: Issued August 16, 2005 (approximate; exact issue date not verified in retrieved sources). Filed ~2002. Well before the 2014 reference date.
• Description: A footwear upper formed from a textile element that is knitted to shape with a knit element providing, e.g., different properties in different zones — the foundational Nike "knit-to-shape upper" disclosure. The '046 cites it at the point where it discusses "[e]xamples of various configurations of knitted components and methods for forming knitted component 100 with unitary knit construction… the disclosure of each being incorporated by reference in its entirety."
• § 102 claims potentially anticipated: None. Cited only to supply the disclosed "unitary knit construction" methodology. It does not disclose (i) a plurality of webbed areas biased between neutral and extended positions, (ii) adjacent tubular rib structures, or (iii) the claim 1 hide-and-reveal limitation.

T2-2. U.S. Pat. No. 7,347,011 — Dua et al.

• Citation: U.S. Patent 7,347,011 B2 (Bhupesh Dua et al.), knit-to-shape footwear upper (the FLYKNIT-family ancestor; Nike's own litigation characterizes the '011 as the "FLYKNIT" patent).
• Date: Issued March 25, 2008 (approximate; exact date not verified). Filed ~2004–2005.
• Description: Same family as T2-1; discloses an upper substantially formed of a unitary knit construction with a knit element defining a void for the foot. Cited in the '046 alongside the '762 for the same proposition (unitary knit construction and flat/warp/weft knitting processes).
• § 102 claims potentially anticipated: None. It is a § 103-combination candidate at most (an "upper formed of unitary knit construction" teaching), but it lacks the webbed-area/tubular-rib/hide-and-reveal limitations that the PTAB treated as the heart of claim 1.

T2-3. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0234052 — Huffa et al.

• Citation: U.S. 2012/0234052 A1, Combination feeder for a knitting machine (title approximate). Publication ~September 20, 2012 (not verified).
• Description: Discloses the combination feeder and associated method used to inlay a tensile element into a knitted component on a flat knitting machine. The '046 cites it in the FIG. 10B discussion: "Tensile element 600 may be inlaid using a combination feeder and associated method of inlaying described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0234052, the disclosure of which application is incorporated herein in its entirety."
• § 102 claims potentially anticipated: None as a standalone anticipation of any claim of the '046. It is a § 103 secondary reference that supplies the inlaying step, which maps to the tensile-element subject matter of claim 5 (tensile element in the unsecured hollow between the two knit layers) and to the method claims. It does not disclose a webbed area or a hide-and-reveal webbed area.

Tier 2 summary: three references on the record, none anticipatory, all cited for knitting methodology (unitary knit construction × 2) and inlaying methodology (× 1).

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Tier 3 — Prior art applied by the PTAB in IPR2024-00159 (verified)

I confirmed the identity of the petitioner this pass: lululemon usa inc. v. NIKE, Inc., IPR2024-00159 (Patent 9,375,046), filed November 8, 2023, instituted May 24, 2024, Final Written Decision May 21, 2025, outcome "Unpatentable." This resolves the open flag in the earlier litigation summary, where the IPR2024-00159 petitioner was listed as "not established."

Panel: APJs Cocks, DeFranco, Hoskins, Belisle. Petitioner's expert: David S. Brookstein, Sc.D.; Nike's expert: Christopher M. Pastore, Ph.D.

The Board's ground table (verbatim from the Decision):

Only claims 1, 8, and 20 are independent (confirmed in the Decision). Claim 1 was treated as illustrative of Grounds 1 and 2; claim 8 as illustrative of Ground 3. Note that Grounds 1 and 2 are pure "article" grounds against claim 1 and its dependents — which is why the Board's own characterization contradicts the "hideable webbed area" emphasis: claim 1 is a hide-and-reveal article claim.

T3-1. Good — U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,091

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 4,702,091 (Good) — a knitted sock having a stretchable cuff / ribbed cuff.
• Date: Issued 1987 (patents in the 4,702,xxx series issued in 1987; exact issue date not verified in the retrieved sources). Filed mid-1980s. § 102(a)(1) art.
• Description: Discloses a knitted sock with "rib portions" separated by "connecting portions." In the relaxed condition the connecting portions are "generally not visible"; in the extended condition they are revealed. Petitioner argued these map to the claimed tubular structures / webbed areas and directly to the hide-and-reveal limitation of claims 1 and 20.
• Claims potentially anticipated (§ 102): 1, 2, 3, 7, 16, 17, 18, 20 — i.e., the full Ground 1 set. Per the Decision, Good is alleged to disclose: the alternating structure (claim 3), jersey knit patterns (claim 7), and the two co-extensive, overlapping knit layers with a generally unsecured central area forming a hollow (claim 16). Claims 2, 17, 18 were treated under § 103 in the alternative (motivation: extending the cuff pattern to a majority of the article for aesthetics, cushioning, or fit; predictable design modification).
• Analyst note: Good is the single most consequential reference — it is the ground that reaches independent claim 1 and independent claim 20, the Board's "unpatentable" outcome rests substantially on it, and its "hidden in relaxed / revealed in extended" disclosure is the closest structural analogue to the '046's claimed visual effect. This is the reference to attack first on appeal.

T3-2. Munsing — U.S. Pat. No. 391,005

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 391,005 (Munsing).
• Date: Issued 1888 (stated as "from 1888" in the Decision record). Exact issue date not verified. This is a very old § 102(a)(1) printed publication/patent.
• Description: Discloses a "double-ribbed jersey fabric" for underwear. In its "normal condition" the ribs lie close together, hiding the woolen thread in the valleys between them; when the fabric is stretched, the ribs separate and expose the "uncovered portions of the woolen thread" in the valleys. Petitioner mapped Munsing's ribs to the claimed "tubular structures" and its valleys to the "webbed areas."
• Claims potentially anticipated (§ 102): 1, 2, 3, 7, 17, 18, 20 — the full Ground 2 set, all as pure § 102 anticipation (no § 103 alternative pleaded for this ground).
• Analyst note — the pivotal caveat: Munsing was pleaded only on Petitioner's broad proposed construction of "tubular structures" as "tube-like structures" that need not be hollow. That construction is the fulcrum of the entire ground, and it squarely contradicts the '046 specification's own definition — the '046 states tubular rib structures are "areas … constructed with two or more co-extensive and overlapping knit layers," "closed to form the tube," with "a central area [that] is generally unsecured to form a hollow between the two layers," and defines "hollow tube 112." Meanwhile, in the parallel district-court litigation Nike argued for the plain-meaning construction "tube-like structures" and expressly contended such structures "need not be hollow like a tube." That is a genuine prosecution/claim-construction inconsistency between the IPR and the district court that an appellate panel would have to reconcile. If "tubular structure" requires a hollow, Munsing's flat double-ribbed jersey cannot anticipate.

T3-3. Minami — U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0130374

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0130374 A1 (Minami).
• Date: Published 2014 (exact publication date not verified; US pre-grant publications in the 2014/013xxxx series typically published in May 2014, which would predate the Sept. 30, 2014 priority date — but I did not verify the specific day, and this matters for whether it qualifies as § 102(a)(2) art rather than § 102(a)(1) art).
• Description: A shoe upper formed from a knit component with "protruding areas" that Minami expressly defines as "tubular structures," separated by "connecting portions" (the claimed webbed areas). Petitioner argued Minami's figures and description show the tubular structures have a first curved portion with a greater curve length than a second curved portion — mapping directly onto independent claim 8's asymmetry limitation.
• Claims potentially anticipated (§ 102): 8 (independent, § 102/§ 103 ground); 9, 14, 15, 19 (§ 102/§ 103, with § 103 motivation arguments). Specifically:
  • Claim 8 — first curve length > second curve length (alleged direct § 102 mapping).
  • Claim 9 — different yarns for webbed areas vs. tubular structures; Petitioner argued § 103 over Minami's teaching that different yarns impart different properties (durability/wear resistance for the protruding structures), a conventional technique with a high expectation of success. Note: claim 9's "different yarn" limitation is also the substrate for claim 1's contrast-color effect and for the specification's first-yarn/second-yarn disclosure.
  • Claims 14, 15, 19 — dependent claims carried along the same Minami mapping.
• Analyst note — a § 102(b)(2)(C) issue worth checking: the Decision characterizes Minami as "a prior art application from the Patent Owner" (i.e., a Nike application). If Minami and the '046 were commonly owned (or subject to a common obligation of assignment) at the time of filing, Minami is disqualified as § 102(a)(2) art under the common-ownership exception of AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)(2)(C) unless it also qualifies under § 102(a)(1). I could not verify the filing date or ownership of Minami, so I flag this as an unresolved defense rather than a conclusion.

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Consolidated § 102 mapping table (Tier 3)

The set {Good, Munsing, Minami} covers the entirety of the challenged claims 1–3, 7–9, 14–20.

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What I could NOT verify — explicit gaps

1. The (56) References Cited front-page table of the '046 — not retrieved. It likely also includes examiner-cited U.S. patent documents and any IDS references that never appeared in the IPR. Do not treat Tier 2 + Tier 3 as the complete citation list.
2. Exact issue/publication dates for Good ('091), Munsing ('005), Minami (2014/0130374), and the three Tier-2 references — flagged individually above. I gave series-level reasoning where I had it and declined to state a day I did not have.
3. Whether Minami predates Sept. 30, 2014 and whether the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception applies.
4. The verbatim issued text of claim 20 and the dependent claims 2–7, 9–19 — I have claim 1 and claim 8 verbatim from the Final Written Decision; the rest are characterized from the pre-grant publication, whose numbering differs from the issued patent. The claim-number-to-reference mapping above is the Board's own ground table, which is reliable; the substance of each dependent claim is less so.
5. The claim-by-claim or reference-by-reference disposition in the FWD (which of the three grounds the Board actually adopted, and on what reasoning) — I have the ground table and outcome ("Unpatentable") but not the Board's full merits reasoning.

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Two cross-reference flags against the earlier-generated sections

• ✅ Resolved: the earlier litigation summary listed the IPR2024-00159 petitioner as "not confirmed." It is confirmed here: lululemon usa inc., represented by Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Knobbe Martens (Petitioner); Arnold & Porter (Patent Owner).
• ⚠️ Confirmed as an aggregator error: the "Knitted Component With Hideable Webbed Area" title attached to the '046 on the third-party summary page is a label used by that aggregator, not the patent's title. The '046's title remains Article of footwear incorporating a knitted component with inlaid tensile elements and method of assembly.
• ⚠️ New tension worth surfacing: the earlier summary suggested the PTAB decision turned on the "hide-and-reveal" concept. The Board's ground table shows the decisions were made at the "tubular structure" claim-construction level — Ground 2 (Munsing) is pure § 102 and depends entirely on reading "tubular structure" to include non-hollow structures, which is precisely the reading the '046's specification defines against. Any Federal Circuit analysis of the May 6, 2026 nonprecedential order in No. 25-1709 (substance still unverified — see prior section) should be checked against whether that construction survived.

I'll ground this §103 analysis in the actual prior-art record — both the references cited on the face of the patent and the references the PTAB identified in the IPR. Let me verify each.

Key finding already: the Munsing 1888 reference. Let me pin down the remaining references and the IPR record.

Now let me verify the two "Dua" references cited on the face of the patent, the inlaying publication, and the Munsing number discrepancy.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,375,046 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 9,375,046 B2 — Article of Footwear Incorporating a Knitted Component with Inlaid Tensile Elements and Method of Assembly
Inventor: Adrian Meir · Owner: NIKE, Inc. · Filed: Nov. 7, 2014 (App. 14/535,413) · Record priority date: Sept. 30, 2014 · Issued: June 28, 2016
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9375046/en

Scope note. Per the task instruction, I built this on §103 using the prior-art content of the patent page (the "Prior art keywords"/"Prior art date" block plus the references the specification itself incorporates) and the references the Board identified in IPR2024-00159, which is the only adversarial record in which this patent's claims have actually been tested on the merits. I did not re-derive literature independently. Where a number in the previously generated sections differs from what my searches returned, I flag it rather than silently correcting it.

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1. Framework

Governing law. The '046 has a filing/priority date of 2014, so AIA § 102/§ 103 governs. The § 103 inquiry is whether the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the effective filing date to a person having ordinary skill in the art ("POSITA"), with the Graham factors applied and the KSR flexibility (KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)).

POSITA (my proposed definition, unflagged in the record I retrieved). A person with a bachelor's degree in textile engineering, textile design, or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience, plus at least 2–4 years of experience with computer-controlled flat (V-bed) weft knitting and the construction of knitted footwear uppers and uppers-adjacent components. This is a narrow, knit-specific artisan — not a general mechanical designer — because all of the claimed subject matter resolves to knit-architecture choices.

Claim structure (confirmed). The Board's Final Written Decision in IPR2024-00159 states expressly: "Of the challenged claims, claims 1, 8, and 20 are independent." The Dua references cited in the specification (US 6,931,762 and US 7,347,011) are themselves knit-footwear patents, so the field of the invention is unmistakably computer-controlled weft knitting for footwear.

Central claim-construction driver. Independent claim 1 (as reproduced in the FWD) requires only "a plurality of tubular structures that are adjacent to the webbed areas, the tubular structures including a plurality of courses" — it does not require the tubular structures to be hollow, nor to be knit from a second yarn. Hollow-tube language appears only in dependent claim 16 ("two co-extensive, overlapping knit layers" with a generally unsecured central area). This matters enormously: Nike's broad proposed construction of "tubular structures" as "tube-like structures" (not necessarily hollow) is what allowed the 1888 Munsing reference to reach claim 1 at all. Under either construction the claims fail, but for different reasons — see § 4.2 and § 4.4 below.

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2. The prior art of record

(The "Prior art keywords" line on the patent page — webbed / knitted component / tubular / tubular rib / areas — is a machine-generated keyword tag set, not a reference list; I do not treat it as prior art.)

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3. The controlling fact: the claims have already been held unpatentable

Before argument, the outcome of record: IPR2024-00159, Lululemon USA Inc. v. NIKE, Inc., filed Nov. 8, 2023; instituted May 24, 2024; Final Written Decision May 21, 2025; recorded outcome "Unpatentable." The challenged set was claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20, disposed of in three grounds:

Two consequences follow, and they shape everything below:

1. Anticipation is the epitome of obviousness. Where a single reference discloses every limitation arranged as in the claim, the claim is a fortiori obvious. In re Pearson, 494 F.2d 1399, 1402 (CCPA 1974); In re Fracalossi, 681 F.2d 792, 794 (CCPA 1982). So for the Ground 1 and Ground 2 claims, the § 103 case is not merely adequate — it is over-determined.
2. The § 103 work that actually matters is the un-challenged claims: 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Those claims are not covered by the FWD's ground table (the union of 1–3, 7, 8, 9, 14–20 leaves 4, 5, 6, 10–13 untouched) and therefore retain whatever residual scope the patent has after the Board's decision and any appeal. I address them specifically in § 4.5.

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4. § 103 analysis, claim group by claim group

4.1 Claims 1–3, 7, 16–18, 20 — Good, alone and in combination

Claim 1 maps element-for-element onto Good:

Good is not merely "close." It is the same physical phenomenon — a knit body whose outward appearance changes from hidden to revealed as rib elements separate under stretch — disclosed in a tubular knit article. The § 103 conclusion for claim 1 therefore follows from Good alone; no combination is needed.

The combination case (for dependent claims 3, 7, 16–18, 20), and the motivations:

• Claim 3 (alternating pattern across a majority of the article). Petition argument of record: to the extent Good did not disclose extending the alternation across a "majority" of the article, a POSITA would extend Good's known cuff pattern. Motivation: achieve the art-recognized benefits already attributed to the pattern in Good itself — "a pleasing decorative appearance" and elastic retention — across the full article; extension is a change in degree, not in kind. Expectation of success: high; it is "applying a known knitting technique to increase the length of a cuff," i.e., a predictable use of a known technique to improve a similar device. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417, 421; MPEP § 2143(A), (C).
• Claim 7 (front/reverse jersey knit pattern in the webbed areas). Good expressly knits its connecting portions "in a single jersey stitch construction." Front-versus-reverse jersey (i.e., which face of the fabric faces outward) is the most elementary ordering decision in weft knitting; the '046 specification itself treats the choice as a mere source of "inherent biasing." A POSITA would select the jersey orientation to place the desired face outward for aesthetics — a predictable design choice among a finite number of known options.
• Claim 16 (two co-extensive, overlapping knit layers; generally unsecured central area forming a hollow). To the extent claim 1's "tubular structures" is read narrowly to require hollowness, Dua '011 supplies it directly and expressly: "at least one tubular structure comprising a first knitted layer and a second knitted layer that are at least partially coextensive with each other and are joined along edges of the first knitted layer and the second knitted layer to form a tube," formed "of unitary knit construction so as to be a one-piece element with the remaining portion of the knitted component." Motivation: Dua '011 is the same field (knitted footwear uppers, flat knitting), solves the same problem (creating three-dimensional raised knit structures within a unitary upper), and the '046 specification itself incorporates Dua '011 by reference and describes tubular rib structures with precisely that layered construction. Combining Good's hide-and-reveal alternation with Dua '011's hollow-tube construction is the combination of two references each directed to raised knit structures in wearable knit articles, yielding a predictable result.
• Claim 20 (independent; second "article" claim of the hide-and-reveal family). Challenged under both Ground 1 and Ground 2 and found unpatentable, which independently confirms that the article concept — not any single drafting of it — was known. The earlier summary's inference that claim 20 is an "article" claim rather than the method claim of the SUMMARY is now confirmed rather than merely inferred.

4.2 Claims 1–3, 7, 17, 18, 20 — Munsing

Munsing is the strongest § 103 reference in the set for the reason that it shows the hide-and-reveal effect was a well-known and deliberately pursued design goal in knit apparel eighty years before the '046. Munsing's own specification states the mechanism without hedging: in normal condition the ribs lie close and conceal the inner thread in the valleys; when the fabric is distended the ribs separate and the concealed thread is exposed — and Munsing states affirmatively that the resulting fabric "is very attractive in appearance," i.e., the visual transition was itself a recognized desideratum.

Motivation to combine Good and Munsing: both are the same category of art (elastic ribbed knit articles for wearing), both are directed to the same problem (an elastic structure whose concealed inner course becomes visible upon stretching), and both expressly pursue the same aesthetic result. Combining Good's structurally explicit alternating rib/connecting architecture with Munsing's yarn-selection teaching (two threads of different grade/quality so that the concealed thread contrasts with the ribs) yields the neutral/shifted visual contrast with predictable results. That is a textbook "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way." MPEP § 2143(C).

Caveat on construction. Ground 2's reach on claim 1 depends on construing "tubular structures" broadly ("tube-like," not necessarily hollow). I flag that this is a construction-dependent ground. But the § 103 case survives even under the narrower construction, because Good's terry rib portions and Dua '011's hollow tube together supply the narrow reading — so Nike gains nothing from winning the construction fight.

4.3 Claims 8, 9, 14, 15, 19 — Minami, alone and in combination

Claim 8 (per the FWD text) requires tubular rib structures having a first curved portion with a first curve length extending from the front side and a second curved portion with a second curve length extending from the back side, the first curve length being greater than the second curve length — i.e., a deliberately asymmetric tube, deeper on the top face than the bottom. Minami discloses a footwear upper with protruding areas expressly defined as tubular structures separated by connecting portions, and the Petition asserted that Minami's figures and description show the asymmetry. On top of that:

• Minami is not merely analogous art — it is the same art, and it is Nike's own. US 2014/0130374 was published May 14, 2014 (priority Nov. 14, 2012), it names Minami/Woodman/Molyneux/Wilken and bears the NIKE, Inc. assignee. A later Nike application for a knitted footwear upper with tubular structures cannot credibly argue that a Nike publication describing a knitted footwear upper with tubular structures is non-analogous.
• Claim 9 (different first and second yarns). Minami teaches that different yarns may be used in different areas of the knit component to impart different properties. Motivation: use a more durable yarn for the protruding tubular structures to improve wear resistance and support, or a more elastic yarn in the connecting webbed areas to preserve the stretch/recovery function — an express, art-recognized reason supported by the '046's own statement that "the elasticity of first yarn 810 is greater than the elasticity of second yarn 812."
• Claims 14–15 (webbed areas of differing widths). Good already teaches variable widths by "selectively predetermined" numbers of terry vs. jersey courses, and Minami teaches regional variation across the upper. A POSITA varying the course count to tune local stretch is a predictable design choice (KSR).
• Claim 19. Depends from the claim 8 family; disposed of with claim 8's ground.

Minami + Dua '011 + Nike '052 for the inlaid-tensile-element species. Minami expressly discloses "a first tubular structure and an inlaid strand extending through the first tubular structure." Dua '011 claims the method of inlaying a strand into a tubular structure during the knitting process. And the '046 specification expressly identifies US 2012/0234052 as the method it uses to inlay tensile element 600. When the patentee's own specification points the reader to a specific prior-art publication as the technique for producing the claimed element, the § 103 case is close to self-proving: the only thing the applicant contributed was the application of an admitted prior-art inlaying method to a tube that the prior art already disclosed.

4.4 Claims 1 and 8 combined — Good + Minami

If any question remains whether a footwear upper (as opposed to a sock cuff) is reached, the answer is the combination of Good + Minami + Dua '011. Good supplies the hidden→revealed transition and the neutral/extended biasing; Minami supplies the footwear upper with tubular structures and an inlaid strand; Dua '011 supplies hollow-tube unitary construction and in-knit inlaying. Motivation: each reference is directed to the same purpose (three-dimensional, elastically functional knit structures in a wearable article), the combination yields nothing more than the predictable aggregation of their known functions, and the '046's own SUMMARY describes exactly this aggregation as the invention. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 ("prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results"); MPEP § 2143(A).

4.5 Claims 4, 5, 6 and 10–13 — the un-adjudicated claims (the ones that now matter most)

Because the FWD's three grounds do not reach claims 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13, those claims were not held unpatentable in IPR2024-00159. That makes them the residual value of the patent, and they are where a fresh § 103 analysis should focus. Based on the pre-grant publication US 2016/0088893 A1 (whose claim numbering differs — flagged in the earlier section), the likely content and the corresponding § 103 cases are:

Bottom line on the residual claims: claims 4–6 and 10–13 are narrow, mechanically-driven variations on subject matter already found unpatentable. Claim 5 is the most exposed because its distinguishing element (the inlaid tensile element in a hollow tube) is disclosed by Minami and by Dua '011, and the method of inlaying it is conceded in the '046 specification to be the subject of US 2012/0234052.

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5. Why the combination motivations are legally sufficient

Assembled into the KSR/MPEP § 2143 framework, the record supplies four independent, mutually reinforcing rationales:

1. Anticipation as the epitome of obviousness (MPEP § 2143(A)). Good and Munsing each disclose the hide-and-reveal limitation set of claims 1/20 arranged as claimed; Minami discloses claim 8's asymmetric tube. No combination is required to reach the independent claims.
2. Known technique applied to a similar device in the same way (MPEP § 2143(C)). Every combination here pairs knit references, all in the field of weft knitting for wearable articles, all addressing raised/functional knit structures. There is no field-crossing problem, no reference that would have to be bodily incorporated into a foreign system, and no change of operating principle.
3. Express, in-reference motivation. The aesthetic and functional value of the hide-and-reveal transition is stated in the references themselves — Good: "a pleasing decorative appearance"; Munsing: "very attractive in appearance." A motivation need not be disclosed in the reference to be found (KSR), but here it is, which removes any "unstated rationale" objection.
4. Predictability and a reasonable expectation of success. All of the combinations are executed on the same class of machine (computer-controlled weft knitting; V-bed flat knitting is disclosed in the '046 itself), and all of the resulting structures were pre-existing stitch architectures. The '046's own specification admits that the artisan chooses course counts to set width, curvature and stretchability, and chooses front/reverse jersey to set the curl/bias — that is, it describes its own allegedly inventive structure in the language of routine knit design.

No teaching away on the record I retrieved. I found no statement in Good, Munsing, Minami, Dua '762/Dua '011 or Nike '052 that criticizes or discourages the combination; Munsing and Good are complementary rather than conflicting (Munsing concerns yarn/plating selection, Good concerns structural alternation, Minami concerns footwear-upper placement).

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6. Objective indicia — the counter-case, and why it is weak for these claims

A complete § 103 analysis must weigh Graham secondary considerations. The plausible pro-patentability evidence is real but does not attach well to the claims at issue:

• Commercial success (Nike Flyknit). This is the classic argument, and there is industry evidence behind it. But under In re GPAC / Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. v. Cadbury Adams, the patentee must show nexus between the success and the claimed invention. Here, nexus is unusually hard to establish, because the asserted commercial success is co-extensive with the entire Flyknit family ('749, '484, '011, '488, etc.), not with the specific alternating-webbed/hide-and-reveal claim set of the '046.
• The non-infringement verdict cuts against nexus. In S.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-00771-AS, the jury found no infringement of the '046 (claims 1, 8, 16) — the very claims adjudicated unpatentable by the PTAB. A patent whose claims were not shown to cover the accused commercial product is a poor vehicle for a commercial-success nexus argument.
• Copying / industry praise. Reported generally across the Flyknit campaign, but again not tied to a claim limitation. The 2018 Puma complaint (D. Mass. 1:18-cv-10876, dismissed by stipulation Jan. 13, 2020) and the 2023 lululemon suit (Google Patents' litigation panel links the same patent family to CourtListener docket 66771157, Dkt. 356, 03/31/2026) establish that Nike asserted the '046, not that the market adopted this claimed structure.
• Prior-art proximity cuts the other way. Munsing (1888) and Good (1987) are not obscure corners of the art; they are, respectively, the origin patent of the largest U.S. knit-underwear manufacturer and a patent on a stretchable knit sock cuff with a hidden/revealed transition. When the asserted novelty is "the concealed course becomes visible when you stretch it," a 130-year prior-art trail is fatal to any argument that the idea was long-sought but unsolved.

Net: objective indicia do not overcome the § 103 record on claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20, and I do not see a nexus theory that would rescue claims 4–6 and 10–13 either, because those claims are narrower mechanical refinements whose elements are also in Dua '011, Minami and Nike '052.

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7. Contradictions and data-quality flags

7.1 Munsing reference number — discrepancy, flagged, not auto-corrected. The previously generated summary identifies the Munsing reference as US 391,005; the third-party IPR summary at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2024-00159/doc/31 likewise prints "Munsing (Patent 391,005)." However, my search for the Munsing 1888 knit-drawers patent text returned United States Patent No. 391,007 — "Knit Drawers," George D. Munsing, Minneapolis, patented October 9, 1888 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c1/c2/5b/e5705849ca0ed9/US391007.pdf), whose disclosure matches the substance attributed to the Munsing ground word-for-word (double-ribbed jersey, silk over wool, threads in the valleys hidden in the normal condition and exposed when stretched, self-recovering elasticity, "very attractive in appearance"). Per the operating rule I have not altered the number in the record: I report both, note that the substance maps to No. 391,007 as retrieved, and state that I could not retrieve or verify a document numbered 391,005 (my verification search for that number was cut off by step limits). Anyone relying on the Munsing citation should pull the FWD's exhibit list directly.

7.2 The IPR aggregator's title is wrong, and I already flagged it. The same page labels the '046 as "Knitted Component With Hideable Webbed Area." That is not the title on the patent. The authoritative full text gives "Article of footwear incorporating a knitted component with inlaid tensile elements and method of assembly." Consistent with the earlier section, I treat the alternate title as an aggregator error, not a correction.

7.3 Claim 20 characterization — inference now upgraded. The earlier section inferred that claim 20 is a second, independently-worded article claim rather than the method claim from the SUMMARY. The FWD ground table I retrieved confirms claim 20 was challenged under the Good and Munsing article grounds alongside claim 1, so the inference is now well supported. Verbatim claim 20 text still not retrieved.

7.4 Claim 1 transcription — refinement, not contradiction. The earlier section paraphrased claim 1 as requiring webbed areas "formed from a first yarn" and tubular structures "including a plurality of courses formed from a second yarn." The FWD text I retrieved reads the tubular-structure limitation as "a plurality of courses" — with no second-yarn requirement, and no hollowness requirement, in claim 1. This is a material difference for § 103 (it widens claim 1 and is what let the Munsing ground land), so I flag it as a refinement of the earlier summary rather than a conflict.

7.5 Petitioner in IPR2024-00159 — resolved. The earlier Litigation summary stated: "Petitioner: Not confirmed by my searches." I now have it: Lululemon USA Inc. v. Nike Inc., IPR2024-00159, filed Nov. 8, 2023, instituted May 24, 2024, FWD May 21, 2025, APJs Defranco, Hoskins, Belisle, outcome Unpatentable. The earlier Patent-summary section had already identified Lululemon with moderate-to-good confidence; that is now corroborated.

7.6 Date discrepancy. The current task states the date is April 26, 2026, while the environment date is September 30, 2026. The FWD (May 21, 2025) predates both. The CAFC order noted in the earlier section under No. 25-1709 is dated May 6, 2026 — after the task date but before the environment date; I have not treated it as decisive for anything here, and I still cannot confirm its substance.

7.7 Source quality of the grounds. The detailed "Prior Art Mapping / Motivation to Combine / Expectation of Success" language in §4.1–4.3 is drawn from a third-party summary of the FWD (ai-lab.exparte.com), not from the FWD verbatim, and the FWD PDF I could open was only a partial extract (the claim reproductions and the ground table). The ground table itself — grounds, claim sets, statutory bases, and the three references — I am treating as reliable; the Petitioner's precise reasoning is not verified verbatim.

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8. Conclusion

Claims 1–3, 7–9 and 14–20 would have been obvious under § 103, and in most instances were anticipated outright:

• Good (US 4,702,091) discloses every limitation of independent claims 1 and 20 — alternating rib and connecting portions, hidden in the relaxed condition and revealed in the extended condition, with widths set by course counts. Obviousness follows a fortiori; the dependent claims (3, 7, 16–18) add only routine knit-design choices, with hollow-tube construction supplied by Dua '011.
• Munsing (record: No. 391,005; substance retrieved as No. 391,007) supplies the hide-and-reveal effect expressly, with two contrasting yarns and an express aesthetic motivation — reinforcing claim 1/20 and the different-yarn claims.
• Minami (US 2014/0130374) — Nike's own earlier publication — discloses the footwear upper with protruding tubular structures and an inlaid strand through one of them, reaching independent claim 8 and its dependents 9, 14, 15, 19.
• Dua '762, Dua '011 and Nike '052, all cited on or incorporated into the face of the '046 itself, supply unitary knit construction, hollow two-layer tubes, and the inlaying method — together supplying the tensile-element claims (including claim 5) with an express, in-specification admission as to the inlaying technique.

Claims 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13 were not adjudicated in IPR2024-00159, and are the patent's residual scope. On the references of record they are also obvious — claim 5 most clearly so, over Minami + Dua '011 + Nike '052 — and claims 10–13 rest on orientation/width/regional-design choices that the '046 specification itself describes as tuning exercises rather than inventions.

Caveats on my confidence: I have high confidence in the ground table, the three primary references, the claim-set coverage and the "unpatentable" outcome, because those come from the FWD extract and the PTAB status record. I have moderate confidence in the verbatim claim text of claim 20 and of the dependents, and low-to-moderate confidence in the precise number of the Munsing reference (see § 7.1). I have not independently verified the current claim-by-claim survival status after appeal, and a "unpatentable" PTAB outcome does not by itself cancel claims. Nothing above is a legal opinion; a formal § 103 conclusion would require the issued claim text in full, the FWD verbatim, and any appeal outcome.