US RE10169

I'll verify the record against live sources before summarizing.

Let me corroborate the reissue's parent patent and check for any litigation/docket traces.

US RE10169 — Verification Summary

Sourcing note up front: I could not retrieve a USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT record or any CAFC 2026 docket entry for "RE10169." That is expected, not surprising: this is an 1882 reissue, not a modern reissue. Pre‑1976 US patents are generally not in full‑text USPTO search databases (image-only), and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was not created until 1982 — so a 2026 CAFC docket for this patent is structurally impossible. The authoritative record I relied on is the Google Patents full text you supplied (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE10169/en). My live searches returned only unrelated hits (a fluorescent-triiodothyronine ELISA kit catalog no. RE10169, a DGRC fly stock RE10169, a Washington State well log ID) plus modern "ejector" patents — none of which are this patent. I found no search result that contradicts the supplied text.

One adjacent corroborating hit is genuine and useful: J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882) (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0012/0012.f.0136.pdf), which concerns a different, earlier Coll reissue (No. 9,199) but confirms the patentee's identity and the "J. B. Sherriff" assignee firm.

Bibliographic data (as printed in the specification)

Abstract

There is none. The document contains no abstract; abstracts were not part of US patent practice in 1882. The "Definitions" block on the Google Patents page is an OCR extraction of the specification, not an abstract. A one-sentence gist from the specification itself: the invention "consists in making the inner head with a flange or collar of suitable size to close the end of the outer head, and provided with holes or perforations for the passage of water from the outer head to the discharge-tube."

Claims — plain-language overview

The patent has two claims, both of which are independent (claim 2 uses "the said extension" as internal antecedent reference but does not formally depend on claim 1):

Claim 1 — A double-head, double-acting, steam-operated water ejector in which the inner head is a detachable piece fastened to the outer head by a flange, and that flange is perforated with openings that let water pass from the outer head into the discharge pipe "f."

Claim 2 — A double-head steam-operated ejector with a detachable inner head attached by a flange, plus (a) an outward extension of the inner head projecting beyond the outer head, and (b) discharge-openings running from the chamber of the outer head, through the flange, into that extension.

⚠️ Accuracy caveat: the OCR of claim 2 is badly jumbled in the supplied text ("an outward extension, eflofthe inner head beyond the outer head' i and disoharge-openin ber of the outer head the said extension..."). My rendering above is a reconstruction of the evident reading, with "discharge-openings leading from the chamber of the outer head through the flange into the said extension" assembled from a fragment ("gs leading from the chain—") that spilled into the witness signature block. The core limitations are reliable; the exact wording of the connecting phrase should be verified against the printed patent image before being quoted verbatim.

Plain-language technical overview

• Problem: Prior "double-head" siphon pumps/ejectors (Coll's own earlier patents) required hand-fitting an inner head into an outer head, making the internal curves hard to form accurately and the parts hard to assemble.
• Solution: Make the inner head (d) a separate, detachable piece carrying a collar/flange (e) that plugs and closes the open end (f) of the outer head (a), with perforations in the flange so water from the outer head can still reach the discharge tube. Stated advantages: heads can be machined/finished separately for more perfect curves, better jet matching, easier fitting, and lower manufacturing cost.
• Components: outer head a with steam nozzle b and induction opening c; inner head d; flange/collar e; discharge/outer end f; optional outward extension g of the inner head (a guide for the inner jet that also narrows the annulus to speed up the outer current).
• Operation: the steam jet first clears air from the inner head; incoming water is entrained and driven at high velocity through the narrow inner head. That action draws air — then water — from the outer head through the flange perforations, establishing the two-stream, double-acting flow.
• Fig. 3 modification: the outer head's outlet openings cut the outward extension, whose inner end flares where it merges into the flange; both streams combine in the tube, which acts as a combining tube.
• Claimed technical benefit: the flange closes the outer head except at the openings, which delays total condensation of the steam jet until it passes beyond the outer head — preserving "reserve power" for greater velocity and capacity, and tending to prevent backlash/reaction in the outer head.
• Claim construction note: the patentee expressly defines "double head" as "an ejector having an outer shell and an independent inner shell or head, the inner shell separable from the outer shell," and expressly disclaims importance for the length of the combining tube or nozzle.

Related documents (Google Patents "Similar Documents" — context only, not verified by me)

Same-family/prior art line: US246084A (Ejector, 1881-08-23 — the original of this reissue), USRE9199E (Ejector, 1880-05-18), USRE9380E (Steam-operated water-ejector, 1880-09-21), US110205A (Improvement in ejectors, 1870-12-20), US277072A (Double-headed ejector, 1883-05-08), US280733A (Ejector and injector, 1883-07-03).

Litigation backdrop (verified): Coll's earlier reissue No. 9,199 was litigated in J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (1882), where Judge Acheson held that "[a] delay of nine years is unreasonable on an application for a reissue wherein the original claim is enlarged." RE10169's own reissue application was filed only ~10 months after its original patent issued, so it is not exposed to that same delay objection on its face — but I have no evidence of whether RE10169 itself was ever asserted or adjudicated.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Original application filing date for No. 246,084 — not in the supplied text, not found.
2. Assignee name — specification OCR reads "J. B. 60 W. J. SHERRIFF"; the "60" is almost certainly an OCR artifact for "&". Corroborated by J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co.
3. Claim 2 and various reference characters (e.g., "holes 0," "outlet-openings c" reusing the letter c) are OCR-garbled; letter designations in the drawing description should be verified against the patent images.
4. No USPTO or CAFC record was located. I am reporting this as an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence of any historical record.

I'll search for litigation records on this specific patent number.

Let me run additional targeted searches to be thorough.

Search result: no litigation identified involving US RE10169

Bottom line: I found no record of any litigation — district court, ITC, PTAB, or Federal Circuit — involving US patent RE10169. I searched and found nothing on point, so I am reporting the absence rather than manufacturing a case list.

What the patent actually is

Before reporting "no cases," it is worth confirming that the identifier parses to something that could be litigated:

Per the strict instruction to read the ID literally: RE10169 as printed is the reissue of the 1881 Coll ejector patent. Note the numbering convention — reissue numbers are written with a comma (RE10,169); the same series continues to the present day (modern reissues are in the RE45,000–RE46,000 range), so there is no separate modern six‑digit "RE10169" distinct from the 1882 patent. Any hit for "RE10169" that is not this ejector is a different, unrelated identifier.

Searches performed and why they returned nothing

1. RE10169 + patent / litigation / lawsuit — no litigation hits. The only non-patent "RE10169" hit was an unrelated Washington State Department of Ecology well-log record (Well Log ID "RE10169").
2. "USRE10169" — only unrelated patent-document tables (e.g., exhibit lists in IPRs on entirely different patents).
3. "RE10,169" — no relevant results; hits concerned unrelated documents.
4. Unified Patents litigation portal — the search surfaced only the portal generally and unrelated UPC/PTAB matters; nothing tied to RE10169.
5. Google Patents page for USRE10169 itself — the page contains a "Similar Documents" table (US246084, US277072, USRE9199, USRE9380, etc.) but no litigation/"Lawsuits" section, which is where Google Patents links asserted patents.

Why "no litigation" is the legally correct answer here

• The reissue issued July 25, 1882, and its parent issued August 2, 1881. Under the law then in force, the term was 17 years from the original grant, so any enforceable term expired in the late 1890s — roughly 130 years ago.
• The patent predates the modern infrastructure for patent litigation records (PACER, which covers federal filings from roughly the early 1990s forward; the Unified Patents litigation portal and Docket Navigator, which are populated almost entirely with post‑2000 cases; and the Federal Circuit, which was created in 1982). A pre‑1900 infringement suit — if one was ever filed — would generally not appear in any of those databases, and would in any event be outside their useful coverage.
• I also cannot verify historical 19th‑century litigation in this session: PACER is paywalled and I was unable to query it directly, and I have no access to historical federal case reporters or the old circuit court digests for the Western District of Pennsylvania for that period. So the accurate statement is: no litigation is known to me, and none appears in the modern litigation databases, not "litigation definitively never occurred."

Caution on similar-number confusion

Several nearby numbers appear in search results and should not be conflated with this patent:

• U.S. 4,701,069 — a 1987 road-grooving patent, litigated in Dickson v. PET (Fed. Cir.; inequitable conduct during reexamination). Unrelated.
• IPR2013-00069 — Berk-Tek LLC v. Belden, Inc., U.S. 7,663,061. Unrelated.
• USRE9199 and USRE9380 — contemporaneous 1880 reissues of other ejectors; listed as "similar documents," not as litigation.

If you need to pursue this further

To make this determination authoritative rather than negative, the next steps would be (a) a PACER docket search under the patent number across all district courts (bearing in mind PACER's limited historical coverage), (b) the USPTO Patent Examination Data / Assignment records for the original 246,084 and RE10169 to identify assignees who might have been parties, and (c) manual review of 1880s federal reporters for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. I did not have the ability to complete any of these in this session.

Result to record: Plaintiff(s) — none identified. Defendant(s) — none identified. Jurisdiction — none identified. Case number — none. Filing date — none. Outcome/status — not applicable.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US RE10169: zero (0) — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and the independent web searches I ran returned nothing to contradict it (the only "RE10169" hits are an unrelated Washington State Ecology well-log ID and a Drosophila stock number, DGRC 1082965). No proceeding number exists to report, and I will not manufacture one.

Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no PTAB record to attack or to lean on. A demand letter citing RE10169 is not "hardened by surviving two IPRs" — it is a 144-year-old reissue whose term expired in the 1890s. The correct defensive move is not an IPR petition (there is nothing left to cancel), it is to put the sender to proof of a live, enforceable right — which cannot exist here.

No proceedings to detail — why the list is empty

Because the template presumes at least one proceeding, the honest substitute is the explanation of the absence and the closest historical analogue.

1. The patent is far outside any AIA-trial window. RE10169 issued 1882-07-25 (original No. 246,084, issued 1881-08-23; reissue application filed 1882-06-24). Post-grant review is limited to petitions filed within 9 months of grant (35 U.S.C. § 321(c)) — that window closed in 1883-04-25. Covered business method review requires a CBM patent "sued for infringement"; there is no such suit and no live term. AIA trials themselves only became available 2012-09-16, roughly 130 years after this patent's term ran out.

2. Expiry is a practical bar, not an absolute statutory one. I want to be precise rather than overstate: § 311 does not, on its face, forbid IPR of an expired patent, and the Board has in some cases instituted review of expired claims. So the reason no petition exists is not a jurisdictional gate — it is that nobody files a $40,000+ petition against a patent with no enforceable term and no accused product. Any assertion of RE10169 today is also vulnerable at the threshold on standing/live-controversy grounds in district court, independent of the PTAB.

3. Even a hypothetical petition would face the USPTO's current age-based discretion. Per the amicus brief filed 2026-07-06 in Google v. Cellular South, No. 26-1519 (https://actonline.org/wp-content/uploads/20260706-Google-v.-Cellular-South-Amicus-Brief_Filed.pdf), a June 2025 USPTO rule bars institution where a patent has been in force more than ~6 years absent "settled expectations" exceptions (significant change in law, or never commercialized/licensed). A 144-year-old patent would be denied on that basis in the first instance. Caveat: this is a secondary source reporting agency practice, not a Federal Circuit holding, and the rule is under challenge.

4. The closest thing to an adjudication is a different Coll reissue. Searching the historical reporters surfaced one suit on a Coll ejector reissue: a case on reissued letters patent No. 9,199 (issued to Hugh Coll 1880-05-18; original No. 110,205, issued 1870-12-20), reported at 12 F. 136 (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0012/0012.f.0136.pdf). That decision held that "[a] delay of nine years is unreasonable on an application for a reissue wherein the original claim is enlarged." This is RE9199, not RE10169 — a sibling patent in the same Coll ejector family (RE9199 appears in RE10169's "Similar Documents" table). I could not confirm the case caption, the deciding court, or the year from the source; I am reporting only what the reporter page states. I flag it because it is the only adjudicative artifact I found touching the Coll ejector line, and it is jurisdictionally and temporally irrelevant to RE10169.

Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled / sustained / untested: none of the above applies. RE10169 as printed carries exactly two claims — claim 1 (double-head double-acting steam-operated water ejector with a detachable inner head attached by a flange having openings into discharge pipe f) and claim 2 (same, plus an outward extension of the inner head beyond the outer head, with discharge openings in the outer head leading through the flange into the said extension). Neither has been the subject of any AIA trial. They were never canceled, never confirmed, and — because the term expired roughly 130 years ago — are not assertable. In practical terms the whole claim set is dead by expiry, not by PTAB cancellation. Note the drafting distinction: a dead-by-expiry claim cannot be infringed today, while a PTAB-canceled claim is void ab initio; the litigation consequence is similar (no viable infringement theory) but the docuмentar trail is entirely different, and any complaint citing this patent should be met with a term/expiry challenge rather than an invalidity defense.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered against anyone. There is no petitioner, no institution, no final written decision, so no party is barred from raising any § 102 / § 103 / § 112 ground. Conversely, no third party obtained the benefit of an estoppel-proof validity adjudication either. If a defendant today were (implausibly) asserting invalidity, all grounds remain available under §§ 282(b)(2)–(3), including public-use and on-sale art unavailable in IPR — but the cheaper and complete answer is expiry, not invalidity.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioners, no serial petitions, no General Plastic / Fintiv issues, no patent-owner appeal activity, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain — unsurprising given the patent predates every one of those institutions by a century. The assignee of record is J. B. & W. J. Sherriff of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, a 19th-century entity with no modern litigation footprint. (For number-confusion risk — e.g., the unrelated IPR2013-00069, Berk-Tek LLC v. Belden, Inc., U.S. 7,663,061 — see the litigation section already generated; I do not repeat it here.)

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and a demand letter cites RE10169: do not file an IPR. There is no PTAB proceeding to distinguish, no FWD to quote, and no live claim to cancel. Respond with (a) the reissue date 1882-07-25 and original grant 1881-08-23, (b) the then-applicable 17-year term from the original grant, which expired in the 1890s, and (c) a demand that the sender identify the specific asserted claim and the statute under which an expired claim is being asserted. A letter that cannot do so is, at minimum, a Rule 11 / § 285 risk for the sender.
• If you are evaluating a portfolio acquisition or license: treat any hit on "RE10169" as a probable identifier collision, not an asset. Cross-check against the 1882 issue date before spending diligence money.
• If you need the absence of PTAB activity made authoritative: the canonical negative result is the USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB API (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/) filtered on the patent number, cross-checked in PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/). My searches found no proceeding outside ODP either, so the "no PTAB activity on file" default holds — and that absence is not a signal about assertion strength here, because the patent lapsed before the AIA existed.
• If you genuinely need 19th-century adjudications (as opposed to PTAB trials): that requires manual review of the Federal Reporter volumes covering the Western District of Pennsylvania for the 1882–1899 window, plus the Commissioner's Decisions and Official Gazette for reissue-related rulings on RE10169 and its parent 246,084. I could not complete that review in this session, and I am not representing that none exists.

Result to record: Total AIA trial proceedings — 0. Petitioner(s) — none. Patent Owner — n/a (assignee of record: J. B. & W. J. Sherriff, 19th-century). Institution decisions — none. FWDs — none. Settlements — none. Federal Circuit appeals of any FWD — none. Claims canceled — none (no claims; term expired). Claims sustained — none.

I'll attempt to locate recorded assignment data for this patent before reporting.

Two useful new leads surfaced. Let me drill into the assignee firm's history and any assertion activity.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US RE10169 (Ejector, Hugh Coll)

Scope note before the findings: this is a reissue granted 25 July 1882. There is no modern-style ownership chain to reconstruct, and the USPTO's online Assignment Center cannot answer the question at all (see below). I have flagged each place where I am reporting an absence of records rather than an absence of transactions.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — negative. The "all inventors depart the assignee within 12 months" tell does not apply: there is a single inventor, and he was never an employee of the assignee. Coll is the same inventor behind a family of ejector patents spanning 1869–1882 (US 90,930 of 1869-06-08; US 110,205 of 1870-12-20; RE 9,199 of 1880-05-18; US 246,084 of 1881-08-23; RE 10,169 of 1882-07-25). That is a classic inventor-licensor / manufacturer-assignee relationship, not an employee-inventor chain. Confirmed by J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882), which describes the Coll patents as the firm's commercial line (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8341150/j-b-sheriff-son-v-a-fultons-son-co/).

Original assignee

As printed on the reissue: "HUGH COLL … ASSIGNOR TO J. B. & W. J. SHERRIFF, OF PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA." Google Patents truncates the "Original Assignee" field to a bare "J", and the OCR of the heading reads "J. B. 60 W. J. SHERRIFF" — the "60" is an OCR artifact for "&", consistent with the previously-generated summary.

• Primary line of business: a brass foundry and coppersmiths serving the river trade, later adding pumps, air compressors and machine tools. Founded 1836 as J. B. Sherriff, the second brass foundry established in Allegheny County. Source: Frasers, Longevity of Manufacturing Concerns, Appendix U-20 (https://archive.org/download/longevityofmanuf00fras/longevityofmanuf00fras_bw.pdf).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? — Yes, affirmatively. The successor firm was still advertising "Coll's patent ejector" and the "Defiance jet pump" c. 1907 (http://www.albert-gieseler.de/dampf_de/firmen9/firmadet94536.shtml). W. J. Sherriff separately registered the trademark "Coll Ejector" for steam water ejectors (LoC BIBFRAME, identifier 21704179, surfaced via https://id.loc.gov/search/?q=EJECTOR). William J. Sherriff was himself a prolific inventor in the same field, e.g. US 148,251 (Ejectors, 1874-03-03). This is a branded, manufactured product line, not a licensing program.
• Entity-name sequence (as recorded by the firm's own corporate genealogy): 1836 J. B. Sherriff → 1865 Sheriff & McGraw → 1867 Sheriff, Loughrey & McGraw → 1869 Sheriff & Loughrey → 1875 J. B. Sheriff & Son → 1882 J. B. Sheriff, Son & Co. → 1892 J. B. Sheriff Manufacturing Co. → 1898 Tranter-Davidson Manufacturing Co. → 1903 Tranter Manufacturing Co. (same source as above).
• Status: dissolved as a legal entity long ago, but the operating business survived through the sequence above. Note it was a reorganized/renamed concern, not a bankrupt one on the evidence I could find.

⚠️ Two cautions, both important:

1. Do not conflate the assignee name with the successor name. The patent names "J. B. & W. J. Sherriff," while the corporate genealogy shows "J. B. Sheriff & Son" (1875) and "J. B. Sheriff, Son & Co." (1882). These are almost certainly the same family enterprise (J. B. = father, W. J. = son), but the face-of-patent name and the recorded corporate name do not match verbatim — treat the equivalence as inferred, not documented.
2. Do not conflate with modern "Tranter." The Pittsburgh Tranter Manufacturing Co. (1903, out of J. B. Sheriff) is a different company from today's Tranter, Inc., which states it was founded in 1932 by R. E. Olds, acquired by J. R. Tranter in 1937, moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, and is now affiliated with the Alfa Laval group (https://www.tranter.com/about-tranter/). Any chain-ending claim of "RE10169 → Tranter → Alfa Laval" would be false.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Patent Assignment Center has no retrievable records for this patent. Stating it plainly, as required:

The one ownership fact that is documented is on the face of the patent itself, not in an assignment record: Coll executed an assignment of his rights to J. B. & W. J. Sherriff, evidenced by the printed "Assignor to" designation on the reissue. The underlying recordation instrument, if it exists, sits in the USPTO's pre-1980 paper/microfilm collection and is retrievable only by manual request to the Assignment Recordation Branch — not through https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or the legacy https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I am therefore not fabricating a single reel/frame, execution date, or correspondent for this chain. Because the Assignment Center returns nothing, the instruction to "stop after this section" would be satisfied by ending here; I have instead given the remaining sections short and explicitly non-speculative, since the required output template includes a verdict field ("Insufficient data — no records, or only the original assignment") that presupposes an answer.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US RE10169
    1869 : Coll files first siphon pump patent
    1870 : Coll files second ejector patent
    1881 : Original patent 246084 issues Aug 23
    1882 : Inventor Coll assigns rights to Sherriff firm
         : Reissue RE10169 issues Jul 25
         : Assignee renamed J B Sheriff Son and Co
    1892 : Business becomes J B Sheriff Mfg Co
    1898 : Patent term expires
         : Business becomes Tranter Davidson Mfg Co

NPE / troll-pattern signals

This rubric is designed for post-2000 monetization chains and does not map cleanly onto an 1882 record; each item is answered on the evidence available, not by analogy.

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No post-issuance transfer to a licensing-only entity appears anywhere in the record. The only transfer is inventor → operating manufacturer at issuance. (No reel/frame exists to cite, because none is retrievable.)
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. None of the listed entities (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.) existed in the relevant period, and the assignee is an 1836-vintage Pittsburgh brass foundry with a documented product line ("Coll's patent ejector," "Coll Ejector" trademark; Gieseler; LoC BIBFRAME 21704179).
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not determinable. Only one link exists, and no correspondent of record is retrievable. There is no basis to name an attorney, and I decline to.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. No chained LLC assignments; the sole documented transfer predates the reissue's own issue date.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The one contemporaneous suit touching this patent family is J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882) — but it was brought on RE 9,199, not RE 10,169, and it was brought by the assignee in its own name.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy, receivership, or patent sale in proceedings found for the Sherriff firm or its successors; the corporate genealogy shows continuations and renamings, not liquidation.
7. Privateering — not present. The inverse pattern appears instead: the operating manufacturer asserted the inventor's patents itself, under its own name, against a competitor (CourtListener, J. B. Sheriff & Son).
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. No RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN involvement; the chain simply expired with the term.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

Justification: The USPTO Patent Assignment Center — whose searchable coverage begins August 1980 — contains no recorded assignment for US RE10169, and none could exist within its coverage because the patent expired c. 1898 and its 1882-era recordation, if any, lives only in the pre-1980 paper/microfilm collection. The sole documented ownership fact is the face-of-patent assignment from Hugh Coll to J. B. & W. J. Sherriff of Pittsburg, an operating brass foundry that manufactured and branded the "Coll Ejector" and was still advertising "Coll's patent ejector" c. 1907 — so the affirmative evidence, such as it is, points to operating-company ownership and operating-company assertion, not to an NPE chain. There is no reel/frame, no correspondent, no transfer to a licensing entity, and no post-1882 ownership event of any kind on the record.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent-number search) and legacy https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — both will return nothing for this patent. The only route to the actual 1882 instrument is a manual records request to the USPTO Assignment Recordation Branch for the pre-1980 Liber/microfilm holdings, and even that would establish recordation only, since no successor owner's title is of any present legal consequence.

Explicit uncertainties carried forward: (a) the original application filing date of US 246,084 remains unknown; (b) the assignee's exact legal name differs between the patent face ("J. B. & W. J. Sherriff") and the corporate genealogy ("J. B. Sheriff & Son" / "J. B. Sheriff, Son & Co."), and the equivalence is inferred; (c) I could not determine whether the 1882 assignment was ever formally recorded at the USPTO, only that Coll was the assignor of record on the printed patent.

I'll search for the prior-art record on this specific patent.

Let me verify the citation record on other databases and check the parent patent.

Let me pin down the content of the key candidate references.

Answer up front

US RE10169 has no patent citations — none on the face of the patent, none in any database. This is not a search failure; it is the accurate record. Every "citation" you may find associated with this number is an algorithmic Similar Document suggestion, not a reference cited by the applicant or an examiner. I explain why below, then give you the closest thing that legitimately exists: the surrounding contemporaneous art, with § 102 mapping for each reference.

One correction to the earlier sections first, because it matters for every date calculation below.

⚠️ Contradiction flagged. The previously generated Litigation summary table states the original patent is "No. 246,084, dated August 2, 1881." That is an OCR error. The specification as printed reads "Original No. 246,084, dated August 2 3, 1881," and Google Patents' own bibliographic entry for US246084A lists 1881-08-23. The correct date is August 23, 1881. The Patent summary section already had it right. Use August 23, 1881.

1. The citations record for RE10169 is empty — and that is expected

Why there are no citations:

1. Citation printing did not exist as a practice in 1882. The "References Cited" / "References Cited in the file of this patent" block did not become standard on US patents until well into the 20th century. A reissue issued July 25, 1882 would carry no such block even if the examiner had looked at prior art. (Contrast the 1959 patent US2888191 that appeared in my search — it does print "References Cited in the file of this patent," including "Re. 6,006, Rue, Aug. 11, 1874." That block is a mid-20th-century artifact.)
2. Google Patents has no citation data for pre-1900 US patents. Its citation graph is machine-extracted from OCR'd front pages; with no printed citations, there is nothing to extract. The "Similar Documents" list is generated by text/classification similarity, not by citation provenance.
3. Nothing has been back-filled. No modern examiner or reexamination has ever touched RE10169 (it expired in the 1890s), so no modern citation list exists either.

Consequence for your request: I cannot "look at each patent citation for RE10169" and describe what each reference anticipates, because the set is empty. What I can do — and what follows — is identify the references that would have constituted the prior art against claims 1 and 2 as of the critical date, drawn from the verified contemporaneous record.

2. What the correct critical date is (this changes the prior-art set)

The earlier Patent summary correctly flagged that Google Patents' "Prior art date 1882-07-25" is just the reissue issue date, not a filing date. For a reissue under Rev. Stat. § 4916 (1882 law), the reissue is treated as having the effect of the original patent, so:

• Critical date for § 102 purposes = the filing date of original application No. 246,084 (which issued Aug 23, 1881). That filing date is not stated in the reissue text and I could not recover it; it is almost certainly late 1880 or the first half of 1881.
• The governing statute in 1882 was not 35 U.S.C. § 102. It was § 24 of the Patent Act of 1870 / Rev. Stat. § 4886: the invention must not have been "known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention, or more than two years prior to his application." I map to § 102(a)/(b) concepts below because you asked for § 102, but the modern labels are anachronistic for this patent.
• A reissue cannot contain new matter (Rev. Stat. § 4916; the modern analogue is 35 U.S.C. § 251). So the prior-art window for claims 1 and 2 is measured against the original application, not the June 24, 1882 reissue filing date. This is why several post-1882 "similar documents" are irrelevant.

3. The most relevant prior art, with § 102 mapping

Tier A — Verified references (my descriptions come from the reported opinion text, not from titles)

These three are confirmed as real, dated, and structurally on-point because they are recited in J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882) — cited in the earlier section and independently retrieved at https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8341150/j-b-sheriff-son-v-a-fultons-son-co/ and https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0012/0012.f.0136.pdf.

A1. US 90,930 — Hugh Coll, "Improvement in Steam Siphon Pumps," issued June 8, 1869

• Description (verified): A steam siphon pump / water elevator having outer and inner pear-shaped hollow heads, so that a jet of steam elevates water and discharges it "through and from either or both the heads." The heads taper to inner and outer discharge pipes, the inner much smaller than the outer. A steam-injection pipe is screwed into the rear of the outer head and extends into the inner head, which is itself screwed on or cast on the injection pipe. Inlet openings are made in the inner head behind the steam-pipe discharge. The claim is exclusively for the combination of the inner and outer pear-shaped heads with the injection pipe.
• § 102 analysis: This is the foundational "double head" disclosure and the origin of the double-acting flow (discharge from either or both heads). It anticipates the preamble of claims 1 and 2 ("double-head double-acting steam-operated water-ejector") but not the claimed combination, because the inner head is mounted on the steam-injection pipe, not attached to the outer head by a flange, and there are no flange perforations. Under the 1870 Act these are combination claims — every element must appear. Not an anticipating reference; it is the genus.

A2. US 110,205 — Hugh Coll, "Improvement in Ejectors," issued December 20, 1870

• Description (verified): Improvement on '930. The outer head is conventional; the material modification is that the base/blunt end of the inner pear-shaped head is cut off at or near its broadest part, and that head is connected, in casting, to the outer head by means of radial arms. The purpose is to leave a large unobstructed opening at the inner head's rear so that solids (tan-bark, bilge water) will not clog the water passages. Its claim 1 reads: "The inner head, d, open at its rear end so as to leave an unobstructed opening around the steam-injection pipe … such inner head, d, being connected to the outer head, a, by means of radial arms, a, all arranged substantially as described."
• § 102 analysis: This is the closest structural prior art to claim 1's connection element — an inner head physically attached to the outer head. But two limitations are missing: (i) the attachment is by radial arms cast integrally, not a detachable inner head fastened by a flange/collar; and (ii) the water passage is the open cut-off rear end of the inner head, not perforations in a flange. So no anticipation of claim 1 or claim 2 — but it is the strongest § 103-style reference if the reissue's "flange" were construed broadly, and it is the reference a defendant would lead with.

A3. US RE9,199 — Hugh Coll (reissue of No. 110,205), "Ejector," reissued May 18, 1880; reissue application filed March 13, 1880

• Description (verified): Same structure as '205 (inner head open at the rear, connected to the outer head by radial arms), single claim, but the reissue specification added new advantages not in the original — that the inner head acts as a "breakwater or dam" protecting the steam jet so it "does not condense so rapidly as in the old form of ejectors." In the litigation, Judge Acheson held the reissue invalid on the ground that "[a] delay of nine years is unreasonable on an application for a reissue wherein the original claim is enlarged."
• § 102 analysis: Structurally, same outcome as A2 — no anticipation, radial arms ≠ flange. But this reference has independent significance for RE10169, for three reasons I want to state explicitly:
  • It fixes the state of the art as of March–May 1880, immediately before RE10169's original was filed. Anything in it is squarely § 102(a)-era art.
  • RE10169's own specification makes the same argument as the '199 reissue's added matter: "The effect of this is to reserve the steam-jet from total condensation until it passes the limit of the outer head…" That overlap is a § 251 new-matter / recapture concern, not a § 102 concern, and it is worth flagging separately.
  • Timing contrast: the earlier Litigation summary correctly notes RE10169's reissue application was filed only ~10 months after its original patent issued, so it is not exposed to the nine-year-delay objection that killed RE9,199. That remains accurate. I still have no evidence RE10169 was ever litigated.

Tier B — Title-verified contemporaneous references (pre-critical-date; content not verified by me)

These appear in the Google Patents "Similar Documents" table with dates before the ~1880/81 critical date, so they are potentially § 102 art. I have not read them and cannot describe their disclosures. I list titles and dates exactly as the record gives them, with a relevance ranking by title only.

Bottom line for Tier B: none of these can be asserted to anticipate claim 1 or claim 2 as written, because the novel elements of both claims — the detachable inner head, the flange/collar closing the outer head's end, and the flange perforations — are not even hinted at by any of these titles. They are, at most, § 102(a) art against the preamble, which is not a separately patentable element of a combination claim.

Tier C — Post-critical-date references (NOT § 102 prior art; listed so they are not misused)

The remaining "Similar Documents" post-date the original application and therefore cannot anticipate. Several post-date even the reissue application (June 24, 1882). I flag them because they are the entries most likely to be mis-cited as prior art:

• US 264,489 — Injector — 1882-09-19
• US 277,072 — Double-headed ejector — 1883-05-08 ← closest title to this patent, but 2+ years too late
• US 280,733 — Ejector and injector — 1883-07-03
• US 326,408 — 1885-09-15
• US 380,907 — Ejector — 1888-04-10
• US 428,234 — Force-sprinkler — 1890-05-20
• US 431,960 — Double-acting force-pump — 1890-07-08
• US 501,271 — Injector — 1893-07-11
• US 628,187 — Suction or injector conveyer — 1899-07-04
• US 1,013,579 — Oil-well pump — 1912-01-02
• US 1,031,289 — Jet-jump — 1912-07-02

One near-miss worth naming so it is not confused with prior art: my search surfaced US 265,246 (Conord, "Ejector for raising liquids"), which describes an injector shell "formed in two halves and clamped together by bolts d d passing through flanges or ears e e." That is a superficially attractive flanged-separable-shell disclosure — but its application was filed June 21, 1882, i.e., after the original 246,084 issued (Aug. 23, 1881) and contemporaneous with the reissue filing. It is not § 102 prior art to RE10169. Exclude it.

4. Direct answers to the four requested fields

For the record, per reference, in the format you asked for:

US 90,930 — Coll, "Improvement in Steam Siphon Pumps," issued June 8, 1869. Steam siphon pump with outer and inner pear-shaped hollow heads; inner head screwed or cast onto the steam-injection pipe; discharge through either or both heads. Potentially anticipates: the preamble only of claims 1 and 2. Does not anticipate either claim as a whole.

US 110,205 — Coll, "Improvement in Ejectors," issued December 20, 1870. Inner head cut off at base, cast to the outer head by radial arms; open rear end for solids. Potentially anticipates: preamble of claims 1 and 2; arguably renders the "attached to the outer head" element obvious. Does not anticipate either claim as a whole.

US RE9,199 — Coll, reissue of 110,205, issued May 18, 1880 (reissue app. filed March 13, 1880). Single claim; same radial-arm structure; added "breakwater" / delayed-condensation advantages. Potentially anticipates: preamble only. Separately relevant as new-matter/recapture context under Rev. Stat. § 4916 (modern § 251) for claim 2's delayed-condensation rationale.

US 154,223 — "Improvement in Steam Siphon-Pumps," issued August 18, 1874. Content unverified; title matches subject matter. Potentially anticipates: claims 1, 2 — unverified, do not assert.

US 143,884 / 148,251 / 163,876 / 171,592 / 189,518 — ejector, injector, and pump patents issued October 21, 1873 through April 10, 1877. Contents unverified. Potentially anticipate: the preamble of claims 1 and 2 only, on the strength of their titles.

US 175,265, US 224,798 — appended to the similarity table but with no discernible § 102 relevance on the record available; US 224,798's title ("Sylvania") is unrecoverable OCR. Do not cite.

5. What this means, stated plainly

• The citation set is empty. Any claim that RE10169 "cites" US 277,072, US 280,733, US RE9,199, etc. is a misreading of Google Patents' Similar Documents table, which is a similarity ranking, not a citation list, and which for this patent includes documents that post-date the patent by up to 30 years and therefore could never have been cited against it.
• The genuinely relevant prior art is Coll's own earlier work — US 90,930 (1869), US 110,205 (1870), and US RE9,199 (1880) — because RE10169 is a narrow, incremental improvement on the same inventor's long-running double-head ejector line. The reissue's contribution is essentially making the inner head a separable part with a perforated mounting flange, replacing the cast-in radial-arm construction of '205/'199.
• No reference I can verify anticipates claim 1 or claim 2 in full. The distinguishing limitations (detachable inner head + flange closing the outer head end + flange perforations; and in claim 2, the outward extension with openings through the flange into it) are absent from all three verified references.

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. No citations exist to analyze. The core premise of the task — "look at each patent citation for RE10169" — cannot be satisfied because the identifiable citation set is empty. I am reporting this as an affirmative finding, not as a search gap.
2. Original serial number / filing date of No. 246,084 is unknown. It is not in the reissue text and I could not recover it. Every § 102 date conclusion above is therefore framed against a range (late 1880 – Aug. 23, 1881), not a fixed date.
3. Tier B references are title-verified only. I did not read US 154,223, US 143,884, US 148,251, US 163,876, US 171,592, or US 189,518. Anyone relying on them must pull the printed specifications.
4. US 224,798's title is unrecoverable from the OCR; do not cite it without verifying the title against the patent image.
5. No examiner's file wrapper exists in accessible form. There is no "References Cited" to reproduce because none was printed in 1882, and I found no reexamination or reissue file content for RE10169.
6. No litigation identified involving RE10169 (consistent with the earlier section); the only adjacent verified case, J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882), concerns the different reissue No. 9,199.

I'll analyze this under § 103, but first I need to establish the prior-art landscape and the correct legal framework. Let me verify what the "Prior Art" section references actually disclose.

Excellent — the Sheriff case gives me the full anatomy of Coll's earlier ejector patents. Let me pull the remaining pre-1881 references.

Obviousness Analysis — US RE10169 ("Ejector," Hugh Coll, reissued July 25, 1882)

Two framing flags before the merits

(a) Timeline contradiction. The previously generated sections were produced on a fetch date of 2026-09-23; this task states the current date is April 26, 2026 — i.e., ~5 months earlier. I flag it rather than silently reconcile it; nothing in the analysis turns on it.

(b) § 103 is anachronistic for this patent. 35 U.S.C. § 103 was enacted by the Patent Act of 1952, effective January 1, 1953. RE10169 issued in 1882. A literal § 103 analysis is therefore a retrospective heuristic, not the law that governed this patent. The governing standard in 1882 was the "invention" requirement of Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. 248 (1851), and its progeny under Rev. Stat. §§ 4886/4920 — whether the improvement required more ingenuity than that of the "ordinary mechanic." I run the modern Graham/KSR framework below because that is what the task asks, but I note where the 19th-century standard was actually harsher (it had no structured "motivation to combine" safe harbor and routinely struck down exactly this kind of "improved construction" claim). See, e.g., Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192 (1883) (decided one year after this reissue) and the "mere change of form/construction" line applied throughout the 1880s circuit reports.

1. The critical date — and why most of the "Similar Documents" list is not prior art

Google Patents prints "Prior art date 1882-07-25." That is the reissue issue date, not a legal critical date. The parent is No. 246,084, issued August 23, 1881; the reissue application was filed June 24, 1882. The invention date is therefore on or before mid-1881 at the very latest. Anything published after that date cannot be § 102/§ 103 prior art.

Sorting the "Similar Documents" list on that basis:

Note the irony: US277072A, titled "Double‑headed ejector" and US280733A, "Ejector and injector," are the two titles most on point — and both post‑date the invention. They are usable only as evidence of the art's trajectory (near‑simultaneous arrival at a double‑head ejector by others), which, if anything, cuts against patentability. They are not § 103 references.

Two additional 1869-era references I did verify, which are not in the Google list but are squarely in the field: Coll's own No. 90,930 (June 8, 1869) and the RE9199 reissue specification — both described in detail in J. B. Sheriff & Son v. A. Fulton's Son & Co., 12 F. 136 (C.C.W.D. Pa. 1882) (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0012/0012.f.0136.pdf; https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8341150/j-b-sheriff-son-v-a-fultons-son-co/).

2. Claim decomposition

Claim 1: (1.1) double-head ejector — the patentee defines "double head" as "an outer shell and an independent inner shell or head, the inner shell separable from the outer shell"; (1.2) double-acting; (1.3) steam-operated, water; (1.4) detachable inner head; (1.5) attached to the outer head by a flange; (1.6) the flange has openings passing water from the outer head to the discharge pipe.

Claim 2: elements 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 plus (2.3) an outward extension of the inner head beyond the outer head, and (2.4) discharge-openings leading from the outer-head chamber, through the flange, into that extension.

3. The core § 103 case against Claim 1

Primary combination — [90,930] + [US110205A] + [USRE9199E].

What each reference supplies (verified through the Sheriff opinion, which quotes the specifications):

• No. 90,930 (Coll, 1869) — outer and inner hollow pear-shaped heads, inner discharge pipe "much smaller than the outer one," and critically: the inner head "at its rear end, is screwed on or otherwise fastened to or cast on the injection pipe." It also expressly notes that "by closing up the annular space between the two discharge pipes the water may be discharged entirely through the inner discharge pipe." → teaches a separable inner head and a closable annulus at the outer head.
• US110205A (Coll, 1870) — "the material modification is stated to consist in cutting off the base or blunt end of the inner pear-shaped head at or near the broadest part, and connecting this head, in casting, to the outer head by means of radial arms." Claim 1: "the inner head, d, open at its rear end so as to leave an unobstructed opening around the steam-injection pipe… such inner head d being connected to the outer head a by means of radial arms a." → teaches an inner-head-to-outer-head connector, and that the connector must leave openings for water flow at the base.
• USRE9199E (Coll, 1880) — the reissue's characterizing advantage is that "the jet of steam is protected and surrounded by the inner head, which acts as a breakwater or dam to break the force or impact of the inflowing current, and hence does not condense so rapidly." → teaches the precise functional effect RE10169 claims for its flange ("reserve the steam-jet from total condensation until it passes the limit of the outer head… reserve power… prevents all backlash or reaction").

The only structural difference between RE10169 claim 1 and US110205A is the form of the inner-to-outer connector: a cast radial-arm spider versus a detachable flange/perforated collar. Everything else — double head, separable inner shell, a connector that lets water from the outer head reach the discharge — is in the 1869/1870 references.

Motivation to combine (explicitly articulated):

1. Same field, same inventor, express cross-references. US110205A declares itself "an improvement on Coll's said patented siphon pump" (90,930); RE9199E says "this ejector operates on the same principle as my ejector patented June 8, 1869." A PHOSITA working this problem in 1881 would start from exactly these three disclosures. All are analogous art (ejectors/siphon pumps), reasonably pertinent to the problem of jet condensation and head construction.
2. Known, articulable problem + predictable fix. The patent itself states the problem: one-piece cast heads cannot be "end-finished" separately, so the internal curves are imperfect. Substituting a detachable part for a cast-integral part, joined by a bolted/threaded flange, was one of the most routine mechanical expedients of the period — and 90,930 already taught a screwed-on, separable inner head.
3. Inevitable perforation. Any connector spanning the outer head's open end will obstruct the very water path US110205A was designed to keep open ("the holes or passages for the water are apt to become clogged unless ample room be left"). A PHOSITA adopting a flange for the connector would perforate it as a matter of course — indeed the specification's own stated motivation for the perforations is a rate-matching convenience ("form the openings which supply the water from the outer head to correspond exactly to the power of the inner jet, and thus regulate the operation of the pump"), which is a tunable-design-choice rationale, not an inventive insight.
4. The stated benefit was already known. RE9199E already claimed credit for protecting the jet from the inflowing current. Moving the outer head's water inlet downstream by closing its end except at perforations is a predictable way to postpone condensation — the patent asserts "reserve power… greater velocity… increase of capacity" but quantifies nothing.

Single-reference variant: US110205A alone is arguably a § 102 anticipation of the purpose, and combined with the common knowledge that mating cylindrical shells are joined by flanges, sustains a § 103 rejection of claim 1 without RE9199E. I would carry RE9199E as the secondary reference to answer any argument that the "delay condensation" advantage is unexpected.

4. Claim 2 — weaker than claim 1

Claim 2's added elements are (2.3) an outward extension of the inner head beyond the outer head and (2.4) discharge openings through the flange into that extension.

The specification itself defeats the nonobviousness argument: "the outer extension g of the head d may be omitted, if desired, as it is merely a guide for the inner jet. It acts also to increase the velocity of the outer current by reducing the width of the passage." That is a patentee admission that (i) the element is optional, and (ii) its function (guiding the jet; accelerating flow by narrowing the annulus) is conventional and predictable. The patentee also expressly disclaims that "the length of the combining tube or nozzle e is important."

A discharge nozzle projecting into a combining tube was the standard architecture of this entire art well before 1881 — I verified contemporaneous descriptions of Giffard's injector (1858) and Morton's ejector condenser (1867) in the Victoria & Albert Museum's mechanical-engineering catalogue (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Catalogue_of_the_mechanical_engineering_collection…pdf), and Morton's device was discussed in the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1869. Any of the qualifying 1873–1880 ejector references in the table above (US143884A, US148251A, US154223A, US163876A, US224798A, USRE9380E) is a plausible vehicle for the projecting-nozzle teaching; I did not retrieve their texts and cannot confirm which one actually shows it — that is the single largest evidentiary gap in this analysis.

Combination for Claim 2: [90,930] + [US110205A] + [one 1873–1880 siphon-pump/ejector reference showing a projecting inner discharge nozzle] + [RE9199E]. Motivation: the projecting nozzle is a known flow-guiding/accelerating expedient whose effect (narrowing the annulus) the patentee describes as ordinary; combining it with the flange of claim 1 requires no change in the principle of operation of either.

5. Counter-indicia / what cuts the other way

• No secondary-consideration evidence. Commercial success, licensing revenue, copying of this patent, and long-felt need are all unevidenced. The only documented copying (A. Fulton's Son & Co.) was of RE9199, not RE10169 — and that case ended badly for Coll's reissue practice on the separate ground of unreasonable delay in enlarging claims. Coll's team was litigious around this family; RE10169 itself shows no assertion history (consistent with the earlier section's finding).
• Near-simultaneous third-party patents. US277072A ("Double-headed ejector," 1883) and US280733A ("Ejector and injector," 1883) show others reaching double-head ejector configurations within a year — probative of obviousness, though not statutory art.
• Possible nonobviousness foothold: the patent's assertion that perforation sizing lets the operator "regulate the operation of the pump," and that the flange closure "prevents all backlash or reaction in the outer head." If a patentee could show qualitatively unexpected anti-reaction behavior, that would be the strongest (and only) nonobviousness argument. It is asserted, not demonstrated.
• No teaching away in any reference identified.
• Self-collision is not a defense. Coll's earlier patents are his own, but they disclose a different structure (radial arms / screwed-on head), so they remain available as prior art.

6. Bottom line

The strongest rejection theory is not a multi-reference mosaic but the "change of construction" theory: claim 1 differs from US110205A only in making an integral cast joint into a bolted flange joint. Under § 103 (and far more so under Hotchkiss/Atlantic Works as applied in the 1880s), a change in the method of joining two coaxial members, producing the same double-head ejector operation with only manufacturing/finishing economies stated, is the paradigm of non-patentable mechanical skill.

Substantive caveat on claim language: claim 2's OCR in the supplied text is garbled ("an outward extension, eflofthe inner head beyond the outer head' i and disoharge-openin ber of the outer head"), and the flange openings are rendered variously as "e," "0," and "c." My element decomposition is a reconstruction of the evident reading; the exact connecting phrase should be checked against the printed patent image before any of it is quoted as claim language.

Unverified references (do not treat as confirmed): I retrieved the contents only of No. 90,930, US110205A, and USRE9199E (via the Sheriff opinion) plus third-party period sources on Giffard/Morton. I could not retrieve the texts of US143884A, US148251A, US154223A, US163876A, US171592A, US189518A, US224798A, USRE9380E, or the parent US246084A, and I could not confirm the original application filing date of No. 246,084.