US 10444094

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC/PTAB proceedings.

Let me do a couple more targeted searches to check for CAFC/PTAB activity.

US Patent 10,444,094 — Summary

Search scope note: I searched for this exact number (and the formatted variants "10,444,094"). I found no USPTO litigation records, no PTAB proceedings, and no CAFC 2026 docket activity naming this patent as the patent-in-suit. I also found no district court docket. I cannot confirm the absence of litigation with certainty (my search tools are not a complete litigation database), but nothing surfaced. All bibliographic data below is corroborated by the authoritative patent text you supplied plus Google Patents/Justia listings.

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Bibliographic data

Abstract: A force sensing resistor (FSR) sensor with a bladder system provides ingress protection by using sealed bladder areas that act as air reservoirs. A sealed bladder area is attached to an air vent of a sensor area. The sensor area has two conductive layers forming an open circuit in the static state, separated by an air cavity. When force is applied, the two conductive layers are forced together to form a short circuit, and air in the cavity is forced out the vent into the bladder area. When force is removed, air returns to the cavity, separating the layers to restore the open circuit. The bladder provides a sealed environment, yielding more reliable and consistent measurements.

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the apparatus (a three-layer stack):

• First layer: a flexible substrate carrying a first conductive layer (e.g., patterned conductive traces such as copper-etched or screen-printed conductive ink — the shunt-mode example).
• Second layer: a flexible substrate carrying a second conductive layer (e.g., a conductive polymer layer; in thru-mode this is a continuous layer with a trace). The two conductive layers together form part of an electric circuit.
• Middle layer (spacer): a substrate with two openings through it. The first opening is interconnected to the second opening.
• Stacking requirement: the first layer sits on the middle layer so that a portion of the first conductive layer is aligned over the first opening; the middle layer sits on the second layer so a portion of the second conductive layer is aligned over the first opening.
• The key limitation: the first layer covers both openings, and the second flexible substrate covers both openings, so the first opening forms an air cavity and the second opening forms a bladder area interconnected to the cavity — and the air cavity and bladder area together are a sealed environment (isolated from ambient; no vent to atmosphere).

Claim 14 — the method of making the sensor:

• Form a first layer by forming a first conductive layer on a first substrate.
• Form a second layer by forming a second conductive layer on a second substrate.
• Form a middle layer by forming an air cavity and a bladder area within a third substrate, the cavity coupled to the bladder area.
• Stack the three layers with a portion of each conductive layer facing the middle layer and aligned with the air cavity. The facing conductive portions plus the cavity form a sensing area, and the air cavity plus bladder area form a sealed environment within the sensor.

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Notes on scope and dependents (for context, not the independent claims)

• Claim 3 (dependent) narrows the interconnection to an explicit air channel in the middle substrate.
• Claims 5–11 (dependent) add the static/active state behavior, the vacuum-driven return flow, and the two alternative static configurations: bladder filled with air (claim 9) or bladder pre-collapsed (claim 10). Claim 10 is notable — pre-collapsing the bladder (done during stacking, optionally with heat/pressure thermoforming) is a core distinguishing point in the specification, but it is only claimed in dependent form.
• Claims 12 and 13 (dependent) cover the shunt-mode and thru-mode circuit configurations, respectively.
• The method claims mirror the apparatus claims (15 = air channel; 24/25 = shunt vs. thru mode).

Prior art and citations (from the front page)

• Cited by examiner (8 references): US 3,830,991; US 4,017,697; US 6,488,556; US 6,483,055; US 2006/0131158; US 7,112,755; US 7,528,337; US 2014/0015633.
• Cited by others (12+ references): a family of Valve Corporation patents/publications (e.g., US 2018/0272232; US 10,874,939; US 10,898,796; US 10,898,797; US 10,987,573; US 11,167,213; US 11,185,763; US 11,294,485; US 11,625,898), plus later references from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Innovationlab GmbH, and Nanomade Lab (the last two being 2020–2021 filings citing this patent as background).

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Uncertainty flags

• No CAFC/litigation found. I did not locate this patent in any CAFC 2026 docket, PTAB IPR/PGR, or district court case. Treat this as "nothing found," not "definitively no litigation."
• Assignee status: the front page shows "Current Assignee: Flex Ltd." and "Original Assignee: Flex Ltd." with a 2018-09-05 assignment from Ocampo. No later reassignment appeared in the data I retrieved, but Google Patents itself disclaims that assignee listings may be incomplete.
• The "Cited By" counts differ slightly between the two tables on the page (12 vs. 18 entries); I did not independently reconcile them.
• The prompt gives today's date as April 26, 2026, while my operating context shows 2026-09-29; this affects nothing in the bibliographic record above.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10444094 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Litigation search results for US Patent No. 10444094

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 10444094.

What I searched

• Google Patents patent page for US10444094B1 (full text, cited-by list, family, legal events)
• FreePatentsOnline record for 10444094
• Justia patents / Justia federal district court dockets
• Unified Patents-related materials (litigation and PTAB/PGR/IPR dockets)
• CAFC opinions and orders (including Rule 36 judgments)
• General web searches for the number combined with "litigation," "lawsuit," "case," "district court," and the patent title

Every hit referencing "10444094" resolved to the patent document itself (or unrelated coincidental number matches, e.g., a product catalog entry string), not to any docket, complaint, or court proceeding.

Patent identity confirmation (to rule out a wrong-number match)

• Patent No.: US 10,444,094 B1
• Title: Bladder system for force sensitive resistors (FSR) sensors
• Inventor: Cesar Ocampo
• Assignee: Flex Ltd. (original and current)
• Application No.: US 16/035,447; filed 2018-07-13
• Provisional priority: US 62/532,799, filed 2017-07-14
• Granted/published: 2019-10-15
• Legal status: Active; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2023-04-04; anticipated expiration 2038-07-13

Litigation found

No district court complaints, no CAFC appeals, and no PTAB post-grant proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM) naming this patent as the patent-at-issue were located.

Related-but-not-litigation observations

• Cited-by references: The "Cited By" list on the patent page is dominated by Valve Corporation patents/applications concerning force sensing resistors and hand controllers (e.g., US 2018/0272232 A1; US 10,874,939 B2), plus a few third-party cites (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Innovationlab GmbH, Nanomade Lab). These are citations (prior-art/background citations in later documents), not assertions of infringement and not litigation involving 10,444,094.
• The patent's own Citations list (8 references, including US 3,830,991; US 4,017,697; US 6,388,556; US 6,483,055; US 7,112,755; US 7,528,337) are prior-art references, not litigation.

Confidence and caveats — please read

• Confidence that no litigation exists: moderate-to-high, but not absolute. This conclusion is based on publicly indexed sources.
• I could not directly query PACER (paywalled) or Docket Navigator (subscription), and I did not obtain a direct live pull of the Unified Patents litigation caselist page at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist. Unified Patents' public materials surfaced in search were about other patents (e.g., 8,605,794; 8,590,940; the '844 patent), not 10,444,094.
• Absence from indexed sources is weaker evidence for: (a) very recently filed complaints not yet indexed, and (b) state-court or ITC actions that may be indexed differently. If you need a definitive negative, a PACER/RECAP docket search on "10444094" and a Docket Navigator "patent" query should be run directly.
• I did not find any litigation, so I have not fabricated plaintiff/defendant/case-number fields. The table above is intentionally empty.

If you'd like, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., by assignee "Flex Ltd." as a plaintiff, or by inventor "Cesar Ocampo") to check for enforcement activity that might reference this patent indirectly.

I'll verify the structured data with a targeted search before reporting.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 10444094 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, and 0 institution denials — which means the Board has never adjudicated the validity of any of this patent's 25 claims; a defendant faces an untested but fully intact patent: all of claims 1–25 are live and un-cancelled, so nothing in the PTAB record weakens a demand letter, but by the same token the entire prior-art universe remains open to you with no § 315(e) estoppel encumbrance from any prior petitioner.

No proceedings to report

The canonical structured list supplied in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) is empty, and my independent web checks surfaced nothing contradicting it. Per the operating instruction, the default of "no PTAB activity on file" therefore controls. For completeness, here is what I verified and what the absence does and does not mean:

• Google Patents citation tables for US10444094B1 list only 8 prosecution citations (US 3,830,991; US 4,017,697; US 6,388,556; US 6,483,055; US 2006/0131158; US 7,112,755; US 7,528,337; US 2014/0015633) and 18 "Cited By" documents — all of which are ordinary patent publications (predominantly Valve Corporation's FSR/controller family and later third-party applications such as US 2024/0044729, US 2024/0077370, US 2025/0164326). None is a PTAB decision, institution decision, or FWD. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10444094/en
• No reissue, no ex parte reexamination, and no certificate of correction appears in the legal-events record; the only post-grant events are the 2019-10-15 grant and a 2023-04-04 § 41 maintenance-fee payment (4th year, large entity). Anticipated expiration: 2038-07-13.
• No Federal Circuit appeal is possible in the absence of an underlying Board decision, and no CAFC docket or CourtListener entry tied to this patent number appeared.
• Searches for IPR202x petitions naming Flex Ltd., Cesar Ocampo, or this patent returned no hits; the IPR results that did surface (e.g. IPR2023-01219, IPR2022-00262, the Rotolight/Videndum and ARRI matters) are unrelated patents.

Confidence caveat: I could not query PTAB E2E or the PTAB Decisions database directly from this session — my checks were web-search based plus the Google Patents legal-proceedings tables, which do normally surface IPR/PGR links when they exist. If you need a belt-and-suspenders confirmation for a filing or an opinion letter, run a party-name search for "Flex Ltd" and a patent-number search on https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb (PTAB E2E) and on the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board Decisions page. The residual risk of an unindexed, very recently filed petition is non-zero but small.

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing canceled, nothing sustained, everything untested. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted, there is no claim-level record to work from. All 25 claims stand as issued: independent apparatus claim 1 and its dependents 2–13 (including the shunt-mode claim 12 and thru-mode claim 13), and independent method claim 14 and its dependents 15–25. Claims 1 and 14 are the only independent claims, so a defendant's exposure runs through those two — and both have never been construed by the Board or (so far as the public record shows) by any district court. Any invalidity theory you build will be a first impression before whichever forum hears it. Note that claim 1's survival turns on a fairly specific structural combination — a first layer covering both the first and second openings in the middle substrate so that the second opening is a sealed bladder interconnected to the air cavity, with the cavity/bladder pair forming "a sealed environment." That sealing limitation is the likely locus of both infringement (accused stacked sensor constructions with environmental vents won't read on it) and invalidity (the prior art — e.g. the prosecution-cited membrane-switch and pressure-sensitive-sensor references, and conventional vented FSR designs described in the patent's own Background — is largely built around unsealed venting to ambient, which is the problem the patent claims to solve).

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate for you. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that has obtained an FWD, and no petitioner has. Accordingly, every ground — § 102, § 103, and § 112 — remains available to a defendant in district court, and IPR (or PGR, though PGR is time-barred here because the 2019-10-15 grant is far outside the § 321(c) nine-month window) remains fully available as an offensive tool. The only real constraints are procedural, not estoppel-based: the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of an infringement complaint, and the Board's discretionary-denial doctrines — Fintiv (parallel-litigation investment, though materially weakened by subsequent Director guidance), General Plastic (serial petitions), and § 325(d) (art already before the examiner, which matters here because the 8 references of record are all conventional pressure-switch/FSR art). Draft any petition to distinguish the already-considered references from the ground you actually want to run.

Pattern signals: none on this patent. There is no repeat petitioner, no PTAB-veteran challenger, no obvious defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity appears anywhere in the record for this patent), and no evidence the patent owner has litigated it through the Board. The only "pattern" worth flagging is contextual: this patent sits inside the FSR sensing space that Valve Corporation has heavily patented and that has attracted real PTAB traffic on other patents — US10444094 is cited by a dozen-plus Valve documents. That adjacency cuts both ways: it confirms a deep, searchable prior-art field exists for your invalidity case, but it also means competent challengers have looked at FSR patents before and have not (on this record) bothered with this one. The most plausible explanation is that Flex Ltd. is a large, real operating manufacturer (not a troll) and has not broadly asserted this patent — so the absence of IPRs is likelier a proxy for low assertion activity than for proven strength.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant, do not expect the PTAB record to help or hurt you. There is no FWD to link, no claim to point to as canceled, and no estoppel to exploit. Your validity case stands or falls on your own art. The most vulnerable pressure point is claim 1's "sealed environment" / "first opening forms an air cavity and the second opening forms a bladder area" / "the first layer covers the first opening and the second opening" structural requirement — find prior art showing a closed, non-ambient air reservoir coupled to an FSR sense cavity (bladder-, bellows-, or enclosed-chamber-type sensors, sealed membrane switches with internal air management) and you attack the heart of the claim rather than its dependents.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) deadline immediately. If you have been served with a complaint asserting US10444094, you have one year from service to file an IPR. Because no prior petition exists, you can be the first petitioner without any General Plastic serial-petition risk.
3. Front-load the § 325(d) analysis. Eight references are already of record and were considered in prosecution. Identify which of them you would rely on and build your ground around art the examiner never saw, or expressly explain under Advanced Bionics why the Board should reach the record art anyway.
4. Verify the negative before you rely on it. Confirm no proceeding is pending via PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and the PTAB Decisions page, and re-check the USPTO ODP record closer to any filing deadline. A first-filed petition can appear between now and your deadline.
5. If you represent the patent owner, the flip side applies: this patent has never been stress-tested, so do not represent it as "IPR-hardened." Its claim 1 sealing limitation is its best defense but is also untested against a well-financed petitioner with FSR-specific art. Consider a validity study and, if available, a broadening-safe reissue or continuation strategy before asserting it aggressively.

I'll search for the recorded assignment details for this patent before assembling the chain.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could pull the Assignment Center record directly, so here is the reconstructed chain with explicit calls on what I could and could not verify.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,444,094 B1

"Bladder system for force sensitive resistors (FSR) sensors" · App. 16/035,447 · filed 2018-07-13 · issued 2019-10-15

Data-access caveat up front: My live searches against the USPTO Assignment Search/Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) returned no retrievable record rows — the queries came back empty or resolved only to the patent document itself, not to a reel/frame entry. I could not verify reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the correspondent of record, and I will not invent them. What follows is grounded in (a) the authoritative patent text, (b) the Google Patents legal-events table, and (c) my previously generated sections. Where a field is unavailable, it is marked as such rather than guessed.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• Single-inventor patent. A one-name inventorship set is typical of an incremental, internally-generated hardware improvement rather than an acquired portfolio asset — no consortium of researchers, no university co-inventors, no government-interest statement appears.
• No departure signal determinable. I found no public record of Ocampo's employment status or departure date from Flex. The "all inventors left within 12 months" fire-sale tell cannot be assessed and I am not inferring it from the single-inventor fact alone. What I can say: by 2026 (nine years post-filing) no assignment out of Flex Ltd. has been recorded, which is inconsistent with a talent-drain-then-sell pattern at this patent.
• No inventor-retained rights. Nothing in the record suggests a partial assignment, license-back, or retained shop right.

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Original assignee

Flex Ltd. (formerly Flextronics International Ltd.; renamed "Flex Ltd." in 2015)

Character of the entity: Flex is an operating manufacturer, not a licensing vehicle. It is a recurring defendant in supply-chain/IP disputes, not a known plaintiff-side asserter. That distinction matters for the NPE analysis below.

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Assignment timeline

There is exactly one recorded conveyance in the chain, plus the application-filing event:

• Executed: not stated in available metadata / recorded 2018-09-05 — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVABLE (see caveat above)

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Cesar Ocampo (individual)
  • Assignee: Flex Ltd.
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable. I have no attorney/firm of record for this recording. Because there is only one link in the chain, the "repeat correspondent" test is untestable — there is no second entry on which a name could recur.
  • Context: Ordinary employment/invention assignment to the filing entity. Executed ~9 months before grant and roughly two months after the 2018-07-13 non-provisional filing — standard pre-grant perfection of title, not a monetization event.

• 2018-07-13 — Application filed by Flex Ltd. (Google Patents event) — the filing itself, consistent with a company-owned application rather than an inventor-owned one later bought out.

Post-issuance assignments (2019-10-15 onward): NONE. Google Patents shows no reassignment event after the 2018 recording; the 2023-04-04 legal event is a maintenance-fee payment, not a title transfer. The only other recorded events are the 2019-10-15 grant and the 2019-09-25 "patent granted" status entry. This is a real finding: the original assignee still holds title.

Note on scope: USPTO assignment records are not a complete encumbrance register. Security interests (patent collateral under credit agreements), intra-group transfers to non-US subsidiaries, and license grants are frequently unrecorded or recorded in bulk against a "master" reel that a patent-number query will not surface. I found no evidence of any such filing for this patent, but I could not search for one exhaustively.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10444094
    2017 : Provisional filed by Cesar Ocampo
    2018 : Non-provisional filed by Flex Ltd
         : Assignment recorded 2018-09-05
         : Ocampo assigns to Flex Ltd
    2019 : Patent issued 2019-10-15
    2023 : Year 4 maintenance fee paid
    2026 : No further assignments recorded

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (the "only the original assignment" flavor — no post-issuance chain to analyze)

Justification: The assignable record for US 10,444,094 consists of a single recorded link — Cesar Ocampo → Flex Ltd., executed/recorded 2018-09-05, with no reel/frame or correspondent retrievable from Assignment Center and no post-issuance assignment of any kind through today (2026-09-29). All eight NPE-pattern signals resolve to not present or unclear/no data; not one is affirmatively present, so neither NPE verdict category is supportable. Equally, the "Operating-company assertion" verdict is not supportable either, because I could not verify that Flex currently ships a product embodying claims 1 or 14 and there is no litigation asserting this patent. The affirmative, defensible finding is negative: title remains with the original corporate assignee; the chain shows no licensing-vehicle, aggregator, or assertion activity.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Search for this patent — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search patent number 10444094 or application 16/035,447); mirrored at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. A direct, logged-in pull is still required to obtain the reel/frame and correspondent of record that I could not retrieve.

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Flags and open items

1. Reel/frame and correspondent remain unverified — this is the single largest gap in the analysis and the one field most likely to change the picture. The 2018 recording should be pulled directly from Assignment Center.
2. No contradiction found with the previously generated sections. The litigation section's "no litigation / FRCP docket empty" finding and the bibliographic section's "no later reassignment appeared in the data I retrieved" are both consistent with, and now independently confirmed by, this ownership review.
3. Do not over-read the Valve citations. The heavy Valve Corporation presence in the "Cited By" table reflects Valve's own FSR/controller filings citing this patent as background — it is not an ownership, license, or assertion relationship, and Valve is not in this chain.
4. Date bookkeeping: the earlier summary noted a prompt-vs-context date discrepancy (April 26, 2026 vs. 2026-09-29). My operating date is 2026-09-29; this does not affect any ownership conclusion, since nothing in this chain turns on a date within that window.

I'll search for the specific patent and each of its citations to build the prior-art analysis.

I have four references so far. Let me search the remaining citations.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 10,444,094

Note on scope/grounding: The five remaining citation lookups (US 2006/0131158; US 7,112,755; US 7,528,337; US 2014/0015633) returned after my tool budget was exhausted, so for those four I rely on the authoritative citation data supplied in the patent text (number, dates, assignee, title) plus the title's subject matter, and I flag explicitly where I am inferring content from the title rather than reading the full reference. I did not invent any content for them.

Date bookkeeping: the task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the system context shows 2026-09-29. Nothing below turns on that window.

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1. Patent identification (literal, no auto-correction)

The number 10444094 resolves to exactly one document, and I am excluding similar numbers (e.g., there is no substitution with 10,444,004; 10,444,904; 10,444,009, etc.).

Confirmed against the authoritative full text, Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10444094/en), and Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/10444094).

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2. The references of record

All eight references below are the patent's own front-page "Patent Citations" — i.e., the prior art the examiner considered during prosecution (each marked "Cited by examiner" on the Google Patents record). They are the complete cited-art universe; the separate "Cited By" list is later documents citing the '094 patent, not prior art against it. I analyze the eight cited references as requested.

Every one of these predates the '094 priority date (2017-07-14), so all eight qualify as § 102(a)(1)/102(b) prior art as to the '094 claims.

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3. Reference-by-reference analysis

Reference 1 — US 3,830,991 A (Essex International)

• Full citation: US 3,830,991 A, "Pressure sensitive mat switch construction," Essex International Inc., granted 1974-08-20 (filed 1973-07-24).
• Description: A pressure-sensitive mat switch for automatic doors. Conductive screens (5, 6) are bridged by resiliently compressible conductive-particle elastomeric "bridging members" (9) held in openings (2) of a spacer (member 7). Crucially, the whole assembly is enclosed in a molded non-conductive sheath (10) whose two halves are ultrasonically welded "so as to provide an air- and moisture-tight enclosure for the switch assembly." It also discloses force-limiting washers to protect against over-compression. (Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3830991A/en; PDF https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cf/7a/5f/0da8deee598d33/US3830991.pdf.)
• § 102 analysis: This is the most thematically interesting citation because it teaches a hermetically sealed pressure switch, which touches the '094 patent's "sealed environment" concept. However, it does not anticipate any '094 claim:
  • It lacks the claimed first/second flexible substrates each carrying a conductive layer forming an electric circuit in the two-layer stack of claim 1 — its conduction is through a particle-filled elastomeric bridge, not two facing conductive layers.
  • It lacks the claimed middle substrate with a first opening interconnected to a second opening, where the first opening is an air cavity and the second opening is a bladder area acting as an air reservoir. Essex's enclosure is a sealed sheath with no interconnected cavity/bladder pair.
  • No bladder/air-reservoir function is disclosed at all (there is no vented cavity needing an air reservoir).
  • Anticipation potential: none. Best characterized as § 103 background art for the "sealed switch" idea, at most.

Reference 2 — US 4,017,697 A (Globe-Union)

• Full citation: US 4,017,697 A, "Keyboard membrane switch having threshold force structure," Globe-Union Inc., granted 1977-04-12 (filed 1975-09-15).
• Description: A three-layer resilient diaphragm membrane switch in which a nonconductive "threshold" paint/glass layer is interposed between the flexible membrane and the fixed electrode(s) so a threshold pressure must be applied before the membrane bridges the electrode pair. Spacers support the membrane out of contact with at least one electrode. (Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4017697; PDF https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/69/fa/c7/eae47e9c3ef61c/US4017697.pdf.)
• § 102 analysis:
  • Teaches the generic two-conductor + spacer + flexible-membrane bridging architecture that underlies claim 1's first layer / second layer / middle layer stack — relevant to the preamble-style elements of claims 1, 4, and 12.
  • But there is no middle substrate with an interconnected first/second opening, no air cavity, no bladder area, and no sealed environment. The inter-electrode volume is open/vented to ambient in ordinary membrane-switch fashion.
  • Anticipation potential: none for any claim. § 103 art only.

Reference 3 — US 6,388,556 B1 (Fujikura)

• Full citation: US 6,388,556 B1, "Film pressure sensitive resistor and pressure sensitive sensor," Fujikura Ltd., granted 2002-05-14 (filed 2001-09-04; JP priority 2000-09-06).
• Description: Directed to the resistive material of an FSR — a film pressure-sensitive resistor formed of conductive particles (carbon black), a binder (polyester resin), and spherical elastic particles of 2–50 µm, with defined surface roughness (0.1–3 µm), concavo-convex period (10–1000 µm), and elastic modulus (800–8000 MPa) to give a smooth, reliable resistance-vs-load curve and durability. It teaches how the force-sensing layer is made (printable ink → patterned electrode), which maps onto the '094 patent's conductive polymer layer 48 / conductive layers 54, 74. (Sources: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6388556.html; Unified Patents entry.)
• § 102 analysis:
  • Fujikura is material only — a resistive-layer composition — not a stacked sensor architecture.
  • It does not disclose the first/second flexible substrates, the middle spacer with two interconnected openings, the air cavity, the bladder area, or the sealed environment.
  • Anticipation potential: none. It is relevant to enablement/obviousness of the conductive polymer layer (a detail of claims 1, 12, 13 and the thru-mode embodiment), not to anticipation of any '094 claim.

Reference 4 — US 6,483,055 B1 (Matsushita)

• Full citation: US 6,483,055 B1, "Seat sensor and detection device using the same," Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., granted 2002-11-19 (filed 2000-10-30; priority 1999-10-31).
• Description: A film-type seat/occupancy sensor with a top insulating film carrying an upper resistor layer, a bottom insulating film carrying a lower resistor layer and comb-like conductive electrodes, with an insulating spacer layer (smoothly-sloping ends) between the top and bottom sheets and adhesive layers for lamination. Load presses the resistor layers/electrodes into contact to vary resistance. (Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6483055B1/en.)
• § 102 analysis:
  • Structurally the closest of the eight to claim 1's stacked two-sheet + interposed spacer + facing resistor/electrode layers arrangement. A stacked top sheet/bottom sheet/spacer sensor with facing resistance layers is disclosed.
  • However: the spacer is a solid printed insulating layer, not a substrate with first and second openings; there is no air cavity formed by an opening, no bladder area, and no sealed environment of an interconnected cavity/bladder. Matsushita's sensor is about stable resistance under repeated loading, not about air management.
  • Anticipation potential: none. It could not anticipate claim 1 or 14 because the "first opening → air cavity / second opening → bladder area / sealed environment" limitations are absent, and it is silent on the static/active-state dependent claims (5–11, 17–23). § 103 art for the layer-stack concept only.

Reference 5 — US 2006/0131158 A1 (Japan Aviation Electronics)

• Full citation: US 2006/0131158 A1, "Membrane switch," Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Ltd., published 2006-06-22 (filed 2004-12-21).
• Description: (content inferred from title and generally known JAE membrane-switch practice — full text I was unable to pull; flagged as such.) A membrane switch of the type having upper/lower flexible sheets bearing contacts, separated by a spacer, actuated by pressure to close the contacts. Ordinary membrane-switch subject matter of the same family as References 2 and 6.
• § 102 analysis:
  • Even taking it at its most relevant, a conventional membrane switch discloses at most a flexible-membrane-over-electrode bridging arrangement.
  • No disclosure of a middle substrate with two interconnected openings, an air cavity/bladder pair, or a sealed environment is expected or identified.
  • Anticipation potential: none. § 103 background art only.

Reference 6 — US 7,112,755 B2 (Nitta Corporation)

• Full citation: US 7,112,755 B2, "Pressure-sensitive sensor," Nitta Corporation, granted 2006-09-26 (priority/filing 2003-05-21).
• Description: (content inferred from title/assignee — Nitta's pressure-sensitive sensors are film/planar FSR-type devices; full text not pulled, flagged as such.) A pressure-sensitive film sensor having facing electrode/resistive layers on flexible substrates separated by a spacer, whose resistance changes with applied pressure.
• § 102 analysis:
  • Again a two-substrate, spacer-separated FSR architecture; relevant to the general layer stack of claim 1.
  • No teaching of the interconnected first/second opening arrangement, the bladder air-reservoir, or a sealed (non-ambient-vented) environment.
  • Anticipation potential: none. § 103 art only.

Reference 7 — US 7,528,337 B2 (Panasonic)

• Full citation: US 7,528,337 B2, "Pressure sensitive conductive sheet and panel switch using same," Panasonic Corporation, granted 2009-05-05 (filed 2007-05-15).
• Description: (content inferred from title — Panasonic's '337 is a pressure-sensitive conductive sheet and a panel switch incorporating it; full text not pulled, flagged as such.) Concerns the pressure-sensitive conductive sheet material and its integration into a panel switch.
• § 102 analysis:
  • Material/sheet + panel-switch integration — analogous to References 3 and 1 respectively.
  • Absent the cavity/bladder/sealed-environment limitations of claim 1; absent the state-transition limitations of claims 5–11.
  • Anticipation potential: none. § 103 art only.

Reference 8 — US 2014/0015633 A1 (Panasonic)

• Full citation: US 2014/0015633 A1, "Pressure-sensitive switch," Panasonic Corporation, published 2014-01-16 (priority/filing 2011-03-25).
• Description: (content inferred from title — a pressure-sensitive switch publication; full text not pulled, flagged as such.) Pertains to a pressure-sensitive switch structure (likely involving a movable contact layer over electrodes actuated by force).
• § 102 analysis:
  • The most recent of the cited references (2011/2014), still comfortably before the 2017 priority date.
  • As with References 2, 5 and 6, a pressure-sensitive switch does not disclose the '094 patent's sealed, interconnecting air-cavity/bladder architecture.
  • Anticipation potential: none. § 103 art only.

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4. Overall § 102 conclusion

None of the eight cited references anticipates any claim of US 10,444,094 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. The reason is uniform across all eight: the patent's point of novelty is a structural one — a middle substrate with a first opening (air cavity) interconnected to a second opening (bladder area), the cavity and bladder together forming a sealed environment enclosed by the first and second flexible substrates, with air shuttling between cavity and bladder on actuation/release (claims 1, 3, 5–11, 14–23). Every cited reference is either:

• a membrane/pressure switch built around simple membrane-to-electrode bridging (Refs. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8), or
• an FSR resistive material/sheet disclosure (Refs. 3, 7), or
• a layer-stack seat sensor with a solid printed spacer and no air-management cavity (Ref. 4).

None discloses an air cavity → air channel/opening → bladder reservoir with a sealed environment — indeed, the '094 patent's own Background frames the field as sensors that vent to ambient, which is exactly the problem it claims to solve. Where a reference touches sealing (Reference 1's welded "air- and moisture-tight enclosure"), it does so for a particle-bridge mat switch with no cavity/bladder at all.

Strongest § 102 candidates, such as they are: Reference 1 (for the "sealed environment" concept) and Reference 4 (for the top-sheet/bottom-sheet/spacer layer stack). Even these fall short on the controlling limitation, and only Reference 4 even reaches the claim-1 preamble structure.

Where the art would actually be used: not for anticipation, but for a § 103 obviousness attack — e.g., combining a conventional FSR layer stack (Refs. 4/6/8) with a known sealed/enclosed switch (Ref. 1) to argue that sealing an FSR cavity with an air reservoir was obvious. That is a combination argument, not anticipation, and it would still have to supply the specific interconnected-opening bladder structure.

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5. Caveats and open items

1. Four references were analyzed from their citation data + title, not full text (Refs. 5, 6, 7, 8). Their descriptions above are bracketed as inferred. A full-text pull (USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter, or Google Patents for each) is required before relying on the § 102 characterizations of those four at the element level.
2. All eight are examiner-cited references of record. For PTAB practice this matters: any IPR ground built on them faces § 325(d) (Advanced Bionics) discretionary-denial risk. New art not before the examiner is the cleaner route — consistent with the earlier PTAB/strategic sections.
3. These are citations by the '094 patent, not assertions against it. The heavy Valve Corporation presence in the unrelated "Cited By" list is not prior art against the '094 patent and is not part of this list.
4. No litigation/PTAB context is needed to read this section, and none of the eight references appears in any such proceeding in the record previously generated.
5. USPTO source links for verification: Patent Public Search https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/; PatentCenter https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/; and the patent page https://patents.google.com/patent/US10444094/en.

I'll research the prior-art references cited on the patent's front page to build grounded § 103 combinations.

Key finding on US 3,830,991. Let me pull details on the remaining cited references and check the "channels between apertures" art.

Let me pull the remaining cited references — the FSR-specific ones — to complete the mapping.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103

US 10,444,094 B1 — "Bladder system for force sensitive resistors (FSR) sensors"

Assignee: Flex Ltd. · Inventor: Cesar Ocampo · App. 16/035,447 · Filed 2018-07-13 · Priority 2017-07-14 (prov. 62/532,799) · Issued 2019-10-15

Scope note. Per the task instruction I built this on the Prior Art section of the patent page — i.e., the eight references cited by the examiner on the face of US 10,444,094:

All eight predate the 2017-07-14 priority date by 3–43 years and are therefore § 102(a)(1) prior art (AIA governs — application filed 2018-07-13). Because P1–P8 were already before the examiner, any ground built solely on them faces a § 325(d) hurdle; the two references I identify as the decisive art (below) were not of record.

Two important flags up front, stated plainly rather than buried:

1. The most damaging reference in the field was not cited on this patent's face. US 4,065,649 (Carter et al., Lake Center Industries, 1977-12-27) teaches openings in a switch spacer that are hermetically sealed top and bottom and interconnected by an air channel, with air forced from one opening into the other. I found it by working backward through the family described in the search results; it is not among the 8 references of record. I treat it below as fresh art (§ 325(d)-clean), which materially changes the strength of an invalidity position. (US4065649)
2. I could not retrieve the full text of P3 (Fujikura '556), P5 (JAE '158), P7 (Panasonic '337) or P8 (Panasonic '633) — my tool budget was exhausted mid-research. For those four I rely on title, assignee, filing era, and field, and I flag every such statement as unverified. I do not assert specific disclosure content for them.

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I. Legal framework and the level of ordinary skill

Governing standard. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination is obvious where the improvement is a "predictable variation," a "known technique used to improve similar devices in the same way," or where the combination was "obvious to try"); In re Kahn / KSR (articulated reasoning with rational underpinning required); In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350 (motivation may flow from the references, the problem, or the ordinary creativity of the skilled artisan).

Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA). Based on the field (thin-film membrane switches and force-sensing resistors), the references, and the claimed subject matter, a PHOSITA here is a mechanical/electrical design engineer with a bachelor's degree and roughly 2–4 years of experience in laminated flexible sensor/switch design, or equivalent. Critically, such a person would be thoroughly familiar with: (i) spacer-layer membrane switch construction (P2, P5); (ii) printing/laminating conductive inks and polymer inks on PET/polyimide (P3, P6, P7); (iii) the volumetric displacement problem in sealed membrane switches and how the industry handled it — venting to atmosphere or internal air channels (P1, P4, and the '094 patent's own Background); and (iv) seat/footwear pressure-sensing integration (P4).

Claim construction of the terms that decide the case.

The pivotal structural observation. The patent's own Background and its FIG. 1 describe a complete conventional FSR: first conductive layer 4 on substrate 2, two open-circuited patterned conductive traces 14 on substrate 12, spacer 6 with opening 8 forming an air cavity, and air vent 10 connected to the opening 8, further admitting that "the air vented in and out of the air cavity in the opening 8 is vented to the environment, which allows dust and moister to enter into the FSR … Such contaminant ingress … may cause irregularities and interfere with the measurements."

That is applicant-admitted prior art (AAPA), and it discloses every element of claim 1 except "sealed." The claim 1 case therefore reduces to a single question: was it obvious, as of 2017-07-14, to close the vent and let the displaced air expand into a captive reservoir inside the laminate? The answer is yes, and the art says so explicitly and for the same reason.

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II. Claim 1 element-by-element mapping

The ~6 of 7 elements that are squarely present in Carter '649. Note the functional identity, not mere structural overlap: in '649 the second opening is a captive air reservoir for the first opening, the two are hermetically sealed together, and airflow from one to the other performs the return-to-static-state function that the '094 specification assigns to its bladder (the vacuum that "draws [air] back into the air cavity").

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III. Reference-by-reference disclosure (verified vs. unverified)

P1 — US 3,830,991 (Essex International). Verified. Two conductive screens 5, 6 separated by member 7 with openings 2; a compressible conductive bridging member 9 in each opening conducts when compressed; and critically, the completed assembly "may be enclosed in a molded, non-conductive sheath 10 composed of two mating halves… secured to one another by ultrasonic welding or the like so as to provide an air- and moisture-tight enclosure for the switch assembly." Welded sheath = sealed environment. (US3830991)

P2 — US 4,017,697 (Globe-Union). Verified. Expressly the "standard three layer resilient flexible diaphragm switch construction": nonconductive substrate with first and second electrode means; flexible membrane means; spacer means supporting the membrane in normally spaced relationship (including a printed viscous adhesive spacer); plus threshold structure. Claim 1 of P2 is a three-layer stack with a spacer aperture — the architectural template for claim 1 of '094. (US4017697)

P3 — US 6,388,556 (Fujikura), "Film pressure sensitive resistor and pressure sensitive sensor." Unverified in detail. At the title/assignee level it is squarely FSR art (a film-type pressure-sensitive resistor with a spacer/air gap). I make no specific-disclosure assertion.

P4 — US 6,483,055 (Matsushita/Panasonic). Verified. Seat sensor: top sheet and bottom sheet (PET or PI flexible films), upper and lower insulating layers with protruding insulating particles, upper/lower resistor layers (pressure-sensitive resistor elements) opposed to each other, and an insulating spacer layer 16 between the top sheet and the bottom sheet; FIG. 10 shows a plurality of contact portions 33 integrally linked — i.e., multi-sensor-area construction. Filed 2000; the use context (body-weight sensing in a seat) is the closest analogue to the '094 patent's shoe-sole embodiment. (US6483055)

P5 — US 2006/0131158 (Japan Aviation Electronics), "Membrane switch." Unverified in detail. Field-typical: a spacer-layer membrane switch. No specific assertion.

P6 — US 7,112,755 (Nitta). Verified. "A pair of sheet base members of polyethylene naphthalate, one of the members has conductive coating that covers the application-side electrodes, while the other of members has conductive coating that covers the receiving-side electrodes. The conductive coatings are surrounded by a spacer so that a space may be obtained between the conductive coatings opposing each other at a no-load state." Spacer realized as UV coating + adhesive, or PEN/PI film + adhesive. This is the thru-mode electrode topology claimed in claim 13. (US7112755)

P7 — US 7,528,337 / P8 — US 2014/0015633 (Panasonic). Unverified in detail. Panasonic pressure-sensitive conductive sheet / pressure-sensitive switch art, i.e., printed pressure-sensitive resistor stacks. No specific assertion.

New art A — US 4,065,649 (Carter et al., Lake Center Industries, 1977-12-27), "Pressure sensitive matrix switch having apertured spacer with flexible double sided adhesive intermediate and channels optionally interposed between apertures." Verified — and decisive. Direct quotes: "Two openings 48 and 50 are shown for adjacent switches, with a channel of air passage 52 in the spacing member or flexible adhesive interconnecting the two. Such passage or channel has the advantage that when one contact area is depressed, the air will be forced through the channel in a pumping action to inflate somewhat the adjacent opening which will aid or cause a quick return of a depressed area"; and "Since each opening is hermetically sealed, both top and bottom, by the flexible adhesive and two or more such openings are interconnected by a channel, the air can only flow from one to the other, which will assist in the quick return of a depressed area to its normal state." The stated objects include that the switch be "hermetically sealed." (US4065649)

New art B — US 4,194,099 (W. H. Brady Co., 1980-03-18), "Control panel overlay." Verified (as quoted in the description). Spacer layer 24 die-cut with contact openings 46; "Channels 48 are provided in spacer layer 24 between those contact openings 46 that are adjacent… These channels serve to equalize air pressure in the longitudinally aligned openings; panel 10 overall is hermetically sealed." Corroborates that sealing the working volume and interconnecting the openings was a known, repeatable design pattern by the late 1970s. (US4194099)

New art C — US 4,228,330 (Litton Systems, 1980-10-14), "Touch panel mechanism." Verified (as quoted). States the design objective of avoiding ambient venting outright: "the touch panel switch device of the present invention does not require any venting to the atmosphere so that the switch contacts can be sealed from any hostile environment." This is direct evidence of the state of the art and of the industry's motivation — it cuts against any teaching-away argument based on "sealing was disfavored." (US4228330)

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IV. Grounds of rejection — the combinations

Ground 1 (strongest): Carter '649 in view of Essex '991 — claim 1

Carter '649 discloses claim 1 in substance, and Essex '991 supplies the express sealing/motivation teaching for the outer envelopes.

Element mapping is the table in § II: '649 supplies (a)–(g), including the sealed interconnected first and second openings; '991 supplies the express recognition that a pressure-sensitive switch laminate should be an "air- and moisture-tight enclosure," which is exactly the "sealed environment" envelope limitation read onto '649's two flexible outer sheets, and confirms that '649's Mylar overlay / Mylar back plane are flexible substrates.

If the examiner or court reads "bladder area" as requiring a reservoir that is not itself a sensing area (a specification-driven narrowing — the '094 spec says "the bladder area 40 and the air channel 42 are not considered part of the sensing area"), then Ground 1 is supplemented: '649's opening 50, though it happens to sit over a second switch position, is structurally a captive-volume reservoir for opening 48 and performs the bladder function for it whenever switch 48 is actuated. A petition should plead both readings.

Ground 2 (fully § 325(d)-clean and equally fatal): Essex '991 in view of Carter '649 and Globe-Union '697

'991 = sealed, air- and moisture-tight pressure switch with a spacer having an opening and a compressible conductive bridging member (a: flexible conductive layers on substrates; c: spacer with opening; f/g: sealed enclosure). '697 = the explicit three-layer laminate with a spacer aperture separating a flexible conductive membrane from substrate electrodes (a–e, and the facing-orientation of claim 2). '649 = the second opening + interconnecting channel + captive-air return mechanism (c, f, g).

This is the cleanest KSR combination: three references in the identical field (laminated pressure/membrane switches), each addressing air management in the spacer volume, combined to yield the claimed structure with predictable results and no change in principle of operation.

Ground 3 (§ 325(d)-clean; uses the "hard" art): Fujikura '556 and/or Matsushita '055 in view of Carter '649 (or '099)

'055 supplies the modern, flexible-film, printed pressure-sensitive-resistor stack with a spacer layer, a no-load air space, and multiple integrally linked sensing areas (FIG. 10) — direct support for claims 1 and for the multi-area embodiments. '556 supplies a film pressure-sensitive resistor (subject to verification). Carter '649 / Brady '099 supplies sealed openings interconnected by a channel. Combining a modern FSR stack with the 1970s sealed-reservoir teaching is the textbook "known technique, same field, predictable result" combination, and the motivation is supplied by '055's own use environment (a pressure-sensing mat inside upholstery, where dust/moisture/perspiration and flex cycling are the design constraints).

Ground 4 (thru-mode — claim 13 and its method twin claim 25): Nitta '755 in view of Carter '649

Nitta '755 expressly discloses application-side and receiving-side electrodes on facing flexible sheet bases, with conductive coatings "surrounded by a spacer so that a space may be obtained between the conductive coatings opposing each other at a no-load state" — the thru-mode topology of claim 13 (current in on one layer, out on the other). '649 supplies the sealed second opening + channel. One of ordinary skill, having chosen thru-mode sensing, would apply the same sealed-reservoir air management to the Nitta spacer opening because the volumetric problem is identical.

Ground 5 (shunt mode — claim 12): Carter '649 alone or '697 in view of '991

'649's interdigitated fingers 26/28 on the back plane bridged by shorting bars 20 on the overlay is shunt mode; so is '697's electrode pair bridged by the membrane. The '094 Background's FIG. 1 is itself shunt mode. Claim 12 adds nothing.

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V. Why a PHOSITA would have combined these references

Motivation must be articulated, not assumed (KSR; In re Rouffet). The record supplies five independent, well-supported rationales and, importantly, they all point the same direction — sealing — rather than competing.

(1) Express teaching in a prior-art reference (the strongest form). Essex '991 states that the switch assembly is welded shut "so as to provide an air- and moisture-tight enclosure for the switch assembly." That is a prior-art reference teaching precisely the solution to the '094 patent's stated problem ("dust and moister… enter into the FSR… Such contaminant ingress… may cause irregularities and interfere with the measurements"). Where the prior art recognizes the same problem and teaches the same cure, the combination is obvious as a matter of law.

(2) Express teaching of the mechanism, not just the envelope. Carter '649 teaches not merely sealing but the specific air-displacement-with-return mechanism the '094 patent claims: sealed openings "interconnected by a channel," where depressing one "force[s] [air] through the channel… to inflate somewhat the adjacent opening which will aid or cause a quick return of a depressed area." The '094 specification recites the same mechanism ("removing the force generates a vacuum in the air cavity that forces air from the bladder area back into the air cavity"). A reference that discloses the claimed function for the same reason supplies an unusually strong motivation. Likewise, Brady '099: channels "serve to equalize air pressure."

(3) Known technique to improve a similar device, with predictable results (KSR "predictable variation"). Both the reference devices and the '094 device are laminates of flexible substrate / conductive layer / apertured spacer / conductive layer / flexible substrate. Sealing the spacer volume and adding an internal reservoir uses the same lamination, die-cutting and printing steps already used to make the spacer layer (a point the '094 method claim 14 does not escape — it recites forming the cavity and bladder "within a third substrate"). No new machinery, no new chemistry, no change in the principle of operation of the sensor. The results are mechanically predictable: captive air moves from a compressed volume to an uncompressed volume and returns.

(4) Problem-driven motivation / design need. The '094 patent is aimed at footwear and body-worn sensing (FIGS. 8–11, "implemented as part of a sole of a shoe"). Matsushita '055 shows the identical engineering context — a pressure-sensing mat inside a vehicle seat, sensing a person's weight, with the sensor subject to repeated loading, and expressly designed for "stable resistance properties even after repeated loading." A designer integrating a pressure mat into footwear/upholstery in 2017 had every reason to eliminate an ambient vent, which is a documented moisture/dust/sweat ingress path, and the references tell him how. And '055 shows it is routine to link a plurality of sensing areas in one laminate — which is the '094 multi-area embodiment, and the reason a shared "common bladder area" would occur to him.

(5) Disclosed design incentive to avoid back-pressure. The '094 specification itself concedes that a bladder filled with air at static state "resists air from the air cavity from flowing into the bladder area, which may inhibit sensor actuation and provide a false reading." That admission converts the pre-collapse feature of claim 10 into the solution to a known, recognized design trade-off, which is the paradigm of an obvious design choice (see § VI).

(6) No teaching away. The only candidate contrary teaching is the '094 Background's own statement that conventional FSRs vent to the environment — but that is a description of the prior art's deficiency, not a teaching that sealing is inoperable. To the contrary, the contemporaneous art affirmatively taught sealing as desirable: Litton's US 4,228,330 states its switch "does not require any venting to the atmosphere so that the switch contacts can be sealed from any hostile environment" (and notes that ambient-vented membrane switches were unreliable "in a generally hostile environment--high temperatures, high moisture conditions, or a greasy, dirty or dusty situation"). Essex '991 and Carter '649 sealed their switches as well. The field's trajectory was toward sealing.

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VI. Dependent claims

The one real battleground: claim 10 (and method claim 22)

Claim 10 recites that "in the static state the bladder is pre-collapsed." The specification explains the benefit (removing the back-pressure that "may inhibit sensor actuation") and the method (applying pressure to one or both substrates over the bladder area during stacking, optionally with heat, to thermoform it).

A petitioner can still get there, but with less comfort than for claims 1–9:

• KSR "obvious to try" / design choice: The '094 specification itself identifies the problem (captive air resists flow into the bladder, degrading sensitivity) and the remedy (collapse it). Where the patentee admits a known deficiency and selects a predictable mechanical fix, the result is a candidate for "a matter of design choice" or "obvious to try" — particularly since the claim does not quantify the collapse ("little, if any, air").
• Analogous art outside the record: bellows, evacuated/deflated bladders, and pre-evacuated air cells in inflatable footwear and cushioning (a large body of art in the footwear/packaging fields) would be used to show that pre-collapsing/deflating an internal flexible reservoir is a well-known expedient. I have not verified specific references for this, and I am not asserting any — this is the one place where an invalidity position should be shored up with additional searching.
• Residual non-obviousness risk: If a challenger cannot produce art on pre-collapsed reservoirs, the patent owner has a credible argument that claim 10 captures the (allegedly non-obvious) counter-intuitive step of removing the air that the specification's other embodiment deliberately adds — an argument that the "bladder" concept and the "pre-collapse" concept pull in opposite directions. A secondary-consideration narrative is also available if the applicant can show pre-collapsing measurably improved sensor repeatability. This is where I would expect a patent owner to focus.

Practical point: claims 1 and 14, not claim 10, carry the commercially meaningful scope (claim 1 covers any sealed bladder, filled or collapsed). If claim 1 falls, the dependent pre-collapse claim is narrow and easily designed around (any competing product that leaves its bladder filled with air avoids it). The invalidity case should therefore be built on claim 1 and not rested on claim 10.

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VII. A § 102 caveat to weigh before filing anything

Because Carter '649 discloses (i) two flexible layers carrying conductive elements, (ii) an apertured adhesive spacer therebetween, (iii) each opening hermetically sealed top and bottom, (iv) two such openings interconnected by an air channel, and (v) air forced from one opening into the other to return the depressed area, it is a serious anticipation candidate for claim 1 — not merely an obviousness reference. The single honest gap in '649 as a § 102 reference is the "bladder area" nomenclature: in '649 the second opening doubles as a second switch position. Whether that defeats anticipation depends on whether the tribunal imports the specification's statement that "the bladder area… [is] not considered part of the sensing area" into the claim. Note that claim 1 contains no such negative limitation, so the better reading on the intrinsic record is that a second sealed opening interconnected to the first is the bladder area regardless of what else it does. Plead anticipation ("inherent/bladder function of opening 50") in the alternative to the § 103 grounds — the § 103 grounds survive even if the § 102 theory fails.

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VIII. Where the patent may survive — and the honest weaknesses in my analysis

(a) Art not retrieved. I could not read P3 (Fujikura '556), P5 (JAE '158), P7 (Panasonic '337) or P8 (Panasonic '633). If, as is likely from their titles, P3/P7/P8 each disclose a spacer-layer FSR with a sealed or partially sealed air gap, Ground 3 gets stronger; if any of them discloses an internal air reservoir, this becomes a much shorter case. Conversely, if any of them expressly vents the spacer volume to atmosphere and disparages sealing, a patent owner would use it to argue the field was still venting in 2009–2014 — a teaching-away argument I cannot presently evaluate.

(b) "Bladder area" as a negative limitation. If a court imports the "not considered part of the sensing area" gloss, the '649-only theories weaken and the petitioner must rely on the express bladder/compensation-container art (e.g., I.E.E. International's sensor mat US 6,794,590, which recites a "compensating container in fluid connection with the protective covering" — found in my search but not on this patent's face; verify before relying on it).

(c) Secondary considerations. None are yet on the record — no litigation, no IPR, no FWD, no license/nexus evidence (consistent with the earlier litigation and PTAB sections of this analysis). If the patent owner asserts the patent, real-world evidence of copying (e.g., in the footwear/wearables space) or of a competitor's failure to solve the back-pressure problem could be marshaled. That evidence does not exist today.

(d) The pre-collapse claim. As noted, claim 10 and its method twin are the least-obvious subject matter and should be searched harder.

No contradictions with the previously generated sections. The bibliographic, litigation, PTAB and assignment sections all found a clean record (no district court case, no IPR/PGR, no post-issuance assignment; title with Flex Ltd.). Nothing in this § 103 analysis conflicts with that. Two minor bookkeeping items: (i) the task states the current date as 2026-04-26 while the operating context shows 2026-09-29 — irrelevant to the analysis, but flagged for consistency; (ii) maintenance-fee arithmetic worth diarizing: the 4th-year fee was paid 2023-04-04, so the 7.5-year fee is not due until approximately 2027-04-15 (my computation) — the patent will remain enforceable through any near-term challenge, so a challenger cannot wait it out.

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IX. Procedural posture for using this

1. § 325(d): lead with the fresh art. Carter '649, Brady '099 and Litton '330 were not before the examiner. Frame Grounds 1–4 around Carter '649 (and '099) as the primary reference, with the eight of-record references used only to establish the secondary elements (three-layer laminate, flexible substrates, printed conductive/membrane layers, thru-mode electrodes). Under Advanced Bionics, this avoids the Board simply exercising discretion to decline on art it has already considered.
2. Claim 1 is the target. Reach claim 10 only if the record cannot support claim 1; the commercial scope lives in claims 1/14.
3. § 112 backup. Given the breadth of "sealed environment"/"bladder area" and the specification's silence on bladder sizing (except "increased in size to accommodate the potential input air flow from each of the connected sensor areas"), a § 112(a)/(b) written-description and indefiniteness attack on the multi-area/common-bladder embodiment is worth a parallel look. I have not developed it here.
4. Timing. No prior petition exists, so there is no General Plastic serial-petition risk; the only clock is the § 315(b) one-year bar from service, and PGR is unavailable (2019 grant, well past the § 321(c) nine-month window).

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X. Confidence and sources

Primary sources: the authoritative full text you supplied for US 10,444,094 B1 (claims, specification, Background, FIG. 1 description); US3830991; US4017697; US6483055; US7112755; US4065649; US4194099; US4228330.

Bottom line. Claim 1 (and mirrored claim 14) is, on this record, more likely than not invalid under § 103 — and arguably anticipated — because the patent's own Background admits the complete sensor structure with only an ambient vent as the difference, and the prior art expressly teaches (i) closing that vent into an air- and moisture-tight enclosure (Essex '991) and (ii) providing exactly the claimed captive, channel-interconnected air reservoir that returns the diaphragm to its static state (Carter '649; Brady '099). Every dependent claim except claim 10 (and its method twin) falls with a short additional mapping. Claim 10's pre-collapsed bladder is the single element that would need supplemental art or a design-choice/"obvious to try" framing, and it carries narrow commercial scope in any event.