US 10617174

I'll run a couple of targeted searches for this exact patent number, then summarize.

Search notes first

I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the CAFC docket system directly, and my searches did not surface any CAFC 2026 docket entry, litigation, IPR, or appeal involving US 10,617,174 — that search returned zero results. So: no confirmed 2026 Federal Circuit activity, and I'd treat "none found" as the accurate statement rather than "none exists." I grounded the bibliographic data below in the front page of the issued patent (US016617174B1 PDF), Google Patents (patents.google.com/patent/US10617174/en), and the cross-cited family listings on FreePatentsOnline (e.g., US 11,633,005 and US 10,905,192 reference listings).

Bibliographic summary

Abstract (as issued): "A footwear article includes a doffing ledge that may provide a lever for pressing the footwear article in one direction, while the wearer slides his or her heel out of the footwear article in a different direction. A doffing angle of the doffing ledge is based, at least in part, on a forwardly inclined angle of a center connecting band near a rear portion of the ankle collar."

Plain-language overview

The problem: A hands-free "step-in" shoe has a springy collar elevator (medial lever arm + lateral lever arm + a center connecting band at the heel). The center connecting band inclines forward, which is great for donning (it catches and seats the heel) but creates a snag you must yank your heel past when doffing. Wearers end up digging their toes into the footbed, using hands, or standing on the opposite shoe's heel counter — which delaminates the upper ([spec, discussion preceding FIGS. 5–11]).

The fix: Add a doffing ledge — an outward bulge formed by the heel sidewall of the sole, sloping downward/outward from a point near the upper to a point farther down — that gives the opposing foot a flat lever surface to press down on while the heel is pulled out. The core inventive insight is that the doffing angle is keyed to the collar's forwardly inclined angle (smaller doffing angle ≈ more vertically directed force, vector "C," better able to overpower the band's retaining force, vector "B").

Independent claims (substance)

The Google Patents HTML rendering truncates the claim bodies and strips most claim numbers, so the three independent claims are described by substance below rather than by verified numbering — see caveats.

1. Independent claim 1 (broadest; rendered "Clause" text calls it a footwear article comprising):

• a sole having a ground-contacting surface and a sidewall;
• an upper coupled to the sole with an ankle collar movable between a lowered state (closer to the sole) and a raised state;
• a collar elevator operable to return the collar from lowered to raised, having a medial lever arm, a lateral lever arm, and a center connecting band coupling them, located near a rear portion of the ankle collar, where the center connecting band has a forwardly inclined angle equal to or less than 65 degrees relative to a horizontal reference plane when the collar is raised;
• the sidewall having a doffing ledge in a heel portion of the sole that protrudes outwardly from a doffing-ledge first portion (closer to the upper) to a doffing-ledge second portion (farther from the upper), the ledge comprising a doffing surface (declining at a doffing angle relative to the horizontal reference plane).

1. Second independent claim (rendered with the phrase "forwardly inclined angle in a range of 70 degrees to 45 degrees"): same sole/upper/collar-elevator/doffing-ledge combination, but the numeric hook is a forwardly inclined angle range of 45°–70° rather than "≤65°."

2. Third independent claim (rendered with "forwardly inclined angle equal to or less than 65 degrees … and wherein the center connecting band includes a length extending from a first endpoint along a longitudinal orientation to a second endpoint"): same combination, with the added structural hook of an explicitly defined center-connecting-band length measured longitudinally, which then supports the doffing-surface-length thresholds described in the spec (at least 75%, 90%, ≥100%, ≥130%, or ≥150% of the band length).

Representative dependent-claim subject matter (including the two dependent claims whose numbers are rendered — 7 and 8 — plus the clause-labeled ones):

• Clause 7: doffing surface aligned with a midline reference plane passing through the rearmost and foremost points of the article.
• Clause 8: doffing ledge positioned on a lateral side of the sole.
• Clause 14: forwardly inclined angle in a range of 52°–62°.
• Clause 16: doffing angle in a range between 40° and 60°.
• A doffing-surface-length limitation: length ≥ one-half of the sole height at the ledge (with the spec describing variants of ≤75% of band length, ≥90%, ≥130%, ≥150%, and ≥⅓, ≥50%, ≥75%, or ≥100% of sole height).
• Spec-described alternatives that appear in the claim set: doffing angle equal to or less than the forwardly inclined angle; doffing angle in a 30°–70° range; medial-side and lateral-side ledge placements; a continuously wrapping medial-to-lateral ledge.

Family context (from the "Priority to" listing on the source page)

Later filings claiming priority from this application include: PCT/US2019/067595 → WO 2020/132314 A1; EP 19842673.6 → EP 3897267 B1; EP 23209705.5 → EP 4298942 B1; JP 2021535502 → JP 7193644 B2; JP 2022196188 → JP 7547443 B2; CN 201980085292.4 → CN 113226100 B; CN 202210904119.6 → CN 115399543 A; KR 1020217019161 → KR 102581124 B1; US 16/839,744 → US 11,758,972 B2 (published as US 2020/0229536 A1, "Footwear article with collar elevator," same three inventors, which expressly states it is "a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 16/230,907 … issuing as U.S. Pat. No. 10,617,174"); and US 18/233,578 → US 2023/0380539 A1.

Uncertainty / things to flag

• Claim numbering for the 2nd and 3rd independent claims is not verified. The rendering of the claim section drops the numerals for most claims; my mapping (likely claim 1 independent; claim 9 bearing the doffing-surface-length limitation; a second independent claim around claim 10; clause 14 and 16 dependent; a third independent claim near claim 18) is an inference from the rendered order and the stated total of 20 claims. Verify against the granted claims in PatentCenter before relying on it.
• The literal claim text is truncated in the rendering. Claim 1's body breaks off after "wherein the doffing ledge comprises a doffing surface," and the 2nd/3rd independent claims break off after "wherein the doffing ledge comprises a doffing." The words "that declines … at a doffing angle … relative to the horizontal reference plane" are strongly implied by the spec and abstract but I have not verified the exact issued wording.
• Assignment-record oddity (interpreted literally, not corrected): the source page lists a January 28, 2019 assignment for this file naming assignors "HOPKINS, Timothy P., WEAST, AARON B., ORAND, AUSTIN J." — which does not match this patent's named inventors. A later April 12, 2019 record names "OWINGS, ANDREW A., TOELLE, HALEY, HOPKINS, Timothy P." I'm not asserting an error on the part of the USPTO; just noting the discrepancy as it appears in the record.
• Prior art cited on the face: U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527 (Pratt) and US 2018/0110292 and US 2018/0289109 (Beers et al.) are the collar-elevator references discussed in the Background and incorporated by reference; the examiner also applied various shoe patents (e.g., 1,686,175 Read; 6,925,732 Clarke; 7,793,438 Busse) and foreign documents (CN 2438353 Y; CN 1403041 A; DE 102004045288 A1; EP 1059044 A1; GB 2517399 A; WO 2009/154350 A1).
• CAFC 2026: no docket match found; treat as unconfirmed rather than a verified absence of litigation.

The first hit is a different patent (12,174,106), so it's not responsive. Let me run more targeted searches.

Findings: Litigation involving US Patent 10617174

Short answer: I could not identify any litigation involving US Patent 10617174 in the searches I was able to run. Treat this as "none found," not as a verified negative.

What I searched

Patent context (from the authoritative full text you supplied)

• Patent: US 10617174 B1 — "Footwear article with doffing ledge"
• Assignee: Nike, Inc. (NIKE, INC. assignment recorded 2019-01-28 and 2019-04-12)
• Inventors of record in the grants/assignments: Timothy P. Hopkins, Andrew A. Owings, Haley Toelle; assignments also name Aaron B. Weast and Austin J. Orand
• Application: US 16/230,907; filed 2018-12-21; granted 2020-04-14; status Active; anticipated expiration 2038-12-21
• Related family members (per the Google Patents "Priority to" entries): WO 2020132314 A1, EP 3897267 B1, EP 4298942 B1, JP 7193644 B2, JP 7547443 B2, CN 113226100 B, CN 115399543 A, KR 102581124 B1, US 11758972 B2, US 2023/0380539 A1

Important caveats — please do not rely on this as a clearance opinion

1. I did not reach a primary source. I was unable to successfully query the Unified Patents litigation caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER, CourtListener/Docket Navigator, or the CAFC docket for this specific patent number before my search budget was exhausted. The queries I ran returned no records, but that is a function of search coverage, not proof of absence.
2. This is a consumer athletic-footwear patent. Nike has historically enforced footwear IP primarily through ITC Section 337 investigations and district court actions, and also defends its patents in PTAB post-grant proceedings (IPR/PGR). A search of PTAB proceedings, ITC EDIS, and Docket Navigator by patent number would be the correct next step; PTAB petitions against 10617174 would be the most likely litigation-adjacent event even if no district court case exists.
3. Verified negative requires primary-source lookup. To state with confidence that "no litigation is known," someone should run the patent number through Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, Unified Patents Portal, PACER (all districts), ITC EDIS, and the CAFC docket.

Recommended verification steps

Bottom line: Based on the searches performed, no litigation involving US Patent 10617174 was identified. I cannot certify that none exists, and I explicitly flag that I did not successfully reach the litigation databases you named. If you need a defensible "no known litigation" statement, this should be re-run against Docket Navigator, PTAB, and ITC EDIS directly.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal with targeted searches before concluding.

Let me run further targeted queries on the patent's number and its distinctive claim terminology.

Let me confirm with a couple more angles — family/continuation IPRs and competitor petitions.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,617,174: 0 (zero). The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical list sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPRs, PGRs, or CBMs for this patent, and my web searches surfaced none either. There is therefore no breakdown by status to give (0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied). Defensive posture: the patent is untested at the PTAB, not hardened. That is a materially different position from a patent that survived an IPR — nothing on this patent has been construed by a panel, no claim has been canceled, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached against anyone. A defendant today faces all 20 claims intact and a clean slate of grounds.

I want to be precise about the evidentiary weight here. "No proceedings found" rests on (a) the ODP structured block showing nothing, and (b) negative web searches. Two searches returned literally zero results (the query "10617174" PTAB AIA trial proceeding returned an empty result set). That is stronger evidence than the usual "nothing indexed," but it is still an absence-of-evidence finding, not a docket-level confirmation. Verify against PTAB E2E / PTAB Center and the patent's "PTAB Proceedings" tab on patents.google.com/patent/US10617174/en before relying on it for a filing deadline.

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What the searches did find (adjacent, not this patent)

Because zero proceedings means nothing to itemize, the useful signal is the surrounding landscape:

• Nike is a frequent, willing PTAB respondent. Skechers, lululemon, and New Balance collectively filed nine IPR petitions against six Nike patents in the 2024–2025 window — but those are the Flyknit textile patents: the '932, '749, '484, '562, '636, and '511 patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,266,749; 8,898,932; 9,060,562; 9,510,636; 9,730,484; 9,907,350; 9,918,511; 9,924,758; 11,707,105). See the D. Mass. stay opinion in Nike, Inc. v. New Balance Athletics, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-12666 (ECF 108, 2025-06-06), CourtListener, and Skechers' petitions e.g. IPR2025-00142, IPR2025-00143, IPR2025-00144, and IPR2025-00150 (institution denied 2025-06-09). None of those petitions names US 10,617,174.
• The pattern to note: Nike's competitors have demonstrated the appetite and the capability to challenge Nike footwear patents at the PTAB, repeatedly, in the same time window in which the '174 patent sat unchallenged. The '174 patent (and its continuation sibling, US 11,758,972 B2) simply have not been targeted — most plausibly because they have not been asserted in litigation against a competitor with standing to file.
• No litigation asserting '174 found. My searches did not surface any complaint asserting US 10,617,174. I cannot rule it out definitively, but the Flyknit campaigns do not include it.

Correction / refinement to the earlier "Patent summary" section

The previously generated summary flagged that the claim bodies were truncated in the Google Patents rendering and left the exact wording unverified. A fuller rendering of the shared specification's clause list (published in the continuation, US 2020/0229536 A1 — FreePatentsOnline; the same clause set appears in the '174 description) resolves most of that uncertainty and changes one substantive point:

• Independent claim 1 carries a negative limitation the earlier summary did not capture: the doffing surface declines "at a doffing angle, which is relative to the horizontal reference plane and is less than the forwardly inclined angle." The earlier summary listed "doffing angle equal to or less than the forwardly inclined angle" as a spec-described alternative; on this rendering it is a claim 1 requirement (strictly less than).
• Independent claim 18 requires more than the ≤65° hook: it recites the center-connecting-band length and that "the doffing-surface length is equal to or larger than one and one-third of the length."
• The clause numbering (1–20) is consistent with the previously inferred three-independent-claim structure (claims 1, 12, 18), with clause 12 reciting the 45°–70° range, clause 9 the ≥½-sole-height limitation, and clauses 13–17, 19, 20 depending.

Caveat I will not paper over: those clauses are from the commonly shared specification as published in the continuation, not from a PatentCenter pull of the '174 granted claims. If claim 1 really requires doffing angle strictly less than the forwardly inclined angle, that extra negative limitation is a meaningful narrowing — and it is exactly the kind of limitation that hands a challenger a clean § 103 argument (teach the two angles, show one is smaller). Confirm before building a claim chart or a petition on it.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 20 claims UNTESTED. No claim of US 10,617,174 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the PTAB. Independent claims 1, 12, and 18 remain in their as-issued form, subject only to whatever narrowing is inherent in the clause language discussed above. There is no narrowing-through-IPR story to tell here, and no FWD to link to.

Estoppel landscape: nothing is foreclosed. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM has been instituted on this patent, no petitioner or privy is subject to § 315(e)(2)/§ 325(e)(2) estoppel on any ground. Conversely, a defendant has no free ride from someone else's prior petition — there is no earlier petition to copy, and no earlier institution decision providing a panel's claim-construction reasoning. Every prior-art ground a defendant cares about is still available, subject only to § 325(d) (art previously considered by the examiner) and § 315(b) (one year from service of a complaint).

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed on this patent, let alone twice. Nike has not needed to defend it at the PTAB, and there is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain — I searched for one and found none. The surrounding pattern instead shows Nike offensively asserting a different, larger footwear portfolio (Flyknit) into the IPR gauntlet, and winning much of it: note the Federal Circuit's 2026-08-05 affirmance in Nike, Inc. v. lululemon athletica canada inc., No. 24-2134, upholding a PTAB finding that claims 1–5, 7, 9, 12–14, and 17–19 of Nike's '413 patent were unpatentable (CourtListener) — i.e., Nike loses some and litigates hard. Its counsel of record on this patent (Shook, Hardy & Bacon) is different from the Banner & Witcoff / Arnold & Porter teams running the Flyknit IPR defense, which is a further indication the '174 patent has simply not been in play.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the patent has been asserted against you: there is no FWD to link to, because there is none. Do not represent otherwise in a motion to stay or a § 101/§ 103 brief. Instead, note the absence of PTAB activity and calibrate accordingly — the claims are untested, so there is no downward claim-construction record to leverage and no cancellation to rely on.
• Watch your § 315(b) clock. If a complaint asserting '174 is served, you have one year from service to file an IPR. Given the § 102(b) art cited on the face (Read 1,686,175; Clarke 6,925,732; Busse 7,793,438; CN 2438353 Y; CN 1403041 A; DE 102004045288 A1; EP 1059044 A1; GB 2517399 A; WO 2009/154350 A1) plus the incorporated-by-reference collar-elevator art (U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527; US 2018/0110292; US 2018/0289109), § 325(d) risk is real for those references — the strongest petitions will likely need new primary art on the angular relationship between the doffing angle and the forwardly inclined angle, which is the actual inventive hook (see vectors "B" and "C" in the spec's FIG. 10 discussion).
• Do not plan around an imminent institution decision or FWD. There is no proceeding, so there is no institution deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory one-year FWD due date. Any such milestone in a case schedule would be fabricated.
• If you are evaluating a stay motion: the D. Mass. Nike v. New Balance stay was granted on the strength of pending IPRs on other Nike patents (ECF 108, 2025-06-06). You have no equivalent predicate for '174 absent a filed petition.
• Verify the negative before filing. Treat this as "no PTAB activity found as of 2026-09-16" and re-run the check at PTAB Center / E2E and on the Google Patents "PTAB Proceedings" tab immediately before any deadline that depends on it.

I'll research the assignment record directly. Let me run several targeted searches.

Good — I now have the full issued claim text from RPX. Now let me hunt for the actual assignment records and any assertion history.

Inventors

Basis for employer: all three inventor addresses are Oregon cities adjacent to Nike's Beaverton world headquarters, and each inventor executed an assignment of rights to NIKE, Inc. (see timeline below). There is no separate corporate co-owner and no government-interest statement on the face of the patent.

Unusual-pattern check — departing-inventor / fire-sale precursor: not present. I found no record, filing, or report indicating any of the three inventors left Nike, assigned away their interest, or that their rights were the subject of a subsequent transfer. All assignment activity occurs to Nike, never away from it. Note also that inventorship on this file is a mixed bag relative to the sibling filings: the related Dec. 21, 2018 Nike rapid-entry applications name Aaron B. Weast and Austin J. Orand (e.g., US 10,455,898, "Footwear article with tongue reinforcer," Orand et al.) — see the assignment-record anomaly in the next section.

Original assignee

NIKE, Inc., Beaverton, OR — named on the front page as both Applicant and Assignee (box 71/73), and it remains the assignee of record; there is no post-issuance assignment of any kind.

• Product embodiment: Nike is an operating company — the world's largest athletic footwear, apparel, and equipment manufacturer. This patent sits in Nike's rapid-entry / hands-free footwear family (the collar-elevator + doffing-ledge architecture; the specification's incorporated references, U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527 and US 2018/0110292 / 2018/0289109, are the Pratt/Kizik and Beers heel-spring references that Nike licensed into its FlyEase and Go FlyEase lines). I could not verify with high confidence that a specific currently-shipping Nike model reads on granted claim 1, so I am not asserting a verified product read.
• Primary line of business: design, manufacture, marketing and sale of athletic footwear, apparel and equipment; publicly traded (NYSE: NKE).
• Current status: operating, not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Its December 2025 / fiscal-2026 SEC filings show it as an ongoing registrant. Nike also continues to invest in this exact family: the continuation US 16/839,744 (filed 2020-04-03, published as US 2020/0229536 A1) issued as US 11,758,972 B2, expressly a continuation of this application, same three inventors — plus national-phase siblings WO 2020/132314 A1, EP 3,897,267 B1, EP 4,298,942 B1, JP 7,193,644 B2, JP 7,547,443 B2, CN 1,132,261 B, CN 1,153,995 A, KR 10-2581124 B1. Non-US family rights are routed to Nike Innovate C.V., Nike's wholly owned Dutch IP-holding subsidiary. That subsidiary's name contains no "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" asserter-style suffix and it is a captive holding vehicle, not an independent licensing-only entity — do not read it as a shell-entity signal.

Assignment timeline

Provenance and a hard caveat up front. I could not execute a live query against the USPTO Assignment Center. That system (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, formerly https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) is a JavaScript single-page application that does not expose record pages to search-engine crawlers, and my searches for a reel/frame number or a recorded-correspondent name for this patent returned nothing. The two records below are sourced from USPTO assignment data as surfaced in the Google Patents legal-events panel for US 10,617,174 (the authoritative text supplied for this analysis). Those entries do not display reel/frame numbers or a correspondent of record, and I will not invent them. Treat the reel/frame and correspondent fields as not retrieved, not as blank.

There are exactly two recorded assignments. Both run to Nike. Nothing has been recorded since issuance.

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• Executed: not stated in the retrieved record / recorded 2019-01-28 — Reel not retrieved/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (invention rights to assignee)
  • Assignor: HOPKINS, Timothy P.; WEAST, AARON B.; ORAND, AUSTIN J.
  • Assignee: NIKE, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — no correspondent data is exposed in the source rendering. (For context only, the prosecution attorney of record on the patent face is Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP; that is the prosecution firm and is not verified as the assignment-record correspondent. Do not conflate the two.)
  • Context: Routine employee-inventor assignment to the operating employer — but see the anomaly immediately below.
  • ⚠ Anomaly, flagged not corrected: two of the three assignors on this record — Weast and Orand — are not inventors of US 10,617,174. The most likely explanation, consistent with the record, is that this recording covers one or more same-day companion Nike applications filed Dec. 21, 2018 (the Orand/Weast tongue-reinforcer family, US 10,455,898 et al.) and is surfaced on the '174 legal-events page as an aggregated/co-recorded entry. I am not asserting a USPTO or Nike error, and I am not treating this as a third-party or adverse record.

• Executed: not stated in the retrieved record / recorded 2019-04-12 — Reel not retrieved/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (invention rights to assignee)
  • Assignor: OWINGS, ANDREW A.; TOELLE, HALEY; HOPKINS, Timothy P.
  • Assignee: NIKE, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: This is the record whose assignor set matches this patent's named inventors exactly — the operative link that put this application's rights in Nike pre-issuance. Routine employment assignment, not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

No records found for: security agreements, releases, name changes, mergers, corrections, or any conveyance of any kind dated after 2019-04-12. In particular, no assignment, license-to-asserter, or security interest recorded between issuance (2020-04-14) and today (2026-09-16). For a patent whose expected life runs to 2038-12-21, six-plus years of post-issuance silence with the original operating assignee still of record is the finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10617174
    2018 : Filed 21 Dec by Nike Inc
    2019 : Assignment recorded 28 Jan to Nike
         : Assignment recorded 12 Apr to Nike
    2020 : Patent issued 14 Apr to Nike
         : Continuation filed 3 Apr for US 11758972
    2026 : Still owned by Nike
         : No post-issue assignment found

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The patent has never left Nike. The only assignee in the entire chain is NIKE, INC., an NYSE-listed operating company with commercial products. No "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" transferee, no registered-agent addresses, no single-purpose LLCs appear in the two retrieved records (recorded 2019-01-28 and 2019-04-12). The captive Dutch holding entity Nike Innovate C.V. receives only foreign family rights through the Dec. 19, 2019 PCT/EP/JP/CN/KR filings — a standard intra-group IP consolidation, not a licensing-only shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee or assignor on this patent matches any entity on the public NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) or any Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency plaintiff roster. The only third party that appears anywhere near this patent is Fast IP, LLC — which does assert rapid-entry footwear patents against footwear brands — but Fast IP appears only as a citing party / prior-art user in the citation graph (e.g., US 10,905,192 and US 10,638,810 cite the '174 as prior art). Fast IP is not in this chain. Do not conflate "cited this patent as prior art" with "owns this patent."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data not retrieved). The correspondent of record is the single most useful signal here and it is the one field the source rendering does not expose. I cannot state who filed either recording, so I cannot check for recurrence within this chain or across other patents. If you have Assignment Center access, this is the first thing to pull: record 1 (2019-01-28) and record 2 (2019-04-12) should be checked for a common correspondent and the correspondent checked against Unified Patents / RPX assertion lists. Note for calibration: a single correspondent appearance proves nothing — Nike volumes are recorded through its own IP operations, and large operating companies routinely use a single outside firm for all recordings.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Two records total, both before issuance, both to the same assignee, both within ~4 months of filing, and nothing in the ~8.5 years since. No chained LLCs, no sub-24-month sequence of distinct assignees, no shared-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. There is no assignment within 6 months before any suit naming this patent, because I found no litigation naming US 10,617,174 at all. The 2023 Nike campaigns (Nike v. Skechers, C.D. Cal. 2:23-cv-09346, filed 2023-11-06; Nike v. New Balance, D. Mass. 1:23-cv-12666, filed 2023-11-06; Nike v. lululemon, S.D.N.Y.) assert Nike's Flyknit/knit-upper patents (e.g., 8,266,749; 9,060,562; 9,730,484; 9,918,511; 11,707,105) — a different Nike portfolio from this rapid-entry/doffing-ledge family — and none of the reported asserted-patent lists include the '174. Note also that the Nike v. New Balance docket shows Nike as plaintiff and target of IPRs, which is the posture of an operating-company enforcer, not an NPE chain.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Nike has not filed Chapter 7 or 11; no patent-sale proceeding involves this asset. No record of any sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer from Nike to any third party that could be asserting on Nike's behalf. Nike litigates in its own name against direct competitors (Skechers, New Balance, PUMA, lululemon), which is the opposite of a privateering structure.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Nike itself. (One honest cross-check: Pointwise Ventures LLC v. Nike, Inc., S.D.N.Y. 1:26-cv-01782, filed 2026-03-04 and discontinued on settlement 2026-06-05, is an NPE suing Nike — Nike is the defendant, and I could not verify which patent(s) were asserted. If the '174 were the patent-in-suit that would be a notable defensive-posture data point, but I have no evidence tying that case to this patent, so I am flagging it as an unverified lead only, not a finding.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the qualification that the "assertion" limb is unproven for this patent.

Justification: the entire ownership chain for US 10,617,174 consists of two employee-invention assignments to NIKE, INC., recorded 2019-01-28 and 2019-04-12, with no assignee other than Nike and no recorded conveyance in the ~8.5 years since issuance. Nike is a going concern that maintains the family (continuation US 11,758,972 B2, plus the WO/EP/JP/CN/KR siblings) and enforces its footwear portfolio in its own name against direct competitors. All eight NPE signals are either absent or, for the correspondent signal, simply not retrievable from the sources available to me — so the correct read is continued operating-company ownership, not an NPE chain. Caveat on the verdict label: if your taxonomy requires an actual infringement suit naming this patent for the "assertion" label, downgrade to operating-company ownership, non-asserting to date — no suit on the '174 was found.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number search: 10617174) — or the mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Also useful: the Google Patents legal-events panel at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10617174B1](/patent/US10617174B1)/en and the RPX Insight record at https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US10617174B1. Pull the two reel/frame numbers and both correspondents from Assignment Center to close the two open fields flagged above; everything else in the chain is settled.

I'll verify the cited prior-art references with targeted searches, then build the analysis.

I now have the verified claim set from Justia and the front-page reference list. Let me verify a few of the examiner-cited shoe references so I can describe them accurately.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,617,174 B1

Patent analyzed: US 10,617,174 B1, "Footwear article with doffing ledge," Nike, Inc.; App. No. 16/230,907; filed Dec. 21, 2018; issued Apr. 14, 2020; 20 claims, 8 drawing sheets; Primary Examiner Heather N. Mangine.

Critical date for § 102: Dec. 21, 2018 (the application's only claimed priority date; no earlier benefit claim). Every reference below predates it, so all are § 102(a)(1) art (a U.S. patent issue/publication or a printed publication available before the effective filing date).

Sources actually used (and what I could not reach)

I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR, Docket Navigator, or the examiner's actual Notice of Allowance/Office Actions, so I cannot state why each reference was cited — only what it discloses and how it maps to the claims.

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⚠️ Corrections to the previously generated sections (flagged per instruction)

The earlier sections were written before the full issued claim text was available and explicitly flagged their claim-numbering as an inference. That inference was partly wrong, and one substantive characterization needs correcting:

1. Independent claims are 1, 11, and 18 — not "1, ~10, ~18." Verified from Justia's rendering of the issued claims. Claim 11's hook is the "45 degrees to 70 degrees" range; claim 18's hook is "≤65°" plus the center-connecting-band length and doffing-surface-length ≥ 4/3.
2. The earlier "doffing-surface length ≥ one-half sole height" limitation is NOT in the issued independent claims. That wording appears in the pre-issuance "Clause" listing (Clause 9 of the Google rendering). Issued claim 9 reads "the doffing-ledge second portion extends to an outsole." The Google Patents "Clause" set and the issued claim set diverge from claim 9 onward. Treat the Clause text as a pre-amendment draft.
3. "Equal to or less than" is wrong for the issued claims. The earlier summary (following the spec) said the doffing angle may be "equal to or less than" the forwardly inclined angle. The issued claims 1, 11, and 18 each recite "less than" (strictly): "…at a doffing angle, which is relative to the horizontal reference plane and is less than the forwardly inclined angle." This matters for § 102/§ 103 — a reference teaching equality would not meet the literal limitation.
4. The issued independent claims all contain a base-geometry limitation the earlier summary omitted. Claims 1, 11, and 18 each require that the medial and lateral lever arms attach to a base having a forward terminal edge and a posterior terminal edge, each "begins at the lateral edge of the sole, extends linearly and continuously across the superior surface of the sole, and terminates at the medial edge of the sole," with the terminal posterior edge spaced forwardly of a rearmost point of the superior surface. (This tracks the spec's base 358 / edges 364 & 366 discussion.) This was almost certainly added during prosecution to distinguish the collar-elevator art — and it is the reason most of the citations below cannot anticipate.
5. A citation-number discrepancy in the record, reported literally, not corrected: the granted patent's front page (Google-hosted PDF rendering) lists "2018/0338853 A1 — 11/2018 — Sullivan"; Justia's rendering of the same list shows "20180338583 — November 29, 2018 — Sullivan." The two renderings disagree by one digit (…3885 3 vs …3885 83). I did not resolve which is the OCR artifact.
6. Second citation-number discrepancy: the front page shows "DE 102004045288 A1 — 8/2005"; Justia renders it "DE 102004005288 — August 2005" (one digit dropped). Reported as-is.
7. The earlier section's list of face-cited art (Read, Clarke, Busse, CN 2438353 Y, CN 1403041 A, DE 102004045288 A1, EP 1059044 A1, GB 2517399 A, WO 2009/154350 A1) is correct but incomplete — the full (56) list is much longer (detailed below).

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What the independent claims require (the anticipation test)

For any single reference to anticipate claims 1, 11, or 18 under § 102(a)(1), it must disclose all of:

No reference on the face of the patent discloses all of these — and critically, none discloses the doffing ledge at all. That is the point of novelty, so I found no § 102 anticipation, only § 103 art and § 102 art for isolated sub-elements.

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Group A — Collar-elevator references (closest art; also incorporated by reference)

These are the references the applicant itself names in the Background and incorporates in their entirety. They supply the entire "collar elevator" half of the claims.

A1. U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527 B2 — Pratt et al.

• Full citation: Pratt, Michael James; Hermann, Steven; Lytle, Seth; Tsen, James Kuangcheng. Rapid-entry footwear with rebounding fit system. FAST IP, LLC (Alpine, UT).
• Dates: App. No. 15/493,582, filed Apr. 21, 2017; issued Nov. 21, 2017; prior publication US 2017/0303632 A1 (Oct. 26, 2017); provisional benefit Nos. 62/326,650 (Apr. 22, 2016) and 62/368,497 (Jul. 29, 2016). 18 claims, 14 sheets.
• Description: A rapid-entry shoe with a heel element and/or tongue element that spring back to secure the foot. Discloses a deformable member with a medial lever arm, a lateral lever arm, and a center connecting band, affixed to a base (sole portion, insole/midsole/outsole/strobel, or anchor), the member storing energy when the collar is depressed and returning the collar to a raised state. Confirmed in full text: "a first end of the deformable element … might be embedded in, or attached to, a medial anchor; a second end … attached to a lateral anchor; and a middle portion … (e.g., the center connecting band) might extend around the heel portion."
• Which claims it potentially anticipates: None. It discloses the collar-elevator subcombination of independent claims 1/11/18 (medial arm, lateral arm, center connecting band, base/anchors, lowered↔raised return) but it is entirely silent on (a) a doffing ledge/doffing surface on the sole sidewall, (b) any doffing angle, and (c) the claimed angular inequalities. It also does not use the "forwardly inclined angle ≤ 65°/45°–70°" numeric.
• § 102 assessment: Not anticipatory of any claim. Its role is (i) § 103 combination art for the collar elevator, and (ii) the express incorporation-by-reference source for the "deformable member" architecture recited in the specification. Its classification (A43B 23/28, 23/088, 23/027, 11/00) overlaps the 10,617,174 field-of-search.

A2. U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0110292 A1 — Beers et al.

• Dates: published Apr. 26, 2018 (verified on the patent's front page). Title not verified in my searches — do not rely on a title.
• Description (per the '174 specification, which characterizes it): describes collar elevators referred to as "control bars" (with or without a base), at least some of which include a medial lever arm, a lateral lever arm, and a center connecting band coupling them. Expressly incorporated by reference.
• Which claims it potentially anticipates: None. Same analysis as A1 — supplies the elevator/control-bar subcombination, no doffing ledge, no angular recitation.
• § 102 assessment: Not anticipatory; § 103 art for the elevator elements.

A3. U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0289109 A1 — Beers

• Dates: published Oct. 11, 2018 (verified on the front page).
• Description: same family of "control bar" collar elevators as A2, per the '174 specification; incorporated by reference.
• Which claims it potentially anticipates: None — same reasoning.
• § 102 assessment: Not anticipatory; § 103 art. Note that its Oct. 11, 2018 publication is only ~10 weeks before the Dec. 21, 2018 filing, which makes it clean § 102(a)(1) prior art but a weak § 103 combination partner on timing alone (identical subject matter to A2 anyway).

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Group B — Examiner-cited heel-entry / heel-retention references (asterisked in the (56) list)

The front page marks certain references "*cited by examiner." These are the references the examiner apparently considered and applied. Full citation, dates, and my § 102 mapping:

Nothing in Group B discloses a doffing ledge formed by the heel sidewall, and nothing discloses a doffing angle tied to a forwardly inclined angle. So none of them anticipates claims 1–20 individually.

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Group C — Remaining U.S. patents in the (56) list (chronological)

All are pre-Dec. 21, 2018 and therefore § 102(a)(1) art. Given their age and subject matter (largely 19th–early-20th-century shoe closures and overshoe retainers), they are background art, not anticipatory for a 2018 claim set.

§ 102 verdict for Group C: none anticipates any of claims 1–20. All lack at least the doffing ledge and the claimed angular relationship. Their cited CPCs (A43B 3/10, 3/12, 3/18, 3/26, 5/00, 9/02, 11/00, 11/02, 23/28) define the field the examiner searched, which is itself useful context: A43B 11/02 ("with built-in shoe horns") is a parent class of the '174 disclosure (the family members are classified A43B 11/02).

Group D — Remaining U.S. application publications in the (56) list

§ 102 verdict: none anticipates. Note that A2, A3, and the Sullivan publication were all published in 2018, within months of the filing — they are clean § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 art but too close in time and subject matter to be more than supplementary.

Group E — Foreign patent documents in the (56) list

§ 102 verdict: none anticipates any claim. The overlap of CN 2438353 Y and CN 1403041 A on both this patent's list and the Pratt '527 list is worth noting — it confirms the examiner was working the same foreign art family that the collar-elevator references had already traversed, i.e., the foreign documents are cumulative to Group A.

Group F — "Other Publications" (not prior art; listed for completeness)

The (56) list also cites, under "Other Publications":

• Prosecution of U.S. App. Nos. 15/493,582 (filed Apr. 21, 2017 — the Pratt application that became US 9,820,527), 13/509,780 (May 14, 2012), 15/693,195 (Aug. 31, 2017), 15/690,679 (Aug. 30, 2017), 15/934,740 (Mar. 23, 2018).
• Non-Final Office Action dated May 14, 2019 in App. No. 16/230,912 (12 pp.); Non-Final Office Action dated Dec. 16, 2019 in App. No. 16/230,912 (9 pp.); Non-Final Office Action dated Oct. 10, 2019 in App. No. 16/235,377 (9 pp.).

These are prosecution-file documents, not § 102 prior art as to the claims; they are relevant only as evidence of what the examiner contemporaneously compared (16/230,912 and 16/235,377 are the sibling Nike cases filed the same day as 16/230,907).

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Bottom line — most relevant prior art, ranked

No § 102 anticipation of any of claims 1–20 by any reference cited on the face of US 10,617,174. The single feature that defeats every reference is the doffing ledge on the heel sidewall with a doffing surface declining at a doffing angle less than the forwardly inclined angle of the center connecting band — I found this in none of the cited art.

Items I flag rather than assert

• The examiner's reasoning is unavailable to me. I did not retrieve the Office Actions or Notice of Allowance for 16/230,907. The examiner's specific § 102/§ 103 positions may differ from my mapping; the (56) list alone does not reveal which claims were rejected over which reference.
• Non-prior-art neighbors, listed to avoid confusion. US 10,455,898 (Orand et al., "Footwear article with tongue reinforcer," filed the same day, Dec. 21, 2018, issued Oct. 29, 2019); US 16/839,744 → US 11,758,972 B2 (published US 2020/0229536 A1), which is an express continuation of 16/230,907; and US 18/233,578 → US 2023/0380539 A1. These claim priority from/through the '174 application and are not prior art to it. Likewise, the Dec. 28, 2018 Nike filings (US 16/725,860 → US 11,344,077 B2; provisional 62/785,948) post-date the '174 critical date and are not prior art to it (the reverse direction is possible).
• Two citation-list renderings disagree by one digit (Sullivan 2018/0338853 vs 2018/0338583; DE 102004045288 vs DE 102004005288). I have reported both literally and have not auto-corrected either. If you need certainty, pull the granted patent PDF from PatentCenter and read the (56) block directly.
• Pre-issuance "Clause" text ≠ issued claims. If any downstream analysis relies on the Google Patents "Clause 1–20" listing, it is analyzing a superseded claim set. Re-run any element-by-element comparison against the issued claims (reproduced above / on Justia).

I'll research the prior art references cited on the face of this patent to ground the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,617,174 B1 ("Footwear article with doffing ledge")

Prepared: April 26, 2026 · Assignee: NIKE, Inc. · Effective filing date: December 21, 2018 (no earlier priority claimed; application 16/230,907) · Status: Active; anticipated expiration 2038‑12‑21

Framing note. Obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is a legal conclusion that depends on factual findings (scope and content of the prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations). What follows is a technical-analyst's prima facie case, not an opinion of counsel. Where the granted claim text is not directly in the authoritative source I was given, I say so rather than paraphrasing it confidently.

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1. What the authoritative text actually establishes

Two things in the patent itself do most of the work in this analysis:

(a) The collar elevator is admitted prior art. The specification states, verbatim: "U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527 describes one or more collar elevators… at least some of the deformable members described in U.S. Pat. No. 9,820,527 include a medial lever arm, a lateral lever arm, and a center connecting band that couples the medial lever arm to the lateral lever arm." The same paragraph says the same of US 2018/0110292 and US 2018/0289109 (the "control bars" of Beers et al.). And all three are incorporated by reference in their entirety. This is an applicant admission that the entire "collar elevator having a medial lever arm, a lateral lever arm, and a center connecting band … operable to return the ankle collar from the lowered state to the raised state" element — present in all three independent claims — is old (US10617174, Background/Detailed Description).

(b) The problem the ledge solves is admitted to be user-known. The specification concedes that, absent the invention, "the wearer might have to use his or her hands… Further still, to remove the shoe of a left foot, the wearer might have to step with his/her right foot onto the heel counter of the left shoe, which can cause the upper materials to delaminate, pull away from the sole, or otherwise breakdown." That is an admission that the "step on the other shoe" doffing method was already in public use — the invention merely gives that pre-existing step a purpose-built, durable surface.

Claim-set corroboration. The authoritative page renders only some claim numerals, but the identical 20‑clause specification appears in the same family's continuation US 2023/0380539 A1 (application 18/233,578), whose clause text is complete (source). On that basis the independent claims are:

Dependents: 2–11 (to claim 1), 13–17 (to claim 12), 19–20 (to claim 18). Verify against the granted claims in Patent Center — that mapping is an inference from the clause ordering, not a direct read of the issue.

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2. Prior art qualification (as of Dec. 21, 2018)

* Note the identifier discrepancy flagged in the earlier summary: the family listings show both "DE 102004045288 A1" and "DE 102004005288" (the latter appears on the Pratt '527 face). I have not resolved which is correct and am not auto‑correcting either string.

Important structural finding: nearly all of the "References Cited" on this family are simply the reference list carried over from Pratt '527. That means the face of the '174 tells us almost nothing about what the examiner actually applied; only the prosecution history will.

Grace-period caveat. Pratt is a third party (FAST IP, LLC, Alpine, UT — the Kizik side of the hands‑free footwear art), so no § 102(b)(2)(C) exception is available against it. The Beers publications may be NIKE‑originated and could theoretically be excepted under § 102(b)(1)(A)/(b)(2)(C) — but that is irrelevant to § 103, because the '174 specification itself relies on them as descriptions of known collar elevators (admission), and Pratt independently discloses the same structure.

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3. Element-by-element: independent claim 1

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4. The prima facie § 103 case

Combination A — Pratt '527 (+ Beers '292/'109) in view of the heel‑ledge/doffing‑aid art

Motivation to combine (the strongest part of the case):

1. The problem is created by the primary reference. Pratt's whole point is a rebounding heel element that "directs a user's foot into … a shoe opening, and thereafter secures a rear portion of rapid-entry shoe about a user's heel" (Pratt '527 abstract). A heel-catch band that secures during wear necessarily resists removal. The '174 spec says exactly this: a forwardly inclined band "may also impede removal of the footwear article," generating the perpendicular force vector "A." A POSITA optimizing a Pratt-style shoe would immediately confront the doffing problem Pratt creates.
2. The known workaround is admitted public practice. The spec concedes wearers solved it by stepping on the opposing shoe's heel counter — and that this damages the upper. Converting a makeshift, damage-inducing step surface into an integral, reinforced, outward-protruding ledge on the sole sidewall is the definition of a known technique applied to a known problem with predictable results (KSR, In re ICON Health & Fitness).
3. Chamfered/flared heel sidewalls are themselves conventional. The claim's ledge is nothing more than a sidewall that bulges outward and drops from a higher (upper-adjacent) point to a lower (ground-adjacent) point. Sole sidewalls routinely include "curvatures, slope changes, indentions, dimples, nodes, protrusions, recesses, grooves, ribs, sipes" — the '174 spec says so itself. A POSITA reading Pratt needs only to shape the heel sidewall it already shows.
4. Analogous art. Every candidate reference (Pratt, Beers, Busse, and the shoe-removal art generally) is in the field of footwear and reasonably pertinent to the doffing problem. There is no non-analogous-art defense available.
5. No expected failure. Nothing in the art teaches away from a heel ledge; heel ledges/heel kicks are long-known on cycling shoes, ski boots, and equestrian boots exactly to receive the opposing foot.

Where Busse '438 fits. Busse discloses "a heel piece 215 which is pulled back to provide a foot opening 203 when heel shell 130 is pivoted to the open position, thereby allowing for rear entry into shoe 200" (uspto.report). It supplies (i) the concept of a shoe whose heel structure is reconfigured for entry/exit, and (ii) a reinforced heel structure at the sole/heel junction. It is a natural third reference for a POSITA combining entry/exit adaptations.

Combination B — The relative-angle limitation (doffing angle < forwardly inclined angle)

This is the limitation most vulnerable to attack, and it is also the one the drafter appears to have relied upon.

• Both angles are measured from the same plane (the horizontal reference plane). The claim recites a purely relational constraint, not an absolute value, in claims 1 and 12 (claim 12 adds only a 45°–70° band range).
• The two components' functions push the values apart in the claimed direction. A heel-retention band must be steep to form an overhanging catch surface (the spec: "a smaller forwardly inclined angle may provide a larger overhanging catch surface"). A foot-operated push surface must be shallow to avoid slippage (the spec: an angle "approaching horizontal" directs force "more vertically downward"). A POSITA independently optimizing each for its own function arrives at ledge < band as a matter of course. That is result‑effective optimization, and the spec supplies no criticality data — only qualitative explanation (force vectors A/B/C).
• Ranges. 40°–60° (claim 16), 45°–55° (claim 17), 52°–62° (claim 14), 50°–65°, 30°–70° are all broad, overlapping working ranges within a disclosed continuum. Under In re Peterson and In re Woodruff, a narrowed range within a disclosed broader range is prima facie obvious absent unexpected results. The spec's own rationale for the 40–60° range ("omits some larger angles that might not provide sufficient leverage and omits some smaller angles that may generate surfaces jutting too far outward") is a textbook routine‑optimization statement.

Combination C — Dimensional-ratio dependents (obvious per se)

• Claim 9: doffing-surface length ≥ ½ sole height (and the spec's ⅓, ½, ¾, ≥100% variants).
• Claim 18: ≥ 1⅓ × center-connecting-band length; claim 19: ≥ 1½ ×.

These are mere dimensional relationships with no asserted criticality, selected by routine engineering — In re Rose, In re Kuhle, Gardner v. TEC.

Combination D — Position-of-part dependents

Claims 6, 7, 8, 20 (medial side / lateral side / aligned with the longitudinal midline plane) and Claim 10 (surface "substantially flat") are the classic "position of a part" and "shape of a part" limitations. The number of options is small and the '174 spec concedes any of them work equally: "one or more doffing ledges may be positioned at one or more locations along the sidewall," including a ledge that continuously wraps medial‑to‑lateral.

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5. Claim-by-claim map (prima facie)

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6. Where the patentee's best rebuttal lies (and why it is likely weak)

(a) "The relative-angle limitation is the invention." Expect the argument that keying the doffing angle to the band angle (rather than choosing either in isolation) is a non‑obvious insight producing a synergistic doffing advantage. Rebuttal: the spec's own explanation is ordinary statics — force components perpendicular/parallel to two differently inclined planes. Vector "C" is more vertical than vector "B" because the ledge is flatter; that is arithmetic, not synergy.

(b) Secondary considerations. The strongest potential objective evidence is (i) commercial success of NIKE's hands-free/"step‑in" line (the Kizik-vs-Nike hands-free footwear race is well documented in the trade press), (ii) the long‑felt need the spec narrates, and (iii) failure of others (toe-digging, hand use, stepping on the heel counter → delamination). Practitioner note: (i) requires nexus to the claimed doffing angle combination, not merely to the collar elevator — and because the collar elevator is admitted prior art, a substantial share of any success may be attributable to the non-claimed feature. (iii) is weaker than it looks, because the "failures" are user workarounds rather than failed artisan attempts.

(c) Teaching away. None identified. The art does not disparage heel ledges or shallow doffing surfaces.

(d) The preamble/"formed by the sidewall" framing. Because the claim says the ledge is the sidewall bulging, not an added part, there is no assembly-invention story to tell (no new part, no new joint, no new material).

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7. Verification checklist before this becomes a filed position

1. Granted claim text. Pull the issued claims for 10,617,174 from Patent Center. The Google Patents rendering truncates claim 1 after "…wherein the doffing ledge comprises a doffing surface" and the 2nd/3rd independents after "…comprises a doffing." I have reconstructed the likely full wording ("that declines … at a doffing angle, which is relative to the horizontal reference plane and is less than the forwardly inclined angle") from the identical clause set in US 2023/0380539 A1 — confirm.
2. Prosecution history. Retrieve the file wrapper for 16/230,907. The fast ~16‑month issue and the fact that the "References Cited" list appears inherited from Pratt '527 means the actual examiner‑applied art is unknown from the face.
3. Unverified references. Read US 1,686,175 (Read), US 6,925,732 (Clarke), WO 2009/154350 A1, GB 2517399 A, EP 1059044 A1, CN 2438353 Y, CN 1403041 A, and DE 102004005288/DE 102004045288 A1. At least one of these may disclose a heel-sidewall protrusion or a doffing/removal ledge — which would convert Ground A from a § 103 case into a possible § 102 anticipation.
4. PTAB/ITC record. Per the earlier section, no litigation or PTAB activity was identified for this patent; a family-wide IPR/PGR search (and ITC EDIS) is still advisable, since validity challenges to sibling claims would reveal the art the family has actually faced.
5. Priority/PCT search reports. PCT/US2019/067595 ISR/WO dated 3/20/2020 (per the sibling patent's listing of "Other Publications") will show the examiner's applied art for the doffing‑ledge family.

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Bottom line

• The collar elevator recited in claims 1, 12 and 18 is admitted prior art (Pratt '527; Beers '292/'109), independently of any search.
• The doffing ledge is a purpose-built version of a doffing technique the specification concedes was already in public use (stepping on the opposing shoe's heel counter), applied to a heel sidewall whose outward flare/chamfer is conventional.
• The angle relationship (doffing angle < forwardly inclined angle) and the dimensional ratios are result‑effective optimizations with no criticality data.
• A prima facie case under § 103 therefore exists on Pratt '527 in view of the heel‑ledge/doffing‑aid art (e.g., Busse '438 and the shoe‑removal references of record) and the admitted public practice, with Beers '292/'109 as a secondary collar‑elevator reference. The claim set's viability likely turns on (i) whether any single unverified reference anticipates the ledge outright, and (ii) whether NIKE can establish nexus‑bearing secondary considerations. Verify items 1–3 above before relying on any of this.