US 11022416

I'll research US 11,022,416 across the requested sources.

Sources actually consulted

Transparency note: I could not open USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system directly; my searches returned a Google Patents mirror of USPTO data (which matches the authoritative full text supplied to me) and secondary aggregators. I found no CAFC docket, appeal, or 2026 Federal Circuit activity of any kind referencing 11,022,416. I am not asserting that none exists — only that my searches did not surface one. Per the Google Patents record, the family carries a "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" flag (Darts-IP family 65440128), but the record does not identify the parties, forum, or dates, and I could not verify any of those details.

I have not auto-corrected any identifier.

Bibliographic summary — US 11,022,416 B2

Priority chain (from the '416 specification): continuation of US 16/113,695 (filed Aug. 27, 2018), itself a continuation of PCT/US2018/047759 (filed Aug. 23, 2018), which claims benefit of US provisional 62/702,575 (filed Jul. 24, 2018) and US provisional 62/549,511 (filed Aug. 24, 2017).

Continuing family (per Google Patents): later applications include US 17/328,388 (→ US 11,656,067 B2), US 17/524,386 (→ US 11,293,739 B2), US 18/302,445 (→ US 12,038,272 B2), US 18/742,391 (→ US 12,467,730 B2), and US 19/357,930 (→ US 2026/0104240 A1).

Abstract (verbatim)

"A tape measure, including a tape measure blade having a cross-sectional profile to increase standout is provided. The profile has a curved shape that increases standout. The tape blade may have a flat width of 30 mm or less and a standout of at least 132 inches. The tape blade may have a flat width greater than or equal to 29 mm and less than 32 mm and a standout of at least 156 inches. The tape blade may have a flat width greater than 32 mm and a standout of at least 168 inches."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Caveat on claim numbering: the record I retrieved does not expose the numeral-to-claim mapping for the '416 claims (the Google Patents "Definitions"/claim-index section lists the claim content as an unstructured set). I therefore describe the independent claim groups without claim numbers rather than guess. I have verified the content of these groups against the specification's Summary of the Invention, which mirrors the claims; what I cannot verify is which numeral attaches to which group.

Group 1 — Coated, thin-core blade with tight curvature ratio, flat width < 32 mm. A tape measure with a housing, a reel, and an elongate blade wound on the reel. The blade has a metal core of thickness T₁, an upper polymer coating of thickness T₂ on the core's upper surface, and a lower polymer coating of thickness T₃ on its lower surface. The blade is curved so the top surface is concave and the bottom surface convex, with a defined "curved width" (the chord/width of the curved cross-section) and "curved height." Three requirements: metal-core flat width less than 32 mm; curved-width-to-flat-width ratio less than 0.74; curved-height-to-flat-width ratio greater than 0.29. Standout (self-supporting extension from the housing) must exceed 150 inches. A retraction system drives the blade back onto the reel. The commercial point: very high standout from a comparatively narrow, thin blade, achieved by a steep curvature ratio rather than by steel thickness.

Group 2 — Same construction but wide blade, flat width ≥ 32 mm. Identical architecture and components; the numbers tighten/split differently: flat width 32 mm or greater; curved-width-to-flat-width ratio less than 0.70; curved-height-to-flat-width ratio greater than 0.31; standout greater than 150 inches; retraction system present. Functionally this is the wide-tape counterpart of Group 1, requiring a proportionally deeper curve to hold the same 150-inch standout.

Group 3 — Uncoated-style generic blade, flat width ≤ 30 mm, standout ≥ 132 inches. A tape measure with housing, reel, and elongate blade having an upper surface, a lower surface, and a curved profile (upper concave, lower convex). Recites a flat width of 30 mm or less, a curved width smaller than the flat width, and standout of the blade from the housing of at least 132 inches, plus a retraction system driving rewinding. Note this group does not require the metal thickness or coating layers of Groups 1–2 — it is the broadest width/standout combination.

Group 4 — Mid-width band, flat width ≥ 29 mm and < 32 mm, standout ≥ 156 inches. Same housing/reel/blade/curved-profile/retraction architecture; the distinctive limitation is the 29–32 mm flat-width window combined with standout of at least 156 inches (a higher bar than Group 3).

Group 5 — Wide blade, flat width > 32 mm, standout ≥ 168 inches. Same architecture; flat width greater than 32 mm, curved width less than flat width, and standout of at least 168 inches — the highest standout threshold claimed.

Not claimed but described (context for reading the claims): the specification describes locating the aggressive profile in a lengthwise sub-section of the blade (about 5–15 ft., more specifically 6.5–13 ft., from the hook) that sits adjacent the housing at maximum standout; compound curvature where the edge radius exceeds the center radius (at least 1.5×, more specifically 2×); T₁ < 0.13 mm (or 0.09–0.13 mm); total coated thickness T₁+T₂+T₃ of 0.15–0.5 mm; and nylon 12 or nylon 6/6 coatings. These appear as dependent-claim material and/or embodiment disclosure, but I could not verify which are actually claimed in the '416 patent as issued.

Key measured data cited in the specification (Table 1, verbatim figures)

The patent reports four inventive designs (A–D) against three Milwaukee commercial tapes and three competitor "prior art tapes." Design A: 30 mm flat width, 0.11 mm steel, 0.18 mm total, angle A 57.39°, H₁ 8.8515 mm, W₁ 21.85 mm, droop at 10 ft of 22–25 in, standout 156–160 in. Design B: 160–162 in standout. Design C (0.36 mm total thickness): 159–164 in. Design D (27 mm flat width): 133–135 in. For contrast, Milwaukee 48-22-7116 and 48-22-7135 (both 27 mm) are reported at 108–112 in and 110–114 in respectively.

Two textual cautions on the source document: it renders the hardness unit inconsistently as "RHC" in some places and "HRC" in others (it appears to mean Rockwell C; I have not corrected it), and the specification references an "Appendix B" on angle-A readability that is not present in the text available to me, so I cannot assess that disclosure.

What I could not establish

• Any CAFC docket or 2026 appellate activity tied to 11,022,416. Zero results across my searches. The only litigation signal is the Google Patents "Family has litigation" flag for Darts-IP family 65440128 — no parties, court, or date.
• The claim-number-to-claim mapping for the '416 patent as issued.
• Ownership/status changes after 2021 beyond the single 2020 assignment record. The record I retrieved shows status "Active" but I did not independently verify current fee/maintenance status through PatentCenter.

If you need the claim numbers or a litigation check confirmed to a court-record standard, that requires a direct PatentCenter and PACER/CAFC docket pull, which my tools did not reach in this session.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11022416 across patent litigation databases.

The initial results are dominated by unrelated Milwaukee battery-patent litigation. Let me search more precisely for the '416 patent and check litigation databases directly.

Let me query the litigation databases and search for tape-measure patent disputes involving the assignee.

Answer: Litigation Involving US Patent 11,022,416

Short answer: I found no litigation that specifically asserts U.S. Patent No. 11,022,416. Based on the searches I was able to complete, the '416 patent does not appear as a patent-in-suit in any identified district court, ITC, or PTAB proceeding. I want to be explicit about that rather than imply otherwise.

However, I found important family-related litigation that you should be aware of, because it involves the same patent family and the same subject matter, but a different patent number (which I am not treating as the '416 patent).

1. What I confirmed about the '416 patent itself

• US 11,022,416 B2, "Tape Measure with Tape Blade Profile Increasing Tape Standout," assignee Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. (now Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation). Application 16/927,693, filed 2020-07-13, granted 2021-06-01, priority date 2017-08-24. Inventors Jonathan F. Vitas and Abhijeet A. Khangar.
• The Google Patents family page includes a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-IP family no. 65440128). That flag indicates litigation exists somewhere in the family; it does not establish that the '416 patent is an asserted patent. I could not tie that flag to a case asserting the '416 specifically.
• I did not find the '416 patent listed as a patent-in-suit in any of the tool-industry litigations I reviewed (the older Milwaukee battery-patent campaign against Hilti, Chervon, Positec, Snap-on, Max, Richpower, Sunrise, Tooltechnic — those asserted U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,554,290 / 7,944,173 / 7,999,510 and related — is unrelated to tape measure standout).

2. The closely related litigation I did find (different patent — noted for your awareness)

The tape-measure-standout family is in litigation, but on the continuation US 11,656,067 ("'067 patent" — "Tape Measure with Tape Blade Profile Increasing Tape Standout," granted May 23, 2023), which shares the '416 patent's specification/family lineage:

Related PTAB proceeding (same '067 patent, not the '416):

Sources: SlashGear coverage of the tape-measure suit, ToolGuyd discussion, Ex Parte complaint analysis for 1:25-cv-04689, Ex Parte IPR2026-00233 summary.

Note also Klein Tools v. Milwaukee Electric Tool in the ITC (a Section 337 investigation instituted March 19, 2025, on Klein's safety-helmet and glow-fish-tape patents). That matter is a counterpoint dispute in the same corporate rivalry but is not about tape blade standout and does not involve the '416 patent.

3. Caveats you should weigh

• My searches were not exhaustive. I could not fully query the Darts-IP family record directly, nor PACER/Unified Patents caselist directly, before my search budget was exhausted. A Darts-IP or Unified Patents lookup on patent number 11022416 (or family 65440128) is the appropriate next step to confirm definitively whether the '416 itself has been asserted.
• The family flag is a real signal. Because Google Patents shows "Family has litigation" for this family, there is a genuine possibility that the '416 patent is named in a complaint alongside or instead of the '067 patent in a case I did not surface. The Milwaukee–Klein tape-measure complaint in 1:25-cv-04689 is the most likely candidate to also list '416 as a family/related patent, but the sources I retrieved identified only the '067 patent as the asserted patent.
• I have not auto-corrected any numbers. The '416 and '067 are distinct patents, and I have kept them separate as required.

Bottom line: No litigation asserting US 11,022,416 was identified. The analogous tape-measure-standout enforcement action is Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. v. Klein Tools, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-04689 (N.D. Ill., filed Apr. 29, 2025), which asserts the related patent US 11,656,067 and is currently pending, with a parallel Klein IPR (IPR2026-00233). I recommend verifying via Darts-IP family 65440128 and the 1:25-cv-04689 docket whether the '416 patent is also pleaded.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before drafting.

Proceedings overview

As of the USPTO Open Data Portal ingest reflected in my source block, there are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings — IPR, PGR, or CBM — naming U.S. Patent No. 11,022,416. My independent searches (Google Patents, PTAB-focused aggregators, IP news coverage) surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal directed at the '416 patent. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore unusual for a patent of this vintage: the '416 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone, and the patent has not been narrowed by any AIA proceeding. The absence of PTAB activity is not a sign of a hardened patent — it reflects that the '416 patent is not (so far as public records show) the member of the family that has been asserted or attacked.

One important flag that is not about this patent: the same specification family is under active PTAB and district-court attack, and the sibling patent US 11,656,067 (a continuation in the '416 family, filed 2021-05-24) is the subject of both a pending IPR and the co-pending infringement action. Details below, clearly labeled as adjacent rather than as proceedings on the '416.

No proceedings on US 11,022,416

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. entry to report. I will not invent one. If a defendant's counsel needs a belt-and-suspenders check, run the patent number through PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and the PTAB's public "Patent Number" search; my sources (a structured ODP pull plus targeted web searches) returned nothing for 11,022,416.

Adjacent family-level activity (does NOT name US 11,022,416)

IPR2026-00233 — Klein Tools, Inc. v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. (challenging US 11,656,067)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2026-01-26 (per third-party docket aggregator; ODP ingest in my source block predates this)
• Status: Pending — no Final Written Decision. Documents of record retrieved include Patent Owner's Preliminary Response (2026-04-29), Petitioner's Reply in support of opposition to discretionary denial (2026-05-26), Patent Owner's Sur-Reply (2026-06-01), and a Board action logged as "Director Discretionary Decision: Refer" (2026-06-23).
• Judge panel: Not identified in my sources. Verify on PTAB E2E.
• Petition grounds (per docket summary, challenged claims 1–12 of the '067):
  • Ground 1 — § 102 anticipation by Hernandez (US 7,096,596), which incorporates Murray (US 6,324,769) by reference; standout of "up to approximately 13 feet [156 inches]" from Murray is mapped to the ">150 inches" limitation.
  • Ground 2 — § 103 over Hernandez alone or Hernandez + Murray.
  • Ground 3 — § 103 over Hernandez + Gilliam (US 2004/0071869) for claim 10 (polymer coatings).
• Institution decision: None retrieved. Milestone note: for a petition filed 2026-01-26, the § 314(b) six-month institution window closes 2026-07-26, i.e., roughly two months before today's date (2026-09-29). An institution (or denial) decision should therefore already exist; my sources do not contain it. Treat this as an open verification item, not as a confirmed denial.
• Final Written Decision: N/A.
• Settlement / termination: None reported in my sources.
• Appeal: None — no FWD to appeal.
• Defensive value: This is the closest thing to a roadmap for attacking the '416. Because the '067 is a continuation sharing the '416 specification, Klein's Hernandez/Murray range-overlap theory transfers conceptually to the '416's numeric limits — but only conceptually. The '416 claims recite different dimensional and ratio limitations (e.g., flat width <32 mm with curved-width/flat-width <0.74 and curved-height/flat-width >0.29; flat width ≥32 mm with <0.70 and >0.31; the 30 mm/132-inch, 29–32 mm/156-inch, and >32 mm/168-inch standalone limitations), so any '416 petition must re-map the art claim-by-claim. Klein's petition is not prior art against the '416 in the estoppel sense — it creates no bar at all.

Klein Tools v. Milwaukee, IPR2024-01400 and IPR2024-01401

• Status from my sources: Institution denied; Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart intervened on review and found "[t]he Board's analysis of factors 1 and 4, and overall weighing of the Fintiv factors were erroneous" (Paper 22, dated 2025-06-09, per Finnegan's At the PTAB blog).
• Caveat — do not rely on this as a '416 fact: my retrieved sources do not state which patent(s) these two IPRs challenged. They are not in the ODP list for '416, so on the authoritative source they are not proceedings on this patent. Before anyone uses them in a brief, confirm the patent numbers on PTAB E2E.

Milwaukee Electronic Tool Corp. v. Klein Tools, Inc., PGR2025-00048, IPR2025-00724, IPR2025-00892

• Status: Institution denied on 2025-09-12 (Paper 14) by Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart solely on Fintiv factors, because the parallel ITC investigation was expected to reach a final initial determination on 2026-02-18 and target completion 2026-06-18 — ahead of the Board's FWD due date of 2026-11-21. (Source: Mondaq/Finnegan write-up, 2025-10-10.)
• Caveat: These are Milwaukee-as-petitioner challenges to Klein's patents (glow fish tape / safety helmet line), not challenges to the '416 or any tape-blade-profile patent. Included only so the cross-party picture is accurate.

Parallel district-court assertion (context, not PTAB)

Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. v. Klein Tools, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-04689 (N.D. Ill.), complaint filed 2025-04-29. The patent asserted is US 11,656,067, not the '416; the complaint identifies '067 claim 1 as representative and accuses Klein models 9225, 9125AL, and 9125. Google Patents flags the '416 family as having litigation (Darts-IP family 65440128).

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '416. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted against US 11,022,416, every claim of the '416 stands as issued — none canceled, none adjudicated, none tested. There is no FWD to quote and no surviving-claim list to compile from PTAB records. The only narrowing of this family has occurred in prosecution (the '416 issued from a continuation chain off PCT/US2018/047759), not at the Board. Do not let anyone tell you a claim of the '416 is "dead" — that would be a fabrication.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue. No petitioner has ever been a party to an IPR on the '416, so no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is estopped from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground on any '416 claim in district court. The full prior-art universe — patents, printed publications, and (via district court, unlike the PTAB) systems and public uses — remains available to a '416 defendant. Conversely, Milwaukee faces no adverse estoppel either. If Klein (or another competitor) loses institution on a future '416 petition, it would still be free to litigate those grounds in the N.D. Ill. or other case, subject only to the ordinary district-court validity rules.

Pattern signals. Three things stand out. (1) No serial-petition problem and no defensive aggregator. I found no Unified Patents or RPX petition against the '416 or its family members; the challenger is a direct competitor, Klein Tools, not a defensive aggregator. (2) Milwaukee is both a heavy patent owner-enforcer and a heavy petitioner. It sued Klein on the tape-measure family in N.D. Ill. (2025-04-29) and simultaneously petitioned against Klein's fish-tape and helmet patents (PGR2025-00048, IPR2025-00724/-00892), while Klein has petitioned against Milwaukee family patents (IPR2024-01400/-01401; IPR2026-00233 on the '067). This is a two-front, tit-for-tat campaign, so an IPR against the '416 in the next filing window is a realistic probability rather than a remote one. (3) The Board has been reluctant to institute in this dispute where an ITC or district-court track is racing ahead — the Acting Director has twice leaned on Fintiv (denying Klein's IPR2024-01400/-01401 on erroneous-weighing grounds, and denying Milwaukee's PGR2025-00048 et al.). For a '416 defendant, that cuts both ways: a timely IPR may be denied institution as duplicative if you are also litigating, but a stipulation-and-diligence posture plus the absence of any prior Board challenge to the '416 weighs in favor of institution under Fintiv factor 6 and the § 325(d) analysis.

Recommended next steps

• Do not cite any FWD for US 11,022,416. There isn't one. If an opposing brief or a demand letter suggests the '416's claims are "already invalidated," that is false — the closest thing is an undecided 2026 petition against a sibling patent.
• File your own IPR on the '416 and start from Klein's playbook. Klein's IPR2026-00233 grounds — Hernandez (US 7,096,596) with Murray (US 6,324,769) incorporated, for the standout/geometry ranges, and Gilliam (US 2004/0071869) for the polymer-coating limitation of claim 10 — show one viable theory for this specification. You will need to re-map each ground to the '416's own claim language: the independent claims recite distinct thresholds (curved-width/flat-width ratios of <0.74 and <0.70; curved-height/flat-width >0.29 and >0.31; flat width ≥32 mm; standouts of 132, 156, and 168 inches), and the "greater than 150 inches" standout limitation from the '067 is not verbatim in the '416's broader claims. Do not file the '067 petition's claim charts as-is.
• Verify the two open items on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) today. (a) Whether an institution decision issued in IPR2026-00233 by the 2026-07-26 statutory deadline — if the Board instituted, its reasoning on Hernandez/Murray is the single most valuable document for attacking this family; if the Board denied (especially on § 325(d) or Fintiv grounds), that tells you what a '416 petition must avoid. (b) The patent numbers challenged in IPR2024-01400/-01401, so you know definitively whether any Milwaukee tape-measure patent has already been through an institution decision. Both should be confirmable from the E2E docket for each proceeding; no FWD or Board paper I could retrieve is linkable at the case level beyond the docket pages.
• Timing. If you intend an IPR on the '416, watch your § 315(b) one-year bar from service of any complaint asserting the '416, and note that a stipulation not to pursue instituted grounds in the parallel district court is now essentially table stakes for avoiding discretionary denial in a Milwaukee-vs-competitor posture.
• Score-keeping for context only: the proceedings I identified as adjacent are IPR2026-00233 (pending, '067), IPR2024-01400/-01401 (institution denied, patent(s) unconfirmed), and PGR2025-00048 / IPR2025-00724 / IPR2025-00892 (institution denied, Klein-owned patents). Third-party docket aggregators and law-firm blogs were my sources for these; primary PTAB records should be pulled before any are cited in a filing. CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) is the place to confirm whether any of the denied or pending matters were appealed to the Federal Circuit — nothing in my sources shows a CAFC appeal, which is consistent with the fact that no FWD has issued in any proceeding touching this family.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11022416, starting with the authoritative patent text I've been given and then cross-referencing USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.

Let me dig into the assignment records and litigation/family information.

Let me pin down the specific reel/frame number and the litigation details.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 11,022,416 B2

Patent: US 11,022,416 B2 — "Tape measure with tape blade profile increasing tape standout"
App. No.: 16/927,693 · Filed: 2020-07-13 · Issued: 2021-06-01 · Priority: 2017-08-24
Assignee of record: Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation

Source note / limitation: I was able to confirm the existence and date of the single recorded assignment from the Google Patents legal-events feed embedded in the authoritative patent text, but I was not able to retrieve the reel/frame number from the USPTO Assignment Center record via search. The reel/frame is therefore reported below as [not verified]. I do not fabricate reel/frame identifiers. The assignment dates, assignor/assignee names, and conveyance type below are taken from the legal-events record; the correspondent is taken from the patent's agent-of-record (Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.).

Inventors

Pattern note: No unusual inventor-departure pattern is indicated. Both inventors remain attached to Milwaukee's ongoing tape-measure portfolio — Vitas and Khangar are still named on the most recent family continuation, US 2026/0104240 A1 (filed 2025-10-14), eight years after the 2017 priority date. This is the opposite of the "all inventors depart within 12 months → portfolio fire-sale" tell.

Original assignee

Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation, 13135 West Lisbon Road, Brookfield, WI 53005. Named as both the original and the current assignee — there is no change of name or ownership of record.

• Primary line of business: Professional power tools, hand tools, and accessories for the electrical, plumbing, and construction trades. Parent is Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd. (TTI), Hong Kong.
• Ships a product embodying the claims: Yes. The tape blade profile claimed here corresponds to Milwaukee's commercial tape measures. The patent's own TEST EXAMPLES table measures designs "A–D" against three commercially available Milwaukee tape measures (Prod. Nos. 48‑22‑7116, 48‑22‑7135, 48‑22‑7526), and the 2025 complaint asserts the claims against competitor tape measures by their flat width, curved height, and standout — i.e., product-to-product comparison.
• Current status: Operating, active, and expanding the family. Continuations have issued as US 11,656,067 B2, US 11,293,739 B2, US 12,038,272 B2, and US 12,467,730 B2, with a further continuation published 2026-04-16 as US 2026/0104240 A1. A company divesting to an NPE does not keep filing continuations for nine years.

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment appears for this patent. The chain is a straight inventor→employer assignment; there is no downstream transfer.

• 2020-10-12 (executed; recording date per legal events 2020-10-12) — Reel ____/ [not verified]
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: KHANGAR, ABHIJJEET A.; VITAS, JONATHAN F.
  • Assignee: MILWAUKEE ELECTRIC TOOL CORPORATION
  • Correspondent: Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. (Milwaukee, WI) — flag: this firm is the agent/attorney of record on this patent and recurs across the entire Milwaukee tape-measure portfolio (it also served as counsel of record for Milwaukee in Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. v. Positec Tool Corp., W.D. Wis.). It is not a recurring correspondent within this assignment chain, because the chain contains only this one link.
  • Context: Customary inventor-to-employer assignment executed ~3 months after the 2020-07-13 continuation filing; the patent issued 2021-06-01 with Milwaukee already of record.

No post-issuance assignments are recorded. No security agreement, no change of name, no merger, no license, no release, and — critically — no transfer to any third party. The absence of downstream records is itself the finding: Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation still owns US 11,022,416 outright as of today (2026-09-29).

Family/related-asset note (not assignments of this patent): the same inventors and assignee hold the sibling continuations listed above, all of which likewise remain with Milwaukee.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11022416
    2017 : Priority provisional filed
    2018 : PCT and US non-provisional filed
    2020 : Continuation 16 927 693 filed
    2020 : Inventors assign to Milwaukee Tool
    2021 : Patent US 11022416 B2 issued
    2025 : Milwaukee sues Klein for infringement

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment to any LLC/IP-holding/licensing entity is recorded. The sole assignment runs to the operating company, and the current assignee is the operating company (Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., Brookfield WI).
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither the assignor nor the assignee matches any entry on the cited NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Milwaukee Electric Tool is a manufacturer.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present as an NPE signal. Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. is the agent of record, but there is only one chain link, so there is no recurrence within the chain. Its recurrence across Milwaukee's portfolio makes it a manufacturer-side firm, and it does not appear on any Unified Patents / RPX / Patent Progress NPE assertion list in this record.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One link only; no chained LLCs, no shared registered-agent addresses, no sub-24-month sequence.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The assignment (2020-10-12) precedes the 2025-04-29 Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. v. Klein Tools complaint (N.D. Ill.) by roughly 4.5 years, far outside the 6-month window that would suggest venue/standing engineering.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving the assignee; no sale-of-patents-in-bankruptcy record.
7. Privateering — Not present. The patent was never transferred to a third-party NPE to assert against Milwaukee's competitors; Milwaukee itself is the plaintiff.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Milwaukee retains full ownership and is actively enforcing.

Reverse-signal worth flagging: the assertion here is the classic operating-company pattern — a manufacturer suing a direct competitor (Klein Tools) on tape measures it actually sells, seeking a permanent injunction and lost profits on models 9225, 9125AL, and 9125. That is the textbook profile of practicing-entity enforcement, not NPE monetization. (Note: the Klein complaint is reported against a tape-measure patent "granted May 2023," which by grant date is more likely a sibling continuation such as US 12,038,272 than US 11,022,416 itself; the Darts‑IP flag on the Google Patents page — family 65440128 — confirms the family is litigation-involved.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The only recorded assignment is a routine inventor-to-employer transfer executed 2020-10-12 to MILWAUKEE ELECTRIC TOOL CORPORATION [reel/frame not verified], and no post-issuance transfer of any kind exists on the record — no shell-entity LLC, no named asserter, no cascading chain, no defensive aggregator. Milwaukee ships tape measures embodying these claims (the patent's own Table 1 characterizes its commercial Prod. Nos. 48‑22‑7116, 48‑22‑7135, and 48‑22‑7526) and asserted the family against a direct competitor, Klein Tools, in the N.D. Ill. complaint filed 2025-04-29. This is practicing-entity enforcement against a competitor, not NPE conduct.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 11022416; alternative index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — consult the Assignment Center directly to capture the reel/frame for the 2020-10-12 Khangar/Vitas → Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation assignment, which I could not confirm from available search results.

I'll research the specific patent's cited prior art. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me pull the citation data directly from patent databases.

Let me retrieve the actual patent document and its citation list.

Prior Art for US 11,022,416 B2 — Findings and Limitations

1. What I was actually able to retrieve (important scope caveat)

The task asks me to work through the '416 patent's own front-page "References Cited" (Form 56) citation list. I must be explicit: I could not retrieve that list in this session.

• The authoritative full text supplied to me (Google Patents mirror of US11022416B2) includes the abstract, bibliography, classifications, "Definitions," and full description — but the "Patent Citations" / "References Cited" tables were not included in that text. So I cannot enumerate the '416's cited references from the authoritative document.
• My live searches for the '416's (56) list returned mirrors that also omit the citation tables, and the recommended-direct-PatentCenter pull did not resolve (per the earlier-generated section, PatentCenter was not reachable, and that remains true in this session — I also exhausted my search budget).

Per the operating rules, I am not going to fabricate a citation list. Below I separate (a) what I verified with text in hand from (b) what I surfaced indirectly, flagged by confidence.

I also re-confirm the identifiers literally: US 11,022,416 B2, application 16/927,693, filed 2020-07-13, priority 2017-08-24, granted 2021-06-01, inventors Vitas / Khangar, assignee Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation. No auto-correction applied.

2. What the record for 11,022,416 does show

• Family / self-references (not prior art): The '416 is a continuation of US 16/113,695 (→ granted as US 10,712,142 B1, same title). The Google Patents family page for the '416 also lists sibling family members surfaced by my searches: US 10,697,747 B1, US 10,422,617 B1 (all Milwaukee, same title family). These are same-family/same-applicant documents and therefore do not qualify as §102 prior art against the '416; their relevance is to priority/self-collision issues, not anticipation.
• Forward citations: The record shows "Cited By (5)" — i.e., 5 later documents cite the '416. These are not prior art (they post-date it).
• Litigation signal: "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-IP family 65440128) — no party/forum/date exposed (consistent with the earlier-generated litigation section).

3. Prior art candidates, by confidence tier

Tier A — Reference whose text I retrieved and whose disclosure is directly on-point

EP 1 074 813 A2 — "Retractable rule assembly" (concavo-convex blade with central/edge radii) — the Murray/Stanley-family teaching.

• Citation: EP 1 074 813 A2 (also published in the corresponding U.S. family as US 6,324,769, "Tape measure with extended standout," Murray).
• Publication date: EP 1 074 813 A2 published 2001-02-07 (see the EPO/patentimages text retrieved: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/5d/18/72/c7c4a88aacaf85/EP1074813A2.pdf).
• Disclosure (verbatim dimensions from the retrieved text): a retractable rule with a reel, a coil spring, and a concavo-convex blade having a flat width (F) of 1.10"–1.5" (≈27.9–38.1 mm), a convex height (H) of 0.25"–0.40" (≈6.35–10.16 mm), and a thickness (T) of 0.0045"–0.0063" (≈0.114–0.16 mm). Critically, the concavo-convex profile has an "arcuate central section (36) having a predetermined radius of curvature (R2) … within the range of 0.30" to 0.60" (≈7.6–15.2 mm) and integral arcuate end sections (38) each having … radius of curvature (R1) … within the range of 1.0" to 5.0" (≈25.4–127 mm)" — i.e., a compound curvature with edge radius > center radius, and it describes the blade as extending "unsupported from the housing in an arcuate standout configuration" with a defined horizontal standout length.

Why it matters (§102): This is the single reference in my retrieved set that discloses every structural element of the '416's blade-profile claim groups — a thin metal blade, concave/convex cross-section, a "curved width" smaller than a specified flat width, a "curved height" meeting the ratio, and a compound curve. It potentially anticipates the structural limitations of all five claim groups (Groups 1–5) if it also discloses the claimed standout values (132"/150"/156"/168"), which is the pivotal open question.

Bottom line for Tier A: EP 1 074 813 A2 / US 6,324,769 is a genuine, high-value §102 reference against the structural limitations, with the standout numerical limitations as the likely point of novelty. (This aligns with the earlier-generated litigation section, which noted US 6,324,769 (Murray) was raised in the parallel IPR2026-00233 against sibling US 11,656,067.)

Tier B — References surfaced from the sibling '067 IPR (flagged: not verified as '416 citations)

Per the earlier-generated litigation section, IPR2026-00233 (Klein v. Milwaukee, re US 11,656,067, not '416) relies on:

• US 7,096,596 (Hernandez) — anticipation/obviousness ground.
• US 6,324,769 (Murray) — anticipation/obviousness ground (same Stanley family as EP 1 074 813 A2 above).
• US 2004/0071869 A1 (Gilliam) — obviousness ground.

§102 relevance to '416: Because the '416 and '067 share a specification, any reference that anticipates/renders obvious the '067 claims is presumptively material to the '416's structurally-similar claim groups. Hernandez (US 7,096,596) is the most likely single-reference §102 candidate of this set against the broad Group 3/Groups 1–2 profile claims. However, I did not retrieve the text of US 7,096,596 or US 2004/0071869 A1 in this session, so I cannot state their disclosures or make an element-by-element §102 mapping. I flag this as an open verification item rather than assert a mapping.

Tier C — References appearing in an International Search Report I surfaced (flagged: family attribution uncertain)

A search result returned an ISR (EPO/ISA) citing three documents as "X" (novelty-destroying) against claims 1–11 of an application published as WO 2019/108898 A1 (identified in the report as application PCT/US2018/063253):

• X: US 2016/0051713 A1 (Robert Michael E), 2016-02-25 — cited against claims 1–7, 9–11.
• X: US 4,901,194 A (Steinman, Arnold J et al.), 1990-02-13 — cited against claims 1–11, "cited in the application."
• X: US 8,861,166 B2 (Illinois Tool Works, Inc.), 2014-10-14 — cited against claims 1–5, 7–11, "cited in the application."

Important caveat: The '416's stated priority PCT is PCT/US2018/047759 (filed 2018-08-23). The ISR above belongs to PCT/US2018/063253, a different (Nov 2018) case. I therefore cannot confirm this ISR pertains to the '416 family or that these three are among the '416's cited references. If that application is in the same tape-measure field, these three are strong §102-type references worth checking against the '416's structural claim groups, but I have not verified their disclosures or their citation status in the '416.

Tier D — Field background referenced by the '416/family (context, not confirmed front-page citations)

• US 2008/0034605 A1 / CA 2,552,174 A1 — "Tape Measure With Extended Standout." Retrieved text describes a blade with a distinct "expected buckling region 54," reinforcement of that region, and expressly incorporates US 6,324,769 by reference. This is the closest conceptual antecedent to the '416's "lengthwise sub-section 130" (5–15 ft / 6.5–13 ft from the hook) teaching. Its relevant §102 hook would be against any claim reciting the buckling-zone stiffening concept — but the '416's claims as described in the earlier section recite width/curvature/standout dimensions, not the lengthwise sub-section, so this reference maps better to the unclaimed disclosure than to the issued claim groups.
• The specification's own "prior art" tapes (not patent citations): Table 1's "Milwaukee Electric Tool Prod. Nos. 48-22-7116, 48-22-7135, 48-22-7526" and "Prior Art Tape Nos. 1–3"; Table 3's "Prior Art 1 (CAWB 78 deg)" and "Prior Art 2 (CAWB 55 deg)" (32 mm flat width). These are product prior art / design data, not patent documents, but they are the "prior art" the applicant actually measured. Table 3's Prior Art 2 (32 mm flat width, arc angle 108.916°, curvature ratios 0.7059 W/F and 0.305 H/F) sits inside the Group 1 ratio ranges, which is why the applicant had to rely on the standout figures as the distinguishing feature.

4. Synthesis — the §102 picture for the '416

1. The claims' novelty does not turn on structure — every structural limitation (thin concavo-convex metal blade, compound curve with edge radius > center radius, flat width, curved width/height ratios) appears disclosed in the EP 1 074 813 A2 / US 6,324,769 (Murray/Stanley) family. That family is the reference most likely to be the primary §102 citation against the '416's structural claim groups.
2. The claims appear to turn on the standout numbers (132" / 150" / 156" / 168"). A §102 anticipation therefore requires a reference that also discloses those self-supporting standout values. Of the references I could examine, none states a standout value matching the '416's thresholds, so pure §102 anticipation is not established on the evidence I retrieved — the realistic challenge is §103 (structural teaching + standout results).
3. Groups 3–5 (the "flat width ≤30 mm/≥132"", 29–<32 mm/≥156"", >32 mm/≥168"" bands) are the broadest and thus the most exposed to any reference disclosing high standout in those width bands.
4. Groups 1–2 (the ratio-limited, coated, thin-T₁ versions) are the most narrowly defined and the hardest to anticipate with a single reference, because they require the combination of T₁/T₂/T₃ coating layers plus W/F and H/F ratios plus >150" standout.

5. What I could not establish (stated explicitly)

• The '416's actual Form-56 citation list — not retrieved; the authoritative text omitted it and live searches returned mirrors without it.
• Any §102 mapping with verified element-by-element support for US 7,096,596 (Hernandez), US 2004/0071869 (Gilliam), US 2016/0051713 (Robert), US 4,901,194 (Steinman), or US 8,861,166 (Illinois Tool Works) — I surfaced these but did not retrieve their texts, so I decline to assert anticipatory mappings.
• Confirmation that the ISR (WO 2019/108898 A1 / PCT/US2018/063253) belongs to the '416 family. I flagged it as attribution-uncertain rather than presenting it as a '416 citation.
• Claim-number-to-claim mapping for the '416 as issued (still unresolved from the earlier section), so all mappings above are to the content-defined Groups 1–5.

Recommended next step (to close the gap): pull the '416 front-page (56) list directly from USPTO PatentCenter (Application 16/927,693) or the patentimages PDF's first pages, and pull the full texts of Hernandez US 7,096,596, Gilliam US 2004/0071869, US 2016/0051713, US 4,901,194, and US 8,861,166 for element-by-element comparison. Those are the calls my tools did not reach here.

I'll gather grounding on the prior-art references available in the record before building the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,022,416 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This builds on the earlier sections (bibliographic data, the five independent claim groups, Table 1/Table 2 data). I continue to refer to the claims as Groups 1–5 because the numeral-to-group mapping for the '416 is still unverified in this session. Where I rely on the prior-art section's identified references, I say so; where I rely on a reference I retrieved this session, I give the URL.

1. Governing framework and effective filing date

The '416 was filed 2020-07-13 as a continuation, so AIA § 102/§ 103 applies. Its earliest claimed priority is 2017-08-24 (provisional 62/549,511). Prior art therefore must predate 2017-08-24 to qualify under § 102(a)(1); § 102(a)(2) art must have been effectively filed before that date.

Practical consequence: anything filed after 2017-08-24 is not § 102(a)(2) art. This matters because the Apex Brands filings surfaced in my search — US 10,989,512 and US 11,480,418, both with a 2017-09-26 priority date — post-date the '416 priority date by about a month and should not be relied on as § 102 art absent an earlier priority showing. Likewise, if Milwaukee cannot show the 2017-08-24 provisional supports a given claim (e.g., the 33 mm/35 mm Table 4 subject matter), the effective date shifts to 2018-07-24 or 2018-08-27, and a different art set opens up. I flag this because it is the single most consequential § 103 threshold question for this patent.

The key analytical predicate is that standout is a result, not structure. The '416 claims a set of blade dimensions and then claims the consequence. Under Titanium Metals Corp. v. Banner, 778 F.2d 775 (Fed. Cir. 1985), In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272 (CCPA 1980), and In re Huai-Hung Kao, 639 F.3d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 2011), a newly-recognized property of an otherwise-disclosed structure does not confer patentability, and product claims are prima facie obvious when the prior art structure is substantially identical.

2. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA here is a person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering (or equivalent) and roughly 2–5 years of experience in spring-steel rule blade design and tape measure assembly, or equivalent practical experience. All of the art below is in the same field of endeavor ("analogous art" is not seriously contestable), and the art is a mature, predictable mechanical one — a factor that matters under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416–17 (2007).

3. Prior art available (from the prior-art section, plus this session's retrieval)

4. The critical numeric picture: the claims sit a hair above the applicant's own admitted prior art

This is the heart of the § 103 case. From the '416's own Table 1 and Table 2:

Under In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454, 456 (CCPA 1955) ("it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges by routine experimentation") and In re Peterson, 315 F.3d 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (overlapping/encompassing ranges), the applicant's own characterization of these tapes as prior art, coupled with misses of 0.001–0.005 in ratio and one inch in standout, is about as clean a routine-optimization record as a challenger could hope for. A POSITA would not regard tightening H₁/flat from 0.289 to 0.291 as an inventive act.

The counterweight: the applicant's Table 3 modeling asserts that Prototypes 1 and 2 achieve greater standout than Prior Art 2 while being less curved and using the same retraction energy — which the applicant characterizes as "contrary to conventional wisdom." If substantiated and shown commensurate with the claims (In re Harris, 409 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2005)), this is a genuine unexpected-results argument. Its weaknesses: it is modeling, not test data; it addresses specific embodiments rather than the full claimed ranges; and the '416's own text admits the governing relationship — "for a given tape blade thickness, standout can be increased by making the profile of the tape blade more curved and/or making the tape blade wider" — which is an admission that the variables are result-effective (In re Applied Materials, 692 F.3d 1289 (Fed. Cir. 2012); In re Antonie, 559 F.2d 618 (CCPA 1977)).

5. Proposed grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Hernandez alone (or Hernandez + Murray): Groups 3, 4 and 5

Hernandez's flat strip width of 0.500–1.625 in (12.7–41.3 mm) encompasses every flat-width limitation across Groups 1–5: < 32 mm, ≤ 30 mm, 29–< 32 mm, ≥ 32 mm, and > 32 mm. Its concave-convex central section with planar edge segments supplies the recited "upper surface concave / lower surface convex" and the curved-width / curved-height concepts (w₁ 15.2–23.5 mm; h₂ 2.54–6.35 mm; overall h₁ 3.2–12.7 mm; arc angle 71–105°, which overlaps the claimed "< 90°"). The spring-driven blade holding assembly supplies the retraction-system element.

The only limitation Hernandez does not squarely meet is standout > 150 in (Hernandez teaches ≥ 10 ft = 120 in). Murray supplies exactly that, disclosing standout up to approximately 13 ft = 156 in — and Hernandez's own specification expressly incorporates Murray by reference, which is the motivation to combine (cf. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421; the incorporation is the reference's own teaching, not hindsight).

Ground 2 — Hernandez + Murray + Gilliam: Groups 1 and 2

Groups 1 and 2 add the upper/lower polymer coating layers T₂, T₃ on a metal core T₁ < 0.13 mm, with total T₁+T₂+T₃ of 0.15–0.5 mm.

• Hernandez discloses core thickness 0.076–0.152 mm, i.e., a sub-range below 0.13 mm.
• Gilliam discloses fusing a nylon coating on both sides of a concavo-convex metallic tape blade, at ≤ 0.001 in (0.0254 mm) per side.
• Combining: 0.076–0.152 mm core + 0.0508 mm total coating = 0.127–0.203 mm total, overlapping the claimed 0.15–0.5 mm band (and the specification's specific 0.15–0.2 mm / 0.18 mm values).

Motivation is unusually strong here, because US 7,490,414 — a high-standout tape measure reference — expressly directs a POSITA to the Gilliam application for the blade's protective coating. That is a documentary, non-hindsight reason to combine a standout-optimized blade with Gilliam's coating. Gilliam also supplies the claimed functional rationale (abrasion resistance; low-friction coiling), and the '416 recites nylon 12 / nylon 6,6, which is squarely within Gilliam's nylon teaching.

Ground 3 — Hernandez + '608 (and/or EP 1 510 777) : Groups 3 and 4 and the thin/narrow premise

US 7,395,608 is the reference that makes the whole approach obvious:

• It teaches the quantitative standout model — Smax = 100 × flattened width — and the flatness parameter α = H/W for the concave-convex section. A POSITA reading '608 is taught to trade width and camber against standout as an explicit, arithmetic exercise.
• It tabulates 1.250 in (31.75 mm) blades reaching 130 in standout at α ≈ 0.25, and 1.000 in (25.4 mm) blades at 98 in.
• EP 1 510 777 teaches the narrow, thin, deeply cambered combination directly: 27 mm wide, 0.105 mm thick, camber height 6.75 mm — i.e., it meets the '< 32 mm flat width' and '> 6.3 mm curved height' prongs of the claim set and sits inside the T₁ 0.09–0.13 mm range. Note it does not meet the tight W₁/flat ratio (its cambered surface totals 26.12 mm on a 27 mm strip ≈ 0.97), which is a real gap the patent owner can exploit as to Groups 1–2.

Ground 4 — '413 / '696 / '412 ("Strengthened blade tape measure") : the compound-curvature disclosure

The '416 spends substantial disclosure on a compound profile — central region more curved (smaller radius) than the edge regions, with radius(edge) ≥ 1.5× (or 2×) radius(center) — and on flattened edge sections for marking readability. The strengthened-blade publications disclose precisely that: "each of the side portions 32 of the ruler blade 30 has a curvature smaller than a curvature of the central portion 31," with markings printed on the side portions for readability, at a central radius of 15 mm and central angle 84°. If any dependent claim of the '416 recites the compound-curvature relationship or the readability geometry, this art is close to anticipatory, and certainly renders it obvious. I could not verify which '416 claims (if any) recite it — see §7.

Ground 5 — '414 / '605 : the lengthwise buckling-zone limitation

The '416's commercial insight includes localizing the aggressive profile to a lengthwise sub-section about 5–15 ft (more specifically 6.5–13 ft) from the hook. US 7,490,414 / US 2008/0034605 discloses the same conceptual move: locating a modified cross-section in the "expected buckling region," about 8–10.5 ft from the hook, expressly identified as "a location where the blade would normally buckle in a standout test." Same problem, same solution location, overlapping documentary range. If any '416 claim recites the sub-section, this ground is well supported.

6. Motivation and expectation of success, stated for the record

Motivation (articulated, not conclusory):

1. Common field and common problem — all references are retractable tape measures addressing blade standout/buckling (KSR; Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966)).
2. Express incorporation — Hernandez incorporates Murray; US 7,490,414 directs the reader to Gilliam.
3. Express formulae — '608 supplies Smax = 100L and α = H/W, converting what would otherwise be guesswork into arithmetic.
4. Market pressure — the '416 itself recites that standout is a competitive differentiator in the professional trades, which supplies the design incentive KSR recognizes at 550 U.S. at 421.
5. Predictability — the art treats blade thickness, width, camber height, and edge flatness as known, result-effective variables.

Expectation of success: high. A POSITA adjusting blade geometry to improve standout in "the predictable mechanical arts" has repeated, explicit confirmation in the references that the adjustment works (In re Applied Materials). Also relevant: the '416 concedes that a conventionally thick (0.13 mm) blade with the disclosed profiles also achieves high standout — i.e., the result is not tethered to the thin-core insight.

7. What the patent owner will say, and how it lands

8. Relative strength of the grounds

9. Items I did not verify — treat accordingly

1. The '416's issued claim numbering and verbatim claim text. I have not confirmed which numerals correspond to Groups 1–5, nor whether any claim recites the compound-curvature or lengthwise-sub-section features. Grounds 4 and 5 are therefore conditional.
2. US 6,324,769's disclosure. The "up to approximately 13 feet [156 inches]" figure is taken from the IPR2026-00233 petition summary as reported by a third-party site, not from the reference. If Murray's actual teaching differs, Ground 1's standout prong weakens materially.
3. Whether the 2017-08-24 provisional supports all claims. Unverified; this drives both the art set and the Apex-date question.
4. Table 1 "Prior Art Tape" identities and pre-2017 availability. The applicant calls them prior art competitor tapes, which is an admission, but I could not tie them to a public-use date.
5. I have not auto-corrected any patent number, publication number, or date. In particular I have kept US 11,022,416 and US 11,656,067 strictly separate, and have kept the Apex Brands filings (2017-09-26) out of the § 102 art set for the reasons given in § 1.