US 11162820

I'll verify against live sources, then summarize.

Verification notes

I ran searches against live web sources (Google Patents / USPTO-facing aggregators, PTAB and court-docket aggregators). Result of the "CAFC 2026 docket" search: no results tying patent number 11162820 to any Federal Circuit docket, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), or district-court case. That is a negative search result, not affirmative proof of absence — I cannot certify that no such proceeding exists, only that my searches returned none. (The only Delta Electronics PTAB hit my search surfaced was Vicor Corp. v. Delta Electronics, IPR2024-00704, which concerns a different patent, 8,711,580, and is unrelated to 11162820.)

US 11,162,820 B2 — Bibliographic summary

Abstract (as published): An optical reflective component and an optical encoder using the same are disclosed. The optical reflective component includes a main body, an optical pattern, a first attaching portion and a second attaching portion. The main body has a first central axis and a reflective surface perpendicular to each other. The optical pattern is disposed on the reflective surface and centered at the central axis. The first attaching portion is centered at the first central axis of the main body and extends from the main body in a direction parallel to the first central axis. The first attaching portion has an inner wall. The second attaching portion has a plane perpendicular to the first central axis. The plane is connected to the inner wall. The main body, the first attaching portion and the second attaching portion are formed of a metal material and are integrally formed with the optical pattern.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the optical reflective component itself

A one-piece metal rotary scale disk (the "code wheel" of a reflective optical encoder) with four required parts:

1. Main body — a disk with a central axis and a reflective face that is perpendicular to that axis.
2. Optical pattern — the encoder track, sitting on the reflective face and centered on / arranged around that axis.
3. First attaching portion — a hub-like skirt centered on the same axis and extending away from the main body parallel to the axis; it has an inner wall (this inner wall is what mates with the outer edge of the motor shaft).
4. Second attaching portion — a flat plane perpendicular to the central axis, and this plane is connected to the inner wall of the first attaching portion. This flat plane is the axial (Z) abutment that seats against a datum face on the shaft.

The point of the claim is the integration requirement: the main body, first attaching portion, and second attaching portion are all made of a metal material and are integrally formed with the optical pattern — i.e., a single machined metal piece carrying the scale pattern, rather than a fragile glass scale bonded to a separate metal hub. Note the claim says "integrally formed with the optical pattern," reading the pattern as part of the same unitary body.

Terminology caveat (flagging a literal inconsistency, not correcting it): In claim 1 the main body carries the "first" central axis. In the description, the main body carries the "second" central axis (C2) and the rotating shaft carries the "first" central axis (C1). The numbering is swapped between the claims and the specification. I am reporting both literally rather than harmonizing them.

Claim 10 — the optical encoder assembly

The same subject matter, but claimed as a system with three cooperating parts:

1. A rotating shaft (e.g., of a motor or drive module) having its own central axis, an outer edge, and a datum plane perpendicular to that axis.
2. The optical reflective component as in claim 1, mounted on that shaft, where:
   • the inner wall of the first attaching portion connects to the outer edge of the shaft so that the component's axis aligns with the shaft's axis (radial/RT-plane positioning, i.e., concentricity), and
   • the second attaching portion's plane matches and aligns to the shaft's datum plane (axial/Z positioning).
3. An optical reading module (light source + photodetector) positioned facing the optical pattern on the reflective surface, so that as the shaft rotates the component, the module reads the pattern.

So claim 10 = the self-aligning, self-fixturing metal code wheel plus the shaft interface that simultaneously establishes concentricity (via the inner wall to shaft outer edge) and axial position (via the perpendicular plane to the datum plane).

Dependent-claim coverage (brief)

The dependent claims largely add: fastening through a fastening hole in the main body aligned with the central axis (claims 3, 14) or through the first attaching portion (claims 4, 15); the pattern being even-width stripes directed at the central axis (claims 5, 11) and concavely formed by laser scribing (claims 6, 12); the pattern being circularly symmetrical (claims 7, 13); the reflective surface being a mirrored, polished, or milling-machined surface (claims 8, 16); the inner wall being a curved surface, ring surface, or conical surface (claims 9, 19); a hollow bore along the shaft axis for leading wires (claim 17); and the reading module mounted on a circuit board with an opening the shaft passes through (claim 18). Claim 20 is a somewhat unusual dependent claim that restates the datum-plane matching limitation already recited in claim 10.

Substantive context (from the specification)

• Problem addressed: conventional reflective code wheels are made by coating photoresist, exposing, developing, etching and stripping to form the encoding stripes on glass, then fixing the glass to the motor shaft via an extra component — the glass is fragile and the process is slow/complex.
• Disclosed solution: a machined metal integral part. The disk and hub are machined so they are coaxially precise; a reference circle (e.g., outer circle) is located by automated optical inspection (AOI) to define the axis, and the pattern is then laser-scribed coaxial with that axis.
• Advantage of "even-width" stripes: the laser spot size is fixed, so stripes sized to the spot diameter (or an integer multiple, e.g., two parallel passes for 2× width, per FIG. 7) give uniform surface characteristics and cut processing time.
• Optical discrimination: the scribed pattern is low-reflectance/scattered/diffuse (concave grooves), while the surrounding reflective face is mirrored (specular), polished (glossy), or milling-machined (diffuse with concentric tool marks) — FIGs. 8–12 walk through the radius-axial and tangential-axial reflection behavior.
• Embodiments 2–4: an annular datum plane at an intermediate shaft section (FIG. 13); fastening through the first attaching portion plus a hollow shaft and a circuit board opening for pass-through wiring (FIGs. 14–15); and a conical inner wall that lets the shaft datum plane abut the cone directly, achieving concentric and axial positioning simultaneously without relying on the second attaching portion (FIG. 16).

Confidence / uncertainty statement

• High confidence on all bibliographic data, the abstract, the claim count, and the claim 1 / claim 10 contents — these come from the full granted text of US 11162820.
• Medium confidence on the anticipated expiration date (2040-06-02 is the face-value 20-year date; I have not verified whether any PTA, terminal disclaimer, or pre-AIA term rules alter it).
• Low confidence / explicitly unresolved: whether US 11162820 has ever been asserted in litigation or challenged at the PTAB. My searches surfaced none, and specifically no 2026 CAFC docket. Treat "no litigation found" as an absence-of-evidence finding from a limited search, not as a verified clearance.
• Flagged, not corrected: the first/second central-axis numbering differs between the claim set and the specification, as noted above. Quoted claim language is verbatim from the granted patent.

Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11162820/en (fetched 2026-09-24).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11162820.

Initial results don't show litigation. Let me search more targeted sources.

Let me try a few more targeted sources before concluding.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820

Patent identified (literal): U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820 B2 — "Optical reflective component and optical encoder using same." Application No. 16/890,842; filed June 2, 2020; claimed priority to CN 201910831191.9 (2019-09-04); granted November 2, 2021. Inventors: Horng-Jou Wang and Tsung-En Chan. Assignee: Delta Electronics, Inc. §

Conclusion

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820 was found.

I searched patent-litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents portal caselist, PTAB/IPR filings and mandatory-notice "related matters" statements, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia dockets, RPX Insight references, and general web queries combining the patent number with "litigation," "lawsuit," "infringement," "asserted," and the patent's title). None returned a district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit proceeding in which 11,162,820 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

Evidence supporting the negative finding

1. No case list entries. Queries against Unified Patents' litigation/PTAB caselists and docket aggregators returned only unrelated hits (e.g., a 10th Circuit docket entry "[11162820]" appearing as a filing number in Coit v. Stancil, 25-1048 — a document number, not a patent assertion; and IPRs concerning unrelated patents such as U.S. 10,621,228 and 9,033,039). No case matched patent 11,162,820.

2. The only substantive third-party citation is a patent catalogue, not a lawsuit. The patent appears on patentleaderboard.com merely as one of inventor Horng-Jou Wang's ten Delta Electronics patents (granted 2021-11-02) — a bibliographic listing with no litigation data.

3. Related Delta Electronics litigation concerns different patents. Delta Electronics is a party to active patent disputes (e.g., the Vicor v. Delta/Cyntec ITC Section 337 matters, 337-TA-1484 and its predecessor; Delta Electronics, Inc. v. Vicor Corporation, W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00288 (filed 2026); Delta Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. v. Vicor Corporation, D. Del. 1:26-cv-00913). Those cases involve power-converter and power-supply patents (e.g., U.S. 9,166,481; 9,516,761; 10,199,950; 6,930,893; 10,877,534), not 11,162,820. They are noted here only to distinguish them and avoid a false positive.

Caveats and limitations (stated explicitly)

• Search-tool limitation: Several planned queries returned a "maximum number of steps" cutoff, so I could not exhaustively query every docket database (e.g., direct Docket Navigator or PACER full-text searches).
• Private/unindexed actions: Settled cases, sealed complaints, arbitration, and licensing-demand activity would not appear in the public sources searched. A confidentiality agreement or pre-suit license would likewise leave no docket trace.
• Scope of the finding: This is a good-faith negative result based on publicly indexed litigation records as of the search date. It is not a legal opinion or a warranty of completeness.
• Verification recommended: Before relying on this result (e.g., for a freedom-to-operate or invalidity opinion), confirm against Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, PACER, and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket, and check Delta Electronics' own disclosure and Assignment records for any enforcement activity not captured above.

Bottom line: Based on the available public records, U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820 has not been the subject of any known patent litigation.

I'll verify the structured-data baseline against live sources before writing the analysis.

Let me run targeted follow-ups on the family members and possible litigation, since PTAB challenges often track district-court assertions.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 11,162,820 B2 ("Optical reflective component and optical encoder using same")

Source of the proceedings list: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal). I supplemented with live web searches of PTAB-facing aggregators. I did hit a tool-step ceiling before running every intended follow-up query, so the negative findings below are bounded by that — see the caveat in Recommended next steps.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — the structured ODP feed returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for US 11,162,820, and my independent searches surfaced none either, so the breakdown is active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is "all 20 claims are live and untested at the Board — you would be the first petitioner, which means no claim is dead, but also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds anyone and the entire prior-art universe is still open to you."

Note the practical upside and downside of that: unlike a patent that has survived two IPRs (which is genuinely hardened), this patent's clean PTAB record is uninformative about validity — nobody has stress-tested it. A clean record here reflects absence of attack, not proof of strength.

Per-proceeding detail

No proceeding numbers exist to report. Rather than fabricate docket numbers, I am recording the null result and the adjacent data points I can actually ground.

No AIA trial proceeding — (no petitioner) v. Delta Electronics, Inc.

• Type: N/A — no IPR, PGR, or CBM on file.
• Filed: N/A.
• Status: No proceedings. This is a negative search result from the ODP feed plus my own searches, not a certified absence.
• Judge panel: N/A.
• Petition grounds: N/A.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of US 11,162,820 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or even instituted upon at the PTAB.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: No PTAB appeal is possible where there was no FWD. My search for a 2026 CAFC docket tied to 11162820 returned nothing (consistent with the earlier verification note in this analysis).
• Defensive value: You face zero estoppel and zero adverse claim-construction precedent from the Board. Conversely, you get no free roadmap — no petitioner-supplied prior-art chart, no FWD claim constructions, no expert declarations to lift from a public IPR record. Everything must be built from scratch.

Adjacent data point (not a proceeding on this patent) — Vicor Corp. v. Delta Electronics, IPR2024-00704

• Type: Inter Partes Review (per the earlier verification section of this analysis; U.S. Patent No. 8,711,580, not 11,162,820).
• Relevance: This confirms Delta Electronics is a repeat PTAB patent owner — it defends its portfolio at the Board. But the patent at issue is unrelated power-electronics subject matter. Flagged as inherited from the prior section and not re-verified in this round (I ran out of search steps before re-confirming the number and status). Do not rely on it as a proceeding on the '820 patent; it is not one.

Third-party citation signal (not a proceeding)

Two Panasonic Intellectual Property Management filings cite US 11,162,820 forward: US 2024/0302188 A1 (published 2024-09-12) and US 12,292,314 B2 (issued 2025-05-06), both titled "Optical encoder." This is a drafting-around signal, not a challenge — Panasonic is citing the patent as prior art/background while prosecuting its own encoder family, not petitioning against it. It tells you Delta has a real competitor in this space who is aware of the patent. That is often the precondition for a future IPR.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All 20 claims of US 11,162,820 — independent claims 1 and 10 and every dependent claim (2–9, 11–20) — are UNTESTED. None are canceled, none are confirmed, none have been the subject of an institution decision. There is no narrowed claim set and no certificate of cancellation to point to. For a defendant, this means the full asserted claim scope you receive in a demand letter or complaint is exactly the scope that issued in 2021 (subject only to whatever claim construction a district court applies). As noted in the earlier sections of this analysis, I also flag the literal first/second central-axis numbering discrepancy between the claim set and the specification — that is a § 112 / indefiniteness-flavored argument a defendant could raise, and it has never been litigated or construed by the Board.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one. There is no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest who is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground. For a defendant being asserted against today, the entire body of prior art — patents, printed publications, and (in district court) system prior art — remains available, constrained only by your own invalidity contentions and the district court's rules. This is the single most favorable procedural fact about this patent.

Pattern signals. There is no repeat petitioner (there are no petitioners at all), no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX filing surfaced), and no PTAB appeal activity by Delta on this patent. What the record does show is an operating-company patent owner — Delta Electronics is a large-entity industrial manufacturer (its 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2025-05-02 as a large entity), not an NPE. Combined with the earlier finding that no litigation asserting this patent has been located, the clean PTAB record most plausibly reflects low assertion pressure so far rather than demonstrated validity. Well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; this one has not been asserted enough to draw fire. Note also the family: JP 7127085 B2 (granted) and CN 112444277 A (reported pending), so there are foreign counterparts that could face separate invalidation proceedings — I found no evidence of any, and Japanese and Chinese invalidation dockets are outside the ODP feed and were only partially reachable in my searches.

Recommended next steps

1. State it plainly to the client: there is no PTAB activity on this patent. No FWD to link to, no claim to quote, no disposition to rely on. I am not linking a Final Written Decision because none exists — any citation to an IPR on the '820 patent would be fabricated. If a vendor or prior-art search service hands you a proceeding number for this patent, demand the PTAB E2E link and verify it at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ before relying on it.
2. Run the check yourself at the canonical source before filing anything. Confirm the null result directly: USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End search by patent number 11162820, and the USPTO Open Data Portal AIA trials dataset. My searches were bounded by a tool-step limit, so treat this as a to-be-verified negative.
3. Check the § 315(b) clock immediately if you have been served. If Delta (or a licensee) has served an infringement complaint on your client, the one-year bar under § 315(b) runs from service. That is your IPR filing deadline — there is no other timing constraint left, because:
4. PGR is time-barred as of 2022-08-02 (nine months after the 2021-11-02 grant date), and CBM is unavailable both because the CBM program sunset for new petitions and because an optical encoder is not a financial-product/service claim. IPR is your only remaining AIA vehicle on this patent.
5. Mine the prosecution history rather than the PTAB record. With no FWD to read, your best doctrinal leverage is (a) the applicant's arguments and any examiner's reasons for allowance during the US 16/890,842 prosecution, and (b) the claim-vs-specification central-axis numbering discrepancy flagged in the prior section — a prosecution-history disclaimer and a § 112 argument respectively. Neither has ever been tested.
6. Watch Panasonic. Its two forward-citing optical encoder filings are the most likely future petitioner and give you a template for the art space and claim-reading if you want a co-petitioner or a prior-art starting point. Keep a docket alert on the patent number and on Panasonic IP Management as assignee.

Caveats I am not going to paper over: (i) the ODP feed is an ingest-based source and the negative result is only as fresh as its ingest; (ii) my live searches returned nothing on point for 11162820 but I was cut off before completing all planned queries, so this is an absence-of-evidence finding from a bounded search, not a clearance opinion; (iii) the Vicor/IPR2024-00704 adjacency and the 8,711,580 patent number are carried over from the earlier verification section and were not independently re-confirmed this round.

Sources: Structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP, no AIA trials for 11162820); Google Patents full text, https://patents.google.com/patent/US11162820/en (forward citations US 2024/0302188 A1, US 12,292,314 B2; family CN 112444277 A, JP 7127085 B2); USPTO PTAB E2E, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/; CourtListener, https://www.courtlistener.com/ (no results tying 11,162,820 to any docket).

I'll verify the ownership record against live sources before building out the analysis.

Verification note on sources

I searched USPTO-facing aggregators (Google Patents legal events, Espacenet/INPADOC, Stanford NPE Litigation Database, RPX/Unified-facing results) for US 11,162,820. What I could retrieve is the Google Patents legal-events record, which reproduces the Patent Assignment Search entries. I could not retrieve the Assignment Center's correspondent (attorney/agent) field for this patent from any live source — that field is not exposed in the records I reached. I am not fabricating a correspondent name; I flag it as unavailable below. This is a genuine gap in my evidence, not a claim that no correspondent exists.

Inventors

Pattern assessment: No unusual inventor pattern. Both inventors assigned their rights to Delta by an instrument effective 2019-11-20, before the US filing (2020-06-02). There is no evidence of inventor departure, and Wang's continued prosecution of Delta patents through 2021 (i.e., the year this patent issued) indicates the inventors were retained employees, not founders exiting a startup. This is the ordinary "employee invention assigned to employer" posture.

Original assignee

Delta Electronics, Inc. (Taiwan) — named on the face of the issued patent, and confirmed as original assignee in the recorded assignment.

• Line of business: Delta Electronics is a large, publicly listed (TWSE: 2308) power-electronics and industrial-automation manufacturer — power supplies, DC/DC converters, motors and drives, industrial automation, and optical/magnetic encoders. It is a genuine operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Product/shipping posture: Delta's industrial-automation and motor lines include encoders; the reflective code-wheel claimed here (a machined metal scale disk for a reflective rotary encoder) is squarely within Delta's motor/encoder product family. I have not independently verified a specific shipping SKU that practices claims 1/10, so treat "ships embodying product" as high-probability but not SKU-verified.
• Current status: Operating. Delta is an active litigant and patent asserter in its own name (see NPE signals §2/§5), and continues to pay maintenance fees on this patent (M1551, 2025-05-02).

Assignment timeline

Chronological list of every recorded assignment I could locate:

• Executed 2019-11-20 / recorded 2020-06-02 — Reel 052818 / Frame 0798
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignors: WANG, HORNG-JOU; CHAN, TSUNG-EN (both individual inventors)
  • Assignee: DELTA ELECTRONICS, INC. (Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: Not available — the correspondent field was not exposed in any source I could reach. Do not treat this as "none"; it is unverified. (Recording was made concurrent with the US filing on 2020-06-02; the recording was almost certainly handled by Delta's outside US prosecution firm, but I will not name one without the record.)
  • Context: Routine inventor-to-employer assignment, executed pre-filing and recorded the same day the US application was filed. Not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

That is the entire recorded chain. Google Patents' legal-events panel — which surfaces post-issuance "AS / Assignment" (reassignment) events when they exist — shows no further assignment, security-agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, release, or correction record after 2020-06-02. All subsequent legal events are prosecution/administrative: STPP docketing (2021-03-14), non-final action (2021-06-08), notice of allowance (2021-08-02), issue-fee payment (2021-09-30), STCF "patented case" (2021-10-13), and the 4th-year maintenance fee under M1551 (2025-05-02).

(Minor housekeeping observation, not a finding: a different Delta application, US 2020/0410884 A1, was recorded at REEL/FRAME 050287/0798 — a different reel but the same terminal frame number, 0798. This is almost certainly a batch-recording artifact or coincidence; I note it only because the shared "/0798" suffix is superficially eye-catching.)

Since a full post-issuance chain does not exist, the balance of the requested analysis proceeds on the affirmative finding that the patent never left Delta.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11162820
    2019 : CN priority application filed
         : Inventors assign rights to Delta
    2020 : US application filed and recorded
    2021 : Patent issued to Delta Electronics
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only assignment (Reel 052818/0798) runs from individual inventors to Delta Electronics, Inc., a large publicly traded operating manufacturer. There is no LLC with an "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" suffix, no registered-agent address, and no single-purpose vehicle anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present (as to assignees), with a caveat. Neither current nor prior assignee matches the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg rosters. Caveat: Delta itself is an active patent plaintiff — Stanford's NPE Litigation Database carries "Delta Electronics, Inc." as a Patent Asserter and classifies it as a "Product company" (category 8), e.g., Delta Electronics, Inc. v. Vicor Corporation, 1:23-cv-01246 (D. Del.) and a later Delta Electronics, Inc. v. Vicor Corporation, 7:26-cv-00288 (W.D. Tex.). That is operating-company assertion against a competitor, not NPE activity, and no filing I found names US 11,162,820. Consistent with the earlier generated section, I found no 2026 litigation or PTAB record tying this patent number to any proceeding.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / unverifiable. With a single recorded assignment there is no chain in which a correspondent could recur, so the "same lawyer runs the shells" signature is structurally impossible to exhibit. I could not retrieve even the single correspondent of record (see Verification note), so I mark this unclear for lack of data, not "present."

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero transfers, therefore no cascade. No chained LLCs, no shared addresses, no common principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. There has been no transfer after the 2020-06-02 inventor assignment, so no assignment sits within six months of any suit — the chain was never arranged to enable assertion by a third party.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Delta Electronics is not in bankruptcy and has not sold this patent in insolvency proceedings. No Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-type event appears.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer to an NPE asserting on Delta's behalf. Where Delta asserts, it does so in its own name (Vicor actions above), which is the opposite of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with the operating original assignee.

Net: zero of the eight NPE signals are present; the record is a clean single-link inventor-to-employer assignment to an operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The entire recorded ownership history is a single instrument — the inventors' assignment to Delta Electronics, Inc., executed 2019-11-20 and recorded 2020-06-02 at Reel 052818 / Frame 0798 — with no post-issuance reassignment of any kind. Applying the rubric's own definition, a chain consisting of nothing but the original assignment lands in "Insufficient data," but the content of that single record is affirmative and favorable: the patent is held by a large publicly traded operating manufacturer that ships motors/encoders and litigates its own patents in its own name (Vicor actions), and none of the eight NPE/troll signals is present. I flag two evidence limits rather than resolve them by inference: the correspondent of record is unverified (the field was unavailable in every source I reached), and no SKU-level confirmation exists that a Delta product practices claims 1/10.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11162820; legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — and the Google Patents legal-events record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11162820/en.

I'll search for the patent and its cited prior art references.

Now let me research the other key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820 B2

Scope note & search provenance. I searched USPTO-facing patent data via its public mirrors (Google Patents and Justia Patents both render the USPTO full-text/OCR record), and used J‑GLOBAL and EPO publication servers to confirm the Japanese references. The patent record and its citation lists below are taken verbatim from the granted text of US 11,162,820 B2 (App. 16/890,842; priority CN 201910831191.9, 2019‑09‑04; filed 2020‑06‑02; granted 2021‑11‑02), which is the authoritative source per my operating rules. I returned only references tied to 11,162,820 — no similar-number substitutions. Where two citation lists appear in the record ("Citations (21)" and "Patent Citations (23)"), I report the union of 23 unique references and flag the two that appear only in the longer list.

Legal frame. Because the effective filing date is post‑2013‑03‑16, AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) governs. Every cited reference pre‑dates 2019‑09‑04, so each is facially available as prior art. Anticipation under § 102 requires a single reference to disclose every element of the claim as arranged; my "potential § 102" tags below are analytical assessments of which claims a reference could conceivably anticipate (or, more often, which claims it most directly bears on), not legal conclusions. I state confidence per reference.

The two independent claims to test against (recap, from the prior section):

• Claim 1 — main body (axis + perpendicular reflective surface) + optical pattern centered on axis + first attaching portion with an inner wall extending parallel to the axis + second attaching portion = a plane perpendicular to the axis connected to the inner wall + the integration clause: main body, first attaching portion, second attaching portion made of metal and integrally formed with the optical pattern.
• Claim 10 — claim 1's component plus a rotating shaft (axis + outer edge + perpendicular datum plane) plus an optical reading module facing the pattern.

The integration clause and the two attaching-portion geometries are the novelty core; a reference that lacks one of these cannot anticipate.

Tier 1 — Most relevant (closest to the claimed subject matter)

1. JP 2004‑151076 A — "Rotatable component for hub-integrated reflection type optical encoder" (Kenseidou Kagaku Kogyo K.K.)

• Filing/priority: JP 2003‑015450 filed 2003‑01‑23; priority JP 2002‑258795 (2002‑09‑04); published 2004‑05‑27.
• Description: A rotating part for a reflective optical encoder in which the rotating component itself is the hub fixed to the motor's rotation shaft, and the reflective/non‑reflective surfaces (or two+ surfaces of differing reflectivity) are formed on a plane perpendicular to the hub's rotation axis. Materials explicitly include magnesium alloy, brass, stainless steel, aluminum alloy, iron, or metal‑plated plastic. Stated benefit: miniaturization, no need for a separate part/fixing component, less shaft deviation and backlash.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Closest single reference to claim 1. It appears to disclose the main body + optical (pattern) surface perpendicular to the axis (claim 1 elements (a)–(b)) and a metal hub integral with the encoder surface (element (e)). However, from the abstract and claim 1 alone I cannot confirm it discloses the "first attaching portion … inner wall" mating to a shaft outer edge (element (c)) or the "second attaching portion plane … connected to the inner wall" (element (d)). My provisional read: likely not a clean § 102 anticipation of claim 1 or 10, but the single most important § 103 reference.
• Confidence: Medium — full JP specification not fully retrieved (claim 1 + abstract + material passages only).

2. US 2010/0193671 A1 — "Reflection plate for optical encoder and manufacturing method thereof, and optical encoder" (Nikon Corp.)

• Filing/priority: 2007‑09‑05; published 2010‑08‑05. (Granted as a US patent; family EP 2187177 A1 / US 8,368,004 per search.)
• Description: A reflection plate for an optical encoder having a base material with a specular reflecting surface and a film formed on part of that surface (a non‑electrolytic plating film or an electrolytic oxide film) to create the encoder pattern; the reflective surface is formed by mirror‑machining (polishing/grinding), and the pattern is created lithographically (photoresist/exposure/development). Also discloses a rotary encoder using the plate.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Bears directly on claim 1 elements (a)–(b) and on claim 8 (mirrored/polished surface) and claim 6/12's pattern‑on‑reflective‑surface concept (its pattern is additive film, not laser‑scribed concave stripes, so it does not anticipate claims 6/12). It does not address the first/second attaching portions or the metal integral‑forming clause, so it cannot anticipate claim 1 or 10 as a whole.
• Confidence: High on substance (spec fetched).

3. US 4,982,084 A — "Method for attaching pulse encoder to motor and motor attached with same" (Fanuc Limited)

• Filing/priority: 1986‑11‑27; published 1991‑01‑01.
• Description: Method of attaching a pulse encoder to a motor: a rotary coded plate is mounted on the output shaft at a right angle to the central axis and centrally aligned; a stationary coded plate (with light sensor) is aligned using a circular track pattern and a clearance gauge between the plates. Family EP 0290622 B1 adds that the mounting sleeve must be accurately concentric with the shaft and have a flange portion positioning the plate perpendicular to the shaft axis.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Bears on claim 10's shaft‑interface geometry and on claim 2 (component axis aligned to shaft axis) and the "plane perpendicular to the axis" concept used for the second attaching portion. But it is a method using a separate coded plate + sleeve, not a single metal part with an inner‑wall first attaching portion and an inner‑wall‑connected planar second attaching portion — so it does not anticipate claims 1 or 10.
• Confidence: High (spec fetched).

4. CN 1992479 B — "Optical encoder device for small‑sized motor and method of producing the same" (Mabuchi Motor / 马渊马达株式会社)

• Filing/priority: 2005‑12‑28; published 2010‑05‑19.
• Description: (From the patent's own citation title; I did not retrieve the CN specification — search budget exhausted.) An optical encoder device for a small motor with a production method, i.e., a reflective/optical encoder integrated with a small motor.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Likely relevant to claim 10 (encoder mounted to a motor) and possibly to claim 2 (shaft mounting). Because I could not read its disclosure, I cannot assess whether it recites an integral metal body with the claimed attaching‑portion geometry. Flagged as needing full‑text review.
• Confidence: Low — title/date only.

5. US 6,232,593 B1 — "Optical encoder" (Fanuc Ltd.)

• Filing/priority: 1998‑04‑01; published 2001‑05‑15.
• Description: Optical encoder focused on the optical detecting section. The movable code plate is made from a glass plate with chrome vapor‑deposited, or a metal plate such as stainless steel, nickel, copper, with light‑transmitting sections formed by etching; a light source and light‑receiving section sit on either side of the plate (i.e., a transmissive type). Discusses drawbacks of etching (chemical management, cost) and resin code plates.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Relevant to claim 1's "metal main body" and the general background of forming an encoder pattern on a metal plate, and to the patent's own stated problem. But it is a transmissive encoder and lacks the reflective surface, the attaching portions, and the integral forming clause → no anticipation of claims 1 or 10.
• Confidence: High on subject matter (claims/background fetched).

Tier 2 — Secondary relevance (pattern formation, scale manufacturing, reflective‑encoder optics)

Note on Tier 2: none of these, on their face, recites the combination of (i) an integral metal body, (ii) a first attaching portion with an inner wall, and (iii) a second attaching portion whose plane is connected to that inner wall. They are best characterized as § 103 secondary references or as background, not § 102 anticipators of claims 1/10.

Tier 3 — Peripheral / low relevance (mounting, sensing‑head, and clearly unrelated art)

Family‑cited references (JP 7127085 B2 / CN 112444277 A counterparts) — Google "Family Cites Families (8)"

These were cited during prosecution of the non‑US family members, so they are part of the global file history and worth screening.

References that are not § 102 prior art (later‑dated)

Forward citations US 2024/0302188 A1 and US 12,292,314 B2 (both Panasonic Intellectual Property Management, priority 2021‑03‑04) post‑date 11,162,820's priority and therefore cannot be § 102 art against it. They are useful only as evidence of the field's continued development (they suggest Panasonic builds on the Delta disclosure). One additional document surfaced in the "Similar Documents" list, US 2026/0036444 A1 ("Rotary optical encoder with rotating angle‑encoding light pattern"), likewise post‑dates the patent.

Bottom line

1. No single cited reference appears to anticipate claim 1 or claim 10 in full. Anticipation turns on the integration clause (metal main body + first attaching portion + second attaching portion integrally formed with the optical pattern) combined with the two specific attachment geometries (inner‑wall first attaching portion; planar second attaching portion connected to that inner wall). None of the 23 cited references, on the record I could inspect, recites that combination.
2. The most dangerous references are (in order): (i) JP 2004‑151076 A (hub‑integrated reflective encoder part, metal, pattern on a plane perpendicular to the axis) — closest to claim 1; (ii) US 2010/0193671 A1 (Nikon reflection plate) — claim 1(a)–(b) and claim 8; (iii) US 4,982,084 A / EP 0290622 B1 (Fanuc) and JP 5673821 B2 (Nikon mounting method) — claim 2/10 shaft‑mounting geometry. These are, in my assessment, § 103 rather than § 102 references.
3. Claims most exposed to § 102/§ 103 attack are the pattern‑ and surface‑focused dependents — claims 5–8 and 11–13, 16 — because references like Nikon '671 and Ricoh '380 directly address patterned reflective scale surfaces. The attaching‑portion and integral‑metal claims (1, 2, 9, 10, 19) appear to be the strongest.
4. Three references need full‑text review before a definitive opinion: CN 1992479 B (Mabuchi), JP 2004‑151076 A (Kenseidou — I only saw claim 1/abstract/materials), and the JP 6932983 B2 publication‑date question. I did not have search budget to retrieve their complete specifications.

Caveats. The descriptions for the references I could not open (notably CN 1992479 B, JP 2009‑121958 A, TW 200702636 A, TW I457542 B, CN 201680850 U, JP 2008‑002970 A, US 8,264,380 B2, US 9,797,754 B2) rest on the titles given in the 11,162,820 record, which I treat as authoritative for the citation but which is not a substitute for reading the disclosure. The § 102 claim mappings are analytical hypotheses keyed to the file wrapper; they are not legal conclusions and should be confirmed against the full texts in USPTO Patent Public Search / Espacenet. I also flag the previously‑noted first/second central‑axis numbering inconsistency between the specification and the claims — any anticipation chart must use the literal claim language.

I'll gather details on the key cited references before building the obviousness analysis.

Now let me pull details on the remaining cited references most relevant to the laser-scribing and mounting features.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,162,820 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note. This analysis is built from the "Prior Art" material on the patent page itself — i.e., the 21/23 reference "Citations," "Family Cites Families," and "Cited By" listings for US 11,162,820 — as instructed. I pulled fuller text for the five references that carry the most weight and verified their disclosures against live sources. For the remaining cited references I have not verified content, and I say so rather than assert it. All cited art predates the 2019-09-04 priority date by more than a decade, so § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) availability is not in issue.

Cross-reference to earlier sections: I do not repeat the bibliographic summary, claim overview, or litigation report. I do rely on the flagged claim/spec axis-label swap — claim 1 assigns the "first central axis" to the main body while the specification assigns C2 to the main body and C1 to the shaft. For claim-charting I therefore map structural relationships, not the ordinal labels, and I flag that inconsistency again where it affects a mapping.

1. Level of ordinary skill (Graham factor 1)

A POSITA here is a mechanical/electro-mechanical engineer (or equivalent) with ~2–5 years' experience designing rotary optical encoders and their code wheels/scales, including: motor-shaft mounting and alignment (concentricity in the r–t plane, axial positioning in the z plane), reflective vs. non-reflective scale surface treatment, and conventional pattern-writing methods (photolithography/etching, mechanical machining, and laser marking/scribing of metal). This is a mature, crowded, incremental art — which matters because KSR permits combining a small number of known elements according to known methods where the improvement is a predictable use of prior-art elements.

2. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

Claim 1 is a product claim to a unitary metal code wheel. The prior art below is remarkably close, and the closest reference alone may approach anticipation; the § 103 case is the conservative framing.

Key finding. JP 2004-151076 A is the strongest reference and is separately identified on the patent's own face as a cited prior-art document. Its stated advantages map almost verbatim onto the '820 specification's stated advantages: (1) integrating hub + encoder parts saves space/size; (2) no separate bonding/press-fitting of a thin precision patterned plate, reducing steps; (3) fixed to the motor's own shaft, so shaft displacement, response lag/looseness and wear are reduced; (4) no separate driven component.

Ground 1 — Claim 1 obvious over JP 2004-151076 A, optionally in view of US 6,232,593 and US 4,982,084

• Motivation (JP 2004-151076 A alone): the reference expressly frames its problem as eliminating the separately mounted, thin patterned plate and its bonding/press-fitting steps. Substituting a machined metal hub (its own claim 2 magnesium alloy) that carries the pattern directly on the shaft-perpendicular face is the reference's own stated solution — no hindsight needed.
• If the examiner/applicant disputes element 1.4's "plane connected to the inner wall": US 4,982,084 supplies a machined reference surface at a right angle to the shaft axis against which the rotating scale is seated, and a press-fit sleeve/hub interface — i.e., the z-datum and the shaft-outer-edge interface.
• If "integrally formed with the optical pattern" is read to require that the pattern be created in the same metal piece: US 6,232,593 (Fanuc) teaches the code plate is "made from a glass plate onto which chrome has been vapour deposited, or a metal plate, such as stainless steel, nickel, copper," and teaches forming the light-modulating features in the plate surface itself (rough surfaces, "indentations on a face of said movable code plate," "rows of indentations … V-shaped grooves"). That is direct support for forming the optical pattern as concave features of the metal body.

Result: Claim 1 would have been obvious. (I note for completeness that JP 2004-151076 A may independently anticipate claim 1 if its hub is read to have the bore + perpendicular shoulder inherently — but the requested analysis is § 103, and I do not need to press that.)

3. Claim 10 — the encoder assembly

Claim 10 adds the shaft and the reader to the claim-1 subassembly.

Ground 2 — Claim 10 obvious over JP 2004-151076 A in view of US 4,982,084 and US 2010/0193671

Motivation: all three are in the same field and address the same engineering problem — mounting a rotating scale on a motor shaft so the pattern is perpendicular to and concentric with the axis, and reading it reflectively. US 4,982,084 expressly teaches that machining the motor's reference surface "at a right angle to the central axis" and nulling a circular-track eccentricity gives perpendicularity + concentricity, and that axial position is set by abutment against that reference. US 2010/0193671 supplies the reflective-encoder reader architecture and the concentric-track scale. Combining these with a hub-integrated scale (JP 2004-151076 A) is the predictable assembly of known, mutually compatible elements, with the claimed benefit (accurate reading of the pattern perpendicular to the axis) as the expected result. No reference teaches away; all point the same direction.

4. Dependent claims

Blanket motivation for the dependents: each added feature is either (a) expressly disclosed in a cited reference in the same field, or (b) an optimization of a known parameter — pattern-geometry (stripe width/track symmetry), surface finish of the reflective face, and the interface hardware (holes, fastener type, bore shape) — each producing nothing more than the predictable mechanical/optical result. KSR permits such predictable variations.

5. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (articulated rationales)

1. Same field / same problem. JP 2004-151076 A, US 4,982,084, US 6,232,593, US 2010/0193671 and US 8,264,380 are all rotary-encoder scale/code-wheel references. All are analogous art; combination is thus permissible by definition.
2. The primary reference states the very objective of the claim. JP 2004-151076 A's stated purpose is to integrate the encoder pattern with the hub so no separate thin patterned plate must be bonded/press-fit — the exact structural thrust of claim 1's "integrally formed with the optical pattern."
3. The secondary references solve the remaining mounting geometry. US 4,982,084 supplies the perpendicular machined datum + shaft-outer-edge interface + the reference-circle centering method that underlies the '820 AOI technique and the claim-10 datum-plane matching. US 2010/0193671 supplies the metal base material with a specular (mirror-machined) reflective face and low-reflection patterned regions, plus the reflective reader.
4. Process-cost pressure drives the laser-scribing substitution. Both JP 2004-151076 A and US 2010/0193671 (and US 6,232,593's background) criticize the complexity/cost of photolithography, etching and vacuum deposition. That pressure provides the motivation to pattern the metal surface directly — the design rationale from which laser scribing follows.
5. Predictable results. Every claimed combination produces an expected result: a durable metal, integral, self-aligning reflective code wheel that a reflective reader can discriminate via the reflectance contrast between the specular face and the written pattern — a contrast US 2010/0193671 states explicitly (low-reflection regions need only have reflectance lower than the specular regions).

6. Weaknesses, counterarguments, and where the § 103 case is vulnerable

I flag these rather than paper over them:

• Laser scribing (claims 6, 12) is the weakest-supported limitation. I did not verify any cited reference that expressly discloses laser scribing of a metal encoder scale. The cited art supports concave surface features in the scale body (US 6,232,593's indentations/V-grooves) and reflectance contrast (US 2010/0193671), and supplies the motive to avoid lithography — but a laser-scribing ground should be buttressed with an express laser-marking/scribing reference (cited or otherwise). Absent that, an applicant could argue non-obviousness of the specific scribing step, though it is a dependent claim and does not rescue claim 1 or 10.
• Claim 1's "integrally formed with the optical pattern." If JP 2004-151076 A is read narrowly — its hub could be a plated plastic (its claim 3) rather than a one-piece metal body — the "metal + integrally formed" requirement leans on combining with US 6,232,593's metal code plate. That is a clean combination but it is a combination, so this is an obviousness (not anticipation) posture.
• The two-part attaching geometry (1.3 + 1.4). Whether a bored hub's perpendicular shoulder is "connected to the inner wall" within the claim is a claim-construction question. A narrow construction (a distinct annular flange whose plane meets the bore at a defined edge) would require a secondary reference showing that specific hub geometry; US 4,982,084's sleeve/shoulder arrangement (shoulder 46, "high flatness," with the plate seated on it) is a good candidate but not a perfect match.
• Conical inner wall (claims 9, 19), hollow shaft (17), board opening (18). These rest mainly on general engineering knowledge rather than on a verified cited reference. They are conventional, but I would not assert them as strong grounds without locating a specific reference.
• No apparent secondary-considerations rescue. The specification presents no comparative or unexpected-result data; its stated advantages (fewer steps, no fragile glass, coaxial accuracy, short laser-processing time via even-width stripes) are the inherent, expected consequences of the proposed combination — and JP 2004-151076 A recites nearly the same advantages (downsizing, no separate bonding part, less shaft displacement/wear, fewer steps). Nexus to any unexpected result is therefore weak.
• Axis-label inconsistency (re-flagged). Because claim 1's "first central axis" for the main body conflicts with the specification's C2-for-main-body/C1-for-shaft convention, any mapping must be structural. This does not change the outcome — the structural relationships (perpendicular reflective face; concentric pattern; axial bore; perpendicular seat) are all present in the cited art.

7. Bottom line

• Claim 1: Obvious over JP 2004-151076 A, alone or in view of US 4,982,084 and US 6,232,593.
• Claim 10: Obvious over JP 2004-151076 A in view of US 4,982,084 and US 2010/0193671 (reader architecture and specular/mirror-machined scale).
• Claims 2, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 16, and (for the ring/curved-wall variant) 9/19: strongly supported by the cited art.
• Claims 3/4 and 14/15: supported, with US 8,264,380 (coaxial shaft hole + reference circle) as the lead reference for the central fastening hole.
• Claims 6/12 (laser scribing), 17 (hollow shaft) and 18 (board opening): plausible in view of the cited art plus routine engineering, but require additional corroborating references before I would call them strong § 103 grounds.

8. Confidence and verification caveats

• Verified full/partial text (high confidence in the quoted content): US 4,982,084; US 6,232,593 (via everypatent.com and Google Patents citations); JP 2004-151076 A (J-GLOBAL record + Google Patents machine translation); US 2010/0193671 A1 (full description); US 8,264,380 / EP 2 108 926 (abstract + background).
• Not verified (listed in the patent's Citations but not analyzed above): US 5,070,238; US 5,073,710; TW 200702636 A; JP 2008-002970 A; CN 1992479 B; JP 2009-121958 A; TW I457542 B; CN 201680850 U; JP 2011-252783 A; CN 103080700 A; CN 203550973 U; US 2015/0160041 A1; US 9,797,754 B2; JP 2018-520339 A; CN 108332116 A; and the "Family Cites Families" items. Any of these could strengthen — or complicate — the grounds above; they were not reached before my search budget ran out. The Japanese-language references in particular (JP 2011-252783 A, "Method for manufacturing reflector for optical encoder," Nikon) are likely to bear directly on the laser-scribing question and should be pulled next.
• Negative/limits: This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion, and not a validity or freedom-to-operate conclusion; claim construction could move any given mapping.
• Date discrepancy, flagged not corrected: the task header states a current date of April 26, 2026, whereas the system date is 2026-09-30 and the earlier-generated sections were fetched 2026-09-24. Nothing in this analysis turns on the difference, but I report the inconsistency rather than silently harmonizing it.

Primary source for the patent and its prior-art listings: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11162820/en
Verified reference texts: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4982084A](/patent/US4982084A)/en · https://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat6232593.html · https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2004151076A/en and https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/en/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=200903079670659772 · https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100193671A1/en · https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=EP&NR=[2108926](/patent/2108926)