US 11226247

I'll search for authoritative records on this patent number, including any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation and Federal Circuit activity.

US Patent 11,226,247 — Summary

Identification (as recorded, not auto-corrected)

Inventor-name note (literal reading): The Google Patents inventor field lists "Ryan Elliot," while the USPTO assignment record (REEL/FRAME 056566/0564, executed 2021-05-11 to 2021-06-13) spells the assignor as "ELLIOTT, RYAN." This may be a spelling variance in the source records rather than two different people; I cannot resolve it authoritatively.

Abstract (verbatim): "Disclosed is an apparatus for testing a water rocket and a method for use thereof, comprising a load cell assembly, a launcher assembly, a rocket assembly, and a base piston, all situated within a housing. Air and/or water pressurizes the rocket assembly and the launcher assembly, which is released to cause the rocket to exert a propelling force on the rocket. The load cell is adapted to capture and record the thrust of the water rocket. The housing is adapted to retain the released water within the housing. The base piston is adapted to move the launcher assembly out of the way of the releasing water and air, whereby the launcher assembly does not impede the exit of the water or air that could result in inaccurate data."

Independent claims in plain language

The patent has 9 claims: two independent (claim 1, apparatus; claim 7, method) plus dependent claims 2–6 (apparatus) and 8–9 (method).

Claim 1 — Apparatus for testing a liquid propelled rocket. Four cooperating parts:

1. Load cell assembly — a contact plate that transfers force to a load cell transducer, which outputs an electrical signal proportional to that force.
2. Rocket assembly — a top surface, a pressure vessel, and a nozzle that opens and closes. The pressure vessel holds liquid + gas at above-atmospheric pressure while the nozzle is closed.
3. Launcher assembly — a trigger mechanism that receives the nozzle, operates it between open/closed, engages it when closed, and releases it when open.
4. Base piston — attached to the trigger mechanism and configured to separate the trigger mechanism from the nozzle when the nozzle goes from closed to open.

Then two positional/functional limitations: in the launch position, the rocket sits below the load cell, the nozzle is closed and pointed downward, and the trigger mechanism is engaged with the nozzle; and at least one of the load cell assembly, rocket assembly, or launcher assembly is vertically movable so the contact plate and the rocket's top surface can be brought into contact.

Claim 7 — Method for testing a liquid propelled rocket. Recites the same four component-providing steps and positional limitations as claim 1, then the operational steps:

• engaging the trigger mechanism with the nozzle "with the nozzle in the open position" (this is what the claim literally says; on its face it appears inconsistent with the closing step that follows, but I am reporting it as written rather than correcting it);
• injecting liquid into the pressure vessel;
• injecting gas to raise internal pressure above atmospheric;
• operating the nozzle to the closed position;
• moving the rocket assembly and launcher assembly vertically until the contact plate and rocket top surface contact;
• operating the nozzle to the open position; and
• recording the electrical signal generated by the load cell transducer.

Dependent claims in brief:

• Claim 2: base piston also moves the rocket + launcher toward the load cell.
• Claim 3: base piston moves slower toward the load cell than when separating the trigger mechanism from the nozzle.
• Claim 4: adds a housing containing the load cell, rocket, and launcher assemblies.
• Claim 5: housing has a door (open/closed).
• Claim 6: housing has a lower surface with a drain to let liquid out.
• Claim 8: (method) base piston also configured to move rocket + launcher toward the load cell.
• Claim 9: (method) the slower-toward / faster-away rate limitation.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

No record found. I searched for Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity and district court complaints tied to patent 11,226,247 and to the assignee Atlantis Educational Services, Inc., and found no litigation, appeal, IPR, or PTAB proceeding referencing this patent number. The only 2026-related item located was a Florida foreign-profit-corporation annual report (filed 05/31/2026, document #F13000001372) listing Atlantis Educational Services, Inc. at a Kennedy Space Center mail code / Titusville, FL address, with Abhishek Agrawal as CEO and registered agent — corporate-filing activity, not patent litigation.

Also note: search results returned several unrelated references to "the '112 patent" (e.g., U.S. 9,656,112 in a fitness-device matter), a Texas voter roll hit for "11226247," and other rocket-thrust art. None of those concern US 11,226,247.

Uncertainty statement: I do not have authoritative confirmation that the CAFC 2026 docket and full USPTO Patent Center litigation records were exhaustively queried via the tools available; my searches returned no case. If a specific docket number or party name exists, I would need that identifier to verify rather than assert absence.

Prior art of record (from the face of the patent)

• US 3,122,917 A (1964-03-03)
• US 2012/0205488 A1 — Sparton Corporation, "Unmanned aerial vehicle launch system" (2012-08-16)
• KR 20200057471 A — 정경민, "Rocket thrust measuring device" (2020-05-26)
• Non-patent: Air Command Water Rockets, "Day 67 — Test Stand Work" (2008) and Day 57 log (2008); Santos et al., "Development of Test Stand for Experimental Investigation of Chemical and Physical Phenomena in Liquid Rocket Engine," J. Aerosp. Technol. Manag., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 159–170 (2011); PCT/US21/22745 ISR and Written Opinion (completed 2021-05-04).

Sources: Google Patents US11226247B2; FreePatentsOnline US2021/0293640; Onscope — Atlantis Educational Services portfolio; Sunbiz 2026 annual report.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11226247 across patent litigation sources.

Initial results show no litigation. Let me search the specific litigation databases directly.

Let me check the litigation-specific portals and RPX/Insight databases directly.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 11226247

Bottom line: I found no litigation — in district court, the ITC, or on appeal — involving U.S. Patent No. 11,226,247. Based on the sources searched, there appears to be no known litigation for this specific patent as of April 26, 2026.

Patent identification (verified, interpreted literally)

What I searched and what I found

• General web / patent-litigation queries for "US11226247" and "11226247 patent litigation / infringement lawsuit" returned only false positives from unrelated data sets — e.g., a PubMed ID (PMID 11226247 for a yeast-prion paper), Brazilian state registration numbers, and Travis County (TX) voter ID numbers. None relate to this patent.
• Owner-entity query ("Atlantis Educational Services v. …" / "Atlantis Educational Services patent lawsuit") returned only the patent's own bibliographic pages (Google Patents, Justia, OnScope) and no complaint, docket, or judgment.
• Litigation databases (Unified Patents portal, RPX/Insight, CourtListener) did not surface any case, and my later targeted calls to those portals were cut off before completing a dedicated docket pull.

The Google Patents record for this patent likewise shows no litigation, ITC, or PTAB entries — only forward citations (Chinese patents citing the family) and prior-art citations (US 3,122,917; US 2012/0205488 A1; KR 2020/0057471 A).

Important caveats (per your strict rules)

1. This is not a certified "no litigation" opinion. I could not complete a direct case-list query of the specific portals you named (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER, or the CAFC docket for the literal string "11226247." A negative result from web search engines is weaker evidence than a direct docket query.
2. Do not conflate with other numbers. I did not return results for similar numbers (e.g., the '047 patent in Poly-America v. GSE, or other "112…"-adjacent patents) — those are unrelated and were disregarded.
3. Owner is a small educational-products company (owned by Atlantis Educational Services, Inc., Florida), which is the type of entity that historically asserts patents rarely; that is consistent with (but not proof of) zero litigation.
4. Related family patent. The continuation US 12,055,456 B2 ("Load cell assembly") was also not shown to be in litigation in this search.

Recommended next steps to reach certainty

To confirm a true null result, run the literal string "11226247" directly in:

• Unified Patents litigation caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist)
• RPX Insight (insight.rpxcorp.com)
• Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / Westlaw Litigation Analytics
• PACER and the CAFC docket, and USITC EDIS (Section 337)
• PTAB (for IPR/PGR/CBM against the '247 patent)

If you'd like, tell me and I'll run those targeted portal queries directly (my earlier calls to them were interrupted) and report any hits.

I'll verify the structured data (which says no AIA trials) against public sources before reporting.

Search results returned no matching IPR. Let me run a couple more targeted checks for any proceeding or related litigation.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11226247: 0. The structured PTAB block (USPTO ODP) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web searches surfaced nothing to override that — no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, no termination, no Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent. Status breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom line defensive posture: there is no PTAB-based defense on the shelf. Nothing has been tested at the Board, so there is no FWD to cite, no canceled claim to point at, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to inherit. The patent stands wholly intact — all 9 claims (claims 1–6 apparatus, claims 7–9 method) are UNTESTED. Any defendant must build its invalidity case from scratch, and the absence of IPR activity is a genuine signal here (see "Pattern signals" below) rather than an artifact of the patent being unpracticed.

⚠️ Verification caveat (stated plainly): my searches for US11226247 + PTAB/IPR returned unrelated Board records (e.g., IPR2022-00030 on U.S. Pat. No. 7,166,062 — a different patent; do not conflate), plus unrelated "Atlantis" matters from the Nevada state courts. I could not retrieve a PTAB E2E docket page for the patent number, so my confirmation rests on negative search evidence plus the structured block. Treat as high confidence but not primary-source-verified; a docket pull at PTAB E2E using the patent number is the definitive check.

No proceedings to report

There are no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} entries to enumerate. Per the task's ordering rule ("claims-invalidated ones go to the top"), the list is empty because no proceeding exists — not because I omitted any.

For completeness, the adjoining data points that do exist:

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 11,226,247 has been canceled, narrowed by amendment, or adjudicated. Claims 1–9 are all live and all UNTESTED. There is no certificate of cancellation, no disclaimer, and nothing for a defendant to quote from a Final Written Decision. Equally, there is no reexamination or reissue narrowing in the record.

Estoppel landscape. Because no AIA trial was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — no petitioner, no privies, no barred grounds. That cuts both ways: your side faces no estoppel either. Every statutory ground is available: § 102 and § 103 on any prior art you can find, § 112(b) indefiniteness (note that claims 1–6 are apparatus claims with structural "contact plate / ball / load cell transducer" limitations and claim 7 recites the step "engaging the trigger mechanism with the nozzle with the nozzle in the open position" — the as-issued text of that step is internally incongruent with the engagement/release scheme in the surrounding claims, which is worth a close § 112 look, but the Board cannot decide § 112(b) in an IPR; only PGR or district court can). PGR is unavailable — the § 321(c) nine-month window closed on/around 2022-10-18, and the patent's 2020 priority date is post-AIA so CBM is inapplicable. IPR is your only AIA vehicle, and it remains open only until one year after service of a complaint on you (§ 315(b)) — so if a demand letter has escalated to service, start the art search now.

Pattern signals. Three observations, all consistent with the "no proceedings" finding rather than contradicting it: (1) the patent owner is an operating small entity, not a serial enforcer — Atlantis Educational Services appears to be an education/STEM company (toy rockets, educational programs, altimeters, diver propulsion vehicles), which is the profile least likely to attract an IPR petition and least likely to have filed many suits; (2) the family is still being prosecuted — the same inventors/owner obtained US 12,055,456 B2 in 2024 off a continuation, so a defendant's freedom-to-operate problem likely includes that sibling patent, which is also IPR-free (though as a 2024 grant it is well past its PGR window too); (3) no Unified Patents or defensive-aggregator footprint appears anywhere in the record — no third-party RPI, no joinder, nothing. Note that the foreign counterpart activity (e.g., CN 116465533 B, "Water rocket testing system and method," 2023) shows the technical field is drawing Chinese filings, but that is irrelevant to PTAB exposure.

Recommended next steps

• No invalidity shortcut exists. Do not represent to a client or a court that this patent has been invalidated or narrowed; it has not. All 9 claims are presumed valid under § 282.
• Build the IPR from the cited art plus fresh art. The examiner's own references are the natural starting set — US 3,122,917 A; US 2012/0205488 A1 (Sparton, UAV launch system); KR 20200057471 A (rocket thrust measuring device) — and the file's non-patent citations signal that water-rocket test-stand literature (Air Command Water Rockets 2008 logs; Santos et al. 2011) was on the examiner's mind. Two features carry the likely novelty weight and should be attacked directly: the load-cell assembly with a ball concentrating force from a spring-loaded contact plate into a transducer (claims 1, 7; the entire subject of the sibling patent) and the base piston that raises the rocket to the load cell pre-launch and then retracts the launcher away from the ejecting propellant, with asymmetric rates (slow up / fast down) (claims 1–3, 7–9).
• Docket-verify before relying on this. Pull PTAB E2E for patent number 11226247 and run a CourtListener docket search on the patent number and assignee to confirm zero proceedings and zero litigation; my search coverage was negative but not exhaustive. ⚠️ Note that neither a litigation search nor an IPR search should be treated as authoritative from search-engine results alone — a recently filed petition may not be indexed anywhere yet.
• If you become a real-party-in-interest in a future petition, the § 315(b) clock runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent; the WO counterpart (WO 2021188660 A1, ceased) does not create a separate exposure.
• Watch the continuation. Because 17/648,160 has already issued as US 12,055,456 B2 and the family remains live, an invalidity win on the '247 patent alone may not end the risk; scope your analysis across both grants.
• Statutory framing for any future trial: if an IPR is ever instituted, the Board's FWD is due within 12 months of the institution decision (§ 316(a)(11)). There is currently no institution decision, no oral hearing, and no deadline to track on this patent.

Uncertainty I won't paper over: I could not confirm from primary sources that no petition has been filed in the last few weeks, and I found no evidence of any district court assertion of this patent (which would normally be the trigger for an IPR). If you hold a demand letter or complaint I don't have, that fact would change the timeliness analysis above.

I'll search for the recorded assignment records and ownership-chain evidence.

Ownership-chain reconstruction — US 11,226,247 B2

Source note / limitation up front: The single recorded assignment below is drawn from the USPTO-derived legal-events record reproduced on the patent's Google Patents page (which mirrors Assignment Center data), not from a completed interactive query of assignmentcenter.uspto.gov. My direct tool queries were exhausted before I could pull the Assignment Center result page itself, so I have reel/frame, dates, conveyance, assignor and assignee confirmed, but not the correspondent-of-record field for that reel/frame. That gap is material to the task (the correspondent is the requested tell) and I flag it rather than fill it in.

Verify directly at: USPTO Assignment Search and Assignment Center — search 11226247.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — no departures flag: All three inventors executed the assignment to their own company on 2021-05-11 through 2021-06-13, i.e. roughly two months after the 2021-03-17 filing and seven months before grant. This is the ordinary employee/contractor invention-assignment posture, not a mass inventor exodus preceding a sale. There is no evidence any inventor assigned away to a third party, and the CEO remains the company's registered agent as of 2026.

Original assignee

Atlantis Educational Services, Inc. (Florida; FEI 46-0668083), doing business as Space Trek, Mail Code AES, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899 / 3785 Raney Road, Titusville, FL 32780.

• Primary line of business: STEM education — space camps at Kennedy Space Center (incorporated 2012) plus hardware: HydroLaunch water-rocket systems, LaunchTrak altimeters, Elev8Eject parachute mechanisms, Near Space Investigation kits, MakerBox Arduino kits.
• Does it ship products embodying the claims? Yes, on the record. The company's own site lists a "Bottle Engine Testing Apparatus (BETA)" lab-equipment line alongside the HydroLaunch kits, and public procurement notices (Hillsborough County Public Schools sole-source/single-source postings, Dec 2022 and Feb 2024) name Atlantis Educational Services as the vendor for "Hydrolaunch rocketry kits … ultimeter rocket altimeters and bottle engine test" equipment. This is the commercial embodiment of the claimed water-rocket thrust test apparatus.
• Current status: Operating, active. Florida 2026 annual report on file; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2025-06-30; small-entity fee status maintained since 2021-03-25. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition record found.
• Governance color (unverified): the 2026 Sunbiz officers/directors list includes a "FERGUSON, CHRIS" as President (Cape Canaveral, FL) — plausibly the former NASA astronaut, but I have no authoritative confirmation of that identity and do not assert it.

Assignment timeline

• 2021-05-11 to 2021-06-13 (executed) / recorded 2021-06-16 — Reel 056566 / 0564
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST
  • Assignor: AGRAWAL, ABHISHEK; GAFFORD, ANDREW; ELLIOTT, RYAN
  • Assignee: ATLANTIS EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, INC. (Florida)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — the Assignment Center correspondent field for reel 056566/0564 was not captured before my queries were exhausted. No recurrence analysis is possible on a single link regardless.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment (normal prosecution-stage housekeeping), ~3 months after filing and ~7 months before grant — not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

That is the entire recorded chain. No security agreements, no corrective assignments, no name changes, no merger conveyances, no licensing recordations, and — critically — no post-issuance transfer of any kind on the Google Patents legal-events ledger for this patent (the only post-grant events are the 2022-01-18 grant and the 2025-06-30 maintenance payment). The Register shows no assignment to any entity whose name contains IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures.

Family cross-check: the continuation US 17/648,160 (filed 2022-01-17, issued 2024-08-06 as US 12,055,456 B2, "Load cell assembly") stays with the same family and assignee; the PCT member WO 2021/188660 A1 (PCT/US2021/022745) is the only other family record, and WO status is "Ceased."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11226247
    2020 : Provisional 62991177 filed Mar 18
    2021 : Non-provisional 17204402 filed Mar 17
         : Assignment to Atlantis recorded Jun 16
         : Pre-grant publication Sep 23
    2022 : Patent granted Jan 18
         : Continuation 17648160 filed Jan 17
    2024 : Continuation issues as US 12055456
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid Jun 30

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — chosen because the rubric reserves this label for the case of "no records, or only the original assignment," which is exactly what the chain contains: a single inventor-to-employer assignment at Reel 056566/0564 (executed 2021-05-11 to 2021-06-13, recorded 2021-06-16) and nothing thereafter.

Substantive conclusion (which the label undersells and which I want stated plainly): every affirmative NPE indicator I could test came back negative, and the ownership evidence points the other way — the assignee is a verified operating company that sells the embodying hardware (BETA Bottle Engine Testing Apparatus; HydroLaunch kits and LaunchTrak altimeters sold to school districts via sole-source procurement), the inventors assigned to their own employer months after filing rather than bailing out, the company is still active in Florida as of 2026, and the patent has never been asserted. This is an operating-company-held, non-asserted patent, not a troll chain; the "Insufficient data" label reflects only that the chain is too short (one link, no correspondent captured) to support a positive NPE finding of any grade — not that the ownership picture is unknown.

I'll research the prior-art citations of record for US 11,226,247 to characterize each reference accurately.

Let me verify the remaining citations — US 3,122,917, KR 10-2020-0057471, and the "family cites families" references.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent No. 11,226,247

1. Confirmation of the patent in the USPTO record (literal identifier 11226247)

The record I retrieved resolves the number 11226247 to US 11,226,247 B2, "Apparatus and method for testing liquid propelled rocket," application US 17/204,402, filed 2021-03-17, granted 2022-01-18, priority 2020-03-18, assignee Atlantis Educational Services, Inc. (Florida). I did not substitute or "correct" the number, and I excluded the similar-but-unrelated hits my searches surfaced (e.g., US 3,132,767 / US 3,121,312 thrust-control patents; the PMID 11226247 yeast-prion paper; a Texas voter-ID hit for "11226247"; the separate "'112 patent" fitness-art matter). None of those is US 11,226,247.

Before the merits, one important framing point: everything below is prior art of record (cited on the face of the patent or in its family / PCT record), not the product of a fresh invalidity search. That distinction matters for a § 102 analysis.

2. Patent citations of record (from the face of US 11,226,247)

The record discloses only three patent citations. There is no large prior-art cluster; the examiner cited two references heavily (§ 102/103 art), and the non-patent literature did the rest of the work.

3. Per-reference analysis

3.1 US 3,122,917 A — granted 1964-03-03

• Full citation: US 3,122,917 A, granted March 3, 1964 (inventor/assignee not captured in the record I retrieved; the Google Patents citation table lists the title only as "figure").
• Publication/filing date: published/granted 1964-03-03. Filing date not captured in my retrieval.
• Description: I could not independently verify the subject matter of US 3,122,917. My searches for this literal number returned different 1964-era patents (US 3,132,767, US 3,121,312 — reaction-jet/fluid-metering art), not the '917 patent. Based on its position as a cited reference in a thrust-measurement patent and its 1964 vintage, it is most plausibly directed to a force/thrust measuring apparatus (the kind of "figure" drawing-only citation typical of a basic transducer or lever-load device).
• § 102 relevance: Low confidence. If it is a basic force-measuring device, it could be cited under § 102(a)(1)/102(b) as teaching the general concept of converting an applied force into a measured quantity — i.e., potentially relevant to the load cell / contact-transfer element of claim 1 and claim 7. But I cannot responsibly assert which claim(s) it anticipates without seeing the document. Treat this as unverified.

3.2 US 2012/0205488 A1 — Sparton Corporation, "Unmanned aerial vehicle launch system"

• Full citation: US 2012/0205488 A1 (Powell et al.), published 2012-08-16; application 13/367,494 filed 2012-02-07; priority to provisional US 61/443,310 filed 2011-02-16; granted as US 8,662,441 B2 on 2014-03-04.

• Description (verified): Discloses a liquid rocket carrying a UAV payload. The booster assembly defines separate volumes of an inert liquid (water) and a compressed, inert gas (CO₂, N₂, or air), pre-mixed or pre-pressurized before launch; a release/trigger mechanism can be actuated (optionally remotely) to release the pressure and launch the rocket; the nozzle is opened when a threshold pressure has built in the canister, producing "extended liquid and gaseous thrust phases." A launch tube and launch control assembly generate the launch signal.

• § 102 relevance — which claims: This is the most substantive patent reference because it overlaps the rocket/launcher side of the claims. It teaches:

  • a rocket assembly with a pressure vessel holding liquid + gas at above-atmospheric pressure and a nozzle opened at threshold pressure → element of claim 1 and claim 7;
  • a release/trigger mechanism that engages the rocket and releases it → the "launcher assembly / trigger mechanism" element of claim 1 and claim 7;
  • a downward-directed liquid-and-gas exhaust producing upward thrust.

  It does not teach, on the record before me, the load cell assembly with a contact plate transferring force to a load cell transducer, the top surface contacting a contact plate, the base piston attached to the trigger mechanism, or the relative/vertical-movement positional limitations. So it does not appear to anticipate claim 1 or claim 7 as a whole (anticipation requires every element in a single reference). Its realistic role is § 103 art: a primary reference for the rocket/launcher sub-combination.

3.3 KR 2020/0057471 A — 정경민, "로켓 추력 측정장치" (Rocket thrust measuring device)

• Full citation: KR 10-2020-0057471 A (KR application 10-2018-0141945), filed 2018-11-16, published 2020-05-26, inventor 정경민. (Confirmed via a patent-classification index listing the publication number, application number, filing date, and publication date.)
• Timing note: Its publication date (2020-05-26) falls after the '247 patent's 2020-03-18 priority date, and its filing date (2018-11-16) precedes it. That places it in the narrow window where its filing date could make it prior art under § 102(a)(2) (pre-AIA § 102(e)) only if the applicant/patentee relationship conditions are met or it qualifies as a printed publication in another country; as a KR publication after the critical date it is not § 102(a)(1) art on its face. This timing wrinkle is worth flagging rather than glossing.
• Description: A rocket thrust measuring device — thrust-measurement apparatus, i.e., the load-cell/transducer side of the problem.
• § 102 relevance — which claims: Potentially relevant to the load cell transducer limitation ("generate an electrical signal proportional to the force") in claim 1 and claim 7, and to the concept of measuring rocket thrust generally. I could not retrieve full text to confirm whether it teaches a contact-plate-to-ball-to-transducer arrangement analogous to the patent's FIG. 6. Treat its element-level relevance as unverified.

3.4 Family citations ("Family Cites Families" — cited by members of the patent family, notably the continuation US 12,055,456 B2 "Load cell assembly")

These three were not cited against US 11,226,247 itself — they belong to the family/continuation record and are most relevant to the load cell assembly subject matter of the continuation US 12,055,456 B2. I could not independently verify their content (search steps were exhausted before I could pull them), so I am reporting them as identified by citation, not as analyzed anticipation art.

4. Non-patent literature of record

5. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

No single reference of record appears to anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 7 as a whole. Anticipation under § 102 requires every element of the claim in one reference, and the potentially distinguishing elements are:

1. the load cell assembly with a contact plate → ball/transfer element → load cell transducer producing a proportional electrical signal (FIG. 6);
2. the base piston attached to the trigger mechanism and configured to separate the trigger mechanism from the nozzle upon opening; and
3. the positional limitations (rocket below load cell, nozzle closed and pointing downward, contact plate and rocket top surface brought into contact by relative vertical movement).

Mapping the strongest references to those elements:

• Air Command "Day 67" (load cell + water rocket + drop-away release head) + US 2012/0205488 (liquid rocket with liquid+gas pressurization and a trigger/release mechanism) together supply most of the rocket/launcher/load-sensing concepts — a § 103 combination, not § 102 anticipation.
• KR 2020/0057471 and the family citations (US 5,523,644; GB 2,327,763; JP 4,434,452) are directed to the thrust/force-transducer side and would go to the load-measuring limitation.
• US 3,122,917 remains unverified as to content.

The apparent point of novelty of US 11,226,247, and the limitation most likely to survive these references, is the base piston attached to the trigger mechanism that removes the launcher from the exhaust path while the rocket stays in contact with the load cell — a feature none of the cited references appears to disclose expressly.

6. Uncertainty and verification caveats (per your strict rules)

1. US 3,122,917 A — I could not retrieve its text/content; my searches for that literal number returned different 1964 patents. I therefore decline to assert what it discloses or which claims it anticipates.
2. KR 2020/0057471 A — confirmed as to number, filing date (2018-11-16) and publication date (2020-05-26) from a classification index, but I did not read the specification, so my element-level mapping (load cell transducer) is inferential.
3. US 5,523,644 A, GB 2,327,763 B, JP 4,434,452 B2 — identified only as family citations; content unverified.
4. Timing/§ 102 category — because the '247 priority date is 2020-03-18 (post-AIA), the KR publication (2020-05-26) is not § 102(a)(1) art on its face and its § 102(a)(2) status depends on filing-date and applicant-relationship conditions I have not confirmed. I flag this rather than treat the KR reference as clean prior art.
5. Scope of this search — this is an analysis of the prior art of record. It is not a validity opinion or an exhaustive invalidity search; additional art exists that no party has yet cited.

Sources: Google Patents US11226247B2 (citations tables and NPL); US 2012/0205488 A1 / US 8,662,441 B2 (Sparton); US 9,612,085 B2 (Sparton, payload launch) ; Air Command Water Rockets, Day 67; KR 10-2020-0057471 A listing (application 10-2018-0141945, filed 2018-11-16, pub. 2020-05-26) via a CPC classification index (patenthub.cn).

I'll analyze obviousness under § 103. First, let me gather details on the prior art references of record.

Let me gather details on the remaining prior-art references.

Let me pin down the KR reference and the Santos test-stand paper.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,226,247 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the previously generated sections (identification, claim breakdown, prior-art-of-record list). No contradictions found with those sections; I adopt their claim taxonomy (claims 1–6 apparatus, claims 7–9 method) and their prior-art list, and flag one date-availability issue below that the earlier sections did not address. Date context: current date April 26, 2026; priority date 2020‑03‑18.

1. Framework and the person of ordinary skill

Legal standard. Obviousness asks whether the claimed subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) at the effective filing date. Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The inquiry is: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia. A combination is obvious where the references are from the same field or a field of endeavor, address the same problem, or where a known technique is applied to improve a similar device in the same way — with a reasonable expectation of success. KSR, 550 U.S. at 401, 415–17.

POSITA (proposed). A person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering (or equivalent) and 2–3 years of experience designing/handling amateur water‑rocket or small liquid‑propulsion test stands and instrumented force‑measurement rigs (load cells, data loggers). This is a low‑skill, mature art — which cuts against patentability, not for it.

Claim-construction note. The independent claims are broad relative to the specification. Claim 1's "load cell assembly" requires only (i) a contact plate that transfers force, and (ii) a load cell transducer producing an electrical signal proportional to that force. The distinctive ball (304), the spring‑loaded screws (305), and the carbon‑fiber plates are not recited. A defendant need only find a contact plate + a proportional‑output transducer, not the ball‑concentrator architecture. That materially simplifies the obviousness case (and means the ball should be attacked against the sibling US 12,055,456, not here).

2. What each reference of record discloses (scope and content)

⚠️ Date‑availability flag (new, and important). KR 2020/0057471 A published 2020‑05‑26, ~2 months after the 2020‑03‑18 priority date. As a foreign national publication it is not § 102(a)(2) art (not an application "published under section 122(b)"). So it qualifies under § 102(a)(1) only if the priority claim is not fully supported and the effective filing date slips to 2021‑03‑17. This must be verified claim‑by‑claim before leaning on it. The Air Command logs (2008), Santos (2011), US 3,122,917 (1964) and US 2012/0205488 (2012) have no such problem — each predates 2020‑03‑18 by years.

3. The primary combination

Air Command "Day 67" (primary) + US 2012/0205488 (Sparton) + US 3,122,917 (Ormond).

This trio maps nearly every limitation of claim 1:

• Load cell assembly / contact plate + proportional transducer → Air Command's single‑point load cell with "the bottle connected to the load cell" measuring water‑rocket thrust; more explicitly, US 3,122,917's force‑transfer plate acting on a load cell/cantilever.
• Rocket assembly (top surface, pressure vessel, nozzle open/closed; liquid + gas above atmospheric) → Air Command's water rocket; Sparton expressly discloses a pressure vessel holding water + compressed gas, with the nozzle closed until a threshold pressure is reached and then opened to produce liquid + gaseous thrust.
• Launcher assembly / trigger mechanism receiving the nozzle, engaging when closed, releasing when open → Sparton's "release/trigger mechanism … actuated remotely to allow the booster assembly to launch." Air Command's nozzle release head performs the same engage/release role.
• Base piston attached to the trigger mechanism, configured to separate the trigger mechanism from the nozzle when the nozzle opens → Air Command's release head "drops away" on release is the claimed function of the base piston. The only difference is the motive force — gravity/string vs. an actuator. Substituting a pneumatic/hydraulic piston (wholly conventional, and the patent itself admits "pneumatic controllers, such as solenoid motors and/or flow regulators" are known) is the classic substitution of a known element to obtain a predictable result (KSR).
• Launch position: rocket below the load cell, nozzle closed and pointed downward → an inherent consequence of water‑rocket physics, which the patent concedes: "Water rocket engine tests can only be conducted in situations where the liquid is closer to the source of gravity." A downward‑pointing nozzle with the rocket under the sensor is the only workable vertical geometry.
• At least one of the three sub‑assemblies vertically movable to bring the contact plate and the rocket top surface into contact → Air Command's stand with adjustable/low‑friction support; routine adjustability of a test stand to fit different bottles.

Claim 7 recites the same structural elements and adds well‑known operational steps (fill water, pressurize with gas, close nozzle, bring into contact, open nozzle, record the transducer signal). Air Command discloses measure‑thrust‑from‑a‑water‑rocket; Sparton discloses pressurize‑liquid‑and‑gas‑then‑open‑the‑nozzle. The method is the ordinary use of the combined apparatus — obvious for the same reasons.

Motivation to combine (explicit and articulated in the references themselves):

1. Same field of endeavor — instrumented thrust testing of liquid/water rockets (Air Command; Santos; US 3,122,917; KR 2020/0057471; Sparton).
2. Same problem — Air Command states the goal verbatim: build a test stand "on which we will be able to test design ideas and see how they affect performance." The '247 patent states the identical problem (measuring water‑rocket thrust accurately). Where the references address the very problem the patent addresses, combination is presumptively obvious.
3. Sparton supplies what Air Command lacks — a remotely/automatically actuated release‑trigger mechanism and a controlled liquid+gas pressurization scheme. A POSITA seeking repeatable, remote, timed thrust tests would adopt Sparton's trigger on Air Command's rig.
4. Predictable improvement — replacing gravity‑dropped release with a piston gives faster, repeatable, timed separation, directly serving the express Air Command goal of sensitivity/accuracy ("The last test stand we built was not sensitive enough…").

4. Claim‑by‑claim conclusions (prima facie)

§ 112(b) cross‑flag that bears on § 103. Claim 7 literally recites "engaging the trigger mechanism with the nozzle with the nozzle in the open position," immediately before "operating the nozzle to the closed position." As noted in the earlier section, the as‑issued text is internally incongruent with the engage/release scheme of claim 1. Because claims are construed before they are invalidated, a defendant should press this as indefiniteness (a district‑court/PGR issue — the Board cannot decide § 112(b) in an IPR). If construed broadly/nonsensically, the step adds no narrowing weight and the method falls to the same combination.

5. Secondary combination (load‑cell‑focused)

Air Command "Day 67" + KR 2020/0057471 (or Santos 2011) + US 3,122,917. Used to reinforce the "load cell assembly / proportional electrical signal" element if the patent owner tries to distinguish Air Command on the quality of its instrumentation. Two independent thrust‑measurement references (KR 2020/0057471; Santos 2011) plus Ormond make the measurement element unpatentable on its own — so the inventive weight must rest entirely on the base‑piston‑plus‑retracting‑launcher integration and the housing/drain, if anywhere.

6. Where the prima facie case is weakest (candor)

• No single reference, and arguably no cited pair, expressly discloses the dual‑function base piston that both raises the rocket to the load cell and retracts the launcher on launch — the reference's only "separate the release head" teaching (Air Command) is gravity/string‑powered. The obviousness case here rests on KSR substitution (piston for gravity), which is strong but not airtight; the patent owner will argue the piston's two‑role integration and asymmetric rate control are non‑obvious.
• Housing + door + drain (claims 4–6) is genuinely thin on the cited art. An invalidity challenge that ignores this may fail on those dependent claims even if claim 1 falls. New art showing an enclosed, drained splash‑containment test cell would close the gap.
• Foreign‑language availability: KR 2020/0057471's post‑priority publication date (see §2 flag) makes it fragile as § 102(a)(1) art. Do not let the whole petition depend on it; anchor on Air Command + Sparton + Ormond, all solidly pre‑2020.
• Secondary considerations: none appears in the record as litigated. The patent's commercial context (Atlantis Educational Services, a small STEM‑education company; see earlier sections) could support a long‑felt‑need / industry‑praise narrative for the patent owner, so any petitioner should expect that rebuttal and pre‑empt it.

7. Bottom line

1. Claim 1 and claim 7 are, on the cited art, prima facie obvious over Air Command "Day 67" in view of Sparton US 2012/0205488 and US 3,122,917, with the "base piston" supplied by ordinary substitution of a known pneumatic/hydraulic actuator for Air Command's gravity‑dropped release head — a predictable improvement serving the references' own stated goal of measurement accuracy.
2. Claims 2, 3, 8, 9 fall as obvious design refinements (raise‑to‑sensor; asymmetric rate via a known flow regulator).
3. Claims 4–6 (housing, door, drain) are the weak link in the cited art and the most likely place for a validity challenge to stall — new art is needed.
4. Only IPR is available (PGR window closed ~2022‑10‑18; CBM inapplicable to a post‑AIA case), and the § 315(b) clock runs from service of a complaint. If a demand letter has escalated to service, build the petition now around Air Command + Sparton + Ormond, and treat KR 2020/0057471 as corroboration only.
5. Uncertainty I won't paper over: I could not retrieve the full text of KR 2020/0057471 A, so its specific disclosure is asserted at the level of title/classification only; and the priority‑support/§ 102(a)(1) availability of that reference is unverified. Both should be checked against the file history before the reference carries any weight.