US 117230

I'll run targeted searches for this identifier before summarizing.

US 117,230 — "Improvement in planing-machines"

Bottom line up front: US 117,230 is not a modern patent and it is not in any 2026 litigation posture. It is an 1871 woodworking-machinery patent issued to the two named inventors. Searches of USPTO-facing records, Google Patents, DATAMP, the 1871 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents, and CAFC 2026 decision/docket material returned no CAFC 2026 docket, no IPR/PGR, and no assignment record for this number. It has been expired since 1888.

(Note on dating: the instructions say "current date April 26, 2026," while the system clock reads 2026-09-30. I used my search tooling in the 2026 window; nothing about US 117,230 turns on the difference.)

Bibliographic data (literal identifiers, as indexed)

Corroborating sources: the 1871 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents alphabetical list of patentees — "117,230 … Woods, Solomon A., Boston, and George E. Woodbury, Cambridge, Mass. Planing-machine … July 18, 1871" (archive.org scan of the 1871 annual report); DATAMP's S. A. Woods Machine Co. patent list (patent 117,230, Jul. 18, 1871, S.A. Woods, G.E. Woodbury); Digital Public Library of America record of "Solomon A. Woods & George E. Woodbury Improvements in Moulding Machines," created 1871-07-18.

Abstract

There is no abstract. Abstracts were not part of U.S. patent practice in 1871. The nearest thing to a stated field is the specification's own opening sentence, quoted in a period lithograph offering of this patent: "My invention relates to details of construction and arrangement of mechanism of that class of planing-machines particularly designed for making moldings, rabbeted stock, etc."

Synthesized summary (mine, not the patent's words): the patent is a multi-feature improvement package for a power-fed planing/molding machine. Its lead feature moves the upper feed-roll's whole adjusting gear-train below the rolls into the under part of the frame (cross-shaft with bevel pinions driving bevel pinions on vertical screw-shafts, which through vertically sliding rods in grooved standards raise, lower, and spring-load the upper feed-roll). Other features cover a removable sectional spur wheel on the upper feed-roll; a laterally adjustable journal-stand whose inclined supports carry the main cutter-cylinder journal boxes; a pressure bar on pivoted arms; a yoke-bar running in front of the cutter-cylinder to tie the journal boxes while leaving the pressure-bar mechanism clear; clamped (fully encircling) support boxes for the vertical side-head spindles; wedge-and-screw vertical adjustment for the under cutter-cylinder; and three separately adjustable work-supports/rests and swinging tables around the cutter-cylinders.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 12 claims, all in the single-sentence, "substantially as shown and described" combination format of the era. No claim uses formal dependency language; each stands as its own combination. In substance, however, claim 1 is the principal/broadest claim, claim 2 is a subcombination of claim 1's mechanism, and claims 3–12 are separate combination claims on distinct features.

Claim 1 — the main claim (feed-roll adjustment moved below the bed).
The machine's upper feed-roll is adjusted by mechanism placed under the machine, in the lower part of the frame, rather than overhead. It consists of a cross-shaft (r) with bevel pinions (q) that drive bevel pinions (p) on vertical screw-shafts (o); those screw-shafts, through vertically sliding connecting rods (j) running in grooves in grooved standards (e), both support and move the upper feed-roll. Practical point stated in the specification: putting the gearing below the rolls does away with gearing overhead and keeps the gear teeth (on the undersides of the wheels) out of the shavings.

Claim 2 — the weight/yoke/stirrup assembly that presses the roll down on the stock (subcombination of claim 1).
The combination of weighted boxes (x), stirrups (v), yokes (u), bars (s), screw-shafts (o), nut-pieces (n), and rods (j). Plainly: the upper roll is carried in yokes; weight is hung on the yokes through stirrups; the screw-shafts and nut-pieces set the height; and the rods transmit the downward stress to the roll, so that the same rods both support/position the upper boxes and spring-load the roll down against the work. The specification explains the roll must be free to rise under a thick board and then press back down on it.

Claim 3 — removable sectional spur wheel on the upper feed-roll.
A sectional feed-roll element (g) with feed spurs (m) that is removably attached to the shaft (k) and to the main feed-roll (f). The stated purpose: the sectional wheel (made in two semicircular halves bolted together around the shaft) can be added or removed without withdrawing the roll shaft from the frame or slipping a belt, for stock of irregular cross-section that the plain rolls will not bite.

Claim 4 — laterally adjustable journal-stand with inclined supports for the main cutter-cylinder.
The journal-stand (e²) combined with the main frame (a) and adjustable laterally on it, having inclined journal-supports (d²) on which the cutter-cylinder's journal boxes (b²) are adjusted vertically. This gives the cutter-cylinder both vertical and endwise/lateral adjustment relative to the frame.

Claim 5 — pressure bar on pivoted arms.
The pressure bar (s²) adjustably mounted on arms (t²) pivoted on the yoke (c²), so the bar can be slid in or out along the arms and fixed; with a straight planing knife it sits close to the cylinder, and with long molding/rabbeting cutters it is moved out of the path of the cutting edges while still pressing the stock near the point of cut.

Claim 6 — yoke-bar carried around the front of the cutter-cylinder.
The combination, with the journal-yoke (c²), of a laterally adjustable stand (d²) whose connecting bar extends across in front of the cutter-cylinder to join the journal boxes. The specification is explicit about the novelty rationale: prior yokes ran over, under, or behind the cylinder (in the way of access, of the stock path, or of the pressure bar), whereas the unoccupied front location frees the pressure-bar mechanism and provides a mounting site for the shoe pieces.

Claim 7 — adjustable shoe pieces on the slotted yoke-bar.
The shoe pieces (o²) in combination with the slotted yoke-bar (c²) projecting from the journal-stand — a slot (p²) allows lateral placement along the yoke bar, and a vertical slot in the shoe bar allows vertical adjustment of the shoe.

Claim 8 — adjustable plates/supports at the vertical cutter-cylinders.
In combination with the vertical cutter-cylinders, the plates or supports made adjustable with respect to those cylinders (an arm from each spindle box carries a rest plate fastened through a slot, so the plate can be brought as close to the cylinder as the cutter length permits). (Reference lettering is inconsistent between OCR sources — one reads "g²," another "y." I flag this rather than pick one.)

Claim 9 — wedge adjustment for the under cutter-cylinder.
The under cutter-cylinder (k²) and its boxes (l²) arranged with wedges (n³) on the ends of screws (p³), where turning the screws drives the wedges and raises or lowers the cylinder. Directly addresses fine depth-of-cut setting on the bottom head.

Claim 10 — adjustable rest and swinging table at the under cutter-cylinder.
The rest (r³) behind and the swinging table in front of the under cutter-cylinder (k²), each adjustable toward and away from the cylinder — so the work can be supported right up to the cutting edges regardless of how far the cutters project or which cutter forms are swapped in.

Claim 11 — vertically adjustable shoe bar that swings up out of the way.
The shoe bar, made vertically adjustable (bearings sliding on vertical posts/rods, held by clamp screws or nuts), but pivoted at one end so it can be swung up into vertical position to give access to the front mechanism of the machine.

Claim 12 — work-supporting adjustable swinging table at the cutter-cylinder.
The work-supporting, adjustable swinging table (d⁴) in combination with the cutter-cylinder (k²): pivoted at one end so it can be swung away from the cylinder and locked at the other end, sliding on bars with slot-and-screw fastenings so it can be set toward or from the cylinder.

OCR caveat: the reference characters in the claim text differ between the Google Patents transcription and the patentimages PDF transcription (e.g., claim 2: "weighted levers 1f, stirrups 1r, yokes u'" vs. "weighted boxes x, stirrups v, yokes u"; claim 10/11: "i'" vs. "a⁴"/"u"/"aᵃ"). The substance is the same; the letters are unreliable in OCR and should be read off the original lithograph/printed specification if you need exact correspondence to the drawing.

Search note — number collisions I deliberately did not substitute

Per your strict "interpret identifiers literally" rule, these surfaced in search but are different numbers and were excluded: US 6,118,230 (Fleischmann, lighting control system, Intuitive Building Controls — an IPR petition document); EP 2 061 230 B1 (Maxell v. Samsung, UPC CFI, decision dated 10 Aug 2026). I also note the trap that the literal ID "117230" is a six-digit 1871 grant, while 2023-era U.S. grants run in the 11,7xx,xxx seven-digit range — reading "117230" as "11,723,0xx" would be an auto-correction and is not what the record supports.

Uncertainty disclosure

• Filing date: unknown to me. Not published in the sources retrieved.
• The Douglass disclaimer (patent of F. Douglass, October 12, 1869) is quoted from the specification but I did not verify the Douglass patent number or inventorship.
• Assignee: no assignment appears on the patent; the S. A. Woods Machine Co. association is a catalog/secondary-source association. A USPTO Assignment-record search for an 1871 instrument would be the only way to confirm or refute a recorded assignment, and I did not retrieve such a record.
• CAFC 2026: negative result. I found no docket, opinion, or Rule 36 judgment touching US 117,230. Given the patent expired July 18, 1888, the absence of appellate activity is expected rather than suspicious.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me check the litigation-specific databases directly.

Let me verify whether any historical litigation is documented (this patent dates from 1871), and check the related reissue.

Bottom line

No litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 117,230. My searches across litigation-oriented sources returned zero cases — no district court complaints, no PTAB proceedings, no Federal Circuit or CAFC appeals, and no Unified Patents Portal / PACER / CourtListener docket entries naming US117230 as an asserted patent.

Requested case table (nothing to populate):

Why this is the correct answer, not a search failure

US117230A is not a modern patent asset. Per the authoritative record:

• Title: Improvement in planing-machines (the specification describes it as relating to "planing-machines particularly designed for making moldings, rabbeted stock, &c.")
• Inventors: Solomon A. Woods (Boston, Suffolk County, MA) and George E. Woodbury (Cambridge, Middlesex County, MA)
• Prior art date / grant date: 1871‑07‑18
• Legal status: "Expired - Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of 1888‑07‑18 (17 years from grant, per the then-governing term)
• Classification: B27C1/00, B27C1/08 (wood planing/molding machinery)

Because the patent term lapsed in 1888, it could not have supported an infringement action at any point covered by the litigation databases you named. PACER (electronic filing from the late 1980s/1990s), the Federal Circuit (est. 1982), CourtListener/RECAP, and the Unified Patents Portal (modern NPE-defense era) contain no pre‑1889 docket material. The patent's own Google Patents family record likewise shows only the single family member (US117230D) and one publication, with no adversary-proceeding data.

Two secondary indicators reinforce this. First, a dealer listing for the original 1871 Patent Office lithograph of No. 117230 (with its specification sheet, printed by the American Photo‑Lithographic Co. under the Osborne process) offers no litigation provenance — only the printed patent. Second, the specification's claim set (weighted levers, stirrups, yokes, sectional feed-roll with spurs, journal-stand, pressure-bars, wedges for the under cutter-cylinder, etc.) is a purely mechanical 19th-century machine patent; there is no reissue, continuation, or continuing application in the record that would carry the disclosure into an era of litigable patents.

Important note on the "related" documents you may see nearby

Google Patents lists USRE4737E — "Improvement in planing-machines," 1872‑02‑06 under Similar Documents, and the family/publication data shows a "US117230D" designation. These are adjacent in the same art and time period, but the record I retrieved does not state that USRE4737E is a reissue of US117230, and I will not assert that it is without verification. If you want litigation on the reissue, that must be searched under USRE4737E, a different (though possibly parent-linked) identifier. I found no case records for that number either.

Matches I expressly excluded as NOT this patent

Your instruction to avoid similar numbers is worth making explicit, because a bare string search for "117230" is heavily polluted. These appeared and are not US117230:

• US 8,223,117 — the "'117 patent" in IPR2023‑00778 / HTC v. Ancora and related PTAB papers
• US 10,621,228 — the "'228 patent" litigated in MemoryWeb, LLC v. Samsung/Apple and the Unified Patents IPR2021‑01413 RPI dispute
• US 10,270,830 — IPR2020‑01688
• WO 2013/117230 A1 — a PCT application (EP 2012/052242) on a NOx-reductant injector
• WO 2015/117230 A1 — a PCT application (CA 2015/000069) on encrypted messaging sessions
• The "'117 patent" asserted in Headwater Research LLC v. Samsung (E.D. Tex. 2:23‑cv‑00103) — a different patent from the 1871 number

None of these involve US117230.

Caveats and confidence

• High confidence that no litigation exists in the modern databases you named, for the structural reason above (term expired 1888).
• Moderate confidence, explicitly flagged: pre‑1889 federal patent cases are not searchable through PACER/CAFC/Unified/CourtListener. Nineteenth-century patent litigation is documented instead in West's Federal Cases, the Commissioner of Patents' annual reports, and the Official Gazette — sources I could not query as litigation databases. Woods was a prominent mid‑19th‑century planing-machine manufacturer, so it is plausible that suits were brought on his patents generally, but I found no case record naming US117230, and I will not fabricate case names, docket numbers, or outcomes. If you need that historical layer, it requires a manual pull of the Federal Cases volumes and the 1871–1888 Commissioner's reports indexed under "Woods, S.A." and "Woodbury, G.E."

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 117230: zero (0). Breakdown by status: active — 0; claims invalidated — 0; claims sustained — 0; settled — 0; institution denied — 0.

The bottom line for a defendant is stronger than any IPR outcome could give you, and it is worth being blunt about it: US 117230 is not a live patent and cannot be asserted against anyone. It issued on 1871-07-18 to Solomon A. Woods (Boston) and George E. Woodbury (Cambridge, MA), and the USPTO record shows an anticipated expiration of 1888-07-18 with a current legal status of "Expired – Lifetime." Any demand letter invoking US 117230 — or any claim of it — is citing a patent whose term closed out in the 19th century. That is a sanction-risk posture for whoever sent it, not a defensive problem for you.

The absence of PTAB activity here is structural, not probative: no rational petitioner files an IPR against a patent that expired 138 years ago, because there is no enforceable claim left to cancel. Do not read "no IPRs" as the signal discussed later in this report (i.e., "quiet patent, probably narrow"). Read it as "dead patent."

Per-proceeding detail

None to report. No IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding number exists for US 117230 in the structured ODP block, and my web searches surfaced no PTAB or Federal Circuit record referencing this patent. I am not going to manufacture a docket number, a panel, or a claim-level disposition to fill the template — there is nothing to report at claim-level granularity, and any string like "IPR2013-XXXXX" for this patent would be fabricated.

Two record-level observations that explain why automated tools return a null result:

• The ODP record for US 117230A does not populate an application-number field (the "Application number" entry in the structured data is blank). Pre-1900 grants often carry incomplete bibliographic wrappers, which trips up cross-referencing scripts that join PTAB petitions to patents via application serial number.
• There is a reissue appearing in the "similar documents" list, US RE4737E, "Improvement in planing-machines," granted 1872-02-06 — roughly seven months after the original grant, which is consistent with it being the reissue of this same subject matter. I have not verified that link against the reissue's own text, so treat it as a lead to check, not a finding. No PTAB proceeding appears against RE4737E either.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 117230: all claims expired; none canceled by the Board, none sustained by the Board, none "untested" in any relevant sense. The patent carries twelve numbered claims (claim 1 to the feed-roll/verticallly-sliding connecting-rod combination; claim 2 to the weighted levers, stirrups, yokes, bars, screw-shafts, nut-pieces and rods in combination; claim 3 to the sectional feed-roll with feed-teeth/spurs; claim 4 to the laterally adjustable journal-stand; claims 5–12 to the pressure-bar, yoke-bar shoe-pieces, vertical-cutter-cylinder supports, the under cutter-cylinder wedge adjustment, the rest/swinging table, the shoe-bar, and the adjustable swinging work-supporting table). Every one of those claims went out of force on or about 1888-07-18 with the expiration of the 17-year term from the 1871 grant. There is no surviving claim to narrow, and no narrowing that matters.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is petitioner-specific — it bars a petitioner and its privies from raising before a district court or the ITC any ground raised or reasonably raisable in an IPR that reached a final written decision. With no petition ever filed, no estoppel runs against anyone. Conversely, there is no § 315(b) one-year-bar clock running, no § 315(a) civil-action bar, and no § 325(e) estoppel. The entire statutory framework is inert as to this patent. The practical corollary is that there is also no "IPR-safe harbor" or FWD-based invalidity shield to inherit — there is simply nothing to litigate.

Pattern signals: none available, and none expected. No serial petitioner, no repeat filer, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) campaign, no Patent Owner appeal history, no Federal Circuit mandate. Note also that the AIA trial regime itself did not exist until the America Invents Act, with IPR/CBM available from 2012-09-16 and PGR only for patents with effective filing dates on or after 2013-03-16. US 117230 predates all of that by well over a century; only IPR would even theoretically have been available against it, and even then only while claims were enforceable.

The one place this patent has real defensive value is as prior art — not as an asserted patent. A granted 1871 US patent is a printed publication, citable under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) or post-AIA § 102(a)(1)/(b), against later woodworking, planing, molding, or feed-roll claims. Its Google Patents classification is B27C1/00 and B27C1/08 ("Machines for producing flat surfaces…"; "Machines for working several sides of work simultaneously"), and its disclosure is unusually rich in structure-level detail for its era — the compound removable feed-roll (solid cylinder plus sectional spurs), the yoke/stirrup/weighted-lever pressure-control arrangement, the laterally adjustable cutter-cylinder frame, and the under-cylinder wedge adjustment are all described with mechanical specificity. If the real dispute you are managing is a modern planer/moulder or feed-roll patent, this document belongs in your invalidity search results, not in your PTAB tracker.

Recommended next steps

1. Reject the premise of the assertion. If a demand letter or complaint cites US 117230, confirm the expiration date on the face of the record (grant 1871-07-18; anticipated expiration 1888-07-18; status "Expired – Lifetime" per the Google Patents record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US117230A/en) and preserve that letter. Asserting an expired 19th-century patent is a strong predicate for a Rule 11 motion and, depending on your circuit and local rules, a fee-shifting / inequitable-conduct-adjacent posture. Do not negotiate royalties.

2. Verify the null PTAB result yourself before relying on it in a filing. The canonical APIs are PTAB E2E / PTAB Center at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ and the USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB proceedings dataset, plus a Federal Circuit docket check via CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%22US117230%22) and PACER. I found nothing, but a null result is a documentable fact only if you re-run it and can state the query and date.

3. Repurpose it as art. Pull the full specification and drawings and index US 117230 (and, if verified, US RE4737E, 1872-02-06) into the prior-art chart for whatever live patent is actually being asserted against you in the planing/molding/feed-roll space. This is the classic 19th-century-art-of-record play: the older the reference, the harder it is for a patent owner to argue away with a POSITA declaration.

4. No trial-stage milestones apply. There is no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD due date to track, because there is no instituted trial. Nothing is pending.

5. If you nonetheless want a formal record, consider a reexamination-style non-action is unnecessary — an expired patent cannot be reexamined to cancel claims in a way that affects you, and the Board has no live controversy before it. Spend the money on the live patent instead.

I'll start by verifying what's actually retrievable for this patent's chain of title before writing anything.

Now let me check the family/reissue relationship and the corporate history of the original owner.

Let me try to pin down the reissue lead and confirm the assignment-database coverage limitation.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check (the "inventors departing within 12 months" tell requested): not runnable and not applicable. This is a July 1871 grant under the 1836/1870 patent acts; there is no employee-assignment record, no PEDS/ODP file wrapper in the modern system, and no employment data for either inventor. The available (and benign) pattern is the opposite one: Woods and Woodbury continued to file together — DATAMP records the Woods + Woodbury joint patent as US 117,230 itself, and Woods incorporated the same business as S. A. Woods Machine Co. in 1873, which went on to take "more than fifty patents" on planing and molding machinery. There is no evidence of inventor flight, and none of the standard fire-sale precursors exist in this era.

Original assignee

None. The patent issued on its face to the two inventors individually.

• The full Google Patents text of US117230A contains no "Original Assignee" field, and the recorded Legal Events consist solely of: Application granted (1871-07-18), Publication of US117230A (1871-07-18), Anticipated expiration (1888-07-18), Status: Expired – Lifetime. There is not a single assignment event in the Google Patents legal-events record.
• DATAMP's S. A. Woods Machine Co. cross-reference lists US 117,230 under the patentees "S.A. Woods, G.E. Woodbury" with no assignee — consistent with a pre-incorporation filing by the proprietors personally.

Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in the sense relevant to an operating-company analysis. The patent is directed to molding/planing-machine details (Sectional feed-roll with feed-spurs, weighted-lever yoke feed-roll pressure, laterally adjustable cutter-cylinder journal stand, clamping spindle boxes on a supporting rail, under-cutter with wedge adjustment, adjustable rests and swing-table). The S. A. Woods works manufactured and sold planers, matchers and molders from 1852 onward, was one of three firms introducing double-supported cutter-head molders in 1862–63, and by the 1880s advertised its machines as "the subjects of over a score of distinct patents," in use "in every state in the Union, and in nearly all foreign countries" (1 January 1884 Illustrated Catalogue, quoted in The Wood-Worker, March 1956). DATAMP's steward, cataloguing the related Woodbury patent US 161,726, notes the 1888 S. A. Woods catalogue shows a patent date attributable either to that patent or to the joint Woods/Woodbury patent 117,230 — i.e., the patent was being carried in the company's commercial catalogue (DATAMP; VintageMachinery S. A. Woods history).

Primary line of business and current status of the operating enterprise (all of this postdates the patent's 1888 expiry):

• 1852–1873 — Solomon A. Woods, sole proprietor, South Boston (partnership Gray & Woods 1854–1859).
• 1873 — incorporated as S. A. Woods Machine Co., Boston; Woods president; >80 patents issued to the successive concerns.
• 1958 — became a wholly owned subsidiary of United Industrial Syndicate, Inc. (UIS).
• 1960 — three UIS subsidiaries including S. A. Woods merged into the surviving GKB Company, Inc.; UIS formed a new shell also named S. A. Woods Machine Company to preserve the name rights.
• 1961 — Yates-American purchased GKB's woodworking-machinery business, including "the exclusive right to use its trademarks and trade names"; at the end of 1961 GKB merged into UIS under the UIS name. Yates-American (later Roscoe, IL; Beloit, WI) still supplies replacement parts for Woods machines (Yates-American history).
• Note the 1942 U.S. Army seizure of the S. A. Woods South Boston plant under Executive Order 9225 was a labor-dispute seizure, not a bankruptcy or receivership — it is not a fire-sale event and it occurred 54 years after the patent expired.

Assignment timeline

No records. The USPTO Patent Assignment Search / Assignment Center contains zero recorded assignments, security interests, name changes, or releases for US 117230, and none for application-number US117230D. Tellingly, Google Patents' legal-events feed for this patent also shows no assignment entries at all.

This is a coverage artifact, not a finding of continuous ownership, and it must be reported as such:

• The searchable USPTO assignment database "contains all recorded Patent Assignment information back to August 1980" (USPTO Assignment Database webinar, 2015-01-20), and MPEP 301.01 states that "[t]he historical database of assignments is maintained separate and apart from the database of assignments affecting title recorded since 1980" (summary of MPEP 301.01).
• US 117230 issued 1871-07-18 and its term expired 1888-07-18 — 92 years before the online index's coverage floor.
• Copies of assignments recorded on or after 1957-05-01 are obtainable from the USPTO Certification Division by reel/frame on payment of the 37 CFR 1.19 fee; pre-1957 records are held by NARA (MPEP 301.01). Any 1871–1888 transfer — for example a confirmatory assignment of the inventors' rights into S. A. Woods Machine Co. upon its 1873 incorporation — would sit in that paper/microfilm record, not in the online index.

Because the online record is empty, there is no reel/frame, no correspondent of record, and no execution/recording date to report. I will not invent them.

Unverified lead worth chasing (flagged, not asserted): Google Patents' "Similar Documents" list for US117230A includes US RE4737E, "Improvement in planing-machines," published 1872-02-06 — a reissue landing about seven months after this grant. Google Patents does not list it in the "Family" block (which contains only US117230D/US117230A), and I could not confirm that RE4737E is a reissue of US117230. If it is, the reissue file is the likeliest place in the patent office record for an 1871–1872 assignment, and reissue applications of that era were frequently accompanied by recorded assignments. Treat as a research lead only.

Timeline diagram

Events before 1888 are patent events; events after 1888 concern the operating business that used the patent, not title to the expired patent. No assignment events exist in the online record, so none are shown.

timeline
    title Ownership and corporate context of US 117230
    1871 : Patent granted to Woods and Woodbury
         : No assignee named on face
    1873 : S A Woods Machine Co incorporated
         : South Boston capital 300000 dollars
    1888 : Patent term expires
    1958 : SA Woods becomes UIS subsidiary
    1960 : Merged into GKB Company Inc
    1961 : GKB woodworking business sold to Yates
         : GKB merged into UIS

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Each signal is scored against the actual online record, which is empty. Where the signal is structurally impossible for a 1871 grant, I say so rather than scoring "unclear" by default.

Verdict

Insufficient data — no records exist for this patent in the USPTO Assignment Center, and the chain cannot be reconstructed from the modern record.

Justification: US 117230 issued 1871-07-18 to Solomon A. Woods (Boston) and George E. Woodbury (Cambridge) with no assignee named on the face, per the Google Patents bibliographic record, whose legal-events feed shows only Application granted 1871-07-18, Anticipated expiration 1888-07-18 and Expired – Lifetime — with no assignment entries whatsoever, and whose "Family" block contains only the single application US117230D/US117230A (no continuations). The Assignment Center cannot close the gap because its searchable coverage begins August 1980 (USPTO Assignment Database webinar; MPEP 301.01), 92 years after this patent expired. Consequently there is no reel/frame, no assignor, no assignee and no correspondent of record to run the repeat-correspondent or repeat-player tests against, and the NPE framework is in any event anachronistic for an 1871 grant (no LLC form, no listed asserter, no defensive aggregator existed). The verifiable positive finding is the opposite of an NPE story: this was a genuine operating-company patent, its claims embodied in S. A. Woods planers, matchers and molders that the company catalogued and sold for decades, with the business surviving as a subsidiary/purchased line through United Industrial Syndicate, GKB Company and Yates-American.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 117230); legacy "Assignments on the Web" — https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/?db=pat. To actually reconstruct title, order the record from the USPTO Assignment Recordation Branch (reel/frame, post-1957-05-01) and NARA (pre-1957), and pair it with S. A. Woods Machine Co. corporate records and the Yates-American/UIS successor files.

I'll research this systematically. First, let me confirm the identity of US117230 and then dig into its citation/prior-art record.

Now let me examine the specific reference documents and the patent's citation record more closely.

Prior-Art Analysis — US117230 (Interpreted Literally as US117230A)

1. Scope control on the identifier

The request specified "patent number 117230," and I have not normalized, padded, or auto-corrected that string. Interpreted literally as a US patent document number, 117230 resolves to:

⚠️ Identifier-collision warning: one search return surfaced US 6,118,230 (Fleischmann, "Lighting control system including server…", Intuitive Building Controls) and another surfaced US 11,723,0xx-class discussion. These are different documents and are excluded. Per the operating rules, I treat 117230 as US117230A only.

2. The controlling finding on the citation record

US117230A has no patent citations of record, and no forward "cited by" citations, on its captured record. The Google Patents rendering for this document (the authoritative text supplied to me) contains no Patent Citations section and no Cited By section. It contains only:

• Info / bibliographic block,
• Classifications,
• Images,
• Similar Documents (an algorithmic similarity list generated by the modern pipeline, not an examiner citation or applicant disclosure), and
• Family (the single self-referential member US117230D).

This is expected, not anomalous. A patent granted in 1871 predates the statutory duty of disclosure and the "References Cited" printing convention; US antique patents (pre‑~1949, and universally before the 1952 Act) carry no citation furniture. Consequently, the specific deliverable requested — "look at each patent citation for 117230, and for each reference give full citation, date, description, and the claim(s) it potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102" — cannot be populated from the patent's own citation record, because that record is empty. I will not manufacture citations to fill it.

A second legal caveat: applying 35 U.S.C. § 102 to an 1871 grant is anachronistic. Novelty at grant was governed by § 24 of the Patent Act of 1870 ("not known or used by others… not patented or described in any printed publication…"), with § 35 and § 61 governing abandonment and proof. Any modern § 102 framing below is therefore a stated analytical overlay, not the statute in force at grant.

3. The only enumerated neighboring documents: the "Similar Documents" list

These are the sole numerically identified references on the US117230A record. I reproduce them with their dates and then apply a date screen, because most cannot legally anticipate a 1871‑07‑18 patent.

§ 102 screen result: every listed item except US95782A and US102069A post-dates 1871‑07‑18 and is legally incapable of anticipating claims of US117230A (a later-issued patent is not § 102(a) prior art and, for § 102(e), requires a filing date earlier than the 117230 invention date, which these do not establish). US102069A is a dovetailing machine — different field; no reasonable § 102 mapping to the planing/molding claims. That leaves US95782A (1869‑10‑12, "Improvement in planing-machine") as the single date-qualified item in the entire similarity list, and its content is not available in the material I retrieved, so I will not characterize what it discloses. Flagging this as an open verification item, not a conclusion.

⚠️ USRE4737E caveat (low confidence): a reissue's document date is not its effective date. If USRE4737E reissues an original application filed/granted before 1871‑07‑18, the underlying disclosure could qualify as prior art through the original. I could not retrieve USRE4737E's original patent number or filing date within my tool budget. I therefore decline to assert either that it is or is not prior art. The same caution applies to the undated, unverified candidate documents discussed in § 5.

4. Prior art admitted on the face of US117230A (statement-against-interest art)

This is the only prior art the specification itself identifies. Per the authoritative text:

These admissions, not any citation, are the strongest § 102-type material actually present in US117230A. They do not anticipate the claims; they limit them.

5. Environment-art candidates I identified (NOT citations of US117230A)

I located these through external searching, and I label each with its verification status. None of these appears on the US117230A citation record.

6. Claim-by-claim anticipation conclusion

Bottom line: no reference cited for US117230 establishes anticipation of any of claims 1–12, because no references are cited for US117230 at all. The anticipation exposure for this patent lies in (a) the specification's own admissions regarding over/under/rear yokes and slotted-rail box fastenings, and (b) un-cited contemporaneous art — chiefly US111,632 and the 1843 Anson machine — which a modern searcher would need to retrieve in full text before reaching any § 102 conclusion.

7. Explicit uncertainties (not fabricated)

1. I could not open USPTO PatentCenter or the Global Dossier for US117230A within my tool budget; my citation-record finding rests on the authoritative Google Patents full text, which shows no citations or cited-by entries.
2. The filing date of US117230A does not appear on the record (only "Prior art date" and grant date, both 1871‑07‑18). Any § 102(e)/§ 102(a) timing analysis is therefore provisional.
3. Dates, numbers, and inventors of US30993, US3704, USRE4737E's original, and the Gracie English patent were not verified. I flag them as search leads, not findings.
4. OCR artifacts in the supplied text are severe (e.g., "eutter-cylinder" for "cutter-cylinder," "1r?" for r², "14" for l⁴, "\*" for sentence starts). Claim 1's preamble is unrecoverable from the OCR. Also note the side-panel term "ancymidol" (a chemical compound) attached to this 1871 woodworking patent — a modern classification-pipeline artifact carrying zero prior-art significance. It should not be mistaken for a reference.

8. Sources

• US117230A full text (authoritative): https://patents.google.com/patent/US117230/en
• US117230A specification PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f8/34/f0/956e0905be7bae/US117230.pdf
• DATAMP S. A. Woods Machine Co. patent list (confirms 117,230, Jul. 18, 1871, S.A. Woods, G.E. Woodbury): https://datamp.org/patents/search/xrefCompany.php?id=131
• Woodbury Patent Planing-Mach. Co. v. Keith, 4 Ban. & A. 100 (C.C.D. Mass. 1879), aff'd 101 U.S. 479: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0030.f.cas/0030.f.cas.0489.2.pdf and https://www.supremecourt.gov/pdfs/USReports/USREPORTS-101_PDFA.pdf
• Fay v. Preble (US 111,632 / RE 8,438, Goodrich & Colburn, pressure rollers on swinging arms; Gracie English patent): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[8161563](/patent/8161563)/fay-v-preble/
• US3,704 (unverified candidate): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e8/8d/35/adccdd942f27d7/US3704.pdf
• US30,993 (unverified candidate): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ae/bd/97/6b5a6d5e37b1b4/US30993.pdf

I'll verify the key reference documents before building the §103 analysis.

Two targeted checks before I write the analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 117,230 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Improvement in planing-machines · US117230A · granted 1871‑07‑18
Inventors: Solomon A. Woods (Boston) and George E. Woodbury (Cambridge), Massachusetts
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US117230](/patent/US117230)/en

0. Three threshold flags before the analysis (please read — they change how the result should be read)

(a) § 103 did not exist in 1871. The Patent Act of 1952 (66 Stat. 792) created § 103. In 1871 the governing statute was § 24 of the Patent Act of 1870 (16 Stat. 198, 201), which was a novelty provision ("not known or used by others… and not patented or described in any printed publication… before his invention or discovery thereof"). The non‑obviousness requirement existed only as a judicial gloss — Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. (11 How.) 248 (1851) ("more ingenuity and skill… than were possessed by an ordinary mechanic acquainted with the business"). I have applied the modern § 103 framework as you requested, but every conclusion below is equally expressible in the 1871 vocabulary, and I note where the older doctrine is actually harsher on the patent (e.g., the "aggregation vs. combination" rule, and the Woodbury Patent Planing‑Machine Co. v. Keith, 101 U.S. 479, 486 (1880) holding that "[m]ere enlargement is not invention. The simplest mechanic can make such a modification").

(b) The Google Patents "Similar Documents" list is not a prior‑art list. It is a machine‑generated CPC/text‑similarity ranking. I date‑sorted it. Only two of the twenty‑seven entries predate the 1871‑07‑18 date, which is a critical and often‑missed point:

Consequence: the § 103 analysis below cannot rest on the listed patent documents alone. It rests on (i) the two qualifying documents, and (ii) the rich, well‑documented public‑use and printed‑publication art of 1793–1869 that the searches surfaced — principally the Woodworth reissue specification of 1845, the Hill / Norcross machines, and the 17 April 1869 Scientific American description of the improved Schenck‑Woodworth planer.

(c) The claim text is OCR‑corrupted. Claims 1, 2, 5, 11 and 12 contain garbled reference characters ("yoltcs u'" = yokes u; "vertical few‑shafts" = vertical screw‑shafts; "pressure‑liars@" = pressure‑bars). I have reconstructed the intended text from the specification but flag that a live analysis should be run against the printed Patent Office copy.

1. The claims, restated

2. Corpus of qualifying prior art and what each teaches

PA‑1 — Woodworth amended specification (reissue of 1845), as reproduced in Brooks v. Fiske, 56 U.S. 212, and 10 Fed. Cas. 336. (supremecourt.gov PDF)

• "The uppermost of the pairs of rollers may be held down by springs, or weighted levers, which it has not been thought necessary to show… as such are in common use." → express admission that weighted upper feed‑rolls were old and conventional by 1845.
• "To meet the different thicknesses of plank, the bearings of the shaft or cylinder may be made movable, by screws or other means, to adjust it to the work."
• "One of the cutter‑wheels should be made adjustable, to adapt it to stuff of different widths." / "One of the heads of the planing‑wheel may be made movable to accommodate its width."
• "There may be friction‑rollers… the rollers… are to be made to press against the plane and keep it close to the carriage… they may be borne against it by means of weights or springs, in a manner well known to machinists."

PA‑2 — the Norcross machine (~1849–55), described in the 1889 History of the Planing‑Mill, pp. 19–20 (full text)

• "Both upper and lower rolls were geared together by the same old‑fashioned system of 'star or finger gears'… and the top rolls were forced down upon the stuff by the same system of weights and levers." → geared‑together pairs of feed‑rolls + weighted levers + levers‑on‑yokes.
• Press‑plate/rest‑bar adjustably related to the under cylinder; cylinder boxes attached to a movable plate.

PA‑3 — Andrews machine (patented 1 Nov. 1845), same source, p. 13 — "Flat pressure‑bars, one each side of the cylinder, were applied to prevent the board from vibrating while being acted upon by the cutters"; and Gibson v. Betts / Gibson v. Harris (1 Blatchf. 164, 170): "The substitution of smooth plates of iron, operated by springs or screws, to press down the boards upon the bed while being planed, in place of a pressure roll or rolls, is not a substantial departure from the Woodworth device for the same purpose."

PA‑4 — Scientific American, 17 April 1869, p. 250, "Improved Woodworth Planing Machine" (link) — the single most damaging reference:

• "A method of adjusting all the top feed rollers simultaneously, preserving their relative positions, by means of one crank, by a very simple arrangement, requiring only one screw on each side of the machine."
• "Also adjusting the facing cylinder and the pressure bar on the delivering side, as well as the pressure roller on the entering side of it simultaneously, precluding the possibility of lowering the facing cylinder so as to come in contact with the pressure bar and roller, or of raising the bar and roller so as to come in contact with the knives… rendering it perfectly safe to adjust the machine so as to receive stuff of any thickness desired while in operation, with no appreciable loss of time."
• "Making the lever which weights the introducing pressure roller adjustable, so that it may be placed (as it always should be) over the middle of the board being planed. This causes the roller to bear evenly… and prevents it from canting"; "This pressure roller is raised by, and with the introducing feed roller, always being one‑eighth of an inch below it."
• "The arrangement by which the matching guides and matching head are adjustable across the machine, all being moved by one crank… the guides being moved by the horizontal shaft, which, by means of the bevel gears, revolves the screw which carries the end of the long introducing guide, and simultaneously adjusts the guides and matcher head… the whole length of the knives is used when narrow stuff is being planed on a wide machine."
• Also: the machine is built "with eight feed rollers, and an under cutter, so that it planes both sides and matches both edges at one operation."

PA‑5 — US95782A (1869‑10‑12), Improvement in planing‑machine — same CPC field (B27C1/00). Disclosure text not verified; treat as a supporting reference only.

PA‑6 — Woodbury Patent Planing‑Machine Co. v. Keith, 101 U.S. 479 (1880) and the Anson machine (1843) — Anson's machine used yielding pressure bars mounted by weights; the Court held the substitution of yielding bars for weighted rollers was an obvious expedient because "it seems probable that any one who substituted bars for rollers would make them yield, because the rollers of Woodworth's machine were made in that way." This is directly reusable as the "ordinary mechanic" standard.

3. Claim‑by‑claim obviousness

4. Explicit combinations, stated in § 103 form

Combination A (claims 1 + 2 + 4 + 6) — the strongest. PA‑4 (1869 Schenck‑Woodworth) in view of PA‑1 (Woodworth 1845 reissue) and the yoke‑position admission in the specification itself. Rationale: PA‑4 teaches a single‑crank, one‑screw‑per‑side adjustment of all top feed rollers, plus coordinated adjustment of facing cylinder / pressure bar / pressure roller, plus bevel‑gear‑driven lateral adjustment of the matcher head and guides. PA‑1 supplies the admitted‑old weighted or spring‑loaded upper roller and the admitted‑old screw‑adjustable cylinder bearing. The remaining differences — putting the yoke across the front instead of over/under/rear, and using vertical screw‑shafts with bevel pinions to drive the roller boxes — are (i) a change in the mere position of a known element and (ii) a known right‑angle drive. Nothing in the record teaches away, and the art recognized the same advantages the patentee claims (adjustment while running; full knife use; no interference between cylinder and pressure bar).

Combination B (claims 3 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 12). PA‑2 (Norcross: bed‑plate with slot for an under cylinder; press‑plate; cylinder boxes on a movable plate; geared‑together upper and lower rolls pressed down by weights and levers) in view of PA‑4 (under cutter for two‑side planing; adjustability of guides and head) in view of PA‑1 ("bearings… movable, by screws or other means"; cutter‑wheels adjustable "to stuff of different widths") and the ordinary wedge/gib art. Rationale: the patentee's under‑cylinder + rest + swinging‑table group is a re‑arrangement of Norcross's bed‑plate/press‑plate organization rendered laterally and vertically adjustable in the manner PA‑4 and PA‑1 already prescribe.

Combination C (claims 5 + 7 + 11) — pressure‑bar and shoe assembly. PA‑3/PAB‑6 (flat, yielding pressure bars operable by springs or screws; the Keith Court holding that making such a bar yield is what "any one" would do) in view of PA‑4 (pressure bar adjusted in coordination with the cylinder so the two cannot foul one another). Rationale: once the bar must be retractable to clear long molding cutters' sweeps, mounting it on pivoted arms that can be adjusted toward and away from the cutter line is the direct mechanical consequence — a "predictable variation… of a known structure" with no unexpected result asserted anywhere in the specification.

General motivations to combine (all claims):

1. Same field of endeavour (CPC B27C1/00, B27C1/08) — all references address power‑feeding and cutter‑head adjustment in wood planing/molding machines.
2. Same problem, articulated in the prior art itself: PA‑4 states the objects as adjusting for "stuff of any thickness desired while in operation, with no appreciable loss of time" and using "the whole length of the knives." Those are the same objects the specification of US117230 recites.
3. No change in the principle of operation — every claim is a "combination, substantially as shown and described" of elements each performing its own ordinary mechanical function. Under both the 1871 aggregation/combination doctrine and modern § 103, that is the paradigm of an obvious combination.
4. No unexpected results, no criticality, no teaching away are asserted in the specification; the asserted advantages are ordinary shop efficiencies.
5. Where the applicant's own specification recites a problem it was solving (e.g., "the roll‑shaft cannot readily be removed from the frame or one of its belts slipped off…"), that statement is itself the motivation to combine.

5. Where obviousness is genuinely contestable — and what would change the answer

• Claim 2 is the one substantial survivor. The claimed co‑function — the rods j serving simultaneously as the supports for the upper roller boxes and as the tensile links through which the counter‑weighted levers drag the roll down onto the stock — is not shown in any reference I found. If a challenger cannot point to a support‑member‑as‑tension‑member arrangement in the art, claim 2 has a real § 103 defence under the 1871 "invention" standard.
• Claim 3 (sectional roll) has no documentary anticipation in the record; the rejection depends on general split‑pulley/split‑collar knowledge, which is exactly the kind of "art not of record" that a court may or may not accept.
• The combination claims as a whole (4+6+7, 9+10+12) could be argued to be a patentable combination under 19th‑century infringement doctrine, which required the defendant to use all elements (cf. Brooks v. Fiske, 56 U.S. 212, and the "aggregation" doctrine).
• § 102, not § 103, would be the front line. Because PA‑4 (17 April 1869) and PA‑1 (1845) are both more than two years before the 1871 grant, a challenger should first attack under the 1870 Act's public‑use and printed‑publication branches. Obviousness is the fallback.
• Secondary-consideration evidence is absent from the record. No commercial‑success, copying, licensing‑demand, or long‑felt‑need evidence is before me. If such evidence exists (the S. A. Woods Machine Co. later catalogued both this patent and Woodbury's US161,726 — see the 1888 catalogue reference at datamp.org and the Vintage Machinery manufacturer index), it would bear most heavily on claims 2 and 3.

6. Caveats and confidence

• High confidence in the date analysis and in the identification of PA‑1 (Woodworth 1845 reissue spec, quoted verbatim in the Supreme Court reports) and PA‑4 (the 17 April 1869 Scientific American item) as qualifying art. These are the load‑bearing references.
• Explicitly flagged — I could not verify US95782A's disclosure. Its Google Patents title is Improvement in planing‑machine (1869‑10‑12), but the only corroborating hit I obtained is an OCR‑ambiguous index line in the 1869 Commissioner's Report reading "WASH‑BOARD 95,782, FRANK DOUGLAS. PLANING‑MACHINE." That OCR may be conflating adjacent index entries and may indicate the number belongs to a wash‑board patent. A live analysis must pull US95782A's specification before relying on it.
• Explicitly flagged — USRE4737E is unresolved, carrying forward the caveat in the earlier litigation section. If RE4737 reissues US117230, its 1872‑02‑06 date makes it a post‑grant publication and it is not prior art; if it reissues an earlier patent, that original may count. I do not assert either relationship. The same caution applies to US161726 (filed 1871‑03‑28), which only becomes a § 102(e)-type reference if US117230's filing date is established to be later.
• Not prior art despite appearance: US374283A / US374233A (S. A. Woods & John R. Thomas) — the OCR header in the retrieved PDF reads "dated December 6, 1857" with a 1866 filing, both of which are transcription errors; the actual dates are 1887‑12‑06 / 1886. Do not cite it against US117230. Likewise USRE6773E (screw‑rod and bevel‑gear adjustment of upper feed‑roller boxes, and lateral matcher‑spindle adjustment) is a later reissue and may be used only as corroborating evidence of what was conventional, not as prior art.
• Claim text caveat: the OCR of claims 1, 2, 5, 11 and 12 is corrupt; my claim restatements are reconstructions and should be verified against the printed patent.
• Method caveat: pre‑1889 prior art is not searchable through PACER, CourtListener, the Unified Patents Portal, or Espacenet's modern docket data. Nothing here should be read as a comprehensive prior‑art search; it is an analysis of the references available on the Google Patents page plus the sources the searches surfaced.