US 123456

Search Results

USPTO / patent records: Confirmed via the USPTO patent-image PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/d9/d1/7a3bf50026b9c7/US123456.pdf) and Google Patents (patents.google.com/patent/US123456A). Both are consistent with the authoritative patent text provided.

CAFC 2026 dockets: No results found for patent number 123456 in any 2026 CAFC docket search. This is consistent with the patent's status — it expired long ago (anticipated expiration 1889-02-06) and has no plausible modern litigation docket.

Summary — US Patent 123456A

Specification in plain language: The invention relates to preparing the paper fabric that forms the body of a blackboard before the blackboard composition is applied. The improvement consists of giving the paper fabric a thorough coating of boiled oil, which renders it impervious to moisture. This prevents the board from warping or becoming harsh, and consequently from cracking and becoming worthless. After this treatment, both sides of the fabric are finished with any of the ordinary blackboard compositions. In the drawing, b is the oil-treated fabric and a (also referenced as c a in the OCR) are the coatings of blackboard composition on both sides.

Independent Claim — Plain-Language Overview

The patent contains a single claim:

"The blackboard, when the paper fabric of which it is composed is previously treated with boiled oil, as and for the purposes herein described."

Plain-language reading: A blackboard whose paper-fabric body has been pre-treated with a thorough coating of boiled oil before the blackboard composition is applied — the boiled-oil treatment making the fabric moisture-impervious to prevent warping, harshness, and cracking — and which is then finished on both sides with ordinary blackboard composition.

Notes on Uncertainty

• Filing date: The 1872 record shows no distinct filing date; the patent date (February 6, 1872) is the operative date. I cannot state a separate filing date with confidence.
• No abstract: Because the USPTO did not publish abstracts for 1872 patents, the "abstract" above is a paraphrase of the specification, not an official abstract.
• Assignee: None is listed in the record; the inventor is the sole named party.
• CAFC 2026 docket: Searches returned no matching entries. Given the patent expired in 1889, I would be highly surprised by any 2026 CAFC matter citing it as a live patent — but absence from the searched docket index is not absolute proof of nonexistence.

Sources: USPTO patent PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/d9/d1/7a3bf50026b9c7/US123456.pdf) and Google Patents record for US123456A.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent 123456A ("Improvement in blackboards")

No litigation involving US Patent 123456 is known.

I performed multiple targeted searches across patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents Portal case list, CAFC docket references, Google Patents, CourtListener and related docket aggregators) for the specific patent number 123456 (and its publication number US123456A). The results:

What the searches returned (and why it is not litigation)

Conclusion

• No district court case, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding naming US patent 123456 as a patent in suit was found in any searched database.
• This is fully consistent with the patent's record: it issued February 6, 1872 and expired (anticipated expiration) on February 6, 1889, under the then-applicable 17-year term. A patent that expired 137 years ago cannot be asserted today, and it would not appear in any modern docket index.

Caveats on confidence

1. Historical records are not comprehensively digitized. Modern litigation databases (Unified Patents, PACER, CAFC dockets, DocketNavigator-type services) generally index cases from the late 20th century forward. If there was a 19th-century infringement suit on this patent (e.g., in the 1870s–1880s in a federal circuit court), it would almost certainly not appear in these databases, and I have no evidence one way or the other.
2. I can therefore state with high confidence that there is no modern or currently pending litigation involving US patent 123456, but I cannot affirmatively rule out the existence of a 19th-century case that predates digital records.
3. Per the strict no-auto-correction rule, I deliberately excluded cases involving modern patents that merely share a "123" suffix, since those are different patent numbers.

Answer: No litigation is known for US Patent 123456. If you need a definitive historical check, the next step would be an archive-level search of 19th-century federal court records (e.g., the National Archives, or the Federal Judicial Center's historical case database, which covers some pre-1960 cases) — a resource outside the scope of the live web searches performed here.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews, or covered business method reviews for US 123456A, and independent web searches (PTAB docket indexes, Federal Circuit dockets, patent-litigation sources) surfaced no petition, institution decision, final written decision, settlement, or appeal touching this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture is the strongest possible one that costs nothing to obtain: the patent expired on 1889-02-06, roughly 137 years ago, and no PTAB proceeding was ever needed or filed — the only viable "defense" to any assertion is that the patent is expired, unenforceable, and cannot support damages or an injunction, and an IPR-based strategy would be wasted spend.

Proceedings

No proceedings to report. There are no IPR, PGR, or CBM cases on file for US 123456A. The structured USPTO ODP block in this prompt is the canonical list, and it is empty; web search corroborates (the only hits for "123456" are unrelated PTAB practice articles, and the patent itself appears exclusively as prior art cited in later patents such as US2452235A, a 1948 Milprint "Blackboard" patent — not as a patent with a PTAB record).

Why this is expected, not anomalous:

• The patent is expired. US 123456A issued 1872-02-06 and, under the then-applicable 17-year term, expired 1889-02-06 — 54 years before the AIA created IPR/PGR/CBM (enacted 2011-09-16; trials began 2012-09-16). There is nothing to invalidate.
• PGR is statutorily unavailable. Post-grant review reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16 (AIA § 3(n)(1)); this 1872 patent is categorically outside PGR.
• CBM is inapplicable. Covered business method review was limited to patents claiming financial products or services (AIA § 18); a blackboard patent is not one.
• IPR was technically possible but never pursued — and rationally so. IPR has no absolute statutory bar for expired patents, but no rational petitioner spends six figures to challenge a claim that has been dead since 1889. No petitioner, no judge panel, no institution decision, and no final written decision exist. I will not invent any.

Strategic summary

Claims — CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED. US 123456A contains a single claim: "The blackboard, when the paper fabric of which it is composed is previously treated with boiled oil, as and for the purposes herein described." No AIA trial has ever challenged it, so it is UNTESTED in the PTAB sense — but that label is academic. The claim is legally dead by expiration (1889-02-06) independent of any PTAB outcome. There are no "surviving claims" and no "canceled claims"; there is simply a claim whose term ended 137 years ago and that cannot be asserted.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue. No IPR was ever instituted, so no petitioner (or privy) is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground — but that freedom is worthless because the patent cannot be enforced at all. For a defendant today, the estoppel analysis is beside the point: the correct affirmative defense is expiration / unenforceability, not invalidity.

Pattern signals. None. There is no repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain, and no patent-owner litigation or PTAB-appeal pattern — because the patent has been expired for over a century. The only observable "pattern" in the record is that the patent functions as prior art in the blackboard/writing-surface art (e.g., cited in US2452235A), which is exactly the role an 1872 patent should play in 2026.

Recommended next steps

• No PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, because the absence is itself the complete answer. A well-asserted patent attracts IPRs; a patent that has never attracted one — and expired in 1889 — was never a live threat. If you are a defendant, do not commission an IPR. There is no FWD to link, no institution deadline to calendar, and no oral-hearing milestone to track.
• The motion to file instead is a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment on expiration. The patent's term ran from 1872-02-06 and lapsed 1889-02-06 (pre-1995, 17-year term from grant). An expired patent confers no right to exclude, no damages period, and no injunction. Any demand letter citing US 123456A today is, on its face, legally baseless.
• If a plaintiff insists the patent is "revived" or otherwise enforceable, force the point in pleading. Under 35 U.S.C. § 282, validity and enforceability are affirmative defenses; put expiration on the record and seek fees under Rule 11 / 35 U.S.C. § 285 if the assertion continues.
• Preserve the record for cost recovery. Because no PTAB proceeding exists, there is no estoppel risk to filing the expiration-based motion immediately — no § 315(b) one-year bar is running, and no ground is waived by skipping IPR.
• Document the search trail. The canonical USPTO ODP block (no AIA trials) plus the corroborating searches (no PTAB docket entries, no CAFC dockets, no litigation) give you a clean, citable foundation that "no PTAB activity exists" — the absence is itself dispositive evidence of the patent's irrelevance.

Bottom line: There is nothing to attack at the PTAB because there is nothing to defend against. US 123456A expired in 1889; no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever filed; and the correct defendant's play is a two-page expiration motion, not a $400,000 IPR.

Sources: USPTO ODP structured data (no AIA trials on file); Google Patents record for US123456A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US123456A); USPTO patent-image PDF (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/d9/d1/7a3bf50026b9c7/[US123456](/patent/US123456).pdf); web searches of PTAB dockets, CAFC dockets, and litigation sources (no matching proceedings found as of 2026-08-27).

Inventors

Marcellus F. Cowdery — sole named inventor, of Sandusky, Erie County, Ohio (per the patent's specification: "MARCELLUS F. COWDERY, of city of Sandusky, county of Erie, State of Ohio").

• Employer at filing: Not determinable from the patent record — 1872-era patents did not record inventor employment. Historical accounts (Kropf, Color Capital of the World, reviewed by The American Spectator) identify Cowdery as a former educator and later the first Superintendent of Sandusky City Schools, and in 1886 he co-founded the Western School Supply Co. (later American Crayon Company) with the Curtis and Whitworth families. That company postdates the patent's 1872 filing by 14 years, so no employer relationship at filing can be established.
• Unusual patterns: None applicable. There is a single inventor and no original assignee to depart from — the "all inventors leave the assignee within 12 months" fire-sale tell cannot even be assessed because the patent issued directly to the inventor.

Original assignee

None recorded. The face of US 123456 names only the inventor ("M. F. Cowdery, of Sandusky, Ohio"), consistent with the era's practice of issuing patents directly to inventors. The Google Patents record confirms "Assignee: None recorded."

• Product embodying the claims: Not applicable — no assignee existed. (Historical context only, not an ownership fact: Cowdery's later family company, American Crayon / Western School Supply, manufactured chalk and crayons for blackboards; it merged into Joseph Dixon Crucible in 1957 and closed in 2002. There is no evidence the 1872 blackboard patent was ever assigned to it.)
• Current status: N/A. The patent issued 1872-02-06 and expired (anticipated expiration) 1889-02-06 under the then-applicable 17-year term. It has been dead for 137 years.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center has no records for this patent. This is itself the finding: the patent remained inventor-owned from issuance (1872-02-06) until expiration (1889-02-06), with no recorded post-issuance assignment of any kind.

Verification basis:

1. USPTO Assignment Center coverage window. The USPTO's searchable patent-assignment database indexes assignments recorded from August 1980 to the present (confirmed in the USPTO Assignment Center documentation and third-party summaries). US 123456 issued in 1872 and expired in 1889 — roughly a century before the database's earliest record. No reel/frame entry exists for patent number 123456; a search returns zero records.
2. Google Patents legal events. The legal-events tab for US123456A contains no "AS" (assignment) event code — only the "Expired - Lifetime" status (anticipated expiration 1889-02-06). No assignment, security agreement, merger, or name change was ever surfaced.
3. Patent-face evidence. The patent names no assignee, which for an 1872 patent means the inventor held title.
4. Caveat on 19th-century archival records. Any assignment executed and recorded between 1872 and 1889 would live only in the USPTO's paper/microfilm assignment books, which are not in the online Assignment Center. I cannot affirmatively rule out such a record, but there is no evidence one exists, and nothing in the historical record suggests Cowdery assigned the patent.

Per the workflow instruction, the analysis stops here substantively — with an empty assignment record, there is no chain of title, no correspondent, no assignee LLCs, and no transfer event to analyze.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 123456
    1872 : Issued to inventor Cowdery
    1889 : Patent expired

The chain is a single uninterrupted line — inventor ownership from issue to expiration, zero recorded transfers.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal below is not present, and each is cited to the same concrete evidence: zero assignment records exist (no reel/frame entries for patent 123456 in the Assignment Center, which indexes from August 1980), and Google Patents legal events for US123456A show only "Expired - Lifetime" (1889-02-06). There is no chain of title in which an NPE pattern could even manifest.

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment moved this patent to any LLC, IP-holding entity, or registered-agent address. There are no assignment records at all.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee exists to compare against Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, or any Unified Patents / RPX asserter list; the prior litigation search found no case ever naming US 123456 as a patent in suit.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present. With no recorded assignments, there is no correspondent of record on any reel/frame. (N/A: the patent predates the assignment-recordation database by a century.)
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. No consecutive assignments through chained LLCs exist; there are no transfers in any 24-month window.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No litigation exists, and no assignment precedes any suit.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No assignee ever filed Chapter 7/11; the patent's only "owner" was an individual inventor who held it to expiration.
7. Privateering — Not present. No operating company transferred the patent to an NPE; no SEC filings (10-K/8-K) reference this patent because no public company ever owned it.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at expiration in 1889.

Verdict

Insufficient data — the designated category for "no records, or only the original assignment," which is exactly the situation here.

The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, legacy search at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) returns zero reel/frame records for patent 123456 because its searchable coverage begins August 1980, over a century after this patent issued (1872-02-06) and expired (1889-02-06). The patent was inventor-owned for its entire life, was never assigned, was never litigated, and has been expired since 1889 — there is no assignment chain in which an NPE, privateering, or defensive-aggregation pattern could arise, so the substantive answer is that no NPE pattern exists and none can exist for a patent of this age. The only residual uncertainty is archival: a 19th-century paper assignment, if one existed, would not be in the online database — but nothing in the patent record, Google Patents legal events, or historical sources suggests one.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ · Legacy assignment search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html · Google Patents record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US123456A · USPTO patent image — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/d9/d1/7a3bf50026b9c7/US123456.pdf

I'll start by verifying the patent record in the USPTO database and then investigate the citation record.

The record is confirmed. Now let me investigate both directions of the citation graph — the forward citations ("Cited By") listed in the record, and any actual prior art (pre-1872 blackboard/oiled-paper references).

I've reached the tool-call limit, so I'll now consolidate the findings from the searches completed (USPTO/Google Patents record confirmation, forward-citation record, and one historical-index search) and be explicit about what I could and could not verify.

Technical Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 123456A ("Improvement in blackboards")

1. USPTO database verification for patent number 123456

I searched specifically for patent number 123456 (not any similar number, per the strict no-auto-correction rule). The record confirms:

Source: USPTO patent-image PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/d9/d1/7a3bf50026b9c7/US123456.pdf) and Google Patents record for US123456A.

Elements of the single claim (for the § 102 analysis below): (1) a blackboard; (2) whose body is a paper fabric; (3) the fabric having been previously treated with a thorough coating of boiled oil; (4) the boiled-oil treatment rendering the fabric impervious to moisture; (5) the purpose being to prevent warping, harshness, and cracking; (6) both sides then finished with ordinary blackboard composition.

2. Citation record — the critical framing point

The Google Patents record for US123456A contains no backward citations ("Citations" / references cited by the examiner). This is normal for 1872-era patents, which did not carry examiner citation lists. The record does contain a "Cited By" list — i.e., forward citations: later patents that themselves cite US123456A as prior art. (This is confirmed by the search results, which show US123456A appearing in the "Family Cites" sections of later patents such as CN100349777C and ITRE20010042A1.)

Consequence for the § 102 analysis: Every formal citation recorded for US123456A postdates the patent by 74 to 152 years. Under both pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b) (invented/patented or described in a printed publication before the applicant's invention date) and AIA § 102(a)(1) (prior to the effective filing date), a reference must predate the claimed invention. None of the recorded citations can therefore anticipate claim 1 — as a matter of law, not just as a matter of disclosure.

3. Each recorded patent citation for US123456A — full citation, dates, description, § 102 analysis

All entries below are forward citations from the "Cited By" lists in the US123456A record. For each: full citation → publication/filing date → brief description → § 102 anticipation analysis.

Bottom line on the recorded citations: Every one of the 12+ recorded citations is a forward citation. Not one is prior art against US123456A. The only one even in the same art field (US2452235A, Milprint "Blackboard") is a 1948 patent that itself depends on US123456A as background art. None anticipates claim 1 under § 102 — none can, because all postdate the claimed invention.

4. True prior-art candidates (from the record's "Similar Documents" list) — with explicit caveats

Google's "Similar Documents" section on the US123456A page lists a handful of documents that predate February 6, 1872. These are the only items in the record that could qualify as § 102 prior art in principle. I could not complete a full USPTO examination of each within this session's tool limit, so treat these as candidates requiring verification, not confirmed anticipatory references:

All other "Similar Documents" (e.g., US124070A, US124315A, US146985A, US246853A, US352814A, US419263A, US900512A) postdate US123456A and are therefore not § 102 prior art.

5. Most relevant prior art — conclusion

1. Among the recorded patent citations for US123456A (the "Cited By" lists): there is no anticipatory prior art. Every recorded citation is a forward citation (1946–2024), all postdating the patent by 74–152 years. None can anticipate the single claim under 35 U.S.C. § 102, under either the pre-AIA or AIA versions of the statute.

2. The most relevant true prior art identifiable from the record is US51857A (1866-01-02, "Improvement in the manufacture of sand-paper"), the only pre-1872 reference in the record's similar-documents list touching coated paper-fabric manufacture. Whether it actually anticipates claim 1 (i.e., whether it discloses a blackboard whose paper-fabric body is pre-treated with a thorough boiled-oil coating to render it moisture-impervious, then finished with blackboard composition on both sides) could not be verified within this session's search limit. A full-text review of US51857A, plus an archive-level search of 1790–1871 patents on blackboards and oiled paper/fabric (e.g., the USPTO Subject-Matter Index 1790–1873, which I located but could not fully mine), is the necessary next step.

3. Honest caveat: Because 1872-era patents did not carry examiner citation lists, the Google Patents record's absence of backward citations does not prove no anticipating reference existed in 1872. Historical prior art (e.g., early slate/cloth blackboard patents, oiled-canvas or oilcloth patents) may well exist in the pre-1872 record but is not captured in the digital citation graph. I state with high confidence that none of the formally recorded citations for US123456A is anticipatory; I cannot state with equal confidence that no historical reference whatsoever anticipated it.

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the prior-art corpus shown on the Google Patents page for US123456A, but first I want to corroborate the state of the art circa 1871–72 (what a person of ordinary skill would have known about boiled-oil treatments and fabric-based blackboards), since that is the controlling temporal frame for § 103.

The searches already surfaced two strong pieces of corroborating art (US51857A of 1866 and US30593A of 1860). Let me now establish the base article — paper/fabric blackboards with composition coatings — in the pre-1872 record, since that is the primary-reference side of the combination.

One more corroboration pass to lock down citable records for the two key references (Peirce's 1863 blackboard-composition patent and Palmer's 1866 boiled-oil-on-paper patent), then I'll write the analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 123456A ("Improvement in Blackboards") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

1. Claim scope — what the single claim actually covers

US 123456A has one claim:

"The blackboard, when the paper fabric of which it is composed is previously treated with boiled oil, as and for the purposes herein described."

Parsed into its elements, the claimed subject matter is:

1. A blackboard whose body is a paper fabric;
2. That paper fabric has been previously treated with a thorough coating of boiled oil, to render it impervious to moisture, thereby preventing warping, harshness, cracking, and consequent worthlessness;
3. Both sides are finished with "any of the ordinary blackboard compositions."

Critically, element 3 is an admission: the blackboard compositions are conceded to be ordinary — i.e., old and known. Element 1 — a blackboard body of paper or fabric — is likewise the backdrop of the whole improvement (the invention is defined as an "improvement in blackboards"). The only disputed point of novelty is element 2: the boiled-oil pretreatment of the paper fabric. The obviousness inquiry therefore collapses to a narrow question: would a person of ordinary skill in the art, as of early 1872, have found it obvious to pre-treat a paper-fabric blackboard body with boiled oil before applying ordinary blackboard composition? The answer is yes.

2. The prior-art corpus on the page — temporal screen first

Under § 103, only references that predate the invention (February 6, 1872) can be combined. Applying that screen to the references listed on the US123456A Google Patents page:

Temporally eligible (pre-1872-02-06):

• US51857A — J. Palmer, "Improvement in the Manufacture of Sand-Paper," issued 1866-01-02 (listed under the page's Similar Documents; corroborated at Hagley Museum patent-model record, https://museumcollection.hagley.org/objects/46827/patent-model-improvement-in-the-manufacture-of-sand-paper).
• US108846A — "Improvement in finishing and bleaching handles," 1870-11-01 (Similar Documents; analogous oil-finishing art).
• US107285A — "Improved cutting- or lap-board," 1870-09-13 (Similar Documents; analogous board art).

Temporally ineligible (post-date the invention — cannot serve as § 102/§ 103 prior art, regardless of content):

• All of the Cited By items, including US2452235A (Milprint, "Blackboard," 1948) and the KR100738731B1, KR100746120B1, EP1441838B1, GB2569099A/B, GB2627551A/B, US2002–US2009 publication numbers, US9561416B1. These cite US 123456A as their own prior art; they are descendants, not antecedents.
• Similar Documents issued after 1872-02-06: US246853A (1881), US124070A (1872-02-27), US124315A (1872-03-05), US146985A/US146983A (1874), US352814A (1886), US900512A (1908), US419263A (1890), and the D-series design patents (1872–1899).

US2452235A deserves one observation: its existence shows the 1872 concept was absorbed into the mainstream blackboard art — useful as evidence of the ordinary nature of the technique, but it is not prior art.

Corroborating pre-1872 art located by search (same temporal class as the eligible page references):

• US37639A — Isaac Peirce, "Improved Composition for Slate-Surface Blackboards, &c.," 1863-02-10: a blackboard composition that "readily dries and hardens into a stone-like surface upon wood, glass, printing or other paper, card-board, muslin, &c." (Hagley patent-model record, https://museumcollection.hagley.org/objects/58060/patent-model-improved-composition-for-slate-surface-blackboards-c).
• US30593A — Louis Simonet, "Waterproof Fabric," 1860-11-06: cloth saturated in a linseed-oil varnish (expressly including boiled linseed oil), rendered "perfectly waterproof" (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/91/d4/b0/770638e854fc26/US30593.pdf).
• The 18th/19th-century oilcloth / floorcloth art: canvas saturated with linseed oil, painted, and used as washable coated surfaces — including, per Oxford Art Online, coated-oil fabrics used for "writing surfaces for desks, tables and related forms" (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Floorcloth).

3. Primary reference — the paper/fabric blackboard with composition coating

The claim's starting article — a blackboard whose body is paper or fabric, finished with blackboard composition — was squarely old by 1872:

• US37639A (Peirce, 1863) discloses exactly that article: a slate-surface composition applied over and hardening on "paper, card-board, muslin," producing a blackboard. This is the same genus of article Cowdery describes, and Cowdery himself concedes the coatings are "any of the ordinary blackboard compositions."
• The specification of US 123456A does not claim any new composition or any new fabric; the entire improvement is the boiled-oil step. So Peirce (or the admitted ordinary state of the art) supplies every element of the claim except the oil pretreatment.

4. Secondary references — the boiled-oil pretreatment, fully known in the same or analogous arts

The added step — treating paper or fabric with boiled (linseed) oil to make it moisture-impervious, tougher, and more durable — was among the most routine operations in the 19th-century coated-fabric and coated-paper arts:

• US51857A (Palmer, 1866) — the strongest single reference, and it is on the page's own Similar Documents list. Palmer treats paper with boiled linseed-oil, absorbed into the pores and dried, expressly "to render the paper ... much greater toughness and firmness" and "more durable" — i.e., to prevent exactly the deterioration (harshness, cracking, becoming worthless from moisture) that Cowdery says his oil treatment cures. Same material (paper), same agent (boiled oil), same function (moisture durability), one field over (coated-paper goods, of which blackboards with paper bodies are a direct instance).
• US30593A (Simonet, 1860) — saturating cloth/fabric with a linseed-oil varnish that includes boiled oil to make the fabric "perfectly waterproof" — the fabric-side analogue of Cowdery's "paper fabric ... impervious to moisture."
• Oilcloth/floorcloth general knowledge — by 1872 oilcloth had been made for over a century by treating canvas with linseed oil; it was painted, washable, moisture-proof, and used as writing/table surfaces. The notion that an oil-saturated fabric is impervious to moisture was common knowledge, not a discovery.
• US108846A and US107285A (1870) — analogous-art examples of oil-based finishing of manufactured boards/articles, reinforcing that oil priming was the default moisture-protection technique of the period.

5. Graham / KSR analysis

Differences between the claim and the prior art. Over Peirce (or the admitted ordinary paper/muslin blackboard), the sole difference is: the paper fabric is pre-treated with boiled oil before the composition coating is applied. Over Palmer, the sole difference is: the oil-treated paper is additionally coated with blackboard composition and used as a blackboard. The combination therefore does nothing more than take a known article (paper/muslin blackboard) and add a known treatment (boiled-oil waterproofing) that the secondary references already taught for the identical substrate and for the identical purpose.

Level of ordinary skill. A person of ordinary skill in early 1872 — a blackboard or school-furniture manufacturer, a painter/varnisher, or a coated-fabric/coated-paper maker — would have been conversant with (i) slate-composition coatings on paper and muslin (Peirce), and (ii) boiled-oil saturation of paper and cloth as the standard moisture-proofing and toughening treatment (Palmer; Simonet; oilcloth).

Motivation to combine. Under KSR, "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." Every motivation factor points to obviousness here:

1. Known problem, known solution. The problem Cowdery solves — moisture causing paper/fabric boards to warp, grow harsh, and crack — is precisely the problem Palmer's boiled-oil treatment was already known to solve for paper ("toughness and firmness," "more durable") and Simonet's for fabric ("perfectly waterproof"). A skilled artisan facing a moisture-warping paper blackboard would reach for the standard waterproofing treatment already proven on that substrate.
2. Same or analogous art. The primary and secondary references sit in the same field — coated paper/fabric boards and fabrics. Palmer's sand-paper is a coated-paper product; Peirce's blackboard is a coated-paper product; the two are one step apart. No "bridging" of distinct arts is required.
3. Predictability / reasonable expectation of success. The outcome — oil-saturated paper that resists moisture — was the known, routine, guaranteed result of the treatment. Cowdery claims no new oil, no new composition, no new coating sequence; he uses stock ingredients in their stock manner.
4. No teaching away, no unexpected results. The patent's specification identifies no unexpected property; it asserts only the ordinary moisture-imperviousness that boiled oil had conferred on paper and cloth for decades. The functional "as and for the purposes herein described" language adds no patentable weight, because the purposes are the same ones Palmer and the oilcloth art already achieved.

Secondary considerations. The record contains none favoring patentability: no evidence of long-felt need, commercial success, copying, or skepticism; the patent expired in 1889 with no recorded litigation (per the prior sections of this analysis). The 1948 Milprint blackboard patent (US2452235A) shows the technique persisted as conventional practice — consistent with obviousness, not contrary to it.

6. Specific combinations that would render the claim obvious

7. Conclusion

The single claim of US 123456A would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 to a person of ordinary skill in the blackboard/coated-fabric art as of February 6, 1872. The claim is a classic KSR "familiar elements, predictable results" case: an old article (paper/muslin blackboard with ordinary composition, per Peirce and the patent's own admission) plus a routine, century-old moisture-proofing treatment for that exact substrate (boiled oil on paper/fabric, per Palmer, Simonet, and the oilcloth art), applied to solve the exact problem the treatment was already known to solve. The most persuasive combination is US37639A (Peirce, 1863) in view of US51857A (Palmer, 1866), with US30593A (Simonet, 1860) and the oilcloth art as supporting references. No secondary considerations rescue the claim.

Caveats. (1) All temporally eligible references used here are drawn from the page's Similar Documents list plus pre-1872 corroborating patents located by search; the page's Cited By list is almost entirely post-1872 and is ineligible as § 103 prior art. (2) Analytically, § 103 did not exist in 1872 — the era's equivalent was the Hotchkiss v. Greenwood "invention" standard — but the conclusion (lack of patentable invention) is identical under either rubric. (3) The claim is in any event legally dead by expiration (1889-02-06), so the obviousness analysis is academic except insofar as it confirms the patent's weakness as prior art against later blackboard patents such as US2452235A.

Sources: Google Patents record for US123456A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US123456A); Hagley Museum patent-model records for US51857A (https://museumcollection.hagley.org/objects/46827/patent-model-improvement-in-the-manufacture-of-sand-paper) and US37639A (https://museumcollection.hagley.org/objects/58060/patent-model-improved-composition-for-slate-surface-blackboards-c); USPTO PDF for US30593A (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/91/d4/b0/770638e854fc26/US30593.pdf); oilcloth/floorcloth history (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Floorcloth).