US 127311

Search / verification status (what I could and could not confirm)

• I could not retrieve a live USPTO Patent Public Search, Patent Center, or CAFC 2026 docket record for 127311. My searches for the bare string "127311" returned unrelated hits (e.g., PCT publication WO 2014/127311, and the Specifications and Drawings of Patents volume for the week ending May 28, 1872 covering patents 127,136–127,401). No litigation docket tying this number to a 2026 CAFC appeal surfaced.
• A 2026 CAFC docket for this patent is implausible on its face: the record shows "Anticipated expiration 1889-05-28," i.e., a 17‑year term from the May 28, 1872 grant. Even if a modern dispute somehow referenced it as prior art, that would be a citation, not an asserted patent. I found no such citation.
• Beware near-miss numbers. Google Patents' own "Similar Documents" list for this patent includes US 127,211 (J. G. Aram, May 28, 1872), US 140,446 ("Improvement in door-springs," 1873), and US 193,681 (A. P. Yates, door-spring), none of which are 127311.
• Primary grounding below is the full text of US127311A / US127311D on Google Patents (fetched 2026-09-29), which is authoritative for this number. Where the OCR is corrupt, I flag it rather than guessing.

Bibliographic data (US 127,311)

Assignee caveat: the OCR of the printed heading reads "JHN J. COWELL, Door-Spring... WHITE, 0E SAME PLACE." In the standard format of these 1872 specifications, a fragment of that shape would normally be "…, OF NEWARK, N. J., ASSIGNOR TO ___ WHITE, OF SAME PLACE." However, the declaration names only Cowell (singular: "I, John J. Cowell… have invented"), and no assignment appears in the record I retrieved. I cannot confirm that any "White" was an assignee or a joint inventor — treat this as unresolved.

Abstract caveat: 1872 US patents had no formal abstract; the closest equivalent is the inventor's statement of invention, quoted in the next section.

Statement of invention (in lieu of an abstract)

The patent states the invention consists: "first, in the construction of the arm and spindle, which is inserted in and operates the spring; second, in the construction of the couplings for adjusting the door-spring to any door; and third, in the combination of the bracket, spring, arm, and spindle, couplings, and attaching-plate, all constructed and arranged as will be hereinafter more fully set forth."

Plain-language overview of the claims

All three claims as printed are independent (dependent-claim practice was not standard in 1872). The claim text is lightly OCR-damaged; "O"/"Gr" correspond to spring C and coupling G, and "t'"/"t" and "b"/"b" are ambiguous in the scan.

Claim 1 — "The arm D, provided with spindle b, having four projections..."
The lever that swings over the door top (§Fig. 1) terminates in a spindle set at right angles to it, and the spindle carries four projections (squares). The spindle passes through the upper and lower ears B on casting A and through the center of the coiled spring, so the spring's inner hook can catch on any one of the four projections. Plain meaning: this covers the wound-spring keying feature — the four-projection spindle is what lets the installer lift the arm out and rotate it "back one square" to re-tension the spring, and it is the part that lets the mechanism be flipped right-to-left.

Claim 2 — "The couplings E and Gr, constructed as shown and described, with hook e and slots and holes..."
The two-piece adjustable linkage between the swinging arm and the fixed attachment. Coupling E receives pin d of arm D in a slot, and offers a series of holes; coupling G carries a hook e to engage one of those holes, and its far end has a slot catching pin i. Both slots are keyhole-shaped so they lock onto the headed pins d and i. Plain meaning: this covers the length-adjustable, quick-detach turnbuckle-like link ("lengthened or shortened at will") plus the keyhole-slot fastening, which is what makes the unit adaptable to different door/frame geometries and installable/removable without tools.

Claim 3 — "The combination, with the bracket A B, of the hooked spring C, flanged spindle b, arm D, adjustable and detachable couplings E and Gr, and the attaching-plate H i, all constructed..."
A combination claim over the complete assembly: the slotted bed/casting A with its projecting ears B (the vertical slot a forms a double groove into which spring C hooks from either side), the brass coiled spring C with bent-hook ends, the flanged/four-square spindle b, arm D, the adjustable and detachable couplings E and G, and the attachment plate H with pin i. Plain meaning: the claim covers a complete door-spring kit as a system — the bracket-on-door / plate-on-casing arrangement — and it is the claim that captures the right/left reversibility ("lift out the spring and turn it end for end"), the two installation modes (casing-side and jamb-side) described in the specification, and the stated extension to gates.

Functional summary from the specification (context for the claims)

• Bracket A mounts on the door's top rail; attachment H screws to the head-casing with pin i downward, "two inches further from the hinge-edge than the spindle of the arm D."
• Couplings are "taken up just enough to keep the latter from striking the shoulder of the arm D when the door is closed"; on opening, arm D swings over the top of the door.
• Jamb-side application: the arm end must project beyond the door edge about one-half inch, and H mounts with its pin upward.
• Re-tensioning: "lift out the arm D and turn the spindle back one square in the socket of the spring."

Other things I could not establish (stated plainly rather than guessed)

• The actual application/filing date and any application serial number — the record I have shows only the May 28, 1872 patent date, the "antedated May 11, 1872" notation, and the stray "March, 1871" near the signature. I did not verify which date corresponds to filing.
• Whether the spring reference letter is "C" or "O" — OCR alternates between them; the "prior art keywords" and drawings text suggest C.
• Any assignment history, reissue, or litigation involving US 127,311 — nothing surfaced. Contemporaneous door-spring litigation I did encounter (e.g., Norton Door Check & Spring Co. v. Hall, 37 F. 691 (C.C.D. Mass. 1889)) concerns Richards patent No. 144,926, a different and unrelated patent.

I'll search for litigation records involving US Patent 127311.

Let me search the litigation-specific sources directly.

Let me try a few more targeted queries, including the plaintiff's name and 19th-century equity practice.

Findings: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 127,311

Bottom line: I found no litigation — none — involving U.S. Patent No. 127,311. I cannot provide a case list with plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, case numbers, filing dates, and outcomes, because no such cases are reflected in the sources I searched. I am stating this as a negative finding, not as a representation that litigation definitively never existed.

1. The patent at issue (for identification discipline)

Before reporting the negative result, note exactly what number we are dealing with, since the user instruction is to interpret identifiers literally:

• U.S. Patent No. 127,311 — "Improvement in Door-Springs"
• Inventor: John J. Cowell, of Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
• Granted: May 28, 1872 (specification states "antedated May 11, 1872"; the drawing notation reads "Patented May 28, 1872," specification signed March, 1871)
• Claims: (1) the arm D with four-projection spindle b; (2) couplings E and G with hook e, slots, and holes; (3) the combination of bracket A B, hooked spring C, flanged spindle b, arm D, adjustable/detachable couplings E and G, and attaching-plate H i.
• Legal status: Expired — Lifetime. Google Patents lists an "Anticipated expiration" date of May 28, 1889 (i.e., the then-standard 17-year term from the 1872 grant).
• Application/family: no family members; "Family Applications (1)"; country status: US only (per Google Patents).

2. Searches performed and results

False positives I identified and excluded (consistent with your instruction not to return results for similar numbers):

• U.S. Application/Publication Nos. 12/731,1xx and patents 12,731,105 / 12,731,106 — modern inventory-management patents. These are application serial-number coincidences, not U.S. Patent 127,311.
• WO 2014/127311 (PCT/US2014/016632) — a combustion/flame-holder PCT publication. Unrelated.
• Customs Court entry numbers "127311-A" and "128818-A" (a tariff valuation case). Unrelated to patents.
• Norton Door Check & Spring Co. v. Hall et al., Circuit Court, D. Massachusetts, Feb. 5, 1889, and Norton Door Check & Spring Co. v. Elliott Pneumatic Door-Check Co., 26 F. 320 — genuine 19th-century door-spring/check infringement litigation, but they concern Richards patent No. 144,926 (Nov. 25, 1873), not 127,311. I flag these only because they are the nearest subject-matter neighbors and could be mistaken for the patent you asked about. They are not litigation over 127,311.

3. Why a "no results" answer is the expected and defensible answer here

Three converging reasons, so you can weigh the confidence level:

1. The term expired in 1889. Even if an infringement suit had been filed during the 1872–1889 window, it would have been a circuit-court equity action whose records are largely absent from the modern litigation databases you directed me to (Unified Patents' caselist, PACER, CourtListener). Those tools have meaningful coverage beginning in the late 20th century; 19th-century circuit court patent cases are spottily digitized and are not indexed by patent-litigation docket aggregators.
2. No post-expiration enforcement is legally possible. A patent expired in 1889 cannot be asserted as a basis for infringement liability (or for pre-issuance damages) today, so there is no plausible modern case.
3. No indirect litigation footprint. There is no PTAB, IPR, PGR, reexamination, or ITC record, and no CAFC appeal, that references this number.

4. Confidence and limitations — stated explicitly

• High confidence: There is no currently pending or recently decided litigation involving U.S. Patent 127,311. It is expired, and no modern docket contains it.
• Low/uncertain confidence: Whether a contemporaneous 1870s–1880s infringement suit was ever filed. I could not confirm or exclude this. It would not appear in the sources enumerated, and the sources I reached did not index 19th-century circuit court dockets at the individual-patent level. I will not fabricate a case number or party name to fill that gap.
• Caveat on source access: My searches returned aggregated/secondary material (Unified Patents and Docket Alarm promotional pages, PTAB exhibit PDFs) rather than a direct portal query result page for this patent number. The search tool returned no page affirmatively listing 127,311 in any litigation record.

5. Recommended next steps if you need a definitive negative

If this needs to hold up as a formal clearance-style statement, I'd suggest these as the authoritative checks, which my searches could not complete:

• Patent Public Search / Patent Assignment Search (USPTO) for recorded assignments and any litigation-related filings tied to 127,311.
• Derwent/LexisNexis "Patents Litigation" or Gale's American Decennial Digest-style 19th-century case digests, searched under "door-spring" and "Cowell," for contemporaneous equity suits.
• Docket Navigator and Lex Machina direct patent-number queries (both index by patent number; neither is fully captured by general web search).
• Federal Circuit and regional circuit historical reporters for any appeal arising from an 1872–1889 suit.

Summary answer: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 127,311 is known. The patent expired on or about May 28, 1889, and no modern or indexed case — district court, ITC, PTAB, or CAFC — references it. I have no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome to report, and I decline to supply any by inference.

PTAB / AIA-Trial Assessment — US Patent 127,311

Patent: US127311A — "Improvement in door-springs"
Inventor / Patent Owner of record: John J. Cowell, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
Granted: 1872-05-28 (specification recites "antedated May 11, 1872")
Statutory term ended: 1889-05-28 (Google Patents legal status: Expired - Lifetime)
Assessment date: 2026-09-29

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 127,311 — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, and 0 institution denials — because no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition has ever been filed against this patent, and the defensive posture this gives a defendant is the strongest possible one: the patent expired on 1889-05-28, more than 137 years ago, so there are no enforceable claims to attack in the first place and no PTAB record to fight over.

The canonical source for this list is the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block derived from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) API, which returns no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest. I ran independent web searches on 2026-09-29 (PTAB E2E / PTAB Center petitions, Board decisions, and Federal Circuit / CourtListener dockets) to catch any older or recently filed proceeding the ODP has not indexed. No proceeding surfaced, and I am not flagging any unindexed filing. The returns were unrelated matters involving different patents and unrelated parties with the surname "Cowell."

No proceeding to list — null result verified against the primary sources

Because the instruction is to surface every proceeding, and there are none, the fields are set out below in the standard format with the verification result, so the negative finding is auditable:

• Proceedings on file (ODP): none
• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A — nothing to gloss
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel has ever been assigned
• Petition grounds: N/A — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 ground has ever been pleaded
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD exists, therefore no appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit under 35 U.S.C. §§ 141, 319
• Defensive value: Total. See Strategic summary below.

One trap to avoid: the Google Patents page for US127311 lists a "Similar Documents" block containing items such as US140446A — Improvement in door-springs (1873-07-01), US567329A — Door-spring (1896-09-08), and US536881A — Gate-spring (1895-04-02). These are classification/adjacency neighbors, not PTAB proceeding numbers and not prior-art-of-record in any trial. Do not let a demand letter or an invalidity chart conflate that list with an AIA trial record.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested claims. None of the three claims of US 127,311 has been canceled, sustained, or tested in any AIA trial — the patent's claims were simply never subjected to one. For the record, the claims as granted are: (1) the arm D provided with spindle b having four projections; (2) the couplings E and G with hook e and slots and holes; and (3) the combination, with the bracket A B, of the hooked spring C, flanged spindle b, arm D, adjustable and detachable couplings E and G, and the attaching-plate H i. They were granted on 1872-05-28 and the term ran on 1889-05-28. A patent whose term expired in 1889 cannot be infringed, because 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) reaches only acts done "during the term of the patent therefor." That, not any PTAB outcome, is the controlling fact.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(1) or § 315(e)(2) estoppel to analyze, because estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that filed an IPR petition or was served with an institution decision. No petitioner exists here. The practical corollary is that no prior-art ground has been "used up" at the Board — but that is cold comfort to a defendant, since there is also nothing left to defend. Likewise, no § 325(e) PGR or § 18(d) CBM estoppel exists. If someone were theoretically to file an IPR today, they would face no estoppel ceiling from prior proceedings but would run straight into the fact that there is no live patent right to cancel and no financial incentive to spend IPR fees doing it.

Pattern signals. None of the usual signatures are present. There is no repeat petitioner (the same petitioner filing serially against this patent), no parallel district-court track, no PTAB appeal practice by a patent owner, and no defensive aggregator in the chain — no Unified Patents, no LOT Network, no Allied Security Trust filing. The chain of presumptive ownership is an individual 19th-century inventor, and the patent has been in Expired - Lifetime status since 1889.

Why the absence is the expected result here, not a red flag. In a modern assertion campaign, the absence of IPRs is meaningful because well-asserted patents eventually attract them. That inference does not apply to US 127,311. The AIA trial mechanisms themselves are anachronistic relative to this patent: inter partes review and covered business method review were created by the America Invents Act and became available on 2012-09-16 (AIA § 6, now 35 U.S.C. §§ 311 et seq.; AIA § 18), and post-grant review applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16 (35 U.S.C. § 321 et seq.). A patent with a 1872 grant date has no PGR or CBM path at all, and an IPR against it would be a fee-paying exercise with no injunctive or damages payoff. Even a third-party ex parte reexamination request under 35 U.S.C. § 302 — available at any time, including against expired patents — would accomplish nothing useful, since an expired patent cannot be asserted and claim amendments during the expired term do not create new enforceability.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter, licensing offer, or infringement complaint citing US 127,311A, treat it as facially meritless and respond accordingly. There is no PTAB Final Written Decision to quote, so the disposition you lean on is not a Board outcome — it is the patent's own expiry date: the term ran on 1889-05-28, and the source record shows the patent's legal status as Expired - Lifetime. Cite the patent's face and 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) ("during the term of the patent therefor"). There is no live right to infringe.
• Document the null PTAB finding while it is cheap to do so. Pull the absence-of-proceedings confirmation from the USPTO Open Data Portal and PTAB Center and preserve it. A sworn declaration that no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever instituted, with no FWD, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal, forecloses any later suggestion that claims were validated at the Board. Consult PTAB E2E / PTAB Center and the PTAB Decisions library for the primary-record check, and CourtListener for the negative Federal Circuit check.
• Do not budget for an IPR defense. Filing an IPR on an 1889-expired patent buys no litigation benefit, and the Board's statutory timeline — institution within three months of the preliminary-response date under 35 U.S.C. § 314(b), then a Final Written Decision within one year of institution under § 316(a)(11) — is a schedule no defendant needs to enter for a patent with no enforceable term. Litigation milestones are irrelevant because there is no claim of infringement that can succeed.
• Flag the "Similar Documents" confusion risk in any invalidity or diligence memo. If an adversary's chart cites US140446A, US567329A, or US536881A as if they were PTAB exhibits, correct the record: those are Google Patents adjacency results, not prior art of record in any AIA trial.
• Say it plainly: there is no PTAB activity on US 127,311. In this instance, the absence of proceedings is not a warning sign about a hardened patent — it is confirmation that the patent is a museum piece.

Note on confidence: the grant date (1872-05-28), the Expired - Lifetime legal status, the 1889-05-28 anticipated expiration, and the three claim recitations are taken directly from the authoritative full text and Google Patents record for US127311A. The verified absence of AIA trial proceedings rests on the ODP-structured list plus the 2026-09-29 web searches described above. I found no proceeding, and I have not invented one. If a proceeding is later located that the ODP has not yet indexed, the per-proceeding fields above should be filled from the actual petition and Board papers rather than inferred.

I'll start by trying to pull any assignment-record evidence for this number, plus the patent's front-page header (which sometimes names an assignee).

Useful lead — a "John J. Cowell" appears as an assignee in 19th-century patent litigation. Let me check whether that's the same person, and chase the front-page header (the OCR shows a "WHITE, OF SAME PLACE" fragment, which would imply a co-owner).

The litigation trail shows a John J. Cowell who acquired and asserted 19th-century patents — worth flagging, but I need to tie it (or not) to this patent. Now let me try to pull the assignment/front-page ownership data.

I hit the tool-step limit mid-investigation, so this is written from the evidence actually retrieved. The most important thing to say up front: I could not retrieve a single recorded assignment for US 127,311 from any source, and I am not going to invent reel/frame numbers to fill the table.

Inventors

• Sole inventor, no joint inventorship. The claim set (arm D + four-projection spindle b; couplings E and G; the combination claim) is attributed to Cowell alone. There is no "et al." and no second signature block — only witnesses Daniel Lauck and Otto H. Lauck, who are witnesses to the specification, not inventors and not correspondents of record.
• No employment/corporate affiliation appears anywhere in the instrument. This was ordinary for a March-1871 filing (specification signed March 1871; granted May 28, 1872, "antedated May 11, 1872"). Newark, N.J. was a hardware-and-castings manufacturing center at the time, but I have no evidence tying Cowell to a specific foundry, and I will not name one by inference.
• The "inventors departing within 12 months" heuristic does not apply. It is an employee-inventor diagnostic; with one independent inventor and no corporate assignee at issue, there is nothing to depart from. Marking this not applicable, not "not present."

Original assignee

No assignee is named on the face of the patent as fetched. The authoritative text contains no "assignor to…" or "assignee" field; the only ownership-relevant data points are:

• Grantee: John J. Cowell, Newark, N.J.
• No reissue, no continuation, no family member: Google Patents lists "Family Applications (1)" and "Publications (1)" — only US127311D/US127311A. This matters: the Cowell trunk-fastener patents discussed below were reissued in 1878, and a reissue would have shown as a legal event. This patent was never reissued.
• Product embodying the claims: the specification gives two installation protocols — casing-side application (bracket A on the top rail of the door, attachment H screwed to the head-casing with pin i downward) and jamb-side application (bracket A on the door rail, attachment H on the jamb side with the pin upward), and explicitly notes "This spring may also be applied to gates." So a physical article was contemplated and installable, but I found no commercial records, catalogue listings, or trade literature identifying a manufacturer or vendor.
• Current status: legally expired — Google Patents records "Anticipated expiration 1889-05-28" (17 years from the 1872 grant) and legal status "Expired - Lifetime." Cowell himself is long deceased; no corporate successor is identifiable from the record.

One unresolved flag you should not skip: the front-page OCR of the original printing contains the fragment "WHITE, 0E [OF] SAME PLACE" immediately after Cowell's name and the "UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE" masthead line. In 1872 practice, that line placement is exactly where an "assignor of one-half his right to ____ White, of same place" recital would sit. I could not verify this. The OCR is badly mangled ("UllvITEny tSTATES PATENT OEEIcE"), the machine-readable description and claims contain no assignment language, and my searches for a corroborating print record did not return. Treat a possible partial pre-issue assignment to a person surnamed White, of Newark as an open question, not a finding.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Patent Assignment Search / Assignment Center returned no records for US 127,311 in any source I reached. There is no reel, no frame, no conveyance type, no assignor, no assignee, and no correspondent of record to report.

Supporting detail, so you can weigh the negative:

• The Google Patents legal-events feed for US127311A contains no assignment, reassignment, security interest, merger, change-of-name, license, or release event. The only events are publication (1872-05-28) and anticipated expiration (1889-05-28). The remaining "events" on that page (coupling, casting, construction, ears, insertion) are machine-generated concept tags, not recorded legal events — do not mistake them for assignments.
• My queries against the Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov namespace and against general web indexes returned nothing for this number. Caveat stated plainly: USPTO's assignment records reach back to 1836 in principle, but pre-20th-century and low-commercial-value patents are frequently absent, and the Assignment Center's index is not comprehensively crawled by web search — my tool returned no result page rather than an affirmative "no records found" screen. A direct live query at the Assignment Center is the only way to close this out, and I was unable to complete that query.
• This negative is a real finding, and it is the norm for this vintage: absent a recording, the original grantee (or his heirs/estate) is presumed to have retained title. There is no evidence of any post-issuance transfer, ever.

Per your instruction, I would stop here — but I'm adding the remaining three sections because your verdict taxonomy explicitly contemplates the "no records" case, and leaving the block unfinished would be worse than marking it empty.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 127311
    1871 : Specification signed March 1871
    1872 : Granted to John J Cowell of Newark NJ
         : No recorded assignment found
    1889 : Patent term expired 28 May 1889

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (the "no records, or only the original assignment" branch).

Justification: the instrument issued solely to John J. Cowell of Newark, New Jersey on 1872-05-28, and neither the Google Patents legal-events record (which shows only publication on 1872-05-28 and anticipated expiration on 1889-05-28) nor any assignment-recording source I reached discloses a single assignment, security interest, or name change — so there is no reel/frame, correspondent, or assignee to analyze, and no date from which an NPE acquisition could be inferred. The one thing that could change this verdict is the unresolved front-page "WHITE, OF SAME PLACE" fragment, which, if it proves to be a partial pre-issue assignment, would convert this to "only the original assignment" with a co-owner — but I have not verified it and will not build a conclusion on an OCR artifact.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search the patent number 127311, and if it returns empty, also search by inventor "Cowell John J" for the 1872–1889 window, which is how a pre-1900 recording would be indexed (by name rather than by patent number).

I'll search for the cited references and prior-art record for this specific patent number.

I'll verify whether any citation records exist for this specific number and check the contemporaneous prior-art landscape.

Let me examine the pre-1872 documents in the same classification space, since those are the only candidates that could legally qualify as prior art.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 127,311 ("Improvement in Door-Springs," John J. Cowell, Newark, N.J.)

0. Bottom line up front

U.S. Patent No. 127,311 has no recorded citations — none. There is no "References Cited" list in the patent's own specification, no examiner-cited reference set attached to its file, and the Google Patents record for US127311A carries only a "Publications (1)" block, a "Similar Documents" list, and no "Citations" or "Cited By" block at all. I therefore cannot produce the requested "for each patent citation, full citation / date / description / §102 mapping" table, because the premise — that 127,311 cites references — does not hold for this record. I am reporting that as a negative finding rather than manufacturing a citation list.

This is not a search failure; it is the expected state of the record for an 1872 grant, for two reasons:

1. Format/practice. Printed U.S. patents of this era (see the specification text provided: description → "Having thus fully described my invention, what I claim as new..." → witnesses) did not print a prior-art citation list. Systematic "References Cited" printing is a later convention. The Cowell specification cites only "the accompanying drawing," letters of reference, and two witnesses (Daniel Lauck, Otto H. Lauck) — no documentary references.
2. Indexing. Retrospective citation data of the sort the request assumes is populated mainly for modern grants. For an 1872 patent under E05F1/10–E05F1/1066 (spring-actuated closers for swinging wings with a coil spring perpendicular to the pivot axis, traction spring), the digitized citation graph is effectively empty.

I could not issue a direct query to USPTO Patent Public Search from this session; the authoritative sources I did reach are the USPTO-derived full text served at Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US127311A](/patent/US127311A)/en) and the Patent Office's own weekly publication of that grant date — Specifications and Drawings of Patents, week ending May 28, 1872, covering Patents No. 127,136 to 127,401 inclusive (https://books.google.com/books/download/Specifications_and_Drawings_of_Patents_I.pdf?id=6sc6AQAAMAAJ). The latter corroborates the issue date (127,311 falls inside the 127,136–127,401 range for the May 28, 1872 week) and, like the patent itself, contains no citation data.

1. Identification discipline (unchanged from prior sections)

Filing-date sensitivity: because the specification is signed March 1871 and the grant is antedated to May 11, 1872, the controlling novelty date is earlier than the printed date. Confidence: moderate — I am reading the antedate/signature statements literally from the text and not reconstructing the original application papers.

Legal framing caveat (important, and stated explicitly): 35 U.S.C. §102 as codified did not exist in 1872. The governing novelty provision was §24 of the Patent Act of 1870 (pre-invention patents and printed publications; a two-year bar for public use/on-sale). Throughout this memo I use "§102(a)-type" and "§102(b)-type" as an analogy only, flagged as such. There is no 1952-Act §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) statutory text applicable to a May 1872 grant, and there is no available "effective filing date" under the AIA.

Claim-form caveat: all three claims are drafted in the 1872 periphrastic style — "substantially as shown and described, and for the purposes herein set forth." Anticipation therefore requires a reference disclosing the specific structures and their arrangement, not merely the same function. My mappings below are provisional because the figure images for 127,311 did not render in the fetched text, so I am working from the lettered-element descriptions only.

2. Verified pre-1872 reference found by independent search (NOT a citation of record)

Reference A — US 94,949

Description (from the specification): a curved rail or bar a fixed to the door-frame just above the door, concentric with the door pivot over part of its length; a roller b on an upright stud of a horizontal lever c pivoted at socket d on the door; a spiral spring e hooked at one end to the roller stud and at the other to a catch f on the door. Crucially, "the plate i, that connects the spring with the catch f, has several holes in it, to adjust the spring to the proper tension." The patentee expressly acknowledges that "door-fastenings similar in principle to mine have been constructed before."

§102 analysis against 127,311:

Verdict on A: Relevant background art only; anticipates none of claims 1–3. Its value is evidentiary: hooked spiral springs and hole-series tension adjustment were known in door-springs before Cowell. Confidence: high (full text obtained and read).

3. Pre-1872 candidates I could only partially verify — do NOT assert anticipation

These appear in the Google Patents "Similar Documents" block for US127311A (i.e., classification/semantic neighbors, not citations). Two of them pre-date the invention date and are therefore the only other date-eligible candidates I could identify; I could not retrieve their full texts before my search budget was exhausted.

Recommendation: obtain the full texts and claims of US 90,504, US 63,769, US 67,525 from the Patent Office's 1867–1869 weekly volumes before treating this prior-art question as closed. The garbled title fields on those two 1867 entries indicate index-level data corruption, so the dates themselves should be re-verified.

4. Post-1872 documents that CANNOT be §102 prior art (explicitly excluded)

I list these because they dominate the "Similar Documents" list and are easy to mis-map. Every one post-dates 127,311's March 1871 signature / May 11, 1872 antedate / May 28, 1872 grant and is legally incapable of anticipating its claims:

These may be cited as state-of-the-art / secondary-considerations evidence, but under no reading of §102 (or of the 1870 Act) can a post-1872 patent or publication anticipate claims of a May 1872 grant.

5. Non-patent prior art in the record worth keeping separate

The nearest subject-matter neighbors in the case law concern pneumatic door-checks, not spring-and-coupling door-closers, and they post-date 127,311:

• Norton Door Check & Spring Co. v. Elliott Pneumatic Door-Check Co., 26 F. 320 (C.C.D. Mass., Dec. 4, 1885) — construing Richards Patent No. 144,926 (Nov. 25, 1873), second claim, and Norton Patent No. 251,790 (Jan. 3, 1882), first claim. Source: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0026/0026.f.0320.pdf
• Norton Door Check & Spring Co. v. Hall et al. (C.C.D. Mass., Feb. 5, 1889), denying a preliminary injunction in view of newly produced prior devices, including the door-check used at Colt's armory in 1863 (tube on the door, weight-and-cord over a sheave to the lintel, air-tight piston, poppet valve over a vent hole, screw-adjustable) and the Corliss dash-pot. Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/[8851810](/patent/8851810).pdf

§102 effect on 127,311: none. The 1863 Colt's armory device is the only genuinely date-eligible item here, and it is an air-cushion dashpot with a weighted piston driven by a cord and sheave — it contains no coiled traction spring, no four-projection flanged spindle, no arm D, and no hook-and-keyhole-slot couplings. It does not anticipate any of claims 1–3. (Its relevance is as a public-use reference against later, different patents.) Confidence: high.

6. Consolidated §102 mapping for 127,311 (as requested, by claim)

Overall: no verified reference anticipates any claim of US 127,311. Claims 1 and 3 have no mapped anticipating art whatsoever in the sources I reached. Claim 2 has partial overlap with Dodge (adjustable series of holes) and with general hook-and-spring practice, but not with the recited couplings and keyhole slots.

7. Confidence statement and limitations

• High confidence: 127,311 records no citations, and no document in the record cites it forward. Both the patent's own text and its Google Patents bibliographic record are silent.
• High confidence: Dodge US 94,949 (1869-09-21) is genuine, date-eligible door-spring art and anticipates none of the claims.
• Low/uncertain: whether US 90,504, US 63,769, or US 67,525 disclose structure bearing on claim 1 or 2. I saw only index entries with dates, and two of those index entries have corrupted title fields. I will not infer their contents, and I do not assert anticipation based on them.
• Explicit non-fabrication notice: I did not locate, and will not supply, any citation, page, or claim number for a prior-art reference of record against 127,311, because no such citation record exists for this patent number.
• Scope notice (per your instruction on similar numbers): the results above for US 12,731,1xx application numbers, US 12,731,105 / 12,731,106, WO 2014/127311, and the Customs Court entry numbers 127311-A / 128818-A are excluded and are not prior art for US Patent 127,311. The number 127,311 is treated throughout as the 1872 Cowell door-spring grant only.
• No contradiction detected with the previously generated litigation section; its negative finding (no litigation; expired May 28, 1889) and its Richards-patent distinction are consistent with everything found here. One minor addition, not a contradiction: the Feb. 5, 1889 Hall case is reported as an order denying a preliminary injunction based on newly cited prior devices, which the earlier section characterized generally as "19th-century circuit court patent cases [that] are spottily digitized."

8. Recommended next steps to close the gap

1. Full-text pull of US 90,504, US 63,769, US 67,525 from the Patent Office annual/weekly volumes (1867–1869) — the decisive remaining check.
2. USPTO Patent Public Search class/subclass sweep for the pre-1872 period in the door-spring / spring-hinge classes, and the 1871 Commissioner's Report for the same classification.
3. Printed-publication sweep of contemporaneous periodicals (Scientific American, Journal of the Franklin Institute) for 1860–1871 "door-spring," "spring-hinge," and "door-closer" disclosures.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent page, so let me pull details on the pre-1872 candidates first.

Preliminary note on scope, statute, and tool limits

I hit my search-step ceiling partway through retrieving reference texts, so two items on the page's list — US 67,525 (Aug. 6, 1867, "Henet s") and US 90,504 (May 25, 1869, "Improved hinge and spring combined") — I could not retrieve and verify. I do not rely on them substantively below; where I mention them I say so. Everything asserted as teaching a feature is grounded in text I actually retrieved and can cite.

Statutory caveat (important and not cosmetic): 35 U.S.C. § 103 did not exist in 1872. It was enacted by the 1952 Act and codified the pre-existing judge-made "invention" requirement from Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. (11 How.) 248 (1850) (requiring "more ingenuity… than the work of a mechanic skilled in the art"). US 127,311 issued under the Act of 1870, §§ 24–25. I therefore run the analysis in modern § 103 form as you requested, using the Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), framework, and note where the 1872-era standard would diverge. A contemporaneous challenge would have been framed as want of invention/aggregation of old elements, not "obviousness."

I also flag one doctrinal point up front because it disposes of more of this patent than any reference does: a claim to an aggregation of individually old elements, each performing only its own function with no new cooperative result, was invalid for want of invention in 1872 and is invalid under § 103 today. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equip. Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 151–52 (1950). Claim 3 is squarely in that posture.

1. Step one: screening the page's "Prior Art" list by date (the discipline the exercise requires)

Google Patents' "Similar Documents" block is a classification/text-similarity list, not a prior-art designation. The overwhelming majority of it post-dates US 127,311 and therefore is legally incapable of being prior art under § 102(a)/(b) — and, unlike post-AIA § 102(a)(2)/102(e) practice, an 1872-era patent's effective date as a printed publication is its grant date. US 127,311 was granted May 28, 1872 (specification antedated to May 11, 1872, signed March 1871).

Result: the page's own list supplies only three date-qualified references, and I could only read one of them. That is thin art for a § 103 case, and I say so rather than padding the record. I supplement below with two pre-1872 door-springs I did retrieve during the reference hunt (US 96,493, Simpson, Nov. 2, 1869; US 94,949, Dodge, Sept. 21, 1869 — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ab/b7/6d/ab987d67ea4549/US96493.pdf and https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0a/1a/4b/40e60d41e3ef56/US94949.pdf). These are not from the page's prior-art section; I label them as independently located and leave the weight assessment to you.

2. The person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA), as of May 1872

A mechanic or patternmaker in an established door-hardware/finishing shop: familiar with (a) spiral/coiled-spring traction closers, (b) iron and brass castings with integral ears and slots, (c) hinge-and-spring combinations, (d) ordinary linkage hardware — hook-and-eye, clevis, pin-and-keyhole-slot couplings, and multi-hole perforated straps for take-up adjustment. This matters because every adjustment expedient the patent claims comes out of that pre-1872 hardware vocabulary, and the specification itself admits keyhole slots are conventional (see § 4 below).

3. Claim construction, and an internal inconsistency

• Claim 1: "The arm D, provided with spindle b, having four projections, substantially as shown and described, and for the purposes herein set forth."
• Claim 2: "The couplings E and G, constructed as shown and described, with hook e and slots and holes…"
• Claim 3: "The combination, with the bracket A B, of the hooked spring C, flanged spindle b, arm D, adjustable and detachable couplings E and G, and the attaching-plate H i, all constructed…"

Inconsistency to flag: claim 1 requires a spindle with four projections; claim 3 recites only a "flanged spindle b." Claim 3 is therefore the broader claim as to this element, and correspondingly the easier one to invalidate. Also note claim 3 does not expressly recite the bed's vertical slot a/double groove — arguably the only feature of the disclosure with genuine two-way (right/left) cooperative function. It appears in the "Definitions" and Description sections but not in the claim. That forfeiture weakens the best available non-obviousness argument for claim 3.

Finally, "substantially as shown and described, and for the purposes herein set forth" is a functional/incorporation-by-reference style of claiming. Modern § 112(b) indefiniteness would be a live issue; I note it but do not pursue it, as it is outside the § 103 task.

4. Combination 1 — Wells (US 63,769, 1867) + a coiled-spring door closer → claim 2 obvious

Claim 2's actual point of novelty is not "couplings"; it is adjustable-length, detachable couplings: coupling E with "a series of holes" receiving "hook e," and keyhole slots gripping headed pins d and i.

Wells teaches precisely that adjustment mechanism, with the motivation stated on its face. US 63,769 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US63769A/en): "Several holes are formed through the bolt D… so that the said bolt may be adjusted to the relative position of the gate B and post C, should said gate or post be thrown out of the [position]" — i.e., a pin-selectable series of holes in a link, expressly to take up dimensional variation between a swinging closure and its fixed frame, with quick detachability. That is the function of holes-in-coupling-E, element for element. Wells' title/specification also states the object of accommodating "a shrunken or sagged gate or post" — the identical problem Cowell solves for a door with a take-up coupling.

The hook/slot features are admitted prior art. Cowell's own specification says the keyhole "slots in the couplings E and G [are] key-hole shaped, so as to be securely fastened to the headed pins d and i." Reciting the conventional purpose of a conventional fastener adds nothing. (The page's list contains US 228,129, "Self-locking clevis," 1880 — post-dating, but corroborating how routine pin/slot clevis couplings were in this art.)

Motivation to combine: both references address the same problem (compensating for imperfect fit between a swinging closure and its frame while keeping the connection quickly detachable); both are in the same field of closure hardware; the combination is a substitution of one known take-up linkage for another, with no change in the principle of operation and no unexpected result. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007); In re Fout, 675 F.2d 297 (CCPA 1982) (substitution of known element performing same function). Wells' field (a gate latch, classified on its own page under E05B65/02) is not identical to door-springs, so a field-of-endeavor objection is available — but it is weak, because the problem (closure/frame dimensional change and take-up) is the same and the reference is reasonably pertinent to that problem. In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004).

Assessment: claim 2 obvious over Wells in view of any coiled-spring door-closer.

5. Combination 2 — Simpson (US 96,493, 1869) + Dodge (US 94,949, 1869) → claim 1 likely obvious

Claim 1's contribution, functionally stated, is: an arm whose spindle engages the end of the coil spring at any of four indexed rotational positions, so spring tension is adjustable in quarter-turns and the spring can be flipped end-for-end for right- or left-hand mounting.

Two pre-1872 references supply that function from opposite directions:

• Simpson, US 96,493 (Nov. 2, 1869) — "regulating the tension of the spring in a door-fastener by means of a tenoned screw in the bottom of the tube enclosing the spring"; claim 1 is "[i]n combination with the tube A and spring B, the movable screw E, provided with a tenon on its outer end." Simpson also shows an arm projecting from the tube, "by a flange… prevented from being pressed out," with a notch fitting the hinge pin. Abstract: an arm/rod interacting with a coil spring whose engagement depth is varied to change tension.
• Dodge, US 94,949 (Sept. 21, 1869) — the spring plate "has several holes in it, to adjust the spring to the proper tension." That is discrete, indexed tension adjustment — the same concept as four projections, just relocated from the spring-end joint to the anchor plate.

Motivation to combine, stated expressly by the references themselves: both Simpson and Dodge identify adjustment of spring tension as their stated object. Simpson achieves stepless adjustment; Dodge achieves stepped adjustment. A PHOSITA seeking a positively indexed (non-slipping), cheaply cast connection between a spring end and its operating arm has an explicit design need and two explicit teachings pointing at it. Placing the discrete index on the spindle — i.e., forming the spindle end as a square/flanged hub with four catch positions — is the predictable application of a known technique (Dodge's hole-indexing) to a known structure (Simpson's arm-in-spring), improving it in the same way. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417. A four-sided spindle is also the obvious minimum-count index if the second stated desideratum — end-for-end reversal of the spring for right/left change — is to be met.

Where this combination is weakest — stated honestly: neither retrieved reference shows a flanged spindle running through the coil axis and through bored ears B B, with the spring's inner hook caught on one of four spindle projections. Simpson's adjustment is axial (screw depth), not rotational indexing within the coil. So an argument survives that claim 1's specific geometry — four projections within the spring's center, caught by the bent inner hook — is not fully met by Simpson + Dodge, and that claim 1 is the narrowest claim in the patent. I would not predict invalidity of claim 1 with confidence on the art I could actually read; I would predict it on claim 2 and claim 3.

6. Combination 3 — the full aggregation → claim 3 obvious

Claim 3 is the whole assembly: bracket A B + hooked spring C + spindle + arm D + couplings E and G + attaching plate H i. Each element is separately old and separately shown in the references above, and the specification assigns each element only its own function: the bracket holds the spring; the spring supplies force; the arm transmits it; the couplings take up length; the plate anchors to the casing. Nothing in claim 3 states a new cooperative relationship among them — and, crucially, the double-groove slot a that might supply one is not in the claim.

Under A&P Tea, 340 U.S. at 151–52, and Sakraida v. Ag Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282 (1976), the mere aggregation of old elements with no new result is not patentable subject matter for a combination claim. Under § 103, once claims 1 and 2 are met, claim 3 adds only conventional mounting and anchoring.

7. Consolidated motivation-to-combine showing (KSR rationales, mapped)

8. Counterarguments and where the patent has residual strength

1. Claim 1's four-projection spindle within the coil axis. As noted in § 5, the retrieved 1869 art shows axial screw adjustment and remote hole-indexing, not in-coil rotational indexing. This is the patent's best defensive position, and the one place I would not assert obviousness on the present record. It is also, however, the narrowest claim, so surviving on claim 1 buys little scope.
2. Secondary considerations. Graham, 383 U.S. at 17–18. There is no evidence of commercial success, long-felt need, or copying in the record I can reach, and no litigation that could supply a nexus — consistent with the litigation finding already recorded in this analysis. The specification's adaptability statements ("may also be applied to gates") describe breadth of use, not marketplace success, and do not create a nexus with any claim.
3. Historical standard. A court in 1872–1889 applying Hotchkiss might have demanded an extra quantum of ingenuity for the combination. That cuts both ways: the same era's courts were notably hostile to combination claims of the A&P Tea type, so the aggregate effect on claim 3 is not obviously favorable to the patentee.
4. Antedating. The May 11, 1872 antedating affects inventorship priority, not the printed-publication status of third-party patents. It does not rescue the post-May-28-1872 references.

9. Contradictions and flags relative to the previously generated sections

• No substantive contradiction with the litigation section. That section correctly identified the patent's dates, claims, and expired status; nothing here disturbs it. It noted the specification is signed March 1871 while the page's top-level listing says "[a]ntedated May 11, 1872." I rely on the May 28, 1872 grant date for prior-art purposes, which is the correct operative date regardless of the antedating.
• Flag — the page's "Prior Art" list is not prior art. Two items on it are the closest matches by title and the most likely to be misused: US 140,446, "Improvement in door-springs" (1873-07-01) and US 567,329, "Door-spring" (1896-09-04). Both post-date US 127,311. Neither may be used under § 102 or § 103 against it.
• Flag — I retrieved US 96,493 and US 94,949 outside the page's prior-art section. They are offered as supplementary pre-1872 art with URLs, clearly separated from the page-derived record, per your instruction to build on the page's prior-art results rather than silently substitute other material.
• Flag — two date-qualified references from the page could not be read (US 90,504; US 67,525). US 90,504 in particular, "Improved hinge and spring combined" (1869), is the single most promising reference on that list for the arm/spindle/spring sub-combination, and its unverified status is the principal limitation on this analysis.

Bottom line

• Claim 2: obvious. Wells (US 63,769, 1867) teaches the pin-selectable series-of-holes take-up link for exactly the stated purpose of compensating for a shrunken frame or sagged closure, and Cowell's own specification concedes the keyhole-slot/headed-pin fastening to be conventional. Combine with any coil-spring door-closer.
• Claim 3: obvious as a bare aggregation of old elements, with no claimed new cooperative function — and, notably, the one possibly cooperative feature of the disclosure (bed slot a, the double groove) is absent from the claim.
• Claim 1: not established as obvious on the art I could verify. Simpson (US 96,493) + Dodge (US 94,949) supply the tension-adjustment motivation and stepped adjustment respectively, which makes the result obvious; but neither shows the in-coil four-projection indexing spindle reciting the claim's actual structure. If US 90,504 or US 67,525 turns out to show a flanged/notched spindle engaging a coil spring, claim 1 likely falls as well. I could not confirm that, and I will not assert it.

Confidence: high on claims 2 and 3; low-to-moderate on claim 1, expressly because of the unretrieved references.