US 196384

I'll verify the details against live sources before summarizing.

Search scope and negative results (read first)

I searched for the literal identifier 196384 in conjunction with patent-hydrant terms and with 2026 Federal Circuit / USPTO litigation terms.

• No CAFC 2026 docket involving US196384 exists (or could exist). Two independent reasons: (a) the Federal Circuit was created by the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982 and did not exist in 1877; (b) US196384's term expired 1894‑10‑23 (17 years from the 1877‑10‑23 grant), and Google Patents records its status as "Expired – Lifetime." An expired 1877 patent cannot support a 2026 appealable controversy. I found no CAFC calendar entry, petition, or docket referencing this number.
• No USPTO post-grant proceedings (IPR/PGR) or 2026 litigation, and no assignment-record fetch was retrievable; Google Patents shows an empty "Application number" field and lists the case internally as US196384D in the family table. Also note there is a Malaysian patent MY‑196384‑A (LG Electronics) and a Hungarian register no. 196384 — these are unrelated documents, not the US patent. I have excluded them per your instruction.
• The bibliographic and textual data below rests on the authoritative full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US196384/en (fetched 2026‑09‑26), supplemented by one confirming citation-table hit for "US196384A (en) * 1877‑10‑23 | Improvement in hydrants" in the forward-citation table of US5934370.

Bibliographic data — US 196,384 A

Abstract: there is no abstract in this document. Abstracts for US patents were not required until the 1952 Patent Act (35 U.S.C. § 112; then Rule 72(b)), so a pre‑1952 patent such as this one has no abstract field. The "summary of the invention" below is my plain-language substitute, drawn from the specification's own statement of invention.

Summary of the invention (in lieu of an abstract)

Porteous states his invention "relates to a class of hydrants that are non-wasting and non-freezing," achieved by a fluid chamber at the base plus an ejector arranged so that it "transform[s] the fluid-chamber into a vacuum-chamber when the hydrant is open," which in turn "cause[s] the water in the rising-pipe to return to the fluid-chamber when the hydrant is closed." The stated object is twofold: waste the water back down instead of onto the ground, and keep the riser/stock free of standing water that would freeze.

Key structural elements as described:

• Casing A with cap B, through which works an operating device: hand-wheel O riveted to screw D, whose bottom carries a collar E riding in a groove in the rising pipe F. Turning the hand-wheel raises or lowers the ejector and regulating valve bodily.
• Rising pipe F has a telescoping joint G so the pipe can rise and fall while the spout H stays stationary. The grooved portion of F is flattened on one side and slides vertically over a lug I on casing A, preventing rotation of F during opening/closing.
• Ejector is secured near the bottom of and moves with rising pipe F: a nozzle a projects into a mouth b; the mouth draws water from the nozzle and also from the vacuum chamber J, with which it communicates through apertures. It "remove[s] any air or water from chamber J at each draft of water through spout H."
• Bottom of casing A has a cylinder L and seat d, on which work cup-packing c and valve f. The cup-packing prevents direct passage of water into chamber J; the valve regulates flow through the hydrant.
• Operation: turning hand-wheel O causes screw D, coupled to pipe F, to lift valve f off seat d; water passes through the apertures into nozzle a, up rising pipe F to spout H, and simultaneously a vacuum/partial vacuum forms in chamber J. When valve f is closed and supply cut off, the water in rising pipe F "immediately returns to the chamber J, where it remains until it is ejected at the next succeeding draft of water."
• Repair feature: removing screw-bolts t and spout H, then caps B and B, allows the rising pipe F, ejector, and other working parts to be drawn out of casing A "in a body," avoiding excavation around the casing.
• Prosecution-style disclaimer: "I do not claim, broadly, the combination of a valved supply-pipe, a vacuum-chamber, an ejector to create the vacuum, and a discharge-pipe, as such is not my invention." The two claims are therefore deliberately narrowed to specific structural combinations.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Both claims are combination claims in the 1877 style; neither refers back to the other, so in modern terms there are two independent claims and no dependent claims. ⚠️ OCR caveat: the claim text in the available copy is badly garbled. The renderings below are my best reconstruction; the literal OCR strings are quoted so you can see exactly what the record says.

Claim 1 (literal OCR): "The combination of the valve), pipe F; telescopic joint G, :and stationary discharge:- spout Hyeonstruetedend: arranged to operate as and for the'pluposedeseribed"
→ Best reading: "The combination of the valve f, pipe F, telescopic joint G, and stationary discharge-spout H, constructed and arranged to operate as and for the purposes described."

Plain language: This claim covers the four-part operating train as a unit — (1) the main valve f at the base, (2) the vertical/rising pipe F, (3) the telescoping joint G, and (4) the fixed (non-rising) discharge spout H. The inventive point being captured is the combination that lets the valve-carrying pipe travel up and down to open and close the valve while the spout stays put at a fixed elevation — i.e., the telescoping joint decoupling the moving riser from the stationary outlet.

Claim 2 (literal OCR): "in combination with'the valve fi'cup" packing a; vertical pipe F; and VICl111IlIOh&Hl-' ber J, the ejector attached 'to' and moving with rishze pipe 1, and; constructed. with flie nozzle 4 andrmouth b, the former havin g peiv forations h and the latter perfor ations c, as and for the purposedeseribed"*
→ Best reading: "In combination with the valve f, cup-packing c, vertical pipe F, and vacuum-chamber J, the ejector attached to and moving with rising-pipe F, and constructed with the nozzle a and mouth b, the former having perforations h and the latter perforations c, as and for the purpose described."

Plain language: This claim adds the vacuum/frost-protection architecture. It requires, in combination with (a) valve f, (b) cup-packing c, (c) vertical/rising pipe F, and (d) vacuum chamber J, an ejector that is mounted on and travels with the rising pipe, built with a nozzle a discharging into a mouth b, where the nozzle carries perforations h and the mouth carries perforations/apertures c (the passage connecting the mouth to chamber J). Functionally, the ejector is the suction/jet element that evacuates chamber J and the riser as water is drawn, so that closing the valve drains the riser back into the base chamber — the non-freezing, non-wasting behavior.

The practical difference between the claims is that claim 1 is the riser/telescoping-joint/spout combination, while claim 2 is the ejector-plus-vacuum-chamber combination keyed to the moving riser — consistent with the inventor's deliberate refusal to claim the broad "valved supply-pipe + vacuum chamber + ejector + discharge pipe" genus.

Family and forward citations

• Family: one application only (US196384D → US196384A); US-only country status (1). No priority claims.
• Cited by (13) — all 20th-century frost-proof/yard-hydrant art, which is a useful map of the lineage this patent sits in:
  • US2688976A (J A Zurn Mfg Co), 1954 — Nonfreezing hydrant
  • US3017896A (Frank C. Papacek), 1962 — Sanitary frostproof hydrant
  • US4109671A (Industrial Value Analysis Inc.), 1978 — Sanitary yard hydrant
  • US4854339A and US5033500A (Herbert W. Hoeptner III), 1989/1991 — Freeze valve apparatus
  • US5217039A and US5228471A (Hoeptner), 1993 — Automatic draining back flow preventer (for use with ground hydrant / generally)
  • US5355907A (Hoeptner), 1994 — Automatic draining back flow preventer for use with hydrant
  • US5553637A (Hoeptner), 1996 — Frost-free water supply
  • US5752542A (Hoeptner), 1998 — Back flow preventing adjustable valve apparatus
  • US5934370A (Hoeptner), 1999 — Well water flow diverter apparatus
  • US5997046A (Hoeptner), 1999 — Divergent legged slide mount adapter
  • US6047723A (Hoeptner), 2000 — Positive displacement yard hydrant
  • (The Google Patents table marks these with the standard "Cited by examiner / cited by third party" legend, but the fetched table does not cleanly attribute each row; I won't overstate which are examiner citations.)
• Similar documents cited by Google include contemporaneous hydrant/valve art such as US1144758A (Valve), US351924A (Valve attachment for hydrants), US284021A (Hydrant-valve), US860424A (Hydrant), and injector/ejector art such as US519728A (Water-ejector), US1026399A (Injector), US384666A (Injector), and US220471A (combined injector and ejector).

Uncertainty and caveats

1. Assignee name is OCR-degraded. The record literally prints "ASSIGNOR TO n. J. BAILEY, or PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA." and repeats "n. J. BAILEY." The initial is almost certainly B., but I am not auto-correcting the identifier. Note also that a George C. Bailey of Pittsburg received hydrant patent US174,181 (issued 1876‑02‑29) — a possible but unverified relation; do not treat the two Baileys as the same person on this record alone.
2. Filing-date discrepancy. The printed specification header says "application filed June 6, 1877," but the testimonium clause (as OCR'd) reads "my hand this fifth day of March 1877." The header date is the one Google Patents reports; the March date may reflect the date of execution of the specification rather than the filing date. I flag this rather than reconcile it.
3. Claim text is not clean. The OCR for both claims is substantially corrupted (e.g., "VICl111IlIOh&Hl-' ber J," "rishze pipe 1*," "pluposedeseribed"). My reconstructions align with the body text's use of letters a, b, c, f, h, F, G, H, J, but the only authoritative wording is the facsimile on the patent document itself. If you need verbatim claim language for a validity or infringement-style analysis, pull the PDF facsimile: https://patents.google.com/patent/US196384/en (Download PDF).
4. No abstract exists, and there are no numbered claim paragraphs or independent/dependent designations, because the document predates both conventions. My "two independent claims" characterization is a modern-law translation, not a feature of the original.
5. No authoritative 2026 litigation or administrative record exists for this patent number. Any claim of a 2026 USPTO or CAFC proceeding involving US196384 should be treated as erroneous.

I'll search for litigation involving this specific patent number.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to be thorough.

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent 196,384 ("Improvement in Hydrants," John Porteous, granted October 23, 1877) was found in any searchable patent-litigation source. I could not identify a single case — plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or otherwise — asserting or adjudicating this specific patent.

I want to be precise about what that does and does not mean, because "no results" in a database is not the same as "no litigation ever."

What I searched

• Unified Patents litigation caselist–type sources and PTAB (P-TACTS) petition records
• CourtListener / RECAP dockets, CAFC dockets
• General web queries for 196384, US196384, "Patent No. 196,384", "196,384" patent, paired with "hydrant," "Porteous," and "litigation/infringement"

Every hit resolved to a different patent or document. To show I did not conflate similar numbers, here is what the searches actually surfaced and why each is excluded:

Notably, the Google Patents record for US196384 lists 13 "Cited By" documents (Zurn US2688976, Papacek US3017896, Industrial Value Analysis US4109671, and the Hoeptner family US4854339, US5033500, US5217039, US5228471, US5355907, US5553637, US5752542, US5934370, US5997046, US6047723) — but these are subsequent patent citations, not litigation. No "Cited By" entry reflects a lawsuit.

Why the absence of hits is expected here

Two structural reasons, which you should weigh when advising a client:

1. The patent is long expired. The Google Patents record states an anticipated expiration of 1894-10-23 (17 years from the 1877 grant, under the law then in force). Any cause of action for infringement would have had to accrue between 1877 and 1894. There is no live legal interest to litigate today.
2. The databases searched are modern. PACER (mid-1990s onward), CourtListener/RECAP, Unified Patents, and P-TACTS do not systematically index 19th-century federal equity and law dockets. Suits decided on this patent, if any, would appear only in the old reporters (Federal Reporter volumes 1–70, Federal Cases, U.S. Official Gazette, and the Supreme Court reporter series) — sources not covered by these tools.

Limitation on this conclusion — read this as a caveat, not a clearance

I am not in a position to state affirmatively that no infringement suit ever touched this patent. My searches covered the sources you named plus general web search; they did not include a full-text sweep of 1877–1894 federal case reporters. The era was litigious for hydrant patents — the contemporaneous Mathews v. Machine Co. line (Race & Mathews hydrant casings, 105 U.S. 54, and the Bailey reissue litigation reported at 22 F. 292–299) shows hydrant patents in the 1870s–80s went to court frequently and that unadjudicated suits on similarly marginal patents may simply never have reached a reported opinion.

If you need a defensible negative, the next steps would be: (a) full-text search of Federal Reporter vols. 1–70 and Federal Cases for "Porteous," "Bailey," and "196,384"; (b) the Patent Office litigation/assignment records for the Porteous patent's chain of title (the patent face assigns to D. J. Bailey of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania); and (c) a manual check of the Cincinnati (S.D. Ohio) and W.D. Pa. circuit dockets for 1877–1894. None of those are reachable through the litigation databases you pointed me to, and I did not perform them.

Summary answer to your question as asked: no known litigation is identified for US patent 196384, and I found no case caption, docket number, or opinion referencing it. I cannot rule out an unreported or pre-database 19th-century suit.

PTAB Proceedings — US 196,384 ("Improvement in Hydrants")

Sourcing note: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 196,384. I ran supplementary web searches against PTAB petitions/FWDs, PTAB E2E-derived materials (ptacts.uspto.gov), RPX/insight IPR dockets, CourtListener, and general web — no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 196,384 was located. Nothing to flag as an unindexed filing. Live results in no way contradict the structured block.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 196,384: 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials, 0 Federal Circuit appeals). The bottom line for a defendant is not "hardened patent" or "dead claims" — it is that this patent cannot be asserted at all: US 196,384 issued 1877-10-23 to John Porteous and, per the Google Patents bibliographic record, reached its anticipated expiration on 1894-10-23 — 131 years ago. The AIA trial regime (IPR under 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319, PGR under §§ 321–329, CBM under AIA § 18) did not exist until 2012-09-16, by which point the patent had been in the public domain for 118 years. There is no economic or procedural pathway to a PTAB challenge, and no PTAB challenge exists.

No proceedings to report

There are no proceeding records to enumerate. Rather than fabricate entries, the relevant facts are:

• Type: N/A — no IPR / PGR / CBM filed.
• Filed: N/A — no petition on file.
• Status: N/A (USPTO ODP structured block: no AIA trial proceedings as of most recent ingest).
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel assembled.
• Petition grounds: N/A — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 grounds ever presented at the PTAB against this patent. Note that the patent's own specification contains a notable prosecution-era disclaimer: "I do not claim, broadly, the combination of a valved supply-pipe, a vacuum-chamber, an ejector to create the vacuum, and a discharge-pipe, as such is not my invention" — so even the inventor conceded the broad combination was old art as of 1877.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A. No claim of US 196,384 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or otherwise adjudicated by the Board. The only claims on the face of the patent (as OCR'd from the printed specification) are:
  • Claim 1 — the combination of the valve f, pipe F, telescopic joint G, and stationary discharge-spout H, constructed and arranged substantially as described;
  • Claim 2 — in combination with the valve f, cup-packing c, vertical pipe F, and vacuum-chamber J, the ejector attached to and moving with rising pipe F, and constructed with the nozzle a and mouth b, the former having perforations h and the latter perforations c.
    Both are UNTESTED at the PTAB and, independently, long expired.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD to appeal; no CAFC docket (e.g., no CourtListener record) involving US 196,384 as the challenged patent. The only CAFC-adjacent signal is the "Cited By" list of 13 later patents (US 2,688,976; 3,017,896; 4,109,671; 4,854,339; 5,033,500; 5,217,039; 5,228,471; 5,355,907; 5,553,637; 5,752,542; 5,934,370; 5,997,046; 6,047,723) — all of which are themselves expired and none of which generated a PTAB challenge to US 196,384.
• Defensive value: None from the PTAB side, because there is nothing to defend against. The defensive value is total but comes from expiration, not from an invalidation judgment: this patent's term ended 1894-10-23, so it is unenforceable and cited only as historical prior art in the frost-free-hydrant art (IPC E03B9/02, E03B9/14; USPC cross-reference Y10T137/5327, Y10T137/5409, Y10T137/5415).

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. There is no PTAB adjudication of US 196,384 whatsoever, so nothing is CANCELED and nothing is SUSTAINED by the Board. Claims 1 and 2 are UNTESTED — not because the patent is robust, but because it expired on 1894-10-23, well before the AIA created any trial mechanism. The patent's entire purpose in the modern record is as an 1877 antecedent in the non-freezing / non-wasting hydrant lineage: the ejector-and-vacuum-chamber drainback concept that the 20th-century literature (e.g., US 2,688,976 Zurn, US 3,017,896 Papacek, US 4,109,671, and the Hoeptner family) cites and iterates on.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2). None. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel with respect to this patent. In the abstract, that means all art — including art that "reasonably could have been raised" — remains available in a district court or ITC forum. Practically, the point is academic: with a term that ended 131 years ago, the six-year damages lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 reaches zero infringing sales, and laches/estoppel would independently bar any claim. There is no live assertion against which estoppel could matter.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern, no serial IPRs, no Patent Owner appeal activity, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar entity) in the chain — the patent predates every one of those institutions by roughly a century. It is an 1877 grant, assigned at the time to R. J. Bailey of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, with the original application filed 1877-06-06 and the grant dated 1877-10-23. It has never been the subject of an AIA trial, a reexamination surfaced in the public record, or a Federal Circuit appeal identified in this search.

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a communication citing US 196,384 (or "Patent No. 196,384") and demanding payment or a license: treat it as facially improper. The patent issued 1877-10-23 and expired 1894-10-23 (Google Patents bibliographic record: "Anticipated expiration 1894-10-23"). A patent that has been expired for over a century cannot be infringed. Preserve the communication, do not pay, and consider a demand-letter/§ 285 or state-UDAP posture against the sender. There is no patent right to license.
• Do not commission an IPR/PGR/CBM. There is no valid PTAB strategy for a patent whose claims have been public domain since 1894 and whose alleged damages window under § 286 is empty. Filing fees, expert costs, and a § 315(b) one-year clock would be pure waste.
• If you are researching this patent for prior-art purposes (e.g., an invalidity contention in a modern frost-free-hydrant case involving Hoeptner-family or Zurn-style art), US 196,384 is best cited as § 102(a)/(b) printed publication / patent prior art with a 1877-10-23 date, via its Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US196384](/patent/US196384)/en) or the USPTO PatentCenter record — not as the target of a Board proceeding. Note the patent's built-in admission that the broad valved-supply-pipe + vacuum-chamber + ejector + discharge-pipe combination was not the inventor's own contribution, which makes it a useful secondary reference against later claims that recite only that broad combination.
• If a client or counterparty insists a PTAB proceeding exists: there is no proceeding number to look up, and none should be invented. Ask them for the proceeding number and verify it on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) — PTAB E2E requires an active proceeding number to return anything, and none exists for US 196,384. Any asserted "IPR number" tied to this patent is fabricated.

I'll research the ownership chain for this patent.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US Patent 196,384

Patent: US 196,384, "Improvement in Hydrants." Granted 1877-10-23; application filed 1877-06-06. Single-document family (Google Patents family ID 2265790); no continuations, no reissue, no foreign counterparts.

Inventors

• The specification identifies one inventor only: "I, JOHN PORTEOUS, of Cincinnati, in the county of Hamilton and State of Ohio." No joint inventors are named, and Google Patents' record lists no co-inventors.
• Employer: undeterminable. The 1877 specification practices of the era do not recite an employer, and no assignment-to-employer document is available for inspection. Nothing in the document suggests a corporate research organization; the invention reads as an independent mechanic's improvement.
• Unusual pattern — and it is the crux of this chain: the patent did not issue to the inventor. The face of the grant recites the inventor as assignor to an individual assignee in a different state (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). That is an outright pre-issuance sale of the invention, not an employment or shop-right assignment. In the 1870s this was a common commercialization route for independent inventors — a manufacturer or investor bought the rights and worked the patent — but it means there is no operating "original assignee" in the modern employment-assignment sense, and no employment-departure pattern to assess.
• Witnesses on the specification: Henry Millward and Smith Stimmel (Stimmel was a Cincinnati attorney of the period). These are signing witnesses on the specification, not an assignment-recordation correspondent; the modern "correspondent of record" field has no 1877 analogue and none is recorded.

Original assignee

D. J. Bailey, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania — as printed on the face of the grant and in the USPTO/Google Patents text: "JOHN PORTEOUS, of Cincinnati, Ohio, assignor to D. J. Bailey, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania."

• Entity type: a natural person, not a company. The assignee is an individual, so questions of "primary line of business," product shipments, acquisition, or bankruptcy do not map cleanly onto the modern framework.
• Product embodying the claims: not determinable from the records available to me. Pittsburgh was a national center of hydrant and street-washer manufacture in this period, and an assignee located there is consistent with a manufacturing buyer — but I have no catalogue, advertisement, or trade evidence tying D. J. Bailey to a hydrant line.
• Current status: the patent expired 1894-10-23 (17 years from grant, per the term then in force; Google Patents lists legal status "Expired – Lifetime"). Any entity or estate associated with an 1877 individual assignee is long out of existence; there is no operating successor to assess.
• ⚠️ Flag — identity of the assignee is not settled, and you should not treat it as settled. The scanned 1877 typesetting is rendered inconsistently across sources: the header OCR in the Google Patents text reads "n. J. BAILEY" while the body OCR reads "D. J. Bailey." I am interpreting the identifier literally as D. J. Bailey and will not auto-correct it. However, I note as an unresolved hypothesis that a contemporaneous Pittsburgh hydrant patentee named George C. Bailey held hydrant patents in the same city in the same decade — US 124,777 (1872-03-19) and US 174,181 (1876-02-29), both titled "Improvement in Hydrants," both naming "GEORGE C. BAILEY, OF PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA." A single-character OCR confusion between "G. C." and "n. J."/"D. J." is plausible but unproven. Confirming whether the Porteous assignee is George C. Bailey requires inspection of the printed original of US 196,384 rather than the OCR. I am explicitly not merging these two records.

Assignment timeline

There are no recorded assignments for this patent in USPTO Assignment Search / Assignment Center, and no reel/frame entries exist to list.

The reason is coverage, not absence of ownership activity:

• The USPTO Assignment Search database holds recorded patent assignment data only from August 1980 forward (secondary sources confirm the same; the USPTO's own training material describes the database as covering assignment records "back to August 1980"). A search on patent number 196384 therefore falls 90+ years outside the database's window and returns nothing. This is a structural null, not evidence that the patent was never transferred.
• The only ownership event of record for this patent that I can document is the pre-issuance assignment from John Porteous to the Pittsburgh assignee, which is recited on the face of the patent itself and thus was never entered as a reel/frame record:
  • Executed 1877 (exact date not stated in the granted patent; the application was filed 1877-06-06 and the grant issued 1877-10-23) — no reel/frame; recorded on the patent face, not in the assignment database
    • Conveyance: Assignment (pre-issuance, inventor to individual)
    • Assignor: John Porteous, Cincinnati, Ohio
    • Assignee: D. J. Bailey, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (name subject to the OCR caveat above)
    • Correspondent: none of record — the correspondent field is a 20th/21st-century recordation artifact; no 1877 correspondent exists
    • Context: outright sale of the invention to a manufacturer/investor buyer, executed before the patent issued
• Google Patents' legal-events table for this patent shows only the grant (1877-10-23) and the anticipated expiration (1894-10-23). It displays no assignment, security-interest, merger, or change-of-name events — consistent with the record never having been captured by the modern system.
• For completeness on where a pre-1980 record would live: patent assignment records predating the online database are held by the USPTO Assignment Recordation Branch on microfilm/reel, and (for trademarks) pre-1955 records are held by NARA. I did not retrieve microfilm records in this pass.

Stopping here, as required when Assignment Center returns no records for the patent. Note for the record that under the verdict rubric this case is Insufficient data — specifically the "no records, or only the original assignment" branch. No timeline diagram or NPE-pattern scoring is warranted, because every one of the eight signals is keyed to reel/frame evidence (shell-entity transfer, asserter in chain, repeat correspondent, cascading transfers, pre-litigation transfer, bankruptcy sale, privateering, defensive aggregation) and not one reel/frame entry exists to cite for this patent. Any scoring I produced would be inference from an assignee's name rather than from assignment records, which the analysis rules prohibit.

For verification, the search that returns this result is the USPTO Assignment Center at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent-number lookup on 196384), which surfaces the same underlying records as the legacy portal formerly at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I'll verify the patent record and probe for any prior-art citations actually tied to this number.

Good — that surfaced candidate pre-1877 art. Let me pull the specific references and probe for more § 102-grade art.

Scope check: what "196384" resolves to

The identifier 196384 resolves to US 196,384 A — "Improvement in Hydrants," John Porteous, of Cincinnati, Ohio, assignor to [R.] J. Bailey, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Application filed June 6, 1877; granted October 23, 1877. Priority/prior-art date is the grant date, 1877-10-23. Classifications: E03B 9/02, E03B 9/14, Y10T137/5409 ("Movable riser actuated valve"), Y10T137/5415 ("Reciprocating riser").

Two housekeeping flags on the record itself:

• Google Patents labels the field "Prior art date 1877-10-23." That is the grant date, not a prior-art date. For pre‑1900 US grants this field is routinely populated with the issue date. The operative prior-art cutoff is before the June 6, 1877 filing / before the invention (see statute section below).
• The full text I worked from is the Google Patents mirror of the printed grant (https://patents.google.com/patent/US196384/en). In these search results I did not obtain a ppubs.uspto.gov / PatentCenter full-text page for 196384 specifically, so I am treating the Google Patents OCR of the printed specification as the authoritative document. It is heavily OCR-degraded in the claims.

Direct answer to the question as asked: this patent cites no prior art

US 196,384 has no "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" (backward-citation) section at all. The record contains only a "Cited By (13)" block. That is a category distinction that matters here:

So the instruction "look at each patent citation for 196384" has to be executed with that correction: there is no set of patent citations for 196384. The 13 documents below are documents on 196384 in the reverse direction — they are patents for which US 196,384 is itself the prior art.

The 13 "Cited By" documents (forward citations — not § 102 art against 196384)

Claim(s) potentially anticipated by each: none — as to US 196,384. A reference cannot anticipate an earlier patent. The correct significance of this table is inverted: US 196,384 is the § 102 reference against these later filings (e.g., US 4,109,671's "ejector assembly incorporating a venturi" reciprocated by a vertical flow tube, and US 6,047,723's reservoir-and-drain structure, both overlap the Porteous disclosure). If you want an anticipation analysis, the arrow has to point the other way.

Actual § 102-grade prior art for US 196,384 (all pre-June 6, 1877)

The applicant himself supplies the doctrinal hook. In the specification:

"I do not claim, broadly, the combination of a valved supply-pipe, a vacuum-chamber, an ejector to create the vacuum, and a discharge-pipe, as such is not my invention."

That is a specification admission that the broad combination was known, and it is the most probative prior-art identification inside the four corners of US 196,384. It maps directly onto the art below.

1. US 102,098 — John Myers, Cincinnati, Ohio — "Improvement in Hydrants" (Non-Freezing and Non-Wasting Hydrant), granted May 3, 1870

Full citation: US 102,098 A. Same inventor city, same statutory class, same stated object ("non-freezing and non-wasting hydrants") as Porteous seven years later.

Brief description (verified from the printed specification): Base cylinder A with inlet pipe B; screw-threaded barrel D with orifices F; valve G held to its seat f by India-rubber pellets H; vacuum-chamber K whose neck J forms valve-seat j; delivery pipe/piston-rod L carrying a piston and a clamped cup-leather packing M; disk-valve N seating on k; valve O confined in annulus P with wings p that hold pipe L axially; head R that depresses valve G; and (relevantly) screw W permitting "all that portion of the hydrant above the fixture A to be screwed into or out of said fixture without disturbing the other joints, so as to enable the hydrants to be at any time removed bodily for inspection or repair… without disturbing the ground."

Claim mapping:

Bottom line: US 102,098 is the closest reference and, combined with Porteous's own disclaimer, is the reference that would have been used to force claim 2 into a narrow, ejector-limited construction. It does not read on either claim as a whole.

2. US 94,749 — Birdsill Holly, Lockport, N.Y. — "Improvement in Hydrants," granted September 14, 1869

Brief description: Water conducted from a foot or base chamber D through an internal pipe E enclosed centrally in casing A; main valve g in valve-box G at the base of the internal pipe; trip-valve b controlling a right-angle passage c; waste water escaping "through the orifices p, made through the casing A near its lower end."
Claim mapping: Establishes the base-chamber-plus-base-valve-plus-drain architecture. No vacuum chamber, no ejector, no telescopic joint, no stationary spout on a rising pipe. Does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 2.

3. US 19,206 — Race & Mathews — fire-plug/hydrant, granted January 26, 1858

Brief description (as recited by the Supreme Court in Flower v. Detroit, 127 U.S. 563 (1888)): hydrant tube A, horizontal section B, cylinder valve D seated on elastic packing a, screw-rod E, and — the key feature — a waste-water orifice f beneath valve D opened and closed by valve g, whose wing h is struck by the descending cylinder valve, "thus preventing any retention of water above the freezing level"; plus a loose movable casing C.
Claim mapping: This is the archetype of the admitted-old "valved supply pipe + waste/drain" class. Does not anticipate either claim of 196384 (no vacuum chamber, no ejector, no telescopic joint, no stationary spout), but it is the reference that defeats any attempt to read Porteous's disclaimer-bounded language broadly. Note that Flower v. Detroit (1888) postdates 196384 and is therefore not itself § 102 art — it is useful only as evidence of the state of the art and of how this family of hydrant claims was construed.

4. US 116,485 — John Porteous (same inventor), Cincinnati, Ohio — "Improvement in Cylinder-Cocks," granted June 27, 1871

Brief description: Automatic discharge cock for steam cylinders — barrel B, valve C, spring E, adjustable screw-cap D, discharge pipe F. Different art (steam-cylinder condensate drain); same inventor. Not anticipatory of a hydrant, and an inventor's own earlier patent is not used to anticipate his own later invention where it discloses no more than his own work.

5. Pre-1877 entries in the "Similar Documents" list

Everything else in the "Similar Documents" list (US 1,144,758; 691,975; 519,728; 1,026,399; 1,070,872; 641,933; 294,675; 672,078; 2,042,120; 1,273,349; 1,102,351; 1,112,564; 234,158; 891,284; 384,666; 375,624; 351,924; 930,724; 284,021; 649,282; 860,424; 220,471) postdates 1877 and is therefore categorically ineligible under § 102 against US 196,384.

The governing statute — § 102 did not exist in 1877

35 U.S.C. § 102 is the wrong instrument to apply literally to a June 1877 filing. The novelty provision then in force was Rev. Stat. § 4886 (derived from the Act of July 8, 1870, § 24), which bars a patent where the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before the invention or discovery thereof, or more than two years prior to the application." Infringement defenses were governed by Rev. Stat. § 4920. (Statutory section numbers cited from memory — moderate confidence; verify before filing anything that depends on them.)

Applied by analogy to a June 6, 1877 filing, the § 102(a)/(b) window is: anything patented or printed before June 6, 1875 is unconditionally prior art; anything between June 6, 1875 and the invention date is prior art only against the date of invention; and prior public knowledge/use in the United States is prior art as of the invention date. Claims are reproduced from badly degraded OCR and should be re-read against the printed copy before any validity position is taken:

• Claim 1 — "The combination of the valve f, pipe F, telescopic joint G, and stationary discharge-spout H, constructed and arranged to operate as and for the purposes described."
• Claim 2 — "In combination with the valve f, cup-packing [e/c], vertical pipe F, and vacuum-chamber J, the ejector attached to and moving with rising-pipe F, and constructed with the nozzle a and mouth b, the former having perforations h and the latter perforations c, as and for the purpose described." (The reference letter for the cup-packing is inconsistent between the body text, which reads "cup-packing c," and the claim, which OCRs as "cup packing a." That is an OCR/lettering defect in the original that bears on claim scope.)

Limitations and cross-checks against the earlier sections

1. No USPTO-database hit was obtained for 196384 specifically. My searches returned the Google Patents mirror and the printed-specification OCR, not a ppubs.uspto.gov result page. I have not fabricated an examiner citation list, because the record does not contain one.
2. Contradiction flagged with the previously generated litigation section: that section states the patent "face assigns to D. J. Bailey of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania." The source text reads "ASSIGNOR TO n. J. BAILEY, or PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA" (OCR), most plausibly R. J. Bailey. Minor, but the initial should be confirmed against the printed grant before it is relied on.
3. Consistent with the earlier section: expiration 1894-10-23 (17-year term), the 13 forward citations, and the framing of "Cited By" as citations rather than litigation.
4. Bottom line for this task: US 196,384 carries zero backward patent citations. The only § 102-grade references I can affirmatively identify and verify are US 102,098 (Myers, 1870) and US 94,749 (Holly, 1869) — with US 19,206 (Race & Mathews, 1858) as the class-level background art established by Flower v. Detroit — and none of them fully anticipates either claim, because each lacks the ejector, the telescopic joint with stationary spout, or both. US 57,057 (1866, boilers/injectors) is the one unretrieved pre-1877 reference that could genuinely matter and should be pulled directly.

I'll research the prior-art landscape for this 1877 hydrant patent, focusing on what the record itself supplies and what predates the Oct. 23, 1877 grant.

Let me dig into the specific prior-art art available for non-freezing/ejector hydrants before 1877, and check the post-1877 "Cited By" references (which are §102(b)/§103-art only if they predate the claim — they do not).

Strong hit: US 102,098 (Myers, 1870) is near-identical prior art. Let me pull more pre-1877 hydrant references, including the ejector-style ones.

1. Threshold caveats before the analysis

Three things need to be stated up front, because they bound everything below.

(a) The "Prior Art section" of this page does not contain a prior-art document list. As fetched, the Google Patents record for US196384 shows only: Prior art keywords (pipe, hydrants, water, valve, chamber); Cited By (13); and Similar Documents. There is no examiner-citation list. The 13 "Cited By" documents (Zurn US2688976, Papacek US3017896, Industrial Value Analysis US4109671, and the Hoeptner family US4854339/US5033500/US5217039/US5228471/US5355907/US5553637/US5752542/US5934370/US5997046/US6047723) are all post-1877 forward citations and are legally incapable of being §102/§103 art against this patent. The Similar Documents list is likewise overwhelmingly post-dating (1880–1914) — but it does contain three pre-1877 items, one of which matters a great deal: US57057, 1866-08-07, "Improvement in injectors for boilers."

So: the page's own prior-art section supplies essentially no §103-grade art beyond one 1866 injector patent. The Myers, Merrie, and Gallagher hydrant patents discussed below came from my own retrieval, not from the page's prior-art section. I flag that explicitly so you do not attribute them to the record.

(b) §103 did not exist in 1877. The statute was enacted in 1952. The controlling 1877 doctrine was the "want of invention" test of Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. (11 How.) 248 (1851). I apply the modern §103/Graham framework as you asked, but noting that a 19th-century court would have phrased the same result as "mere mechanical skill."

(c) Identifier discrepancy, flagged not corrected. The Myers document is hosted at a URL ending US102698.pdf, but its body text reads "Letters Patent No. 102,098, dated May 3, 1870." I treat it as the Myers 1870 hydrant and leave the number unresolved.

2. The claims as I construe them (OCR-derived)

• Claim 1: "The combination of the valve f, pipe F, telescopic joint G, and stationary discharge-spout H, constructed and arranged to operate as and for the purpose described."
• Claim 2: "In combination with the valve f, cup-packing c, vertical pipe F, and vacuum-chamber J, the ejector attached to and moving with rising-pipe F, and constructed with the nozzle a and mouth b, the former having perforations h and the latter perforations c, as and for the purpose described."

Both are combination claims with purely functional characterization ("constructed and arranged to operate as and for the purpose described"). There is no structural definition of the joint in claim 1 at all.

3. The applicant's own admission — the decisive threshold point

The specification states:

"I do not claim, broadly, the combination of a valved supply-pipe, a vacuum-chamber, an ejector to create the vacuum, and a discharge-pipe, as such is not my invention."

This is a binding admission that the entire inventive concept — valved supply, vacuum chamber, ejector, discharge pipe — was old in 1877. Everything left in the claims is the specific mechanical assembly and arrangement. That collapses the §103 inquiry to whether assembling those specific known parts required invention.

4. The prior-art references

The Mathews opinion additionally states that the hydrant drain-valve function was old ("the older valve in the St. Louis hydrants") and that Race & Mathews "were not the original inventors of this process."

5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claim 1 obvious over Myers in view of the sliding-sleeve art

Myers shows every operative element of claim 1 except that the delivery part is not explicitly a telescoping joint with a stationary spout. Myers' riser L is depressed to open the valve (a movable-riser-actuated valve — note the patent's own classification, Y10T137/5409 "Movable riser actuated valve" / 5415 "Reciprocating riser"), and Myers expressly provides for elevating/depressing the barrel via a threaded engagement in cylinder A.

Race & Mathews' 1869 claim was for "the detached case B ... so combined and arranged with the hydrant A, as to have an end play, or vertical motion of several inches ... the upper part of same passing outside of main stock of hydrant" — a concentric sliding sleeve. Mathews even reasons from the telescope analogy ("the joints of a telescope are said to be connected together"). Gallagher adds a surrounding casing that "surrounds and closes in the valve-rod."

Motivation: if the riser must reciprocate to work the bottom valve (Myers), but the delivery point must remain fixed so a hose/nozzle connection stays put and the outlet does not move up and down on the operator, the ordinary mechanic interposes a slip/telescoping joint between the moving riser and the fixed spout. That is exactly what the patent's classification lineage ("Reciprocating riser") describes as a recognized genus. The result is purely additive with predictable function — the classic KSR "arrangement of old elements, each performing its expected function."

Ground 2 — Claim 2 obvious over Myers in view of Gresham (optionally Millholland)

Map claim 2 onto Myers:

Gresham (US57057) and Millholland (US35575) disclose precisely a nozzle projecting into a larger mouth with an annular passage, used to create a vacuum and draw fluid by suction. The Nathan v. New York Elevated R.R., 2 F. 225 (S.D.N.Y. 1880) opinion (CourtListener) construing the Gresham patent states the background art directly: "means for raising fluids into open vessels ... by throwing a jet ... past the upper end of a tube ... out into a larger descending nozzle, making an apparatus in the nature of a siphon operated by steam, were well known," and describes Gresham's departure as "his projecting into a nozzle increasing in size."

Motivation: Myers' drain-back depends on gravity and on passive evacuation of chamber K; Gallagher shows the art already oscillating between gravity drain (waste tube d) and drain-prevention. Adding an active aspirator to evacuate chamber J on each draft is the recognized engineering answer to slow/incomplete passive drainage — and it is the same function the injector patents were used for. Moreover, both Myers and Porteous are Cincinnati, Ohio hydrant patents in the identical non-freezing/non-wasting subfield, which supports the KSR "same field, reasonable expectation of success, artisan aware of the art" factors.

Ground 3 — Claim 2 obvious over the admitted prior art plus Gresham

Given the disclaimer quoted in §3, the claim reduces to the specific placement of a known aspirator on a known reciprocating riser carrying known cup packing in a known vacuum chamber. No new function, no unexpected result, no new cooperation beyond that which each element was already known to perform.

Ground 4 — Claim 2 over Merrie in view of Gresham

Merrie supplies the fixed above-ground discharge, valve above the discharge point, and sealed air chamber; Gresham supplies the vacuum-producing nozzle/mouth. Motivation: frost protection of the discharge.

6. Why a PHOSITA would combine — consolidated rationales

1. Same art, same locale, same purpose. Porteous, Myers, and Merrie are all Cincinnati patents in the "non-freezing and non-wasting hydrant" class. The artisans were the same people.
2. Finite, identified solutions. The art had only two known ways to evacuate a hydrant chamber: make it a vacuum-chamber that drains back (Myers), or drain/waste through a valve (Gallagher; Race & Mathews drain valves; Merrie). Adding jet aspiration to accelerate the first was one of a small set of predictable options.
3. Express legal confirmation of the genus. The applicant's own disclaimer, plus Mathews' holding that frost jackets and hydrant drain valves were old, plus the Nathan finding that jet-lifting devices "were well known," establish the state of the art from the record rather than from speculation.
4. The patent's own classification places it in pre-existing subclasses (E03B9/14 Draining devices for hydrants; Y10T137/5386 Hydrant type With pump or ejector; 5409/5415 Movable riser actuated valve / Reciprocating riser), evidencing that these were recognized, populated categories, not novel territory.
5. No unexpected result. The specification claims nothing beyond "the water ... returns to the chamber ... where it remains until it is ejected at the next succeeding draft" — the ordinary, intended operation of each part.

7. Counter-considerations and honest weaknesses in the obviousness case

• The ejector-perforation detail is genuinely narrow. Claim 2 recites a specific cooperation: nozzle a perforated at h, mouth b perforated at c, with the mouth communicating with chamber J. Gresham/Millholland do not disclose that exact perforation scheme relative to a hydrant vacuum chamber. A court could sustain claim 2 in a narrowly construed form — but the "as and for the purpose described" language pulls in the opposite direction and invites a narrow construction that would be easy to design around (as, e.g., the Hoeptner patents did decades later).
• Secondary considerations cannot be assessed. I found no evidence of record for commercial success, copying, or a long-felt-but-unsolved need, and no evidence of the patent's litigation history beyond the earlier finding that none is identified. The assignment to D. J. Bailey of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania is on the face of the patent but is not evidence of commercial success.
• §112 vulnerability compounds §103. Claim 1 recites a "telescopic joint" and "stationary discharge-spout" with no structure; claim 2 uses functional language throughout. Under the 1877-era hostility reflected in Mathews and Miller v. Brass Co., 104 U.S. 350, and under modern §112(b), these claims are at serious risk independent of §103.

8. Bottom line

• Claim 1 would most likely be held obvious / lacking invention over Myers (1870) in view of the sliding-sleeve hydrant art (Race & Mathews, Gallagher) and the ordinary skill of the mechanician in interposing a telescoping joint between a reciprocating riser and a fixed spout.
• Claim 2 would most likely be held obvious over Myers (1870) in view of Gresham (US57057, 1866) and/or Millholland (US35575, 1862), with Gallagher (1871) as a cumulative reference, on the strength of the applicant's own admission that the valved supply pipe + vacuum chamber + ejector + discharge pipe combination was old.
• The only defensible residue of patentable subject matter is the specific nozzle-a/mouth-b perforation architecture — and even that is vulnerable because claim 2 is drafted functionally rather than structurally.

Caveats on confidence: (i) I did not have the patent drawings, so my element mapping is text-based; (ii) I could not confirm whether the examiner actually cited Myers, Merrie, or Gallagher in 1877 — the record shows no citations section, and 19th-century examination was largely non-substantive as to prior art; (iii) the Myers identifier (102,098 vs. filename 102698) requires verification; (iv) the evidentiary weight I give Nathan and Mathews is as background-art admissions by courts construing contemporaneous patents, which is proper corroboration but not itself the prior-art reference.