US 269628

I'll research US patent 269628 across the available sources.

US Patent 269,628 — Research Summary

Search scope note: I ran targeted queries against Google Patents/patentimages (USPTO-sourced full text), USPTO PTAB/PTAB-related material, and CAFC 2026 docket/opinion listings. There is no CAFC 2026 docket and no PTAB proceeding involving US 269,628. Any "628 patent" hits appearing in 2026 Federal Circuit materials (e.g., the Spero v. Mercedes-Benz/Volkswagen appeals over U.S. 10,894,503 and 11,208,029, and an IPR over an electronic-cigarette "atomizer" patent) are different patents and are expressly not results for 269,628.

Bibliographic data

Uncertainty flags:

• Assignee: I have no authoritative assignment record. My conclusion that there is no assignee of record rests on the absence of an assignee field in the retrieved record, not on a positive search of the Assignment database — treat as unconfirmed.
• Inventor's name: The header reads "GEORGE B. BOOMER," but the signature block OCR is garbled to "GEORGE E. 1300MB." The authoritative form is George B. Boomer. A U.S. Commissioner of Patents Annual Report for 1880 lists "Boomer, George B., Mexico, and R. E. Boschert, Syracuse, N.Y." for cider-mill grinders and an apple pressure-plate. Whether that is the same George B. Boomer is plausible but not established — do not treat as confirmed.
• Abstract: There is none. Abstract practice did not exist for 1882 patents. The opening paragraph of the specification performs that function.

Summary (specification's own statement of invention)

The invention is an improved process of extracting juice from sugar cane, consisting of: first reducing the cane to short lengths, then heating it, and finally subjecting it to pressure — so that the cane is brought to a superior condition both for heating and for pressing, the sugar crystals it contains are dissolved, and a maximum yield of juice results. Heating is by direct action of steam in a closed chamber, done rapidly and economically. The stated commercial advantage is that the press extracts cane juice alone, leaving the heavy and deleterious matter in the cane. Preferred process temperature is given as 212° Fahrenheit.

The specification also discloses an apparatus to practice the process: a cutter (A) reduces cane; a box (B′), open at the bottom, forms the upper part of heating chamber (B); a platform (D) extends across the bed of press (C) and extends beyond the box as D′ to form a clearing where raw cane is stacked; the box is fitted to vertical guideways (F) and raised/lowered by a hoisting rope (E) so a stack can be moved beneath it; a propelling chain shifts the stack from steaming position to press; a flexible tube supplies steam while permitting the box's up-and-down movement; and a packing strip (G) of india-rubber or the like at the box/platform contact, optionally with a lever locking the box to the platform, insures a tight joint. Cane is preferably arranged in layers enveloped in press-cloths alternating with racks.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

All three claims are independent; there are no dependent claims.

Claim 1 — Process. A multi-step process for extracting juice from sugar cane:

1. Sever the cane into short lengths;
2. Pile those severed lengths into a mass inside a closed chamber;
3. Apply heat in that closed chamber until the cane is thoroughly heated and its crystals are dissolved;
4. Remove the steamed cane from the closed chamber; and
5. Finally press it.
   Plain language: chop the cane, pile it in a closed steam chamber, heat it long enough to dissolve the sugar crystals, take it out, then press it.

Claim 2 — Process (steam-focused variant). Reducing the cane to short lengths, heating it by the direct action of steam in a closed chamber, and finally subjecting it to pressure.
Plain language: the same three-stage idea, but recited around the specific heating mechanism — live/direct steam in a closed vessel.

Claim 3 — Apparatus. The combination, substantially as described, of the press, the elongated platform, and the platform-box fitted to vertical guideways and provided with means for raising it.
Plain language: the equipment claim — a press plus a long platform plus a liftable box riding in vertical guides, so cane can be stacked, steamed under the box, and slid to the press without leaving the platform.

Note on claim scope: Claim 2 is broader in one respect (it does not require the "piled in a mass" and "crystals dissolved" limitations of claim 1) but narrower in another (it expressly requires direct steam heating). Neither claim 1 nor claim 2 recites the 212 °F figure — that is a specification example only.

Prior-art keywords and similar documents (from the record)

• Prior-art keywords indexed against this patent: cane, juice, box, press, platform; indexed concepts include Saccharum officinarum, crystal, heat treatment, isoprene/india-rubber, saccharin, steaming.
• Similar documents listed include US 143,089 (Duncan Moffat, "Apparatus for Extracting Cane-Juice," 1873 — itself claiming a steaming vat with perforated steam pipes to "dissolve the sugar-crystals"), US 246,731 (cane-mill, 1881), US 757,296, US 1,404,610, US 293,838, US 52,424, US 140,307, US 1,754,522, and others.

Bottom line

US 269,628 is an 1882, three-claim patent to George B. Boomer of New York, N.Y., titled "Extracting Cane-Juice," filed October 19, 1882 and issued December 26, 1882. It claims two processes (chop → steam-heat in a closed chamber until crystals dissolve → press) and one apparatus combination (press + elongated platform + vertically guided liftable box). It has been expired since December 26, 1899, is in the public domain, has no assignee of record in the sources retrieved, and has no abstract, no dependent claims, and no 2026 CAFC or PTAB activity.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 269628.

Initial results returned only different patents (e.g., 10,292,628, 8,490,628 — no relation). Let me run more targeted searches on litigation databases.

Let me check the potentially relevant Boomer case and a couple more litigation-specific sources.

Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 269,628 could be identified. I found no case — in any court or tribunal — in which US 269,628 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue. Searches of the sources you specified (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, CAFC opinions) returned nothing tied to this patent number.

What I searched

Why this result is expected, not merely a search failure

US 269,628 — "Extracting Cane-Juice," George B. Boomer, New York, N.Y., filed October 19, 1882, granted December 26, 1882 — has a legal status of "Expired – Lifetime," with an anticipated expiration of December 26, 1899 (per the Google Patents record). The patent therefore entered the public domain over 126 years ago.

This matters for database coverage: the litigation sources you named do not reach this era.

• PACER covers federal district court dockets from roughly the late 1980s–1990s forward (with scattered earlier records), nowhere near 1882–1899.
• Unified Patents' litigation portal and CourtListener/RECAP index modern filings; CourtListener's historical Supreme Court/Federal Cases collections reach the 19th century only for a limited set of reported decisions.
• CAFC did not exist until 1982, and its predecessor (CCPA) until 1929.

Any infringement suit on this patent would necessarily have been filed between 1882 and 1899, in a circuit court, and would only be findable through 19th-century reporter volumes (e.g., Federal Reporter, Federal Cases) or archival dockets that are not indexed in the databases you directed me to.

Unconfirmed lead (not established as litigation on '628)

One search result surfaced a 19th-century case captioned Boomer et al. v. United Power Press Co. et al., reported in Federal Cases (3 F. Cas. 868), involving a patent on a toggle-lever press for keeping the platen level. See: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0003.f.cas/0003.f.cas.0868.3.pdf

I am flagging this only because the plaintiff surname matches the '628 inventor. However, based on the reported text, the suit concerns a press structure (sliding standards, screw-shaft, toggle-levers), not the cane-juice extraction process or apparatus claimed in US 269,628. I cannot confirm that US 269,628 was at issue in that case, and the excerpt affirmatively suggests a different patent was involved. Treat this as a research lead for a manual check of 19th-century reporters, not as confirmed litigation on '628.

False positives to disregard (important given the strict identifier rule)

Several search results contained numbers that superficially resemble 269628 but are different identifiers:

1. U.S. Patent No. 10,292,628 B1 (Masimo) — subject of Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corp., IPR2020-01521, Final Written Decision April 11, 2022, appealed to the CAFC. Not US 269,628.
2. U.S. Patent No. 8,490,628 — subject of an R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. IPR (IPR2017-01118). Not US 269,628.
3. U.S. Patent No. 6,155,268 — an IPR exhibit. Not US 269,628.
4. "US 269628" as an Eastman Kodak application serial number (EP 1 408 352 A3, priority claim dated 11.10.2002, "Waveguide with nanoparticle induced refractive index gradient"). This is an application number, not Patent No. 269,628. Not relevant.
5. McKnight v. Catholic Healthcare et al., No. S-1500-CV-269628 (Kern County Superior Court, filed Feb. 18, 2010) — a California medical-malpractice case; "269628" is a state court docket number. Not relevant.

Conclusion

For US Patent No. 269,628 specifically: no litigation is known or discoverable through the specified sources. Given the patent expired December 26, 1899, any historical suit would need to be researched in 19th-century primary sources (bound Federal Reporter / Federal Cases volumes, circuit court archives, or the Official Gazette litigation notices of 1882–1899) rather than in PACER, the CAFC docket, or the Unified Patents portal. I do not have high-confidence information of any such suit, and I am not aware of one.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before writing this up.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 269,628 — the USPTO Open Data Portal structured block reports no AIA trials, and targeted web searches (PTAB/IPR queries against the patent number, petitioner names, and the inventor) returned no PTAB or Federal Circuit activity of any kind. The breakdown is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened patent" or "claims are dead" in the IPR sense — it is that there is nothing to defend against: this patent issued on 1882-12-26, its 17-year term ran on 1899-12-26, and AIA trials (IPR/PGR/CBM) did not exist until 2012-09-16, so no AIA proceeding could ever have been a realistic vehicle against it.

Why the per-proceeding template below is empty, and why that is the correct answer rather than a gap in the record

• The patent is a pre-AIA, 19th-century grant: application filed 1882-10-19, Letters Patent No. 269,628 dated 1882-12-26 (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US269628A](/patent/US269628A)/en; grant copy at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/81/e7/c2/925abdd31310bc/[US269628](/patent/US269628).pdf).
• Google Patents' legal-status record shows "Anticipated expiration 1899-12-26" and current status "Expired - Lifetime." A patent expired in 1899 cannot support an infringement action, and the § 286 six-year damages look-back window closed roughly a century before the AIA created IPR, PGR, and CBM.
• Statutory fit fails independently: PGR reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16; CBM requires at least one claim directed to a financial product or service (a cane-juice steaming-and-pressing process claim is not that); IPR under § 311 is not barred by expiration as such, but the AIA post-grant framework did not exist during this patent's enforceable life.
• No proceeding numbers exist, and I will not invent any. I did not fabricate IPR/PGR/CBM dockets, APJ panels, institution decisions, Final Written Decisions, settlements, or CAFC appeals, because none were found. Searches for "269628" against proceedings returned only unrelated third-party documents — e.g., an Indian patent 269,628 ("A lubricant dispensing system") and US 4,392,330A (application ser. 269,628, a casement window) — confirming that bare-number matches are coincidental cross-references, not this patent.

Claim inventory (from the patent itself — not from a PTAB ruling)

For the CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED ledger the task calls for, the honest answer is all claims are UNTESTED and all have been expired since 1899-12-26. Nothing was canceled by the Board and nothing was sustained by the Board. Per the printed specification:

(Note the OCR artifact in the Google Patents title, rendered "O ane juice" — the actual title of record is "Extracting Cane-Juice," George B. Boomer, of New York, N.Y.)

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. None of claims 1–3 of US 269,628 has ever been adjudicated by the PTAB, the Federal Circuit, or (based on the searches performed) by any court. There is no cancellation to rely on and no Board-sanctioned narrowing to work around. The operative constraint is temporal, not adjudicative: the entire right — process claims 1 and 2 and apparatus claim 3 — expired on 1899-12-26. A demand letter that cites claim 1 or claim 3 of US 269,628 cannot be a live infringement threat, regardless of who sends it.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to analyze, because there has been no petitioner and no Final Written Decision. Section 315(e)(2) attaches only to a petitioner that obtains an FWD; with no AIA trial ever instituted, no party and no privy carries estoppel. Practically, that means every invalidity theory against this patent is "still available" — but the more useful framing is inverted: this 1882 specification is itself public-domain prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(b) (patented and printed in 1882), so the patent's disclosure — cut the cane into short lengths, steam it in a closed chamber directly to about 212 °F until the crystals dissolve, then press — is a free, citable reference against modern cane-juice/steam-extraction or juice-extraction process claims that recite the same sequence.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (no petitioners at all). No PTAB appeal activity by the owner. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain — aggregators target live, asserted, electronics/fintech patents, not 1882 cane-juice patents. The Google Patents "Similar Documents" list is likewise populated only with other 19th/early-20th-century cane-mill and extraction art (e.g., US 246,731 "Cane-mill," US 293,838, US 757,296 "Apparatus for extracting sucrose from sugar-cane"), which is citation-neighborhood noise, not litigation history.

Recommended next steps

• If a demand letter or complaint cites US 269,628: treat the citation as an affirmative signal that the sender has not done title/status diligence. The dispositive facts are: grant date 1882-12-26, anticipated expiration 1899-12-26, status "Expired - Lifetime" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US269628A/en). Verify status yourself at USPTO PatentCenter before responding, but there is no PTAB FWD to link to or quote, because none exists — do not represent otherwise in correspondence.
• If you need a defensive record of "no AIA trials": the canonical source is the ODP structured block in this prompt; for belt-and-suspenders confirmation, a PTAB E2E / USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board Decisions search on the patent number (PTAB E2E: https://e2e.uspto.gov; PTAB decisions: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) will return an empty result. CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) likewise returns no case captioned against this patent. Caveat on one adjacent hit: a Boomer v. United Power Press Co. opinion appears on CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[8648931](/patent/8648931)/boomer-v-united-power-press-co/) concerning a toggle-lever/cheese press reissue and conduct "prior to April 10th, 1874" — that is before the 1882 grant and I have not confirmed any connection to inventor George B. Boomer or to US 269,628. Do not cite it as litigation history on this patent without independent verification.
• No trial-stage milestones to track. There is no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no one-year FWD clock running, because no petition exists. Nothing is pending.
• Read the absence correctly. For a modern patent, zero PTAB activity can mean "asserted but not yet challenged." Here it means something different and stronger: the patent predates the AIA post-grant regime by 130 years and expired in the 19th century, so the absence of AIA trials is structural, permanent, and conclusive — not a matter of a docket that may fill later.

Confidence statement: I have high confidence in the zero-proceeding conclusion based on (a) the USPTO ODP structured block supplied as canonical, and (b) multiple independent searches that surfaced no PTAB, CBM, PGR, or CAFC activity for US 269,628. I cannot rule out an ex parte reexamination request from the historical record via this method — ex parte reexam is not an AIA trial and is outside the ODP AIA-trial list — but no such control number surfaced, and any 19th-century reexam would be a curiosity rather than a defensive asset today.

I'll research this patent's assignment record before writing anything.

Let me check a couple more sources before concluding.

One more targeted check on the inventor's company and any recorded transfer.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US Patent 269,628

Patent: US 269,628 — "Extracting Cane-Juice" (Google Patents renders the title as "O ane juice," an OCR artifact of the title line)
Inventor: George B. Boomer, New York, N.Y.
Filed: October 19, 1882 · Issued: December 26, 1882 · Anticipated expiration: December 26, 1899
Status on the record: Expired – Lifetime

Headline finding: there are no recorded assignments for this patent. The USPTO Patent Assignment Search database contains recorded assignment data only back to August 1980 (per USPTO's own Assignment Search documentation, uspto.gov Assignment Database Webinar: "This searchable database contains all recorded Patent Assignment information back to August 1980"). A patent granted in 1882 and expired in 1899 falls entirely outside that window. Google Patents' legal-events table for US269628A likewise shows only grant and expiry events — no assignment, security-interest, or name-change entries. Nothing has been fabricated below to fill the gap.

Inventors

• Sole named inventor. Confirmed by the specification's self-identification: "I, GEORGE B. BOOMER, a citizen of the United States, residing at New York, in the county and State of New York."
• Attesting witnesses of record: W. Hauff and Chas. Wahlers. The drawing/specification footer OCR ("BY fifazwl ATTORNEYS") is too degraded to identify a prosecuting attorney or firm with any confidence — I will not guess a name.
• Pattern check — no findings. There is no original assignee on the face of the patent, so the "all inventors departed the assignee within 12 months" heuristic cannot apply. The patent issued to Boomer in his individual capacity, which was the norm for sole-inventor mechanical patents of this era.
• Contextual note (different patent — do not conflate): A George B. Boomer of New York is associated with the Boomer & Boschert Press Company of New York City, which appeared as a party in Boomer et al. v. United Power Press Co., a suit over a reissued toggle-lever press patent — No. 108,753, granted November 1, 1870 to Boomer, Boschert & Morse (Federal Cases, 3 F. Cas. 868). That litigation record shows the Boomer & Boschert Press Company taking an exclusive right to the reissued patent for most of the United States, i.e., a license-style grant, not an assignment. This is a different patent from US 269,628, and I found no document linking US 269,628 to any corporate entity. Treat as background color only.

Original assignee

None. US 269,628 issued directly to George B. Boomer, an individual, with no assignee named on the printed patent. The claims are directed to (1) a process of severing cane into short lengths, piling it in a closed chamber, steaming until the crystals dissolve, then pressing; (2) the same process limited to direct steam heating in a closed chamber; and (3) an apparatus combination of a press, an elongated platform, and a platform-box fitted to vertical guideways with a lifting means.

• Product embodying the claims: The patent claims a cane-juice extraction process plus a cooperating cutter/chamber/press apparatus. Whether Boomer or any licensee ever commercialized this specific apparatus is not determinable from the record; the subject matter (steam-assisted cane juice extraction ahead of pressing) is squarely in the technology space of late-19th-century sugar machinery.
• Primary line of business: On the available evidence, individual inventor and press designer. Any connection to Boomer & Boschert Press Company is documented for a different patent family (see above).
• Current status: The inventor is long deceased; the patent term expired December 26, 1899. There is no operating entity, no successor, and no bankruptcy record associated with this patent number.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments exist.

Searches returned no reel/frame entries for patent 269,628 in the USPTO assignment records. This is not an inference from silence in an otherwise-populated dataset — it is the expected structural result of the database's August 1980 coverage floor colliding with an 1882 grant date. There is no pre-1980 paper assignment to report, because microfilm-era assignment records for patents of this vintage are generally not present in the Assignment Center's searchable index, and Google Patents surfaces no assignment events either.

No conveyance, reel/frame, assignor, assignee, or correspondent can be stated. None will be invented.

Per the operating instruction, the remaining sections are provided below in summary form for completeness of the requested format, but they carry no evidentiary weight because the antecedent (a recorded chain of title) does not exist.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 269628
    1882 : Filed by George B Boomer
         : Issued to Boomer as sole owner
         : No assignee named on the patent
    1899 : Patent term expired

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Applying a modern NPE framework to an 1882 patent is anachronistic; every signal below is answered on the record as it stands.

Verdict

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

US 269,628 issued on December 26, 1882 to George B. Boomer of New York as sole owner, with no assignee on the face of the patent, and the USPTO Assignment Center contains no reel/frame records for this patent number — a structural consequence of that database's August 1980 coverage floor, as documented by USPTO's own Assignment Search materials, not evidence of a concealed chain. Google Patents legal events show only grant and expiry (anticipated expiration 1899-12-26). No shell entity, known asserter, repeat correspondent, cascading transfer, pre-litigation transfer, bankruptcy sale, privateering arrangement, or defensive aggregation is present, and none can be asserted without fabricating a record. This is a 19th-century expired patent, not an NPE vehicle.

Verify at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search Patent Number 269628). Expect zero results — if any assignee record does surface there, it would be worth reporting back, since it would contradict the coverage-floor explanation above.

I'll research US patent 269628 and its prior-art landscape.

Let me check the USPTO record directly and look for any cited references and relevant pre-1882 art.

Let me verify whether the patent has any citations of record and look for pre-1882 analogous art in the same classification.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 269,628

1. Record verification

2. Bottom line on citations of record: there are none

US 269,628 has zero patent citations of record. I checked the printed patent (PDF), the Google Patents "Citations"/"Cited By" fields, and USPTO-facing sources. The printed specification contains no "References Cited" section — it runs from the description straight to the three claims, the inventor's signature block ("GEORGE E. BOOMER [L.S.]"), and witnesses (W. Hauff; Chas. Wahlers). Google Patents likewise lists no "Citations" and no "Cited By" entries for this document.

Two things that are commonly mistaken for citations here, and which I am explicitly not treating as prior-art citations:

• "Prior art keywords: cane, juice, box, press, platform" on the Google Patents page — these are algorithmically extracted from the patent's own text, not examiner citations.
• The "Similar Documents" list — this is a machine-generated CPC/text-similarity landscape, not a citation list. Its contents are reproduced and analyzed in §3 below only because you asked for a reference-by-reference treatment.

Because there are no cited references, there is nothing on the face of US 269,628 that the examiner expressly relied on, and no citation-based § 102 mapping can be constructed from the document itself. What follows is therefore an independent prior-art landscape assessment, clearly labeled as such.

3. The "Similar Documents" list, sorted by whether they can legally be prior art

Critical dates for this patent: filed Oct. 19, 1882; granted Dec. 26, 1882.

Only five of the twenty-five "similar documents" pre-date the Oct. 19, 1882 filing date, and of those, only three pre-date the Oct. 19, 1880 two-year statutory bar (§4).

4. Legal framework caveat (important for this vintage)

US 269,628 is an 1882 grant. The modern statute you invoked — 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)–(g) — did not exist; it was enacted in 1952. In 1882 the controlling provision was Rev. Stat. § 4886 (as amended 1870), which barred 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 his invention or discovery thereof, or more than two years prior to his application."

Consequences that materially change the § 102 analysis you asked for:

• There was no § 102(e)-style "filed-before, published-after" reference available in 1882.
• A US patent issued between Oct. 19, 1880 and Oct. 19, 1882 is not automatically statutory art. It is only art if its publication can be shown to predate Boomer's actual date of invention.
• A US patent issued before Oct. 19, 1880 is squarely available as "patented… more than two years prior to his application."

Applying that filter:

• Available on the face of the record (published >2 years before filing): US 49,884 (1865); US 52,424 (1866); US 140,461 (1873).
• Available only if shown to predate Boomer's invention date: US 246,731 (Sept. 6, 1881); US 261,807 (July 25, 1882).
• Not available at all: everything published on/after Dec. 26, 1882, including US 273,472 (Mar. 6, 1883).

5. Reference-by-reference § 102 mapping (provisional)

Caveat up front: I was unable to retrieve the full specification texts of US 140,461, US 246,731, US 52,424, US 261,807, or US 49,884 in the searches available. The descriptions below are drawn from their listing titles, classification, and (for US 140,461) a third-party auction record describing an extant patent model. I therefore cannot state with high confidence what each of these references actually discloses, and the claim mappings below are provisional hypotheses to be verified against the full texts — not verified anticipation findings.

Reference A — US 140,461 A, "Improvement in apparatus and processes for extracting saccharine matter from [sugar-cane]"

• Inventor: not retrieved. Granted July 1, 1873. Pre-dates the two-year bar (Oct. 19, 1880) → squarely available under R.S. 4886.
• Description (per listing title only): a combined apparatus and process for extracting saccharine matter from cane. A surviving patent model is described by an auctioneer as a "brass tube receptacle with super structure containing pulley" — suggestive of a vertical/cylindrical treating vessel with a lifting or hoisting element, but this is a physical-model description, not a disclosure.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claims 1 and 2 (process of extracting cane juice) are the exposure, because this reference is titled as both an apparatus and a process for extracting saccharine matter. If its process includes heating or treating cane prior to pressing, claims 1 and/or 2 are at risk. Claim 3 would only be at risk if the brass-tube-and-pulley structure is a platform-box on vertical guideways coordinated with a press-plus-platform combination — unverified.

Reference B — US 52,424 A, "Improvement in the manufacture of sugar"

• Granted Feb. 6, 1866. Pre-dates the two-year bar → squarely available.
• Description: not retrieved; title indicates a sugar manufacture (process) improvement, which in this era typically meant juice treatment/defecation rather than cane-cutting-and-pressing.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claim 2 is the most exposed (broadest process claim: reduce to short lengths → heat by direct steam in a closed chamber → press). If this reference discloses steam-heating of cane or cane juice in an enclosed vessel before pressing, claim 2 is anticipated. Claim 1 is at lower risk because it additionally requires the "severing into short lengths," "piling in a mass within a closed chamber," and "crystals dissolved" limitations. Claim 3 (apparatus) is unlikely to be met — it is a composition-of-apparatus claim and this is a process-of-manufacture reference.

Reference C — US 49,884 A, "Improvement in machines for making paper-board"

• Granted Sept. 12, 1865. Pre-dates the two-year bar → squarely available.
• Description: not retrieved. Different field (paper-board machinery), so relevance is structural rather than chemical — likely to a platen/press-and-platform arrangement.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claim 3 only, and only if it discloses a press with an extended platform and a guided, liftable box. Given the divergent field, I would rate this as a weak § 102 reference and more realistically a § 103-type obviousness reference — which is not a ground that existed as such in 1882 practice, but is how a modern analyst would characterize it. Claims 1 and 2: not anticipated.

Reference D — US 246,731 A, "Cane-mill"

• Granted Sept. 6, 1881 — after the Oct. 19, 1880 bar date but before the Oct. 19, 1882 filing. Under R.S. 4886 this is art only if its publication predates Boomer's invention date, which is not of record.
• Description: not retrieved; a mechanical cane mill (crushing/roller art).
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claim 3 is the only plausible target, and only if the mill disclosure includes a press-plus-elongated-platform-plus-vertically-guided-liftable-box combination. On its title, a "cane-mill" is a roller crusher, not a box-press, so I rate anticipation of claim 3 as unlikely. Claims 1 and 2 require heating in a closed chamber, which a cane-mill reference would not supply — not anticipated.

Reference E — US 261,807 A, "Wine and cider press"

• Granted July 25, 1882 — again after the Oct. 19, 1880 bar date and before the Oct. 19, 1882 filing; available only against the invention date.
• Description: not retrieved. Likely a press with a platen/box arrangement for expressing liquid from a mass of fruit.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Claim 3 is the target — a press-plus-platform-plus-guided-liftable-box combination is structurally close to press art generally. But claim 3's box is a steam-heating-chamber element (it "forms the upper part of the heating-chamber"), which a wine press would not disclose. So even here, anticipation of claim 3 as a whole is doubtful. Claims 1 and 2: not anticipated (no cane, no steaming).

Summary table

6. Non-patent prior art worth chasing (leads, not verified findings)

Because the patent art of record is thin, the real anticipation exposure for claims 1 and 2 is almost certainly non-patent literature and foreign practice, since R.S. 4886 reached "any printed publication in this or any foreign country" more than two years before filing. Two leads surfaced in searching:

1. Crossley's British patent 7469 of 1837 and Newton's British patent 12,033 of 1848 ("for a foreigner") are described in contemporary sugar-technology literature as disclosing shredding cane and treating it by diffusion — i.e., reducing cane to small pieces and extracting with heat/water rather than by simple milling. A related description appears in the 1911-era text retrieved here: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/itempdf/52986#146#56 ("This scheme is not new; it is included in Crossley's patent 7469 of 1837, and in that taken out by Newton for a foreigner 12033 of 1848."). If verified, these bear directly on claim 1's "severing the cane into short lengths" step — though they do not disclose a closed-chamber steam treatment followed by pressing, which is the heart of claim 1.
2. Contemporaneous sugar-industry literature on steaming/maceration before milling, e.g. The Planters' Monthly (May 1893) at https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/533622ba-9f54-49a2-960f-156945f9868c/content — useful context but dated after 1882, so it is evidence of what the art knew rather than statutory art.

I have not verified the contents of the Crossley or Newton specifications, and I flag both as leads requiring retrieval of the original British specifications before any anticipation statement is made.

7. Identifier disambiguation — do not conflate these

Per your instruction to interpret alphanumeric identifiers literally, three different documents share the numerals "269628," and none is the same as US 269,628 A:

8. Confidence statement

• High confidence: US 269,628 A, its bibliographic data, its three claims, and the fact that it carries no patent citations of record. No "References Cited" section appears in the printed patent; Google Patents shows no citations and no citing documents.
• Moderate confidence: the date-based filtering of the "Similar Documents" list into legally available vs. unavailable references, and the R.S. 4886 two-year-bar framework applicable to an 1882 grant.
• Low confidence / unverified: the actual technical disclosures of US 49,884, US 52,424, US 140,461, US 246,731, US 261,807, and of the British Crossley (1837) and Newton (1848) specifications. I could not retrieve their full texts, and I am not asserting that any of them anticipates any claim. The claim mappings in §5 are hypotheses for verification, not findings.

To convert §5 into defensible § 102 findings, the next step would be retrieving the full specification texts of US 140,461, US 52,424, and US 49,884 (all pre-Oct. 19, 1880, and therefore squarely available), plus the Crossley 7469/1837 and Newton 12,033/1848 British specifications.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 269,628

"O ane juice" (OCR rendering of the title line; specification reads "CANE-JUICE")
Inventor: George B. Boomer, New York, N.Y. — Application filed October 19, 1882 — Patent dated December 26, 1882 — "(No model.)"
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US269628](/patent/US269628)/en

Note on identifiers. I am taking the number, title string, dates and claim text exactly as they appear on the page, including OCR corruption. I am not correcting the title string "O ane juice" as an identifier; where the OCR has mangled claim words (e.g., "ill'lllllglllg," "platl'orn'i-box," "titted") I flag the literal text and give the reading compelled by the specification.

1. Governing law and critical dates (pre-AIA)

Because the application was filed in 1882, validity is governed by the pre-AIA statutes (35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 as enacted 1952, with § 103 applied to the state of the art as of 1882). The page's field "Prior art date 1882-12-26" is the grant/publication date, not the filing date, and must not be used as the § 102 cut-off.

2. The claims, literally

• Claim 1 (process): severing cane into short lengths → "ill'lllllglllg such severed lengths in a pile or mass within a closed chamber" [reading: piling/placing; the specification supports "having laid or piled up a mass of the cut material, place it in a closed chamber"] → subjecting the cane to heat in the closed chamber "until the cane is thoroughly heated and the crystals dissolved" → removing the steamed cane from the closed chamber → subjecting it to pressure.
• Claim 2 (process): "reducing the cane to short lengths, then heating it by the direct action of steam in a closed chamber, and finally subjecting it to pressure."
• Claim 3 (apparatus): "the combination … of the press, the elongated platform, and the platl'orn'i-box [platform-box] titted [fitted] to vertical guideways, and provided with ameans [a means] for raising it."

Specification-supplied parameters: cane cut by "a cutter, A"; steam "admitted … heated to a proper degree of temperature for dissolving the crystals which it contains — say to 212° Fahrenheit"; mass "arrange[d] … in layers, which are enveloped in press-cloths and alternate with racks"; box B "open at the bottom," "left detached from the platform D," lifted by "a hoisting-rope, E," guided by "vertical guideways F," steam fed through "a flexible tube," joint sealed by "a packing-strip, G, of india-rubber."

3. The "Similar Documents" list — admissibility screen

Only five of the twenty-five listed documents pre-date the filing. The remainder cannot be used in a § 103 combination because they post-date October 19, 1882:

Usable (pre-filing):

Must be excluded (post-date the Oct. 19, 1882 filing), despite appearing "nearby" in the list: US273472A (1883-03-06, Cane-mill), US293838A (1884), US304012A (1884), US514780A (1894), US520242A (1894), US595137A (1897), US603945A (1898), US616322A (1898), US622194A (1899), US696088A (1902), US719617A (1903), US757296A (1904), US801191A (1905), US1142409A (1915), US1432275A (1922), US1403072A (1922), US1445218A (1923), US1754522A (1930), US1855606A (1932), US2505302A (1950). Note in particular that US273472A, a "Cane-mill" issued March 6, 1883, is only ~4½ months too late and is a classic sorting trap given the page's grant-date-based "prior art date" field.

4. Element mapping and the § 103 combinations

Combination A — Claims 1 and 2 (primary)

US140461A (1873) in view of the cane-slicing/diffusion art and in view of steam-treatment-of-saccharine-material art.

• US140461A is titled, on this page, as an "apparatus and process for extracting saccharine matter from" (truncated; the truncation almost certainly reads "sugar-cane"). A surviving patent model for No. 140,461, dated July 1, 1873, is described in the trade literature as an "Apparatus for Extracting Saccharine Matter from Sugar Cane … consisting of brass tube receptacle with super structure containing pulley" (https://jamesdjulia.com/item/lot-417-patent-models-lot-of-3-6232/). That places a cane-saccharine-extraction vessel-plus-pressure-mechanism squarely in the field and squarely before the bar date. Caveat: I could not retrieve the full text of US140461A; its per-element disclosure must be verified against the printed specification before the combination is treated as complete.
• Reduction to short lengths was the defining step of the beet/cane diffusion (maceration) process long before 1882: "1866, No. 594, Gedge: cutting the cane or beet into small slices, and extracting the saccharine matters slowly by passing these slices successively through solutions containing less and less quantities of sugar" and "1869, No. 1498, Robert: further modifications to adapt the diffusion process to the treatment of raw canes" (reported in Sugar Growing and Refining, Google Books id LGJGAAAAYAAJ).
• Direct-steam contact heating of saccharine material in a closed vessel was likewise old: Finken, US 33,524 (Oct. 22, 1861), passes steam through an upright closed trunk to "subject … grains or crystals … to the action of steam," and expressly acknowledges that "sugar has been treated with steam in other branches of the sugar manufacture" (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a7/48/67/6c413d173ce930/US33524.pdf). Morrell, US 242,216 (May 31, 1881 — § 102(b)) heats cane juice "in a closed steam-jacket" to a "high degree of temperature" and keeps it in "covered" vessels.

Why combine: one of ordinary skill targeting maximum juice yield had a small, identified set of known levers — (i) increase surface area by cutting the cane, (ii) apply heat/steam to dissolve the crystals and rupture the cells, (iii) apply mechanical pressure. Each lever is disclosed in the same or an obviously pertinent art for the identical purpose, and their combination produces no result beyond the sum of the parts.

Combination B — Claims 1 and 2 (backup, date-clean)

US52424A (1866) + US246731A (1881) + the printed diffusion literature (Gedge 1866; Robert 1869). US246731A supplies the cane-mill/pressure step in the identical field (§ 102(b), the cleanest date of the set); the diffusion literature supplies cutting-to-short-lengths; US52424A supplies the sugar-manufacture process context. This combination does not depend on the weak-dated US261807A. Caveat: the substance of US52424A is unverified by me — its title "Improvement in the manufacture of sugar" (1866-02-06) is a genus-level designation, and its disclosure must be read before use.

Combination C — Claim 3 (apparatus)

US261807A (1882, "Wine and gider press") + US49884A (1865, paper-board machinery) + US246731A (1881, Cane-mill).

US261807A is indexed in CPC alongside art for presses "cooperating with a penetrating box or filter" (https://www.patenthub.cn/cpc/list-55274-30.html), i.e., a press-plus-box juice-expressing organization — the very "platform + box + press" architecture of claim 3. Independent corroboration that this architecture was conventional for sugar, not just cider, appears in the printed description of Russell's hydraulic press: "we have seen a sugar apparatus fixed on this plan, in which there are two boxes running alternately on the railways, so that the sugar in one box is submitted to the action of the press, while the contents of the other are removed, and a fresh charge put in, ready to wheel into the press … by this means nearly double the usual quantity of work is done in the same time" (https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umsl/islandora/object/umsl:45556/datastream/PDF/view). That reference alone supplies the elongated platform/railway + movable box + press combination and, critically, the motivation (throughput). US49884A supplies the extended material-handling platform/continuous-stack approach. Vertical guideways plus a hoisting means for a curb-like frame open at top and bottom is, in turn, old in pressing practice — see Farquharson, US 181,775, whose "curb is simply a rectangular frame, open at top and bottom, and having vertical walls on the inside for the play of the follower," raised and lowered under pressure (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/36/af/a7/a992106f73cfd2/[US181775](/patent/US181775).pdf) — offered with the caveat that I did not independently confirm that reference's exact issue date.

Why combine: the problem addressed is not juice chemistry but materials handling — getting a heavy, steamed, cloth-and-rack-enveloped "cheese" from the heating station to the press without re-stacking it. Any press-handling art (cider/wine, paper-board, hydraulic sugar presses) is reasonably pertinent to that problem, and the claim's stated advantage ("the cane may be laid up, steamed, and pressed without leaving the platform") is exactly the expected benefit of a movable box on rails/guideways.

5. Motivation, and why the case is strong under KSR

1. Same field / reasonably pertinent art. Every reference above is drawn from sugar manufacture at large or from the juice-expressing arts (cider, wine, hydraulic presses for "molasses from sugar"). No non-analogous-art defense is realistically available.
2. Known problem, known solutions. The specification itself characterizes the problem as the "loss hitherto incurred by the nonextraction of the crystals" — a recognized deficiency of milling, which both the diffusion art (cut + steep) and the "cheese"-press art (rack-and-cloth pressing) had already attacked.
3. Predictable result, admitted in the specification. Boomer's own explanation is mechanistic and predictable: "It will be readily understood that by reducing or cutting up the cane into short lengths it is brought to a condition in which it readily absorbs the heat … and likewise discharges the juice in the operation of pressing." A patentee's own characterization of why an old step works is strong evidence the result was expected, not surprising (cf. MPEP 2144.04; In re Kerkhoven).
4. Result-effective variables, not invention. "Heated … say to 212° Fahrenheit," "the required length of time," "short lengths or particles" — these are optimization of degree-of-completion and cut size, i.e., ordinary skill.
5. Functional/inherent limitations. "Until the cane is thoroughly heated and the crystals dissolved" states an inherent consequence of heating juice-bearing cane to the boiling point of water in a closed vessel. Inherent results do not confer patentability on an otherwise obvious process (In re Best; In re King).
6. The apparatus claim omits the only arguably novel element. Claim 3 does not recite the cutter A, the steam supply, the flexible tube, or the packing-strip G. It covers press + elongated platform + guided, liftable box — i.e., the oldest part of the disclosure — and "fitted to vertical guideways, and provided with a means for raising it" is met by any hoisting rope/lever on guides, a ubiquitous 19th-century expedient.

6. Anticipated counter-arguments

• "The piling/removal steps of claim 1 are missing from the art." Piling a charge in a closed steaming chamber and removing the steamed charge are inherent in any batch steaming step; and enveloping layered cane in press-cloths between racks — the specification's own preferred mode — is the standard cider/beet "cheese" practice, so no new structure or step is added.
• "The closed chamber is critical." The cube-sugar steaming trunk (US 33,524) and the steam-jacketed/covered vessels of US 242,216 show closed-vessel steam treatment of saccharine material was routine; the claim recites no pressure, seal geometry, or steam-circulation feature beyond "closed."
• Swear-behind risk on US261807A. Real, but not fatal: Combination B (US246731A + diffusion literature) and the printed Russell/Machines'-Magazine sugar-box-on-railways disclosure are date-clean § 102(b) material covering the same elements.
• Secondary considerations. There is nothing in the record page evidencing commercial success, long-felt need, copying, or unexpected results. Unless the patentee produces such evidence tied to the claimed combination, Graham factor four is neutral.

7. Limitations of this analysis — stated explicitly

1. I could not retrieve the full specifications of US140461A, US52424A, US246731A, US261807A, or US49884A. Their content is characterized here only from title, date, CPC indexing, and third-party descriptions. A complete § 103 conclusion requires the full texts, claim sets, and drawings of at least US140461A, US246731A and US261807A.
2. US140461A's title is truncated on the page ("…extracting saccharine matter from"); the terminal words were not recovered. Do not treat my inferred reading ("sugar-cane") as verified.
3. Farquharson US 181,775 and Finken US 33,524 are not on the page's Prior Art list; I introduced them as supplementary art located in independent searching. Their dates should be independently confirmed from their face pages before reliance.
4. US52424A deserves particular scrutiny: it is dated 1866-02-06, which is not the date of the frequently cited Hirsh "Improvement in the Manufacture of Sugar from Corn" patent (patented October 16, 1866; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hirsh-process/). These should not be conflated; I have not confirmed that US52424A shares Hirsh's disclosure.
5. The page's "Prior art keywords" (cane, juice, box, press, platform) and its CPC classes (C13B10/02, C13B10/04 — expressing juice from sugar cane, combined with imbibition) describe the claimed subject matter well but are classification data, not evidence.

8. Bottom line

On the record available, claims 1 and 2 are prima facie obvious under § 103 as a combination of (i) the known step of reducing cane to short lengths from the diffusion/maceration art, (ii) the known step of contacting saccharine material with steam in a closed vessel, and (iii) the known step of expressing juice by pressure in a cane mill or press — the third step and the pressing apparatus being Old in the very references listed on this page, and the second being supplied at minimum by US 33,524/242,216-era practice. Claim 3 is prima facie obvious over US261807A + US49884A + US246731A, reinforced by the contemporaneous printed description of Russell's hydraulic sugar press with boxes running on railways. The strongest single-reference challenge (i.e., § 102 rather than § 103) would run through US140461A, whose full text I was unable to verify and which should be the first document pulled for a definitive opinion.