US 2909989

I'll verify the patent against external sources before summarizing.

Let me check CAFC/litigation sources and the Google Patents record for any 2026 activity.

US Patent 2,909,989 — Summary

Verification note: I re-pulled the record from Google Patents (US2909989A) and it matches the authoritative full text supplied. I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter or a CAFC docket system directly, so the bibliographic data below rests on the Google Patents record plus the patent's own front-matter text. Searches of CAFC 2026 dockets and litigation databases returned no hits for 2909989 — see the litigation note at the end.

Bibliographic data

Literal-ID caution: the Google Patents page renders the original assignee as "International Harverster Corp" — an evident typographical error on that page. The patent's own front matter reads "International Harvester Company."

Abstract

There is no formal abstract. This is an October 1959 patent, predating the abstract requirement. Google Patents carries no abstract field; it substitutes a "Definitions" block whose lead entry describes Figure 2 ("an enlarged top view of a portion of a bale-forming chamber with the top removed to show the reciprocating plunger and spring extended hay conveying fingers"). The functional summary below is drawn from the specification's stated objects and "In operation" passage, not from a patent abstract.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 (the only independent claim) covers a hay baler of the auger-feed type with a spring-loaded, plunger-mounted sweep finger that clears a known dead zone.

The claimed combination:

• a transverse hay pickup platform and a longitudinal bale-forming chamber with a feed opening in one side;
• an auger conveyor on the platform feeding hay laterally, with the discharge end left open and unsupported (the "unjournalled end") — i.e., the auger is cantilevered from its far end only;
• a space behind that open discharge end on the platform, and packing fingers that sweep through that space into the chamber;
• a reciprocating plunger in the chamber traveling from forward of the feed opening to rearward of it;
• fingers carried by the plunger that extend laterally outward of the chamber near the platform, so that as the plunger advances they sweep hay off the auger's discharge end into the packing-finger space;
• those fingers being hingedly mounted and spring-biased outward, so that when the plunger retracts into the chamber the fingers are drawn back in against the plunger's side.

The point of the claim is positive, mechanized clearing of the "dead space" at the open auger discharge, rather than relying on incoming hay to shove the previous charge rearward.

Dependent claims (brief):

• Claim 2 — the plunger side has horizontal notches to house the hinged fingers when retracted.
• Claim 3 — an inclined wall between platform and chamber, forward of the auger discharge end, with notches letting the fingers emerge and sweep hay rearward.
• Claim 4 — details the hinge: a vertical hinge pin journalled on the plunger, a bracket plate fixed to the pin, a spring between plunger and bracket plate normally urging the pin to rotate the fingers outward and laterally away from the chamber, and a stop limiting finger extension.

Technical context

The patent is a follow-on to Bornzin et al., US 2,787,949 ("Hay pushing attachment for balers," filed 1954-03-30, issued 1957-04-09), which the specification identifies as co-pending application Serial No. 419,686. The baler's packing-finger drive is not claimed here and is cross-referenced to Crumb et al., US 2,450,082. References cited on the face of the patent: US 543,278 (Washburn, 1895); US 943,656 (Dain, 1909); US 1,041,521 (Slover et al., 1912); US 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al., 1957). Forward citations include US 3,367,094, DE 102007031211 B4, US 9,253,948, US 9,258,946, and US 11,382,275.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 — negative finding

I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district court matter involving patent 2909989. This is unsurprising and not merely a search failure: the patent's term expired October 27, 1976, roughly fifty years before the search date, so it cannot support an infringement action. General CAFC 2026 decisions surfaced by the search (e.g., Fortress Iron, LP v. Digger Specialties, Inc., Fed. Cir. Apr. 2, 2026; TrackTime, LLC v. [[Amazon.com Services](/litigations/by-defendant/Amazon.com%20Services) LLC](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Amazon.com%20Services%20LLC)) concern unrelated patents and are not about 2909989.

Uncertainty flags

• Assignee of record at issue is International Harvester Company; the "International Motors LLC" current-assignee entry comes from Google Patents' automated assignment aggregation and the page itself disclaims accuracy. Treat it as unverified.
• No formal abstract exists for this patent; anything presented as one is editorial reconstruction.
• Litigation and docket coverage for pre-1977 patents is generally outside the scope of modern CAFC/PTAB docket databases, so my negative finding there reflects both expiry and limited historical coverage.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 2909989.

Initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me try more targeted queries.

Let me run additional targeted searches against litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 2,909,989

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent 2,909,989.

Searches performed

I ran multiple targeted queries (patent number alone; number plus "litigation"/"infringement"; "Bornzin" + "International Harvester" + infringement; Unified Patents portal; and CourtListener-oriented queries). Every query either returned zero responsive results or returned hits for different patent numbers that must not be conflated with this one, e.g.:

• U.S. Patent 3,498,621 (Dana Corp. v. NOK, Inc.) — valve stem seal
• U.S. Patent 7,454,002 (SportBrain Holdings / Unified Patents v. Heslop) — fitness trackers
• U.S. Patent 3,589,110 (Deere & Co. v. International Harvester Co.) — corn head gear drive
• Various baler/agricultural patents (e.g., 2,450,082 Crumb et al.; 2,787,949 Bornzin et al.) that appear only as references cited on the face of the '989 patent — not as asserted patents in any case I located.

None of these involve US 2,909,989.

Why this is expected

• Prosecution/term: Filed 1957-02-27 (App. Ser. No. 642,834), granted 1959-10-27, to James H. Bornzin, assigned to International Harvester Company (Chicago, IL). Per the Google Patents record, the anticipated expiration was 1976-10-27 (17-year term then in effect). The patent has been expired for roughly half a century.
• Databases: The litigation portals you referenced (Unified Patents litigation caselist, RPX Insight, PACER, CourtListener) have essentially no coverage of any litigation from that era; PACER itself does not reach back reliably to the 1950s–60s in searchable form. Any suit on this patent would have been filed in the late 1950s or 1960s — outside the practical searchable window of these sources.
• Realistic likelihood: Hay balers of this class were widely made by International Harvester, New Holland, Deere, and others, so a defensive or licensing dispute is conceivable historically, but I have no documentary basis to assert one, and I will not fabricate a case caption, docket number, or date.

What I can state with confidence from the record

• The patent's own face cites four U.S. references — 543,278 (Washburn), 943,656 (Dain), 1,041,521 (Slover et al.), and 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al.) — these are prior art citations, not litigation.
• Cited-by entries (e.g., US 3,367,094 Baler feed mechanism; AGCO continuous round baler patents; Tube-Line Manufacturing's US 11,382,275) are later citing patents, not litigation involving the '989 patent.
• The specification itself references the co-pending application Ser. No. 419,686 (now U.S. 2,787,949) and Crumb et al. U.S. 2,450,082 as related technical disclosures, not litigation.

Caveats

• My searches were limited by the tool call budget and by the fact that no free public database indexes 1950s–60s patent litigation comprehensively. I cannot rule out that a case exists in paper archives or in a district court's historical records.
• To pursue this definitively, I would recommend a manual/historical search of the Federal Reporter / F.2d and F. Supp. case law (e.g., Westlaw/Lexis historical libraries) for "2,909,989," plus a check of International Harvester's annual reports and the Commissioner's decisions from roughly 1959–1976, and the Federal Circuit predecessor courts (CCPA/regional circuits).

If you need, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., specific historical databases or the exact string "2,909,989" vs. "2909989") in a follow-up. But as of this search, the accurate answer to your question is: no known litigation is identified for US Patent 2,909,989.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 2,909,989: 0 — no active trials, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, nothing settled, no institution denials. The patent is a 1957-filed / 1959-issued International Harvester hay baler patent (4 claims) that reached its anticipated expiration on 1976-10-27, roughly 36 years before the first IPR was ever filed (AIA trials became available 2012-09-16). The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "hardened patent" and not "claims are dead" — it is simpler than either: there is nothing left to defend against and nothing to invalidate. Any demand letter citing US 2,909,989 is a demand letter citing an expired 1959 patent, and an IPR would be a pointless expenditure (the Board cannot cancel claims that already ceased to have effect in 1976, and § 315(e) estoppel cannot arise absent a proceeding).

Proceedings

None to report. Per the canonical structured block (USPTO Open Data Portal), the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and targeted web searching surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions for US 2,909,989. I found no petitioner, no panel, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal. I am stating this affirmatively rather than padding the record, because inventing proceeding numbers or panels here would be the single worst failure mode for this task.

Accuracy flag on a lookalike number

Web searching "2909989" in a PTAB context pulls up a different patent: EP 2909989 (Centripetal Networks, Inc., "Methods and systems for protecting a secured network," filed 2013-08-30). That European number is unrelated to US 2,909,989. Do not let an automated docket scrape conflate them. Similarly, USPTO application 642,834 is only the serial number of this patent's 1957 filing — it is not a proceeding number.

Related-but-not-a-trial activity worth knowing about

These are not PTAB proceedings, but they are the only post-issuance activity touching this patent family that I can verify:

• Prosecution citations (prior art of record) — the patent's face cites four references, examined at issuance, with no post-issuance challenge ever mounted against any of them: US 543,278 (Washburn, "Baling-press," 1895-07-23); US 943,656 (Dain, "Hay-press," 1909-12-21); US 1,041,521 (Slover et al., "Baling-press," 1912-10-15); and US 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al., "Hay pushing attachment for balers," Int'l Harvester Co., 1957-04-09), the applicant's own co-pending application identified in the specification as Serial No. 419,686.
• Forward citations (5) — US 3,367,094 (Harwig, "Baler feed mechanism," 1968-02-06); DE 10 2007 031 211 B4 (Claas, 2014-05-22); US 9,253,948 B2 and US 9,258,946 B2 (AGCO Corp., 2016-02-09 / 2016-02-16); US 11,382,275 B2 (Tube-Line Manufacturing Ltd., 2022-07-12). These are later patents citing the '989 as background art. They are evidence that the disclosure is still read by baler engineers; they are not evidence of any challenge to it.
• Assignment chain — original assignee International Harvester Corp.; Google Patents lists a current assignee of "International Motors LLC" (a Navistar successor entity). Note that Google's assignee field is expressly a non-legal conclusion, and I have no assignment-record citation confirming current title. For an expired patent this affects only standing trivia, not exposure.

I want to be explicit about one limitation: my search coverage of PTAB E2E / the Board's decision archive is indirect (web search, not a direct E2E docket query). My high-confidence conclusion rests on (a) the ODP structured data returning zero proceedings, and (b) the chronological impossibility of an AIA trial having been statutorily available for a patent that expired in 1976 in any realistic assertion window. If you need a belt-and-suspenders record, run the patent number directly through PTAB E2E (https://e2e.uspto.gov/) and the PTAB Decisions archive; I expect both to return zero.

Strategic summary

Claim-status picture: all four claims (1, 2, 3, 4) are UNTESTED in any PTAB forum — and all four expired on 1976-10-27. There is no FWD, so there is no claim-level cancellation to quote and no surviving-claim list to build an infringement theory around. The claims as issued are: claim 1 (the base apparatus claim — reciprocating plunger carrying hingedly mounted, spring-biased fingers that sweep hay from the unjournalled discharge end of the platform auger into the packer-finger path, retracting against the plunger side); claim 2 (adding horizontal notches in the plunger side to receive the hinged fingers); claim 3 (adding the inclined platform wall between platform and bale chamber with notches for finger emergence); and claim 4 (reciting the vertical hinge pin journalled on the plunger, the bracket plate, the return spring, and the stop limiting outward extension). Because no AIA trial, no inter partes reexamination, and no ex parte reexamination appears on file, the claims stand exactly as they issued — but they stand as expired claims.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and there cannot be one. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is a consequence of a petition and institution; with zero petitions there are zero estopped grounds and zero estopped parties. That is not the good news it sounds like for a defendant: the reason no ground is estopped is that no one ever needed a ground. Practically, the only live question for a defendant is the damages window, not validity. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286 a plaintiff can recover only for infringement occurring within six years before suit; because the patent term ended 1976-10-27, that means the entire residual exposure is for conduct on or before 1976-10-27, asserted in a suit filed no later than roughly 1982. Any suit filed today is time-barred as to all conduct and barred on its face. Confirm a maintenance-fee/terminal-disclaimer check is unnecessary — the patent expired on its own terms ("Anticipated expiration," 1976-10-27), not by fee lapse.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. No serial petitioner (no petitioner at all), no patent-owner appellate aggression (nothing to appeal), no defensive aggregator involvement — Unified Patents and similar entities challenge asserted patents, and this patent was never in the assertion cycle within the AIA era. The structural explanation is the decisive fact: AIA trials postdate this patent's expiration by decades, and the pre-AIA reexamination regime (available from 1981) likewise produced no filings on this number. That absence is not a "well-asserted patent that hasn't been hit yet" signal — it is the expected signature of a commercially retired mid-century agricultural patent whose only continuing role is as a citation in later baler patents (the five forward citations above) and as background art in the Bornzin/IHC baler family (e.g., US 2,923,230 "Knife guided plunger for hay balers," same inventor).

Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand or complaint citing US 2,909,989, do not build a PTAB strategy. The patent expired 1976-10-27 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US2909989A](/patent/US2909989A)/en, "Anticipated expiration 1976-10-27"). There is no claim to cancel, no trial to institute, and no § 315(b) one-year clock that matters. Respond on the pleadings: § 286 damages bar (no infringement within six years of filing), plus laches/statute-of-limitations and, for an expired patent, the unavailability of injunctive relief. An IPR filing here would be sanction-adjacent conduct — it would burn fees attacking claims that cannot be enforced.
• If the citation format looks anomalous (e.g., a letter mixes "US 2,909,989" with modern claim language, "CBM," "§ 101," or an ODP/IPR number), treat it as a misidentified patent and pin down which number is actually meant before responding. The most likely confusion candidates I surfaced are EP 2909989 (Centripetal Networks) and, in the baler art, the forward-citing AGCO US 9,253,948 / 9,258,946 and Tube-Line US 11,382,275 patents. Those are eligible for AIA trials and would be worth a real PTAB docket search.
• If the intent is a defensive-publication or prior-art use (an IPR against some other patent, using the '989 as § 102/§ 103 art), note the usable date: the '989 is prior art as of its 1957-02-27 filing and 1959-10-27 issuance, and it is cited as background in later baler patents. The only art examined against it — Washburn 543,278; Dain 943,656; Slover 1,041,521; and the applicant's own Bornzin US 2,787,949 — is a ready-made, prosecution-vetted starting set for a § 103 combination against a modern auger-feed/packer-finger baler claim.
• If no PTAB activity exists, say so plainly — and here it does not. The absence is itself the signal: for a patent this old, the meaningful conclusion is enforcement impossibility, not an untested-but-viable assertion target. I have found no PTAB proceeding on US 2,909,989 and, on the record above, do not expect one to ever exist.

I'll research the assignment record and corporate chain for this patent before writing up.

Let me check the assignment database and the corporate chain history.

Let me try to pin down actual recorded assignment entries and any bulk portfolio transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 2,909,989

Patent: "Hay feeding mechanism for balers" · US 2,909,989 A · Appl. No. 642,834
Filed: 1957-02-27 · Issued: 1959-10-27 · Anticipated expiration: 1976-10-27 · Status: Expired – Lifetime
Source of record used: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2909989/en (authoritative text supplied), cross-checked against corporate-registry and secondary sources.

Method note / limitation stated up front: I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center from this session. What I can report with confidence is that the Google Patents legal-events record for US 2,909,989 contains no assignment events of any kind — the event list runs: 1957-02-27 Priority to US642834A → 1957-02-27 Application filed by International Harvester Corp → 1959-10-27 Application granted → 1959-10-27 Publication of US2909989A → 1976-10-27 Anticipated expiration → Expired – Lifetime. No reel/frame entries are retrievable for this patent from the sources available to me. I will not invent reel/frame numbers.

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Inventors

James H. Bornzin — sole named inventor.

• Address on the face of the patent: La Grange, Illinois.
• Employer at time of filing: International Harvester Company, Chicago, Illinois. This is determinable with high confidence, not inferred from naming: the printed patent reads "James H. Bornzin, La Grange, Ill., assignor to International Harvester Company, Chicago, Ill., a corporation of New Jersey" — an assignor-on-the-face notation, which means title had already passed to IH (by pre-issuance assignment) when the patent printed.
• Corroborating pattern: Bornzin is a career IH engineer, not a one-off filer. Same-inventor IH patents include US 2,634,840 (Clutch trip mechanism for hay balers, filed 1951-03-28, from Memphis, Tenn.), US 2,800,996 (Hold-down member for a material feeding platform, filed 1953-06-25, with Currier and Reibell, from Memphis), and US 2,923,230 (Knife guided plunger for hay balers, filed 1957-06-05 — three months after the instant filing, likewise assigned to IH). Every one of his filings in this window is IH-assigned.

Pattern check — unusual departures: Not present. There is no inventor-departure signal here. The Memphis → La Grange address shift between his 1953 and 1957 filings is consistent with an internal IH relocation to the Chicago-area engineering headquarters, and his continuing IH-assigned filings through mid-1957 (US 2,923,230) confirm he remained with the company past this filing. A single-inventor, single-employer, multi-patent prosecution history is the opposite of a pre-fire-sale portfolio.

Internal prior-art quirk worth flagging (not an NPE issue): The specification expressly states the invention "contemplates a result very similar to that shown in the co-pending application Serial No. 419,686, now Patent No. 2,787,949, in which I am a co-inventor." US 2,787,949 (Hay pushing attachment for balers, Int'l Harvester Co., filed 1954-03-30, issued 1957-04-09) is also cited as prior art against US 2,909,989 by the examiner, as are US 543,278 (Washburn), US 943,656 (Dain), and US 1,041,521 (Slover). Self-citation within one corporate portfolio is normal for a prolific employer; it is not a shell-entity tell.

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Original assignee

International Harvester Company, Chicago, Illinois — expressly "a corporation of New Jersey" on the face of the patent.

• Primary line of business: Agricultural and construction equipment, motor trucks, and engines — one of the largest full-line farm-equipment makers in the world (Farmall tractors, McCormick-Deering implements, International trucks, the Scout).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. This is a hay-baler platform/plunger feed mechanism, and IH was a volume manufacturer of pickup balers. The claims (auger conveyor with an unjournalled discharge end, gyrating packer fingers, and spring-biased plunger-carried sweep fingers) describe production hardware, not a paper patent. The assignee at issue practiced the invention.
• Current status of the original assignee: Dissolved. International Harvester Company ceased to exist as a corporate entity in 1986. Sequencing: after the 1979–80 UAW strike and the farm-economy collapse, IH sold its Agricultural Division to Tenneco (agreed Nov 1984, closed early 1985), which merged it with J.I. Case to form Case IH; the surviving truck/engine company renamed itself Navistar International Corporation on 1986-02-20. No Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 filing by IH is identified — this was a distressed out-of-court divestiture, not a bankruptcy liquidation, so the classic bankruptcy-fire-sale path does not apply.

Successor chain (corporate records, not patent-assignment records):
International Harvester Co. (1902–1986) → Navistar International Corporation (1986-02-20) → Navistar International Transportation Corp. (merger effective 1987-04-01) → International Truck and Engine Corporation (2000-02-23) → IP consolidated into International Truck Intellectual Property Company, LLC (assignment dated 2000-11-01; recorded in the Canadian register 2004-11-25); Navistar acquired by Traton SE (Volkswagen Group), closed 2021-07-01, becoming Navistar, Inc.; renamed International Motors, LLC effective 2024-10-01.

⚠️ Important caveat on the "current assignee" field. Google Patents lists the current assignee as International Motors LLC but expressly disclaims it: "The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis..." That entry is a derived name-mapping of the IH corporate successor, not evidence of a recorded assignment on this patent. Moreover, for an agricultural implement patent, the economically correct successor-in-interest to IH's ag assets is the Tenneco → Case IH → CNH Industrial line, not the truck business that became Navistar/International Motors. I could not verify which successor actually took record title to US 2,909,989; that question is unresolved on the available evidence.

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Assignment timeline

No recorded assignment entries could be retrieved for US 2,909,989.

The only ownership event of record is the pre-issuance assignment from inventor Bornzin to International Harvester Company implied by the "assignor to" notation printed on the face of the patent (executed on or before 1959-10-27; the underlying application was filed 1957-02-27, Appl. No. 642,834). No reel/frame citation is available to me, and I have not fabricated one.

There are no recorded post-issuance assignments retrievable for this patent. Taken together with the fact that the patent expired 17 years after issue, on 1976-10-27 (pre-1980 grants were not subject to maintenance fees; this is natural end-of-term, not a fee lapse), that absence is itself the finding: no NPE, no aggregator, and no licensing entity ever took record title in the ~50 years the patent has been dead.

Per your specification, I stop the structured narrative here. Two additions are warranted because they change the entire answer to your actual question.

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Addendum A — Timeline diagram

Caveat: this is the corporate-succession context, not a chain of recorded patent assignments. I have not represented any of these as reel/frame entries for US 2,909,989, because none are verifiable.

timeline
    title Ownership context for US 2909989
    1957 : Application filed by James H Bornzin
         : Rights assigned to International Harvester
    1959 : Patent issued to International Harvester
    1976 : Patent reached end of 17 year term
    1985 : IH agricultural division sold to Tenneco
    1986 : Survivor renamed Navistar International
    1987 : Merger creates Navistar Transportation Corp
    2000 : Renamed International Truck and Engine Corp
         : IP consolidated into International Truck IP LLC
    2021 : Navistar acquired by Traton SE
    2024 : Renamed International Motors LLC

Addendum B — NPE signals, and the dispositive point

The dispositive fact is legal, not transactional: US 2,909,989 expired on 1976-10-27. An expired patent cannot be asserted, cannot be the subject of an infringement suit, and generates no licensing revenue. Every NPE signal in your checklist is therefore moot as a practical matter, and none is supported by evidence in any event:

Verdict

Insufficient data. The Google Patents legal-events record for US 2,909,989 contains no assignment events at all, and I could retrieve no reel/frame entry for either the 1957 Bornzin → International Harvester pre-issuance assignment or any later transfer; the only ownership signal available (the "current assignee" field) is a self-disclaimed, derived corporate-name mapping, not a recorded instrument. Independently, the verdict is academic: the patent reached the end of its 17-year term on 1976-10-27 and has been unassertable ever since, so no NPE reading is possible regardless of the chain's content. The practical conclusion for an operating company today is that this patent is public domain and carries zero assertion risk.

Verify independently at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — choose Patent Assignment Search, then Search by Patent Number, entering 2909989. Also mirror-check https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Because this is a 1950s-era record, be aware that pre-1980 assignment documentation is held in the paper/microfilm collection and may not be fully indexed online — a null online result is not the same as a null Assignment Branch result. If you need certainty on which successor holds record title to the IH agricultural patent estate, the correct follow-up is a manual Assignment Branch reel search plus a chain-of-title query to Tenneco / Case IH / CNH Industrial, not a keyword web search.

I'll pull the cited references individually and verify them against live sources before assessing § 102 relevance.

Let me pull the individual Google Patents records for the three older cited references to confirm dates and subject matter.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 2,909,989

Analyst note on scope: I pulled the patent record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US2909989A/en, which matches the authoritative full text supplied in this thread. I also attempted to retrieve each of the four cited references. I was able to retrieve substantive text for only one of them (US 2,787,949). For the three 1895–1912 references, my searches returned decoy documents with similar-but-different numbers, or nothing. I state below exactly what is verified versus unverified — I will not characterize a reference's disclosure that I could not read.

Literal-ID caution (must read before the table): Several numbers in this family are one transposition away from each other and must not be conflated:

• US 2,909,989 — the patent under analysis.
• US 2,787,949 — Bornzin et al., cited prior art on the '989 face.
• US 1,041,521 — Slover et al., cited prior art on the '989 face.
• US 1,045,125 — J. Dain, "Hay Press." This is NOT a cited reference. It appeared in my search results for "943656" and is a different patent.
• US 857,604 — J. Dain, "Hay press" (1907). Not a cited reference.

I noted these traps and excluded all non-matching numbers from the analysis.

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1. The four references cited on the face of US 2,909,989

The patent's own "References Cited" list (United States Patents) reads, verbatim from the record:

543,278 Washburn July 23, 1895
943,656 Dain Dec. 21, 1909
1,041,521 Slover et al. Oct. 15, 1912
2,787,949 Bornzin et al. Apr. 19, 1957

Google Patents' own citation table for the same patent gives slightly different data for the last entry (filing 1954-03-30, issue 1957-04-09), and gives filing dates the printed list omits. I reconcile both below and flag the conflict in §4.

§ 102 availability framework applied

US 2,909,989 was filed 1957-02-27 (Ser. No. 642,834) under the 1952 Patent Act. The relevant pre-AIA subsections:

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Reference 1 — US 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al.) — the only verifiable, on-point reference

Full citation: US 2,787,949 A, "Hay pushing attachment for balers," inventors Bornzin et al., assignee International Harvester Company. Application Ser. No. 419,686.
Dates: Filed 1954-03-30; issued 1957-04-09 (Google Patents citation table and FreePatentsOnline; FPO lists App. No. US41968654A). The '989 printed list says "Apr. 19, 1957" — see conflict flag in §4.
Classification: A01F 15/10.
Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2787949A/en; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/58/51/55/54768b7b27583e/US2787949.pdf

Brief description (verified from the document text): Same baler architecture as the '989 — longitudinal bale-forming chamber 12, transverse platform 13, an auger conveyor 26 with an unjournalled discharging end 28 discharging into a space 37, and gyrating packer/clawing fingers 39, 40 sweeping a space 38 to carry hay through side opening 23 into the chamber. The invention is a hay-butting/pushing member 47 hinged at 48 in a vertically disposed, diagonally positioned wall member 49 that forms the forward defining extent of space 37, with an opening 51 in that wall through which the pusher's front face 50 sits flush. The pusher is driven by a link arm/pitman 56 from a crank pin 58 on a sprocket 60, itself chain-driven — i.e., an independently oscillated element, not a plunger-mounted one. The stated objects are essentially identical to the '989's: positive removal of hay from the open discharge end of the platform auger and transfer into the path of the clawing fingers.

§ 102 analysis:

• § 102(a)/(b): NOT available. The '949 issued 1957-04-09, six weeks after the '989 was filed on 1957-02-27. It was not a patent or printed publication before the '989 filing date, so it cannot be § 102(a) or § 102(b) art.
• § 102(e): the only available route, as of its 1954-03-30 filing date. Two complications worth flagging, both of which the examiner apparently resolved in the applicant's favor by citing '949 as background rather than as a rejection:
  1. "By another." The '949 inventive entity is "Bornzin et al." (multiple inventors); the '989 is Bornzin alone. Under the pre-AIA text, differing entities generally satisfy "by another" even with an overlapping inventor.
  2. Common ownership / common inventor. Both patents were owned by International Harvester Company, and Bornzin is a common inventor. The '989 specification itself concedes the relationship: "The present invention contemplates a result very similar to that shown in the co-pending application Serial No. 419,686, now Patent No. 2,787,949, in which I am a co-inventor." A common-assignee § 102(e) disqualification (the proviso now codified in pre-AIA § 102(e)) would remove '949 as a § 102 reference altogether. I state this as analysis, not as a recorded prosecution outcome — I have not seen the file wrapper and cannot confirm what the examiner did.

Potential anticipation of the '989 claims: NONE, on any claim. Taking the claims in order:

Verdict: '949 is the closest and most material prior art for the '989, but it does not anticipate any of claims 1–4, because it lacks the single feature that defines the '989's contribution — a plunger-carried, spring-biased, self-retracting sweep finger. Its actual significance is § 103 obviousness, not § 102: it supplies every element of claim 1 except the plunger-carried, spring-biased mounting, and it discloses the same inclined/diagonal wall-with-opening expedient that claim 3 elaborates. A challenger would argue it would have been obvious to relocate '949's pusher onto the reciprocating plunger and spring-load it; the '989's answer is that plunger-carrying plus spring retraction enables the finger to be stowed in plunger notches for travel through the chamber without interference (claims 2 and 4).

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Reference 2 — US 543,278 (Washburn), "Baling-press"

Full citation: US 543,278, Washburn, "Baling-press."
Date: Issued 1895-07-23 (per the '989 face and the Google Patents citation table, which supplies no separate filing date).
Sources: listed on the '989 face; my direct searches for this number returned no copy of the document.

Brief description: Unverified. I could not retrieve the specification, drawings, or claims. The title ("Baling-press"), the 1895 date, and the absence of an assignee are all that the record supplies. It is a pre-1900 press, i.e., almost certainly of the stationary/horse- or engine-driven, hand-fed class that predates the pickup-baler art entirely. I explicitly decline to attribute any specific structure to it.

§ 102 status: Available under § 102(a) and, easily, § 102(b) (issued ~62 years before the '989 filing — far more than one year).

Potential anticipation of the '989 claims: Cannot be established on the available record; no anticipation asserted. At most, art of this vintage would have been cited for the antiquity of the reciprocating plunger in a bale-forming chamber — an element of claim 1 that no one claims as novel. It cannot be shown to disclose an auger conveyor, an unjournalled auger discharge end, packing fingers sweeping a space into a side feed opening, or plunger-carried spring fingers. No claim of the '989 can be anticipated by it on this record.

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Reference 3 — US 943,656 (Dain), "Hay-press"

Full citation: US 943,656, Joseph Dain, "Hay-press."
Dates: Filed 1905-01-28; issued 1909-12-21 (Google Patents citation table on the '989 record; the '989 face gives only the issue date).
Sources: listed on the '989 face. My search for this number did not return the document. It returned US 1,045,125 (J. Dain, "Hay Press") and US 857,604 (J. Dain, "Hay press") — different patents, which I have not treated as this reference.

Brief description: Unverified. Title and dates only.

Relevance inference — flagged as inference only: Dain's adjacent hay-press work is retrievable and is instructive as to the family, though it is not the cited document. US 857,604 (Dain, 1907) describes a tucker 16 with springs 23 that "immediately force the tucker inward" and "pull the upper portion of the tucker forward," the springs' pull being transmitted to the plunger. US 1,045,125 (Dain, 1912) describes a perforator needle 17 mounted horizontally on the plunger, fitted in a bearing in the plunger-head, with a spring 19 on the needle to retract it when the plunger rebounds, advanced by a chain 20. So Dain's contemporaneous art does contain plunger-mounted, spring-retracted elements — conceptually adjacent to claim 4's spring-biased, plunger-mounted hinge. But because I could not read US 943,656 itself, I do not assert that it contains any such disclosure, and I assert no anticipation. If a § 102 or § 103 challenge on claim 4 were contemplated, US 943,656 would be the first document to obtain and read in full.

§ 102 status: Available under § 102(a) and § 102(b) (issued ~47 years before filing).

Potential anticipation of the '989 claims: None established. Claims 1–4 all require the full claim-1 combination (transverse pickup platform, auger with an open unjournalled discharge end, packer-finger space, side-opening chamber, plunger-carried spring fingers). A 1909 hand-fed hay press cannot, on this record, be shown to disclose that combination. At most it is background on plunger/tucker mechanics.

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Reference 4 — US 1,041,521 (Slover et al.), "Baling-press"

Full citation: US 1,041,521, Marion F. Slover (with James R. Harter), "Baling-Press."
Dates: Filed 1912-04-10; issued 1912-10-15 (Google Patents citation table; the '989 face gives "Oct. 15, 1912" and names only "Slover et al.").
Source (metadata verified): https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth513059/ — UNT Government Documents; the record confirms inventors Marion F. Slover and James R. Harter, date 1912-10-15, patent number 1041521, and describes it only as "Patent for a baling press that packs the bales more effectively than other models."

Brief description: Only minimally verified. The UNT catalog abstract is the extent of what I confirmed: a baling press directed to more effective bale packing. I did not retrieve the specification or claims. I decline to attribute structure to it.

§ 102 status: Available under § 102(a) and § 102(b) (issued ~45 years before filing).

Potential anticipation of the '989 claims: None established. Likely cited as general baling-press background. Nothing in the verified record touches auger conveyors, unjournalled discharge ends, gyrating packer fingers, or plunger-mounted spring fingers. No anticipation asserted for any of claims 1–4.

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2. Summary table

No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–4 of US 2,909,989. Anticipation requires every element of the claim as arranged in a single reference; each cited reference is missing at least the claim-1 requirement that the sweep fingers be carried by the reciprocating plunger and be hingedly mounted and spring biased outwardly so as to retract against the plunger side (and, for claims 2–4, the plunger notches, inclined wall notches, and hinge-pin/bracket-plate/spring/stop mechanism).

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3. Referenced in the specification but not in the References Cited list

• US 2,450,082 — Crumb et al. The '989 specification twice points to it for the packing-finger drive: "The packer fingers 33 and 34 are mounted on top of the bale-forming chamber 12 and are adapted to move as in Crumb et al. Patent 2,450,082," and again in the "driving features" paragraph. It is not listed among References Cited, so it is not a formal citation. Notably, US 2,787,949's own reference list includes US 2,450,082 "Pickup baler," 1948-09-28 (per FPO), confirming the family relationship. If full prior-art coverage is wanted, Crumb et al. is the fifth document to examine — it is the source of the gyrating packer-finger mechanism that claim 1 incorporates by reference to function.
• The '989 also cross-references its own co-pending parent, Ser. No. 419,686, now US 2,787,949 (i.e., Reference 1 above).

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4. Record-integrity and contradiction flags

These are places where the record is internally inconsistent. Per the literal-ID rule, I have not silently corrected any of them.

1. Issue date conflict for US 2,787,949. The '989's printed References Cited list reads "Apr. 19, 1957." Google Patents' citation table for the same patent, and FreePatentsOnline, both give the issue date as 1957-04-09. Same-day-in-month-length typo (9 vs 19) — but note that the literal date affects nothing material: under either date the '949 post-dates the '989's 1957-02-27 filing, so § 102(e) (via the 1954-03-30 filing date) is the only available route in both cases.
2. Date conflict for US 2,909,989 itself, environment vs. task header. The system context and the Google Patents fetch are stamped 2026-09-30; the current task header states April 26, 2026. The previously generated sections of this analysis also referenced "CAFC 2026" searches. I flag the discrepancy rather than reconcile it; it does not affect the § 102 analysis, since the '989's term expired 1976-10-27 under the then-17-year term (Google Patents, "Anticipated expiration").
3. Internal reference-numeral inconsistencies in the '989 specification text. The body refers to the fingers' hinge shaft variously as "vertical rod 57," "vertical post or shaft 57" and, later, "the vertical shaft 47" — but 47 is used two paragraphs earlier for the plunger travel direction arrow. Similarly, the plunger-emergence slots are called "slots 59 and 51" in one place and "slot 50" / "notches 5t and 51" elsewhere; the consistent reading from Figure 2's description is 50 and 51. These are transcription/OCR-level defects in the record, not substantive claim limitations, but any claim-charting work should go back to the drawing sheets.
4. Inventor-name mismatch across the family. The Slover reference is printed on the '989 face as "Slover et al."; the UNT record names Marion F. Slover and James R. Harter. Similarly, Google Patents renders the assignee of the '989 as "International Harverster Corp" (evident typographic corruption) while the patent's own front matter says "International Harvester Company." The earlier-generated bibliographic section already flagged the assignee point; this analysis confirms it.
5. Decoy numbers encountered and excluded. My searches for the cited references surfaced US 1,045,125 (Dain) and US 857,604 (Dain) — neither is the cited US 943,656 — and, for the '989 itself, unrelated hits on US 3,498,621, US 7,454,002, and US 3,589,110. None of these has been used in this analysis. Note the particularly hazardous pair 1,045,125 vs 1,041,521 (Dain hay press vs. Slover baling press, both 1912).
6. Gap in my verification, stated plainly. I did not reach USPTO PatentCenter for US 2909989 within the search budget, so the "search the USPTO database for 2909989" instruction is satisfied only indirectly, via the Google Patents record for US2909989A (which mirrors USPTO data) and the authoritative full text supplied. I also could not retrieve the specifications of US 543,278, US 943,656, or US 1,041,521. Accordingly, my descriptions of those three are bibliographic only, and I have asserted no anticipation against them.

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5. Bottom line

• Most relevant prior art: US 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al.) — by a wide margin. It addresses the identical problem (clearing the unjournalled auger discharge into the packer-finger path), uses the identical baler architecture, is by a common inventor, and was pending concurrently. It is a § 102(e)-only reference (filed 1954-03-30, granted 1957-04-09), and its availability is further clouded by the common assignee/inventor overlap.
• Anticipation result: none. No reference cited on the '989 anticipates any of claims 1, 2, 3, or 4. Claim 1's distinguishing element — sweep fingers carried by, and retracting against, the reciprocating plunger, hingedly mounted and spring biased — is absent from all four references, including '949, whose sweeper is a separately driven, fixed-wall-hinged pusher.
• Where the real fight would be: § 103. US 2,787,949 alone supplies the motivation (same problem, same geometry — including the diagonal wall 49 with opening 51 that parallels claim 3's inclined wall 45 with notches 50/51). The '989's non-obviousness case rests on claims 2 and 4: the plunger-side notches that stow the fingers during chamber travel, and the specific vertical hinge-pin / bracket-plate / spring / stop assembly that makes the fingers auto-extend at the side opening and fold flat against the plunger elsewhere.
• If this analysis is to be completed: the three unverified references (US 543,278, US 943,656, US 1,041,521) should be pulled in full — US 943,656 first, because Dain's adjacent hay-press patents do contain plunger-mounted, spring-retracted elements relevant to claim 4. US 2,450,082 (Crumb et al.) should also be read, as it is the functional source of the packer fingers recited in claim 1.

I'll pull what I can on each cited reference before reasoning about combinations.

Let me try to pull the older cited presses directly.

Obviousness Analysis — US 2,909,989 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on: the bibliographic/claim-scope work and the negative litigation finding already produced. Those are not repeated; this section takes the claim-1 element list and the four cited references as given and tests them for § 103.

Scope note on "the Prior Art section of this page": the Google Patents record for US2909989A lists exactly four references under Citations (4) — US 543,278 (Washburn), US 943,656 (Dain), US 1,041,521 (Slover et al.), and US 2,787,949 (Bornzin et al.). Those four are the universe for the primary analysis below. I have added a clearly separated subsection (§ 6) on art that is not on the face of this patent but surfaced during retrieval, because it bears directly on claim 4.

Date discrepancy flag: the task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while this session's operating context is 2026-09-30. Immaterial to the analysis (the patent expired 1976-10-27 and all cited art predates 1957 regardless of which date is correct), but I am flagging it rather than silently reconciling it.

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1. Verification status of the cited references

Identification caution (per the literal-ID rule): several other 1912-vintage presses surfaced during retrieval — US 1,045,125, US 1,045,184, and US 1,043,345. These are distinct patents from the cited US 1,041,521. I have kept them separate and do not attribute their disclosures to Slover et al.

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2. Governing legal framework

• Statute. The application was filed 1957-02-27 and granted 1959-10-27, so the 1952 Patent Act governs. The operative test is pre-AIA § 103(a): whether "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." The 1984 § 103(c) common-ownership proviso and the 2011 AIA § 102/103 regime did not exist for this filing — relevant below.
• Retrospective standards. Courts apply the Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), four-factor framework and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), to old patents when their validity is tested today. I note where KSR reasoning (design incentives, known techniques, predictable substitution) materially strengthens a rejection that might have failed under a strict 1960s-era "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" test.
• PHOSITA (as of ≤ Feb. 1957). A mechanical/agricultural engineer or experienced baler designer, ~3–5 years in pickup-baler development, familiar with: cross-auger platform feeding, unjournalled (cantilevered) auger discharge ends and the "dead space" they create, plunger/packer-finger timing, and the standard repertory of spring-loaded, pivoted, wall-cammed elements used to move crop into and out of a plunger path. This art was mature and crowded by 1957 (International Harvester, New Holland, Deere, Ann Arbor, and dozens of 1890–1915 press patents).

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3. Claims to be tested (element lists, condensed)

Built on the earlier claim-scope section; restated only as the mapping skeleton:

• Claim 1 (independent): (a) transverse pickup platform; (b) longitudinal chamber with side feed opening; (c) auger conveyor, discharge end open and unsupported; (d) a space behind that discharge end; (e) packing fingers movable through that space into the chamber; (f) plunger reciprocating from forward of to rearward of the feed opening; (g) fingers carried by the plunger extending laterally outward of the chamber adjacent the platform to sweep hay off the auger discharge into the packing-finger space; (h) those fingers hingedly mounted and spring-biased outwardly, so retraction of the plunger pulls them in against the plunger side.
• Claim 2: horizontally disposed notches in the plunger side to receive the hinged fingers when retracted.
• Claim 3: inclined wall between platform and chamber forward of the auger discharge end, with notches for finger emergence.
• Claim 4: hinge detail — vertical hinge pin journalled on the plunger; bracket plate affixed to the pin; spring between plunger and bracket plate urging pin rotation to swing the fingers outward/laterally away from the chamber; stop limiting extension.

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4. Reference-by-reference disclosure analysis

4.1 US 2,787,949 — the closest art (VERIFIED)

'949, the same inventor's earlier, commonly-owned, co-pending case (the '989 specification calls it "co-pending application Serial No. 419,686"), is to the same field, the same machine, and expressly the same problem. Verified disclosures:

• Same baler anatomy: bale-forming chamber 12, laterally extending platform 13, auger conveyor 26 with an unjournalled discharge end 28, a space 37 behind that end, and packer/clawing fingers 39, 40 sweeping through a space 38 into the chamber's side opening 23 — "as in Crumb et al." (US2787949A).
• Same stated problem: to "provide means associated with the unjournalled discharging end of an auger conveyor for pushing the hay from its position adjacent the open discharge end of the auger rearwardly therefrom into the path of clawing type fingers which feed the hay into a bale-forming chamber."
• The mechanism: a hay pusher 47 hinged at 48 in a vertically disposed diagonally positioned wall member 49 that forms the forward extent of space 37; the pusher swings through an opening 51 in that wall and is oscillated by a link arm/pitman 56 driving off a crank pin 58 on sprocket 60 (chain 62 from sprocket 63).
• '949's claim 1 recites, in substance: platform + chamber + auger with open, unsupported discharge end + space behind it + hay packing fingers movable through that space into the chamber + a hay pusher hingedly mounted on the platform adjacent the unsupported discharge end + means oscillatably swinging the pusher + a diagonal wall having an opening with the pusher's operating surface oscillating within it. Claims 3–5 recite the same combination with a triangular-section pusher, a vertical hinge, etc.
• '949's own cited art includes US 2,450,082 (Crumb et al., "Pickup baler," 1948) — the very reference the '989 specification identifies as the source of the packer-finger drive.

Net: every element of '989 claim 1 except elements (f)-relocation, (g) and (h) is disclosed in '949 — indeed '949 discloses the identical hay-sweeping function at the identical location. The only differences are where the sweeper is mounted (platform vs. plunger) and how it is biased/retracted (positive oscillation + wall opening vs. outward spring bias + collapse against the plunger).

4.2 US 543,278 (Washburn), US 943,656 (Dain), US 1,041,521 (Slover et al.) — cited, content UNVERIFIED

I could not retrieve the specifications within the tool budget. I therefore make no assertion about what these references disclose. What can be said with confidence from the face of the '989 patent alone:

1. All three were considered and cited by the examiner, which in this era of practice typically means they were used for the plunger-and-feeder architecture of early baling presses, not for the auger/packer combination.
2. All three are § 102(b)-type art as to the '989 filing (issued 1895, 1909, 1912 — respectively 62, 48 and 45 years before 1957-02-27). No date-qualification problem attaches to them, unlike '949 (below).
3. All three are in the same field of endeavor — baling presses for hay/straw with reciprocating plungers and feeding mechanisms.

Analysis consequence: any rejection relying on these three is conditional. The analysis below is written as "if X discloses a spring-biased, pivoted, plunger-associated feed element that retracts against the plunger, then …" — and I flag exactly which factual finding would have to be verified. I will not manufacture a quotation from them.

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5. Element mapping for claim 1

So the § 103 question reduces to a narrow one: is it obvious to take the '949 hay sweeper off its own crank drive and put it on the plunger, spring-load it outward, and let the chamber wall cam it back into a plunger-side recess?

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6. Non-cited art relevant to the residual gap (flagged as outside the cited art)

These emerged in retrieval and are not in the '989 cited-reference list. I have only search-snippet-level text, no full documents, so treat them as leads to verify:

• US 675,258 (baling-press): combination of "a plunger, a baling-chamber, retaining-fingers adapted to enter the baling chamber, movable bars carried by the plunger for moving said fingers out of the baling-chamber, spring-dogs for holding said bars in an elevated position… notched movable bars carried by the plunger… arms to which the retaining-fingers are connected and notched movable bars carried by the plunger" (US675258). If verified, this is directly on point for plunger-carried, notched, spring-affected finger-actuating structure — i.e., claims 1(h) and 2.
• US 1,043,345 (baling-press, ~1912): plunger plus "a tucker pivotally secured… a torsion spring opposing the tucker in its upward and forward movement and adapted to restore the same to its normal position when the plunger is retracted," plus a bracket on a pivot carrying a blade with an adjustable spring (US1043345 PDF).
• US 1,045,125 (~1912): a rod/needle mounted on the plunger, with "a spring 19 on the needle [that] serves to retract it when the plunger rebounds" (US1045125 PDF).

Cumulatively (subject to verification), the pre-1915 baling-press art shows that housing an operating element on the plunger, spring-biasing it to an operative position, and letting relative motion restore it was a known technique. That is precisely the technique the '989 specification uses to justify claim 1(h).

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7. The combinations, and why a PHOSITA would have made them

Combination A (primary): US 2,787,949 alone, or '949 + one of Washburn/Dain/Slover

Structure of the rejection. Take '949 as the primary reference for every element but (g) and (h). Then:

• Rationale 1 — elimination of a dedicated drive train. '949's sweeper needs its own power take-off: sprocket 60, shaft 61, the chain 62 from sprocket 63, crank pin 58, link arm/pitman 56. The '989 plunger already reciprocates in exactly the needed direction and on exactly the needed cycle. A designer told to reduce parts count, cost, and drive complexity in a 1950s implement would plainly ask why the sweeper cannot be driven by the plunger that is right there. This is the classic KSR "design incentive" and "known technique" rationale, and it needs no explicit suggestion in a reference.
• Rationale 2 — inherent synchronization. '949's free-running sprocket drive is not synchronized to the packer fingers or to the auger discharge; the pusher operates on its own cadence. Mounting the sweeper on the plunger automatically phases the sweep to the plunger stroke, which is itself phased to the packer-finger and chamber-feed cycle. Any engineer who has dealt with packer/plunger interference would recognize that as a benefit and a simplification.
• Rationale 3 — same field, same problem, same machine, express cross-reference. The '989 specification itself says "The present invention contemplates a result very similar to that shown in the co-pending application Serial No. 419,686, now Patent No. 2,787,949." That is, in the applicant's own words, a statement that the two disclosures are directed to the same result in the same machine. That is about as strong a "motivation to combine" as § 103 case law ever requires.
• Rationale 4 — the retraction mode is dictated by the environment. Once the finger is on the plunger, it must not remain extended when the plunger withdraws into the chamber (it would foul the chamber wall and the plunger packing). The wall is a fixed surface; a part biased outward against a fixed surface is cammed back into its recess by that surface as a matter of ordinary kinematics. Spring-out/wall-cammed-in with a stop is the standard, predictable solution, and the '989 specification describes exactly that — the fingers "ride along the inside of the wall 56… Immediately upon the spring fingers arriving at the opening 18 in the wall 56 they swing outwardly."

If the 1895/1909/1912 references show spring-biased pivoted feed/tuck elements acting with a plunger (the conditional finding § 4.2 flags), they supply the one residual element (h) outright, and the rejection becomes: '949 for the auger/packer/dead-space combination + [Washburn or Dain or Slover] for spring-biased pivoted feed elements that fold against the plunger path, with the KSR motivation of eliminating the '949 crank drive and synchronizing the sweep to the plunger.

Combination B: '949 + US 2,450,082 (Crumb et al.)

Crumb is expressly identified in the '989 specification as the packer-finger drive reference and appears in '949's own cited art, so it is both available and plainly combinable. Its role is narrow: it confirms that the "packing fingers moving through the space into the chamber" element (claim 1(e)) and the timing of the whole feed cycle were known and conventional. It does not, by itself, reach elements (g)–(h).

Combination C (claim 2 and 4 specifically): '949 + US 675,258-type art

For the notched plunger side of claim 2 and the spring-urged pivoted element with a stop of claim 4, the strongest motivation is space and function, not aesthetics: a plunger that carries a laterally projecting finger must have somewhere for that finger to go during the return stroke without protruding into the chamber. Notching or slotting a plunger side is the only practical answer, and the general art of baling knows plungers penetrated by slots for needles (the '989 patent's own field and the "needles… pass through slots in the plunger" convention recorded in agricultural-engineering literature). A stop to define the outward limit of a spring-urged member is a routine detail with no patentable weight absent a demonstrated unexpected result.

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8. Claim-by-claim conclusions

Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4): essentially unavailable on this record. There is no evidence of commercial success, copying, licensing, or unexpected results; the "long-felt need" narrative ("a constant challenge," "In some conditions of hay this area 31 may be a dead space") is asserted in the specification but is undercut by the fact that the same inventor had already solved the same problem six years earlier in '949 — which weakens both "failure of others" and "long-felt need" as nonobviousness evidence.

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9. Where a nonobviousness defense is strongest (balancing the analysis)

I would be doing this analysis a disservice if I presented § 103 as a foregone conclusion. Two genuine issues cut the other way:

(1) The primary reference may not qualify as prior art at all. This is the single most important point in the file. US 2,787,949 issued 1957-04-09, which is after the '989 filing date of 1957-02-27. Therefore:

• Not § 102(a) art (not "patented… before the invention thereof by the applicant" — the invention date is on or before the filing date).
• Not § 102(b) art (not more than one year before filing).
• Only potentially § 102(e) art (a patent granted on an application "by another" filed before the applicant's invention; '949 was filed 1954-03-30, which would qualify on date). But '949 names James H. Bornzin himself as a co-inventor, and the '989 specification expressly calls it "co-pending." Under the pre-AIA § 102(e) "by another" requirement as construed in In re Land, 368 F.2d 866 (CCPA 1966), and its progeny, a disclosure is not "by another" as to subject matter commonly invented. To that extent, '949 cannot be used as § 102(e) prior art against '989 claim 1's core subject matter, and no § 103(c) common-ownership safe harbor existed in 1957 to be invoked (the prohibition was statutory, in § 102(e) itself, not a policy exception).
• The counter-move available to a challenger is an applicant-admission theory keyed to the specification's statement that the invention "contemplates a result very similar to that shown in the co-pending application… now Patent No. 2,787,949," plus, if sales/field-use evidence exists, an on-sale/public-use theory under § 102(b) predating 1956-02-27 for the commercial baler embodying the '949 structure. Both routes need evidence I do not have (sales records, catalogues, dealer literature). I flag them as theories, not findings.

(2) Changed principle of operation. Applicant could argue the plunger-carried sweep finger is not a mere substitution for the '949 platform-hinged pusher, because the timing and reach of the sweep are different: the '949 pusher oscillates independently; a plunger-carried finger sweeps only during the compression stroke, is bounded by the plunger's stroke length, and must be geometrically registered with the side opening 18 and the wall notch 58 (the '989 specification's Figure 2 attention to where the fingers emerge through notch 58, and to the reduced final convolution 39 of the auger flight for packer-finger clearance, hints that the interference window was real). Under KSR, however, that argument is weakened: an assertion that a known element performs the same function in an expected way, with predictable consequences, does not defeat obviousness, and the "reasonable expectation of success" standard for mechanical relocation of a feed element in a mature art is low.

Bottom line: on the merits, claims 1–4 read as obvious over US 2,787,949 combined with the spring-biased/pivoted-element teachings of the 1895–1912 baling-press art (and, for claims 2 and 4, over 675,258-type plunger-carried spring-actuated finger art), with KSR-type design-incentive reasoning supplying the motivation. But a competent challenger must first establish that '949 is available as prior art — a point on which, on the record I can verify, the applicant has a real argument. My confidence in the disclosure content of '949 is high; my confidence in the outcome of the overall § 103 challenge is moderate, and it rises or falls on (i) the '949 prior-art status and (ii) contents of Washburn/Dain/Slover that I could not verify.

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10. Explicit uncertainty flags

1. I did not retrieve the specifications of US 543,278, US 943,656, or US 1,041,521. Their role in any rejection is stated above only in conditional form. The Washburn/Dain/Slover element of the combinations requires verification against the actual documents (Google Patents PDFs, or the UNT record for 1,041,521) before being asserted.
2. References in § 6 are not on the face of the '989 patent and are supported only by search snippets. US 675,258 in particular needs its full text and its actual filing/issue dates verified before use; I have not confirmed its date or assignee.
3. US 1,045,125, US 1,045,184, and US 1,043,345 are not the cited US 1,041,521 and must not be conflated with it or with each other.
4. The § 102(e) "by another" analysis turns on facts (inventorship of '949; whether Bornzin's contribution to '949 covers the subject matter relied on) that I cannot fully resolve without the '949 file history.
5. Usual caveat: obviousness is a legal conclusion applied to underlying factual findings; nothing here is a legal opinion or a prediction of any tribunal's ruling.