Invalidity dossier
US 3040678
Flying trolley slide
Current assignee: Individual
Added 9/17/2026, 1:48:47 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 3,040,678
Title: Flying Trolley Slide
Patent number: US 3,040,678 A
Inventor: Norman S. McEwen (487 NE. 8th Ave., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
Original assignee / current assignee: Individual (per the supplied page's listed assignee; Google notes the listed assignees may be inaccurate)
Filing date / priority date: March 7, 1960 (Application No. 13,080)
Publication (grant) date: June 26, 1962
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration listed as June 26, 1979). Google states the legal status is an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
Classification: A63G 21/22 — Suspended slideways (chutes; helter-skelters).
Purpose: The invention relates to amusement devices, specifically a slide trolley for children's exercise and entertainment. The stated objects are to provide a trolley supported by a horizontal or slightly inclined elevated cable or rope that a child can readily mount, hold onto, and swing from; to use simple, inexpensive parts operable by children with limited mechanical knowledge; to minimize the chance of fingers or other body parts being caught or injured; and to be small, foldable for compact storage and transport, and economical to manufacture.
Plain-language scope: The device is a carriage or body — a channel-shaped metal body open at both ends with parallel sides and a closed bottom — containing grooved rollers on transverse axles, with the rollers wholly confined between the side plates so nothing projects beyond the body. A bar passes transversely through aligned openings midway along the body, below the rollers, and extends beyond the sides as hand grips. A yoke embraces the body and is secured to that bar, with a second lower bar at the yoke's free end, parallel to the first. The excerpt recites four claims, including a roller/axle body version, a yoke-and-two-bar version, and a version in which the yoke-to-bar distance exceeds the bar-to-body-end distance so the yoke can fold alongside the body. Alternative forms show a rigidly fixed yoke, and a yoke bolted to the housing with an adjusting nut permitting rigid or swinging adjustment.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3040678/en
Not established by the excerpt: the full claim text and complete figure descriptions (the excerpt is partial); the number or identity of prior-art references; whether any office actions or amendments occurred; and any litigation, ownership transfer, or validity determination. The expiry status is Google's stated assumption only.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:03:10 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.