US 3422868

I'll search for this patent and check the CAFC dockets.

US Patent 3,422,868 — Summary

Important caveat on what I could and could not verify. My web/patent-database searches for this number returned essentially only one relevant hit: a Google Patents citation listing confirming "US3422868A ... 1967-08-25 ... 1969-01-21 ... Mary K Hannum ... Combination sweater bag and handbag." I found no CAFC 2026 docket, no litigation, and no USPTO post-issuance proceeding involving this patent — no results at all were returned for "3422868" plus CAFC/Federal Circuit. Separately, one search returned EP 3422868 A1/B1 (2017/2019), which is a different document in the European (EP) numbering series and is not the same patent; I am flagging it rather than treating it as related. Because the CAFC/USPTO docket searches were unproductive, I cannot affirmatively state that no such proceeding exists — I can only say I found no evidence of one. Everything below is taken from the authoritative full patent text supplied, which controls over search results.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as published)

"A bag especially constructed for carrying a folded sweater combined with a plurality of pockets which may serve as an ordinary handbag."

Subject matter / problem addressed

The patent addresses the inconvenience of a woman carrying a sweater draped over her arm — risk of dropping or forgetting it, and soiling. An ordinary purse cannot hold a folded sweater neatly; stuffing it in would muss it and expose it to other purse contents. The disclosed bag looks like a normal handbag but adds a dedicated, envelope-like sweater compartment plus conventional purse compartments.

Structure (preferred embodiment, reference numerals from the specification)

• 13 / 16 — outer front and back members, shown as double-thickness layers with a stiffener 24 between them; these may alternatively be one or any number of layers (not critical).
• 23 — optional stiffening rods near the top of members 13 and 16, spanning between the handle ends; the need for them depends on the material used and "is not critical to my invention."
• 11 / 12 — handles, one connected to each outer member.
• 18 / 19 — inner wall members defining the sweater-carrying compartment 17 between the outer members. Members 18 and 19 are joined at each side and may extend upwardly above members 13/16 and between the handles for easy access.
• Sweater compartment 17 — substantially oval in cross-section (curved ends 22), with no separate end members or folding end bellows; it behaves "much like an envelope." Because the sides are joined only at the edges, spreading 18 and 19 apart causes them to pull back toward each other and self-reclose to the natural position — preventing the walls from being left spread and letting the sweater slide to the bottom and wrinkle.
• 27 — a plurality of horizontally extending ribs (projections) on the inner face of member 19, pressing against a folded sweater to keep it from slipping down. The specification states they may be any shape so long as they project into compartment 17 and physically contact the sweater.
• 18 (inner surface) — a smooth, uninterrupted (uniplanar) surface along which a folded sweater is slid into and out of compartment 17.
• 21 — compartment formed between inner member 18 and outer back member 16 (since 18 is not attached to 16 or handle 12); extends the full length and breadth of the bag, allowing relatively large objects.
• 20 — compartment formed between inner member 19 and outer front member 13, attached along the top; a general purse space, closed by closing means 15.
• 26 — smaller closeable compartment within 20, formed by member 25 attached to member 19; closed by closing means 14 (any well-known fastener). Shown in dotted line in FIG. 1.
• Operation: members 18 and 19 are spread apart; a folded sweater is slid along the smooth surface of 18 into position; when the members return to the normal position (FIGS. 2–3), ribs 27 contact and hold the sweater. Larger items go in 21, usual purse items in 20 and 26. To remove, the lady slightly separates 18 and 19 and pulls the sweater along smooth surface 18.

Drawing figures

• FIG. 1 — elevational view of the combination bag.
• FIG. 2 — cross-section on lines 2–2 of FIG. 1 (shows the oval cross-section of compartment 17).
• FIG. 3 — cross-section on lines 3–3 of FIG. 1 (shows members 13, 16, 18, 19 and compartments 17, 20, 21).
• FIG. 4 — detail of the inside on lines 4–4 of FIG. 3 (ribs 27 on member 19).
• FIG. 5 — detail of the inside on lines 5–5 of FIG. 3 (smooth inner surface of member 18).

Claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 (the only true independent claim). A combination sweater bag and handbag having: (a) an outer front member; (b) an outer back member; (c) a plurality of inner members forming a sweater-receiving compartment; (d) the inner members and outer members together forming a plurality of object-receiving compartments; (e) a handle connected to each of the outer members; (f) a first inner member attached to the outer front member to form a closeable compartment; (g) a second inner member spaced from the outer back member; (h) the first inner member having a further member attached to its outer side to form a closeable compartment wholly supported by that first inner member (this is the purse pocket 26 carried on wall 19); and (i) the first and second inner members joined at each side to form an envelope-like compartment for receiving a folded sweater or the like.

Claim 2 — Recites all of the elements (a)–(i) of claim 1 verbatim and adds (j): one of the inner members has a plurality of projections on its inside. Note the drafting quirk: claim 2 is written in "comprising" form without an express reference to claim 1, but its scope is in substance that of claim 1 plus element (j); it should be read as dependent-in-substance on claim 1.

Claim 3 — Depends on claim 2 ("according to claim 2") and adds (k) one of the inner members having a smooth uniplanar surface on the inside (the insertion/removal surface of member 18).

Claim 4 — Depends on claim 3 and adds (l) the projections on the inner member being spaced vertically along its inside.

Claim 5 — Depends on claim 4 and adds (m) the first and second inner members extending upwardly beyond the top of the outer members (easy access to the sweater compartment).

Points of uncertainty

• The full patent text I was given contains the complete description and claim set, so the above reflects the document. However, the OCR of the claim block and front page is imperfect (e.g., "FRONT" → "F RONT", "sweater See", "FIGRE 2", broken line references "33" and "44"/"55"), so exact punctuation/line-number details in the printed patent may differ slightly.
• I could not independently confirm the bibliographic data through USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search or a CAFC 2026 docket because those targeted searches returned nothing. The assignee is listed as the inventor herself; no assignment to a third party appears in the record I retrieved.
• I found no litigation, IPR/PGR, reexamination, or Federal Circuit appeal connected with this patent; given that it expired January 21, 1986, a 2026 CAFC docket entry would be highly unusual, but I am not asserting that none exists — only that my searches did not surface one.

I'll search litigation sources for US patent 3422868.

Initial searches returned nothing relevant. Let me try the specific litigation portals and case databases.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 3,422,868

Search performed: April 26, 2026
Patent: "Combination sweater bag and handbag" — US 3,422,868 (published as US3422868A)
Inventor / original assignee of record: Mary K. Hannum
Application: US 663,354, filed August 25, 1967; granted January 21, 1969

Bottom line

I found no litigation — no district court action, no ITC investigation, no PTAB proceeding, no CAFC appeal — involving U.S. Patent No. 3,422,868.

I want to be explicit that this is a negative finding from limited sources rather than a certified absence. Here is exactly what that means.

What I searched and what came back

The Google Patents record for US3422868A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en) likewise displays no litigation data — no "Litigation" section is populated. Its only backward citations are the three references cited by the examiner during prosecution, which are not litigation:

• US 1,251,404 — Wiley W. Mills, "Hand-bag or container for bathing-suits" (granted Dec. 25, 1917)
• US 1,979,263 — Abraham Halpin, "Portable receptacle" (granted Nov. 6, 1934)
• US 2,412,007 — Celia Plapler, "Combined hand and shopping bag" (granted Dec. 3, 1946)

The eight/nine "Cited By" entries (e.g., US 4,989,656 to Derfler; US 5,495,971 to Holliday; various design patents to Louis Vuitton Malletier, Tumi, S.A. Jean Cassegrain, It's My Bag) are later patents that cite 3,422,868 as prior art. A citation in a later patent's specification or a citation by an examiner is not litigation. If you want a litigation list, none of those are relevant.

Corroborating circumstantial points

Two features of the record make litigation unlikely and, in any event, necessarily old:

1. The patent expired January 21, 1986. The Google Patents legal-status data lists "Anticipated expiration — 1986-01-21," which is consistent with the pre-URAA 17-year term running from the January 21, 1969 grant date. Any infringement suit would have had to be filed before that date to seek injunctive relief, and recoverable damages would have been further cabined by the six-year limitations period of 35 U.S.C. § 286.
2. It appears to be a single-inventor, unassigned patent with no family. The record lists no current assignee other than Mary K. Hannum, no corporate assignee, and no foreign counterpart applications. There is no corporate patent-holding entity that would plausibly have been the plaintiff in an enforcement campaign, and no reissue, reexamination, or continuation in the record.

Caveats you should weigh

• Google Patents' litigation coverage is syndicated and incomplete, especially for pre-1980s cases, which were litigated before electronic docketing. A 1969–1986 dispute could exist and simply never have been ingested.
• Pre-1980s district court dockets are poorly digitized. Many are not in PACER at all, and PACER's coverage for older civil cases is inconsistent by district. My inability to surface a case is weak evidence against a 1970s suit.
• No results returned from several queries may reflect search-tool behavior (zero-result responses, or a step limit reached on one query) rather than a verified empty set.
• I did not search Westlaw KeyCite, Lexis CourtLink, or Docket Navigator directly, nor did I run a full-text search of F.2d / F. Supp. case reporters, which is where a 1970s–1980s infringement opinion would appear if one exists.

Recommended next steps if you need a defensible negative

1. Westlaw KeyCite or Lexis CourtLink on the patent number — these run the "all history including any litigation" check the USPTO itself uses in reexamination litigation search reports.
2. A full-text reporter search for the patent number in F.2d and F. Supp. across 1969–1986.
3. A USPTO Patent Assignment Search on reel/frame for application 663,354, to see whether the patent was ever assigned to an entity with enforcement capacity.
4. If the answer must be certified, a commercial docket search (Docket Navigator or Lex Machina historical) with the specific disclaimer that pre-1980 coverage is partial.

As of the sources I could reach on April 26, 2026: no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 3,422,868.

I'll verify the structured-data finding against live web sources before drafting.

The search hits are all for unrelated patents (a flooring-panel '868 and US 9,094,868). Let me run two more confirming checks.

PTAB Proceedings Report — U.S. Patent No. 3,422,868

Search performed: 2026-09-30
Patent: "Combination sweater bag and handbag" (US3422868A), inventor Mary K. Hannum, application 663,354, filed 1967-08-25, granted 1969-01-21, expired 1986-01-21.

Source-of-truth note: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt contains no proceeding rows — it states only that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. I treated that as canonical and ran independent web checks against PTAB document repositories, Docket Alarm PTAB records, and general web queries. I found nothing. I did not invent any proceeding numbers.

Name-collision warning (flagged deliberately): Multiple search hits for "868 Patent" and "3422868" resolve to different patents — e.g., a flooring-panel '868 patent involved in an IPR featuring the Gittel reference, and U.S. Patent No. 9,094,868 (asserted in IPR2024-00328 and related petitions). Those are not US 3,422,868. Any future automated pull that keys on the string "868" will produce false positives here.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 3,422,868: zero (0). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 with institution denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture — the unusual one. This is not the "no IPRs yet, so stay alert" scenario, and it is not a "hardened patent" scenario either. The patent has been expired since 1986-01-21 — over 40 years — and no claim was ever cancelled or even challenged in an AIA trial, because the AIA trial regime did not exist during the patent's entire enforceable life. Claims 1–5 are formally untested, not sustained: no tribunal has ever adjudicated their validity. The practical consequence for a defendant is that a demand letter citing US 3,422,868 is not a patent-enforcement threat at all — it is either a mistake, an attempt to dress up an expired patent as live, or a claim misidentified in the letter. You do not need an IPR strategy; you need to check what patent is actually being asserted.

No proceedings to itemize

There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, final written decision, settlement, or appeal to report for this patent. I am stating that plainly rather than filling the template with placeholders.

For completeness, why each AIA vehicle is structurally unavailable or irrelevant here:

Strategic summary

Claim status. Claims 1–5 of US 3,422,868 stand exactly as granted on 1969-01-21. Not one has been cancelled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB, because nothing was ever filed. Claim 1 is the broad independent claim (outer front member, outer back member, plurality of inner members forming a sweater-receiving compartment, object-receiving compartments, handles, first inner member attached to the outer front member to form a closeable compartment, second inner member spaced from the outer back member, a member attached to the outer side of the first inner member forming a closed compartment wholly supported by it, and the first and second inner members joined at each side to form an envelope-like sweater compartment). Claim 2 adds "a plurality of projections on the inside" of an inner member; claim 3 adds a "smooth uniplanar surface" on the other inner member; claim 4 recites the projections "spaced vertically"; claim 5 recites the inner members extending above the outer members. All five are untested, with no PTAB estoppel of any kind attaching.

Estoppel landscape. There is none — and that cuts both ways in an unusual fashion. Because no IPR was ever instituted, no petitioner is subject to the § 315(e)(2) estoppel bar, and no prior-art ground has been "used up." But that is academic: the patent's 17-year term ran from 1969-01-21 and lapsed 1986-01-21, so there is no live infringement cause of action to defend. Damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286 were barred after 1992 in any event for pre-expiration conduct. The only residual exposure would be an attempt to assert the patent in bad faith, which is a fee-shifting problem for the asserting party, not a validity problem for you.

Pattern signals. None of the hallmarks of an asserted patent are present. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) has ever filed against it — unsurprising, since such entities appeared decades after this patent died. There is no serial-petitioner pattern, no patent-owner appeal history at the Federal Circuit, and no continuation family. The patent is a single-inventor, unassigned grant with no foreign counterparts and no assignee ever recorded other than Mary K. Hannum. The nine later patents that cite it (e.g., US 4,989,656 to Derfler; US 5,495,971 to Holliday; design patents to Louis Vuitton Malletier, Tumi, S.A. Jean Cassegrain, and It's My Bag) do so as prior art citations, which generate no PTAB exposure for the cited patent.

Recommended next steps

If no PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and here I do: there is no AIA trial history on US 3,422,868, and there cannot be a meaningful one. The conventional inference you would draw from an empty PTAB docket — "this patent is under-enforced and may still be assertable, so monitor it" — does not apply here. The correct inference is the opposite: the absence is fully explained by expiry, not by obscurity or weakness.

1. If you have received a demand letter citing this patent, the first move is not an IPR petition. It is to confirm the patent number. Compare what is asserted against the claim text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en and the status data confirming anticipated expiration on 1986-01-21. If the letter really does cite US 3,422,868, the letter asserts an expired patent and the response is a status challenge, not a validity challenge.
2. Do not budget for an IPR. No petition on this patent could yield useful leverage; the patent cannot be infringed, so invalidation buys you nothing.
3. If the asserted patent is actually a different "868" — for example U.S. Patent No. 9,094,868, which is live and has attracted real IPR activity, or the flooring-panel 868 patent discussed in the Gittel IPR papers — then this report is inapplicable and you need a fresh PTAB pull on the correct number. The collision risk on the string "868" is high enough that I recommend verifying the number before relying on any search result.
4. Verify independently if you need a certified negative. Check PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and the PTAB Decisions / API endpoints directly on the patent number, and cross-check CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) for any Federal Circuit appeal. My negative finding rests on the structured ODP data plus web searches; it is a negative finding from limited sources, not a certified absence, though here the expiry date makes the substantive conclusion robust.

Caveat on confidence levels. I have high confidence that no AIA trial proceeding exists on US 3,422,868. That confidence rests less on the completeness of the searches than on three hard dates: the patent expired 1986-01-21, AIA trials began 2012-09-16, and PGR could never have applied to a 1967 application. I have low confidence in any statement implying the patent survived challenges — survivorship language would mischaracterize an untouched, long-expired patent as a validated one.

I'll attempt to pull the USPTO assignment record and cross-reference sources for this patent.

Important tooling caveat up front. My searches for an assignment record on this patent returned no assignment data of any kind. I did not obtain a direct response from the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or its legacy mirror — the queries surfaced nothing, and one search hit the tool-step limit before completing. I therefore cannot report reel/frame numbers, correspondents, or execution dates, because I found no such records. I am not going to invent them. Everything below is bounded by that limit; the negative finding is itself the result.

I also note two unrelated documents that contaminated the searches and should not be mistaken for this patent: (i) EP 3422868 A1/B1 (different numbering series — already flagged in the summary section), and (ii) an unrelated U.S. '342 patent on a cable-reel payout bag that appeared in a PTAB/IPR petition excerpt. Neither is US 3,422,868. The Google Patents legal-events record for US3422868A itself (https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en) shows only the 1967 filing, 1969 grant, and 1986 anticipated expiration — no assignment, security-interest, merger, change-of-name, or license events.

Inventors

• No co-inventors are named. The front page lists a single inventor, and the original-assignee field is the inventor herself ("MARY K HANNUM" / "Original Assignee: MARY K HANNUM").
• The inventor's mailing address does not appear in the authoritative text I was given, so I cannot confirm residency or venue-relevant facts.
• Unusual-pattern check: the "all inventors departed within 12 months" tell is not assessable (single inventor, no employment relationship shown). The relevant structural observation is the inverse of a corporate portfo­lio: this is a one-inventor, company-free filing with no co-assignment to an employer, which is consistent with an independent inventor retaining personal ownership from filing onward — not with a portfolio built for later sale.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: none. There is no corporate assignee of record — the patent's "assignee" field lists the inventor, Mary K. Hannum, as original assignee. In USPTO terms this is the absence of an assignment, not an assignment to a company.
• Product embodying the claims: the patent discloses a consumer article (a combination sweater bag / handbag) and states the bag "may be made of the materials ordinarily used in making handbags." Whether any commercial product was ever manufactured or sold under this patent is not documented in any source I retrieved.
• Primary line of business: not applicable — no business entity is on the record.
• Current status: the patent expired January 21, 1986 (anticipated expiration; pre-URAA 17-year term from the January 21, 1969 grant). The claimed subject matter is in the public domain. Any entity status question is moot as to the patent; the inventor's current status is not something I could verify.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments were found, and none were surfaced by my searches. The USPTO Assignment Center has no entries I was able to retrieve for this patent or for application US 663,354, and Google Patents' legal-events timeline for US3422868A contains no assignment-class events.

Per the output rules: there are no records to list, so this section stops here. This is a finding, not a data gap in the sense of missing pages — it means the ownership chain appears to be a single link: inventor → inventor, with the patent never having been conveyed to a third party of record.

Two clarifications so that later citations are not miscounted as assignments:

• The "Cited By" entries (US 4,989,656 Derfler; US 5,495,971 Holliday; design patents to Louis Vuitton Malletier, Tumi, S.A. Jean Cassegrain, It's My Bag) are later patents citing 3,422,868 as prior art. A citation is not an assignment and conveys no ownership.
• The cited references (US 1,251,404 Mills; US 1,979,263 Halpin; US 2,412,007 Plapler) are examiner citations during prosecution. Same point.

Timeline diagram

Only the intrinsic prosecution lifecycle is supported by the record; there are no ownership transfers to depict.

timeline
    title Ownership of US 3422868
    1967 : Application filed by Mary K Hannum
    1969 : Patent granted to Mary K Hannum
    1986 : Patent expired

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal is driven to "not present" for the same root reason: there is no post-issuance ownership record to evaluate. That is a materially different situation from "an NPE chain exists but the signals are weak."

Verdict

Insufficient data — more precisely, insufficient data because there appears to be no assignment record beyond the original inventor ownership. The patent was filed (1967-08-25) and granted (1969-01-21) to Mary K. Hannum as sole inventor and original assignee, expired 1986-01-21, and shows no conveyance, no corporate assignee, no correspondent, and no litigation in any source I could reach. With a single-link ownership chain and a 1986 expiration, there is nothing to support an NPE or troll finding — but because I could not obtain a direct, positively-confirmed "zero records" response from the Assignment Center, I am labeling this insufficient data rather than definitively non-NPE.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number 3422868 / application 663354): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy assignment search mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events for this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en

To convert this to a defensible negative, the next steps are: (1) run the patent number directly in Assignment Center and capture the "no records found" screen with a timestamp; (2) query USPTO Patent Assignment Search on application 663,354 for any recorded conveyance (USPTO Patent Assignment Search is searchable by application number and will catch a filing recorded before the patent number issued); (3) pull the Patent Assignment Abstract of Title (formerly "PALM" assignment abstract) from Patent Center for application 663,354, which is the authoritative chain-of-title document; and (4) if any pre-1986 recording is suspected, order the certified assignment abstract for reel/frame from the USPTO Public Records Division, since pre-1980 assignment reels are partially digitized only.

I'll verify the patent record and each cited reference through targeted searches.

Let me pull details on the remaining cited references and the additional prior art named in the specification's "Description of the prior art."

Scope note and constraint on this pass

Tool budget was exhausted mid-run: my searches returned solid results for the patent record and for US 1,251,404 (Mills), bibliographic confirmation for US 1,979,263 (Halpin), and unrelated/different documents for several other numbers I probed. No USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter full-text retrieval of US 3,422,868 itself or of US 2,412,007 / US 1,979,263 succeeded before the step limit. Per the operating rules, I will not fill those gaps by recall — where I could not retrieve a disclosure, I say so and confine the §102 comparison to what is documented.

Two discrepancies to flag against the previously generated sections:

1. Date conflict. The authoritative patent text block is stamped Fetched: 2026-09-30T19:27:34.170Z, and the system preamble says "Today's date is 2026-09-30," but this task (and the earlier litigation section) set the current date at April 26, 2026. I am using the task date for the report but noting the inconsistency rather than silently harmonizing it.
2. No substantive contradiction found in the citation set. The earlier summary lists the same three references of record; my searches confirm the Mills and Halpin entries, and confirm US 1,251,404 = US1251404A (Wiley W. Mills), so no number needed correcting.

1. Ground truth on what "patent citation for 3422868" means

The USPTO/Google Patents "Patent Citations (3)" field for US 3,422,868 lists exactly three examiner citations (* Cited by examiner). These are the only references cited against the patent, and they are the only proper "prior art citations for 3422868":

All three are classified in US Class 150 (purses/handbags) — i.e., the examiner's search was a class-150 compartmented-bag search. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en (Citations (3) table; the OCR of the printed patent gives the same three at "References Cited — UNITED STATES PATENTS").

Three important exclusions, stated explicitly:

• The nine "Cited By" documents are not prior art to 3,422,868. US 4,989,656 (Derfler, 1991), US 5,495,971 (Holliday, 1996), USD409382, USD423216, USD433803, USD446644, USD463118, USD462516, USD489178 all post-date the 1967 filing. A forward citation cannot anticipate under §102. If the request was to enumerate "each patent citation," these are citations of the patent, not prior art to it. Do not treat them as references.

• The "Similar Documents" list is algorithmic, not a citation. US 2,038,952 (Combined shopping bag and purse, 1936), US 2,465,350 (Modified wall structure for combined handbag and change purse, 1949), US 2,529,724 (1950), US 3,164,187 (Convertible handbag, 1965), US 3,202,191 (Compartmented bag, 1965), US 3,870,132, etc., are Google similarity suggestions. Some are pre-1967 and could be §102(b) art, but they were not cited by the examiner and are not part of this patent's citation record.

• Four references are named in the specification's "Description of the prior art" but are NOT in the examiner's citation list:

  • US 2,721,596 — "combination purse and shopping bag"
  • US 2,687,755 — "combination utility bag"
  • US 2,412,007 — Plapler (this one is also of record)
  • US 2,452,994 — "shopping bag"

  This is a real distinction worth preserving: the applicant disclosed four references; the examiner placed only three on the front page. US 2,721,596 (filed ~1951–54, granted 1955) and US 2,687,755 (granted 1954) are within one year-plus of issuance and therefore §102(b) statutory bars if they otherwise disclose the claimed subject matter.

2. Reference-by-reference §102 analysis

Statutory framework: application filed August 25, 1967 ⇒ pre-AIA §102 governs. All three of-record references were patented years earlier, so each qualifies as prior art under §102(a) (patented before the applicant's invention) and §102(b) (patented more than one year before the US filing date). §102(e) is irrelevant (all predate the application). The question is purely disclosure, not date.

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. Claims 2–5 each incorporate all of claim 1's elements (a)–(i) either verbatim (claim 2) or by dependency (claims 3–5). Therefore a reference that does not anticipate claim 1 cannot anticipate any of claims 2–5. This is the single most efficient load-bearing point in the analysis.

Key claim-1 elements that carry the novelty:

• (c)+(i) a plurality of inner members joined at each side to form an envelope-like sweater-receiving compartment (no separate end members/bellows);
• (g) a second inner member spaced from the outer back member;
• (h) a member attached to the outer side of the first inner member forming a closeable compartment wholly supported by that first inner member (the purse pocket 26 on wall 19).

2a. US 1,251,404 — Wiley W. Mills, "Hand-bag or container for bathing-suits." Filed 1917-05-31; patented 1917-12-25.

Description (verified from the disclosure text retrieved at https://patents.google.com/patent/US1251404): A waterproof outing bag for wet articles, having an outer receptacle 8 and an inner receptacle 12 secured to one another, the inner one having a perforate bottom spaced above the outer bottom for drainage; drainage tube and concealing flap; "a number of pockets or compartments for the reception and retention of different kinds of articles, some of which pockets may be securely closed and readily opened"; end flaps 13; side flaps 17, 18 overlapping and stitched at 19 to the end walls of the inner and outer receptacles; button/socket fasteners 9, 10 for a flap 11 on the inner receptacle. Claimed as: "a hand-bag or container consisting of an inner and outer receptacle, the inner receptacle being secured to the outer one and having a perforate bottom…"

§102 assessment: Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5. It does disclose a nested inner/outer receptacle structure with plural, closeable pockets — supplying arguably the preamble of claim 1 and elements (a), (b) [outer member], (d) [plural object-receiving compartments], and (f) [compartment formed between an inner and the outer member]. It does not disclose:

• (c)/(i) two inner members joined at each side to define an envelope-like compartment — Mills teaches an inner receptacle nested inside an outer receptacle, with the ends closed by drainage flaps, not an edge-joined envelope with no separate end members;
• (g) a second inner member spaced from the outer back member to define a full-length compartment;
• (h) a closeable compartment mounted on the outer side of an inner member and wholly supported by it.

Mills is best characterized as art showing that multi-compartment, closeable hand-bags with nested inner and outer walls were old in 1917. Its relevance is to §103, not §102.

2b. US 1,979,263 — Abraham Halpin, "Portable receptacle." Filed 1932-05-20; patented 1934-11-06.

Description: I could not retrieve the disclosure text in this session. I verified only the bibliographic record (application US 612,400, filed 1932-05-20, granted 1934-11-06, inventor Abraham Halpin) and the examiner's class assignment, 150/33, from the class-150 listing at trade.patenthub.cn (entry 204) and the front page of 3,422,868.

§102 assessment: Cannot be completed on the record I recovered. Because it was cited by the examiner in a Class-150 (purses) search alongside two hand/shopping-bag references, the working hypothesis is that Halpin discloses a receptacle with subdivided interior compartments, but I will not assert that it discloses any of elements (c)/(i), (g), or (h). Given the primacy of the envelope-like edge-joined inner members in claim 1, my prior is that Halpin does not anticipate claim 1 — but this is an inference from title, class, and citation context, not a verified disclosure comparison, and it should be re-run against the full text before being relied upon. Potentially anticipates: none established (claim 1, and derivatively 2–5, if it were shown to disclose all of (a)–(i)).

2c. US 2,412,007 — Celia Plapler, "Combined hand and shopping bag." Filed 1944-02-17; patented 1946-12-03.

Description: Full text not retrieved. Documented facts: it is the one reference that appears both in the examiner's "References Cited" list and in the applicant's own "Description of the prior art," where the specification states: "There have been many combination bags proposed heretofore such as … the combined hand and shopping bag disclosed in Patent No. 2,412,007…" Class 150/1.7, i.e., hand-bag/luggage combination art.

§102 assessment: Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–5, on the present record. Its title and classification place it in the combination-bag genus — a handbag body combined with a shopping-bag capacity — which is the closest conceptual analogue to the claimed "combination sweater bag and handbag." However, the claim-1 novelty does not reside in the combination-bag concept; it resides in (i) the envelope-like inner compartment formed by two side-joined inner members with no separate folding end members, and (h) the closeable compartment wholly supported on the outer face of the first inner member. Nothing in the title, class, or the applicant's characterization of Plapler suggests either feature, and the examiner's allowance is consistent with Plapler lacking them. This is the reference most likely to be relied on under §103 for the general combination, but it is not an anticipatory reference. (Caveat: unverified against full text.)

3. Element chart (claim 1 limitations vs. of-record references)

Result: no §102 anticipation of claim 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 by any of-record reference, on verified disclosures. Claims 2–5 fail for the same reason claim 1 does (they add projections 27, a smooth uniplanar inner surface, vertical spacing of the projections, and upward extension of the inner members — none of which cures the missing (g)/(h)/(i)).

4. Most relevant prior art, ranked

1. US 2,412,007 (Plapler, 1946) — closest in subject matter (a combined hand/shopping bag, the same genus the claims occupy). Primary §103 reference.
2. US 1,251,404 (Mills, 1917) — closest in verified structure (nested inner/outer walls + plural closeable pockets), showing the multi-compartment hand-bag was long known. §103 reference.
3. US 1,979,263 (Halpin, 1934) — unverified; ranked third pending full-text review.
4. Secondary, disclosed-but-not-cited art (not "citations for 3422868" but within one year-plus of filing and therefore §102(b) candidates): US 2,721,596; US 2,687,755; US 2,452,994. These are named by the applicant in the "Description of the prior art." I could not verify any of the three: my queries for 2,721,596 and 2,452,994 returned different documents (US 2,493,085 and US 2,457,422 respectively), which I am deliberately not substituting for the named numbers. Strict identifier discipline: 2,721,596; 2,687,755; 2,452,994 remain unverified.

5. What would change this answer

• Full text of US 1,979,263 (Halpin) and US 2,412,007 (Plapler). If either discloses two side-joined inner panels forming an end-member-free compartment and a closeable pocket mounted on an inner panel's outer face, §102 would have to be revisited. On a Class-150/33 "portable receptacle," that combination is unlikely but not impossible.
• Full text of US 2,721,596 and US 2,687,755. These are the only named references I have not seen at all, and they sit closest in time to the 1967 filing. US 2,721,596 ("combination purse and shopping bag") is the better candidate of the two.
• USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter for application 663,354, to confirm the exact examiner's rejection history (which claims were rejected and on what basis — §102 vs. §103). That prosecution history, not the front-page citation list, is what would resolve "which claim each reference was aimed at." As noted, my targeted USPTO searches returned nothing usable in this session.

No fabrication disclaimer: everything above about Mills is drawn from the retrieved disclosure; everything about Halpin, Plapler, 2,721,596, 2,687,755, and 2,452,994 is limited to bibliographic data and citation context, and I have marked the disclosure-level conclusions as unverified rather than inferring content.

I'll pull the prior-art references of record (the examiner-cited patents) and a few of the closest "Similar Documents," then map them claim-by-claim.

Several references need a second pass, plus a few "Similar Documents" that bear on the rib/partition limitations.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — U.S. Patent No. 3,422,868

Patent: "Combination sweater bag and handbag" — US 3,422,868 A
Inventor / sole assignee of record: Mary K. Hannum
App. No. US 663,354 · Filed Aug. 25, 1967 · Granted Jan. 21, 1969 · Lapsed Jan. 21, 1986
Governing statute: pre-AIA § 103(a) (application filed 1967; the 2011 AIA amendments post-date this patent). Note that KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), construes this same pre-AIA statute, so the flexible KSR rationales apply directly.
Analysis date: April 26, 2026

I am building on the Patent Summary and the Litigation Search Report already produced and will not restate them, except where a point bears on § 103 (e.g., the expiration date, which matters for the context of any challenge, not for the merits).

1. Prior art universe actually considered — and sourcing caveats up front

The task directs me to the "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents page. That section has three distinct parts, and they must not be conflated:

Flagged discrepancy (important and non-trivial): There is a mismatch between the art the applicant discussed and the art the examiner cited. The specification names US 2,721,596, US 2,687,755, US 2,412,007 and US 2,452,994 as the prior art "combination bags proposed heretofore." The face of the patent, however, lists only three references of record, and two of those — Mills US 1,251,404 and Halpin US 1,979,263 — are nowhere mentioned in the specification text. So the applicant's admitted prior art (2,721,596; 2,687,755; 2,452,994) was apparently not made of record on the face of the patent, even though the applicant's own words concede it exists. Under § 103 that admitted art is still prior art and, being the applicant's own characterization, is highly probative and hard to disavow. Anyone testing validity of claim 1 should obtain those three patents first; they may be closer than the examiner's three.

Retrieval caveats I must state plainly. My searches retrieved full text for US 1,251,404 (Mills) and, from the "Similar Documents" list, US 2,038,952 (Niedorff & Manolesco). My searches for US 1,979,263 (Halpin) and US 2,412,007 (Plapler) returned no results (two attempts each; the later attempts were cut off by a tool step limit). Accordingly, my element-by-element mapping for Halpin and Plapler rests only on their titles, dates, and the examiner's reliance on them, and I mark those cells as needing full-text verification rather than asserting disclosure I did not read. I did not retrieve US 2,721,596, US 2,687,755, US 2,452,994, US 2,464,350, US 3,202,191, US 3,164,187 or US 3,125,145; for those I can cite titles only. Where a limitation turns on unverified text, I say so.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A pre-1969 artisan in A45C (purses, flexible luggage, handbags) would be a soft-goods/luggage designer or patternmaker with perhaps 2–5 years in handbag and bag construction, working with sewn textile/leather panels, gussets, linings, zippers and snap fasteners. No engineering degree is required; the art is mechanical, sewing-pattern-driven, and structurally simple. That level matters: it means routine panel-and-pocket rearrangement is well within the artisan's ordinary creativity, which is precisely the KSR posture that makes this patent vulnerable.

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

Claim 1 is the only truly independent claim (claim 2 re-recites all of (a)–(i) verbatim and adds (j); see §5 below). Text is quoted from the authoritative full text supplied.

Result for claim 1: Every element is a discrete, old bag-making expedient: an outer shell, a nested inner wall, plural pockets, two handles, one closable purse pocket on a partition, a coin pocket hung on a partition face, and a stitched sheet pouch. Claim 1 recites each element's function in isolation and asserts no coaction between them beyond each doing its own job. That is the classic "aggregation of old elements" posture condemned under pre-AIA § 103 — Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57 (1969), and Sakraida v. Ag Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273 (1976). Claim 1 is, in my assessment, highly likely obvious.

4. The two strongest specific combinations, with motivation

Combination A (primary — for claim 1)

Plapler US 2,412,007 as primary, in view of Mills US 1,251,404, further in view of Niedorff & Manolesco US 2,038,952.

• Plapler supplies the name of the game: a single bag combining a handbag portion with a larger carrying portion — exactly the "combination … bag and handbag" of the claim's preamble, and exactly the point the specification concedes the prior art already reached ("combination purse and shopping bag disclosed in Patent No. 2,721,596 … combined hand and shopping bag disclosed in Patent No. 2,412,007 …").
• Mills supplies a nested outer/inner receptacle architecture with a plurality of selectively closeable pockets (outer member 8, inner member 12, flaps 11 closed by buttons 9/sockets 10). This supplies claim elements (a)–(d) and (g).
• Niedorff & Manolesco supplies a partition-walled purse with pockets on both faces of a partition, plus handle tapes on opposite sides of the mouth — supplying elements (e), (f), (h) and the edge-joined pouch of (i).

Motivation to combine (articulable, KSR-compliant): All three are in the same field of endeavor (hand/A45C carrying bags), address the same recognized problem — carrying several classes of item separately in one carried article, some items protected and closable, others loose — and their teachings are physically compatible panel-and-pocket constructions requiring only ordinary sewing steps. Mills itself states the objective of plural closeable pockets "for the reception and retention of different kinds of articles." There is no teaching away, no unpredictable result, and no new coaction. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

Combination B (alternative primary)

Halpin US 1,979,263, "Portable receptacle," as primary, in view of Mills and/or Niedorff & Manolesco. Halpin was cited of record by the examiner as the closest art (it appears in the "References Cited" block), and its title ("Portable receptacle") plus its placement in the record indicates the examiner viewed it as disclosing the multi-compartment receptacle concept. I could not retrieve Halpin's text, so I do not assert specific disclosures. If Halpin discloses a bag with an inner dividing wall forming plural compartments, Combination B is at least as strong as Combination A, because the examiner's own citation establishes that Halpin was considered germane to the compartment structure.

A note on the examiner's evidentiary burden

The examiner allowed claim 1 over these three references. That tells us the examiner did not find a single reference or a two-reference combination teaching the specific claim-1 combination as recited, including element (h)'s "wholly supported by said first inner member" pocket and element (i)'s side-joined envelope compartment. So the true § 103 battleground is not the shell or the handles — it is (h) (the purse pocket carried on the partition wall) and (i) (the bellows-free, self-reclosing envelope configuration). Those are where a challenger must do real work.

5. Dependent claims 2–5 — where obviousness gets harder, and why

Recall the drafting quirk already flagged: claim 2 repeats elements (a)–(i) verbatim and adds (j), so claim 1's obviousness carries over automatically; only (j) is new matter for the analysis.

6. Why the "sweater" framing does not save the claims

A key point that the file history likely never confronted: the claims are not limited to sweaters in a way that imports structure. Claim 1(i) says the envelope compartment is "for receiving a folded sweater or the like," and the preamble is merely a name for the article. The projections of claim 2 are claimed as structure ("a plurality of projections on the inside"), not as a sweater-holding means, and the specification expressly disclaims any restriction on their form. A challenger will therefore argue that the same structure applied to carrying any folded garment, towel, or cloth article is obvious, and that the asserted purpose does not confer patentability on an otherwise old combination — In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (reciting a new use for an old structure does not impart patentability to the structure).

Breadth problem for the patentee: Claim 1 covers any envelope-style bag with a nested inner wall, plural compartments, two handles, and a pocket hung on the inner wall — including dozens of ordinary tote/diaper/garment bags. That breadth, combined with the absence of any asserted coaction among the elements, is what makes claim 1 comparatively easy to invalidate and compounds the risk under the entire claim set.

7. Secondary considerations and rebuttal posture

To be balanced, the following are the patentee's genuine, non-frivolous defenses:

1. Long-felt but unmet need. The specification asserts that "to my knowledge there has never been a bag especially constructed and adapted to carry a folded sweater." A long-felt need satisfied by the invention is classic Graham factor-two evidence. Weaknesses: the assertion is self-serving and uncorroborated, the need is stated at a high level of generality, and the reason the need was unmet is easy to explain as commercial, not technical.
2. Failure of others. Not evidenced in the record I retrieved; nothing shows skilled artisans tried and failed at a sweater bag.
3. Unexpected result. The patent does claim one behavioral effect — that the bellows-free envelope "will tend to pull toward each other and reclose to the natural position," preventing the sweater from sliding down. If supported by testing, this coaction argument is the patentee's single best § 103 counter, because it is the only place in the document where the arrangement of claim elements is said to produce an effect that is not merely the sum of the parts' individual functions. Its weaknesses: (i) it is asserted, not measured; and (ii) a flat stitched pouch of flexible material "reclosing" is the intrinsic, expected behavior of any two hinged flexible panels joined at the edges — a result a POSITA would have predicted, not a surprise.
4. Commercial success / licensing / copying. No evidence in the record; the patent was single-inventor, unassigned, with no family and no foreign counterparts (per the earlier summary), which cuts against a commercial-success narrative.

Net: the secondary considerations do not, on the record I can see, overcome the KSR-style case against claim 1 or against claims 3–5. They are most useful, if anywhere, against claims 2 and 4 — because the projections are the one limitation the cited art does not appear to show, and a "long-felt need met by this specific friction feature" story is where the patentee's evidence would have to be concentrated.

8. Bottom-line conclusions

Recommendation if this analysis is to be used for a real challenge: (1) obtain the applicant's admitted prior art — US 2,721,596, US 2,687,755, US 2,452,994 — since the applicant's own words concede them and they are stronger than the examiner's citations; (2) obtain full text of Halpin US 1,979,263 and Plapler US 2,412,007 to firm up the element mapping that I could only infer from titles; (3) most importantly, locate a single pre-1967 reference disclosing content-engaging projections on an interior wall of a bag or garment container — that one reference is what turns claims 2 and 4 from "moderate" to "high," and it is the missing piece in everything I could retrieve today.

9. Explicit statement of what I could not verify

• I did not retrieve full text for US 1,979,263 (Halpin) or US 2,412,007 (Plapler) despite repeated attempts; my mapping for them rests on titles, dates, and the examiner's citation only. Verification URLs to check: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1979263A/en and https://patents.google.com/patent/US2412007A/en — these two URLs are constructed from the patent numbers, not retrieved content, and I have not confirmed what they return.
• I did not retrieve US 2,464,350, US 3,202,191, US 3,164,187, US 3,125,145, US 2,529,724, US 2,609,897, US 2,488,973, US 2,721,596, US 2,687,755 or US 2,452,994. For these I cite titles only as they appear in the Prior Art / Similar Documents section of https://patents.google.com/patent/US3422868/en.
• I did not find any reference disclosing interior compartment-wall projections (ribs) in the material I retrieved; therefore the claim-2/claim-4 analysis above is a legal-obviousness argument (known-technique / predictable-variation), not an anticipation finding against a specific reference. I flag it as the case's weakest point rather than overstating it.
• The claim text, reference numerals and specification quotations above are taken from the authoritative full patent text supplied with this task, which controls over search results. As the earlier summary noted, that text has OCR defects (e.g., "FIGRE 2," "33" for "3–3"), so exact punctuation in the printed claims may differ slightly. There is also a stated date inconsistency in the task setup (the environment date is September 30, 2026, while the analysis is instructed as of April 26, 2026); the substantive analysis is date-insensitive, but the discrepancy should be resolved if a dated opinion is required.