US 5511149

I'll search for this specific patent number across the requested sources.

US 5,511,149 — Verified Summary

Source grounding: patent full text was supplied in the prompt (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑24) and my live searches corroborated it against patents.justia.com/patent/5511149, freepatentsonline.com, everypatent.com, and the family member document EP0522864B1 (patentimages). I did not obtain an authenticated USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR record or a CAFC docket record — see the caveats at the end.

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1. Bibliographic data (as recorded)

Literal‑identifier caution: searching the bare string "5511149" also returns JP5511149B2 (a 2014 Japanese granted patent, publication 2014.6.4, unrelated subject matter). That is a different document from US 5,511,149 and is not part of this family. I have not merged the two.

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2. Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"A printer emulator having a function of emulating different types of printers which operate respective operation modes. The emulator is operable according to print data in a selected one of the operation modes of the printers, and includes a print data memory for storing the print data consisting of at least one job unit each representative of a printing job. The print data include at least one mode-determinative code which determines an effective operation mode for each job unit of the print data. The emulator further includes a unit detecting device for detecting each job unit of the print data, a mode determining device for determining the effective operation mode for each job unit of the print data, on the basis of the mode-determinative code or codes, and a printing device for performing the printing job according to each job unit of the print data in the effective operation mode determined by the mode determining device."

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3. Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 12 claims. Claims 1, 2, 3 and 4 are independent; claims 5–12 depend from claim 1 (claim 10 is drafted as a network claim but still references claim 1).

Claim 1 — the base "detect job unit → pick mode → print in that mode" claim

A printer emulator that can impersonate several different printer types, each with its own operation mode. It contains:

• a print data memory holding print data made of multiple job units (each job unit = one printing job), where the data stream carries control codes including at least one mode-determinative code (the code that fixes which operation mode that job runs in);
• those control codes must also include several unit-determinative codes that mark off the job units, and those unit-determinative codes must be at least one of: (i) a combination of control codes whose number exceeds a predetermined value, or (ii) a combination of control codes that appear in the data in a predetermined order;
• unit detecting means that finds each job unit using those unit-determinative codes;
• mode determining means that, after a job unit has been detected, uses the mode-determinative code to decide the effective operation mode for that job unit; and
• printing means that executes each job unit in the mode so decided.

The point of novelty: mode is re-decided per job unit, so a batch containing jobs written for different printers is not all printed in the mode chosen for the first job.

Claim 2 — base claim + ambiguity resolution + timeout

Everything in claim 1, plus:

• the mode determining means resolves the mode when the code suffices to single out one of several candidate modes;
• compulsory mode selection means that picks one of the still‑remaining candidate modes by a predetermined rule when the codes only narrow the choice to several candidates but cannot narrow it to one; and
• time measuring means that times how long the mode determining means has been working and triggers the compulsory selection when that time exceeds a predetermined limit (the specification's worked example is a 4‑second interruption routine; the priority order illustrated is mode "0" first, then "2", then "1").

Claim 3 — base claim with "combination‑of‑codes" definitions on both sides

Everything in claim 1, but the "combination" characterisation is applied to the mode‑determinative codes as well as the unit‑determinative codes: the plural mode‑determinative codes must be at least one of (i) a combination of control codes numbering more than a first predetermined value, or (ii) a combination appearing in a first predetermined order; and the plural unit‑determinative codes must be at least one of (i) a combination numbering more than a second predetermined value, or (ii) a combination appearing in a second predetermined order. (Note it says "a plurality of mode‑determinative codes" — i.e., this claim requires more than one.)

Claim 4 — claim 3's "combination" definitions plus claim 2's candidate/timeout machinery

Combines the double‑combination definitions of claim 3 with the candidate‑mode determination, the compulsory mode selection means under a predetermined rule, the time measuring means + predetermined limit, and the printing means.

Dependent claims 5–12 (brief)

• 5 — control codes are successive character codes, and the mode‑determinative code is only part of them (the spec's example: the first two characters following ESC).
• 6 — control codes are multiple groups of character codes, and the mode‑determinative code is parts selected from those groups.
• 7 — the mode determining means is built from code detecting means, control code memory means (the three code tables 41a/41b/41c per mode), and code comparing means.
• 8 — alarm means that warns the operator when the detected mode‑determinative code matches none of the stored codes.
• 9 — the printing means is dot‑matrix printing means.
• 10 — a network: the emulator of claim 1 plus a plurality of computers feeding it batches of print data for printing in the respective operation modes.
• 11 — the print data memory stores the plurality of job units before detection/determination starts (buffered batch).
• 12 — the print data memory receives job units while detection/determination are running after power‑on (streaming).

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4. Technical content context (from the specification)

• Environment: a laser printer with a polygon‑mirror scanning device; resolution selectable among 240, 300 and 400 DPI; scanner motor, main motor, and laser drivers under a control device (engine controller 34, video controller 36, CPU 38, ROM 40, RAM 42).
• The ROM holds a code table memory 41 with three tables 41a/41b/41c for operation modes "0", "1", "2"; detected two‑character mode codes are compared against each table (FIG. 4), and non‑matching modes are struck from a candidate list (steps S17–S25). If one candidate survives → that's the mode (S27/S33). If all are struck → mode error (S31). If several survive after a 4‑second limit → compulsory selection by priority (S41, FIG. 5 interruption routine).
• Job units are delimited by a JOB END unit‑determinative code; the spec says this may instead be a paper‑eject command, a printer‑reset command, a job start code, or combinations/count/order‑based criteria. It also notes the last job unit problem when a job‑end code is used and proposes starting the time counter before step S5.
• Prior art cited on the face: EP0094493A2 (IBM), JPS63216756A (Brother), US4968159 (Brother), US4992957 (Seiko Epson), WO199012359A1 (Eastman Kodak), EP0395562A2 (IBM), US5010514 (IBM), US5293466 (QMS), US5165014 (HP), US5222200 (Lexmark).
• Later-cited-by includes US5,975,775 (Brother, emulation with error recovery), US5,673,545 (Apple), US6,552,813 (Sun), US8,534,193 / US2010/0039662 (Pharos Systems), and others.

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5. CAFC / litigation check — result: nothing found

• Multiple searches for "5511149" combined with CAFC / Federal Circuit / 2026 docket / appeal / litigation returned zero results. Searches for Brother Industries enforcement of this number likewise returned nothing.
• I found no indication of any 2026 (or other) Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, IPR/PGR, or district‑court case involving US 5,511,149.
• I also could not retrieve an authoritative USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR status screen (no authenticated access via the tools available); the status data above is Google Patents' rendering plus the family documents surfaced by search.

Practical note: the patent's own record shows anticipated expiration 2013‑04‑23 and "Expired – Lifetime" status, which makes live 2026 appellate activity on this number unlikely — but I cannot prove a negative from the tools available, so treat "no CAFC activity" as absence of evidence, not verified absence.

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6. Stated uncertainties / literal anomalies I did not "correct"

1. Priority/filing dates conflict. The docket lists Priority date 1991‑07‑10 (JP 3‑195748) and Filing date 1994‑01‑14 (the continuation), while the parent 07/908,992 was filed 1992‑07‑06. Google itself flags the priority date as an assumption.
2. Prior‑art publication number mismatch in the patent's own text. The Background section cites "laid‑open Publication No. 63‑216765," but the front‑page citation list gives JPS63216756A (63‑216756) — one digit different. Per your instruction I reproduce both literally and do not harmonise them.
3. Internal figure/section typos in the specification (reproduced, not fixed): the Background is headed "Discussion of the Invention" rather than of the prior art; the text refers to "the main routine of FIG. 3" where FIG. 2 is meant; "Step S39 and S40" is used although no step S40 exists (S41 is meant); and the register comparison sentence names "first register 41a … second register 41b" instead of registers 44/45.
4. Undeclared component: time counter 39 is referenced in the flow‑chart description but is not introduced in the hardware description (which names only 34, 36, 38, 40, 41/41a‑c, 42, 43, 44, 45).
5. Claim‑set divergence across the family: the EP counterpart (EP0522864B1) has a differently numbered and differently worded claim set (e.g., its claim 2 recites the unit‑determinative code as selected from a group including job‑end code, job‑start code, count‑based combination and order‑based combination). If you need a claim‑scope opinion, it must be run separately per jurisdiction — the EP/DE/JP claims are not verbatim equivalents of the 12 US claims.
6. Assignee labelling: "Brother Industries Ltd" appears as both original and current assignee; the JP family member JP3084807B2 is titled simply "Printing device" (Google translation), a different title from the US member. I have not inferred that the JP claims are identical.

If you can supply a Patent Center / CourtListener / PACER extract, I can reconcile items 1, 2 and 5 against an authoritative record rather than against the aggregator renderings used here.

I'll search litigation-specific sources for this patent number, being careful not to conflate it with the unrelated JP5511149B2.

Initial searches returned only the unrelated JP 5511149 B2 (Sysmex blood analyzer) and generic PTAB/RPI material — nothing on US 5,511,149. Let me run more targeted litigation searches.

Still no US 5,511,149 hits. Let me try litigation databases and docket aggregators directly.

Litigation Search — US Patent 5,511,149

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving US 5,511,149 — no district court case, no ITC investigation, no CAFC appeal, and no PTAB post‑grant proceeding. This is an absence-of-evidence finding, not a verified negative; the caveats are set out in §4 below.

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1. What I searched and what came back

False positives I am explicitly not reporting as litigation (per your "no similar numbers" instruction):

• JP 5511149 B2 (特許第5511149号) — a Sysmex Corporation patent, "生体試料分析装置及び生体試料分析方法" (biological sample analyzer), filed 2008‑03‑28, registered 2014‑04‑04, published 2014‑06‑04. Different jurisdiction, different subject matter, different owner. This is the document that dominates every search for the bare string "5511149." It is not the US patent and not in its family.
• Lithuanian Republic notice No. 5511149 — a business-registry filing notice ("Pranešimo Nr. 5511149," Vilnius, 2022). Purely coincidental numbering; not a patent matter.

The prior summary already flagged the JP 5511149 B2 collision. My searches confirm it is the persistent source of noise and that no US 5,511,149 case record exists in the accessible sources.

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2. Requested case table

There is nothing to populate. Presenting it as requested:

No district court docket, ITC Section 337 investigation, CAFC appeal, or PTAB IPR/PGR naming US 5,511,149 was surfaced.

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3. Why this result is unsurprising (context, not substitute for verification)

The procedural posture of the patent makes live or recent litigation essentially implausible:

• Term expired 2013‑04‑23, and the record status is "Expired – Lifetime." Maintenance fees were paid at 4, 8 and 12 years (1999‑10‑12, 2003‑09‑29, 2007‑09‑17), consistent with the patent running its full term rather than lapsing early for non‑payment.
• Because the patent has been expired for ~13 years as of the current date, there is no injunctive exposure and no ongoing royalty base — which is the ordinary commercial predicate for a 2026 filing.
• Any damages recovery window would have closed long ago: 35 U.S.C. § 286 caps back damages at six years, which on an April 2013 expiration ran out around April 2019.
• The owner is a large, practicing Japanese manufacturer (Brother Industries Ltd. / Brother Kogyo K.K.), not a non‑practicing entity. Brother has no visible history of monetizing this particular number — and its litigation posture could not be retrieved from the sources available to me.
• The patent appears in later-citing references (e.g., US 5,975,775 to Brother on emulation with error recovery; US 8,534,193 / US 2010/0039662 to Pharos Systems), which indicates it is a cited technical antecedent in the printer‑emulation art rather than an asserted asset.

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4. Caveats — read before relying on this

1. No authenticated source was reached. I could not execute a live PACER query, a CourtListener API/docket pull, or a USPTO Patent Center / PTAB API lookup. CourtListener returned an empty result set and Docket Alarm returned no case hits, but neither was an authenticated, exhaustive index sweep. Free‑text web search is not a complete litigation index — sealed cases, default judgments, state‑court actions, and older pre‑1990s filings are frequently invisible to it.
2. "No litigation known" ≠ "no litigation exists." My finding is an absence of evidence. If a case were filed and terminated with no published opinion, no news coverage, and no PACER‑indexed web footprint, I would not have found it.
3. I did not verify the JP/EP/DE family for opposition or nullity proceedings. A patent of this vintage could have had a European opposition (the counterpart is EP0522864B1, granted 1998‑09‑09) or a Japanese invalidation trial, but those are administrative validity proceedings, not "litigation" in the sense you asked about, and I did not search for them.
4. Assignee history not verified. The record lists Brother Industries Ltd. as both original and current assignee, with no recorded assignments surfaced. An unnoticed mid‑term assignment to a monetization vehicle would change the likelihood calculus in §3 — I cannot rule that out.

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5. Recommended next steps if a definitive answer is required

This question needs database access the current toolset cannot provide:

• USPTO Patent Center / PTAB API — pull the full prosecution and post‑grant history for application 08/181,453 and confirm there is no IPR/PGR/reexam.
• PACER Docket Search (or Docket Alarm / Lex Machina full index) on patent number 5511149 as a case-participant field, not free text.
• CourtListener RECAP / CAFC docket search restricted to the patent number string across the full docket corpus.
• European Patent Register for EP0522864B1 opposition status, and JPO for JP3084807B2 invalidation trials — if the question extends to family members.

If you can supply a PACER, CourtListener, or Unified Patents portal extract, I can reconcile it against this finding.

I'll verify the structured ODP record against live searches before writing up.

Nothing relevant surfaced. One more targeted sweep before I close it out.

PTAB Check — US 5,511,149 ("Printer emulator capable of emulating a plurality of printers which operate in different modes")

Bottom line up front: I found no AIA trial proceedings on this patent — not on the USPTO Open Data Portal canonical list, and not in any live search. There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM to report, no Final Written Decision to quote, no PTAB appeal, and therefore no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to map. If you were expecting a "patent has been hardened by surviving IPR" or "claims 1–5 are canceled" story, the answer is neither: the patent simply never went to the Board.

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Proceedings overview

US 5,511,149 has been the subject of zero AIA trial proceedings before the PTAB — total count 0, with no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained by the Board, no settlements, no institution denials, and no Federal Circuit appeals arising from a Board decision. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns an empty set for this patent number, and my live searches did not surface any older or un-indexed proceeding to add to it.

The defensive posture this gives a defendant is therefore unusual but strong for a reason that has nothing to do with the Board: you cannot be met with "the patent survived PTAB scrutiny," but you also gain no free kill from an FWD. Your leverage comes from the patent's lifecycle — US 5,511,149 reached its anticipated expiration on 2013-04-23 and is recorded as "Expired – Lifetime" (maintenance fees paid at 4, 8, and 12 years, the last on 2007-09-17; no further fees, no recorded revival). A defendant facing assertion of this patent today is facing a long-expired, pre-AIA patent from 1996 whose infringement-accrual window closed in 2013, which is a § 286 damages-bar and standing/standing-in-interest problem long before it is a validity problem.

Why the record is empty (structural, not evidentiary, reasoning)

This is worth stating so the absence is not mistaken for an incomplete search:

• IPR — 35 U.S.C. § 311 is not categorically barred by expiration, so in theory a petition could have been filed. But the PTAB's AIA docket only opened 2012-09-16, and this patent expired roughly seven months later, with the last commercially relevant assertion window preceding that. There was essentially no window in which an IPR offered a petitioner more than a district-court invalidity defense already would.
• PGR — Statutorily unavailable twice over. A PGR petition must be filed within nine months of issuance (§ 321(c)); this patent issued 1996-04-23, roughly sixteen years before the PGR regime existed. PGR also reaches only patents with claims subject to first-inventor-to-file; this is a pre-AIA patent.
• CBM — Not eligible. AIA § 18 covers only patents with claims directed to a financial product or service (a "technological invention" exception aside). A laser-printer emulator for detecting job units via control codes is not a covered business method. Independently, the CBM transitional program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16.

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Proceedings

None. There are no proceeding numbers to list, and I will not invent any. To be explicit about the categories the task asked me to populate:

Caveat I want on the record: this is an absence of evidence finding. The ODP list is authoritative and empty, and my web searches returned no contrary hit — but a search tool cannot affirmatively prove a negative, and I did not have authenticated PTAB E2E / Patent Center access to run a docket-number query directly. Treat "no PTAB activity" as very high confidence, not as a certified null result. If you can supply a PTAB E2E patent-number search export, that would close the gap.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All 12 claims remain exactly as issued on 1996-04-23. Nothing is canceled, nothing is amended, nothing is confirmed by the Board, and nothing is estopped. Claims 1, 2, 3, and 4 are independent; claims 5–12 depend from claim 1 (claim 10 being the network claim). Because there is no PTAB narrowing, the full claim set — including the broad claim 1 "detect job unit → determine mode per job unit → print in that mode" formulation — is untouched. Every invalidity argument you would have wanted to raise at the Board is still completely unspent: no § 102/§ 103 ground has been presented to the Office in an AIA trial, and no ground has been "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by any petitioner, so § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue. You have the entire prior-art field available, including the face-of-patent references (EP0094493A2, JPS63216756A, US4968159, US4992957, WO199012359A1, EP0395562A2, US5010514, US5293466, US5165014, US5222200) and everything they render obvious in combination.

The real defensive posture. Expiration is the dominant fact, and it changes the shape of the defense entirely. For a defendant being asserted against today: damages under § 286 reach back only six years from filing, and this patent stopped being enforceable in 2013 — so any accused conduct post-dating 2013-04-23 is non-actionable as a matter of law regardless of validity, and pre-expiration conduct is time-barred unless it was already the subject of a timely-filed suit. Practically, that means the assertion is either a stale pre-2013 claim (limitations and laches-adjacent problems, plus the practical problem of proving pre-2013 infringement of a printer-emulator claim from documents a decade-plus old) or a fatally late claim on post-2013 conduct. I'd want to see the demand letter or complaint's accused-conduct dates before saying more, because the entire analysis turns on them.

Pattern signals. No pattern to report. There is no repeat petitioner, no Unified Patents-style defensive-aggregator filing, no IPR-estoppel chain, and no evidence the patent owner (Brother Industries Ltd. / Brother Kogyo K.K.) pursued PTAB appeals on this patent. The later-cited-by trail (US5,975,775 Brother; US5,673,545 Apple; US6,552,813 Sun; US8,534,193 / US2010/0039662 Pharos Systems) shows the disclosure fed later emulation and printer-configuration art without ever generating a Board fight, which is the profile of a patent that was technically influential in its field but never a litigation asset. Note also that the EP counterpart EP0522864B1 and DE69226913T2 are likewise recorded "not active / expired" — there is no live foreign flank either, and per the earlier section, the EP/DE/JP claim sets are not verbatim equivalents of the 12 US claims.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not budget for an IPR. There is nothing to petition against in any meaningful sense — no live claims to invalidate for practical benefit on an expired patent, and no litigation-preservation value, since the patent cannot support prospective relief or post-2013 damages. If your client is nonetheless in an active case, an IPR would be a costly detour around a § 286 problem that already disposes of the case.

2. Lead with expiration and the damages window, in that order. Establish the accrual dates of the accused conduct and the filing date of the assertion. If all accused conduct post-dates 2013-04-23, the patent is expired and non-actionable; if any predates it, run the six-year § 286 window and confirm whether a timely suit or written notice tolls anything. The earlier section's finding that maintenance fees were paid only through the 12-year payment on 2007-09-17, with no later payment and no recorded revival, supports the expired status — but pull the USPTO Patent Center "Fees" and "Status" tabs yourself rather than relying on the aggregator rendering.

3. Preserve the invalidity defense anyway, for free. Because no AIA trial ever occurred, the district-court invalidity case is fully intact with zero estoppel entanglement. The face-of-patent art plus the specification's own admissions are unusually favorable: the Background concedes the core "automatically detecting the operation mode of the received print data on the basis of the control codes" concept was already known (it cites JP laid-open Publication No. 63-216765 for it — note the literal discrepancy flagged earlier, where the front page instead lists JPS63216756A, i.e., 63-216756, one digit different; do not harmonize them, and cite both as they appear). That concession sharpens an obviousness attack on independent claim 1, whose added limitations (per-job-unit mode determination, and unit-determinative codes defined as count-based or order-based control-code combinations) are the only real battleground.

4. Consider targeted discovery into the file history rather than the Board. With no PTAB record to mine, the productive record is the parent application Ser. No. 07/908,992 (filed 1992-07-06, abandoned) and the continuation's prosecution, plus the JP priority document JP 3-195748 / JP19574891 — useful for checking whether the per-job-unit limitation was added to overcome art, which bears on prosecution-history estoppel.

5. Reexamination: available in form, likely pointless in substance. Ex parte reexamination under § 302 is not categorically barred by expiration, and a requester need not own the patent — but for a patent that expired in 2013, any resulting certificate gives you almost nothing of commercial or defensive value. I am flagging this as low-confidence on the procedural details for expired patents specifically and would want to confirm against current MPEP 2200-series guidance before advising a client to spend money on it. My recommendation is not to.

Sources checked for this section: the structured USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block (empty, and treated as canonical per instructions); live web searches for the patent number in combination with IPR/PGR/CBM, PTAB, Brother Industries, and reexamination/litigation terms, which returned no proceeding naming US 5,511,149. I did not obtain an authenticated PTAB E2E or Patent Center docket extract, and I have no CourtListener/PACER PTAB-appeal record to point you to — because there is no Board decision to appeal. Every date above is given as YYYY-MM-DD, and no proceeding number has been fabricated.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent across the sources you named.

Let me try to reach the actual assignment records and cross-check via other sources.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 5,511,149

Search-integrity note up front (read before using anything below). I was unable to retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center record for this patent. The Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) is a JavaScript application that my tooling could not query, the legacy assignment.uspto.gov index did not surface this patent in any result I obtained, and my session's search budget was exhausted while attempting secondary routes (uspto.report, docket aggregators, SEC). Therefore I have zero verified reel/frame entries for US 5,511,149, and I have not fabricated any. Everything below is either (a) from the authoritative patent text supplied in the prompt, (b) from a live search result I can cite, or (c) explicitly labelled as unverified. This is a weaker evidentiary position than the section headers imply, and you should treat reel/frame-dependent conclusions as provisional.

One useful negative: the Google Patents Legal Events block in the authoritative text contains no AS (Assignment) entries at all — only FEPP (1995-12-02, "PAYOR NUMBER ASSIGNED… ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY"), STCF (1996-04-12, patent grant), and three FPAY fee payments (1999-10-12, 2003-09-29, 2007-09-17).* On that record, the only ownership-flavoured event in the entire post-issue life of the patent is an administrative payor-status entry, not a transfer of title. I flag it because it is occasionally misread as an assignment event.

* Consistent with — but not proof of — the previously generated summary's statement that the legal-events list shows only fee payments. No contradiction with the prior section. The prior section's item 3 (spec typos) and item 2 (63-216765 vs JPS63216756A) stand; nothing in this task touches them.

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Inventors

Pattern assessment — no anomaly. A single inventor, a Japanese corporate R&D employee, working in Brother's printer/character-output engineering group in the 1990-1991 window, on technology contemporaneous with the EP0478304 character-output-device filing. There is no evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing, no co-inventor set that fragments, and no inventor-side assignment to a third party. Hayano's name also appears across Brother's printer-controller art (see the sibling-family note under Original assignee), which is the normal profile of a career corporate engineer, not a pre-fire-sale signature. I could not independently verify Hayano's employment status after 1994 — no resignation, retirement, or later-assignee record was found, and absence of such a record is not evidence of anything.

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Original assignee

Brother Industries, Ltd. (ブラザー工業株式会社 / Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha), Nagoya, Japan — named as both Original Assignee and Current Assignee in the authoritative text. The FEPP event of 1995-12-02 records entity status "PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY", i.e., USPTO treated the owner as a large entity — a large, established corporate filer, not a small-entity/individual owner.

• Primary line of business: diversified Japanese manufacturing — printers and multifunction devices, sewing machines, machine tools, industrial equipment, and (by the 2000s) the Domino and Nissei printing/labelling businesses. Publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TYO: 6448). Not a holding company; a genuine operating manufacturer.
• Did Brother ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the face of the specification. The patent is drafted against a concrete commercial architecture: a laser printer with a polygon-mirror scanning device, selectable 240 / 300 / 400 DPI resolution, an engine controller (34) + video controller (36) split, and code tables 41a/41b/41c mapping detected two-character mode codes to operation modes — exactly the control architecture of Brother's HL-series laser printers, which shipped with multi-emulation capability (HP PCL, Epson FX/LQ, IBM ProPrinter, Brother native modes) as standard firmware. The patent's own stated object — "the printer emulator is used in a network which includes a plurality of computers or terminals and is adapted to receive batches of print data which are written in different formats" — describes a shipping product category, not a paper design. Caveat: I have not located a Brother service manual or firmware specification expressly identifying US 5,511,149 as the basis for a named model's multi-emulation behaviour, so treat "shipped a product embodying the claims" as strongly supported but not documentary-proof for a specific SKU.
• Current status: operating. No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition of the parent. This is material to the NPE analysis below — the industry's classic patent fire-sale feeders (Kodak, Nortel, Polaroid, Sun) simply do not appear here.
• Sibling family worth noting for portfolio context: the "Similar Documents" list in the authoritative text includes US 5,467,432 — "Printer controller capable of operating with different operation modes based on mode-determinative codes stored in point-table memory", which shares verbatim the phrase "mode-determinative codes" with US 5,511,149. That is a tell that Brother maintained a multi-patent emulation family around 1991–1993 rather than a single orphan patent. I did not verify US 5,467,432's inventor of record or assignee, so do not assume it is Hayano or Brother without checking — flagging it as a lead only.

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Assignment timeline

I must report this plainly rather than dress it up:

I could not obtain a single recorded assignment from the USPTO Assignment Center, and the authoritative patent text supplied to me records no assignment event of any kind. The Google Patents Legal Events block contains no AS entries. I am therefore not able to list reel/frame numbers, execution dates, recording dates, conveyance types, or correspondents of record for this patent.

What I can state defensibly:

• ~1992-07-06 (executed, unverified) / recording date unknown — Reel/Frame: UNKNOWN
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inferred — the standard USPTO filing practice for a corporate-filed US non-provisional; not read from a record)
  • Assignor: Fumihito Hayano (inferred, unverified)
  • Assignee: Brother Industries, Ltd. / Brother Kogyo K.K. (inferred, unverified)
  • Correspondent: UNKNOWN — not in my source. Note that the Google Patents rendering supplied to me omits the front-page "Attorney, Agent, or Firm" field entirely, so even the patent's own attorney of record is not available from my source text. I will not invent a name.
  • Context: initial corporate assignment — the ordinary inventor-to-employer vesting that precedes issuance.
• 1994-01-14 — no reel/frame; prosecution-chain event, not a title transfer
  • Conveyance: none (continuation) — application 08/181,453 filed as a continuation of Ser. No. 07/908,992 (filed 1992-07-06, now abandoned), per the patent's own "Cross-Reference to Related Application" text. This is frequently mis-entered in aggregators as an ownership event; it is not one.
• 1995-12-02 — FEPP, no reel/frame
  • Conveyance: none (administrative) — "PAYOR NUMBER ASSIGNED… ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY." Not a transfer of title. Any analysis that lists this as an assignment is wrong.
• 1996-04-23 — STCF (patent grant), no reel/frame — issuance, not a transfer.
• 1999-10-12 / 2003-09-29 / 2007-09-17 — FPAY — years 4, 8 and 12 maintenance fees. These are the complete set of US maintenance-fee windows (3.5 / 7.5 / 11.5 years), so the patent ran to term without a fee lapse.

Finding: the chain is a single-link chain terminating at the original operating-company assignee. On the evidence available, Brother Industries, Ltd. retained ownership of US 5,511,149 for the entire life of the patent — no NPE ever appears, and no successor-in-interest appears. If you require the reel/frame for the original Hayano→Brother vesting, that must be pulled directly from Assignment Center; I have already stated I could not reach it.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5511149
    1991 : JP priority filed by Brother
    1992 : US parent filed by Brother
    1994 : Continuation application filed
    1996 : Patent issued to Brother
    1999 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2003 : Maintenance fee paid year 8
    2007 : Maintenance fee paid year 12
    2013 : Anticipated expiration

No assignment arrows exist to draw. Every event above is a prosecution or maintenance event except the initial corporate vesting, which is why the diagram shows no LLC, no aquirer, and no litigation milestone.

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Signals present: zero. Signals unclear: one (repeat correspondent — a data-access failure, not a negative finding).

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Verdict

Insufficient data (in the sense of your taxonomy: no post-issuance assignment records, only the original corporate vesting — and even that vesting I could not document by reel/frame).

Justification. Every event I can actually source is consistent with a single corporate owner that never parted with the patent: the FEPP LARGE-ENTITY payor entry of 1995-12-02, the three FPAY payments of 1999-10-12 / 2003-09-29 / 2007-09-17 completing the full three-window maintenance schedule with no lapse, and the STCF grant of 1996-04-23, all with Brother Industries, Ltd. as both original and current assignee and zero AS assignment events in the legal-events record. That is the opposite of an NPE profile — a passive, full-term owner that paid to keep the patent alive and expired with it on 2013-04-23. I stop short of Operating-company assertion only because no assertion (litigation) by Brother was found, and short of a clean Defensive / non-asserting call because no defensive aggregator has the title; the honest label for a chain I could not retrieve from Assignment Center is Insufficient data.

Verify independently (I could not): query by patent number 5,511,149 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (basic search, patent-number field) and cross-check the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Two things to look for that would change this answer: (i) an AS record executed near 1992-07-06 transferring from Hayano to Brother — expected, benign, and the correspondent on it is the attribution you actually want for the repeat-correspondent test; and (ii) any post-1996 record at all — if one exists, my "zero transfers" finding is wrong and everything downstream of it needs re-running. Also pull the front-page "Attorney, Agent, or Firm" field from the granted-patent PDF image, which the text rendering I was given did not include.

I'll work through this systematically: first confirm the USPTO record for 5511149, then research each cited reference individually.

Key finding emerging: US4968159 (Brother, same assignee) uses a nearly identical "candidate mode narrowing + 4-sec interrupt" scheme. Let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,511,149

Note on scope vs. the earlier sections: the bibliographic record, abstract, claim overview and technical-context material were already generated above and are not repeated here. This section is new work confined to (i) the record check, (ii) identification and characterisation of the ten references cited on the face of US 5,511,149, and (iii) a preliminary § 102 element-by-element assessment. Where I build on prior sections I say so explicitly.

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1. Record check for "5511149" (USPTO)

I did not reach an authenticated USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR screen — the search tools surfaced the aggregator renders listed above, plus the Google Patents full text already supplied in the prompt. Treat the record confirmation as "corroborated across two independent aggregators," not "verified against the USPTO primary record."

Consistent with the literal-identifier rule flagged in the earlier section, the bare string "5511149" also resolves to JP 5511149 B2 (a 2014 Japanese grant, unrelated subject matter). That document is not merged into this analysis.

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2. Which references count as "the citations for 5511149"

The Google Patents render of this document presents two overlapping tables, and the overlap matters for completeness:

• "Citations (8)" — 8 entries.
• "Patent Citations (10)" — the same 8 plus US4968159A and US5010514A.

The union is therefore 10 examiner-cited references. (The separate "Cited By (23)/(32)" tables are later documents citing 5,511,149 — they are not prior art to it and are outside this task.)

Master table — the 10 cited references with § 102 category triage

Critical dates used for triage: invention/priority 1991-07-10 (JP 3-195748); US parent 07/908,992 filed 1992-07-06; continuation 08/181,453 filed 1994-01-14. Pre-AIA § 102 governs (application filed well before 2013-03-16). Practical § 102(b) bar date ≈ 1991-07-06 (foreign priority under § 119 cannot antedate a § 102(b) bar).

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3. Per-reference analysis

3.1 ★ US 4,968,159 A — Brother Kogyo K.K. (the most material reference)

• Full citation: US 4,968,159 A, Printing apparatus that adapts to host computer's operation mode, inventors Ichiro Sasaki and Naoyuki Hatta, assignee Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, granted 1990-11-06 (App. 07/425,343). URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4968159 ; corroborated at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4968159.
• Dates: 1987-03-04 (Google-assigned priority) / published-granted 1990-11-06.
• Description (verified from the document): A printer carries several operation modes with mutually incompatible control-code systems (the patent's own example: ESC 6 means BACKWARD-PRINT-MODE-ON in DIABLO mode, PRINTABLE-CODE-AREA-EXPANSION in EPSON mode, SELECT-INTERNATIONAL-CHARACTER-SET in IBM mode). Memory means store incoming printing information; detecting means extract the control codes; judging means decide which control-code system the detected codes are compatible with, and thereby select the mode. The disclosure expressly builds a candidate list of operation modes and withdraws non-matching modes ("the operation mode Nos. 0 and 1 are withdrawn from the candidates"), then at step S19 "judged whether or not the read-out operation modes are narrowed down to one." Its FIG. 3 is expressly "a flow chart of a 4 sec. interrupt routine carried out by the controller."

Why this is the closest art — and a cross-reference worth flagging: this reference is strikingly congruent with 5,511,149's own FIG. 3 (S13 provisional mode "0" → S15 detect mode code → S17/S21/S24 lookup in tables 41a/41b/41c → S19/S23/S25 strike modes from the candidate list → S27/S33 one survivor = effective mode) and with its FIG. 5 "4-secs. interruption routine." Both are Brother documents. US 4,968,159 is not discussed in 5,511,149's Background — the Background discusses only JP 63-216765 (see §3.2).

• Potential § 102 anticipation:
  • Claim 1 — partial, and I cannot close the gap on the present record. US 4,968,159 reads on the memory means, the mode-determinative code, the mode-determining means, and the printing means. The element I cannot confirm it discloses is the plural unit-determinative codes requirement — i.e. job-unit segmentation by "a combination of control codes the number of which is larger than a predetermined value" or "a combination of control codes which appear in the print data in a predetermined order." Its described detection appears directed at mode/command-system identification, not at delimiting successive job units. Absent evidence it segments the incoming stream into per-job units, claim 1 is not anticipated on the present record.
  • Claim 2 — closer. Its candidate-mode narrowing plus the 4-second interrupt maps well onto claim 2's "candidate modes" / "compulsory mode selection means … according to a predetermined rule" / "time measuring means … exceeds a predetermined limit." But claim 2 incorporates every limitation of claim 1, so the unit-determinative-code gap propagates.
  • Claims 7 and 8 (dependent). Its mode-lookup-and-compare architecture is material to claim 7's "control code memory means + code comparing means," and its withdrawal/default logic to claim 8's alarm-if-no-match concept.
  • Net: strongest candidate for a § 103 combination anchored on US 4,968,159, and strong obviousness-type double patenting exposure given common ownership and near-identical disclosure. Whether it is a true § 102 reference turns on whether its full text discloses job-boundary detection.
  • § 102 category: § 102(b) (patented 1990-11-06, more than one year before the 1992-07-06 parent filing) and § 102(e) (US filing 07/425,343).

3.2 ★ JP S63-216756 A — Brother (and the "63-216765" anomaly)

• Full citation: Japanese Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication S63-216756 A, Brother Industries Ltd., published 1988-09-09 (priority 1987-03-04). Google Patents entry in the front-page citation list.
• Description: Listed only as "printing device." No abstract or claim text was retrievable through the available tools.
• Literal anomaly (do not harmonise): 5,511,149's Background section cites the acknowledged prior-art emulator as "laid-open Publication No. 63-216765," whereas the front page cites JP S63-216756 A — a one-digit difference. Both are reproduced verbatim here. Note also that JP S63-216756 A and US 4,968,159 share the same 1987-03-04 priority date and the same assignee, which strongly suggests they are family members of one Brother filing — but I could not verify family linkage with the tools available.
• § 102 relevance: The Background's own characterisation of the cited JP document is that it discloses a printer emulator "capable of emulating two or more types of printers … by automatically detecting the operation mode of the received print data, on the basis of the control codes." That is applicant-admitted prior art bearing on the mode-determinative concept of every independent claim. As a § 102(b) printed publication (published 1988-09-09) it is available; whether it discloses the unit-determinative-code element is unknown to me on this record.

3.3 US 4,992,957 A — Seiko Epson

• Full citation: US 4,992,957 A, Printer and method for utilizing character codes and control codes within a printer, assignee Seiko Epson Corporation, filed/priority 1988-03-17, granted 1991-02-12. Also published as EP 0 332 779 A2. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4992957A; corroborated https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4992957.
• Description (verified): Input data buffer receives host data; a character-code/control-code group judging unit sequentially decodes the buffered data and compares it against the internal control codes of several print control units. Control codes are classified into three weighted groups — (1) codes peculiar to one group, (2) codes present in several groups but with differing effective argument ranges, (3) codes present in several groups and effective identically. Probabilities are accumulated and the print control unit with the maximum value is selected, which then drives a line buffer and print head. The disclosure also contemplates three or more print control units and states that if the determination remains ambiguous the data "may be carried out either by print control unit 3 or by print control unit 4" (a fallback selection).
• § 102 relevance:
  • Claim 7 (code detecting means + control-code memory means + code comparing means) is well read on by this reference.
  • Claim 2's "predetermined rule" fallback finds support in the ambiguity-resolution passage.
  • Claims 1–4 as a whole: the reference is directed to which print control unit should process a stream, not to delimiting the stream into successive job units. I see no disclosure of the plural unit-determinative codes (count-based or order-based combinations) recited in independent claims 1–4. On this record, not anticipating.
  • § 102 category: § 102(b) (granted 1991-02-12, before the 1991-07-06 bar date; EP publication 1989 also available).

3.4 US 5,165,014 A — Hewlett-Packard

• Full citation: US 5,165,014 A, Method and system for matching the software command language of a computer with the printer language of a printer, inventor Robert M. Vassar, assignee Hewlett-Packard Company, priority 1990-09-11, US filing 1990-09-12 (App. 07/580,984), granted 1992-11-17. EP family member EP 0 548 251 B1. URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5165014 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5165014-A.
• Description (verified): A stream of data from computer software is read; a plurality of parallel character counters count selected characters (an "Early Percent" counter, an "Escape" counter, a "Left Bracket" counter, a "Right Bracket" counter). A comparator decides when "enough character data has been received in order to make a command language determinator." A language determinator then applies a hierarchy of seven ordered tests (e.g. "Escape = 0 → PCL"; "Escape = 0 and Early Percent > 4 → PostScript"; "Right Brace < 5 → PCL", etc.) to select PCL or PostScript, followed by a command-language selector that switches the physical connection.
• § 102 relevance:
  • Read-on points against claim 3's count/order-characterised control-code combinations: the counter-threshold trigger ("Early Percent counter reaches a count greater than 5"; "2,000 characters have been received") is literally "a combination of a plurality of control codes the number of which is larger than a predetermined value," and the hierarchical ordered test cascade is arguably "a predetermined order."
  • Read-on points against claim 2's "predetermined rule" for compulsory selection (the ordered test hierarchy) and the notion of a trigger condition standing in for a time limit.
  • Not anticipating claims 1–4 overall: the reference selects a printer/language at the connection level, not operation modes within one emulating printer, and I see no plural unit-determinative codes segmenting successive job units. Best used as a § 103 reference.
  • § 102 category: § 102(e) only (US filing 1990-09-12 precedes the invention, but the grant 1992-11-17 is after the 1991-07-06 § 102(b) bar date).

3.5 US 5,222,200 A — Lexmark International

• Full citation: US 5,222,200 A, Automatic printer data stream language determination, assignee Lexmark International, Inc., filed 1992-01-08, granted 1993-06-22. EP family member EP 0 551 206 B1. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5222200.
• Description (verified): The printer interprets one of several binary control languages (PPDS/ASCII, PCL4/PCL5, PostScript, IBM/HP Graphics). As the current language is interpreted, conditions "characteristic of a possible end of printing" are monitored. On that condition, a language-determination routine examines up to the next 500 non-null bytes for commands unique to a language (e.g. 1B 2A/1B 28/1B 29 for PCL4; 1B 2E/1N/DF/PD/SP/PG for IBM Graphics; %!/%%, dict begin, findfont, hex 04 for PostScript). Notably, "The language determination routine is also executed at power on, reset, and the like, which are characteristic of a new printing job."
• § 102 relevance — with an important date caveat:
  • Substantive read-ons: its end-of-job triggers are exactly the codes 5,511,149's specification says may serve as the unit-determinative / JOB END code — "the JOB END code may be a paper eject command … or a printer reset command for resetting the control device 32." US 5,222,200's page-feed (hex 0C) and power-on/reset triggers are therefore directly on point for the unit-detecting means element. Its "examine up to the next 500 non-null bytes" window is a "predetermined value" count of characters, potentially on point for the count-based combination element.
  • Claim 1 — plausibly the best structural read on the unit-detecting limitation among these ten references, though the "combination" nature of the unit-determinative codes is arguably a single page-feed/04 code rather than a plurality of codes meeting a count or order criterion.
  • Claim 10 (network) — its disclosure is framed around printers fed multiple languages from multiple sources.
  • ⚠ Date problem: US 5,222,200's US filing date (1992-01-08) post-dates the claimed 1991-07-10 JP priority. If that priority is perfected and supported, US 5,222,200 is not § 102(e) art. It only becomes § 102(e) art if the effective date falls back to the 1992-07-06 parent filing (e.g. failure to perfect/support the JP priority), in which case 1992-01-08 < 1992-07-06 and § 102(e) applies. This is a genuinely contested point and should be resolved against the JP 3-195748 certified copy and the parent specification. It was nevertheless cited by the examiner, which suggests the examiner treated it as available art.
  • § 102 category: § 102(e) — contingent, as above. Not § 102(a)/(b).

3.6 US 5,293,466 A — QMS, Inc.

• Full citation: US 5,293,466 A, Method and apparatus for selecting interpreter for printer command language based upon sample of print job transmitted to printer, assignee QMS, Inc., filed/priority 1990-08-03, granted 1994-03-08.
• Description: As retrievable only from title/bibliographic data: selection of a printer-language interpreter based on a sample of the incoming print job (i.e. a prefix-window characterisation leading to interpreter selection). A full-text verification was not completed — my tool budget was exhausted before this reference could be pulled.
• § 102 relevance (preliminary): the "sample of the print job" mechanism is on point for the mode-determining means of independent claims 1–4 and for the notion that the sample's contents determine the effective mode. On the available record I cannot state whether it discloses job-unit segmentation by plural unit-determinative codes; absent that, it is a § 103 reference, not an anticipation of claims 1–4.
• § 102 category: § 102(e) only (US filing 1990-08-03 precedes the invention; grant 1994-03-08 is after the § 102(b) bar date).

3.7 EP 0 395 562 A2 and US 5,010,514 A — IBM (the pair most on point for the "unit-determinative code" element)

• US full citation: US 5,010,514 A, Structured fields at a data stream boundary for delimiting files, assignee International Business Machines Corp., filed 1989-04-26, granted 1991-04-23.
• EP full citation: EP 0 395 562 A2, A method and an apparatus for delineating the beginning and the end of a data file sent to a print server in a computer network, assignee International Business Machines Corp., priority 1989-04-26, published 1990-10-31.
• Description (from titles/bibliographic record only — full texts not retrieved): both are directed to delimiting the beginning and end of a data file / delimitating files at a data-stream boundary, and the EP document situates this in a print server in a computer network.
• § 102 relevance (preliminary, and the most important open thread): the "unit-determinative codes … determine said each job unit" limitation of claim 1, and the "network" element of claim 10, map directly onto this pair. IBM's "structured fields … delimiting files" is the type of disclosure that would need close element-by-element reading against the count-based and order-based combination sub-limitations of claims 1/3/4. Note I have not verified whether the "structured fields" are themselves plurality-of-control-codes constructions — that is the crux.
• § 102 categories: US 5,010,514 — § 102(b) (issued 1991-04-23, i.e. before the 1991-07-06 bar date) and § 102(e). EP 0 395 562 A2 — § 102(b) (published 1990-10-31).

3.8 WO 90/12359 A1 — Eastman Kodak

• Full citation: WO 90/12359 A1, Communications interface for computer output printer, Eastman Kodak Company, priority 1989-04-10, published 1990-10-18.
• Description: Not retrievable on this record beyond the title. On its face it concerns the host↔printer communications interface, which is the locus of the claimed emulator but not obviously its mode-determination logic.
• § 102 relevance: preliminary only. A communications-interface disclosure would need to be read against the "print data memory means" and "printing means" elements; I have no basis to assert it discloses the mode- and unit-determinative-code elements. Likely a background/§ 103 reference.
• § 102 category: § 102(b) (published 1990-10-18, before the bar date).

3.9 EP 0 094 493 A2 — IBM (earliest reference)

• Full citation: EP 0 094 493 A2, Print buffering scheme for a key to print operation, International Business Machines Corp., priority 1982-05-17, published 1983-11-23.
• Description: Not retrievable beyond the title; on its face a print-buffering scheme.
• § 102 relevance: on the title alone this bears only on the generic print data memory means element common to all claims; it appears to disclose nothing about mode-determinative or unit-determinative codes. Not anticipating. Functionally a background/§ 103 reference at most.
• § 102 category: § 102(b) (published 1983-11-23).

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4. Ranking of the most relevant prior art

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5. Bottom line on § 102

No single one of the ten cited references, on the evidence I have been able to examine, anticipates independent claim 1, 2, 3 or 4 as a whole. The reason is structural: every independent claim is gated by the plural unit-determinative codes limitation — job boundaries identified by either a combination of control codes exceeding a predetermined count or a combination of control codes in a predetermined order. That is the limitation the prior art appears not to supply in a single reference:

• US 4,968,159, US 4,992,957, US 5,165,014, US 5,293,466 all detect language/mode, and their mode-determination machinery is on point — but on the record they are not shown to delimit successive job units by plural combination codes.
• US 5,222,200 and EP 0 395 562 A2 / US 5,010,514 are the ones most likely to supply the job-boundary element, but the former is single-code (page feed / 04 / PG;) rather than a count- or order-based combination, and the latter two I have not yet read.

Therefore the strongest realistic attack is a § 103 combination, e.g. US 4,968,159 (candidate-mode narrowing + 4-sec interrupt + comparison against per-mode code tables) in view of US 5,222,200 or EP 0 395 562 A2 / US 5,010,514 (job-boundary delineation) — with US 4,992,957 and US 5,165,014 as secondary references on the comparison and threshold aspects. Where § 102 is realistically available, it is against the dependent claims (notably claim 7 read against US 4,992,957 or US 4,968,159) and against the specific sub-features embodied in claim 2 (compulsory selection under a predetermined rule) and claim 3 (count/order-based code combinations).

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6. What I could not verify (stated explicitly)

1. Full texts of four references were not retrieved before my tool budget was exhausted: US 5,293,466 A, US 5,010,514 A, EP 0 395 562 A2, and WO 90/12359 A1 (and JP S63-216756 A). For these, the § 102 analysis above is based on the front-page citation data in the supplied patent text plus titles — it is preliminary, and items 7 and 6 in the ranking are the most likely to move upward on full-text review.
2. No authenticated USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR record was reached; no reexamination, IPR/PGR or terminal-disclaimer history was checked.
3. The US 5,222,200 date question in § 3.5 is unresolved and is outcome-determinative for whether that reference is § 102(e) art at all. It depends on whether the 1991-07-10 JP 3-195748 priority is perfected and supported in the US chain.
4. The JP S63-216756 A vs. "63-216765" one-digit discrepancy in the patent's own text has been reproduced literally and not harmonised, per the operating rule. Likewise, the possible family relationship between JP S63-216756 A and US 4,968,159 (same assignee, same 1987-03-04 priority) is flagged as an inference, not a verified fact.
5. Common-ownership issues — US 4,968,159 and JP S63-216756 A are Brother documents, as is the patent under analysis. § 102 turns on inventive entity, not assignee, so Sasaki/Hatta (US 4,968,159) constitute "another" relative to Hayano; but the shared assignee makes obviousness-type double patenting a live secondary consideration that no § 102 table captures.

I'll ground the §103 analysis in the actual disclosures of the cited prior art. Let me pull details on the key references.

Key finding: US4968159 itself appears to disclose candidate-mode withdrawal and a 4-second interrupt. Let me verify a few more references, including a related Brother case and the Background reference.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,511,149 A under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Governing law: The application's claimed priority is 1991‑07‑10 and its US parent (Ser. No. 07/908,992) was filed 1992‑07‑06, so pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies. The controlling framings are Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), implemented through the rationales of MPEP § 2143.

Analysis is built on the prior‑art citation list in the patent's own "Prior Art / Patent Citations" section (as supplied in the authoritative full text), supplemented — where clearly labelled — by primary‑document lookups of those same references. Live lookups returned substantive disclosure for US 5,293,466, US 5,222,200, US 5,165,014, US 4,968,159, EP 0 395 562 A2 and US 5,010,514; the remaining cited documents (EP 0 094 493 A2, US 4,992,957, WO 90/12359, JPS 63‑216756, US 5,010,514) I only have by title/abstract.

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0. Flagged conflict with the previously generated section

The earlier summary's §6 item 2 noted that the Background cites "63‑216765" while the front‑page list gives JPS63216756A (63‑216756) and correctly declined to harmonise them. For § 103 that discrepancy matters less than it looks, because either document is being used in the specification as an admitted prior‑art printer emulator:

"a printer emulator is proposed as disclosed in laid‑open Publication No. 63‑216765 … capable of emulating two or more types of printers … by automatically detecting the operation mode of the received print data, on the basis of the control codes included in the print data."

That is a specification admission of the core concept of claim 1 minus the per‑job‑unit element. This is the single most important fact for the obviousness analysis, and it is not a contradiction with the earlier section — it is a use of it.

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1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here would be a printer firmware/controller engineer with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science and ~2–4 years' experience with printer control languages (ESC/P, PCL, PostScript, IBM/PPDS/Diablo emulations) and printer controller firmware, familiar with (i) job/language identification from control‑code signatures, (ii) emulation of multiple printer personalities in one engine, and (iii) networked print servers. All the cited references are addressed to this same person; KSR makes clear that the level of ordinary creativity in a predictable, incremental art such as this is fairly high.

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2. What claim 1 actually adds over the admitted art (the "delta")

Reduced to its bones, independent claim 1 requires:

Given the Background admission, the admitted art already supplies 1a (a received batch), 1b (control codes determining operation mode), and 1f. The novelty delta is 1c–1e: repeated, per‑job‑unit mode determination gated on job‑boundary detection. Almost every reference cited on the face is aimed at exactly that delta or at a neighbouring sub‑problem.

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3. Dispositive teaching of each cited reference

3.1 US 4,968,159 — Printing apparatus that adapts to host computer's operation mode (Sasaki/Hatta; Brother Kogyo; granted 1990‑11‑06) — the closest art

Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4968159 ; bibliographic confirmation: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4968159](/patent/4968159)

Verified disclosure:

• Claims recite "memory means for storing therein printing information inputted from an external instrument, the printing information including control codes; detecting means for detecting the control codes from the printing information stored in the memory means; and judging means for judging with which one of the control code systems the control codes detected by the detecting means are compatible, to select one of the operation modes corresponding to the control code system judged to be compatible." → claim 1 elements 1a, 1b, 1d/1e (in substance) and 1f.
• It expressly claims to eliminate the operator's manual dip‑switch/ROM‑cartridge mode selection, which is the same problem and same motivation the '149 recites.
• It expressly operates on "ESC" control codes peculiar to different printer personalities — worked example: ESC 6 means BACKWARD‑PRINT‑MODE‑ON in DIABLO MODE, PRINTABLE‑CODE‑AREA‑EXPANSION in EPSON MODE, SELECT‑INTERNATIONAL‑CHARACTER‑SET in IBM MODE. That is literally the '149's "mode‑determinative code" concept, in the same three‑personality context.
• Critically for claim 2, US 4,968,159 contains an "initial handling program" whose steps withdraw non‑matching operation modes from a candidate list ("the operation mode Nos. 0 and 1 are withdrawn from the candidates"), then judge "whether or not the read‑out operation modes are narrowed down to one," and its drawing set includes "FIG. 3 is a flow chart of a 4 sec. interrupt routine carried out by the controller."

This means US 4,968,159 discloses, in substance, the entire claim‑2 candidate‑narrowing + timeout architecture of the '149 — candidate‑mode list, withdrawal on non‑match, "narrowed to one → set the mode," and a 4‑second interrupt for the fallback. (The '149 specification's FIG. 3 and FIG. 5 read as a near‑restatement of this.) The only thing US 4,968,159 appears to lack is the repetition per job unit.

3.2 US 5,293,466 — Method and apparatus for selecting interpreter for printer command language based upon sample of print job transmitted to printer (Bringmann; QMS; filed 1990‑08‑03, granted 1994‑03‑08) — the per‑job delta

Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5293466 ; full claims: http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5293466.html ; EP counterpart EP 0 469 974 A3/B1 (QMS) at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/62/23/8b/49101ce42f8eec/EP0469974A3.pdf

Verified disclosure:

• "the printer controller may have stored therein the interpreter or emulator for more than one printer control language. In this case, there must be means to select the correct interpreter for an incoming print job."
• "sampling a portion of the print job, analyzing the sampled portion … to identify the printer control language in which it is encoded, and interpreting the print job in accordance with the printer control language identified."
• Claim 2(e) / claim 4(c): "printing the new print job using an interpreter or emulation suitable for the printer control language identified in the preceding step."
• The characterizing data sets comprise "statistical data reflecting the likelihood of selected n‑grams (short sequences of characters) occurring individually or in combination in print jobs encoded in a given printer control language," stored as "weighted pattern vectors (ordered lists)" with "a threshold value." → supplies claim 1 element 1c (combinations of control codes, count‑based and order‑based) and claim 3/4's "combination … exceeding a predetermined value / in a predetermined order" in both roles.
• Stated advantages: "to improve the productivity and throughput of printer resources, especially in a networked environment," and to avoid job headers and manual switches.

This is the per‑job‑unit mode determination of claim 1 elements 1d–1e, expressly motivated by the network/multi‑application setting the '149 describes.

3.3 US 5,222,200 — Automatic printer data stream language determination (Lexmark; filed 1992‑01‑08, granted 1993‑06‑22)

Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5222200 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5222200](/patent/5222200) ; EP 0 551 206 B1

Verified disclosure (verbatim/near‑verbatim):

• "the presence of the 04 character within the first 500 non‑null bytes results in PostScript language being selected … The occurrence of an 04 character within a job being interpreted in the PostScript language identifies the end of that job."
• "The ASCII and PCL languages both use hexadecimal 0C as the form feed character. Their presence during language interpretation defines a potential end of job …" → job‑boundary detection, then mode selection, i.e., claim‑element order 1d → 1e ("operable … after each of said plurality of job units … has been detected").
• "the determination routine is also executed at power on, reset, and the like" and the "pre‑existing call to the paper feed routine is used to actually call the language determination routine" → per‑job repetition, not one‑time selection.
• Characteristic commands are expressly combinations/sequences of control codes, e.g. PCL4 1B 26, 1B 2A, 1B 28, 1B 29; IBM Graphics 1B 2E, IN;, DF;, PU, SP, PG; PostScript %!, %%, def, bind def, dict begin, findfont → element 1c (combination exceeding a number, and in a predetermined order) and dependent claims 5/6 (parts of successive character codes; parts selected from plural groups).
• Defaults when nothing is recognized: "default is automatic … return data processor 17 to the setting for the previous PCL4 or PCL5 … failure to recognize … the default is to set data processor 17 for PPDS" → a predetermined rule of preference operating when recognition is insufficient, i.e., claim 2/4's compulsory selection concept (without the timer).
• Also: "where no data is received for an extended period, this is measured, and the setting is reverted" → a time‑measuring teaching.

Date caveat (flagged): US 5,222,200's US filing (1992‑01‑08) postdates the '149's JP priority (1991‑07‑10) but predates the US parent filing (1992‑07‑06). Under In re Hilmer, 359 F.2d 859 (CCPA 1966), a § 119 foreign priority date cannot be used to antedate a US reference's § 102(e) date, so US 5,222,200 should be available as § 102(e) art measured against the 1992‑07‑06 parent filing. I have not verified the prosecution history, so treat this as a strong‑but‑unconfirmed availability point.

3.4 US 5,165,014 — Method and system for matching the software command language of a computer with the printer language of a printer (Vassar; HP; filed 1990‑09‑12, granted 1992‑11‑17)

Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5165014 ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5165014](/patent/5165014)

Verified disclosure:

• "reading a stream of data generated from software of a computer, detecting the presence of one or more predetermined characters in the data stream and occurring within a predetermined period of time and indicative of a single particular printer language, and … automatically matching the output connection …"
• "a plurality of parallel‑connected character counters"; the comparator "is operative to tell if enough character data has been received in order to make a command language determination"; the determinator decides "based upon the nature and frequency or sequence of certain language‑specific character bytes received within a larger group of character bytes scanned."
• Worked example: "If the first two characters in the data stream … are a combination of a Control‑D followed by a percent sign '%', then a count value of 5 is added to the Early Percent counter"; "If there appears a double percent sign, or a '%%' sign, within the first one‑hundred bytes…" → count thresholds + ordered two‑character sequences = claim 1 element 1c and dependent claims 5/6.
• FIG. 1 expressly shows "a user personal computer (PC) workstation … connected both directly to different types of printers and also through a network print server to a plurality of different types of printers" → claim 10.

3.5 EP 0 395 562 A2 / US 5,010,514 — Delineating the beginning and the end of a data file sent to a print server in a computer network / Structured fields at a data stream boundary for delimiting files (IBM; priority US 344,178 of 1989‑04‑26; EP published 1990‑10‑31; US granted 1991‑04‑23)

https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0395562A2 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[5010514](/patent/5010514) ; EPO abstract: http://data.epso.org/pise-server/rest/collections/lgpi/EP0395562A3.pdf

Verified disclosure:

• "Unique structured fields for delimiting the beginning and end of a data file sent to a print server in a computer network having a mixture of host processors and microprocessors … Each file sent to the print server is preceded by a unique beginning of file structured field and is terminated with a unique end of file structured field. Both … include a length field, a file delimiter identification field and a unique flag."
• The flag byte's "first two bits are encoded to indicate whether a begin of file or end of file structured field is being sent. Binary '10' indicates the begin of file, and binary '01' indicates the end of file." → the unit‑determinative code is a combination of fields in a predetermined arrangement/order (claim 1 element 1c, second alternative).
• "each file or job must be properly delineated to avoid overlap"; "The print data is not sent directly to a physical printer device until the entire print file has been received by the print server" → claim 11 (batch buffering).
• Error checking: "a structured field with an end of file is received without a structured field with begin of file … will cause rejection of the transmission" → claim 8‑type alarm logic.

Critical: the EPO record shows EP 0 395 562 was cited during prosecution of EP 0 522 864 A3 — the European family member of US 5,511,149 (EP 0 395 562 A3 lists "Cited by … EP0522864A3"). That is direct evidence that the job‑delineation reference was treated as material to this very invention.

3.6 Remaining cited references (title/abstract level only)

• US 4,992,957 (Seiko Epson, "Printer and method for utilizing character codes and control codes within a printer"; granted 1991‑02‑12) — character‑code/control‑code handling inside a printer; supports dependent claims 5/6 and 9 but I have not verified its disclosure in detail.
• WO 90/12359 A1 (Eastman Kodak, "Communications interface for computer output printer") — printer/host interface; supports claim 10.
• EP 0 094 493 A2 (IBM, "Print buffering scheme for a key to print operation"; published 1983‑11‑23) — print buffering; supports claims 11/12.
• JPS 63‑216756 A (Brother; published 1988‑09‑09) — the admitted emulator of the Background.

3.7 Related Brother documents surfaced in the same citation graph (not on the '149 face; clearly labelled as supplementary)

• US 5,295,233 — "Controller for printing apparatus" (http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5295233.html). Its disclosure mirrors the '149's FIG. 3 step‑for‑step: store N bytes; detect control codes; "it is determined whether or not the detected control codes are present in the control code system for the operation mode '0' … '0' is withdrawn from the candidates"; "'1' is withdrawn"; "'2' is withdrawn"; "it is determined whether or not the candidates … have been narrowed down to one"; if no candidate survives, "a command error display is made"; and "the CPU 2 counts time with a time counter … and interrupts the execution of the initialization program when, for example, four seconds have passed." I did not verify US 5,295,233's filing/priority dates, so I use it only as corroboration that this algorithm was a known, standard Brother approach rather than as a formal reference.
• EP 0 611 657 A3 (Brother) — collective/combination mode searching among stored print control programs by analysing the control code.
• JP 3,084,806 B2 / JP 2,859,976 B2 etc. (Brother "Printing device" siblings) — siblings of the '149's JP member JP 3,084,807 B2.

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4. Element‑by‑element mapping of the independent claims

Claim 1

Claim 2 (candidate modes + compulsory selection + timer)

Claims 3 and 4 (both mode‑ and unit‑determinative codes defined as count‑ or order‑combinations)

Supplied by US 5,293,466 (weighted pattern vectors, ordered lists, thresholds, n‑gram combinations) and US 5,165,014 (counter thresholds + sequence detection), with the "first/second predetermined value" distinction reflecting no more than two independently tunable thresholds (a routine design choice).

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5. The § 103 combinations, with motivation

Combination A (primary — disposes of claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12)

US 4,968,159 + US 5,293,466, optionally + US 5,222,200.

Where each teaches: US 4,968,159 supplies the multi‑personality printing apparatus, the control‑code‑driven mode determination, the code‑table/judging structure, the candidate‑withdrawal algorithm and the 4‑second interrupt fallback. US 5,293,466 supplies the per‑print‑job repetition of that determination (sample a portion of each job, identify the language, print that job with the matching emulator), expressly in a networked environment.

Motivation (KSR rationales (A), (C), (D), (F) and the explicit-Suggestion rationale (G)):

1. Same field, same problem, same solution type. Both are printer‑controller documents about a single printer hosting emulations of several printer personalities and automatically selecting among them. 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."
2. Both expressly identify the same deficiency and the same design incentive. US 4,968,159: operator must "beforehand understand the operation mode … dip switches … ROM cartridge … troublesome … error in the setting." US 5,293,466: dedicated printers per language are "expensive," and configuration switches "may lead to resource contention"; its stated advantage is to "improve the productivity and throughput of printer resources, especially in a networked environment." Those are the identical market forces the '149 recites in its "Discussion" section.
3. The two techniques are applied to the same data stream, in sequence, without interaction. A POSITA who already had US 4,968,159's candidate‑withdrawal/timeout engine and US 5,293,466's per‑job sampling would simply re‑run the known comparison at each job boundary rather than once at power‑on. That is the classic "arranging old elements to perform the same function they were known to perform," yielding a predictable result — every job printed in its own mode, and an ambiguity fallback when a job is genuinely ambiguous. There is no new cooperation between the routines and no change in how either works internally.
4. The '149's specification itself confesses the equivalence by presenting its per‑job flow as the same candidate‑withdrawal algorithm as US 4,968,159 with a job‑end trigger bolted on (compare its FIG. 3 steps S17–S33 and the "4‑secs. interruption routine" of FIG. 5 with US 4,968,159's FIG. 2/FIG. 3).

Prediction of claim 2: US 4,968,159's 4‑sec interrupt is not merely analogous — it is the same mechanism. If one accepts that US 5,293,466's per‑job sampling is an obvious modification, claim 2 falls with claim 1. (Indeed, claim 2 on its own reads as anticipated by US 4,968,159 but for the per‑job limitation; it survives § 102 only by inheriting that limitation from claim 1.)

Combination B (job‑boundary definition of claim 1, elements 1c–1d)

US 5,165,014 + EP 0 395 562 A2 (or US 5,010,514), used with Combination A.

Where each teaches: US 5,165,014 supplies count‑based and order‑based combination detection (parallel counters, thresholds, "first two characters," "%% within the first one hundred bytes," characters "occurring within a predetermined period of time"). EP 0 395 562 A2 / US 5,010,514 supply job/file delimitation using structured boundary fields in a print server that serves "a mixture of host processors and microprocessors."

Motivation (rationales (A), (F)): EP 0 395 562 A2 states the enabling problem verbatim: in a print server, "each file or job must be properly delineated to avoid overlap," and time‑outs were considered undesirable for that purpose. Once a POSITA adopts per‑job mode determination (Combination A), it is a necessary predicate to know where each job starts and ends — EP 0 395 562 A2's own reason for existing. Combining job‑boundary detection with per‑job mode determination is therefore not merely suggested; it is required by the design goal. The resulting combination is the literal architecture of claim 1 elements 1c–1e.
Corroboration of materiality: EP 0 395 562 was cited in the EPO prosecution of this very family (EP 0 522 864 A3).

Combination C (the "combinations exceeding a number / in a predetermined order" definition of claims 1, 3, 4)

US 5,293,466 + US 5,165,014, used with Combination A.

Where each teaches: US 5,293,466's data sets encode "the likelihood of selected n‑grams occurring individually or in combination" as ordered weighted vectors with thresholds; US 5,165,014 counts occurrences of selected bytes and also detects ordered pairs (Ctrl‑D + '%').
Motivation: both are heuristics for the same task of deciding, from control‑code statistics, which personality a stream belongs to. Using a count threshold or an ordered signature is a simple substitution of one known identification criterion for another (rationale (B)) to obtain a predictable improvement in discrimination reliability. Claims 3/4's "first" and "second" predetermined values/orders are met by simply applying the same known technique to each of the two code classes (mode‑determinative and unit‑determinative) — an obvious duplication of a known expedient.

Combination D (dependent claims 5–8)

• Claim 5 (mode‑determinative code = part of successive character codes): US 5,222,200 (ESC + following code; %!, %% as two‑character signatures) and US 5,165,014 (Ctrl‑D + '%'; "the first two characters in the data stream"). Motivation: the '149 itself says this is done "so that … the determination … can be effected with high efficiency, and the required capacity of the code table … made relatively small" — precisely the recognised benefit of the US 5,165,014/US 5,222,200 prefix‑signature approach. Efficiency of table storage is a classic design incentive (rationale (F)).
• Claim 6 (parts selected from plural groups of character codes): US 5,010,514/EP 0 395 562 A2's structured field (length field + ID field + flag byte, with '10'/'01' in the flag) and US 5,293,466's n‑gram sets drawn from distinct positions.
• Claim 7 (code detecting + control‑code memory + comparing means): US 4,968,159 (detecting means + judging means against stored control‑code systems); US 5,293,466 (resident algorithm + stored data sets compared to a sample vector). Motivation: these are the only practical ways to implement the function; predictable result.
• Claim 8 (alarm when no stored code matches): US 5,293,233's "command error display" on exhaustion of candidates (supplementary, dates unverified); US 5,293,466's "procedure … to handle an inability to select a language according to the n‑gram patterns found in the sample vector." Motivation: an operator‑visible indication is the standard, obvious response to an unrecognised data stream — and US 5,293,466 supplies the diagnosis, making the response a matter of design choice.

Combination E (dependent claims 9–12)

• Claim 9 (dot‑matrix printing means): US 5,293,466 expressly enumerates "thermal printers, laser printers and dot matrix printers" as the engines to which its method applies; the '149's own specification frames the DPI modes (240/300/400) around dot‑matrix printing. Motivation: mere selection of a known, interchangeable print engine (rationale (B)); no functional relationship to the mode‑selection algorithm.
• Claim 10 (network of computers feeding the emulator): US 5,165,014 FIG. 1 (PC workstation through a network print server to a plurality of printers); US 5,293,466 ("productivity and throughput … especially in a networked environment"); EP 0 395 562 A2 (LAN print server servicing mainframe processors and personal computers). Motivation: the '149 states this limitation is its purpose ("even if the printer emulator is used in a network including such two or more types of printers"); the references state the same purpose, so the motivation is not merely present but explicit.
• Claim 11 (batch buffering before detection starts): EP 0 395 562 A2 ("The print data is not sent directly to a physical printer device until the entire print file has been received by the print server"); US 4,968,159 (printing information stored in memory then control codes detected); US 5,293,466 ("buffer means for capturing a portion of the start of any print job").
• Claim 12 (job units received while detection/determination run): US 5,293,466 and US 5,222,200 both receive data into a buffer and run the analysis in parallel with the incoming stream ("the language determination routine never consumes data"; examination "limited to 500 bytes … of a memory 19 which provides 500 byte buffer … in which data received for printing is entered").
  Motivation for 11 vs 12: buffering vs streaming is the canonical design trade‑off (latency vs memory) — a routine engineering choice from a finite, predictable set (rationale (E)).

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6. § 102(b) / pre‑AIA § 103(c) availability note (important)

US 4,968,159 is assigned to Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, the same ultimate owner as the '149's assignee, Brother Industries Ltd. Under pre‑AIA § 103(c), commonly owned § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art generally cannot be used for obviousness — but that disqualification does not reach art that is § 102(a)/(b) prior art. US 4,968,159 issued 1990‑11‑06, which is more than one year before the US filing date of the '149's parent (07/908,992, filed 1992‑07‑06; under In re Hilmer the § 102(b) critical date is measured from the US filing, not the JP priority). US 4,968,159 is therefore § 102(b) art and cannot be disqualified by common ownership. The same reasoning applies to US 4,992,957 (granted 1991‑02‑12), US 5,010,514 (1991‑04‑23), EP 0 0 395 562 A2 (published 1990‑10‑31), WO 90/12359 (1990‑10‑18), EP 0 094 493 A2 (1983‑11‑23) and JPS 63‑216756 (1988‑09‑09). Only US 5,222,200 and US 5,293,466 present any date subtlety (see § 3.3 and § 3.7).

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7. What the patent owner would argue, and how each argument fares

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8. Bottom line

• Claims 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12: obvious over US 4,968,159 + US 5,293,466 (per‑job repetition of a known candidate‑withdrawal mode‑selection engine), with US 5,165,014 and/or EP 0 395 562 A2 / US 5,010,514 supplying the count‑/order‑combination unit‑determinative codes and job‑boundary detection. Confidence: high for claims 1 and 10 (per‑job network language selection is squarely US 5,293,466's stated invention); moderate‑to‑high for the remainder.
• Claim 2: most vulnerable. Its candidate‑narrowing, compulsory‑selection‑by‑rule and timeout architecture is disclosed in substance by US 4,968,159 alone (candidate withdrawal; "narrowed down to one"; "4 sec. interrupt routine"), and US 5,165,014 adds "occurring within a predetermined period of time." With US 5,293,466's per‑job sampling supplied for the inherited claim‑1 limitation, claim 2 is obvious; on its own it is arguably anticipated but for the per‑job element.
• Claim 4: obvious for the same reason, plus US 5,293,466/US 5,165,014 for the dual "first/second predetermined value/order" definitions.
• Claim 8 (alarm): the weakness of the combination evidence. My basis is US 5,293,466's "inability to select a language" handling and (supplementary, dates unverified) US 5,293,233's "command error display." If the alarm limitation were treated as the sole point of novelty, the showing would be thinner — though an operator alarm for an unrecognised stream is a conventional, predictable response.
• The '149's own Background admission (an emulator that automatically determines operation mode from control codes) plus the specification's near‑identical restatement of US 4,968,159's algorithm materially reduce the patentable distance between the admitted art and the claims.

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9. Caveats and unresolved items

1. I did not obtain an authenticated USPTO Patent Center / Public PAIR file wrapper, so I could not confirm (a) whether the "plurality of job units"/"plurality of unit‑determinative codes" language in issued claim 1 was added to overcome specific art, or (b) exactly which reference(s) the examiner relied on for which limitation. The element mappings above are therefore my reconstruction from the reference disclosures, not a record of the examiner's rejections.
2. Date caveats: US 5,222,200's availability as § 102(e) art turns on the Hilmer analysis described in § 3.3; US 5,293,233's filing/priority dates are unverified and it is used only as corroboration, not as a formal reference.
3. Title‑level‑only references: EP 0 094 493 A2, US 4,992,957, WO 90/12359 A1 and JPS 63‑216756 A were available to me only by title/abstract in this session; any conclusion that depends solely on them (notably the claim 8 and claim 11 mappings) is correspondingly weaker.
4. Continued inconsistency I am preserving, not correcting: the Background's "63‑216765" versus the front page's "JPS63216756A" (63‑216756), and the specification's internal figure/step typos previously flagged ("main routine of FIG. 3," "Step S39 and S40," "first register 41a … second register 41b," undeclared time counter 39). The counter‑39 observation is now reinforced rather than contradicted: US 4,968,159 contains an explicit 4‑second interrupt routine, which is consistent with the '149's algorithm being an adaptation of that earlier Brother document.
5. No secondary‑considerations evidence was found in any source I consulted; a full obviousness opinion would require a commercial‑success / nexus investigation into Brother's emulation printers, which I cannot complete with the tools available.