US 5946110

I'll verify this patent's identity and check for any litigation or docket activity before summarizing.

Let me run one more targeted check for docket/litigation records on this specific number.

US Patent 5,946,110 — "Apparatus for Multiple Resolution Scanning"

Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5946110](/patent/US5946110)/en (full text fetched 2026-09-24) and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5946110

1. Bibliographic data

Note on status: Google Patents lists an "anticipated expiration" of 2017-05-19 (20 years from filing), but the patent actually lapsed in 2003 for failure to pay maintenance fees. It is not enforceable.

2. Abstract (as issued)

A mechanical, electrical and optical scanning apparatus for producing a digital image of a two-dimensional original object in which the combined motions of multiple platforms or carriages along one dimension of the two-dimensional original object provides both low resolution scan of the original object and high resolution scan of the original object as well as intermediate resolutions. One of the platforms carries a camera with precision zoom/focus control for receiving light energy from said original object along the other of its dimensions converting it into electrical energy in a digital format. This platform provides low resolution scanning. The other platform carries the original object and provides high resolution scanning but moves only a fraction of the length of the original object. Combined motion of the two platforms provides high resolution scanning along the entire length of the two-dimensional original object.

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Two-platform scanner architecture (broadest claim)

A scanning apparatus for making a 2-D computer image of a 2-D original, comprising:

• At least two platforms (first and second), both mounted for linear scanning motion along a path set by one dimension of the original.
• The first platform carries the original object; the second platform carries the electro-optical image reproduction equipment (typically a camera/CCD).
• Two scan drive mechanisms ("scan motive means"), one per platform.
• Asymmetric travel: one drive moves its platform over the entire length of the path; the other drive moves its platform over only a fractional part of the path.
• Motion control means coordinates the two drives.

In plain terms: two independently driven carriages share the scanning job. One spans the whole document; the other is a short-travel, high-precision carriage. This is the core inventive concept.

Claim 6 — Full optical-system scanner

Same two-platform architecture as claim 1, but with the electro-optical equipment spelled out:

• Lamp to illuminate the original;
• Camera that receives light along the other object dimension and converts it to digital electrical energy using a charge coupled device (CCD);
• Multiple lenses that focus light from the original onto the CCD;
• Lens selection means for choosing a lens to achieve high, low, and intermediate resolutions;
• Zoom/focus motive means to precisely maintain the correct object-to-CCD distance;
• Plus the same two scan drives (one full-path, one fractional-path) and motion control means.

In plain terms: claim 1's dual-carriage structure plus a multi-lens turret and a motorized zoom/focus mechanism, which collectively deliver the multiple selectable resolutions.

Claim 11 — Platform-means / computer-image framing

A scanning apparatus for producing a digital image for use in a computer, comprising:

• First and second platform means, each movable along a path covering the original;
• Means for moving them separately, configured so the second platform moves less distance than the first;
• The first platform means supports camera means with precision zoom and focus receiving light reflected from the original to produce an image in a predetermined digital format;
• The second platform means supports the original object for movement along the path;
• Whereby the combined motions of the two platform means yield a high resolution digital image.

In plain terms: a means-plus-function recital of the same dual-carriage idea, oriented toward producing a computer-usable digital image, with the camera platform moving a shorter distance than the object platform.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2 — Motion control includes high-resolution control, low-resolution control (drives only the second motive means), and motion selection for intermediate resolutions.
• 3 — High-resolution motive means = stepper motor + high-resolution transmission; low-resolution motive means = low-resolution stepper motor + low-resolution transmission.
• 4 — Transmission details: high-resolution side has a non-slip belt, pulleys, and a precision ball screw whose length generally corresponds to the fractional path; low-resolution side has a non-slip belt.
• 5 — Electro-optical means includes lamp means, camera means, and at least two lenses.
• 7 — Zoom/focus motive means = a zoom/focus stepper motor plus focus control means coupled to the camera.
• 8 — Focus control means = first and second lead screws and first and second guide shafts, with lead screws coupled to the zoom/focus stepper motor by a non-slip belt.
• 9 / 10 — Scan motive means and zoom/focus motive means operate together under control of digital electronics.

4. Supporting mechanical details from the specification

• High-resolution (fine) carriage carries the original on an object glass, driven by a stepping motor and timing belt turning a ~5-inch zero-backlash ball screw; one motor step ≈ 1/12,000 inch.
• Low-resolution (main) carriage carries the lamp and camera box, driven by a stepping motor, gear box, idler pulley, timing belt and belt rack over the full 18-inch maximum travel; one step ≈ 1/2,000 inch.
• Complementary indexed scanning: the fine carriage scans the first ~5 inches; the main carriage indexes 5 inches forward; the fine carriage returns to its start and scans the next 5 inches; repeated until the whole 18-inch object is covered at high resolution. Precision stops are accurate to better than 1/40,000 inch (2.77% of one main-carriage step).
• Supportable resolutions: 667, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 ppi; max scan width shrinks from 12 inches at 667 ppi to about 2 inches at 4,000 ppi.
• Optical tolerance: object-to-image distance must be held within 9 microns; vertical zoom/focus uses a guide lead screw, idler lead screw, guide shaft, idler shaft, pulleys and a coupling timing belt, with calibration values stored in firmware in an electronics box.

5. Internal inconsistencies and drafting notes (interpreted literally, not corrected)

• Specification figure/unit anomaly: the text states the CCD has "8,000 triads of photodetectors along its 72 centimeter length, giving the CCD an intrinsic resolution of 2,822 ppi." Taken literally, 8,000 elements over 72 cm would not yield 2,822 ppi; 2,822 ppi implies roughly 2.835 inches (≈72 mm). I flag this as an apparent inconsistency in the document rather than correcting it.
• Role-of-carriage inconsistency: the Background section states "the main carriage uses a stepping motor and timing belt to transport the original object" and "the fine carriage uses a precision ball screw mechanism to transport the same original object," whereas the Detailed Description, Abstract, and all independent claims state the fine carriage carries the original object and the main carriage carries the camera box. The claim language and detailed description are the controlling disclosures.
• Typo: claim 4 recites "high resolution transmision means" (spelling as issued).

6. Docket / litigation search result — NOT FOUND

I searched for litigation and appellate (CAFC, 2026 dockets) activity tied specifically to 5946110 / 5,946,110. The searches returned no infringement suits, Federal Circuit appeals, IPR/PGR proceedings, or other docket records for this patent number. The only third-party references located were forward citations in later patents (e.g., US 7,477,425, Hewlett-Packard, listing "5946110 | August 31, 1999 | Hu et al." in its prior-art table).

Uncertainty statement: I do not have direct, authenticated access to USPTO PatentCenter, PACER, or the CAFC docket system in this session; the "no litigation" conclusion rests on general web search results, which returned nothing for this specific number. This should not be treated as a certified clearance or docket check. Anyone needing a definitive litigation posture should query PACER/CM-ECF and the CAFC docket directly by patent number. Given the patent lapsed in 2003 for non-payment of maintenance fees, any such activity would in any event relate to a now-expired right.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5946110 across patent litigation databases and court sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and sources.

Summary of Findings: Litigation Involving US Patent 5,946,110

No litigation specifically involving US Patent 5,946,110 was identified in the sources searched.

What I searched

I ran web searches targeting (1) the literal patent number "5946110," (2) the patent owner/inventor names (Microtek Artix Corp; Darwin Hu; Lawrence Huang), and (3) general patent‑litigation databases (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener, and general case dockets). I did not find any district court complaint, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding in which US 5,946,110 was the asserted patent.

Why the absence of litigation is consistent with the record

The patent's own prosecution and maintenance history supports a finding of no known litigation:

• Patent: US 5,946,110 — "Apparatus for multiple resolution scanning"
• Assignee: Microtek Artix Corp (assignment recorded 1997‑05‑19; inventors Darwin Hu and Lawrence Huang)
• Filing / priority date: 1997‑05‑19 (application 08/858,726)
• Grant date: 1999‑08‑31
• Legal status: Expired – Fee Related. Per the Google Patents legal‑events record: a maintenance‑fee reminder was mailed 2003‑03‑19, the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2003‑09‑02, and it was recorded as expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees (37 CFR 1.362) effective 2003‑08‑31.

A patent that lapsed roughly four years after issuance — well before any realistic infringement‑suit timeline and with only a narrow ~4‑year enforceability window — is very unlikely to have generated reported litigation. The only citations to US 5,946,110 I found are patent‑literature citations (e.g., it being cited as prior art/reference in later applications such as US 2005/0099619 A1, and in the "Similar Documents" list), not litigation citations.

Important caveats and one tangential lead

1. Negative‑result limitation. I could not complete exhaustive docket queries (e.g., full PACER/Unified Patents/DPMA‑style docket pulls) before reaching my search limit. My conclusion is that no litigation is known, but I state this with the caveat that I did not run an exhaustive, paginated docket search. I will not fabricate case numbers, plaintiffs, or filing dates, since none were found.

2. A Microtek‑related case that is NOT this patent. One search surfaced a venue‑transfer opinion referencing Microtek entities (MLI, MIDSDI, MEI, and subsidiary MCSC) and "ImageDeck" scanners in the Eastern District of Virginia / Central District of California. That matter concerns ImageDeck scanner products and a different asserted patent — it does not identify US 5,946,110 as the patent‑in‑suit, so I do not attribute it to this patent.

Bottom line

Based on the sources available, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 5,946,110. The patent issued in 1999, was cited only as prior‑art literature, and lapsed in 2003 for nonpayment of maintenance fees, which is consistent with it never having been asserted in a lawsuit.

If you need a definitive negative confirmation, I'd recommend a direct PACER docket search and a Unified Patents / Lex Machina query on the exact string "5,946,110" — but based on everything found here, no such cases exist in the public record.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" data with targeted searches before writing.

Let me check the PTAB E2E / ODP-facing sources and the assignee's PTAB footprint directly.

One more pass for any petitioner-side or aggregator activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — zero IPRs, zero PGRs, zero CBMs. There is nothing to break down by status, because no petition was ever filed, instituted, decided, or settled. The structured PTAB block included in this prompt (the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list) is empty for US 5,946,110, and my independent web searches returned no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal referencing this patent number.

The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs." It is the unusual and much better position that the patent was never tested at the PTAB because it never needed to be — it lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees and expired on 2003-08-31, roughly nine years before the first IPR was ever instituted. For a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 5,946,110 today (2026-09-30), the PTAB record is a nullity, and the operative defenses are statutory timing and expiration, not AIA trials.

Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceedings to report, so the requested ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} subsections have no content and I am not going to invent proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions to fill them.

What I can state with high confidence from the structured data:

• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A — no proceeding exists
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — consequently no claim of US 5,946,110 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD to appeal
• Defensive value: The absence of PTAB history means there is no Board-issued claim construction, no estoppel, and no adjudicated invalidity to point to. Any defense must be built from the district court record, the prosecution history, and the patent's own expiration.

Why zero proceedings is the expected — and correct — result

Three independent reasons all point the same way, and each is confirmed by the record already generated for this patent:

1. Expiration predates the AIA trial regime. The Google Patents legal-events record shows a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2003-03-19, lapse for failure to pay on 2003-09-02, and expiration under 37 CFR 1.362 effective 2003-08-31. IPR, PGR, and CBM proceedings only became available on 2012-09-16. As a practical matter, no rational petitioner files a validity challenge against a patent that has already been unenforceable for nine years.
2. No litigation ever attached. As documented in the litigation section of this analysis, no district court suit, CAFC appeal, or demand-driven dispute over this patent is in the public record — and patents that never get asserted never attract IPR petitioners or defensive aggregators.
3. CBM was categorically unavailable anyway. Even setting timing aside, CBM review required a "covered business method" patent (a financial products or services claim) with a pre-2003-11-15 effective filing date. US 5,946,110 claims a document scanner — a purely technological apparatus — so it could not have qualified for CBM on subject matter, and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 in any event.

Search caveat (stated plainly rather than glossed): my web searches for "5946110" as a patent identifier returned no PTAB materials, but they were not an exhaustive, paginated docket pull. One search hit returned the string "5946110" as an SEC EDGAR accession-sequence artifact in a 2020 Form 497J filing — that is an unrelated coincidence, not a reference to this patent, and I am not treating it as evidence of anything. A definitive negative should be confirmed by querying the USPTO PTAB E2E system and the PTAB Decisions search on the exact application number 08/858,726 and patent number 5,946,110. I found nothing, and the structured ODP data confirms nothing, but I did not have authenticated API access in this session.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED, and that is the whole story. None of the eleven claims (independents 1, 6, 11; dependents 2–5, 7–10) has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed in any AIA trial. There is no surviving-claims list to construct because there is no FWD, no certificate, and no Board claim construction. Contrast this with the typical high-assertion patent, where the useful defensive artifact is a claim-cancellation certificate; here the useful defensive artifact is the legal-events record showing the patent expired 2003-08-31 for nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362 (Google Patents legal events, assignment reel/frame 008599/0612). Any assertion built on claims 1, 6, or 11 today faces the threshold problem that the right lapsed more than two decades ago, long before the AIA trial system existed to test it.

Estoppel landscape: no estoppel exists, because there is no petitioner. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estops a petitioner (and its real parties in interest and privies) from raising in a civil action any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised in an IPR that reached a Final Written Decision. There is no such proceeding, no such petitioner, and therefore no estoppel bar on anyone. In theory, every prior-art ground remains available — including grounds a defendant might otherwise have been estopped from raising. In practice this theoretical freedom is of little value: the two references the examiner cited, US 5,239,392 (Minolta Camera, 1993-08-24) and US 5,140,443 (Victor Company of Japan, 1992-08-18), were already overcome during prosecution, and a defendant's real defenses are timing-based rather than art-based. Note also that an IPR filed now would be of marginal utility: the claims cannot be amended to preserve validity in any commercially meaningful way, and the six-year damages lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 would confine any recovery to a window that closed in the early 2000s.

Pattern signals: there are none to read. No serial petitioner (no company filed even one IPR), no patent-owner appeal practice before the Federal Circuit, and no defensive aggregator in the chain — I searched for Unified Patents–style activity against Microtek scanning patents and found nothing tied to this number. The forward-citation trail (for example, US 7,477,425 to Hewlett-Packard citing "5946110 | August 31, 1999 | Hu et al.") is ordinary patent-literature citation, not evidence of a contested validity fight. The only Microtek-adjacent litigation surface I surfaced concerned different patents and ImageDeck products and did not name US 5,946,110; I am explicitly not attributing it to this patent. A patent with zero IPRs, zero litigation, and a 2003 fee lapse is a patent that was simply never economically worth attacking.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and the patent has claims "invalidated": it does not, and no proceeding did that. Do not cite a non-existent FWD. The correct citation is the expiration record. Point to the legal-events chronology on Google Patents: maintenance-fee reminder 2003-03-19, lapse for non-payment 2003-09-02, and the notation "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362," effective 2003-08-31. Any demand letter asserting claims 1, 6, or 11 against post-2003 conduct is asserting an unenforceable right, and any recovery theory is independently time-barred by the § 286 six-year limitation.

If active proceedings are pending: they are not. There is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no FWD due date to track, because there is no proceeding — no statutory one-year trial clock is running against anyone.

If no PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and read the signal correctly. No PTAB activity exists. Here the absence is not the usual "the patent hasn't been asserted hard enough yet to attract an IPR" signal. It is a stronger signal: the patent has been dead since 2003, and the AIA trial regime did not begin until 2012. For a defendant, this converts the analysis from a merits fight into a standing and timing fight. Before spending on invalidity contentions, confirm (a) the expiration date via USPTO PatentCenter, and (b) whether any asserted conduct falls within the 1999–2003 enforceability window and the § 286 lookback. If it does not, the PTAB question is moot.

For definitive negative confirmation of the PTAB record, query these sources directly on patent number 5,946,110 and application number 08/858,726: USPTO PTAB E2E, the USPTO Open Data Portal, PTAB Decisions, and CourtListener for any CAFC appeal. My searches returned nothing on all fronts, consistent with the empty structured block — but treat that as a documented negative result from the sources I could reach, not a certified docket clearance.

I'll verify the assignment record and dig into the assignee's corporate history before reconstructing the ownership chain.

Let me dig into the assignee's corporate identity and check for any additional recorded assignments.

Let me check for any additional recorded assignments and the corporate fate of the assignee.

Inventors

Pattern note: No "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" red flag is supported by the record — the assignment was executed before the 1997-05-19 filing (effective 1997-04-30), i.e., the inventors assigned on the way in, which is ordinary employment practice for a corporate R&D shop. There is no recorded evidence of a coordinated inventor exit preceding a portfolio sale.

Original assignee

Microtek Artix Corporation (a California corporation).

• Incorporation: 1996-04-16 (per California business registry). Registered agent of record: C. Stewart Chow — the same agent listed for Microtek Lab, Inc. (the separately-registered US subsidiary of Microtek International) and for Microtek International Development Systems Division, Inc. That shared agent is strong evidence Artix was a member of the Microtek corporate family, not an independent startup.
• Line of business: graphics-arts / professional pre-press scanning hardware. The "ArtixScan" product brand (e.g., ArtixScan 2500, ArtixScan 120tf, later ArtixScan M1) traces directly to this "Artix" naming, and this patent's own specification is aimed squarely at "professional printing and publishing in the graphics arts industry." On that basis the assignee plausibly shipped product embodying the claims (the ArtixScan line), though I could not tie a specific model number to this patent's claims within the searches performed.
• Parent: Microtek International Inc. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) — an operating scanner/imaging manufacturer founded 1980, still filing corporate reports as of March 2024. Its US arm Microtek Lab, Inc. (Santa Fe Springs / Cerritos, CA) is listed as Dissolved (last statement 2014).
• Current status of the assignee itself: "Merged Out" per the California registry — i.e., Microtek Artix Corporation ceased to exist as a standalone entity through a corporate merger, not a bankruptcy.

Contradiction to flag: The earlier-generated litigation section characterized the patent as having "no recorded post-issuance assignments" and treated absence of records as consistent with the original assignee still owning the patent. That inference is not safe here: the assignee's registry status is "Merged Out," so ownership may have passed to a successor by operation of law. However — and this is the key finding — no merger or successor assignment was ever recorded at the USPTO (see next section), so there is no recorded paper chain beyond the original conveyance.

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5946110](/patent/US5946110)/en) exposes exactly one recorded assignment for application 08/858,726 / patent 5,946,110:

• 1997-04-30 (executed) / recorded 1997-05-19 — Reel 008599/0612
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:HU, DARWIN;HUANG, LAWRENCE")
  • Assignor: Darwin Hu and Lawrence Huang (individuals)
  • Assignee: Microtek Artix Corporation, California
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the record available to me. The Google Patents legal-events table lists the reel/frame, owner name, free-format text and effective date, but does not include the recording correspondent (the attorney/firm who filed the recordation). I did not retrieve the Assignment Center detail page itself, so I will not name a correspondent I cannot cite. Anyone needing it should pull Reel 008599 Frame 0612 directly in Assignment Center.
  • Context: Ordinary on-the-way-in assignment from the two employee-inventors to their employer, executed ~3 weeks before the application was filed and recorded on the filing date. Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Post-issuance assignments: none recorded. No assignment appears after grant (1999-08-31). No assignment appears in connection with the "Merged Out" corporate event, and no release, security agreement, change-of-name, or correction record is present. Per the task instruction, this is itself the finding: the only recorded transfer of this patent is the original inventor→Microtek Artix conveyance. Note the practical consequence — because the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2003-08-31 (reminder mailed 2003-03-19; lapse 2003-09-02; expiration recorded 2003-10-28 under 37 CFR 1.362), any successor-in-interest would have inherited an already-dead asset.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5946110
    1996 : Microtek Artix Corporation incorporated in California
    1997 : Inventors assign to Microtek Artix Corp
         : Executed Apr 30 recorded May 19
         : Reel 008599 Frame 0612
         : Application 08858726 filed May 19
    1999 : Patent US 5946110 issues Aug 31
    2003 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee
         : Effective Aug 31
         : No successor assignment ever recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The sole recorded assignment runs from two individuals to an operating corporate parent (Microtek Artix Corporation, a California corporation sharing a registered agent with Microtek Lab, Inc. and tied to a real product brand, ArtixScan). There is no downstream move to an "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" LLC, no single-purpose Delaware/Texas entity, and no registered-agent-service address anywhere in the chain. Reel 008599/0612 is the only entry.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Microtek Artix Corporation nor Microtek International appears on the public NPE rosters referenced (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Microtek is an operating scanner/imaging manufacturer. No record in the chain matches a high-frequency plaintiff.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. The correspondent of record is not exposed in the source I could retrieve (the Google Patents legal-events table omits it). With only one assignment in the chain there is, in any event, no second link against which recurrence could be measured. I am explicitly not reporting a correspondent name, because the underlying record (Reel 008599/0612 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) was not opened in this session.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. A single assignment across a 22-year recorded life (1997–2019). No back-to-back LLC hops, no shared-correspondent address cluster, no sub-24-month chain.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 5,946,110 was located (consistent with the earlier litigation section). The only assignment predates grant by two years and predates any conceivable litigation by far longer, so the "assignment within 6 months before first suit" pattern does not exist. The patent was already lapsed by 2003, which makes a venue-motivated transfer structurally impossible.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present as recorded. The assignee's registry status is "Merged Out," which is a corporate merger, not a bankruptcy; the related US affiliate Microtek Lab, Inc. shows "Dissolved" with a 2014 last statement. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, and no court-supervised patent sale, was found. Critically, no merger-successor assignment was recorded at the USPTO, so even if ownership devolved by operation of law, there is no recorded fire-sale in this chain.

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating company → NPE transfer, no SEC 10-K/8-K or third-party reporting describing assertion on Microtek's behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent simply expired in place in 2003.

Verdict

Insufficient data — applying the rubric's own definition ("no records, or only the original assignment"). The complete recorded chain is a single entry: Reel 008599/0612, executed 1997-04-30, recorded 1997-05-19, conveying from inventors Darwin Hu and Lawrence Huang to Microtek Artix Corporation. There is no post-issuance assignment, no litigation, and not one of the eight NPE indicators is positively present — the signals that could have been meaningful (correspondent recurrence, successor-in-interest after the assignee "Merged Out") are unavailable rather than negative, which is precisely why this lands on "insufficient data" rather than any affirmative NPE or defensive-aggregator call. The context that is documented points away from an NPE narrative: the assignee was a real California operating subsidiary of a Taiwanese scanner manufacturer, tied to the ArtixScan graphics-arts product line, and the patent died for non-payment of a maintenance fee effective 2003-08-31 — a lapse pattern typical of a discontinued product line, not of a monetization vehicle.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 5946110 or reel 008599 frame 0612); mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Patent record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5946110/en.

Caveats: I could not open the Assignment Center detail page or a PEDS/ODP continuity record in this session, so I cannot rule out a successor assignment that exists in the paper file but was not surfaced in the Google Patents legal-events extraction — and I specifically could not obtain the correspondent name for Reel 008599/0612. I have deliberately not named a correspondent rather than guess one.

I'll verify the patent record and pull details on each cited reference.

Let me pull the front-page details for the two examiner-cited references and check a few adjacent references.

Prior Art Analysis — US 5,946,110

Scope note (stated up front, not buried): I did not have authenticated access to USPTO Patent Public Search (PPUBS), PatentCenter, or the Open Data Portal API in this session. The of-record data used below comes from the Google Patents record for US5946110 (the "Patent Citations (2)" block, which mirrors USPTO's reference listing and flags entries with "* Cited by examiner") and the corroborating uspto.report grant page. Every identifier below was queried as the literal string 5946110 / 5,946,110; no similar-but-different patent number has been substituted. Where I could not verify something, I say so rather than filling the gap.

1. The complete of-record prior-art set: exactly two references

US 5,946,110 is unusual in having a very thin citation record. The issued patent's "References Cited — U.S. Patent Documents" contains two entries, both flagged as cited by the examiner (not by the applicant, and not third-party submissions). There are no foreign patent documents, no non-patent literature, and no § 102(e) U.S. application publications cited of record.

Because 5,946,110 was filed 1997-05-19 — before the AIA first-to-file regime took effect on 2013-03-16 — the governing novelty statute is pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102. Both references issued more than one year before the 1997-05-19 U.S. filing date, so both are § 102(b) printed publications / patents, and both are also § 102(a) and § 102(e)-class art. There is no priority-date question: no § 102(b) grace-period argument is available against either.

2. Reference 1 — US 5,140,443 A ("Image scanning apparatus")

Full citation

• US 5,140,443 A, "Image scanning apparatus."
• Inventors: Iwahara, Makoto; Miyoshi, Tadayoshi; Tada, Shigeaki; Kuriyama, Takashi; Takanashi, Itsuo; Shishido, Ichiro; Kitami, Kaoru.
• Assignee: Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (Yokohama, JP).
• Appl. No.: 07/557,612. Filed: 1990-07-24. Issued: 1992-08-18.
• Foreign priority: JP 1-192059 (1989-07-25); JP 1-194561 (1989-07-27); JP 1-249512 (1989-09-26); JP 1-281531 and JP 1-281532 (1989-10-27); JP 2-15843 (1990-02-20). Google Patents lists the priority date as 1989-07-25.
• Classification: H04N 1/04; U.S. Cl. 358/474, 358/491, 358/494, 399/206.
• Examiner of record: Ng, Jin F. (primary); Lefkowitz, Edward (assistant). Attorney: Meller, Michael N.
• Its own cited art: US 4,571,636 (Itoh); US 4,891,711 (Tomita); US 4,893,196 (Koshiyouji).
• Source: patents.google.com/patent/US5140443; everypatent.com/comp/pat5140443.html

What it discloses

A single-housing document scanner that handles two kinds of originals without changing the optical bench configuration:

• A first original platen that is movable horizontally across a slit in the top of the main unit casing, carrying a light-reflective (opaque) original.
• A second original platen that is movable horizontally inside the body casing, carrying a light-transmissive (transparent/film) original.
• A first light source irradiating through the slit onto the first platen; a second light source irradiating downward onto the second platen.
• A stationary image sensor inside the casing, and optical means (a first reflecting mirror, a movable second reflecting mirror, a third reflecting mirror, and a converging lens) that routes either reflected light from the first platen or transmitted light through the second platen to the same sensor. A swing-away remover takes the second mirror out of the first optical path to prevent optical-path interference.
• Stated objects: simplified structure, compact overall size, small/low-heat light source, and no interference between the two optical systems.

§ 102 analysis against claims 1, 6, 11

Conclusion: US 5,140,443 does not anticipate any claim of US 5,946,110 under § 102. It fails the single most distinctive element of the independent claims — a translating platform that carries the electro-optical imaging means. It is fully consistent with the standard "one stationary sensor + moving original/platen" flatbed architecture that the '110 patent is expressly distinguished from. Its realistic role is as § 103 background art (it establishes that movably mounted platens and dual reflected/transmitted optical paths were known), and possibly as a secondary reference on the "lamp means + camera means" fragment of claim 5/6 — but it cannot supply the dual-carriage asymmetric-travel limitation.

3. Reference 2 — US 5,239,392 A ("Reading apparatus")

Full citation

• US 5,239,392 A, "Reading apparatus."
• Inventors: Suzuki et al. (the Google Patents and uspto.report records credit "Suzuki et al."; I did not retrieve the complete inventor list).
• Assignee: Minolta Camera Kabushiki Kaisha (Osaka, JP).
• Issued: 1993-08-24. Priority/filing date shown by Google Patents: 1988-05-10.
• Prosecution chain (from the patent's own text): "This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 07/349,179, filed May 9, 1989 abandoned." The 1988-05-10 date listed as priority therefore appears to be the parent application; the issuing application number for the 5,239,392 grant was not retrieved in this session and I will not guess it.
• Volume: 24 claims, 22 drawing sheets.
• Source: patents.google.com/patent/US5239392A; patentimages PDF; freepatentsonline.com/5239392.html

What it discloses

This is the closer of the two references, and it is the reason the examiner cited it. It teaches one machine with two different reading resolutions:

• A high-resolution reading part and a low-resolution reading part, held by holding means slidable along the document surface.
• Selecting means to choose between the reading parts, yielding four modes: low- and high-resolution reading of light-impermeable documents, and low- and high-resolution reading of light-permeable documents (large sheet film vs. small film such as a photographic film/slide).
• Each reading part has a CCD, and per claim 23 the two CCD elements are driven by a common driving circuit.
• Claim 24 adds a light source between the two reading means and switching means to steer reflected light to the low-resolution part or the high-resolution part.
• Claim 19 specifics: first reading means with a length corresponding to the platen width; second reading means shorter than the platen width and of higher resolution; selecting means selecting the second reading means independent of selection of the first; first driving means moving both reading means in the scanning direction; and second driving means moving the second reading means perpendicular to the scanning direction.
• Objective (8th object) is expressly cost-driven: sharing one CCD drive circuit between the two resolution parts.

§ 102 analysis against claims 1, 6, 11

Conclusion: US 5,239,392 does not anticipate any claim of US 5,946,110 under § 102. The '110 patent's distinguishing architecture — two independently driven platforms moving along the same scan path, one of which carries the original and travels the full path while the other carries the optics and travels only a fraction, coordinated to stitch a full-length high-resolution scan — is absent. 5,239,392 solves the multiple-resolution problem by duplicating the optical/CCD channel and switching between channels on a single carrier, which is the opposite design philosophy from 5,946,110's one CCD + one multi-lens turret + precision zoom/focus + complementary index-and-rescan carriage motion.

Where it is nonetheless a genuine threat (the § 103 case, not § 102)

Be precise about this, because it matters if the analysis is ever used adversarially:

• Claim 2's resolution sub-concept (high-resolution control, low-resolution control, and selection of intermediate resolutions) is substantively anticipated as a concept by 5,239,392's selectable high/low resolution parts with selecting means. But claim 2 is dependent on claim 1 and adds the dual-platform limitation, so the claim as a whole is not anticipated. A § 103 attack would combine 5,239,392 (resolution selection) with a dual-carriage transport reference.
• Claim 5's "at least two lenses" — 5,239,392's two reading parts each have their own optical system, so a plurality of lenses is disclosed in substance. Again, claim 5 depends from claim 1 and inherits the unmet limitation.
• Claim 6's "multiplicity of lenses" + "lense selection means" — 5,239,392's selecting means between two reading parts is closer to this than the examiner's allowance presumably credited; but claim 6 requires the lenses to focus onto a (singular) charge coupled device and adds zoom/focus motive means, neither of which is in 5,239,392. Claim 6 also re-recites the dual-carriage limitations.

4. Anticipation verdict matrix (§ 102)

Bottom line: zero § 102 anticipations across all 11 claims from the entire of-record citation set. The two references map cleanly onto the background of the invention (movable platens; selectable multiple resolutions in one scanner) and arguably onto isolated dependent-claim fragments, but neither discloses the asymmetric dual-carriage/fractional-travel architecture that is the whole point of claims 1, 6, and 11.

Caveat on the rejection grounds: I retrieved the list of examiner-cited references, not the file wrapper / Office actions. I therefore do not know whether these two references were the basis of a § 103 rejection that applicant traversed, or were cited purely as background/IDS-style art. That determination requires the prosecution history, which is not in the sources retrieved here.

5. Secondary art — NOT of record as cited prior art

The Google Patents page also displays a "Similar Documents" list and a "Cited By" list. Neither is prior art to 5,946,110 under § 102, and neither should be presented as such:

• "Similar Documents" is a Google Patents similarity output (shared classification/text), not an examiner citation. It includes US 5,751,447; US 5,711,643; US 5,691,824; US 5,589,972; US 4,736,251; US 5,844,697; US 5,966,221; US 5,696,609; US 5,734,477; US 5,122,911; US 5,004,523-era items such as US 5,001,566; US 4,742,401; US 5,894,356; US 6,576,883; US 6,233,063; US 6,031,639; US 6,111,666; US 2008/0204823 A1; CA 1,199,055; EP 0 751 664 B1; EP 0 751 671 A2; JP H06-253101; JP H11-243473; JP 2011-176861; CN 101272444 B. Several of these (scanner carriage drive/suspension, dual-plane flatbed, multi-lens optical devices) look thematically on-point, but I did not retrieve or read their disclosures in this session and will not characterize their content. My attempted lookups for US 5,751,447, US 5,589,972, and US 5,691,824 hit a tool-call limit before returning usable front-page detail.
• "Cited By" entries are later documents that cite 5,946,110 as references — they cannot be § 102 art against it. The technically closest are US 2004/0012824 A1 → US 7,477,425 B2 (Hewlett-Packard, "Biasable drive for an image scanner carriage"), US 2005/0099619 A1 (Cross Match Technologies, "Large area, high quality print scanner apparatus"), and US 2006/0082794 A1 → US 8,390,874 B2 (Hewlett-Packard, "Optimal resolution imaging system and method").

If a fuller prior-art picture of the field is wanted (rather than the of-record picture), the honest next step is a classification-driven search of H04N 1/04 and H04N 1/10 (and the 358/474, 358/494, 358/496–498 classes the examiner searched), not a reliance on Google's similarity list.

6. Practical significance (cross-referencing the earlier sections)

This § 102 analysis is academic for enforcement purposes. Per the record already generated for this patent, US 5,946,110 lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2003-08-31 (reminder 2003-03-19; lapse 2003-09-02; expiration recorded under 37 CFR 1.362). No claim has ever been adjudicated, no IPR/PGR/CBM exists, and no litigation is known. So the defensible statements are:

1. The of-record prior art is only two references: US 5,140,443 (Victor Company of Japan, 1992-08-18) and US 5,239,392 (Minolta Camera, 1993-08-24), both cited by the examiner, both § 102(b) art.
2. Neither anticipates claims 1, 6, or 11, or any dependent claim, under § 102 — each fails at minimum the "two platforms, one carrying the original / one carrying the electro-optical means, with full-path versus fractional-path travel" requirement, and US 5,140,443 additionally fails the "translating imaging means" requirement outright.
3. US 5,239,392 is the strongest § 103 springboard for the multiple-resolution and lens-selection aspects (claims 2 and 5's sub-concepts), but it does not supply the dual-carriage asymmetric-travel core and provides no zoom/focus motive means or single-CCD multi-lens turret.
4. Any prior-art-based challenge today would face a threshold problem independent of the art: the patent has been unenforceable since 2003, so § 102/§ 103 contentions are moot unless the analysis is being done for historical, licensing-history, or defensive-record purposes.

Key sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5946110/en · https://patents.google.com/patent/US5140443/en · https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5239392A](/patent/US5239392A)/en · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5946110 · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5239392.html · http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5140443.html

Uncertainty statement: I could not query PPUBS/PatentCenter/full file wrappers, so (a) the exact issuing application number of US 5,239,392, (b) the complete US 5,239,392 inventor list, and (c) the Office-action rejection grounds are not verified here. None of those gaps changes the § 102 conclusions, which rest on the claims and disclosures quoted above.

I'll pull up the two examiner-cited references and check the similar-documents list for additional § 103 combination material before building the obviousness analysis.

Good — I have both examiner-cited references. Let me check the "Similar Documents" set for § 102(e)-eligible secondary art (dual-plane flatbed, multi-lens, and carriage-drive references) before assembling the grounds.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,946,110 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Record basis: the "Prior Art" material on the patent page — Patent Citations (2): US 5,239,392 (Minolta Camera K.K., 1993‑08‑24) and US 5,140,443 (Victor Company of Japan, Ltd., 1992‑08‑18); the prior‑art keyword set ("original object," "scan," "scanning," "platform," "motive"); plus the page's Similar Documents set, used only as supplementary gap‑filler and labelled as such. Full text of both examiner references was retrieved (US5239392 PDF, US5140443 claims). I did not obtain complete figure sets or every drive‑mechanism passage of either reference, and I say so where it matters.

Preliminary notes (not auto‑corrected, flagged): the application here has a 1997‑05‑19 filing/priority date, so pre‑AIA § 103(a) governs. Both examiner references issued more than one year before that date — '443 on 1992‑08‑18 and '392 on 1993‑08‑24 — so both are § 102(b) art on their faces. Two housekeeping flags: (i) the task header says "April 26, 2026" while the session date is 2026‑09‑30; nothing in this analysis turns on the difference; (ii) as cross‑referenced from the earlier sections, the '110 Background contradicts the Detailed Description on which carriage carries the original — for § 103 mapping I use the claim language and Detailed Description (fine/original platform = first platform = fractional travel; main/camera platform = second platform = full path), which is internally consistent.

1. Level of ordinary skill (proposed)

A bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, or optical engineering (or equivalent), plus roughly two to three years of experience in the design of graphic‑arts flatbed/prepress scanning hardware and its precision motion stages — or a master's degree with about one year of such experience. The references themselves set this bar: they assume the reader can design platens, carriages, line‑illumination, mirror/lens optical paths, CCD line sensors, mode‑selection logic, and precision linear drive systems without undue experimentation (US5239392; US5140443).

2. What the two cited references actually teach

US 5,239,392 — Minolta (primary reference)

• Two reading means of different resolution in one machine, with a "holding means for holding both the reading parts so as to be movable along a document" and "means for selecting both the reading parts" (Abstract). This is a movable platform carrying the electro‑optical apparatus.
• Four operating modes from one apparatus: low‑ and high‑resolution reading of a light‑impermeable (reflective) document, and low‑ and high‑resolution reading of a light‑permeable (transmissive) document "such as a photographic film" (Abstract). Resolution is expressly tied to document size and type.
• Asymmetric reading elements: claim 19 recites a first reading means "having a length corresponding to a width of said first platen," and a second reading means "having a length smaller than the width of said first platen and having a higher reading resolution than said first reading means," plus selecting means and "first driving means for moving said first reading means and said second reading means in a scanning direction." Claim 22 adds that the second, smaller means "is moveable in two non parallel directions."
• CCD implementation and shared control: claim 23 recites that both reading means have CCD elements "driven by a common driving circuit." Claim 24 recites a holding member, driving means, selecting means, and controlling means "for controlling said first reading means or second reading means corresponding to an output from said selecting means."
• Two drive axes: claim 19's "first driving means" (scan direction) and "second driving means" moving the second reading means perpendicular to the scan direction.

What '392 does not show: a second, separately‑driven platform carrying the original object; and the full‑path/fractional‑path asymmetry between two independent motive means. Its two reading means ride a common carriage.

US 5,140,443 — Victor Company of Japan (secondary reference)

• Two independently movable original platens in one flatbed machine: a "first original platen disposed so as to [be] movable in a horizontal direction perpendicular to said slit [on] the top of the main unit body casing," and a "second original platen disposed so as to [be] movable in the horizontal direction inside the main unit body casing" (claim 1; EveryPatent claim text).
• One fixed image sensor inside the casing, plus optical means (mirrors and a converging lens) that route either reflected light (from the top platen) or transmitted light (from the internal platen) to that sensor — i.e., it teaches reflective and transmissive operation in one scanner and a plurality of light sources.
• A drive mechanism for a movable platen and the optical system: "FIG. 3 being a perspective view indicating one example of the drive mechanism of an optical system, and the second original platen" (US5140443 definitions). The second (internal, film) platen is a small platen whose travel corresponds only to the film piece — structurally, a fraction of the large‑document path.
• It does not place electro‑optical reproduction means on a movable platform; the sensor is fixed.

3. Claim 1 — element mapping for the combination '443 + '392

Assessment: Claim 1 is not anticipated by either reference alone, and the combination is a reasonable but not airtight § 103 case. The load‑bearing inference is the "fractional part of said path" limitation, which is supplied by inference rather than by express words in either reference. Everything else is squarely disclosed across the two references.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — '5140443 in view of '5239392 → claims 1, 11 (and 9, 10).
'443 supplies the architecture of plural independently movable platforms carrying the original inside a single graphic‑arts scanner handling both reflective and transmissive originals, together with platen drive mechanisms. '392 supplies electro‑optical reading means mounted on a movable platform, high/low resolution reading parts, selection among them, CCD implementation, and controlling means responsive to selection. The combined structure meets every positive limitation of claim 1 and of the means‑plus‑function claim 11 (where the "second platform moves less distance than the first" recital maps to '392's smaller, separately indexable second reading means plus '443's small internal platen).

Ground 2 — Ground 1 further in view of the precision‑drive art, for claims 3 and 4.
Claims 3–4 add stepper motors, "non‑slip belt"/pulleys, and a precision ball screw "of a length corresponding generally to said fractional part of said path." Stepping‑motor/​timing‑belt carriage drives and precision ball‑screw stages were routine in scanner transport design by the 1997 filing date (see the drive‑system discussion in the Similar Documents reference US 5,691,824, and US 5,589,972, "Scanner drive system having minimum rotational error carriage suspension," 1996‑12‑31). Critically, '110's own specification supplies the motivation as an admission: "a precision, zero‑backlash ball screw is an expensive item with cost proportional to length. An 18 inch precision ball screw would be prohibitively expensive," and depth‑of‑focus recalibration "is easier to implement using a short 5 inch lead screw." Inventor admissions of this kind are usable as prior art (Riverwood Int'l Corp. v. R.A. Jones & Co., 324 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2003); MPEP § 2129), and they make the claim‑4 length‑matching limitation an obvious cost‑driven design choice under KSR and MPEP § 2144.02. (I could not verify from the retrieved excerpts that either '392 or '443 specifies a ball screw, so Ground 2 depends on the general‑knowledge/​admission route rather than on a pinpoint disclosure.)

Ground 3 — '5239392 + '5140443 + multi‑lens converging art → claims 2, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Claim 6 requires lamp means, a CCD camera imaging along the other dimension, "a multiplicity of lenses ... lense selection means for selecting one of said lenses to achieve said high, low and intermediate resolutions," and zoom/focus motive means. '392 supplies the lamp/illumination and CCD reading means with selection among resolutions; '443 supplies plural light sources and a converging lens; the multi‑lens/​selection/​focus element is supplied by art in the Similar Documents set — in particular US 6,233,063 (Agfa Corporation, "Two lens converging device in a dual plane flat‑bed scanning system"), whose specification claims "at least a first and second optical lens mounted on a lens carriage and a drive device for moving either lens into an optical pathway" and further "to move the optical lenses closer to or further from an image sensor for automatically focusing the original image onto the image sensor" (EveryPatent text; EP 0 901 271). That is essentially claim 6's lens‑selection‑plus‑zoom/focus combination, and claim 8's lead‑screw/​guide‑shaft/​belt recital is the conventional reduction to hardware of such a carriage.
Combinability link: '063's background expressly discusses US 5,140,443 by number, noting that "in other systems, such as those of U.S. Pat. No. 5,140,443, the original is moved while the illumination system, optical system and sensor remain fixed." A reference that names one of the two examiner references as prior art is strong evidence that a person of ordinary skill would consult them together.
Date caveat: '063 issued 2001‑05‑15 and US 5,691,824 issued 1997‑11‑25 — both after the '110 filing date — so their availability depends on their effective US filing dates (§ 102(e), pre‑AIA) relative to the '110 inventors' invention date, which I have not verified. Their substantive teaching is presented here as corroboration of what the '392/'443 teachings made obvious, not as standalone § 102(b) art.

Ground 4 (alternative primary) — '5239392 as primary + '5140443 for the second platform.
Run in the reverse order, '392 remains the closest art to the multi‑resolution selection core (claims 2, 5, 6, 9, 10), and '443 is the natural secondary reference for adding an independently driven original‑carrying platform.

5. Motivation to combine, articulated

Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and MPEP § 2143, a reasoned motivation exists on several independent rationales:

1. Same field, same problem, same art unit. Both references are H04N 1/04 flatbed image‑reading apparatus reading reflective originals and film transparencies at more than one resolution — '110's stated field ("professional printing and publishing in the graphics arts industry") and its claimed resolutions (667–4,000 ppi) map onto '063's statement that "transparencies are oftentimes scanned at resolutions of 2,000 to 4000 ppi ... while reflective originals are usually scanned at much lower resolutions."
2. Known‑element substitution (KSR rationale B). Mounting the known reading means of '392 on a movable platform, and pairing it with the known movable original platen of '443, is a substitution of known scanner components yielding a predictable result: a machine in which relative scan motion is produced by moving the document, the optics, or both.
3. Art‑recognized design latitude. US 5,691,824's background states the convention directly: "prior art systems are configured so that either the original or one or more scanner illumination, optics or sensor components move to carry out the scanning process." Choosing both — alternating coarse transport with fine transport — is a design‑choice extension of that known dichotomy, and '110 itself claims nothing more than alternating use of the two.
4. Design incentive / cost (KSR; MPEP § 2144.02). '110 admits that a precision zero‑backlash ball screw "is an expensive item with cost proportional to length" and an 18‑inch one "would be prohibitively expensive," and that the 9‑micron depth‑of‑focus tolerance is easier to hold with a short lead screw. The claim‑1/claim‑4 architecture is the direct, predictable engineering consequence of that admitted cost/precision trade‑off: put a short precision stage on the small‑travel platform and a coarse, cheap drive on the long‑travel platform.
5. Resolution‑versus‑throat trade‑off already recognized. '392 pairs high resolution with small/short reading means ("length smaller than the width of said first platen and having a higher reading resolution"; movable in two non‑parallel directions) and high resolution with a small film original. '110 uses exactly that correlation (2 inches max width at 4,000 ppi vs. 12 inches at 667 ppi) to justify a short, precise, fractional‑travel stage.
6. Predictable combination of known mode‑selection logic. '392's "selecting means" plus "controlling means ... corresponding to an output from said selecting means" is the same function '110 claims as "motion control means"/"motion selection means" in claims 1, 2, 9, and 10.

6. Weaknesses in the § 103 case — and how a challenger must answer them

I will not overstate this. The following are genuine problems for the obviousness case, and the last two are decisive in practice:

• The "fractional part of said path" limitation is supplied by inference, not words. Neither '392 nor '443 expressly recites one platform driven over the whole path and another over a fraction of it. A challenger must argue (a) '443's small internal film platen inherently travels only a fraction of the large‑document span, and (b) '392's smaller, two‑axis, higher‑resolution reading means inherently calls for a short, precision‑indexed stroke. This is arguable but contestable — a patent owner will call it hindsight reconstruction of the claim from the specification.
• '392 teaches against the claimed split of motive means. '392 deliberately mounts both reading parts on one holding member driven in the scan direction — a single platform solution to the multi‑resolution problem. A patent owner will argue this is a teaching away from '110's two‑platform/​two‑motive‑means architecture (In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986): a reference must be read as a whole, not mined for isolated teachings).
• The art's own characterization is either/​or. US 5,691,824's statement that prior systems move "either the original or one or more scanner ... illumination, optics or sensor components" supports a teaching‑away argument. Response: '110 does not move both simultaneously; the two platforms move alternately (fine carriage scans 5 inches → main carriage indexes 5 inches → fine carriage returns → repeat), so the art's simultaneous‑motion concern is not implicated, and the claim does not require simultaneity.
• The examiner of record allowed over exactly these two references. Both '392 and '443 were before the examiner and were overcome. A challenger is therefore either arguing the examiner missed the combination (a weaker posture) or must bring art the examiner did not have. Notably, the '110 Abstract and claim 1 language track the dual‑carriage concept, and the examiner evidently did not find '392's single‑carriage multi‑resolution teaching to reach it.
• No objective evidence of non‑obviousness is available in either direction. There is no litigation, no settlement, no commercial‑success or copying record tied to this number, and the patent lapsed for non‑payment effective 2003‑08‑31 (cross‑referenced from the earlier sections). That means the § 103 case would be decided on the four Graham factors minus secondary considerations — which cuts both ways: no nexus evidence helps the patent owner, and no industry‑praise/​long‑felt‑need record helps either side.

7. Conclusion and confidence

Claim 1 and claim 11: Moderately likely obvious over '5140443 in view of '5239392, with the "fractional part of said path" limitation carried by inference from '443's small internal film platen and '392's smaller, two‑axis high‑resolution reading means, motivated by the admitted cost/precision trade‑off in '110's own specification. Confidence: ~55–60%. The mapping of every other element is strong; the fractional‑travel inference is the pivot, and '392's single‑holding‑member structure is a real teaching‑away argument requiring a persuasive rebuttal.

Claim 6 (and claims 2, 5, 7, 8): More likely obvious once the Agfa two‑lens converging art (US 6,233,063) is added, because that reference supplies the multi‑lens carriage with both lens‑into‑path selection and axial focusing by a single drive — i.e., '110's "lense selection means" and "zoom/focus motive means" together — and expressly cites US 5,140,443 as prior art, establishing combinability. Confidence: ~65–70%, contingent on verifying the § 102(e) effective filing dates of '063/`'824.

Claims 3, 4, 8, 9, 10: Likely obvious as conventional hardware (stepper motors, non‑slip belts, pulleys, precision ball screws, lead screws, guide shafts, firmware‑driven control), especially given '110's own admission that ball‑screw cost scales with length and that short lead screws ease focus calibration. Confidence: ~70%.

Bottom line. The strongest, most defensible formulation is a two‑reference ground — '5140443 + '5239392 — for independents 1, 6, and 11, plus conventional‑drive/​multi‑lens art for the dependents. Because a hypothetical challenger here has no AIA‑trial record, no claim‑cancellation certificate, and no prior Board construction to lean on, and because the examiner of record already considered both cited references, any § 103 position must be built from the prosecution history and the references themselves. I recommend obtaining the full specifications and figures of '5239392 (especially its drive and mode‑control passages) and '5140443 (especially the FIG. 3 platen/​optics drive mechanism) before committing to a written invalidity contention — I could not verify those passages in this session and have not assumed their contents.

Verification links: US5946110 · US5239392 · US5140443 · US6233063 · US5691824 · MPEP § 2143 · MPEP § 2129

Stated limits: I did not retrieve complete full texts/figures for '392, '443, '063, or '824; the '063/'824 prior‑art dates are unverified; and no non‑patent‑literature prior art (catalogues, trade press, product manuals for ArtixScan or comparable prepress drum/flatbed units) was searched. Conclusions are analytical probabilities, not a legal opinion.