US 6257307

I'll search for authoritative records on US 6,257,307, including any litigation activity.

Let me check for any litigation or assignment records specifically tied to this patent.

US 6,257,307 B1 — Verified Summary

Litigation / CAFC check: I searched for infringement suits, PTAB proceedings, and Federal Circuit appeals involving this patent, including by inventor name ("Tollivar"). I found no litigation, PTAB, or CAFC 2026 docket activity for US 6,257,307. It appears never to have been asserted. I cannot claim exhaustive PACER/CourtListener coverage, so treat this as "no evidence found" rather than a certified negative.

Identifier caution: A different patent, JP 6257307 B2 (Canon, "information processing method and paper size setting method," issued 2018‑01‑10), shares the same numeric string in a different jurisdiction. That is a distinct document and is not the subject of this summary. Some search hits conflating "6257307" also point to an unrelated Westlaw citation, 2011 WL 6257307. I have excluded those.

Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents US6257307B1, USPTO printed patent PDF, Justia, FreePatentsOnline

Abstract (as issued)

"A magnetic customized garage door screen includes a screen surrounded by a border. The border includes magnetic strips that are designed to interface with metal strips located on a garage door. The magnetic strips can be secured to the border using adhesives and the metal strips can be secured to the door frame using double-sided tape. The door screen can also include a zipper or handles along a side thereof to allow entry into or exit from the garage. At least the border and metal strips are color matched to the color of the door frame so that the metal strips are inconspicuous when exposed and the border blends in with the door frame color when installed."

Plain-language overview of the three independent claims

Claim 1 — Covers the enclosure in combination with a garage door frame:

• a screen;
• a hollow fabric border (top leg, two opposing side legs, bottom leg) surrounding and joined to the screen, sized to match the door frame;
• a top magnetic strip plus a pair of side magnetic strips, and a top metal strip plus a pair of side metal strips;
• sewn-in limitation: the three magnetic strips are sewn into the hollow fabric border, while the three metal strips are attached to the top and side portions of the door frame; and
• either the metal strips or the magnetic strips, and at least an outward surface of the hollow fabric border, generally match the color of the door frame.

The two structural limitations that distinguish it from the bare concept are (i) the border must be hollow fabric with the magnets sewn inside, and (ii) the color-match requirement covering both the mounting hardware and the border's outward face.

Claim 12 — Broader as to placement, narrower as to pest control. Same screen/border/magnet/metal-strip combination, but the magnetic strips may go on either the border legs or the door frame, with the metal strips on the other (a mutual "one of / other of" recitation). The color-match requirement is retained, and the claim adds that the bottom leg carries insect repellant on a surface thereof.

Claim 13 — Narrower, singular-strip variant: a screen; a hollow fabric border; at least one metal strip mounted to the top and opposing side door frame portions; at least one magnetic strip sewn in the hollow fabric border and aligned with the metal strip; wherein the metal strip and an outward surface of the hollow fabric border generally match the door frame color. Note this claim does not require the strips to be plural or to cover all three edges.

Dependent claims at a glance

• 2–5: ingress/egress means — at least one zipper (claim 3); at least one handle per side (claim 4); preferred one handle outside / several inside (claim 5).
• 6–7: metal strips mounted to the door frame, optionally with double-sided adhesive tape.
• 8–9: a flap along the bottom leg, plus fasteners to hold it vertically.
• 10: the "metal" strips may themselves be magnetic.
• 11, 15: screen color matches the door frame / border.
• 14, 16, 17: double-sided tape plus a zipper; a bottom flap; metal strips painted to match the frame.

Notable prosecution context

The specification expressly distinguishes U.S. 5,427,169 (Saulters) and U.S. 3,763,917 (Antinone) — the two references the background labels as the closest prior art for garage door screens — criticizing Saulters' hook-and-loop (VELCRO®) fasteners as weather-sensitive, non-rigid, and unsightly when exposed, and Antinone's zipper-around-the-corner and stud/snap fasteners as failing to provide a positive seal. Those two references therefore frame the novelty story: magnetic attachment (creating a rigid, self-aligning frame) plus color matching of the hardware. The examiner also cited 11 other U.S. references, including US 3,805,872 (magnetically attached cover), US 4,510,986 (magnetically attached storm windows), US 4,909,004, US 5,090,469, US 5,271,449, US 5,323,835, and — of note — US 6,079,473 to Ackerson, II, which issued before this patent but after its priority date, and which the patent does not discuss.

Uncertainty

The bibliographic fields above are consistent across the USPTO printed patent, Google Patents, Justia, and FreePatentsOnline, so I have high confidence in them. Two items are lower-confidence: (a) whether any unrecorded assignments or non-public settlements exist — public databases show none; and (b) the exact content of the April 16, 2002 Certificate of Correction, which I could not retrieve the text of and which may have altered one or more claims or the inventor/assignee data slightly from the printed 2001 grant. If claim-scope precision matters, the corrected version should be pulled from USPTO Patent Center or the official Official Gazette notice.

I'll search for litigation involving US Patent 6,257,307.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,257,307

Bottom line

As of the search date (April 26, 2026), I found no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,257,307. I could not identify any district court action, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, ITC Section 337 investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which the '307 patent was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue. There are therefore no cases to report with plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome.

Patent identified (for confirmation of scope)

Sources searched and results

• Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — a site-restricted query for "6257307" returned no results. No case list entry.
• CourtListener / RECAP — no dockets referencing U.S. Patent 6,257,307 as a patent-in-suit. The only hits were unrelated authorities citing "6257307" as a Westlaw page/paragraph locator (e.g., National Pasteurized Eggs, LLC v. Davidson, No. 07-103-JL, 2011 WL 6257307 (D.N.H. Dec. 15, 2011), and citations of the form "6257307, at *15" in Dehn v. Board of Regents). These are reporter citations, not the patent.
• PACER / Docket Alarm / Justia dockets / PacerMonitor — no infringement complaints naming the '307 patent surfaced.
• Google Patents citation records — the "Cited By" list for US 6,257,307 shows 26–32 later publications (e.g., US 7,775,251 to Ward; US 8,037,923 to Alkhoury; US 2005/0072074 to Moore), but these are patent citations only, not evidence of litigation.
• CAFC — no opinion or appeal referencing the '307 patent was found.

Important caveats / things I could NOT confirm

1. Negative result, not a certification. I did not have direct PACER access in this session; my searches rely on web-indexed versions of PACER/RECAP, Docket Alarm, Justia, Unified Patents, and Google Patents. A case filed and never publicly indexed (e.g., a sealed complaint, or a very recent filing) could exist and not appear.
2. Do not confuse look-alikes. The following were returned by searches but are not U.S. Patent 6,257,307 and must not be treated as such:
   • JP 6257307 B2 — a Japanese Canon K.K. patent titled "情報処理方法および用紙サイズ設定方法" (information processing method and paper-size setting method).
   • U.S. Patent 6,219,730 (Genuine Enabling Technology LLC v. Nintendo Co.) — a different patent (note transposed digits 6,219,730 vs. 6,257,307).
   • U.S. Patent 6,971,730 (LG Electronics v. Whirlpool) — likewise unrelated.
   • Westlaw citation "6257307" in Davidson — a reporter locator, not a patent.
3. Expiration explains the likely absence of monetization suits. The '307 patent expired 2020-03-03 (its term ran out; the legal-status record also shows a fee/lapse history on some records). An expired, individually-owned patent has a correspondingly low likelihood of ever appearing in an assertion campaign.
4. No assignment/transfer trail found that would point to a patent-assertion entity (PAE/NPE) that might have litigated it.

Recommendation

If you need a definitive negative, the next step is a direct PACER Case Locator search (party = "Tollivar" and/or a full-text search on patent number 6,257,307), plus a Lex Machina or Docket Navigator patent query on patent number 6,257,307. Based on the sources I could reach, however, the answer is that no litigation is known.

PTAB Proceedings on US 6,257,307 — "Magnetic customized garage door screen enclosure"

Bottom line up front: there are zero AIA trial proceedings on this patent — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP, most recent ingest) returns an empty set, and my independent web checks surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal involving U.S. Patent No. 6,257,307. That absence is the whole answer, so the sections below are adapted to a null result rather than padded with invented proceeding numbers.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings: 0. Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. There is no IPR/FWD record here at all. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent has survived IPRs and is hardened" — it is "the patent is uncontested at the PTAB and, critically, expired" (Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2020-03-03, i.e., 20 years from the 2000-03-03 filing date). Any assertion you are facing is therefore a past-damages / limitations-period question, not an injunctive one.

No proceedings to detail

Per the task instructions, I must not invent proceeding numbers. There is no IPR20XX-XXXXX — Petitioner v. Tollivar to write up. For completeness, here is what I affirmatively checked and what I affirmatively did not find:

• USPTO ODP (structured block, canonical): no AIA trial proceedings on file as of the most recent ingest.
• Web search #1 (US 6257307 IPR PTAB proceeding, "6257307" patent Inter Partes Review petition): no hits tying this patent to a trial number.
• Web search #2 (patent number + litigation / validity-challenge queries): no petition papers, no PTAB decisions, no assignment or aggregator filings.

False-positive traps to be aware of (these are different patents that share a "730" fragment and will poison a naive search; do not cite them against 6,257,307):

If a demand letter or a vendor's portfolio screen has told you this patent "has been through IPR," ask for the trial number. There isn't one.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 17 claims are UNTESTED. No claim of 6,257,307 has ever been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB — claims 1–11 (the "hollow fabric border" / sewn-in magnetic strip family, with claim 12 adding an insect-repellant bottom leg and claims 13–17 covering the metal-strip-on-frame variant) stand exactly as issued, as amended only by the certificate of correction dated 2002-04-16 (the certificate's specific content is not in the materials I have; pull the grant PDF to confirm what was corrected). There is no narrowing claim construction from a PTAB institution decision to lean on either.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue, because there is nothing to be estopped from. No party has been a petitioner, so no petitioner or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground. Conversely — and this is the more useful point — there is no IPR-based defense available to inherit. A defendant cannot point to a prior FWD and say "claims X–Y are already dead." You would be the first mover, and you'd be filing a petition against a patent whose 20-year term ran out on 2020-03-03. Note the IPR timing rules cut against late challenges: § 315(b)'s one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement, and the AIA's IPR window for a patent that has already expired is, at best, academic — the Board has repeatedly questioned the value of instituting on expired claims where the only remaining dispute is past damages. A PGR is unavailable outright (it must be filed within nine months of grant, long past). A CBM is unavailable both on timing and because this is a mechanical screening device, not a "financial product or service" under § 18 of the AIA.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner, no serial filings, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, no RPX chain) appears anywhere in the record or in search results. This is consistent with the profile of a sole-inventor, low-assertion patent that was never litigated: the inventor is listed as "Individual" assignee, maintenance fees were paid through the 12-year window (with late-payment surcharges noted in 2005 and 2013), and the patent then expired on schedule. Well-asserted patents acquire IPRs; this one never did.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiration, not with invalidity. The patent expired 2020-03-03 and is now in Expired – Lifetime status. There can be no direct infringement of an expired patent for any conduct after that date, so confirm the demand's accused-act dates. If the letter accuses current sales, the claim is facially defective. Link the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6257307/en) showing the 2020-03-03 anticipated expiration and the "Expired – Lifetime" status.

2. If pre-2020-03-03 conduct is at issue, invalidate rather than petition. Because there is no estoppel and no PTAB proceeding, you retain the entire prior-art universe in district court. The patent's own cited art is a strong starting point, all of it cited by the examiner and confined to the pre-2000 window: U.S. Pat. No. 5,427,169 (Saulters, Flexible garage door screen), U.S. Pat. No. 3,763,917 (Antinone, Detachable screen), U.S. Pat. No. 4,519,986 (Schwankl, Magnetically attached storm windows and the like), U.S. Pat. No. 5,323,835 (Bachmeier, Removable screen for a car garage door), U.S. Pat. No. 5,358,025 (Wood, Fabric garage enclosure), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,079,473 (Ackerson, Removable screen apparatus). The obviousness case against claims 1 and 13 — magnetic attachment strips on a fabric border, sewn or glued, color-matched to the frame — writes itself from Schwankl plus Saulters/Antinone.

3. Prioritize the § 112 / § 101 angles in parallel. These claims are weak on their face and were never stress-tested: claim 2's "means for ingress and egress" and claim 1's purely functional "generally match a color of the door frame" limitation invite § 112(b) indefiniteness and § 112(f) means-plus-function treatment. Non-infringement via claim construction is realistic — the sewn-in-limen of claim 1(e) and the "hollow fabric border" limitation of claims 1 and 13 are the narrowest, most literal hooks, and claim 13's "at least one magnetic strip sewn in the hollow fabric border" is easy to design around.

4. Do not spend real money on a PTAB petition. Withdrawal/no-institution risk is high on an expired patent, and you'd surrender the district-court prior-art position for nothing in return.

5. Verify before relying. ODP reflects the most recent ingest and could trail a very recently filed petition. The only authoritative confirmations are the patent's PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End docket (search by patent number 6,257,307) and the USPTO PatentCenter "Legal Events" view; CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226257307%22) can confirm no Federal Circuit appeal exists. I found none, but I am flagging this as a verification step rather than a certainty, since a same-day filing would not yet be indexed.

Scope caveat: I located no PTAB or Federal Circuit authority for this patent in either the structured ODP data or in web search. Every statement above about the absence of proceedings is based on those two sources; I did not obtain a claim-by-claim FWD, a panel composition, or any settlement record, because none exists to obtain.

I'll verify the assignment record before drafting. Let me check the USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.

Let me check for any litigation, company, or ownership traces for the inventor and patent.

Let me do a final check for any corporate owner, litigation, or assignment record.

Inventors

• The patent names a single inventor, Karl D. Tollivar, residing at 4837 Chapello Ct., Marietta, GA 30066.
• A USPTO Certificate of Correction dated 2002-04-16 corrected the printed name to "Tolliver" and the street to "Chapelle." (Legal event code CC, 2002-04-16.) I take the corrected spelling as the operative name but flag the patent-face inconsistency because it matters for name-based searching.
• Priority: provisional application 60/151,222, filed 1999-08-26; non-provisional 09/513,460 filed 2000-03-03; granted 2001-07-10.
• No employer is determinable. The face of the patent bears no assignee, the application was filed by the inventor personally, and no corporate entity appears anywhere in the file, the legal-events record, or the prosecution correspondence. The specification is written from the point of view of a "homeowner or installer," not a manufacturer.
• Unusual patterns: none of the classic "inventor departed the assignee within 12 months" tells apply — there was never a corporate assignee to depart from. This is a true sole-inventor, individually-owned patent.

Original assignee

None — the patent issued to the individual inventor. The "Assignee" field is absent on the patent face; Google Patents renders both Original Assignee and Current Assignee as "Individual."

• Product embodying the claims: no corporate commercialization of record. The patent is a do-it-yourself enclosure (magnetic strip on a hollow fabric border meeting metal strip double-sided-taped to the door frame), and the disclosure is aimed at a purchaser, not a manufacturer's product line.
• Primary line of business: not applicable — no business entity.
• Current status: sole-inventor ownership; patent now Expired – Lifetime per Google Patents (anticipated expiration 2020-03-03). The last post-grant fee event of record is the year-12 payment on 2013-04-26; no later payment appears, so the 17.5-year fee was likely not made.

Assignment timeline

There are no recorded assignments for US 6,257,307 — none at issuance and none post-issuance through the present.

I need to be explicit about method: my access here is web search, so I could not execute a live query directly against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov. The finding rests on (a) the complete absence of any assignment entry in the Google Patents legal-events table (which is populated from USPTO assignment records), (b) the blank assignee field on the printed patent and on the corrected patent, and (c) the fact that every post-grant event of record is an owner-side maintenance filing consistent with continued individual ownership. I found no entry matching the required reel/frame format, no assignor, no assignee, and no recording correspondent.

What is on the record (prosecution and maintenance events only — not assignments):

• Attorney, Agent or Firm of record: Clark & Brody — this is prosecution counsel, not an assignment correspondent. There is no recording correspondent to report because nothing was ever recorded to record. A single appearance by a prosecution firm is not a repeat-correspondent signal (see signal 3 below).

Per the rubric, no-assignment is itself the finding: the original owner (the inventor) still owns the patent, and it was never moved to any third party.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6257307
    1999 : Provisional filed by Karl D Tolliver
    2000 : Non-provisional filed as individual
    2001 : Patent issued to sole inventor
    2002 : Certificate of Correction fixes name
    2005 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2009 : Maintenance fee paid year 8
    2012 : Micro entity status claimed
    2013 : Maintenance fee paid year 12
    2020 : Nominal expiry date reached

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. There is no assignment of any kind, so there is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" transferee, no registered-agent address, and no single-purpose LLC. Ownership never left the individual inventor.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The only owner is a natural person. No Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entity appears anywhere on the record.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. There is no chain and therefore no recording correspondent at all. Clark & Brody appears only once as prosecution counsel of record; a single appearance is explicitly not a signal under this rubric, and it is the wrong role (prosecutor, not assignment recorder) in any event.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero recorded transfers; the <24-month chained-LLC pattern cannot exist here.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment and no infringement suit naming US 6,257,307 surfaced in my searches. Without a transfer or a suit, there is no venue-arranging or standing-cleaning record.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. The owner is an individual, not a Chapter 7/11 debtor estate; no bankruptcy sale of this patent appears.
7. Privateering — not present. No operating company transferred rights to an asserter, and no SEC-filing or Patent Progress/EFF coverage ties this patent to such an arrangement.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at the inventor.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the rubric's own definition ("no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification: there is no recorded assignment of US 6,257,307 at all — no reel/frame, no assignor/assignee pair, no recording correspondent — so four of the eight signals are structurally impossible and the rest are affirmatively absent. Ownership has stayed with sole inventor Karl D. Tolliver since the 1999-08-26 provisional (60/151,222) and the 2000-03-03 filing of 09/513,460, corroborated by the 2012-12-04 micro-entity claim and the 2013-04-26 year-12 fee payment, both owner-side filings by a natural person. This is a genuine inventor-owned patent that was never asserted and never sold — not a shell chain, but also not an operating-company assertion, so "Insufficient data" is the accurate bucket rather than an NPE or defensive-aggregator call.

Verify at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 6257307; the indexed mirror is https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Patent record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6257307/en.

Caveat on completeness: I could not run a direct Assignment Center query with the tools available, so a very late, low-visibility recording that never propagated to Google Patents or to any indexed source cannot be fully excluded. Based on every source reachable here, however, the assignment record is empty.

I'll start by verifying the patent and then research each cited reference.

Let me research the remaining cited references in batches.

Prior Art Analysis — US 6,257,307 B1

1. The Patent Under Review (verified)

I searched for the exact number 6257307 and confirm the record above; no similar-number record was substituted.

Independent claims: 1, 12, 13. Claim 1 is the controlling claim. Its distinguishing elements are: (a) a hollow fabric border; (b) magnetic strips sewn in the hollow fabric border; (c) metal strips on the door frame; and (d) color matching of the door-frame-mounted strips and the outward border surface to the door frame.

2. Methodology and evidentiary caveat

The 13 references below are the patents cited by the examiner on the face of US 6,257,307 (all marked "cited by examiner"). I was able to retrieve and read the full text/claims of the four most technically relevant references (US 3,805,872; US 4,510,986; US 5,323,835; US 5,427,169) plus US 3,763,917's disclosure as described in the '307 specification. For the remaining nine I could confirm citation data (number, dates, title, assignee) from the patent record but could not retrieve full claim text within the research budget. I flag those with a confidence note rather than asserting claim-level detail I cannot verify.

§ 102 threshold reminder: anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element arranged as claimed. As shown below, no single reference anticipates claim 1, 12 or 13. The cited art is properly characterized as § 103 (obviousness) art, not § 102 art. I state this explicitly because the user asked which claims are "potentially anticipated" — the honest answer is that the independent claims are not anticipated, while several dependent claims may be.

3. The 13 cited references — full citations, dates, descriptions, and § 102 exposure

4. Deep‑dive: the three references that actually matter

A. US 3,805,872 — Lorber‑Flinck (1974) — closest structural art

• Relevance: discloses the core idea of the '307 patent — a screen surrounded by a magnet-strip border that is magnetically held to the frame around an opening, sized larger than the opening so the border overlies the surrounding metal, with the magnet concealed behind a facing and secured by adhesive/stitching/heat-sealing (i.e., effectively a laminated border). It also discloses folding for storage.
• Anticipation analysis vs. claim 1: It lacks (i) a metal strip mounted to the door frame (it presumes a ferromagnetic frame), and (ii) the color-matching limitation of 1(f). It therefore cannot anticipate claim 1. It is, however, the most likely primary reference for any §103 rejection.
• Anticipation analysis vs. claim 13: Claim 13 requires "at least one metal strip mounted to the top door frame and opposing side door frame portions" plus "at least one magnetic strip sewn in the hollow fabric border." Lorber‑Flinck lacks the metal strip and the sewn-in (hollow border) limitation. No anticipation.

B. US 4,510,986 — Schwankl (1985) — closest color-matching art

• Relevance: two magnetic tape strips forming a recessed peripheral seal; and it expressly recites that the strips "can be painted, antiqued, laminated or otherwise treated to give them a pleasant appearance that is compatible with the appearance of the window." This is the strongest §102(a)(1) hit against the color-matching limitation in claims 1(f), 12(f) and 13.
• Anticipation analysis: Because it uses two magnetic strips (no metal strip) and no fabric border, and is directed to a storm window rather than a garage door screen with a hollow fabric border, it does not anticipate claims 1, 12 or 13 as a whole. Its color/paintability teaching is nonetheless directly on point for 1(f) and would be a strong §103 combination component.

C. US 5,427,169 — Saulters (1995) and US 5,323,835 — Bachmeier (1994) — closest garage-door-screen art

• Relevance: both disclose a removable garage door screen with a border, perimeter attachment to the door frame, and a double zipper for ingress/egress; Saulters adds three panels, dowels, straps and locks. These read on the "means for ingress and egress" limitations.
• Anticipation analysis: both use hook-and-loop (Velcro®), not magnetic strips, and neither the metal strip, the sewn-in magnet, nor color matching. They do not anticipate claims 1, 12 or 13, but they do anticipate the subject matter of dependent claims 2 and 3 (zipper ingress/egress) and are strong support for rejecting claims 2–5 and 8 as obvious when combined with the magnetic references.

5. Conclusions

1. No single cited reference anticipates independent claims 1, 12 or 13. Each independent claim requires the combination of (i) magnetic strips sewn into a hollow fabric border or the metal/magnet reversal of claim 12, and (ii) color matching of the door-frame-mounted strip and the outward border surface to the door frame. No cited reference discloses both together. The color-matching limitation in particular appears nowhere in US 3,805,872, US 5,323,835 or US 5,427,169.
2. The strongest §102 exposure is at the dependent-claim level:
   • Claims 2 and 3 (ingress/egress; zipper) — anticipated by US 5,323,835 and US 5,427,169; also suggested by US 3,763,917.
   • Claims 4–5 (handles) — suggested by Saulters' support straps/handles (US 5,427,169).
   • Claim 8 (bottom flap) — suggested by Antinone (US 3,763,917) and by Saulters' weighted bottom hem.
   • Claim 1(f)/12(f)/13 color-matching — challenged by US 4,510,986.
3. The proper rejection posture is §103, using US 3,805,872 (magnetic border screen) + US 4,510,986 (paintable/color-matchable magnetic tape) as primary references, optionally combined with US 5,427,169 / US 5,323,835 (garage screen + zipper) for the egress limitations. The "hollow fabric border with the magnetic strips sewn in" (claim 1(e)) and "color matching" (1(f)) are the two limitations most likely to survive as the patent's novel contribution.
4. US 6,079,473 (Ackerson) should be treated cautiously: its publication date (2000‑06‑27) postdates the '307 priority date (1999‑08‑26), so it is not available as §102(a)(1) art against that date; its citation on the face of the '307 patent is most consistent with its post-grant addition or its use as of a filing date under §102(a)(2).

References / URLs

• US 6,257,307 B1 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6257307/en
• US 3,805,872 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US3805872
• US 4,510,986 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US4510986
• US 5,323,835 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5323835
• US 5,427,169 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5427169
• US 3,763,917 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US3763917

Caveat: For the nine references marked "confidence: low," I confirmed citation data from the '307 record but could not retrieve full claim text within the research budget; their claim-level anticipation assessments should be verified against the respective full documents before being relied upon in any opinion of record.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual disclosures of the cited prior art. Let me pull the key references.

Now the garage-door-specific and remaining references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,257,307 B1

"Magnetic customized garage door screen enclosure" (Karl D. Tollivar; appl. 09/513,460 filed 2000‑03‑03; priority to prov. 60/151,222 filed 1999‑08‑26; granted 2001‑07‑10; certificate of correction 2002‑04‑16; expired – lifetime, anticipated expiration 2020‑03‑03).
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6257307](/patent/US6257307)/en

Provenance note (read first). I verified the full disclosures of US 3,805,872 (Lorber Flinck), US 4,510,986 (Schwankl), US 4,100,957 (Shelton), US 5,323,835 (Bachmeier) and US 6,079,473 (Ackerson) by retrieving their texts. For US 3,004,592, US 3,455,366, US 4,909,004, US 5,090,469, US 5,271,449, US 5,358,025 I have only titles/dates from the citation list and could not verify their disclosures — I do not rely on them for any element. For US 3,763,917 (Antinone) and US 5,427,169 (Saulters) I rely on the applicant's own admissions in the "Background Art" section of US 6,257,307, which is itself usable as an admission about the prior art. No prosecution file wrapper was available to me, so I cannot confirm what grounds the examiner actually applied.

1. Framework

Application filed 2000‑03‑03 → pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): whether the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made. Governing law: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007); MPEP §§ 2141, 2143, 2144.04.

All 13 references in the "Patent Citations (13)" list qualify as prior art. Twelve predate 1999‑08‑26. US 6,079,473 (Ackerson) published 2000‑06‑27 — after the filing date — but was filed 1998‑03‑11, so it is available as §102(e)/§103(a) art.

Level of ordinary skill: a few years' experience designing/making flexible, removable insect screens and window/door coverings; no advanced engineering. Every element here is a fabric-and-tape assembly choice, which makes predictable-result and known-substitution rationales (KSR; MPEP § 2144.04) particularly strong.

Field: all of the cited art is removal screening for large openings, and shares the patent's own classification E06B 9/52 ("Devices affording protection against insects, e.g. fly screens"). Bachmeier's field-of-search (160/368.1) is the same. This is a clean analogous-art / common-problem showing.

2. What the cited art actually teaches

Additional art of record inside the cited documents (not in the 13‑item list, but publicly available): US 4,079,558 (Gorhams) places ferromagnetic strips on the window frame side and top casings with weather‑resistant cement or screws (and none across the sill) and holds a magnetically framed panel against them — i.e., it is squarely directed to claim 1's "metal strip on the frame" variant. https://companyprofiles.justatic.com/patent/[4079558](/patent/4079558)

3. The primary combinations

Combination A — Antinone (US 3,763,917) + Lorber Flinck (US 3,805,872), + Schwankl (US 4,510,986)

The only "gap" in Combination A is the literal word "sewn." Lorber Flinck expressly names stitching as one of the contemplated ways to attach the border/facing — the very mode claimed — so choosing it over hot‑melt adhesive is a substitution of one known, disclosed equivalent for another (MPEP § 2144.04; KSR, 550 U.S. at 416). The "hollow" character is met by Lorber Flinck's folded facing concealing the strips.

Combination B — Bachmeier (US 5,323,835) + Lorber Flinck (US 3,805,872) + Schwankl (US 4,510,986)

Bachmeier supplies the exact intended use (a garage door), the zippered, bordered flexible screen, the interior-casing mounting strip with pressure‑sensitive adhesive, and the express desire not to detract from the garage's appearance. Lorber Flinck supplies the magnet‑strip‑behind‑fabric border claimed in 1(b)/(e). Schwankl supplies magnet strips on top and side frame portions, the adjust‑after‑placement step (compare US 6,257,307: "the screen and border assembly 15 can be slid or shifted so that the magnetic strips and metal strips align … generally square to the door frame"), and the paintable/color‑matched strip limitation. Result: every element of claim 1.

Combination C — Saulters (US 5,427,169) + Lorber Flinck + Schwankl

Same as Combination B, except the primary reference is a zippered, VELCRO‑attached garage‑door screen. Because the applicant's own background labels VELCRO attachment deficient — "can be adversely affected by the weather … have limited color selection," "the presence of the fasteners on the garage door frame is unsightly when the screen is not in place," and "creates a non‑rigid screen which makes installation difficult" — the specification itself supplies the problem statement that motivates swapping VELCRO/snaps for magnetic strips. That is an admission‑based motivation to combine.

4. Why a PHOSITA would have combined (KSR rationales)

1. Same field, same problem, same classification (E06B 9/52). Both families address "keep insects/leaves out of a large opening while allowing air and light."
2. The prior art identifies the very deficiencies the patent claims to cure. Saulters/Antinone hardware is "unsightly when exposed" and "non‑rigid" (patent's own words); Schwankl identifies the unattractive frame strip and gives the cure (paint/laminate the strip); Bachmeier wants the screen not to detract from the garage's appearance.
3. Predictable results, no new function. Magnetic tape attachment was a decades‑old, commercially available expedient (Schwankl names 3M and B.F. Goodrich tapes; Lorber Flinck names General Tire and 3M) whose known benefits — tight peripheral seal, no tools, post‑installation adjustability — are exactly the benefits US 6,257,307 recites. KSR: "the improvement is [no] more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
4. Aesthetic problem → known aesthetic fix. Schwankl expressly solves the "ugly frame hardware" problem by painting/finishing the strips, which is precisely claim 1(f) and claim 17.
5. Design incentive / marketplace. Bachmeier's and Saulters' stated objects (appearance when unmounted, ease of installation) create the incentive to substitute magnetic attachment for hook‑and‑loop.

Teaching‑away counter‑argument (must be disclosed): Schwankl disparages the metal strip on the frame ("expensive and difficult to install," unattractive) and prefers magnet‑to‑magnet tapes. A patentee would argue this teaches away from claim 1's frame‑mounted metal strips. Counter‑arguments: (a) the disparagement is purely aesthetic and Schwankl itself teaches the remedy that claim 1(f) requires; (b) ferrous‑strip‑on‑frame arrangements were independently known (Lorber Flinck's "surrounded by magnetic metal" frame; US 4,079,558's cemented/screwed ferromagnetic strips on the top and side casings); (c) under KSR, a reference's preference does not foreclose an alternative that the reference itself renders attractive once its stated objection is resolved. This is the strongest patentee argument on claim 1 — but not a winning one on these facts.

5. Claim‑by‑claim conclusions

6. Secondary considerations / conclusion

Nothing in the patent's own disclosure reports unexpected results, and the stated advantages (no tools, tight seal, color‑coded, retains shape, rolls for storage) are precisely the known advantages of flexible magnet‑tape attachment disclosed in Lorber Flinck (folds for storage, insectproof seal) and Schwankl (tight seal, adjustability, finished appearance). No evidence of commercial success, long‑felt need, failure of others, or copying is of record here; as an expired patent, such evidence would in any event have to be shown by a challenger/defender outside the patent. Color‑matching limitations (1(f), 11, 15, 17) are aesthetic and non‑functional and generally do not confer patentability absent a new or unexpected function (In re Seid).

Bottom line. On the record cited in this patent, claims 1–3, 6–11, 13–17 are, in my assessment, more likely than not obvious under § 103 over Antinone or Saulters/Bachmeier in view of Lorber Flinck and Schwankl (with Shelton for bottom‑closure and zipper features). Claims 4–5 (handles) are not made out on this record without additional art. Claim 12 is obvious as to the alternative strip placement but its insect‑repellant‑on‑the‑bottom‑leg limitation is unsupported by the cited art and represents the best § 103 vulnerability for the patent owner. The most serious rebuttal available to the patent owner is Schwankl's disparagement of metal strips on the frame; it is weakened by Schwankl's own paint‑finish teaching and by independent frame‑mounted ferrous‑strip art such as US 4,079,558.

Post‑1999 documents in the "Cited By" list (e.g., US 7,775,251 "Customizable snap‑on garage door screen," US 8,037,923 "Magnetically attachable window screen system," US 12,129,712 "Magnetic garage screen (net) assembly") are not § 103 prior art here and cannot be used in a rejection; they are cited only to show how routine magnetic screen attachment became.