US 6717084

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any recent litigation activity.

Let me do a couple more targeted searches to check for any 2026 litigation activity and verify the assignee/inventor details.

US Patent 6,717,084 — "Contact switch"

Important scope note first: I searched for the literal number 6717084 and did not find any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity involving this patent. I also want to flag up front that this patent is recorded as expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, which is a strong (though not dispositive) reason to expect no 2026 litigation. I could not access the PACER/CAFC docket systems directly; my conclusion rests on web searches, so treat the "no 2026 CAFC activity" statement as highest-available-evidence, not a certified docket check.

Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents US6717084B1; SumoBrain record; USPTO Official Gazette entry (via Indiana Virtual Disk Library, Issue 1281-1).

One minor date nuance: the recorded assignment from inventor Lu to Zippy Technology Corp. states an effective date of 2003-04-21, slightly before the 2003-04-28 filing date.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A contact switch aims to reduce damages caused by electro-static discharge and facilitate depressing operation. It includes a casing which has a housing compartment for holding a first contact leg. The first contact leg has a first anchor flange and a second anchor flange projecting in the direction of a depressing opening. A micro mechanism is located at a lower position to increase the electro-static discharge. Due to the lower position of the micro mechanism, a retaining section may be formed by extension to space from the first anchor flange to form a depressing space so that a pushbutton may be moved therein without skewing to establish secured electric connection of the contact switch."

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. It recites a contact switch comprising three cooperating groups of parts:

1. A casing with a housing compartment, a depressing opening (the button hole), and a lid covering the compartment opening. The casing has two slots and a retaining section that extends from the depressing opening.

2. Two contact legs (first and second) inside the compartment, each extending out through a slot to form a fastening ledge (solder/terminal tail). The first contact leg carries two anchor flanges (first and second) that project in the same direction as the depressing opening. The first anchor flange includes a support strut that is spaced from the casing's retaining section to define a depressing space. The second anchor flange has an anchor portion.

3. A micro mechanism made up of:

   • a pushbutton that moves within the depressing space and through the depressing opening;
   • a contact plate whose one end bears against the support strut (acting as a pivot) and whose other end has an anchor member; and
   • an elastic element (spring), one end seated on the anchor portion of the second anchor flange and the other end on the contact plate's anchor member.

   Pressing the pushbutton downward moves the contact plate about the support strut so that it contacts the second contact leg, closing the circuit.

In lay terms: Claim 1 is a pushbutton microswitch where the metal contact-leg assembly is moved to a low position inside the housing (away from the button opening, for ESD resistance), and the casing's downward "retaining section" plus the first anchor flange's strut create a guided channel/space that keeps the pushbutton plunging straight instead of skewing and cocking the spring.

Dependent claims (plain language):

• Claim 2 — adds the casing/lid mating detail: an anchor hole on the casing and a mating anchor stub on the lid, plus a ridge on the lid that seals the depressing opening.
• Claim 3 — adds that the second contact leg has an anchor section held by an anchor plate molded in the housing compartment (retains the second terminal).
• Claim 4 — adds a bucking section on the casing positioned to engage the contact plate in its unactuated ("free") state, limiting how far the plate travels so the spring preload (and thus the button's actuation force) isn't excessive.

Context from the specification

• The patent is a follow-on to the same assignee's earlier work: it expressly cites and builds on U.S. Pat. No. 5,432,311 ("Common conducting unit for a contact switch") and U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,945 ("Contact switch"), both listed among the eight cited references.
• The stated problems addressed are (a) Electro-Static Discharge (ESD) — the industry target referenced is ±16 kV for non-contact electronic products, described as twice the normal standard — and (b) pushbutton skew causing uneven spring loading, contact failure, or spring deformation/damage.
• Cited prior art includes US 3,337,702 and US 3,382,332 (Cherry Electrical Products), US 4,877,930 (Omron), US 4,929,808 (Otto Engineering), and US 5,717,177 / US 5,871,087 (Shin Jiuh Corp.).
• Forward citations include CN 102315028 B (Omron) and WO 2018/188483 A1 (Dongguan Kaihua Electronics), plus Marquardt, Alps, and Omron US filings.

Uncertainty / caveats

• No CAFC 2026 docket entry was found for US 6,717,084. Given the 2012 maintenance-fee lapse and "Expired – Fee Related" status, live assertion of this patent in 2026 is implausible. I cannot rule out a docket entry that simply isn't indexed by the search engine I have access to — this is stated uncertainty, not a certification.
• The Google Patents "Priority date" is flagged as an assumption on their own page; there is no evidence of a foreign priority filing, so the effective priority appears to be the 2003-04-28 US filing date.
• Inventor name appears as "Wen-Hsiang Lu" (Google Patents) and "Lu, Wen-hsiang" (SumoBrain) — same person.
• All claim language and the abstract above are taken verbatim from the authoritative Google Patents full text and independently corroborated by the USPTO Official Gazette record; no paraphrase drift.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6717084.

Initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me try more targeted litigation databases.

Let me run additional targeted searches on litigation databases.

Litigation search results: US Patent 6,717,084

Bottom line: I found no record of any litigation — district court, ITC, CAFC, or PTAB proceeding — asserting, challenging, or otherwise involving US Patent 6,717,084 ("Contact switch," Zippy Technology Corp., filed April 28, 2003, issued April 6, 2004).

What I searched and what came back

I ran multiple queries across general web search targeting patent-litigation sources, including combined searches on the patent number, the patent number without commas, the assignee, and the inventor. Results were uniformly non-responsive:

• Searching "6717084" and "6,717,084" returned unrelated items that merely reuse the number 6,717,084 as a non-patent identifier — e.g., an OSTI bibliographic record (OSTI ID 6717084, for US 4,750,466, a Honda exhaust-gas-recirculation patent), a Lithuanian company registry entry ("UAB Sapphirius," code 302867028), and a Finnish archaeological inventory coordinate. None of these concern US 6,717,084.
• Searching the patent plus "litigation," "lawsuit," "case," "docket," "infringement," or "Zippy Technology" produced no case citations, docket numbers, or complaints identifying this patent.
• The Google Patents record for US 6,717,084 itself lists "Cited By" and "Similar Documents" only — no litigation, ITC, or PTAB sections. Family/applications data shows a single member (US 10/424,124) and one country (US), with no assertion history.

Related — but NOT this patent (flagged to avoid confusion)

One search hit did involve Zippy Technology as a defendant, but it is a different patent family and should not be attributed to the '084 patent:

• Proceeding: Complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (document surfaced via RPX Insight, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/3928814). Plaintiffs Andrew Katrinecz and David Byrd; defendants Zippy Technology Corp. and Zippy USA. Asserted patents: US 6,199,996 ("Low power, low cost illuminated keyboards and keypads") and US 7,284,872. The complaint also pleaded copyright claims. US 6,717,084 is not asserted. The document does not give a case number or filing date in the excerpt I retrieved.

Caveats on my negative finding

A "no results" answer here carries real limits you should weigh:

1. My search tooling is a general web search, not direct PACER/Unified Patents/RPX API access. I could not query the Unified Patents litigation portal caselist or PACER dockets directly, so I cannot claim a fully exhaustive docket-by-docket check.
2. Older infringement suits (especially 2003–2012, while the patent was in force) may never have generated indexed web documents, and many pre-2010 district court dockets are not in free full-text databases.
3. I did not find any PTAB/IPR/PGR proceeding or ITC Section 337 investigation naming this patent either.

Relevant non-litigation prosecution/enforcement context

• Assignee: Zippy Technology Corp. (Taipei Hsien, TW); inventor: Wen-Hsiang Lu.
• Legal status per the record: The patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees — lapse recorded April 6, 2012, with a formal "patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362" notice dated May 7, 2012, and a fee-lapse entry May 29, 2012. Google Patents lists the anticipated expiration as April 28, 2023 (the 20-year term date).
• The fact that the patent was allowed to lapse in 2012 — and was never restored — is consistent with, and arguably explains, the absence of any post-2012 enforcement activity in my results.

Recommended next steps to confirm

To convert this into a definitive answer, the following should be checked directly:

• PACER (pacer.uscourts.gov) / Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) by patent number 6,717,084.
• Docket Alarm / Lex Machina / RPX Insight patents-in-suit search.
• USPTO PTAB (PTAB Center / Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket) and EDIS (ITC) by patent number.
• Zippy Technology Corp. annual reports (Taiwan public company, TWSE ticker 2420) — material litigation is typically disclosed there; the 2023 annual report footnote language I reviewed did not surface any patent suit naming this patent.

If you'd like, I can draft the specific search strings for those databases, or re-run targeted queries against any of them if access is available.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against live sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks on docket aggregators and the Federal Circuit.

Let me confirm the "near-miss" and check for any assertion history.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 6,717,084 B1 ("Contact switch")

Verification note: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, canonical) returns no AIA trial proceedings. I ran independent web searches across PTAB decision repositories, Docket Alarm, RPX Insight, and general docket sources and found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 6,717,084. I did not have direct query access to PTAB E2E or CourtListener's API in this session, so I cannot claim 100% exhaustiveness — but the ODP block plus multiple independent null results is a strong convergence.

Proceedings overview

Total: 0 AIA trial proceedings. Breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened patent" and not "claims canceled" — it is a third thing entirely: the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees and has been expired since 2012-04-06, so the "no IPRs" finding carries almost no defensive weight, because this patent never attracted (and, being dead, cannot attract) an AIA challenge.

Proceedings

None on file

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: No AIA trial proceeding. Note the patent's own legal status in the record: "Expired - Fee Related" — "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362," lapse effective 2012-04-06 (5/7/2012 STCH entry; 5/29/2012 FP entry). Anticipated expiration had the fees been paid: 2023-04-28.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: No PTAB FWD exists to appeal. I found no Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent.
• Defensive value: If you receive an assertion letter on US 6,717,084 today, the IPR question is beside the point. Check the maintenance-fee status first: as of this record the patent expired 2012-04-06, so there should be no enforceable claim 1–4 to practice. See caveat below on revival.

⚠️ Decoy to avoid: IPR2014-00681 (this is not this patent)

Research on "6,717,084" frequently collides with Case IPR2014-00681, Patent 6,715,084 B2 — a network intrusion-detection patent litigated by IBM against Intellectual Ventures, in which institution was denied on 2014-10-30. That is US 6,715,084, a one-digit transposition of our patent (US 6,717,084). It has nothing to do with Zippy Technology's contact switch.
Link: https://ptabtrialblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/IPR2014-00681-Denying-Institution-20141030.pdf
Do not cite this proceeding in a brief about the '084 contact switch — the panel in IPR2014-00681 addressed claims to "detecting an anomaly in a networked computer system," not microswitch hardware.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all four claims UNTESTED — and presumptively unenforceable in practice. US 6,717,084 issued 2004-04-06 with exactly 4 claims: claim 1 (independent, directed to the casing / first and second contact legs with the first and second anchor flanges / micro mechanism combination) and claims 2–4 (depending from claim 1, adding the anchor-hole-and-stub and lid-ridge sealing; the second contact leg's anchor section held by an anchor plate; and the bucking section limiting contact-plate displacement). No claims are canceled — because no claims were ever challenged. Instead, the entire claim set lapsed with the rest of the patent on 2012-04-06 for failure to pay maintenance fees. So the correct framing is not "claims 1–4 survived" but "claims 1–4 expired."

Estoppel landscape: none, and none needed. With no IPR FWD under 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on any party, and every prior-art ground remains uncaptured — including the four Zippy/Shin Jiuh-family references the examiner cited and the eight references of record (Cherry US 3,337,702 and 3,382,332; Omron US 4,877,930; Otto Engineering US 4,929,808; Shin Juich US 5,171,945; Shin Jiuh US 5,432,311, US 5,717,177, US 5,871,087). That is an unusually rich § 103 combination set that was never run through a PTAB panel. But a defendant should not spend the money: an expired patent cannot be infringed in the present tense, so an IPR — which is a forward-looking validity trial, not a damages defense — would be the wrong instrument. The cheaper and more decisive move is a status and enforceability check.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. No serial petitioners, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator anywhere in this patent's history, no PTAB appeals, no litigation track record on this patent that I could locate. The only litigation-adjacent hit I found involving Zippy Tech is an E.D. Tex. Marshall Division complaint in which Zippy was a defendant on unrelated patents (US 6,199,996 and US 7,284,872, illuminated keyboards), plus a copyright claim about website copy — Zippy was not asserting the '084 microswitch patent there. The absence of PTAB activity here is explained, not mysterious: this patent lapsed before the AIA trial regime matured, and it was never a high-value assertion asset.

Recommended next steps

1. Order a certified copy of the file history / maintenance-fee record from Patent Center and confirm the lapse is still in force. The record shows expiration effective 2012-04-06 under 37 CFR 1.362, with "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee" entered 2012-05-29. Link: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov
2. Watch for a revival petition (37 CFR 1.378). An expired-for-fee patent can in principle be revived on a petition showing unintentional delay and payment of the fee. I have no evidence that any such petition was filed or granted here, and I cannot verify revival status from the sources available to me — but this is the single factual contingency that would change the analysis. Ask opposing counsel in writing whether any revival petition has been filed.
3. If a demand letter cites US 6,717,084: do not file an IPR. Assert that the asserted claims (1–4) are expired, demand the current Patent Center fee/status printout, and preserve a fee-shifting argument under 35 U.S.C. § 285 / Rule 11 for assertion of an expired patent. Note that § 292 false marking is generally unavailable after Helsinn absent competitive injury.
4. If you nonetheless want an invalidity record (e.g., a supplier-indemnity demand or a defensive publication/design-around memo), the grounds are wide open — no § 315(e) estoppel blocks anyone — but build it as a district-court § 102/§ 103 invalidity position on the eight references of record rather than as a PTAB filing, since the patent is not live.

Confidence statement: I am highly confident there is no PTAB proceeding on US 6,717,084; I am equally confident the patent expired for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2012-04-06 per the authoritative record in the prompt. I could not independently confirm via USPTO Patent Center whether a revival petition was ever filed. Nothing here should be treated as a legal opinion on the enforceability of an expired patent in your jurisdiction or forum.

I'll reconstruct the assignment chain. Let me start by verifying records across the sources you named.

Let me verify the assignment record and check for any assertion activity on this patent.

Let me confirm whether any post-issuance assignment exists and check for litigation/assertion activity.

US 6717084 B1 — "Contact switch" — Ownership & NPE Analysis

Patent snapshot (from authoritative Google Patents record): Appl. No. US10/424,124 · filed 2003-04-28 · granted 2004-04-06 · sole inventor Wen-Hsiang Lu · original and current assignee Zippy Technology Corp. · status Expired – Fee Related (lapsed 2012-04-06).

Inventors

• Sole inventor; no co-inventors.
• Employer is determinable with high confidence: the application was assigned to Zippy Technology Corp. by an assignment executed 2003-04-21, seven days before the 2003-04-28 filing date, per USPTO reel 014012/0907. That is the classic employee-invention assignment executed at filing.
• No unusual inventor pattern. There is no evidence Lu departed Zippy, and even if he had, a single-inventor departure is not a fire-sale predicate. The same applicant family has a long-running in-house microswitch program (see below).

Original assignee

Zippy Technology Corp. (Chinese name 新巨企業股份有限公司), No. 48/50 Wuquan Rd. / Minquan Rd., New Taipei City, Taiwan. Founded 1983-04-25; publicly listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, ticker 2420.

• Primary line of business: design/manufacture/trade of micro switches and switching power supplies (ZIPPY and EMACS brands), two reportable segments — Switch Division and Power Supply Division. Products feed mice, keyboards, IT peripherals, medical, automotive, AI-server and data-center markets. (Yahoo Finance 2420.TW profile; Zippy consolidated financials.)
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — the patent is directed to a microswitch/contact switch for products such as a mouse, which is exactly Zippy's Switch Division output. The specification itself cites Zippy's own earlier patents (US 5,171,945 and US 5,432,311, "granted to Applicant"). No product-level infringement finding was made, but the commercial embodiment is not in doubt.
• Current status: Operating, profitable, publicly traded. Q1 2026 sales TWD 548.1M and net income TWD 159.5M; ~NT$8–11B market cap; TTM revenue ~US$70M. Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy.
• Note on corporate naming: the cited earlier patents (US 5,171,945; 5,432,311; 5,717,177; 5,871,087) list assignees "Shin Juich Corp." and "Shin Jiuh Corp." — the older English transliterations of 新巨. The patent text calls these "granted to Applicant," so they are the same corporate family / earlier house name. (Stated as likely; I did not independently verify the name-change filing.)

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center / Google Patents legal-events record shows exactly one recorded assignment — the original inventor-to-employer assignment. Neither the Google Patents "Legal Events" table nor the "Reassignments" entries surface any post-issuance conveyance.

• 2003-04-21 (executed) / recorded 2003-04-28 — Reel 014012/0907

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Wen-Hsiang Lu (individual)
  • Assignee: Zippy Technology Corp. (Taiwan)
  • Correspondent: Not surfaced in the retrieved record. The Google Patents legal-event entry for reel 014012/0907 lists only the assignor, assignee, reel/frame, and effective date — the attorney/agent of record who filed the recording is not exposed in this text. I will not name one without the underlying USPTO image. Because there is only a single link in the chain, the "repeat correspondent" test is structurally impossible to satisfy here regardless.
  • Context: Inventor-to-employer assignment, standard pre-issuance housekeeping. Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

• No further assignments recorded. The patent remained with Zippy Technology Corp. until it lapsed 2012-04-06 for non-payment of the maintenance fee (USPTO codes LAPS/STCH/FP; maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2011-11-21).

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 6717084)
• Legacy Assignment Search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search (same underlying records)
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6717084/en

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6717084
    2003 : Lu assigns rights to Zippy Technology
         : Application filed 28 Apr
    2004 : Patent issued 6 Apr
    2007 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2012 : Patent lapses for nonpayment

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional disconfirming fact: the patent expired in 2012 for failure to pay the 8.5-year maintenance fee. A monetizable NPE asset with a live chain would not be allowed to lapse; this independently corroborates that no assertion entity ever acquired it.

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The complete recorded chain is a single entry — inventor Wen-Hsiang Lu to Zippy Technology Corp., executed 2003-04-21 and recorded 2003-04-28 at reel 014012/0907 — with no post-issuance assignments of any kind. There is no evidence whatsoever of shell-entity transfer, a known asserter, a repeat NPE correspondent, cascading transfers, pre-litigation transfer, bankruptcy sale, privateering, or defensive aggregation; the patent simply stayed with its manufacturer-owner and lapsed on 2012-04-06. No NPE/troll pattern is present, and the absence of any post-issuance record is itself the finding — Zippy Technology Corp. (TWSE:2420), an operating microswitch and power-supply maker, owned this patent from filing to expiry.

Caveat: the correspondent/attorney of record on reel 014012/0907 is not exposed in the text record I retrieved; confirming it would require pulling the USPTO assignment image at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. I have not fabricated a name.

I'll verify the prior-art citations for US 6,717,084 against the USPTO/Google Patents record and gather grounded details for each reference.

Now let me gather details on the Shin Jiuh / Shin Juich references and the Omron/Otto references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,717,084 B1 ("Contact switch," Zippy Technology Corp.)

0. Verification of the target record

I re-pulled the authoritative full text at patents.google.com/patent/US6717084/en (which mirrors the USPTO full-text record) and cross-checked the bibliography. This confirms the previously generated sections and adds nothing contradictory:

• US 6,717,084 B1, App. 10/424,124, filed 2003-04-28, issued 2004-04-06, inventor Wen-Hsiang Lu, assignee Zippy Technology Corp., 4 claims (1 independent), status Expired – Fee Related (lapse 2012-04-06).
• Direct USPTO-facing links: PatentCenter → USPTO PatentCenter record; USPTO Assignment (reel/frame 014012/0907).

Method limitation (stated up front): I do not have a live, credentialed session against USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter / Docket databases; my retrieval is via the Google Patents full-text mirror (which reproduces the USPTO citation table verbatim) plus secondary mirrors (SumoBrain, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, EveryPatent). The citation table itself is reproduced literally below, and each reference's dates are taken from that table. Where I could not open a reference's full text, I say so rather than paraphrasing.

1. The citation table as it appears on the '084 record

The '084 patent lists eight (8) cited patent documents. I reproduce them literally (no number "auto-correction"):

Note the citation table's ordering is not chronological by priority date (US5871087A has the 1993-12-21 priority but appears last), and it lists US5171945/5,432,311/5,711,777/5,871,087 as "Shin Jiuh"/"Shin Juich" — the same corporate family the '084 specification calls "granted to Applicant" (see §3 below). I take the table literally; the assignee-name variants ("Shin Juich" vs. "Shin Jiuh") are reproduced as recorded.

All eight pre-date the 2003-04-28 filing date, so each is § 102(a)/(b) or § 102(e) prior art on its face. (A ninth class of references — the 19 "Cited By"/forward citations such as WO2018/188483A1 and CN102315028B — post-dates the '084 patent and therefore cannot be § 102 art against it; they are excluded from the anticipation analysis.)

2. Reference-by-reference: what each discloses, and § 102 exposure

Reference 1 — US 3,337,702 (Cherry Electrical Products)

Full citation: US 3,337,702 A, "Non-defeat double snap-acting switch with oscillating contact," filed 1963-02-25, issued 1967-08-22; inventors Arnold A. Brevick, Walter L. Cherry, James U. Dernehl; App. 260,390; Int. Cl. H01H13/28. (Google Patents; SumoBrain)

Description (verified against full text): Mating housing sections 11/12; fixed terminals 14/15; a combination terminal plate/support 18 with spaced pivot posts 21/22 having notches 23; a U-shaped movable blade 24 pivoted in notches 23; coil spring 25 anchored to a struck lug 26; actuator 29 with exposed end 28 through opening 27, whose rectangular body 30 slides in recessed guiding slots 33 formed in the inner side walls to "maintain a prescribed path of movement of the actuator."

Closest mapping to '084 claim 1: the guided actuator (anti-skew) feature — the "guiding slots 33" concept is functionally the ancestor of the '084 pushbutton-guided-in-depressing-space idea.

§ 102 exposure: None. It does not disclose (i) a casing retaining section extending from the depressing opening, (ii) a first contact leg with first and second anchor flanges projecting in the direction of the depressing opening, (iii) a support strut spaced from the retaining section to form a depressing space, (iv) two contact legs extending through slots to form fastening ledges, or (v) an anchor member on a contact plate engaged by the elastic element. It is a § 103 (secondary) reference for the pushbutton-guidance concept, not an anticipatory reference for claims 1–4.

Reference 2 — US 3,382,332 (Cherry Electrical Products)

Full citation: US 3,382,332 A, "Multiposition snap-action switch blade," filed 1967-02-13, issued 1968-05-07; assignee Cherry Electrical Products Corp. (Google Patents via US3989914 citation table)

Description (verified against the related blade disclosure): Housing 10 (sections 11/12), fixed contact-bearing terminals 14/15, base terminal 18 with spaced fingers 19 and spring lug 20, coil spring 21, U-shaped movable switch blade 22 with legs 26/27 and angular tabs 28/29 riding the fingers 19, and actuator 23 with button 24 projecting through a housing opening, its lug 25 seated on the spring. The improvement claimed is the blade geometry (slots/tongue) producing a shearing-and-rocking contact break.

§ 102 exposure: None as to claims 1–4. It teaches the pivot-blade + spring + pushbutton actuator subcombination at a very high level, but discloses no anchor flanges, no retaining section, no support strut/retaining-section spacing, and no fastening ledges through slots. § 103 art at most (contact-plate pivot/spring geometry).

Reference 3 — US 4,877,930 (Omron Tateisi Electronics Co.)

Full citation: US 4,877,930 A, "Sealed push-button switch and method of assembly," filed 1987-08-14, issued 1989-10-31; assignee Omron Tateisi Electronics Co.

Description (per title/assignee and general knowledge — I was cut off before opening this reference's full text, so treat the description as unverified detail): A sealed push-button switch with a casing and cover, directed to keeping contaminants out and to an assembly method. Omron's sealed push-button work of this era typically mounts the switching element in a sub-housing under a sealing membrane/cover.

Closest mapping to '084: potentially claim 2, which adds the lid/casing anchor hole + anchor stub engagement and a ridge on the lid that seals the depressing opening. Claim 2 is a sealing/covering limitation.

§ 102 exposure: None. Claim 2 depends from claim 1 and incorporates all of claim 1's elements, none of which this reference supplies as a whole. Even considered in isolation, it is at best a § 103 reference for the lid/ridge seal.

Reference 4 — US 4,929,808 (Otto Engineering, Inc.)

Full citation: US 4,929,808 A, "Electrical switch component and switches formed thereby," filed 1989-06-13, issued 1990-05-29; assignee Otto Engineering, Inc.

Description (per title/assignee; full text not opened — unverified detail): Directed to a switch component (a contact-blade/spring subassembly) that can be incorporated into various switch constructions. Otto Engineering is a sealed-pushbutton switch maker; this era of Otto art focuses on a blade-and-spring contact subassembly usable across switch styles.

Closest mapping to '084: potentially the "micro mechanism" subassembly concept of claim 1 (contact plate + elastic element as a unit installable in a casing).

§ 102 exposure: None as to claims 1–4. A generic component disclosure does not meet the spatially-arranged casing/leg/flange limitations of claim 1. § 103 art at most.

Reference 5 — US 5,171,945 (Shin Juich Corp.) ★ closest § 102 candidate

Full citation: US 5,171,945 A, "Contact switch," filed 1991-01-07 (continuation of App. 07/638,120 filed 1991-01-07, abandoned), issued 1992-12-15; assignee Shin Juich Corp. (Google Patents; SumoBrain; Justia — Shin Juich Corp.)

Description (verified against full text + claims): Casing (a); first, second and third conductors 10/(e1)/(e2) with downward legs out of the casing; a spring mounting plate member extending from the leg of the first conductor inside the casing with an upward end flange (b4) having opening (b5) and gap; a spring engaging member (b1) projecting upward and spaced from the end flange with notches (b2); a movable contact arm (c) whose one end abuts the end flange and turns about the point of contact therewith; a helical spring (d) whose curved end hitches on the spring-engaging member and whose other end (rod + hook) engages the contact arm; and a button member (f) slidably mounted relative to the casing in alignment with the helical coil, plus a lever (g) to operate the button. Claim 8 expressly recites the button member "slidably mounted relative to said casing… for pivoting the contact arm between the first position and the second position."

Why it is the closest: This is the antecedent of the '084 micro mechanism — end flange ≈ "support strut," movable contact arm ≈ "contact plate," helical spring ≈ "elastic element," button member ≈ "pushbutton." The '084 specification itself credits this patent for "a mounting plate member that enables a micro mechanism to be installed on a common leg spacing from a depressing opening at a greater interval."

Element-by-element against claim 1:

§ 102 verdict: No anticipation of claim 1. The reference is a three-conductor switch (the '084 spec says so expressly), and it lacks the retaining-section / two-anchor-flange / two-slot-fastening-ledge architecture. Because claims 2–4 depend from claim 1, they cannot be anticipated either. This reference is the primary § 103 reference and the specification's own admitted starting point.

Reference 6 — US 5,432,311 (Shin Jiuh Corp.) ★ closest § 102 candidate for the anchor-flange subcombination

Full citation: US 5,432,311 A, "Common conducting unit for a contact switch," filed 1993-12-06, issued 1995-07-11; assignee Shin Jiuh Corp. (Google Patents PDF; cited in the '084 spec at col. 1)

Description (verified against full text): Switch casing 11; a common conducting unit with conductor body 12 and movable contact plate 13; first and second conductors 17/18 whose downward legs project out of the casing in the same direction as the common leg plate 15; a spring member 14; button member 19 on the spring's intermediate portion; press lever 16 pushing the button to move plate 13 to the upper/lower position. The claimed improvement is a mounting plate with (i) an elongated flat portion with two parallel end edges, (ii) first and second end plate portions extending integrally and perpendicularly from the respective end edges in the same direction, (iii) an engaging groove in the first end plate portion parallel to the end edges, (iv) a spring mounting portion extending perpendicularly from the end edge of the second end plate portion, and (v) a through-opening so the tension spring can run through the first end plate portion to interconnect the contact plate and the spring mounting portion — enabling automated assembly.

Why it matters: This is the closest disclosure of the two-flange, same-direction projection idea — "first and second end plate portions extending… in the same direction" is structurally the ancestor of '084's "first anchor flange and a second anchor flange projecting in the direction of the depressing opening."

§ 102 exposure: None as to claim 1 as a whole. Missing: the retaining section extending from the depressing opening, the support-strut-spaced-from-retaining-section depressing space, the pushbutton moving within a depressing space between the retaining section and the first anchor flange, the two-slot/fastening-ledge legs, and the "anchor member on the contact plate" engaged by a spring whose other end sits on a second flange's anchor portion. Also note the '084 spec expressly distinguishes this art for having the micro-mechanism installation too high (near the depressing opening) to pass the stricter ±16 kV ESD requirement. § 103 reference for the dual-flange geometry.

Reference 7 — US 5,717,177 (Shin Jiuh Corp.)

Full citation: US 5,717,177 A, "Common conducting unit for a contact switch," filed 1996-12-06, issued 1998-02-10; assignee Shin Jiuh Corp.; inventors Tsai et al. (Google Patents; Google Patents PDF)

Description (verified against full text + claims): Casing 21, button member 24 on top of the contact arm, first/second conductors 25/26 with legs out of the casing, and a conductor body 3 with a U-shaped mounting unit 32 — upright first/second arm mounting portions 321/323 joined by a connecting portion 322, each with a horizontal retaining groove 324/325 (324 higher than 325) — plus a longitudinal opening 326 and, on the upper end edge of the second arm mounting portion, an inverted-U "retaining unit" 3231 that limits upward movement and prevents removal of the movable contact arm due to the spring's upward bias.

Closest mapping to '084: (a) the retaining unit 3231 limiting arm travel is conceptually the ancestor of claim 4's "bucking section … to limit the travelling displacement of the contact plate in a free condition"; (b) the two retention grooves on the mounting arms map loosely to the anchor-flange/anchor-portion idea.

§ 102 exposure: None. It does not disclose the claim 1 combination; claim 4 depends from claim 1, so no anticipation. Best used as a § 103 reference for the travel-limiting stop (claim 4) and for spring/contact-arm mounting.

Reference 8 — US 5,871,087 (Shin Jiuh Corp.) ★ strong § 103 / closest subcombination reference

Full citation: US 5,871,087 A, "Common conductor assembly for a contact switch," priority 1993-12-21, issued 1999-02-16; assignee Shin Jiuh Corp. (Justia — Shin Jiuh Corp.)

Description (verified via the assignee listing abstract): A common conductor assembly with a mounting plate having an elongated flat portion with first and second vertical edges, and first and second end plate portions extending integrally and transversely from the respective vertical edges in the same direction; the first end plate portion has an outward face formed with an engaging groove perpendicular to the flat portion's vertical edges; the second end plate portion has a spring mounting neck; and a conducting leg plate portion extends downwardly and integrally from the second vertical edge. A pivotally movable member and a tension spring complete the assembly.

Why it matters: This maps even more directly than US 5,432,311 onto claim 1's geometry: first anchor flange with a support/engaging feature (engaging groove on the first end plate portion) + second anchor flange with an anchor portion (spring mounting neck on the second end plate portion), both projecting in the same direction from a contact leg, with the leg plate extending downward (≈ fastening leg). It is essentially the "two-anchor-flange" architecture in a two-conductor common-conducting unit.

§ 102 exposure: None as to claim 1 as a whole. Still absent: the casing retaining section extending from the depressing opening, the depressing space formed between the retaining section and the support strut, the two-slot pass-through fastening ledges, the pushbutton/contact-plate/elastic-element micro mechanism as claimed, and the contact plate connecting the second contact leg. As with US 5,432,311, the specification's §3 problem statement (installation too high → ESD failure) distinguishes it. Strong § 103 reference for the anchor-flange subcombination.

3. Cross-reference note on the specification (and one flagged nuance)

The '084 specification does not treat its citation table neutrally — it expressly characterizes two of the eight:

• US 5,432,311 — described as the two-conductor "common conducting unit" whose "U-shape" common leg places the "installation point of the micro mechanism … on an upper portion close to the depressing opening," so it "cannot meet the stricter [±16 kV ESD] test requirements." (Verified verbatim in the '084 description.)
• US 5,171,945 — described as having a mounting plate that spaces the micro mechanism farther from the depressing opening, but being "mainly adopted on electronic switches of three conductors."

That is a material admission: the applicant affirmatively distinguished US 5,432,311 on the micro-mechanism height/ESD ground and US 5,171,945 on the three-conductor ground. This strongly corroborates that the novelty/obviousness battleground for claim 1 is the location of the micro mechanism plus the retaining-section-derived depressing space, not the general blade-spring-actuator architecture, which the applicant conceded was old.

Flagged item (literal-reading caution): The prior sections of this analysis reproduce the citation-table assignee spellings inconsistently across sources ("Shin Juich" for US 5,171,945; "Shin Jiuh" for US 5,432,311 / US 5,717,177 / US 5,871,087). I have not auto-corrected these — I reproduce them as recorded. Whether they are the same entity under an earlier/later romanization is a corporate-identity question, not a patent-number question, and does not affect the § 102 dates.

4. Consolidated § 102 verdict table

Bottom line on § 102: None of the eight cited references, alone, discloses every element of claim 1 in the claimed arrangement, and because claims 2–4 are dependent, none can anticipate them either. This is consistent with the prosecution outcome (the patent issued with all four claims over this art). The citation table is best understood as § 103 obviousness art, with US 5,171,945 as the principal combination reference (admitted prior art) and US 5,432,311 / US 5,871,087 supplying the dual-flange–same-direction geometry. The elements that appear to have carried the allowance — and that no cited reference supplies — are the casing retaining section extending from the depressing opening, the support strut spaced from that retaining section to define the pushbutton depressing space, and the resulting lowered micro-mechanism position for ESD.

5. Caveats and recommended confirmation steps

1. Two references were not opened in full in this pass (US 4,877,930 Omron; US 4,929,808 Otto Engineering) — their descriptions above rest on title, assignee, and general knowledge, and are labelled unverified. Their § 102 exposure is nil regardless, since neither supplies the claim 1 combination.
2. I did not perform a search for uncited prior art. The task asked specifically about "each patent citation for 6717084"; if you want an invalidity-grade § 102 search (e.g., foreign/JP/KR/TW art, or the same-family Shin Jiuh patents not listed in the table, such as US 5,875,887 or US 6,768,069), that is a separate exercise.
3. To convert any of the above into a citable, certified statement, verify against USPTO Patent Public Search and the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" view for App. 10/424,124, and pull the full-text PDFs at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com for each of the eight numbers listed in §1.

Sources used: US6717084B1 full text; US3337702A & SumoBrain; US3382332A citation record; US5171945 & SumoBrain; US5432311 PDF; US5717177 & PDF; US5871087 / Shin Jiuh assignee abstract; Justia — Shin Juich Corp..

I'll pull details on the key cited references so the obviousness analysis rests on what those references actually disclose, not just their titles.

Let me pull the remaining cited references that matter for the dependent claims — the sealed push-button switch and the Otto Engineering switch component — plus check the KSR-type teaching in the forward citations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,717,084 B1 ("Contact switch"), 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the prior sections: the bibliographic data, verbatim abstract, claim-1 plain-language overview, and the negative litigation finding from the earlier sections are adopted here without repetition. Two points from those sections drive this analysis: (1) the patent has 4 claims, only claim 1 independent; and (2) the specification expressly characterizes the invention as a combination of two earlier patents ("The inventions provides an improved contact switch structure that combines the advantages of the two patents mentioned above"). That self-characterization is the analytical fulcrum below.

1. Legal framework and the governing statute

Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies. Application 10/424,124 was filed 2003-04-28, i.e., before the AIA's 2013-03-16 change to § 102/103. So the analysis is the Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), framework: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) rebuttal evidence (secondary considerations).

The controlling rationales are:

• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — the TSM test is "expansive and flexible"; a combination can be obvious from "market forces," "design incentives," "the interrelated teachings of multiple patents," and the "predictable" use of "a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way."
• MPEP § 2143 exemplary rationales: (A) combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of known technique to improve similar devices in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (F) "obvious to try"; (G) design incentives/market forces.
• In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) / In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986) — a § 103 rejection based on a combination cannot be defeated by attacking each reference individually; the test is what the combined teachings suggest.
• In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004) — analogous-art threshold: same field of endeavor.

All eight cited references qualify as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b), because each published more than one year before the 2003-04-28 filing date — the latest being US 5,871,087 (1999-02-16) and US 5,717,177 (1998-02-10). Age is irrelevant to § 103 once a reference is analogous art; all eight are microswitches/contact switches and therefore squarely in the same field of endeavor.

2. The prior art of record and what each reference supplies

The eight references listed in the "Patent Citations" section of the Google Patents page (US6717084B1):

⚠️ Discrepancy to flag (per the operating rules)

The '084 specification states that both US 5,171,945 and US 5,432,311 were "granted to the Applicant" (i.e., to the '084 applicant/prosecution entity). The Google Patents citation table, however, lists the '945 assignee as "Shin Juich Corp." (note the non-standard spelling) and the '311 assignee as "Shin Jiuh Corp." (inventor Ching-Chuan Lin), while '084's assignee is Zippy Technology Corp. These cannot all be literally correct as to a single entity. I am not auto-correcting either identifier; both are recorded as they appear. This matters because, if the specification's attribution is right, then A5 and A6 are the applicant's own prior work, which strengthens the motivation analysis (see §4.1) rather than weakening it.

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

Claim 1 breaks into three groups. Mapping the primary combination (A5 + A6/A8 + A3):

Result: no single reference discloses every limitation — A5, A6, A7 and A8 are each "common conducting unit"/three-conductor-oriented designs, and none describes the casing's long retaining section in combination with a two-contact-leg layout. But each limitation is disclosed, and the differences are the kind of rearrangement § 103 is designed to reach.

The closest single reference is A5 (US 5,171,945) — and that is the patentee's own admission: the '084 Background says of A5, "If the structure of the common leg can be adapted on existing switches, it would be a great breakthrough." A5 even expressly supplies the alleged ESD advantage: A5's mounting plate member "enables a micro mechanism to be installed on a common leg spacing from a depressing opening at a greater interval."

4. The § 103 combinations and the motivation to combine

4.1 Combination I (primary): A5 + A6 + A3 → claim 1

Rationale under MPEP § 2143(A) — combination of known elements yielding predictable results.

Motivation, in order of strength:

1. Applicant's own express admission of combinability. The '084 Summary of the Invention states the invention "combines the advantages of the two patents mentioned above" — A5 and A6. When an applicant's own specification identifies the two references as the parts to be combined, the motivation inquiry is essentially at an end. This is the "applicant's own prior work" situation through which KSR's "design incentive" rationale bites hardest.
2. A5 already teaches the stated ESD objective. The '084 Background sets out the problem as lowering the micro-mechanism installation point to meet a ±16 kV ESD standard. A5's mounting plate member is described in '084 itself as placing the micro mechanism "spacing from a depressing opening at a greater interval" — i.e., A5 anticipates the solution concept. Combining A5's low-mounted plate with A6's compact two-end-plate pivot/anchor architecture is the predictable way to adapt that advantage to a two-conductor switch.
3. A6 teaches exactly the claimed two-flange architecture. A6's first and second end plate portions "extend integrally and perpendicularly… from a respective one of the end edges in the same direction," one carrying a pivot groove and the other a spring mount. That is the claim's "first anchor flange… second anchor flange projecting in the direction of the depressing opening," with the support strut and anchor portion.
4. Same field, same problem, same components. All three are pushbutton microswitches for small appliances/electronic products. In re Bigio; KSR ("familiar elements… according to known methods").
5. Common provenance. Whether A5/A6 belong to the applicant (per the specification) or to the Shin Jiuh/Shin Juich family (per the citation table), the '084 and A5–A8 references are one continuous line of development of the same common-conducting-unit art, and '084 cites all four Shin Jiuh-family patents as its own lineage. Common ownership/obligation of assignment and a shared technical lineage are recognized motivations to combine.

4.2 Combination II: A8 + A5 + A3 (and optionally A7) → claim 1

A8 (US 5,871,087) is arguably the single most on-point micro-mechanism reference. It discloses a two-conductor switch (first and second conductors 16, 17 with contacts above and below the movable member) in which:

• a pushbutton (15) contacts the tension spring (14);
• the spring drives a pivotally movable member (13) whose engaging end sits in a groove 126;
• the spring's hook ends engage the movable member's spring engaging hole 131 and the mounting plate's spring mounting hole 121, with notches 124/127 preventing spring movement/misplacement.

That is claim 1's micro mechanism, element for element, in a two-contact-leg environment. The only material gap is the casing's downward retaining section. Adding it from A3 (Omron) — whose button 15 "is slidably inserted into a through-hole 14 formed in the top of cover 3," the through-hole walls necessarily extending from the depressing opening into the case interior — supplies that limitation.

Motivation: (i) A3 is the same field (pushbutton microswitch), filed by a major switch manufacturer and cited as prior art of record; (ii) extending a button bore into the housing is a predictable mechanical expedient (MPEP § 2144.04 — obvious design choice; lengthening a guide bore adds no new principle of operation); and (iii) the anti-skew problem the '084 Background itself identifies as "another issue to be resolved" was a recognized, actively-addressed problem in this art. Omron's own contemporaneous push-button guide arrangement states the object bluntly: "Even if the push button is obliquely pushed, it is always prevented from being inclined to provide the stable switching operation at all times" (EP 0 283 052 A3, Omron Tateisi, abstract) — I flag that this Omron document is not among the eight listed citations, so it is corroborating evidence of the state of the art rather than a formal reference of record.

4.3 Combination III: A5 + A6 + A7 → claim 1 (and, critically, claim 4)

A7 (US 5,717,177) carries the same two-arm-mounting-portion architecture as A6 plus an express retaining unit 3231 that "limits upward movement and prevents removal of the movable contact arm." A5 supplies the button/spring/pivot. The motivation is identical to Combination I, with the added benefit that A7 and A6 share the same specification lineage (both "Common conducting unit for a contact switch," Shin Jiuh Corp.).

4.4 The "depressing space" limitation — why it does not save claim 1

Claim 1 recites the support strut "spaced from the retaining section to form a depressing space," with the pushbutton "movable in the depressing space." This is the patentee's anti-skew feature. It is nonetheless obvious because:

• The "depressing space" is defined negatively — it is simply the region the button occupies between the casing's downward extension and the fixed metal pivot support. Every one of A3, A5 and A8 places the button's lower end inside the housing, adjacent to a fixed spring/pivot structure and separated from the casing wall. No reference is asked to be "bodily incorporated" into another (In re Keller); the question is whether the combined teachings suggest the claimed arrangement, and they do.
• Claim 1 recites no dimension. The specification's ESD benefit ("the interval of the electric connection and the depressing opening 12 increases") is not claimed. There is no claimed minimum spacing, no claimed ratio, no claimed relationship between the ESD spacing and the retaining section length. Under In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997), and the Graham second factor, an unclaimed advantage cannot supply patentability. The asserted ESD advantage is therefore legally unavailable as a distinguishing argument for claim 1 as written.
• Making a button bore longer and moving the conductive parts further from the opening is a mere change of degree in a known structure, with no new cooperation of parts and no asserted criticality.

5. Dependent claims 2–4

Claim 2 — anchor hole/anchor stub between casing and lid; lid ridge sealing the depressing opening

• A3 discloses the case as a cover 3 fixed to base 2 with the button passing through a through-hole 14 in the cover, plus an annular groove 17 on the cover top and a seal member 16 fixed to grooves 17 and 18 to seal around the button periphery; A3 also shows cover structures (mesa-shaped protrusion 3a) used for sealing. A4 likewise has cover means 44 enclosing the blade and an internally sealing arrangement.
• Casing-to-lid retention by a hole/stub snap fit, and a ridge to close a button opening, are elementary mechanical fastening/sealing expedients. Motivation: the switch art's well-documented concern with dust and moisture ingress and contamination (A3 states the purpose of its sealed construction; A4's flexible seal "prevents contamination of the electrical contact areas"). MPEP § 2144.04 (obvious design choice — "changes in shape"; "arrangement of parts") and § 2143(B) (substitution of a known element).
• A close-proximity alternative combination: A3 + A6/A7, since the "split casing/lower casing part with plate retained therein" architecture appears in A8 ("the mounting plate 12 is provided on the lower switch casing part 10") and A7.

Claim 3 — second contact leg has an anchor section held by an anchor plate in the housing compartment

• A3 embeds terminals 4, 5, 6 in a resin base and forms an engagement recess 11a / engaging member 11 for pivotally supporting and electrically connecting the movable member — a molded retention feature fixing a conductor within the housing. A6 and A8 retain the conducting leg plate to the mounting plate and the mounting plate to the casing.
• Motivation: fixing a terminal so that contact force does not displace it is inherent in any switch design; molding a retention rib costs nothing and is a classic "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" (KSR; MPEP § 2143(C)). The claim adds no structural cooperation beyond retention.

Claim 4 — bucking section on the casing corresponding to the contact plate in a free condition

• A7 is the direct hit. Its retaining unit 3231 on the upper end edge of the second arm mounting portion "limits upward movement and prevents removal of the movable contact arm from the conductor body." Functionally identical to the '084 bucking section 15, which "limit[s] the travelling displacement of the contact plate 42."
• A4 provides the same concept in a different form: base/cover/yoke surfaces coact with the blade and its bail portion, and the coacting surfaces are "so located, dimensioned and arranged" to constrain travel; the art of over-travel and over-load stops in microswitches (e.g., the abutment/fulcrum structures shown in US 4,105,882, an Otto Engineering switch, cited among the extended results) is pervasive.
• Motivation: limiting travel and preload so the user's actuation force stays comfortable is a result-oriented design goal expressly recited in '084's own description. Any stop surface placed in the plate's free-state path achieves it; the result is predictable, not unexpected (KSR; MPEP § 2143(A)).

6. Anticipated rebuttals and why they likely fail

7. Bottom line

Claim 1 is, in my analysis, most likely invalid as obvious under pre-AIA § 103(a) over:

• US 5,171,945 (A5) + US 5,432,311 (A6) + US 4,877,930 (A3), with US 5,871,087 (A8) and US 5,717,177 (A7) as reinforcing secondary references for the micro mechanism and the travel stop, respectively; or
• US 5,871,087 (A8) + US 5,171,945 (A5) + US 4,877,930 (A3) as an alternative primary combination.

The motivation is supplied by (1) the applicant's express statement that the invention combines the two identified patents, (2) A5's own teaching of the low-mounted micro mechanism that is the claimed purpose, (3) the highest-available evidence of a known anti-skew problem in the pushbutton art, and (4) the universal ESD/footprint design pressure recited in the '084 Background as an industry standard.

Claims 2 and 3 would fall with the primary combination plus A3/A4/A6/A8 and routine design-choice reasoning (MPEP § 2144.04). Claim 4 would fall with A7 (retaining unit 3231) as the primary secondary reference.

8. Confidence and caveats

1. Prosecution history not reviewed. I do not have the file wrapper. I cannot tell whether the examiner actually made a § 103 rejection over A4/A5/A6, whether an affidavit (Rule 132) was filed, or what arguments were made. The above is a de novo obviousness assessment against the references of record.
2. Reference texts consulted at abstract/description level. I retrieved A5 and A6 descriptions and claims, A3's and A4's specification text, and A7/A8's disclosure excerpts via search; I did not review every drawing or the full claim sets of A1/A2 (Cherry) — those two are treated as generic snap-blade art and play no load-bearing role in the analysis.
3. Assignee discrepancy unresolved (specification says A5 and A6 were "granted to the Applicant"; the Google Patents citation table assigns them to Shin Juich/Shin Jiuh Corp.). I did not auto-correct either name. If A5/A6 are the applicant's own patents, the motivation analysis strengthens; if they are a third party's, the "same field/same problem/common lineage" rationale still applies but with less force.
4. Claim-construction sensitivity. The pivotal constructions are "retaining section extending from the depressing opening," "support strut," and "depressing space." A narrow construction of "retaining section" (requiring a distinct depending skirt that laterally confines the button, rather than merely a bore wall) would make the A3-based mapping weaker and would force reliance on the Omron EP 0 283 052 guide-member disclosure (not formally of record). A broad construction (any casing wall extending inward from the opening) makes the A3 mapping straightforward.
5. A § 112 written-description/claim-support note worth flagging: the claims do not recite the ESD spacing, so the asserted advantage is unclaimed — this simultaneously weakens the § 103 case against the patent's ESD story and provides a separate vulnerability worth exploring.