US 7966628

I'll search for this specific patent number as instructed.

Let me run additional targeted searches for the USPTO record and any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me try a few more direct searches to confirm the record and check for any 2026 litigation activity.

Summary of US Patent 7966628

I ran multiple targeted searches against the number 7966628 / US7966628B2. Below is what I can state from the authoritative patent text (Google Patents) supplied in your prompt, plus notes on what my searches could and could not confirm.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (paraphrased from the record)

The patent concerns a slot-in disk drive in which a disk-shaped recording medium (e.g., CD/DVD/BD) is automatically loaded by being directly inserted through a port in the cabinet. A transfer arm is rotatably supported on the apparatus body; it rotates in an insertion direction when pressed by an inserted disk, and in an ejection direction when the disk is ejected. At the tip of the transfer arm is a lift section having a rotation axis oriented substantially perpendicular to the disk's main surface. An abutting piece projects from the rotation axis to contact the disk's front/leading edge, and a support piece projects to support the lower surface of the disk. On standby, the support piece is tilted so it sits beneath the disk transfer area; when the disk's leading edge pushes the abutting piece, the rotation axis turns and the support piece rises to support the disk's lower surface, thereby preventing a diagonally-inserted disk from colliding with internal components (turntable, optical pickup) and guiding it to the normal transfer plane.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The grant text presents (in the summary/“Definitions” section) five independent-claim families covering the same mechanism from different angles:

1. Disk transfer mechanism — lift section with abutting piece + support piece (claim family 1). A rotatable transfer arm plus a lift section whose rotation axis carries (a) an abutting piece that the inserted disk pushes, and (b) a support piece. The support piece starts tilted below the transfer area and, upon the abutting piece being pushed, rotates up to support the disk's underside.

2. Disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus — same lift section, apparatus context (claim family 2). Parallel to family 1, but recited as a recording/reproduction apparatus, with the lift section described as having an abutting section upright on the rotation axis plus a support piece; same standby-tilt / rotate-to-support behavior.

3. Disk transfer mechanism — support surface + rear-side slide-in-contact section (claim family 3). A transfer arm with a lift section whose rotation axis has, at one end, a support section presenting a support surface that (toward the tip) is substantially perpendicular to the disk surface and, at the other end, a slide-in-contact section toward the rear of the apparatus that rotates the support section into substantial parallelism with the disk surface by sliding against the main chassis edge.

4. Disk recording/reproduction apparatus — main chassis + biased lift section (claim family 4). Adds a main chassis (its upper surface serving as the disk/transfer-arm movement area) and a biasing member that biases the rotation axis so the support surface stays substantially perpendicular to the disk surface, with the slide-in-contact section overriding the bias against the chassis edge.

5. Disk transfer mechanism — support member at arm tip (claim family 5). Broadest phrasing: a support member at the transfer-arm tip that, on insertion standby, is positioned beneath the disk transfer area and, when the arm is rotated by the inserted disk, supports the disk's lower surface into the transfer area.

(Note: the source text I was given lists these as independent embodiments rather than with explicit claim numbers, so I cannot authoritatively map them to specific numbered claims from the material provided.)

Search findings and uncertainties

• USPTO/Google Patents record: Consistent with the authoritative text above. I could not independently re-verify the exact assignment chain or fee-status through the search snippets returned.
• CAFC / 2026 docket activity: My searches returned no results indicating any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket, appeal, or 2026 litigation involving 7966628. I cannot confirm or deny such activity — treat this as "not found," not "confirmed none."
• Search noise / false positives to disregard: A results snippet matched the bare string "7966628" as a part number in a military technical manual (identified as a "first and reverse gear shift shaft"), which is unrelated to this patent. I am flagging it because it is exactly the kind of coincidental numeric match to avoid conflating. Another snippet referenced US 7967938 B2, a different number that I have not treated as this patent.
• Wording variant: One third-party site (patents-review.com) describing publication US 2007/0300246 renders the element as "pickup section" rather than "lift section." I am not auto-correcting or reconciling that; the authoritative grant text uses "lift section." Flagging it as a possible variant translation of the pre-grant publication.

If you need claim-by-claim verbatim text with numbered claims, I'd want to pull the full claim set from the official USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents claims section, which was not fully captured in the text provided.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7966628 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try more specific searches on litigation databases.

Summary of Findings — US Patent 7,966,628

No litigation involving US Patent 7,966,628 was identified in the sources I was able to search.

Below is a candid account of what I searched, what I found, and the limits of those findings.

Patent identified (for confirmation)

• US 7,966,628 B2 — "Disk transfer mechanism and disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus"
• Application No. 11/761,030; filed June 11, 2007; granted June 21, 2011
• Priority: JP 2006-174646, filed June 23, 2006
• Inventors: Kiyoshi Omori, Katsunori Takahashi, Hideaki Tsutsumi
• Original assignee: Sony Corp., later assigned to Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. (July 31, 2007), then reassigned to Sony Corporation (Jan. 3, 2008)
• Legal status per Google Patents: Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2030-04-17
• Classification: G11B17/0515 (slot-in loading of different-sized discs)
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966628/en

Searches performed

1. 7966628 patent litigation
2. "7966628" patent lawsuit defendant
3. unifiedpatents.com litigation "7966628"
4. courtlistener "7,966,628" OR "7966628" patent case
5. "7,966,628" patent infringement lawsuit
6. portal.unifiedpatents.com patents "7966628" litigation
7. Sony NEC Optiarc patent 7966628 lawsuit

Results of those searches

Every hit for the numeric string "7966628" was a false positive, not a patent litigation reference:

• A 1967 U.S. Army technical manual (TM 9-2320-246-34) in which "7966628" is a part number for a "First and reverse gear shift shaft" — an equipment part stock number, unrelated to the patent.
• Various unrelated patent cases that merely quote large numbers or cite other patents (e.g., Deere v. ESCO, Sonos v. Google, Sable Networks v. Cloudflare, NEO Wireless MDL, 800 Adept/Murex-Targus). None of these involve US 7,966,628.
• General articles about Unified Patents' PTAB practice, none of which name this patent.
• A Samsung/Ioengine patent-spat article asserting entirely different patent numbers (7,861,006; 9,059,969; etc.).

No district court complaint, CAFC appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) naming US 7,966,628 surfaced.

Important limitations / caveats (please read)

• I could not directly query the primary litigation databases (PACER, the Unified Patents litigation/PTAB caselist portal at portal.unifiedpatents.com, Docket Alarm, or CourtListener's full-text docket search) with a reliable, authenticated, patent-number-scoped query. My results come from general web search, which is a weak proxy for litigation screening.
• A negative result from a general web search is not proof of non-litigation. Patent suits are frequently never reported in the news and may not surface through open web search, especially for a hardware/mechanical patent like this one, which is unlikely to generate NPE assertion campaigns or press coverage.
• The patent's status — Expired – Fee Related with a 2030 adjusted expiration, and its origin with a large operating company (Sony/Sony NEC Optiarc, a manufacturer of optical drives) rather than a monetization entity — is consistent with a low likelihood of litigation, but that is an inference, not a documented fact.

What I recommend to get a definitive answer

To confirm the absence of litigation with high confidence, the following should be run directly:

1. Unified Patents Portal — litigation and PTAB caselists filtered by patent: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
2. Docket Alarm or Lex Machina / Docket Navigator — patent-number docket search for "7,966,628"
3. CourtListener RECAP docket search and PACER full-text search
4. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier "Litigation" and assignment history for App. 11/761,030
5. CAFC docket search for any appeal referencing the patent

Conclusion

On the evidence gathered, I have no confirmed record of any litigation involving US Patent 7,966,628, and I will not fabricate case names, numbers, or outcomes. I state confidently only this: I could not find any litigation, and I cannot rule out that some exists in databases I was unable to search directly. If you can provide access to or run a query against Unified Patents' litigation portal, Docket Alarm, or PACER, that would convert this "not found" into a definitive verified result.

I'll start by checking for any PTAB proceedings on this patent via web search, since the structured block indicates no AIA trial proceedings are on file per the ODP.

The searches returned no relevant PTAB activity. Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,966,628

Patent: Disk transfer mechanism and disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus
Assignee (current): Sony Corp. (originally Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.)
Priority: 2006-06-23 · Filed: 2007-06-11 · Granted: 2011-06-21
Google Patents legal status: "Expired - Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2030-04-17

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). There are no Inter Partes Reviews, Post-Grant Reviews, or Covered Business Method reviews — active, terminated, settled, or finally decided — naming U.S. Patent No. 7,966,628. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and targeted web searches (PTAB E2E / PTACTS dockets, Federal Circuit docket indices, CourtListener, and the periodic PTO litigation new-filing reports) surfaced no petition, institution decision, final written decision, or appeal involving this patent. Bottom line for a defendant: the patent carries no PTAB scorecard at all — it has neither been hardened by a survivor's win nor weakened by any claim cancellation. There is no IPR-based invalidity record to lean on, and equally no IPR estoppel to worry about from a prior challenger.

This is a notable absence. The patent issued in 2011 over a "slot-in" optical-disk loading mechanism (transfer arm / lift section with a tiltable support that catches a disk inserted at an angle) and, per the ODP status, is Expired - Fee Related — meaning it appears to have lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees well before any assertion campaign would typically attract IPRs.

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No proceedings to report

Because the canonical structured list is empty and no proceeding numbers could be verified, I am not inventing any case captions. There is no IPRxxxx-xxxxx, PGRxxxx-xxxxx, or CBMxxxx-xxxxx to populate below. (An AIA proceeding, if one existed, would have a verifiable number on PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov and a public Final Written Decision.)

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Strategic summary

Claim status of 7,966,628. All claims of the patent are UNTESTED before the PTAB — none are canceled and none are sustained by any AIA final written decision. There is no narrowing IPR history, no certificate of cancellation, and no surviving-claim list to consult. A defendant facing assertion today therefore litigates the claims as issued, on the full scope of the granted claims and the original prosecution history — with no PTAB record doing any pre-work.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petition was ever filed against this patent, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding any would-be challenger from a prior IPR, and no estoppel from any privy of a prior petitioner. Every § 102/§ 103 ground available in the art is still theoretically on the table for a first-time petitioner or for a district-court invalidity defense. The only estoppel that exists is the generic, self-imposed kind that would attach if you file your own IPR.

Pattern signals. No repeated-petitioner pattern, no defensive-aggregator chain (no Unified Patents or similar), and no patent-owner appellate history are visible — because there is no proceeding of any kind. The most probative signal is the "Expired - Fee Related" status: an asserted patent that is not worth the maintenance-fee payments to keep alive is unlikely to have been a revenue asset in a licensing campaign, which is consistent with the total absence of PTAB filings. Sony/NEC Optiarc patents from this era do appear in unrelated proceedings (e.g., Sony-lineage optical-drive patents in ARRIS/video matters), but none of those involve the '628 patent.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are being threatened or sued on the '628 patent: Do not expect a PTAB record to do your work. There is no FWD to cite and no canceled claim to point to. Your invalidity case must be built from the ground up on the '628 specification and file history (the file history is public at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7966628](/patent/US7966628)/en and via USPTO PatentCenter for App. No. 11/761,030).
• Confirm the maintenance-fee / expiration status first. The ODP-derived status is "Expired - Fee Related." If the patent is in fact lapsed for non-payment and has not been revived, a damages claim for post-lapse infringement (potentially the entire asserted period) may face a standing/enforceability obstacle that dwarfs any IPR strategy. Verify the maintenance-fee events and any petition to revive in USPTO PatentCenter before spending money on invalidity contentions.
• No PTAB milestones to track. There is no institution-decision deadline, no statutory one-year trial clock, and no FWD due date, because no trial was instituted. If you nonetheless file a first IPR, note the current institution framework: since October 2025, institution decisions in IPR/PGR are made by the Director rather than the merits panel (see the Director's October 16, 2025 memorandum, discussed at https://www.willkie.com/publications/2025/10/ptab-announces-new-institution-policy), and the USPTO has proposed rules that would bar IPRs against patents that have already survived a validity challenge.
• Caveat on completeness. The absence of PTAB activity is based on the structured ODP block (canonical) plus web search. A very recently filed petition could exist but not yet be indexed; if you have a live docket, cross-check the patent number directly on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) before relying on the "no proceedings" conclusion.

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Note on sourcing: I did not locate any USPTO PTAB Final Written Decision or Federal Circuit opinion involving this patent, so no claim-level disposition, judge panel, or appeal docket is reported — none exists to report. All statements above are limited to what the structured ODP data and searches support; anything beyond that would be speculation and I have not included it.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,966,628, focusing on the USPTO Assignment Center records, reel/frame data, and correspondents of record.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame data and correspondents of record.

Let me search for the specific reel/frame numbers and correspondent details.

Assignment & Ownership Chain — U.S. Patent No. 7,966,628

Patent: Disk transfer mechanism and disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus
App. No.: 11/761,030 · Filed: 2007-06-11 · Granted: 2011-06-21 · Priority: JP 2006-174646 (2006-06-23)
Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (secondary mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html)

Data-availability disclaimer (read first). The Assignment Center / Assignment Search portals are JavaScript-driven search applications that my tooling could not query directly. Every numeric-string search I ran for "7966628" returned the same false positive flagged in the earlier litigation section — the 1967 U.S. Army TM 9-2320-246-34 part number "7966628" (first-and-reverse gear-shift shaft) — plus unrelated patent matters. I therefore could not retrieve reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the correspondent of record for either recorded assignment. What I can state with confidence is the existence, direction, and recording dates of the two conveyances, because Google Patents' legal-events feed documents them (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966628/en). The reel/frame and correspondent fields below are genuine gaps, not absences of an assignment. Flagging this explicitly rather than filling them with guesses.

Contradiction flagged against the prior summary. The previously generated "Patent summary" section lists the Original Assignee as "Sony Corp." The recorded assignment chain, however, begins with the inventors assigning to Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. on 2007-07-31 — i.e., there is an intermediate corporate entity between the inventors and Sony Corporation that the earlier summary omitted. Reconciling: Sony Corporation was the applicant/original-assignee of record on the issued face, but the inventors' actual employment assignment ran to Sony NEC Optiarc, which then conveyed to Sony Corp. This is the single most important correction to the ownership picture.

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Inventors

Pattern notes.

• All three inventors assigned to the same intermediate entity (Sony NEC Optiarc), not directly to the patent's named original assignee (Sony Corp). That is consistent with the inventors being Optiarc employees (Optiarc was established 2006-04-03 as the Sony/NEC optical-drive joint venture), while the application was filed under Sony Corporation's name. This is a normal large-corporate-JV arrangement, not a distortion pattern.
• No unusual-departure pattern is discernible. I found no evidence that any of the three inventors left Optiarc/Sony within 12 months of the 2006-06-23 priority filing, and no evidence of inventor-to-startup migration. "Insufficient data" is the honest call here — departures of Japanese mechanical engineers from an ODD JV are not public-record events I could verify, and the 2007-07-31 confirmatory assignment is the ordinary corporate practice for a JV-established team.
• Inventor residence/jurisdiction is best taken from the issued face (Japan), which I did not independently re-verify.

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Original assignee

Sony Corporation (per the issued patent's assignee field), with Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. appearing as the first recorded assignee in the chain.

• Primary line of business: Sony Corporation — diversified consumer electronics and components, including optical disk drives (ODDs) and the personal computers (VAIO) that consume them. The 12.7 mm-slim slot-in ODD described in the specification is squarely a Sony/Sony-NEC-Optiarc product category.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in substance. Sony NEC Optiarc was, per the Irish Competition Authority's merger determination (M/08/033, 19 Nov 2008), "active in the development, design, manufacturing (by subcontracting to third parties), marketing and sale of ODDs, including ODDs using the blue laser technology," and its 2007 Irish turnover "related exclusively to sales of ODD products" — i.e., a genuine operating company selling drives in the claimed slot-in/slim form factor. Source: http://beta.bailii.org/ie/cases/IECompA/2008/m08033(image1).pdf
• Current status: Operating. Sony is not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. Sony NEC Optiarc was originally a 55/45 Sony/NEC JV (cleared by the European Commission 2006-03-31; JV effective 2006-04-03); Sony acquired NEC's remaining 45% in the transaction noticed to the Irish authority on 2008-10-29 (determination dated 2008-11-19), taking Optiarc to 100% Sony ownership. Optiarc was subsequently folded into Sony's optical-drive business (later "Sony Optiarc"). No insolvency event is associated with this chain.

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Assignment timeline

Both entries below are recorded reassignments documented in Google Patents' legal-events feed. Google Patents supplies recording dates only; execution dates and reel/frame numbers were not retrievable from my searches.

2007-07-31 (recorded) / execution date not captured — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents labels it "reassignment")
• Assignor: Omori, Kiyoshi; Takahashi, Katsunori; Tsutsumi, Hideaki (the three named inventors)
• Assignee: Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.
• Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center copy required). I expressly decline to name a Sony-era correspondent without the recorded document — naming one would be fabrication.
• Context: Confirmatory employment assignment — the inventors' rights conveyed to their JV employer, Sony NEC Optiarc. Ordinary corporate practice for a JV-built engineering team; not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

2008-01-03 (recorded) / execution date not captured — Reel not retrieved / Frame not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents labels it "reassignment")
• Assignor: Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.
• Assignee: Sony Corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center copy required).
• Context: Internal corporate reorg / intra-group transfer — Optiarc conveys the asset up to parent Sony. Timing (Jan 2008) precedes the completion of Sony's buy-out of NEC's stake (2008–2009), so this reads as a group-structure ownership consolidation, not a third-party disposition.

No further assignments are recorded after 2008-01-03. That is itself the key finding: the patent has never left the Sony corporate family. There is no post-issuance transfer, no NPE, and no defensive-aggregator acquisition.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7966628
    2006 : Japanese priority application filed
    2007 : US application filed Jun 11
         : Inventors assign to Sony NEC Optiarc
    2008 : Optiarc conveys to Sony Corporation
    2011 : Patent granted Jun 21
    2030 : Adjusted expiration date

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Net positional read. The patent shows zero NPE signals. It is a flagship-assignee, single-family, intra-corporate chain that ends where it started — with the original operating company. The most probative ancillary fact is the "Expired – Fee Related" legal status (adjusted expiration 2030-04-17, per Google Patents), which — if the lapse has not been cured by a petition to revive — would make the patent unenforceable for the affected period and is consistent with an asset Sony chose not to maintain. (Note the internal tension already flagged in the PTAB section: a 2030 adjusted-expiration date is not obviously consistent with a fee lapse; verify the maintenance-fee events and any revival petition in Patent Center before relying on expiry.)

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — with an explicit taxonomy caveat.

Justification: the reconstructed chain is inventors → Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. (recorded 2007-07-31) → Sony Corporation (recorded 2008-01-03), and it stops there. There is no third-party, NPE, shell-entity, or aggregator transfer at any point, and the current assignee is the original operating company, which manufactures the claimed slot-in/slim ODD product class (Irish Competition Authority M/08/033). Under this taxonomy the operating-company bucket ("Operating-company assertion") requires active suit against competitors, which is not evidenced, so I do not select it; the "non-asserting" bucket matches the reality (no assertion; patent reported expired for fee non-payment) even though the chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator. Read the verdict as: not an NPE / not asserted; closest available label is non-asserting.

Two things a human must close before this is filing-grade:

1. Pull the two reel/frame records and the correspondent of record from Assignment Center for both conveyances (search by patent 7,966,628 or App. 11/761,030). This is the one hard gap.
2. Confirm maintenance-fee lapse and any petition to revive in USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier (App. 11/761,030) — the fee-lapse status is central to whether this patent can be enforced at all.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO Assignment Search (mirror): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966628/en
• Irish Competition Authority determination M/08/033 (Sony / Sony NEC Optiarc): http://beta.bailii.org/ie/cases/IECompA/2008/m08033(image1).pdf

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 7,966,628 from authoritative sources.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,966,628 B2

Patent analyzed: US 7,966,628 B2 — Disk transfer mechanism and disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus
App. 11/761,030 · filed 2007-06-11 · priority JP 2006-174646 (2006-06-23) · granted 2011-06-21 · Sony / Sony NEC Optiarc

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1. Sourcing limitation you need to know up front (read this first)

I was asked to walk the patent citation list for 7,966,628. I must be candid about a real limitation rather than paper over it:

• The authoritative full text I was given (the Google Patents fetch at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966628/en) did not include the front-page "References Cited" tables — i.e., the U.S. Patent Documents, Foreign Patent Documents, and Other Publications lists — nor the examiner's citation categories (X/Y/A), nor the Cited By list. In the fetched rendering those regions appear as blank/image artifacts.
• My targeted web searches for the citation list (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, PTAB/EPO full-text) returned the specification text and claims, but not the (56) references table for this specific patent. Every apparent "hit" for the bare string 7966628 was a false positive — most persistently a 1967 U.S. Army technical manual TM 9-2320-246-34, where 7966628 is a part number for a "first and reverse gear shift shaft"/"shaft (first and reverse)." That is an equipment stock number, not this patent, and I am excluding it.

Consequence: I can give you a verified § 102 analysis for the prior art that the patent's own specification explicitly identifies by document number, but I cannot produce a complete, examiner-accurate enumeration of the (56) front-page citations without the missing table. I will not invent citation numbers, dates, or examiner categories to fill that gap.

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2. Prior art cited within the specification itself (verified from the document)

The only prior-art document identified by number anywhere in the authoritative text supplied is:

Reference A — JP-A-2005-259324 ("Patent Document 1")

Brief description (as characterized by the '628 specification, ¶ describing the background): A slot-in disk drive apparatus provided with a contact section at the tip end portion and a plurality of rotation arms whose base end portions are rotatably supported. The contact section abuts the outer region of a disk inserted through the disk insertion/removal port in the front panel, and the apparatus performs the loading (retract) and ejecting operations by rotating those rotation arms in a plane parallel to the disk.

Which claims it potentially anticipates under § 102:

• Independent claim 1 (disk transfer mechanism — transfer arm + "pickup section"/"lift section" with abutting piece and support piece): JP-A-2005-259324 appears to disclose the "transfer arm … rotatably supported by an apparatus body … rotated in an insertion direction by being pressed by the disk … rotated in an ejection direction" element — the arm/contact-section loading concept. However, on the specification's own characterization, the reference is silent as to the "lift section/pickup section" (the rotation axis orthogonal to the disk surface carrying both an abutting piece and a support piece that is tilted beneath the transfer area on standby and rises to support the disk's lower surface). Because the independent claims each require that lift/support structure, this reference is best characterized as a § 103 obviousness reference for the arm subcombination, not a clean § 102 anticipation of claim 1.
• Claims 2–6 (dependents: biasing member/leaf spring; support wall; grip piece; contact piece riding the main-chassis edge): same conclusion — the reference supplies the arm/pressing context, not the lift-section limitations.
• Independent claims 7 (apparatus), the support-surface/slide-in-contact claim family, the chassis + biasing-member family, and the arm-tip support-member family: same analysis — the reference does not appear to disclose a support member positioned beneath the disk transfer area on insertion standby, which is the point of novelty common to all five independent-claim families. So no independent claim is squarely anticipated by this reference alone, on the record I can verify.

Net § 102 posture for Reference A: Potentially anticipatory only for a claim drawn purely to the rotatable, disk-pressed transfer arm — and the '628 patent contains no such standalone claim. As to the issued claims, JP-A-2005-259324 is realistically a § 103 reference (arm-loading art) that must be combined with art showing a tilt-up disk support/catcher, not a § 102 reference.

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3. Things I identified that are NOT prior art to '628 (flagged so they aren't misused)

These surfaced in my searches and are in the same technical space, but their dates put them after the 2006-06-23 priority date, so they cannot be § 102/§ 103 art against '628:

I list these only to preempt a common error: their subject matter overlaps, but they cannot be cited against '628.

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4. Family / related-art context (for completeness, not § 102)

• JP 2006-174646 — the Japanese priority application (filed 2006-06-23) claimed by '628. Its Japanese kokai counterpart would itself be a publication, but it is the priority document, not separate prior art.
• I did not locate a separate U.S. continuation/divisional of the '628 family that issued as an independent patent; the only U.S. publication I can tie to this application is US 2007/0300246 A1.

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5. Bottom line

1. Verified prior art from the patent's own text: JP-A-2005-259324 (cited as "Patent Document 1") — a slot-in drive with disk-pressed rotating loading arms. It reads on the transfer-arm element of every independent claim but not on the lift/pickup section (tilted support piece rising to catch a diagonally inserted disk) that distinguishes the claims. Practical citation: § 103, not clean § 102.
2. I could not retrieve the (56) front-page reference tables for 7,966,628, so I cannot give you the complete examiner-cited reference list, and I will not fabricate it. There may be U.S. patent references cited on the front page that I simply could not see.
3. No § 102 anticipation of any issued claim is supportable from the evidence I actually retrieved.

To close the gap (recommended, specific)

• Open the "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" tab and the "Cited By" tab directly on Google Patents for US7966628B2 — I was unable to render those tables from the fetch/search path available to me.
• Pull the file wrapper / (56) list from USPTO PatentCenter for App. 11/761,030 (public).
• Retrieve JP-A-2005-259324 in full from J-PlatPat / JPO AIPN to confirm its publication date and whether it discloses any disk-underside support feature (this determines § 102 vs § 103 for the independent claims).

I am deliberately not listing additional "cited" references with invented numbers or dates; anything beyond JP-A-2005-259324 would be speculation on the record I was able to obtain.

I'll gather the prior-art citations for this patent before building the § 103 analysis, since the "Prior Art section" content wasn't included verbatim in what I received.

Let me pull the citation lists directly from the patent pages.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,966,628 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026 · Analyst: Technical patent analyst
Patent: US 7,966,628 B2 — "Disk transfer mechanism and disk recording and/or reproduction apparatus"
App. No. 11/761,030 · Filed 2007‑06‑11 · Priority JP 2006‑174646 (2006‑06‑23) · Granted 2011‑06‑21
Assignee (current): Sony Corp. (originally Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.) · Status: Expired – Fee Related

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0. A required caveat about the "Prior Art section"

You instructed me to use the results of the Prior Art section of this page. I want to be explicit about a limitation, because it materially affects how firm the following analysis can be.

What I could ground: The authoritative grant text you supplied contains exactly one express prior-art document citation — Patent Document 1: JP‑A‑2005‑259324 — plus a body of admitted prior art in the Background ("Definitions") section (the tray-loading type, and the slot-in type "provided with a pair of opposing guide rollers"). I also retrieved the pre-grant publication's claim text via Justia.

What I could not ground: I was unable to retrieve the dedicated patent-citation / "References Cited" table for US 7,966,628 (the examiner-cited U.S. and foreign references, the applicant IDS, and the "Cited By" list). My searches returned unrelated international search reports rather than the '628 citation table. I will therefore not name U.S. patent numbers as secondary references, because doing so here would be fabrication. Instead I identify the elements that must be supplied, name the one reference I can verify, and mark the slots where a secondary reference is required as [VERIFY IN FILE WRAPPER].

(Note: my previous sections flagged that third-party sites render the key element as "pickup section" rather than "lift section." That is now confirmed to have a real source — the pre-grant publication's claim 1, as rendered at https://patents.justia.com/patent/20070300246#10, literally recites "a pickup section that is provided with a rotation axis…". The grant text you supplied recites "lift section." I am flagging this as a substantive claim-wording change during prosecution, discussed in § VII below. I am not auto-correcting either term.)

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I. Governing framework

• Pre-AIA § 103(a) applies. The application was filed June 11, 2007 — before the March 16, 2013 AIA effective date. The controlling test is therefore pre‑AIA § 103(a) as construed in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).
• Graham factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) objective indicia of non-obviousness.
• KSR: the TSM test is "not the only reason" for combining; a combination may be obvious where the improvement is the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," where there is "a design need or market pressure," or where the field presents "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions."
• Prior-art date line. Because JP‑A‑2005‑259324 published in 2005, it is unambiguously § 102(b) art. The Background admissions are likewise prior art. This is a crowded, mature, mechanical art — which cuts toward obviousness under KSR.
• Procedural posture (building on my earlier sections): the patent carries no PTAB record and no identified litigation; it is Expired – Fee Related. There is accordingly no IPR estoppel and no adjudicated claim construction; the claims stand as issued and are untested. All independent claims are treated below as live and un-narrowed.

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II. Level of ordinary skill in the art ("POSITA")

A POSITA here is a mechanical or electromechanical design engineer with a B.S. in mechanical engineering (or equivalent) and approximately 2–4 years of experience designing disk-drive loading/transfer mechanisms, or a comparable combination of training and experience. Critically, such a person would be familiar with:

• slot-in and tray-type optical-disk loaders for CD/DVD/BD;
• the constraint that slim drives (~12.7 mm / 9.5 mm form factors, expressly recited in the specification) leave minimal vertical clearance in the disk-transfer plane;
• conventional cam-and-follower motion conversion and conventional spring-biased pivoting members;
• the standard problem of a disk being inserted at a skew/angle and fouling internal components (turntable, optical pickup).

This is a low-to-moderate skill level in a highly incremental art — the frame most favorable to an obviousness finding.

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III. Scope and content of the prior art

A. Admitted prior art inside the '628 specification

The Background section is an admission of the state of the art:

This is the single most important point for the § 103 case: the '628 patent concedes (a) that a rotation-arm transfer mechanism abutting the disk's outer edge and rotating in the disk plane is known, and (b) that the problem to be solved (angled insertion → collision with internal components in a slim drive) is known. What remains is whether adding a known tilt-up support to that known arm is obvious.

B. Analogous art (same field of endeavor and/or same problem)

The following are classic sources a POSITA would consult, all dealing with transferring a disk-shaped medium through a low-clearance plane while preventing edge-drop/scratching:

1. Disk-changer / cartridge-loader lifters — pivoting "lift fingers" or ramps that raise a disk's leading edge as it advances.
2. Slot-in drives using rollers/ramps with spring-biased followers — where a follower rides a chassis edge to raise a guide as the arm swings rearward.
3. Banknote / card feeders and magnetic-disk loaders — same "trip the support up when the medium's leading edge pushes a finger" kinematics.

These are analogous because they address the identical problem (supporting/centering a leading edge in a restricted clearance) and employ the identical mechanics (pivot + bias + cam-edge follower).

C. Slots requiring a verified secondary reference — [VERIFY IN FILE WRAPPER]

To make the § 103 case complete, a challenger needs at least one reference that discloses the tilt-below-then-rotate-up support piece. I could not verify the identity of the examiner-cited art. Candidate references should be pulled from:

• the IDS / "References Cited" table on the '628 face and the file wrapper for App. 11/761,030 (USPTO Patent Center);
• the JP‑A‑2005‑259324 full text and its family;
• the sibling application US 2008/0046900 A1 ("Disk drive device," Sony NEC Optiarc; inventors include Kiyoshi Omori and Katsunori Takahashi — the same inventors as the '628 patent). ⚠️ This publication is dated Feb. 21, 2008, i.e., after the '628 filing date, so it is NOT prior art on its own face. It is useful only as (i) evidence of what the art was doing, and (ii) a lead to its Japanese priority application, which should be date-checked.

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IV. The claims to be analyzed

From the pre-grant publication (Justia, https://patents.justia.com/patent/20070300246#10), claim 1 recites, in substance:

a transfer arm rotatably supported by an apparatus body, rotated in an insertion direction when pressed by the inserted disk and in an ejection direction to eject it; and
a [pickup / lift] section having a rotation axis at the arm's tip rotatable substantially orthogonal to the disk's main surface, from which protrude (i) an abutting piece to abut the disk's front/leading edge and (ii) a support piece to support the disk's lower surface,
wherein the support piece is tilted below the transfer area before insertion and, when the abutting piece is abutted by the disk, the rotation axis rotates and the support piece supports the lower surface.

Dep. claims: 2 biasing member (biases the axis to tilt the support piece down); 3 the biasing member is a leaf spring and the axis has a flat surface contacting the spring end; 4 a support wall on the arm backing the abutting piece; 5 a grip piece protruding from the arm to grip the disk with the support piece; 6 a contact piece facing the arm's lower surface, rotating the axis by contacting an edge section of a main chassis.

The grant text you supplied also frames four further independent-claim families (support surface + rear-side slide-in-contact section; apparatus context with main chassis + biasing member; and a broad "support member at the arm tip on standby beneath the transfer area"). These are the same invention re-cast and are analyzed jointly below.

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V. Element-by-element obviousness (representative claim 1)

Bottom line for claim 1: JP‑A‑2005‑259324 supplies the transfer arm/abutting-contact element; ordinary mechanical knowledge supplies the tilt-up support coupled to the push. The claimed combination is the predictable use of known elements to solve an admitted, known problem in a space with few solutions — the paradigm KSR case.

Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (biasing member biasing the axis to tilt the support down). Spring-biasing a pivoting member to a rest position is one of the most elementary expedients in mechanical design; the specification's own "press member 92 … leaf spring member" is described as conventional. Obvious.
• Claim 3 (leaf spring; flat surface on the axis contacting the spring end). A leaf spring bearing on a flattened shaft (a D-shaped flat) is a textbook anti-rotation/positive-detent construct. Obvious over claim 2 + routine skill.
• Claim 4 (support wall backing the abutting piece). Adding a reaction wall to back a loaded cantilever is routine reinforcement to resist the disk's push. Obvious.
• Claim 5 (grip piece on the arm to grip the disk with the support piece). The admitted guide-roller art expressly sandwiches the disk between two members; gripping the disk during transfer is a known function. Obvious.
• Claim 6 (contact piece on the lower side of the arm that contacts the chassis edge to rotate the axis). This is a cam follower riding a chassis edge — ubiquitous, and structurally identical to the technique in the Sony-lineage sibling publication US 2008/0046900 A1 ("a guide cam having a guide edge on which a guide projection … slides"). Obvious, subject to the usual caution (§ III.C) that the sibling is not itself prior art.

The four alternative claim families

• "Support surface + rear-side slide-in-contact section" family: the slide-in-contact section converting arm swing into support rotation is a cam-follower, and the "support surface substantially orthogonal to the disk surface, toward the tip" is a straightforward orientation of the support piece of claim 1. Obvious for the same reasons.
• "Main chassis + biasing member" family: adding a main chassis whose upper surface is the transfer area is inherent in any slot-in drive, and the specification admits the main chassis is a conventional partition. The biasing member is the claim‑2 spring. Obvious.
• "Support member at the arm tip on standby beneath the transfer area" family (broadest): this is the genus of which the above are species; it is squarely met by the JP‑A‑2005‑259324 arm + conventional tilt-up support. Obvious — and this family is the most vulnerable to a § 103 attack precisely because it recites function (on standby "positioned beneath," and "supports the lower surface") with minimal structure.

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VI. Motivation to combine — the KSR rationales, stated expressly

A POSITA would have combined the known rotation-arm transfer mechanism (JP‑A‑2005‑259324 / admitted art) with a known tilt-up support member for at least these reasons, each independently sufficient under KSR:

1. Design need / market pressure. The '628 specification itself recites the pressure to reach 12.7 mm and 9.5 mm thicknesses; a thinner drive means less clearance and a greater risk of angled-insertion collisions. That is a stated design need driving the solution. (Specification, "Definitions": "the height of the transfer area … is not enough … little margin for a disk if it is diagonally inserted.")
2. Known problem, known remedy. The collision-at-angled-insertion problem is exactly the problem that ramps/lift fingers/lifters solve in analogous disk and sheet handlers. Applying a known remedy to a known problem is obvious.
3. Predictable use of known elements. Push → pivot → lift is a mechanical conversion a POSITA routinely implements; no new principle of operation is required.
4. Finite solutions in a narrow design space. Given a slim slot-in drive, the available solutions to "catch a skewed disk" are essentially: (a) a fixed ramp, (b) a spring-loaded ramp, (c) a pivoting finger tripped by the disk, or (d) a roller guide. "'[A] finite number of identified, predictable solutions'" supports obviousness under KSR.
5. Substitution / improvement of the same device, in the same way. Mounting the support on the already-present arm tip harnesses the arm's existing swing — a mere substitution of one known element (contact section) for another (abutting piece + support piece) that performs the same edge-contact function.
6. Explicit teaching/suggestion in the reference base [VERIFY]. JP‑A‑2005‑259324 itself is directed to snug, damage-free disk handling in a slot-in drive; its express aim supplies a reason to add the lift feature. The exact passage should be quoted from the JP text once obtained.

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VII. Objective indicia and construction issues

Objective indicia (secondary considerations): I found none on the current record.

• No evidence of unexpected results — the claimed mechanism performs exactly the expected function (catching a tilted disk).
• No evidence of commercial success attributable to the claimed feature (Sony's optical-drive sales reflect brand/OEM relationships, not the lift mechanism).
• Expired – Fee Related status (from my earlier section) is, if anything, evidence the patentee did not treat the claimed subject matter as a valuable, asserted asset — the opposite of a licensing-driven secondary consideration.
• No nexus-provable praise, copying, or industry-acclaim surfaced.

Claim-construction flag (important): the pre-grant publication's claim 1 recites "pickup section," whereas the grant text recites "lift section" (and earlier third-party renderings used "pickup"). This is a claim-wording amendment during prosecution. For § 103 purposes:

• Under the broadest reasonable interpretation, "lift section" and "pickup section" both cover a member that lifts/picks up the disk edge; the change does not appear to add structure.
• But if the patentee argued during prosecution that "pickup" was not supported and "lift" meant something narrower, that argument may narrow the term and should be mined from the file wrapper for both an estoppel and an obviousness angle.

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VIII. Candid weaknesses of the obviousness case (why this is not a slam dunk)

1. The single verified reference does not disclose the tilt-up support. JP‑A‑2005‑259324 discloses the transfer arm and edge contact, not the support piece's standby-below-then-rotate-up behavior. A § 103 rejection must be completed by a secondary reference or by a solid "background knowledge" showing. A negative search result for that secondary reference is not proof it is absent; it means the file-wrapper citation list must be obtained.
2. The specific geometry is arguable. The rotation axis orthogonal to the disk surface, the abutting piece upright on that axis, and the support piece thinned and sloped toward the tip are implementation details a patentee will argue were not suggested in combination.
3. No PTAB narrowing — but also no dueling constructions. Because there is no IPR, there is no FWD to cite and no canceled claim; a defendant must build invalidity from scratch. Conversely, because the claims are untested, there is also no adverse claim construction yet.
4. Prior-art date subtlety. The sibling US 2008/0046900 A1 (Feb. 21, 2008) is post-filing relative to the '628 application and cannot be used as prior art per se. Only its Japanese priority counterpart, if it pre-dates the relevant critical date, could be used. [VERIFY]

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IX. Conclusion

On the record I can verify, claims 1–6 and all five independent-claim families of US 7,966,628 are strong § 103 targets, though the case is not closed on the present evidence:

• Claim 1 (and the broadest "support member" family) is the most vulnerable: JP‑A‑2005‑259324 supplies the transfer arm and edge-contact element, the specification admits the slimming/angled-insertion problem, and the tilt-up support coupled to the disk's push is a predictable use of known mechanical elements under KSR.
• Claims 2–6 are each individually obvious as conventional springs, flat-shaft detents, reinforcement walls, disk-gripping, and cam-follower expedients.
• The gap is exclusively the tilt-below / rotate-up support piece; the analysis cannot be finalized until the '628 file-wrapper citation list is retrieved to identify the examiner's secondary reference (or to confirm none exists and rely on analogous art).

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the "References Cited" table and IDS for App. 11/761,030 from USPTO Patent Center and Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966628/en) — this fills the single missing element in § III.C.
2. Obtain the full text of JP‑A‑2005‑259324 and quote its disk-handling/anti-damage passages as the suggestion to combine.
3. Date-check the Japanese priority application behind US 2008/0046900 A1 (Sony NEC Optiarc; Omori/Takahashi) for use as analogous art.
4. Mine the prosecution history for the "pickup section" → "lift section" amendment and any narrowing argument (estoppel/claim-construction leverage).
5. Confirm the maintenance-fee lapse (already a live issue from my earlier sections) before investing in invalidity contentions — a lapsed, unrevived patent may present a standing/enforceability obstacle that moots the § 103 fight.

Nothing above asserts a legal conclusion of invalidity; it is a technical analysis of the obviousness issue under the Graham/KSR framework, based on the prior art I could verify and flagged explicitly where verification is required.