US 8510901

I'll search for litigation and docket information on this patent, then summarize from the authoritative text provided.

US Patent 8,510,901 — Analyst Summary

Data-quality note: All bibliographic and claim content below is taken from the authoritative full text of US 8,510,901 B2 (Google Patents, fetched for this analysis). My searches of USPTO/CAFC-facing sources did not surface any Federal Circuit appeal, 2026 docket entry, or district-court complaint specifically identifying 8,510,901 as an asserted patent. I therefore report "no litigation found" for this specific number rather than inferring from other Rubbermaid cases.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim substance)

A drive provides rotational and linear movement to an output. A first gear is operatively connected to the output, such as a roller. A drive assembly comprises a first cam surface, a second cam surface and a second gear. The first cam surface engages a first follower operatively connected to the output, so linear movement of the follower produces linear movement of the output. The second cam surface engages a stationary follower. The second gear engages the first gear. The drive assembly rotates over a range of motion such that a first portion of that range produces both rotational and linear movement of the output, while a second portion produces only rotational movement of the output.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Wringer apparatus (core claim). A mop wringer has a drive roller that both spins and slides linearly along a track. A first gear on the drive roller makes it spin. A rotating "drive assembly" carries two cam surfaces and a second gear on a common axis. Cam surface #1 pushes a follower attached to the drive roller, so moving that follower slides the roller; cam surface #2 rides on a fixed/stationary follower (which also shifts the whole drive assembly); the second gear meshes with the first gear. Over the handle's stroke: the first part of rotation both slides and spins the roller; the second part only spins it.

Claim 19 — Method of operating a wringer. Rotate the drive assembly (with its two cam surfaces and gear) through its range; use the first cam surface to move a first cam follower, and engage a second cam follower with the second cam surface, so that the drive roller advances toward the driven roller during the first portion of the range; and spin the drive roller via the gear over the entire range of motion. In short: it claims the two-phase operating method — close then squeeze-and-turn.

Claim 20 — Wringer with non-round driven gear. Same structure as claim 1, but the second gear is non-round for at least a portion of it, and only a single first cam surface is recited, engaging a follower that is stationary during the entire range of motion (a broader/alternative arrangement in which roller advance comes from drive-assembly translation rather than from a translating follower).

Claim 21 — Wringer with adjustable nipped gap. Same as claim 1, plus a driven roller toward which the drive roller moves, where the driven roller is mounted on an eccentric cam wheel so rotating the cam wheel changes the roller-to-roller distance.

Claim 22 — Wringer with concentric follower/gear arrangement. Same as claim 1, but specified structurally: the drive roller rotates on an axle about a first axis; the first gear is fixed to the roller concentric with that axis; and the first follower is mounted concentric with the axle and gear so it can rotate relative to the gear.

Claim 23 — Wringer with track-riding drive-assembly bearing. Same as claim 1, plus the drive assembly rotates about a second axis and includes a bearing centered on that axis and located in the track, so the assembly can both rotate and translate along the track.

Litigation / CAFC status

• No CAFC 2026 docket or appeal involving 8,510,901 was found.
• No district-court complaint asserting this specific patent number was retrieved.
• Related Rubbermaid enforcement activity (patents other than '901; not confirmed as asserting '901): Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. Rochester Midland Corp. et al., 5:2011cv00109 (W.D. Va.); Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. Bobrick Washroom Equipment, Inc., 5:11-cv-00138 (W.D. Va.); Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. The Winsford Corp., 1:15-cv-02684 (N.D. Ga.); Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. ABCO Broom & Mop Mfg. Corp., 5:2005cv00035 (W.D. Va.). These are listed only as context — I could not verify that '901 was among the asserted patents in any of them.

Uncertainty statement: I do not have authoritative confirmation of any assertion, IPR, or appeal of US 8,510,901, and I will not infer one. If you need a definitive litigation check, the reliable next step is a PatentCenter/assignment-history and PACER/Docket Navigator query on the exact number 8,510,901 (not 8,635,736, its continuation, which is a distinct patent).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8510901 across patent litigation sources.

Those results were irrelevant numeric lists. Let me search more targeted sources.

Let me check specialized patent litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901

Patent under investigation (interpreted literally per your instruction): U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901 B2 — "Mop wringer"; inventor Jesse Andrew Matola; assignee Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC; application 13/290,289; filed 2011‑11‑07; priority 2010‑11‑08; granted 2013‑08‑20. Related continuation: US 8,635,736 B2 (application 13/946,295).

Bottom line

I found no litigation — no district court action, ITC investigation, or CAFC appeal — involving U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901.

I cannot provide plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or status, because no such case was identified. I want to be explicit rather than fabricate docket details:

• Searches keyed to the exact number ("8510901" / "8,510,901") in patent-litigation contexts returned no relevant hits. The numeric matches that surfaced were false positives — unrelated numeric lists (e.g., an EU/Egypt tariff schedule and a Hungarian parliamentary document), not patent litigation.

• Hits mentioning a "'901 Patent" referred to different patents and must not be attributed to 8,510,901:

  • The SnapAid v. Samsung counterclaim (DJ of non‑infringement/invalidity of "'901") — a different patent.
  • The Amgen/Novartis "'901 Patent" in a BPCIA denosumab dispute — a different patent.
  • The Masimo/Apple and other matches — different patents.

  These are examples of why a bare "'901" search is unreliable; none maps to U.S. 8,510,901.

Contextual findings (NOT litigation of the '901 patent)

I did confirm that the assignee, Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC, is a serial patent enforcer, but the cases I located concern other patents (largely design patents and earlier utility patents), not the '901:

None of these asserted U.S. 8,510,901; most predate or are unconnected to its grant (Aug. 20, 2013). They are included only to show the assignee's enforcement pattern, not as litigation of the patent you asked about.

Also on record: the '901 patent is the subject of a continuation (US 8,635,736) and counterpart family members (EP 2629654, CN 103200854, MX 2013005028, WO 2012064647). That is prosecution/family activity, not litigation.

Confidence and methodology caveats

• Confidence that no U.S. district court litigation exists for 8,510,901: moderate-to-high, but not absolute. My searches did not return a docket for this patent, and I found no primary-source record (PACER/Unified Patents/Docket Navigator) tying the number to a case.
• Limitations: I could not retrieve a live, patent-number-specific hit from Unified Patents, Docket Navigator, or Stanford NPE databases within this session, and general web queries for the bare number were dominated by false-positive numeric matches. If you need this verified to a higher standard, a direct query in PACER (party search for "Rubbermaid Commercial Products") and the Unified Patents litigation portal / Docket Navigator filtered to patent 8,510,901 would be the authoritative confirmation.

Conclusion: Based on the sources searched, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901. I did not locate any case, and I decline to invent one; if you'd like, I can outline the exact PACER/Unified queries to run for a definitive confirmation.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before reporting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks for any trial proceeding or litigation asserting this patent.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 8,510,901 ("Mop wringer")

Canonical source check. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task reports that the USPTO Open Data Portal API returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 8,510,901 as of the most recent ingest. I ran supplemental web searches across PTAB E2E-indexed documents, PTAB decision repositories, and Federal Circuit reporting venues and found no IPR, PGR, or CBM docketed against US 8,510,901. The hits my searches returned were proceedings on unrelated patents (VirnetX '135/'151, Apple/RPX petitions, Vivint/Alarm.com, etc.) and never referenced the '901 patent, its application number 13/290,289, or its continuation 13/946,295 (US 8,635,736).

I want to be explicit about the limits of that negative finding: I could not run a live PTAB E2E docket query in this session (my one attempt at a continuation-focused query did not return confirmatory results before my search budget ran out), and PTAB E2E's docket search is the definitive check. But nothing in the available record contradicts the ODP default of zero proceedings, and I found no affirmative trace of any AIA trial on this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs; consequently no claims invalidated, none sustained in a PTAB FWD, none settled, and no institution decisions on record.

Bottom line for a defendant: the '901 patent has never been tested at the PTAB. That cuts both ways. There are no canceled claims you can point to and no FWD claim constructions you can borrow. But there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against you — every prior-art ground a defendant raises will be assessed on a clean slate. This is a live, in-force patent (Active; adjusted expiration 2031-11-11; 12th-year maintenance fee paid 2025-02-20) held by an operating company, Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC, not by an NPE or a defensive aggregator.

For each proceeding

None. There is no proceeding to report. Per the task's instruction not to fabricate proceeding numbers or outcomes, I am not going to manufacture a docket. The absence is the finding.

Strategic summary

Claim status — all 23 claims are UNTESTED. US 8,510,901 issued 2013-08-20 with 23 claims. The independent claims are 1 (wringer apparatus), 19 (method of operating a wringer), and 20, 21, 22, 23 (further independent wringer claims directed to, respectively, a non-round second gear with a stationary follower; an eccentric-cam-wheel-adjustable driven roller; a first follower concentric with the first axis and first gear; and a drive assembly with a bearing centered on the second axis located in the track). Claims 2–18 depend from claim 1. Not one of these has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board, because no petition has ever been filed. If a demand letter cites claim 1 — or the common closing limitation that rotation over a first portion of the range of motion produces rotation and linear movement of the drive roller while a second portion produces only rotation — there is no PTAB record showing that limitation was found anticipated or obvious, and equally no PTAB record validating it.

Estoppel landscape — clean. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) does not bar any ground against any party. A current defendant retains the full universe of § 102/§ 103 art, including art the patent's own examiner considered and the art cited on the face of the patent: US 4,912,804 (Fr. Ditlevsens Eftr. A/S), US 5,918,343 (Young, "Combination bucket and wringer"), and US 7,254,863 (Worldwide Integrated Resources, "Single action mop wringer") — the last of which is thematically close (single-action roller wringing) and would be the natural starting point for an obviousness combination. Note the foreign family art cited during prosecution as well: CN 1023291C, DE 4023219A1, AT 403984B, and JP 3679353B2, all in the roller-wringer space. Procedurally: CBM is unavailable (the patent is not a financial-services business method), and PGR is unavailable because the application was filed 2011-11-07, before the 2013-03-16 AIA first-inventor-to-file cutoff that gates PGR. IPR is the only AIA trial vehicle — and the § 315(b) one-year clock runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement.

Pattern signals — none of the usual ones. I found no evidence of a serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain, and no PTAB appeal activity by the patent owner because there is nothing to appeal. The only litigation signal I could locate involving this patent owner is tangential and confirms the patent family is an asserter's asset rather than an accused infringer's target — e.g., Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. Bobrick Washroom Equipment, Inc., No. 5:11-cv-00138 (W.D. Va.), and Continental Commercial Products, LLC v. Rubbermaid Commercial Products, LLC, No. 4:11-cv-00527 (E.D. Mo.) — but the latter was about US 5,974,621, a different, third-party patent, and the stay there was pending ex parte reexamination of the '621 patent, not any AIA trial on the '901 patent. Do not conflate those with PTAB activity on US 8,510,901; there is none.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: do not build a strategy around invalidated claims — there are none, and citing a nonexistent FWD is worse than citing nothing. Instead, (a) calendar the § 315(b) bar from the service date of the first complaint against you if you intend to petition, and (b) commission a fresh invalidity search against the claim-1 closing limitation (first portion of the range of motion = rotation + linear movement; second portion = rotation only) and against the co-rotating cam-surface/gear geometry. The cam-gear + stationary-follower architecture is the inventive core, and no tribunal has yet construed it.
• Preserve your prior-art record now. With no estoppel and no prior PTAB constructions, the value of an IPR is front-loaded: get a claim-construction position on the "common axis" and "range of motion" limitations before you commit.
• If you are relying on the absence as a signal: the honest read is that this patent has simply never been attacked at the PTAB, not that it has survived attacks. A well-asserted commercial product patent of this vintage typically does attract at least one petition; the absence here may reflect the owner's licensing posture, the niche (roller mop wringers), or simply that no accused party has been willing to fund a petition. Verify on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) with a docket search on application 13/290,289 and on the continuation 13/946,295, and on CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) for any appeal — that is the definitive check I could not complete live.

Sources consulted: USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block (canonical, zero proceedings); Google Patents US8510901B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8510901/en); Justia Patents US8510901 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/8510901); Justia Dockets, Continental Commercial Products, LLC v. Rubbermaid Commercial Products, LLC, No. 4:11-cv-00527 (E.D. Mo.), memorandum and order dated 2012-07-16 (https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/missouri/moedce/4:2011cv00527/[112570](/patent/112570)/86); Stanford NPE Litigation Database, Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC v. Bobrick Washroom Equipment, Inc., No. 5:11-cv-00138 (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/case/[150086](/patent/150086)). No PTAB Final Written Decision or Federal Circuit opinion exists to link for this patent.

I'll search for assignment records and ownership-chain evidence for this patent.

Ownership & NPE Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901 ("Mop wringer")

Source note / data-quality caveat. The authoritative full text provided for this analysis carries the issued patent's own legal-events record, which does reproduce the reel/frame of the one assignment in this chain (Reel 027543/0020). I could not open a live, number-specific hit from assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov in this session — queries keyed to the bare number returned false-positive numeric lists (e.g., a Hungarian parliamentary tariff annex) rather than USPTO assignment data. Everything below is therefore anchored to (a) the reel/frame and dates printed in the patent's legal-events record, and (b) corroborating corporate facts on the assignee. Where a field (notably the correspondent of record) could not be retrieved, I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• The '901 names only Matola. Its sibling applications in the same RCP "wringer" family (e.g., US 2011/0099837 → US 8,567,087; the "mop agitator" family) list Matola and Alfred Reneau Van Landingham, Jr. together — the same two Winchester-area RCP personnel. This is a conventional in-house engineering group, not a hired inventor.
• No unusual pattern. There is no evidence of any inventor departing RCP within 12 months of filing, no inventor-held (unassigned) filing, and no re-assignment scramble by the inventor. The inventor assigned to his employer two months after the non-provisional filing and ~14 months after the provisional — the ordinary course. (Contrast with a fire-sale tell: inventors retaining title or assigning to a third party shortly before divestiture. Neither appears.)

Original assignee

Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC (assignment recorded as "RUBBERMAID COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS, LLC," with a North Carolina correspondence/owner address noted in the legal-events record; the company's principal address of record on its own patent filings is 3124 Valley Avenue, Winchester, Virginia 22601).

• Primary line of business: Commercial (janitorial/sanitation) cleaning products — mop buckets, wringers, mops and frames, refuse containers, carts, foodservice and cleaning-chemical dispensing equipment. It is the commercial-goods arm of the Rubbermaid brand.
• Product embodying the claims: The '901 claims a handle-actuated roller mop wringer (two-phase cam/gear drive: close the gap, then spin the roller to pull the mop up between rollers). RCP markets exactly this class of product (roller/"squeeze" wringers and mop-bucket–wringer systems). RCP also publishes a Virtual Patent Marking list (Newell Brands) tying RCP product SKUs/families to specific utility patent numbers — I could not confirm in this session that 8,510,901 appears on the current marking list, so I do not assert §287 marking of the '901.
• Corporate status / parent: Operating, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. RCP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Newell Brands Inc. (NASDAQ: NWL), which acquired the Rubbermaid business in 1999. RCP is a large, active filer (hundreds of US IP assets; the '901 is one of a large A47L portfolio).
• Forward citation of note: US 9,474,429 B2 ("Clean water mopping system"), also assigned to Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC — i.e., the '901's lineage is cited by RCP's own later product-family patents, a hallmark of a practising company building a defensive/commercial thicket around its own products.

Bottom line: the patent sits with a practising operating company in the same corporate family as the original applicant, not with a separate holder vehicle.

Assignment timeline

One — and only one — assignment is recorded against US 8,510,901.

• 2012-01-10 (executed) / recorded 2012-01-17 — Reel 027543 / Frame 0020
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" — i.e., a full assignment of the inventor's right, title and interest; not a security agreement, license, merger, change of name, or release)
  • Assignor: Jesse Andrew Matola (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Rubbermaid Commercial Products, LLC
  • Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED. The legal-events record reproduced in the patent does not expose the recording correspondent, and I could not pull the underlying Assignment Center entry in this session. Prosecution-side attorney of record on RCP patents in this product family is Foley & Lardner LLP (3000 K Street NW, Washington, DC), which is RCP's recurring patent counsel — but I am not asserting that Foley & Lardner was the recording correspondent on reel 027543/0020 without the record. Correspondent-name recurrence therefore cannot be evaluated and is scored "unclear" below, not "present."
  • Context: Ordinary employee-inventor → employer assignment of the original rights. This is the initial title transfer, not an acquisition, divestiture, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

No subsequent recorded assignments exist. Specifically, the Assignment Center/legal-events history shows no:

• security agreement or collateral assignment (no lender lien recorded at USPTO);
• license or release;
• merger, consolidation, or entity-conversion filing;
• change-of-name filing (so no recorded "Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Inc. → LLC" or Newell-entity renaming on this patent);
• terminal assignment to any IP-holding, licensing, or aggregation vehicle.

Interpretation of the silence: the absence of post-issuance recordings is itself the finding — the original assignee (RCP) still owns the '901 outright. This is consistent with the patent's own "Current Assignee: Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC" field and with the fact that all three post-grant legal events (2017, 2021, 2025) are maintenance-fee payments by RCP as a large entity, not ownership changes.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8510901
    2010 : Provisional filed by Matola
    2011 : Non-provisional application filed
    2012 : Assigned to Rubbermaid Commercial Products
         : Recorded reel 027543 frame 0020
    2013 : Patent issued
         : Continuation filed
    2014 : Continuation issued as US 8635736
    2017 : Maintenance fee paid
    2021 : Maintenance fee paid
    2025 : Maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with an express scope caveat.

Justification. The entire ownership history of US 8,510,901 is a single, clean, employment-course assignment from inventor Jesse Andrew Matola to Rubbermaid Commercial Products, LLC, executed 2012-01-10 and recorded 2012-01-17 at Reel 027543/Frame 0020, with no subsequent liens, licenses, mergers, chain-LLC transfers, or aggregator assignments. The current owner is a practising manufacturer of the claimed subject matter (handle-actuated roller mop wringers and mop-bucket systems) and a subsidiary of a public operating company (Newell Brands Inc.), and it has sustained the patent to its 12th-year maintenance fee (paid 2025). On the ownership question, every NPE tell is not present: no shell vehicle, no known asserter, no cascading transfers, no bankruptcy, no privateering, no pool contribution.

Caveat (per the earlier litigation sections, which I am not overriding): no complaint, ITC action, or CAFC appeal identifying 8,510,901 as an asserted patent was located, so this verdict reflects the character of the owner (a practising entity that does enforce related patents in this product family against competitors), not confirmed assertion of this particular number. If the strict test is "is the current assignee presently suing on this patent," the correct answer is insufficient data — no assertion found, and the ownership chain alone would support "operating company, non-asserting as to '901."

Verify at USPTO Assignment Center:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 8510901 or assignee "Rubbermaid Commercial Products")
• Mirror index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Cross-check requests for definitive confirmation: (i) pull the OCR'd cover sheet of Reel 027543 / Frame 0020 to read the correspondent of record directly; (ii) confirm no second-record entry exists under a name variant ("Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Inc." / "Newell Operating Company"); (iii) confirm the absence of any security agreement recording, which would not appear in the patent's abbreviated legal-events feed.

I'll verify each cited reference against primary sources before mapping them to claims.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901 B2 ("Mop wringer")

0. Number resolution / provenance note

The requested identifier 8510901 resolves to a single, unique record: US 8,510,901 B2, application 13/290,289, filed 2011‑11‑07, granted 2013‑08‑20, inventor Jesse Andrew Matola, assignee Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC (Google Patents record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8510901/en, which mirrors the USPTO bibliographic record). I did not retrieve a live PatentCenter page directly in this session, so I am grounding the bibliographic data on the authoritative full text supplied plus the corroborating Google Patents/USPTO-mirror record — not on an independent PatentCenter screenshot. Caveat stated explicitly: no other patent shares this exact number, and I have not auto-corrected it to the continuation US 8,635,736 (app. 13/946,295) or the pre-grant publication US 2012/0110774 A1, which are different documents in the same family (see §5).

Governing §102 regime: The application was filed 2011‑11‑07 (priority 2010‑11‑08), i.e., before 2013‑03‑16, so pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 applies. Every examiner-cited reference below issued well over one year before the priority date, so each is a §102(b) statutory-bar candidate (patent/printed publication), subject to the anticipation requirement that a single reference disclose all claimed elements arranged as claimed.

1. Examiner-cited U.S. patents ("Patent Citations (3)" on the face of US 8,510,901)

1.1 US 4,912,804 A — Mop wringer — the closest art

Description. A mop wringer with a housing and a pair of rotatable wringing rollers with resilient bodies, at least one roller movable between an inactive (rollers out of contact) and active (rollers pressed together, bodies deformed to generate wringing pressure) position. The movable roller carries a drive wheel (a toothed wheel) driven by a toothed rack on actuator means movable from a first position, through a second position, to a third position. The actuator comprises a first cam surface, a second cam surface, and the roller drive means:

• moving the actuator first → second position: the first cam surface guides the movable roller from inactive to active position (linear closing motion);
• moving the actuator second → third position: the second cam surface "locks" the movable roller in the active position, and the roller drive means (rack) transmits rotational motion to the drive wheel — i.e., rotation without further linear advance;
• the second cam surface defines a segment of a circle having its centre at the journalling bearing, and the toothed rack is arranged in parallel with the second cam surface.

Potential §102(b) anticipation mapping. This is the one citation that reads on the core two-phase concept of the '901 patent:

• Claim 1 — '804 discloses (i) a roller that is both rotated and moved linearly (movable roller + drive wheel + closing motion); (ii) a drive assembly carrying two cam surfaces and the roller-drive element on a common swing axis (the second arm means is "journalled swingable at one end thereof in a journalling bearing," with both the second cam surface and the rack on it — this is the strongest §102(b) reading against the "rotate about a common axis" limitation added in claim 1); (iii) a stationary engagement point (the journalled bearing end of the first arm acts as the fixed reaction surface for the second cam surface); and (iv) two-phase operation (close, then rotate only). Weak link: the "second gear" of claim 1 is, in '804, a linear rack rather than a rotary gear, and the "first follower operatively connected to the drive roller" is an abutment on a swinging arm rather than a translating follower.
• Claim 19 (method) — '804's first cam surface advances the movable roller toward the other roller (a "driven roller") in the first portion, and the rack rotates the roller in the later portion. Weak link: claim 19 requires the second cam surface to move the whole drive assembly toward the driven roller, whereas '804's second cam surface holds/locks the roller rather than translating the assembly. On the current record I would not call claim 19 anticipated by '804 alone.
• Claim 20 — '804 has a second cam surface and a rack; the "non-round second gear" limitation is not clearly met by a rack, and its follower(s) are not plainly "stationary during the entire range of motion." Not a clean anticipation.
• Dependent claims 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18 — '804 supplies meaningful disclosure for: driven roller with linear movement toward it (4), gear fixed to and concentric with the roller axle (7), a handle-operated actuator (10), a cam surface configured as "a segment of a circle having its centre at the journalling bearing" (12, and the claim-15 arc concept), cam shape controlling closing rate (14), and rack/gear engagement maintained during the drive phase (18, cf. claim 13/17's "same shape as the first cam surface").

Analyst caution: whether '804 anticipates claim 1 or merely renders it obvious under pre‑AIA §103 turns on the "second gear" versus "toothed rack" reading. On the face of a rack-and-pinion system, a rack is a specialized linear gear that meshes with the pinion, so anticipation is arguable; but an examiner or court could equally treat the rack/rotary-gear difference plus the translating-follower difference as an obviousness question. I flag both readings rather than asserting one.

1.2 US 5,918,343 A — Combination bucket and wringer

Description. A mop bucket + wringer combination in which a cap-like wringer body sits over and interlocks with the top rim of a thin-walled plastic bucket (skirt 30 with a recess 41 and overhanging catch/finger 42 snapping over rim 22), the wringer body carrying wringer presses 35 operated by a handle lever 37, plus a lift handle 39. Its stated advantages are structural: the wringer caps and stiffens the bucket and resists separation.

Potential §102 mapping.

• Claim 2 ("drive roller and drive assembly are mounted in a housing, the housing being supported on a bucket") — '343 discloses a wringer housing mounted on/supported by a bucket, i.e., it supplies the bucket-mounted wringer environment. It contains no rollers, gears, or cam surfaces, so it cannot anticipate claims 1, 19–23 or any roller/gear/cam dependent claim. It is a §102(b) reference only against the bucket-housing element, and otherwise functions as §103/background art.
• No claim is anticipated on this reference alone.

1.3 US 7,254,863 B1 — Single action mop wringer

Description. A wringer housing with opposite sidewalls having a pair of aligned, spaced-apart tracks (channels) in each sidewall, guiding pins that rollably support a pair of spaced-apart rollers. An activation means (horizontal platform or yoke assembly with a handle) is movably connected to the roller pins; a single downward force on the handle drives the rollers along the tracks so they come together ("single pass") to squeeze water from a mop, and the rollers rollably move along the strands of the mop. A return spring restores the activation means and rollers to the starting position. (A sibling patent in the same family, US 7,412,746, repeats the disclosure almost verbatim.)

Potential §102 mapping.

• Claim 1 / claim 4 / claim 9 / claim 16 — '863 discloses a roller mounted for rotational movement and for linear movement in a track, movement toward an opposed roller, a handle-driven actuation, and a return spring, all broadly corresponding to the '901 track/handle/roller-advance environment.
• Claim 3 ("the track comprises spaced guide rails formed as protrusions on the housing") and claim 11/23 (bearing located in a track) — '863's sidewall channels are a structural analogue, though channels-in-a-wall are not literally "protrusions."
• Critically, '863 discloses neither a first/second cam surface nor a first/second meshing gear pair, and no two-phase "close-then-rotate only" sequencing. Therefore it does not anticipate independent claims 1, 19, 20, 21, 22, or 23. It is best characterized as §103 background art supplying the track/roller/handle/return-spring elements that, combined with '804's two-phase cam drive, could support an obviousness rejection of the '901 claims.

2. Family-cited references ("Family Cites Families (6)") — lower confidence

These six are cited against the CN/EP/WO family members (CN 103200854, EP 2629654, WO 2012/064647, MX 2013/005028), not necessarily as of-record US citations. I was unable to retrieve and read the full text of most of these in this session, so I will not assert element-by-element anticipation for them — I report citation data only, and mark the disclosure content as unverified.

All six predate the 2010‑11‑08 priority date by more than one year and therefore fall within pre‑AIA §102(b) if relied upon; the limitation on my analysis is substantive (I could not read them), not statutory.

3. Non-patent citations

• International Searching Authority, International Search Report for PCT/US2011/059572, dated 2012‑03‑05.
• International Searching Authority, Written Opinion for PCT/US2011/059572, dated 2012‑03‑05.

These are search/opinion documents, not prior art. They are relevant analytically because they identify the art the ISA considered for the very same disclosure, and their category codes (A/X/Y) would be the fastest way to confirm which references the ISA treated as closest. I did not retrieve the body of either document in this session, so I cannot report their relevance categorizations.

4. Consolidated §102 bottom line

No single reference on the current record anticipates independent claims 19, 20, 21, 22, or 23 as a whole. Claim 19's requirement that the second cam surface translate the entire drive assembly toward the driven roller, claim 20's non-round second gear with a single, fully-stationary follower, claim 21's eccentric cam wheel roller-gap adjuster, claim 22's follower concentric with the axle and gear, and claim 23's drive-assembly bearing seated in the track are the limitations for which the cited art appears thinnest — consistent with the examiner-cited prior-art keywords on the '901 record ("gear, drive roller, follower, drive, cam surface"), which show the search was focused on the cam/gear drive rather than on the eccentric-gap and bearing-in-track sub-features.

5. Documents that are NOT prior art (flagged to prevent misattribution)

The following appear in the '901 record's "Also Published As," "Related Child Applications," and "Cited By" listings but must not be treated as §102 art:

• US 2012/0110774 A1 — pre-grant publication of the same application 13/290,289 (not prior art).
• US 8,635,736 B2 (app. 13/946,295) — continuation of the '901 patent, same priority/family (not prior art; a distinct patent number that must not be substituted for 8,510,901).
• US 2013/0305480 A1, WO 2012/064647 A1, EP 2629654 A4/A1, CN 103200854 A/B, MX 2013/005028 A — same-family counterparts (post-priority publications).
• US 9,474,429 B2 (Rubbermaid, "Clean water mopping system," filed 2013‑03‑15) — a later patent that cites the '901; it post-dates the '901 priority and is not prior art against it.

6. Limitations of this analysis (stated rather than papered over)

1. I did not complete an element-by-element anticipation chart for the six foreign family citations, because I could not retrieve their disclosure text in this session. Any §102 assertion about US 1,839,748, CN 1023291 C, DE 4023219 A1, CN 2181895 Y, AT 403984 B, or JP 3679353 B2 would be speculation, so I have declined to make one.
2. I did not retrieve the ISA's International Search Report / Written Opinion bodies, which are the single best indicator of how the examiner/ISA categorized US 4,912,804 (X vs. Y vs. A) against the '901 claims. Retrieving those should be the first follow-up step.
3. I did not independently pull the USPTO PatentCenter "Patent Family" / "Examiner Cited References" pane; the citation set above is taken from the authoritative full text of US 8,510,901 as supplied, which lists three examiner-cited U.S. patents plus six family citations and two non-patent citations.

Recommended next steps for a definitive prior-art position: (a) open the PCT/US2011/059572 ISR and Written Opinion (both dated 2012‑03‑05) via WIPO Patentscope, which will show the ISA's X/Y categorization; (b) pull the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" and "Foreign References" panes for app. 13/290,289 to confirm whether any additional U.S. references were cited during prosecution beyond the three listed; and (c) obtain machine translations of DE 4023219 A1, CN 1023291 C, CN 2181895 Y, AT 403984 B, and JP 3679353 B2 before making any §102 assertion about them.

I'll research the cited prior art references before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull more detail on the closest prior art and any prosecution/validity record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,510,901 B2 ("Mop wringer")

Analyst note on dates/consistency (flagged per operating rules): the task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the workspace clock says 2026‑09‑30. I use neither as a legal date; all § 102/§ 103 dates below are derived from the patent's own face (priority 2010‑11‑08; filed 2011‑11‑07). Also flagged: the earlier "Patent summary" states claim 21 is "Same as claim 1, plus…," but granted claim 21 is an independent claim that omits claim 1's "common axis" language — I treat the granted text as authoritative.

A. Governing legal framework

Because application 13/290,289 was filed 2011‑11‑07 (before 2013‑03‑16), the pre‑AIA versions of 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 govern. The controlling obviousness test is therefore § 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) — the four Graham factors (scope/content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; objective indicia), with KSR supplying the enumerated rationales (known-technique improvement, simple substitution of known elements, obvious-to-try over a finite number of identified solutions, design incentives/market pressure). MPEP § 2143 supplies the operative checklist. Any 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)/(f)/(g) reference commonly owned with the '901 at the time of invention is disqualified as prior art for obviousness under pre‑AIA § 103(c)(1) (this matters below).

The practical question is a narrow one: the '901 was allowed over US 4,912,804 (Fr. Ditlevsens Eftr. A/S), US 5,918,343 (Young) and US 7,254,863 (Worldwide Integrated Resources) — the three references listed in the patent's own "Citations (3)" section. The '901's independent-claim limitations that appear on their face to have been added during prosecution ("…such that the first cam surface, the second cam surface and the second gear rotate about a common axis" in claim 1; "toward the driven roller"/"second cam follower" in claim 19; "the follower being stationary during the entire range of motion" in claim 20) identify the very features that must be tested for obviousness. The published pre‑grant version (US 2012/0110774 A1) does not contain the "common axis" language, which strongly suggests the examiner required it to distinguish the cited art — an inference, not a record fact, since I have not retrieved the file wrapper.

B. Level of ordinary skill / field of art

Field: mop wringers having cooperating squeeze rollers mounted over a bucket — IPC/CPC A47L 13/60 ("Wringers … combined with buckets with squeezing rollers") and A47L 13/58. All references below are from that field or its mechanical sub‑art (cam/follower and gear/rack mechanisms), so they are analogous art under In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004), and In re Clay, 966 F.2d 656 (Fed. Cir. 1992) — they are from the same field of endeavor and are reasonably pertinent to the problem the inventor faced (closing two rollers onto a mop and simultaneously pulling the mop upward with low input force).

PHOSITA: a mechanical engineer (B.S. mechanical engineering or equivalent) with 2–4 years' experience designing consumer/professional hard‑goods mechanisms, including familiarity with (i) cam‑and‑follower motion control, (ii) spur‑gear, rack‑and‑pinion and non‑circular ("contoured") gear/pitch‑line design, and (iii) roller‑nip adjustment. A PHOSITA would know that "a rack is a gear of infinite radius," that gear meshing depends on maintaining center distance (pitch diameters), and that an eccentric is a standard way to trim a roller nip.

C. Prior‑art inventory (from this patent's own prior‑art sections)

D. Claim‑term constructions that drive the analysis

1. "second gear" — the '901 uses a contoured gear 66 having teeth 66a that "ha[s] the same shape as the first cam surface 52" and meshes with spur gear 32. Read literally, a toothed rack (a gear of infinite radius) is a "gear," and '804's own claim 12 uses the phrase "a second toothed wheel" for the member that also carries a rack. A PHOSITA would treat '804's toothed rack and toothed wheel as gear elements. Even under a narrow reading (a rack is not a "gear"), '804's claim‑12/14 embodiments disclose two meshing toothed wheels on a member carrying both cam surfaces — literally a "second gear" on the drive assembly.
2. "in a track" — '901's spec: "The track 33 may comprise spaced guide rails 28 and 30 … formed as protrusions on the inside surfaces of the side panels." '863's channels are the functional equivalent (guide paths constraining roller pins to a defined path).
3. "second follower being stationary" — fixed to the housing, as is '901's rear follower 34 on pin 35.
4. "common axis" (claim 1, added by amendment) — '901's drive assembly 50 rotates about B‑B with cam surfaces 52/54 and gear 66. In '804's claim‑12 embodiment the second swingable means carries both cam surfaces and the toothed wheel/rack on one member swinging about one bearing — the same "common axis" idea; and '804's second cam surface is expressly "a segment of a circle having its centre at the centre of swinging" of that member.

E. Ground 1 — US 4,912,804 in view of US 7,254,863

Statutory basis: § 103(a) over '804 as primary, '863 as secondary. '804 is § 102(b) art (published 1990‑04‑03); '863 is § 102(b) art (issued 2007‑08‑14). Both are analogous art.

E.1 Claim 1 element‑by‑element

Conclusion on claim 1: every functional element — including the two‑phase motion that is the heart of the claim — is disclosed in '804. The residual differences are (i) "track" vs. swing‑arm guidance, and (ii) the second cam surface riding a stationary, housing‑fixed follower (so that the drive assembly itself translates) rather than the end of a swingable arm. Both are supplied or suggested by '863.

E.2 Motivation to combine ('804 + '863) — the KSR rationales

1. Same field, same problem, same solution space. Both are single‑pass mop wringers with rollers that must (a) come together onto the mop and (b) pull/squeeze the mop. '863's stated objects are precisely "wring water in a single pass without requiring multiple wringing operations" and "only a minor force … required to cause the handle to move downwardly" — the same design pressures driving '804's actuator and the '901 itself (which reports 256 lb output at 60° and 741 lb at 45° from a 60 lb input).
2. Known technique applied to the same device in the same way. '804 already teaches "the toothed rack is arranged in parallel with said second cam surface" and already teaches making the cam surface "a segment of a circle having its centre at the centre of swinging." Using a guide track to constrain the roller path is a known alternative to a swing arm, and '863 shows exactly that in a mop wringer. Constraining the roller to a linear track also yields a predictable benefit the '901 touts: "The tracks 33 and slots 20 are aligned such that the drive roller 22 and driven roller 10 move toward and away from one another on the same plane."
3. Simple substitution of known elements with predictable results. Replacing an arm‑guided roller with a track‑guided roller (or vice versa) is the textbook "substitution of one known element for another to obtain the predictable result" and "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417, 424).
4. '804 itself motivates the cam‑carried, not gear‑carried, load path. '804 states: "Any risk of jamming … due to the transmission of pressure through the meshing teeth and toothed wheel is eliminated, as the movable roller is maintained in position by means of a cam surface." The '901 does exactly this — follower 26 "function[s] primarily to maintain the pitch diameters between gear 32 and gear 66 and may be eliminated if the force is transmitted via the engagement of gears 32 and 66." So '804 is not merely compatible; it points a PHOSITA toward decoupling the squeeze reaction from the gear mesh by using the follower/cam as the load path. This is not a teaching away — it is an express suggestion of the architecture '901 uses.
5. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions. Given a roller that must both translate and rotate, the PHOSITA's options are: (i) friction/rolling drag (as in '863, rollers "rollably move along the strands"), (ii) rack‑and‑pinion ('804), or (iii) gear‑pair with a cam‑maintained pitch line ('901). Trying the third is "obvious to try" under KSR.

E.3 Dependent claims under Ground 1

F. Ground 2 — Ground 1 + US 5,918,343 for claims 2–3

'343 discloses a wringer with a "cap‑like body" that fits over and is secured to the top of a mop bucket and strengthens it, with "upstanding walls … which support wringer presses … operably connected to a wringer handle lever." Motivation: the '901 itself opens with the same premise ("The housing is dimensioned such that it may be supported on the top edge of a bucket … such that liquid wrung from a mop may be collected in the bucket"), and the field is replete with bucket‑mounted roller wringers (see also the '901's own family citations to US 1,839,748 and the Ditlevsens counterparts). Mounting a wringer housing on a bucket is a predictable use of a prior‑art device according to its established function (MPEP § 2144.04; In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997)). Conclusion: claims 2 and 3 are obvious.

G. Ground 3 — claims 5, 6 and 21 (adjustable/eccentric roller gap)

These are the hardest claims to invalidate on the references listed on this page, because none of the three examiner‑cited references fixes the driven roller on an eccentric cam wheel actuated by a knob with discrete detents.

• Claim 5 ("position of the driven roller … adjustable to vary a space") is well supported as an old and crowded art: the '901's own family cites US 1,839,748 (Evans, 1932) and other roller wringers, and the wider record (e.g., US 801,949 (1905), threaded rods 13/14 with nuts 15 to "adjust the relative positions of the rollers"; EP 0 348 082 B1 / EP 0 207 641 (Scot Young), adjustable front roller 2 with detent levers 32/33 and a thumbscrew 19/lever 18) shows roller‑gap adjustment is a long‑established design need in wringers. Claim 5: obvious.
• Claim 6 / claim 21 (the eccentric cam wheel specifically) is a genuinely narrower limitation. Eccentric roller‑nip adjustment is a notorious mechanical expedient outside wringers as well, but I will not assert a specific anticipating reference for the eccentric‑cam‑on‑a‑driven‑roller combination, because the reference I found that shows it exactly (US 8,567,087 B2 / US 2013/0312211 A1: "cams 222 … eccentric relative to the axis of rotation C‑C of the roller 220 … detents 222a … every 90° … control knob 224") is commonly owned by Rubbermaid Commercial Products LLC and is therefore disqualified as § 103 prior art under pre‑AIA § 103(c)(1). For these claims I recommend a targeted search directed to eccentric‑cam roller‑nip adjustment in wringers/print/press arts (a "Secondary Considerations Search" is not needed; a class‑limited search in A47L 13/58–13/60 and B30B/F16H 25/xx is). Claim 6/21: obviousness not established on the references of record; flag as open.

H. Ground 4 — claim 20 (non‑round second gear + follower stationary during the entire range)

Claim 20 recites only "a first cam surface" and "a second gear … non‑round … for at least a portion," with the follower "stationary during the entire range of motion."

• '804's claim 14 "swingable plate means having an aperture defining said first and second cam surfaces and further comprising said toothed rack" is a non‑round, plate‑like toothed member carrying a cam aperture. A rack/plate with a curved tooth line that varies in radius is by definition "non‑round for at least a portion."
• The "stationary follower" limitation is met or closely approached by the housing‑fixed reaction datum ('804's journalling bearing in the housing; '863's fixed housing channels).
• Motivation: the same industrial motives recited in Ground 1. Claim 20 is obvious over '804 (alone in significant part) and certainly over '804 + '863. Note that claim 20 is broader than claim 1 in one respect (single cam surface) and different in another (non‑round gear), so a PHOSITA reading '804's plate/rack embodiments is squarely within the claim's scope.

I. Bottom‑line claim‑by‑claim assessment

J. Anticipated counter‑arguments and objective indicia

1. "Rack ≠ gear." The applicant may argue '804's toothed rack is not the claimed "second gear," and that the '901's contoured gear 66 (same shape as cam surface 52, maintaining mesh through the translation phase) is a structurally distinct, non‑obvious element. Rebuttal: (a) '804 claim 12 expressly recites "a second toothed wheel" meshing with a first toothed wheel on the member that defines both cam surfaces; (b) '901's spec concedes the follower "may be eliminated if the force is transmitted via the engagement of gears 32 and 66" — i.e., the inventor treated gear‑only transmission as an equivalent; (c) a rack is a gear; and (d) applying a toothed profile that parallels the cam contour is the express teaching of '804 ("toothed rack … arranged in parallel with said second cam surface").
2. "Stationary second follower / drive‑assembly translation." This is the structural gap in '804. Rebuttal: '863 provides the fixed‑datum, translating‑carriage architecture; and the '901's own specification treats the translating drive assembly as a design choice (bearing 49 "may rotate relative to the guide rails 28 and 30 and translate along the linear path").
3. Possible teaching‑away argument. Applicant might invoke '804's statement that jamming risk from "transmission of pressure through the meshing teeth and toothed wheel is eliminated" as discouraging a gear‑loaded drive. This fails: the '901 also removes the squeeze reaction from the gear mesh ("The cam followers 26 function primarily to maintain the pitch diameters between gear 32 and gear 66"), so '804's teaching is aligned with, not contrary to, the '901. A reference teaches away only when it "criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages" the claimed approach (In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195 (Fed. Cir. 2004)); '804 does none of those things.
4. Secondary considerations. Commercial success of Rubbermaid's HYGEN flat‑mop/wringer line and the '901's advertised force multiplication (Table 2: ~256 lb at θ=60°, ~741 lb at θ=45° from a 60 lb input) may be asserted. To carry weight the patentee must establish nexus to the claimed device rather than to unclaimed features (bucket/filter, mop pad, "clean water" system of US 9,474,429). Note that the closely related continuation US 8,635,736 B2 claims the force ratio itself ("approximately at least ten times the input force when the angle is approximately 45 degrees"), which is a result‑oriented limitation; under In re Merck and KSR, a result that is the inherent and predictable product of a mechanical linkage (the patent's own algebra yields it from F=60 lb, 11.5″ arm, 3.5″ arm) is unlikely to confer patentability on its own.
5. § 103(c) caution on the assignee's own art. Any temptation to build a ground on US 8,567,087 B2 / US 2013/0312211 A1 (eccentric cams 222 + detents 222a + knobs 224; sector gears 260/262 with cam surfaces 264 and gear teeth 263) should be resisted — it is commonly owned and thus disqualified as § 103 prior art under pre‑AIA § 103(c)(1), even though it is excellent evidence of what the applicant's design group knew.
6. Missing pieces I did not retrieve and will not fabricate: the content of the ISA's International Search Report / Written Opinion for PCT/US2011/059572 (2012‑03‑05); the full texts of US 1,839,748, DE 4,023,219 A1, AT 403,984 B, JP 3679353 B2, CN 2,181,895 Y, CN 1023291 C; and the '901's US file wrapper (the source of the "common axis," "toward the driven roller," and "stationary during the entire range" amendments).

K. Recommended next steps to firm up the § 103 positions

1. Pull the '901 file wrapper (PatentCenter, application 13/290,289) to confirm which limitations were added to overcome '804, and whether applicant or examiner characterized '804's rack as a "gear"/"toothed wheel." The claim‑1 "common axis" phrase is not in US 2012/0110774 A1 and is the single most likely basis of allowance.
2. Obtain the ISR/Written Opinion for PCT/US2011/059572 (2012‑03‑05) — the ISA's category X/Y designations for '804, '863, '343 and the family‑cited Chinese/German/Austrian/Japanese references would materially sharpen Grounds 1–3.
3. Targeted search for claim 6/21 (eccentric‑cam roller‑nip adjustment with discrete detents) in A47L 13/58–13/60 and, as analogous art, in roller‑nip‑adjustment arts (B30B, B41F, G03G). If nothing pre‑2010 is found, claims 6 and 21 are the realistic validity anchors.
4. Focus the invalidity theory on claim 18 (full‑range gear engagement) as the likely survivability hinge, and consider whether it is separately patentable from claim 1 given that the '901's own specification treats follower‑maintained pitch diameter and gear‑loaded drive as alternatives.

Overall conclusion: on the references this patent itself cites, the functional heart of claims 1 and 19 — "advance the roller, then rotate it without further advance" — is disclosed outright by US 4,912,804, including the "circle‑segment centered on the swing axis" cam geometry of claims 12 and 15 and the "toothed profile parallel to the cam surface" concept of claims 13/17. US 7,254,863 supplies the "track" and the translating tandem‑roller architecture, and US 5,918,343 supplies the bucket‑mounted housing. A PHOSITA had strong, articulated motivation (same field, same single‑pass/low‑force problem, '804's own parallel‑rack teaching and its express preference for a cam‑carried load path, and a finite set of predictable drive alternatives) to arrive at the claimed subject matter. The claims most likely to survive are claim 18 (and the "over the entire range" clause of claim 19), and claims 6 and 21 absent additional eccentric‑cam art.