Invalidity dossier
US 8516721
Articles of footwear
Current assignee: Saucony IP Holdings LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 11:43:14 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US8516721B2
Title: Articles of footwear
Patent number: US8516721B2
Application number: US12/987,708
Inventor: Christopher J. Mahoney
Current assignee: Saucony IP Holdings LLC (original assignee Saucony IP Holdings LLC)
Priority/filing date: 2011-01-10
Publication date (grant): 2013-08-27
Earlier publication: US20120174433A1 (published 2012-07-12)
Legal status: Active; adjusted expiration 2032-03-31
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8516721](/patent/US8516721)/en
Purpose: The disclosure relates to outsoles for articles of footwear. Shoes generally protect and stabilize a user's feet, with an upper and a sole together defining a void to securely and comfortably hold a human foot, and the sole acting as the interface between the foot and the ground.
Plain-language scope: One aspect provides an article of footwear whose sole defines a bending feature (e.g., a groove) between a phalanges portion and a metatarsus portion, allowing the phalanges sole portion to articulate upward relative to the metatarsus sole portion. An attached upper defines a foot void and has a phalanges portion defining at least one toe receiver volume with a raised shape relative to an adjacent metatarsus portion, permitting substantially unrestricted upward toe flexion. The sole may have a substantially uniform thickness from toe end to heel end and may comprise EVA (e.g., high-abrasion EVA). In some examples the sole includes a sole body and first, second, and third ground contact pads on the heel, medial metatarsus, and medial phalanges portions respectively, whose bottom surfaces together with the sole body's bottom surface define a ground contact surface. The sole body may define traction lugs with a heelward shoulder (optionally a substantially right angle edge with a substantially non-radiused corner) and a ground contact pod in a medial portion.
Classifications include: A43B13/14, A43B13/141, A43B13/22, A43B13/223, A43B23/02, A43B23/0235, A43B23/0265, A43B7/1405–7/145, A43C1/003, A43C11/1493, A43C15/16, A43C15/162, A43C15/164.
What the excerpt does not establish: Because the source text is excerpted, it does not establish the full claim set, the complete written description, all drawing content, or any legal conclusions about scope, validity, enforceability, or infringement. It does not establish litigation, ownership transfers beyond the listed assignment entries, or prior-art effect.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:54 PM
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Litigation summary
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PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.