US 8645037

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, including any litigation or docket references.

Let me run additional targeted searches for any USPTO proceedings or CAFC docket activity involving this patent.

Summary of US Patent 8,645,037 B2

Note on sources and certainty: I do not have a live, credentialed connection to USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system. My searches of the open web (Google Patents, Google Patents classification indexes, patent aggregator sites, and general CAFC/PTAB coverage) returned no evidence of any litigation, PTAB/IPR proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 8,645,037. So the "CAFC 2026 dockets" portion of your request should be treated as negative/unverified — I found nothing, but absence of results in web search is not proof that no docket exists. The bibliographic data below is drawn from the patent's own front matter (authoritative per the full text provided).

Bibliographic data

Family: JP 4341717B2, KR 101250138B1, CN 101910613B, DE 112009000450B4, WO 2009095772A1.

Abstract

When the condition for starting an engine (50) is satisfied, the controller (90) executes a lock switching control in which the wheels (88) are forcibly locked by the brake device (86) and the parking lock mechanism (200) is released to unlock the driveshaft (steps S4, S5), and then the controller (90) executes the cranking control (step S6) in which the engine (50) is started by the motor-generator (MG1).

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — Apparatus (vehicle driving apparatus)
An apparatus comprising an engine; a starter motor; a driveshaft transmitting engine torque to the wheels; a parking lock mechanism that locks the driveshaft; a brake device that locks the wheels; a controller controlling all three; and a temperature sensor measuring engine coolant temperature. Three functional requirements:

1. On satisfaction of an engine-start condition, the controller performs a "lock switching control" — forcibly locking the wheels with the brake device and releasing the parking lock to free the driveshaft — and then cranks the engine with the motor.
2. After the engine starts self-driving following cranking, the controller re-engages the parking lock mechanism on the driveshaft and cancels the brake-device wheel lock.
3. Temperature gating: if the sensed coolant temperature is below a predetermined value, cranking is done after the lock switching control; if above, cranking proceeds without the lock switching control.

Claim 4 — Method (control method of a vehicle driving apparatus)
The method counterpart of Claim 1, covering an apparatus with engine, starter motor, driveshaft, parking lock mechanism, brake device, and coolant temperature sensor. Steps: (a) determine whether the engine-start condition is satisfied; (b) on satisfaction, perform the lock switching control (forcibly brake-lock the wheels, release the parking lock) and then crank the engine with the motor; (c) once the engine self-drives, re-engage the parking lock and release the wheel brake lock; with the same below/above-threshold temperature branching as Claim 1.

Claim 7 — Apparatus (broader "wheel lock device" variant)
Same architecture and same three functional requirements as Claim 1, but the wheel-locking element is recited generically as a "wheel lock device" rather than a "brake device," and the driveshaft is recited without the "and driving wheels of the vehicle" limitation. Includes the coolant temperature sensor and the same low/high-temperature branching.

Dependent claims (for completeness):

• Claim 2 (dep. 1) — brake device includes a parking brake and a hydraulic brake; hydraulic brake used for the forced lock; if the wheels are not locked by the parking brake, cranking proceeds skipping the lock switching control (fail-safe).
• Claim 3 (dep. 1) — textually identical to Claim 2 as presented in the granted text.
• Claim 5 (dep. 4) — same hydraulic-brake/fail-safe limitation as Claim 2, in method form.
• Claim 6 (dep. 4) — textually identical to Claim 5 as presented in the granted text.
• Claim 8 (dep. 7) — the wheels may include both drive wheels and driven wheels, or either of them.

(Observation, not legal advice: Claims 2/3 and 5/6 appear duplicative on their face in the text supplied. That is what the source shows; I am not correcting it.)

Technical gist / why it matters

The invention targets a specific NVH (noise/vibration/harshness) problem. In a hybrid vehicle at low ambient temperature, battery voltage sags and oil viscosity rises, so engine cranking takes longer. During that unstable pre-self-sustaining period, torque direction through the motor repeatedly reverses, making the parking lock pawl chatter against the parking lock gear teeth, producing objectionable gear-contact noise. The claimed fix is a hand-off of the locking function: release the toothed parking pawl (which is prone to chatter) and instead hold the vehicle stationary with the friction/hydraulic (ECB) brake during cranking. Once the engine self-sustains, the parking pawl is re-engaged and the ECB released — restoring the mechanical park lock. The temperature sensor (specifically a coolant temperature sensor, with −10 °C as the illustrated threshold in the description) ensures the extra lock-switching routine is only invoked when cranking is expected to be slow.

The disclosed embodiment is a series-parallel hybrid (planetary gearset 20 dividing engine power between a drive axle and generator MG1, with MG2 driving the output), but the specification states the invention may be applied to any vehicle having an engine-starter motor, a parking lock mechanism, and an electronically controlled brake.

Bottom line on the litigation/docket question

I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity, no district court case, and no PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) proceeding referencing US 8,645,037 in accessible sources. Its forward citations (e.g., Ford US 10,479,343; US 10,391,998; US 11,001,262; Aisin Aw hybrid-drive patents) indicate it is cited as prior art by others, which is different from being litigated. If you need a definitive docket check, that would require a direct Westlaw/Lex Machina/Docket Navigator or PACER query, which I cannot run here — so please treat the docket finding as unconfirmed.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8645037 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more specific litigation databases.

Let me check litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Report: US Patent No. 8,645,037

Bottom Line

No litigation is known to involve US Patent No. 8,645,037 (the '037 patent). I searched multiple litigation-focused sources (including the Unified Patents portal referenced in your instructions, Docket Alarm, Justia Dockets, and general litigation/PTAB document repositories) and found no record of any district court action, ITC proceeding, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging this specific patent. I want to be explicit that this is an absence-of-evidence finding, not a certified negative—court dockets can lag, and I could not complete a direct PACER/Docket Alarm query before running out of search steps.

Patent Identity (literal interpretation of the identifier provided)

• Patent number searched: US 8,645,037 (as requested — note this differs from the similarly-numbered US 8,674,037, results for which I did not return)
• Title: "Vehicle driving apparatus and control method for same"
• Assignee/owner: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corp.)
• Inventors: Hajime Kato, Hideto Watanabe, Yoshimitsu Yokouchi, Kunio Takeda, Masayuki Tanaka
• Priority date: 2008-01-31; Filed: 2009-01-30; Granted: 2014-02-04
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2029-07-17; maintenance fees paid through the 12th year (recorded 2025-07-23)
• Family members: JP4341717B2, KR101250138B1, CN101910613B, DE112009000450B4, WO2009095772A1

Search Results Summary

The hits returned for the number "8645037" consistently resolved to the Google Patents bibliographic page itself or to inventor/aggregator listings — none to a docket entry. Notably, Google Patents pages typically surface an "Litigation" section when a patent has been asserted; the authoritative text you provided contains no such section, and the "Cited By" / "Families Citing" entries are patent citations, not litigation.

Why No Litigation Is Plausible

• The patent is a large-entity Toyota portfolio asset in hybrid-vehicle engine-start control (parking-lock/brake lock-swap noise reduction), a defensive technical area. It is not the type of asset commonly held by NPEs that drive most assertion litigation.
• The adjacent litigation activity I did observe involving Toyota (e.g., Mel NavIP, LLC v. Toyota Motor North America, E.D. Tex.) concerned different patents (e.g., US 8,060,368), not the '037 patent.

Caveats and Recommended Next Steps

I could not complete a live, direct PACER/CourtListener query against the exact patent number, so treat the above as "no known litigation" rather than a verified null. To fully confirm, I would recommend the following targeted checks:

1. Unified Patents Portal – Litigation caselist: search the specific number 8645037 at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
2. Unified Patents Portal – PTAB caselist: search 8645037 at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist
3. CourtListener / RECAP: query the docket database for "8,645,037"
4. Docket Alarm / Lex Machina: patent-number search for 8645037
5. USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and Assignment records for any challenge or transfer

If any of these return results contradicting this report, the live docket data should be treated as controlling over this summary.

If no litigation exists (as this search suggests), then there are no plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, case numbers, filing dates, or outcomes to report for US 8,645,037.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" default against the public record before writing this up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to make sure I'm not missing anything.

PTAB proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,645,037: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding — no institution decisions, no Final Written Decisions, no settlements, no terminations, and no Federal Circuit appeals arising from a Board trial — for this patent as of the most recent ODP ingest (verified 2026-09-29). Status breakdown is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and deserves a plain statement: there is no PTAB record to lean on, in either direction. No claim of the '037 patent has ever been canceled or even challenged at the Board, so claims 1–8 — including independent claims 1, 4, and 7 — stand with their full presumption of validity intact and untested by the PTAB. A defendant cannot point to a prior petitioner's win, and cannot invoke § 315(e)(2) estoppel against the patent owner. The defensive work, if any, must be done from scratch.

No proceedings to report

The template's per-proceeding section is intentionally left unfilled rather than populated with speculation. I will not invent a proceeding number, panel, or FWD. What follows instead is what does exist on the record, plus what it means.

• Type: N/A
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no FWD has ever issued on any claim of this patent
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — no Board decision exists to appeal, so no CAFC docket number is available to cite
• Defensive value: Zero estoppel benefit, but also zero adverse claim construction or disclaimer record. Nothing in the PTAB record helps or hurts you.

What the record does show (from the Google Patents / ODP family data, which is the authoritative source here):

• The patent issued 2014-02-04 from US 12/679,592 (filed 2009-01-30), priority JP 2008-020901 (2008-01-31). Adjusted expiration: 2029-07-17.
• Current assignee: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (assignment recorded 2010-03-23, effective 2010-02-22). This is an operating-company portfolio patent, not a monetization vehicle.
• Foreign counterparts granted and maintained: JP4341717B2, KR101250138B1, CN101910613B, DE112009000450B4. PCT/IB2009/000156 published as WO2009095772A1.
• Maintenance fees paid through the 12th year (payment recorded 2025-07-23), so the patent is in force and presumptively healthy as of today.
• Nine "Patent Citations" on the face of the patent, plus "Cited By" references including later Ford Global Technologies patents (US 10,479,343; US 10,391,998; US 11,001,262) directed to electrified-vehicle park-state disengagement and NVH — a signal that this claim space has been actively worked by other OEMs, which is useful prior-art/design-around context even without an IPR.
• Nine cited references, including JP-A-2002-307982 (Isuzu Motors) — the reference the '037 specification itself credits with the low-temperature cranking problem, i.e., the acknowledged starting point of the art.

I was unable to complete a direct query of PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions within this session's tool budget; the conclusion above rests on the ODP structured block plus targeted web searches for IPR/PGR identifiers tied to the '037 number, which surfaced nothing. Treat that as high-but-not-absolute confidence: a petition filed and not yet docketed in the ODP feed would be the one thing this method could miss. Verify directly at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and Patent Public Search (https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/) before relying on the "clean record" conclusion in a filing.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is untested. Claims 1–8 are all live and all valid-by-presumption. Independent claim 1 (vehicle driving apparatus: engine, starter motor, driveshaft, parking lock mechanism, brake device, controller, coolant temperature sensor; lock-switching control before cranking; re-lock on self-drive; cold-temperature trigger) is the load-bearing claim. Independent claim 4 is its method counterpart, and independent claim 7 recites the same control logic against a "wheel lock device" rather than a "brake device." Note a quirk in the granted text worth checking against the printed patent: as the source renders it, claim 3 is a verbatim duplicate of claim 2, and claim 6 is a verbatim duplicate of claim 5 — each pair recites the parking-brake/hydraulic-brake fail-safe. If that duplication is real and not a rendering artifact, it is a formal defect worth confirming against the official copy; it does not affect validity analysis, but a defendant's invalidity contentions should track the actual claim set, not the web rendering. No claim is canceled, so there is nothing to cross off a demand letter. Any assertion of claims 1–8 proceeds against live claims.

Estoppel landscape: nothing is foreclosed and nothing is foreclosed for you. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner, real party in interest, or privy that obtains an FWD. No IPR has been filed, so no entity is estopped. That cuts both ways: (a) you are free to raise any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court or in a new IPR; but (b) you cannot borrow anyone else's work — there is no petitioner's expert report, no Board claim construction, and no adverse FWD findings to repurpose. If you do file the first IPR, you will bear the full cost of the first-mover analysis, and § 315(b)'s one-year clock runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement. Because there is no prior petition, there is also no § 325(d) "same art, same arguments" exposure from a prior Board challenge — though the nine cited references and the Isuzu '982 reference were before the Examiner and will be scrutinized for § 325(d) abuse-of-discretion risk if recycled verbatim.

Pattern signals: none — and that is the signal. No serial petitioner, no Unified Patents or defensive-aggregator participation, no patent-owner PTAB appeal activity, no litigation of record surfaced tying this number to an assertion campaign. The '037 reads as a Toyota internal patent covering a specific low-temperature engine-start NVH technique in a series-parallel hybrid (planetary gearset with MG1/MG2, parking lock on the ring gear). Patents in this posture typically attract IPRs only when they are asserted — often after being sold into a monetization vehicle. So the absence of PTAB activity is consistent with "never asserted," not with "asserted and survived." If you are the first defendant, you may also be the signal that changes this patent's status.

Time is the dominant strategic fact. With an adjusted expiration of 2029-07-17, roughly two years and nine months of enforceable term remain as of today. A petition filed now would, under the statutory scheme, draw an institution decision in about six months and an FWD about twelve months after institution — landing the final decision in late 2028 or 2029, leaving little or no commercial runway to protect. That materially changes the IPR cost/benefit relative to a patent with a decade of life left.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the empty record yourself before you build a defense on it. Query PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) by patent number 8,645,037 and by application 12/679,592, and cross-check the PTAB Decisions archive and CourtListener's PTAB docket (https://www.courtlistener.com/?type=o&court=patent-trial-and-appeal-board). Because there is no FWD to link or quote, I am not able to provide a decision citation or disposition language — do not represent one in any filing.
2. Reassess IPR economics against a 2029-07-17 expiry. Model the FWD date against your client's exposure window. If the assertion targets a product with meaningful remaining sales life, an IPR on independent claims 1, 4, and 7 (with the dependent claims riding along) is the highest-leverage filing; if the exposure is short-dated, a district-court invalidity case or a design-around may dominate.
3. Preserve § 315(b) timing. No IPR clock is running today. Once a complaint alleging infringement of the '037 is served, the one-year window opens — calendar it immediately, since the pre-filing investigation here is unusually front-loaded (no prior petition to copy).
4. Mine the citation trail now, cheaply. The Ford patents citing '037 (US 10,479,343; US 10,391,998; US 11,001,262) and the nine face-of-patent references are a free head start on the state of the art in park-state/engine-start control, and the Ford filings postdate the 2008 priority date, so use them for claim-construction and design-around guidance rather than as § 102 art.
5. Verify the claim-set rendering. Get the official granted claims from Patent Public Search and confirm whether the claim 2/3 and claim 5/6 duplication is real, because your invalidity contentions and any IPR claim listing must match the granted patent exactly.
6. Treat the foreign family as corroborating art, not a PTAB event. JP4341717B2 discloses the same subject matter and its prosecution file is a low-cost source of prior-art citations and any narrowing amendments — helpful for § 103 motivation-to-combine and for reading the claim scope as Toyota itself understood it. No EPO or JPO opposition activity was located in the available data; I make no representation about it.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me verify the reel/frame reference and check for any later-recorded assignments.

Inventors

Note on method: I could not execute a live query against USPTO Assignment Center from this environment (no credentialed API/PACER/Westlaw access). Everything below is grounded in (a) the authoritative full text of US 8,645,037 B2 supplied in this session — including its Google Patents "Legal Events" table, which reproduces the recorded reel/frame — and (b) open-web corroboration I was able to retrieve before search limits were reached. Where I could not retrieve a field (notably the correspondent of record), I say so rather than infer it.

Corroborating third-party index: Patent Leaderboard pages for Kunio Takeda (9 Toyota patents, incl. 8645037) and Yoshimitsu Yokouchi (11 Toyota patents, incl. 8645037).

Unusual-pattern check — nothing flagged. There is no evidence any inventor assigned away, departed, or was severed from Toyota. All five appear only as assignors → Toyota on the single recorded assignment; there is no inventor-to-third-party instrument, no inventor retention of a reversionary interest, and no co-ownership split. The classic "all inventors out the door within 12 months of filing" precursor to a portfolio fire-sale is therefore not present. (Caveat: inventor employment history is not a public USPTO record; the negative finding is based on the assignment chain, not on HR records.)

All five inventors also appear on the Japanese priority application JP 2008-020901 (priority 2008-01-31) and the PCT PCT/IB2009/000156, which is consistent with a normal corporate research-and-development filing rather than an acquired or derivative chain.

Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation), 1 Toyota-cho, Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. The Google Patents front matter lists "Current Assignee" and "Original Assignee" both as Toyota Motor Corp.

• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the face of the specification. The embodiment is described as a series-parallel hybrid system in which planetary gearset 20 splits engine 50 output between the drive axle and motor-generator MG1, with MG2 driving the output. The specification expressly contemplates "heating of the vehicle compartment, system warming-up" at low ambient temperature — i.e., the ordinary Toyota hybrid cold-start use case (Prius-family power split architecture). The patent is therefore a core operating-company product patent, not a paper asset.
• Primary line of business: Design, manufacture and sale of automobiles; one of the world's largest automakers. Publicly listed (TSE: 7203; NYSE: TM).
• Current status: Operating. No insolvency, no Chapter 7/11, no assignment-in-bankruptcy, and no change of name or merger event is reflected in the recorded chain.
• Status of the patent itself: Google Patents shows legal status Active, adjusted expiration 2029-07-17, with maintenance fees paid at the 4th year (2017-07-24), 8th year (2021-07-21), and 12th year (2025-07-23) — all as "LARGE ENTITY." Payment of the 12th-year fee fourteen months ago is strong affirmative evidence that Toyota still holds and values the patent as of the 2026 assessment date.

Assignment timeline

Important scope finding. The record reflects exactly one assignment for US 12/679,592 / US 8,645,037 — the original inventor-to-Toyota conveyance. There are no post-issuance assignments. No security agreement, no license recordation, no release, no correction, no merger/change-of-name, and no transfer to any third party appears in the Google Patents legal-events table or in any source I could retrieve.

• Executed 2010-02-22 (recorded as "Effective date") / recorded 2010-03-23 — Reel 024124 / Frame 0386
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded event code AS — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Hajime Kato; Hideto Watanabe; Yoshimitsu Yokouchi; Kunio Takeda; Masayuki Tanaka (all natural persons, joint inventors)
  • Assignee: TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA, Japan
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources available to me. The Google Patents legal-events record exposes the reel/frame, the conveyance, the assignors, the assignee, and the effective date, but not the recorded correspondent/attorney of record. My searches keyed to "024124" "0386" and to the assignor names returned no third-party reproduction of the record that would surface the correspondent. I am not going to guess at a name. This is the one genuinely missing field in the chain, and I am flagging it as a verification gap rather than a finding. If a repeat-player attorney matters to your analysis, that field must be pulled directly from Assignment Center.
  • Context: Routine inbound corporate assignment of employee-inventor rights — the standard pre-issuance title cleanup on a PCT national-stage entry (US 12/679,592 is the US national stage of PCT/IB2009/000156, itself claiming priority from JP 2008-020901). Timing fits: executed ~1 month before the US national-stage publication (US 2010/0286883 A1, 2010-11-11) and ~4 years before grant. Not a fire-sale, not a reorg, not a monetization vehicle.

Why only one row: the patent was filed by Toyota as PCT applicant and issued to Toyota; there was never a change of owner, so there was never a second instrument to record. The absence of post-issuance records is itself the finding — Toyota still owns the patent outright.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8645037
    2008 : Priority JP 2008-020901 filed by Toyota
    2009 : PCT IB2009 000156 filed by Toyota
    2010 : Inventors assign rights to Toyota
         : Reel 024124 Frame 0386 recorded
         : US national stage 12/679,592
    2014 : US 8645037 B2 issued to Toyota
    2017 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2021 : 8th year maintenance fee paid
    2025 : 12th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Legend: present / not present / unclear.

Aggregate: zero NPE signals present; one signal unresolvable (correspondent).

Verdict

Insufficient data — only the original assignment exists (which, on this chain, is a benign conclusion, not a red flag).

Justification: the sole recorded instrument is the inventor-to-Toyota assignment at reel 024124/0386, effective 2010-02-22, recorded 2010-03-23, and it conveys title to the operating automaker that filed the application, manufactures the series-parallel hybrid vehicles practising the claims, and is still paying large-entity maintenance fees as recently as 2025-07-23 (12th year) against an adjusted expiration of 2029-07-17. There is no post-issuance transfer, no shell-entity step, no known asserter, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive-aggregator terminus — i.e., every affirmative NPE indicator is absent, and the "insufficient data" label here simply reflects a one-link chain. The single open item is the correspondent of record, which no source I could access exposed; that field should be pulled directly before the chain is treated as fully documented.

Verification links:

• USPTO Patent Assignment Center (search by patent number 8645037 or application 12/679,592): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Fallback Assignment Search interface: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal-events view for this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8645037/en#legalEvents
• USPTO PatentCenter (fees, entity status, ownership data): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/

Residual uncertainty statement: I was unable to query Assignment Center programmatically. The one-assignment finding rests on the legal-events table in the authoritative patent text supplied for this analysis plus open-web corroboration. It is consistent with, and does not contradict, the earlier section's finding of no litigation, no PTAB proceeding, and no CAFC docket activity for US 8,645,037.

I'll search the USPTO and patent databases for US 8,645,037 and its cited prior art references.

Let me search for the remaining cited references to build accurate descriptions.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,645,037 B2

"Vehicle driving apparatus and control method for same" — Toyota Jidosha K.K. (priority 2008-01-31; filed 2009-01-30; granted 2014-02-04)

0. Scope, method, and honesty flags

• Patent identity confirmed. All searches for the literal number 8645037 resolved to US 8,645,037 B2, "Vehicle driving apparatus and control method for same," and to its pre-grant publication US 2010/0286883 A1. No results for visually similar numbers (e.g., 8,674,037) are mixed in.
• This section builds on the prior bibliographic and litigation sections and does not repeat them.
• What "each patent citation" means here: the references listed on the face of US 8,645,037 under Patent Citations — i.e., the prior art of record cited against this patent during prosecution. These are backward citations. (Forward citations — Ford, Aisin Aw, etc. — are not prior art against the '037 patent and are out of scope.)
• Verification status: I retrieved and verified the full text/abstracts for US 2003/0154945 A1, US 7,243,748 B2, US 2007/0173984 A1, and US 2007/0200424 A1. For JPH11257114A, JP2000127927A, JP2002307982A, US 2007/0170775 A1, DE 19729354 A1, and GB 2315305 A I was able to obtain only the citation metadata shown on the patent's own face; descriptions for those are drawn from that metadata and general knowledge of the art and should be treated as lower-confidence.
• Legal caveat: § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation of a claim, arranged as claimed. My assessment below is a technical mapping, not a legal opinion.

1. The prior art of record (backward citations)

(Note: the patent front matter presents two slightly different lists — a "Citations (9)" list and a "Patent Citations (10)" list. GB 2315305 A appears only in the second, longer list. I treat all ten as cited prior art of record.)

2. Reference-by-reference analysis

Reference 1 — DE 19729354 A1

• Full citation: DE 19729354 A1, "Kraftfahrzeug mit automatisch gesteuertem Getriebe und Kupplung (Motor vehicle with automatically-controlled gearbox and clutch)," Luk Getriebe-Systeme GmbH; priority 1996-07-12; published 1998-01-15.
• Description: A motor vehicle with an automated clutch/gear box. Its thrust is a starter/starting interlock: the engine is prevented from being started (or the vehicle prevented from being driven) unless a safe condition exists — e.g., the transmission is in neutral/park or the clutch is disengaged. This is the classic "crank-only-if-drivetrain-secured" safety concept.
• § 102 relevance: Does not anticipate any claim. It is relevant only as general background to the idea of gating engine start on drivetrain state. It discloses no engine-starter motor cranking regime, no parking-lock mechanism that is released and replaced by a wheel brake, and no temperature gating. Best characterized as a § 103 background reference for the "interlock at start" concept.

Reference 2 — GB 2315305 A

• Full citation: GB 2315305 A, "Starter interlock for a vehicle with an automatically-controlled gearbox and clutch," Luk Getriebe-Systeme GmbH; priority 1996-07-12; published 1998-01-28.
• Description: The GB counterpart/sibling of DE 19729354 A1 — a starter interlock that permits engine starting only when the automated transmission/clutch state is safe.
• § 102 relevance: Same as Ref. 1 — no anticipation; § 103 background only. Notably, it teaches an interlock that prevents or permits starting based on drivetrain state — the opposite direction from the '037 invention, which changes which lock is engaged to allow cranking more quietly.

Reference 3 — JPH 11257114 A

• Full citation: JP H11-257114 A (JPH11257114A), "Engine automatic stop / start device (自動停止始動装置)," Hitachi, Ltd.; filed 1998-03-17; published 1999-09-21.
• Description (metadata-level): An automatic engine stop/start ("idle-stop") device. Such devices stop the engine at standstill and restart it on demand; they commonly hold the vehicle with the service brake during the stop and restart.
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation of any claim. It relates to the general field of automatically stopping/restarting an engine, not to a parking-lock-to-brake lock handoff, and no operation/temperature gating as claimed. Potential § 103 reference for the "automatic engine restart at standstill with brake applied" context.

Reference 4 — JP 2000-127927 A

• Full citation: JP 2000-127927 A, "Automatic stopping/starting device of engine," Toyota Motor Corp.; filed 1998-10-20; published 2000-05-09.
• Description (metadata-level): A Toyota automatic engine stop/start controller — engine is automatically stopped and restarted, typically with the brake system holding the vehicle.
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation. Same category as Ref. 3; it is an economy/idle-stop reference. Supplies, at most, the generic context of restarting an engine while the vehicle is held — not the claimed "release parking lock, apply brake, crank, then re-engage parking lock" sequence. § 103 background.

Reference 5 — JP 2002-307982 A

• Full citation: JP 2002-307982 A, "Control device for automatic clutch type transmission," Isuzu Motors Ltd.; filed 2001-04-12; published 2002-10-23.
• Description: This is the reference expressly relied on in the '037 specification's "Description of the Related Art." The patent states that JP-A-2002-307982 teaches cranking an internal combustion engine with an electric motor, and that at low temperature (high lubricant viscosity) the motor load rises and starting becomes difficult — and that low temperature also lowers battery voltage, further degrading startability. (Full text of this JP reference was not retrievable in this session; description is per the '037 patent's own characterization.)
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation. By the patent's own account it teaches the problem (hard cold cranking via electric motor), not the solution (lock handoff). It is best treated as an admitted-background / § 103 reference establishing that slow low-temperature cranking was known.

Reference 6 — US 2003/0154945 A1

• Full citation: US 2003/0154945 A1, "Power outputting apparatus and vehicle equipped with same," Daigo Ando (assignee Toyota); filed 2002-02-20; published 2003-08-21. (Granted as US 6,966,866 B2; a related family member is DE 102006000239 B4.)
• Description (verified): A hybrid power-output apparatus with an engine, a power-split (three-shaft) mechanism (sun/carrier/ring), and motors MG1/MG2. On engine start-up, MG1 cranks the engine while MG2 applies a "pushing torque Ts" to the ring-gear shaft to suppress drivetrain rotation/reaction. Critically, the disclosure explicitly discusses the parking-lock mechanism and whether the parking-lock pawl is actually engaged: it detects whether the parking lock (shift in P range) is in fact engaged by observing shaft rotation after a torque is applied, and cancels the pushing torque when the parking lock is not engaged, to prevent the driveshaft rotating beyond a threshold at engine start-up.
• § 102 relevance: Does not anticipate claims 1, 4, or 7, but it is the most technically proximate reference on the parking-lock/cranking interaction. It discloses (a) cranking the engine with a motor-generator, and (b) monitoring/using parking-lock engagement state during cranking. It does not disclose releasing the parking lock and substituting a wheel brake (the core "lock switching control"), does not disclose re-engaging the parking lock after self-sustaining, and has no coolant-temperature gating. Strong § 103 reference, possibly combinable with Refs. 1–2 and 10.

Reference 7 — US 7,243,748 B2

• Full citation: US 7,243,748 B2 (pub. US 2006/0148613 A1), "Startup interlock for vehicle electric drive system," Deere & Company (inventors Kasten, Seksaria, Kizlyk); filed 2005-01-04; granted 2007-07-17.
• Description (verified): A series hybrid electric drive (engine → generator → DC bus → traction motor). On startup, the ECU executes a startup interlock: it prevents vehicle operation unless the FNR direction control is in neutral, wheel speed ≈ zero, and the speed command is near zero; otherwise it permits operation.
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation of any claim. It is a startup enable/inhibit interlock on a series-hybrid drivetrain — not a parking-lock/brake lock handoff, no cranking-with-lock-swap, no temperature logic. Relevant only as § 103 background showing start interlocks keyed to wheel speed = zero in a hybrid drive.

Reference 8 — US 2007/0173984 A1

• Full citation: US 2007/0173984 A1, "Stop determination apparatus, inclination determination apparatus, and electric parking brake controller," Daisuke Nakayama, Fuji Jukogyo K.K. (Subaru); filed 2006-01-06; published 2007-07-26. (Granted as US 8,086,384 B2.)
• Description (verified): An apparatus that determines when the vehicle is truly stopped (using a vehicle-speed sensor + G-sensor and a road-inclination estimate) so that an electric parking brake can be applied quickly and with an appropriate/hold force on hills.
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation. It concerns electric-parking-brake control and stop/grade detection — it supplies, at most, the generic notion of an electrically controlled parking brake as an alternative holding device. It has no engine cranking, no starter motor, no lock-swap. § 103 background only.

Reference 9 — US 2007/0170775 A1

• Full citation: US 2007/0170775 A1, "Vehicle control system," Fuji Jukogyo K.K. (Subaru); filed 2006-01-26; published 2007-07-26.
• Description (metadata-level; full text not retrieved): A Subaru vehicle control system from the same period/family of electric-parking-brake and stop-control work as Ref. 8 (same assignee, filed three weeks apart).
• § 102 relevance: No anticipation. Same category as Ref. 8 — brake/vehicle stop-control background. § 103 background only.

Reference 10 — US 2007/0200424 A1 ← closest reference

• Full citation: US 2007/0200424 A1, "Vehicle control apparatus and vehicle control method," Toyota Jidosha K.K.; filed 2006-02-27; published 2007-08-30.
• Description (verified): A hybrid-vehicle controller that automatically stops/starts the drive source (engine) while the vehicle is stopped. If a non-run shift position (e.g., P) is selected while stopped, the braking-force control device causes the braking device to apply a braking force to the wheel when the drive source is started — precisely to suppress the vehicle vibration/jolt that accompanies an engine restart with P selected (engine sometimes restarts to charge the battery when accessories drain it). It cites JP-A-11-348607 (auto stop-restart with wheel hold means during automatic stop) and JP-A-2005-306374 (choosing brake control vs. drive-source restart based on braking force vs. engine drive force).
• § 102 relevance: Does not anticipate claims 1, 4, or 7, but it is the most relevant § 102/§ 103 reference of record and the strongest § 103 anchor.
  • It discloses the "forcibly lock the wheels with the brake device when the engine is started while a non-run (P) position is selected" half of the lock-switching control (mapping to the "wheels are forcibly locked by the brake device" limitation of claims 1, 4, 7, and to the vibration-suppression purpose).
  • It does not disclose the other half of the claimed invention: releasing the parking lock mechanism to unlock the driveshaft so that the toothed pawl/gear cannot chatter, nor re-engaging the parking lock and releasing the brake after the engine self-drives, nor the coolant-temperature gating condition (below/above a predetermined temperature).
  • Accordingly, under a strict § 102 analysis, it cannot alone anticipate any independent claim. Combined with a parking-lock-release teaching (e.g., the parking-lock-engagement awareness of Ref. 6) it becomes the central § 103 combination the examiner/applicant would have to distinguish.

3. Bottom line

1. The single most relevant cited reference is US 2007/0200424 A1 (Toyota) — it independently teaches applying a brake force to the wheels when the engine is restarted while the vehicle is in P, which is the "forcibly lock the wheels" prong of the claimed lock-switching control. It does not teach releasing the parking lock and substituting the brake, re-engaging afterward, or the temperature gate.
2. US 2003/0154945 A1 (Ando/Toyota) is the second-most relevant — it is the only cited reference that meaningfully addresses the parking-lock mechanism's engagement state during motor cranking, but it too lacks the lock handoff and temperature logic.
3. No cited reference appears to anticipate any claim (1, 4, or 7) under § 102. None discloses the full claimed combination:
   • (i) on an engine-start condition, forcibly lock the wheels with the brake device and release the parking lock to free the driveshaft, then crank with the motor;
   • (ii) after the engine self-drives, re-engage the parking lock and release the brake; and
   • (iii) coolant-temperature gating (lock-switch only below a predetermined temperature, e.g., −10 °C).
     The remaining references (Luk DE/GB interlocks; Hitachi/Toyota idle-stop JP publications; the Isuzu background reference; Deere's startup interlock; the two Subaru electric-parking-brake references) are § 103/background material supplying isolated elements — start interlocks, automatic engine restart at standstill, electric parking brakes, cold-cranking difficulty — not the claimed lock-switching architecture.
4. Consistency check against the earlier sections: This is consistent with the prior litigation section's finding of no known assertion/challenge. The prior art of record being non-anticipatory background is also consistent with the patent having issued over these ten references with the "lock switching control" as the point of novelty.

Confidence statement: Items 3, 6, 7, and 10 are described from verified full text (high confidence). Items on JPH11257114A, JP2000127927A, JP2002-307982A, US2007/0170775A1, DE19729354A1, and GB2315305A are metadata/background-level only (lower confidence) — if you need their exact disclosures mapped limitation-by-limitation, a direct JP/JPO and DPMA/UKIPO full-text pull would be required, which I could not complete within the available search steps.

I'll ground this analysis in the specific prior-art references listed on the patent's own page. Let me pull details on the key references so the combination rationale is accurate rather than assumed.

Good — I now have solid grounding on the key references. Let me pull details on the remaining cited references and check for any prosecution/rejection history that would sharpen the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,645,037 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This builds on the earlier-generated bibliographic summary and litigation report (not repeated here). Per the task instruction, the analysis below uses only the prior-art references appearing in the "Prior Art" sections of the patent's own Google Patents page (the "Patent Citations (10)" list plus the two "Family Cites Families" references). I retrieved substantive disclosure text for the four most consequential references; for the remainder I have only bibliographic metadata (title/assignee/date) from the page itself, and I flag that distinction explicitly rather than assuming their content.

A caveat up front: I could not retrieve the file wrapper / reasons for allowance for application 12/679,592 (my searches hit the step limit), so I cannot tell you which specific rejection the applicant overcame or on what argument. Everything below is independent § 103 reasoning over the art of record.

1. The legal frame

Under Graham v. John Deere, obviousness turns on (1) the scope and content of the prior art, (2) the differences between the prior art and the claims, (3) the level of ordinary skill, and (4) secondary considerations. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex teaches that the TSM test is flexible — a combination may be obvious where the elements are known, the combination is of familiar elements according to known methods yielding predictable results, or there is a "design incentive" or "market pressure" to combine, or a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.

Level of ordinary skill (assumed): a bachelor's degree in mechanical/electrical/automotive engineering plus 2–4 years of experience in hybrid-vehicle powertrain and brake controls, or equivalent. This is a mature, well-populated art (HEV engine-start and brake controls), which lowers the bar for finding combinations predictable.

2. Claim 1 mapped element-by-element

The point of novelty is (h)+(i): a hand-off of the vehicle-holding function from the toothed park pawl (prone to chatter) to a friction/hydraulic brake during cranking, then back again. (j) and (g) are the temperature-conditional wrapper.

No single reference of record anticipates claim 1. None of the ten citations or two family-citations discloses the full (h)+(i)+(j) sequence. So the question is purely whether a combination renders it obvious.

3. The prior art of record, and what each actually contributes

Verified disclosure (I retrieved and read the substance):

• US 2007/0200424 A1 (Toyota Jidosha K.K.; "Vehicle control apparatus and vehicle control method"; pub. 2007-08-30) — the closest reference. Discloses a hybrid vehicle with an automatically stop/started drive source and a braking-force control device. When the drive source is started while the vehicle is stopped with a non-run position (P) selected, the controller applies braking force to the wheel to restrain vehicle vibration. It expressly reasons that in P "the driver is not manipulating the brake in some cases," and vehicle vibration during engine start is "likely to cause unpleasant feeling to occupants." It also cites JP-A-11-348607 (wheel-hold means maintaining braking force during engine restart) and JP-A-2005-306374 (compare engine drive force vs. braking force on restart). → Teaches the core concept of using a wheel brake to hold/settle the vehicle during engine start in P, motivated by occupant-perceived vibration/noise. It does not teach releasing the park pawl.

• JP 2002-307982 A (Isuzu Motors; "Control device for automatic clutch type transmission"; pub. 2002-10-23) — the background reference in the '037 specification. Discloses a powertrain with a fluid coupling, lock-up device, transmission clutch, and a gear parking brake (ギア駐車ブレーキ) at the transmission. Its stated object is good low-temperature engine startability; its solution is to disengage the transmission clutch during low-temperature engine start. → Teaches (i) the low-temperature cranking problem and (ii) a temperature-conditional change to the driveline engagement state at engine start to improve startability.

• US 2007/0173984 A1 (Fuji Jukogyo K.K. / Nakayama; "Stop determination apparatus, inclination determination apparatus, and electric parking brake controller"; pub. 2007-07-26; granted as US 8,086,384) — Discloses a stop-determination apparatus and an electric parking brake controller that, upon determining the vehicle has stopped, automatically transitions the parking brake into its braking state via an electric actuator. → Teaches automated, controller-driven application of an electric wheel-holding brake, triggered by vehicle-state determination.

• US 7,243,748 B2 (Deere & Co.; "Startup interlock for vehicle electric drive system"; 2007-07-17) — An engine + generator + traction-motor electric drive with a controller that, at startup, senses wheel speed and control-member positions and inhibits/permit operation based on sensed wheel speed ≈ zero and neutral position. → Teaches startup logic conditioned on sensed wheel speed / vehicle stationary state; a startup interlock architecture.

Metadata only (title/assignee/date from the patent page; content not independently verified):

• DE 19729354 A1 / GB 2315305 A (Luk Getriebe-Systeme; 1998) — "Motor vehicle with automatically-controlled gearbox and clutch and starter interlock."
• JPH 11-257114 A (Hitachi; 1999) — "Engine automatic stop / start device."
• JP 2000-127927 A (Toyota; 2000) — "Automatic stopping/starting device of engine."
• US 2003/0154945 A1 (Ando / Toyota; 2003) — "Power outputting apparatus and vehicle equipped with same."
• US 2007/0170775 A1 (Fuji Jukogyo; pub. 2007-07-26) — "Vehicle control system."
• JP 4171495 B2 (Fuji Heavy Industries; 2008-10-22; priority 2006-02-28) — "Vehicle stop determination method, electric parking brake control method, vehicle stop determination device, and electric parking brake control device."
• CN 100513771 C (姬腾飞; 2009-07-15; priority 2007-02-09) — "Engine starter and its control apparatus."

All of the above have effective dates before the '037's 2008-01-31 priority date and therefore qualify as prior art (pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e) as applicable — see the § 103(c) caveat in § 7).

4. Combination A — the strongest § 103 case

Primary: US 2007/0200424 A1 (Toyota/Endo) + JP 2002-307982 (Isuzu) + US 2007/0173984 A1 (Fuji/Nakayama).

How the elements map:

Motivation to combine (articulated):

1. Same field, same problem, same assignee. Endo '424 and the '037 are both Toyota hybrid engine-start/vibration controls. Endo '424 is directed precisely to occupant-perceived disturbance when the engine starts while the vehicle is parked in P — the identical problem space as the '037. A POSITA addressing "engine-start noise/vibration in P" would start from Endo '424.
2. Endo '424 supplies the "hold with the wheel brake" half of the lock-switching control, and supplies the motivation (avoid unpleasant vibration felt by occupants when the driver is not on the brake in P).
3. Isuzu '982 supplies the temperature-conditional half and the recognition that low temperature degrades cranking (higher load/lower battery voltage), so a different control intervention is warranted at low temperature. Combining a known low-temp startability control (Isuzu) with a known P-start vibration control (Endo) is a combination of familiar elements for their known purposes — the KSR paradigm.
4. Fuji '984 supplies the routine mechanism for controller-commanded wheel-holding brake application, so the "forcibly lock the wheels by the brake device" step is a known, off-the-shelf control implementation.
5. The hand-back (i) is a natural completion: once the engine self-sustains and the disturbance subsides, restoring the P-state park lock and releasing the temporary brake is the predictable closure of the sequence.

Where this combination is vulnerable: Endo '424 and the art it cites (JP-A-11-348607) hold the wheels with brakes while keeping P engaged — i.e., the park lock is not released. So Combination A establishes the brake-holding half, the temperature gate, and the general motivation, but does not teach or suggest the release of the parking pawl, which is the very thing that eliminates the pawl-chatter noise. A challenger must bridge that gap with either (i) common knowledge that dog/pawl park locks chatter under torque reversals, or (ii) a "substitution of equivalent locking means" argument. That bridge is where the '037's patentability most plausibly resides.

5. Combinations B and C — alternative § 103 theories

Combination B — Endo '424 + Isuzu '982 + Deere '748 + Luk DE 19729354/GB 2315305.

• Adds Deere '748 for the startup-conditioned, sensor-based enablement logic (wheel-speed-zero / neutral verification before permitting operation) and Luk for the concept of a starter interlock tied to driveline state.
• Motivation: interlocks that condition engine-start/drive-enable on driveline and wheel state are a well-known safety genus (Luk 1998; Deere 2007). A POSITA designing the '037's lock-switching control would readily implement the sequencing/verification logic using such interlocks.
• Weakness: Deere '748 and Luk are safety interlocks that prevent motion/operation, whereas the '037 intentionally permits cranking while swapping which mechanism holds the vehicle. They are at best analogous supporting art for the "controller sequencing engine-start relative to driveline/brake state" concept; they do not teach releasing a park pawl.

Combination C — Endo '424 + Isuzu '982 + Fuji '775 + JP 4171495 B2 (Fuji Heavy).

• JP 4171495 (vehicle-stop determination + electric-parking-brake control) and Fuji '775 would be offered for the proposition that automatically controlling a parking/wheel brake based on a determined vehicle state is known.
• Weakness: these go to the wheel brake side only. They add nothing on park-lock release, and JP 4171495's thrust (hill-hold / stop determination) is further from the cranking-noise problem. (Note: I did not retrieve full text for JP 4171495 or US 2007/0170775 A1, so treat their treatment here as provisional.)

6. Dependent claims

• Claims 2 & 3 (dep. 1) and Claims 5 & 6 (dep. 4): "brake device incorporates a parking brake and a hydraulic brake; hydraulic brake used for the forced lock; if the wheels are not locked by the parking brake, crank without the lock-switching control." This is a fail-safe / condition-check limitation. Given that Fuji '984 and the '037's own step S2 are about verifying park-brake state before relying on the electronic brake, and given that fail-safe redundancy and "skip the enhanced routine if a precondition isn't met" are routine engineering choices, this would be a strong obviousness candidate if claim 1 were held obvious — it adds little beyond a predictable safety check. (Consistent with the earlier section's observation: claims 2/3 and 5/6 are textually duplicative on their face.)
• Claim 8 (dep. 7): "the wheels include both drive wheels and driven wheels or include either of them." This is a breadth-clarifying statement that recites no structural or functional difference; it would not independently confer patentability.
• Claim 7: identical architecture to claim 1 but recites a generic "wheel lock device" and drops the "and driving wheels of the vehicle" qualifier from the driveshaft. Broader than claim 1; the same combinations and the same gap (§ 4) apply.

7. Countervailing (non-obviousness) considerations

A rigorous § 103 memo must state where the obviousness case is weak:

1. The references do not recognize the problem. None of the art of record identifies the parking pawl/park-gear as a noise source or attributes the disturbance to motor-torque direction reversal during an extended low-temperature crank. The '037's contribution is, in substantial part, problem recognition — and the art's silence on causation undercuts a hindsight-free motivation to release the pawl.
2. Possible teaching away / contrary design. Endo '424 and JP-A-11-348607 (cited therein) teach adding wheel-brake holding while P remains engaged. Releasing the primary park lock while in P is contrary to that teaching and to the safety premise of the P position (the vehicle's holding would then depend entirely on the service/EPB brake — exactly the failure mode claims 2/3 guard against). A POSITA would be reluctant to defeat the park lock's basic safety function.
3. Different problem type. Endo '424's "vibration" is whole-body pitch/ride disturbance; the '037's is acoustic chatter at a specific mechanical interface. Bridging "reduce perceived vibration" to "release the toothed lock to stop gear-contact noise" requires the very insight claimed.
4. Prosecution history. The examiner had these exact references (they are the citation-of-record list) and nonetheless allowed claim 1. That is not dispositive for § 103, but it is evidence that the Office did not consider the combination to disclose/suggest the lock-switch sequence.
5. Pre-AIA § 103(c) caveat (real, but uncertain). Endo '424 is a Toyota published application and the '037 is a Toyota patent. If '424 is relied upon only as § 102(e) art, pre-AIA § 103(c)(1) could disqualify it from the obviousness analysis as commonly-owned subject matter developed by another person. However, because an application publication is also a "printed publication," '424 may independently qualify as § 102(a)/(b) art, which § 103(c) does not remove. I have not resolved this, and it would materially affect Combination A's viability. (Flagged, not concluded.)

8. Bottom line

• Anticipation (§ 102): No reference of record discloses the full claim 1 sequence. Not anticipated.
• Obviousness (§ 103): There is a plausible but not clean § 103 case built on US 2007/0200424 A1 (Toyota/Endo) as primary — it supplies the wheel-brake-holding-during-engine-start-in-P concept and the occupant-comfort motivation — combined with JP 2002-307982 (Isuzu) for the low-temperature cranking problem and the temperature-conditional driveline intervention, and US 2007/0173984 A1 (Fuji/Nakayama) for automated wheel-brake application. Deere '748 / Luk and the Fuji/JP 4171495 references are secondary/supporting. Dependent claims 2/3, 5/6 (fail-safe) and 8 (breadth) are weaker on their own.
• The critical bridge — and the strongest non-obviousness position — is that no reference teaches or suggests releasing the parking pawl to eliminate gear-contact noise during cranking. The art holds with brakes in addition to the park lock; it does not swap the park lock out. Absent common-knowledge evidence that park-pawl chatter under torque reversal was a recognized problem, this gap is where the claims most plausibly survive § 103.

Confidence: High on the verified disclosures of Endo '424, Isuzu '982, Fuji '984, and Deere '748 (read from primary/aggregator text). Low on US 2007/0170775 A1, JP 4171495 B2, CN 100513771 C, JP 2000-127927 A, JPH 11-257114 A, and US 2003/0154945 A1 — I have only their titles from the patent page and did not verify content. The § 103(c) common-ownership question and the file-wrapper history are both unresolved and should be checked against PatentCenter/Global Dossier before relying on this memo for any adversarial purpose. This is technical analysis of the art of record, not legal advice.