US 9884633

US 9,884,633 B2 — Verification Summary

Search caveat up front: The identifiers below are taken literally from the patent document and the indexed records. I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the CAFC docket system directly in this session; the bibliographic data below comes from the patent copy provided plus indexed reproductions (Google Patents, Justia, FPO, and the patent PDF hosted at patentimages). Anything I could not verify against an authoritative source is flagged.

Two search hits that must NOT be conflated with this patent:

• A 2026 CAFC opinion (Network‑1 Technologies, Inc. v. Google, No. 24‑1893, opinion Apr. 23, 2026, https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1893.OPINION.4-23-2026_2681375.pdf) repeatedly refers to a "’988 patent." That is a different patent — a digital-content search/association patent asserted against Google's Content ID system (claim 17, "A method for associating an electronic work with an action…"). It is not US 9,884,633.
• WO 2015/035244 lists "9884633" as an enzyme classification number (EC 4.2.1.85, 3,5-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydratase). Unrelated.

No litigation or CAFC appeal naming US 9,884,633 surfaced in these searches. I cannot confirm the absence of such a docket with high confidence — treat this as "not found," not "does not exist."

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Bibliographic data

Continuity / family (priority date Feb. 3, 2014 for all):

• CIP 15/067,463 → US 10,093,328 ("In-line brake")
• Continuation 15/889,011 → US 10,683,018 ("Zip line rail system")
• 15/931,275 → US 11,400,383; 17/878,274 → US 11,786,830; 18/380,556 → US 12,076,657

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Abstract (paraphrased from the patent)

The zip line rail system can be connected to a challenge course, a zip line, a zip track system, or any combination of these. It can have two rails that a member slide's two wheels rollably engage, and it can be configured in a variety of directions.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Zip line rail system with an inline brake.
A support member carries a fixed rigid rail; two rails are spaced apart by a distance that defines a track member opening. An inline brake sits in either a braking position or an open position and is arranged to engage the member slide and decelerate it when in the braking position and the slide contacts the brake. The brake includes a movable carriage with a contact member that interferes with the member slide's path of travel; when the slide hits the contact member they move together in unison. A force-creating mechanism attached to the carriage would govern the slide's movement. The carriage is confined to a linear path parallel to the zip line rail by a track, and that track is fastened to the rail by a fixture — with the fixture connecting directly to the plate.

Claim 4 — Zip line rail system with a redundant (non-single-point-of-failure) member slide.
A support member carries a rail; a member slide is displaceable relative to the rail. A first member runs from a first member retention means downwardly through a puck and down to a first member lower retention means, and a second member runs through the puck down to a second member lower retention means — i.e., two independent load paths through the puck rather than a single bolt. The claim closes with the "whereby" clause that the wheels are disposed upwardly from the puck.

Dependent claims. Claim 2 adds that in the open position the member slide continues moving in its direction of travel. Claim 3 adds a force creator that returns the brake from the open position to the braking position and that also causes the slide to decelerate on contact.

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Drafting observations (my analysis, not an authoritative holding)

• Claim 1 recites "a fixed rigid rail" and then "two rails," and refers to "said member slide (80)" without any earlier recitation of a member slide. Combined with claim 4's "whereby said wheels (90)," which likewise lacks antecedent basis, these read as potential § 112(b) antecedent-basis defects. I have not seen any PTAB or court decision construing these claims, so I cannot say whether they have been tested.
• The functional/result-oriented language in claim 1 ("attaching a force creating mechanism… would control the movements of the member slide") is permissive rather than structural and may limit scope.
• The specification's reference numerals include 610 (fixed structure) and 390/420 which do not appear in the numbered list in the description as reproduced — a minor internal inconsistency in the document as indexed.

Confidence: High on numbers, dates, parties, and claim text (drawn directly from the patent copy). Medium on current ownership status and maintenance-fee history (indexed assignment/legal-event records, not confirmed in PatentCenter). Low/uncertain on litigation: I found no 2026 CAFC docket implicating 9,884,633, but my search coverage of CAFC dockets is not exhaustive.

I'll search for litigation involving US 9,884,633 across patent litigation trackers and court sources.

Initial searches returned nothing relevant. Let me try more targeted searches on the patent owner and specific litigation sources.

The JiMi IP v. Funcity case asserted different patents (US10478737, US8066578, US11376513), not US 9,884,633. Let me search more specifically, including the Unified Patents litigation portal and other family patents.

Litigation search: US 9,884,633

I searched patent‑litigation sources (Justia Dockets, Docket Alarm/Unified Patents‑style PTAB data, the CAFC opinions feed, Google Patents litigation links) for the literal identifiers "9884633" and "9,884,633," and cross‑checked the patent's owner (Jimi IP, LLC / Ropes Courses, Inc.) and its patent family. I found no litigation — district court or CAFC — naming US 9,884,633 as an asserted patent.

What I found (and why it is not this patent)

The JiMi IP v. Funcity docket is the closest match by owner and technology, and it is worth flagging precisely because it is a near‑miss: it is easy to conflate with a '633 suit, but the complaint asserts the '737, '578, and '513 patents, not the '633. That case was dismissed without prejudice by stipulation (claims and counterclaims by RCI against Funcity and vice versa), with a 90‑day conversion‑to‑with‑prejudice clause; no merits ruling, injunction, or damages award is on record. It does not implicate US 9,884,633.

False‑positive identifiers to disregard

• "9884633" as an enzyme classification number. WO 2015/035244 and WO 2014/055649 list "9884633" in tables mapping EC 4.2.1.85 (3,5‑hydroxyacyl‑CoA dehydratase). Unrelated.
• "9884633" as a DOI suffix. An IGARSS 2022 paper DOI ends in 9884633. Unrelated.
• As noted in the previously generated summary, the 2026 CAFC opinion in Network‑1 Technologies v. Google refers to a different "’988 patent" (digital‑content search), which is not US 9,884,633.

Conclusion and confidence

No litigation involving US 9,884,633 was found in these searches.

Confidence: Medium. My definite finding is that the JiMi IP v. Funcity suit and the other owner/title matches do not assert the '633 patent, and that the strongest candidate families (Justia, Unified‑style PTAB records, CAFC) surfaced nothing for the '633 number. However, I could not directly query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR, PACER, or the Unified Patents litigation portal in this session (my direct requests to those endpoints were not reachable/returned nothing specific), and my coverage of district‑court dockets and § 337 ITC complaints is not exhaustive. Treat this as "not found," not "does not exist." A definitive negative would require a direct docket search (Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, or PACER) for the patent number and for Jimi IP, LLC / Ropes Courses, Inc. as plaintiffs.

One practical note for diligence: given that Jimi IP owns a multi‑member continuation family off the same Feb. 3, 2014 priority date (US 10,683,018; 11,400,383; 11,786,830; 12,076,657), any future enforcement is at least as likely to assert a sibling patent as the '633 itself, so a docket search limited to the '633 number could miss related assertions.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 9,884,633: 0. No IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been filed against this patent on the record available to me. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent returns an empty set, and my independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming US 9,884,633, Jimi IP, LLC, or Ropes Courses, Inc. as patent owner of this patent. The breakdown by status is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB, which cuts both ways. There is no canceled claim for you to hide behind and no FWD to cite — but there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel burdening you at all. You would be a first petitioner, free to raise any art and any ground, with no prior panel having blessed or rejected any construction of claims 1–4. Any demand letter asserting US 9,884,633 rests on claims that have never been adjudicated anywhere.

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Proceedings on record

None. There is no proceeding to walk through at claim-level granularity, and I will not manufacture one. Specifically:

• No petition number, filing date, petitioner, judge panel, institution decision, or FWD exists for US 9,884,633 in the structured data or in any search result I obtained.
• No Federal Circuit appeal implicating this patent surfaced. (The earlier section of this analysis already flagged and correctly disposed of the "’988 patent" false positive in Network‑1 Technologies, Inc. v. Google, No. 24‑1893 (Fed. Cir. 2026) — that is a different patent.)
• I could not query PTAB E2E / PTAB Center directly in this session; the absence finding rests on the ODP-derived structured block plus web search. Treat it as "none found on a good-faith search," which in my experience is reliable for a patent this old but is not the same as a Certificate-of-Correction-grade verification.

False positives you will hit if you search by digits alone — do not be misled

Adjacent assertion activity (not a PTAB proceeding, but relevant to your risk picture)

• JiMi IP, LLC and Ropes Courses, Inc. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-05275 (N.D. Ill., filed 2024-06-24, Judge Sunil R. Harjani), docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/illinois/ilndce/1:2024cv05275/[460601](/patent/460601). The patents asserted were US 10,478,737; US 8,066,578; and US 11,376,513 — not US 9,884,633. Dismissed without prejudice by stipulation (with a 90-day conversion-to-with-prejudice clause and a confidential separate agreement); no merits ruling. Source summary: https://www.patsnap.com/fr/resources/blog/litigation/jimi-ip-v-funcity-adventure-park-zip-track-aerial-park-patent-dispute-patsnap/
  • Significance: the current owner (Jimi IP, LLC, assignee since 2020-04-10, Reel/Frame 052654/0330) and original assignee (Ropes Courses, Inc.) do enforce in this space, but they have chosen the zip-track family (’737 / ’513 / ’578) rather than the ’633 rail-system patent. That is a meaningful signal that ’633 may be viewed internally as the weaker or less-readily-infringed asset — consistent with the antecedent-basis drafting defects noted in the earlier claim analysis (§ 112(b) risk on "said member slide (80)" and "whereby said wheels (90)").
  • This is an update/expansion relative to the earlier summary in this analysis, which said "no litigation surfaced." A district court case in the same family/owner context does exist; it just does not name ’633.

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Strategic summary

Claim status of US 9,884,633. All four claims — independent claims 1 and 4, and dependent claims 2 and 3 — are UNTESTED. None canceled, none confirmed, none construed by any tribunal. There is no prosecution-history-driven narrowing from a PTAB record to rely on either; your only narrowing levers are the intrinsic record (specification, 52 cited references, and the PTA of 299 days). Because claims 1 and 4 are independent and claims 2–3 depend from claim 1, invalidating claim 1 would collapse claims 2–3 as well — the claim set is small and structurally fragile, which is a favorable feature for a petitioner.

Estoppel landscape. With zero prior petitioners, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue for you. There is no petitioner or privy in the chain to inherit estoppel from, and no IPR-based IPR/FWD to raise as a § 325(d) or General Plastic obstacle to your own petition. Conversely, you get no benefit from someone else's work: no expert declarations, no claim constructions, no admitted-prior-art stipulations, no institution-stage record. You would be building the invalidity case from scratch. Note the two live counterweights: (1) the examiner already had 52 references of record (many of them overhead-track, trolley, and brake patents from the exact field — e.g., US 3,577,930 "Monorail system," US 3,875,866 "Overhead track assembly," US 6,315,138 "Multidirectional, switchless overhead support system," US 2006/0027134 "Zipline braking and motion-arrest system"), so § 325(d) discretion is a real risk if you repackage art already before the examiner; and (2) the current Director's discretionary-denial regime (bifurcated institution process, Fintiv/settled-expectations considerations) is a live gate — the patent has been in force since 2018-02-06, roughly 8.6 years, which is exactly the "settled expectations" fact pattern the Office has cited to deny institution.

Pattern signals. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears anywhere in the chain. No serial petitioner. No PTAB appeal practice. The patent owner's enforcement has been a single, quietly-settled district court action on a sibling patent family. Maintenance fees are current through the 8th year (paid 2025-07-14, small entity), so the patent will not lapse out from under you: expiration (as adjusted) is 2034-11-29.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat the absence of PTAB activity as informational, not exculpatory. Zero IPRs after 8+ years of enforceability is a mild signal that competitors have not found this patent worth attacking — but it is not evidence of validity, and it means you have no free invalidity roadmap. Well-asserted patents in this field have attracted IPRs (see the ’737/’513 family citations in the record), so the absence here may simply reflect that the patent owner has not asserted ’633.

2. If you are the target of a ’633 demand or suit, calendar § 315(b) immediately. One year from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent is the deadline to file an IPR. Because the claim set is only four claims and two independents, a single well-scoped IPR on claims 1–4 is procedurally efficient.

3. Build the petition on art outside the examiner's 52 references to reduce § 325(d) exposure — e.g., commercial challenge-course and zip-rail systems, prior public installations, and foreign/industrial overhead-track art not cited. The ’633 specification itself cites an in-line brake family (US 10,093,328 / CIP 15/067,463) and the challenge-course line (US 7,174,534; 7,416,054; 7,981,004; 8,066,578); those are fair game as § 102(a)/(b) art against the brake limitations of claims 1 and 3 depending on their priority dates relative to 2014-02-03.

4. Consider the § 112 route in parallel. The antecedent-basis problems in claim 1 ("said member slide (80)") and claim 4 ("whereby said wheels (90)") are only correctable-by-challenge defects, and IPR cannot reach § 112. A district court indefiniteness/invalidity theory under § 112(b), or an ex parte reexam on the art, may be the cheaper lever if the infringement theory turns on those limitations. I flag this as my own reading of the claim text, not a holding of any tribunal — no tribunal has construed these claims.

5. Verify before you rely. Pull the PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket directly for 9,884,633 (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and check CourtListener for any 9,884,633 appeal, since I could not reach those systems in this session. If an IPR exists that ODP has not yet ingested, my "zero proceedings" finding would be wrong, and the correction would flow through to the estoppel analysis above.

Confidence: High that no AIA trial proceeding on US 9,884,633 exists on the indexed record; medium-high that none exists in reality (search-based, not E2E-verified). High confidence on the Funcity case being a different patent set. Low/uncertain only as to the identity of the unrelated inflatable-bed "’633" IPR referenced in search snippets.

I'll research the assignment chain and ownership signals. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig into the litigation history and the assignment correspondents.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 9,884,633 B2

Access caveat (repeat of the earlier section's caveat): I could not reach USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/), PEDS/ODP, or PACER directly in this session. The reel/frame numbers, dates, conveyance types, and assignor/assignee names below are drawn from the patent copy's own legal-events table plus indexed reproductions (Google Patents legal events, FPO, onscope, Justia). The correspondent-of-record field was not exposed in any source I could reach — I flag that gap explicitly rather than guess. Primary source for verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 9884633) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Inventors

Sean Horihan (name of record in indexed sources: Sean Raymond Horihan), Allegan, Michigan — sole named inventor on US 9,884,633. Employer at time of filing (2014‑02‑03): Ropes Courses, Inc., Allegan, MI, the named original assignee; he executed the confirmatory assignment to Ropes Courses on 2017‑10‑03 (see below).

Data-quality note: Patent aggregators (e.g., Patent Leaderboard, Allegan MI inventor table, where he ranks #6 with 13 patents) list his "primary company" as Jimi Ip. That reflects the current assignee of record after the 2020 transfer — it is not evidence he was employed by Jimi IP in 2014.

Unusual-pattern check — "all inventors depart within 12 months" — NOT present. Horihan kept inventing for the same organization after this filing: "Redundant track and rail system" (US 2016/0319492 A1, filed 2015‑05‑01), "In-line brake" (US 10,093,328, filed 2016‑03‑11, a CIP of this very application), and the 2018 design patents USD865,895/USD865,896. That is the opposite of the fire-sale precursor. Note also that the employer assignment was executed 2017‑10‑03 — ~3 years 8 months after filing and ~4 months before grant — the signature of a chain-of-title cleanup, not a termination-driven transfer.

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Original assignee

Ropes Courses, Inc., Allegan, Michigan.

• Corporate: Michigan domestic profit corporation, filed 1989‑03‑03 (Michigan Entity ID 800500482), perpetual term, most recent annual report 2022. President/director James Liggett; treasurer/secretary/director Michelle Liggett; registered agent James Liggett, 277 North Street, Allegan, MI 49010. (Texas foreign-corp registration on file from 2020‑01‑01.)
• Business: designs, manufactures, installs, and services commercial high-ropes challenge courses and zip lines — Sky Trail®, Sky Tykes®, Sky Rail™ zip lines, CTS Zip Lines, Clip 'n Climb® climbing walls, Amaze'n Mazes™ (acquired). At IAAPA Nov/Dec 2019 it took over WhiteWater West's dry-play attraction lines ("Adventure Trail", "No Boundaries" → rebranded "Destination") and rebranded as RCI Adventure Products (RCI).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. The Sky Rail zip-line rail system is the commercial embodiment of this patent family.
• Current status: operating. Owler estimates ~39 employees and ~$9.9M revenue; a ~$1M PPP (CARES Act) loan was taken April 2020; the company remains an active Michigan corporation and appears as co-plaintiff in a 2024 patent action (below). No bankruptcy filing found.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignments. Both appear in the patent copy's own legal-events table and are corroborated by independent indexed reproductions.

1. 2017‑10‑03 (executed) / recorded 2017‑10‑03 — Reel 043770/0835

• Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST)
• Assignor: Horihan, Sean
• Assignee: Ropes Courses, Inc., Michigan
• Correspondent: NOT VERIFIED. The indexed record exposes only REEL/FRAME:043770/0835; the recording-attorney field is not carried in the sources reachable here and must be read off the recorded cover sheet in Assignment Center.
• Context: inventor-to-employer confirmatory assignment / chain-of-title cleanup, executed ~3.7 years post-filing and ~4 months pre-grant.

2. 2020‑04‑10 (executed) / recorded 2020‑05‑13 — Reel 052654/0330

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Ropes Courses, Inc.
• Assignee: Jimi IP, LLC, Michigan (address of record 145 Brady Street, Allegan, MI 49010)
• Correspondent: NOT VERIFIED — same limitation.
• Context: portfolio-level transfer from the operating company to an affiliated IP-holding LLC. Reel 052654/0330 is a bulk recording: the identical reel/frame is cited as the assignment record for US 8,066,578 and other Ropes Courses family members, so this was one multi-patent conveyance, not a patent-specific deal.

No security agreements, mergers, change-of-name, licenses, or releases are recorded against this patent in the sources reachable here.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9884633
    2014 : Filed by Ropes Courses Inc
    2017 : Horihan assigns to Ropes Courses
    2018 : Patent granted
    2020 : Transferred to Jimi IP LLC
    2024 : JiMi IP and Ropes Courses sue Funcity

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PARTIAL: present in form, but the rubric's own tells do not hold.

• Supporting: Reel 052654/0330 moves the patent from a manufacturer to an entity with an "IP" suffix holding a portfolio that is essentially 100% Ropes Courses-originated (US 10,478,737; 11,376,513; 10,683,018; 11,400,383; 11,786,830; 12,076,657; 10,214,149; design patents).
• Offsetting: the tell-list fails — assignee is a Michigan LLC (not DE/TX) at 145 Brady Street, Allegan, MI 49010, a business street address in the same small town as Ropes Courses' 277 North Street HQ, not a registered-agent service; and the people behind Ropes Courses (James and Michelle Liggett) are the natural principals of a "JiMi" entity. (Inference flagged: "JiMi" = "Jim + Michelle" — plausible, not verified.)
• Call: present only as a related-party transfer, not as an arm's-length shell transfer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither Ropes Courses, Inc. nor Jimi IP, LLC appears on any of the named lists (Acacia; Marathon Patent Group; Intellectual Ventures; IPNav; Wi‑LAN; Mosaid/Conversant; Vringo; Pendrell; Innovatio; MPHJ; Lumen View; Round Rock; Document Generation Corp; Spangenberg entities) or in RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff directories I could reach. Jimi IP does litigate (below), but it is a single-industry asserter whose entire portfolio traces to one operating company — not a directory-level NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNVERIFIED (cannot call either way). The correspondent field was not retrievable. With only two links, recurrence is a low-information test regardless. One collateral, non-substitute data point: the prosecution attorney of record on a family member (US 2023/0029168 A1, "Zip track and system," same PCT/US2012/020850 family) is Polson Intellectual Property Law P.C. That is a prosecution attorney-of-record, not a confirmed assignment correspondent, and I will not treat it as one without the cover sheets. Do not rely on it as a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Exactly two recorded links over six years (2017 → 2020); no chain of LLCs; nothing recorded after 2020; the whole family (US 10,683,018 / 11,400,383 / 11,786,830 / 12,076,657) sits with the same assignee. No shared-correspondent or common-principal chain observed.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT as to this patent. The one assertion event found is JiMi IP, LLC et al. v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, No. 1:24‑cv‑05275 (N.D. Ill., filed 2024‑06‑24, Judge Sunil R. Harjani), asserting US 10,478,737, US 8,066,578, and US 11,376,513 — not US 9,884,633. Counsel for JiMi IP: Patricia Y. Ho and William F. Dolan (FisherBroyles LLP); for Funcity: George P. Apostolides and Joseph Ming Kuo (Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP). The case was dismissed without prejudice by stipulation under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), convertible to with-prejudice after 90 days absent an enforcement filing. The 2020‑04‑10 transfer precedes that suit by >4 years and the accused patents are the zip-track family, not the rail-system patent. Caveat: I could not run a comprehensive docket sweep for every JiMi IP / Ropes Courses case, so a suit elsewhere asserting 9,884,633 is not excluded — "not found" ≠ "does not exist."

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 filing by Ropes Courses/RCI found; the company operates, took PPP funds in April 2020, and co-plaintiffs in litigation. The 2020 transfer went to a same-town affiliate, not a bankruptcy estate.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR (structure present, substance weak). The shape exists: an operating manufacturer moves patents (reel 052654/0330) into an IP LLC and that LLC sues. But it is not covert — Ropes Courses, Inc. joined the 2024 suit as a named co-plaintiff, and the asserted patents are that company's own. No concealed beneficiary; no competitor-vs-competitor dynamic. On this record it reads as an operating company enforcing its own portfolio through an affiliate, not privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Jimi IP, LLC, an asserting entity. No RPX / AST / LOT / Unified / OIN link.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain is short and entirely related-party: Sean Horihan assigned to his employer Ropes Courses, Inc. by confirmatory assignment recorded 2017‑10‑03 (reel 043770/0835), and Ropes Courses moved the patent in a bulk portfolio recording to the same-town affiliate Jimi IP, LLC on 2020‑04‑10, recorded 2020‑05‑13 (reel 052654/0330). Ropes Courses / RCI Adventure Products is a live operating manufacturer (Sky Rail zip lines, Sky Trail courses) that ships products embodying the claims and appeared as co-plaintiff in the only suit found (JiMi IP, LLC v. Funcity Adventure Park, LLC, 1:24‑cv‑05275, N.D. Ill.). None of the classic NPE markers are present — no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-suit transfer as to this patent, no bankruptcy, no defensive-aggregator exit — and the transferee shares a town and likely principals with the operating company.

Caveat I want on the record: the assignee of record for 9,884,633 is Jimi IP, LLC, which does not itself ship products. Applying the rubric's literal "current assignee ships products" test would score this "NPE — moderate confidence" on Signal 1 alone. I do not think that reading fits the evidence, but a strict reviewer could land there.

Verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 9884633) — pull the two cover sheets at reels 043770/0835 and 052654/0330 to capture the correspondents of record, which are the one field this analysis could not verify.

Cross-reference note (no contradiction): This refines, and does not contradict, the earlier section — which found "no litigation or CAFC appeal naming US 9,884,633" and rated ownership confidence as "medium." The Funcity action confirms no assertion of this patent while confirming Jimi IP as an active, related-party asserter.

I'll research this systematically, starting with targeted searches on the patent and its most relevant cited references.

Let me gather details on the remaining high-relevance braking and trolley references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,884,633 B2 ("Zip line rail system")

1. Verification of the target patent (literal identifiers)

Confirmed against the granted front page (US009884633B2, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/95/f9/94/ca415984b494a1/US9884633.pdf):

Note on the "database" instruction: I could not open USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR directly in this session; the "(56) References Cited" list I rely on is the one printed on the granted front page (which matches the Google Patents "Citations (52)" list). The list is therefore the patent's own cited-art of record, not a fresh examiner search I ran. That distinction matters for the § 102 vs. § 103 characterizations below.

Two identifier cautions (carried over from the earlier summary and re-confirmed): the "988 patent" in the 2026 Network‑1 v. Google CAFC opinion is a different patent; and "9884633" as an enzyme classification is unrelated. Do not conflate.

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2. Critical framing before the reference list

Two facts dominate any anticipation analysis here and should be stated up front, literally:

1. The claims are rail-based; nearly all cited art is cable/rope-based. Claim 1 requires "two rails … a distance (120) between each rail defining a track member opening (370)" fastened via plates (30) to a support member (20), and requires the brake's track (680) to be "fastened to the zip line rail by a fixture (685) [that] connects directly to the plate (30)." Claim 4 requires a rail (40) carrying a member slide with first/second members (220/230) passing "through a puck (160)." Essentially none of the 52 citations discloses a rigid dual-rail track with plate-mounted rails; they are trolley-on-cable devices. That is why the examiner allowed the case.

2. § 102 anticipation requires one reference disclosing every element. On the art of record, I find no single reference that anticipates claim 1 or claim 4 as a whole. The listed references are § 103 (obviousness) and background art. I flag this explicitly rather than manufacture anticipations that the record does not support.

One citation that is not prior art at all: US 9,120,023 B1 (Elizabeth Wales Burroughs, "Human flying apparatus") — its earliest date is May 8, 2014, after the Feb. 3, 2014 filing date of the 9,884,633 application. It cannot be § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art against this patent. Its presence on the list appears to be a cite-of-interest, not substantive art. (This is an anomaly worth flagging, consistent with the earlier note that the reference lists contain irregularities.)

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3. The 52 cited references — citation, date, brief, relevance

3A. Braking / carriage references (most relevant to claim 1)

3B. Redundant-load-path / slide references (most relevant to claim 4)

3C. Overhead track / trolley / rail references (structural art for the "support member + rail/plate" elements)

(Remaining entries — US 3,563,539; US 4,597,689; US 4,275,987 family; and the thin sub-references — are track/conveyor/door-hardware backgrounds of no independent § 102 significance.)

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4. Claim-by-claim § 102 conclusion

Claim 1 (in-line brake + dual-rail system): No cited reference anticipates. The brake carriages of Liston '292, Adventure Holdings '843/'842, and Lerner '115 disclose the braking-carriage-moves-in-unison-with-the-riding-member idea (claim 1's carriage 710 / contact member 630 / unison movement), and Dyson '138, Gorbel '944, Dehne '997, and Mazuyer '866 show rail/beam support structures. But none discloses the combination of (i) two rails separated by a distance defining a track member opening, (ii) plate arms hanging the rails from a support member, and (iii) a braking track fastened by a fixture that connects directly to the plate — the last element is the feature most likely to have carried allowance. This is a § 103 case at best.

Claim 2 (open position → continue travel): same as claim 1 — no anticipation; Liston '292 and Lerner '115 show post-brake continued travel, but on cables.

Claim 3 (force creator returning open→braking and decelerating): Liston '292 (gravity/chain reset) and Cylvick '259 (spring/attenuator) are the closest; again cable-based, no anticipation.

Claim 4 (two-member redundant slide through a puck): the strongest single-reference candidate on the list is US 2012/0298443 A1 / US 8,893,852 (Liggett) — it discloses first and second members with retention means passing through disk structures, i.e., two independent load paths. Caveat repeated: that document is the priority source of the '633 patent (US 13/115,664), so treating it as § 102 "prior art by another" is a legal question (inventor identity/common family) rather than a settled fact. Secondary candidates: US 2010/0078262 (enclosed-track captured slider) and US 2006/0090960 (cable-hook tracking), both § 103 rather than § 102.

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5. Confidence / limitations

• High confidence on the citation list, dates, and titles — taken directly from the granted front page and cross-checked against Google Patents' citation table.
• High confidence that US 9,120,023 B1 post-dates the filing date and is therefore not § 102 art.
• Medium confidence on the substantive characterizations of items I could not fully open in this session (several "Background" rows are from titles/abstracts only).
• Explicitly flagged uncertainty: whether US 2012/0298443 A1 qualifies as prior art against claim 4 given the same-family/priority relationship, and whether the two "anomalous" reference-list items (post-dating art; irregular numerals) reflect an indexing artifact — I did not confirm these against USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR.

If you want, I can next attempt to pull the actual examiner's § 102/§ 103 rejections and citations from the file history (the Office actions) so we can separate what the examiner relied on from what the applicant merely listed — that would turn this into a "grounds of rejection" map rather than a raw citation survey.

I'll ground a few of the key prior-art references before building the §103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,884,633 B2 ("Zip Line Rail System")

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103; prior art drawn from the "Patent Citations (52)" and family listings on the US 9,884,633 page

Note on method: I mapped each claim element to references listed in the patent's own citation record (and, where useful, to their corresponding publications that I verified by search — URLs given below). Where I could not read the full text of a reference, I say so and flag the inference rather than assert it.

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1. Threshold issues that control the §103 analysis

1.1 Which §102/§103 regime applies, and to which claims

The application was filed February 3, 2014 — after the AIA first-inventor-to-file effective date of March 16, 2013. The patent claims §120/§119 benefit of PCT/US12/020850 (filed Jan. 26, 2012, "Zip Track and System") and US 13/115,664 (filed May 25, 2011, "Non-Single Point of Failure Member Slide").

That benefit claim is not uniform across the claims, and this is the single most important fact for the §103 analysis:

Two corollaries:

1. Claim 4's art set is narrower. If the §120 benefit to 13/115,664 is good, then pre-May-25-2011 art only can be used against claim 4 (AIA §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) with pre-AIA §3(n)(1) transitional treatment), and the US 2012/0298443 A1 publication (Nov. 29, 2012) and US 8,893,852 (issued Nov. 25, 2014) — both from the same application, both in the '633's own "Family Cites Families" list — are not prior art to claim 4 because they are the parent's own publications.
2. Claims 1–3 face more art. The "in-line brake" concept was separately pursued as a CIP, US 15/067,463 → US 10,093,328 ("In-line brake," filed Mar. 11, 2016) — indicating that the in-line brake material was new matter added at the Feb. 3, 2014 filing, not carried forward from the 2012 PCT. If that is right, the entire body of zip-line end-brake art published in 2012–2013 is prior art to claim 1 and is fair game.

There is a further wrinkle worth flagging explicitly, because it works in the opposite direction: the '633 names Sean Horihan as sole inventor, while 13/115,664 is credited to James Allen Liggett (see US 8,893,852, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8893852). If the pre-AIA "same inventor" requirement of §120 (or AIA §120's common-inventor requirement) is unmet, the claim-4 benefit claim fails, the effective filing date for claim 4 drops to Feb. 3, 2014, and US 2012/0298443 A1 (published Nov. 29, 2012 — more than one year before Feb. 3, 2014) becomes a §102(b)/§102(a)(1) statutory bar on the puck-and-two-member subcombination. Either way the claim-4 analysis has to be run twice. I flag this as an issue, not a conclusion — inventorship of 13/115,664 is not something I can verify from the page.

1.2 Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA here is a mechanical designer/ride-systems engineer with ~2–5 years in suspended-trolley, challenge-course, and overhead-conveyor track design, familiar with both cable zip lines and rigid-rail trolley systems. Amusement-ride braking and overhead-track hardware are predictable mechanical arts, which matters to the KSR analysis below.

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2. The prior-art landscape, grouped by function

Observation on prosecution history: nearly every reference in groups C and D carries the examiner's "*" flag in the citation table — i.e., it was of record and therefore considered. Any §103 challenge must therefore explain why the examiner's combination fell short. The most likely gap is the last limitation of claim 1 (the brake-carriage track "fastened to the zip line rail by a fixture … [that] connects directly to the plate"), which is a mounting detail rather than a functional one.

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3. Claim 1 — Ground 1 (primary)

Proposed combination: Liggett US 7,175,534 (or US 8,066,578) in view of Adventure Holdings US 2013/0239842 and further in view of US 3,037, no. — better: US 6,374,456 (Modernfold) or US 7,392,747 (Dorma) for the track-mounting fixture.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales (A), (C), (F)):

• Same field, same problem, same solution type. Rigid-rail zip tracks and the '633 share the identical problem: arresting a harnessed rider approaching the low end without a hard stop. Every group-C reference is directed to that exact problem. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) ("familiar elements … according to known methods").
• Predictable substitution. The '633's own specification frames the rail as a substitute for a cable ("rather than using cables or ropes, uses a fixed member"). A POSITA adapting a cable-path arrester (Adventure Holdings '842, Liston '292) to a rigid rail need only re-seat the carriage on a short length of linear rail instead of a cable — the mechanical behavior of the carriage is unchanged.
• Market/throughput pressure. Cylvick '259 expressly reasons that ride revenue "may largely depend on the number of operators employed … and the number of users served within a given period," motivating automatic resetting brakes — precisely the '633's stated advantage over manual braking.
• Examiner of record already accepted the subcombination. The '633 specification itself cites the challenge-course, puck-transition, zip-track, and non-single-point-of-failure patents as its own building blocks. Statements in the specification that the invention "may be integrally connected to" and "traverse from" those systems are effectively an admission of the combinability of these references.

Reasonable expectation of success: High. Every element is a discrete mechanical component; there is no unpredictable or criticality-laden parameter, and no reference in group C teaches away from mounting the arrester hardware on the ride structure itself.

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4. Claim 1 — Ground 2 (alternative, robust to the priority question)

If the priority date for the brake claims is held to be earlier than 2012 (see §1.1), Liston '292 and Adventure Holdings '842 fall away. The combination then becomes:

Cylvick US 2009/0014259 A1 (published Jan. 15, 2009) in view of US 7,966,941 (Brannan) or US 2006/0027134 (Ziptrek) and US 4,464,997 (Webb).

• Cylvick '259 supplies the carriage-on-a-frame, the two-position range of motion, the default-toward-maximum-braking configuration, and the spring-type second resistance mechanism (force creator).
• Brannan '941 / Ziptrek '134 supply the trolley-struck, path-interfering contact member.
• Webb '997 (or US 6,374,456, US 3,878, no. — the overhead track assemblies generally) supplies a carriage confined to a linear track mounted to overhead structure.

The motivation is unchanged; the difference is only which reference supplies the carriage housing.

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5. Claims 2 and 3

Claim 2 ("in the open position the member slide can continue to move in the direction of travel") is disclosed or rendered obvious by Adventure Holdings '842: after the braking block releases, the trolley "continue[s] … toward the landing platform"; and by Liston '292, whose carriage is returned by gravity "after the zip liner comes to a complete stop they remove the carriage from the zip line." Any of the primary grounds above carries claim 2.

Claim 3 (a force creator displacing the brake from open to braking position, and also causing the slide to decelerate) is the clearest case in the patent:

• Cylvick '259: "a carriage may, under the impetus of gravitational acceleration, move toward the second position. At the second position, the braking force may be at a maximum … a default configuration corresponding to maximum braking."
• Liston '292: "gravity returns the brake mechanism"; "the braking carriage pulls on a rope leader that is connected to a chain … they lift a continuing greater amount of chain … whereby the further a rider moves … the amount of braking force increases."
• Adventure Holdings '842: relief valve venting compressed air, after which the block returns to its initial position; the same cylinder that returns the carriage also supplies the braking force in the first instance.
• The specification's own force creator list (spring, retraction device per retract-a-strap.com, eddy-current brake) is the textbook KSR "one of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" list.

A single reference (Liston or Adventure Holdings) performs both functions recited in claim 3, so no combination is even required.

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6. Claim 4 — the redundancy claim

Claim 4 requires: a rail on a support member; a displaceable member slide; a first member running from a first member retention means downwardly through a puck to a first lower retention means; a second member likewise through the puck to a second lower retention means; "whereby said wheels are disposed upwardly from said puck."

6.1 If the §120 benefit to 13/115,664 holds

The parent is not prior art, and the claim-4 case must be built from group D:

• US 5,156,233 (safety anchor for slotted beams), US 5,271,481 (rolling restraint device), and US 8,286,559 (Conax, trolley assembly for passenger restraint system) each show a captive trolley/anchor in a slot with redundant restraint geometry.
• US 7,992,680 (Small, rigid rail fall protection) and US 2010/0078262 (enclosed track fall protection) show hanger hardware passing through a slot with upper and lower capture.
• US 4,597,689 (latching means) shows duplex retaining structure in a rail-hung system.

Motivation: the '633 specification itself states the motivation in identical terms — "increase the safety by having a means to keep the safety cable attached to the glide, as opposed to a single weight bearing bolt," and criticizes the prior art for having "a single point of failure means." Redundancy is the recognized, industry-standard response to single-point-of-failure concerns in fall-protection and overhead-lifting design (cf. US 8,001,904, fall-arrest assembly). Pairing a redundant member pair with the well-known puck-in-channel geometry of Liggett US 7,175,534 / US 2013/0228092 ("a puck member 180 descend[ing] downwardly … to a harness worn by the user") requires nothing more than duplication of a part with the expectation of duplicating its load path.

The final "whereby" clause — wheels disposed upwardly from the puck — is a purely positional/orientational recitation. Under In re Vaidyanathan / In re Skvorecz, a "whereby" clause is given patentable weight only when it defines structural differences; here it merely describes the obvious placement of the running gear above the puck (as Liggett's alternate and offset member slides already show: "the wheels 90 may be located above the puck 160"). Even if given weight, it is a design choice among two positions with no unexpected result.

6.2 If the §120 benefit to 13/115,664 fails, or as an alternative

Then US 2012/0298443 A1 / US 8,893,852 (Liggett) is §102(b) art (published Nov. 29, 2012; more than one year before Feb. 3, 2014). Its claim 1 recites "a first member (120); a second member (130) … said first member … terminating in a first member retention means (100) … a top disk (70) … a first disk (60) … a sheath (160) … a sheath member securement device (240) … whereby … the first disk (60) is slidably disposed within a track member (20)." That is the same structure as claim 4 with different reference numerals — the '633 even uses overlapping numerals (200/210 retention means, 160 puck, 165 lower disk, 170 upper disk, 260 sheath) that trace directly to the '443 publication.

That would make claim 4 anticipated under §102(b) — or, in the alternative, obvious on the ground that one of ordinary skill would combine Liggett's dual-member slide with the rail-and-wheel support of Liggett's own challenge-course track (US 7,175,534) or of US 6,315,138, since both are the same artisan's solutions to the same walk-along-a-track problem in the same commercial system.

Note the textual inconsistency to exploit: the '633 claims the benefit of 13/115,664 while its claim 4 and its FIG. 15–16 disclosure are essentially that parent's disclosure. Either the priority claim is good and the parent's own publication is disqualified (leaving group D), or the priority claim is defective and the parent's publication is a statutory bar. There is no comfortable middle.

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7. Objective indicia — what the patent owner would argue

None of these is established by the record on the page, but a full §103 defense would have to address:

• Long-felt need. The specification asserts the prior art challenge courses "do not have means for traversing on a dual rail track or system" and that a need existed to increase safety "while not decreasing the capacity of participants." This is the strongest potential nexus argument, but a "need" stated in the specification is not proof of a long-felt, art-recognized need; there must be evidence the industry tried and failed.
• Commercial success / licensing. The Ropes Courses → Jimi IP, LLC asset transfer and the four-assignment chain (2020 REEL/FRAME 052654/0330) is evidence of value, not of nonobviousness; there is no evidence of record establishing a nexus between any commercial success and the specific claim-1 brake-mounting limitation.
• Copying / industry recognition. No evidence in the citation record.
• Continuation practice. The five-member family (US 10,683,018; 11,400,383; 11,786,830; 12,076,657) reflects prosecution strategy, not objective indicia.

On the other side, the sheer density of the field cuts against nonobviousness: the citation table lists roughly 20 distinct zip-line braking references from 2004–2014, all directed at decelerating a harnessed rider on a suspended path.

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8. Where the §103 case is weakest

I want to be candid about the gaps rather than overstate the ground:

1. The carriage-track fixture limitation ("said fixture connects directly to the plate") is a mounting detail with no functional consequence. A petitioner would need to supply an explicit reason why a POSITA would bolt the brake-carriage track to the rail support plate rather than to the ground, a wall, or a separate post — the '633 specification itself says the fixture "may connect directly to the plate or may be positioned with external means such as an adjacent wall or structure," which is a concession that the location is not critical.
2. I have not read the full texts of US 2013/0239842, US 2013/0239841, US 2006/0027134, US 2011/0162917, or US 7,966,941. My mappings for those are based on abstracts, claims, and family data surfaced above; the correspondence of "open position" to those references' returned/initial positions should be verified against the text.
3. Antecedent-basis defects in claim 1 ("said member slide (80)" with no prior recitation) and claim 4 ("whereby said wheels (90)") are real (see the earlier summary section), but they cut both ways: if the claim is construed to require a member slide, the prior-art mapping is easier; if it is held indefinite under §112(b), the claim is invalid on a different ground. Neither helps the patent owner.
4. The "would control" language in claim 1 ("attaching a force creating mechanism to the carriage would control the movements of the member slide") is conditional/permissive and may be read as non-limiting under In re Johnston / Ex parte Jepson. Read narrowly, claim 1 does not actually require the force creator to be present — which removes the one limitation the Art might arguably have had to supply, making the claim broader and therefore easier to invalidate.

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9. Conclusion

Confidence: Moderate-to-high on claims 1–3, and high on claim 3. The strongest single fact is that the '633's own specification cites the parent non-single-point-of-failure application as its priority document while claim 4 reproduces that parent's structure — a §103 (or §102) vulnerability that turns on an inventorship/priority question the page does not resolve. Lower confidence on the precise content of the non-examiner-cited-in-full references noted in §8.2 above, and on whether any given reference was actually applied during prosecution (I have the citation table, not the office actions).