US 9970792

I'll research US patent 9970792 across USPTO records and litigation dockets.

Let me check litigation/assignment records and current ownership.

Let me verify current ownership and confirm whether any 2026 appellate docket actually involves this patent.

US 9,970,792 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: The authoritative full text I was given is the Google Patents record for US9970792B2, fetched 2026-09-24. My searches of the open web did not surface a USPTO Patent Center/PAIR or assignment record directly, and I found no CAFC docket naming this patent. Where I am inferring rather than reading a record, I say so. Also flag a data-integrity issue: your prompt sets the date as April 26, 2026, while the environment header says 2026-09-29. I have cited dates as they appear in the fetched record rather than reconciling them.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative record)

Ownership caveat: The "Aumovio Systems Inc" assignment rests on Google Patents' current-assignee field. It is consistent with the well-documented fact that Continental spun off its Automotive group sector as AUMOVIO SE, which listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 2025-09-18. However, I did not independently verify a recorded USPTO assignment from Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. to Aumovio. Treat the transfer as probable but not confirmed at the reel/frame level.

Abstract (as issued)

A stepper motor assembly, for use in an instrument panel in some applications, has a first rotor, a second rotor, a set of first electromagnets, and a set of second electromagnets. Each electromagnet is disposed adjacent to one of the first and second rotors and is configured to generate a magnetic field to rotate the respective rotor. The first rotor is configured to rotate a first shaft, wherein the first shaft extends from a first side of the stepper motor assembly. The second rotor is configured to rotate a second shaft, wherein the second shaft extends from a second side of the stepper motor assembly. The second side is opposite the first side. The first and second shafts are rotatable independently about a single shaft axis.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Stepper motor assembly (rotor + two-sided shaft + non-coplanar gearing).
Two rotors, each driven by its own set of electromagnets about its own rotor axis. Rotor one drives a first shaft exiting a first side of the assembly; rotor two drives a second shaft exiting the opposite side. The two shafts share a single shaft axis but rotate independently. Added to that structural core: a first shaft gear part on the first shaft lying in a first plane, a second shaft gear part on the second shaft lying in a second, non-coplanar plane, a first intermediate gear meshing both with the first shaft gear part and with a gear part on the first rotor, and a second intermediate gear meshing both with the second shaft gear part and with a gear part on the second rotor. In short: a two-stage gear train per shaft (rotor gear → intermediate gear → shaft gear), with the two shafts' gear planes deliberately offset.

Claim 10 — Instrument panel assembly (rotor/electromagnet version).
Same two-rotor, two-electromagnet-set, two-opposite-shaft architecture, plus a printed circuit board in communication with both electromagnet sets. Adds that the first shaft gear part lies in a first plane normal to the shaft axis and the second shaft gear part lies in a second, non-coplanar plane normal to that axis, plus the same first and second intermediate gears coupling each rotor gear part to its shaft gear part.

Claim 15 — Instrument panel assembly (mask-and-dials version).
A mask with a display side and a back side, defining first and second openings. A first dial and second dial extend through those openings. A stepper motor assembly sits against the back side and contains two stepper motors (first rotor + first electromagnets; second rotor + second electromagnets). The first shaft exits a first side and drives the first dial; the second shaft exits the opposite side and drives the second dial. The shafts are disposed along a single shaft axis, with the first and second shaft gear parts on non-coplanar planes normal to that axis, and first/second intermediate gears meshing with the respective shaft gear parts and rotor gear parts.

Claim 21 — Stepper motor assembly (housed two-motor version).
A first stepper motor and a second stepper motor disposed in a housing. The first shaft exits a first side of the housing and the second shaft exits the opposite side, with both shafts rotatable about a single shaft axis. Again includes the first and second shaft gear parts on non-coplanar planes and the two intermediate gears meshing with their respective shaft gear parts and rotor gear parts.

Dependent-layer highlights

• cl. 2 PCB in communication with both electromagnet sets; cl. 3 first/second dials on the shafts; cl. 4 mask with first/second illuminatable pointers.
• cl. 5 second shaft has a sleeve concentrically disposed around the first shaft (the coaxial/independent-rotation mechanism described in the spec).
• cl. 6 second shaft gear part lies in a plane normal to the shaft axis; cl. 7 all listed components disposed in a housing; cl. 8 housing attached to the PCB; cl. 9 one shaft passes through the PCB and the other does not.
• Mirroring dependents in the other chains: cl. 11–14 (dials, pointers, single axis + sleeve, housing on PCB) and cl. 16–20 (housing, electromagnet/PCB language, sleeve, pointers, housing-on-PCB), and cl. 22 (PCB attached to housing, dials through mask openings, sleeve around first shaft).

Prior art and citation profile (from the record)

• 33 cited references, including US 3,135,886 (coupled synchronous motor assembly), US 4,501,981 (Haydon Switch, return-to-zero stepper motor), EP 0 793 329 A1 (Shinko Electric, "Concentric-double-shaft simultaneously rotating apparatus"), US 6,524,108 (Denso, shaft arrangement of indicating instrument), US 6,557,485 (TRW, dual integrated gauge), US 7,503,607 (Continental Automotive Systems US, instrument cluster display), and CN 101728926 B / CN 101728926 B (彭希南), "Micro step motor with double driving shafts".
• 4 non-patent citations, all Sonceboz "Slimline Stepper Motors 6407" / slimline stepper motor for instrument clusters materials (one dated 2014-07-02).
• Cited by (1): US 2017/0069439 A1 (Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, "Position indicator," priority 2014-05-08).

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check — explicit negative finding

• I found no CAFC 2026 docket, district court docket, ITC proceeding, IPR, PGR, or reexamination that names 9,970,792. I cannot represent this as exhaustive without direct PACER/Patent Center access, but on the searches run there is no such proceeding.
• Do not confuse this patent with the "'997 patent" appearing in search results. My query for "9970792" returned Warsaw Orthopedic / NuVasive / Medtronic litigation material referencing a "'997 patent." That shorthand refers to US 8,251,997 (NuVasive's lateral spinal surgery method patent), an entirely different patent and technology. Per your strict rule, I am flagging it rather than folding it into this report.
• Similarly, the string 10.23919/ICITS155531.2022.9970792 is a DOI from a 2022 IEEE conference paper on smart trolleys — a coincidental digit-string match, unrelated to this patent.

Uncertainties I want to be explicit about

1. Current assignee: "Aumovio Systems Inc" is taken from Google Patents' current-assignee field; no reel/frame for the Continental→Aumovio transfer was located.
2. Fee status: the 2026-01-05 record is a reminder for the 11.5-year maintenance fee. I have no payment record; "Active / expires 2034-11-18" reflects the record as fetched and could change if the fee is not paid.
3. Inventor city/country comes from a third-party aggregator (patentbuddy), not from the authoritative text.
4. Adjusted expiration: 2034-11-18 is roughly 2014-08-11 + 20 years + ~99 days, consistent with a small patent term adjustment, but I did not read the face of the patent for a PTA figure.

I'll search multiple litigation sources for this specific patent number.

Initial results are mostly about unrelated patents (e.g., NuVasive's '997 is patent 8,251,997). Let me search more targeted litigation databases for the exact patent number.

Let me do a few final targeted checks on litigation-specific databases.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" finding against web sources and check for any CAFC appeals before writing.

The first two searches surfaced no proceedings. Let me run targeted confirmatory searches on PTAB dockets, Unified Patents, and any CAFC appeal.

Let me do a final round: site-specific checks on PTAB dockets and CourtListener for any appeal.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 9,970,792. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block drawn from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns an empty set — no IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been instituted, denied, or terminated against this patent — and my confirmatory web searches (Google Patents family/citation record, PTAB-related docket aggregators, and general IPR/PGR queries keyed to both the patent number and the application number 14/456,564) surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal. The breakdown is therefore not "0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled" in the sense of contested outcomes; it is no proceedings filed at all. The bottom-line defensive posture is the opposite of a hardened patent: 9,970,792 has never been stress-tested at the Board. Every claim — 1 through 22 — is UNTESTED, and there is no IPR estoppel wall, no claim cancellation to exploit, and no adverse FWD to hide behind. A defendant today starts from a blank slate with the full menu of § 102/§ 103 printed-publication grounds still available.

Sourcing caveat: The negative finding rests on (a) the canonical structured block supplied in this prompt, which is authoritative for the proceedings list, and (b) the searches I was able to run. I could not complete a direct PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End docket lookup or a PACER/CM-ECF sweep before hitting my tool-call limit, and the USPTO ODP ingest can lag recent filings. Treat "no proceedings" as high-confidence but not court-certified. Also flag a residual data-integrity note carried forward from the earlier summary: an earlier section of this analysis referenced a prompt date of 2026-04-26 while the environment header says 2026-09-29; I am dating this memo to the header value.

Proceedings

None. There are no proceeding numbers, petitioners, panels, institution decisions, Final Written Decisions, settlements, or appeals to report. I will not manufacture docket numbers or APJ names to fill this section.

Per the explicit instruction not to fabricate: there is no ### IPR20XX-XXXXX — Petitioner v. Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. / Aumovio heading to write, because no such paper exists in the record I can access.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All 22 claims of 9,970,792 are UNTESTED. No claim is CANCELED, and no claim has been adjudicated SUSTAINED by the Board. The independent claims — claim 1 (two-rotor assembly with non-coplanar shaft-gear planes and twin intermediate gears), claim 10 (instrument-panel variant with PCB), claim 15 (mask-and-dials variant with single shaft axis), and claim 21 (housed two-motor variant) — stand exactly as issued on 2018-05-15, subject only to whatever construction a district court or the Board might later adopt. The dependent-layer features that would ordinarily be the focus of a validity attack — notably claim 5 / 13 / 18 / 22's "sleeve concentrically disposed around the first shaft," and claim 9's one-shaft-through-the-PCB limitation — have never been construed in any post-grant forum.

Estoppel landscape. Because there has been no IPR/PGR, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is entirely absent. No petitioner (or privy) is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court. A defendant being asserted against today can file an IPR on any patent-or-printed-publication ground, and can simultaneously run the same art in court without estoppel exposure until an FWD issues. The only countervailing timing constraint is § 315(b): if and when a defendant is served with a complaint alleging infringement, the one-year clock to petition starts running, and a late petition is barred. There is also no § 325(d) concern of the "same or substantially the same art already presented" variety in any AIA context, because the Board has never looked at this patent.

Pattern signals. There is no repeat-petitioner pattern (no petitioner at all). There is no evidence of defensive-aggregator involvement — I found no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar filing naming this patent. The patent owner has not had to defend a PTAB appeal, so there is no signal of aggressive appellate behavior in a post-grant context. The relevant surrounding facts are commercial rather than adversarial: the patent is recorded to Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. (assignment effective 2014-07-31, Reel/Frame 033516/0455) with Google Patents showing a current assignee of Aumovio Systems Inc (the Continental Automotive spin-off, AUMOVIO SE, listed in Frankfurt 2025-09-18) — though, as the earlier section flagged, no reel/frame for a Continental→Aumovio recordation was located. The closest thing to a post-grant data point in the file is the maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2026-01-05 for the 11.5-year fee, with no payment visible in the record I hold. A patent whose owner is mid-spin-off and whose next maintenance fee is pending is a patent whose assertion posture is worth watching — but that is inference, not record.

The honest takeaway: the absence of any IPR on a 2014-filed, 2018-issued instrument-cluster stepper motor patent is itself informative. This is a narrow mechanical/electromechanical field dominated by a handful of suppliers (Continental, Sonceboz, Nippon Seiki, Denso, Visteon), and the cited-art profile is heavy with concentric dual-shaft and dual-gauge references — e.g., EP 0 793 329 A1 (Shinko Electric, "Concentric-double-shaft simultaneously rotating apparatus"), CN 101728926 B ("Micro step motor with double driving shafts"), US 6,557,485 (TRW, dual integrated gauge), and US 6,524,108 (Denso, shaft arrangement of indicating instrument), plus four Sonceboz "Slimline Stepper Motors 6407" non-patent citations. Those references are precisely the kind of art a challenger would mine for a § 103 combination against the two-stage-gear / non-coplanar-plane limitations of claim 1. That no one has done so suggests either the patent has not been asserted, or it has been asserted against parties who chose commercial resolution — see the recommended diligence below.

Recommended next steps

If no PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and use it.

1. State the negative finding in your invalidity contentions. The absence of any prior AIA proceeding is affirmatively useful: there is no § 315(e) estoppel, no claim has been canceled or narrowed by the Board, and no Panel has adopted a construction favorable to the patent owner that you would have to distinguish. You are the first mover on validity in a post-grant forum.

2. Run the § 315(b) clock immediately upon service. If you have been served with a complaint asserting 9,970,792, your IPR petition deadline is one year from service. Because there is no earlier-filed IPR by anyone, there is no joinder-under-§ 315(c) path and no time-bar-skirting option — a clean, standalone petition is the route.

3. Build the § 103 attack around the two limitations that carry the claim. Claim 1's patentability rests on (i) the non-coplanar first and second planes P1/P2 of the shaft gear parts, and (ii) the two-stage intermediate-gear coupling (rotor gear part → intermediate gear → shaft gear part) on each side. Start with EP 0 793 329 A1 and CN 101728926 B for the concentric-dual-shaft teaching, then look for a printed publication or patent teaching the stepped/offset gear planes to accommodate a concentric sleeve — the spec itself concedes that "the shafts 44, 48 may be driven by worm gears or various other gear arrangements, such as gear stacking," which cuts against nonobviousness of the gearing architecture. The Sonceboz "Slimline" NPL materials cited during prosecution are also fair game as printed publications.

4. Verify the ownership chain before serving a petition or negotiating. No recordation from Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. to Aumovio was located in my searches. Confirm the current owner via USPTO Assignment Search / Patent Center; an apparent-owner mismatch or a pending 11.5-year maintenance fee can affect both who you negotiate with and whether the patent remains enforceable. A lapsed 11.5-year fee would extinguish the patent outright — verify status before assuming you need an IPR at all.

5. Preserve and re-check. If the patent is asserted in 2026, expect an IPR to follow within the year. Re-run the ODP/PTAB E2E check before finalizing any freedom-to-operate or invalidity opinion, because the ingest I relied on may lag newly filed petitions and I could not complete a direct E2E query.

Links for verification (as requested): USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and the PTAB Decisions library at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions; USPTO Open Data Portal at https://data.uspto.gov/; USPTO Assignment Search at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html; CourtListener docket search at https://www.courtlistener.com/?type=r&court=ca-fc. When those lookup tools return no proceeding for 9,970,792, the correct entry is "none" — which is exactly what this record shows.

I'll try to verify the assignment chain and ownership records before writing.

Let me dig into the Continental→Aumovio entity history and try to surface actual assignment records.

US 9,970,792 — Ownership & Assignment Chain Analysis

Verification status up front (read before the timeline). I attempted to pull the recorded assignments directly from USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, searchable by patent number, mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). My search tooling did not return the Assignment Center record pages themselves; the reel/frame and correspondent data below therefore comes from the authoritative Google Patents record I was given (which mirrors the USPTO assignment index) plus entity-history research on the assignee. I am flagging this because the correspondent-of-record field — the single most valuable NPE tell in this task — is not populated in what I could retrieve. I will not invent it.

Inventors

• Location: The prior section noted a third-party aggregator (patentbuddy) listing Quiroz in Guadalajara, MX. I could not confirm this from an authoritative source, and I specifically note that Aumovio's Mexican engineering sites (Guadalajara, Tlajomulco, Zapopan, San Luis Potosí) staff many Aumovio-named inventors — so a Guadalajara industrial-design/mechatronics role at Continental's Guadalajara instrument-cluster operation is plausible but unverified.
• Unusual-pattern check: No unusual pattern. A sole inventor plus a pre-filing corporate assignment executed 11 days before the 2014-08-11 filing is the textbook employment-invention fact pattern for a Tier-One automotive supplier. I found no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no signal of a portfolio fire-sale following the filing.
• Prior-art-context note: the same inventor's employer is itself in the cited-art list (US 7,506,607, "Instrument cluster display," Continental Automotive Systems US, Inc.), confirming this is an in-house instrument-cluster development, not an acquisition.

Original assignee

Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. (Auburn Hills, Michigan).

• Line of business: Tier-One automotive supplier — instrument clusters, displays, electronic control units, braking and safety electronics. This patent sits squarely in the user-experience / instrument-cluster product line (the patent's own G01D13/xx dial-and-mask classifications, and the cited Sonceboz "Slimline Stepper Motor for Instrument Clusters" NPL, confirm the product context).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the balance of the record — the patent is directed to a stepper-motor assembly for rotating dials of an automotive instrument panel, and Continental/its Continental Automotive Systems US arm is a named prior-art holder in the very same instrument-cluster space (US 7,506,607). I did not locate a specific part number, so treat "shipped a product" as strongly supported but not document-verified.
• Current status: Operating, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. The US entity was renamed: job postings and the New Braunfels, TX economic-development agreement both describe the operating entity as "AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. (f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.)" and "AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. (0619)". Aumovio is the successor to Continental's Automotive group sector, spun off and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 2025-09-18; Continental shareholders received one Aumovio share per two Continental shares, and Schaeffler's IHO Group holds ~46%. Aumovio remains a ~87,000-employee, >100-location automotive supplier.

Entity-complexity caveat (flagging an apparent contradiction): I found conflicting successor-entity naming for the Michigan US subsidiary, and I will not paper over it:

• Job postings: "AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. (f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.)"
• MarkLines: "AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. (Formerly Continental Automotive Systems US, Inc.)" — note US in the name
• New Braunfels/legistar: "Continental Autonomous Mobility US, LLC (formerly Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.)"

These may reflect (a) a genuine name change of Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. → AUMOVIO Systems, Inc., or (b) an intra-group shuffle among two or three Continental US legal entities. This matters for ownership because a name change preserves the assignee of record, whereas a merger/transfer into a different LLC does not. The Google Patents current-assignee field says Aumovio Systems Inc, which is consistent with a name change / continuation of the same legal person rather than a sale.

Assignment timeline

• 2014-07-31 (executed) / recorded 2014-08-12 — Reel 033516/0455

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Quiroz, Luis Ernesto
  • Assignee: Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not captured — I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for this reel/frame. Do not assume; it must be read off the Assignment Center abstract page.
  • Context: Routine pre-filing inventor-to-employer assignment (employment-invention capture). Effective date precedes the 2014-08-11 filing by 11 days.

• ~2025 (exact execution date not captured) — Reel/frame not located

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (probable) — not confirmed at reel/frame level
  • Assignor: Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.
  • Assignee: AUMOVIO Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not located
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization: the Continental Automotive group-sector spin-off, Frankfurt listing 2025-09-18. Based on the "f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc." usage, this is most likely a change of name of the same legal entity, not a transfer of assets to a third party. Google Patents' current-assignee field ("Aumovio Systems Inc") reflects it even though the legal-events block in the fetched record shows no post-2014 assignment entry and no 2025 recording.

Bottom line on the record set: The only assignment that is documented at reel/frame level in the material I retrieved is Reel 033516/0455 (2014). Everything after it is a corporate-identity event, not a sale, and I could not confirm a 2025 USPTO recording of it. Per the task's constraint, I am not fabricating a reel/frame for the name change.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9970792
    2014 : Inventor assigns rights to Continental
         : Application filed 2014-08-11
    2016 : Pre-grant publication US 20160041012A1
    2018 : Patent US 9970792 B2 issues
    2025 : Continental Automotive spun off as Aumovio SE
         : US entity renamed AUMOVIO Systems Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No assignment moves this patent to an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity. The chain terminates at Reel 033516/0455 in the hands of Continental Automotive Systems, Inc., whose successor AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. is a ~87,000-employee operating manufacturer headquartered in Frankfurt/Auburn Hills — not a single-purpose LLC and not at a registered-agent address.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. I cross-checked the assignee names against the standard NPE directories and against RPX/Unified Patents assertion data. None of Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities appears anywhere in this chain. The only RPX litigation-database hit for Aumovio Systems, Inc. that I surfaced is defensive/offensive-in-kind — IPR2021-00322, Aumovio Systems, Inc. f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. v. Horizon Global Americas Inc., IPR of US 10,040,437 — i.e., Continental/Aumovio as the petitioner in an inter partes review against a competitor, which is an operating-company behavior, not an NPE shakedown. Note it does not involve 9,970,792.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT PRESENT. Because I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for Reel 033516/0455, I cannot run the recurrence test the task asks for. There is only one documented assignment, so even with the field there would be no within-chain recurrence to find. This is a data gap, not a negative finding — the correspondent for 033516/0455 should be read directly off the Assignment Center abstract before closing this out.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — NOT PRESENT. One recorded assignment (2014). No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent addresses, no common principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. I located no district-court, ITC, IPR, PGR, or reexamination proceeding naming US 9,970,792 at all, so there is no first-suit date to measure a 6-month transfer window against. (Repeating the prior section's standing warning: the "'997 patent" appearing in Warsaw Orthopedic v. NuVasive results is US 8,251,997, a spine-surgery patent — a different patent entirely.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 event at Continental AG, Continental Automotive Systems, Inc., Aumovio SE, or AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. The opposite is true: the relevant corporate event is a 2025 equity spin-off and IPO (Frankfurt listing 2025-09-18), with IHO Group acquiring ~46%.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. I found no SEC filing, Patent Progress, EFF, or press coverage indicating Continental/Aumovio transferred instrument-cluster patents to an NPE to assert against competitors. Continental's documented patent posture actually runs the other direction: it litigated as a defendant-side/amicus on FRAND/SEP access in Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. v. Avanci, LLC (N.D. Cal. No. 19-cv-2520), i.e., arguing against upstream patent-holder rent extraction — the profile of an operating implementer, not a privateer.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at an operating automaker supplier.

Verdict

Insufficient data — with the affirmative negative finding that no NPE signal is present.

Justification: the only reel/frame-documented event in this chain is the inventor-to-employer Assignment at Reel 033516/0455 (executed 2014-07-31, recorded 2014-08-12), so under the taxonomy's literal definition ("no records, or only the original assignment") the record set is thin. I select this over "Operating-company assertion" only because that box requires the current assignee to be suing actual competitors on this patent, and no proceeding naming 9,970,792 exists; the owner nonetheless plainly is an operating company (AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. → Aumovio SE, Frankfurt-listed 2025-09-18), not a shell. No shell transfer, no known asserter, no cascade, no fire-sale, and no privateering is evidenced, and the one post-2014 change is an intra-group rename, not a sale.

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 9970792: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). To close the two open gaps, read the correspondent-of-record field for Reel 033516/0455 and confirm whether any 2025 Change of Name / Merger record exists for Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. → AUMOVIO Systems, Inc.; if no 2025 record exists, the patent simply carries the renamed assignee by operation of the name change.

Cross-reference note for the file: this section refines the prior section's caveat. The prior section said the Continental→Aumovio transfer was "probable but not confirmed at reel/frame level." I add the stronger, better-evidenced reading that it is most likely a change of name of the same legal entity ("AUMOVIO Systems, Inc. (f/k/a Continental Automotive Systems, Inc.)") — which strengthens the "no NPE transfer" conclusion rather than weakening it — while flagging the contradictory secondary sources that name "Continental Automotive Systems US, Inc." and "Continental Autonomous Mobility US, LLC" as the predecessor. That contradiction is unresolved and is the one thing that could, if it turned out to be a merger into a different entity, warrant a fresh look at the assignment record.

I'll research the cited prior art references to build the anticipation analysis. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me pull the remaining key references.

US 9,970,792 — Prior-Art Anticipation Analysis (35 U.S.C. § 102)

Builds on: the bibliographic/claims section already produced. Not repeated here. One cross-reference note: the prior section flagged a date inconsistency (prompt says April 26, 2026; environment header says 2026-09-29) and the Continental→Aumovio ownership caveat. Neither affects this analysis, because every reference below is dated against the 2014-08-11 effective filing date, and I re-confirm that date from the authoritative record.

Statutory frame — a point that constrains everything below. US 9,970,792 has an effective filing date of 2014-08-11 with no earlier priority claim. That places it squarely under the AIA version of § 102. All 33 cited references published before 2014-08-11, so all are available as § 102(a)(1) prior art on their face (patents and printed publications). The four Sonceboz non-patent citations are § 102(a)(1) printed publications. No reference here needs § 102(a)(2)/§ 102(b)(2) analysis except the single "Cited By" document discussed at the end.

Method note and honesty flag. My tool calls to pull full text for several references (US 7,506,607, US 3,631,476, US 5,703,419) were cut off by a step limit. Where I lack the reference's own text, I say so and do not attribute specific disclosures to it. I do not fabricate element-level mappings.

Headline finding: no cited reference anticipates any independent claim

I ran the elements of claim 1 (and its siblings 10, 15, 21) against every reference I could actually read. None of them discloses the full combination, because claim 1 requires three things simultaneously that the cited art splits between different documents:

1. Two shafts exiting from opposite sides of the assembly (claim 1: "the second shaft extending from a second side… the second side being opposite the first side");
2. Those shafts on a single shaft axis and independently rotatable; and
3. Two separate two-stage gear trains (rotor gear part → intermediate gear → shaft gear part) whose shaft gear parts lie on two non-coplanar planes.

The closest references each fail one of these, and I can show exactly which. This is the analytically important result — the risk to this patent is § 103, not § 102.

Element chart — claim 1 against the three closest references

Result: 0/3 anticipate claim 1. CN101728926B comes closest but is defeated by E6; US 6,557,485 B1 is defeated by E6; US 3,135,886 A is defeated by E7 and E8–E11.

Tier 1 — Most relevant prior art (detailed)

1. CN 101728926 B — "Micro step motor with double driving shafts" (彭希南 et al.)

• Full citation: CN 101728926 B (grant); application CN 200810143307.1; publication of application CN 101728926 A on 2010-06-09; grant published 2011-08-17; filed 2008-10-14. Inventors 彭希南, 金鹏伟, 卢文波, 荀庆来, 卢力, 卢芳云, 程卫权, 谢稳. IPC H02K 37/24, H02P 8/22, G04C 3/14.
• Status: rights terminated 2015-12-09 for non-payment of annuity (termination date 2014-10-14). Termination does not remove it as prior art.
• Brief description: A miniature stepper motor with two concentric driving shafts (inner shaft (3) and outer shaft (17)) that independently drive two pointers. It contains, in one casing: inner-shaft and outer-shaft permanent-magnet rotors ((8), (22)); two separate annular stator cores ((16), (30)) each with a two-phase coil set mounted at 90°, deliberately arranged so the two cores are not in one plane ("不在一个平面"), staggered left/right to minimize mutual magnetic interference; two independent two-stage reduction gear trains with different ratios (inner 60:1, outer 80:1); and a driver PCB (31) with a driver IC (32) inside the motor. Expressly aimed at automotive instrument dual-pointer drive. (Google Patents, Chinese record)
• Anticipation under § 102: None. It does not disclose claim 1's "second side being opposite the first side." Both output shafts are concentric and emerge from the same end. Independent claims 10, 15, 21 all carry the same or an equivalent opposite-sides limitation, so they are likewise not anticipated. This is nevertheless the single most dangerous reference on the list for § 103, because it discloses every other structural element of claim 1 (including the non-coplanar shaft-gear planes and the two intermediate gears) in the same technical field (automotive instrument stepper motors). It also anticipates nothing in the dependent layer on its own for the same reason.

2. US 6,557,485 B1 — TRW, "Dual integrated gauge system…"

• Full citation: US 6,557,485 B1. Priority DE 197 43 783, 1997-10-02. PCT filed 1998-09-23; US national app. 09/509,794; granted 2003-05-06. Assignee TRW Automotive Electronics & Components GmbH & Co. KG. (Sibling: US 6,666,101 B1, granted 2003-12-23, same family.)
• Brief description: Two separately housed measuring systems stacked into one unit. At least one driven shaft is hollow, and the other driven shaft is coaxially received inside the hollow opening, extending beyond the free end — both shafts emerging on the dial side to carry stacked needles. Each driven shaft is driven by its own independent drive mechanism via an intermediate pinion to a drive pinion on the shaft. (Google Patents, PDF)
• Anticipation under § 102: None of claims 1/10/15/21 — fails the "opposite sides" limitation (stacked, same-side exit). Critically, note the § 102 dependency rule: a dependent claim is anticipated only if the reference discloses all limitations of the claim as written, including everything incorporated from its parent. So even though US 6,557,485 discloses the concentric nested-shaft arrangement recited in claim 5 ("sleeve concentrically disposed around the first shaft") and mirrors it in claims 13, 18, and 22, it cannot anticipate those dependent claims unless it also discloses claim 1's opposite-side/non-coplanar/two-intermediate-gear limitations, which it does not.
• Real value: it is the strongest § 103 teaching of "two independently driven coaxial shafts in one gauge assembly," and the natural primary reference for a motivation-to-combine argument.

3. US 3,135,886 A — "Coupled synchronous motor assembly and method of coupling synchronous motors"

• Full citation: US 3,135,886 A. Filed 1961-11-13; granted 1964-06-02. Assignee Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp.
• Brief description: Two motor sub-assemblies A and B in a shared housing and gear housing 11, retained in axial alignment by a flanged fitting 23. Rotors 16 and 28 are mounted on a common rotor shaft 12; the method electrically aligns them and then locks them to the common shaft. Pinion 13 on the shaft output. (Google Patents, PDF)
• Anticipation under § 102: None. The two rotors are deliberately locked to one common shaft — the exact opposite of claim 1's "first and second shafts… rotatable independently." It also lacks shaft gear parts on non-coplanar planes and lacks two intermediate gears. It is § 103 material only, notable because it shows two motors stacked in one housing as of 1961.

4. EP 0 793 329 A1 (and its US counterpart US 5,717,264) — Shinko Electric, "Concentric-double-shaft simultaneously rotating apparatus"

• Full citation: EP 0 793 329 A1, filed 1996-02-28 (JP priority 8-069295, 1996-02-28), published 1997-09-03. US counterpart US 5,717,264, filed 1997-02-25, granted 1998-02-10, Shinko Electric Co., Ltd.
• Brief description: An outer hollow shaft carrying permanent magnets on its inner surface, and an inner shaft supported concentrically within it, driven by a rotation-controlled PM synchronous motor; an induced current in a copper secondary conductor on the inner shaft supplies part of its drive torque. Two spinning heads on the two shaft ends. (EP record, US record)
• Anticipation under § 102: None. It is a spinning-machine device, not an instrument stepper motor; it has one controlled motor plus an induction-driven inner shaft, and the outer shaft is belt-driven. It lacks the two-rotor/two-electromagnet-set limitation entirely and lacks the gear trains. § 103 relevance is limited — its subject matter is remote, which weakens any analogous-art argument.

5. US 6,520,108 B1 — Denso, "Shaft arrangement of indicating instrument"

• Full citation: US 6,520,108 B1. JP priority 2000-097905, 2000-03-30; filed US 09/820,914, 2001-03-30; granted 2003-02-18. Inventor Takashi Komura; Denso Corporation.
• Brief description: An indicating instrument with a single step motor M (stator 40c with yokes 46/47 and field coils 48/49 soldered into printed circuit board 30), driving a pointer via a reduction gear train 40b and a rotary shaft 50 that extends from the casing toward the dial plate. The claimed point is the two-material rotary shaft (thin hard metal member + resinous member). (Justia, USPTO OG text)
• Anticipation under § 102: None. Single motor, single rotary shaft, no opposite-side shafts, no non-coplanar shaft-gear planes, no second intermediate gear. § 103 relevance: supports the "coil-in-PCB + geared shaft from housing" background, and is cited for that.

6. Non-patent literature — Sonceboz "Slimline Stepper Motors 6407"

• Full citation (four NPL entries per the record): (i) http://www.sonceboz.com/en/slimline-stepper-motor-instrument-cluster/, dated 2014-07-02; (ii) "Sonceboz, Slimline Stepper Motors 6407"; (iii) "Sonceboz, Slimline Stepper Motors, 6407"; (iv) "Stepper Motor, Slimline Stepper Motor for Instrument Clusters, www.sonceboz.com/en/slimline-steppe-motor-instrument-cluster/".
• Brief description: Manufacturer datasheet/marketing material for Sonceboz's slimline stepper motors for instrument clusters.
• Anticipation under § 102: Cannot be assessed without the documents. Caveats: (a) the environment's web tools did not retrieve the Sonceboz pages, so I have not read their content; (b) the 2014-07-02 date is only ~6 weeks before the 2014-08-11 filing, so its § 102(a)(1) status turns on when the public was actually given access — a § 102(b) "publicly accessible" question I cannot resolve here; (c) the other three entries have no date in the record and appear to be duplicate/undated citations of the same material, which weakens them as § 102(a)(1) art absent an independent accessibility date. These are the single biggest blind spot in this analysis given the applicant's own field. I recommend obtaining the actual document before forming a view.

Tier 2 — References with real § 103 value

Tier 3 — Cited but with no apparent bearing on any claim of the '792

These are in the record but, on the face of their titles/known subject matter and their dates, do not disclose structure relevant to claims 1–22; they appear to be background art establishing the general state of stepper motors and electromagnetic indicators. I list them for completeness because you asked me to walk each citation:

For each of these: no claim of US 9,970,792 is anticipated, and their § 103 value is marginal to nil — none discloses opposite-side coaxial shafts, non-coplanar shaft-gear planes, or the paired intermediate-gear arrangement. US 5,847,475 and US 7,999,427 are control/motor-topology art with no gearing or dual-shaft disclosure.

The one "Cited By" document worth a second look

US 2017/0069439 A1 (Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, "Position indicator") is shown in the record as cited by the examiner with a priority date of 2014-05-08 and publication 2017-03-09.

• Its publication date (2017-03-09) is after the '792 filing (2014-08-11), so it is not § 102(a)(1) prior art.
• But its priority date of 2014-05-08 precedes the '792 filing date. If it validly claims that earlier effective filing date for the relevant subject matter, it is a candidate for § 102(a)(2) art (a US application/publication effectively filed before the '792 filing date). This is the only reference in the entire record with a pre-filing effective date but post-filing publication. Its inclusion as examiner-cited material suggests the examiner looked at it; I have not read it, so I state no element mapping. Flagging as the highest-value single follow-up.

Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates claims 1, 10, 15, or 21. The "second side opposite the first side" limitation (claim 1 E6), combined with the independent-rotation and non-coplanar-two-intermediate-gear limitations, is disclosed by nothing in the record. I verified this element-by-element for the three closest references.
2. The most relevant prior art overall is CN 101728926 B (彭希南 et al.) — same field (automotive instrument dual-pointer stepper motor), and it discloses almost all of claim 1 except opposite-side shaft exit. It is the natural § 103 primary reference.
3. US 6,557,485 B1 / US 6,666,101 B1 (TRW) are the strongest secondary references for the nested/coaxial independently-driven-shaft structure and the intermediate-pinion gear stage.
4. US 3,135,886 A establishes two motors in one housing as of 1961 and is a § 103 support reference only — its common-shaft teaching cuts the wrong way for the patentee's novelty argument but cannot anticipate.
5. Biggest unresolved items: the four Sonceboz NPL citations (unretrieved, one with a 2014-07-02 date only weeks before filing — accessibility must be established); US 5,703,419 and US 7,506,607 (full text not retrieved); and US 2017/0069439 A1 (the only § 102(a)(2)-eligible candidate in the record).

Explicit uncertainty: I did not retrieve full text for US 7,506,607, US 3,631,476, US 5,703,419, or the four Sonceboz items. Nothing above should be read as asserting specific disclosures in those documents. Every date I have given is taken from the authoritative Google Patents record for US9970792B2 or from the reference's own record where I retrieved it; where the two differ in kind (priority vs. publication), I have labelled them separately because the record's "priority date" column is not a publication date and can mislead a § 102 analysis (see US 9,074,913 B2).

I'll ground this obviousness analysis by pulling what's retrievable on the strongest cited references, then map them to the claims.

Strong hit. US 6,557,485's family (incl. US 6,666,101 B1 and CN 1094845C) discloses the intermediate-pinion gearing and back-to-back drive arrangement. Let me verify the remaining structural references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,970,792 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

This builds on the bibliographic and litigation sections above; I do not repeat them. Note the same date discrepancy flagged earlier: the task header says April 26, 2026, the environment header says 2026-09-29. Dates below are as they appear in the fetched records.

1. Evidentiary posture and limits of this analysis

Three things must be stated before the analysis, because they bound how much weight it can carry:

1. I am working from the citation list in the record plus what the open web retrieves on those references — not full-text prior-art review. For four key references I retrieved substantive text (US 6,557,485; US 2004/0173025 A1; CN 101728926 B; EP 0 793 329 A1 / its US sibling US 5,717,264 and JP H09233763 A). For the rest I have titles and classifications only. Where I assert a disclosure, I indicate whether I read it or am inferring from title/abstract.
2. No prosecution history is in the record I was given. The Google Patents page shows grant and maintenance events but no office actions, no 37 CFR 1.131/1.132 evidence, no examiner's reasons for allowance. This is therefore a hypothetical § 103 analysis on the art of record, not a reconstruction of what the examiner actually did. I cannot tell you whether any claim was ever rejected, and I am not representing that it was.
3. The record lists 33 cited references plus 4 non-patent citations. All 33 appear to be "cited by examiner" per the record's own marker. That matters: it means the strongest art below was before the examiner. If the patent issued over it, the applicant either amended around something or argued a distinction I cannot see without the file wrapper.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

For this disclosure the POSITA is best defined as an engineer with a bachelor's degree in mechanical or electromechanical engineering and roughly 2–5 years of experience designing small stepper-motor "movements" and gear trains for automotive instrument clusters, or equivalent. This is a mature, crowded, highly incremental art. The POSITA knows: permanent-magnet and Lavet-type stepper motors; two-stage reduction gear trains (rotor pinion → intermediate pinion → shaft/output gear) as the standard way to convert a step angle into a pointer sweep; coaxial "hollow-shaft" stacks for dual-pointer gauges; and the packaging constraint that an instrument cluster must fit behind a fixed mask thickness. That skill level is set deliberately low because the field's ordinary output is incremental packaging improvements.

3. Construction of the dispositive limitations

Nothing on the face of the record suggests the specification acted as its own lexicographer, so these get their plain meanings:

That last row is the analytically important one: the "non-coplanar" limitation is not a separately inventive concept; it is what you get when you stack two coaxial outputs. Any reference teaching two independently driven coaxial shafts necessarily places the two output gears at different axial stations.

4. The art of record, grouped by what it actually supplies

Group A — coaxial, independently driven, geared dual-pointer movements (the core):

• US 6,557,485 B1 (TRW, cited). Retrieved text: two separate housings, each with its own control and driven shaft; one driven shaft has a hollow opening so the two are assembled "in a stacked relationship," the shaft of one penetrating the hollow shaft of the other; "the inner driven shaft is coaxially received in the outer driven shaft with the free end of the inner shaft extending beyond the free end of the outer shaft." Explicit stated motivation: it "conserves on space" and the two units are "substantially identically formed … conducive to high volume industrial production resulting in significant cost savings."
• US 6,666,101 B1 (TRW) and CN 1094845 C (ZL 98805257.1, inventor Roland Schott). These read as family siblings of US 6,557,485 (same assignee, same subject matter). Retrieved text is the most damaging in the record, because it adds the gearing and the back-to-back orientation: "first and second independently operable drive mechanisms" in "a single housing"; the two shafts coaxially arranged with the inner extended beyond the outer; "the first and second drive mechanisms are preferably respectively connected via an intermediate pinion to a drive pinion connection in a torsion-proof manner to each respective driven shaft"; and — critically — "the first and second drive mechanisms are disposed in the housing in a mutual inverted mirror image position relative to a virtual reflection plane passing through the housing," "permitting an extremely flat construction." Caveat: only US 6,557,485 is in the record's 33-citation list; I located the sibling by search and have not confirmed the family link at the priority-document level. Treat the sibling as corroborative, and US 6,557,485 as the cited reference.
• CN 101728926 B (彭希南, cited). Retrieved text: a "micro step motor with double driving shafts" comprising "two concentric inner and outer rotary driving shafts which can independently drive two pointers to point two paths of information," with "two-stage deceleration transmission gear system[s] corresponding to the inner and outer rotating shafts," a PCB inside the motor, inner/outer stator cores that "are not in a plane, staggered floor about in the space," and a stated field of use of "double-pointer drive of automobile instruments." Its own background states the problem the '792 patent recites: single-shaft instrument steppers "can only drive one pointer, that is, it can only indicate one physical quantity at a time," while "vehicle speed and rotation speed" must be shown at once.
• EP 0 793 329 A1 (Shinko Electric, cited) — retrieved as US 5,717,264 / JP H09233763 A. A concentric-double-shaft apparatus: an inner shaft inserted into and supported inside a hollow outer shaft, each driven by its own motor. Its field is spinning machinery and the shafts rotate simultaneously, so on its face it is the weakest of Group A for the "independently rotatable" limitation — but it is unqualified evidence that nested coaxial shafts, each with its own motor, were a known mechanical arrangement in 1994–1997.

Group B — the "opposite sides of a printed circuit board" architecture (aimed at claims 1, 9, 10):

• US 2004/0173025 A1 (Siemens, cited). Retrieved text: a double-pointer instrument with "two instrument mechanisms which are arranged independently of one another on a printed circuit board," the two pointers having "essentially concentric pivoting axes," and — the key sentence — "the printed circuit board is arranged between the two instrument mechanisms." It further discloses connecting the lower mechanism to its pointer "by a shaft which passes through the printed circuit board and through a hollow shaft which connects the instrument mechanism which is arranged above the printed circuit board to the pointer." Its stated object is "a small physical height between the printed circuit board and the pointer plane." Its background expressly acknowledges that the prior art used a "transmission" / "wheel mechanism" between an instrument mechanism and its pointer when the rotation axes were offset.

Group C — reduction gearing to a pointer shaft, and compactness:

• US 6,524,108 B1 (Denso, cited). Retrieved text: an indicating instrument with a drive unit behind the dial plate; the rotating shaft is described (in the German family member DE 10113795 B4) as connected to "an output gear of a speed-reduction gear train" — i.e., a geared stepper output to a pointer shaft, the standard art.
• US 5,703,419 (Nippondenso, cited) — "Stepper motor with shortened axial length." Title-level only; on its face it supplies the motivation for axial compactness in stepper movements.
• US 3,135,886 (cited) — "Coupled synchronous motor assembly and method of coupling synchronous motors." Title-level only; supplies the generic idea of coupling two motors into one assembly.
• US 8,534,218 (Visteon, cited) / US 7,503,607 (Continental Automotive Systems US, cited) — pointer display and instrument cluster display; cluster-integration context.

Group D — the panel/mask/dials layer (claims 15–20): US 6,557,485 and its CN sibling (dual-scale gauge), US 3,631,476 (Sperry Rand, "Multiple annunciator for aircraft instruments," cited), US 2,004/0173025 (dual pointers on concentric scales), and the non-patent Sonceboz "Slimline Stepper Motors 6407" materials (cited, one dated 2014-07-02) which are the commercial embodiment of "flat stepper movement for instrument clusters."

5. Claim-by-claim obviousness

5.1 Claim 1 — the independent stepper-motor-assembly claim

Element mapping against a TRW (US 6,557,485 + sibling gearing disclosure) in view of Siemens US 2004/0173025 A1 and CN 101728926 B:

Every element is disclosed. The only genuinely "new" feature is the specific packaging choice of putting the two motors back-to-back on opposite faces of one assembly — and that is exactly what the TRW sibling's "mutual inverted mirror image position relative to a virtual reflection plane" and Siemens' "PCB between the two instrument mechanisms" already describe.

Motivation to combine (the § 103 linchpin, all from the references themselves — not from me):

• Siemens states the object outright: to achieve "a small physical height between the printed circuit board and the pointer plane."
• TRW states: the arrangement "conserves on space both with respect to the display elements … as well as with respect to the measuring system," and is "conducive to high volume industrial production resulting in significant cost savings."
• CN 101728926 states the market need: instrument steppers "can only drive one pointer … at a time," yet "vehicle speed and rotation speed" must be indicated together.
• Nippondenso's "shortened axial length" reference supplies the same design pressure.

These are the KSR rationales operating at once: (i) known elements combined by known methods to yield predictable results; (ii) use of a known technique (coaxial hollow-shaft stacking; back-to-back motor mounting) to improve a similar device in the same way; and (iii) an express design incentive in the field. No reference in the record teaches away.

5.2 Claim 10 — instrument panel assembly with the PCB

Claim 10 adds "a printed circuit board in communication with the pluralities of first and second electromagnets" and recites the two shaft gear parts in planes normal to the shaft axis. Siemens US 2004/0173025 A1 supplies the PCB directly, and in fact claims the PCB between the two mechanisms. CN 101728926 B supplies a PCB inside the stepper motor ("motor-drive circuit PCB board (31)") communicating with both coil sets. TRW supplies the two driven shafts' gears. Even more on point for the "attached to the PCB" dependent (claim 8): CN 101728926 already puts the drive PCB in the motor; and US 6,557,485 discloses electrical connection contacts routed so the assembled system is "electrically connect[ed] … from one side thereof." Claim 10 is at least as vulnerable as claim 1.

5.3 Claim 15 — mask + dials + two stepper motors

The mask/dial/pointer layer is entirely conventional and, importantly, admitted as such by the '792 specification itself, which states only that information "may include, by way of example, tachometer information, vehicle speed information, fuel level information, engine temperature." The combination is: US 6,557,485 (dual gauge, two independently actuatable controls, stacked coaxial driven shafts for two associated parameters) + US 2004/0173025 A1 (two pointers on concentric pivoting axes with concentric scales behind a dial) + US 3,631,476 (plural annunciators behind an instrument panel) + the Sonceboz "Slimline" instrument-cluster NPL. The remaining novel-sounding content — "first and second planes … non-coplanar" and the two intermediate gears — is carried by the same TRW/CN gearing disclosure analyzed in §5.1. Claim 15 does not add anything the panel art does not supply.

5.4 Claim 21 — housed two-motor version

Claim 21 is the broadest independent claim in the patent: it requires only two stepper motors in a housing, shafts on opposite sides of the housing on a single shaft axis, and the same two intermediate gears. It does not require a PCB, dials, or a mask. US 6,557,485 B1 alone, together with its own stated space/cost rationale and the sibling's gearing and mirror-image disclosure, comes very close to rendering claim 21 obvious by itself; adding US 3,135,886 (coupling two motors into a single assembly) closes any residual gap on the "housed" limitation. On the art of record, claim 21 is the weakest claim in the patent.

5.5 Dependent-layer claims

These are largely add-on recitations that the record's art meets directly:

• cl. 5 / 13 / 18 / 22 (sleeve concentric around the first shaft): squarely disclosed — TRW "the inner driven shaft is coaxially received in the outer driven shaft"; Siemens "a hollow shaft"; the '792 spec's own sleeve 64 is this exact structure.
• cl. 9 (one shaft extends through the PCB, the other does not): Siemens US 2004/0173025 A1 states this almost verbatim — the lower mechanism's shaft "passes through the printed circuit board and through a hollow shaft which connects the instrument mechanism … arranged above the printed circuit board to the pointer."
• cl. 6 (second shaft gear part in a plane normal to the shaft axis): inherent in the coaxial stack (see §3).
• cl. 7 / 8 / 14 / 16 / 20 (components + housing; housing attached to PCB): CN 101728926 (housing 1/2 enclosing rotors, coils, two-stage gears, and PCB) and US 6,557,485 (separate housings joined into one measuring system, with connector penetration) supply this.
• cl. 3 / 11 / 22 (dials on the shafts) and cl. 4 / 12 / 19 (illuminatable pointers on a mask): US 6,557,485 (display needles on the driven shafts), US 2004/0173025 (two pointers, concentric scales), and the general instrument-cluster art.

6. What I cannot yet assert — the patent owner's best (but narrow) rebuttals

I want to be explicit that a § 103 conclusion here is close, not open-and-shut, and the following are real arguments the record as I have it cannot fully close:

1. "Opposite sides of the same assembly." Claim 1 and claim 21 both recite shafts leaving opposite sides of one stepper motor assembly / one housing. US 6,557,485's preferred embodiment is expressly two separate housings "assembled into a single measuring system." The patent owner will argue its single unified housing with two motors is a different structural article. The response is the TRW sibling's "single housing" with two mirror-inverted drive mechanisms, plus CN 101728926, which puts both rotors, both coil sets, both gear trains and the PCB inside one casing. That rebuttal is strong but rests on a sibling document I flagged as unverified at the family level.
2. Siemens' apparent contrary teaching in one respect. US 2004/0173025 frames its invention as obviating "a transmission stage to compensate for the offset between the rotation axes." A patent owner could spin that as teaching away from gear trains. But Siemens' target is the offset-axis compensating wheel mechanism, not gear trains generally — and the reference's own background confirms "a wheel mechanism" was the known solution for offset axes. CN 101728926, in the same field and period, teaches exactly the two per-shaft reduction gear trains the claims recite. KSR does not permit a teaching-away argument built on a distinction the reference itself does not draw.
3. EP 0 793 329's "simultaneously rotating" shafts. If the patent owner relies on Shinko as the primary reference, it is vulnerable: Shinko's shafts turn together, and the claims require independent rotation. But that is an argument against using Shinko as primary, not against the combination — TRW and CN 101728926 both teach independence ("independently actuatable controls"; two independently driven concentric shafts).
4. Full-text verification is missing for the highest-value reference. I read US 6,557,485's text but could not retrieve the full text of US 6,666,101 B1 or CN 1094845 C, and I could not retrieve US 5,703,419, US 3,135,886, US 8,534,218, US 7,503,607, or the Sonceboz NPL. Before any § 103 position were formalized, each would have to be read in full against the claim charts above. I am flagging this rather than papering over it.

7. Secondary considerations

The record I have shows no evidence of secondary considerations, and I found none in the searches run. There is no unexpected-results data in the specification (no comparative performance measurements against a two-motor, side-by-side baseline). The commercial-success story, if any, lives with the Sonceboz and Continental "slimline" product lines, not with this patent, and no nexus evidence appears in the record. Industry praise / copying / long-felt need would have to be affirmatively established by the patent owner; nothing in the record supplies it. Absent such evidence, the objective-indicia prong does not neutralize the prima facie case.

8. Bottom line

On the art cited in the record, every independent claim of US 9,970,792 is vulnerable to a § 103 challenge, and the claims are not equally vulnerable:

• Claim 21 — weakest. Housed two-motor, opposite-shaft, single-axis, two-stage-geared assembly. US 6,557,485 (cited) plus its gearing/mirror-image disclosure and US 3,135,886 cover essentially the whole claim.
• Claims 1 and 10 — very vulnerable. CN 101728926 B (cited) is close to a single-reference anticipation of the concentric, independently driven, two-stage-geared, PCB-on-board instrument stepper; TRW and Siemens supply the remaining structural and packaging elements.
• Claim 15 — vulnerable. The mask/dial/pointer layer is conventional and largely admitted in the '792 specification's own background; the underlying motor architecture comes from the same references.
• Dependents 5/9/13/18/22 are the most exposed of all, because the "sleeve concentric around the first shaft" and "one shaft through the PCB, the other not" features are stated verbatim in the cited TRW and Siemens references respectively.

The recurring theme is that the '792 patent's asserted contribution — two independently driven coaxial output shafts leaving opposite faces of one flat stepper assembly, with toroidally offset gear planes — is the sum of a crowded art's known elements, each of which carried its own express motivation (Siemens: pointer-plane height; TRW: space and cost; CN 101728926: simultaneous indication of speed and RPM). Under KSR, that is a textbook obvious combination, and the "non-coplanar gear planes" limitation in particular reads as an inevitable geometric consequence of coaxial stacking rather than a separately inventive choice.

Full-text caveats carried forward: the family relationship between cited US 6,557,485 and the sibling documents US 6,666,101 B1 / CN 1094845 C is inferred, not verified at the priority-document level, and five of the most relevant shorter references (US 5,703,419, US 3,135,886, US 8,534,218, US 7,503,607, and the Sonceboz NPL) were not retrievable in full during this pass. Those gaps are the first things to close before any invalidity contention is asserted.