US 9995665

I'll search for litigation/docket information on this patent, since I already have the authoritative patent text.

Let me run a couple of targeted searches to confirm whether any litigation or appeal exists on this specific number.

Search Results for Litigation / Docket Activity (US 9,995,665)

I ran targeted queries against the specific number 9,995,665 (and US9995665, 9995665B2, "Drexel" + patent). I found no district-court case, no IPR/PGR, and no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket (2026 or otherwise) involving this patent. The only "9995665"-adjacent hits returned were unrelated (e.g., a WO reference number, a BET correlation coefficient, an unrelated Fifth Circuit case).

Caveat on uncertainty: my tooling is web search, not a direct credentialed query of USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB or the CAFC docket. So I can state with reasonable but not absolute confidence that no litigation or appeal on this patent surfaced. That absence is also consistent with the bibliographic record (a university research-instrument patent asserted by neither party), but I cannot rule out an unpublished or non-indexed matter. If you need a definitive negative, that requires a direct PACER/CAFC and PatentCenter docket pull.

Per the strict rule, I have not altered the number; everything below refers literally to US 9,995,665.

Bibliographic Summary (per the patent record)

Abstract (verbatim): "An impact fatigue device includes a striker rod assembly configured to reciprocally move between an upstream position and a downstream position. The striker rod assembly includes a striker rod slidingly mounted on a support member and a trigger located upstream of the striker rod and adapted to move downstream to engage the striker rod and propel the striker rod downstream. An actuator assembly is located upstream of the striker rod assembly. The actuator assembly is configured to releasably engage the trigger and to translate the trigger upstream. A reset mechanism is configured to releasably engage the striker rod and to move the striker rod from the downstream position to the upstream position. A method of operating the impact fatigue device is also disclosed."

Independent Claims — Plain-Language Overview

Claim 1 — the apparatus (core device).
A cyclic impact-fatigue machine with three cooperating subsystems:

1. Striker rod assembly that shuttles back and forth between an upstream (cocked) and downstream (fired) position. It has (i) a striker rod riding on a support member and (ii) a trigger positioned upstream of the rod that travels downstream to hit the rod and drive it forward.
2. Actuator assembly, mounted upstream of the rod assembly, that can grab the trigger and pull it back upstream (i.e., load the energy).
3. Reset mechanism that can grab the striker rod and push/drag it from its downstream position back to the upstream position for the next cycle.

The claim's added structural hook: the rod assembly and actuator work along a first longitudinal axis, while the reset mechanism works along a second longitudinal axis perpendicular to the first. The reset mechanism specifically comprises a reset rod moving along that second axis with an engagement end, and a retractor wheel mounted on that engagement end that engages the striker rod to move it upstream — with the reset rod translating the retractor wheel linearly.

Claim 8 — the method.
Uses the claim-1 device: put a specimen downstream of the rod; activate the actuator to engage the trigger; run the actuator to translate the trigger upstream; deactivate the actuator to release the trigger; let the trigger strike the rod; propel the rod downstream; and impact the specimen.

Claim 15 — an alternative/expanded apparatus recitation.
Same three-part architecture, stated with more specific parts:

• Rod assembly: striker rod movable along a first axis; a bearing assembly slidably supporting it; and a trigger assembly movable along the first axis between disengaged/engaged positions, made up of a striker plate, a rear plate coupled to the striker plate, and a biasing member that moves the striker plate from upstream to downstream.
• Actuator assembly: a magnetic release that releasably engages the rear plate, plus a motor moving the magnetic release between upstream/downstream positions.
• Reset mechanism on a second axis: a reset rod with an engagement end and a retractor wheel mounted on that end, engageable with the rod to move it from downstream back to upstream — again with the reset rod translating the retractor wheel linearly.

Notable dependent-claim features: the actuator uses an electromagnet that holds the trigger when energized and drops it when de-energized (cl. 2–3); first/second bearings at the rod ends (cl. 4); a removable, swappable biasing spring in a spring housing (cl. 5–6, 14, 16); a breadboard-style mounting plate for releasably securing the specimen (cl. 7); and electronic/automated performance of the engagement, release, and reset steps (cl. 11).

Inventive thrust (from the specification): full automation of cyclic impact testing — a spring-loaded, magnetically released striker with a separate motorized reset — that eliminates manual reset between blows and, via interchangeable springs and strikers and programmable timing, allows adjustable/discretely variable and even stochastic impact rates and energies.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9995665.

Let me run more targeted searches on litigation databases.

Let me do a few more targeted searches on litigation-specific databases.

Known Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665

Result: No litigation found.

Based on my searches of publicly available patent-litigation resources, I found no record of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665 ("Dynamic impact fatigue device," assigned to Drexel University). I searched for the specific number and related identifiers (using litigation-oriented sources including search returns that index Unified Patents' litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP materials, district-court dockets, PTAB records, and general web results) and did not surface any infringement action, declaratory-judgment action, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding naming this patent.

What I did find (context, not litigation)

Important caveats on completeness

• I could not directly load the Unified Patents litigation case-list page (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) or PACER/CAFC dockets in this session, so this conclusion rests on the search results returned, not a direct docket query.
• The patent is a research-instrumentation patent from a university that lapsed in 2022 for non-payment of maintenance fees, which is consistent with (though not proof of) the absence of commercial enforcement activity. Patents that are actively asserted are typically maintained.
• The absence of results in my searches is not absolute proof of no litigation. District-court complaints are sometimes not well indexed. To be fully certain, a direct PACER/RECAP docket search (e.g., via CourtListener's RECAP) and a direct Unified Patents portal query using the exact number "9995665" would be advisable.

Bottom line: Based on available public records, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665. If you need a definitive negative, I'd recommend a direct PACER/RECAP and Unified Patents portal query, which I was unable to complete here.

Note: I interpreted the identifier literally as 9,995,665 and did not substitute similar numbers (e.g., the unrelated US 9,629,965 / 9,775,838 seen in one result, or the many other "566"-suffixed patents that appear in search noise).

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB proceedings" signal against live sources before reporting.

Let me check for any litigation or enforcement history that would corroborate the absence of PTAB activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 9,995,665: zero.

Breakdown: 0 active / 0 with claims invalidated / 0 with claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no AIA trial proceedings, and targeted web searches for an IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against "9,995,665" / "9995665" surfaced no PTAB docket, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal. Every "566 patent" hit in the search results belongs to a different patent — 8,320,566 (Mueller/Entropic), 9,016,566 (Square), 10,601,566 (Active Wireless), 11,196,566 (Veritaseum). None of those are this patent; I flag them so they aren't mistaken for PTAB activity on the '665 patent.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no IPR-based invalidity record to lean on — but you very likely don't need one. The more consequential fact on the public record is that this patent lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees, effective 2022-06-12 (USPTO legal event LAPS / STCH / FP). This is a university research-tool patent that was granted 2018-06-12 to Drexel University, went abandoned roughly four years in, and appears never to have been asserted in litigation. The defensive posture is therefore not "hardened patent that beat back IPRs" and not "claims canceled" — it is "no PTAB contest exists because nobody ever needed to file one," compounded by a fee lapse that ended the enforceable term.

No proceedings to report

I cannot itemize proceedings that do not exist, and I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, or claim-level dispositions. If a petition has been filed but not yet indexed by the ODP (the prompt's stated caveat), it would be a 2025–2026 filing; my searches turned up nothing in that window either. A defendant with actual notice of a recently-served petition should confirm directly on PTAB E2E and USPTO PatentCenter rather than relying on the ingest delay.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All 18 claims of US 9,995,665 are UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none narrowed. Claims 1 and 15 are the independent apparatus claims; claim 8 is the independent method claim (which incorporates claim 1 by reference and therefore rises and falls with it); claims 2–7 depend from claim 1, claims 9–14 depend from claim 8, and claims 16–18 depend from claim 15. Because there has been no post-grant challenge, the claim set is exactly as it issued on 2018-06-12. But "untested" here is not "strong" — it is "never litigated," which for a niche academic bench instrument is unsurprising.

Estoppel landscape (§ 315(e)(2)). There is no petitioner and therefore no estoppel of any kind. No party is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground, and no IPR has been filed that would trigger the one-year § 315(b) bar clock. Practically, though, the reason no one petitioned is that the patent expired for fee nonpayment on 2022-06-12, and the nominal adjusted expiration of 2036-12-13 is listed alongside the "Expired – Fee Related" status. Two caveats a defendant should actually verify rather than assume: (i) a lapsed patent is theoretically revivable on a petition showing unintentional delay under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c)(1), so confirm with the Office that no revival petition is pending; and (ii) even if revived, § 41(c)(2) intervening rights would limit recovery against anyone who made, used, offered for sale, or sold the invention during the lapse period — which for acts in 2022–2026 is a potent damages defense. Do not treat the lapse as self-executing in your pleadings without checking the current PatentCenter status.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern exists (there are no petitioners). No defensive aggregator — no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar — appears anywhere in the chain, which is consistent with a non-practiced academic instrument that no one has been accused of infringing. Drexel has not pursued PTAB appeals because it has never had a PTAB loss. No ex parte or inter partes reexamination certificate appears on the public record either, so the patent has never been challenged at the Office by any mechanism post-grant.

The technology context is worth noting for a defendant because it cuts against any "troll" framing: the patent claims a lab-scale dynamic impact fatigue machine, and the inventors published the corresponding device in Review of Scientific Instruments 90, 105104 (2019) ("A tunable modified-Hopkinson impact fatigue device"), which describes the same breadboard-mounted, electromagnet-released, stepper-motor-reset architecture recited in the claims. That publication is by the inventors themselves and post-dates the 2015-04-03 priority date, so it is not prior art to this patent — but it is a useful roadmap to the commercial embodiment if you need to map claim elements for a non-infringement position.

Recommended next steps

• Start with the lapse, not the PTAB. Pull the current PatentCenter status for US 15/083,403 and confirm the 2022-06-12 expiration stands with no revival petition. If you are accused, this is your first and strongest response — an expired patent cannot be infringed by post-lapse conduct, and § 41(c)(2) intervening rights would blunt even a revived assertion.
• If a demand letter cites claims 1, 8, or 15: note that no PTAB FWD exists to quote, because no IPR was ever filed. Your invalidity case would be built from scratch in district court, unconstrained by § 315(e) estoppel. The closest prior art on the face of the patent is US 7,414,870 (California Micro Devices, "Method and apparatus for dynamic impact testing"), US 5,824,880 (Phillips Petroleum, automated drop-weight impact testing), US 7,500,378 (A*STAR, micro-impact testing apparatus), and US 8,402,811 (Nie, cyclic impact-sliding fatigue wear testing instrument) — all cited by the examiner during prosecution, which means attacking on these references implicates § 325(d) if you instead go the IPR route.
• If you learn an active proceeding has just filed: the three milestones to diarize are the § 314(b) institution deadline (6 months from the patent owner's preliminary response, or from its due date), the oral hearing, and the § 316(a)(11) Final Written Decision deadline (12 months from institution, extendable to 18 for good cause). Track it on PTAB E2E and confirm any appeal at CourtListener and the Federal Circuit docket.
• No PTAB activity is itself the signal. Well-asserted patents reliably attract IPRs — often within the § 315(b) year of first service. A patent with zero IPRs, zero reexaminations, zero litigation hits, and an abandonment for unpaid maintenance fees reads as a dormanted university asset, not a live assertion threat. Verify status before budgeting for a validity defense.

Confidence note: I am confident about the absence of PTAB activity, since two independent sources (ODP-structured data and open search) agree. I am confident about the maintenance-fee lapse because it appears as an explicit USPTO legal event with an effective date of 2022-06-12. I am not able to confirm from the public record whether a revival petition is pending, and the exact scope of intervening rights under § 41(c)(2) is fact-specific — treat those as items to confirm before relying on them.

Ownership Chain Reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665

Scope note / data limitation. I was unable to load the USPTO Assignment Center itself (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and the indexed mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) in this session, so I could not read the assignment cover sheets directly. The findings below are built from the patent's own front-matter/legal-events record as set out in the authoritative full text provided (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24), plus independent corroboration where noted. Where a field could not be verified (notably the assignment correspondent), I say so rather than inferring.

Also flagged for the record: no contradiction exists between this section and the previously generated litigation summary. That section found no litigation; this section finds no litigation-enabling assignment chain. The two are mutually consistent.

Inventors

All three named inventors were affiliated with Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, at the time of filing (utility application 15/083,403, filed 2016-03-29; provisional 62/142,500, filed 2015-04-03).

Unusual-pattern check — inventor departures: Partially present, but outside the fire-sale window.

• By the October 2019 Rev. Sci. Instrum. publication, Lamberson's affiliation had changed to the Colorado School of Mines (Mechanical Engineering, Golden, CO) while her former students remained at Drexel. That is a departure roughly 3.5 years after filing — well outside the 12-month window that typically precedes a portfolio fire-sale.
• Conflict in my sources: a Society for Experimental Mechanics officers report (May 2020) still lists "Prof. Leslie Lamberson, Drexel University" for a Technical Editor term ending 2021. I cannot reconcile these with high confidence; the peer-reviewed paper affiliation is the stronger evidence, and the SEM roster may simply lag. I state the departure as "moved to Colorado School of Mines circa 2019 — date not precisely established."
• Pagano and Jewell: no evidence located of departure from Drexel at any specific date. Not determined.
• Critically, none of these departures coincided with any assignment of the patent — all three inventors had already assigned to Drexel in 2016 and no further conveyance was ever recorded. The classic "inventors scatter, then portfolio is sold" pattern is not present.

Original assignee

Drexel University — Philadelphia, PA. Named as assignee on the issued patent and as the sole assignee in the only recorded assignment (see below). Current assignee per Google Patents: Drexel University.

• Entity type / primary line of business: private, nonprofit research university (higher education and sponsored research). Not a product company.
• Product embodying the claims: No commercial product identified. The claimed device is a laboratory instrument. It was built in-house in Prof. Lamberson's Drexel lab, and the design was subsequently published by the inventors as "A tunable modified-Hopkinson impact fatigue device," Rev. Sci. Instrum. 90, 105104 (2019) — i.e., the technology was published openly for academic use, not commercialized. I found no evidence of a manufacturing licensee, OEM, or vendor selling the device. (Note: the NSF PAR-hosted manuscript version of that paper recites "USPTO No. 62142500" — the provisional application number, not the patent number. That is the authors' own shorthand and is not an assignment record.)
• University tech-transfer function: Drexel Applied Innovation ("Drexel Applied Innovation manages the intellectual property that is created at the University… negotiates license agreements with industry, investors and entrepreneurs"). This is an internal office, not a separate assignee — no Drexel IP-holding LLC ever appears in this chain.
• Current status: Operating. No evidence of acquisition, dissolution, bankruptcy, or receivership. Drexel remains an active patent filer (44 U.S. patents issued in 2018 as first assignee, tied for 51st nationally).

Assignment timeline

One (1) recorded assignment exists for this patent. Google Patents' legal-event table contains exactly one AS (Assignment) event for application 15/083,403, plus the ordinary grant and fee events. Applying the literal instruction: because a record does exist, I proceed.

• 2016-03-28 to 2016-04-08 (executed, per-signature dates differ) / recorded 2016-05-13 — Reel 038580 / Frame 0524
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor(s): LAMBERSON, LESLIE ELISE; PAGANO, STEVEN J.; JEWELL, PETER A
  • Assignee: DREXEL UNIVERSITY (Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation), Philadelphia, PA
  • Correspondent: NOT VERIFIED. The Google Patents legal-events entry records the reel/frame, the assignors, the signing dates and the reel/frame citation REEL/FRAME:038580/0524, but does not expose the recording correspondent. I could not reach the USPTO Assignment Center to read it. The only attorney of record I can confirm for this patent is the prosecution agent, Joseph E. Maenner, Maenner & Associates, LLC, 2723 Stockley Lane, Downingtown, PA 19335 (listed as "Agent" on the application's bibliographic record). I cannot confirm Maenner was the assignment-recording correspondent — that is an inference from the fact that the same small firm prosecuted the case, not a documented finding.
  • Context: Initial employment/obligation assignment. Standard university practice: the faculty and student inventors assigned their rights in the provisional/utility filing to Drexel at the outset. This is the inception record of the chain, not a transfer of an already-issued patent.

No other assignments, security interests, licenses, name changes, mergers, corrections, or releases are recorded. The legal-event table for this patent contains only: the 2016 assignment, the 2018-05-23 grant ("PATENTED CASE"), the 2022-01-31 maintenance-fee reminder, and the 2022-07-18 lapse events. There is no record of the patent ever leaving Drexel.

Corroborating negative: the patent's current legal status is "Expired – Fee Related," lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362, effective 2022-06-12. A patent that had been transferred to an asserting entity would ordinarily have had its maintenance fees paid; the lapse is consistent with the patent remaining with the original university assignee and never being monetized.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9995665
    2015 : Provisional 62142500 filed by Drexel inventors
    2016 : Utility app 15083403 filed
         : Inventors assign all rights to Drexel University
    2018 : Patent US 9995665 issues to Drexel
    2022 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — and that is the correct call under the rubric, because the record contains only the original assignment (Reel 038580/0524, executed 2016-03-28 to 2016-04-08, recorded 2016-05-13, inventors Lamberson/Pagano/Jewell → Drexel University). No post-issuance conveyance, license, security interest, or name change was ever recorded, and I could not confirm the assignment correspondent because the USPTO Assignment Center was unreachable in this session.

Substantively, every affirmative NPE indicator is absent and the evidence points to a non-asserting university holding: a single inception-stage employment assignment to a nonprofit university, no product and no licensee, no litigation, and a 2022 lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees (effective 2022-06-12) that would be anomalous for any monetization vehicle. The one thread a reviewer might pull — outside counsel Maenner & Associates, LLC appearing on multiple Drexel patents — is a normal university-counsel relationship and, standing alone, is not a finding.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 9995665 or application 15/083,403); indexed mirror — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Google Patents legal events for this patent — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9995665](/patent/US9995665)/en.

Recommended follow-up if a definitive correspondent is needed: query the Assignment Center by reel/frame 038580/0524 directly, or pull the assignment cover sheet via PatentCenter for application 15/083,403, to read the "Correspondent" field. I could not complete that step here and have deliberately left the field marked unverified rather than attributing it to Maenner on inference.

I'll search the USPTO database for the specific patent number 9995665 and gather details on its cited prior art.

I have the authoritative citation list from the patent text. Let me gather details on the most technically relevant references to map them accurately.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665 B2

Methodology & scope note (read first)

The identifier was interpreted literally as 9,995,665; no similar numbers were substituted. My tooling is web search, not a credentialed pull of USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB; however, the authoritative full text of US 9,995,665 (fetched from Google Patents, which mirrors the USPTO bibliographic and "References Cited" record) supplies the complete examiner-cited reference list. The analysis below is built from that list plus verification searches on the individual references. Where I only have a title/abstract for a reference, I say so rather than fabricate an element-by-element disclosure.

Important internal discrepancy to flag: the authoritative patent page displays the citation list twice — once as "Citations (20)" and once as "Patent Citations (21)." The 21-entry list adds US 7,073,405 B2 (absent from the 20-entry rendering). I treat all 21 as cited art. This is a rendering discrepancy in the source, not a different patent.

Legal framing: Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a reference anticipates only if it discloses every element of the claim, arranged as in the claim. Here, every claim (independent or dependent) requires the full three-subsystem architecture of claim 1 (or the claim-15 variant), including the claimed reset mechanism operating on a second longitudinal axis perpendicular to the first, with a reset rod and a retractor wheel on its engagement end that translates linearly. On the records available, no single cited reference discloses all of that; therefore none of the 21 references is an anticipatory (claim-killing § 102) reference for claims 1, 8, or 15, or for any claim depending from them. The references are best characterized as § 103 (obviousness) art and as art bearing on individual features. I map each below to the claim features it touches.

Complete examiner-cited reference list (21 references)

Dates as recorded in the patent's "References Cited." "Pub." = publication/issue date; "Filed" = application filing/priority date.

Tier 1 — Impact / fatigue / cyclic-testing apparatus (most relevant)

1. US 2,662,392 A — "Sine wave shock tester"

• Inventor: Donal E. Sullivan · Filed 1950-02-03 · Pub. 1953-12-15
• Description: Test instrument that imparts a sinusoidal/repeated shock to a specimen (per its title and classification as an impact/vibration tester).
• § 102 relevance: Touches the general concept of repeated-impact/shock testing (claim 8 preamble). Does not disclose the striker-rod/trigger/actuator/reset architecture of claim 1 or the perpendicular reset of claims 1/15. Not anticipatory; at most background.

2. US 3,374,662 A — "Flexural fatigue machine"

• Inventors: Achter, Smith, Riley, Stegman · Assignee: U.S. Navy · Filed 1966-04-29 · Pub. 1968-03-26 · Class G01N 3/32
• Description: Machine for applying repeated or pulsating forces to induce flexural fatigue in a specimen — directly in the same technical space as the claimed device (repetitive loading to characterize fatigue).
• § 102 relevance: Highly relevant to the purpose and classification of claims 1/8/15 (repeated mechanical stress to determine fatigue). But it is a flexural fatigue apparatus, not a magnetically-actuated, spring-driven striker with an independent perpendicular reset. Not anticipatory.

3. US 5,824,880 A — "Automated drop-weight impact testing"

• Assignee: Phillips Petroleum Co. · Filed 1997-05-30 · Pub. 1998-10-20
• Description (verified): A computer-automated, pneumatically powered lift mechanism that automates weight-lifting for a standard ASTM drop-weight impact machine; the weight/dart is raised in a drop tube, position-sensed, and released at a programmed height. Expressly solves the "must be manually reset/loaded after each impact" problem that the '665 background section identifies.
• § 102 relevance: Directly relevant to the automated cyclic impact concept and to the motivation underlying claim 8 (and the '665 background). Discloses automated lift/release, not a striker rod propelled by a released spring-loaded trigger, and no perpendicular retractor-wheel reset. Not anticipatory; strong § 103 context for the automation aspects of claims 8–11.

4. US 7,412,870 B2 — "Method and apparatus for dynamic impact testing"

• Inventor: Anguel S. Brankov · Assignee: California Micro Devices / Semicom Components Ind. LLC · Filed 2005-12-02 · Pub. 2008-08-19 · IPC G01N 3/32, 3/42, 3/48
• Description (verified): Projectile propelled (gravity, electromagnetic, hydraulic, pneumatic, etc.) along a rod to strike a stopper assembly that transmits impact to a target; mass and shape of the projectile and stopper are interchangeable to tune impact; automated using return mechanisms and programmed sequences of impacts; impact energy adjusted by changing propelling force/mass/height.
• § 102 relevance: Combines several features the '665 device claims — interchangeable striker/mass, adjustable energy, automated repetition, and reset/return. Touches claims 8–9 (method/repeat), and the "change out the projectile" theme. Still lacks the trigger-propels-striker-rod architecture and the perpendicular reset axis/retractor wheel. Not anticipatory; the most § 103-relevant reference for the automation + adjustability combination.

5. US 8,402,811 B2 — "Cyclic impact-sliding fatigue wear testing instrument"

• Inventor: Yining Nie · Filed 2010-06-26 · Pub. 2013-03-26
• Description: Instrument for cyclic impact combined with sliding, for fatigue/wear characterization.
• § 102 relevance: Closest cited art on the cyclic-impact-fatigue purpose and on cyclical impact delivery (claims 1/8 framing). Does not disclose the specific striker/trigger/actuator/perpendicular-reset structure. Not anticipatory.

6. US 7,500,378 B2 — "Micro-impact testing apparatus"

• Assignee: Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) · Filed 2005-04-29 · Pub. 2009-03-10
• Description: Micro-scale impact testing apparatus (cited on the '665 page as related art; also the '665 patent appears in its "Cited By" list).
• § 102 relevance: Relevant only as impact-testing background; different scale/mechanism. Not anticipatory.

7. US 2010/0300177 A1 — "Methods and apparatus for high frequency impact testing"

• Assignee: Raytheon Company · Filed 2009-05-26 · Pub. 2010-12-02
• Description: High-frequency impact testing apparatus/methods.
• § 102 relevance: Bears on the "programmable/adjustable impact rate" concept (specification; claims 8–11 automation). Not the claimed architecture. Not anticipatory.

8. US 6,523,391 B1 — "Vertical height impact testing apparatus"

• Assignee: Variform Inc. · Filed 2001-06-08 · Pub. 2003-02-25
• Description: Impact-testing apparatus based on vertical drop height.
• § 102 relevance: Background impact-testing art; adjustable-impact-energy concept. Not anticipatory.

9. US 6,742,381 B2 — "Apparatus and method for evaluating damping performance of vibration-damping devices"

• Assignee: Tokai Rubber Industries, Ltd. · Filed 2002-03-12 · Pub. 2004-06-01
• Description: Apparatus applying repeated impacts/vibration to characterize damping.
• § 102 relevance: Repeated-impact testing background. Not anticipatory.

Tier 2 — Actuation / magnetic or electromagnetic drive (relevant to claims 2–3, 15, 17)

10. US 4,019,374 A — "Electromagnetic impulser for dynamically loading a structure"

• Assignee: TRW Inc. · Filed 1975-07-24 · Pub. 1977-04-26
• Description: Electromagnetic impulse generator that dynamically loads a structure (impact excitation).
• § 102 relevance: Bears on the electromagnetic actuation/magnetic release feature (claims 2–3, 17) and the concept of electromagnetically generated dynamic impulse. Not the claimed trigger/rear-plate release. Not anticipatory.

11. US 8,786,143 B2 — "Magnetically actuated reciprocating motor and process using reverse magnetic switching"

• Inventor: Kendall C. Gosvener · Filed 2010-07-08 · Pub. 2014-07-22
• Description: Reciprocating motor driven by magnetic switching (magnetic plate actuation/reciprocation).
• § 102 relevance: Bears on the magnetic release + linear-motor reciprocation feature (claims 2–3, 15, 17) and on reciprocal motion of an actuator. Not the impact-fatigue architecture. Not anticipatory.

12. US 2014/0217932 A1 — "Magnetostrictive actuator"

• Assignee: Great Plains Diesel Technologies, L.C. · Filed 2013-02-06 · Pub. 2014-08-07
• Description: Magnetostrictive actuator (a magnetically driven linear actuator).
• § 102 relevance: Generic magnetic linear-actuator art; touches the actuator-assembly concepts (claims 1–3, 15). Not anticipatory.

13. US 3,177,386 A — "Alternating-current electromagnetic reciprocating motor"

• Inventor: Pietro Aurelio Macchioni · Filed 1961-11-14 · Pub. 1965-04-06
• Description: AC electromagnetic reciprocating motor.
• § 102 relevance: Early electromagnetic-recipation art; background for the actuator assembly. Not anticipatory.

14. US 2,662,392 already covered; US 2,289,962 is not in the '665 list (it appears in a different patent's search report) — excluded.

Tier 3 — Percussion/striker mechanism, hardness, and profiling/impulse art (peripheral)

15. US 4,499,906 A — "Percussion instrument"

• Assignee: Siemens Aktiengesellschaft · Filed 1982-04-26 · Pub. 1985-02-19
• Description: Percussion/striking instrument (Siemens was a medical-device maker; consistent with a mechanical percussion striker).
• § 102 relevance: Background on percussive striking mechanisms (the striker/trigger concept broadly). Not anticipatory.

16. US 3,879,982 A — "Method and apparatus for testing hardness of specimens"

• Inventor: Ernst Schmidt · Filed 1972-10-16 · Pub. 1975-04-29
• Description: Impact/indentation-based hardness testing of specimens.
• § 102 relevance: Background on impact-driven materials testing; not the claimed architecture. Not anticipatory.

17. US 7,380,443 B2 — "Hardness testing apparatus"

• Assignee: Mitutoyo Corporation · Filed 2002-12-25 · Pub. 2008-06-03
• Description: Instrumented hardness tester (controlled-force indentation).
• § 102 relevance: Background on controlled-force specimen testing. Not anticipatory.

18. US 6,941,793 B2 — "Impulse generator for profiling system"

• Inventor: Daniel Rioux · Filed 2001-12-20 · Pub. 2005-09-13
• Description: Impulse generator (excitation) used in a profiling/scanning system.
• § 102 relevance: Background impulse-generation art. Not anticipatory.

19. US 7,073,405 B2 — "Sensor for profiling system"

• Assignee: Global E Bang Inc. · Filed 2001-12-20 · Pub. 2006-07-11
• Description: Sensor used with a profiling system (companion to the Rioux impulse generator above).
• § 102 relevance: Peripheral; no bearing on the claimed mechanical impact-fatigue architecture. Not anticipatory.

20. US 3,371,770 A — "Apparatus for moving pipe through a coating machine"

• Assignee: American Pipe & Construction Co. · Filed 1966-10-25 · Pub. 1968-03-05
• Description: Pipe-handling/transport apparatus for a coating machine.
• § 102 relevance: Mechanically tangential (handling/transport), cited very likely for a general mechanical-translation/linear-motion teaching. Not anticipatory; of minimal value.

21. US 2014/0016535 / US 2014/0026635 A1 — "Field testing apparatus and method for determining the dynamic elastic modulus of asphalt"

• Inventor: Bernd Zorn · Filed 2012-07-30 · Pub. 2014-01-30
• Description: Field apparatus using an impact to determine a dynamic property (elastic modulus) of asphalt.
• § 102 relevance: Impact-based dynamic-property measurement background. Not anticipatory.

(Also cited: US 2014/0150526 A1 — "Electrodynamic Modal Test Impactor System and Method," The Boeing Company, filed 2012-11-30, pub. 2014-06-05 — a voice-coil-driven electrodynamic impactor for modal testing; relevant to claims 2–3/15 as an electrodynamic/electromagnetic actuator driving a shaft/tip, but not the claimed spring-trigger + perpendicular-reset architecture.)

Consolidated § 102 / § 103 mapping

Non-patent citation (1): "Scientific Research," dated Oct. 15, 2014, URL http://file.scirp.org/Html/3-4900181_30860.htm — cited by the examiner as general scientific background. It is not a § 102 reference to the claimed apparatus.

Bottom line

• No cited reference anticipates any claim of US 9,995,665 under § 102. Every claim requires the full claim-1/claim-15 architecture — in particular the reset mechanism on a second longitudinal axis perpendicular to the striker axis, comprising a reset rod with a retractor wheel on its engagement end that is translated linearly. None of the 21 references discloses that combination.
• The most technically relevant prior art (for § 103 or for defense of specific features) is:
  1. US 7,412,870 (Brankov / California Micro Devices) — automated, return-mechanism-equipped dynamic impact tester with interchangeable projectile and adjustable energy — closest to the combined automation + adjustability thrust of claims 8–11, 14, 16;
  2. US 5,824,880 (Phillips Petroleum) — computer-automated cyclic drop-weight testing that eliminates manual reset — directly addresses the problem the '665 background identifies;
  3. US 8,402,811 (Nie) — cyclic impact-fatigue testing instrument;
  4. US 3,374,662 (Navy) — repeated-force flexural fatigue machine (same G01N 3/32 space);
  5. US 8,786,143, US 4,019,374, and US 2014/0217932 — magnetic/electromagnetic actuation relevant to the "magnetic release" limitations (claims 2–3, 15, 17).
• Confidence/caveats: I verified the citation list against the authoritative patent text and spot-verified several references via search (descriptions for US 5,824,880 and US 7,412,870 are pulled from their specifications; the remainder are described from their titles/abstracts). I did not perform a full element-by-element, claim-chart reading of all 21 reference specifications, and I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB directly — so the § 102/§ 103 characterizations here are reasoned from the available records, not a formal invalidity opinion. A definitive anticipation/invalidity conclusion would require full-text review of each reference against each claim limitation.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual cited references. Let me pull details on the most structurally relevant ones.

Let me pull the remaining structurally key references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,995,665 B2 ("Dynamic impact fatigue device")

Authority used: the full text/claims of US 9,995,665 B2 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995665/en (all claim quotes below are verbatim from that source), plus the "Citations (20)" and "Non-Patent Citations (1)" listed on that page. I also pulled the published content of the four structurally most relevant cited references (links in each row). This builds on — and does not repeat — the bibliographic, claim-overview, and litigation sections already generated.

Critical date. Priority is the provisional US 62/142,500 filed 2015-04-03 (application filed 2016-03-29). The patent is an AIA patent. Every reference cited on the face that I checked published well before 2015-04-03, so all qualify as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1). Note the identifier is treated literally throughout; where the patent's own text contains apparent typographical errors (e.g., claim 3 recites "a downstream position wherein the electromagnet engages trigger and a downstream position wherein the electromagnet releases the trigger"; the specification has "Magnetic release 24," "Support 152," "motors 120, 182," and "striker rod 160 shown in FIG. 5 instructed from a metallic material"), I flag them rather than silently correcting them.

I. Legal framework applied

Because the claim priority is post-AIA, § 103 is applied as in Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): (1) scope/content of the prior art; (2) differences between the art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) objective indicia (no evidence of nexus-bearing secondary considerations appears in the record — the patent went abandoned in 2022 for non-payment of maintenance fees, which is at most weakly probative of no commercial success, and is not reliable evidence either way).

Under KSR, a combination is obvious if (a) the references are analogous art, (b) there is an articulated reason to combine (including the KSR rationales: predictable results, mere substitution of known elements, "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," design incentives/market pressure, and design choice), and (c) the references are reasonably amenable to the combination. The specification's own Background supplies the motivation:

"Current commercially available impact machines must be manually reset after each impact or provide only a predetermined, unalterable impact value. It would be beneficial to provide a dynamic impact fatigue device that can be easily modified … to deliver a desired rate and/or strength of impact or successive impacts."

That is an express problem statement that the prior art is being combined to solve.

II. Level of ordinary skill in the art

A POSITA here would be a mechanical or mechanical-test engineer (or applied-mechanics researcher) with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and roughly 2–5 years' experience in materials-testing instrumentation, including impact/fatigue testers, spring-loaded actuators, linear-motion stages, magnetic/electric actuators, and data-acquisition controls. All references below are within this field (G01N 3/32 and G01N 3/38 — repeated/pulsating mechanical stress testing), so there is no serious analogous-art dispute.

III. The cited prior art and what each teaches

Non-patent citation: "Scientific Research; Date: Oct. 15, 2014; URL: http://file.scirp.org/Html/3-4900181_30860.htm." I could not retrieve or verify this document's content, so I do not rely on it. It should be pulled in any formal office action.

IV. Element-by-element mapping for independent claim 1

V. Grounds of rejection under § 103

A. Ground 1 — Claim 1 (and claims 2–3, 5–14) obvious over Raytheon '177 in view of TRW '374 and CMD '870

• Raytheon '177 supplies the entire launch half of the device: spring-loaded, reciprocable mass; an upstream actuator (winch) that releasably engages and translates a spring-loaded element upstream; a latch that releases it downstream; and adjustability of impact energy by "selecting a different spring constant."
• TRW '374 supplies the two-body trigger→striker firing architecture (a driven first body striking a second, spring-loaded body that then delivers the blow), and the impact-timed trigger signal — the recognised equivalent of the '665 laser 190/photoreceptor.
• CMD '870 supplies the missing automatic reset/return mechanism and the programmable cyclic operation the '665 Background says is needed.

Motivation to combine (KSR):

1. Express problem statement in the '665 Background ("must be manually reset after each impact") — the references are being combined to do precisely what the Background asks.
2. Predictable result: bolting a known return mechanism onto a known spring-launch test rig yields nothing more than the expected ability to repeat an impact without a human. No new physical principle is invoked.
3. Finite number of identified, predictable solutions for "return a rod to a start position": push it (linear actuator), pull it (magnetic gripper), or drive it (friction wheel). Any one is a routine selection. Raytheon '177 itself demonstrates the magnetic-hold solution.
4. Market/competitive pressure to reduce fatigue-test time — CMD '870 and Nie '811 both drive in that direction.

B. Ground 2 — Claims 4, 5, 6, 14 and 16 obvious over Raytheon '177 / A*STAR '378

C. Ground 3 — Claim 7 (mounting plate for a test specimen) obvious; also applicant-admitted

The '665 specification expressly admits that mounting plate 106 is a breadboard with "evenly spaced threaded openings 108" and that the user can mount components "using typical optical breadboard mounting systems known in the art (Thor Labs, Edmunds, etc.)." A feature the applicant admits is a known commercial item cannot render a claim non-obvious. Independently, CMD '870 discloses a base 12 / base pedestal 16 that supports the target and is adjustable; A*STAR '378 discloses a specimen holder with a fixed-clamp plate on a three-dimensionally translatable stage (X-Y-Z micrometers). Any of these supports claim 7.

D. The hardest limitation — the "retractor wheel mounted on the engagement end of the reset rod"

This is the limitation that both independent claims emphasise ("wherein the reset rod moves the retractor wheel linearly"), which suggests it was the point of novelty added/retained during prosecution; it is also the only element I cannot cleanly map to the references I opened. An examiner would need to either:

1. Chart it to a driven roller/pinch-roller friction drive — US 3,371,770 (cited on the face) is titled "Apparatus for moving pipe through a coating machine" and its subject matter is (per title) translating an elongate cylinder via rollers. The '665 specification itself characterises the wheel as a friction member: "Retractor wheel 184 is then electronically operated to rotate and frictionally slide striker rod 160 upstream until striker rod 160 is reset." Substituting a rotary friction wheel on a linear actuator shaft for the return mechanisms of CMD '870 is a predictable substitution of one known translation mechanism for another; and
2. Argue design choice for the perpendicular second axis — mounting the reset hardware orthogonally to the launch axis is a packaging decision on the breadboard, and the specification offers no unexpected benefit from the perpendicularity itself (it merely states L2 is "generally perpendicular to linear axis L1 of striker rod 160").

Honest weakness: if the retractor-wheel-on-linear-actuator-shaft combination, moving linearly, is genuinely absent from every reference (including US 3,371,770, which I did not open), a competent applicant could argue non-obviousness of at least claim 1's final clause, since the combination of a rotating friction wheel that is itself translated linearly by the reset rod is a specific architecture. Any formal rejection should be supported by a full text read of US 3,371,770 and a broader search for "driven roller / friction drive return for a reciprocating striker."

E. Ground 4 — Claim 15 obvious over Raytheon '177 + A*STAR '378 + Boeing '526 (EP 2 738 537 A1)

Claim 15 recites the same architecture with more specific parts, almost all of which are directly present in the cited art:

F. Method claims 8–14

• Claim 8 (place specimen; activate actuator; translate trigger upstream; deactivate; impact; propel; impact specimen): CMD '870's process flow (place target 14 → raise/release projectile → impact → repeat) plus Raytheon '177's winch/latch/spring sequence perform every step.
• Claim 9 (reset, then repeat): CMD '870's "return mechanisms and programmed sequences of impacts."
• Claim 10 (reset mechanism translated generally perpendicular): design choice (see § V.D).
• Claim 11 (steps performed electronically): CMD '870 ("automated"), TRW '374 (electronic trigger signal), Boeing (controller).
• Claims 12–13 (translate actuator downstream; magnetically engage/disengage): Raytheon '177's magnetic hold-and-release.
• Claim 14 (swap biasing member for one with different characteristics): Raytheon '177's "selecting a different spring constant."

VI. Objective indicia / counterarguments to anticipate

1. No asserted secondary considerations. No evidence in the record of commercial success, licensing, copying, or long-felt unmet need tied to the claimed subject matter. The patent lapsed 2022-06-12 for non-payment of maintenance fees — weak, non-dispositive evidence that the owner did not perceive commercial value, and in any event not a nexus-bearing objective indicium.
2. "Unexpected results" would need to be shown for the perpendicular reset axis or the retractor wheel; the specification provides only the expected benefit (automatic reset).
3. Design-choice attack on the perpendicular axis: the spec gives no functional reason (e.g., "to eliminate cross-axis forces on the striker") for the orthogonality — only the bare structural recitation. An examiner should require the applicant to rebut the ordinary design-choice rationale.
4. Possible § 102 anticipation to raise (not just § 103): Raytheon '177 alone appears to disclose the spring-launch + upstream retracting actuator + magnetic release + adjustable-spring combination; if a full read confirms it also holds/repositions the projectile on a return stroke, it may anticipate independent claim 1 and/or claim 15 (aside from the retractor-wheel clause). This should be verified against the full Raytheon text.

VII. Bottom line

Every element of independent claims 1 and 15 except the "retractor wheel mounted on the engagement end of the reset rod, [with] the reset rod mov[ing] the retractor wheel linearly" limitation is disclosed or rendered obvious by the cited references — chiefly US 2010/0300177 A1 (Raytheon) for the spring-loaded, magnetically-released, energy-adjustable launcher; US 4,019,374 (TRW) for the trigger-strikes-striker architecture and impact-timed signal; US 7,412,870 B2 (California Micro Devices) for automatic return/reset and programmable cyclic testing; US 7,500,378 B2 (A*STAR) for a spring-loaded, linearly-guided impact head with a releasable holder and an adjustable-energy spring; and US 2014/0150526 A1 / EP 2 738 537 A1 (Boeing) for the motor-driven reciprocating shaft. The '665 Background supplies the express motivation, and the specification supplies two applicant admissions (breadboard mounting; optical-breadboard hardware) that independently defeat claim 7.

The only genuinely contestable limitation is the retractor-wheel-on-reset-rod. A robust § 103 rejection of claims 1 and 15 should therefore either (i) chart that feature to US 3,371,770 (pipe-advancing rollers) as a predictable friction-drive substitution, corroborated by the specification's own statement that the wheel "frictionally slide[s] striker rod 160 upstream," or (ii) search specifically for driven-roller/pinch-roller return mechanisms for reciprocating strikers. Absent such a reference, claims 1 and 15 have a colourable non-obviousness argument limited to that clause.

Caveats on completeness (please read)

• All claim quotes are taken from the authoritative Google Patents text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995665/en; I did not alter any reference number, and where the patent text contains apparent typos I flagged them instead of correcting them.
• I substantively retrieved the content of US 2010/0300177 A1, US 7,412,870 B2, US 4,019,374 A, US 7,500,378 B2, US 8,402,811 B2, and the Boeing EP 2 738 537 A1 counterpart. The remaining cited references (including US 3,371,770 A, US 5,824,880 A, US 2,662,392 A, US 3,374,662 A, and the non-patent Scientific Research citation) were not opened; my statements about them are limited to titles/classification and are flagged as such.
• I searched by patent number and title; where the search tool returned material for a different-format publication (e.g., the European counterpart EP 2 738 537 A1 or the pre-grant publication US 2010/0300177 A1), I identified that explicitly rather than silently substituting it.
• This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion and not a substitute for a full Examiner-style search of the complete text of each reference.