PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15886890
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-02
Publication Date: 2018-06
Patent Classification: ["074", "493000"]

Abstract:
A collapsible steering column assembly comprising a steering shaft that is supported within a steering column shroud, the shroud comprising an upper shroud portion and a lower shroud portion, in which the upper shroud portion is located towards the end of the steering shaft that is nearest the steering wheel and the lower portion is located towards the end of the shaft furthest from the steering wheel, the upper portion being at least partially received within the lower portion so that the upper portion can telescopically collapse into the lower portion during a crash, a support bracket that in use is secured to a fixed part of the vehicle and includes two support bracket arms that depend from a base portion to embrace the shroud, a clamp rail that is releasably secured to the upper shroud portion, the clamp rail including a slot that extends generally horizontally, and a clamp pin that extends through an opening in each of the arms of the bracket and through the generally horizontal slot in the rail, the clamp pin carrying a clamp mechanism that is movable between an unclamped position in which the rail can move freely relative to the clamp pin and a clamped position in which the rail is fixed relative to the clamp pin. The rail is secured to the upper shroud portion by a deformable tab which protrudes from the upper shroud portion to hook onto a part of the rail that faces the steering wheel end of the shroud. In use of the assembly with the cam mechanism in the clamped condition the tab is deformable under a predefined load applied to the upper shroud so as to unhook from the rail allowing the upper shroud to move axially relative to the rail and hence relative to the clam pin to permit collapse of the steering column shroud.

Claim (Index 1):
A collapsible steering column assembly comprising a steering shaft that is supported within a steering column shroud by at least one bearing assembly, the steering column shroud comprising an upper shroud portion and a lower shroud portion, in which the upper shroud portion is located towards an end of the steering shaft that is nearest a steering wheel and the lower shroud portion is located towards the end of the steering shaft furthest from the steering wheel, the upper shroud portion being at least partially received within the lower shroud portion so that the upper shroud portion can telescopically collapse into the lower shroud portion during a crash,\n a support bracket that in use is secured to a fixed part of a vehicle and includes at least two arms, each of which depends from a base portion alongside a respective side of the steering column shroud in a region where the lower shroud portion overlaps the upper shroud portion, and a clamp mechanism that comprises a stack of components that are located along a clamp pin, the clamp pin passing through an opening in each of the at least two arms of the support bracket, the stack of components including a cam assembly that is rotatable between an unclamped positon in which the cam assembly has a first axial length and a second clamped position in which the cam assembly has a second, greater, axial length, the support bracket arm being pressed onto the upper shroud portion when the clamp mechanism is in the clamped position thereby to squeeze the lower shroud portion onto the upper shroud portion, wherein the clamp mechanism is arranged to additionally provide a secondary clamped position in which the squeezing force applied by the support bracket onto the lower shroud portion is reduced or removed completely without any corresponding rotational movement of the cam assembly.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 5.0
- Percentile: 88.0
- Lexical Diversity: 3.1165
- Patent Class: 74.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['15233272', '15886888', '15315932', '14759533', '16087149']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8225515772041032
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.550408835411946
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7953373030248876
- Mean Citation Score: 403.124404
- Max Citation Score: 467.45218
- Similarity Product: 464.22327132791526

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 0
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 0
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test