US 10060869

I'll verify the current status of this patent with a couple of targeted searches, then summarize.

The first round of searches returned only off-target material (unrelated patents on ultrasonic flow metering). Let me refine.

Verification note

I ran several searches against the USPTO/Google Patents record and against publicly indexed court dockets (including 2026 CAFC-related material). The bibliographic data below comes from the authoritative patent text you supplied (source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10060869](/patent/US10060869)/en, fetched 2026-09-24), cross-confirmed for the specification text and assignee by FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[10060869](/patent/10060869).html) and the corresponding CN family member (CN107407645B).

No litigation was found. Searches for US 10,060,869 / "10060869" in district-court or Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dockets returned no hits involving this patent, and no PTAB/IPR activity surfaced. The 2026 CAFC docket material my searches returned concerned unrelated parties (e.g., Headwater Research, Fintiv/Apple, Taction/Apple) and is not connected to this patent. I cannot rule out a filing that is simply not indexed in the sources searched — treat "no litigation found" as a search result, not a legal conclusion.

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Bibliographic summary

Classifications: G01N33/28 (oil/hydrocarbon liquids), G01N22/00 (microwave/RF analysis), H01P7/04 (coaxial resonators), G01N27/02, G01N22/04, G01N33/2847 (water in oils).

Key prior art cited on the face: NO308922B1 / US6466035B1 (Multi-Fluid AS), NO315584B1 / US6915707B2 (Roxar), US20050188771A1, WO2007089156A1, WO2010115883A1, EP2500699B1 (Roxar, conical insert), WO2014122093A1 (Roxar, conductivity measurements). Non-patent: Nyfors, "Cylindrical Microwave Resonator Sensors for Measuring Materials Under Flow," Helsinki Univ. of Technology, Report S243, 2000; and the ISR by Savage for PCT/EP2016/058338 (2016-06-29).

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Abstract (as granted)

The abstract describes a system for measuring electrical characteristics of a fluid flowing through a pipe section. A coaxial resonator is formed by an essentially coaxial insert in the pipe defining an annular volume between a chosen part of the insert and the pipe wall, with the insert and pipe wall made of electrically conductive material. The system has at least one antenna that emits electromagnetic signals into and receives them from the coaxial resonator, and means to measure the frequency response within a frequency range including the waveguide mode TE11. The coaxial insert is mounted to the pipe wall through at least one support leg positioned outside the annular volume, and one electrically conductive fin is positioned at least partially in the annular volume, the fin lying in a radial plane that is different from the plane of the antenna(s) and the axis of the annular volume.

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Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. In plain terms, it covers a fluid-measurement system with all of the following elements:

1. A coaxial resonator in a pipe. An essentially coaxial insert sits inside the pipe and, together with the pipe wall, bounds an annular (ring-shaped) volume. Both the insert and the pipe wall are electrically conductive.
2. At least one antenna that both transmits electromagnetic signals into and receives signals from that coaxial resonator.
3. Measurement in the TE11 waveguide-mode band. The system measures the resonator's frequency response over a range that includes the coaxial waveguide mode TE11.
4. Mounting geometry. The insert is held on the pipe wall by at least one support leg located outside the annular volume (so the leg does not intrude into the resonant measurement volume).
5. An electrically conductive fin placed at least partly inside the annular volume, lying in a radial plane that is different from (a) the plane(s) defined by the antenna position(s) and (b) the plane defined by the axis of the annular volume. (Per the specification and drawings, the fin is at roughly 90° to the antenna plane.)

The technical purpose, per the specification, is to break the degeneracy of the two orthogonal coaxial TE11 modes: the extended fin sets up different effective short-circuit planes for the two orientations, separating them in frequency and locking the wanted mode's orientation, so the TE11 resonance peak can be used cleanly — in combination with the TEM resonance — for conductivity/salinity measurement as taught in WO2014/122093.

Dependent claims (2–12), briefly:

• 2 — measure over a range including both the TE11 mode and a coaxial TEM mode resonance.
• 3 — at least two antennas in a radial plane perpendicular to the fin's radial plane, on opposite sides of the insert.
• 4 — insert shaped to have a minimum distance from the pipe wall at the annular volume.
• 5 — insert is conical along the pipe direction.
• 6 — the fin is constituted by a support leg extending a chosen length into the annular volume.
• 7 — insert mounted between at least two legs positioned in the radial plane, equidistant between the antenna(s).
• 8 — three legs, one in that radial plane.
• 9 — four legs, two in that radial plane.
• 10 — system calculates conductivity in the annular volume from the TE11 resonance frequency.
• 11 — those calculations include measured TEM and TE11 resonance properties.
• 12 — support legs made from an electrically conducting material.

The specification adds that the fin need not be a leg at all — any conductive post or structure connecting insert to pipe wall that creates the short circuit at the desired location works, and its orientation defines the orientation of the wanted TE11 mode. Example embodiments: a 3-leg cone with ~30 mm extension on one leg and 180° antenna angle (antennas 90° from the extended leg), or a 4-leg cone with two opposite legs extended ~20 mm.

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Points of uncertainty

• Ownership chain beyond the face record: the patent states Roxar Flow Measurement AS as assignee. Roxar has widely been reported as an Emerson company, but I did not find an authoritative document in this search confirming a current ultimate parent or any later assignment/chain of title. Treat the recorded assignee as Roxar Flow Measurement AS.
• Litigation/PTAB status: as noted, no case, IPR, or CAFC appeal referencing US 10,060,869 was located. This is a negative search result, not a certified clearance.
• No discrepancy found between the search results and the supplied patent text for this number; searches for close variant numbers were excluded per your instruction.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10060869 across patent litigation databases.

Initial searches didn't surface litigation for this patent. Let me search more targeted sources.

No litigation surfaced. Let me check dedicated litigation databases directly.

Litigation Report: US Patent 10060869

Case Name: System for measuring characteristics of a fluid flow (US 10,060,869 B2)
Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS (a subsidiary of Emerson Electric Co.)
Inventor: Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors

Finding: No litigation identified

Based on my searches of patent litigation sources, I did not find any known litigation — district court, appellate (CAFC), ITC, or PTAB — involving US Patent 10060869 specifically.

Searches run (all specific to this patent number) returned no matching infringement suits, declaratory judgment actions, or administrative challenges tied to US 10,060,869.

Sources searched and what they returned

Important caveats and adjacent (non-matching) matters

1. Adjacent Roxar disputes exist but are NOT this patent. Roxar has been involved in intellectual-property disputes concerning multiphase flow meter technology, but these were trade-secret / know-how cases litigated in Norway, not US patent infringement suits on US 10,060,869:

   • Roxar AS v. FlowSys AS — Norwegian courts, culminating in a November 2005 Supreme Court of Norway Appeal Committee ruling (Gulating Court of Appeal, Aug. 2005) restraining FlowSys from selling/marketing its TopFlow and Wellsense meters and awarding Roxar damages.
   • Roxar Flow Measurement v. Multi Phase Meters (MPM) — Norwegian courts (Gulating Lagmannsrett, ~2014) ruling against Roxar and awarding MPM ~110 MNOK + costs.

   These involve different parties, a different patent/trade-secret set, non-US forums, and no case numbers identified as matching US 10,060,869.

2. Related Roxar patents appear only as citations, not as litigation targets here. E.g., US 11,415,446 (Roxar, "Flow measuring system") and US 10,359,372 (Roxar, "Conductivity measurements") appear in citation lists; their citation of this patent is not litigation.

3. Confidence statement. I could not confirm any litigation with high confidence, and I was unable to directly reach the full Unified Patents litigation case list, Docket Navigator, PACER, or the CAFC docket in this session (my tool calls were cut off). It remains possible that a suit naming this patent exists but was not indexed in the sources I could reach.

Recommended next steps to confirm a negative

To definitively rule litigation in or out, check these resources directly (each keyed to the exact number 10,060,869, not similar numbers):

• Unified Patents litigation case list — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
• CourtListener / RECAP docket search — https://www.courtlistener.com/
• PACER (per-district search on "10,060,869" in complaint text)
• CAFC docket search — https://cafc.uscourts.gov/
• USPTO Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ for any IPR/PGR on this patent
• Docket Navigator / RPX Insight (subscription dockets)

If you want, I can run these targeted checks (PTAB, CourtListener, CAFC) on the specific number once tool access resumes, and report any case names, jurisdictions, case numbers, and statuses I find.

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public sources before writing anything.

Let me run a few final targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,060,869: 0. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no AIA trial proceedings, and my independent web checks against PTAB public filings did not surface any IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 10,060,869 (application 15/556,522) or its owner Roxar Flow Measurement AS as respondent in an AIA trial.

Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. There is no proceeding to list individually below, and I will not invent one.

Bottom-line defensive posture: all 12 claims (1–12) stand untested at the PTAB and unchanged from issuance. That cuts both ways. There is no Final Written Decision to cite and no claim to point at as already canceled, so a defense built on "the PTAB already killed these claims" is unavailable. But there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone, and no patent-owner-sympathetic FWD record that would be read against your invalidity case. You are the first mover, not the follower of someone else's losing IPR.

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No proceedings to report

I found no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, or appeal to describe. Per the constraints of this task, I am stating that plainly rather than fabricating a docket entry. Two verification notes:

• The 869 shorthand is a trap. Web searches for "the '869 patent" surface unrelated matters including U.S. Patent No. 11,024,869 (VARTA/EVE battery IPR) and U.S. Patent No. 8,898,260 (ex parte reexam 90/019,489, Unified Patents as third-party requester). Neither is US 10,060,869. Always docket this patent by application number 15/556,522 or by full number 10,060,869, never by "the '869 patent."
• Family-level data confirms an uncontested US history. The prosecution/legal-events record for 15/556,522 shows only routine events — assignment to Roxar Flow Measurement AS (2017-09-08), patent grant (2018-08-28), and maintenance fees paid at the 4th year (2022-01-20) and 8th year (2026-01-21). No PGR window filing, no IPR petition, no certificate of correction or reexamination certificate. The only US publication is US 2018/0045662 A1 (2018-02-15).

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is in play. Claims 1–12 are all as-issued. The independent claim is claim 1, directed to a system with a coaxial resonator insert, at least one antenna, measurement of the frequency response including the coaxial waveguide mode TE₁₁, and — the point of novelty — an electrically conductive fin at least partially in the annular volume lying in a radial plane different from the plane defined by the antenna(s) and the annular volume axis. The remaining claims are dependents: claim 2 (TEM plus TE₁₁ response), claim 3 (two antennas in a plane perpendicular to the fin plane, opposite sides of the insert), claims 4–5 (minimum-distance/conical insert shape), claim 6 (fin = extended support leg), claim 7 (two legs at equal distances between the antennas), claim 8 (three legs, one in the fin plane), claim 9 (four legs, two in the fin plane), claim 10 (conductivity from TE₁₁ resonance frequency), claim 11 (calculation using TEM and TE₁₁ properties), and claim 12 (conducting-material support legs). Nothing is canceled; nothing is "hardened" by surviving a challenge either. The patent is in force and its anticipated expiration is 2036-04-15.

Estoppel landscape is wide open. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM has been instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not attach to anyone. No petitioner, and no privy of any petitioner, is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground in a district court or ITC action. Practically, that means a defendant today can still file a first IPR on any ground without the risk of § 315(e)(1) estoppel from an earlier petitioner's work, and can also argue any invalidity theory in litigation free of the "raised or reasonably could have raised" bar. The factual flip side: you also get no benefit from the extensive pre-issuance art discussion. The prosecution history cites a dense, self-referential prior-art set — EP2500699B1 (Roxar's own conical insert patent), WO2014/122093 (Roxar's conductivity-measurements application), NO308922 / US 6,466,035 (Multi-Fluid Asa), NO315584 / US 6,915,707 (Nyfors, "Compact flow meter"), US 2005/0188771 A1, WO2007/089156 A1, and WO2010/115883 A1 — plus the examiner-cited Nyfors thesis (Helsinki University of Technology, Report S243, 2000). Much of this art appears in the "Patent Citations" and "Family Cites Families" tables and was already before the examiner; a petition built on those references alone invites a § 325(d) discretionary denial, so a fresh combination or non-cited art will be the stronger footing.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has ever filed against this patent, so there is no serial-filer pattern and no evidence of a defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents in this chain. (Unified does appear in an unrelated ex parte reexamination of a different "869" patent — see above — which is a search artifact, not a link.) The patent owner is a large entity and an Emerson business (Roxar Flow Measurement AS), a sophisticated, well-resourced portfolio holder in multiphase flow metering, and it has continued paying maintenance fees on schedule through the 8th year. This is not a patent that has been left to lapse or quietly abandoned; it is a live instrument in a commercially active product line (Roxar MPFM multiphase meters). The absence of IPRs here more likely reflects that competitors have not reached the point of asserting-or-being-asserted with a target worth a $30k+ petition, not that the claims are unassailable.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not rely on PTAB history — there isn't any. Nothing in this record narrows the claims, estops a party, or supplies a free invalidity roadmap. If you are a defendant, your strongest posture is offensive: consider an IPR on claim 1 (and its dependents) as your own first filing, since you will face no § 315(e)(1) estoppel from a prior petitioner and no § 325(d) problem if you avoid the references the examiner already had.
2. Treat the "fin/leg geometry" limitations as the litigation battleground, not the microwave physics. Claim 1's distinguishing features relative to the admitted prior art — the fin's radial plane being different from the antenna plane and the annular-volume axis, and the support leg being outside the annular volume — are geometric, narrow, and squarely amenable to § 103 attack using Roxar's own earlier disclosures (NO308922/US 6,466,035 already describes "a radial, electrically conductive fin extending along the pipe axis, possibly inside the measured volume"). An IPR aimed at those limitations with a non-cited secondary reference is a viable path.
3. Verify the empty docket yourself before committing. Run a live PTAB search on application 15/556,522 in PTAB E2E / PTACTS and the USPTO PTAB API, and a parallel docket check on CourtListener for any Federal Circuit appeal or district-court case naming Roxar Flow Measurement AS. Two of my scheduled verification searches were cut off by a step limit, so while the structured ODP result plus the searches I did complete both show zero AIA activity, a fresh docket pull is the responsible confirmation before you build a strategy on the absence of proceedings.
4. Watch the family, not just the US patent. The same invention is covered by EP 3 286 561 B1, CN 107407645 B, the Norwegian NO 342831 B1, and WO 2016/169847 A1. Opposition or nullity activity in those jurisdictions can supply prior art, claim-construction arguments, and admissions that are useful in a US IPR or § 282 defense even though they are not PTAB proceedings. I did not confirm any EPO opposition in this run — flagging that as an open item rather than a finding.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,060,869 through the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Assignment Record Analysis — US 10,060,869 B2

Method note / limitation: My direct session access to the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) was not successful before tool limits were reached, so the reel/frame below is taken from the USPTO assignment data mirrored in the Google Patents legal-events block for this patent (the same underlying Assignment Center records). I flag each item I could not independently corroborate. Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10060869) and the legal-events mirror at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10060869/en.

Inventors

• Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors — sole named inventor on all 12 claims.
  • Employer at time of filing: Roxar Flow Measurement AS (Stavanger/Bergen, Norway), a wholly-owned subsidiary within Emerson (see below). The PCT application was filed 2016-04-15 by Roxar Flow Measurement AS as applicant, and the inventor assigned his rights to Roxar in 2017 (reel 043532/0233) — the ordinary employee/obligation-assignment pattern.
  • Background: Nyfors is a long-standing multiphase-metering researcher. He authored the thesis cited in this patent's specification ("Cylindrical Microwave Resonator Sensors for Measuring Materials Under Flow," Helsinki Univ. of Technology, Report S243, 2000) and is a named inventor on earlier flow-metering patents in the same corporate lineage, including US 6,466,035 (Multi-Fluid AS) and US 6,915,707 (Roxar). Earlier in his career he was associated with Multi-Fluid AS, which is the predecessor to Roxar's flow-measurement business.
  • Departure-pattern check: No evidence found that any inventor departed the original assignee within 12 months of filing. There is a single inventor, and the patent issued to the assignee that filed the application. No unusual pattern.

Original assignee

• Roxar Flow Measurement AS (Norway) — original and current assignee of record.
• Line of business: Design and manufacture of subsea/topside multiphase flow meters, wet-gas meters, and related instrumentation for upstream oil & gas. Roxar is an operating company that ships products; its multiphase flow meters (e.g., the Roxar MPFM line) are the commercial embodiment of the microwave-resonator measurement technology described in this patent and its cited siblings (EP2500699B1, WO2014/122093).
• Current status: Operating, and not independent. Emerson Electric Co. (NYSE: EMR) acquired Roxar ASA in 2009 through its subsidiary Aegir Norge Holding AS — announced 2009-03-02, voluntary offer settled 2009-04-21, compulsory acquisition completed 2009-05 (sources: Emerson press releases at emerson.com; controlglobal.com; hartenergy.com). Roxar became part of Emerson Process Management (later Emerson Automation Solutions). Roxar Flow Measurement AS retained its legal name through that acquisition, which is why no "merger" or "change of name" assignment appears on this 2016-filed patent even though its ultimate corporate parent changed in 2009. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or divestiture of this entity was found.

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is recorded. There are no post-issuance transfers — no shell IP entity, no security agreement, no merger assignment, no license/release recordation.

• 2017-08-31 (executed) / recorded 2017-09-08 — Reel 043532/0233
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS (Norway)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable in this session — the Assignment Center correspondent field for reel 043532/0233 was not successfully pulled. Given the pattern, it is most likely the US prosecution/recording agent for the national-stage application rather than a Norwegian associate; this should be confirmed at the Assignment Center before any reliance. No recurrence across this chain is possible to assess, because this is the chain's only link.
  • Context: Employer/obligation assignment — inventor conveys his rights to the company that filed the PCT application. This is the ordinary inventor-to-employer transfer, not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter.

Nothing else is recorded. The patent sits where it was filed: with Roxar Flow Measurement AS.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10060869
    2015 : Priority application NO20150495 filed
    2016 : PCT filed by Roxar Flow Measurement
    2017 : Inventor Nyfors assigns rights to Roxar
    2018 : US patent issued to Roxar

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment to any IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures entity exists; the only recorded assignee is Roxar Flow Measurement AS, an operating instrumentation manufacturer (a named Emerson subsidiary). No single-purpose LLC appears in the record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Roxar Flow Measurement AS nor Emerson matches any public NPE/asserter list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff match was surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not determinable. There is a single recorded assignment, so recurrence cannot exist by definition on this chain. The correspondent of record for reel 043532/0233 was not retrieved this session, so even a single name cannot be reported — flagged as a gap, not a negative finding.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment, executed 2017-08-31; no chain of LLCs and no transfers within any 24-month window beyond the original inventor transfer.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming this patent was found (consistent with the earlier litigation summary), so there is no pre-suit transfer to date. The only assignment (2017) predates issuance (2018) and predates any hypothetical assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 or insolvency sale involving Roxar Flow Measurement AS or its parent was found. Roxar was acquired by Emerson in 2009 as a solvent, revenue-generating company (≈US$200M revenue at acquisition).

7. Privateering — Not present. There is no transfer of the patent from the operating company to a third-party NPE, and no reported assertion of this patent on the operating company's behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at an operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data — in the literal sense that only the original inventor-to-employer assignment (reel 043532/0233, executed 2017-08-31 / recorded 2017-09-08) is on record. Beyond that procedural limitation, the record is affirmatively clean of NPE signals: the sole assignee, Roxar Flow Measurement AS, is an operating instrumentation manufacturer and an Emerson subsidiary that ships multiphase flow meters embodying the claims, and no licensing-only entity, cascading transfer, pre-suit transfer, or known-asserter appears. The one genuinely unresolved item is the correspondent of record on reel 043532/0233, which I could not retrieve; because no litigation exists, that gap is of low materiality.

Verification: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 10060869); legal-events mirror: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10060869/en.

I'll verify the cited references against public records before building the § 102 analysis.

Let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,060,869 B2

System for measuring characteristics of a fluid flow · Roxar Flow Measurement AS · priority 2015-04-23 · granted 2018-08-28

Building on the bibliographic summary and the claim-element breakdown already established for this patent, this section analyzes the patent citations of record on the face of US 10,060,869 B2 (the six "Citations" entries and the fuller "Patent Citations (11)" list from the Google Patents record supplied at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10060869/en), plus the two non-patent citations. I confirm the record by number only — no similar numbers were substituted. Record cross-checked against FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[10060869](/patent/10060869).html) and the US pre-grant publication US 2018/0045662 A1.

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1. Analytical framework and a candid bottom line

Effective filing date / applicable law. The application is the US national stage of PCT/EP2016/058338, filed 2016-04-15, with priority to NO 20150495A of 2015-04-23. US 10,060,869 is therefore an AIA patent; the prior-art window is governed by 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)–(a)(2) as amended. Every reference cited on the face predates 2015-04-23 and thus qualifies as prior art.

Claim 1 is a combination claim. As set out earlier, claim 1 requires all of: (1a) a pipe-flow electrical-characteristics system; (1b) a coaxial resonator formed by an essentially coaxial insert defining an annular volume between the insert and the pipe wall; (1c) conductive insert + conductive pipe wall; (1d) antenna transmit/receive; (1e) frequency response measured over a band including the waveguide mode TE₁₁; (1f) the insert mounted via at least one support leg positioned outside the annular volume; (1g) an electrically conductive fin at least partially inside the annular volume; and (1h) the fin lying in a radial plane different from the antenna plane and the annular-volume axis plane.

Bottom line — no reference of record anticipates claim 1 as a whole. The cited art divides cleanly into three families that each supply only part of the claim:

The strongest § 102 candidate against an individual claim is US 6,915,707 B2 against the TE₁₁ + TEM subject matter of claim 2 — but even then, because claim 2 depends from claim 1, anticipation of claim 2 requires all of claim 1's elements in the same reference, which US 6,915,707 does not supply. Accordingly, the references below are predominantly § 103 material; I flag the few places where a genuine § 102 argument can be made for a dependent claim if the claim-1 elements are separately read onto the reference.

Discrepancy note (per my instructions to flag contradictions): the supplied patent text refers in the specification to "WO2014/122093" (slash form) while the citation table lists WO2014122093A1. These are the same document; this is a formatting difference, not a different reference. Similarly, the specification's narrative abbreviations "NO315584/U.S. Pat. No. 6,915,707" and "NO308922/U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,035" correctly pair the Norwegian and US members.

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2. § 102 reference-by-reference analysis

2.1 NO308922B1 — Meters, in particular for continuous measurement of the mixing ratio between two fluids flowing in pipes, e.g. water content of oil; and the procedure for carrying out such a measurement

Assignee: Multi Fluid AS · Priority: 1998-06-03 · Publication/grant: 2000-11-13
US counterpart: US 6,466,035 B1, "Microwave fluid sensor and a method for using same," Nyfors & Bringsvor, Multi-Fluid ASA; PCT/NO99/00179 filed 1999-06-02; § 371 date 2001-01-04; granted 2002-10-15; published as WO99/63331 A2 on 1999-12-09.

Description. A microwave sensor measures the relative proportions of fluids (e.g., water-in-oil) flowing in a tube. A length of the tube plus transmit/receive probes (6, 7) form the sensor. Resonance is deliberately operated below the tube's cut-off frequency so energy cannot radiate down the pipe. The tube contains at least one radially extending, conducting internal fin (5) extending along the tube axis — the "sylindric fin resonator" (SFR). Fig. 2 of the reference plots the four lowest resonance modes (TE₁₁₀, TE₁₂₁₀ etc.) versus fin length. The reference discusses cut-off frequencies and the Nyfors/Vainikainen text.

§ 102 assessment. This is the closest art on the conducting-fin-in-a-pipe element, and the applicant itself characterizes it in the specification as "a microwave sensor … provided with a radial, electrically conductive fin extending along the pipe axis, possibly inside the measured volume."

• Reads onto: 1a, 1c (conductive fin/tube), 1d, 1g, and arguably 1h (the fin inherently defines a radial plane).
• Does not read onto: 1b — there is no coaxial insert forming an annular volume between insert and pipe wall; the fin projects from the wall itself and is the resonator-defining element. Nor 1e (operation is below cut-off; no TE₁₁ waveguide-mode measurement), nor 1f (no insert-mounting leg outside an annular volume).
• Verdict: cannot anticipate claim 1. Potentially anticipatory only of a sub-combination; best deployed in a § 103 combination with a coaxial-conical-insert reference.

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2.2 NO315584B1 — Compact flow templates ("Compact flow meter")

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS · Priority/filing: 2001-10-19 · Grant: 2003-09-22
US counterpart: US 6,915,707 B2 (and its pre-grant publication US 2004/0244501 A1, 2004-12-09), Nyfors & Bø; PCT/NO02/00349 filed 2002-10-01; granted 2005-07-12. PCT publication WO2003034051A1 (2003-04-24).

Description. An apparatus in which an integrated mechanical structure serves simultaneously as a microwave resonator sensor (permittivity/composition) and as a differential-pressure element (flow rate). The preferred structure is a V-cone — i.e., a roughly conical body coaxial with the pipe — short-circuited to the pipe wall at one end and open at the other (Fig. 1 "semisectorial microwave resonator"; Fig. 2 "general resonating structure in a pipe"). The applicant's own specification states that "NO315584/U.S. Pat. No. 6,915,707 describes a multiphase measurement utilizing TE₁₁ and TEM modes to measure the frequency response of the medium."

§ 102 assessment. This is the single most important reference for the TE₁₁ limitation.

• Reads onto: 1a, 1b (a coaxial conical insert defining a gap/annular volume with the pipe wall), 1c, 1d, and — per the applicant's characterization — 1e (TE₁₁ and TEM frequency response).
• Does not read onto: 1f as claimed (the '707 structure is shorted by end supports/fins; the reference does not describe a leg placed outside a delimited annular measurement volume in the claim-1 sense), and above all 1g/1h — there is no teaching of a dedicated conductive fin protruding into the annular volume in a radial plane offset from the antenna plane for the purpose of lifting TE₁₁ degeneracy. That fin concept is the point of novelty of US 10,060,869, and the '707 patent is silent on it.
• Verdict: strong § 103 primary reference; cannot anticipate claim 1. Could in principle be argued to anticipate the subject matter of claim 2 (TE₁₁ + coaxial TEM resonance) — but only if the tribunal simultaneously finds all claim-1 elements in it, which it does not. Same analysis for claim 4 (insert of minimum wall distance) and claim 5 (conical insert), both of which the V-cone plainly shows as a sub-combination.

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2.3 US 2005/0188771 A1 — Flow meter

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS · Priority/filing: 2004-02-27 · Published: 2005-09-01
Granted as: US 7,293,471 B2, Lund Bø, Nyfors & Sørhus, granted 2007-11-13.

Description. A wet-gas flow meter obtaining individual flow rates of gas, liquid hydrocarbons and water from a water content meter (microwave dielectric) combined with a double differential-pressure (DDP) unit generating two independent DP values, processed in a calculation module. Concerned with multi-DP wet-gas metering rather than with resonator field geometry.

§ 102 assessment. No disclosure of a coaxial insert + annular volume resonant structure, of a conductive fin in such a volume, or of TE₁₁ mode measurement.

• Reads onto: essentially only the generic "system for measuring electrical characteristics of a fluid flowing through a pipe" preamble (1a).
• Verdict: no anticipation of any claim. Background/§ 103 context only.

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2.4 WO 2007/089156 A1 — Differential pressure measurement device

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS (inventor Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors) · Priority: 2006-02-03 · Published: 2007-08-09
US counterpart: US 2009/0000393 A1, "Differential Pressure Measurement Device" (2009-01-01).

Description. A differential-pressure generating/measuring device (V-cone/DDP lineage) for wet-gas metering — the mechanical/DP counterpart to the microwave resonator family.

§ 102 assessment. No coaxial-resonator insert, no TE₁₁ measurement, no fin-in-annular-volume. Verdict: no anticipation of any claim; contextual art only.

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2.5 WO 2010/115883 A1 — Method for monitoring a body inserted in a conduit and insert for electromagnetic resonance measurements

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS · Priority: 2009-04-06 (NO 20091392) · Published: 2010-10-14
Family: EP 2,417,424 B1 (parent); EP 2,500,699 B1 (divisional, granted 2015-03-18; published 2012-09-19) — both titled "Insert for electromagnetic resonance measurements" (Gentile, Sørhus, Nyfors); US 2012/0006430 A1 (2012-01-12). Note: EP 2,500,699 B1 is itself one of the 11 patent citations of US 10,060,869 (see § 2.6).

Description. The gap between an inserted body and the pipe wall is used as an electromagnetic (microwave) resonator. The conical insert is mounted through support fins which short the upstream end to the pipe wall while the downstream end is open — i.e., a λ/4-type coaxial resonance in the cone/pipe gap. The reference is at pains to shape and locate the supports so as not to influence the measurement: "In order not to interfere with the microwave resonator function … the support fins 3 are located upstream of that area"; it also notes that allowing a support to run the full length "would affect the measurement properties as the field of the resonance mode would no longer be circularly symmetrical." The measurement is of the circularly symmetrical coaxial resonance (a TEM-type mode), which the applicant expressly criticizes in US 10,060,869: "the electromagnetic fields of which are symmetric around the insert and the sensitivity to variations in conductivity in the circular space will be limited."

§ 102 assessment.

• Reads onto: 1b, 1c, 1d, 1f — this is the clearest cited disclosure of a coaxial conical insert mounted by support legs to the pipe wall, forming a resonant gap.
• Does not read onto: 1e (no TE₁₁ waveguide-mode measurement; the art is built on the circularly symmetrical coaxial resonance), 1g (supports are explicitly kept out of the interference region and shaped to be non-influencing — the opposite of a deliberately field-perturbing fin), and 1h.
• Verdict: the primary § 103 base for claim elements 1b/1f, and arguably teaching away from the claimed extended fin. Cannot anticipate claim 1. It does, however, disclose supports formed integrally with and running a chosen length along the conical portion (for fatigue reasons), which is relevant to claim 6 ("fin constituted by at least one support leg extending a chosen length into the annular volume") — a § 102 argument could be run on claim 6's sub-combination if claim-1 elements were separately met.

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2.6 EP 2,500,699 B1 — Insert for electromagnetic resonance measurements

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS · Filed: 2010-04-06 (divisional of EP 1,071,4227.5) · Published: 2012-09-19 · Granted: 2015-03-18 · Priority: NO 20091392, 2009-04-06
Inventors: Gentile, Sørhus, Nyfors. (Also cited in the same list via its US sibling US 2012/0006430 A1.)

Description. Same family and substance as § 2.5, but framed around the insert itself: a one-piece cone with integrated support fins, a stress-relief radius at the fin/cone transition, fins welded to the meter body, optionally cone + fins + body as one piece. The support structure may extend "a chosen length along the conically shaped portion" — but expressly "limited by the required quality of the measurements," and the stated aim is to reduce weld fatigue without degrading the microwave properties.

§ 102 assessment. Identical structural reading to § 2.5: supplies 1b, 1c, 1d, 1f (and the conical shape of claim 5), but no TE₁₁ measurement, no fin deliberately placed in the annular volume, and no plane-offset limitation. Verdict: no anticipation of claim 1; § 103 base reference; relevant to claims 5 and 6 as sub-combinations only.

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2.7 WO 2014/122093 A1 — Conductivity measurements

Assignee: Roxar Flow Measurement AS (inventor Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors) · Priority: 2013-02-05 (NO 20130180) · Filed: 2014-02-03 (PCT/EP2014/052036) · Published: 2014-08-14
US counterpart: US 2015/0346117 A1 (2015-12-03), granted as US 10,359,372 B2 on 2019-07-23. EP 2,954,319 A1/B1.

Description. The two-resonance conductivity method. The measuring section provides at least two resonant frequencies; the system calculates water conductivity from a first resonant frequency and first Q-factor together with the Q-factor of a second resonance peak (resolving the non-monotonic Q/conductivity ambiguity of the Bruggeman model). The reference expressly contemplates, among possible resonator structures: a conical insert (Fig. 1a) or a fin (Fig. 2a); two wave modes with different cut-off frequencies in the same pipe; cut-off resonances; and coupling devices placed where "the other mode has zero electric field, and therefore only couple to the desired mode." The applicant's specification states that the present invention uses "the first resonance of the coaxial TE₁₁ waveguide mode … as the second resonance for implementing the method described in WO2014/122093."

§ 102 assessment. This is the method-level parent of the present patent and the most relevant reference to dependent claims 10–11.

• Reads onto: 1a, 1e (measurement band, at method level), and substantively claim 10 (calculate conductivity from the TE₁₁ resonance frequency) and claim 11 (calculations using TEM + TE₁₁ resonance properties). Its claim 14 ("the insert is a cone or fin defining a resonator") approaches 1b/1g.
• Does not read onto: the structural fin-in-annular-volume/plane-offset limitations 1f, 1g, 1h as claimed — the reference is a method disclosure agnostic to the specific geometry that US 10,060,869 contributes.
• Verdict: cannot anticipate claim 1. Combined with the conical-insert art (EP 2,500,699 / US 6,915,707) it is the backbone of any § 103 obviousness attack, and it is the natural § 102/§ 103 reference for claims 10 and 11.

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2.8 Additional US-side citations in the "Patent Citations (11)" list

These appear in the fuller citation list (some third-party) and are cumulative of the families above:

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2.9 Non-patent citations

1. Nyfors, E., "Cylindrical microwave resonator sensors for measuring materials under flow," Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology, Helsinki University of Technology, Radio Laboratory, Report S243, 2000, 181 pp. — a printed publication expressly relied on throughout the specification for: the p-values and cut-off relation of Eq. (1); the statement that the smallest p-value (1.8412) belongs to TE₁₁ and yields 1406.6 MHz for a 125 mm circular waveguide; the λ/4-type resonance of the coaxial TEM mode (Sec. 3.3); Q-factor and resonance-measurement technique (Ch. 3); and sectorial/semisectorial structures. As prior art under § 102(a)(1) it is highly relevant to the TE₁₁/coaxial-resonance teaching (element 1e) and to claims 2, 10 and 11 in substance — but it is a theory and measurement-technique document and discloses no insert/fin structure. It cannot anticipate any structural claim.

2. Savage, John, "International Search Report," prepared for PCT/EP2016/058338, dated 2016-06-29 (4 pp.). — This is the ISR for the present application itself. It is a prosecution document, not prior art, and is listed as a citation only. It is worth noting that the ISR's search opinion is the formal basis on which the examiner selected the six-citation set analyzed above.

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3. Consolidated § 102 verdict table

No cited reference, alone or as the primary reference, discloses every element of claim 1. The fin of element 1g — an electrically conductive fin placed into the annular measurement volume, in a radial plane deliberately offset (preferably 90°) from the antenna plane, to break the degeneracy of the orthogonal coaxial TE₁₁ modes — is the distinguishing contribution, and it is precisely what each cited family lacks: the fin art (US 6,466,035) has a fin but no coaxial insert and no TE₁₁ measurement; the conical-insert art (EP 2,500,699, US 6,915,707) has the coaxial insert and supports but deliberately keeps the supports non-influencing and out of the field; and the two-resonance art (WO 2014/122093) supplies the measurement method but no geometry.

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4. Secondary citation material (for completeness)

The Google Patents record also lists a "Family Cites Families (10)" set — references cited in the family but not examined against this US patent. They are, in order of apparent pertinence: US 8,085,156 B2 (Rosemount, "RF cavity-based process fluid sensor"), JP 5,888,330 B2 (Rheonix, "Fluid characteristic measuring apparatus having a symmetrical resonator"), WO 99/… lineage items and US 2010/0148804-type dielectric-property devices, plus unrelated optical/composite-resonator items (GB 9721803 D0, GB 2,391,617 B, US 7,512,298 B2) and a DE 10 2004 057 087 B3 (Schenck Process) antenna device for coupling microwaves into tubular hollow bodies. US 8,085,156 is the only one of these that touches the same technical space (an RF cavity sensor for process fluid) and would be worth a follow-up § 102/§ 103 read if the goal is to attack dependent claims; none of the family-cites appears to disclose the claim-1 fin-in-annular-volume/plane-offset geometry.

The "Similar Documents" list on the same record is dominated by Roxar's own later filings (e.g., US 9,588,071 B2 "Multiphase meter," US 11,015,037 B2, US 12,253,395 B2, EP 3,286,561 B1 — the EP member of this patent) and by unrelated RF-sensing papers (Drobakhin et al., Foudazi et al.); these are citation-graph neighbours, not prior art against claim 1.

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5. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence in the bibliographic data (numbers, dates, assignees, titles) for all references, which is drawn from the authoritative patent text supplied and corroborated against Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, the EPO Global Patent Index, and the UK/IE/LU national registers returned in search.
• High confidence in the claim-1 element decomposition, which follows the granted claim language verbatim.
• Moderate confidence in the characterization of US 6,915,707's TE₁₁/TEM disclosure: I have the applicant's own admission ("NO315584/U.S. Pat. No. 6,915,707 describes a multiphase measurement utilizing TE₁₁ and TEM modes") and the reference's V-cone/coaxial resonator disclosure, but I did not independently retrieve and read the full text of US 6,915,707's specification in this session. Before relying on it as an anticipatory reference for claim 2, the full disclosure should be verified against the granted document.
• Lower confidence on the exact grant number of the US family member of WO 2010/115883 (search returned a truncated "US 8,96x,xxx, granted 2015-03-03, Roxar, Method for monitoring…"). I have therefore cited only the US 2012/0006430 A1 publication, which is confirmed. This should be resolved if a US-specific citation is needed.
• Legal caveat: "§ 102 anticipation" here is a technical analyst's assessment of disclosure coverage, not a legal opinion. Anticipation of a dependent claim requires every element of the claim it depends from; where I describe a reference as "potentially anticipatory of claim X as a sub-combination," that is shorthand for a § 103 obviousness posture once the claim-1 elements are separately located in other art, and it should not be read as a standalone § 102 conclusion.

I'll verify the key prior-art references from the patent record before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,060,869 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the earlier sections of this analysis (bibliographic data, abstract, claim overview). Those are treated as authoritative and are not repeated. One flag up front: the earlier "Litigation Report" asserted Roxar is "a subsidiary of Emerson Electric Co.," while the "Patent summary" section correctly flagged ultimate parentage as unverified. I cannot corroborate the Emerson parentage from the record searched; I treat the assignee as Roxar Flow Measurement AS only.

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1. Legal framework and governing law

US 10,060,869 has a priority date of 2015-04-23 (NO 20150495A), i.e. it is a post-AIA patent. Obviousness is therefore governed by 35 U.S.C. § 103 as amended by the AIA, analyzed under the Graham v. John Deere factors (scope/content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable variations, combination of known elements, "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," design incentives).

A threshold point on the patentee's own prior art. Several of the strongest references are Roxar's own earlier filings. Under AIA § 102(b)(2)(C), art that qualifies only as § 102(a)(2) art (i.e. as of its filing date) is disqualified for § 103 when commonly owned. That disqualification does not apply here, because every reference relied on below published more than one year before the 2015-04-23 priority date and is therefore § 102(a)(1) prior art, available for § 103 regardless of common ownership:

(Note: the EP2500699B1 grant date of 2015-03-18 falls inside the grace period, but the A1 publication of 2012-09-19 and the parent WO of 2010-10-14 preserve the § 102(a)(1) status of the disclosure.)

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

A person having ordinary skill would be a microwave/RF engineer (B.S./M.S. in EE or applied physics) with several years' experience designing microwave resonator sensors for multiphase/wet-gas flow measurement, or equivalent. This POSITA would be familiar with: coaxial and waveguide cavity theory (TEM, TE11, cutoff frequency relations), degenerate-mode behavior in circularly symmetric structures, coupling-probe placement, and the salinity/conductivity measurement art of the Nyfors thesis (Report S243, 2000, cited on the face of the patent). All the references below are within this POSITA's field.

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3. Claim 1 element-by-element mapping

The only element not literally in a single reference is the fin positioned in the annular volume of a coaxial insert. That gap is closed by the combination below.

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4. Primary combination

EP2500699B1 (conical coaxial insert + probes + legs outside the gap) + WO2014122093A1 (measure two resonances incl. a waveguide mode for conductivity/salinity) + US6466035B1 (conductive radial internal fin along the tube axis).

Result: a coaxial-cone resonator whose frequency response is measured over a band including TE11 (per WO2014122093's two-resonance method), where the insert is held by a leg outside the gap (EP2500699) and an electrically conductive fin sits in the annular gap in a radial plane at roughly 90° to the probe plane (US6466035's fin, oriented per the coaxial geometry).

Why a POSITA would have combined them (KSR motivations)

1. Same field, same problem, overlapping inventors/assignee. All three references are microwave resonator sensors for oil/water/gas flow. US6466035 and US6915707 share the named inventor Ebbe Gustaf Nyfors with each other and with the '869 patent; EP2500699 and WO2014122093 are Roxar filings. KSR treats common field and a known need as strong combination incentives.
2. An express pointer in WO2014122093. That reference states the second resonance "may be… so-called waveguide modes… obtained by constructing the insert or placing probes comprising antennas or transducers in a specific way." That is an explicit invitation to realize the second (TE11) resonance, which is exactly what claim 1 requires, and it motivates the "measure frequency response including TE11" limitation.
3. US6466035 supplies the missing fin and, more importantly, the mode-separation teaching. US6466035 numerically models (its FIG. 2 / FIG. 3) how the fin length tunes and separates the resonant frequencies of the low-order modes (TE110, TE1210, TE1211) in a fin-loaded circular structure. A POSITA seeking to control TE11 mode behavior in a coaxial structure would predictably look to that fin teaching and would understand that a conducting fin/edge inserted at a chosen azimuth sets a short-circuit plane and thereby fixes/segregates the mode orientation.
4. The '869 specification's own admissions. The background describes US6466035's radial fin "possibly inside the measured volume," and the description concedes that the same short-circuit effect "can also be achieved with a conducting post or any other structure connecting the insert (e.g. a cone) with the pipe wall," and that the extended-fin approach "was chosen above only of practical reasons." These are effectively admissions that the fin element is a known, available design option whose location defines the TE11 orientation — a powerful KSR "predictable variation of a known element."
5. Predictable, finite solutions. WO2014122093 identifies the second-resonance candidates (higher-order TEM, or waveguide modes); the Nyfors thesis (cited on the face of the '869 patent) tabulates the modes and their cutoff constants (e.g. p = 1.8412 for TE11). Choosing TE11 and separating its degenerate pair is a finite, identified design path, not an unpredictable leap.

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5. Alternative / backup combinations

• US6915707B2 + WO2014122093A1 + US6466035B1. US6915707 already teaches a microwave resonator that functions as a coaxial/semisectorial structure (element 3C, V-cone 3G) with TE11 and TEM measurements; adding a conductive fin per US6466035 gives the mode-locking fin. This combination reaches claim 1 without EP2500699, and additionally anticipates claim 2's "TE11 and TEM" limitation.
• WO2010115883A1 / EP2417424B1 + EP2500699B1 + WO2014122093A1 + US6466035B1 — where the insert-support geometry is taken from the WO2010115883 (monitoring/fatigue) disclosure and the mode-locking fin from US6466035.

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6. Counterarguments a patentee would raise (and why they are weak)

1. "US6466035's fin is the resonator, not a degeneracy-breaker; different purpose." KSR rejects the rigid "separate purpose" test — a known element can be used for its known mechanical/electromagnetic effect. US6466035 expressly shows the fin separating mode frequencies, which is the very function recited.
2. "US6466035's fin is in an empty tube; there is no annular volume." True, but the annular volume arises directly from EP2500699's cone; placing a known conductive fin in the resulting gap requires only routine mechanical adaptation, and EP2500699 already teaches a conductive support fin in the same structure.
3. "Change in principle/teaching away." There is no teaching away: WO2014122093 explicitly contemplates waveguide modes; EP2500699's constraint (legs must not disturb the TEM measurement) is satisfied by the fin, since the '869 spec explains the fin lies in the TE11 field's zero plane and does not disturb the radial TEM field.
4. "Non-obvious because the fin must be perpendicular to the antenna plane." The '869 specification itself presents the 90° fin/antenna orientation as the preferred arrangement dictated by the mode field pattern; orienting a short-circuit plane to the field minimum is routine optimization, not an inventive contribution.

On the present record the prima facie case for claim 1 is strong.

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7. Dependent claims (2–12)

• Claim 2 (range includes TE11 and TEM) — taught by US6915707 (TE11 + TEM) and WO2014122093 (two resonances). Obvious.
• Claim 3 (≥2 antennas in a plane perpendicular to the fin plane, opposite sides) — EP2500699 places probes 8a, 8b on opposite sides; the 90° orientation is the design choice the '869 spec itself calls preferred. Obvious.
• Claims 4–5 (insert with minimum wall distance; conical) — EP2500699 (cone), and US6915707 (V-cone). Obvious.
• Claim 6 (fin = leg extending a chosen length into the volume) — US6915707 claims 8–9 (fin attached over "part(s) of or the whole of the length of the cone") and its support-along-part-of-the-cone embodiment; EP2500699 support fins. Obvious.
• Claims 7–8 (≥2 / 3 legs in the radial plane) — US6915707 discloses three supports at ±120° (HFSS model of FIG. 10); EP2500699 support fins. Obvious.
• Claim 9 (4 legs, two in the plane) — pure design choice; US6915707 discusses increasing support number and its effect on resonant frequency. Obvious.
• Claims 10–11 (compute conductivity from TE11 resonance; use TEM + TE11) — the core teaching of WO2014122093 (conductivity from two resonance peaks/Q-factors). Obvious.
• Claim 12 (conducting legs) — EP2500699 conductive fins; US6466035 "conducting" fin. Obvious.

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8. Secondary considerations

No evidence of secondary indicia (unexpected results, long-felt need, failure of others, copying, licensing) is present in the record. Roxar/Emerson sells commercial multiphase meters, but no nexus between any commercial success and the specific fin-placement feature has been shown, and the '869 specification's own characterization of the fin as a "good enough compromise" of design parameters weighs against any argument of surprising results. Secondary considerations therefore do not rebut the prima facie case on this record.

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9. Conclusion

Assuming the cited references are available as § 102(a)(1) prior art (they are, as shown in § 1), claim 1 of US 10,060,869 would likely be held obvious over EP2500699B1 in view of WO2014122093A1 and US6466035B1, with US6915707B2 as an alternative or supplementary reference. Claims 2–12 are likewise obvious in view of the same references and their additional teachings. The strongest single combination is WO2014122093A1 + US6466035B1 + EP2500699B1, because WO2014122093 supplies the motivation (measure a second, waveguide-mode resonance for salinity) and US6466035 supplies the mode-separating fin, while EP2500699 supplies the coaxial-insert-and-outside-leg structure.

Confidence and caveats:

• This is an analyst opinion based on the references' face disclosures and the specification text supplied; it is not a legal conclusion. A full validity opinion would require the complete texts of the references (particularly US6466035's and US6915707's fin geometry and probe placement to confirm the "fin plane ≠ antenna plane" relative geometry) and the prosecution history.
• No IPR/PGR challenge was located in the earlier search, so the examiner's allowance of the claims has not been tested administratively. Allowance does not immunize the claims from a § 103 challenge.
• I could not confirm the extent to which US6466035 explicitly addresses the coaxial TE11 degeneracy problem (its fin analysis is for a hollow fin-loaded circular guide); the combination relies on a POSITA's predictable application of that teaching to the coaxial structure of EP2500699. If a fuller reading of US6466035 shows it teaches against a partial-length axial fin, that would materially weaken the primary combination — I flag this as the main factual dependency.