US 10094776

USPTO / CAFC search results for US 10,094,776

Search scope and limitation. I searched for the literal identifiers 10094776, US10094776B2, and "US 10,094,776", plus Honeywell patent-litigation and PTAB/IPR queries. The only authoritative record I could retrieve for this number is the granted patent itself (Google Patents full text, which matches the authoritative text supplied in this task) and its counterparts. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, no district court case, and no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding naming US 10,094,776. If such a 2026 docket exists, it is not surfacing in the sources available to me — treat the "no litigation found" finding as inconclusive rather than as affirmative evidence of a clean docket. I also did not auto-correct any identifier; everything below is keyed to the literal number 10094776.

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Bibliographic summary

Abstract (verbatim). "A particulate matter (PM) sensor. The sensor comprises a mass separation fluid tunnel body defining a fluid inflow channel, a first fluid channel branch opening off of the inflow channel and having a first outlet, a second fluid channel branch opening off of the inflow channel and having a second outlet, and a fluid port between the first fluid channel branch and the second fluid channel branch, a fan located downstream of the first outlet and the second outlet, a photodetector located in the first fluid channel branch, and a computing device coupled to the photodetector having a processor and a memory storing instructions which, when executed by the processor, determines a mass concentration of particles in the first fluid channel branch based on an output of the photodetector."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (apparatus — the core "split-flow" claim). A particulate-matter (dust) sensor built around a single "mass separation fluid tunnel body" that internally defines four things: (1) an inflow channel; (2) a first branch channel that opens off the inflow channel and has a first outlet; (3) a second branch channel that also opens off the inflow channel and has a second outlet; and (4) a fluid port positioned between the two branches, letting fluid communicate between them. One fan sits downstream of both outlets (i.e., it pulls air through the whole tunnel). A photodetector is located in the first branch, and a computing device (processor + memory) is coupled to that photodetector and, when running its stored instructions, determines the mass concentration of particles in the first branch from the photodetector's output. In plain terms: one fan draws dusty air in; the geometry splits fine from coarse particles into two branches; light-scattering is measured only in the branch carrying the fines; the electronics convert that optical signal into a mass-concentration number.

Claim 10 (apparatus — the laser-diode/forward-scatter variant). Same tunnel architecture as claim 1 — inflow channel, two branch channels with outlets, and a fluid port between the branches; one fan downstream of both outlets; a photodetector in the first branch; and the same processor/memory computing device that determines mass concentration from the photodetector output — but additionally reciting a laser diode. The determination is expressly tied to the photodetector detecting light emitted by the laser diode and scattered by dust particles flowing through the first branch. In plain terms: claim 1's structure plus a laser light source, with the measuring step defined as laser light scattering off dust in the fine-particle branch.

Observations on the claim set.

• Dependent claims 2–9 narrow claim 1 (photodetector downstream of the fluid port; detecting scattered light; tunnel body less than about 3 cm × 3 cm × 1.5 cm; "sensor is a dust sensor"; presence of a light source; light source is a laser diode; first branch continues the inflow path; second branch diverges).
• Dependent claims 11–13 narrow claim 10 (dust sensor; second branch diverges; and claim 13 — "therein" [sic] — an operating fan speed calibrated to separate particulate matter larger than about 2.5 microns into the second branch and about 2.5 microns and smaller into the first branch). Note the "about 2.5 microns" and the "about" in claim 4 are terms of approximation.
• Important discrepancy worth flagging: the patent's SUMMARY presents three embodiments, the second of which is the two-fan / adjustable-speed-fan configuration (first fan downstream of the first outlet, adjustable-speed fan downstream of the second outlet, speed set from a fan-speed parameter stored in memory). That embodiment does not appear as an independent claim in the granted US 10,094,776 claim set, which contains only the two independent claims summarized above. The adjustable-fan subject matter appears in the description (FIG. 4) but is not claimed. Anyone relying on the SUMMARY as a claim map will be misled; only claims 1 and 10 define the granted scope.
• The purely method/algorithm subject matter in the specification (binning pulse amplitudes, "sigma_nv" moving averages, the concentration formula C = k·Σ N(vᵢ)·vᵢᵅ, and curve-fit calibration) is also described but not recited in the granted claim set of US 10,094,776 — it is described in the disclosure and is the subject of the related Honeywell family member US 10,809,172 B2 ("Systems, methods, and devices for sensing particulate matter," which appears in the "Cited By" list).

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Uncertainty disclosure

• Litigation/PTAB: No authoritative hit for a 2026 CAFC appeal, district court case, or PTAB proceeding involving US 10,094,776 was found in my searches. This is a negative search result, not proof of absence.
• Expiration date ("2036-12-08") and legal status ("Active") come from Google Patents' legal-status data, which explicitly disclaims being a legal conclusion. Verified independently: the 8th-year maintenance fee was recorded as paid 2026-03-31.
• Inventor name of record: the inventor is listed as "Ouyang Yang" in the US record; a Chinese-language database rendering shows "阳水平" for the CN counterpart. I have not independently verified the Chinese character rendering, so treat the transliteration with caution.
• "Assignee" nuance: current assignee of record is Honeywell International Inc. Note that unrelated 2026 Honeywell patent suits exist (e.g., Honeywell Aerospace US LLC v. Rivian Automotive, D. Ariz. 2:26-cv-06694, filed Sept. 2026) — I did not verify that any of those assert US 10,094,776, and none of the Honeywell cases I surfaced listed this patent.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10094776.

Let me dig deeper into patent-specific litigation databases.

The searches so far are turning up unrelated patents ending in "076." Let me verify against litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 10,094,776

Patent identification (as given): US 10,094,776 B2 — "Dust sensor with mass separation fluid channels and fan control"

• Application No. US 15/213,139; filed 2016‑07‑18; granted 2018‑10‑09
• Inventors: Ouyang Yang, Kevin Cai, Kai Huang
• Original/current assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Related family members: US 2018/0017488 A1, WO 2018/017301 A1, EP 3485251 A1, CN 109791100 A/B, CN 115165691 A

Finding: No litigation specifically naming US 10,094,776 was found.

Based on my searches of public patent‑litigation resources (including results surfaced from the Unified Patents litigation materials, PACER/RECAP‑derived dockets such as CourtListener and PacerMonitor, RPX Insight litigation documents, and CAFC/PTAB filings), I did not locate any district‑court complaint, ITC investigation, or other enforcement action in which US 10,094,776 is the asserted patent (i.e., no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or filing date can be reported for this specific patent).

Important caution — identified look‑alike "’076" patents (NOT this patent)

My searches repeatedly returned different patents that are colloquially referred to as an "’076 patent." These should not be confused with US 10,094,776:

1. U.S. Patent No. 9,022,076 — asserted in Tristar Products, Inc. v. Telebrands Corp., No. 3:24‑cv‑238 (expandable garden‑hose technology). Not related.
2. A semiconductor "’076 patent" referenced in a PTAB petition concerning consolidated EDTX suits filed Aug. 1, 2024 (against TSMC) and Sept. 6, 2024 (against UMC), assigned to Judge Rodney Gilstrap, with trial set for June 22, 2026. The petition describes transistor/substrate (silicon‑wafer) subject matter — inconsistent with the dust‑sensor disclosure of US 10,094,776, so this "’076 patent" is a different patent. Not related.

Because the operating rules require interpreting patent numbers literally and not auto‑correcting them, I have not attributed any of these "’076" matters to US 10,094,776.

Related Honeywell dust/PM‑sensor activity (context only)

For completeness — and clearly distinct from assertion of the ’776 patent itself — Honeywell's broader particulate‑matter sensing portfolio appears in the record:

• US 10,809,172 B2 ("Systems, methods, and devices for sensing particulate matter," Honeywell) is listed among patents citing US 10,094,776 (per the patent's "Cited By" table).
• WO 2017/101038 A1 (Honeywell, "Systems, methods, and devices for sensing particulate matter," priority 2015‑12‑16) appears among references cited against the ’776 patent.

These are citation relationships, not litigation involving the ’776 patent.

Caveats on completeness

• I was unable to fully query the live Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) or run an exhaustive PACER docket‑number search before reaching my search limit; those are the authoritative sources for a definitive negative.
• The absence of results in my searches does not prove that no litigation exists. I found no affirmative evidence of litigation, but I cannot certify a complete negative on this record.

Bottom line: On the evidence available, I found no known litigation involving US Patent No. 10,094,776. If you want a definitive confirmation, the recommended next step is a direct query to the Unified Patents litigation portal and a PACER full‑text search for the exact number "10,094,776," which I was unable to complete here.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 10,094,776 B2

Patent: US 10,094,776 B2 — Dust sensor with mass separation fluid channels and fan control
Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
Application: 15/213,139 · Filed: 2016-07-18 · Granted: 2018-10-09
Status: Active · Adjusted expiration: 2036-12-08 · Claims: 13 (independent claims 1 and 10)
Analysis date: 2026-09-29

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured record for US 10,094,776 lists no IPR, PGR, or CBM — no petitions, no institution decisions, no Final Written Decisions, no terminations, no settlements, and no Federal Circuit appeals — and my independent web checks (PTAB-tracked dockets, PTAB-law coverage, and patent-number-specific queries) surfaced no AIA trial naming this patent as the challenged patent. Bottom line for a defendant: this is not a "claims already canceled, ignore the demand letter" patent — it is a completely untested, fully intact 13-claim patent with a 2036 term, which means (a) all claims carry a presumption of validity with no PTAB black marks, and (b) no petitioner estoppel exists, so the entire prior-art field is still open to you in an IPR. Conversely, the patent has also never been stress-tested at the Board, which is where a defendant's leverage actually lives.

Data-integrity note. I found no proceeding numbers to report and I have not invented any. Three search hits contain a "'776 patent" but they are different patents and must not be conflated with this one:

• PGR2016-00010 — Mylan v. Regeneron/Teva, an autoimmune-therapy patent (Copaxone), unrelated.
• IPR2015-00915 — Honeywell as petitioner, U.S. 8,710,282 (refrigerant chemistry), unrelated.
• IPR2021-00908 — Honeywell v. 3G Licensing, U.S. 8,457,797, unrelated.

If any AIA trial has been filed in the last few weeks it may not yet be indexed; verify directly at PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and search docket-alarm style aggregators before relying on the null result in a brief or a board memo.

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Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceedings to itemize.

No petitioner has ever challenged US 10,094,776. Consequence: there is no FWD, no claim-level verdict, no institution decision, no IPR-estoppel, and no panel to name. The legal-events record for this patent contains only the assignment (2016-07-19), the grant (2018-09-19), and maintenance-fee payments in the 4th year (2022-03-29) and 8th year (2026-03-31). The absence of post-grant activity is corroborated by the file itself: no certificate of correction, no reissue, no disclaimers, no adverse PTO events.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED. All 13 claims are alive and unamended. There is no "surviving" claim set to distinguish because nothing has been canceled. Independent claim 1 covers the mass-separation tunnel (inflow channel; first and second branch; fluid port between the branches), a single fan downstream of both outlets, a photodetector in the first branch, and a computing device that determines mass concentration from the photodetector output. Independent claim 10 is the same architecture with an express laser diode and the "light scattered by dust particles in the first fluid channel branch" limitation. Dependents worth noting for infringement read-through: claim 2 (photodetector downstream of the fluid port), claim 4 (tunnel < ~3 cm × 3 cm × 1.5 cm), claim 8 (first branch continues the inflow path), claim 9/12 (second branch diverges), and claim 13 (fan speed calibrated to split at ~2.5 µm).

A significant unclaimed-feature gap is visible on the face of the document — and it is a defense hook. The written description's second embodiment — the adjustable-speed second fan controlled by a stored fan speed parameter for orientation-independent mass separation — is described in the specification and in the "Definitions"/Summary section, but was not carried into the granted claims. Granted claim 13 captures only a calibrated-fan-speed result, not an adjustable/PWM-driven, feedback-controlled, reprogrammable fan. Whether that gap matters depends on your product: if your accused device separates mass by variable fan control rather than by a static fan + fluid-port geometry, claim 1's "fan located downstream of the first outlet and the second outlet" and the "fluid port between the first fluid channel branch and the second fluid channel branch" are the limitations to attack on both infringement and validity grounds. Note also that a second-fan embodiment arguably triggers an "and the second outlet" singularity argument — a single downstream fan is an express claim element; a defendant using two independently driven fans can argue either non-infringement or that the claim is narrower than the spec's alternative.

Estoppel landscape: wide open. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner who obtains an FWD. Because there has never been an AIA trial here, no party is estopped from anything. You may file an IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground, on any prior art not already of record in prosecution, without a § 325(d) "same art/same argument" problem from a prior Board decision, and without any joinder/time-bar complications other than your own § 315(b) one-year clock from service of a complaint. The only gatekeeper is the examiner's own prior-art record: 25 references were cited, including US 9,805,570 B2 (Garrett Thermal Systems, "Particle detector with dust rejection"), WO 2015/087583 A1 (Sharp, "Particle separation apparatus, particle measuring apparatus, and particle separation method"), US 2010/0288921 A1 (Wang, "Size segregated aerosol mass concentration measurement with inlet conditioners and multiple detectors"), and US 7,927,408 B2 (Honeywell, "Inlet particle separator systems and methods"). The Sharp and Wang references are the most conceptually on-point and should be the starting point for a § 103 combination; be aware that anything cited and substantively overcome during prosecution invites a § 325(d) discretionary-denial fight, so pair them with art the examiner never saw. One further candidate: Honeywell's own WO 2017/107038 A1 / US 10,809,172 B2 (effectively filed 2015-12-16, "Systems, methods, and devices for sensing particulate matter") is a § 102(a)(2) reference against the '776 patent's 2016-07-18 effective filing date — but it is commonly owned, so a § 102(b)(2)(C) / § 103(c) disqualification fight is likely if you use it in a § 103 ground. Use it only as a § 102(a)(2) anticipation reference, or expect that fight.

Pattern signals are benign-to-neutral. Honeywell is a prolific PTAB participant, but here it is the patent owner, not the petitioner, and it has never had to defend this patent at the Board — meaning it has never had to surrender claim scope, never stipulated to a narrowed construction, and never been back-footed by a dissent or a remand. There is no serial-petitioner pattern (no repeat filer), no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or Open Invention Network entity in the chain — the entire chain is Honeywell engineer-inventors Yang, Cai, and Huang, assigned to Honeywell). There is also no Federal Circuit docket for this patent and no parallel district-court record surfaced that would tell us how Honeywell reads these claims. Practically: you cannot free-ride on another defendant's IPR work product or a prior claim construction, because none exists. You would be the first mover, which is expensive — but also means you would control the claim-construction narrative and could seek a stay with no competing PTAB schedule.

Consider the parallel-family thread. The same invention family was pursued offshore (PCT/US2017/039907 → EP 3 485 251 A1, status withdrawn; CN 109791100 B and CN 115165691 A, active; WO 2018/017301 A1, ceased). The EP application was withdrawn — if it was abandoned in the face of prior art or a written-description/unity objection, the EPO file wrapper is worth pulling as a source of both art and prosecution admissions. That is a cheap lead that has nothing to do with the PTAB record and everything to do with your invalidity case.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not assume invalidity leverage that isn't there. There is no FWD to cite, no canceled claim, and no estoppel. If you are a defendant, your demand-letter response should not say "the IPR canceled these claims" — that would be false. The correct posture is: the patent is fully intact; the burden is on us to build a ground of our own.
2. Calendar your § 315(b) clock immediately. No AIA trial has ever been filed, so nothing is time-barred yet. If you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement of US 10,094,776, you have one year from service (35 U.S.C. § 315(b)) to petition. If you have not been served, you may petition at any time — which is a reason to consider a pre-emptive IPR if you have actual or a reasonable apprehension of notice.
3. Start the prior-art search at Sharp and Wang, then go outside the record. Build § 103 combinations around WO 2015/087583 A1 (particle separation + particle measurement in one instrument) and US 2010/0288921 A1 (size-segregated aerosol mass measurement with inlet conditioners and multiple detectors), and pair them with non-cited art to blunt a § 325(d) denial. Target independent claim 1's "fan located downstream of the first outlet and the second outlet" and the "fluid port between the first fluid channel branch and the second fluid channel branch" — those are the structural bottlenecks.
4. Pull the EP/CN file wrappers for EP 3 485 251 A1 (withdrawn) and CN 109791100 B, and the prosecution history of the sibling US 10,809,172 B2. Search for examiner statements and applicant concessions about the fluid-port function and the mass-separation threshold.
5. Re-verify the null result before relying on it. Check PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and CourtListener's docket search (https://www.courtlistener.com/?type=r&q=%2210094776%22) for the patent number and for the application number 15/213,139. If a proceeding has been filed since the last ODP ingest, the FWD would be due within one year of institution (extendable up to six months for good cause under § 316(a)(11)), and the institution decision would be due within six months of the petition's filing under § 314(b).

Bottom line: no PTAB activity, no estoppel, no canceled claims, no appellate history. Every avenue — § 102, § 103, claim construction, and §§ 101/112 (the latter two only in a PGR, which is now unavailable because the nine-month post-grant window closed on 2019-07-09) — is still on the table, but the work is yours to do from scratch.

I'll research the assignment record and cross-reference sources before drafting.

Let me check for litigation and any post-issuance transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,094,776 B2

Patent: US 10,094,776 B2 — "Dust sensor with mass separation fluid channels and fan control"
Appl. No.: 15/213,139 · Filed: 2016-07-18 · Granted: 2018-10-09 · Adjusted expiration: 2036-12-08
Assignee of record: Honeywell International Inc. (per the printed patent and Google Patents legal events)

Verification link: USPTO Assignment Center and legacy Assignment Search — search patent number 10094776. Google Patents legal-events mirror: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10094776B2](/patent/US10094776B2)/en

Caveat on scope of research: I was able to retrieve the Google Patents legal-events table and the patent text in full, plus assignment-abstract examples from USPTO PTAB filings. I could not pull the live Assignment Center abstract-of-title page itself in this session, and I could not independently confirm the correspondent of record on the one recorded assignment. Nothing below is inferred from naming; unresolved fields are flagged as such.

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Inventors

All three inventors executed the assignment to Honeywell in the same window (signing dates 2016-05-23 to 2016-05-24, recorded 2016-07-19, Reel 039183/0730), i.e., roughly two months before the 2016-07-18 filing date. That is the normal pre-filing invention-assignment pattern for a corporate R&D group.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of any inventor departing the original assignee. There are no inventor-to-third-party or inventor-retained-rights assignments, no reversion, and no co-owner split. The "all inventors leave within 12 months → portfolio fire-sale" precursor described in the brief is not present. Third-party inventor aggregators (e.g., patentleaderboard.com) simply list Yang's Honeywell patents, which is corroborative of continued Honeywell employment/portfolio association but is not itself an assignment record.

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Original assignee

Honeywell International Inc. (Morris Plains / Charlotte, NC; "New Jersey" in the recorded assignment data)

• Line of business: Diversified industrial/technology operating company (aerospace, building technologies/HVAC, performance materials, safety & productivity solutions). Air-quality and particulate sensing falls within its building-technologies and sensing product lines.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Not verified in this session. Honeywell does commercialize particulate-matter/air-quality sensing products generally, but I was unable to retrieve a specific datasheet or product page mapping an HPM-series or comparable Honeywell PM2.5 sensor to the claims of US 10,094,776. Treat product-embodiment as unconfirmed, not disproven. This does not affect the ownership analysis.
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or divestiture of this patent is recorded. Maintenance fees on this patent were paid by Honeywell (4th year paid 2022-03-29; 8th year paid 2026-03-31), which independently confirms Honeywell remained the fee-paying owner as of 2026-03-31.

Family status (all Honeywell): WO2018017301A1 (ceased), EP3485251A1 (withdrawn), CN109791100B (active), CN115165691A (pending). Original assignee retains the family.

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Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is recorded against US 10,094,776. Post-issuance, the Assignment Center record is empty — there are no security agreements, no change-of-name, no merger, no assignment to a licensing entity, and no release filings.

• 2016-05-23 to 2016-05-24 (executed) / recorded 2016-07-19 — Reel 039183/0730
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (as recorded by Google Patents: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: YANG, OUYANG; CAI, KEVIN; HUANG, KAI (individual inventors, signing dates 2016-05-23 to 2016-05-24)
  • Assignee: HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC., New Jersey
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources retrieved. This field is the one the brief specifically wants captured, and I will not guess it. Please confirm it directly on the Assignment Center abstract of title for Reel 039183/0730. Contextual note only (not a finding for this reel/frame): Honeywell's in-house patent services group operates under USPTO Customer No. 91970 (patentservices-us@honeywell.com) as its correspondence channel on other Honeywell matters, so an in-house correspondent is plausible — but this is not confirmed for 039183/0730 and should not be cited as the correspondent of record.
  • Context: Ordinary pre-filing employment/invention assignment from employee inventors to their corporate employer. Not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Subsequent recorded events (not assignments), from Google Patents legal events:

• 2018-09-19 — STCF, patent grant (no ownership change)
• 2022-03-29 — MAFP, 4th-year maintenance fee paid (large entity)
• 2026-03-31 — MAFP, 8th-year maintenance fee paid (large entity)

Per the brief's instruction: where the Assignment Center shows only the original assignment, that is itself the finding — it means the original assignee still owns the patent. That is the case here.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10094776
    2016 : Inventors assign rights to Honeywell
         : Patent application filed
    2018 : US 10094776 B2 issued
    2022 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2026 : 8th year maintenance fee paid

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment is on record).

Justification: The Assignment Center record for US 10,094,776 contains exactly one conveyance — Reel 039183/0730, executed 2016-05-23/24 and recorded 2016-07-19, assigning the inventors' rights to Honeywell International Inc. — with no post-issuance assignments, security interests, mergers, or name changes, and no assertions found. Every NPE signal in the checklist returns not present (the sole "unclear" item, correspondent recurrence, is non-assessable because there is only one link and the correspondent could not be retrieved), and Honeywell's payment of the 8th-year maintenance fee on 2026-03-31 confirms the operating company still owns the patent. Per the brief's rubric, the absence of any record beyond the original assignment is the finding: this is a clean, uninterrupted operating-company ownership chain, not an NPE chain.

Open items to close out with primary sources (not fabricated here): (a) the correspondent of record on Reel 039183/0730, obtainable from the Assignment Center abstract-of-title page for patent 10094776; (b) a specific Honeywell PM-sensor product page if product-embodiment is needed for a formal claim-chart comparison.

Verification: assignmentcenter.uspto.gov → search 10094776 → "Abstract of Title"; mirror at assignment.uspto.gov.

I'll research the cited prior art for US 10,094,776 systematically. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me gather details on the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 10,094,776 B2

Patent under analysis: US 10,094,776 B2 — "Dust sensor with mass separation fluid channels and fan control" — App. 15/213,139, filed/priority 2016‑07‑18, granted 2018‑10‑09, Honeywell International Inc. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10094776B2](/patent/US10094776B2)/en

Cross-reference to previous sections (no repetition). This analysis builds on the bibliographic summary, the plain-language claim map (independent claims 1 and 10; dependent claims 2–9 and 11–13), and the litigation findings already generated. Two earlier findings drive this prior-art analysis and are re-affirmed here rather than restated: (a) the adjustable-speed-fan embodiment described in the SUMMARY/FIG. 4 is not in the granted claim set, so art that reads on fan-speed control is pertinent to the disclosure but not to the granted claims; and (b) the pulse-binning/"sigma_nv"/curve-fit calibration algorithm is likewise unclaimed here (it is claimed in the related Honeywell family member US 10,809,172 B2). Both points are flagged again below where they change the §102 analysis.

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0. Method, scope, and legal framework

Sources. The reference list, dates, and "cited‑by‑examiner" (asterisk *) annotations are taken from the authoritative Google Patents page for US 10,094,776 B2 (same URL as above). My characterization of each reference's disclosure is drawn from the reference's own Google Patents/full‑text record where a live search returned it; where a search did not return substantive text, I say so explicitly rather than inventing content.

Scope limitation (important). The record I can retrieve for US 10,094,776 does not include the examiner's face‑sheet category labels (X/Y/A) for the 25 cited references, nor the Office Actions. What follows is therefore my own technical §102 assessment, not a restatement of an examiner's or a court's finding. A strict anticipation conclusion requires an element‑by‑element correspondence that I can only form from the abstracts/specification excerpts available; I flag confidence per reference.

Legal framework (§102 — AIA applies). US 10,094,776 has an effective filing date of 2016‑07‑18, i.e., after the March 16, 2013 AIA changeover. The applicable novelty provision is therefore AIA 35 U.S.C. §102, in which:

• §102(a)(1) art must have been patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use/on sale before 2016‑07‑18; and
• §102(a)(2) art is a U.S. patent, U.S. application publication, or (per §102(d)) a WO publication of an international application designating the U.S. and published in English, that was effectively filed before 2016‑07‑18.

This matters because three cited references post‑date the '776 filing date (US 2016/0349168 A1; WO 2017/101038 A1; and, for its printed‑publication date, US 9,805,570 B2). They are only available — if at all — as §102(a)(2) "secret" prior art, and only if their earlier effective filing dates are before 2016‑07‑18. I address each in turn.

Tiers. Because the two independent claims are narrow and structural (see the earlier claim map), I rank the references by how many claim limitations they actually disclose:

• Tier 1 — closest to a full §102 reading of claim 1 and/or claim 10.
• Tier 2 — disclose a key sub‑combination (split/branch flow splitting fine vs. coarse; single fan drawing both legs; optical sensing of one leg; fan‑speed control) but not all limitations.
• Tier 3 — feature‑level art (scattering optics, calibration, particle separation generally, enclosures) with little or no §102 reach against claims 1/10.

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1. Tier 1 — Closest art (potential §102 anticipation targets)

1.1 WO 2015/008519 A1 — Sharp Corporation — "Fine particle measurement device"

• Citation / dates. WO 2015/008519 A1; priority 2013‑07‑17; published 2015‑01‑22 (per the '776 citation table). §102(a)(1).
• Disclosure (from the reference's own Google Patents text). A particle measuring apparatus 10 has a sensor 1 (measuring unit), intake 2, sizing unit 3, and a single fan 4 ("fluid drive unit"). Its gas path comprises an introduction flow path 5a, a main flow path 5b and a branch flow path 5c branched at a branch portion A, and a discharge path 5d that joins the main and branch paths and discharges through the single fan 4. The sensor 1 sits in the branch flow path 5c and measures fine-particle amount by light scattering. The main flow path extends in the same direction as the introduction path; the branch path turns away (claims recite 120°–150°). Dependent claims recite a drive control unit making the fan's drive output variable. (JP family member JP 5864009 B1 / JP 5770255 B9 — the latter appears as WO 2015/087583's family — shows the same machine.)
• §102 assessment. This is the single most structurally similar reference in the list to the '776 split‑flow architecture. It discloses: (i) a tunnel body with an inflow path, (ii) two branches off it (main + branch), (iii) a single fan downstream of both legs at the joined discharge path, (iv) an optical sensor in one leg measuring particle amount, and (v) a drive controller for the fan. It is potentially pertinent to claim 1 (and claim 10's laser‑variants where the sizing sensor uses a laser), and its variable fan drive output anticipates the disclosure of the unclaimed adjustable‑fan embodiment and is potentially pertinent to claim 13's fan‑speed/size‑cut limitation.
• Caveats / confidence. Two limitations are not clearly shown in the excerpts I could retrieve: the recited "fluid port between the first fluid channel branch and the second fluid channel branch" (the Sharp device has the upstream branch portion A and a downstream junction 5d, but I cannot confirm a discrete inter‑branch port), and an explicit "computing device … [that] determines a mass concentration … based on an output of the photodetector." Confidence: moderate‑to‑high that this is the closest art; uncertain on full anticipation of claim 1 as literally worded.

1.2 WO 2015/087583 A1 — Sharp Corporation — "Particle separation apparatus, particle measuring apparatus, and particle separation method"

• Citation / dates. WO 2015/087583 A1; priority 2013‑12‑10; published 2015‑06‑18. §102(a)(1).
• Disclosure (from the JP B‑publication text, JP 5770255). The same Sharp device family: particle measuring apparatus 10A with sensor 1 (particle detecting unit), intake 2, sizing unit 3, and fan 4 (fluid drive unit); particles are classified by inertial force at a branch portion into a main flow path and a branch flow path; the fan drive output is varied by a drive control unit; the device measures fine‑to‑coarse particle amounts and can display results. Figures show intermittent‑drive and time‑division modes for the fan.
• §102 assessment. Substantively the same disclosure as §1.1 (same assignee, overlapping disclosure, slightly broader claim set). Potentially pertinent to claim 1 and claim 10, and to the discretionary fan‑control and PM‑sizing subject matter of claim 13. The JP version is also the origin of the "sizing unit + sensor + single fan + branched flow" combination that most closely tracks the '776's FIG. 3.
• Caveats / confidence. Same gap as §1.1 (no confirmed discrete inter‑branch "fluid port"; no explicit "mass concentration … based on photodetector output" computing step). Confidence: moderate.

Why Tier 1 stops here. No other cited reference appears to disclose the complete claim‑1 combination (two branches off one inflow + an inter‑branch fluid port + one fan downstream of both outlets + photodetector in the first branch + processor computing mass concentration). The two Sharp references come closest but each leaves at least one limitation unconfirmed from the text I could retrieve.

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2. Tier 2 — Art disclosing a key sub‑combination

2.1 US 3,787,122 A — Wehr Corp. — "Light scattering particle analyzer"

• Dates. Filed 1973‑01‑05; published 1974‑01‑22. §102(a)(1).
• Disclosure. A light‑scattering airborne‑particle analyzer with an intake conduit, a sample inlet nozzle into an optical sensing chamber, bypass conduit means from the intake conduit, and a single pumping means in the exhaust conduit that draws a high‑volume intake stream, diverts a minor sample stream through the sensing chamber, and draws the major bypass stream through the bypass conduit.
• §102 assessment. Discloses the "single fan/pump downstream of both legs" limitation and a split between a measured leg and a bypass leg. Pertinent to claim 1's downstream‑fan and split‑flow features, but it lacks an inter‑branch fluid port, a processor‑based mass‑concentration determination, and (for claim 10) a laser diode. Does not anticipate claims 1 or 10.
• Note. This is the oldest and one of the clearest "split‑flow optical particle" references; it is cited by examiner (*).

2.2 US 2010/0288921 A1 — Xiaoliang Wang (TSI Inc.) — "Size segregated aerosol mass concentration measurement with inlet conditioners and multiple detectors"

• Dates. Priority 2007‑08‑08; published 2010‑11‑18. §102(a)(1). (* cited by examiner.)
• Disclosure. Real‑time size‑segregated mass concentration of an aerosol. A cut‑size adjustable sample conditioner at the inlet may be, among other things, "a rotating device, for example, a fan, with adjustable speed." A pumping system 312 draws flow; a detection portion has a light source, an interrogation volume, and a detector; a processor converts the photometric/pulse signals into size‑segregated mass fractions (PM1, PM2.5, PM10, etc.).
• §102 assessment. Strongly pertinent to (i) mass‑concentration computation from a photodetector signal (claim‑1 element iv) and (ii) fan/adjustable‑speed‑based size cut (the subject matter of unclaimed FIG. 4 and of claim 13). It is not a two‑branch‑with‑inter‑branch‑port tunnel and has no single fan downstream of two outlets of a branched tunnel, so it does not anticipate claims 1 or 10 — but it is highly relevant to any obviousness challenge to the mass‑concentration and adjustable‑fan subject matter.
• Family note. Related to US 7,932,490 B2 and US 8,534,116 (TSI) surfaced in search — useful context, not themselves cited on the '776 face sheet.

2.3 US 5,420,440 A — Rel‑Tek Corp. — "Optical obscuration smoke monitor having a shunt flow path located between two access ports"

• Dates. Filed 1994‑02‑28; published 1995‑05‑30. §102(a)(1). (* cited by examiner.)
• Disclosure (per title/abstract). An optical obscuration smoke monitor with a shunt flow path located between two access ports.
• §102 assessment. This is the cited reference that most directly reads on the '776's distinguishing "fluid port between the first fluid channel branch and the second fluid channel branch" limitation (a cross‑flow passage between two ports). It is pertinent to that single limitation of claims 1 and 10 but plainly does not disclose the two‑branch mass‑separation tunnel, the downstream single fan, or the processing step. Does not anticipate any claim.

2.4 US 2016/0349168 A1 — Fujitsu Limited — "Measuring apparatus and measuring system"

• Dates. Priority 2015‑05‑29; published 2016‑12‑01 — i.e., after the '776 filing date. (* cited by examiner.)
• §102 assessment. Because it published after 2016‑07‑18, it is not §102(a)(1) art. It is available (if at all) only as §102(a)(2) art, and only if its disclosure was effectively filed before 2016‑07‑18 — its 2015‑05‑29 priority date is before that, so this is a legitimate §102(a)(2) candidate. On the excerpt I could retrieve, it concerns particle measurement generally; I could not confirm that it discloses the two‑branch/fluid‑port/single‑downstream‑fan combination. Confidence: low; verify against the full text. Does not appear to anticipate claims 1/10 on the record available.

2.5 US 9,805,570 B2 — Garrett Thermal Systems Limited — "Particle detector with dust rejection"

• Dates. Priority 2011‑06‑22; published 2017‑10‑31. (* cited by examiner.)
• §102 assessment. A U.S. patent granted after the '776 filing date, so not §102(a)(1) art; potentially §102(a)(2) art because its 2011‑06‑22 priority is before 2016‑07‑18. Its subject ("dust rejection" in a particle detector — a smoke‑detector‑art concept of excluding dust from the sensing volume) is conceptually aligned with the '776's coarse‑particle rejection, but a smoke detector's dust‑rejection optics do not disclose the claimed branched tunnel with an inter‑branch port and a single downstream fan. Pertains to the general concept of rejecting large/dust particles from an optical detection zone; does not anticipate claims 1/10.

2.6 US 2015/0253165 A1 — Xtralis Technologies Ltd. — "Addressability in particle detection"

• Dates. Priority 2012‑10‑16; published 2015‑09‑10. §102(a)(1). (* cited by examiner.)
• Disclosure/assessment. Concerned with aspirated particle‑detection systems (addressable detectors in a piped network). Relevant background: aspirated detectors draw sampled air through a chamber by a fan/blower — this touches the "fan draws flow to a sensing chamber" concept. No two‑branch tunnel; does not anticipate claims 1/10. (Related WO 2009/015178 A1, surfaced in search, describes concentrating particles by splitting a stream so larger particles are excluded from the sensing chamber — conceptually close to the '776's FIG. 3, but I did not confirm that WO 2009/015178 A1 is itself a face‑sheet citation.)

2.7 WO 2017/101038 A1 — Honeywell International Inc. — "Systems, methods, and devices for sensing particulate matter"

• Dates. Priority 2015‑12‑16; published 2017‑06‑22 — after the '776 filing date (not marked * on the face sheet).
• §102 assessment. As a WO publication designating the U.S. and published in English, it is a §102(a)(2) candidate if effectively filed before 2016‑07‑18 — its 2015‑12‑16 priority satisfies that. It is the PCT counterpart of Honeywell's US 10,809,172 B2, the family member that claims the pulse‑binning/sigma_nv/mass‑concentration algorithm. This is the reference most pertinent to the unclaimed algorithm portion of the '776 disclosure, and it is a §102(a)(2) / double‑patenting‑flavored relationship to note. It does not disclose the two‑branch/fluid‑port tunnel. Pertinent to the mass‑concentration computation, not to claims 1/10's structure.
• Flag. Because both are Honeywell filings, this reference sits at the intersection of §102(a)(2) (if inventors differ) and §102(c) common‑ownership/§103(c) considerations — worth verifying against the actual inventive entities.

2.8 CN 204 613 066 U — 济南诺方电子技术有限公司 — "A kind of dust detecting sensor based on LASER Light Source"

• Dates. Priority 2015‑05‑29; published 2015‑09‑02. §102(a)(1). (Utility‑model; not marked *.)
• Disclosure/assessment. A dust‑detecting sensor based on a laser light source. Directly pertinent to claim 10's laser‑diode/scattered‑light limitation and to the general laser‑scattering dust‑sensor architecture; it does not disclose the two‑branch mass‑separation tunnel, inter‑branch port, or single downstream fan. Does not anticipate claims 1/10.

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3. Tier 3 — Feature‑level art (little/no §102 reach against claims 1 and 10)

Each entry gives full citation, dates, brief description, and the claim to which it is (at most) pertinent.

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4. "Family Cites Families" (9) and Non‑Patent Citations (2)

These were cited during prosecution of the family counterparts (CN/EP), not necessarily on the US face sheet. They are still relevant prior art to consider, and several are more on‑point than the US Tier‑3 art.

Non‑patent citations (2):

• International Application No. PCT/CN2015/097546 — International Search Report, dated 2016‑09‑06 (4 pages).
• International Application No. PCT/CN2015/097546 — Written Opinion of the ISA, dated 2016‑09‑06 (4 pages).

Note on dating: Both NPL citations are dated 2016‑09‑06, i.e., after the '776 filing date (2016‑07‑18). As search‑report documents they are procedural citations, not substantive prior art in their own right; the art cited in those reports would need to be examined directly. The ISR for PCT/CN2015/097546 (a China‑filed PCT) suggests the search report likely belongs to a related Honeywell China filing rather than the U.S. case — worth verifying, since it appears in the US record only as a citation.

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5. Bottom‑line assessment

1. No cited reference clearly anticipates claim 1 or claim 10 in full on the record available. The claim‑1 combination is unusually specific (two branches off one inflow plus an inter‑branch fluid port plus one fan downstream of both outlets plus a photodetector in the first branch plus a processor computing mass concentration), and no single citation was confirmed to disclose all of it.

2. The closest potential §102 art is the Sharp pair — WO 2015/008519 A1 and WO 2015/087583 A1 (§1.1–1.2; both published 2015, both §102(a)(1)). Each discloses a single‑fan, branched‑flow (main/branch) optical particle‑measuring device with an inertial sizing branch and a variable‑speed fan. The unconfirmed limitations are the discrete inter‑branch "fluid port" and the explicit processor‑based "mass concentration … based on photodetector output" step. If further review of the full texts shows those, they become serious anticipation candidates; if not, they are strong §103 bases.

3. Key single‑limitation art:

   • Inter‑branch fluid port → US 5,420,440 A (Rel‑Tek; "shunt flow path located between two access ports").
   • Single fan drawing a diverted sample plus a bypass leg → US 3,787,122 A (Wehr).
   • Mass‑concentration computation + adjustable‑speed size cut → US 2010/0288921 A1 (Wang/TSI).
   • Laser‑scattering dust sensing (claim 10) → CN 204 613 066 U, CN 104 316 443 A.

4. Three references are §102(a)(2)‑only (published after the '776 filing date but with earlier effective filing dates): US 2016/0349168 A1 (Fujitsu; priority 2015‑05‑29), WO 2017/101038 A1 (Honeywell; priority 2015‑12‑16), and US 9,805,570 B2 (Garrett/Xtralis; priority 2011‑06‑22). Only the first two have priority after the AIA date but before '776 — confirm inventive entity and §102(b)(2) exceptions (especially for the Honeywell‑to‑Honeywell WO 2017/101038).

5. The most on‑point reference for the unclaimed subject matter is WO 2017/101038 A1 / US 10,809,172 B2 (Honeywell), which claim the pulse‑binning/sigma_nv/calibration algorithm described (but not claimed) in the '776 specification. This reinforces the cross‑reference flagged earlier: do not read the '776 SUMMARY as a claim map — the adjustable‑fan and algorithm features that most of this prior art targets are not in the granted claims of US 10,094,776.

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Caveats and uncertainties (explicit)

• I could not retrieve the examiner's §102 category designations (X/Y/A) or the Office Actions for US 10,094,776. All "potentially anticipates" judgments above are my technical assessments from abstracts/specification excerpts, not official findings. Anticipation is a facts‑and‑element‑mapping question that requires the full reference texts and, ideally, the file history.
• Several reference descriptions rely on titles/abstracts only (e.g., US 2004/0159799 A1, US 7,049,824 B2, US 8,813,540 B2, US 8,243,274 B2, and most CN/JP family‑cited items), because a live full‑text search did not return their bodies before my step limit. Treat those characterizations as low‑confidence.
• Date/identifier integrity. I have interpreted every number literally and not auto‑corrected any identifier. Where a cited "’076"‑style designation elsewhere could be confused with this patent, I have keyed everything to the literal number 10094776 / US 10,094,776 B2.
• One inconsistency to flag: the task header states the current date as April 26, 2026, whereas the session metadata shows 2026‑09‑29. This does not affect the prior‑art analysis (all reference dates are historical and unaffected), but it is noted for completeness.

I'll ground the key prior-art references before mapping them to the claims.

Let me ground the two remaining high-relevance references (the Sharp separation reference and the dust-rejection/shunt-flow references).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,094,776 B2

Dust sensor with mass separation fluid channels and fan control — 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst's note on scope. This analysis is built on (i) the authoritative full text supplied for US 10,094,776 and (ii) the prior-art references listed in the patent's own "Patent Citations (25)," "Family Cites Families (9)," and "Non-Patent Citations" tables. I treat that citation list as the universe of references to be analyzed. I could not verify, from the text I retrieved, that any particular one of the 25 cited references was actually applied by the examiner — the Google Patents table lists references cited, not examiner rejections. Where I rely on the substantive disclosure of a reference, I say so; where I am relying on title/abstract alone, I flag it.

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0. Contradictions flagged (per instructions)

1. Date discrepancy. The system context states today's date is 2026-09-29; this task prompt states "Current Date: April 26, 2026." These conflict. Neither affects the legal analysis (the patent issued 2018-10-09 and is past its 8th-year fee, paid 2026-03-31, so it is in force either way), but I flag it rather than silently pick one. I use "as of the date of this analysis" rather than a specific day.
2. Consistency with the prior sections. The earlier sections correctly identified that the SUMMARY's three embodiments do not map to the claim set — the two-fan / adjustable-speed-fan configuration is disclosed (FIG. 4) but not independently claimed. My analysis below therefore treats only claims 1 and 10 as independent, consistent with the earlier section. No contradiction found.
3. The earlier litigation section reported no litigation found for this patent. I found nothing contradicting that. This is a negative search result, not proof of absence.

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1. Governing framework and the PHOSITA

Legal standard. Under § 103, a claim is obvious if the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art ("PHOSITA") at the effective filing date, in view of the art, the level of ordinary skill, and the objective evidence of non-obviousness. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), permits combinations of familiar elements according to known methods where the result is predictable, and allows recourse to design incentives and market forces.

PHOSITA (proposed). A person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, or optical engineering (or physics) and roughly 2–4 years of experience designing airborne-particle (aerosol) sensors, optical particle counters, or air-handling/flow-control subassemblies, or equivalent. This is a mature, well-populated art with a long paper trail (the citation list itself dates to 1973).

Effective filing date: 2016-07-18 (no priority claim; "CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS — None").

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2. The prior-art landscape, sorted by what it supplies

Key structural observation. Two of the strongest references here are not in the "Patent Citations" table but in the description and family-citation tables: the Sharp separation patent (WO 2015/087583 A1 / JP 5805731 B2) and the Wang/TSI family. The Sharp reference is discussed first because it is, on the verified record, the closest structural art.

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3. Grounding the strongest reference: Sharp WO 2015/087583 A1 / JP 5805731 B2

I retrieved and read the claim text of the Japanese family member JP 5805731 B2 ("粒子分離装置、及びそれを備えた微粒子測定器" — Particle separation apparatus and a fine particle measurement device provided with the same; Sharp; filed 2013-10-24; registered 2015-09-11). Its claim 1 recites, in translation:

"…a gas flow path having an introduction flow path for introducing gas from outside, a main flow path and a branch flow path branched at a branching portion at the end of the introduction flow path on the side opposite to the outside, and a discharge path that is a merging flow path connected to the main flow path and the branch flow path … which again merges the main flow path and the branch flow path branched at the branching portion; one fluid drive unit that generates an airflow from the introduction flow path toward the discharge path via the main flow path and the branch flow path; … a particle separation device that separates particles contained in the gas introduced from the introduction flow path into the main flow path and the branch flow path by their inertial force; wherein the discharge path is provided with a partition plate that separates the main flow and the branch flow; the gas suction face of the fluid drive unit is connected to the discharge path; and the partition plate divides, at the gas suction face, the main-flow region and the branch-flow region."

And claims 2–3 add a switching mechanism that switches "communication and separation between the main-flow passage space and the branch-flow passage space" (主流通過空間及び支流通過空間同士の連通及び分離を切り替える切替機構), with claim 4 requiring the main- and branch-passage areas at the fan suction face to differ, and claim 5 requiring the main flow velocity to exceed the branch flow velocity.

Why this matters: it is a near-element-for-element structural read on claim 1's tunnel, as the table in §5 shows. It is also, by its own title, expressly adapted to feed a "fine particle measurement device."

(Confidence: high on the Japanese claim text I retrieved. I did NOT retrieve the WO 2015/087583 A1 English text directly; I am treating the JP family member as representative. The reference also appears in the record as a "Family Cites Families" entry, published 2015-06-18 — i.e., more than a year before the '776 filing date, and therefore § 102(a)(1)/102(b) prior art.)

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4. Primary combination for independent claim 1

4.1 Element-by-element

Result. Every element of claim 1 is disclosed across Sharp + one laser-scattering detector reference + Wang/TSI or FLIR for the mass-concentration computation. No single reference contains all elements, so claim 1 is not anticipated on this record — but the combination is a textbook § 103 case.

4.2 Motivation to combine (Sharp as base)

1. Express purpose in the primary reference. Sharp's own title is "Particle separation apparatus and a fine particle measurement device provided with the same." The reference is not merely combinable with a measuring device — it is written to be combined with one. The only missing element (detection + concentration) is the very thing Sharp says its separator is for.
2. Same field, same problem, same fluid. Both are airborne-particle handling in an air stream at ambient/consumer conditions; no field-of-use leap is required (KSR; In re Kahn).
3. Articulated, art-recognized problem. Optical particle sensors are degraded by large/coincident particles. The '776 specification states this (larger particles "may impart large, undesirable variations in dust sensing"); FLIR's US 8,243,274 B2 states it (intake "prefilter … filter[ing] out larger particles"); Garrett's US 9,805,570 B2 is titled "Particle detector with dust rejection"; Wang/TSI describes coincidence-error limits of OPCs. Every one of these is a stated reason to put a separator upstream of a scatter detector.
4. Predictable result / known technique. Inertial separation of a polydisperse aerosol into two streams is classical (Leschonski 1976; Honeywell's 7,927,408 describes exactly this, including the ~15–25% scavenge split). Scattering photometry for mass concentration is equally classical (Wehr 1974; Wang 2007/2010). Combining a mechanical separator with an optical counter yields the predictable result of a cleaner interrogation volume — the definition of an obvious combination under KSR.
5. Design incentive in the market. The '776 background itself recites that consumer air cleaners must be "modestly priced and compact." A designer confronting that constraint has a clear incentive to reuse an existing, cheap inertial splitter rather than invent a new one — the classic "KSR design incentive."

4.3 The "fluid port between the branches" — the only arguable non-obvious kernel

If any element of claim 1 survives, it is the fluid port located between the first and second branches. Two independent references supply it:

• Sharp's switching mechanism (claims 2–3) that opens/closes communication between the main-passage space and the branch-passage space at the fan suction face; and
• Rel-Tek US 5,420,440 A, whose title recites a "shunt flow path located between two access ports" in an optical smoke monitor.

Adding either to the base combination is motivated by the same accuracy objective the '776 spec states: the port lets fines that drifted into the second branch "rise to rejoin the first," thereby making the concentration measured in the first branch better represent the inlet air. That is a result-effective, expected improvement, not an unpredictable one. A PHOSITA would adopt it to reduce measurement bias.

Conclusion — claim 1: obvious over Sharp + {US 3,787,122 A or US 5,426,501 A or CN 204613066 U or US 8,243,274 B2} + {US 2010/0288921 A1 or US 8,243,274 B2}, optionally with Rel-Tek US 5,420,440 A for the port. (Confidence: moderate-to-high for the core structure and detection; the pin on the "fluid port" is the one place where the record is thinner and where a robust rebuttal would focus.)

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5. Independent claim 10 (laser-diode variant)

Claim 10 is claim 1 + a laser diode, with the determination "based on detecting light emitted by the laser diode scattered by dust particles present in a fluid flow through the first fluid channel branch."

• The added laser-diode-and-scattering element is squarely old: CN 204613066 U ("dust detecting sensor based on LASER Light Source"), US 5,426,501 A (Laser Sensor Technology), US 3,787,122 A (Wehr, light-scattering analyzer), and US 8,243,274 B2 (FLIR) all place a laser and a photodetector in an optical path traversed by the particle-laden stream.
• The '776 specification's own stated reason for preferring a laser over an LED — greater convergence/intensity yielding resolvable pulses rather than "envelopes of light signals" — is exactly the reason a PHOSITA would substitute a laser diode for any lamp/LED source already in the combination, i.e., a result-effective substitution of one known light source for another with predictable improvement.
• Motivation: the combination is Sharp (separator, purpose-built for a fine-particle measuring device) + FLIR (laser source, photodetector, and a controller that converts the laser signal into a concentration), which FLIR does in a portable aerosol monitor — the same application space.

Conclusion — claim 10: obvious, and weak relative to claim 1 because it adds only well-trodden laser-scattering hardware. (Confidence: high — the laser-plus-photodetector-plus-controller trio is documented in multiple independent references.)

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6. Dependent claims 2–9 and 11–13

Note on claim 13's antecedent. As flagged in the prior section, claim 13 recites "therein" [sic] rather than "wherein," and depends from claim 10, which — unlike the SUMMARY's unclaimed second embodiment — recites a single fan, not a separately adjustable one. A cut size tuned by fan speed is still mechanically available on a single fan (flow-rate scanning, as Wang/TSI teaches), so the claim remains supported and obvious; but this is the kind of informality that could surface in a § 112 challenge independent of § 103.

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7. Alternative (secondary) combinations, if the Sharp reference were unavailable or rebutted

Even without Sharp, claim 1 falls to alternative pairings:

Combination B — Wang/TSI + Honeywell US 7,927,408 + FLIR US 8,243,274.

• US 7,927,408 B2 teaches the two-path, one-inlet duct with a single downstream suction source and an adjustable splitter/scavenge geometry, including coupling to fan speed;
• US 2010/0288921 A1 teaches the optical determination of size-segregated mass concentration (PM1/PM2.5/PM10) with an optics chamber and detectors along the flow;
• US 8,243,274 B2 supplies laser + photodetector + controller computing concentration in a compact, wearable monitor.
• Motivation: all three are particle-monitoring art, two of them expressly for PM2.5; combining an inertial pre-separator (7,927,408) with a photometric mass-concentration detector (Wang) yields the predictable benefit of a cleaner optical volume.

Combination C — Honeywell's own family + a separator.

• WO 2017/101038 A1 / US 10,809,172 B2 (priority 2015-12-16, before the '776 filing date of 2016-07-18) supply the detection + sigma_nv + curve-fit-calibration algorithm for which the '776 discloses no claimed monopoly.
• Important § 102(b)(2)(C) caveat: because WO 2017/101038 / US 10,809,172 and the '776 are commonly owned by Honeywell and the former was effectively filed before the '776 filing date, the common-ownership exception may remove these from the prior art entirely as of the '776 effective filing date, and the non-patent citations to PCT/CN2015/097546 (ISR/WO dated 2016-09-06) have the same character. If so, Combination C is not available as § 103 art. I flag this because the earlier sections correctly noted that the algorithm is described but unclaimed in the '776 — the algorithm is thus a dedication/related-family issue, not a clean obviousness hook. (This is a nuance I would want to confirm against the actual record; I could not verify the ownership-at-filing chain beyond the assignment data already reported.)

Non-analogous-art objection. Not available. Every reference in the tables is from G01N15 (particle investigation) or the aerosol/air-handling arts; the Xtralis/Rel-Tek smoke-detection references are the only arguable outliers, and smoke detection is well within the "detect particles in a flowing fluid by light" field for motivation purposes (In re ICON Health & Fitness).

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8. Objective indicia (Graham factors) — what is and is not in the record

• Unexpected results: none asserted in the specification, and none apparent — separating coarse particles before optical interrogation yields expected accuracy gains.
• Long-felt need / failure of others: the record shows the opposite — FLIR, Wang/TSI, Sharp, Garrett, and Xtralis all reached the same "separate or reject large particles before optical detection" solution independently, and years earlier. That is evidence of known, adoptable technique, not of a long-felt unmet need.
• Commercial success / licensing / copying: no evidence in the retrieved record; and no nexus could be shown because the alleged invention's commercial embodiment does not appear to be established on this record.
• Praise / industry recognition: none retrieved.
• Teaching away: none apparent. Sharp, Wang, and Honeywell 7,927,408 all teach toward splitting a particle stream upstream of measurement.

Conclusion: no objective evidence in the available record rebuts the prima facie case.

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9. Claim-by-claim conclusion

Overall: on this record, all 13 claims are reasonably susceptible to a § 103 rejection, with claim 1 being the only claim where a meaningful non-obviousness argument could be mounted — and then only on the narrow "fluid port between the branches" limitation, and only if Rel-Tek US 5,420,440 A and the Sharp switching-mechanism claims were successfully distinguished.

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10. Explicit uncertainty disclosure

1. What I verified first-hand. The Sharp JP 5805731 B2 claim text; US 2010/0288921 A1's disclosure of the adjustable cut-size inlet including "a rotating device, for example, a fan, with adjustable speed" (via the US 8,534,116 / US 7,932,490 family text); US 8,243,274 B2's abstract, claim 1, and controller description; US 7,927,408 B2's abstract and the "in-line scavenge channel / branching clean channel / scavenge fan" description (via citing documents).
2. What I did NOT verify. I did not retrieve the substantive disclosure of US 3,787,122 A, US 3,952,207 A, US 4,197,013 A, US 4,223,559 A, US 5,420,440 A, US 5,426,501 A, US 2004/0159799 A1, US 7,049,824 B2, CN 1800820 A, US 2008/0156187 A1, US 2010/0269600 A1, US 2010/0172471 A1 / US 2013/0195245 A1, US 8,813,540 B2, US 9,805,570 B2, US 2015/0253165 A1, WO 2015/008519 A1, CN 104316443 A, CN 204613066 U, US 2016/0349168 A1, US 8,806,915 B2, JP 4153434 B2, JP 2004/089898 A, MY 179786 A, CN 103852405 B, CN 104792671 B, EP 3215270 B1, CN 105092443 B, CN 105136637 B, WO 2017/101038 A1, and US 10,809,172 B2. For those, I relied on titles/abstracts and on face-value citation data from the Google Patents page. Any conclusion keyed to those references should be re-checked against their full texts before being relied upon in a filing.
3. The examiner's actual positions are unknown to me. I could not retrieve the file wrapper. Whether any of these references were applied (as opposed to merely cited or listed as "cited by") is unknown. My § 103 case is an independent reconstruction, not a report of a rejection.
4. Common-ownership analysis (§ 102(b)(2)(C)) is flagged, not resolved (see § 7, Combination C).
5. No litigation, PTAB, or CAFC activity for this patent was found, consistent with the earlier section; that is a negative search result, not a certification of a clean docket.