Invalidity dossier
US 10126257
Device and method for non-invasive detection of hazardous materials in the aquatic environment
Current assignee: Jagiellonian University
Added 9/23/2026, 7:49:11 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 10,126,257 B2
Title: Device and method for non-invasive detection of hazardous materials in the aquatic environment
Assignee: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski (original assignee; assignment recorded 2017-04-12 to inventors Moskal and Silarski). Inventors: Michal Silarski and Pawel Moskal.
Key dates: Priority date 2014-09-07; filing date 2015-06-08; publication of US20170254763A1 on 2017-09-07; patent granted/publication 2018-11-13. Status shown as "Expired – Fee Related," with anticipated expiration 2035-06-08 — this is a listed legal-status assumption, not a legal conclusion.
Purpose: To detect hazardous substances such as war remnants, mines, and war gases in underwater environments (notably contaminated Baltic areas like Little Belt, Bornholm Deep, and the Gotland Deep). The stated technical problem is providing higher sensitivity, lower background/noise, more accurate detection of deeply buried objects, and determination of a substance's density distribution.
Plain-language scope (from the Definitions section): The device uses a sealed housing containing a fast neutron generator surrounded by an alpha-particle detector and a gamma-quantum detector. Neutrons are emitted toward a tested object; the gamma detector registers characteristic gamma quanta emitted by nuclei of the object after neutron irradiation. The improvement is the addition of neutrons and/or gamma-quanta guides connected to the generator and detector. Guides may be telescopic cylinders with closed bases, evacuated or gas-filled (air, helium, argon), made of stainless steel, aluminum, or carbon fibers, and lined with a neutron-reflecting layer (preferably graphite). The angle between guides is variable (0–90 degrees), enabling depth/area variation and density-distribution measurement. Gamma quanta may be detected in coincidence with alpha particles to reduce background. The method claims include collimating fast neutrons, transmission through guides, coincidence detection, and position/time measurement of guides and gamma registration.
Not established by this excerpt: All claims and the full specification (text was truncated at detector 111); figures' visual content; exact claim language; and the excerpt's completeness. No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is included.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:41:47 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.