US 10310039

Patent Overview — US 10,310,039 B2

Title: Method and apparatus for multislice magnetic resonance fingerprinting

Assignee/Applicant (per source): Original assignee Siemens Healthcare GmbH; current assignee listed as Siemens Healthineers AG.

Key dates (per source): Priority date 2016-05-03; filing date 2017-05-03; publication of US20170322276A1 on 2017-11-09; granted and published as US10310039B2 on 2019-06-04. Status: Active, with an adjusted expiration listed as 2037-08-26. Application number US15/585,456. Inventors: Himanshu Bhat and Mario Zeller.

Purpose: The invention concerns a method for magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF), plus a corresponding MR apparatus, combining MRF with Simultaneous Multislice (SMS) imaging. The stated aim is an SMS fingerprinting imaging approach that overcomes at least some disadvantages of prior techniques.

Plain-language scope (from the excerpt): A repetition sequence is performed in which each repetition radiates a first RF excitation pulse exciting nuclear magnetization in a first slice and acquires first MR data, and a second RF excitation pulse exciting a second, different slice and acquires second MR data. A first MR image of the first slice is determined based on a fingerprinting directory (containing reference data) and the first MR data; a second MR image of the second slice is likewise determined from the directory and the second MR data. The first and second RF excitation pulses are radiated at least partly in parallel in time. Flip angles of the first RF pulses are, at least for some repetitions, different from those of the second RF pulses. The scattering of local maxima of the summed RF energy of the first and second pulses, as a function of repetition over the sequence, is not greater than 80% relative to the average of that summed RF energy. Repetition time and trajectory may be varied repetition-to-repetition as MR parameters; the sequence may include more than 100 repetitions.

What the excerpt does not establish: It provides no claim set, no complete detailed description, no figures, and no prior-art references beyond the cited Dan Ma et al., Nature 495 (2013) 187-192. It does not establish validity, enforceability, claim scope, or legal status as a conclusion.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10310039/en

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10310039 across patent litigation databases and court records.

Initial results are mostly unrelated (e.g., DE 10310039 A1 is a German butterfly-valve patent). Let me search patent litigation databases directly.

Let me search more specifically, including Google Patents' litigation data and CourtListener.

Litigation search report — US Patent 10,310,039

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent 10,310,039 was found. Based on my searches of patent-litigation-oriented sources, I could not identify any district-court case, ITC investigation, PTAB/IPR proceeding, or foreign (e.g., UPC) action in which US 10,310,039 is the asserted patent, the patent-in-suit, or a challenged patent.

Per your instruction to say so explicitly when the answer is negative: no known litigation exists for this patent on the record I was able to retrieve.

What the patent is (for identification purposes)

• Patent: US 10,310,039 B2 — "Method and apparatus for multislice magnetic resonance fingerprinting"
• Inventors: Himanshu Bhat; Mario Zeller
• Original assignee: Siemens Healthcare GmbH
• Current assignee: Siemens Healthineers AG
• Priority date: 2016-05-03; Filed: 2017-05-03; Granted: 2019-06-04
• Application no.: 15/585,456; Pre-grant pub.: US 2017/0322276 A1
• Status: Active, adjusted expiration 2037-08-26
• Subject matter: Combined MR fingerprinting + simultaneous multislice (SMS) imaging; claim 1 recites flip-angle differences between first/second slice excitation pulses and a scattering of local maxima of summed RF energy < 80% of the average.

Litigation case list: None identified. (No plaintiff/defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome can be provided because no case was located.)

Important caveats and search noise (do not conflate)

Because you asked me not to auto-correct identifiers, I want to flag the false positives that appeared and that must not be attributed to US 10,310,039:

1. DE 10310039 A1 — a German patent for a butterfly valve (Kronschroeder AG, published 2004-09-16; family of EP 1 455 124). This shares the numeric string "10310039" but is an entirely unrelated patent and jurisdiction. It is not US 10,310,039.
2. IPR2025-00536 — a PTAB proceeding that references US Patent 9,032,039 (an eight-digit number), not 10,310,039. Different patent. Do not conflate.
3. Hologic v. Siemens Healthineers (UPC Düsseldorf Local Division, UPC_CFL_758/2024 and UPC_CFL_259/2025, judgment 10 June 2026) — asserted EP 2 352 431 B1 (breast tomosynthesis X-ray focal-spot control). This concerns Siemens Healthineers but involves a different patent and different technology (mammography hardware, not MR fingerprinting). It is not related to US 10,310,039.

Methodology and limitations (stated plainly)

• I searched for the exact strings "10310039," "10,310,039," and "US 10310039" against litigation-oriented queries (Unified Patents portal, CourtListener/RECAP, general case-docket searches, and assignee-based searches tying Siemens/Siemens Healthineers to infringement suits).
• The searches surfaced no case naming this patent. However, I was unable to run live queries directly against the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or CourtListener's database endpoint — my results derive from web-indexed pages, which do not reliably expose every docket entry for a given patent number. A PACER/RECAP docket search and a Unified Patents Portal case-list search keyed to "10310039" should be run directly to confirm.
• Confidence: Moderate-to-high that no reported litigation exists, given this is a Siemens-owned active medical-imaging patent that (unlike NPE-asserted patents) shows no signals of assertion activity in indexed sources. I cannot rule out a very recent, low-profile, or not-yet-indexed action.

If you want, I can attempt targeted follow-ups (e.g., a direct PACER/RECAP docket search for the patent number, or a Google Patents "Litigation" tab check) to close the remaining gap in coverage.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before reporting.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 10,310,039 B2

"Method and apparatus for multislice magnetic resonance fingerprinting" (Siemens Healthineers AG)
Report date: 2026-09-29

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding against US 10,310,039 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches surfaced none either — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials, and the bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is that the patent is entirely untested at the PTAB: all 24 claims carry a full presumption of validity, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel firewall of your own to exploit, and there is no ready-made invalidity roadmap to copy.

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Proceedings on file

None. There is no proceeding to profile. I am not listing any proceeding number, petitioner, panel, or written decision, because none exists — inventing one would be malpractice for the purpose you're using this for.

To avoid a real, live confusion risk, note that neither of the following is US 10,310,039, despite superficially similar numbering:

None of these involves Siemens Healthineers, MR fingerprinting, or the US 15/585,456 family.

What I actually verified

• Structured ODP block (canonical, authoritative for this task): zero AIA trial proceedings on file.
• Live web searches for: US 10310039 PTAB, 10310039 IPR petition, Siemens magnetic resonance fingerprinting IPR, Unified Patents / defensive aggregator + 10310039. No hit tied to this patent.
• Patent posture from the patent text itself: priority 2016-05-03, filed 2017-05-03, published 2017-11-09 (US 2017/0322276 A1), granted 2019-06-04, current assignee Siemens Healthineers AG (reassigned from Siemens Healthcare GmbH on 2023-12-20), legal status Active, adjusted expiration 2037-08-26. 24 claims total, with at least claim 1 (the "scattering of local maxima … < 80%" method claim) and claim 12 (the dual-optimization method claim) as independent method claims.

Caveat I'd rather state than paper over: the ODP block covers AIA trial proceedings only. It would not reflect an ex parte reexamination (90/xx,xxx), a reissue, or a foreign opposition. I found no indication of any of those for this patent in the material available to me, but neither the ODP block nor my searches are a positive clearance of those avenues, and I could not query PTAB E2E or the reexam file wrapper directly in this session. If a reexam is outcome-determinative for you, pull the file wrapper on PatentCenter for App. No. 15/585,456 before you rely on this report.

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Strategic summary

Claim-level status. All 24 claims are UNTESTED. Nothing is canceled, nothing has been amended by certificate, nothing has been held patentable after an adverse challenge. That cuts both ways for a defendant: you are not staring at a "claim 1 is dead" situation, but you also don't know where the Board would draw the line. Practically, the two independent claims likely to be asserted are claim 1 — which recites a specific, quantifiable limitation (scattering of local maxima of summed RF energy less than 80% of the average over the sequence) — and claim 12, which recites two separate flip-angle optimizations. Both are numerical-limitation claims, and numerical limitations are traditionally fertile grounds for § 112(b) indefiniteness and for § 103 attack on the ground that a POSITA would reach the claimed range with routine optimization. That's an observation about litigation risk, not a PTAB finding, since no panel has addressed it.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petitioner has ever reached a final written decision here, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone. You and your client are free to raise any prior-art ground under §§ 102/103 — including art that a hypothetical earlier petitioner might have raised. Conversely, there is no earlier petitioner's win to freeride on: any IPR you file would be built from scratch, on art you select, with the usual risk that the Board exercises § 314(a)/Fintiv-style discretion if a co-pending district court case has moved past its preliminary stage, and the usual § 315(b) one-year bar from service of an infringement complaint. Note also the tension in claim 1's design: an IPR would have to defeat the "less than 80%" scattering limitation with prior art that renders that numerical relationship obvious, which is a materially harder petition than a typical two-reference § 103 on a mechanical claim.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed anything — not once, let alone the repeat-petitioner pattern you see with shell-entity assertion campaigns. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, AST, LOT) appears anywhere in the chain; the assignment history is a straight intra-Siemens corporate transfer (Siemens Healthcare GmbH → Siemens Healthineers AG, 2023-12-20), with no signs of the patent changing hands to a monetization entity. Siemens Healthineers is a large operating company asserting an internal R&D portfolio patent, not a litigating NPE. There is likewise no patent owner PTAB appeal activity and no Federal Circuit docket touching this patent. Siemens is active in other forums — notably the UPC campaign against Hologic over EP 2 352 431 and related European rights — but that is a different patent and a different jurisdiction, and it does not put US 10,310,039 before the PTAB.

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Recommended next steps

1. Say it plainly to the client: there is no PTAB record. No FWD to link to, no disposition to quote, no cancellation certificate, no appeal. Any representation to the contrary — by an adverse party or by an AI research tool — should be treated as an error.
2. The absence is itself a signal, and it points toward, not away from, real assertion risk. Well-asserted medical-imaging patents attract IPRs quickly; a 9-year-old priority date with a live term to 2037-08-26 and zero challenges suggests the patent has sat quietly inside an operating company's portfolio rather than being broadly asserted — which in turn means the first wave of defendants will each be footing a first-mover IPR bill. Budget accordingly.
3. Because you're a first mover, the petition economics are yours to shape. Commission a validity search now, before any § 315(b) one-year clock starts, and focus it on: (a) SMS/multiband MRF prior art co-published before 2016-05-03 (the Ye t-blipped SMS MRF and Jiang pattern-recognition SMS-MRF papers cited on the face of the patent are obvious starting points — a petitioner must show they teach different flip-angle dependencies per slice and the <80% scattering of summed RF-energy local maxima); and (b) the numerical-limitation angle, both as § 103 routine optimization and as § 112(b) indefiniteness for the terms "scattering," "local maxima," and "average value."
4. Watch the parallel-art risk, not a parallel-PTAB risk. Even with no AIA proceedings, check for foreign counterparts in opposition (EPO) and for UPC actions involving the Siemens Healthineers MRF family — a favorable EPO revocation decision on a family member is strong persuasive ammunition and can supply prior art you'd otherwise have to find yourself.
5. If you do file, calendar the statutory machinery: institution decision due within 6 months of the petition's filing date (extendable), and a final written decision due within 12 months of institution under 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11). There is no existing schedule to plug into, because there is no case.

Bottom line: US 10,310,039 has no PTAB history whatsoever. Treat it as a fully intact, un-narrowed, and un-estopped patent with roughly eleven years of term remaining, owned by a sophisticated operating company — and treat any claim that it has already been invalidated at the Board as false.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10310039 across the sources you named.

Let me try the USPTO assignment data and related sources directly.

Let me probe the USPTO assignment API and Google Patents legal-events page for this patent number.

I hit my search-step limit while probing the USPTO Assignment Center's public API, so I'll be explicit about what is verified vs. what I could not retrieve. The authoritative source I do have is the full grant text plus the Google Patents legal-events record captured with it (fetched 2026-09-24), which enumerates every recorded reassignment event. Reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record are not exposed in that capture and my live searches for them returned nothing usable — I will not invent them.

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Inventors

Unusual patterns: none observed. Both inventors bound their rights to their respective Siemens employing entities, and those rights were then consolidated into Siemens Healthcare GmbH (see below). This is the opposite of the pre-fire-sale signature you flagged: there is no indication of any inventor departing the assignee within 12 months of the 2017-05-03 filing, and Bhat and Zeller continue to appear together as Siemens inventors on later filings (e.g., US 12,161,456, issued 2024-12-10, naming Bhat). No assignment-to-a-third-party by either inventor is on record.

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Original assignee

Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany (per the issued face of the patent and the Google Patents "Original Assignee" field).

• Primary line of business: medical imaging — MRI, CT, X-ray, molecular imaging. This is a large operating company, not a holding/licensing vehicle.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. The patent claims a multislice (SMS) MR-fingerprinting acquisition/reconstruction method executed by an MR data acquisition scanner. Siemens Healthineers ships the MAGNETOM family of MRI scanners whose software stack includes simultaneous-multislice and MR fingerprinting sequences; the claims are directed at the scanner control/reconstruction behavior of exactly that product line. The specification's FIG. 1 is a description of the assignee's own MR system (magnet, gradient system, RF coil arrangement, RF transmitter/receiver, console, processor, memory).
• Current status: Operating. Siemens Healthcare GmbH remains an active Siemens legal entity, and the patent's current recorded assignee is Siemens Healthineers AG, the separately listed (Frankfurt: SHL) medical-technology operating company. Not dissolved, not in bankruptcy, not acquired by a third party.

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Assignment timeline

Three post-filing assignment events are recorded. All three are legal-events entries dated 2017-12-11 in the Google Patents record and the 2023 entry is dated 2023-12-20. The execution dates and reel/frame numbers are not published in the source I can access, and I could not retrieve them from the Assignment Center within my tool budget — I am reporting them as "not retrieved" rather than guessing.

• executed: not published / recorded 2017-12-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents event type: "reassignment"; USPTO event type shown as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST" for the Siemens-side entries)
  • Assignor: BHAT, HIMANSHU
  • Assignee: SIEMENS MEDICAL SOLUTIONS USA, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Not exposed in the available source; my live searches for the Assignment Center record for 15/585,456 did not return the correspondent field.
  • Context: Employee-inventor assignment to his U.S. employing subsidiary — routine rights capture, not a transfer to an acquirer.

• executed: not published / recorded 2017-12-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: ZELLER, MARIO, MR.
  • Assignee: SIEMENS HEALTHCARE GMBH
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Employee-inventor assignment to his German employing entity — routine rights capture.

• executed: not published / recorded 2017-12-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: SIEMENS MEDICAL SOLUTIONS USA, INC.
  • Assignee: SIEMENS HEALTHCARE GMBH
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — consolidation of the U.S. subsidiary's co-ownership interest into the German parent so that a single Siemens entity held the whole right. This is the standard Siemens filing practice of vesting group patents in Siemens Healthcare GmbH.

• executed: not published / recorded 2023-12-20 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (event type: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST", labeled "reassignment")
  • Assignor: SIEMENS HEALTHCARE GMBH
  • Assignee: SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS AG
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — intra-group transfer of the patent portfolio to the separately listed Healthineers operating entity, following the Siemens Healthineers carve-out (IPO March 2018) and the subsequent migration of Healthcare GmbH-held IP into Siemens Healthineers AG. Not a sale to a third party; Siemens AG/Healthineers control is continuous.

Note on the "assignment" counts. Google Patents surfaces a fourth event on 2017-05-03 ("Application filed by Siemens Healthcare GmbH") — that is the filing itself, not an assignment, and I have excluded it. There is no record of any transfer to a non-Siemens entity, no security agreement, no license record, and no release.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10310039
    2016 : Priority date
    2017 : Filed by Siemens Healthcare GmbH
    2017 : Bhat assigns to Siemens Med Solutions USA
         : Zeller assigns to Siemens Healthcare GmbH
         : US rights consolidated into Siemens Healthcare GmbH
    2019 : Patent issued
    2023 : Transferred to Siemens Healthineers AG

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is a named Siemens operating entity (Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.; Siemens Healthcare GmbH; Siemens Healthineers AG). None carries an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, none is a single-member LLC, and none uses a registered-agent service address. Siemens Healthineers AG ships MRI scanners; the patent is used in-company.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignor or assignee matches any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Document Generation / Spangenberg lists, and no Siemens entity appears on the RPX or Unified Patents high-frequency-plaintiff directories. The 2023-12-20 transfer is to a listed medical-technology operating company.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRESOLVED (unclear). I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any of the four events. I want to be precise here rather than pattern-match: Google Patents legal events do not publish the correspondent, and my searches did not surface the Assignment Center entries for application 15/585,456. There is therefore no correspondent evidence either way; I am not treating the absence as a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. The pattern is two same-day employee assignments plus one intra-group consolidation on 2017-12-11, then a single reorganization transfer on 2023-12-20 — a ~6-year gap. That is a 2-link, 4-entity chain contained entirely within one corporate group, not the "<24 months through chained LLCs" signature.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. I found no infringement suit naming US 10,310,039. The 2023-12-20 transfer has no litigation anchor, and the 2017-12-11 events predate issuance (2019-06-04) by ~18 months.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Siemens Healthcare GmbH or Siemens Healthineers AG; the assignors remain solvent operating companies. This is the inverse of the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid pattern.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. A privateering finding requires an operating company transferring to an NPE that then asserts on its behalf. Here the patent moved deeper into the operating group (US sub → German parent → listed Healthineers entity), which is the opposite direction.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT (but note the inverse: this is also not a defensive-aggregator termination). The chain does not end at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN, so the patent has not been neutralized — it remains held and enforceable by an operating company that practices the claims.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the express caveat that the "assertion" prong is not evidenced: I found no infringement litigation naming US 10,310,039, so the accurate operative finding is "not an NPE; ownership sits inside the Siemens Healthineers operating group."

Justification. The entire chain — 2017-12-11 assignments from inventors Bhat (to Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.) and Zeller (to Siemens Healthcare GmbH), the same-day consolidation of the U.S. interest into Siemens Healthcare GmbH, and the 2023-12-20 intra-group transfer to Siemens Healthineers AG — stays within one corporate group that designs and sells the MRI scanners practicing SMS-MRF under the claims. Zero of the eight signals are present (one, the correspondent check, is merely unresolved for lack of data), which is the expected profile for a large med-tech operating company's ordinary employee-assignment and portfolio-reorganization filings. If the intended distinction is "operating owner that is not currently asserting," this patent should be recorded as a non-asserting operating-company asset rather than an NPE holding; I chose the closest available verdict bucket and flagged the deviation rather than overstate the litigation evidence.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by application 15/585,456 or patent 10,310,039): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents (legal events reproduced above): https://patents.google.com/patent/US10310039/en

Residual gap to close manually: open the Assignment Center record for 15/585,456 and capture (a) reel/frame for each of the four events and (b) the correspondent of record for each. Those two fields are the only parts of your requested output I could not ground, and I'd rather report them missing than fabricate them — on this record the correspondent is likely a single Siemens in-house or outside firm handling all four recordings, but that is an inference, not a finding.

I'll research US patent 10310039 and its cited prior art references.

I found the key citation data. Let me gather more details on each reference and the patent's full citation list.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10310039 B2

Important caveats up front (per my operating rules):

• I could not open the USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier citation record directly in this session. The citation list below is taken from the Justia and Google Patents pages for US 10,310,039 (URLs cited inline), which reproduce the "Referenced Cited" section of the granted patent. Treat the list as reliable but verify against the official USPTO record before relying on it legally.
• The references below are applicant-cited ("Referenced Cited"), not confirmed examiner rejections. The grant of the patent implies the examiner did not find a § 102 anticipation among them. My § 102 mapping is an analytical assessment, not a statement of what the examiner did.
• The Justia listing renders the Ma et al. Nature citation as "(1971)." That is almost certainly a rendering/OCR error — the patent's own specification and every other source give Nature 495 (2013) 187‑192. I am flagging it rather than silently correcting it, as instructed.

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A. Identification of the patent (ground truth, from the full text)

Core inventive concept (claims 1 and 12): simultaneous‑multislice (SMS) MR fingerprinting in which (i) first and second slice‑selective RF pulses are radiated at least partly in parallel, (ii) the flip angles of the first pulses differ from those of the second pulses in at least some repetitions, and (iii) the scattering of the local maxima of the summed RF energy ("integral RF energy") is ≤ 80% of its average over the repetition sequence (claims 9–11 narrow this to 50%, 20%, 8%). Claim 12 adds a dual flip‑angle optimization step.

The limitation that drives novelty/§ 102 analysis is the quantitative RF‑energy‑scattering constraint — a numerical bound on RF energy fluctuation across the SMS pulse train. This is the feature most prior art does not disclose.

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B. U.S. patent-document citations

1. US 9,897,675 B2 — Setsompop et al.

• Full citation: US 9,897,675 B2, "Magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) with simultaneous multivolume acquisition," granted Feb. 20, 2018 (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9897675B2](/patent/US9897675B2)/en).
• Description: MRF combined with simultaneous multi‑volume/slice acquisition (MRF‑SMVA). It explicitly discloses (a) creating a first MRF excitation in a first volume and a second, different MRF excitation in a second volume, simultaneously excited; (b) "modulating spin magnetization in different simultaneously excited slices using unique flip angle trains for the different slices" (FIG. 1); (c) t‑blipped SMS‑MRF (FIG. 14); and (d) dictionary matching to recover per‑slice parameters.
• Relevance / potential § 102 mapping: This is by far the closest reference on the multislice‑MRF‑with‑different‑flip‑angles aspect.
  • It discloses elements of claim 1 (parallel first/second slice excitations; differing flip angles across slices; dictionary‑based reconstruction) and the subject matter of claims 2, 3/4, 5–8 (varying flip angles over repetitions; complementary/corresponding per‑slice flip‑angle trains).
  • However, it does not appear to disclose the numerical scattering limitation of claim 1 (local maxima of summed RF energy ≤ 80% of average), nor the dual optimization of claim 12 / claims 13–22. On the record I have, claim 1 and claim 12 are therefore not anticipated by this reference standing alone; it is the primary § 103 reference.
• Note: I could not confirm this reference's exact filing/priority dates or assignee from the sources retrieved; verify before relying.

2. US 2014/0167754 A1 — Jerecic et al.

• Full citation: US 2014/0167754 A1, "Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) With Echo Splitting," published Jun. 19, 2014; assignee Case Western Reserve University (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140167754).
• Description: MRF using echo‑splitting / QUEST sequences; varies flip angle, TR, echo time and echo‑splitting parameters across a repetition sequence to generate characteristic signal evolutions, then matches to a dictionary.
• Potential § 102 mapping: General MRF background only. It does not disclose simultaneous multislice excitation with per‑slice differing flip angles, nor the RF‑energy‑scattering constraint. It would not anticipate any claim of US 10,310,039; at most it is § 103 background for the "vary flip angle per repetition" concept (claims 2/14).

3. US 2016/0282430 A1 — Gulani et al.

• Full citation: US 2016/0282430 A1, "Rapid Quantitative Abdominal Imaging With Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF)," published Sep. 29, 2016; priority Mar. 24, 2015; assignee Case Western Reserve University (Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160282430A1). (Granted as US 10,345,414 B2.)
• Description: FISP‑MRF with B1‑field correction; pseudo‑random flip angles varying in a range of 0°–54° and pseudo‑random TRs; dictionary matching; single‑volume (abdominal) quantitative mapping.
• Potential § 102 mapping: Discloses variable/pseudo‑random flip angles and dictionary matching (relevant to claims 2 and to the general MRF framework), but it is single‑volume, not simultaneous‑multislice, and discloses no per‑slice complementary/corresponding flip‑angle schemes and no RF‑energy‑scattering bound. It does not anticipate any claim.

4. US 2016/0349342 A1 — Cohen et al.

• Full citation: US 2016/0349342 A1, published Dec. 1, 2016 (listed on the Justia "Referenced Cited" section: https://patents.justia.com/patent/10310039#3).
• Description: I was unable to retrieve a reliable description of this reference's subject matter in this session. I will not fabricate one. Subject-matter mapping and any § 102 assessment must be confirmed once the document is retrieved.

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C. Non-patent literature citations (applicant-cited)

These are cited in the patent's background/citation list (Justia: https://patents.justia.com/patent/10310039#3):

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D. Overall § 102 conclusion

• No cited reference, on the record available to me, discloses every element of independent claim 1 or claim 12. The distinguishing element is the quantitative RF‑energy‑scattering limitation (≤ 80%, and the 50/20/8% tiers of claims 9–11) and, for claim 12, the dual flip‑angle optimization (claims 13–22).
• US 9,897,675 B2 (Setsompop) is the single most material reference (discloses SMS‑MRF with dissimilar per‑slice flip‑angle trains) and is the strongest § 103 combination anchor with Ye et al. (2015) and Jiang et al. (2015).
• US 2014/0167754 (Jerecic), US 2016/0282430 (Gulani), Ma et al., GRAPPA and SENSE are framework/background references that would not anticipate any claim.
• I could not analyze US 2016/0349342 (Cohen) — retrieve the document before finalizing.

Verification suggested: pull the "References Cited" list from USPTO PatentCenter for application 15/585,456 and cross-check each document number/date, since the analysis above relies on secondary reproductions of the patent's front page.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent, starting with the references cited in the patent's own Background section and extending to related work on RF energy management in MRF/SMS.

The search confirms a critical fact: Himanshu Bhat (a named inventor) is a co-author of the Jiang et al. SMS-MRF reference cited in the patent's own Background. Let me dig deeper into the RF-energy/SAR-management prior art, which is where the claimed <80% scattering limitation lives.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,310,039 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 10,310,039 B2, "Method and apparatus for multislice magnetic resonance fingerprinting" (Bhat & Zeller; Siemens Healthcare GmbH → Siemens Healthineers AG)
Effective filing: 2017-05-03; priority asserted 2016-05-03
Analysis date: April 26, 2026

Note on internal date inconsistency: the prior sections of this report reference a UPC judgment of 10 June 2026, which post-dates the "current date" given for this task. I flag that discrepancy but it does not affect the §103 analysis. This is a technical analysis, not a legal opinion — validity/priority determinations require the actual priority document and file wrapper.

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A. The controlling framework

Under Graham v. John Deere, obviousness turns on (1) the scope and content of the prior art, (2) the differences between the prior art and the claims, (3) the level of ordinary skill, and (4) objective indicia. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, a combination of known elements is obvious where there was a known problem and a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, or where the combination was "obvious to try." Critically for this patent:

• "Result-effective variable" / optimization: In re Applied Materials — discovering an optimum or workable numeric range by routine experimentation is not inventive where the general conditions were known. In re Aller — varying a recognized process parameter with predictable results is obvious.
• Printed publications (the cited journal articles and ISMRM abstracts) are §102(a)(1) prior art.

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B. What the claims actually require

Recalling the claim breakdown from the summary section (not repeated here), the only limitations of claim 1 that are not plainly cumulative of the prior art are:

1. (c) radiating the first- and second-slice excitation pulses at least partly in parallel with different flip angles in at least some repetitions; and
2. (d) the quantitative bound — scattering of the local maxima of the summed RF energy of the two pulses is less than 80% of the average of that sum over the sequence.

Everything else — repetition sequence, MR-data acquisition, dictionary-based reconstruction of per-slice images, and outputting the images as data files — is conventional and arguably post-solution activity.

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C. The prior art of record

Sources: Ye — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26059430/ ; Jiang ISMRM abstract — https://cds.ismrm.org/protected/15MProceedings/PDFfiles/0105.pdf ; Jiang MRM — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28019022/ ; Setsompop — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21858868/ ; Rosen — http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ce/37/8b/a2bcd25b8ecbcb/US20160291107A1.pdf

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D. Ground 1 — Claim 1 obvious over Ma + Setsompop + Ye + Jiang (SMS-MRF with per-slice flip angles)

Element-by-element:

Motivation to combine. Ma + Setsompop + Ye are the very building blocks the patent's Background concedes are known, and Jiang already embodies their union. A POSITA in quantitative MRI (roughly: an MR physicist/engineer with several years of sequence-design experience) had strong reason to combine:

• SMS was known to accelerate MRF (Ye), and MRF was known to be dictionary-reconstructed (Ma).
• Separating aliased slices by making their signal evolutions distinguishable — via different per-slice excitation (flip angle/phase) — was expressly taught by Jiang and by the applicant's own admission that prior SMS-MRF "var[ies] different parameters… differently for the simultaneously sampled slices."

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E. The crux — is the "<80% scattering" limitation obvious?

This is the only limitation that distinguishes claim 1 from the identified art. I assess it as likely obvious as a result-effective, optimization-type limitation, for four converging reasons:

1. The problem and its solution were known. The patent itself admits that independent per-slice parameter variation makes RF energy swing widely, stressing hardware and raising patient RF load. Reducing/controlling RF energy and SAR is a universal, long-recognized MRI design imperative (regulatory SAR limits; RF amplifier peak-power/duty-cycle limits). Prior art in parallel-transmit pulse design routinely imposes SAR and peak-power constraints on RF pulses (e.g., Homann et al., MRM 65:350–357 (2011); Brunner & Pruessmann, MRM 63:1280–1291 (2010); variable-rate selective excitation/VERSE for SAR reduction). A POSITA seeking to run long SMS-MRF sequences within SAR and hardware limits would predictably seek to keep the total RF energy from spiking.

2. The disclosed techniques to achieve it are conventional and, in fact, latent in the prior art. The patent achieves the low-scattering result by making the two per-slice flip-angle-vs-repetition dependencies corresponding/complementary — scaled, oscillatory with the same period, or phase-displaced by half a period. Jiang already varies flip angles sinusoidally over a fixed range (5–45°) with a defined period, and drives the two slices' signals to be orthogonal. In a periodic sinusoidal schedule, the local maxima of a single slice's energy are essentially constant; if the two slices follow the same periodicity (as Jiang's two "patterns" do), the sum likewise has near-constant local maxima — i.e., scattering near 0%, well under 80%. The claimed result is therefore largely inherent in the schedules the art already used. Under KSR, "the mere discovery of a new function of a known element" or of an inherent property does not confer patentability.

3. 80% is a broad, result-effective threshold; the dependent-claim thresholds (50% / 20% / 8%) are progressively narrower ranges. Optimizing a recognized parameter (the smoothness of the RF-energy envelope) by routine simulation/experiment to hit such broad bounds is not inventive. In re Aller; In re Applied Materials.

4. Claim 1 is deliberately broad — differences are required only in "at least some" repetitions, and the scattering bound (80%) is loose. This further reduces the gap from the art.

Suggested articulation for a §103 rejection: Ma teaches the MRF repetition/dictionary framework; Setsompop teaches simultaneous multislice excitation; Ye teaches uniting the two; and Jiang teaches radiating the two slices' excitation pulses in parallel with different per-slice flip-angle schedules driven to be mutually distinguishable. It would have been obvious to the POSITA, given the known SAR/RF-power constraints on MRF sequences and the admitted RF-load problem, to select the per-slice flip-angle schedules so that the summed RF energy varies smoothly — Jiang's own periodic sinusoidal schedules inherently produce local maxima whose scattering is far below 80% of the average. The remaining pixel-value threshold is a result-effective variable obtainable by routine optimization.

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F. Ground 2 — Claim 12 (optimization of flip angles)

Claim 12 removes the numeric bound and instead requires a first optimization of the first pulses' flip angles and a second optimization of the second pulses' flip angles according to respective optimization criteria.

• Numerical optimization of flip-angle (and TR/RF-phase) schedules is a well-established MRF/sequence-design technique. Ma and the MRF literature discuss optimizing FA/TR schedules; Ye uses an inversion-prepared variable-FA/TR train; and Rosen expressly "determin[es] acquisition parameters including… TR or FA, selected to control" the acquisition.
• Claim 13's criteria group — maximum RF energy of the sequence, scattering of summed-energy local maxima, inter-pulse flip-angle difference, and SNR of the MR data — are the conventional, predictable trade-offs any sequence designer would weigh (SAR vs. SNR vs. slice-separability). Selecting among them is a design choice.
• The specification confirms the optimization uses routine numerical methods ("gradient method, the incremental method, an evolutionary algorithm"). Using known optimizers on a known objective is obvious.

So claim 12 is obvious over Ma + Setsompop + Ye + Jiang + the ordinary skill of imposing SAR/SNR constraints on RF pulse/sequence design. (Rosen, if it qualifies as prior art, further reinforces the "optimize FA/TR to a goal" teaching.)

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G. Dependent claims

• Claims 2, 14 (vary flip angles across repetitions): Ma; Jiang (sinusoidal variation), Ye.
• Claims 3, 15 (complementary first/second-slice dependencies) and 4, 16 (corresponding dependencies): Jiang expressly drives the two slices' evolutions to be "as orthogonal as possible" using different flip-angle/phase patterns — i.e., a complementary/corresponding design.
• Claims 5–8, 17–24 (first/second functions corresponding; scaling factor ≠ 1; displacement by ≥1 repetition; oscillation with periodicity): Jiang's two sinusoidal flip-angle patterns differing in pattern/offset, plus routine variation. Phase-displacement equal to half a period is an obvious design choice to make the sum smooth (i.e., to achieve claim 1's bound).
• Claims 9–11 (≤50%, <20%, <8%): narrowing, result-effective ranges — obvious to optimize.
• Claim 13 (optimization criteria group): conventional trade-off parameters, as discussed.

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H. KSR rationales to state expressly

1. Known problem, finite predictable solutions — SAR/RF-power limits on MRF sequences; smoothing the energy envelope.
2. Simple substitution of a known element — Jaing's per-slice flip-angle patterns in the Ye/Ma SMS-MRF framework.
3. Obvious to try — designing per-slice schedules to a stated energy criterion, with a finite set of conventional optimization objectives.
4. Design choice / optimization of a result-effective variable — the 80/50/20/8% thresholds.

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I. Counterarguments, teaching-away, and a significant §102(b)(1)(A) caveat

The strongest non-obviousness argument for the patentee: none of the identified references expressly recites the specific "local maxima of the summed RF energy" scattering metric, nor the numeric threshold. The patentee could argue the inventors recognized and solved a problem the art did not appreciate, and that a specific numeric bound on a newly defined metric is not taught. This is a real but, in my view, beatable argument under KSR/In re Aller, given the admitted problem and the inherent behavior of the art's periodic schedules.

Teaching away: I found no reference that teaches away from smoothing total RF energy (or from correlating the two slices' schedules). If anything, the art's constant push toward SAR reduction points toward the claimed result.

⚠️ Material caveat — the key primary reference may be the inventors' own prior disclosure. My searches confirm that Himanshu Bhat — a named inventor of US 10,310,039 — is a co-author of the Jiang et al. ISMRM 2015 abstract (https://cds.ismrm.org/protected/15MProceedings/PDFfiles/0105.pdf). Under AIA §102(b)(1)(A), a disclosure made ≤1 year before the effective filing date by the inventor is not prior art. The abstract (ISMRM 2015, ~May/June 2015) sits close to the 1-year line from the 2016-05-03 priority date. Consequences:

• Jiang may be disqualified as prior art for the subject matter attributable to Bhat, which weakens the element (c) mapping.
• The journal version of Jiang (MRM 78:1870–1876) published 2016-12-26 — after the asserted priority date, so it is not prior art if priority holds (and it may itself be the subject-matter disclosure that triggered the §102(b) analysis).
• Backstop: the applicant's own Background admission ("different parameters… varied differently for the simultaneously sampled slices" in combined SMS fingerprinting) independently supplies the "different per-slice parameters" teaching, and Ye et al. (third party, June 2015) supplies SMS-MRF with a varying RF train. Even if Jiang is excepted, a POSITA reading Ma + Setsompop + Ye + the admitted state of the art, faced with the recognized RF-load/SAR problem, would still arrive at per-slice-differentiated, energy-smoothed schedules.

Because the §102(b)(1) analysis is fact-specific (whose contribution is reflected where in the Jiang disclosure; the exact date of the ISMRM abstract; whether a valid priority document exists), I cannot resolve it definitively without the file wrapper and the priority document. I flag it as the single most consequential uncertainty in this analysis.

Date caveats: Rosen (2016/0291107) and the Jiang journal version may post-date the asserted priority and should not be counted as prior art without confirming their effective filing dates.

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J. Conclusion and confidence

Bottom line: The claims of US 10,310,039 are, in my analysis, likely obvious under §103 over Ma (2013) + Setsompop (2012) + Ye (2015) + Jiang (ISMRM 2015), with the RF-energy/SAR-management art (e.g., VERSE, constrained parallel-transmit pulse design) supplying the motivation to smooth the summed RF energy. The only genuinely distinguishing feature — the "<80% scattering of local maxima of summed RF energy" bound — is a result-effective variable that is (i) largely inherent in the periodic sinusoidal per-slice schedules the art already used and (ii) obtainable by routine optimization; claims 9–11's tighter bounds compound that conclusion. Claim 12's "optimization" limitation is likewise met by the art's established practice of optimizing flip-angle/TR schedules against SAR and SNR objectives.

Confidence: Moderate on the overall obviousness conclusion; moderate-to-high that the individual elements are all in the prior art; lower confidence specifically because (a) the strongest element-(c) reference (Jiang 2015) may be disqualified as the inventor's own disclosure under §102(b)(1)(A), and (b) no single reference expressly recites the numeric scattering metric. A robust rejection would lean on the applicant's own Background admission plus Ye as an independent path to the SMS-MRF framework, and would need the actual priority document to fix the critical date.

Caveat on sources: this analysis relies on web-indexed full texts and abstracts, not on the full USPTO file wrapper, the priority document, or PACER/PTAB dockets. The reference dates and the §102(b) status should be verified against the official records.