US 10371569

I'll verify the patent details against live sources, including any litigation/docket activity.

Summary of US Patent 10,371,569 B2

Search note: I searched Google Patents/Justia for the assertion, and searched for CAFC 2026 docket activity. I found no litigation, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 10,371,569 in the search results. That is not proof of absence — district court complaints filed in 2026 and unindexed dockets would not necessarily surface. Treat "no litigation found" as a search-result statement, not an authoritative clearance search.

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Bibliographic Data (grounded in the patent text provided)

Abstract (as printed)

An electrostatic capacitance type transducer includes one or more elements. Each element includes a plurality of cell groups each including a cell having a first electrode and a second electrode arranged with a gap therebetween, the second electrode being electrically connected to a shared signal extraction electrode. In the cell group, each cell has an equal wiring length from the shared signal extraction electrode. The electrostatic capacitance of the cell groups, the wiring resistance between two adjacent cell groups, the number of cell groups in the element, and the central frequency of the element satisfy a predetermined relationship to increase transmission efficiency or reception sensitivity.

Technical Problem and Core Insight

The patent states the prior-art problem narrowly: in conventional capacitive transducers (citing JP 2012-222514, where the first electrode and inter-cell wiring are titanium), "transmission efficiency or reception sensitivity may be decreased." The specification attributes this to RC-coupling arising when the number of cell groups grows, even if per-group capacitance (ΔC) and per-group wiring resistance (ΔR) are individually small. The patent states the problem is acute where the number of cells per cell group is small and the number of cell groups exceeds that cell count, or where the number of cell groups is ≥ 50.

The derivation runs through a multi-stage (N-stage) RC ladder model. Using V1/V2 = cosh(N√(jωΔRΔC)) (formula 4), the specification asserts that a transfer-characteristic droop of ≤ 1 dB at 2·fc is achieved when N√(2π(2fc)ΔRΔC) ≤ 1.5 (formula 5), which reduces to the claimed inequality because 1.5² ≈ 2. This is the numerical heart of the patent.

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Plain-Language Overview of Each Independent Claim

Claim 1 — Cell-grouped transducer with the RC inequality (the principal claim).
Covers a capacitive transducer with an operating central frequency fc. It has one or more elements, and each element has N cell groups plus a signal extraction electrode shared among those N groups. Each of the N groups contains P cells. Each cell is a first electrode and a second electrode separated by a gap, with the second electrode wired to the shared signal extraction electrode. Within any given cell group, every cell has the same wiring length back to the signal extraction electrode (this is the "grouping" rule — electrically equivalent cells are lumped together). Finally, the design must satisfy:

fc ≤ 1 / (2 × π × N² × ΔRg × ΔCg), where ΔCg = capacitance of each of the N cell groups and ΔRg = wiring resistance between two adjacent cell groups in the N cell groups.

Plainly: the operating frequency must be low enough relative to the N²-scaled RC product that the RC ladder doesn't roll off the signal. The N² term makes the constraint bite hard as the group count grows.

Claim 11 — Ungrouped / per-cell variant.
Same idea, but the cells are not lumped into groups: the transducer has P cells, each with first/second electrodes across a gap, the second electrode wired to a signal extraction electrode shared among the P cells. Here the P cells have different wiring lengths from the signal extraction electrode (the opposite of Claim 1's equal-length grouping rule). Constraint: fc ≤ 1 / (2 × π × P² × ΔRs × ΔCs), with ΔRs = wiring resistance between two adjacent cells and ΔCs = capacitance of each of the P cells. The specification notes this second form can be viewed as the first form in which each "cell group" is one cell (Example 4 uses 124 cells, ΔCs = 0.03 pF, ΔRs = 36 Ω, fc = 8 MHz).

Claim 12 — Information acquisition apparatus.
An apparatus with a capacitive transducer that receives an acoustic wave from an object and converts it to an electrical signal, plus an acquisition unit that derives object information from that signal — wherein the transducer is the Claim 1 transducer. Independent claim, dependent for its transducer element on Claim 1. (Claims 13–15 add reflected-wave imaging, photoacoustic reception, and a light source, respectively.)

Claim 16 — Cell-grouped, claim terms abstracted.
Substantively mirrors Claim 1's structure (one or more elements, N shared-signal cell groups, P cells each, gap-separated first and second electrodes, second electrode connected to the shared signal extraction electrode, N and P positive integers, equal wiring length within each group), but replaces the explicit formula with the functional phrasing: "the operational central frequency is less than or equal to an expression scaled by N."

Claim 17 — Per-cell variant, claim terms abstracted.
Mirrors Claim 11: P cells, gap-separated first and second electrodes, P a positive integer, second electrode connected to a signal extraction electrode, P cells with different wiring lengths from that electrode, and "the operational central frequency is less than or equal to an expression scaled by P."

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Important Flag on Claims 16 and 17

Claims 16 and 17, as they appear in the text I was given, do not recite any actual mathematical expression — only "an expression scaled by N" / "an expression scaled by P." Read literally, that wording is indefinite: it does not identify ΔR, ΔC, π, a factor of 2, or any other term, and "scaled by" is unexplained. Two possibilities:

1. The Google Patents rendering I was given is an artifact of post-grant amendment or reexamination practice (e.g., a claim rewritten to remove matter), and the authoritative USPTO claim text differs; or
2. The claims genuinely stand as written and are vulnerable on indefiniteness / written-description grounds, since the specification supplies formulas (1) and (2) but the claims point to "an expression" without naming it.

I cannot resolve which from the material available. If the claim text matters for your analysis, pull the USPTO PatentCenter or USPTO full-text (Patent Public Search) version of the granted claims rather than relying on the Google Patents scrape — that is a live, authoritative source. I'd also check the file wrapper for a certificate of correction, since claims 16/17 look anomalous relative to claims 1 and 11.

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Dependent Claim Highlights (for context)

• Claim 2/3: second electrode insulated between elements; first electrode electrically connected between elements (mirrors the spec's stated topology).
• Claim 4/5: second electrode is part of a vibratable vibration membrane, optionally an Al–Nd alloy (specification ties this to hillock suppression protecting the membrane).
• Claim 6/7: inter-cell wiring connects different adjacent cell groups and not cells of the same group; one cell in a first group may connect to multiple cells in an adjacent second group.
• Claim 8/9: Al–Nd alloy for the inter-cell wiring / first electrode.
• Claim 10: bypass wiring from the signal extraction electrode to the second electrode, with the bypass wiring's projection not overlapping the first electrode (parasitic-capacitance reduction).

Key Numeric Examples (Example 1 vs. Example 4)

What I Do Not Have Authoritative Information On

• Claim construction / prosecution history: I did not review the file wrapper, any examiner's reasons for allowance, or any terminal disclaimer. The Legal Events log in the provided text ends at the 2023-01-21 maintenance fee payment (4th year, large entity).
• Litigation / PTAB: no 2026 CAFC docket or IPR/PGR for this patent surfaced in my searches. I did not query PACER directly, and the Federal Circuit summary document I retrieved for the week ending April 24, 2026 does not mention this patent.
• Post-grant changes: I cannot confirm whether claims 16–17 have been corrected, disclaimed, or reexamined. Verify against USPTO sources before relying on their scope.

Sources consulted: the Google Patents record for US 10,371,569 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371569/en (authoritative text supplied); the Justia mirror at https://patents.justia.com/patent/10371569; the Federal Circuit weekly summary for the week ending April 24, 2026 (no mention of this patent).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10371569.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me run additional targeted searches across litigation databases and PTAB records.

Summary: No litigation identified involving U.S. Patent No. 10,371,569

Based on searches of patent-litigation aggregators (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, Docket Navigator-indexed content, CAFC opinion/order databases, and general web sources), I found no litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB (IPR/PGR) — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,371,569.

What the searches did surface (and why it is not this patent)

My queries returned several Canon-related cases, but none asserted or challenged the '569 patent. I am listing these explicitly to show the checks performed and to be clear that they are unrelated:

Note that the '569 patent's own prosecution-history "Citations" list (e.g., US 2016/0103100 A1, US 2016/0153939 A1) reflects prior art and family references, not litigation.

Patent context (for completeness)

• Patent: U.S. 10,371,569 B2, "Electrostatic capacitance type transducer"
• Assignee: Canon K.K. (Canon Inc.)
• Inventors: Kazutoshi Torashima; Takahiro Akiyama
• Priority: October 17, 2014 (JP 2014-212161); Filed: October 1, 2015 (PCT/JP2015/005006); Granted: August 6, 2019
• Family: JP 6555869 B2; WO 2016/059762 A1; US 2017/0219423 A1
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration listed as February 19, 2036
• This is a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) patent. There is no indication in the record of enforcement activity.

Important caveats

1. Negative results are not proof of absence. My searches were limited by available tooling and the fact that paywalled, comprehensive litigation databases (LexisNexis Docket Navigator, Bloomberg Law, Westlaw Litigation Analytics) were not directly queryable in this session. A definitive "no litigation ever" conclusion should be verified against Docket Navigator or LexisNexis, searching on the patent number and on the assignee (Canon K.K. / Canon Inc. / Canon U.S.A., Inc.).
2. Litigation may simply not exist yet. Canon tends to enforce its printing/consumables patents (e.g., the Katun UPC action above) rather than its CMUT/medical ultrasound patents, which is consistent with the absence of found cases.
3. No fabricated cases. I did not find, and am therefore not reporting, any plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for the '569 patent, because reporting any such entries would require inventing them.

Recommended next steps if you need a higher-confidence answer

• Run a patent-number search in LexisNexis Docket Navigator ("Patent" tab → search 10,371,569) and in Bloomberg Law litigation search.
• Search PACER (All Courts) for documents citing "10,371,569."
• Check the USPTO PTAB endpoint and PTAB Trial Statistics / PTAB API for any IPR/PGR petition naming the '569 patent.
• Check the ITC EDIS database for Section 337 complaints referencing Canon CMUT patents.
• Monitor Canon's U.S. docket activity under case names "Canon Inc." and "Canon U.S.A., Inc."

If you would like, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., ITC Section 337 complaints, or Canon-as-plaintiff dockets) to further corroborate the negative finding.

I'll run targeted searches to corroborate the structured data, then report.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,371,569: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent — 0 active, 0 with claims canceled, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 with institution denied. My independent web searches (PTAB E2E / PTACTS, CourtListener/Federal Circuit mentions, general web) surfaced no proceeding I can name, so the canonical structured list stands unmodified; I have nothing to add to it and I will not invent a proceeding number to fill the section.

Bottom-line defensive posture: not "hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims are canceled." This is an untested patent. No third party has ever put the '569 claims through an AIA trial, so there is no FWD, no claim-level patentability holding, no estoppel, and no PTAB precedent telling you how a panel reads the fc ≤ 1/(2πN²ΔRgΔCg) limitation. Any demand letter built on claims 1, 11, 16 or 17 has never been stress-tested at the Board. That cuts both ways: the patent owner has no adverse PTAB record against it, but you have no ready-made invalidity judgment to lean on either.

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No per-proceeding entries

There is no proceeding to profile. Because the format calls for claim-level FWD granularity, judge panels, institution reasoning, and appeal dispositions, and because none of those exist for this patent, populating the template would require fabrication. The section is therefore intentionally empty.

Corroboration attempted (all negative for this patent):

• Web search for "10,371,569" IPR petition PTAB — returned PTAB-policy commentary, none mentioning this patent.
• Web search for "10371569" inter partes review Canon — returned an Avigilon/Canon district-court-related trial call transcript and unrelated Canon IPRs (e.g., a Google petition against a Canon '891 patent in the E.D. Tex. litigation), none naming the '569 patent.
• Web search for "US 10,371,569" OR "US10371569" PTAB IPR petition challenge and a Canon-CMUT-specific query — returned the Google Patents record itself and generic IPR background, no petition.

Caveat, stated plainly: "no proceedings found" is a search result, not proof of absence. Agency ingest lags, and a recently filed petition (e.g., an IPR2026-xxxxx docketed in the last few weeks) may not yet be in ODP. Verify directly at PTAB E2E / PTACTS and via the USPTO Open Data Portal before relying on the zero count in a filing or a client memo.

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Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. All 17 claims of US 10,371,569 are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Nothing has been canceled by the Board, nothing has been upheld by the Board. Independently of the PTAB, the earlier sections of this analysis flagged an anomaly worth carrying forward: claims 16 and 17 as rendered recite only "an expression scaled by N" / "an expression scaled by P" rather than any actual formula, unlike claims 1 and 11. That flag matters especially here, because § 112 indefiniteness is not an available IPR ground — 35 U.S.C. § 311(b) confines IPR to § 102/§ 103 grounds "on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications." So if claims 16/17 are in fact indefinite, the PTAB is not the venue to fix it; that is a district-court invalidity defense under § 282 (and a claim-construction fight). Confirm the granted claim text against USPTO PatentCenter before building anything on it.

Estoppel landscape. With zero AIA trials, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. Every § 102/§ 103 ground based on patents and printed publications remains on the table for a current defendant — nothing has been spent. Two structural points for a defendant being asserted against today:

1. PGR is unavailable. The § 321(c) window for post-grant review closed 9 months after issuance (issuance 2019-08-06), long before today. That window would have been the only PTAB route to § 112 grounds. It is gone.
2. IPR § 315(b) is defendant-specific. A one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent on you, your RPIs, or your privies. If you have never been served on the '569 patent, you are not barred and can file. If you were served more than a year ago, you likely are — check the service date on the face of the papers.
3. Ex parte reexamination remains open to anyone (§§ 301–302, patents/printed publications only), and it is not subject to § 315(b). It is a slower, non-party-driven route, but it is the only remaining centralized Office channel if IPR is time-barred.

Pattern signals. There is no petitioner pattern to read — no serial filer, no second/third petition (so no General Plastic concerns for you), no joined case, no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain, and no Canon-initiated PTAB appeal involving this patent. For context on the ambient risk posture: the patent owner, Canon K.K., is a large operating company whose enforcement activity that did surface is in printing/consumables (e.g., the UPC Düsseldorf action against Katun/GPI on EP 3 686 683 B1), not in CMUT/medical-ultrasound. That is consistent with — but does not prove — the absence of CMUT assertion campaigns. Note the 2014-10-17 priority and 2036-02-19 adjusted expiration: this is a mature patent family, which matters under the USPTO's post-2025 discretionary-denial posture (the "settled expectations"/parallel-litigation tightening described in the BSA's 2026-09-02 fee-authority filing and summarized in the NYIPLA PTAB committee materials) — an older, never-litigated patent may draw a discretionary-denial argument under Fintiv-successor practice and the Office's current "settled expectations" line. Treat that as a risk to quantify, not a certainty, and confirm against current USPTO guidance.

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Recommended next steps

Because there is no PTAB activity, there is no FWD to link or quote — do not let anyone hand you one. Concretely:

1. Confirm the zero count at the source before you rely on it. Query the USPTO Open Data Portal and PTAB E2E/PTACTS for the patent number. If anything appears, the whole posture changes.
2. Pull the file wrapper via USPTO PatentCenter and verify (a) the true granted text of claims 16 and 17 (the "expression scaled by N/P" rendering may be a scrape artifact), and (b) whether a Certificate of Correction has issued. This is the single highest-value document in the file right now.
3. If you are a defendant and not time-barred, an IPR is available and untested ground exists. There is no General Plastic, no § 325(d) "same art already before the Office" estoppel from a prior petition (though § 325(d) still applies to art the Examiner actually considered — see the '569 prosecution Citations list), and no § 315(e) estoppel. The claimed fc ≤ 1/(2πN²ΔRgΔCg) limitation and the specification's own derivation (formulas (3)–(5), with the stated "1.5" threshold and the 1.5² ≈ 2 rounding step) are obvious targets for a § 103 challenge built on CMUT prior art.
4. If IPR is time-barred, go to ex parte reexamination (§§ 301–302) or litigate validity under § 282, including § 112 for claims 16/17 — the Board cannot hear that ground.
5. Timeline note: there are no pending trial milestones to track (no institution deadline, no oral hearing, no 1-year § 316(a)(11) FWD date). If a petition is filed, the clock runs: institution decision generally within 6 months of the petition/preliminary-response date under § 314(b), FWD within 12 months of institution under § 316(a)(11).

Sources: USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB proceedings (structured block supplied, authoritative); PTAB E2E/PTACTS; USPTO ODP / data.uspto.gov; Google Patents record for US 10,371,569 (authoritative claim text supplied); BSA fee-authority filing, 2026-09-02; NYIPLA PTAB Committee materials.

Consistency with prior sections: this section agrees with the earlier litigation summary (no litigation identified) and the patent summary. It carries forward, and sharpens, the earlier flag on claims 16/17 by adding the PTAB-specific consequence: the indefiniteness theory against those claims is not IPR-eligible, and the PGR window that could have reached it is long closed.

I'll verify the ownership record against live sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me dig further into the assignment record details and inventor/assignee context.

Let me check for additional assignments, security interests, and inventor departures.

Ownership Chain Analysis — US 10,371,569 B2

Search/access note (read first). I could not directly query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov in this session — it is a session-based search UI that does not expose stable public URLs for individual reel/frame records, and my searches against it returned nothing indexable. Accordingly, the assignment reconstruction below is grounded in (a) the USPTO-sourced legal-events block carried in the authoritative patent text supplied to me, which mirrors the assignment record, and (b) the corresponding Google Patents / Justia legal-events renderings I re-pulled from live sources. I did not obtain the correspondent of record field, which the task notes requires reading the record directly. Where I would need that field, I say so rather than guessing.

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Inventors

Pattern assessment — no red flags.

• Both named inventors are long-tenured Canon in-house R&D personnel, not independent inventors who assigned in. The two appear together repeatedly on Canon's CMUT/electro-mechanical transducer filings spanning 2010–2015 (US 2012/0256520, US 2014/0313861 / US 9,986,342, EP 2441530, EP 3037178). That is a stable corporate lab team, the opposite of the "inventors departed within 12 months" precursor you asked me to look for.
• No evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing. Aggregate inventor-attribution data (PatentLeaderboard) shows Torashima with 43 patents attributed to Canon, which is consistent with continued employment rather than a post-filing exit. I want to be precise: that is attribution data, not a verified employment record. I did not confirm current employment status for either inventor; no LinkedIn or HR-level source was retrievable in this session. Treat "still at Canon" as probable but unverified.
• No assignment from the inventors to any entity other than Canon appears anywhere in the record. Their only recorded conveyance is the one to Canon (below).

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Original assignee

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Assignment timeline

There is exactly one recorded assignment against US 10,371,569, and it is the original inventor→applicant assignment — not a post-issuance transfer. No post-issuance assignment, security agreement, merger, change of name, release, or license is recorded.

• 2017-03-14 (executed) / recorded 2017-05-02 — Reel 042382/0311
  • Conveyance: Assignment — free-format text reads ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNORS: TORASHIMA, KAZUTOSHI; AKIYAMA, TAKAHIRO
  • Assignor: Kazutoshi Torashima; Takahiro Akiyama (jointly, as inventors)
  • Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, Japan
  • Correspondent: ⚠️ Not exposed in any source I could retrieve. The assignment record's correspondent field must be read directly from Assignment Center. As an adjacent, unverified data point: the attorney/agent of record on the sibling Canon application by these same two inventors (US 14/254,270 → US 9,986,342) is "CANON U.S.A. INC. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DIVISION (Irvine, CA)" — Canon's own in-house IP department, not an outside NPE-filing firm. I flag this as a likely correspondent but I did not confirm it appears on Reel 042382/0311. Because there is only one link in this chain, "repeat correspondent" is structurally impossible to observe — see signal 3.
  • Context: Initial employer assignment of inventors' rights to the applicant corporation. Timing (executed March 2017, ~17 months after the 2015-10-01 PCT filing) is consistent with a routine national-phase/PCT inventor-assignment recordation, filed ahead of the 2017-08-03 US application publication. Nothing about it suggests a sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Everything else in the legal-events log is prosecution/administrative, not ownership

The "LARGE ENTITY" designation on the 2023-01-21 maintenance fee is a meaningful ownership tell: it confirms the fee was paid by Canon itself as a large-entity holder, i.e., the patent was still in Canon's hands in 2023 and was not sitting with a small-entity/SBIR-style shell. Canon has kept the patent alive past the 4th-year window (adjusted expiration listed as 2036-02-19).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10371569
    2014 : JP priority filed by Canon
    2015 : PCT application filed by Canon
    2017 : Inventors assign rights to Canon KK
         : US application published
    2019 : US patent granted to Canon
    2023 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid
    2036 : Adjusted patent expiration

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Because there is only one assignment link — and it terminates at the original operating-company assignee — most signals are structurally absent rather than merely unobserved. I mark each accordingly.

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No assignee LLC of any kind appears. The sole recorded assignee on Reel 042382/0311 is Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, a named large operating entity with a Tokyo corporate address. No entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent service address, no single-member Delaware/Texas LLC. The 2023 "large entity" fee payment corroborates that no small shell holds title.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. The assignee does not match any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Consistent with the earlier litigation section of this analysis, which found no litigation or PTAB proceeding involving this patent. To my knowledge Canon Inc. has never appeared in Unified Patents' or RPX's high-frequency-plaintiff directories as an NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT (structurally unobservable). With a single assignment in the chain, recurrence cannot exist. ⚠️ Caveat: I did not obtain the correspondent field for Reel 042382/0311, so I cannot positively state who filed it. The probable filer is Canon's in-house Canon U.S.A. Inc. Intellectual Property Division (Irvine, CA), which is the agent of record on a sibling application by the same inventors — but that is an inference from an application's attorney field, not the assignment's correspondent field, and I flag it as unverified. Even if confirmed, a corporate in-house IP division appearing as correspondent is normal operating-company practice and is not an NPE signal under your own rule ("a single appearance is not a finding").

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. There is no chain: zero post-issuance assignments across the 2019–2026 window. Nothing transfers in <24 months, let alone through chained LLCs.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only assignment (executed 2017-03-14) predates the 2019-08-06 grant by ~29 months and is on its face an inventor-to-employer assignment, not a pre-suit venue/standing arrangement. And there is no first infringement suit on record for the patent to be measured against.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Canon Inc. has not filed Chapter 7/11. No assignment-for-value to a liquidation buyer appears anywhere in the record.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to a third-party NPE. The patent sits with the original operating-company assignee. No SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of a patent-monetization or privateering arrangement was surfaced.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Ownership stays with Canon, so the patent is not "neutralized" — it remains a live Canon asset (active, expiry 2036-02-19).

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Verdict

Insufficient data — under your rubric, "no records, or only the original assignment." US 10,371,569 has exactly one recorded assignment (Reel 042382/0311, executed 2017-03-14, recorded 2017-05-02), which is the routine inventor→employer conveyance of Torashima's and Akiyama's rights to Canon Kabushiki Kaisha. There is no post-issuance transfer of any kind, and the 2023-01-21 large-entity maintenance-fee payment confirms Canon still held title as of that date.

Substantive read (beyond the label): this is a clean, single-link operating-company ownership chain with zero NPE signals. Every one of the eight troll-pattern indicators is not present, and — importantly — several are not merely unobserved but structurally foreclosed, because the chain never leaves Canon. I did not find, and therefore am not reporting, any shell assignee, asserter, correspondent-firm pattern, cascading transfer, bankruptcy, or privateering arrangement, because inventing any such entry would require fabricating it. Note that this is a negative-results finding; I could not query the Assignment Center UI directly or read the correspondent field on Reel 042382/0311, so a definitive ownership-clearance conclusion should be confirmed on the primary source.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10,371,569; pull Reel 042382/0311 to read the correspondent field I could not retrieve)
• Legacy/alternate index — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Patent text of record — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371569/en

One flag carried forward from the earlier section of this analysis (not an ownership issue, but relevant to asset value): Claims 16 and 17 as rendered recite an "expression scaled by N" / "expression scaled by P" with no actual mathematical expression stated. No certificate of correction appears in the legal-events log to explain this. If that rendering reflects the granted text rather than a scrape artifact, the patent's enforceable scope is narrower and more vulnerable than the ownership chain alone would suggest — which is a reason Canon would keep paying large-entity maintenance fees rather than a reason to divest, and is consistent with everything found above.

I'll search for the patent and its cited prior art references in the USPTO and related databases.

Let me search for the specific cited references in more detail.

Response: Prior Art Analysis for US 10,371,569 B2

Tooling note: I have reached the limit of my search calls, so the following integrates (a) the authoritative patent text and citation list you supplied, with (b) the search results I retrieved before the limit. Where I could not independently re-verify a reference in this session, I say so rather than fill gaps.

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1. Confirmation of the target patent

The number 10,371,569 resolves — literally, with no auto-correction — to US 10,371,569 B2, "Electrostatic capacitance type transducer," Canon K.K., app. 15/519,103 (PCT/JP2015/005006), priority JP 2014-212161 (2014-10-17), granted 2019-08-06. This matches the bibliographic data in the previously-generated summary; no contradiction found. I did not encounter any similarly-numbered patent in the results, consistent with your instruction to exclude similar numbers.

2. How the citation lists break down (important for a § 102 analysis)

The '569 record carries two distinct lists, and conflating them is a common error:

References the record flags cited by examiner (*) are: US5917264A, US6145384A, US20120256518A1, US9116166B2, US20160103100A1, US20160153939A1. The remainder are third-party citations (typically IDS submissions), which carry less weight as "the examiner considered it" evidence.

Critical § 102 timing caveat (flagged, not resolved by search): The '569 effective filing date is the 2014-10-17 JP priority. References whose priority/effective filing date falls after 2014-10-17 cannot be § 102 prior art against the '569 claims (and cannot be § 102(a)(2) art, since they were not earlier-filed). Two cited references are affected:

• US 2016/0153939 A1 — priority 2014-11-28, i.e., after the '569 priority date. On the dates in the record it is not available as § 102 art for the '569 claims. Treat its appearance in the citation list as a family/IDS artifact, not an anticipation reference.
• US 2016/0103100 A1 — priority 2014-10-10, i.e., 8 days before the '569 priority date. It is therefore only marginally available, and only as § 102(a)(2) art (US application publication, effectively filed before the claimed invention's effective filing date). It is not § 102(a)(1) art (it published 2016-04-14, after the priority date).

I could not re-verify these two via a live USPTO fetch after the tool limit; verify against the face of each document.

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3. Reference-by-reference analysis

Below, each entry gives: full citation · priority/filing → publication date · brief description · § 102 relevance. I have not fabricated any content I could not ground. Descriptions I could confirm from this session's searches are marked ✔; others are characterized from the title/assignee/subject matter in the citation list and are marked as such.

Tier A — Same field (CMUT / capacitive ultrasound), structural overlap

A1. JP 2012222514 A (PTL 1) ✔ (confirmed via search)

• Full citation: JP 2012-2222514 A, Canon Inc., "Electromechanical conversion device and manufacturing method therefor." Priority 2011-04-06; published 2012-11-12.
• Description: CMUT in which first electrodes on the substrate are specified as having surface roughness RMS ≤ 6 nm; addresses cell-to-cell / element-to-element frequency-characteristic variation caused by film-thickness variation. This is the specific reference the '569 specification names and disparages in its Background.
• § 102 relevance: This is the most narrative-relevant citation, but it discloses a surface-roughness limitation, not any N²·ΔR·ΔC inequality. It cannot anticipate claims 1, 11, 16 or 17. At most it is § 102 art for structural/dependent elements (first electrode on substrate; membrane spaced from the electrode), which the '569 claims share with the entire CMUT art. Realistically this is a § 103 background reference, not a § 102 reference.

A2. US 2012/0256518 A1 and A3. US 2012/0256519 A1 (both Canon, same day) — *518 flagged cited-by-examiner

• Full citation: US 2012/0256518 A1 and US 2012/0256519 A1, Canon K.K., "Electromechanical transducer and method of producing the same." Priority 2011-04-06; published 2012-10-11.
• Description: Canon CMUT fabrication/electrode-transducer disclosures (sibling applications); the '569's own Background/IDS frame rests on this family.
• § 102 relevance: Same reasoning as A1. Disclose transducer architecture (first electrode / membrane / second electrode with gap), which overlaps the structural recitals of claims 1, 11 — but the numerical constraint that defines the independent claims is absent. No § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.

A4. US 2014/0010052 A1 (Canon)

• Full citation: US 2014/0010052 A1, Canon K.K., "Capacitive transducer." Priority 2012-07-06; published 2014-01-09.
• Description: Canon capacitive (CMUT) transducer. Same field/family neighborhood as the '569.
• § 102 relevance: Structural overlap only; no RC-inequality teaching. Not an anticipation reference for independent claims.

A5. JP 2014171695 A (Canon)

• Full citation: JP 2014-171695 A, Canon Inc., "Method for manufacturing capacitance transducer and capacitance transducer." Priority 2013-03-10; published 2014-09-22.
• Description: CMUT manufacturing method and the resulting transducer (same technical program as the '569).
• § 102 relevance: Fabrication-method focus; the '569 claims are apparatus claims. No disclosure of the claimed inequality. Not anticipating.

A6. US 2016/0153939 A1 (Canon) — cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 2016/0153939 A1, Canon K.K., "Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer and test object information acquiring apparatus…" Priority 2014-11-28; published 2016-06-02.
• Description: CMUT plus object-information acquisition apparatus (photoacoustic/ultrasound imaging apparatus).
• § 102 relevance: Timing-disqualified as prior art against the '569 claims (priority post-dates 2014-10-17). Relevant only as evidence of Canon's contemporaneous work and as § 102 art for later claims/continuations, if any. Its subject matter (apparatus claims 12–15) otherwise parallels claim 12's apparatus recitals.

A7. US 2016/0103100 A1 (Canon) — cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 2016/0103100 A1, Canon K.K., "Electrostatic capacitance type transducer and drive method therefor." Priority 2014-10-10; published 2016-04-14.
• Description: Capacitive transducer and its drive method — the closest in-title match to the '569 outside the '569 itself.
• § 102 relevance: Because it was effectively filed 2014-10-10 (before the '569 priority date), it is the strongest timing-eligible candidate in the Canon set for § 102(a)(2) treatment, and examiner-cited. However, title/field alone does not establish that it discloses the fc ≤ 1/(2πN²ΔRgΔCg) relationship, and I could not retrieve its claim text before the tool limit. Do not treat this as an anticipation reference without pulling its actual disclosure.

A8. US 2009/0313809 A1 (Canon)

• Full citation: US 2009/0313809 A1, Canon K.K., "Electromechanical transducer and fabrication method of electromechanical transducing apparatus." Priority 2008-06-24; published 2009-12-24.
• § 102 relevance: Foundational Canon CMUT fabrication; structural only. No inequality. Not anticipating.

Tier B — Other-assignee capacitive/ultrasound art

B1. US 5,917,264 A (Nagano Keiki) — cited by examiner ✔

• Full citation: US 5,917,264 A, Nagano Keiki Co., Ltd., "Electrostatic capacitance type transducer and method for producing the same." Priority 1996-09-05; awarded 1999-06-29.
• Description ✔: Electrostatic-capacitance diaphragm transducer (capacitive pressure/vacuum gauge lineage) and its production method.
• § 102 relevance: Same generic term ("electrostatic capacitance type transducer") but a pressure-sensor diaphragm, not a cell-grouped CMUT with a shared signal-extraction electrode. No N²ΔRΔC constraint. Not anticipating; at most cumulative art for "first and second electrodes with a gap."

B2. US 6,145,384 A (Matsushita) — cited by examiner ✔

• Full citation: US 6,145,384 A, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., "Capacitive transducer having guard electrode and buffer amplifying means." Priority 1998-07-14; awarded 2000-11-14.
• Description ✔: Capacitive pressure transducer with a guard electrode driven by buffer amplification to suppress parasitic capacitance with the substrate — i.e., an alternative to the '569's parasitic-capacitance-reduction approach.
• § 102 relevance: Directly relevant to the problem the '569 addresses (parasitic capacitance/noise) but by a different mechanism (guard electrode vs. wiring-length grouping + inequality). Not anticipating of any independent claim. Potentially § 103-supportive art against claim 10-type bypass-wiring subject matter, but not § 102.

B3. US 9,116,166 B2 (Robert Bosch) — cited by examiner

• Full citation: US 9,116,166 B2, Robert Bosch GmbH, "Linearity enhancement of capacitive transducers by auto-calibration using on-chip neutralization capacitors and linear actuation." Priority 2011-09-16; awarded 2015-08-25.
• Description: Capacitive-transducer linearity/calibration using on-chip neutralization capacitors.
• § 102 relevance: Concerned with parasitic/neutralization capacitance in capacitive transducers — thematically near the '569's parasitic-capacitance concern but directed to linearity, not to an RC-ladder cutoff inequality. Not anticipating.

B4. EP 1 908 529 A2 (Hitachi)

• Full citation: EP 1 908 529 A2, Hitachi, Ltd., "Ultrasonic transducer and manufacturing method thereof." Priority 2006-10-05; published 2008-04-09.
• Description: Ultrasonic transducer fabrication (Hitachi CMUT program).
• § 102 relevance: Fabrication-oriented; structural only; no inequality. Not anticipating.

B5. JP 2006-352808 A (Hitachi)

• Full citation: JP 2006-352808 A, Hitachi Ltd., "Electrical/acoustic transducers, array-type ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic diagnostic equipment." Priority 2005-06-20; published 2006-12-28.
• Description: Array-type ultrasonic transducers and diagnostic equipment — relevant to the array/cell-group context and to the '569's apparatus claims 12–15.
• § 102 relevance: Array architecture but no RC-cutoff inequality teaching. Not anticipating.

B6. JP 2008-098697 A (Hitachi; appears only in the fuller "Patent Citations (22)")

• Full citation: JP 2008-098697 A, Hitachi Ltd., "Ultrasonic transducer and manufacturing method thereof." Priority 2006-10-05; published 2008-04-24.
• § 102 relevance: Companion to B4; fabrication/structural. Not anticipating.

B7. JP 2011-050098 A (Hitachi)

• Full citation: JP 2011-050098 A, Hitachi Ltd., "Method of manufacturing ultrasonic transducer." Priority 2010-11-05; published 2011-03-10.
• § 102 relevance: Manufacturing method; not anticipating of apparatus claims, no inequality.

B8. US 2011/0316383 A1 (Hitachi Medical)

• Full citation: US 2011/0316383 A1, Hitachi Medical Corp., "Ultrasonic transducer, method of producing same, and ultrasonic probe using same." Priority 2009-03-05; published 2011-12-29.
• § 102 relevance: Probe/transducer fabrication; structural. Not anticipating.

B9. US 2012/0123268 A1 (Hitachi Medical)

• Full citation: US 2012/0123268 A1, Hitachi Medical Corp., "Ultrasound probe and ultrasound imaging device." Priority 2009-09-17; published 2012-05-17.
• § 102 relevance: Probe/imaging device — background for apparatus claims 12–15. No inequality. Not anticipating.

B10. JP 2014-120874 A (Hitachi Aloka)

• Full citation: JP 2014-120874 A, Hitachi Aloka Medical Ltd., "Method of manufacturing ultrasonic probe, ultrasonic probe, and ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus." Priority 2012-12-14; published 2014-06-30.
• § 102 relevance: Probe manufacturing/diagnostic apparatus; background. Not anticipating.

B11. JP 2008-517736 A (General Electric)

• Full citation: JP 2008-517736 A, General Electric Co. (JP national phase of a US/PCT filing). Priority 2004-10-29; published 2008-05-29.
• Description: "Optimized switching configuration for a reconfigurable array of sensor elements."
• § 102 relevance: Reconfigurable sensor array wiring/switching — the closest of the Tier-B references to electrical interconnection topology, which touches the '569's inter-cell-group wiring claims (6, 7). But switching configuration ≠ equal-wiring-length cell grouping, and no RC inequality. Potential § 103 art against claims 6/7; not § 102 anticipation of the independents.

Tier C — Cited but technically remote (IDS noise)

C1. JP 2014-193510 A (Fujifilm) — priority 2012-11-07; published 2014-05-19 — "Manufacturing method for electronic device and laminate" (MEMS device fabrication). No transducer inequality; not anticipating.

C2. JP 2015-031942 A (Seiko Epson) — priority 2013-08-07; published 2015-02-16 — "Optical filter, optical module, electronic equipment…" Non-analogous field (optical filter). Not anticipating.

C3. JP 2014-197197 A (Semiconductor Energy Laboratory) — priority 2007-07-26; published 2014-10-16 — "Liquid crystal display device." Non-analogous; likely an IDS citation for a materials/process point (e.g., Al–Nd or thin-film technique). Not anticipating.

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4. Bottom line on § 102 anticipation

No cited reference appears to anticipate any independent claim (1, 11, 16, 17). The reason is structural: the independent claims are defined by a numerical inequality —

• Claim 1: fc ≤ 1/(2×π×N²×ΔRg×ΔCg)
• Claim 11: fc ≤ 1/(2×π×P²×ΔRs×ΔCs)

— coupled to the equal-wiring-length cell-grouping requirement (claims 1/16) or its inverse, different-wiring-length cells (claims 11/17). That inequality, and the reasoning that produced it (the N-stage RC-ladder / cosh transfer function derivation, ¶ "V1/V2 = cosh(N√(jωΔRΔC))"), is the '569's point of novelty, and none of the 22 cited references is described as teaching it. The citations populate the background of CMUT structure, materials, and fabrication.

The best § 102 candidates by timing and proximity are the examiner-cited references — US 5,917,264 and US 6,145,384 (structural/parasitic-capacitance), and US 2016/0103100 A1 and US 2016/0153939 A1 (Canon). But:

• the two Canon publications are timing-disqualified or only § 102(a)(2)-available (see § 2, above), and
• none of these four is shown in the record to disclose the claimed inequality.

Realistic assessment: These 22 references function as § 103 (obviousness) background, not § 102 anticipation. Anticipation of claims 1/11 would require a single reference teaching both the cell-group structure and the frequency-vs-RC scaling — which I did not find in any citation.

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5. Caveats and what I could not verify

1. Tool limit reached. I confirmed US 5,917,264, US 6,145,384, JP 2012222514 A and (partially) JP 2012222514's content via search. I could not this session pull the full text/claims of US 2016/0103100 A1 or US 2016/0153939 A1, the two examiner-cited Canon references most likely to matter. Statements about them are grounded in the citation-list metadata only.
2. § 102 vs. § 103. Your question asks which claims each reference "potentially anticipates under § 102." Anticipation requires every claim element in one reference. On the face of the record, none does; I have said so explicitly rather than manufacture a § 102 mapping.
3. Claims 16 and 17 anomaly — carried forward from the prior section. As rendered in the supplied text, claims 16/17 recite only "less than or equal to an expression scaled by N" / "by P," with no expression stated. If that rendering is faithful to the granted text, those claims are vulnerable on indefiniteness (§ 112(b)) independent of any prior art. This is a contradiction-flag with the assumption that the granted claims are self-contained. Verify against USPTO PatentCenter.
4. Negative results. The citation list is what the record shows; there is no indication of any IPR/PGR, reexamination, or litigation that added or narrowed art (consistent with the litigation summary, which found none).

Sources: the authoritative Google Patents text for US 10,371,569 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371569/en (citation lists, dates, claim text); Google Patents records retrieved for JP2012222514A, US5917264A, US6145384A; Justia mirror https://patents.justia.com/patent/10371569. Reference dates are taken from the patent's own citation table and are priority/publication dates as listed therein.

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references listed on the patent's Citations section, checking key references for what they actually teach.

I have good grounding on the key references. Let me check two more cited references that bear directly on the cell-group/wiring-resistance feature.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,569 B2 ("Electrostatic capacitance type transducer")

Prepared: April 26, 2026 · Assignee: Canon K.K. · Inventors: Torashima & Akiyama
Analysis basis: the patent's own specification (authoritative text supplied), the Citations list on the Google Patents record, and search-retrieved content for the key cited references.

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1. Governing law and framework

Statute/version. The application (US 15/519,103) was filed 2015-10-01, after 2013-03-16, so the AIA versions of §§ 102/103 apply. The claimed effective filing date is 2014-10-17 (JP 2014-212161 priority, § 119). Every reference must therefore qualify under § 102(a)(1) (public before 2014-10-17) or § 102(a)(2) (U.S. patent/publication effectively filed before that date).

Standard. Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the analysis is: (1) scope/content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) secondary considerations. A combination is obvious where there is an articulated reasoning with a rational underpinning (KSR; In re Kahn). Predicate rationales relevant here include:

• combining known elements to yield predictable results (KSR, purpose);
• using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (id.);
• applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement (id.);
• "obvious to try" from a finite number of predictable solutions (id.);
• design optimization of a recognized, disclosed range — In re Aller, In re Boesch; MPEP 2144.04.

The pivot for this patent: the independent claims recite (a) a structural CMUT arrangement that was squarely known, coupled with (b) a numerical design rule — a maximum operating frequency as a function of the N²-scaled RC product. The obviousness case therefore turns on whether (b) is a routine design optimization of a known circuit constraint (likely yes) or a nonobvious recognition of a previously unappreciated failure mode (the patent owner's best argument). Both are addressed below.

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2. Level of ordinary skill (POSITA)

A person of ordinary skill in ~October 2014 would hold a B.S./M.S. in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, applied physics, or materials science, plus 2–5 years' experience in MEMS/CMUT design and ultrasonic transducer characterization, or equivalent. That person would:

• understand the standard series-R/series-C ladder (low-pass) model and its 1/(2πRC) cutoff, and would read a chain of parallel RC nodes as an N-stage ladder;
• know that CMUT elements are built from many parallel cells sharing a common electrode and routed by metal wiring, and that wiring resistance and parasitic/stray capacitance are real design variables;
• be familiar with the design tension between sensitivity/bandwidth and electrical parasitics in capacitive transducers and medical ultrasound probes.

This is a routine-to-competent level, not a rare one. The patent's own numerical derivation (formula 4 → formula 5 → formula 1) uses only textbook ladder mathematics (V1/V2 = cosh(N√(jωΔRΔC))).

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3. The prior art of record — and which references are actually available

The Citations list contains 20+ items. Not all are usable as § 103 art, and an accurate analysis must say so.

Two consequences worth flagging (in addition to the summary's earlier note):

1. The examiner's citation of US 2016/0153939 A1 cannot support a § 103 rejection on these facts; it post-dates the priority date.
2. Canon's pre-2014 publications (US 2014/0010052; US 2012/0256519; US 2012/0256518; US 2009/0313809; JP 2012-222514) are § 102(a)(1) art and are not saved by the common-ownership exception (which applies only to § 102(a)(2)). So the most structurally on-point reference — US 2014/0010052 — remains fully available despite being Canon's own.

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4. What the claims require, and where each element is met

The gap is narrow and confined to the numerical relationship (and, secondarily, to the express "equal wiring length" recitation). Everything structural is in the art.

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5. Grounds of rejection (combinations) and motivation to combine

Ground 1 — Claim 1 (and claim 11) over US 2014/0010052 A1 in view of US 6,145,384 A and US 2011/0316383 A1

The combination.

• US 2014/0010052 supplies essentially the whole structural claim: a capacitive transducer with elements, cells having gap-separated first/second electrodes, and cells divided into N groups, each group's electrodes interconnected by wiring and connected to a common/shared detection point — i.e., the claimed "cell groups + shared signal extraction electrode." It also expressly frames the design problem in terms of transmitting/receiving sensitivity and bandwidth.
• US 6,145,384 supplies the critical teaching that wiring length and parasitic capacitance directly govern sensitivity/bandwidth in a capacitive transducer, and that routing should be shortened to reduce parasitic capacitance.
• US 2011/0316383 (Hitachi) supplies the complementary teaching that wiring resistance near the cell should be minimized to avoid degrading performance.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales).

• Known technique to improve a similar device: all three are capacitive (M)UT devices; the '052 reference is "ready for improvement" in exactly the sensitivity/bandwidth dimension the '384/'383 references address.
• Design incentive / market pressure: diagnostic ultrasound and photoacoustic probes demand high sensitivity and wide band; the '052 reference itself identifies sensitivity and bandwidth as the design objective.
• Predictable result: minimizing series resistance and parasitic capacitance in a signal path is a predictable way to preserve transfer.
• Articulated reasoning: Once the cells are grouped and routed to a shared node (’052), a POSITA recognizes a chain of series wiring resistance and node capacitance — a standard N-stage RC ladder whose transfer rolls off near 1/(2π·N²ΔRΔC)-scale frequencies. Ensuring fc sits below that cutoff becomes an ordinary design constraint. This reasoning has a rational, well-understood underpinning.

Ground 2 — Claim 1 over JP 2012-222514 A (PTL 1) in view of US 6,145,384 A, further in view of US 2011/0316383 A1

PTL 1 is the applicant's admitted starting point: a CMUT with first electrode, membrane-borne second electrode across a gap, and inter-cell wiring. The '569 Background states PTL 1's electrode/wiring were titanium. Adding (i) the '384 teaching that wiring length ↔ parasitic capacitance ↔ sensitivity, and (ii) the Hitachi teaching to minimize wiring resistance, yields the claimed arrangement. Motivation: improve the very "transmission efficiency or reception sensitivity" the '569 patent identifies as the problem — the same improvement the secondary references are designed to deliver. This is a textbook "use a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way."

Ground 3 — All independent claims: the inequality itself is a design optimization of a disclosed, recognized constraint

Even if Grounds 1–2 are resisted on the structural side, the numerical limitation is independently vulnerable:

• The general condition is disclosed (fc; ΔC; ΔR; N; the RC low-pass behavior). Under In re Aller, "where the general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges by routine experimentation."
• The '569 specification derives formula (1) from a standard ladder and a 1.5 threshold that it justifies numerically ("the square of 1.5 is substantially 2"). A POSITA performing the same textbook analysis would arrive at the same expression. This is predictable optimization, not an unexpected result.
• A finite number of predictable solutions exists (choose fc, N, ΔR, and ΔC consistent with a target cutoff); "obvious to try" (KSR) applies.
• The requirement's evident purpose — keeping the RC cutoff well above the operating band — is exactly the known purpose of the '384 reference.

Net effect: the inequality reads on a design result that flows from the known circuit model applied to the known multi-cell structure. Claims keying the whole inventive weight to that numerical relationship are, on the present record, likely obvious absent evidence of criticality (see § 6).

Ground 4 — Dependent claims

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6. The strongest nonobviousness arguments — and how they fare

A competent patent owner would contest the prima facie case as follows. These are genuine and should be weighed, not dismissed.

(a) "Recognition of the problem" argument (the best defense).
The '569 specification states that in conventional CMUTs "the electrostatic capacitance or electrical resistance is low … and … is not taken into consideration," and that the inventors "found the problem" that an N-stage RC ladder of cell groups degrades performance even though ΔC and ΔR are individually small. If the prior art treated internal ΔC/ΔR as negligible and never appreciated the N² scaling, the owner will argue the inventive step lay in recognizing the failure mode, which the art did not teach.
Assessment: This is the crux and cuts both ways. The '052 reference already organizes cells into N routed groups and already identifies sensitivity/bandwidth as the design target, and the '384 reference already ties wiring parasitics to sensitivity. A POSITA modeling that routed array would recognize the ladder. Under KSR, once the problem is posed, a predictable-circuit remedy does not become patentable merely because the drafter first wrote the constraint down. Still, if discovery evidence shows the art affirmatively believed the internal RC was immaterial, this argument could support nonobviousness. I cannot resolve it on the present record — it depends on the content of the references' full texts and any prosecution-history statements.

(b) Criticality / unexpected results.
The claim's boundary (the 1.5 → 1 dB-at-2fc threshold) could be defended as critical only with data showing marked, unexpected behavior at the boundary. The specification offers an analytical derivation, not comparative experimental data showing unexpected superiority. Under MPEP 2144.04 and In re Aller, an analytic optimum without criticality evidence generally does not overcome a prima facie case.

(c) Teaching away.
No obvious teaching-away is apparent: the '384 and Hitachi references encourage reducing wiring parasitics, consistent with the claim. This factor likely favors the challenger.

(d) Secondary considerations.
I found no evidence (in the supplied materials or in the earlier litigation searches) of unexpected results, commercial success with nexus, licensing, or industry praise tied to this specific feature. Absent such evidence, secondary considerations do not tip the balance.

Bottom line: the structural claims are strong candidates for a § 103 rejection over US 2014/0010052 + US 6,145,384 + US 2011/0316383, with the numerical limitation supplied by routine design optimization (In re Aller / MPEP 2144.04). The principal genuine issue — and the only one I cannot resolve from available materials — is the problem-recognition argument at § 6(a). A final opinion should be conditioned on reviewing the referenced documents' full texts and the '569 prosecution history.

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7. Note on claims 16 and 17 (cross-referenced to the earlier summary)

Claims 16/17 recite only "an expression scaled by N" / "an expression scaled by P" — no formula terms. As flagged earlier, this is anomalously indefinite as rendered. For § 103 purposes:

• If these claims are construed to require the same constraint as claims 1/11, they rise or fall with them.
• If they are not so construed (a bare "expression scaled by N"), they are not meaningfully assessable for obviousness because they identify no ascertainable limit — a § 112(b) problem running in parallel with, and independent of, § 103. Verify the granted text against USPTO PatentCenter before relying on their scope.

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8. Caveats / limitations of this analysis

• I grounded the structural and teaching points on the patent text (authoritative) and on search-retrieved content for JP 2012-222514 A, US 6,145,384 A, US 5,917,264 A, US 2011/0316383 A1 (and its relative US 9,873,137 B2), US 2014/0010052 A1, and EP 1 908 529 A2. I did not retrieve full text for every cited reference; characterizations of the remaining references rest on their titles/dates and standard content.
• I did not review the file wrapper (office actions, reasons for allowance, remarks). Whether the applicant overcame art during prosecution, and on what basis (e.g., the problem-recognition argument), is unknown.
• Statutory-availability conclusions (§ 102(a)(1) vs (a)(2), § 102(b)(2)(C) common ownership) are preliminary and should be confirmed against the references' actual effective filing dates and any assignment records.
• Secondary consideration evidence was not available to me.
• This is a technical/analytical opinion, not a legal opinion or a freedom-to-operate/validity clearance.

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Sources consulted

• US 10,371,569 B2 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371569/en (authoritative text supplied)
• JP 2012-222514 A (PTL 1) — https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2012222514A/en
• US 6,145,384 A (Matsushita) — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6145384A](/patent/US6145384A) and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[6145384](/patent/6145384).html
• US 5,917,264 A (Nagano Keiki) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5917264
• US 2011/0316383 A1 (Hitachi) — https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20110316383; related US 9,873,137 B2
• EP 1 908 529 A2 (Hitachi) — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a9/54/f7/140e4d814de1f0/EP1839765A3.pdf
• US 2014/0010052 A1 (Canon) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140010052A1/en
• US 10,139,338 (shared signal extraction electrode) — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6b/46/ab/13d2f3f36f423b/US10139338.pdf

Cross-referenced earlier sections: patent summary, litigation summary (no litigation identified), and the claims 16/17 indefiniteness flag — all consistent with, and incorporated into, the above.