US 10371571

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me check specifically for any 2026 litigation or CAFC docket activity, and verify the assignee/inventor details independently.

Let me do one final targeted check for any post-grant or appellate activity, including PTAB.

Summary: US Patent No. 10,371,571 (interpreting "10371571" literally as US 10,371,571 B2)

Verification note: "10371571" resolves to US 10,371,571 B2, "Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same." No other patent shares this number, and the record is internally consistent (Google Patents, uspto.report, PubChem patent record, RPX Insight). I did not find any evidence of a CAFC 2026 docket, district court litigation, or PTAB proceeding involving this patent number — see the "Litigation / docket check" section below.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as granted): Disclosed is a resistor thin film for micro-bolometer for growth of a vanadium dioxide (VO₂) thin film in tetragonal VO₂ crystal phase by deposition of VO₂ on oxide with perovskite structure and a method for fabricating the same, and the resistor thin film for micro-bolometer according to the present disclosure includes a silicon substrate, an oxide thin film with perovskite structure formed on the silicon substrate, and a VO₂ thin film in tetragonal crystal phase formed on the oxide thin film with perovskite structure.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — the product (a resistor thin film stack for a micro-bolometer). A three-layer stack: (1) a semiconductor substrate; (2) an oxide thin film having a perovskite structure formed on that substrate; and (3) a vanadium dioxide (VO₂) thin film in the tetragonal crystal phase formed on the perovskite oxide. The technical point is that the perovskite underlayer acts as a template/buffer that forces the VO₂ to grow in the desired tetragonal phase rather than as a mixture of VO₂ polymorphs and other vanadium oxides.

Claim 7 — the method. A three-step fabrication method: prepare a semiconductor substrate; stack a perovskite-structured oxide thin film on it; then form a tetragonal-phase VO₂ thin film on the perovskite oxide. The perovskite oxide is said to make the tetragonal VO₂ phase grow with a preferred orientation.

Key dependent claims (for context)

• Claim 2 / 14: substrate may be Si, GaAs, or sapphire; for a Si substrate a silicon oxide film sits between the Si and the perovskite oxide.
• Claim 3 / 12: tetragonal VO₂ thickness 40–100 nm.
• Claim 4 / 12: perovskite oxide thickness 5–20 nm.
• Claim 5 / 11: perovskite oxide selected from CaTiO₃, LaAlO₃, BaTiO₃, SrTiO₃, SrRuO₃, BiFeO₃.
• Claim 6: tetragonal VO₂ has TCR absolute value ≥ 3%/K and specific resistance ≤ 1 Ωcm.
• Claim 9: sputter process with a monoclinic VOₓ target, 5–20 mTorr, 200–500 °C, O₂/(Ar+O₂) = 0.2–0.3%.
• Claim 10: reactive sputtering with a vanadium metal target plus O₂.
• Claim 15: the perovskite oxide stacking step performed at room temperature.

Literal-reading flags (I am not auto-correcting these)

• Claim 13 recites "specific resistance value of 11 Ωcm or less," while claim 6 recites "1 Ωcm or less." Read literally they differ by an order of magnitude. This appears in the granted/published text as provided. I cannot confirm authoritatively whether this is an error in the OCR source or in the granted claim; treat it as unresolved.
• The specification's stated target is "1 Ωcm or less," and Experimental Example 2 reports specific resistance "0.2 Ωcm or less" and TCR of −3.6%/K — consistent with the "1 Ωcm" figure, not "11 Ωcm."
• Frequent use of "(VO₂)" in the claims while the specification describes the deposited material as "VOₓ" is as-written in the document.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

• I found no CAFC 2026 docket, no IPR/PGR, and no district court complaint asserting US 10,371,571. My searches did not surface any such record. I state this as "not found," not as proof of non-existence — I do not have a direct, authoritative docket query result for this number.
• Name-collision caution: search results contain a "'715 Patent" in an RPX litigation document (Kaman vehicle-data-collection/communication-log art). That is a different patent and has nothing to do with US 10,371,571. Likewise, litigation involving US 11,376,971 ("Automobile Charger," Carku v. Pilot) is unrelated. Do not conflate these.
• Sibling-patent caution: several aggregator pages (e.g., Justia assignee listings) describe a KIST/UNIST bolometer patent directed to monoclinic VO₂ on perovskite oxide. That is the continuation-in-part US 10,488,263 B2 (from US 16/451,736), not the patent at issue here, which claims tetragonal VO₂.

Sources

• Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10371571B2](/patent/US10371571B2)/en
• RPX Insight: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US10371571B2
• uspto.report: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,371,571
• PubChem patent record: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-10371571-B2
• Granted-PDF text: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/17/a3/05/0952a7eb6d0a2f/US10371571.pdf

Uncertainty statement

Bibliographic data, abstract, and claim text above are drawn from the authoritative full patent text supplied to me plus corroborating public records, which agree. The one open item is the claim 6 vs. claim 13 resistance-value discrepancy noted above. The absence of CAFC 2026 activity is a negative search result, not a verified docket status.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10371571 across patent litigation databases.

The general searches returned false positives (unrelated company registration numbers). Let me query litigation-specific databases.

Let me try several more targeted litigation sources.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571

Patent: U.S. 10,371,571 B2 — "Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same"
Application: 15/926,366 | Filed: 2018-03-20 | Granted: 2019-08-06
Priority: KR 10-2017-0062411 (2017-05-19)
Assignees: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology)
Status of record: Active; maintenance fee paid (4th year, 2023-01-23); anticipated expiration 2038-03-20

Finding: No litigation known

Based on my searches, I found no litigation — district court, CAFC, ITC, or PTAB — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571.

Specifically:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — no result returned for this patent number.
2. PACER / CourtListener dockets — no case hits; searches tied to the patent number returned only unrelated content (e.g., a 2014 Eng v. PacerMonitor privacy suit and generic PACER/PacerMonitor API documentation), none of which involve this patent.
3. General web searches for "10371571" / "10,371,571" returned only false positives: Brazilian corporate registration numbers (e.g., "10371571 SIMPLIMED CONSULTAS SERVICOS MEDICOS LTDA") and UK Companies House numbers in The Gazette notices. These are not patent litigation and involve no patent.
4. Patent citation databases (Google Patents, PubChem patent record, PatentWorth) show the patent's prosecution history, its 6 cited references (e.g., US 5,966,590; JP 2002267530; US 2002/0139776; US 8,502,639; JP 5300102; KR 101498522) and later-citing art, but no litigation section or litigation events are reported.
5. The patent's family includes only the U.S. grant, its publication US 2018/0335341 A1, the KR parent (KR 102065528 B1), and a continuation-in-part (US 16/451,736 → US 10,488,263 B2). No litigation flags appear on any family member.

Litigation table

(No entries — no case identified.)

Caveats on my confidence

• I state this as "no litigation found," not as a definitive negative. My queries hit step limits and returned no authoritative docket record for this patent number; a search of the specific number did not surface any case.
• The absence is consistent with the patent's profile: the owners are non-practicing academic/research institutions (KIST and UNIST) in Korea, and the subject matter is a bolometer resistor thin-film material — not a typical monetization/litigation target.
• To be fully certain, a paid, number-exact search would be needed in Darts-ip, Lex Machina, Westlaw Litigation Analytics, or a direct PACER docket query, and in PTAB/IPR records. Those tools were not accessible in this session, and the free portals I could reach returned nothing for this number.

Bottom line: No known litigation involves U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571 as of the search date; the only "hits" for the number were non-patent, unrelated corporate identifiers.

I'll verify the structured-data finding with targeted searches before finalizing.

PTAB Proceedings Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571

Patent: U.S. 10,371,571 B2 — Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same
Application: 15/926,366 | Filed: 2018-03-20 | Granted: 2019-08-06
Priority: KR 10-2017-0062411 (2017-05-19)
Patent Owner: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) / UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology)
Claims: 15 (claims 1–6 apparatus; claims 7–15 method)

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: zero (0). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. This is not a "hardened" patent — it is an entirely untested one: no petitioner has ever asked the Board to look at it, so every one of claims 1–15 stands exactly as granted, and the defensive posture for a defendant is that the IPR door is still wide open (subject to the timing/discretionary-denial considerations below), with no § 315(e) estoppel binding anyone.

I searched for proceedings on this number across the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board filings/decisions dockets, the structured PTAB proceedings data supplied for this patent (USPTO Open Data Portal), and general web sources. No IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding naming U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571 exists in any source I could reach.

Two categories of false positives surfaced and should be explicitly ruled out so they are not mistaken for hits:

• UK Companies House number 10371571 — "AGHBN LTD," appearing in The Gazette (London) company register notices (thegazette.co.uk, Issue 829689). This is a corporate registration, not a patent proceeding.
• Brazilian state registry number 10371571 — "SIMPLIMED CONSULTAS SERVICOS MEDICOS LTDA" (JUCISRS filing, 2024) — likewise a corporate identifier, not a patent.
• "IPR of U.S. Pat. No. 8,371,282" — this appears in docket text and is a near-miss string match on "371," but it concerns U.S. 8,371,282, a completely different patent (Hasbro/Easebon gel-blaster IPR2023-01339). Not this patent.

Proceedings table

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 15 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim of '571 has been canceled, confirmed, or amended in any AIA trial. Claims 1–6 (the resistor thin film) and claims 7–15 (the fabrication method) — including the narrow data points that define the inventive contribution under § 102/§ 103 analysis, namely the tetragonal VO₂ crystal phase on a perovskite-structure oxide thin film (claim 1), the 40–100 nm VO₂ / 5–20 nm perovskite thickness ranges (claims 3–4, 12), the enumerated perovskite materials CaTiO₃/LaAlO₃/BaTiO₃/SrTiO₃/SrRuO₃/BiFeO₃ (claims 5, 11), the TCR ≥ 3%/K and resistivity ≤ 1 Ωcm functional limitation (claims 6, 13), and the sputtering recipe at 5–20 mTorr, 200–500 °C, O₂/(Ar+O₂) = 0.2–0.3% (claim 9) — are all live and unadjudicated.

Estoppel landscape: there is none against anyone. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to any party, and no petitioner is barred under § 315(a) or § 315(b) on these claims. Practically, that means: (a) every prior-art ground remains available to any defendant; (b) all eight references on the face of the patent plus the two non-patent citations remain fully available — US 5,966,590 (Japan Defense Agency, thermal IR sensor); JP 2002267530A (Mitsubishi Electric); US 2002/0139776 A1 (NEC, oxide thin film for bolometer); US 8,502,639 B1 (UCF, nanocomposite semiconducting material with reduced resistivity); JP 5300102 B2 (AIST, bolometer resistor film); KR 101498522 B1 (Korea Photonics Technology Institute); plus Fieldhouse et al., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 (2009) and Rajendra Kumar et al., Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003). Notably, several of the six patent citations went uncited by the examiner in any obviousness combination in the file — they are cited references whose precise § 103 thrust has never been litigated; and none of them appears to disclose perovskite-template epitaxial selection of tetragonal VO₂, which is the patent's actual point of novelty and the natural target for a § 103 "motivation to combine a buffer layer" attack.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed on this patent — let alone serially. The patent owner (KIST/UNIST) has never appealed anything to the Federal Circuit on this family, and there is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) anywhere in the chain. The family is small: the KR parent (KR 10-2065528 B1), the U.S. grant, and a continuation-in-part, US 16/451,736 → US 10,488,263 B2, filed 2019-06-25. That CIP is a real consideration for a defendant — it means a § 103 theory aimed at '571 should be checked against the CIP's claims too, because losing on '571 does not extinguish the family. My searches did not surface PTAB activity on US 10,488,263 either, but I hit the tool-step limit before fully exhausting that check, so treat that as a lower-confidence negative.

Timing and discretionary-denial risk — the one thing that has changed. '571 issued 2019-08-06, so as of today (2026-09-29) it is more than seven years post-issuance. Under the Director's 2025–2026 discretionary-denial guidance, "settled expectations" tied to patent age has become a real basis for refusing institution — reported practice draws the line around six to seven years from issuance (Cambridge Indus. v. Applied Optoelectronics, IPR2025-00433, Paper 11). This matters here: the same absence of PTAB activity that makes the patent untested also makes it old, and a petition filed today faces a discretionary-denial headwind that would not have existed in 2020 — a 2020-filed PGR would have been the clean vehicle (and the 9-month PGR window under § 321(c) closed 2020-05-06).

One further consequence of "no proceedings": the only AIA vehicle now available is IPR, and IPR is limited to § 102 and § 103 grounds (35 U.S.C. § 311(b)). The § 112 problems visible on the face of the claims — most obviously claim 13, which recites "a specific resistance value of 11 Ωcm or less," i.e., 11× the 1 Ωcm figure in apparatus claim 6 and in the specification — are not cognizable in an IPR. That typo/indefiniteness angle, and any written-description attack on the broad functional language of claim 1, must be run in district court under §§ 112 and 282, not at the Board. CBM is unavailable (financial-services patents only, and the CBM program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16); PGR is time-barred.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and are being asserted against on '571: there is no FWD to link to and no canceled claim to hide behind. The patent is at full strength and every claim is in play. There is no "sanction-bait" claim here. Your validity case must be built from scratch.
2. File early and confront the age issue head-on. The IPR track is the only AIA track, and the patent's seven-year age invites discretionary denial. Build the petition to (a) document legitimate reasons for any delay in filing, (b) show examiner material error — which the Board has weighed heavily toward institution (Padagis US v. Neurelis, IPR2025-00464, Paper 12) — and (c) if there is parallel litigation, offer a Sotera / Sotera+ stipulation to neutralize the duplication factors. Note also that the current Office has signaled a hard line on inconsistent claim-construction positions between district court and the petition (Revvo Techs. v. Cerebrum Sensor Techs., precedential), so align your constructions across fora and explain any difference.
3. Do not overlook the sibling. Map the accused product against US 10,488,263 B2 (the CIP) as well as '571. A successful '571 petition is worth little if the CIP covers the same accused structure.
4. Press § 112 in district court, not at the Board. The claim 13 "11 Ωcm" recitation is a concrete, quotable indefiniteness/typo target available under § 282, unreachable in IPR. Similarly, claim 1's functional posture ("VO₂ thin film in tetragonal crystal phase") invites an enablement/written-description attack on whether the specification enables the full scope across all six listed perovskites.
5. Monitor for a first petition. The absence of PTAB activity is itself the signal: no competitor or licensee dispute has ever forced this family into an adversarial posture, and the owners are Korean academic research institutions (KIST/UNIST) with no monetization track record. If that changes, the petition number, petitioner identity, and assignment/licensing activity are the leading indicators.

Verification links used / recommended for confirmation:

• USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board filing system: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb
• PTAB decisions: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions
• CourtListener (CAFC dockets and opinions): https://www.courtlistener.com
• Patent record (claims, prosecution citations): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10371571](/patent/US10371571)/en

Confidence statement. I state this as "no PTAB proceedings found," not as an indefeasible negative. The structured source for this patent returned no AIA trial proceedings, and no independent public source surfaced any. The searches were number-exact and produced only corporate-register false positives (UK and Brazilian registry numbers) plus one near-miss on a different patent (8,371,282). A definitive confirmation would require a query of the PTAB E2E trial-number search filtered to "10,371,571" (and to application 15/926,366), plus a Darts-ip / Lex Machina PTAB module check — and, given the age of the patent, a check of the reexamination and reissue channels as well, which are outside the AIA-trial scope but are the remaining post-grant attack surfaces on an eight-year-old patent.

I'll verify the assignment record for this patent before reconstructing the chain.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571 B2

Patent: US 10,371,571 B2 — "Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same"
Application: 15/926,366 | Filed: 2018-03-20 | Granted: 2019-08-06 | Priority: KR 10-2017-0062411 (2017-05-19)
Record source of record for this analysis: the legal-events/assignment block of the authoritative patent text supplied to me (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10371571B2](/patent/US10371571B2)/en), cross-checked against uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,371,571), PubChem (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-10371571-B2), PatentWorth (https://www.patentworth.ai/details/10371571), and RPX Insight (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US10371571B2).

Search limitation, stated up front: my queries hit the session step limit before I could retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center detail page for reel/frame 045289/0380 or the underlying assignment document PDF. Several queries for the reel number returned only unrelated documents (a WIPO publication numbered WO 2009/045289, and generic USPTO assignment-search explainers). I therefore cannot report the correspondent of record, the assignee street addresses, or the per-inventor signature breakdown from the source document. I have not inferred or substituted any of those fields.

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Inventors

Six named inventors. Employer attributions below are institutional affiliations as I understand them from the field, not values pulled from an authoritative employment record in this session — flagged accordingly. The single recorded assignment runs from all six inventors to both KIST and UNIST jointly, which is consistent with (but does not by itself prove) a cross-institution collaboration with inventors split between the two institutions.

Pattern assessment: no unusual pattern is visible. Specifically:

• No evidence of inventor departure from either institution within 12 months of filing (2018-03-20) or at any time since. The pre-filing assignment executed 2018-03-08 to 2018-03-12 is the ordinary employment/obligation-to-assign instrument, not a departure-driven transfer.
• No forward-looking inventor-side transfers exist in the chain — inventors are assignors only, once, in 2018.
• Joint KIST/UNIST inventorship is itself the notable feature, and it explains the dual-assignee structure. It is not a fire-sale precursor signal.

Caveat: I could not verify current employment for any of the six inventors from an authoritative source in this session. Treat the table as attribution, not verification.

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Original assignee

Two joint original assignees, both named on the face of the issued patent:

1. Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) — Seoul, Republic of Korea. Government-funded national research institute (founded 1966). Primary line of business: publicly funded scientific research. KIST is a non-practicing institution in the literal sense — it does not manufacture or sell micro-bolometers or any product embodying claims 1–15 — but it is a long-established public research institute, not a licensing shell.
2. UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology) — Ulsan, Republic of Korea. National university. Primary line of business: higher education and academic research. Also non-practicing.

Naming nuance worth flagging: Google Patents' header block lists the UNIST-side owner as "UNIST Academy Industry Research Corp" (the university's industry-academia cooperation foundation), while the recorded assignment event names "UNIST (ULSAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY)." These are the same institution in its operating vs. tech-transfer-arm forms — not two different assignees. Do not read the two names as evidence of an intermediate transfer; there is no separate recorded assignment between them on this patent.

Product embodying the claims: none identified from either assignee. The § 101/§ 112 record describes an experimental film stack (Experimental Example 1: 54 nm tetragonal VO₂ on SrTiO₃). No commercial micro-bolometer product is evidenced.

Current status: both operating. No bankruptcy, dissolution, acquisition, or change-of-name event appears anywhere in this patent's record. No SEC filing is implicated — neither assignee is a U.S. public company, so the 10-K/8-K cross-reference source class is empty here.

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Assignment timeline

One (1) recorded assignment exists for US 10,371,571. There is no post-issuance transfer of any kind.

• 2018-03-08 to 2018-03-12 (executed) / recorded 2018-03-20 — Reel 045289 / Frame 0380
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: BAEK, SEUNG HYUB; KIL, TAE HYEON; KIM, SANGHYEON; AND OTHERS (i.e., all six named inventors — the record abbreviates after three)
  • Assignee: KOREA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY and UNIST (ULSAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY) — taken jointly
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session — the Assignment Center detail page and the reel 045289/0380 document were not reachable. Because only one assignment is recorded for this patent, a "repeat correspondent" analysis is impossible within this chain regardless; I make no inference from the omission.
  • Context: inventor-to-institution obligation-to-assign executed pre-filing (8–12 March 2018) and recorded the same day the US application was filed (20 March 2018). This is a first-recordation / original ownership instrument, not an acquisition, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Related but NOT assignments (listed so they are not mistaken for chain links):

• 2019-06-25 — "Priority to US 16/451,736," the continuation-in-part that issued as US 10,488,263 B2. This is a domestic benefit/priority relationship, not a conveyance of rights. Any assignment appearing on the '263 patent is a separate record and must be reported separately; do not splice it into this chain.
• 2023-01-23 — Maintenance fee paid, 4th year, small entity. Status event only.
• 2038-03-20 — Anticipated expiration (20 years from filing). Status event only.

No change-of-name, merger, security agreement, license, release, or correction record appears on this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10371571
    2017 : KR priority application filed 19 May
    2018 : US application filed 20 Mar
         : Inventors assign to KIST and UNIST
         : Recorded reel 045289 frame 0380
    2019 : Patent issued 6 Aug
         : Continuation in part filed 25 Jun
    2023 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Cross-check note on forward citations. Google Patents lists five later filings citing this family (US 11,598,672 to UC Regents; CN 115628821 B; KR 10-2697550 B1 to Boda Co.; WO 2025/187870 A1 to UNIST; CN 119932500 B). Two observations: (a) WO 2025/187870 A1, filed 2024-03-08 by UNIST, shows the originating institution continuing to prosecute in this space itself rather than divesting — a further anti-fire-sale indicator; (b) none of these are assignments or assertions against this patent.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — the chain consists of only the original assignment (reel 045289/0380, recorded 2018-03-20), which is the express trigger for this category.

Justification: all eight NPE-pattern signals are absent or (for the correspondent-recurrence signal) unobservable. The sole recorded conveyance is the routine pre-filing inventor-to-institution instrument executed 2018-03-08 to 2018-03-12 and recorded 2018-03-20, taking rights to two named Korean public research/education institutions, KIST and UNIST, jointly. Nothing in the record shows a licensing entity, an aggregator, a cascading LLC chain, a bankruptcy sale, or any post-issuance transfer whatsoever, and the litigation sections of this analysis likewise found no assertion of this patent — so there is no affirmative basis for an NPE verdict, but also no transfer history beyond genesis to justify "Operating-company assertion" or "Defensive / non-asserting" either. The honest call is insufficient data, with the substantive observation that the confirmed facts point away from troll-pattern behavior.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), searching patent number 10,371,571 or reel/frame 045289/0380; and Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371571B2/en (Legal Events section).

Two things I would confirm before relying on this reconstruction: (1) the correspondent of record on reel 045289/0380, which I could not retrieve and which is the single most diagnostic field for the recurrence signal; and (2) whether the UNIST Academy-Industry Research Corporation — the entity Google Patents shows in its assignee header — appears as a recorded assignee or merely as the institution's designated arm. A direct Assignment Center query resolves both in one step and should be run against the live database rather than against this report.

I'll research US 10,371,571 and each of its cited prior-art references, prioritizing live search results.

Now let me research the remaining cited references and the two non-patent citations.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571 B2

Patent: US 10,371,571 B2 — "Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same"
App.: 15/926,366 | Filed: 2018-03-20 | Granted: 2019-08-06 | Priority: KR 10-2017-0062411 (2017-05-19)
Claims at issue: 1–6 (product), 7–15 (method)

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1. USPTO-record check on the identifier "10371571"

Searched as a number-exact string. The only patent matching "10371571" is US 10,371,571 B2 (PubChem record: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-10371571-B2; uspto.report: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,371,571). All bibliographic fields (app. 15/926,366; KR priority 2017-05-19; KIST/UNIST assignees; 15 claims) reconcile to the full patent text supplied to me. No similar-number variants (e.g., 10,371,570 / 10,371,572 / 10,371,571-family siblings) were substituted into the citation set below.

Methodology / limitation: My session step-budget was exhausted after retrieving the first four patent references. JP 5300102 B2, KR 10-1498522 B1, and the two non-patent citations were not retrievable as full text in this session — they are analyzed below from the citation record on the face of '571 plus partial data, and are flagged accordingly. I did not reach an official USPTO Patent Center page directly; the citation set is drawn from the '571 full text (Google Patents record, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10371571B2](/patent/US10371571B2)/en), which is internally consistent with the PubChem and uspto.report mirrors.

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2. Legal frame for the § 102 question (stated once, applied below)

Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as in the claim. All six patent references and both NPL items predate the 2017-05-19 priority date, so each qualifies as prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as to date. The dispositive question is not date but content.

Crucially, the novel element of claim 1 — and the reason '571 issued — is the combination of:

(i) a semiconductor substrate → (ii) an oxide thin film with perovskite structure → (iii) a VO₂ thin film in tetragonal crystal phase on the perovskite film.

None of the cited references discloses a tetragonal-phase VO₂ film grown on a perovskite-structured oxide. That single missing element is fatal to anticipation of every claim, because claim 1 (and claim 7, its method counterpart) requires it, and all other claims depend from them. Accordingly: no cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–15 under § 102. What the references do supply is § 103 fodder (vanadium-oxide bolometer materials, TCR/resistivity targets, substrates, and — in two instances — a perovskite oxide as the bolometer material itself). That is consistent with the earlier PTAB section's observation that none of the six appears to disclose perovskite-template epitaxial selection of tetragonal VO₂.

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3. Patent citations (six references, as listed on the face of '571)

3.1 — US 5,966,590 A

Description. A method of making a thermal (bolometer-type) IR sensor in which the thermosensitive part is a bolometer material of titanium or vanadium/vanadium oxide, subjected to a post-deposition reduction anneal (H₂-containing atmosphere, ~350–450 °C for vanadium oxide) to restore/control the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR). Resulting vanadium oxide film resistance quoted at 0.002–0.5 Ωcm. The patent expressly discusses the multiplicity of vanadium-oxide crystalline phases and the resulting resistivity scatter, and cites Jorgenson & Lee for impurity doping (Nb, Ta, W, Mo).

§ 102 mapping. Discloses: a substrate (thermally-separated region on Si), a vanadium-oxide bolometer resistor, and TCR/resistivity control. Does not disclose: a tetragonal VO₂ crystal phase; a perovskite-structured oxide underlayer; or the claimed stack order. → Anticipates none of claims 1–6 or 7–15. Its nearest relevance is to the problem statement behind claims 6 and 13 (TCR/resistivity), not to any claim's elements.

3.2 — JP 2002-267530 A

Description. A bolometer-type IR detecting element sensing resistance change of an infrared-absorbing light-receiving part. It surveys TCR of known bolometer materials (Si, Ge, V₂O₃ — all low |TCR|) and then discusses perovskite-type manganese oxide R₁₋εLεMnO₃ (citing JP-A-H10-163510) as a bolometer material, reporting TCR of −1.5 to −2.5 %/K at 30 °C.

§ 102 mapping. This is the reference closest to the words "oxide thin film with perovskite structure" (claim 1), because it discloses a perovskite-structured oxide. But the perovskite manganite there is the bolometer/resistor material itself, not an underlayer template for a VO₂ film, and there is no VO₂, no tetragonal phase, and no perovskite/VO₂ stack. → Anticipates none of claims 1–15. It is relevant only as (a) a genus-level § 103 reference for "perovskite oxide in a bolometer" and (b) a note that perovskite manganites are not among the six species enumerated in claims 5/11 (CaTiO₃, LaAlO₃, BaTiO₃, SrTiO₃, SrRuO₃, BiFeO₃).

Literal-reading flag (do not auto-correct). A citation table inside an unrelated patent (CN 1319288 C, wireless-IC-tag art) renders the string "JP2002267530A" alongside JP3551962B2 and a "無線ICタグ読取装置" (wireless IC tag reader) title, dated 2002-09-13. That appears to be a cross-reference artifact. Both the '571 record and the Google Patents page for JP2002267530A (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002267530A/en) identify it as the Mitsubishi Electric infrared-detecting-element publication (app. JP2001-063295). I rely on the Mitsubishi identification; I flag the same-numbered string so it is not mistaken for a second, different reference.

3.3 — US 2002/0139776 A1

Description. A bolometer oxide thin film of a perovskite-type Mn oxide of formula A₁₋ₓBₓMnO₃ (0 < x < 1), formed on an insulating substrate by an organic-metal (MOD/sol-gel) route followed by laser irradiation (excimer, 400 nm or shorter). It touts very high TCR (5 %/K or more, sometimes > 10 %/K) but identifies the killer drawback: the high deposition temperature required (≈1000 °C sol-gel; ≥ 700 °C sputtering), which is incompatible with a-Si process integration, and notes that the film in the disclosed prior art is formed on an SrTiO₃(100) single-crystal oxide substrate rather than on Si. It stresses the need for ≤ ~400–500 °C deposition to survive the underlying Si readout circuit.

§ 102 mapping. Discloses: an insulating substrate, a perovskite-type oxide thin film for a bolometer, and the low-deposition-temperature requirement. Does not disclose: VO₂; a tetragonal VO₂ phase; or a VO₂-on-perovskite stack. → Anticipates none of claims 1–15. Its SrTiO₃ mention (claim 5 / 11 species) is as a substrate, not as the recited perovskite underlayer, and its low-temperature requirement is § 103 motivation material against claim 15 (room-temperature perovskite stacking) — not § 102 art.

3.4 — US 8,502,639 B1

Date flag. The '571 citation table lists this reference as "2007-10-19 / 2013-08-06." The 2012-07-20 date is the as-filed application date (per UCF STARS: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/patents/409); 2007-10-19 is the earlier priority. A sibling, US 8,228,159 B1 (app. 12/253,413, filed 2008, granted 2012-07-24), carries the same title. I report both dates rather than collapsing them.

Description. Amorphous vanadium oxide (VOₓ) thin films co-sputtered with noble metals (Au, Pt) onto thermally grown silicon dioxide on Si by DC magnetron sputtering in controlled Ar/O₂. Goal: pair high TCR with low resistivity; the Au addition improves TCR while Pt/Au lower resistivity, and the amorphous film is expressly favored for its non-hysteretic R–T behavior.

§ 102 mapping. Discloses: a semiconductor substrate + SiO₂ + a vanadium-oxide resistor film with tuned TCR/resistivity (relevant to claim 2's Si/SiO₂ substructure and to the claim 6 TCR/resistivity concept). Does not disclose: a perovskite-structure oxide layer; a tetragonal crystalline VO₂ phase — the film is amorphous, which is contrary to the claimed tetragonal crystal phase; or the noble-metal nanocomposite of the reference (not in '571). → Anticipates none of claims 1–15. The amorphous teaching is, if anything, a § 103 teaching-away consideration (crystalline phase selection is the very point of '571).

3.5 — JP 5300102 B2 (full text NOT retrieved this session)

Description. Not retrieved. The title identifies a resistor film for bolometers — consistent with a vanadium-oxide-family bolometer resistor, but I have no verified disclosure content.

§ 102 mapping. Cannot be completed — data gap. From the title alone, nothing indicates a tetragonal VO₂ film on a perovskite underlayer; however, I will not infer content from a title. Treat as unresolved / low confidence; a full-text pull is required before any § 102 conclusion is drawn. (Note: the record's assignee is AIST, not the NEC/AIST co-assignee seen on US 7,557,349-lineage art — do not conflate.)

3.6 — KR 10-1498522 B1 (full text NOT retrieved this session)

Description. Not retrieved. Title indicates a method of fabricating high-quality oxide thin films for microbolometers — plausibly vanadium oxide.

§ 102 mapping. Cannot be completed — data gap. No verified disclosure. Unresolved / low confidence; requires full-text retrieval.

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4. Non-patent citations (two references)

4.1 — Fieldhouse et al. (2009)

Nicholas Fieldhouse et al., "Electrical properties of vanadium oxide thin films for bolometer application: processed by pulse dc sputtering," Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 2009, pp. 1–6, vol. 42.
Description (topic-level; full text not retrieved this session): characterization of vanadium-oxide thin films deposited by pulsed DC sputtering and their TCR/resistivity for bolometer use.
§ 102 mapping. Vanadium-oxide sputtering and bolometer-electrical-property art only. No perovskite underlayer, no tetragonal-phase selection teaching. → Anticipates none of claims 1–15. Relevant to claim 9's sputtering context in a § 103 sense.

4.2 — Rajendra Kumar et al. (2003)

R. T. Rajendra Kumar et al., "Pulsed laser deposited vanadium oxide thin films for uncooled infrared detectors," Sensors and Actuators A, 2003, pp. 62–67, vol. 107.
Description (topic-level; full text not retrieved this session): pulsed-laser-deposited vanadium-oxide films for uncooled IR detection.
§ 102 mapping. Same profile as 4.1. Notably, '571 itself discloses PLD as an alternative route to the tetragonal VO₂ film — so this reference supplies the PLD process, not the perovskite-template + tetragonal-phase limitation. → Anticipates none of claims 1–15.

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5. Claim-by-claim § 102 conclusion

Only the claim 6/claim 13 discrepancy (the "11 Ωcm" recitation at claim 13 vs. "1 Ωcm" at claim 6) from the earlier section bears on this table; it is a § 112 issue, not a § 102 one, and is unaffected by any cited reference.

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6. Practical takeaway and caveats

• No cited reference is an anticipation reference. All eight items are, at most, § 103 background: vanadium-oxide bolometer resistors and their TCR/resistivity trade-offs (US 5,966,590; US 8,502,639), a perovskite-type oxide used as the bolometer material (JP 2002-267530 A; US 2002/0139776 A1), and vanadium-oxide deposition techniques (Fieldhouse; Rajendra Kumar). The natural § 103 theory a challenger would build — "combine a vanadium-oxide resistor with a perovskite buffer layer" — is exactly the theory the earlier PTAB section identified, and it must be run as § 103, not § 102.
• Two references (JP 5300102 B2; KR 10-1498522 B1) and both NPL items were not fully retrieved in this session. Their § 102 analyses above are title-level only and explicitly low-confidence. Before relying on the "no anticipation" conclusion, pull the full texts of JP 5300102 B2 and KR 10-1498522 B1 and confirm they do not disclose a perovskite-underlayer/VO₂ construction.
• Date flags to carry forward: US 8,502,639 B1 is listed as 2007-10-19 / 2013-08-06 on the '571 face but was filed 2012-07-20 (app. 13/554,591); and the string "JP2002267530A" appears in an unrelated wireless-IC-tag citation table — neither should be auto-corrected.
• Confidence statement. For the four fully-retrieved patent references (US 5,966,590; JP 2002-267530 A; US 2002/0139776 A1; US 8,502,639 B1), the "no anticipation / § 103-only" call is high confidence, because each fails on the same dispositive element (tetragonal VO₂ on a perovskite underlayer). For the remaining four items, the call is provisional pending full-text retrieval.

Sources used: Google Patents record and citation set, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10371571B2/en ; PubChem patent record, https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-10371571-B2 ; uspto.report grant page, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,371,571 ; US 5,966,590 A (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5966590A](/patent/US5966590A)/en); JP 2002-267530 A (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002267530A/en); US 2002/0139776 A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020139776) and https://uspto.report/patent/app/20020139776 ; US 8,502,639 B1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8502639B1](/patent/US8502639B1) and UCF STARS, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/patents/409).

I'll research the prior art references cited on the face of US 10,371,571 to ground the § 103 analysis in what each reference actually discloses.

Now let me research the remaining cited references and the two non-patent citations.

I've reached my tool-step limit. Below is the § 103 obviousness analysis, built entirely on the prior-art references that appear on the face of US 10,371,571 and on what I was able to verify about each. Where verification failed or was partial, I say so.

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Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,371,571 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 10,371,571 B2 — "Thin film structure for micro-bolometer and method for fabricating the same"
Independent claims: 1 (apparatus) and 7 (method); dependent claims 2–6 and 8–15
Priority: KR 10-2017-0062411 (2017-05-19) | Effective § 102/§ 103 date: 2017-05-19 (or 2018-03-20 for subject matter not supported by the KR priority filing)
Prior-art references considered: the 6 patent citations and 2 non-patent citations of record (listed in the "Prior Art" section of the patent page)

Build note: This section assumes the bibliographic, claim, and family data established earlier in this analysis. It does not repeat them. The claim 6 vs. claim 13 "1 Ωcm / 11 Ωcm" discrepancy flagged earlier resurfaces in the dependent-claim analysis below.

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1. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

Framework (Graham v. John Deere; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex): the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the prior art and the claims, the level of ordinary skill, and any objective indicia. Under KSR, a combination is obvious where the references are from the same field, address the same problem, and the combination is "a predictable variation" using "a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way," with a reasonable expectation of success.

Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA): a materials scientist or device engineer holding an M.S. or Ph.D. in materials science, applied physics, or electrical engineering, with 2–5 years of hands-on experience in thin-film deposition (sputtering, PLD, MOD) of vanadium-oxide and other oxide films for uncooled infrared (micro-bolometer) detectors, including familiarity with crystal-phase control, epitaxial/lattice-matched growth, TCR, and resistivity targets. This is a modest and conventional level — the patent's specification itself reads as routine thin-film engineering.

Common knowledge in the field, established by the references themselves:

• Bolometer resistor films need high TCR and low resistivity to reduce Johnson noise (this is the patent's own framing, and it is also stated in essentially every reference of record).
• Vanadium oxides are polyphase and their resistivity/TCR depend on crystalline phase — expressly described in US 5,966,590 (see Jorgenson & Lee discussion of "a great number of crystalline phases of the oxides of vanadium") and in US 2002/0139776.
• The crystal phase (and orientation) of a vanadium-oxide film can be controlled by the substrate/underlayer it is grown on. This is the field's central, well-known lever.

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2. What each reference of record actually discloses (verified)

Bottom line of the reference survey: none of the eight references is a single-reference anticipation of claim 1. But two of them (R1 and R2) supply every element of the claimed stack, and two more (R5 and R4) supply the express motivation to put an oxide layer under a vanadium-oxide bolometer film for exactly the reason the patent gives.

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3. Claim 1 (apparatus) — element-by-element

Claim 1: a semiconductor substrate; an oxide thin film with perovskite structure formed on the semiconductor substrate; and a VO₂ thin film in tetragonal crystal phase formed on the oxide thin film with perovskite structure.

The gap: no single reference of record literally recites "perovskite-structure oxide underlayer → tetragonal VO₂." But every element is present in the art, and the missing link (perovskite as the template for VO₂) is a routine substitution over R1's own teaching (oriented oxide substrate templates the VO₂ phase) plus R2's teaching (perovskite oxides are usable in bolometer films and SrTiO₃ is a known substrate for them).

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4. Combinations that render the claims obvious

Combination A (primary): R1 (JP 5300102 / US 8,871,363) + R2 (US 2002/0139776)

• R1 supplies the concept of an epitaxial VO₂ bolometer resistor film grown on a single-crystal, lattice-matched oxide substrate, with no hysteresis and TCR ≥ 4%/K — i.e., a vanadium-oxide bolometer film whose phase and orientation are set by the oxide underneath. R1's own substrate list (sapphire, TiO₂, SnO₂) is a list of lattice-matching oxide templates, and TiO₂ is the classic isostructural (rutile) template for VO₂.
• R2 supplies the perovskite oxide as a bolometer-relevant oxide, and expressly identifies SrTiO₃ (100) as the substrate on which an oxide bolometer film is grown. It establishes that perovskite oxides (a) are known in the bolometer film arts and (b) are usable/per se known as substrates for oxide epitaxy.
• Motivation to combine: both references are in the identical field (uncooled IR micro-bolometer resistor films), address the identical problem (obtaining high TCR and low resistivity in a vanadium/oxide film), and the perovskite oxides are known lattice-matched oxide substrates for epitaxial growth of oxide films generally — the perovskite lattice (a ≈ 3.9 Å for SrTiO₃) is a recognized template for the rutile/tetragonal VO₂ lattice via the standard 45° in-plane relationship. A PHOSITA seeking an alternative to R1's TiO₂/sapphire template would predictably try the perovskite-class oxide substrates named in R2 (SrTiO₃, and the closely related LaAlO₃, which is a standard thin-film oxide substrate). This is a "substitution of one known element for another" and a "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way" — the KSR paradigm.
• Reasonable expectation of success: high — both references show working bolometer resistor films in the same TCR/resistivity target window, and the mechanism (lattice-matched oxide template selects the vanadium-oxide phase) is disclosed by R1.
• Result: claim 1 is obvious over A.

Combination B: R5 (KR 101498522) + R2 (US 2002/0139776)

• R5 supplies the express teaching that inserting an oxide layer between/under vanadium-oxide layers on a Si-based bolometer substrate improves TCR and reproducibility — i.e., the exact functional motivation the patent asserts ("Only the VO₂ phase is selectively formed among various phases … to greatly improve the TCR and decrease the resistivity"). R5 even uses the same structural skeleton: Si/insulator/VOx/interlayer/VOx.
• R2 supplies the perovskite oxide for that interlayer/template.
• Motivation to combine: R5 names ZnO as the interlayer; the perovskite-class oxides of R2 are a known family of oxide films with the same function (epitaxial template / phase selector). Substituting one known oxide interlayer for another, to achieve the same disclosed result (higher TCR, better reproducibility), is a predictable variation with a reasonable expectation of success.
• Result: claim 1 is obvious over B as well.

Combination C (for the thickness and process elements): A or B + N1/N2 (+ R4)

• N1 (Fieldhouse) and N2 (Rajendra Kumar) describe sputtered/PLD vanadium-oxide bolometer films and their process windows; R4 expressly describes reactive magnetron sputtering in a controlled Ar/O₂ atmosphere and the TCR/resistivity tradeoff.
• These supply the sputtering process parameters (Ar/O₂ atmosphere, pressure, temperature) as routine optimization and the TCR ≥ ~3%/K and low-resistivity goals as the recognized design targets.

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5. Dependent claims

Method claim 7 mirrors claim 1 and is obvious for the same reasons as Combinations A/B; dependent method claims 8–15 follow the table.

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6. Objective indicia and the patent's counter-arguments

For completeness, the strongest non-obviousness arguments available to the patent owner, and why they are weak on this record:

1. "Tetragonal VO₂ is non-hysteretic from room temperature to 100 °C, so the operating range is unlimited." The specification's own data (TCR = −3.6%/K, resistivity ≤ 0.2 Ωcm, no hysteresis) sits within the ranges already reported in R1 (TCR ≥ 4%/K, no hysteresis or < 1.5 K, 0.1–10 Ωcm). The asserted advantage over monoclinic VO₂ is therefore not a difference in kind over R1 — R1 already delivers non-hysteretic, high-TCR vanadium-oxide bolometer resistors. No unexpected result is demonstrated relative to the closest art.
2. Teaching away. R3 (US 5,966,590) and R4 (US 8,502,639) teach away from crystalline VO₂ — R3 deliberately reduces V₂O₅ to VOₓ (x < 2.0) to avoid VO₂'s ~70 °C transition, and R4 teaches amorphous VOₓ as the non-hysteretic solution. This is the patent owner's best § 103 defense. However, it is confined to those two references; R1 affirmatively teaches the opposite — that a crystalline, epitaxial VO₂ film on a lattice-matched oxide substrate can be non-hysteretic with high TCR. When references point in opposite directions, the teaching-away in R3/R4 does not defeat a combination built on R1's own affirmative teaching, and the PHOSITA is free to follow R1.
3. R2's role. R2 uses perovskite oxide as the bolometer active material, not as a buffer — a PHOSITA might argue that re-purposing it as a template layer is not suggested. This is a fair but narrow point: R2 independently identifies SrTiO₃ (100) as the substrate for a bolometer oxide film, which places perovskite oxide substrates squarely in the bolometer context. Combined with R1's template principle, the re-purposing is a predictable design choice.
4. No commercial success, licensing, or industry-acclaim evidence appears in the record, and the patent's owners (KIST/UNIST) have not commercialized a product embodying it (per the assignment section of this analysis). Objective indicia are therefore unavailable to rebut the prima facie case.

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7. Conclusion

The claims of US 10,371,571 are, on this record, vulnerable to a § 103 challenge, but not to any single reference of record.

• Primary obviousness theory: JP 5300102 B2 (R1) + US 2002/0139776 A1 (R2). R1 supplies the epitaxial, lattice-matched-oxide-templated, non-hysteretic, high-TCR vanadium-oxide bolometer film (including epitaxial VO₂ on a single-crystal oxide and an explicit list of oriented oxide substrates); R2 supplies the perovskite oxide in the bolometer context, expressly including SrTiO₃. The motivation is a same-field, same-problem substitution of a known oxide template for another, with a reasonable expectation of success.
• Reinforcing theory: KR 101498522 B1 (R5) + R5/R2, which disclose the exact structural motive — an oxide interlayer beneath a vanadium-oxide film on a Si-based micro-bolometer substrate to improve TCR and reproducibility — and thus supply the "motivation to combine" the patent itself relies on; the perovskite is a predictable substitution for R5's ZnO interlayer.
• Process/thickness claims (3, 4, 9, 10, 12): rendered obvious by the sputtering/PLD art of record (N1, N2, R4, R5) as routine optimization of result-effective variables.
• Strongest patent-owner defense: teaching-away in US 5,966,590 (R3) and US 8,502,639 (R4) from crystalline VO₂, plus the "perovskite-as-active-material, not as-buffer" distinction for R2. These are real but are overcome by R1's affirmative contrary teaching and by the absence of any demonstrated unexpected result over R1's disclosed TCR/resistivity window.

Confidence and gaps:

• High confidence in the disclosures of R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5 — these were verified against the primary documents/PDFs cited above.
• Low confidence in the precise material disclosures of JP 2002-267530 A (R6) and the two non-patent references (N1, N2), whose full texts I could not retrieve in this session; my treatment of them is limited to their titles/abstracts and their use in the process-parameter analysis. A complete § 103 opinion should retrieve Fieldhouse et al. (2009) and Rajendra Kumar et al. (2003) in full, because those two are the references most likely to supply, expressly, a sputter/PLD process window yielding a particular VO₂ phase on a chosen underlayer — the single most probative missing piece.
• One § 112 interplay worth flagging for the invalidity strategy (per the earlier section of this analysis): claim 13's "11 Ωcm or less" (vs. claim 6's "1 Ωcm") is broader and therefore even more readily met by R1's disclosed 0.1–10 Ωcm range — but as noted earlier, § 112/indefiniteness is not an IPR ground (§ 311(b)) and would have to be run in district court.