US 10495454

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me look for the actual claim text and any litigation records.

Let me try to retrieve claim 1 and claim 18 specifically for US10495454.

Search/verification notes

I searched for the literal number 10495454 / US 10,495,454 B2 across patent databases (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, the USPTO/patentimages PDF) and for CAFC 2026 docket activity. Results for the patent itself are consistent and authoritative (the granted-PDF text is quoted below). For the CAFC 2026 docket, my searches returned no hits tying that docket or any litigation to this patent number. Search results also surfaced unrelated families (e.g., a WO2019133234 "inspection path" application, and the '887/lam pipe-inspection litigation material), which I did not treat as relating to 10495454. I therefore report no litigation/appeal information rather than inferring any.

One caveat: the patent's own "Cross Reference" paragraph in the fetched Google Patents text says the parent was "filed Sep. 25, 2016," while the granted PDF cover page says the parent was filed Sep. 25, 2015. I report the 2015 date as authoritative (it matches the PDF and the listed priority date) and flag the discrepancy rather than silently correcting it.

Bibliographic summary — US 10,495,454 B2

Abstract (as issued): "An inspection system, in an embodiment, can be operable with a probe and a position tracker to inspect an object. The system can be operable to display at least one probe travel axis, receive first and second inspection values from the probe, associate the first inspection value with a first position point, and associate the second inspection value with a second position point. The system displays an inspection path based on the associations. The inspection path extends relative to the probe travel axis."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has three independent claims (1, 9, and the method claim 18). All three are built around the same idea: take a non-destructive-testing (NDT) probe's measured signal values and plot them along the physical axis the probe traveled, so the operator sees a curve ("inspection path") that is spatially aligned with the part, rather than a conventional alarm gate.

Claim 1 — Inspection system (processor + stored instructions)

An inspection system has at least one data processor that works with a probe, a display device, and a position tracker; a data storage device holds executable instructions that, when run, cause the system to:

1. Display a "probe travel axis" — a graphical axis passing through a series of inspection position points (i.e., the path/positions the probe moves along).
2. Generate a first inspection value from a first probe signal, characterizing a property of the object at a first object point.
3. Generate a second inspection value from a second probe signal, characterizing the property at a second object point.
4. Display an inspection path based on the first and second inspection positions, extending relative to the probe travel axis.
5. Display a reference path extending relative to the same probe travel axis — and the inspection path and reference path together form a "track" characterizing information about the object's property at those object points (the specification describes this track as a ladder with "rungs" representing deviations, which become pass/fail based on a maximum deviation setting).

Claim 9 — Inspection system (programmed processor; explicit association + reference values)

A second independent system claim, similar in scope but written around "at least one processor programmed to operate with a display device" and adding two features in more explicit terms:

• A "perform an association" step: associating the first inspection value with the first position point and the second inspection value with the second position point (i.e., binding each measured value to its location on the travel axis).
• Displaying the inspection path based on that association, plus the reference path whose shape is based on first and second reference values corresponding to the same characteristic at the same object points (the reference values coming from a benchmark/reference part). Dependent claims 10–17 narrow this to eddy-current values (impedance, phase angle, eddy-current factor), ultrasonic values (signal strength, time, ultrasound factor), characteristic types (physical/electrical/chemical), dimensional differences, display of an intersecting inspection axis, the maximum-deviation pass/fail outputs, and a full system claim incorporating the probe/position tracker/memory/display/processor.

Claim 18 — Inspection method

The independent method claim recites the same pipeline in method form: graphically displaying a probe travel axis extending through inspection position points; receiving first and second inspection values derived from the probe signals that relate to a characteristic of the object at first and second object points; performing an association that links each inspection value to its position point; and displaying an inspection path based on the association, extending relative to the probe travel axis (with the embodiment/specification describing the path as graphically indicating both object information—the characteristic—and probe information—the probe's variable position relative to the object).

Uncertainty flag: I directly verified the text of claims 1 and 9 of US 10,495,454 from the granted-PDF source. I could not fully retrieve the verbatim text of claim 18 of 10,495,454; the description above reflects its independently-claimed method structure and the parallel method language found in the related application (US 10,018,465 / US 2018/0292205 A1). Treat claim 18's exact wording as not fully verified.

Bottom line

• What it is: A General Electric (now Baker Hughes) NDT-inspection display invention by Daniel Scott Groninger that replaces conventional peak/valley "alarm gates" with a spatially intuitive graphical inspection path plotted against the probe's travel axis, overlaid on a reference path to form a "track" whose rungs reveal deviations (and hence flaws) beyond a settable maximum-deviation threshold.
• Litigation/CAFC: No CAFC 2026 docket entries or litigation records were found for 10495454 in my searches. I do not have authoritative information indicating any appeal or court proceeding involving this specific patent, and I am not asserting one exists.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10,495,454 using multiple searches.

Let me search more specifically for this patent in litigation databases and litigation-related sources.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources and databases.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 10,495,454

Bottom line: I found no litigation — district court, Federal Circuit (CAFC), ITC, or PTAB — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,495,454.

What I searched

I ran multiple searches aimed at litigation databases and dockets, including queries combining the patent number in both 10495454 and 10,495,454 formats with terms like "litigation," "lawsuit," "infringement," "district court," "Baker Hughes," "CAFC," "CourtListener," and "Unified Patents." I attempted to reach the Unified Patents litigation caselist and PACER-adjacent sources (Justia Dockets, Docket Alarm, CourtListener).

What came back

Every hit that referenced a patent number was a different patent — the results did not match the number I was asked about. Examples of near-misses (all distinct from '454) that surfaced:

• Contour IP Holding's U.S. 8,890,954 ("the '954 patent") in Contour IP Holding, LLC v. GoPro, Inc., No. 3:17-cv-04738 (N.D. Cal.) and Contour IP Holding, LLC v. Arashi Vision Inc. (Insta360) — this is a camera patent, not the inspection-path patent.
• Medtronic's U.S. 8,036,756 and related patents against Axonics.
• Various Baker Hughes corporate/financial litigation (IEC arbitration, shareholder derivative suits, Baker Hughes Oilfield Operations, LLC v. NOV Inc., No. 6:25-cv-00274 (E.D. Tex.)) — none of which asserted the '454 patent.

None of these involve U.S. 10,495,454, whose subject matter is the "Inspection path display" NDT system (originally assigned to General Electric Co., now Baker Hughes Holdings LLC, per the patent record).

Findings for the requested fields

Because no case was located, I cannot populate plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or status/outcome for any suit. No known litigation involving US 10,495,454 was found.

Important caveats and confidence level

• Confidence is moderate, not high. I was unable to directly query the Unified Patents litig

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 10,495,454 B2 ("Inspection path display")

Patent snapshot: US 10,495,454 B2, Application No. 16/002,779 (filed 2018-06-07), granted 2019-12-03; continuation of Ser. No. 14/865,533; earliest priority 2015-09-25; anticipated expiration 2035-09-25. Inventor: Daniel Scott Groninger. Original assignee General Electric Co.; current assignee Baker Hughes Holdings LLC (assignment to Baker Hughes, a GE Company, LLC recorded 2021-06-01 and 2021-07-13). Source: Google Patents — US10495454B2.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal reports no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 10,495,454; my independent web searches (PTAB petition/decision repositories, PTAB E2E-indexed materials, CourtListener/docket aggregators, and litigation reporting) surfaced no proceeding or Federal Circuit appeal on this patent either, so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no PTAB estoppel and no cancellation to exploit — all claims 1–18 remain presumptively valid and untested, so a defendant's invalidity case must be built from scratch (IPR and/or district court), and the patent owner faces no existing IPR-driven narrowing.

⚠️ Caveat on confidence: the absence finding rests on (a) the ODP structured block, which the prompt identifies as canonical, and (b) negative web-search results. I could not access a live PTAB E2E docket search directly. Negative search results are weaker evidence than a positive docket query, so treat "zero proceedings" as high-confidence-but-verifyable rather than certified. Related numbers that do appear in search results — IPR2014-01426 (U.S. 8,509,954, Nest), IPR2014-01511 (6,536,054), IPR2019-00635 (8,767,824) — are different patents and must not be conflated with this one.

Proceedings

None on file

No proceeding number can be listed because none exists. Per the operating rule to interpret identifiers literally and not invent proceeding numbers, I am not generating placeholder docket entries.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All claims issued in US 10,495,454 B2 are UNTESTED before the PTAB. Nothing is canceled and nothing has been confirmed. The claim set, as published, includes independent claim 1 (inspection system with stored instructions, probe travel axis, generated inspection values, inspection path + reference path forming a track), independent claim 9 (processor-based inspection system), independent claim 18 (inspection method), and dependents 2–8, 10–17. Because no AIA trial has been instituted, there is no reexamination certificate, no certificate of cancellation, and no statutory disclaimer of record that I could locate. If your adversary's demand letter cites claims 1, 9, or 18, those claims are alive and carry their full original scope.

Estoppel landscape. With zero IPRs, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(1)/(2) estoppel does not attach to anyone. There is no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy barred from a ground. Practically, a defendant today enjoys the maximum freedom the AIA framework allows:

• Any § 102/§ 103 ground may be raised in an IPR, PGR (if eligible), and in district court, with no risk that a prior petitioner's FWD forecloses it.
• Conversely, because the patent has never been before the Board, there is no record of how the Board has construed the key terms ("probe travel axis," "inspection path extending relative to," "reference path," and the "track" formed by the two) — and no FWD reasoning to adopt.
• The one-year clock in § 315(b) will start running against your client on service of a complaint alleging infringement; that is the only timing constraint, and it is triggered by your own litigation, not by any existing proceeding.

Pattern signals. No pattern to report: no serial petitioner, no PTAB-appeal track record by the patent owner, and no evidence of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. Ownership passed from GE to Baker Hughes (a large operating company with an active NDT/inspection-services business — the same business segment as the patent's subject matter), which is not the classic troll-assertion profile that tends to attract aggregator IPRs. That ownership profile is consistent with the observed absence of filings. Renewal maintenance and the 2035 expiration mean the patent has a long remaining life, so the absence of AIA challenges to date should not be read as the window having closed.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: assume all claims 1–18 are live and unadjudicated. Run your own clearance/invalidity search now; do not rely on any "this patent took two IPRs" narrative, because there isn't one. Because no § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists, you can run IPR and district-court invalidity in parallel without the usual estoppel trap — but be aware that an instituted IPR attracts its own estoppel at FWD, so plead the grounds you want to preserve in court carefully.
• Watch the § 315(b) clock: once a complaint is served on your client (or a privy/RPI), you have one year to petition for IPR. A preliminary-institution-style Fintiv analysis is now largely neutered by the current practice regime, but a district-court defendant may still prefer to defund via IPR.
• Verify the negative before relying on it: independently re-run the docket search at USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions and CourtListener immediately before filing anything that depends on the absence of proceedings. Given this bench memo could not open a live PTAB docket query, a 5-minute confirmation is warranted. Starting points: USPTO PTAB E2E / USPTO PTAB Decisions, CourtListener, and the Google Patents page for US10495454B2 (which links USPTO PatentCenter and assignment records).
• If you are the patent owner: the clean record is an asset. Consider a ex parte reexamination or a supplemental examination sweep only if you have specific disclosure concerns, since the strongest posture for enforcement is a patent no third party has yet invalidated.

Sources and confidence notes

• Structured data: "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP ingest) — no AIA trial proceedings.
• Web search: negative for US 10,495,454 across PTAB petition/decision material, docket aggregators, and litigation coverage. Only unrelated same-numbered patents appeared (parking meter '054, waste receptacle 6,536,054, U.S. 8,509,954, U.S. 8,886,954, U.S. 8,767,824, and the furnace-inspection patents in Quest Integrity USA, LLC v. Cokebusters), none of which concern US 10,495,454.
• Not verified: no live PTAB E2E docket query or CourtListener docket query was executed; the zero count is therefore reported as the canonical structured result plus corroborating negative search, not as an independently docket-confirmed fact.

I'll research this patent's ownership chain through the available sources.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 10,495,454 B2

Source-access caveat (read first). I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or correspondent-of-record for this patent through the tooling available to me; the Assignment Center and legacy-assignment interfaces are JavaScript-driven and were not reachable, and the searchable mirrors I reached returned assignment records only for other Baker Hughes patents. What follows therefore separates (a) hard facts taken from the authoritative patent text supplied in the prompt and the Google Patents legal-events record, from (b) clearly-labeled inferences and non-findings. No reel/frame, execution date, or correspondent for US 10,495,454 is invented below. Verify the reel numbers directly at the USPTO Assignment Center and the Google Patents legal events tab.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check:

• No "mass-departure within 12 months" signal. There is only one inventor, and no inventor-side assignment to a third party is recorded — the only recorded transfers are corporate GE→Baker Hughes. Nothing in the record supports the "inventors exit before a portfolio fire-sale" pattern.
• Literal-reading note (do not auto-correct): the patent's Cross-Reference section states the parent application Ser. No. 14/865,533 was "filed Sep. 25, 2016," while the priority date of record is 2015-09-25 and the priority claim is to that 2015-09-25 filing. The two dates cannot both be right; I report them as written.

Original assignee

General Electric Company (GE) — named on the issued patent (Google Patents: Original Assignee = General Electric Co.).

• Primary line of business: diversified industrial conglomerate (NYSE: GE). The relevant segment at filing was GE's non-destructive testing / inspection technologies business, which supplied eddy-current and ultrasonic NDT instruments of exactly the type recited in the claims (probe + position tracker + display of an inspection path against a reference path).
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? The claimed subject matter maps to a real, commercially sold NDT instrument line (GE's inspection instruments, continued today under Baker Hughes). I can confirm the product category exists in the portfolio; I cannot confirm from the record available to me that a specific SKU practices every limitation of claims 1/9/18.
• Corporate fate of the relevant business: not a bankruptcy and not a fire-sale. On July 3, 2017, GE combined its Oil & Gas business with Baker Hughes to form Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE), with GE holding ~62.5% initially; GE's stake fell below 50% in September 2019 and GE exited over 2019–2021. GE itself is still an operating company; it simply no longer owns this patent. The NDT business follows the oil & gas/inspection carve-out into Baker Hughes (now marketed under the Waygate Technologies brand — stated as background, not as a dated record).

Assignment timeline

Google Patents' legal-events record shows exactly two recorded reassignments, both in 2021, both from General Electric Company to Baker Hughes, a GE company, LLC. The granular fields (reel/frame, execution date, correspondent) were not retrievable from the sources I could reach; the entries below are marked accordingly rather than fabricated.

• 2021-06-01 (reassignment recorded per Google Patents) / executed date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (reassignment of assignors' interest — see note)
  • Assignor: GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY
  • Assignee: BAKER HUGHES, A GE COMPANY, LLC (17021 Aldine Westfield, Houston, TX 77073; Delaware entity)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved for this patent. (Recurrence flag, different patents: Cantor Colburn LLP — Hartford, CT — appears as correspondent of record on other Baker Hughes, a GE Company, LLC patent assignments, e.g. Reel 043692 Frame 0976 (executed/recorded 2017-09-26; submitter Jared B. Howenstine; usptopatentmail@cantorcolburn.com) and Reel 047476 Frame 0724 (recorded 2018-11-12). Those reels are not this patent. I cannot assert they appear on US 10,495,454's chain.*)
  • Context: internal corporate separation/asset transfer — GE divesting its remaining interest in the GE/Baker Hughes combined oilfield business, which by 2021 owned the NDT/inspection portfolio.

• 2021-07-13 (reassignment recorded per Google Patents) / executed date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (appears to be a confirmation/curative or second-step recording of the same GE→BHGE transfer; identical assignor/assignee)
  • Assignor: GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY
  • Assignee: BAKER HUGHES, A GE COMPANY, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved for this patent (same caveat as above).
  • Context: internal corporate separation / clean-up recording; two near-identical recordings five weeks apart are consistent with a two-step GE-exit documentation package, not with a chain of independent buyers.

No other transfers are recorded: no assignment to any "IP Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity, no security interest, no merger, no license, no release. The current assignee of record displayed by Google Patents is Baker Hughes Holdings LLC, which is the renamed successor name of "Baker Hughes, a GE company, LLC" (the BHGE LLC entity was renamed after the 2019 rebrand to "Baker Hughes Company"). Flagging the rename as an inference from corporate history rather than a reel-cited change-of-name record — I found no recorded "Change of Name" conveyance for this patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10495454
    2015 : Priority date 25 Sep for parent app
    2017 : GE combines oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes
    2018 : Continuation filed by General Electric
    2019 : Patent granted on 3 Dec
    2021 : GE assigns patent to Baker Hughes a GE company LLC
         : Second recording of same transfer in Jul

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion (with an explicit caveat)

Justification. The only recorded ownership events are the two 2021 reassignments from General Electric Company to Baker Hughes, a GE company, LLC (see the Google Patents legal-events record; reel/frame not retrieved), i.e. a move between two large operating companies that actually build and sell NDT equipment in the field of the claims — there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, and no defensive-aggregator terminus. Every NPE signal in the checklist is therefore "not present," and the current owner commercializes inspection instruments of the claimed type.

Caveat on the label. The nearest-fit bucket among the five offered is "Operating-company assertion," but I must be precise: I found no litigation by GE or Baker Hughes involving this patent, so the chain is more accurately operating-company ownership with no documented assertion activity. That bucket doesn't exist in the provided verdict set, and "NPE — high/moderate," "defensive/non-asserting," and "insufficient data" all fit worse.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10495454)
• Legacy assignment search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10495454B2](/patent/US10495454B2)/en#legalEvents

Cite-with-caution list. The specific reel/frame numbers, execution dates, and correspondent of record for both 2021 recordings remain unretrieved; the Cantor Colburn LLP (reel 043692/0976 and reel 047476/0724) and Baker Hughes "Waygate Technologies / renamed-LLC" observations are background about the same corporate family, not reel-cited findings about this patent and should be confirmed against Patent Assignment Search before being relied on.

I'll research this patent and its citations. Let me start with several searches.

I found the citation list. Let me get more detail on these references and the patent's own claims.

Let me pull the full cited-references list with dates and details.

I have the core citation list. Let me try to confirm bibliographic details for the key references.

I'll research the prior art landscape for US 10,495,454 and check what references are actually cited on this patent.

I have the patent's citation list partially. Let me retrieve the full list of cited references and examine the key ones.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,495,454 B2 ("Inspection Path Display")

Analyst note on inputs and a limitation. You asked me to work from "the Prior Art section of this page." On the Google Patents record for US 10,495,454 B2, that section consists of (i) the "Prior art keywords" string and (ii) the "Citations (16)" table. I was able to retrieve the keyword string and 11 of the 16 cited references before exhausting my search budget; I could not retrieve the remaining five, and I could not pull full-text/claim-level content for most of the cited references. The mappings below are therefore prima facie mappings flagged for verification, not final § 103 conclusions. Where I rely on art I found outside the page's own citation list, I say so explicitly.

1. The reference point: effective date and claim scope

• Effective filing date: 2015-09-25. US 10,495,454 is a continuation of US 14/865,533 (issued as US 10,018,465 B2), both claiming the 2015-09-25 priority. Only art before 2015-09-25 is unambiguously available. (US10018465B2 family)
• Flagged contradiction: the '454 specification's CROSS-REFERENCE paragraph states the parent was "filed Sep. 25, 2016." The Google Patents family/priority data shows 14/865,533 was filed 2015-09-25. This is an internal inconsistency in the patent text (apparent typographical error) and does not change the operative 2015-09-25 priority date — but it should be flagged in any validity chart.
• Assignee history: original assignee General Electric Co.; reassigned to Baker Hughes, a GE company, LLC (2021). IRRELEVANT to § 103 but relevant to the litigation posture noted in the earlier section.
• Independent claims: claim 1 (data-storage/instructions variant), claim 9 (processor variant), claim 18 (method variant). I have claim 9 and claims 10–18 verbatim from Justia; I do not have claims 1–8 verbatim, so the claim-1 mapping below is inferred from the SUMMARY language.

The core inventive concept is narrow: take a position-tracked NDT probe (position count), correlate each incremental probe position with the probe's signal value at that position, and graphically plot the signal value as a path that extends relative to the probe-travel axis, optionally overlaid on a reference path from a known-good part, with rungs representing deviations and a threshold distinguishing pass from fail.

That is, in substance, a position-indexed (B-scan / strip-chart) rendering of an impedance-plane or A-scan signal, plus a reference overlay and a threshold.

2. The prior-art record

Page's own "Prior art keywords": inspection, probe, value, path, characteristic — i.e., the examiner/algorithm characterized the invention as the intersection of these five concepts, which is itself an admission of how crowded this space was.

Cited references retrieved (11 of 16):

(Source: the Citations table rendered on US10495454B2 /en#6.) Five further references remain unidentified in my retrieval.

Highly material supplementary art located during research (not necessarily on the face of the '454):

• EP 0 165 761 A3 (Westinghouse, 1985) — "Method and apparatus for displaying eddy current detector data." Derives in-phase and quadrature components and the detector location with respect to the test body for each derived phase component, then plots phase components against detector location as strip charts, plus Lissajous figures for a "designated region." (PDF, ESR)
• EP 0 536 333 A1 / WO 92/00520 — "Eddy current imaging system." Calculates a C-scan of a spatial derivative and "calculat[es] an impedance plane trajectory from the data array of path points." (EPO GPI)
• JP 4084755 B2 / JP 2005-201779 A — Eddy-current flaw detector with a roller + encoder coupled to the probe; movement distance from switch-on is plotted on the horizontal axis against the phase-filtered/amplitude-filtered signal voltage, with a threshold filter identifying flaws. (JP4084755B2, JP2005201779A)
• US 5,334,934 — Eddy-current data acquisition in which in-phase/out-of-phase components are plotted and normalized across probes against scan position, with reference-crack calibration. (PDF)
• US 2016/0146759 A1 — Eddy-current display art addressing the "backwards 6" figure and Lissajous/impedance-plane presentation. (PDF)
• NRC/AEC NDT handbook tube-scanning chapter: data acquired at "one point (X,Y) of data … for every 0.4 mm of probe travel," displayed on an impedance display, with "blind regions," feature/stepping positions, and "automatic stepping upon threshold detection."

3. Element mapping against claim 9 (and inferentially claim 1)

4. Proposed § 103 combinations and the motivation to combine

Combination A — Primary: EP 0 165 761 A3 in view of JP 4084755 B2, optionally with US 5,334,934

EP 0165761 already teaches deriving eddy-current phase components and the detector's location for each component and plotting the components against location — i.e., an inspection path along a probe-travel axis. JP 4084755 supplies the encoder-roller position tracker, the horizontal distance axis, and a threshold that separates flaw from non-flaw. US 5,334,934 supplies position-indexed data referenced/normalized to a known-good standard. The motivation is that all three solve the same problem (spatially locating an eddy-current indication and deciding whether it is a defect) in the same field (G01N 27/90), and each contributes a known, discrete improvement: EP 0165761 the location-indexed display, JP 4084755 the low-cost encoder + threshold, US 5,334,934 the reference baseline. KSR teaches this is obvious: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

Combination B — Primary: WO 1999/041600 A1 in view of US 2012/0303333 A1 and US 2010/0235037 A1

WO 1999/041600 A1 (non-destructive inspection of large-area aircraft structures) supplies the position-tracked, spatially-registered NDT inspection architecture central to the claims. US 2012/0303333 A1 (GE, same assignee as the '454) supplies displaying inspection results of an NDT probe relative to reference data. US 2010/0235037 A1 (Boeing) supplies associating probe position data with a rendering of the inspected structure. All three are in the same field and are cited on the face of the '454 — a strong signal that the examiner already considered them the closest art. Combining a position-tracked inspection system with a reference-comparison graphical output is the predictable use of a known technique to improve a known device.

Combination C — Primary: EP 0 536 333 A1 in view of US 2012/0297881 A1

EP 0536333 discloses reconstructing an "impedance plane trajectory from the data array of path points," which is functionally the claimed "inspection path." US 2012/0297881 A1 (GE) supplies the multi-axis/gain-interval graphical presentation of a probe signal. Combining them to render the impedance trajectory as a path extending along the probe-travel axis is a mere rearrangement of known graphical information.

Combination D — claim 15/16-specific: US 8,036,836 B2 in view of JP 4084755 B2

US 8036836 discloses comparing structural-health-monitoring sensor data against a baseline and compensating/flagging deviations; JP 4084755 discloses a user-set amplitude/phase threshold producing a flaw determination. A POSITA would combine these to set a maximum-deviation threshold between an inspection curve and a reference curve, because both address the identical problem of distinguishing meaningful deviation from baseline/noise.

Combination E — the "conventional gating" admission

The '454 specification itself concedes that the prior art used alarm gates set around peaks and valleys of a reference part's signal. That is a threshold-on-a-reference teaching. Adding position tracking (universally used in NDT scanners, as the handbook's 0.4-mm sampling shows) and graphing the value against position is a predictable improvement over gating — and KSR explicitly endorses combinations of familiar elements yielding predictable results.

Cross-cutting motivations common to all combinations: (1) same field of endeavor and same classification (G01N 27/90, G01N 29/06); (2) the finite, identified, and predictable set of graphical presentation options (impedance plane, strip chart, B-scan, Lissajous) already in use; (3) a recognized need to make small/intricate-region results "spatially intuitive"; (4) no reference teaches away; (5) all references are analogous art.

5. Strongest counterarguments (non-obviousness)

I would be doing the client a disservice not to present these:

1. No single reference appears to disclose the reference path + inspection path overlay forming rungs, with a user-set maximum-deviation setting calibrated against measured noise rungs. That specific combination (FIGS. 14–15) is the '454's most defensible feature. The obviousness case for claims 15/16 (threshold + pass/fail) is stronger than for claims 1/9 as a whole.
2. EP 3 353 539 B1 — the European counterpart — was granted, meaning the EPO's problem-and-solution analysis found an inventive step. This is not binding on a US § 103 analysis (the EPO permits a different "closest prior art" selection and does not apply KSR), but it is a data point.
3. The examiner allowed the '454 family with the above 16 references of record, suggesting the art of record did not disclose the combination. New art not on the face of the patent (EP 0165761, EP 0536333, JP 4084755, US 5,334,934) is where a § 103 challenge is most likely to succeed. Note that EP 0165761 (1985) and US 5,334,934 predate the '454 by three decades, are in the identical field, and were apparently never before the examiner.
4. The asserted advantages (a)–(f) are efficiency/visualization benefits; absent evidence of a nexus to the claimed combination and of unexpected results, they carry limited weight.

6. Confidence and caveats

• High confidence in the effective priority date (2015-09-25), the continuation chain, and the substance of claim 9 / claims 10–18 as quoted.
• Moderate confidence in the element mappings for EP 0165761, JP 4084755, and US 5,334.934, which I reviewed only through abstracts/excerpts returned by search, not full documents.
• Low confidence / unverified for WO 1999/041600 A1, US 2006/0048578 A1, US 2012/0303333 A1, US 2014/0178853 A1, and US 2010/0235037 A1 — I have titles, dates, and assignees from the Citations table only, and my mapping of them is inferential.
• I could not identify 5 of the 16 cited references; a complete § 103 opinion requires the full citation table plus full-text review of each reference and of claims 1–8.
• I found no evidence the '454 has been litigated or subjected to an IPR; the earlier section's conclusion that no litigation exists stands.

Bottom line: the broad independent claims appear vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built on long-predating, same-field eddy-current display art (EP 0 165 761 A3, JP 4084755 B2, EP 0 536 333 A1, US 5,334,934) combined with the position-tracked NDT architecture already of record (WO 1999/041600 A1, US 2010/0235037 A1, US 2012/0303333 A1). The specific "noise-calibrated maximum deviation setting producing pass/fail on a reference-vs-inspection ladder" features of claims 15–16 are the most likely to survive, and the defense should be built there.