US 10551214

I'll search for this specific patent and any related litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation or court dockets involving this patent.

US Patent 10,551,214 — Analyst Summary

Source of record: Google Patents full text, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10551214](/patent/US10551214)/en (fetched 2026-09-24). No authoritative USPTO PatentCenter or CAFC docket record for this patent was retrievable in my searches; see "Litigation / CAFC 2026 check" below for caveats.

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Bibliographic data

A note on the inventor names: the record as fetched lists the fourth name as "Tuma Tomas," which appears to be given-name/surname transposed. Consistent with the strict no-auto-correction rule, I am reporting it literally rather than silently reordering it. No independent confirmation of the correct order was obtainable.

Abstract (verbatim)

A sensor arrangement for position sensing comprises a row of multiple magnetoresistive elements. A magnetic field source (3) provides a magnetic field with a first magnetic pole (N) and a second magnetic pole (S). The magnetic field source (3) is arranged such that magnetoresistive elements of the row face one of: the first magnetic pole (N) or second magnetic pole (S). The first magnetoresistive element is arranged in the magnetic field and provides a first output signal dependent on a position of the magnetoresistive element relative to the magnetic field source (3). A measurement unit is configured to determine a position of the magnetic field source (3) relative to the magnetoresistive elements of the row dependent on the first output signals of the magnetoresistive elements.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has two independent claims: claim 1 (apparatus) and claim 11 (method). Claims 2–10 depend from claim 1; claims 12–19 depend from claim 11 (with one apparent mis-dependency, noted below).

Claim 1 — Sensor arrangement (apparatus). A position-sensing sensor made of:

• a magnetic field source having a North pole and a South pole;
• multiple magnetoresistive (MR) elements arranged in a row along a longitudinal axis (X), where each element has a depth extending along a transverse axis (Y), each element in the row is separated by a gap, and — the characterizing limitation — the elements of the row differ in their arrangement along the vertical axis (Z), so that the elements facing the North pole are offset from one another along Z (i.e., a "height-profiled" row); and
• a measurement unit.

The row sits in the magnetic field and each element produces an output signal that depends on its position relative to the field source. The measurement unit determines the position of the magnetic field source relative to the row from those output signals.

The vertical-offset ("height profile") requirement is what distinguishes this continuation claim set from the earlier family members — it is the point of novelty here rather than the dual-pole arrangement or the row itself.

Claim 11 — Method for determining position of an object. A method comprising:

• coupling either the magnetic field source (with N and S poles) or the row of multiple MR elements to the object to be tracked;
• the MR elements being arranged in a row along X, each with a depth along Y, separated by a gap along X, and differing in arrangement along Z such that elements of the row facing the North pole are offset from one another along Z;
• arranging the magnetic field source so its North pole faces the row, forming the sensor arrangement;
• receiving at a measurement unit an output signal from each MR element in the row, depending on its position relative to the field source; and
• determining the object's position from those received output signals.

Dependent-claim themes (for context)

• Claim 2: defines the layer stack (conductive layer between two magnetic layers, longitudinal extension L, transverse Y) and the dipole axis DA along Z, orthogonal to the X–Y plane.
• Claim 3: field source movable along X; measurement unit computes a difference between the output signals to get the X position.
• Claim 4: an additional row of MR elements facing the South pole (mirror row).
• Claims 5–7: magnet dimensioned so the field illuminates either a single element at a time (W < L) or multiple adjacent elements (W > L).
• Claims 8–9: read-out variants — subtracting adjacent signals with unpinned layers (claim 8); height-profiled row with middle element closest to the source and outer elements farthest (claim 9).
• Claim 10: one of the row or the source is coupled to the object being sensed.

Apparent drafting anomaly (flagged, not corrected)

Claim 16 opens with "The method as claimed in claim 1," which is an apparatus claim — apparently a mis-dependency (likely intended to be claim 11/12). I am reporting the text literally and not repairing it. Claim 19 is the other method-side dependent of note (height-profiled row in method form).

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

• I searched for court, litigation, and CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to 10551214 / 10,551,214. No matching district-court complaint, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal was returned.
• The only hits for the string "10551214" outside the patent itself were (a) an IBM inventor patent-listing page (patentleaderboard.com) and (b) an unrelated US Patent 7,253,536 whose application number happens to be 10/551,214 — a different identifier entirely and not to be conflated with US 10,551,214. I did not auto-correct or merge these.
• The CAFC/PTAB materials surfaced in the searches (e.g., 2026 PTAB institution notices and the May 2026 Federal Circuit Patent Watch) concern unrelated patents and do not name this patent.

Uncertainty statement: I could not access PACER, USPTO PatentCenter, or an authoritative CAFC docket index directly, so I cannot affirmatively certify the absence of litigation or an appeal — only that none appeared in my searches. Treat "no litigation found" as a search limitation, not a verified negative. The bibliographic data above is grounded in the Google Patents record provided and is reliable; the inventor-name ordering and the claim-16 dependency are the two items I would verify against the USPTO PatentCenter grant copy before relying on them.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10551214 across patent litigation databases.

Those results are unrelated. Let me search the specific litigation databases.

Let me try additional targeted searches for this specific patent and its family.

Litigation Search Results — US Patent No. 10551214

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent No. 10551214 was found in the sources searched. I could not locate any district court, ITC, PTAB, or Federal Circuit proceeding asserting or challenging this specific patent.

What I searched (and what came back)

I searched patent-litigation aggregators and free docket sources — Unified Patents' litigation/portal content, CourtListener/Free Law Project (RECAP), and general web queries using the exact identifiers 10551214, 10,551,214, and the title "Sensor arrangement for position sensing."

• Queries combining 10551214 with "litigation," "lawsuit," "infringement," or "courtlistener" returned no matching cases. The hits were either unrelated patents (e.g., patents numbered 9,253,239, 10,311,073, 8,605,794) or non-patent documents containing the digit string (e.g., an Arizona SB 1055 legislative amendment stamp).
• A query for the exact title + "IBM patent lawsuit" similarly surfaced no case tied to this patent.

⚠️ Caveat on search confidence: My search access was cut off by a step limit before I could exhaustively query PACER-centric and paywalled databases (Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, Unified's full case list). The absence of results is therefore reasonably strong but not conclusive. A definitive negative would require a direct PACER/RECAP docket search by patent number and a Lex Machina/Docket Navigator "patents asserted" lookup.

Relevant context (not litigation, but material)

Per the authoritative patent record you provided:

• Patent: US 10551214 B2, "Sensor arrangement for position sensing"
• Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
• App. No.: 15/854,957 (filed 2017-12-27); granted 2020-02-04
• Priority date: 2015-03-12
• Family: Continuation of US 14/825,737 (now US9945693B2) and related to US 14/645,559 (US9759578B2); foreign family members include GB2552266B, DE112016000720B4, CN107429982B, and JP2018513355A
• Status: Expired – Fee Related. Legal events show the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2024-03-11, with the lapse effective 2024-02-04 (under 37 CFR 1.362). Anticipated expiration had been 2035-03-12.

This posture (IBM-owned, allowed to lapse for non-payment) is consistent with there being no enforcement litigation — IBM is not a frequent assertion plaintiff against this class of sensor patent, and a lapsed patent cannot be enforced going forward. Related IBM patents (e.g., GB2532787A) appear in the citing/cited references, but that is prior-art/document citation activity, not litigation.

Recommendation

If you need a litigation-grade negative clearance, run:

1. RECAP/CourtListener and PACER docket searches on the exact patent number (search "patent" field, all district courts).
2. Lex Machina or Docket Navigator "Patent → Cases" lookup for 10551214.
3. PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) and ITC EDIS (Section 337) searches by patent number.
4. The family members (9945693, 9759578, and the GB/DE/CN/JP counterparts), in case a case is indexed under a sibling patent.

If you'd like, I can draft the precise search strings to use in each of those systems.

I'll verify the structured PTAB data against live sources before drafting the analysis.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US Patent 10,551,214 ("Sensor arrangement for position sensing")

Sourcing note: The canonical proceedings list for this analysis is the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in my instructions (USPTO Open Data Portal). I supplemented it with live web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM references to this patent number, its family members, and its assignee. No proceeding surfaced in either source.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,551,214: 0. Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied.

The bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on — neither as a shield nor as a roadmap. No claim of this patent has been canceled, so you cannot say "the asserted claims are already dead." Equally, no claim has been tested at the Board, so the patent carries no PTAB-hardened presumption and no petitioner-side estoppel has been created for anyone. A defendant facing assertion of the '214 patent is starting from a blank AIA slate: every § 102/§ 103 ground is still available, subject only to the ordinary § 315(b) one-year timing bar and the patent's now-expired term (see below).

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(No per-proceeding sections — there is nothing to report. Per the constraints, I am not inventing proceeding numbers to fill this space.)

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Strategic summary

Claim status across US 10,551,214: all 19 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claims 1–10 (apparatus, independent claim 1) and claims 11–19 (method, independent claim 11) stand exactly as granted on 2020-02-04. No independent claim has been canceled, no dependent claim has been held unpatentable, and no claim has been held patentable over art in an instituted trial. For a defendant, "UNTESTED" cuts both ways: you get first-mover advantage at the Board (no adverse FWD, no panel's claim constructions to argue around), but you also get no free kill and must fund the entire challenge yourself.

The most important fact about this patent is not a PTAB fact at all — it is that the patent is dead for failure to pay maintenance fees. Per the bibliographic record, the lapse was recorded 2024-03-11 with an effective date of 2024-02-04, and the anticipated expiration listed is 2035-03-12. A defendant asserted against today (2026-09-29) should raise this immediately: an expired-for-nonpayment patent cannot support prospective injunctive relief, and damages exposure is limited to pre-lapse infringement plus any recoverable back maintenance fees under 35 U.S.C. § 41(c). Before spending six figures on an IPR, a defendant should confirm whether the patent has been revived by petition (37 C.F.R. § 1.378) — an unpaid-fee lapse is curable for unavoidable or unintentional delay, and a revived patent restores enforceability for the unexpired term. This is the single highest-value check available, and it is cheaper than a petition.

Estoppel landscape: none exists yet. Because no IPR or PGR resulted in a final written decision, § 315(e)(1)/(2) estoppel has never attached against any party. No petitioner is barred, no privy is barred, and there is no defensive-aggregator chain (no Unified Patents, no LOT-network-initiated challenge surfaced). Practically, this means a defendant retains the full universe of prior-art defenses: anything in the 37-reference citation list, anything cited by the examiner, and anything the applicant did not have before it. The family's own earlier patents — US 9,759,578, US 9,945,693, US 9,575,142, US 10,480,958, and US 9,964,419 — are obvious candidate § 102 prior art (all share the 2015-03-12 priority date and the same specification), as is the published sibling application US 2018/0120129 A1. The continuation genealogy here is dense enough that § 112 written-description and § 102(b) self-collision theories deserve a hard look.

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Recommended next steps

1. First, verify the fee lapse — it may end the case. Check USPTO PatentCenter / the fee record for US 10,551,214 to confirm whether the lapse is final or whether a § 1.378 petition for revival has been granted. If the patent is expired and not revived, say so in your first responsive pleading and move to dismiss any injunctive demand. If it has been revived, the revival date and the pre-lapse damages window become the central damages issue.

2. If the patent is live, the IPR door is wide open. No prior petition exists, so no § 315(e) estoppel and no § 325(d) "same art already considered" problem beyond whatever the examiner actually cited. Note the timing bar: under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b), if you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement, the petition must be filed within one year of service.

3. If you need a FWD to point to, you will have to create it. There is no disposition to quote — no IPR2020-xxxxx, no PGR2018-xxxxx, no CBM. Anything claiming otherwise would be fabricated. If a demand letter from a would-be plaintiff cites this patent's claims as "PTAB-confirmed," that representation is false: no AIA tribunal has ever reviewed a single claim of US 10,551,214.

4. Two identifier traps to avoid in your own docketing:

   • US Application 10/551,214 is not US Patent 10,551,214. The former is a different, unrelated filing; do not merge the two in any prior-art or family analysis.
   • A separate, unrelated patent referred to in recent PTAB filings as the "'214 patent" (a 3D NAND memory patent, challenged in a Micron-related IPR, with a term of roughly 11 years) is not this patent. It shares only a three-digit suffix. Do not import its institution or FWD any more than you would import another patent's.

5. Be candid about the search limitation. The ODP block shows zero proceedings, and my independent web searches returned zero as well. But I could not reach PTAB E2E or a PTAB-endorsed docket index directly during this run, so treat "no PTAB activity" as a strong, corroborated finding rather than a certified negative. For a filing-grade confirmation, pull the PTAB E2E record for US 10,551,214 directly (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and re-run the family check across the five sibling patents listed above — a challenge to a sibling is not a challenge to this patent, but it is a meaningful signal about how the family is being tested.

Bottom line for the defendant: no PTAB proceeding exists on this patent, so there is nothing for a plaintiff to wave and nothing for you to inherit. Your leverage is (a) the apparent maintenance-fee lapse, and (b) an untouched claim set that no petitioner has yet attacked.

I'll research the assignment record and cross-reference sources for this patent.

Let me dig deeper into the assignment record and any assertion history.

I hit the research-step limit, but I retrieved enough to reconstruct the chain and characterize it. Note the key limitation up front: only one assignment event is recorded against US 10,551,214 in the Google Patents legal-events record — the original inventor→IBM assignment at reel 044489/0194. No post-issuance assignments exist. I could not retrieve the reel 044489/0194 PDF itself (the legacy-assignments hit I got was frame 0359 of the same reel, an unrelated Japanese film-forming assignment, confirming reel 044489 is a December-2017 IBM batch reel). I flag the correspondent field as not captured rather than guess it.

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Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,551,214

Inventors

All four are named assignors to IBM on reel 044489/0194, and the family siblings (e.g., US 9,575,142, app 14/918,873) carry assignments naming Pantazi, Sebastian, and Tuma at reel 040985/0208. The inventor set is a coherent IBM Research – Zurich nanoscale-science group, consistent with the patent's stated application areas (scanning probe microscopy, nanoscale position sensing).

Pattern note: I could not determine departure dates for any inventor, so I cannot confirm or rule out the "all inventors left within 12 months" fire-sale precursor. That pattern is unclear / not determined here. No evidence of it surfaced.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) — New York corporation, Armonk, NY; named original and current assignee. IBM is an operating company (hybrid cloud, AI, software, hardware, consulting), currently operating and solvent — not in bankruptcy, not acquired, not dissolved. On the "ships a product embodying the claims" question: this patent describes a research-stage nanoscale magnetoresistive position sensor ("resolution of less than ~200 pm over 100 kHz"). I found no evidence IBM commercialized a product embodying these claims — it appears to be a portfolio/research patent, not a product patent. IBM is a prolific patent plaintiff in its own right (e.g., IBM v. Zynga, IBM v. Carvana; and as a defendant in VirtaMove v. IBM), but that is operating-company assertion, not the patent at issue here. This patent is not among IBM's asserted patents that I surfaced.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment. Presented literally:

• 2015-03-04 (recorded effective/execution date) / recorded 2017-12-27 — Reel 044489/0194
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: HAEBERLE, Walter; PANTAZI, Angeliki; SEBASTIAN, Abu; and others (record reads "AND OTHERS," i.e., Tuma)
  • Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, New York
  • Correspondent: not captured in retrievable sources — flagged, not fabricated
  • Context: original inventor-to-employer assignment. Note the recorded effective date (2015-03-04) precedes the 2015-03-12 priority date by 8 days — the short-form inventor assignment executed just before the priority filing, then carried forward and re-recorded when the continuation (15/854,957) was filed on 2017-12-27.

No other recorded assignments. No change-of-name, no security agreement, no merger, no license, no release, no transfer to any third party. The chain begins and ends at IBM.

Family cross-reference (same sensor family, adjacent sibling — not this patent's reel):

• US 9,575,142 (app 14/918,873; priority 2014-11-28) — IBM assignment at reel 040985/0208, assignors PANTAZI, SEBASTIAN, TUMA. Same IBM Research – Zurich group; recorded 2016. (Distinct priority family, included only to show the assignment pattern, not a link in this patent's chain.)
• US 9,945,693 (14/825,737) and US 9,759,578 (14/645,559) — same 2015-03-12 family; the '214 is a continuation of the '693.

Post-issuance status (not an assignment, but ownership-relevant): The patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees — lapse effective 2024-02-04, recorded 2024-03-11 (USPTO codes LAPS / STCH; FP effective date 2024-02-04). Status: Expired – Fee Related. (RPX Insight still shows "Active Grant," which is stale relative to the USPTO lapse.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10551214
    2015 : Inventors execute assignment to IBM
         : Priority application filed
    2017 : Continuation filed
         : Assignment recorded reel 044489 0194
    2020 : Patent issued to IBM
    2024 : Patent lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — the record contains only the original assignment (reel 044489/0194: Haeberle, Pantazi, Sebastian, Tuma → IBM, recorded 2017-12-27), with no post-issuance transfers of any kind. Under the task's own rubric, "only the original assignment" resolves to insufficient data rather than an NPE finding. Practically, every NPE signal is absent: the patent never left IBM, IBM is an operating (non-NPE) assignee, and the asset simply expired for failure to pay maintenance fees (lapse effective 2024-02-04). This is the profile of an unmonetized operating-company research patent, not a troll chain.

Verification link: search patent number 10551214 at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (equivalently https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). The single reel/frame to pull is 044489/0194; confirm the correspondent field there, which I could not retrieve.

Caveats: (1) I could not directly query USPTO Assignment Center or PatentCenter, so this rests on the Google Patents legal-events record plus indexed assignment-document hits; treat the absence of further assignments as a well-supported but not court-certified negative. (2) Reel 044489/0194's correspondent is unreported — do not treat that as "none of record." (3) The inventor name "Tuma Tomas" and the recorded date "2015-03-04" preceding the 2015-03-12 priority date are reported literally, per the no-auto-correction rule; both merit a PatentCenter check against the grant copy.

I'll search for the patent's prior-art citations and details on the most relevant references.

Let me gather details on the most technically relevant cited references.

Let me verify a few more of the cited references' substance.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,551,214 B2

Task date: April 26, 2026. (Note: the session system date shows 2026-09-29; I flag this minor inconsistency rather than silently picking one. All findings below reflect the record as fetched.)

A. Scope and source caveat

I was not able to query the USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Full-Text (PatFT) "References Cited" face page directly in this session. The authoritative prior-art list I am analyzing is the citation set reproduced in the Google Patents record for US 10,551,214 B2, which I treat as the operative record per the governing instruction to prefer the fetched document. That record presents the references in two closely related lists — "Citations (37)" and "Patent Citations (39)" — the second including two US counterparts (US 6,509,888 B1 and US 7,382,122 B2) that map to two of the CN/JP family entries in the first list. I treat these as one citation family and note the count difference rather than treating 37 and 39 as contradictory.

Entries marked with an asterisk ( * ) in the Google Patents record are flagged there as "cited by examiner"; unmarked entries are listed without that designation. I report this literally and do not infer that unmarked entries were applicant-only submissions.

Legal framing. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference to disclose every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. "Potentially anticipates" below means the reference comes closest on the identified claim elements; it is not a conclusion of invalidity. Where a reference discloses only some elements, I say so.

Key structural fact driving the whole analysis: Claim 1 and claim 11 both require a row of multiple MR elements spaced by gaps along X, with the elements offset from one another along the vertical axis Z (height-profiled). That height-offset-within-a-gapped-row limitation is the distinguishing element introduced in this continuation. No reference in the cited set appears to disclose it. That materially limits § 102 exposure on the independent claims.

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B. Most relevant cited references (detailed)

1. GB 2508375 A — IBM (the closest "same-family-lineage" art)

• Full citation: GB 2508375 A, "A position sensor comprising a magnetoresistive element," applicant IBM.
• Dates: priority/filed 2012-11-29; published 2014-06-04.
• Description: A single MR element (stack with conductive layer (112) between magnetic layers (111, 113)) plus a magnet whose dipole axis DA is orthogonal to the X–Y plane of the layers; resistance depends on magnet position along X. This is the direct doctrinal and textual ancestor of the present patent's "orthogonal dipole axis" teaching.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially anticipates claim 2 (layer stack + orthogonal dipole axis DA along Z) and the corresponding method element in claim 12. It does not disclose the row of multiple elements, the gaps, or the Z-offset, so it cannot anticipate claim 1 or claim 11.

2. US 2010/0085041 A1 (= US 8,026,715 B2) — Pozidis, IBM

• Full citation: US 2010/0085041 A1 / US 8,026,715 B2, "Magneto-resistance based nano-scale position sensor," Charalamois Pozidis (IBM).
• Dates: filed 2008-10-03; published 2010-04-08 (patent issued 2011-09-27 per the document).
• Description: A magnet plus a first and a second MR sensor (AMR/GMR/TMR family) sensing a stray magnetic field; the two sensors are configured in a differential read-out (V+Δx − V−Δx) so that the difference yields the positional change; sensors have a gap (210) between them aligned with the direction of motion; either the magnet or the sensor pair is fixed to the moving platform.
• § 102 relevance: This is the strongest cited reference against the row + gap + multiple-MR + differential computation concepts. It potentially anticipates:
  • claim 3 — "row … along X … determine position along X by computing a difference between the output signals" (the reference's subtraction of two sensor signals is squarely on point);
  • claim 8 — subtracting output signals of adjacent MR elements (assuming unpinned layers);
  • claim 10 / method claim 11's coupling element — one of magnet or sensors coupled to the object.
  • It does not disclose the vertical (Z) offset of elements within the row, so it does not anticipate claim 1, 9, or 19.

3. US 2015/0050013 A1 (= US 9,042,716 B2) — Allegro MicroSystems

• Full citation: US 2015/0050013 A1 / US 9,042,716 B2, "Method and apparatus for determining linear position using multiple magnetic field sensors," Allegro MicroSystems, LLC.
• Dates: filed 2013-08-15; published 2015-02-19 (patent 2015-05-26).
• Description: Multiple magnetic field sensors (expressly may be "a magnetoresistive (MR) sensor") held in fixed relation and separated by a fixed distance Δx, in moving relation to a magnet; position of the magnet is computed from the readings of first and second sensors plus Δx. A third sensor may be centered between the first two to estimate the field spatial frequency.
• § 102 relevance: Potentially anticipates claim 3 (multiple elements in fixed spaced relation; computation from their signals) and is highly relevant to claims 5–7 (the "which elements are illuminated" / spacing concept) and to the general "row of multiple magnetoresistive elements" element of claim 1. Again, the sensors are described as coplanar — no Z-offset, so claim 1 / 9 / 19 are not anticipated.

4. US 5,570,015 A — Mitsubishi Denki (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 5,570,015 A, "Linear positional displacement detector for detecting linear displacement of a permanent magnet as a change in direction of magnetic sensor unit."
• Dates: filed 1992-02-05 (CIP of 08/013,086, 1993-02-03); issued 1996-10-29.
• Description: Elongated permanent magnet movable along its longitudinal axis over a ferromagnetic magnetoresistance element sensing surface; displacement detected as a change in direction of magnetic flux crossing the sensing surface; the magnet pole face and MR sensing surfaces are in parallel facing relationship and mutually slanted relative to the direction of movement to extend the linear range.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to claim 2 (MR element geometry/orientation) and to the linear-sensing-range motivation underlying claims 5–7 and claim 9. The slanted-magnet "shape the field to extend linear range" teaching is conceptually adjacent to the height-profiled concept of claim 9 — but it is the magnet that is slanted, not the row of elements offset in Z. I do not consider it anticipatory of claim 9.

5. US 4,471,304 A — Festo (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 4,471,304 A, "Fluid-powered actuator having a cylinder with magnetic field detectors thereon and a magnetized piston rod."
• Dates: filed 1979-11-14; issued 1984-09-11.
• Description: Cylinder with an array/plurality of magnetic field detectors along the cylinder and a magnetized piston rod moving relative to them — i.e., a linear array of field detectors distributed along the travel axis for position detection.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant background to the "row of multiple field-sensing elements along X" concept of claim 1 and to claim 6 (identifying which element of the row registers a change). It uses magnetic field detectors generally, not MR elements, and has no Z-offset.

6. US 5,608,317 A — Hughes Electronics (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 5,608,317 A, "Complementary linear magnetic position sensor."
• Dates: filed 1994-06-21; issued 1997-03-04.
• Description: Complementary linear magnetic position sensor using a pair of magnetic sensing elements with a complementary/relative output relationship for linear position.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to claim 3 and claim 8 (two-element / difference-based read-out). Not anticipatory of the independent claims.

7. US 2009/0045807 A1 — Asahi Kasei EMD (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 2009/0045807 A1, "Position detection apparatus."
• Dates: filed (priority) 2005-12-16; published 2009-02-19.
• Description: Position detection apparatus using magnetic sensing elements. (Verify full text against the face copy — see caveat.)
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to the general position-detection-with-magnetic-sensing-element element.

8. US 2008/0303515 A1 — Wolf, Ronald J. (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 2008/0303515 A1, "Position sensor."
• Dates: filed 2007-06-05; published 2008-12-11.
• Description: Position sensor (field/magnet based) — general.
• § 102 relevance: Background only; no MR row / Z-offset teaching.

9. US 2013/0066587 A1 — Honeywell (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 2013/0066587 A1, "Wireless magnetic position sensor."
• Dates: filed (priority) 2011-09-08; published 2013-03-14.
• Description: Magnetic position sensor with wireless output.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant only to the peripheral "transmit its result wire bound or wireless to an evaluation unit" remark in the specification; nothing bearing on claim 1.

10. US 2010/0289484 A1 — Coactive Technologies (examiner-cited)

• Full citation: US 2010/0289484 A1, "Multi-position switch having dual output hall device."
• Dates: filed (priority) 2009-05-14; published 2010-11-18.
• Description: Multi-position switch with dual Hall output devices.
• § 102 relevance: Relevant to the dual-sensor / dual-output aspect (claim 3-type differencing), but Hall-based and not row/Z-offset.

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C. Complete cited-reference table (all entries)

Also cited (family-level cites, 4): US 4,866,854 A (Draper Laboratory, "Multiple axis displacement sensor," 1986-12-05/1989-09-19); JP H10-160747 A (Oki Electric, impact sensor, 1996-12-03/1998-06-19); DE 10 2005 059 551 A1 (Siemens, 2005-12-13/2007-06-14); DE 10 2010 034 482 A1 (Carl Zeiss Industrielle Messtechnik, 2010-08-10/2012-04-19 — "sensor arrangement and method for determining a spatial position of a first part relative to a second part"). The DE 10 2010 034 482 A1 reference is worth a look on claim 10-type relative-position determination.

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D. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

None of the 37/39 cited references appears to anticipate independent claim 1 or independent claim 11. Each of claims 1 and 11 requires, as a single combined limitation, (i) a row of multiple magnetoresistive elements, (ii) a gap between each element, and (iii) elements offset from one another along the vertical axis Z. The cited set supplies (i) and (ii) in several references (Pozidis US 8,026,715; Allegro US 9,042,716; Festo US 4,471,304), but I found no cited reference that discloses element-to-element offsetting in Z — the height-profile limitation that distinguishes this continuation. On the record available, the independent claims are not anticipated by any cited reference.

The realistic § 102 exposure is concentrated in the dependent claims, principally:

• Claims 2 / 12 → GB 2508375 A (IBM) is the closest fit (MR stack + orthogonal dipole axis).
• Claims 3 / 8 / 13 / 17 → US 8,026,715 (Pozidis) and US 9,042,716 (Allegro); also US 5,608,317 and US 2005/0127900.
• Claims 4 / 14 → the dual-pole/mirrored-row idea; no cited reference squarely maps, but Pozidis's dual-sensor differential arrangement is the nearest analogue.
• Claims 5–7 / 16 → US 4,471,304 (detector array along travel axis) and US 9,042,716 (fixed sensor spacing).
• Claims 9 / 19 (height profile) → no anticipatory reference found in the cited set; the closest conceptual neighbours (US 5,570,015's slanted magnet; US 9,042,716's centered third sensor) are not anticipatory as claimed.

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E. Verification caveats (must-read)

1. I did not read the full text of every cited reference in this session. Descriptions for the lower-relevance foreign references (#1, #2, #5, #9, #10, #15, #29, #32, #37–39) and for #20 (US 2009/0045807 A1) are drawn from titles/abstracts and general knowledge; several should be pulled in full from the USPTO/Espacenet face copy before any § 102 position is asserted.
2. The examiner-vs-third-party "cited by" designations are as shown in the Google Patents record; I could not confirm them against the USPTO "References Cited" face page, which is the controlling source.
3. Reference #31 (US 2014/0050013 A1, Panasonic, "Nonvolatile memory element…") appears to be an unrelated/mis-catalogued citation (an apparent artifact of the patent number being close to Allegro's US 2015/0050013 A1). Per the strict no-auto-correction rule, I report it literally and flag the likely coincidence rather than renumbering it.
4. Contradiction flag vs. the earlier section: that section noted the identity/name issue ("Tuma Tomas") and the claim-16 mis-dependency — both stand. It also stated no litigation was found; that conclusion is unaffected here, and this prior-art analysis does not draw on any litigation record.
5. Section 102 exposure is assessed against the issued claims as literally worded, including the noted claim-language anomalies (e.g., claim 6/16's references to a "single first magnetoresistive element" in apparatus/method claims that recite a row and, for claim 16, a mis-dependency on claim 1). Those drafting defects can themselves create § 112 issues that a validity challenge would likely raise alongside any § 102 argument — but that is outside the scope of this prior-art task.

I'll verify a few key references and look for art that may bear on the height-profiling limitation before drafting the § 103 analysis.

I have good material on the key references. Let me run a couple more targeted searches on the crux limitation — non-coplanar/height-offset sensor rows — before drafting.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,551,214 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Task date note: the prompt states April 26, 2026; the session system date is 2026-09-29. The prior-art section already flagged this discrepancy; I echo it rather than silently choosing one. Nothing in the analysis turns on the difference.

Basis of record: the citation set and descriptions from the Prior Art section of this page, plus supplemental live searches run for this task (Allegro US 9,042,716; Pozidis US 8,026,715; Mitsubishi US 5,570,015; and a Honeywell application note on MR linear position sensing). Where I rely on a reference's substance, I name it and, where possible, link it. Where I could not verify something, I say so.

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0. Bottom line up front

1. Claims 1 and 11 (the independents) are the whole ballgame. Every other claim rises or falls with them. Their point of novelty is a row of gapped MR elements that are offset from one another along the vertical axis Z ("height-profiled"). No reference in the cited set discloses that limitation, so a § 103 case on claim 1/11 must be built from a combination — a primary reference supplying the gapped MR row plus a secondary reference supplying the field-following/Z-offset concept — and must lean on KSR-style motivation, not on a printed "suggestion to combine."
2. A workable § 103 combination exists and is reasonably strong for claims 1–3, 7–13, 15, 17, 18. It does not depend on any reference teaching the exact FIG. 14 geometry; it depends on showing the Z-offset was a predictable design variant the art was already driving toward.
3. Claims 4, 9, 14 and 19 (the mirror-row and height-profile claims) are the hardest and the most exposed to a "no explicit disclosure of the claimed offset pattern" rebuttal. They are obvious on the same rationale but with weaker documentary support.
4. Contradiction flag (see §7): the earlier Prior Art section suggested the family's own sibling patents (US 9,759,578, US 9,945,693, US 9,575,142, US 10,480,958, US 9,964,419) are "obvious candidate § 102 prior art." I believe that is wrong for the § 102(a)(2)/(b)(2)(C) reasons set out in §7, and it matters here because § 103 borrows the § 102 prior-art universe. I flag it rather than propagate it.

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1. Legal frame and the prior-art universe

• § 103 asks whether the claimed subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art ("PHOSITA") at the effective filing date, given the art, the level of skill, and any objective indicia (Graham factors).
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) governs the motivation inquiry: a combination may be obvious where the improvement is a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions, where there is a design incentive, or where the art presents a finite number of identified, predictable solutions ("obvious to try"). No express teaching, suggestion, or motivation is required.
• MPEP § 2143 catalogues the acceptable rationales I rely on below: (A) combining prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try"; (F) design incentives and other market forces; (G) a teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the art.
• Combination ≠ bodily incorporation (In re Keller): the test is what the combined teachings would have suggested, not whether one reference physically incorporates another.

Effective filing date / prior-art universe. The '214 is a continuation of US 14/825,737, which claims priority to US 14/645,559, filed 2015-03-12. Assuming the claims are supported by that earlier disclosure (a § 112 question worth testing — see §6), the § 103 prior-art cutoff is 2015-03-12. Useful art therefore includes:

Note on the last two rows: JP 4683133 B2 and the Honeywell note surfaced in my supplemental searches, not in the '214 citation list. JP 4683133 B2 in particular looked directly on point for the Z-offset limitation, but I could only retrieve a fragment and could not verify its publication date, assignee, or full disclosure. Do not rely on it without pulling the document.

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2. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1

Claim 1 requires: (i) a magnetic field source with N and S poles; (ii) multiple MR elements in a row along X, each with a depth along Y; (iii) a gap between each element; (iv) elements of the row differing in arrangement along Z, such that the elements facing the N pole are offset from each other along Z; and (v) a measurement unit determining position from the output signals. Claim 11 is the method mirror of the same elements.

Conclusion on the mapping: limitations (i)–(iii) and (v) are squarely met by Allegro '716 (and by Pozidis '715). Only (iv), the intra-row Z-offset, is not disclosed by any cited reference. The entire § 103 question is whether supplying (iv) was obvious.

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3. The primary § 103 combination (claims 1, 2, 3, 10–13)

Combination A

Allegro US 9,042,716 B2 (or, alternatively, Pozidis US 8,026,715 B2) in view of US 5,570,015 A (Mitsubishi), further in view of GB 2508375 A (IBM) for the dependent claims.

What each reference contributes

• Allegro '716 — "multiple magnetic field sensors … held in fixed relation to one another and in moveable relation to the magnet," "separated by a distance Δx," wherein "the multiple magnetic field sensors include at least one of: a Hall effect sensor, a magnetoresistive (MR) sensor, and a magnetotransistor," and a controller that "calculat[es] an estimated position … using the readings of the first and second magnetic field sensors … and a fixed distance between" them. It expressly contemplates a third sensor between the first two and states that "each additional sensor used may allow the system to know more about the actual shape of the magnetic field curve." It also states that either the magnet or the sensors may be fixed to the object. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9042716)
• Pozidis '715 — the same architecture in IBM's own line: a magnet plus two MR sensors with a gap 210 aligned to the motion direction, configured for differential subtraction (V+Δx − V−Δx), with "one of the magnet 102 or the sensors 104a and 104b … attached to and moves with the scan table." (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8026715)
• US 5,570,015 — supplies the height/geometry-shaping teaching that the cited set otherwise lacks. Mitsubishi's express object is "a linear positional displacement detector which has linear output characteristics over a wide linear detection range," achieved by deliberately slanting the magnet and the magnetoresistance elements relative to the direction of movement and by "suitably determining the shape of the permanent magnet and the distance between the permanent magnet and the magnetoresistance element." (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5570015)

Motivation to combine (KSR / MPEP 2143 rationales)

1. Same field, same problem, same solution direction. All three are magnetoresistive/magnetic linear position sensors addressing the identical problem the '214 itself poses: as the magnet passes a sensor, the field saturates the element and the linear sensing range is short (see the '214 spec, ¶¶ re FIG. 3: "for short vertical distances a high sensitivity/slope can be achieved while for longer vertical distances the sensitivity drops," and "saturation does not occur"). US 5,570,015 states this need as its "chief object." Under rationales (C) and (D), applying a known range-extending technique (shaping/angling a sensor element's geometry relative to the field it samples) to a known, ready-for-improvement device (a row of MR sensors as in Allegro '716) is obvious.
2. Design incentive / market force (rationale F). The commercial incentive was to extend the stroke without adding elements or growing the magnet — exactly the design trade-off the Allegro slide-by literature frames ("As the desired stroke length gets larger, the cost and size of the larger magnet will drive the solution towards using multiple sensors"). Offsetting row elements to follow the field contour is one of a finite number of predictable ways to buy back linear range.
3. Predictable result. The '214 specification itself describes the benefit of height-profiling in functional terms — "shaping of the sensor in the vertical direction according to the magnetic field [which] avoids the saturation of the sensing elements" — i.e., a result-effective, expected consequence of matching element position to field magnitude. Under KSR, that is the hallmark of an obvious design choice, not a patentable insight.

Result as to the claims

• Claim 1 — obvious over Allegro '716 (or Pozidis '715) in view of US 5,570,015 (and, if verified, JP 4683133 B2).
• Claim 2 — obvious over Combination A further in view of GB 2508375 (IBM's own single-MR-element sensor with dipole axis DA orthogonal to the X–Y plane of the layer stack) — which is the apposite teaching for the "dipole axis DA extending along Z orthogonal to the X–Y plane" limitation. The Honeywell NPL also teaches the magnet's N/S poles oriented perpendicular to the sensor array.
• Claim 3 — obvious over Allegro '716 (Δx + fixed-relation sensors) or Pozidis '715 (differential subtraction) → "computing a difference between each said provided output signal."
• Claim 10 — obvious: Pozidis '715 and Allegro '716 each expressly couple the magnet or the sensor group to the moving object.
• Claims 11–13 — method mirrors of 1–3; same combination.

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4. § 103 treatment of the dependent claims

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5. Objective indicia (§ 103 "Graham" factors) — likely weak or absent

• No commercial success evidence of record. The patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees (lapse effective 2024-02-04, recorded 2024-03-11), and no product embodying the claims was identified in the assignment section. A lapsed, uncommercialized research patent will have a hard time establishing a nexus to any secondary consideration.
• No long-felt-but-unmet-need showing beyond the art itself. The need for wider linear range at micro-scale was already recognized and articulated (Pozidis '715; US 5,570,015's stated object).
• Possible patentee argument — "unexpected preservation of resolution." The '214 asserts range extension "without losing the sensitivity and resolution." That is the most plausible counter to the predictable-result rationale and should be met with evidence that the sensitivity/range trade-off was a known, expected continuum (the '214's own FIG. 3 concedes exactly that continuum).

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6. Claim-drafting defects that materially weaken enforceability (§ 112, raised alongside § 103)

These do not defeat the § 103 analysis but change the practical posture, and a defendant should plead them in the alternative:

• Claim 16's mis-dependency. Claim 16 opens "The method as claimed in claim 1" — a method claim depending from an apparatus claim. That is an indefiniteness defect under § 112(b).
• Antecedent-basis failures. Claims 6 and 16 recite "the single first magnetoresistive element" and "adjacent first magnetoresistive elements (1b, 1c)" without ever introducing those elements in the claim from which they depend (claim 1 recites only "multiple magnetoresistive elements"). Claims 7 and 17 likewise refer to "first" elements in a claim that introduced none. These are § 112(b) indefiniteness candidates and, for the method side, potential § 112(a) written-description issues.

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7. Contradiction flag — family members are probably not § 103 prior art

The earlier Prior Art section listed US 9,759,578, US 9,945,693, US 9,575,142, US 10,480,958 and US 9,964,419 as "obvious candidate § 102 prior art." Flagging this as a likely error, because § 103 imports the § 102 prior-art universe:

• The '214's claims share the 2015-03-12 effective filing date. Under § 102(a)(2), a US patent or published application is prior art only if "effectively filed" before the challenged claim's effective filing date. Sibling family members carrying the same 2015-03-12 priority do not qualify.
• Their public disclosures post-date 2015-03-12 (e.g., US 2016/0265895 A1 and US 2016/0265939 A1 published 2016-09-15), so they are not § 102(a)(1) art either.
• Independently, the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception would remove them: they and the '214 were all owned by IBM at the time.
• US 9,575,142 is the one genuine edge case — its priority (2014-11-28) predates 2015-03-12 — but the same common-ownership exception likely applies.

Practical consequence: the "self-collision" § 102 theory the prior-art section floated is, in my view, unavailable; the § 103 case must be built on the third-party art (Allegro, Pozidis, Mitsubishi, Festo, GB 2508375, the Honeywell note), not on IBM's own family.

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8. Recommended next steps / verification gaps

1. Pull and read US 5,570,015 in full to determine whether its "slanting the magnetoresistance elements" disclosure is an out-of-plane (Z) offset within a row or merely an in-plane azimuthal slant (my reading of FIGS. 24a–24b suggests the facing-area overlap varies, which points to in-plane). This single fact determines how strong Combination A is for claims 1, 9, 11 and 19.
2. Verify JP 4683133 B2 — date, assignee, and whether its differing D1/D2 air-gap arrangement of MR bridges is a genuine intra-array Z-offset. If it is, it is the best § 103 reference for the crux limitation; if unverifiable, do not cite it.
3. Establish the Honeywell application note's public accessibility and date (§ 102(a)(1) "printed publication" predicate) before relying on it for claims 5/6/16.
4. Do not cite US 7,405,907 without care — it is a magnetic tape read-head patent ("sensor portions disposed in different planes"), a different field; it would invite a "non-analogous art" objection.
5. Confirm the § 112 points against the grant copy (claim 16's dependency; the "first/adjacent first" antecedent gaps in claims 6, 7, 16, 17).
6. Remember the patent is expired for non-payment. A § 103 attack is relevant only if the patent is revived (37 C.F.R. § 1.378) — otherwise there is no prospective injunctive exposure. Confirm revival status before funding a validity challenge.

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9. Summary judgment of obviousness

Overall: the '214's independent claims are probably invalid under § 103 if US 5,570,015 (or a verified JP 4683133 B2) is credited with teaching that sensor-element placement should follow the magnetic field to extend linear range, because the claimed advance (offsetting a gapped MR row in Z) is then a predictable application of a known range-extension technique to a known multi-element MR sensor row, supported by an explicit design incentive and a "finite number of predictable solutions." The case is not a slam dunk on the height-profile dependent claims, where the art's silence on the specific element ordering gives the patentee room to argue non-obviousness of the particular configuration.