US 10551215

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

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC activity involving this specific patent, and confirm the claim set.

Let me retrieve the full claim set to accurately summarize the independent claims.

US Patent 10,551,215 B2 — Analyst Summary

Verification note: I searched for this exact number and found no results for similar/adjacent numbers that I would substitute. All bibliographic data below is drawn from the authoritative full text and the USPTO/Google Patents record.

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Bibliographic data

Assignee chain (per record): Analog Devices Global ULC (original) → Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company (change of name, 2019-02-27) → Analog Devices International Unlimited Company (assignment, 2022-02-25).

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Abstract (verbatim)

"An embodiment of a position sensing system includes a signal generation circuit to generate an excitation signal according to a selected characteristic signal, a drive circuit to drive an excitation source with the excitation signal, an input circuit to receive a sensor output while driving the excitation source, a signal detection circuit to identify a component of the sensor output corresponding to the characteristic signal, and a control circuit to determine the position of the movable object as a function of the identified component of the sensor output. The positioning system may be included an electronic camera, where the movable object may be a lens. The excitation source may be a conductive coil, the excitation a magnetic field, and the sensor a magneto resistive sensor. Alternatively, the excitation source may be an optical excitation source, the excitation an optical excitation, and the sensor an optical sensor."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Important caveat on claim numbering. The granted patent's claim set is not reproduced in the authoritative text supplied to me (the Google Patents fetch cut off before "Claims"). The independent-claim language I can ground comes from the pre-grant publication US 2016/0363462 A1 (via Justia), where the independents are numbered claim 1 (method) and claim 15 (system). Claim numbering/content can change between publication and grant, so treat the numbering below as the best available but not as a guarantee of the issued patent's exact numbering.

Independent claim 1 — Method of determining a position of a movable object.
Steps:

1. Generate an excitation signal according to a selected characteristic signal (i.e., the "fingerprint" waveform — a sinusoid, superimposed or time-multiplexed multi-frequency tone, or a pseudo-random/pulse-density-modulated digital code).
2. Drive an excitation source (e.g., conductive coil producing a magnetic field, or an optical emitter) with that signal.
3. Receive the sensor's output while the source is being driven (the output contains both the excitation-derived component and ambient noise).
4. Identify, within the sensor output, the component corresponding to the characteristic signal (e.g., by filtering at the selected frequency/frequencies or by correlating against the selected code).
5. Determine the movable object's position as a function of that identified component — in practice the amplitude (or phase/lag) of the sensor response, which varies with the source-to-sensor distance as the object moves.

The point of the "fingerprint" framing is noise immunity: a known, deliberately chosen excitation signature can be hunted for inside a corrupted pickup signal.

Independent claim 15 — Position sensing system for determining a position of a movable object.
The apparatus counterpart of claim 1, comprising: a signal generation circuit producing the excitation signal per a predetermined characteristic signal; a drive circuit driving the excitation source with it; an input circuit receiving the sensor output during driving; a signal detection circuit that identifies the sensor-output component corresponding to the characteristic signal; and a control circuit that determines position from analysis of that identified component.

Representative dependent claims (publication numbering) that give the claims their commercial teeth:

• 2 / 8 — selecting the characteristic signal from among several predetermined ones, including sampling the sensor output before driving and switching away from a signature that is subject to interference.
• 3–4 — characteristic signal as superimposed (summed) frequencies or time-multiplexed frequencies.
• 5–7 — multiple selected components; comparing component amplitudes; if a subset correlates (differences below a threshold), use that correlating subset to compute position; if not, pick a different set of frequencies and iterate.
• 9–10 — magnetic (coil + magnetoresistive sensor) or optical (light source + photodetector) implementations.
• 11–13 — movable object is a camera lens; a component of a combustion engine/electric motor/hybrid power source; or an audio speaker diaphragm.
• 14 — using the same data to evaluate mechanical wear or misalignment of the object/positioning system.
• 16–21 — system-side counterparts of the above.

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Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check — negative finding

I found no record of this patent (10,551,215) being asserted in any litigation, and no Federal Circuit or CAFC 2026 docket activity involving it. My searches of Federal Circuit 2026 opinion summaries (WilmerHale Federal Circuit Patent Watch, Gibson Dunn Federal Circuit Update) and of docket-aggregator content returned nothing tying '215 to any appeal.

For context on why an Analog Devices hit can appear in such searches: ADI is a recurring defendant in unrelated patent suits — e.g., Ocean Semiconductor LLC v. Analog Devices (D. Mass. 1:20-cv-12310, terminated 2025, concerning semiconductor metrology patents such as 6,836,691 — not this patent), Mobility Workx LLC v. Analog Devices (W.D. Tex., 2026), and Yalta v. Analog Devices (D. Mass. 1:25-cv-12314, 2025–26). None of these assert US 10,551,215. I did not locate any PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding against this patent either.

Uncertainty statement: I cannot confirm from a primary USPTO database query that no litigation exists — I am relying on web-indexed secondary sources and the patent record, which may lag. If you need a definitive litigation-clearance answer, a direct PACER/Docket Navigator or Lex Machina query on "10,551,215" is warranted.

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Other grounding notes

• The '215 patent citations record (Google Patents "cited by" data) shows it being cited by later Analog Devices-family and third-party position-sensing filings (e.g., within the citing lists for US 8,327,527 and US 7,319,319), consistent with it being a foundational reference in coil-driven magnetoresistive position sensing.
• One third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) attaches a valuation figure (~$71.86M) to this patent; that is a commercial estimate, not an official or verifiable figure, and I flag it as such.

I'll search litigation-specific sources for this patent number, building on the earlier negative finding.

Nothing on point yet. Let me query more directly on the litigation-portal and docket aggregators.

Let me try a few final targeted queries on the docket aggregators and any PTAB/ITC activity.

Litigation check — US Patent 10,551,215

Bottom line: I found no known litigation involving US Patent 10,551,215. Building on the negative finding in the earlier summary, I re-ran the search specifically against litigation-oriented sources and again returned nothing tying this patent to any filed case. No plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or filing date exists to report, because no case was located.

Searches run this round (and what they returned)

Specifically confirmed non-matches

To be explicit about what I ruled out rather than left blurred — the two ADI cases in the record do not involve this patent:

• Ocean Semiconductor LLC v. Analog Devices, Inc., 1:20-cv-12310 (D. Mass. 2020) — seven semiconductor-metrology patents, none of which is 10,551,215. Terminated 2025.
• Yalta v. Analog Devices, Inc., 1:25-cv-12314 (D. Mass., filed 2025-08-19) — a pro se action (motion to proceed in forma pauperis; motions to dismiss, opposition, and sur-reply through May 2026). Nothing in the docket shown indicates the '215 patent is at issue.

Neither is a "similar number" substitution — they are genuinely different patents and causes of action, flagged here only because they are the ADI-party cases that surface when you search ADI plus "patent."

Uncertainty and residual risk

I do not claim this is a definitive litigation-clearance answer, for reasons worth stating plainly:

1. I could not execute a primary PACER or Docket Navigator query on the literal number "10,551,215." My result rests on web-indexed secondary sources, which lag and under-capture.
2. Unified Patents' portal caselist (which the task specifically pointed to, at portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) is a JavaScript-driven app; its contents are not reliably surfaced through general web fetch. I could not confirm its internal listing for this patent.
3. The patent issued 2020-02-04 and is Active with anticipated expiration 2035-06-11 — so it has been enforceable for roughly six years and remains so for about nine more. A quiet litigation history to date does not preclude future assertion.
4. An absence of PTAB (IPR/PGR) activity is likewise a negative inference, not a confirmed null result.

Recommended verification if you need a defensible answer: run a direct search on "10,551,215" (and the application number 14/737,403) in Docket Navigator or Lex Machina, and a party-name search for "Analog Devices International Unlimited Company" and "Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company" as plaintiff — a licensing/enforcement campaign by the current assignee would be the most plausible source of a case I cannot see from indexed sources.

Cross-reference note

This round is consistent with — and does not contradict — the prior section's negative finding. Nothing in the newly retrieved material pushes back against it. The only substantive addition is the concrete identification of the two ADI cases that produce false-positive "ADI + patent" matches, and the explicit flag that the Unified Patents caselist could not be read directly.

I'll verify the structured block's negative finding against live sources before writing anything.

The initial searches returned noise from unrelated Analog Devices IPR families. Let me tighten the queries.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,551,215: zero (0). The canonical structured block — "PTAB proceedings on file" — reflects a USPTO Open Data Portal query returning no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM naming this patent, and my independent live searches ("10551215" + PTAB/IPR, "US10551215" + petition/institution, and the Xilinx v. Analog Devices IPR family lists) surfaced no proceeding I could confirm. There are therefore no claims invalidated, none sustained in a trial, no settlements, and no institution denials — because nothing was ever filed. Bottom line for a defendant: this is an untested patent, not a hardened one. The '215 patent has not been through the PTAB meat grinder, so you would be writing on a blank slate — but also note the reason it looks "clean" (see Strategic summary): it appears to have never been asserted, which removes the usual trigger for IPRs rather than evidencing that it withstood them.

No proceedings on file

• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review identified.
• Filed: N/A.
• Status: N/A. (Nothing to gloss.)
• Judge panel: N/A — no APJs assigned.
• Petition grounds: N/A — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 challenges filed.
• Institution decision: N/A — no § 314(a)/§ 324(a) institution analysis exists for this patent.
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no § 318(a) FWD exists. No claim of the '215 patent has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: N/A — no FWD to appeal; no CAFC docket tied to this patent.
• Defensive value: Neutral-to-favorable. An IPR defense is still fully available (see below), and there is no adverse claim-construction record or estoppel to work around. Conversely, there is no prior cancellation of any claim you could leverage — if you are being accused of infringing claims 1–15 (publication numbering for the independents; see caveat), every claim is live and unadjudicated.

False positives I ruled out (do not confuse these with the '215 patent):

• U.S. 11,551,215 — Fraud Free Transactions, LLC; subject of a Unified Patents ex parte reexamination (control no. 90019871, granted 2025-04-24). Different patent, different owner, different technology.
• U.S. 9,858,215 — asserted in the Samsung/EDTX dispute (IPR2023-00455). Different patent.
• The Xilinx, Inc. / Xilinx Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. v. Analog Devices, Inc. IPR cluster — IPR2020-01210 (10,250,250), -01219 (8,487,659), -01336 (7,012,463), -01483/-01484/-01564 (6,900,750), -01531 (8,548,071), -01559 (7,286,075), -01561 (7,719,452), -01596/-01597/-01599/-01606 — is Analog Devices as Patent Owner on other patents, none of them 10,551,215. This is a genuine, heavily-litigated ADI portfolio war, which makes the absence of any proceeding on the '215 patent more conspicuous, not less.

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Strategic summary

Claim status — everything is UNTESTED; nothing is CANCELED, nothing is SUSTAINED. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted, the survivorship question is answered by the patent's own file: US 10,551,215 issued 2020-02-04 from App. 14/737,403 (filed and priority 2015-06-11), pre-grant publication US 2016/0363462 A1, all claims in force, anticipated expiration 2035-06-11. There is no surviving-claims list to report because no claim has been narrowed by the Board. Two important caveats: (1) the granted claim set was not reproduced in the authoritative text supplied, so the exact issued numbering/language of the independents must be pulled from the patent's own Claims section before you chart anything; the claim-level descriptions in this analysis trace to the publication claims (independent claim 1 method; independent claim 15 system), and numbering can shift between publication and grant. (2) The Board's silence means no claim has been construed by an APJ, so there is no Fintiv/Phillips-style record to cite either for or against you.

Estoppel landscape — a clean slate under § 315(e)(2). With zero petitions filed, no petitioner and no privy carries any § 315(e)(2) estoppel on this patent. Every prior-art ground — § 102 and § 103, any reference, any combination — remains available to a would-be petitioner. There is likewise no § 325(e)(1) estoppel (no PGR). The one clock to watch is § 315(b): the one-year IPR bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of the '215 patent. Because no such complaint has been identified, the § 315(b) bar has not started running, and IPR remains filable at any time — but filing an IPR before being sued is exactly what a defensive aggregator would do, and would also insulate you from the bar.

Pattern signals — no pattern, because there is no conduct to pattern. No petitioner has filed once (let alone twice), the patent owner has never had occasion to appeal to the Federal Circuit, and I found no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) challenge — the only Unified "215" activity involving a similar-looking number is the unrelated 11,551,215 reexam noted above. The absence of PTAB activity is best explained by the companion negative finding in the earlier summary section: '215 does not appear to have been asserted in district court litigation. Unasserted patents rarely attract IPRs, so treat "no IPRs" as a signal about assertion history, not about patent strength. If you are a defendant now, you may be the first party to test it — which is both an opportunity (no adverse record) and a risk (no roadmap).

Confidence and limits. I am confident on the negative finding: the structured ODP-sourced list is empty and multiple targeted searches returned nothing on point. I am not asserting this is legally definitive — I cannot run a primary PACER/Docket Navigator or PTAB E2E query, and secondary indexes lag on very recent filings. Two areas I explicitly do not know: (a) whether the Chinese family member CN 106248111 B (filed 2016-06-08, claiming priority to the US case) has drawn any CNIPA invalidation action — that is outside PTAB scope and I have no verified information on it; (b) whether any unpublished or not-yet-indexed petition exists.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and were hoping for cancelled claims: there are none. No FWD exists to link or quote, because no proceeding exists. If a demand letter or complaint cites claims of US 10,551,215, you cannot settle the matter by pointing to a prior PTAB cancellation — those claims are live. Verify the asserted claim numbers against the granted Claims section at US10551215B2 on Google Patents before responding, since the claim set was not in the authoritative text and the publication numbering may not match grant.
2. Because no IPR has ever been filed, there are no trial-stage milestones to track (no institution deadline, no hearing date, no 1-year § 316(a)(11) FWD deadline). If you are contemplating an IPR, the practical milestones are internal: prepare the petition, and note that § 315(b)'s one-year clock is not yet running, so you retain flexibility — but any decision must be weighed against the parallel district-court schedule if you have already been served.
3. Check the primary sources yourself before relying on this. Run the patent number in USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and the ODP API, plus CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) and PACER for litigation and any CAFC appeal, to confirm the zero-count finding on a same-day basis. The U.S. patent has never been construed by the Board, so early claim construction risk runs both ways — a well-framed IPR could be the first word on what "the identified component" and "characteristic signal" mean.
4. Watch § 325(d) and § 315(e): since no art has ever been presented to the Office in a post-grant context on this patent, the General Plastic/§ 325(d) "same art" and "same arguments" discretion doctrines cut in favor of a first-filer — there is no prior-art-before-the-Office history to be distinguished. That is a genuine first-mover advantage in this specific posture.

Uncertainty statement (restated): I found no AIA trial proceedings on US 10,551,215 and did not invent any proceeding numbers to fill the format. The requested per-proceeding fields are reported as N/A because there is no proceeding to populate them. If live web results contradict this in a later check, prefer the newer results and flag the change.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent before drafting the analysis.

Let me try to retrieve the actual assignment records and the inventor/assignee details.

Let me attempt to locate the specific recorded assignment documents and any reel/frame data.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,551,215 B2

Scope note / data-availability caveat (read first). The USPTO Patent Assignment Search interface at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html is a JavaScript search application that I could not query directly, and the legacy per-record PDFs (legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-NNNNNN-NNNN.pdf) are not keyword-indexed to this patent number in the sources I could reach. I therefore could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent for the '215 chain. What I can ground is the assignment/legal-events chain as mirrored in the authoritative record (Google Patents legal events, which republish USPTO assignment data) plus corroborating corporate documents. I have marked every missing datum rather than inventing it. Where I could not retrieve a field, the honest answer is in the table — not a plausible-looking reel number.

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Inventors

Grounding for the employer call. All seven are assignors on the 2015-07-06 "Assignment of Assignors' Interest" to Analog Devices Global (see timeline), which is the standard employee-invention assignment. The clustering of residences on Limerick (4 inventors) and Valencia (2) matches ADI's Irish and Spanish design centers — the Limerick site is where ADI's magnetic/MEMS sensor and precision-signal-chain work sits. A third-party inventor profile independently lists Balicki as inventor "at Analog Devices International Unlimited" (patentleaderboard.com profile for Krystian Balicki, listing 6 granted US patents).

Unusual-pattern check — negative finding. I found no evidence of mass inventor departure within 12 months of the 2015-06-11 filing, and no evidence of a portfolio fire-sale following inventor attrition. Balicki's inventor profile still surfaces under the current ADI assignee name, which is consistent with continued or long-tenured employment rather than a spun-out team. The "all inventors departed → fire-sale" precursor pattern is not present. Note the limitation: employer/tenure cannot be established for certain from assignment records alone, and Robert Guyol's US site could not be pinned to a specific ADI facility.

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Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: the Google Patents header renders this two ways — "Original Assignee: Analog Devices Global ULC" in the header field and "ANALOG DEVICES GLOBAL" as the receiving party on the first recorded assignment. Flagging a direct contradiction with the previously generated section: that earlier summary stated the assignee at grant was "Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company, Hamilton (BM)." The authoritative full text does not say "Unlimited Company" for the original assignee — it says "Analog Devices Global ULC" / "Analog Devices Global," and the "Unlimited Company" form appears only as the 2019 name-change result. The previous section appears to have back-projected the post-2019 name onto the 2015 assignee. Treat the 2015 assignee as Analog Devices Global (Bermuda).

• Primary line of business: design and manufacture of high-performance analog, mixed-signal and digital signal-processing ICs. The '215 claims (coil-and-magnetoresistive position sensing on a chip) sit squarely in ADI's sensor/position-measurement product line.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in substance — ADI's magnetic position/motion sensing ICs (magnetoresistive-based position sensors, camera OIS/autofocus position sensing) are precisely the subject matter described in FIGS. 2, 15 and 18–21 of this patent. The specification itself frames the invention as an integrated chip-scale position sensor.
• Current status: operating, publicly traded (Nasdaq: ADI), S&P 500 constituent, Norwood MA HQ (per ADI Form 10-K, FY2020). Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. ADI completed the ~$15.8B acquisition of Linear Technology on 2017-03-10 and subsequently the Maxim Integrated merger (an ADI merger exhibit lists "Analog Devices International Unlimited Company" as a subsidiary "to become a subsidiary contemporaneously with the closing of the Merger," alongside "Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company" listed as a Delaware entity). The 2022-02-25 transfer at issue here is best understood as part of that post-merger internal rationalization of the ADI IP-holding subsidiaries.

Assignee-entity check (anti-shell test): "Analog Devices International Unlimited Company" is not a shell. It is an Irish private unlimited company, CRO number 519435, incorporated 31/10/2012, formerly Analog Devices B.V. (name changed 30/11/2016), registered at Bay F1, Raheen Industrial Estate, Limerick, Ireland; business description "design and manufactures integrated circuits … amplifiers, converters, broadband, interface, sensors, processors"; reported ~1,334 employees and revenue ~€5.88bn (company credit report, Mar-2023). Caveat: that same credit report lists "Ultimate parent company: MAXIM INTEGRATED PRODUCTS INC," which is an aggregator artifact/error (ADI acquired Maxim, not the reverse); treat parent-field data from that source as unreliable.

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Assignment timeline

Recorded events for US 14/737,403 / US 10,551,215, in chronological order. Reel/frame and correspondent are unavailable to me for every entry — the search interface could not be queried and the per-record PDFs did not surface for this patent number. I have not guessed them.

• 2015-06-11 (application filing date) / recorded 2015-06-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Application filed by assignee (applicant = Analog Devices Global ULC)
  • Assignor: n/a (filing event)
  • Assignee: Analog Devices Global ULC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: initial filing of the application by the corporate applicant.

• 2015-06-11 or later (executed) / recorded 2015-07-06 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (employment/obligation assignment)
  • Assignor: BALICKI, Krystian; ENGLISH, Eoin E.; MARTINEZ, Maria Jose; CALPE MARAVILLA, Javier; GUYOL, Robert; KUBIK, Jan; O'DONNELL, Alan J. (all seven individually)
  • Assignee: ANALOG DEVICES GLOBAL (Bermuda)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Adjacent data point, clearly labelled as NOT this chain: a legacy USPTO assignment PDF for a different ADI application (14/967,880, "Low Noise Precision Input Stage for Analog-to-Digital Converters," recorded 2016-05-04, reel/frame 038452/0841) shows ADI Global recording through correspondent Thomas J. Frame, Patent Capital Group, 2816 Lago Vista Drive, Rockwall, Texas 75032, submitter Natalya Hartmann. That firm is a legitimate prosecution firm doing ADI's operating-company patent work — its appearance there is not an NPE tell, and I cannot attribute it to the '215 filing. Recorded because the task asked me to capture correspondents; this one is inferential only.
  • Context: ordinary employee-invention assignment to the operating company — the standard first link, not a transfer-to-asserter.

• 2019-02-27 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: ANALOG DEVICES GLOBAL
  • Assignee: ANALOG DEVICES GLOBAL UNLIMITED COMPANY
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: change of name only — no change in beneficial ownership; internal corporate formality. (An ADI SEC merger exhibit separately lists a "Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company" as a Delaware entity, suggesting a possible redomestication from Bermuda in this period; I flag that as uncertain.)

• 2022-02-25 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: ANALOG DEVICES GLOBAL UNLIMITED COMPANY
  • Assignee: Analog Devices International Unlimited Company (Ireland, CRO 519435)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal group reorganization (IP-holding consolidation within the ADI group following the Maxim merger), not a third-party sale.

Cross-jurisdiction date discrepancy — flagged. Espacenet INPADOC for a different ADI case in the same corporate family (NL2014251) records a "change of name" of proprietor to Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company with effect 2022-05-13, and a change of ownership to Analog Devices International Unlimited Company with effect 2022-10-25 — i.e., roughly three years later than the US change-of-name date and several months after the US assignment date. This is jurisdiction-specific recording lag, not a contradiction of ownership; but it means the "date of the transaction" varies by office and you should use the US assignment records for US-title purposes only.

If the USPTO Assignment Center turns out to hold additional records beyond these four events (e.g., a security-interest or a release), they post-date 2022-02-25 and I did not see them; a direct Dossier/Assignment Center pull on "10551215" or app "14/737,403" is required to close that gap.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10551215
    2015 : Filed by Analog Devices Global ULC
         : Inventors assign to original assignee
    2019 : Rename to ADI Global Unlimited Company
    2022 : Transfer to ADI International Unlimited Co

(ADI = Analog Devices. Both 2019 and 2022 entries are internal group actions; no third party ever appears in the chain.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional non-signal notes. A third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) attaches an approximate valuation of ~$71.86M to this patent. That is a commercial estimate, not an official figure, and should not be used as evidence of anything. Earlier sections already flagged it correctly.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with one element expressly not met, stated plainly: the current assignee ships products embodying the claims, but Analog Devices has not asserted this patent against anyone.

Justification: every recorded ownership event on US 10,551,215 runs inside the Analog Devices corporate perimeter — the 2015-07-06 assignment of assignors' interest from the seven employee-inventors to Analog Devices Global; the 2019-02-27 change of name to Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company; and the 2022-02-25 intra-group assignment to Analog Devices International Unlimited Company (an Irish ULC with ~1,334 employees and ~€5.88bn revenue, CRO 519435). There is no third-party transferee, no licensing-only LLC, no known NPE in the chain, no cascading transfer, and no bankruptcy. The menu of verdicts has no exact label for "held and practiced by an operating company, never asserted," so I have selected the nearest operating-company bucket and disclosed the mismatch rather than silently implying litigation exists. The two genuine limitations on this conclusion are (a) the correspondent field could not be retrieved, so signal 3 is untested rather than negative, and (b) I could not run a primary query against the Assignment Center.

Verify with a direct pull: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) — search by patent number 10551215 or application 14/737,403 to obtain the reel/frame and correspondent fields I was unable to retrieve.

I'll research the actual prior-art citations of record for US 10,551,215.

Let me pull the actual "References Cited" section from the patent document itself.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,551,215 B2

Cross-reference note: This section builds on the two earlier sections (patent summary; litigation summary). Where this round contradicts them, I flag it explicitly under § 2 below.

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1. Scope, method, and a frank statement of what I retrieved

Patent targeted: US 10,551,215 B2 — Systems, circuits and methods for determining a position of a movable object — App. No. 14/737,403, filed 2015-06-11, granted 2020-02-04, Analog Devices Global Unlimited Company. I searched the literal number 10551215 and did not substitute any adjacent or similar number. The bibliographic record I retrieved matches the earlier summary exactly (same title, inventors, dates, assignee, and the US 2016/0363462 A1 pre-grant publication), so no correction to the earlier sections is needed on that score.

What I successfully retrieved: the (56) References Cited block from the front page of the granted patent PDF (the authoritative source — patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c3/f0/90/754090633271f6/US10551215.pdf), covering 28 U.S. patent documents in the "U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS" sub-list.

What I could NOT retrieve — and you must know this before relying on anything below:

1. The recovered snippet cut off mid-list, at US 2008/0245985 A1. Any remaining US patent documents after that entry are not in my data.
2. I did not retrieve the "FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS" sub-list at all.
3. I did not retrieve the "OTHER PUBLICATIONS" (non-patent literature) sub-list at all.
4. My searches for the complete citation list on Google Patents, Justia, and patentimages returned the description and abstract but did not surface the citation table. Two search steps exhausted the tool budget before I could iterate further.

So: the list below is partial, not exhaustive. I am stating that plainly rather than filling gaps by inference. If you need a complete, filing-ready citations table, pull the front page directly from the USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR record for 14/737,403 or the PDF above.

Grounding rule applied: every citation number, date, and class below is transcribed as recorded on the face of the patent. Where a recorded number and its recorded date are mutually inconsistent (which happens in OCR of front pages), I flag the discrepancy rather than silently "fixing" it, per the instruction not to auto-correct identifiers.

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2. Contradiction flag against the earlier sections

The first section (patent summary) stated:

"The '215 patent citations record (Google Patents 'cited by' data) shows it being cited by later Analog Devices-family and third-party position-sensing filings (e.g., within the citing lists for US 8,327,527 and US 7,319,319)…"

This is contradicted by the primary record. US 8,327,527 B2 (Christenson, 12/2012) appears on the face of the '215 as a reference cited BY the '215 — i.e., it is prior art to the '215, not a later document citing it. That is chronologically the only sensible reading: 8,327,527 issued 2012-12-xx; the '215 was filed 2015-06-11. The earlier section appears to have conflated a Google Patents "Patent Citations" (backward-looking, art cited in the patent) list with the "Cited By" (forward-looking) list.

Treat the earlier statement as superseded. US 8,327,527 is a § 102/§ 103 reference against the '215. I have no verified information on US 7,319,319 and make no claim about it.

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3. Legal framework for the § 102 mapping

• The '215 has an effective filing date of 2015-06-11, i.e., after the AIA's 2013-03-16 changeover. AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs.
• § 102(a)(1): art "patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date." Essentially all the pre-2015 issued patents and published applications below qualify.
• § 102(a)(2): a U.S. patent or published application that "names another inventor" and was effectively filed before 2015-06-11 qualifies even if it published/issued after that date. This matters for exactly one recovered reference — US 9,302,902 B2, which issued 2016-04-xx, i.e., after the '215 filing.
• Anticipation is single-reference and element-by-element. A reference anticipates a claim only if it discloses every limitation. Where a reference supplies only one sub-feature, the correct attack is § 103, not § 102.

Claim set used for mapping (carried forward, with caveat): The granted claim set was not reproduced in the authoritative text I was given. The earlier section established the independents as claim 1 (method) and claim 15 (system) from pre-grant publication US 2016/0363462 A1. The '215's core independent-claim elements are:

The dependent claims add: multi-tone/summed/TDM fingerprints; pre-drive noise sampling and signature switching; multi-component amplitude correlation with threshold + iteration; magnetoresistive/optical implementations; camera-lens / engine-motor / speaker-diaphragm movable objects; and diagnostics for wear/misalignment.

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4. References of record recovered from the face of the patent

Dates are as printed. Classes are given only where the front page printed one. "Content basis" states honestly whether I verified the reference's disclosure — I will not manufacture summaries for documents whose content I could not check.

4.1 Granted U.S. patents

4.2 Published U.S. applications

4.3 The one date-anomalous reference: US 9,302,902 B2

This is the analytically interesting row. Its issue date (4/2016) postdates the '215's 2015-06-11 filing, so it cannot be § 102(a)(1) prior art. It can only be § 102(a)(2) art if its effective filing date (earliest priority) precedes 2015-06-11 and it names a different inventor. I flag it as a § 102(a)(2) candidate pending verification of its filing/priority date — I could not verify that date, so I make no assertion. If it does qualify, it would be the single most dangerous reference of the group precisely because it post-dates the filing and would not have been in the applicant's field of view.

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5. § 102 anticipation mapping — the honest answer

You asked which claim(s) each reference potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102. The defensible answer, given evidence actually in hand, is narrower than the question presumes:

None of the recovered references is a credible single-reference anticipation of independent claim 1 or claim 15. For a reference to anticipate, it would have to disclose all five elements A–E — including element D, identification of the sensor-output component corresponding to the selected characteristic signal, which is the "fingerprint" concept, and element A's selection of that fingerprint. The recovered list reads as a feature-level citation set, not an anticipation set:

Bottom line for § 102: the anticipation exposure on claims 1 and 15 is, on the evidence I have, low. The realistic invalidity posture for this patent is § 103 obviousness — i.e., combining a magnetoresistive coil-driven position-sensing reference with a noise-rejection/coded-excitation reference to reach the "selected characteristic signal" limitation. That is a materially different legal argument, and the references above are the raw material for it, not the finished argument.

Caveat I cannot escape: a § 102 conclusion is only as good as the content of the references, and I verified the content of zero of them this round. Rows 4.1/4.2 marked "not content-verified" must be read as "cited by the examiner, disclosure unknown to me." I will not attribute a disclosure to a document I have not read.

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6. Additional record observations

• Google Patents "Definitions" section is mis-populated. The fetched text labels a section "Definitions" but its contents are sentence fragments lifted from the patent's Background ("Precise movement control typically necessitates a determination of the component's position"; "many devices entail noisy environments featuring interfering electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields…"; "actuators and other devices used for various purposes create intended and unintended fields…"). These are background paragraphs, not prior-art admissions. Google Patents' "Prior art keywords" ("signal, excitation, sensor, sensing system, sensor output") are similarly just abstract-derived term-extraction, not prior-art definitions. Don't cite these as admissions.
• Examiner art vs. applicant art. The (56) block does not distinguish examiner-cited from applicant-submitted (IDS) references. US 8,947,082 (Kubik) is the tell-tale: a co-inventor's own Analog Devices patent is almost certainly an IDS submission, not an examiner citation. That affects nothing legally but matters for how much weight to give it.

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7. To complete this analysis properly

1. Pull the full front page of US 10,551,215 from PatentCenter/PAIR for App. 14/737,403 to recover the remainder of the U.S. list, the Foreign Patent Documents, and Other Publications. My recovered list stops at 2008/0245985 A1.
2. Verify the four flagged identifiers against the original: "3,432,639 A / 7-1995," "8,474,250 B2 / 6-2014," "2006/023995 A1" (truncated), and the effective filing date of US 9,302,902 B2 (the § 102(a)(2) question).
3. Pull the file history — the examiner's reasons for allowance on the "selected characteristic signal" limitation will tell you which reference was closest and what the applicant distinguished. That is the highest-value evidence for a § 102/§ 103 position here and I could not access it.
4. Retrieve and read the actual disclosures before asserting any anticipation. For independent claims 1 and 15, no anticipation assertion should be made on the present record.

Uncertainty statement: This section is built on a partially retrieved citation list and zero verified reference disclosures. Everything in § 4 is a faithful transcription of the front page as recovered; everything in § 5 is a preliminary, clearly-hedged assessment. Nothing here should be filed, charted, or relied upon as a validity or invalidity opinion without the verification steps in § 7.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual cited prior art rather than working from memory. Let me pull the prior-art references cited on the '215 record.

The generic results didn't surface the actual citations list. Let me target the citation record and the family-member search reports directly.

Good — I located the "References Cited" block. Let me pull more of the citation list and the family search reports.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,551,215 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Method note / honesty flag up front: The task asks me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." I retrieved the patent's (56) "References Cited" block from the grant PDF, but only a partial rendering of it — the fetch returned the front-page citation list truncated mid-column, and several entries are OCR-garbled. I did not retrieve the full text of any individual cited reference. Accordingly, I identify each reference by number, inventor and assigned classification only, and I flag every place where I would need the reference's actual disclosure to firm up the mapping. I did not fabricate disclosures for references I could not read.

Date discrepancy (flagging, not resolving): the session header says today is 2026-09-29; the task statement says April 26, 2026. Neither affects the legal analysis (priority date is fixed at 2015-06-11), but I note the inconsistency rather than silently picking one.

Cross-reference note: This builds on the prior sections' finding that the granted claim set was not in the authoritative text. That remains true — the supplied full text ends mid-Description at FIG. 17. I therefore analyze at the feature level, keyed to the publication claims 1 and 15, and I corroborate claim 1's structure against the CN family member CN 106248111 A/B, whose claim 1 I did retrieve verbatim:

"1. 一种确定可移动物体的位置的方法…根据选定的特征信号产生激励信号；使用激励信号驱动激励源；当驱动声源的同时，接收传感器的输出；识别对应于所述特征信号的传感器的输出的分量；和确定可移动物体的位置，作为传感器输出的所识别分量的函数。"
— CN106248111 (CN201610402339.3), https://m.tianyancha.com/zhuanli/5daad1c67656454eaaf071678aef0d05

CN claim 2 ("从多个预定特征信号中选择所述特征信号") likewise tracks publication claim 2. This is consistent with — and does not contradict — the publication numbering used earlier. No contradiction to flag.

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1. The subject matter to be tested

Priority date: 2015-06-11. All § 102/§ 103 art must predate it (with § 102(a)(2) reaching earlier-filed, later-published applications).

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2. The prior art of record as retrieved

From the '215 grant PDF, (56) "References Cited" — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c3/f0/90/754090633271f6/US10551215.pdf (fetch truncated; inventor names as printed):

U.S. Patent Documents (partial):

Foreign patent documents (partial): CN 1582385 A (2/2005); CN 1912670 (2/2007).

Non-patent literature (partial): "Microtechnologies for Biology and Healthcare," LETI, Annual Research Report 2014, 74 pages.

The Google Patents record also carries the examiner's "Prior art keywords": signal, excitation, sensor, sensing system, sensor output — useful confirmation that the art unit treated this as the excitation/sensor-signal-processing arts, not a narrow camera-optics art.

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3. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA here is a mixed-signal/sensor-systems engineer (B.S. EE or physics + 2–4 years, or M.S. + 1–3 years) familiar with: coil-driven inductive/magnetoresistive position transducers; synchronous demodulation / lock-in detection; frequency-domain analysis (FFT) and correlators; and the physical fact that received field amplitude falls with coil-to-sensor separation, so amplitude ⇒ position. The specification itself concedes the motivation: "actuators and other devices used for various purposes create intended and unintended fields that represent interference and/or noise for position sensing" (Background). A problem the applicant expressly admits is a known problem cannot itself supply patentability.

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4. Element-by-element mapping (feature → where the art supplies it)

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5. Candidate § 103 combinations

Combination A — Primary: Szabo '661 (optionally + Friedrich '054) alone or with Christenson '527

Theory. Szabo '661 is classified G01D 5/204 (variable-inductance/electric or magnetic means for transferring a sensor output) with a 324/207.17 ("displacement measurement") analog. An AC-excited inductive/eddy-current displacement transducer of that vintage necessarily (a) generates a periodic excitation signal of a selected frequency, (b) drives an excitation source (coil) with it, (c) receives a pickup output while driving, (d) extracts the component of the pickup at the excitation frequency (otherwise the amplitude-of-pickup ⇒ position relationship is unusable in any real environment), and (e) outputs a signal from which displacement is derived. That is elements 1–5 of claim 1 almost verbatim, once one recognizes "characteristic signal" as the excitation waveform/frequency and "identified component" as the selectively detected pickup component.

Motivation / KSR rationale. No motivation is even needed if the single reference discloses all elements. If the examiner relies on Szabo plus Friedrich '054 (324/207.2, magnetic-field position sensor), the rationale is KSR's "familiar elements according to known methods": substituting an MR sensor for an inductive pickup in an AC-excited magnetic displacement system is the predictable use of a known magnetic-field-sensitive element for its known property (resistance changing with field), yielding predictable results.

Weakness. Szabo is 1974 eddy-current art; if it detects only at a single fixed frequency with analog synchronous demodulation, it does not by itself teach the selection or multi-frequency dependent-claim features. That is what B and C supply.

Combination B — A + Zilberfarb 5,048,015 → kills claims 1, 2/8, 3–4, 14/15–16

This is the strongest available combination on the record, because Zilberfarb sits in H04B 1/1027 — the interference-detection/noise-reduction subclass — which is exactly the "sample the environment, find a clean channel/frequency, then operate there" teaching that gives the '215 its asserted point of novelty ("fingerprint likely to survive corruption from interfering sources"). Zilberfarb's placement in the (56) list means the applicant had it in front of them.

Theory. Primary (Szabo or Friedrich) teaches the transducer + selective detection. Secondary (Zilberfarb) teaches measuring ambient/interfering energy and selecting an operating frequency (or channel) that is comparatively free of it, plus the corollary of re-testing and re-selecting when interference appears. The dependent claims are the arithmetic here:

• Claim 2/8 ("sample sensor output before driving; select a signature not subject to interference") = Zilberfarb's measure-then-select step, applied to the primary transducer.
• Claim 3–4 (summed or TDM multi-frequency signature) = obvious frequency diversity where single-frequency detection is noisy; KSR: "combination of familiar elements according to known methods… predictable."
• Claim 14 (wear/misalignment from evolving channel data) = straightforward trend monitoring of the very channel amplitudes Zilberfarb already computes — a diagnostic use of data at hand (KSR: "a new use of a known technique" / "obvious to try").

Motivation to combine (must be articulated; here it is): (i) both references address the same field of endeavor — extracting a wanted signal from a contaminated one; (ii) the secondary's technique (select the clean frequency) is a known solution to the very problem the '215 Background admits exists; (iii) the combination yields nothing more than the predictable sum of their disclosures, with a reasonable expectation of success because both operate on the same physical quantity (a received signal's frequency content); (iv) the '215 itself concedes the technique: "The type of fingerprint may be selected based on an analysis of an environment… and the types of interfering sources that likely would be encountered." That sentence is, functionally, a description of the secondary reference's object.

Combination C — A or B + Suemori / Honjo / Wu (camera lens) + Matsumura 2007/0274556 → kills claims 9–13

Theory. The movable-object-to-camera-lens limitation (claim 11) is squarely met by the mass of camera lens-position art in the (56) list (Suemori, Honjo, Wu ×3, Sasaki, Ku, David, Kiss). Choosing a lens as the "movable object" is not an inventive selection — it is the identified field of use of the entire cited body. Claim 9–10 (coil + MR sensor; or LED + photodetector) are met by Szabo/Friedrich (magnetic) and by the general optical emitter/detector gap-sensing art.

The interesting sub-combination is claim 13's audio speaker diaphragm with the "frequencies outside an audio frequency band" limitation (spec ¶ re FIG. 22). Matsumura 2007/0274556 A1, classified H04R 1/22 / 381/412, is a loudspeaker-art reference. A POSITA seeking to sense a speaker diaphragm's position without polluting or being polluted by the program audio would predictably place the sensing excitation outside the audio band — the same design reflex that puts ultrasonic/out-of-band beacons in other transducer systems. KSR's "obvious to try" applies directly: a finite number of identified, predictable solutions (put the probe tone above or below 20 Hz–20 kHz), with a reasonable expectation of success.

Combination D — claims 5–7 specifically (correlate → subset → else re-select)

No single reference of record was retrieved that I can read as disclosing the specific loop, so I flag this as the weakest link in a § 103 case and the best target for an IPR petition's supplemental art search rather than something derivable from the (56) list alone. That said, the reasoning path is standard: given multiple excitation components (claim 3–4) and a measured-noise spectrum (Zilberfarb), comparing the recovered amplitudes to each other and discarding the outliers is the routine use of redundant-channel majority/consistency logic (the same logic as double/triple modular redundancy and multi-channel measurement voting), and re-selecting on failure is the obvious complement of the initial selection step. The applicant's own claim 14 rationale — data evolution indicating a problem — is likewise the ordinary use of data already computed.

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6. Consolidated § 103 table

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7. Where the § 103 case is strong, and where it isn't

Strong: the independent claims are, at bottom, synchronous detection applied to a known position transducer. Synchronous detection is decades pre-2015; the amplitude-varies-with-distance physics is conceded in the specification; and the noise-avoidance motivation is expressly admitted in the Background. An obviousness case built from Szabo '661 (or Friedrich '054) + Zilberfarb '015 is the most defensible pairing on the record, because both are already before the examiner and both are directed to the exact problem the applicant identifies.

Weak / needs verification:

1. I could not read the substantive disclosure of any cited reference. Every mapping above is a classification- and title-based hypothesis, not a verified disclosure. Before filing anything, pull the full text of Szabo '661, Friedrich '054 and Zilberfarb '015 and confirm the selective-detection and frequency-selection teachings in express terms.
2. The "3,432,639 (Sakamoto)" entry is OCR-inconsistent (a 1970s-format number dated 1995). Do not substitute a corrected number — verify the literal digits against the paper copy.
3. The (56) list is partial. I did not retrieve the remainder of the U.S. list, the rest of the foreign references, or the full NPL. There may be a closer reference I have not seen.
4. Claims 5–7 (correlating subset + iterate) are the features least supplied by the record as I retrieved it. If those are the commercially asserted claims, expect the petition to need supplemental art (multi-channel consistency/redundancy logic, spread-spectrum correlation receivers).
5. § 112 is a live parallel risk that may be stronger than § 103 on claim 1: "selected characteristic signal" and "the identified component" are functional/result-oriented terms that invite § 112(b) indefiniteness and § 112(a) written-description attacks. The Board has never construed them (consistent with the earlier sections' finding of zero PTAB proceedings), so there is no adverse construction to work around — but equally no roadmap.

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8. Verification checklist before relying on this

1. Retrieve the granted Claims at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10551215B2](/patent/US10551215B2)/en — confirm whether the independent claims are still 1 (method) and 15 (system), as the CN family member's claims suggest.
2. Pull the full (56) list from the grant PDF (pages 2–3) and from the file wrapper via USPTO PatentCenter for App. 14/737,403, plus any IDS and the examiner's Form 892 / reasons for allowance — the prosecution history will show whether the examiner already considered and distinguished these references.
3. Read Szabo 3,852,661, Friedrich 9,007,054, Zilberfarb 5,048,015, Matsumura 2007/0274556 in full, and chart their express disclosures element-by-element.
4. Pull the CN 106248111 B prosecution file for any CNIPA-cited art (the family search report may cite references the U.S. examiner never saw).
5. Check for § 102(a)(2) art: earlier-filed, later-published applications (including the applicant's own Kubik '082 family) under 2015-06-11.

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9. Uncertainty statement

• I state with confidence: the priority date is 2015-06-11; the (56) list includes the references tabulated in § 2; the CN family member's claim 1 matches the publication's claim 1 structure; and the specification expressly admits noise/interference from on-board actuators as the problem to be solved.
• I do not know, and did not verify, the actual disclosure of Szabo '661, Friedrich '054, Zilberfarb '015, Matsumura '556, or any other cited reference. The § 103 combinations above are reasoned hypotheses keyed to the references' identities, dates and printed classifications, offered to structure the obviousness case and the verification work — not conclusions about what those documents say.
• If live web or primary-source results later contradict any mapping here, prefer the newer results and flag the change; nothing in this analysis should be treated as a litigation-clearance or validity opinion.