US 10883836

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

Let me search for litigation/docket information and the claim text specifically.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and check for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

US Patent 10,883,836 — Analyst Summary

Bottom line up front: The bibliographic and technical picture is well supported. However, on your two specific research targets I must flag limits: (a) I found no literal, primary-source claim set to quote verbatim, and (b) I found no evidence of any CAFC 2026 docket activity. Details and caveats below.

1. Identification (interpreted literally)

Sources: the authoritative Google Patents full text supplied for this patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10883836/en), corroborated by https://patents.justia.com/patent/10883836 and the WO 2018/008082 record at https://fid-move.tib.eu/en/search/id/epa:WO2018008082.

Important disambiguation: A search hit for "IPR2022-00513, Lyft, Inc. v. AGIS Software Development LLC" concerns U.S. Patent No. 10,341,838 (a location-service patent) — a different number that is not to be conflated with 10,883,836. Likewise, US 2020/0143677 A1 ("determining how/hot lane travel times") is an unrelated application. I am flagging these rather than treating them as family or related art.

2. Abstract (as given in the authoritative text)

"A travel-lane estimation system includes: a GNSS receiver; a vehicle-speed calculator; an angular-velocity measurement mechanism; a subject-vehicle-position positioner calculating a vehicle's reference coordinate and reference orientation from a GNSS coordinate, and calculating time series data of vehicle's positions; a map information storage storing positional information about a division line of each lane; and a lane estimator calculating, as an optimal correction amount, an error pattern having a highest posterior probability among plural error patterns, correcting the time series data using the optimal correction amount, and comparing the corrected time series data with the division line, to estimate a vehicle's travel lane, the posterior probability calculated with the product of prior occurrence probability of the time series data by the plural error patterns and a likelihood calculated, under condition that the error pattern has occurred, based on a relative positional relationship between the corrected time series data and the division line."

3. Plain-language overview

The patent attacks a known limitation of dead-reckoning navigation: GNSS plus gyro/wheel-speed positioning drifts by as much as ~10 m, so it can tell you which road you're on but not which lane. Camera-based lane detection works but needs dedicated hardware.

The disclosed approach is a Bayesian correction of a vehicle trajectory against map lane-markings:

1. Build a trace. A GNSS receiver gives a coordinate; vehicle speed (wheel pulses) and angular velocity (gyro) propagate it into a time series of positions/orientations from a "reference coordinate/orientation" captured only when the vehicle is verified to be travelling straight (heading variation under a threshold).
2. Enumerate candidate corrections. Assume X, Y and orientation (θ) errors follow a 3-D normal distribution based on GNSS reception accuracy and gyro reliability; enumerate all lattice points within ±2σ as "error patterns." (Third–sixth embodiments reduce this to a θ-only 1-D search: far fewer candidates, higher angular resolution, faster — motivated by high-standard roads/expressways where lane-change detection speed matters.)
3. Score each candidate with Bayes. Posterior ∝ (prior probability of the error pattern) × (likelihood of the observed path given that pattern). The likelihood P₂ is a product of terms encoding "events" such as: no driving outside the road; few lane straddles (Poisson); gentle lane changes (yaw angle ~ normal); no lane change in a no-change zone; and consistency with turn-signal operation, steering-angle change, and camera white-line-crossing detection — plus staying near the lane center line (normal distribution). Relative position between the corrected path and lane division lines is captured either as line-segment intersection or as a distance-continuation relationship.
4. Correct and classify. Take the highest-posterior error pattern as the "optimal correction amount," re-apply it to the stored trace, and compare the corrected trace against the map's lane division lines to output the travel lane and the occurrence/direction (left/right) of a lane change — optionally by cumulating lateral movement amounts versus lane width.

The preamble's stated advantage over Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-211491 (cited as Patent Document 1) is that the earlier template-matching operated on the whole-road travelable region, so it could not perform lane-level orientation correction on multi-lane roads.

4. Independent claims — plain-language overview

⚠️ Caveat on sourcing. The authoritative full text furnished to me includes the Abstract, the SUMMARY, and the Description, but the verbatim claim set was not included in the retrieved text, and my searches did not surface a primary-source (USPTO/Google Patents "Claims" tab) copy of the claims before my search budget was exhausted. Accordingly, the two independent claims below are reconstructed from the SUMMARY's two parallel "A travel-lane estimation system according to the present invention includes…" passages, which are typically verbatim reproductions of the independent claims. I cannot confirm exact claim numbering or exact claim wording from primary sources.

Independent claim family A — "high-definition map" variant (SUMMARY passage 1; believed to be claim 1):
A travel-lane estimation system comprising:

• a GNSS receiver receiving a vehicle coordinate via GNSS;
• a vehicle-speed calculation means computing speed from travel distance;
• an angular-velocity measurement means measuring angular velocity from change in vehicle orientation;
• a subject-vehicle-position positioning unit that computes a reference coordinate and reference orientation from the GNSS coordinate, and computes time series data of positioning coordinates and positioning orientations from the reference coordinate/orientation plus the speed and angular velocity;
• a map information storage storing map information including positional information about a lane division line; and
• a lane estimation unit that: (i) picks, as an "optimal correction amount," the error pattern with the highest posterior probability among a plurality of error patterns; (ii) corrects the time series data with that optimal correction amount; and (iii) compares the corrected time series data with the division line to estimate the vehicle's travel lane,
• wherein the posterior probability = (prior occurrence probability of the time series data for the error patterns) × (likelihood), the likelihood being computed, given that the error pattern occurred, on the basis of a relative positional relationship between the corrected time series data and the division line.

Independent claim family B — "simple map" variant (SUMMARY passage 2):
Structurally identical to the above, except that the map element is replaced by:

• a simple-map-information storage storing map information comprising node coordinates forming a road link, road width, number of lanes, and travelable direction (i.e., ordinary navigation-map content), and
• a division line calculator that computes a lane division line from that map information,
  with the same posterior-probability/highest-error-pattern/correct-and-compare lane estimation logic.

Notable dependent-claim subject matter recited in the specification (numbers unverified): the relative positional relationship being intersection and/or distance-continuation (see ¶0094-equivalent text); the error pattern being a combination of coordinate error and orientation error; and (fifth/sixth embodiments) a high-standard-road determination unit that switches between θ-only error patterns on high-standard roads and coordinate+orientation error patterns elsewhere.

5. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity for US 10,883,836, and no litigation at all involving this patent number. My targeted queries ("CAFC 2026 docket Mitsubishi Electric 10883836 appeal" and the term 10883836/10,883,836 with Federal Circuit/2026) returned no relevant results — in one case an empty result set. I cannot state affirmatively that none exists; I can only state that my searches did not reveal any. I did not obtain a USPTO Patent Center / Patent Trial and Appeal Board / assignment-history screen confirming the current owner-of-record; the assignee chain above comes from the Google Patents legal-events timeline (Mitsubishi Electric Corp → Mitsubishi Electric Corporation assignment 2018-11-07 → Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation company split 2024-09-04).

Recommendation for verification: confirm the claim set and any post-grant proceedings against the primary USPTO records (PatentCenter for application 16/099,510 and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket), and check the CAFC docket via PACER/CM-ECF under "Mitsubishi Electric" for 2026. If you want, I can attempt those specific lookups.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10883836.

Let me search more specifically for this patent and its assignee.

Let me search additional litigation databases specifically for this patent number.

Summary of findings

I was unable to identify any litigation involving US Patent 10,883,836 ("Travel-lane estimation system," Mitsubishi Electric Corp., inventors Daikoku, Igarashi, Ikawa, Fujii, Irie; granted Jan. 5, 2021; adjusted expiration Oct. 1, 2036).

No known litigation matches this patent. Based on the searches I was able to run, I found no district court complaint, ITC action, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging US 10,883,836.

Important caution about "matching" numbers

The searches surfaced several proceedings involving different patents whose numbers contain the digit string "838" or "10883836." None of these relate to US 10,883,836, and they should not be mistaken for litigation on this patent:

Why I cannot confirm a definitive "no litigation" conclusion

• My web searches were truncated (I hit the tool-step limit before completing targeted queries against Unified Patents' litigation caselist, Docket Navigator, PACER, and CourtListener).
• I did not obtain a direct hit on Unified Patents, Justia Dockets, or the CAFC for this specific number.
• Accordingly, my statement is a "not found in the sources searched" result, not a verified negative.

Recommended verification steps (to convert this into a grounded answer)

1. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier for US 10,883,836 → "Litigation" tab and Assignment history (the 2024 assignment to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corp. via company split may affect who could assert it).
2. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist — filter by patent number 10883836.
3. Docket Navigator / Lex Machina — patent-number search (note: a granted-in-2021 patent from a large corporate owner like Mitsubishi Electric often sees no litigation).
4. CourtListener / Justia Dockets — search "10,883,836" and 10883836.
5. PTAB (PTAB E2E / PATENTSVIEW) — no IPR/PGR under IPR2020–IPR2026 identified for this number.

Bottom line

On the record available to me, US 10,883,836 has no known litigation (no identified plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome). I cannot rule out an unindexed or recently filed case, and given that I could not finish querying the dedicated litigation databases, you should treat this as a preliminary negative and confirm via the sources listed above before relying on it.

I'll start by verifying the canonical "no proceedings" signal with targeted web searches.

Let me run additional targeted searches to confirm there's no PTAB activity or related litigation involving this specific patent.

Let me do a final verification sweep for litigation and any Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator activity.

PTAB / AIA Trial Activity — U.S. Patent No. 10,883,836 B2

Patent: Travel-lane estimation system — App. No. 16/099,510 (PCT national stage, filed 2016-07-05) · Granted 2021-01-05 · Originally assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Corp.; reassigned 2024-09-04 to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation (company split) · Legal status: Active, adjusted expiration 2036-10-01
Source of record: US10883836B2 on Google Patents

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — no Inter Partes Reviews, no Post-Grant Reviews, and no Covered Business Method reviews have ever been filed against U.S. Patent No. 10,883,836. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal ("PTAB proceedings on file") block returns an empty set as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches surfaced no PTAB petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent.

The bottom line for a defendant is therefore not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened," and it is not "claims 1–5 have been canceled." Neither is true. The accurate characterization is: this is an untested patent. Every claim stands exactly as it issued on 2021-01-05, with no claim-cancellation, no estoppel-creating institution, no adverse PTAB claim construction, and no public Board reasoning construing "posterior probability," "division line," "error pattern," or any other limitation. That cuts both ways:

• For the patent owner: all claims are intact and there is zero IPR-derived narrowing to exploit. No prosecution-disclaimer-style admissions exist in a Board record.
• For a defendant: the patent is brittle by inexperience. There is no Board construction to rely on, but also no estoppel wall, no Fintiv-immunized prior art, and no first-petitioner General Plastic bar on your own first petition. You would be the first challenger, with a clean § 311 record and the full universe of prior art available.

Important framing signal: the absence of IPRs here is almost certainly not because the patent is invincible — it is because the patent has apparently never been asserted in high-stakes litigation. The patent owner is an operating company (Mitsubishi Electric → Mitsubishi Electric Mobility), not a monetization vehicle, and I found no district court complaint naming this patent. Well-asserted patents attract IPRs; unasserted ones do not. Treat the "0 proceedings" figure as a litigation signal, not a validity signal.

Per-proceeding detail

None to report. There are no proceeding numbers to enumerate, and I will not invent any. For completeness on the specific fields the template requests:

• Type / Filed / Status / Judge panel / Petition grounds / Institution decision / FWD / Settlement / Appeal — not applicable; no proceeding exists.
• No Board panel has ever touched this patent, so there are no APJ names, no institution reasoning, and no claim-level verdicts to quote. Any source that reports otherwise is reporting on a different patent (the "838-family" search space is heavily polluted by US 10,341,838 (AGIS Software) and US 12,010,838 (YMTC/Micron), both of which have substantial PTAB histories and are unrelated to this Mitsubishi patent).

Adjacent items worth flagging (not AIA trials)

• Same-family international filings exist — WO 2018/008082 A1 ("Travel Lane Estimation System") and EP 3570262 — but these are foreign prosecution, not PTAB proceedings. (WO-2018008082-A1 on the Unified Patents portal)
• Not a defensive-aggregator target (yet). I found no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar IPR filed against this patent. The Unified Patents portal carries a page for the related WO publication, which is a monitoring artifact, not evidence of a challenge.
• Caveat on scope of my check: I verified AIA trials (ipr/pgr/cbm). I did not independently confirm whether this patent has any ex parte reexamination or inter partes reexamination history, and the ODP block does not cover those. If you need that for a clearance opinion, pull the file wrapper directly.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM has ever been instituted against US 10,883,836, no claim has been canceled and no claim has been held unpatentable by the Board. Claims are neither "CANCELED" nor "SUSTAINED by the PTAB" — they are UNTESTED. The only validity determinations on this patent are the examiner's original allowance on 2021-01-05 and the European/Japanese counterparts' outcomes, neither of which binds a U.S. defendant or the Board. The patent text supplied here describes the claimed subject matter at a high level — a GNSS receiver, a vehicle-speed calculator, an angular-velocity measurement mechanism, a subject-vehicle-position positioner, a map/division-line store, and a lane estimator that selects an "optimal correction amount" as the error pattern with the highest posterior probability computed as prior occurrence probability × likelihood derived from the relative positional relationship between the corrected time series and the lane division line. I will not characterize individual claim numbers, because the claims section is not present in the authoritative text provided and I will not guess at them.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on this patent to work around — estoppel attaches only once a petitioner obtains an institution and an FWD (or termination after institution). Because no petitioner exists, there are no estoppel-carriers, no privies, and no RPI chains to litigate. Conversely, note the one-way effect that matters to you: if you file now, you will incur estoppel on grounds you raised or reasonably could have raised, while the patent owner incurs nothing. There is also no Sotera stipulation or Fintiv discretionary-denial trajectory to inherit from a prior petitioner, and [35 U.S.C. § 315(b)] is irrelevant here — the 1-year bar only runs from service of a complaint, and there is no complaint I could find.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner, because there is no first petitioner. The patent owner has not pursued PTAB appeals (nothing to appeal) and has not been on the receiving end of an adverse Board ruling. There is no defensive-aggregator chain. The one genuine pattern worth noting is corporate: the 2024-09-04 reassignment to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation via company split means the patent now sits in a dedicated mobility/ADAS entity — a corporate structure that is more likely to be asserted or cross-licensed in automotive supplier disputes than the parent's legacy portfolio. That is a forward-looking risk, not a current fact.

IPR-relevant art already on the face of the record. The patent itself cites Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-211491 (the "template matching" reference the specification distinguishes in the Background). That reference is the natural starting point for any § 103 challenge and, critically for § 325(d), it is already before the examiner — you would need to show the examiner materially erred, or pair it with art the examiner never saw. The spec's own admission that the prior-art template matches "a travelable region on the entire road" rather than "each lane" is the patent owner's own framing of its point of novelty, and it is also your best roadmap to a motivation-to-modify argument.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null result at the source before you rely on it. The absence of PTAB activity is the single most important finding in this memo, and it is a negative finding. Verify directly at USPTO PTAB E2E (search Application No. 16/099,510 and Patent No. 10,883,836) and cross-check the PTAB Decisions page and the file wrapper in Patent Center. Docket-level anomalies (a petition filed in the last few weeks that ODP has not ingested) are exactly the case where the structured block lags reality.
2. Because there is no FWD, there is nothing to link and nothing to quote. Do not build a defense narrative that presupposes an IPR record. If opposing counsel or a demand letter asserts "the PTAB already held these claims valid," that statement is false for this patent — no Board ever considered it — and you should say so with the E2E screenshot attached.
3. If you are being asserted against and want to file an IPR: you are a first mover, which means (a) no § 315(b) bar unless and until you are served, (b) no § 325(d) overlay beyond the examiner's own record, and (c) full freedom on art selection. The two live risks are General Plastic / follow-on (inapplicable to a first petition) and Fintiv / § 314(a) discretionary denial, which is live if there is parallel district court litigation — mitigate with an early Sotera stipulation. Budget to the statutory clock: institution decision due within 6 months of the petition's filing date and the FWD within 1 year of institution ([35 U.S.C. § 314(b), § 316(a)(11)]), extendable only for good cause.
4. If no litigation exists and you are doing freedom-to-operate work: treat this as a live, unadjudicated patent through at least 2036-10-01. Design-around and invalidity analysis should run in parallel, and the strongest invalidity theory starts with the patent's own distinguished reference, JP H11-211491, plus art directed at lane-level (not road-level) map matching.
5. Set a docket watch. Given the 2024-09-04 transfer into Mitsubishi Electric Mobility, look for a first assertion. The first IPR against this patent — if one ever comes — will be the trigger that converts every statement above from "untested" to "adjudicated."

Verification note / confidence. High confidence that the canonical ODP list is empty (the structured block is explicit) and that my searches surfaced no AIA trial for this patent. Medium confidence that no proceeding has ever been filed, since web-search coverage of unasserted patents is thin and a very recently filed petition may not yet be indexed. I found no Federal Circuit appeal and no district court case naming US 10,883,836; I did not separately audit reexamination or interference records.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10883836 before producing the analysis.

Let me dig deeper into the specific recorded assignments and any litigation.

Let me try to locate the specific reel/frame records and check for any litigation dockets.

I was able to retrieve the Google Patents legal-events record and corroborating corporate documents, but my searches did not surface the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame rows or correspondent-of-record fields for this patent. I'm flagging that gap explicitly rather than filling it in.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10883836 B2 ("Travel-lane estimation system")

Patent: US 10,883,836 B2 | App. No. 16/099,510 | PCT filing date / priority: 2016-07-05 | Issued: 2021-01-05 | Adjusted expiration: 2036-10-01 | Status: Active
Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10883836/en
USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Data-availability note (read before the timeline): Google Patents enumerates only the two legal events below and does not expose reel/frame numbers for this patent. My attempts to pull the corresponding rows from USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov returned no usable records in this session. Reel/frame numbers, execution dates, and correspondent-of-record names are therefore NOT verified and are deliberately left blank below. Do not treat the omission as "no reel/frame exists" — it means I could not confirm them.

Inventors

All five are listed on the face of the patent as having assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Google Patents legal events, recordation dated 2018-11-07: "Assignors: IGARASHI, YUJI, IKAWA, MASAHIKO, FUJII, MASATOSHI, IRIE, TAKASHI, DAIKOKU, Kentaro"). Third-party inventor indices (PatentLeaderboard) also group all five under Mitsubishi Electric, consistent with an in-house R&D team rather than a collected inventor pool.

Unusual patterns: None detected. There is no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing. This is a normal corporate R&D team with employee-style assignment, not a founder-inventor group that could signal a later portfolio fire-sale. (I could not verify individual departure dates from any source, so this is a "no evidence found" call, not a positive clearance.)

Original assignee

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TSE: 6503) — named as original assignee and recorded assignee as of 2018-11-07.

• Primary line of business: diversified electrical and electronics manufacturing — energy/power systems, industrial automation, information & communication systems, electronic devices, and automotive equipment (the business unit relevant to this patent).
• Product embodiment: The patent's specification expressly contemplates deployment — a navigation system using the travel-lane estimation system "enables a lane on which the subject vehicle is travelling to be grasped," and the described use cases are "automated driving, driving assist function." Mitsubishi Electric manufactures and supplies automotive navigation, ADAS and in-vehicle infotainment equipment, so the patent sits squarely inside a shipped product line rather than a licensing-only asset. I did not find a specific commercially branded product confirmed to implement these claims.
• Current status (2026): Operating. Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Mitsubishi Electric remains the 100% parent of the entity that now holds the patent.
• Post-issuance restructuring: On 2023-10-31 Mitsubishi Electric announced the spinoff of its automotive-equipment business, named the successor Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation on 2023-12-01, and incorporated it on 2024-04-01 (source: Mitsubishi Electric press releases, us.mitsubishielectric.com, and the Stanley Electric / Mitsubishi Electric Mobility disclosure at mitsubishielectric-mobility.com, which lists Mitsubishi Electric Mobility as 100% held by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation as of 2024-04-01). The patent is a company split transfer into a wholly-owned subsidiary — an intra-group reorganization, not a sale to a third party.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded events are visible. Reel/frame and execution dates were not retrievable; correspondent is unknown. No security agreements, licenses, releases, or corrections are recorded.

• YYYY-MM-DD (executed) / recorded 2018-11-07 — Reel [/___] (reel/frame not obtainable — do not cite)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (see document for details)
  • Assignor: Yuji Igarashi; Masahiko Ikawa; Masatoshi Fujii; Takashi Irie; Kentaro Daikoku (the five named inventors, individually)
  • Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
  • Correspondent: Not available. Cannot run the repeat-correspondent test without it.
  • Context: Standard employee/obligation assignment to the original corporate assignee at national-stage entry — the ordinary first link in a Japanese corporate chain of title, not an acquisition.

• YYYY-MM-DD (executed) / recorded 2024-09-04 — Reel [/___] (reel/frame not obtainable — do not cite)

  • Conveyance: COMPANY SPLIT (absorbion-type corporate demerger under Japanese corporate law)
  • Assignor: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
  • Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation
  • Correspondent: Not available.
  • Context: Internal reorg / intra-group spinoff of the automotive-equipment business. The split's effective date was 2024-04-01 (the subsidiary's incorporation date); recordation followed on 2024-09-04, a normal ~5-month lag. Mitsubishi Electric retained 100% ownership of the successor at closing. No third-party consideration, no licensing entity, no change of control.

If the Assignment Center in fact holds additional rows (e.g., a pre-2018 PCT-stage record, or assignments tied to the later AISIN and Stanley joint ventures), I did not see them and have not asserted them. Confirm directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by searching patent number 10883836.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10883836
    2016 : PCT application filed by Mitsubishi Electric
    2018 : Inventors assign rights to Mitsubishi Electric
    2021 : US patent issued
    2024 : Company split to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility

(Note: the 2016 label reflects the PCT filing/priority date carried on the face of the patent and in Google Patents legal events; the US national-stage filing date is 2018-11-07, the same day the inventor assignment was recorded.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only post-issuance transfer is to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation, recordation 2024-09-04, conveyance type COMPANY SPLIT. That entity is (a) a 100%-owned subsidiary of a listed operating parent at closing, (b) an operating automotive-equipment supplier with real facilities and products, and (c) located at 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo — the Mitsubishi Electric group head-office address, not a registered-agent service address. No "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" naming, no single-member Delaware or Texas LLC anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither Mitsubishi Electric Corporation nor Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation appears on any public NPE roster (Acacia/ACT, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities), and I found no Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing for either. No such entity appears at any link, recorded or unrecorded.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNKNOWN / NOT ASSESSABLE. I could not obtain the correspondent-of-record for either the 2018-11-07 or the 2024-09-04 recording. The repeat-lawyer tell is the single most valuable signal in this taxonomy and it cannot be run for this patent with the sources reachable in this session. Do not record this as "not present" — it is genuinely unverified.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only two recorded transfers across eight-plus years (2018-11-07 and 2024-09-04), spanning ~6 years and 10 months. No chained LLCs, no <24-month sequence, no shared-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. I found no infringement litigation naming US 10,883,836 in any district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit source searched. There is consequently no 6-month pre-suit window to satisfy and no evidence the chain was arranged for assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has not filed Chapter 7/11, and the 2024 transfer was a solvent, parent-to-wholly-owned-subsidiary demerger disclosed in the parent's own investor communications — the opposite of a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to an NPE asserting against competitors; no EFF, Patent Progress, RPX or SEC filing surfaced suggesting Mitsubishi Electric is funding off-book assertions through a third party. The successor entity is a wholly-owned operating subsidiary, not an assertion vehicle.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent is not neutralized by defensive aggregation; it is retained inside an operating corporate family.

Bottom line on signals: zero strong signals, zero weak signals; two signals (correspondent recurrence) cannot be evaluated for lack of data.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with an explicit caveat on the word "assertion."

Both recorded links (recordations 2018-11-07 and 2024-09-04, conveyance types Assignment of Assignors' Interest and Company Split) keep the patent continuously inside the Mitsubishi Electric corporate family: the five named inventors assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, which later demerged the asset into its 100%-owned subsidiary Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation. There is no licensing-only entity, no NPE, no defensive aggregator, no bankruptcy, and no identified lawsuit anywhere in the chain — which is why no NPE verdict is supportable.

Read this verdict as "operating-company ownership," not as a finding that the patent has been asserted: as of 2026-09-29 no infringement assertion naming US 10,883,836 has been identified, and if the taxonomy requires the litigation prong to be literally satisfied, no listed category fits and the practical answer is operating-company-held, currently non-asserted. Verify the reel/frame rows and, critically, the correspondent of record at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — that field is the one open question and the only signal I could not close out.

Confidence and open items

• High confidence: original assignee (face of patent + 2018-11-07 recordation), 2024-09-04 company-split transfer, Mitsubishi Electric Mobility's 100% parentage and operating status, absence of NPE-type assignees.
• Not verified — do not cite: reel/frame numbers, execution dates, correspondent of record for either recording, and whether any additional Assignment Center rows exist.
• Not verified — no evidence found: inventor departure dates; existence of any commercially branded product specifically implementing claims 1–N of this patent.

I'll research US Patent 10883836 thoroughly, focusing on its citation records.

Let me dig deeper into the specific citation records for this patent.

Let me try to access the patent's specific pages directly for the citation record.

Prior Art Analysis: US 10,883,836 B2 — "Travel-lane estimation system"

1. Patent Identification (verified bibliographic data)

Interpreting the number literally as 10883836 (i.e., US 10,883,836 B2):

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10883836/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/10883836

2. Important Transparency Note on the Citation Record

I must be explicit about a limitation of what I was able to verify. You asked me to search the USPTO database and pull each patent citation off the face of US 10,883,836. My searches (USPTO PatentCenter/PTActs, Google Patents, Justia, EPO, PATENTSCOPE results) did not return the front-page "(56) References Cited" list — the U.S. Patent Documents and Foreign Patent Documents blocks — for this specific patent. The search hits that came back were prior-art lists belonging to other patents (EP 2677460, JP 2013530435, JP 2019519043, etc.), not to US 10,883,836.

Under your operating rule ("If you do not know something with high confidence, say so explicitly rather than fabricating"), I will not invent a citation list. What follows is grounded only in (a) the authoritative full patent text you supplied and (b) the citation references I could confirm. I flag where the record is incomplete.

3. Confirmed Prior Art Reference(s)

Reference A — JP 11-211491 (the only reference named in the patent's own text)

• Full citation: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-211491 ("Patent Document 1" as cited in the specification and in the "PRIOR ART DOCUMENTS" section of US 10,883,836).
• Jurisdiction / literature type: Japanese unexamined patent application (Kokai), foreign patent document.
• Publication/filing date: The "11" prefix denotes Heisei year 11, i.e., 1999 (publication year). I cannot state the exact publication day with high confidence from the retrieved record — treat "1999" as verified and the specific day as unconfirmed. It predates the 2016-07-05 priority date by roughly 17 years, so it is valid prior art under §102(b) (pre-AIA) / §102(a)(1) (AIA) if the subject matter is disclosed.
• Brief description (as characterized by the patent itself): A camera-less technique for correcting a subject vehicle's position. In its "travel-lane identification means" it corrects the coordinate and orientation of the subject vehicle on the basis of shape information contained in a map and identifies a travel road through pattern matching. In its "lane calculation means" it calculates, on the basis of shape data of each virtual lane created from navigation-map data (number of lanes, road widths) and on positioning coordinates at individual times, the probability that the subject vehicle is travelling on each travel lane. It creates a template of a vehicle's trace from map data and corrects positioning results in chronological order so the trace falls within the template.
• Which claim(s) it potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102: This is the crux. The applicant distinguished over this reference rather than being anticipated by it:
  • Patent Document 1's template is a travelable region on the entire road, not a per-lane travelable region. The patent's stated problem (see "Problem to be Solved by the Invention") is that PD1's approach cannot perform lane-level orientation correction on a multi-lane road, so it "fail[s] to achieve orientation correction with expected accuracy through pattern matching in some cases."
  • Accordingly, PD1 does not anticipate the independent claims, because those claims require the posterior probability to be computed from "positional information about a division line of a lane" and "a relative positional relationship between the time series data after correction and the division line," and require an error pattern having the highest posterior probability to be selected as the optimal correction amount (Bayesian inference). PD1 discloses whole-road pattern matching + a per-lane travel probability, but not a per-lane division line used as the likelihood basis for selecting a correction amount.
  • Where PD1 could be relied on under §102 is only against a hypothetical broad claim reciting the generic combination of (i) map-shape-based coordinate/orientation correction and (ii) computing a probability of being on each lane from positioning coordinates. No independent claim in US 10,883,836 is that broad, so PD1 reads as §103-type background art / the starting point the disclosure distinguished, not as an anticipatory §102 reference against the issued claims.

Reference B — the "Background Art" non-patent characterization (no specific citation given)

The specification describes the dominant conventional method: obtaining white-line information around the vehicle through camera image analysis and detecting lane changes from time-series data of the distance between the vehicle and the white lines. The patent critically notes a camera "requires an exclusive specification" and imposes "a significant economic burden on a user." This is described generically — the patent text does not name a specific document for it, so it cannot be treated as a formally cited reference with a citation date.

4. Family / Related Documents (not prior art, but relevant context)

• US 20190120632 A1 — the pre-grant publication of this same application; same priority, not prior art to US 10,883,836 (same family).
• WO 2016/… (the parent PCT application of the US 16/099,510 national stage) — the international publication in the same family.
• Assignments: 2018-11-07 to Mitsubishi Electric Corp.; 2024-09-04 to Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corp. (company split) — record data only.

5. Bottom Line

Based on the sources I could actually retrieve:

1. The only patent citation definitively tied to US 10,883,836's own disclosure is JP 11-211491 ("Patent Document 1"), a 1999 Japanese Kokai. It is background/distinguishing art, not an anticipatory §102 reference against the issued claims, because it matches against a whole-road travelable-region template rather than a per-lane division line, and does not select a highest-posterior-probability correction amount from a relative positional relationship with the lane division line.
2. I could not verify the full face-of-the-patent "(56) References Cited" list (U.S. and foreign patent documents cited by the examiner) for US 10,883,836 from the available searches. I am not going to fabricate those entries. If you need that exact list, it should be pulled directly from USPTO PatentCenter (application 16/099,510) or the Google Patents "Citations" tab, which my searches did not return.

If you can supply the examiner's citation list (or paste the "References Cited" block from the PDF), I will run the same §102 element-by-element mapping — full citation, publication/filing date, description, and the specific claim(s) each reference potentially anticipates — against the concrete independent and dependent claims.

I'll analyze obviousness for US 10,883,836, building on the prior-art record already available. First, let me ground the analysis in the actual prior-art citations on this patent.

I found a promising lead — a search report citing JP 11-211491 (the exact reference cited on this patent). Let me verify the family relationship and identify the other cited references.

Obviousness analysis — US 10,883,836 ("Travel-lane estimation system")

0. Scope, sources, and a flagged evidentiary caveat

Build on prior work: The earlier litigation section established (provisionally) that no litigation is known against US 10,883,836. That matters here because it means there is no record of objective indicia (secondary considerations) in a litigation posture — no injunction/validity findings, no nexus evidence, no commercial-success record. I incorporate that and do not repeat it.

What "the Prior Art section of this page" contains. The page's prior-art record consists of:

• Prior art keywords: vehicle, lane, travel, time series, series data.
• One cited patent document: Patent Document 1 — Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-211491 (cited both on the front page and in the Background Art).
• Admissions in the specification itself (Background Art), which are prior art under § 103 as applicant/admitted art.
• CPC classes that define the field of search: G01C21/30 (map- or contour-matching), G01C21/165 (INS + non-inertial), G06V20/588 (lane-marking recognition), B60W30/12 (lane keeping), G08G1/0969.

⚠️ Caveat I must flag, not paper over. I could not retrieve the verbatim claim set of US 10,883,836 in this session; the only claim-language text on the page is the "Definitions" block, which reproduces the claim-style recitations ("a travel-lane estimation system includes the following: …"), plus the Summary's two independent-claim variants. My analysis is therefore anchored to that recitation text, and it should be re-verified against the issued claims. I also could not retrieve the full text of JP 11-211491; my characterization of it rests on (a) the patent's own Background-Art description and (b) an ISR citation to it (below).

⚠️ Second caveat (possible family mismatch). A German-language PCT/ISA/210 search report appears in the file of JP 2019-520648 A (completed 10.08.2017; claim range 1–11) citing: X — Tao Junli et al., "Wrong Roadway Detection for Multi-lane Roads"; Y — US 2012/0290150 A1 (Doughty); A — US 2013/0304374 A1 (Lee), F. Peyet et al., "Lane-level positioning for cooperative systems using EGNOS and enhanced digital maps" (2008), DE 10 2012 208974 A1 (GM), and Schindler, "Vehicle self-localization with high-precision digital maps" (IEEE IV 2013, 141–146). This is a lane-level positioning citation set that is highly consistent with a search against a travel-lane estimation invention — but I could not confirm that JP 2019-520648 belongs to the US 10,883,836 family, and the ISR being in German/EPO-as-ISA is a mismatch with a JPO-filed PCT. I therefore treat these references as field-corroborating art, not as officially certified citations against this patent. Verify via Patent Center/Global Dossier.

1. The claim 1 recitation, decomposed

From the page's claim-language block, claim 1 recites:

The second independent claim substitutes/simplifies element E: simple-map-information storage (node coordinates, road width, number of lanes, travelable direction) plus a division line calculator that derives lane division lines from that map data. Dependent-style recitations in the record add: (i) the relative positional relationship is an intersection relationship and/or a distance-continuation relationship; (ii) the error pattern is a combination of coordinate error and orientation error; (iii) the error pattern is an orientation error alone (3rd/4th embodiments); (iv) a high-standard-road determination unit selecting between the two error-pattern modes (5th/6th embodiments).

Practical consequence: Elements A–D are, on the patent's own words, the ordinary GNSS/DR navigation stack. The § 103 battle is therefore entirely over elements E and F — i.e., "do lane-level maps + Bayesian path scoring on lane geometry."

2. Reference-by-reference: what each supplies

(1) D1 — JP 11-211491 (Mitsubishi Electric; laid open 1999-08-06). Per the patent's own description: a travel-lane identification means that corrects the coordinate and orientation of the subject vehicle on the basis of shape information contained in a map… through pattern matching, and a lane calculation means that computes the probability that the subject vehicle is travelling on each travel lane on the basis of shape data of each virtual lane created using information about the number of lanes and road widths contained in a navigation map, using positioning coordinates at individual times. The patent expressly criticizes D1 for using "a travelable region on the entire road as a template" and not "a travelable region on each lane."

→ D1 discloses: coordinate and orientation correction by map pattern matching; probability computation over candidate lanes; time-chronological (time-series) correction so the trace falls within a template. The patent concedes D1's method is the same genus, differing in resolution (road vs. lane).

Corroboration of D1's content/scope: an ISR in the WO 2016/203515 A1 file cites "JP 11-211491 A (Mitsubishi Electric Corp.), 06 August 1999, claim 1; paragraphs [0038] to [0049]" — i.e., D1's pattern-matching core is recited in one claim and a dozen paragraphs, and is treated in the art as generic map-matching teaching.

(2) Admitted art — camera/white-line lane-change detection. Background Art: "a dominant method for identifying a travel lane is a technique using the results of camera image analysis… obtaining white-line information… and sensing the fact that the subject vehicle has crossed a lane using time series data of the distance between the subject vehicle and the white-line information, thereby detecting a lane change." This is admitted prior art that supplies the lane-boundary-relative, distance-based comparison over time series — the very "distance-continuation relationship" the dependent recitation claims.

(3) Lane-level enhanced-map art (Peyet 2008; Schindler 2013; DE 10 2012 208974 (GM); US 2013/0304374 (Lee)). These supply element E: digital maps containing lane-level geometry/boundaries ("enhanced maps," "high-precision digital maps"), and lane-level positioning using them. Peyet's title alone ("Lane-level positioning for cooperative systems using EGNOS and enhanced digital maps") establishes that mapping GNSS/EGNOS positioning onto enhanced (lane-level) digital maps was known by 2008 — seven-plus years before the 2016-07-05 priority date.

(4) Probabilistic/Kalman/Bayesian map-matching (Tao 2013, "Wrong Roadway Detection for Multi-lane Roads"; GM DE 10 2012 208974). Supplies element F: scoring candidate vehicle hypotheses against multi-lane road geometry by a probability/likelihood measure, and detection that the assumption is wrong (i.e., choosing the best hypothesis) — the identical reasoning structure to "highest posterior probability → optimal correction."

(5) US 2012/0290150 A1 (Doughty), pub. 15 Nov 2012 — Y-category in the above ISR. From the excerpt I saw, it concerns lane-corresponding route/lane information, "current heading of a vehicle traveling in the appropriate direction in a lane," and a mapping database with surveyed coordinates. I flag that I only reviewed a partial excerpt and that its disclosure is directed to fixed-location route markers; I would not rest the obviousness case on it without full-text review. It is, however, useful for the proposition that lane-level heading/lane-identification from map+heading data was known.

(6) Mitsubishi's own WO 2016/203515 A1, "Driving lane determining device and driving lane determining method" (int'l filing 2015-06-15; published 2016-12-22). This is the closest structural sibling in the same applicant's portfolio. Its disclosure, as retrieved: a map database whose map information includes road information, lane information (lane identifier, latitude/longitude, center line), and constituent line information (identifier, latitude/longitude, line type, curvature of each line constituting the lane); a current-position acquisition unit comprising a GPS sensor, gyro sensor, vehicle-speed sensor and acceleration sensor, performing map matching; a white-line information acquisition unit (front/rear camera); a travel lane estimation unit; and a travel lane determination unit operating on a "driving lane probability list."

• Prior-art status: published after the 2016-07-05 priority date, so not § 102(a)(1) art. However, as a PCT application designating the US with an international filing date of 2015-06-15 (before the priority date), it is a candidate § 102(a)(2) reference (via 35 U.S.C. § 374) if the US designation and national-stage conditions are met. This needs verification before use. If it qualifies, it is the single most damaging reference, because it discloses essentially elements D(lane-level map), E, and probability-based lane estimation in one document by the same assignee.

3. Combination 1 — D1 in view of lane-level enhanced-map art (strongest, cleanest)

Teaching: D1 teaches the whole claimed algorithm at road resolution: compare a positional/orientation-corrupted trace against map shape by pattern matching, score by probability over candidate lanes, and correct chronologically. Peyet/Schindler/GM teach that maps exist that carry lane-level geometry (division lines / lane boundaries / curvature) and that GNSS+DR positioning can be resolved against them.

Motivation (KSR/MPEP 2143):

• The problem is D1's own, and the patent says so: D1's template is a "travelable region on the entire road," and thus "lane-level orientation correction cannot be made in a road composed of a plurality of lanes." A POSITA reading D1 and asked to fix exactly that deficiency would replace the road-level template with a lane-level template — i.e., with the dashed/solid division lines of a lane-level map.
• KSR rationale (C)/(D) — known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement: "lane-level positioning on enhanced digital maps" was a recognized, actively pursued technique by 2008–2013 in the very same field (Peyet 2008; Schindler 2013), making the substitution a predictable use of an established technique with an expected result (better lane discrimination).
• KSR rationale (A) — combination of known elements according to known methods: GNSS + gyro + wheel speed (admitted) + lane-level map (Peyet/GM) + D1's map-matching/probability correction = the claim, with each element performing its known function.
• Market/industry pressure: the Background Art's own framing — cameras are "an exclusive specification" imposing "a significant economic burden" — supplies a business/engineering driver to do lane estimation without a camera, using data the vehicle already has (GNSS+DR+map).

Result: claim 1's elements A–F are all accounted for; the only difference from D1 is resolution and map content, and the prior art expressly supplied lane-level map content for exactly this purpose.

4. Combination 2 — D1 (or admitted camera art) + probabilistic multi-lane hypothesis scoring (Tao 2013; GM; possibly WO 2016/203515)

Teaching: Tao's "Wrong Roadway Detection for Multi-lane Roads" addresses determining which of several parallel lanes/roadways a vehicle is on, by testing a trajectory hypothesis against multi-lane road geometry. GM DE 10 2012 208974 addresses lane-level position estimation against lane geometry. WO 2016/203515 uses a driving lane probability list.

Motivation: Once element E (lane-level geometry) is present, computing a likelihood of the observed trace given a hypothesized position/orientation error, and picking the maximum, is the textbook Bayesian/particle-filter map-matching solution that a POSITA would apply as a matter of routine optimization. The claim's "prior occurrence probability × likelihood" formula is the standard Bayes product (P(x,y,θ) ∝ P1(x,y,θ)·P2(x,y,θ) — the patent's Expression 3) and the specification itself concedes the priors are ordinary three-dimensional normal distributions parametrized by "GNSS reception accuracy" and "gyro reliability" (Expression 4 region).

Key § 103 point: the likelihood term is where the patent wants novelty — but the specification enumerates the events as Poisson processes (road departures, lane changes), normal distributions (yaw angle, lane-center offset), and exponential distributions (time to blinker/steering/white-line detection), with all parameters λ_dev, λ_chg, μ_yaw, σ_yaw, p_prh, λ_win, λ_hnd, λ_cam, σ_cen expressly settable as constants "based on past records, such as travel probe data." Choosing known probability models for known driving behaviors and calibrating them from probe data is precisely the "application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement" that KSR condemns.

5. Combination 3 — admitted white-line/time-series art for the dependent "relative positional relationship" recitations

The dependent recitation that the relative positional relationship be (i) an intersection between lines linking the time series and the division line and/or (ii) a distance-continuation relationship is met by the admitted camera art: obtaining white lines and "sensing… a lane [crossing] using time series data of the distance between the subject vehicle and the white-line information." Intersection = crossing a division line; distance-continuation = keeping distance within a range. Substituting map-derived division-line geometry for camera-derived white lines to compute the same two relationships is a simple substitution of one known data source for another, yielding predictable results (KSR rationale (B)) — and the applicant cannot claim the camera version as his own, since it is admitted prior art and the Background Art further concedes cameras have "not widely spread."

Likewise, the recitation of "the distance between each point… and the division line keeps falling within a predetermined range" and "travelling in the center of the lane" map directly onto standard lane-keeping/lane-centering criteria already used in B60W30/12 lane-keeping systems (a class the Office itself assigned to this patent).

6. The second independent claim (simple map + division line calculator) and the "high-standard road" claims

• Simple-map-information storage + division line calculator: This is explicitly the "use the map you already have" variant. The specification states the simple map "include[s] information about node coordinates, forming a road link, a road width, the number of lanes, and a travelable direction" — and concedes that common navigation maps already include node coordinates and travelable direction, requiring only that width and lane count also be available. D1 itself already recites "information about the number of lanes and road widths contained in a navigation map" and computes "shape data of each virtual lane." That is the entire recited function of the simple-map-information storage + division line calculator: synthesizing virtual lane geometry (division lines) from road width and lane count. → This claim is squarely obvious over D1 alone, and in combination with the lane-level-positioning art (Peyet/GM) with respect to the comparing/estimating steps. This is the most vulnerable claim in the patent.
• Orientation-error-only error pattern (3rd/4th embodiments): Claimed as a reduction of the search space from three dimensions to one. The specification supplies the motivation itself: "the number of correction amount candidates… greatly reduce[d]… thereby greatly reducing the volume of correction amount calculation," plus the observation that in high-standard roads "correct detection of positional off-set amounts x and y is difficult, and… accurate estimation of an orientation error amount θ is important." Truncating a Bayesian search to a lower-dimensional parameter space, and selecting which parameter dominates in a given regime, is an optimization/design choice with a predictable benefit (compute savings vs. resolution trade-off) — KSR rationale (D), and the trade-off is expressly acknowledged in the specification ("for the same volume of calculation, increasing the resolving power… conversely… the volume of calculation is reduced").
• High-standard-road determination unit switching between the coordinate+orientation mode and the orientation-only mode: This is a conditional/if-then selection between two disclosed estimation modes based on a parameter read from map data (road type) — the classic "obvious to try"/"automatic switching at a threshold" and "functional equivalence of two disclosed alternatives" situation. Where a reference or the applicant discloses two ways of doing the thing, and the claim covers choosing between them on a stated criterion (here, road type available in the same map data), § 103 is generally fatal. The "high-standard road" definition the patent supplies (no grade intersections/signals, higher speed) is a conventional expressway/exclusive-motorway definition.

7. Synthesis — the strongest two-reference and three-reference attacks

Claim 1 is, on the available record, vulnerable; the second independent claim (simple map + division line calculator) is the most vulnerable because its distinguishing feature is verbatim in D1's described content; the orientation-only and high-standard-road dependent claims are vulnerable as optimization/selection-of-alternatives claims.

8. Counter-arguments and how they fare (be candid)

Arguments the patentee would make, and their strength:

1. "D1 teaches away / is limited to road-level templates." Weak-to-moderate. D1's road-level template is a deficiency, not a teaching away — a reference's failure to solve a problem is not a teaching away from solving it (In re Fulton; MPEP 2145). The patent's own Background Art frames D1's limitation as the problem to be solved, which is the classic § 103 posture.
2. "D1's lane calculation is only a probability over candidate lanes, not a posterior probability combining a prior occurrence probability and a geometric likelihood, and not a correction amount selection." Moderate. This is the strongest non-obviousness argument and depends on how the claims/limitations are construed. It would be met by the secondary references (Tao/GM; possibly WO 2016/203515's probability list) and by the admission that priors are ordinary Gaussians from GNSS accuracy — i.e., the "prior" element contributes nothing non-conventional.
3. "No motivation to combine outside the same field." Weak. All identified references are in the same field (G01C21/30 map matching, G08G1/0968-0969, B60W30/12), addressing the same problem (which lane is the vehicle in?), often by the same assignee.
4. Secondary considerations. On the earlier (provisional) litigation record there is no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, long-felt need, or industry praise with a nexus — and the patent's own Background Art affirmatively describes the market as not having adopted camera-based lane estimation ("a product employing such travel-lane estimation using a camera image has not widely spread"), which cuts both ways: it may support long-felt need, but the patentee would have to prove the claimed solution (not cameras generally) satisfied it.
5. "Enumerated events/probability models are a specific innovation." Weak-moderate. The events are descriptions of ordinary driving behaviors (lane straddling, gentle lane change, lane change in a prohibition zone, blinker/hand/camera timing, lane-center offset) resolved with textbook distributions. Whether the specific product-of-eight-factors likelihood (P2 = P2A·P2B·…·P2H) is claimed or merely an embodiment determines the outcome; if merely an embodiment, it cannot save the claim.

9. Bottom line

• Element-by-element, claim 1 is likely obvious under § 103 over JP 11-211491 (D1) in view of lane-level digital-map/positioning art (Peyet 2008; Schindler 2013; DE 10 2012 208974) — with the motivation supplied by D1's own lane-level deficiency, which the patent itself identifies, plus the predictable-benefit and known-technique rationales of KSR.
• The second independent claim (simple-map + division-line calculator) is the weakest claim; its distinguishing function is described in D1.
• The orientation-only and high-standard-road dependent claims are optimization/alternative-selection claims with the trade-off expressly conceded in the specification, and are correspondingly vulnerable.
• The strongest single additional reference — if it qualifies under § 102(a)(2) — is Mitsubishi's own WO 2016/203515 A1, which discloses lane/constituent-line map data, GPS+gyro+vehicle-speed map matching, and a probability-list-based travel-lane estimation unit. Verify its § 102(a)(2) eligibility (US designation; international filing date 2015-06-15 vs. priority 2016-07-05) before relying on it.
• Confidence: moderate-to-high on the D1-based combination attacks (D1's content is corroborated by the patent's own characterization and by an ISR citation); moderate on the lane-level-map secondary references (I confirmed their identities, dates, and subject matter from search snippets, not full texts); low on any reliance on US 2012/0290150 (Doughty) without full-text review, and explicitly unresolved as to whether the JP 2019-520648 search report belongs to this patent's family.

10. Verification steps to convert this into a grounded § 103 opinion

1. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier file wrapper for US 16/099,510 — pull the IDS, the examiner's § 103 rejections, and the applicant's response/allowance arguments. The X-category ISR finding (Tao 2013) suggests narrow allowance; the reasons for allowance are the highest-value document here.
2. Retrieve and translate JP 11-211491 (esp. claim 1 and ¶¶[0038]–[0049], per the WO 2016/203515 ISR citation) to confirm the degree to which it discloses per-lane probability and orientation correction.
3. Confirm whether JP 2019-520648 A is in this patent's family, and pull the EP family member (EP 3 479 075 or equivalent) search report, which is the counterpart of the German ISR set.
4. Confirm WO 2016/203515 A1's § 102(a)(2) status (US designation, any US national-stage filing) — it is the most probative single reference identified.
5. Obtain full texts of Peyet 2008, Schindler 2013, Tao 2013, US 2013/0304374, DE 10 2012 208974, US 2012/0290150 for pinpoint citations before finalizing any invalidity contentions.