US 10983001

Patent Overview — US 10983001 B2

Title: "Raman probe and biological component analyzing apparatus using the same"

Assignee/Inventor: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (original assignee per the source); inventor Ho Jun Chang. Assignment recorded 2019-08-06.

Key dates (source): Priority 2018-07-31; Filing 2019-07-30; Publication of US20200041338A1 on 2020-02-06; Granted/Published as US10983001B2 on 2021-04-20. Anticipated expiration is listed as 2039-07-30; legal status "Active" is expressly described in the source as an assumption, not a legal conclusion. Application number US16/526,456.

Purpose: Non-invasive biological sensors using spectroscopic techniques such as Raman spectroscopy may measure blood components without drawing blood, for example by analyzing interstitial fluid in a dermal layer from a measured skin spectrum. The stated drawback: measured Raman signal is generally small, and for turbid media such as skin, Raman light collection efficiency is very low using existing image-based examination optical systems and endoscope-form Raman probes. Example embodiments therefore aim to increase light collection efficiency.

Plain-language scope (from the excerpted description): A Raman probe includes a light source emitting light onto an object; a light collector that collects Raman-scattered light by reflecting it, having a light incident port, a light emitting port, and a reflective surface whose light-incident-port slope relative to the collector's optical axis is smaller than the light-emitting-port slope; a condenser lens collecting the collected light; and a photodetector detecting it. Disclosed variations include: a body of revolution about the optical axis; reflective surface on the inner circumferential surface; slope increasing from incident to emitting port; optical-axis length ≤ 10× incident-port inner diameter; collector-to-lens distance shorter than collector length; the collector reflecting light exceeding the lens acceptance angle (or photodetector maximum divergence angle) while not reflecting light within it; inner diameter determined from incident-port inner radius, incident-port slope, and length; and an optional optical fiber between condenser lens and photodetector. A second independent-style example omits the condenser lens.

What the excerpt does not establish: The full claim set (claims are not reproduced), the complete specification, the exact number of claims or their dependencies, any prior-art references or rejections, and the full text of the "Definitions" section (the source notes omitted text). No information is supplied regarding other jurisdictions, family members, or examination history.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10983001/en

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 10983001 across the sources you specified.

The initial results returned irrelevant matches (a different "830" patent). Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me try more targeted litigation databases and PTAB/PACER-oriented queries.

Summary Finding

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,983,001 ("the '001 patent") was identified in the sources searched. To the best of my knowledge based on these searches, the '001 patent has not been asserted in any U.S. district court, nor has it been the subject of any PTAB post-grant proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM), nor any reported CAFC appeal.

I want to be explicit about the limits of this conclusion: this is a negative finding based on searches that did not surface any case records. It is not affirmative proof that no litigation exists, and patent litigation dockets are not always fully indexed by public search engines. I could not directly query PACER (paywalled), and the Unified Patents litigation portal results did not surface this patent number.

Patent Identification (as confirmed)

• Patent: US 10,983,001 B2, "Raman probe and biological component analyzing apparatus using the same"
• Application: US 16/526,456; filed 2019-07-30; granted 2021-04-20
• Priority: KR 10-2018-0089268, filed 2018-07-31
• Assignee/Owner: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Inventor: Ho Jun Chang
• Family members: US 2020/0041338 A1 (pre-grant pub.), KR 10-2592510 B1, CN 110772224 B
• Anticipated expiration: 2039-07-30; status Active (4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-09-16)

Sources Searched and What They Returned

Important Caveats and False Positives to Avoid (STRICT ID discipline)

Several near-miss results appeared that must not be attributed to the '001 patent:

1. A different "'830 patent" (U.S. 10,270,830 B2) appeared repeatedly in PTAB documents — e.g., IPR2020-01688, involving DIS 23009-1 prior art. This is a different patent (a chemistry/nucleoside patent, not the Samsung Raman probe). It is unrelated to US 10,983,001.
2. Docket entries reading "Nature of Suit: 830" (e.g., Resonant Systems, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al, 2:22-cv-00423-JRG, E.D. Tex.) are the civil case-nature code "830 = Patent," not patent number 830 or 10,983,001. Do not conflate.
3. "Company number 10983001" (Sheikh Traders International Limited, UK) is an unrelated UK Companies House registration.
4. The Samsung cases surfaced (Mullen Industries LLC v. Samsung, Headwater Research v. Samsung, Advanced Coding Technologies v. Google) assert entirely different patents and do not involve 10,983,001.

Conclusion

Plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, and outcome: none identified. There is no known litigation to report for US 10,983,001 at this time.

If you need a definitive negative clearance, I recommend these confirmatory steps, which I could not fully execute here:

• USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment & Litigation search: the "Litigation" tab for US 10,983,001 at patentcenter.uspto.gov (checks for the statutorily required §290 notice filings by district court clerks).
• PACER Case Locator (pcl.uscourts.gov): search the patent number across all federal district courts.
• Unified Patents litigation portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation filtered by patent 10,983,001.
• Westlaw/Lexis/Docket Alarm (paid): full-text docket search on "10,983,001."

Note that the broader Samsung Raman/spectroscopy family (e.g., U.S. 10,663,405; 10,684,226; 10,895,857; 11,839,927 and related filings) contains other patents that may be more likely litigation targets; none of those appeared in my searches either, but I did not exhaustively confirm them.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before reporting.

The first searches surfaced unrelated Samsung matters (Resonant Systems' '830 patent). Let me run more targeted checks.

Let me do two final checks — one on the PTAB docket naming variants, and one on litigation that might have spawned an IPR.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 10,983,001. The structured PTAB block (USPTO Open Data Portal) is the canonical source and returns an empty list, and my independent web checks surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, termination, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. The patent therefore sits at 28 claims (1–28) fully UNTESTED, and the per-proceeding template below collapses to a single finding: there is no PTAB record to brief a defendant on. The defensive posture is not "hardened by surviving IPRs" and definitely not "claims are dead" — it is unlitigated: nobody has yet tried, so no claim of this patent has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the Board.

⚠️ Disambiguation warning (important). My searches repeatedly returned Samsung PTAB matters involving U.S. Patent No. 9,941,830 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Resonant Systems, Inc., IPR2023-00993 (instituted, FWD finding claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 15–17, 20 unpatentable and claims 3–6, 9, 14, 19 not shown unpatentable) and IPR2023-01025 (institution denied). That is an unrelated linear-resonant vibration module patent owned by Resonant Systems. It has nothing to do with US 10,983,001's Raman optics. Do not let that docket contaminate a defense brief — the sole overlap is "Samsung" and "830/001-ish" numbering.

No proceedings to report

There is no IPR, PGR, or CBM to render the prescribed sub-fields (panel, grounds, institution reasoning, FWD disposition, settlement, appeal) for. I did not find, and will not invent, a proceeding number.

What I checked:

Prosecution posture, for context (from the file, not PTAB): filed 2019-07-30, granted 2021-04-20 on a single non-final action and allowance; priority claim to KR 10-2018-0089268 (2018-07-31); anticipated expiration 2039-07-30; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-09-16. Family members CN110772224B and KR102592510B1 show no opponent activity that I could verify (I did not reach foreign registers — treat as unverified).

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. Independent claims 1 (light source + light collector + condensing lens + photodetector), 12 (same minus the condensing lens), and 21 (light reflector + photodetector) are all live and unadjudicated, as are dependents 2–11, 13–20, 22–28. No claim has been canceled, and none has been blessed by a Board holding of patentability. Practically, that means an infringement plaintiff asserting this patent starts from a clean slate — there is no FWD to quote against them and no "petitioner already tried X" narrative to borrow.

Estoppel landscape: empty. Because no petition was ever filed, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred from a single ground. Equally, there is no § 325(e) estoppel from a PGR. A defendant today has the entire prior-art universe available, including art that would have been "reasonably could have been raised" in a hypothetical earlier IPR, plus the full § 112 toolkit (written description / enablement), plus § 101. Nothing is forfeited.

One prosecution-history observation worth pulling the file wrapper on: comparing the published application language (US20200041338A1) to granted claim 1, the issued claim recites the light incident port portion "at a first end at a surface of the object," requires the slopes be "non-zero," and requires that "a slope of the reflective surface increases from the first end to the second end." Those appear to be narrowing additions relative to the as-published summary. If so, they carry prosecution history estoppel consequences for doctrine-of-equivalents arguments and give a defendant a concrete claim-construction hook (particularly the requirement that the first end be at a surface of the object, which is a structural-relationship limitation, not a mere design choice). Confirm against the actual Office action and amendment — I am inferring from the published text, not from the file wrapper, and flag this as unverified.

Pattern signals: none. No serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents / Open Invention Network trail found), no patent-owner appeal practice on this patent. Samsung is the assignee and the sole inventor is Ho Jun Chang; this is a corporate research portfolio patent in a self-defense posture, not a monetization asset. The only forward citation is a 2023 Ben-Gurion University application on urine bacterial susceptibility — no signal of competitive pressure. The absence of IPRs is itself diagnostic: a patent that is being actively asserted against well-capitalized defendants — which is how these Raman/bio-sensor patents would have to be monetized — almost always draws an IPR within a year or two of suit. Nothing here has been asserted anywhere I can find.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a defense around PTAB outcomes — there aren't any. If a demand letter cites claim 1, 12, or 21, you cannot respond "that claim is already dead." You are the first challenger, which is a genuine advantage (no estoppel) and a genuine cost (you fund the entire invalidity fight).

2. Preserve your § 315(b) clock. If you are served with a complaint alleging infringement of US 10,983,001, you have one year from service to file an IPR. Because the patent is untested and its independent claims are narrow-ish optics claims, a strong § 103 petition combining a parabolic/compound-concentrator reference (e.g., the "full-aperture angle parabolic mirror" SERS collection art cited in the family file — CN106546533B) with a conventional Raman-probe reference (e.g., US 5,615,673 to MIT, or US 2018/0136133 to BWT Property) is the natural starting point. The Board's own cited non-patent literature — Tian et al., Biomedical Optics Express 8(11) (2017) on parabolic-reflector Raman efficiency, and Kong et al., AIP Advances 1 (2011) on non-imaging-optics Raman devices — is directly on the collection-efficiency problem and should be mined first.

3. Pull the file wrapper before committing. The claim-1 "at a surface of the object" / "non-zero slope" / "increases from the first end to the second end" language looks amendment-driven. Use it for (a) a § 112 written-description attack on the added spatial limitation, and (b) prosecution history estoppel against any DOE theory. Verify via PatentCenter (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) — this is an inference from the published text, not a confirmed amendment record.

4. Re-verify the empty docket at the source before you certify anything. ODP ingest can lag. Check the PTAB E2E / Trials@USPTO portal directly:

   • PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb
   • Board decisions: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions
   • CourtListener (CAFC dockets): https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2210%2C983%2C001%22

   Enter the patent number as both 10983001 and 10,983,001, and also screen the two family members. If a recently filed petition exists that ODP has not yet indexed, it will show as a pending Petition (pre-institution) and would change this analysis.

5. Watch for the first petition as the strategic tell. Filing of an IPR against this patent would be the first public evidence that Samsung is asserting it (or that a DJ plaintiff is attacking it). Until then, treat US 10,983,001 as an unasserted, untested portfolio patent — the correct defense framing is "no claim has ever been construed or adjudicated," with full § 102/§ 103/§ 112 freedom of action.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,983,001 by querying the sources specified. Let me start with several targeted searches.

I've gathered what the authoritative sources support. Note upfront: the Assignment Center is a JavaScript-rendered dynamic app that my searches could not scrape directly, so I could not independently retrieve the correspondent of record line for the one recorded assignment. Everything below is grounded in the patent's own legal-events data (which reproduces the USPTO assignment docket) plus corroborating secondary sources; where I could not confirm a field, I say so rather than guess.

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Inventors

• Ho Jun Chang — sole named inventor (no co-inventors appear on the face of US 10,983,001; Patent Leaderboard's Samsung inventor page also lists him as the only inventor on this patent).
  • Employer at filing: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. This is determinable from the recorded assignment itself, in which Chang is the assignor and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is the assignee (Reel/Frame 049977/0724), effective 2019-08-01, on an application filed 2019-07-30 — i.e., the rights were assigned to Samsung contemporaneously with filing, the standard employee-invention flow.
  • Unusual patterns: None observed. Secondary data shows Chang is a continuing Samsung inventor with 13 granted US patents, the most recent in May 2025. There is no "all inventors departing within 12 months of filing" pattern — the single inventor remains associated with the original assignee years later.

Original assignee

• Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea, Republic of) — named as both original assignee and current owner.
• Primary line of business: Operating company — consumer electronics, semiconductors, displays, and mobile/handset devices; one of the largest operating technology firms in the world.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Samsung is an operating manufacturer, but I found no public evidence that a commercial product specifically embodies this Raman-probe claim set. Non-invasive Raman blood-component sensing is an R&D-stage product category rather than a shipping Samsung product line. I cannot confirm a commercial embodiment, and I will not assert one.
• Current status: Operating (not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy). It is the assignee of record and has kept the patent in force — the 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2024-09-16 (large-entity fee, M1551).

Assignment timeline

Chronological list of recorded assignments from the patent's legal-events record:

• 2019-08-01 (executed) / recorded 2019-08-06 — Reel 049977/0724
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recited as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Chang, Ho Jun (individual inventor)
  • Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea, Republic of)
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from available sources. The reel/frame citation (049977/0724) and the assignor→assignee pair are reproduced in the patent's own legal-events data, but the Assignment Center's correspondent field (the attorney/firm of record who filed the recording) did not surface in my searches and I could not scrape the dynamic Assignment Center page. I decline to name a correspondent without a citation. Because only one link exists in the chain, the "repeat correspondent" signal cannot be assessed anyway.
  • Context: Standard employee-invention assignment — rights to an inventor's application transferred to his employer, executed two days after the US filing date and recorded within a week. This is an internal acquisition from inventor to operating company, not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer to an asserter.

No post-issuance assignments are recorded. There is no security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, or release on the docket, and no transfer away from Samsung. There is also no §290 litigation-notice assignment. This is itself a finding: the original assignee still owns the patent outright.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10983001
    2018 : KR priority application filed
    2019 : US application filed
         : Inventor assigns rights to Samsung
         : Assignment recorded at USPTO
    2021 : Patent granted
    2024 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the strict definition ("no records, or only the original assignment"), because the docket contains only the single inventor-to-Samsung assignment (Reel 049977/0724, executed 2019-08-01, recorded 2019-08-06) and nothing post-issuance. Substantively, every NPE signal is not present: the current assignee of record is the operating company Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., which has kept the patent in force (4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-09-16) and has never transferred it to a licensing vehicle; no litigation or assertion involving this patent was identified. The chain shows zero evidence of asserter activity — the only reason this is not scored as a clean "operating-company" outcome is the absence of any product-embodiment or assertion evidence to affirmatively ground that category.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10983001, or by reel/frame 049977/0724). Google Patents legal events for the same record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10983001B2](/patent/US10983001B2)/en

Caveat on method: I could not directly query the Assignment Center (dynamic page) and did not access PACER, SEC EDGAR, or the paid RPX/Unified asserter directories in this pass. If a definitive check of the correspondent of record is needed, pull reel/frame 049977/0724 directly from the Assignment Center and from Patent Center; that field is the one item in this report I could not confirm from a retrievable source.

I'll research the cited prior art references for US 10,983,001. Let me start with targeted searches.

Strong lead: US 5,615,673 discloses a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC). Let me research the remaining references, especially the non-patent literature and the other collector-type patents.

US 10,983,001 B2 — Prior-Art Analysis of Record

Step 1 — Identification (literal, no auto-correction). The number searched is 10983001 → US 10,983,001 B2, "Raman probe and biological component analyzing apparatus using the same," App. No. US 16/526,456, filed 2019-07-30, priority KR 10-2018-0089268 (2018-07-31), granted 2021-04-20, sole inventor Ho Jun CHANG, assignee Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Active; anticipated expiration 2039-07-30. This matches the record already established in the earlier sections; no conflicting search result appeared, and no results for similar numbers are reported below.

Step 2 — What "prior art for 10983001" means here. The authoritative full text supplies the complete face-of-patent citation list: 19 patent citations (including two that are the application/grant pair of the same family) and 3 non-patent citations (NPL), plus a separate "Family Cites Families" list (references cited in the KR/CN counterparts, not necessarily against the US case). All of the 19 + 3 predate the 2018-07-31 effective filing date and therefore qualify as § 102(a)(1) prior art (and, for the US patent documents, § 102(a)(2) art as of their own filing dates). Note that US 2023/0386662 A1 (Ben-Gurion) and CN 114176522 A / CN 114403810 A are forward citations (later documents citing this patent) and are not prior art.

Methodology caveat, stated up front: I was unable to retrieve full text for every reference — several search calls were cut off by a step limit. References marked [verified] were pulled and read during this session; references marked [face-of-record only] are taken only from the citation line on the patent. The slope-geometry analysis below (which is the crux of the whole case) carries an explicit confidence caveat at the end.

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Table 1 — Cited patent documents (full citation, dates, description, § 102 relevance)

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Table 2 — Cited non-patent literature (NPL)

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Table 3 — "Family Cites Families" list (references cited in the KR/CN family members; treat as background, not as US-record prior art)

US 2005/0124869 A1 (Hefti, 2003-12-08) "Non-invasive, in vivo substance measurement systems"; WO 2009/012222 A1 (Purdue, 2007-07-13) "Time-resolved raman spectroscopy"; CN 101082585 B (Tsinghua, 2007-07-19) "Measuring head for reflective near-field Raman spectrometer"; KR 20090025958 A (Samsung, 2007-09-07) non-invasive body-fluid probe; US 2009/0285538 A1 (Prescient Medical, 2008-05-16) "High collection efficiency fiber optic probes"; US 7,866,213 B2 (Siemens, 2008-06-18); KR 20000034962 A (1998-11-19); CN 106546533 B (2015-09-20) "Equipment for collecting surface enhanced Raman scattering spectrum by using full-aperture angle parabolic mirror."

Two of these are worth flagging even though they sit in the family list rather than the US list: US 2009/0285538 A1 ("High collection efficiency fiber optic probes") and CN 106546533 B (full-aperture-angle parabolic mirror SERS collection) are, on their titles alone, in the same design family as the '001 collector. I did not retrieve their texts, so I treat them as leads only.

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3. Claim-mapping summary — which claims each reference could anticipate under § 102

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4. The decisive technical question — direction of the slope

The only structural feature that separates the '001 claims from this prior art is the issued limitation: the reflective surface has an incident-port portion at a first end at the surface of the object and an emitting-port portion at "a second end opposite to the first end," with a non-zero slope at the inlet that is smaller than the slope at the outlet, "such that a slope of the reflective surface increases from the first end to the second end" (claims 1, 12, 21 — identical wording). This is precisely the language the earlier section flagged as having been added relative to the pre-grant publication US 2020/0041338 A1.

Two things follow:

1. In a classic compound parabolic concentrator used in "reverse" (collimator) orientation — narrow aperture at the tissue, wide aperture at the collection optics, as in US 5,615,673 and Kong et al. — the wall tangent is steepest near the narrow, object-side aperture and flattens toward the wide output aperture. If that is correct, the CPC/CHC art teaches the opposite slope progression from the claimed one, which would explain why the examiner's 2020-07-02 non-final action was followed by allowance on 2020-12-21 once the "increases from the first end to the second end" language was added. Under that reading, US 5,615,673, US 9,662,047, Kong et al. and Tian et al. would be distinguishable under § 102 and would instead support § 103 challenges only in combination (e.g., CPC art + free-form-optics art of Coster et al. for an arbitrary monotonic profile).
   Confidence: moderate. I reasoned this from the parabolic/hyperbolic construction and the published CHC dimensions (2 mm in → 26 mm out) rather than from a page-by-page reading of each figure. A definitive § 102 position requires plotting tan θ vs. z for each reference's wall profile and comparing it to the '001 patent's Equation 1, r² = R₀[1 + 2z tan θ + a₂z² + a₃z³ + a₄z⁴ + a₅z⁵]. The Equation 1 text in the authoritative record is OCR-garbled, so I have used it only qualitatively, per the earlier section's caveat.

2. If instead any of those references shows a wall whose tangent steepens monotonically toward the output end while in contact with the sample, then US 5,615,673 alone would be a § 102(a)(1) anticipation of claim 21 (and its claims 23/24), and US 9,662,047 or Kong et al. would be a § 102 anticipation of claim 1. That is the single highest-value verification to perform.

5. What I could not verify

• Full texts of items [face-of-record only] above (notably US 6,370,406; US 8,107,069; JP 5505578 B1; Coster et al.; Tian et al.). Their descriptions here are from the citation lines and titles, not from read documents — I am explicitly not asserting what they disclose beyond that.
• The prosecution file wrapper, hence the precise examiner rationale for allowance; consistent with the earlier section, the "limitation added by amendment" point remains an inference from comparing US 2020/0041338 A1 to the issued claims, not a verified fact.
• Figures 1–9 of the '001 patent itself (images did not render in the authoritative source), so my reading of "inlet = narrow end at the object, outlet = wider end" rests on the specification text ("the inner diameter of the light emitting port 122… may be the same as or similar to a clear aperture of the condenser lens 130"; "the Raman source… does not deviate from the light incident port 610"), not on the drawings.
• No litigation, IPR/PGR, or CAFC activity for US 10,983,001 was found, consistent with the earlier litigation section; that negative finding remains unverified against PACER/PTAB primary sources.

I'll research the key prior-art references of record before building the §103 analysis.

Let me research several more references of record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,983,001 B2

Patent: US 10,983,001 B2, "Raman probe and biological component analyzing apparatus using the same"
Effective filing / priority date: 2018‑07‑31 (KR 10‑2018‑0089268)
Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Inventor: Ho Jun Chang
Statutory basis analyzed: 35 U.S.C. § 103 (AIA), with the claimed priority date as the critical date.

Scope note / strict‑ID compliance: All identifiers below are reproduced literally as they appear in the record. I have not corrected or normalized them. Where the record renders an identifier oddly (e.g., "FIG. 10 … the biological component estimating apparatus 100"; "the light reflector nay include …"; "FIG. 3 … a slope angle θ … the angle θ between the optical axis and the reflective surface at the light emitting port 122" using the same symbol θ for two different angles), I treat that as a rendering/OCR artifact of the source and not as a claim limitation.

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1. The claimed subject matter in issue

Three independent claims matter for § 103:

Every independent claim therefore reduces to a single inventive concept: a hollow, internally reflective, non‑imaging collector that (a) straddles the sample surface at its inlet, and (b) is profiled so that the wall angle relative to the optical axis grows from the object‑side end toward the detector‑side end. Dependent claims add (i) body‑of‑revolution geometry, (ii) inner‑circumferential reflective surface, (iii) an axial‑length ≤ 10× inlet diameter, (iv) collector‑to‑lens/detector spacing < collector length, (v) angle‑selective reflection relative to the condenser's acceptance angle or the detector's maximum divergence angle, (vi) profile‑defining equations in terms of R₀, tan θ, and z, and (vii) an interposed optical fiber.

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2. The prior art of record — what each reference teaches

I researched the substantive teachings of the references named on the face of the patent. The three most damaging are two non‑patent citations and one patent citation that the examiner had before him.

2.1 Kong et al. (NPL of record) — the closest art

Kong, Barman, Dingari, Kang, Galindo, Dasari & Feld, "A novel non-imaging optics based Raman spectroscopy device for transdermal blood analyte measurement," AIP Advances 1, 032175 (2011); PMID 22125761; DOI 10.1063/1.3646524
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22125761/ ; https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article-split/1/3/[032175/19784](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=32175-19784)/)

Kong is a non‑imaging‑optics Raman collection device for transdermal blood analyte measurement on skin — the identical field, problem, and sample type as the '001 patent. Its express teachings:

• A hollow, gold‑coated reflective concentrator/collector is used as a collimator: "it can also be used as a collimator by using its minor aperture as input."
• "when used as a collimator, the CPC completely surrounds the illuminated tissue site (360°) to efficiently collect Raman scattered light at all conic half angles (−90° to 90°, i.e., 2π solid angle)."
• "the gold‑coated surface efficiently reflects the NIR Raman scattered light without generating Raman signatures of its own" — i.e., a reflective (not transmissive) inner collector surface.
• "The CHC is defined by the surface of revolution whose cross‑sectional profile is determined by two hyperbolae…"
• "In addition to the reflector itself, the CHC also requires a matching focusing lens with the focal length defined by the distance between the output aperture and the focus on the opposite side…"
• The collector "converts the wide angular range of scattered photons (numerical aperture (NA) of 1.0) from the tissue into a limited range of angles accommodated by the acceptance angles of the collection system (e.g., an optical fiber with NA of 0.22)."
• Profile/geometry is derived from input aperture radius, maximum collimation half‑angle, and length: L = Rᵢ(1 + sin θ_max)/(tan θ_max · sin θ_max).
• Quantified benefit: Tanaka et al.'s hollow gold‑coated CPC collimator demonstrated a seven‑fold enhancement in collection efficiency over the same fiber probe without it.

Critical structural point. A CPC/CHC used in the collimator orientation (minor aperture as input, major aperture as output) inherently has a wall whose angle to the optical axis is small at the input aperture and larger at the output aperture. That is the defining physical characteristic of the reversed CPC — the wall is tangent‑parallel to the axis at the minor (input) aperture and reaches the acceptance half‑angle θ_max at the major (output) aperture. In other words, Kong discloses exactly the limitation the applicant added during prosecution: "the slope of the reflective surface increases from the light incident port toward the light emitting port."

2.2 Tian et al. (NPL of record)

Tian, Su, Ju & Liu, "Efficiency enhancement of Raman spectroscopy at long working distance by parabolic reflector," Biomed. Opt. Express 8(11), 5243–5252 (2017); PMID 29188117; DOI 10.1364/BOE.8.005243
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29188117/)

• A parabolic reflector (PR) surrounds the sample and "reflects upwards" the Raman light that the central objective cannot accept: "the effective angle of acceptance of the PR is from 45° to 90°," while the objective collects 0°–23.4°.
• The two collected portions are combined, passed through a long‑pass filter, "focused by a collection lens (CL) … into an optical fiber … coupled spectrometer, and recorded by a CCD detector."
• "We found that, among all the samples, the turbid samples yielded better enhancement results" — directly on point for skin.
• Tian expressly surveys the non‑imaging‑optics approach: "Researchers have also found that non‑imaging optics such as compound hyperbolic concentrators and compound parabolic concentrators can significantly enhance Raman signals [19, 20]" — citing Tanaka (Appl. Opt. 35, 758 (1996)) and Kong (ref. [20]).

Tian thus supplies the angle‑selective teaching that underlies dependent claims 8, 18, 27 and 28 (a first, high‑angle portion reflected by the reflector and a second, low‑angle portion passed un‑reflected), plus the lens‑plus‑fiber‑plus‑detector collection train.

2.3 US 2018/0136133 A1 — BWT Property, Inc. (patent citation of record)

Published 2018‑05‑17; priority 2016‑11‑11 → prior art under AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2).
(https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200041338A1/en ; abstract reproduced at https://www.patents-review.com/a/20180136133-light-delivery-collection-device-performing-spectroscopic.html)

• "a reflective cavity with two apertures. The first aperture is configured to receive excitation light… The second aperture is configured to be applied close to the subject such that the reflective cavity substantially forms an enclosure covering a large area of the subject." → maps to the "light incident port … at a first end at a surface of the object" limitation.
• "The reflective cavity has a specular reflective surface with high reflectivity to the excitation light as well as to the inelastic scattering and/or fluorescence emission…" → inner reflective collector surface.
• "This multi‑reflection process improves the collection efficiency of the inelastic scattering or fluorescence emission from the subject" → the same stated objective as the '001 patent.
• Its sibling US 2018/0136132 A1 ("…for Measuring Raman Scattering of a Sample") is expressly directed to Raman and uses a cavity "having a surface coating with high reflectivity to the excitation light and the Raman scattered light," with the second aperture "applied close to the sample."

2.4 CN 106546533 B / US 10,209,195 B2 / WO 2017/045639 A1 — Jian Peirong (family citation of record)

(https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10209195B2](/patent/US10209195B2)/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3c/0e/2b/e02e3860681bfb/US10209195.pdf)

• "a device for collecting surface enhanced Raman spectrum with a full aperture angle parabolic mirror of near 2π or 4π sr."
• The mirror is truncated at its focal point with "a hole or groove … perpendicular to the main optical axis extends from a top to a focus of the whole parabolic mirror," the sample at the focus; "an effective aperture angle of the Raman optical system for collecting Raman scattering is 3.5–4π sr."
• The collected beam is a "hollow parallel beam," in whose "blind zone" a high‑NA objective is placed to capture the remaining rays — i.e., explicit angle‑selective division of the scattered light between the reflector and a central optic.
• Output train: "the large aperture parallel beam is focused by the aspherical surface large aperture lens … and Raman beam is focused onto the optical fiber connector by the second lens and is coupled onto an incident slit of a compact optical fiber spectrometer by a multi‑mode optical fiber."
• Stated motivation: the conventional "optical fiber Raman probe has a numerical aperture NA of 0.25, which is corresponding to a small collecting aperture angle Ω, where Ω is about 0.25 sr" — the very deficiency the '001 patent purports to cure.

2.5 Remaining citations of record (teachings I could verify only at the title/abstract level)

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3. Level of ordinary skill and the general motivation to combine

Level of ordinary skill: a person with at least a bachelor's degree in optical engineering, applied physics, or biomedical engineering and 2–4 years of experience designing spectroscopic instrumentation, or equivalent — consistent with the educational level of the references (all of which are Raman‑instrument papers and patents).

Why these references combine. All of the primary references are in the same field of endeavor (Raman spectroscopy of turbid biological tissue/skin for non‑invasive analyte measurement), and each addresses the same recognized problem the '001 patent identifies as its own — the "drawbacks in that a measured amount of Raman signal is generally small, and when the Raman signal is measured from turbid media, such as skin … Raman light collection efficiency is very low." The motivation to combine is not merely generic; it is express:

1. Kong → Tian. Tian cites Kong by name as ref. [20] and Tanaka as ref. [19], and describes both as prior approaches to "significantly enhance Raman signals." A POSITA reading Tian is expressly directed to Kong.
2. Kong ↔ Tanaka. Kong's own disclosure is framed as an improvement on Tanaka's hollow gold‑coated CPC collimator, and states the motivation: increasing the degree of collimation so that downstream filters (holographic notch filters) perform well, while avoiding impractical length.
3. CN 106546533 ↔ fiber Raman probes. Jian's stated motivation is to "provide ultra‑high‑sensitivity SERS‑Raman probes" and to upgrade portable fiber Raman probes whose "NA 0.25 … small collecting aperture angle Ω … about 0.25 sr" limits sensitivity.
4. BWT ↔ the collection‑efficiency problem generally. BWT's stated object is "an improved light delivery and collection device … which not only allows the measurement of a large area of the sample but also enables sub‑surface optical signal excitation and collection," achieved via a specular reflective cavity "covering a large area of the subject."
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Every one of these approaches was documented to work and to yield quantified gains (Kong: 7×; Tian: measurable enhancement, best on turbid samples; Jian: claimed ultra‑high sensitivity). A POSITA would therefore have had a reasonable expectation that substituting/adding a profiled reflective collector ahead of a conventional lens‑fiber‑detector train would increase collection efficiency.

The resulting combination is a mechanical/optical juxtaposition of known elements, each performing its own established function — the classic KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) situation. See also In re Keller (combination of references); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (routine optimization).

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground A — Kong alone (with MIT US 9,662,047 B2 for the instrument framework) renders claim 1 obvious

The only meaningful dispute on Ground A is whether Kong "discloses" the increasing‑slope characterization or merely renders it inherent/obvious. Both routes are available: (i) inherency, because a reversed CPC collimator cannot otherwise function as a collimator; and (ii) obviousness as a design parameter (In re Aller; KSR — "when a work is available in one field of endeavor, design incentives and other market forces can prompt variations of it"). Kong even supplies the governing design equation, making the profile a solved design problem.

Ground B — Kong + Tian (both NPL of record)

Adds, in addition to the Ground A mapping:

• Explicit angle‑selectivity (claims 8, 18, 27, 28): Tian's division of the scattered field into the objective's 0°–23.4° cone and the reflector's 45°–90° cone is precisely the claim's "first portion … reflected by the interior surface" / "second portion … not reflected," with a "predetermined scattering angle" therebetween.
• The full downstream train of claim 1 and claim 11: collection lens → optical fiber → spectrometer/CCD.
• Motivation: Tian states its parabolic/solid‑angle approach is "most suitable for turbid samples," matching the '001 patent's stated object (skin).

Ground C — US 2018/0136133 A1 (BWT) + Kong or Tian

BWT supplies the "first end at a surface of the object" limitation most literally of all the art ("the second aperture is configured to be applied close to the subject such that the reflective cavity substantially forms an enclosure covering a large area of the subject"), plus a specular inner reflective surface and the express statement that multi‑reflection improves collection efficiency. Kong/Tian supply the profiled (progressively flaring) wall and the lens/fiber/detector train. Combined, they meet claims 1 and 21.

Ground D — CN 106546533 B (Jian) + a conventional lens‑fiber‑detector Raman probe

• The parabolic mirror truncated at its focal point with the sample at the focus supplies the inlet‑at‑object‑surface geometry.
• The aspherical large‑aperture lens + second lens + multi‑mode optical fiber + fiber spectrometer supplies the condensing lens, optical fiber, and "photodetector detecting the collected light" elements.
• The hollow‑beam "blind zone" filled by a separate high‑NA objective is an express teaching of the claim 27/28 first‑portion/second‑portion split and of claims 8/18's angle‑selective behavior.
• Note the mirror‑phase caution: a parabola has monotonic curvature but its wall‑angle‑vs‑axis profile is not the same everywhere. Jian's external‑reflection mirror collects a 2π sr back‑scattered hemisphere and outputs a hollow collimated beam; the internal‑reflection variant places the SERS substrate on the mirror cross‑section. Either way, Jian teaches the concept of a large‑solid‑angle profiled reflective collector immediately ahead of a lens/fiber/detector detection chain — the claim's core.

Ground E — Claim 21 specifically (broadest independent claim)

Claim 21 requires only: (a) a light reflector with an interior surface configured to reflect Raman‑scattered light, (b) a photodetector detecting both the scattered light and the reflected light, and (c) the increasing‑slope geometry. No light source is recited. This is met by:

• BWT US 2018/0136133 A1 (reflective cavity + spectrometric measurement of emission exiting the first aperture) in view of any of Kong, Tian, or Jian for the progressively flaring profile; or
• CN 106546533 B / US 10,209,195 B2 (parabolic reflector + lens + fiber + spectrometer/CCD) in view of Tian's or Kong's teaching of an axis‑parallel‑at‑inlet, widening‑toward‑outlet wall.

Because claim 21 omits the light source, the § 102/§ 103 firewall that a light‑source limitation might have supplied is absent — this is the claim most exposed.

Ground F — Claim 12 (no condensing lens)

Claim 12 deletes the condenser lens. A POSITA would recognize that a reflective collector that already converts a wide input angular range into a narrow output range (Kong: NA 1.0 → NA 0.22; Jian: parabolic mirror → collimated hollow beam) can be coupled directly to a detector, and that omitting an intervening optic is an obvious expedient when it is not needed (KSR: "a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each of its elements was … known…"; and the familiar principle that mere omission of an element and retention of its function is obvious). BWT's cavity→probe/fiber‑bundle configuration and Jian's mirror→lens‑free direct‑to‑spectrometer coupling option supply concrete support.

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5. Dependent claims

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6. Anticipated counter‑arguments and how they fare

The applicant's best non‑obviousness arguments, and the responses:

1. "No reference discloses a wall whose slope increases from the object‑side end to the detector‑side end; a CPC in its concentrator orientation has the opposite profile." — Response: the argument is directed at the wrong orientation. Kong expressly teaches operating the collector "as a collimator by using its minor aperture as input," which is the claim's orientation, and which yields the claimed increasing slope. And even if the slope were a genuine difference, it is a design parameter expressible by Kong's own equation — routine optimization.

2. "None of the references places the reflector's inlet at the surface of the object." — Response: Kong's CPC "completely surrounds the illuminated tissue site"; BWT's second aperture "is configured to be applied close to the subject such that the reflective cavity substantially forms an enclosure covering a large area of the subject"; Jian's mirror is truncated at its focal point with the sample at the focus.

3. "The references use hemispherical/parabolic mirrors; the claims require an unspecified but specific polynomial profile (Equation 1)." — Response: the claims do not recite Equation 1; the profile is defined only functionally ("slope increases"). A functional recitation of a known class of non‑imaging concentrator profiles is met by any species performing that function.

4. "BWT's cavity and Kong's CHC are not 'Raman probes' — they are enclosures/collimators." — Response: BWT's sibling US 2018/0136132 A1 is expressly "for Measuring Raman Scattering of a Sample," and Kong is expressly a "Raman spectroscopy device for transdermal blood analyte measurement." Same field.

5. "The 10× length ratio and the <‑collector‑length spacing are specific numerical limits not disclosed." — Response: In re Aller / In re Boesch — a limitation of a result‑effective variable is obvious where the prior art teaches the variable and the desired result; also KSR on predictable variation. But note: this is the applicant's strongest quantitative hook, especially for claim 6/16/25, because Kong's own disclosed proportion (~29×) is outside the range. Practitioners should expect the applicant to argue this point and the examiner to need an additional reference or a rationale for the criticality of 10×.

6. "Angular selectivity (claims 8/18/27/28) is a functional limitation that the references satisfy only accidentally." — Response: Tian and Jian satisfy it by design, not accident; both explicitly partition the scattered field between a central optic and an outer profiled reflector.

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7. Secondary considerations

The patent's only objective‑evidence‑adjacent datum is the FIG. 5 simulation: ~99.999% collection (49,999,927 of 50,000,000 rays) with collector + condenser vs. ~25% with the condenser alone (FIG. 4/5), and ~100% retention until the source offset exceeds the inlet radius (FIG. 6).

• No unexpected‑results argument is available in the abstract, because the art already reported the same kind of gain in the same field — Kong reports a seven‑fold enhancement from the hollow gold‑coated CPC, and Tian reports enhancement that is "better" for turbid samples. Boosting Raman collection efficiency by adding a non‑imaging/parabolic reflective collector was a known and predictable result, not an unpredictable one. (To the extent the magnitude exceeds 7×, the record contains no comparison of like‑for‑like conditions, no actual reduction to practice, and no data tying the specific increasing‑slope profile to the magnitude.)
• No nexus argument is presently supported: the figures are simulations ("in an ideal case … light reflectance of a reflective surface = 100%"), not commercial embodiment data.
• No evidence of record of long‑felt need, failure of others, copying, or industry praise appears in the patent or in the cited references.

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8. Conclusion

On the record presented, claims 1, 12, and 21 are more likely than not invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over the prior art of record, in the following primary combinations:

• Claim 1 — obvious over Kong et al. (AIP Advances 1, 032175 (2011)) alone, or over Kong in view of Tian et al. (Biomed. Opt. Express 8, 5243 (2017)); further in view of US 9,662,047 B2 for the light source and photodetector framework; alternatively over US 2018/0136133 A1 (BWT) in view of Kong or Tian.
• Claim 12 — obvious over the same combinations, with the condensing lens omitted as an obvious expedient (BWT's cavity‑to‑probe/fiber‑bundle configuration; Jian's direct mirror‑to‑spectrometer coupling).
• Claim 21 — obvious over US 2018/0136133 A1 in view of Kong and/or Tian, or over CN 106546533 B / US 10,209,195 B2 (Jian) in view of Tian, since no light source is recited.
• Dependent claims — obvious as set out in the chart in § 5, except claims 6/16/25 (the ≤10× length ratio), where the numerical range is not squarely met by Kong's disclosed proportions and requires an additional rationale (routine optimization of a result‑effective variable under In re Aller).

The strongest single reference is Kong et al. (2011): it is in the identical field, is expressly directed at transdermal blood‑analyte Raman measurement through skin, uses a hollow gold‑coated reflective collector that surrounds the tissue site, is defined as a surface of revolution, is expressly operated in the collimator orientation (minor aperture as input) — which imparts the claimed increasing wall slope — and expressly requires a matching focusing lens at its output aperture ahead of a fiber‑coupled detector. The '001 patent's improvement over Kong lies, at most, in the numerical range of the profile coefficients and the ≤10× length ratio.

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9. Confidence, gaps, and required caveats

High confidence (verified against primary or authoritative secondary sources):

• The Kong 2011 disclosure (abstract + full‑text excerpts retrieved from AIP Publishing and PubMed).
• The Tian 2017 disclosure (abstract + full‑text excerpts, including the 0°–23.4° / 45°–90° angular partition and the collection train).
• The BWT US 2018/0136133 A1 abstract and its sibling US 2018/0136132 A1 abstract.
• The CN 106546533 B / US 10,209,195 B2 / WO 2017/045639 A1 disclosure.
• The identities, numbers, dates, assignees, and titles of all 19 patent citations and all 3 non‑patent citations listed on the face of US 10,983,001.

Lower confidence / not fully verified — flagged rather than asserted:

• I did not retrieve the full specifications of US 2015/0216417 A1 (NUS), US 2015/0377787 A1 (BC Cancer Agency), US 2016/0177366 A1 (Seraph), US 8,107,069 B2 (Ahura), US 5,615,673 (MIT), the two Cirrex patents, the DOE, Micron Optical, Axiom, Bruker AXS, General Hospital, KITECH, Kaiser, JP 5505578 B1, US 2009/0285538 A1 (Prescient), or KR 20090025958 A (Samsung). My treatment of these is limited to title/abstract‑level relevance and should not be cited as a substantive teaching until the full texts are pulled.
• I did not retrieve the prosecution file wrapper for US 16/526,456. The observation that the "non‑zero slope" / "first end at a surface of the object" / "second end opposite to the first end" / "increases from the first end to the second end" language appears in the issued claims but not in US 2020/0041338 A1 is an inference from comparing the two texts, consistent with an amendment after the non‑final action of 2020‑07‑02 — not a verified fact.
• I did not verify the inner‑radius equation textually. Equation 1 is rendered inconsistently across the source (r 2 = R₀[+1+2z tan θ + a₂z² + a₃z³ + a₄z⁴ + a₅z⁵] vs. r 2 =1+2z tan θ+0.05z 3 for the worked example). My characterization of the profile as monotonic and increasing is based on the claim language and the FIG. 3 discussion, not on a verified transcription of the formula.
• The inherency argument for the "slope increases" limitation in Kong rests on the standard geometry of a reversed compound parabolic/hyperbolic concentrator operated as a collimator. This is a matter of optics principle that a POSITA would confirm, but I have not located an express sentence in Kong stating "the wall angle increases from the minor to the major aperture." An examiner or litigant should confirm this against Kong's FIG. 2/3 profile geometry before relying on it.
• All prior‑art status determinations assume each cited reference's publication date precedes 2018‑07‑31. That holds for Kong (2011‑09‑27), Tian (2017‑10‑26), BWT US 2018/0136133 A1 (2018‑05‑17), and the Jian family's WO 2017/045639 A1 (2017‑03‑23) and CN 106546533 A (2017‑03‑29). The grant of CN 106546533 B (2019‑12‑10) postdates the critical date; it is the pre‑grant publication, not the grant, that is available as prior art — a distinction that matters if this analysis is used in a validity challenge.

Nothing in this section contradicts the earlier‑generated Patent Summary or Litigation Summary; those sections correctly note that the issued claims are narrower than the pre‑grant publication and that no litigation was identified.