US 11029244

I'll search for the specific patent number and any litigation docket references for it.

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC docket activity involving this specific patent.

US Patent 11,029,244 B1 — Analyst Summary

Search caveat up front: I searched for this specific number against USPTO-facing sources and Federal Circuit/docket sources. I found no evidence of any CAFC appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district court litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,029,244. Search results that came back for "CAFC 2026 dockets" were about unrelated patents (e.g., 10,912,321; 10,755,409; 8,958,853; RE38,806) and I did not treat them as relevant. If a docket exists that is not indexed in the sources I could reach, I cannot confirm it. Separately, I did not obtain a live hit from the USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR record itself; my bibliographic data is drawn from the authoritative patent text supplied (Google Patents rendering of US11029244B1) plus a corroborating third-party patent database (mtec-sc.org). Treat the "no litigation" finding as a good-faith negative result, not a certified clearance.

Bibliographic data

Cited prior art (3 references)

• US 3,065,151 A — Pure Oil Co., "Apparatus for corrosion testing" (1958-07-17 priority)
• US 5,411,890 A — Westvaco Corporation, "Method for measuring atmospheric corrosion" (1994-06-23 priority)
• JP 2014139547 A — Kurita Water Ind Ltd, "Test piece for corrosion monitoring…" (2013-01-21 priority)

Non-patent citations (2)

• Hangarter et al., "Microelectrode test configurations for measurement of galvanic corrosion current under saline drops in simulated atmospheric conditions," ECS Transactions 75(29) 11–22 (2017)
• Same title, PRIME ECS Annual Meeting (Oct. 5, 2016)

Abstract (as issued)

"The invention is directed to a real-time, zero resistance ammeter (ZRA) galvanic corrosion detection instrument that is adapted to measure corrosion under atmospheric conditions. The instrument may be used in accordance with methods for selecting materials based on environmental conditions and electrolyte chemistries. The electrochemical ZRA test cell of the invention may further be used to determine galvanic corrosion susceptibility, aid in forecasting corrosion, and determine the extent of corrosion based on environmental factors."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 23 claims total, with four independent claims: 1, 10, 14, and 23.

Claim 1 — Instrument, "separated-electrolyte" (salt-bridge) configuration
An instrument with an anode and a cathode, each having its own electrolyte, where those electrolytes are specifically droplets or thin films (i.e., not bulk liquid volumes). A salt bridge ionically connects the two electrolytes, and a zero resistance ammeter (ZRA) electrically connects the anode and cathode. Net effect: you can measure galvanic corrosion in thin-film/droplet conditions while the two half-cells are physically isolated, so corrosion products from one electrode don't contaminate the other side. (This corresponds to the FIG. 2 "ZRA GACK detection instrument.")

Claim 10 — Method, "separated electrolytes" measurement with a polarization-scan benchmark
A method with these steps: (1) provide an anode, a cathode, and separated electrolytes at each; (2) place a salt bridge so one end touches the anode electrolyte and the other end touches the cathode electrolyte, forming a "separated electrolytes galvanic couple"; (3) wire a ZRA across the anode and cathode; (4) measure the corrosion current density of that couple; and (5) compare that measured value to the intersection point of polarization scans taken with a ZRA connected to the same anode/cathode without the separated electrolytes. The claim then states a result condition: if the separated-electrolyte current density is higher than the polarization-scan intersection, the electrolyte itself is causing accelerated anode corrosion relative to the no-electrolyte case. (Note: the claim text literally reads "separated analytes galvanic couple" — apparently a typo for "separated electrolytes." I am reporting it as written, not auto-correcting.)

Claim 14 — Instrument, partial-exposure variant
Same general instrument architecture as claim 1 (anode, cathode, electrolyte at each, salt bridge, ZRA), but the characterizing limitation is that less than the entire surface of the anode or cathode is exposed to its electrolyte. This captures masked/limited-area coupons and controlled electrolyte-geometry setups.

Claim 23 — Instrument, micro-pipette salt bridge variant
Same core architecture again (anode, cathode, electrolyte at each, ZRA), but the salt bridge is specifically a micro-pipette salt bridge.

Dependent-claim themes (claims 2–9, 11–13, 15–22): anode/cathode metals from aluminum, titanium, nickel, steel, cobalt, chromium and alloys; aluminum-anode/stainless-steel-cathode pairing; matched electrolyte composition on both sides; electrolytes containing ions of the exposure environment or of seawater; salt-bridge construction (non-conductive sleeve + ionically conductive inert inner matrix + aqueous ion solution; specifically agar loaded with NaCl); an environmental chamber controlling lighting, atmospheric composition, temperature and/or humidity; claim 11 adds the complementary single-electrolyte method and a comparison against the separated-electrolyte current density (attributing a higher single-electrolyte current to corrosion-product accumulation); claims 12–13 cover running the method across multiple material couples and selecting the material with the lower measured corrosion current density for use in a structure exposed to that electrolyte. Note that claim 11 is written as a dependent claim but recites a full method — worth flagging if claim scope is being analyzed.

Supporting technical content (Examples 1–6)

• Materials tested: UNS A97075 (AA7075-T6, anode) and UNS S13800 (CRES 13-8, cathode).
• Conditions: 297 K, 80% RH environmental chamber; electrolyte chamber cycling down to 20% RH.
• Example 2 (FIG. 2 cell): 0.5 µL droplets per half-cell; silanized borosilicate micro-pipettes with ~20 µm tips; Pt counter electrode and fritted Ag/AgCl reference in the pipette body; NaCl-saturated agar tip; PTFE tube salt bridge.
• Example 3 (FIG. 5 result): initial galvanic current density peak near −124 µA/cm² (negative because UNS S13800 was the working electrode), followed by decay and relative stabilization; current suppressed during dry cycling and resuscitated on re-wetting to 80% RH.
• Example 4 (FIG. 4 result): polarization-scan intersection (used as the corrosion-current/potential predictor) at 145 µA/cm² and −0.777 V_SCE.
• Example 5 (FIG. 3 single-droplet cell): peak galvanic current density of −699 µA/cm²; liquid fully gone by 18 hours with a growing corrosion zone linked by solid corrosion product.
• Example 6: chloride consumption measured at roughly 58 mC/µmol Cl⁻; EDS mapping of the AA7075-T6 anode tip showed Na confined to the contact tip and Cl dispersed through the oxide scale.

Uncertainty / items I could not verify authoritatively

1. No litigation or appeal found for 11,029,244 — I cannot certify that none exists, only that my searches did not surface one.
2. Expiration date conflict (2038-12-15 vs. 2038-10-26) between Google Patents and mtec-sc.org — unresolved.
3. A search result referenced the ECS Transactions paper title as both "galvanic corrosion current" and "galvanic current"; the patent's own citation list uses "galvanic corrosion current."
4. I did not independently retrieve the underlying provisional application 62/577,362 or the file history/office actions, so I cannot comment on prosecution amendments or any patent-term-adjustment determination basis.
5. The list of 9–11 "Cited By" documents in the supplied text includes a Halliburton patent (US 12,331,603 B1) that appears topically unrelated — I report it as listed without asserting relevance.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 11029244.

Let me run additional targeted searches on litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 11,029,244

No litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 11,029,244.

I searched multiple litigation-focused sources and document repositories (including Unified Patents-style litigation coverage, RPX Insight references, CourtListener/RECAP filings, Justia dockets, PatSnap litigation intelligence, and general CAFC/district court document searches) for the exact number 11029244 and for the patent's identifiers. I found no infringement suit, declaratory judgment action, IPR/PGR, or appeal naming this patent.

Why this result is consistent with the record

A Navy-owned, government-funded corrosion-testing instrument patent is not the type of asset typically asserted in patent infringement litigation. It has not been granted to, nor assigned to, a commercial entity or monetization vehicle. There are no recorded assignments away from the Navy, no reexamination, and no PTAB proceedings found.

Related-but-distinct items (not litigation of this patent)

To avoid confusion, note that my searches surfaced several irrelevant hits for other numbers that should not be conflated with 11,029,244:

• US 11,427,044 (Shenzhen Xiang Yun Duan v. Dynamic Manufacturing Group, S.D. Fla. Case 0:25-cv-61038 — a trailer-lock patent; dismissed with prejudice Nov. 3, 2025). This is a different patent number.
• Numerous unrelated false-marking and Hatch-Waxman cases that merely quoted stray "110" or "292" figures.

Caveats

• My conclusion is based on publicly indexed litigation records and search results available to me. It is possible—though I found no indication—that a recently filed action or a sealed matter exists that is not yet indexed.
• I could not directly retrieve a Unified Patents case-list entry or a PACER docket for patent 11,029,244, in part because a government-owned instrument patent of this nature rarely appears there.
• I found no case with plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome to report, because no such case was located.

Bottom line: Based on the available public records, U.S. Patent No. 11,029,244 has no known litigation history as of the current date. If you need a definitive negative confirmation, the authoritative step would be a direct PACER/Unified Patents docket query by patent number, which I was unable to complete with a positive match.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" finding against live sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted queries to be thorough before concluding.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 11,029,244 B1

Canonical source used: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt, which reflects the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) AIA-trial index. Web search was used only to try to surface proceedings the ODP may not yet have ingested.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings: 0. There is nothing to break down by status — no instituted IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, no settlement-terminated trials, and no institution denials, because no petition has been filed.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: the correct characterization is not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened" (it hasn't been tested) and not "the claims are dead" (they aren't — all 23 claims, including independent claims 1, 10, 14, and 23, stand as issued). The accurate posture is: an untested, un-narrowed patent whose validity has never been adjudicated by the Board or by any Article III court. That cuts both ways. You get no free invalidity finding to ride, but you also face no adverse estoppel and no hardened claim set — a first-filed IPR would be a clean slate with no General Plastic / serial-petition baggage and no § 315(e) estoppel running against anyone.

No individual proceeding entries

The per-proceeding template (proceeding number, petitioner, panel, grounds, institution decision, FWD, settlement, appeal) is not applicable, because there is no proceeding to populate it with. I will not manufacture a proceeding number, a panel, or an FWD for this patent. Nothing in the supplied structured data, and nothing returned by web search, identifies any AIA trial involving US 11,029,244.

Search corroboration (and its limits). My queries returned only the patent's own bibliographic records — Google Patents, mtec-sc.org, and iprdb.com — plus a set of unrelated PTAB/CAFC documents (e.g., proceedings on U.S. 11,024,292, 9,928,044, 8,588,033, 11,871,088, 10,464,992, 8,332,844, 7,292,441). Those are different patents and I did not treat them as relevant — note in particular that 11,024,292 is a different patent from 11,029,244; a single-digit transposition, and not the same document. This is a good-faith negative result, not a certified clearance. The ODP index is the canonical list; where it says zero, zero is the answer absent a specific hit.

Consistency check against the previously generated section: the earlier summary independently found no CAFC appeal, no PTAB proceeding, and no district court litigation for this patent. My searches corroborate that. No contradiction to flag.

Why the zero-result is structurally plausible here (not just a search artifact):

Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED. No claim of 11,029,244 has been canceled, confirmed, or even challenged. That means independent claims 1 (instrument — anode/cathode with electrolytes "provided as droplets or thin films," a salt bridge, and a ZRA), 10 (method — separated electrolytes + salt bridge + ZRA, benchmarked against the polarization-scan intersection point), 14 (instrument — less than the entire anode/cathode surface exposed), and 23 (instrument — micro-pipette salt bridge) are all live and presumptively valid under § 282. I cannot tell you which claims are "sustained," because "sustained" is a term of art that presupposes a challenge; there has been none.

Estoppel landscape: empty. § 315(e)(1) and § 315(e)(2) estoppel only attaches to a petitioner that obtained an institution decision. With no petitioner, no proceeding, and no FWD, no estoppel runs against anyone. Critically for a current defendant, the entire prior-art universe remains open in district court — including the three references cited on the face of the patent (US 3,065,151 to Pure Oil; US 5,411,890 to Westvaco; JP 2014139547 to Kurita Water) and the significant body of the inventors' own pre-filing publications listed as non-patent citations, notably Hangarter et al., ECS Transactions 75(29) 11–22 (2017) and the PRIME ECS Annual Meeting presentation (2016-10-05). Those two NPL items predate the 2017-10-26 priority date and are the natural starting point for any § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 attack — they are the inventors' own disclosure of the same microelectrode-under-saline-droplet galvanic-current measurement work.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed even one petition, so there is no serial-filing (General Plastic) pattern, no defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents in the chain, and no indication the Navy has had to defend these claims anywhere. The patent is government-owned (assigned to the Secretary of the Navy), which historically correlates with low assertion activity — but that is a behavioral observation, not a legal immunity; Navy-owned patents are fully subject to IPR and PGR like any other patent. If a contractor or supplier is on the receiving end of a demand, note that a government contractor's exposure often runs through 28 U.S.C. § 1498 rather than a conventional infringement suit, which changes the forum calculus and may make an IPR less interesting to the plaintiff than to you.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted against:

1. Do not assume a PTAB record exists to lean on. There is none. You would be the first petitioner, which is an advantage: no General Plastic factor (1)/(2) problem, no § 315(e) estoppel, and no § 325(d) "same art already before the Office" presumption beyond the three cited references.
2. The ceiling is not the same everywhere. Independent claim 1 is narrow — it requires the electrolytes to be "provided as droplets or thin films," which limits it to the atmospheric/thin-film regime the specification is about. Independent claim 14 requires only partial surface exposure, and claim 23 requires only a micro-pipette salt bridge. If your accused product is bulk-electrolyte or a conventional epoxy-mounted electrode stack, claim 1 may not reach you at all — read the asserted claims before spending on an IPR.
3. Two drafting weaknesses are worth building into an invalidity or § 112 position (both flagged in the earlier summary and worth preserving verbatim): claim 10 recites "the corrosion current density of the separated analytes galvanic couple" — a literal claim-recitation error in an independent claim; and claim 11 is written as a dependent claim but recites an entire independent method. These are the kind of defects that support indefiniteness and written-description arguments, and they cannot be cured retroactively in a way that would bind you.
4. File within § 315(b) if you've been served. If you have been served with a complaint alleging infringement of 11,029,244, the one-year clock is running and the § 315(e)(2) estoppel consequence of not filing is the whole ballgame — grounds you "raised or reasonably could have raised" get foreclosed in the district court case.

If you are monitoring, not defending:

• There is no trial-stage milestone calendar to track — institution deadline, oral hearing, and the statutory § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD deadline all presuppose a filed petition. No petition, no calendar.
• Verify the negative at the source before relying on it: the Board's public face for AIA proceedings is PTAB E2E / PTACTS (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the ODP API (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api), with decisions posted at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions. CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) is the check for any CAFC appeal. I did not obtain a live hit from any of these directly; treat this as a good-faith negative, not a certified clearance.

Plain statement of the conclusion you asked for: there is no PTAB activity on file for US 11,029,244. The absence is itself the signal — this patent has never been asserted in a way that provoked a validity challenge, so it is neither "hardened" by survival nor "dead" by cancellation. It is simply untested, and the first challenger writes on a blank page.

I'll verify the assignment record before writing anything, then reconstruct the chain.

Let me try to pin down the reel/frame and correspondent for the recorded Navy assignment.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,029,244 B1

Data-integrity note before the analysis: I could not retrieve the per-patent record from the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) through the tools available to me — the legacy-assignments PDF index and the Assignment Center search UI are not directly queryable here, and web searches for the specific reel/frame returned nothing for this patent. The authoritative patent text I was given (Google Patents rendering of US11029244B1) contains the legal-events block but does not print a reel/frame number or a correspondent. Accordingly, the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent fields below are marked not retrieved rather than guessed. Everything else is grounded in the supplied record.

Inventors

Confidence caveat: the specific Navy laboratory / command (e.g. Naval Research Laboratory) is not stated in the issued patent text or the bibliographic record I hold. I am not asserting a specific command. What is documented is that the assignment instrument was executed "while employed by the Government of the United States" (standard Navy-titled employee-assignment language), and both named inventors assigned to the Secretary of the Navy.

Departure/attrition pattern: No evidence of an inventor-departure pattern. The underlying work was presented at the PRIME ECS Annual Meeting on 2016-10-05 and published in ECS Transactions 75(29) 11–22 (2017) — i.e. roughly a year before the 2017-10-26 priority filing — which is the normal publication cadence for career government research staff, not a founder-departure or fire-sale precursor. I have no evidence either inventor left government service, but I also have no affirmative evidence they stayed. Mark as unclear / no signal.

Original assignee

Entity on the issued patent: THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.
(Assignment recorded 2019-01-28; the underlying application, US 16/172,490, was filed 2018-10-26 by "US Department of Navy" per Google Patents legal events.)

• Product embodying the claims: No commercial product. The claimed subject matter is an electrochemical test instrument (a ZRA galvanic atmospheric corrosion kinetics test cell) used as a laboratory/metrology apparatus. The Navy does not sell it. There is no evidence in the record of any commercial embodiment, manufacture, or offer for sale by the assignee. This is a government research instrument, not a product patent.
• Primary line of business: U.S. federal defense research, development, test and evaluation. Not an operating commercial enterprise in the patent-assertion sense. Not an SEC registrant — so no 10-K/8-K privateering paper trail exists for this assignee; the analogous disclosure regime is government patent policy (Bayh-Dole 35 U.S.C. §§ 200–212 for contractor inventions; §§ 207–209 for federally owned inventions).
• Current status: Operating (an active, continuously existing federal agency). No acquisition, no dissolution, no bankruptcy. Ownership continuity is corroborated by the maintenance-fee payment recorded 2024-12-28 (4th year, large entity, with a surcharge for late payment, M1554/M1551) and the "Active, expires 2038-12-15" legal status. A patent whose fee is paid at the grace-period deadline by the current owner is strong evidence the owner of record has not changed hands.

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is of record on this patent.

• Execution date: not retrieved / recorded 2019-01-28 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of interest (inventor-to-government; "ASSIGNMENT OF INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: POLICASTRO, STEVEN A; HANGARTER, CARLOS M (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Google Patents does not expose the correspondent of record, and I could not reach the Assignment Center per-patent view. For context only — and this is not a finding about this patent — Navy assignment cover sheets filed around this era in the same legacy index commonly carry a Navy Office of Counsel correspondent (e.g. an Office of Counsel attorney at Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division or Dept. of Navy Office of Counsel, Patuxent River, signing as a registered practitioner). I am not attributing any specific attorney or firm to this record.
  • Context: Routine employee invention assignment — the statutorily compelled transfer of title from Navy-employed inventors to the United States, not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Corollary finding: there is no post-issuance assignment, no change of name, no merger, no security agreement, and no recorded license on this patent. If the Navy's technology-transfer office had granted a recorded license, it would appear as a "License" conveyance; none is on record. Absence of any post-issuance recording is itself the finding: the original assignee — the U.S. Government — still owns it.

Cross-check vs. the previously generated section: consistent. That section noted "no litigation or appeal found" and that the expiration date is disputed between sources (2038-12-15 vs 2038-10-26). My re-search again surfaced no litigation, and I likewise cannot resolve the expiration discrepancy. I would note only that an adjusted-expiration date (2038-12-15) implies patent term adjustment, which is consistent with the case having been granted roughly 2.6 years after filing. Not resolvable from the data I hold.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11029244
    2016 : Underlying work presented at PRIME ECS
    2017 : Provisional filed by Navy inventors
    2018 : Utility application filed by US Dept of Navy
    2019 : Inventors assign to Secretary of the Navy
    2021 : Patent issued to US Government
    2024 : Navy pays 4th year maintenance fee

Only six events exist; there is no transfer leg to diagram after 2024.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer of any kind off the original assignee. The sole recorded assignee is a named sovereign entity, not an "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" LLC. There is no registered-agent address, no single-member LLC, no product-free shell. Date anchor: the only recording, 2019-01-28.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee in the chain matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Erich Spangenberg entities, or any RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff list. Neither current nor prior assignee is an NPE. There is no "prior assignee" other than the inventors.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data unavailable).
This is the one signal I cannot score either way, because the Assignment Center record for this patent is unreachable from here and the issued-patent text does not print a correspondent. With only a single recorded link, the "recurrence" test could not be satisfied even if the name were known — one appearance is not a finding per the rubric. I flag this as a genuine data gap, not as a negative.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Zero consecutive assignments, let alone chained LLCs within 24 months. A single recording over the patent's entire 8+ year life (2017-10-26 priority to today 2026-09-29).

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No infringement suit naming this patent was found on either pass of this analysis, and there is no assignment within six months of any hypothetical suit. There is nothing to arrange the chain for.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 by the assignee; the United States does not file for bankruptcy. No sale-in-proceedings event. No Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style transaction in the chain.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
The inverse is true. The chain terminates inside the federal government. U.S. government-owned patents are not asserted by the government against private parties in the ordinary commercial sense (compare 28 U.S.C. § 1498, which channels government-use compensation into a Court of Federal Claims remedy rather than a patent-infringement suit). There is no operating-company-to-NPE transfer and no SEC filing, because there is no public operating company in the chain.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT (by mechanism), but the practical effect is the same.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the U.S. Navy. So the literal rubric trigger is absent, while the outcome the signal is designed to detect — a patent that is effectively neutralized and will not be asserted by a rent-seeking plaintiff — is present. Recording this honestly rather than stretching the signal.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: the only assignment of record is the inventors' assignment to The Government of the United States as represented by the Secretary of the Navy, recorded 2019-01-28, and there is no post-issuance recording of any kind — no chain, no LLC, no license, no security interest. The patent remains Active with the 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-12-28 by the original assignee, and no infringement litigation or PTAB proceeding naming US 11,029,244 has been found on either pass of this analysis; a sovereign-owned, never-transferred, never-asserted research instrument patent carries no NPE exposure.

Two honest caveats on this verdict. First, the rubric's "Defensive / non-asserting" bucket is defined as a chain terminating at a defensive aggregator, which is not literally what happened here — I am applying the label because it is the only option in the list that describes a non-asserting chain, and I want the deviation visible rather than hidden. If the rubric were applied mechanically, "Insufficient data (only the original assignment)" could be argued; I reject that label because the ownership question is not open — the government owns it and has kept it in force, so we are not lacking data, we are looking at a chain that simply has only one link. Second, the reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent of record were not retrievable, so anyone who needs those three fields for a formal chain-of-title opinion must pull them directly from the Assignment Center.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 11029244; the alternate index https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html surfaces the same underlying records). Cross-check via Google Patents legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11029244/en.

Not fabricated: I have not supplied a reel/frame, an execution date, or a correspondent name for this patent. I could not obtain them, and no public NPE list entry, litigation docket, or SEC filing exists to cite for this chain.

I'll search for the specific patent and its cited prior-art references.

Now let me get details on the other two cited references.

Let me find the specific JP reference details.

I've hit the tool-call limit, so here is the analysis based on the searches completed.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,029,244 B1

Step 1 — Confirming the patent number (no similar-number substitution)

The search resolved US 11,029,244 B1 uniquely and consistently across sources:

No results for a different number were returned or used. Caveat: I did not obtain a live PatentCenter/PAIR hit; the record is corroborated by the authoritative patent text plus three independent third-party databases, all agreeing on number, application, inventor, assignee, and title. My bibliographic data is the same as the previously-generated section, so nothing there is contradicted.

Step 2 — The complete citation set

US 11,029,244 B1 has 3 patent citations and 2 non-patent citations (all examiner-cited). Critically, the patent issued over all five — i.e., the examiner did not treat any of them as anticipatory under § 102. That framing matters for the analysis below: these are considered references, and the realistic challenge they pose is under § 103 or as background, not clean § 102 anticipation.

Step 3 — Reference-by-reference analysis

Reference 1 — US 3,065,151 A

Potential § 102 mapping:

• The agar ion-conducting barrier separating two solution zones is the single most relevant concept in this reference. It is not a salt bridge connecting two droplets/thin films on separate electrodes — it is a bulk-solution divider inside one vessel. It also does not disclose a ZRA, and the electrolyte is a bulk liquid, not a droplet or thin film.
• Claim 1 — Discloses a two-zone corrosion cell with an agar (ionically conductive) membrane between them, arguably teaching the "electrolytically-connecting" bridge element. However, it fails to disclose (a) electrolyte at the anode/cathode "provided as droplets or thin films," and (b) a ZRA electrically connecting the anode and cathode (it uses resistance-type corrosion meters). A § 102 anticipation requires all elements in a single reference; these two missing elements defeat clean anticipation. Best characterized as § 103 art against claim 1. Null against claims 10, 14, 23 (method; masking; micro-pipette).
• It is the closest § 102 candidate only if one reads "salt bridge" and "electrolyte" extremely broadly and ignores the droplet/thin-film and ZRA limitations — a reading the patent's own FIG. 2/3 distinction resists.

Reference 2 — US 5,411,890 A

Potential § 102 mapping:

• This reference is atmospheric-corrosion-specific, matching the patent's general field, but it is purely optical/reflectance-based. It has no anode/cathode galvanic couple, no electrolyte droplet or thin film, no salt bridge, and no ZRA.
• Null for anticipation of all four independent claims (1, 10, 14, 23). It lacks every characterizing element. Its only role is as § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 background establishing that atmospheric-corrosion measurement and thin corrodable metal films were known. It does not teach or suggest electrolyte separation or electrochemical (ZRA) coupling.

Reference 3 — JP 2014-139547 A

Potential § 102 mapping:

• If the reference is a coupon-based corrosion monitor as its title and family indicate, it may be relevant to claim 14 (the "less than the entire surface exposed" / masked-or-limited-coupon variant) and to claim 9 (environmental control), and as general background to claim 1's electrode architecture. It would not disclose the salt-bridge-separated droplet/thin-film half-cells or the ZRA galvanic coupling — the core of claims 1, 10, and 23 — so § 102 anticipation of the independent claims is unlikely. This conclusion is provisional because I could not read the document.

Step 4 — Additional highly relevant prior art: the two Non-Patent Citations

The task asks for the "most relevant prior art." The two examiner-cited NPLs are the inventors' own publications and are materially closer to the claims than any of the three patents:

1. Hangarter et al., "Microelectrode test configurations for measurement of galvanic corrosion current under saline drops in simulated atmospheric conditions," ECS Transactions 75(29) 11–22 (2017).
2. Same title, PRIME ECS Annual Meeting, Oct. 5, 2016.

Both pre-date the 2017-10-26 priority date. Because they share the inventive entity, AIA § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period treatment becomes decisive:

• The Oct. 5, 2016 PRIME ECS disclosure is more than one year before the Oct. 26, 2017 priority date (≈ 1 year + 21 days). That places it outside the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace period, so it can potentially qualify as § 102(a)(1) prior art even though it is the inventors' own work.
• The 2017 ECS Transactions paper's exact publication date relative to Oct. 26, 2017 governs whether it falls inside the grace period.

Caveat: I did not retrieve the full text of either paper, so I cannot confirm which claims they would anticipate. However, because they are titled to galvanic corrosion current under saline drops in simulated atmospheric conditions using microelectrode test configurations, they are the references most plausibly capable of disclosing the droplet half-cell + salt-bridge + ZRA combination of claims 1, 10, and 23. This is the priority area for a validity challenge and warrants retrieval of the actual texts.

Step 5 — Summary anticipation matrix

Key analytical conclusions

1. None of the three patent citations appears to anticipate any independent claim. Each is missing at least one core element — the sodium-chloride-type salt bridge connecting droplet or thin-film half-cells, and/or the ZRA electrical connection. This is consistent with the patent having issued over them.
2. US 3,065,151 A is the most structurally relevant patent citation (agar ion-conducting divider between two zones), but its bulk-liquid geometry and resistance-based metering distinguish it from the claimed droplet/thin-film + ZRA architecture; it is best framed as § 103 art.
3. US 5,411,890 A is field-relevant but element-poor — atmospheric corrosion by optical wedge; no galvanic couple, bridge, or ZRA; background only.
4. JP 2014-139547 A could not be verified — my mapping for it is provisional and flagged.
5. The two NPLs are the genuinely dangerous prior art because they are the inventors' own pre-priority disclosures on the exact subject matter, and the earlier one (Oct. 5, 2016) may fall outside the AIA grace period.

Honesty flags carried forward from the prior section, still unresolved here: the 2038-12-15 vs. 2038-10-26 expiration discrepancy; and the literal "separated analytes galvanic couple" wording in claim 10 (reported as written, not corrected).

I'll research the cited prior-art references to ground the §103 analysis in their actual disclosures.

Let me pull the details of the remaining cited references and the non-patent literature.

Now let me get the full text of the primary references and the Kurita JP application.

I'll note at the outset that I'm building on the earlier sections (bibliographic data, claim map, Examples 1–6, and the "no known litigation" finding) and not repeating them.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,029,244 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Framework and threshold caveats

This analysis uses only the references in the "Prior Art" section of the supplied page:

Three caveats that materially affect the analysis:

1. I did not retrieve the text of JP 2014‑139547 A. My search returned Kurita‑family material for other members (US 6,077,418 / EP 0 909 945, directed to corrosion monitoring under heat‑transfer conditions). Per my operating rules I will not attribute that content to JP 2014‑139547 A. I therefore treat the Kurita reference as at most a secondary reference (general corrosion‑monitoring test piece/apparatus) and do not rest any claim‑element mapping on it.
2. I do not have the file history. I cannot state what the examiner relied on for allowance, whether the examiner considered the Oct. 5, 2016 PRIME presentation as prior art, or what art was applied. The examiner did cite both Hangarter NPL items, which implies the examiner considered them — but the citation alone does not resolve the grace‑period question below.
3. The patent text renders one alloy as "UNS 513800" (elsewhere "UNS S13800"). I treat this as written and do not auto‑correct it.

1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here would be a corrosion scientist/electrochemist with an M.S. or Ph.D. in materials science, chemical engineering, or electrochemistry plus 2–3 years of atmospheric/galvanic corrosion experience, or a B.S. with ~5 years of such experience. That skill level matters because every claimed element outside the droplet/thin‑film context is classical electrochemistry: two‑compartment galvanic cells, agar salt bridges, zero‑resistance ammeters, mixed‑potential (Evans) diagram construction, and IR‑corrected polarization scans. The patent's own specification concedes most of this skill set (e.g., microfabrication and epoxy‑mounted electrode stacks are described as known; masking to limit exposed area is described as "known to those skilled in the art of corrosion science"; ZRA measurements are admitted to be "recognized for their utility in characterizing galvanic corrosion rates").

2. The hinge issue: are the Hangarter disclosures prior art?

The critical date is the effective filing date. If provisional 62/577,362 (filed 2017‑10‑26) supports a given claim, the effective filing date is 2017‑10‑26 and the §102(b)(1) grace period reaches back only to 2016‑10‑26.

• NPL‑2 (PRIME ECS, presented Oct. 5, 2016; abstract published in MA2016‑02). This predates 2016‑10‑26 by ~3 weeks. Because it is more than one year before the effective filing date, the §102(b)(1)(A) inventor‑disclosure exception cannot remove it, even though the inventors are the same two people. A conference presentation to an unrestricted technical audience plus a publicly posted meeting abstract is a printed publication / public disclosure. NPL‑2 is prior art. (Note the irony: electing the provisional priority date shortens the grace period and thereby converts the inventors' own 2016 presentation into prior art.)
• NPL‑1 (ECS Trans. 75(29):11–22, 2017). The TOC confirms the article and pagination (https://www.proceedings.com/content/034/034193webtoc.pdf). Whether it is prior art depends on whether it published before or after 2016‑10‑26: if before, it is unexcepted prior art; if between 2016‑10‑26 and 2017‑10‑26, it is an inventor disclosure inside the grace period and is excepted under §102(b)(1)(A). I could not verify the publication date from the sources I reached. This is the single most consequential unverified fact in the analysis, because NPL‑1 in isolation appears to disclose essentially every element of claims 1, 10, 11, 14 and 23 (see §4).

Anti‑inurement check: the patent's specification is nearly verbatim the same text as NPL‑1 (the "145 µA/cm² and −0.777 V_SCE" intersection point, the "58 mC/µmol Cl⁻" consumption rate, the "not predicted… precipitous decay," the micro‑pipette silanization at 473 K, the −124 µA/cm² and −699 µA/cm² transients). That near‑identity confirms common inventorship — it is why the grace‑period exception is even arguable — and it also means NPL‑1 is the single best §102/single‑reference §103 reference if it is prior art.

3. What each reference actually discloses (element mapping)

US 3,065,151 A — the strongest structural reference. Its FIG. 1/FIG. 5 apparatus has two compartments (12, 14) or, expressly, "separate vessels with the porous plate 16 comprising a salt bridge, the ends of which are plugged with a conducting diffusion barrier such as agar gel" (US3065151A, p. 2). Probes 18 and 36 sit in the two electrolytes and "serve as an anode and cathode when connected by means of wire 52," the container divided by an agar layer into "two separate zones, 114 and 116, which are filled with the liquid under study," with apertures "for the migration of ions." In the worked example, the probes are connected "to circuit 180, which included recorder 202," and "[t]he zero‑resistance ammeter was read over a period of time and automatically recorded," giving a cell current of "80 ma./sq. ft. based on the area of the cathode." Pure Oil also teaches (a) varying "the relative areas of the corroding surfaces" (area‑ratio screening), (b) providing unconnected specimens "to establish a blank rate for each environment" — i.e., a baseline comparison — and (c) deliberately separating the anodic and cathodic reactions to study them independently. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3065151A/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/15/56/ca/c42a0b75567e33/US3065151.pdf

US 5,411,890 A — atmospheric/field‑exposure and thin‑film teaching. Discloses measuring atmospheric corrosion with a corrosion test element comprising a transparent substrate bearing a corrodable metal applied as a thin wedge (250–1,000 Å), read optically, with results expressed as Å/year, and used for "atmospheric environmental monitoring." URL: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[5411890](/patent/5411890)

JP 2014‑139547 A — unverified; treated as cumulative. Title/assignee indicate a corrosion‑monitoring test piece, apparatus and method. I will not assert its content.

NPL‑2 (PRIME ECS abstract, 2016) — the full two‑cell concept, in the public domain before the grace period. It states that "two different cells were conceived, tested, and used to study galvanic couples in atmospheric environments," that the first "allows the time resolved galvanic current and potential of the zero‑resistance‑ammeter (ZRA) connected anode and cathode to be examined during humidity cycling in the absence of reaction product cross‑talk," and that the second "brings the anode and cathode into contact with a single microliter droplet… the droplet is placed on the cathode and the anode is polished to a fine tip… translated… with a three axis micromanipulator," where "reaction products from both electrodes are free to interact." URL: https://beta.iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2016-02/13/1300

NPL‑1 (ECS Trans., 2017) — the fullest disclosure. Explicitly: "a novel galvanic corrosion cell with two distinct droplet half cells joined by a micro‑pipet salt bridge was constructed"; 0.5 µL droplets; "saturated NaCl agar filled PTFE tube salt bridge"; "electrically connected through the zero resistance ammeter (ZRA) of the potentiostat"; "The intersection point between anodic and cathodic scans, which is used as a predictor for corrosion current and potential of galvanic couples, is located at 145 µA/cm² and −0.777 V_SCE"; the single‑droplet cell peak "at 699 µA/cm² or 4.8 times the predicted galvanic corrosion rate determined by polarization scans"; "Removal of the salt bridge from the configuration in Figure 1 yields the corresponding ZRA galvanic atmospheric corrosion cell in Figure 2"; and "the galvanic current density peaks at −124 μA/cm²." All experiments ran in "a temperature and humidity‑controlled environmental chamber."

4. §103 combinations rendering the claims obvious

Combination I — US 3,065,151 A in view of NPL‑1 or NPL‑2 (and, alternatively, NPL‑1 alone)

Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 14, 22, 23; fully or nearly fully also claim 10.

Pure Oil supplies everything in claim 1 except the phrase "wherein the electrolyte at the anode and the electrolyte at the cathode are provided as droplets or thin films": an anode, a cathode, an electrolyte at each, a salt bridge (expressly, an agar‑plugged diffusion barrier linking two vessels), and a zero‑resistance ammeter electrically connecting the anode and cathode. The Hangarter work supplies exactly that missing limitation — 0.5 µL droplets/discontinuous thin films on each alloy — together with the micro‑pipette salt bridge (claim 23), the temperature/RH chamber (claims 9/22), and the polarization‑scan intersection benchmark (claim 10).

Combination II — NPL‑1 (or NPL‑2) alone, plus the admitted art

If NPL‑1 is prior art, claims 1, 10, 11, 14 and 23 read on a single reference and are invalid under §102(b); the §103 variant is that the remaining dependent claims (metal selection, seawater ions, agar/NaCl bridge, chamber) are obvious in view of US 3,065,151 A (steel ribbon probes in a NaCl solution "equaling that of sea water"; agar bridge) and the patent's own admissions.

Combination III — US 3,065,151 A + US 5,411,890 A (+ JP 2014‑139547 A) for claims 1, 9, 22 (contingency if all Hangarter disclosures are excepted)

Pure Oil teaches a bulk two‑compartment cell and expressly warns in the patent's own background that bulk behavior differs from atmospheric behavior. Westvaco supplies the recognition that atmospheric corrosion is best characterized at thin‑film scale and by rate measurement over time, and JP 2014‑139547 A (as titled) the corrosion‑monitoring test piece/apparatus context. Motivation: an artisan pursuing atmospheric‑relevant galvanic data would scale Pure Oil's cell down to the electrolyte geometries actually encountered in service. This is the weakest of the three combinations (Westvaco's "thin film" is a metal film, not an electrolyte film), but it is likely sufficient for claim 1's broader contemplation of "thin films," and entirely sufficient for claims 9/22 (environmental control) given routine chamber use.

Method claims 10–13

• Claim 10: Pure Oil discloses steps (1)–(4) — separated electrolytes, salt bridge whose ends contact both electrolytes ("the ends of which are plugged with a conducting diffusion barrier"), a ZRA across anode and cathode, and measurement of the couple's current (and Pure Oil's probes report current per unit cathode area, i.e., current density). Step (5) — comparing to "an intersection point of polarization scans" — is disclosed by NPL‑1 verbatim in function ("used as a predictor for corrosion current and potential of galvanic couples"), and is in any event textbook mixed‑potential theory (the type of content in McCafferty's Kinetics of Corrosion, listed among this patent's similar documents). Pure Oil's "unconnected specimen… blank rate" teaching supplies the comparison‑against‑a‑baseline motivation. The terminal "wherein" clause is an outcome statement, not a step — see §6.
• Claim 11: NPL‑1 discloses the complementary single‑electrolyte cell ("a simple galvanic cell containing only anode, cathode and electrolyte in a ZRA configuration for fixed, small volumes") and the comparison to the separated‑electrolyte cell (−699 vs. −124 µA/cm²; "4.8 times the predicted"; reaction‑product interactions). NPL‑2 discloses the same dichotomy in its two cell figures.
• Claims 12–13: running multiple couples and selecting the lower‑current material is the raison d'être of a galvanic screening cell and is taught by Pure Oil's stated object of "direct comparison of anodic and cathodic areas," its area‑ratio screening, and its screening of inhibitors.

Dependent claims 2–9, 15–22

• Al‑anode / stainless‑cathode (claims 3, 16): NPL‑1 uses UNS A97075 vs. UNS S13800; Pure Oil uses steel in seawater‑equivalent NaCl.
• Metal list (claims 2, 15): routine selection from the galvanic series for the intended aircraft/structural service.
• Matched electrolytes (claims 4, 17) / seawater ions (claims 6, 19) / environmental ions (claims 5, 18): Pure Oil's example uses NaCl at seawater conductivity; NPL‑1 uses 4 M NaCl droplets on both sides.
• Salt‑bridge construction, agar + NaCl (claims 7, 8, 20, 21): essentially anticipated by Pure Oil's "salt bridge… plugged with a conducting diffusion barrier such as agar gel," and expressly disclosed in NPL‑1 ("saturated NaCl agar filled PTFE tube").
• Environmental chamber (claims 9, 22): NPL‑1/NPL‑2 ran in a temperature‑ and humidity‑controlled environmental chamber; adding lighting/atmospheric‑composition control and airborne pollutants is routine and motivated by the very atmospheric conditions the instrument purports to simulate.
• Claim 14 ("less than an entire surface… exposed"): Pure Oil teaches varying the relative corroding areas; the patent's own specification concedes that "masked to expose a limited area of the anode or cathode" is a known preparation technique; and a 0.5 µL droplet on a 1″×1″ coupon inherently exposes a small fraction of the surface.

5. Motivation to combine (why the POSITA would have done this)

1. Same field, same problem, same solution architecture. Both Pure Oil and the Hangarter work are in G01N 17/02 electrochemical corrosion testing and both are expressly aimed at decoupling the anodic and cathodic reactions and at excluding reaction‑product cross‑talk. Pure Oil's stated objects ("direct comparison of anodic and cathodic areas"; "detecting separately… the anodic and cathodic areas") and its concentration‑cell/logical separation discussion mirror the patent's asserted advance. Combining references that attack the identical problem is the paradigm case for motivation. (KSR, "known elements, known methods, predictable results.")
2. Explicit teach‑through and bodily incorporation. Pure Oil itself offers the two‑separate‑vessels‑plus‑salt‑bridge alternative; NPL‑2/NPL‑1 merely put the electrolytes where atmospheric corrosion actually occurs (droplets/thin films). No change in the principle of operation is required.
3. Finite, small, and identified set of solutions. NPL‑2 names exactly two cell designs ("two different cells were conceived, tested, and used"), and the patent claims those two designs. Under KSR, an artisan facing a known design need with "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" has a strong motivation, and success is predictable.
4. Design necessity at the relevant scale. A macroscopic porous plate/agar barrier cannot interface a 0.5 µL droplet spanning ~a millimeter; a pulled‑glass micro‑pipette/agar salt bridge is the foreseeable means (micro‑pipettes, Luggin capillaries and micro‑salt bridges for sub‑microliter electrochemistry were established tools — NPL‑1 itself cites prior microcapillary‑salt‑bridge work on mild steel under microscale droplets). Substituting a micro‑pipette for the plate is thus an obvious change of scale with a reasonable expectation of success, not a new principle.
5. Predictable, not surprising, results. The patent states its own data merely "support predicted corrosion rate values for galvanic couples from droplet polarization scans." Results that match pre‑existing predictions are the antithesis of an unexpected‑results rebuttal.
6. Baseline‑comparison motivation. Pure Oil's unconnected‑probe "blank rate" and its use of polarization/resistance measurement to establish uncoupled corrosion rates supply the reason to benchmark a measured galvanic current against a predicted value — the core of claim 10.

6. Where the obviousness case is weakest

1. Claim 23 (micro‑pipette salt bridge) is the claim most likely to survive if NPL‑1 is excepted under §102(b)(1)(A) and NPL‑2's abstract is held not to disclose a salt bridge expressly (the abstract speaks of separated half cells and the absence of "reaction product cross‑talk" but does not itself recite "micro‑pipette salt bridge"). Even then, the obviousness argument rests on the micro‑pipette as an obvious scale‑adapted substitute for Pure Oil's agar‑plugged barrier. That is a solid but not airtight position.
2. Claim 10's terminal "wherein" clause and the physically odd phrase "in the absence of the separated electrolytes" reduce, in substance, to a statement of result (higher measured current ⇒ accelerated corrosion). Such clauses are frequently given little or no patentable weight where they do not change the steps performed. Conversely, a patentee could argue the clause imports a specific comparison protocol.
3. Claim 11 is drafted as a dependent claim that recites a complete independent method. Its validity rises and falls with claims 10 and with the single‑droplet cell (NPL‑1/NPL‑2).
4. Claim 14's "less than an entire surface… of the anode or the cathode" is broad and almost unavoidable in any practical cell; expect a §112 indefiniteness cross‑attack as well as the obviousness attack.
5. Possible objective indicia. The patent asserts an unmet need and "not predicted" behavior (the precipitous current decay in the single‑droplet cell; the 5–10× enhancement of droplet over bulk galvanic rates). This is the best non‑obviousness story available. It is substantially undercut here because the same wording and the same findings appear in NPL‑1/NPL‑2, i.e., the "surprising" behavior was already public (and, if NPL‑1 is prior art, was already disclosed in the same cell). There is also no evidence in the record before me of commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry praise — consistent with the earlier section's finding of a Navy‑owned, unasserted instrument patent.
6. Procedural note: because both Hangarter NPL items were cited to the examiner, any validity challenge built on them must confront the possibility that the examiner understood the Oct. 5, 2016 abstract to be within the grace period, or treated the NPL as the inventors' own non‑prior‑art disclosure. The date arithmetic in §2 is therefore the pressure point of the whole §103 case, and it should be verified against the actual MA2016‑02 and ECS Transactions 75(29) publication records (and, if available, the §102(b)(1)(A) showing in the file).

7. Bottom line

• Strongest attack (highest confidence): §102/§103 over Hangarter & Policastro, ECS Trans. 75(29) 11–22 (2017) if that paper published on or before 2016‑10‑26 — it alone appears to disclose claims 1, 10, 11, 14 and 23 (two droplet half‑cells joined by a micro‑pipette agar salt bridge; ZRA coupling; polarization‑scan intersection as the predictor; single‑droplet variant; RH cycling).
• Strongest attack that does not depend on the ECS Transactions date: US 3,065,151 A in view of the Oct. 5, 2016 PRIME ECS abstract (MA2016‑02/13/1300) — Pure Oil supplies the separated electrolytes + agar salt bridge + ZRA + current‑density baseline comparison; the abstract supplies the droplet/thin‑film atmospheric context, the two cell architectures, and humidity cycling; the abstract is unambiguously prior art because it predates the one‑year grace‑period boundary of 2016‑10‑26.
• Fallback if all Hangarter disclosures are excepted: US 3,065,151 A + US 5,411,890 A (+ JP 2014‑139547 A), which is sufficient for claims 1 and 9/22 and arguable (weaker) for claims 10, 11, 14 and 23.
• Most vulnerable claims: 1, 3–9, 14, 15–22 (architecture + bridge chemistry + chamber), and 12–13 (routine screening/selection).
• Most defensible claims: 23 (micro‑pipette salt bridge) and, marginally, 10 and 11 (the specific benchmark/comparison methodology and the single‑droplet configuration) — but only on the assumption that the Hangarter disclosures are excluded by the grace period, which the Oct. 5, 2016 abstract defeats for the core two‑cell architecture.

Confidence: high on the US 3,065,151 A element mapping (I read the specification text directly); high on the Oct. 5, 2016 date appearing in the patent's own citation list; moderate/low on the ECS Transactions 75(29) publication date, which I could not verify and which determines whether NPL‑1 is prior art at all; low on JP 2014‑139547 A, whose text I could not obtain.