Prior art

The USPTO database search on Google Patents (which is linked to the USPTO data) for US patent 11031677 provides access to the patent document itself, including its cited prior art. As of the current date, US11031677B2 is an active patent, granted on June 8, 2021, and is anticipated to expire on December 21, 2026.

The patent document lists a significant number of patent and non-patent citations. To identify the most relevant prior art for potential anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a comprehensive review of all 616 patent citations would typically be required. However, for this exercise, I will highlight some of the key prior art documents that appear to be directly related to the lineage of US11031677B2, as indicated by the "Priority and Related Applications" section of the Google Patents record. These are the continuation and provisional applications from which US11031677B2 claims benefit. While these are related applications rather than prior art in the strict sense for a 102 analysis of the granted claims, understanding their content is crucial as they represent the evolutionary path of the claimed invention.

For a true 35 U.S.C. § 102 anticipation analysis, we would typically look at patents not in the priority chain but cited against the application during prosecution. The Google Patents link lists "Patent citations (616)", but it does not immediately present the details of those citations or indicate which were specifically cited by the examiner against the claims. Without access to the full prosecution history (e.g., an Image File Wrapper from USPTO PatentCenter), it's impossible to definitively state which specific prior art references were deemed most relevant by the examiner or could anticipate the claims.

However, based on the provided text, the patent US11031677B2 claims benefit from the following earlier applications:

• U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/856,626

  • Filing Date: December 28, 2017
  • Description: This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/738,090.
  • Potential Anticipation: This is a parent application in the chain. Its disclosures would be part of the inventive entity's own prior work and not used to anticipate claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102 unless the priority claim is invalid for some reason. The claims of 11031677 would need to be considered in light of the earliest effective filing date derived from this chain.

• U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/738,090 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,899,727)

  • Filing Date: June 12, 2015
  • Publication Date (for the granted patent): February 20, 2018
  • Description: This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/246,491.
  • Potential Anticipation: Similar to the above, this is a parent application. Its granted form, US Pat. No. 9,899,727, would constitute prior art if the claims of US11031677B2 did not have an earlier effective filing date than the publication of 9,899,727. Given the continuation chain, the claims of US11031677B2 would likely claim priority back through this application.

• U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/246,491 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,099,773)

  • Filing Date: April 7, 2014
  • Publication Date (for the granted patent): August 4, 2015
  • Description: This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/614,429.
  • Potential Anticipation: Another parent application in the chain. Its granted form, US Pat. No. 9,099,773, would be considered similarly to 9,899,727 regarding prior art analysis.

• U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/614,429 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,738,103)

  • Filing Date: December 21, 2006
  • Publication Date (for the granted patent): May 27, 2014
  • Description: This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/831,544 and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/856,410.
  • Potential Anticipation: This is a foundational non-provisional application in the chain. Its granted form, US Pat. No. 8,738,103, would be relevant as a potential prior art date if the claims in US11031677B2 do not have an effective filing date prior to May 27, 2014.

• U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/831,544

  • Filing Date: July 18, 2006
  • Description: This is an early provisional application in the priority chain.
  • Potential Anticipation: This provisional application provides the earliest priority date (July 18, 2006) for subject matter disclosed therein and later claimed in US11031677B2. Therefore, any other prior art would need to have a filing or publication date before July 18, 2006, to anticipate claims in US11031677B2 that are fully supported by the disclosure of this provisional application.

• U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/856,410

  • Filing Date: November 3, 2006
  • Description: This is another early provisional application in the priority chain.
  • Potential Anticipation: Similar to the above, this provisional provides a priority date for subject matter disclosed within it.

Without the detailed list of examiner-cited prior art and the specific claims from the "Claims" section (which were inferred for this analysis), identifying the most relevant prior art that anticipates a claim under 35 U.S.C. § 102 is speculative. A proper analysis would involve comparing each element of an independent claim to the disclosure of a piece of prior art published before the effective filing date of the patent. The related applications listed above are primarily for establishing the priority date, not for anticipation against the current patent if the priority claim is valid.