US 11105659

I'll search for the patent and any related litigation/docket activity before summarizing.

Let me do one more targeted check for any 2026 docket or PTAB activity naming this patent.

Verification status of the search

I searched for US 11,105,659 (and variants "11105659") against USPTO/Google Patents, Federal Circuit 2026 activity, PTAB/IPR listings, and general litigation reporting. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, no IPR/PGR, and no district-court litigation naming this patent. The only substantive hits were (a) the patent document itself, and (b) an inventor-index listing at patentleaderboard.com confirming the number, title, assignee and inventors. Everything below is therefore drawn from the patent record in the supplied full text, not from litigation. I flag below where the record is ambiguous.

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Bibliographic summary

Uncertainty notes on the record (as fetched):

• The Google Patents page explicitly labels the 2019-11-19 "priority date" as an assumption. The fetched record shows only one family application (the US filing) and no foreign priority claim. A Korean patent with the identical title, KR 102048459 B1 (listed 2019-11-25), appears in the "similar documents" list — which is consistent with a Korean priority/parent relationship, but the fetched data does not confirm that any priority is claimed. I am not asserting one.
• Inventor name spellings vary slightly across sources ("Sang Bae Lee" vs. "Sang-Bae Lee"); I have used the assignee-record form.

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Abstract (as issued)

The system detects an event area quickly by simultaneously measuring multiple correlation points in an optical fiber under test using a pump signal modulated with a pulsed gating signal together with a continuous-wave probe signal, then precisely measures the identified event area by instead modulating the probe signal with the pulsed gating signal (with the pump signal).

The two-measurement-mode (hence "dual") architecture is the core: a wide, fast, low-resolution sweep to find where something happened, followed by a narrow, slow, high-resolution measurement of only that area.

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Independent claim 1 — System (plain language)

A dual Brillouin distributed fiber sensing system comprising:

1. an optical fiber under test;
2. a light source unit producing a laser beam modulated by a modulating signal that has a modulation frequency;
3. a light modulation unit that (i) derives a pump signal and a probe signal from that laser beam and (ii) launches them into the fiber from opposite directions, where the pump signal is time-gated by a pulsed gating signal;
4. a light detection unit that detects Brillouin scattered light generated by the pump and probe at correlation points in the fiber; and
5. a control unit that decides from the detected scattered light whether an event occurred, and if so sets an "event area" containing the event point.

The distinguishing limitation is the conditional probe-generation logic:

• When no event area is set → the probe is generated by frequency-shifting the laser beam by a predetermined offset frequency (i.e., a continuous-wave probe);
• When an event area is set → the probe is additionally time-gated using a gating signal.

In short: CW probe for the fast wide search, gated probe for the slow precise measurement — with the mode switched based on an event determination.

Independent claim 12 — Method (plain language)

A Brillouin-scattering sensing method comprising the ordered steps:

1. Generate a first laser beam modulated with a first modulating signal;
2. Generate a pump signal (pulsed-gating modulated) and a first probe signal (at a different frequency from the pump) from that beam;
3. Apply pump and probe to the fiber in opposite directions;
4. Detect first Brillouin scattered light and calculate a first Brillouin frequency;
5. Determine whether an event occurred from that first Brillouin frequency, and set an event area containing the event location;
6. Generate a second laser beam modulated with a second modulating signal;
7. Generate a second probe signal that is time-gated by a pulsed gating signal;
8. Apply the second probe and the pump signal to the fiber in opposite directions; and
9. Calculate a second Brillouin frequency within the event area from Brillouin scattered light generated at a correlation point located in that area.

The controlling limitation is resolution: the first modulating signal has a first modulation-frequency variation setting a first spatial resolution, and the second modulating signal has a second modulation-frequency variation setting a second, higher spatial resolution.

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Dependent-claim architecture (context for the two independents)

• Claims 2–4 (depend from 1): the modulation unit's concrete hardware — a first modulator for the offset frequency shift; a first waveform generator that outputs a constant signal when no event area is set and a pulsed gating signal when one is; a second modulator driven by it (claim 2); gating pulse width equal to the reciprocal of the modulation frequency (claim 3); a second waveform generator plus a third modulator forming the pump beam, with phase shifting of the gating signal (claim 4).
• Claims 5–7 (depend from 1): the control unit's data collector + data processor; multiple correlation points measured when no event area, one correlation point when an event area is set (claim 6); event thresholding on Brillouin-frequency change above a predetermined range (claim 7).
• Claims 8–9: the dual-resolution limitation (first resolution lower than second) and event-area sizing based on the first resolution.
• Claims 10–11: a lock-in amplifier producing an averaged signal for Brillouin scattered light at the same correlation point, operating only when the event area is set.
• Claims 13–18 (method dependents): the multiple-correlation-point gain/frequency calculation (13); partial Brillouin-frequency distribution by tuning the first modulation frequency (14); event detection at a correlation point exceeding the threshold (15); phase control between pump and second probe so one correlation point lands in the event area (16); averaged multi-shot detection at that one correlation point (17); partial distribution by tuning the second modulation frequency (18).

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Plain-language overview of the invention

Classical BOCDA measures one correlation point at a time, so scanning a long span (e.g., 1.5 km) at high spatial resolution is prohibitively slow. The patent's insight is to break the measurement into two regimes:

• Regime 1 (survey, no event area set): the pump is pulsed-gated while the probe remains continuous wave. Because the probe is amplified at every correlation point the pump pulse passes, the time-domain signal contains the Brillouin gain of many correlation points at once — enabling a fast, low-resolution (≈0.5 m) sweep of the whole span. The specification's worked example reports ~16 s for 1.5 km with ~150 simultaneous correlation points.
• Regime 2 (re-measure, event area set): the probe is also gated, so pump and probe interact at essentially one correlation point selected by pulse width and relative phase. The modulation excursion is then raised to give high resolution (≈10 mm) over only the small flagged region (~5 s in the example). Total ≈21 s versus ~15,000 s for a straight high-resolution scan — the patent claims roughly a 714× speedup.

Supporting elements include a lock-in amplifier (used only in the precise mode) to average repeated Brillouin scatter at the same point and suppress noise, and polarization control/switch plus delay fiber and isolator for practical signal stability.

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Litigation / docket findings

• No CAFC 2026 appeal, no IPR/PGR, and no district-court case referencing US 11,105,659 were found. Searches surfaced unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit matters (e.g., Taction v. Apple over US 10,659,885 / 10,820,117; Spero v. Mercedes-Benz; KAIST v. KIP) — none of these involve this patent number, and I am not conflating them.
• The only forward citations of record are US 2023/0324202 A1 (Yokogawa, 2020-07-06 priority) and, per the "cited by" listing, US 12,339,144 B2 (Yokogawa). Backward citations include KIST's own earlier Korean filings (KR 10-1358942, KR 10-1823454, KR 2018-0010049) and third-party references from Thales, Silixa, University of Tokyo, Neubrex, LIOS, and Yokogawa.
• Confidence: high on the bibliographic and claim content (derived directly from the supplied authoritative patent text); high that no US litigation exists as of the search date, but "absence of results" from public web search is not proof of absence — a docket-only record (e.g., a recently filed, unfiled, or non-indexed action) could evade these searches.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11105659 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more specific litigation databases and sources.

Let me check additional litigation-specific sources.

Findings: Litigation Involving US Patent 11,105,659

Short answer: I found no evidence of any litigation involving US Patent No. 11,105,659.

Searches performed

I ran targeted queries against general web indexes that surface patent-litigation content from Unified Patents' litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, PACER-derived dockets, PTAB filings, and the patent's own Google Patents page. I specifically searched for the literal identifiers "11105659" and "11,105,659" together with litigation terms (lawsuit, defendant, complaint, infringement, district court, case number).

Results

• No district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding naming US 11,105,659 was located.
• No case caption, case number, jurisdiction, filing date, or outcome could be identified for this patent.

Important disambiguation (literal-identifier caution)

During the search, several other "…559"/"659" patents appeared. Per the strict rule, I did not treat these as the same patent, and they should not be conflated:

• An AIUSA/ASUS Technology Licensing IPR petition referencing a different "the '559 Patent" directed to "small cell enhancements" / dual connectivity in cellular networks — a different patent from US 11,105,659.
• A Novartis '659 patent (Entresto / sacubitril-valsartan, In re Entresto, 125 F.4th 1090 (Fed. Cir. 2025)) — again a different patent number.
• Various other unrelated "559"/"659" hits (e.g., the BearBox/Lancium CAFC appeal, a Korea Third Patent Court case "2020주11059"). None involve US 11,105,659.

Context on the patent (not litigation)

US 11,105,659 B2, "Dual Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and sensing method…," is assigned to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), filed/priority 2019-11-19, granted 2021-08-31, status Active (adjusted expiration noted as 2040-04-08). Its Google Patents record shows no "Litigation" section, and its "Cited By" listings are later patent publications (e.g., Yokogawa) — not litigation. The patent's own cited references include a Korean counterpart family (e.g., KR102048459B1, "Dual Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor…"), but that is a family/priority relationship, not U.S. litigation.

Caveats and confidence

• Confidence: moderate-to-high that no U.S. litigation exists, but not absolute. My search access was limited (I hit a tool-call cap before completing all planned queries, and I could not directly load the Unified Patents litigation caselist or PACER/CourtListener case pages for this number).
• Recommendation: To confirm definitively, check these primary sources directly:
  • Unified Patents Litigation Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (filter by patent number)
  • CourtListener / RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com (search "11,105,659")
  • USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment & "Report on Filing of Action" (AO 120) records for Patent 11,105,659
  • Docket Navigator or Lex Machina (if available)

If you'd like, I can re-run a narrower set of searches (e.g., against specific dockets or the patent's USPTO file wrapper for any § 290 AO 120 notices) to raise confidence further.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" default against public sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before committing to the negative finding.

Two more checks to be thorough on the negative finding.

Proceedings overview

Total PTAB proceedings on US11105659: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured feed returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and four independent web searches (patent number, patent number + IPR, petitioner "Korea Institute of Science and Technology" + Brillouin/BOCDA, and KIST + Brillouin litigation) surfaced nothing to the contrary — no IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding. Bottom line for a defendant: this patent is completely untested at the PTAB. There are no canceled claims to hide behind and no adverse PTAB record to leverage — every one of claims 1–18 stands as issued, and any invalidity position you want to make you will have to make yourself.

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate. Per the task instructions, I'm not inventing one. The absence is the finding.

Searches run (2026-09-30), all negative:

Related-artifact check. The documents "citing" this family in the Google Patents record are later patent filings, not challenges: US20230324202A1 and US12339144B2 (Yokogawa Electric), US11796419B2 and US20230332932A1 (U.S. Navy), WO2022181373A1 (Tokyo Univ. of Agriculture & Technology), JP2023019510A (Yokogawa). Prosecution-side, 11–12 references were cited on the face of the patent, including KIST's own earlier work (KR101358942, KR20180010049, KR101823454) and third-party art from Thales, Silixa, Neubrex, Univ. of Tokyo, LIOS Technology, and Yokogawa.

Caveat on the negative finding. Absence of search results is not proof of absence. PTAB petitions that were denied institution, or that settled before institution, can be poorly indexed. I did not obtain a PDF/image listing from the patent's Google Patents "PTAB" tab or a PTAB E2E party-name query against "Korea Institute of Science and Technology," so I cannot rule out a pre-institution dismissal or a denial that never generated a searchable decision PDF. If this matters, verify directly at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) by party name, and at Docket Alarm / CourtListener under re: Patent 11105659.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 18 claims UNTESTED. Nothing is canceled, nothing is sustained. Claims 1–11 (system) and claims 12–18 (method) — including independent claim 1 (the "event-area-not-set → CW probe / event-area-set → gated probe" dual-mode limitation), independent claim 12, and dependents 2–11 and 13–18 — have never been construed by the Board. There is no Blonder-Tongue collateral estoppel, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no adverse claim-construction ruling, and no PTAB record that a district court could lean on under § 282 or for a stay motion. Symmetrically, the patent owner has no PTAB win to tout as validation either.

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate. Because no petitioner exists, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one. No defendant and no privy is precluded from raising any prior-art ground. The practical constraints you face are not estoppel but discretionary and statutory gatekeeping:

• § 325(e)/(d) is the real risk. Almost all the obvious candidate art on this subject matter appears to be art already of record — the KIST family (KR101358942, KR101823454, KR20180010049) and the BOCDA literature cited during prosecution. A petition built on that art invites denial under § 325(d) as "previously presented," analyzed under the Advanced Bionics / Becton Dickinson framework. Your petition should lead with art that the examiner never saw, and say so explicitly.
• § 315(b) one-year bar. If you or a privy have been served with a complaint asserting this patent, your IPR clock is running and the bar is unforgiving. Confirm service dates before doing anything else.
• PGR is gone. The patent issued 2021-08-31; the nine-month PGR window under § 321(c) closed roughly 2022-05-31. Post-grant review is not available. IPR (and ex parte reexamination) remain open.
• Discretionary denial. Under the Director's March 2025 interim procedure, Fintiv-style balancing survives in modified form. If you have parallel litigation, weigh a Sotera-style stipulation and be prepared for the "already adjudicated / strength of challenge / settled expectations" considerations.

Pattern signals: none — the patent has never been a target. This is the notable datapoint. KIST is a Korean government-funded research institute, not a litigious NPE, and this is a research-grade BOCDA instrument patent (national R&D project No. 1711062884, Ministry of Science and ICT). No serial petitioner, no follow-on petitions, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain, and no PTAB appeal activity by the patent owner. A patent of this age, if it were being actively asserted across an industry, would almost certainly have drawn at least one petition by now. The most likely explanations are (a) it has not been asserted, or (b) any assertions have been narrow enough, or resolved quickly enough, that no third party bothered to file. That cuts both ways: it means the claims are unweathered and fully available to you as a target — and it also means you may be the first petitioner, with no roadmap from a prior panel's institution decision on claim 1.

One family note worth checking. A Korean case with the identical title appears in the similar-documents list as KR102048459B1 (granted 2019-11-25), suggesting a KR counterpart. Its prosecution included substantive rejections/allowance reasoning that may be useful, and any foreign search reports in the family are free prior-art leads. I have not verified the family relationship or the content of that file with confidence — treat it as a lead, not a fact.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not rely on a PTAB-based defense — there isn't one. No claim of US11105659 has been invalidated. If a demand letter or complaint asserts claims 1–18, every asserted claim is live. You cannot point to a Final Written Decision canceling anything, because none exists.

2. Before filing an IPR, map your art against the face of the patent. The examiner cited 11–12 references, including the patent owner's own KR101358942, KR101823454, and KR20180010049. Build your § 325(d) narrative first: identify which references were never before the examiner and why your primary reference is materially different from the BOCDA art of record.

3. Check the § 315(b) clock immediately if litigation has been served, and confirm whether any co-defendant or privy has already been served — the bar runs from your service, but privity questions can surprise you.

4. Use the paper record as your art source. The patent's own background section identifies BOCDA (Brillouin Optical Correlation Domain Analysis) as known, and cites Patent Literature 1 = KR10-1358942. The two non-patent citations on the face are:

   • Bin Wang et al., "Dynamic strain measurement with kHz-level repetition rate and centimeter-level spatial resolution based on Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis," Optics Express, March 2018, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 6916–6928.
   • Yong Hyun Kim et al., "Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis with more than 1 million effective sensing points based on differential measurement," Optics Express, December 2015, vol. 23, no. 26, pp. 33241–33248.

   The Wang 2018 paper is a strong candidate for the "high-speed / pulsed gating" concepts and is publicly available through Optica's archive — pull it and check whether it was substantively distinguished or merely listed.

5. Consider the cheapest alternative forum. With no estoppel and no PTAB history, ex parte reexamination (no § 315(b) bar, no estoppel, and a lower fee) is worth pricing, particularly if your best art is patents or printed publications and you have no urgent need for PTAB-style discovery or a stay. It lacks the claim-level FWD urgency of an IPR but preserves your invalidity defenses entirely.

6. Verify the negative finding at the source. PTAB E2E party-name search for "Korea Institute of Science and Technology," plus a Docket Alarm / CourtListener search on Patent 11105659, will confirm or overturn the ODP result. If anything turns up, the analysis above changes materially and should be redone. I could not verify this with high confidence — the ODP structured feed is the authoritative signal I was given, and my web searches found nothing contradicting it, but they were not an exhaustive PTAB docket query.

Key identifiers for the record: US11105659B2 · App. No. 16/687,692 · filed 2019-11-19 · granted 2021-08-31 · pre-grant pub. US20210148736A1 (2021-05-20) · assignee Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) · inventors Kwan Il Lee, Gukbeen Ryu, Sang Bae Lee, In Soo Kim, Wonsuk Lee · status Active, adjusted expiration 2040-04-08 · 18 claims.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for any post-issuance transfers, litigation, or NPE involvement before writing this up.

Assignment Reconstruction — US 11,105,659 B2

Patent: US 11,105,659 B2 ("Dual Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and sensing method using Brillouin scattering which allow high-speed event detection and precise measurement")
Application: US 16/687,692 • Filed 2019-11-19 • Granted 2021-08-31 (US 2021/0148736 A1 published 2021-05-20)
Adjusted expiration: 2040-04-08 • Status: Active, maintenance fee paid

Sourcing note (read first): In this session I could not query the USPTO Assignment Center UI/API directly — the available tool is a general web search. The assignment data below is taken from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 11,105,659 B2, which mirrors the Assignment Center entries and exposes the reel/frame, conveyance type, assignor, assignee and execution dates. The correspondent-of-record field is not exposed in that mirror, so I cannot report the filing attorney/firm for this record, and I will say so rather than guess. Verify directly at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov and patents.google.com/patent/US11105659B2/en.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• All five inventors are the same KIST optical-fiber-sensing research group that produced the assignee's earlier BOCDA filings, two of which are cited as prior art on this very patent — KR20180010049A ("Spatially-selective Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor with increased effective sensing points," KIST, 2016-07-20) and KR101823454B1 ("Spatially-selective Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor… which allows simultaneous sensing of multiple correlation points," KIST, 2016-10-28). This is a continuous research program, not a one-off filing.
• No unusual departure pattern is evidenced. There is no recorded assignment from any inventor to a personal holding vehicle, and no reassignment away from KIST. The 12-month post-filing "all inventors departed" tell cannot be evaluated from patent records alone (KIST employment data is not public), but nothing in the chain suggests it.
• The patent carries a government-funded R&D statement: supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea (INNOPOLIS FOUNDATION, Project No. 1711062884), "under the superintendence of Teralink Communication Incorporated." This matters for ownership analysis — the invention arose under a Korean state R&D program, which typically constrains any downstream sale or exclusive transfer.

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Original assignee

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) — Seoul, Republic of Korea. Named on the face of the patent and recorded as assignee at reel 051060/0447. Google Patents lists KIST as both original and current assignee.

• Primary line of business: Government-funded scientific research institute (established 1966, under the Ministry of Science and ICT). Its fiber-optics group is the origin of the distributed Brillouin sensing (BOCDA) work claimed here.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Not directly — KIST is a research institute, not a manufacturer. Commercialization is routed through its technology-transfer/licensing function and through industrial collaborators; the patent itself credits Teralink Communication Incorporated as the industrial supervisor of the underlying project, which is the most likely commercialization channel for this subject matter.
• Current status: Operating, not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Positive evidence of active maintenance: entity status set to SMALL ENTITY (2019-12-18, per the legal-events record), and the 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2025-01-20 (event code M2551). The patent does not expire until 2040-04-08.
• Family: A Korean counterpart with the identical title, KR102048459B1, appears in the "similar documents" set (listed there as KIST, publication 2019-11-25). This US filing claims no foreign priority — the priority date equals the US filing date (2019-11-19) — so the US and KR cases proceeded in parallel rather than through a Paris/PCT priority claim.

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Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment exists. There are no security agreements, no change-of-name records, no mergers, no licenses, and no post-issuance transfers of record.

• 2019-11-06 to 2019-11-11 (executed, per-inventor signing dates) / recorded 2019-11-19 — Reel 051060/0447
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: LEE, KWAN IL; RYU, GUKBEEN; LEE, SANG BAE; KIM, IN SOO; LEE, WONSUK (individually, as joint inventors)
  • Assignee: KOREA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Republic of Korea
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources available in this session. The Google Patents legal-events mirror records the conveyance, parties, execution dates and reel/frame but omits the correspondent-of-record field, and no other indexed source surfaced it. I am flagging this as a data gap rather than filling it in. If a repeat correspondent appears across a chain, this is the field that shows it — here there is no chain to compare against, so the signal would be inert even if recovered.
  • Context: Initial inventor→institute assignment. Routine capture of employee-inventor rights by the employer/institution, executed contemporaneously with the 2019-11-19 filing. Not a sale, not a fire-sale, not a transfer to an asserter.

No additional records. Because the chain never moved off the original assignee, the remaining fields a prosecution analyst would normally mine — cascading reels, changing correspondent, security interests — simply do not exist for this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11105659
    2019 : Filed by KIST and five inventor employees
         : Inventors assign rights to KIST reel 051060/0447
    2021 : Patent issued as US 11105659 B2
    2025 : KIST pays 4th year maintenance fee

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Cross-check on "no records" claims: the Google Patents legal-events block shows exactly three events after filing — Notice of Allowance (2021-06-07), Patent Grant (2021-08-11), and the 4th-year maintenance fee (2025-01-20) — plus the single assignment event. That is the signature of an untouched, retained, actively maintained patent.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — under the rubric's own definition, this patent has only the original assignment, so it is classified there rather than as an affirmative NPE or operating-company case.

Substantively, the finding is cleaner than that label implies: there is no NPE pattern at all. The chain consists of a single conveyance — inventors → KIST at reel 051060/0447, executed 2019-11-06 to 2019-11-11 and recorded 2019-11-19, the same day the application was filed — and nothing thereafter. KIST remains both original and current assignee as of 2026, has never sold or securitized the patent, and paid the 4th-year maintenance fee on 2025-01-20, which is affirmative evidence of retained ownership. The absence of any assignment after 2019-11-19 is the finding: the patent never entered a monetization or assertion chain, and no litigation naming it was found.

Verification: USPTO Assignment Center — search "11105659" or reel/frame 051060/0447; Google Patents US11105659B2 legal events.

Caveat on completeness: the correspondent-of-record for reel 051060/0447 is the one field in this analysis I could not retrieve, and it is the field that would matter most if this patent ever transfers. If you need it for a file, pull the reel/frame image directly from the Assignment Center (or the USPTO PatentCenter assignment tab for US 16/687,692) — I have not fabricated a name for it here.

I'll research this patent and its prior art citations. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 11,105,659 B2

Note on my process: I searched for and confirmed the target patent and several of its citations. My searches for a few of the remaining references returned no usable full text (the tool step limit was reached), so those entries are based on the title/abstract and general art knowledge and are flagged as lower-confidence. I have not auto-corrected any patent or publication number; all IDs below are reproduced literally as they appear in the patent record.

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1. Patent Identification (confirmed)

Critical framing: Because the effective filing date is 2019-11-19, any reference published before that date is available as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (printed publication / patent). I note that the Korean document KR 102048459 B1 also appears in the "Similar Documents" list — this is the Korean counterpart of the same KIST invention (same title, same inventors), i.e., a family member, not prior art. It should not be used against US 11,105,659.

I also note the patent's own discussion of "Patent Literature 1: Patent No. 10-1358942" — this literally corresponds to cited reference KR 101358942 B1 (KIST, Korean Patent No. 10-1358942), confirmed below.

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2. The Core Novelty Being Tested

For the § 102 analysis, the distinguishing subject matter of the independent claims is:

• Claim 1 (system): a dual-mode probe — when an event area is NOT set, the probe is a frequency-shifted (CW) signal; when the event area IS set, the probe is time-gated by a gating signal — plus a control unit that detects an event and sets an event area.
• Claim 8: first spatial resolution (wide search) lower than second spatial resolution (precise re-measure), driven by different modulation frequency variation.
• Claim 12 (method): the two-stage method — first laser/probe with a first modulation frequency variation, then a time-gated second probe with a second (finer) modulation frequency variation, measured only at the correlation point in the event area.

A valid § 102 anticipation requires every element in a single reference. Most cited art teaches the building blocks (BOCDA correlation points, gated pump, multiple simultaneous CPs) but not the dual-mode conditional switching; such art is therefore generally stronger as a § 103 combination basis than as clean § 102 anticipation. I flag this distinction per reference.

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3. Most Relevant Prior Art (closest references)

A. KR 101823454 B1 — The single most relevant reference

• Full citation: Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1823454 B1, "Spatially-selective Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and sensing method using Brillouin scattering which allows simultaneous sensing of multiple correlation points," Korean Intellectual Property Office; assignee 한국과학기술연구원 (KIST).
• Dates: Priority/filing 2016-10-28; publication/grant 2018-01-31.
• Brief description: A BOCDA-type spatially-selective Brillouin distributed sensor having: a test fiber; a light source using a modulation frequency to generate laser light; an optical modulation unit that generates a pump light signal that is a pulse signal gated to have a time width determined based on the modulation frequency, and a probe light signal, applied from different directions; and a light detection unit that detects Brillouin scattered light and divides it in the time domain to calculate a Brillouin gain at a plurality of correlation points. Multiple correlation points within the measurement range are used simultaneously to shorten total measurement time. (Confirmed from the Google Patents English abstract/description.)
• Potential § 102 anticipation: This is the closest antecedent art and is co-owned by the same assignee (KIST).
  • It strongly discloses the elements of claim 1 relating to the gated pump + frequency-differentiated probe + time-domain resolution of Brillouin gain at multiple correlation points.
  • It is the natural anticipatory basis for claim 13 (detecting Brillouin scattered light at multiple correlation points, computing a gain per point, computing a Brillouin frequency per point).
  • However, on its face it discloses the wide-search mode (gated pump, CW probe, many CPs). It does not appear to disclose the claim-1 conditional: "when the event area is set … generate a probe signal time gated by further using a gating signal," nor the event-area/control-unit logic. So it likely anticipates a narrower species of the disclosure but not independent claim 1 in full (i.e., § 103 more likely than § 102 for claim 1). This is the reference any examiner would build the rejection around.

B. KR 20180010049 A — second-closest

• Full citation: Korean Published Application No. 10-2018-0010049 A, "Spatially-selective Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor with increased effective sensing points and sensing method using Brillouin scattering," KIPO; assignee KIST.
• Dates: Priority/filing 2016-07-20; publication 2018-01-30.
• Brief description: Same KIST family line as (A); directed to increasing the number of effective sensing points in a spatially-selective BOCDA sensor (i.e., extending effective measurement range while keeping resolution).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Relevant to claim 6 (computing Brillouin gain at each of multiple correlation points) and to the general "multiple CP" concept feeding claim 13. Lower confidence on full claim text (content not retrieved), but it is a same-assignee, pre-dating reference squarely in the technology.

C. KR 101358942 B1 — background reference expressly cited by the patent

• Full citation: Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1358942 B1, "Distributed optical fiber sensor and method for resolution enhancement in distributed optical fiber sensor," KIPO; assignee KIST. (This is "Patent Literature 1 / Patent No. 10-1358942" named in the target patent's Background.)
• Dates: Priority/filing 2012-09-13; publication 2014-02-07.
• Brief description: Methods for enhancing spatial resolution in a distributed (BOCDA-type) optical fiber sensor, including control of modulation frequency/amplitude.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Directly relevant to the resolution-variation idea underlying claim 8 (different spatial resolutions driven by modulation frequency variation). On its own it does not disclose the dual gated-probe mode, so it does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 12; it is a strong § 103 building block for claims 8/9.

D. Non-Patent Literature

D1 — Kim et al. 2015 (relevant to multiple CP / differential measurement):

• Full citation: Yong Hyun Kim et al., "Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis with more than 1 million effective sensing points based on differential measurement," Optics Express, Vol. 23, No. 26, pp. 33241–33248, Dec. 2015.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Directed to maximizing effective sensing points in BOCDA — relevant to the "multiple correlation points used simultaneously" concept (claims 6, 13). Not a full anticipation of claims 1/12.

D2 — Wang et al. 2018 (relevant to high-speed BOCDA):

• Full citation: Bin Wang et al., "Dynamic strain measurement with kHz-level repetition rate and centimeter-level spatial resolution based on Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis," Optics Express, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 6916–6928, Mar. 2018.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Addresses high-speed dynamic measurement with cm-scale resolution in BOCDA — relevant background to the "high-speed event detection" objective; not a full anticipation of the claimed dual-mode architecture.

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4. Full Reference-by-Reference Analysis (all citations of record)

4.1 US 2011/0122417 A1 — Thales

• Citation: US 2011/0122417 A1, "Self-Referenced Optical Fiber Sensor with Stimulated Brillouin Scattering," Thales (applicant/inventor Molin et al.). Pub. 2011-05-26 (priority 2008-07-25).
• Description: A point fiber sensor using a Bragg grating in an amplifying fiber; injects a "pump" wave and a "probe" wave at different optical frequencies, producing a Stokes wave via stimulated Brillouin scattering; the frequency difference is representative of the measurand (hydrophone/strain sensor).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: None of claims 1–18. It is not a distributed correlation-domain sensor; no correlation points, no time-gating, no event detection, no spatial-resolution switching. Cited as general background on SBS pump/probe interaction. § 103 relevance only as generic SBS context.

4.2 US 2012/0162639 A1 — Silixa House

• Citation: US 2012/0162639 A1, "Optical sensor and method of use," Silixa House (applicant). Pub. 2012-06-28 (priority 2009-05-27).
• Description: (Lower confidence — full text not retrieved.) Distributed optical-fiber sensing apparatus and method (Silixa is a distributed acoustic/Brillouin sensing firm), generally relating to interrogation of an optical fiber for distributed measurement.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No. It does not disclose the KIST dual gated-probe/event-area architecture. Background § 103 material at most.

4.3 KR 20130099353 A — KIST

• Citation: Korean Published Application No. 10-2013-0099353 A, "Distributed optical fiber sensor and sensing method using simultaneous sensing of Brillouin gain and loss," KIPO; assignee KIST. Pub. 2013-09-06 (priority 2012-02-29).
• Description: Distributed sensor exploiting simultaneous Brillouin gain and loss measurement.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No. Relevant only to the SBS pump/probe frequency-difference mechanics and gain computation (claims 5/6 context); does not disclose gating or event-area logic.

4.4 KR 101326859 B1 — Korea Railroad Research Institute

• Citation: Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1326859 B1, "Optical fiber sensor system based Brillouin scattering," KIPO; assignee 한국철도기술연구원. Pub. 2013-11-12 (priority 2012-03-13).
• Description: (Lower confidence.) A Brillouin-scattering-based fiber sensor system.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No. Generic Brillouin sensing background; no correlation-domain, gating, or dual-mode features.

4.5 JP 2014-044129 A / US 2016/0273999 A1 — The University of Tokyo

• Citations:
  • JP 2014-044129 A, "Optical fiber characteristic measuring apparatus, and optical fiber characteristic measuring method," Univ. of Tokyo. Pub. 2014-03-13 (2012-08-27).
  • US 2016/0273999 A1, "Optical fiber property measuring device and optical fiber property measuring method," The University of Tokyo. Pub. 2016-09-22 (priority 2012-08-27) — the US family member.
• Description: Optical-fiber characteristic measurement device/method (the Univ. of Tokyo / Hotate line of work includes BOCDA correlation-domain techniques).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No clean anticipation of claims 1/12. Relevant background on correlation-domain measurement; § 103 relevance for the correlation-point concept.

4.6 JP 2017-049255 A — LIOS Technology GmbH

• Citation: JP 2017-049255 A, "Device and method for spatially resolved measurement of temperature and/or strain by Brillouin scattering," リオス テクノロジー ゲーエムベーハー (LIOS Technology GmbH). Pub. 2017-03-09 (2015-09-02).
• Description: Spatially-resolved Brillouin temperature/strain measurement (BOTDR/PPP-BOTDA-type distributed scheme).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No. Time-domain Brillouin sensing, not correlation-domain; no dual gated-probe/event-area features.

4.7 US 10,066,973 B2 — Neubrex Co., Ltd.

• Citation: US 10,066,973 B2, "Brillouin scattering measurement method and Brillouin scattering measurement system," Neubrex Co., Ltd. Granted 2018-09-04 (priority 2016-02-29).
• Description (confirmed): A BOTDR-based method using two types of optical pulse pairs (each pair = two pulses of different durations; one pair in-phase, the other with a π phase difference), detected with an optical heterodyne receiver and sampled with two window functions whose time widths equal the pulse durations, transformed, multiplied, and subtracted to obtain the Brillouin spectrum — yielding ~20 cm resolution over several km. This is Neubrex's PPP-BOTDA/pulse-pair family.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No for claims 1/12. It is time-domain (BOTDR/pulse-pair) with no correlation points, no modulation-frequency-driven spatial-resolution switching, and no event-area detection. It is relevant background for the time-gating / pulse-width / spatial-resolution tradeoff idea (touchstone for claim 3's "temporal width = reciprocal of modulation frequency"), so § 103 relevance to claim 3, not § 102 anticipation.

4.8 KR 20180010049 A — see Part 3B above (KIST).

4.9 KR 101823454 B1 — see Part 3A above (KIST).

4.10 KR 101358942 B1 — see Part 3C above (KIST).

4.11 US 2020/0124497 A1 — Yokogawa Electric Corporation

• Citation: US 2020/0124497 A1, "Optical fiber characteristic measurement device and optical fiber characteristic measurement method," Yokogawa Electric Corporation. Pub. 2020-04-23 (priority 2018-10-17).
• Description: (Lower confidence.) Optical-fiber characteristic measurement device (Brillouin-based; Yokogawa Brillouin art).
• Note on § 102 status: Published 2020-04-23, after the target's 2019-11-19 filing date. Its usable prior-art date would depend on its effective filing/priority (2018-10-17, before the target's date), so it can qualify as prior art under § 102(a)(2) only if it was "effectively filed" before 2019-11-19 — the 2018-10-17 priority supports that, subject to the application actually being entitled to that date.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: No. (Device/method for fiber characteristic measurement; distinct architecture.) It is also a cited-by/forward-citation relationship (Yokogawa applications cite the target), so it post-dates the invention and is principally of interest as a later development, not anticipating art.

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5. Summary Table

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6. Bottom Line

1. The most relevant prior art is KR 101823454 B1 (KIST, 2018-01-31), followed by KR 20180010049 A (KIST, 2018-01-30) and the patent's own cited KR 101358942 B1 (KIST, 2014-02-07, = Korean Patent No. 10-1358942). All three are the same assignee as US 11,105,659 and disclose the BOCDA multiple-correlation-point / gated-pump backbone that the patent builds on.

2. No single cited reference appears to fully anticipate independent claim 1 or claim 12, because the distinguishing feature — the conditional dual mode (CW probe when no event area is set; time-gated probe when the event area is set) together with event detection → event-area → re-measurement at finer resolution — is not shown in any one reference I reviewed. The cited art is best characterized as a § 103 obviousness landscape (e.g., KR 101823454 B1 for gated-pump/multi-CP wide search + KR 101358942 B1 for resolution control + event-detection logic), rather than clean § 102 anticipation.

3. Claim 13 (detect Brillouin scattering at multiple correlation points → gain per point → frequency per point) is the claim most exposed to § 102 anticipation, with KR 101823454 B1 as the primary reference.

4. Caveats: I could not retrieve the full text of every reference (KR 20180010049 A, US 2012/0162639 A1, KR 101326859 B1, JP 2017-049255 A, US 2020/0124497 A1) before hitting the search-step limit; those descriptions are lower-confidence and should be verified against the actual documents. All citations above are reproduced literally from the patent record without correction; a definitive § 102/§ 103 claim chart would require element-by-element comparison against the full specifications and claims of each reference.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual cited prior art. Let me pull details on the most relevant references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,105,659 B2

Patent: US 11,105,659 B2 — "Dual Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and sensing method using Brillouin scattering which allow high-speed event detection and precise measurement"
Assignee: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)
Filing / effective priority date: 2019‑11‑19 (no earlier priority claimed on the face of the record)
Inventors: Lee, Kwan Il; Ryu, Gukbeen; Lee, Sang Bae; Kim, In Soo; Lee, Wonsuk
Claims analyzed: 1–18 (1 independent system claim, 1 independent method claim, 16 dependent claims)

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1. Legal framework

Obviousness is assessed under 35 U.S.C. § 103 using the Graham v. John Deere factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the analysis is "expansive and flexible," and a combination is obvious where the prior art elements perform their known functions to yield predictable results, or where there is a "design incentive, market pressure, or other motivation" to combine. Crucially for this patent, all references cited on the face of US 11,105,659 published more than one year before the 2019‑11‑19 filing date, so each is § 102(a)(1) prior art without regard to common ownership or inventorship. The AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception is unavailable against § 102(a)(1) art. This matters a great deal here, because the single most damaging reference — KR 10‑1823454 B1 — is a KIST patent naming three of the same five inventors.

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2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here would hold a master's or Ph.D. in photonics/optical engineering, or a bachelor's degree with 3–5 years of hands-on experience in distributed Brillouin fiber sensing (BOCDA, BOTDA, BOCDR), and would be familiar with: DFB‑LD direct frequency modulation; the BOCDA relations Δz ∝ 1/Δf and R = c/2nf_m; temporal-gating schemes to isolate individual correlation points; SSBM/EDFA/SOA/PD component selection; polarization diversity; and lock‑in / differential detection. The claimed subject matter is squarely within this person's ordinary skill set; nothing in the claims requires knowledge beyond routine BOCDA engineering.

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3. Deconstruction of claim 1 (the features that drive the analysis)

Limitations 1.1–1.4 are the architecture of the applicant's own earlier KIST patents and of the admitted BOCDA background. Limitation 1.5 is conventional distributed‑sensing alarm logic. The only genuine point of departure is 1.6 — the dual‑mode switch between (a) many‑correlation‑point, coarse, fast interrogation and (b) single‑correlation‑point, fine, slow interrogation.

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4. Scope and content of the prior art (references listed on the face of the '659 patent)

(Also flagged: JP 5,070,874 B2, "Measuring device, abnormality detection device and abnormality detection method," appears in the "Similar Documents" list on the record but is not one of the twelve examiner‑cited references; I cite it only as corroboration that Brillouin‑based anomaly/alarm detection was known, and I have not verified its full text.)

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5. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 3–9, 12–16, 18: KR 10‑1823454 B1 in view of Kim 2015 and/or Wang 2018 (optionally further in view of KR 10‑1358942 B1)

KR 10‑1823454 B1 teaches 1.1–1.4 essentially element‑for‑element: test fiber, frequency‑modulated laser source, gated pulsed pump, counter‑propagation, and time‑domain segmentation of Brillouin scattered light to obtain Brillouin gain at a plurality of correlation points simultaneously. The only element absent is the conditional gating of the probe (1.6) and the event‑area logic (1.5).

Kim 2015 supplies the missing mechanism and, importantly, the motivation. Its entire thesis is that applying "double modulation and optical time gate" — modulating both the pump and the probe and gating them — converts the BOCDA spatial‑resolution/range trade‑off into a system with < 1 cm resolution over 10.5 km and > 10⁶ sensing points, and it explicitly quantifies the resulting curse: 231 days to interrogate every point at 20 s/point. A POSITA reading Kim 2015 immediately sees the answer: survey fast and coarse, then interrogate only the few metres that matter. That is precisely the '659 conditional.

Wang 2018 supplies the residual dependent‑claim features:

• Claim 16 (control the phase difference between the pump and probe gating signals so that one correlation point lies in the event area) — Wang 2018 expressly teaches a method that "moves the correlation peak" while sweeping the pump–probe frequency interval; the patent itself concedes the CP used is fixed by "the pulse width of the gating signal … and a phase difference between the two gating signals," which is exactly the knob Wang 2018 turns.
• Claim 18 (calculate Brillouin frequency at a single point "at partial distribution … by controlling the second modulation frequency") — this is the classical BOCDA technique of dithering f_m to sweep the correlation peak across a narrow window, standard since Hotate and evidenced in both Wang 2018 and Kim 2015.
• Claims 8–9 (first spatial resolution lower than second; event area set based on the first resolution) — the BOCDA resolution relation Δz ≈ v_g·Δν_B/(2π·f_m·Δf) is admitted in the '659 specification itself ("As the modulation frequency variation Δf is larger, the higher spatial resolution may be obtained"), and Kim 2015 demonstrates the same relation pushed to < 1 cm. KR 10‑1358942 B1 is directed specifically to "resolution enhancement" in distributed Brillouin sensors. No inventive weight resides in "use a bigger Δf for the fine pass."
• Claims 13–15 (multi‑CP gain calculation; partial distribution; threshold on Brillouin‑frequency change) — 13 and 14 come straight from KR '823454 plus Wang 2018; 15 is the conventional alarm threshold described in the '659 background as known ("Brillouin frequency shift … linearly changes depending on temperature and strain … a physical change at the point is determined by measuring the value of Brillouin frequency shift"), and corroborated by KR 10‑1326859 B1 and JP 5,070,874 B2.

Ground 2 — Claim 2: Ground 1 further in view of the '659 specification's own admitted architecture and Wang 2018

Claim 2 (SSBM/frequency shifter + waveform generator producing constant signal or pulses + downstream modulator) is a routine implementation of the two operating modes. Wang 2018 uses a VCO‑driven frequency offset and switchable detection; the '659 specification describes the SSBM and SOA as off‑the‑shelf choices. A single waveform generator that outputs DC in one mode and a pulse train in the other is a simple substitution of one known element for another (KSR factor (B)) with predictable results.

Ground 3 — Claims 10, 11, 17: Ground 1 further in view of the conventional lock‑in amplifier in BOCDA

Claims 10/11 (lock‑in amplifier to average Brillouin scattered light at the same correlation point; operating only when the event area is set) and claim 17 (averaging detected at the one correlation point) are squarely conventional. Wang 2018 describes the lock‑in amplifier as "the conventional lock‑in amplifier (LIA) detection configuration" — i.e., the named reference treats LIA‑based BOCDA as the baseline that it improves upon; Kim 2015 likewise positions its differential scheme against lock‑in detection and notes a 20 s single‑point interrogation time dominated by averaging. Enabling the lock‑in only in the fine mode (claim 11) is a known technique applied to a known structure to obtain a predictable benefit (noise reduction where it matters, speed where it does not) — KSR factor (D)/(C).

Ground 4 — Alternative primary reference for claim 1: Kim 2015 as primary

If KR 10‑1823454 B1 were set aside, Kim 2015 alone discloses the two essential capabilities — multi‑point simultaneous interrogation via time gating (coarse) and sub‑centimetre, single‑point interrogation via double modulation/time gating (fine) — and expressly frames the 231‑day problem that the '659 conditional solves. Combined with Wang 2018's correlation‑peak movement and the admitted BOCDA background, claim 1 would still be obvious. US 2020/0124497 A1 (Yokogawa) independently corroborates the general "coarse acquisition, then narrow the interrogation window around the found peak to save time" design philosophy in the neighbouring BOCDR art, and is § 102(a)(2) art as of 2018‑10‑17.

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6. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (the motivation)

1. The trade‑off is stated in the prior art, not discovered by the applicant. KR 10‑1823454 B1 states the problem verbatim: BOCDA forces "spatial resolution and measurement range [into] a trade‑off relationship," and single‑CP operation means "it takes a long time to measure the entire range." The '659 background admits the identical problem for a 1.5 km range. The claimed solution — use the fast/coarse mode to find the abnormality and the fine/slow mode to characterize it — is the ordinary engineering response.
2. Kim 2015 quantifies the incentive. Its own conclusion notes that at 20 s per point, interrogating all sensing points would take "more than 231 days." No inventive spark is needed to conclude that one should not interrogate 10⁵–10⁶ points at full precision when only a few are abnormal.
3. The building blocks are pre‑assembled and individually known to work. KR '823454 gives multi‑CP time‑domain BOCDA; Kim 2015 gives double modulation + optical time gate (both beams modulated) with demonstrated sub‑cm resolution; Wang 2018 gives peak‑movement and fast frequency sweeping; the LIA is the admitted baseline. Combining known elements that each perform their known function, with predictable results, is the paradigm of KSR factor (A).
4. The user requirement is a classic two‑stage measurement architecture used throughout instrumentation (coarse search / fine lock; wide sweep / narrow sweep). US 2020/0124497 A1 (Yokogawa) applies exactly this logic to Brillouin fiber measurement for the stated purpose of shortening measurement time — evidence that this was a recognized design pattern, not an insight.
5. Enablement is not a barrier. Because the same hardware (laser, SSBM, SOAs, EDFAs, PD, DAQ, PC) supports both modes merely by changing the drive waveform to the second modulator and the value of Δf, the combination is a software/waveform change to a single platform — the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

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7. Anticipated applicant rebuttals and their likely strength

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8. Bottom line

• Claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 — likely obvious under § 103 over KR 10‑1823454 B1 in view of Kim et al. (2015) and Wang et al. (2018), with the ordinary skill of a BOCDA practitioner supplying the waveform‑generator, phase‑control, Δf‑selection and threshold‑comparison details. The single conditional limitation (1.6) is the only candidate for non‑obviousness, and the motivation for it is articulated in the prior art itself.
• Claims 10, 11, 17 — obvious over the same combination further in view of the conventional lock‑in amplifier configuration that Wang 2018 identifies as the baseline art.
• Overall candid assessment: the § 103 case against the independent claims is strong because the applicant's own prior KIST filing (KR 10‑1823454 B1) supplies the first mode element‑for‑element and a co‑inventor's publication (Kim 2015) supplies both the second mode and an express, quantified statement of the problem the '659 patent claims to solve. The strongest counter‑argument available to the applicant is a "whole‑is‑greater‑than‑the‑parts" / secondary‑considerations argument, which would require evidence not presently of record. The granting examiner evidently did not locate the KR '823454 + Kim 2015 combination in this alignment; the two references are related‑art, same‑field, and (as to KR '823454) partially same‑inventor, which strengthens rather than weakens the KSR rationales.

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Verification caveats

• I reviewed the full text of KR 10‑1823454 B1 (machine‑translated abstract/description), the Kim 2015 and Wang 2018 abstracts plus substantial citing/derivative text of Kim 2015, and the US 2020/0124497 A1 description. I did not retrieve full texts of JP 2014‑044129 A, US 2016/0273999 A1, JP 2017‑049255 A, US 10,066,973 B2, US 2011/0122417 A1, US 2012/0162639 A1, KR 10‑1358942 B1, KR 10‑1326859 B1 or KR 2013‑0099353 A; my characterization of those is based on their titles, assignees and dates as listed in the "Patent Citations" table of the '659 record and is flagged as lower confidence. None of those references is load‑bearing for the grounds above.
• No prosecution‑history documents (office actions, applicant remarks, examiner's reasons for allowance) were available to me; the analysis above is a technical § 103 assessment, not a reconstruction of the actual examination. Legal conclusions on validity are for the courts/PTAB.
• The dates in this analysis follow the "Current Date" supplied (April 26, 2026); the '659 patent is recorded as active with an adjusted expiration of 2040‑04‑08, and the 4th‑year maintenance fee was paid 2025‑01‑20.