US 11215574

I'll run a few targeted searches before summarizing.

US 11,215,574 B2 — "Monitoring of heated tubes"

Source note / scope of search. I searched the open web for this exact number and for Topsoe-related litigation and Federal Circuit activity. Patent bibliographic and full-text data below is taken from the authoritative full text supplied in this thread (Google Patents rendering of US11215574B2), cross-checked against the USPTO/Google-hosted front-page PDF (patentimages…/US11215574.pdf) and Justia/patents-review mirrors, which agree. I could not query PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system directly — I have only general web-search tooling — so the litigation statement below is a "not found," not a certified negative.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"A method and an apparatus for detailed continuous monitoring of the thermal environment for a tube or a plurality of tubes and calculation and prediction of remaining lifetime of said tubes."

Technical gist

The patent covers the "Furnace Manager" concept: an installed (typically cooled, furnace-mounted) camera continuously images heated tubes — e.g. steam-reformer catalyst tubes operating in the creep range — and the emitted radiation (explicitly discussed at ~650 nm, and/or visible-to-near/mid-IR) is converted to tube-wall temperatures. Those temperatures are logged over time, combined with tube pressure (inlet pressure or calculated from pressure drop), and fed into a Larson–Miller creep-lifetime correlation plus the life-fraction (Robinson) rule, Σ Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1, to estimate consumed and remaining tube life per tube, per tube bank, and per tube section. The stated purpose is planned/preventive replacement of reformer tubes to avoid unplanned creep rupture while not scrapping tubes prematurely. Applications named: steam reformers, fired heaters, ethylene crackers, power plant boilers and superheaters.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 (method, camera + remote processing). A method for monitoring the thermal environment around a tube or tube bank and predicting remaining life, having three steps: (a) monitor temperatures on or adjacent to the tubes using an installed camera; (b) log the monitored temperatures in intervals over time; (c) calculate a predicted remaining lifetime for at least one tube, or a group of tubes, based at least on the logged temperatures. The claim is closed by the limitation that the logging and calculating are performed either solely or supplementarily geographically remote from the tubes' location. Note: "installed camera" and remote logging/calculation are the elements that appear intended to distinguish the hand-held-pyrometer and thermocouple prior art.

Claim 14 (method, life-fraction formula). Same monitoring-by-camera and logging steps, plus calculating predicted remaining lifetime, wherein the remaining lifetimes are calculated using Σᵢ₌₁ᴺ Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1, where Δtᵢ is each period in which temperature and pressure are constant within a selected range, tᵢ is the total expected lifetime (minimum or average) for that temperature/pressure pair, Δtᵢ/tᵢ is the consumed life fraction, and N is the number of consecutive time periods identified with constant temperature and pressure. This is the numerically-limited counterpart to claim 1 and does not repeat the "geographically remote" limitation.

Claim 15 (system). A system for monitoring the thermal environment and estimating remaining tube life, comprising: a temperature-monitoring camera; means for logging the monitored temperatures in intervals over time; and means for calculating a predicted remaining lifetime for at least one tube or group of tubes based on the logged temperatures — wherein the logging and calculating are performed solely or supplementarily geographically remote from the tubes. (Claim 15's "means for…" elements are functional/means-plus-function style limitations; no drawings are present to depict structure.)

Dependent claims of note. Claims 2–3 (summarizing residence time at each logged temperature; computer-implemented), 4 (tubes in a furnace/high-temperature environment), 5 (cooled camera permanently mounted in the furnace), 6 (continuous/constant monitoring), 7 (optical fiber/fiber optics to the camera), 8 (per-section remaining-life calculation), 9 (pressure-based calculation), 10 (Larson–Miller + life-fraction rule), 11 (maintenance-plan output), 12 (start-up/trip/shut-down thermal damage), 13 (field-of-use: steam reformer, fired heaters, ethylene crackers, boilers, superheaters); 16–24 parallel the system claims, including claim 23 (Larson–Miller) and claim 24 (same field-of-use list).

Prior art cited on the face of the patent (selected)

• FR 2 888 920 A1 (Air Liquide) — reforming-kiln maintenance via tube-mounted temperature sensor + data acquisition for remaining-life calculation (the closest cited reference).
• US 2010/0042370 A1 (Air Liquide) — method of replacing catalyst tubes of a hydrocarbon reformer.
• US 2005/0266363 A1 (Ganeshan) — flame monitoring using optical fibers and a video camera vision system.
• US 2013/0176418 A1 (Pandey, GE) — continuous infrared thermography monitoring and life management for HRSGs.
• US 2014/0105243 A1 (Tait) — tube monitor and process measurement/control in or for a reformer (related to US 9,606,005 B2 / LumaSense).
• Also: GB 2 103 801 A, US 5,050,108 A (Aptech), US 5,355,845 A, US 7,938,576 B1, EP 2 258 997 A1, US 2011/0113993 A1 / EP 2 325 562 A2 (Air Products), CN 104749211 A.
• Non-patent: Danish search report (2016-12-13); EPO ISR and Written Opinion (both 2017-07-13) for PCT/EP2017/060540.

Cited by (post-issuance): FR 3 143 742 A1 (Air Liquide, 2024); US 12,460,983 B2 (Taiwan Power Company); EP 4 260 933 A1 (Linde); CN 110343541 B; CN 109253870 B.

Litigation / CAFC status — what I found and did not find

• No Federal Circuit appeal, IPR, or district-court case asserting or challenging US 11,215,574 was located in my searches, including for 2026. I cannot rule out a low-visibility filing, but nothing surfaced.
• The topically adjacent Topsoe litigation I did find does not involve this patent: Topsoe, Inc. v. Casale US, Inc. et al., No. 3:24-cv-00033 (S.D. Tex., Galveston) concerns U.S. Pat. No. 11,286,168 (Casale's patent) plus unfair-competition/false-advertising claims; IPR2025-01454 was instituted 2026-02-10 and the court denied Topsoe's motion to bifurcate/stay on 2026-08-07. Separately, Topsoe A/S v. SYPOX proceedings at the UPC Düsseldorf Local Division (e.g. UPC_CFI_1696/2025; UPC_CFI_1849/2025) concern EP 3 802 413 B1, an electrically heated reforming reactor, not '574. Chinese-language and Taiwanese proceedings involving Haldor Topsoe A/S (e.g. Taiwan IP Court 113 民營上字第 1 號, trade-secret damages) also do not involve this patent.
• Note the possible family/priority overlap worth flagging rather than asserting: LumaSense's US 10,274,375 B2 ("Tube monitor and process measurement and control in or for a reformer") has a priority date of 2016-04-01, about five weeks before the '574 priority date of 2016-05-09, and relates to US 2014/0105243 A1 / US 9,606,005 B2, which appear in the '574 cited-art list. I have no authoritative evidence of an interference, derivation, or litigation between them.

Uncertainty flags

• Google Patents lists the current assignee as "Topsoe AS" while the printed front page shows "HALDOR TOPSOE A/S, Kgs. Lyngby (DK)"; the legal-events record shows this is a name change effective 2022-04-12. Both entries refer to the same entity.
• "No Drawings" is stated on the front-page PDF; this is unusual for a camera-based monitoring patent and is worth verifying against the official USPTO copy if drawings matter to your analysis.
• The 2038-09-09 term is Google Patents' adjusted expiration figure (post-PTA), which is flagged on the site as an assumption rather than a legal conclusion.
• The "Features of the Invention" (features 1–23) section mirrors, but does not exactly track, the issued claims — for example, "permanent mounted" camera language in feature 4 became simply "permanent mounted" in claim 5, and the geographically-remote limitation (feature 8) was elevated into independent claims 1 and 15. Treat the issued claims, not the features list, as operative.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11215574. Let me run several targeted searches.

Initial searches returned no relevant hits. Let me query litigation-specific databases.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,215,574

Patent identified: U.S. 11,215,574 B2, "Monitoring of heated tubes," application No. 16/095,736, filed 2017-05-03, granted 2022-01-04, priority 2016-05-09 (DK PA2016 00281), original assignee Haldor Topsoe A/S, current assignee Topsoe A/S, status Active / adjusted expiration 2038-09-09. (Grounding: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11215574](/patent/US11215574)/en)

Bottom line

I found no litigation involving U.S. Patent 11,215,574. No district court complaint, ITC investigation, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding was located in which this specific patent number appears as an asserted, challenged, or declaratory-judgment patent.

Because absence of evidence is not proof of absence, I want to be explicit about what I did and did not verify (see "Confidence and limitations" below).

What I checked and what came back

The Google Patents page itself lists only forward citations (FR3143742A1, US12460983B2) and cited-by/citing families — no litigation or "Litigation" panel entries appear for this patent.

Related activity I did find (NOT litigation over '574)

These involve the same patent owner and technical field. I flag them so you do not mistake them for '574 suits — none of them asserts or challenges U.S. 11,215,574:

1. Topsoe A/S and Topsoe Inc. v. Casale S.A. and Casale US, Inc. — U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas (Galveston Division). Declaratory judgment / unfair competition / false advertising action, plus related PTAB petitions. The patent at issue is Casale's U.S. Patent No. 11,xxx,168 ("Process for the synthesis of ammonia with low emissions of CO₂"), not '574. (Source: PTAB petition documents at ptacts.uspto.gov; RPX litigation documents at insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/15672274)
2. IPR2025-01173 and IPR2025-01174, Petitioner Topsoe, concerning a patent referred to as the '805 patent (tubular reactor / reformer configurations, series vs. parallel configurations). Not '574. (Source: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558082](/patent/1558082)/...)
3. Haldor Topsoe A/S appears as a third-party requester in merged ex parte reexaminations (95/001,744 and 95/001,894) of BASF's U.S. 7,902,107 — unrelated technology. (Source: USPTO BPAI FOIA document)

Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: U.S. 11,215,574 does not appear as an asserted patent in any publicly indexed court opinion, appeal, or PTAB trial document that surfaced in my searches.
• Not verified / lower confidence: I did not directly query subscription-gated or login-walled dockets (PACER full-text, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, Unified Patents' portal case lists) with the exact patent number. Unified Patents' litigation portal and PACER were not directly reachable from my tooling in this session; I relied on open-web searches that index much of that content. A recently filed (2025–2026) complaint that has not yet been widely indexed could therefore be missed.
• The patent is relatively young (granted Jan. 2022) and is a process-monitoring patent held by a technology licensor (Topsoe) that, based on the record above, tends to litigate over process licensors' patents (e.g., the Casale ammonia dispute) rather than enforce this particular reformer-tube monitoring patent. That is context, not evidence.

Recommended next steps if you need a certified negative

1. Run the exact string 11,215,574 and 11215574 in Docket Navigator and Lex Machina (patent-number fields), filtered to 2022-01-04 → present.
2. Search PACER CaseLocator "Party" and "Nature of Suit 830" with patent full text, and check the ITC EDIS for Section 337 complaints.
3. Check Unified Patents' Portal patent page for '574 directly (patent-specific "Litigation" and "PTAB" tabs), and the CAFC docket for any appeal naming it.
4. Ask Topsoe (current assignee) and any exclusive licensees whether enforcement actions exist that settled before public indexing.

If you'd like, I can draft the docket-search strings and a negative-search declaration suitable for an opinion-of-counsel file.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" baseline against the open web before drafting.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks — the patent's application number, the patent owner's PTAB-facing name, and any Unified Patents/third-party challenge.

Proceedings overview

There are no AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,215,574 B2. The structured USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns zero IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and my independent web checks (petition text on ptacts.uspto.gov, PTAB litigation blogs, Unified Patents' patent-keyed litigation/trial portal for patents-in-case, and Federal Circuit docket reporting) surfaced nothing contradicting that. So the breakdown is: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied.

Bottom line defensive posture: The patent is untested, not hardened. All 24 claims stand exactly as issued, with no IPR estoppel attached to any petitioner and no Federal Circuit claim-construction precedent constraining the claim terms. A defendant gets neither the upside of a death-by-IPR (no claims to point at as canceled) nor the burden of litigating around a PTAB-endorsed claim scope. Practically, this means the full claim set — including the two independent method claims (1 and 14) and independent system claim 15 — is live against you, and there is no prior petitioner whose estoppel or worse-than-expected outcome you can free-ride on.

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Proceedings on US 11,215,574 B2

None. There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate because no petition has ever been filed against this patent. I will not manufacture case numbers, panels, or dispositions.

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Adjacent-but-distinct PTAB activity (flagged so you do not conflate it)

These matter for strategic intelligence about the patent owner, not for the validity posture of '574. None of them involves US 11,215,574.

IPR2025-01454 — Topsoe, Inc. v. Casale S.A. (US 11,286,168)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Status: Instituted (per the litigation analysis earlier in this thread: instituted 2026-02-10; the district court denied Topsoe's motion to bifurcate/stay on 2026-08-07)
• Direction: Topsoe is the PETITIONER here, not the patent owner. This is about Casale's ammonia-process patent ('168), not Topsoe's '574.
• Why it matters to you: it shows Topsoe is a sophisticated, repeatedly-litigating party that is comfortable both asserting and attacking patents, and it shows the parties in the syngas/ammonia space (Topsoe, Casale, Linde, Air Liquide) are actively contesting this technology neighborhood. Petition text: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1558400/download-documents and Casale's preliminary response at the same docket.
• Caveat: I am reading this from petition and preliminary-response PDFs on PTAB's public file-hosting domain, not from a certified PatentCenter record. Verify the institution date and current status directly on PTAB E2E.

IPR2025-01173 / IPR2025-01174 — Topsoe as petitioner (US 11,xxx,805)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two parallel petitions, "series configuration" and "parallel configuration" of the same claim 1)
• Direction: Topsoe is again the PETITIONER; the '805 patent owner is not identified in the sources I retrieved.
• Relevance: further confirmation that Topsoe's IPR posture in this space is offensive, and that a request for multiple parallel petitions is a pattern it is willing to run. Petition briefing: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1558082/download-documents
• Do not cite this as authority about '574. Different patent, different owner.

Also found, and also unrelated to '574: Topsoe A/S v. SYPOX (UPC Düsseldorf Local Division, UPC_CFI_1696/2025 and UPC_CFI_1849/2025) concerns EP 3 802 413 B1 (electrically heated reforming reactor) — an EPO/UPC matter, not a US AIA trial. Orders at https://www.veron.com/wp-content/uploads/pve-upc/fichiers/2025-11-25_LD_Dusseldorf_UPC_CFI_1696-2025_en-GB.pdf and the 2026-05-04 order at https://www.bristows.com/app/uploads/2026/06/Topsoe-v-SYPOX.pdf.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of US 11,215,574 B2 — independent method claims 1 and 14, independent system claim 15, and dependents 2–13 and 16–24 — is CANCELED: none. SUSTAINED: none (nothing has been adjudicated). UNTESTED: all 24. There is no narrowing amendment, no certificate of correction affecting scope, and no adverse PTAB or Federal Circuit construction on record. As of 2026-09-29, the patent expires (per Google Patents' adjusted-expiration assumption, which is flagged on that site as a non-legal conclusion) on 2038-09-09.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR has ever been instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel has not attached to anyone. There is no petitioner-and-privies class you inherit, and no ground that is "reasonably could have been raised" foreclosed. Conversely, you enjoy no collateral-estoppel or collateral-attack benefit from anyone else's win. Your full § 102/§ 103 prior-art runway is open — including the art already cited on the face of the patent (FR 2 888 920 A1; US 2010/0042370 A1; US 2005/0266363 A1; US 2013/0176418 A1; US 2014/0105243 A1 / US 9,606,005 B2; GB 2 103 801 A; US 5,050,108 A; EP 2 258 997 A1; US 2011/0113993 A1 / EP 2 325 562 A2) plus non-cited art.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern on this patent (there is only one petitionless data point). No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears in the chain — I checked the patent-keyed litigation/trial portal and found no '574 entry. Patent owner has not had to defend a PTAB appeal on this patent, so there is no signal about how aggressive it would be in a PTAB fight — but its conduct in the Casale and SYPOX matters shows an owner willing to litigate hard and internationally.

Timing/environment signal — this cuts both ways. The 2025–2026 PTAB environment is markedly petitioner-hostile: Director Stewart's 2025-03-26 bifurcation memorandum and "settled expectations" doctrine (patents in force ≥6 years) drove a wave of discretionary denials, and Director Squires (confirmed 2025-09-18) took personal control of all institution decisions via his 2025-10-16 memorandum. See https://www.willkie.com/publications/2025/10/ptab-announces-new-institution-policy and the 2025 PTAB review at https://irwinip.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/PTAB-2025-Review-Article-4926-2114-7521.1.pdf. '574 issued 2022-01-04, so it is not yet six years old — which, under the current de facto threshold, is a point in a petitioner's favor today, but it will cross that line around 2028-01-04. If you are going to petition, the "settled expectations" headwind is a live consideration.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not assume the absence of PTAB activity is a defense. It is the opposite: it means claim 1, claim 14, and claim 15 have never been construed by the Board, and you will be the test case. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote.

2. Run your own § 102/§ 103 search against the issued claims, not the "Features of the Invention" list. The features list (features 1–23) does not exactly track the issued claims — the geographically-remote limitation was elevated into independent claims 1 and 15. The issued claims are operative. The two structurally distinct targets are (a) claim 1/15's combination of installed camera + interval logging + geographically remote logging/calculation, and (b) claim 14's hard-wired Robinson life-fraction formula Σ Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1. A petition should attack both, because a successful motion to amend could otherwise narrow to whichever one you ignored — the exact risk Topsoe articulated in the '805 parallel petitions.

3. Check the § 315(b) clock before anything else. If you have been served with a complaint asserting '574, you have one year from service to petition. The patent has never been asserted in any litigation I could find, so if you have a demand letter but no complaint, the bar has not yet started — but confirm service dates from the docket, not from memory.

4. Verify the empty record yourself on the official systems. I had only general web-search tooling and could not query PTAB E2E, PatentCenter, or the CAFC docket directly. Walk the docket at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2211%2C215%2C574%22) to confirm zero proceedings and zero appeals. Also confirm whether any ex parte reexamination has been ordered under § 257 — I found none, but a reexam petition is not an AIA trial and would not appear in the structured block, and the Casale matter shows this patent owner is not above using supplemental examination/reexam to control the USPTO dialogue.

5. Watch the specification, not just the claims. The likely invalidity pressure points are disclosure-level: the ~650 nm band selection, the "installed/cooled camera" versus hand-held pyrometer distinction, and the Larson–Miller/life-fraction calculation. The prior art cited on the face of the patent — especially FR 2 888 920 A1 and US 2013/0176418 A1 — already covers camera/sensor-based tube-temperature life assessment, so your petition will need a genuine secondary-reference motivation and a real obviousness story. Do not rely on the Board to fill gaps.

Confidence and caveats. High confidence that there are no AIA trial proceedings and no Federal Circuit appeals on US 11,215,574 as of 2026-09-29, because the canonical ODP block says so and my web corroboration is consistent. This is a "not found" from a non-exhaustive search, not a certified negative — treat it as a strong working assumption to be confirmed on PTAB E2E before you rely on it in a filing or a client memo. All details about IPR2025-01454, IPR2025-01173/-01174, and the UPC matters are drawn from public petition PDFs and law-firm postings, not from certified records, and none of them concern '574.

I'll verify the assignment records against live sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me try a few more targeted checks.

Let me try to surface the correspondent of record and confirm the assignee's current operating status.

Assignment Chain Reconstruction — U.S. Patent No. 11,215,574 B2

Scope note on sourcing. I could not query USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) directly with the tooling available in this session; open-web searches for the reel/frame numbers returned no indexed Assignment Center pages. The reel/frame data below therefore comes from the authoritative full text supplied in this thread (Google Patents' legal-events rendering of US11215574B2, which mirrors the USPTO Assignment database), which per the operating rules governs over search results. The correspondent-of-record field was not retrievable and is reported as such rather than guessed — see signal #3 below.

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Inventors

Pattern check — no anomaly found. The assignment was executed 2016-05-24, i.e. 15 days after the Danish priority filing (2016-05-09) and long before the PCT filing (2017-05-03). This is the signature of a standard, pre-existing employee-invention agreement being papered at filing time — not a distressed inventor divesting. I found no evidence of any inventor departing Haldor Topsoe within 12 months of filing, and the specification's authorship context (Topsoe's own "Furnace Manager" program; the non-patent citation Jensen et al. 2016, "Operating at peak performance with Topsoe reformer management") indicates the invention was made inside the company's reformer-management business line. Single-inventor, employer-assigned, no co-inventor fragmentation.

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Original assignee

Haldor Topsoe A/S, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark — named on the issued patent; renamed Topsoe A/S in 2022 (see timeline).

• Primary line of business: heterogeneous catalysis and process technology — catalysts, technology licensing, and engineering for ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, refinery hydroprocessing and syngas/steam reforming. Revenue DKK ~5.9bn (2019), R&D ~8% of revenue (Topsoe annual report 2019, https://www.topsoe.com/hubfs/DOWNLOADS/.../HT_AR19_WEB.pdf).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the evidence in this record. Topsoe commercially offers the reformer-tube monitoring and remaining-life service described in the patent ("Furnace Manager" / "Topsoe reformer management"), and the patent itself is cited alongside the 2016 Topsoe paper "Operating at peak performance with Topsoe reformer management" (listed among the page's Similar Documents). This is a process-licensor service/product, not a bare patent holding.
• Current status: Operating. Privately held Danish company; ownership traced to Topsøe Holding A/S and Dahlia Investments Pte. Ltd. (Lex.dk company entry, https://lex.dk/Topsoe). No bankruptcy, receivership, or acquisition of the entity. Name change from Haldor Topsoe A/S to Topsoe A/S resolved at the AGM on 2022-04-07, announced 2022-04-08 (https://www.topsoe.com/news/haldor-topsoe-is-topsoe). US subsidiary Topsoe, Inc. is active in Florida/Texas registries (search.sunbiz.org, entity F03000004077, "ACTIVE," name-change amendment 2024-07-16).
• Enforcement posture (context, not ownership): Topsoe litigates as both patent owner and petitioner (Topsoe v. Casale re U.S. 11,286,168; UPC Düsseldorf actions v. SYPOX re EP 3 802 413 B1). None of that activity concerns '574 — see the prior litigation and PTAB sections of this thread.

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Assignment timeline

The record contains exactly two entries. There is no security agreement, license, merger, release, correction, or post-issuance transfer of any kind.

• 2016-05-24 (executed) / recorded 2018-10-23 — Reel 047275/0132

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignor's interest)
  • Assignor: Søren Gyde Thomsen (sole inventor)
  • Assignee: Haldor Topsoe A/S, Denmark
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources available — Assignment Center's correspondent field was not reachable in this session. Do not infer; verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. (For orientation only: the patent's prosecution firm of record is Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney P.C. per the front page — that is a different field from the assignment-recording correspondent and I have no evidence they filed the recordation.)
  • Context: inventor-to-employer assignment (standard employment practice). Recording lag of ~17 months is explained by the timing: 2018-10-23 is also the US national-stage entry date (371(c)), i.e. the assignment was papered into the US file on national-stage entry.

• 2022-04-12 (executed) / recorded 2023-12-19 — Reel 066076/0685

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (no transfer of title)
  • Assignor: Haldor Topsoe A/S
  • Assignee: Topsoe A/S, Denmark
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources available (same limitation as above).
  • Context: pure corporate name change only. Confirmed by independent press: AGM decision 2022-04-07, announced 2022-04-08; the recorded effective date of 2022-04-12 is consistent. Beneficial ownership is unchanged — the same legal entity before and after.

Bottom line on chain of title: Thomsen → Haldor Topsoe A/S (2016) → Topsoe A/S (2022, name only). The patent has never left the control of its original corporate owner. Compare the directly analogous register entry for Topsoe's Danish patents (Haldor Topsoes Allé 1, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby), confirming a stable, single-entity ownership practice rather than a transfer-based one.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11215574
    2016 : Priority filing DK PA201600281 on 09 May
         : Inventor assigns to Haldor Topsoe A S on 24 May
    2017 : PCT filed as PCT EP2017 060540 on 03 May
    2018 : Assignment recorded Reel 047275 0132 on 23 Oct
    2022 : Issued as US 11215574 B2 on 04 Jan
         : Name change to Topsoe A S effective 12 Apr
    2023 : Name change recorded Reel 066076 0685 on 19 Dec
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid on 24 Jun

(Event text deliberately avoids parentheses, slashes and commas for parser safety; "A S" stands in for "A/S" and reel/frame digits are spaced.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

Justification: the substantive assignment record consists of a single transfer — inventor Søren Gyde Thomsen → Haldor Topsoe A/S, executed 2016-05-24, recorded 2018-10-23 at reel 047275/0132 — plus a name-change-only entry, Haldor Topsoe A/S → Topsoe A/S, effective 2022-04-12, recorded 2023-12-19 at reel 066076/0685, which conveys no title and leaves beneficial ownership with the same legal entity. No suit asserting US 11,215,574 was found (see the litigation section of this thread), so there is no assertion event to classify the patent as an operating-company assertion; and the absence of any post-issuance transfer means there is nothing to score against the NPE signals. Every NPE/troll signal is affirmatively not present (or, for signal #3, unverified), and the owner is a large, product-and-service-shipping operating company that has held the patent continuously since before the US filing. This is a clean single-owner chain, not a troll chain — the "insufficient data" label reflects the thinness of the record and the one unresolved field, not any ambiguity about ownership.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — search patent number 11215574 (also confirm the two reels 047275/0132 and 066076/0685, and capture the correspondent of record on each, which I could not retrieve).

I'll verify the key cited references against live sources before mapping them to claims.

Now let me verify the remaining cited references, including the boiler-lifetime and furnace-temperature ones.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,215,574 B2 ("Monitoring of heated tubes")

Scope note. Per the strict rule, I analyzed only patent 11,215,574 / US 16/095,736. No similar numbers are reported. The authoritative text used is the full text supplied in this thread (Google Patents rendering, cross-checked against the patentimages PDF US11215574.pdf). I ran live searches to verify full text and dates for the four highest-relevance references (FR 2 888 920 A1; US 2010/0042370 A1; US 2013/0176418 A1; US 2014/0105243 A1; plus US 5,050,108 A). My tooling hit its step limit before I could independently verify the remaining citations, so descriptions of those rest on the patent's own front-page citation tables and on my training knowledge, flagged below. I could not query USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB E2E directly — only general web search — so treat bibliographic dates as Google-Patents-derived, not certified.

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1. Analytical frame: what a reference must disclose to anticipate

Under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (post-AIA), anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Critically, a dependent claim incorporates all limitations of the claim from which it depends (35 U.S.C. § 112(d)). So a reference that discloses only claim 7's optical fiber still cannot anticipate claim 7 unless it also discloses claim 1's installed-camera + interval-logging + geographically-remote calculation.

Element breakdown of the three independent claims:

Key structural observation. The "geographically remote" element (E) appears only in claims 1 and 15, not claim 14. Claim 14 is therefore the broader-scope independent claim against camera art, and claim 1/15's element E is the element that was almost certainly added during prosecution to escape FR 2 888 920 — yet it has no meaningful support in the specification (only "feature 8" of the features list mentions it; the Description never elaborates on remote processing). That is both an invalidity pressure point and a § 112(a) written-description vulnerability worth flagging.

Priority / § 102 qualification. Effective filing date = 2016-05-09 (DK PA 2016 00281). A reference qualifies as prior art only if it predates that date (or is a US patent/application publication "effectively filed" before it, § 102(a)(2)).

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2. Do any cited references qualify as § 102 prior art? (gating table)

The three UOP/Veltz references listed last cannot be § 102 art for these claims and I will not treat them as such.

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3. Reference-by-reference: citation, dates, description, § 102 potential

Tier 1 — the references that actually matter

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1. FR 2 888 920 A1 — Air Liquide

• Full citation: FR 2888920 A1, "Procédé de maintenance d'un four de reformage catalytique d'hydrocarbures" / "Hydrocarbon catalytic reforming kiln maintenance procedure…". App. FR 2005 0052243; filed 2005-07-19; published 2007-01-26. CPC F27D21, C10G35/04.
• Description (verified live): At least one catalytic tube is fitted with a temperature sensor connected to a data-acquisition system permitting continuous recording of temperature variations during kiln operation. The recorded temperatures are converted into a remaining-life duration for each tube, on which a replacement plan is based. The sensor is a thermocouple attached to a downstream portion of the tube; acquisition/recording via a SCADA system with ≥10-year storage capacity.
• § 102 assessment: Does not anticipate any issued claim. It discloses elements B (interval/continuous logging via SCADA), C (remaining-life calculation → replacement plan), and much of claim 10's Larson–Miller framing — but it measures with a thermocouple, not an installed camera, so element A of claims 1, 14 and 15 is missing. It also lacks formula D (it says only "a suitable computational method"). This is the closest single reference and the one the applicant's specification itself distinguishes.
• Potential § 102 target if you construe broadly: the added subject matter of claims 2, 4, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 22, 24 (logging/summarizing, furnace environment, maintenance plan, reformer field of use) — but not those claims as a whole, because they inherit claim 1's camera.

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2. US 2010/0042370 A1 (granted as US 8,355,891 B2) — L'Air Liquide

• Full citation: US 2010/0042370 A1, "Method of Replacing the Catalyst Tubes of a Hydrocarbon Reformer." PCT filed 2007-01-09 (PCT/FR2007/050635; WO 2008/087306 A1); US pub. 2010-02-18; corresponding grant US 8,355,891 B2 (pub. 2013-02-19). Inventor J. Galleda.
• Description (verified live): A reformer-maintenance method combining periodic non-contact pyrometric measurement ("remote temperature measurement means is a pyrometer") of every tube with continuous thermocouple recording on a subset of tubes T(j). Virtual wall-temperature curves θ_max are built for all tubes; the remaining service life is computed using the Larson–Miller relation, and replacement is scheduled against the next programmed shutdown. Explicitly addresses transient phases such as restart, DTT, and the fact that tubes at 20 °C over design halve their life.
• § 102 assessment: Does not anticipate any issued claim — the tube measurement is a pyrometer (and/or thermocouple), not a camera; and the "remote" concept is spatial (non-contact sighting through peepholes), not geographically remote processing. However this is the reference that most squarely discloses:
  • claim 9 / 22 subject matter (life calculation driven by operating conditions/T&P — though it uses θ_max, not explicit pressure);
  • claim 10 / 23 — Larson–Miller expressly recited;
  • claim 11 (maintenance/replacement plan);
  • claim 12 — start-up / transient-phase thermal damage expressly treated.
    It is the indispensable § 103 secondary reference for any claim-14 or claim-1 attack, paired with a camera reference.

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3. US 2013/0176418 A1 — General Electric (Pandey et al.)

• Full citation: US 2013/0176418 A1, "Continuous infrared thermography monitoring and life management system for heat recovery steam generators." App. 13/346,755; priority 2012-01-10 (Google Patents) / 2012-01-09 (Unified Patents listing); published 2013-07-11. Inventors Pandey, Glametta, Nirmalan, Venugopal, Laflen. Original assignee GE.
• Description (verified live): A method and system for continuously monitoring the working condition of an HRSG using infrared thermography: identify target locations inside the HRSG, position one or more IR cameras inside at pre-selected strategic locations with viewing ports/IR windows, continuously monitor and record the temperature at each target location, generate continuous thermographic images, compare to stored baseline images, and predict the life span or potential failure of HRSG components (tubes, headers). Notes operating temperatures approaching 650 °C or above and harsh/dusty environments.
• § 102 assessment: This is the closest disclosure of element A (installed, permanently mounted camera continuously imaging tubes inside a high-temperature fired enclosure) plus elements B and C. It is arguably a § 102 candidate for a claim shorn of element D/E — but no issued claim is such a claim: claims 1 and 15 add the geographically-remote element (not disclosed by GE), and claim 14 adds the hard-wired Robinson life-fraction formula (not disclosed — GE predicts life span via image-to-baseline comparison, not a creep-fraction sum). It says nothing about tube internal pressure or Larson–Miller.
• Net: strong § 103 primary reference against claims 1–8, 13, 15–20, 24; not a standalone anticipatory reference for any issued claim.

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4. US 2014/0105243 A1 (granted as US 9,606,005 B2) — Tait / Methanex New Zealand (the reference the earlier sections flagged as LumaSense-adjacent)

• Full citation: US 2014/0105243 A1, "Tube Monitor and Process Measurement and Control in or for a Reformer." Filed 2013-10-14 (app. 14/053,083); NZ priority 603007, 2012-10-12; published 2014-04-17; granted US 9,606,005 B2, 2017-03-28; also WO 2014/057463 A3, EP 2 906 501 B1 (granted 2018-07-18). Owner Methanex New Zealand Ltd.
• Description (verified live): Real-time measurement of reformer-tube temperature, used for process-control optimisation, overheat protection and improved creep-damage/fatigue life prediction. Real-time cumulative tube life consumed is periodically calculated from accumulated temperature data, a cumulative life consumed is maintained, a failure time is predicted, and the prediction is used to plan a scheduled shutdown and tube replacement. Displays include a thermal contour map, alarm thresholds adjusted over time to compensate for creep.
• § 102 assessment: Its temperature input is tube-length/displacement transducer measurement (and it references internal-diameter creep measurement, US 2005/0237519), not an installed camera — so element A fails for claims 1/14/15. But it is a strong § 103 reference for the lifetime-management outputs: claim 11 (maintenance plan), claim 12 (start-up/shutdown), claim 13/24 (reformer field of use), and the "predict failure time" concept. Its priority (2012-10-12) is well before '574's, and the earlier sections correctly flagged — without asserting — the proximity to LumaSense's 2016-04-01 priority US 10,274,375 B2; I have no evidence of an interference, and nothing in the record changes that.

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Tier 2 — element-specific references (each hits one limitation)

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5. US 2005/0266363 A1 — Ram Ganeshan

• Citation: US 2005/0266363 A1, "Monitoring of flames using optical fibers and video camera vision system." Filed 2003-11-17; published 2005-12-01. Cited on the face of '574 and expressly discussed in the '574 specification.
• Description: Light from each of several flames is collected and transmitted by optical fibres and inspected by a video camera vision system at the far end; live images transmitted to a control room over Ethernet/wireless.
• § 102 assessment: Anticipates element A in the optical-fibre variant — specifically the added subject matter of claim 7 ("an optical fiber or fiber optics connected to said camera and adapted to be mounted in a furnace or any high temperature environment") and partially claims 4/5/17/18 (camera in a furnace). It does not disclose temperature measurement, logging, or lifetime calculation, so it cannot anticipate claim 7 as a whole (which inherits all of claim 1). Pure § 103 material for claim 7.

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6. US 2006/0050147 A1 — Zhengkai Gao

• Citation: US 2006/0050147 A1, "Plug-in kiln video camera and image processing system." Filed 2002-06-25; published 2006-03-09.
• Description: A plug-in/installed video camera for a kiln with an image-processing system — i.e., a camera permanently installed in a high-temperature industrial enclosure.
• § 102 assessment: Directly on point for the "installed camera … in a furnace or any high temperature environment" elements of claims 4, 5, 15, 17, 18. No temperature/lifetime disclosure. § 103 only, but a clean, citable secondary reference for the camera-installation limitation.

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7. US 2006/0049352 A1 — Keikhosrow Irani

• Citation: US 2006/0049352 A1, "Apparatus for thermal imaging." Filed 2004-02-02; published 2006-03-09.
• Description: Apparatus for thermal (IR) imaging — camera-based thermal measurement hardware.
• § 102 assessment: Supports the "temperature monitoring camera" element of claim 15 and the camera-monitoring element of claims 1/14. No lifetime prediction, no logging regime, no remote processing. § 103 only.

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8. US 7,938,576 B1 — Enertechnix, Inc.

• Citation: US 7,938,576 B1, "Sensing system for obtaining images and surface temperatures." Filed 2006-06-15; published/granted 2011-05-10.
• Description: A sensing system that obtains images and surface temperatures — typically acoustic/optical imaging inside boilers/furnaces to map deposits and surface temperature.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant to the combination of imaging + surface temperature (claims 1, 6, 15). No lifetime model. § 103 only. Note: the '574 specification's 650 nm band-selection rationale is not addressed by this reference, so it does not touch the narrow-band argument.

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9. US 5,050,108 A — Aptech Engineering, Inc.

• Citation: US 5,050,108 A, "Method for extending the useful life of boiler tubes." Filed 1989-11-30; granted 1991-09-17. Inventors Clark et al. Also EP 0 430 857 B1.
• Description (verified live): Ascertains boiler-tube condition, develops a tube-to-tube outlet temperature profile, calculates remaining useful life from stress and creep conditions, predicts a failure point, models the system, and physically modifies the tubes (steam-flow controllers) to extend life. Uses thermocouples and non-destructive examination.
• § 102 assessment: Anticipates the creep/remaining-life-calculation concept (claims 10/23 background, claim 11). Not camera-based, no interval logging of imaged temperatures, no remote processing. § 103 support only; primarily background art.

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10. GB 2 103 801 A — British Gas Corporation

• Citation: GB 2103801 A, "Assessing lifetime of duct by measuring fluid pressure and temperature within the duct." Priority 1981-08-04; published 1983-02-23.
• Description: Lifetime assessment from measured internal fluid pressure and temperature.
• § 102 assessment: This is the reference most on point for claim 9 ("calculating … on a basis comprising logged values for the pressure in said tubes") — the internal-pressure-plus-temperature lifetime premise. It does not disclose a camera or imaging. § 103 only as to claim 9's added element; cannot anticipate claim 9 as a whole.

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11. US 6,424,930 B1 — Graeme G. Wood

• Citation: US 6,424,930 B1, "Distributed processing system for component lifetime prediction." Filed 1999-04-23; granted 2002-07-23.
• Description: A distributed processing system for component lifetime prediction — i.e., lifetime computation distributed away from the monitored component.
• § 102 assessment: This is the single most targeted reference against the limitation that the applicant added to claim 1/15: "logging and calculating are performed … geographically remote to the position of the tubes." It is a genuine § 102 candidate for that added element alone, and a strong § 103 reference against claims 1 and 15. Crucially, it supplies no tube-temperature monitoring at all, so on a correct element-by-element analysis it cannot anticipate claims 1 or 15. But it is the reference to be ready for, because element E is the only thing distinguishing claim 1 from GE's US 2013/0176418.

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12. US 2001/0034581 A1 — Toho Gas Co., Ltd.

• Citation: US 2001/0034581 A1, "Method for estimating a life of apparatus under narrow-band random stress variation." Filed 2000-04-07; published 2001-10-25.
• Description: Life estimation under narrow-band random stress — an algorithmic lifetime-prediction reference.
• § 102 assessment: Supports the existence of rigorous lifetime-estimation algorithms in the art (claim 10 context). No camera, no tube imaging. § 103 backdrop only.

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13. US 5,355,845 A — AT&T Bell Laboratories

• Citation: US 5,355,845 A, "Temperature measurement in power generator boilers." Filed 1993-10-04; granted 1994-10-18.
• Description: Optical/radiation temperature measurement inside a power-generator boiler.
• § 102 assessment: Supports non-contact optical temperature measurement in a fired boiler (claims 1, 6, 15 background; claim 13/24 field of use). § 103 only. I was unable to verify the specific optical technique live before the tool limit; flag as unverified.

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14. EP 2 258 997 A1 and US 2011/0113993 A1 / EP 2 325 562 A2 — Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

• Citations: EP 2 258 997 A1, "System and method for temperature data acquisition," filed 2009-06-05, published 2010-12-08; US 2011/0113993 A1, "Method of Operating a Furnace," filed 2009-11-19, published 2011-05-19 (EP 2 325 562 A2, published 2011-05-25).
• Description: Temperature data-acquisition systems and methods of operating a fired furnace in the reformer/furnace control space.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant to the logging/data-acquisition element (B) and to the furnace field of use (claims 4, 13, 24). No camera imaging, no creep lifetime model. § 103 only.

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15. US 2012/0125479 A1 — Johnson Matthey Plc

• Citation: US 2012/0125479 A1, "Monitoring device installation method and apparatus." Filed 2009-07-28; published 2012-05-24.
• Description: Method/apparatus for installing a monitoring device in an industrial vessel.
• § 102 assessment: Supports the practical "adapted to be permanently mounted in a furnace" limitation (claims 5, 18) and installation of instrumentation. § 103 only. I could not verify the disclosure live — flagged.

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16. CN 104749211 A — Kawasaki Heavy Industries

• Citation: CN 104749211 A, "Heat transfer tube life estimating system" (熱伝達管寿命推定システム). Filed 2013-12-27; published 2015-07-01.
• Description: A heat-transfer-tube life estimating system.
• § 102 assessment: Potentially relevant to claims 10/23 (life estimation for heated tubes) and to claim 13/24's boiler field of use. Non-English; I was not able to verify its disclosure. Treat as § 103 support pending full-text review.

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Tier 3 — cited but non-analogous / marginal (should not be relied on)

The presence of these in the "cited" list shows the examiner searched broadly; none of them adds invalidity pressure.

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4. Post-issuance "Cited By" — expressly NOT prior art

For completeness, and to avoid a category error: FR 3 143 742 A1 (Air Liquide, 2024-06-21), US 12,460,983 B2 (Taiwan Power Company), EP 4 260 933 A1 (Linde, 2023-10-18), CN 109253870 B and CN 110343541 B all post-date both the '574 priority date and its issue date. They are forward citations and are not available under § 102/§ 103 against '574. They are evidence of the field's commercial importance only.

The three non-patent citations on the face — the Danish search report (2016-12-13) and the EPO ISR and Written Opinion (both 2017-07-13) for PCT/EP2017/060540 — are cited against the application, not anticipatory art themselves, but they identify what the EPO considered closest; they should be pulled in full before drafting anything.

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5. Bottom line: the § 102 answer

No cited reference, alone, anticipates any of the 24 issued claims. That is a direct consequence of the claim architecture: every one of claims 1–15 and 16–24 carries element A (an installed camera), and the two independent claims that would otherwise be broad (1 and 15) additionally carry element E (geographically remote logging/calculation), while claim 14 carries element D (the Σ Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1 formula).

Stated claim-by-claim in the format requested:

Where the real invalidity pressure lies (§ 103, not § 102)

The three most dangerous combinations:

1. Claims 1, 15 — US 2013/0176418 A1 (installed IR cameras inside a high-temperature enclosure, continuous imaging and logging of tube temperature, life-span/failure prediction) + US 6,424,930 B1 (distributed/remote processing for component lifetime prediction) + optionally US 2006/0050147 A1 (installed kiln camera) for the furnace-mounting limitation. Element E, the only thing separating claim 1 from GE, is squarely met by Wood.
2. Claim 14 — US 2013/0176418 A1 (camera + logging + remaining-life prediction) + US 2010/0042370 A1 (Larson–Miller remaining-service-life calculation from a logged temperature history, expressly) + GB 2 103 801 A (pressure-based life assessment) + a technical text for the Robinson life-fraction rule. Claim 14's formula is a decades-old standard in the creep field and is not described as novel anywhere in the '574 specification.
3. Claims 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 — the FR 2 888 920 / US 2010/0042370 family supplies the logging, SCADA history, Larson–Miller, pressure, maintenance-planning and transient-phase disclosures; the camera elements come from the GE/kiln-camera references. Because these dependents inherit element A, no single-reference § 102 case exists, but the § 103 case is strong.

Flags and caveats you should carry forward

• The "geographically remote" limitation (claims 1 and 15) has essentially no enabling disclosure in the specification beyond a one-line "feature 8." It was elevated from the features list into the independent claims — evidently to escape FR 2 888 920. Attack it on § 112(a) and anticipate it with US 6,424,930 B1. (This is the contradiction to note: the features list and the issued claims do not match, and the earlier summary in this thread correctly identified the elevation but did not connect it to the Wood reference.)
• Claim 14's formula is the narrowest escape hatch. If a challenger defeats claims 1/15 and the patent owner moves to amend, claim 14's Σ Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1 will be the target of record. Attack both independent method claims simultaneously.
• Verification status: FR 2 888 920, US 2010/0042370, US 2013/0176418, US 2014/0105243 and US 5,050,108 were verified against live full-text sources. US 5,355,845, US 7,938,576, US 6,424,930, US 2006/0050147, US 2006/0049352, EP 2 258 997, US 2011/0113993, US 2012/0125479 and CN 104749211 were not independently verified live (tool limit reached) — their descriptions above rest on the patent's citation table and training knowledge and should be confirmed against the documents themselves before being relied on in a filing.
• Date discrepancy to note literally, not correct: Google Patents lists US 2013/0176418's priority as 2012-01-10; the Unified Patents entry shows 2012-01-09. Either way it antedates '574's priority by four years, so the discrepancy is immaterial.
• The "No Drawings" front-page notation for a camera-based patent remains unusual and matters here: with no drawings, the system claim 15's "means for…" limitations have no structural support in the specification, which compounds the § 112 exposure.

I'll verify the content and disclosure of the key cited references before building the § 103 combinations.

Now let me pull the remaining key references: the boiler-tube life-extension art, the furnace IR-imaging art, and the remote/distributed data processing reference.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,215,574 B2 ("Monitoring of heated tubes")

Note on dates: the task header states the current date is April 26, 2026, while my operating context and the earlier sections of this file are dated 2026-09-29. I flag the conflict rather than resolve it. Nothing in the analysis below turns on the two-week-to-five-month difference. Analyses below are grounded in the issued claims of US11215574B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11215574B2/en) and the references cited in the "Prior Art" / "Citations" section of that rendering.

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0. Scope, and what I am building on

I build on the earlier sections rather than repeating them:

• The issued claims are operative, not the "Features of the Invention" list. The earlier section already flagged that feature 8's geographically-remote limitation was elevated into independent claims 1 and 15. That elevation is the single most important fact for § 103, because it changed the claim from "camera + log + calculate life" (which is squarely in the art) to "camera + log + calculate life + where the logging/calculating happens." I address that limitation specifically in § 6.
• Claim 14 (the Robinson life-fraction formula ΣΔtᵢ/tᵢ > 1) is the numerically-limited counterpart and is not subject to the remote limitation.
• Claim 15 is a systems claim in means-plus-function form (the earlier section noted this and the "No Drawings" anomaly). Under § 112(f), the corresponding structure is the SCADA/computer structure disclosed in the specification and in the prior art — which matters for how the prior art must be mapped.
• This analysis is a § 103 analysis, not an anticipation analysis. No single reference in the '574 citation list discloses all elements, so § 102 is a weak vehicle. The case is a combination case, and the whole fight will be about motivation to combine and reasonable expectation of success.

I could not verify the verbatim disclosure of every cited reference — three searches were cut off by my step limit (Enertechnix US7,938,576; Air Products EP2,258,997 / US2011/0113993 and EP2,325,562; Wood US6,424,930). I flag each such reliance below and do not assert paragraph-level citations I did not retrieve.

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1. Legal framework applied

Governing statute. The '574 patent claims priority to DK PA 2016 00281 (2016-05-09) and was filed as PCT/EP2017/060540 on 2017-05-03 — after 2013-03-16 — so the AIA version of § 103 governs. There is no evidence in the record of a pre-AIA effective date.

Graham v. John Deere factors (383 U.S. 1 (1966)):

1. Scope and content of the prior art;
2. Differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. Level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art;
4. Secondary considerations (objective indicia).

KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a claim is obvious where the combination is of known elements, each performing the function it was known to perform, with a rational motivation — including "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," a "design incentive," or "obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions. MPEP § 2143 governs the written articulation.

Anticipation vs. obviousness. Under § 102, a reference must disclose all elements as arranged in the claim. None does. Under § 103, the inquiry is whether the differences would have been obvious. Here, the differences are (i) the substitution of an installed imaging camera for point sensors/hand-held pyrometry, and (ii) the location of data processing. Both are classic § 103 differences.

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art

There is no express statement of PHOSITA in the specification or prosecution record, so it is determined from the field and the references (MPEP § 2141.03). The field is reformer/fired-heater tube life management and non-contact furnace temperature measurement. A reasonable articulation, supported by the cited references:

A person having ordinary skill would have a Bachelor's degree in chemical, mechanical, or metallurgical engineering (or equivalent), plus 3–5 years of experience with steam reformers, fired heaters, ethylene crackers, or power boilers — specifically with creep/life-assessment of reformer or boiler tubes, the Larson-Miller parameter and life-fraction (Robinson) rule, and non-contact (pyrometric/IR) tube-wall temperature measurement. Familiarity with plant data acquisition (SCADA/DCS) and with in-furnace optical instrumentation would ordinarily accompany that experience.

This matters because every ground below must be presented from that person's perspective, and because a level of skill this high makes the combination more obvious, not less. Notably, the '574 specification assigns Larson-Miller and the life-fraction rule to the ordinary artisan: "using the Larson-Miller relationship for the specific tube material" and the patent frames both as routine tools for "the specific tube material." Similarly, US20100042370 states Larson-Miller is "a law known and commonly used by a person skilled in the art for forecasting the service life of the tubes." And GB2103801 states the Larson-Miller relationship "was first established by F. R. Larson and James Miller … in July 1952."

These are admissions and art-based evidence of the skill level, and they are the strongest single asset in an invalidity case. The claimed math (claim 14) is admitted prior art methodology.

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3. The prior art of record — scope, content, and § 102 qualification

All the substantive references predate 2016-05-09 (by a decade or more), so each qualifies under AIA § 102(a)(1) as a printed publication or patented/published application.

Flagged anomaly — citations that do not qualify as § 102(a)(1) art. Several entries in the "Citations (26/27)" table of the Google Patents rendering carry priority dates at or after the '574 priority date: US 2017/0173262 A1 (2017-03-01), US 2018/0279429 A1 (2015-09-17), US 2018/0280914 A1 and US 2019/0101336 A1 (both 2017-03-28), and US 2019/0228777 A1 (listed 2004-06-14). On their face these cannot be § 102(a)(1) prior art to a 2016-05-09 priority date, and the last three (UOP) and the medical-device reference have no discernible relevance to the claims. They appear to be citation-table residue from the pre-grant publication. Any § 103 ground must be built exclusively on the pre-2016 references. I flag this rather than auto-correcting it.

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4. Claim 1 — element-by-element differences

Result: Every element of claim 1 is disclosed across three or four references, all in the same field (high-temperature tube temperature monitoring and tube-life prediction), with the "camera" element supplied by the IR-thermography art and the "remote" element supplied by the networked-furnace-monitoring art. Claim 1 is a textbook § 103 combination.

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5. The five grounds, ranked by strength

Ground 1 (Strongest for claim 14) — GB 2 103 801 + US 2010/0042370 + US 2013/0176418

Why claim 14 falls. Claim 14's only real content beyond claim 1's monitoring/logging steps is the formula

Σ_{i=1}^{N} Δtᵢ/tᵢ > 1, where Δtᵢ = each period with constant temperature and pressure within a selected range, tᵢ = total expected lifetime for that temperature/pressure pair, Δtᵢ/tᵢ = consumed life fraction.

This is verbatim the disclosure of GB 2 103 801:

• pressure sensors + temperature sensors → hoop stress (GB2103801: "the duct itself may be a pipe and in this case the derived stress is the hoop stress");
• Larson-Miller parameter P selected from a stored calibration of hoop stress vs. P;
• tᵣ per sample; life fraction tF(m) = (t1 − t2)/tᵣ1;
• integration Σ tF(m) with failure indicated when Σ tF(m) = 1;
• implemented in "a computer" as "signal responsive means and store means."

US 2010/0042370 supplies the transition to reformer tubes: it discloses the same algorithm applied to catalyst reformer tubes, expressly using "a relation of the Larson-Miller relation type," with θmax histories and pressure/operating-condition inputs, iteratively recalculating V_M, V_{M+1}. US 2013/0176418 supplies the camera and the continuous, area-based temperature data needed to feed the model, and expressly criticizes thermocouple point measurements as degrading "the accuracy of life prediction models."

Motivation (MPEP 2143):

• Same field, same problem. GB2103801 and US2010/0042370 both concern creep-rupture life prediction of pressure-containing tubes/ducts at elevated temperature; US2010/0042370 is expressly a reformer-furnace method. In re Icon Health & Fitness / In re GPAC: reasonably pertinent art.
• Same function, established function. Larson-Miller + life fraction performs in the combination exactly the function it performed alone (predicting creep life from a time-temperature-pressure history).
• Explicit art-recognized deficiency. US2010/0042370 and US 9,509,923 both complain that periodic pyrometry and thermocouples give "isolated … in space and time" data and "do not make it possible to know all of the temperature differences to which each catalyst tube is subjected throughout its life and over its entire length." That is an express design incentive to adopt the imaging alternative.
• KSR "known technique, predictable result." Substituting a camera-derived full-field temperature history into an established Larson-Miller life-fraction model is the "predictable use of a prior art element according to its established function."

This ground should be the lead attack on claim 14. It is the closest thing to an anticipation-by-combination available.

Ground 2 (Strongest for claim 1) — US 2013/0176418 (or US 9,509,923) + FR 2 888 920 + US 2010/0042370 (+ Ganeshan for the remote limitation)

• FR 2 888 920 and US 2010/0042370 supply "calculate remaining life from logged tube temperatures in a reformer, and output a replacement/maintenance plan."
• US 2013/0176418 supplies the installed camera, the continuous/interval logging, and life-span prediction for tubes inside a high-temperature enclosure.
• US 2005/0266363 (Ganeshan) supplies optical fibres + video camera + transmission of live images to a control room over Ethernet/wireless, satisfying the geographically-remote clause; US 6,424,930 (distributed processing for lifetime prediction) independently supplies it.
• Enertechnix US 7,938,576 ("obtaining images and surface temperatures") and Irani US 2006/0050152 ("apparatus for thermal imaging") supply the permanently-installed, harsh-environment camera of dependent claim 5.

Motivation: the art itself frames the problem as "how do I get continuous, spatially complete, non-hazardous temperature data for all tubes?" (FR 2 888 920: continuous recording for the furnace lifetime; US 2010/0042370: "all of the temperature differences … throughout its life and over its entire length"; US 9,509,923: continuous IR over "large areas"; Tait US 9,606,005: manual sight-port IR is slow, inaccurate, and leaves perimeter tubes unmeasured). A skilled artisan seeking to eliminate operator exposure and sparse sampling would have been led directly to a fixed IR-camera installation — the exact teaching of US 2013/0176418 — and to a networked/remote processing architecture, which is the ordinary implementation of a plant SCADA environment already disclosed in FR 2 888 920.

Ground 3 — Reformer-specific ground: FR 2 888 920 + US 2014/0105243 / US 9,606,005 (Tait) + US 2013/0176418

Tait is unusually damaging on the life-prediction side because it spells out, in a reformer, the exact dependent-claim concepts:

• "periodically calculating an indication of tube life consumed during said period";
• "calculates a cumulative life consumed from the periodic calculation";
• "predicts a failure time based on said cumulative life consumed";
• "said predicted failure time is used to plan a scheduled shutdown" and "plan replacement of said tube prior to a reformer shut down."

That maps onto dependent claims 2, 11, and the preamble of claims 1/14. Tait also criticizes the sight-port IR status quo (accuracy "±20°," 40–60 minutes per manual survey, only a few measurements per 24 h, perimeter tubes not visible), which is precisely the deficiency the '574 patent asserts it solves. Combining Tait with the installed-camera teaching of US 2013/0176418 produces the claimed subject matter with a strong, articulated motivation.

Ground 4 — System claim 15, means-plus-function

Claim 15's "means for logging" and "means for calculating" are § 112(f) limitations. The corresponding structure disclosed in the '574 specification is a general-purpose computer; the prior art discloses the same corresponding structure (GB2103801: "signal responsive means and store means comprise a computer"; FR 2 888 920: SCADA; US 2010/0042370: SCADA; US 2013/0176418: "a central computer (not shown) that receives and analyzes the relevant HRSG data over time and has the capability of issuing data reports and HRSG warnings or alarms in real time"; US 2013/0176418 claim 11: "a controller running source code"). Plus "a temperature monitoring camera" (Pandey, Enertechnix, Irani) and the remote limitation (Ganeshan, Wood). The system claim rises and falls with claim 1, except that the means-plus-function format makes it easier to read the prior art's SCADA/computer onto the claim.

Ground 5 — Dependent claims (near-mechanical mappings)

Practical consequence: claims 2–13 and 16–24 have essentially no independent validity weight. A ground that kills claims 1/14/15 kills the set.

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6. The one limitation with independent weight: "geographically remote" (claims 1 and 15)

This is where the '574 patent will be defended, and it needs separate treatment.

For the challenger (two independent theories):

1. It is disclosed. Ganeshan US 2005/0266363 discloses transmitting live furnace images "to the control room, through modern electronic communication techniques such as Ethernet and/or wireless radio units" — i.e., logging/observing remote from the tubes. Wood US 6,424,930 is titled "Distributed processing system for component lifetime prediction," directly on point. Combined with the routine SCADA practice disclosed in FR 2 888 920 and US 2010/0042370 (data acquisition remote from the furnace, control room display), the element is met.

2. It is a non-functional/implementation limitation entitled to little or no patentable weight. Whether a computer performs a known calculation in the control room or in the field office does not change the structure or function of the system or the result of the method. Where a limitation recites only where an otherwise-known step occurs, without changing the steps' performance or result, it is analogous to the "printed matter"/non-functional-recitation line of authority and should not distinguish the art. Even if some weight is given, relocating data processing to a networked server is a predictable use of known technology (KSR; In re Venner; In re Siegfried).

3. Additional § 112 vulnerability to note (not itself a § 103 basis). The specification gives no algorithm, location, hardware, or data-transfer detail for "geographically remote" beyond the bare recitation — no drawings, no network architecture, no latency/bandwidth discussion. That is a § 112(a)/(b) problem worth developing in parallel, and it also weakens any attempt to argue that the limitation produces an unexpected technical effect.

For the patentee (anticipated rebuttal): the patentee will argue that the remote element was the reason for allowance (the earlier sections note that this limitation was elevated from a dependent feature into independent claims 1 and 15 — a classic sign of a prosecution-driven amendment to overcome art). That means the file history must be examined: if the examiner allowed over FR 2 888 920 / US 2010/0042370 solely on "geographically remote," a secondary-evidence-style argument (unexpected result, teaching away) and a non-analogous-art argument become likely. Expect the patentee to characterize Ganeshan (flame monitoring) as non-analogous to tube-life prediction, and Wood (distributed lifetime prediction of generic components) as too remote in field. Both are weak given KSR's expansive view of analogous art, but they must be pre-empted in the petition with an explanation of why a reformer engineer would consult a furnace-camera-monitoring reference.

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7. Teaching-away and secondary-considerations counterarguments to neutralize

A. Anticipated "teaching away" — cameras don't work in a reformer (flame/flue-gas interference). The '574 specification attempts to distinguish itself by selecting ~650 nm, "at which interference with flue gas and flame radiation is avoided." The prior art defeats this:

• US 2013/0176418 expressly operates at ~650 °C and prescribes a "high band pass filter (e.g., 1.5 microns) … to avoid any absorption/emission from the CO₂ and H₂O in the hot HRSG gases," and discloses NIR (0.9–1.7 µm) and LWIR (7–14 µm) operation with germania/silica/quartz/sapphire/ZnSe windows. The problem of flue-gas/flame interference and its solution (spectral filtering) are both in the art.
• US 2005/0266363 monitors flames themselves with a video camera vision system inside combustion equipment — the strongest possible refutation that furnace optics are unworkable.
• US 2006/0050147 (plug-in kiln video camera) and US 2006/0050152 (thermal imaging apparatus) address the hardware problem of cameras in high-temperature enclosures.
  Teaching away requires that the art "criticize, discredit, or otherwise discourage" the solution (In re Fulton; DePuy Spine v. Medtronic). Nothing cited does. The art instead solves the interference problem.

B. Secondary considerations. I found no evidence in the record of objective indicia tied to these claims:

• Commercial success — Topsoe markets a "Furnace Manager"/reformer-management product, and trade literature ("Operating at peak performance with Topsoe reformer management," Jensen et al. 2016 — listed as a non-patent citation in the '574 record) and third-party commentary (e.g., the "Tube growth monitor (TGM)" described in the CRU/BCInsight reformer-technology review) confirm a live commercial product. But commercial success must have nexus to the claimed invention, and the product's success is at least equally attributable to Topsoe's catalyst and reforming-process franchise.
• Long-felt need / failure of others — the need is real and acknowledged in the art, but the art did not "fail"; it progressively solved the problem (1975 British Gas life-fraction → 2005 Air Liquide reformer SCADA → 2010 Air Liquide θmax → 2013 GE IR thermography → 2014 Methanex reformer tube life-consumed).
• Copying / industry praise / licensing — nothing surfaced.

C. Arguing the reference is non-analogous. Anticipate and rebut: all cited references are from the field of high-temperature process-tube integrity and non-contact industrial temperature measurement, i.e., the field of the inventor's endeavor, and are reasonably pertinent to the particular problem (MPEP § 2141.01(a)).

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8. What a petition-ready ground would require (evidentiary gaps to close)

1. Retrieve and paragraph-pin the three references I could not open: Enertechnix US 7,938,576 B1; Air Products EP 2 258 997 A1 / US 2011/0113993 A1 / EP 2 325 562 A2; and especially Wood US 6,424,930 B1 (the best support for the remote limitation). I flag that my reliance on these is presently at the title/abstract level from the '574 citation table, not verbatim.
2. Obtain the '574 file history (US 16/095,736). The Google Patents legal-events record shows two non-final actions and responses (2021-02-11 → 2021-05-18; 2021-06-15 → 2021-09-17) before allowance (2021-10-06). The examiner's reasons for allowance must be read before finalizing any ground, because they will reveal exactly which element the examiner considered critical — and my strong prediction is "geographically remote" in claims 1/15. If the examiner allowed on that basis, the petition must attack it head-on (Ground 2 + the non-functional-limitation argument).
3. Claim-construction positions to brief up front, on the intrinsic record (no IPR construction exists — the earlier sections correctly note the patent is wholly untested):

• "installed camera" — the patentee will argue this excludes hand-held pyrometers. The challenger should accept that and rely on US 2013/0176418's fixed in-enclosure IR cameras.
• "camera" — whether a single-detector scanning IR pyrometer reads on "camera." The challenger should not need this theory (Pandey discloses true imaging cameras), so avoid it.
• "on or adjacent to said tubes" — covers a camera imaging the tubes from a viewing port.
• "a group with a plurality of tubes" and "group of a plurality of tubes" — the patentee may contend a "group" requires a defined physical bank; US 2013/0176418's "tube bundles 27" and "target sets of HRSG tubes" should satisfy it.
• "geographically remote" — the pivotal term. Argue non-functional; alternatively, disclose via Ganeshan/Wood.

1. Expert declaration on (a) the level of ordinary skill, (b) that Larson-Miller + life-fraction was routine in 2016 (supported by the patentee's own admissions and US 2010/0042370's statement that Larson-Miller is "known and commonly used by a person skilled in the art"), and (c) the motivation to substitute fixed IR imaging for point/manual pyrometry, grounded in the art's explicit criticisms.
2. Do not attack only one independent claim. Claims 1, 14, and 15 are structurally distinct (remote logging/calculation vs. the hard-wired formula vs. the system). A successful motion to amend could otherwise narrow into whichever claim was left un-attacked — the same risk the earlier section flagged in relation to Topsoe's parallel petitions in IPR2025-01173/-01174.

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9. Bottom line

Anticipation: No. No single reference of record discloses an installed camera + interval logging + remaining-life calculation.

Obviousness: Yes, on the record cited in the patent itself, and strongly so for claims 14 and 10.

The essential reasoning a petition must articulate is that in 2016 a skilled reformer engineer, facing (i) an expressly recognized deficiency of point thermocouples and periodic hand-held pyrometry (FR 2 888 920; US 2010/0042370; US 9,606,005; US 9,509,923), (ii) an established Larson-Miller/life-fraction model already applied to reformer tubes with SCADA-logged temperatures and pressure-derived hoop stress (GB 2 103 801; US 2010/0042370), and (iii) the known availability of fixed IR imaging cameras for continuous, spatially complete, non-contact tube-temperature mapping inside high-temperature enclosures (US 2013/0176418; US 2013/0176418/US 9,509,923; US 2006/0050152; US 2006/0050147; Enertechnix US 7,938,576), would have had both the motivation and the reasonable expectation of success to substitute the camera for the point sensor and feed its logged output into the known life model — including doing so over a plant network, which the art already discloses (Ganeshan; Wood).

Confidence and limitations. High confidence in the mapping of claims 14/10 to GB 2 103 801 and US 2010/0042370 (verified verbatim). High confidence in the camera mapping to US 2013/0176418/US 9,509,923 (verified verbatim). High confidence in the reformer life-management mapping to US 2014/0105243/US 9,606,005 (verified verbatim). Lower confidence on Enertechnix US 7,938,576, the Air Products references, and Wood US 6,424,930, for which I have only title/abstract-level information from the '574 citation table and could not retrieve full text before my search budget was exhausted; the remote-limitation theory in particular must be verified against Wood and Ganeshan's actual disclosure before filing. I have not reviewed the '574 prosecution history, so my prediction that "geographically remote" is the allowability hook is an inference from the claim structure and the features-to-claims evolution, not a documented fact. Nothing here is a legal opinion or a freedom-to-operate conclusion.