US 11340159

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 11,340,159. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig for the actual claim text and any litigation/docket activity.

US Patent 11,340,159 — Analyst Summary

Caveat up front: I was able to confirm bibliographic data against the authoritative patent text (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑24) and a corroborating family listing. However, I could not retrieve the literal granted claim set — the patent document text available to me was truncated at the end of the specification/description, immediately before the "Claims" section. The claim overview below is therefore built from the patent's own Summary of the Invention, which recites the independent-claim subject matter in claim-like form. Wording and claim numbering in the granted patent may differ in detail from what is summarized, and dependent-claim coverage is not fully verified. Treat the claim discussion as high-confidence on substance, medium-confidence on exact numbering.

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Bibliographic Data (confirmed)

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Abstract (as granted)

A measurement device includes: a container into which sample gas is to be injected; a liquefaction mechanism configured to liquefy the sample gas in the container; a near-infrared probe extending from inside to outside the container; and a near-infrared measuring instrument configured to measure an absorbance spectrum of the sample gas in a state of being liquefied by the liquefaction mechanism, via the near-infrared probe.

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Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The disclosure solves a specific practical problem: to use near‑infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to measure LNG properties (composition, calorific value, density) without vaporizing it, you need a pre-built calibration curve. In the prior-art/comparative approach, that curve had to be built by putting a NIR instrument in a live LNG process line, alongside a gas chromatograph, and accumulating roughly six months of data — yielding only a narrow, site-specific curve (e.g., methane 88–92%, versus the ~80–100% real-world range). The invention instead builds the curve in the laboratory from synthetic "LNG-like" sample gas that can be liquefied on demand in a cryostat.

1. Measurement device (the core apparatus claim). An apparatus with four elements: (a) a container into which sample gas is injected; (b) a liquefaction mechanism that liquefies the gas inside that container; (c) a near-infrared probe that passes from inside to outside the container (i.e., the probe penetrates the vessel wall so the sample is interrogated while liquefied); and (d) a near-infrared measuring instrument that measures the absorbance spectrum of the liquefied gas through that probe. In effect: a benchtop cryogenic cell that lets you measure NIR absorbance of a liquefied gas sample on demand, rather than only on a live process line.

2. Spectrum measurement method. The method counterpart: inject sample gas into a container, liquefy it in the container, and measure its absorbance spectrum with a NIR instrument via a probe extending from inside to outside the container. The disclosed embodiments add a buffer tank that is vacuum-purged before filling, then fed to the container to preserve sample purity.

3. Calibration curve generation system. Combines the above measurement device with a generation device that produces, from absorbance spectra measured on multiple samples of differing property values, a calibration curve relating property value to absorbance spectrum. The signature advantage is that the curve becomes a "universal" calibration curve covering the composition distribution of LNG worldwide, generated in a short time rather than over months on-site.

4. Calibration curve generation method. The method counterpart to claim 3 — measure the spectra using the spectrum measurement method above and generate the calibration curve from the multi-sample results. In embodiments, the temperature of the liquefied sample is varied and measured as well, so the curve relates property value, temperature, and absorbance spectrum, correcting for temperature-induced offsets in the measured spectrum.

5. Analysis device (the field instrument). Comprises: (a) a memory storing a calibration curve of the type generated by the lab process described above; (b) a meter that measures the absorbance spectrum of liquefied gas by NIR spectroscopy; and (c) a controller that computes a property value of the liquefied gas from the stored curve plus the meter's measurement. In embodiments, an input interface also receives a measured temperature of the liquefied gas, and the controller uses the temperature-dependent curve to correct the offset.

6. Property analysis method. The method counterpart: measure the absorbance spectrum of liquefied gas by NIR, and calculate a property value from (i) a calibration curve generated from measurements on multiple LNG-like sample gases that were liquefied in a container and measured via a through-wall NIR probe, and (ii) the field measurement. Embodiments add measuring the temperature of the liquefied gas and using a temperature-inclusive curve.

7. Liquefied gas production plant. A production plant (e.g., LNG, LPG, or vinyl chloride plant) that includes the analysis device of claim 5. The patent notes the analysis device may be used anywhere LNG/LPG is produced, transported, stored, or used.

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Notable Technical Details (embodiment support)

• Cryostat (container + liquefaction mechanism) controllable over −190 °C to 30 °C, using liquid nitrogen from a coolant tank, a cooling pipe with a porous, position-adjustable temperature-regulation part, and copper heat-transfer plates.
• Copper cylindrical body defines the liquefaction chamber; a portion of the NIR probe sits inside it, with a mirror and paired light guides (transmitted/reflected light collection).
• A second heat-transfer material (thermal anchor) thermally couples the coolant tank's outer shell to the NIR probe to keep the probe cold.
• Introduction tube with inner diameter ≤ 1 mm (specifically 1 mm) to introduce sample gas while preventing backflow; separately heated and PID-regulated to avoid freezing.
• Independent heaters + temperature regulators (PID) on the cylindrical body, the probe anchor, and the introduction tube.
• In-chamber temperature sensor directly contacting the liquefied sample.
• Chemometrics program correlates measured spectra with known property data (component concentrations, calorific value, density) to produce the curve.
• FIG. 8 contrasts the narrow prior-art coverage with the near-full compositional range of the disclosed curve.

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Regarding the Requested USPTO / CAFC 2026 Docket Search

• USPTO status: Confirmed active, adjusted expiration 2040‑03‑11, with a granted continuation (US 11,885,741 B2) claiming priority to the same family. The Google Patents record shows no litigation or PTAB events flagged.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no CAFC appeal, IPR, or other Federal Circuit activity involving US 11,340,159 in the searches I ran. My searches of 2026 Federal Circuit materials (opinions, oral-argument calendars, and practitioner summaries) returned unrelated patents (e.g., 10,912,321; 10,894,503; 8,701,167 et al.).
• Uncertainty statement: I do not have direct access to the USPTO Patent Center / PACER / CAFC docket databases, and my search tooling is web-based rather than a live docket query. Accordingly, the absence of found docket activity is not proof that none exists — it means I could not corroborate any. If you need a definitive litigation/PTAB/appeal check, that should be run directly against USPTO Patent Center, the PTAB API, and the CAFC CM/ECF docket.

Confidence summary: Bibliographic data and technical substance — high confidence. Exact granted claim wording/numbering — medium confidence (source document truncated before claims). Absence of CAFC/litigation activity — low-to-medium confidence (negative result from web search only).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11340159.

Those hits are unrelated (they concern a different "'659 patent" in the Entresto litigation). Let me search more specifically.

No relevant hits yet. Let me try litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 11,340,159

Result: No litigation involving US 11,340,159 was found.

Searches performed

I ran multiple targeted queries aimed at the litigation-focused sources you specified, including:

• Direct queries on the patent number (11340159, US11340159, "11,340,159") combined with "litigation," "infringement," "lawsuit," and "case."
• Attempts to surface records from Unified Patents' litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation), CourtListener/RECAP, and general CAFC/PACER-related results.
• Assignee-based queries (Yokogawa Electric) combined with "lawsuit," "infringement," and "near-infrared LNG patent."

What the searches returned

• Hits on US11340159 / "11340159" returned no actual patent-litigation records for this patent. The results that referenced a "'659 patent" concerned an entirely different patent (the Novartis Entresto / valsartan-sacubitril litigation), and other hits concerned unrelated patent numbers and proceedings. None involved US 11,340,159.
• No docket entries, complaints, IPR/PGR petitions, or case numbers referencing US 11,340,159 were located.

Relevant context on the patent itself

• US 11,340,159 B2 is titled "Measurement device, calibration curve generation system, spectrum measurement method, calibration curve generation method, analysis device, liquefied gas production plant, and property analysis method."
• Assignee: Yokogawa Electric Corporation.
• Priority date: 2018-12-28 (JP 2018-247804); filed 2019-12-19; granted 2022-05-24; legal status Active (adjusted expiration listed as 2040-03-11).
• Related family member: US 11,885,741 B2 (from US 17/727,385, a priority continuation filed 2022-04-22) — this is a patent-family relationship, not a litigation.

Important caveats

• I was unable to complete unrestricted access to the Unified Patents litigation caselist and PACER/RECAP docket databases within this session; the searches were run through general web search rather than a full docket scrape.
• Absence of a hit is not a legal conclusion. Litigation involving this patent could exist but be absent from public search indexing, sealed, or too recent to appear. A definitive check would require directly querying PACER (all district courts), the CourtListener/RECAP API, and the Unified Patents litigation portal by the patent number, plus a PTAB proceeding search on the USPTO PTAB endpoint.

If you need a verified negative, the next step is to run the patent number directly against the Unified Patents litigation caselist and the PACER/RECAP docket API (which I was unable to fully reach here). Based on everything retrievable in this session, however, I can report that no known litigation involving US 11,340,159 was found.

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

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,340,159: 0 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBM reviews. Per the structured PTAB proceedings on file block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest), there are no AIA trial proceedings associated with this patent, and my web searches for a proceeding number, petitioner name, or patent-number challenge returned nothing on point (the hits I retrieved were unrelated cases — e.g., a different Yokogawa matter, Yokogawa Corp. of America v. Certified Measurement LLC over U.S. 5,828,751, and assorted non-Yokogawa IPR/PGR papers). Because there are no proceedings, there is no "claims invalidated / claims sustained / settled / institution denied" breakdown to report: all claims of the patent stand untested in AIA proceedings.

Bottom line for a defendant: the patent is not "hardened" and it is not "wounded" — it is untested. No challenger has ever attacked these claims at the PTAB, so you face no inter partes estoppel and no PTAB claim-cancellation record either way. Every invalidity theory you have is still available to you, and a first-filed IPR is procedurally clean.

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Proceedings

None. There is no AIA trial proceeding to report on US 11,340,159. I will not invent a proceeding number or a claim-level disposition to fill this section.

What I checked (and what it returned)

Statutory/eligibility notes the record supports:

• The patent issued 2022-05-24 from an application filed 2019-12-19 (priority JP 2018-247804, dated 2018-12-28), i.e., a first-inventor-to-file patent — so PGR eligibility existed, but the § 321(c) 9-month PGR window closed on 2023-02-24 and no PGR was filed.
• IPR (§ 311–319) remains available to any petitioner, including one who has not been sued, for as long as the claims are enforceable (adjusted expiration listed as 2040-03-11). A defendant served with an infringement complaint must file within § 315(b)'s one-year bar from service.
• CBM review is unavailable — the claims are directed to a measurement device / spectroscopy methods, not a "financial product or service," and the CBM program has sunset for patents like this one.

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Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim status. There is no PTAB-driven claim narrowing to hand you. The patent's claims — including the broad independent claim 1 (measurement device: container + liquefaction mechanism + NIR probe extending from inside to outside the container + NIR measuring instrument) and the parallel independent claims directed to the spectrum measurement method, calibration curve generation system/method, analysis device, liquefied gas production plant, and property analysis method — are all UNTESTED at the PTAB. Nothing is CANCELED, nothing is SUSTAINED by a Final Written Decision, and nothing is statutorily disclaimed per the record I could retrieve. (The full patent text provided ends mid-sentence in the description; I did not obtain a separate reissue, reexamination certificate, or statutory disclaimer record, so treat "no claims canceled" as a statement about AIA trials, not a guarantee about other Office proceedings.)

Estoppel landscape. This is the clearest defensive upside of the zero count: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is completely absent. No petitioner has been through an FWD, so no party (and no privy) is barred from raising any ground at the district court or ITC. If you are a defendant being asserted against, your full prior-art universe is open: § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art, § 103 combinations, and — in district court, where IPR's § 311(b) limit on printed publications and patents doesn't apply — system/prior-use and public-use art as well. Conversely, there is also no § 315(e)(1) IPR estoppel running against you, and no SAS-style all-or-nothing institution dynamic created by an earlier petition.

Pattern signals. There is no serial-petitioner pattern, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX petition on record), and no PTAB appeal activity to read. Yokogawa appears in PTAB records as a petitioner in unrelated litigation-driven validity challenges — suggesting the company is a sophisticated, patent-aware participant that will litigate when sued — but that says nothing about how it would defend this patent. The one family fact worth flagging is that this patent has a priority continuation, US 11,885,741 B2 (application 17/727,385, filed 2022-04-22), also unchallenged in any proceeding I could find. That matters tactically: if a demand letter cites the '159 patent's claims, expect the same party to be able to assert the '741 claims on substantially the same disclosure, so a negative outcome on one family member does not end the campaign.

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Recommended next steps

• No PTAB activity exists — state it plainly. The absence is itself a signal. A patent that gets asserted in a real market (LNG/LPG production analytics, NIR process spectroscopy) typically attracts at least one IPR petition within a couple of years of assertion. A completely clean PTAB slate for a 2022-issued patent suggests it has not been broadly asserted — consistent with the litigation finding in the earlier section of this analysis (no litigation located). Before you build a defense strategy around PTAB outcomes, confirm the patent is actually being asserted and against whom.
• If you are the first challenger, you have a first-mover advantage and no estoppel. File within the § 315(b) one-year window if you've been served. There is no prior petition, no Fintiv-style serial-petition baggage, and no § 325(d) "same art previously presented to the Office" argument available against you (though § 325(d) could cut for the patent owner on art already in the file — pull the prosecution history of JP 2018-247804's US counterpart to see what the Examiner considered).
• Mind the 1-year statutory clock if you file. Nothing is pending now, so there is no institution decision to track — but if you file, the Board's institution decision is due within ~6 months of the petition's filing date, and the FWD is due within 1 year of institution under § 316(a)(11) (extendable for good cause).
• Definitive negative requires docket-level verification. The structured ODP block is the canonical source and it is empty, but ODP ingest can lag. To convert this into a verified negative, query USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB APS by patent number, the PTAB Decisions database (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/), and the PTAB E2E proceeding search; then cross-check the Federal Circuit docket and CourtListener/RECAP for any appeal from this patent or from the related US 11,885,741 B2. I was unable to reach those dockets directly in this session — general web search does not reliably index PTAB proceeding pages, so treat the zero count as high-confidence but not docket-verified.

Defensive value in one line: no IPR has ever touched US 11,340,159 — nothing is dead, nothing is confirmed, and the slate is yours if you choose to file first.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,340,159 through the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Let me try the USPTO Assignment Center directly and search for the specific recording details.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 11,340,159 B2

Access caveat up front. I could not reach the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) or the legacy assignment.uspto.gov index directly in this session — those interfaces require interactive query submission, and my tooling returned general web results rather than the reel/frame record. I therefore could not verify reel/frame numbers, execution/recording dates, or the correspondent of record for any entry. Everything below is grounded in the authoritative Google Patents legal-events table supplied in the patent text (which mirrors the USPTO assignment feed) plus the patent front page. Where a data point is unverified, I say so rather than filling it in. Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 11340159).

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• All four inventors executed the assignment to Yokogawa, consistent with a standard employee-invention (shukko / service-invention) assignment under Japanese practice. This is the only inventor-side event in the record.
• No evidence of inventor departure within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-named later assignments (which would indicate a carve-out or a personal shell entity). Because the inventors do not appear again anywhere in the chain, there is no "all inventors left the assignee" precursor signal here.
• I could not verify inventor residences/cities from the sources retrieved; do not read anything into their absence.

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Original assignee

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Tokyo, JP) — the entity named on the issued patent and the current assignee.

• Primary line of business: Industrial automation and control (DCS, field instruments, process analyzers), test & measurement, and life-innovation/industrial IT. Publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE: 6841). Founded 1915.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yokogawa is a long-standing vendor of process spectroscopy and analyzer equipment (near-infrared/FTIR analyzers and TDLS laser analyzers for gas and liquid streams), and the patent's own specification describes deploying a near-infrared spectrometer (the "analysis device 500") into an LNG production plant process line — i.e., the commercial embodiment is a Yokogawa analyzer system sold into LNG/liquefied-gas plants. The patent's measurement rig (cryostat + NIR probe) is an in-house calibration-curve tool rather than a standalone catalog product. Net: corporate products in commerce, yes; a product specifically practicing the claimed cryostat rig is not established from the record.
• Current status: Operating. Google Patents lists legal status Active, adjusted expiration 2040-03-11. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition events appear in the legal-events table.
• Confirmation of ongoing R&D in the same space: the same family continued — US 11,885,741 B2 (from US 17/727,385, filed 2022-04-22) claims priority here, and Yokogawa continues to publish in the "measurement device / light measurement" space (e.g., US20260177429A1, US20260219172A1). This is the profile of a live operating-company portfolio, not an abandoned asset.

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Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events table contains exactly one assignment event for US 11,340,159:

• 2019-12-19 (date as shown) / recorded date not retrievable — Reel unverified
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents label: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: SAKAI, RYOTA; TANAKA, HIDEKO; Nozawa, Youko; OHARA, TOSHIKI (all four named inventors)
  • Assignee: YOKOGAWA ELECTRIC CORPORATION
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable this session — I cannot name the attorney/firm of record. This is the one field I most wanted for the repeat-player analysis and could not obtain.
  • Context: Ordinary employee-invention assignment at filing — the inventors' rights vest in their employer. Not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or asserter transfer.

No post-issuance assignment, security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, release, or correction is recorded. The chain begins and ends at the original operating-company assignee.

Flagged ambiguity (do not over-read): the single event is dated 2019-12-19, which is identical to the application's filing date (US 16/720,426). Google Patents frequently surfaces the assignment record against the filing date rather than the true execution date; the actual execution date may be days or weeks earlier. This is a rendering artifact, not evidence of a same-day transfer scheme.

If the Assignment Center in fact holds no entries beyond this one (my strong expectation), that is itself the finding: Yokogawa still owns the patent outright, unencumbered on the public record.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11340159
    2018 : JP priority application filed
    2019 : US application filed 16 720 426
         : Inventors assign to Yokogawa Electric
    2022 : Patent granted 2022-05-24
         : Continuation filed as US 17 727 385

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — with the affirmative finding that no NPE chain exists.

The rubric's "Insufficient data" applies precisely because the record contains only the original assignment (inventors → Yokogawa Electric Corporation, dated 2019-12-19 per Google Patents legal events), and I could not independently verify reel/frame or correspondent at the Assignment Center. Functionally, this is a clean, non-NPE outcome: the chain terminates at the original operating-company assignee, which remains a live public manufacturer with an active portfolio in this exact technology area (continuation US 11,885,741 B2, filed 2022-04-22). None of the eight NPE signals is present or even partially supported by record evidence, and the earlier litigation sweep found no suit to which a pre-litigation transfer could attach.

Suggested next step for a definitive record: query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov by patent number 11340159 (and by application 16/720,426) to capture the reel/frame and correspondent for the single 2019 entry, and confirm there are no later-change-of-name filings — the "correspondent" field is the only element of this analysis I could not close out.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 11,340,159. Let me run targeted searches against USPTO and related sources.

Let me try to retrieve the actual patent document to extract its cited references list.

The general searches aren't surfacing the citation list. Let me query more specifically for the patent's "Cited By" / "Citations" sections.

USPTO Prior-Art Search: US Patent No. 11,340,159

Identifiers interpreted literally: I searched for exactly 11340159 / US 11,340,159 (and its pre-grant publication US 2020/0209153 A1). I did not substitute any similar number.

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⚠️ Critical limitation on this answer

I was unable to retrieve the complete "References Cited" (§56) list — i.e., the full PTO‑892 set of U.S. patent documents, foreign patent documents, and other publications — for US 11,340,159. The authoritative Google Patents full text I was supplied for this patent was truncated at the end of the specification, immediately before the Claims and the front-page citation block, and my web searches (USPTO PatentCenter, patentimages PDF mirrors, Justia, Espacenet, Unified Patents) did not return the patent's citation table. The searches returned reference lists belonging to other patents (e.g., US 11,185,320; US 8,764,326; EP 4216963) — not US 11,340,159. I will not attribute those lists to this patent.

Accordingly, the prior-art analysis below is limited to the reference(s) I could positively confirm from the patent's own text, plus the closest prior art the patent itself distinguishes. This is not a complete §102/§103 landscape for the patent.

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Confirmed cited prior art (from the patent's own specification)

PTL 1 — JP H08‑248021 A

• Full citation: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H08‑248021 A (JP H08-248021 A). Cited literally as "PTL 1: JP H08-248021 A" in the patent's Citation List.
• Publication date: Heisei 8 = 1996 (JP publication numbering ~1996). This predates the patent's priority date of 2018‑12‑28 by more than two decades, so it qualifies as prior art under §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and pre-AIA §102(b).
• Brief description (as characterized by the patent): It "describes a technique of analyzing components of LNG using a gas chromatograph in an LNG production process." That is, a gas-chromatography-based composition analysis of liquefied natural gas requiring vaporization of the LNG.
• Anticipation analysis under 35 U.S.C. §102:
  • No claim is anticipated by this reference. JP H08‑248021 A is a gas chromatograph analysis technique. It does not disclose the four-element combination that defines the independent apparatus claim — (a) a container for injected sample gas, (b) a liquefaction mechanism liquefying gas in the container, (c) a near-infrared probe extending from inside to outside the container, and (d) a near-infrared measuring instrument measuring the absorbance spectrum of the liquefied sample via that probe. It likewise does not disclose the NIR/calibration-curve independent method, system, analysis-device, or plant claims.
  • Its relevance is therefore background / §103 motivation only: it establishes the conventional GC route for LNG analysis (with the associated disadvantage — LNG must be vaporized, which "takes time"), against which the patent's NIR-without-vaporization approach is framed.

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Closest prior art the patent itself distinguishes (the "Comparative Example," FIG. 9)

The specification expressly frames the invention against the following system, which is admitted prior art in the document (it is described as the conventional approach the invention improves upon). No external publication number is given for it; it is a described system, not a named reference:

• System: A calibration-curve generation system that places a near-infrared (NIR) measuring instrument into a live LNG process line, paired with a gas chromatograph (GC) that vaporizes the LNG to output property data, and a computer running a chemometrics program to correlate the two.
• Date: Described as the pre-existing/known approach as of the 2018‑12‑28 priority date.
• Anticipation analysis under §102:
  • The measurement-device and spectrum-measurement independent claims (container + liquefaction mechanism + through-wall NIR probe): Not anticipated. This comparative system has no sample container, no liquefaction mechanism that liquefies injected sample gas in a container, and no probe extending from inside to outside such a container. Its probe is inserted in process piping of the actual LNG line.
  • The calibration-curve-generation system/method claims: Potentially relevant, but not anticipatory as a whole. The comparative system does generate a calibration curve from NIR spectra + property data, but it does so in-line on live LNG, and the patent's claims require the curve to be generated from spectra of sample gas that was injected into a container, liquefied in the container, and measured via a through-wall NIR probe using multiple samples of differing property values. Those container/liquefaction/via-probe limitations are absent. Closest under §103.
  • The analysis device / property analysis method claims: Not anticipated. These claims recite a stored calibration curve generated by the specific laboratory liquefaction-and-through-wall-probe process, a meter doing NIR on liquefied gas, and a controller computing a property value. The comparative in-line GC-based system computes properties via GC vaporization, not via a curve built from the recited container-liquefaction process.

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Family members — NOT prior art (do not cite against this patent)

• US 2020/0209153 A1 — pre-grant publication of the application that issued as US 11,340,159; same priority date.
• US 11,885,741 B2 (from continuation US 17/727,385, filed 2022‑04‑22) and its apparent pre-grant publication US 2022/0244175 — same family/priority (JP 2018‑247804); these are continuations, not prior art to US 11,340,159.
• EP 3674691 A1 — European counterpart.

These appear in search results but share the 2018‑12‑28 priority and therefore cannot be §102 art against the parent.

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What I could not confirm (and why it matters)

• I could not obtain the patent's U.S. patent citations (USPTO PTO‑892 "U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS" column), its foreign patent-document citations, or any non-patent literature beyond PTL 1. The web sources returned citation lists for unrelated patents; assigning those to US 11,340,159 would be fabrication, which I will not do.
• I found no evidence of a fuller citation set through the sources I could reach.

Recommended next step to complete the §56 picture (definitive source)

Run the patent number directly against, in order:

1. USPTO Patent Center — for the issued patent's "References Cited" front-page block and the PTO‑892 from the file wrapper (application 16/720,426).
2. Google Patents "Citations" / "Cited By" sections for US 11,340,159 B2 (the page I was given appears to have been truncated before these sections).
3. Espacenet "Cited documents / Citing documents" for the EP 3674691 A1 family member and the search report.
4. USPTO PTAB API / PACER / CourtListener — for any IPR/PGR or litigation raising additional art (none found in this session, but not verified against a live docket).

Confidence: Confirmed citation JP H08‑248021 A — high confidence (stated in the patent text). Completeness of the §56 reference list — low confidence; the list was not retrievable in this session. Claim-level §102 conclusions above are stated against the independent-claim categories as described in the patent's Summary; exact granted claim numbering is unverified (source truncated before the claims).

I'll research the prior art landscape relevant to this patent's claims before building the §103 analysis.

Now let me examine the specific prior art references cited in this patent's family and the broader technical literature.

Excellent — I've found several highly material references. Let me drill into the most promising ones.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

US Patent No. 11,340,159 B2 (Yokogawa Electric Corp.)

Analyst memo — prepared April 26, 2026

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0. Correction to the Earlier-Generated Sections (flagged per instructions)

Two material corrections to the earlier "Patent summary" section, now that the granted claim text has been retrieved from the patent PDF and the Google Patents claims listing:

1. The earlier summary stated the literal granted claim set could not be retrieved and that claim 1 was a four-element apparatus claim. That was wrong. The granted claim set is available. The authoritative text appears at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/f9/19/f6/25c52a2386b9c7/US11340159.pdf and at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340159B2 ("Claims (10)").

2. Granted claim 1 is materially narrower than the published application's claim 1. Published US 2020/0209153 A1 claim 1 was the bare four-element claim (container / liquefaction mechanism / through-wall NIR probe / NIR measuring instrument). Granted claim 1 incorporates the former dependent subject matter:

"…wherein the liquefaction mechanism includes: a cylindrical body configured to form a liquefaction chamber into which the sample gas is to be introduced, in the container; and a cooling instrument configured to cool the cylindrical body to liquefy the sample gas in the liquefaction chamber, part of the near-infrared probe is located in the liquefaction chamber, the near-infrared measuring instrument is configured to irradiate the sample gas in the liquefaction chamber … and detect at least one of transmitted light or reflected light …, and the liquefaction mechanism further includes: a heat transfer material configured to thermally connect the cooling instrument to the cylindrical body; a heater configured to heat the heat transfer material; and a temperature regulator configured to regulate a temperature of the heat transfer material by controlling the heater."

This is significant for § 103: the applicant narrowed claim 1 by pulling in former claims 2 and 3 (as published) — consistent with the broad four-element claim having been met by the art. It also means the earlier "confidence: medium on claim numbering" caveat is now superseded — numbering is confirmed for claims 1–8; claims 9–10 exist but their text was not retrieved (the Google claims listing truncates after claim 8), and are presumed to be the method claims (spectrum measurement method / calibration curve generation method) mirroring published claims 11–14. I flag that as an inference, not a verified fact.

Nothing else in the prior sections is contradicted; the bibliographic data, family data (US 11,885,741 B2 from 17/727,385), and the "no litigation found" negative result stand.

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1. Legal Framework and Level of Ordinary Skill

Standard. 35 U.S.C. § 103; Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). A claim is obvious if the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA). Under KSR, a combination of known elements is obvious where it yields no more than predictable results, where there is a known problem for which the combination is an obvious solution, or where the combination is a "predictable variation" / "design choice" / "obvious to try."

Critical date. Priority is December 28, 2018 (JP 2018-247804); US filing December 19, 2019. All references below predate the priority date and qualify as prior art under § 102(a)(1) (printed publications/patents) unless noted.

POSITA (my construction, consistent with the field): a spectroscopist or process-analytical instrumentation engineer holding a B.S. in chemistry, physics, or chemical engineering, with 2–5 years' experience in near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and chemometric calibration in a process-analytical-technology (PAT) or hydrocarbon-processing environment, plus working familiarity with cryogenic instrumentation (cryostats, liquid-nitrogen cooling, PID temperature control) and fiber-optic probe design. This is a routine engineering arts level, not a research-scientist level — which matters: under KSR, routine engineering choices are more readily deemed obvious.

The claimed invention reduced to its operative components:

1. A vessel that receives sample gas; (2) equipment that liquefies that gas in the vessel (a cooled cylindrical chamber); (3) a fiber-optic NIR probe passing through the vessel wall into the liquid; (4) an NIR spectrometer reading absorbance through that probe; (5) a thermal chain (cooling instrument → heat-transfer part → chamber) plus a heater and PID-style regulator so the chamber temperature is actively settable; and (6) downstream, a chemometric "generation device" that fits a calibration model from NIR spectra of multiple samples of differing property value, optionally including temperature as a variable.

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2. Prior Art Inventory

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3. The Lead Combination, Element-by-Element

3.1 Combination A: Warren 1997 + Axiom FPT-850LT + PTL 1 (+ routine chemometrics/cryogenic knowledge) → Claim 1

Why a POSITA would have combined — motivation (express and inherent):

1. Warren supplies an express, articulated motivation. The thesis is framed as a "feasibility study into the potential application of alternative analysis methods for monitoring and quantifying LNG in-situ," and it concludes NIR was "the most applicable." It further expressly built the very apparatus: the cryogenic in-situ liquefaction cell and the cryogenic-immersible fiber probe, with chemometrics for quantification. Combining with PTL 1 (the GC status quo identified in the patent's Background) requires no hindsight: PTL 1 defines the problem (LNG property analysis requires vaporization → slow, 5–30 min chromatograph cycles, and the patent's admitted-art FIG. 9 shows a ~6-month calibration-data collection burden), and Warren defines the solution path (liquefy the sample in a cell and take NIR spectra of the liquid).
2. Axiom supplies a commercial, LNG-specific enabling teaching and a strong market motivation. A probe sold for the express purpose of "Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) processing" — with a sapphire-to-metal pressure seal built for "thermal shock" and "extremely low temperatures" — is precisely the kind of reference that supplies the motivation to place an NIR fiber probe in a cryogenic LNG sample holder while parking the spectrometer at ambient temperature outside. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."
3. The heater + PID regulator are not an inventive add-on; they are the standard way to achieve what Warren already did. Warren's cell operated under "variable conditions of temperature." A cell that can be held at a selected temperature between, say, LN₂ temperature and ambient, requires a cold source + heater + controller. This is the archetype cryostat; a POSITA seeking to sweep temperature to map its spectral effect, or merely to avoid freezing the inlet and to stabilize the measurement, would predictably arrive at the claimed thermal chain. The claimed arrangement yields only the expected result: an arbitrarily settable chamber temperature.
4. Reasonable expectation of success. Warren physically built and successfully operated the cell and probe and obtained quantitative results via CLS. Axiom commercially sold the probe. The outcome was predictable, not speculative.

Conclusion: Claim 1 would have been obvious over Warren + Axiom + PTL 1, with cryostat/PID engineering as the routine gap-filler. Grounded on three independent (non-hindsight) motivations: express problem recognition in PTL 1, express apparatus teaching in Warren, and commercial LNG-specific probe teaching in Axiom.

3.2 Combination B: Admitted FIG. 9 art (calibration system 900) + Warren 1997 / WO 2006/058816 → Claims 5, 8 and the method claims

The specification's own FIG. 9 admitted prior art already discloses the informational architecture: NIR spectra of LNG (907) correlated by a chemometrics program 906 with GC-derived property data (908) to make a calibration curve 901, later installed in a field NIR spectrometer to measure LNG properties without vaporization. That is the substance of the calibration-curve-generation and property-analysis aspects (claims 5, 8, 9/10).

The only difference from those claims is where and how the calibration data are acquired: instead of the live process line, a benchtop vessel with in-situ liquefaction and a through-wall NIR probe, driven with multiple samples of deliberately differing property value.

Motivation is not merely available but is recited as the problem to be solved in the patent itself and is independently corroborated:

• The patent's own list of deficiencies of the admitted art: (1) NIR instrument must be installed in the actual process; (2) ~6 months data collection; (3) only a limited-range curve (methane 88–92% vs. the real ~80–100% range); (4) a GC must be co-installed. These are express, inventor-acknowledged problems. Under KSR, "a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each element was independently known"; but equally, "[w]hen there is a design need or market pressure to solve a problem and there are a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options."
• Warren 1997 shows the predictable option: lab cryogenic cell + immersion NIR fiber probe + chemometrics. WO 2006/058816 reinforces the container-with-waveguides architecture.
• Designing a calibration set of multiple synthetic samples spanning the property range is the ordinary, textbook method of building a multivariate NIR model (ASTM E1655/E1655-style practice). The patent itself gives no more than the conventional practice: use more samples over a wider designed range and the model extrapolates more broadly.

Conclusion: claims 5 and 8 (calibration-curve-generation systems) and the method claims would have been obvious as the combination of the admitted FIG. 9 architecture with Warren/WO 2006/058816, motivated by the expressly-recognized deficiencies of the on-line approach.

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4. Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 6, 7)

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5. Anticipation Overhang (§ 102) and Why It Matters to § 103

Although this memo addresses § 103, note that Warren 1997 alone arguably discloses every element of the published application's claim 1 (cryogenic cell liquefying LNG in-situ; immersed fiber-optic NIR probe; NIR measurement of the liquid; chemometric quantification). The applicant's amendment folding former claims 2 and 3 into claim 1 is the classic prosecution response to such a reference. That history is itself probative that the broad concept was not considered allowable over the art — and the surviving differences (specific thermal architecture) are, per § 4 above, routine engineering. I would flag that the narrowing suggests the applicant's position on the record is that the thermal-management specifics are the point of novelty, not the liquefy-in-a-cell-and-probe-with-NIR concept. A § 103 attack therefore should focus its energy on the thermal chain (heat-transfer material + heater + regulator + thermal anchoring).

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6. Counterarguments a Patentee Would Raise (and my assessment)

1. "Warren's finding that temperature and pressure had an insignificant effect on the NIR spectra undercuts the motivation to build a temperature-corrected calibration."
   This is the patentee's best argument, because it targets the temperature-compensated dependent features (claim 8 and the corresponding analysis-device/method features, and to a degree the heater/regulator of claim 1). Warren states the "full temperature and pressure range of conditions were found to have an insignificant effect on the NIR spectra." Assessment: weak-to-moderate, and partial. (a) A "teaches away" finding requires criticism, discredit, or discouragement — Warren does neither; it built a variable-temperature cell and operated across a temperature range, which affirmatively teaches temperature-variable measurement. (b) The statement concerns Warren's particular pathlengths/regions and does not discourage active temperature control to stabilize a cell or to avoid freezing an inlet, which is the ordinary reason to add a heater + PID loop. (c) At most, this argument might rescue the temperature-as-calibration-variable dependent claims from that one reference — but those features are still obvious over Warren in view of routine NIR chemometrics practice (temperature is a universally-recognized spectral nuisance variable in NIR, routinely included in multivariate models).
2. "The 1 mm introduction tube is a critical, non-obvious parameter." No data of unexpected results is presented in the patent tying 1 mm to any measured improvement beyond "prevents backflow," which is the predictable effect of a restrictor. Weak.
3. "The claimed combination as a whole was not obvious because the prior art never suggested collecting a designed library of synthetic LNG-like samples in a lab cryostat." This is the strongest commercial-narrative argument, but legally it fails: the compound being used to build the calibration set (a cryogenic cell + NIR probe) and the method (multivariate calibration on a spanning sample set) are both known, the problem was expressly recognized, and the solution was among a finite number of predictable options. KSR.
4. Secondary considerations. None has been established in the record I can retrieve. Conceptually the patentee could assert: long-felt need (the admitted 6-month calibration burden), failure of others, and industry adoption (Yokogawa's own continuation and EP family show continued investment). But (i) the "need" is inventor-admitted as the starting problem, and (ii) there is no evidence of commercial success with a nexus to the claimed thermal architecture, as opposed to the generic benefit of "calibrate off-line." Without nexus, the "improved efficiency" advantage recited in the specification is a result inherent in the known off-line approach and carries little weight. I flag this as evidence I could not obtain, not as a finding that none exists.
5. Common ownership of the Yokogawa inspecting family (CN 111065913 A / EP 3 686 578 B1 / WO 2019/059263). Because its inventors overlap this patent's inventorship (Ohara), it is more likely an artifact of § 102(a)(2)/§ 103(c) common-ownership practice than a substantive § 103 reference. I could not retrieve its disclosure, so I do not rely on it.

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7. Overall Assessment

Single most efficient invalidity theory: Warren 1997 (cryogenic in-situ LNG liquefaction cell + cryogenically immersible fiber-optic NIR probe + chemometrics) in view of Axiom's FPT-850LT LNG cryogenic NIR transmission probe, further in view of PTL 1's identification of the vaporization/GC bottleneck, with the heat-transfer-material + heater + temperature-regulator recited in claim 1 supplied as the standard cold-finger/PID cryostat architecture and evidenced by the art's own use of "variable conditions of temperature."

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8. Confidence and Evidence Gaps (stated explicitly)

• High confidence: identity, dates, and, where quoted, the disclosures of PTL 1 (admitted, quoted in the patent), the admitted FIG. 9 comparative-example art (quoted in the patent), the Axiom FPT-850LT press release (Nov. 7, 2014; quoted), the Fraunhofer WO 2006/058816 abstract (quoted), and Warren 1997 (abstract quoted verbatim from the Southampton repository). The granted claim 1 and claims 2–8 text (quoted above from the patent PDF/Google Patents).
• Medium confidence: Warren 1997's full text beyond the abstract — I have only the abstract and record metadata; the exact structural details of its cryogenic cell (whether actively heated or purely LN₂-cooled) are not verified and could affect the motivation analysis for the heater/regulator elements. WO 2006/058816's full claim scope is likewise unverified.
• Low confidence / explicitly unknown: the text of granted claims 9 and 10 (listing truncated after claim 8); the content of CN 111065913 A / EP 3 686 578 B1 / WO 2019/059263 (not retrieved); any prosecution-history statements the applicant made distinguishing these references (the USPTO file wrapper was not accessed); and any secondary-considerations evidence (no commercial-success, licensing, copying, or long-felt-need evidence could be retrieved).
• Note on negative results: as with the earlier litigation search, my inability to retrieve the full Warren thesis or the file wrapper is a limitation of this session's tooling, not a representation that the material lacks the details assumed above. A definitive obviousness opinion would require the complete Warren thesis, the WO 2006/058816 claims, the USPTO file wrapper (to see precisely what was argued and allowed), and any objective indicia.

Bottom line: On the record assembled, US 11,340,159 is vulnerable to a § 103 challenge on all independent claims, with the strongest attack on the calibration-system/method claims (5, 8, 9/10) — which differ from the patent's own admitted FIG. 9 art in little more than substituting a lab cryogenic cell for a process line and building a designed sample set — and a somewhat harder but still viable attack on apparatus claim 1, where the contest will center on whether the heat-transfer-material + heater + temperature-regulator thermal chain is (as I assess) predictable cryostat engineering or an unexpected combination.