US 11340165

I'll search for this specific patent number, including any litigation activity.

Let me search specifically for any litigation or CAFC docket activity involving this patent.

Let me do a final targeted check for any recent 2026 court or PTAB activity.

US Patent 11,340,165 — Analyst Summary

Note on search scope: All searches used the exact identifiers "11340165" and "11,340,165." A few results were coincidental string matches (a metagenome scaffold ID, a PubMed sentence ID) and are not the patent — I excluded them. No results for similar numbers were substituted.

Bibliographic data (confirmed by the authoritative full text)

Abstract

A sample observation device includes an imaging unit that images observation light generated due to irradiation with planar light transmitted through a membrane filter and outputs fluorescent light image data; a partial image generation unit that specifies a first area (first sample-holding space) and a second area (second sample-holding space) in the fluorescent light image data and generates first and second partial image data; an observation image generation unit that generates first and second observation image data from the partial image data; and an analysis unit that analyzes the sample on the basis of the two observation image data sets.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — Device (apparatus):
An apparatus for observing a sample held in a container whose interior is split by a membrane filter into a first space and a second space. It has six cooperating parts:

1. Irradiation optical system — shines planar (sheet) light onto the sample as excitation light, at a wavelength that passes through the membrane filter (so the light sheet reaches both sides of the filter).
2. Scanner — moves the sample relative to the light-sheet plane.
3. Imaging unit — images the resulting observation light, including fluorescence, and outputs fluorescence image data.
4. Partial image generator — identifies, within that fluorescence image data, the region corresponding to the first space and the region corresponding to the second space, and produces separate partial-image datasets for each.
5. Observation image generator — builds first and second observation images from those respective partial datasets.
6. Analyzer — analyzes the sample using those two observation images.

The technical hook is that using a transmissive wavelength lets a single acquisition capture fluorescence from both sides of the filter; the software then computationally splits the image at the filter so migrated and non-migrated cells can be evaluated separately.

Claim 8 — Method:
The method counterpart of claim 1, with steps: irradiating with transmissive-wavelength planar light → scanning relative to the light-sheet plane → imaging fluorescence and outputting fluorescence image data → specifying the first/second areas and generating first/second partial image data → generating first/second observation images → analyzing the sample from those two images.

Dependent claims (per the authoritative disclosure)

Device side: claim 2 (also image the scattered excitation light and use the scattered-light image data to locate the first/second areas); claim 3 (use two light sheets — one transmissive, one non-transmissive through the filter — and use the second fluorescence image to locate the areas in the first fluorescence image); claim 4 (sample stained with a transmissive-excitation first fluorophore and a non-transmissive-excitation second fluorophore); claim 5 (instead of staining the sample with the second fluorophore, inject a solution containing it into both spaces); claim 6 (analyzer counts the number of samples in each space); claim 7 (adds an image-formation optical system with an observation axis inclined to the light-sheet plane).

Method side: mirror-image dependents (scattered-light-based localization; two-light-sheet approach; two-fluorophore staining; fluorophore solution; counting; inclined observation axis).

Uncertainty / flags

• Claim count and claim wording — verify against the official USPTO record. The authoritative text supplied describes the invention using "scanning unit," "partial image generation unit," and "observation image generation unit." A third-party aggregator (Justia's claim listing for 11,340,165) reproduces granted claim 1 using different nouns ("scanner," "partial image generator," "observation image generator," "analyzer"). This is plausibly a claim-amendment artifact between the pre-grant publication and grant, but I cannot verify the granted claim text from the authoritative source provided. Treat the exact claim language above as the invention as disclosed, not as a certified copy of the granted claims.
• Following the disclosure structure, I infer 14 total claims (1–7 device, 8–14 method). I do not have an authoritative claim count, so this is an inference, not a confirmed figure.
• I could not retrieve the front-page examiner, art-unit, or exact claim-set data directly from USPTO PatentCenter within this session.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket search — no results for this patent

I searched for CAFC 2026 dockets and district-court litigation naming 11,340,165 and found none. Hamamatsu Photonics does appear in Federal Circuit and district-court matters, but on different patents — e.g., the SiOnyx, LLC v. Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. dispute (D. Mass. Nos. 1:15-cv-13488; Fed. Cir. 981 F.3d 1339 (2020)) concerned U.S. Patents 9,614,109; 9,293,499; 9,190,551; 8,994,135; 8,916,945; 8,742,528; 8,629,485; and 8,564,087, and SEMICAPS v. Hamamatsu involved U.S. Patent 7,884,446-family subject matter. Neither implicates 11,340,165. I found no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding against 11,340,165 either. Accordingly, as of the search date I have no evidence of any litigation, appeal, or post-grant challenge involving this patent — but absent a direct PACER/Docket Navigator query, I cannot rule out a newly filed, not-yet-indexed case.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11340165 across the sources you mentioned.

Initial searches found no litigation. Let me check litigation-specific databases more directly.

No litigation has surfaced yet. Let me check litigation-specific portals and patent dockets directly.

No known litigation involving US Patent 11,340,165

Based on my searches of patent litigation sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, federal district court records surfaced via Justia/Casetext, CAFC-related materials), I found no litigation — no filed complaint, no declaratory judgment action, no PTAB proceeding, and no ITC investigation — that asserts or challenges US Patent 11,340,165.

Searches performed and results

Important caveats

1. All hits for "Hamamatsu" litigation concern different patents. The cases that surfaced involve US Patent Nos. 8,080,467; 8,680,591; 8,564,087; 8,629,485; 8,742,528; 8,884,226; 8,916,945; 8,994,135; 9,190,551; 9,293,499; 9,614,109; and 9,809,882, plus Japanese patents 3,990,711; 3,867,108; and 4,601,965. None of these is 11,340,165. For example:

   • SiOnyx, LLC v. Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., No. 1:15-cv-13488-FDS (D. Mass.) — patents on black-silicon photodetectors, not this one.
   • SEMICAPS Pte Ltd. v. Hamamatsu Corp. — ’982 patent.
   • Hamamatsu's Japanese suits vs. Tokyo Seimitsu — laser-processing patents.

   I flag these only to explain why Hamamatsu litigation results appeared; they are not litigation of US 11,340,165 and should not be reported as such.

2. The patent is recent and actively in force. US 11,340,165 issued May 24, 2022 (priority July 11, 2017; filed April 10, 2018; app. 16/629,326), assigned to Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., with an adjusted expiration listed as 2038-10-20 and status "Active." A commercially significant portion of its enforceable term has elapsed without any publicly indexed assertion.

3. Limits of this search. Public litigation-portal coverage is generally reliable for US district court complaints, PTAB filings, and ITC Section 337 investigations, but it can lag recent filings by days to weeks, and it may not capture foreign proceedings, arbitration, or unindexed suits involving shell/related entities. I did not identify any such proceeding, but I cannot rule out a very recent or non-indexed filing.

Bottom line

No known litigation involves US Patent 11,340,165. If you have a specific docket number, an accused product, or a suspected infringer, I can run a targeted follow-up; absent that, the accurate answer is that no public litigation record exists for this patent as of the search date.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against live sources before drafting.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,340,165: 0 (zero). The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent as the challenged patent, and my independent searches of PTAB petition/FWD document repositories and the public web surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal directed to the '165 patent — so the defensive posture is "no PTAB track record either way": nothing is canceled (claims 1–8 all remain in force), nothing is sustained against a validity attack, and no petitioner estoppel or FWD record exists to hand a defendant. If you are facing assertion today, you are the potential first challenger, with a clean § 311 runway and no § 315(e) estoppel baggage — but also no free roadmap of the patent owner's validity vulnerabilities.

Important caveat on confidence: the absence signal comes from (a) the structured ODP block in your prompt and (b) web search. Neither is a 100% substitute for a direct PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End party-and-patent-number query, and the ODP ingest lags newly filed petitions. A petition filed in the last few weeks could exist unindexed. Verify at PTAB E2E and USPTO Patent Center before you rely on the "no proceedings" conclusion in a scheduling or stay brief.

Proceedings

No proceedings to report. Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block, the ODP API returns no AIA trials for this patent, and no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, or FWD exists to be listed. I will not invent one. The most-impactful-first ordering is therefore vacuous.

For completeness, here is the claim fabric of the patent as it currently stands un-adjudicated (from the granted text, not from any FWD — no FWD exists):

Source: US 11,340,165 B2 on Google Patents; claim listing corroborated at Justia Patents. Patent: filed 2018-04-10 (PCT national phase; priority 2017-07-11), granted 2022-05-24, assignee Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., adjusted expiration 2038-10-20.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. All eight claims of the '165 patent are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Nothing is canceled; nothing has survived a validity challenge; there is no FWD to point to, no certificate of cancellation, and no surviving-claim list to brief. This matters rhetorically: a demand letter citing claim 1 cannot be answered with "claim 1 is dead," and neither can the patent owner claim "this patent has survived IPR." Both narratives are unavailable.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted against the '165 patent, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered by anyone — no petitioner, no privies, no real parties in interest, and no "reasonably could have raised" bar. Every prior-art ground is still on the table, in every forum. That is a genuinely favorable starting position for a defendant considering a parallel IPR: you are not boxed into a narrow § 311(b) ground set defined by someone else's earlier petition, and you do not inherit another party's claim-construction positions or expert record. The flip side: the patent owner has also never had its claims narrowed by an adverse Board construction, so the full breadth of claim 1 — including the functional "specify a first area … and a second area" language, which reads quite broadly — is still live.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern on this patent exists because there are no petitioners. Two adjacent observations are worth flagging, though neither involves the '165 patent:

• Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. is not a passive patent owner on the PTAB side. Its U.S. affiliate, Hamamatsu Corporation, was the petitioner in IPR2017-00909, challenging Harvard's U.S. Patent No. 8,080,467, with Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. and Photonics Management Corporation named as real parties in interest (petition PDF). That proceeding arose out of the SiOnyx/Harvard v. Hamamatsu litigation (D. Mass. No. 1:15-cv-13488), which went to a jury verdict and then to the Federal Circuit. The lesson for a defendant is that this patent owner litigates hard, is sophisticated about PTAB procedure, and will not be surprised by an IPR. It is not evidence of any proceeding on the '165 patent, and I am not suggesting otherwise.
• The '165 patent is one of a large continuation family claiming priority to the same 2017-07-11 disclosure — related grants include U.S. 10,809,509; 11,131,839; 11,169,092; 11,353,402; 11,391,934; 11,630,064; 11,822,066; 11,874,224; and 12,031,911 (per PatentLeaderboard's inventor listing, which mirrors USPTO records). That family structure is the single most important defensive planning fact here: a targeted IPR on the '165 patent alone may simply push an assertion onto a sibling patent with materially the same disclosure. Any invalidity strategy should be scoped across the family, and any IPR petition should be drafted with the sibling claims in mind.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and you wanted to cite an FWD: there is none. There is no Final Written Decision to link or quote. Do not represent to a court or to opposing counsel that any claim of the '165 patent has been invalidated — it has not been adjudicated anywhere at the PTAB. The claim-by-claim table above is the granted text, not a disposition.

Confirm the negative before relying on it. Run the patent number directly in PTAB E2E (both "Patent Number" and "Party Name" searches; also try "Hamamatsu") and check the USPTO Patent Center transaction history for the '165 file and for application 16/629,326. Also check the sibling patents listed above — a petition may have been filed against a family member rather than the '165 patent itself.

If you are contemplating an IPR, the clock rules are the gating item. Under § 315(b), you have one year from service of a complaint alleging infringement of the '165 patent to file; miss it and the petition is barred. Under § 311(b), grounds are limited to § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications — no § 112 or § 101 theories, so claims 3–5's staining/fluorescence-substance limitations and claim 1's functional generator language must be attacked with prior art, not indefiniteness. Because there is no prior institution, there is no § 325(d) "same art already before the Office" strike against you, but note that the '165 patent's prosecution involved at least one related-family rejection record and an international search report citing Hamamatsu's own prior JP 2015-50223 and JP 2011-215073 (PCT/ISA/210 for a Hamamatsu family case) — art cited during prosecution is a § 325(d) risk area if you recycle it rather than materially improve on it.

If a proceeding does turn out to be pending (unindexed), get the milestones immediately. On institution, the Board's statutory deadline is a Final Written Decision within one year of the institution decision (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)), extendable up to six months for good cause. The date chain to pull from the docket is: petition filing date → Patent Owner Preliminary Response due (3 months) → institution decision deadline (3 months from POPR or last filing) → oral hearing → FWD due date. Any of those can be obtained from the case docket on PTAB E2E; Federal Circuit dispositions, if any, are on CourtListener — I found none for this patent.

Bottom line for the file memo. The correct statement is: "As of 2026-09-29, US 11,340,165 has no AIA trial history. No claim has been canceled or sustained. The patent stands un-narrowed and untested, and § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds no one. The absence of PTAB activity is a signal that this patent has either not been asserted in a way that justified a $300k+ IPR, or has been asserted only recently enough that the one-year § 315(b) window is still open for the party now receiving the demand." If you are that party, the window — not the docket — is your scarcest resource.

I'll reconstruct the ownership record for US 11340165. Let me verify the assignment data against primary sources.

Ownership Analysis — US 11340165 B2

Patent: Sample observation device and sample observation method
App. No.: 16/629,326 (national-stage of a PCT filed 2018-04-10; Paris priority 2017-07-11)
Granted: 2022-05-24 · Status: Active, adjusted expiration 2038-10-20
Assignee of record: Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (Shizuoka, Japan)

Note on sourcing: the assignment records for this patent were cross-checked against the Google Patents legal-events record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340165/en#legal-events) and the assignee directories (Seedtable, PatentLeaderboard). The USPTO Assignment Center search panel (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) renders as a client-side application and I could not extract the reel/frame and correspondent fields from the indexed record. Wherever the reel/frame or correspondent of record is not retrievable from an authoritative source, I say so rather than inventing a number.

Inventors

Pattern check: No unusual signals. All three inventors assigned to the same corporate employer, and no evidence of any inventor leaving Hamamatsu within 12 months of filing. Matsubara's 16-patent Hamamatsu portfolio (PatentLeaderboard) is consistent with a long-tenured staff inventor rather than a founder-inventor preparing to exit. No pre-fire-sale departure pattern.

Original assignee

Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. — a Japanese opto-electronics manufacturer founded 1953, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market (securities code 6965), with consolidated FY2025 net sales of ¥212.0 billion (~6,600 employees; ~90% global share in photomultiplier tubes).

• Primary line of business: R&D, manufacture, and sale of photodetectors, photomultiplier tubes, opto-semiconductors, light sources, imaging/measurement systems, and laser equipment.
• Does it ship products embodying the claims? Yes — the specification (Description, "sample observation device 1") expressly describes the device as a slide scanner or plate reader. Hamamatsu's own product line includes the NanoZoomer virtual slide scanner (3,000+ units sold) and life-science plate-reader/imaging instrumentation, i.e., the exact product category claimed. This is a genuine operating company commercializing in the claimed field, not a paper owner.
• Current status: Operating, profitable, publicly traded, and growing (FY2026 Q3 YTD sales ¥173.0 bn, +11.3% YoY). Not dissolved, not acquired, not in bankruptcy.

Hamamatsu is also an active patent enforcer in its own right (e.g., its Japanese Stealth Dicing litigation against Tokyo Seimitsu; its defense against SiOnyx in SiOnyx, LLC v. Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., No. 1:15-cv-13488-FDS). That litigation posture is that of a practicing manufacturer, not a licensing NPE.

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is recorded against US 11340165. There are no post-issuance transfers — no IP-holding LLC, no security interest, no license, no release, no merger, no change of name.

• Execution date not exposed / recorded 2020-01-08 — Reel/frame not retrievable from the indexed record (Assignment Center panel did not render to extraction; Google Patents legal-events entry titled only "Assigned to HAMAMATSU PHOTONICS K.K.")
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Norikazu Sugiyama; Masanori Matsubara; Satoshi Yamamoto (individually)
  • Assignee: Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the available record. I am not able to name the recording attorney/firm without fabricating data — flagging this as a gap rather than asserting a name.
  • Context: Routine employee-to-employer assignment of inventors' rights — the standard initial ownership conveyance, not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Because the Assignment Center returns no post-issuance records, the original assignee (Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.) still owns the patent. Per your framing, the absence of assignment records is itself the finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11340165
    2017 : Priority application filed
    2018 : US application filed by Hamamatsu Photonics
    2020 : Inventors assign rights to Hamamatsu Photonics
    2022 : Patent granted to Hamamatsu Photonics
    2038 : Adjusted expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

The record contains a single conveyance — the 2020-01-08 recording of the inventors' interest (Sugiyama, Matsubara, Yamamoto) to Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. — and nothing after it. There is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading chain, no privateering, and no defensive aggregation; every NPE signal in the checklist is either not present or, for the correspondent field, unassessable because the Assignment Center record could not be extracted. The ownership chain accordingly terminates at a large, publicly traded operating manufacturer that commercializes products (slide scanners / plate readers) in the claimed field, which is the opposite of the NPE pattern this analysis is designed to surface — but because the sole record is the original assignment and the reel/frame and correspondent are not verifiable from the sources reachable here, the framework's own rule caps this at "insufficient data" rather than a clean operating-company finding.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the mirrored https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — search patent number 11340165; also https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340165/en#legal-events.

Caveat: no invented reel/frame or correspondent has been supplied. If you need the reel/frame and the recording attorney of record confirmed, that requires a direct query of the Assignment Center UI (or a USPTO Assignment Search API pull for app. 16/629,326), which was not extractable from the indexed sources used here.

I'll research US patent 11340165 and its prior-art citations. Let me search for the patent record and citation data.

Let me search for the specific prior-art citations listed on this patent's face.

The citation lists aren't appearing directly. Let me try more targeted queries for the front-page references of this patent and its publication.

I was able to confirm the patent's identity and its in‑specification prior‑art references, but I was not able to pull the complete examiner "References Cited" front‑page list for US 11,340,165 through the searches available in this session. I'll be explicit about what is confirmed versus what I could not verify, and I will not invent citation entries.

1. Patent confirmed — no other number substituted

Subject matter: a light‑sheet ("planar light") sample‑observation device for a sample container whose well is partitioned by a membrane filter into a first and a second sample‑holding space. Light of a wavelength transmitted through the membrane is used so that fluorescence from both spaces is captured in one fluorescent‑light image; areas corresponding to each space are then separated and analyzed (cell‑invasion assay readout).

2. Important caveat on the citation list

• The Google Patents text I was given for US 11,340,165 contains the description and claims, but not the front‑page "(56) References Cited" table.
• My web searches did not return the USPTO/Google Patents "Patent Citations" (examiner‑cited U.S. patent documents) list for US 11,340,165 specifically. I therefore cannot present that list without fabricating it, which I will not do.
• What I can state authoritatively are the references cited inside the patent's own specification, which appear in the authoritative text. These are listed below, with an honest §102 analysis.

3. Prior art cited in the specification of US 11,340,165

A. Non‑Patent Literature

A1. Kramer et al., "In vitro cell migration and invasion assays"

• Full citation: Nina Kramer et al., Mutation Research 752 (2013) 10–24.
• Category: Non‑patent literature (assay methodology review).
• Description: Reviews Transwell/Boyden‑chamber migration and invasion assays in which cells traverse a microporous membrane filter separating two compartments; cells that migrate/ invade are labeled and quantified (typically by fluorescence/absorbance plate readers).
• Potential §102 relevance: Relates to the membrane‑filter assay platform and to quantifying migrated cells — i.e., it supplies the biological context of the claims. It does not disclose the claimed planar‑light irradiation, sample scanning relative to a light‑sheet irradiation surface, the partial‑image generation of separate areas corresponding to the two holding spaces, or the observation‑image generation. It cannot anticipate independent claim 1 (device) or the independent method claim in their entirety under §102. At most it is a §103 obviousness reference for the problem background, and it could be relevant to a hypothetical claim directed only to observing migrated vs. non‑migrated cells.

A2. Hulkower & Herber, "Cell Migration and Invasion Assays as Tools for Drug Discovery"

• Full citation: Keren I. Hulkower & Renee L. Herber, Pharmaceutics 2011, 3, 107–124; doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics3010107.
• Description: Review of migration/invasion assay formats (including membrane‑filter/chamber assays) used in drug discovery.
• Potential §102 relevance: Same as A1 — background on membrane‑filter assays and fluorescence readout. No disclosure of the light‑sheet imaging architecture or the two‑area partial‑image processing. Not anticipatory of the device or method claims.

A3. Mastyugin et al., "A Quantitative High‑Throughput Endothelial Cell Migration Assay"

• Full citation: Vladimir Mastyugin et al., Journal of Biomolecular Screening 9(8), 2004.
• Description: A high‑throughput endothelial cell‑migration assay, again based on a membrane‑filter barrier between compartments.
• Potential §102 relevance: Same category as A1/A2. Provides assay background; does not disclose planar‑light excitation, scanning, inclined observation axis, or the area‑separation/partial‑image generation. Not anticipatory of the claims as written.

Collective note on A1–A3: These three are exactly the references the applicant characterizes as the state of the art for "evaluating the mobility of a sample such as a cancer cell using a membrane filter." They are the problem‑statement references. None discloses the claimed optical/processing solution, so they are §103‑type references, not clean §102 anticipations.

B. Patent literature cited within the specification

B1. U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203 (cited as "Oblique Plane Microscopy")

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 8,582,203 — cited in the description as the optical system of "Oblique Plane Microscopy" (OPM).
• Date: granted in 2013 (I was not able to independently re‑verify the exact grant date, assignee, or inventors within this session, so I flag that bibliographic detail as unconfirmed rather than asserting it).
• Description (per how the patent is used): An OPM‑type optical system that forms an image of observation light along an observation axis inclined relative to the illumination plane — cited as an alternative to the line‑scan + inclined‑axis combination used in the embodiment.
• Potential §102 relevance: This is the reference most directly relevant to the inclined observation axis / image‑formation optical system feature (the device's "image formation optical system that has an observation axis inclined with respect to the irradiation surface," a dependent feature in the specification's device claim set). If US 8,582,203 discloses inclined‑plane image formation, it is relevant to that dependent feature and to the imaging architecture generally. However, it does not disclose the membrane‑filter sample container with first/second sample‑holding spaces, the membrane‑transmitted excitation wavelength selection, the specification of the two areas in the fluorescent image, or the generation of first/second observation‑image data. It therefore cannot anticipate claim 1 or the independent method claim under §102; it is relevant as an obviousness/inherent‑architecture reference and could bear on a claim drawn purely to the inclined‑axis image‑formation optical system.

4. Related Hamamatsu family material (flagged — NOT confirmed as US 11,340,165's own citations)

US 11,340,165 belongs to a cluster of Hamamatsu "sample observation" applications sharing inventors/priority. One closely related sibling (whose subject matter is scattered‑light‑based analysis‑area setting) surfaced with the following search‑report references:

JP 2005‑024532 (A); JP 2010‑072014 (A); JP 2005‑181145 (A); JP 2013‑507612 (A); JP 2006‑509246 (A); US 2013/0129181 (A1); and Carucci et al., "Line‑scanning, stage scanning confocal microscope," Proceedings of SPIE, 2016‑03‑11, Vol. 9703, pp. 97030F‑1–97030F‑7.

Do not treat these as US 11,340,165's citations. They belong to a different member of the family (the scattered‑light/analysis‑region invention, e.g., the counterpart of US 11,169,092 / JP 7125936), and I could not confirm they were cited against US 11,340,165. I include them only as a lead for where the family's examination‑relevant art lives. Their relevance to US 11,340,165 would be to the imaging/scattered‑light features, again §103‑type rather than §102 anticipation.

5. Bottom line

1. No reference I could confirm cites or anticipates US 11,340,165's independent device claim or independent method claim in their entirety under 35 U.S.C. § 102. The references cited in the specification (Kramer 2013; Hulkower & Herber 2011; Mastyugin 2004) supply the membrane‑filter assay background only, and US 8,582,203 supplies the inclined‑plane (OPM) imaging concept only.
2. The strongest §102 candidate for any single claim element is US 8,582,203 vis‑à‑vis the inclined‑observation‑axis image‑formation feature (a dependent feature), and possibly §103 against that element — but not against the claim as a whole.
3. The A1–A3 assay papers are best characterized as §103 references (problem/field) rather than §102 anticipations.

What would be needed to give you a fully authoritative answer

A definitive claim‑by‑claim §102/§103 mapping requires the actual front‑page "(56) References Cited" list of US 11,340,165 from the USPTO PatentCenter/Google Patents record, which I could not retrieve here. If you can provide that list (or a link to the granted‑patent PDF's front page), I will map each cited U.S. patent document and foreign document to specific claims, dates, and §102/§103 grounds with exact quotes.

Sources used: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340165/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210116373A1/en ; https://www.patents-review.com/a/20210116373-sample-observation-device-sample-observation-method.html ; https://ipforce.jp/patent-jp-P_B1-7125936 (sibling family, flagged).

I'll ground this analysis by pulling the cited-art record and the referenced third-party patent before building the §103 combinations.

Let me pull the granted claim set and the "References Cited" record for this patent, plus check the closely-related Hamamatsu filings that surfaced.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,165 B2

0. Scope, record, and a required caveat

Patent data (as listed on the page): US 11,340,165 B2, "Sample observation device and sample observation method"; Appl. No. 16/629,326; filed 2018‑04‑10; priority 2017‑07‑11; granted 2022‑05‑24; assignee Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.; inventors Norikazu Sugiyama, Masanori Matsubara, Satoshi Yamamoto. Prior‑art keywords listed: image data, light, sample, observation, area.

Caveat on the prior‑art record. The page's "Prior Art" content that I was able to retrieve consists of (a) the "PRIOR ART LITERATURE" section, which cites only Non‑Patent Literature 1–3, and (b) the specification's own reference to U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203 as an alternative optical scheme. I could not retrieve a "References Cited"/U.S. patent‑document table for US 11,340,165, and I could not retrieve the granted claim text verbatim. Accordingly:

• Claims below are reconstructed from the "Solution to Problem" and "Definitions" passages, which mirror claim 1 and its dependents; numbering is my inference, not a verbatim quotation.
• I therefore analyze §103 using the art actually named on the page plus the background art the specification itself acknowledges. Where I rely on anything else, I flag it.

1. The claims, element by element (reconstructed)

Claim 1 (device): a sample observation device for a sample in a container having first (V1) and second (V2) holding spaces partitioned by a membrane filter, comprising:

Dependents: (2) scattered‑light imaging and using the scattered‑light image to locate V1/V2; (3) first planar light (transmitted) + second planar light (non‑transmitted), first/second fluorescent light image data, areas in the first specified from the second; (4) first and second fluorophores excited respectively by transmitted/non‑transmitted wavelengths; (5) first fluorophore in the sample plus a solution containing the second fluorophore in both spaces; (6) counting samples in each space; (7) image‑formation optical system with an observation axis inclined to the irradiation surface. Method claims mirror these.

2. The prior art of record and what each reference teaches

NPL 1 — Kramer et al., In vitro cell migration and invasion assays, Mutat. Res. 752 (2013) 10–24 (verified, PubMed PMID 22940039). Reviews Boyden‑chamber/Transwell assays: two compartments partitioned by a porous membrane (polycarbonate/PET, ~8 µm pores), Matrigel coating, chemoattractant gradient; migrated cells on the far face are labeled and read out (fluorescent dyes, microscopy, plate readers). Critically, the review expressly catalogues the limitations of the standard trans‑membrane format, including the absence of information about the non‑migrated population and the inability to separate invasion from proliferation/death — the exact problem the '165 patent states at col. "Technical Problem."

NPL 2 — Hulkower & Herber, Cell Migration and Invasion Assays as Tools for Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutics 3(1) (2011) 107–24 (verified, PMID 24310428; PMC3857040). Reviews transmembrane assays in the context of high‑throughput/high‑content imaging, fluorescent labeling of cells, and the move to physiologically relevant cell‑based formats; teaches plate‑scale imaging readouts of migration/invasion.

NPL 3 — Mastyugin et al., A Quantitative High‑Throughput Endothelial Cell Migration Assay, J. Biomol. Screen. 9(8) (2004) (verified as a cited work and DOI 10.1177/1087057104269495). Fluorescent‑labeling, quantitated, high‑throughput readout of cells that have traversed a membrane.

U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203 B2 (Dunsby et al.), "Optical arrangement for oblique plane microscopy" (verified full text; pre‑grant publication US 2011/0261446 A1). Teaches:

• illumination of an oblique plane in a sample using a light sheet (SPIM/HILO‑type sheet illumination), and imaging that oblique plane with a detection optical axis angled with respect to the illumination axis (≈90° at the sample), correcting the resulting aberrations with a second/third optical subassembly;
• scanning the light sheet/sample to build up volumetric data (the SCAPE‑type swept‑sheet variant);
• that because only one objective is at the sample, "conventional sample preparation techniques, e.g. glass microscope slides, can be employed" — i.e., the technique is expressly presented as compatible with standard, plate‑like sample holders;
• beam‑combining optics and multiple illumination beams (structured oblique illumination), relevant to dependent claim 3.

The '165 patent itself concedes this art: "an optical system of oblique plane microscopy described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203 may be adopted" as an alternative implementation, and generally that "another scheme may be adopted as long as a cross section in a depth direction of the well … can be measured at a time."

Note on near‑miss art that is not available. Several Hamamatsu sibling filings surfaced in search (e.g., the family with priority 2017‑07‑26, including EP 3660572 / US 11,874,224; JP 2018‑063292; JP 2019‑184401; EP 3779555, priority 2018‑04‑09). These describe the same planar‑light + inclined‑observation‑axis architecture, but their effective filing dates are after 2017‑07‑11, so they are not §102(a)(2)/§103 art against this patent on the present record. They would become relevant only if the '165 claims were shown not to be entitled to the 2017‑07‑11 priority date. I flag this as a conditional rather than asserting it.

3. Graham factors: the differences actually in dispute

Against NPL 1–3 alone, every element except 1a–1f's optical implementation is disclosed: the V1/V2 membrane‑partitioned container, the sample, fluorescent labeling, and the analysis need. The genuine differences are:

• D1 — using planar light (a light sheet) whose wavelength is transmitted through the membrane filter as the excitation, so that fluorophores on both sides of the filter are excited in a single acquisition;
• D2 — automatically segmenting the fluorescence image into two compartment areas and generating two separate observation images from that single scan;
• D3 — the inclined observation axis / scanning configuration (dependent claim 7, but architecturally central).

4. Proposed §103 combinations

Combination A (primary attack on claim 1 and the method counterpart)

NPL 1 (or NPL 2/NPL 3) in view of U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203, further in view of routine image processing.

Motivation / KSR rationales.

1. Problem identified in the art itself. NPL 1 and NPL 2 state the very deficiency the patent addresses — that reading only the migrated population makes it "difficult to distinguish … cell proliferation or cell death from the invasion ability," and that removing non‑migrated cells by swabbing loses viability information. The patent restates this verbatim as its "Technical Problem." A POSITA seeking to improve invasion‑assay accuracy therefore had an explicit design incentive to image both compartments.
2. Predictable use of a known technique to improve a similar device. US 8,582,203 supplies optically sectioned, sheet‑based fluorescent imaging that is expressly asserted to work with "conventional sample preparation techniques … glass microscope slides" — i.e., with plate/well formats — which is exactly the Transwell‑in‑a‑well setting.
3. Combining known elements with predictable results. Sheet illumination through a visibly transmissive porous membrane yields two fluorescence bands, one per compartment; segmenting at the filter's image and counting objects in each is the ordinary output of the assay art plus routine image analysis.

Reasonable expectation of success. High: OPM was demonstrated on standard specimens, Transwell membranes were already imaged optically, and the post‑processing (isolate two image regions; project; count) is deterministic, not speculative.

Combination B (dependent claim 2 — scattered‑light‑based area specification)

Combination A + the routine technique of imaging membrane‑borne scattered/reflected light to locate the filter. Both NPL 1–3 and general microscopy practice show that porous membranes scatter incident light and are therefore visually identifiable in transmission/reflection. The patent concedes the point ("the scattered light is generated when the planar light L2 is scattered in the membrane filter 6"). Motivation: the membrane's image is the natural boundary between V1 and V2, and locating it photometrically avoids manual cropping.

Combination C (dependent claims 3–5 — dual‑wavelength discrimination)

Combination A + standard viability/fluorescent dyes with distinguishable excitation spectra. NPL 1–3 and the fluorescent‑assay literature teach multiplexed labeling and viability dyes; the patent's own examples (calcein AM, exc. ~490 nm; calcein blue, exc. ~360 nm) are standard reagents. Motivation: if the sheet's wavelength is transmitted by the membrane, both compartments fluoresce and the image is ambiguous; if a second sheet at an excitation wavelength blocked by the membrane illuminates only one compartment, the resulting single‑compartment reference image resolves which region is which. Incorporating a dichroic/mirror to make the second beam coaxial (claim 3's arrangement) is expressly taught in OPM's structured‑oblique‑illumination optics (US 8,582,203 / US 2011/0261446). Adding a fluorescent probe to the medium rather than the cells (claim 5) is the ordinary alternative of labeling the medium instead of the cells.

Combination D (dependent claim 6 — counting)

Combination A + conventional object counting in fluorescence images (NPL 2's high‑content imaging context). Counting labelled migrated cells is the standard readout of every trans‑membrane assay in NPL 1–3; extending the identical counting step to the non‑migrated compartment adds nothing new.

Combination E (dependent claim 7 — inclined observation axis)

US 8,582,203 alone, applied in the Combination A setting. The inclined detection axis relative to the irradiation plane, with a 10°–80° range, is the core of OPM, and the patent's own 10°–80°/20°–70°/30°–65° ranges read as routine optimization of a known parameter rather than a criticality.

5. Counterarguments the patentee can press (and their strength)

1. No reference teaches sheeting through the filter to excite both compartments simultaneously. This is the strongest point: OPM addresses oblique‑plane aberration correction, not membrane-crossing illumination, and the assay literature never suggests using the filter as a transmissive window for the excitation sheet. Strength: moderate — it is a difference in application, but the combination supplies the missing piece by predictable substitution, and the "transmitted wavelength" limitation is largely an inherent property of a known membrane plus a routine choice of visible excitation.
2. Possible teaching away. Standard Transwell protocols (NPL 1–3) contemplate swabbing/removing non‑migrated cells, arguably directing away from imaging them. Strength: weak — that is a protocol preference, not a statement of technical impossibility, and the same references simultaneously complain about the limitation it causes.
3. Architectural/claimed-module specificity. The claim recites distinct "partial image generation," "observation image generation," and "analysis" units. Strength: weak — these are functional, software‑implemented modules, and functional partitioning of standard image‑processing steps is a routine implementation choice.
4. Secondary considerations. No evidence of unexpected results, industry praise, licensing, or copying was in the material I reviewed; absent that record, there is nothing to rebut the prima facie case. If Hamamatsu holds product‑level evidence tying a commercial light‑sheet plate reader to these claims (a plausible avenue given the sibling families noted in §2), that would be the patentee's best rebuttal and should be investigated before relying on this analysis.

6. Bottom line

• No single reference of record anticipates any claim; this is a §103 case, not §102.
• Claim 1 and the parallel method claim are, in my assessment, moderately vulnerable under §103 as: NPL 1 (or NPL 2/NPL 3) in view of U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,203, optionally with routine object‑counting software — the motivation being the limitation the assay references themselves identify, and the sheet‑illumination/scanning/inclined‑axis machinery being supplied by the Dunsby patent, which the specification itself names.
• Dependent claims 2–7 are more exposed than claim 1, because each adds a step squarely known in the art: scattered‑light localization of the membrane (claim 2), dual‑wavelength excitation with dichroic beam combination (claim 3, echoing OPM's structured oblique illumination), standard viability dyes or a fluorescent medium (claims 4–5), fluorescent object counting (claim 6), and the inclined observation axis (claim 7, the core of the cited OPM patent). If claim 1 falls, the dependents are unlikely to rescue it.
• The patent's best defense rests on the absence of any teaching to transmit a light sheet through a membrane filter so as to excite and separately image both compartments in one scan, ideally reinforced by objective evidence of unexpected results.
• Verification gap to close: the "References Cited" U.S.‑patent table and the granted claim text were not retrievable from the page I was given. A formal analysis should re‑run against the printed claims and the full IDS to confirm that no closer §102(a)(2) art (e.g., a pre‑2017‑07‑11 sheet‑illumination filing directed to membrane/insert assays) was overlooked.