US 11346781

I'll check for litigation/CAFC activity on this patent, then summarize based on the authoritative patent text provided.

Search results for US 11,346,781

USPTO / CAFC / litigation search — outcome: no matching records found.

I ran targeted searches for the literal identifier 11346781 and for "US11346781" / "11,346,781" in combination with CAFC 2026 docket language and litigation language. Nothing returned tied this number to:

• any CAFC appeal docket (2026 or otherwise),
• any PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR),
• any district court complaint, or
• any other litigation or reexamination.

Two cautions on that negative result:

1. The only literal 11346781 hit in the litigation-oriented search was an unrelated Brazilian corporate-registry entry (a consumer energy consortium, "NORDEN ENERGIA"), not a patent. Per the no-auto-correction rule I flagged it and discarded it as non-responsive.
2. A negative web-search result is not authoritative proof of the absence of litigation. Docket databases are not exhaustively indexed in general web search. I do not have authoritative confirmation either way.

What the search did surface that is on-point is the patent's own family data (idiyas mirror and the Justia page for the pre-grant publication), which is consistent with the authoritative full text you supplied.

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Bibliographic summary (from the authoritative full text)

Note: the "Suzhou Nuclear Powerresearch Institute Co., Ltd" spelling appears in the patent record as SUZHOU NUCLEAR POWERRESEARCH INSTITUTE CO.,LTD; I have not normalized it.

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Abstract (as issued)

An optical fiber laser induced breakdown spectroscopy detection device and a detection method are provided. The device comprises an optical fiber LIBS detector and a master control detection system. The master control detection system is installed in the master control room of a nuclear power plant, and the optical fiber LIBS detector is configured to perform detection in a pipeline. The master control detection system and the optical fiber LIBS detector are connected to each other via the transmission optical fiber and the control signal line. The remote on-line detection of the positioning and fixed point of the designated area of the inner wall of the main pipeline of the nuclear power plant can be detected on line in the master control room of the nuclear power plant.

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Independent-claim overview (plain language)

Important limitation on this section: the "Claims (7)" block in the source text I was given is truncated. It cuts off partway through claim 1 ("…an ex"). The Google Patents full-text view and the Justia family page I retrieved did not supply the remaining claim language either. So I can describe claim 1's architecture with confidence from the truncated text plus the specification, but I cannot state the exact wording or numbering of the second independent claim with high confidence. Treat the claim-level details below as my best reconstruction, explicitly flagged.

Claim 1 — the device claim (apparatus).
An optical fiber laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) detection device with two physically separated assemblies:

• (a) An optical fiber LIBS detector that travels inside the pipeline. It carries an optical fiber LIBS probe, whose body is a two-piece cavity — a probe external cavity and a probe internal cavity joined at their tail portions by a threaded connection. The probe head (external regulator) and the lens holder (internal regulator) are both threaded/adjustable, so the object distance U (fiber-to-lens) and image distance V (lens-to-pipeline-wall) can be trimmed to land the laser focus exactly on the inner pipe wall. A plano-convex lens (25.4 mm diameter, 16 mm focal length) sits in the internal regulator held by a snap ring; stop rings fix the two adjustments; the fiber couples in via a connector at the tail. Two air nozzles on the external regulator are aimed at each other so opposed equal-flow gas streams meet and stagnate at the center, then flow axially, bathing the breakdown spot in a controlled gas medium (e.g., Ar, He, N₂) — the mechanism for boosting signal-to-background on trace elements. A 90° opening lets gas escape.
• (b) A master control detection system installed in the nuclear plant's main control room, connected to the detector by a transmission optical fiber and a control signal line (long-distance remote operation).

The detector's mobility/locating subsystem (recited in claim 1 and dependent claims): a lifting platform carrying a rotational mechanism, with a telescopic mechanism on the turntable end and the LIBS probe at the telescopic end; a lifting drive mechanism and moving components below the platform; a radial distance sensor, an illuminating lamp and a camera at the telescopic/probe joint; a rotation stopper at the rotary/telescopic joint to prevent over-rotation and fiber damage. The moving assembly is two lateral driving wheels (each with its own side wheel drive mechanism, permitting differential steering) plus two driven wheels, all on wheel telescopic rods, with a forward distance sensor and lateral distance sensor(s). Sensors are high-frequency ultrasonic probes; the drive/actuator packages are stainless-steel sealed and the detector body is stainless steel.

The master-control optical train (also in claim 1): a nanosecond laser (Nd:YAG, 1064 nm, 1–10 Hz, 10 ns FWHM, ≤150 mJ) with a first beam splitter and second beam splitter tapping off to a photodetector/oscilloscope (timing) and a **laser energy meter (energy monitor) respectively; a short-wavelength-pass dichroic mirror (805 nm cutoff) that reflects the 1064 nm pump into a fiber coupler and transmits the returning plasma light; plasma photons travel the reversible path back through the same transmission fiber, are collimated by the first plano-convex lens (12.7 mm dia., 100 mm FL), pass the dichroic mirror, and are focused by a second plano-convex lens (12.7 mm dia., 40 mm FL) into a collecting optical fiber feeding a spectrometer. Spectrometer → computer → control module → control signal line. Each of the nanosecond laser, ICCD and spectrometer is tied to a programmable pulse delay generator. The transmission fiber is a polyimide-coated multimode fiber (steel-jacketed; 6 mm outer diameter, 600 µm core, 0.22 NA, 660 µm clad, 710 µm coating, 185–1100 nm, 1 GW/cm², −190 °C to 350 °C service); the collecting fiber is 1 m silica-clad multimode, 400 µm core, 0.22 NA.

At least one further independent claim — the method claim.
The specification's SUMMARY recites a method mirroring the apparatus: "A method for optical fiber laser induced breakdown spectroscopy detection includes: step 1 of adjusting detector; step 2 of positioning the detector; and step 3 of analyzing and processing detection." The three steps are:

1. Adjusting — pick the external regulator matching the pipe's nominal inner diameter; tune the four wheel telescopic rods and their angles so all four wheels seat on the pipe wall; equalize the two lateral distance sensor readings to center the detector in X; extend the telescopic rod to seat against the wall; set the laser to internal trigger, set ICCD gate width/delay, then iterate object distance U (internal regulator) and image distance V (external regulator) until the element line intensity is maximal.
2. Positioning — raise/lower the lifting platform based on lateral-vs-radial sensor comparison to center the detector in Z (turntable at pipe center); turn on the lamp, extend/retract and auto-zoom the camera to image the wall; set equal wheel speeds for straight travel; use a forward-distance threshold to detect bends and steer by differential wheel speed; stop at the target, rotate the mechanism to bring the target area into the camera image center, turn the lamp off, then rotate a fixed angle to swing the LIBS probe into the camera's former position and extend until the external regulator seats on the wall.
3. Analyzing/processing — external trigger mode with the delay generator setting laser fire and ICCD gate; open the gas valve to fill the probe with the chosen medium; sample an environmental background spectrum before each measurement; fire 50 pulses at 1 Hz; accumulate the 50 plasma spectra; compare against the NIST spectral database; pick optimal interference-free/self-absorption-free lines; and build a calibration curve against nuclear-plant LIBS reference-standard databases to yield elemental contents. FIG. 6 shows a demonstration cumulative spectrum for Z3CN20-09M nuclear main-pipeline steel (Fe, Cr, Ni, Mn, Mo, Co, Cu, Nb, Si detected; trace lines weak).

Whether that method text is presented as a single independent claim or split across claims, and its exact claim number within the 7, is something I could not verify from the source text available to me.

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Confidence and caveats

• High confidence: patent number, title, assignees, inventors, filing date (Mar. 20, 2019), issue date (May 31, 2022), priority (Nov. 19, 2018), application number 17/043,720, abstract, 7-claim count, and the device architecture of claim 1 — all taken from the authoritative full text provided.
• Moderate confidence: the characterization of the method content as lying in a second independent claim. That is an inference from the SUMMARY section and the 7-claim count, not from the (truncated) claim set.
• Explicitly uncertain / not verified: exact wording and numbering of claims 2–7; exact scope boundaries of the method independent claim; and any litigation or CAFC activity (none found, but absence in my searches is not proof of absence).

If you need the verbatim claim set for a freedom-to-operate or infringement read, pull the issued patent's claim block directly from USPTO Patent Center or the Google Patents "Claims" tab for US 11,346,781 B2 — the copy I was supplied is cut off mid-claim 1, so it cannot support an element-by-element claim chart as-is.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11346781 across patent litigation sources.

Initial searches returned no relevant hits. Let me search the dedicated litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,346,781

Result: No litigation found

I searched for litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,346,781 ("Optical fiber laser induced breakdown spectroscopy detection device and method") and found no evidence of any litigation — no district court case, no ITC investigation (§ 337), no PTAB proceeding, and no appeal.

Sources searched and what they returned

Why this is unsurprising

The patent's profile is inconsistent with a typical litigation campaign:

• Owners/assignees: Xi'an Jiaotong University and Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. (both Chinese institutional/research entities), per the patent record. These are research institutions, not patent-assertion entities.
• Field: Fiber-delivered LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) for inspecting the inner walls of nuclear power plant main pipelines — a narrow industrial/scientific instrumentation field.
• Status: Active, granted 2022-05-31, anticipated expiration 2039-03-20. No reassignment to a monetization entity appears on the record (the only assignment logged is the inventor-to-institution assignment on 2021-07-06).
• Family: U.S. application 17/043,720 is a § 371 national-stage entry of PCT/CN2019/078908, claiming priority to Chinese application 201811377546.3. No U.S. continuation/divisional activity was observed.

Confidence and caveats

Confidence level: Moderate-to-high that no U.S. litigation exists involving this specific patent number.

Important caveats, stated honestly:

1. I did not obtain a direct hit from the specific Unified Patents case-list URL (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — the site-restricted query returned nothing, which is consistent with (but not conclusive proof of) no asserted cases. I could not independently confirm a zero-result page load.
2. PACER is not freely/fully searchable by patent number through the tools available to me, so I cannot rule out a recently filed, low-profile case that has not yet been surfaced in secondary aggregators.
3. Absence of evidence in the aggregators searched is not proof of absence. RPX Insight, Unified Patents, and CourtListener cover the large majority of U.S. patent suits, but a very recent filing (e.g., within the last few weeks) may not yet be indexed.
4. I found no Federal Circuit appeal referencing this patent.

Recommended verification steps for a definitive answer

To convert this into a conclusive negative, I would recommend running the following, which are the authoritative sources and are not fully covered by free web search:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment Search — confirm no assignment to a litigation-oriented entity and check the "Litigation" tab if available.
2. Docket Alarm / Lex Machina / Docket Navigator — paid dockets that index by patent number across all federal districts and the ITC.
3. PACER Case Locator — party-name search under "Xi'an Jiaotong University" and "Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute."
4. USITC EDIS — check for any § 337 investigation naming this patent.
5. PTAB Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (E2E) system — confirm no IPR/PGR on this patent number. My searches of PTAB-related document repositories returned no hits.

If you'd like, I can draft a formal "no litigation" declaration with the specific search strings and dates used, suitable for a diligence file or an IDS/litigation-status representation.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" block against public PTAB/CAFC sources before writing the report.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks (PTAB E2E pattern, reexamination, CAFC) before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,346,781: 0 (zero). No IPR, no PGR, no CBM. Breakdown by status is therefore N/A: zero active, zero claims invalidated, zero claims sustained, zero settled, zero institution denials. Every one of the patent's 7 issued claims is UNTESTED at the Board. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened" — it is "the patent is virgin territory at the PTAB, and there is no petitioner estoppel, no FWD, and no Board-construed claim term to anchor anyone." Whoever files first gets to write on a clean slate (§ 315(e)(2) estoppel is defined by that petitioner's own grounds, not by anyone else's).

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Proceedings

None. There is nothing to list, and I will not manufacture a proceeding number to fill this section.

The canonical structured source supplied for this task states, verbatim:

The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. Web search may surface older or recently-filed proceedings the ODP hasn't indexed yet — flag any you find — but the default should be "no PTAB activity on file."

I ran the web-search cross-checks the task requires, and I found nothing to flag. Search log:

Two numeral collisions I explicitly discarded rather than conflated (consistent with the no-auto-correction rule already applied in the earlier sections of this analysis):

1. 11346781 — a Brazilian corporate-registry entry (energy consumers' consortium), not a patent. Same collision the litigation section flagged.
2. U.S. 11,634,781 — a different patent number that is one digit-transposition away. It appears in generic 10-Q language. It is not this patent and must not be imported into this report.

I also found no CAFC appeal whose opinion or docket references this patent, and no reexamination (ex parte or inter partes) on this patent number.

What I could not do, stated plainly: the PTAB's authoritative PTAB E2E / PTAB Center system at https://e2e.uspto.gov/ is a session-based search interface that I cannot query directly from here, and PACER is not freely bulk-searchable. So I am relying on (a) the USPTO ODP structured block supplied as canonical, and (b) negative results across secondary aggregators. A very recent petition (filed within the last few weeks) could theoretically be unindexed — see "Recommended next steps."

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 7 claims are UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,346,781 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed in an AIA trial. There is no reissue or reexamination certificate altering the claim set. The granted claim set — 7 claims, of which claim 1 is the device/apparatus independent claim and (per the specification's SUMMARY) at least one further independent claim is directed to the three-step detection method — stands exactly as it issued on 2022-05-31. I'll repeat the caveat already flagged in the earlier sections: the claim text supplied to me is truncated mid-claim-1, so I cannot be more granular than "7 claims, all untested." For a claim chart, pull the verbatim claim set from PTAB E2E or the Google Patents "Claims" tab.

Estoppel landscape: a blank field. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner and its privies, and only as to grounds raised or reasonably raisable. With zero proceedings there are zero estoppel bars on anybody. Practical consequences for a defendant considering a petition:

• No § 325(d) problem from prior Office treatment of the same art in an AIA trial (though the examiner's original prosecution record still exists and is fair game for a § 325(d) argument).
• No Fintiv/General Plastic history from an earlier petitioner on this patent to work around — though note the Board's discretionary-denial practice is in flux and the current posture should be re-checked at filing time.
• No Board claim construction on the adjustable object-distance/image-distance (U-plane) limitation, the opposed-air-nozzle stagnation arrangement, or the "reversible optical path" transit of plasma photons back through the same transmission fiber. All of those terms are unconstrued by the PTAB. That cuts both ways: it is an opportunity for a petitioner, and it removes the guidance a defendant would otherwise get from a prior FWD.

Pattern signals: there are none, and the absence is not the usual signal. In a consumer-electronics or software-assertion context, "a well-asserted patent eventually attracts an IPR" is a fair heuristic. It does not apply here, and I want to be candid about why. The owners are Xi'an Jiaotong University and Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. — the earlier litigation section already found no U.S. litigation, no ITE § 337 investigation, and no reassignment to a monetization entity. This is a narrow industrial/scientific instrumentation patent (fiber-delivered LIBS for inner-wall inspection of nuclear main pipelines, classified under G01N 21/718, G01N 2021/9542, G21C 17/017) with Chinese institutional owners and, as far as the record shows, no U.S. assertion campaign. The correct read of zero IPRs on this patent is "no one has been sued in the U.S.," not "the claims proved invulnerable." Do not tell a client this patent is "hardened." Tell them it is untested and unasserted.

One more practitioner-level observation: the assignee's Chinese-portfolio sibling — CN 201811377546.3 / ZL201811377546.3, published as CN109444111-family equivalents and the XJTU faculty listing shows 一种用于核电站主管道内的光纤LIBS探测装置及方法 — and a separate related U.S. application by the same group (US 2023/0243740 A1, "Online vacuum degree detection system and method based on single-fiber laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy") indicate an active, growing family. A defendant evaluating risk should be watching for continuations and new filings from this group, because those carry fresh, un-exhausted claim scope even though the '781 patent itself is clean.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant today:

• There is no FWD to cite and no invalidated claim to hide behind. You cannot tell opposing counsel that any claim of this patent is dead; none is. Any non-infringement or invalidity position must be built from scratch.
• Your § 282 invalidity case is fully available in district court — no § 315(e)(2) estoppel applies to you unless and until you file your own petition.
• If you are contemplating a petition, you are a first filer on this patent. Advantages: no General Plastic follow-on problem, no prior-petitioner estoppel, no prior FWD framing the issues. Risks: the same clean slate means no roadmap, so the petition must independently address every limitation — particularly the two air nozzles with opposed equal-flow openings that confront and stagnate at the center of the external regulator (with the 90° overflow opening perpendicular to the nozzle axis) and the threaded dual-regulator object-distance/image-distance adjustment with the stop rings. Those are the most likely places for a petitioner to win or lose on obviousness evidence.
• Before filing, re-verify the negative. PTAB status can change in a 1–2 week window. Check https://e2e.uspto.gov/ by application number 17/043,720 and by patent number 11,346,781, and check the USPTO Patent Center "Litigation"/"Proceedings" tabs for the same application. Cross-check CourtListener at https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2211%2C346%2C781%22&type=r and Docket Alarm / Docket Navigator (paid) by patent number.
• Docket watch: also search PACER by party name under "Xi'an Jiaotong University" and "Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute" to catch any newly filed U.S. action, and run a CourtListener RECAP alert on those party strings. If the owners ever assert this patent, an IPR petition would be due within one year of service of the complaint under § 315(b) — calendar that from the date of service, not from the date you learn of the case.

If you are the patent owner:

• The absence of any petition is a genuinely favorable posture — the claims have never been Board-tested, and there is no adverse FWD to defend on appeal. There is no CAFC appeal to track, no oral argument on the horizon, and no rehearing deadline to manage.
• Because there are no AIA proceedings, your post-grant exposure is limited to a future petition (which must be filed within the § 315(b) one-year window once you sue) or a reexamination request by any third party at any time.

Bottom line: no PTAB activity exists on US 11,346,781. I found no proceeding to report, and I am not going to invent one.

Sources checked: USPTO Open Data Portal (canonical, via supplied structured block); USPTO PTAB E2E/Center — https://e2e.uspto.gov/ (cannot be directly queried from here; manual verification recommended); CourtListener RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com/; plus the general-web searches logged in the table above.

I'll attempt to pull the actual assignment records before writing anything up.

Data-access note (read first)

I need to flag a hard limitation up front, because it bears directly on the deliverable.

I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record data for this patent. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy Assignment Search interface (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) both require interactive query execution, and my searches against those endpoints and against secondary mirrors returned no responsive records. What I have as the grounded assignment data is the legal-events block from the authoritative Google Patents full text you supplied, which shows exactly one post-filing ownership event (2021-07-06) and does not expose reel/frame or correspondent.

Consequently:

• Where the record is silent, I say so rather than reconstructing.
• No reel/frame is invented. Every entry below is tagged with its actual source.

Verification link: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "11346781" under Patent Number) and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

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Inventors

Seven named inventors, per the authoritative full text:

Basis for the inference, and its limits. The 2021-07-06 assignment record lists all seven inventors as assignors conveying to both Xi'an Jiaotong University and Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. jointly. A joint conveyance of that shape is the normal footprint of a university–institute collaboration, so the split above is plausible. However, the assignment record as surfaced does not allocate individual inventors to individual institutions, and I found no employment declaration on the record. I am therefore marking employer as inferred, not established. I also saw a Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute / CGN-affiliated author list including "Feng Xue" and "Zhao Zhang" in an unrelated ICONE32 conference document — note that Fei Xue ≠ Feng Xue and Zhi Zhang ≠ Zhao Zhang. These are different people and must not be conflated; I mention it only to flag the trap.

Unusual-pattern check — departing inventors: Not observed. All seven inventors appear as assignors on the single recorded conveyance. There is no record of any inventor assigning away separately, no inventor retained an undivided interest post-2021, and no evidence any inventor left either institution within 12 months of the 2019-03-20 filing. No fire-sale precursor signal.

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Original assignee

Two joint original assignees, both named on the face of the issued patent:

1. Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an, Shaanxi, CN)
2. Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. (Suzhou, Jiangsu, CN)

(The patent record spells the second entity SUZHOU NUCLEAR POWERRESEARCH INSTITUTE CO.,LTD; per the literal-interpretation rule I have not normalized that string, but I use the conventional spacing in prose for readability.)

Primary line of business. Both are research institutions, not product companies. Xi'an Jiaotong University is a major Chinese national university with a known laser-diagnostics / LIBS research group. Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute is a nuclear-industry R&D institute, and appears affiliated with the China General Nuclear Power (CGN) group — I saw it listed alongside CGN entities in HKEX patent-schedule filings. I flag that corporate-parentage point as moderate confidence, since the HKEX document I observed listed it as a co-owner on unrelated patents rather than stating group structure directly.

Product embodying the claims. Unclear / no evidence found. The specification describes an operating detector architecture (nanosecond Nd:YAG pump, fiber-delivered plasma generation, opposed-nozzle gas shroud, wheeled in-pipe crawler) with a demonstration result on Z3CN20-09M main-pipeline steel (FIG. 6). That is consistent with a working research prototype. I found no commercial product, no product page, and no vendor selling an apparatus reading on claim 1. I am not asserting absence of a product as a finding — only that I could not verify one.

Current status. Both assignees appear operating. No bankruptcy, dissolution, acquisition, or name change appears anywhere in the record. Neither is a US public company, so no 10-K/8-K trigger exists for the standard SEC cross-check.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded post-filing ownership event. That is the entire chain.

• Executed date: not surfaced / recorded 2021-07-06 — Reel/Frame: not available from the source I hold
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"
  • Assignors: HANG, YUHUA; Li, Xingwen; LIU, TAO; QIU, Yan; WU, JIAN; XUE, FEI; ZHANG, ZHI — i.e. all seven inventors, 1:1 with the inventive entity
  • Assignees: SUZHOU NUCLEAR POWERRESEARCH INSTITUTE CO.,LTD and XI'AN JIAOTONG UNIVERSITY (joint)
  • Correspondent: not available — the Assignment Center record was not retrievable, so I cannot name the attorney, firm, or address of record. This is the single most important gap in this analysis and I am not going to guess at it.
  • Context: Initial inventor-to-institution assignment. This is the founding title record, not a transfer. It was recorded after US national-stage entry (application 17/043,720) and about 4 months before the 2021-11-25 pre-grant publication, which is a routine sequencing for a PCT national-stage case where the inventors' papers are filed at entry. There is no prior recorded chain for this event to depend on — it is the root.

What is not in the record, and this is affirmative on the facts I hold:

• No security agreement or lien.
• No merger or change of name.
• No license or release recordation.
• No correction.
• No assignment of any kind after 2021-07-06. Title has not moved in over four years.

Caveat I must state plainly: Google Patents' legal-events panel is generally a mirror of recordation data, but it is not the Assignment Center, and it does not display reel/frame or correspondent. It is possible that additional recorded documents exist that were not surfaced to me. Given that the panel shows the 2021-07-06 entry with full assignor/assignee detail, I read it as complete — but "complete" here is a moderate-confidence call, not a verified one.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11346781
    2018 : CN priority application filed
    2019 : PCT application filed Mar 20
    2021 : Inventor assignment recorded Jul 6
         : Pre-grant publication Nov 25
    2022 : US patent issued May 31
    2039 : Anticipated expiration Mar 20

(Note: no post-2021 ownership event exists to plot. The 2039 row is the statutory term date, not a transfer.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Pattern read. Every substantive NPE indicator is negative, and the negatives are affirmative rather than merely absent: the chain is one link long, it runs from inventors into two named research institutions, and it has been static since 2021-07-06. The profile is that of a university–national-laboratory joint filing that has never been monetized or asserted. The two unresolvable items are the reel/frame and the correspondent — both are gaps in my retrieval, not evidence of concealment.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — as the rubric defines it: only the original assignment is on record.

I want to be precise about why I chose that label over "not an NPE," because it is a mechanical point rather than a substantive one. The chain contains exactly one recorded conveyance — the 2021-07-06 inventor-to-institution assignment — which is the "only the original assignment" condition verbatim. Critically, I could not obtain the reel/frame or the correspondent of record, so I cannot run the recurrence test that the task specifically asks for, and I will not manufacture a conclusion from records I did not see.

Substantively, however, the finding is clean: there is no shell entity (signal 1 negative), no listed asserter (signal 2 negative), no cascade (signal 4 negative), no litigation-driven transfer (signal 5 negative, and no post-2021 assignment exists at all), no bankruptcy (signal 6), no privateering (signal 7), and no defensive-aggregator termination (signal 8). Title has rested continuously with Xi'an Jiaotong University and Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. since the 2021-07-06 recording.

To close the two remaining gaps, retrieve the 2021-07-06 reel/frame and correspondent directly at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search 11346781) or https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — the correspondent field on that single entry is the only outstanding data point, and with a one-link chain its diagnostic value is limited to confirming the filing was handled by in-house or routine outside counsel rather than a known assertion-side filer.

I'll search for the citation record of US 11,346,781 (front-page references, family, and cited-by data).

Let me try the patent-specific databases directly.

Let me try to surface the granted patent's front-page citation block directly.

I hit the tool-step limit before I could retrieve the granted patent's front‑page citation block. Here is an honest accounting of what I found and what I could not.

Prior-Art / Citation Analysis — US 11,346,781 B2

1. Patent identification — confirmed

I did not encounter any similar-numbered patent in the on-point results, so there was nothing to wrongly merge. (The string 11346781 did collide once with an unrelated Brazilian corporate-registry number in the earlier litigation pass; discarded.)

2. The core problem: I could not retrieve the (56) References Cited list

I am not able to give you the examiner-cited reference list for US 11,346,781. Stating this plainly rather than filling the table with guesses.

Why this happened, specifically:

• The authoritative full text I was given is the Google Patents HTML text view, which omits the front page entirely — there is no (56) References Cited block, no U.S. patent document list, no foreign patent document list, and no (56) References Cited / Cited By data anywhere in the supplied document. The text jumps from the abstract straight to the description and the (truncated) claims.
• The mirrors that do carry the family — Justia (patents.justia.com/patent/11346781 and /patent/20210364434), Patents‑Review, Patents Encyclopedia, and the idiyas badge page — reproduce abstract, description, claims and classifications but also do not publish the front-page citation list in their indexed HTML.
• The only place the (56) block reliably lives is the issued-patent PDF front page, and my searches aimed at patentimages.../US11346781B2.pdf and at the literal string "US 11,346,781 B2" "References Cited" returned no retrievable copy before I exhausted my search steps.

So: the citation table you asked for is not obtainable from the sources I could reach, and I will not invent it.

3. What prior art is identified in the patent itself (self-acknowledged)

This I can give you with high confidence, because it is in the specification text I was handed.

(a) The one patent document named in the specification. In the BACKGROUND, the applicant distinguishes:

"the traditional portable optical fiber LIBS detection system cannot adapt to the working environment in the main pipelines of the nuclear power plant… (for example, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Zeng Xiaoyan, etc., portable laser probe composition analyzer based on fiber laser, [P], China, 2013107403189.2015104)"

Two cautions, per the no-auto-correction rule:

• I am reproducing 2013107403189.2015104 exactly as it appears. This is an unusual identifier format for a CN application number (a normal CN application number would be a 12-digit string with a check digit, e.g. 201310740318.9). The string as printed appears to be a concatenation of a CN application number and a date-like suffix (2015104). I flag it rather than normalizing it. Verify the true CN number before relying on it.
• This is the only patent publication the specification expressly cites. It is cited as background / distinguished art, not as an anticipation reference, and it addresses portability, not the pipeline-crawler architecture.

(b) Non-patent material expressly relied on in the description. These are named in the text and are the system's analytical anchor, not prior art citations:

• the NIST standard spectrum database (used for line identification);
• "optical fiber LIBS standard sample databases of the nuclear power plant" (used for calibration curves);
• generic background techniques the applicant positions against: X-ray photography, ultrasonic testing, eddy-current testing, acoustic-emission technology, electrochemical technology.

(c) The specification's own admissions that bound the prior art. Three passages are legally relevant regardless of what the examiner cited:

• "the developed optical fiber LIBS device also has the following shortcomings" — i.e., fiber-delivered LIBS devices existed before, with the admitted deficiency being lower energy density at the target than free-space LIBS, causing poor sensitivity/limits of detection (specification BACKGROUND).
• "it is necessary to create a special gas medium environment according to the detection requirements for specific elements" — the opposed-nozzle gas-bath feature is presented as the fix, which is an admission that gas-atmosphere LIBS generally was known.
• "At present, China has not yet established a laser-induced spectrum database for nuclear power plant steel or a quantitative measurement method for its elemental composition" — an admission about the state of the database, not the hardware.

4. On the § 102 anticipation mapping you asked for

I cannot produce a § 102 claim-by-claim anticipation table, because I do not have the cited references. Any table I produced would be fabricated, so I am not producing one. Two things I can contribute substantively:

(a) A previously-unnoticed discrepancy in the claim set that bears directly on any § 102 analysis. The record is inconsistent, and you should resolve it before charting:

• The granted patent (US 11,346,781 B2) has 7 claims per the bibliographic record.
• The pre-grant publication (US 2021/0364434 A1) text I retrieved from Justia shows claim 6, claim 7, claim 8, and claim 9 — with claim 9 reading "An optical fiber laser induced breakdown spectroscopy detection method using the detection device according to claim 6, comprising: step 1 of adjusting detector; step 2 of positioning the detector; and step 3 of analyzing and processing detection…"

That means the published application carried at least nine claims including a method claim tied to apparatus claim 6, whereas the granted patent has seven. The claims were therefore cancelled/renumbered/amended during prosecution, which is itself evidence that the examiner raised art against part of the claim set. Which claims were surrendered is exactly what the file wrapper would show — and that is the most informative thing you can pull. It also corrects the earlier summary's "moderate confidence" characterization: the method claim in the published version was a dependent-form method claim reusing the device, not a clean stand-alone independent method claim.

(b) Why single-reference anticipation is structurally unlikely here — an analytical point, not a citation claim. Section 102 requires one reference disclosing every limitation. Claim 1 as issued is a combination of: (i) a two-piece threaded fiber-LIBS probe with independently adjustable object distance U and image distance V and a 25.4 mm/16 mm plano-convex lens; (ii) two opposed, equal-flow air nozzles plus a 90° relief opening; (iii) a self-propelled pipeline crawler with differential two-motor steering, lift column, rotary turntable with anti-over-rotation stopper, and telescopic arm; and (iv) a physically separated master control room console joined by a steel-jacketed polyimide transmission fiber and a control signal line, with beam-splitter/energy-meter/photodetector taps and a delay-generator-synchronized ICCD. Published LIBS prior art (fiber-optic LIBS probes for molten metal, remote-LIBS, gas-purge LIBS) supplies pieces (ii)/(iv); nuclear main-pipeline in-situ crawler inspection with a rotary/telescopic LIBS probe supplies (iii). The inventive weight sits in the integration, so a § 102 rejection would most plausibly have landed on the narrower dependent claims (probe geometry, fiber specifications, gas-flow specifics) rather than on claim 1 — which is consistent with the claim-count reduction noted above. Treat this paragraph as reasoned inference from the specification, not as a report of what the examiner did.

5. Candidate references I saw in passing — flagged, not asserted

I want to be explicit that the following surfaced in my searches but I have no evidence tying any of them to US 11,346,781's citation record. I list them only as leads to check, and they must not be represented as citations of this patent:

• US 2003/0174325 A1 — fiber-optic LIBS sensor for molten-alloy analysis; back-transmits plasma emission through the same delivery fiber to a spectrograph; stainless-steel high-temperature lens holder; Ar and N₂ purge gases compared. Relevance if cited: the "same-fiber reversible optical path" and "gas medium" concepts. (Corresponds in subject matter to Rai/Yueh/Singh, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 73, 3589 (2002), which appears as an "A" reference on a different patent's search report.)
• US 5,751,416 — "Analytical method using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy" (granted May 12, 1998). Relevance if cited: foundational LIBS method art.
• US 2013/0277340 A1 — fiber-based spectroscopic-imaging-guided laser material processing using a single beam delivery/collection fiber plus camera viewing. Relevance if cited: fiber LIBS with imaging.
• The University of Nebraska LIBS signal-to-noise material (provisional 61/494,221) and WO 2013/186317 A1 — pulse/focus optimization LIBS.

I am deliberately not assigning these to claims, because doing so without the actual office action would be fabrication.

6. How to get the definitive (56) list — the authoritative route

To produce the table you actually want, pull these, in this order:

1. USPTO Patent Center, application 17/043,720 → "Documents & Transactions." Download the issued patent PDF (front page = the (56) References Cited block) and the non-final/final Office Actions (Form PTO-892 "List of References Cited by Examiner" and the examiner's art rejections). This is the only source that gives you the citation list and the § 102/§ 103 mapping the examiner actually made. Free, no PACER account needed.
2. USPTO Patent Public Search / Global Dossier → the PCT/CN2019/078908 International Search Report and Written Opinion, which carry their own categorized citation list (X/Y/A) with claims affected — often broader than the US list.
3. Google Patents "US11346781B2" → "Citations" and "Cited By" tabs, and the Espacenet "Cited documents" view for the family, to capture post-issuance "cited by" art (useful for § 103 landscape and for watching for later art).
4. Espacenet / CNIPA for the CN priority 201811377546.3 to confirm the true CN number of the Zeng Xiaoyan reference cited as 2013107403189.2015104.

Once you have the PTO-892, I can build the claim-by-claim chart you specified — full citation, publication/filing date, description, and the § 102 mapping — properly and without guessing.

7. Confidence statement

• High confidence: patent identity; filing/priority/grant dates; assignees; that the specification expressly cites only the Zeng Xiaoyan/HUST CN application (as printed 2013107403189.2015104) plus the NIST and nuclear-plant reference databases; that the granted claim set (7) differs from the published claim set (≥9, with a method claim depending from claim 6).
• Cannot state with any confidence, and will not: the contents of the (56) References Cited block for US 11,346,781 B2, or which reference was applied against which claim under § 102.
• Reason: the supplied authoritative text omits the front page, and the indexed full-text mirrors I could reach do not publish the citation block; my direct attempts to retrieve the issued PDF or a "US 11,346,781 B2" "References Cited" page were cut off by the search-step limit.

If you can paste the front-page (56) block, or the PTO-892 from the file wrapper, I will immediately produce the complete reference-by-reference § 102 analysis you asked for.

I'll first try to locate the prior-art reference set for this patent (the source text I was given contains only "Prior art keywords" and the prior-art date — no cited-reference list), then build the § 103 combinations.

Let me dig for the specific prior-art references (cited references on the patent record, plus likely § 103 combinable art such as pipeline-crawler LIBS systems and gas-purged LIBS probes).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,346,781 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026 · Patent: US 11,346,781 B2, "Optical fiber laser induced breakdown spectroscopy detection device and method" · Effective filing date: Nov. 19, 2018 (CN 201811377546.3 priority; PCT/CN2019/078908 filed Mar. 20, 2019) · Assignee: Xi'an Jiaotong University; Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute Co., Ltd.

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0. Source-integrity flag (read first)

The instruction was to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." There is no prior-art reference list on the page I was given. The authoritative full text supplied to me contains only:

• a "Prior art keywords" field — optical fiber, detected, probe, pipeline, laser;
• a "Prior art date" field — 2018-11-19; and
• no "References Cited," "Cited By," or search-report block.

Per the operating rule against fabrication, I will not invent a reference list or imply the examiner applied specific art. What follows is therefore my own independent § 103 analysis, built from (a) the prior art the patent itself cites in its Background, and (b) prior art I located by search, each cited with a URL. If you have the actual "Prior Art" / "References Cited" section, this analysis must be re-run against those specific references, because a real examiner-Applied combination would supersede my reconstruction.

Second flag (carried forward from the earlier sections): the claim block in the source text is truncated mid-claim 1 ("…an ex"). So this is a feature-level § 103 analysis of the claim 1 architecture and the specification-supported dependent features, not an element-by-element chart against verbatim claim language. Do not use it as an invalidity contention without the verbatim claims.

Third flag: the Chinese counterpart CN 109557057 B (application 201811377546.3) appeared in search results and is the same invention — it is the priority document, not prior art. Same for the 2024 RSC paper by Qiu et al. (same inventors). Both excluded. Likewise EP 3 798 622 / US 11,635,391 / US 2022/0026374 (Mistras pipeline-inspection robot) have a Dec. 3, 2018 filing date — after the Nov. 19, 2018 priority date — and EP 4 065 960 / GB 2 589 367 (purge-gas spectrometry) were filed Nov. 2019/Nov. 2020. All four are excluded as post-priority despite being superficially on point. I list them only so you know they were considered and rejected.

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1. Governing law and level of ordinary skill

The '781 patent has a post-March 16, 2013 effective filing date, so AIA § 103 applies, with prior art defined by § 102(a)(1) (publicly available before Nov. 19, 2018) and § 102(a)(2) (US applications/patents effectively filed before that date).

The controlling framework is KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) and Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), implemented in MPEP §§ 2141–2144. The key points for this patent:

• The test is "what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to a PHOSITA," not what any single reference says. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981).
• A teaching, suggestion, or motivation may come from the references themselves, from the nature of the problem to be solved, from the ordinary creativity/common sense of a PHOSITA, or from market/design incentives. MPEP §§ 2144.01–2144.04; KSR, 550 U.S. at 418–421.
• Where a combination is "the product of ordinary creativity, not innovation" and involves a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, § 103 is met. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.
• Optimization of a result-effective variable through routine experimentation is obvious. In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454 (CCPA 1955); MPEP § 2144.05. Selection of a known material for its known properties is obvious. In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272 (CCPA 1980).

PHOSITA definition I am applying: a person with a bachelor's degree in optical engineering, applied physics, or mechanical engineering (or equivalent), plus 2–3 years of experience in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrumentation and/or in-pipe robotic inspection systems, with access to the general LIBS literature (Miziolek/Cremers/Romano, Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, and the NIST Atomic Spectra Database), commercial fiber and optics catalogs, and the nuclear-plant ISI (in-service inspection) regulatory context (ASME § XI / G21C 17/017).

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2. The reference set

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3. The patent's own problem statement supplies the motivation (MPEP § 2144.01)

This is important because it removes the need to prove motivation from the references alone. The '781 specification admits:

1. that fiber-LIBS is a known improvement over traditional LIBS and "is more suitable for the detection task in extreme occasions";
2. that it is known to be useful in "nuclear power plants … spent fuel treatment plants," and to reach "places which are difficult to reach manually, such as the main pipeline … with high temperature, high pressure and high radiation";
3. that the prior portable fiber-LIBS system (P1) "cannot adapt to the working environment in the main pipelines of the nuclear power plant, and cannot go deep into the main pipelines … to remotely control and detect the designated area of the inner wall"; and
4. that "the energy density of bombarding a target material by the laser transmitted by optical fiber LIBS technology is generally lower than that of traditional LIBS … poor element sensitivity and element detection limit," and that the fix is to "create a special gas medium environment according to the detection requirements for specific elements, improve the signal-to-background ratio … and improve the detection sensitivity of key elements."

Every one of these four statements is a motivation for the corresponding claim features. An applicant's own admission that a problem is known is evidence that the solution would have been obvious to try. In re Ratti, 270 F.2d 810 (CCPA 1959); MPEP § 2144.01.

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4. Claim-1 feature map against a primary combination

Primary combination (Combination A): P2 (JAEA in-pipe nuclear LIBS) + P1 (HUST portable fiber-laser LIBS) + P4 (ULC Robotics in-pipe crawler) + P5/P6 (purge gas at the ablation site) + P7 (fiber LIBS with gas administration) + P8 (dichroic-separated delivery/collection + flow-conditioned purge nozzle).

Result under Combination A: every element of claim 1 is disclosed or suggested across the set, with motivation traceable to (i) the '781's own admitted problems, (ii) the express teachings of P2 and P4, and (iii) the ordinary creativity of a PHOSITA. Under KSR / In re Keller, the rejection would be grounded on "the combined teachings," not on any single reference's completeness.

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5. The four specific § 103 combinations

5.1 Combination A — "In-pipe fiber LIBS for a nuclear plant" (strongest)

P2 + P1 + P4 (+ P3).

• Motivation: P2 is in the identical field (LIBS on nuclear-plant pipe inner walls), the identical facility (nuclear power plant), the identical problem (remote insertion), and already teaches radiation-resistant fiber delivery, a waterproof view scope, and integrated LIBS + imaging. P1 supplies the portable fiber-laser LIBS analyzer that the '781 itself identifies as the closest prior art. P3 supplies motive means for carrying a fiber-delivered laser tool deep into a pipeline; P4 supplies a circumferential, wall-approachable in-pipe carrier with drive wheels.
• Reasonable expectation of success: high — each element is a mechanical or optical substitution without a change in principle of operation. P2 proves the LIBS+imaging+radiation-hard-fiber combination works in a nuclear pipe; P4 proves the crawler works; the only remaining question is mechanical packaging.
• Predicted rejection: claim 1 obvious over P2 in view of P1 and P4, further in view of P3 for the motive means.

5.2 Combination B — The vision-guided aiming workflow (method)

P2 + P4 + P10 (+ P5's autofocus/moving-spot routines).

• The '781's method step of rotating the mechanism to bring the target area into the camera image center, extinguishing the lamp, then rotating a fixed angle to swing the LIBS probe into the camera's former position and extending the telescopic rod until the external regulator seats on the wall is the direct geometric consequence of mounting the camera and the probe at a fixed angular offset on the same rotatable, telescoping arm — a design choice the '781 itself recites ("the left side of the telescopic rod is provided with a camera 4, the right side … with an optical fiber LIBS probe 1").
• Motivation: co-mounting an aiming/vision sensor and a working head on a single rotatable stage, then indexing the stage by the known inter-sensor angle to move the working head onto the vision-derived target, is the standard "vision-guided pick-and-place" paradigm, and P5 expressly teaches automated focus/aim routines driven by maximizing spectrometer output.
• Reasonable expectation of success: high. Given a known angular offset between camera and probe, indexing by that offset necessarily lands the probe where the camera was aimed. This is arithmetic, not invention.

5.3 Combination C — The gas-medium local environment (partially addressed; see 5.4)

P5 + P6 + P7 + P8 + P9. Motivation is supplied three times over: (i) the '781's own admission that lower fiber-delivered energy density degrades sensitivity and that a "special gas medium environment" is the fix; (ii) P9's express teaching that the inert-gas flow rate changes the plasma spectrum and the detection accuracy; (iii) P5/P6/P7's express teaching of local argon purge at a LIBS probe nose with a controlled flow rate and volume. KSR holds that **"a need or problem known in the field … and addressed by the patent can provide a reason for combining elements."* 550 U.S. at 420.

5.4 The opposed-nozzle / stagnation feature — the soft spot in the rejection

Claim 1 recites that the two opposite nozzles are fed from the same bottle and same regulating valve so the flows have equal flow rate, impinge at the interior center, are buffered there, and then flow axially; plus a 90° relief opening perpendicular to the nozzle axis.

How to meet it: treat it as an obvious design choice / obvious-to-try with a finite number of predictable solutions (KSR, 550 U.S. at 421; MPEP §§ 2144.05, 2144.09):

• P9 teaches a two-orifice shielding injector whose purpose is to form a flow envelope around the plasma; P8 teaches a purge tube whose passage narrows and re-expands to condition the flow field at the sample. Both are in the same art of shaping the purge-gas field so the breakdown volume sits inside a controlled gas medium — the identical purpose recited in the '781.
• Given that purpose, a PHOSITA has a closed set of purge-nozzle geometries: (a) single lateral jet, (b) coaxial annular curtain, (c) opposed balanced jets, (d) radial multi-jet ring. Opposed balanced jets is the one option that cancels net momentum at the axis — which is exactly the stated benefit ("the speed of the airflows is buffered at the central position"). The claimed arrangement is therefore the predictable result of the stated desire to avoid a momentum-carrying jet blowing through the ablation plume.
• Feeding both nozzles from one bottle and one regulating valve is the cheapest way to guarantee equal flow and to make the flow controllable with one degree of freedom — a textbook single-actuator design, and P6 already teaches controller-gated, predetermined-flow-rate gas delivery.
• The 90° relief opening is not separately argued in the specification beyond "the gas in the outer regulator 34 can overflow" — i.e., an exhaust. Any purge cavity needs an exhaust path; sizing it perpendicular to the nozzle axis is arbitrary and unrelated to any asserted result.

Where I would expect the applicant to fight: arguing that the opposed-jet stagnation pressure is a result-effective variable that must be independently justified, or that "buffering at the center" produces an unexpected plasma-stabilization effect. The weakness of that position is that the '781 supplies no comparative data (see § 7).

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6. Dependent-claim and numerical features — individually obvious

Applying MPEP §§ 2144.05 (range optimization / result-effective variables) and 2144.17 (obvious design choices):

Note on the highest-risk dependent features for an applicant: the specific fiber/lens numbers would fall easily to a § 103 rejection on range optimization, and I would expect them to be the first things narrowed or argued on unexpected results.

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7. Anticipated rebuttals and the objective-evidence question

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8. Bottom line

If I had to draft a § 103 rejection today, on the art I could actually retrieve:

1. Claim 1 (device) — obvious over Ito et al. (JAEA-Conf 2014-001) in view of Zeng et al. (CN 201310740318.9) and US 10,378,992 (ULC Robotics) / US 2012/0255933 (laser-pig), further in view of US 9,719,853, US 2014/0204375, US 2008/0151241, WO 2012/040769, and US 9,733,189. Motivation: same field, same facility, same problem; the '781's own admissions of the gaps in P1 and of the gas-medium remedy.
2. The dependent features (fiber/lens/energy values, stainless-steel and polyimide selection, ultrasonic ranging, 50-pulse accumulation, NIST comparison, calibration curves) — obvious design choices / optimization of result-effective variables under MPEP §§ 2144.05, 2144.07, 2144.17.
3. The method claim — obvious as the natural operating sequence of the claim-1 device in view of P5's automated aim/focus routines and P2's delay-generator gating.

Where the analysis is weakest and where I would spend more effort before signing an invalidity contention:

• (a) the opposed-nozzle stagnation geometry with a 90° relief opening — meetable as an obvious design choice, but the closest retrieved art (P9's coaxial two-orifice injector; P8's necked purge tube) is analogous, not identical. Consider searching spark-OES/AES gas-jet stands and laser-cutting coaxial-nozzle art for a closer "opposed balanced jets" teaching.
• (b) the bidirectional single-transmission-fiber limitation — I could not verify it verbatim in any pre-2018 reference I retrieved. Resolve with P1's full text (CN 201310740318.9) and with pre-2018 fiber-LIBS probe literature (Beddows et al., Guirado et al., Rai et al. are named in the retrieved fiber-LIBS sources and are pre-2018).
• (c) the verbatim claim scope — the source claim block is truncated at claim 1, so nothing here supports an element-by-element chart. Pull the issued claims from USPTO Patent Center or the Google Patents "Claims" tab.

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9. Confidence statement

Two verification steps that would materially change this analysis: (1) obtain the "References Cited" / search-report block from the actual Google Patents or USPTO record for US 11,346,781 B2 — if the examiner cited specific art, that art supersedes my reconstruction and reveals what the applicant already distinguished; and (2) obtain the verbatim issued claims 1–7, because the claim-1 preamble and the boundary between the apparatus and method independent claims are currently reconstructed rather than read.