US 11353392

I'll search for the specific patent number and any litigation/docket records.

Let me check for any litigation or CAFC docket activity on this patent.

US 11,353,392 B2 — Search Results Summary

Search scope / caveat: I searched for the exact number "11353392" (and "US11353392B2") plus litigation/CAFC terms. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entries, no district-court complaints, and no PTAB/IPR records naming this patent. Everything below comes from the patent text you supplied (authoritative, fetched from Google Patents) plus two secondary patent databases. Where the supplied text and those databases diverge, I flag it rather than resolve it silently.

Bibliographic data (per the supplied Google Patents record)

Abstract (verbatim)

"A device includes a filter that enhances a beam profile of a received pulsed laser; a first optical element to direct the pulsed laser as a reference wave towards an optical sensor; an open cavity positioned between the first optical element and the optical sensor. The open cavity receives an aerosol particle, which enters the open cavity from any direction. The reference wave illuminates the aerosol particle. An illuminated particle generates and directs an object wave towards the optical sensor. A pixel array is connected to the optical sensor. The pixel array receives the reference wave and the object wave. The optical sensor creates a contrast hologram comprising an interference pattern of the illuminated particle. A processor creates an image of the illuminated particle based on the contrast hologram."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Two important caveats:

1. The Google Patents text you supplied does not include a claims section — its "Definitions" block is AI-generated narration of the description. So the claim wording below for independent claims 1 and 9 is taken from a secondary database (NDLI/Lens, corroborated by mtec-sc.org) and is not verified against the official granted claim set. Treat it as indicative, not authoritative.
2. The independent-claim language in that secondary source ("trigger beam," "pair of axicon lens," "trigger sensor") is broader/different than the Summary-of-the-Invention text in your supplied record, which contains no "trigger beam" limitation. This suggests the granted claims were amended during prosecution to add trigger-beam subject matter. I cannot confirm the amendment history without the file wrapper.

Independent Claim 1 — Device. A device with:

• a filter (e.g., a pinhole spatial filter) that improves the beam profile of a received pulsed laser;
• optics that direct that pulsed laser as a reference wave toward an optical sensor;
• optics that shape a second laser into a collimated, hollow annular trigger beam coaxial with the reference wave;
• an open cavity between the optical element and the sensor, into which aerosol particles enter and are illuminated by the reference wave, producing an object wave;
• a pixel array that receives both the reference and object waves, the sensor recording a contrast hologram formed from their interference; and
• a processor that, in response to the trigger beam interacting with and detecting a particle, reconstructs an image of the illuminated particle from the contrast hologram.

Independent Claim 9 — Opto-electric system. A three-compartment instrument:

• optics compartment shapes, combines and redirects a pair of laser beams;
• sensing compartment holds two laser sources — the first beam follows a trigger-beam path, the second follows a hologram-beam path and provides the reference wave, with the second beam coaxial with and contained within the first; a sensing region receives the redirected beams so a particle becomes illuminated and produces an object wave; an optical sensor records a contrast hologram from reference/object interference;
• electronics compartment contains a signal generator producing a beam trigger signal when a particle is illuminated, a control system that applies a delay to the pulse of the second (hologram) laser beam, and a memory device storing the hologram; and
• a processor that reconstructs the particle image.

Independent Method Claim (claim number uncertain — appears after the claim‑9 family, likely in the claim‑20s). A method of generating a contrast hologram in a portable device: receiving a pulsed laser; directing it as a reference wave toward an optical sensor; receiving an aerosol particle in a sensing cavity; illuminating the particle with the reference wave; generating an object wave from the illuminated particle; directing the object wave to the sensor; and generating a contrast hologram from the interference patterns produced by unscattered and particle‑scattered light. Dependent aspects include selectively delaying the pulsed laser to position the particle relative to the reference wave, and creating the image (with the description noting images for particles "larger than five micrometers").

Technical substance worth noting

• Two-beam architecture: a CW 635 nm red diode laser (~4.5 mW) expanded by a pair of ~20° axicon lenses into a ~1.5 cm hollow annular trigger beam, plus a pulsed 514 nm green diode-pumped solid-state laser (~30 mW, 10–200 ns pulses) that forms the hologram.
• A silica window with a diffuse scattering coating (ground-glass edge + reflective paint) collects weakly forward-scattered trigger light via total internal reflection; an opening routes it through a narrow-line filter to a micro PMT, which fires the trigger.
• Filter stack (linear polarizer, 514.5 ± 1 nm narrow-line filter, 550 nm shortpass) protects a 4096 × 3000, 3.45 µm pixel sensor from ambient light.
• Contrast hologram = raw hologram minus a dynamically computed median reference, I_con = I_holo − I_ref; image reconstruction via Rayleigh–Sommerfeld scalar diffraction, with twin-image removal.
• Embodiment called HAPI (holographic aerosol particle imager), ~20 cm diameter × 42 cm, 3D-printed mounts, tethered to or integrated with a UAV/drone, validated in "spruce tree" (pollen/PBAP) and "road dust" (mineral dust) field trials.

Uncertainty statement

I could not verify an official claims set, prosecution history, or any litigation/CAFC 2026 docket activity for US 11,353,392. The independent-claim paraphrases above come from a secondary aggregator and are internally inconsistent with your authoritative record's Summary section; the exact claim numbering of the method claim is unverified, and one secondary source describes "two main independent claims" while listing three. No CAFC docket information exists in my search results — absence of a hit is not proof that no appeal exists.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11353392 across patent litigation databases and court sources.

Let me run more targeted searches on litigation-specific sources.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 11,353,392

Bottom line: I found no litigation — no district court actions, no ITC investigations, no PTAB proceedings, and no CAFC appeals — involving US Patent 11,353,392 (or its publication US20220091019A1). Based on the sources I was able to reach, the patent appears to be litigation-free as of today's date (April 26, 2026).

What I searched and what came back

Requested case table

Context that supports the "no litigation" finding

• Ownership is government/institutional, not a typical assertion vehicle. The patent lists Kansas State University and the United States Department of the Army as current assignees, with the original assignee being the U.S. Department of the Army. The patent carries a Government Interest statement ("may be manufactured, used, and/or licensed by or for the United States Government without the payment of royalties thereon"), which under 28 U.S.C. § 1498 generally channels any government-directed infringement claims into the Court of Federal Claims rather than ordinary district-court actions. Google Patents
• Prosecution/term status shows no adversarial activity. The record shows only routine prosecution and assignment events: filed 2020-09-21, published as US20220091019A1 on 2022-03-24, granted 2022-06-07, status Active, adjusted expiration 2040-09-22. No PTAB trial, reexamination, or terminal disclaimer events are reflected. Google Patents
• Independent profile databases likewise list no assertions. The mtec-sc.org patent record for US-11353392-B2 lists only bibliographic/abstract data and assignees with no litigation field. mtec-sc.org

Important caveats on my confidence

I want to be explicit about the limits of this answer rather than overstate it:

1. I could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents litigation portal (e.g., https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) or run a docket-number-level search. My findings rest on general web/index searches, not a live docket pull. A PACER "patent" case search or a Docket Navigator litigation report keyed to 11,353,392 would be the authoritative confirming step.
2. A recently filed case could exist that is not yet indexed by the search engines and aggregators I reached. Quiet-period complaints against low-volume, government-owned patents can take weeks to surface.
3. I found no secondary indicator of assertion (no demand-letter reporting, no licensing campaign, no news coverage), which is consistent with — but not proof of — the absence of litigation.

Recommended verification steps before relying on this: (a) run a PACER Case Locator search on patent number 11,353,392; (b) check the Unified Patents Portal litigation view for the patent; and (c) confirm the absence of any PTAB petition via the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End system. If those also return nothing, the "no known litigation" conclusion is solid.

If you'd like, I can draft the PACER/Google Patents query strings for a records clerk to run, or generate a short "no litigation found" declaration suitable for an IP due-diligence memo.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 11,353,392. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web checks (PTAB-related queries, petitioner/patent-owner name queries, litigation-name queries) surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent number.

Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is fully untested at the PTAB and therefore fully intact. This is not the "hardened by two IPRs" scenario, and it is not the "claims 1-5 are canceled" scenario either. Every claim that issued on 2022-06-07 (and there is no certificate of correction or reexamination narrowing on file that I found) is live, un-adjudicated, and available to be asserted against you. The absence of PTAB activity here is a structural signal, not an evidentiary one — see the strategic summary.

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Proceedings

No proceedings to enumerate. There is no proceeding number to list, and I will not manufacture one. Per the operating constraints, the structured ODP list is the canonical source, and it is empty.

For completeness on what I checked and did not find:

• No IPR/PGR/CBM docket entries referencing US 11,353,392, application 17/027,131, or publication US 2022/0091019 A1.
• No AIA trial involving "Kansas State University Research Foundation" (a co-assignee) as patent owner on this patent.
• No AIA trial involving The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army (the original assignee of record) as patent owner on this patent.
• No district court action asserting this patent that I could locate, which is the trigger event that would normally generate an IPR (see timing note below).

If a proceeding has been filed in the last few weeks and ODP ingest has not caught up, it would appear on PTAB E2E / the PTAB "Trial Proceedings" search within days of the petition's accord date. I found nothing there.

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Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. All claims of US 11,353,392 are UNTESTED. Not one claim has been canceled, and not one has been confirmed in a Final Written Decision. The patent issued 2022-06-07 from application 17/027,131 (filed 2020-09-21, so its § 102/§ 103 priority date is 2020-09-21 and its 20-year term runs to 2040-09-22 with the listed adjustment). Note one important caveat: the authoritative patent text supplied to me contains the abstract, specification, and figures but the reproduced excerpt stops inside the detailed description and does not include the printed claims. So I cannot state from the primary source exactly how many claims issued or quote their text. What the specification's SUMMARY section tells you is that the patent family contains at least three claim types — (i) a device claim, (ii) an "opto-electric system" claim, and (iii) a method of generating a contrast hologram in a portable device. Before relying on claim numbers in any invalidity or non-infringement analysis, pull the front-page claims from the granted patent itself. There is a third-party rendering (NDLI) suggesting the granted claims were amended relative to the published application — e.g., language requiring a "trigger beam interacting with and detecting a particle" in the independent device claim and a "trigger beam … trigger sensor" limitation in a dependent claim — which, if accurate, is a narrowing amendment that would be useful to you. Treat that as a lead to verify against the file wrapper, not as a finding.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2). Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to anyone. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no ground that was "raised or reasonably could have been raised." Your entire prior-art position is unencumbered: you may raise any § 102 or § 103 reference, in any forum, in any combination. That is the single most favorable consequence of the empty docket. The flip side is that you also get no benefit from a prior petitioner's work product, no FWD findings to borrow, and no claim-construction record from a PTAB panel.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (there are no petitioners). No patent-owner appeal activity (nothing to appeal). No defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents anywhere in the chain — Unified typically targets broad, mass-asserted software/business-method patents, and this is a narrow, government-funded optical instrumentation patent, which is outside its remit. Three structural factors explain the empty docket and matter to your forecasting: (1) the patent is owned by the U.S. Army (original assignee) with Kansas State University Research Foundation as co-assignee — sovereign/state co-ownership is a powerful deterrent to IPR challenges; (2) the technology is bespoke scientific instrumentation (a tethered-UAV digital-holography aerosol imager) with a small commercial field and, so far as I can find, no assertion campaign; and (3) an IPR is time-barred under § 315(b) unless and until the owner serves an infringement complaint, so no one has a reason — or the statutory right — to file one yet. Note also that the PGR window closed on 2023-03-07 (nine months after the 2022-06-07 grant), so a post-grant review challenging the issued claims on § 112 or written-description grounds is no longer available to anyone; an IPR limited to § 102/§ 103 is the only route left, and only after service of a complaint.

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Recommended next steps

• No PTAB activity exists — say so plainly to your client, and do not budget for a PTAB defense that has no record to work from. The absence is itself a signal: this is not a well-asserted patent, so a demand letter or license inquiry citing US 11,353,392 (rather than a litigation complaint) would be unusual and would not itself start any § 315(b) clock.
• Pull the granted claims and the file wrapper from USPTO PatentCenter for application 17/027,131 before doing anything else. The claims as issued, plus the amendment history, are the foundation of both an invalidity position and any § 112 or prosecution-history-estoppel argument. My supplied source text does not include the printed claims.
• If you are served with a complaint asserting this patent, that service is the § 315(b) event: you then have one year to file an IPR. Institution decisions issue within ~6 months of a complete petition, and the PTAB's statutory Final Written Decision deadline is one year from institution (extendable to 18 months for good cause under § 316(a)(11)). Those are the only trial-stage milestones that could exist, and none are currently running.
• Evaluate the art landscape now, while there is no clock. The closest known reference I surfaced is US 2013/0242301 A1, "Methods and Apparatuses for Contact-Free Holographic Imaging of Aerosol Particles," which shares the same government-interest lineage and inventors' field but describes an off-axis configuration with a beam splitter and a separate second beam. The '392 patent's independent claims center on an in-line/trigger-gated arrangement (contrast hologram from an in-line pulsed beam minus a reference measurement, with a separate trigger beam defining the trigger event). Whether the 2013/0242301 disclosure is § 102 or § 103 art against the issued claims turns entirely on claim language I do not have in front of me — verify before relying on it.
• Do not represent to any tribunal that the patent has been narrowed or that claims are dead. Nothing in the record supports it, and the constraints here are explicit: no FWD addressed any claim of this patent, so no claim can be described as canceled or sustained.

I'll verify the assignment record against the primary sources before writing this up.

Let me try to pull the actual USPTO reassignment records with reel/frame data.

Assignment Record — US 11,353,392 B2

"Contact-free holographic imaging of aerosol particles from mobile platforms"
App. 17/027,131 · Filed 2020-09-21 · Granted 2022-06-07 · Adjusted expiry 2040-09-22

Source caveat up front. I retrieved the chain of title via the Google Patents legal-events mirror of the USPTO reassignment record and corroborated the parties through Army/ARL and DSIAC press releases and the inventors' own publications. I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the named correspondent of record for the four 2020-09-23 entries — the Assignment Center search UI is not directly queryable from my tooling, and Google Patents' legal-events feed does not expose reel/frame. Everything below that is stated as fact is sourced; the reel/frame gaps are flagged rather than filled.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — no departure pattern. There is no evidence of the inventors leaving a common employer within 12 months of filing, and no such trigger is needed here: the title never left the inventing institutions. The inventors held different employers (a university and a federal lab), which is the reason for the split-ownership chain below rather than a fire-sale.

⚠️ One genuine inconsistency to resolve: the USPTO record shows Kemppinen assigning to Kansas State University Research Foundation, while the Army's October 2020 public-affairs release describes him as being at the University of Maryland. Both can be true only if he moved between the 2020-09-21 filing and the 2020-09-23 recordings, or if the release is imprecise. I could not resolve this from available sources and am not asserting which is correct.

Original assignee

Original assignee on the issued patent: United States Department of the Army (as represented by the Secretary of the Army). Google Patents lists current assignees as Kansas State University and United States Department of the Army — i.e., co-ownership, not a transfer out.

• Primary line of business: federal defense research (CCDC Army Research Laboratory). This is a government-owned invention.
• Product embodying the claims: the HAPI — holographic aerosol particle imager, a cylindrical 3D-printed instrument (~20 cm × 42 cm) tethered to a commercial UAV. It is a research/instrumentation prototype used in field trials (spruce tree / road dust), not a commercial product, and has never been sold.
• Government-interest statement on the face of the patent: "may be manufactured, used, and/or licensed by or for the United States Government without the payment of royalties thereon." This is a government-owned patent, not a government-licensed contractor patent — a materially different posture from a Bayh-Dole university case with a private licensee.
• Current status: active; United States Government + Kansas State University Research Foundation, both operating and non-bankrupt.

Assignment timeline

Four recorded entries, all dated the same day — 2020-09-23, two days after the 2020-09-21 filing. This is the classic at-filing employment/institutional assignment cluster, not a post-issuance monetization chain. No post-issuance assignments of any kind were recorded.

• 2020-09-XX (executed; exact date not exposed) / recorded 2020-09-23 — Reel unavailable / Frame unavailable

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST — see document for details")
  • Assignor: Osku P. Kemppinen
  • Assignee: Kansas State University Research Foundation
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the sources I could reach. (KSU's other aerosol-holography patent, US 12,571,718 B2, lists Hovey Williams LLP as its agency of record — that is KSU's regular outside counsel, but I have not confirmed Hovey Williams as correspondent on this reel and do not assert it.)
  • Context: institutional employment assignment — inventor to his university's tech-transfer foundation at filing.

• 2020-09-XX (executed) / recorded 2020-09-23 — Reel unavailable / Frame unavailable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Matthew J. Berg
  • Assignee: Kansas State University Research Foundation
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: institutional employment assignment — same KSU cluster as above.

• 2020-09-XX (executed) / recorded 2020-09-23 — Reel unavailable / Frame unavailable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Kansas State University Research Foundation
  • Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: co-ownership creation under a government-funded collaboration — KSURF conveys an undivided interest to the Army so the two institutions co-own the case. This is a defensive/funding-driven transfer, not a transfer-to-asserter.

• 2020-09-XX (executed) / recorded 2020-09-23 — Reel unavailable / Frame unavailable

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Gorden W. Videen
  • Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
  • Correspondent: not retrievable
  • Context: federal-employee obligation assignment — Army inventor's rights to the Government as a condition of federal employment (35 U.S.C. § 261 / EO 10096 framework).

No bankruptcy, no security agreement, no license, no merger, no change-of-name, no correction, and no release is recorded. Nothing has been recorded after 2020-09-23, i.e. nothing post-issuance.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11353392
    2020 : App filed by Army and KSU inventors
         : Kemppinen assigns to KSU Research Foundation
         : Berg assigns to KSU Research Foundation
         : KSU Research Foundation assigns to Secretary of the Army
         : Videen assigns to Secretary of the Army
    2022 : Patent issued to Army and KSU
    2040 : Adjusted expiration date

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. Every assignee in the chain is the actual inventing institution: a state university tech-transfer foundation and a federal agency. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" suffix appears on any recorded assignee. Addresses are the institutions themselves (KSU, Manhattan KS; Army ARL, Adelphi MD), not a registered-agent service. No single-member Delaware or Texas LLC appears anywhere in the record.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee or assignor matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. None of the three recorded assignees has ever appeared on a Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff list.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ESTABLISHED. The single most probative tell (recurring filing attorney across shell LLCs) cannot be evaluated here: I could not extract the correspondent of record for any of the four 2020-09-23 entries. I am explicitly not treating the absence as exculpatory. The only adjacent datum is that KSU's sibling aerosol-holography patent US 12,571,718 B2 records Hovey Williams LLP as its agency; Hovey Williams is a general-practice Kansas City IP firm that does both operating-company and university work, so even a confirmed appearance here would be a weak signal under your own recurrence rule.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. All transfers are same-day (2020-09-23), not a sequence of consecutive assignments through chained LLCs. There is no chain of intermediate entities and no shared correspondent address to test for common principals, because there is only one step out of each inventor and one step from KSURF to the Army.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 11,353,392 appears in any of the litigation databases surfaced by search. There is no first suit to measure a 6-month window against. The government-ownership posture also makes assertion structurally unlikely: 28 U.S.C. § 1498 gives the Government a sovereign-immunity channel for its own patents and the patent carries a royalty-free Government license statement.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Neither assignee has filed Chapter 7/11. No sale in bankruptcy proceedings of any kind.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. There is no operating company transferring to an NPE for proxy assertion. The one "exit" transfer moves into the Government, the opposite direction from privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — PRESENT IN SUBSTANCE, ABSENT IN FORM. The chain terminates at a United States Government agency co-owning with a university research foundation — a genuinely non-asserting terminus. But I must be precise: the terminus is not RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN, so the literal "defensive aggregator" definition is not satisfied. It is non-asserting for a different reason (sovereign co-ownership + royalty-free Government license), and that distinction should be honored rather than blurred.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: The entire chain of title consists of four assignments all recorded 2020-09-23, two days after filing — inventor-to-university and inventor/KSU-to-Government employment assignments — with current ownership split between Kansas State University and the United States Department of the Army and zero recorded post-issuance transfers, zero security interests, and no litigation. There is not one of the eight NPE signals present on the evidence; the two signals that could theoretically exist (repeat correspondent, pre-litigation transfer) are either unverifiable from available sources or definitionally inapplicable. One caveat on taxonomy: this is non-asserting because the patent is Government-owned with a royalty-free Government license, not because it terminated at an RPX/AST-style defensive aggregator — if the verdict list is applied strictly to require a defensive-aggregator terminus, the honest fallback would be Insufficient data, since only the founding institutional assignments exist.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 11353392): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO Patent Assignment Search (legacy): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events for the same record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11353392/en
• Confirming the parties and the HAPI program: https://www.army.mil/article/[239968](/patent/239968)/army_3d_printed_holography_device_rapidly_detects_characterizes_aerosols

Open item for follow-up: pull the four reel/frame entries directly from Assignment Center and capture the correspondent of record for each. That is the only missing field that could change signal 3 from unclear to a finding — though given the assignees are a state university foundation and a federal agency, I would expect that field to be unremarkable.

I'll search for the USPTO record of US 11,353,392 and its cited prior art.

I found the referenced-cited list. Let me pull the complete citation table with titles, dates, and assignees.

Let me gather details on each cited patent reference.

Search summary

I located the USPTO record for US 11,353,392 B2 ("Contact‑free holographic imaging of aerosol particles from mobile platforms," Berg / Kemppinen / Videen; appl. No. 17/027,131; filed 2020‑09‑21; granted 2022‑06‑07; assignees Kansas State University Research Foundation and the United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army; expiration adjusted to 2040‑09‑22).

Important limitations on this report (stated up front, per the "do not fabricate" rule):

1. I was able to retrieve the patent's "Referenced Cited" list (18 U.S. patent documents plus one co‑pending U.S. application). I could not retrieve the complete front‑page "References Cited" section including any foreign patent documents and non‑patent literature (NPL) entries — so this is not necessarily the exhaustive citation list.
2. My research budget was exhausted before I could verify the content of several of the older secondary references (Jacoby, Flinsenberg, Chapline, Witherow, Hosono, Toishi, Hayden, Serabyn, Takahashi). For those I report the citation data I obtained and state explicitly where I could not verify substance; I have not guessed at their disclosures.
3. The patent has 22 claims. I verified the verbatim text of claims 1–4. My sources did not give me a verified claim‑by‑claim listing beyond that, so the numbers I assign to the system claim and method claim below are a reconstruction from the specification's claim‑ordered summary and should be checked against the granted claims before being relied on.

Sources used: Google Patents full text of US11353392 (supplied, authoritative); Justia Patents "Referenced Cited" table for US11353392 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11353392](/patent/11353392)); Google Patents PDF front page of US011353392B2 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/49/84/83/a7d9ebfeefd564/US11353392.pdf); Google Patents pages for individual references; mtec‑sc.org mirror page.

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Claim structure of US 11,353,392 (for the §102 mapping)

Because the application was filed 2020‑09‑21, the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. §102 governs.

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The cited references, one by one

The "core" references (same inventors / same technical field) — highest relevance

1. US 8,830,476 B2 — Berg et al., "Methods and apparatuses for contact‑free holographic imaging of aerosol particles"

• Publication/grant date: September 9, 2014 (Appl. filed 2013; family member of US 2013/0242301).
• Assignee: U.S. Government as represented by the Secretary of the Army.
• Description: In‑line and off‑axis holographic imaging of aerosol particles. An optical device with a laser light source and focusing lens directs light into a region where particles are delivered/admitted; the sensor records the interference between the unscattered reference wave and the particle‑scattered object wave; a processor executes a computer‑implemented algorithm to generate particle images (and hence size/shape). Discloses recording holograms rapidly as particles flow, and computational 3‑D reconstruction.
• §102 relevance: This is the single most relevant item. It discloses, in substance, the elements of claim 1 — a first optical element directing light as a reference wave to a sensor, a region/cavity into which an aerosol particle is received, an image sensor receiving reference + object waves, and a processor generating an image from the recorded interference pattern. It also bears on claims 4, 5 and 6.
• Caveat: '476 does not appear to disclose a pulsed laser, a contrast hologram formed by reference subtraction, a PMT/trigger‑beam architecture, or an aerospace‑vehicle platform, so it does not appear to anticipate claims 1–6 as issued (which recite a "received pulsed laser" and a "contrast hologram") nor the system claims. Its realistic role is §103 obviousness and written‑description/priority context. Additionally, because '476 shares an inventor with '392, it may be disqualified as §102 prior art under the common‑ownership/§102(b)(2)(C) exception if the inventive entities overlap — this needs a proper inventor‑entity analysis, which I cannot complete from the record available to me.

2. US 2013/0242301 A1 — Berg et al., "Methods and apparatuses for contact‑free holographic imaging of aerosol particles"

• Publication date: September 19, 2013 (application publication; family member/companion of US 8,830,476).
• Description: Off‑axis embodiment in addition to the in‑line embodiment; beam splitter combining a separate second beam with the particle‑scattered light of the first beam; image sensor sensing the combined interference pattern; processor generating the particle image. Text expressly incorporates Berg & Videen, "Digital holographic imaging of aerosol particles in flight," J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer 112 (2011) 1776–1783.
• §102 relevance: Same as above — potentially anticipatory of the generic claim 1 combination and informative for claims 5–6; strongest as the §102(a)(1) printed publication for the underlying contact‑free holographic aerosol imaging concept. Again lacks pulsed‑laser / contrast‑hologram / UAV limitations.

3. U.S. Appl. No. 16/814,061, filed March 10, 2020 (cited by examiner; granted as US 11,016,280 B1 on 2021‑05‑25, "Optical trapping of airborne particles using dual counter‑propagating hollow conical beams," U.S. Army)

• Filing date: March 10, 2020 — before the '392 effective filing date; published/granted after.
• Description: Axicon‑generated hollow conical beams used to trap/immobilize airborne particles.
• §102 relevance: §102(a)(2) "secret prior art" only (it cannot be §102(a)(1) art because it was not publicly available before 2020‑09‑21). It is relevant to the hollow annular trigger beam / axicon optics aspects described in the '392 specification (and, if the granted '392 claims recite an annular or collimated hollow trigger beam, to the corresponding dependent claim of group B). It is a commonly owned U.S. Army case, so the §102(b)(2)(C) common‑ownership exception may likewise apply — this should be checked.

Particle‑holography / holgraphic‑particle measurement references

4. US 3,520,610 — "Particle distribution readout using holographic methods" (inventor as literally rendered in the Justia citation table: "Bjr" — I believe this rendering is truncated/defective; I could not confirm the full inventor name)

• Patent date: July 14, 1970 (Justia shows "July 1970").
• Description (verified from the Google Patents text): far‑field (as opposed to Fresnel) holography of particles suspended in a fluid medium; the photographic apparatus is placed in the midst of the particle cloud and a fast exposure "freezes" particle motion so no sample separation is required; the hologram is later reconstructed to bring individual particles into sharp focus for counting/sizing and to give density and size distribution without depth‑of‑focus loss; contrast‑enhancement optics are also described.
• §102 relevance: This is a direct anticipation candidate for the concept recited in claim 2 (particles flowing into an open sensing volume from an arbitrary direction) and for the method claim group C (holographically recording, then computationally/optically reconstructing, images of free‑flowing particles). It does not disclose a pulsed laser, reference‑subtraction contrast holography, the trigger‑beam/PMT architecture, or a mobile platform, so it does not anticipate the independent device or system claims as issued.

5. US 5,299,035 — Leith et al., "Holographic imaging through scattering media"

• Patent date: March 29, 1994; filing date shown as March 25, 1992; assignee University of Michigan (class G03H 1/041, examiner‑cited).
• Description (verified from claim text): two‑pulse holography through a diffusing medium — a first coherent light pulse propagates through the medium (e.g., living tissue), a second coherent light pulse is generated, a combiner combines the two, and synchronizing means adjust the timing of the second pulse so that it combines with the initial (ballistic) portion of the first pulse to form a holographic interference image which is recorded. Exposure‑limited and short‑pulse recording is discussed (e.g., <40 ms), as is pulsed laser sources and beam‑splitting a single laser into object and reference pulses.
• §102 relevance: The nearest anticipation candidate for the "pulse of the second laser beam delayed by the beam trigger signal" and "control system … creates a delay in a pulse of the second laser beam" limitations (the system‑claim delay/trigger‑timing features, group B) and for the synchronized two‑beam recording scheme. It does not disclose a PMT‑based particle trigger, an aerosol open cavity, or a UAV platform, so it cannot anticipate the independent system claim as a whole — it is a §103 reference for the timing/delay sub‑feature.

6. US 5,351,118 — Spinell (class G01N 15/10, examiner‑cited)

• Patent date: September 27, 1994.
• Description: I could not verify the disclosure text within the available budget. The Google Patents front‑page classification (G01N 15/10 — "Investigating individual particles") indicates particle‑measurement/particle‑counting subject matter, i.e., sensing individual particles that flow through a probe volume — which is the general context of the trigger/particle‑detection aspect of the '392 system claims.
• §102 relevance: Unverified. I will not assert specific claim anticipation. If verified, it would be a candidate only for the particle‑detection/sensing‑region aspects of group B.

7. US 5,548,419 — Adrian (class G03H 1/28, examiner‑cited)

• Patent date: August 20, 1996.
• Description: not verified in the available budget; the G03H 1/28 classification and the inventor (a recognized holographic particle‑image‑velocimetry figure) indicate holographic recording of a particle field in a fluid flow.
• §102 relevance: Unverified — potentially relevant background for holographic imaging of moving/flowing particles (claim 2 and the method group), but I cannot assert anticipation.

Miscellaneous holography / optical references (contents unverified)

8. US 3,993,399 — Jacoby — patent date November 23, 1976. Description not verified in the available budget. No assertion of anticipation.

9. US 4,444,500 — Flinsenberg — patent date April 24, 1984. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

10. US 4,536,883 — Chapline, Jr. — patent date August 20, 1985. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

11. US 4,810,094 — Witherow — patent date March 7, 1989. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

12. US 9,222,874 B2 — Hill et al. — patent date December 29, 2015. Description not verified in the available budget (no classification was captured for it). No assertion of anticipation.

13. US 9,443,631 B1 — Pan et al., "Optical trap using a focused hollow‑beam for trapping and holding both absorbing and non‑absorbing airborne particles" — patent date September 13, 2016 (title verified from the Google Patents page).

• §102 relevance: relevant background for the hollow/annular beam and airborne‑particle‑handling concepts in the '392 specification (axicon‑formed annular trigger beam; trapping). Not a candidate to anticipate the independent claims.

14. US 9,448,155 B2 — Pan — patent date September 20, 2016; same inventor pool as '631, likely a related optical trapping/particle handling case. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

15. US 2002/0126333 A1 — Hosono et al. — publication date September 12, 2002; class G03H 1/04 (examiner‑cited) → holography. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

16. US 2007/0258118 A1 — Toishi et al. — publication date November 8, 2007; class G11B 7/128 (examiner‑cited) → holographic data storage/recording medium. Description not verified. Not a candidate to anticipate the particle‑imaging claims; background optical‑system art only.

17. US 2016/0231225 A1 — Hayden et al. — publication date August 11, 2016; class G01B 11/0608 (examiner‑cited) → optical dimensional measurement/interferometry. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

18. US 2017/0219999 A1 — Serabyn et al. — publication date August 3, 2017; class G02B 6/0008 (examiner‑cited) → optical fiber/waveguide optics. Description not verified. No assertion of anticipation.

A reference that post‑dates the filing date — check the §102 subsection

19. US 2021/0110992 A1 — Takahashi et al. — publication date April 15, 2021; class H01J 37/244 (examiner‑cited) → charged‑particle‑beam (electron/ion) detector.

• §102 relevance: Because it published after the '392 filing date of 2020‑09‑21, it is not available under §102(a)(1). It could only have been applied under §102(a)(2) as a U.S. patent application publication "effectively filed" before 2020‑09‑21 (i.e., relying on an earlier U.S. filing/priority date). Its contribution is limited to detector/pixel‑array hardware background; it is not a candidate to anticipate the aerosol‑holography claims.

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Bottom line

Most relevant prior art, in order of relevance to US 11,353,392:

1. US 8,830,476 B2 (Berg et al., 2014) — closest art; discloses laser‑based contact‑free holographic imaging of aerosol particles with reference + scattered object waves, an image sensor, and computational image reconstruction. Bears on claim 1 and claims 4–6, and on the method group. Subject to a common‑inventor / §102(b)(2)(C) analysis.
2. US 2013/0242301 A1 (Berg et al., published 2013‑09‑19) — the printed publication of that same work, available as §102(a)(1) art.
3. US 5,299,035 (Leith, 1994) — the strongest art on the delayed/synchronized pulse of a second laser beam features of the system claim.
4. US 3,520,610 (1970) — the strongest art on holographic imaging of free‑flowing particles in an open volume (claim 2 and the method).
5. U.S. Appl. No. 16/814,061 / US 11,016,280 B1 (filed 2020‑03‑10) — §102(a)(2) art on hollow/annular axicon beam generation.
6. US 5,351,118 (Spinell), US 5,548,419 (Adrian), US 9,443,631 / US 9,448,155 (Pan), US 4,810,094 (Witherow) and the remaining older/ancillary references — background art on particle measurement and holography of particle fields.

No cited reference appears to anticipate the issued claims. That is the necessary inference from the fact that the patent granted with these 22 claims on 2022‑06‑07: the distinguishing combination — a pulsed hologram beam fired on a particle‑trigger from a separate trigger beam, formation of a contrast hologram by reference subtraction, all packaged in a light, tethered, UAV‑transportable housing with an open sensing volume that particles may enter from any direction — is not met in full by any single entry in the cited list. The realistic exposure is §103: e.g., Berg '476/'301 in view of Leith '035 (two‑beam synchronized pulsed recording) and in view of an airborne‑particle‑handling/trigger reference.

Not verified / open items I will not guess at: the disclosures of Jacoby '399, Flinsenberg '500, Chapline '883, Witherow '094, Hosono '333, Toishi '118, Hayden '225, Serabyn '999, and Takahashi '992; the full inventor names on US 3,520,610; the complete References‑Cited section (foreign documents and non‑patent literature, e.g., the famously incorporated Berg & Videen 2011 JQSRT paper); and the exact claim numbers of the independent opto‑electric‑system claim and the independent method claim. These should be confirmed against the USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier record and the granted claim set before being relied on.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis in the actual prior art. Let me first pin down the references the patent itself points to and then search the art landscape around each claim element.

Now let me locate patent-form prior art and the specific references named in the patent's own background.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,353,392 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Patent: Contact-free holographic imaging of aerosol particles from mobile platforms
Application: 17/027,131, filed & priority 2020-09-21; granted 2022-06-07; assignees Kansas State University / U.S. Department of the Army
Analysis date: April 26, 2026 · Governing law: AIA §§ 102/103 (post-03/16/2013 filing, no earlier priority claim)

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0. Two threshold caveats before the analysis

Caveat A — the "Prior Art" section was not actually supplied. The page text you provided contains the Description/Definitions content but not the Google Patents "Prior Art" tables (Cited By / Similar Documents) or the front-page "References Cited" list. Google Patents also does not render a labelled "Prior Art" field on this record. I therefore reconstructed the art landscape from (i) the instruments the patent's own background names without citations ("an aircraft-mounted instrument for cloud-ice particle imaging, a stationary instrument for mixed-phase cloud imaging, a submersible digital holography imager, a digital holography cloud imager for cable cars, and a stationary pollen imager"), and (ii) external search. URLs are given for every reference so a records clerk can pull the authoritative copies.

Caveat B — the granted claim text in front of me is incomplete. The Google Patents body text you supplied is truncated mid-description ("Due to the filters 200a-"), so the claims themselves are not in the record I was given. The claim language I analyse below comes from the NDLI claim transcription (ndl.iitkgp.ac.in), which shows narrower claims than the published application's Summary — notably a claim 1 reciting that the processor creates the image "in response to the trigger beam interacting with and detecting a particle," a dependent claim to "a pair of axicon lens[es]," and a dependent claim to the window/scattering-coating/total-internal-reflection/opening-to-trigger-sensor structure. If that transcription is accurate, the granted claims are meaningfully narrower than the application as filed, and the obviousness case must be run against the trigger-beam and axicon limitations as claim elements. My element mapping below flags every place where this matters. Confirm against USPTO PatentCenter "Claims" before relying on it.

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

For a § 103 analysis I assume a POSITA with an M.S. (or B.S. + 3–5 years) in physics, optics, or atmospheric instrumentation, plus 2–3 years of hands-on experience with digital in-line holography (beam expansion/spatial filtering, Rayleigh–Sommerfeld or Fresnel numerical reconstruction, twin-image handling) and with aerosol particle instrumentation (triggering, PMT detection, CCD/CMOS imaging). This is a crowded, well-documented art with textbook-level knowledge (Kreis, Handbook of Holographic Interferometry; Goodman, Introduction to Fourier Optics — both cited in the field literature around this patent), which matters because § 103 permits reliance on such background knowledge.

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2. The prior art references

Note on reference A/I. US 2013/0242301 A1 and US 8,830,476 appear to be the same Army/KSU family (the '476 grant is described by TechLink as the HAPI patent, matching the '301 publication's content and timing). I could not verify the grant number↔publication correspondence or the exact inventor list within this session — flagging this as unverified. It matters twice: (a) if the '301/'476 names a different inventive entity from the '392, it is § 102(a)(2) art as well; (b) common Government ownership would except it from § 102(a)(2) under § 102(b)(2)(C) — but not from § 102(a)(1), because a 2013 publication is a printed publication more than one year before the 2020 filing, and the § 102(b)(1) exception cannot reach it. Reference A remains available § 103 art regardless of common ownership.

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3. Element-by-element mapping of the granted independent claims

Claim 1 (device) — reconstructed from the NDLI transcription

Claim 9 (opto-electric system) — the system claim

Method claim (NdlI/spec Figs. 7A–7C)

All eight steps — receive pulsed laser, direct as reference wave, receive aerosol particle in sensing cavity, illuminate, generate object wave, direct object wave to sensor, generate contrast hologram from unscattered/scattered interference, selectively delay the pulse, create image (for particles "> approximately five micrometers") — are disclosed by A (trigger, pulse, image) + G (HAPI's ">5 micrometers," lensless contact-free imaging, post-hoc computational focusing) + H (contrast/subtraction + RS reconstruction).

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4. The combinations, and why a POSITA would have made them

Combination I — A alone, or A + B, for claim 1

References: US 2013/0242301 A1 (A) in view of Fugal 2004 (B).
Rationale: A is the closest art and supplies every claim-1 functional element, including the trigger-beam-fired image creation. B supplies the express teaching of performing the identical in-line holographic particle measurement from a moving (airborne) platform rather than a laboratory bench. A POSITA seeking to characterise aerosols in situ — the precise problem the '392's own background concedes is unsolved ("the accuracy of remote-sensing retrievals and climate models critically depends on the particle properties assumed") — would have been motivated to swap A's lab delivery nozzle for free-flowing ambient sampling (as in B and E) and to move it onto a mobile platform. Expected result: claim 1 obvious; all of its dependent claims (CCD/CMOS sensor selection; lens-or-mirror optical element; interference-pattern detection; "transmission diffraction grating" characterisation of the hologram) are routine design choices or mere descriptions of known in-line holography physics.

Combination II — A + E (+F/G) for the system claim and the mobile-platform limitation

References: A + Swisens Poleno / Sauvageat et al. (E) + the HAPI abstracts (F/G).
Rationale: A discloses the concept and the trigger architecture; E discloses a field-deployed, commercially operational instrument in which a scattering trigger initiates a digital-holography capture of a free-flying particle; F/G disclose the same architecture mounted on a UAV with 3D-printable lightweight construction and particle sizing down to 5 µm. The motivation is not speculative: F and G are the inventors' own public statements that HAPI was built for UAV deployment, and E is the same trigger-plus-holography architecture reduced to practice by a third party. The Federal Circuit's KSR "predictable variations of known techniques" logic applies: combining two known, compatible sub-systems (triggered holographic imager + small UAV airframe) with no change in their respective operating principles is the paradigm of obviousness. Expected result: the system claim and the housing/aerospace-vehicle claim are obvious.

Combination III — A + E + background DH knowledge, for the contrast hologram and reconstruction limitations

References: A/E in view of H (Schnars & Jüptner; DTIC ADA456956; Kreis; Goodman).
Rationale: The distinction between a raw hologram I_holo and a contrast hologram I_con = I_holo − I_ref, and its benefit (DC-term suppression, improved fringe contrast against stray light), is textbook, and the DTIC spray-holography report uses exactly this "subtract average intensity before reconstruction + Rayleigh–Sommerfeld convolution via FFT" chain. Motivation is supplied by the problem itself, which the patent acknowledges ("Because it is not possible to measure a guaranteed no-particle hologram in the field…"). Expected result: the contrast-hologram limitation adds nothing patentable.

Combination IV — A + E + axicon/annular-beam art, for the dependent claims

References: A + E + the POSITA's knowledge of axicon optics (a double-axicon pair is the standard, text-book way to convert a Gaussian beam into a collimated hollow/annular beam — this is the entire commercial purpose of axicons).
Rationale: The pair of axicon lenses limitation recites the conventional instrument for making an annular beam, and the specification's own stated advantage — "hologram recording events may be triggered regardless of the direction particles enter the instrument" — is a design need recognised in the art (E's radially symmetric trigger, G's "from any direction"), which the annular trigger beam serves. Similarly, trapping weakly scattered light in a coated window by total internal reflection and funnelling it through an opening to a PMT is a known light-collection technique; a POSITA seeking to raise trigger sensitivity over a 360° acceptance angle would predictably reach for it. Expected result: the axicon, window/DSC/TIR, and filter-stack dependent claims are each obvious as a combination of known elements with predictable results.

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5. Graham/KSR factor summary

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6. Where the obviousness case is weakest (the patentee's best defences)

1. The independent claims may be narrower than the publication suggests. If granted claim 1 in fact requires the response to the trigger beam interacting with and detecting a particle, the challenger must show the trigger-to-image causal link — which A and E do supply — but must also confront the "open cavity … from any direction" limitation that A's nozzle delivery structure does not literally meet.
2. The annular/coaxial two-beam geometry with dichroic co-alignment (red CW annular trigger enclosing the green pulsed hologram beam) is a genuinely specific architecture. E uses a different trigger geometry; A uses focused trigger beams, not an annular beam coaxial with and contained within the hologram beam. Expect the patentee to argue this is a non-obvious design choice yielding the "any-direction" advantage. Counter: axicons, dichroics and coaxial beam combining are standard, and the advantage was a recognised design need.
3. § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period issue with reference G (and F). The AAAR 2018 abstract (Oct 2018) is >1 year before the 2020-09-21 filing, so the exception cannot apply to it if it is an inventor-derived disclosure… and the abstract lists Berg and Kemppinen among its authors. If those two are joint inventors of the '392 and the HAPI subject matter in the abstract was theirs (with McMeeking/Gordon being co-authors who did not contribute it), the exception does apply and G drops out as art. If instead the abstract contains subject matter obtained from non-inventor contributors, G survives under § 102(a)(1). This is the single most contestable evidentiary point in the whole case and should be briefed first. F (Oct 2019) is inside the window and almost certainly excepted.
4. Secondary considerations. The Army's public affairs release quotes co-inventor Videen: "This research is unique… This has not been done before and other researchers have not yet ventured into this territory" (army.mil), and the Sci Rep abstract asserts a "unique ability." These are weak nonobviousness evidence — inventor statements in a press release have no demonstrated nexus to any specific claim and are not industry praise or unexpected results. If the patentee cites them, the rebuttal is that the 2018/2019 abstracts show the inventors themselves publicly described the same capability beforehand.
5. § 103(c)/§ 102(b)(2)(C) do not rescue the patent from A. Because A published in 2013, it is § 102(a)(1) prior art; common Government ownership only neutralises § 102(a)(2) art.

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7. An additional, independent invalidity vector (not § 103)

If US 8,830,476 is the grant of US 2013/0242301 A1 and is commonly owned with the '392 (both U.S. Army / KSU-licensed), then the '392 may be vulnerable to obviousness-type double patenting if the two sets of claims are not patentably distinct, notwithstanding differing inventorship — common ownership supplies the predicate under the In re Hubbell line. Alternatively, if there is no common ownership of the '301 at the relevant time, the '301 becomes § 102(a)(2) art as well, strengthening Combination I. Either way, the relationship should be established before the § 103 case is finalised. Verify the grant number, filing date, inventor list, and assignment chain of US 8,830,476.

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8. Bottom line

• Claim 1 (device) and the method claim are, on the record assembled here, reasonably likely to be held obvious over US 2013/0242301 A1 (A) alone or in view of Fugal 2004 (B) and the HAPI UAV abstracts (G) — A supplies the trigger→pulsed-laser→CCD→FFT-image architecture for contact-free holographic imaging of flowing aerosol particles, B/G supply the moving-platform implementation, and H supplies the contrast-hologram subtraction.
• The system claim (claim 9) is likewise obvious over A + E (Swisens Poleno / Sauvageat 2020) — E supplies the field-deployed trigger-initiated digital holography of free-flying particles.
• The axicon, DSC/TIR-window, filter-stack, and delayed-pulse dependent claims are each obvious as combinations of known elements with predictable results and a recognised design need (360° particle detection).
• Confidence: moderate-to-high on the art-based reasoning; materially limited by three unverified facts — (1) the exact granted claim text (Caveat B), (2) the identity/grant number/ownership of US 8,830,476 relative to US 2013/0242301 A1, and (3) whether the § 102(b)(1)(A) exception removes the AAAR 2018 abstract from the art. I could not verify (2) and (3) within this session and am flagging rather than guessing.

Recommended verification steps: (a) pull the granted claims from USPTO PatentCenter for 17/027,131; (b) pull the full text and front page of US 8,830,476 and compare inventorship/assignments to US 2013/0242301 A1; (c) confirm the AAAR 2018 abstract's authorship contributions and the inventors' HAPI disclosure timeline; (d) retrieve the uncited instruments the background names (aircraft cloud-ice imager, stationary mixed-phase imager, cable-car cloud imager, stationary pollen imager) from the Sci Rep 2020 reference list to firm up references B–E.