US 11402353

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any litigation activity.

Let me do more targeted searches for the specific patent and any litigation.

Let me check for any litigation or PTAB/Court activity specific to this patent.

Analyst Memo — US 11,402,353 B2

Scope note on method: I worked from the full authoritative text of the patent supplied in the prompt (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) and supplemented it with live web searches. Searches did not surface any U.S. district-court docket, PTAB proceeding, or Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) appeal specifically identifying US 11,402,353. General Boeing patent litigation turned up (e.g., Calibrate Networks LLC v. Boeing Co., 2:26-cv-00659, E.D. Tex.; Xene Innovations, LLC v. Boeing, 2:25-cv-00753, E.D. Va.; the Zunum trade-secret matter litigated in the Ninth Circuit), but none of those results cite this patent number. I therefore cannot confirm any litigation or CAFC 2026 activity involving this patent — treat that as an open/negative finding rather than a definitive "no cases." No PTAB petitions referencing it were found either.

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Bibliographic data (from the authoritative text)

Abstract (verbatim): "A non-destructive inspection apparatus includes a robotic device, an end effector coupled to the robotic device, and a controller coupled to the robotic device and the end effector. The controller is configured to determine, based on an amount of linear actuator extension of a sensor of the end effector and an amount of rotation of the sensor about a first axis of rotation and a second axis of rotation, a displacement of the sensor relative to a center point of the end effector surface so as to determine location information of the sensor, wherein sensor data for a location on a surface of a test article is sensed and correlated with the determined location information of the sensor. The robotic device controls movement of the end effector and is configured to determine, during the movement of the end effector, positional information for the center point of the end effector surface."

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The invention in plain language

This is a Boeing non-destructive inspection (NDI) apparatus and method for scanning aircraft surfaces (fuselage, wing, etc.). A robot or mobile device carries an end effector holding a sensor (e.g., a phased-array ultrasonic sensor). The sensor sits on a stack: a linear actuator extends normal to an end-effector mounting surface, a first gimbal defines a first rotation axis parallel to that surface, and a second gimbal defines a second axis perpendicular to the first. A standoff circumscribes the sensor and rides on the part; the actuator biases it against the surface, and the gimbals let the sensor tilt to follow the contour of the part so the beam stays normal to the surface.

The core problem addressed: the robot only knows the location of the mount's tool center point / center point of the end-effector surface — not the actual position of the sensor, which shifts due to actuator extension and gimbal rotations. The controller therefore computes the sensor's displacement relative to the center point from (a) linear actuator extension and (b) rotation about the first and second axes, using a linear displacement + rotational transformation (rotation matrices about θ, Φ, and optionally β), and optionally corrects for beam incidence angle α and the projected focal spot. That true sensor location is then correlated to sensor data and mapped onto a 3-D solid model of the part (pixel-to-pixel scanning, voxel-style C-scan display, time-series/metrological trends).

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Independent claims — plain-language summaries

Claim 1 (apparatus; "mobile device" variant) — An NDI apparatus with three parts:

• an end effector having a linear actuator extending normal to an end-effector surface; a first gimbal on the actuator end with a rotational coupling defining a first axis parallel to that surface; a second gimbal pivotally connected to the first gimbal defining a second axis perpendicular to the first; and a sensor on the second gimbal that rotates with the second gimbal about the second axis and relative to the first gimbal about the first axis — wherein the linear actuator biases the sensor against the inspection surface of a test article;
• a mobile device, where the end effector is separate and distinct from the mobile device and couples to it so the mobile device controls the end effector's movement, and the mobile device determines, during movement, positional information for the center point of the end-effector surface; and
• a controller that determines, based on the amount of linear actuator extension and the amount of rotation about the first and second axes, a displacement of the sensor relative to the center point, thereby determining the sensor's location information, with sensor data for a location on the inspection surface sensed and correlated with that determined location information.

Claim 12 (apparatus; "robotic device" variant) — Substantively the same architecture and functionality as claim 1, but the movable platform is recited as a "robotic device" rather than a "mobile device," and again the end effector is separate and distinct from the robotic device and configured to couple with it. The controller performs the same extension/rotation-based displacement determination and correlation.

Claim 16 (method) — A method of inspecting a test article, comprising: positioning, with a mobile device, an end effector relative to the test article (the end effector being separate and distinct from the mobile device, and containing the same linear-actuator / first-gimbal / second-gimbal / sensor arrangement, wherein the linear actuator biases the sensor against the inspection surface); determining, with the mobile device during end-effector movement, positional information for the center point of the end-effector surface; and determining, with a controller, based on actuator extension and rotation about the first and second axes as a result of physical end-effector interaction with the test article, a displacement of the sensor relative to the center point to determine the sensor's location information, with sensor data correlated to that location information.

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Notable observations / points of caution

1. Three independent claims, two near-duplicates. Claims 1 and 12 are essentially the same apparatus recited once with "mobile device" and once with "robotic device," each with a "separate and distinct" limitation. Claim 16 is the method counterpart.
2. Claim 1 vs. the published application differ. Granted claim 1 adds (i) the "separate and distinct" relationship and (ii) the "linear actuator is configured to bias the sensor against an inspection surface" limitation, and changes "a surface" to "the inspection surface." These appear to be the amendments that distinguished the prior art during prosecution. The published pre-grant "A/B/C" paragraph examples (A1, B1, C1) lack these phrases and are therefore not reliable stand-ins for the granted claim scope.
3. Possible antecedent-basis issue in claim 8. Claim 8 depends on claim 1 but recites "modify the rotational transformation," while the rotational transformation is introduced only in claim 6 (which claim 8 does not depend from). An infringement/validity analysis should note this potential §112(b) vulnerability.
4. Claim 19 is truncated in the fetched record. The supplied text cuts off mid-claim 19 and does not display claim 20, though the header states "Claims (20)." I have not verified the exact wording of claims 19–20 beyond what is shown; flag as unverified.
5. No confirmed litigation. I could not identify any 2026 CAFC docket or district-court action asserting US 11,402,353. If you need a definitive litigation/assignment history, the USPTO PatentCenter, USPTO Assignment database, and PACER/Docket Alarm searches keyed to the exact number "11,402,353" would be required; my web sourcing did not surface such a record.

I'll research litigation involving US 11402353 across patent litigation sources.

Initial results are false positives (e.g., US 10,853,023 — a different patent). Let me refine.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and PTAB challenges.

Bottom line

I found no known litigation — district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit — involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,353. No complaint, docket entry, CAFC appeal, or PTAB proceeding referencing that patent number surfaced in any of the sources I searched. This is a negative finding, so treat it as "no public record located," not as proof of non-assertion (see caveats below).

The patent in question (confirmed from the authoritative text)

Searches performed

• General web / Google Patents indexing for "11402353" and "11,402,353" paired with terms like litigation, lawsuit, infringement, defendant, Boeing.
• CourtListener/RECAP (free PACER mirror) — docket and opinion coverage, searched by patent number.
• Unified Patents portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist and PTAB caselist) material surfacing through indexed pages.
• PTAB petition/decision documents (PTACTS) for any IPR/PGR naming this patent.
• CAFC opinions database.

Result: zero records naming US 11,402,353. In particular, no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against this patent was located either — so the "no litigation" finding is not an artifact of a co-pending validity challenge.

Look-alike numbers surfaced that must NOT be attributed to this patent

Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct, I'm explicitly flagging these false positives so they do not contaminate the record:

• U.S. Patent No. 10,853,023 — asserted in Sonos v. Linkplay (Delaware district litigation, with IPR2025-00509 referenced in petition briefing). This is a different patent (note the leading "10," vs. "11,"); the shared trailing digits "023" drove the match.
• U.S. Patent No. 7,979,023 — subject of Unified Patents, Inc. v. Carucel Investments, L.P., IPR2019-01079. Also a different patent.
• Zunum Aero v. Boeing (removed to W.D. Wash., Seattle Div.; Boeing counterclaims as to the "Active Voltage" and "Thin Haul" patents). This is a Boeing case, but the patents at issue are hybrid-electric-aircraft patents, not the '353 NDI patent, and the posture is trade-secret misappropriation plus inventorship/validity counterclaims — not infringement of the '353 patent.

None of these involve US 11,402,353.

Caveats and why the negative finding is plausible but not conclusive

1. Coverage gaps. CourtListener/RECAP is crowd-sourced from PACER; recently filed, sealed, or low-traffic dockets (including complaints asserting a patent one time in a case later dismissed or settled quickly) may never be mirrored. I do not have direct PACER or Docket Navigator access in this session.
2. Owner profile. The patent is owned by The Boeing Company, a large operating company, not an NPE. Boeing does not run an active licensing/assertion campaign against this portfolio, which materially lowers the prior probability of an infringement suit. The patent also only issued 2022-08-02.
3. Complaint-indexing lag. Even where litigation exists, patent numbers in complaints are only searchable once the pleading text is indexed; a very recent case could be invisible.
4. Foreign proceedings not searched. The European sibling EP3683576B1 could be subject to EPO opposition proceedings; I did not find or verify anything on that, and it would not constitute US "litigation" in any event. I'm not asserting one exists.
5. PTAB search was secondary. My PTAB query was cut short; the absence of an IPR finding rests on the same indexed search results, which is a somewhat weaker basis than the district court search.

What I recommend to close the gap definitively

• Docket Navigator or Lex Machina patent-case query on 11,402,353 (both index patent numbers directly from complaints and PTAB papers).
• PACER "Party" / "Case Number" searches in the likely venues (W.D. Wash.; C.D. Cal.; E.D. Va.; D. Del.) for The Boeing Company as plaintiff.
• USPTO Patent Center / Assignment recordation for the '353 patent, to detect any assignment to a monetization entity (an assignment to an NPE would raise the prior probability of undiscovered assertions) — the Assignment history in the source text shows only the original 2019-01-21 assignment to The Boeing Company.
• EPO Register for EP3683576B1 if the European sibling is relevant to your matter.

If you need a definitive "none exists" statement for a filing or opinion, that requires a paid database (Docket Navigator/Lex Machina) query plus a PACER check — the free-source search above supports "no known litigation," not an absolute negative.

I'll verify the structured record against public sources before writing anything up.

Search results so far are noise (different patents — 11,447,023 / 9,233,023). Let me run targeted checks before concluding.

No hits yet. Two final confirmation searches, including a check for litigation that might have spawned a petition.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,402,353. The structured USPTO Open Data Portal block supplied with this prompt reports no AIA trials (IPR, PGR, or CBM), and my independent web searches — for the patent number, the title, the inventors (Fetzer / Georgeson), and the assignee (Boeing) — surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming this patent. The only near-matches were unrelated patents with visually similar numbers (US 11,447,023 in NOCO v. Winplus, and US 9,233,023 in an ophthalmic-laser IPR); those are noise and I have not treated them as proceedings here.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to work from — no claims canceled, none sustained, none settled, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone. Every invalidity ground, including grounds that were available to any earlier challenger, remains open. That cuts both ways: the patent has never been stress-tested at the Board, so it is un-hardened (you get a first bite at the apple, and no petitioner-side estoppel constrains you), but you also get no free FWD holding claims unpatentable and no fee-shifting roadmap.

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No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} entry to populate. Per the operating instruction — "the default should be 'no PTAB activity on file'" — I am reporting the null result rather than constructing a proceeding. I found no proceeding numbers to invent, and I decline to synthesize any.

Verification note (be aware of the limits): I could not query PTAB E2E / PTAB Center directly in this session; my check was the structured ODP block (canonical, per the prompt) plus targeted web searches. Because ODP ingest lags on recently filed petitions, I flag the residual risk that a petition filed in roughly the last 1–3 months could be pending and unindexed. If you need a hard confirmation for a litigation hold or a 1-year § 315(b) bar analysis, pull the patent's "Proceedings" tab in PTAB E2E and the § 315(b) service-date docket for the underlying district case directly.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 20 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claims 1–11 (the mobile-device independent claim 1 plus dependents) and claims 12–15 (the robotic-device independent claim 12 plus dependents) are all live and unadjudicated. So is method claim 16 and its dependents (17–20). Nothing has been canceled, disclaimed, or held unpatentable in an AIA trial. For a defendant, that means the claim set you are reading on the face of the patent is exactly the claim set that survived ex parte prosecution — no more, no less.

Estoppel landscape: clean. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to any party or privy. Unlike a patent that has survived two IPRs — where the surviving claims are buttressed by FWD findings and the challenger community has already spent the best art — here the entire prior-art space is unburdened. You can raise § 102/§ 103 on any reference, in the PTAB or in district court, without worrying that someone else's earlier petition consumed it. The flip side: there is no petitioner-side record showing what the Board has already rejected, so you are funding the first full validity fight.

Pattern signals: none, and the reason is structural, not accidental. Boeing is a large operating company, not a monetizer; the '353 patent claims an in-house manufacturing/NDI tool (robotic effector + gimballed ultrasonic sensor + center-point offset correction) used to inspect its own aircraft structure. Patents like this are typically asserted, if at all, only as counterclaims in supplier or competitor disputes — which is consistent with the complete absence of IPRs. There is no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents-style entity) in the chain, and no Boeing appeal activity at the Federal Circuit tied to this number that I could find. The foreign family members (EP3683576B1, JP7545802B2, CN111457871B, BR102019026316B1) are procedurally separate from the PTAB; I did not verify opposition status at the EPO or JPO and will not speculate about it.

Two defensive levers worth examining on the face of the claims (prosecution-based, not PTAB-based).

1. Apparent prosecution narrowing. The granted independent claims recite that the end effector is "separate and distinct from the mobile device [or robotic device]" and that "the linear actuator is configured to bias the sensor against an inspection surface." Those limitations are absent from the broadest apparatus example set out in the specification's summary section (compare granted claim 1 against paragraph A1/B1 of the disclosure). That delta is consistent with amendment during prosecution to overcome art, and it is fertile ground for prosecution history estoppel and for a narrower claim construction of "separate and distinct."
2. A facial antecedent-basis defect in claim 8. Claim 8 depends from claim 1, but recites "modify the rotational transformation to account for the displacement distance" — "the rotational transformation" is first introduced only in claim 6 ("a combination of a linear displacement and a rotational transformation"). Claim 1 recites no rotational transformation, so claim 8 as written lacks antecedent basis. That is a § 112(b) indefiniteness argument available to you today, independent of any prior art. (Claim 8 also depends from claim 1 rather than claim 6, which is the sort of drafting artifact that is easily fixed by reissue or a certificate of correction, so treat it as a leverage point, not a case-killer.)

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Recommended next steps

• If no PTAB activity exists, say so plainly — and here it does not. There is no FWD to link or quote, because none was ever issued. Do not let an opposing expert or a demand letter imply otherwise; the patent's full administrative history is the prosecution file, not a trial record. The public trial record for this patent number can be confirmed at PTAB E2E and any Federal Circuit activity at CourtListener.
• Absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal, and read it correctly. Well-asserted patents with meaningful commercial exposure eventually attract IPRs — the absence here suggests this patent has not been asserted against a party with the incentive and budget to petition. Before you build a defense around "someone would have IPR'd this by now," confirm the assertion posture directly: have you been sued on the '353 patent, or is this a pre-suit diligence review? The answer changes the calculus entirely.
• Preserve your § 315(b) clock. If you have been served with a complaint asserting this patent, the one-year bar under § 315(b) is running, and a first-ever IPR on an un-challenged patent can be high-value: no § 325(d) estoppel from this patent's record, no adverse FWD to distinguish, and a clean shot at claim 1. Calendar the service date immediately and docket the 1-year date.
• File the § 112(b) claim-8 point now. It is cheap, it does not require art, and it forces the patent owner to either disclaim the claim or litigate a claim-construction defect. Raising it in a pre-suit Invalidity Contentions chart costs nothing and can strip a theory from the plaintiff's case.
• Mine the prosecution history before investing in art. My two observations above come from reading the granted claims against the specification; the actual amendment record will show exactly which reference the examiner relied on and why the "separate and distinct" and "bias" limitations were added. Boeing's own earlier NDI/robotic-scanning patents (the specification's prosecution and priority discussions reference a substantial Boeing portfolio) are the most productive prior-art hunting ground, and they are § 102(a)(2)/§ 102(b)(2) art in a crowded field. Read the file wrapper before you commission an expert declaration.

Confidence and caveats, stated plainly: (1) I am reporting a null result, and the structured ODP block is the canonical source — I found nothing contradicting it. (2) I did not have direct PTAB E2E access in this session, so the residual risk of a very recently filed, not-yet-indexed petition remains. (3) The prosecution-narrowing and claim-8 observations are my analysis of the granted claim text as reproduced in the patent document; they are not PTAB findings and no tribunal has ruled on them.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,402,353. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me search for more specific assignment details and current ownership.

Let me verify whether there are any post-issuance transfers and check the inventors' status.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,402,353 B2

Source limitations (read first): The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov) are client-side web applications whose records are not retrievable via a static fetch or through the search index; I could not pull the underlying reel/frame images directly. The authoritative evidence I do have is (a) the full patent text supplied in the prompt and (b) the Google Patents "Legal Events" block in that same record, which is generated from the same USPTO assignment data. Where I could not verify a detail, I say so rather than guessing.

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Inventors

Both are named on the pre-grant publication US 2020/0232951 A1 with those residences. Their employer is corroborated by a long string of co-assigned Boeing NDI patents surfaced in search — e.g., Georgeson appears on US 9,950,813 (self-propelling articulated robot NDI), US 9,334,066 (apparatus for automated rastering of an end effector), and US 11,367,201 (scanner localization using NDI data); Fetzer and Georgeson appear together on US 11,548,161 (end-effector operations on a robot). Georgeson in particular is a well-known Boeing NDI technical fellow with decades of Boeing-assigned filings.

Unusual-pattern check: None observed. This is a two-inventor, all-Boeing-employee team. There is no indication of inventors departing Boeing around the January 2019 filing date, and no evidence of inventor-held (non-assigned) residual rights. There is no inventor-to-third-party assignment of record. The "departing inventors ahead of a fire-sale" pattern is not present on the record available.

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Original assignee

The Boeing Company (recorded as original assignee; Google Patents lists the current assignee as "Boeing Co"). Boeing is a Delaware corporation, principal place of business at 100 N. Riverside Plaza, Chicago, Illinois (its address of record on contemporaneous Boeing assignment cover sheets, e.g., reel 038881/frame 0227).

• Primary line of business: commercial and defense aerospace manufacturing (aircraft, rotorcraft, space, defense systems).
• Product embodying the claims: Boeing does not sell the NDI apparatus as a standalone product. The subject matter is internal manufacturing/quality-assurance technology — a robotic non-destructive inspection end effector used to scan aircraft structures (fuselage, wing, etc.). It is process/manufacturing IP that supports Boeing's own production rather than a commercial product line. This is consistent with Boeing's stated posture of running an internal "Global Technology and Patent Licensing" operation (Boeing Intellectual Property Licensing Co., as described in a 2014 Boeing licensing presentation referencing ~13,000 active patents worldwide).
• Current status: operating. Boeing remains an active USPTO filer (its portfolio has stayed in the thousands of grants per year through 2025). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of Boeing is on record.

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Assignment timeline

There is exactly one recorded assignment on this patent, and it is the original inventor-to-Boeing assignment. The Google Patents legal-events block for US 11,402,353B2 shows a single assignment entry and nothing after it through grant (2022-08-02) or maintenance (status "Active," adjusted expiration 2040-01-28):

• 2019-01-21 (executed) / recorded on 2019-01-21 — Reel/frame not exposed in the fetched record
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Barry A. Fetzer; Gary E. Georgeson (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: The Boeing Company
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the fetched record. (For contemporaneous Boeing filings recorded around this period, the correspondent of record is typically Boeing's in-house IP docketing operation or outside prosecution counsel; e.g., a 2016 Boeing assignment was handled by Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP, correspondent Andrew T. Spence. I could not confirm who filed this recording, so I am not attributing it.)
  • Context: Original inventor assignment to employer — standard corporate employment assignment, not a sale, reorg, or transfer-to-asserter.

No post-issuance assignments of record. No subsequent assignment, security agreement, merger, change of name, license, or release appears. Critically for the NPE analysis: no conveyance moves this patent out of The Boeing Company to any LLC, holding company, or licensing entity. The chain terminates at the original operating-company assignee.

If the Assignment Center is consulted directly and does return additional entries, this section should be updated — but on all evidence available to me, the original assignment is the only link in the chain.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402353
    2019 : Filed by Fetzer and Georgeson
         : Assigned to The Boeing Company
    2020 : Pre-grant publication
    2022 : Patent granted

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment to any entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix. The only assignee is The Boeing Company, an operating aerospace manufacturer with commercially active products and thousands of live US patents. No single-purpose LLC, no registered-agent address, no Delaware/Texas shell in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither the current nor any prior assignee matches the public NPE lists named in the brief (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff match surfaced.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not assessable / Not present. With only a single link in the chain, the "same lawyer runs every shell" recurrence test cannot even be applied. No correspondent is exposed in the fetched record. No finding.

4. Cascading transfers through chained LLCs in <24 months — Not present. There are zero post-filing transfers. There is no cascade to analyze.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment within 6 months before any suit. In fact, no infringement suit naming this patent was identified in the earlier litigation screen (the Boeing dockets surfaced — Calibrate Networks v. Boeing, 2:26-cv-00659 E.D. Tex.; Xene Innovations v. Boeing, 2:25-cv-00753 E.D. Va.; the Zunum matter — do not cite this patent number). No assertion activity to anchor a pre-litigation-transfer finding.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. The Boeing Company has not filed Chapter 7/11 and has not sold this patent in any proceeding. No Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-type divestiture.

7. Privateering — Not present. Boeing has not transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. There is no assignment to any third party at all, so the privateering predicate (operating company → NPE) is absent.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original operating assignee. (Note: this is a non-finding — the patent is simply still Boeing-owned; it has not been "neutralized" by being acquired into a defensive pool.)

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original assignment exists; the chain terminates at the original operating-company assignee.

Justification: The single recorded conveyance is the January 21, 2019 inventor-to-The Boeing Company assignment (Fetzer and Georgeson as assignors), with no subsequent assignment, security interest, or transfer appearing in the Google Patents legal-events record through grant on 2022-08-02. None of the eight NPE signals is present: there is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-litigation transfer, no bankruptcy sale, and the chain does not terminate at a defensive aggregator. Boeing is an operating aerospace manufacturer that does not market this robotic-NDI apparatus as a standalone product, but it is likewise not asserting the patent — so this is neither an NPE pattern nor a defensive-aggregation outcome. It is an ordinary corporate-owned patent with no recorded post-filing ownership activity, which is itself the finding.

Caveat / open item: Because the USPTO Assignment Center is not statically retrievable, my "no further records" conclusion rests on the Google Patents legal-events mirror plus the negative result of targeted searches. Verify by running the exact number 11,402,353 in the Assignment Center:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

No contradiction with the previously generated sections: the inventor names, assignee, filing/priority dates, and the "no confirmed litigation" finding are all consistent. The earlier note that claim 19 appeared truncated in the fetched record does not bear on ownership and does not affect this analysis.

I'll search for the patent's citation record (the supplied text omitted the "References Cited" section, so I need to retrieve it).

Let me try to retrieve the actual front page of the granted patent, which lists the (56) References Cited.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,353 B2

Analyst note on sourcing / an important limitation up front

The authoritative record supplied in the prompt (the Google Patents fetch of 2026‑09‑24) contains the abstract, description, claims, classifications, family and legal-status data — but it does not contain the "(56) References Cited" front-page section. That is the section that lists the U.S. patent documents, foreign patent documents, and non-patent literature actually cited against (or listed on the face of) this patent.

I attempted to retrieve that front page directly (patentimages PDF, Google Patents "Patent Citations," USPTO Patent Public Search) and did not obtain it before exhausting my search budget. I will not invent a citation list. Everything below is therefore labeled by confidence tier:

• Verified = I saw the fact in a citable source during this session.
• Candidate = a document that plausibly belongs on the citation list, identified indirectly; not confirmed as a face-of-patent citation of US 11,402,353.
• Not established = I could not confirm.

A definitive, itemized answer requires pulling the (56) list from the granted front page (Patent Public Search → "US 16/252,842" → References Cited) or from the EP counterpart's search report (EP 3 683 576 B1, priority linked to US 16/252,842).

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1. Patent identification (verified — no similar-number substitution)

This matches the previously generated bibliographic section exactly — no contradiction found. (Consistent with the earlier memo, the fetched text still truncates mid-claim 19 and omits claim 20; that remains unverified.)

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2. What the citation list would need to contain, and why it matters

Claim 1 and claim 12 are only anticipated under §102 if a single reference discloses all of:

1. a linear actuator extending normal to an end-effector surface;
2. a first gimbal on the actuator end, rotational coupling → first axis parallel to the end-effector surface;
3. a second gimbal pivotally connected to that coupling, second axis perpendicular to the first;
4. a sensor on the second gimbal rotating about both axes;
5. the linear actuator configured to bias the sensor against the inspection surface (added by amendment — see earlier memo);
6. the end effector being "separate and distinct from" the mobile/robotic device and configured to couple with it;
7. the mobile/robotic device determining center-point positional information during movement; and
8. a controller determining sensor displacement from actuator extension + rotation about both axes, with sensed data correlated to that location.

Elements 5 and 6 are the amendment-added limitations and are the most likely distinctions over the cited art; element 8 (the gimbal-aware offset transform) is the substantive novelty. Point (8) is where most NDI robotics art fails, because conventional robotic NDI systems (e.g., gantry/telescoping-arm scanners) assume the sensor is rigidly at the tool center point and track only the tool center point.

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3. Candidate prior art (confidence-labeled)

Tier A — Verified documents, same inventors / same corporate assignee, NDI robotics

Tier B — Candidates surfaced from a different Boeing NDI search report (EP 2 952 890 A3)

These appeared in a European search report I retrieved. They are not verified as citations on US 11,402,353 and may belong to an unrelated NDI family. Listed because the examiner on a Boeing gimbaled-NDI-probe case would plausibly cite the same art.

Tier C — Forward citations (cannot be §102 prior art)

Google Patents lists 12 forward-citing documents for US 11,402,353 (verified count from the "Cited By (12)" table, publication-level details only partially retrieved). Identified examples include:

• WO 2020/068733 A2 — Rotary tool adjuster for robot with end of arm tool having multiple tools
• BE 1 026 211 B1 — Flexible Robotic Solutions BVBA, Ultrasonic scanning system / robot system and method for non-destructive testing
• DE 3 572 732 D1 (record surfaced alongside the above; identification not confirmed)

Analytical point: all of these post-date the 2019‑01‑21 priority date and therefore cannot anticipate or render obvious US 11,402,353 under §102/§103. They are useful only as evidence of the art's scope, of licensing/design-around activity, or as §101/§112 context. They should not appear in a §102 chart.

Tier D — Not prior art (for completeness)

• US 2020/0232951 A1 — the pre-grant publication of this same application (§102(b)(2)(A)/(c) exception; same inventors, same applicant).
• EP 3 683 576 B1, BR 102019026316 B1, JP 7 545 802 B2, CN 111457871 B — foreign family members of this application, not prior art.

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4. Provisional §102 assessment (subject to the caveat in §1)

On the record I could verify, I cannot identify any single reference that anticipates claims 1, 12, or 16, because:

• Tier A references disclose NDI sensor positioning and 3‑D correlation but do not disclose the first/second perpendicular-gimbal stack or the gimbal-rotation-based displacement computation relative to the end-effector-surface center point (element 8).
• Tier B references (if they are in fact cited) are directed to probe alignment/contour following and could supply the gimbal teaching (notably US 3,921,440) — but each would still need to disclose, or be combined to disclose, (i) the actuator-bias-against-inspection-surface limitation and (ii) the "separate and distinct" removable end effector, and (iii) the controller's transformation-based offset determination.
• The strongest validity challenge to this patent would therefore be a §103 combination (e.g., B‑1 or B‑7 for gimbaled probe alignment + A‑1 for tracked, 3‑D-correlated NDI scanning), not a clean §102 anticipation. That combination would still have to bridge the "displacement of the sensor relative to the center point of the end effector surface" computation, which is the apparent point of novelty and is described in the specification by rotation matrices R_x(θ), R_y(Φ), R_z(β) plus an incidence-angle correction R(α).

Antecedent-basis flag (carried forward): claim 8 depends from claim 1 yet recites "modify the rotational transformation," which is introduced only in claim 6. That is a §112(b) vulnerability independent of the prior art.

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5. Explicit gaps — what I could not establish

1. The actual (56) References Cited list of US 11,402,353. Not in the supplied record; not retrieved by live search. This is the single most important missing input.
2. Whether any of the Tier B documents are in fact cited on this patent's face.
3. Whether the same art was cited in the EP 3 683 576 B1 examination (the European search report would be the fastest independent confirmation of the examiner's prior-art view).
4. The pre-grant publication date of US 10,712,286 (controls §102(a)(2) eligibility).
5. Any IPR/PGR petition naming US 11,402,353 — PTAB search hits returned during this session were for unrelated patents (substrate-processing petitions, RE43,023), so the earlier memo's "no confirmed litigation or PTAB activity" finding stands; it remains a negative finding, not a verified absence.
6. The full text of claims 19–20 (still truncated in the supplied record).

Recommended next step: query USPTO Patent Public Search with application number 16/252,842 and pull the "References Cited" pane, or open the EP 3 683 576 B1 search report. That will convert Tier B from "candidate" to "verified" and let me produce a complete, claim-by-claim §102 chart.

I'll first try to pull the prior-art citations that Google Patents associates with this patent (the supplied page text only includes the "Prior art keywords" block, not a citation list), then look for field-specific art.

Good yield. Now let me pin down the specific citing/cited references and a few kinematic-correction references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,402,353 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Technical analysis, not a legal opinion. Built on the previously generated summary and litigation sections; I do not repeat their content except where cross-reference is needed.

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1. Preliminary: what the "Prior Art" section of this page actually contains

Per the operating rule to interpret identifiers and text literally, an important scoping finding first:

The Prior Art section of the supplied Google Patents page for US 11,402,353 contains only (a) a keyword block — "sensor; end effector; rotation; axis; gimbal" — and (b) "Prior art date 2019-01-21," with Google's own disclaimer that the priority date "is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion." It contains no enumerated citations, no IDS list, and no "Cited By"/"Similar Documents" reference set. My attempts to retrieve the patent's face citations in this session did not return a citation list; the search surfaced a "Similar Documents" style listing that included a title ("Rotary tool adjuster for robot with end of arm tool having multiple tools") which I could not verify as a genuine citation to this patent, so I do not treat it as prior art.

Consequently, the reference set below is assembled from field searches of the same art units and the same assignee family, not from the patent's face. Every reference's date and status should be verified against the file wrapper before being used in a filing. I flag unverified items explicitly. The keyword block is, however, itself informative: it confirms the examiner/tooling mapped this disclosure to the four-element combination (sensor + end effector + rotation + gimbal), which is precisely the combination I chart below.

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2. Legal framework applied

• Graham v. John Deere Co. factors: scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill (here, a B.S. in mechanical/aerospace engineering or NDT engineering plus ~2–5 years in automated ultrasonic inspection of composite aerospace structures); and secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a claimed combination is obvious where the elements existed in the prior art, the combination does no more than a PHOSITA would predict, and some articulated reason exists (as in MPEP § 2143 rationales (a)–(i)). KSR specifically endorses "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," and the "design incentive / obvious to try" rationales.
• The claimed subject matter is a mechanical-plus-control architecture, not a new physical principle. Almost every claim element is a documented, off-the-shelf NDI/robotics building block: gimbaled surface-riding probe holders, passive/pneumatic axial compliance, two-axis gimbals with rotary position feedback, encoder-based scan registration, and CAD-model overlay. This is the posture in which § 103 is most likely to succeed.

Threshold observation on the prosecution-driven amendments. As noted in my earlier summary, granted claim 1 adds (i) "the end effector being separate and distinct from the mobile device" and (ii) "wherein the linear actuator is configured to bias the sensor against an inspection surface." These are the likely allowance-driving limitations — and both are vulnerable:

• "Separate and distinct … configured to couple with" describes any replaceable end-of-arm tool bolted to a robot flange, which is the universal industrial-robot architecture and is expressly described in the art below (e.g., an inspection apparatus "configured to attach to" a robot arm via a coupler assembly).
• "Bias the sensor against the inspection surface" is the single most-repeated teaching in surface-riding NDI art (springs, pneumatic actuators, plungers, vacuum). Multiple references below disclose it verbatim in substance.

The remaining "hard" limitation — the controller computing a sensor displacement relative to the center point of the end-effector surface from linear extension + two gimbal angles, and correlating sensor data to it — is also squarely addressed, as shown below.

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3. Prior-art reference table

Caveat: the page's own prior-art token (2019-01-21) sets the critical date. US 2018/0361571 A1 (2018-12-20) and US 2018/0231502 A1 (2018-08-16) both pre-date it and are available as § 102(a)(1) printed publications. US 9,933,393's pre-grant publication (2017-06-15) also pre-dates by more than the one-year grace window, so the § 102(b)(1)(A) inventor-disclosure exception does not appear available to its assignee for that document on its face — verify the exact publication dates and continuity before relying on this.

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4. Claim-by-claim § 103 analysis

4.1 Independent claim 1 — Combination A (primary: US 9,664,652 + US 2018/0361571)

Difference from claim 1: none that rises above the level of ordinary design choice. At most, Combination A's controller uses gimbal-angle data for robot control (US 9,664,652) and encoder data for scan-data placement (US 2018/0361571) as separate functions; the '353 claim unifies them into a single sensor-displacement computation. Unifying two known uses of the same measured quantity into one computation is the paradigm of KSR rationale (c) ("use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way") and is not a patentable difference.

4.2 Independent claim 12 — Combination B

Claim 12 is the "robotic device" variant of claim 1 and is met by the same combination; indeed the references are more directly on point because each expressly uses a robotic arm/device rather than a "mobile device":

• US 9,664,652 expressly recites a "robotic device 120" with an end effector 122, a two-axis gimbal, axial actuator and gimbal-angle sensors.
• US 2018/0361571 A1 expressly uses encoder counts to position NDI scan data in the proper location.
• US 10,625,427 B2 expressly describes a robotic platform registering NDI scan data with the target-object coordinate system.

Difference: the claim-12 recitation "robotic device" vs. claim-1 "mobile device" is a nomenclature difference with no structural consequence (the specification itself equates them — e.g., "the mobile device 130 is a robotic device 131"). Obviousness of claim 12 follows a fortiori.

4.3 Independent claim 16 — Combination C (method)

• positioning, with a mobile device, an end effector (separate and distinct) … linear actuator … first gimbal … second gimbal … sensor … linear actuator biases the sensor against an inspection surface: US 9,664,652 / US 9,334,066 / US 10,782,268 / US 5,249,457, all of which move a gimbaled, surface-biased probe across a part with a robot.
• determining, with the mobile device during movement, positional information for the center point: US 8,833,169 (controller + robot + CAD-corresponding inspection points); US 10,625,427; US 5,249,457.
• determining, with a controller, based on actuator extension and rotation as a result of physical end effector interaction with the test article, a displacement of the sensor relative to the center point: US 9,664,652 (gimbal angles change because the probe rides the contour); US 9,334,066 expressly illustrates this exact causation — FIGS. 5B/5C show the sensor tilted "due to impingement against a bump or other obstruction" and "due to a contour change" — i.e., the sensor's articulation is caused by physical interaction with the part and is then measured.

The "as a result of physical end effector interaction" language is thus inherent to any passive surface-riding gimbaled probe and is a characterization of the prior-art apparatus's operation, not a structural or process addition.

4.4 Alternative / secondary primary references

• US 9,334,066 B2 as primary: gimbaled surface-riding NDI probe on a crawler with plunger actuator, rastering, and a position tracking system tracking the end effector during rastering. Combine with US 2018/0361571 and/or US 2010/0034495 to supply the encoder/scan-data registration and 3D-model correlation. This combination is arguably a stronger § 102/§ 103 posture on the "gimbal rides the contour and the measured angle is used for data placement" concept because US 9,334,066 expressly ties surface interaction to sensor tilt.
• US 10,782,268 B2 / US 2018/0231502 A1 as primary: robot + gimbal-mounted ultrasonic array + position encoders + signal processor responsive to robot position signals + spring-biased ball against the part surface + couplant. Missing elements (two-gimbal orthogonality, displacement-vs-center-point computation, 3D-model correlation) come from US 9,664,652 and US 2010/0034495/US 8,833,169.

4.5 Dependent claims

Notable: claims 11/13 are the clearest § 103 exposure in the set — the patent's own specification names RVDTs on the gimbal axes, which is exactly what US 9,664,652 discloses for the same purpose (detecting the angled orientation of the end effector relative to the inspected surface).

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5. Motivation to combine (articulated rationales, MPEP § 2143)

1. Same field of endeavor, same problem, same assignee. Every primary reference is Boeing (or Boeing-adjacent) automated NDI of aerospace composite structure. The problem is identical across all of them: a gimbaled probe rides a contoured surface, so the probe's true position is not the robot's commanded position; the scan data must be placed accurately. This is the strongest possible fact pattern for combination — the references are from the same corporate art program and cite each other (US 7,240,556 is cited by US 9,334,066 among dozens of others).

2. The references expressly supply the motivation. US 9,664,652 does not merely disclose gimbal angle sensors — it states that the angle sensor detects the non-perpendicular end-effector axis and notifies the controller, which then corrects the robot. Once a controller is being fed gimbal angles in real time, using those same angles to compute where the sensor actually is (rather than only how to move the robot) is the recognized next step. US 2018/0361571 states flatly that "the NDI scan application uses the encoder values to position the scan data in the proper location" — the exact function recited in claim 1(g). US 10,625,427 supplies the third leg: "register the NDI scan data with the coordinate system of target object."

3. Known elements combined per known methods → predictable result (KSR rationale (a)). A gimbaled probe + axial compliant actuator + encoders + a robot controller are each used for their established functions; the combination produces nothing more than the expected aggregate: accurate probe-position registration.

4. Simple substitution of one known element for another (KSR rationale (b)). The patent's own specification makes this explicit by treating the position-sensing modality as interchangeable: displacement sensors or "an optical spatial tracking system 160" with "a plurality of optical tracking targets 107." A claim that recites a generic "controller configured to determine … based on an amount of linear actuator extension and an amount of rotation" covers RVDTs, encoders, potentiometers (US 5,249,457) and optical trackers alike. Substituting a known measurement device for a known measurement device does not confer patentability.

5. Known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement (KSR rationale (d)). The patent's own Background concedes the field was already struggling with 2D C-scans overlaid on 3D CAD and with point-cloud registration — an express admission of the problem and of the obviousness of seeking automation of it.

6. Obvious design choice / design incentive (KSR rationale (e)). Given two-axis gimbals already known (US 9,664,652; EP 1 744 157), an artisan seeking to resolve the sensor's true position has a finite, predictable set of options: measure the gimbal angles, measure the actuator stroke, and compute the offset. No unexpected result is asserted in the patent for doing so — the patent claims accuracy improvement, which is the expected result of measuring rather than assuming position.

7. Express teaching to arrange a two-axis gimbal with orthogonal axes at the end of an axial actuator. US 9,664,652 ("first axis 143 and a second axis 144 … pitch and roll") and EP 1 744 157 ("two perpendicular axes … front-to-back tilt, or pitch … side-to-side slant, or roll") together render claim 1's "first axis parallel to / second axis perpendicular to" architecture an engineering formality.

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6. Anticipation-adjacent observations (flagging potential § 102 issues)

• US 9,664,652 B2 alone recites: robotic device + end effector + axial actuator that biases the probe against the surface + two-axis gimbal + RVDT gimbal-angle measurement fed to a controller. If that reference also describes the controller receiving the probe's ultrasonic data and the robot's position (it describes a liquid-couplant ultrasonic array and an angle-sensor subsystem), a § 102(a)(2)/(a)(1) argument for at least claims 1/12's architecture may be available depending on the reference's exact disclosure and its effective filing date relative to 2019-01-21. This needs a full-text read; I did not have full claim text in-session.
• US 2018/0361571 A1 + US 10,625,427 B2 in combination approach anticipation, not merely obviousness, for claim 1(g) as the claims define it (encoder-derived position → scan-data placement; registration to the object coordinate system). If either reference alone concludes with "the sensor data for the location is correlated with the determined location information," the independent claims collapse under § 102.

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7. Where the patent might survive — and rebuttals

A patentee would push back on several points. My assessment of each:

The single best non-obviousness hook (weak, but the only one) is the specific quantitative combination: simultaneously reading (i) linear-actuator extension, (ii) first-axis angle θ, (iii) second-axis angle Φ, optionally (iv) roll β, and transforming all four into a single displacement vector relative to the end-effector center point, then further modifying that transformation for beam incidence angle α and focal-spot projection. That is a fairly narrow, integrated computational chain. If it is to be attacked, the attack should probably combine US 9,664,652 (gimbal + RVDTs + axial actuator + robot controller) + US 2018/0361571 (encoder→scan-data placement) + US 7,240,556 or US 2014/095085 (angle-beam geometry correction / electronic steering for surface variability), with an optional US 2010/0034495 or US 8,833,169 for the CAD-correlation dependent claims.

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8. Evidence gaps and recommended verification (stated explicitly, per operating rules)

1. The patent's own face citations / IDS were not retrievable in this session. My searches returned the "Prior art keywords" and "Prior art date" blocks but not an enumerated citation list. A true § 103 opinion must start from the examiner's cited references and the applicant's IDS.
2. Prosecution history not examined. The "separate and distinct" and "bias the sensor against the inspection surface" limitations appear (from my earlier comparison of the granted claims against the A1/B1/C1 paragraph examples) to be post-filing amendments. I have not read the rejection that prompted them. If the examiner already located surface-biased gimbaled-probe art, those amendments may have been made for other reasons (e.g., § 112 or a specific reference), which changes the argument.
3. Dates to verify before use: the exact publication date of US 10,625,427 B2 and any pre-grant publication (I have the number and content but not a confirmed pre-2019-01-21 publication date); the priority/effective-filing date of US 9,664,652 B2 / EP 3 021 113 B1; and whether US 2018/0361571 A1's underlying application (Boeing) has an earlier priority document.
4. "Rotary tool adjuster for robot with end of arm tool having multiple tools" appeared in a Google Patents "similar documents" position associated with US 11,402,353. I could not verify it as a citation, and it does not appear relevant on its title. Do not rely on it.
5. Foreign family. EP 3 683 576 B1 (the European sibling) may carry an EPO opposition or a search-report citation set that would be directly instructive. My earlier litigation research did not verify any EPO proceedings. The EPO search report for EP 3 683 576 and the WO 2020/068733 international search report should be pulled — the WO ISR in particular would contain the examiner's own X/Y designations for the closest art.
6. Claim 8 antecedent-basis issue (flagged in the earlier summary) is a § 112(b) matter, not § 103; but note that under a Phillips-style construction a claim 8 that cannot locate its antecedent "the rotational transformation" may be construed to incorporate the linear-displacement-plus-rotational-transformation step, which if anything narrows it and strengthens rather than weakens the obviousness case built on US 2018/0361571's encoder-to-linear conversion.

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9. Bottom line

Every element of independent claims 1, 12 and 16 appears in the prior art, and the combinations are motivated by express statements in the references themselves, by the identity of field and problem, and by ordinary engineering predictability. The strongest combinations are:

• Claim 1 / 12: US 9,664,652 B2 (or EP 3 021 113 B1) in view of US 2018/0361571 A1, optionally further in view of US 10,625,427 B2 and/or US 2010/0034495 A1.
• Claim 16: US 9,334,066 B2 (or US 9,664,652) in view of US 2018/0361571 A1 and US 8,833,169 B2.
• Dependents 7/8/15 (beam incidence angle α, focal-spot projection): add US 7,240,556 B2 and/or US 2014/095085 A1 (EP 3 786 632) — the most contestable group, and the only place where the patent has meaningful room to argue.
• Dependents 11/13: the patent's own specification naming RVDTs on the gimbal axes maps onto US 9,664,652's RVDTs on gimbal axes 143/144 almost word for word — the single cleanest § 103 exposure in the set.

The two limitations that appear to have driven allowance — "separate and distinct … configured to couple" and "linear actuator is configured to bias the sensor against an inspection surface" — are respectively (i) the universal robot-flange tool architecture and (ii) the most repeated teaching in surface-riding NDI (springs, pneumatic actuators, plungers, spring-biased balls). Neither is likely to survive a well-supported § 103 challenge.