US 11402401

I'll search for the patent and check for any CAFC litigation involving it.

Let me check specifically for any litigation or CAFC activity, and pull the full claim set.

US 11,402,401 B2 — Analyst Summary

Searches run: Google Patents / Justia / PubChem patent records for the exact string "11402401" / "US11402401B2", plus targeted queries for CAFC 2026 docket activity and DRS Network & Imaging Systems litigation. Searches for the CAFC 2026 angle returned no results.

Bibliographic Data (as returned by the sources)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402401/en ; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-11402401-B2 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/11402401 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220326273A1/en

Abstract (verbatim from the record)

"An imaging system includes a body, a stage coupled to the body, and a focal plane array including one or more detectors and coupled to the stage. The imaging system also includes a lens assembly including an objective lens and a rear lens group. The lens assembly is coupled to the body and optically coupled to the focal plane. The imaging system further includes a transparent plate coupled to the body and optically coupled to the objective lens and the focal plane array. The transparent plate is disposed between the objective lens and the focal plane array. Additionally, the imaging system includes an actuator coupled to the transparent plate and configured to rotate the transparent plate relative to an optical axis of the imaging system."

Independent Claim — Plain-Language Overview

Claim 1 (imaging system) — the independent claim retrieved in the search results. It covers a camera/imaging system made of six cooperating physical elements:

1. A body — the structural housing of the camera.
2. A stage coupled to the body — the mounting platform.
3. A focal plane array (FPA) with one or more detectors, coupled to the stage — the sensor(s) that actually capture the image.
4. A lens assembly made up of two parts — an objective lens and a rear lens group — coupled to the body and optically coupled to the FPA. (The two-part lens assembly is a notable narrowing feature: not just "a lens," but specifically an objective lens plus a downstream rear lens group.)
5. A transparent plate coupled to the body and optically coupled to the objective lens and the FPA, with the plate disposed between the objective lens and the FPA. This is the core of the invention — a tiltable glass/optical plate in the light path, not a mirror.
6. An actuator coupled to the transparent plate, configured to rotate the transparent plate relative to the optical axis of the imaging system.

Plain-language gist: a satellite/aircraft camera with a small rotatable transmissive plate placed in the optical path between the front (objective) lens and the sensor; tilting/rotating that plate shifts the image on the sensor, so it can be "backscanned" to cancel the platform's ground motion and stop image smear.

Dependent Claims Retrieved (2–9)

• 2 — plate disposed between the objective lens and the rear lens group.
• 3 — plate disposed between the exit pupil and the objective lens.
• 4 — plate disposed at a location within the rear lens group.
• 5 — plate disposed between the rear lens group and the FPA.
• 6 — actuator further configured to move the plate in one or more directions relative to the FPA (i.e., not rotation only).
• 7 — adds a controller (processor + computer-readable medium) structurally programmed to: (a) determine a travel velocity of the FPA; (b) cause the actuator to rotate the plate at a rotation rate corresponding to that travel velocity; and (c) cause the detectors to capture image data while the plate is rotating. This is the commercially most substantive claim of the set retrieved.
• 8 — the travel velocity corresponds to that of an aircraft or a satellite.
• 9 — adds a dewar coupled to the body (the claim text was truncated in the retrieved snippet at "a dewar coupled to the body…").

Candid Uncertainty Notes

• Full claim set not fully verified. My search results exposed claims 1–9 verbatim. I could not confirm from an authoritative full-text source whether US 11,402,401 contains additional independent claims beyond claim 1 (e.g., method claims) at claim 10 or higher. Notably, the continuation US 2022/0326273 A1 does recite a method as its claim 1 ("A method of using an imaging system comprising a focal plane with one or more detectors…") and an imaging system as its claim 11. You should pull the granted '401 claim set directly from USPTO Patent Center/PatFT if claim-by-claim completeness matters.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: no hits. A search for "11402401" / "11,402,401" in connection with a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal returned an empty result set. I found no evidence of an appeal, IPR, ITC action, or district-court suit involving this patent. This is absence of evidence found, not a verified negative — the CAFC docket and PACER were not directly queried, and a docket search via Google may simply be under-indexed.
• Noise excluded. Searches also surfaced unrelated documents with superficially similar numbers (e.g., US 11,246,024 / IPR2023-00148 re Apple; various reexamination records). Per your instruction, those are not results for US 11,402,401 and were disregarded.
• Assignee naming. The record shows both "DRS Network and Imaging Systems LLC" (original assignee) and "DRS NETWORK & IMAGING SYSTEMS, LLC" (assignment record). Treated here as the same legal entity; I did not auto-correct either string. DRS is part of Leonardo DRS, but I have not verified current ownership beyond the face of the patent record.
• Date discrepancy. The Google Patents record labels 2018-08-29 as the "prior art date"/priority date and 2019-08-29 as the filing date; the provisional (62/724,513) is the priority basis. Today's date given in your prompt (2026-04-26) post-dates the continuation grant (2024-02-06) but not the listed adjusted expiration (2040-09-03).
• Google Patents page mislabeling. One search result returned a Google Patents page for EP 2381286 B1 whose "cited by" table lists US 11,402,401 B2 with a different title ("A wide-field-of-view optical system and a method for imaging the ground"). That alternate title appears to be an artifact of the citing-document listing, not a second title for the '401 patent — the '401 title is consistent across Google Patents, PubChem, and Justia. Flagging it rather than silently resolving it.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11402401 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me try more specific litigation database queries.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,401

Bottom line

I found no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,401.

Based on the searches I was able to run, this patent does not appear in any district court complaint, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal that I could identify. DRS Network & Imaging Systems LLC (the assignee) appears to have never asserted the '401 patent.

What I searched and what came back

Note on the near-miss results (these are NOT '401 litigation)

• Raytheon Co. v. BAE Systems, Inc., No. 19-1439 (4th Cir., filed Apr. 3, 2019). DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC appears here as a party/appellee alongside Leonardo DRS, Inc., but this is not an assertion of the '401 patent.
• Wallace v. DRS Network & Imaging Systems et al., No. 6:17-cv-01664 (M.D. Fla., filed Sept. 20, 2017). Nature of suit is "Other Contract" (28 U.S.C. § 1332), not patent. It predates the '401 patent's 2022 grant anyway.
• The UK Companies House result ("company number 11402401") is an unrelated corporate registration and should not be confused with the patent number.

Confirmed bibliographic facts for the patent itself

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402401](/patent/US11402401)/en

• Patent: US 11,402,401 B2 — "Method and system for scanning of a transparent plate during earth observation imaging"
• Application: US 16/555,735; filed 2019-08-29; granted 2022-08-02
• Priority: 2018-08-29 (provisional 62/724,513)
• Assignee: DRS Network & Imaging Systems LLC (original and current)
• Inventors: Mark Muzilla; Harvey M. Spencer; Raymond Wagoner
• Continuation family: US 17/849,237 → US 11,892,468 B2 (also no litigation found)
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2040-09-03

There is no litigation section populated on the Google Patents page for this patent, which is consistent with the absence of any identified suits.

Important caveats

1. This is a negative finding, not a certification. Absence of results in web-indexed sources does not prove no suit exists or ever existed. Sealed filings, recently-filed complaints not yet indexed, and foreign proceedings may not surface.
2. Database coverage limits. The queries I ran returned primarily Google Patents/PubChem bibliographic pages. I was unable to directly query Docket Alarm, PACER, the Unified Patents Portal case list, or CAFC docket for this specific patent number within the search budget available. A definitive answer would require running the patent number directly against those databases (e.g., portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=11402401 and a PACER/Docket Alarm docket search).
3. Defensive/post-grant activity. I also found no PTAB petition (IPR/PGR) against the '401 patent. As a defense contractor–held patent covering satellite/airborne imaging, it is plausible the owner has chosen to keep it as a portfolio/protective asset rather than assert it.

Recommendation

To confirm definitively, run the number directly in:

• Unified Patents Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=11402401
• PACER / Docket Alarm / CourtListener (RECAP) — search "11,402,401"
• USPTO PTAB — search Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings for the patent
• CAFC — search the Federal Circuit docket for appeals referencing the patent

If those return nothing, the correct statement is: no litigation is known for US 11,402,401 as of today's date (April 26, 2026).

I'll start by verifying the structured data with targeted web searches, since the canonical block says "no PTAB activity on file."

The broad searches returned a different "024 patent (a 2019-issued light-engine patent). Let me search specifically for PTAB activity involving this patent's owner and number.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to rule out anything the ODP hasn't indexed.

PTAB Proceedings — US 11,402,401 B2

Patent: US 11,402,401 B2 — Method and system for scanning of a transparent plate during earth observation imaging
Patent Owner: DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC
Inventors: Mark Muzilla; Harvey M. Spencer; Raymond Wagoner
App. No.: 16/555,735 | Priority: 2018-08-29 (Prov. 62/724,513) | Filed: 2019-08-29 | Granted: 2022-08-02
Adjusted expiration: 2040-09-03 | Status: Active
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402401/en

Proceedings overview

No AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,402,401 — total count: 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials).

This is the canonical answer from the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block generated from the USPTO Open Data Portal, and it is the controlling source here. The patent's entire claim set is therefore UNTESTED at the PTAB — there is no IPR, PGR, or CBM to point a defendant to, and no cancelation order, estoppel ruling, or Federal Circuit mandate to leverage. The defensive posture is the opposite of "hardened by surviving IPRs": nobody has ever tried, so there is no roadmap, no admitted claim construction, and no estoppel safety net — but there is also a wide-open runway for a first-filed petition. Treat the absence as an intelligence gap, not as evidence of strength.

Per-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to report. Rather than fill the template with fabricated case numbers, panels, or dispositions, I state affirmatively: the USPTO ODP structured data returns zero AIA trials for this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR/PGR/CBM petition naming US 11,402,401 (or its application 16/555,735) as of 2026-09-29.

Look-alike hits I checked and ruled out (do NOT treat as this patent)

These appeared in search results and are commonly confused with this patent. They involve different patents that happen to be numbered "'024" or share the same leading/trailing digits:

I could not locate any PTAB document, petition, or institution decision citing 11,402,401 or 16/555,735. Links for the primary sources a defendant should independently re-check: USPTO PTAB Center/E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/).

Confidence note: a negative result is harder to prove than a positive one. The ODP structured block is authoritative for indexed AIA trials; my searches are corroborating, not exhaustive. A recently filed petition (within the last ~6–9 months) could conceivably be pending before it appears in every source I can reach. Verify directly in PTAB E2E and the USPTO PatentCenter "Proceeding" tab before relying on this in a brief.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of US 11,402,401 — claims 1 through the last issued claim — is SUSTAINED by default only, meaning never adjudicated, never amended, never disclaimed. I am deliberately not enumerating "surviving claims" as a narrow list, because no claim has been canceled and none has been upheld; the entire claim set stands as issued. The only claim text I can state with confidence is the granted text of the patent itself. There is no PTAB record defining which claims are commercially asserted, so a defendant cannot infer that the patent owner is litigating only a subset.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered at all, because no IPR was ever instituted. Practically, this cuts both ways for a current defendant:

• No downside: you are not a privy of any prior petitioner, and no ground is off the table by statute. Every § 102/§ 103 ground over patents and printed publications is available to a first-filer, subject only to your own § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of the first complaint alleging infringement of this patent.
• No upside: there is also no prior petitioner's expert record, no Board claim construction, and no institution decision to borrow from or distinguish. You will be paying for the first full build-out of invalidity with no subsidized predecessor work.

Pattern signals. No prior petitioner has filed any petition on this patent (so "repeat petitioner" and "joinder" signals are both null). No PTAB appeal exists, so there is no evidence of an aggressive or defensive patent-owner PTAB posture either way. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, RPX) appears in the chain — the patent has not attracted a crowd-funded validity challenge. One structural point does matter: the family is alive. Google Patents records priority to US 17/849,237 → US 11,892,468 B2 (continuation asserted as a priority link in 2022-06-24). A defendant facing assertion must check whether the continuation 11,892,468 — and any further continuations — have been separately asserted or challenged, because a win on the '401 alone may not clear the family.

PGR is time-barred; IPR is not. The post-grant review window under § 321(c) closed nine months after grant (i.e., around 2023-05-02) and has long lapsed. The '401 is a post-AIA first-inventor-to-file patent (priority 2018-08-29), so PGR was once available but is gone. IPR remains the only AIA vehicle, with the IPR-eligibility date computed from the later of nine months post-grant or termination of any PGR — the latter never occurred.

Recommended next steps

If no PTAB activity exists (current state) — say so plainly in any opinion you write. The honest framing for a client is: "US 11,402,401 has never been challenged at the PTAB. There is no Final Written Decision to cite, no canceled claim to exploit, and no estoppel to hide behind. Our invalidity case is a from-scratch build." Do not let anyone on the team characterize the zero-IPR history as validation of the patent; well-asserted patents in hot markets attract IPRs, and a quiet patent may simply be under-asserted — or asserted against parties who cannot afford the filing, or whose § 315(b) clock has run.

1. Confirm the negative in PTAB E2E and PatentCenter today. Pull the "Proceedings" tab for US 11,402,401 and for App. 16/555,735 in https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402401/en and PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/). Screenshot-dated confirmation belongs in the file.
2. Sweep the family, not just the patent. Check US 11,892,468 B2 and any later continuations/divisionals claiming priority to Prov. 62/724,513 for pending or decided AIA trials. A challenge strategy aimed only at the '401 may be defeated by assertion of the sibling.
3. Check your § 315(b) clock before anything else. If you were served more than one year ago with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, an IPR petition is barred — and a voluntary dismissal may or may not reset the clock depending on panel treatment of the earlier complaint. Establish the service date in writing first.
4. If you are inside the window, this is a first-mover opportunity. A first-filed IPR would be the first-ever adjudication of claim 1 and its dependents, with no prior Board construction to be bound by and no risk of § 315(e)(2) estoppel arising from someone else's proceeding. Budget for a complete prior-art build-out and your own expert record; you will not inherit either.
5. Do not cite the Netlist IPR2025-00001 adverse judgment, the 2019-issued '024 light-engine Fintiv decision, or the Tesla IPR2024-01420 / IPR2025-00943 matters as authority about this patent. They are unrelated patents that share digits. Mistaking any of them for US 11,402,401 in a brief or a demand-letter response would be an evidentiary and credibility own-goal.

Bottom line: the PTAB record on US 11,402,401 is empty as of 2026-09-29. Any statement that "this patent has survived two IPRs" or that "claims 1–5 have been canceled" would be fabricated and is contradicted by the canonical structured data. If pressed by opposing counsel to cite an FWD, the correct answer is that none exists.

I'll research the assignment/ownership chain for US 11,402,401 across the assignment databases and corporate records.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,402,401 B2

Critical sourcing caveat up front: I was unable to retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame numbers for this patent through the search tools available to me. The Assignment Center interface at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html is a JavaScript search application that my web-search tooling could not query directly, and no indexed page exposed the numeric reel/frame for the '401 chain. What follows distinguishes verified facts (from Google Patents legal events, PubChem, Justia, and SEC/Leonardo corporate filings) from unverified items. I have not invented any reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

Pattern assessment: No unusual pattern. All three are career DRS inventors whose names recur across the same assignee's portfolio (Muzilla and Spencer each appear on multiple DRS Network & Imaging Systems grants). There is no evidence of the "inventors departing within 12 months of filing" red flag that often precedes a portfolio fire-sale — all three inventors executed the assignment to DRS, and the patent remained with DRS. I found no record of any inventor spinning out a competing entity.

Original assignee

DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC — a US subsidiary of Leonardo DRS, Inc. (formerly DRS Technologies), itself majority-owned by Leonardo S.p.A. (Milan-listed defense/electronics group).

• Primary line of business: operating defense-electronics company. It designs and ships cooled/uncooled infrared detectors, thermal camera cores, EO/IR sensor systems, and imaging/targeting systems for airborne, spaceborne, and ground platforms. This is squarely the technical field of the '401 patent (earth-observation imaging systems for satellites/aircraft).
• Product embodying the claims: The specification describes a staring FPA with a backscanning transparent plate for airborne/satellite EO imaging — consistent with DRS's actual product line of airborne and space imaging systems. On the face of the record the assignee is an operating manufacturer, not a licensing vehicle.
• Current status: Operating. DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC remains an active Leonardo DRS business unit. Leonardo DRS completed an all-stock merger with RADA Electronic Industries on 2022-11-29, listed as NASDAQ: DRS, with Leonardo S.p.A. retaining ~80.5% through Leonardo US Holding. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or divestiture of this patent was found. Portfolio activity continues (125-looking patent estate per onscope; a 2024 grant listed).

Assignment timeline

The public record exposes one recorded conveyance in this chain. The reel/frame number was not retrievable from my sources (see caveat), so I list the recording date exactly as surfaced by Google Patents legal events, and I do not fabricate a reel/frame.

• Executed on/before 2020-10-16 (execution date not exposed) / recorded 2020-10-16 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrievable)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: MUZILLA, MARK; SPENCER, HARVEY M.; WAGONER, RAYMOND (the three named inventors)
  • Assignee: DRS NETWORK & IMAGING SYSTEMS, LLC
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable. I could not surface the recording attorney/firm of record for this reel. Because the assignee is an operating company with in-house and outside prosecution counsel, the correspondent signal (repeat-player NPE attorney) is not probative here even if obtained.
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-company assignment — the standard employment/obligation-to-assign conveyance taken by the operating employer. Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter. Notable only in that it was recorded roughly 13.5 months after the 2019-08-29 filing (recorded post-publication, 2020-03-05), which is a routine late-recordation timing common at large operating companies, not a red flag.

No other assignments are recorded. Specifically, there is no assignment to any "IP Holdings," "Licensing," "Ventures," or similarly named shell; no security agreement; no merger conveyance; and no post-issuance transfer of the '401 patent. The related continuation (US 17/849,237 → US 11,892,468 B2, priority claim noted 2022-06-24) stayed within the same corporate family.

If the Assignment Center has additional entries I could not surface, the most likely incremental item would be a change-of-name or merger recordation flowing from the DRS/Leonardo corporate steps (e.g., DRS Technologies → Leonardo DRS lineage). I did not find such a record for this patent and am not asserting one.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402401
    2018 : Provisional filed by DRS inventors
    2019 : Nonprovisional 16 555 735 filed
    2020 : Patent application published
         : Inventors assign to DRS Network Imaging Systems
    2021 : Parent Leonardo DRS launches IPO
    2022 : Continuation application filed
         : Patent granted
         : Leonardo DRS lists on NASDAQ
    2024 : Continuation patent granted
    2040 : Adjusted expiration

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only recorded assignee is DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC, an operating defense manufacturer. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" transferee appears in the chain. (Recorded conveyance dated/recorded 2020-10-16.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Current and sole assignee is Leonardo DRS / DRS Network & Imaging Systems. I checked the named NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) — no match. I found no RPX or Unified Patents listing identifying DRS Network & Imaging Systems as an asserter.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVABLE. The correspondent of record on the 2020-10-16 recording could not be retrieved. With only a single link in the chain, recurrence cannot be established regardless. No signal.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — NOT PRESENT. There is exactly one recorded assignment; no chained-LLC cascade exists.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. I found no infringement suit naming this patent, so there is no litigation-anchored pre-suit transfer. (Absence of evidence, not a certified negative — PACER and the CAFC docket were not directly queried.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Assignee is solvent and publicly traded via its parent (NASDAQ: DRS, post-2022-11-29 merger). No Chapter 7/11 proceeding found for DRS Network & Imaging Systems or Leonardo DRS.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to a third-party NPE asserting on DRS's behalf. No SEC/EFF/Patent Progress coverage surfaced suggesting any such arrangement.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with the operating original assignee.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records beyond the original assignment) — with an affirmative no-NPE finding.

The only assignment on record is the 2020-10-16 inventor-to-DRS Network & Imaging Systems, LLC conveyance (reel/frame not retrievable from my sources), which is the textbook operating-company ownership pattern; there are no shell transfers, no known-asserter assignments, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-suit transfer, and no bankruptcy or privateering event. I verified the assignee as an operating, currently NASDAQ-listed defense-electronics manufacturer (Leonardo DRS, merged with RADA 2022-11-29, ~80.5% Leonardo S.p.A.-owned), which is inconsistent with an NPE profile. I selected "Insufficient data" rather than "Operating-company assertion" only because the taxonomy's operating-company category requires evidence of the assignee suing actual competitors, and I found no litigation naming this patent — I have not certified that no suit exists.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 11402401; I could not retrieve the reel/frame programmatically and recommend a direct manual query to confirm whether any corporate change-of-name/merger recordation accompanies the single inventor assignment).

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,402,401 B2. Let me pull the patent's citation records and verify against the authoritative text.

Let me pull the complete cited-reference list and the citing-document list from the primary records.

Let me retrieve the full citation tables from the primary records.

I hit the tool-call limit mid-research, so this section is built on what I was able to retrieve. I'll be explicit about what's verified versus what remains unverified, and I'll flag any tension with the earlier sections.

Prior Art Analysis — US 11,402,401 B2

0. Method / what this is grounded in

For this task I queried the patent's own citation records (the "(56) References Cited" front-page data) via the mirrored Justia and Google Patents records. The authoritative full text provided in my context does not include the front-page citation table (it reproduces the description, claims, and abstract, but not the "References Cited" block), so the citation list had to come from the secondary records.

Important limitation, stated up front: I was able to retrieve the U.S. patent documents cited by the '401 patent (via Justia's "Referenced Cited" list), but the search budget was exhausted before I could retrieve (a) the full Google Patents "Patent Citations" table, (b) any cited foreign patent documents, and (c) the cited non-patent literature. The list below is therefore very likely partial. Do not treat it as a certified complete citation set. The definitive list must be pulled from the '401 front page / USPTO Patent Center.

1. Verified citation set (U.S. patent documents)

The Justia record for US 11,402,401 lists the following under "Referenced Cited → U.S. Patent Documents":

Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11402401](/patent/11402401)

Cross-check: US 8,023,183 (Cook) is independently corroborated — it surfaced as a Google Patents record titled "All-reflective wide-field-of-view telescope with beneficial distortion correction," and the '401 patent appears in its forward-citation table. So item 3 is confirmed as a real, correctly-numbered reference.

Not corroborated: I could not independently confirm the titles/contents of items 1, 2, 4, and 5 within the search budget. I will not invent their titles — for anything I cannot verify I say so explicitly below.

2. §102 eligibility screen by date

The '401 patent's priority date is 2018-08-29 (provisional 62/724,513). Under AIA §102, a reference can only anticipate under §102(a)(1) if it was publicly available before that date; a U.S. application publication can also qualify under §102(a)(2) if it was effectively filed before that date.

The last row is a red flag worth flagging to whoever pulls the full record: a reference whose publication postdates the priority date cannot be §102(a)(1) art. If it appears on the '401 front page, the examiner either used it under §102(a)(2)/§103, or it is a citation in the specification/IDS rather than an examiner's rejection. This is exactly the kind of thing that should be verified against the actual Office Actions rather than inferred from a bare citation list.

3. Per-reference analysis

Reference 1 — US 2,974,230 (Harris), March 1961

• Full citation: US 2,974,230 A, "Harris," issued March 1961.
• Dates: mid-20th-century grant; vintage aerial-camera image-motion-compensation era.
• Brief description: I could not retrieve this document's text within budget, so I will not assert its title or content. Based on the number, era, and inventor it is characteristic of the early aerial-camera image-motion-compensation (IMC) art — the family of patents that used a rotating/oscillating optical element (a prism, wedge, or plate) in the optical path to hold an image stationary on film while the aircraft moves. This is my inference, not a verified fact, and it must be confirmed against the document.
• Claims it potentially anticipates (§102): If confirmed to disclose a rotatable optical element in the imaging path that is driven to cancel platform image motion, it would be the most structurally on-point single reference and would bear on claim 1 (body + stage + focal plane array + lens assembly + transparent plate between objective and focal plane + actuator to rotate the plate) and claim 7 (controller causing plate rotation at a rate corresponding to travel velocity while the detector captures). Note the '401 spec itself frames the invention against the fast-steering-mirror art, not against this reference — the specification does not appear to distinguish it, which is consistent with it being cited by the examiner.
• Confidence: LOW on content, MODERATE on relevance-in-principle. Do not quote a title for this number until verified.

Reference 2 — US 7,763,587 (Michelet et al.), July 27, 2010

• Full citation: US 7,763,587 B2, "Michelet et al.," issued July 27, 2010.
• Brief description: Not verified. I could not retrieve this document within budget, and I will not guess its title or disclosure.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Cannot responsibly assess without the document. Because it is an earlier-issued U.S. patent (2010), it can be §102(a)(1) art; what claim it touches depends entirely on its subject matter.
• Confidence: LOW. Flagging as an open item.

Reference 3 — US 8,023,183 (Cook), September 20, 2011 — verified in part

• Full citation: US 8,023,183 B2, "Cook," issued September 20, 2011.
• Title (corroborated): "All-reflective wide-field-of-view telescope with beneficial distortion correction."
• Brief description: An optical-system patent directed to a wide-field-of-view telescope using reflective (mirror-based) surfaces with distortion correction. It is an optical-layout / wide-FOV reference rather than a moving-plate backscan reference.
• Claims it potentially anticipates (§102): Realistically none on its own. It is relevant background to the '401's wide-FOV context (the spec discusses fields of view of ~118°–121°) and to the "lens assembly including an objective lens and a rear lens group" limitation in claim 1 and the plate-position claims 2–5 — but it does not disclose a rotating transmissive plate with an actuator, so it lacks the core element of every independent claim. Best characterized as §103 background art (a secondary reference one might combine), not §102 anticipatory art.
• Confidence: MODERATE on characterization; the claim-mapping is my analysis, not the examiner's stated grounds.

Reference 4 — US 2014/0002665 A1 (Kingdon), January 2, 2014

• Full citation: US 2014/0002665 A1, "Kingdon," published January 2, 2014.
• Brief description: Not verified. I could not retrieve this publication within budget.
• Dates: Pre-2018-08-29, so §102(a)(1)-eligible as a published application.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Cannot assess without the text. Given the 2014 date and the imaging-space context, this is plausibly a motion-compensation / image-stabilization reference, but I will not assert that.
• Confidence: LOW. Open item.

Reference 5 — US 2020/0145568 A1 (Vollmerhausen), May 7, 2020

• Full citation: US 2020/0145568 A1, "Vollmerhausen," published May 7, 2020.
• Brief description: Not verified within budget. The inventor name (Vollmerhausen) is associated in the imaging literature with sampled-imaging-system modeling, but I will not infer the subject matter of this particular publication from the inventor's other work.
• Dates / §102 problem: Publication postdates the '401 priority date (2018-08-29). It therefore cannot be §102(a)(1) art. It could only be §102(a)(2) art if its effective filing date precedes 2018-08-29 — which must be checked. Alternatively it may be an IDS/co-pending-application citation rather than an examiner rejection.
• Claims it potentially anticipates: Cannot assess; and the §102 basis is doubtful as noted.
• Confidence: LOW, with a specific date-based caveat.

4. Forward citations (NOT prior art)

The Google Patents records show "Cited By (9)" for the '401 patent — nine later documents that cite it. These are forward citations and are categorically not prior art to the '401 (they postdate it). Examples seen in the search pool include a Raytheon "Optical orthorectification system" publication (US 2021/0208375 A1, published 2021-07-08). I mention them only so the two directions aren't confused; they play no role in a §102 analysis.

5. Bottom-line assessment

• Verified prior-art list is short and partial — five U.S. patent documents, of which only one (#3, Cook) could be independently corroborated. The full citation set (foreign references + NPL) was not retrievable within the search budget.
• Potentially most threatening under §102: US 2,974,230 (Harris, 1961) — if it is the aerial-camera image-motion-compensation patent it appears to be, it is the single reference most likely to read on the core "rotate an optical element to cancel image motion" concept of claim 1 and the controller/rotation-rate features of claim 7. This is an inference requiring verification.
• Background/§103-type art only: US 8,023,183 (Cook) — relevant to the wide-FOV optical-layout context, but lacking the rotating-plate-plus-actuator core. Cannot anticipate any claim alone.
• §102-eligible but unassessed: US 7,763,587 (Michelet) and US 2014/0002665 (Kingdon).
• Doubtful §102 basis: US 2020/0145568 (Vollmerhausen) — its publication date postdates the '401 priority date; verify whether it was cited under §102(a)(2) or merely as an IDS item.

Candid uncertainty notes / contradictions

1. Completeness is not established. My earlier bibliographic section noted the full claim set wasn't fully verified; the same applies here to the citation set. I retrieved only the U.S. patent-document citations. Do not represent this list as the complete "(56) References Cited."
2. I did not fabricate titles. For references 1, 2, 4, and 5 I explicitly withhold titles/content because I could not verify them. Anyone relying on this should confirm each number directly.
3. §102 vs. §103. A bare citation on the front page does not tell you whether the examiner used a reference for anticipation (§102) or obviousness (§103), or whether it was an applicant IDS submission. The claim-level §102 attributions in §3 above are my analytical mapping, not the examiner's stated grounds. The actual rejections live in the Office Actions / file wrapper.
4. Recurring title artifact. Consistent with the flag in the earlier summary, the Google Patents "citing" tables keep listing the '401 with the alternate title "A wide-field-of-view optical system and a method for imaging the ground" (seen again attached to EP 2381286 B1's citation table). The '401's own title is consistent across sources; the alternate string appears to be a citation-listing artifact, not a second title.
5. Date bookkeeping. Today's date supplied in the task is April 26, 2026; the operating context date is 2026-09-29. This doesn't affect the prior-art analysis (all priority/reference dates are well before both), but I note it since the earlier sections tracked dates.

Recommended next step: pull the '401 front page and file wrapper from USPTO Patent Center, then verify each cited number against its own specification to replace the "not verified" entries above with confirmed titles, dates, and examiner categories.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent's core inventive concept before performing the obviousness analysis.

Let me dig into the specific prior art cited against this patent and related references in the field.

Let me pin down the key prior-art references and their dates.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,401 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on inputs (please read first). The prompt directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No discrete, verbatim prior-art list was supplied in this conversation — the material I have is (i) the full '401 specification (which cites only categories of prior art: gimbaled lens-barrel steering, fast-steering mirrors, and the patentee's own admitted FMC background), (ii) the Google Patents "Prior art keywords" field (transparent plate; focal plane; imaging system; plane array; image), and (iii) the search results I obtained in the Prior-Art and Litigation sections plus the searches run for this section. I could not retrieve the face-of-patent "References Cited" list for the '401 or its USPTO file-wrapper IDS. Everything below is therefore grounded in the references I actually retrieved, and I flag uncertainty where it exists. Per the operating rules, I have not auto-corrected any identifier.

Governance dates. Priority date 2018-08-29 (provisional 62/724,513); filed 2019-08-29; granted 2022-08-02. The '401 is a post-AIA patent, so § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) prior art must predate 2018-08-29. Every reference relied on below does so comfortably, by years to decades.

1. What the claims actually require

From the previously generated section, independent claim 1 is a pure apparatus claim with six structural elements and no functional backscanning limitation whatsoever:

This is the single most important observation in this analysis. Claim 1 does not require: any velocity input, any rotation-rate determination, any backscan or smear correction, any controller, any frame stacking, any wide field of view, or any curved plate. As written, it reads on any imaging system having a rotatable transmissive plate in the optical path between a front objective group and the focal plane — which is the definitional architecture of a tilt plate, a rotating wedge, a Risley-prism beam steerer, and the variable-angle-prism (VAP) stabilizers that have been in consumer Canon camcorders since 1995.

That framing drives the whole § 103 picture: the commercially meaningful limitations live in claims 7–9, not claim 1.

Level of ordinary skill. A POSITA here is a person with a B.S. or M.S. in optical engineering/physics plus several years designing airborne or spaceborne electro-optical imaging payloads (lens design, FPA integration, cryogenic detector packaging), or equivalent. The prior art is squarely within that skill set.

2. The relevant prior art I was able to retrieve

Caveat: I read CN 104061909 A, US 6,734,903, EP 0 387 723, US 3,212,420, US 2014/0152793, US 2012/0212633, US 9,313,429 and EP 0 897 596 through the retrieved text/abstracts, not through full certified copies of every drawing sheet and claim. Where I say a reference "discloses" something, it is from retrieved text. Inventor/date details for US 3,212,420 and US 5,835,217 I did not independently verify and treat as approximate.

3. Claim chart — claim 1 against the primary reference

Result: CN 104061909 A discloses every substantive element of claim 1. The only arguable gaps are the word "body" and the word "stage" — i.e., the routine housing and detector mounting of any camera — plus the literal phrase "rotate." On the '401's own specification, both "body" (camera body 202) and "stage" (stage 216) are described as the ordinary structural support/alignment and detector-mount elements. Under § 103 these are unrebutted design choices and inherent conventional structure; under § 102 they are arguably inherent.

Honest counterweight: CN 104061909's plate is described as servo-tilted in azimuth and depression, which some might argue is "tilting" rather than "rotating." That is not a meaningful distinction — tilt is rotation about a transverse axis, and the '401's own FIG. 6A/6B describes its "rotation" as a tilt angle θ measured from the detector-parallel plane, with the identical Snell's-law shift equation.

4. The § 103 combinations

Combination 1 — CN 104061909 A alone (single-reference obviousness)

Conclusion: Claim 1, and claims 2, 4 and 6, are invalid as obvious over CN 104061909 A alone.

Rationale. Where a single reference discloses all elements but for unclaimed conventional structure (a housing and a detector mount), the claim is obvious. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007); In re Heck, 354 F.2d 1004 (C.C.P.A. 1966) (recitation of conventional elements not a patentable distinction). The patentee's own specification describes "body" and "stage" as generic supports. No secondary consideration has been shown with any nexus to these generic recitations.

Combination 2 — CN 104061909 A + US 3,212,420 (flight-data-driven optical motion compensation) [+ US 5,155,597]

Conclusion: Claim 1 and claims 7 and 8 are obvious.

• US 3,212,420 supplies the entire control concept of claim 7: a servo-driven optical element in an aerial camera whose drive is computed from the platform's forward speed (fed as v/h), plus sensors in the camera body feeding the servo. That is "determine a travel velocity of the focal plane array; cause the actuator to rotate the plate at a rotation rate corresponding to that travel velocity."
• US 5,155,597 and EP 0 897 596 / CA 2,248,650 supply real-time updating of the compensation rate from an INS as velocity and altitude change.
• Claim 7(c) ("cause the one or more detectors to capture image data while the plate is rotating") is supplied by US 6,734,903, which photographs during driving of the VAP (exposure/frame readout interleaved with VAP drive; stabilization signal superposed on the pixel-shift drive; N frames photographed and synthesized). Also US 2014/0152793 synchronizes exposure with scan-mirror motion.

Motivation to combine — articulated by the references themselves (the strongest KSR fact pattern).
CN 104061909 does not merely co-exist with US 3,212,420; it is aimed at the same problem (aerial-camera image motion) and its stated inventive contribution is that the plate is small and low-inertia, which makes servo control precision easier to achieve. Feeding a servo a v/h-derived rate signal (US 3,212,420) into a low-inertia, high-precision plate servo (CN 104061909) is the combination of prior-art elements according to their established functions, yielding the predictable result of improved image-motion compensation. KSR; Alza Corp. v. Mylan Labs, 464 F.3d 1286 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (express teaching/motivation in the art). The '401's own background admits that gimbaled-lens-barrel and fast-steering-mirror approaches were the incumbent techniques — i.e., the problem was known and the field was already looking for a lighter solution. In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 1998).

Combination 3 — CN 104061909 A + Canon VAP art (US 6,734,903 / EP 0 669 757 / EP 0 662 626) + EP 0 387 723

Conclusion: Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7(c) are obvious; this combination also forecloses arguments about plate location and about "relative to an optical axis."

• Claim 3 (plate between the exit pupil and the objective lens): US 3,212,420 expressly places the compensator forward of the objective; US 6,734,903 places the VAP in the taking lens ahead of the stop and enumerates positions. Placing a tilt plate in the objective-side collimated space is a design choice between a finite number of identified, predictable locations. In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272 (C.C.P.A. 1980).
• Claim 4 (plate within the rear lens group): a pure obvious-to-try positional variant; the telecentric/collimated waist within a rear group is exactly where a tilt plate belongs for uniform shift, and CN 104061909 already teaches putting the plate in the collimated/telecentric path.
• Claim 5 (plate between the rear lens group and the FPA): US 6,734,903 expressly contemplates the prism immediately before the CCD and adjusts the shift math accordingly; US 2012/0212633 and US 9,313,429 place correction hardware at/near the IR focal plane.
• Claim 6 (actuator moves the plate in one or more directions): CN 104061909's azimuth + depression servos (two axes) and US 6,734,903's horizontal + vertical actuators disclose multi-axis motion.
• Claim 1(d) ("objective lens and a rear lens group"): EP 0 387 723 A3 supplies this exact two-plus-group vocabulary ("a rear lens group of positive power for forming an image"), removing any argument that the "objective lens / rear lens group" recitation imports something unusual.

Motivation. Tilting a transmissive plate to shift an image is a purely predictable Snell's-law effect (both CN 104061909 and the '401 publish the same closed-form shift equation). Using a known technique (VAP/tilt-plate image displacement) to improve a similar device (a camera that must hold an image still on a sensor) in the same way is the paradigm of predictable-result obviousness. KSR; Perfect Web Techs. v. InfoUSA, 587 F.3d 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2009).

Combination 4 — + IR/dewar art (US 9,313,429; US 2012/0212633) for claim 9

Conclusion: Claim 9 (dewar coupled to the body) is obvious. Dewar-packaged IR focal planes with coolers, temperature control and structural mounting are ubiquitous and are disclosed by both references, both of which also address smear reduction for long-integration IR sensors. No teaching away, no unexpected result.

Combination 5 — the "snap/reset" cycle and method claims (family/continuation)

If any claim of the '401 or its continuation US 11,892,468 recites capturing frames during a linear backscan sweep and then resetting/flying back the plate during a period when the already-captured scene is passing (the FIG. 4A sawtooth and FIG. 4B overlap), then US 2014/0152793 A1 is on point: it discloses servo-controlled scan mirrors (and tilt plates in the optical path) operated with a linear scan interval followed by a fly-back interval, and expressly teaches that imaging must cease during fly-back because the image is not stable, and how to synchronize exposure with the motion profile. That destroys the "fly-back/reset" and "capture only during the sweep" concepts as novel contributions. This is the closest art I retrieved against the cycle-timing claims and should be run against the '468 claims.

5. Why a POSITA would have combined these (consolidated motivation)

1. Same field, same problem, same solution type. All references address image smear in moving-platform EO imaging; the primary reference (CN 104061909) is specifically an aerial-camera plate-based image-motion compensator.
2. The prior art articulates the very advantage the patent claims. CN 104061909 states that putting the plate after the front optics instead of at object space makes it much smaller and lighter than the scanning mirror, with lower rotational inertia and better control precision — the '401's asserted benefit ("small and light … compact package"; "reduces the weight, size, and power needs of backscanning components") is pre-echoed almost verbatim. Alza; In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986) — an advantage already recognized in the art cannot support patentability.
3. The '401's own background concedes the motivation. It admits gimbaled-lens-barrel systems add weight/complexity, that fast-steering mirrors are large, slow to settle, and space-hungry, and that a smaller element would be "easier to control, faster to reset, and less disruptive." That is an admission of the design incentive. In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (reasoned motivation may come from the invention's own disclosure or the art).
4. Predictable physics. Refraction through a tilted plate displaces the image; the magnitude is a solved closed form that both the primary reference and the patent publish. No unpredictable coupling among elements.
5. Finite, identified design choices. Plate location along the axis (objective side / exit pupil / within rear group / before FPA), plate curvature, number of plates, and one- vs. two-axis actuation are all enumerated in the art, including the '401's own specification. Boesch; In re Kuhle, 526 F.2d 553 (C.C.P.A. 1975).
6. The velocity-driven servo is 55+ years old and directly on point. US 3,212,420 feeds ground-speed/altitude to a servo to move an optical element and cancel aerial-camera image motion — the functional heart of claims 7–8.

6. Where the patent is strongest (candid counterarguments)

I will not overstate the case. The following limitations are not squarely met by the references I retrieved, and would need additional art or a fuller record:

• The wide-field-of-view uniformity claim. The '401's real technical contribution appears to be achieving a substantially uniform pixel shift across a very wide FOV (118°–121°) — using a curved (non-zero-power) plate and/or placing the plate where rays from different field points traverse different regions of the plate (FIGS. 2B, 2C, 9; curvature 1.662 m; the "<10% of pixel dimension registration error" and RER≈0.53 vs. 0.34 data of FIG. 10). None of my retrieved references squarely teaches curvature-engineered, FOV-linearized plate shift. If any claim in the '401/continuation recites the curved-plate geometry (e.g., a specified curvature range, or the "uniform shift across the field of view within X%" limitation), that is the patent's best non-obviousness redoubt, and I did not retrieve art that anticipates it. It should be searched specifically (wide-FOV uniform image shift; aspheric/curved compensator plate; telecentric relay with FOV-dependent plate thickness).
• Large-diameter COTS-free optics with 5 stagger-butted FPAs / mosaic detectors. EP 0 897 596 (Lareau, "mosaic detectors…") is a good but not verified-complete hit for the mosaic-FPA aspect (FIGS. 5A–5B); I did not confirm whether its mosaic teaching extends to the specific stagger-butting geometry claimed.
• Claim-by-claim completeness. As flagged in the earlier section, I have claims 1–9 only, and could not confirm whether the '401 recites method claims at claim 10 or higher. The obviousness conclusions here are firm for claims 1–9 and provisional for anything above 9.
• No prosecution-history or IPR record. I found no reexamination, IPR/PGR, or litigation, and I could not inspect the examiner's stated reasons for allowance. It is entirely possible the claims were allowed on the strength of the FOV-uniformity/curved-plate limitations, in which case claims 1–6 as issued may be narrower in practice than the literal text suggests — or, alternatively, the broad claim 1 survived only because the examiner did not find CN 104061909 (a Chinese-language application), which is a common gap.
• Secondary considerations are unevaluated. No evidence of commercial success, copying, long-felt-but-unsolved need, or industry praise with a nexus to the claims was located. Note that "long-felt need" is weak here: the need (aerial/satellite smear) was long known and had many prior solutions, and the field (not the patentee) identified the light-plate answer in 2014 (CN 104061909).

7. Bottom line

Recommendation. The most efficient § 103 challenge uses CN 104061909 A as the primary reference (it is the closest single-reference art and is Chinese-language, the classic search gap), combined with US 3,212,420 for the velocity-derived compensation drive and US 6,734,903 for driving the plate/actuator while capturing frames. Before relying on this, obtain (i) the full certified claim set of the '401 (including any claims above 9), (ii) the '468 continuation claims, and (iii) the file-wrapper IDS to confirm what the examiner did and did not consider. The only limitation family that plausibly survives is the curvature-engineered, wide-FOV-uniform shift; that is where any validity defense will concentrate and where any invalidity effort must find art.