US 11402407

I'll search for litigation/docket activity and confirm the patent's bibliographic data before summarizing.

Search performed

I checked public sources for US 11,402,407 and for any CAFC 2026 docket naming it. Results are reported below, with the caveat that I could not directly query USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter or the Federal Circuit's own docket system in this session — I relied on search results plus the authoritative full patent text you supplied.

• No CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, IPR, or district-court litigation naming US 11,402,407 was found. Searches for "11402407" in connection with CAFC/2026 dockets returned only unrelated hits (a UK Gazette listing, a pipe-fittings catalog product code with the same digits, and unrelated PTAB/IPR papers). I cannot affirmatively rule out a proceeding that is not indexed publicly — treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result, not a certification.
• Yes, enforcement-adjacent activity exists: MPI Corporation lists US11402407 on its official virtual patent marking pages for its probe card product lines (e.g., "MPI Probe Card 〈Advanced Probe Card〉" / vertical probe card series): https://www.mpi-corporation.com/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/ and https://www.mpi.com.tw/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/

Bibliographic summary (US 11,402,407 B2)

Abstract (as issued)

A positionable probe card includes a space transformer, a plurality of positioning pins, and a probe head. The space transformer includes a space transforming substrate having a plurality of apertures, and the positioning pins are respectively fixed in the apertures. The probe head includes a plurality of positioning holes, and the positioning pins are respectively inserted into corresponding positioning holes. A method of manufacturing a positionable probe card is also disclosed.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — the apparatus. A probe card with three cooperating parts:

1. a space transformer whose space-transforming substrate has multiple apertures drilled/formed in it;
2. multiple positioning pins, each fixed in one of those apertures; and
3. a probe head with multiple positioning holes, into which the pins are inserted.

Two positional requirements are recited together:

• the center of each positioning pin is aligned with the center of its corresponding positioning hole in the probe head (i.e., pin-to-probe-head concentricity), and
• at least one of the positioning pins is eccentrically arranged within its corresponding aperture in the space transformer (i.e., pin-to-substrate off-center).

The plain-language thrust: the pin-to-probe-head interface is precise/concentric, while the pin-to-ceramic-substrate interface is deliberately allowed to be off-center because the ceramic apertures cannot be drilled to the required precision. Off-center pin placement plus a surrounding fixing medium absorbs the drilling error, so the assembly still lands the probe head at the correct position. This "eccentric in the aperture, concentric at the probe head" combination is the core of the grant — it is the limitation that distinguishes the issued claim from the summary-section version of the claim, which merely recited that a pin "is eccentrically arranged in a corresponding aperture."

Claim 10 — the method. The manufacturing counterpart: (a) provide a space transformer with a space-transforming substrate; (b) form apertures in that substrate; (c) fix positioning pins in the apertures; and (d) position the probe head on one side of the space transformer using those pins, where the probe head's positioning holes receive the pins, with each pin's center aligned to its corresponding positioning hole's center, and at least one pin eccentrically arranged in its corresponding aperture. Steps (a)–(c) are the same physical structure claimed in claim 1, so claim 10 is the process analog of claim 1 with identical concentricity/eccentricity limitations.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2, 3, 11, 12 — substrate composition: multi-layer ceramic (MLC), optionally with a multi-layer organic (MLO) substrate fixed to the MLC.
• 4–6, 13 — a fixing ring in the aperture holds each pin; it may be a cured fixing-adhesive ring, a cured adhesive block with a drilled hole, or a cylindrical metal rod with a drilled hole, made of resin adhesive (UV-curable, epoxy, or two-part epoxy).
• 14, 15 — process variant: embed cylindrical material (cured adhesive block or metal rod) in the apertures, drill positioning through-holes into it, then insert the pins.
• 16 — process variant: use an alignment fixture to place the pins, then fix with resin adhesive.
• 7, 8, 17 — a sleeve (metal) fixed between the fixing ring and the pin; lets the pin be inserted/removed and the substrate reworked without re-positioning.
• 9, 18 — pins come in two diameters (first larger, second smaller), matched to correspondingly sized positioning holes, to prevent mis-installation or reverse installation.

Key points of novelty asserted in the specification

The stated problem is that a probe head and space transformer are conventionally fixed independently, so relative position can drift; impact or thermal expansion during test, transport, or temperature cycling can displace probe tails. Because MLC ceramic is very hard, non-contact machining of alignment holes cannot achieve the needed accuracy, and the drill bit cannot touch the test area (C4 connection region) of the DUT side. The disclosed fix is to drill oversized apertures, then place the pins with an alignment fixture (or embedded/reamed cylindrical insert) and lock them in with a fixing ring or adhesive — consciously accepting eccentricity at the ceramic interface to achieve concentricity at the probe head interface.

Uncertainty / caveats

• No litigation or appeal found for this patent in the sources I could reach; I cannot confirm the absence of an unindexed, sealed, or very recent proceeding.
• The Google Patents legal-status and priority-date fields are expressly flagged there as assumptions, and I have repeated them as such.
• The inventor name spacing (e.g., "Zhi-Wei Su" vs. "Zhi-wei SU") varies between Google Patents and the assignment record; I did not normalize it.
• I did not independently verify the claims against the USPTO's official issued-claim text beyond the Google Patents copy supplied; the claim language quoted above is from that copy.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11402407.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Bottom line

Based on my searches of litigation-oriented sources (RPX Empower/Litigation, Unified Patents-related materials, PACER-derived dockets via PacerMonitor, Docket Alarm, CAFC opinions, and general web results), I found no litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 11,402,407 ("the '407 patent") is asserted as a patent-in-suit, and no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) challenging it.

To be explicit about the search discipline you requested: I did not find any case identified by the literal number 11402407 / 11,402,407. Cases I encountered involving similar-but-different patent numbers were excluded rather than attributed to this patent.

What the '407 patent is actually doing publicly

The only enforcement-adjacent appearance of US11402407 I could locate is product patent marking, not litigation:

• MPI Corporation's official virtual patent marking pages (U.S., Taiwan, and Japan) list US11402407 under its probe card product series — i.e., an affirmative patent-marking notice under 35 U.S.C. § 287(a), which is a prerequisite to recovering pre-notice damages but is not itself litigation.
  • https://www.mpi-corporation.com/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/
  • https://www.mpi.com.tw/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/
  • https://www.mpi-corporation.jp/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/

Closely related MPI litigation (context — the '407 patent is NOT among the asserted patents on the available record)

The patent's owner, MPI Corp, is currently in active patent litigation with Technoprobe S.p.A., which is worth flagging given your interest in this patent family's owner:

Sources: https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txedce-[245179](/patent/245179)-mpi-v-technoprobe-s-p-a ; https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/64186784/MPI_Corporation_v_Technoprobe_SpA ; https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/dct/txed/2:26-cv-00305/mpi-corp-v-technoprobe-spa

Per the publicly available complaint analysis for 2:26-cv-00305, the asserted patents are described as the "'424 Patent" (accusing Technoprobe's "HiP Architecture" probe card lines) and U.S. Patent No. 9,823,272 (accusing the "Phantom" probe card lines). Neither is US 11,402,407. Accused products per that analysis: the "HiP Architecture" and "Phantom" probe card lines. (https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/txed/2:26-cv-00305/doc/analysis/1)

There is also a parallel/related dispute in Taiwan: Technoprobe filed a provisional injunction motion against MPI before the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court (ROC), and MPI filed a patent invalidation procedure against Technoprobe's asserted ROC patent. Public source: MPI Corp (6223.TW) material information announcement, dated 2026-05-08 — https://finance.biggo.com/news/twse_major_6223_1150508_170037 (note: this date is later than the April 26, 2026 working date given in your instructions; I am reporting it as retrieved without reconciling the dates).

Important caveats

1. Absence of evidence, not proof of absence. District court dockets, ITC Section 337 investigations, and foreign actions are not fully captured by free web indexes. A patent that issued August 2, 2022 and expires December 10, 2040 could be asserted in a case that is not publicly indexed or that post-dates my retrieved snapshots.
2. I could not run a direct docket query on PACER or the Unified Patents litigation portal for the literal string "11402407," so a negative result there is inferred from searching, not from a verified docket search of the patent number itself.
3. Do not infer that the MPI v. Technoprobe case involves US11402407. Based on the retrieved record, it asserts the '424 patent and U.S. 9,823,272 only. If you need certainty, the operative complaint (E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00305) and its Exhibits 3–4 (claim charts) should be pulled directly from PACER.
4. The '407 patent is in the same family as TWI750552B (Taiwan) and CN112986636B (China), all claiming priority to Taiwan Application No. 108146042, filed December 16, 2019. I found no litigation reported on the TW or CN counterparts either.

Recommendation for a definitive answer

Because you specifically want litigation-grade confirmation, the reliable next steps are:

• PACER docket search in E.D. Tex. (and N.D. Cal., D. Del., W.D. Tex., C.D. Cal.) for "11,402,407" as patent-in-suit.
• ITC Electronic Document Information System (EDIS) search for Section 337 complaints citing the '407 patent.
• The Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) filtered by assignee "MPI Corp" — which surfaces the Technoprobe case above but no '407-patent case.
• Direct retrieval of the 2:26-cv-00305 complaint via PacerMonitor link above to confirm the asserted patent list.

If no litigation is known: it appears none is known for US 11,402,407 specifically. On the record I could retrieve, the answer is that the '407 patent has no identified litigation history; the only public assertion-adjacent activity is MPI's virtual patent marking.

I'll verify the structured-data finding against public sources before finalizing.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks on PTAB/litigation context for this patent family.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding — active or terminated — involving US 11,402,407, and independent web checks (PTAB petition documents, PTAB E2E-indexed materials, and litigation-news sources) surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision referencing this patent. The breakdown is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no PTAB record to lean on — neither as a shield (no claims canceled for you) nor as a roadmap. The patent stands as granted on 2022-08-02 with all 18 claims intact, and it has never been tested at the Board. That is a real, if modest, signal: uncontested patents are usually untested either because they are never asserted or because targets settle rather than petition. Conversely, it means the invalidity case is entirely open — no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds anyone, and no panel has yet construed a single term of claim 1.

Proceedings

None — no AIA trial proceeding identified on US 11,402,407

• Canonical source: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — USPTO ODP: no AIA trial proceedings as of most recent ingest.
• Independent verification: web searches for "11402407" inter partes review petition, PTAB filings naming MPI Corporation as patent owner, and litigation coverage of the patent returned no petition, no IPR number, and no FWD. MPI's own virtual patent marking page lists US11402407 as covering its Advanced Probe Card product series (mpi-corporation.com) — a marking reference, not evidence of a challenge.
• Judge panel: none assigned — no proceeding exists.
• Petition grounds: none.
• Institution decision: none.
• Final Written Decision: none. No claim of this patent has been canceled, and no claim has been held patentable in an AIA trial. I am not aware of any Federal Circuit appeal, because there is no FWD to appeal.
• Settlement / termination: none.
• Defensive value: a defendant drafting an IPR starts from a clean slate. There is no estoppel protecting the patent owner, no adverse Board construction to fight, and no discretionary-denial history on the patent — but also no institution precedent showing the Board's appetite for this art unit's patents. Note one structural point: because the patent is an operating company's product-marking patent (MPI is the world's largest vertical/cantilever probe card supplier per its own annual report), it is far more likely to surface in competitor-v-competitor litigation than in a non-practicing-entity campaign. Frame your risk analysis accordingly — the low "troll" profile does not mean low assertion risk.

Related family members — also no proceedings found

• TWI750552B (Taiwan parent, priority 2019-12-16) and CN112986636B (Chinese counterpart, granted 2025-09-05): no invalidation or opposition outcome surfaced. Do not assume a Chinese invalidation action exists — I found no evidence either way, and CNIPA invalidation decisions are not reliably indexed in the sources available to me.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All 18 claims are UNTESTED — none canceled, none confirmed at the Board. Claim 1 (the only independent apparatus claim) and claim 10 (the only independent method claim) are the live assertion targets, with dependent claims 2–9 and 11–18 adding: MLC substrate (2, 11); MLC + MLO stack (3, 12); fixing ring (4, 13); ring as cured adhesive ring / drilled adhesive block / drilled metal rod (5, 14–15); resin adhesive chemistry — UV-curable, epoxy, two-part epoxy (6, 16); sleeve between ring and pin, metal sleeve (7–8, 17); and first-pin-diameter > second-pin-diameter (9, 18).

The prosecution record is your best starting material. The application drew a non-final rejection on 2021-12-22, a response on 2022-03-24, and a notice of allowance on 2022-04-13 — a single round before allowance. Notably, granted claim 1 carries a limitation that is absent from the Summary of the Invention as published: "a center of each positioning pin of the positioning pins is aligned with a center of a corresponding positioning hole of the positioning holes of the probe head." Compare the Summary, which requires only that a positioning pin be "eccentrically arranged in a corresponding aperture." The natural inference is that the concentric pin-to-hole limitation was added to overcome art during that one response. Verify this against the file wrapper before relying on it — but if confirmed, it is simultaneously (a) an estoppel hook limiting the doctrine of equivalents for that limitation, and (b) the amendment that defines the validity battleground: art that shows a pin sitting eccentrically in a substrate aperture would no longer anticipate claim 1 unless it also shows the pin concentric with the probe head's hole.

Note the internal tension in claim 1. The claim simultaneously requires concentricity at the pin↔positioning-hole interface and eccentricity at the pin↔aperture interface. The specification calls the eccentricity an artifact — the "eccentric distance 150 is meaning that the center 115 of the positioning pin 114 is not aligned with the center 117 of the aperture 116" — and describes the fixing ring as compensating for drilling error. A defendant should test whether this makes "eccentrically arranged" a claim term with an ascertainable boundary, and whether prior-art assemblies whose pins are offset from as-drilled aperture centers by ordinary manufacturing tolerance fall inside the claim purely as an inherent consequence of sloppy drilling. That is a claim-construction and § 112 position worth preserving, not a guaranteed winner.

Estoppel landscape. There is none. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that reaches FWD, and no one has petitioned. Every ground — § 102, § 103, on any art — remains available to the first petitioner. The real clock is § 315(b): the one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. With no litigation identified, that clock has not started for anyone I can identify. Separately, the PGR window closed on 2023-05-02 (nine months after the 2022-08-02 grant), and CBM review is unavailable (postal-program sunset, and a probe card is a technological invention in any event). IPR is the only AIA vehicle left — which also means no § 112 or written-description challenge and no broad claim-construction latitude; your petition must be a § 102/§ 103 art attack on claims 1–18.

Pattern signals. No serial petitioner, no patent-owner appeal history to the Federal Circuit on this patent, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. Nothing in the record suggests MPI has been a frequent IPR patent owner either — but I did not run an exhaustive cross-patent portfolio check, so treat that as an unverified impression rather than a finding.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat the "no proceedings" result as actionable intelligence, not a dead end. Before filing anything, confirm the negative directly: run PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and the USPTO PTAB API for the patent number and for "MPI Corporation" as patent owner or real party in interest. Confirm the same for the family members TWI750552B and CN112986636B if you sell into Taiwan or China.
2. Pull the full file wrapper from USPTO PatentCenter for application 17/118,564. The specific objectives: (i) the 2021-12-22 non-final rejection — which claims and which art under § 102/§ 103; (ii) the 2022-03-24 response — what was amended and argued; (iii) whether the "center of each positioning pin... is aligned with a center of a corresponding positioning hole" language was added by amendment. That answer determines the strongest route: if the limitation was added to distinguish art, the examiner already identified art close to the claimed structure, and § 325(d) becomes a live discretionary-denial risk you must pre-empt in the petition.
3. Calendar nothing on this patent — there is no PTAB docket to track. Instead, calendar the § 315(b) trigger: the date a complaint alleging infringement of US11402407 is served on you (or your privy). One year from that date is your outside IPR deadline. If you are already accused, that date is now.
4. Build a § 102/§ 103 record; skip the § 112 theories. Constrained to IPR grounds, the productive targets are: (i) concentric pin-in-hole, eccentric pin-in-aperture arrangements in the assignee's own earlier probe-card work — e.g., the alignment-adjustment and modular probing-device disclosures in MPI's US 9,470,750 and the family referenced there — and (ii) second-source prior art from FormFactor, NHK Spring, Nidec-Read / Micronics Japan, and Technoprobe, several of which already appear on the face of the patent as cited references (US 2009/0212798, US 2009/0219043, US 7,795,892, US 2018/0024167, US 2020/0182907). Note for § 325(d) purposes that those references were cited but, on the face of the record, appear not to have been substantively applied — that is the argument for why they are fair game.
5. If you need invalidity beyond IPR (e.g., anticipation through physical product prior art, on-sale art, or a § 112 written-description attack on the "eccentric" limitation), that fight belongs in district court, not the Board. Preserve it in your invalidity contentions even while the IPR proceeds, and be aware that a district-court counterpart action is where the specification's own admission — that the eccentric offset is an unintended drilling-error artifact — gets its most useful airing.
6. Verify the negative before you rely on it in a brief or an opinion. My search tools surface indexed web and petition-document content; they are not a docket. If a petition was filed very recently and is not yet indexed anywhere, I would not have seen it, and neither would the ODP ingest. A direct PTAB E2E query is the only clean confirmation.

I'll verify the assignment record and cross-reference the parties before writing this up.

Let me pin down the correspondent of record and check for any additional recorded transfers or litigation involving this patent.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,402,407 B2

Patent: Positionable probe card and manufacturing method thereof
Appl. No. 17/118,564 · Filed 2020-12-10 · Issued 2022-08-02
Priority: TW 108146042, filed 2019-12-16
Family: US20210181237A1 · US11402407B2 · TWI750552B · TW202124968A · CN112986636A/B

Inventors

All ten named inventors appear on the single recorded assignment (Reel 054626/0615) as assignors to MPI Corporation:

Pattern assessment: No unusual activity. This is a flat, single-employer inventor group — the hallmark of an in-house R&D team, not a broker-assembled portfolio. Every inventor is a named assignor on the same reel/frame, and there is no evidence of inventor departure, no subsequent confirmatory assignment, and no inventor-to-third-party transfer. The assignment was executed 2020-11-24 — 11 months after the TW priority filing (2019-12-16) and 16 days before the US filing (2020-12-10) — i.e., a routine pre-filing employer assignment, not a distress signal.

Original assignee

MPI Corporation (旺矽科技股份有限公司), No. 155, Zhonghe St., Zhubei City, Hsinchu County 302, Taiwan. Incorporated 1995-07-25; registration no. 89647050; ~1,599 employees; publicly listed on the Taipei Exchange since 2003 (6223.TW).

• Primary line of business: semiconductor test — probe cards (vertical/CPC/VPC/MEMS), probe stations and RF/millimeter-wave measurement, photonics automation, and thermal test equipment. Ranked by MPI's own investor materials as a top-5 non-memory probe card supplier, 2017–2022.
• Product embodying the claims — yes. MPI's official virtual patent marking pages list US11402407 as protecting the "MPI Probe Card / 垂直式探針卡 (Vertical Probe Card)" product series, alongside TWI750552 and US9442135:
  • https://www.mpi-corporation.com/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/
  • https://www.mpi.com.tw/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/
• Current status: operating, and expanding. Acquired Celadon Systems Inc. (US, via MPI America) in 2021; AutomatisierungsTechnik Voigt GmbH (Germany) in 2025; Focus Microwaves Inc. (Canada) for US$28M in Nov 2025. The patent was maintained — the 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2026-01-27 (large entity), with anticipated expiration 2040-12-10.

Assignment timeline

USPTO Assignment Center / Google Patents legal events disclose exactly one recorded assignment for this patent.

• 2020-11-24 (executed) / recorded 2020-12-13 — Reel 054626/0615
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST (recorded free-format text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: SU, ZHI-WEI; TZENG, TZUNG-JE; CHEN, WEN-CHI; HSU, HUO-KANG; WU, HSUEH-CHIH; LIN, SHENG-WEI; LIN, CHIN-YI; LIN, CHE-WEI; HONG, JIAN-KAI; CHANG, SHU-JUI (all ten inventors)
  • Assignee: MPI CORPORATION, Taiwan
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the retrieved record. The Google Patents legal-events entry for Reel 054626/0615 and the assignment abstract do not surface a correspondent name or address, and I could not retrieve the underlying Assignment Center abstract for this reel/frame in this session. I am therefore not naming a correspondent rather than inferring one. Verify directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "11402407" or reel/frame 054626/0615).
  • Context: Routine inventor→employer assignment executed pre-filing. No acquisition, no fire-sale, no reorg, no securitization.

No post-issuance assignments exist. There is no transfer to an IP holding entity, no security interest, no license record, no change of name, and no corrective assignment. After 2020-12-13 the only legal events are prosecution/grant events and the 2026 maintenance-fee payment. The original assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402407
    1995 : MPI Corporation founded in Hsinchu
    2019 : TW priority application filed
    2020 : Inventors assign rights to MPI
         : US application filed
    2022 : US 11402407 issues
    2026 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
         : MPI asserts other patents vs Technoprobe

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only recorded conveyance is inventor→MPI Corporation (Reel 054626/0615). There is no LLC assignee, no "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" suffix, and no registered-agent address anywhere in the chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. MPI Corporation does not appear on the Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, or Spangenberg families, nor on Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency plaintiff lists. It is a TPEx-listed (6223.TW) hardware manufacturer with audited SEC-equivalent filings (MOPS annual reports) and real, marked products.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. With only one link in the chain there is no recurrence to detect, and the correspondent of record for Reel 054626/0615 was not retrievable in this session. No finding either way.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. A single assignment; zero chained LLC-to-LLC transfers, and nothing recorded within any 24-month window after issue.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only assignment predates the earliest known MPI/Technoprobe litigation (E.D. Tex., filed 2026-04-17) by roughly 5 years and 4 months, and it is a standard employer assignment, not a standing/venue-driven transfer. Separately, the asserted patents in that suit are US 9,823,272 and US 9,423,424 — not US 11,402,407.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 for MPI; the company was acquiring businesses (Celadon 2021, ATV 2025, Focus Microwaves 2025) throughout the patent's life.
7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company→NPE transfer exists; MPI retained the patent and asserts its own patents in its own name.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at the original operating assignee, not at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN.

Inverse observation (relevant to signals 2 and 5): MPI and Technoprobe are direct competitors in probe cards. Technoprobe entities are cited as prior art on this very family (US20180024167A1 and TW201839408A, "Technoprobe S.p.A."), and the two are now in active, bilateral litigation — MPI suing Technoprobe in E.D. Tex. and Technoprobe seeking a provisional injunction in Taiwan's IP Court over ROC patent I705249. This is a competitor-versus-competitor dynamic, the opposite of an NPE posture.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Justification: The entire ownership record is a single pre-filing inventor assignment to MPI Corporation (Reel 054626/0615, executed 2020-11-24, recorded 2020-12-13); there is no post-issuance transfer, no shell LLC, no NPE, and no defensive aggregator anywhere in the chain, and the patent is still marked on MPI's shipping "Advanced/Vertical Probe Card" product line with the 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2026-01-27. MPI is actively enforcing its patent estate against a direct competitor (MPI Corp v. Technoprobe S.p.A., E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00305, filed 2026-04-17). Caveat on precision: the patents asserted in that suit are US 9,823,272 and US 9,423,424, so US 11,402,407 is not itself in suit as of 2026-09-29 — the "assertion" characterization rests on the assignee's overall operating-company enforcement posture, not on litigation over this specific patent. Zero of the eight NPE signals are present; one (repeat correspondent) is unassessable.

Verify: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11402407 / reel 054626, frame 0615).

Data limitations, stated plainly: (a) I did not retrieve the Assignment Center abstract for Reel 054626/0615 directly, so the correspondent of record is unknown, not absent; (b) US11402407 is not listed among the eight examiner citations in the Google Patents record, and the litigation cross-references above concern other MPI patents; (c) if a later recordation exists that postdates the Google Patents legal-events snapshot (fetched 2026-09-24), I could not see it.

I'll search for the patent and its cited references. Note: I'll flag one thing up front — the task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my session date is 2026-09-29. I'll treat the patent text you supplied as authoritative regardless.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,407 B2 ("Positionable probe card and manufacturing method thereof")

Method, sources, and scope caveats (read first)

• Search method. I could not directly query USPTO Patent Public Search, PatentCenter, or the examiner's file wrapper in this session. I relied on (i) the authoritative full patent text you supplied (including its "Citations (8)" table, sourced from Google Patents), and (ii) live web retrieval of the cited documents' own text/family pages. Treat the citation list as reliable; treat my characterizations of references I could fully retrieve as grounded, and of references I could not fully retrieve as expressly flagged.
• Date discrepancy flagged. The task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026"; my session date is 2026-09-29. Neither changes the § 102 analysis, which turns on dates relative to the '407 priority date.
• Critical framing (AIAs apply). US 11,402,407 has an effective filing date of 2019-12-16 (TW 108146042; US filing 2020-12-10). All eight citations predate that for § 102(a)(1) purposes except US 2020/0182907 A1, which is addressed separately under § 102(a)(2).
• All eight citations are examiner citations. On the Google Patents page you supplied, every entry under "Citations (8)" carries the * flag ("Cited by examiner"), not the † flag ("cited by third party"). That matters: these are the references the examiner actually considered, which is exactly the set a validity/§ 102 challenge would start from.
• Bottom line up front: none of the eight references appears to anticipate any claim of US 11,402,407 under § 102. The best of them (US 7,795,892 B2) discloses a pin-and-hole architecture between a space transformer and a probe head, but with an elongated probe-head hole — the opposite of the issued claim's "center of each positioning pin … aligned with a center of a corresponding positioning hole." These are § 103 (obviousness) references, not § 102 references. Details below.

§ 102 status at a glance

1. US 2001/0054905 A1 — Khandros et al. (FormFactor)

• Full citation: US 2001/0054905 A1, "Probe card assembly and kit," Igor Y. Khandros, Gary W. Grube, Benjamin N. Eldridge, Gaetan L. Mathieu. Pub. 2001-12-27; priority 1993-11-16 (US 08/152,812). Family continuations include US 6,615,485 B2, US 7,064,566, US 7,352,196, US 8,373,428.
• Brief description: A probe card assembly (500) comprising a probe card (502), a space transformer (506) bearing resilient/composite contact elements ("probe elements" 524) mounted directly to its terminals, and an interposer (504) stacked between them. Differential screws (536/538) and pivot spheres (546) adjust the planarity/orientation of the space transformer without changing probe-card orientation. Crucially for our purposes, the reference also teaches that "a plurality of alignment features … such as pins extending from the front mounting plate — and holes extending into the probe card" (¶ [0205]) may be provided to ensure accurate positioning of the front mounting plate vis-à-vis the probe card.
• Publication/filing dates for § 102: printed publication 2001-12-27 → § 102(a)(1) art (and US patents in the same family are § 102(a)(1) patents).
• Potential § 102 claims: None. The reference does disclose a space transformer and a pin/hole alignment concept, which is why it is the kind of art an examiner cites. But the pin/hole pair here couples a front mounting plate to the probe card — not positioning pins fixed in apertures of a space transforming substrate (claim 1 element (a)–(b)), and there is no probe head having positioning holes receiving those pins (element (c)), no concentricity requirement (element (d)), and no eccentric-in-aperture arrangement (element (e)).
• Correct characterization: § 103 background art going to the general architecture (space transformer + probes + adjustable mounting) and to the generic notion of alignment pins entering holes.

2. US 2009/0212798 A1 — Kasukabe et al.

• Full citation: US 2009/0212798 A1, "Probe card, manufacturing method of probe card, semiconductor inspection apparatus and manufacturing method of semiconductor device," Susumu Kasukabe & Yasunori Narizuka. Filed 2008-10-17 (Ser. 12/253,271); pub. 2009-08-27; priority JP 2008-045809, 2008-02-27.
• Brief description: A probe sheet fabricated photolithographically on a silicon mold (anisotropic-etch pits used as a casting mold for pyramidal/truncated-pyramidal contact terminals), bonded to a polyimide film and supported by a low-CTE metal film (42-alloy or Invar, ~1–6 ppm/°C). A multilayer (ceramic) wiring board carries the probe sheet, and an elastomer/press-block mechanism presses the terminal group. Notably, the reference forms "knock pin holes" (97a/97b, 98) in the probe sheet and aligns the probe sheet to the adhesion holder using knock pins (FIGS. 7A–7B).
• Publication/filing dates: § 102(a)(1) as of 2009-08-27.
• Potential § 102 claims: Claims 1 and 10 — not anticipated. Kasukabe does use pins-in-holes for alignment, but the pins/holes sit between a probe sheet and an adhesion holder, not between a space transforming substrate (apertures) and a probe head (positioning holes). There is no "at least one positioning pin eccentrically arranged in a corresponding aperture," and no fixing ring/sleeve.
• Closer-dependent-claim relevance: the reference's ceramic multilayer wiring board + polyimide film combination is the kind of structure that could be argued against claims 2/3 and 11/12 (MLC substrate; MLC + MLO fixed to it) — but as § 103 art, since the claimed "space transforming substrate" build-up and the claimed fixing-ring/aperture structure are absent.

3. US 2009/0219043 A1 — Nakayama, Nagaya & Yamada (NHK Spring)

• Full citation: US 2009/0219043 A1, "Probe Card," Hiroshi Nakayama, Mitsuhiro Nagaya, Yoshio Yamada; assignee NHK Spring Co., Ltd. Pub. 2009-09-03; filed as national phase of PCT/JP2006/324183 (Ser. 12/086,031); priority 2005-12-05. Granted as US 8,603,106 B2.
• Brief description: A probe card in which post members (18) are embedded in and pass through the substrate (11) (the PCB/wiring substrate), having a height greater than the substrate's thickness, so that the interposer (13) and the space transformer (14) are referenced to the rigid post members rather than to a warped substrate; a holding member (16) and leaf spring (17) press the probe head (15) edge. The interposer uses coil-spring connection terminals (the relevant terminal structure appears in the sibling US 8,149,006 B2).
• Publication/filing dates: § 102(a)(1) as of 2009-09-03.
• Potential § 102 claims: None. The "posts" here are embedded in the wiring substrate, not pins fixed in apertures of a space transforming substrate, and the disclosure says nothing about probe-head positioning holes, concentricity, or eccentric pin placement. It is architecture art for the probe-card stack.

4. US 7,795,892 B2 — NHK Spring (the closest reference)

• Full citation: US 7,795,892 B2, "Probe card," NHK Spring Co., Ltd. Granted 2010-09-14; priority 2005-12-28. (Sibling/counterpart disclosures: US 2009/0219043 A1 and EP 1 970 715 A1, whose claim sets recite the positioning-pin subject matter.)
• Brief description: A probe card in which the probes' ends contact near the centers of pads on the wafer and space transformer at the average of the test's low/high temperatures, to tolerate CTE mismatch. The reference expressly discloses:
  • "a plurality of positioning pins that are fastened to the space transformer and perform positioning of the space transformer and the probe head"; and
  • "the probe head has a plurality of positioning holes, through which the positioning pins are inserted, and at least one of the positioning holes is formed in a long hole shape, length in a longitudinal direction of which is larger than a diameter of the positioning pins." (Same subject matter appears in the EP 1970715 A1 claim set: "extending in a longitudinal direction … larger than the diameter of the positioning pins.")
• Publication/filing dates: § 102(a)(1) as of 2010-09-14.
• Potential § 102 claims: This is the only reference that comes close on the independent claims, because it discloses the very sub-combination of (i) a space transformer, (ii) positioning pins associated with it, and (iii) a probe head having positioning holes that receive those pins.
  • Claim 1 / claim 10 — not anticipated. Two elements are missing or contradicted:
    1. The pins are "fastened to the space transformer" — nothing in the reference requires them to be "respectively fixed in the apertures" of a space transforming substrate, and there is no fixing ring, cured adhesive, drilled adhesive block, metal rod, or sleeve.
    2. The reference elongates at least one probe-head positioning hole (length > pin diameter) precisely so the pin can shift within the hole under thermal expansion. That is the opposite of the issued claim's requirement that "a center of each positioning pin … is aligned with a center of a corresponding positioning hole." Under the '407 claim, the eccentricity is at the ceramic aperture; under US 7,795,892, the play is at the probe-head hole. A reference that teaches away from the claimed concentricity cannot anticipate it.
  • Where it is genuinely dangerous: as the primary § 103 reference. Its pin/hole positioning architecture, combined with any of references 1–3 (which supply space-transformer alignment-pin/hole arrangements and oversized/replaceable holes), puts the general concept of pin-based space-transformer-to-probe-head registration squarely in the art. Expect the inventive weight of the '407 to rest on the eccentric-in-aperture + fixing-ring + concentric-at-probe-head combination recited in claims 1/10 and detailed in claims 4–8/13–17.

5. TW 201111799 A — Touchdown Technologies, Inc.

• Full citation: TW 201111799 A, "Microelectronic contactor assembly, structures thereof, and methods of constructing same," Touchdown Technologies, Inc. Pub. 2011-04-01; priority 2009-02-19.
• Brief description: A microelectronic contactor assembly (probe/contactor structures and methods of building them) — the general class of MEMS/spring contactor probe structures used in probe cards.
• Publication/filing dates: a Taiwanese publication dated 2011-04-01 → § 102(a)(1) "printed publication" art regardless of language or country. (Note: a TW publication does not itself qualify under § 102(a)(2), which reaches only US patents/applications/publications and PCT applications designating the US.)
• Potential § 102 claims: Cannot be assessed with confidence. I was unable to retrieve the full text of TW 201111799 A in this session, so I will not assert what it does or does not disclose beyond its title/assignee/family. Based on the title and its role as examiner-cited art adjacent to the FormFactor and NHK families, the reasonable expectation is that it is contactor/probe-structure background, not a disclosure of apertures-in-the-space-transforming-substrate with eccentrically fixed pins. Flagged as unverified.

6. US 2018/0024167 A1 — Technoprobe S.p.A.

• Full citation: US 2018/0024167 A1, "Probe card for a testing apparatus of electronic devices with enhanced filtering properties," Technoprobe S.p.A. Pub. 2018-01-25; priority 2015-03-31.
• Brief description: A probe card for testing electronic devices in which filtering properties are enhanced — i.e., a probe card architecture (probe head/contactor, interface/substrate, vertical or MEMS probes) with a capacitive/filtering element associated with the signal path.
• Publication/filing dates: § 102(a)(1) as of 2018-01-25; also available as § 102(a)(2) art as of its effective filing date (2015-03-31) if the priority disclosure supports the relied-upon subject matter.
• Potential § 102 claims: None as to claims 1 or 10. The reference is directed to electrical filtering, not to mechanical registration between a space transforming substrate and a probe head. No apertures, no eccentrically fixed pins, no fixing ring, no sleeve, no concentricity limitation. It is § 103 background showing the state of probe-card architecture (and, at most, could be cited against nothing more than generic probe-card claims).

7. TW 201839408 A — Technoprobe (義大利商探針科技公司)

• Full citation: TW 201839408 A, "Probe card for a testing apparatus of electronic devices," Technoprobe S.p.A. Pub. 2018-11-01; priority 2017-04-28.
• Brief description: A further Technoprobe probe-card publication (interface/card architecture for testing electronic devices).
• Publication/filing dates: § 102(a)(1) as of 2018-11-01 (before the '407 priority date of 2019-12-16). As a TW publication it is not § 102(a)(2) art.
• Potential § 102 claims: Cannot be assessed with confidence — full text not retrieved in this session. On its face (title/assignee/family) it is probe-card architecture background and does not appear to address space-transforming-substrate apertures with eccentrically fixed positioning pins. Flagged as unverified.

8. US 2020/0182907 A1 — Kabushiki Kaisha Nihon Micronics (Micronics Japan)

• Full citation: US 2020/0182907 A1, "Electric connection device," Kabushiki Kaisha Nihon Micronics. Pub. 2020-06-11; priority 2017-05-30.
• Brief description: An electrical connection device (contactor/probe unit for testing) from Micronics Japan — the class of assemblies in which contact probes are held in a holder/guide structure and connected to a test substrate.
• Publication/filing dates — this one is different and worth flagging. Its publication date (2020-06-11) is after the '407 priority date (2019-12-16), so it is not § 102(a)(1) art. It can only be prior art under § 102(a)(2) (US patent-application publication "effectively filed" before the claimed invention), and then only as of its effective filing date of 2017-05-30, and only for subject matter actually supported by that priority disclosure (§ 102(d)). If the examiner relied on this reference, that reliance necessarily ran through § 102(a)(2) / its 2017 priority — worth confirming against the file wrapper.
• Potential § 102 claims: Cannot be assessed with confidence — full text not retrieved in this session. Expect a holder/probe-head-and-substrate connection architecture; I found no basis to expect a disclosure of pins fixed in apertures of a space transforming substrate, eccentrically, with pin centers aligned to probe-head positioning-hole centers. Flagged as unverified.

Synthesis

Is any claim of US 11,402,407 anticipated under § 102 by these eight?

No. For § 102 anticipation, a single reference must disclose every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Independent claim 1 (and its method twin, claim 10) requires the combination of:

1. a space transformer whose space transforming substrate has a plurality of apertures;
2. positioning pins respectively fixed in those apertures;
3. a probe head with positioning holes receiving those pins;
4. each pin's center aligned with its corresponding positioning hole's center; and
5. at least one pin eccentrically arranged in its corresponding aperture.

Against that:

• Element 1 + 2 + 5 (apertures in the ceramic substrate, pins fixed there, eccentric placement) is the heart of the invention and is described in the '407 specification precisely because ceramic is too hard to drill precisely (the drill bit cannot contact the C4/test area of the DUT side). None of the eight references discloses eccentric pin placement in a substrate aperture, a fixing ring, or the workaround of accepting aperture-eccentricity to buy probe-head concentricity.
• Element 3 + 4 (pin + hole registration) is the only thing the closest reference supplies, and it supplies it in a contradictory form: US 7,795,892 B2 deliberately makes at least one probe-head hole a long hole (slot) so the pin floats within it — i.e., it teaches away from element 4's concentricity.
• The remaining references are probe-card stack architecture (Khandros, Nakayama, Technoprobe, Micronics), a photolithographic probe-sheet process with knock-pin fixturing (Kasukabe), or an unverified contactor publication (Touchdown). Each is missing at least elements 1, 2, 5, and 4.

What the citation set is actually for

These eight are best read as a § 103 obviousness set establishing the state of the art at the '407 priority date: (i) probe cards universally comprise a probe head + space transformer + wiring substrate stack; (ii) pins-in-holes registration between a space transformer and a probe head was known (US 7,795,892; EP 1970715); (iii) oversized/replaceable drill features to absorb placement error were known (US 7,795,892's long hole; Kasukabe's knock-pin holes; Khandros's alignment pins); and (iv) ceramic-based space-transformers with low-CTE organics were known (Kasukabe; Khandros' multi-layer ceramic space transformer 518).

The '407's asserted point of novelty — per its own specification — is the deliberate decoupling of the two interfaces: exploit the eccentric, adhesive/ring-retained pin placement in the oversized ceramic aperture so that the pin-to-probe-head interface can be truly concentric. That is what the examiner evidently did not find in the cited art, and what allowed the case to issue after a single non-final action (mailed 2021-12-22) and a notice of allowance (2022-04-13) per the legal-events record you supplied.

Secondary citations to be aware of (not among the eight)

The Google Patents page separately lists "Family Cites Families (7)" — JP 4974021 B2, CN 102466739 B, US 8,736,294 B2 (FormFactor, "Probe card stiffener with decoupling"), TW 201437642 A (MPI, "Manufacturing method of space converter for probe card"), CN 104793026 B, MY 177187 A, and CN 109270299 B. Note TW 201437642 A is the applicant's own prior work (MPI Corp) on space-transformer manufacturing, so it is likely to appear in any § 102(b) / § 102(a)(1) analysis of the assignee's own earlier disclosures. These were not examiner citations and I have not analyzed them here.

Uncertainty / caveats (explicit)

1. No claim of anticipation is asserted. My conclusion is a negative one: on the sources I could reach, none of the eight citations discloses all elements of claims 1 or 10. I have not seen the examiner's written reasons, so I cannot rule out that the examiner relied on one of these (especially US 2020/0182907 A1) for a narrower point not visible from the citation list alone.
2. Three references are unverified as to text: TW 201111799 A, TW 201839408 A, and US 2020/0182907 A1. My characterizations of these are based on title, assignee, priority, and family context only. Do not treat them as authoritative until the full texts are pulled from USPTO Patent Public Search / Espacenet / TIPO.
3. US 2020/0182907 A1 cannot be § 102(a)(1) art — its 2020-06-11 publication post-dates the '407's 2019-12-16 priority. Any anticipation theory built on it must run through § 102(a)(2) and its 2017-05-30 effective filing date, subject to § 102(d) (priority disclosure must support the relied-upon subject matter).
4. The TW publications are § 102(a)(1)-only (printed publications as of their publication dates); Taiwanese publications do not qualify as § 102(a)(2) "effectively filed" art.
5. Claim language is taken from the Google Patents copy of the issued claims you supplied; I did not independently verify it against the USPTO's official issued-claim text. If that text differs, the element-by-element analysis above should be re-run.
6. Method limitation repeated: I could not directly query USPTO Patent Public Search, PatentCenter, or the Federal Circuit docket in this session. "No anticipation found" is a negative search result, not a certification of validity.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent page, checking what each discloses before mapping them to the claims.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,402,407 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Critical date: 2019-12-16 (TW 108146042 priority). All references below must qualify as prior art as of that date.
Scope of the analysis: I use only the references listed on the patent page's Prior Art / Citations and Family-Cites sections, supplemented by what those references actually disclose as retrieved from public full-text sources. Where I could only see an abstract or claim set, I say so.

1. Framework and level of ordinary skill

Applying Graham v. John Deere, the analysis turns on (a) the scope and content of these references, (b) the differences from claims 1 and 10, and (c) the PHOSITA's level of skill.

A PHOSITA here is a mechanical/electrical engineer (BS, or equivalent) with ~2–5 years in probe-card and wafer-test hardware, familiar with MLC/MLO substrates, pin-and-hole alignment, and epoxy/underfill assembly of space transformers to probe heads. That person would know: (i) multi-layer ceramic is hard and its drilled-hole positional tolerance is poorer than the probe-pad pitch; (ii) probe head and space transformer are conventionally fixed independently; and (iii) clearance somewhere in the pin/hole stack is used to absorb tolerance and CTE mismatch.

2. Claim 1, element by element

So a single reference does not anticipate claim 1. But every element except the eccentricity is squarely in US 7,795,892 B2, and the eccentricity is the sole difference to be bridged.

Two points worth flagging for the record:

1. Claim 1 is narrow in substance. "A center of each positioning pin is aligned with a center of a corresponding positioning hole" is simply concentric pin-to-hole insertion — what happens whenever pin OD matches hole ID. The only limitation with technical bite is the eccentric pin-in-aperture.
2. The specification concedes the eccentricity is a tolerance artifact. It states the pin is eccentrically arranged "due to the conversion error of non-contact positioning," and that "the eccentric distance … can be compensated by the fixing ring to absorb the original drilling errors of the apertures." That framing — eccentricity as the unavoidable result of placing an oversized aperture where the ceramic could not be drilled accurately — materially assists a § 103 case, because it converts "eccentric arrangement" into an expected consequence of known practice rather than a designed-in feature.

3. The primary combination

Combination A (strongest): US 7,795,892 B2 + US 2020/0182907 A1 (Nihon Micronics)

• US 7,795,892 B2 supplies the entire structural frame: space transformer, positioning pins fastened to the space transformer, probe head with positioning holes receiving those pins, and an explicit teaching that at least one hole is deliberately made larger than the pin diameter to absorb positional variation/thermal expansion ("length … larger than a diameter of the positioning pins").
• US 2020/0182907 A1 supplies pin/columnar fixing components that traverse a member and are received in a counterpart, with through-holes sized to let the fixing component penetrate — i.e., an oversized-hole-plus-insert architecture, and screw-adjustable seating that leaves an annular gap.

Rationale (KSR): Two references, same field (wafer-level probe cards), same problem (aligning/retaining a probe head relative to a space transformer despite tolerance and CTE). Combining known pin-in-hole alignment with known clearance-fit oversizing to yield a still-functional, better-aligned assembly is (A) combining known elements by known methods with predictable results, and (C) using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way. The art further teaches the artisan to move the clearance between the two interfaces as needed — NHK already put it at the probe-head hole; putting it at the aperture instead is a predictable, mechanical relocation of the same clearance.

Combination B (most dangerous): NHK '892 + MPI Corporation's own prior family

Two references in the Family-Cites list are MPI's own earlier work and are both pre-2019 publications:

• TW 201437642 A / US 2014/0290053 A1 ("Manufacturing method of space converter for probe card," MPI) — teaches a multi-layer ceramic first substrate with multi-layer organic second substrates, forming an insulating layer with through-holes by photolithography, and fixing conductive blocks in those holes so element positions are set by the holes rather than by mechanical drilling. This is directly on point for claims 3/12 (MLC + MLO) and 14/15 (embed a material, form a hole in it, insert an element).
• CN 104793026 B / US 2015/0185254 A1 ("Supporting structure applied to probe testing device," MPI) — teaches exactly the concept of intentional misalignment as a fix, in the same assignee's probe-card line, expressly reciting that "a center line of at least one second pad does not overlap a center line of the first pad being covered below" — i.e., eccentricity relative to the underlying feature, adopted to compensate for displacement during assembly (reflow shift), with the upper surface then planarized.

Rationale (KSR): NHK '892 gives the pin/aperture/probe-head architecture and the motivation to absorb tolerance; MPI's own references confirm that (i) ceramic/organic stacks are used in this position, (ii) element position can be set by hole formation rather than by drilling accuracy, and (iii) off-center placement of a locating feature relative to its underlying feature is an accepted way to recover assembly displacement in a probe card. The motivation is supplied by the shared problem, and the "eccentric-in-aperture" feature is a predictable application of a technique MPI itself had already described.

Combination C: NHK '892 + Khandros '905 (with its epoxy-ring teaching) + Kasukabe '798

Khandros US 2001/0054905 A1 discloses the space-transformer-plus-interposer stack and alignment features, and its specification expressly cites U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,622 — a "high density epoxy ring probe card" — acknowledging that mounting pins/needles in an oversized aperture with cured epoxy was already conventional. Kasukabe US 2009/0212798 A1 supplies the ceramic multi-layer wiring board and the bonding/assembly steps for a probe sheet to a ceramic board. This combination maps cleanly onto claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, and 13, and the motivation is the same as above (predictable improvement of a known assembly using a known potting/positioning technique).

Combination D: NHK '892 + TW 201111799 A (Touchdown Technologies)

TW 201111799 A concerns a microelectronic contactor assembly and methods of constructing it; the associated Touchdown disclosure teaches a probe contactor substrate bonded to a space transformer substrate, with adhesive layers and alignment/pass-through conductors (see US 8,305,101). Caveat: I could not retrieve the TW document's full text; I am relying on its title/abstract and the sibling US disclosure. If its adhesive-bonding and alignment-feature teachings are as the sibling suggests, it independently supplies the "fix the pin/contactor in place with adhesive" limitation of claims 4–6/13 and reinforces the motivation element.

4. Claim 10 (method)

Claim 10 recites the same physical structure as claim 1 as a process: provide a space transformer → form apertures → fix pins in apertures → position the probe head on the pins, with the same concentric/eccentric dual requirement. Where a product claim is obvious over the art, the process claim covering the mere assembly of that product is prima facie obvious for the same reasons — every claimed step is a conventional assembly operation (drill, insert pin, seat probe head) performed on the structure NHK '892 already discloses. No claim 10 step adds an unobvious operation; the eccentricity limitation is met, per the specification itself, by ordinary "non-contact positioning."

5. Dependent claims

6. Counterarguments the patent owner can raise, and their weight

1. No single reference discloses "eccentric in the aperture and concentric at the probe head." True, and this is why the examiner allowed the case. But that is an argument against anticipation, not against § 103 — the combination is a two-feature stacking of known expedients with a predictable result.
2. NHK '892 arguably "teaches away" by locating the clearance in the probe-head hole rather than in the space transformer. This is the patent's best counterargument. It is undercut by (a) the fact that NHK's own claim 1 does not require the slot, so its baseline architecture is a plain concentric pin/hole fit; (b) the interchangeability of the two clearance locations as a matter of mechanical design; and (c) MPI's own CN 104793026 B / US 2015/0185254, which puts the off-center compensation on the substrate-adjacent side.
3. Secondary considerations. The specification asserts improved assembly accuracy and reduced displacement from impact/thermal cycling. These are the expected results of adding clearance-plus-locking between two independently fixed parts, so nexus to the eccentric limitation specifically is weak. I found no evidence of licensing, industry praise, copying, or long-felt-but-unmet need tied to this limitation; MPI's virtual patent marking (https://www.mpi-corporation.com/about/official-virtual-patent-marking/) shows commercial probe-card products but does not itself establish nexus.
4. Prosecution history. Per the patent page: non-final action 2021-12-22, response 2022-03-24, allowance 2022-04-13. The examiner's citations are the eight "Citations" references; the MPI family references (TW 201437642 A, CN 104793026 B) appear only in the Family-Cites list, not among the examiner-cited art. If that is accurate, the most on-point MPI references were likely never before the examiner — which is exactly the kind of art that supports a § 103 rejection in a reexamination, IPR, or invalidity challenge even though it would not have been part of the original obviousness case.

7. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 10 are, in my assessment, reasonably strong § 103 candidates on US 7,795,892 B2 in view of US 2020/0182907 A1, and stronger with MPI's own TW 201437642 A / US 2014/0290053 A1 and CN 104793026 B / US 2015/0185254 A1 added. The only limitation not found in a single reference — the eccentric pin within the space-transformer aperture — is taught as a concept (off-center locating feature to absorb assembly displacement) and is characterized in the specification itself as an incidental consequence of "non-contact positioning," which weakens any argument that it reflects a non-obvious insight.
• Dependent claims 2–9 and 11–18 each add structure or process steps that are individually conventional in this art, so they are unlikely to survive on their own if the independent claims fall.
• Caveats: (i) I could not retrieve full text for TW 201111799 A, TW 201839408 A, JP 4974021 B2, MY 177187 A, CN 102466739 B, CN 109270299 B, or US 8,736,294 B2, so those are treated as cumulative only. (ii) For US 7,795,892 B2 and US 2020/0182907 A1 I relied on the claim text and the "Definitions"/summary extracts quoted on Google Patents; I have not verified the cited passages against the printed patent columns. (iii) The "eccentric" limitation is a relative-orientation term, so its construction (how far off-center counts) materially affects the strength of any rejection — a narrower reading ("deliberately offset by a designed amount") makes the claims harder to invalidate than a broader reading ("not perfectly centered").

If you want, I can next build a formal claim chart mapping each claim-1 element to specific paragraph/claim citations in US 7,795,892 B2, US 2020/0182907 A1, and the MPI family, with pinpoint cites — that would require pulling the full text of the two MPI documents, which I have not yet retrieved.