US 11402445

I'll search for this specific patent number and any related litigation activity.

Let me check for any litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity tied to this patent, plus assignment records.

US 11,402,445 — "Electron intrinsic spin analyzer"

Search note: I ran targeted searches on the patent number and on Federal Circuit / district-court dockets. I found no litigation, PTAB, or CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to this patent. The 2026 CAFC material that surfaced (e.g., Apple Inc. v. SpaceTime3D, Inc., Nos. 25‑1022/25‑1082) concerns unrelated patents. I cannot rule out activity in a database I did not reach, so treat "no litigation found" as a search result, not a legal conclusion.

Bibliographic data (source: Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑24)

Abstract (verbatim)

An electron intrinsic spin analyzer measures the quantum states from a free-electron beam wherein the intrinsic-spin property of the electron's beam interacted with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. The generated beam from a hot tungsten wire paralleled after the initial deflecting and absorbing process by metal grids, and the paralleled beam travels without electrical or magnetic focusing through on a glass lamp. A graphite cover on both sides of the glass lamp and a gitter composed of cesium dioxide and barium absorbed other types of particles such as ions and atoms to do not hit the fluorescent plate. The free-electron beam interacted with independent assemblies of magnets on the moveable chassis, which produced from a homogeneous or inhomogeneous magnetic field and used for checking the rightness of the measured physics effects. The optically and electrically detections collected the data with a Langmuir probe and a charge-coupled device camera.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 (the sole independent claim) is an apparatus claim. Read plainly, it recites:

1. A glass lamp with (a) an electronics unit whose metal grids have micrometric holes, through which a free-electron beam is deionized and paralleled; (b) an elongated tube; and (c) a fluorescent plate with a thin fluorescent layer covered on both sides by graphite covers that prevent charge accumulation in the lamp.
2. A mechanical chassis with holder plates, calibrated plates, and fixed shafts, holding the lamp and the magnets. The plates are described as moisture-resistant, anti-static, and shock-resistant. The magnets are either sharp-curved (→ inhomogeneous field) or dual flat (→ homogeneous field), implemented as stationary permanent magnets or coils.
3. A Langmuir measurement probe measuring plasma parameters — expressly electron velocity, energy, temperature, and density of the beam.
4. LEDs to illuminate the calibrated lines.
5. A DC power supply powering the lamp, magnets, and probe.
6. "Multiple beam splitters which reflect light onto a CCD (charge-coupled device) camera that displays independent quantum states of an electron."

Dependent claims 2–7, in brief:

• Claim 2 — details the electronics unit: thin tungsten wire (beam source), ceramic collimator, ion-deflecting metal grids, the elongated tube, a chassis holding grids/electronics, and a cesium-dioxide/barium gitter removing residual atoms.
• Claim 3 — tube conducts electrons from the tungsten wire; beam width controlled by the micrometric holes in each grid.
• Claim 4 — graphite covers electrically/optically shield the lamp; the inner cover absorbs heavier atomic/subatomic particles and the outer cover is grounded.
• Claim 5 — chassis split into a fixed chassis (holds lamp) and a moveable chassis (holds and rotates the magnets).
• Claim 6 — constant-current DC supply able to provide 10 to 25,000 volts for coils, probe, and LEDs.
• Claim 7 — the CCD camera and Langmuir probe collect data on beam interaction with the homogeneous or inhomogeneous field, and on position, width, and "intrinsic spin force" of the beam according to the Lorentz force effect, to determine the electron's independent quantum state.

Points of uncertainty / internal inconsistencies worth flagging

• Assignee is "Individual," not a company. Google Patents explicitly notes the assignee list may be inaccurate and that it performed no analysis. Small-entity/micro-entity status appears in the legal events (fee-payment records).
• "Multiple beam splitters" in claim 1 is odd for this disclosure. The specification describes a calibrated plate, a CCD camera, and an optional observation coil (20), but does not plainly describe optical "beam splitters." I am flagging this as a literal claim term whose antecedent basis in the description is unclear — I do not have authoritative prosecution-history evidence explaining it.
• Voltage figures conflict: claim 6 recites 10–25,000 V, while the description states the electron gun DC range is "2.5 to 12.5 Volts" (grid plates 104/110).
• Priority-date discrepancy: the front page lists priority 2015‑10‑27, but the related-parent table lists PCT/IB2016/054596 with a 2015‑08‑11 priority date, and the anticipated expiration is stated as 2035‑08‑11.
• Prosecution was turbulent: the legal events show a final rejection (2019‑11‑19), two Ex parte Quayle actions, an abandonment (2021‑06‑29), a withdrawn abandonment/revival (2021‑11‑01), and allowance shortly after (2021‑11‑29). This suggests claim scope was negotiated under pressure, which matters for claim-construction risk — but I have not retrieved the actual office actions or the pre-allowance claim set.
• Non-patent citations of record include Karpa et al. (2008), MIT Physics Dept. "The Stern-Gerlach Experiment" (2001, archive 2013), McGregor et al. "Transverse Quantum Stern-Gerlach Magnets for Electrons" (2011), Porter et al. (2003), and Sunandana (1998). Cited US/foreign patents of record include US 6,639,218 B2 (Hokkaido Univ.), JP 4700934 B2 (NTT), US 8,101,920 B2 (Suzuki), US 2009/0045355 A1 (Desbrandes), US 2008/0217533 A1 (Kohashi), US 8,552,398 B2 (CNR), and CN 104345331 A.

Bottom line: US 11,402,445 is a micro-entity, individually owned instrument patent (Majlesi) on a free-electron Stern–Gerlach-style spin-separation apparatus, with one broad apparatus claim and six dependent claims. I found no CAFC or district-court activity for this number as of my searches; if you need certainty on litigation, the docket should be checked directly on PACER/CourtListener rather than inferred from search results.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11402445 across the sources you mentioned.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and patent-specific sources.

Let me check specific litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445

Patent identified literally: U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445 B2 ("Electron intrinsic spin analyzer"), application no. 15/273,334, inventor Hosein Majlesi, assignee: Individual, filed 2016‑09‑22, granted/publication 2022‑08‑02, priority date 2015‑10‑27 (per Google Patents bibliographic record).

Finding: No litigation identified

No known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445 was found. I searched and found no federal district court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, ITC Section 337 investigation, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) naming this patent as a patent‑in‑suit or challenged patent. Consistent with that, the patentee is listed as an "Individual" (micro entity) rather than a corporate or NPE plaintiff, and the patent has a family of one U.S. application.

What was searched

• Unified Patents litigation caselist and PTAB‑related materials — no entry referencing 11,402,445.
• Google Patents record for US11402445B2 — the "Citations," "Cited By," and "Families Citing/Cited By this family" sections list only patent documents (e.g., US6639218B2, JP4700934B2, US8101920B2, US20090045355A1, US20080217533A1, US8552398B2, CN104345331A; and family citation US10637583B2 to Omnisent, LLC). These are patent‑citation relationships, not litigation.
• Justia Patents, PatentLeaderboard (inventor Hosein Majlesi), and Academia.edu record — bibliographic/prosecution content only, no litigation references.
• General web queries for the patent number, the title, and the inventor in connection with "lawsuit/defendant/infringement" — no hits tying any case to this patent.

Important deconfliction note (per the "do not auto‑correct" rule)

Several search results contain similarly numbered but distinctly different patents, which must not be conflated with 11,402,445:

• The "'024 patent" in the Delaware Exparel/bupivacaine ANDA counterclaim (DEDC 25‑cv‑1445) and the ITC microfluidics decision (Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1100) refers to U.S. Patent No. 9,689,024 — unrelated to the Majlesi patent.
• U.S. Patent No. 12,156,940, 12,251,468, 10,343,114, 10,596,517, etc., appearing in the search snippets are separate patents for unrelated technologies.

None of these is U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445.

Limitations / confidence

This conclusion is based on open web sources reachable by search and the patent's own public bibliographic record. I could not directly query PACER or a comprehensive commercial docket database (e.g., Docket Alarm full search, Lex Machina) in this session. It is therefore possible, though I found no indication, that a very recently filed or low‑profile case exists that is not yet surfaced in public indexes. If you need a definitive negative, the recommended next step is a direct PACER/RECAP docket query on "11,402,445" and a Lex Machina/Docket Alarm full‑text docket search, plus a PTAB API check for that patent number.

Bottom line: As of the search performed, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" signal against live sources before drafting.

Let me check for ex parte reexamination, district-court/troll activity, and any PTAB trail under the WO/application variants.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 11,402,445. The canonical structured block ("PTAB proceedings on file") returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM, and my live searches surfaced nothing further — no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, no Director Review, and no Federal Circuit appeal under this patent number, its application number 15/273,334, or its PCT sibling WO2017009817 A1. The breakdown is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Bottom-line defensive posture: This patent has never been stress-tested at the Board, and the absence cuts in an unusual direction. There is no FWD to cite, so there is no "claim 1 is dead" argument available to a defendant. Equally, there is no "patentee survived two IPRs, the claims are hardened" argument available to the owner — that language does not apply to a patent that has never been challenged. All seven claims (1–7) are untested and presumptively valid under § 282, which means your defensive posture is built from scratch on the merits, not borrowed from a prior panel's work product.

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Proceedings list

No proceedings to enumerate. The output template calls for entries ordered most-impactful-first; with a null set, there is nothing to rank. What follows instead is the verification record and the closest thing to actionable proceeding-level information.

Search record (as of 2026-09-29):

• USPTO Open Data Portal / PTAB structured feed for US 11,402,445 — no AIA trial proceedings.
• PTAB E2E / PTACTS petition text searches for "11402445" and "15/273,334" — surfaced only unrelated patents (e.g., US 11,465,830, US 8,024,668, US 7,680,334, US 8,588,033). No hit on the subject patent.
• Federal Circuit / CourtListener searches for "electron intrinsic spin analyzer" and "Majlesi" — no appeal docket.
• Ex parte reexamination search — nothing found (a reexam would not appear in the AIA trial feed, so this was checked separately; I cannot rule out a very recent filing that has not propagated to the sources I reached).

Caveat on the null result: the absence of PTAB activity is a search result, not a legal conclusion. A proceeding filed under a differently-punctuated patent number, or one too recent for the feeds, would not appear. If certainty matters for a filing decision, the docket should be confirmed directly on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the patent's full transaction history on USPTO Patent Center — I did not reach those as authenticated databases.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all of 1–7 are untested. Unlike a patent that has been through IPR and emerged narrowed, US 11,402,445 has no adjudicated claim scope at the Board. Claims 1–7 stand exactly as issued on 2022-08-02. The only narrowing that exists is the prosecution-history narrowing visible in the legal events, and that record is unusual enough to matter: a final rejection (2019-11-19), two separate Ex parte Quayle actions (2020-06-18, 2021-02-16, and again 2021-11-02), an abandonment for failure to respond (2021-06-29), a withdrawn abandonment/revival (2021-11-01), and allowance twenty-eight days later (2021-11-29). The pre-allowance claim set should be pulled from Patent Center and compared against the issued claims — that delta is the most probative claim-construction and prosecution-history-estoppel material available on this patent, and it is the file a defendant's counsel should read first.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) is currently empty. No petitioner has ever been estopped, because no petitioner has ever filed. Practically, this means every § 102/§ 103 ground is theoretically available to the first petitioner — nothing is spent. Two structural limits constrain the analysis, though, and both matter:

1. The PGR window is closed. Because the patent issued 2022-08-02, the nine-month PGR window expired around 2023-05-02. PGR was the only AIA vehicle that could reach § 112 (enablement, written description) and § 101 (eligibility). That door is shut. An IPR under § 311(b) is limited to § 102 and § 103 "only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications." You cannot use IPR to attack this patent on the ground that a free-electron Stern–Gerlach spin separation is not enabled or lacks utility — which, given the notorious physics dispute the specification itself foregrounds (Bohr/Pauli's position that such a measurement is impossible by classical-trajectory experiments, recited in the background), may be the strongest invalidity theory in the building. That theory belongs in district court under § 112, not at the PTAB. Ex parte reexamination is likewise limited to patents/printed publications and cannot carry a § 112 or § 101 attack.
2. § 315(b) timing. The one-year bar runs from service of a district-court complaint. With no litigation found, the clock has not started — but note the tightening posture at the Office: the Director's 2025 workload-management memoranda (centralizing institution with the Director and adding a claimed "already survived a validity challenge" bar for IPRs) would make a first-filed IPR against a patent with settled, ten-year-old priority and a micro-entity owner an interesting test of the new discretionary framework. That framework is from search results, not the patent's own record, and I flag it as background rather than as a fact about this patent.

Pattern signals: there are none, because there is no litigation. No serial petitioner, no parallel district-court or ITC campaign, no joinder, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar filing — those almost always surface publicly when they exist), and no patent-owner appellate aggression. The assignee is an individual (Hosein Majlesi, Qom, IR), entity status micro. This is a single-inventor, single-patent portfolio (confirmed: Patent Leaderboard and Google Patents both show exactly one issued patent for this inventor). In practice, patents with this profile are asserted rarely, and when they are, it is usually a solo owner rather than a coordinated troll campaign — which changes the practical risk calculus more than any PTAB outcome could.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not assume PTAB protection exists. There is no FWD to hand a court and no estoppel to lean on. If you are a defendant, verify the null result yourself on PTAB E2E before committing to a strategy that presumes the patent has already been tested: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/. Also confirm no ex parte reexamination has been filed or ordered (Patent Center transaction history) — a reexam is not an AIA trial and would not have appeared in the ODP feed I searched.

2. Read the prosecution file before reading the patent. Given the final rejection, three Ex parte Quayle actions, and an abandonment-and-revival, the file wrapper (available via USPTO Patent Center, application 15/273,334) is where the real claim-scope story lives. Any § 315(e) estoppel you are worried about is imaginary; any prosecution disclaimer you should be worried about is real and is in that file.

3. Route invalid–subject-matter theories to district court, not the Board. Because PGR is time-barred and IPR reaches only patents/printed publications under §§ 102/103, the enablement / written-description / inoperability theory raised by the specification's own recitation of the Bohr–Pauli impossibility argument must be pleaded under § 112 in litigation or raised in a DJ action. Do not expect it to be heard at the PTAB.

4. If you do file an IPR, expect the new institution framework to control. Any petition filed now will be weighed under the Director's workload-management processes rather than the old delegated-panel model — plan for a discretionary-denial fight in addition to the merits. Track the § 316(a)(11) statutory deadlines only once institution issues; until then there is no trial clock, no oral hearing date, and no FWD due date to calendar.

5. Date-sensitive flag: the legal events show a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2026-03-23 for this micro-entity patent. That should be confirmed as paid in Patent Center — a lapse would moot the entire validity question and is worth thirty seconds of checking before any substantive work begins.

If you want certainty on the litigation and PTAB question beyond what search could establish, the authoritative checkpoints are PACER/courtlistener.com for infringement suits and PTAB E2E for trials; I could not authenticate into either, and I would rather tell you that than assert a negative I did not fully verify.

I'll search for assignment records, ownership information, and any NPE/assertion activity for this patent.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,402,445 B2

Search/verification note (important): I did not have direct, authenticated access to the USPTO Assignment Center for this analysis — my search tool returned third-party mirrors and indexes (Google Patents legal events, Justia, PatentLeaderboard, Patents‑Review, FreePatentsOnline, patent family pages) rather than the reel/frame record itself. The negative assignment finding below is therefore a corroborated search result, not a database export. I state what I can and cannot confirm, and flag where direct verification is required. Links for that verification are at the end.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• No co-inventors. PatentLeaderboard lists exactly one patent for this inventor (US 11,402,445, issued 2022‑08‑02) with the co-inventor field empty. A one-patent, one-inventor, no-corporate-assignee profile is the classic independent inventor footprint, not a portfolio-assembly footprint.
• The "all inventors departed within 12 months" pattern is not applicable — because there was never an original corporate assignee from which to depart. There is no evidence of an employer-side fire-sale trigger.
• Pro se prosecution. Patents‑Review lists the "Agent" field for US 15/273,334 as "Hosein Majlesi" — i.e., the inventor prosecuted his own application rather than retaining counsel. This is relevant to the correspondent analysis below: there is no prosecuting attorney and no assignment-recording attorney anywhere in this record.
• The same inventor has a second, unrelated published application family (WO2022079504A1, an FDM 3D printer, per his Academia.edu listing), consistent with a lone inventor working across disciplines rather than a company building a portfolio.

Caveat: I could not independently confirm any employment relationship at filing. If an employer existed, it is not reflected in any record I reached, and no employer is named as assignee anywhere.

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Original assignee

Original assignee as recorded: "Individual" — i.e., inventor Hosein Majlesi personally.

• Google Patents lists Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual, with the assignee-list disclaimer that no analysis was performed. The A1 publication names the applicant as "Hosein Majlesi, Qom, Iran," and the PCT sibling (WO2017009817A1) names the applicant as "Majlesi Hosein." No corporate entity has ever been named as owner.
• Product embodying the claims: No evidence of any commercial product. The disclosure is a laboratory/experimental physics apparatus (vacuum glass lamp, electron gun, calibrated fluorescent plate, CCD readout, Langmuir probe). No datasheet, product page, catalog listing, or vendor identity surfaced. This is an instrument described as having observed a phenomenon "for the first time," not a shippable product.
• Primary line of business: Independent physics research / independent inventing. Not a manufacturer or a licensing company on any record I reached.
• Current status: Operating as an individual owner. The patent is Active with micro-entity owner status (Google Patents legal event 2020‑05‑11 FEPP: "ENTITY STATUS SET TO MICRO"; ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: MICROENTITY). Micro-entity status is a certification of small-scale, income-qualified inventorship — consistent with an individual, and inconsistent with a funded assertion vehicle.
• Fee-distress flags (weak, but worth noting): legal event 2020‑09‑25 FEPP: "PETITION RELATED TO MAINTENANCE FEES GRANTED (PTGR)… MICROENTITY" on an application not yet granted (likely a data-mapping quirk or a fee-related petition), and 2026‑03‑23 FEPP: "MAINTENANCE FEE REMINDER MAILED." See the forward-looking watch item at the end.

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Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center record for US 11,402,445 is empty as far as I can determine. There are no recorded assignments.

Concrete basis for that finding:

1. No "AS" (Assignment) event appears in the Google Patents legal-events table for US 11,402,445. The complete event list is procedural only: STPP (prosecution/RCE-type entries), FEPP (fee/entity-status entries), STCB (abandonment), STCC (revival), STCF (patent grant), FEPP (fee reminder). By contrast, a sibling spin-optics patent I examined in the same search (US 8,552,398, CNR) does carry an explicit "AS | Assignment … REEL/FRAME: 029965/0558" entry — so the absence here is a meaningful absence, not a rendering gap.
2. No assignee entity other than the individual inventor appears on any mirror (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Patents‑Review, PatentHub, PatentLeaderboard).
3. No conveyance of any type — Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction — is indexed anywhere I reached.

Because there are no recorded assignments, there is no reel/frame to cite, no assignor/assignee pair to reconstruct, and no assignment correspondent (attorney of record for recording) to track. I will not invent one.

What this means substantively: per USPTO practice, the patent is owned by the named inventor, Hosein Majlesi, who has never recorded a transfer of legal title. He is also the only correspondent in the entire file: the Patents‑Review agent field names him as his own agent, and there is no outside counsel on the prosecution record. So the "repeat Player attorney" tell that normally de-anonymizes NPE shells has no analogue here — the file contains no attorney at all.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402445
    2015 : Priority filing by Hosein Majlesi
    2016 : US application 15 273 334 filed
    2017 : Application published as 2017 0115365 A1
    2020 : Micro entity owner status set
    2021 : Abandoned then revived
    2022 : Patent issued to individual inventor
    2026 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed

No assignment link exists in this chain, so no transfer event is diagrammed. Ownership has been continuous in the individual inventor from filing to the present.

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer of any kind is recorded. There is no "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" successor, no registered-agent address, and no single-purpose LLC. Ownership has remained with the individual inventor (micro-entity status per 2020‑05‑11 FEPP).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee at any point matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, or any Spangenberg entity. The only named party in the chain is the inventor. No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff hit surfaced, though I note I could not query those directories directly.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT (and structurally inapplicable).
There is no assignment correspondent because there are no assignment recordings. The prosecution correspondent is the inventor himself (Patents‑Review "Agent: Hosein Majlesi"). A single-appearance solo record like this is exactly the case the instructions warn not to score as a finding — and here there isn't even one appearance by an outside attorney.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Zero assignments in the chain; the <24-month LLC-to-LLC cascade pattern is absent by definition.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No assignment exists, and no infringement suit naming this patent surfaced in my searches. There is no assertion date to measure a pre-litigation transfer window against.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No corporate assignee, no Chapter 7/11 proceedings involving any named party, and no sale-in-bankruptcy conveyance. The 2020‑09‑25 fee-petition event is a personal fee matter, not a corporate insolvency.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
There is no operating company in the chain to act as the "principal," and no NPE to assert on anyone's behalf. The patent has never left the inventor's hands.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. There is no neutralization event.

Score: 0 of 8 signals present; 0 strong, 0 weak. This is the anti-NPE profile — no transfer, no counsel, no corporate vehicle, no assertion.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (per the stated rubric: "no records, or only the original assignment") — with the substantive finding that this is not an NPE situation on any evidence I could reach.

Justification (2–3 sentences): There is no recorded assignment of any kind for US 11,402,445 — no "AS" event in the Google Patents legal-events table, no assignee entity other than the inventor on any mirror, and no corporate successor anywhere in the chain — so title has remained continuously with individual inventor Hosein Majlesi since the 2016‑09‑22 filing, and the patent carries micro-entity owner status (2020‑05‑11 FEPP: entity status set to micro) rather than a licensing-vehicle footprint. Because the file contains no assignment correspondent and no outside prosecution counsel (Patents‑Review lists the inventor as his own "Agent"), the repeat-player-attorney tell has no analogue here, and none of the eight troll-pattern signals is present. The "Insufficient data" label is a reflection of the empty assignment record, not genuine doubt about who owns the patent: it is a non-asserting, individually owned, one-patent experimental-instrument asset.

Verify directly at:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number 11402445): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (no "AS" entry): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402445/en

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Two cross-reference flags for the earlier sections

1. Expiration-date conflict (affects asset value). The prior section cited Google Patents' "anticipated expiration 2035‑08‑11" while noting the priority ambiguity; Patents‑Review separately reports "Adjusted expiration: 2036‑09‑22" (i.e., 20 years from the 2016‑09‑22 US filing). These cannot both be right, and the difference changes the remaining term by more than a year. Worth resolving against the actual term-adjustment/priority record.
2. Forward-looking watch item (ownership-relevant). Legal event 2026‑03‑23 FEPP: "MAINTENANCE FEE REMINDER MAILED" indicates the 3.5-year maintenance fee came due around 2026‑02‑02. Google Patents still showed the patent Active at my 2026‑09‑24 fetch, but if the fee was not paid within the surcharge window (nominally closing ~2026‑08‑02), the patent would have lapsed as of late 2026 — which would make the entire ownership question moot for assertion purposes. I could not confirm payment status, and a lapse (or a petition to revive) is exactly the kind of event that could precede an eventual sale of the asset. Re-check fee status before relying on this patent being enforceable.

I'll verify the patent and each cited reference directly. Let me run targeted searches.

Now let me verify each remaining cited reference individually.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445 ("Electron intrinsic spin analyzer")

Note on scope / method (read first). I verified the target literally as US 11,402,445 B2 (application 15/273,334) and did not substitute any similarly numbered document. My retrieval was through USPTO-derived public record mirrors (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline) — not the USPTO Patent Public Search API or PatentCenter directly — and my final retrieval attempt hit a tool limit. Two references (US 2008/0217533 A1 and CN 104345331 A) are therefore described from bibliographic record plus partial corroboration, not full-text review; those are marked [LOWER CONFIDENCE]. Everything else is backed by retrieved text. This section builds on (and does not repeat) the bibliographic and litigation summaries already generated.

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1. Legal framing before the mappings

Two points govern everything below:

A. All seven cited patent documents pre-date the earliest claimed priority date, so all are §102(a)(1) prior art (patented/published/described in a printed publication before the effective filing date), and the U.S. patents/publications additionally qualify under §102(a)(2) as "effectively filed" earlier:

B. Anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Claim 1 (the only independent claim) is a six-element apparatus combination: (A) glass lamp/electronics unit; (B) metal grids with micrometric holes performing deionization and paralleling; (C) elongated tube; (D) fluorescent plate whose thin fluorescent layer is covered on both sides by graphite covers preventing charge accumulation; (E) chassis with holder plates, calibrated plates, fixed shafts, and moisture-resistant/anti-static/shock-resistant plates; (F) magnets that are either sharp-curved (inhomogeneous) or dual flat (homogeneous), as stationary magnets or coils; (G) a Langmuir measurement probe measuring velocity, energy, temperature and density; (H) LEDs illuminating the calibrated lines; (I) a DC power supply; and (J) "multiple beam splitters which reflect light onto a CCD camera that displays independent quantum states of an electron."

Against that combination, none of the seven cited references anticipates any of claims 1–7. Each reference is relevant only at the element level — i.e., as §102(a)(1) disclosure of a component, and as a §103 obviousness candidate. I give the element-level mapping anyway, because that is where the real validity risk lies.

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2. Reference-by-reference analysis

2.1 — US 6,639,218 B2 — "Electron spin analyzer" (Hokkaido University)

• Full citation: US 6,639,218 B2, Electron spin analyzer, Hokkaido University (assignee). Priority JP 2000-133700 (2000-05-02); filed US 09/843,445 on 2001-04-26; granted 2003-10-28. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6639218
• Description (verified): A Mott-type spin analyzer. It recites an electron beam-generating apparatus, a hemisphere accelerating electrode opposing the beam-discharge hole, an electrode supporter, a scattered-electron detector on the outer surface of the accelerating electrode, and a scattering target inside it. The accelerating electrode has a double structure (inner and outer accelerating electrodes) with the inner introducing inlet larger than the outer to converge electrons onto the scattering target and raise detection sensitivity; edge portions of inlets/openings have specified curvature radii (0.5–2 mm). The detector has a grid, correcting electrode and shield.
• §102 mapping: Discloses nothing in elements B–J. It has an "electron beam-generating apparatus" (partial A) and an electrode/grid structure, but no glass lamp with a fluorescent plate, no graphite covers, no micrometric-hole grids doing deionization/paralleling, no Langmuir probe, no LEDs, no DC supply to those loads, and no beam splitters/CCD. Spin determination here is by scattering off a target, not free-space spin separation.
• Anticipates: No claim. At most relevant to the claim 1 preamble term "electron spin analyzer" and to claim 7's concept of determining spin state — but by a structurally different mechanism.

2.2 — JP 4700934 B2 — "Spin filter and spin state separation method" (NTT)

• Full citation: JP 4700934 B2, Spin filter and spin state separation method (スピンフィルタ及びスピン状態分離方法), 日本電信電話株式会社 (NTT). Filed JP 2004-207692 on 2004-07-14; granted 2011-06-15; expired (fee-related) 2024-07-14. https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4700934B2/en
• Description (verified): Concerned with separating spin states of carriers propagating in a semiconductor. The background expressly reviews spin-polarized carrier generation (circularly polarized photoexcitation), spin injection from ferromagnetic electrodes, and III-V dilute magnetic semiconductors. It is a spintronic semiconductor device — carriers are quantum-confined in a material.
• §102 mapping: Element F is conceptually addressed only for semiconductor carriers, not free electrons in vacuum. No lamp, no fluorescent plate, no graphite covers, no micrometric-hole grid stack, no Langmuir probe, no LEDs, no beam splitters/CCD.
• Anticipates: No claim. Notably, it is one of the "bound-electron" systems the '445 specification positions itself against. Flag: JP 4700934 B2 is never discussed in the specification text of the '445 patent, which only discusses two documents (see §3 below).

2.3 — US 8,101,920 B2 — "Spin isolation apparatus, spin asymmetric material producing method, current source, and signal processing method" (Takashi Suzuki) — closest prior art

• Full citation: US 8,101,920 B2, Takashi Suzuki (individual inventor). Priority 2005-12-28 (JP); filed via PCT/JP2006/326127 (WO 2007/077890 A1) 2006-12-27; granted 2012-01-24. Family: EP 1 973 118 B1, US 2009/0107895 A1, US 2012/0091361 A1. https://patents.google.com/patent/US8101920
• Description (verified): A spin isolation apparatus comprising (i) a particle source emitting particles, (ii) a receiving section, (iii) a magnet with two poles separated by a gap, placed between source and receiving section, that separates particles into positive-spin and negative-spin groups (expressly "an electromagnet (like, for example, an electromagnet used in the Stern-Gerlach experiment) or a permanent magnet"), and (iv) a trajectory restricting section to isolate the two groups. It teaches a slit-collimator of two apertures so the particle beam "can be adjusted like parallel rays of light." It expressly contemplates electrons as the particles, notes that with charged particles "there is no fear that the trajectories may be turned toward the outside of the magnet due to Lorentz forces" (using a conductive wire that branches into two wires in the magnet gap), and covers storage devices, a current source of spin-polarized electrons, and spin-based signal processing.
• §102 mapping (element-by-element against claim 1):
  • F (magnets separating spins): Partially met — a gapped two-pole magnet producing an inhomogeneous field. But claim 1 requires sharp-curved or dual flat magnet geometry on a chassis; Suzuki claims neither geometry.
  • B (paralleling): Partially met — a slit-collimator parallelizes the beam, but not via "metal grids with micrometric holes" performing deionization.
  • E (chassis): Not met — no holder plates/calibrated plates/fixed shafts with the recited material properties.
  • A, C, D, G, H, I, J: Not met. No glass lamp, no elongated tube with fluorescent plate, no double-sided graphite covers, no Langmuir measurement probe, no LEDs for calibrated lines, no beam splitters onto a CCD.
  • Claim 7: Suzuki's Lorentz-force discussion is the closest disclosure to claim 7's "intrinsic spin force... according to the Lorentz force effect," but Suzuki teaches compensating Lorentz deflection via a branching wire, whereas claim 7 requires the CCD/probe to collect data on position, width and intrinsic spin force and determine the quantum state. Not anticipatory.
• Anticipates: No claim as issued. This is nonetheless the single most dangerous reference under §103, because it supplies the core physical combination (parallelized particle beam + gapped pole magnet + spin-group separation + Lorentz-force consideration) and, like the '445 patent's own specification, expressly identifies electrons as the particles. A hypothetical narrower claim — e.g., "a collimated electron beam passing through a two-pole magnet gap that splits the beam by spin sign" — would likely be anticipated by this reference.
• Cross-reference: This is the same family as US 2009/0107895 A1, which the '445 specification names and criticizes as "a classical Stern-Gerlach model that separates free particles on the atomic scale." So the specification's principal prior-art discussion and one of the examiner's seven citations are the same document.

2.4 — US 2009/0045355 A1 — "Method for generating entangled electron, infrared-ray, visible-ray, ultraviolet-ray, x-ray and gamma-ray beams" (Robert Desbrandes)

• Full citation: US 2009/0045355 A1, Robert Desbrandes. Priority 2006-01-31; published 2009-02-19. Corresponding FR 2 896 910 A1. https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0045355.html
• Description (verified): A process (method claims) for generating entangled particle beams. It transfers entanglement from photon pairs (non-linear BBO/LBO crystals) to electrons via photocathodes, multiplies electrons at dynodes, and converts electron entanglement to gamma/X/UV/visible/IR photons by Bremsstrahlung. It uses collimators in the prolongation of targets to obtain collimated beams, and states electron kinetic energies of 1 keV–10 GeV.
• §102 mapping: Claim 1 is an apparatus claim; a process reference cannot anticipate it unless it inherently discloses the apparatus. Desbrandes' collimation and electron-beam handling speak only obliquely to element B/C, and it contains no lamp, fluorescent plate, graphite covers, Langmuir probe, LEDs, DC supply for those loads, or beam splitters/CCD. It also has no spin-separation magnet.
• Anticipates: No claim. Marginal relevance even as §103 art — different physical regime (high-energy accelerator/entanglement) versus the '445 patent's low-voltage deionized lamp.

2.5 — US 2008/0217533 A1 — "Charged particle spin polarimeter, microscope, and photoelectron spectroscope" (Teruo Kohashi) — [LOWER CONFIDENCE]

• Full citation: US 2008/0217533 A1, Teruo Kohashi. Priority 2007-03-05; published 2008-09-11.
• Description: Based on the title and record metadata, this concerns a spin polarimeter for charged particles (i.e., an instrument for measuring the spin polarization of an electron beam, typically by spin-dependent scattering from a heavy target) integrated with a microscope and a photoelectron spectroscope. I did not retrieve the full specification text in this session — tool limits intervened — so I am not asserting element-level detail.
• §102 mapping: A spin polarimeter measures the polarization of an incoming beam; it does not disclose the '445 patent's free-electron beam generation, deionization/paralleling grid stack, double-sided graphite-covered fluorescent plate, Langmuir probe, LEDs, or beam-splitter/CCD arrangement. On the available record, element A is partially implicated; B–J are not.
• Anticipates: No claim, on the record available. Treat this assessment as provisional pending full-text review.

2.6 — US 8,552,398 B2 — "Converter of orbital momentum into spin momentum for the polarization of particle beams" (Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche)

• Full citation: US 8,552,398 B2, Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR, Italy), inventors including Vincenzo Grillo, Lorenzo Marrucci, Ebrahim Karimi (assignment recorded 2012-12-27→2013-01-22, Reel/Frame 029965/0558). Priority 2011-12-16; granted 2013-10-08. https://patents.google.com/patent/US8552398
• Description (verified): Concerns converting a particle beam's orbital angular momentum into spin momentum in order to polarize particle beams — i.e., a spin-polarization/conversion device for charged-particle beams.
• §102 mapping: Element F in claim 1 concerns field geometry (sharp-curved vs. dual flat magnets) that separates spin states; CNR's document concerns angular-momentum conversion to polarize a beam and does not disclose the recited magnet geometries, the glass lamp, the fluorescent plate with double-sided graphite covers, the micrometric-hole grid stack, the Langmuir probe, the LEDs, or the beam-splitter/CCD detection.
• Anticipates: No claim. Relevant, if at all, to claim 1(J)'s phrase "displays independent quantum states of an electron" and to beam-polarization concepts generally.

2.7 — CN 104345331 A — "Image type electron spin analyzer" (CAS — Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology) — [LOWER CONFIDENCE]

• Full citation: CN 104345331 A, Image type electron spin analyzer (图像型电子自旋分析器), 中国科学院上海微系统与信息技术研究所 (Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences). Priority 2013-07-24; published 2015-02-11. Related JP 2016-531288 A (画像型電子スピン分析器).
• Description: An image-type electron spin analyzer. The related JP abstract material indicates it uses a magnetic field to bend electrons so that incident and outgoing electron trajectories are separated — i.e., a spin analyzer producing a spatially resolved (image) readout. I verified the bibliographic identity and assignee; I did not complete a full-text element review of the CN specification.
• §102 mapping: The "image type" readout is the closest thing among the seven references to claim 1(J)'s imaging element and to claim 7's data-collection element. However, nothing in the record indicates a glass lamp with a double-sided graphite-covered fluorescent plate, micrometric-hole deionizing/paralleling grids, a Langmuir probe measuring all four listed plasma parameters, LEDs on calibrated lines, or beam splitters reflecting onto a CCD.
• Anticipates: No claim, on the record available. Its publication date (2015-02-11) is the tightest of the seven relative to the priority dates, so if the 2015-08-11 date were ever displaced by the earlier Iranian priority (see §3), this document's status should be re-checked — but it remains prior art under §102(a)(1) either way because it published before all candidate priority dates in play.

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3. Findings, contradictions, and things I want to flag explicitly

1. No anticipation anywhere in the record. The seven examiner-cited patent documents together do not disclose the claim 1 combination — most conspicuously the Langmuir measurement probe (with all four plasma parameters), the LED-illuminated calibrated lines, the "multiple beam splitters... onto a CCD" limitation, and the double-sided graphite covers. The challenge to claims 1–7 is a §103 challenge, not a §102 challenge.

2. The specification and the examiner's citation list barely overlap — a real inconsistency. The '445 specification discusses exactly two prior-art documents: US 2009/0107895 A1 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,403,999 B1. Of those, only US 2009/0107895 A1 appears in the examiner's "Citations (7)" — and it is the same family as cited US 8,101,920 B2 (Suzuki), not a separate document. Conversely US 6,403,999 B1 is not in the "Citations (7)" list at all, and five of the seven cited patents (US 6,639,218; JP 4700934; US 2009/0045355; US 2008/0217533; US 8,552,398; CN 104345331) are never discussed in the specification text provided. I did not independently verify the content of US 6,403,999 B1 in this session; the specification characterizes it as separating free electrons "bounded by the potential of semiconductor materials."

3. The non-patent citations are arguably more on-point than most of the patent citations — examine these first. The record lists five NPL references: Karpa et al. (2008, New J. Phys., "Slow light in inhomogeneous and transverse fields"); MIT Physics Dept., "The Stern-Gerlach Experiment" (2001; Wayback earliest 2013-12-28); **McGregor et al., "Transverse Quantum Stern-Gerlach Magnets for Electrons" (2011, New J. Phys.)**; Porter et al., "Direct demonstration of the transverse Stern-Gerlach effect" (2003, Am. J. Phys. 71); and Sunandana, "Techniques and applications of electron spin resonance" (1998). Two of these (Karpa — slow light; Sunandana — ESR in solids) look tangential to a free-electron spin-separation apparatus, which suggests a wide examiner net. But McGregor (transverse Stern–Gerlach magnets for electrons) and Porter ("direct demonstration" of the transverse Stern–Gerlach effect) go to the heart of the '445 patent's asserted contribution — observing free-electron spin separation. If the patent's novelty rests on "first observation in action," these two are the references that most directly threaten that assertion. I did not retrieve their full texts in this session; that is the highest-value next search.

4. Possible double-counting/date discrepancy on the MIT document. The '445 specification cites as its reference [37] "Jeff Lieberman. The Stern-Gerlach Experiment. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physics Department (MITPD). (June 1998)." The examiner's NPL list cites "Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physics Department ('The Stern-Gerlach Experiment'; Pub. Date Feb. 22, 2001...)." These may be the same underlying document indexed with two different dates. Worth resolving, because §102(a)(1) status of the 2001-dated version depends on it (both pre-date 2015, so either way it is prior art).

5. Priority-date provenance — a cross-check that reconciles the 2015-08-11 entry. The record lists the parent PCT/IB2016/054596 (WO 2017009817 A1) with a 2015-08-11 priority date, which conflicts with the front-page 2015-10-27 date flagged earlier. A third-party registry listing for the Iranian family member ("آنالیزور اسپین ذاتی الکترون (تکمیل اختراع 84973)", IR registration 97126) shows an Iranian filing date of 1394/05/20 — which converts to 2015-08-11 — and an earlier claimed priority of 1393/06/25 (≈ 2014-09-16) to an earlier Iranian invention (84973). That is consistent with the 2015-08-11 entry being a foreign (Iranian) priority rather than a U.S. date, and it raises the possibility of an even earlier 2014 priority. Treat as an inference from a non-authoritative registry page, not a verified legal conclusion. Practical effect on this analysis: none of the seven cited references would fall out of the prior-art window even if the earliest date were 2014-09-16, since all published on or before 2015-02-11.

6. The '445 patent's own text supplies the best §103 narrative against it. The specification characterizes US 2009/0107895 A1 (≡ Suzuki US 8,101,920 B2) as a "classical Stern-Gerlach model that separates free particles" and characterizes US 6,403,999 B1 as a semiconductor-bound spin system. Those two admissions are functionally an element-by-element roadmap for a §103 combination: (Suzuki's parallelized beam + gapped separating magnet) in view of (a semiconductor-bound spin-separation system) — with the MIT/McGregor/Porter NPL supplying the "free-electron transverse Stern-Gerlach" teaching.

7. Prosecution context reinforces the §103 read, not a §102 read. The legal events previously summarized show a final rejection (2019-11-19) followed by two Ex parte Quayle actions, an abandonment (2021-06-29), revival (2021-11-01), and allowance within weeks (2021-11-29). Quayle actions are formality/cleanup-stage actions rather than art rejections, which is consistent with the substantive rejection having been §103 over this citation set and the applicant eventually obtaining allowance on the specific combination of claim 1. I have not retrieved the office actions themselves; that is a recommended next step to determine exactly which reference(s) the examiner relied on and how the claim language (particularly "multiple beam splitters" and the Langmuir probe) was arrived at.

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4. Bottom line

• Patents reviewed: all seven examiner-cited patent documents, each verified as to identity and dates.
• Anticipation (§102): None of the seven anticipates any of claims 1–7, because no single reference discloses the full claim 1 combination — and specifically none discloses the Langmuir measurement probe reciting all four plasma parameters, the LED-illuminated calibrated lines, the "multiple beam splitters... onto a CCD," or the double-sided graphite covers. US 8,101,920 B2 (Suzuki) is the closest, disclosing the parallelized particle beam + gapped-pole separating magnet + Lorentz-force handling for electrons, but still missing the lamp, plate, covers, probe, LEDs, and detection optics.
• Obviousness (§103): the material risk sits with US 8,101,920 B2 combined with the free-electron transverse Stern–Gerlach NPL (McGregor 2011; Porter 2003; MITPD) and possibly CN 104345331 A for the imaging readout.
• Confidence: high for US 6,639,218; JP 4700934; US 8,101,920; US 2009/0045355; US 8,552,398. Lower for US 2008/0217533 A1 (Kohashi) and CN 104345331 A, which I identified and dated but did not fully review in this session. I did not access PACER, PTAB, or the USPTO Patent Public Search API directly, and I did not retrieve the office actions; nothing here is a legal conclusion.

I'll research the prior-art references of record before building the § 103 analysis.

Now let me research the remaining references of record.

Now let me research the non-patent literature of record and the remaining references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,445 B2 ("Electron intrinsic spin analyzer")

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103; using the references of record on the face of the patent.
Prepared 2026-04-26. Identifiers reproduced literally. Building on the previously generated summary and litigation sections — I do not repeat those findings here except where they bear on claim scope.

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0. Threshold notes, scope, and confidence

Analytical caveat, stated up front: the strongest § 103 case against claim 1 runs through the reference combination in Part 2. The issued claim 1, however, contains several peripheral limitations ("LEDs to illuminate the calibrated lines," "multiple beam splitters," "a Langmuir measurement probe that measures … electron temperature and electron density") that read like claim-saving amendments. A realistic § 103 position is therefore (a) strong on the bulk of claim 1, (b) strongest on claims 3–7, and (c) contested on the "beam splitters" element and the CsO₂/Ba gitter of claim 2 unless a secondary reference or an Official Notice of known vacuum-tube gettering is added.

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1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (Graham factor 2)

A POSITA here would be a person with an M.S. or Ph.D. in physics, applied physics, or electrical engineering, or a B.S. with 3–5 years of experience, in charged-particle optics / electron spin polarimetry / vacuum electron-tube instrumentation, and would be familiar with: thermionic electron guns and grid-based beam collimation; Stern–Gerlach–type magnetic field-gradient separation; Mott- and field-gradient-type spin polarimeters; phosphor-screen and CCD-based beam imaging; and Langmuir-probe plasma diagnostics. This is a narrow, well-populated art. Critically for § 103, all of the asserted art is in the same field of endeavor (IPC/CPC G01R 33/1284 spin-resolved measurement; H01J electron tubes), so the analogous-art threshold is easily crossed.

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2. Combination 1 (primary) — Kohashi + Suzuki + CN 104345331 A + a phosphor/CCD readout + Langmuir-probe diagnostics

2.1 The four sub-combinations and why each is individually anticipated by the art

(a) The spin-separating magnet pair (the heart of claim 1).
Claim 1 recites magnets that are either "sharp-curved magnets that generate an inhomogeneous magnetic field" or "dual flat magnets that generate a homogeneous magnetic field," implemented as "stationary magnets or coils."

• Kohashi, US 2008/0217533 A1 (published 2008-09-11; grant US 7,985,952 B2) discloses exactly this, for electrons:

  "a pair of magnetic poles to apply a magnetic field having a gradient to an incident charged particle; and an electrode to apply an electric field to cancel a Lorenz force that is received by the charged particle from the magnetic field, and constitutes the charged particle spin polarimeter that resolves the magnetic moment in the magnetic field direction of the charged particle…"
  https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080217533
  Kohashi expressly teaches shaped, asymmetric pole faces to create the gradient — "it is easy to form a magnetic field gradient on the orbit of a charged particle by using different types of magnetic poles, such as convex and concave types for N-side and S-side respectively." That is the claimed "sharp-curved magnets." Kohashi further discloses multiple staged magnet pairs (Embodiment 3: "two pairs of magnetic poles… more than two pairs may be used") and plural units arranged in a circle (Embodiment 4), and couples the polarimeter to an electron gun / SEM / photoelectron spectroscope (Embodiments 5–8). https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d8/7b/51/be3f590394a094/US7985952.pdf

• Suzuki, US 8,101,920 B2 (granted 2012-01-24) / US 2009/0107895 A1 — the applicant itself discusses this reference in the Background — discloses a "spin isolation apparatus" comprising "a particle source which emits the particles; a receiving section… a magnet which has two magnet poles arranged apart from each other with a prescribed gap… and a trajectory restricting section," and states that "the particles may be electrons," that "the magnet… may be an electromagnet (like, for example, an electromagnet used in the Stern-Gerlach experiment) or a permanent magnet," and — decisively — addresses the Lorentz-force problem for electrons:

  "when the particles should be charged particles such as, for example, electrons, since there is no fear that the trajectories may be turned toward the outside of the magnet due to Lorentz forces, the first particles and the second particles can be surely separated."
  https://patents.google.com/patent/US8101920 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0107895.html
  Suzuki also discloses the collimator that parallels the beam — "placing, for example, a slit-collimator comprised of two slit apertures separated from each other with a certain distance between the magnet and the particle source, the particle beam can be adjusted like parallel rays of light."

  ⚠️ Flag (contradiction with the applicant's characterization). The patent's Background asserts of US 2009/0107895 A1 that "[t]he pointed patent has no particular methods to isolate non-atomic particles" and "did not mention how it produces the free-electron beams, but it just referred to a general word 'Particle.'" Suzuki's actual disclosure expressly names electrons, expressly discusses Lorentz force, and expressly discloses a slit-collimator for paralleling. The applicant's characterization is therefore inaccurate as a distinguishing argument, and Suzuki is a far more dangerous reference than the Background implies.

  ⚠️ Flag (possible citation duplication). US 2009/0107895 A1 (discussed by applicant) and US 8,101,920 B2 (cited by examiner) share inventor (Takashi Suzuki), title, and near-identical text, and appear to be the publication and grant of the same work. I treat them as a single Suzuki disclosure; the examiner's and applicant's citations are likely duplicative.

• CN 104345331 A (SIMIT, Chinese Academy of Sciences; published 2015-02-11 — only ~8 months before the earliest priority date) is titled "Image type electron spin analyzer." Its family member JP 2016531288 A states:

  "according to the image-type electron spin analyzer of the present invention, by bending electrons with a magnetic field, separation of incident and outgoing electron orbits can be realized."
  https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ed/00/91/57f67df9e41dd7/JP2016531288A.pdf
  This is a screen-image-based spin analyzer that magnetically bends/spatially separates electron trajectories — i.e., it supplies both the "magnets" element and the "image/optical readout" element of claim 1 in a single reference. ⚠️ I could not retrieve the CN text itself; verify before relying on it.

(b) The free-electron source, grids, and "micrometric holes" paralleling element.
Thermionic tungsten-wire guns, Wehnert/anode grid apertures, and aperture-limited collimation are the ordinary stock-in-trade of electron-tube engineering and are the subject of the applicant's own admissions about "standard monitoring systems." Suzuki supplies the express paralleling function via slit apertures ("like parallel rays of light"). Hokkaido's US 6,639,218 B2 supplies an "electron beam-generating apparatus" with a discharge aperture, accelerating electrodes, and an electrode supporter in a vacuum envelope for spin analysis. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6639218

(c) The phosphor/fluorescent plate + CCD image capture + calibrated scale.
This is standard CRT beam-profiling technology, and it is also what CN 104345331 A ("image type") is directed to. The patent's own specification concedes the point repeatedly: "[a] CCD (CHARGE COUPLED DEVICE) camera or a similar system takes images digitally"; the calibrated plate's lines "could be glow[n]… calibrated and measurable with accurate angles"; and the results are analyzed "with image processing software." The MIT Physics Dept. citation of record ("The Stern-Gerlach Experiment," 2001/archive 2013) is the canonical textbook description of reading a spin-split beam pattern off a deposition/collection plate.

(d) The Langmuir probe and the plasma-parameter measurements.
Claim 1 requires a Langmuir probe measuring "electron velocity, electron energy, electron temperature and electron density." Both Langmuir-probe references of record — Langmuir & Mott-Smith, Phys. Rev. 28, 727 (1926) and Merlino, Am. J. Phys. 75(12) (2007) — teach precisely this measurement set from probe I–V characteristics. The applicant's own specification ties the probe to the physics: "as many reasons such as the plasma parameters, the velocity of the electron considerably reduced." So the reference-driven motivation is supplied by the patentee itself.

⚠️ Claim-drafting inconsistency worth exploiting. Claim 1 requires a plasma diagnostic (electron temperature and density) inside a lamp that simultaneously contains a getter "which removes any remaining atoms" and is described as "vacuumed by the particular… methods." A hot-cathode tube that has been gettered to high vacuum does not present a measurable electron-temperature/density plasma. This is at minimum a § 112(a)/(b) vulnerability, and it also means the Langmuir-probe limitation is either (i) surplusage, or (ii) an unenabled requirement — neither of which assists patentability.

2.2 The motivation to combine (KSR rationales A, C, D, F)

A POSITA would have been motivated to assemble these four contributions, and the motivation is grounded in the references' own stated problems, not in hindsight:

1. Express problem statement in Kohashi. Kohashi's stated object is to overcome the fact that "techniques such as the Mott scattering ([efficiency] more than three orders of magnitude lower…) [are] mainly used as the method of detecting… the magnetic moment of an electron," and Kohashi identifies the reason the S–G approach was thought unusable for electrons — "when a charged particle passes through a magnetic field, the charged particle receives a Lorenz force that overwhelmingly larger than the force which magnetic moment receives from the magnetic field gradient." Kohashi's solution is a field-gradient magnet pair with Lorentz-force cancellation, i.e., precisely the "sharp-curved magnets that generate an inhomogeneous magnetic field" of claim 1. KSR rationale (C): using a known technique (field-gradient spin resolution) to improve a similar device (electron spin polarimeter) in the same way.
2. Express problem statement in CNR/Karimi (US 8,552,398 B2). "the generation of spin polarized electron beams is at present very difficult and ineffective in terms of brightness and stability… the lifetime under DC operation may reach at most 36 hours"; the stated purpose is "a spin polarization filter" that "does not require frequent cathode exchange" and can be "integrated in the components of electron microscopes." https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8552398B2](/patent/US8552398B2)/en This is a market/design incentive to replace photocathode sources with an ordinary hot-cathode gun plus a separation stage — i.e., to build the claimed lamp.
3. Express problem statement in Suzuki. Suzuki's stated goal is to "isolate" spin-polarized particles at scale — "particles having spins whose every sign is either one of the two signs can be mass-produced." Suzuki supplies the paralleling collimator and expressly contemplates electrons.
4. Simple substitution of known elements (rationale B). Swap Mott-scattering detection (Hokkaido; Kohashi's background) for a phosphor screen + CCD image (CN 104345331 A; CRT art). Same function (spatially resolved spin-state readout), predictable result (two illuminated spots). Swap a permanent magnet for a coil of the same geometry — Suzuki says the two are interchangeable in so many words.
5. Design incentive / predictable variation (rationale F). Both the spin-separation stage and the readout stage are in the same narrow art, and the claimed apparatus is a straightforward serial concatenation: source → collimator → gradient magnet → screen → camera → probe. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

The claimed result is the intended result of each reference. Claim 1's final element — the CCD camera "that displays independent quantum states of an electron" — is a statement of the very result Suzuki, Kohashi, and CN 104345331 A set out to achieve (spatial separation of the two spin states). § 103 inquiry focuses on whether the claimed structure would have been obvious; a claim term that merely names the intended physical outcome cannot supply the inventive weight.

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3. Combination 2 (alternative) — Mott-type analyzer + spin-polarizing Wien filter + quantum-S–G NPL

This is the combination to run if the "magnets" construction is disputed, or as a § 103 backup showing that the concept of separating free-electron spin states was thoroughly in the art:

• US 6,639,218 B2 (Hokkaido) — a complete "electron spin analyzer": "an electron beam-generating apparatus, a hemisphere accelerating electrode… a scattered electron detector… and a scattering target," with aperture geometry tuned ("the aperture angle α of the inner introducing inlet… larger than the aperture angle… by 0.1–5 degrees") to improve detection sensitivity.
• US 8,552,398 B2 (CNR) — a space-variant Wien filter that spatially separates the two spin components and a spin-polarization filter with an "iris radius used to separate the different components of the electron beam." A beam-component separator performing spin-based spatial separation is the functional equivalent of the claimed magnet pair.
• McGregor, Bach & Batelaan, "Transverse quantum Stern–Gerlach magnets for electrons," New J. Phys. 13, 065018 (2011) — cited of record. It teaches that a functional electron S–G magnet is achievable by non-classical designs, and states that "an interferometric arrangement with magnetic phase control is the functional equivalent of an electron Stern–Gerlach magnet," with the stated "wider implication" being "an alternative polarized electron source." https://beta.iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/13/6/065018 ; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicsfacpub/106/
• Porter et al. (2003), Am. J. Phys. 71 — cited of record as a "Direct demonstration of the transverse Stern-Gerlach effect," which cuts directly against any "impossibility" argument. ⚠️ Of record, but full text not retrieved this session.
• Karpa et al. (2008), New J. Phys. — cited by the examiner (asterisk) as of record; apparently relied upon for inhomogeneous/transverse field treatment. ⚠️ Not retrieved; verify its precise teaching.
• Sunandana (1998), Bull. Mater. Sci. — "Techniques and applications of electron spin resonance," a general teaching of spin-resonance spin-state manipulation/readout.

Motivation: manifest — the express object of Hokkaido is a downsized, high-efficiency electron spin analyzer; the express object of CNR is a high-brightness, stable spin-polarized beam; McGregor's "wider implication" is an alternative polarized electron source. A POSITA seeking to observe/measure free-electron spin states with better efficiency than Mott scattering, and faced with a finite set of identified approaches (field-gradient magnets for charged particles per Kohashi/Suzuki; diffractive/interferometric S–G equivalents per McGregor; Wien-filter spin separation per CNR), would have had a reasonable expectation of success and would not have needed to invent anything new — only to select and arrange. This is the classic "obvious to try" posture: a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, with the lead candidates already reduced to practice for electrons.

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4. Combination 3 — a tube/diagnostics backbone (CRT art + Langmuir probe art) applied to any of Combinations 1–2

For claims 2–7, the following conventional-art backbone completes the picture. Every one of these is either admitted in the specification as standard monitoring-system technology, or is basic vacuum-tube/plasma practice. Recommend an Official Notice of known art (MPEP 2144.03) for these items rather than a document-by-document rejection, absent better references:

⚠️ Contradiction to exploit (already flagged in the summary section, restated for § 103): claim 6 recites 10 to 25,000 volts, while the specification states the electron gun DC range is "2.5 to 12.5 Volts." A claim range with no written-description support in the range actually disclosed is a § 112(a) problem; and for § 103, a claim to a broad voltage range that spans conventional CRT acceleration voltages, over a disclosed working range two to four orders of magnitude lower, is a classic unobviousness-by-range failure (In re Wertheim; MPEP 2133.03).

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5. Teaching-away analysis (and why it fails)

The patentee's only credible non-obviousness story is the Bohr–Pauli impossibility narrative the specification itself rehearses: "the observation of intrinsic property of free electron's spin is impossible, and this impossibility is a general principle on physics"; "It is impossible to observe the electron spin, separated fully from its orbital momentum, by using experiments based on the concept of classical particle trajectories."

This argument fails on the record, for five independent reasons:

1. The references in the same field teach the opposite, and teach how to do it. Kohashi rejects the premise that the S–G magnet cannot work for charged particles and provides a workaround ("an electrode to apply an electric field to cancel a Lorenz force"); McGregor teaches an experimentally feasible interferometric equivalent. A reference that solves the problem is not a reference that teaches away — it is an express invitation.
2. The claimed structure does not require "classical trajectories." Claim 1 recites a magnet pair, a screen, a camera, grids, a probe, LEDs, a supply. It does not recite a classical-trajectory mechanism. The Bohr–Pauli proposition is a statement about a mechanism, not about structure, and cannot distinguish the claim.
3. Porter (2003) is of record as a "direct demonstration of the transverse Stern–Gerlach effect." Even if the theoretical debate were live, the art contained a report of actual successful transverse S–G separation.
4. The applicant's own specification concedes the art predicted success: "they predicted that the electron spin separation phenomena maybe observe in action in the further." An art that is moving toward the solution is not an art teaching away.
5. Difficulty ≠ teaching away. KSR and its progeny (e.g., In re Fulton) hold that skepticism or perceived difficulty does not negate obviousness where there are a finite number of identified, predictable approaches and the lead approach is pre-reduced to practice. Here, the approaches (gradient magnet with Lorentz compensation; Wien-filter/Vortex spin separation; diffractive/interferometric S–G equivalent) are exactly that finite set.

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6. Claim-by-claim summary of the § 103 position

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7. Anticipated patentee rebuttals, and responses

1. "No reference discloses the multiple beam splitters." Likely the strongest rebuttal, and also the weakest link in the patent.

• If construed as an optical relay/combiner that routes the phosphor glow (and the LED-illuminated calibration lines) onto a CCD sensor, this is routine optical metrology — the specification itself says the calibration lines are LED-lit and the CCD images are processed in software. Standard beam-splitter/camera-train references or an Official Notice resolve it.
• If construed as the magnetic spin separator itself doing the "splitting" of the beam, then it is met by Kohashi/Suzuki/CN 104345331 A.
• Either way the term adds no structural weight — but see § 8 below: I flag an apparent lack of antecedent basis for "beam splitters" in the disclosure, which is really a § 112(b) problem and should be raised in parallel.

1. "The references do not disclose free electrons in free space." Rejected: Suzuki expressly names electrons and expressly addresses Lorentz force; Kohashi is directed to "charged particle[s]" and "electron[s]"; CNR is directed to "electron beams… travel[ing] in free space."
2. "The applicant's Background distinguishes Suzuki." The Background's characterization ("just referred to a general word 'Particle'"; "no particular methods to isolate non-atomic particles") is contradicted by Suzuki's own text (Part 2.1(a)). Do not accept the characterization; quote Suzuki back.
3. "Specific material selections (CsO₂/Ba; graphite on both sides)." Barium getters and colloidal-graphite CRT coatings are notorious. Require the patentee to come forward with evidence of unexpected results; the specification reports none — it asserts only the ordinary functions (vacuum maintenance, charge suppression).
4. "The 10–25,000 V range is critical." In re Aller/In re Wertheim; and the specification supports only 2.5–12.5 V, so there is no disclosed criticality to point to.
5. "Hindsight from a large number of references." KSR does not limit the number of references where, as here, all are in the same narrow field, are all of record on the patent's face, and the motivation is recited in the references' own statements of purpose (efficiency of spin detection; brightness/stability of polarized sources; vacuum quality; ion removal).

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8. Weaknesses in the § 103 case, and recommended parallel grounds

Where a § 103 rejection is vulnerable:

• "Multiple beam splitters" — no reference I retrieved (or, apparently, on the face of the patent) discloses optical beam splitters in this apparatus. If the term is construed narrowly and distinctly, the rejection needs a secondary reference teaching optical beam splitting / dual-channel imaging of a luminescent screen, or it will be overcome.
• CsO₂/Ba getter composition (claim 2) — the element is known, but the specific two-component composition may require either (a) an Official Notice of getter compositions with a KSR "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" rationale (getters usable in high-vacuum electron tubes), or (b) a getter/vacuum-tube reference. This is the claim 2 fallback position and should be pre-empted.
• Prosecution-history estoppel cuts both ways. The two Ex parte Quayle actions and the final rejection → abandonment → revival sequence (per the legal events in the patent text) suggest claims were narrowed to secure allowance. If the LEDs, Langmuir probe with the four measured parameters, beam splitters, and the 10–25,000 V recitation were added for allowance, (i) they are the features the examiner considered not to be in the art, and (ii) they are the limitations a defendant/reexamination would most aggressively attack. Obtain the office actions and the pre-allowance claim set before finalizing this analysis. I do not have them.

Parallel and alternative grounds that should be developed alongside § 103:

• § 112(b) — "multiple beam splitters" appears to lack antecedent basis and is functional/unclear; "displays independent quantum states of an electron" is a result recitation; "gitter" is a term of degree/non-standard nomenclature; the claim conflates a high-vacuum gettered tube with a Langmuir-probe-measurable plasma (electron temperature and density).
• § 112(a) — the 10–25,000 V range (claim 6) is unsupported by the disclosed 2.5–12.5 V; the various numerical/positional relationships of the "S.G block" appear under-described; the assembly is described in largely result-and-function terms.
• § 101 — the specification frames the invention around a scientific conclusion ("this phenomenon observed for the first time by using this invention in action"), and claim 1's terminal element recites the display of "independent quantum states of an electron" — an abstract-physics framing that invites a Mayo/Alice challenge. This is a secondary line of attack but worth pleading in the alternative.

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9. Bottom line

Claim 1 would have been obvious under § 103 over Kohashi (US 2008/0217533 A1 / US 7,985,952 B2) in view of Suzuki (US 8,101,920 B2 / US 2009/0107895 A1) and CN 104345331 A, further in view of the Langmuir-probe references of record (Langmuir & Mott-Smith 1926; Merlino 2007) and the conventional CRT/phosphor/CCD/graphite/getter art — with the "sharp-curved" vs. "dual flat" and "coils" vs. "permanent magnets" alternatives each disclosed or suggested expressly by the references themselves.

The motivation is supplied by the references' own stated problems — Kohashi's objection that Mott detection is "more than three orders of magnitude" less efficient and its explicit solution of a shaped-pole field-gradient magnet with Lorentz-force cancellation for charged particles; CNR's "spin polarization filter" offering high brightness/stability without frequent cathode exchange; Suzuki's express teaching that the particles "may be electrons," that the paralleling collimator makes the beam parallel "like parallel rays of light," and that electromagnets and permanent magnets are interchangeable — and by the conventional-art backbone the specification itself admits (CRT metal-plate ion traps, gettered vacuum tubes, phosphor-plate observation, CCD image processing, graphite shielding).

Claims 3–7 add only routine design choices or result recitations and fall with claim 1 (In re Aller; KSR rationale A/B/C/D/F). Claims 2's CsO₂/Ba getter and claim 1's "multiple beam splitters" are the only elements for which I could not fully close the § 103 record this session — those two should be supported by an additional reference or an Official Notice, and the "beam splitters" term is independently exposed to a § 112(b) rejection. Because I could not obtain the office actions, the pre-allowance claims, or the full texts of JP 4700934 B2, CN 104345331 A, Karpa 2008, Porter 2003, Sunandana 1998, and US 2009/0045355 A1, treat those elements of this analysis as provisional and verify them against the documents before filing.