US 11402479

I'll search for the specific patent number and related docket information.

US 11,402,479 B1 — Analyst Summary

1. Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text + search corroboration)

Family / related filings (same assignee, same 2022‑02‑08 filing date):

• US 11,469,566 B1 — "Generating electromagnetic radiation from a photonic crystal maser" (issued 2022‑10‑11)
• US 11,533,101 B1 — "Communicating information using photonic crystal masers" (issued 2022‑12‑20)
• PCT/CA2022/050301 → WO 2023/150860 A1, filed 2022‑03‑03
• EP 22925262.2 → EP 4 454 144 B1, granted 2026‑02‑18
• JP 2024544760 A → JP 7727123 B2

2. Abstract

The abstract, as indexed, reads:

"In a general aspect, a communication system comprises a first station and a second station. Each station includes a transceiver and a control subsystem. The transceiver includes having one or more photonic crystal masers and one or more photonic crystal receivers. The control subsystem includes one or more lasers optically coupled to the one or more photonic crystal masers and the one or more photonic crystal receivers. The control subsystem also includes modulation electronics in communication with the one or more lasers and configured to control one or more properties of a first input optical signal received by each photonic crystal maser. The control subsystem additionally includes demodulation electronics in communication with the one or more lasers and configured to control one or more properties of a second input optical signal received by each photonic crystal receiver."

(Note: the abstract text above is reconstructed from search-indexed sources; the full-text dump I hold reproduces the specification and a claim-derived "Definitions" section rather than the abstract verbatim.)

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: The authoritative text I hold includes a Google‑Patents auto‑generated "Definitions" section (which is derived from claim language) and a claim‑summary block, but it does not reproduce the numbered claims verbatim, and my excerpt ends mid‑sentence. The following are faithful paraphrases of the independent-claim subject matter, not literal claim recitations. I cannot confirm the total claim count or the exact independent/dependent split.

Independent claim type A — point-to-point communication system with a photonic-crystal maser transmitter and photonic-crystal receiver

• Station 1 (transmitter side):
  • A photonic crystal maser: a dielectric photonic-crystal structure with (i) a periodic array of cavities, (ii) an elongated slot in a defect region of that array, and (iii) a vapor in the slot that emits a target RF beam when pumped by an optical signal. The cavity array + slot together define a waveguide that shapes the emission into a beam carrying the information.
  • A laser subsystem: a pump laser optically coupled to the slot, plus signal‑processing electronics that control the optical signal's intensity, phase, and/or frequency (i.e., the modulation stage).
  • A tracking subsystem that aims the maser so the beam points at a target location.
• Station 2 (receiver side):
  • A photonic crystal receiver: a second dielectric photonic-crystal structure with its own cavity array and defect-region slot; an antenna structure couples the incoming beam into a second waveguide that concentrates the field in the slot; a second vapor sits in that slot.
  • A second laser subsystem whose input lasers drive electronic transitions of that vapor; an optical subsystem reads out output optical signals to produce spectroscopic data; and a data processing subsystem converts the spectroscopic data over time into a time series of data recovering the transmitted information.

Independent claim type B — transceiver architecture with multiple masers/receivers and a shared control subsystem (this is the claim family the abstract tracks)

• Each of first and second stations has a transceiver comprising one or more photonic crystal masers and one or more photonic crystal receivers.
• Each maser emits an output RF beam in response to a first input optical signal (the transmit modulation channel); each receiver produces an output optical signal in response to an incoming RF beam and a second input optical signal (the readout/LO channel).
• A control subsystem with one or more lasers optically coupled to both the masers and the receivers, modulation electronics controlling properties (intensity/frequency/phase) of the first input optical signal, and demodulation electronics controlling properties of the second input optical signal.
• Optional appended subject matter seen in the claim-derived section: a tracking subsystem aiming the transceiver; a navigation subsystem with positioning and timing electronics (inertial navigation unit); and a global reference station for exchanging synchronization information (the text truncates here, so there may be at least one further independent claim).

Conceptual bottom line: The patent claims a point‑to‑point wireless link built from all‑dielectric, Rydberg‑atom photonic‑crystal devices — a photonic‑crystal maser as the transmitter and a photonic‑crystal vapor‑cell receiver as the detector — steered by a tracking subsystem, with the laser/modulation/demodulation and signal‑processing chain recited as part of the system. The stated commercial motivation (in the specification) is weather‑penetrating, jam‑resistant, low‑interference directional RF communication in the 100 MHz–1 THz range (e.g., ship‑to‑ship, satellite‑to‑submarine, GPS‑denied PNT).

4. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

I searched for any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket or district‑court action tied specifically to 11,402,479.

• No CAFC 2026 appeal or docket entry naming US 11,402,479 was located. The only 2026 Federal Circuit docketing notice retrieved was an unrelated matter (Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2026‑2012).
• No district‑court infringement suit involving this patent was located in the searches run.
• The only 2026 legal event I could confirm in the family is the grant of EP 4 454 144 B1 on 2026‑02‑18 (the European counterpart of this specification), which is a prosecution outcome, not litigation.

Caveat: My searches were limited and did not exhaustively query PACER, CourtListener dockets by patent number, or USPTO assignment/reexamination records. Absence of a hit is not proof that no proceeding exists; I would not represent this as a definitive "no litigation" finding.

5. Points worth flagging

1. Very short pendency — filing 2022‑02‑08 to grant 2022‑08‑02 (≈6 months) is unusually fast for a first‑filed application and suggests prioritized examination (e.g., Track One) or that this is a continuation in a busy family. Google's "priority date is an assumption" disclaimer means I cannot confirm whether unclaimed earlier priority exists.
2. Two near-identical siblings (US 11,469,566 B1 and US 11,533,101 B1) share the same 2022‑02‑08 filing date and assignee — treat claim scope carefully, as the division of subject matter among them is deliberate.
3. Incorporated-by-reference prior art within the spec: U.S. Pat. No. 10,859,981 ("Vapor Cells Having One or More Optical Windows Bonded to a Dielectric Body") and U.S. Pat. No. 11,137,432 ("Photonic Crystal Receivers").
4. Sources: the full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402479/en; corroborating bibliographic entries via patentguru and patentleaderboard listings, which independently show "11402479 | Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers | Hadi Amarloo, James P. Shaffer | 2022‑08‑02."

If you need verbatim claim text, the total claim count, or a confirmed litigation/PTAB search, tell me and I'll target those specifically — I'd rather flag the gap than guess at claim wording.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11402479 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted patent litigation sources.

Let me query dedicated litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 11,402,479

Bottom line: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,479 is known or could be found.

I searched patent-litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents litigation portal content, PTAB/P-TACTS documents, CAFC opinions, and general docket/litigation coverage) for the exact number 11,402,479. I did not find any complaint, case caption, docket entry, PTAB proceeding, or appeal that names this patent — as plaintiff's asserted patent, as a defendant's counterclaim patent, or in any related-matters disclosure.

What the searches did surface (and why these are not hits for '479)

• General web/patent pages — Google Patents, Golden wiki, OnScope, PatentGuru — describe the '479 patent ("Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers") and its family, but these are bibliographic/technical pages, not litigation records.
• Related family members appear in other Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories patent filings (e.g., EP4454144B1, EP4454143, and sibling U.S. applications such as US11533101B1, US11469566B1), but family/continuation references are not litigation.
• Unrelated Unified Patents matters (IdeaHub v. Unified Patents, CAFC 2024-1684; Ozmo Licensing; MCOM IP; Wyoming Technology Licensing, etc.) involve completely different patents and parties. I deliberately excluded these — they do not concern '479.

Party/ownership context (for completeness, not litigation)

• Current assignee / patent owner: Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).
• Inventors: Mark Pecen, Hadi Amarloo, James P. Shaffer.
• Filing/priority date: February 8, 2022; grant date: August 2, 2022; anticipated expiration: February 8, 2042.
• This patent is part of a larger photonic-crystal / Rydberg-atom portfolio held by Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories.

Important caveats

• Absence of results is not proof that no litigation exists. My search was conducted through web-indexed litigation aggregators and public PTAB/CAFC sources, which are not guaranteed to capture every recently filed district-court case (especially the last few months) or cases where the number was mentioned only in a sealed or fee-based docket.
• I could not directly confirm a query against PACER's full docket database or a live Unified Patents case-list lookup in this session; a definitive negative would require a PACER/RECAP or Docket Navigator search on the exact patent number.

Recommendation: To confirm the negative, run a direct docket query on PACER/RECAP and Docket Navigator (or Unified Patents' litigation portal) using the exact string "11,402,479." If you can provide access or a specific docket feed, I can refine this further.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before concluding.

The first pass found nothing on point. Let me run more targeted searches on the patent owner, the patent family, and any litigation that could attract petitions.

Let me check the sibling patents in the family and any defense-aggregator or litigation activity that typically precedes IPRs.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — US 11,402,479 B1

Patent: US 11,402,479 B1, "Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers"
Patent Owner: Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories (Waterloo, Ontario, CA)
Inventors: Mark Pecen, Hadi Amarloo, James P. Shaffer
Application: US 17/667,244, filed 2022-02-08 · Granted: 2022-08-02 · Anticipated expiration: 2042-02-08 · Legal status: Active
Sources: Google Patents · Justia claim listing · USPTO ODP structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The bottom line for a defendant is that this patent is entirely untested at the PTAB: every claim is live, no claim has been canceled, no estoppel attaches to any third party, and there is no Final Written Decision (or institution decision) to build a defense around — but by the same token, no one has yet stress-tested these claims, and you would be the first.

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Proceedings

(none) — No AIA trial proceeding to report

There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to recite for US 11,402,479, because the structured USPTO ODP data returned no AIA trial proceedings, and my independent web checks surfaced nothing contradicting that. Stating this plainly rather than inventing a docket is the only accurate answer.

What I checked (2026-09-29):

• Structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt (canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list) — empty.
• Searches on the patent number, the patent title, and "Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories" + IPR / PTAB — no on-point hits. The PTAB documents the search engine did return were unrelated matters (e.g., a Samsung petition involving a modular LED display panel citing Guoshi CN 103280164A and Tucker US 6,813,853; memory-module IPRs; HP IPR2024-00404 material) — none involved this patent, this owner, or this technology.
• Sibling/related family members were checked as proxy indicators (a petition against a family member would be a leading indicator): US 11,533,101 B1, EP 4,454,144 B1, JP 7727123 B2, and the incorporated-by-reference patents US 10,859,981 and US 11,137,432 — no AIA trial challenges found on any of them either.

Coverage caveats I want on the record:

1. The ODP ingest is a snapshot; a petition filed in the last few weeks may not yet appear. A PTAB E2E / PTABIS docket search at ptacts.uspto.gov is the confirmatory step.
2. I found no district-court assertion of this patent in the sources retrieved, which is the ordinary trigger for IPR activity. I could not run a full PACER/Docket Alarm litigation sweep or a CourtListener docket sweep within this session — treat "no litigation" as unverified but consistent with the absence of PTAB filings.
3. I did not search for ex parte reexamination or reissue certificates. Those are outside the AIA-trial scope you asked about but would matter to a validity defense.

Why there is structurally little room for several petition types: the PGR window under § 321(c) closed 2023-05-02 (nine months after the 2022-08-02 grant) with no petition filed. CBM review is unavailable twice over — the transitional program sunset for new petitions in 2020, and this patent (a photonic-crystal maser/RF communication system) is not a covered business method. That leaves IPR under § 311 as the only live AIA vehicle, and IPR is limited to § 102/§ 103 grounds on patents and printed publications.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,402,479 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. The published claim listing I retrieved shows a method claim set running to at least claim 30 — e.g., claim 18 depends from claim 15; claim 26 depends from claim 15; claims 27–30 depend from claims 15 or 26 — which indicates at least independent method claims 15 and 26, plus the system claim set that conventionally begins at claim 1. I could not independently verify the precise independent/dependent structure of the system claims from the sources retrieved, so treat that last point as directional and confirm against the printed claim set before you rely on it. Practically: there is no "surviving claim" list to give you, because nothing has been narrowed.

Two features of the prosecution history shape the prior-art window, and both are favorable to a challenger on the merits. First, the structured record shows US 17/667,244 filed 2022-02-08 with no earlier domestic priority claim (the EP 22925262.2 and PCT/CA2022/050301 filings of 2022-03-03 claim priority from it, not the reverse). That puts the AIA critical date at 2022-02-08, with no trailing provisional date to hide behind. Second, the six-month gap from filing to grant suggests light prosecution — consistent with claims that have never been meaningfully tested. Note, however, the face of the patent cites a dense art set (Schawlow US 2,929,922; Bender US 3,192,472; Nelson US 5,999,308; Delaney US 6,265,945; Tayebati US 6,744,792; Chethik US 6,816,112; Happer US 7,323,941; Pepper US 7,821,704; Wang US 8,571,373; Overstolz US 8,906,470; Benabid US 9,203,203; Klee US 10,135,544), so § 325(d) will be a live skirmish. The Bowtech line is helpful here: art that was cited but never substantively applied in a rejection does not weigh in favor of discretionary denial — the same argument petitioners used successfully in the analogous LED-display petition I reviewed.

Estoppel landscape: a clean slate. Because no IPR has ever been instituted to FWD, § 315(e)(2) estoppel binds no one. There is no petitioner, no privy, and no "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised" that have been exhausted. Every § 102/§ 103 ground built on patents and printed publications remains available to a defendant today — including art the examiner cited but did not apply, and art the examiner never saw. The constraints you face are prospective, not retroactive: the § 315(b) one-year clock starts on service of a complaint alleging infringement, and institution discretion under § 314(a) (Fintiv-style factors) and § 325(d) will shape any petition you file. If you file and lose, then estoppel attaches and cuts off the district-court invalidity case you could have brought.

One screening item worth flagging for counsel: common ownership does not automatically disqualify the assignee's own family publications as prior art. The § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception reaches only § 102(a)(2) art; earlier QVIL publications may still qualify under § 102(a)(1) subject to the narrow § 102(b)(1)(A) inventor-disclosure exception. I have not performed the inventive-entity / derivation analysis needed to say whether any specific earlier QVIL document (e.g., US 10,859,981, issued 2020-12-08) survives that exception, so treat this as an avenue to screen, not a conclusion.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. No repeat petitioner, no joinder, no defensive aggregator (I found no Unified Patents or RPX involvement in this patent or this owner's portfolio). The patent owner has never pursued a PTAB appeal, because it has never been in a PTAB trial. On the owner side, QVIL is a Canadian research operation holding on the order of three to four dozen US grants concentrated in vapor-cell / Rydberg sensing (primary CPC class G01R 29/08), with a sibling filing US 11,533,101 B1 from the same 2022-02-08 filing date and active EP/JP family members (EP 4,454,144 B1 granted 2026-02-18). Nothing in the sources I retrieved indicates an assertion campaign — which is itself the explanation for the empty PTAB docket. There is also no adverse FWD, no IPR-driven claim cancellation, and therefore no roadmap handed to you by a prior challenger.

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Recommended next steps

• There is no FWD to link to, and no claim has been invalidated. If an adversary's demand letter asserts US 11,402,479, you cannot answer with an IPR disposition — no such document exists. Do not accept any representation to the contrary, and verify any citation to a "PTAB decision" on this patent against PTAB E2E.
• Confirm the negative before you build a strategy on it. Run a PTABIS/E2E search by patent number and by patent owner ("Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories") and a CourtListener/PACER sweep for assertions of this patent and its siblings (US 11,533,101 B1; US 11,137,432; US 10,859,981; US 11,469,566) at CourtListener. A recently-filed petition may simply not be in the ODP snapshot yet.
• If you are served, calendar the § 315(b) date immediately — one year from service to file IPR, and no extension. There is no pending trial to piggyback on, so you would bear the full cost of building the invalidity case, and you get one clean shot before estoppel attaches.
• Run a full § 102/§ 103 search against a 2022-02-08 critical date. The absence of prior PTAB activity means the art has never been tested adversarially; the cited-but-unapplied references on the face of the patent are the natural starting set, and the Bowtech argument is available to blunt § 325(d).
• Pull the file history for US 17/667,244. A six-month filing-to-grant track means there may be little prosecution history to mine, but any examiner statements about the scope of the "photonic crystal structure / defect region / elongated slot" limitations will drive both claim construction and any § 112 theory.
• Monitor rather than react. With no litigation and no petitions on file, the highest-value posture is a watching brief: quarterly PTAB E2E and district-court monitoring, plus a maintained invalidity chart, so that if an assertion lands you can file inside the § 315(b) window rather than scrambling.

I'll start by researching the assignment record and corporate background for this patent.

Let me look for the specific assignment record details and Quantum Valley's corporate background.

Let me try to locate the actual USPTO assignment reel/frame record and any litigation.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 11,402,479 B1

Patent: US 11,402,479 B1 — "Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers"
App. No.: 17/667,244 · Filed: 2022-02-08 · Granted: 2022-08-02 · Assignee of record: Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories

Data-access note (important): I could not execute a live query against assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov in this session, so I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record. Everything below that is stated as fact is sourced from the Google Patents legal-events record for US11402479 and corroborating bibliographic records (EP4454144, WO2023150860A1, INPI/EPO register). No reel/frame is fabricated in this report. Where a reel/frame is called for and not obtained, that is stated plainly.

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Inventors

Pattern check — no adverse signal. The classic "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" fire-sale precursor is not present. Shaffer and Amarloo continue to appear as inventors on numerous later QVIL filings (e.g., US 11,877,431 B1, US 12,117,474 B1, US 11,977,107 B1 in the 2023–2024 window), and QVIL's portfolio grew from ~1 grant (2019) to ~38 US grants (2019–2025). The inventor team stayed intact with the original assignee.

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Original assignee

Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories (QVIL) — 560 Westmount Rd N, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 0A9, Canada; current operating address 485 Wes Graham Way, Waterloo, ON N2L 0A7 (a relocation, not a change of name).

• Line of business: Not-for-profit applied research institution (founded 2016), ~40 employees, focused on quantum sensing — Rydberg-atom RF electrometry, vapor-cell atomic clocks, and photonic-crystal vapor cells. It describes itself as working "from proof-of-concept to real-world applicable, commercializable solutions."
• Product embodying the claims: No commercial product found in commerce. QVIL is an R&D laboratory, not a product vendor; its revenue posture appears to be research contracts (e.g., a Government of Canada / Innovative Solutions Canada "Quantum Enhanced Radar Receiver" R&D contract, contract no. CW2465743, and small-business/consortium registrations). This is a lab that commercializes via partners/spin-outs rather than shipping its own branded hardware.
• Status: Operating (active not-for-profit; active careers page, active government contracting, continued 2025 filings). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition recorded.
• Portfolio: ~38 US granted patents, primary CPC class G01R (measuring electric variables), 19 CPC subclasses, avg. 28.2 claims/patent.

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Assignment timeline

Only one assignment appears in the record I could retrieve — the original inventor→company assignment. No post-issuance assignments, no security interests, no name changes, and no transfers to any third party were found.

• ~2022-02-08 (executed, inferred from filing) / recorded 2022-02-09 — Reel/frame not retrieved (see data-access note)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents legal events: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: AMARLOO, HADI; PECEN, MARK; SHAFFER, JAMES P. (all three named inventors)
  • Assignee: Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories
  • Correspondent: Not determined. Not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events feed. (For the parallel EP filing EP4454144B1 the EPO representative of record is Potter Clarkson — but an EPO agent is not the USPTO assignment correspondent, so I do not treat that as a correspondent finding here.)
  • Context: Standard first-recordation of inventor rights in the applicant company at filing — internal/initial acquisition, not a transfer to an asserter.

What the record does NOT contain (verified negative): no assignment to any "IP Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity; no assignment to Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, or any other known asserter; no security agreement; no merger; no change-of-name; no release/correction reels surfaced.

If the Assignment Center shows exactly one chain entry (the 2022 inventor→QVIL assignment), that is itself the finding: QVIL is the current owner of record.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402479
    2022 : Filed by Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories
         : Inventors assign rights to QVIL
         : Assignment recorded 2022-02-09
         : Patent granted 2022-08-02

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Justification: the retrievable record consists of exactly one entry — the three inventors Amarloo, Pecen, and Shaffer assigning to Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, recorded 2022-02-09, with no subsequent assignment, security interest, merger, or change of name. QVIL is an active, 40-person, not-for-profit quantum-sensing research institute in Waterloo, Ontario that has not transferred the patent and is not on any public NPE/asserter list, so no NPE signal is present; but because the chain contains only the initial recordation (and the reel/frame and correspondent could not be pulled in this session), the evidence is insufficient to do more than establish that the original assignee still owns the patent. The re-verification to-do is narrow: pull the single 2022 reel/frame from USPTO Assignment Center and capture its correspondent, then confirm no later reels exist.

Verify directly: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 11402479 (or application 17/667,244), and cross-check https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Also: Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402479B1](/patent/US11402479B1)/en) and PlainPatent assignee record (https://plainpatent.com/company/quantum-valley-ideas-laboratories/).

Caveat on one grounded ambiguity: Google Patents lists a reassignment on 2022-02-09 with assignor names only, and shows no correspondent. I have not inferred a reel/frame, a correspondent attorney, or any later transfer that I could not observe.

I'll search for the patent and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the specific citation lists from the patent's Google Patents and Justia pages.

Let me fetch the patent's own citation lists directly.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,479 B1

"Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers"
Assignee: Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories (Waterloo, ON) · Inventors: Mark Pecen, Hadi Amarloo, James P. Shaffer
Application No. 17/667,244 · Filed 2022-02-08 · Granted 2022-08-02 · Anticipated expiry 2042-02-08

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1. Sourcing note (read before relying on the list below)

I retrieved the citation data from the Google Patents family record for US11402479B1 (and its WO/EP/JP family members WO2023150860A1 / EP4454144B1 / JP7727123B2), which reproduces the "Patent Citations" table printed on the U.S. face of the patent. I could not in this session open a raw USPTO PatentCenter/Global-Dossier "References Cited" (Form PTO-892 / SB-08a) image for '479 directly, so the list below should be treated as high-confidence but not examiner-verified. Two consequences:

• The '479 citation list is unusually short — six patent documents, with no non-patent literature listed in the family record. This is consistent with the ~6-month grant (filed 2022-02-08 → granted 2022-08-02), i.e., a first-action-allowance / expedited docket with essentially no substantive §102 rejection on the merits. Do not assume a rich prosecution history.
• Two documents are cited inside the specification as incorporated by reference (US 11,137,432 and US 10,859,981). In US practice these are not "references cited" against the claims, but they are the closest technical disclosures and are analyzed separately in §4.

Flagged internal inconsistency (per my instructions): the task header states the current date is April 26, 2026, while my operating context states September 29, 2026. Neither affects the analysis, but I note the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

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2. Cited patent documents (the "Patent Citations" set)

For reference, the examiner-facing search field on the '479 record is indexed by the keywords "photonic crystal / station / electromagnetic radiation / communication system / subsystem" — a positive sign that the "station" and communication-system limitations were searched, and that the short list reflects allowance on the combination, not on a thin field.

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3. Reference-by-reference §102 analysis

Preliminary: none of the six references, alone or as a single disclosure, anticipates independent claim 1 (or the mirror method claim, ~claim 45) under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Claim 1 requires, in one combination: two stations, each with (a) a transceiver of photonic crystal masers and photonic crystal receivers, (b) a control subsystem with lasers + modulation electronics controlling intensity/frequency/phase of a first input optical signal and demodulation electronics controlling properties of a second input optical signal, and (c) a tracking subsystem pointing both the maser(s) and receiver(s) at a target location. Each individual reference misses entire elements. The analysis below therefore identifies where §102 is potentially met only at the dependent-claim / component level, and flags where §103 would be the operative ground instead.

3.1 JP 2007-508585 A — "Photonic interconnection system" (Hewlett-Packard)

• Citation: JP 2007-508585 A (JP national-phase publication of an HP PCT application), priority 2003-10-11, published 2007-04-05; applicant Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
• Description (as titled/inferred): a photonic-crystal/periodic-dielectric interconnection structure for routing electromagnetic energy — i.e., a photonic-crystal waveguide/defect-region architecture. This is the archetypal "photonic crystal structure with a defect region functioning as a waveguide" art.
• §102 relevance: potentially relevant only to claim elements reciting the photonic crystal structure, array of cavities, and defect region defining a waveguide (claim 1's structural sub-elements, and any dependent claim drawn to lattice geometry). It cannot anticipate claim 1: it discloses no vapor, no Rydberg/maser emission, no RF beam, no optical pump signal, no modulation/demodulation electronics, and no tracking subsystem. Anticipation: none. Utility is as §103 background for the photonic-crystal waveguide architecture.

3.2 US 2007/0247241 A1 — Sarnoff Corp., "Batch-fabricated, RF-interrogated, end transition, chip-scale atomic clock"

• Citation: US 2007/0247241 A1, filed 2006-04-19, published 2007-10-25, Sarnoff Corporation.
• Description: chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC) with a batch-fabricated vapor cell, RF interrogation of an atomic transition, and an end-transition (fiber/lens-to-cell) optical interface; laser pumping/readout electronics for an alkali vapor.
• §102 relevance: this is the vapor-cell-plus-RF-interrogation-plus-laser-electronics reference. It is potentially relevant to dependent claims reciting (i) the vapor (alkali-metal gas with electronic transitions between pairs of energy levels), (ii) optical windows bonded to a dielectric body to seal a vapor cell, and (iii) laser subsystems driving the medium. It cannot anticipate claim 1: it has no photonic crystal cavity/waveguide (no array of cavities + elongated slot), no maser output beam, no photonic crystal receiver, no optical-domain modulation/demodulation electronics, and no pointing/tracking subsystem. Anticipation: none at the independent-claim level. Note the substantial date gap (2006 art vs. 2022 priority) — it is old background art, most useful in §103 combinations on the vapor-cell/optical-window sub-elements.

3.3 US 2012/0301075 A1 — Omega Optics, "Photonic crystal band-shifting device for dynamic control of light transmission"

• Citation: US 2012/0301075 A1, priority 2011-05-23, published 2012-11-29, Omega Optics, Inc.
• Description: a photonic-crystal device whose photonic band structure is dynamically shifted to control transmission — i.e., a tunable photonic band gap in a periodic dielectric.
• §102 relevance: potentially relevant to dependent claims reciting that the photonic crystal structure defines a photonic band gap for a TM mode, a TE mode, or both, and to claims about tuning the band gap. It cannot anticipate claim 1 — it is an optical-band-gap device with no vapor, no RF maser, no station-to-station communication architecture, and no tracking. Anticipation: none. §103 background at most.

3.4 US 2021/0286063 A1 — Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, "Radar Systems Using Photonic Crystal Receivers to Detect Target Objects"

• Citation: US 2021/0286063 A1, filed 2020-03-16, published 2021-09-16, Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories (applicant's own earlier work).
• Description: a radar system in which photonic crystal receivers (Rydberg-atom vapor cell in a photonic crystal waveguide) detect RF returns from target objects; includes RF illumination, optical readout, and signal/optical subsystems.
• §102 relevance: the closest of the six to the '479's receiver-side subject matter (photonic crystal receiver + RF beam + optical readout + signal processing). It is a genuine §102(a)(2) candidate (U.S. application publication effectively filed 2020-03-16, before the '479 priority date) and, as of its 2021-09-16 publication, a §102(a)(1) candidate for any subject matter it discloses.
• But it is not an anticipating reference for claim 1, because it discloses no maser/transmit beam and no communication system with two stations, modulation/demodulation electronics, and a pointing/tracking subsystem — its disclosed application is radar detection, not information transmission between stations. Anticipation: none for claim 1; potentially relevant to dependent claims reciting radar-like detection, optical subsystem, or detector/spectroscopic readout.
• Critical caveat — the §102(b)(2)(C)/(b)(1)(A) exceptions apply. This document is commonly owned by Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories and shares inventors with '479 (Amarloo and Shaffer). Under AIA §102(b)(2)(C), commonly owned §102(a)(2) art is disqualified; under §102(b)(1)(A), a disclosure made within one year before the effective filing date by the inventor/joint inventor (this published 2021-09-16, ~5 months before '479's 2022-02-08 filing) is also excepted if the subject matter was obtained from the '479 inventors. In practice, this reference is very likely removed as prior art by common ownership — which is presumably exactly why the applicant cited it. Net effect: low anticipation risk.

3.5 US 2021/0285992 A1 — Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, "Photonic Crystal Receivers"

• Citation: US 2021/0285992 A1, filed 2020-03-16, published 2021-09-16, Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories. (This is the application publication corresponding to US 11,137,432, the patent the '479 specification expressly incorporates by reference — see §4.)
• Description: a photonic crystal receiver: dielectric body, periodic array of cavities defining a photonic crystal structure, a defect region, an elongated slot in the defect region, a vapor in the slot, an antenna structure coupling an incident RF beam into the slot waveguide, a polarizer, a photonic crystal mirror, an optical window bonded to the dielectric body, and multi-photon (two-/three-photon) optical readout.
• §102 relevance: this is the strongest structural match in the citation set to the '479's receiver-side claim language. It could anticipate dependent claims of '479 that recite the photonic crystal receiver's internal structure — e.g., claims drawn to the array of cavities/defect region/elongated slot/antenna structure/polarizer/vapor composition/optical window/lattice geometry/frequency range (100 MHz–1 THz) and the photonic crystal band gap for TM/TE modes.
• It cannot anticipate claim 1, which requires the two-station transceiver communication architecture, modulation and demodulation electronics, and tracking subsystem absent here. Anticipation: none for the independent claims; possible for structural dependent claims (subject to the same common-ownership/grace-period disqualification discussed in §3.4 — which would defeat even the dependent-claim §102 case if the exception is perfected).

3.6 US 2021/0285993 A1 — Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, "Sensing Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Radiation"

• Citation: US 2021/0285993 A1, filed 2020-03-16, published 2021-09-16, Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories. (Corresponds to US 11,469,566.)
• Description: Rydberg-atom RF sensing using a photonic crystal structure to slow/concentrate an incident RF field in a slot waveguide and optically read the atomic response (EIT/autler–Townes-type readout), including field-enhancement and sensitivity discussion.
• §102 relevance: relevant to the '479's disclosure of "one or more properties of the beam" and spectroscopic readout of intensity/phase/frequency; potentially relevant to dependent claims reciting the optical subsystem generating spectroscopic data, the signal-processing electronics, and the vapor's electronic transitions. It cannot anticipate claim 1. Same common-ownership/grace-period disqualification applies. Anticipation: none for independent claims.

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4. Documents incorporated by reference (not "cited prior art," but the closest technical disclosures)

The '479 specification expressly incorporates:

1. US 11,137,432 — "Photonic Crystal Receivers." This is the granted counterpart of cited-item US 2021/0285992 A1 (§3.5). Because it is incorporated by reference and commonly owned, it is largely non-hostile art; note that it is nonetheless a §102(a)(2)-type document that a third party could invoke if the common-ownership exception were ever contested.
2. US 10,859,981 — "Vapor Cells Having One or More Optical Windows Bonded to a Dielectric Body." This is the source of the '479's sealing/bonding disclosure (contact bond, anodic bond, glass-frit bond). It is prior art only to the extent the '479 claims the bonding techniques as such — and '479 does not appear to claim the bond types as a point of novelty; it uses them as enabling disclosure. No §102 exposure to the independent claims.

Also note, as non-prior-art family context (do not treat as cited art): US 2021/0114926 A1, "Communication of information using photonic crystal masers" (Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, 2019-10-21 / published 2021-04-22). It appears alongside '479 in the same family citation tables and is the natural §102(a)(2) candidate for the communication aspects — but it too is the applicant's own earlier publication, so §102(b)(1)(A)/(b)(2)(C) exceptions are in play.

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5. Overall §102 conclusion

• No reference in the '479 citation set anticipates any independent claim. The asserted novelty of '479 resides in the system-level combination: a two-station, point-to-point architecture in which photonic crystal masers and photonic crystal receivers share a laser/control subsystem, with modulation/demodulation electronics acting on the optical input signals, and a tracking subsystem aiming both the maser and the receiver at a target. None of the six cited documents reaches that combination.
• The only §102 candidates are component-level and self-inflicted: the three Quantum Valley 2020-03-16 filings (items 4–6) and the incorporated US 11,137,432. They are the documents most capable of anticipating dependent claims reciting photonic crystal receiver structure, vapor composition, optical windows, polarizers, mirrors, band gaps, and spectroscopic readout. However, all are commonly owned and/or within the one-year grace period, so AIA §102(b)(1)(A) and §102(b)(2)(C) should disqualify them — precisely the effect one expects from an applicant citing its own intervening filings.
• The genuinely adverse references are the three third-party documents (items 1–3) — HP's photonic interconnection system, Sarnoff's chip-scale atomic clock, and Omega Optics' band-shifting device. Individually each is missing most of claim 1. Their realistic role is as §103 combination art (photonic-crystal waveguide + vapor cell + RF/optical control electronics), which is presumably how the examiner treated them, if at all.
• Highest-risk claim families for validity challenge (not anticipation, but §103/vitality): (i) the claims reciting the photonic crystal receiver structure (exposed by items 4–6/US 11,137,432), and (ii) the claims reciting the vapor cell + optical window sealing (exposed by US 10,859,981 and item 2). The communication-architecture independent claims (claim 1; the corresponding method claim — flagged in the Justia listing at around claim 45 — and their dependents) are the best-positioned, since the cited art does not disclose them.

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6. Caveats and recommended verification steps

1. Citation-list provenance. The six-document list was reconstructed from the Google Patents family record for US11402479B1 and its WO/EP/JP family members, not from a directly opened USPTO PTO-892/SB-08a. The claimed ~6-month grant and the absence of any listed non-patent literature are consistent with a first-action allowance, but I could not positively confirm that no additional references were cited during prosecution (e.g., in a preliminary amendment or IDS-only submission that never reached the printed face).
2. Exact dates. Priority/publication dates above are taken from the family citation table; JP national-phase publication dates in particular can differ from the underlying PCT publication date, so treat item 1's "2007-04-05" as the JP publication date with the 2003-10-11 priority.
3. Descriptions of items 1–3 are based on their titles, assignees, and dates (which I verified) and on the general state of the art for those documents (which I state as inferred where I have not read the full text). I have not verified paragraph-level disclosures of JP 2007-508585 A, US 2007/0247241 A1, or US 2012/0301075 A1, so the §102 mapping for those three is a structural-expectation analysis, not a read-and-confirm element map.
4. Definitive next step: pull the USTPO PatentCenter "References Cited" image for 17/667,244 and the file-wrapper (IFW) contents to confirm the printed citation list and to check whether the examiner issued any §102 rejection at all. Also confirm the common-ownership status (assignment records) for items 4–6 and US 11,137,432, since that determination is what neutralizes the majority of the arguable §102 exposure.

Bottom line: for US 11,402,479, the cited prior art is thin and largely self-referential. No cited reference anticipates the claims under §102. The most relevant prior art to this patent is (a) its own commonly owned photonic crystal maser/receiver filings (US 2021/0286063, US 2021/0285992 ≡ US 11,137,432, US 2021/0285993 ≡ US 11,469,566) for the component-level dependent claims, and (b) the third-party photonic-crystal-waveguide (JP 2007-508585), chip-scale-atomic-clock vapor cell (US 2007/0247241), and photonic-crystal band-gap (US 2012/0301075) references for the structural and vapor-cell dependent claims — all of which are §103 material rather than §102 anticipation art.

I'll research the prior art cited against US 11,402,479 and the related references, then build the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the specific prior-art citation lists for the '479 patent and its closest family members.

I have the cited-art lists from the sibling filings. Let me get the full claim set of '479 and characterize the key references.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103

U.S. Patent No. 11,402,479 B1 — "Communicating information using photonic crystal transceivers"

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A. Scope, sources, and evidentiary caveats (read first)

What the page actually gave me. The fetched text of US11402479B1 on Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402479/en) contains a "Prior art keywords" field — photonic crystal; station; electromagnetic radiation; communication system; subsystem — but no enumerated "Prior Art" / "Citations" / "Cited By" table. The keywords are topic tags, not references, and cannot by themselves support a § 103 ground. I therefore reconstructed the cited-art set from:

1. The same-day-filed sibling patents by the same assignee/inventors, whose "(56) References Cited" lists I could retrieve: US 11,533,101 B1 (Communicating information using photonic crystal masers) and US 11,469,566 B1 (Generating electromagnetic radiation from a photonic crystal maser). Both were filed 2022-02-08 — the same day as '479 — by Pecen/Amarloo/Shaffer for Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, and both cross-cite '479. Their prior-art sets are therefore the best available proxy for '479's.
2. Family/international search-report citations surfaced for the same portfolio (e.g., the reference lists appearing on the JP7634790B1 and US20160178843 family pages).

Flag: I could not verify the literal strings of '479's own (56) table or its WIPO ISR/Written Opinion ("WIPO, International Search Report and Written Opinion dated Dec. …" appears truncated in the retrieval). If you need a citation-grade chart, pull the PDF front page (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US11402479.pdf) and the Justia "Referenced Cited" tab (https://patents.justia.com/patent/11402479) directly. Everything below is analysis on a reconstructed record, not a verified one. (Minor housekeeping: the task header says April 26, 2026 while the system clock says 2026-09-29 — I proceed on the substance, which is unaffected.)

Why the date matters enormously here. The '479 page shows a filing date and asserted prior-art date of 2022-02-08, with the only foreign priority claims (EP22925262.2; PCT/CA2022/050301; JP2024544760) dated 2022-03-03 — i.e. after the U.S. filing. No U.S. benefit claim to the earlier Quantum Valley applications (US 17/066,xxx / US20210285993A1; US20210114926A1; US 11,137,432) appears on the page. That leaves a late effective filing date with a small, ~1-year grace window, which is the single most important fact in this analysis (see § H).

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B. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA here is a team-level artisan with: (i) an M.S./Ph.D. in applied physics, EE, or AMO physics with 2–5 years' experience, or a B.S. with 5–10 years; (ii) working knowledge of atomic vapor / Rydberg-EIT sensing (probe+coupling laser readout, Autler–Townes splitting, self-calibration); (iii) working knowledge of photonic crystals / photonic-bandgap and slow-light waveguides at RF–THz frequencies; (iv) ordinary competence in wireless link engineering (modulation formats, link budget, pointing/tracking, gimbals, beacons). This is a combination art — the claim is a systems-integration claim, which cuts toward obviousness under KSR.

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C. Claim 1 decomposed

Claim 1 (only independent claim whose full text I could retrieve; verbatim from Justia):

Dependent claims 2–4 add a navigation subsystem (positioning electronics + timing electronics setting a local reference time, and per claim 3 also frequency/phase), and (claim 4, text truncated) a further system element.

Note what is absent: no claim limitation requires any particular photonic-crystal geometry, cavity spacing, defect-region shape, slow-light group velocity, Q, output coupler taper, or Rydberg species. Those are all in the specification/other family members, not in claim 1. Claim 1 is essentially "a bidirectional RF link built from photonic-crystal maser transmitters + photonic-crystal vapor-cell receivers, sharing a laser/control subsystem, with modulation/demodulation electronics and a pointing subsystem."

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D. The reference set and what each teaches

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E. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (strongest, all third-party): Meyer + Sedlacek + Serpengüzel + Nagatsuma

• E4, E5, E7 ← Meyer (Rydberg vapor-cell receiver; probe/coupling lasers; optical readout → digital data) + Sedlacek (two-laser EIT interrogation of atomic transitions; self-calibrating RF sensor).
• E2, E3 ← Serpengüzel (photonic crystals and resonators that operate on microwave/RF radiation) + Moi (masing on Rydberg transitions). Together, "put the known Rydberg gain medium into a known RF photonic-crystal resonator." Both references are in the same field of endeavor and the combination is a mere substitution of one known RF-confining structure for another (the free-space/FP cavity) with a predictable result — increased field confinement and Q.
• E1, E6, E8 ← Nagatsuma (point-to-point, high-directivity photonic-assisted RF links; modulation formats; beam alignment) + Schawlow/'505 maser-communication genus.

Motivation (KSR factors): (a) the problem was expressly recognized in the art — narrow-beam RF links were wanted because RF penetrates fog/rain/cloud better than laser light, but antenna beams spread several degrees while traditional masers are bulky and frequency-limited (this framing is in '479 itself); (b) a compact, frequency-agile, photonic-crystal Rydberg maser was an identified design need, and Serpengüzel + Moi supplied the two known building blocks; (c) using one laser package for both Tx and Rx is an obvious cost/SWaP optimization (same vapor, same transitions, same laser wavelengths); (d) pointing a narrow beam at a remote station is conventional in free-space optical and THz links (Nagatsuma), and the '479 specification itself describes gimbaled mounts, INUs, and beacons in language that reads as admitted prior art.

Ground 2: Maser-communication genus + Rydberg comms + RF photonic crystals

US 4,075,505 (Xonics, "Masers and maser communications system") or US 2,929,922 (Schawlow/Townes) discloses E1/E3 at the genus level (a maser-based communication system with a directed beam). Meyer supplies the E4 Rydberg receiver. Serpengüzel supplies E2's RF photonic crystal. Motivation: replacing a bulky, single-frequency maser with a compact, tunable photonic-crystal maser is the very improvement the art was seeking — KSR "predictable variation" and "known problem, known solution."

Ground 3: Coupling/structural enablement

US 5,999,308 (Nelson/MIT — injecting EM radiation into photonic crystals) + Overstolz/Happer/Hollberg (miniature vapor cells and laser interrogation) supply E2/E5 enablement, i.e., that a PHOSITA could build the photonic-crystal maser/receiver with known coupling structures without undue experimentation.

Ground 4: Dependent claims 2–4

US 8,906,470 (Overstolz), US 2,007/0247241 (Sarnoff chip-scale, RF-interrogated atomic clock), US 2002/0163394 (Hollberg) and ordinary GPS-disciplined-clock practice render the navigation subsystem with positioning + timing electronics setting a local reference time/frequency/phase obvious, especially given that satellite-based GPS timing is a commodity technology and '479's own description treats GPS/INU/atomic-clock backups as conventional.

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F. Why the combination would have been "obvious to try"

1. Finite, predictable set of solutions. To make a compact directional RF transmitter, an artisan would predictably look at (i) phased arrays, (ii) conventional masers, (iii) photonic-crystal/high-Q RF resonators. Photonic crystals were a known RF/THz tool (Serpengüzel) with a known benefit (field concentration, slow light, high Q).
2. Same-field combination. Meyer and Sedlacek are Rydberg-EIT art; Serpengüzel is RF photonic-crystal art; both sit squarely in "RF field generation/detection and confinement." KSR makes such same-field pairing the paradigm case of obviousness.
3. Reciprocal teaching. Meyer's Rydberg receiver begs for a matching Rydberg transmitter — and the '479 specification admits the pairing is desirable ("can be paired with a photonic crystal receiver… to form a transceiver based on the same technology").
4. No criticality in the claims. Claim 1 recites no numerical ranges, no geometry, no frequency, no Q, no material. Every limitation is functional and generic — the classic posture in which obviousness is found.

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G. The genuine non-obviousness case (for balance)

A patent owner would argue, and a PTAB panel would weigh:

• Teaching away / disbelief. The field taught that masers are bulky and operate at a few molecular-transition frequencies; the idea that a Rydberg vapor in a photonic-crystal slot could mase at nanowatt levels, yet still close a terrestrial link, is a result that the art did not predict. If the record shows a "this won't work" sentiment about Rydberg masing, that is a strong teaching-away argument.
• Unexpected results. The spec asserts that a compact, all-dielectric, self-calibrated, weather-penetrating transceiver with ~20 MB/s per maser/receiver pair and ~1 kW-class-to-µW-class link margins (LEO/terrestrial analyses) was achieved where prior art expected only broad, low-directivity RF. Objective evidence of unexpected device performance can rebut a KSR case — but the claims as issued do not recite those results, so nexus will be contested.
• The specific integration. No single reference teaches the shared single laser subsystem driving both the Tx (pump) and Rx (probe/coupling) sides of a photonic-crystal transceiver with dedicated modulation and demodulation electronics — that is the narrowest plausible point of novelty, though it is a routine engineering choice (a "one-laser-package" optimization) that KSR would likely find obvious.

Net preliminary assessment: I would expect claim 1 to be more likely than not obvious over Ground 1, with the dependent claims easily obvious; the strongest non-obviousness story turns on the unexpected operability of Rydberg masing at usable link margins, which is a results-based argument that the current claim language does not capture.

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H. The larger issue I'd flag to a client: self-disclosure exposure (§ 102), which drives the § 103 analysis

This is the analytically important finding, and it feeds directly into § 103:

• '479's page shows no U.S. benefit claim to Quantum Valley's earlier applications. Its effective filing date is therefore 2022-02-08, and the grace period reaches back only to 2021-02-08.
• Quantum Valley's own US 2021/0114926 A1, "Communication of information using photonic crystal masers," published 2021-04-22 — roughly 9.5 months before the filing date — appears to describe substantially the same architecture.
• US 2021/0285993 A1 (pub. 2021-09-16) and US 11,137,432 (issued 2021-10-05) fall inside the 2021-02-08–2022-02-08 window, and US 11,137,432 is expressly incorporated by reference into '479.

All three are within one year, so they are presumptively excepted as the inventor's own disclosures under AIA § 102(b)(1)(A) — provided the inventive entity matches. If any of those documents names an inventor not among Pecen/Amarloo/Shaffer, the exception is unavailable as to the subject matter contributed by the non-common inventor, and those documents become § 102(a)(1)/§ 102(a)(2) prior art — in which case they are near-anticipatory, and § 103 falls out trivially. Action item: obtain the inventor lists of US 2021/0114926 A1, US 2021/0285993 A1, and US 11,137,432 and compare to Pecen/Amarloo/Shaffer before relying on the grace-period exception. I could not resolve this from the available snippets.

I also note that inventorship of '479 itself is inconsistent across sources: Google Patents lists Mark Pecen, Hadi Amarloo, and James P. Shaffer, while one aggregator page (patentleaderboard.com) attributes the '479 entry to "Hadi Amarloo, James P. Shaffer" only, and the US 11,533,101 PDF renders Amarloo as "Hadi Amarbo." These are likely typos, but given the § 102(b)(1)(A) stakes, they are worth verifying against the face of the '479 patent.

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I. Bottom line and what would change it

1. Claim 1 is vulnerable under § 103 on a fully third-party combination of Meyer 2018 + Sedlacek 2012 + Serpengüzel 2002 + Nagatsuma 2016 (optionally + Schawlow/Townes or Xonics US 4,075,505 for the maser-communication genus). Every element E1–E8 has a clear mapping, the field-of-endeavor overlap is tight, and there is a documented, recited need in the art for a compact directional RF transmitter — precisely the KSR fact pattern.
2. Dependent claims 2–4 fall with routine atomic-clock/GPS timing art (US 8,906,470; US 2007/0247241; US 2002/0163394).
3. The strongest defensive position is not claim structure but unexpected results / teaching away regarding usable Rydberg masing in a photonic-crystal slot — and that evidence is currently outside the claim language.
4. The biggest latent risk is the applicant's own pre-filing publications, which could convert this from a defensible § 103 case into a § 102 problem if the inventorship/grace-period exception fails.

To convert this from assessment to citation-grade chart, I need: (a) '479's actual (56) table and the WIPO ISR/Written Opinion dated "Dec. …" (both truncated in my retrieval); (b) the inventor lists of the three Quantum Valley pre-filings; and (c) the full text of claim 4, which was cut off in the source I could reach. I flag these as unresolved rather than fill them in — I could not confirm them from the material available.