US 11596311

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent, then synthesize with the patent text provided.

Let me get the actual claim set and litigation details.

Let me retrieve the remaining independent claims (1, 5, 15, etc.) from the patent text.

US 11,596,311 B2 — Patent Summary

Scope note: I searched for this exact number (11,596,311) only. I did not retrieve results for similar numbers such as 10,596,311 or 11,596,331. Where I could not retrieve authoritative text, I flag it explicitly rather than reconstruct it.

1. Bibliographic Data

Family context: This is a continuation in a very large Omni MedSci continuation family claiming priority to a Dec. 31, 2012 priority date, with intermediate applications filed Dec. 17, 2013 (the PCTs and the two US applications). The Google Patents "Definitions" section lists a long chain of parents (e.g., Ser. Nos. 16/669,794 → US 10,874,304; 16/506,885 → US 10,517,484; 16/029,611 → US 10,201,283; 15/888,052; and many others). I could not confirm with certainty which single application is the immediate parent of Ser. No. 17/666,518 — the page does not state it explicitly in the text I retrieved.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11596311/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/11596311

2. Abstract

The following is the abstract as indexed for this patent (retrieved via the Justia classification listing for US Class 356/300):

"An active remote sensing system is provided with an array of laser diodes that generate light directed to an object having one or more optical wavelengths that include at least one near-infrared wavelength between 700 nanometers and 2500 nanometers. One of the laser diodes pulses with pulse duration of approximately 0.5 to 2 nanoseconds at repetition rate between one kilohertz and about 100 megahertz. A beam splitter receives the laser light, separates the light into a plurality of spatially separated lights and directs the lights to the object. A detection system includes a photodiode array synchronized to the array of laser diodes and performs a time-of-flight measurement by measuring a temporal distribution of photons received from the object. The time-of-flight measurement is combined with images from a camera system, and the remote sensing system is configured to be coupled to a wearable device, a smart phone or a tablet."

Caveat: the Google Patents full-text page I was given does not reproduce the abstract as its own labeled field (it contains a machine-extracted "Definitions"/prior-art-keyword section instead). The above abstract is consistent with, and closely tracks, the independent claims quoted below, but I am citing it from a secondary index rather than the face of the patent.

3. Independent Claims — Plain-Language Overview

Claim 8 — "A remote sensing system comprising…" (verbatim, retrieved)

This is the flagship independent claim, and I retrieved its full text:

• Light source: an array of laser diodes generating light at an initial intensity and one or more optical wavelengths, at least one of which is a near-infrared wavelength between 700 nm and 2,500 nm. At least part of the array includes one or more Bragg reflectors. That part is modulated with a pulsed output at a pulse repetition rate between 1 kHz and about 100 MHz, and the array is coupled to driver electronics.
• Array architecture: the array comprises a plurality of bars of laser diodes positioned proximate one another, and the light is spatially interleaved.
• Beam handling: a beam splitter receives part of the light, directs some toward an object, and separates the received portion into a plurality of spatially separated lights.
• Detection: a photodiode array with one or more lenses and one or more spectral filters in front of at least part of it; the array is coupled to a processor and comprises pixels coupled to CMOS transistors.
• Synchronization & ranging: the detection system receives reflected light, is synchronized to the Bragg-reflector laser diodes, and performs a time-of-flight measurement based on the time difference between (a) when the laser diodes emit and (b) when the photodiode array receives the reflection.
• Imaging fusion: a camera system coupled to a lens system and the processor captures images of at least part of the object; the processor combines the image portion and the time-of-flight portion into a "combined portion."
• Connectivity: the system is configured to communicate with a wearable device, a smart phone or a tablet that can process and display or transmit some of the time-of-flight measurement.

Plain language: A laser-diode-based active remote-sensing "lidar-like" system that pulses NIR light at an object, splits/steers it, times the returning photons with a synchronized CMOS photodiode array, and fuses that depth data with ordinary camera images — with results pushed to a phone, tablet, or wearable.

Dependent claims 9–14 add, in sequence: boosting laser intensity to improve SNR of the combined output; measuring a temporal distribution of photons for the time-of-flight; operation near 940 nm with Bragg reflectors on each diode and a trans-impedance amplifier; 0.5–2 ns pulse duration plus a beam shaping module; use of artificial intelligence on the combined portion; and on/off signal differencing (a first "laser-off" signal vs. a second "laser-on" signal) to derive the time-of-flight portion.

Claim 15 — "A remote sensing system comprising: one or more laser diodes…" (partial)

I retrieved only the opening element: "one or more laser diodes configured to generate light having an initial light intensity and one or more optical wavelengths…" The remainder of the claim text was truncated in the sources available to me. Given the position and the patent's summary-of-embodiments material, it appears to be a narrower/lower-unit-count variant of the claim 8 remote-sensing concept (one or more laser diodes rather than an "array," still with time-of-flight and camera fusion). I am not asserting its full scope with confidence.

Claim 1 — "A measurement system comprising…" (not verbatim-retrieved)

The patent's front-matter "Definitions"/embodiment summary describes a measurement system with an array of laser diodes generating light including a near-infrared wavelength between 600 nm and 1,000 nm, Bragg reflectors, pulsed output (≈0.5–2 ns pulse duration, several MHz), a beam splitter, a photodiode array, time-of-flight measurement, a camera system, and configuration to non-invasively measure blood in blood vessels within or below the dermis and measure hemoglobin absorption, plus physiological parameter and time-variation measurement. A second described measurement-system embodiment adds a phase-shift measurement with modulation between 10 MHz and 1 GHz and detection of oxy- or deoxy-hemoglobin.

Uncertainty flag: I did not retrieve the verbatim text of claim 1 or claim 5 from an authoritative source. I therefore cannot state with confidence which of those two "measurement system" descriptions corresponds to which claim number, nor whether there are additional independent claims beyond 1, 8, and 15. Based on the claim numbering visible in the record (independent claims at 1, 8, and 15; dependent claims 9–14 depending from 8), the patent most likely has three independent claims (a skin/blood measurement-system claim, a remote-sensing-system claim, and a second remote-sensing-system claim), but treat this as a working inference, not verified fact.

Technology classification (corroborating the subject matter): A61B5/14532 (glucose), A61B5/1455 (optical oximetry), G01N21/359 (NIR), G01N2021/1793 (remote sensing), G01N2021/39 (tunable laser / diode laser), G01J3/02, G01N2201/0214 (airborne), G01N2201/0216 (vehicle-borne), G01N2201/0221 (portable/hand-held), H01S3/067 (fiber lasers).

4. Litigation and Docket Status

The Google Patents page for this patent flags "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" and lists:

• Texas Eastern District Court, case 2:26-cv-00356 — via Unified Patents: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00356
  • Confirmed independently as Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics, Co. LTD.; Samsung Electronics America, Inc.; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., Nature of Suit 830 (Patent), cause 15 U.S.C. § 1126, Eastern District of Texas, filed on or about May 1, 2026 (PacerMonitor shows the complaint docketed May 1, 2026; Docket Alarm lists the date as May 1, 2026; the PacerMonitor case page shows a "Case Filed: ?? 01, 2026" with docket last updated May 2, 2026).
  • Accused products per the complaint analysis: Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra / S21 Ultra / S22 Ultra / S23 Ultra / S24 Ultra / S26 Ultra smartphones (alleged laser autofocus / direct time-of-flight feature) and the Samsung Galaxy XR headset (alleged dToF spatial awareness/depth mapping).
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Fossil Group Inc., E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00470, filed June 12, 2026, Patent Infringement, Nat. Suit 830.
• Related PTAB activity: IPR2025-01250, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. Omni MedSci, Inc., concerning US 9,651,533 (not this patent) — petitioners include Samsung, Fossil entities, Oura Health, and OnePlus.

On the "CAFC 2026 dockets" request specifically: I found no Federal Circuit docket in 2026 involving US 11,596,311. The Federal Circuit activity I could locate in this family is older and concerns other patents — e.g., Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 7 F.4th 1148 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (standing/assignment issue) and Appeal No. 2023-1034 (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2024). I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC appeal of this patent, and I will not infer one.

5. Explicit Uncertainty Statement

High confidence (multiple corroborating sources + patent text): patent number, title, sole inventor, assignee, application number 17/666,518, filing date Feb. 7, 2022, issuance date Mar. 7, 2023, pre-grant publication US 2022/0160234 A1, the Dec. 31, 2012 priority date as listed, the E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00356 and 2:26-cv-00470 cases, and the verbatim text of claim 8 and its dependents 9–14.

Moderate confidence: the abstract wording (secondary index, consistent with claims but not read off the patent face); the existence of three independent claims (1, 8, 15).

Not verified / do not rely on: the full text of independent claims 1 and 15; the precise immediate parent application of Ser. No. 17/666,518; any 2026 Federal Circuit docket for this patent; the current legal status beyond Google's own "assumption" caveat ("The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion"); and whether the "expires 2033-12-17" adjusted-expiration figure reflects term adjustment, terminal disclaimer, or both.

If you need claim 1 and claim 15 verbatim, the authoritative sources are the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search record for application 17/666,518 or the granted patent PDF at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US11596311.pdf — I was unable to pull those exact strings in this session.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11,596,311 across litigation databases and court records.

Let me search the litigation databases directly and for Omni MedSci's enforcement activity.

Let me verify whether US 11,596,311 specifically is asserted in these cases, and look for the complaint details.

Summary of research findings — U.S. Patent No. 11,596,311

Important caveats up front

1. I hit the tool-call limit partway through this investigation, so I could not exhaustively confirm each docket's asserted-patent list. What follows distinguishes what I could confirm from what I could not.
2. Caution on the key question: I could not definitively confirm that U.S. Patent No. 11,596,311 itself is asserted in any currently-identified district court case. The litigation lead attached to the '311 patent on its Google Patents page is a family-level link (the page flags "US case filed in Texas Eastern District Court" pointing to a Unified Patents docket), which associates the case with the patent's family, not necessarily with the '311 patent as an asserted claim.

Litigation associated with the '311 patent / its family

The only litigation directly linked from the '311 patent's Google Patents record is:

Source (linked from the patent page): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/2%3A26-cv-00356 and https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/64454741/Omni_MedSci,_Inc_v_Samsung_Electronics,_Co_LTD_et_al

What that case appears to actually assert (per a third-party complaint analysis of 2:26-cv-00356): U.S. Patent Nos. 12,426,788 ("Active Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Gases or Smoke Using a Time-of-Flight Sensor"), 12,588,820 ("Wearable Device for Differential Measurement on Pulse Rate and Blood Flow"), 12,599,305 ("3D Cameras or Sensors Inputting to Multi-Modal Generative Artificial Intelligence Models…"), and 10,201,283 — accused products being Samsung smartphones (Galaxy Note 20 Ultra; S21/S22/S23/S24/S26 Ultra) with laser autofocus, and the Samsung Galaxy XR headset. I did not see U.S. 11,596,311 listed among the asserted patents in that analysis. Treat that as unconfirmed, but it weighs against the '311 patent being expressly asserted there. (Source: https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/txed/2:26-cv-00356/doc/analysis/1)

The broader Omni MedSci enforcement campaign (family-related, to give context)

Omni MedSci has been an active litigant. Cases in the surrounding family/campaign (not confirmed to assert the '311 patent):

• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 2:18-cv-00134 and 2:18-cv-00429 (E.D. Tex.; later N.D. Cal.) — asserted the '533, '040, '286, '698 patents; litigated up through Omni Medsci, Inc. v. Apple Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2021) on the standing/assignment issue. Concluded.
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al., 2:24-cv-01070-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex.), filed ~Dec. 20, 2024 — defendants Samsung, Fossil (Group/Stores/Partners), OnePlus, Ōura Health Oy; asserted patents 10,517,484; 10,874,304; 11,160,455; 9,055,868; 9,651,533. Pending; Docket Control Order set Markman 2/13/2026, Pretrial 7/13/2026, Jury Selection 8/17/2026. (Sources: PacerMonitor; DocketAlarm IPR2025-01250 exhibit list; IP-NAVI)
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al., 2:25-cv-00483 (E.D. Tex.), filed May 5, 2025. Pending. (RPX Empower)
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Oura Health Oy, 2:26-cv-00289 (E.D. Tex.), filed Apr. 10, 2026 — lead consolidated case for the 2026 E.D. Tex. filings. Pending.
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Fossil Group, Inc. et al., 2:26-cv-00470 (E.D. Tex.), filed June 12, 2026. Pending.
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., 2:26-cv-00472 (E.D. Tex.), filed June 12, 2026. Pending (consolidated for pretrial issues under 2:26-cv-00289 per 06/17/2026 order).
• Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 7:26-cv-00226 (W.D. Tex.), filed June 8, 2026 — asserts at least U.S. 12,268,475; 12,193,790; 11,896,346; 11,564,577 (the complaint expressly recites this continuation chain, which is the same family lineage as the '311 patent). Pending.

Related PTAB proceedings (administrative, not district court litigation; concern other patents in the family, not the '311 patent as far as I found): IPR2025-01250 ('533), IPR2025-01251 ('304), IPR2025-01252, and PGR2025-00064 — all styled Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. Unified Patents also ran a PATROLL prior-art contest against U.S. 10,874,304.

Bottom line

• No litigation could be confirmed in which U.S. Patent No. 11,596,311 is expressly named as an asserted patent. I could not complete confirmation because I exhausted my search budget.
• The one litigation record directly linked from the '311 patent's Google Patents page is Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics, Co. LTD. et al., No. 2:26-cv-00356 (E.D. Tex.), filed May 1, 2026, status open/pending — but on the evidence I have, that association is family-level, and the complaint analysis for that case lists other patents (12,426,788; 12,588,820; 12,599,305; 10,201,283), not the '311 patent.
• To state the answer precisely and per your strict rule: based on the sources retrieved, no case was identified that is confirmed to assert U.S. 11,596,311 specifically. Treat that conclusion as provisional — a PACER/Docket Navigator or Lex Machina search on the exact number "11,596,311," and review of the E.D. Tex. 2026 consolidated complaint (2:26-cv-00289 lead case) and the W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226 complaint, would be needed to confirm definitively.

I'll start by checking the structured PTAB block against what's publicly findable, and probe for any AIA proceedings the ODP may not have indexed.

The family is heavily litigated and there's a 2025 Samsung PGR/IPR wave. I need to pin down which proceedings (if any) specifically target the '311 patent. Let me dig.

Let me search specifically for the '311 patent's own challenge history and its litigation posture.

I hit the tool-call limit while trying to confirm the last few details, so I'll answer with what I verified and flag the gaps explicitly.

PTAB proceeding review — US 11,596,311 B2

"Remote sensing and measurement system using time-of-flight detectors" · Omni MedSci, Inc. · priority 2012-12-31 · granted 2023-03-07

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,596,311. The structured USPTO ODP block in this prompt returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent, and my targeted web searches (PTACTS, Docket Alarm, CourtListener, USPTO decisions) surfaced no IPR/PGR petition, institution decision, or FWD directed at the '311 patent as of 2026-09-28. The breakdown is therefore active: 0 / claims invalidated: 0 / claims sustained: 0 / settled: 0 / institution denied: 0.

Defensive posture: the '311 patent is untested at the PTAB — no claim has been canceled, and equally, no petitioner is estopped. That cuts both ways for a defendant: you cannot point to a dead claim, but you also have a clean, unencumbered runway to file an IPR (subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar), and you face none of the "hardened patent" optics. The real signal is family-level: this patent is a member of the heavily-attacked '533 family, and every claim in that family that has actually been challenged at the PTAB has been held unpatentable. That is the single most important datapoint for pricing the risk on '311.

No proceedings to itemize for the '311 patent itself

I will not invent proceeding numbers. Because the canonical list is empty, the per-proceeding template has no rows. What follows is the related, verified activity on other patents in the same family — which is where the defensive value actually lives.

Related family proceedings (NOT directed at the '311 patent)

Panels are not public for most of these; the only adjudicator I verified by name is Under Secretary/Director John A. Squires, who initiated the sua sponte Director Review in IPR2025-01253.

Strategic summary

Claim status of the '311 patent: all claims UNTESTED. Nothing has been canceled, nothing has been sustained, nothing has been construed by the Board. The patent is active with an adjusted expiration of 2033-12-17. The claims that matter (per the patent's own claim summary) recite an array of laser diodes including Bragg reflectors delivering a pulsed output (≈0.5–2 ns, multi-MHz repetition), a photodiode array with CMOS pixels / spectral filters, and a time-of-flight measurement synchronized to the source — plus camera co-registration and 2D/3D mapping in some independents. Those TOF/Bragg-reflector limitations are additions on top of the '533-family backbone, which is precisely the kind of limitation that has sometimes saved dependent claims at the Board before (cf. the '484 claims 3–6/8–14, which the Board initially upheld on the "configured to identify an object" limitation before the Federal Circuit vacated on a procedural ground and the Board killed them on remand). Treat "untested" as "unpredictable," not "weak."

Estoppel landscape. Because no petitioner has taken a proceeding on '311 to FWD, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is entirely absent as to this patent. Any defendant can file a fresh IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground and preserve the full invalidity case in district court. Two structural constraints matter, though: (1) the § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint asserting the '311 patent — so if Omni has recently sued you on it, the clock is running and a petition must be filed within 12 months; and (2) PGR is unavailable for this patent. Its priority date is 2012-12-31, i.e., pre-AIA, so it is a first-to-invent patent outside the PGR window — the exact reason Samsung filed conditional PGRs in this family (see Petitioners' Ranking and Explanation, IPR2025-01254). Any challenge to '311 must be an IPR limited to patents and printed publications; you cannot use § 112, § 101, or public-use/system art in an AIA trial. Those grounds stay in the district court.

Pattern signals. This is not a passive patent owner. Apple ran a sustained IPR wave (2019–2021) across the '533, '040, '546, '299, and '484 patents; Samsung, Fossil, Oura Health, and OnePlus filed a coordinated seven-petition IPR/PGR wave on a single day (2025-08-05); WHOOP filed its own parallel IPR/PGR set in late 2025 and early 2026; and NKT Photonics is litigating a related Omni Continuum portfolio. Omni litigates in E.D. Tex. and W.D. Tex. and has shown a growing practice of asserting later-issued continuations (e.g., the '790 and '475 patents) to keep pace with the Board. The '311 patent fits that template — a 2022-filed continuation granted 2023-03-07 that is exactly the kind of "fresh" family member Omni tends to assert after earlier claims fall. The absence of a '311 IPR is best explained by petitioners not yet having needed to file one, not by the claims being strong. Note also the district-court signal on the Google Patents page: an E.D. Tex. case, 2:26-cv-00356, and a W.D. Tex. action (Omni MedSci v. Apple, 7:26-cv-00226) whose complaint describes asserted claims directed to "remote sensing using time-of-flight sensors co-registered with camera systems" — thematically identical to the '311 disclosure. I could not verify from a primary source that either case asserts the '311 patent, so treat that as a lead to confirm, not a finding.

Recommended next steps

• Do not assume no IPR exists because ODP says so — but here, ODP and web search agree. I checked both and found nothing on '311. If you are served with a complaint asserting it, calendar the § 315(b) one-year deadline immediately; that is your only route to an AIA trial, since PGR is closed (pre-AIA priority 2012-12-31).
• Mine the family's FWDs for § 102/§ 103 art. The institution-granted Samsung petitions (IPR2025-01251 re '304; IPR2025-01252 re '455) and the Apple '484 IPR papers share the same specification as '311 and name the same reference set (Lisogurski, Tran, LeBoeuf, Carlson, Al-Ali, Lamego, Valencell-093, etc.). That is your prior-art starting point. Pull them from USPTO PTAB E2E/PTACTS: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/
• Coordinate on estoppel and privity. If you are a privy of Apple, Samsung, Fossil, Oura, or OnePlus, their filings matter to you; if you are independent, you retain full freedom to file and to keep all district-court invalidity grounds. The Delaware court's status tables (D. Del. 1:25-cv-00140, Dkt. 101) are a useful running scorecard: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.88127/gov.uscourts.ded.88127.61.0.pdf
• For a pending or threatened assertion, the family-wide line to quote is WHOOP's own framing in the Delaware stay briefing — that "every claim arising from the '533 patent family that has been challenged has been found unpatentable." That is a district-court argument, not a PTAB disposition on '311, but it is the strongest available framing for why a stay and an IPR are worth pursuing.
• Watch IPR2025-01253 / PGR2026-00003. The Director's sua sponte review of IPR eligibility where a parallel PGR exists will set the § 311(c)(1) rules for this entire family — and could affect how any future '311 petition must be styled.

Caveats. (i) I did not obtain APJ panel rosters for the family proceedings beyond Director Squires, and I did not independently pull every FWD PDF; status entries above reflect institution/FWD documents surfaced in search, and the source paper for each is linked in-line where available. (ii) The only authority I have that '311 itself is PTAB-untouched is the ODP block plus my searches — I could not reach a full PTACTS docket for '311 before hitting my tool limit, so if you are relying on this for a filing, re-run the PTACTS patent-number query directly.

Primary sources: Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US11596311/en · USPTO sua sponte Director Review order, IPR2025-01253, https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/IPR2025-01253_Samsung_v_Omni_MedSci_SS_DR_Grant.pdf · Fed. Cir. No. 2023-1034 (2024-06-21), Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. · D. Del. 1:25-cv-00140 stay opinion, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.88127/gov.uscourts.ded.88127.61.0.pdf · CourtListener, Omni MedSci v. Apple, W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73456916/1/omni-medsci-inc-v-apple-inc/

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 11596311. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig for the specific assignment reel/frame records and the litigation docket.

I hit the search-step limit before I could pull the Assignment Center record directly. Below I've separated what is grounded in retrieved records from what I could not verify, and I do not invent reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

Mohammed N. Islam — sole named inventor on US 11596311.

• Employer at filing: University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor — tenured professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; in 2011 he took an additional appointment at UM's medical school, for which he executed an employment agreement incorporating UM Bylaws (Bylaw 3.10). He filed the priority provisional applications during an unpaid leave of absence in 2012; the non-provisionals were filed after he returned in 2013. (Arnold & Porter analysis; Fed. Cir. briefing)
• Concentration pattern: there are no co-inventors — Islam is the sole inventor across essentially the entire Omni MedSci / Cheetah Omni family. The sole inventor is also the sole principal and (per reporting) owner of the assignee. That is a notable ownership-concentration pattern, but it is not the "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale tell the prompt asks about; there is no co-inventor to analyze and no evidence of inventor departure.
• Related vehicles: Islam is also founder/principal of Cheetah Omni, a patent-holding entity that previously sued Fujitsu, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Nokia and Siemens (per contemporaneous reporting on the 2018 Apple suit).

Original assignee

Omni MedSci, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI.

• Entity type / business: small, privately held, founder-controlled company founded by Dr. Islam; works on near-infrared and mid-infrared broadband laser / supercontinuum sources. The patent's applications are docketed to correspondence address "Brooks Kushman P.C./Cheetah Omni MedSci, 1000 Town Center, Twenty Second Floor, Southfield, MI 48075" — i.e., the Omni MedSci and Cheetah Omni dockets are maintained under one outside-counsel address.
• Assignee address of record (EP register entry for the family): 1718 Newport Creek Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 — a residential street address, not a laboratory or corporate campus. That is a concrete closely-held-entity data point, not a naming inference. (EU patent register extract)
• Product embodying the claims: I could not identify any commercial product shipped by Omni MedSci that embodies the US 11596311 claims (pulsed NIR laser-diode array with Bragg reflectors + photodiode-array time-of-flight receiver). Its public activity is patent prosecution, IPRs and infringement suits, not product sales. Flagging this as an evidence gap rather than a proven absence.
• Current status: Active privately-held entity; no evidence found of acquisition, dissolution, or Chapter 7/11 filing. It is the current assignee of record per Google Patents legal events.
• The patent is flagged by Google Patents as part of a family with worldwide litigation (Darts-IP family 69228103) and by Unified Patents as subject of a Texas Eastern District case, 2:26-cv-00356 (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/.../case/2%3A26-cv-00356).

Assignment timeline

Important data-availability caveat: the reachable sources surfaced the Google Patents legal-events entry and the Federal Circuit's description of the 2013 assignment, but not the reel/frame numbers. I could not retrieve the Assignment Center index for this patent in this session. I therefore report the recorded events I can ground and mark the reel/frame as not retrieved. Verify directly at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html searching "11596311".

• 2013-12-17 (executed) / recorded date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (agreement of assignment of patent rights)
  • Assignor: Mohammed N. Islam
  • Assignee: Omni MedSci, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (prosecution/assignment correspondence of record on the family is Brooks Kushman P.C., 1000 Town Center, 22nd Floor, Southfield, MI 48075; attorney David S. Bir, Reg. No. on file, per the file-history EFS receipt for related application 14/875,709). Brooks Kushman recurs across the entire Cheetah Omni / Omni MedSci portfolio, so the recurrence tell would be portfolio-wide rather than chain-wide.
  • Context: originator-to-own-company assignment. This transfer date is the one the Federal Circuit and Arnold & Porter cite for the family ("Dr. Islam assigned the patent rights to Omni on December 17, 2013"), and it matches the external-priority/assignment events listed on the '311 Google Patents page.
  • Caveat: this 2013 date applies to the then-issued family members. US 11596311 itself was not filed until 2022-02-07, so its own cover assignment would post-date this.

• 2022-02-07 (executed) / recorded 2022-02-07 — Reel not retrieved/Frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: ISLAM, MOHAMMED N.
  • Assignee: OMNI MEDSCI, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved; same Brooks Kushman docket address as the rest of the family. Brooks Kushman P.C. is the single recurring correspondent for this patent owner across its whole portfolio — a recurring-counsel pattern, though the firm is a large general-practice IP firm that does both operating-company and assertion-side work, so a single appearance would not be a finding and this is at most a weak one.
  • Context: internal cover assignment, executed the same day the continuation US 17/666,518 was filed (filing date 2022-02-07). Not a transfer to an assertor — the assignee is the same entity that has owned the family since 2013.

No further recorded assignments found. The chain is: Islam → Omni MedSci, Inc. and it terminates there. There is no recorded transfer to any licensing LLC, holding company, or defensive aggregator.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11596311
    2012 : Provisional applications filed by M N Islam
    2013 : Non-provisional applications filed
         : Islam assigns family rights to Omni MedSci
    2018 : Omni MedSci sues Apple in E D Texas
    2021 : Federal Circuit affirms Omni standing
    2022 : Continuation filed as US 17 666 518
         : Islam records assignment to Omni MedSci
    2023 : Patent US 11596311 issues
    2024 : Omni sues Samsung Fossil Oura OnePlus
    2025 : Omni sues Whoop in Delaware
    2026 : New Texas Eastern District case filed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment from an operating assignee to a licensing-only LLC is recorded. The chain ends at Omni MedSci, Inc., which has held the family since the 2013-12-17 assignment and which is also the assignee on the face of the patent. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" successor appears in the record.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present as to the named lists; adjacent evidence exists. Neither the current nor any prior assignee of record matches the enumerated lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). However, Omni MedSci is itself a high-frequency plaintiff (E.D. Tex. 2:18-cv-00134 and 2:18-cv-00429 v. Apple; 2:24-cv-01070 v. Samsung/Fossil/Oura/OnePlus; D. Del. 1:25-cv-00140 v. Whoop; Texas case 2:26-cv-00356), and its affiliate Cheetah Omni is a documented prior assertion vehicle. Unified Patents' portal carries the Omni MedSci docket and multiple IPR/PGR filings against it. Treat as corroborating, not as list-matching.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / weak. Only one assignment link is visible, so intra-chain recurrence cannot be shown. The record does show a single recurring correspondent across the whole portfolio: Brooks Kushman P.C. / Cheetah Omni MedSci, 1000 Town Center, Southfield, MI (attorney David S. Bir; the same customer/docket address appears on related applications 14/875,709, 16/669,794, 17/078,771 and on the 2024–2025 publications). Sealed reel/frame + correspondent names could not be retrieved, so this stays at "recurring counsel, single firm," which is common for any portfolio.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero chained LLC transfers; no evidence of shared correspondent addresses across multiple assignees because there is only one assignee.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only recorded assignment (2022-02-07) is the owner's own cover assignment executed on the continuation's filing date. The nearest asserted suits post-date it by 2+ years (2024, 2025, 2026). Not a suit-enabling transfer.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding or IP sale found for Omni MedSci, Inc.
7. Privateering — not present / unclear. Requires an operating company transferring to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here the originator (Islam) and the asserting entity (Omni MedSci) have been the same side since 2013; there is no upstream operating company.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN; the patent remains with the original assertor.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The assignment record itself is clean — the only recorded transfer is inventor Mohammed N. Islam → Omni MedSci, Inc. on 2022-02-07 (Google Patents legal events; family original assignment cited as 2013-12-17 per the Federal Circuit briefing in Omni Medsci v. Apple), with no shell-LLC hop, no cascading transfers, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive-aggregator termination — so this is not a chain-arranged NPE. The moderate call rests instead on the assignee's posture: a single-shareholder entity at a residential Ann Arbor address (1718 Newport Creek Drive), no identified product embodying the '311 claims, and a sustained assertion campaign against Apple (2018), Samsung/Fossil/Oura/OnePlus (2024), Whoop (2025) and a new E.D. Tex. action in 2026, with affiliate Cheetah Omni as a prior litigating vehicle. This is best characterized as an inventor-founded, non-practicing licensing/assertion company rather than a disguised shell LLC.

Caveats: (a) reel/frame numbers were not retrievable in this session — confirm at USPTO Assignment Center or assignment.uspto.gov by searching patent 11596311; (b) the "no product" finding is an absence of evidence from public sources, not a proven negative; and (c) the named-NPE-list match is negative — if you need the RPX/Unified "high-frequency plaintiff" cross-check finalized, that requires the asserter directories, which I could not query before hitting the search limit.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,596,311 directly.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,596,311

Compliance note: I searched only for the identifier 11596311. I did not return, and did not import, results for look-alike numbers (e.g., 11,596,331 / 11,569,311 / 10,596,311). Where my retrieval was incomplete, I say so rather than fill the gap.

1. What I was and was not able to retrieve

Consequence: I cannot certify that the list below is the complete citation set for the '311 patent, and I cannot state filing dates for any of the references. I am not going to invent titles or filing dates. Below I give (a) the bibliographic data I actually retrieved, and (b) subject-matter characterizations that are inference from inventor/assignee lineage and the patent's own subject matter, each explicitly flagged for confidence.

2. The cited references retrieved (Justia, US 11,596,311)

Non-patent literature retrieved under the same heading:

• IPR2021-00453, Apple, Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. — Decision Granting Institution of Inter Partes Review of U.S. Pat. No. 10,517,484, pp. 1–50, dated Aug. 6, 2021.
• IPR2020-00175, Apple, Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. — Final Written Decision as to U.S. Pat. No. 10,188,299, dated June 14, 2021.

Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/11596311 (Referenced Cited section)

3. Brief description of each reference (with confidence flags)

⚠️ All descriptions in this section are tentative. I could not open the reference documents in this session, and the citations were retrieved by number/date/inventor only. Treat these as hypotheses to be verified against the fronts of the documents, not as established facts.

1. US 8,587,771 B2 — Xu et al. (11/19/2013). Tentative: a three-dimensional / depth-imaging (time-of-flight or structured-light) system. Confidence: low-moderate. The citation grouping (a cluster of TOF-ranging patents on a TOF-centric patent) is consistent with a depth-sensing disclosure, but I did not verify the title.
2. US 8,928,893 B2 — Findlay et al. (01/06/2015). Tentative: optical/3-D distance-measurement or imaging apparatus. Confidence: low.
3. US 9,151,829 B2 — Campbell (10/06/2015). Tentative: TOF/distance-measurement or optical sensing. Confidence: low.
4. US 9,171,985 B2 — Dutton et al. (10/27/2015). Tentative: optical sensing / TOF sensor or imaging module. Confidence: low. (Dutton is associated with 3-D sensor work in my training data, but I did not verify this specific patent.)
5. US 9,236,519 B2 — Mazzillo et al. (01/12/2016). Tentative: a photodetector patent. Confidence: moderate that this is a semiconductor photodetector / single-photon-detector-family patent (Mazzillo is a prolific STMicroelectronics SPAD/SiPM inventor), but the exact subject matter is unverified.
6. US 9,316,735 B2 — Baxter (04/19/2016). Tentative: optical scanning or TOF imaging. Confidence: low.
7. US 9,417,734 B2 — Raynor et al. (08/16/2016). Tentative: time-of-flight / SPAD ranging sensor. Confidence: moderate on the technical field (Raynor is associated with TOF sensor development), low on the exact disclosure.
8. US 9,430,093 B2 — Harrison et al. (08/30/2016). Tentative: optical/electronic sensor apparatus. Confidence: low.
9. US 9,860,522 B2 — Lapstun (01/02/2018). Tentative: 3-D scanning/imaging or optical measurement. Confidence: low.
10. US 9,891,309 B2 — Hudman et al. (02/13/2018). Tentative: LIDAR / optical ranging system. Confidence: moderate on field (Hudman appears in the prior-art citations of LIDAR patents), low on exact disclosure.
11. US 9,915,726 B2 — Bailey et al. (03/13/2018). Tentative: optical ranging / depth sensing. Confidence: low.

4. § 102 anticipation analysis

4.1 The threshold problem: the references' dates vs. the '311 effective filing date

The '311 patent carries a listed priority date of December 31, 2012 (provisional 61/747,487/61/747,472/61/747,553 lineage per the family record). Assuming the '311 claims are entitled to that date, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs, and a U.S. patent can only anticipate as of its effective U.S. filing date (pre-AIA § 102(e)) — not its issue date.

Every retrieved reference issued after Dec. 31, 2012 (earliest: 11/19/2013). Therefore:

• None of these references is facially anticipatory on an issue-date theory. They can only anticipate if their effective U.S. filing date predates Dec. 31, 2012.
• On issue-date-to-filing-date heuristics (typically 2–4 years for this era), the four earliest-issuing references — US 8,587,771 (2013), 8,928,893 (2015), 9,151,829 (2015), 9,171,985 (2015) — are the plausible candidates for an effective filing date before Dec. 31, 2012. The 2016–2018 issuances (9,236,519; 9,316,735; 9,417,734; 9,430,093; 9,860,522; 9,891,309; 9,915,726) more likely post-date the priority date on their faces, which means they would typically have been cited for reasons other than date-qualified anticipation (background in the specification, an IDS, or § 103/§ 102(a)(1) treatment).
• ⚠️ Unverified: I have no filing dates. The heuristic above must be replaced with actual effective filing dates before any § 102 conclusion is drawn. This is the single most important verification step.

Corollary risk worth flagging: if the '311 claims are not fully supported by the 2012 provisional(s) (i.e., new matter was added in the 2017–2022 continuations), the effective date shifts forward, and the post-2012 references become date-qualified art. That is a priority/§ 112 question, not a citation question, and I am not asserting it — only noting it as the pivot on which the whole § 102 date analysis turns.

4.2 No retrieved reference appears to anticipate the independent claims

Even putting dates aside, no single one of these references appears to disclose the full combination recited in the independent claims of the '311 patent as described in the earlier sections of this analysis:

Independent claim 8 (remote sensing system) requires, in one reference: (i) an array of laser diodes at 700–2,500 nm, (ii) at least part of the array having one or more Bragg reflectors, (iii) pulsed output at 1 kHz–100 MHz with driver electronics, (iv) a plurality of bars of laser diodes whose light is spatially interleaved, (v) a beam splitter receiving and separating the light into a plurality of spatially separated lights, (vi) a photodiode array with lens(es) + spectral filter(s) and pixels coupled to CMOS transistors, (vii) synchronization to the Bragg-reflector diodes, (viii) a time-of-flight measurement, (ix) a camera system whose image is combined with the TOF portion, and (x) communication with a wearable / smart phone / tablet.

A conventional TOF/LIDAR or photodetector reference discloses at most the ranging element (viii) and perhaps a detector (vi). It would not disclose the NIR laser-diode array with built-in Bragg reflectors (ii)/(iii), the spatially interleaved diode-bar architecture (iv), or the camera-and-TOF fusion with phone/wearable telemetry (ix)/(x). On the retrieved record, therefore, none anticipates claim 8. The realistic § 103 combinations would be, e.g., a TOF/depth reference (the Xu/Findlay/Campbell/Dutton/Raynor/Hudman/Bailey cluster) in view of a NIR laser-source reference and a smartphone/wearable-telemetry reference.

Independent claims 1 and 15 — the earlier analysis flags these as a skin/blood "measurement system" (600–1,000 nm variant, non-invasive blood/hemoglobin measurement, optional phase-shift at 10 MHz–1 GHz) and a reduced-count "one or more laser diodes" remote-sensing variant. Neither the 600–1,000 nm blood/hemoglobin limitation nor the phase-shift limitation appears in any retrieved TOF reference. No retrieved reference anticipates claims 1 or 15 on the present record.

Dependent claims 9–14 (dependents of claim 8) are the only place where individual references could plausibly do § 102 work at the limitation level, but anticipation requires the reference to disclose the limitation as incorporated into the parent claim — i.e., coupled with all of claim 8's elements. For example:

• claim 10 (temporal distribution of photons for the TOF) and claim 11 (940 nm operation with Bragg reflectors on each diode plus a trans-impedance amplifier) are the limitations most likely to be found individually in a SPAD/TOF reference (Mazzillo, Raynor candidates #5 and #7) — but only if that same reference also carried the rest of claim 8. It will not.
• claim 13 (artificial intelligence applied to the combined portion) and claim 14 (laser-off vs. laser-on differencing) are less likely to be found in 2010–2016 TOF art.
• The prior "Patent summary" section already notes that the '484/'475 family terms "to use artificial intelligence to process" and "to use artificial intelligence in making decisions" were litigated for indefiniteness in E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-01070, which is a useful cross-check that this limitation family is the disputed one — not the TOF element.

4.3 § 102 category each reference most likely occupies

5. What this means, stated precisely

1. No reference retrieved from the '311 citation list is confirmed to anticipate any claim under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Each is, at most, a partial-disclosure or secondary reference.
2. The date analysis is the gating issue. Because the '311 patent claims 2012 priority and every retrieved reference issued 2013–2018, only those with effective U.S. filing dates before December 31, 2012 can even be § 102(e) art. I could not retrieve those filing dates in this session.
3. The strongest lead for the real prior-art set is not the face of the '311 patent but the PTAB records in this family — IPR2021-00453 ('484) and IPR2020-00175 ('188,299) — both of which are cited on the '311 patent's own reference list, plus the later family IPRs the earlier sections identified (IPR2025-01249–01254, PGR2025-00064) styled Samsung v. Omni MedSci. Petitions in those proceedings list the art the petitioners contend invalidates the same specification.
4. Cross-check to the earlier sections (no contradiction found): the "Measurement system" claim-1 discussion in the prior summary (600–1,000 nm; hemoglobin; phase shift 10 MHz–1 GHz) and the retrieved abstract's "700–2,500 nm" figure address different independent claims; they are consistent, not contradictory.

6. Explicit gaps — do not treat as verified

• The complete (56) reference list on the '311 patent (US patents, foreign patent documents, and other publications) — only an 11-entry window was visible.
• Filing/priority dates of all 11 references (needed before any § 102 date call can be made).
• Titles and disclosures of all 11 references.
• Whether the '311 claims are entitled to the 12/31/2012 priority date in full (the pivot for § 102 date qualification).
• Whether the retrieved list reflects examiner-applied art or applicant-submitted IDS material — these have very different § 102 weight.

Verification path: USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter for application 17/666,518 (full "References Cited" block and file history), and the granted-patent PDF for US 11,596,311, which carries the (56) block on its face; then pull each cited patent's "Prior Publication Data / Related U.S. Application Data" to confirm effective filing dates.

I'll research the prior-art landscape for this patent, focusing on the specific claim elements (laser-diode arrays with Bragg reflectors, nanosecond pulsing, beam-splitting, synchronized photodiode/CMOS arrays, time-of-flight, camera fusion, and NIR blood/tissue measurement).

Let me dig into the specific third-party prior art and the family's IDS listings.

Let me pin down the specific third-party references from the family's litigation record and the ToF/laser-diode prior art.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,596,311 B2

"Remote sensing and measurement system using time-of-flight detectors"

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Preliminary caveats (read first)

1. "Prior Art section of this page." I was not able to retrieve the literal Google Patents "Prior Art" table (the "Similar Documents / Cited By" field) as a discrete list within this session's budget. What the page does surface under that heading is the prior-art keyword set — "light, array, laser diodes, remote sensing, fiber" — plus a machine-extracted "Definitions" section. I therefore ground the combinations below in (a) the patent's own face/priority record, (b) the family's PTAB and district-court prior-art charts (which are the best available proxy for the examiner's and litigants' art), and (c) the worldwide search reports for the same technology. Where I rely on general knowledge of the art rather than a retrieved reference, I say so.

2. Date inconsistency flag. The prior generated sections (and my source fetches dated 2026-09-28) reference litigation events in May–June 2026. This task's header states the current date is April 26, 2026 — which pre-dates those filings. I treat the header date as the operative "today" and do not treat the May/June 2026 filings as adjudicated facts. This does not affect the § 103 analysis, which is driven by the Dec. 31, 2012 priority date.

3. No new claim text. Consistent with the earlier sections, I do not re-quote claims 1 and 15 verbatim (not retrieved); the analysis of those two is flagged as provisional and built on the specification's "Definitions" paragraphs, which mirror them closely.

1. Threshold legal issues that drive the whole analysis

1.1 Effective filing date — dispositive

The '311 patent's listed priority date is December 31, 2012 (provisional Ser. No. 61/747,xxx family; Google Patents expressly labels it "an assumption … not a legal conclusion"). Ser. No. 17/666,518 was filed February 7, 2022 as a continuation.

Two scenarios control the prior-art universe:

This is a live § 112 written-description question, not a § 103 question — but it gates § 103. The family has already been litigated on exactly this axis: the Board's FWDs in IPR2019-00916 ('533) and IPR2021-00453 ('484) treated the priority chain (provisional Dec. 31, 2012 → utility Dec. 17, 2013) as a measuring device for the claims then at issue (regenerated from the DocketAlarm IPR2025-01250 record; see also the PTAB '484 FWD, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/PGR2025-00063/SAMSUNG_ELECTRONICS_CO._LTD/08-05-2025-Petitioner/Exhibit-1015-2022_08_03_22_484_Final_Written_Decision_IPR2021_00453/). Crucially, the claims held unpatentable there turned on SNR/pulse-oximetry concepts, not ToF — so those FWDs do not collaterally estop an obviousness challenge to the ToF-topped claims at issue here, but they do show the art level.

1.2 Level of ordinary skill

A PHOSITA here would be a person with an M.S./Ph.D. in optics, photonics, or biomedical engineering (or a B.S. plus 3–5 years) with working familiarity with (i) semiconductor laser sources (including DBR/DFB devices), (ii) photodetection and time-resolved/ToF electronics, and (iii) non-invasive optical physiological measurement. This is a predictable-arts combination — the Federal Circuit has repeatedly characterized optical sensing and signal-processing improvements as "applied technology" fields where KSR's "combination of known elements" reasoning applies with force.

1.3 Claim construction notes

• "Bragg reflector" — an integrated grating reflector in a diode laser (DBR/DFB). Gillette-safe to construe this as the well-understood wavelength-selective reflector used to stabilize laser diodes.
• "spectral filters in front of … the photodiode array" — bandpass/notch filtering to reject ambient/background light.
• "combines … into a combined portion" — a broad functional recital of sensor fusion; the specification's Figure 24/31 network description supports a broad reading.

2. The relevant art, by claim element

Sorting the record by the "prior art keywords" (light / array / laser diodes / remote sensing / fiber), four clusters emerge:

(A) Time-of-flight / SPAD depth-imaging art (pre-2013 core)

• Niclass et al., US 2006/0192086 A1 and US 2007/0182949 A1 — SPAD-based 3D imaging with pulsed illumination and per-pixel time-to-digital conversion. These are the Y/[A]-category references cited in the European search report for the 2D/3D imager below (see EP 2469294 Global Patent Index: http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP2469294A1).
• EP 2469294 A1 — "2D/3D real-time imager and corresponding imaging methods," priority Dec. 23, 2010, published 2012-06-27. Teaches: ultrashort laser pulses → illumination of a scene → SPAD detector array → 3D coordinates derived from time-of-flight, with local filtering/averaging/processing (http://data.epo.org/publication-server/rest/v1.2/patents/EP2469294NWA1/document.pdf). This predates Dec. 31, 2012 and is therefore prior art under Scenario A as well.
• Niclass-descended depth-mapping patents (e.g., the family yielding US 10,955,234; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ca/9d/51/1fd1a44bd7045a/US10955234.pdf) teach a VCSEL array source, beam steering, a SPAD sensing array, synchronized gated detection, and coarse/fine ToF histograms. These are prior art only under Scenario B (post-2012 filings), but they demonstrate that every ToF limitation is a routine engineering choice.
• MiSPiA / SPIE Advanced Photon Counting VII (2013) describes direct-ToF SPAD arrays illuminated by modules of 10–15 laser diodes at 808 nm, pulsed for depth mapping — directly on point for "array of laser diodes" + ToF (though 2013-dated).

(B) Laser-diode arrays and Bragg reflectors

• The patent itself concedes the state of the art in its background (SWIR light "may be generated by light sources such as … one or more laser diodes, super-luminescent laser diodes, and fiber-based super-continuum sources"), retrieved from the patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11596311](/patent/US11596311)/en.
• Common knowledge: DBR and DFB laser diodes (and fiber-Bragg-grating-stabilized diode lasers) were commercially standard by 2012 for wavelength-stabilized emission; laser-diode "bars" are the canonical high-power module. I flag this as general art knowledge, not tied to a single retrieved reference.

(C) NIR optical physiological measurement (pre-2013 core)

• Carlson et al., US 2005/0049468 A1 (Feb. 24, 2005) — multi-LED pulse oximeter emitting at 660 nm and 800–1000 nm; pulses the LEDs above ~1000 Hz to discriminate ambient/sunlight; uses beam-shaping optics to concentrate the beams and raise S/B; increases optical power to raise signal. See the chart reproduced in Samsung's IPR2025-01252 Exhibit 2024 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2025-01252/SAMSUNG_ELECTRONICS_CO._LTD._v._OMNI_MEDSCI_INC/10-14-2025-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2024-Defendant%E2%80%99s_Invalidity_Contentions___Exhibit_N,_Omni_MedSci,_Inc_V_Apple_Inc,_Case_No_218_cv_134_RWS/). Carlson alone maps most functional limitations of the measurement-system claims.
• Lisogurski (wearable pulse-oximetry sensor with spatially separated detectors and sensor-fall-off detection) and Tran (health monitoring with threshold comparison) — combined with Carlson in Apple v. Omni MedSci for the '484 patent; the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's obviousness findings on those combinations (https://storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2024/06/21/apple_inc._v._omni_medsci_inc..pdf).
• Rulkov US 8,172,761 (filed Oct. 4, 2011; issued May 8, 2012), Elhag US 7,648,463 (issued Jan. 19, 2010), Bryars US 5,795,300 (issued Aug. 18, 1998), and Yuen US 8,954,135 (priority Jun. 22, 2012) — the core non-invasive-sensing references in Apple's 2018 invalidity contentions for the '533/'040/'286/'698 family (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00029/Apple_Inc._v._Omni_MedSci_Inc/docs/01-23-2020-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2018-5-PART_5___pgs_4001_4837___546_file_history.pdf). Rulkov, Elhag, and Bryars all predate Dec. 31, 2012.
• Park US 9,596,990 — LED physiological monitor with a smart-phone/tablet ecosystem (charting also in the same contentions file).

(D) Camera + depth fusion and smartphone/tablet integration

• Smartphone depth cameras fusing an RGB camera with a ToF depth map were commercially well-known by 2012–2013, and the patent's own background describes wirelessly pushing monitored data to a smart phone for cloud processing (patent text, Definitions section).

3. The obviousness case, element by element

3.1 Independent claim 8 (remote-sensing system) — the flagship

Combination 8-A: EP 2469294 (or Niclass) in view of Carlson in further view of a DBR-laser-diode reference.

Combination 8-B: Niclass-descended depth-mapping art (VCSEL/SPAD array with synchronized gating) in view of a laser-diode-array/DBR reference in view of a smartphone-camera-fusion reference — available under Scenario B only.

3.2 Independent claim 1 (measurement system — skin/blood)

Claim 1, as reflected in the specification's mirroring "Definitions" paragraph, requires the NIR band to be 600–1000 nm, a Bragg reflector, pulsing at ~0.5–2 ns / several MHz, the beam-splitter and CMOS photodiode array, a ToF measurement, a camera, and configuration to non-invasively measure blood within/below the dermis and hemoglobin absorption, plus physiological-parameter and time-variation measurement.

Combination 1-A: Carlson in view of Niclass/EP 2469294 in further view of Rulkov/Elhag/Bryars (non-invasive NIR analyte sensing) and a DBR laser-diode reference.

• Carlson supplies the 660 nm / 890 nm bands, the pulsing-to-reject-ambient technique, the beam-shaping optics, the intensity-for-SNR teaching, and the on/off comparison — i.e., nearly every functional element.
• The only material differences are the substitution of (i) the "Bragg reflector" laser diodes for LEDs and (ii) the ToF/depth measurement for a plain amplitude measurement. The reason to make both substitutions is the same and is expressly taught: NIR laser diodes give higher spectral brightness and wavelength stability, and time-gating/ToF is the strongest available tool to reject the ambient-light problem Carlson itself identifies as "difficult" (Carlson [0006]).

3.3 Independent claim 15 (one or more laser diodes)

Claim 15 drops "array" for "one or more laser diodes" — a broader claim. If the art renders claim 8 obvious a fortiori, claim 15 (fewer structural constraints) is obvious a fortiori. Under Scenario A, EP 2469294 + a DBR-laser-diode patent reaches it.

3.4 Dependent claims 9–14

Claim 13 ("artificial intelligence") is a § 103 weak spot for the patent owner: applying known machine-learning/chemometric techniques to a known data stream (spectral or depth data) is the paradigm of an obvious automation, and the patent's own background treats "pattern matching … spectral fingerprinting" and "chemometrics or multivariate analysis" as known.

4. Motivation to combine (the KSR rationales)

A PHOSITA would have been motivated, with a reasonable expectation of success, for at least four independent reasons:

1. Same field, same problem. All references address active optical sensing of a sample/target using a controlled light source and a synchronized photodetector; ToF depth imaging and NIR oximetry/analyte sensing are both "active optical measurement." KSR permits combination of references "designed to address the same problem."

2. The references point at each other. Carlson itself identifies ambient/sunlight rejection as the central obstacle and solves it by pulsing the source above ambient-noise frequencies. ToF/time-gating is the more powerful member of the same family of solutions (it rejects ambient photons by temporal gating rather than frequency filtering). A PHOSITA seeking better ambient rejection would look directly to ToF.

3. Predictable, routine substitutions. Replacing LEDs with laser diodes (and adding Bragg gratings to stabilize them), and adding a photodiode array with spectral filters and CMOS readout, are substitutions of known elements to achieve known results — exactly KSR's "familiar element, known method, predictable result."

4. Market/industry pressure. The patent's own background catalogs the commercial pull — non-invasive glucose, dental caries, remote hyperspectral sensing, smartphone/cloud value-add services. Competing designers had strong incentive to move physiological and remote sensing onto compact, low-cost, smartphone-integrated platforms, which is precisely what drives "array of laser diodes + CMOS photodiode array + camera fusion + phone."

5. Anticipated patent-owner rebuttals, and responses

6. Bottom line

• Under Scenario B (priority not reached by the ToF limitations): Claim 8 and its dependents are highly likely obvious over (a) EP 2469294 or Niclass (SPAD ToF depth imaging) + (b) Carlson (NIR pulsed optical measurement with ambient rejection) + (c) a DBR-laser-diode/array reference, with a KSR motivation supplied both by Carlson's own ambient-rejection problem and by the general compact-sensor market pull.
• Under Scenario A (2012 priority holds): The case narrows but does not disappear. EP 2469294 (priority Dec. 23, 2010; published Jun. 27, 2012) and Niclass (2006/2007) do predate the critical date and supply every ToF element; Carlson (2005), Rulkov (2011/2012), Elhag (2010), and Bryars (1998) supply the measurement elements. The only genuinely contestable gap is the "Bragg reflector" + "bars … spatially interleaved" recitations — and those are classic obvious design choices (wavelength stabilization and array packaging) supported by general art knowledge.
• The strongest non-obviousness redoubts for the patent owner are (i) a genuine § 112/priority showing that locks the ToF claims to 2012 and knocks out post-2012 art, and (ii) secondary-considerations evidence with established nexus.

7. Explicit uncertainty statement

Grounded in retrieved sources: claim 8 and dependents 9–14 verbatim; EP 2469294's priority/publication dates and SPAD/ToF content; Niclass references' status as cited art in that search report; Carlson US 2005/0049468's disclosure (bands, pulsing, beam shaping, S/N); the existence and dates of Rulkov US 8,172,761, Elhag US 7,648,463, Bryars US 5,795,300, Yuen US 8,954,135, and Park US 9,596,990 as invalidity references; the Lisogurski/Tran/Carlson combination as adjudicated in the '484 appeal.

Not verified / do not rely on without confirmation: the verbatim text of claims 1 and 15 (my mapping of these is inferential from the specification's mirroring paragraphs); the literal contents of the Google Patents "Prior Art" table (I could not pull it); the exact priority chain and § 112 support posture of Ser. No. 17/666,518; whether specific post-2012 references (MiSPiA, the Niclass-descended depth patents) qualify as prior art (this turns entirely on the priority ruling); and the patentability conclusion itself, which is my analytical opinion, not a legal determination.

Recommended confirmatory steps: retrieve the actual "Cited By / Citations" list and the examiner's IDS/892 from USPTO PatentCenter for Ser. No. 17/666,518; pull the complaint and infringement contentions in the E.D. Tex. and W.D. Tex. 2026 matters to see whether the '311 is asserted and what the parties treat as the effective priority date; and obtain the full text of claims 1 and 15 from the granted patent PDF (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US11596311.pdf).