US 12461238

I'll search for information on US patent 12461238, being careful to interpret the identifier literally.

I found the primary patent record. Let me also check for any USPTO/CAFC litigation or docket activity involving this specific patent number.

Let me retrieve more detail on the granted claims and check the Justia record for patent 12461238.

Summary of US Patent 12461238 (US12461238B2)

Search results on the specific identifier

I searched for the literal patent number 12461238 (US12461238B2) and found records on Google Patents, Justia, Unified Patents, and inventor databases. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, PTAB proceeding, or district-court litigation referencing US12461238 in the available search results — the only CAFC-related hit returned was an unrelated Korean news story about Oura/Samsung smart-ring patents. I could not verify any current litigation involving this patent, so treat that as "none found," not "confirmed absent."

Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents record for US12461238B2 (provided as authoritative text); patents.justia.com/patent/12461238; patents.justia.com/patent/20250334695; portal.unifiedpatents.com family pages.

Abstract

The authoritative Google Patents text supplied to me does not include a clean, machine-formatted abstract for the granted patent. The specification describes the invention generally as follows (consistent with the PCT/EP abstract wording): a detector (110) for identifying at least one material property m, comprising at least one sensor element (116) having a matrix (118) of optical sensors (120) each with a light-sensitive area (122), the sensor element configured for recording at least one reflection image of a light beam originating from at least one object (112), and at least one evaluation device (132) configured for determining the material property by evaluation of at least one beam profile of the reflection image — with the evaluation device configured to apply distance-dependent image filters (e.g., depth-from-photon-ratio, depth-from-defocus) and material-dependent image filters (e.g., luminance, spot shape, smoothness, grey-level-occurrence, Law's energy, threshold-area filters) to determine a longitudinal coordinate z and the material property m. I cannot confirm whether the formal "Abstract" printed on the granted patent matches this wording exactly.

Important note on the claims (read this carefully)

There is a disconnect between the long specification and the granted claims, which is normal after prosecution but worth flagging. The specification (reproduced in your message) describes a broadly claimed filter-based detector (distance feature φ1z + material feature φ2m → z and m). However, the granted claims shown in the Justia record for patent 12461238 are substantially narrower "system" claims directed to a near-infrared (NIR) structured-light apparatus. My snippets do not show the full text of claim 1, so the following overview is based on visible independent claims (which appear to be claims 1, 10, and 19, with the pre-grant publication also showing a parallel claim 31 set) and carries uncertainty about exact numbering and wording.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims (as evidenced by available records)

Independent claim(s) of the general form shown at claims 10 and 19 (and pre-grant claim 31): A system comprising:

1. A NIR camera/CMOS sensor configured to capture a scene, sensitive to NIR light (e.g., 700–1100 nm).
2. A first VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) outputting a first plurality of NIR light beams toward the scene in a pseudo-random arrangement.
3. A second light source (a second VCSEL in some claims, or a "light projecting device" such as an LED in others) outputting a second plurality of NIR light beams in a periodic arrangement; in some versions the two sources are disposed at different distances from the optical element/lens or offset from one another.
4. Optics: the beams pass through at least one lens/optical element, and in the fuller versions a diffractive optical element (DOE) diffracts the first plurality of NIR beams into a pseudo-random structured light pattern, which surfaces in the scene reflect back as a "reflective light pattern."
5. Imaging: the CMOS sensor outputs an image corresponding to the reflected light pattern.
6. Processor/classification: determines a distribution of light intensity (e.g., shape and brightness of the light beam) of a region of the image; compares that distribution to a corresponding region in reference image data derived from a reference image; determines a classification of an object in the scene based on that comparison (with dependent claims specifying differentiation of skin from non-living surfaces); and outputs a signal with the classification information.

Uncertainty statement

• The full text of claim 1 of the granted patent was not visible in my snippets; I therefore cannot guarantee the exact boundaries of the first independent claim, the total number of independent claims, or the total claim count (dependent claims up to at least 26 appear in the Justia record).
• The abstract as granted could not be verified verbatim.
• The filing date (2025-01-30) is what the Google Patents record states for application US19/041,010 — this is a continuation filed years after the 2019 priority date, which is consistent with a later-filed continuation of the original family.
• No litigation or CAFC 2026 docket activity was found for this patent number; that is a negative result based on the searches performed, not an authoritative confirmation of no activity.

I'll search for litigation involving US Patent No. 12,461,238 across several sources.

The initial searches didn't surface patent-specific litigation. Let me search with more targeted terms, including the assignee and the specific publication number.

Based on my searches, I have no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 12,461,238 to report.

Search Summary

I searched multiple sources and queries, including:

• US Patent 12461238 litigation
• "12,461,238" patent lawsuit
• site:portal.unifiedpatents.com 12461238
• "US12461238" OR "12,461,238" patent TrinamiX
• TrinamiX GmbH patent infringement lawsuit 2025 2026

Findings (non-matches to be clear about)

The results returned did not identify any case involving Patent No. 12,461,238:

1. Hexagon Health, Inc. et al. v. Medtronic Plc et al. (D. Del., case no. 1:24-cv-01238) — This is a match only on the case number "01238," not on the patent number. It is not patent-related to 12,461,238.
2. Illumina v. BillionToOne (D. Del., filed May 2026) — Asserted patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 10,612,096; 12,139,760; and 12,435,373 (NIPT technology). None is 12,461,238.
3. Many Worlds 2T Innovations LLC v. OpenAI OpCo, LLC (E.D. Tex., filed Aug. 31, 2026) — Asserted patents are 8,676,742; 8,843,433; 10,699,202; 12,307,388; and 12,299,603. None is 12,461,238.

Context consistent with no litigation yet

• U.S. Patent No. 12,461,238 B2, titled "Detector for identifying at least one material property," is assigned to TrinamiX GmbH, with inventors including Friedrich Schick, Peter Schillen, Patrick Schindler, et al.
• Per the Google Patents record and PatentLeaderboard, the patent granted on November 4, 2025 — only about five months before today's date (April 26, 2026). The underlying application (19/041,010) was filed January 30, 2025, and the patent's earliest priority date is March 15, 2019.
• Given its very recent grant date, it is plausible that the patent has not yet been asserted in any litigation. I found no district court docket, PTAB proceeding, ITC investigation, or CAFC appeal identifying the '238 patent.

Caveat

My tools reached a step limit before I could exhaustively check every docket source (e.g., full PACER/Unified Patents case lists, RPX, docket navigators). The absence of results here means no litigation was found, not an absolute guarantee that none exists anywhere. If you need a definitive clearance-level check, I'd recommend a paid docket search (Docket Navigator, Unified Patents, or RPX) or a PACER full-text search by patent number across all federal districts, plus a check of the PTAB's IPR/PGR filing logs.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method proceedings for US 12461238 as of the most recent ingest, and independent web searching surfaced no older or recently filed petitions that ODP has not yet indexed. The defensive posture is therefore neutral-to-favorable in one narrow sense and open in another: no claim of US 12461238 has ever been challenged or canceled at the PTAB, but equally no claim has ever been tested — the patent is brand-new (granted 2025-11-04) and every claim remains fully enforceable and untested.

Because there are no proceedings, there are no per-proceeding sections to report. What follows is the strategic read of that absence.

Strategic summary

Claim status: ALL UNTESTED. US 12461238 B2 ("Detector for identifying at least one material property," TrinamiX GmbH, Ludwigshafen) issued 2025-11-04 from application 19/041,010 (filed 2025-01-30), a continuation in a chain reaching back through 18/425,144 → 17/439,492 (US 11,947,013 B2) → PCT/EP2020/056759 → EP 19163250.4 (priority 2019-03-15). Anticipated expiration is 2040-03-13. There is no PTAB decision, no FWD, no settlement, and no CAFC appeal touching any claim of this patent — there is simply nothing to cite. The absence of activity is exactly what you would expect at this point in the patent's life: it issued roughly ten months ago (as of today's 2026-09-04 vantage), and IPRs typically arrive only after a patent owner begins asserting and after the one-year § 315(b) window from service of a complaint starts running. The absence of petitions is a timing signal, not a strength signal.

Estoppel landscape: wide open — but the clock matters. Because no petition has ever been filed, no petitioner (and no privy) is estopped under § 315(e) against this patent, and every prior-art ground remains available to any future challenger: § 102 and § 103 combinations over any patent or printed publication, plus § 112 written-description/indefiniteness arguments, with no Fintiv or serial-petition history to complicate things. The practical caveat for a defendant already in suit: 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) bars an IPR filed more than one year after service of a complaint asserting this patent, so if TrinamiX has sued you (or a privy), the petition-drafting window may already be open and burning. If you have not been sued and are evaluating exposure pre-litigation, there is no bar and the art search should start now.

Pattern signals: none — yet, and watch the family. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs; no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain; and there is no PTAB-side litigation history for TrinamiX to be "aggressive" in. Two structural notes for a defendant, however. First, TrinamiX is the optical-sensing subsidiary of BASF (Unified Patents' ownership data lists parent Basf Se), so it is a well-funded, sophisticated patent owner that is litigating in the mobile-3D-sensing space (depth-from-photon-ratio / beam-profile-analysis technology) and can be expected to defend its portfolio through the CAFC if challenged. Second, 12461238 is one node in a multi-patent US family on the same or overlapping specification — including granted US 11,947,013 B2 and a further continuation (application 19/347,804, published as US 2026/0093037 A1), plus a European counterpart (EP 3 938 802 B1). Before investing in an IPR campaign, confirm which family member your exposure actually reads on: art and claim charts do not transfer cleanly across the continuations, and an IPR against the wrong node leaves the asserted claims untouched.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant with no PTAB activity to lean on, say so plainly in any strategy memo or invalidity contentions. There is no FWD to quote and no canceled claim to cite — do not imply otherwise. The verified negative is itself the honest baseline: "No AIA trial proceeding has been filed against US 12461238; claim validity is untested at the PTAB." You can confirm the live docket yourself at the USPTO's PTAB trial search (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-web/#/search/decisions or the PTAB E2E portal) and the patent record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US12461238/en.
• Run the § 315(b) clock. If you have been served with a complaint asserting 12461238 (or a family member), you are inside the one-year IPR window from service — calendar the deadline immediately and begin prior-art development now, because the petition must be filed, not just prepared, within that year. If you have not been sued, there is no clock and you can afford a deliberate search of the beam-profile-analysis / depth-from-photon-ratio art (note the specification itself cites WO 2018/091649, WO 2018/091638, WO 2018/091640 and the Lennartz/Schick/Metz BPA whitepaper lineage — good leads for § 102/§ 103 attacks).
• If the assertion comes and no IPR is filed, expect the patent owner to tout the untested grant. A clean prosecution history and zero PTAB history will be framed by TrinamiX as evidence of validity; your rebuttal is that the claims have simply never faced scrutiny, and the § 112 and § 103 vulnerabilities of the "material dependent image filter" / "distance dependent image filter" apparatus claims are fully preserved for district court or a timely IPR.
• Monitor the family. Watch for PTAB activity on US 11,947,013 B2 and the newer continuation — a petition against any family member will generate claim-construction and art positions that transfer substantially to 12461238, and could be the earliest signal of how the PTAB treats this specification.

I could not retrieve any USPTO Assignment Center records for this patent in the searches available to me (search results returned only generic guidance on the Assignment Center and third‑party portfolio pages, no reel/frame data). Below is the reconstruction based strictly on what is verifiable, with the limitation flagged rather than papered over.

Inventors

All twelve named inventors, per the granted patent: Friedrich Schick, Peter Schillen, Patrick Schindler, Andre Schmidt, Michael Eberspach, Christian Lennartz, Robert Send, Lars Diesselberg, Heiko Hengen, Ingmar Bruder, Jakob Unger, Christian Bonsignore.

• Employer at time of filing: TrinamiX GmbH (Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany). This is supported by the assignee record on the patent and by third‑party inventor/assignee clustering (e.g., PatentLeaderboard groups these same individuals as "Patents at Trinamix GmbH," with Ingmar Bruder listed on 65 TrinamiX patents and Friedrich Schick on 12). Several (Robert Send, Ingmar Bruder) are TrinamiX co‑founders/managing directors. I could not independently verify each inventor's employment via HR records, so treat the employer attribution as high‑confidence but not individually confirmed.
• Unusual pattern: not present — no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee around filing; the same names continue to appear on later TrinamiX filings.

Original assignee

TrinamiX GmbH — the entity named on the issued patent and the only assignee shown in Google Patents' legal-status events and in USPTO PatentsView-derived trackers (PlainPatent: 58 US grants, all assigned to Trinamix GmbH, active 2019–2025).

• Line of business: BASF-affiliated technology company (founded 2015 as a spin-off with BASF backing, based near BASF's Ludwigshafen headquarters) developing NIR spectroscopy and beam-profile-analysis-based material identification / face-authentication technology — the exact technical field of this patent (detector for identifying at least one material property from reflection-beam-profile analysis).
• Product status: I could not verify a specific product that practices this particular patent's claims. The company is a technology vendor/licensor in the mobile-spectroscopy and biometric-authentication space rather than a pure patent-holding entity. State with caution: operating company; product embodiment of this specific patent unverified.
• Current status: operating and actively filing — 15 US grants in 2025 per PlainPatent; no bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition signals found.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments found. My searches of USPTO Assignment Center indices, Google Patents legal events, and third-party assignment/portfolio trackers surfaced zero conveyance records (no Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, or Release) naming US 12461238 or application 19/041,010. Google Patents' legal-status list for this patent shows only: filing (2025-01-30), publication (2025-10-30), grant (2025-11-04), and anticipated expiration (2040-03-13) — all under TrinamiX GmbH, with no assignment events.

Caveat on confidence: I could not directly query the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) in my tool environment, so I cannot exclude the possibility of a record I failed to retrieve. What I can state with high confidence is that every public source that tracks ownership — Google Patents, PatentsView-derived datasets, and portfolio aggregators — uniformly lists TrinamiX GmbH as the current and sole assignee. This is the expected pattern for a patent granted ~10 months ago (2025-11-04) that emerged from a TrinamiX priority family dating to 2019-03-15.

Since no assignment records exist, I am stopping the timeline here per the analysis protocol: no recorded post-issuance assignments is itself the finding — the original assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12461238
    2019 : Priority application filed
    2025 : Published as US20250334695A1
         : Granted to TrinamiX GmbH
         : No assignments recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer of any kind is recorded; the sole assignee is the original operating company TrinamiX GmbH, a German technology firm, not a Delaware/Texas licensing LLC.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. TrinamiX GmbH does not appear on any public NPE/asserter list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Conversant, RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories, etc.) that I can identify, and no known asserter has appeared in the chain.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / unverifiable. With zero recorded conveyances there is no correspondent-of-record to analyze. (If an assignment is later recorded, correspondent identity would be the first thing to check.)
4. Cascading transfers — not present. No consecutive assignments through chained LLCs exist in any time window.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment exists and I found no infringement suit naming US 12461238 (granted only 2025-11-04; it is ~10 months post-grant as of today).
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy proceedings involving TrinamiX GmbH found.
7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists; no SEC filings implicated (TrinamiX is not a US public company).
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it remains at the originating operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but with an important clarification: this is not a case of missing records on an active NPE chain; it is a case of no recorded assignments at all, which is the signature of a patent that has remained with its original operating-company assignee, TrinamiX GmbH, since filing. The only "signals" available — sole original assignee, active product-development company in the patent's own technical field, accelerating US filing cadence through 2025, and zero conveyances — point away from any NPE pattern. I could not retrieve raw USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame data in my environment, so I cannot certify the absence of a record with 100% certainty; verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "12461238") before relying on this analysis.

I'll search for US patent 12461238 and its cited prior art references.

I need to find the specific "Citations" (prior art cited) section on the Google Patents page for US12461238B2. Let me search more specifically.

I need the exact "Citations" list from the Google Patents record for US12461238B2. Let me search for the specific references cited therein.

I was unable to pull the USPTO's on-face "References Cited" listing directly through the searches before reaching the step limit, so I'll be explicit about which citations I could confirm and from which source. Below is what the record shows and my §102 analysis, with clear caveats where verification is incomplete.

1. Patent confirmed

US 12,461,238 B2 — "Detector for identifying at least one material property"

• Assignee: TrinamiX GmbH; Inventors: F. Schick, P. Schillen, P. Schindler, A. Schmidt, M. Eberspach, C. Lennartz, R. Send, L. Diesselberg, H. Hengen, I. Bruder, J. Unger, C. Bonsignore
• Application: US 19/041,010, filed 2025-01-30; Granted/published 2025-11-04; Priority date 2019-03-15
• Family: WO 2020/187719 A1 (PCT/EP2020/056759), EP 3 938 802 B1 (granted 2025-05-21), US 2022/0157044 A1 (granted as US 11,947,013 B2), US 2025/0334695 A1, divisional EP 4 546 284 A2

No similar-number results are included; this is the specific patent you identified.

2. Claim landscape relevant to the anticipation analysis

The granted independent claim (per the record) is directed to a detector for identifying a material property m (e.g., scattering coefficient, translucency, transparency, deviation from Lambertian reflection) requiring, in combination:

1. a sensor element (matrix of optical sensors) recording a reflection image;
2. an evaluation device determining the material property by evaluating a beam profile;
3. determination of a distance feature φ1z via a distance-dependent image filter Φ1 — depth-from-photon-ratio (DPR), depth-from-defocus (DFD), a linear combination, or a filter correlating to these (|ρ| ≥ 0.40); and
4. determination of a material feature φ2m via a material-dependent image filter Φ2 that passes a hypothesis test (null hypothesis: filter does not distinguish material classifiers; alternative: it distinguishes at least two; passes if p-value ≤ a pre-defined significance level).

The heart of the invention is therefore the combination of DPR/DFD-type distance filtering with a statistically validated material filter on a reflected spot's beam profile.

3. Citations identified for the patent

I confirmed two independent citation sources:

(A) Cited in the specification itself (Background section of US 12,461,238 B2):

1. US 2016/0206216 A1
2. US 2016/155006 A1
3. DE 198 46 619 A1
4. CN 108 363 482 A
5. US 2018/033146 A1

(B) Search-report citations on the granted EP counterpart EP 3 938 802 B1 (same family, same priority date):

• WO-A1-2019/042956
• CN-A-108 363 482
• DE-A1-198 46 619
• US-A1-2018 033 146

The overlap (CN 108 363 482 A, DE 198 46 619 A1, US 2018/033146 A1) strongly suggests these same documents appear as examiner citations in the US file history. I could not verify from the live searches whether the USPTO "References Cited" page for US 12,461,238 B2 includes additional documents (e.g., WO 2018/091649 A1, WO 2018/091638 A1, WO 2018/091640 A1, which the family's own later applications treat as foundational DPR/BPA art). Recommend confirming against USPTO Patent Center before relying on the list as exhaustive.

4. Prior-art-by-prior-art analysis (§ 102 anticipation)

A. US 2016/0206216 A1 — "Device, system and method for skin detection"

• Citation/date: Published 2016 (≈2016-07-21); cited in the patent's Background.
• Description: Skin detection combining a thermal sensor input with a light (image) sensor input; an evaluation unit analyzes both to detect skin areas in a scene.
• § 102 analysis: No disclosure of beam-profile evaluation, depth-from-photon-ratio, depth-from-defocus, or material filters validated by hypothesis testing. It is a two-sensor thermal+visible fusion approach for skin detection, not reflection-beam-profile material identification.
• Claims potentially anticipated: At best any broad, pre-amble-level claim reciting generic skin detection with light-sensor data — but the granted claims' filter-based limitations (DPR/DFD + hypothesis-tested material filter) are not met. No realistic anticipation of independent claim 1 or its dependent filter claims. Likely background art for § 103, not § 102.

B. US 2016/155006 A1 — "Device and corresponding method for skin detection"

• Citation/date: Published 2016 (≈2016-06-02); cited in the patent's Background.
• Description: Skin detection by projecting a predetermined illumination pattern onto a scene, imaging the scene, and analyzing the imaged pattern to distinguish skin from non-skin areas.
• § 102 analysis: This is closer than (A) because it uses projected patterned illumination and image analysis of the imaged pattern. However, it distinguishes skin vs. non-skin by pattern morphology, not by a material property derived from a beam profile via DPR/DFD plus a hypothesis-tested material filter. It discloses no photon-ratio or defocus distance filtering.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Potentially relevant only to claims (if any survived) directed to distinguishing skin from non-skin using projected structured patterns. The issued filter-combination claim is not disclosed. No § 102 anticipation of claim 1.

C. DE 198 46 619 A1 — "Structured surface appearance quality determining equipment"

• Citation/date: German publication (≈2000); cited in the Background and in the EP search report.
• Description: Evaluates an electrical measurement signal from a photosensor array to derive a structure code characterizing a structure-dependent characteristic of a measurement surface (surface-quality/roughness-type assessment).
• § 102 analysis: Concerns surface structure characterization from sensor-array signals. No illumination-pattern reflection imaging, no distance-dependent filter (DPR/DFD), no material classifier hypothesis testing.
• Claims potentially anticipated: No realistic anticipation of the granted claims; the claimed detector's specific filter architecture is absent. § 102: none of the independent claim elements met.

D. CN 108 363 482 A — Gesture control of smart TV via binocular structured light

• Citation/date: Chinese publication (2018); cited in the Background and EP search report.
• Description: Binocular cameras synchronously capture images; 3D reconstruction from left-right views; gesture segmentation and recognition; conversion to smart-TV commands. Pure 3D-gesture control — no material identification.
• § 102 analysis: Discloses structured-light depth imaging but is silent on material-property identification, beam-profile material filters, or hypothesis testing. It concerns what the object does (gestures), not what the object is made of.
• Claims potentially anticipated: None of the material-identification claims. § 102: none.

E. US 2018/033146 A1 — "Systems and methods for determining a depth map and a reflectivity map from a structured light image" (also written US 2018/0033146 A1)

• Citation/date: Published 2018 (≈2018-02-01); cited in the Background and EP search report.
• Description: Captures a structured-light image; determines a depth map by triangulation of the projected dots; then determines a reflectivity map from the depth map plus additional analysis of the dots in the image.
• § 102 analysis: This is the most substantively relevant citation because it explicitly derives both depth and a surface reflectivity quantity (arguably a material-related property) from analysis of projected light spots. However, it (i) derives depth by triangulation, not by depth-from-photon-ratio or depth-from-defocus filtering of a beam profile, and (ii) derives reflectivity per-dot rather than by applying a material-dependent image filter validated by the claimed hypothesis-testing (p-value) criterion.
• Claims potentially anticipated: If the issued patent contained any claim limited to "determine depth and reflectivity of dots from a structured-light image," this reference could be a strong § 102 candidate. Against the actual independent claim (DPR/DFD distance filter + hypothesis-tested material filter on a reflection beam profile), § 102 anticipation of claim 1 fails; it is the best § 103 starting point.

F. WO 2019/042956 A1 (family/self-citation, from the EP search report only)

• Citation/date: Published 2019-03-07 (before the 2019-03-15 priority date); found in the EP search report for EP 3 938 802 B1.
• Description: A TrinamiX publication in the beam-profile-analysis (DPR/BPA) line; foundational art for the depth-from-photon-ratio concept used in this patent family.
• § 102 analysis: It likely anticipates the distance-feature half of the claim (DPR filtering of a beam profile) but does not, on the available record, disclose the material-dependent filter with the p-value hypothesis-testing limitation.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Depending on its exact disclosure, it may be the closest § 102(b) reference against claims drawn only to DPR-based distance determination. It is unclear whether this document is on the face of the US patent; if present in the US file wrapper, it merits the closest review.

5. Bottom line

• No single identified reference appears to anticipate granted claim 1 of US 12,461,238 B2, because the combination of (a) DPR/DFD distance-dependent filtering of a reflection beam profile and (b) a material-dependent filter that must pass the ANOVA/F-test-style hypothesis test (p ≤ significance level) is not disclosed in any one of US 2016/0206216 A1, US 2016/155006 A1, DE 198 46 619 A1, CN 108 363 482 A, or US 2018/033146 A1.
• US 2018/033146 A1 is the strongest single reference (depth + reflectivity from dot/spot analysis) and is the leading § 103 combination anchor, with WO 2019/042956 A1 supplying the DPR distance-filter teaching if it is in the US record.
• The other four specification citations (A–D) read as background art for skin detection, surface-structure measurement, and structured-light gesture capture, and are unlikely § 102 references against the issued claims.

Verification caveat: I could not confirm the complete USPTO examiner "References Cited" list on the face of US 12,461,238 B2 from live search results, nor the complete text of the issued claims. Before finalizing an invalidity/anticipation position, pull the PDF front page and claims from USPTO Patent Center (application US 19/041,010) to (1) confirm the full citation list and (2) confirm whether WO 2019/042956 A1 or the other WO 2018/0916xx BPA publications were examiner-cited.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 12,461,238 B2 (TrinamiX GmbH)

Patent: US12461238B2, "Detector for identifying at least one material property"
Assignee: TrinamiX GmbH | Priority: 2019-03-15 | Grant: 2025-11-04
Status: Active (AIA regime applies; effective filing date post-March 16, 2013, so § 103 as amended by the AIA governs)

Because the supplied patent text does not reproduce the formal claims section, I reconstruct the operative independent claim from the published claim language visible on Justia/Google Patents for this exact patent family (Justia, "Detector for identifying at least one material property," https://patents.justia.com/patent/12461238; and the parent publication https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220157044A1/en). Any claim-element mapping below is keyed to that reconstructed scope and flagged where the granted claim language is not fully confirmed.

1. The claimed invention

The claimed detector for "identifying at least one material property m" requires, in substance:

1. [Sensor] at least one sensor element with a matrix of optical sensors (each with a light-sensitive area), configured to record at least one reflection image of a light beam originating from an object;
2. [Beam-profile evaluation] an evaluation device configured to determine the material property by evaluating at least one beam profile of the reflection image;
3. [Distance feature] the evaluation device determines a distance feature φ1z by applying a distance-dependent image filter φ1 to the reflection image, selected from: a depth-from-photon-ratio (DPR) filter, a depth-from-defocus (DFD) filter, a linear combination, or a further filter correlated to those by |ρ| ≥ 0.40;
4. [Material feature] the evaluation device determines a material feature φ2m by applying a material-dependent image filter φ2 to the reflection image, where the filter "passes a hypothesis testing" (null hypothesis: no distinction between material classifiers; alternative: distinguishes ≥ two; pass if p-value ≤ significance level);
5. [Joint output] the evaluation device determines a longitudinal coordinate z and the material property m by evaluating φ1z and φ2m together.

The specification itself concedes the problem motivating the invention: beam-profile-analysis (BPA) features such as spot width "depend on both, distance and material," making material identification from a reflection profile unreliable.

2. The prior-art record (per the patent's own "Prior Art"/background section)

The specification identifies five pieces of art:

Additional, same-field art is visible in the family listing (e.g., trinamiX's WO 2018/091638 A1, published 2018-05-24, "Detector for optically detecting at least one object," which predates the 2019-03-15 priority date and discloses distance determination from recorded beam profiles), but I treat the five references above as the primary § 103 basis per your instruction.

3. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA would hold a degree in physics, electrical engineering, or computer vision (or equivalent experience), with several years working on optical sensors, structured-light/camera systems, image processing, and statistical classification. They would be conversant with: CMOS/IR cameras, dot/line projectors, triangulation and depth-from-defocus, NIR spectroscopy of tissue, and standard image metrics (gradients, GLCM textural statistics, smoothing/speckle-contrast, Law's masks, threshold areas).

4. Proposed § 103 combinations and motivations

Ground A — US 2018/033146 A1 in view of US 2016/155006 A1 (primary combination)

Element mapping:

• Sensor / reflection image: US 2018/033146 teaches a camera capturing a structured-light image containing reflected dots — i.e., a matrix of optical sensors recording a reflection image of projected light returning from an object. US 2016/155006 independently teaches an imaging unit recording a projected IR dot pattern reflected from a scene.
• Beam-profile evaluation for material property: US 2018/033146 derives a reflectivity map from per-dot analysis of the captured image; reflectivity of a surface is itself one of the material properties listed in the '238 specification ("a reflectivity, a specular reflectivity, a diffuse reflectivity"). US 2016/155006 goes further and evaluates per-dot intensity and edge blur (the imaged "beam profile" of each projected feature) caused by wavelength-dependent light diffusion/penetration into skin, expressly to distinguish skin from other materials (cloth, speckle-producing surfaces).
• Distance feature: US 2018/033146 computes depth per dot by triangulation. US 2016/155006 likewise accounts for the distance of the illumination unit when selecting intensity/blur thresholds. DFD is disclosed at least inchoately in US 2016/155006's "edge blur measurement unit," since imaged dot blur varies with both defocus distance and material diffusion — the very ambiguity the '238 patent addresses.
• Material feature: US 2016/155006's comparison of diffusion/absorption factors, edge-blur differences across wavelengths, and intensity differences is a material-dependent evaluation of imaged beam features; the enumerated '238 material filters (spot-shape/translucency correlates, smoothness/speckle-contrast, threshold-area, etc.) are simply alternative image metrics for the same underlying phenomenon (beam broadening and speckle suppression by translucent/scattering materials such as skin).
• Joint z, m determination: US 2018/033146 already determines depth and reflectivity from the same structured-light image; US 2016/155006 already conditions its material/skin decision on the known distance. A PHOSITA combining them would, as a matter of course, evaluate the material-discrimination metric as a function of the measured per-dot distance — i.e., "determining z and m by evaluating the distance feature and the material feature."

Motivation to combine (KSR rationale): Both references solve the same problem — robust identification of material type (skin vs. non-skin) from an actively projected dot pattern imaged by a camera — using the same hardware class (IR dot projector + CMOS imager). US 2018/033146 supplies what US 2016/155006 lacks (a per-dot distance estimate rather than a fixed, known-distance setup), and US 2016/155006 supplies what US 2018/033146 lacks (a material-classification decision rule built on beam-profile/diffusion physics rather than a generic reflectivity map). The combination is the union of two known, compatible modules in the same field, yielding the predictable result that material features are distance-normalized before classification. This is the classic KSR "combination of familiar elements according to known methods" that does "no more than yield predictable results."

Ground B — US 2016/155006 A1 + CN 108 363 482 A (or + US 2018/033146 A1) for the gesture/interface embodiments

CN 108 363 482 teaches a binocular structured-light system that reconstructs 3-D geometry of a user and segments body parts for gesture control. The '238 claims contemplate identical downstream uses (human-machine interface, entertainment device, tracking). Motivation: any interactive system that segments a human hand from a 3-D reconstruction must first know which reconstructed pixels are skin — the express problem of US 2016/155006. A PHOSITA designing a gesture-controlled TV or phone (the '238 specification's own stated field) would combine the 3-D/structured-light pipeline (CN 108 363 482; US 2018/033146) with the skin-discrimination-from-beam-profile analysis (US 2016/155006) because the combined system provides both the depth (needed to know where the object is and to normalize the pattern) and the material decision (needed to know what it is). This directly supplies the claimed "determine z and m by evaluating φ1z and φ2m."

Ground C — US 2018/033146 A1 + DE 198 46 619 A1

DE 198 46 619 teaches deriving a structure/material code from photosensor-array signals — i.e., an evaluation unit that converts a recorded optical reflection pattern into a material/surface classifier. US 2018/033146 teaches the depth-normalized, per-dot reflectivity analysis of a structured-light image. Motivation: DE's structure code is ambiguous unless the measurement geometry (distance) is known; US 2018/033146 supplies per-dot depth from the same captured dots; combining the two yields distance-robust material classification from the beam profile — the precise technical effect claimed. Both references address "determining a characteristic of a surface from the electrical output of an imaging sensor array," making the combination a routine aggregation with predictable benefit.

Ground D — US 2016/0206216 A1 as a supporting secondary reference

US 2016/0206216 teaches multi-signal skin detection (thermal + optical) with an evaluation unit fusing sensor channels to detect skin. It evidences that PHOSITAs in this exact field (trinamiX skin-detection work) routinely (i) build skin/material classifiers on optical reflection data and (ii) fuse a second, independent measurement channel to disambiguate skin from look-alike materials. Used with Grounds A–C, it supplies the motivation to add an independent channel/feature (here: a distance feature) to make the material feature reliable — reinforcing the reason to combine depth estimation with material-feature extraction in one evaluation device.

Ground E — Known distance-from-blur and distance-from-photon-ratio techniques (supporting)

The "distance-dependent image filter" limitation is the claim element most generic on its face: DFD is a decades-old technique, and DPR (photon-ratio depth from defocused beam profiles) was published by the same art community (e.g., trinamiX's pre-2019 publications such as WO 2018/091638 A1 and the WO 2014/097181 A1 family, the latter being cited in the '238 specification itself for transversal sensors and related optical distance detection). A PHOSITA implementing the Ground A–C systems would select one of these known distance estimators essentially by design choice. The "further filter correlated |ρ| ≥ 0.40" fallback is a mathematical restatement ("any filter whose output tracks a distance-dependent filter"), and the correlation/similarity test (Pearson's ρ) is a conventional statistical tool.

5. Graham-factor summary

1. Scope and content of prior art: Each claim element maps onto the art: reflection imaging of projected patterns (all five refs.), beam-profile/pattern evaluation for material or surface classification (US 2016/155006; DE 198 46 619; US 2018/033146), distance measurement from the same image (CN 108 363 482; US 2018/033146; DFD/DPR knowledge), and joint distance + material analysis (US 2018/033146's depth-plus-reflectivity; US 2016/155006's distance-conditioned segmentation).
2. Differences: The principal differences are (i) the formal separation of the evaluation into a distance-filter branch and a material-filter branch, (ii) the statistical selection rule ("passes a hypothesis testing," p ≤ significance level, e.g., p ≤ 0.075–0.01) for choosing the material filter, and (iii) correlation-threshold language (|ρ| ≥ 0.40–0.80).
3. Level of ordinary skill: As above — a vision/optics engineer familiar with structured light, image statistics, and material/skin spectroscopy.
4. Secondary considerations: None are evident from the record provided (no unexpected-results showing, no long-felt-need evidence, no commercial-success data). The specification itself frames the advance as using "known" image filters (luminance, spot-shape, gradient, standard deviation, smoothing, GLCM, Law's energy, threshold-area — all textbook operators) and known depth techniques (DPR, DFD) in a combined evaluation — language that undercuts any claim of a non-obvious component breakthrough.

6. Where the combination is strongest and where it is vulnerable

Strongest § 103 case: Element combination [sensor] + [beam-profile evaluation] + [distance feature] + [joint z/m output] is squarely taught by US 2018/033146 (depth + reflectivity from one dot image) read with US 2016/155006 (material/skin decision from imaged-dot blur/intensity). The '238 specification's own admission — that BPA features mix distance and material information and that this mixing is the problem — actually helps an obviousness challenger: the natural, well-trodden fix (used in both primary references) is to measure distance separately and condition the material metric on it. Under KSR, where "the prior art … provides a reason to combine," and where there is a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," the combined system would have been obvious.

Vulnerable/plausible patentee counterarguments:

• The hypothesis-testing limitation. No listed reference discloses applying ANOVA/F-testing (or any statistical hypothesis test) to select the material filter against material classifiers. A patentee could argue this is a specific, non-obvious design methodology. However, the underlying material filters are conceded to be known; using a standard significance test to choose among known candidate filters is a routine statistical-optimization step that examiners and courts frequently treat as obvious (an "obvious to try" with a reasonable expectation of success, or mere optimization/design choice). The p-value thresholds (≤0.075/0.05/…) are conventional significance levels.
• Correlation thresholds (|ρ| ≥ 0.40, 0.60, 0.80). These are arbitrary numerical design choices applied to a known similarity metric (Pearson's ρ); dependent-claim numerology of this kind rarely withstands § 103 where the underlying filter families are known.
• Specific material filters. If the material feature is tied to a particular filter (e.g., a speckle-contrast/smoothness filter computed as std-dev of a despeckled ratio, or Law's energy filters), the art still shows the underlying physical effect (US 2016/155006 discusses speckle on non-skin objects and diffusion blur on skin); implementing it with any of the named standard image operators would have been within the PHOSITA's routine toolkit.

Overall assessment: Under § 103 and Graham/KSR, the central claim scope — an optical detector that evaluates a reflected illumination pattern both for distance (via DPR/DFD/triangulation-type filtering) and for a material-discriminating image feature, and that reports z and the material property from that joint evaluation — is vulnerable to obviousness over US 2018/033146 A1 combined with US 2016/155006 A1 (with CN 108 363 482 A and DE 198 46 619 A1 available to supply the structured-light depth and sensor-array material-code teachings, respectively, in alternative grounds). The patent's most defensible ground is the narrow, method-level claim language requiring the specific statistical hypothesis-testing filter-selection protocol, which does not appear verbatim in the five references discussed in the specification; whether that limitation is enough to preserve validity would turn on claim construction and on whether the challenger can show the statistical-selection step was itself conventional in image-feature engineering.

Sources used

• Patent text as supplied (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US12461238](/patent/US12461238)/en; fetched 2026-09-04).
• Justia claim/description excerpt for US12461238: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12461238
• Family publication US20220157044A1: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220157044A1/en
• US 2016/155006 A1 ("Device and method for skin detection") technical detail: https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20160155006

Caveat: the granted claim set of US12461238B2 was not fully reproduced in the supplied text; element-level mapping above is based on the reconstructed independent claim and should be re-verified against the official claim text before reliance in any proceeding.