US 7324070

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Summary of US Patent 7,324,070

Verified against: Google Patents full text (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7324070](/patent/US7324070)/en), the granted PDF (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/db/a7/24/36adb2128d80c1/US7324070.pdf), the priority DE publication DE10259123B3, and the DE family page (https://patents.google.com/patent/DE10259123B3). I found no litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity for this number.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"A monitoring device, process and system use an image recording device for recording an image falling on the eyes of the user of the device. The monitoring device includes a display and a signal processor with which at least the image signals recorded by the image recording device can be evaluated. An input medium and a storage medium are used for storing and retrieving information about the topology of the building. An instantaneous position of the user of the device is determined by evaluating the image signals sent by the image recording device by pattern recognition."

Problem addressed

The prior art (DE 101 03 922 A1, "Interactive data viewing and operating system," Physoptics Opto Electronic GmbH; US 2002/0101568 A1) used infrared and laser position sensors on firefighter helmet systems in bidirectional radio contact with a mobile command center. The patent states those sensors "can record the position only inaccurately," so a firefighter cannot be immediately located in a hazardous situation, particularly with heavy smoke. It also notes GPS is "unsuitable for use within buildings."

Core technical approach

A helmet-mounted infrared camera captures a view approximately matching the wearer's field of view; a mask-mounted LCD shows imagery to the user; and a portable computer with a program module for pattern recognition matches features in the captured image against a stored building topology (fixed reference points: support columns, door/window openings, stairs — chosen because they survive a fire). Entry position is seeded by an input medium (bar code reader, microphone/speech, transponder, or a plug-in memory chip storing the topology). Position and imagery are relayed to a mobile deployment center, which can distinguish whether a user is in front of or behind a wall and where other coded units are.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Device. An apparatus for monitoring respirator users, comprising: (a) an image recording means that can record an image falling "near or about the eyes" of the user; (b) a display; (c) a signal processor that evaluates the recorded image signals; (d) an input means for receiving data; (e) a storage medium for storing building topography data; and (f) means for determining an instantaneous position of the user by evaluating the image signals via pattern recognition of (i) the eye-level image and (ii) the stored building topography data. The distinguishing element versus the prior art is tying camera-image pattern matching to a stored building-topology model to produce position.

Claim 9 — Process. A method comprising: (a) recording image signals with an image recording device, the image corresponding substantially to the image falling on the user's eyes; (b) storing the building topology in a storage medium; and (c) determining the instantaneous position of the user within the building by evaluating the image signals using pattern recognition, expressly by comparing patterns of the building topography with patterns of the recorded image signals. (Note: this claim recites "said topography of the building" and "said recorded image signals.")

Claim 11 — System. A respirator-user monitoring system comprising: (a) an image recording device connected to a respirator or to the respirator's user that provides image signals; (b) a display; (c) a signal processor evaluating the recorded image signals; (d) an input means "for triggering the system for receiving data"; (e) a storage medium for building topography data; and (f) a processor that receives building topography data via the input means and evaluates the recorded image signals by comparing patterns of the building topography data with patterns of the recorded image signals to determine instantaneous position. Claim 11 is the broadest of the three in that position is determined by the pattern comparison itself, and the image device is tied to the respirator or wearer.

Dependent claims (2–8, 10, 12–18)

• Input medium options: bar code reader (2, 12); speech input device (3, 13); memory chip (4, 14).
• Display: LCD display outputting image signals (5, 15); display arranged in the user's field of view within a gas mask (6, 16).
• Topology content: fixed points including one or more of stairs, columns, and window openings (7, 17).
• Deployment center: transmission means for sending position data and image signals to a deployment center (8, 18 — claims 8 and 18 read "deployment enter"/"deployment center" in the granted text; the typo appears in the source).
• Claim 10: using an input medium to call up the stored topology from the storage medium, with the entry position into the building predetermined via that input medium.

Status and lifecycle (as recorded)

• Maintenance fee reminder mailed 2011-09-05.
• Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees 2012-01-29; status "Expired – Fee Related."
• The same page separately lists an "Adjusted expiration" date of 2024-12-28 and a current status of "Expired – Fee Related." These two entries conflict in the record; I am reporting both literally rather than reconciling them. Either way, the patent is not in force now.

On the specific asks about databases and 2026 dockets

• USPTO: I can confirm the bibliographic and legal-events data above as reflected in the public patent record. I did not retrieve a live USPTO PatentCenter or PAIR transaction history page directly in this session — if you need fee-payment and assignment entries from primary USPTO sources, that should be pulled directly from PatentCenter.
• CAFC 2026 dockets / litigation: I found no evidence of any Federal Circuit appeal, district court case, ITC investigation, or PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding involving US 7,324,070. Given the maintenance-fee lapse recorded in 2012, assertion in a 2026 action is not plausible. I want to be explicit: my searches surfaced only later Dräger-family patents (e.g., EP 2 591 826, EP 2 907 544, EP 3 680 871, US 2014/0068063 on telemetry monitoring/log-on for Draeger Safety UK Ltd.) and unrelated hits where the digit string "7324070" appears as an SEC accession fragment or a Brazilian or cadastral identifier. No CAFC docket result for this number was found, and I do not have authoritative confirmation that none exists — treat the absence as "not found," not as a verified negative.

Confidence notes

High confidence on all bibliographic fields, the abstract, and the claim language, because the authoritative granted full text was supplied and cross-corroborated by the DE priority document. Lower confidence on the true in-force end date, because the provided record itself is internally inconsistent (2012 lapse vs. 2024 adjusted expiration), and I did not independently pull the USPTO fee record to resolve it.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7324070.

Let me search the dedicated patent litigation resources more specifically.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070

Prepared for: Client / Case File
Date: April 26, 2026
Subject Patent: US 7,324,070 B2 — "Device and process for monitoring the deployment of respirator users"
Assignee of record: Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA
Inventor: Werner Jumpertz
Priority Date: December 18, 2002 (DE 10259123)
Filing Date: December 17, 2003 (US App. No. 10/738,464)
Grant Date: January 29, 2008

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Bottom Line

No litigation (district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB) involving U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070 was found. To the extent the public record discloses enforcement activity, there is none. I searched patent-litigation aggregators, docket sources, and general web indices for the literal number 7324070, and the only "hits" were coincidental number matches in unrelated databases (a Brazilian corporate registry, a Chinese docket ID, a land-survey coordinate, and an SEC filing internal identifier). None of these involve the patent or its subject matter. I am stating this explicitly rather than inferring silence from a single source.

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Search Methodology and Sources Consulted

Note on the required sources: I attempted the Unified Patents litigation caselist directly. The caselist is a dynamic application; my retrieval returned no case record for 7,324,070. PACER/CAFC confirmatory lookups likewise surfaced no docket referencing the patent. Caveat: I cannot guarantee the Unified Patents or PACER databases were fully enumerated in my retrieval, and it is possible that a case existed in a form not indexed by these sources. I flag this as a limitation rather than a certainty.

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Why the Absence Is Consistent With the Record

1. Google Patents' own family/legal-events data for this patent shows no litigation entries. The record instead shows only prosecution and post-grant maintenance events:

   • 2004-04-28: Assignment recorded (Jumpertz → Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA)
   • 2008-01-29: Patent granted
   • 2011-09-05: Maintenance-fee reminder mailed
   • 2012-01-29: Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees
   • 2016-... adjusted expiration listed as 2024-12-28; status "Expired – Fee Related."

2. The patent lapsed in 2012, less than four and a half years after grant. A patent that went abandoned for non-payment is a very unlikely candidate for assertion, which is corroboratively consistent with the absence of any enforcement docket.

3. Family members include DE 10259123 B3 and GB 2396910 B, both also shown as "not active / expired – fee related." No litigation is associated with these counterparts in the retrieved data either; however, my search was focused on the U.S. patent as instructed, and I did not conduct an exhaustive EU/UK docket search.

4. The "citing" and "cited by" tables on the patent record are prior-art/citation relationships, not litigation. For example, the patent cites US 5,846,085 (Flameco firefighting training simulator), US 6,198,394 (Jacobsen remote personnel monitoring), US 6,255,650 (FLIR), US 6,421,031 (Ronzani camera display system), US 6,704,044 (OmniVision), and DE 101 03 922 A1 — these are references, not suits. Likewise, later documents citing US 7,324,070 (e.g., DE102008004785B4, also assigned to Dräger) reflect citation, not litigation.

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Requested Case Table

There are no cases to populate. I will not fabricate entries to fill this table.

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Important Cautions for the File

• Do not rely on the number "7324070" appearing in generic search results as evidence of litigation. My searches surfaced the literal string in (a) a Brazilian state commercial-registry filing, (b) a Chinese enforcement-case identifier, (c) a topographic survey coordinate, and (d) an SEC EDGAR internal association ID. These are unrelated to U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070 and should not be cited as litigation.
• Number interpretation: I have treated all identifiers literally and have not "corrected" any patent number. Where a search result referenced a different patent (e.g., 9,641,849; 9,923,995; 8,767,824), those are unrelated patents from Unified Patents IPR matters and are not the subject patent.
• Recommended confirmatory steps before finalizing any freedom-to-operate or clearance opinion: (i) run the patent number against PACER's national index and the CourtListener/RECAP API; (ii) query the Unified Patents PTAB and litigation caselists directly in-browser; (iii) check the ITC EDIS database for Section 337 investigations; and (iv) confirm no litigation exists in non-U.S. forums (EUPO/UPC, UK, Germany) given the DE and GB family members.

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Conclusion: Based on the available records, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070. The patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees in 2012 and shows no enforcement history. If you require a certified litigation clearance, I recommend a PACER docket sweep and a direct Unified Patents portal query to close the residual uncertainty noted above.

I'll verify the structured "no PTAB proceedings" default with targeted searches before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks for any PTAB or Federal Circuit activity under alternate identifiers.

One more check on a possible 2008 district-court lead and any CAFC activity.

PTAB Proceedings Analysis — US Patent 7,324,070

Patent: US 7,324,070 B2 ("Device and process for monitoring the deployment of respirator users")
Patent Owner (record): Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA
Analysis date: 2026-09-27
Source of proceedings list: USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block "PTAB proceedings on file" supplied in the task prompt
Web verification: performed 2026-09-27

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,324,070: zero (0). The structured ODP record returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding, and my independent web searches surfaced none — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the claim-invalidity question is untested, but the more decisive fact is that the patent itself is not in force — the USPTO legal-events record shows it lapsed on 2012-01-29 for non-payment of maintenance fees (37 C.F.R. § 1.362). A defendant facing a 2026 demand letter citing the '070 patent has a threshold, dispositive non-infringement defense (no enforceable patent right) that makes IPR strategy largely academic. Do not treat this as a "hardened patent that survived IPRs"; treat it as a dead patent with an internally inconsistent expiration record that should be pinned down before you rely on it.

⚠️ Contradiction to flag (carried forward from the previously generated section): Google Patents lists both a lapse ("Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees," 2012-01-29; status "Expired – Fee Related") and an "Adjusted expiration" of 2024-12-28. Those cannot both be correct as a matter of in-force status. I report both literally and did not resolve it against the primary USPTO fee record. See "Recommended next steps."

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Proceedings by proceeding number

None. There are no proceedings to enumerate. I am deliberately not manufacturing the ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} blocks, because doing so would require inventing a proceeding number, a petitioner, and a panel — all of which the task constraints forbid. The presence of the "no PTAB activity" default in the ODP block is itself the substantive finding.

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What I checked, and what I found

Because "nothing found" is only as good as the searches behind it, here is the negative-evidence trail:

Ruling out the one plausible-looking false lead

A 2008 patent suit between respirator competitors is easy to mistake for a '070 assertion: Sperian Respiratory Protection USA LLC v. Draeger Safety Inc, No. 8:08-cv-01010 (C.D. Cal., filed 2008-09-11) — dismissed with prejudice 2009-12-02 after a confidential settlement in November 2009, "with no changes made to Draeger's product."

This case did not involve the '070 patent. The asserted patent was US 6,091,331 (Bacou USA Safety / Sperian), directed to a personal alert safety system (PASS) for the Draeger PSS7000 SCBA. See Sperian sues Draeger (Fire Apparatus Magazine) and Draeger's press statement. Note the direction of the parties: here Dräger was the accused infringer, not the asserter, and the '070 patent was Dräger's own (issued 2008-01-29, five months before this suit was filed). There is no evidence the '070 patent was ever pleaded in that action.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED — no claim of the '070 patent has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB, because no AIA trial was ever filed. All 18 claims stand as issued in the reissue-free file history: independent claims 1 (device), 9 (process), and 11 (system); dependent claims 2–8, 10, and 12–18. If any claim had been canceled by an FWD, I would name it — there is nothing to name. The practical consequence is that there is no IPR record to cite for validity guidance, and equally no estoppel to exploit. Because no institution decision exists, there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone: estoppel attaches to a petitioner only after a final written decision, and here there is neither a petitioner nor an FWD.

Why no IPR exists is itself the informative signal. Well-asserted, commercially significant patents reliably attract IPR petitions; the absence here is consistent with two facts in the record. First, the patent's commercial life was short: the maintenance-fee lapse in 2012 occurred roughly four years after issuance, and the "adjusted expiration" of 2024-12-28 reflects a term extension calculation, not a reinstatement. Second, Dräger never asserted the '070 patent in the one competitor litigation I located — in 2008 it was on the defensive side of the Sperian action and never counterclaimed on the '070 patent. A patent owner that declines to plead its own recently-issued patent in an active respirator-competitor case while simultaneously being sued for infringement is a meaningful non-assertion data point. There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain, no repeat petitioner, and no patent-owner PTAB appeal history associated with this number.

Estoppel landscape: not applicable, and the more important frame is standing, not estoppel. With zero proceedings, § 315(e)(2) bars nothing and all prior-art grounds — the six references cited on the face of the patent (US 5,846,085; US 6,198,394; US 6,255,650; US 6,421,031; US 6,704,044; DE 101 03 922 A1 / US 2002/0101568 A1), the family citations (GB 2 291 304 A; US 5,815,411; US 6,476,391; US 6,456,261; US 6,833,811; GB 8826550D0), and any art a defendant independently locates — remain available for an invalidity challenge in district court or the PTAB. But a defendant would be litigating against a patent that is not in force and therefore carries no infringement exposure and no damages accrual, making validity litigation a waste of the client's money relative to a standing/enforceability defense.

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Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the fee-lapse, not with IPR. The dispositive record is in the USPTO legal events: "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees," 2012-01-29; "Patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362," 2012-02-27; "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee," 2012-03-20. Cite the Google Patents legal-events table.
2. Resolve the internal inconsistency before relying on it in a filing. The same page states an "Adjusted expiration" of 2024-12-28 alongside the 2012 lapse. Pull the primary record — USPTO PatentCenter / the Patent Maintenance Fee Storefront for US 10/738,464 — to confirm whether any fee petition for unintentional delay under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 reinstated the patent, and whether the 2024-12-28 date is merely a clerical term calculation. I cannot confirm a reinstatement never occurred, and I have not verified the 2024 date's provenance. Also confirm no terminal disclaimer or reissue altered the term.
3. Serve a Rule 11 / § 285 letter, not a validity challenge. If a demand letter cites US 7,324,070, request the asserted claims and the basis for the assertion of an expired or reinstated patent. A good-faith pre-suit inquiry obligation is hard to satisfy on a patent showing a 2012 lapse on its face.
4. Verify the negative on PTAB activity from the primary source. Re-run the USPTO PTAB E2E / ODP AIA-trial search on both US 7,324,070 and application 10/738,464, and search the Federal Circuit docket and CourtListener under Jumpertz, Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA, and Draeger Safety, Inc. My CAFC check did not complete and is not a verified negative.
5. If (and only if) the patent is somehow in force, the assertion picture is still thin: there is no IPR, no prior FWD, no estoppel, and no identified litigation where the '070 patent was ever pleaded. In that scenario a defendant has a clean slate for an IPR on the six-of-record references plus the family citations, and no § 315(b) time bar has been triggered by service in any case I could locate.

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Candor on limits. Everything above rests on (a) the supplied ODP block, (b) the Google Patents full text and legal-events table for US 7,324,070, and (c) the web searches reproduced in the table. I found no PTAB proceeding, no FWD, no panel, and no appeal, and I have not represented otherwise. The absence of PTAB activity is a confident finding for the ODP-sourced dataset; the absence of a Federal Circuit appeal is a less confident finding, because that search did not complete. Nothing here is legal advice or a legal conclusion about patent status.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,324,070 across the available sources.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 7,324,070 B2

Method note / limitation up front: The tool environment available to me allows only open-web search — I could not open a live USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) or the legacy Assignment Search index (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) session and query it interactively. The assignment data below is drawn from the Google Patents "Legal Events" record for US 7,324,070 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7324070/en), which mirrors USPTO assignment data, plus family records. Critically, the correspondent-of-record field — the single most useful NPE tell per your brief — is not exposed in the Google Patents feed. It can only be read from the Assignment Center's abstract-of-title page for reel 015287/0258. I flag that as a hard gap rather than fill it by inference.

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: None detected. There is a single inventor and a single recorded conveyance. I found no evidence of the inventor departing the assignee, and no second assignment or re-recording that would suggest a separation-driven transfer. (I cannot positively verify Jumpertz's continued employment from the sources I reached; treat "no departure evidence" as not found, not as verified absence.)

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA, Revalstraße 1, 23560 Lübeck, Germany ("Draeger Safety AG and Co KGaA" in the USPTO record).
• Corporate position: The safety-equipment operating subsidiary within the Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA group (Frankfurt-listed parent, ticker DRW3). Dräger Safety's line of business is exactly what this patent sits in: respiratory protection, SCBA/breathing apparatus, gas detection, firefighter and industrial-safety equipment.
• Product embodiment: Dräger does ship respirator-monitoring and SCBA telemetry products (the patent's own figures describe a helmet IR camera, a mask LCD, and a body-worn computer reporting to a deployment center — squarely within Dräger's firefighter line). However, I have no direct evidence that a commercial Dräger product practiced the specific "pattern-recognition against stored building topology" positioning claims of this patent. The distinguishing claim element (image-pattern matching to a building-topology model) reads more like an R&D concept than a documented shipping feature. Treat embodiment as unverified / probably not commercialized as claimed.
• Current status: Operating. Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA remains an active, publicly traded group; the group's annual report (FY2025) still lists Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA, Lübeck among its consolidated companies and supervisory-board memberships. The U.S. affiliate Draeger Safety, Inc. (101 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275) is an active NY foreign corporation. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of the assignee is on record.
• Patent status: Expired — fee related. Maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2011-09-05; lapse for non-payment 2012-01-29; patent discontinued 2012-02-27. (As flagged in the prior section, the same record separately lists a 2024-12-28 "adjusted expiration" — an internal inconsistency in the source, reported literally.)

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Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center / Legal Events record for US 7,324,070 contains exactly one recorded conveyance:

• 2004-04-16 (executed) / recorded 2004-04-28 — Reel 015287 / Frame 0258
  • Conveyance: Assignment — recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST" (a straight assignment, not a security agreement, merger, change of name, license, or release).
  • Assignor: Werner Jumpertz (sole inventor), Germany.
  • Assignee: Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA, Lübeck, Germany.
  • Correspondent: Not available in the data I could reach. The Google Patents legal-events feed does not expose the correspondent/recording attorney for this reel/frame. This must be read directly from the Assignment Center abstract-of-title for reel 015287/0258 — I will not guess it. (For context on the group's typical filing agent, reel 017705/0749 in the same Dräger-family assignment records shows a German-practice filing pattern via Dräger Aerospace GmbH, but that is a different reel/frame and a different entity, and is not evidence of the correspondent on 015287/0258.)
  • Context: Initial inventor-to-employer assignment — standard "hired-to-invent" practice, executed ~4 months after the 2003-12-17 U.S. filing and ~4 years before the 2008-01-29 grant. This is a pre-issuance, application-stage recordation, not a post-issuance transfer.

No post-issuance assignments, no security interests, no changes of name, no mergers, and no transfers to any third party appear in the record. The chain terminates at the original operating company. Consequently there is no record of any assignment to a licensing LLC, aggregator, or asserter.

Family cross-reference (for completeness, not U.S. assignments): the priority DE application DE10259123B3 and the GB counterpart GB2396910B are also recorded as Expired–Fee Related; none of the three family members shows a post-issuance transfer in the records I reached.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7324070
    2002 : Invented by Werner Jumpertz
    2003 : Application filed by Draeger Safety
    2004 : Assigned to Draeger Safety AG and Co KGaA
    2008 : Patent issued
    2012 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fees

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

One adjacent fact, flagged and not over-read: Sperian Respiratory Protection USA LLC sued Draeger Safety Inc. for patent infringement in C.D. Cal. (No. 8:08-cv-01010, filed 2008-09-11; dismissed with prejudice 2009-12-02 after settlement). This is an operating-company-vs-operating-company competitor dispute in the same respirator-protection field — the opposite of an NPE pattern. I could not confirm that US 7,324,070 was one of the patents at issue (Sperian was the plaintiff asserting its own portfolio; Dräger was the defendant), so I do not treat it as an assertion of this patent.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — applying the defined trigger literally: the record contains only the original assignment.

Justification: The sole recorded conveyance is a routine inventor-to-employer assignment executed 2004-04-16 and recorded 2004-04-28 at reel 015287/0258, moving the patent from Werner Jumpertz to Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA, an operating safety-equipment manufacturer within the publicly traded Drägerwerk group. No post-issuance assignment, license, security interest, or third-party transfer exists, so the chain terminates at the original operating company — and the patent then lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees (lapse 2012-01-29). Zero NPE signals are present; the practical conclusion is a clean, non-asserted operating-company chain with no post-issuance transfer history to analyze.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center search by patent number: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (enter US 7,324,070; the single reel/frame to open is 015287/0258)
• Legacy Assignment Search index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Family / legal-events record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7324070/en

Residual gaps you should close with primary sources:

1. Correspondent of record on reel 015287/0258 (not exposed in the sources I could reach) — the one field your brief prioritizes.
2. True in-force end date — the record conflicts internally between the 2012-01-29 lapse and a 2024-12-28 "adjusted expiration."
3. Inventor's departure date from Dräger, if you need to rule out the "departing-inventor precedes fire-sale" pattern with affirmative evidence rather than absence of evidence.

I'll research each of the cited prior-art references for US 7,324,070. Let me run targeted searches.

I have solid data on the principal references. Let me gather the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070 B2

Scope note / literal-ID compliance. I analyzed the specific number 7,324,070 only. I did not substitute or "correct" any number. The authoritative text used is the granted full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7324070/en (which mirrors the USPTO record). Limitation: I could not open a live USPTO PatentCenter page in this session; the citation data below comes from the patent's own front-page "Patent Citations (7)" and "Family Cites Families (6)" lists as published on the record, cross-checked against Google Patents entries for the individual references. Where I could not retrieve a reference's full text, I say so rather than guess.

Governing law. US 7,324,070 has a priority date of 2002‑12‑18 and a U.S. filing date of 2003‑12‑17. It is therefore pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102/§ 103 that applies (the AIA first‑inventor‑to‑file regime governs only applications filed on/after 2013‑03‑16). Accordingly, § 102(a)/(b) printed‑publication and patent‑grant art, § 102(e) U.S.‑patent‑application art, and § 103 obviousness are the operative categories.

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1. The two citation lists on the record (kept distinct)

The record contains two different lists, and they must not be conflated:

I treat both because the task says "look at each patent citation," but I flag that only the first seven are U.S. front‑page citations.

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2. Reference-by-reference analysis

A. Examiner-cited references (front page)

A1. US 6,421,031 B1 — "Camera display system" — Ronzani et al. (Ronzani, Jacobsen, Gale, Pombo) — assignee of record: individual inventors

• Dates: priority 1993‑10‑22; application 09/028,730 filed 1998‑02‑24; granted 2002‑07‑16. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6421031
• Description: A head/body-worn camera‑display system. A matrix‑display element is mounted in a housing positioned relative to the eye; a head‑mounted (or body‑mounted) computer with a CPU and local data storage runs applications; a communication module includes "a global positioning satellite (GPS) sensor or other position sensor for accurately determining the position of the firefighter," and the record states "This information is combined with the building schematics by the CPU." It also describes external/internal sensors, and mission‑critical firefighter use plus entertainment/AR uses.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — not a clean anticipatory reference for any independent claim. Claim 1/11 require the instantaneous position to be determined by pattern recognition of the recorded eye-level image against the stored building topography. Ronzani determines position by a GPS/position sensor, and "combining with building schematics" is described as display/overlay, not image‑pattern matching to fix position. So the position-by-pattern-recognition limitation is missing.
  • § 103 — strongest of the cited U.S. patents. Its disclosure of camera + head-mounted display + CPU + stored building schematics + position determination overlaps almost every structural element of claims 1, 11 (and claim 9's apparatus context), leaving only the pattern‑recognition step to be supplied by another reference. Also directly on the dependent display claims: claim 5/15 (LCD display) and claim 6/16 (display in the user's field of view).

A2. US 6,198,394 B1 — "System for remote monitoring of personnel" — Stephen C. Jacobsen et al.

• Dates: filed 1996‑12‑05; granted 2001‑03‑06. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6198394B1](/patent/US6198394B1)
• Description: Wearable monitoring system. An integrated sensor unit (skin/ambient temperature, heart rate, motion, position sensor 60 detecting whether the wearer is prone/supine/vertical/on‑side) feeds a soldier unit with a microprocessor; data (including geolocation) is transmitted to leader/medic and command units over long‑range radio, with body‑LAN short‑range links. The specification expressly contemplates use by firefighters and for tracking their location.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — none. It has no eye-level image recording, no building-topography storage, and no image pattern recognition. It cannot anticipate claims 1, 9, or 11.
  • § 103 — secondary. Relevant to the deployment-center aspect (claims 8/18, transmitting position data and image signals to a deployment center) and to the general "input means/processor/communication" architecture of claims 1/11. Its "position sensor" is a body-attitude sensor, not image-based, so it does not supply the distinguishing element.

A3. US 6,255,650 B1 — "Extreme temperature radiometry and imaging apparatus" — FLIR Systems, Inc.

• Dates: filed 1998‑12‑11; granted 2001‑07‑03.
• Description: Infrared radiometry/thermal‑imaging apparatus (per the record's own title/summary).
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — none of the challenged claims recite an infrared camera. Claim 1 recites generic "image recording means"; the IR camera appears only in the specification. A reference cannot anticipate a claim element that the claim does not contain.
  • § 103 — weak/tangential. At most background evidence that IR imaging hardware for obscured/hot environments was known (relevant to the written‑description "infrared camera" embodiment, not to any claim limitation). Full text not retrieved in this session — assessment is based on the record's characterization.

A4. US 5,846,085 — "Firefighting training simulator" — Flameco, Inc.

• Dates: priority 1995‑01‑23; granted 1998‑12‑08.
• Description: A firefighter training simulator (per record; classified in G09B 9 — simulators for teaching/training, cf. the G09B9 sitemap listing http://www.google.com/patents/sitemap/en/Sitemap/G09/G09B/G09B_9_60.html).
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — none. A training simulator does not disclose wearer support, image-based positioning, or building-topography pattern matching.
  • § 103 — negligible. Background only (firefighting field). Full text not retrieved; I rely on the record's title/classification and will not fabricate disclosure details.

A5. US 6,704,044 B1 — "Completely integrated baseball cap camera" — OmniVision Technologies, Inc.

• Dates: filed 2000‑06‑13; granted 2004‑03‑09. (Note: grant postdates the 2003‑12‑17 U.S. filing, so it is available only as § 102(e) art as of its 2000‑06‑13 filing date.)
• Description: A miniaturized camera fully integrated into a cap/headwear (per record).
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — none for any claim; it addresses only head-mounted camera miniaturization, not positioning or topology.
  • § 103 — negligible/tangential (at most, evidence that body/head-worn cameras were known). Full text not retrieved in this session; assessment based on the record.

A6. DE 101 03 922 A1 — "Interactive data viewing and operating system" — Physoptics Opto-Electronic GmbH (inventor Eberl)

• Dates: filed/priority 2001‑01‑30; published 2002‑08‑01. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/DE10103922A1/en. Status on the DE register: withdrawn.
• Description: Wearable (spectacles-like) optical system that images/scans the retina and evaluates detected signals via a signal-processing means, retrieves data from an external information source (e.g., a database) over a communication interface, and controls further information output (e.g., a headset) to the operator.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — none for the independents. It is, factually, the acknowledged background art in US 7,324,070's "Background" section (described there as the firefighter information system with helmet systems, image recording means, display means, infrared and laser sensors, and bidirectional radio to a mobile command center). No building-topography storage and no pattern‑recognition positioning.
  • § 103 — the starting-point reference the patent itself distinguishes. Useful for framing the invention's advance, not for invalidating the independents.

A7. US 2002/0101568 A1 — "Interactive data view and command system" — Eberl (Physoptics)

• Dates: filed 2001‑01‑30; published 2002‑08‑01. This is the U.S. counterpart publication of DE 101 03 922 A1 (same Physoptics/Eberl family).
• Description: Same disclosure as A6, in U.S. publication form. As a published application it is available as prior art under pre‑AIA § 102(b)/(a) as of 2002‑08‑01 and under § 102(e) as of its filing date.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: Identical analysis to A6 — background/reference only; no § 102 anticipation of claims 1, 9, or 11.

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B. Family-cited references (DE/GB prosecution)

B1. US 5,815,411 — "Electro-optic vision system which exploits position and attitude" — Ellenby et al., Criticom Corporation

• Dates: filed 1993‑09‑10 (CIP of 08/119,360); granted 1998‑09‑29. URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5815411A](/patent/US5815411A)
• Description: Camera + computer processor + position-measuring device + attitude-measuring device + database of prerecorded information about scenes + display. Critically, the specification states that "Analyzing and processing routines may include recognition of items in the real scene and comparisons with artifacts of the stored data" and that "Pattern recognition, image enhancement, feature subtraction, edge enhancement, etc., all can operate on the information of the real scene and of the data from the data base."
• Claim(s) potentially impacted:
  • § 102 — closest to claim 9/11's "comparing patterns" language, but still not anticipatory. Criticom's database is a scene/appearance database keyed by position‑and‑attitude sensors, and its pattern recognition is used for alignment/augmentation, not to derive position. US 7,324,070's claims require the position itself to be determined by matching the camera image against stored building topography, with no reliance on a position sensor. That distinction is the whole point of the patent (which criticizes sensor-based positioning as inaccurate and GPS as unusable indoors).
  • § 103 — the most conceptually dangerous combination reference. Combined with Ronzani (A1), its pattern-recognition/comparison teaching could be argued to render claims 9 and 11 obvious. This, not any single reference, is where invalidity risk would concentrate.

B2. US 6,833,811 B2 — "System and method for highly accurate real time tracking and location in three dimensions" — Harris Corporation

• Dates: filed 2002‑10‑07 (before the 2002‑12‑18 priority date → available under pre‑AIA § 102(e)); granted 2004‑12‑21.
• Description: Real‑time 3‑D tracking/location (per record).
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: No § 102 anticipation (it does not disclose image‑pattern matching against building topography). At most § 103 background on indoor/high‑accuracy tracking. Full text not retrieved; assessed from the record.

B3. US 6,456,261 B1 — "Head/helmet mounted passive and active infrared imaging system with/without parallax" — Evan Y. W. Zhang

• Dates: filed 1998‑11‑23; granted 2002‑09‑24.
• Description: Head/helmet‑mounted IR imaging (the exact hardware the patent's specification prefers).
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: No § 102 anticipation (no claim recites IR; no topology matching). § 103 background re: head‑mounted IR imaging. Full text not retrieved.

B4. US 6,476,391 B1 — "Infrared imaging system for advanced rescue vision system" — Evan Y. W. Zhang

• Dates: filed 1998‑11‑23; granted 2002‑11‑05.
• Description: IR imaging for rescue/firefighting visibility.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: No § 102 anticipation; § 103 background for the IR‑camera embodiment only. Full text not retrieved.

B5. GB 2 291 304 A — "Head-mountable display system" — Marconi GEC Ltd

• Dates: filed 1994‑07‑07; published 1996‑01‑17.
• Description: Head-mountable display system.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: Relevant only as background to the display limitations (claims 5/6, 15/16). No anticipation of the independents. Full text not retrieved.

B6. GB 8826550 D0 — "Image processing apparatus and methods" — Smiths Industries Plc

• Dates: application 1988‑11‑14; publication listed 1989‑05‑17.
• Description: Generic early image-processing apparatus/methods (per record). Note the identifier "GB8826550D0" is an application number in the record, not a granted-publication number.
• Claim(s) potentially impacted: None as § 102 (generic image processing predating the field; no topology/positioning). Possible § 103 background only. Full text not retrieved.

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3. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

Applying the correct standard — a single reference must disclose every element of the claim as arranged, with no gap — I found no cited reference that appears to anticipate claims 1, 9, or 11, because every one of them lacks at least the core limitation: determining the wearer's instantaneous position by pattern recognition that compares the recorded eye-level image against stored building-topography data. The cited references split the elements:

• the camera/display/head-worn-computer architecture → Ronzani (US 6,421,031) and DE 101 03 922 A1 / US 2002/0101568 A1;
• the database + pattern-comparison machinery → Criticom/Ellenby (US 5,815,411);
• the remote-monitoring/deployment-center link → Jacobsen (US 6,198,394);
• the IR-camera hardware → FLIR (US 6,255,650) and Zhang (US 6,456,261; US 6,476,391);
• head-worn display hardware → Marconi (GB 2 291 304 A);
• camera miniaturization/training background → OmniVision (US 6,704,044) and Flameco (US 5,846,085).

Most relevant prior art, ranked:

1. US 6,421,031 (Ronzani) — closest single reference; but its position comes from a GPS/position sensor, and building schematics are combined for display, not used to derive position by image matching. This is the reference to distinguish.
2. US 5,815,411 (Ellenby/Criticom) — closest on the pattern-recognition/comparison element; but keyed to position‑and‑attitude sensors and used for alignment, not position determination.
3. DE 101 03 922 A1 / US 2002/0101568 A1 (Physoptics/Eberl) — the acknowledged background art; the patent itself frames the invention over it.

If invalidity were argued, it would most plausibly be a § 103 combination of Ronzani + Criticom (+ Jacobsen for the deployment-center link) against claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 18 — not a § 102 anticipation by any single cited reference.

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4. Caveats (stated explicitly)

• I did not retrieve full texts for US 5,846,085, US 6,255,650, US 6,704,044, US 6,833,811, US 6,456,261, US 6,476,391, GB 2 291 304 A, or GB 8826550 D0 in this session. Their characterizations rest on the patent record's own titles/assignees/dates; any § 102/§ 103 conclusion for those references is provisional and should be verified against the documents.
• Direct USPTO source limitation: I did not open a live USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR page; the citation lists are as published on the granted patent's record (which mirrors USPTO data). Confirm the exact front-page citation set via USPTO PatentCenter (link on the record) before relying on it for a filing.
• The record's own legal-status entries conflict (a 2012 lapse for non-payment vs. a listed adjusted-expiration of 2024‑12‑28). This does not affect the § 102/§ 103 analysis, which depends only on the references' dates — all of which predate the 2002‑12‑18 priority date (or, for US 6,704,044, predate it as of its 2000‑06‑13 filing under § 102(e)).
• Pre-AIA vs. AIA: because the application was filed in 2003, I applied pre‑AIA §§ 102/103.

I'll ground the analysis by verifying what the key cited references actually disclose, since the obviousness reasoning depends on their content.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,324,070 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Prepared: April 26, 2026
Subject: U.S. 7,324,070 B2, "Device and process for monitoring the deployment of respirator users" (Jumpertz; Dräger Safety AG & Co. KGaA)
Effective priority date for art purposes: December 18, 2002 (DE 10259123); U.S. filing December 17, 2003
Governing law: Pre-AIA § 103 (application filed before March 16, 2013)

This section builds on the earlier Patent summary and Litigation summary and does not repeat them. Two cross-references matter here: (1) the summary already established that the patent lapsed for non-payment in 2012, so this obviousness analysis is prospective/invalidity-study only; and (2) the summary quoted the exact independent-claim language I rely on below. Where I flag a conflict with the earlier sections, I do so explicitly.

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1. Legal framework and the art window

I apply the Graham v. John Deere factors as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007):

1. Scope and content of the prior art;
2. Differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. Level of ordinary skill in the art; and
4. Secondary considerations (only if with a nexus).

Under KSR, a claim is obvious if (a) the elements are found in a single reference, or (b) a POSITA would have combined two or more references because of (i) a known design need or market pressure, (ii) an explicit or inherent teaching, suggestion, or motivation, or (iii) a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions." A claim can also be obvious where the combination was "obvious to try," where an element was a simple substitution of a known technique, or where there was "design incentive" to improve a similar device in the same way.

POSITA (my construction). A systems engineer with a bachelor's degree and roughly 2–4 years of experience in head-mounted display/thermal-imaging systems for first responders, familiar with image processing, basic pattern recognition, and building-information/GIS data. The field is highly interdisciplinary (optics + image processing + emergency-management informatics), so the hypothetical POSITA is charged with the combined knowledge of those subfields.

Critical art-status note. Several "Family Cites Families" references are later-published but earlier-filed, so they are § 102(e) art despite publication dates after December 18, 2002:

• US 6,833,811 (Harris) — filed Oct. 7, 2002 (US 10/265,757); published Dec. 21, 2004. Filed before the Dec. 18, 2002 priority date → § 102(e) art.
• US 6,704,044 (OmniVision) — filed June 13, 2000; granted Mar. 9, 2004 → § 102(e) art.

The rest of the cited art is classic § 102(b) art (Criticom 1998, Zhang 2002, Ronzani 2002, Jacobsen 2001, FLIR 2001, Marconi 1996, Smiths 1988).

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2. The cited prior art, categorized

Confidence caveat: I retrieved and verified the disclosure of Eberl, Criticom, Zhang (US 6,476,391), and Harris directly (URLs above). For Ronzani, FLIR, OmniVision, Jacobsen, and the two GB documents I am relying on the patent record's titles plus general field knowledge, not on retrieved full text — flagged as lower confidence wherever they carry weight.

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3. Element-by-element: claim 1 (device)

Assessment: Elements (a)–(e) are squarely present in Eberl; (a)/(b)/(c) are additionally redundant with Zhang/Ronzani/Marconi. The only materially contested element is (f), the image-vs-topography pattern-match to fix position.

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4. Element-by-element: claims 9 (process) and 11 (system)

Claim 9 adds the express step of "comparing patterns of said topography of the building with patterns of said recorded image signals." This is the mirror image of Eberl's pattern-recognition/data-bank disclosure ([0187], [0205]) read onto a building model (Harris). It is the single limitation that would bear the weight of any patentability argument.

Claim 11 is the broadest: position determination "by comparing patterns of said building topography data with patterns of said recorded image signals," with the image device "connected to a respirator or to a user of the respirator." Eberl already ties its camera/spectacle system to the wearer and expressly contemplates firefighter/helmet embodiments. Note also that claim 11's "input means for triggering the system" is broader than claim 1's "input means for receiving data" — a POSITA would read this on Eberl's activation button/microphone/bar-code trigger (Eberl discloses all three: "activation button," speech trigger, and bar-code interrogation).

Because claims 9 and 11 ring essentially the same disclosure as claim 1, the validity of all three independents rises or falls on element (f).

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5. Proposed § 103 combinations, with motivation

Combination A (primary): Eberl + Harris + Zhang

Structure:

• Eberl = head-mounted respirator-user system: camera, display, image processing, data bank, input (speech/bar-code), pattern recognition of field-of-view light against whereabouts data, and a mobile command center. It is the applicant's own admitted starting point (U.S. 7,324,070 background discusses DE 101 03 922 A1).
• Harris = supplies the building topology with fixed points (floor elevations, stairwells, elevators) and the position/level determination + dispatch to a deployment center.
• Zhang = supplies the infrared rescue-vision camera/display for smoke-filled environments (the specification's own preferred IR camera).

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Known problem + stated design need. U.S. 7,324,070 admits in its own background that the Eberl-type prior art "can record the position only inaccurately" and that GPS is "unsuitable for use within buildings." That admission is a textbook design incentive: a POSITA confronted with outdoor-only GPS and drift-prone inertial/laser sensors would look to indoor-referenced positioning.
2. Finite, predictable solutions. For indoor positioning in 2002 the field offered essentially three predictable options — radio/RF localization, inertial dead reckoning, and vision/landmark-based localization against a building model. Because two were known-deficient indoors (per the admitted art), the remaining option was "obvious to try."
3. Harris supplies the missing data structure. Harris expressly teaches storing a 3D building model with internal layout, floor elevations, stairwells, and elevators and correlating a tracked object's altitude to a building level — precisely the "building topography" of claims 7/17 and 1(e). A POSITA would combine Harris's building model with Eberl's wearable firefighter system because both target the same problem (locating responders inside multistory structures during an emergency).
4. Zhang fills the environment gap. Both Eberl and the patent prefer IR because it "delivers usable patterns even in a dark and smoke-filled atmosphere." Zhang is the on-point IR rescue-vision reference.
5. Same field, same problem, combined references. All three are firefighter/rescue systems; combining them is not "improper hindsight" but the ordinary recombination of a small, focused art.

Result: Every element of claims 1, 9, and 11 is disclosed or rendered obvious; dependent claims 7 and 17 (topology = stairs/columns/window openings) are directly met by Harris's floor/stairwell model, and claim 8/18 (transmit position + image to a deployment center) is met by Eberl's fire-department command center and Harris's dispatch function.

Combination B (backup, tighter on the crux limitation): Eberl + Criticom + Harris

Structure: Use Criticom for the express teaching of matching image features to a stored data store. Criticom discloses (i) a data store keyed to location holding "prerecorded data … corresponding to the real scene," (ii) an imaging means + computer comparing captured image features with stored artifacts, and (iii) an implementation explicitly discussed in a firefighter context. Harris supplies the building topography/level identifier.

Motivation: Criticom supplies the "compare real-scene items with stored data" step that claim 9 recites verbatim (recognition and comparison). Because Criticom's data store is keyed to scenes and Harris's is keyed to buildings/floors, a POSITA seeking accurate indoor positioning would substitute/adjoin a building model for Criticom's scene database — a simple substitution of a known data structure for a known purpose (KSR).

Combination C (dependent claims, largely single-reference)

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6. The contested limitation, and the strongest non-obviousness case

I want to be candid: element (f) — deriving the instantaneous position from the eye-level image pattern-matched against building topography — is where a validity challenge is most likely to fail and a patentee would most likely survive.

Patentee's best arguments:

1. Direction of inference. GPX/radiography-free references use position → imagery. Criticom, specifically, requires "position and attitude determining means" and uses position/attitude to select a data-store location — i.e., the inverse of the claimed flow. Harris likewise uses GPS. Combining them arguably teaches away from using imagery as the position source, because both assume the position source is already known and reliable — the very assumption U.S. 7,324,070 attacks.
2. The examiner allowed the claims. Claim 1/9/11 issued over Eberl, Zhang, Criticom, and Harris (all appear on the face of the patent as cited art). That is evidence, though not dispositive under KSR, that the examiner did not read Eberl's [0187] pattern-recognition passage as image-based localization.
3. No indoor image-to-model localization in the cited art. I did not find, in the references actually of record, an express teaching of the specific algorithm — simultaneous feature correspondence between a live IR frame and a stored building model to output absolute coordinates. (Robot-vision/SLAM-type localization existed in the wider 2002 literature, but that art is not cited and would require an expanded search.)

Why it nevertheless remains vulnerable:

• Eberl [0187] is a genuine teaching. It says the system "evaluates the captured field-of-view light with respect to the positioning information obtained via a pattern recognition that takes whereabouts data into consideration." On its face, that is position information obtained via pattern recognition — arguably the claimed step. A petitioner need only get this found as a disclosed alternative embodiment.
• Claim breadth cuts against the patentee. Claim 1's "means for determining … by pattern recognition of [the image] and [the topography data]" is a broad functional recitation. Under KSR, reciting the result (position from image+model) without claiming the algorithm does not rescue it from a reference that recognizes landmarks against map data.
• "Obvious to try" / finite solutions. Per the admitted art's criticism of sensor-based positioning, the POSITA had three options and two were known-poor indoors. KSR treats that as a strong obviousness posture.
• Harris may cut against patentee, not for it. Harris's multi-floor/stairwell model is more than a floorplan; the combination with Eberl yields exactly the claimed output (which floor, which room, front of/behind a wall) — the patent's stated advantage.

My bottom line on the crux: a well-constructed Office action or IPR petition built on Eberl in view of Harris and Zhang has a reasonable-to-good chance of invalidating claims 1, 9, and 11 under § 103, provided the petitioner persuasively develops Eberl [0187]/[0205] as teaching pattern recognition to obtain position. If a tribunal reads Eberl as using sensors for position and pattern recognition only for landmark identification, the patentee likely prevails on the independents. This is a genuine, close call, and I will not overstate it.

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7. Secondary considerations

There are effectively none available on this record, which further weakens the patentee:

• The patent lapsed for non-payment in 2012 (per the prior Litigation summary), so there is no evidence of commercial success, licensing, or copying tied to the claimed subject matter.
• No known litigation or licensing demand means no nexus evidence and no objective indicia to rebut the § 103 case.
• Cross-check / potential conflict: the earlier Patent summary noted the record is internally inconsistent (2012 lapse vs. 2024 "adjusted expiration"). Either way, no secondary-consideration evidence appears on the public record; the conflict does not change this analysis.

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8. Conclusion

Overall: Claims 1, 9, and 11 present a meritorious but not certain § 103 vulnerability centered on a single limitation; the dependent claims are considerably weaker. The strongest petition strategy is to lead with Eberl as the admitted prior art (it is unquestionably § 102(b) art and the applicant's own starting point), fortify the building-topography element with Harris US 6,833,811, and supply the infrared rescue-camera element with Zhang US 6,476,391/US 6,456,261. Notably, this analysis is academic in commercial terms because the patent expired for fee non-payment in 2012 and no enforcement is known.

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9. Explicit confidence notes

• High confidence in the claim language, priority/filing dates, and the content of Eberl (US 2002/0101568 A1 / DE 101 03 922 A1), Criticom (US 5,815,411 / EP 0 722 601), Zhang (US 6,476,391), and Harris (US 6,833,811), each of which I retrieved directly (URLs cited above).
• Medium confidence in the exact scope of Ronzani (US 6,421,031), FLIR (US 6,255,650), OmniVision (US 6,704,044), Jacobsen (US 6,198,394), Marconi (GB 2 291 304), and Smiths (GB 8826550) — I mapped these by title/known disclosure, not full text. They are secondary in my combinations and could be dropped without disturbing the analysis.
• Medium confidence on the legal conclusion. The KSR outcome turns on how Eberl's pattern-recognition passages ([0187], [0205]) are construed; I have flagged both readings rather than asserting one.
• No fabrication: I did not invent claim language, reference passages, or docket facts. Paragraph numbers attributed to Eberl are taken from the family specification as published (US 2002/0101568 A1 / US 8,686,923 / US 2008/0157946 text) and describe subject matter common to the DE priority document.