US 8775089

I'll run targeted searches for this patent number, including any litigation/docket activity.

Let me check specifically for any litigation or PTAB/Court of Appeals activity on this number.

US 8,775,089 B2 — Verification Summary

Bottom line up front: I found no litigation, PTAB/IPR, or Federal Circuit activity for US 8,775,089. I want to flag one near-miss I encountered: several PTAB documents in my search results discuss "the '877 patent," but those refer to US 10,250,877 (InterDigital, video coding) — a completely different patent. Do not conflate them. I also note that a companion patent in the same family, US 9,243,494, exists; it is a divisional of the same application, not the same patent.

Bibliographic Data (per the authoritative patent text)

Abstract (verbatim)

"In some embodiments, apparatus and systems, as well as methods, may operate to measure formation fluid and obtain data, the data having measurement levels that vary over a parameter. The data is grouped in one or more categories, each category having data falling within a range, and the grouped data is analyzed as a function of the parameter. In some embodiments, the grouped data is used to identify at least one fluid type of the formation fluid using the grouped data."

Plain-Language Overview of the Three Independent Claims

Claim 1 (method). A four-step method: (1) measure formation fluid in a borehole to obtain data whose measurement levels vary over a parameter; (2) group (bin) that data into categories, where each category holds data falling within a range (e.g., a density band); (3) analyze the grouped data as a function of the parameter — the claim specifically requires this to include analysis as a function of pump piston stroke position; and (4) identify at least one fluid type from that analysis. Dependent claims 2–11 add: plotting, time/amplitude analysis (cl. 3), volume analysis (cl. 4), density-based grouping (cl. 5), water/oil/gas ranges (cl. 6), selective sampling or exclusion (cl. 7), contamination/heterogeneity estimation via weighted volume fraction curves (cl. 8), heterogeneity characterization (cl. 9), and identification among at least three fluid types including water, gas, and oil (cl. 10–11).

Claim 12 (system). A downhole tool carrying a sensor that periodically measures a downhole fluid property over a parameter, plus a processor that (a) groups those measurements into categories each bounded by a range, (b) performs the grouping as a function of pump piston stroke position, and (c) identifies at least one fluid type from the grouped data. Dependent claim 13 places the processor in the downhole tool; claim 14 specifies the sensor is a density sensor.

Claim 15 (non-transitory computer-readable memory). A Beauregard-style claim: a non-transitory CRM storing instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to perform the same method as claim 1 (measure → group into ranged categories → analyze as a function of the parameter including pump piston stroke position → identify at least one fluid type). Dependent claim 16 adds characterization of formation-fluid heterogeneity.

Practical Note on Scope

The pump-piston-stroke-position limitation appears in the independent claims (1, 12, 15) and is what most tightly bounds the claim set as issued. The specification supports a materially broader disclosure — binning by time, volume, or tool/valve events, water/oil/gas binning, contamination estimation (including the ρ-based formula), and heterogeneity index — much of which surfaces in the dependent claims.

Uncertainty / Confidence

• High confidence on bibliographic data, abstract, and claim text — these come from the full authoritative patent text supplied.
• No evidence found of any district court, ITC, PTAB, or CAFC proceeding involving US 8,775,089. My searches were general web searches rather than direct queries into the USPTO PatentCenter and PACER/RECAP docket systems, so I cannot represent that this is an exhaustive litigation-clearance result. If a docket-level confirmation is needed, that should be run against USPTO PTAB (PTAB E2E) and PACER/RECAP directly.
• I made no attempt to correct or normalize any identifier; all numbers above are reproduced literally from the source.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8775089.

Let me try more targeted litigation database searches.

Litigation Search: US Patent 8,775,089

Bottom line: I found no litigation (no district court case, no ITC action, and no PTAB proceeding) involving US Patent 8,775,089.

What I searched

• General web searches for "8775089" combined with litigation, lawsuit, defendant, and docket terms.
• Targeted attempts at litigation aggregators (Unified Patents litigation caselist, RPX Insight / insight.rpxcorp.com, Docket Alarm, PACER-oriented search, Stanford NPE litigation database).
• Searches off the patent's assignee (Halliburton Energy Services) and inventors (Van Zuilekom, Proett, Kveton, Storm).

Note on search reliability: two of my queries did not complete (one aggregator query returned a "maximum steps" message and one returned no results), so I cannot claim exhaustive coverage of every paywalled docket database. However, no public source I retrieved—including Google Patents' own "Cited By" listings and family/litigation tabs—reflects any assertion of the '089 patent.

Why the "no results" finding is plausible

• Owner/practice: US 8,775,089 ("Apparatus and method for fluid property measurements") is owned by Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., a large operating company, not an NPE/PAE. Operating companies typically assert patents selectively, and this patent's family (including divisional US 9,243,494 B2) does not appear in any reported litigation.
• Nature of the patent: It claims a method of measuring formation fluid, binning sensor data by a parameter (e.g., pump piston stroke position), and identifying fluid type—plus a corresponding system and computer-readable memory claim. Method claims of this type are harder to detect/assert against tools and are frequently practiced internally by the patentee.
• The Halliburton oilfield litigation I did surface involves different patents, e.g.:
  • Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. v. Weatherford International Inc. (jury verdict / ~$35M damages reported Feb. 2012) — different Halliburton patents.
  • Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. v. U.S. Well Services, LLC, No. 6:22-cv-00905-ADA (W.D. Tex.) — hydraulic fracturing pump patents (e.g. U.S. 9,650,871), not the '089 patent.
  • Adelos, Inc. v. Halliburton Co. et al., No. CV-16-119-M-DLC (D. Mont.) — fiber-optic sensing / trade secret dispute, not the '089 patent.

None of these assert US 8,775,089.

Also checked: post-grant proceedings

No IPR, PGR, CBM, reissue, or reexamination involving US 8,775,089 appeared in my results. (The PTAB documents my searches surfaced—e.g., IPR2022-00055, IPR2022-00055-adjacent Unified Patents petitions, IPR2021-01539—concern unrelated patents such as the "MCOM IP" '508 patent, Ozmo Licensing's '991 patent, and Halliburton's '871 patent, respectively, not the '089 patent.)

Caveats and a recommendation

1. Statutory disclaimer / expiration context: The Google Patents record lists the patent as Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2031-07-12 and legal status noted as "an assumption and not a legal conclusion." This is status information, not litigation.
2. Confirm before relying on this: Because litigation databases are paywalled and my aggregator queries were incomplete, I recommend a direct confirmatory pull from:
   • PACER / CourtListener / RECAP for any district-court complaints naming the patent,
   • Unified Patents litigation portal, and
   • USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and Patent Center assignment records.
3. If you are evaluating freedom-to-operate or a licensing position, the absence of litigation does not mean the patent is not enforceable—it remains presumptively valid and unexpired (unless the maintenance-fee and expiration figures change).

No litigation is known involving US Patent 8,775,089 as of this search.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 8,775,089 B2. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured record supplied for this analysis returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming this patent — and my independent web searching found no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal touching the '089 patent either. Breakdown by status is therefore trivially: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

Defensive posture for a defendant: there is no PTAB "kill shot" to inherit, and no PTAB estoppel to exploit. All 16 claims — including independent claims 1, 12, and 15 with their pump-piston-stroke-position limitation — remain untested and presumptively valid. The absence of any AIA trial on a 2007-priority patent that has been on issue since 2014-07-08 is itself a signal: there is no public record of a prior challenger having built an invalidity case strong enough to file, let alone win. A defendant today would be the first mover at the Board, not the beneficiary of someone else's win.

Because there are no proceedings, the per-proceeding template below has no entries to populate. Instead I document the verification and the near-misses a careless search will surface.

No proceedings to itemize — and the near-misses that look like them

I could not fill in a single proceeding number for US 8,775,089 without fabricating it, so I have not. What follows is what my searches did return, flagged so it is not mistaken for activity on this patent.

Near-miss 1 — "the '089 patent" that is actually US 6,046,089

• IPR2017-02123 and IPR2017-02124, filed 2017-09-20, petitioner Renesas Electronics Corporation / Renesas Electronics America Inc., patent owner Lone Star Silicon Innovations LLC.
• Patent at issue: US 6,046,089 ("Selectively sized spacers") — a semiconductor patent, not Halliburton's '089. Patent Owner conceded judgment on claims 1 and 5 of the '046,089 in IPR2017-02124 (Paper 20), with claims 2 and 3 remaining challenged.
• Relevance to us: none. But the shorthand "'089" in PTAB papers is a common reason a keyword search will falsely flag this patent.

Near-miss 2 — "the '508 patent" confusion

• IPR2020-01426, Sage Products, LLC v. PureWick Corp., involving US 8,287,508 (urine collection). FWD 2022-02-14 held claims 1, 3–8, and 17–19 unpatentable.
• Also surfaced: a Corning fiber-optics IPR against a US 8,2xx,508-family patent. Neither is the '089.

Near-miss 3 — Halliburton IPRs where Halliburton is the petitioner, not the owner of '089

• A real-party-in-interest dispute between STC (Schlumberger Technology Corporation) and a Halliburton petitioner appears in IPR2017-01564, -01569 through -01574, -01576, and -01578, plus later-filed companions. In those cases Halliburton was attacking Schlumberger-owned patents, and the fight was over whether "Halliburton Co." had to be named an RPI.
• Relevance to us: none, except as a warning — searching "Halliburton" + "IPR" produces a large volume of noise in which Halliburton is either the aggressor or the owner of some other patent.

Near-miss 4 — recent Halliburton-owned patents under attack (but not this one)

• IPR2024-00990, Weatherford U.S., L.P. et al. v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. et al., filed 2024-05-30, patent US 11,333,007 (T.C. 3600), instituted 2024-12-13, FWD 2025-12-09 holding some challenged claims unpatentable and denying Patent Owner's motion to amend; followed by a limited remand, a Director Review request, and notices of appeal by both sides (2025-12-17 petitioner; 2026-02-10 patent owner), with Director Review denied 2026-04-20.
• IPR2021-01032 through -01039, -01065/01066, -01238, -01315/-01316, -01538/-01539, and IPR2022-00074, brought by Halliburton against U.S. Well Services patents (e.g., US 9,893,500). Plus a PGR in which Halliburton defended a fracking patent as patent-eligible (Feb. 2024).
• Relevance to us: none. These are the hydraulic-fracturing power/electric-pump families, a different technology center and a different patent portfolio segment. Nothing in the Weatherford/Halliburton assertion sets touches the formation-sampling portfolio.

Family check — the divisional

The '089 patent's own divisional, US 9,243,494 B2 (application 14/283,658, issued 2016-01-26, van Zuilekom et al., 6 claims), is likewise a Halliburton formation-sampling patent. No PTAB proceeding against it surfaced in my searching either. I flag that this is a web-search-only observation — I did not have an ODP pull for the '494 in this prompt, so treat that as unconfirmed.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of US 8,775,089 is UNTESTED: independent method claim 1 and its dependents 2–11; independent system claim 12 and its dependents 13–14; independent Beauregard-style non-transitory CRM claim 15 and its dependent 16. There are no canceled claims, no confirmed claims, and no adverse judgments. None of the 16 claims has been construed by the Board, so there is no PTAB claim-construction record to borrow for a district-court Phillips argument or a § 112 fight.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR was ever filed by anyone, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a blank slate. A defendant being asserted today may raise any invalidity ground, including grounds that would have been "reasonably could have raised" — because there is no earlier petitioner whose estoppel could attach, and no privity chain to inherit. Two ordinary constraints remain: (i) a first-filing petitioner's own one-year § 315(b) clock from service of the complaint, and (ii) § 325(d)/§ 323 discretion at the Board if the art is the same art already considered during prosecution. That second point matters here because the '089 was a national-stage case that drew a final rejection and an Advisory Action mailed 2013-12-30 before allowance — a prosecution record a petitioner should mine rather than re-serve. Notably, the art cited during prosecution was thin (US 4,763,730; 6,178,815; 6,218,662; 7,458,257; US 2004/000506; US 2005/0242807; US 2006/0101905; US 2006/0243047; GB 2407109 A; WO 01/51898 A1), so the field for fresh art is comparatively open.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner exists because no petitioner exists. The patent owner (Halliburton Energy Services, Inc.) has not had to defend this patent at the Board, and there is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents, RPX) anywhere in the chain — this is a large operating company's internal tooling method, not an NPE target. Compare the contrast with the same owner's fracturing portfolio, which has drawn dense multi-petition IPR campaigns from U.S. Well Services and Weatherford — evidence that sophisticated challengers will file against Halliburton when the commercial stakes justify it, and that they have not chosen to do so against the '089.

Timing note. Google Patents lists the patent as Active with an adjusted expiration of 2031-07-12, flagged by the source as an assumption, not a legal conclusion. If that date holds, the patent has roughly five more years of life — which means an IPR filing window is open now and a defendant has real incentive to move rather than wait the patent out.

Recommended next steps

1. Say it plainly in any opinion you write: there is no PTAB activity on US 8,775,089. No FWD to link, no claim to quote as canceled, no disposition to cite. The defensive story here is the absence of a Board record, and it should not be dressed up as anything else.
2. Do not rely on this as exhaustive without a docket-level pull. My searching was general web search; two aggregator queries were incomplete. If you are making a clearance or FTO call, confirm directly against USPTO PTAB E2E / the ODP API (proceeding search by patent number), the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, and the USPTO Patent Center assignment and reexamination records. The ex parte reexamination record in particular is not covered by the ODP AIA-trial list and I did not find one, but it should be checked as a separate category.
3. If you intend to file an IPR, the practical workstreams are: (a) mine the 12/673,686 prosecution history, including the 2013-12-30 Advisory Action and the reasons allowance was finally obtained, to see what the examiner already had in front of him; (b) focus on the pump-piston-stroke-position limitation that appears in all three independent claims (1, 12, 15) — it was apparently the point of novelty, and it is the place where a § 103 rationale must land, not on the generic binning disclosure; (c) remember the specification is broader than the claims (time/volume/valve-event binning, contamination estimation via the ρ_max/ρ_min relation, heterogeneity index), so a § 112 written-description attack on unclaimed subject matter is not a viable route. A § 112 attack must be against the claim language as issued — principally the antecedent-basis and definiteness of "measurement levels that vary over a parameter" and of the claimed grouping step.
4. Watch the divisional (US 9,243,494) — same specification, separate 6-claim set. A petition against the '089 alone leaves the '494 untouched, and that patent could be asserted in parallel. Any invalidity analysis for this family should cover both.

Confidence: high that no AIA trial proceeding is on file for US 8,775,089 (ODP structured list plus independent web searching agree). Moderate-to-high that no litigation or ex parte reexamination exists — see the earlier sections for the caveats on paywalled docket sources.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8,775,089.

Found a reel/frame reference. Let me dig deeper into the assignment record.

I'll research the prior-art citations of US 8,775,089 B2.

I found the front-page reference list. Let me confirm the complete "References Cited" section (including any foreign documents) and pull details on each reference.

Let me confirm the front-page citation list from the patent itself and gather details on each reference.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,775,089 B2 ("Apparatus and method for fluid property measurements")

Methodology and confidence statement (read first)

Two things you should know before using the list below:

1. The authoritative full text you supplied does not contain the patent's own "Patent Citations" (backward-citation) section. The Google Patents capture provided includes only the forward "Cited By" listings (e.g., US 2014/0131037 A1; US 10,156,656 B2; US 10,781,649 B2; US 11,686,168 B2). This is a gap I want to flag explicitly so it isn't mistaken for "the patent cites nothing." The backward-citation list below is therefore drawn from the Justia mirror of the granted patent's "Referenced Cited" section (https://patents.justia.com/patent/8775089), and cross-checked against the front page of the sibling divisional US 9,243,494 B2 as returned by search.
2. My attempts to independently verify the subject matter of several individual references did not complete in this session (one query returned zero results; three returned a step-limit message). Where I could not verify, I say so rather than describe the reference from memory. Treat those entries as bibliographic-only.

Everything below is reproduced literally from the sources; I have not normalized or "corrected" any identifier.

1. References cited on the face of US 8,775,089 (backward citations)

U.S. Patent Documents (8 documents):

Additional U.S. documents appearing on the sibling divisional US 9,243,494 B2 front page but NOT on the '089 list as mirrored above (flagged, §9 below):

• US 2006/0101905 A1 (Bittleston et al.) — May 2006 — cited by examiner, class 73/152.24
• US 2006/0243047 A1 (Terabayashi et al.) — Nov. 2006 — cited by examiner, class 73/152.55

No foreign patent documents or non-patent literature appear in the mirrored "Referenced Cited" list for '089. That is itself notable for a Halliburton oilfield case and is consistent with an Information Disclosure Statement drawn narrowly from U.S. oilfield-sampling art.

2. Legal framework for the § 102 analysis

The '089 application was filed May 9, 2008 (PCT/US2008/006045) and claims priority to provisional 60/965,351, filed Aug. 20, 2007. Because the application was filed before March 16, 2013, pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. Critical dates:

• § 102(b) statutory bar: publications/patents more than one year before the U.S. filing date → on or before May 9, 2007 (or Aug. 20, 2006 if the provisional date is relied upon for that subject matter).
• § 102(a): known or published by others before the invention date (≈ Aug. 20, 2007).
• § 102(e): U.S. patents/publications of applications filed before the '089 invention date.

Applying that to the eight references: #1–#6 are clean § 102(b) art (all published ≥1 year before the '089 filing). #7 (Feb. 15, 2007) and #8 (May 31, 2007) fall inside the grace period and are therefore § 102(a) art subject to swearing-behind/swearing-behind-by-priority. #4 (Pop, issued Dec. 2, 2008) issued after the '089 priority date; its anticipatory value depends entirely on its underlying application's filing date and any pre-Aug. 2007 pre-grant publication — i.e., it is § 102(e)/§ 102(a) art only if perfected, never § 102(b).

3. Per-reference detail and potential § 102 mapping

Reference 1 — US 4,763,730 A (Suzuki), Aug. 16, 1988

• Status: § 102(b) statutory bar. Filed/issued well before the '089 priority date.
• Description: I could not verify this reference's subject matter in this session (the targeted query returned no usable results). Bibliographic data only.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Based solely on its presence in this art and vintage, it is cited as general background apparatus art. If it is a borehole/fluid density-measuring apparatus, it would bear most directly on claims 12 and 14 (system / density sensor) and on the "measuring … and obtaining data" step of claims 1 and 15 — but only as apparatus context; nothing in the record suggests it discloses the range-binning or pump-stroke-position limitations. Anticipation of any independent claim: unlikely on the present record.

Reference 2 — US 6,178,815 B1 (Felling, Morris, Butsch; Schlumberger Technology Corp.), filed Jul. 30, 1998, issued Jan. 30, 2001

• Title: "Method to improve the quality of a formation fluid sample"
• Status: § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Description (verified): Determines, in real time, the composition of fluid flowing into a downhole tool from the formation, using an optical fluid analyzer measuring optical density as the fluid flows through the tool. An optical-density spectrum is generated and compared to a composite spectrum built from a database of known fluid samples; the composite is adjusted until deviations are minimized. The sampling process begins when the fluid composition shows a desirable fractional hydrocarbon component. The spec expressly addresses the pump-out process, changing mixture composition, and diverting fluid to a sample chamber upon stabilization; the tool includes a pump-out module 5 drawing fluid through a flowline.
• Most relevant reference on the face of the patent. Potential § 102 bearing:
  • Claim 1 / Claim 15 — arguably discloses "measuring formation fluid … obtaining data" and "identifying at least one fluid type" (oil/water/gas fractions) if the optical-density-spectrum matching is treated as equivalent to "grouping the data in categories each having data falling within a range." This is the weakest link for anticipation — Felling's claim language is spectral matching, not range-binning of sensor levels, and it does not recite analysis "as a function of a pump piston stroke position," which is a required limitation of issued claims 1, 12, and 15.
  • Claim 5 (grouping by density) — Felling measures optical density; a § 102 argument would require the optical density to be read as "density" and the composite-spectrum fit as "grouping … according to density." Contested, not clean.
  • Claim 7 (selectively sampling based on the data) — strongly disclosed (the entire point of Felling).
  • Claim 2 (plotting/analysis) and Claim 8 (contamination estimation) — relevant art.
• Bottom line: Strongest § 103 combination anchor and a plausible § 102 reference against dependent claim 7-type subject matter; not a clean anticipation of independent claim 1, 12, or 15 because of the pump-piston-stroke-position and range-binning limitations.

Reference 3 — US 6,218,662 B1 (Tchakarov et al.), Apr. 17, 2001

• Status: § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Description: Not verified in this session (query returned no results). Bibliographic data only.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Too early to characterize. It sits in the same 2001 vintage as Felling and is presumably oilfield fluid-property measurement art; its likely bearing is on the sensor / measurement-step elements of claims 1, 12, and 15. Flagged as unverified — do not rely on this entry without pulling the document.

Reference 4 — US 7,458,257 B2 (Pop et al.), issued Dec. 2, 2008

• Status: Not § 102(b) (issued after the '089 priority date). Qualifies as § 102(e) art only if its underlying U.S. application was filed before Aug. 20, 2007, or as § 102(a) art if a pre-grant publication predates that date. Its date is the reason the applicant/examiner could cite it at all as "prior art" over a 2007-priority case — an important nuance to verify against the application filing date.
• Description: Not verified in this session. Pop is a prolific Schlumberger downhole-fluid author (cf. US 2004/0045706 A1, Pop et al., class 166/250.07, referenced in US 9,297,255).
• Potential § 102 relevance: Presumed to relate to downhole fluid property measurement/characterization; would bear on claims 1, 5, 12, and 15. Because it post-dates the '089 priority date, treat any § 102 assertion as § 102(e) only, and only after confirming the parent filing date.

Reference 5 — US 2004/0000636 A1 (Mullins et al.), Jan. 1, 2004

• Status: § 102(b) statutory bar (published >3½ years before priority).
• Description: Not verified in this session. Mullins et al. is Schlumberger optical downhole-fluid-analysis art.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Presumed to be a downhole fluid characterization / optical fluid analysis publication. Likely bearing on the "measuring … and obtaining data" step and the "identifying at least one fluid type" step of claims 1 / 15, and on claim 5 (density-type grouping) if the fluid-property basis is density or optical density. Not anticipated: no known teaching of subsetting sensor data into ranged bins as a function of pump piston stroke position. Flagged as unverified.

Reference 6 — US 2005/0242807 A1 (Freedman), Nov. 3, 2005

• Status: § 102(b) statutory bar.
• Description: Not verified in this session. Freedman is associated with Schlumberger NMR-based downhole fluid analysis.
• Potential § 102 relevance: The '089 specification itself names NMR properties among the measurable parameters and expressly states that "Density-based contamination compares favorably to other sensor measurements such as NMR T1, capacitance, and resistivity sensors using this trend analysis approach." A Freedman NMR publication is therefore most relevant to claim 8 (contamination estimation) and to the alternative-parameter breadth of claims 1 / 3 / 15, not to the pump-stroke-position limitation. Flagged as unverified.

Reference 7 — US 2007/0035736 A1 (Vannuffelen et al.), Feb. 15, 2007

• Status: § 102(a) (published inside the one-year grace period; before the Aug. 20, 2007 priority date). Not a statutory bar.
• Description: Not verified in this session.
• Potential § 102 relevance: A Feb. 2007 downhole fluid-property publication is chronologically the closest-cited reference after Felling. Presumed bearing on claims 1, 12, and 15 (measurement and fluid-type identification). Because it is only § 102(a) art, the applicant could in principle have sworn behind it with the Aug. 20, 2007 provisional date; its real bite is therefore as § 103 art, not as an anticipation reference. Flagged as unverified.

Reference 8 — US 2007/0119244 A1 (Goodwin et al.), May 31, 2007

• Status: § 102(a) (published ~3 months before the '089 priority date). Not a statutory bar.
• Description: Not verified in this session.
• Potential § 102 relevance: Likely a downhole fluid-analysis publication; potential bearing on claims 1, 12, and 15. Same caveat as #7 — § 102(a) only, and the narrow three-month gap makes it the most likely candidate for a priority-date contest. Flagged as unverified.

4. Additional art from the sibling divisional US 9,243,494 B2 — flagged

These two were marked "cited by examiner" on the '494 front page (asterisks in the original) and do not appear in the mirrored '089 "Referenced Cited" list. Because '089 and '494 share the same specification and priority, they are equally applicable to '089:

• US 2006/0101905 A1 (Bittleston et al.), May 2006 — class 73/152.24 (measuring/testing of borehole/well fluids). § 102(b) as to '089 (published >1 yr before the May 2008 filing).
• US 2006/0243047 A1 (Terabayashi et al.), Nov. 2006 — class 73/152.55. § 102(b) as to '089.

Potential § 102 relevance: Both are examiner-identified art in the same classification (fluid property measurement during sampling), and either could bear on claims 1, 5, 12, 14, and 15 (measurement of a downhole fluid property, density sensing, contamination/sampling logic). Their presence in the divisional but (apparently) not the parent is a discrepancy worth resolving by pulling the parent's actual IDS/Form 892 from USPTO PatentCenter.

5. What is NOT prior art — explicitly

The forward citations ("Cited By") associated with the '089 family are not prior art to '089 and must not be used in a § 102 analysis. For the record, they include: US 2013/0020074 A1 (Baker Hughes); WO 2013/155125 A1; US 2014/0017092 A1; US 8,682,586 B1 (Selman); US 2014/0131037 A1 (Schlumberger); US 9,105,434 B2; US 9,169,727 B2; US 9,244,494 B2 (the divisional itself — same family, not art); US 9,334,729 B2; US 9,347,314 B2; US 9,521,836 B2; and the Baker Hughes densitometer family (US 10,156,656; US 10,781,649; US 11,686,168).

6. Overall assessment — most relevant prior art, ranked

Key substantive conclusion on anticipation

On the present record, I do not see a single cited reference that anticipates independent claim 1, 12, or 15. Every one of those independent claims requires (i) grouping measurement levels into categories each bounded by a range, and (ii) analysis "as a function of a pump piston stroke position." The cited art (Felling in particular) discloses real-time fluid-composition measurement and sampling, but its logic is spectral matching / stabilization, not range-binning of sensor levels keyed to pump-stroke phase. That pump-stroke-position limitation is what the '089 claims were narrowed around (and it recurs verbatim in claims 12 and 15), so a § 102 attack would have to find it expressly in a reference. The references are, however, credible § 103 combination material — e.g., Felling (real-time composition + sampling) in view of a pump-stroke-referenced sampling tool.

7. Caveats you should carry forward

• Not exhaustive / not fully verified. Three verification queries failed with a step-limit message and one returned zero results. Entries marked "not verified" above are bibliographic only; pull each document before relying on any § 102 assertion. Do not treat my assumed subject-matter descriptions for references 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 as findings.
• Source gap to resolve. The supplied Google Patents text omits the patent's own "Patent Citations" section, so the backward list here rests on the Justia mirror plus the '494 divisional front page. Confirm against the actual front page of the US 8,775,089 PDF and the Form 892 (Notice of References Cited) in USPTO PatentCenter. The 2004/0000636 vs. "2004/000506" discrepancy between the two mirrors looks like OCR noise, but verify.
• Verify the Pop date question. US 7,458,257 B2 issued Dec. 2, 2008 — after the '089 priority date. Establish its application filing date and any pre-grant publication date before asserting it as § 102 art.
• Flagged carry-over from earlier sections: the previously flagged "'877 patent" PTAB false-positive (that is US 10,250,877, InterDigital) remains a non-issue here, and US 9,243,494 is the divisional, not the same patent. Both are stated consistently above.
• No § 102(e)-style art beyond Pop has been identified; if a broader prior-art search (not limited to the face citations) is wanted, the 2006–2007 Schlumberger/Baker Hughes downhole-fluid-analysis window is where additional § 102(a) art would most likely be found.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent before building the obviousness analysis. Let me run several searches in parallel.

I have the actual "References Cited" list from the family (divisional US 9,243,494). Let me pull details on the key cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,775,089 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Preliminary flags (read first)

Before the analysis, two discrepancies between the task instruction and the authoritative record must be flagged:

(a) The fetched page contains no "Prior Art" (backward-citation) section. The authoritative Google Patents text supplied for US 8,775,089 contains only two citation tables:

• "Cited By (4)" — US 2014/0131037 A1 (Schlumberger, priority 2012‑11‑14), US 10,156,656 B2, US 10,781,649 B2, US 11,686,168 B2 (all Baker Hughes, priority 2015‑11‑06 and 2015‑11‑12).
• "Families Citing this family (27)" — earliest priority among them is 2010‑09‑10 (US 9,528,372).

Every one of these post-dates the '089 priority date of 2007‑08‑20. They are forward citations and are legally incapable of being § 102/§ 103 prior art against the '089 patent. The page also carries the Google Patents fields "Prior art keywords: fluid / data / grouped data / recited / parameter" — that is an auto-generated keyword index, not a prior-art listing. So the premise "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page" cannot be satisfied from the supplied text.

(b) I have substituted the closest authoritative proxy. Because the divisional sibling US 9,243,494 B2 (application 14/283,658, filed 2014‑05‑21, "Division of application No. 12/673,686 … now Pat. No. 8,775,089") reproduces the same specification and carries the same examiner-cited reference list, I am using the "References Cited" table printed on that document as the de facto '089 IDS. I flag explicitly that this is a proxy: the '089's own front page may contain a slightly different list (the divisional table is marked "(Continued)," so references beyond those visible may exist). I did not auto-correct any number; all patent numbers below are reproduced literally.

1. Governing legal standard

• Priority date: 2007‑08‑20 (US provisional 60/965,351). Application filed: 2008‑05‑09 (PCT/US2008/006045); national stage 12/673,686.
• Because the application was filed before 2013‑03‑16, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs. Prior art therefore arises under pre‑AIA § 102(a), (b), (e), and (f). A reference must have a date before 2007‑08‑20 (or before the 2008‑05‑09 filing for § 102(e)/(f) art) to qualify.
• Framework: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of claims; differences from prior art; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations). KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a combination is obvious where the elements are known, the improvement is "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," or the field presents "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions." In re Kahn / KSR also permit reliance on "design incentives and other market forces."

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a person with a B.S. in petroleum, mechanical, or electrical engineering (or physics) and approximately 2–5 years of experience in downhole formation testing / downhole fluid analysis, or an M.S. with less experience and equivalent exposure to wireline/LWD sampling tools, flowline sensors, and pump-out data processing. This is the level used in Halliburton/Schlumberger IPR practice for wireline-sampling patents of this family.

2. Claim scope (from the authoritative text)

Three independent claims. The narrowing limitation that most tightly bounds the set is the requirement in each independent claim that the analysis be performed "as a function of a pump piston stroke position."

Observation on prosecution posture: The "pump piston stroke position" language in all three independents is the classic signature of an amendment made to traverse art that disclosed time- or volume-indexed grouping. That makes the indexing parameter the decisive battleground for § 103, and it is where I focus.

3. Prior art available against the 2007‑08‑20 date

3A. References from the family's own cited list (confirmed to exist)

Confidence note: I verified the Bittleston content directly from the patent PDF and the Terabayashi title/abstract from a FAMPAT family sheet and a Questel listing. I did not retrieve full text for Felling, Tchakarov, Suzuki, Pop, Mullins 2004/0000506, or Freedman 2005/0242807 before hitting a search-step limit, so their subject-matter descriptions above are from the assignee/family metadata and general knowledge and should be verified before being used in a formal § 103 ground. I will not represent otherwise.

3B. Additional pre‑2007 art located by search (not necessarily in the IDS)

3C. References that are NOT prior art (flag to avoid misuse)

US 2014/0131037 A1; US 10,156,656 B2; US 10,781,649 B2; US 11,686,168 B2 (the "Cited By" set); US 9,733,389 B2 (Schlumberger multi-sensor contamination monitoring, priority 2012); US 2013/0075088 A1 (Schlumberger "Single Pump Focused Sampling"); US 10,539,015 B2; US 2013/0020074 A1 (Baker Hughes "filtering data influenced by a downhole pump," priority 2011); and the '089's own WO 2009/025688 A1 (pub. 2009‑02‑26) and US 2011/0048700 A1 (pub. 2011‑03‑03). All post‑date the priority date and/or are the applicant's own work. The Baker Hughes and later Schlumberger documents are nonetheless useful to show that, after 2007, the industry treated "index sensor data to the downhole pump cycle" as a routine refinement — which cuts against any argument that the '089's pump-stroke limitation was a leap.

4. Element-by-element mapping — independent claim 1

5. Element-by-element mapping — independent claim 12

Claim 15 tracks claim 1 exactly (memory claim, In re Beauregard).

6. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Bittleston in view of Schroer; optionally further in view of Terabayashi

Primary: US 2006/0101905 A1 (Bittleston) / US 7,565,835 B2.
Secondary: US 6,274,865 B1 (Schroer et al.); US 2006/0243047 A1 (Terabayashi et al.).

Rationale. Bittleston supplies every structural element of claims 12/15 (downhole tool; flowline sensors/analyzers; pump and piston in the sampling flow line; sample chambers; valve-controlled sampling) and the acquisition of sensor data from the sampled fluid. Schroer supplies the fluid-type/contamination identification step that claims 1(d)/12(d) require. Terabayashi supplies the teaching of indexing the sensed parameter to the displacer's continuous travel, which supplies the pump-piston-stroke-position limitation.

Motivation to combine. Both are Schlumberger sampling/analysis patents in the same field of endeavor, aimed at the same problem (obtain a representative, low-contamination formation-fluid sample and know, in real time, what is flowing). Bittleston already carries the pump, the piston, and the flowline sensors; a skilled artisan seeking to decide when to open the sample-chamber valve has both the reason and the ready capability to record, from the tool's own telemetry, where in the pump stroke each sensor reading was taken. That is a "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" (KSR), not an inventive leap.

Ground 2 — Terabayashi in view of Schroer and/or Mullins

Primary: US 2006/0243047 A1 (Terabayashi).
Secondary: US 6,274,865 B1 (Schroer); US 6,476,384 B1 / US 5,939,717 A (Mullins).

Rationale. Terabayashi already discloses the core of the '089's insight — continuously varying the fluid's pressure/displacement state while sensing a fluid parameter, generating a parameter-dependent data series. Schroer/Mullins teach that such series are used to identify fluid type and quantify contamination. Combining them yields claim 1.

Motivation. Terabayashi's own continuous-variation sensing creates the need for a parameter axis against which to plot the readings; the pump piston (or displacement piston) is the natural, available axis. Schlumberger's contemporaneous OCM art (Schroer) proves the industry was already extracting fluid-type/contamination information from sensor traces. KSR: where a technique is used to improve one property (here, resolving fluid type from noisy multiphase readings), it is obvious to apply it to the known family of downhole analysis tools.

Ground 3 — Sampling tool (US 6,659,177 / Bittleston) + binning teaching (US 7,432,500) + fluid-ID (Schroer/Mullins)

Rationale. This ground isolates the two "soft" limitations:

• "grouping … each category having data falling within a range" is met by the known logging technique of binning density/porosity measurements into defined intervals indexed to a tool parameter (US 7,432,500) — which is exactly "grouping measurements into categories by density range," applied to a flowline density signal instead of a borehole-wall density signal. Transferring a known binning algorithm from the formation-density-logging context to a flowline-density context is an obvious application — same data type (density), same goal (classify a physical state), predictable result.
• "identifying at least one fluid type" is met by OCM art (Schroer US 6,274,865; Mullins US 6,476,384).

Motivation / rationale for the transfer. KSR "same field of endeavor" and "familiar element" rationales both apply: the artisan is a person of skill in downhole measurements generally, density-binning was a stock technique in the downhole measurement toolbox, and there is an express design incentive to reuse it because the '089's own background concedes that simple averaging of erratic multiphase readings "often fails to accurately identify the fluid type and levels of contamination."

Dependent claims

Every dependent claim is a conventional refinement once claim 1 is found obvious:

• Claim 5 (density) / Claim 14 (density sensor): vibrating-tube/flowline density sensing was standard in Schlumberger LFA/CFA tools and is the very sensor the '089 uses.
• Claims 2–4 (plotting; time/amplitude; volume): mere presentation/recast of the same data on a different abscissa — Hsu's OCM workflow expressly recasts time-based data to pumpout-volume-based data.
• Claims 6, 10–11 (water/oil/gas ranges, ≥3 fluid types): the '089 itself calls water/oil/gas/mud coloration "industry standard"; OCM art already discriminated gas/oil/water.
• Claim 7 (selective sampling/exclusion): US 6,659,177 and Bittleston both teach valves and multiple sample chambers filled at different fluid phases.
• Claims 8, 9, 16 (contamination, heterogeneity, weighted volume fraction curves): contamination-by-density is straight from Schroer US 6,274,865's OCM approach; the '089's own formula C = (ρmix − ρmin)/(ρmax − ρmin) is a textbook linear mixing model.
• Claim 13 (processor in the tool): a design choice between downhole and surface processing, both known (KSR — "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions").

7. The strongest non-obviousness counterarguments (and my assessment)

An honest § 103 analysis must state where the patentee has a real rebuttal, because the '089 is presumptively valid.

1. The "pump piston stroke position" limitation in the independents. If the examiner's art indexed only by time or cumulative volume (e.g., Hsu-style time→volume conversion), then adding piston-stroke indexing could be argued to be a specific, non-obvious narrowing. Assessment: this is the patentee's best argument, but it is weak against Bittleston/Terabayashi, which disclose pump and piston structure in the flow path and continuous displacement-indexed sensing. It would be defeated by any pre‑2007 reference that correlates sensor readings to piston position, and I note the post-2007 Baker Hughes document US 2013/0020074 A1 ("filtering data influenced by a downhole pump") confirms that the industry very quickly treated pump-cycle indexing as routine.

2. Unexpected result. The specification states the resistivity sensor's erratic behavior "was previously dismissed as an unreliable sensor measurement," and that applying the binning method produced "a surprising trend correlation." That is a bona fide "unexpected results" argument (and a faint "teaching away" argument). Assessment: KSR cautions against over-weighting; the "surprise" is a discovery of usefulness of data already collected, not a new structure or an unpredictable physical result. Still, if the patentee can show the prior art affirmatively taught that resistivity data during pump-out was noise, that argument has real legs.

3. Secondary considerations. I found no evidence of licensing, industry praise, or copying tied to the '089, and no litigation establishing nexus. Note: a third-party site (patentleaderboard.com) lists an "Approx Value" of $21,511,000 for the '089 — this is an algorithmic third-party estimate, not evidence of commercial success and not probative of secondary considerations. I would not rely on it.

8. Conclusion and confidence

Bottom line. US 8,775,089 is vulnerable to a § 103(a) challenge on the independent claims and highly vulnerable on all dependent claims, provided the challenger can produce pre‑2007‑08‑20 art that indexes flowline sensor data to the pump/piston stroke (or an equivalent displacement parameter). The combination of (i) a downhole sampling tool with an in-flowline pump/piston and flowline sensors — Bittleston US 2006/0101905 / US 7,565,835, or US 6,659,177 — with (ii) continuous displacement-indexed fluid-parameter sensing — Terabayashi US 2006/0243047 — and (iii) flowline sensor-based fluid-type/contamination identification — Schroer US 6,274,865 and Mullins US 6,476,384 / US 5,939,717 — supplies every element of claims 1, 12, and 15. Under KSR, the combination is a predictable use of known elements in the same field to solve a problem the art itself had already identified (the '089 background concedes that "average of the data often fails to accurately identify the fluid type and levels of contamination").

Confidence levels (stated explicitly, per the operating rules):

• High on the legal framework, the claim construction, and the characterization of the "Cited By" and "Families Citing" tables as non-prior-art.
• High that no backward-citation section exists in the fetched page (the premise of the task is unmet and I have flagged it).
• Moderate–high on the Bittleston mapping — I read the reference's own PDF/abstract directly.
• Moderate on Terabayashi (abstract- and family-sheet-level only; not the full text) and on Schroer/Mullins (metadata + established reputation for OCM).
• Low–moderate on the specific subject matter of Felling US 6,178,815, Tchakarov US 6,218,662, Suzuki US 4,763,730, Pop US 7,458,257, Mullins US 2004/0000506, and Freedman US 2005/0242807 — I did not retrieve full text and my descriptions should be verified before being used in a formal obviousness ground. My search budget was exhausted before those queries returned.

Recommended next steps before relying on any ground: (1) pull the full prosecution file history of 12/673,686 to see exactly which reference(s) the "pump piston stroke position" amendment traversed — that tells you whether the limitation is a genuine point of novelty or a narrowing of convenience; (2) obtain the complete "References Cited" front page of the '089 itself (not the divisional proxy); and (3) retrieve full texts of US 2006/0243047 and US 6,274,865, since those two carry the weight of the strongest grounds.