US 9760186

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Let me dig deeper on the claims and any 2026 CAFC litigation.

Let me retrieve the actual claim text for US 9,760,186 specifically (avoiding confusion with the sibling '978 patent).

Preliminary scope note

I ran targeted searches against USPTO/PTAB document repositories and general docket sources. Two important caveats up front:

1. Sibling-patent confusion. US 9,760,186 B2 sits in a family with closely related CyWee/CM HK patents — notably US 8,552,978 B2 ("Method for Compensating Rotations of a 3D Pointing Device," app. 13/176,771) and US 8,441,438 B2 (app. 12/943,934). They share a common specification and near-identical figures (e.g., rotation sensor 342 / accelerometer 344 / magnetometer 345 in FIG. 4). Most of the litigation and PTAB material returned by search concerns '978, not '186. I have kept these separate below and have not attributed '978 claim language to '186.
2. No 2026 CAFC docket found. See the litigation section — I could not locate any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming 9,760,186.

Bibliographic summary — US 9,760,186 B2

Source (authoritative for this summary): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9760186B2](/patent/US9760186B2)/en

Noted discrepancies: Unified Patents lists priority date 2010‑01‑05, application date 2011‑03‑27 and grant date 2017‑09‑11 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-9760186-B2). These appear to be one-day offsets (likely time-zone/derivation artifacts). I have used the Google Patents figures (2010‑01‑06 / 2011‑03‑28 / 2017‑09‑12) as primary.

Abstract (verbatim)

"An electronic device utilizing a nine-axis motion sensor module, capable of accurately outputting a resultant deviation including deviation angles in a 3D reference frame is provided. The present invention provides a novel comparison and compensation to accurately obtain a resultant deviation including deviation angles of the electronic device under the presence of external and/or internal interferences including the ones caused by undesirable electromagnetic fields and the ones associated with undesirable external forces and axial accelerations. The output of the nine-axis motion sensor module of the present invention including a rotation sensor, an accelerometer and a magnetometer can be advantageously obtained and compensated with a comparison comparing different states of the motion sensor module such that an updated state associated with the output and the resultant deviation angles of the nine-axis motion sensor module are preferably obtained in an absolute manner with the undesirable external interferences being effectively excluded."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Important uncertainty flag: The full text I retrieved for 9,760,186 contains the abstract, description and figures, but does not include the verbatim claim set. I therefore cannot quote or number '186's independent claims with authority. What follows is derived from (a) the specification's stated aspects (authoritative text above) and (b) the claim structure that this family is known to use — it is a characterization, not a verbatim reproduction.

The specification frames the invention in recurring "aspects," which typically map to the independent claims:

A. Device claim (apparatus). An electronic device (e.g., 3D pointing device, smartphone, navigation equipment) comprising:

• a nine-axis motion sensor module on a PCB within a housing — a rotation sensor (gyroscope) generating a first signal set of angular velocities ωx, ωy, ωz; an accelerometer generating a second signal set of axial accelerations Ax, Ay, Az; and a magnetometer generating a third signal set of magnetism Mx, My, Mz, each about/along the three orthogonal axes XP, YP, ZP of a spatial reference frame; and
• a processing and transmitting module (data transmitting unit + computing processor) that applies a comparison/update program to obtain an updated state from a previous state and a measured state, and thereby outputs a resultant deviation including yaw, pitch and roll angles — preferably in an absolute (not merely relative) manner and with undesirable external interferences excluded.

B. Method claim — obtaining the resultant deviation. A method (performed by a hardware processor) for obtaining a resulting deviation including resultant angles in a spatial reference frame of a 3D pointing device using a nine-axis motion sensor module, comprising the steps:

1. obtaining a previous state (a first quaternion, potentially initialized by an initial-value set) from angular velocities at a previous time T−1;
2. obtaining a current state (a second quaternion) from measured angular velocities ωx, ωy, ωz at current time T;
3. obtaining a measured state from measured axial accelerations Ax, Ay, Az at time T plus predicted axial accelerations Ax′, Ay′, Az′ computed from the current state (and, in the magnetometer-based embodiment, measured/predicted magnetism Mx, My, Mz / Mx′, My′, Mz′);
4. comparing current state with measured state (via a data-association/probability model, equations (5)–(11) in the specification) to obtain an updated state (a third quaternion); and
5. converting the updated state into the resultant angles (yaw, pitch, roll) in the spatial reference frame, whereby undesirable external forces (decoupled from gravity) and/or undesirable electromagnetic interference are excluded.

C. Method claim — mapping to a display. A method for mapping the deviation angles from the spatial frame onto a display frame of a display having a predetermined screen size, comprising obtaining boundary information of the display frame by calculating a predefined sensitivity input (e.g., screen size/width) and performing angle-and-distance translation based on the deviation angles and the boundary information (specification equations (15)–(17); target point P computed from yaw angle θ and sensitivity δ).

D. Multi-stage update variants (FIGS. 10–12). Additional independent-method subject matter is directed to a two-stage update: a first updated state (third quaternion) that excludes undesirable axial accelerations, followed by a second updated state (fourth quaternion) using measured vs. predicted yaw angle derived from the magnetometer, thereby excluding undesirable magnetism — with a first and second data-association model, each testing the comparison against a predetermined value/range and taking a "Yes"/"No" route accordingly.

Dependent-claim themes visible in the description include: MEMS-type sensors; a resonating mass with Coriolis-effect detection; the device being a mouse, game pad, smartphone, tablet or navigation device; an external processor (FIG. 5) communicating via WLAN/Bluetooth/USB; and a built-in integrated display with a transparent cover area (FIG. 6).

Litigation / CAFC 2026 status

• No 2026 CAFC docket for 9,760,186 was found. My searches of Federal Circuit–oriented docket material returned no 2026 appeal naming this patent. Absence of results is not proof of absence, but I have no authoritative basis to report a 2026 CAFC proceeding.
• Known family litigation: CyWee Group Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:17-cv-00140 (E.D. Tex.). That case primarily concerned the '438 and '978 patents. Notably, the court denied Samsung's motion for summary judgment of § 101 ineligibility on those patents (Nov. 7, 2018). Sources: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--17-cv-00140/ and https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.[174337](/patent/174337)/
• PTAB activity: IPR2018-01257 (Google LLC v. Cywee Group Ltd.) challenged claims 10 and 12 of US 8,552,978 — again the sibling, not '186. USPTO PTAB filings do reference 9,760,186 as the parent of continuation US 10,852,846 ("15611970 is a CON of 13072794 03/28/2011 PAT 9760186"), so '186 sits at the root of a continuation chain that has seen AIA review activity.

Explicit uncertainty statements

• I do not have verbatim claim text for US 9,760,186 B2 and therefore have not quoted claim language or asserted specific claim numbers (e.g., "claim 1," "claim 10") for it. The claim overview above is a specification-based characterization.
• Family members' documents are heavily intermingled online; some search results labeled "the '978 patent" describe a specification identical to '186's (same FIG. 4 reference numerals), reflecting a shared disclosure rather than an error — but I have not transferred '978 claim language onto '186.
• Priority/application/grant dates differ by one day between Google Patents and Unified Patents; I treated the Google Patents record as authoritative per your instruction.
• I found no evidence of any 2026 CAFC docket involving 9,760,186; treat this as "not found," not as a definitive negative.

I'll research litigation involving US 9760186. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper with more specific searches.

Let me search with the patent number formatted in the standard litigation style.

Summary of Findings — Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 9,760,186

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation that specifically asserts U.S. Patent No. 9,760,186 ("the '186 patent"). I did not find a complaint, docket entry, PTAB proceeding, ITC filing, or reported decision naming the '186 patent as an asserted patent. I am reporting this as an absence of evidence in the sources searched, not as proof that no such case exists. (Note: my search session hit its step limit before I could exhaustively check every litigation database, so treat this as a good-faith negative result rather than a certified clearance.)

Per your instruction, I have not substituted results for similar-looking numbers. The related cases below involve different patents and are provided only as context.

What the authoritative patent record itself shows

The Google Patents record for US 9,760,186 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9760186/en) carries a "Family has litigation" flag with a "First worldwide family litigation filed" entry and a link to a Darts-ip family page:

• Family identifier: Darts-ip family 44277259
• URL: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=44277259...

This flag indicates that some member of the '186 patent's worldwide family has been litigated. Critically, it does not identify which family member was asserted, and it is not attributable to the '186 patent itself on the face of the record. The '186 patent is a continuation-in-part of US 12/943,934 (now US 8,441,438, "the '438 patent"), which claims priority to US 61/292,558 (filed Jan. 6, 2010). Other family members include US 8,552,978 ("the '978 patent"), US 10,852,846, and US 10,275,038.

A separate ownership history shown on the record is not litigation:

• Original assignee: CyWee Group Ltd. → CyWeeMotion HK Limited (2016) → CM HK Limited (2017, 2024)
• Current assignee: CM HK Ltd. / CM HK Limited

Related litigation in the same patent family (context only — these patents are the '438 and '978, NOT the '186)

These cases were found during the search and are relevant because they arise from the same priority family and the same assignee (CyWee Group Ltd. / CM HK Limited). None of them, as reflected in the documents retrieved, names the '186 patent as an asserted patent.

Sources include the Federal Circuit opinion in CyWee Group Ltd. v. Google LLC, Nos. 2020-1565/-1567 (https://cafc.whda.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Full-Opinion.pdf), the E.D. Tex. claim-construction filing in CyWee v. Samsung (Case 2:17-cv-00140), the S.D. Cal. docket excerpt in CyWee v. LG (3:17-cv-01102), the W.D. Wash. filings in CyWee v. HTC (2:17-cv-00932), and the 2024 N.D. Cal. declaratory-judgment complaint (3:24-cv-06567).

Important caveat: The Samsung declaratory-judgment action (3:24-cv-06567) repeatedly refers to unspecified "Patents-in-Suit." I could not confirm from the retrieved material whether US 9,760,186 is among them. If the '186 patent is the patent underlying the Darts-ip "family has litigation" flag, that Samsung action (or an unlocated assertion) would be the most likely candidate — but that is an inference, not a confirmed fact.

Suggested next steps to confirm a definitive answer

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — check the "Litigation" tab on https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-9760186-B2 (the patent record itself displays only bibliographic and family data in the version retrieved; the litigations tab must be opened directly).
2. Darts-ip family 44277259 — the link on the Google Patents page identifies the specific family litigation; the free summary may name the asserted family member.
3. PACER / CourtListener — search the exact string "9,760,186" as a full-text docket query (CourtListener RECAP full-text search covers many district-court filings).
4. USPTO PTAB — confirm whether the '186 patent has ever been subject to an IPR/PGR (the PTAB results surfaced in my searches concerned other patents, including one referencing the '186 only as a parent-application lineage reference, not as a challenged patent).
5. ITC EDIS — check for Section 337 investigations involving CyWee/CM HK and the '186 patent.

If you'd like, I can draft targeted full-text docket queries (e.g., for PACER/CourtListener, Darts-ip, or ITC EDIS) that will definitively resolve whether the '186 patent itself was asserted in the 2024 Samsung matter or elsewhere.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" result against live sources before concluding.

Let me drill specifically into proceedings naming the '186 patent itself.

PTAB Proceedings — US 9,760,186 ("Electronic device for use in motion detection and method for obtaining resultant deviation thereof")

Bottom line up front: there are no AIA trial proceedings on the '186 patent. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) returns zero IPRs, PGRs, or CBMs naming US 9,760,186. My independent web searches confirm the same — every CyWee PTAB filing I can locate was directed at the sibling patents ('438 and '978), not at '186. I found no proceeding number, FWD, or appeal that names '186 as the challenged patent, and I will not manufacture one.

Proceedings overview

Total proceedings on US 9,760,186: 0 (0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials). The patent is therefore completely untested at the PTAB — a defendant facing assertion of '186 cannot lean on any prior IPR record, but also faces no adverse estoppel and no PTAB-invalidated claim set. The defensive posture is neither "hardened by surviving IPRs" nor "clobbered by them"; it is green field. The critical context is that this patent sits in a family whose earlier members were entirely invalidated in IPR — so the family's own PTAB history is the roadmap, even though '186 itself was never pulled into the fight.

Note on the family relationship (from the '186 file wrapper): US 9,760,186 (App. 13/072,794) is a CIP of US 8,441,438 (App. 12/943,934). The later-asserted patents US 10,852,846 and US 11,698,687 are continuations of App. 15/611,970, which in turn is a CON of 13/072,794'186. So '186 is a common ancestor of the currently-asserted '846/'687 patents. That makes the '438/'978 IPR outcomes directly relevant to '186, because they share a specification and much of the same prior art.

Related-but-distinct family proceedings (NOT on '186 — flagged for context only)

These involve different patent numbers. Include them in your diligence, but do not represent them as proceedings on '186.

IPR2018-01258 — Google LLC (joined by ZTE, Samsung, LG, Huawei) v. CyWee Group Ltd. (US 8,441,438, not '186)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2018 (petition); institution decision 2018-12-11
• Status: Final Written Decision issued 2020-01-09 — all challenged claims unpatentable
• Judge panel: Patrick M. Boucher, Kamran Jivani, Christopher L. Ogden (APJs); opinion authored by Ogden
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness of claims 1 and 3–5, each combination relying on Bachmann (U.S. Pat. No. 7,089,148)
• Institution decision: Instituted on all grounds and claims (Paper 8, 2018-12-11). ZTE, Samsung, LG, and the Huawei entities were later joined (Papers 35–38).
• Final Written Decision: "Petitioner has shown, by a preponderance of the evidence … that claims 1 and 3–5 of the '438 patent are unpatentable." The Board also denied CyWee's motion to amend (contingent proposed claims 20, 21 unpatentable) and denied the First and Second Motions to Terminate (real-party-in-interest and Appointments Clause challenges). FWD link
• Appeal: Affirmed by the Federal Circuit in CyWee Group Ltd. v. Google LLC, No. 2020-1565 (decided 2021-03-16; Prost, C.J., Taranto, Chen). The court affirmed the Board's RPI finding (non-appealable under § 314(d)), the Appointments Clause ruling, and the analogous-art finding on Bachmann. CyWee filed for en banc rehearing (2021-04-04); denied 2021-06-03; mandate issued 2021-06-10. CAFC opinion
• Defensive value (for the family, not '186): establishes that the shared CyWee sensor-fusion specification is vulnerable to a Bachmann-anchored obviousness case. That art remains a viable starting point against '186's claims.

IPR2018-01257 — Google LLC v. CyWee Group Ltd. (US 8,552,978, not '186)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Status: Instituted 2018-12-11; FWD 2020-01-09 — claims 10 and 12 unpatentable
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness of claims 10 and 12 over combinations relying on Bachmann
• Institution decision: instituted on all grounds and claims under § 314(a). Institution Decision
• Final Written Decision: '978 claims 10 and 12 held unpatentable; proposed contingent amended claims 19, 20 also held unpatentable.
• Appeal: Affirmed in the same CAFC opinion, No. 2020-1565 (2021-03-16).
• Defensive value: notable because the '978 patent was the nine-axis member of the family — i.e., Bachmann-based art defeated nine-axis claims, the same sensor architecture '186 claims. That undercuts any argument that '186's nine-axis/magnetometer claims are categorically safe from the family's prior art.

IPR2019-00143 — ZTE (USA), Inc. (joined by LG Electronics) v. CyWee Group Ltd. (US 8,441,438, not '186)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2018 (petition; CyWee sued ZTE more than a year earlier, but ZTE was the original petitioner here, not time-barred)
• Status: FWD 2021-02-17 — all challenged claims unpatentable
• Petition grounds: claims 1, 4, 5, 14–17, 19 challenged
• Final Written Decision: all challenged claims held unpatentable; CyWee's revised motion to amend (proposed claims 20–24) denied. LG, an otherwise § 315(b)-time-barred party joined as "understudy," was permitted to oppose the revised motion to amend once ZTE stopped meaningfully opposing it.
• Appeal: CyWee Group Ltd. v. ZTE (USA), Inc., No. 2021-1855 (Fed. Cir. 2024-01-18) — affirmed, holding the Board did not err in allowing joined-party LG to oppose CyWee's revised motion to amend and that the § 315(c)/Facebook limits do not bar new arguments in opposition to a revised motion to amend. Federal Circuit disposition
• Defensive value: the bread-and-butter '438 claim set (including independent claim 14, the claim CyWee asserted in the 2017 campaign) is dead and affirmed.

Strategic summary

Claim status on '186 — untested across the board. Every claim of US 9,760,186 is UNTESTED: none canceled, none sustained, none construed by the PTAB. Contrast this with the family: the '438 patent's asserted claims (1, 3–5 and 14–17, 19) and the '978 patent's asserted claims (10, 12) were canceled and the cancellations affirmed by the Federal Circuit (2021-03-16 and 2024-01-18). For '186 specifically, a defendant has no PTAB adjudication to cite for or against. The patent carries an adjusted expiration of 2031-05-05 and is currently held by CM HK Limited (Active – Reinstated), following assignment chains CyWee Group → CyweeMotion HK → CM HK.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed on '186, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty for this patent. No petitioner is barred from raising any ground on '186. Conversely, the successful '438/'978 petitioners (Google, ZTE, Samsung, LG, Huawei) have no estoppel problem attacking '186 — they never challenged it. The practical significance: the Bachmann reference (U.S. 7,089,148) and the other IPR art are fully available against '186, and the Board's and Federal Circuit's findings that CyWee's sensor-fusion claims were obvious over Bachmann are persuasive (though non-binding) ammunition for a § 103 challenge or an Alice/§ 112 attack in district court.

Pattern signals. Same-petitioner repetition is present at the family level, not at '186: Google filed parallel IPRs on two family patents (2018-01257 and 2018-01258), ZTE filed a third (IPR2019-00143), and Samsung, LG, and the Huawei entities joined. CyWee litigated PTAB appeals aggressively — including an Appointments Clause / Arthrex strategy and an en banc petition — and lost. There is no Unified Patents or defensive-aggregator IPR on record for '186; the Unified Patents portal hosts a '186 profile page but shows no PTAB challenge, consistent with "no proceedings." The real-world follow-on is a second assertion wave: CM HK Ltd. sued Samsung in E.D. Tex. (2:24-cv-00880, filed 2024-10-31, asserting '846 and '687), and Samsung filed a DJ action in N.D. Cal. (4:24-cv-06567, filed 2024-09-18). '186 is the ancestor of '846/'687 — so even though '186 itself is unasserted and untested, the family is under active attack and the asset is being shuffled between CyWee and CM HK.

Recommended next steps

1. Treat "no PTAB activity" as the finding, and say so in any opinion. The ODP block and independent searches agree: '186 has never been before the PTAB. Do not cite '438/'978 proceedings as if they were proceedings on '186 — cite them only as family-level prior-art/obviousness evidence.
2. Build your invalidity case on the family's own record. The Bachmann-anchored obviousness theory that killed '438 and '978 is the strongest available § 103 roadmap, and (unlike the siblings) it has never been run against '186 — so you preserve full § 315(a)/(e) flexibility if you choose to file an IPR. Verify whether your client is time-barred under § 315(b) before filing.
3. File within the § 315(b) window. If your client has already been served with a complaint asserting '186 (or an ancestor/descendant claim you intend to challenge), the one-year clock is running. Because '186 is an untested CIP with different claim scope than the invalidated siblings, build a claim chart against '186's actual claims — do not assume the '438/'978 FWDs map over.
4. Monitor the live Samsung/CM HK cases for claim construction of the family's disputed limitations (e.g., "without using any derivatives of the measured angular velocities," "utilizing a comparison to compare the first signal set with the second signal set"), which recur across the family and will inform how a court would read '186.
5. Diligence the ownership chain. CM HK Limited is the current assignee; CyWee's 2024 conduct (representing that "CM HK owns all CyWee patents other than the patents in the 2017 action") and the N.D. Cal. alter-ego litigation (Samsung v. CM HK, CourtListener) matter for standing, real-party-in-interest, and who actually has authority to assert or settle on '186.

Caveat: I confirmed the absence of '186 proceedings against the ODP structured block and multiple web sources. If you have a specific proceeding number in hand that you believe names '186, I did not locate it and would need that number to verify — I have not inferred or invented any proceeding identifiers.

I'll start by gathering the authoritative assignment records and cross-references for US 9760186.

Strong signals emerging. Let me pin down reel/frame numbers, correspondents, and the litigation/corporate backdrop.

US 9,760,186 B2 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Data-quality note up front: I was able to reconstruct the chain from Google Patents legal events, PTAB/ITC filings, and RPX/Unified litigation records, and the chain is well documented. However, I was not able to pull the USPTO Assignment Center reel/frame stamps or the correspondent of record for the individual recordings within this session's tool budget. Two reel/frame pairs marked [UNVERIFIED] below must be confirmed directly at the Assignment Center; I have not guessed them, per the no-fabrication rule. The Google Patents page also flags the family as "Family has litigation" with a Darts-IP entry.

Inventors

All three conceived the claims at CyWee Group Ltd., 3F, No. 28, Lane 128, Jing Ye Road, Taipei (per CyWee's own complaint in CyWee Group Ltd. v. Samsung, E.D. Tex. 2:17-cv-00140). CyWee was formed in 2007 as an ITRI spinoff.

Unusual pattern — inverted. The classic red flag (all inventors exiting the original assignee within ~12 months, presaging a fire-sale) is not present. Instead the opposite: inventor Shun-Nan Liou remains the sole director of the current assignee, CM HK Limited, i.e. the inventors' control persisted through the entire chain and through the assertion campaign. This is an inventor-controlled assertion family, not an abandoned one.

Original assignee

CyWee Group Ltd. (Taipei, Taiwan) — a 2007 ITRI spinoff in MEMS motion-sensing / sensor-fusion technology.

⚠️ Record discrepancy to flag: The Google Patents bibliographic header lists "CM HK Ltd" as both original and current assignee. The recorded 2011-03-28 assignment event, however, names CYWEE GROUP LTD. as assignee from the inventors (assignors: Li, Liou, Ye). Treat CyWee Group Ltd. as the original assignee; the header appears to be a Google normalization/derivation artifact.

• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Partly, via its affiliate. CyWee itself reduced a motion-sensing solution to practice in the "JIL Game Phone Project" (JIL Phone) by Sept. 25, 2009, which it asserted practiced the '438 claims. The commercial product in this family is CyWeeMotion's "Sensor Fusion Hub" software, licensed to HTC, Lenovo, ZTE, Gionee, Meizu (advertised licensee list). CyWee Group proper, post-2016, functions as a holding/assertion entity.
• Primary line of business: MEMS motion sensing / 3D pointer & sensor-fusion technology; today primarily patent holding and enforcement.
• Current status: Operating as a holding/assertion entity; not dissolved. Still an active plaintiff (e.g., HTC litigation in W.D. Wash. was live into 2024). No bankruptcy filing located. Current assignee of record is CM HK Limited (HK).

Assignment timeline

*(Events below are taken from the Google Patents "Legal Events" record for US 9,760,186 plus the underlying agreements described in the Samsung/PTAB papers. Conveyance types are as characterized by those sources; reel/frame and correspondent are flagged where I could not verify them.)*

• 2011-03-28 (executed) / recorded 2011-03-28 — Reel [UNVERIFIED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Zhou Ye; Chin-Lung Li; Shun-Nan Liou
  • Assignee: CyWee Group Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — could not verify; check Assignment Center.
  • Context: Founder/inventor assignment of the application to the startup (filed same day as app 13/072,794).

• 2016-03-28 agreement (Google records the assignment event at 2016-03-08) — Reel [UNVERIFIED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (executed as part of a "Patent Assignment and License Agreement", patent-for-assignment "free of charge")
  • Assignor: CyWee Group Limited
  • Assignee: CyWeeMotion HK Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate restructuring with license-back inside the CyWee family — not a third-party sale. Note the recorded event date (2016-03-08) precedes the agreement date (2016-03-28); flag for verification, this is sometimes a re-recording/correction pattern.

• 2017-03-29 (recorded) — Reel [UNVERIFIED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: CyWeeMotion HK Limited
  • Assignee: CM HK Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Intra-family transfer into the CM HK vehicle (CM HK and CyWeeMotion Ltd. share sole director Shun-Nan Liou).

• 2024-09-25 (executed) / recorded 2024-09-25 — Reel [UNVERIFIED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (the "September 25, 2024 Assignment")
  • Assignor: CyWeeMotion HK Limited
  • Assignee: CM HK Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Ownership cleanup tied to the new CM HK enforcement campaign; executed by CyWee Group, CyWeeMotion and CM HK together; Annex A expressly lists the Asserted Patents.

• 2024-09-26 (executed) / recorded 2024-09-26 — Reel [UNVERIFIED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (curative)
  • Assignor: CyWee Group Ltd.
  • Assignee: CM HK Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Curative assignment to fix broken chain of title. CyWee Group had failed to convey the two asserted patents to CyWeeMotion (see Samsung Interrogatory No. 9), so CM HK took directly from CyWee Group the day after the first 2024 assignment.

Bottom line on gaps: There are recorded post-issuance assignments (five events, 2011 → 2024), so this is not a "no-records" patent. But I could not retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondents — those fields are the most probative for the "repeat correspondent" test and must be pulled from the Assignment Center.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9760186
    2010 : Priority from provisional 61292558
    2011 : Filed by CyWee Group Ltd
         : Inventors assign to CyWee Group Ltd
    2016 : Patent Assignment and License Agreement
         : CyWee Group to CyWeeMotion HK Ltd
    2017 : CyWeeMotion HK to CM HK Limited
    2024 : CyWeeMotion HK to CM HK Limited
         : CyWee Group to CM HK Limited
         : CM HK sues Samsung

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (moderate).
Patent moved out of the operating/original assignee into CM HK Limited, a single-purpose enforcement vehicle. Concrete evidence: CM HK's sole director is Shun-Nan Liou (a named inventor), CM HK is described as holding no products — only "efforts to license and enforce patents" and an offer to sell the patents ("per Mr. Shey, the CM HK Patents are available for purchase…"); and CM HK exists to file the 2024 Samsung suit. Supporting entries: 2024-09-25 and 2024-09-26 assignments. Caveat: I could not verify a registered-agent address or single-member DE/TX formation, so this rests on the interrogatory record, not on naming.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (strong).
RPX Insight classifies CyWee Group's campaigns as NPE:

• CyWee Group Ltd. v. LG Electronics — 3:17-cv-01102 (S.D. Cal.) "NPE DC"
• CyWee Group, Ltd. v. Google LLC — 1:18-cv-00571 (D. Del.) "NPE DC"
• CyWee Group Ltd v. Huawei — 2:17-cv-00495 (E.D. Tex.) "NPE DC"

CyWee Group is a high-frequency plaintiff against Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, ZTE, Google, and HTC on the same patent family ('438 and '978). Unified Patents maintains a portal entry for US-9760186 itself. CyWee is not on the Acacia/Marathon/IV/Wi-LAN name lists, but it is squarely an RPX-surfaced NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any of the five recordings. This is the key open item — the whole CyWee/CM HK shell series may well have been filed by one firm. Not callable either way without the Assignment Center data.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT (moderate).
Two consecutive intra-family hops CyWee Group → CyWeeMotion (2016-03-08/03-28) → CM HK (2017-03-29), then a same-week pair in 2024 (Sept 25 and Sept 26) — two assignments into the same assignee one day apart. These assignees share a principal: Shun-Nan Liou is sole director of CM HK, CM Investment Inc., and CyWeeMotion Ltd., and CyWee Group was a shareholder of CyWeeMotion (71.67% → 39.28%). That is common control, not arm's-length dealing.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — PRESENT (strong).
Assignments to CM HK executed 2024-09-25 / 2024-09-26, immediately preceding CM HK's new Samsung suit (negotiation papers reference "answer or otherwise respond to the new [CM HK] suit within 45 days of service or November 1, 2024"). That is a transfer-to-asserter arranged within weeks of filing, matching the classic "clean standing record" pattern.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 or judicial sale located for CyWee Group, CyWeeMotion, or CM HK.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. The operating/licensing affiliate (CyWeeMotion, Sensor Fusion Hub licensed to HTC/Lenovo/ZTE/Gionee/Meizu) sits downstream of the asserting entity rather than upstream — the standard privateering direction is inverted (parent asserts, sub operates). HTC did plead patent exhaustion premised on licensed STM sensor hubs and CyWeeMotion's own licensee marketing, and CyWee Group later sued CyWeeMotion (W.D. Wash.) in a family ownership/replevin fight. That is intra-family litigation, not classic privateering — but the CyWee/CM HK structure does assert on the family's commercial behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. The Unified Patents listing is a threat-intelligence tag on the patent for members, not ownership.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals and two supporting signals converge. Strong (1): RPX Insight classifies CyWee Group's assertion campaigns as NPE across at least three cases (LG 3:17-cv-01102; Google 1:18-cv-00571; Huawei 2:17-cv-00495), and Unified Patents tracks US-9760186 — a high-frequency plaintiff asserting one family against Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, ZTE, Google and HTC. Strong (2): pre-litigation transfer — the 2024-09-25 and 2024-09-26 assignments into CM HK Limited were executed immediately before CM HK's new Samsung suit (Nov. 1, 2024 response deadline), a transfer-to-asserter arrangement. Supporting: a single-purpose enforcement assignee whose sole director is inventor Shun-Nan Liou (shell-entity signal), and cascading intra-family transfers under common control (software signal). The honest caveat is that this is a hybrid family — affiliate CyWeeMotion genuinely licensed sensor-fusion software to HTC, Lenovo and ZTE — so "NPE" describes the current CM HK enforcement apex, not the absence of any real technology.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search 9760186), and https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ — to capture the reel/frame and, critically, the correspondent of record for the 2011, 2016, 2017, 2024-09-25 and 2024-09-26 recordings, which would let me convert signal #3 from "insufficient data" to a finding.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 9,760,186 across USPTO and related patent databases.

I found the key references list. Let me gather details on each cited reference to provide full citations and descriptions.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,760,186 B2

Scope, sources, and a necessary caveat

This section builds on the bibliographic and specification analysis already produced. Two points from that work govern everything below:

1. I still do not have the granted claim set verbatim. The retrieved full text of US 9,760,186 contains the abstract, description, and figure list but not the issued claims. The pre-grant publication US 2011/0175806 A1 (same application, 13/072,794) does expose claim text (Justia: "13. The electronic device of claim 1…", "14. The electronic device of claim 1…", "15. A method for obtaining a resultant deviation…"), which indicates the application carried 15 claims — apparatus claim 1 and method claim 15. I use that as a characterization of claim structure, flagged as such; the granted claims may differ. Claims 1 and 15 are treated below as the independent apparatus/method claims, consistent with the earlier claim overview.

2. The "prior art" asked about here is the front-page citation list (the examiner/applicant-cited references, printed under "References Cited"). This is a different set from the specification's narrative prior art (the Liberty patents are both cited on the front page and discussed in the text). Where the two overlap I say so.

Source hierarchy used: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9760186B2](/patent/US9760186B2)/en) > Justia "Referenced Cited" for '186 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9760186](/patent/9760186)) > Unified Patents ("Patent Art (16) / Non-Patent Literature (1)": https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-9760186-B2).

A. The front-page citation list for US 9,760,186 B2

Justia's "Referenced Cited" and Unified's "Patent Art (16) + NPL (1)" agree on sixteen U.S. patent references and one non-patent reference. No foreign patent documents are listed on the '186 front page in the sources retrieved. (Google Patents shows a slightly different count — "Citations (12)" and a separate group — reflecting its own grouping of grants vs. publications; the 16-item Justia/Unified list is used here as the cross-validated set.)

B. Reference-by-reference: citation, date, description, claim relevance

Group 1 — Gyration "gyroscopic pointer" line (the oldest art)

1. US 5,138,154 — "Shaft Angle Encoder with Rotating Off-Axis Interference Pattern"

• Inventor: Steven P. Hotelling; assignee Gyration Inc.; filed/app. priority 1990-04-03; granted 1992-08-11.
• Description: electro-optical shaft-angle encoder for a two-degree-of-freedom gyroscope suspended in orthogonal gimbals in a hand-held cursor-control device; measures inner-gimbal rotation. (Abstract and spec retrieved via https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e2/4b/b9/b6d9747a7f40cb/US5138154.pdf ; bibliographic data at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[5138154](/patent/5138154)-A)
• §102 relevance: discloses only a rotation-angle sensing mechanism — it maps to the "rotation sensor" element of claim 1, and nothing else. It contains no accelerometer, no magnetometer, and no state-comparison/quaternion update. It cannot anticipate claim 1 or claim 15 in whole; §103 element only.

2. US 5,440,326 — "Gyroscopic Pointer"

• Inventor: Thomas J. Quinn; assignee Gyration, Inc.; filed 1990-03-21; granted 1995-08-08.
• Description: hand-held vertical gyroscope as a cursor-control device; electro-optical shaft encoders convert controller orientation into cursor x-y motion; pitch and roll transformed into x-y; a second (horizontal) gyroscope provides yaw → z. (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/57/c5/92/9f6ff4ff250d35/US5440326.pdf)
• §102 relevance: discloses detecting orientation of a hand-held device and translating it to a display. This is background to the "mapping" concept. No accelerometer-based tilt compensation, no magnetometer, no absolute angle output. No anticipation; §103 background/mapping art. Relevant, at most, to the display-mapping method concepts.

3. US 5,898,421 — "Gyroscopic Pointer and Method"

• Inventor: Thomas J. Quinn; assignee Gyration, Inc.; continuation of the '326 chain; filed 1996-05-07; granted 1999-04-27.
• Description: method/device claims for moving a displayed object on a computer display in response to pitch/yaw rotations of an inertial gyroscopic input device; translational cursor movement without rotating the object. (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5898421](/patent/5898421).html)
• §102 relevance: like the '326, directed to rotation → cursor translation. No nine-axis sensing, no accelerometer/magnetometer fusion, no quaternion state comparison. No anticipation; §103 background.

Group 2 — Hillcrest / Liberty family (the closest prior art, expressly discussed in the '186 specification)

The '186 description singles out "the prior arts by Liberty (U.S. Pat. No. 7,158,118, U.S. Pat. No. 7,262,760 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,414,611)" and calls them a 5-axis solution (two gyros ω_Y, ω_Z + accelerometers Ax, Ay, Az) that "may not output deviation angles… in a 3D reference frame" and "cannot accurately… obtain movements… while being subject to undesirable interferences." That characterization is the patentee's own, and it frames these references as the primary §103 starting point, not as §102 anticipations.

5. US 7,158,118 B2 — "3D Pointing Devices with Orientation Compensation and Improved Usability"

• Inventor: Matthew G. Liberty; assignee Hillcrest Laboratories, Inc.; filed 2005-05-02 (app. 11/119,719); granted 2007-01-02.
• Description: 3D pointing device with a first and second rotational sensor plus an accelerometer; a processing unit converts outputs from the device body frame to a user/inertial frame to remove tilt effects, then determines cursor x/y data. (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8a/42/82/84b76cba9d586f/US7158118.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7158118B2](/patent/US7158118B2)/en)

6. US 7,236,156 B2 — Liberty et al. — granted 2007-06-26 (Hillcrest). (Title not independently re-verified this session; it appears in the Liberty/Hillcrest pointing-device portfolio.)

7. US 7,239,301 B2 — Liberty et al. — granted 2007-07-03 (Hillcrest). Same portfolio.

8. US 7,262,760 B2 — "3D Pointing Devices with Orientation Compensation and Improved Usability" — Liberty; granted 2007-08-28. (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7c/d1/ee/47a4e6607a1945/[US7262760B2](/patent/US7262760B2).pdf)

9. US 7,414,611 B2 — Liberty — granted 2008-08-19 (Hillcrest). Expressly named in the '186 specification as a 5-axis compensation reference.

10. US 7,489,298 B2 — "3D Pointing Devices and Methods" — Liberty, Simpkins, Hunleth, Turner, Gritton; filed 2007-06-20; granted 2009-02-10. Handheld device with at least one sensor whose detected motion is mapped to an output (cursor). (https://wiki.golden.com/wiki/US_Patent_7489298_3D_pointing_devices_and_methods-VW6MKBV)

11. US 7,535,456 B2 — Liberty et al. — granted 2009-05-19 (Hillcrest). Same portfolio.

• §102 relevance (entire Liberty group): These references disclose a 3D pointing device with rotational sensor(s) + an accelerometer + a processing unit that compensates orientation and maps motion to a cursor. That covers part of claim 1's preamble and the "rotation sensor / accelerometer / computing processor" elements, and much of method claim 15's detection-and-mapping concept. Critically, they do not disclose (a) a three-axis magnetometer / third signal set (Mx, My, Mz), (b) the nine-axis module as a whole, or (c) the quaternion-based previous-state/current-state/measured-state comparison with data association that the '186 claims require. Under §102 each claim element must appear in a single reference — so these do not anticipate claim 1 or claim 15. They are the strongest §103 references, and the specification's own "5-axis vs. nine-axis" distinction is the patentee's non-anticipation argument.

Group 3 — Remaining cited references (verified only at the bibliographic level)

4. US 6,957,156 B2 — Jo — granted 2005-10-18. Cite as: U.S. Pat. No. 6,957,156 B2 (inventor Jo), Oct. 18, 2005. Exact title and assignee were not re-verified in this session (search step limit reached). Listed on the '186 front page as a U.S. grant. Because its subject matter was not retrieved, I will not assign it to specific claims — I flag it as unverified rather than guess. If it is an inertial/orientation-measurement reference (as its position among the sensor-fusion art suggests), its likely footprint is again the "rotation sensor / computation" elements of claim 1 and the method steps of claim 15, i.e., a §103 element, not an anticipation.

12. US 2009/0115724 A1 — Yamamoto — published 2009-05-07. Title/subject not re-verified this session. Published >1 year before '186's 2010-01-06 priority, so it is facially available as §102/§103 prior art if its disclosure is on point. Flagged unverified.

13. US 2009/0182503 A1 — Changey et al. — published 2009-07-16. Title/subject not re-verified. The inventor name (Changey) is associated with inertial-navigation/attitude work; if so, it would bear on the "obtaining deviation angles in a spatial reference frame" element of claim 15. Flagged unverified — not mapped to a specific claim.

14. US 2009/0262074 A1 — Nasiri et al. — published 2009-10-22. Nasiri is the InvenSense founder; the reference is likely a motion-processing/handheld-orientation publication. Subject not re-verified. If it discloses magnetometer-augmented orientation sensing, it would be relevant to the magnetometer / third-signal-set element of claim 1 and the yaw-from-magnetism steps (spec. eq. (21); claims tied to the magnetometer), but I cannot confirm its disclosure and therefore do not assert anticipation. Flagged unverified.

15. US 2010/0161084 A1 — Zhao et al. — published 2010-06-24. Subject not re-verified. Note the effective-date problem: its publication (2010-06-24) is after '186's 2010-01-06 priority date, so it is §102/§103 art only if its own earliest effective filing date predates 2010-01-06 (or the relevant critical date). Flagged unverified; effective-date check required.

16. US 2011/0199298 A1 — Bassompiere — published 2011-08-18; retrieved description: "Pointer with motion sensing resolved by data merging." (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110199298A1/en) This publication date is after '186's filing (2011-03-28) and priority (2010-01-06). It therefore qualifies as prior art only if its own priority/effective filing predates the '186 critical date. Its subject matter ("data merging" of motion sensing) is conceptually adjacent to the '186 "data association" model, so if timely it could be a §103 reference against the comparison/fusion aspects of claims 1 and 15 — but I cannot confirm timeliness or disclosure on the retrieved record. Flagged: effective-date and disclosure both unverified.

NPL — Azuma et al., SIGGRAPH '94 (1994).

• Description: classic paper on improving static and dynamic registration in optical see-through head-mounted displays, using predictive/registration techniques to reduce latency and jitter.
• §102 relevance: background on dynamic registration / sensor-fusion error correction in head-mounted displays. Not anticipatory of any '186 claim (different device genus; no nine-axis module). §103 background art on the general problem of accumulated error in dynamic tracking.

C. Which references are the "most relevant," and the §102 vs. §103 point

Most relevant prior art: the Hillcrest/Liberty series (US 7,158,118; 7,236,156; 7,239,301; 7,262,760; 7,414,611; 7,489,298; 7,535,456). They are (a) the most structurally similar — hand-held 3D pointing device with rotational sensors + accelerometer + processing unit + cursor mapping, (b) expressly discussed and distinguished in the '186 specification, and (c) the references a challenger would most naturally lead with.

Anticipation (§102) assessment — the honest answer:

True anticipation requires every element of a claim in a single reference. The independent claims as characterized require, in combination:

• a nine-axis motion sensor module — rotation sensor (ωx, ωy, ωz) and accelerometer (Ax, Ay, Az) and magnetometer (Mx, My, Mz);
• the multi-state comparison: a previous state (first quaternion), current state (second quaternion), measured state (measured vs. predicted axial accelerations — and, in the magnetometer embodiment, measured vs. predicted magnetism), compared to yield an updated state (third/fourth quaternion); and
• output of yaw, pitch, and roll in the spatial reference frame, excluding the external interferences.

No single cited reference supplies all of these. The Gyration line (US 5,138,154; 5,440,326; 5,898,421) supplies only gyroscopic rotation sensing and cursor translation. The Liberty/Hillcrest line supplies rotation sensors + an accelerometer + orientation compensation but no magnetometer and no quaternion state-comparison. The Azuma NPL is a different genus. Accordingly:

On the record available, none of the sixteen cited U.S. references or the Azuma NPL appears to anticipate (35 U.S.C. §102) independent claim 1 or independent claim 15. They function as §103 obviousness references — elements to be combined — rather than as anticipatory art.

Where a reference can be said to touch a claim, it is element-level only:

D. Explicit uncertainty statements

• I have not verified titles/subject matter for US 6,957,156 (Jo), US 2009/0115724 (Yamamoto), US 2009/0182503 (Changey), US 2009/0262074 (Nasiri), US 2010/0161084 (Zhao), or the exact claims of US 7,236,156 / 7,239,301 / 7,414,611 / 7,535,456. My verification session reached its step limit. I have not fabricated titles for this group; they are marked "unverified." A follow-up pass on each PatentCenter/Google Patents record is needed before these are relied on.
• Effective-date issue for US 2011/0199298 A1 (Bassompiere, pub. 2011-08-18) and US 2010/0161084 A1 (Zhao, pub. 2010-06-24): both post-date '186's 2010-01-06 priority (and the earlier filing covers one of them), so their status as prior art depends on their own earliest effective filing dates, which I did not confirm.
• Claim numbering is a characterization, not a quote. I inferred a 15-claim structure (apparatus claim 1, method claim 15) from the pre-grant publication US 2011/0175806 A1; the issued claims of '186 may differ, and the earlier-generated section flagged the same gap.
• This analysis is confined to the front-page "References Cited" list. The specification also discusses Liberty patents in narrative form; those are the same references and are handled above. I did not examine uncited art (e.g., the prior art as actually applied during prosecution, or art raised in the IPRs against the sibling patents).
• Consistent with the earlier-generated sections, no litigation or PTAB record was found that asserts the '186 patent itself; the family litigation (CyWee v. Samsung/Apple/LG/HTC) and the Google IPRs (IPR2018-01257/'978; IPR2018-01258/'438) concern sibling patents. Nothing in this prior-art section changes that.

If you'd like, I can produce (1) a per-claim element chart comparing the '186 independent claims against the Liberty 7,158,118 disclosure, and (2) a follow-up verification list to fill the six "unverified" entries above.

I'll ground this analysis with searches on the candidate prior art before building the § 103 grounds.

Good — the searches surfaced PTAB petition documents quoting the '186 specification. Let me pin down the claim text and any IPR/prior-art record specific to '186.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,760,186 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope note and a flagged gap in the record

The task instruction says to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but no discrete Prior Art section was transmitted in the previously-generated sections. The earlier sections cover: (a) a bibliographic summary, (b) a plain-language claim overview built from the specification (with an explicit warning that verbatim claim text for '186 was not retrieved), and (c) a litigation summary. There is no reference table, no IDS, and no examiner's citation list for '186 in the record I was given.

Per the operating rule "if you do not know something with high confidence, say so explicitly rather than fabricating," I am not inventing a Prior Art section. Instead I have reconstructed the operative prior art from two verifiable sources and I label each clearly:

1. The prior art cited on the face of the '186 specification itself (authoritative, from the patent text): the Liberty patents — U.S. Pat. No. 7,158,118; U.S. Pat. No. 7,262,760; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,414,611 — plus the applicant's own characterization of them.
2. The prior art actually litigated against this family at the PTAB — the record of IPR2018-01257 (Google LLC v. Cywee Group Ltd.), which challenged the sibling patent U.S. 8,552,978 ("the '978 patent"). The Board's Final Written Decision in that proceeding relied on Liberty and Bachmann (and separately Zhang and Bachmann) and held claims 10 and 12 of '978 unpatentable.

Critical integrity caveat: IPR2018-01257 is directed to the '978 patent, not '186. I am not importing the Board's judgment onto '186. I use that record only for (i) the actual content of the prior-art references (Liberty, Bachmann, Zhang), and (ii) the fact that this family's own claims of the same genus have been held obvious over those references. The '186 patent is a CIP in the same family and shares the specification, so the disclosure overlap is real — but the claim sets differ and I have no verbatim '186 claim text.

Second caveat: I also found PTAB petition artifacts hosted at ptacts.uspto.gov (petition IDs 1522655, 1522717, 1557923, 1557974) whose text reproduces the '186/'438 specification verbatim, including the phrases "data association model," "nine-axis motion sensor module," and "measured magnetism Mx, My, Mz … predicted magnetism Mx′, My′, Mz′." I could not confirm within my search budget which specific proceeding or patent number each belongs to. Treat them as leads, not as established fact.

1. Legal framework applied

• Governing statute: Because the '186 application was filed March 28, 2011 and its earliest priority is January 6, 2010, this is a pre-AIA patent. The applicable provision is 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (pre-AIA), with prior art under pre-AIA §§ 102(a), (b), and (e). I do not apply AIA §§ 102/103.
• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1966) — the four factual inquiries: scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; objective indicia.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a person of ordinary skill may combine references using "inferences and creative steps"; the test is "whether a skilled artisan not only could have made but would have been motivated to make" the combination. Belden Inc. v. Berk-Tek LLC, 805 F.3d 1064, 1073 (Fed. Cir. 2015).
• In re Magnum Oil Tools Int'l, Ltd., 829 F.3d 1364, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2016) — conclusory statements cannot carry the burden; an articulated reason to combine is required. In re NuVasive, 842 F.3d 1376, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

2. Effective filing date and person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

Effective date. The '186 patent is a continuation-in-part of US 12/943,934 (filed Nov. 11, 2010, now US 8,441,438), which claims benefit of provisional US 61/292,558, filed Jan. 6, 2010. This matters for § 103:

• Subject matter present in the provisional/§ 12/943,934 disclosure is entitled to Jan. 6, 2010 (or, at the latest, Nov. 11, 2010).
• Any new matter added in the CIP (13/072,794) is entitled only to March 28, 2011.

Because the magnetometer-in-fusion and "data association" subject matter is the CIP's apparent point of novelty, a Petitioner would argue the critical date for at least the yaw-from-magnetism limitations is March 28, 2011 (or Nov. 11, 2010 at the earliest). This matters because the Madgwick report (2010) and Sabatini's 2011 review/Sensors paper fall near or after the early date but before the later one. Flag: I could not retrieve the '186 prosecution history (CIP benefit claims, IDS, office actions) in the record provided; a definitive § 103 date requires the file wrapper.

PHOSITA (proposed, and consistent with the record in IPR2018-01257). A person having ordinary skill in the art would have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or a comparable field, with roughly two years of experience with inertial/magnetic motion sensors (MEMS accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers), attitude estimation, and human-interface/pointing-device software, with additional experience substituting for education and vice versa. This is the level proposed by the Petitioner and undisputed by the Patent Owner in the '978 IPR (IPR2018-01257 FWD, Level of Ordinary Skill section).

3. Scope and content of the claimed subject matter (with the standing uncertainty flag)

Consistent with the earlier section, I still do not have verbatim claim text for '186 and therefore do not assert specific claim numbers or quote claim language for it. The following limitation set is a specification-based characterization, and its recitation tracks — closely but not identically — the limitations the Board actually addressed in the '978 IPR (which I label as such).

Cross-check against the '978 IPR record (labelled, not transferred). In IPR2018-01257, claim 10 of '978 recited a method that included "obtaining one or more resultant deviation including a plurality of deviation angles using a plurality of measured magnetisms Mx, My, Mz and a plurality of predicted magnetism Mx', My' and Mz'," plus generation of orientation by a nine-axis motion sensor module (three-axis accelerometer + three-axis magnetometer + three-axis rotation sensor). The Board held claim 10 and claim 12 (the "orientation output is a quaternion" limitation) unpatentable over Liberty + Bachmann and, on other grounds, over Zhang + Bachmann. Full decision: https://smithbaluch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IPR2018-01257_-_FWD_Public.pdf. The Federal Circuit affirmed. CyWee Group Ltd. v. Google LLC, Nos. 2020-1565, -1567 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 16, 2021), https://cafc.whda.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Full-Opinion.pdf.

Why that matters here: the L1–L4, L7 and part of the L4/L5 magnetometer limitations of '186 belong to the same genus the Board already found obvious. The genuinely distinguishing '186 subject matter is concentrated in L5, L6, L8 (selective interference rejection via data association, and the sensitivity-based absolute display mapping).

4. The prior art references

All of Liberty, Zhang, and Bachmann qualify as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b) (all published/issued before Jan. 6, 2010). Sabatini 2006 and Roetenberg 2005 likewise pre-date the earliest date. Madgwick 2010 is prior art under § 102(a)/(b) only if the effective date for the relevant claims is the CIP date (Nov. 11, 2010 or Mar. 28, 2011) rather than Jan. 6, 2010 — a § 103 date question flagged in § 2.

5. Proposed grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Liberty in view of Bachmann (§ 103(a)): the device and core method claims (L1–L4, L7)

Coverage.

• Liberty teaches the pointing-device context the '186 specification adopts as its setting (FIG. 1/2, the XPYPZP body frame, the XDYDZD display frame, tilt compensation, cursor x,y output) and even the quaternion Q for body-to-user-frame rotation. It supplies the "3D pointing device," "processing unit," "spatial reference frame," and "movement pattern on a display" limitations.
• Bachmann supplies precisely what Liberty lacks and what the '186 specification identifies as the prior-art gap: a nine-axis MARG module (tri-axis accelerometer 31 + tri-axis magnetometer 32 + tri-axis angular-rate sensor 33), a quaternion orientation output q̂, and — decisively — the comparison architecture recited in L3: a measurement vector ȳ(q̂) containing both predicted accelerations (h1,h2,h3) and predicted magnetisms (b1,b2,b3), i.e., measured-vs-predicted comparison of the accelerometer and magnetometer channels against a state estimate.
• Liberty separately teaches that a quaternion estimate can be converted to Euler-type angles ("Q is the normalized quaternion that represents the rotation from the body frame to the user frame"), and Bachmann confirms Euler angles (roll, pitch, yaw) are "a conventional way of describing … orientation … in three dimensions" — supplying L4's yaw/pitch/roll output.

Motivation to combine (articulated, not conclusory).

1. Same field, same problem, same solution family. Both references address tracking the orientation of an articulated/handheld rigid body in three dimensions using inertial sensors for a human-interface / tracking purpose. Liberty's stated problem is that tilt of the device corrupts mapping to screen coordinates; Bachmann's is full 3-D body-orientation tracking. A PHOSITA improving a Liberty-type pointer with full 3-D attitude output would look to Bachmann's MARG/quaternion approach as the natural next step.
2. The '186 specification itself admits the gap and the solution direction. The '186 Background expressly faults the Liberty 5-axis scheme for being unable to "output deviation angles … in 3D reference frame … only … a 2D reference frame," and it frames the invention as adding the magnetometer and a nine-axis comparison. That is an admission that the problem was known and that the magnetometer/quaternion fix was the recognized line of development — the classic KSR "design incentive" and "predictable variation" rationale.
3. Bachmann's own comparison architecture anticipates L3. Bachmann's ȳ(q̂) already contains predicted accelerations and predicted magnetisms compared against measured sensor data — the exact "measured state … plus predicted Ax′,Ay′,Az′ (and Mx′,My′,Mz′)" structure. No new principle of operation is required; only its application to a pointing device.
4. Reasonable expectation of success. Bachmann implemented and validated the MARG/quaternion approach empirically; Liberty implemented and validated body-to-user-frame transformation for pointing. Both are complete, working techniques, so combining them is a predictable use of known techniques for their known purposes (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417).

Anticipated Patent Owner (PO) counterarguments and their assessment.

• "Bachmann teaches away because its accelerometers are 'mounted separately' (14:49–51), so there is no 'nine-axis motion sensor module'." This exact argument was made by the PO in IPR2018-01257 and rejected. The Board found Bachmann's statement "ambiguous," credited expert testimony that components "mounted separately to the same printed circuit board" still constitute a nine-axis motion sensor, and held the limitation met. A PHOSITA reading Bachmann's sentence would not understand it to forbid a common PCB. This is the strongest available rebuttal to the PO's teaching-away theory.
• "Zhang/Bachmann do not map onto a display." Bachmann's signals are "not mapped onto a display screen." This is why Liberty, not Bachmann alone, is the primary reference in Ground 1 — Liberty supplies the display-mapping element. The combination, not either reference alone, covers the claim.
• "Extensive PCB redesign would be required." The Board in IPR2018-01257 did not accept that redesign concern as defeating the combination. A PHOSITA integrating commercially available MEMS tri-axis parts onto a pointing device PCB is routine engineering.

Ground 2 — Zhang in view of Bachmann (§ 103(a)): alternative to Ground 1

Because the Board in IPR2018-01257 also sustained claims 10/12 of '978 over Zhang + Bachmann, the same pairing is available as an alternative primary-reference chain. Flag: Zhang is a 2-D/four-axis device, and the PO argued Zhang "teaches away" from adding accelerometers (compounded noise, unusable integration). The Board nonetheless found the Zhang + Bachmann combination sufficient. For '186 (which is more strongly directed to 3-D pointing and absolute mapping), Ground 1 (Liberty-based) is the stronger primary chain, and Ground 2 is best kept as a fallback. I would not lead with Zhang for a display-mapping claim.

Ground 3 — Ground 1 further in view of Sabatini 2006 (§ 103(a)): the interference-rejection and "data association" limitations (L5, L6) and the quaternion filter (L7)

Coverage. Sabatini 2006 discloses a quaternion-based EKF fusing tri-axis gyro + tri-axis accelerometer + tri-axis magnetometer — i.e., the nine-axis fusion of L1/L3 — and, critically, an adaptive measurement-noise covariance whose stated purpose is to "guard against the effects which body motion and temporary magnetic disturbance may have on the reliability of measurements of gravity and earth's magnetic field, respectively." That is a reliability-weighted comparison between measured sensor data and a predicted/expected Earth-field measurement — functionally the L6 "data association model … to determine whether the comparison falls within a predetermined value or range."

Motivation.

1. Sabatini addresses the identical failure mode the '186 patent recites as its problem: the accelerometer cannot distinguish gravity from externally imposed acceleration (the '186 spec says exactly this: readings "may be accurate only when the pointing device is static"), and the magnetometer is corrupted by temporary magnetic disturbance. Sabatini's response — down-weight/reject the unreliable aiding measurement via the measurement covariance — is the recognized prior-art solution, and § 103 permits using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417).
2. Sabatini's tri-axis gyro + accelerometer + magnetometer EKF is the "enhanced comparison model" the '186 specification claims as novel; a PHOSITA looking to reduce "accumulated errors as well as noises over time" (the '186 specification's stated goal) would be led directly to Sabatini's EKF.
3. The '186 "predetermined value or range" and Yes/No routing are a thresholding/gating implementation of Sabatini's adaptive covariance — a predictable engineering choice, not a new principle.

Flag / honest weakness. Sabatini 2006 is a journal article about human-movement tracking, not a pointing device. For the device claims, Sabatini must be combined as a secondary reference onto a Ground-1 device; it is best used against the method claims (L3, L5, L6, L7). Also, Sabatini 2006 exists in two closely-related forms — the July 2006 IEEE TBME article and his 2011 Sensors review ("Estimating three-dimensional orientation of human body parts by inertial/magnetic sensing," 11(2):1489–1525) — the 2011 review post-dates even the CIP date and should not be relied upon for the § 103 date of March 28, 2011 or earlier.

Ground 4 — Ground 1 or 3 further in view of Roetenberg 2005 (§ 103(a)): magnetic-disturbance rejection specifically (L5)

Coverage. Roetenberg discloses a complementary Kalman filter fusing gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer signals with explicit "compensation of magnetic disturbances" producing "accurate and drift-free orientation estimates." This maps directly onto the L5 requirement that "undesirable magnetism caused by … undesirable electromagnetic fields" be excluded — the very element the '186 specification touts as novel ("unique update program comprising a data association model").

Motivation. Where Sabatini adapts the covariance to guard against magnetic disturbance generally, Roetenberg is directed specifically to the magnetic-disturbance problem, making the motivation to combine with a nine-axis fusion device more explicit than "could combine." Both references are in the same technical community (inertial/magnetic orientation estimation), and Roetenberg's stated contribution — that compensating magnetic disturbances improves orientation accuracy — is an express teaching of the desirability of the claimed result. This is a strong "improving one's own prior-art device" rationale.

Ground 5 — Ground 1 further in view of Madgwick 2010 (§ 103(a)): efficiency/quaternion-filter variation (L3, L7)

Coverage. Madgwick discloses a quaternion orientation filter for IMU and MARG arrays incorporating "magnetic distortion and gyroscope bias drift compensation," using accelerometer and magnetometer data in a gradient-descent computation of the gyroscope error as a quaternion derivative, benchmarked against a Kalman-based sensor.

Motivation. If POs argue the Kalman/EKF framing (Sabatini) is materially different from the '186 "comparison/update" model, Madgwick supplies an alternative quaternion comparison of measured vs. predicted Earth-field vectors (gravity and magnetic field) — functionally the same measured-vs-predicted comparison recited in L3. Madgwick is appropriately cited only if the effective date for the relevant claims is the CIP date (Nov. 11, 2010 / Mar. 28, 2011); a 2010 report is not § 102(b) art as of Jan. 6, 2010. This is a date-sensitivity flag, and I could not resolve it without the file wrapper.

Ground 6 — Grounds 1/3 further in view of display-mapping art (§ 103(a)): the mapping limitations (L8) and "absolute" output

Coverage. The '186 mapping claims require obtaining boundary information of the display frame via a predefined sensitivity and performing angle-and-distance translation based on the deviation angles and boundary information (Eqs. 15–17).

Motivation.

1. Liberty itself already teaches transforming sensed motion from a body frame to a user frame and "determining data associated with x and y coordinates … associated with movement of a screen cursor" — the core of any angle-to-cursor mapping. The '186 mapping math (Eqs. 15–17: P = d·tan(θ) style relationships with a user-set sensitivity δ, bounded by P_max from screen width) is straightforward trigonometry applied to a known output.
2. A PHOSITA implementing cursor translation on a display of known screen size would, as a matter of ordinary design, use the screen width for a boundary/P_max value and expose a user-adjustable sensitivity — routine, if not mandatory, for pointing-device UX. The "absolute" (as opposed to relative-offset) mapping claimed in the '186 specification is achieved by recomputing the target coordinate from the angle rather than accumulating deltas; that is a known alternative to relative integration, and the specification itself identifies the relative approach's boundary-overshoot failure as the motivation — an express problem/known-solution teaching that supports the obviousness of the absolute approach.
3. Flag: I did not identify a dedicated, pre-2010 "sensitivity × screen-size → cursor" prior-art reference in the retrieved record. The mapping limitation is thus argued as obvious over Liberty's mapping disclosure plus routine mechanical/trigonometric steps rather than over a discrete anticipatory reference. Absent a dedicated reference, this ground is the weakest of the six and should be pleaded with an explicit "design choice / predictable result" rationale or supported by additional mapping art not in this record.

Ground 7 — Routine design-option limitations (L9) and any dependent claims

• MEMS / Coriolis resonating-mass rotation sensors: the '186 specification itself acknowledges "commercially available MEMS angular rate sensors and accelerometers" (the phrase appears in the '648/IPR2024-00668 record as an admission in a related context). MEMS tri-axis accelerometer/gyro/magnetometer parts were standard off-the-shelf components by 2010; selecting MEMS is a predictable design choice.
• External processor over WLAN/Bluetooth/USB (FIG. 5): linking a remote sensor housing to a host processor over a standard wireless or USB link is a conventional, well-known interconnection with no new technical effect.
• Built-in integrated display with a transparent cover area (FIG. 6): a smartphone/tablet/navigation form factor with an integrated touch display is an admitted, ubiquitous commercial form factor and a predictable arrangement.

These are classic "arranging old elements, each performing the same function it had been known to perform, yielding no more than expected" limitations — obvious under the Mendelson-1988 / Inokawa line of reasoning (see, e.g., the Board's § 103 analysis quoted in IPR2020-01521, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/.../IPR2020-01521...).

6. Consolidated motivation-to-combine rationale (the "articulated reason" KSR requires)

For each ground above, the required motivation is supplied by one or more of the following, all supported by the record:

1. Express problem-recognition in the patent itself. The '186 background admits the Liberty 5-axis approach cannot produce 3-D deviation angles and cannot distinguish gravity from imposed accelerations. An applicant's own admission of the problem is strong evidence of the design incentive to solve it.
2. Reasonable expectation of success. Every secondary reference (Bachmann, Sabatini, Roetenberg, Madgwick) is a working, published, tested technique in the same field, several of them explicitly benchmarked against or described as improving Kalman-based orientation. Combining a validated technique with a known device to obtain its known benefit is the paradigm of obviousness (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417).
3. Predictable, merely-advantageous result. Speed/efficiency (Madgwick: "computationally inexpensive"; "low sampling rates"), accuracy/drift-free output (Roetenberg, Rehbinder & Hu), and robustness to disturbance (Sabatini, Roetenberg) are results the references themselves promise, not unexpected results.
4. Same field of endeavor / reasonable pertinence. Liberty, Zhang, Bachmann, Sabatini, Roetenberg and Madgwick all concern attitude/orientation estimation of a rigid body from inertial and/or magnetic sensors and/or the use of that orientation in a human-interface context.
5. Sibling-claim precedent. The Board already held that claims reciting a nine-axis module, measured/predicted magnetisms Mx…Mz and Mx′…Mz′, and quaternion output are unpatentable over Liberty + Bachmann (and Zhang + Bachmann), affirmed by the Federal Circuit. This does not bind '186, but it is directly probative that a PHOSITA would combine these references and that the combination works.

7. Objective indicia (Graham factor 4) — what to look for

I found no evidence of objective indicia of non-obviousness in the record supplied for '186. If the Patent Owner relies on secondary considerations, the relevant issues are:

• Commercial success / licensing: CyWee/CM HK's motion-sensor patents were asserted in CyWee v. Apple, CyWee v. Samsung, CyWee v. LG, CyWee v. ZTE, and CyWee v. HTC. Commercial success requires a nexus to the claimed subject matter — and where the '978 sibling's claims were invalidated and the associated assertions collapsed, any proffered success must be tied specifically to the '186 claim scope.
• Long-felt need / failure of others: the '186 specification's own narrative that Liberty's 5-axis devices could not output 3-D angles is a need-recognition story, but the ready availability of Bachmann/Sabatini/Roetenberg/Madgwick supplies it as well; failure of others is undercut where the art had already published working nine-axis fusion.
• Unexpected results: not apparent; the claimed advantages (absolute output, disturbance rejection) are the promised results of the cited art.

Flag: because I have no prosecution history or litigation record specific to '186, I cannot state with confidence what, if any, secondary-consideration evidence exists or was argued.

8. Where the § 103 case is weakest — honest assessment

1. No verbatim '186 claims. I cannot tie any ground to a specific claim number with authority. The grounds above are mapped to limitation groups (L1–L9) derived from the specification and the '978 IPR record. A real § 103 opinion requires the actual claim set and prosecution history.
2. The "nine-axis motion sensor module" as a unitary module. Both Zhang- and Bachmann-based attacks must contend with Bachmann's "accelerometers mounted separately" sentence. The Board discredited it in the '978 IPR, but the Federal Circuit's affirmance did not convert that into a universal rule, and PO could reargue module-vs-collection for '186's specific claim wording.
3. The "absolute" output limitation. No single retrieved reference expressly frames its output as "absolute" rather than relative; this limitation is argued as an obvious design choice in view of the boundary-overshoot problem the specification itself describes. This is the most contestable element of the device/method claims.
4. The "data association" with discrete predetermined thresholds. Sabatini's adaptive covariance and Madgwick's distortion compensation are the closest art; whether they anticipate or merely render obvious a literal "first/second data association model with a predetermined value or range" depends on the claim construction of those terms — which I do not have.
5. Date sensitivity for Madgwick (2010) and any 2010–2011 art — resolved only by the CIP benefit analysis in the file wrapper.
6. No dedicated display-mapping reference was located; Ground 6 relies on Liberty plus routine trigonometry.

9. Bottom line

• For the nine-axis sensor-fusion core of '186 (L1–L4, L7 — a tri-axis gyro + tri-axis accelerometer + tri-axis magnetometer, compared against predicted accelerations/magnetisms, producing a quaternion converted to yaw/pitch/roll for a pointing device), the strongest grounds are Liberty in view of Bachmann and, alternatively, Zhang in view of Bachmann — the same combinations the Board adopted, and the Federal Circuit affirmed, against sibling '978 claims reciting the same limitations. Both Liberty and Bachmann are pre-2010 § 102(b) art.
• For the interference-rejection/"data association" limitations (L5, L6), the strongest grounds add Sabatini 2006 (adaptive measurement-noise covariance against body motion and temporary magnetic disturbance) and/or Roetenberg 2005 (explicit compensation of magnetic disturbances by fusing gyro/accelerometer/magnetometer), with Madgwick 2010 as an efficiency/quaternion-filter alternative subject to the CIP date question.
• For the mapping limitations (L8), the case rests on Liberty's cursor mapping disclosure plus routine screen-size/sensitivity trigonometry — the weakest link in the chain.
• All conclusions above are conditional on limitation groups characterized from the specification and the '978 IPR record, not on verbatim '186 claim language, which I could not retrieve and have therefore not quoted or numbered. I have also flagged (i) the absence of a discrete "Prior Art section" in the materials provided, (ii) the presence of PTAB petition artifacts quoting the '186 specification whose specific proceeding I could not confirm, and (iii) the CIP-benefit question that controls the § 103 date for the magnetometer and Madgwick-related limitations.