US 9772225

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any CAFC 2026 activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity involving this patent.

Let me do a final check for any court docket activity naming the patent or its owner.

Search scope and a critical negative finding

I searched for US 9,772,225 specifically (and for "9772225" combined with CAFC, IPR, litigation, and Genesia terms). I found no evidence of any CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR/PGR, or district court case involving US 9,772,225. The only 2026 CAFC material returned was unrelated (e.g., In re Incept LLC on a catheter application, and a Globus Medical / Moskowitz Family appeal). I want to be explicit: I cannot confirm any litigation activity, and I also cannot confirm the absence of litigation with authority, because I do not have direct access to PACER, the CAFC docket system, or Docket Navigator. Treat the litigation question as unverified rather than as "no litigation exists."

Note also that searches for the bare string "9772225" returned several false positives that are not this patent — e.g., a DOI (10.1109/PICST54195.2021.9772225) and statistical tables containing the value 0,9772225. These are literal-string collisions, not the patent.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

One conflict to flag: a third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) lists 9772225 on a page headed "Daisuke Fukuoka — 14 Patents at Denso." The authoritative patent record and the USPTO assignment data both name Genesia Corporation as assignee. I treat the Denso attribution as an aggregator artifact and the Genesia assignment as correct. If Denso reassignment occurred later, I have no authoritative record of it and cannot confirm it.

Abstract (as issued)

The device maintains uniformity of the central transmitting wavelength across the field of view and minimizes bandwidth broadening in an optical lens using an optical tunable filter, even with a wide field of view and/or large numerical aperture. A space is defined in which, when each beam incident from each off-axial object point on the object surface toward the optical lens reaches the optical tunable filter, the chief ray is maintained parallel to the optical axis. A filter in that space sees each beam at normal incidence, so only narrow-band components at the specific central wavelength are transmitted.

Independent claims in plain language

The patent has two independent claims: claim 1 and claim 7. Claims 2–6 and 8 are dependent (claims 3, 4, 6, 8 trace through claim 2/3/4).

Claim 1 — the optical lens unit (apparatus).
A lens unit with several lens elements placed between an object surface and the adjacent real image surface that is conjugate to it, the elements receiving light beams from off-axial object points. It includes an optical tunable filter that selects a wavelength band of each beam. The key limitation: at least one ray in each beam is parallel to the optical axis in a space between the lens elements, and the tunable filter sits in that space. In plain terms: build the lens so that inside the lens barrel there is a region where the light from each point of the scene is travelling parallel to the axis, and put the tunable filter there — so every beam hits the filter head-on instead of at an angle.

Claim 7 — the spectroscopic device (apparatus, system-level).
Three elements: (a) an optical lens unit whose lens elements sit between the object surface and the conjugate real image surface and that makes at least one ray in each beam substantially parallel to the optical axis; (b) an optical tunable filter for selecting wavelength, disposed in the space where that ray is substantially parallel to the axis; and (c) a photodetector that detects the wavelength-selected light transmitted through the filter. In plain terms: the same optical arrangement as claim 1, but claimed as a complete spectroscope by adding the detector, and using "substantially parallel" rather than "parallel."

Dependent claims worth noting for scope:

• Claim 2: adds a depolarization filter between the object and the tunable filter (so polarization in the incoming light does not corrupt the spectral measurement).
• Claim 3: adds a polarization filter between the object and the depolarizer (so you can select a polarization direction before depolarizing).
• Claim 4: adds a rotator for changing the polarizer's direction.
• Claim 5: specifies the parallel ray is the chief ray of each beam.
• Claim 6: an optical device for measuring wavelength, amplitude and/or phase, using the claim 3 lens unit.
• Claim 8: same measuring device, using the claim 4 lens unit.

Supporting disclosure (relevant to claim construction)

• The tunable filter is described as a liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF), expressly not limited to it — a tunable Fabry–Perot interferometer is named as an alternative.
• The spec states the chief-ray incidence angle should be kept less than 10 degrees relative to the optical axis, and acknowledges that, with aberrations, a ray other than the chief ray (or multiple rays) may be the one parallel to the axis — the claims are drafted to cover that.
• Design guidance, not claim language: the clear aperture of beams through the tunable filter should be larger than the entrance pupil diameter of the unit, to reduce obliquity.
• Cited prior art of note: JP 3979535 B2 (the LCTF document referenced in the background), US 5,132,826 A (ferroelectric LC tunable filters), and WO 2008/108846 A1 (ChemImage — polarization-independent Raman imaging with an LCTF). Two JP office actions (2015-07-22 and 2015-11-18) in JP 2015-086938 are listed as non-patent citations.

Uncertainties

1. No confirmed CAFC 2026 or district court activity. I could not verify either the existence or the absence of such a docket with authoritative sources.
2. Assignee. The patent text and USPTO assignment record say Genesia Corporation; one aggregator says Denso. I prefer the patent record.
3. Claim count. The source shows 8 claims with two independent claims (1 and 7). If a reissue, reexamination, or certificate of correction altered the claims, I have no record of it — the document shows no such events, only maintenance-fee payments.
4. Legal status is the source's own disclaimer: an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Initial searches returned no relevant hits. Let me run more targeted litigation-database searches.

Bottom line

No litigation involving US 9,772,225 is known. I searched litigation-focused and patent-database sources for this specific patent number and found zero district court cases, ITC investigations, PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM), or CAFC appeals naming the patent or naming its owner, Genesia Corporation, as a party. This is a negative finding, and I flag below exactly how much confidence it warrants.

Case table

There is nothing to populate. I am reporting an empty set rather than guessing.

What I searched

• "9772225" patent litigation
• US9772225 lawsuit defendant
• Genesia Corp patent infringement lawsuit
• unifiedpatents.com litigation "9,772,225" (targeting the caselist portal you specified)
• "Genesia" OR "Takeyama" patent case district court hyperspectral spectrometer
• docketalarm "9772225"

None returned a docket, complaint, petition, or order referencing US 9,772,225.

Corroborating evidence (indirect, but meaningful)

1. The authoritative Google Patents record has no litigation section. The full text you supplied includes extensive "Families Citing," "Citations," "Also Published As," and "Similar Documents" sections — but no "Litigation" / "Court Cases" / "IPR" block. Google Patents normally populates those blocks when they exist for a US patent. This is suggestive, not conclusive.
2. The prosecution record shows no contentious events. The "Legal Events" timeline for US 15/134,950 contains only the assignment (2016-04-21), the grant (2017-09-06), and two maintenance-fee payments (4th yr, 2020-09-28; 8th yr, 2025-03-12). The only "Non-Patent Citations" are two JP Office Actions in JP 2015-086938 dated 2015-07-22 and 2015-11-18 — routine JP examination, not litigation.
3. The owner appears to be a small operating company, not a PAE. Genesia Corporation is a Mitaka-city (Tokyo) optical-instrument maker with JAXA, NAOJ, and QST as clients, and its own literature advertises "Wide FOV with fast F number thanks to optical design based on our patented technology acquired in Japan & USA" — i.e., the patent is being practiced, and there is no public indication of an assertion campaign. (Source: Genesia company profile PDF hosted by JAXA, https://aerospacebiz.jaxa.jp/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/genesia.pdf.) Small-entity status (per the USPTO fee events) is also consistent with a non-asserting profile, though small entities do litigate.

False positives I discarded (string collisions, not this patent)

• 10.1109/PICST54195.2021.9772225 — an IEEE DOI.
• 0,9772225 — a statistical table value in an unrelated project document.
• U.S. Patent No. 7,792,256 (VARATEC / Unified Patents, IPR2019-01276) — contains the digit sequence "9772256"/"977225" but is a different patent. Per your instruction, I did not treat this as a match. Note this is a trap worth flagging: it is numerically adjacent and appears in Unified Patents litigation material.
• Numerous 2025–2026 court documents from the Bed Bath & Beyond chapter 11 case (D.N.J. 23-13359-VFP) that surfaced purely because of dense party/attorney name lists.

Limitations — read before relying on the "none" answer

• I do not have direct, reliable query access to PACER, the CAFC docket system, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents litigation caselist API. I could not load https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist as a structured query. My searches were general web searches, and the Unified Patents hits returned were PTAB petition documents about other patents, not a caselist entry for 9,772,225.
• Absence of search results is not proof of absence of litigation. NPE suits, quiet settlements, and cases filed under an unrecorded reassignment could all exist without surfacing.
• Foreign litigation is out of scope and unsearched. Given the JP priority (JP 5935085 B1) and JP family member JP 2016-205964 A, any Japanese infringement action would not appear in US sources. I found none, but I did not search J-PlatPat or Japanese court dockets.

Treat the litigation question as "no known US litigation found" — not as "no litigation exists." A confirming check would require a paid docket service (Docket Navigator, Lex Machina) or direct PACER/CAFC queries.

Consistency notes with the prior sections

• No contradiction with the earlier "Search scope and a critical negative finding" section — the same negative result is reproduced here on a fresh search round, with the additional corroboration from the patent's own legal-events timeline and the Genesia company profile.
• Assignee discrepancy restated: the aggregator page "Daisuke Fukuoka — 14 Patents at Denso" (patentleaderboard.com) again appeared in my results and again lists 9772225 under Denso. The authoritative patent text, the USPTO assignment record, and Genesia's own JAXA-hosted company profile all point to Genesia Corporation. I continue to treat the Denso attribution as an aggregator artifact. This matters for a litigation search: if a Denso reassignment had occurred and gone unrecorded in the sources I can reach, a Denso-related case could exist outside my search. I have no evidence of that.
• Date flag: the operating instructions give today's date as 2026-09-22, while the task header states April 26, 2026. My searches reflect results available at the time of retrieval; if the litigation picture changed between those dates, I have no visibility into it.

I'll verify the structured ODP finding against web sources before concluding.

The structured ODP data says no AIA trials; let me run a few more targeted checks (patent owner name, and any reexam/appeal) before finalizing.

Two more checks to round out the negative finding (reexam/derivation, and JP counterpart challenges).

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). There are no inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews, or covered business method reviews — instituted, denied, settled, or terminated — involving US 9,772,225; consequently there is no breakdown by status to report (active: 0 / claims invalidated: 0 / claims sustained: 0 / settled: 0 / institution denied: 0), and the bottom-line for a defendant is the inverse of the usual PTAB story: the patent has never been tested in an AIA trial, so nothing is canceled, no petitioner estoppel exists, and every claim — including independent claims 1 and 7 — remains live and unadjudicated.

This is sourced from the canonical structured record supplied for this analysis (USPTO Open Data Portal: no AIA trial proceedings for US 9,772,225 as of the most recent ingest). I independently searched for corroboration and found none to the contrary. I want to be explicit about the limits of that confirmation (see below).

Why the list is empty — what I checked

I ran the following verification searches against the patent number, the patent owner, and the specification subject matter:

Additional context on the patent's only recorded challenge history. The sole adversarial examination events of record are not PTAB events: the Non-Patent Citations list two Japanese refusals in the priority application JP 2015-086938, dated 2015-07-22 (4 pages) and 2015-11-18 (5 pages), after which JP 5935085 B1 granted on 2016-06-15. That is Japanese prosecution, not an AIA trial, and it is not a proceeding "on file" at the PTAB.

What I cannot rule out. The ODP ingest is a snapshot. I do not have live PACER, live PTAB E2E, or Docket Navigator access in this session, so I cannot distinguish "no petition has ever been filed" from "no petition is in the indexed dataset." Given that the patent is a small-entity, single-assignee patent (Genesia Corp.) with no visible US litigation asserted against it, the absence of IPRs is unsurprising rather than anomalous. Treat "zero proceedings" as high-confidence but re-verifiable, and re-verify before relying on it in a filing or a clearance opinion.

Claim-level status of US 9,772,225 as of 2026-09-22

Because there is no FWD, no certificate, and no reexamination certificate, I will state the claim status without projection:

• Claim 1 — LIVE / UNTESTED (independent; optical lens unit with tunable filter in the parallel-ray space)
• Claim 2 — LIVE / UNTESTED (depolarization filter between object surface and tunable filter)
• Claim 3 — LIVE / UNTESTED (polarization filter between object surface and depolarizer)
• Claim 4 — LIVE / UNTESTED (rotator for changing polarizer direction)
• Claim 5 — LIVE / UNTESTED (parallel ray = chief ray)
• Claim 6 — LIVE / UNTESTED (measuring device using the claim 3 lens unit)
• Claim 7 — LIVE / UNTESTED (independent; spectroscopic device with optical tunable filter + photodetector)
• Claim 8 — LIVE / UNTESTED (measuring device using the claim 4 lens unit)

All eight claims carry their full original scope. Nothing has been canceled, disclaimed, or amended. Note also that no statutory disclaimer appears in the record's Legal Events — the events are limited to the assignment (2016-04-21), grant (2017-09-06), and maintenance fees (4th year paid 2020-09-28; 8th year paid 2025-03-12, small entity).

Strategic summary

No narrowing, therefore no safe harbor. The counter-intuitive consequence of an empty PTAB docket is that this patent is broader than a patent that has survived IPRs. Claims 1 and 7 have never been construed by the Board under the Phillips framework, no claim has been canceled or narrowed by amendment, and no prosecution disclaimer from an IPR has been created. If you are being asserted against, you cannot point to an FWD and say "claim 1 is dead." The entire invalidity case is yours to build from scratch, and the burden is on you. The patent's term runs to its anticipated expiration of 2036-04-21 — roughly a decade of remaining exclusivity, which materially raises the stakes of any licensing demand.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate for everyone. Because no IPR/PGR has been instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground in a district court or ITC proceeding. Conversely, you as a prospective petitioner face no General Plastic "follow-on petition" baggage, no § 315(e)(1) bar in a second IPR, and no risk of being characterized as a serial harasser under the General Plastic factors. Practically, this means the entire universe of prior art is available to you — but you also get no help from anyone else's work product. The two-year horizon matters as well: watch the § 315(b) clock, which starts on service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent (or of a real party in interest/privy), and be aware of the Worlds Inc. v. Bungie burden-shifting framework if the patent owner raises a privity-based time bar against you, as the Board applied it in the Greenthread matters discussed above.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. There is no repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity appears anywhere in the record), and the patent owner has never pursued a PTAB appeal — because it has never had a PTAB loss to appeal. The patent is a single-assignee, small-entity asset (Genesia Corp., Japan) with a JP family member (JP 5935085 B1), and the only third-party interest on record is a forward citation — US 2024/0241375 A1 (Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC, "Wavelength-tunable optical pattern projector," priority 2023-01-17) — which indicates the technology area is still being actively patented, not that the '225 patent is being asserted. One conflict to keep flagged: an aggregator page attributes inventor Daisuke Fukuoka to "14 Patents at Denso"; the patent text and the USPTO assignment record (Reel/Frame 038344/0001, effective 2016-04-19) both name GENESIA CORPORATION. I treat Denso as an aggregator artifact. If a later assignment to a larger entity occurred, it is not in the record I have.

The real prior-art picture is the patent's own citation list. The 10 references of record are your starting point and simultaneously your § 325(d) risk zone: US 5,132,826 A (ferroelectric LC tunable filters), JP 3979535 B2 (the LCTF document the background expressly cites), JP 2003-215530 A (National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan — liquid crystal optical measuring instrument), WO 2008/108846 A1 (ChemImage — "polarization independent Raman imaging with liquid crystal tunable filter," which is directly on the polarization-degeneracy problem claims 2–4 address), JP 2001-141564 A (NEC — spectrum smoothing), JP 11-023891 A, and JP 2000-321424 A (NTT — polarization canceling element). Re-asserting art already of record invites discretionary denial under Advanced Bionics; if you file, the cleaner path is art that is new to the file and targeted at the specific claim limitation — the placement of the tunable filter inside the lens barrel where a ray is parallel to the axis — which is the point of novelty of claim 1 and is what the JP examiner apparently did not find.

Claim-construction footholds worth developing. The specification supplies two design statements that sit just outside the claim language but will dominate construction. First, the spec states that "the incident angle of each chief ray contained in the beam should be maintained less than 10 degrees relative to the optical axis X," while the claims recite only "parallel" (claim 1) or "substantially parallel" (claim 7) — the gap between the claim word and the 10-degree figure is a live indefiniteness/narrowing battleground. Second, the spec's guidance that the "clear aperture of beams passing through the optical tunable filter are larger than the entrance pupil diameter of the optical unit" is expressly framed as design guidance, not a claim limitation — a defendant should resist importing it, because it is the most natural non-infringement escape hatch. The spec also concedes that with aberrations a ray other than the chief ray may be the parallel one, and that multiple rays may simultaneously be parallel — drafting that deliberately broadens claim 1 and complicates any "the chief ray must be parallel" theory.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and the patent owner's demand letter cites claims 1–8, you cannot rely on any PTAB cancellation — there is none. Confirm the "zero proceedings" finding yourself before you build a strategy on it, using the live sources:

1. PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End — search by patent number 9,772,225: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/
2. USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB API (the source of the structured block in this prompt): https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/
3. USPTO Patent Center for the '225 file wrapper and any reexamination, reissue, or certificate-of-correction papers: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
4. CourtListener for any district court or Federal Circuit docket mentioning the patent: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%229772225%22

If you are contemplating an IPR. With the whole field open, the constraints are: (a) prior art must predate the 2015-04-21 priority date; (b) art already of record invites Advanced Bionics § 325(d) denial, so lead with art the examiner never saw; (c) the § 315(b) one-year clock from service on you (or a privy/RPI) is the hard cutoff; and (d) the statutory trial timeline, once instituted, is one year from institution to FWD under § 316(a)(11), extendable only for good cause. The claim to attack first is claim 1, because claim 7 mirrors it plus a photodetector and claims 2–8 all depend from claim 1/2/3/4; a successful claim 1 challenge takes claims 2–6 with it, and a claim 1 + claim 7 pair leaves only claim 8 standing on claim 4.

If you are the patent owner or its licensee. The absence of IPRs is a meaningful positive: no estoppel shackles your adversaries' art but also no adverse claim construction binds you, and the patent has never been held unpatentable by the Board. That said, an empty docket is often a pre-assertion signal rather than a permanent one — well-asserted patents reliably attract IPRs, and this one has now had roughly nine and a half years of life with none. Expect that to change if and when the patent is asserted.

Confidence and caveats. High confidence that no AIA trial proceeding appears in the USPTO's own structured data for this patent. Medium-high confidence that no petition has ever been filed, based on the corroborating searches above. I could not confirm the absence of an unindexed or very recent filing with the authority of a live docket system, and I found no CAFC appeal, no district court case, and no ex parte reexamination either — all three are likewise unverified absences rather than affirmative findings. No proceeding numbers have been invented in this section; there are none to report.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 9,772,225.

Let me verify the assignment record directly and check for any assertion activity or co-ownership.

I've gathered what the accessible record supports. Two caveats up front: (a) my tools did not return the USPTO Assignment Center's per-record page for this patent, so the reel/frame below is grounded in the Google Patents legal-events entry reproduced in the authoritative full text, not a direct Assignment Center fetch; and (b) the correspondent of record was not surfaced by any source I could reach. I will not guess it.

Inventors

Pattern check: No unusual pattern. The three inventors executed an assignment to Genesia two days before the US filing (executed 2016-04-19; filed 2016-04-21), which is the signature of a routine, contemporaneous inventor→employer assignment — the opposite of the "all inventors bolt within 12 months" precursor to a fire-sale. I found no evidence of any inventor leaving Genesia. All three appear to be Genesia personnel, and Takeyama and Kanai are still publishing/patenting with the company as of 2025.

Cross-reference note (do not conflate with this patent): The Irish patent register shows a different patent (EP 16841798.8) co-owned by Satake Corporation and Genesia Corporation, naming Kawamura, Ikeda, Takeyama and Kanai. That is a separate family (likely grain/optical sorting), not US 9,772,225. It is useful only as evidence that Genesia co-owns IP with an industrial partner; this patent is not co-owned.

Original assignee

Genesia Corporation (GENESIA CORPORATION), 3-38-3 / 3-38-4 Shimo-renjaku, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0013, Japan.

• Primary line of business: Optical instrument manufacturer — design and production of UV/VIS/IR optical systems for aerospace and high-energy (nuclear fusion) applications, plus hyperspectral/multispectral imagers built around liquid-crystal tunable filters (LCTFs). Established 1996.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the company's own representation. Genesia's JAXA space-industry catalog entry markets hyperspectral imagers featuring "Wide FOV with fast F number thanks to optical design based on our patented technology acquired in Japan & USA," and advertises a wide-angle LCTF hyperspectral imager with 90° FOV (diagonal), F/2.5, 0.4–1.6 µm, and spectral characteristics that "do not depend on the viewing direction." That is a direct description of the core teaching of claim 1/claim 7 (parallel-ray space around the tunable filter → field-uniform central wavelength). The JP counterpart of this family is JP 5935085 B1; Genesia is also the assignee named on the petrel/remote-sensing program.
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition found. A METI "Sapo-in" (strategic core technology) project page for Genesia's LCTF spectroscopic imaging system was updated 2025-01-27, and the company still lists JAXA, NAOJ and QST among its clients — i.e., alive and trading well after issuance.

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment exists in the accessible record. There are no post-issuance transfers, security interests, licences or name changes recorded.

• 2016-04-19 (executed) / recorded 2016-04-21 — Reel 038344/0001
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Takeyama, Norihide; Kanai, Yoshikazu; Fukuoka, Daisuke (the three named inventors, individually)
  • Assignee: GENESIA CORPORATION (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable. The Google Patents legal-events record reproduced in the authoritative text lists the reel/frame, conveyance, parties, execution date and "Effective date: 20160419" but does not expose the recording correspondent. I could not reach the Assignment Center record page to capture the attorney/agent of record. Without that, I make no claim about it — and I explicitly do not treat its absence as a finding.
  • Context: Initial inventor→employer assignment, executed two days before the US filing and recorded on the filing date — a standard in-house/prosecution-counsel recordation, not a transfer to any third party.

Finding: the Assignment Center record for this patent contains only the original inventor-to-Genesia assignment. There is no chain to reconstruct beyond that link — which by itself usually means the original assignee still owns the patent. That is consistent with the maintenance-fee history (4th-year fee paid 2020-09-28; 8th-year fee paid 2025-03-12, both as a small entity), which shows a single owner paying to keep the patent alive rather than an entity parking it.

This also re-confirms the assignee conflict flagged in the prior section: the patent face and the USPTO assignment record name Genesia Corporation, while an aggregator page attributes 9772225 to "Denso." The recorded assignment (reel 038344/0001, assignee Genesia Corporation) is the authoritative datum; I treat the Denso attribution as an aggregator artifact and find no recorded reassignment to Denso.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9772225
    2015 : Priority JP application filed
    2016 : Inventors assign to Genesia Corp
         : US application filed and recorded
    2017 : US 9772225 B2 issued
    2020 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2025 : 8th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — taken literally, the only recorded event is the original assignment, which is the definition the taxonomy gives for this label; and a definitional caveat applies: none of the substantive categories fit cleanly. Genesia is an operating company that ships products within the claims' scope, so this is not an NPE; but because I found no litigation it also does not meet the strict "Operating-company assertion" test (which requires suing actual competitors), and it does not meet "Defensive" (which requires termination at a defensive aggregator). The substantive reading is therefore operating-company, non-asserting — no NPE pattern.

Justification: the sole recorded conveyance is the 2016-04-19 inventor→GENESIA CORPORATION assignment at reel 038344/0001, executed two days before the US filing; there are no subsequent transfers, security interests, or licences, and the same owner has paid two rising maintenance fees (2020-09-28 and 2025-03-12), while Genesia's own marketing describes wide-FOV hyperspectral LCTF optics "based on our patented technology acquired in Japan & USA" — evidence of a genuine operating-company owner, not a shell or an asserter.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "9772225") and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — I was unable to open the per-record page, so the reel/frame and the correspondent of record should be confirmed there before this chain is relied on.

I'll search the USPTO and related sources for US 9,772,225 and each of its cited references.

Now let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,772,225 B2 ("Spectroscopic device")

Exact-number confirmation (no look-alikes)

I searched the exact string 9772225 against USPTO/registry-derived sources. The only patent match is US 9,772,225 B2 (application 15/134,950, Genesia Corporation). I excluded literal-string collisions that are not this patent (e.g., DOI 10.1109/PICST54195.2021.9772225 and statistical tables containing 0,9772225). Google Patents and Justia both return the same document I was given as authoritative, so the citation list below is taken from the patent's own "Patent Citations (10)" record — which is the examiner-cited art of record.

Source note: the ten references below are listed under the heading "* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party" in the record, i.e., they are the references the examiner cited during prosecution. All ten have publication dates well before the 2015-04-21 priority date (and the 2016-04-21 filing date), so all ten qualify as prior art under AIA §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) (or pre-AIA §102(b)) — none is disqualified by date.

The ten cited references — full citations

Non-patent citations of record (2) — both are JP prosecution documents, not prior art in the §102 sense:

• Notification of Reason(s) for Refusal (and English translation) in JP 2015-086938, dated 2015-07-22, 4 pages.
• Notification of Reason(s) for Refusal (and English translation) in JP 2015-086938, dated 2015-11-18, 5 pages.

Reference-by-reference §102 anticipation analysis

Standard applied. Under 35 U.S.C. §102, a claim is anticipated only if a single reference discloses every element of that claim, arranged as the claim requires. A reference that discloses only a subcombination (e.g., a tunable filter by itself, or a depolarizer by itself) cannot anticipate a claim that also recites the lens-unit / parallel-ray-space limitations. For the dependent claims (2–8), the reference must disclose all limitations of the base claim plus the added limitation.

Independent claims 1 and 7 — the "parallel-ray space with the filter in it"

Claim 1 requires, in substance: (a) plural lens elements between an object surface and its conjugate real image surface; (b) beams from off-axial object points; (c) an optical tunable filter for wavelength-band selection; (d) at least one ray in each beam parallel to the optical axis in a space between the lens elements; and (e) the filter disposed in that space. Claim 7 recasts the same arrangement system-level with a photodetector and "substantially parallel."

• #1 US 5,132,826 A — Discloses an optical tunable filter per se (FLC Lyot-type). No lens unit, no object/image conjugate, no parallel-ray space, no placement limitation. Anticipates: none of claims 1–8. Potentially §103-relevant only as evidence that an LCTF was a known, electrically tunable bandpass element (bearing on claim element (c)).
• #2 JP H07-198398 A — Fiber-gyro phase modulator. Not directed to tunable filtering in an imaging lens, and discloses none of elements (a), (c), (d), (e). Anticipates: none. (Likely cited for a generic polarization/phase-modulating optical component.)
• #3 JP H11-023891 A — A variable-wavelength selection array element. At most touches element (c) in isolation. No lens unit and no parallel-ray space. Anticipates: none.
• #4 JP 2000-321424 A — A polarization-canceling (depolarizing) element. This is the closest thing in the list to the claim-2 "depolarization filter," but it is only one element of that dependent claim and discloses nothing of claim 1. Anticipates: none (relevant to claims 2–3 only as §103 art — the idea of depolarizing incident light was known).
• #5 JP 2001-141564 A — Spectrum-smoothing device. No lens-unit/parallel-ray-space teaching. Anticipates: none.
• #6 JP 2003-215530 A and #7 JP 3979535 B2 — These two related JAXA documents are the closest prior art in the list. Each places the LCTF between two relay lenses in a collimated ("parallel light beam") section of an objective→LCTF→CCD spectrograph (JP 2003-215530's own description states the space between the relay lenses is a parallel-ray bundle section into which the LCTF can be inserted). That reads on the structural elements (a), (b), (c), (e) almost verbatim.
  • But the claim-1 element (d) — "at least one ray contained in each of the beams being parallel to the optical axis" — is not disclosed. In an infinity-conjugate/afocal relay section (the configuration these documents show, and which the patent reproduces as its own FIG. 8 "conventional" prior art), each point's beam is internally collimated, but the chief ray of an off-axial beam is tilted relative to the optical axis, not parallel to it. This is precisely the defect the patent asserts and sets out to cure. Anticipates: none of claims 1–8 on the literal claim language.
  • These documents are, however, the prime §103 references against claim 1 (and claim 7), and JP 3979535 is the applicant's own admitted background. Claim 7's "substantially parallel" wording is materially broader than claim 1's "parallel" and would be the pivotal construction in any §102 fight over these two references.
• #8 US 2007/0268574 A1 — An illumination device; I could not retrieve its disclosure body within this review. On the face of the record it does not describe a lens unit between an object and its conjugate image with a wavelength-tunable filter in a parallel-ray space. Anticipates: none (stated with the caveat below).
• #9 WO 2008/108846 A1 — Discloses an objective→LCTF→detector imaging system and even an infinity-corrected (collimated) objective arrangement — i.e., the same conventional afocal geometry as FIG. 8. It collimates within each beam but does not place the LCTF where the chief rays of off-axial beams are parallel to the axis. Its polarization solution (beam splitting + HWP realignment) is a different route than the claimed depolarizer. Anticipates: none of claims 1–8. It is, however, a good §103 reference against the polarization-related dependent claims (2–3), since it is squarely aimed at the LCTF's polarization dependence that those claims address.
• #10 JP 2010-237097 A — A two-dimensional spectrometric apparatus/method. Describes spectral imaging equipment, nothing about a parallel-ray space with a tunable filter disposed therein. Anticipates: none.

Dependent claims 2–8

Because each dependent claim incorporates every limitation of its base claim (claims 3, 4, 6, 8 trace through 2→3→4; claim 5 depends from 1), and because no cited reference discloses the base-claim parallel-ray space, none of the ten references anticipates claims 2–8 either. The dependent-claim subject matter maps as follows (each as §103 art, not §102):

• Claim 2 (depolarization filter) — JP 2000-321424 A (#4) and JP 2001-141564 A (#5) show depolarizing/spectrum-smoothing elements; WO 2008/108846 A1 (#9) shows the polarization-dependence problem being solved (by another route).
• Claim 3 (polarizer before the depolarizer) / Claim 4 (rotator for the polarizer) — JP 2003-215530 A and JP 3979535 B2 (#6/#7) show a rotating LCTF for polarization selection; WO 2008/108846 A1 (#9) shows a polarization beam-splitter/HWP assembly ahead of the filter. The patent itself notes that rotating the LCTF is the prior approach and that its claimed arrangement (separate polarizer + depolarizer, avoid rotating the wired LCTF) is the point of novelty — consistent with these being §103 references against claims 3–4, not anticipatory ones.
• Claim 5 (the parallel ray is the chief ray) — a narrowing limitation; the cited art does not disclose a space in which chief rays of off-axial beams are parallel to the axis.
• Claims 6 and 8 (measuring devices using the claim-3/claim-4 units) — same fate as their base claims.

Bottom line

• Most relevant prior art: JP 3979535 B2 and its sibling JP 2003-215530 A / JP 3613578 B2 (JAXA) — objective→LCTF between relay lenses→CCD with a rotatable LCTF; and WO 2008/108846 A1 (ChemImage) — LCTF imaging with an infinity-corrected collimating objective and a polarization-compensation assembly. JP 3979535 is the applicant's own admitted background technology.
• Anticipation (§102): None of the ten cited references, alone, anticipates any of claims 1–8. The single limitation that defeats anticipation for every independent claim is the requirement that at least one ray of each beam (notably the chief ray of off-axial beams) be parallel to the optical axis in the space where the tunable filter sits — the cited art uses infinity-conjugate/afocal spaces (FIG. 8 style), where off-axial chief rays are tilted, not parallel.
• Obviousness (§103): The cited art is best understood as a §103 combination attack (JP 3979535 / JP 2003-215530 as the base, optionally combined with US 5,132,826 for the tunable-filter element and WO 2008/108846 / JP 2000-321424 for the polarization aspects). Claim 7's "substantially parallel" language is the most exposed to such an attack.

Caveats and flags

1. Descriptions vs. verified disclosures. I retrieved and read substantive disclosure text for US 5,132,826 A (#1), WO 2008/108846 A1 (#9), JP 3979535 B2 (#7), and JP 2003-215530 A / JP 3613578 B2 (#6). My descriptions of JP H07-198398 A, JP H11-023891 A, JP 2000-321424 A, JP 2001-141564 A, US 2007/0268574 A1, and JP 2010-237097 A are derived from the citation table (title/assignee/date) plus field knowledge; I did not read their full specifications within this review budget. Treat those six descriptions as provisional, and confirm before relying on them.
2. Claim-construction tension to flag (carried from the prior section). Claim 1 locates the parallel-ray space "between the plurality of lens elements," while the specification's FIG. 1 embodiment places the LCTF in the space "between the object surface and the first lens unit 5" (a front-telecentric space). This discrepancy matters directly to the §102 analysis above, because it determines whether the relay-lens spaces of JP 3979535 / JP 2003-215530 can be mapped onto the claimed "space between the plurality of lens elements."
3. "Potentially anticipates" is answered as "none." That is the correct §102 result on this record; the references remain materially relevant under §103 and as background (notably the applicant's own citation of JP 3979535).
4. Prefer the patent record on the assignee conflict (Genesia Corporation), as noted in the prior section; the "Denso" attribution on one aggregator page (patentleaderboard.com) appears to be an artifact.

I'll research the cited prior-art references to ground the §103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,772,225 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / date discrepancy. The task states the current date is April 26, 2026; the environment metadata says 2026-09-22. Nothing in this analysis turns on the difference. Effective filing date is 2016-04-21, priority 2015-04-21 (JP 2015-086938 / JP 5935085 B1). Every reference in the patent's own Citations (10) list published between 1992 and 2010, so each qualifies as prior art under § 102(a)(1) (and § 102(a)(2) where it is a U.S. patent/application). No reference falls in the grace-period window, so no § 102(b)(1)/(2) exception applies.

Confirmation of the reference set used. I used the ten references in the Prior Art section of the US9772225 page: US 5,132,826 A; JP H07-198398 A; JP H11-23891 A; JP 2000-321424 A; JP 2001-141564 A; JP 2003-215530 A; JP 3979535 B2; US 2007/0268574 A1; WO 2008/108846 A1; JP 2010-237097 A. I verified the substance of US 5,132,826 A, JP 3979535 B2, JP 2003-215530 A, WO 2008/108846 A1 and JP 2010-237097 A from their own texts. For JP H07-198398 A, JP H11-23891 A, JP 2000-321424 A, JP 2001-141564 A and US 2007/0268574 A1 I have only the titles and bibliographic data — I treat them by title literally and weight them lightly. Note also that the fetched page's asterisk convention ("* = cited by examiner") is rendered ambiguously; I do not rely on it, and I flag that the only evidence of threshold prior-art consideration is the two JP office actions (2015-07-22, 2015-11-18) listed as non-patent citations.

1. Legal framework and PHOSITA

Graham v. John Deere factors: scope/content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, PHOSITA level, and objective indicia. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex: a combination is obvious if it flows from a known problem, a known technique, and a predictable result; a teaching, suggestion, or motivation is helpful but not required. The question is whether the claimed arrangement is "more than a predictable variation" of the cited art.

PHOSITA (my construction): a person with a Master's degree in optics/applied physics (or a Bachelor's plus 3–5 years) with working experience designing imaging spectrometers and refractive lens systems, including practical familiarity with (i) angle-dependent interference-type tunable filters such as LCTFs, (ii) infinity-corrected/afocal lens layouts, and (iii) polarization control elements (polarizers, depolarizers, retarders). This is a mature, engineering-intensive art; the level of ordinary skill is relatively high.

Objective indicia: none in the record. The prior analysis for this patent found no verified CAFC 2026, PTAB, or district court activity, so there is no litigation-driven nexus evidence to weigh. Absent commercial-success, long-felt-need, or surprising-result evidence, there is nothing to rebut a prima facie case.

2. Claim 1 — the key combination

Claim 1 requires: (a) a plurality of lens elements between the object surface and the adjacent conjugate real image surface, receiving beams from off-axial object points; (b) a tunable filter selecting a wavelength band of each beam; (c) at least one ray in each beam parallel to the optical axis in a space between the lens elements; and (d) the filter disposed in that space.

Combination and motivation. JP 2003-215530 A alone places an LCTF in a collimated inter-lens space. What it does not clearly disclose is that the parallel ray is parallel for the off-axial beams (i.e., a chief ray that is axial for every field point, rather than each beam merely being a collimated bundle whose direction equals the field angle). The gap is a space in which the chief ray of each off-axis beam itself runs parallel to the axis — i.e., a telecentric/afocal space rather than a pupil (Fourier) plane where chief rays from different field points cross at markedly different angles.

A PHOSITA would close that gap, because:

1. The problem was known and admitted. The '225 patent's own background — and FIG. 7 — describes the LCTF's angle-dependence (blue-shift one way, red-shift the other; broadening with cone angle). JP 2010-237097 A independently confirms the same field-position dependence: it explains that the LCTF's spectral transmittance distribution shifts with the position on the filter surface (center vs. edge), requiring a centroid-wavelength correction Δλ. The problem the '225 patent addresses was thus squarely in the art.
2. The remedy is a standard technique. Placing a narrow-band, angle-sensitive filter in a collimated/parallel space — and, for wide-field imaging, arranging the layout so the filter sees rays at near-normal incidence — is routine optical-design practice. Both JAXA references already put the LCTF in exactly such a parallel-light section; WO 2008/108846 A1 does it in an infinity-corrected objective/imaging-lens configuration. Making the bundle axial for all field points (a telecentric condition) is a conventional design option with a predictable effect on the incidence angle.
3. Predictable result. Reducing the incidence angle and the cone angle reduces wavelength shift and bandwidth broadening. Nothing in the combination is unpredictable; the references explain the mechanism (angle → transmitted wavelength) themselves.

The strongest counter-argument (and why it is weak). The '225 specification itself distinguishes FIG. 8 — the conventional LCTF-at-the-exit-pupil arrangement, which is the layout of the JAXA references — as suffering field-dependent wavelength shift for wide fields. That is a recognition-of-problem that supports obviousness: the inventors identified the cause (chief rays of oblique beams hitting the filter at large angles) and applied the known cure (move the filter to a space where those rays are axial). The gap between the claims and JP 2003-215530 A + JP 3979535 B2 + the admitted knowledge of LCTF angular dependence is a design choice within the ordinary skill level — the same type of "predictable variation" that KSR holds unpatentable. In reissue/reexam or IPR terms, I would rate claim 1 as moderately exposed but not a clear invalidation: a petitioner would need the "each of the beams" limitation mapped, which none of the cited references expressly states.

Secondary § 102 point. If a tribunal reads JP 2003-215530 A's "parallel light beam section" as literally satisfying "at least one light ray in each beam parallel to the optical axis," claim 1 is anticipatorily disclosed. That reading is aggressive because a tilted collimated bundle has no ray parallel to the axis for off-axis points (except incidental ones); anticipation is therefore the weaker theory, § 103 the stronger one.

3. Claim 7 — same combination plus a detector

Claim 7 = the claim 1 arrangement (with "substantially parallel") plus a photodetector. Every primary reference already includes the detector: the CCD detection element in JP 2003-215530 A and JP 3979535 B2, and photosensor array 60 in WO 2008/108846 A1. Claim 7 also uses the softer "substantially parallel," which broadens rather than narrows the prior-art overlap and makes the claim easier to invalidate than claim 1. I would rate claim 7 as at least as exposed as claim 1, and the combination of JP 2003-215530 A (collimated LCTF space + CCD) in view of the admitted angular-dependence knowledge is the most efficient attack.

4. Claims 2–4 — the polarization features

Motivation. The polarization shortcoming is expressly stated in the '225 specification: because the LCTF acts as a polarizer, a strongly polarized return (e.g., sunlit leaf, or a specular source) can be blocked or artificially modulated as the source–object geometry changes, corrupting the spectral data. WO 2008/108846 A1 is direct evidence that the art recognized this exact defect of LCTF-based spectral imaging and was actively solving it (there, by dual-path polarization realignment rather than depolarization). Given that, substituting a depolarizer — a standard optical component whose function is to randomize phase/polarization — for the beam-splitting approach is an obvious alternative with a predictable result: the LCTF input becomes polarization-isotropic.

Claims 3 and 4 are the natural, conventional refinements. Retaining a polarizer before the depolarizer preserves the ability to select a polarization component while ensuring the LCTF still receives all polarization states; a rotator (the patent itself concedes "any means ... electronic method or a mechanical method" may be used) adds polarization scanning, which is the standard polarimetric technique and is what the two JAXA references already do.

Caveat / possible rebuttal. JP H07-198398 A (optical fiber gyro, phase modulator) is fiber-optic sensor art — a PHOSITA might argue it is non-analogous. I would not rest the depolarizer case on it; JP 2000-321424 A (polarization canceling element) and JP 2001-141564 A (spectrum smoothing) plus WO 2008/108846 A1 suffice, and WO '846 is indisputably in the same field.

5. Claims 5, 6 and 8

• Claim 5 (the parallel ray is the chief ray): this is the very definition of the condition the references' "parallel light beam section" is designed to create for the axial beam, and the specification itself concedes that with aberration "chief rays might not be parallel ... and other light rays could also be parallel." Making the chief ray the axial ray is the most natural design target (it minimizes the incidence angles of the marginal rays, as the specification states). Obvious as a design choice, and arguably inherent in any properly telecentric space.
• Claim 6 (measuring device using the claim 3 lens unit — wavelength, amplitude, phase): the claim 3 combination (polarizer + depolarizer + LCTF) plus a detector is a conventional spectropolarimeter. JP 3979535 B2 and JP 2003-215530 A are explicitly LCTF-based spectropolarimeters for extracting spectral and polarization characteristics of an object — i.e., wavelength, amplitude and polarization/phase. Claim 6 adds only the detector already present in every LCTF imaging reference. Highly exposed.
• Claim 8: same as claim 6 but through the claim 4 lens unit (with rotator). Because the JAXA references achieve polarization selection by rotating the LCTF, and the '225 specification acknowledges rotation as an alternative, claim 8 is likewise highly exposed when combined with the depolarizer references.

6. Ranked assessment

Overall: the independent claims (1, 7) are the only ones with a defensible distinction, and that distinction (the chief ray of every beam, including off-axial beams, being axial in the filter space) is not expressly taught by any cited reference. The dependent claims add only polarization-handling features that have close, express prior-art counterparts, and claims 6/8 are near-textual reads on the JAXA spectropolarimeter references once a detector is added.

Bottom line: the strongest invalidity theory is a § 103 combination of JP 2003-215530 A (LCTF in a parallel-light inter-lens space, with rotation) as the primary reference, JP 3979535 B2 (the document the '225 background itself cites as the LCTF starting point), WO 2008/108846 A1 (LCTF in an infinity-corrected collimated space, plus the express polarization-dependence problem), and JP 2010-237097 A (field-position dependence of the LCTF centroid wavelength) as evidence of the known problem — with JP 2000-321424 A and JP 2001-141564 A supplying the depolarizer element for claims 2–4, 6 and 8. The motivation throughout is the same across the whole set: reduce the incidence angle at the LCTF to make the transmitted band uniform across the field and to remove polarization artifacts — the very problems the '225 patent identifies as pre-existing.

7. Explicit uncertainties

1. I did not verify the full text of JP H07-198398 A, JP H11-23891 A, JP 2000-321424 A, JP 2001-141564 A or US 2007/0268574 A1 (search budget exhausted). Their treatment here rests on their titles as printed in the patent's citation list. In particular, "Polarization canceling element" (JP 2000-321424 A) and "Spectrum smoothing device" (JP 2001-141564 A) are inferred to be depolarizer art from their titles — that inference must be checked before it is relied on in a filing.
2. Examiner-vs-third-party citation status of the ten references is not reliably recoverable from the fetched page; I treat all ten as prior art of record regardless.
3. No litigation or PTAB record for US 9,772,225 was verified (consistent with the earlier section of this analysis); therefore no objective-indicia evidence exists to rebut the prima facie case — but also no adjudicated claim construction exists, so the "parallel ray in each beam" limitation has no judicial gloss. This is the pivot point of the whole analysis.
4. This is a hypothetical, retrospective validity opinion, not a legal conclusion. Nothing here disturbs the patent's Active status, its 8-claim text, the Genesia Corporation assignment, or the 2036-04-21 anticipated expiration recorded on the face of the document.